Fiji news site

["Lou Paulsen" <wwchi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky <Gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

> ..I find it very curious that Phil embraces
>something slightly resembling this, no matter how thuggish the
>current Fijian ruler may (and certainly can be taken to) be.
>


Actually, the current Fijian prime minister is Leisiana Qarase, who is not a
socialist, has a conservative reputation, but I don't think can reasonably
be called 'thuggish' either.  Qarase was head of a local Fijian bank, as I
recall (the big banks are of course branches of imperialist banks).

A lot has happened there in the last three days.  Essentially, the Fijian
army cracked down hard on Speight's civilian followers.  Qarase is trying to
pursue a rather conventional and stable course and wants to re-establish
ties with the imperialists, but so far there's no sign the imperialists want
to do that.  He is begging for Indo-Fijian participation in the government,
but the FLP and NFP are boycotting it, and then the imperialists call it a
racist government because there are no Indo-Fijians in it.  Anything can
happen in the next few days, though.

Rather than characterize events, I am going to provide some links to some
news sites:

www.fijilive.com - this is an Indo-Fijian run site which has relatively
balanced and extensive news coverage.  There is also a discussion board
which is mostly dominated by Indo-Fijians, and from which you can get some
sense of some sectors of 'Fijian public opinion'.  This site is associated
with the Fiji Post, which is government-owned

http://www.fiji.gov.fj/core/home.html - this is the Fiji government site.
The 'press releases' section has the test of Qarase's inauguration speech.
The 'news briefs' section has daily summaries of articles from -all- the
Fiji media, maybe 10 stories a day, all available for the last three years
or so.  It's a very valuable reference.

www.fijivillage.com - this is another news site, associated with Rupert
Murdoch's Fiji Times.  So there are two news sections, the fijivillage news
and the Fiji Times news

http://pidp.ewc.hawaii.edu/pireport/graphics.htm - this is the Pacific
Islands Report, an archive of news articles from Pacific countries which is
maintained at the University of Hawaii and which has the full text of a lot
of local media stories on Fiji.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/fiji/default.htm - the Australia Broadcasting
Company's Fiji crisis page, invaluable for following the imperialist
response

http://www.smh.com.au/news/specials/intl/fiji/index.html - the Sydney
Morning Herald's fiji crisis page - also invaluable, but more biased and
less accurate

By the way, the important imperialist countries involved are:

Australia and New Zealand - between them, they account for the vast majority
of Fiji's trade (except sugar) and foreign-owned business (including
tourism)

The European Union and Japan - buy most of Fiji's sugar.  The European Union
has been paying prices above the world market price, under a treaty called
the Lomé Convention, which gives a subsidized price to former European
colonies.  Chirac warned that the EU is ready to abrogate this provision for
Fiji, which would be a big disaster.

The US has little directly to do with Fiji.  I found a US state department
press briefing where a reporter who was all for sanctions was pressuring the
State Department guy with questions, and the diplomat essentially said,
"Look, we have no aid program, we have nothing to sanction Fiji with."  (Of
course Australia and US foreign policy are not independent these days.)

Lou Paulsen
Chicago