Only in Spanish (no time to translate at the moment):

Remitimos comunicado de prensa.

Quito, 23 de junio de 2008
BOLETIN DE PRENSA

POLO DEMOCRÁTICO

VAMOS A DEFENDER EL PROYECTO DE CAMBIOS PROFUNDOS
CON LA RENUNCIA DE ACOSTA, CORREA SE CAE… A LA DERECHA

La historia no se repite y cuando lo hace se presenta como tragedia o como comedia. Ahora viene la comedia del 98: allí la movilización social logró un cambio de correlación de fuerzas y obligó a la salida de Osvaldo Hurtado de la Presidencia de la Asamblea , con lo cual se dio un giro, aunque tardío y débil, hacia la izquierda. Ahora la renuncia de Alberto Acosta es un signo de la fuerza que los sectores de derecha han ganado dentro de las filas de Alianza País, señaló Eduardo Delgado, Presidente del Movimiento Polo Democrático.

En varias oportunidades se han manifestado contradicciones programáticas entre Alberto Acosta y Rafael Correa. Antes fue la renuncia del Ministerio de Energía por las discrepancias sobre la política petrolera impulsada por Carlos Pareja Yanusseli, respaldado en ese momento por el régimen.

Ahora no sólo se trata de la diferencia entre un método democrático de apertura a las diversas voces del país y el método autoritario de imposiciones desde comisiones extra-Asamblea, monitoreadas desde
Carandolet y Senplades; sino sobre todo las definiciones sobre temas claves como seguridad y soberanía alimentarias, el carácter plurinacional del Estado, los derechos laborales; así como sobre algunas actuaciones del Ejecutivo, especialmente en materia energética, minera, eléctrica y agraria.

La gota que habría regado el vaso es el anunciado mandato agrario, en donde los beneficios irían a manos de las cinco grandes transnacionales importadoras y comercializadoras de agroquímicos, y no de los productores, distrayendo recursos claves que deben destinarse a enfrentar la crisis productiva y la subida de la inflación.

Es responsabilidad de Alberto Acosta recuperar el proyecto de cambio; y es responsabilidad de los pueblos indígenas, de los movimientos sociales, de todos los hombres y mujeres patriotas coordinar esfuerzos para defender el proyecto histórico y evitar el regreso de la derecha y del imperialismo.

Un problema grave ha sido la ausencia de plenos poderes de la Asamblea y el sometimiento a los avatares del poder a los que está sometido un gobierno. La falta de fiscalización al régimen ha llevado a actuaciones con visos de ilegalidad y falta de transparencia en negocios en sectores estratégicos; lo que ha afectado la legitimidad del régimen.

Polo Democrático convoca a todos los movimientos sociales, pueblos indígenas, organizaciones de izquierda a mantenerse vigilantes y a unirse para enfrentar a la vieja y a la nueva derecha.

Responsable de Prensa
Polo Democrático

Fresh from the inbox is a letter that seemingly has been censored/suppressed for more than fifty years - it was important then and even more so now. It comes with an introduction and notes at the end and it is about the creation of a fascistoid state on Middle Eastern soil. The state colony is of course known as Israel and is a very complex matter, but there is no doubt about it: like all other states it is a social construction from the top down guided by the ulterior motives of a relatively small elite, bound up in connections of blood, networks of industrial interests and, essentially, racism clad as liberal freedom:

77 Hannah Arendt’s + Albert Einstein’s Letter to New York Times 02/04 Dec. 1948

Prominent Jews’ December, 1948
Letter To New York Times
From John Wheat Gibson
From RePorterNoteBook@aol.com
8-2-2

Below is a ‘copy’ in its entirety of a very important letter to the New York Times from Jewish intellectuals including Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and Sidney Hook that appeared on December 4, 1948 While it is quoted from in brief on several web sites, it appears nowhere in its entirety, and it deserves to be disseminated as it originally appears. [THIS (colonos) EDITOR'S NOTE: a .pdf scan of the letter is linked to on the Wikipedia entry for Arendt]

John Wheat Gibson

Please see also information provided under “Source Notes” at the end of this document.

Letters to The Times New York Times December 4, 1948
New Palestine Party Visit of Menachem Begin and Aims of Political Movement Discussed

TO THE EDITORS OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties. It was formed out of the membership and following of the former Irgun Zvai Leumi, a terrorist, right-wing, chauvinist organization in Palestine.

The current visit of Menachem Begin, leader of this party, to the United States is obviously calculated to give the impression of American support for his party in the coming Israeli elections, and to cement political ties with conservative Zionist elements in the United States. Several Americans of national repute have lent their names to welcome his visit. It is inconceivable that those who oppose fascism throughout the world, if correctly informed as to Mr. Begin’s political record and perspectives, could add their names and support to the movement he represents.

Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin’s behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.

The public avowals of Begin’s party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.

Attack on Arab Village
A shocking example was their behavior in the Arab village of Deir Yassin. This village, off the main roads and surrounded by Jewish lands, had taken no part in the war, and had even fought off Arab bands who wanted to use the village as their base. On April 9 (THE NEW YORK TIMES), terrorist bands attacked this peaceful village, which was not a military objective in the fighting, killed most of its inhabitants-240 men, women, and children-and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem. Most of the Jewish community was horrified at the deed, and the Jewish Agency sent a telegram of apology to King Abdullah of Trans-Jordan. But the terrorists, far from being ashamed of their act, were proud of this massacre, publicized it widely, and invited all the foreign correspondents present in the country to view the heaped corpses and the general havoc at Deir Yassin.

The Deir Yassin incident exemplifies the character and actions of the Freedom Party.
Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model. During the last years of sporadic anti-British violence, the IZL and Stern groups inaugurated a reign of terror in the Palestine Jewish community. Teachers were beaten up for speaking against them, adults were shot for not letting their children join them. By gangster methods, beatings, window-smashing, and wide-spread robberies, the terrorists intimidated the population and exacted a heavy tribute. The people of the Freedom Party have had no part in the constructive achievements in Palestine. They have reclaimed no land, built no settlements, and only detracted from the Jewish defense activity. Their much-publicized immigration endeavors were minute, and devoted mainly to bringing in Fascist compatriots.

Discrepancies Seen
The discrepancies between the bold claims now being made by Begin and his party, and their record of past performance in Palestine bear the imprint of no ordinary political party. This is the unmistakable stamp of a Fascist party for whom terrorism (against Jews, Arabs, and British alike), and misrepresentation are means, and a “Leader State” is the goal.

In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country. It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin’s efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin. The undersigned therefore take this means of publicly presenting a few salient facts concerning Begin and his party; and of urging all concerned not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.

(signed)

ISIDORE ABRAMOWITZ, HANNAH ARENDT, ABRAHAM BRICK, RABBI JESSURUN CARDOZO, ALBERT EINSTEIN, HERMAN EISEN, M.D., HAYIM FINEMAN, M. GALLEN, M.D., H.H. HARRIS, ZELIG S. HARRIS, SIDNEY HOOK, FRED KARUSH, BRURIA KAUFMAN, IRMA L. LINDHEIM, NACHMAN MAISEL, SEYMOUR MELMAN, MYER D. MENDELSON, M.D., HARRY M. OSLINSKY, SAMUEL PITLICK, FRITZ ROHRLICH, LOUIS P. ROCKER, RUTH SAGIS, ITZHAK SANKOWSKY, I.J. SHOENBERG, SAMUEL SHUMAN, M. SINGER, IRMA WOLFE, STEFAN WOLFE.

New York, Dec. 2, 1948

Source notes: Laura Nader gave a copy of the microfilmed NYT to Anne Lipow in April. (Nader has been using it in her class at UC). The copy was illegible in parts and the first column was cut off; Laura’s original was the same. Anne and UC Anthropology Librarian Suzanne Calpestri then tried to retrieve an electronic version of the letter. It appears nowhere in its entirety on the Internet, and is not in any NYT electronic archive accessible to UC Librarians (i.e., it doesn’t exist). Suzanne made another copy from a different microfilm; it solved the mystery of the missing first column but this copy was also “dirty” in other areas. Neither copy was scannable using OCR, so I typed it in by hand exactly the way it appeared in the original, and have proofed it carefully. However, the spelling of some of the signatories was unclear in the microfilmed originals, so there may be a few errors in this rendition. It would be nice if someone were to annotate the list of signatories, so that those less-familiar names could be placed in context. At any rate, this clearly belongs IN FULL TEXT on the web for distribution to as many people as possible. Please circulate this among anyone you think may be interested; I think it especially belongs in the hands of those friends and family members who are still reluctant to criticize the Israeli government.

Source info:
Jenny Lipow Berkeley, CA

John Wheat Gibson

MainPage: http://www.rense.com

Colonos recently referred to David Suzuki in the context of DiCaprio’s documentary about climate chaos and change, the appropriately titled “11th Hour” (link should be generated automagically below) - and doing a bit of googling for that purpose led me to some presumptuous nonsense? about Suzuki being an “ecofascist”:

“Eco fascism, can be used in two different ways:

1. For specific elements of radical environmentalism which are openly affiliated with neo-fascism, or which share conceptual similarities with fascist theories. It is used critically from an external source, and somewhat less commonly used from within as a self label, to refer to various white nationalist and third positionist groups who incorporate environmentalist positions into their ideology.
2. The term is also used as a political epithet by political conservatives to discredit deep ecology, mainstream environmentalism, and other left and non-left ecological positions, and less frequently by political leftists to discredit environmental movements they see as non-left such as deep ecology.”

So who do the conspiracy theorists think are behind this socalled ecofascism? None others than the very same kind of people that actual, radical environmentalists - anyone that I have ever met, and it is quite a few anyway - would call the greenwashers:

“Greenwashing is the unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government, a politician or even a non-government organization to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or to try and rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers after being embroiled in controversy.The U.S.-based watchdog group CorpWatch defines greenwash as “the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment.” This definition was shaped by by the group’s focus on corporate behavior and the rise of corporate green advertising at the time. However, governments, political candidates, trade associations and non-government organizations have also been accused of greenwashing.“

Hence, what warped, right-winger, industrialist cheerleaders call ecofascism, those who radically care for the planet call greenwashing - and you can scroll down this list quickly to get an idea who they are, or read in-depth if you like facts and figures:

“The Rockefeller Foundation (www.rockfound.org) currently values its assets at $3.1 billion. They’ve been averaging about $175 million per year in grants to various causes over the last several years. They no longer list “population control” and “environment” as distinct programs. They now deploy vague program headings such as “Working Communities”, “Global Inclusion”, “Food Security” etc., but searching deeper one discovers many of the grants allocated under these program headings are going to the usual neo-Malthusian, eco-activist NGOs.

There are scores of lesser foundations which have chosen to follow the lead of the above-mentioned institutions and presently donate to ‘the cause’. For instance, environmentalism in definitely the number one priority at the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelly Foundation (www.gddf.org) - assets $70 million - total annual grants around $4 million. The same could be said of the Merck Family Foundation (www.merckff.org) - assets $55 million, annual grants around $3 million. Almost all the $4 to $6 million leaving the Beldon Foundation (www.beldon.org) goes to eco-groups. Both the Flintridge Foundation and the Charles Heller Foundation are giving about $500,000 per year to green groups. And there are many others. So the several hundred million dollar annual donation figure cited above has to be supplemented, by some indeterminable amount, to account for the contributions of these hundreds of lesser foundations.“

This research, even though done by some extremist, anti-environmentalist (does that mean a “planet murderer”?) seems useful enough: see for yourself who they are, those who claim to be washing the planet green. As far as I can tell, probably neither the extremist, anti-environmentalists nor the radical environmentlists are exclusively right. I clearly favour the view of the radical environmentalists and would think more than twice about taking greenwashing money, but it seems to me just as plausible that those rich and educated people, like the trust fund kids of oil, cars and ketchup empires, know all too well that all their wealth is built with blood money and that, merely, they are buying themselves a conscience.

On the other hand, in a moment of charity, one could also give the extremist the benefit of the doubt and agree that Theresa Heinz-Ketchup Kerry, Ted Deception Turner and the Rockefellas are the vegan children of Hitler and Satan, but that says nothing about the hard working anti-capitalist, environmentalists out there, such as RisingTide. On that view, if anything, the ecofascist conspiracy (at best or at worse?) is a conspiracy to write out that very kind of action from the equation: if only rich neo-nazis control from above and blue-eyed, sheepish following below defines environmentalism, then the status quo seems well preserved:

“On a still day you can just hear the plutocracy laughing. Environmentalism is a dark green tarp they have thrown over North America. They have decreed development be slowed to a crawl and enlisted a vast ‘army of the night’ to implement this command. Here in the trenches we never engage the Kennedys, the Trudeaus or the Windsors. No, down here we get to argue with kids with daisy-counting diplomas from community colleges in their hands and grant applications to the Ford Foundation in their hip pockets; and good luck trying to change the minds of people like this. If not for environmentalist suppression of economic activity North America would be experiencing a tremendous and sustained boom that would reduce unemployment to a smidgeon of its current rate. The responsibility for all of the under-employment, all of the want of opportunity, the lack of housing, the scarcity of public funds, the poverty, the hardship, hard times and heartache people are experiencing shall be layeth upon the well-guarded doorsteps of Big Green. We smolder, we seethe and we type on.”

However, there is a different way - different from Gory Al and Ketchup Kerry, different from DiCaprio and Suzuki: anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist and spiritual environmentalism that is shared by many environmental movements, indigenous movements, and campesino movements across the world in their struggles for autonomy and environmental justice.

Environmentalism is an economic issue as much as it is a spiritual challenge. Those who suffer first and foremost from industrial pollution and consequent climate change are the poor - as always. But it also concerns leaving a liveable planet for our children to play in.

What kind of world do we want - one that is run by a filthy few for a bloody buck or one that is lived by all in common? This is “The Future according to Robert Crumb” from Whole Earth Review, Winter 1988:

(the “Fun Future” and the “Ecological Disaster” scenarios are probably the same)

The two first scenarios are two sides of the same future - a rich enclave on the inside and outside the promised land where there is no ecological justice, - the rich enclave, of course, living on borrowed time. The industrial nightmare is what the extremist wants - that is in particular why it is an extreme position - the second illusionary or technofetishist wet dream of the IT nouveau-riche almost exist for some, while the last and only viable option, really, is still on the magic cards.

Let’s go do it!

This is a follow-up to the recent case at Nottingham University where the combination of misinformed, xenophobic colleagues, an administration without perspective and law making far beyond the rule of law led to the arrest and prolonged detainment of a student and staff and confiscation of their belongings simply for doing their job: finding, printing and investigating documents.

What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate and a sheepish, dependent and pathetic bunch of business administrators - jacks of all administrative trades, masters of no intellect - who call the anti terror cops on their own students and staff without reflection, without (reasonable) thought and with no sense of reality at all.

Colonos have just written to Alf Nilsen to clarify the exact meaning of the third last paragraph, which commences: “Fourthly, the claim that…” which appears to be written a bit too hastily or merely goes right over my head

However, for now - here goes, see for yourself where it’s at:

Dear all – some of you may have written to the Registrar at the University of Nottingham, Dr. Paul Greatrix, to protest the recent false terror arrests at our university, and some of you might also have received a reply. My colleagues and I would like to point out a number of inconsistencies in this reply – see below, and as always: please circulate!!

Comments on University Communication on Recent Events

As concerned academics at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham who have been involved in the campaign for academic freedom and the release of Hicham Yezza in the wake of the false terror arrests at our university last week, we request that the Registrar, Dr. Paul Greatrix, amends the statement that he is currently circulating in response to letters of concern sent by academics from across the world to the University of Nottingham. The statement contains a number of inconsistencies, and we feel it necessary to point these out, both to Dr. Greatrix, and to the wider public.

Firstly, Dr. Greatrix seeks to label the coverage of the incident in the media, and in the Times Higher Education supplement in particular as inaccurate. However, all the evidence he provides for this claim are the two minor points that the administrative member of staff involved in this case was not working at the Department of Engineering, and that there was no armed response by the police during the arrests at the university. These facts, however, are in themselves irrelevant when compared to the fact that the academic freedom and civil liberties of a student and a member of staff have been grossly violated. Indeed, it should be noted that the Times Higher Education supplement was substantially correct in its coverage of the case. Finally, it should also be noted that the claim that there was an armed police response to the campus stems from the BBC news reports on the incident last week, which do not seem to have attracted a correction from the university.

Secondly, Dr. Greatrix claims that this was a low-level investigation. This claim, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. Students had their bags searched by uniformed police before entering the Trent Building the day after the arrests. The student and member of staff that was arrested was held from Wednesday May 14 until Tuesday, May 20 without charge, in spite of the fact that Rizwaan Sabir’s supervisor and personal tutor both confirmed to the police that the document they had downloaded and printed was legitimate research material on Friday, May 16. The homes of the two men were raided; they had their computers impounded and they have still not been returned; the family of Rizwaan Sabir was ejected from their home during the police’s search; several colleagues in the School of politics were interviewed for hours by the police. A low-key investigation would have resolved this matter within hours by contacting the relevant members of staff at the School of Politics and International Relations; indeed, a low-key investigation, to use Dr. Greatrix’s term, would have been conducted by the university itself, without any police involvement at all.

Thirdly, Dr. Greatrix claims that the university has contacted those involved in this matter to offer support and discuss the incident that took place. In fact, none of the staff members interviewed by the police have been contacted by the university with the offer of support. Moreover, the university has offered nothing in terms of official support or counsel to Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza, thus neglecting the welfare and well-being of its staff and students. To the extent that Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza have received support it has been from the members of staff and the students that Dr. Greatrix’s statement appear to be slurring.

Fourthly, the claim that the Times Higher Education supplement is wrong in its claim that the university does not deem the document that led to the arrests to be relevant research material is unconvincing. The university did in fact state that it deemed the document illegitimate, and only at a later stage retracted this and replaced with the modified statement that it was appropriate for academic members of staff to be in possession of such materials. This is of course in itself a deeply problematic argument, due to the simple fact that the material is available to the general public via perfectly respectable web-sites. We find it surprising that a university would express such disregard of the rights of engaged citizens to educate themselves on issues of public concern.

The conduct of the university in this matter stands in stark contrast to Dr. Greatrix’s claim that the university is committed to ensuring that its staff and students “are free to study and work in a safe, secure and tolerant environment” and that the university works towards ensuring “that everyone at Nottingham is able to enjoy freedom of speech and expression within the law”. In fact, the university has been deeply reluctant to enter into any kind of dialogue with students and staff that are concerned about the status of academic freedom and civil liberties.

It is clear to us, therefore, that the University of Nottingham will not be an “open and free arena for debate and dissent” until an apology is offered to Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza, and until the university guarantees the academic freedom, civil liberties and human rights of its staff and students.

Alf Nilsen
Bettina Renz
Vanessa Pupavac

Dr. Alf Gunvald Nilsen
RCUK Fellow, Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cssgj/index.php
University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, England, UK

Mobile: (0044) (0) 7973332219

Office: (0044) (0) 1159514032

Here is an article in English that mentions some of the sources referred to by colonos when noting that Rafael Correa don’t give a toss about the indigenous people and campesinos whose self-described saviour he likes to present himself as in the global media’s corporate eye - something which he to quite some extent share with his Bolivian partner in populistic crime, Evo aMoralas, who:

“…rejected oil and gas expropriation, supports Big Oil interests, and embraced business as usual policies. Under nationalizations Morales-style, current contractual arrangements are effectively intact, and the country’s mineral resources have been sold off to the greatest ever number of foreign investors.

In addition, Morales broke his promise to triple the painfully low minimum wage, increased it 10% instead, and maintained previous neoliberal fiscal austerity and economic stability policies. He also tolerates the US Drug Enforcement Agency’s intrusive presence and the Pentagon’s Chapare military base; appointed hard right economic, defense and other ministers; opposed agrarian reform; supports large landowners; provides them large subsidies and tax incentives; and backs the Confederation of Private Businessmen in Bolivia by promoting foreign investment, social spending cuts, prioritization of exports, and other pro-business policies above the interests of the people who elected him. Petras says Morales “excels in public theater” by combining “political demagogy” to his base while backing neoliberal IMF austerity and business-friendly policies”. (Read more about forgotten promises here.)

We’re much too busy to translate, sooo many documents floating about these days, so here goes from Upsidedownworld.org, beginning with a highlight:

“According to the CONAIE declaration, “We reject President Rafael Correa´s racist, authoritarian and antidemocratic statements, which violate the rights of [Indigenous] nationalities and peoples enshrined in international conventions and treaties. This constitutes an attack against the construction of a plurinational and intercultural democracy in Ecuador. Correa has assumed the traditional neoliberal posture of the rightist oligarchy.“

Ecuador: CONAIE Indigenous Movement Condemns President Correa
Written by Daniel Denvir and Thea Riofrancos
Friday, 16 May 2008

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) declared itself in opposition to the government of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa on May 12. The CONAIE accused the president of continuing right-wing neoliberal economic and racist social policies. The harsh condemnation focused on Correa´s opposition to two key demands: the recognition of Ecuador as a plurinational state in the new constitution and the requirement that communities must offer prior consent before large-scale mining and other major extractive projects take place.

Ecuador is currently governed by a Constituent Assembly, which is writing a new Ecuadorian constitution as well as performing all legislative functions. The Assembly was convened after voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional referendum in April 2007. Members of Correa´s Alianza Pais party won 74 of the 130 seats. Patchakutik, the CONAIE’s electoral arm, has four representatives in the Assembly.

While the CONAIE has supported a number of Correa`s programs, most social movement activists in Ecuador say that this conflict was foreseeable. Correa`s support for large scale mining and his opposition to plurinationality run up against the indigenous movement’s top political priorities.

Plurinationality is a broad framework that encompasses a number of key indigenous movement demands, including cultural rights—such as bilingual education and culturally appropriate healthcare—and collective economic rights such as the requirement of affected communities’ consent before any exploration or extraction of non-renewable resources, whether by State or multinational corporations.

The CONAIE’s strong position against large-scale mining and for prior consent is a boon to Ecuador`s anti-mining movement, led by the National Coordinator in Defense of Life and Sovereignty. Over the past several months, the Coordinator has organized massive road blockades in Southern Ecuador, sparking government condemnation and repression. In response, a large pro-mining march took place in Quito in early May, apparently organized by government and industry forces.

The environment is a central issue for the Ecuadorian indigenous movement, as they see cultural rights as closely tied to territorial rights and the preservation of biodiversity. The CONAIE’s environmental demands extend beyond the indigenous movement and involve close collaboration with local and international environmental organizations. The CONAIE, along with a wide range of regional social movements, rejects the South American regional integration plan known as the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA). The development program, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank and other regional financial institutions, such as the Brazilian Development Bank and the Andean Development Corporation, consists of mega-development projects such as dams and hydroelectric plants. According to the Bank Information Center, the IIRSA “poses one of the greatest challenges to environmental sustainability and social justice today.” In Ecuador, the main IIRSA project is the Manta-Manaos multimodal transportation axis between Ecuador and Brazil, which includes building a port and the construction of several new roads leading to and from the coast. In the words of the Ecuadorian government, this transportation project will achieve the “dream of joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through a terrestrial-river route,” and will facilitate the creation of a new East-West trade axis.

The CONAIE also strongly criticized the negotiations for a Free Trade Deal (misleadingly called “Association Agreement”) between the European Union and the Andean Community, which took place three weeks ago.

The CONAIE’s leadership is now visiting and holding consultations with its constituent base communities throughout Ecuador. The leadership will reconvene at the end of the month to make decisions about what actions to take next. It is widely rumored that the CONAIE will launch a national indigenous uprising, events that have in the past shut down the entire country. According to the CONAIE spokesperson Pacha Taran, “We are not calling for an uprising. But we are not ruling that out, either.”

While certain members of Correa´s Alianza Pais (AP) party have made statements in support of plurinationality, Correa and a number of AP assembly members either oppose the measure or support it symbolically while opposing its substance of collective territorial and cultural rights. As Taran put it, “Correa likes us, except for when we start to protest. Then he tells us to shut up.”

According to the CONAIE declaration, “We reject President Rafael Correa´s racist, authoritarian and antidemocratic statements, which violate the rights of [Indigenous] nationalities and peoples enshrined in international conventions and treaties. This constitutes an attack against the construction of a plurinational and intercultural democracy in Ecuador. Correa has assumed the traditional neoliberal posture of the rightist oligarchy.”

The declaration goes on to accuse the government of “handing over national and indigenous territories to transnational oil, mining, pharmaceutical, logging and hydroelectric companies.” The CONAIE also demands that the Constitutional Assembly support food sovereignty and declare Ecuador “free of transgenics and agrofuels.”

Furthermore, the twelve-point resolution called for the firing of Minister of Mines and Petroleum Galo Chiriboga and Minister of the Environment Marcela Aguiñaga. Chiriboga has been widely criticized for allowing foreign companies, namely the Brazilian state company PetroBras, to violate Ecuadorian law. Aguiñaga is accused of allowing large scale logging in the Amazon and of failing to adequately investigate the murders of an undetermined number of Huaoroni indigenous people earlier this year. It is widely believed that the Huaorani were killed by either loggers or paramilitary groups hired by logging companies. They have also called for action to be taken against Attorney General Washington Pesántez. Pesántez is accused of persecuting social movement activists from unions and indigenous groups and organizations like Indymedia.

Finally, the CONAIE declared its solidarity with the people of Bolivia and President Evo Morales. They condemned the Bolivian right-wing’s attempt to declare wealthy regions like Santa Cruz “autonomous” and warned against pro-autonomy statements by Ecuadorian opposition leader Jaime Nebot. Although this resolution represents the indigenous movements’ strongest public condemnation of Correa to date, the CONAIE makes it clear that they are not part of the right-wing opposition and oppose Correa on their own terms.

Daniel Denvir and Thea Riofrancos are independent journalists from the United States and collaborators at the Latin American Information Agency (www.alainet.org) in Quito, Ecuador. They are also editors at the forthcoming journal Caterwaul Quarterly (www.caterwaulquarterly.com). Daniel Denvir is a 2008 recipient of NACLA’s Samuel Chavkin Investigative Journalism Grant.

Rafael Correa is the poster boy of neo-socialism - he wears Quechua shirts and bathes himself in the limelight of indigeous peoples’ struggle in the global media, makes promises to the poor and the illiterate (and also delivers on some of his promises) - but more than anything he is increasingly despised by the indigenous peoples and the campesinos “who mean nothing to him” and who he represses violently if they organise against the foreign companies that Correa contracts their land away to. Also known in international socialist and even environmental circles as the saviour of the Yasuni national park. But nothing could be further from the truth - as has been reported by the colonos blog since before Correa entered office.

I have just returned from a meeting where yachaks (shamans) from various regions of “el Oriente” (basically the Ecuadorian Amazon) have gathered all weekend to discuss, among other things, Correa’s rejection in the constituent assembly processes of collective rights and a range of specific demands made by the indigenous movements as part of the rewriting of the Ecuadorian constitution. Talks are of strikes and some suggest that another uprising is brewing - at any rate Rafael Correa is very unpopular with indigenous people and campesinos, because he arrogantly have stated that he cares not about their demands since “they only constitute a few percent of his voters“.

So what does Mr. Correa care about - well, like the Clintons he seems mostly fascinated by inscribing himself into the white man’s history of conquest of the world through an industrial economy that is essentially based on exploitation of labour and pachamama (mother earth).

“Unasur to boost financial self-sufficiency in S America:

BRASILIA, May 23 (Xinhua) — Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said here Friday that the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) will boost programs to help realize financial self-sufficiency in the region.

After signing the bloc’s constitutive agreement in the Brazilian capital, Correa said it was “a historical day for South America, which brings great expectation and hope.”

“We can do like the European Union (EU). As the EU has to explain why they united, we will have to explain to our children and grandchildren why we took so long to do it,” he told a press conference.”“

Correa’s vision and that of UNASUR is about entrance into an economy that many ever since its inception - with the conquest of new worlds and the industrial production apparatus that makes wars for more profit possible - have been fighting. And for quite some years it has been quite clear that it is a very unsustainable economy that the planet cannot sustain.

Of course it is the rich and the powerful who mostly have to change their wasteful ways, but to happily join that horrible economy that Correa is so blinded by and which accelerates climate change and destroys civilization is plain stupid. However, the middle classes who get better roads (this, the year where it seems like we have to take drastic measure and actions to counter climate change, is the year of asphalt in Ecuador), nicer cars to drive them on and bigger supermarkets to park them by and shop in, and of course the capitalists that exploit the natural resources that he so happily gives to foreign and private interests are laughing all the way to the bank while the earth cries.

The rest of the chinese article follows.

“The Ecuadorian president said the integration will bring about fast and concrete results.

“We can no longer be rhetorical, and Unasur must develop itself with concrete improvements in living standard of our peoples,” he said.

In addition, Correa mentioned the project of financial integration through the Bank of the South as “fundamental.”

“We can be self-sufficient in financial terms,” said Correa, adding that, if member states keep their money “together,” they will avoid having to “kneel down to get a small loan here and there.”

Correa also spoke of the importance of cooperation in energy and transportation in the region, saying that it “would safeguard our sovereignty and enhance our capacity to make our own decisions.”

He also agreed with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet on the harmonization of social and educational policies in the region.

For example, Correa said certificates are to be recognized in all Unasur countries.

Referring to Brazil’s proposal to create a South American defense council, Correa said he approved of it, although it was not his country’s priority and that it would be necessary to reach true regional consensus before turning words into action in that matter.

He called on all countries to “permanently commit to following international law,” in reference to Colombia’s military incursion into Ecuadorian territory on March 1.“

How about Correa committing to environmental justice and the human rights of indigenous peoples!??!

Six months before the colonos blog came into being the article below - here translated into English - was written in Castellano. It is about what we have been labelling corridors (or interoceanic corridors) or the Manta-Manaus commodity highway. In this article a much more comprehensive perspective is offered - and shows how big, concerted and damaging to the continent and the rest of the world that this global capitalist project is.

Get the whole article in .pdf format.

Re-mapping Latin America’s Future

IIRSA: Integration Custom-Made for International Markets (#1)

Raúl Zibechi | June 13, 2006

Translated from: IIRSA: la integración a la medida de los mercados
Translated by: Nick Henry

Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP)

The project for Integration of South American Regional Infrastructure (IIRSA, by its initials in Spanish), is swiftly but silently moving forward. IIRSA is the most ambitious and encompassing plan to integrate the region for international trade. If completed in full, the project would connect zones containing natural resources (natural gas, water, oil, biodiversity) with metropolitan areas, and both of these with the world’s largest markets.

From August 31-September 1, during the 2000 South American Presidential Summit in Brasilia initiated by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the InterAmerican Development Bank (IADB) presented its “Plan of Action for the Integration of South American Infrastructure.” In essence, it formed the foundation for what would become IIRSA, an ambitious plan to facilitate regional and global trade by carrying out physical projects and effecting changes in legislation, statute, and national regulations.

IIRSA is a multi-sectoral project that aims to develop and integrate transportation, energy, and telecommunications infrastructure over the next 10 years. The goal is to reorganize the continent’s landscape based on the development of a physical infrastructure of land, aerial, and river transport; oil and gas pipelines; waterways; maritime and river ports; and power lines and fiber optic cables, to name a few. These projects are organized in 12 integration and development axes—corridors where investments can be concentrated to increase trade and create chains of production connected to global markets.

To carry out this megaproject a number of physical, statutory, and social “barriers” must first be overcome. This requires harmonizing national legislation in the 12 affected countries, and occupying the key territories that tend to have low populations but are major reserves of raw materials and biodiversity.

An Ambitious Project

The December 2000 IADB study “A New Push for Regional Infrastructure Development in South America” suggests that the main obstacles to accomplishing physical integration, and therefore, to improving the flow of merchandise, are the “formidable natural barriers like the Andes Mountains, the Amazon Rainforest, and the Orinoco river basin.”1 Carlos Lessa, former president of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES, by its initials in Portuguese) agrees, pointing out, “The Andes mountain range is certainly beautiful, but it’s a terrible engineering problem.”2 This kind of logic that regards nature as a “barrier” in some places and a “resource” in others pervades all aspects of the plan.

During the September 2003 Sub-regional Seminar, IIRSA’s Technical Coordination Committee defined three goals:

• Support the integration of markets to improve intra-regional trade.

• Promote new chains of production to become competitive in major global markets.

• Reduce the “South American cost” by creating a solid logistical platform that is well-inserted into the global economy.

According to studies, another objective of this integration project is to conquer South America’s natural resources and put them at the disposal of North American and European markets.

These objectives can be easily observed on maps of the development and integration axes, each of which encompasses several countries.3 The ten axes already defined (two are still under development) are:

• Andean Axis (Venezuela-Colombia-Ecuador-Peru-Bolivia)

• Amazon Axis (Colombia-Ecuador-Peru-Brazil)

• Central Inter-oceanic Axis (Peru-Chile-Bolivia-Paraguay-Brazil)

• Capricorn Inter-oceanic Axis (Antofagasta/Chile-Jujuy/Argentina-Asunción/Paraguay-Porto Alegre/Brazil)

• Guyana Shield Axis (Venezuela-Brazil-Suriname-Guyana)

• Mercosur-Chile Axis(Brazil-Uruguay-Argentina-Chile)

• Southern Axis (Talcahuano-Concepción/Chile-Neuquén-Bahía Blanca/Argentina)

• Southern Amazon Axis ( Peru-Brasil-Bolivia)

• Atlantic and Pacific Maritime Axis (all countries)

The two axes still under development are the Parana-Paraguay waterway and a megaproject to unite the Orinoco, Amazon, and Rio de la Plata river basins through a connection of 17 rivers to permit river transportation from the Caribbean to Rio de la Plata.

Each axis involves a variety of infrastructure projects. For example, the Amazon Axis, which unites the Pacific Ocean with the Atlantic and crosses three large ecosystems (coastal, Andean mountain, and rainforest), must tie the Amazon River and its tributaries to the ports of Tumaco (Colombia), Esmeraldas (Ecuador), and Paita (Peru). This will require major improvements to existing roads and construction of others. Since the axis aims to create a dense network of river transportation systems, several rivers will be dredged and straightened, while in other places river ports will have to be completely overhauled. These infrastructure projects and the spike in transportation flows they generate will result in massive environmental impacts on the Amazon ecosystem.

In areas covered by the axis, there is major hydroelectric power potential as well as large oil reserves already under development, in addition to soybean crops, wood extraction, fishing, and fish farms. The axis will connect with three others (Andean, Central Inter-oceanic, and Guyana Shield) and reduce transportation costs for Pacific countries to Europe, and Brazil to Japan, thus encouraging more trade. The construction of two gas pipelines is being considered for areas deep in the Brazilian Amazon, one extending from Coari to Manaos and the other from Urucu to Port Velho, at a total cost of $750 million. This would allow natural gas to be exported from key points in the Amazon and Southern Amazon Axes. The first contains the important port of Manaos, and the second Port Velho, Brazil, which would be united with the Peruvian ports on the Pacific. This would also allow transportation of the area’s grain production—where soy, corn, and wheat production are the fastest growing—in addition to Camisea’s natural gas from Peru.

The majority of the axes are interconnected. Of the 10, four cover the Amazon and five unite the Pacific with the Atlantic. Under this plan, the continent’s natural resources will be made available to international markets.

The IIRSA project has defined seven processes of sectoral integration to address institutional and statutory obstacles. They are: regional energy markets; functional systems of aerial, maritime, and multimodal transport; promotion of information and telecommunication technologies; the facilitation of border crossings; and finance modalities.

Total investment is expected to be on the order of $37 billion. The project will be financed by the IADB, the Andean Promotional Corporation (CAF, by the Spanish), and the Financial Fund for the Development of the Rio de la Plata Basin (FONPLATA, by the Spanish), in addition to the important contributions of the Brazilian Development Bank (see boxes below).

In reality, these projects are already underway, though not in direct connection with IIRSA. According to CAF’s 2002 Annual Report, some 300 physical integration projects have been identified in South America, 140 of which were ready to begin at any moment. Sixty IIRSA-related projects were already underway: 40 for transportation, 10 for energy, and 10 for telecommunications.

Territories and Markets

Overcoming the physical, legal, and social barriers to implementing IIRSA will require profound changes in geography, legislation, and social relations. The South American continent is sometimes considered a collection of five separate “islands” that should be united: the Caribbean Plate, the Andean Mountains, the Atlantic Plate, and the Central and Southern Amazon Enclaves. The integration and development axes unify these “islands” by breaking down what is called in technocratic language, natural “barriers.”

From a geographical perspective, this unification would demand major undertakings in infrastructure to “correct” the obstacles imposed by nature, speed up the flow of transportation and trade, and greatly reduce costs. The Peru-Brazil-Bolivia Axis, for example, seeks to create an access path from Brazil’s agricultural industry, in the Southern Amazon Enclave, to Pacific ports without having to first travel north through the Amazon river basin. To accomplish this, efficient highways crossing the Andes must be built, in addition to the infrastructure projects necessary for river transport. The path paved by nature will be modified, through huge investments, so that South American merchandise can more rapidly reach the global market.

As Andres Barreda points out, “Starting in the 1980s, the flow of commercial traffic from the Pacific began to displace flow on the Atlantic side. In the 1990s, port traffic on the Pacific was outpacing the Atlantic’s; and in the year 2000, the United States’ Pacific port traffic saw double the volume of its Atlantic ports. There is a problem when the global economy shifts from the Atlantic to the Pacific.”4 This shift caused the Panama Canal to lose its significance and in its place corridors connecting the two oceans are beginning to appear. According to Barreda, South America has a “strategic bottleneck” in Bolivia, where five of the 12 corridors cross.

South America is one of the few regions on earth that contains all four strategic natural resources: hydrocarbons, minerals, biodiversity, and water. The profound changes to the landscape do not follow a model for integrating the continent as a whole, but rather, for inserting it into the global market . IIRSA, it could be said, centers on an “outward-facing” or exogenous type of integration, rather than an “inward-facing” one. In addition, the axes or corridors must have certain characteristics: “To make real-time connections, the Internet is fundamental. To make just-in-time connections, intermodality is fundamental.”5 As such, the corridors must combine a modern-day telecommunications system with the necessary infrastructure for intermodal transportation.

Intermodality is based on the “container revolution.” The system must be exactly the same for ground, aerial, and river transportation, and merchandise must be able to transfer from one system to another seamlessly. This requires a system of highways and semi trucks, airports and airplanes, and rivers and barges capable of transporting freight containers, which are now replacing the old system of storage or deposit that the merchandise sector has traditionally utilized. This transformation is linked to the emergence of “global factories” that operate under the just-in-time premise. A sort of “global automaton” has been created by large businesses that employ remote-control operation techniques and cover the planet in the form of a network. But this global automaton, “industrially and productively integrated, now operates with new center-periphery hierarchical relations of an industrial character,” as evidenced by the maquiladora.6 IIRSA is the South American link to integrate the continent into this process, but in a subordinate manner.

To overcome the various legal and statutory barriers, IIRSA has adopted the neoliberal strategy of deregulation and weakening the state. Adapting national legislation to the needs of global trade requires homogenization of the rules. This would inevitably lead to each country or region losing its distinguishing characteristics, and states would lose their autonomy to multinationals and the governments of developed countries.

Finally, the “social barriers” must also be overcome. Just one example of this among dozens is the 260-mile Coari-Manaos gas pipeline that passes through the Amazon River as well as one of the best-preserved areas of the rainforest. The two companies primarily interested in the project are Brazil’s Petrobras and the United States’ El Paso (world leader in natural gas and one of the world’s largest in the energy sector). In 1998, Petrobras built the first part of the gas pipeline (174 miles), which united the Urucu reserves with the city of Coari. The project caused enormous social and environmental impacts: “It reduced fishing levels, affecting river populations that depend on fish to survive; it affected areas where Brazil nut is extracted, crucial to the surrounding areas; the Coari population grew considerably, as the city houses the workers that arrive from different areas; and there has been a dramatic increase in prostitution, violent crime, and cases of malaria.”7 The Urucu-Port Velho gas pipeline will affect 13 indigenous communities and five municipalities where 90% or more of the population is indigenous.

The benefits gained by a small handful of multinationals will create irreversible social and environmental damages, and further weaken the autonomy of marginalized states , giving them even less recourse to deal with their problems.

Two Cases: Brazil and Bolivia

IIRSA affects each country in the region differently, but in general, we can define “winners” and “losers” in terms of the benefits and damages the implementation of IIRSA will generate. One of the problems with the project is that it will deepen the gaps between countries, regions, and the rich and poor social sectors of society, since different regions will be integrated into the global market on an unequal footing based on current “comparative advantages.” Brazil, one of the most industrialized countries in the world, and Bolivia, South America’s poorest country, illustrate this point well.

In Bolivia, the only thing poor is the indigenous majority. The country boasts important hydrocarbon reserves, the second largest on the continent behind Venezuela. It also occupies a key geographical position: five of the integration and development axes connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic must pass through its territory. It is also rich in biodiversity. Consequently, in its plan “Change for All,” the international bank called for Bolivia to become a thoroughfare for the subcontinent and central distributor of gas and other sources of energy.”8 As a country providing passage, corridors for exporting goods and services will form part of important binational projects for hydro- and thermoelectric energy generation and distribution.

According to plans defined by IIRSA, Bolivia must construct a new Fundamental Network of Highways that will leave entire zones isolated but connect hydrocarbon reserves to global markets. The Central Inter-oceanic Axis that seeks to unite the Brazilian port Santos with the Chilean ports Arica and Iquique, crosses through the middle of Bolivia and is critical to countries like Brazil and Chile, which are especially interested in establishing bi-oceanic trade. The Peru-Brazil-Bolivia Axis would unite the Brazilian state Rondonia with the Pacific and gain access to its large-scale soy production, thereby “taking advantage of one of the regions where crossing the Andes presents the least difficulty.”9 Bolivia is about to become the object of huge investments for the construction of the five corridors that will fracture its national territory.

Brazil finds itself in the opposite situation. Exogenous integration will permit it to “advance its goal of dominating Latin America, a result of its 1980s strategy to reach a position of regional leadership by gaining influence over its closest neighbors: Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, first, then Bolivia and Chile, and finally, the rest of the Andean community and all of South America, the ultimate goal being to strengthen its economy in the face of the FTAA.”10

Brazil will be in a position similar to that of the world’s industrialized nations the moment it begins to benefit from IIRSA. In reality, Brazil’s relationship with the rest of South America—Argentina being the exception—is similar to that which most center countries have with peripheral countries. In the first place, Brazil has a major interest in channeling its industrial and agribusiness production through the Pacific. Second, several of the businesses set to develop infrastructure are Brazilian, like Petrobras or Norberto Odebrecht Construction, which has investments all over the region.11 Third, the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) is one of the principal financiers of IIRSA.

The Madeira River Complex, which is a nucleus of the Peru-Brazil-Bolivia Axis, is perhaps the best example. Carlos Lessa, ex-president of the BNDES, maintains that under this project “Brazil can promote its vision of conquering the West, a jungle zone with neighboring Peru and Bolivia. Its megaproject illustrates the dream of Latin American integration, an area that is ripe for development.”12 The Madeira River Complex project includes two hydroelectric dams in Brazil; floodgates for making the river navigable, which will require the elimination of a zone of waterfalls that “interrupt” navigation; a hydroelectric dam on the Beni River in Bolivia; and ports for the Madeira-Gupore-Beni-Madre de Dios waterway in Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru. The project will allow “significant supply of low-cost energy and consolidate the agribusiness Development Pole in the western region of Brazil and the Bolivian Amazon.” This would permit a reduction in the cost of transportation for grains, and other commodities.13

The project will have an enormous impact on the environment and will benefit only Brazil. “Brazilian businesses will be the only buyers of the energy produced, allowing them to impose conditions on buying, contracts, and prices.” The project will involve a $6 billion investment, benefiting Brazilian-owned businesses Odebrecht, Furnas Centrais Electricas, and the Tedesco Maggi group (largest soy producer in Brazil). The latter has invested $100 million into making the Madeira River navigable, “where it has the largest fleet of barges and tugboats, with a river transportation capacity of 210,000 tons per month.”14

Taken in perspective, projects like the Rio Madeira Complex make up part of Brazil’s geopolitical expansion west to occupy “empty” territories and control strategic resources like Bolivia’s hydrocarbons. They confirm the idea that “Brazil’s leaders believe that increasing their competitiveness in the international market depends, in large part, on South American integration.”15 It is, however, a kind of subordinate integration on two levels: Brazil over the rest of South America, and global markets and business over the region as a whole.

IIRSA in the World

IIRSA is closely linked to the FTAA, to the point where they can be seen as two sides of the same coin. “The FTAA deals very concretely with judicial and administrative issues, while IIRSA deals with infrastructure.”16 Both form part of a much larger project that includes the Puebla-Panama Plan. IIRS A is, however, unique in at least one way: it is a type of integration that has been conceived of by the South, engineered in large part by the continent’s elite, and will primarily benefit those sectors best inserted into the global market. The demand for infrastructure projects has grown out of the need for global markets to access a stable and increasing flow of raw materials and natural resource exports. Accessing these resources has to be done as “competitively” (which is to say, as cheaply) as possible. It’s clear that this type of development will only generate more poverty and greater inequalities, further concentrate wealth on a local and global scale, and create profound environmental impacts. Among other negative consequences, the external debt of South American countries will continue to rise. The current practice of overexploiting resources could create a situation where a few decades down the road, countries that today depend on oil and natural gas to generate income will exhaust their reserves without ever having truly benefited from them.

One of the most worrisome aspects of IIRSA is the way in which it is being implemented: silently. While the continent furiously debates the FTAA and other free trade agreements, IIRSA projects are taking place without the participation of civil society or social movements and without the release of information by governments. This method of implementation clearly seeks to avoid debate altogether. At the same time, projects are starting up in separate areas to be linked at a later date—a technique that prevents vigilance, weakens the control of affected communities, and facilitates sidestepping environmental regulations. Formally, IIRSA began in the year 2000, but a good part of its projects have their roots in the previous decade.

The most disturbing prospect of IIRSA’s large network of infrastructure projects is that they may well accomplish the same goals as the FTAA, only without that name, with no debate, and imposed from the top down by global markets and national elites. If this is the case, a few decades from now South America will have quietly completed a gigantic, continent-wide remodeling project that affects every one of its inhabitants. The elite know—as recent experience has shown them—that openly debating their plans will only condemn them to failure.

Translated for the Americas Program by Nick Henry.

Raúl Zibechi, a member of the editorial board of the weekly Brecha de Montevideo, is a professor and researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina and adviser to several grassroots organizations. He is a monthly contributor to the IRC Americas Program (www.americaspolicy.org).

Sources

1. IADB Document, cited in Elisangela Soldati, ob. cit. p. 4.
2. Cited in Guilherme Carvalho, ob. cit. p. 36.
3. The maps can be found at www.fobomade.org.bo. Click on the green button “Geopolítica e Integración” and then on “IIRSA-ALCA”. When the page loads, click on “Galería de Mapas”.
4. Andrés Barreda, ob. cit.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Elisangela Soldatelli, ob. cit.
8. Fobomade, “El rol de Bolivia en la integración sudamericana”, p. 3.
9. Ibid. p. 7.
10. Ibid. p. 6.
11. See the report, “Brazil and the Difficult Path to Multilateralism” at americas.irc-online.org/am/3144.
12. Patricia Molina, ob. cit
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
15. Guilherme Carvalho, ob. cit. p. 64.
16. Marcel Achkar and Ana Domínguez, ob. cit. p. 18.

For More Information

Resources

Marcel Achkar and Ana Dominguez,” IIRSA: Otro paso hacia la des-soberanía de los pueblos sudamericanos,” Programa Uruguay Sustentable-Redes Amigos de la Tierra, Montevideo, 2005.

Barreda, Andrés “Geopolítica, recursos estratégicos y multinacionales”, 20 de diciembre de 2005, en www.alainet.org.

Guilherme Carvalho, “La integración sudamericana y Brasil,” Action Aid, Rio de Janeiro, 2006.

Fobomade, “Las venas del ALCA. IIRSA. Bolivia, un país de tránsito y de extracción de recursos,” La Paz, July, 2003, at www.fobomade.org.bo.

Fobomade, “El rol de Bolivia en la integración sudamericana,” at www.fobomade.org.bo.

Gabriel Herbas Camacho and Silvia Molina, “IIRSA y la integración regional,” in OSAL No. 17, Buenos Aires, Clacso, May-August 2005.

Patricia Molina, “Bolivia-Brasil: Relaciones energéticas, integración y medio ambiente,” at www.fobomade.org.bo.

Elisangela Soldatelli, “IIRSA. E esta a integraçao que nós queremos?”, Amigos da Terra, Porto Alegre, diciembre de 2003.

The BICECA Project: Building Informed Civic Engagement for Conservation in the Andes-Amazon, online at www.biceca.org/en/Index.aspx.

Acronyms

Banco Nacional de Desarrollo Económicoy Social (BNDES): www.bndes.gov.br

Comunidad Andina de Naciones: www.comunidadandina.org

Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF): www.caf.com

Fobomade (Foro Boliviano sobre Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo): www.fobomade.org.bo

FONPLATA: www.fonplata.org

IIRSA: www.iirsa.org

CONSIDER THIS. A fine example of the distortion of the rule of law that the Terrorism Act of 2000 is. It provides the opportunity to switch of due process and being innocent until proven guilty - moreover, and the important catalyst here, it encourages mis- and uninformed people to call the authorities on their neighbour. Boy Cry wolf, where do we go from here? Like climate change processes operate through positive feedback loops, so do law and culture. Two people have probably just been radicalised - and thousands give them their support. As the leaders of the world creep further and deeper into the ir castles their guns and laws are all the more loud. A downward spiral for profit.

Dear Friends,

I’m writing to call your attention to a recent incident at the University of Nottingham, where one of our graduate students at the School of Politics and International Relations and an administrative member of staff at the Department of Engineering were arrested by armed police under the Terrorism Act of 2000.

Their alleged “crime” was that the graduate student had downloaded an Al-Qaeda training manual from a US government website for research purposes, as he’s writing his MA dissertation on Islamic extremism and international terrorist networks. He had then sent this to his friend in the Department of Engineering for printing. The printed material had been spotted by other staff and reported to the University authorities who passed on the information to the police.

The two were then arrested by armed police on May 14 and held for six days without charge, before being released without charge on May 20. During the six days they were imprisoned, the men had their homes raided and their families harassed by the police. It is worth noticing that in talking to one of my colleagues, a police officer remarked that the incident would never have occurred if the people involved had been blonde, Swedish PhD students (the two men were of British-Pakistani and Algerian backgrounds respectively).

The incident was recently reported in the Times Higher Education Supplement online:
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=402125&c=2

Needless to say, this raises hugely important issues both about academic freedom and civil liberties. Obviously, there is the issue that for those of us involved in research on contentious issues we will by necessity have to consult primary materials of a controversial nature, and the fact that the material is controversial should not lead to it being deemed as illegitimate research material. Moreover, we should not under any circumstances have to fear for infringements upon our civil liberties as a consequence of doing our jobs. Moreover, it goes without saying that the university should guarantee the academic freedom, freedom of speech and expression, and civil liberties of all members of staff and students, irrespective of ethnic and religious background or political beliefs!

I would be most grateful if you could circulate this e-mail as widely as possible in the interest of raising awareness and attention about this incident and the wider issues of academic freedom that it gives rise to, to as many of your friends and colleagues as possible!

Please consider writing to the University of Nottingham to express your concern about this case. Letters should be sent to the Registrar, Dr Paul Greatrix, at registrars@nottingham.ac.uk; please send a copy to alf.nilsen@nottingham.ac.uk.

Regards

Dr. Alf Gunvald Nilsen

RCUK Fellow, Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, School of Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cssgj/index.php
University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, England, UK
Office: (0044) (0) 1159514032

Here is PART 1 of Indigenous Peoples UN Forum - “MAY REVOLT” 2008 by Rebecca Sommer (uploaded to youtube).

Indigenous Peoples representatives and organizations held a protest at the May 2 2008 conclusion of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in New York.

See also “Indigenous Peoples Critical of Position on Carbon Trading of UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues“

They were angered by the final report of the Permanent Forum, which ignored Indigenous Peoples stated concerns about carbon trading projects (REDD), Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and other so called “good practise” initiatives.

During the two weeks of the UNPFII, Indigenous community representatives testified about the injustices associated with the clean development mechanism projects and asked that the UNPFII not promote the projects. However, in the final report, their testimony was ignored. The final report of the UNPFII hails World Bank-funded carbon trading as “good examples” of partnership.

Carbon trading is a system whereby companies are allowed to emit a limited amount of carbon dioxide, a gas linked to global warming. If a company does not “use up” all its carbon credits, it can sell them on the carbon market, allowing the buyer to pollute more.

Companies can also buy into “carbon offset” schemes. The idea behind this is that the polluter can “offset” the carbon it has emitted by helping to finance a “clean energy” development.

At first glance these ideas may seem good. However, there are many problems with this market-based approach.

In promoting the clean development mechanism projects and carbon trading, the Permanent Forum is allowing oil companies, who are the biggest emitters for greenhouse gases, to continue to pollute.In other words, big corporations can buy and sell the right to pollute freely, while poor and working people—including the Indigenous peoples of the world—have no say in determining where or how much carbon should be emitted.

Additionally, the allegedly “clean energy” development programs may actually cause environmental damage and have been imposed on Indigenous people against their will.

There is a war between those who say that the climate is changing and those who say that it isn’t, why don’t you come on back to the war, don’t be a tourist!