Transnational news - 23 January 2009

Editor's pick: Articles of the week

Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza
UN rapporteur Richard Falk interviewed by Michael Slate
“I stand by the truthfulness of what I’ve been trying to say and the reasonableness of my legal interpretations of what the Israeli policies imply in terms of violations of the rights of the Palestinian people, and criminal accountability for the Israeli military and political leaders.”
See also Richard Falk on war crimes in Gaza and the prospects for change with the new US administration (Video)

Gaza under siege
Phyllis Bennis
The Israeli assault on Gaza reflects the same mindset as the U.S. invasion against Iraq: the belief that power equals right, that terror can somehow be destroyed by war. We must urge Obama to reclaim his commitment to change.
Listen to Bennis on Gaza and law (audio)
See also Bennis critiques US foreign policy approach proposed by Clinton and Hilary Wainwright on the double standards of UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband

	Clean start (video lecture) Susan George There has been a long, silent monetary coup d’état that has transferred value away from labour into the hands of capital, but the current crisis offers a window of opportunity for transforming the economy.

'No reason for unease at Obama presidency'
Praful Bidwai
As much of the world celebrates the swearing in of Barack Obama as the President of the United States of America, Indian diplomats are uneasy about what his presidency would entail for relations between the two countries.
See also Phyllis Bennis at the Obama inauguration (video)
and Obama's rescue plan is doomed to fail by Boris Kagarlitsky

Award

TNI’s video “The Carbon Connection” receives the Student Jury Award 2008 at the Sondrio International Documentary Film Festival on Parks! Established in 1987, the festival takes places every year in the Alpine town of Sondrio, in Lombardy, Northern Italy, for a week in October.

New Publications

Withdrawal Symptoms in the Golden Triangle: A Drugs Market in Disarray
Tom Kramer, Martin Jelsma, Tom Blickman
This new 96-page glossy report is the result of pioneering research undertaken by local researchers in China, Burma, Thailand and Laos. It highlights how the fall in opium production has led users to shift to injecting heroin and methamphetamine, contributing to the HIV epidemic in the region. The report calls attention to the urgent need to harmonise drug and HIV policies, for long term harm reduction and health care programmes, and for legislation and sanctions that support rather than hamper efforts to contain the problem.
See also Drug report in Southeast Asia

The Permanent People's Tribunal in Lima (PDF)
The Third Summit of the Peoples Enlazando Alternativas took place in Lima, Peru, in May last year, in the framework of which the Permanent Peoples Tribunal held a hearing on the Transnational European Companies and the neo-liberal policies in Latin America. This publication outlines the process.

Global perspectives

“Existential” threat
Mike Marqusee
The Israelis ask what else they could have done in response to the rocket attacks on its citizens. The answer is painfully obvious: end the blockade of Gaza, end the occupation and accept a genuinely independent Palestinian state.

Understanding Gaza
Gabriel Kolko
By waging a war against the defenceless population in Gaza, Israel has, perhaps irreparably, imperilled its relations with the neighbouring Arab states and other Muslim nations.
See also Reason for war?, by Saul Landau

East Asia - The end of an era
Walden Bello
For East Asia, the current economic crisis represents the end of an era of export-oriented industrialisation that began in the 1960s, when Korea and Taiwan embarked on a development process that tied their growth to the US market.

Lowering temperatures
Praful Bidwai
India will have to be cautious in its diplomacy as Pakistan’s government admits that the last surviving assailant of the Mumbai attacks is Pakistani.
See also Good Cop, Bad Cop' Approach to Pakistan

Dealing with Pakistan
Praful Bidwai
The savage violence visited upon Gaza, which has already resulted in the death of more than 500 people and caused large-scale devastation, has had a salutary effect in discrediting the idea that military force is the preferred and natural answer to terrorism.

Beginning of the difficult year
Praful Bidwai
The main peculiarity of the current crisis is that not only the population but also the officials and the companies’ owners will have a hard time. It is not known whether this will be a consolation for the ordinary Russians.

Impacts of expansion of sugarcane mono-cropping for ethanol production
Maria Luisa Mendonça
The Brazilian region of Cerrado is being cleared of its rich vegetation to grow sugar cane for agrofuel production, but diverse studies show that the expansion of mono-cultures represent greater risk for global warming than emissions of carbon coming from fossil fuels.

An Obama nightmare
Praful Bidwai
Obama should learn from mistakes of his predecessor and avoid the temptation to send more troops to Afghanistan.
See also Bush’s legacy

En español

Selección del editor

El nuevo consenso capitalista en ciernes
Walden Bello
Las elites económicas y políticas empiezan a converger en una especie de solución global de tipo socialdemócrata como solución de la presente crisis económica, pero necesitamos modelos de organización social que apunten a la igualdad y al control democrático-participativo de la economía, tanto a escala nacional como a escala planetaria.

Cómo transformar la economía mundial: soluciones para un mundo sostenible
Susan George
La actual crisis financiera ofrece la oportunidad idónea para poner en marcha reformas fiscales que financiarían la conversión hacia una industria respetuosa con el medio ambiente: un keynesianismo ecológico que sacaría al mundo de la catástrofe económica y el caos social, y pondría bajo control al desbocado sistema financiero mundial.

Nueva publicación

El Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos en Lima (PDF) La III Cumbre de los Pueblos Enlazando Alternativas tuvo lugar en la capital peruana, Lima, en mayo de 2008. En su marco, el Tribunal Permanente de los Pueblos celebró una sesión sobre las empresas transnacionales europeas y las políticas neoliberales en América Latina, cuyo proceso se repasa en esta publicación.

Perspectiva global

Cómo evitar la devastación del planeta
Reflexiones del Foro de Viterbo
Amira Armenta
Una población educada desde la infancia para comportarse como ciudadanos, no como consumistas, es la mejor garantía de cambio del comportamiento humano y de las leyes económicas que promueven la devastación del planeta.

Respuestas a la crisis del capitalismo
Joan Subirats
El nuevo capitalismo de la discontinuidad y la temporalidad deja obsoletas las críticas basadas en los viejos esquemas industrialistas; debemos enfrentarnos a las raíces injustas y opresoras del sistema.
Véase también ¿Si tú no vas, Madoff vuelve?

Una pesadilla de Obama
Saul Landau
Obama debería aprender de los errores de sus predecesores y evitar la tentación de enviar más tropas a Afganistán. Su decisión tendrá un impacto en todo el mundo.
Véase también El legado de Bush

Job Vacancy

TNI Communications Manager
Application deadline: 1 February 2009

New from our network

Second Chance: A Sensible Plan for Getting the Recovery Right (PDF)
Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, Chuck Collins, Dedrick Muhammad, Sam Pizzigati, Institute for Policy Studies

A place weeping
John Berger, Irish Times

El llanto de un lugar
John Berger

The Philippines and Israel: A history of complicity, an imperative for action
Herbert Docena, Focus on the Global South