Red Pepper News

Death, Abundance and New Orleans

Jordan Flaherty of Left Turn magazine continues his series of articles from New Orleans (apologies this took a while to post here!). Wednesday, December 14, 2005. On Sunday, I drove past streets named Abundance, Pleasure and Humanity to a memorial for Meg Perry, a 26 year old Common Ground Collective volunteer from Maine. Meg died on Saturday when the bus she was in crashed near downtown New Orleans. She had come to New Orleans in September, then left and returned with more volunteers. The memorial was in a community garden she had been working on in the Gentilly neighborhood. All around were empty houses. It was a small moment of mourning, in a city of mourning. Mourning that feels like it won’t end, because the disaster hasn’t ended.

WTO: around the web

For up-to-date and radical analysis of the WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong, the Focus on the Global South website is an excellent place to start. Choike, a Southern-based civil society portal, also has a wide range of news and analysis - it's WTO page is here, and it  includes useful briefings from the Third World Network. The World Development Movement has the best coverage of the UK NGOs, including blogs from Caroline Lucas (Green MEP) and various WDM campaigners. For more on the WTO protests, Via Campesina is organising solidarity amongst farmers' movements, whilst the Hong Kong People's Alliance has brought together local campaigners. Indymedia, the activist news site founded at the Seattle anti-WTO protests in 1999, is also worth a look.

WTO Fiasco: Lamy Spins Deception Deal at Hong Kong

Focus on the Global South: The unholy trio of the EU, US and Pascal Lamy succeeded in their attempt to force developing countries into accepting a Ministerial Declaration that further forecloses the development of countries of the South.

After 6 days of acrimonious negotiations the final day of the Hong Kong Ministerial ended with the adoption of a highly flawed text that doesn’t reflect what several developing countries have been demanding over the last 5 days. The resistance of countries such as the G90, Venezuela, Kenya and Cuba were systematically thwarted by immense pressure from the developed world. Venezuela and Cuba registered a reservation on the NAMA and services components of the text at the closing plenary. Its legal standing remains unclear. 

Coca Cola banned from New York University

New York University (NYU), the largest private university in the United States with over 50,000 students and 16,000 employees, becomes the 12th college or university in the US, and at least the 20th worldwide, to have taken strong economic action against The Coca-Cola Co. by banning the sale and marketing of Coke products on campus.

Climate Justice, or, what's really going on in Montreal

If you're unimpressed by the 'greenwashing' that routinely accompanies intergovernmental climate change talks, then the Climate Justice blog is an excellent source of information from environment campaigners at the summit.

And if you still want to check in on the official course of the negotiations, try here
or here

Chairman Mao: the new face of Starbucks

We've received a few requests for the 'Starbucks Mao' image from the Red Pepper China issue. So by popular demand, here it is - courtesy of our designer Tom Lynton. Clicking on this small version will bring up the full size image.

Around the left

Dalkeith Country Park facing the axe

22 November. At the end of October protesters set up a tree-sit to stop the construction of the A68 Bypass, which would destroy Dalkeith’s 850 acre country park. An eviction order has been served on the protestors and trees have already begun to fall. The activists have vowed to remain in the trees until the bypass is defeated, but need support to keep the protest going. To contact Dalkeith Protest site phone 07783904369 or http://www.save-dalkeith-park.org.uk/

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Zapatista Communiques

If you don't speak Spanish but want to keep up-to-date with the latest from the EZLN, then this is a useful blog: http://zaptranslations.blogspot.com/