IDEALS

RESENDE, Brazil, (Aug. 12, 2009) IPS/GIN – After 10 years of
waiting for secure title to the land they occupy and farm, 35
families in Resende, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Rio de
Janeiro, joined a huge march organised by the Landless Workers
Movement (MST) in Brasilia to demand effective agrarian reform.

Mario Laurindo knows all about protest demonstrations. Some 14
years ago, he and others in the MST set up a roadside camp and were
evicted. For the past 10 years he and his family have lived in the
“Terra Libre” (Free Land) settlement, 176 kilometres from the city
of Rio de Janeiro, the state capital.

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BOGOTA, (Aug. 12, 2009) IPS/GIN – While street sweepers clean up
huge piles of rubbish in the Tercer Milenio park in the centre of
the Colombian capital, young police officers have been posted there
to prevent any more people displaced from their rural homes by the
armed conflict from trying to camp there.

For four months, more than 5,000 people took refuge in makeshift
tents and shelters in the park – an area of 16.5 square kilometres
that had been taken over by the Bogota  city government and
transformed into a beautiful public park.

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HARARE, (Aug. 12, 2009) IPS/GIN – City council turns off the water.
National minister in charge says turn it back on. Domestic and
commercial users alike dispute their unpaid bills. The shadow of
a cholera epidemic looms over it all. Must be Harare.

“We are not going to pay. We will boycott paying.” Netsai Mutongi
has a letter from the council demanding 230 dollars for unpaid
water bills, just part of the 22 million dollars Harare City
Council says it is owed in outstanding water bills.

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CARACAS, (Aug. 12, 2009) IPS/GIN – New trade agreements worth 1.1
billion dollars have been signed by Argentina and Venezuela, which
has decided to stop importing goods from Colombia and get its
supplies from other sources.

Trade between Argentina and Venezuela amounted to 1.4 billion
dollars in 2008, compared to 7.3 billion dollars in trade between
Venezuela and Colombia, with a balance of six to one in favour of
Bogot .

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TOKYO, (Aug. 13, 2009) IPS/GIN – Ann Wright is a former U.S.
diplomat who served in the military for 29 years.

She was a deputy ambassador in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Mongolia
and Micronesia. She is one of three U.S. diplomats who publicly
resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war.

She is currently in Japan speaking around the country about
eradicating military violence against civilians, including sexual
assault and rape by the military. Before she arrived in Japan she
went to the Pacific island of Guam with a delegation.

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BERLIN, (Aug. 10, 2009) IPS/GIN – European banks are back to paying
high bonuses to managers despite their heavy losses. But this time
most of the money is coming out of taxpayers’ pockets.

Germany’s Commerzbank, saved last year by a 18.2 billion euros (25
billion dollars) state bailout, has announced losses adding up to
more than 1.6 billion dollars in the first half of this year. But
the bank, in which the German government took a 25 percent share,
has announced also that it will pay unspecified bonuses to staff. Read the rest of this entry →

BUENOS AIRES, (Aug. 10, 2009) IPS/GIN – Leonardo Henrichsen turned
his film camera on the soldier who was aiming at him and held it
steady until he was shot to death. But the justice system never
caught up with the killer of the Argentine journalist, murdered 36
years ago in Chile while he was filming a military uprising for
Swedish television.

Less than three months later a coup d’Çtat against socialist
President Salvador Allende (1970-1973) ushered in the 17-year
dictatorship of the late general Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

The abortive military rebellion known as the “tanquetazo” (tank
putsch) was put down in a few hours by troops loyal to the leftwing
Popular Unity government, in a battle in central Santiago close to
the presidential palace of La Moneda, where Allende died 11 weeks
later in an aerial bombardment unleashed by Pinochet’s forces.

The tanquetazo left 22 civilians dead, among them Henrichsen, a
33-year-old correspondent in Chile for Swedish Public Service
Television (SVT) who filmed the soldiers who shot him at close
range. Read the rest of this entry →

JERUSALEM, (Aug. 10, 2009) IPS/GIN – “We have no partner,” has been
the mantra of successive Israeli governments, both right-wing and
centre, ever since the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifadah in
September 2000 in wake of the failed Camp David summit. That was
the last time Palestinians and Israelis saw each other as potential
peace partners.

Behind their security wall, nourished by their leaders, Israelis
are comfortably cosseted in this belief. It partly explains why
they brush off so easily the remarkable persistence of mainstream
Palestinians to continue their pursuit of a negotiated settlement.

Battered from within (by Hamas) and from without (by Israel), Fatah
had no other realistic option. Read the rest of this entry →

NEW YORK, (Aug. 10, 2009) IPS/GIN – With Sonia Sotomayor’s swearing
in over the weekend as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme
Court, legal experts are aggressively debating what was learned
from her four days of gruelling testimony before the Senate
Judiciary Committee – and whether these hearings are instructive
or merely Capital Hill’s version of Kabuki theatre.

The nomination of the court’s first Latina member – and only the
third woman to serve on the nation’s highest court – was confirmed
by the U.S. Senate last Friday by a vote of 68-31, with all
Democrats voting ‘aye’ and nine Republicans bucking their Party’s
line to do likewise. The 55-year-old nominee was sworn in by Chief
Justice John Roberts on Saturday. Read the rest of this entry →

PORT OF SPAIN, (Aug. 10, 2009) IPS/GIN – The Trinidad and Tobago
government is finding itself against the wall amid allegations that
it is attempting to curb press freedoms in this oil rich twin
island republic.

At the centre of the allegations are the outcome of a meeting the
Patrick Manning government held late last month with the Media
Association of Trinidad and Tobago (MATT).

At the end of the one-hour deliberation both parties issued
separate statements, which contradicting each other left the media
asking the question “who is telling the truth.”

MATT requested the meeting after Prime Minister Manning used a
so-called “public education” rally to criticise the media over its
role in educating the public. Read the rest of this entry →