The European Union has officially renewed ties with Cuba after a five-year freeze in relations and announced it will deliver millions of euros in aid to the Communist-led island. Development commissioner Louis Michel and Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque signed a joint declaration in Havana on Thursday (23 October) that restores bilateral co-operation between the EU and Cuba and recognises the country's political independence and the principle of non-intervention in its domestic affairs.
The European Union has officially renewed ties with Cuba after a five-year freeze in relations and announced it will deliver millions of euros in aid to the Communist-led island.
Development commissioner Louis Michel and Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque signed a joint declaration in Havana on Thursday (23 October) that restores bilateral co-operation between the EU and Cuba and recognises the country's political independence and the principle of non-intervention in its domestic affairs.
VILLA RICA, Colombia, Oct 24 (IPS) - Colombian President Álvaro Uribe admitted that the security forces opened fire on indigenous protesters in the southwestern province of Cauca, but denies that they were responsible for the deaths of three demonstrators, said Daniel Piñacué, a leader of the Nasa community.Piñacué, head of the governing council of Calderas, an indigenous reservation in the mountains of Cauca, and a prominent member of the powerful Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC), was interviewed by IPS in the small town of Villa Rica. The CRIC organised the "minga" (a traditional indigenous meeting for the collective good), the name given to the march that set out from the La María Indian reservation, declared a "territory of peace and co-existence" in the midst of Colombia's civil war. The 35,000 indigenous marchers, who belong to a number of different ethnic groups and come from 20 of Colombia's 32 provinces (known as departments), expect to reach the city of Cali, the capital of the southwestern province of Valle del Cauca, on Saturday. Piñacué, one of the leading spokespersons for the indigenous protest, told the media that the security forces had used live ammunition against the demonstrators, before the U.S. cable news network CNN broadcast a video this week taped by participants in the march that showed a uniformed man wearing a mask shooting in the direction of the protesters. On Wednesday, Uribe acknowledged that the police had fired at the demonstrators. But previously, the rightwing president had publicly called for Piñacué's arrest.
Analysis by Gareth Porter* WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (IPS) - The final draft of the U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces agreement on the U.S. military presence represents an even more crushing defeat for the policy of the George W. Bush administration than previously thought, the final text reveals.The final draft, dated Oct. 13, not only imposes unambiguous deadlines for withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by 2011 but makes it extremely unlikely that a U.S. non-combat presence will be allowed to remain in Iraq for training and support purposes beyond the 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces. Furthermore, Shiite opposition to the pact as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty makes the prospects for passage of even this agreement by the Iraqi parliament doubtful. Pro-government Shiite parties, the top Shiite clerical body in the country, and a powerful movement led by nationalist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr that recently mobilised hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in protest against the pact, are all calling for its defeat. At an Iraqi cabinet meeting Tuesday, ministers raised objections to the final draft, and a government spokesman said that the agreement would not submit it to the parliament in its current form. But Secretary of Defence Robert Gates told three news agencies Tuesday that the door was "pretty far closed" on further negotiations. In the absence of an agreement approved by the Iraqi parliament, U.S. troops in Iraq will probably be confined to their bases once the United Nations mandate expires Dec. 31. The clearest sign of the dramatically reduced U.S. negotiating power in the final draft is the willingness of the United States to give up extraterritorial jurisdiction over U.S. contractors and their employees and over U.S. troops in the case of "major and intentional crimes" that occur outside bases and while off duty. The United States has never allowed a foreign country to have jurisdiction over its troops in any previous status of forces agreement.
The question of the US's presence is critical in many respects but most notably in that Bremer's infamous, corporatist 100 Orders will, in principle, be rescindable, when / if the US gets the hell out.
All of the Orders are despicable, across the board, but none more so than N° 81, which outlaws the use of native wheat seed, in favor of genetically modified varieties [you'll never guess who was breathing down Bremer's neck].
More on Order 81 here. As for the 99 others, see here and here.
A handful of seasons of gm wheat cultivation would suffice to irreperably pollute an 8000 year patrimony of wheat species.
WASHINGTON, USA: China was officially inducted as a member of the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) on Monday and committed US$350 million for public and private sector projects in Latin America and the Caribbean. Speaking at a video conference to journalists around the world, IDB's President, Alberto Luis Moreno, said that the money would be divided into four loan schemes. "China is now this region's second biggest trading partner after the United States," Moreno said, adding that the loan would help to "bolster some of our programmes in the public and private sectors at a time when the world economy is under duress". Of that money, $125 million will go to the IDB'S funds for special operations to provide soft loans to Bolivia, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua; $75 million will go to multiple IDB grant funds to strengthen the institutional capacity of member states including municipal governments and private sector institutions; $75 million will be allocated to the Inter American Investment Corporation which lends to small and mid-sized business; and $75 million will be placed in the bank's multilateral investment fund.
Speaking at a video conference to journalists around the world, IDB's President, Alberto Luis Moreno, said that the money would be divided into four loan schemes.
"China is now this region's second biggest trading partner after the United States," Moreno said, adding that the loan would help to "bolster some of our programmes in the public and private sectors at a time when the world economy is under duress".
Of that money, $125 million will go to the IDB'S funds for special operations to provide soft loans to Bolivia, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua; $75 million will go to multiple IDB grant funds to strengthen the institutional capacity of member states including municipal governments and private sector institutions; $75 million will be allocated to the Inter American Investment Corporation which lends to small and mid-sized business; and $75 million will be placed in the bank's multilateral investment fund.
And then what? The societies of the world will be faced with the task of rebuilding systems of fruitful activity, i.e., real economies based on productive behavior rather than the smoke-and-mirrors of Frankenstein-finance con games. In fact, excuse me while I switch metaphors again, because the Frankenstein story -- the New Prometheus -- is yet another apt narrative to inform us what we have done. We have "played" with financial fire and brought to life a monster now bent on killing us. One question that this metaphor-narrative raises is: when will the angry peasant mob storm the castle with their flaming brands and cries for blood from the makers of this monster? Rather soon, I think. Perhaps, in some countries (maybe the USA, if we're lucky), this will take the more orderly form of systematic prosecutions, bringing to justice persons who perpetrated swindles involving the alphabet soup of investment "products" that have gone bad in so many accounts (and ruined so many individuals, institutions, and governments). I think it has already begun with the inquisitors summoning the shifty Dick Fuld of Lehman Brothers -- but there are hundreds of other characters like him out there, who scored untold millions of dollars in activities that were simply grand swindles. I wouldn't be surprised if, eventually, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson found himself in the dock to answer how come, when he ran Goldman Sachs, there was a special unit in the company dedicated to short-selling the very mortgage-backed securities that another unit in the company was so busy pawning off to every pension fund on God's green earth.
