'The United Nations is just an instrument at the service of American policy'
No great revelation, but this is Boutrous Boutros Ghali saying it.
The daily war
Instead of devoting their energy to securing food, jobs and land, social movements around the world are being forced to spend their time fighting the low-level war against their own criminalisation.
The great irony is that these movements are actually waging the real war on terrorism - not with law and order but by providing alternatives to the fundamentalist tendencies that exist wherever there is true desperation.
I never paid that much attention to Naomi Klein or 'No Logo', writing her off as part of the fashionably vacuous anti-globalisation movement. This makes me think I may have been rather hasty - good writing and perfectly timed.
What did the French ever do for US?
The astonishing range and ferocity of US insults and arbitrary protests against the French is by now common knowledge.
So my question is: when is America going to send back the Statue of Liberty?
F-I-R-E-I-N-tck-tck-R-I-O
"It is lamentable that this happens when we have a record number of tourists" - Cesar Maia, City Mayor.
Fortunately I was busy enjoying paradise at the time. Incidentally a week ago I visited Cidade de Deus, the slum depicted in the eponymous film. Although I didn't see any heavily armed drug traffickers the place felt just a touch more intimdating and broody that the South African townships I know.
