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20th May 06, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, LA Times This week, the State Department announced that it was banning all sales of weapons to Venezuela, alleging that the government of President Hugo Chavez was not cooperating in the worldwide war on terror.
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 The outcry over Bolivia's renationalization and the silence over Chad's betrays the hypocrisy of the critics
Civilization has a new enemy. He is a former coca grower called Evo Morales, who is currently the president of Bolivia. Yesterday he stood before the European parliament to explain why he had sent troops to regain control of his country's gas and oil fields. Bolivia's resources, he says, have been "looted by foreign companies," and he is reclaiming them for the benefit of his people. Last week, he told the summit of Latin American and European leaders in Vienna that the corporations which have been extracting the country's fossil fuels would not be compensated for these seizures.
You can probably guess how this has gone down. Tony Blair urged him to use his power responsibly, which is like Mark Oaten lecturing the Pope on sexual continence. Condoleezza Rice accused him of "demagoguery." The Economist announced that Bolivia was "moving backwards." The Times, in a marvellously haughty leader, called Morales "petulant," "xenophobic," and "capricious," and labelled his seizure of the gas fields "a gesture as childish as it is eye-catching."
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16th May 06 - Dr Zeki Ergas ~ STWR The main argument or hypothesis of this short essay is that to eradicate extreme poverty in the world – which, with the proliferation of nuclear weapons, climate change due to pollution, and various forms of violence (war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, terrorism), is one of the four or five most dangerous challenges facing humanity today – the primacy of reason needs, in particular in the distribution of the world’s resources, to be replaced by the primacy of love. That inevitably will lead to a better, more equal and more just, sharing of the world’s resources. This is the meaning of the concept of the ‘political economy of love’ in the title of this essay, which can be seen as superseding the ‘political economy of reason’, which has been, one way or the other (in the liberal and Marxist senses) the dominant concept until now. [1] |
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 The poorest people in the world will be the chief victims of the West's failure to tackle global warning, with millions of Africans forecast to die by the end of the century, Christian Aid says in a report out today.
The potential ravages of climate change are so severe that they could nullify the efforts to end the legacy of poverty and disease across developing countries, the charity says.
The report highlights the fact that, despite hand-wringing in the West about the threat to its coastlines from rising temperatures, it is the poorest who are likely to suffer most. It estimates that a "staggering" 182 million people in sub-Saharan Africa could die of disease directly attributable to climate change by 2100. Many millions more face death and devastation from climate-induced floods, famine, drought and conflict.
Sir John Houghton, former co-chairman of the scientific assessment working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has given his support to the report's findings. "This report exposes clearly and starkly the devastating impact that human-induced climate change will have on many of the world's poorest people," he said.
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15th May 06, The Observer Venezuelan President promises fuel to the needy and proclaims 'final days of the North American empire' before visit to Britain today.
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14th May 2006 - John Pilger, The Guardian (UK) Venezuela's president is using oil revenues to liberate the poor - no wonder his enemies want to overthrow him
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14th May 2006, OneWorld With growing concerns over high prices of oil and its adverse impact on the world's poor and the environment, the United Nations is urging policy makers to explore the use of alternative sources for energy.
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14th May 2006, IPS The governments of Argentina and Bolivia joined civil society organizations, in the Austrian capital, to accuse European companies of disregarding laws on the environment, civil rights and labor in their operations in Latin America and the Caribbean. |
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11th May 2006, President Ahmadinajad Mr. George Bush, President of the United States of America, For sometime now I have been thinking, how one can justify the undeniable contradictions that exist in the international arena -- which are being constantly debated, especially in political forums and amongst university students. Many questions remain unanswered. These have prompted me to discuss some of the contradictions and questions, in the hopes that it might bring about an opportunity to redress them.
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 The president has joined the radical bloc by taking over energy resources and signing a trade deal with Castro and Chávez
With the nationalisation of Bolivia's natural gas and petroleum resources President Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous president, is dramatically reshaping his country's destiny. On May 1 he proclaimed "a historic day has arrived. Now the gas and oil that flows from our land will no longer belong to foreigners". This came just after his return from Havana, where he signed what was called the people's trade agreement with Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.
Until these dramatic steps, it was unclear what direction Morales was moving in during his first three months in office. He and his foreign minister held at least four talks with the US ambassador in Bolivia, David Greenlee, in which both sides seemingly extended the olive branch. As Greenlee said in March after one of the meetings: "We have a constructive dialogue with the government of Bolivia over a wide range of themes and mutual interests."
Two factors compelled Morales to seize Bolivia's national resources and to realign the country internationally: the militancy of the country's peasant, worker and indigenous movements, and the decision of the US to foist free-trade agreements on Colombia and Peru that severely damaged Bolivian exports to other Andean nations.
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