Red Pepper News

Community and Resistance in New Orleans

Jordan Flaherty writes: A couple months before New Orleans flooded, I remember walking through my neighborhood on a beautiful weekend afternoon and hearing music.

I followed the sound a couple blocks, to where about thirty people, all of them Black, followed a few musicians through the streets. They were mourning the death of a loved one, New Orleans-style. Most folks were wearing custom t-shirts with a picture of the deceased. Next to the photo were the words “sunrise” along with the date of his birth, and “sunset,” above the date of his (recent) death - he was 20. Also on the shirt were the words, “No More Drama.”

Free José Bové

José Bové has once more been sentenced to four months in prison for uprooting genetically modified crops with a group of the "voluntary harvesters" ["Faucheurs volontaires"]. To protest this iniquitous prison sentence, go here: www.josebovelibre.fr.st/

In case you’re wondering who José Bové is, go here and here

Select your winner in Europe’s debut ‘Worst EU Lobbying’ awards 2005!

Corporate Europe Observatory in association with LobbyControl, Spinwatch and Friends of the Earth Europe invites you to vote for this year’s most offensive case of corporate lobbying in the EU capital Brussels. 

This is your opportunity to decide which of the ten nominated cases of dubious lobbying deserves to be remembered as the most ruthless influence peddler, the fastest spinner of spin, the grand master of disguise, in short who will become the EU Worst Lobby Award 2005 champion!  Go to: http://www.corporateeurope.org/worstlobby/

Around the web

First of all, peace activist Milan Rai is currently in prison for Defacing the British Foreign Office. Please send messages of support to Milan Rai, HMP Lewes, 1 Brighton Road, Lewes, East Sussex, BN7 1EA. He's keeping a prison diary which can be viewed here.

Secondly, with the COP 11 (the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention) in Montreal coming up from 28 November to 9 December, it's worth checking out www.carbontradewatch.org. Their new book Trouble in the Air: Global Warming and the Privatised Atmosphere is edited by Patrick Bond and Rehana Dada and can be downloaded from here.

And finally... it seems that the British neo-cons are getting organised.

Guardian to Chomsky: Sorry!

In case you missed it, here's The Guardian's apologetic response to Noam Chomsky's complaint after they published a fairly muck-raking and highly inaccurate profile of him last week. A MediaLens point-by-point response is here.

Interestingly, the Guardian itself has removed the original article from it's website but Chomsky still has it on his. Perhaps he's making a point about freedom of speech?

National Debate on Policing?

As Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair has called for a national debate on policing:  it may be worth pointing out that Red Pepper recently dealt with this issue: http://www.redpepper.org.uk/society/x-oct05-reyes.htm

Arms-free university

London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has announced that it is to sell all of its investments in arms companies, reports the Campaign Against Arms Trade.  The campaign also recently released an 'Ivy League' of university arms investors, which makes for interesting reading.

No to the state of exception

The following statement is from various trade unions, left political parties and civil liberties groups in France.

Joint Communiqué, Paris, November 8th, 2005. Confronted by a revolt born from the accumulation of inequalities and discrimination in the “banlieues” (suburbs of Paris) and the poor areas, the French government has just passed a new and extremely serious threshold in the escalation of security measures. Even in May 1968, when the situation was a lot more dramatic, the public authorities did not use the extreme measure of declaring a state of emergency. The proclamation of the state of emergency is the answer to a revolt whose causes are profound and well known even at the level of state repression.

Changing New Orleans

Jordan Flaherty writes: It’s bittersweet being back in New Orleans.  Although the architecture is the same, and it’s a relief to walk the streets and reunite with old friends, already this is a very different city from the one I love. It’s a city where some areas are quickly rebuilding and other parts are being left far behind.  A city where people who have lived here for generations are now unwelcome in a hundred different ways.

White New Orleans is steadily coming back, and Black New Orleans is moving out.  A grassroots organizer with New Orleans Network tells me she has been speaking to people in every moving truck she sees.  She reports that in every case, “they’re Black, they are renters, they’re moving out of New Orleans, and they say they would stay, if they had a choice.”

Remembering Fallujah

Justin Alexander writes: Today marks an ignoble aniversary. On 8 November 2004 the US military, with approval and support from Britain, began the systematic destruction of a city of 200,000 people in an operation originally and appropriately codenamed "Thanksgiving Massacre". When I visited 5 months later the 1000+ bodies had been buried and the blood had been washed away, but the devastation remained.

Reading that 60% of the buildings had been seriously damaged is one thing, looking around a once populous neighbourhood and seeing only rubble in all directions is something else entirely. The people of Fallujah were promised large amounts of compensation and reconstruction but my friends at Christian Peacemaker Teams who visited a few days ago testify that a year on the situation remain dire.

http://www.rememberfallujah.org/... and Ramadi, Hit, Mosul, Qaim, Tal Afar, Haditha...