Threat to Democracy in Latin America

On 10 September, the president of Bolivia declared the US ambassador to
Bolivia persona non grata. On 11 September (the 35th anniversary of the
military overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile) the president of
Venezuela asked the US ambassador to Venezuela to leave the country.

President Hugo Chavez believed he was facing the possibility of an
imminent coup d'etat in which he accused the United States administration
of being involved. President Evo Morales believed that his government was
facing serious destabilisation which was also being fomented by the United
States. A third country, Paraguay, announced ten days previously that they
had detected a conspiracy involving military officers and opposition
politicians

Latin America now faces its most serious crisis since the re-introduction
of democracy at the end of the 20th century.

The plot against democracy in Venezuela centred on a conspiracy, revealed
in telephone conversations between senior military officers broadcast on
national television, to assassinate the democratically elected head of
state, President Chavez.

In Bolivia, the separatist prefects of the five eastern and southern
departments, (whose ringleader Ruben Costas, the prefect of Santa Cruz
department, recently met with the US Ambassador), have begun a campaign of
violence and economic sabotage designed to destabilise the democratic
regime.

These events demonstrate unequivocally who defends democracy and who
threatens it in Latin America today.

We are appalled by the failure of much of the international media to
provide accurate and proportionate coverage of these events.

We call upon democrats throughout the world to rally to defend democracy,
social progress and national independence in Latin America and to condemn
these conspiracies against democracy and human rights.

We call upon the European Union and European governments to adopt a policy
independent of the Bush administration in the US and unequivocally condemn
all attempts to overthrow democratically elected governments in Latin
America.

Signatories:

Harold Pinter
John Pilger
Bruce Kent
Victoria Brittain
Tony Benn
Ken Loach
Gordon Hutchison, Sect. Venezuela Information Centre
Jean Lambert MEP
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Bill Etherington MP
Ian Gibson MP
Harry Cohen MP
Bob Abberley, Assist Gen. Sect. Unison
Gail Cartmail, Unite the Union, Assist. Gen. Sect
Les Bayliss, Unite the Union Assist Gen. Sect.
Bob Crow, Gen. Sect. RMT
Kelvin Hopkins MP
Bill Wilson MSP
Cllr. Salma Yakoob
Prof. Jonathan Rosenhead
Billy Hayes, Gen. Sect. CWU
Keith Norman, Gen Sect. ASLEF
Gerry Morrissey, Gen Sect. BECTU
Bill Greenshields, President, NUT
Andy Bain, President TSSA
Doug Nicholls, Nat.Officer Unite
Geoff Shears
Michael Dereham
Kaveh Mussavi
Diana Raby
Derek Wall
Steve Cottingham
Joni McDougall, Internat Officer GMB

Oil up to $120 today

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7630513.stm

I am surprised by how volatile the oil price is and you can't just say peak oil 'there you go'

I am assuming that producing companies will invest in oil pushing up supply (yes I know at some point this may not work...but there is a lot of very dirty in the world still ready to come out and compleatly fuck up the atmosphere).....and economic recession will depress demand for the black stuff.

however the US bailout (I don't think this will work to stop financial markets sliding) is being seen as leading to higher demand in the global economy and therefore more demand for the black stuff.

OPEC is cutting back supply (Ben you were right about this!) and the hurricanes do seem to have hit production in Texas and in gulf of Mexico.

What away to run a planet...lets go oil free....what will oil prices do tomorrow?

Canada's Election and the Climate Crisis: Five Parties, No Solutions

SEPTEMBER 21, 2008
Web Edition: www.socialistvoice.ca


Canada's Election and the Climate Crisis: Five Parties, No Solutions

By Ian Angus

For the environment, there's good news and bad news in Canada's current federal election campaign. Good news: for the first time ever, climate change is a central issue in the political debates. Bad news: despite much sound and fury, none of the major political parties is proposing effective measures for dealing with the climate change crisis. The differences between them amount to "Don't do anything" versus "Don't do much."

When Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party took office in January 2006, they promptly cancelled existing environmental programs and planned to ignore the environment from then on. Only a massive public opinion shift led them to awkwardly don green garb in 2007 and announce a new "Turning the Corner Plan" on greenhouse gases.

There wasn't much to the plan — a detailed review by the respected Tyndall Institute concluded that greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decade would be the same, and might be lower, if the Conservative plan didn't exist at all. The Tories' close alliance with the Bush administration and its drive to block any international agreement on emissions targets shows just how misleading their green rhetoric was.

Now, with a recession looming, the Conservatives are fighting this election as the "party of free enterprise, free markets and free trade" — which means returning to their previous anti-environmental positions. Harper demagogically promises to defend economic growth, while charging that the Liberals "jeopardize our economic growth with new taxes and threaten to impose new trade barriers in their Green Shift Plan."

Harper signalled his new direction most clearly by promising a 50% reduction in federal taxes on diesel and aviation fuel. That's a $600 million fossil fuel subsidy to industries that generate 10% of Canada's greenhouse gases. If the Conservatives are re-elected, no one should be surprised if they use "economic growth" to justify backtracking even on the feeble environmental measures they introduced in the past 18 months.

The opposition

Polls show that the environment and climate change still rank very high as voter concerns, so the Tory policy shift offers an opportunity for the opposition parties to mobilize that concern in support of a strong pro-environment program. Unfortunately, none of them proposes effective measures for dealing with the crisis. The "solutions" they offer amount to little more than crossing their fingers and hoping that the problem will go away.

All four mainstream opposition parties — Liberals, New Democrats, Bloc Québécois and Greens — have embraced the currently trendy economic theory that the way to fight global warming is to "put a price on carbon." Corporations and consumers emit greenhouse gases, the theory says, because doing so doesn't cost them anything. If government imposes a cost, companies and individuals will seek alternatives — they will try to reduce or eliminate their emissions in order to reduce their costs.

The Liberal Party is the prime defender of this approach. The cornerstone of its election program is the "Green Shift Plan," which they say will "shift Canada's tax system away from income and towards pollution." They promise to phase in a $40 per tonne tax on greenhouse gas emissions over four years, and to reduce corporate and personal income taxes by an equivalent amount. As a result, businesses will be "encouraged to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit into the atmosphere," while consumers will be motivated to insulate their homes and find other ways to make less use of fossil fuels.

The Liberals say they will begin the tax shift immediately. They also promise an emissions trading scheme for corporations, including caps on emissions — but say it "will take several years to build."

The New Democratic Party argues, correctly, that the main effect of the Liberal tax plan will be higher prices for working people. Instead, the NDP wants to launch a cap-and-trade program quickly. They have provided few details about their program, but they have made positive statements about the Western Climate Initiative, under which several provinces and U.S. states propose to regulate emissions while allowing corporations to continue polluting by purchasing emissions credits from the government, other corporations or Third World countries.

The NDP website says its plan is "in line with" a similar scheme implemented in Europe. It is silent on the fact that the European system has produced windfall profits for energy companies while having no effect at all on emissions.

The Green Party and Bloc Québécois propose variants on the two main themes. The Greens want a cap-and-trade program for large corporations, combined with a shift from income taxes to carbon taxes for consumers. The Bloc favours cap-and-trade, organized on a province-by-province basis.

Will market solutions work?

There is much more than this to each party's program, and each party promises a different set of reforms and subsidies. But underneath those variations in style and detail, the opposition parties are united in seeking to use capitalist methods to solve a problem that is inherent in capitalism. "Putting a price on carbon" — directly through taxes or indirectly through a cap-and-trade scheme — means depending on the magic of the market to reduce emissions.

At best, that's wishful thinking.

Consumers can only make significant emissions cuts if affordable low-emission alternatives are actually available, which they are not. In practice, the main effect of pricing carbon (directly through a tax or indirectly through emissions trading and regulations) will be to increase the prices of essential products for which there are no alternatives — especially food, transportation and housing. Workers and farmers, already hit by declining real incomes, will have to tighten their belts until those magical new products arrive, if they ever do.

As for corporate polluters, it's hard to believe that anyone who follows the business news can still claim that markets and "price signals" are an efficient way to get good results. Yet such claims are still made: Hot Air, a recent book co-written by two leading Canadian economists who favour putting a price on carbon, offers a typical justification:

"Using market-based policies is the best way of accomplishing this objective, because taxes and emissions trading schemes send the same financial signals to all firms and individuals, encouraging them to seek the lowest-cost actions that lead in turn to lower overall costs for society."

Two points need to be stressed.

First, to these economists, "lower overall costs for society" doesn't mean fewer droughts, floods and giant storms, less damage to crops, or fewer climate refugees and climate-related catastrophes. It only means lower spending by capitalists. For them, the cheapest solution is the "most efficient," even if it increases human misery.

Second, and more important, the economists' unstated assumption is that the "lowest-cost actions" will reduce emissions. But real-world experience shows that long before they change their business methods, corporations will opt for a very different set of "lowest-cost actions," including:

*

Lobbying and economic blackmail. Whoever wins the election will be subject to intense pressure from the major emitters, demanding special treatment, arguing for delays and exemptions, and threatening layoffs and shutdowns if their interests aren't given priority. Past experience says they'll succeed in watering down legislation, if they don't block it completely.
*

Cheating and lying. A recent study found that the methods used by Canadian and U.S. oil refineries to calculate greenhouse gas emissions dramatically understate what's really happening. Actual measurement at an Alberta refinery found that it released 19 times more benzene, 15 times more hydrocarbons, and nine times more methane, than it reported to Environment Canada. The oil industry's response? Rather than changing its emissions measurement procedures, it demanded that the government suppress the tables showing the dramatic difference between reported and actual emissions.

The plans proposed by Canadian political parties all rely on self-reporting by the polluters, for whom lying is often the lowest-cost option. Even if they are caught, investigations, trials and appeals can win them years of delays.
*

Cutting wages. The tried and tested corporate method of dealing with higher costs is to shift the burden onto workers, directly through pay cuts and longer hours, or indirectly by outsourcing work to countries where wages are lower.
*

Gaming the system. Every corporation employs teams of lawyers and accountants to figure out how to get around regulations and avoid paying taxes. These scam artists are undoubtedly already working on legal ways to minimize the impact of any emissions policy — without actually reducing emissions, of course.
*

Passing the costs on to consumers. If the increased costs imposed by carbon taxes or trading can't be evaded, corporations will increase prices. The only barrier to such increases is competition, and the biggest polluters have very few competitors.
*

Shifting investments elsewhere. Capitalists don't just need profits — they need a rate of profit that matches or exceeds the rate they can make elsewhere. If the carbon rules cut into their profits, they will move their money elsewhere, to other industries or other countries. If that happens, just watch how fast the politicians back down!

In short, big industry will do everything in its power to block or minimize any restrictions on business-as-usual — and they will do their utmost to avoid or delay complying with laws that do get passed. Pro-capitalist economic models never take those factors into account.

But that isn't the biggest problem with the programs of the opposition parties.

Even if their programs are implemented exactly as proposed, and even if there is 100% compliance, and even if the regulations and "price signals" produce the promised results, emissions will not come down fast enough to head off dangerous climate changes.

The most aggressive "put a price on carbon" plan proposed in the influential book Hot Air will, the authors say, reduce emissions to 50% below the 2010 level, by 2050. That's far less than what's needed — but none of these programs is nearly that aggressive.

Declare a climate emergency!

The starting point for any serious effort to combat climate change must be recognition that this is an emergency. The world's leading climate scientist, James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute, says that unless decisive action is taken quickly, "it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity's control."

A growing number of climate scientists believe that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has already passed the safe level. Modest targets such as reducing emissions to 25%-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 are not just inadequate — they are, Hansen says, "a recipe for global disaster."

A government that really wanted to deal with climate change would declare a Climate Emergency. It would learn from the experience of World War II, when Ottawa forced through a radical transformation of the entire economy in a few months, with no lost jobs or pay cuts.

Internationally, it would campaign for a tough global climate treaty with teeth, focusing on cutting rich industrial nations' emissions and transferring clean technology to the Global South.

Regardless of what happens in international negotiations, Canada must unilaterally adopt a goal of a 60% overall emissions reduction by 2020, and a 90% reduction by 2030. Those reductions can be achieved through government measures such as these:

*

Set hard, rapidly declining ceilings on emissions produced by the largest companies. Expropriate any company that doesn't comply.
*

Put all power industries under public ownership and democratic control. Begin phasing out coal-fired plants immediately and stop building new ones. Invest heavily in non-fossil fuel sources such as solar, wind, tidal and geothermal.
*

Stop all new development in the Tar Sands and rapidly phase out existing operations, including restoring of the land as closely as possible to its previous condition.
*

Redirect all military spending and the federal budget surplus into public energy-saving projects such as expanding mass transit and retrofitting homes and office buildings. Former tar sands workers and redeployed soldiers can play key roles in this effort.
*

Retool auto plants to focus on building mass transit, wind turbines and other green technologies.
*

Expand and upgrade transit systems so that all urban residents can use them easily. Make all public transit free.

The climate crisis will not respond to modest goals and incremental tinkering — what's needed are emergency measures to drive current greenhouse gas emissions towards zero as rapidly as possible. Unfortunately, in this election, modest goals and incremental tinkering are the best that Canadian politicians are offering. There is no sign that any party recognizes how serious the problem actually is, let alone that emergency action is needed.

Ian Angus is Editor of Climate and Capitalism and an Associate Editor of Socialist Voice.

* * * * * * *

Greens benefit from imploding Labour (in Australia)

Natalie Bennett argues that 'hard work is needed in Brighton Pavilion' on the basis of today's poll.

For details of how to get involved in electing Caroline Lucas, click here.

Some good news from Green Left Weekly:

AUSTRALIA
Greens gain from ‘imploding’ ALP

20 September 2008


Max Phillips, a newly elected Greens councillor in Marrickville and the Greens’ campaign coordinator for the September 13 NSW local government elections, puts the swing to the Greens down to the state Labor government’s implosion.

Developer donations to Labor, and the ALP’s pro-developer laws, were crucial to the Greens winning broad support, Phillips told Green Left Weekly. The widespread opposition to the state government’s moves to privatise electricity also helped the Greens, he said.

In Marrickville and Leichhardt, traditionally ALP strongholds, the Greens out-polled Labor. In Marrickville, the Greens received 40% of the vote compared to Labor’s 29%. In Leichhardt, the Greens received 46% compared to Labor’s 25%.

Phillips said the Greens had also firmed up support outside their inner-city stronghold. There will be more Greens councillors in North Sydney, Lane Cove, Willoughby and Hornsby councils, and in the Blue Mountains, and Manly and Warringah on the northern beaches.

The Greens also increased their regional representation in Wagga Wagga, Armidale, Coffs Harbour, Orange, Yass and Byron Shire where popularly elected Greens mayor Jan Barham received more than 50% of the vote.

The Greens are now demanding that the NSW government review six major residential development decisions given the go-ahead by the former NSW planning minister Frank Sartor. The new minister, Kristina Keneally, has so far refused the Greens’ demand for an independent review of Sartor’s decisions that were favourable to ALP donors. According to the Greens, nearly $900,000 was donated by these developers to the NSW ALP.

The Greens are also calling on the state government to repeal the pro-developer planning laws and ban corporate donations to political parties.

Convention of the Left

I enjoyed visiting yesterday, although weary from going to Manchester and back in a day.

There is clearly huge electoral space on the left, with the Lib Dems moving right ward, there is no clearly articulated alternative to the madness of the market. Creating an electoral alternative is vital but difficult, clearly the Green Party when compared to the rest of the left in England is doing something right, we have elected councillors, MEPS and GLA members...the Ken-green coalition nearly beat Boris, everywhere else Labour unsurprisingly saw a huge drop in support.

Nonetheless the Green Party is not quite poised for Westminister government, although with some hard work we could pick up three MPs at the next General Election.

The trade unions continue to support New Labour, the bad experiences of the Socialist Alliance, Respect, the Socialist Labour Party mean that creating a left of Labour party does not look easy.

However I think on the 90% we do agree, we can at least be working locally...there have been unity projects...think for example of the Chesterfield Socialist Conference in the 1980s.

The convention was lively, certainly Tony Benn, John McDonnell and Lindsey German had interesting things to say when I listened to them, at least some links are being made.

It's very rare for me to praise a speaker from the SWP like Lindsey but I thought what she had to say was apologetic, positive and modest....I am hoping the far left can start being more plural and less dogmatic, we shall see...the SWP have a bad reputation for trying to take over everyone's campaigns....Martin Empson who I know and is also from the SWP was also excellent, talking about how in Manchester Greens/SWP/campaigners in general work together and noting how although the media was obssessed with bankers losing their jobs, no press for 850 (!) council workers facing sack in Oldham...generally the discussion was good.

It was very nice to chat to Tony Benn and John McDonnell....the Labour Party is firmly on the neo-liberal right but there are still some lovely people in it!

I was warmly greeted by the guy who edits Workers Power and by Mark Fischer of the CPGB, both organisations are bit outside my political orbit, although I did debate with John Cornford of the CPGB/Weekly Worker last summer...particularly good to bump into Andy and Chris from Green Left and lots of Green Party members and Diana Raby whose book 'Democracy and Revolution' I am encouraging people to take a look at.

Here is a report from the Morning Star...and I am back on wednesday night in Manchester, hoping to get to Roberto Perez's meeting in Friends House where the Convention is being held...before I debate with George Galloway, Lindsey, etc.




Uniting to find a new way forward
(Sunday 21 September 2008)
by LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR in Manchester

LOUISE NOUSRATPOUR hears the Left's plot to rally together an alternative to Labour.

The aim of the Convention of the Left is to unite against a resurgent Tory Party and a growing BNP, filling the vacuum left by new Labour's abandoning of the working class.

With delegates from across the left debating issues of peace and socialism long abandoned by new Labour, the event is intended to offer a stark contrast to the official Labour conference taking place just down the road in Manchester.

That point was driven home by a banner on display after Saturday's 5,000-strong anti-war demonstration.

It bore two clear messages - one reading "war," with a blue arrow directing people to the Labour conference in the GMEX Centre, and the other saying "peace," with an arrow pointing to the convention hall in Friends Meeting House, where convention delegates joined a lively debate on practical policies to counter new Labour's agenda of war and neoliberalism.

Opening the session, event organiser John Nicholson said that the four-day convention was about "developing practical policies through discussions and contributions from all, not just a panel of the usual suspects."

He stressed that the aim was not to form yet another left party but to unite the movement around the big issues agreed by all.

As the global economy took a nosedive last week, the bourgeois media was nervously asking whether "the end of capitalism" was near.

But a Respect activist pointed out: "Capitalism will not collapse on its own accord because the state will always step in to rescue the system at the expense of the working class.

"We have to bring it down and this convention can be an important step towards that direction."

Indeed, only a few days ago, the US government effectively nationalised AIG for $85 billion in public money and Britain has pumped billions into the finance sector to bail out City gamblers.

While governments use taxpayers' cash to fund bankers' greed, the fat cats are busy sacking workers, cutting wages and slashing pensions lest the self-made crisis eat into their profits.

John McDonnell MP warned: "In my constituency in west London, unemployment is already rising, wages are being depressed, homelessness is at a crisis point and more and more refugees are being deported.

"Enough is enough. We have a historic opportunity to recreate the left and put progressive policies into practice."

Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German also said that, rather than debate "whether to create a new workers' party," the convention should focus on "practical solutions to help the working class defend itself against the economic crisis and imperialist wars."

Andy Smith of Permanent Revolution said that the convention must analyse the reasons why Respect collapsed "or we run the danger of repeating those mistakes."

One activist, only introduced as Tariq, said: "I've just come back from Pakistan, where bombs are going off all the time.

"It is the duty of the left in this country and internationally to unite, because we cannot have peace here when bombs are dropped on sleeping children elsewhere."

Green Party representative Derek Wall summed up the meeting with a quote from an anarchist song: "Even though we disagree, we have a common enemy and that is capitalism."

Uganda human rights LGBT appeal

had this from Peter....he works very very hard on these campaigns.

anti-asylum sentiment kills....anti-LGBT kills...please take action.

Dear Friends,

URGENT ACTION - Uganda

Please support this appeal on behalf of our arrested and harassed LGBT
brothers and sisters in Uganda.

This appeal is being coordinated by the International Gay and Lesbian
Human Rights Commission.

Below is the latest information on the homophobic witch-hunt in
Uganda, and a sample letter you can send to the Ugandan President and
others (their email addresses are below).

International solidarity works, as we know from the global campaign
against apartheid in South Africa.

Thanks for your support for our Ugandan LGBT friends.

Peter Tatchell, OutRage!, London


Uganda: Action Alert-Demand An End To Official Harassment of LGBT Activists

September 19, 2008

INTERNATIONAL GAY AND LESBIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION

Uganda: Action Alert-Demand An End To Official Harassment of LGBT Activists

SUMMARY

In what appears to be an all-out effort to silence the sexual rights
movement in Uganda, police have again arrested high profile members of
the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, this time
two male-to-female transgender gay men - Georgina (aka) Oundo George
and Brenda (aka Kiiza). According to Sexual Minorities of Uganda
(SMUG), two men who identified themselves as police officers, but were
not in the customary Ugandan Police uniform arrested both men at the
home of Georgina on Wednesday September 10, 2008.

Georgina and Brenda were held at Nabweru Police Post for a full week
without access to lawyers or to bail. They were never brought before a
judge, even though Article 3.9 of the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR) states that, "anyone arrested or detained
on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge."
Article 23 of the Ugandan Constitution requires that an arrested
person must appear before a judge within 48 hours of arrest.

Brenda and Georgina report being beaten, kicked and hit with batons
around the legs and ankles during their detention as interrogators
demanded that they provide information about the names and addresses
of other LGBT activists. Brenda and Georgina were finally released on
September 17, 2008, but have been required to report regularly to the
police station. They have been accused of "spreading homosexuality,"
though no such crime exists under Ugandan law. "Carnal knowledge
against the order of nature" is punishable by up to life imprisonment
in Uganda.

Among the rights violated in this most recent incident are:

The right to liberty and security of person; freedom from arbitrary
arrest or detention
The right to freedom from torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
The right to freedom of expression

ACTION

IGLHRC requests that its members send appeals to Ugandan authorities
as quickly as possible:

Demanding an end to the harassment of Oundo George and Kiiza through
the requirement that they report to the police on a regular basis.
Calling on the Ugandan government to immediately end illegal arrests
and detention of LGBT individuals and human rights defenders.
Asking for a repeal of Section 145 of the Penal Code Act of 1950,
which ostensibly criminalizes homosexual acts.

Please feel free to cut and paste from our letter (below) and send
faxes and e-mails to the following officials:

President
Yoweri Museveni
Parliament Building
PO Box 7168
Kampala, Uganda
Fax: + 256 414 346 102
Email: info@gouexecutive.net
Salutation: Your Excellency

Inspector General of Police
Major Kale Kayihura
Police Headquarters
PO Box 7055
Kampala, Uganda
Fax: + 256 414 255 630
Salutation: Dear Major

Minister of Justice
Hon. Makubuya Kiddu
Parliament Building
PO Box 7183
Kampala,
Uganda
Fax: + 256 414 234 453
Email: info@justice.go.ug
Salutation: Dear Minister

COPIES TO:

Chairperson of the Uganda Human Rights Commission
Margret Sekagya
P.O .Box 4929, Kampala,
Uganda
Fax: +256 414 255 261
E-mail: uhrc@uhrc.ug
Salutation: Dear Chairperson
COPIES TO: diplomatic representatives of Uganda accredited to your country.

PLEASE SEND COPIES OF ALL APPEALS TO IGLHRC SO THAT WE CAN TRACK THE RESPONSE:
E-mail: aro.africa@iglhrc.org
Fax: +27.21.462.3024, fax

SAMPLE LETTER

Your Excellency President Museveni,

I am writing to you to express my concern about the unwarranted arrest
and arbitrary detention of two lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
(LGBT) human rights defenders in Uganda on September 10, 2008. George
Oundo and Kizza Brenda were held in detention for eight days without
going before a judge. Article 23 of the Constitution of Uganda makes
it unconstitutional to hold a suspect for over 48 hours. Furthermore,
it is my understanding that these two individuals were arrested and
detained solely as a result of their sexual orientation and gender
identity

The continuous violation of the basic human rights of lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender people perpetuated by the Ugandan government
is of great concern. I understand that Uganda is party to various
regional and international human rights covenants such as the African
Charter on Human and People's Rights and the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights, both of which condemn arrests based on
arbitrary categories such as race, ethnicity, political belief and
sexual orientation, among others.

I would ask that your government ceases and desists from harassing and
arresting LGBT people simply because of their sexual orientation and
gender identity and end the harassment and intimidation of LGBT human
rights defenders. I would also urge you to consider the repeal of
Section 145 of the Penal Code Act of 1950, which criminalizes
homosexual acts. Such laws have been declared a violation of the
rights to privacy and equality by the United Nations and have caused
great pain to many of your citizens.

Sincerely,

Paula Ettelbrick

Executive Director
International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission

Cc: Major Kale Kayihura, Hon. Makubuya Kiddu, Margret Sekagya

BACKGROUND

In the past five years, there have been nearly a dozen arrests of LGBT
people on charges related to homosexuality in Uganda. Authorities have
harassed LGBT human rights defenders in their homes and in public and
fined a private radio station that broadcast a program on HIV
prevention among men who have sex with men. In July 2005, Uganda's
Parliament passed an amendment to the constitution making Uganda only
the second country in the world to use its supreme law to outlaw
marriage between people of the same sex. In 2007, a coalition of
religious leaders marched through the streets of Kampala demanding the
arrests of LGBT people with one cleric even calling for the "starving
to death" of homosexuals. Buttressed by the official homophobia of the
state, the Ugandan media has published lists of gay men and lesbians,
leading to physical violence, loss of employment and the curtailing of
educational opportunities for those LGBT people who were named.

On June 4, 2008, Usaam Mukwaaya, Pepe Julian Onziema and Valentine
Kalende, were arrested and charged with criminal trespass while
peacefully attending the HIV/AIDS Implementers Meeting in Kampala. The
arrest of the activists was condemned by local and international
organizations, including UNAIDS, as well as by the U.S. government.
Usaam Mukwaaya was rearrested on July 25, 2008 on his way from Friday
prayers and was detained and tortured for several days.

IGLHRC is deeply concerned that this increasingly clear pattern of
abuse - arrest, mistreatment in detention, and then release - is a
systematic attempt to silence the Ugandan LGBT, feminist and human
rights communities through constant harassment. There have also been
reliable reports that authorities have a list of LGBT leaders
including addresses, photographs and other personal information. Some
activists have fled into neighboring countries to escape arrest.

======================================

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) is
a leading human rights organization solely devoted to improving the
rights of people around the world who are targeted for imprisonment,
abuse or death because of their sexuality, gender identity or HIV/AIDS
status. IGLHRC addresses human rights violations by partnering with
and supporting activists in countries around the world, monitoring and
documenting human rights abuses, engaging offending governments, and
educating international human rights officials. A non-profit,
non-governmental organization, IGLHRC is based in New York, with
offices in Cape Town and Buenos Aires. Visit http://www.iglhrc.org for
more information

email: executive_director@iglhrc.org
phone: 212-268-8040
web: http://www.iglhrc.org

The Mission of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
Commission is to secure the full enjoyment of human rights of all
people and communities subject to discrimination or abuse on the basis
of sexual orientation or expression, gender identity or expression
and/or HIV status.

--
Peter Tatchell is the Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford East
www.greenoxford.com/peter and www.petertatchell.net

PETER TATCHELL HUMAN RIGHTS FUND

Donations are requested to help Peter Tatchell's campaigns promoting
human rights, democracy and global justice. Peter is unpaid and
receives no grants. He depends on donations from friends and
supporters.

Please make cheques payable to: "Peter Tatchell Human Rights Fund".

Send to: PTHRF, PO Box 35253, London E1 4YF

To download a donation form or a standing order mandate, go to
Donations at: www.tatchellrightsfund.org

For information about Peter Tatchell's campaigns: www.petertatchell.net

Capitalism in crisis: more banks on the way out

This was all obvious in February, may be before....finance capitalism is about ever more esoteric forms of gambling...the UK under Gordon Brown has been about the primacy of banking....now the debts are being called in.

These were my thoughts in the spring still current today...


The global economy is on the edge of a cliff. Recession is on its way, which could mean a return to millions of unemployed, widespread house repossessions and growing poverty. The reasons for this crisis are complex in some ways, simple in others but the jargon of the economists mystifies.

I will try and cut through misleading appearances and get to the essence of the matter.

1% of American families were involved in some stage of home repossession in 2007. That's 2,203,295 individual cases.

9.5 million Britons currently have debt problems.

As we know, a French trader lost $3.6 bn a couple of weeks ago, enough to have paid off the credit card bills over here.

Northern Rock collapsed, in the first run on a bank in decades.

The British government has spent £40bn bailing out Northern Rock and has acquired liabilities of £100bn. This has pushed government debt beyond his golden rule sum of 40% of GDP limit set by Gordon Brown.

It started with the sub prime market, and free market globalisation is pushing it in our direction. Sub prime is jargon, and economics is all about jargon which hides simple truths.

Sub prime mortgages are simply high interest rate mortgages for the poorest American homeowners - those who risk not being able to pay.

Loan shark finance for the post-modern age.

Northern Rock went under partly because of securitisation - more jargon - it means debt that has been split up into bits and sold on. In this case sub prime debt.

Increasingly, everything is financialised. Private pensions, endowment mortgages, insurance policies - you name it - is based on shares, bonds, bills, options, derivatives and securitisation.

Who's heard of credit-default swaps? You will soon.

One commentator noted, "Credit-default swaps are a kind of insurance against default, arranged between two parties. One party, the seller, agrees to pay the face value of the policy in case of a default by a specific company. The buyer pays a premium, a fee, to the seller for that protection.

"This has grown to be a huge market: the total value of all CDS contracts is about $450 trillion. Some studies have put the real credit risk at just 6% of the total, or about $27 trillion. That puts the CDS market at somewhere between two and six times the size of the U.S. economy."

To survive economically, all of us are, although most of the time unaware, caught up in an increasingly mysterious and esoteric financial web. With privatisation and an increasingly economically insecure society, financialisation is likely to accelerate. If you put money into Northern Rock as a saver did you expect it to be tied up with mortgages in Florida?

George Soros, the billionaire financier, a man often more critical of capitalism than myself, believes that there is a 50/50 chance of the British economy moving into recession. Soros is also saying that the present crisis is the worst since the 1930's.

To keep the increasingly risky and unreal economy afloat we have to keep on consuming. If we spend less then unemployment rises, homeowners who lose their jobs can no longer keep up with mortgage payments, houses are repossed, credit card debt cannot be paid, and the vicious spiral of negative economic growth leads to poverty and mass unemployment. The system eventually rebounds but with a huge cost in insecurity and human misery.

To keep the system afloat we have to exploit each other and our environment.

A healthy modern capitalist economy is like a system of hard drug addiction. We have to work harder and consume more, to avoid the pain of economic cold turkey. The only solution, it seems, is to increase the dose. But increasing doses only brings relief in the short term. Long term it increases tolerance, which can only be met with larger doses.

The economic approach of Gordon Brown is to simply up the dose with more privatisation, more insecurity, more consumption and more free market globalisation. New Labour's approach- inherited from the Tories - is to make the interests of the City pre-eminent.

It isn't just human beings who feel the pain, its the rest of nature, as well.

Which is where rainforests come in.

More consumption, more free trade and fewer barriers to corporations means the forests come tumbling down - cut for palm oil for biofuels and processed food.

Every time you eat margarine you risk killing a monkey, and all in the name of oil exploration and mines for new minerals and metals.

Oil addiction means that our leaders are going to be tempted to the likes will Iraq and, increasingly, Iran, causing more chaos.

But hey, the arms industry likes to have their products tested!

We have an economy which is irrational and unecological, which increasingly no one understands and is, increasingly, no fun.

The psychologist Oliver James shows that with higher GNP, mental illness rises, and we catch a disease called Affluenza.

We have to create an economy that gives access to things we all need, from warm homes to healthy food to secure pensions, and creative good work in secure posts without the ever increasing overuse of resources.

At this conference, we are going to debate recession and policies to deal with it. Yes, you can pump up the economy with spending on good things like renewables, but we also have to make our economy more stable.

We need to reduce the dose, improve security and put people and nature in charge of society. At the moment we act as if were part of some insane religion that makes us sacrifice our children for a golden idol covered in dollar signs.

We need to tackle housing, and stop the attack on social housing. We ceased building council houses in the 1980's, and that has created speculation in the housing market and a new sub prime rental sector where landlords prey on homelessness. The British economy is fueled by housing insecurity - homes are no longer primarily considered places to live in, but now thought as financial instruments.

From cutting super-bonuses that inflate house prices in London, to dealing with empty homes - 870,000 last time I looked - to building low impact homes that don't sacrifice the environment, we need to creating greater council housing capacity. We can take the pressure out of the housing market,give people security and make the economy more stable.

Not easy but essential.

And we have the policies.

We need proper pensions and welfare so people feel secure.

Our revolutionary basic income scheme would help massively. Well where would the money come from?

Trident is £70bn.

The billions spent on nuclear power.

The billions spent on war in Iraq.

Then there is all the waste, from ministerial limos to lack of insulation.

£40bn on Northern Rock was money down the toilet but there was no question the government simply paid it. New priorities are necessary.

We need an economy that is based on what is good and useful, and not on simply piling up piles of money.

Why not make goods to last longer? Why not cut advertising? Why not create sustainable energy? Why not have local economies? Less is more.

We need work-sharing and democratic control of the economy. Democracy used to be dismissed as mob rule and was condemned by the 18th century equivalents of the Daily Mail and Express as a recipe for chaos.

We need a democratic economy.

Companies can instead of issuing shares and having by law to maximise profit, whatever the consequences, can be run by mutuals with the cash going to workers. The best example of this is the staff policies of the John Lewis Group, who own Waitrose.

What about ZOPA - a peer to peer bank, where borrowers and lenders pick their own interest rates? How far away is that from sub prime.

In Venezuela I met workers who run their own factories and saw massive permaculture city farms. We need to put ordinary people in control of the economy, we need to think rationally about what to produce. The economics of free software and social sharing is sweeping the world.

In the 1970s the visionary trade unionist Mike Cooley, together with fellow workers from Lucas Aerospace, produced detailed plans to build road rail buses, kidney machines and renewable energy systems instead of weapons. We need such green plans for people-orientated production.

You know this. Its all in the Manifesto for a Sustainable Society.

The 1980s could have been about this kind of grassroots economics Instead we had Thatcher who, fueled by oil wealth, embarked on an economic experiment that has made Britain technically richer but socially poor, more unequal, less democratic and more insecure.

I am, as you know, an out-of-the-closet socialist, but if socialism means central-control then count me out. Its inefficient and undemocratic.

Whatever you call it, we can have an economy that meets human need and not the greed of a few. It's about being on the side of ordinary people, and not about making the economy more market-based that ultimately only benefits the super rich.

And I suppose, unless they go into space with Richard Branson in his biofuel tourist rockets, will even destroy their future.

It is about a different kind of property rights. Property rights are the long DNA of any social system. We need property rights that preserve ecology and local control.

So, there is much to do, but to achieve what we want we can't simply dream.

We need to win. As I constantly say, it's a battle of ideas - to show that radical green politics is asking the right questions and coming up with solutions.

We need to use direct action to slow and reverse the damage.

We need to elect greens.

It's about reclaiming space, ideas, direct action, and elections.

I am going to be working to elect our first Green MP Caroline Lucas in Brighton. This year I will be at the climate camp again. I am going to be opposing the Lisbon treaty which will impose a more neo-liberal Europe, and I am going to be fighting biofuels and climate change.

Time is very, very short. We need to be working with others, to take the wider view.

I have been talking to John McDonnell, the Labour MP. He's going to the climate camp and supports direct action, and that's good. I have been asking Trade Union leaders like Matt Wrack and people like the Venezuelan Ambassador, Samuel Moncada, to speak to us. And they tend to say yes.

We need dialogue and the big vision to save planet earth. We all need to get stuck in and build a bigger, stronger, more realistic but more radical Green Party.