Fw: world news: A SEATTLE IN SCOTLAND?
NEWS DISSECTOR July 5, 2005
STREET FIGHTING IN SCOTLAND
AFRICA RESPONDS TO THE G8
IRAQ RESISTANCE SURFACES
Tomorrow is G-8 Day, as eight leaders of the world's richest nations meet--where else but on a ritzy golf resort in Gleneagles outside of Edinburgh Scotland-- to discuss their common problems and debate a proposed hike in aid, trade and debt relief for the majority of humanity that lives on 2$ a day.
Activists have raised the issues of economic justice in dramatic and powerful ways with rock concerts, mass marches, and direct confrontations. Oddly this latest battle in the globalization war seems to have little resonance in the American media or among political movements in America who are locked into their own domestic battle with the Bush Administration or are just indifferent.
With mainstream media highlighting the issues there--and downplaying it here--its not surprising that many Americans don't really know about the issues and are said not to care. (Only half the members of Congress have passports and world news is increasingly an endangered species.) Nevertheless, more than a million Americans have joined the One Campaign lauched by Bono while others have been part and parcel of anti-globalization movements. This is the home of Seattle after all.
Europe seems to have more outspoken advocates for global change than the US, The African American community with ties of history and heritage to Africa is largely uninformed about the issues perhaps because its own survival issues have to come first while its middle class leadership is more insular and inward focused. The war is another factor--with activists here showing a single issue focus on it. The rest of the world and its concerns seems a lesser priority.
And President Bush echoes that attitude in his pronouncements that he is there to represent US interests (as he defines them, of course) and is not there to help improve the world. He says the US gives 0.2% of its GDP in international aid while the UN target is 0.7%. Moreover much US aid is tied to rules that require much of the money be spent with US companies, in effect, making the rich richer. He has rejected a variety of climate change proposals that the rest of the world believes is critical to planetary survival.
Already the campaign planers from groups like Oxfam and the Green Alliance are pessimistic that the G-8 will deliver on their demands which include slashing farming subsidizing and protecting markets from African goods. Max Lawson. Oxfam's advisor says "Given the events of this weekend, there are millions of people expecting G8 to come up with something extraordinary and this isn't it."
Critics like the Guardian's George Monbiot fear that the movement has been co-opted by multi-national corporations and the governments that back them, "
The G8 leaders and the business interests their summit promotes can absorb our demands for aid, debt, even slightly fairer terms of trade, and lose nothing. They can wear our colors, speak our language, claim to support our aims, and discover in our agitation not new constraints but new opportunities for manufacturing consent. Justice, this consensus says, can be achieved without confronting power.
What Democracy Looks Like?
No sooner did I leave Edinburgh than the real anti G8 action erupted with in the center of the city with the police and authorities branding one set of protesters as troublemakers,.
"It felt like Seattle," one demonstrator said. Protesters say they turned the center city into a carnival and reported on police abuse that the BBC did not.
THE BBC VERSION
"Anti-G8 protesters fought violent battles with police in the centre of the city, which was brought to a standstill for six hours. About 90 people were arrested including what police called "key" anarchist suspects from across Europe.
More than 20 protesters and police officers were injured."
THE INDY MEDIA VERSION
Now here's a posting on the local Indy media site which operates out of an impressive indy media Center that I worked in when I was in Edinburgh:
"Reports of excessive force by Lothian and Borders police against protestors and by standers in Edinburghs financial district.
"Around 200 protesters and bystanders where herded into Canning Street at 12.30 PM by Police in riot gear. Eyewitness reports say the police were extremely heavy handed and seemed to be promoting violence amongst the crowd. The crowd was held until 4.30, with many arrests, a large number of people were stopped and searched without being given a reason."
The BBC website does offer lots of background on the G8 Meeting. It also summed up some African reaction to the Live 8 Concerrts that I cover in a separate report on the front page of Mediachannel.org.
AFRICA RESPONDS
BBC reports from Libya: "Delegates at the African Union summit in Libya are preparing a final declaration expected to appeal for the continent's debts to be wiped out. Members are also likely to call for fairer terms of trade with the West, while stressing their desire for better governance and transparency."
Some of the African Press Response (BBC)
"Saturday's worldwide series of Live 8 concerts are greeted enthusiastically by Sunday papers in South Africa, while throughout the continent, commentators look ahead to this week's G8 meeting.
Johannesburg's Sunday Times was impressed by the worldwide extravaganza, labelling the concerts "The Gr8est Show on Earth".
"They were old songs, but they were good ones," says the paper "
"Another South African paper, the Mail and Guardian, hails a certain local hero's performance at the Johannesburg concert.
"Bono effortlessly worked the crowd. Half a globe away, Bjork strutted the stage. Bill Gates was cheered like a rock star. And on the continent that inspired the unprecedented Live 8 extravaganza, Nelson Mandela outshone them
all," the paper says.Trade not aid?
The focus of Live 8, the G8 summit in Gleneagles, has begun to generate press
comment from further afield on the continent, revealing mixed feelings.Kenya's Daily Nation says: "The poor would certainly benefit from the removal of tariff barriers, in particular the EU's unfair system of farm subsidies. However, Africa needs to
begin to seriously look for its own home-grown solutions to poverty and the
debt problem."A commentary in the Mail and Guardian is also sceptical, and criticises theconditions attached to debt relief.
"The G8's plan for saving Africa is a little better than an extortion racket," it complains ."
AFRICAN NGOs SPEAK OUT
Meanwhile, "A range of African NGOs and organisations have expressed frustration and concern that they have not been consulted as part of the commission process.
"The Alternatives Commission, was set up one month ago in response to statements from Blair and Brown that they were going to solve Africa'sproblems with limited debt relief and increased aid. This response is an oversimplification of what really needs to happen to address poverty in Africa."
PILGER: "THE G8 SUMMIT: A FRAUD AND A CIRCUS"
Writing in the New Statesman, the British-based John Pilger is even more critical:
"The illusion of an anti establishment crusade led by pop stars - a cultivated, controlling image of rebellion - serves to dilute a great political movement of anger. In summit after summit, not a single significant "promise" of the G8 has been kept, and the "victory for millions" is no different. It is a fraud - actually a setback to reducing poverty in Africa. Entirely conditional on vicious,discredited economic programs imposed by the World Bank and the IMF, the "package" will ensure that the "chosen" countries slip deeper into poverty.
ALTERNATIVE SUMMIT
I participated in an alternative summit, speaking on media issues and showing WMD to packed room. There was lots of interest there in Mediachannel.org.
David Miller reports:
"5,000 people attended what organisers claim is the biggest alternative political meeting ever held in Scotland. The G8 Alternative Summit covered more than
half a dozen venues in Edinburgh and involved activists and speakers from
most continents.
Meanwhile his organization reports that Miller, a journalist who co-edits Medachannel affiliate Spinwatch"has been refused a press pass to cover the G8 summit at Gleneagles. According to Sean McCulloch of the vetting unit at Tayside police this has not been an isolated occurrence.
"Several journalists have been refused passes. Indeed it transpires that several letters announcing arrangments for picking up press passes have been sent to journalists, according to Sean McCulloch. They have subsequently had their passes rescinded on the orders of the police/intelligence agencies. The denial of press passes to journalists is an attempt to ensure that coverage of the G8 summit is managed to give a favourable glow to the G8 summit process."
IRAQ RESISTANCE SURFACES
Al Jazeera reports:
"The new spokesperson for the Islamic Army in Iraq and Jaish al-Mujahidin, Dr Ibrahim Yusuf al-Shimmari, told Aljazeera that the decision comes in the context of the groups' plans to implement a political programme and be politically recognised.
"It is most appropriate for the two groups to unite and appoint a media spokesman," said al-Shimmari, "due to the escalating amount of persons who claim to speak on behalf of the resistance and adopt political projects that do not serve the resistance."
WOLFF: IS US LOSING?
Writing in the Spectator, Michael Wolff asks if the US is losing in Iraq. His answer is in the affirmative:
"All in all, after more than two years of combat and any number of cycles of triumphalism followed by dismal comeuppance, youd have to be a cockeyed nitwit not to realise that the Iraq war might not end happily. People are now talking of a new Tet moment. During the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, the Vietcong, who were said to be demoralised and on the run, were suddenly storming the doors of the American embassy (and on television). In Iraq the insurgents, with their supposedly poor leadership and declining support, are suddenly upping their kill rate, with attacks of terrible ferocity and obvious strategic smarts."
BATTLE OVER SUPREME COURT
The Nation reports: "Sandra Day O'Connor's resignation has launched an epic struggle over the direction of the Supreme Court. Potentially at stake are the future of legal abortions, affirmative action for minority groups, government aid to religious schools and other issues that have long divided US society. The People for the American Way and the Alliance for Justice are both working overtime to rally opposition to what is widely expected to be a divisive, far-right appointment by the President."
DEMOCRACY ALERT
Gara LaMarche of the Open Society Institute offers an eloquent, worrying panorama of America's democratic crisis writing, "the United States is closer to ideologically-driven, one-party control than ever before, and its hand-in-glove relationship with a reactionary, intolerant media and religious forces creates something like theocracy"
In the media News, two radio stories attracted my attention. One comes from the Olympian in Washington State:
"A judge's ruling that two talk-radio hosts' on-air activity could be considered campaign contributions has attracted concern that the decision could have unintended effects on other media.
"This is an extremely important ruling that has very significant implications across the country for the First Amendment," warned Mark Lamb, one of two lawyers who represented Initiative 912 sponsors in Thurston County Superior Court against claims by opponents that the radio hosts' activities could be considered political contributions.
"Superior Court Judge Chris Wickham ruled Friday morning that on-air advocacy of the anti-gasoline-tax initiative by KVI Radio hosts John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur was in effect a political campaign contribution that needed to be listed as an in-kind donation by I-912 sponsors.
KVI had issued a news release May 9 bragging about the success of Wilbur and Carlson in helping to "promote the launch of a new gas-tax initiative."
"And Kirby told the Spokane Spokesman-Review newspaper a day later that "our legal team is writing the initiative."
"Wickham gave few details explaining his decision. But he indicated his ruling applied to the airtime when the hosts were soliciting money and promoting the campaign -- and not their on-air interviews and discussions of issues."
Carlson, a conservative Republican who ran for governor in 2000 and lost to Democrat Gary Locke, said the ruling raises questions for "the media at large."
"If commentary is equated with a commercial, does this mean that editorial endorsements that give out a campaign address and contact information is now a reportable in-kind donation?" Carlson asked. "Does it mean that a television commentary that vigorously opposes an initiative has to be reported? ...
"At what point does commentary become a commercial?" Carlson added of Wickham's decision. "He didn't make those distinctions."
Sacked radio host vows to speak out in Hong Kong:
" The South China Morning Post reports from Hong Kong: "Talk-show host Wong Yuk-man spoke out last night about his sacking from Commercial Radio, vowing to strike back and give his version of events on RTHK today.
"News of his dismissal on Saturday sparked a media frenzy and prompted former Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee Chu-ming to warn it was a blow to freedom of speech. "
CENSORSHIP IN MONTREAL
Naomi Klein and Aaron Maté report for the Guardian:
"Even after her death, it seems the attacks on Zahra Kazemi will not end. The
Montreal photojournalist was arrested in June 2003 while taking photographs outside a prison in Iran, the country of her birth. To punish her for this transgression, Kazemi's captors raped and beat her, according to a doctor who fled Iran to tell the story. She died while in Iranian custody."Close to two years later, there are new attempts to cover Kazemi's lens, toprevent her photographs from reaching public eyes - only now the censorship is happening inside her adopted country of Canada. Montreal's Cote St Luc Libraryhas removed five of Kazemi's photographs from display after Jewish patrons complained of alleged "pro-Palestinian bias". They left up the rest of the exhibition, which had already been displayed in Paris."
FILE-SHARING FOREVER?
John Naughton writes in the Observer that File-sharing may not quote be over yet:
" Once, when pressed for a decision on some issue, the movie mogul Sam Goldwyn famously said: 'I'll give you a definite maybe.' Last Monday, the US Supreme Court, pressed to decide on the question of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing, said something fairly similar.
This is not how it was initially reported, of course. The mainstream media saw it as an open and shut case. 'File-sharing suffers major defeat,' burbled BBC Online. 'The US Supreme Court has ruled that file- sharing companies are to blame for what users do with their software. The unanimous ruling is a victory for recording companies and film studios in what is widely seen as one of the most important copyright cases in years.' Grim-faced corporate lawyers popped up everywhere declaring war on 'pirates' and promising to
prosecute anything that moved on the net. The grown-ups were back in charge, at last.""On closer inspection, however, things become distinctly murky ."
Sandy Pliskin write:
" How do we frame our antiwar activity so that we are not accused of focussing on the past? (This is what occurs when we note that we were lied to in the run-up to the war, although, ironically, the president and his henchmen dwell on 9/11, which happened nearly four years ago!) How do we frame it so that we are not accused of cutting and running, dwelling on the negative, or dishonoring the sacrifice of those already dead? "
HEY DUDE
The first version of a piece I write on Live 8 carried an inaccuracy about the origins of the song "Hey Jude" that many readers pounced on. I fixed it for the version carried on Mediachannel.org
Cliff Radlauer wrote: "In your G8-Live8 article you claim that " 'Hey Jude' is "a song that Sir Paul McCartney wrote for John Lennon's son Julian after his father was killed." John Lennon was killed in 1980. "Hey Jude" came out in 1968, I believe."
So did Seth Wolfson:
"I read your article about Live 8 on CommonDreams. Hey Jude is a Beatles'song long pre-dating John Lennon's death. Most people, includingCommonDreams readers, would know that.
I read your stuff and respect your analysis. Getting a fact wrong about asong isn't a big thing, but the way it was wrong, and the context of the error is more than trivial. You should be more careful."
Agreed!
CELEBRATING JULY 4
On this day in 1852, Frederick Douglass, a former slave and a leader in the fight against slavery wrote:
"What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?
"I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim.
"To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisya thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.
"There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
"Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and desposms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without arrival.
And on that note, and in that spirit, I announce my return to the fray.
Your comments always welcome.
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posted by carol wolman @ 10:22 AM
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