Watch Aljazeera's 101 East Discussions on the Asian Economy. Part 2
The Gr8 Climate Sale
COMING SOON!
The Gr8 Climate Sale, the latest video from Focus on the Global South. Click here to watch the trailer. The full video will soon be available for downloading for free here at www.focusweb.org. DVD copies can also soon be ordered.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) — Resource-hungry nations are snapping up huge tracts of agricultural land in poor Asian nations, in what activists say is a "land grab" that will worsen poverty and malnutrition.
Global trends including high prices for oil and commodities, the biofuels boom, and now the sweeping downturn, are spurring import-reliant countries to take action to protect their sources of food.
China and South Korea, which are both short on arable land, and Middle Eastern nations flush with petrodollars, are driving the trend to sign up rights to swathes of territory in Asia and Africa.
Statement by Richard Falk, United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights for the Palestininan Territories, on Israel’s Agression in Gaza. In an unprecedented move, Israel expelled Falk from Israel on Dec. 17, 2008.
In recent days the desperate plight of the civilian population of Gaza has been acknowledged by such respected international figures as the Secretary General of the United Nations, the President of the General Assembly, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Such a flurry of denunciations has not occurred on a global level since the heyday of South African apartheid. And still Israel maintains its Gaza siege in its full fury, allowing only enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease. Such a policy of collective punishment, initiated by Israel to punish the 1.5 million Gazans for political developments within the strip, constitutes a continuing flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as set forth in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
by Walden Bello* Published on Wednesday, December 24, 2008 by Foreign Policy in Focus
Not surprisingly, the swift unraveling of the global economy combined with the ascent to the U.S. presidency of an African-American liberal has left millions anticipating that the world is on the threshold of a new era. Some of President-elect Barack Obama’s new appointees – in particular ex-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers to lead the National Economic Council, New York Federal Reserve Board chief Tim Geithner to head Treasury, and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk to serve as trade representative – have certainly elicited some skepticism. But the sense that the old neoliberal formulas are thoroughly discredited have convinced many that the new Democratic leadership in the world’s biggest economy will break with the market fundamentalist policies that have reigned since the early 1980s.
One important question, of course, is how decisive and definitive the break with neoliberalism will be. Other questions, however, go to the heart of capitalism itself. Will government ownership, intervention, and control be exercised simply to stabilize capitalism, after which control will be given back to the corporate elites? Are we going to see a second round of Keynesian capitalism, where the state and corporate elites along with labor work out a partnership based on industrial policy, growth, and high wages – though with a green dimension this time around? Or will we witness the beginnings of fundamental shifts in the ownership and control of the economy in a more popular direction? There are limits to reform in the system of global capitalism, but at no other time in the last half century have those limits seemed more fluid.
FOP December 2008
Focus on the Philippines this month releases a very timely issue on
agrarian reform and rural development. On December 17, the last session
of Congress for 2008, Legislators will vote on House Bill 4077, seeking
to extend and reform the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program. This
vote will decide the fate of the unfinished business of agrarian reform
in the Philippines, with funding for CARP, land acquisition and
distribution as well as the provision of support services to
beneficiaries, ending this year. This month's issue includes analyses
on CARP performance and the need for meaningful reforms as well as a
summary of an alternative agricultural roadmap.
Perspective:Standing on Tenuous Grounds
by Mary Ann Manahan
Samir Amin: “It was the financial corporations that asked the governments to step in and ‘nationalise’ them. The rescue package was drafted by them, and they are in control of most of the bailout money.”
THE financial crisis continues to spread rapidly across the world, crippling banks, stock markets and manufacturing industries and leaving hundreds of thousands jobless in its wake. Two days after the much hyped meeting of the Group of 20 in Washington, D.C., economist Samir Amin shared his insights into and analysis of the arduous road ahead for economic globalisation and the urgent need for a course change from capitalism and the possibilities of a new internationalism in the form of a Bandung II initiative.
RADICAL NEW AGENDA NEEDED TO ACHIEVE CLIMATE JUSTICE
Poznan statement from the Climate
Justice Now! alliance
12 December 2008
Members
of Climate Justice Now! – a worldwide alliance of more than 160 organisations
-- have been in Poznan for the past two weeks closely following developments in
the UN climate negotiations.
This statement is our assessment of the
Conference of Parties (COP) 14, and articulates our principles for achieving
climate justice.
THE
URGENCY OF CLIMATE JUSTICE
We will not be able to stop climate
change if we don't change the neo-liberal and corporate-based economy which
stops us from achieving sustainable societies. Corporate globalisation must be
stopped.
The historical responsibility for the
vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions lies with the industrialised
countries of the North. Even though the primary responsibility of the North to
reduce emissions has been recognised in the Convention, their production and
consumption habits continue to threaten the survival of humanity and
biodiversity. It is imperative that the North urgently shifts to a low carbon
economy. At the same time in order to avoid the damaging carbon intensive model
of industrialisation, the South is entitled to resources and technology to make
this transition.
We believe that any ´shared vision´
on addressing the climate crisis must start with climate justice and with a
radical re-thinking of the dominant development model
Nations are gathering in Poznan, Poland under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). To meet their obligations towards developing countries and repay their climate debt, industrialized countries must agree to appropriately and adequately finance adaptation, mitigation, and technology development and transfer. The World Bank Group is positioning itself to control key financial mechanisms of the UNFCCC.
We, the undersigned organizations, oppose any World Bank role in aninternational climate change convention regime, for the following reasons:
We, the undersigned representatives of indigenous peoples, local communities and non-governmental organizations monitoring the progress of negotiations in Poznan are outraged that the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand opposed the inclusion of recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities in a decision on REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) drafted today by government delegates at the UN Climate Conference.
These four countries (often known as the 'CANZUS Group') want to include REDD in the future climate agreement, but they oppose protecting the rights of the indigenous and forest peoples who will be directly affected by REDD measures. In discussions today, these countries insisted that the word "rights" and references to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples be struck from the text.
We, representatives of peasant organizations, women, migrants, workers, consumers, urban and rural poor, fisherfolks, social movements and civil society organizations are writing to express our alarm that efforts are being made to conclude the Doha “Development” Round of negotiations. We are even more concerned that this last ditch effort is being made through an exclusive Mini-Ministerial meeting that does not involve the whole membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The proposed Mini-Ministerial this December 13 to 15, 2008 by WTO Director General Pascal Lamy is so hastily organized that there will not even be enough time to read let alone review the texts that will be the basis for the negotiations. This rush into the conclusion of negotiations with a few select members is clearly a move by the developed countries together with the WTO secretariat to railroad the rest of the membership into an agreement.
The UN´s Clean Development Mechanism is beyond repair and should be dumped, climate justice campaigners told delegates at the UN ClimateChange Conference in Poznan today. *1
“The CDM is a ´lose-lose´ proposition. Its projects generate windfalls for major polluters in the global South while providing Northern-based transnational corporations and governments a way to buy their way out the responsibility to make their own emissions cuts” says Tom Goldtooth, Executive Director of the Indigenous Environment Network.
The future of the CDM is currently under discussion at the Poznan climate talks. Most of the rule changes and reforms being considered will expand the mechanism. These include proposals to include nuclear power and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects in the CDM. None of the proposals will address the fundamental flaws of ´carbon offsetting´, however.
ASEAN People's Forum
Date to be announced
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
VISIT THE APF WEBSITE
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Wall Street: The Causes of Collapse
by Walden Bello
Updated: 18 October 2008
Download the Presentation
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