A billionaire, mass murdering criminal is dead, but the symbiotic processes of empire and terrorism that breed inequality, war, occupation, torture and dispossession are alive and well.
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In the World of Light Tiki Taane Touring Qld, NSW & Vic: May 19-28 www.tikidub.com Interview by Mat Ward Chart-topping New Zealand musician Tiki Taane became an unlikely poster boy for free speech on April 9 when he was escorted from his own gig in handcuffs. His arrest was for singing NWA’s “Fuck tha Police” during a routine police check of the concert in the seaside town of Tauranga. He was charged with disorderly behaviour likely to cause violence.
In April 1915, in the midst of a stalled military campaign on the Western Front, Britain and its allies attacked Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula in an attempt to gain control of the Dardanelles Straits and take German-allied Turkey out of World War I.
This impressively researched volume, which relies extensively on unpublished first-hand accounts from soldiers of all sides of the conflict, is a detailed account of this “doomed” and “pointless” campaign.
The US-led military operation in Libya has morphed from the initial imposition of a “no-fly zone” — ostensibly to prevent Muammar Gaddafi’s regime from carrying out a massacre — into an ongoing bombing campaign with no end in sight.
And now there’s increasing talk of the use of ground forces until Gaddafi is overthrown and a new government, no doubt Western-approved, takes his place.
Libya discussion
Left wrong to oppose military intervention
Two wars in Libya
Several weeks of conflict between the government of President Evo Morales and Bolivian trade unions has again thrown into sharp relief some of the serious challenges confront Bolivia’s process of change.
For two weeks in April, the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) called mobilisations across various cities to protest the government’s proposed 10% pay rise for teachers, health workers, police and soldiers, and 20% rise in the minimum wage.
Europe’s biggest polluters have made billions out of the European Emissions Trading System (ETS). But a new briefing by Carbon Trade Watch (CTW) says the scheme will ensure industry will not have to cut its emissions until at least 2017.
The ETS sets a cap, or upper limit, on total emissions for 11,000 power stations and industrial plants in 30 European countries. Each company receives permits to pollute, which can be traded with other companies.
In another important step towards winning Bolivia’s national sovereignty, the country’s Plurinational Assembly has announced the expulsion from Bolivia of USAID’s Environment and Economic Development (EED) program.
USAID is funded by the US government and on its website says one of its aims is “furthering America’s foreign policy interests”. The agency has come under fire for its role in funding pro-US right-wing organisations in Bolivia and the region.
Sixty-two protesters had been killed by Syrian security forces on April 29, Al Jazeera reported that day. This was the second Friday in a row that Syrian authorities had used lethal forces against protesters — 100 protesters were killed in Deraa on April 22.
The United States responded by imposing sanctions on three leading figures in the regime — including President Bashar al-Assad’s brother, but not the president — and the Syrian intelligence agency.
The sixth congress of the Communist Party of Cuba ended on April 19. Not by accident, the date chosen for the meeting coincided with the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the victory of Playa Giron [Bay of Pigs — at which the Cuban people defeated a US-sponsored invasion in 1961].
A request by the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, to visit alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, United States soldier Bradley Manning, was denied in April.
At the time, Manning was being held in solitary confinement at Marine Corps Brig, Quantico in Virginia.
Speaking through his lawyer, Manning accused the guards at Quantico of treating him differently to other prisoners and reported he had been forced to strip naked by guards every night.
Mendez said US authorities had “not been receptive to a confidential meeting” with Manning.
Since January, tens of thousands of United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) militants, together with activists from other left parties and social movements, have been debating the future of Venezuela’s revolution.
Their sights are set on the crucial 2012 presidential elections.
This years’ pro-revolution May Day march will be the platform to officially launch Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s re-election bid.
The US-funded right-wing opposition is yet to decide its candidate, but the election will be critical to the future of a country undergoing a profound process of change.
The release of secret US Department of Defense files on prisoners held by the US as part of the “war on terror” confirms, in the US government’s own words, the shoddy and unreliable nature of the “evidence” used to condemn prisoners at its Guantanamo Bay torture camp.
The files released by WikiLeaks also show the mentality of the US government in its attempts to prosecute and gather information about “terrorists” to justify its wars of aggression. Apart from those known to be innocent by their US captors, many others were condemned on the flimsiest of pretexts.
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