A Critique of Energy Alternatives

by George Caffentzis

The discussion of energy politics in the US is now dominated by two competing paradigms. One is promoted by the Bush Administration and its corporate allies; the other by a wide assortment of liberal and left-wing NGOs and analysts (and occasionally by corporate supporters of the "Gore-wing" of the Democratic Party including, at times, John Kerry).

by David Bacon

BASRA, Iraq - The cracking towers and gas flares of the Al-Daura oil refinery rise above the neighborhood on Baghdad's outskirts that bears its name. On February 18, Ali Hassan Abd (Abu Fahad), a leader of the refinery's union, was walking home from the Al-Daura Refinery with his young children when gunmen ran up and shot him.

Abu Fahad had been one of 400 union activists who emerged from the underground or returned from exile in May 2003 and at a Baghdad conference formed the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. Afterwards, he went back to the refinery and urged his fellow workers to elect department and plant-wide committees. That, in turn, became a nucleus of the Oil and Gas Workers Union, one of the twelve industry unions that make up the IFTU.

by Jacob Mundy

"We preferred that occupation," Salim says, pointing to the Spanish news channel on his television, "to this one," he says gesturing toward Moroccan settlers walking past his West Saharan shop window.

The Janjaweed Spin Out of Control

by Rene Wadlow

The on-going conflicts in the provinces of Darfur in western Sudan are a textbook example of how programmed escalation of violence can go out of control. It is increasingly difficult for both the insurgency and the government-backed forces to de-escalate the conflict which has been called with reason "genocide." It will be even more difficult after the war to get the pastoralists and the settled agriculturalists to live together again in a relatively cooperative way.

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Two stories from Venezuela this month exemplify the pressures faced by President Hugo Chavez: on one hand, an increased push from Washington and the bourgeois opposition to capitulate in his populist programs or face destabilization; on the other, a powerful campesino movement demanding an extension and faster pace of populist reforms, especially land redistribution. Reports of local military commanders taking a hard line with campesino protesters point to continuing divisions within Venezuela's armed forces.—WW4 REPORT

U.S. TO LAUNCH PROPAGANDA BLITZ?

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

In spite of the "Justice and Peace" law passed in June, which provides an amnesty for Colombia's right-wing paramilitary networks in exchange for "demobilization," the networks appear to be as active as ever. Peasant and unionist leaders throughout the country continue to be targeted, even as the government of President Alvaro Uribe touts the "demobilization" program as evidence of progress towards peace to keep the US aid flowing in. Killings are reported this month from Dabeiba and Ciudad Bolivar, both in the Cordillera Occidental in Antioquia department, and El Castillo, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Meta department.—WW4 REPORT

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

BORDER ZONE: COLOMBIA ACTIONS PROTESTED

According to a report issued July 20 by the Emerging Inter-Institutional Mission, a collaboration of 11 human rights organizations and local governments in northern Ecuador, the Colombian Armed Forces violated Ecuadoran air space and territory in Sucumbios province on June 24 and 25. The incidents took place as rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) attacked an army post in Teteye, in the southern Colombian department of Putumayo, killing 22 soldiers. According to Alexis Ponce, president of the Latin American Human Rights Association (ALDHU), a member of the military revealed that nearly 20 Colombian soldiers in civilian clothes entered Ecuador "with weapons to see what the situation was like."

from Weekly News Update on the Americas