Month: July 2010

by DAVID HILL

PHOTO/Upside Down World

The oil was spilled by Argentine company Pluspetrol on the River Maranon in Loreto, northern Peru. This is far from the first time. According to a June 25 article in the Peruvian weekly Hildebrandt en sus trece, the same company has spilled oil 78 times in the last four years in this region: four spills in 2006, 23 in 2007, 18 in 2008, 23 in 2009, and 10 this year already.

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Local reaction has centred on two main concerns. First, the fact that so many people rely on the river for their survival. According to leading indigenous organization Asociación Interétnica de Desarrollo de la Selva Peruana (AIDESEP), at least 28 indigenous communities – in other words, thousands of people – use the river for their drinking water, cooking and fishing.

Upside Down World for more

Link

David Harvey

(Submitted by Robin Khundkar & Asad Zaidi)

by MUMIA ABU JAMAL

Historians tell of Lincoln arriving at the Washington home of Gen. McClellan, only to be left waiting, for hours, only to be informed by the general’s wife that he was indisposed. When someone in the Lincoln entourage remarked at this breach of protocol, Lincoln reportedly remarked that it mattered little that he was disrespectful, as long as he continued to fight and win his war.

Z Space for more

by DAVID KAISER

My mother rarely calls to talk about my research. In April, however, she rang to ask: ‘Do you agree with Stephen Hawking?’ That’s usually an easy question to field. On topics ranging from the behaviour of black holes to the structure of the early universe, a safe answer is yes. But that wasn’t what my mother wanted to know. She wanted to know whether I agreed with the recently retired Lucasian Professor of Mathematics that trying to contact aliens was a bad idea. Any extraterrestrial civilisation that could receive our communiqués and act on them, Hawking warned, might show up on our doorstep, and wouldn’t necessarily be friendly. ‘Such advanced aliens,’ Hawking said, might be ‘looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.’ In no time at all, the word spread from Hawking’s voice synthesiser to the world’s blogosphere. Soon even my mother was calling.

London Review of Books for more

THE ECONOMIST

THERE are only 30,000 Muslims in Oklahoma, a state of 3.7m people, making them well under 1% of the population. That’s still enough to worry some people, though. Rex Duncan, a Republican member of Oklahoma’s House of Representatives, has just had a measure placed on the November ballot that would ban local courts from considering sharia, or Islamic law, in their judgments, a dubious first for the nation.

The Economist for more

(Submitted by reader)

BUST MAGAZINE

There’s been a whole lot of debate surrounding Japanese game culture lately. And reasonably so; as the entertainment industry has taken it too far with the new game “RapeLay.” Without elaborating, the motive of this crap rape game is to rape random female avatars, as well as their family members in discreet spots as well as in public. How’s that for stunting healthy sexual growth in young people?

Bust Magazine for more

SOUTH ASIAN MEDIA NET

NEW DELHI: After bringing a rail line close to the Indian border with Tibet, China is now gearing to push a rail link across the Karakorams into Pakistan through the Gilgit-Baltistan region that is part of the original state of Jammu and Kashmir.

As the first rail link across the Great Himalayas, the line running nearly 700 km from the historic Kashgar city in Xinjiang province to Havelian near Rawalpindi in northern Pakistan through the Khunjerab Pass will transform the geopolitics of western China. China also has plans to expand its rail links into Nepal and Myanmar.

South Asian Media Net for more

by MAX LANE

Rendra performing. PHOTO/Burung Merak Press/Inside Indonesia

In all countries, the ruling class determines what version of history enters the minds of the population, and in Indonesia this phenomenon is particularly striking. This does not just apply to the false memories implanted in society about the events of 1965; it applies to the whole of the country’s historical experience. As a result, almost nobody among the current generation knows what a transformative period the 1970s was.

It was in the 1970s that the basis for Suharto’s dictatorial system was established but also when people like Rendra laid the basis for the emergence in the 1990s of a radical resistance to that dictatorship. As a result of political censorship, and school education that distorted history and did not teach Indonesian literature as a subject, knowledge of Rendra’s 1970s poems and plays has never become a mass phenomenon, even if arrests, lyrics for pop songs and movies have long made his image as a flamboyant dissident the subject of front page news.

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They live in shanties without windows
and harvest for landlords
who live in huge palaces.
Their sweat falls like gold
for the carpetbaggers who run cigar factories in Europe.
When they demand their share of the profits,
the economists straighten their ties,
and send them condoms.

Inside Indonesia for more

by EDWARD S. HERMAN and DAVID PETERSON

In his June 17 “review” of our book The Politics of Genocide, for Pambazuka News,1 Gerald Caplan, a Canadian writer who Kigali’s New Times described as a “leading authority on Genocide and its prevention,”2 focuses almost exclusively on the section we devote to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.3 Caplan says virtually nothing about the rest of the book: nothing about the analytic framework that we apply throughout, nothing about the wealth of data that we report about usage of the term ‘genocide’ for different theaters where atrocities have been committed, nothing about our criticisms of “responsibility to protect” doctrine and the International Criminal Court, and almost nothing about the many other conflicts that also serve to corroborate our thesis.4 Instead, Caplan uses his “review” to falsely identify the main locus of responsibility for the mass killings known as the “Rwanda genocide,” falsely deny the central and ongoing U.S. role in the catastrophic events in Rwanda and the DRC from 1990 to the present, and maliciously label anyone who disagrees with him a “genocide denier” and member of the “lunatic fringe.” Caplan even defends Paul Kagame’s dictatorship, including Kagame’s suppression of free elections and free speech. All of this, we believe, makes Caplan not only a genocide denier, but as he helps divert attention from Kagame’s mass killings and pillage in the DRC, a genocide facilitator as well.

Monthly Review Zine for more

More GRITtv

Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussing their countries’ foreign relations resembles two lovers discussing their future together. Though they have squabbled in the past over trivial things (things like settlement expansion that most other countries deem flagrant violations of international law), their July 6th meeting at the White House showed that their “unbreakable bond” cannot be shaken.

Norman Finkelstein joins us in the studio to report that one should judge the alleged “peace process” with results, not rhetoric. Obama has certainly given enough lip service to settlement moratoriums, proximity talks, and direct talks, but what are the results? Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, there are three times as many settlers and Israel has annexed 42% of Palestinian land for even more expansion. Though Obama waxes eloquently about “direct negotiations,” there are no signs of Israel withdrawing to the 1967 borders that would only begin to indicate a successful peace process.