Global News and Analysis

Source: The Independent

Every coal train should be ringed with people refusing to let it pass

Buried deep in our subconscious, there still lays the belief that our political leaders are collective Daddies and Mummies who will – in the last instance – guarantee our safety. Sure, they might screw us over when it comes to hospital waiting lists, or public transport, or taxing the rich, but when it comes to resisting a raw existential threat, they will keep us from harm. Last week in Copenhagen, the conviction was disproved. Every leader there had been told by their scientists – plainly, bluntly, and for years – that there is a bare minimum we must all do now if we are going to prevent a catastrophe. And they all refused to do it. read more

Source: Foreign Policy in Focus

The global economic crisis has devastated workers around the world, none more than migrants whose daily wages are dependent on the whims of global financiers. Witness Dubai. Even before the meltdown of Dubai World, migrants whose labor literally built Dubai from the ground up suffered serious job losses with the onset of the global recession in 2008.

Remittances are expected to decline from $308 billion worldwide in 2008 to $293 billion in 2009, due to the global financial crisis. Many countries have experienced declines, particularly in Central and Latin America where workers’ fates are tied to the U.S. economy: Mexico (-11%), Guatemala (-13%), Honduras (-13%) and El Salvador (-13%). Some countries in South Asia, however, did experience an influx of money from workers abroad: Bangladesh (+22%) and Pakistan (+21%). read more

Source: Tom Dispatch

It’s clear now that, from her immoveable titanium bangs to her chaotic approximation of human speech, Sarah Palin is a Terminator cyborg sent from the future to destroy something — but what? It could be the Republican Party she’ll ravage by herding the fundamentalists and extremists into a place where sane fiscal conservatives and swing voters can’t follow. Or maybe she was sent to destroy civilization at this crucial moment by preaching the gospel of climate-change denial, abetted by tools like the Washington Post, which ran a factually outrageous editorial by her on the subject earlier this month. No one (even her, undoubtedly) knows, but we do know that this month we all hover on the brink. read more

Source: The Independent

At first glance, the Copenhagen climate summit seems like a Salvador Dali dreamscape. I just saw Archbishop Desmond Tutu being followed by a swarm of Japanese students who were dressed as aliens and carrying signs saying "Take Me To Your Leader" and "Is Your Species Crazy?". Before that, a group of angry black-clad teenage protesters who were carrying spray cans started quoting statistics to me about how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere can safely absorb. (It’s 350 parts per million they pointed out, before sucking their teeth.) Before that, I saw a couple in a pantomime cow costume being attacked by the police, who accused them of throwing stones with their hooves. read more

 Source: The New Internationalist

Photo by: Ana Areanas

While the world is commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall, another less well-known wall that separates a nation and its people still stands tall. At 1,553 miles long, the wall that divides Western Sahara is 12 times longer than the Berlin Wall and, having stood for 29 years, is now a year older than the Berlin Wall was when it was toppled. Known as ‘the Berm’, the wall was constructed by the Moroccans from sand and stone to keep the Polisario Front, the Western Sahara liberation movement, out of the territory and prevent the 165,000 Saharawi refugees from returning to their land. Standing at around 3 metres in height, the wall runs through the desert and is fortified with barbed-wire fencing, artillery posts and one of the highest densities of land mines in the world.

Like the wall that separates the Israeli and Palestinian populations in the West Bank, the Berm has become a potent symbol of the occupation and focus for protests. Last April 19-year-old Ibrahim Hussein Leibeit was taking part in one of the frequent marches to the wall organized by Saharawis living in the refugee camps. In a symbolic gesture, Ibrahim was attempting to get close enough to the wall to throw a pebble to the other side when he trod on a land mine. He lost his right leg below the knee and in the following months has become something of a hero to the Saharawi cause. read more