Herpes Bump Under Nose

1. The 35th G8 summit in L'Aquila and the strange absence of anti-globalization ...

2. Harper continues his "Busheries' open hostility toward Ottawa ousted president of Honduras

3. 150 years in prison for the rogue financier Bernard Madoff why CEOs of criminal enterprises do not suffer the same fate?

4. The UN summit on the global economic crisis: the necessary reforms blocked by the rich countries

5. The great historian Howard Zinn reminds us of the lessons of the American Revolution

6. Before the great glacial melt from its course, Greenland takes a first step towards independence


G8


The world's eyes are not on vacation at L'Aquila in Italy for the 35th G8 summit

Find an Answer to the global economic crisis will undoubtedly be the top priority of

As always, protests the streets are expected ... although not on such a scale that we saw during the last decade

we have seen since Seattle in 1999 millions of people took to the streets to denounce the doctrine of neo-liberalism

A program of privatization, deregulation and global financialisatio ...

touted so loudly that another world is possible

And with the current crisis of neo-liberalism, it's strange but it looks like the global justice movement hit a dead end

None of the major networks and organizations of the left have shown great interest to demonstrate next week at the G8 summit

Yet, in theory, the timing is ideal for a great mobilization of the European Left ...

The purpose of the G8 has always been to facilitate the development of responses to crises in global capitalism

The G8 was created in 1975, the G6 at the time so without Russia and Canada Following two major events that have destabilized the political stability and economic crisis

The first was the collapse of Bretton Woods through the deregulation of currency markets in 1971

the other was the oil crisis of 1973

then annually for the purpose of the meetings was to build a consensus among the richest countries in the world to restructure the international economy

So now the G8 states control 48 % of votes at the IMF and even 46% of the votes at the World Bank, and four of five seats to veto the council of the UN Security ...

So needless to say that their agreements take considerable weight

To return to the lack of mobilization at this year's G8 summit this year comes from the difficulties facing the European left this year

The problem is that the left seems incapable of formulating an adequate response to the current crisis, despite the obvious failure of neoliberalism

A crisis implies necessarily a call for change.

When I speak, therefore, another world is not only possible, but it now seems inevitable.

The question to be answered is what role is played by the left in this vast undertaking? HONDURAS CANADA



Saturday during a special meeting of the OAS on the Canadian Minister of the Americas Peter Kent recommended that the ousted President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya are pushing back in his country

Kent added that it was important to take into account the context in which the army drove Zelaya ... actually verify whether or not he violated the constitution of Honduras

The next day, Sunday, therefore, with three other heads of state, Zelaya tried to return to Honduras by air

But the army has blocked the aircraft and pushed 100,000 demonstrators wanting the return of Zelaya

in the process the army killed two people and injured at least 30 other

Peter Kent Zelaya immediately blamed for the violence

Last June, Kent Zelaya criticized because he planned to hold a plebiscite, a large survey about whether people wanted to consult on whether the constitution would open

With political tensions rising in the Honduras, two days before the coup, the OAS passed a resolution supporting democracy and the rule of law in the country

The representative from Ottawa to the OES for its part was to remain silent on the issue

Indeed the day of the coup, it was only very late in the evening after all the countries of the Americas have denounced the coup that Ottawa has also

Canada is so far the only country in the hemisphere that has not explicitly requested the return to power of ousted president

And unlike the World Bank, Ottawa has not yet announced its plans to suspend aid in Honduras is the largest recipient of Canadian assistance in Central America

And Ottawa has still not said if Canada will continue to Honduras to attend military training

The obvious hostility toward Ottawa Zelaya is most likely motivated by private interests in Canada and that the ousted president supported the Bolivarian Revolution led by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela

Years 1996 to 2006 Canadian companies were the second largest investors in Honduras

And it is certain that Zelaya has not made friends in the Canadian mining company Breakwater Resources, Yamana Gold and Goldcorp, which are active in Honduras

Who were probably very disappointed to hear that Zelaya has decided not to give mining concessions

And I suppose the company that makes t-shirts from Gildan Montreal was not too happy to learn that Zelaya has increased the minimum wage by 60%

Gildan produces half of its clothing Honduras

obviously knowing when the minority government of Stephen Harper that Zelaya is hated because he takes the road of other governments in Latin America who seek to improve conditions for citizens to unite South America

Harper did not hide his disdain for Hugo Chavez, calling him a dictator ... showing Ottawa's strategy that aims to block the left turn from Latin America ...

And it is obvious that their clear support to the coup is part of the strategy.


FINANCIAL CRIME

150 years in prison for the criminal financial Madoff is a very good thing we should

crime has profoundly disrupted the lives of thousands of families

but we know, the punishment is not a substitute for prevention

but at least the sentence gives the impression of a little justice for victims and perhaps it will discourage other crossers to steal as much money investors

but what is surprising is not the 150 years in prison for Madoff

is that other white-collar criminals out of business with little or no sentence or charge any short

In August 2006 a federal court in the U.S. had recognized that major tobacco company participated in a conspiracy for 50 years to deceive the public about the risks of tobacco and its addictive effect

tens of millions of people died worldwide ... but you will not find a tobacco company CEOs in jail for much

25 years ago had poisonous gases escaped from a Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India

Thousands of people died, with many more wounded and maimed for life and the factory site remains polluted today

Despite conviction for homicide, the directors of Union Carbide, now merged with Dow Chemical Company have never been sent to prison

in 1989, the tanker vessel Exxon Valdez struck a reef in Alaska, spilling eleven million gallons of oil over a thousand kilometers
ruining
the lives of thousands of fishermen and hunters traditional industrial

captain was sentenced to community work, Exxon pleaded guilty to the violation of federal environmental laws ... but no one was in prison

The list is extremely long abuse of human rights and destruction caused by the abuses of big oil Burma, Nigeria, Ecuador, Indonesia, Chevron, Shell, Texaco and Exxon ...

With courageous lawyers and international solidarity campaigns victims have sometimes managed to obtain some financial compensation for their suffering ... but not a single high ranking of these companies have spent a day in jail

So what about the 150 years of Bernie Mafoff and freedom from other criminals?

the difference is that the victims of Madoff are powerful, they can afford to pay lawyers, to organize to obtain compensation and a little justice

crimes affecting businesses especially poor communities in poor countries

then the penalties for financial crimes have nothing to do with the murders of big multinational companies

these multinationals have the power and influence to change laws and even culture in their favor for their actions, even the most horrific, are not considered criminal


RICH COUNTRIES AND UN REFORMS


The UN summit on the global economic crisis held between 24 and 26 June last once again demonstrated the serious lack of fair distribution of power within the UN

Rich countries have blocked all attempts at serious reform, specifically in the financial sector

The conference was addressed issues of a reserve system and international political openness to the influence of developing countries

However, the summit failed .. . it failed to adopt a program to help clear and significant changes in the Bretton Woods institutions: the IMF and WB

So the first major conference on the financial crisis to include all countries of the world ended with rich countries that have blocked the reforms called for by the poor countries

Unlike the G20 summit in London last April where discussions were conducted in great secrecy behind closed doors

documents on the negotiations at the UN move freely and therefore had access to all development negotiations

The G77 brings together 130 countries Development has tried to insert text in the final declaration which required a series of reforms ... while the northern countries, thus including the U.S. and the EU have tried to block everything

In the end, the final document was empty of any serious proposals, deleted, in fact by the rich countries

So anyway there are two fields that go beyond previous international agreements

first the need for poor countries to have an influence on economic policy and financial ... including the right to use defensive trade measures and restrictions on movement of capital

Then, the final document of the conference calls for reforms to the Bretton Woods institutions, but nothing very specific, especially

nothing that would indicate that we take a radically different direction than the one that has systematically destroyed national economies over the past 35 years ...

AMERICAN REVOLUTION

With national holidays in Quebec, Canada and the Independence Day July 4 that has just passed the U.S. would like to convey the ideas of the great American historian Howard Zinn

He recently published his thoughts on the revolution in the U.S. for independence against England

It raises the open question: is it that Americans should absolutely make war with the English to get there?

wars, even those that are found justified, are still horrible butchers ... and you never know exactly how many people die ...

For the American Revolution the estimate is 25 000 to 50 000 ... take the conservative figure of 25,000 in a population of three million at the time

That would be the equivalent today of 2.5 million people to repel England's colonies in the U.S. east coast

A Wholesale price to pay ... anyway. Is it worth it?

Well historian Zinn tells us that it depends for whom.

During the year before the start of the Revolutionary War, farmers in western Massachusetts were able to exit the British government without firing a single shot. They had assembled

bases surrounded by thousands of colonels and redundant took control and drove the British officials

was a fine example of non-violent revolution.

But the fighting came to Lexington and Concord and the Revolution became violent in 1775 ... there was made the founding fathers who led the fight.

So the farmers were poor and the founding fathers were rich ...

is very important if you really want to understand history is to note the differences in gains and losses among all segments of the population.

So in terms of social class, gender and ethnicity

for Indian independence from the American colonies was a very bad thing, because England had earlier drawn a line that prohibits settlement expansion westward

So for the next century colonization had free rein to west of the continent in looting the Indian civilization

blacks did not benefit from the American Revolution ... Slavery remained ... Not only that, but slavery was legalized in the same constitution

course, the founding fathers of the U.S. were more concerned with the property that the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness when they wrote the constitution

The U.S. has taken birth as a society already split between rich and poor, large landowners and small farmers

starting, there were conflicts between different social classes ... and that is what Howard Zinn wants to pass as a message: the history of the American Revolution was primarily a class struggle.

What we need to rethink the benefits of war ... actually come to the conclusion that under no circumstances war is an acceptable outcome

war is by its nature a massacre, a slaughter of large numbers of people for purposes that are uncertain

Yes, when a historic event takes place, it becomes very difficult to imagine that the result could be achieved in another way

So Professor Zinn's lesson: to understand between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.

It is totally wrong to think that it's one or the other.


INDEPENDENCE OF GREENLAND

Greenland, with a population of 58,000 people is taking place in the world last Sunday

And Greenland has taken the first step towards independence from Denmark, which the checked since 1721

The decision to allow Greenland to gradually take on responsibilities in sectors such as justice and exploration of oil

This emancipation following a referendum held last year where 76% of voters voted in favor of sovereignty

Now, Kalaallisut, an Inuit dialect is now the country's official language

And the people of Greenland are officially recognized under international law to be a separate Fulani Danes

And there will have to get used to, the government of Greenland is now called Inuit not his name: Na-a-la-ker-sui-sut

Even Danish government uses the name in its official documents

But it's no surprise that the new independent country faces many challenges

Few people in Greenland have a post-secondary education

Many alcoholism, unemployment endemic domestic violence

infrastructure spending are very expensive and therefore lacks severely in several places where there are no roads to connect towns and villages

And global warming is melting at sight of Cape icy eye covers 80% of the surface of Greenland

So while the traditional hunting disappear accordingly

Some see new opportunities to explore and exploit what could be vast reserves of oil and minerals that are beneath the surface or in the waters surrounding the territory

Denmark will still be the partner more important in the development of Greenland, providing over 500 million in aid each year

and the hope is that this aid would not be necessary one day and that Greenland will be ready for full independence

So beautiful Ceremonies were held throughout the weekend as the right to self-determination Eskimo ...

Grimsson President of Iceland to recall that in 1944 his country had become independent of the Danes

So all in all, for the people of Greenland, who have long felt like second-class citizens of Denmark, this new stage their history gives them a national pride that he had never known before