Aid, not Occupation

As predictions for the death toll from the Haitian earthquakes rise over 200,000, ABC News have reported that planes carrying medical equipment and relief supplies are having to compete with soldiers for the valuable slots at Port-au-Prince airport which was taken over by the US military after the quake. Since the start of the great anti-slavery republican insurrection nearly 220 years ago, Haiti has been presented as a dangerous place incapable of running its own affairs and requiring foreign intervention. Yet the reality is its people were the first enslaved population to deliver themselves from slavery and also carried out what was only the third successful republican insurrection on the planet. The threat of this good example was rewarded with centuries of invasion, blackmail, the robbery of Haiti's natural resources and the impoverishment of its people. This articles summarizes that history of intervention and the resistance to it in order to put into context what is happening in Haiti after the quake

Podcast: "The Haitian Revolution"



Direct download in mp3 format (48.39mb)
Strong aftershock hits Haiti | Naomi Klien's document | has the world failed Haiti? (video) | US aid relative to other countries | The Incapacitation of Haiti | Against the grain main site

Map of Tara/Skryne Area

The Minister for the Environment, John Gormley, is currently conducting two separate public consultations, allegedly to protect Tara. There is the proposed Tara Skryne Landscape Conservation Area and the proposed Tara UNESCO World Heritage Site. But the Minister has not produced one single map showing the proposed areas, and has refused to answer Parliamentary Questions on the issue.

Related Links:
Hill of Tara - www.hilloftara.info
Follow TaraWatch on Twitter
Save Tara, from Causes.com

“The Minister must stop hiding the ball and define Tara if there is to be effective public consultation for these so-called protective measures. We have two expensive and elaborate public consultations taking place separately, for the same approximate area, but we don’t have one single map defining that area. The Minister’s measures appear to be a smoke screen, with illusory promises of protection, which will not have any legislative basis. The Minister could easily give Tara real statutory protection, by broadening the boundary of the national monument in the National Monuments Bill 2009 he just announced." - Vincent Salafia, TaraWatch

This is the second of a series of articles covering the financial and money markets from a critical perspective.

In 'Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction', Paul Bowman examined the derivatives market and promised that the succeeding article would cover the 'story of the historical development of successive regimes of global financial orders' and would explain the role of the Eurodollars market 'in undermining the Keynesian Bretton Woods system'.

However, in the interests of space and relevance, I will only tell the story of the historical development of the regime of global financial order under US hegemony. I will begin by examining how the centre of capital accumulation shifted from Europe to the US in the first half of the twentieth century, and how following World War II the global financial order became centred around the US through the Bretton Woods system.

I will then look at how the Bretton Woods System was undermined, concentrating as much on the role of workers’ militancy as on the role of the Eurodollars market. After considering the response to the crisis of Bretton Woods, I'll look at the Clinton boom bringing us up to the current situation of the US’s current heavy dependence on foreign borrowing.

Cultural Destruction

How the issue of a discussion at WAC 6 on Tara and the M3 arose and an update on the situation.

The issue of a debate on Tara and the M3 at the World Archaeological Congress, which takes place next week in Dublin, arose after Tara campaigners requested that I investigate whether such a discussion could be facilitated at one of the sessions dealing with ethics. I wrote to WAC asking for a session on campaigns against cultural destruction as a counterbalance to the programme as it was, which included several pro-developer, pro-private sector archaeology themes as well as the shocking presence at the congress of the US military.

Related Links: World Archaeological Congress Tara stories on indy

Not exactly…
But there might be more than you’d think.

On the 11th -13th April Seomra Spraoi host Ireland's first Social Centre Gathering. What better excuse to have as look back at radical spaces in Ireland over the last 30 years.

Details on Social Centre Gathering

Web Resources on Social Centres In Ireland: Direct Action Against Apathy — Housing Resource on Struggle