Hosted by Justin Podur
http://www.zcommunications.org/re-colonization-is-still-on-schedule-by-justin-podur
For the months leading up to the April 12 coup in Venezuela, there were reports and rumours coming that a coup was imminent. In December 2001, the San Francisco Examiner ran a story by Conn Hallinan who had detected the ‘scent of another coup in Venezuela’ (http://www.zmag.org/content/Colombia/hallinanchavez.cfm). This was cause for alarm. John Pilger, and others, made the analogy to Chile.
Most of the victims of the perpetual war in Colombia are unarmed poor civilians. For every military casualty there are six civilian deaths. In the words of one peasant leader, the Colombian war ‘is not a civil war. It’s a war against civilians’. Paul Valery put it another way when he said “war is a massacre between people who don’t know each other, for the benefit of people who do know -but do not massacre- each other.”
ZNet Commentary
Cut Through The Lies In Palestine April 02, 2002
By Justin Podur
It’s possible that there are more distortions and lies printed about Israel and Palestine than there are about any other conflict. The first example: For something like thirty years, most Arabs, including Palestinians, have accepted these principles, stated by Chomsky as his own basic assumptions in ‘Fateful Triangle’:
Steve Shalom. The New York Times ran a story on February 25 by Juan Forero titled “Colombian Rebels Sabotage Peace Hopes.” Perhaps you can address some of the questions raised by the article.
The arguments against reparations for Africa are in the details: How can you possibly measure, and repay, for millions and millions of shattered lives over centuries? When a figure is settled on, and paid, is it all over? Can there be adequate compensation for centuries of slavery, colonization, and destruction? Can one group of people be held accountable for what their ancestors did? Where does exploitation in the present fit in?
There are stories that get into the news, and stories that don’t. Sometimes when stories do make the news, they’re provided without context. The recent near-breakdown of the peace process in Colombia is one example of a context-free story, reported in the major media. Worker’s and indigenous struggles that are happening right now, in places like Cali and Cauca, are examples of stories that don’t even make the news. Here we will provide some context first, and then three stories that you won’t hear in the news about Colombia today.
Context: The IMF, the FTAA, and the Crisis
Years ago I interviewed someone who had traveled all over Central and Eastern Europe and Central and South Asia studying states and civil wars and how and why states failed. ‘People ask me what’s worse, an authoritarian state or no state,’ he said. ‘I’ve been in both. No state is worse.’ I suppose he was saying when there are rules, no matter how cruel or arbitrary, one knows how to avoid punishment, but when there are no rules but only raw power, it makes you even more helpless.
ZNet Commentary
Consumption, Complicity, And SUVs
December 29, 2001
By Justin Podur
Are people in poor countries suffering because we drive SUVs? Are they starving because we eat too much? Is it our consumption that is the foundation of the exploitative system we live in?
These are important questions for people who want to alleviate suffering, end poverty, and change the exploitative system. I think that the every day consumption of the people in the rich countries is an outcome of the system, not the cause.
‘If Osama bin Laden were hiding in the jungles of Colombia instead of Afghanistan, whose help would we enlist to find him? U.S. Army Special Forces? The Colombian Army? I don’t think so.
Actually, we would enlist the drug cartels. They have the three attributes we need: They know how to operate as a covert network and how to root out a competing network, such as Mr. bin Laden’s. They can be bought and know how to buy others. And they understand that when we say we want someone “dead or alive” we mean “dead or dead.”‘
Thomas Friedman New York Times – 28 September 2001
http://www.zcommunications.org/review-of-the-activist-s-handbook-and-rules-for-radicals-by-justin-podur
Continue reading “Review of The Activist’s Handbook and Rules for Radicals”