In solidarity with Muntadar al-Zeidi
Bush out of Baghdad … Canada out of Kandahar!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20 at 1pm
outside the US Consulate in Montreal
(1155 St-Alexandre, métro McGill)

-> Bring extra shoes and footwear to throw! Bring noisemakers!
-> We strongly encourage all journalists to join us in this action and to throw their own shoes.

After our action at the US Consulate, we will march west along Ste-Catherine Street to Bishop Street and the Canadian Armed Forces Recruiting Station, where our shoe action will continue.

–> MAP: http://tinyurl.com/62s43k

Along with tens of millions around the world, we celebrate the recent action of Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi who hurled two shoes at US President George Bush while shouting, “This is a farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans, and those who were killed in Iraq.”

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Prosecuting a charity such as the Holy Land Foundation was nothing more than a means for the Bush administration to acquire a notch on its “get a terrorist” club.

By Wajahat Ali, altmuslim, 15 December 2008

The Bush administration’s “war on terror” paraded a feather in its tattered cap with the recent conviction of key leaders of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) charity. Many observers accurately characterised this legal charade as a witch hunt, which used Muslims and Arabs (specifically Palestinians) as its targets. In doing so, the administration shamelessly abuses the legal system to advance failed security measures and pro-Israel policy initiatives that systematically punish Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

Five leaders from the once highly-respected HLF, which gave nearly $12m to non-violent Palestinian institutions to build hospitals and feed the poor, were convicted on 108 charges of supporting terrorism by funneling money to Hamas. A US official proudly declared: “Today’s verdicts are important milestones in America’s efforts against financiers of terrorism.” However, Linda Moreno, a defense lawyer for one of the HLF leaders, disagreed. “This was a political, ‘win at all costs’ prosecution,” she said.

[Read the article]

Joshua Keating of Foreign Policy’s Morning Brief writes:

The financial world was blindsided by the arrest of Madoff, a fixture of the New York financial world, though the Wall Street Journal reports that some analysts had been sounding the alarm about him for years. As one fund manager told the Financial Times, “This was the train wreck that happened in broad daylight.”

One person vanishes $50 billion, even half of it, without a trace? That’s possible?

It has come to our attention through information that we’ve recieved that there was a person informing to the FBI about numerous individuals involved in the Wild Rose Rebellion group and University Of Iowa Anti-War Committee. He has since been outed, confronted and ousted from our community. The purpose of this statement is to warn all radical organizations and people, that we don’t have personal ties with, across the country about the following person. Anything identifying or useful pertaining to him we have attempted to include.

[Read more]

Produced and distributed by the Americas Policy Program, a program of the Center for International Policy (CIP). For more information, visit http://www.americaspolicy.org/ and http://www.ciponline.org/.

We’ve just posted three articles on aspects of the global financial crisis that we think you’ll find interesting. The first is by food and agriculture expert Raj Patel on the many incarnations of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round. It appears that just when you think it’s out for the count, it’s up and fighting again. And that’s not good news for the poor. Says Patel, “although it’s called the Doha Development Round, it’s not the poorest who will be developed by the negotiations. The G-20 declaration (to revive the talks) signals that the world’s richest governments are keener to support their big industries as we head into a global recession, than to think terribly hard about their poorest citizens.”

Americas contributor Tony Phillips writes on the global summits to deal with the financial crisis and asks whether, after this hyperactive bout of diplomatic activity, we’re really any better off. Phillips looks closely at the real meaning of what to most of us is gobbledy-kook in the strange world of derivatives. He concludes that “none of the language in the White House G20 Summit Declaration is truly innovative… It rehashes the conventional wisdom that has crippled the world financial system: further deregulation of financial and trade markets, prohibitions on protectionism or restrictions on private capital flows,and resolution of the moribund Doha round of the WTO within a year.”

Also see a new post at Americas MexicoBlog  (http://americasmexico.blogspot.com/) called “Coping with Crisis, Latin America Bucks the System.” It’s about the Nov. 26 meeting of Alba countries that decided to create a regional monetary unit to replace the endangered dollar. As the G-20 repeats tired recipes for disaster, these countries are making some bold plans. The challenge–one that Latin American integration has typically had trouble meeting– will be in bringing them to practice.