Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Germany - Israel
Nato Bombs
Universities And Hospitals
Former US congresswoman and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney told RT she went to Libya because she wanted to know the truth, 14 June 2011.
As mentioned in the video, there is More at WBAIX.
# posted by furtherleft @ 6/14/2011 02:05:00 PM
Cynthia Ann McKinney.. She is actually telling the truth!!
Gilad Atzmon has video today Further.. Again.. It has the truth..
She is very eloquent, Very truthful. And her video needs to be shared .. Bless this woman.
I am sure she will be vilified on other channels, but again RT seems to be the channel that likes the truth.
The Real Reason
Why The Nato Powers Are Trying To Assassinate Muammar Gaddafi Is Not Protecting Civilians But Western Oil Companies
By Brian Becker, 13 June 2011
Wikileaks-released State Department cables from November 2007 and afterwards show the real reason for the mounting U.S. hostility to the Libyan government prior to the current civil war.
NATO has been dropping devastating bunker-busting bombs on Muammar Gaddafi's home in an attempt to assassinate him. One son and several grandchildren have died but Gaddafi has survived. The State Department cables give background to the hostility directed against Gaddafi by the United States and other NATO powers.
One State Department cable from November 2007 (Wikileaks reference ID 07TRIPOLI967) sounds the alarm of “growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism” by the Gaddafi government. This was almost identical language employed by the U.S. and British governments against Iranian Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh when he nationalized Iran’s oil field in 1951. Mossadegh was overthrown by a 1953 CIA coup that restored the Shah to the throne. It allowed U.S. and British oil companies to re-take ownership over Iran’s oil until the 1979 revolution.
The crime of “resource nationalism”
Condemning “Libyan resource nationalism” is diplomatic language. The U.S. government was furious that Gaddafi was moving to rein in and limit the power and profits of the western-owned oil giants that he permitted to come back into the country after George W. Bush in 2004 lifted economic sanctions against Libya.
The same cable refers to an angry speech that Gaddafi made in 2006 which was interpreted as a virtual act of war by the oil companies and the U.S. and western governments.
Gaddafi's speech included these unacceptable words: “Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them—now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money.”
Oil reserves in Libya are largest in Africa
Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa and the ninth largest in the world with 41.5 billion barrels as of 2007. The U.S. government and oil industry surveys conclude that Libya has 63 years of reserves at current production rates if no new reserves were to be found. But Libya is considered to have many unexplored reserves. Libya has been a big prize for the western oil giants both because of the quantity of oil and of the particularly high quality of Libyan oil.
In 2008, according to another leaked State Department cable, Gaddafi summoned Conoco-Phillips Chief Executive Jim Mulva to a meeting in Sirte, Libya. There he threatened to expel U.S. oil companies and “threatened to dramatically reduce Libya’s oil production.”
The oil companies and the State Department, as the cables indicate, were increasingly agitated by Gaddafi’s interference with their operations. The Washington Post, which is a big cheerleader for the U.S./NATO bombing campaign, published a story on June 11, 2011, about the leaked Libya cables: “Labor laws were amended to ‘Libyanise’ the economy, and oil firms were pressed to hire Libyan managers, finance people and human resource directors.”
Gaddafi 2009 speech suggested nationalizing Libyan oil
Another Wikileaks-released State Department cable from Jan. 30, 2009, (Wikileaks reference ID 09TRIPOLI71) discusses a January 2009 speech by Gaddafi, stating, “Muammar al-Qadhafi suggested that Libya and other oil exporting states could nationalize their oil production in view of sharply plummeting petroleum prices.”
The U.S. government fully backed the Saudi monarchy and the Mubarak dictatorship, but turned on Libya—not because the regime violated human rights or democracy, but because Gaddafi sought to limit their power. The oil companies, however annoyed they were by having to work with the Libyan government, would have certainly continued their current business operations. The opening of a civil war inside of Libya in February 2011, however, gave a perfect pretext to overthrow the regime and place in power a government that the NATO powers hope will serve as a client regime.
In any country, Libya included, the masses of people can have many valid and legitimate grievances against their government. Even those who support Gaddafi against the NATO bombers probably have grievances. But the U.S., British, French and Italian governments are at war to protect their own interests. Protecting civilians and promoting democracy is of zero concern to Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil or any of the other oil giants.
The Wikileaks-released State Department cables make it clear that the basis for U.S. hostility to the Gaddafi regime was about who should control Libya’s vast oil reserves. Should it be Libya or should it be the biggest capitalist oil enterprises from western countries?
“Those who dominate Libya’s political and economic leadership are pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies in the energy sector that could jeopardize efficient exploitation of Libya’s extensive oil and gas reserves,” the November 2007 cable states.
Anti-Gaddafi rebels in Washington, D.C.
In mid-May 2011, just six weeks after the NATO bombing of Libya began, leaders of the anti-Gaddafi rebel movement came to Washington, D.C., for “talks.” They spoke at the U.S.-Libya Business Council. The big oil companies were present. The rebels have employed a public relations/lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., called the Harbour Group.
The principals of the Harbour Group include Hillary Clinton’s staff director from the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. Another served as a spokesperson for the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and other conservative Republicans. The third served as a public relations figure in the last three Democratic presidential conventions, according to Reuters.
“Now you can figure out who’s going to win, and the name is not Gaddafi,” Nansan Saleri, the founder of the Houston-based Quantico Reservoir Impact company told the Washington Post. Saleri, former head of reservoir management at Saudi Aramco, explained why the company wouldn’t do business in Libya until now. “Everything in Libya—everything—had to be approved by Gaddafi or one of his sons,” he told the Post. Saleri continued, “Certain things about the mosaic are taking shape. The western companies are positioning themselves.” Within five years, he predicted, “Libyan production is going to be higher than right now and investments are going to come in.”
Libya today is resisting the new colonialism. The colonizers assign noble names such as “protecting civilians” to their military mission. But their role in Africa and the Middle East during the past decades and centuries deprive such propaganda of any credibility. They rely though on the uniformity of the corporate-owned media coverage about their “humanitarian motives” to disguise their crass and cynical plans in Libya and elsewhere.
Monday, June 13, 2011
A Story Of A War
Jewish Sensitivities
by Gilad Atzmon
It occurred to me recently that the Palestinian solidarity discourse is spiritually, ideologically and intellectually driven by some very misleading terminology: crucial notions such as Zionism, colonialism and apartheid (heard in every discussion, and present in every text book about the conflict), are either confusing, or even delusional: I believe that they are there to actually block any attempt to grasp the true spirit and ideologies that drive the Jewish State rather than to clarify the situation.
Zionism
Many of us tend to refer to Zionism as the ideological driving force behind Israel.
But make no mistake: Israel is not Zionism, and Zionist ideology and politics have very little at all to do with Israeli politics or practice.
It must be understood that Israel and Zionism are, by now, two distinct categories. While Zionism was defined by its founders as an attempt to ‘transform the Diaspora Jew into an authentic and civilised human being’, Israel can, nowadays, only be seen as the pragmatic product of such an ideology.
It may surprise many of you to hear that these days, Israel is not driven or even particularly inspired by Zionism any longer -it is, instead, engaged in self-maintenance. More so, Israelis are hardly even that familiar with Zionist ideology. For most Israelis Zionism is little more than a dated and archaic concept - it may have historical significance -but it has zero meaning in daily life.
Zionism is, in fact, a Jewish Diaspora discourse. It is there to differentiate between world Jewry that largely supports Israel, and a few sporadic Jewish secular voices who want to maintain their Jewish national identity while opposing the Jewish State.
The Zionist/ anti Zionist debate is, in fact, a debate that takes place within the Jewish Diaspora, and not within Israel itself. It belongs to the realm of Jewish identity politics. It has very little political significance out of that context.
Because Israel and Israelis are actually impervious to Zionism, ‘Anti Zionist’ activity and ideology have very little impact at all on Israel and Israelis.[1] Israelis are only concerned with direct actions against their Jewish State, and for them, sanctions are a matter that concern and worry them a great deal. Israelis though, are hardly concerned at all with seeking solutions to the so called ‘Jewish Question.’ From an Israeli perspective the Jewish state is the ultimate solution for the ‘Jewish Question.’ I guess that from a realistic and pragmatic perspective, one may have to agree, Israel didn’t really solve the ‘Jewish Question’ it just moved it to a new place.
Why do we then, continue to make this crude mistake, and always refer to Israeli crimes as a Zionist symptom? Why don’t we refer directly and openly to the ‘Jewish State’, because at the end of the day, this is how Israel defines itself.
The answer is simple: it is because we really do not want to offend anyone. We accept that Jews have suffered all through their history and we accept their unique sensitivities. Hence, voluntarily, we self-censor ourselves. We voluntarily give up on our capacity to think freely, coherently, openly and critically.
Colonialism
Zionism is not colonialism either. As much as many activists around us insist that we must regard Zionism as a colonial project, the truth must be stated: colonialism defines itself by having a clear material relationship between a ‘mother state’ and a ‘settler state’. In the case of Zionism however, it is impossible to determine what was, or is, the ‘Jewish mother State’. In fact there is no Jewish mother State and there has never been one. Zionism is not a colonial project and it has never been one. It is indeed true that the Jewish State exhibits some colonial symptoms.[2] But then, some brain cancer patients also exhibit some symptoms of migraine. A proper diagnosis aims at discovering the true cause behind symptoms. To diagnose is to trace a true disease rather than provide a superficial explanation that may be linked to a number of sporadic symptoms.
But it is also clear why so many of us love the colonial paradigm, despite it being flawed: the followers of the colonial paradigm accept that Israelis are not different from the British, French or Dutch; they just happen to celebrate their ‘colonial’ expansionist symptoms ‘100 years after everyone else’. Also the colonial paradigm promises a ‘solution’ at the end of the road -- a post colonial reconciliation is just a matter of time, they stress.
Again, I am sorry to disappoint so many people I really care about, but I have to say it: Zionism is original and unique of its kind, and it has no precedent in history. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit into any materialist model, for the aspiration behind Zionism was, and still is, spiritually driven.
So why do we continue to make this crude mistake, and always refer to Zionism as colonialism? Why don’t we refer to Zionism as what it is; a totally unique Jewish ideological project? Simple, because we do not want to offend some of the very few Jews who are kind enough to support Palestine. We accept their sensitivities, and voluntarily remain quiet about it all. We would do whatever it takes to keep everybody happy. After all, we are a peace movement.
Apartheid
And what about apartheid? Is Israel an apartheid State? In Israel we clearly witness racial separation and legal discrimination. However, I would argue that Israel is not an apartheid system for apartheid was set in place to exploit the indigenous peoples, yet, to keep them living on the land. Israel, on the other hand, is there to destroy the indigenous population - the Israelis would be relieved if they woke up one morning to find out that the Palestinians had simply left the region.
Those who are Naïve enough to buy into the apartheid narrative probably believe that Israel may collapse soon, because this is what history teaches us about apartheid. Again, we like the apartheid model because it makes Israel look (relatively) ‘ordinary’. We do not want to offend anyone, especially the few Jews who support us.
But here is a question that I must address to righteous Jews and fellow Palestinian supporters around the world: do you really believe that the discourse of the struggle against the Jewish State should be shaped by ‘Jewish sensitivities’? Was the fight against Nazism shaped by German sensitivities? Did we take on board the Afrikaners' touchy spots when campaigning against the apartheid? Isn’t the time ripe to call a spade a spade? I do accept the crucial importance of Jews in this movement and I try to work with as many Jews as possible. Yet, I wonder, isn’t it time for Jews to overcome their sensitivities and look into the subject with open eyes? Isn’t the time ripe for all of us to do the same? Shouldn’t we question the supporters of the Jewish State, and ask exactly what Jewishness stands for?
I believe that this is exactly what we have to do-for the sake of a better future in Palestine, we must openly engage in these crucial questions. I also believe that more than anyone else, it is Jews who must confront these questions. I would expect Jewish activists within our movement to lead this move rather than trying to silence it.
[1] Zionism may be a useful term when referring to Jewish lobbying around the world. It may throw light on the activity of Sayanim around the world, and it may explain the inclination of some Brooklyn Jews to make Aliya. It may also explain why some Jewish Leftists join forces with rabid Zionist institutions as soon as someone questions what Jewishness stands for.
[2] It can be reasonably argued that the relationships between Israel West Bank Settlers and the indigenous peoples could be understood in colonial terms.
It occurred to me recently that the Palestinian solidarity discourse is spiritually, ideologically and intellectually driven by some very misleading terminology: crucial notions such as Zionism, colonialism and apartheid (heard in every discussion, and present in every text book about the conflict), are either confusing, or even delusional: I believe that they are there to actually block any attempt to grasp the true spirit and ideologies that drive the Jewish State rather than to clarify the situation.
Zionism
Many of us tend to refer to Zionism as the ideological driving force behind Israel.
But make no mistake: Israel is not Zionism, and Zionist ideology and politics have very little at all to do with Israeli politics or practice.
It must be understood that Israel and Zionism are, by now, two distinct categories. While Zionism was defined by its founders as an attempt to ‘transform the Diaspora Jew into an authentic and civilised human being’, Israel can, nowadays, only be seen as the pragmatic product of such an ideology.
It may surprise many of you to hear that these days, Israel is not driven or even particularly inspired by Zionism any longer -it is, instead, engaged in self-maintenance. More so, Israelis are hardly even that familiar with Zionist ideology. For most Israelis Zionism is little more than a dated and archaic concept - it may have historical significance -but it has zero meaning in daily life.
Zionism is, in fact, a Jewish Diaspora discourse. It is there to differentiate between world Jewry that largely supports Israel, and a few sporadic Jewish secular voices who want to maintain their Jewish national identity while opposing the Jewish State.
The Zionist/ anti Zionist debate is, in fact, a debate that takes place within the Jewish Diaspora, and not within Israel itself. It belongs to the realm of Jewish identity politics. It has very little political significance out of that context.
Because Israel and Israelis are actually impervious to Zionism, ‘Anti Zionist’ activity and ideology have very little impact at all on Israel and Israelis.[1] Israelis are only concerned with direct actions against their Jewish State, and for them, sanctions are a matter that concern and worry them a great deal. Israelis though, are hardly concerned at all with seeking solutions to the so called ‘Jewish Question.’ From an Israeli perspective the Jewish state is the ultimate solution for the ‘Jewish Question.’ I guess that from a realistic and pragmatic perspective, one may have to agree, Israel didn’t really solve the ‘Jewish Question’ it just moved it to a new place.
Why do we then, continue to make this crude mistake, and always refer to Israeli crimes as a Zionist symptom? Why don’t we refer directly and openly to the ‘Jewish State’, because at the end of the day, this is how Israel defines itself.
The answer is simple: it is because we really do not want to offend anyone. We accept that Jews have suffered all through their history and we accept their unique sensitivities. Hence, voluntarily, we self-censor ourselves. We voluntarily give up on our capacity to think freely, coherently, openly and critically.
Colonialism
Zionism is not colonialism either. As much as many activists around us insist that we must regard Zionism as a colonial project, the truth must be stated: colonialism defines itself by having a clear material relationship between a ‘mother state’ and a ‘settler state’. In the case of Zionism however, it is impossible to determine what was, or is, the ‘Jewish mother State’. In fact there is no Jewish mother State and there has never been one. Zionism is not a colonial project and it has never been one. It is indeed true that the Jewish State exhibits some colonial symptoms.[2] But then, some brain cancer patients also exhibit some symptoms of migraine. A proper diagnosis aims at discovering the true cause behind symptoms. To diagnose is to trace a true disease rather than provide a superficial explanation that may be linked to a number of sporadic symptoms.
But it is also clear why so many of us love the colonial paradigm, despite it being flawed: the followers of the colonial paradigm accept that Israelis are not different from the British, French or Dutch; they just happen to celebrate their ‘colonial’ expansionist symptoms ‘100 years after everyone else’. Also the colonial paradigm promises a ‘solution’ at the end of the road -- a post colonial reconciliation is just a matter of time, they stress.
Again, I am sorry to disappoint so many people I really care about, but I have to say it: Zionism is original and unique of its kind, and it has no precedent in history. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit into any materialist model, for the aspiration behind Zionism was, and still is, spiritually driven.
So why do we continue to make this crude mistake, and always refer to Zionism as colonialism? Why don’t we refer to Zionism as what it is; a totally unique Jewish ideological project? Simple, because we do not want to offend some of the very few Jews who are kind enough to support Palestine. We accept their sensitivities, and voluntarily remain quiet about it all. We would do whatever it takes to keep everybody happy. After all, we are a peace movement.
Apartheid
And what about apartheid? Is Israel an apartheid State? In Israel we clearly witness racial separation and legal discrimination. However, I would argue that Israel is not an apartheid system for apartheid was set in place to exploit the indigenous peoples, yet, to keep them living on the land. Israel, on the other hand, is there to destroy the indigenous population - the Israelis would be relieved if they woke up one morning to find out that the Palestinians had simply left the region.
Those who are Naïve enough to buy into the apartheid narrative probably believe that Israel may collapse soon, because this is what history teaches us about apartheid. Again, we like the apartheid model because it makes Israel look (relatively) ‘ordinary’. We do not want to offend anyone, especially the few Jews who support us.
But here is a question that I must address to righteous Jews and fellow Palestinian supporters around the world: do you really believe that the discourse of the struggle against the Jewish State should be shaped by ‘Jewish sensitivities’? Was the fight against Nazism shaped by German sensitivities? Did we take on board the Afrikaners' touchy spots when campaigning against the apartheid? Isn’t the time ripe to call a spade a spade? I do accept the crucial importance of Jews in this movement and I try to work with as many Jews as possible. Yet, I wonder, isn’t it time for Jews to overcome their sensitivities and look into the subject with open eyes? Isn’t the time ripe for all of us to do the same? Shouldn’t we question the supporters of the Jewish State, and ask exactly what Jewishness stands for?
I believe that this is exactly what we have to do-for the sake of a better future in Palestine, we must openly engage in these crucial questions. I also believe that more than anyone else, it is Jews who must confront these questions. I would expect Jewish activists within our movement to lead this move rather than trying to silence it.
[1] Zionism may be a useful term when referring to Jewish lobbying around the world. It may throw light on the activity of Sayanim around the world, and it may explain the inclination of some Brooklyn Jews to make Aliya. It may also explain why some Jewish Leftists join forces with rabid Zionist institutions as soon as someone questions what Jewishness stands for.
[2] It can be reasonably argued that the relationships between Israel West Bank Settlers and the indigenous peoples could be understood in colonial terms.
Wars Not Seen
"The War You Don't See" is a 2010 film by award winning journalist John Pilger. It is a powerful and timely investigation into the media's role in war, tracing the history of 'embedded' and independent reporting from the carnage of World War One to the destruction of Hiroshima, and from the invasion of Vietnam to the current war in Afghanistan and disaster in Iraq. Pilger's documentary films are always about the real stories that the global mainstream media groups do not tell tax payers and voters.
As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an 'electronic battlefield' in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy? This is a remarkable documentary in which the winner of journalism's top awards for both press and broadcasting, including academy awards in the UK and US television, John Pilger, himself a renowned war reporter, questions the role the media in war. "The War You Don't See" asks whether mainstream news has become an integral part of war-making.
Focusing on the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pilger reflects on the history of the relationship between the media and government in times of conflict stretching back to World War I and explores the impact on the information fed to the public of the modern day practice of public relations in the guise of 'embedding' journalists with the military. Featuring interviews with senior figures at major UK broadcasters, the BBC and ITV, and high profile journalists on both sides of the Atlantic, including Rageh Omaar and Dan Rather, the film investigates the reporting of government claims that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction.
"The War You Don't See" contains shocking never-seen-before footage from Iraq and Afghanistan and revealing interviews with former BBC reporter Rageh Omaar, former CBS anchor Dan Rather and the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange.
The film was originally embeded here from YouTube. It was then blocked from there for copywrite claims. It is re-embedded 14 July 2011 from Vimeo.
As weapons and propaganda become even more sophisticated, the nature of war is developing into an 'electronic battlefield' in which journalists play a key role, and civilians are the victims. But who is the real enemy? This is a remarkable documentary in which the winner of journalism's top awards for both press and broadcasting, including academy awards in the UK and US television, John Pilger, himself a renowned war reporter, questions the role the media in war. "The War You Don't See" asks whether mainstream news has become an integral part of war-making.
Focusing on the current conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pilger reflects on the history of the relationship between the media and government in times of conflict stretching back to World War I and explores the impact on the information fed to the public of the modern day practice of public relations in the guise of 'embedding' journalists with the military. Featuring interviews with senior figures at major UK broadcasters, the BBC and ITV, and high profile journalists on both sides of the Atlantic, including Rageh Omaar and Dan Rather, the film investigates the reporting of government claims that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction.
"The War You Don't See" contains shocking never-seen-before footage from Iraq and Afghanistan and revealing interviews with former BBC reporter Rageh Omaar, former CBS anchor Dan Rather and the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange.
The film was originally embeded here from YouTube. It was then blocked from there for copywrite claims. It is re-embedded 14 July 2011 from Vimeo.
La Guerra que No Ves - The War you don't see from Loboalpha on Vimeo.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
US Imperialism
The two videos below chronicle US military incursions. Dates shown are years of troop dispatch. A documented and detail referenced complete list of these can be found at this this Wikipedia link. That is derived from CIA and Committee on Foreign Affairs sources. Excluded from the list are instances where the U.S. gave aid alone, with no military personnel involvement as well as are CIA operations.
1800 - 1900
1900 - 2010
67 Palestinian Children
Dispossessed Or Affected By Demolitions In May
The UN Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, has reported that the month of May shows the highest number of children made homeless or otherwise affected by Israeli demolitions in the West Bank for 2011.
According to the report 304 Palestinians were dispossessed or affected by demolitions of homes and other infrastructure such as water facilities in the West Bank during May 2011. Of those 304, 67 were children.
Palestinians are permitted to build in only 13% of occupied Jerusalem and 1% of Area C in the West Bank. This leads to chronic housing and water shortages.
Palestinians forced to build without Israeli permission face the constant threat of demolition by the army. According to Israeli human rights group B’T Selem, there have been 25,000 house demolitions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967.
The UNRWA was set up by the UN to care for Palestinian refugees pending a solution to the refugee crisis. It has called on Israel to fulfill its duty as an occupation force to respect and maintain the human rights of those it administers such as rights to housing and water.
Minister: Gaza Medical
Crisis 'Unprecedented'
June 11, 2011
GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Hospitals in the Gaza Strip are suffering a critical shortage of medicine and medical supplies, Hamas Health Minister Bassem Naem said Saturday.
The crisis was unprecedented even during Israel's massive offensive on Gaza in December 2008, Naem said, adding that the situation was worsening by the day.
Speaking at a conference in Ash-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Naem said 180 types of medicine and 200 medical items had run out in Gaza, including alcohol and needles.
All health facilities were affected by the deficit, the minister said, adding that Israel's siege on the Gaza Strip exacerbated the crisis.
The Gaza health ministry announced a state of emergency in Gaza on Wednesday.
On Friday, Naem announced that pre-scheduled surgeries would be canceled, including children's operations, cardiac catheterization, laparoscopic surgery and bone and nerve operations. He said the ministry would reduce medical services including laboratory tests.
An eye hospital in Gaza City reported Saturday that it had canceled 12 surgeries because doctors had run out of medical supplies.
In An-Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, the shortage affected 142 patients who could not be given medicine.
Sources in the Gaza Health Ministry said Palestinian Authority official Nabil Shaath had promised to send medicine to Gaza from Ramallah, but that the supplies never arrived.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Peru
President-elect Ollanta Humala bows to bankers
by Luis Arce
In the week following his victory at the polls last Sunday, Peru’s president-elect Ollanta Humala has made it his first priority to reassure capitalist investors, foreign and national, that they have nothing to fear from his campaign rhetoric about changing the country’s economic model and effecting a more just distribution of wealth.
Starting on election night, as his lead over right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori became clear, his spokesmen took to national television with the aim of calming the markets and avoiding a possible collapse of the Lima stock exchange and the Peruvian currency, the sol, as a result of frightened investors and market raiders withdrawing their money.
These reassurances, notwithstanding, only hours after opening for business the next morning, officers of the Lima stock exchange moved to close the market to stop a massive selloff, but not quickly enough to avoid a historic 12 percent drop.
The driving down of share values on the Lima stock market was the opening shot by the Peruvian bourgeoisie and foreign capital in a campaign to impose their conditions for agreeing to work with the president-elect.
Speaking in unison, the presidents of the Lima’s stock exchange, the Association of Exporters, the National Association of Miners, the National Society of Industrialists, the National Confederation of Private Enterprises, former candidate and Wall Street banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the leader of the most right-wing party, Lourdes Flores, and others are demanding that Humala to quickly name “reliable” candidates for prime minister, minister of Economy and Finance and the head of the Central Reserve Bank.
The tense political atmosphere that followed Humala’s victory was expressed by former president and leader of Peru Posible, Alejandro Toledo, who called on his supporters to vote for Humala in the election’s second round. He issued a public appeal to investors for a truce, insisting they shouldn’t limit themselves to raising demands on the president-elect, but should start working for the country.
In exchange for his support, it is possible that Toledo’s party will be part of Humala’s cabinet, according to recent reports. It is also rumored that a few politicians from Peru’s old “left” could be included in the cabinet.
The Peruvian political class and foreign investors can only feel a sense of gratification at how hard Humala is trying to satisfy their demands.
“The party wants to place its people [in the government], but Ollanta want personalities that generate a sense of maturity and give reassuring signals to the financial sectors,” said a source at Los Delfines, the hotel where Humala has established his headquarters. Humala, according to this source, is looking to form an independent technical staff “for a government of national consensus.”
In executing his post-election swing to the right, Humala is receiving invaluable help from the former “lefts” of the 60s and 70s. The old petty-bourgeois radicals, who form part of Humala’s Gana Peru electoral bloc, came forward to show they have become harmless creatures. Their expertise now is in giving assurances that the government will continue its submission to the interest of capital.
Thus, Javier Diez Canseco, a prominent leader of the petty-bourgeois left organization of the 1960s, Vanguardia Revolucionaria, and a member of Peru’s parliament for more than two decades, declared his support for Beatriz Merino to be named as prime minister. “I have seen her act firmly and calmly in difficult times,” said Diez Canseco, who won a seat in the congress as a candidate of Gana Peru.
Merino began her political life when she was elected to congress in 1990 as a candidate of the Democratic Front (FREDEMO), an alliance of center right and conservative parties, whose presidential candidate, Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru’s Nobel Prize-wining author, lost to Alberto Fujimori. In 2003, she was named prime minister by Alejandro Toledo. She remained in the job for six months. Later, she served as the national ombudsman in Peru.
But it is her current position as president of the Association of Private Pension Funds (AFP) that makes her a favorite of the Peruvian political class and investors. Modeled after the Chilean private pension funds, the Peruvian AFPs are the largest investors in the Lima stock exchange.
In an interview published by La Republica, one week before the presidential elections took place, Merino declared, “Yes, I trust Ollanta Humala… At the moment, in my opinion, there is no danger to the pension system in Humala’s government plan.” She made these remarks after meeting with the technical and economic team of Gana Peru.
Expressing similar views, the president of the Association of Exporters (ADEX in Spanish), Juan Varilias Velasquez, declared his support for Humala seeking to “refine” the economic model to benefit the majority through “social inclusion”.
Varilias understands that Humala will respect the economic model and his aim is just to “refine” it, that is, to introduce minor changes aimed at masking the immense social inequality that has dominated Peruvian life, even as the country’s economy has grown 60 percent over the last decade.
When it comes to foreign relations, Humala has shown the same determination to calm the markets.
He acted immediately to lay to to rest any concerns in Washington that he would revert to the nationalist rhetoric that characterized his failed 2006 presidential campaign.
As the Lima daily Peru21 reported on Monday: “President-elect Ollanta Humala sent a new conciliatory message that he considered the United States a ‘strategic partner’ and is looking to establish a close cooperation with Washington in the fight against drugs.”
Interviewed by Reuters, Humala said, “We believe Peru has to follow its own path and not copy other countries.” The purpose of these words was to show that he has jettisoned any connection to Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez, with whom he had identified himself in 2006.
Humala’s efforts to comply with foreign investors appear to be yielding results.
As of June 9, the China Development Bank had expressed its confidence in the future of Peru under Humala. Likewise, the Chilean retail conglomerate Cencosud announced that it will continue to invest in the country. A Cencosud spokesman compared Peru growing under Humala to the growth Brazil experienced under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Humala is losing no time in forging close political and economic relations with South America’s most powerful capitalist nation.
On his third day as president-elect, he embarked on his fist tour abroad. It is revealing that his first stop was Brazil, meeting with both Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and with with former president Lula da Silva in Sao Paulo.
This is more than just a courtesy call. The turn to Brasilia sends message to Washington, foreign and Peruvian investors that Humala intends to follow Brazil and not Venezuela. It is also a recognition of the ever increasing role of Brazilian capital investment in Peru.
Humala’s week-long tour will take him to Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile; with Venezuela and Bolivia noticeably excluded.
During his appearance in Brazil, Humala declared: “This country’s social and economic model should be an example for Peru… Brazil is the first country I visit. This is an important strategic partner for us as well as a successful model of macroeconomic stability with social inclusion.”
The Brazilian model of “social inclusion” emulated by Humala consists of providing modest social assistance programs that do nothing to challenge the country’s gaping social polarization, while maintaining neo-liberal free market policies. The Workers Party governments of both Lula and Rousseff have further set an example by ceding control of the central bank and fundamental economic decision-making to right-wing pro-business officials.
Interviewed by the TV program “Prensa Libre” on June 8, the president-elect’s close advisor Salomon Lerner Ghitis provided a surprisingly candid description of how Humala had crafted a new image for the election under the tutelage of political operatives from Brazil’s Workers Party: “Humala has received training from Brazilian and national advisors, even more, by people linked to art and theater. He has learned to smile and be patient when confronting difficult questions at interviews. I think he was a good and disciplined student.
“It really has been a change in him. Has made significant changes and that is what you see today… The work of the consultants from Brazil was required since September of last year.”
That Lerner Ghitis is a close advisor sheds significant light on what can be expected from Humala’s government.
He started his political career in a student organization associated with the Apra party of outgoing president Alan Garcia. In the 1970s, he left Apra to join the nationalist military dictatorship of General Juan Velasco, where he was linked to a pro-regime Labor Revolutionary Movement. In the 1980s, Lerner, by now a savvy political animal, found his way into a group called “friends of Alan,” a group of businessmen that took part in the most important government decisions during Garcia’s first presidency.
In 1998 he served on the board of directors of Latin Frequency, a TV channel that sold its editorial line to the National Intelligence Service headed by Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori’s sinister chief adviser. Under the Toledo government, he was head of the Finance Corporation for Development (Cofide), the entity in charge of restructuring all banks in financial trouble. In that position, he was able to help his friends—including himself—in the banking industry.
This political biography of his senior adviser provides an unmistakable warning as to the social interests that an incoming Humala government will represent.
by Luis Arce
In the week following his victory at the polls last Sunday, Peru’s president-elect Ollanta Humala has made it his first priority to reassure capitalist investors, foreign and national, that they have nothing to fear from his campaign rhetoric about changing the country’s economic model and effecting a more just distribution of wealth.
Starting on election night, as his lead over right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori became clear, his spokesmen took to national television with the aim of calming the markets and avoiding a possible collapse of the Lima stock exchange and the Peruvian currency, the sol, as a result of frightened investors and market raiders withdrawing their money.
These reassurances, notwithstanding, only hours after opening for business the next morning, officers of the Lima stock exchange moved to close the market to stop a massive selloff, but not quickly enough to avoid a historic 12 percent drop.
The driving down of share values on the Lima stock market was the opening shot by the Peruvian bourgeoisie and foreign capital in a campaign to impose their conditions for agreeing to work with the president-elect.
Speaking in unison, the presidents of the Lima’s stock exchange, the Association of Exporters, the National Association of Miners, the National Society of Industrialists, the National Confederation of Private Enterprises, former candidate and Wall Street banker Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, the leader of the most right-wing party, Lourdes Flores, and others are demanding that Humala to quickly name “reliable” candidates for prime minister, minister of Economy and Finance and the head of the Central Reserve Bank.
The tense political atmosphere that followed Humala’s victory was expressed by former president and leader of Peru Posible, Alejandro Toledo, who called on his supporters to vote for Humala in the election’s second round. He issued a public appeal to investors for a truce, insisting they shouldn’t limit themselves to raising demands on the president-elect, but should start working for the country.
In exchange for his support, it is possible that Toledo’s party will be part of Humala’s cabinet, according to recent reports. It is also rumored that a few politicians from Peru’s old “left” could be included in the cabinet.
The Peruvian political class and foreign investors can only feel a sense of gratification at how hard Humala is trying to satisfy their demands.
“The party wants to place its people [in the government], but Ollanta want personalities that generate a sense of maturity and give reassuring signals to the financial sectors,” said a source at Los Delfines, the hotel where Humala has established his headquarters. Humala, according to this source, is looking to form an independent technical staff “for a government of national consensus.”
In executing his post-election swing to the right, Humala is receiving invaluable help from the former “lefts” of the 60s and 70s. The old petty-bourgeois radicals, who form part of Humala’s Gana Peru electoral bloc, came forward to show they have become harmless creatures. Their expertise now is in giving assurances that the government will continue its submission to the interest of capital.
Thus, Javier Diez Canseco, a prominent leader of the petty-bourgeois left organization of the 1960s, Vanguardia Revolucionaria, and a member of Peru’s parliament for more than two decades, declared his support for Beatriz Merino to be named as prime minister. “I have seen her act firmly and calmly in difficult times,” said Diez Canseco, who won a seat in the congress as a candidate of Gana Peru.
Merino began her political life when she was elected to congress in 1990 as a candidate of the Democratic Front (FREDEMO), an alliance of center right and conservative parties, whose presidential candidate, Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru’s Nobel Prize-wining author, lost to Alberto Fujimori. In 2003, she was named prime minister by Alejandro Toledo. She remained in the job for six months. Later, she served as the national ombudsman in Peru.
But it is her current position as president of the Association of Private Pension Funds (AFP) that makes her a favorite of the Peruvian political class and investors. Modeled after the Chilean private pension funds, the Peruvian AFPs are the largest investors in the Lima stock exchange.
In an interview published by La Republica, one week before the presidential elections took place, Merino declared, “Yes, I trust Ollanta Humala… At the moment, in my opinion, there is no danger to the pension system in Humala’s government plan.” She made these remarks after meeting with the technical and economic team of Gana Peru.
Expressing similar views, the president of the Association of Exporters (ADEX in Spanish), Juan Varilias Velasquez, declared his support for Humala seeking to “refine” the economic model to benefit the majority through “social inclusion”.
Varilias understands that Humala will respect the economic model and his aim is just to “refine” it, that is, to introduce minor changes aimed at masking the immense social inequality that has dominated Peruvian life, even as the country’s economy has grown 60 percent over the last decade.
When it comes to foreign relations, Humala has shown the same determination to calm the markets.
He acted immediately to lay to to rest any concerns in Washington that he would revert to the nationalist rhetoric that characterized his failed 2006 presidential campaign.
As the Lima daily Peru21 reported on Monday: “President-elect Ollanta Humala sent a new conciliatory message that he considered the United States a ‘strategic partner’ and is looking to establish a close cooperation with Washington in the fight against drugs.”
Interviewed by Reuters, Humala said, “We believe Peru has to follow its own path and not copy other countries.” The purpose of these words was to show that he has jettisoned any connection to Venezuela’s president Hugo Chavez, with whom he had identified himself in 2006.
Humala’s efforts to comply with foreign investors appear to be yielding results.
As of June 9, the China Development Bank had expressed its confidence in the future of Peru under Humala. Likewise, the Chilean retail conglomerate Cencosud announced that it will continue to invest in the country. A Cencosud spokesman compared Peru growing under Humala to the growth Brazil experienced under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Humala is losing no time in forging close political and economic relations with South America’s most powerful capitalist nation.
On his third day as president-elect, he embarked on his fist tour abroad. It is revealing that his first stop was Brazil, meeting with both Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and with with former president Lula da Silva in Sao Paulo.
This is more than just a courtesy call. The turn to Brasilia sends message to Washington, foreign and Peruvian investors that Humala intends to follow Brazil and not Venezuela. It is also a recognition of the ever increasing role of Brazilian capital investment in Peru.
Humala’s week-long tour will take him to Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile; with Venezuela and Bolivia noticeably excluded.
During his appearance in Brazil, Humala declared: “This country’s social and economic model should be an example for Peru… Brazil is the first country I visit. This is an important strategic partner for us as well as a successful model of macroeconomic stability with social inclusion.”
The Brazilian model of “social inclusion” emulated by Humala consists of providing modest social assistance programs that do nothing to challenge the country’s gaping social polarization, while maintaining neo-liberal free market policies. The Workers Party governments of both Lula and Rousseff have further set an example by ceding control of the central bank and fundamental economic decision-making to right-wing pro-business officials.
Interviewed by the TV program “Prensa Libre” on June 8, the president-elect’s close advisor Salomon Lerner Ghitis provided a surprisingly candid description of how Humala had crafted a new image for the election under the tutelage of political operatives from Brazil’s Workers Party: “Humala has received training from Brazilian and national advisors, even more, by people linked to art and theater. He has learned to smile and be patient when confronting difficult questions at interviews. I think he was a good and disciplined student.
“It really has been a change in him. Has made significant changes and that is what you see today… The work of the consultants from Brazil was required since September of last year.”
That Lerner Ghitis is a close advisor sheds significant light on what can be expected from Humala’s government.
He started his political career in a student organization associated with the Apra party of outgoing president Alan Garcia. In the 1970s, he left Apra to join the nationalist military dictatorship of General Juan Velasco, where he was linked to a pro-regime Labor Revolutionary Movement. In the 1980s, Lerner, by now a savvy political animal, found his way into a group called “friends of Alan,” a group of businessmen that took part in the most important government decisions during Garcia’s first presidency.
In 1998 he served on the board of directors of Latin Frequency, a TV channel that sold its editorial line to the National Intelligence Service headed by Vladimiro Montesinos, Fujimori’s sinister chief adviser. Under the Toledo government, he was head of the Finance Corporation for Development (Cofide), the entity in charge of restructuring all banks in financial trouble. In that position, he was able to help his friends—including himself—in the banking industry.
This political biography of his senior adviser provides an unmistakable warning as to the social interests that an incoming Humala government will represent.
Left in Peru
Leftist Election Winner Promises "Growth with Social Inclusion" in Peru
IPS) - For the first time in the democratic history of Peru, a left-wing candidate has won the presidency. With the support of an overwhelming majority of voters in the provinces, retired lieutenant colonel Ollanta Humala defeated his right-wing rival Keiko Fujimori, whose strongest backing was in the capital, in Sunday's runoff.
Based on the preliminary results, the election authority, ONPE, reported that Humala took 51.3 percent of the vote against Fujimori's 48.6 percent. The ballots not yet counted are from rural areas in the provinces.
"We are going to bring about a major transformation," Humala said near midnight Sunday, addressing thousands of cheering supporters in the Dos de Mayo plaza in Lima. The crowd had been waiting for him for hours in the square, a favourite staging ground for protest demonstrations and strikes.
Before making his victory speech, in which he promised a government of national reconciliation, Humala waited for the first official results, which were delayed until after 10 pm local time.
According to ONPE officials, the delay was due to the fact that by 8 pm local time, when the first projections were due to be announced, the only ballots that had been tallied were from the capital, the main port city, Callao, and the provincial capitals along the coast, where Fujimori was winning by a broad margin.
"All of the exit polls pointed to a victory by Humala and his supporters were already celebrating, so we decided to wait for more ballots to be counted from the provinces, to have more realistic results," a source at ONPE told IPS.
In response to the delay, Humala supporters headed to the ONPE offices to complain. But the first preliminary results already indicated that Humala would beat Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who is in prison for 25 years for corruption and human rights violations.
"There are two important political results coming out of these elections: for the first time a coalition including the left has won the national elections, and it has also managed to defeat all of the powers-that-be: the economic elites, the media, the (Catholic) Church, the government of the moment, and the rival candidate," sociologist Sinesio López at the Catholic Pontifical University of Peru told IPS.
López, who was one of Humala's professors when the candidate was earning his master's degree in political science, said that throughout the campaign, and especially between the first and second rounds, all of these power groups carried out an intense smear campaign against the candidate.
The country's business leaders questioned Humala's announced economic policies, raising the spectre of a wave of dismissals, capital flight and loss of investment, López said.
After Humala's triumph was announced, Peru’s main stock indexes fell more than eight percentage points before the Lima stock exchange suspended trade. Mining company shares fell the most.
Peru is one of the world's top producers of a number of minerals, including silver, tellurium, copper, tin, bismuth, lead, molybdenum, arsenic, gold and selenium, and is home to Latin America's biggest gold mine, Yanacocha.
Humala triumphed in 20 of Peru's 25 regions, including the areas most heavily affected by social conflicts such as protests against mining, in which demonstrators have been injured and killed in the past few years.
One example is the southern highlands region of Arequipa, where the Southern Peru gold mining company operates, and where Humala took 66.4 percent of the vote and Fujimori just 33.6 percent, according to the preliminary results.
The voting patterns in the runoff were similar to those seen in the first round, on Apr. 10: Humala's strongest support was in the impoverished southern highland regions, where a majority of the population is indigenous.
It was in those areas that the Fujimori regime had carried out a controversial forced sterilisation campaign in the 1990s, presented as part of the government's anti-poverty strategy.
In Huancavelica in the southwest, the country's poorest region, Humala garnered nearly 71 percent of the vote, compared to a mere 29 percent for Fujimori.
And in the neighbouring Ayacucho, another poor region that was among those hardest-hit by the violence during the 1980-2000 civil war, Humala won 72 percent against less than 28 percent for Fujimori.
"This is due to demand for economic growth with social inclusion," López told IPS. "Humala will have to implement very aggressive social policies in the regions not yet reached by the economic boom."
Fujimori, on the other hand, won by a comfortable margin in Lima, with nearly 57 percent of the vote against Humala's 43 percent.
She was also ahead in the four northern coastal regions: Tumbes, Piura, Lambayeque and La Libertad, traditional strongholds of President Alan García's APRA party.
Harvard political science professor Steve Levitsky, who is in Peru studying the political system, said one of Fujimori's big mistakes was her failure to distance herself from her father's legacy, which was marked by corruption, human rights crimes and excesses like the mass sterilisation of Andean indigenous women.
"Keiko Fujimori recognised what she called 'errors' on the part of her father's government," he told IPS. "But at the same time, her team included people from her father's regime, who formed part of an administration where corruption and human rights violations reigned. That was one of her big mistakes."
Voting is compulsory in Peru, where just under 40 percent of voters are between the ages of 20 and 35, and 34 percent of voters are in Lima.
Based on the preliminary results, the election authority, ONPE, reported that Humala took 51.3 percent of the vote against Fujimori's 48.6 percent. The ballots not yet counted are from rural areas in the provinces.
"We are going to bring about a major transformation," Humala said near midnight Sunday, addressing thousands of cheering supporters in the Dos de Mayo plaza in Lima. The crowd had been waiting for him for hours in the square, a favourite staging ground for protest demonstrations and strikes.
Before making his victory speech, in which he promised a government of national reconciliation, Humala waited for the first official results, which were delayed until after 10 pm local time.
According to ONPE officials, the delay was due to the fact that by 8 pm local time, when the first projections were due to be announced, the only ballots that had been tallied were from the capital, the main port city, Callao, and the provincial capitals along the coast, where Fujimori was winning by a broad margin.
"All of the exit polls pointed to a victory by Humala and his supporters were already celebrating, so we decided to wait for more ballots to be counted from the provinces, to have more realistic results," a source at ONPE told IPS.
In response to the delay, Humala supporters headed to the ONPE offices to complain. But the first preliminary results already indicated that Humala would beat Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), who is in prison for 25 years for corruption and human rights violations.
"There are two important political results coming out of these elections: for the first time a coalition including the left has won the national elections, and it has also managed to defeat all of the powers-that-be: the economic elites, the media, the (Catholic) Church, the government of the moment, and the rival candidate," sociologist Sinesio López at the Catholic Pontifical University of Peru told IPS.
López, who was one of Humala's professors when the candidate was earning his master's degree in political science, said that throughout the campaign, and especially between the first and second rounds, all of these power groups carried out an intense smear campaign against the candidate.
The country's business leaders questioned Humala's announced economic policies, raising the spectre of a wave of dismissals, capital flight and loss of investment, López said.
After Humala's triumph was announced, Peru’s main stock indexes fell more than eight percentage points before the Lima stock exchange suspended trade. Mining company shares fell the most.
Peru is one of the world's top producers of a number of minerals, including silver, tellurium, copper, tin, bismuth, lead, molybdenum, arsenic, gold and selenium, and is home to Latin America's biggest gold mine, Yanacocha.
Humala triumphed in 20 of Peru's 25 regions, including the areas most heavily affected by social conflicts such as protests against mining, in which demonstrators have been injured and killed in the past few years.
One example is the southern highlands region of Arequipa, where the Southern Peru gold mining company operates, and where Humala took 66.4 percent of the vote and Fujimori just 33.6 percent, according to the preliminary results.
The voting patterns in the runoff were similar to those seen in the first round, on Apr. 10: Humala's strongest support was in the impoverished southern highland regions, where a majority of the population is indigenous.
It was in those areas that the Fujimori regime had carried out a controversial forced sterilisation campaign in the 1990s, presented as part of the government's anti-poverty strategy.
In Huancavelica in the southwest, the country's poorest region, Humala garnered nearly 71 percent of the vote, compared to a mere 29 percent for Fujimori.
And in the neighbouring Ayacucho, another poor region that was among those hardest-hit by the violence during the 1980-2000 civil war, Humala won 72 percent against less than 28 percent for Fujimori.
"This is due to demand for economic growth with social inclusion," López told IPS. "Humala will have to implement very aggressive social policies in the regions not yet reached by the economic boom."
Fujimori, on the other hand, won by a comfortable margin in Lima, with nearly 57 percent of the vote against Humala's 43 percent.
She was also ahead in the four northern coastal regions: Tumbes, Piura, Lambayeque and La Libertad, traditional strongholds of President Alan García's APRA party.
Harvard political science professor Steve Levitsky, who is in Peru studying the political system, said one of Fujimori's big mistakes was her failure to distance herself from her father's legacy, which was marked by corruption, human rights crimes and excesses like the mass sterilisation of Andean indigenous women.
"Keiko Fujimori recognised what she called 'errors' on the part of her father's government," he told IPS. "But at the same time, her team included people from her father's regime, who formed part of an administration where corruption and human rights violations reigned. That was one of her big mistakes."
Voting is compulsory in Peru, where just under 40 percent of voters are between the ages of 20 and 35, and 34 percent of voters are in Lima.
Nato Chaos To Last
RT's Anissa Naouai talks to Alexander Cockburn, American political journalist, for more analysis on the turbulent situation in Libya and the Middle East.
Columbian Victims
Historic Compensation
Historic' Colombian Victims' Compensation Law Signed
11 June 2011
Colombia has passed a controversial law which aims to compensate an estimated four million victims of the country's long-running armed conflict.
The Victims' Law, described by President Juan Manuel Santos as "historic", allows damages to be paid to relatives of those killed.
It also seeks to restore millions of hectares of stolen land to its rightful owners.
Analysts say implementing the law is a huge challenge that may take a decade.
Marxist rebels continue their 47-year struggle to overthrow the government, while drug cartels ship hundreds of tonnes of cocaine out of the country, using the billions of dollars of earnings to undermine the state.
Violent response fears
The BBC correspondent in Colombia, Jeremy McDermott, says the compensation bill could total $20bn (£12.3bn).
He says that is a sum of money that the country just does not have at the moment.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the signing ceremony in the capital Bogota, described the law as an "important advance" for Colombia.
But he cautioned that the work had only just begun, and promised that the UN would help Colombia implement the legislation.
Last month, the Colombian government said owners had lost nearly seven million hectares (17m acres) of land over the past 25 years of armed conflict.
Agriculture Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo said paramilitaries, rebels and drug traffickers had used a mixture of violence and fraud to take control of land, which had made them immensely rich.
Some armed groups - which still occupy much of the stolen land - have already tried to undermine the process.
There are fears that they will respond violently to attempts by the rightful owners or the state to repossess the land.
On Tuesday, a campaigner for land restitution, Ana Fabricia Cordoba, was shot dead in the city of Medellin.
The Victims' Law, described by President Juan Manuel Santos as "historic", allows damages to be paid to relatives of those killed.
It also seeks to restore millions of hectares of stolen land to its rightful owners.
Analysts say implementing the law is a huge challenge that may take a decade.
Marxist rebels continue their 47-year struggle to overthrow the government, while drug cartels ship hundreds of tonnes of cocaine out of the country, using the billions of dollars of earnings to undermine the state.
Violent response fears
The BBC correspondent in Colombia, Jeremy McDermott, says the compensation bill could total $20bn (£12.3bn).
He says that is a sum of money that the country just does not have at the moment.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the signing ceremony in the capital Bogota, described the law as an "important advance" for Colombia.
But he cautioned that the work had only just begun, and promised that the UN would help Colombia implement the legislation.
Last month, the Colombian government said owners had lost nearly seven million hectares (17m acres) of land over the past 25 years of armed conflict.
Agriculture Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo said paramilitaries, rebels and drug traffickers had used a mixture of violence and fraud to take control of land, which had made them immensely rich.
Some armed groups - which still occupy much of the stolen land - have already tried to undermine the process.
There are fears that they will respond violently to attempts by the rightful owners or the state to repossess the land.
On Tuesday, a campaigner for land restitution, Ana Fabricia Cordoba, was shot dead in the city of Medellin.
Migration & Racism
History of Mexican Migration: Racism, the "Free Market" and
the Creation of "Illegal Aliens"
The history of U.S. immigration law, as we lay out in our page, The History of U.S. Immigration Laws, is a history of racism. In addition to justifying the virtual extermination and exclusion of Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans, after the Civil War, racism continued to be legally implemented not only through "Jim Crow " laws, but also through immigration legislation designed to exclude, first, Asians, and then non-WASP Europeans.
This legalized racism, of course, has also targeted Mexicans who have come to the United States. But as they did with the excluded Chinese, racist immigration laws came into conflict with the demands of U.S. businesses that sought cheap labor in a "free market." The result of this conflict between racism and market economics has been that Mexicans, and other Latin Americans, who have come to the U.S. - like all other immigrants - solely to seek work, have been turned into demonized, "illegal aliens" with no exit from their plight.
From the annexation of Mexican territory in 1848 until the end of the nineteenth century, no functional border actually existed between the two countries, as there were no immigration laws to enforce and no border patrol was needed. It is estimated that up to 50,000 Mexicans came into the Southwest as agricultural, railroad and mine workers between 1850 and 1880. The tradition of migrant labor was established early on. During the same period, and into the 1920's, Mexicans were the second largest group of people lynched, after African-Americans.
With the passage of the first, racist immigration laws in the 1880's and '90's, excluding Chinese laborers, the railroads and growers turned to Mexican laborers, creating the first Mexican contract labor system. The Immigration Act of 1917, designed to permanently exclude Asian immigrants, also excluded illiterates. However, with the approach of World War I, labor was in demand, so illiterate Mexican laborers were granted waivers by the Department of Labor, thus creating the first government sponsored bracero system, which lasted until 1921.
The advent of alcohol Prohibition in 1920 and the passage of the racist Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 precipitated the creation of the Border Patrol in 1924. Its mission was to keep out alcohol and "illegal aliens," that is, Chinese who were sneaking in via Canada and Mexico and any other "aliens" without the now-required immigration visa from a U.S. consular office in their home country. No quota was placed on Mexican immigrants, but they needed a visa to enter. Migrant workers, who had no interest in being "immigrants," were no longer granted waivers. Their need for work and the need of U.S. growers and other capitalists continued, so migrants now crossed the newly enforced border "illegally."
With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, annimosity arose against these "illegal aliens" as well as against legal Mexican immigrants and Mexican-American U.S. citizens. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) launched the first governmental assault on Mexicans in the U.S. About one million Mexicans were "repatriated" to Mexico over a ten year period. More than half were U.S. citizens.
World War II once again created a demand for labor. Agricultural labor was especially needed, as young U.S men went to war and those left at home went into factory work. The government therefore created the second bracero program. With continued post-war demand and then the Korean war, the program was continued until 1964, bringing over four million Mexican workers into the country on temporary work visas. However, this influx did not meet the need for agricultural workers, so many more came without these visas, "illegally."
In reaction, anti-Mexican animosity rose, leading the INS to launch its second deportation assault, "Operation Wetback," in 1954. Over one million Mexicans were apprehended. Ironically, because of growers' demands for labor, many were delivered at the border, not to Mexican authorities, but to workers from the Department of Labor, who issued them bracero work visas so that they could return "legally" to their employers's fields.
The bracero program was ended in 1964, in part due to exposure of the abuses of laborers by their employers. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 replaced it with the H-2 temporary work visas program. In the 1986 revision of immigration law, these visas were divided into agricultural (H-2A) and non-agricultural (H-2B) work visas. To access workers through the program, potential employers first had to certify to the Department of Labor that they could not find U.S. workers to fill the jobs. Once approved by the Labor Department, the employer then had to register with INS to process workers that he found to use the visas. Many employers did not choose to do this, but continued to use "illegal" migrants.
The 1984 law granted amnesty and a path to legal status to those in the country without such status. But it also began the process of fortifying the border with more Border Patrol agents and surveillance equipment to try to prevent more illegal crossings. President Bill Clinton continued this in the 1990's, initiating the building of a border fence. This attempt to seal the border actually led to a major change in migration patterns. Before this, migrants had moved relatively easily back and forth with the seasonal work needs. With the crossings made more difficult, migrants stayed put in the U.S. and even brought their families over. As a result, the number of "illegal" migrants increased and they became, in effect, permanent immigrants. Their children, now born here, are U.S. citizens.
The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, while touted to reduce migration, actually increased it significantly. With the dropping of Mexican tariffs, U.S. government-subsidized corn flooded the Mexican market, such that Mexican small farmers could not compete and had to abandon farming. Many migrated to the U.S. in order to survive.
The effort of President George W. Bush, in 2007, to get immigration reforms passed that would address the issue of "illegal immigrants" was stonewalled by right-wing forces that resorted to old racist fears of Mexican migrants. These same racist fears - and the political demagoguery that manipulates them - continue to demonize Mexicans and other Latin Americans as "illegal aliens," a status in fact created by racially motivated changes in U.S. law and that law's failures to address the demands and abuses of the U.S. labor market. Until these truths are recognized, Mexican and other Central American migrants will remain trapped outside the pale of legal acceptance.
This legalized racism, of course, has also targeted Mexicans who have come to the United States. But as they did with the excluded Chinese, racist immigration laws came into conflict with the demands of U.S. businesses that sought cheap labor in a "free market." The result of this conflict between racism and market economics has been that Mexicans, and other Latin Americans, who have come to the U.S. - like all other immigrants - solely to seek work, have been turned into demonized, "illegal aliens" with no exit from their plight.
From the annexation of Mexican territory in 1848 until the end of the nineteenth century, no functional border actually existed between the two countries, as there were no immigration laws to enforce and no border patrol was needed. It is estimated that up to 50,000 Mexicans came into the Southwest as agricultural, railroad and mine workers between 1850 and 1880. The tradition of migrant labor was established early on. During the same period, and into the 1920's, Mexicans were the second largest group of people lynched, after African-Americans.
With the passage of the first, racist immigration laws in the 1880's and '90's, excluding Chinese laborers, the railroads and growers turned to Mexican laborers, creating the first Mexican contract labor system. The Immigration Act of 1917, designed to permanently exclude Asian immigrants, also excluded illiterates. However, with the approach of World War I, labor was in demand, so illiterate Mexican laborers were granted waivers by the Department of Labor, thus creating the first government sponsored bracero system, which lasted until 1921.
The advent of alcohol Prohibition in 1920 and the passage of the racist Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 precipitated the creation of the Border Patrol in 1924. Its mission was to keep out alcohol and "illegal aliens," that is, Chinese who were sneaking in via Canada and Mexico and any other "aliens" without the now-required immigration visa from a U.S. consular office in their home country. No quota was placed on Mexican immigrants, but they needed a visa to enter. Migrant workers, who had no interest in being "immigrants," were no longer granted waivers. Their need for work and the need of U.S. growers and other capitalists continued, so migrants now crossed the newly enforced border "illegally."
With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, annimosity arose against these "illegal aliens" as well as against legal Mexican immigrants and Mexican-American U.S. citizens. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) launched the first governmental assault on Mexicans in the U.S. About one million Mexicans were "repatriated" to Mexico over a ten year period. More than half were U.S. citizens.
World War II once again created a demand for labor. Agricultural labor was especially needed, as young U.S men went to war and those left at home went into factory work. The government therefore created the second bracero program. With continued post-war demand and then the Korean war, the program was continued until 1964, bringing over four million Mexican workers into the country on temporary work visas. However, this influx did not meet the need for agricultural workers, so many more came without these visas, "illegally."
In reaction, anti-Mexican animosity rose, leading the INS to launch its second deportation assault, "Operation Wetback," in 1954. Over one million Mexicans were apprehended. Ironically, because of growers' demands for labor, many were delivered at the border, not to Mexican authorities, but to workers from the Department of Labor, who issued them bracero work visas so that they could return "legally" to their employers's fields.
The bracero program was ended in 1964, in part due to exposure of the abuses of laborers by their employers. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 replaced it with the H-2 temporary work visas program. In the 1986 revision of immigration law, these visas were divided into agricultural (H-2A) and non-agricultural (H-2B) work visas. To access workers through the program, potential employers first had to certify to the Department of Labor that they could not find U.S. workers to fill the jobs. Once approved by the Labor Department, the employer then had to register with INS to process workers that he found to use the visas. Many employers did not choose to do this, but continued to use "illegal" migrants.
The 1984 law granted amnesty and a path to legal status to those in the country without such status. But it also began the process of fortifying the border with more Border Patrol agents and surveillance equipment to try to prevent more illegal crossings. President Bill Clinton continued this in the 1990's, initiating the building of a border fence. This attempt to seal the border actually led to a major change in migration patterns. Before this, migrants had moved relatively easily back and forth with the seasonal work needs. With the crossings made more difficult, migrants stayed put in the U.S. and even brought their families over. As a result, the number of "illegal" migrants increased and they became, in effect, permanent immigrants. Their children, now born here, are U.S. citizens.
The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, while touted to reduce migration, actually increased it significantly. With the dropping of Mexican tariffs, U.S. government-subsidized corn flooded the Mexican market, such that Mexican small farmers could not compete and had to abandon farming. Many migrated to the U.S. in order to survive.
The effort of President George W. Bush, in 2007, to get immigration reforms passed that would address the issue of "illegal immigrants" was stonewalled by right-wing forces that resorted to old racist fears of Mexican migrants. These same racist fears - and the political demagoguery that manipulates them - continue to demonize Mexicans and other Latin Americans as "illegal aliens," a status in fact created by racially motivated changes in U.S. law and that law's failures to address the demands and abuses of the U.S. labor market. Until these truths are recognized, Mexican and other Central American migrants will remain trapped outside the pale of legal acceptance.
# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 6/11/2011 02:06:00 PM
HUSHED IRONY
US family farms struggled for survival during the depression of the 1930's. Farm subsidy recovery efforts saved them. There are few if any family farms there today. Most appearing as such actually work on contract to large agricultural corporations. Subsidies still exist but now go to the corporations rather than Uncle Jed and Aunt Mame. Subsidy enabled profit permits selling at less than production cost. Markets for the artificially under priced produce are other countries, including Mexico. Farmers there are unable to compete with artificially lower prices and driven from the land. So, they go where they can work. In sum, US taxpayers enrich corporations, allowing them in process to force Mexican (and other) farmers to work in the US for those same damn corporations. Amerikans get to eat $1 rather than $20 lettuce while directing their racism toward Mexicans whose labor permits that. The corporate executives smile at the suffering of some and stupidity of others.
Israel Attacks USA
By Paul Craig Roberts, an assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Reagan Administration, is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
19/06/08 "Hustler" -- -- -JUNE 8, 1967. On the fourth day of the Six Day War between Israel and Egypt, Syria and Jordan, the USS Liberty was positioned in international waters off the coast of Egypt. Israeli aircraft had flown over the vessel in the morning and had reported that it was American.
In close proximity to the war zone, the Liberty’s crew was reassured by the presence of Israeli aircraft. But at 2:00 p.m., sailors sunbathing on the deck saw fighter jets approaching in attack formation. Red flashes from the wings of the fighters were followed by explosions, blood and death. A beautiful afternoon in the eastern Mediterranean suddenly became a nightmare. Who was attacking the Liberty and why?
The attack on the Liberty was an attack on the United States of America. The Liberty was an intelligence ship. Its purpose was to monitor Soviet and Arab communications in order to warn both Tel Aviv and Washington should the Soviets enter the war on behalf of their Arab allies. The Liberty was armed only with four machine guns to repel boarders. Its request for a destroyer escort had been denied.
The assault on the Liberty is well documented. With no warning, the Liberty was attacked by successive waves of unmarked jets deploying cannons, rockets and napalm. The attacking jets jammed all of the U.S. communications frequencies, an indication they knew the Liberty was American.
The air assault failed to sink the ship. About 30 minutes into the attack, three torpedo boats appeared. Flying the Star of David, the vessels were not on a rescue mission. They proceeded to attack the Liberty with cannons, machine guns and torpedoes. One torpedo struck the Liberty midship, instantly killing 25 Americans while flooding the lower decks. The Israeli torpedo boats later struck the life rafts the Liberty crew had launched when preparing to abandon ship, sending the message that there would be no survivors.
At approximately 3:15 two French-built Israeli helicopters carrying armed troops appeared over the Liberty. Phil Tourney could see their faces only 50 to 60 feet away. He gave them the finger. Surviving crew members are convinced the Israelis were sent to board and kill all survivors. The Israeli jets destroyed the Liberty ’s communication antennas.
While under attack, crew members strung lines that permitted the ship to send a call for help. Once notified, the Sixth Fleet commander ordered the carriers USS America and USS Saratoga to launch fighters to drive off or destroy the attackers. The unencrypted order was picked up by Israel, which immediately called off its attack. The torpedo boats and the hovering helicopters sped away. Tel Aviv quickly notified Washington that it had mistakenly attacked an American intelligence ship, and the U.S. fighters were recalled. However, a subsequent rescue mission was aborted by direct orders from Washington.
The USS Liberty suffered 70% casualties, with 34 killed and at least 171 wounded. Although the expensive, then-state-of-theart vessel was kept afloat by the heroic crew, it later proved unsalvageable and was sold as scrap.
Why Didn’t Help Come?
No explanation has ever been given by the U.S. government for Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and President Lyndon B. Johnson’s orders for the Sixth Fleet to abort a rescue mission. Lieutenant Commander David Lewis of the Liberty told colleagues that Admiral L.R. Geis, commander of the Sixth Fleet carrier force, informed him that when he challenged McNamara’s order to recall the rescue mission, LBJ came on the line and said he didn’t care if the ship sank; he wasn’t going to embarrass an ally. The communications officer handling the transmission has given the same account.
Dead in the Water—a 2002 BBC documentary on the Israeli raid—reported that confusion about the attacker’s identity almost resulted in a U.S. assault on Egypt. Richard Parker, at the time this country’s political counselor in Cairo, confirmed in the documentary that he received official communication that an American retaliatory attack on Egypt was imminent.
The U.S. government’s official position on the USS Liberty corresponds with Israel’s: The attack was unintentional and a result of Israeli blunders. This is the official position despite the fact that Lyndon B. Johnson’s CIA Director Richard Helms, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Assistant Secretary of State Lucius Battle and a long list of Naval officers, government officials and Liberty survivors are on record saying the Israeli attack was intentional.
According to Helms, Battle and the minutes of a White House meeting, Johnson believed the attack was intentional. Helms says LBJ was furious and complained when the New York Times buried the story on page 29, but that the President finally decided he had to publicly accept Israel’s explanation. “The political pressure was too much,” Helms said.
U.S. communications personnel, intelligence analysts and ambassadors all report having read U.S. intercepts of Israeli orders to attack the Liberty. In one intercept an Israeli pilot reports that the Liberty is an American ship and asks for a repeat and clarification of his orders to attack an American ship.
An Israeli who identified himself as one of the pilots involved later came to America and met with U.S. Representative Pete McCloskey and Liberty survivors. The airman said he had refused to participate in the attack when he saw that the target was an American ship. He was arrested upon returning to base.
The Liberty flew the Stars and Stripes. The ship’s pendant number GTR-5, measured several feet in height on both sides of the bow. On the stern the name of the vessel was clearly denoted in large letters of the Latin alphabet. Mistaking the Liberty for an Egyptian ship, as Israel claims to have done, was impossible.
Tattered Flags Show Ferocity of the Attacks: The Israelis claim the Liberty flew no flag, but two U.S. flags full of holes from the attack exist. When the first was shot down, crewmen replaced it. Measuring 13 feet across, this flag—bearing battle scars—is on display at the NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Mead, Maryland.
Admiral John S. McCain Jr., the father of the current U.S. senator, ordered Admiral Isaac C. Kidd and Captain Ward Boston to hold a court of inquiry and to complete the investigation in only one week. In a signed affidavit, Captain Boston said President Johnson ordered a coverup and that he and Admiral Kidd were prevented from doing a real investigation. Liberty survivors were ordered never to speak to anyone about the incident. Their silence was finally broken in 1980 when Random House published Lieutenant Commander James Ennes Jr.’s book Assault on the Liberty.
It is now established fact that the attack on the Liberty was intentional and was covered up by President Johnson and every administration since. There has never been a Congressional investigation, nor have the majority of survivors ever officially testified. Moreover, testimony that conflicted with the coverup was deleted from the official record.
Disgusted by the U.S. government’s official stance discounting the survivors’ reports, Admiral Thomas Moorer—retired Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—organized and headed a commission to make public the known facts about the attack and coverup. The Moorer Commission also included Admiral Merlin Staring (former Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy), Marine Corps General Raymond G. Davis and James Akins (onetime U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia).
The commission’s October 22, 2003, report concluded: “That there is compelling evidence that Israel’s attack was a deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew.
“That fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty by recalling Sixth Fleet military rescue support while the ship was under attack.
“[That] surviving crew members were later threatened with ‘court-martial, imprisonment or worse’ if they exposed the truth; and [the survivors] were abandoned by their own government.
“That there has been an official coverup without precedent in American naval history.
“That a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation.”
Why did Israel attack the Liberty?
Was something supersecret going on that is so damaging, it must be protected at all cost? Some experts believe Tel Aviv decided to sink the Liberty because the ship’s surveillance capability would discover Israel’s impending invasion and capture of Syria’s Golan Heights, an action opposed by Washington.
Others believe Israel was concerned the Liberty would discover Israel’s alleged massacre of hundreds of Egyptian POWs, which supposedly happened contemporaneously with the attack on the U.S. ship. Still others believe that Israel intended to blame the attack on Egypt in order to lure America into the war. It is known that the United States was providing Israel with reconnaissance and that there were joint U.S.-Israeli covert operations against the Arabs, undertakings Washington was desperate to keep secret.
Survivors with whom I spoke said the attack was the easy part of the experience. The hard part has been living with 40 years of official coverup and betrayal by the U.S. government. One survivor said that he was asked to leave his Baptist church when he spoke about the Liberty, because the minister and fellow churchgoers felt more loyalty to Israel than to a member of the congregation who had served his country. His church’s position was that if our government believed Israel, the survivors should also.
Survivor Phil Tourney said that “being forced to live with a coverup is like being raped and no one will believe you.”
Survivor Gary Brummett said he “feels like someone who has been locked up for 40 years on a wrongful conviction.” Until the U.S. government acknowledges the truth of the attack, Brummett says the survivors are forced to live with the anger and dismay of being betrayed by the country they served.
Survivor Bryce Lockwood has been angry ever since June 8, 1967. The torpedo that killed his shipmates, wrecked his ship and damaged his health had been manufactured in the USA.
Survivor Ernie Gallo told me he “has been haunted for four decades” by the knowledge that his commander in chief recalled the U.S. fighters that could have prevented most of the Liberty ’s casualties.
Liberty survivors say it is difficult to know which is worse: Israel’s intentional attack on an American ship or the U.S. government’s participation in a conspiracy with Israel to keep the truth from the American people.
Every American should be troubled by the fact that the President of the United States and the secretary of defense prevented the U.S. Sixth Fleet from protecting a U.S. Naval vessel and its 297-man crew from foreign attack. They should also be troubled that the President ordered the Navy to determine the attack was unintentional and that the coverup ordered by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1967 remains the official position of the U.S. government.
Note: This article is based entirely on documented sources and on interviews with six Liberty survivors, as well as Captain Ward Boston and Bill Knutson, the executive officer of the USS America fighter squadron dispatched on the first aborted rescue mission. For additional information, see USSLiberty.org.
Thursday, June 09, 2011
Frat House With Guns
By Peter Van Buren and lifted from Asia Times, 9 June 2011
Way out on the edge of Forward Operating Base Hammer, where I lived for much of my year in Iraq as a Provincial Reconstruction Team leader for the United States Department of State, there were several small hills, lumps of raised dirt on the otherwise frying-pan-flat desert. These were "tells", ancient garbage dumps and fallen buildings.
Thousands of years ago, people in the region used sun-dried bricks to build homes and walls. Those bricks had a lifespan of about 20 years before they began to crumble, at which point locals just built anew atop the old foundation. Do that for a while, and soon enough your buildings are sitting on a small hill.
At night, the tell area was very dark, as we avoided artificial light in order not to give passing insurgents easy targets. In that darkness, you could imagine the earliest inhabitants of what was now our base looking at the night sky and be reminded that we were not the first to move into Iraq from afar. It was also a promise across time that someday someone would undoubtedly sit atop our own ruins and wonder whatever happened to the Americans.
From that ancient debris field, recall the almost forgotten run-up to the American invasion, the now-ridiculous threats about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, Secretary of State Colin Powell lying away his own and America's prestige at the United Nations, those "Mission-Accomplished" days when the marines tore down Saddam's statue and conquered Baghdad, the darker times as civil society imploded and Iraq devolved into civil war, the endless rounds of purple fingers for stage-managed elections that meant little, the "surge" and the ugly stalemate that followed, fading to gray as president George W Bush negotiated a complete withdrawal of US forces from Iraq by the end of 2011 and the seeming end of his dreams of a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East.
Now, with less than seven months left until that withdrawal moment, Washington debates whether to honor the agreement, or - if only we can get the Iraqi government to ask us to stay - to leave a decent-sized contingent of soldiers occupying some of the massive bases the Pentagon built hoping for permanent occupancy.
To the extent that any attention is paid to Iraq here in Snooki's America, the debate over whether eight years of war entitles the US military to some kind of Iraqi squatter's rights is the story that will undoubtedly get most of the press in the coming months.
How this won't end
Even if the troops do finally leave, the question is: Will that actually bring the US occupation of Iraq to a close? During the invasion of 2003, a younger David Petraeus famously asked a reporter: "Tell me how this ends."
Dave, it may not actually end. After all, as of October 1, 2011, full responsibility for the US presence in Iraq will officially be transferred from the military to the Department of State. In other words, as Washington imagines it, the occupation won't really end at all, even if the landlords are switched.
And the State Department hasn't exactly been thinking small when it comes to its future "footprint" on Iraqi soil. The US mission in Baghdad remains the world's largest embassy, built on a tract of land about the size of the Vatican and visible from space. It cost just $736 million to build - or was it $1 billion, depending on how you count the post-construction upgrades and fixes?
In its post-"withdrawal" plans, the State Department expects to have 17,000 personnel in Iraq at some 15 sites. If those plans go as expected, 5,500 of them will be mercenaries, hired to shoot-to-kill Iraqis as needed, to maintain security. Of the remaining 11,500, most will be in support roles of one sort or another, with only a couple of hundred in traditional diplomatic jobs. This is not unusual in wartime situations.
The military, for example, typically fields about seven support soldiers for every "shooter". In other words, the occupation run by a heavily militarized State Department will simply continue in a new, truncated form - unless the US Congress refuses to pay for it.
It would better serve America's interests to have an embassy sized to the message we now need to send to the Middle East, and it shouldn't be one of boastful conquest.
A place to call home
After initially setting up shop in a selection of Saddam's Disneyesque palaces (in one of the dumbest PR moves of all time), plans were made to build an embassy worthy of the over-the-top optimism and bravado that characterized the invasion itself.
Though officially photos of the inside of the embassy compound are not allowed for "security" reasons, a quick Google search under "US Embassy Baghdad" turns up plenty, including some of the early architectural renderings of the future gargantuan compound. (Historical minifact: back in 2007, TomDispatch first broke the story that the architect's version of the embassy's secret interior was displayed all pink and naked online.)
The blind optimism of that moment was best embodied in the international school building stuck in one corner of the embassy compound. Though a fierce civil-war-cum-insurgency was then raging in Iraq, the idea was that, soon enough, diplomatic families would be assigned to Baghdad, just as they were to Paris or Seoul, and naturally the kids would need a school. It may seem silly now, but few doubted it then.
Apartments were built, each with a full set of the usual American appliances, including dishwashers, in expectation that those families would be shopping for food at a near-future Sadr City Safeway and that diplo-tots Timmy and Sally would need their dinners after a long day at school. Wide walkways, shaded by trees and dotted with stone benches - ultimately never implemented - were part of the overall design for success, and in memory now serve as comic rim-shots for our past hubris.
In la-la land they may have been, but even the embassy planners couldn't help but leave some room for the creeping realities of an Iraq in chaos. The compound would purify its own water, generate its own power, and process its own sewage, ensuring that it could outlast any siege and, at the same time, getting the US off the hook for repairing such basic services in Baghdad proper.
High walls went up rimmed with razor wire, and an ever-more complex set of gates and security checkpoints kept creeping into the design. Eventually, the architects just gave up, built a cafeteria, filled the school building with work cubicles, and installed inches-thick bulletproof glass on every window. The embassy's housing for 4,000 is, at present, packed, while the electrical generators run at capacity 24/7. They need to be upgraded and new units added very soon simply to keep the lights on.
And now, the embassy staff in Baghdad is about to double. One plan to accommodate extra personnel involves hot-bunking - sharing beds on day-and-night shifts as happens on submarines.
The embassy will also soon need a hospital on its grounds, if the US Army truly departs and takes its facilities with it. Iraqi medical care is considered too substandard and Iraqi hospitals too dangerous for use by white folks.
You and whose army?
A fortress needs guards, and an occupier needs shock troops. The State Department's army will be divided into two parts: those who guard fixed facilities like the embassy and those who protect diplomats as they scurry about trying to corral the mad Iraqis running the country.
For static security, a company named SOC will guard the embassy facilities for up to $973 million over five years. That deflowered old warhorse Blackwater (now Xe), under yet another dummy corporate name, will also get a piece of action, and of the money pie.
SOC will undoubtedly follow the current security company's lead and employ almost exclusively Ugandans and Peruvians transported to Iraq for that purpose. For the same reasons Mexicans cut American lawns and Hondurans clean American hotel rooms, embassy guards come from poverty-stricken countries and get paid accordingly - about $600 a month.
Their US supervisors, on the other hand, pull down $20,000 of your tax dollars monthly. Many of the Ugandan and Peruvian guards got their jobs through nasty intermediaries ("pimps," "slavers"), who take back most of their meager salaries to repay "recruitment costs," leaving many guards as little more than indentured servants.
Long-time merc group Triple Canopy will provide protection outside the embassy fortress, reputedly for $1.5 billion over a five-year span. The overall goal is for State to have its own private army in Iraq: those 5,500 hired guns, almost two full brigades worth of them. The Army guards Fort Knox with fewer soldiers; my Forward Operating Base made due with less then 400 troops and I slept comfortably.
The past mayhem caused by contracted security is well known, with massacres in public squares, drunken murders in the Green Zone, and the like. Think of the mercs as what the army might be like without its NCOs and officers: a frat house with guns.
Most of them are Americans, though with a few exotic Brits and shady South Africans thrown in. They love 5.11 clothing and favor fingerless leather gloves. Think biker gang or Insane Clown Posse fan boys.
Popular is a clean-shaven head, no moustache but a spiky goatee teased straight out. You know the look from late-night convenience store beer runs. They walk around like Yosemite Sam, arms out as if their very biceps prevented them from standing straight. They're bullies of course, flirting inappropriately with women and posturing around men. Count on them to wear the most expensive Oakley sunglasses and the most unnecessary gear (gold man-bracelets, tactical hair gel). Think: Jersey Shore rejects.
Aggressive tattoos on all exposed skin seem a prerequisite for membership in Club Merc, especially wavy inked patterns around the biceps and on the neck. They all let on that they were once SEALS, Green Berets, SAS, or Legion of Doom members, but of course they "can't talk about it". They're not likely to disclose last names and tend to go by nicknames like Bulldog, Spider, Red Bull, Wolverine or Smitty.
If arrogance was contagious they'd all be sneezing. All Aryan, all dudely, and now all that stands between those thousands of State Department personnel and Iraq. Oh yes: the seersuckered and bow-tied diplomats are supposed to supervise the mercs and keep them on the right diplomatic path, kind of like expecting the chess club to run herd on the football team.
Air America
With the US Army departing in whole or in part by year's end, most of the array of army air assets State used will need to be replaced. A recently released State Department Office of the Inspector General's (OIG) "Report on Department of State Planning for the Transition to a Civilian-led Mission in Iraq Performance Evaluation" explains that our diplomats will, in the future, have their own little Air America in Iraq, a fleet of 46 aircraft, including:
20 medium lift S-61 helicopters (essentially Black Hawks, possibly armed)
18 light lift UH-1N helicopters (new models of ‘Nam era Hueys, possibly armed)
Three light observation MD-530 helicopters (Little Birds, armed, for quick response strike teams… er, um, observation duties)
Five Dash 8 fixed-wing aircraft (50-passenger capacity to move personnel into the "theater" from Jordan)
The OIG report also notes that State will need to construct landing zones, maintenance hangars, operation buildings, and air traffic control towers, along with an independent aviation logistics system for maintenance and fueling. And yes, the diplomats are supposed to supervise this, too, the goal being to prevent an Iraqi from being gunned down from an attack helo with diplomatic license plates. What could go wrong?
How much?
At this point, has cost started to cross your mind? Well, some 74% of embassy Baghdad's operating costs will be going to "security". State requested $2.7 billion from congress for its Iraq operations in FY 2011, but got only $2.3 billion from a budget-minded Capitol Hill.
Facing the possibility of being all alone in a dangerous universe in FY 2012, the department has requested $6.3 billion for Iraq. Congress has yet to decide what to do. To put these figures in perspective, the State Department total operating budget for this year is only about $14 billion (the cost of running the place, absent the foreign aid money), so $6.3 billion for one more year in Iraq is a genuine chunk of change.
How does it end?
Which only leaves the question of why.
Pick your forum - TomDispatch readers at a kegger, Fox news pundits following the Sarah Palin bus, high school students preparing to take SATs, unemployed factory workers in a food-stamp line - and ask if any group of Americans (not living in official Washington) would conclude that Iraq was our most important foreign policy priority, and so deserving of our largest embassy with the largest staff and largest budget on the planet.
Does Iraq threaten US security? Does it control a resource we demand? (Yes, it's got lots of oil underground, but produces remarkably little of the stuff.) Is Iraq enmeshed in some international coalition we need to butter up? Any evil dictators or weapons of mass destruction around? Does Iraq hold trillions in US debt? Anything? Anyone? Bueller?
Eight disastrous years after we invaded, it is sad but altogether true that Iraq does not matter much in the end. It is a terrible thing that we poured 4,459 American lives and trillions of dollars into the war, and without irony oversaw the deaths of at least a hundred thousand, and probably hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis in the name of freedom. Yet we are left with only one argument for transferring our occupation duties from the Department of Defense to the Department of State: something vague about our "investment in blood and treasure".
Think of this as the Vegas model of foreign policy: keep the suckers at the table throwing good money after bad. Leaving aside the idea that "blood and treasure" sounds like a line from Pirates of the Caribbean, one must ask: What accomplishment are we protecting?
The war's initial aim was to stop those weapons of mass destruction from being used against us. There were none, so check that off the list. Then it was to get rid of Saddam. He was hanged in 2006, so cross off that one. A little late in the game we became preoccupied with ensuring an Iraq that was "free." And we've had a bunch of elections and there is a government of sorts in place to prove it, so that one's gotta go, too.
What follows won't be "investment", just more waste. The occupation of Iraq, centered around that engorged embassy, is now the equivalent of a self-licking ice cream cone, useful only to itself.
Changing the occupying force from an exhausted US Army that labored away for years at a low-grade version of diplomacy (drinking endless cups of Iraqi tea) to a newly militarized Department of State will not free us from the cul-de-sac we find ourselves in. While nothing will erase the stain of the invasion, were we to really leave when we promised to leave, the U.S. might have a passing shot at launching a new narrative in a Middle East already on edge over the Arab Spring.
Embassies are, at the end of the day, symbols. Sustaining our massive one in Iraq, with its ever-lengthening logistics and security train, simply emphasizes our failure there and our stubborn inability to admit that we were wrong. When a country becomes too dangerous for diplomacy, like Libya, we temporarily close our embassy.
When a country becomes dangerous, but US interests are still at stake, as in Yemen, we withdraw all but essential personnel. Similarly, in Baghdad, what's needed is a modest-sized embassy staffed not by thousands but by scores - that is, only the limited number of people necessary to make the point that it is no longer an extension of a failed occupation.
Nothing can change the past in the Middle East, but withdrawing the troops on schedule and downsizing our embassy radically to emphasize that we are no longer in the business of claiming more space for the American empire might very well help change the future.
Peter Van Buren spent a year in Iraq as a State Department Foreign Service Officer serving as team leader for two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Now in Washington, he writes about Iraq and the Middle East at his blog, We Meant Well. His book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books), will be published this September and can be preordered by clicking here. To listen to Timothy MacBain's two-part TomCast audio interview in which Van Buren discusses Washington going through withdrawal over Iraq and the mercenaries it's leaving behind, click here.
Way out on the edge of Forward Operating Base Hammer, where I lived for much of my year in Iraq as a Provincial Reconstruction Team leader for the United States Department of State, there were several small hills, lumps of raised dirt on the otherwise frying-pan-flat desert. These were "tells", ancient garbage dumps and fallen buildings.
Thousands of years ago, people in the region used sun-dried bricks to build homes and walls. Those bricks had a lifespan of about 20 years before they began to crumble, at which point locals just built anew atop the old foundation. Do that for a while, and soon enough your buildings are sitting on a small hill.
At night, the tell area was very dark, as we avoided artificial light in order not to give passing insurgents easy targets. In that darkness, you could imagine the earliest inhabitants of what was now our base looking at the night sky and be reminded that we were not the first to move into Iraq from afar. It was also a promise across time that someday someone would undoubtedly sit atop our own ruins and wonder whatever happened to the Americans.
From that ancient debris field, recall the almost forgotten run-up to the American invasion, the now-ridiculous threats about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, Secretary of State Colin Powell lying away his own and America's prestige at the United Nations, those "Mission-Accomplished" days when the marines tore down Saddam's statue and conquered Baghdad, the darker times as civil society imploded and Iraq devolved into civil war, the endless rounds of purple fingers for stage-managed elections that meant little, the "surge" and the ugly stalemate that followed, fading to gray as president George W Bush negotiated a complete withdrawal of US forces from Iraq by the end of 2011 and the seeming end of his dreams of a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East.
Now, with less than seven months left until that withdrawal moment, Washington debates whether to honor the agreement, or - if only we can get the Iraqi government to ask us to stay - to leave a decent-sized contingent of soldiers occupying some of the massive bases the Pentagon built hoping for permanent occupancy.
To the extent that any attention is paid to Iraq here in Snooki's America, the debate over whether eight years of war entitles the US military to some kind of Iraqi squatter's rights is the story that will undoubtedly get most of the press in the coming months.
How this won't end
Even if the troops do finally leave, the question is: Will that actually bring the US occupation of Iraq to a close? During the invasion of 2003, a younger David Petraeus famously asked a reporter: "Tell me how this ends."
Dave, it may not actually end. After all, as of October 1, 2011, full responsibility for the US presence in Iraq will officially be transferred from the military to the Department of State. In other words, as Washington imagines it, the occupation won't really end at all, even if the landlords are switched.
And the State Department hasn't exactly been thinking small when it comes to its future "footprint" on Iraqi soil. The US mission in Baghdad remains the world's largest embassy, built on a tract of land about the size of the Vatican and visible from space. It cost just $736 million to build - or was it $1 billion, depending on how you count the post-construction upgrades and fixes?
In its post-"withdrawal" plans, the State Department expects to have 17,000 personnel in Iraq at some 15 sites. If those plans go as expected, 5,500 of them will be mercenaries, hired to shoot-to-kill Iraqis as needed, to maintain security. Of the remaining 11,500, most will be in support roles of one sort or another, with only a couple of hundred in traditional diplomatic jobs. This is not unusual in wartime situations.
The military, for example, typically fields about seven support soldiers for every "shooter". In other words, the occupation run by a heavily militarized State Department will simply continue in a new, truncated form - unless the US Congress refuses to pay for it.
It would better serve America's interests to have an embassy sized to the message we now need to send to the Middle East, and it shouldn't be one of boastful conquest.
A place to call home
After initially setting up shop in a selection of Saddam's Disneyesque palaces (in one of the dumbest PR moves of all time), plans were made to build an embassy worthy of the over-the-top optimism and bravado that characterized the invasion itself.
Though officially photos of the inside of the embassy compound are not allowed for "security" reasons, a quick Google search under "US Embassy Baghdad" turns up plenty, including some of the early architectural renderings of the future gargantuan compound. (Historical minifact: back in 2007, TomDispatch first broke the story that the architect's version of the embassy's secret interior was displayed all pink and naked online.)
The blind optimism of that moment was best embodied in the international school building stuck in one corner of the embassy compound. Though a fierce civil-war-cum-insurgency was then raging in Iraq, the idea was that, soon enough, diplomatic families would be assigned to Baghdad, just as they were to Paris or Seoul, and naturally the kids would need a school. It may seem silly now, but few doubted it then.
Apartments were built, each with a full set of the usual American appliances, including dishwashers, in expectation that those families would be shopping for food at a near-future Sadr City Safeway and that diplo-tots Timmy and Sally would need their dinners after a long day at school. Wide walkways, shaded by trees and dotted with stone benches - ultimately never implemented - were part of the overall design for success, and in memory now serve as comic rim-shots for our past hubris.
In la-la land they may have been, but even the embassy planners couldn't help but leave some room for the creeping realities of an Iraq in chaos. The compound would purify its own water, generate its own power, and process its own sewage, ensuring that it could outlast any siege and, at the same time, getting the US off the hook for repairing such basic services in Baghdad proper.
High walls went up rimmed with razor wire, and an ever-more complex set of gates and security checkpoints kept creeping into the design. Eventually, the architects just gave up, built a cafeteria, filled the school building with work cubicles, and installed inches-thick bulletproof glass on every window. The embassy's housing for 4,000 is, at present, packed, while the electrical generators run at capacity 24/7. They need to be upgraded and new units added very soon simply to keep the lights on.
And now, the embassy staff in Baghdad is about to double. One plan to accommodate extra personnel involves hot-bunking - sharing beds on day-and-night shifts as happens on submarines.
The embassy will also soon need a hospital on its grounds, if the US Army truly departs and takes its facilities with it. Iraqi medical care is considered too substandard and Iraqi hospitals too dangerous for use by white folks.
You and whose army?
A fortress needs guards, and an occupier needs shock troops. The State Department's army will be divided into two parts: those who guard fixed facilities like the embassy and those who protect diplomats as they scurry about trying to corral the mad Iraqis running the country.
For static security, a company named SOC will guard the embassy facilities for up to $973 million over five years. That deflowered old warhorse Blackwater (now Xe), under yet another dummy corporate name, will also get a piece of action, and of the money pie.
SOC will undoubtedly follow the current security company's lead and employ almost exclusively Ugandans and Peruvians transported to Iraq for that purpose. For the same reasons Mexicans cut American lawns and Hondurans clean American hotel rooms, embassy guards come from poverty-stricken countries and get paid accordingly - about $600 a month.
Their US supervisors, on the other hand, pull down $20,000 of your tax dollars monthly. Many of the Ugandan and Peruvian guards got their jobs through nasty intermediaries ("pimps," "slavers"), who take back most of their meager salaries to repay "recruitment costs," leaving many guards as little more than indentured servants.
Long-time merc group Triple Canopy will provide protection outside the embassy fortress, reputedly for $1.5 billion over a five-year span. The overall goal is for State to have its own private army in Iraq: those 5,500 hired guns, almost two full brigades worth of them. The Army guards Fort Knox with fewer soldiers; my Forward Operating Base made due with less then 400 troops and I slept comfortably.
The past mayhem caused by contracted security is well known, with massacres in public squares, drunken murders in the Green Zone, and the like. Think of the mercs as what the army might be like without its NCOs and officers: a frat house with guns.
Most of them are Americans, though with a few exotic Brits and shady South Africans thrown in. They love 5.11 clothing and favor fingerless leather gloves. Think biker gang or Insane Clown Posse fan boys.
Popular is a clean-shaven head, no moustache but a spiky goatee teased straight out. You know the look from late-night convenience store beer runs. They walk around like Yosemite Sam, arms out as if their very biceps prevented them from standing straight. They're bullies of course, flirting inappropriately with women and posturing around men. Count on them to wear the most expensive Oakley sunglasses and the most unnecessary gear (gold man-bracelets, tactical hair gel). Think: Jersey Shore rejects.
Aggressive tattoos on all exposed skin seem a prerequisite for membership in Club Merc, especially wavy inked patterns around the biceps and on the neck. They all let on that they were once SEALS, Green Berets, SAS, or Legion of Doom members, but of course they "can't talk about it". They're not likely to disclose last names and tend to go by nicknames like Bulldog, Spider, Red Bull, Wolverine or Smitty.
If arrogance was contagious they'd all be sneezing. All Aryan, all dudely, and now all that stands between those thousands of State Department personnel and Iraq. Oh yes: the seersuckered and bow-tied diplomats are supposed to supervise the mercs and keep them on the right diplomatic path, kind of like expecting the chess club to run herd on the football team.
Air America
With the US Army departing in whole or in part by year's end, most of the array of army air assets State used will need to be replaced. A recently released State Department Office of the Inspector General's (OIG) "Report on Department of State Planning for the Transition to a Civilian-led Mission in Iraq Performance Evaluation" explains that our diplomats will, in the future, have their own little Air America in Iraq, a fleet of 46 aircraft, including:
20 medium lift S-61 helicopters (essentially Black Hawks, possibly armed)
18 light lift UH-1N helicopters (new models of ‘Nam era Hueys, possibly armed)
Three light observation MD-530 helicopters (Little Birds, armed, for quick response strike teams… er, um, observation duties)
Five Dash 8 fixed-wing aircraft (50-passenger capacity to move personnel into the "theater" from Jordan)
The OIG report also notes that State will need to construct landing zones, maintenance hangars, operation buildings, and air traffic control towers, along with an independent aviation logistics system for maintenance and fueling. And yes, the diplomats are supposed to supervise this, too, the goal being to prevent an Iraqi from being gunned down from an attack helo with diplomatic license plates. What could go wrong?
How much?
At this point, has cost started to cross your mind? Well, some 74% of embassy Baghdad's operating costs will be going to "security". State requested $2.7 billion from congress for its Iraq operations in FY 2011, but got only $2.3 billion from a budget-minded Capitol Hill.
Facing the possibility of being all alone in a dangerous universe in FY 2012, the department has requested $6.3 billion for Iraq. Congress has yet to decide what to do. To put these figures in perspective, the State Department total operating budget for this year is only about $14 billion (the cost of running the place, absent the foreign aid money), so $6.3 billion for one more year in Iraq is a genuine chunk of change.
How does it end?
Which only leaves the question of why.
Pick your forum - TomDispatch readers at a kegger, Fox news pundits following the Sarah Palin bus, high school students preparing to take SATs, unemployed factory workers in a food-stamp line - and ask if any group of Americans (not living in official Washington) would conclude that Iraq was our most important foreign policy priority, and so deserving of our largest embassy with the largest staff and largest budget on the planet.
Does Iraq threaten US security? Does it control a resource we demand? (Yes, it's got lots of oil underground, but produces remarkably little of the stuff.) Is Iraq enmeshed in some international coalition we need to butter up? Any evil dictators or weapons of mass destruction around? Does Iraq hold trillions in US debt? Anything? Anyone? Bueller?
Eight disastrous years after we invaded, it is sad but altogether true that Iraq does not matter much in the end. It is a terrible thing that we poured 4,459 American lives and trillions of dollars into the war, and without irony oversaw the deaths of at least a hundred thousand, and probably hundreds of thousands, of Iraqis in the name of freedom. Yet we are left with only one argument for transferring our occupation duties from the Department of Defense to the Department of State: something vague about our "investment in blood and treasure".
Think of this as the Vegas model of foreign policy: keep the suckers at the table throwing good money after bad. Leaving aside the idea that "blood and treasure" sounds like a line from Pirates of the Caribbean, one must ask: What accomplishment are we protecting?
The war's initial aim was to stop those weapons of mass destruction from being used against us. There were none, so check that off the list. Then it was to get rid of Saddam. He was hanged in 2006, so cross off that one. A little late in the game we became preoccupied with ensuring an Iraq that was "free." And we've had a bunch of elections and there is a government of sorts in place to prove it, so that one's gotta go, too.
What follows won't be "investment", just more waste. The occupation of Iraq, centered around that engorged embassy, is now the equivalent of a self-licking ice cream cone, useful only to itself.
Changing the occupying force from an exhausted US Army that labored away for years at a low-grade version of diplomacy (drinking endless cups of Iraqi tea) to a newly militarized Department of State will not free us from the cul-de-sac we find ourselves in. While nothing will erase the stain of the invasion, were we to really leave when we promised to leave, the U.S. might have a passing shot at launching a new narrative in a Middle East already on edge over the Arab Spring.
Embassies are, at the end of the day, symbols. Sustaining our massive one in Iraq, with its ever-lengthening logistics and security train, simply emphasizes our failure there and our stubborn inability to admit that we were wrong. When a country becomes too dangerous for diplomacy, like Libya, we temporarily close our embassy.
When a country becomes dangerous, but US interests are still at stake, as in Yemen, we withdraw all but essential personnel. Similarly, in Baghdad, what's needed is a modest-sized embassy staffed not by thousands but by scores - that is, only the limited number of people necessary to make the point that it is no longer an extension of a failed occupation.
Nothing can change the past in the Middle East, but withdrawing the troops on schedule and downsizing our embassy radically to emphasize that we are no longer in the business of claiming more space for the American empire might very well help change the future.
Peter Van Buren spent a year in Iraq as a State Department Foreign Service Officer serving as team leader for two Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Now in Washington, he writes about Iraq and the Middle East at his blog, We Meant Well. His book, We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People (The American Empire Project, Metropolitan Books), will be published this September and can be preordered by clicking here. To listen to Timothy MacBain's two-part TomCast audio interview in which Van Buren discusses Washington going through withdrawal over Iraq and the mercenaries it's leaving behind, click here.
Bilderbergs Meet
They're Gonna Get You
If You Don't Watch Out
By Alex Newman, 08 June 2011
A secretive cabal of some of the world’s most influential people known as the Bilderberg group will be meeting from June 9 to the 12th in St. Moritz, Switzerland — but this year, more attention than usual is being afforded to the gathering in the world press.
The shadowy organization — made up of about 120 central bankers, top CEOs, academics, European royalty, big bankers, high-ranking politicians and even representatives of the establishment media — has been getting together once a year since the mid-1950s. The group of “leading citizens,” as attendees are described on the group’s purported official website, gets its name from the Bilderberg Hotel in Holland where the first meeting was held in 1954.
Until recently, almost the entire international media establishment maintained an apparent information blackout of the yearly gatherings. Despite the fact that representatives of some of the world’s largest news outlets are always present at the conference, the vast majority of event coverage has generally come from the alternative press.
The rise of the Internet and widespread media choice, however, appear to have had a major effect. This year, the Bilderberg conference is attracting far more scrutiny than past gatherings — in line with a steady trend over the last few years of increasing awareness surrounding the affair.
Several major media outlets around the world have already picked up the story. And news of the gathering is expected to continue making headlines in the coming days as the conference kicks off Thursday. Some of the mainstream press coverage thus far, however, has focused primarily on downplaying the meeting’s importance and painting its critics in a negative light.
In a June 8 BBC article, the government-funded media outlet attempted to ridicule concerns about the Bilderberg meeting and the massive power wielded by attendees. Citing various authors, the state reporter desperately tried to link critics of the secretive meetings to “anti-Semitism,” a psychological feeling of alienation or powerlessness, and even belief in a world “governed by alien, reptilian shape shifters” expounded by a former sports journalist named David Icke.
“In fact, many conspiracy theories surrounding cabals hint at an anti-Semitic worldview,” the BBC Bilderberg piece claimed, citing the discredited Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Eventually the article quotes one expert who acknowledges that there could be some kernel of truth to Bilderberg theories about power-hungry conspirators out to rule the planet — and that there is indeed a “very strong move” to erect a one-world government.
But the piece closes with yet another quote blasting critics of the cabal, with a newspaper columnist claiming that a “strong belief in the Bilderberg Group means believing in a fantasy” and is “anti-scientific.” Of course, not believing in the Bilderberg group would be to deny reality and the facts, but presumably the columnist was referring to thinking that the meeting is powerful or nefarious.
Other mainstream reports, however, were more friendly to Bilderberg critics. “It's a shame the attendees are still so phobic of attention, seeing as how this year there's shaping up to be more press interest than ever. People and the media have finally started noticing this quiet little conference at the centre of the storm,” noted a piece in the U.K. Guardian, pointing out that the cabal played a crucial role in the creation of the European Union.
While very little information is ever publicly released following the conferences, general topics on the agenda have been compiled on an official website cited by numerous media outlets. In 2007, for example, the first item on the list was “The New World Order.” And with some of the most powerful people on earth attending the meeting, most objective analysts realize that the group wields enormous collective influence.
Last year, as the cabal was gathering in Spain, The New American's Charles Scaliger noted that "the Bilderberg gathering is obviously a nerve center of the world’s power-elite network; the security and secrecy are evidence enough of its significance. Whether planning the occupation of Iran or charting the course of the ongoing European financial, economic, and political merger, the men meeting right now behind sniper rifles and locked doors ... are planning for their own best interests, which are not likely to coincide with yours or mine."
Though Bilderberg touts itself as a sort of forum where attendees can discuss ideas freely without the spotlight of the press, anecdotal evidence suggests that there is much more going on. Consider: Then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton attended the 1991 Bilderberg conference. He was virtually unknown at that time. The following year, Clinton was elected President.
Numerous other relatively obscure figures who have attended the meetings have ended up meteorically rising to power in a spectacular fashion. Tony Blair is another good example. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were reported to have attended the 2008 Bilderberg meeting in Chantilly, Virginia. Current Treasury Secretary Timothy “TurboTax” Geithner and Federal Reserve boss Ben Bernanke were there that year, too.
The attendee lists for the meetings consist of the veritable “who’s who” of the global elite from across the political spectrum. Bilderberg luminary David Rockefeller, for example, who admitted in his autobiography of conspiring to erect a global economic and political system, is intimately involved with the formal organizational structure. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who constantly and openly advocates what he calls a “New World Order,” is almost always there too. Supposed “conservatives” and even some “libertarians” are often welcomed as well.
But this year, Kissinger and other members of the world elite are attracting some unwanted attention for the conference. A senior center-right Swiss lawmaker from the nation’s largest political party sent a letter to prosecutors asking them to consider arresting Kissinger — and George W. Bush and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, if they attend — for war crimes. The legislator also requested that prosecutors consider applying the charge of treason for Swiss attendees.
Other critics of the cabal have also argued that Americans who attend should be arrested by U.S. authorities. Citing the Logan Act, which makes it a felony for Americans to formulate government policy with foreign officials, Bilderberg opponents have called for the prosecution of Texas Gov. Rick Perry — who will reportedly also attend the 2011 meeting — and many other American officials.
A small handful of activists around the world have been steadily attempting to expose the influential cabal for decades. And in addition to increased media coverage, this year appears on track to attract a great deal of protesters, too — also in keeping with the awareness trend sparked by the Internet and alternative media sources.
At the 2011 meeting, being held at a luxurious hotel Suvretta House, a prominent line-up of notorious critics and anti-New World Order reporters also plan to greet the global power brokers from the moment they start arriving. Among them are author Daniel Estulin, who wrote a book about the Bilderberg group; American Free Press journalist Jim Tucker, who has tracked the meetings for decades; WeAreChange activist Luke Rudkowski; and many others.
One of the Facebook groups organizing protesters has over 750 people listed as “attending,” though it’s unclear how many actually plan to show up. A mini-bus dubbed the “Bilderbus” will be transporting anti-Bilderberg activists from the U.K. to the meeting. Swiss activists from across the political spectrum will reportedly be out in force as well.
Speculation about what may be discussed at the 2011 meeting has been running rampant, as always. Since the Bilderberg group maintains extreme secrecy and meets behind closed doors guarded by heavily armed guards, however, not much concrete information generally gets out. Stay tuned.
Torturing Doctors
Of Bahrain
By Stephen Lendman
For months, courageous Bahrainis protested peacefully against the Al Khalifa monarchy's repressive brutality, corruption, and discrimination, as well as unemployment, poverty, and other unaddressed social justice issues.
The response has been ruthless state terrorism against anyone challenging regime control, no matter how lawless, barbaric, and unresponsive to basic human rights and needs.
Since the mid-February uprising began, America's media largely ignored it, especially extreme repression Washington supports. Complicit in helping a key ally, Bahrain is home to the Navy's Fifth Fleet, strategically located in the heart of the Persian Gulf.
On June 6, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) highlighted the mistreatment of doctors and nurses, explaining their arrests, detentions, torture and upcoming military trials for doing their job.
Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR) President Stephen Soldz spoke publicly saying:
"We cannot be silent. Many of our members are health providers. The government of Bahrain arrested nearly 50 doctors and other health providers, many of whom have been tortured. Their 'crime' is refusing to let injured protesters die and informing the world press about the abuses they witnessed."
Scheduled to start on June 6, trials for 47 doctors and other medical providers will begin next week, maliciously charged with:
-- refraining from providing aid;
-- embezzling public funds;
-- physical assault;
-- assault leading to death;
-- possessing unlicensed weapons and ammunition;
-- not performing their employment duties, and thus endangering lives and health;
-- forcefully occupying a public building;
-- promoting regime change illegally;
-- inciting hatred against the regime;
-- promoting sectarian hate;
-- spreading false news and rumors harming the public interest; and
-- participating in unlicensed protests and rallies.
In fact, doctors and nurses are being tried for doing their job. They committed no crimes but are treated like enemies of the state.
Justifying its repression, regime authorities said a military court will try 23 doctors and 24 nurses. "They abused their profession and prevented some people from entering the Salmaniya Hospital (the nation's largest public facility)." In fact, despite extreme repression, they performed heroically, treating sick and wounded patients.
Yet Salmaniya Hospital was falsely called a hotbed of sectarian tension. BCHR said "it is quite clear that it was the presence of military and police inside the hospital which sparked this tension, with security forces interfering with the doctors' work," instigating violence by their actions.
In fact, regime authorities fear medical providers for reflecting the non-sectarian nature of the protests, opposite of what security forces claim.
"Their Hippocratic Oath means they have to treat patients regardless of politics or religion. They are a symbol of the unity of the majority against the oppression of the (fascist) government and its cronies, and therefore they are dangerous."
As long as King Hamad keeps Bahrainis divided and has Western and Gulf Council States backing, he can retain power. It's why he reacted violently against the slogan "No Sunni, No Shia, just Bahraini."
BCHR believes doctors and nurses were especially targeted because they're key witnesses to criminal acts. They've seen dead, wounded and tortured victims and can provide damning evidence if asked. If silenced, however, by intimidation, torture and/or show trials, key witnesses will be lost. "We must not let the government get away with these crimes."
Many other medical providers are afraid to speak publicly about what they've seen or know, fearing retaliation. However, some gave the international media anonymous statements.
On May 29, AFP headlined, "Bahraini female doctors recount detention 'horror,' " saying:
Released from prison, Shiite women doctors explained "abuse and torture by police after being accused of backing pro-democracy protests in the Sunni-led monarchy."
They explained they were tortured and abused to sign confessions, one doctor saying her interrogator said:
"I advise you that we will get you to say whatever we want, either by you saying it willingly, or we will beat you like a donkey and torture you until you say it."
Explaining she treated wounded patients, she was struck in the face, an interrogator saying:
"It seems you don't want to cooperate," accusing her of "stealing blood units to splash on the wounded" to exaggerate injuries for television and other crimes against state authorities.
Blindfolded and handcuffed, she was severely beaten, electro-shocked, thrown to the floor, beaten again with electric cables, especially the soles of her feet. "Even policewomen were shocked when they saw my state as I came out of the interrogation room," she said.
The next day, she was again abused, sexually harassed and threatened with rape, an interrogator saying "I will hang you from your breasts and rape you." She finally signed a confession to end the ordeal. Afterward, she spent 20 more days in prison before released, agreeing not to give interviews or participate in protests.
Other doctors described similar ordeals. Those freed can't travel, remain suspended from work unpaid, and 47 doctors and nurses face trials. AFP asked Bahraini authorities to comment, but got no response.
By politicizing medical care and abusing doctors and nurses, injured protesters are afraid to get treatment, fearing arrests, torture, trials and convictions. As a result, determining precise numbers hurt is compromised, suggesting many more than publicly known.
Nonetheless, for nearly four months, Bahrain's "had the highest per capita arrests and second highest per capita deaths of any Arab country (after Libya)...." America ignored it, Obama urging only dialogue and resolution, quietly going along with criminal viciousness.
As a result, it's up to people of conscience, independent journalists, and international public opinion to explain what can't be ignored, demanding accountability for crimes this great and all political prisoners released and exonerated.
http://www.mathaba.net/
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
Evolution Revolution
Rethink & Question the Indifference
Peaceful demonstrators, intelligent Freedom Fighters.
They have watched themselves being watched as the world has scorned them.
The Israeli's historical version of events has led them to take the only stand open to them.
To stand with their unarmed bodies. Their bodies are their only voice now. Their cries are their bullets, and their camera's are their only guns.
Israeli's are protected by
1) (and most importantly) Distance.
2) Body armour
3) Sniper rifles
4) Fences and meshing
The young protesters hold flags jump around every Tuesday as part of their peaceful protest to be recognised as
1) Not being Bombers
2) Not throwing stones
3) Not having Armour
4) Being a regular event.
One Palestinian blogger writes
"This is the weekly protest against Buffer Zone Tuesday June 7th 2011, and the demo is going in a peaceful way, when the protesters reach the area, Israeli army began to shoot live bullets and one guy is injured on his neck, his name is Mohamed Kafarna, (he is 19) We took him to the hospital and took medical care and he is in safe hands now ..... We will not surrender and we will continue our struggle. We are not afraid. We will not become silent. We are crying in a loud voice "Free Free Palestine!"
It is devastating to watch as you see their only hope, is that the world watches and witnesses these events.
Be a witness to their cry.
Be a witness to their blood.
Be a witness to the media propaganda
These ARE Muslims, but they act more like Buddhists.
The world does not care about Muslims, so they will die for you until you do care.
Is this the evolvement? .. Is this Our enlightenment?
Peaceful demonstrators, intelligent Freedom Fighters.
They have watched themselves being watched as the world has scorned them.
The Israeli's historical version of events has led them to take the only stand open to them.
To stand with their unarmed bodies. Their bodies are their only voice now. Their cries are their bullets, and their camera's are their only guns.
Israeli's are protected by
1) (and most importantly) Distance.
2) Body armour
3) Sniper rifles
4) Fences and meshing
The young protesters hold flags jump around every Tuesday as part of their peaceful protest to be recognised as
1) Not being Bombers
2) Not throwing stones
3) Not having Armour
4) Being a regular event.
One Palestinian blogger writes
"This is the weekly protest against Buffer Zone Tuesday June 7th 2011, and the demo is going in a peaceful way, when the protesters reach the area, Israeli army began to shoot live bullets and one guy is injured on his neck, his name is Mohamed Kafarna, (he is 19) We took him to the hospital and took medical care and he is in safe hands now ..... We will not surrender and we will continue our struggle. We are not afraid. We will not become silent. We are crying in a loud voice "Free Free Palestine!"
It is devastating to watch as you see their only hope, is that the world watches and witnesses these events.
Be a witness to their cry.
Be a witness to their blood.
Be a witness to the media propaganda
These ARE Muslims, but they act more like Buddhists.
The world does not care about Muslims, so they will die for you until you do care.
Is this the evolvement? .. Is this Our enlightenment?
End Occupation Now!
'Imaginary Enemies'
Costing Americans $1 Trillion
