Global News and Analysis

Source: Boston Review

ONE

On January 12, 2010 an earthquake struck Haiti. The epicenter of the quake, which registered a moment magnitude of 7.0, was only fifteen miles from the capital, Port-au-Prince. By the time the initial shocks subsided, Port-au-Prince and surrounding urbanizations were in ruins. Schools, hospitals, clinics, prisons collapsed. The electrical and communication grids imploded. The Presidential Palace, the Cathedral, and the National Assembly building—historic symbols of the Haitian patrimony—were severely damaged or destroyed. The headquarters of the UN aid mission was reduced to rubble, killing peacekeepers, aid workers, and the mission chief, Hédi Annabi. read more

Source: Inter Press News

“In my opinion, there is no such thing as a natural disaster,” says Sylvia Richardson, a volunteer broadcaster, mother of two, assistant librarian, and the new vice president of the North American region of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC).

“Poor people are forced to live in conditions that make them vulnerable. The real question is, why do we have this idea that poverty is ‘natural’?” she asked.

Born in El Salvador and now living in Canada, Richardson was speaking at the first-ever Caribbean Conference of Community Radios held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the site of what the U.N. has called “the worst disaster in decades”. read more

Members of the grassroots Healthcare Is a Human Right campaign and the VT Migrant Farmworker Solidarity Project cheered on Tuesday, May 3, as the joint house senate committee voted to accept a reconciled version of the universal healthcare bill, H.202, which removed a provision excluding undocumented workers from health care coverage. Observers credit Vermonters’ unhesitating and unflinching demand that “universal means everyone” for turning a political hot potato into a victory.

“This is a huge victory for our state, and it only happened because of the thousands of Vermonters who have been working together to make their voices heard and demand their human rights,” said Peg Franzen, President of the Vermont Workers’ Center, which launched the Healthcare Is a Human Right Campaign in 2008 to change what is politically possible in healthcare reform. “Everyone has a human right to healthcare, simply by virtue of being human. That’s what universal healthcare is all about,” said Franzen. read more

Source: In These Times

From the military crackdown in Libya to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, the events of the past week shook up the so-called Muslim world. And they sadly overshadowed a bigger story unfolding in the region, one with far more resonance than boilerplate narratives of counterterrorism and never-ending conflict. Interspersed with the bombast of gun battles was the steady rhythm of May Day amidst the “Arab Spring.”

As the weather warms, the Western media lens has drifted onto hotter and bloodier clashes in the Middle East and North Africa. But the May Day protests in Cairo revealed that the coalescence of labor and human rights are at the crux of the unfolding revolution and continues to serve as a barometer for monitoring the progress, or precariousness, of the transition to democracy. read more

Source: TVNZ

Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda had lost relevance, and the chance of reprisal attacks following the terrorist leader’s death are slim, says veteran journalist Robert Fisk.

Fisk, who interviewed bin Laden three times before the September 11 terror attacks, says he was little more than “a name and an icon”.

“He was never a hands-on person, he never planned operations,” Fisk told TV ONE’s Close Up programme.

“Secondly, he was a middle-aged man. He’d become rather vain, clearly. In his videotapes he began to wear embroidered clothes I noticed. He used to dress much more humbly.” read more

Source: Al Jazeera

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s death is politically momentous for US president Barack Obama – witness the cheering crowds which gathered outside the White House even before his speech on Sunday night.

Its impact on al-Qaeda, though, is harder to measure.

Peter Bergen, an American journalist, said on CNN that bin Laden’s death marked “the end of the war on terror”. But many other analysts would disagree: Al-Qaeda, after all, is a very different organisation in 2011 than in 2001, with a new cadre of leaders and a wider range of affiliate groups. read more