Brazil V Wall Street, Nike Lies (Surprise!), Dirty US Military, Cannabis Closet

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Maayo bga adlaw, Brazilian Democracy Faces Obstacles from the North Court Says First Amendment Doesn't Shield Nike From Suit BUSH'S HIT LIST AT THE UNITED NATIONS Historical Examples of US Involvement in Dirty Wars Workers Struggles: Europe, the Middle East and Africa Project Censored: NAFTA Destroys Farming Communities at Home and Abroad Chavez: borrowed time? The Netherlands: social democrats eulogize murdered neo-fascist Pim Fortuyn ISRAEL, THE OCCUPIED WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP, AND THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY TERRITORIES Nepal Solidarity Network COMING OUT OF THE CANNABIS CLOSET *** Brazilian Democracy Faces Obstacles from the North Common Dreams News Center http://commondreams.org/views02/0508-07.htm RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL -- In this slum carved out of the hilltops overlooking Rio de Janeiro, Claudia de Andrade Burgo explains why she plans to vote for Lula, the presidential candidate of the Workers' Party, in Brazil's 2002 elections. "He is from the people -- the poorer classes. The Workers' Party is more likely to create jobs." Claudia is a 31-year-old single mother with two children, who earns about $40 a month for childcare work. She has lived all her life in Jacarezinho, a favela -- one of the slums surrounding Rio, where drug dealers are often the law and police fear to tread. She is ready for change in Brazil. But unknown to Claudia, her vote could be cancelled by the decisions of Wall Street firms some 5000 miles away. Last week Luis Ignacio da Silva -- or Lula as he is popularly known -- pulled ahead in the polls. He scored 38 percent, with the nearest competitor at 16 percent. Brazil's financial markets showed no reaction, until the US financial giants Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter downgraded Brazilian bonds in response to the polls. The Brazilian stock market dropped more than 4 percent in one day, and the press broadcast Wall Street's warnings far and wide. The power of these firms to move financial markets -- and thereby intimidate the electorate -- is a growing threat to democracy in Brazil, as well as in other developing countries.... * Court Says First Amendment Doesn't Shield Nike From Suit New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/03/business/03SWEA.html California's highest court ruled yesterday that the First Amendment did not shield Nike from a lawsuit accusing it of fraud for asserting that its overseas workers received adequate wages and that its working conditions complied with safety regulations. The California Supreme Court ruled that the fraud lawsuit should not be dismissed, concluding that Nike's statements about its labor practices were commercial speech that did not deserve full First Amendment protection. Nike asserted that its defense of its labor practices was political speech and thus deserved full protection under the First Amendment. The company said its statements were part of an international media debate on issues of public interest. The ruling was the latest effort to distinguish commercial speech, in which businesses can be held liable for false statements, from political speech, in which the speaker enjoys broad protections, even when making false statements.... * BUSH'S HIT LIST AT THE UNITED NATIONS http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13088 Quietly, and without the fanfare that accompanies the campaign in the mountains of Afghanistan, the administration has begun a long march through multilateral institutions. At the UN and elsewhere, the U.S. has mounted a campaign to purge international civil servants judged to be out of step with Washington in the war on terrorism and its insistence that the U.S. have the last word in all global governance issues. The first and most prominent to go was Mary Robinson, the former Irish president whose work as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has been acclaimed by human rights groups across the world. Officially, she retired after a one-year renewal of her contract. In fact, the U.S. ferociously lobbied against here reappointment. UN officials and Western diplomats also said she was "difficult to work with" -- the usual euphemism for not willing to be dictated to. Most human rights activists see this as precisely her strength in an organization where not rocking the boat seems to be genetically engineered into many officials. The U.S. could not forgive her for her stands on the Middle East issues or for her endorsement last year of the results of the UN's Durban Conference on Racism, which both the U.S. and Israel walked out of. The rest of the world stayed and adopted a toned-down document, and subsequently Washington began its campaign to force Robinson out. Another recent victim of the U.S. campaign was Robert Watson, the much-respected chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. On Apr. 19, the U.S. administration succeeded in replacing him with Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian economist. The panel is (or perhaps was is the correct tense) an independent scientific body established to assess the degree of climate change and the contribution made by human activities such as burning fossil fuels. The panel's work had come to a consensus, not shared by the Bush administration, that human activity is a factor in climate change.... * Historical Examples of US Involvement in Dirty Wars 9-11 Peace Newsletter http://www.9-11peace.org/bulletin.php3 Over the years, the US government has supported coups that brought a number of repressive and brutal regimes to power, as well as the dirty wars which followed. Chile, Djakarta, El Salvador, Iran - the list goes on. In many cases military regimes replaced democratically elected leaders, and the killing sprees which followed were justified by the US government as necessary to wipe out communism--while being quietly covered up. The following links are meant to provide an introduction to the many notorious incidents that occurred from the 60's to the 80's. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it should begin to shed some light on the long history of questionable US foreign policies. A CIA-backed coup and massacre in Indonesia in the 1960's may have taken the lives of up to a million people. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/54b/032.html Thousands of declassified CIA documents reveal that the CIA aided in the overthrow of democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende in the 70's, thus putting Augusto Pinochet into power. You may have heard Pinochet's name before: his infamously brutal regime saw thousands killed, tortured, and "disappeared." http://9-11peace.org/r.php3?r=194 Henry Kissinger played a key role in the overthrow of Allende. This article explains his involvement (which he denies in his memoirs), and details the many instances of direct US and CIA involvement in the situation, such as setting up a fascist organization run by a former PR person for the Ford Motor Company. http://www.wsws.org/news/1998/oct1998/kis-o21.shtml This article on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Argentina's dirty war describes how it began with a coup and led to the disappearance of thousands of people during the 70's. http://9-11peace.org/r.php3?r=195 Evidence shows that US approval was also expressed for Argentina's dirty war, again through the influence of Henry Kissinger. http://9-11peace.org/r.php3?r=196 Reagan-era support for brutal counterinsurgency operations in Guatemala and Nicaragua has generally not received the coverage in the States that it deserves. This article details the former President's complicity in Guatemala, in order to make the argument that the US must face up to its own history. http://www.consortiumnews.com/1999/052699a1.html This article lives up to its title, "What everyone should know about Nicaragua." The author provides a clear and concise explanation of how the US used brutal contras (rebel groups) to try to overthrow the democratically elected Nicaraguan government in the 80's, including how this history led to the adamant US support for one candidate rather than the other in the post-Sept. 11 Nicaraguan elections. http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2001-11/09weisbrot.cfm Senator Jesse Helms has praised Pinochet and a former military officer who ran death squads in El Salvador, and was involved in supporting anti-communism actions during the Cold War. In fact, his efforts to eliminate communism led Senator Helms to support a Nicaraguan rebel group that has turned out to be one of the contra groups most heavily involved in narcotrafficking. http://www.parascope.com/articles/0797/helm01.htm US support of groups in Colombia have helped contribute to deaths and human rights violations there. http://www.zmag.org/crisescurevts/colombia/tdeath.htm * Workers Struggles: Europe, the Middle East and Africa WSWS http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/lab-m09.shtml German engineers and electrical workers union continues strike action + Council workers in London to strike + French medical practitioners strike continues + French foundry workers continue strike action over pay and conditions + Israeli unions protest social cost of war + Israeli pilots threaten strike action + Zimbabwean textile workers protest ill treatment + Ugandan dam operators on sit-down strike + Zimbabwean gold miners strike against non-payment * Project Censored: NAFTA Destroys Farming Communities at Home and Abroad Censored Alerts http://www.projectcensored.org/ The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are responsible for the impoverishment of and exodus of small farms in Mexico and Haiti. NAFTA is also causing the economic destruction of rural farming communities in the United States and Canada. The resulting loss of rural employment has created a landslide of socio-economic and environmental consequences that will only worsen with the continued dismantling and deregulation of trade barriers. When NAFTA came before Congress in 1993, U.S. farmers were told that the agreement would open the borders of Mexico and Canada, enabling them to sell their superior products and achieve previously unknown prosperity. Corporations whom operate throughout the Americas, such as Tyson and Cargill, have since used the farming surplus to drive down costs, pitting farmers against each other and prohibiting countries from taking protective actions. Since the enactment of NAFTA, 80% of the foodstuffs coming into the US are products that displace crops raised here at home. NAFTA has allowed multinational middlemen to increase production in Mexico, where they can profit from much cheaper labor, as well as freely use pesticides banned in the US. In both Mexico and Haiti, NAFTA policies have caused an exodus from rural areas forcing people to live on city streets, accepting low paid labor and sweatshop conditions. Farmers in Mexico, unable to compete with the large-scale importation and chemical-intensive mass production of US agricultural corporations, are swimming in a corn surplus that has swelled approximately 450% since NAFTA's implementation. Haiti's deregulation of trade with the US has destroyed the island's rice industry in a similar manner. Resulting urban slums are contributing to the breakdown of cultural traditions and public authority, making the growing masses increasingly ungovernable. The Mexican government clashes violently with any organized dissent towards NAFTA. Protests in Chiapas and in Central Mexico have lead to the reported arrest, injury and death of dozens of activists. Community leaders like Minister Lucius Walker, executive of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, state that, "The biggest challenge facing all of us in this new millennium is to build a citizens' movement to counter the corporate captivity of the Americas." The1993 NAFTA agreement has created the desolation of small farming communities, added loopholes to environmental precautions and exploited poor people throughout the Americas. With the scheduled 2009 lift on tariffs and import restrictions, as well as Bush's proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) adding 31 more countries to the NAFTA agreement, many additional farming communities are in danger. Synopsis by: Adam Cimino * Chavez: borrowed time? Channel 4 News http://www.channel4.com/news/cgi-bin/search.cgi?link=http://www.channel4.com/new\ s/home/20020509/Story05.htm ...President Chavez: "Of course, it's a revolution, profound change in political, social and economic structures of the country, a profound ideological change. And that's why we've seen such ferocious opposition from a privileged minority who are trying to stop the course of the revolution. They will not succeed." The truth of what happened here a month ago still in the eye of the beholder. But what's clear now is that the military overplayed its hand by first removing Chavez, then installing a right-wing puppet government that promptly disbanded parliament and the supreme court, thereby allowing Chavez to stage a lightning counter-coup. Clear as well that coup leaders acted only after being given a tacit green light by the Americans... * The Netherlands: social democrats eulogize murdered neo-fascist Pim Fortuyn http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/may2002/neth-m09.shtml Only days before May 15 parliamentary elections, the assassination of racist demagogue Pim Fortuyn has set off political shockwaves in the Netherlands. The event has exposed deep divisions in a society that carefully maintained a facade of political harmony based on consensus and tolerance. Immediately after the news broke that the 54-year-old Fortuyn had been fatally injured by five shots to his head, chest and neck, his supporters rioted through the centre of The Hague, capital of the Netherlands. The same evening they engaged in violent street battles with police. Mobile police units used water cannon and truncheons to counter the right-wing rioters, who threw stones and bottles. Supporters of Fortuyn were able to force their way into an underground garage adjoining the parliamentary building and set fire to a number of cars. Together with election placards bearing his picture, many Fortuyn supporters wore swastikas and other Nazi symbols.... * ISRAEL, THE OCCUPIED WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP, AND THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY TERRITORIES Human Rights Watch http://hrw.org/reports/2002/israel3/ SUMMARY ...Despite these close quarters, the IDF had a legal duty to distinguish civilians from military targets. At times, however, IDF military attacks were indiscriminate, failing to make this distinction. Firing was particularly indiscriminate on the morning of April 6, when missiles were launched from helicopters, catching many sleeping civilians unaware. One woman was killed by helicopter fire during that attack; a four-year-old child in another part of the town was injured when a missile hit the house where she was sleeping. Both were buildings housing only civilians, with no fighters in the immediate vicinity. The IDF used armored bulldozers to demolish residents' homes. The apparent purpose was to clear paths through Jenin's narrow and winding alleys to enable their tanks and other heavy weaponry to penetrate the camp interior, particularly since some of these had evidently been booby-trapped. However, particularly in the Hawashin district, the destruction extended well beyond any conceivable purpose of gaining access to fighters, and was vastly disproportionate to the military objectives pursued. The damage to Jenin camp by missile and tank fire and bulldozer destruction has shocked many observers. At least 140 buildings-most of them multi-family dwellings-were completely destroyed in the camp, and severe damage caused to more than 200 others has rendered them uninhabitable or unsafe. An estimated 4,000 people, more than a quarter of the population of the camp, were rendered homeless because of this destruction. Serious damage was also done to the water, sewage and electrical infrastructure of the camp. More than one hundred of the 140 completely destroyed buildings were in Hawashin district. In contrast to other parts of the camp where bulldozers were used to widen streets, the IDF razed the entire Hawashin district, where on April 9 thirteen IDF soldiers were killed in an ambush by Palestinian militants. Establishing whether this extensive destruction so exceeded military necessity as to constitute wanton destruction-or a war crime-should be one of the highest priorities for the United Nations fact-finding mission. The harm from this destruction was aggravated by the inadequate warning given to civilian residents. Although warnings were issued on multiple occasions by the IDF, many civilians only learned of the risk as bulldozers began to crush their houses. Jamal Fayid, a thirty-seven-year-old paralyzed man, was killed when the IDF bulldozed his home on top of him, refusing to allow his relatives the time to remove him from the home. Sixty-five-year-old Muhammad Abu Saba`a had to plead with an IDF bulldozer operator to stop demolishing his home while his family remained inside; when he returned to his half-demolished home, he was shot dead by an Israeli soldier. Human Rights Watch has confirmed that at least fifty-two Palestinians were killed as a result of IDF operations in Jenin. This figure may rise as rescue and investigative work proceeds, and as family members detained by Israel are located or released. Due to the low number of people reported missing, Human Rights Watch does not expect this figure to increase substantially. At least twenty-two of those confirmed dead were civilians, including children, physically disabled, and elderly people. At least twenty-seven of those confirmed dead were suspected to have been armed Palestinians belonging to movements such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades. Some were members of the Palestinian Authority's (PA) National Security Forces or other branches of the PA police and security forces. Human Rights watch was unable to determine conclusively the status of the remaining three killed, among the cases documented.... * Nepal Solidarity Network Mission Nepal Solidarity Network http://vm.uconn.edu/~ser00003/NS.html The Nepal Solidarity Network is meant to be a resource for people committed to working to help resolve the ongoing conflict in Nepal and working toward a true and just peace, rather than a solution by military force by either side. We hope to avoid needless bloodshed of any human being, and work for economic and social justice and true democracy in Nepal. We are nonpartisan and do not affiliate ideologically with either side in the conflict, but wish to work in solidarity with the people of Nepal, who like all people deserve to live dignified lives in peace. But, very importantly, a true and just peace doesn't simply mean a lack of bloodshed. It also includes the need to focus on issues of structural violence: economic inequality, global imperialism, caste/race oppression, patriarchal oppression, and other forms of "quiet" violence that partly underlie the current conflict. These issues must at least be included in the dialogue. Without addressing these issues, a cease-fire will be a welcome yet hollow peace. * COMING OUT OF THE CANNABIS CLOSET Alternet http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=13059 Jodi James is a 34-year-old single mother of two, a Democratic candidate for the Florida House of Representatives and a marijuana smoker. James, who made a point of disclosing her marijuana use at the Florida state Democratic convention, is one of a growing number of people who believe it's time for pot smokers to step forward and challenge their negative stereotype. "If many prominent people come out of the closet, it will change the idea that we have to hide, that we have to be ashamed," James says. "Coming out on this issue will change what will be okay for other politicians to do." Some politicians have already been forced out of the closet, or have come out on their own. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, was revealed to be a marijuana smoker by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), which ran a series of advertisements featuring Bloomberg's reply to a reporter who asked him last summer if he had smoked marijuana, "You bet I did," said Bloomberg, "and I enjoyed it." ... Return to CounterHeg Home