Month: June 2009

By Robert Jenson (Z Space)

Apartheid is dead in South Africa, but a new version of white supremacy lives on.

“During apartheid the racism of white people was up front, and we knew what we were dealing with. Now white people smile at us, but for most black people the unemployment and grinding poverty and dehumanizing conditions of everyday life haven’t changed,” a black South African told me. “So, what kind of commitment to justice is under that smile?”

This community activist in Cape Town said that, ironically, the end of South’s Africa’s apartheid system of harsh racist segregation and exploitation has in some ways made it more difficult to agitate for social justice today. As he offered me his views on the complex politics of his country, Nkwame Cedile, a field worker for People’s Health Movement, expressed a frustration that I heard often in my two weeks in the country: Yes, the brutality of apartheid ended in 1994 with free elections, but the white-supremacist ideas that had animated apartheid and the racialized distribution of wealth it was designed to justify didn’t magically evaporate.

That shouldn’t be surprising — how could centuries of white supremacy simply disappear in 15 years? What did surprise me during my lecture tour was not the racial tension but how much discussions about race in South Africa sounded just like conversations in the United States. There was something eerily familiar to me, a lifelong white U.S. citizen, about those discussions. I have heard comments from black people in the United States like Cedile’s, but I’ve also heard white Americans articulate views on race that were sometimes exactly like white South Africans’. I learned that even with all the differences in the two countries there are equally important similarities, and as a result the sense of entitlement that so many white people hold onto produces similar dodges and denials.

Those similarities: South Africa and the United States were the two longstanding settler states that maintained legal apartheid long after the post-World War II decolonization process. The crucial term is “settler state,” marking a process by which an invading population exterminates or displaces and exploits the indigenous population to acquire its land and resources, with formal slavery playing a key role at some point in the country’s history. Both strategies were justified with overtly racist doctrines about white supremacy, and both required the white population to discard basic moral and religious principles, leading to a pathological psychology of superiority. Both of those settler strategies have left us with racialized disparities in wealth and well-being long after the formal apartheid is over.

The main difference: The United States struggles with its problem with a white majority, while South Africa has a black majority. But what I found fascinating his how little difference that made in terms of the psychological pathology of so many white people. So, as is typically the case, my trip to South Africa taught me not only about racism in South Africa but also in the United States, which reminded me that perhaps we travel to observe others so that we can learn about ourselves.

From a two-week trip I wouldn’t claim deep insights or knowledge about South Africa. My contact in the country, outside of informal chats with people on the street, was limited primarily to university professors and students, or left/progressive activists in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban. I didn’t have a chance to get behind the gates in the wealthy neighborhoods or talk to elite business people, and my travels in the black townships were limited in time and scope. But with those limits, some clear patterns emerged about the moderate/liberal/left white people I engaged with.

[A footnote on racial terms: In South Africa people sometimes talk about race in terms of white and black, with “black” in that context meaning all people who aren’t of European descent. More specifically, the black population is made up of black Africans (such as the Zulu and Xhosa), Indians (descended from various waves of immigration from India), and coloured (mixed-race). Most whites tend to identify as of primarily English or Dutch/Afrikaner background. Many people in South Africa try to avoid apartheid-era terminology but still sometimes use these four traditional racial categories, in part because they are the basis for measuring economic progress in relation to various forms of affirmative action.]

Z Space for more

GAZA CITY: Former US president Jimmy Carter yesterday met Hamas leader Ismail Haniya in the Gaza Strip, where he called for a lifting of Israel’s blockade, saying Palestinians are being treated “like animals.” Following the talks, Carter called for an end of “all violence” against both Israelis and Palestinians.

This is holy land for us all and my hope is that we can have peace… all of us are children of Abraham,” he said at a joint news conference with Haniya, prime minister of the Hamas government in the Palestinian enclave. Hamas, a group pledged to the destruction of Israel which violently seized power in Gaza two years ago, is listed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the United States and the European Union.

Carter was expected to pass on a letter from the parents of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants including Hamas in a cross-border raid almost three years ago, and who remains in captivity. Earlier Carter denounced the Israeli blockade and the destruction wrought by its 22-day military offensive against Gaza in December and January.

My primary feeling today is one of grief and despair and an element of anger when I see the destruction perpetrated against innocent people,” Carter said as he toured the impoverished territory. “Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings,” he said.

The starving of 1.5 million human beings of the necessities of life-never before in history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles and then denied the means to repair itself,” Carter said at a UN school graduation ceremony in Gaza City. The United States and Europe “must try to do all that is necessary to convince Israel and Egypt to allow basic goods into Gaza,” he said. “At same time, there must be no more rockets” from Gaza into Israel, said Carter, who brokered the historic 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been wracked against your people,” he said at a destroyed American school, saying it was “deliberately destroyed by bombs from F16s made in my country.” Israel’s offensive killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and left large swathes of the coastal strip sandwiched between Israel and Egypt in ruins. Thirteen Israelis also died in the conflict. “I feel partially responsible for this as must all Americans and Israelis,” Carter said.

Kuwait Times for more

A couple have spoken of their shock after an IVF clinic mix-up led to their last embryo being wrongly implanted into another patient.

The clinic where the couple took the treatment
They were further angered when it emerged the other woman was given the morning-after pill.
The couple from Bridgend won their case for damages after the mistake at Cardiff’s University Hospital of Wales.

Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust apologised “unreservedly” for the error and said it had improved checking procedures.

The trust admitted gross failures in care and has also agreed to pay an undisclosed settlement to the couple.

Shattered
The couple, who have not been named, discovered the mix-up when they attended the clinic for the implantation of their last remaining viable embryo in December 2007.

It later emerged that the patient who had wrongly been given their embryo had been given the morning after pill when the mistake was spotted almost immediately. This resulted in the procedure being terminated.

“In less than 10 seconds our wonderful world was shattered when the senior embryologist stood in front of us and said, ‘I’m very sorry to tell you, but there’s been an accident in the lab. Your embryo has been destroyed’,” the woman told the Mail on Sunday.

She added: “We were both rooted to our seats. We were stunned and trembling. We held each other tightly, and sobbed and sobbed.”
The couple’s solicitor, Guy Forster, said the couple were “absolutely distraught” by what happened.

“Even some time later, they still get very tearful when talking about what they went through, and I don’t think that will leave them,” he said.

The woman, a 38-year-old hospital worker, said the couple rejected an offer for a free round of IVF treatment as they felt they could no longer trust the hospital.
She added that the incident put a great strain on her relationship with her husband.

The couple began fertility treatment in 2000.
Following the third cycle of treatment, the woman became pregnant and in April 2003 gave birth to a son.
The remaining embryos were frozen and, in line with the clinic’s policy, were kept for five years.

Wrong shelf
In November 2007 the clinic contacted the couple with the news that just one embryo had survived and was in good condition.
The couple decided to take this last chance to add to their family.
On 5 December 2007, they attended the clinic for the embryo to be transplanted, unaware that in the laboratory a trainee embryologist had mixed up their embryo after taking it from the wrong shelf of the incubator.

The trainee embryologist failed to carry out “fail-safe” witnessing procedures to ensure the embryo being taken from the incubator and implanted belonged to the correct patient.
The mistake was only discovered when another colleague later found that the correct embryo, that belonging to the couple, was missing from the incubator.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) was informed of the incident.
BBC for more

From his appointment, Afghan culture minister Karim Khorram has shown a dislike of free speech and has taken steps to curb it

By Kamran Mir Hazar (Guardian)

Since the fall of the Taliban, the international community has been playing a game of double-standards in Afghanistan. George Bush, for example, repeatedly talked of spreading democracy in Afghanistan but not once did he raise his voice against those accused of human rights violations.

The Afghan government led by Hamid Karzai is pleased with such pronouncements, as they downplay the daily increase in corruption, injustice and inefficiency. Karzai is content with such pronouncements and is exploiting them to ensure his own survival. Nowadays he officially refers to Mullah Omar, the leader of the murdering band of the Taliban, as his “dear brother Mullah Omar” and is asking for the names of Taliban killers to be removed from the UN blacklist.
In doing so, the Afghan government is intending to complete the number of human rights violators in the government by officially including the Taliban and Golbuddin Hekmatyar’s terrorist group. But, even if the intention exists to fight Hekmatyar and the Taliban, the struggle has to begin from the presidential palace and parliament. This is because many men loyal to the Taliban and to Hekmatyar are currently acting as senior advisers to President Karzai, including education minister Faruq Wardak; culture minister Karim Khorram, Mullah Zaif and Mullah Mutawakel as well as such tie-wearing Taliban like Hedayat Amin Arsala and former finance minister Nurulhaq Ahadi.
The international community’s game of double standards and the Afghan government’s backing of this game has had bitter results for the people. Alongside the spread of human rights violations, the situation with regard to freedom of expression has become equally desperate. Afghanistan has become one of the most dangerous parts of the world for journalists. Seven journalists have been killed in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, a number of others have been kidnapped and dozens more have been arrested and imprisoned, beaten and belittled.

Thousands of letters have been sent so far to Karzai about Parwiz Kambaksh, a journalist sentenced to 20 years’ jail, but so far Karzai hasn’t even taken the smallest of steps to help Kambaksh. This is even though all Kambakhsh has done is to download a piece of writing off the internet, to print it and distribute it to a small group of friends. Exactly one day after Kambakhsh was sentenced to 20 years, a serious human rights violator by the name of Asadullah Sarwari was given 19 years in jail, a year less than Kambakhsh.

Even though the situation of the freedom of expression had little to offer prior to the appointment of the current culture minister, Karim Khorram, it seems that by appointing Khorram three years ago, Karzai has taken organised measures against freedom of speech and culture in Afghanistan. The measures are to be put into practice through this specific member of Golbodin Hekmatyar’s party.

Only a few days after becoming minister, Khorram had turned up at a cultural institution. There, he banned female photographers from photographing him. He told them that he did not want women to take his picture. This Taliban-style attitude showed that Khorram had no inclination to come to terms with freedom of speech and that he would take measures to curb this freedom.
Guardian for more

(Jaffna), Sri Lanka
Date of Release: 11th June 2009

The recent denial of entry to the Canadian Parliamentarian Bob Rae, a long time champion of democracy, requires particular attention by those who care about the future of Lanka. His deportation reflects the paradox of continuing internal repression and unhealthy xenophobia despite the end of the war. It reflects a mindset that bodes ill for the minorities and the democratic rights of Sinhalese. It is a government that wants everyone else to conform to its own agenda and is hostile to discussion of any kind based on rights.

In our recent report, released on 10th June 2009, we highlighted the character of present government and its leadership, which is using the euphoria following on military success against the LTTE to promote a majoritarian agenda along with increasing authoritarianism. If this trend is not challenged, the country will be hijacked by those who will do irreparable damage to the long term interest of the country. The UTHR(J) has experienced and challenged the negative aspects of narrow Tamil nationalism, which permitted the rise of LTTE and its ability to paralyse the community through internal terror and created an illusion of strength among the Tamil community founded on transient military success. In the absence of broader humanity, it failed miserably in uniting the people.

Many people from the all the different communities hoped that end of the war would bring goodwill to the fore. They hoped for reconciliation and reconstruction in the context of a just political process. It should also have been the time to restore democratic governance and accountability and bring an end to the culture of impunity. But during the last stages of the war, the bankruptcy of the political leadership and its majoratarian schemes were becoming clear. The dominant section of the government shows utter contempt for the emergence of a Tamil democratic culture and is only interested in using the armed elements within Tamil community that are willing to toe the ruling SLFP’s narrow interests. In this context the denial of entry to Bob Rae clearly exposes the mindset of the present government and those who control its decision making.

When entry is barred to a Canadian parliamentarian, a former premier of Ontario and one of the leading figures in the Opposition Liberal Party after being granted a visa with the full knowledge of its purpose by Sri Lanka’s High Commissioner in Canada, it is much more than a gaffe. It reflects the atrocious diplomacy into which the country is being driven by a clique that is usurping the due functions of other arms of the state.

How different sections of the state acted tells its own story. Daya Perera PC, High Commissioner in Canada was frankly apologetic. Controller of Immigration P.B. Abeykoon told the Daily Mirror, ‘We denied him entry to Sri Lanka and detained him after State intelligence services warned that Mr. Rae’s visit was not suitable’ indicating that he was taking instructions from the Defence Ministry. Someone at the Mirror tried to be clever by inserting a box item comparing Rae’s deportation to that of Charles de Gaulle from Canada in 1967 after his expression of support for Québec separatism. The state-owned Daily News in saying Rae was involved in pro-LTTE political activities in his home country, was repeating parrot-like something about which it knew nothing. The Island simply described him as an LTTE-supporting Canadian MP.

The Army spokesman as reported on its web site said not only that Rae ‘relentlessly supported Tiger terrorists and their supporters in Canada’, but went on to put words into the mouth of poor Mr. Abeykoon: ‘He was held by Immigration and Emigration authorities at the airport on charges of aiding and abetting terrorism while working against the interests of Sri Lanka.’ The related Defence Ministry web site was strangely silent or had on second thoughts taken down its posting. It is clear where the action came from.

To begin, we set the record straight. Far from being a supporter of the LTTE, Bob Rae played an important role in helping Tamil dissidents in Canada to find their voice. It was owing to active moral support from people like him, that the LTTE’s monopoly over the lives of Tamils in Toronto began to crack in 2004. In December 2004 he chaired a Human Rights Watch meeting in Toronto launching a report looking into the LTTE’s recruitment of children. It was his commitment to Tamil children that led him to take a strong stand on the child soldier issue even as pro-LTTE activists attempted to disrupt the meeting.
Bob Rae’s commitment to Tamil dissent and a united Sri Lanka is clear from his participation at a memorial meeting in London, UK in March 2007 for his friend and colleague Kethesh Loganathan, who was labelled a “traitor” and assassinated by the LTTE. Kethesh Loganathan, a long-time activist, spent the last months of his life working in the Government’s Peace Secretariat to take forward the political process. In his keynote address, Bob Rae stated: “This has been the central question in Sri Lankan politics for the entire 20th century. How to create a country that reflects pluralism, that reflects diversity, that reflects the differences, that reflects the collective personalities of Tamils, of Hill Country Tamils, of Muslims, of Sinhalese. And that gets rid of this pathology of an excessive nationalism which never recognises the dignity and the difference and the personality of the other.”

Bob Rae was firmly on the side of human rights, a committed opponent of violations by the LTTE and its conscription of children. Like most Tamil dissidents and many enlightened Sinhalese he supported a federal political settlement in Lanka and at no time supported separatism in Lanka.
SACW for more

Our dearest Fuzzheads,

The Green Kaleidoscope’s 10th issue has been officially launched, today! 🙂

Please have a little look-see at: www.thegreenkaleidoscope.com, and send us your feedback at:

editors.tgk@gmail.com.

We’re two months shy of turning ONE! After 10 long months of learning to wobble away on our little feet – in diapers et al – we stand and walk confidently all because of YOUR support.

Our wonderful writers, our wonderful readers, you’ll make us sprint one day!

All our love,
Team TGK.

p.s) TGK is best viewed on Internet Explorer!

—

www.thegreenkaleidoscope.com

Maternal instinct: After killing its mother, Legadema the hunting leopard helps a day-old baboon to safety at the top of a tree

Animal Liberation Front for more pictures and article

Submitted by Asghar Vasanwala.

By Tony Phillips (Brazzil)

Latin America has some of the world’s largest countries, in terms of land area, but the continent has no large global economy: and only two medium-sized economies, Brazil and Mexico. The region also lacks a local hard currency as a basis for international, and especially intra-regional, trade.

Many of the commodities that South American countries export are not traded in the currency of the originating country. So, if Chile imports oil from Argentina or Argentina copper from Chile, they pay in U.S. dollars. A regional currency facilitates trade and the creation of financial service hubs.

Europe developed its financial services and its regional development bank around the Pound Sterling, the Mark, the French Franc, and its economic stability now depends largely on the Euro. The U.S. Dollar filled this role in North America, and Asia uses the Yen (and increasingly the Yuan). (1) The lack of a continental currency leads to unstable national currencies and also financial dependence, in this case on the U.S. dollar.

Three Latin American democracies are dollarized (Ecuador, Panama, and El Salvador). While the Bank of the South will not replace the use of the dollar, even in development projects, it could be a step in the right direction in terms of locally-sourced development infrastructure. It is also a step toward a South American regional currency.
The Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA in Spanish) (2) countries have proposed beginning with a Sucre, (3) a transactional currency introduced at the latest ALBA-TCP (TCP – Peoples Trade Agreement) conference in Cumaná, Venezuela. ALBA itself was created as a “Bolivarian” alternative for Latin American commerce to oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Ecuador recently agreed to join ALBA.

Latin America is rich in real terms, however its financial infrastructure is primitive. This means that many national and international transactions pass unnecessarily via northern financial centers, sometimes requiring two hard currency conversions from buyer currency to dollar to seller currency.

Even transactions within a country can be in external currencies; buying an apartment in Buenos Aires, for example, involves a transaction in dollars. For a time this was also the case in Brazil. However, increased self-reliance, the strength of the Brazilian Real, and banking regulation have gradually replaced the dollar with the Brazilian Real in most Brazilian financial transactions.

One recent step forward has been a bilateral Central Bank agreement between Brazil and Argentina, allowing trade to occur between these two countries in local currencies. However, this Central Bank to Central Bank facility is not backed by basic financial services in São Paulo or Buenos Aires, such as currency hedges to protect the transaction in the case of a sharp currency move between the Brazilian Real and the Argentine Peso.

With the global financial crisis, currency moves are becoming more volatile. The result is that traders pay extra to buy and sell futures on the U.S. dollar, which offers them the currency security they need to plan ahead and fix the price of a future transaction, so use of this new facility accounts for less than 20% of transactions between Brazil and Argentina.

A History of Instability
Latin America has experienced economic instability for centuries. Some economic historians believe this to be the result of bad habits inherited from colonial times. During the Spanish and Portuguese empires, export policies were policed by viceroys for the benefit of their Iberian kings (and corrupt local customs officials). With military conquest came exploitation of human and natural resources for export markets abroad.

Iberian royalty cared little about the working conditions in their silver mines or large estancias. (4) It never even occurred to them to pay for the silver and gold coins smelted there for use in Madrid or Lisbon which funded Europe’s development. In effect they were a donation of Latin American resources to Europe. New World plunder financed the development of Old World empires.

With independence came change and some improvement in the chain of international production. Recent decades, however, have seen another consolidation in the control of exploitation, production, transport, and marketing of South American resources, introducing new economic forces, a process known as the transnationalization of these economies.

The chain of production has shifted to the hands of private transnational corporations. Examples include U.S. transnational Cargill’s activities in grains and oils (especially soybeans) in Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil; or banking giants such as Citibank and HSBC; or Spanish transnationals such as Telefonica, Banco Santander, BBVA, and Repsol.

Today none of South America’s commodity exports are denominated in their own currencies and most of the financial system is held and controlled by developed country-based transnational companies. This leaves national currencies and financial systems weak and vulnerable, what some have called a “neo-colonial” order that undermines regional development.

This results in flows of capital (5) from South America to the headquarters of the transnationals which operate there leaving the countries permanently short of hard currency. This causes so-called stop-and-go economic instability cycles: (stop) crisis in the balance of payments and then (go) after devaluation of currency. Stop-and-go makes development planning impossible.

Latin America’s economic problems are compounded by foreign debt and the growth of dollar-denominated commodity exports. This has a cyclical destructive pattern in Latin America from the shortage of savings in local currencies. Who wants to save for a rainy day when their currency is constantly losing value, if not by internal inflation, then by forced devaluation relative to other currencies?
Brazzil for more