Saturday, June 13, 2009
Reflections by Fidel
The envy of Goebbels
Yesterday I was listening to the Round Table TV program when it analyzed, among other topics, Operation Peter Pan, one of the most repugnant acts of moral aggression carried out against our country. Patria potestas is an extremely sensitive issue. That was a repugnant low trick. One of the novels by Mikhail Sholokhov that I read some years later included a reference to that kind of slander which had already been used against the Revolution of October,1917.
The mastermind behind that operation against Cuba was Monsignor Walsh, an American Catholic priest who worked under the orders of the bishop of Miami.
The operation began in 1960. As is known, our Revolution had not placed any obstacles whatsoever to prevent those who wanted to leave the country from doing so. The work of the Revolution had to be voluntarily made by a free people. The imperialist response, among many other serious aggressions, was Operation Peter Pan.
When Taladrid was making his comments on that event, he mentioned the name of Ángel Fernández Valera, a professor of Economics. I remembered that when I was on my last senior high school year at Colegio de Belén, a lay professor used to teach us one of the subjects: Political Economy. Obviously, this was not about a Marxism-Leninism course, which was the ideological issue resorted to 18 years later in order to expel Cuba from the OAS. Those were simple and quite elemental classes on bourgeois political economy. What else were we, the white pupils who studied there? The professor who taught those classes two or three times a week was very punctual and never missed a class.
I was surprised by what I heard during the Round Table program. I wonder if that man was the same professor I had met. I called Taladrid and asked for more information. I checked that with him, because I knew that man had been a professor at Colegio de Belén. Luis Báez equally asserts that I had met with that professor somewhere in Havana in 1959 and that I had criticized his attitude, but I did not remember that detail.
Some days ago, Walsh was decorated post mortem for having worked the “feat” of Operation Peter Pan. A few years before he had declared that he had received some telephone calls for him to start with the operation and that he had made some arrangements with the CIA.
By the end of May, Álvaro F. Fernández, the son of Fernández Varela, declared to the digital magazine Progreso Semanal that “…a few years before he died in Miami, my father brought us together in front of my mother, my sister María, her husband and myself, and told us that he had been one of the persons responsible for the drafting of the false Law that gave rise to the hysteria that surrounded the ‘elimination of the patria potestas’. That is why I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Operation Peter Pan was a sinister and immoral maneuver designed and longed for by the CIA before the Bay of Pigs invasion…”
A CIA agent brought the false bill to Havana from Miami. Ángel Fernández Varela himself told to the magazine Contrapunto that he had worked for the CIA between 1959 and 1968.
Each of the 14 000 children involved in that tragedy followed their own traumatic path. They were mostly from middle class families. They were not the children of landowners or the wealthy bourgeois; there was no reason why they had to be dragged into that tragedy. By that time there was a Yankee embassy that granted the permits to enter the United States. The Peter Pan children application forms were sent to Cuba in packages and afterwards they were filled up here with the names of he children. None of them required to be saved. Throughout many years the Revolution has allowed the exit of around one million persons. Most of them have left for the United States, the richest country of all, which incentivates the brain drain and the stealing of cultivated persons and skilled labor force.
The United States would not be in the position to do the same with any other country of Latin America. Who else could have been benefited from that diabolical clandestine operation?
María de los Ángeles Torres, an associate professor of Political Sciences at the DePaul University in Chicago, was a Peter Pan child. Although she is not a revolutionary, she called for the CIA to declassify around 1 500 documents about Operation Peter Pan. The CIA has refused to declassify them under the pretext of national security. This whole issue smells so bad that some are reluctant to unveil it.
Despite that refusal, professor Torres asked and succeeded in that the Presidential Library Lyndon B. Johnson could grant her access to a document issued by the US government in which it refused a proposal made by the High Commissioner of the United Nations whereby the United Nations would cover the transportation costs for the parents of the children who had been sent to the United States. That material was published by the press of that country more than 15 years ago.
Operation Peter Pan was a cynical publicity maneuver that would have been the envy of Goebbles himself, the Nazi minister of Propaganda.
Fidel Castro Ruz
June 11, 2009
4:40 p.m.
Yesterday I was listening to the Round Table TV program when it analyzed, among other topics, Operation Peter Pan, one of the most repugnant acts of moral aggression carried out against our country. Patria potestas is an extremely sensitive issue. That was a repugnant low trick. One of the novels by Mikhail Sholokhov that I read some years later included a reference to that kind of slander which had already been used against the Revolution of October,1917.
The mastermind behind that operation against Cuba was Monsignor Walsh, an American Catholic priest who worked under the orders of the bishop of Miami.
The operation began in 1960. As is known, our Revolution had not placed any obstacles whatsoever to prevent those who wanted to leave the country from doing so. The work of the Revolution had to be voluntarily made by a free people. The imperialist response, among many other serious aggressions, was Operation Peter Pan.
When Taladrid was making his comments on that event, he mentioned the name of Ángel Fernández Valera, a professor of Economics. I remembered that when I was on my last senior high school year at Colegio de Belén, a lay professor used to teach us one of the subjects: Political Economy. Obviously, this was not about a Marxism-Leninism course, which was the ideological issue resorted to 18 years later in order to expel Cuba from the OAS. Those were simple and quite elemental classes on bourgeois political economy. What else were we, the white pupils who studied there? The professor who taught those classes two or three times a week was very punctual and never missed a class.
I was surprised by what I heard during the Round Table program. I wonder if that man was the same professor I had met. I called Taladrid and asked for more information. I checked that with him, because I knew that man had been a professor at Colegio de Belén. Luis Báez equally asserts that I had met with that professor somewhere in Havana in 1959 and that I had criticized his attitude, but I did not remember that detail.
Some days ago, Walsh was decorated post mortem for having worked the “feat” of Operation Peter Pan. A few years before he had declared that he had received some telephone calls for him to start with the operation and that he had made some arrangements with the CIA.
By the end of May, Álvaro F. Fernández, the son of Fernández Varela, declared to the digital magazine Progreso Semanal that “…a few years before he died in Miami, my father brought us together in front of my mother, my sister María, her husband and myself, and told us that he had been one of the persons responsible for the drafting of the false Law that gave rise to the hysteria that surrounded the ‘elimination of the patria potestas’. That is why I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that Operation Peter Pan was a sinister and immoral maneuver designed and longed for by the CIA before the Bay of Pigs invasion…”
A CIA agent brought the false bill to Havana from Miami. Ángel Fernández Varela himself told to the magazine Contrapunto that he had worked for the CIA between 1959 and 1968.
Each of the 14 000 children involved in that tragedy followed their own traumatic path. They were mostly from middle class families. They were not the children of landowners or the wealthy bourgeois; there was no reason why they had to be dragged into that tragedy. By that time there was a Yankee embassy that granted the permits to enter the United States. The Peter Pan children application forms were sent to Cuba in packages and afterwards they were filled up here with the names of he children. None of them required to be saved. Throughout many years the Revolution has allowed the exit of around one million persons. Most of them have left for the United States, the richest country of all, which incentivates the brain drain and the stealing of cultivated persons and skilled labor force.
The United States would not be in the position to do the same with any other country of Latin America. Who else could have been benefited from that diabolical clandestine operation?
María de los Ángeles Torres, an associate professor of Political Sciences at the DePaul University in Chicago, was a Peter Pan child. Although she is not a revolutionary, she called for the CIA to declassify around 1 500 documents about Operation Peter Pan. The CIA has refused to declassify them under the pretext of national security. This whole issue smells so bad that some are reluctant to unveil it.
Despite that refusal, professor Torres asked and succeeded in that the Presidential Library Lyndon B. Johnson could grant her access to a document issued by the US government in which it refused a proposal made by the High Commissioner of the United Nations whereby the United Nations would cover the transportation costs for the parents of the children who had been sent to the United States. That material was published by the press of that country more than 15 years ago.
Operation Peter Pan was a cynical publicity maneuver that would have been the envy of Goebbles himself, the Nazi minister of Propaganda.
Fidel Castro Ruz
June 11, 2009
4:40 p.m.
Orwellian Speak
Overhauling the nation's health care system is one of Obama's biggest ambitions, and lawmakers are working on a variety of plans. A top goal is to reduce costs in the government's largest medical programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which cover millions of elderly and low-income Americans and involve thousands of doctors, hospitals, nursing homes and other institutions.
In his weekly Internet and radio address Saturday, Obama proposed cutting $313 billion from the programs over 10 years. That's in addition to the $635 billion "down payment" in tax increases and spending cuts in the health care system that he announced earlier.
The biggest cuts in health care spending in history,and mostly to medi-care/medic-aid is going to provide more health to WHO?makes you wanna say..Hmmmmm
In his weekly Internet and radio address Saturday, Obama proposed cutting $313 billion from the programs over 10 years. That's in addition to the $635 billion "down payment" in tax increases and spending cuts in the health care system that he announced earlier.
The biggest cuts in health care spending in history,and mostly to medi-care/medic-aid is going to provide more health to WHO?makes you wanna say..Hmmmmm
Friday, June 12, 2009
ALBA & Petrocaribe
ALBA and PETROCARIBE, two integration initiatives that show promise to unite forces
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez affirmed that the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) – a bloc for integration and cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean – could no longer be ignored in the future as some powerful countries and regional organizations have tried to do in the past.
In his Sunday column ‘Chavez’s Lines’, entitled “The Battle of San Pedro Sula”, the Venezuelan leader referred to the role of ALBA during the recently concluded General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Honduras.
In his article, Chavez stressed that such a high level of coordination among so many Latin American and Caribbean governments had never been seen before the OAS meeting in San Pedro Sula.
The South American head of state and government described the six ALBA member countries as the driving force of the diplomatic and strategic efforts made during the meeting and noted that the regional bloc “is no longer an Alternative but a Bolivarian Alliance; and with us, the coordinated action of many countries that are friends of ALBA and Cuba.”
Chavez recalled that during an Extraordinary ALBA Summit in Cumana, Venezuela, last April, the organization strongly rejected the arbitrary exclusion of Cuba from the OAS.
The carrying out of works addressed at the development of countries united by Petrocaribe, through funds of the Bolivarian Alternative for the People's of our America (ALBA), seems to be one of the proposals to be debated during the VI Summit of the Caribbean group, which takes place in Basseterre, capital city of Saint Kitts and Nevis, two islands that make up the smallest country in America.
Just in Saint Kitts and Nevis are being carried out three housing projects financed by the ALBA fund, which put in 10 million dollars to the initiative in November 2007. This fact might be an accurate example of the benefits that would result from the interaction between the two blocs.
Venezuela's Ambassador to the Caribbean country, Cruz de Jesus Bello, explained that the housing project embraces humanist values, since it is aimed at the extension of houses for people with limited resources and at the building of houses for the workers who are unemployed since the closing of what used to be the main source of incomes in Saint Kitts and Nevis during more than 300 years: the sugar industry.
Saint Kitts' Minister of Housing, Agriculture, Fishing and Cooperatives, Cedrid Libor, expressed that “Our sugar industry, built more than 300 years ago, generated important incomes for the country. We used to sell sugar to the European Union at preferential prices until the World Trade Organization issued a dictate to end with those advantages. We were obliged to close it in 2005, which left many people unemployed. Well then, the housing project financed to us through the ALBA includes the building of 250 houses for them.”
The VI Petrocaribe Summit will also review the progress in matters of infrastructure in order to optimize the oil supply on behalf of Venezuela.
Furthermore, Saint Kitts and Nevis is also the example to tackle with the issue of infrastructure in virtue of the constitution of a joint company with Venezuela, PDV Saint Kitts LTD, which is running since September 2008 and which is currently leading the building of a tank farm with the capacity to store 46 thousand barrels of crude, fuel, gas oil, diesel, jet -A1 (oil for airplanes) and liquefied propane gas.
The above described work is devised to be finished by the year 2011.
Petrocaribe is currently made by 18 countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Granada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Suriname and Venezuela. The government of this last country, headed by president Hugo Chavez Frias, proposed and boosted the initiative to create the group.
The first Petrocaribe Summit took place in 2005, in Kingston, Jamaica, and in this sixth edition it is expected the joining of two other countries: Guatemala and Costa Rica.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez affirmed that the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) – a bloc for integration and cooperation in Latin America and the Caribbean – could no longer be ignored in the future as some powerful countries and regional organizations have tried to do in the past.
In his Sunday column ‘Chavez’s Lines’, entitled “The Battle of San Pedro Sula”, the Venezuelan leader referred to the role of ALBA during the recently concluded General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Honduras.
In his article, Chavez stressed that such a high level of coordination among so many Latin American and Caribbean governments had never been seen before the OAS meeting in San Pedro Sula.
The South American head of state and government described the six ALBA member countries as the driving force of the diplomatic and strategic efforts made during the meeting and noted that the regional bloc “is no longer an Alternative but a Bolivarian Alliance; and with us, the coordinated action of many countries that are friends of ALBA and Cuba.”
Chavez recalled that during an Extraordinary ALBA Summit in Cumana, Venezuela, last April, the organization strongly rejected the arbitrary exclusion of Cuba from the OAS.
The carrying out of works addressed at the development of countries united by Petrocaribe, through funds of the Bolivarian Alternative for the People's of our America (ALBA), seems to be one of the proposals to be debated during the VI Summit of the Caribbean group, which takes place in Basseterre, capital city of Saint Kitts and Nevis, two islands that make up the smallest country in America.
Just in Saint Kitts and Nevis are being carried out three housing projects financed by the ALBA fund, which put in 10 million dollars to the initiative in November 2007. This fact might be an accurate example of the benefits that would result from the interaction between the two blocs.
Venezuela's Ambassador to the Caribbean country, Cruz de Jesus Bello, explained that the housing project embraces humanist values, since it is aimed at the extension of houses for people with limited resources and at the building of houses for the workers who are unemployed since the closing of what used to be the main source of incomes in Saint Kitts and Nevis during more than 300 years: the sugar industry.
Saint Kitts' Minister of Housing, Agriculture, Fishing and Cooperatives, Cedrid Libor, expressed that “Our sugar industry, built more than 300 years ago, generated important incomes for the country. We used to sell sugar to the European Union at preferential prices until the World Trade Organization issued a dictate to end with those advantages. We were obliged to close it in 2005, which left many people unemployed. Well then, the housing project financed to us through the ALBA includes the building of 250 houses for them.”
The VI Petrocaribe Summit will also review the progress in matters of infrastructure in order to optimize the oil supply on behalf of Venezuela.
Furthermore, Saint Kitts and Nevis is also the example to tackle with the issue of infrastructure in virtue of the constitution of a joint company with Venezuela, PDV Saint Kitts LTD, which is running since September 2008 and which is currently leading the building of a tank farm with the capacity to store 46 thousand barrels of crude, fuel, gas oil, diesel, jet -A1 (oil for airplanes) and liquefied propane gas.
The above described work is devised to be finished by the year 2011.
Petrocaribe is currently made by 18 countries: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Granada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Suriname and Venezuela. The government of this last country, headed by president Hugo Chavez Frias, proposed and boosted the initiative to create the group.
The first Petrocaribe Summit took place in 2005, in Kingston, Jamaica, and in this sixth edition it is expected the joining of two other countries: Guatemala and Costa Rica.
ECUADOR
Integration of Ecuador into Regional Cooperation Bloc
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that Ecuador will soon join the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) regional integration and cooperation bloc.
The official incorporation of Ecuador to ALBA will take place during an upcoming meeting of the group that will be attended by the heads of state and government of the ALBA member countries.
Speaking in a television program in Caracas, the Venezuelan leader added that Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa confirmed his country’s official integration into the regional bloc.
Chavez, who announced that the meeting for the official inclusion of Ecuador will take place on June 24th in Carabobo, Venezuela, stressed that ALBA is a mechanism of integration different from any other previous process in the continent.
The Venezuelan leader recalled that its main goal is to fight poverty and social exclusion and that it is comprised of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Honduras, Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and now Ecuador.
The agreement for the creation of the regional bloc was signed in Havana on December 14, 2004, by Chavez and the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that Ecuador will soon join the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) regional integration and cooperation bloc.
The official incorporation of Ecuador to ALBA will take place during an upcoming meeting of the group that will be attended by the heads of state and government of the ALBA member countries.
Speaking in a television program in Caracas, the Venezuelan leader added that Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa confirmed his country’s official integration into the regional bloc.
Chavez, who announced that the meeting for the official inclusion of Ecuador will take place on June 24th in Carabobo, Venezuela, stressed that ALBA is a mechanism of integration different from any other previous process in the continent.
The Venezuelan leader recalled that its main goal is to fight poverty and social exclusion and that it is comprised of Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Honduras, Dominica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and now Ecuador.
The agreement for the creation of the regional bloc was signed in Havana on December 14, 2004, by Chavez and the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro.
Mother Jones
No matter what your fight, don’t be ladylike! God Almighty made women and the Rockefeller gang of thieves made the ladies.
Author: Jones, Mother
Author: Jones, Mother
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Petrocaribe
Petrocaribe Summit to Discuss New Regional Cooperation Plans
HAVANA, Cuba, June 10 (acn) New plans of cooperation will be discussed during the 6th Petrocaribe Summit that takes place on Thursday and Friday in Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Petrocaribe is an energy cooperation agreement of the Venezuelan government with Caribbean nations that was established on June 29, 2005, which coordinates and articulates energy policies in the area in a fair and participatory way.
According to Granma news daily, participants in the meeting will not only assess advances in the field of energy cooperation but they will also analyze the design and implementation of new plans in the agriculture and food production sectors.
Delegations from Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Suriname and Venezuela will participate in the summit as full members of Petrocaribe while Costa Rica and El Salvador will attend the meeting as observers.
Other topics to be discussed during the 6th Petrocaribe Summit include infrastructure projects to optimize logistics related to the supply of hydrocarbons, the consolidation of joint ventures for the implementation of investments, infrastructure, exchange and projects of endogenous development.
Seven working groups will focus in the following themes: advances in the area of energy saving projects and the efficient use of energy; renewable sources of energy; petrochemical products; gas supply; education and training; system of exchange and compensation of the oil invoice; and fair trade.
The meeting takes place at the ministerial level on Thursday while the heads of state and government will meet on Friday.
HAVANA, Cuba, June 10 (acn) New plans of cooperation will be discussed during the 6th Petrocaribe Summit that takes place on Thursday and Friday in Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Petrocaribe is an energy cooperation agreement of the Venezuelan government with Caribbean nations that was established on June 29, 2005, which coordinates and articulates energy policies in the area in a fair and participatory way.
According to Granma news daily, participants in the meeting will not only assess advances in the field of energy cooperation but they will also analyze the design and implementation of new plans in the agriculture and food production sectors.
Delegations from Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Lucia, Suriname and Venezuela will participate in the summit as full members of Petrocaribe while Costa Rica and El Salvador will attend the meeting as observers.
Other topics to be discussed during the 6th Petrocaribe Summit include infrastructure projects to optimize logistics related to the supply of hydrocarbons, the consolidation of joint ventures for the implementation of investments, infrastructure, exchange and projects of endogenous development.
Seven working groups will focus in the following themes: advances in the area of energy saving projects and the efficient use of energy; renewable sources of energy; petrochemical products; gas supply; education and training; system of exchange and compensation of the oil invoice; and fair trade.
The meeting takes place at the ministerial level on Thursday while the heads of state and government will meet on Friday.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Anarchist or Reformists
or "THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF WORKING WITHIN THE SYSTEM"
An anarchist ethics is an affirmation, an affirmation of the creativity, desire and power of the individual; it is an affirmation of the ability of individuals to come together and decide their own fate without the need of any imposed decision coming in from the outside whether in ‘totalitarian’ or ‘democratic’ form. As an ethics, it is both a way of living and a way of relating to others: how can we come together-combine-in a fashion that doesn’t restrict, limit and suppress the desire, creativity and active power of each other? This ethical question is at the heart of anarchism. As an ethics, anarchism recognizes that there is no escape from social life; the anarchist ethic, after all, grows out of the movement of the exploited and excluded, and it only remains vital within that movement. Living this ethic will mean that one will come into conflict with imposed social order, with hierarchy, with any archy or cracy. To live this ethic is thus not always an easy choice, we can’t make it into a Snickers Bar; anyhow, no matter how drained of content anarchism becomes the masses won’t run to sign up any day soon.
That said, it is also a simple fact of language that those who want to reform the present system are called reformists. There are also many people who wish to end the rule of capital and the state but unwittingly use means that can only bring about a reform of the present system. It is, therefore, obviously important to come to a clear understanding of the results of our actions; this is what theory and critique are for, and it should not be turned into a pleasant game of compliments. Yet, as anarchists, we can work with them towards intermediate aims, while always remaining clear as to how such aims tally with our ultimate goals. There are, however, important limits-limits that are obscured when we hold only an abstract conception of social change. Working to “demand authentic control over the police” might be a small step for social change in some general sense, but ultimately it is a step backwards as it strengthens the legitimacy of the police and of imposed decision. That is of course, unless one’s goal is nicer police and “democratic control over our lives”-the term ‘democratic,’ which we hear repeated over and over by activists these days, is another term usually left unthinkingly abstract. “Direct democratic control over our lives” might make a nice slogan, but it is vague enough for most politicians in Washington to use.
An anarchist ethics is an affirmation, an affirmation of the creativity, desire and power of the individual; it is an affirmation of the ability of individuals to come together and decide their own fate without the need of any imposed decision coming in from the outside whether in ‘totalitarian’ or ‘democratic’ form. As an ethics, it is both a way of living and a way of relating to others: how can we come together-combine-in a fashion that doesn’t restrict, limit and suppress the desire, creativity and active power of each other? This ethical question is at the heart of anarchism. As an ethics, anarchism recognizes that there is no escape from social life; the anarchist ethic, after all, grows out of the movement of the exploited and excluded, and it only remains vital within that movement. Living this ethic will mean that one will come into conflict with imposed social order, with hierarchy, with any archy or cracy. To live this ethic is thus not always an easy choice, we can’t make it into a Snickers Bar; anyhow, no matter how drained of content anarchism becomes the masses won’t run to sign up any day soon.
That said, it is also a simple fact of language that those who want to reform the present system are called reformists. There are also many people who wish to end the rule of capital and the state but unwittingly use means that can only bring about a reform of the present system. It is, therefore, obviously important to come to a clear understanding of the results of our actions; this is what theory and critique are for, and it should not be turned into a pleasant game of compliments. Yet, as anarchists, we can work with them towards intermediate aims, while always remaining clear as to how such aims tally with our ultimate goals. There are, however, important limits-limits that are obscured when we hold only an abstract conception of social change. Working to “demand authentic control over the police” might be a small step for social change in some general sense, but ultimately it is a step backwards as it strengthens the legitimacy of the police and of imposed decision. That is of course, unless one’s goal is nicer police and “democratic control over our lives”-the term ‘democratic,’ which we hear repeated over and over by activists these days, is another term usually left unthinkingly abstract. “Direct democratic control over our lives” might make a nice slogan, but it is vague enough for most politicians in Washington to use.
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
The Liberal Left's
War Lies
Conor Foley, The Guardian
Certain conflicts are simplified and championed as symbolic causes, leaving worse humanitarian cases under-reported.
In George Orwell's Looking Back on the Spanish War, he wrote:
Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even a relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retelling these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened.
Over the past few months a number of articles have appeared comparing news coverage of the humanitarian situations in Gaza and northern Sri Lanka, and asking why the liberal left seem to care so much more about the former than the latter. Unfortunately, the articles usually then go on to ignore the situation in Sri Lanka completely while discussing a particular aspect of the Israel-Palestine conflict in great detail, which rather undermines their authors' claims to .
I was in Sri Lanka recently doing some work for a humanitarian agency. According to recent reports, up to 20,000 people were killed in the space of a few months as the army poured its firepower into an area the size of New York's Central Park where hundreds of thousands of civilians were sheltering. Those reports broadly fit with what I experienced, although the only piece I was able to write deliberately avoided any comment on the political situation.
This has been without doubt the world's worst humanitarian crisis in recent months and clearly has been under-reported, simply due to problems of gaining access. But I think there is more to it than that.
A couple of weeks ago I attended the Hay literary festival to discuss my book, The Thin Blue Line, which discusses some of the dilemmas facing contemporary humanitarianism. Also there was Luis Moreno-Ocampo, prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), in conversation with the noted human rights lawyer, Philippe Sands.
Moreno-Ocampo is seeking to bring charges of genocide against Sudan's president, Omar al-Bashir, who has responded by expelling a group of international aid agencies from the Darfur region. Large numbers of people in Darfur are completely dependent on humanitarian aid and so this could cause a catastrophe. Given that the arrest warrant cannot be enforced, there is an obvious debate to be had about whether it was worth issuing. There are also a number of questions about the timing, nature and possible political spin about this prosecution, which I have previously raised here and here
Around 650 people died violently in Darfur last year. The region is about the size of France and this death rate is lower than in many medium-sized cities in the world today. Yet the situation continues to be described as an ongoing act of genocide in which hundreds of thousands of people are being slaughtered. This impression was reinforced at Hay by both Sands and Moreno-Ocampo. We were even asked to make a donation to a humanitarian agency on our way out, despite the fact that this aid cannot now be delivered. Darfur seems to have taken on a symbolism for one part of the liberal left in much the same way that Gaza has for another.
The first conflict I experienced first-hand was in Kosovo. Prior to Nato's intervention, Serbian forces had mounted a brutal counter-insurgency response to a campaign of terrorism by the Kosova Liberation Army. This had cost several hundred lives, it is true, yet it was clearly not the genocide which supporters of intervention claimed. Indeed, the most immediate impact was to dramatically worsen the humanitarian situation. Nevertheless, Kosovo took on a similar symbolism for an invented narrative that bore little relation to what had actually happened.
So why do the liberal left lie so often to themselves about wars?
I have worked in a dozen or so war zones and I am constantly struck by the total divergence between how the situations get debated in British politics and what I see with my own eyes. I am not a huge fan of George Orwell, but one thing he got right is that the liberal-left intelligentsia simply does not understand what war, with all its attendant horrors and hypocrisies, entails. They are prepared to accept even the most outrageous propaganda and exaggerations if it helps them to build emotional superstructures around their own myths.
In Afghanistan, for example, Nick Cohen first warned , in October 2001, that military intervention would lead to a death toll somewhere between the 25,000 who died in Dresden and the 300,000 killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Six years later, in November 2007, he claimed that the Taliban was being "beaten on the battlefield" and lambasted aid workers for their "risk-averse culture".
Cohen had changed his mind about the conflict and re-fixed the facts accordingly. As Orwell observed, history gets written "not according to what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various party lines".
There is a serious debate going on about the future of humanitarian interventions, but the left have almost completely absented themselves from it, preferring to talk instead in simplistic slogans. Afghanistan is "today's Spanish civil war"; Iraq is Vietnam; Darfur is Rwanda. Where a conflict can be reduced to a spectator sport where you are "up" for one side or the other than this just about works. Where the reality is just so messy, complicated and difficult that the slogans don't fit, so the liberal left just have to ignore it.
For 300 Years
Britain Has Outsourced Mayhem. Finally It's Coming Home
Opium, famine and banks all played their part in this country's plundering of the globe. Now it's over, we find it hard to accept
George Monbiot, The Guardian
Why now? It's not as if this is the first time Britain's representatives have been caught out. The history of governments in all countries is the history of scandal, as those who rise to the top are generally the most ambitious, ruthless and unscrupulous people politics can produce. Pushing their own interests to the limit, they teeter perennially on the brink of disgrace, except when they fly clean over the edge. So why does the current ballyhoo threaten to destroy not only the government but also our antediluvian political system?
The past 15 years have produced the cash-for-questions racket, the Hinduja and Ecclestone affairs, the lies and fabrications that led to the invasion of Iraq, the forced abandonment of the BAE corruption probe, the cash-for-honours caper and the cash-for-amendments scandal. By comparison to the outright subversion of the functions of government in some of these cases, the is small beer. Any one of them should have prompted the sweeping political reforms we are now debating. But they didn't.
The expenses scandal, by contrast, could kill the Labour party. It might also force politicians of all parties to address our unjust voting system, the unelected Lords, the excessive power of the executive, the legalised blackmail used by the whips, and a score of further anachronisms and injustices. Why is it different?
I believe that the current political crisis has little to do with the expenses scandal, still less with Gordon Brown's leadership. It arises because our economic system can no longer extract wealth from other nations. For the past 300 years, the revolutions and reforms experienced by almost all other developed countries have been averted in Britain by foreign remittances.
The social unrest that might have transformed our politics was instead outsourced to our colonies and unwilling trading partners. The rebellions in Ireland, India, China, the Caribbean, Egypt, South Africa, Malaya, Kenya, Iran and other places we subjugated were the price of political peace in Britain. After decolonisation, our plunder of other nations was sustained by the banks. Now, for the first time in three centuries, they can no longer deliver, and we must at last confront our problems.
There will probably never be a full account of the robbery this country organised, but there are a few snapshots. In his book Capitalism and Colonial Production, Hamza Alavi estimates that the resource flow from India to Britain between 1793 and 1803 was in the order of £2m a year, the equivalent of many billions today. The economic drain from India, he notes, "has not only been a major factor in India's impoverishment … it has also been a very significant factor in the industrial revolution in Britain". As Ralph Davis observes in The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade, from the 1760s onwards India's wealth "bought the national debt back from the Dutch and others … leaving Britain nearly free from overseas indebtedness when it came to face the great French wars from 1793".
In France by contrast, as Eric Hobsbawm notes in The Age of Revolution, "the financial troubles of the monarchy brought matters to a head". In 1788 half of France's national expenditure was used to service its debt: the "American War and its debt broke the back of the monarchy".
Even as the French were overthrowing the ancien regime, Britain's landed classes were able to strengthen their economic power, seizing common property from the country's poor by means of enclosure. Partly as a result of remittances from India and the Caribbean, the economy was booming and the state had the funds to ride out political crises. Later, after smashing India's own industrial capacity, Britain forced that country to become a major export market for our manufactured goods, sustaining industrial employment here (and avoiding social unrest) long after our products and processes became uncompetitive.
Colonial plunder permitted the British state to balance its resource deficits as well. For some 200 years a river of food flowed into this country from such places as Ireland, India and the Caribbean. In The Blood Never Dried, John Newsinger reveals that in 1748 Jamaica alone sent 17,400 tons of sugar to Britain; by 1815 this had risen to 73,800. It was all produced by stolen labour.
Just as grain was sucked out of Ireland at the height of its great famine, so Britain continued to drain India of food during its catastrophic hungers. In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis shows that between 1876 and 1877 wheat exports to the UK from India doubled as subsistence there collapsed, and several million died of starvation. In the North-Western provinces famine was wholly engineered by British policy, as good harvests were exported to offset poor English production in 1876 and 1877.
Britain, in other words, outsourced famine as well as social unrest. There was terrible poverty in this country in the second half of the 19th century, but not mass starvation. The bad harvest of 1788 helped precipitate the French revolution, but the British state avoided such hazards. Others died on our behalf.
In the late 19th century, Davis shows, Britain's vast deficits with the United States, Germany and its white dominions were balanced by huge annual surpluses with India and (as a result of the opium trade) China. For a generation "the starving Indian and Chinese peasantries … braced the entire system of international settlements, allowing England's continued financial supremacy to temporarily co-exist with its relative industrial decline". Britain's trade surpluses with India allowed the City to become the world's financial capital.
Its role in British colonisation was not a passive one. The bankruptcy, and subsequent British takeover, of Egypt in 1882 was hastened by a loan from Rothschild's bank whose execution, Newsinger records, amounted to "fraud on a massive scale". Jardine Matheson, once the biggest narco-trafficking outfit in history (it dominated the Chinese opium trade), later formed a major investment bank, Jardine Fleming. It was taken over by JP Morgan Chase in 2000.
We lost our colonies, but the plunder has continued by other means. As Joseph Stiglitz shows in Globalisation and its Discontents, the capital liberalisation forced on Asian economies by the IMF permitted northern traders to loot hundreds of billions of dollars, precipitating the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98. Poorer nations have also been strong-armed into a series of amazingly one-sided treaties and commitments, such as trade-related investment measures, bilateral investment agreements and the EU's economic partnership agreements. If you have ever wondered how a small, densely populated country which produces very little supports itself, I would urge you to study these asymmetric arrangements.
But now, as John Lanchester demonstrates in a fascinating essay in the London Review of Books, the City could be fatally wounded. The nation that relied on financial services may take generations to recover from their collapse. The great British adventure – three centuries spent pillaging the labour, wealth and resources of other countries – is over. We cannot accept this, and seek gleeful revenge on a government that can no longer insulate us from reality.
The "Iranian Threat"
Media Disinformation and the "Iranian Threat"
The great, international, demonic, truly frightening Iranian threat
by William Blum
The United States is "facing a nuclear threat in Iran" — article in Chicago Tribune and other major newspapers, May 26
"the growing missile threat from North Korea and Iran" — article in the Washington Post and other major newspapers, May 26
"Iran's threat transcends religion. Regardless of sectarian bent, Muslim communities need to oppose the attempts by Iran ... to extend Shia extremism and influence throughout the world." — op-ed article in Boston Globe, May 27
"A Festering Evil. Doing nothing is not an option in handling the threat from Iran" — headline in Investor's Business Daily, May 27, 2009
This is a very small sample from American newspapers covering but two days.
"Fifty-one percent of Israelis support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites" — BBC, May 24
After taking office, on Holocaust Memorial Day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "We will not allow Holocaust-deniers [Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] to carry out another holocaust." — Haaretz (Israel), May 14, 2009
Like clinical paranoia, "the threat from Iran" is impervious to correction by rational argument.
Two new novels have just appeared, from major American publishers, thrillers based on Iran having a nuclear weapon and the dangers one can imagine that that portends — "Banquo's Ghosts" by Rich Lowry & Keith Korman, and "The Increment" by David Ignatius. "Bomb, bomb, bomb. Let's bomb Iran," declares a CIA official in the latter book. The other book derides the very idea of "dialogue" with Iran while implicitly viewing torture as acceptable.1
On May 12, in New York City, a debate was held on the proposition that "Diplomacy With Iran Is Going Nowhere" (English translation: "Should we bomb Iran?"). Arguing in the affirmative, were Liz Cheney, former State Department official (and daughter of a certain unindicted war criminal) and Dan Senor, formerly the top spokesman for Washington's Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Their "opponents" were R. Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state, and Kenneth Pollack, former National Security Council official and CIA analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq", a book that, unsurprisingly, did not have too long a shelf life.2
This is what "debate" on US foreign policy looks like in America in the first decade of the 21st century AD — four quintessential establishment figures. If such a "debate" had been held in the Soviet Union during the Cold War ("Detente With The United States Is Going Nowhere"), the American mainstream media would unanimously have had a jolly time making fun of it. The sponsor of the New York debate was the conservative Rosenkranz Foundation, but if a liberal (as opposed to a progressive or radical leftist) organization had been the sponsor, while there probably would have been a bit more of an ideological gap between the chosen pairs of speakers, it's unlikely that any of the present-day myths concerning Iran would have been seriously challenged by either side. These myths include the following, all of which I've dealt with before in this report but inasmuch as they are repeated on a regular basis in the media and by administration representatives, I think that readers need to be reminded of the counter arguments.
Iran has no right to nuclear weapons: Yet, there is no international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not. Iran has every reason to feel threatened. In any event, the US intelligence community's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of December 2007, "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities", makes a point of saying in bold type and italics: “This NIE does not assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons.” The report goes on to state: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program ."
Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier: I have yet to read of Ahmadinejad saying simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally that he thinks that what we know as the Holocaust never happened. He has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. And he has questioned the figure of six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, as have many other people of all political stripes.
Ahmadinejad has called for violence against Israel: His 2005 remark re "wiping Israel off the map", besides being a very questionable translation, has been seriously misinterpreted, as evidenced by the fact that the following year he declared: “The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom.”3 Obviously, he was not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place peacefully.
Iran has no right to provide arms to Hamas and Hezbollah: However, the United States, we are assured, has every right to do the same for Israel and Egypt.
The fact that Obama says he's willing to "talk" to some of the "enemies" like Iran more than the Bush administration did sounds good: But one doesn't have to be too cynical to believe that it will not amount to more than a public relations gimmick. It's only change of policy that counts. Why doesn't Obama just state that he would not attack Iran unless Iran first attacked the US or Israel or anyone else? Besides, the Bush administration met with Iran on several occasions.
The following should also be kept in mind: The Washington Post, March 5, 2009, reported: "A senior Israeli official in Washington" has asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation." This was the very last sentence in the article and, according to an extensive Nexis search, did not appear in any other English-language media in the world.
In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel." She "also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears." This appeared in Haaretz.com, October 25, 2007 (print edition October 26), but not in any US media or in any other English-language world media except the BBC citing the Iranian Mehr English-language news agency, October 27.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Changeman!
In January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented. All my expenses were to be paid by the Cuban government and I was very much looking forward to the visit. Only one problem — the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration. (On that occasion I went anyhow and was extremely lucky to avoid being caught by the American Travel Police on the way back and being fined thousands of dollars.) I mention this because Obama supporters would have us believe — as they themselves believe — that their Changeman has been busy making lots of important changes, Cuba being only one example. But I still don't have the legal right to travel to Cuba.
The only real change made by the Obama administration in regard to Cuba is that Cuban-Americans with family on the island can travel there and send remittances without restrictions. The April 13 White House announcement listed several other provisions concerning telecommunications companies, but what this will actually mean in practice, if anything, is unknown, particularly as it affects Cuba's access to the Internet. American anti-Castroites have long blamed Cuban's deficient Internet access on the proverbial "communist suppression", when the technical availability and prohibitive cost were to a large extent in the hands of American corporations. Microsoft, for example, bars Cuba from using its Messenger instant messaging service.4 And Google has long blocked Cuban access to many of its features.5 Venezuela and Cuba have been working on an underwater cable system that they hope will make them less reliant on the gringos.
The multifarious US economic embargo, which causes unending hardship and expense for the Cuban people, remains in place. Here is Changeman in a recent press conference:
Reporter: Thank you, Mr. President. You've heard from a lot of Latin America leaders here who want the U.S. to lift the embargo against Cuba. You've said that you think it's an important leverage to not lift it. But in 2004, you did support lifting the embargo. You said, it's failed to provide the source of raising standards of living, it's squeezed the innocent, and it's time for us to acknowledge that this particular policy has failed. I'm wondering, what made you change your mind about the embargo?
The President: Well, 2004, that seems just eons ago. What was I doing in 2004?
Reporter: Running for Senate.
The President: Is it while — I was running for Senate. There you go.6
Yes, there you go; you shouldn't confuse campaign rhetoric with the real world and the real Changeman.
The case of the Cuban Five is another chance for Changeman to come to the rescue. This outrageous perversion of justice whereby Cubans were sent to the United States to try to learn of further terrorist attacks in Cuba planned by anti-Castroites in Florida and were themselves arrested by the FBI on information partly supplied to the US by the Cuban government as their contribution to the War On Terrorism.7
The Cuban Five have been in US prisons for more than 10 years. Around June 15 the Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on whether or not they will hear the appeal of the Five. The Clinton administration arrested them. The Bush administration continued the awful, mindless, crimeless persecution for eight more years. But now comes the Changeman administration. Hooray! Oh, in late May, the Changeman administration filed a brief urging the Court to deny the Five a hearing, and on June 2, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an Organization of American States meeting: "I want to emphasize the United States under President Obama is taking a completely new approach to our policy toward Cuba."8
Another opportunity for Changeman to come to the rescue also involves Cuba — closing the Guantanamo prison. But our hero is once again displaying a woeful lack of political courage and imagination. If there's good evidence that certain detainees are a danger to anyone, then try them in US civilian courts with full rights, a decent defense team, and excluding secret evidence and coerced confessions. If they're found guilty — and with an American jury sitting in judgment of "terrorists", this, in almost all cases, would be the verdict — then imprison them in one of America's maximum security prisons, which already houses about 355 men labeled as "terrorists".9 The new ones will not be any more of a danger in prison than the ones already there.
However, if they're found innocent, then declare them free men. It would be much easier then to find a country to accept them, including the United States. Until now, the world has been told repeatedly by Washington that these men are "the worst of the worst". Small wonder that no country or community wants them near. But if they've been tried and acquitted, this situation should change markedly.
So Mr. Obama, we're waiting for you to step into a phone booth.
It's part of America's ideology to pretend that it doesn't have any ideology.
Oh, a woman nominated to be a Supreme Court justice. A woman whose parents are from Puerto Rico. A Latina! A Latina Supreme Court justice! Oh, hooray for America!
Who cares? Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice. He's black. He's as hopelessly reactionary as they come. No one should give a damn that Sonia Sotomayor is a woman with a Latin American background. All that counts is her politics. Her ideology. Her positions on important social and political issues. Yes, I know, we're talking about the Law, the Majesty of the Law, judges who are scholars, impartial scholars, who study the fine points and the history of a law, experts on the Constitution of the United States, not swayed by today's partisan squabbles but take the long view, looking at precedent, considering what precedent may be set for the future.
Don't believe it. That may be true in the infrequent Supreme Court case where no ideological question at all is raised. Otherwise the judges are all biased human beings, appointed by a biased president, confirmed by biased members of the Senate.
Patrick Martin recently observed on the World Socialist Web Site: "For the past 12 years ... under two Democratic presidents and one Republican, the post of US Secretary of State has been occupied by, in succession, a white woman, a black man, a black woman, and a white woman."10 And they all loved the empire. When the empire called for it, they bombed, invaded, and killed; they overthrew, occupied, tortured, and lied; and swore allegiance to Israel and the corporations.
And now we have a black president. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or Stokely Carmichael he's not. His policies and his appointments have all fallen in that area that runs from ever so slightly to the left of center to clear conservative and imperialist on the right. He's more loath to being identified as, or collaborating with, progressives than with right-wingers. Team Obama sees the left as an eccentric old aunt who keeps showing up at family functions, making everyone uncomfortable and wishing she'd just go away.
America, and the world, have to grow up. Forget color. Forget ethnicity. Forget gender. Forget sexual orientation. Forget even the class the person comes from. Look at the class they serve. And understand that the person wouldn't be in the position they are, or be nominated for the position, if there was any serious question about their loyalty to the capitalist ethic or American world domination.
It also matters not whether the president is comically inarticulate or whether he speaks in complete grammatical sentences. Keep your eye on the policies.
Obama
To the numerous fans of Barack Obama, on the left, in the middle, on the right, and to the apolitical Obamaniacs, my advice is to read "Being There" by Jerzy Kosinski, or see the film version of the same name starring Peter Sellers.
Also read "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen.
"Men go mad in herds, but only come to their senses one by one." — Charles Mackay, 19th century Scottish journalist
The great, international, demonic, truly frightening Iranian threat
by William Blum
The United States is "facing a nuclear threat in Iran" — article in Chicago Tribune and other major newspapers, May 26
"the growing missile threat from North Korea and Iran" — article in the Washington Post and other major newspapers, May 26
"Iran's threat transcends religion. Regardless of sectarian bent, Muslim communities need to oppose the attempts by Iran ... to extend Shia extremism and influence throughout the world." — op-ed article in Boston Globe, May 27
"A Festering Evil. Doing nothing is not an option in handling the threat from Iran" — headline in Investor's Business Daily, May 27, 2009
This is a very small sample from American newspapers covering but two days.
"Fifty-one percent of Israelis support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear sites" — BBC, May 24
After taking office, on Holocaust Memorial Day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "We will not allow Holocaust-deniers [Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] to carry out another holocaust." — Haaretz (Israel), May 14, 2009
Like clinical paranoia, "the threat from Iran" is impervious to correction by rational argument.
Two new novels have just appeared, from major American publishers, thrillers based on Iran having a nuclear weapon and the dangers one can imagine that that portends — "Banquo's Ghosts" by Rich Lowry & Keith Korman, and "The Increment" by David Ignatius. "Bomb, bomb, bomb. Let's bomb Iran," declares a CIA official in the latter book. The other book derides the very idea of "dialogue" with Iran while implicitly viewing torture as acceptable.1
On May 12, in New York City, a debate was held on the proposition that "Diplomacy With Iran Is Going Nowhere" (English translation: "Should we bomb Iran?"). Arguing in the affirmative, were Liz Cheney, former State Department official (and daughter of a certain unindicted war criminal) and Dan Senor, formerly the top spokesman for Washington's Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. Their "opponents" were R. Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state, and Kenneth Pollack, former National Security Council official and CIA analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq", a book that, unsurprisingly, did not have too long a shelf life.2
This is what "debate" on US foreign policy looks like in America in the first decade of the 21st century AD — four quintessential establishment figures. If such a "debate" had been held in the Soviet Union during the Cold War ("Detente With The United States Is Going Nowhere"), the American mainstream media would unanimously have had a jolly time making fun of it. The sponsor of the New York debate was the conservative Rosenkranz Foundation, but if a liberal (as opposed to a progressive or radical leftist) organization had been the sponsor, while there probably would have been a bit more of an ideological gap between the chosen pairs of speakers, it's unlikely that any of the present-day myths concerning Iran would have been seriously challenged by either side. These myths include the following, all of which I've dealt with before in this report but inasmuch as they are repeated on a regular basis in the media and by administration representatives, I think that readers need to be reminded of the counter arguments.
Iran has no right to nuclear weapons: Yet, there is no international law that says that the US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear weapons, but Iran is not. Iran has every reason to feel threatened. In any event, the US intelligence community's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of December 2007, "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities", makes a point of saying in bold type and italics: “This NIE does not assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons.” The report goes on to state: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program ."
Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier: I have yet to read of Ahmadinejad saying simply, clearly, unambiguously, and unequivocally that he thinks that what we know as the Holocaust never happened. He has instead commented about the peculiarity and injustice of a Holocaust which took place in Europe resulting in a state for the Jews in the Middle East instead of in Europe. Why are the Palestinians paying a price for a German crime? he asks. And he has questioned the figure of six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany, as have many other people of all political stripes.
Ahmadinejad has called for violence against Israel: His 2005 remark re "wiping Israel off the map", besides being a very questionable translation, has been seriously misinterpreted, as evidenced by the fact that the following year he declared: “The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom.”3 Obviously, he was not calling for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place peacefully.
Iran has no right to provide arms to Hamas and Hezbollah: However, the United States, we are assured, has every right to do the same for Israel and Egypt.
The fact that Obama says he's willing to "talk" to some of the "enemies" like Iran more than the Bush administration did sounds good: But one doesn't have to be too cynical to believe that it will not amount to more than a public relations gimmick. It's only change of policy that counts. Why doesn't Obama just state that he would not attack Iran unless Iran first attacked the US or Israel or anyone else? Besides, the Bush administration met with Iran on several occasions.
The following should also be kept in mind: The Washington Post, March 5, 2009, reported: "A senior Israeli official in Washington" has asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation." This was the very last sentence in the article and, according to an extensive Nexis search, did not appear in any other English-language media in the world.
In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel." She "also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears." This appeared in Haaretz.com, October 25, 2007 (print edition October 26), but not in any US media or in any other English-language world media except the BBC citing the Iranian Mehr English-language news agency, October 27.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Changeman!
In January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented. All my expenses were to be paid by the Cuban government and I was very much looking forward to the visit. Only one problem — the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration. (On that occasion I went anyhow and was extremely lucky to avoid being caught by the American Travel Police on the way back and being fined thousands of dollars.) I mention this because Obama supporters would have us believe — as they themselves believe — that their Changeman has been busy making lots of important changes, Cuba being only one example. But I still don't have the legal right to travel to Cuba.
The only real change made by the Obama administration in regard to Cuba is that Cuban-Americans with family on the island can travel there and send remittances without restrictions. The April 13 White House announcement listed several other provisions concerning telecommunications companies, but what this will actually mean in practice, if anything, is unknown, particularly as it affects Cuba's access to the Internet. American anti-Castroites have long blamed Cuban's deficient Internet access on the proverbial "communist suppression", when the technical availability and prohibitive cost were to a large extent in the hands of American corporations. Microsoft, for example, bars Cuba from using its Messenger instant messaging service.4 And Google has long blocked Cuban access to many of its features.5 Venezuela and Cuba have been working on an underwater cable system that they hope will make them less reliant on the gringos.
The multifarious US economic embargo, which causes unending hardship and expense for the Cuban people, remains in place. Here is Changeman in a recent press conference:
Reporter: Thank you, Mr. President. You've heard from a lot of Latin America leaders here who want the U.S. to lift the embargo against Cuba. You've said that you think it's an important leverage to not lift it. But in 2004, you did support lifting the embargo. You said, it's failed to provide the source of raising standards of living, it's squeezed the innocent, and it's time for us to acknowledge that this particular policy has failed. I'm wondering, what made you change your mind about the embargo?
The President: Well, 2004, that seems just eons ago. What was I doing in 2004?
Reporter: Running for Senate.
The President: Is it while — I was running for Senate. There you go.6
Yes, there you go; you shouldn't confuse campaign rhetoric with the real world and the real Changeman.
The case of the Cuban Five is another chance for Changeman to come to the rescue. This outrageous perversion of justice whereby Cubans were sent to the United States to try to learn of further terrorist attacks in Cuba planned by anti-Castroites in Florida and were themselves arrested by the FBI on information partly supplied to the US by the Cuban government as their contribution to the War On Terrorism.7
The Cuban Five have been in US prisons for more than 10 years. Around June 15 the Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on whether or not they will hear the appeal of the Five. The Clinton administration arrested them. The Bush administration continued the awful, mindless, crimeless persecution for eight more years. But now comes the Changeman administration. Hooray! Oh, in late May, the Changeman administration filed a brief urging the Court to deny the Five a hearing, and on June 2, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an Organization of American States meeting: "I want to emphasize the United States under President Obama is taking a completely new approach to our policy toward Cuba."8
Another opportunity for Changeman to come to the rescue also involves Cuba — closing the Guantanamo prison. But our hero is once again displaying a woeful lack of political courage and imagination. If there's good evidence that certain detainees are a danger to anyone, then try them in US civilian courts with full rights, a decent defense team, and excluding secret evidence and coerced confessions. If they're found guilty — and with an American jury sitting in judgment of "terrorists", this, in almost all cases, would be the verdict — then imprison them in one of America's maximum security prisons, which already houses about 355 men labeled as "terrorists".9 The new ones will not be any more of a danger in prison than the ones already there.
However, if they're found innocent, then declare them free men. It would be much easier then to find a country to accept them, including the United States. Until now, the world has been told repeatedly by Washington that these men are "the worst of the worst". Small wonder that no country or community wants them near. But if they've been tried and acquitted, this situation should change markedly.
So Mr. Obama, we're waiting for you to step into a phone booth.
It's part of America's ideology to pretend that it doesn't have any ideology.
Oh, a woman nominated to be a Supreme Court justice. A woman whose parents are from Puerto Rico. A Latina! A Latina Supreme Court justice! Oh, hooray for America!
Who cares? Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice. He's black. He's as hopelessly reactionary as they come. No one should give a damn that Sonia Sotomayor is a woman with a Latin American background. All that counts is her politics. Her ideology. Her positions on important social and political issues. Yes, I know, we're talking about the Law, the Majesty of the Law, judges who are scholars, impartial scholars, who study the fine points and the history of a law, experts on the Constitution of the United States, not swayed by today's partisan squabbles but take the long view, looking at precedent, considering what precedent may be set for the future.
Don't believe it. That may be true in the infrequent Supreme Court case where no ideological question at all is raised. Otherwise the judges are all biased human beings, appointed by a biased president, confirmed by biased members of the Senate.
Patrick Martin recently observed on the World Socialist Web Site: "For the past 12 years ... under two Democratic presidents and one Republican, the post of US Secretary of State has been occupied by, in succession, a white woman, a black man, a black woman, and a white woman."10 And they all loved the empire. When the empire called for it, they bombed, invaded, and killed; they overthrew, occupied, tortured, and lied; and swore allegiance to Israel and the corporations.
And now we have a black president. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or Stokely Carmichael he's not. His policies and his appointments have all fallen in that area that runs from ever so slightly to the left of center to clear conservative and imperialist on the right. He's more loath to being identified as, or collaborating with, progressives than with right-wingers. Team Obama sees the left as an eccentric old aunt who keeps showing up at family functions, making everyone uncomfortable and wishing she'd just go away.
America, and the world, have to grow up. Forget color. Forget ethnicity. Forget gender. Forget sexual orientation. Forget even the class the person comes from. Look at the class they serve. And understand that the person wouldn't be in the position they are, or be nominated for the position, if there was any serious question about their loyalty to the capitalist ethic or American world domination.
It also matters not whether the president is comically inarticulate or whether he speaks in complete grammatical sentences. Keep your eye on the policies.
Obama
To the numerous fans of Barack Obama, on the left, in the middle, on the right, and to the apolitical Obamaniacs, my advice is to read "Being There" by Jerzy Kosinski, or see the film version of the same name starring Peter Sellers.
Also read "The Emperor's New Clothes" by Hans Christian Andersen.
"Men go mad in herds, but only come to their senses one by one." — Charles Mackay, 19th century Scottish journalist
Monday, June 08, 2009
Reflections by Fidel
A Ridiculous Response To A Defeat
Yesterday in the afternoon, while thoroughly analyzing the speech delivered by Obama at the Muslim University of Cairo, I received some reports published by the news agencies with the weird information that two retired persons more than 70 years old had been arrested on charges of having been spying for the government of Cuba for 30 years. Almost all the important western press agencies – eight of them- disseminated the news.
The persons accused are Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers. It is also said that Walter worked as a specialist in European affairs and that in 1995 -14 years ago- the couple had traveled to Cuba and were received by me. During that time I met with thousands of American citizens for different reasons, either individually or in groups; at times there groups that numbered several hundreds, such as the students who traveled to Cuba on the Semester at Sea cruise ship project, so I could hardly remember any details about a meeting with two persons. Now I realize why George W. Bush prevented the cruise ship students to continue visiting Cuba. They talked with me for many hours, despite the fact that they belonged to high-middle class families.
That accusation points out that the married couple received numerous awards, but at the same time it acknowledges that they never did it for money or personal benefits.
I for one can assert that, as a matter of principle, we have never tortured anyone nor have we paid anyone to obtain any type of information. Those who one way or the other helped to protect the lives of Cuban citizens against terrorist plans and the plots to attempt against the life of their leaders, of the many which were perpetrated by several US administrations, did so moved by the imperatives of their own consciousness and, in my opinion, they deserve every honor in this world.
What is curious is the fact that this news is published 24 hours after the defeat suffered by the US diplomacy at the General Assembly of the OAS.
What is really weird is this: If these persons were under surveillance, because there were some FBI agents who managed to fool them by pretending that they were Cuban spies, why weren’t they arrested before? Why are they arrested now?
Now begins the game of the alleged justice against two persons who have been morally torn to shreds beforehand through accusations that will arrange in advance the behavior of the jury that is to decide whether they are guilty or not guilty. Obviously they will not receive the kind treatment accorded to the terrorists who were recruited by the government of that country to destroy the Cubana airliner with all its passengers inside and to commit horrible crimes against our people. They have also violated the US laws, for many of these despicable terrorist actions were carried out in the US territory.
A whole campaign has already been launched against the married couple; they are portrayed as traitors who could be sanctioned to 35 years imprisonment, a sentence they will have to serve until they are more than 100 years old. The prosecutors will be able to resort to their traditional maneuvers in their quest for political goals.
All of this mess has been created after Obama took office as President of the United States. Perhaps the arrest was influenced not only by the tremendous setback suffered at San Pedro Sula, but also by the news that there have been some contacts between he governments of the United States and Cuba to deal with important issues of common interest.
According to a news report published by ANSA, Walter Kendall Myers declared that he tried to be “very prudent” when picking up or transmitting secrets to Cuba.
Other articles refer to a diary that was found in Gwendolyn’s possession. If all of this were true, I could not but admire her selfless and courageous behavior towards Cuba.
The confrontation with the United States is of an ideological character and has nothing to do with the security of that country.
However, yesterday other three reports from news agencies released information that does have a lot do with the political moral and the security of the United States:
The agency AFP reported that a new debate had taken place on Friday when several Democrat legislators accused the Republican opponents of revealing secret information about torturing techniques, which was made public during a closed door session of the Congress.
The report adds that the Representative from Illinois, Jan Schakowski, pointed out that everybody in the commission understands what a closed door hearing means.
She further stated in a communiqué that the members of this commission acted in an irresponsible manner when they left from the confidential meeting before it ended and went straight ahead to speak to the press.
The news agency AP stated that the federal prosecutors had accused a man for having launched threats against President Barack Obama after he presumably told a bank employee in Utah that his mission was to kill the president.
The local diary Salt Lake Tribune published on Thursday on its website stated that Daniel James Murray had confessed his intentions to a bank cashier on May 27 while he was withdrawing 13 000 dollars from a bank account.
According to the newspaper, no one knows where the accused is. A document submitted yesterday to the justice authorities states that Murray is from New York and that very recently he had traveled to California, Utah, Georgia, Oklahoma, and possibly Texas.
The newspaper further states that the Secret Service claims that Murray has at least 8 registered fire arms, and adds that Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, had told The Associated Press that he won’t make any comments in this regard.
According to the AFP news agency, sensitive US military technologies required to manufacture nuclear weapons can easily be acquired in the United States and exported illegally, as advised by the Congress GAO.
In a recent report published by that institution it is stated that, using a front company and false identities, the GAO was able to buy sensitive products, such as infrared goggles used by the US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to identify targets during night time, electrodes to detonate nuclear weapons, electronic sensors used in the manufacturing of hand-made bombs and used chips from remotely controlled missiles.
Isn’t it so that that immense and sophisticated arsenal that has been made available to the market is placing the world at the verge of a precipice?
Don’t you all find the whole story about Cuban espionage quite ridiculous?
Fidel Castro Ruz
June 6, 2009
3:12 p.m.
Yesterday in the afternoon, while thoroughly analyzing the speech delivered by Obama at the Muslim University of Cairo, I received some reports published by the news agencies with the weird information that two retired persons more than 70 years old had been arrested on charges of having been spying for the government of Cuba for 30 years. Almost all the important western press agencies – eight of them- disseminated the news.
The persons accused are Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers. It is also said that Walter worked as a specialist in European affairs and that in 1995 -14 years ago- the couple had traveled to Cuba and were received by me. During that time I met with thousands of American citizens for different reasons, either individually or in groups; at times there groups that numbered several hundreds, such as the students who traveled to Cuba on the Semester at Sea cruise ship project, so I could hardly remember any details about a meeting with two persons. Now I realize why George W. Bush prevented the cruise ship students to continue visiting Cuba. They talked with me for many hours, despite the fact that they belonged to high-middle class families.
That accusation points out that the married couple received numerous awards, but at the same time it acknowledges that they never did it for money or personal benefits.
I for one can assert that, as a matter of principle, we have never tortured anyone nor have we paid anyone to obtain any type of information. Those who one way or the other helped to protect the lives of Cuban citizens against terrorist plans and the plots to attempt against the life of their leaders, of the many which were perpetrated by several US administrations, did so moved by the imperatives of their own consciousness and, in my opinion, they deserve every honor in this world.
What is curious is the fact that this news is published 24 hours after the defeat suffered by the US diplomacy at the General Assembly of the OAS.
What is really weird is this: If these persons were under surveillance, because there were some FBI agents who managed to fool them by pretending that they were Cuban spies, why weren’t they arrested before? Why are they arrested now?
Now begins the game of the alleged justice against two persons who have been morally torn to shreds beforehand through accusations that will arrange in advance the behavior of the jury that is to decide whether they are guilty or not guilty. Obviously they will not receive the kind treatment accorded to the terrorists who were recruited by the government of that country to destroy the Cubana airliner with all its passengers inside and to commit horrible crimes against our people. They have also violated the US laws, for many of these despicable terrorist actions were carried out in the US territory.
A whole campaign has already been launched against the married couple; they are portrayed as traitors who could be sanctioned to 35 years imprisonment, a sentence they will have to serve until they are more than 100 years old. The prosecutors will be able to resort to their traditional maneuvers in their quest for political goals.
All of this mess has been created after Obama took office as President of the United States. Perhaps the arrest was influenced not only by the tremendous setback suffered at San Pedro Sula, but also by the news that there have been some contacts between he governments of the United States and Cuba to deal with important issues of common interest.
According to a news report published by ANSA, Walter Kendall Myers declared that he tried to be “very prudent” when picking up or transmitting secrets to Cuba.
Other articles refer to a diary that was found in Gwendolyn’s possession. If all of this were true, I could not but admire her selfless and courageous behavior towards Cuba.
The confrontation with the United States is of an ideological character and has nothing to do with the security of that country.
However, yesterday other three reports from news agencies released information that does have a lot do with the political moral and the security of the United States:
The agency AFP reported that a new debate had taken place on Friday when several Democrat legislators accused the Republican opponents of revealing secret information about torturing techniques, which was made public during a closed door session of the Congress.
The report adds that the Representative from Illinois, Jan Schakowski, pointed out that everybody in the commission understands what a closed door hearing means.
She further stated in a communiqué that the members of this commission acted in an irresponsible manner when they left from the confidential meeting before it ended and went straight ahead to speak to the press.
The news agency AP stated that the federal prosecutors had accused a man for having launched threats against President Barack Obama after he presumably told a bank employee in Utah that his mission was to kill the president.
The local diary Salt Lake Tribune published on Thursday on its website stated that Daniel James Murray had confessed his intentions to a bank cashier on May 27 while he was withdrawing 13 000 dollars from a bank account.
According to the newspaper, no one knows where the accused is. A document submitted yesterday to the justice authorities states that Murray is from New York and that very recently he had traveled to California, Utah, Georgia, Oklahoma, and possibly Texas.
The newspaper further states that the Secret Service claims that Murray has at least 8 registered fire arms, and adds that Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, had told The Associated Press that he won’t make any comments in this regard.
According to the AFP news agency, sensitive US military technologies required to manufacture nuclear weapons can easily be acquired in the United States and exported illegally, as advised by the Congress GAO.
In a recent report published by that institution it is stated that, using a front company and false identities, the GAO was able to buy sensitive products, such as infrared goggles used by the US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to identify targets during night time, electrodes to detonate nuclear weapons, electronic sensors used in the manufacturing of hand-made bombs and used chips from remotely controlled missiles.
Isn’t it so that that immense and sophisticated arsenal that has been made available to the market is placing the world at the verge of a precipice?
Don’t you all find the whole story about Cuban espionage quite ridiculous?
Fidel Castro Ruz
June 6, 2009
3:12 p.m.
Cuban Fighters
Cuba Denounces Injustices in Case of the Cuban Five in Geneva
by Cuban Agency News
Cuba denounced at the Human Rights Council in Geneva the violations committed by the US Government in the judicial process against five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters who remain unjustly imprisoned in the United States since 1998.
According to Prensa Latina news agency, the Cuban Ambassador to this body of the United Nations (UN), Juan Antonio Fernandez, introduced the topic during an interactive discussion with the UN Special Rapporteurs on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers and on Freedom of Opinion and Expression.
The Cuban diplomat congratulated the Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers for taking into account the necessary parameters to guarantee the independence of magistrates.
However, he stressed that Cuba believes it would have been important to include the analysis of the impact that factors such as media manipulation, a prejudiced community and a biased venue can have upon the impartial conduct of judges.
Fernandez explained that these factors, along with a vindictive attitude by the US Government, are present in the case of Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez – internationally known as the Cuban Five – who were arrested in Miami in 1998 for infiltrating anti-Cuba extremist groups that were planning and carrying out terrorist actions against the Caribbean nation.
The Cuban official recalled that the detention of the Cuban Five was declared arbitrary by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2005.
“Almost eleven years after their unjust imprisonment, the Cuban Five are still giving the world an example of unyielding resistance and faith in justice,” the diplomat added.
As to the report regarding freedom of opinion and expression, the Cuban ambassador warned the audience about the relationship of the Rapporteur with certain regional mechanisms and other institutions of dubious reputation such as the Inter American Press Association.
by Cuban Agency News
Cuba denounced at the Human Rights Council in Geneva the violations committed by the US Government in the judicial process against five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters who remain unjustly imprisoned in the United States since 1998.
According to Prensa Latina news agency, the Cuban Ambassador to this body of the United Nations (UN), Juan Antonio Fernandez, introduced the topic during an interactive discussion with the UN Special Rapporteurs on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers and on Freedom of Opinion and Expression.
The Cuban diplomat congratulated the Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers for taking into account the necessary parameters to guarantee the independence of magistrates.
However, he stressed that Cuba believes it would have been important to include the analysis of the impact that factors such as media manipulation, a prejudiced community and a biased venue can have upon the impartial conduct of judges.
Fernandez explained that these factors, along with a vindictive attitude by the US Government, are present in the case of Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Rene Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino and Fernando Gonzalez – internationally known as the Cuban Five – who were arrested in Miami in 1998 for infiltrating anti-Cuba extremist groups that were planning and carrying out terrorist actions against the Caribbean nation.
The Cuban official recalled that the detention of the Cuban Five was declared arbitrary by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2005.
“Almost eleven years after their unjust imprisonment, the Cuban Five are still giving the world an example of unyielding resistance and faith in justice,” the diplomat added.
As to the report regarding freedom of opinion and expression, the Cuban ambassador warned the audience about the relationship of the Rapporteur with certain regional mechanisms and other institutions of dubious reputation such as the Inter American Press Association.
In The Name of God
This song can be listened to and downloaded freely at "http://headonradionetwork.com/blog/2009/06/03/new-music-from-david-rovics-in-the-name-of-god/"
Hi folks,
Another doctor who provided abortions has been murdered in the US,
this time in Kansas. He had already been shot back in 1993. Google
Dr. George Tiller and you’ll find out lots more. I’ll get a scratchy
MP3 of the song up on http://www.myspace.com/davidrovics soon, but
here’s the lyric…
In the Name of God
I woke up this morning
And I turned on the news
It was a Sunday morning
They were sitting in the pews
The doctor’s wife was in the choir
She was about to sing
She saw it all in front of her
And she heard that awful ring
In the name of God he held his pistol
Pointed at the doctor’s head
In the name of God he pulled the trigger
Now the doctor’s lying dead
Dr. Tiller had a family
Three daughters and a son
Two girls were both doctors
Who were proud of what he’d done
They knew someone had to do something
Before they left this world behind
If it wasn’t them then who would serve
The cause of womankind
In the name of God…
This is not Afghanistan
It’s the Heartland USA
Where a girl has to wonder
If she’ll get acid in her face
Where they bomb the women’s clinics
Because the preacher told them to
Where the man there on the TV
Tells them that’s what they should do
In the name of God…
Hi folks,
Another doctor who provided abortions has been murdered in the US,
this time in Kansas. He had already been shot back in 1993. Google
Dr. George Tiller and you’ll find out lots more. I’ll get a scratchy
MP3 of the song up on http://www.myspace.com/davidrovics soon, but
here’s the lyric…
In the Name of God
I woke up this morning
And I turned on the news
It was a Sunday morning
They were sitting in the pews
The doctor’s wife was in the choir
She was about to sing
She saw it all in front of her
And she heard that awful ring
In the name of God he held his pistol
Pointed at the doctor’s head
In the name of God he pulled the trigger
Now the doctor’s lying dead
Dr. Tiller had a family
Three daughters and a son
Two girls were both doctors
Who were proud of what he’d done
They knew someone had to do something
Before they left this world behind
If it wasn’t them then who would serve
The cause of womankind
In the name of God…
This is not Afghanistan
It’s the Heartland USA
Where a girl has to wonder
If she’ll get acid in her face
Where they bomb the women’s clinics
Because the preacher told them to
Where the man there on the TV
Tells them that’s what they should do
In the name of God…
Take Back The Net!
Sunday, June 07, 2009
CUBA
OAS votes to readmit Cuba after 47 years
The Organization of American States voted Wednesday June 3rd to revoke the 1962 measure suspending communist Cuba, overturning a landmark of the Cold War in the hemisphere.
"The Cold War has ended this day in San Pedro Sula," said Honduran President Manuel Zelaya immediately following the announcement. "We begin a new era of fraternity and tolerance."
The action doesn’t mean Cuba will return to the 34-member body that helps coordinate policies and mediates disputes throughout the Americas.
Cuban officials have repeatedly insisted they have no interest in returning to an organization they consider a tool of the United States.
"This is a moment of rejoicing for all of Latin America," Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Fander Falconi told reporters after the session.
The decision was taken by consensus, meaning the United States accepted it, though Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had lobbied personally for requiring Cuba to make democratic reforms and improve respect for human rights.
The decision seemed to catch State Department officials in Washington off guard.
Spokesman P.J. Crowley, briefing reporters before the vote, said an agreement Wednesday was unlikely and he called that "a clear sign of how the president’s approach to relations in the Americas is paying dividends."
He said the main support from Cuba’s return came from "countries like Nicaragua and Venezuela; they’re the ones who have been trapped in the past" while the United States was celebrating "that the OAS is, in fact, a community of democracies."
Clinton herself left the meeting before the final vote, saying that the organization had been unable to reach consensus on Cuba.
The meetings dragged on so long Tuesday night that she did not even have time to deliver a prepared speech of 1,500 words before flying out of Honduras to join U.S. President Barack Obama in Egypt.
The U.S. won Cuba’s suspension from the hemispheric body in 1962 as Fidel Castro’s government veered into the Soviet bloc at a moment of intense global tension.
But in recent years, with the Cold War fading and left-of-center governments spreading in the Americas, Cuba’s isolation melted away. Every country in the hemisphere except for the United States has re-established relations with Cuba and the U.S. embargo of Cuba is deeply unpopular throughout the region.
Cuba’s government, has repeatedly said it has no interest in returning to the 34- member organization, which it calls a tool of the United States.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro wrote in state newspapers on Wednesday that OAS should not exist and historically has "opened the doors to the Trojan horse" — the U.S. — to wreak havoc in Latin America.
The Obama administration has hoped its recent overtures to the Cuban government would overcome widespread resentment in the Americas over Washington’s long history of isolating Havana.
U.S. officials have lifted restrictions on money transfers and travel to the island by Americans with family there and are resuming long-stalled immigration and postal service talks.
In her prepared statement for Tuesday’s closed session, Clinton acknowledged that "in the past, the U.S. has sometimes taken a counterproductive approach to domestic affairs within the hemisphere that created mistrust and suspicion," according to a copy given to reporters.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said the United States is continuing to use the OAS as "an instrument of domination" and that Cuba’s suspension was due to the support of former conservative Latin American dictators who were "used by the Yankees."
At a news conference the Sandinista leader accused the Obama administration of being no different from previous administrations. "The president has changed, but not American policy," Ortega said.
The Organization of American States voted Wednesday June 3rd to revoke the 1962 measure suspending communist Cuba, overturning a landmark of the Cold War in the hemisphere.
"The Cold War has ended this day in San Pedro Sula," said Honduran President Manuel Zelaya immediately following the announcement. "We begin a new era of fraternity and tolerance."
The action doesn’t mean Cuba will return to the 34-member body that helps coordinate policies and mediates disputes throughout the Americas.
Cuban officials have repeatedly insisted they have no interest in returning to an organization they consider a tool of the United States.
"This is a moment of rejoicing for all of Latin America," Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Fander Falconi told reporters after the session.
The decision was taken by consensus, meaning the United States accepted it, though Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had lobbied personally for requiring Cuba to make democratic reforms and improve respect for human rights.
The decision seemed to catch State Department officials in Washington off guard.
Spokesman P.J. Crowley, briefing reporters before the vote, said an agreement Wednesday was unlikely and he called that "a clear sign of how the president’s approach to relations in the Americas is paying dividends."
He said the main support from Cuba’s return came from "countries like Nicaragua and Venezuela; they’re the ones who have been trapped in the past" while the United States was celebrating "that the OAS is, in fact, a community of democracies."
Clinton herself left the meeting before the final vote, saying that the organization had been unable to reach consensus on Cuba.
The meetings dragged on so long Tuesday night that she did not even have time to deliver a prepared speech of 1,500 words before flying out of Honduras to join U.S. President Barack Obama in Egypt.
The U.S. won Cuba’s suspension from the hemispheric body in 1962 as Fidel Castro’s government veered into the Soviet bloc at a moment of intense global tension.
But in recent years, with the Cold War fading and left-of-center governments spreading in the Americas, Cuba’s isolation melted away. Every country in the hemisphere except for the United States has re-established relations with Cuba and the U.S. embargo of Cuba is deeply unpopular throughout the region.
Cuba’s government, has repeatedly said it has no interest in returning to the 34- member organization, which it calls a tool of the United States.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro wrote in state newspapers on Wednesday that OAS should not exist and historically has "opened the doors to the Trojan horse" — the U.S. — to wreak havoc in Latin America.
The Obama administration has hoped its recent overtures to the Cuban government would overcome widespread resentment in the Americas over Washington’s long history of isolating Havana.
U.S. officials have lifted restrictions on money transfers and travel to the island by Americans with family there and are resuming long-stalled immigration and postal service talks.
In her prepared statement for Tuesday’s closed session, Clinton acknowledged that "in the past, the U.S. has sometimes taken a counterproductive approach to domestic affairs within the hemisphere that created mistrust and suspicion," according to a copy given to reporters.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said the United States is continuing to use the OAS as "an instrument of domination" and that Cuba’s suspension was due to the support of former conservative Latin American dictators who were "used by the Yankees."
At a news conference the Sandinista leader accused the Obama administration of being no different from previous administrations. "The president has changed, but not American policy," Ortega said.
Obamas War
Privatization of 'Obama's War'
Michael Winship uruknet.info روكنت.إنفو
June 5, 2009
The sudden reappearance of former Vice President Dick Cheney over the last few months - seeming to emerge from his famous undisclosed location more frequently now than he ever did when he was in office - does not mean six more weeks of winter.
But it does bring to mind that classic country and western song, "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?" Or, maybe, "If You Won't Leave Me, I'll Find Someone Who Will."
In his self-appointed role as voice of the opposition, Mr. Cheney has been playing Nostradamus, gloomily predicting doom if the Obama White House continues to set aside Bush administration policy, setting the stage for recrimination and finger-pointing should there be another terrorist attack on America.
Cheney's grouchy legacy is the gift that keeps on giving. Just this week, The Washington Post reported for the first time that while vice president, Cheney oversaw "at least" four of those briefings given to senior members of Congress about enhanced interrogation techniques; "part of a secretive and forceful defense he mounted throughout 2005 in an effort to maintain support for the harsh techniques used on detainees...
"An official who witnessed one of Cheney's briefing sessions with lawmakers said the vice president's presence appeared to be calculated to give additional heft to the CIA's case for maintaining the program."
And remember Halliburton, the international energy services company of which Cheney used to be the CEO? After the fall of Baghdad, Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR were the happy recipients of billions of dollars in outside contracts to take care of the military and rebuild Iraq's petroleum industry.
Waste, shoddy workmanship (like faulty wiring that caused fatal electric shocks) and corruption ran wild, Pentagon investigators allege, even as Vice President Cheney was still receiving deferred compensation and stock options.
Reporting for TomDispatch.com, Pratap Chatterjee, author of the book, Halliburton's Army, writes, "In early May, at a hearing on Capitol Hill, DCAA [Defense Contract Audit Agency] director April G. Stephenson told the independent, bipartisan, congressionally mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan that, since 2004, her staff had sent 32 cases of suspected overbilling, bribery and other possible violations of the law to the Pentagon inspector general.
"The 'vast majority' of these cases, she testified, were linked to KBR, which accounts for a staggering 43 percent of the dollars the Pentagon has spent in Iraq."
In one instance, KBR was charging an average $38,000 apiece for "prefabricated living units" on bases in Iraq; another contractor offered to provide them for $18,000. But of a questionable $553 million in payments to KBR that the DCCA blocked or suspended, the Pentagon has gone ahead and agreed to pay $439 million, accepting KBR's explanations.
KBR, Halliburton and the private security firm Blackwater have come to symbolize the excesses of outsourcing warfare. So you'd think that with a new sheriff like Barack Obama in town, such practices would be on the "Things Not to Do" list. Not so.
According to new Pentagon statistics, in the second quarter of this year, there has been a 23 percent increase in the number of private security contractors working for the Pentagon in Iraq and a 29 percent hike in Afghanistan. In fact, outside contractors now make up approximately half of our forces fighting in the two countries.
"This means," according to Jeremy Scahill, author of the book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, "there are a whopping 242,647 contractors working on these two U.S. wars."
Scahill, who runs an excellent new website called "Rebel Reports," spoke with my colleague Bill Moyers on the current edition of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.
"What we have seen happen, as a result of this incredible reliance on private military contractors, is that the United States has created a new system for waging war," he said.
By hiring foreign nationals as mercenaries, "You turn the entire world into your recruiting ground. You intricately link corporate profits to an escalation of warfare and make it profitable for companies to participate in your wars.
"In the process of doing that you undermine US democratic policies. And you also violate the sovereignty of other nations, because you're making their citizens combatants in a war to which their country is not a party.
"I feel that the end game of all of this could well be the disintegration of the nation-state apparatus in the world. And it could be replaced by a scenario where you have corporations with their own private armies. To me, that would be a devastating development. But it's happening on a micro level. And I fear it will start to happen on a much bigger scale."
Jeremy Scahill's comments come just as Lt. General Stanley McChrystal, the man slated to be the new commander of our troops in Afghanistan says the cost of our strategy there is going to cost America and its NATO allies billions of additional dollars for years to come.
In fact, according to budget documents released by the Pentagon last month, as of next year, the cost of the war in Afghanistan - more and more known as "Obama's War" - will exceed the cost of the war in Iraq.
The President asserted in his Cairo speech on Thursday that he has no desire to keep troops or establish permanent military bases in Afghanistan.
But according to Jeremy Scahill, "I think what we're seeing, under President Barack Obama, is sort of old wine in a new bottle. Obama is sending one message to the world," he told Moyers, "but the reality on the ground, particularly when it comes to private military contractors, is that the status quo remains from the Bush era."
Maybe that's one more reason Dick Cheney, private contractor emeritus, won't go away.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program "Bill Moyers Journal," which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
June 5, 2009
The sudden reappearance of former Vice President Dick Cheney over the last few months - seeming to emerge from his famous undisclosed location more frequently now than he ever did when he was in office - does not mean six more weeks of winter.
But it does bring to mind that classic country and western song, "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away?" Or, maybe, "If You Won't Leave Me, I'll Find Someone Who Will."
In his self-appointed role as voice of the opposition, Mr. Cheney has been playing Nostradamus, gloomily predicting doom if the Obama White House continues to set aside Bush administration policy, setting the stage for recrimination and finger-pointing should there be another terrorist attack on America.
Cheney's grouchy legacy is the gift that keeps on giving. Just this week, The Washington Post reported for the first time that while vice president, Cheney oversaw "at least" four of those briefings given to senior members of Congress about enhanced interrogation techniques; "part of a secretive and forceful defense he mounted throughout 2005 in an effort to maintain support for the harsh techniques used on detainees...
"An official who witnessed one of Cheney's briefing sessions with lawmakers said the vice president's presence appeared to be calculated to give additional heft to the CIA's case for maintaining the program."
And remember Halliburton, the international energy services company of which Cheney used to be the CEO? After the fall of Baghdad, Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR were the happy recipients of billions of dollars in outside contracts to take care of the military and rebuild Iraq's petroleum industry.
Waste, shoddy workmanship (like faulty wiring that caused fatal electric shocks) and corruption ran wild, Pentagon investigators allege, even as Vice President Cheney was still receiving deferred compensation and stock options.
Reporting for TomDispatch.com, Pratap Chatterjee, author of the book, Halliburton's Army, writes, "In early May, at a hearing on Capitol Hill, DCAA [Defense Contract Audit Agency] director April G. Stephenson told the independent, bipartisan, congressionally mandated Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan that, since 2004, her staff had sent 32 cases of suspected overbilling, bribery and other possible violations of the law to the Pentagon inspector general.
"The 'vast majority' of these cases, she testified, were linked to KBR, which accounts for a staggering 43 percent of the dollars the Pentagon has spent in Iraq."
In one instance, KBR was charging an average $38,000 apiece for "prefabricated living units" on bases in Iraq; another contractor offered to provide them for $18,000. But of a questionable $553 million in payments to KBR that the DCCA blocked or suspended, the Pentagon has gone ahead and agreed to pay $439 million, accepting KBR's explanations.
KBR, Halliburton and the private security firm Blackwater have come to symbolize the excesses of outsourcing warfare. So you'd think that with a new sheriff like Barack Obama in town, such practices would be on the "Things Not to Do" list. Not so.
According to new Pentagon statistics, in the second quarter of this year, there has been a 23 percent increase in the number of private security contractors working for the Pentagon in Iraq and a 29 percent hike in Afghanistan. In fact, outside contractors now make up approximately half of our forces fighting in the two countries.
"This means," according to Jeremy Scahill, author of the book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, "there are a whopping 242,647 contractors working on these two U.S. wars."
Scahill, who runs an excellent new website called "Rebel Reports," spoke with my colleague Bill Moyers on the current edition of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.
"What we have seen happen, as a result of this incredible reliance on private military contractors, is that the United States has created a new system for waging war," he said.
By hiring foreign nationals as mercenaries, "You turn the entire world into your recruiting ground. You intricately link corporate profits to an escalation of warfare and make it profitable for companies to participate in your wars.
"In the process of doing that you undermine US democratic policies. And you also violate the sovereignty of other nations, because you're making their citizens combatants in a war to which their country is not a party.
"I feel that the end game of all of this could well be the disintegration of the nation-state apparatus in the world. And it could be replaced by a scenario where you have corporations with their own private armies. To me, that would be a devastating development. But it's happening on a micro level. And I fear it will start to happen on a much bigger scale."
Jeremy Scahill's comments come just as Lt. General Stanley McChrystal, the man slated to be the new commander of our troops in Afghanistan says the cost of our strategy there is going to cost America and its NATO allies billions of additional dollars for years to come.
In fact, according to budget documents released by the Pentagon last month, as of next year, the cost of the war in Afghanistan - more and more known as "Obama's War" - will exceed the cost of the war in Iraq.
The President asserted in his Cairo speech on Thursday that he has no desire to keep troops or establish permanent military bases in Afghanistan.
But according to Jeremy Scahill, "I think what we're seeing, under President Barack Obama, is sort of old wine in a new bottle. Obama is sending one message to the world," he told Moyers, "but the reality on the ground, particularly when it comes to private military contractors, is that the status quo remains from the Bush era."
Maybe that's one more reason Dick Cheney, private contractor emeritus, won't go away.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program "Bill Moyers Journal," which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog at www.pbs.org/moyers.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
The Last Convention
"It is my opinion that the 1968 Democratic convention was the death of any semblance of free and open politics and elections in USA"..... alabamared
Brief History Of Chicago's 1968 Democratic Convention
(Sources: "Miami and the Siege of Chicago" by Norman Mailer, Facts on File, CQ's Guide to U.S. Elections)
The 1968 Democratic Convention, held on August 26-29th, stands as an important event in the nation's political and cultural history. The divisive politics of the convention, brought about by the Vietnam war policies of President Johnson, prompted the Democratic party to completely overhaul its rules for selecting presidential delegates -- opening up the political process to millions. The violence between police and anti-Vietnam war protesters in the streets and parks of Chicago gave the city a black-eye from which it has yet to completely recover. The following is a brief history of the events leading up to the convention, the convention itself and the riots surrounding it.
Events Leading up the 1968 Convention Riots
The primary cause of the demonstrations and the subsequent riots during the 1968 Chicago convention was opposition to the Vietnam War. Young peace activists had met at a camp in Lake Villa, Illinois on March 23 to plan a protest march at the convention. Anti-war leaders including David Dellinger (editor of Liberation magazine and chairman of the National Mobilization Committee to End War in Vietnam) Rennie Davis, head of the Center for Radical Research and a leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Vernon Grizzard, a draft resistance leader, and Tom Hayden (also a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society) coordinated efforts with over 100 anti-war groups.
Groups related to this effort also planned events. Jerry Rubin (a former associate of Dellinger) and Abbie Hoffman (both leaders of the Youth International Party (YIPPIES) planned a Youth Festival with the goal of bringing 100,000 young adults to Chicago. They tried to get a permit from Chicago to hold a YIPPIE convention. The permit was denied, but the YIPPIES still came.
On March 31, President Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. Johnson's favorability ratings were in the mid-30% range and polls showed even less support for his Vietnam War policies (about 23%.) The announcement created uncertainty in the anti-war groups' convention plans. Many anti-war activists also became involved in the presidential campaigns of war opponents such as Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-NY), Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-WI) and Sen. George McGovern (D-SD).
However, by early April there was much talk of Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice President, running for the presidency. Humphrey officially entered the race on April 27th. Because of his close identity with the Johnson administration, the plans for demonstrations were not cancelled.
Other events preceding the 1968 Democratic convention contributed to the tense national mood. On April 4, civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated and riots broke out throughout the country. (This included Chicago, where Mayor Daley reportedly gave a "shoot to kill" instruction to police.) On June 3, artist and cultural icon Andy Warhol was shot. Finally, on June 5th, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy (President John Kennedy's brother) was shot in the head after winning the California primary. He died the next day. There also were countless protests against the Vietnam war at this time. Student protesters effectively shut down Columbia University in April.
Attempts to Move the Convention from Chicago
Many Democrats were eager to move their national convention from Chicago to Miami, where the Republicans were to hold their nominating event. Democrats were concerned not only about the possibility of unruly protests, an ongoing telephone strike in Chicago threatened to cause logistical nightmares. The television networks also lobbied to move the event to Miami -- TV and phone lines already were installed at the Republican convention site. In addition, because of the phone strike in Chicago, television cameras would be limited to the hotels and the convention center -- new phone lines were needed to cover outside events. Any footage taken outside this area would have to be shot on film, which would require processing before it was broadcast.
Mayor Richard J. Daley would not let the convention leave Chicago. He promised to enforce the peace and allow no outrageous demonstrations. He also threatened to withdraw support for Humphrey, the apparent nominee, if the convention was moved. President Johnson also wanted to keep the convention in Chicago and is rumored to have said "Miami is not an American city."
The Convention
Humphrey came to Chicago with the nomination virtually sewn up -- he had between 100 and 200 more delegates than he needed, as well as the support of blacks, labor groups and Southern Democrats. However, he still felt his nomination was in jeopardy.
Humphrey was clearly seen as Johnson's man. President Johnson still had a grip over the convention, even going as far as to ensure states supportive of him received the best seats at the convention hall. But Johnson did not show up for the event.
Mayor Daley, who wanted Ted Kennedy to run for President, caucused his delegation of 118 the weekend before the convention and decided to remain "uncommitted." Humphrey also was at risk from the growing anti-war wing of the Democratic party. After vascillating between the pro-war policies of the Johnson administration and the anti-war policies of his opponents, Humphrey made it clear on CBS's Face The Nation the weekend before the convention he supported President Johnson's Vietnam policies.
Humphrey faced a major credentials fights. Delegations from 15 states tried to unseat Humphrey's delegates and seat anti-Vietnman delegates. Humphrey's forces won every fight. There also was manuevering behind the scenes at the Conrad Hilton (where the press and the Democratic party were staying) to try and get Sen. Ted Kennedy to run.
Sen. Dan Inouye (D-HI) gave the keynote address, but it was decidedly downbeat, with 10 of 13 pages devoted to what's wrong with the country. (Keynote speeches are usually upbeat affirmations of the party.)
The most contentious issue was Vietnam, and the debate on the minority "peace plank." The convention managers scheduled the debate for late (past prime-time) Tuesday night, but the peace delegates staged a protest and it was rescheduled for the next afternoon.
Debate was limited to one hour for each side and structured to prevent hostile exchanges. Rep. Phil Burton (D-CA) was the featured speaker in support of the peace plank, Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-ME) was the featured speaker in support of the Johnson-Humphrey language. After the Humphrey language was approved, the New York and California delegations began to sing "We Shall Overcome" and more delegations marched around the convention floor in protest. Television made it impossible for the convention planners to hide the protests of delegates favoring the peace plank. Even if planners tried to hide rebel delegations (such as New York and California) by placing them in the back of the convention hall and turning down their microphones, a camera and sound-man covering the floor could easily broadcast their protests across the nation.
During the debate on the peace plank, the worst day of rioting occurred outside the Amphitheater, in the so-called "Battle of Michigan Avenue."
Humphrey was nominated by Mayor Joseph Alioto of San Francisco. (His daughter is now running for Congress in California.) Sen. George McGovern was nominated by Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-MA), who shocked the convention by saying, "With George McGovern as President of the United States we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago." Mayor Daley erupted in anger and shook his fist at Ribicoff. Most reports of the event also say Daley yelled an off-color epithet beginning with an "F," but accoriding to CNN executive producer Jack Smith, others close to Daley inist he shouted "Faker," meaning Ribicoff was not a man of his word, the lowest name one can be called in Chicago's Irish politics.
Humphrey easily won the nomination by more than a 1,000 votes, with the delegation from Pennsylvania putting him over the top.
On the last day, Thursday, the convention opened with a film tribute to Bobby Kennedy. Also, Mayor Daley printed up hundreds of "We Love You Daley" signs and orchestrated a pro-Daley demonstration in the convention to contrast with the negative image the city had gained during the course of the convention.
Humphrey chose Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-ME) to be his running mate. Julian Bond, the African-American civil rights activist, was nominated for Vice President, but withdrew because he was 28 years old, under the constitutional age (35) to hold the office.
The Riots
Outside the official convention proceedings, anti-war demonstrators clashed with 11,900 Chicago police, 7500 Army troops, 7500 Illinois National Guardsmen and 1000 Secret Service agents over 5 days.
The violence centered on two things: the Chicago police forcing protesters out of areas where they were not permitted to be; and protesters clashing with police, and their reinforcements, as they tried to march to the convention site.
The violence began Sunday August 25th. Anti-war leaders had tried to get permits from the city to sleep in Lincoln park and to demonstrate outside of the convention site. Those permit requests were denied, although the city did offer them a permit to protest miles away from the Amphitheater But the protesters were undeterred. When the park was officially closed, Chicago police bombed protesters with tear gas and moved in with billy-clubs to forcibly remove them from the park. Along with the many injuries to anti-war protesters, 17 reporters were attacked by police (including Hal Bruno, who was then a reporter for Newsweek and is now political director for ABC.) Throughout the convention, police would see the press as the enemy. Subsequent battles between police and protesters occurred nightly in Lincoln Park and Grant Park.
Also present that first night and throughout the convention were the famous Beat artists Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs and French poet Jean Genet. Most events and protests featured speeches from Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
The worst day of protesting was Wednesday, and was dubbed the "Battle of Michigan Avenue." Protesters were stopped in their march to the convention site and the media recorded graphic violence on the part of the Chicago police. Many innocent bystanders, reporters and doctors offering medical help were severely beaten by the police. Many hotels where the delegates were staying were affected by the riots. Fumes from the tear gas used by the police and "stink bombs" thrown by the protesters drifted into the buildings. (One of those affected was the Conrad Hilton, the headquarters for the Democratic party and the press.)
Another major clash occurred on the final day of the convention, when protesters tried once again to reach the convention center. They were twice turned away. A barricade was put up around the convention center to prevent anyone without credentials from entering the facility.
When the convention was finally over, the Chicago police reported 589 arrests had been made and 119 police and 100 protesters were injured. The riots, which were widely covered by the media, led to a government funded study to determine the cause of the violence. The study was led by Daniel Walker, a Democratic businessman from Illinois who would ran successfully for governor in Illinois in 1972. The study placed most of the blame on the Chicago police. Mayor Daley disagreed with the report and issued the Chicago police a pay raise.
The Aftermath
On March 20, 1969, a Chicago grand jury indicted eight police officers and eight civilians in connection with the disorders during the Democratic convention. The eight civilians, dubbed the "Chicago 8," were the first persons to be charged under provisions of the 1968 Civil Rights act, which made it a federal crime to cross state lines to incite a riot. David Dellinger was chairman of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden were members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were leaders of the Youth International Party (YIPPIES). Lee Weiner was a research assistant at Northwestern University. John Froines was a professor at the University at the University of Oregon. Bobby Seale was a founder of the Black Panthers.
The trial of the "Chicago 8" opened before Judge Julius Hoffman in Chicago on September 24, 1969. It was a circus. The defendents disrupted the trial and talked back to the judge. The defense attorneys repeatedly accused the judge of bias against them. Because of Seale's repeated courtroom outbursts, Hoffman had ordered him gagged and chained to his chair on October 29. When the restraints were removed on November 3, Seale resumed his outburts, calling Hoffman a "racist," a "facist" and a "pig." Seale's trial was severed from the other seven on November 5, 1969 when Hoffman declared a mistrial on the conspiracy charges and sentenced him to four years in prison for contempt.
The long "Chicago 7" case finally went to the jury on February 14, 1970. The next day Judge Hoffman convicted all 7 defendents, plus defense attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, of contempt of court. (Kunstler had told the judge the trial was a "legal lynching" for which Judge Hoffman was "wholly responsible.") The jury returned its verdicts on February 18, 1970. Froines and Weiner were aquitted. Dellinger, Davis, Hayden, Hoffman and Ruben were convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot and giving inflammatory speeches to further their purpose. They were fined $5,000 each, plus court costs, and given five years in prison.
Brief History Of Chicago's 1968 Democratic Convention
(Sources: "Miami and the Siege of Chicago" by Norman Mailer, Facts on File, CQ's Guide to U.S. Elections)
The 1968 Democratic Convention, held on August 26-29th, stands as an important event in the nation's political and cultural history. The divisive politics of the convention, brought about by the Vietnam war policies of President Johnson, prompted the Democratic party to completely overhaul its rules for selecting presidential delegates -- opening up the political process to millions. The violence between police and anti-Vietnam war protesters in the streets and parks of Chicago gave the city a black-eye from which it has yet to completely recover. The following is a brief history of the events leading up to the convention, the convention itself and the riots surrounding it.
Events Leading up the 1968 Convention Riots
The primary cause of the demonstrations and the subsequent riots during the 1968 Chicago convention was opposition to the Vietnam War. Young peace activists had met at a camp in Lake Villa, Illinois on March 23 to plan a protest march at the convention. Anti-war leaders including David Dellinger (editor of Liberation magazine and chairman of the National Mobilization Committee to End War in Vietnam) Rennie Davis, head of the Center for Radical Research and a leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Vernon Grizzard, a draft resistance leader, and Tom Hayden (also a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society) coordinated efforts with over 100 anti-war groups.
Groups related to this effort also planned events. Jerry Rubin (a former associate of Dellinger) and Abbie Hoffman (both leaders of the Youth International Party (YIPPIES) planned a Youth Festival with the goal of bringing 100,000 young adults to Chicago. They tried to get a permit from Chicago to hold a YIPPIE convention. The permit was denied, but the YIPPIES still came.
On March 31, President Johnson announced he would not seek re-election. Johnson's favorability ratings were in the mid-30% range and polls showed even less support for his Vietnam War policies (about 23%.) The announcement created uncertainty in the anti-war groups' convention plans. Many anti-war activists also became involved in the presidential campaigns of war opponents such as Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-NY), Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-WI) and Sen. George McGovern (D-SD).
However, by early April there was much talk of Hubert Humphrey, Johnson's Vice President, running for the presidency. Humphrey officially entered the race on April 27th. Because of his close identity with the Johnson administration, the plans for demonstrations were not cancelled.
Other events preceding the 1968 Democratic convention contributed to the tense national mood. On April 4, civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated and riots broke out throughout the country. (This included Chicago, where Mayor Daley reportedly gave a "shoot to kill" instruction to police.) On June 3, artist and cultural icon Andy Warhol was shot. Finally, on June 5th, presidential candidate Robert Kennedy (President John Kennedy's brother) was shot in the head after winning the California primary. He died the next day. There also were countless protests against the Vietnam war at this time. Student protesters effectively shut down Columbia University in April.
Attempts to Move the Convention from Chicago
Many Democrats were eager to move their national convention from Chicago to Miami, where the Republicans were to hold their nominating event. Democrats were concerned not only about the possibility of unruly protests, an ongoing telephone strike in Chicago threatened to cause logistical nightmares. The television networks also lobbied to move the event to Miami -- TV and phone lines already were installed at the Republican convention site. In addition, because of the phone strike in Chicago, television cameras would be limited to the hotels and the convention center -- new phone lines were needed to cover outside events. Any footage taken outside this area would have to be shot on film, which would require processing before it was broadcast.
Mayor Richard J. Daley would not let the convention leave Chicago. He promised to enforce the peace and allow no outrageous demonstrations. He also threatened to withdraw support for Humphrey, the apparent nominee, if the convention was moved. President Johnson also wanted to keep the convention in Chicago and is rumored to have said "Miami is not an American city."
The Convention
Humphrey came to Chicago with the nomination virtually sewn up -- he had between 100 and 200 more delegates than he needed, as well as the support of blacks, labor groups and Southern Democrats. However, he still felt his nomination was in jeopardy.
Humphrey was clearly seen as Johnson's man. President Johnson still had a grip over the convention, even going as far as to ensure states supportive of him received the best seats at the convention hall. But Johnson did not show up for the event.
Mayor Daley, who wanted Ted Kennedy to run for President, caucused his delegation of 118 the weekend before the convention and decided to remain "uncommitted." Humphrey also was at risk from the growing anti-war wing of the Democratic party. After vascillating between the pro-war policies of the Johnson administration and the anti-war policies of his opponents, Humphrey made it clear on CBS's Face The Nation the weekend before the convention he supported President Johnson's Vietnam policies.
Humphrey faced a major credentials fights. Delegations from 15 states tried to unseat Humphrey's delegates and seat anti-Vietnman delegates. Humphrey's forces won every fight. There also was manuevering behind the scenes at the Conrad Hilton (where the press and the Democratic party were staying) to try and get Sen. Ted Kennedy to run.
Sen. Dan Inouye (D-HI) gave the keynote address, but it was decidedly downbeat, with 10 of 13 pages devoted to what's wrong with the country. (Keynote speeches are usually upbeat affirmations of the party.)
The most contentious issue was Vietnam, and the debate on the minority "peace plank." The convention managers scheduled the debate for late (past prime-time) Tuesday night, but the peace delegates staged a protest and it was rescheduled for the next afternoon.
Debate was limited to one hour for each side and structured to prevent hostile exchanges. Rep. Phil Burton (D-CA) was the featured speaker in support of the peace plank, Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-ME) was the featured speaker in support of the Johnson-Humphrey language. After the Humphrey language was approved, the New York and California delegations began to sing "We Shall Overcome" and more delegations marched around the convention floor in protest. Television made it impossible for the convention planners to hide the protests of delegates favoring the peace plank. Even if planners tried to hide rebel delegations (such as New York and California) by placing them in the back of the convention hall and turning down their microphones, a camera and sound-man covering the floor could easily broadcast their protests across the nation.
During the debate on the peace plank, the worst day of rioting occurred outside the Amphitheater, in the so-called "Battle of Michigan Avenue."
Humphrey was nominated by Mayor Joseph Alioto of San Francisco. (His daughter is now running for Congress in California.) Sen. George McGovern was nominated by Sen. Abraham Ribicoff (D-MA), who shocked the convention by saying, "With George McGovern as President of the United States we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago." Mayor Daley erupted in anger and shook his fist at Ribicoff. Most reports of the event also say Daley yelled an off-color epithet beginning with an "F," but accoriding to CNN executive producer Jack Smith, others close to Daley inist he shouted "Faker," meaning Ribicoff was not a man of his word, the lowest name one can be called in Chicago's Irish politics.
Humphrey easily won the nomination by more than a 1,000 votes, with the delegation from Pennsylvania putting him over the top.
On the last day, Thursday, the convention opened with a film tribute to Bobby Kennedy. Also, Mayor Daley printed up hundreds of "We Love You Daley" signs and orchestrated a pro-Daley demonstration in the convention to contrast with the negative image the city had gained during the course of the convention.
Humphrey chose Sen. Edmund Muskie (D-ME) to be his running mate. Julian Bond, the African-American civil rights activist, was nominated for Vice President, but withdrew because he was 28 years old, under the constitutional age (35) to hold the office.
The Riots
Outside the official convention proceedings, anti-war demonstrators clashed with 11,900 Chicago police, 7500 Army troops, 7500 Illinois National Guardsmen and 1000 Secret Service agents over 5 days.
The violence centered on two things: the Chicago police forcing protesters out of areas where they were not permitted to be; and protesters clashing with police, and their reinforcements, as they tried to march to the convention site.
The violence began Sunday August 25th. Anti-war leaders had tried to get permits from the city to sleep in Lincoln park and to demonstrate outside of the convention site. Those permit requests were denied, although the city did offer them a permit to protest miles away from the Amphitheater But the protesters were undeterred. When the park was officially closed, Chicago police bombed protesters with tear gas and moved in with billy-clubs to forcibly remove them from the park. Along with the many injuries to anti-war protesters, 17 reporters were attacked by police (including Hal Bruno, who was then a reporter for Newsweek and is now political director for ABC.) Throughout the convention, police would see the press as the enemy. Subsequent battles between police and protesters occurred nightly in Lincoln Park and Grant Park.
Also present that first night and throughout the convention were the famous Beat artists Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs and French poet Jean Genet. Most events and protests featured speeches from Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
The worst day of protesting was Wednesday, and was dubbed the "Battle of Michigan Avenue." Protesters were stopped in their march to the convention site and the media recorded graphic violence on the part of the Chicago police. Many innocent bystanders, reporters and doctors offering medical help were severely beaten by the police. Many hotels where the delegates were staying were affected by the riots. Fumes from the tear gas used by the police and "stink bombs" thrown by the protesters drifted into the buildings. (One of those affected was the Conrad Hilton, the headquarters for the Democratic party and the press.)
Another major clash occurred on the final day of the convention, when protesters tried once again to reach the convention center. They were twice turned away. A barricade was put up around the convention center to prevent anyone without credentials from entering the facility.
When the convention was finally over, the Chicago police reported 589 arrests had been made and 119 police and 100 protesters were injured. The riots, which were widely covered by the media, led to a government funded study to determine the cause of the violence. The study was led by Daniel Walker, a Democratic businessman from Illinois who would ran successfully for governor in Illinois in 1972. The study placed most of the blame on the Chicago police. Mayor Daley disagreed with the report and issued the Chicago police a pay raise.
The Aftermath
On March 20, 1969, a Chicago grand jury indicted eight police officers and eight civilians in connection with the disorders during the Democratic convention. The eight civilians, dubbed the "Chicago 8," were the first persons to be charged under provisions of the 1968 Civil Rights act, which made it a federal crime to cross state lines to incite a riot. David Dellinger was chairman of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden were members of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were leaders of the Youth International Party (YIPPIES). Lee Weiner was a research assistant at Northwestern University. John Froines was a professor at the University at the University of Oregon. Bobby Seale was a founder of the Black Panthers.
The trial of the "Chicago 8" opened before Judge Julius Hoffman in Chicago on September 24, 1969. It was a circus. The defendents disrupted the trial and talked back to the judge. The defense attorneys repeatedly accused the judge of bias against them. Because of Seale's repeated courtroom outbursts, Hoffman had ordered him gagged and chained to his chair on October 29. When the restraints were removed on November 3, Seale resumed his outburts, calling Hoffman a "racist," a "facist" and a "pig." Seale's trial was severed from the other seven on November 5, 1969 when Hoffman declared a mistrial on the conspiracy charges and sentenced him to four years in prison for contempt.
The long "Chicago 7" case finally went to the jury on February 14, 1970. The next day Judge Hoffman convicted all 7 defendents, plus defense attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, of contempt of court. (Kunstler had told the judge the trial was a "legal lynching" for which Judge Hoffman was "wholly responsible.") The jury returned its verdicts on February 18, 1970. Froines and Weiner were aquitted. Dellinger, Davis, Hayden, Hoffman and Ruben were convicted of crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot and giving inflammatory speeches to further their purpose. They were fined $5,000 each, plus court costs, and given five years in prison.
Friday, June 05, 2009
Obama in Cairo
A new face for Imperialism
by Patrick Martin
The speech delivered by US President Barack Obama in Cairo yesterday was riddled with contradictions. He declared his opposition to the “killing of innocent men, women, and children,” but defended the ongoing US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US proxy war in Pakistan, while remaining silent on the most recent Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. These wars have killed at least one million Iraqis and tens of thousands in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories.
Obama declared his support for democracy, human rights and women’s rights, after two days of meetings with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, two of the most notorious tyrants in the Middle East. He said nothing in his speech about the complete absence of democratic rights in Saudi Arabia, or about the ongoing repression under Mubarak’s military dictatorship. In the days before the US president’s arrival at Al-Azhar University, the campus was raided by Egyptian secret police who detained more than 200 foreign students. Before leaving on his Mideast trip, Obama praised Mubarak as a “steadfast ally.”
While posturing as the advocate of universal peace and understanding, Obama diplomatically omitted any reference to his order to escalate the war in Afghanistan with the dispatch of an additional 17,000 US troops. And he tacitly embraced the policy of his predecessor in Iraq, declaring, “I believe the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.” He even seemed to hedge on the withdrawal deadline of December 2011 negotiated by the Bush administration, which he described as a pledge “to remove all our troops from Iraq by 2012.”
Obama rejected the charge that America is “a self-interested empire”—a perfectly apt characterization—and denied that the United States was seeking bases, territory or access to natural resources in the Muslim world. He claimed that the war in Afghanistan was a “war of necessity” provoked by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This is the same argument made by the Bush-Cheney administration at the time, which deliberately conceals the real material interests at stake. The war in Afghanistan is part of the drive by US imperialism to dominate the world’s two most important sources of oil and gas, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Basin.
There was of course a distinct shift in the rhetorical tone from the bullying “you’re either with or against us” of George W. Bush to the reassuring “we’re all in this together” of Obama. But as several commentators noted (the New Republic compared the speech line-for-line to that given by Bush to the United Nations on September 16, 2006), if you turned off the picture and the sound and simply read the prepared text, the words are very similar to speeches delivered by Bush, Condoleezza Rice and other officials of the previous administration.
The vague and flowery rhetoric, the verbal tributes to Islamic culture and the equal rights of nations, constitute an adjustment of the language being used to cloak the policy of US imperialism, not a change in substance. Obama made not a single concrete proposal to redress the grievances of the oppressed peoples of the Middle East. That is because the fundamental source of this oppression is the profit system and the domination of the world by imperialism, of which American imperialism is the most ruthless.
Obama made one passing reference to colonialism, and to the US role in the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953. But in his litany of “sources of tension” in the region, he offered the same checklist as his predecessor, with the first place given to “violent extremism”, Obama’s rhetorical substitute for Bush’s “terrorism.”
The reaction to the Obama speech in the American media was across-the-board enthusiasm. Liberal David Corn of Mother Jones magazine said Obama’s great advantages were “his personal history, his non-Bushness, his recognition of US errors, his willingness to at least talk as if he wants to be an honest broker in the Mideast.”
Michael Crowley wrote in the pro-war liberal magazine New Republic, “to see him unfold his biography, to cut such an unfamiliar profile to the world, is to appreciate how much America will benefit from presenting this new face to the world.”
Perhaps most revealing was the comment by Max Boot, a neoconservative arch-defender of the war in Iraq, who wrote: “I thought he did a more effective job of making America’s case to the Muslim world. No question: He is a more effective salesman than his predecessor was.”
In his speech in Cairo, Obama was playing the role for which he was drafted and promoted by a decisive section of the US financial elite and the military and foreign policy apparatus. This role is to provide a new face for US imperialism as part of a shift in the tactics, but not the strategy, of Washington’s drive for world domination.
Nearly two years ago, former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski gave his public backing to the presidential candidacy of a still-obscure senator from Illinois, holding out the prospect that as an African-American with family ties to the Muslim world, Obama would improve the worldwide image of the United States.
Brzezinski was the leading hawk in the administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter and helped instigate the political upheavals in Afghanistan in the hopes of inciting a Soviet invasion that would trap the Moscow bureaucracy in a Vietnam-style quagmire. He has remained steadily focused on what he calls the “great chessboard” of Eurasia, and particularly on oil-rich Central Asia, where a struggle for influence now rages between the United States, Russia, China and Iran.
According to Brzezinski in August 2007, Obama “recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America’s role in the world... Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand. He has a sense of what is historically relevant and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world.”
Brzezinski, a ruthless defender of the interests of US imperialism, has issuing warnings to the American ruling elite of the danger of what he calls the “global political awakening.”
In one particularly pointed comment, he told the German magazine Der Spiegel, only months before he endorsed Obama, that the vast majority of humanity “will no longer tolerate the enormous disparities in the human condition. That could well be the collective danger we will have to face in the next decades.”
To call it by its right name, what the more perceptive elements in the US ruling class fear is world revolution. The effort to prevent such a social upheaval is what impelled them to install Obama in the White House and what set him on his pilgrimage to Cairo.
by Patrick Martin
The speech delivered by US President Barack Obama in Cairo yesterday was riddled with contradictions. He declared his opposition to the “killing of innocent men, women, and children,” but defended the ongoing US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US proxy war in Pakistan, while remaining silent on the most recent Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. These wars have killed at least one million Iraqis and tens of thousands in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories.
Obama declared his support for democracy, human rights and women’s rights, after two days of meetings with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, two of the most notorious tyrants in the Middle East. He said nothing in his speech about the complete absence of democratic rights in Saudi Arabia, or about the ongoing repression under Mubarak’s military dictatorship. In the days before the US president’s arrival at Al-Azhar University, the campus was raided by Egyptian secret police who detained more than 200 foreign students. Before leaving on his Mideast trip, Obama praised Mubarak as a “steadfast ally.”
While posturing as the advocate of universal peace and understanding, Obama diplomatically omitted any reference to his order to escalate the war in Afghanistan with the dispatch of an additional 17,000 US troops. And he tacitly embraced the policy of his predecessor in Iraq, declaring, “I believe the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.” He even seemed to hedge on the withdrawal deadline of December 2011 negotiated by the Bush administration, which he described as a pledge “to remove all our troops from Iraq by 2012.”
Obama rejected the charge that America is “a self-interested empire”—a perfectly apt characterization—and denied that the United States was seeking bases, territory or access to natural resources in the Muslim world. He claimed that the war in Afghanistan was a “war of necessity” provoked by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This is the same argument made by the Bush-Cheney administration at the time, which deliberately conceals the real material interests at stake. The war in Afghanistan is part of the drive by US imperialism to dominate the world’s two most important sources of oil and gas, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Basin.
There was of course a distinct shift in the rhetorical tone from the bullying “you’re either with or against us” of George W. Bush to the reassuring “we’re all in this together” of Obama. But as several commentators noted (the New Republic compared the speech line-for-line to that given by Bush to the United Nations on September 16, 2006), if you turned off the picture and the sound and simply read the prepared text, the words are very similar to speeches delivered by Bush, Condoleezza Rice and other officials of the previous administration.
The vague and flowery rhetoric, the verbal tributes to Islamic culture and the equal rights of nations, constitute an adjustment of the language being used to cloak the policy of US imperialism, not a change in substance. Obama made not a single concrete proposal to redress the grievances of the oppressed peoples of the Middle East. That is because the fundamental source of this oppression is the profit system and the domination of the world by imperialism, of which American imperialism is the most ruthless.
Obama made one passing reference to colonialism, and to the US role in the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953. But in his litany of “sources of tension” in the region, he offered the same checklist as his predecessor, with the first place given to “violent extremism”, Obama’s rhetorical substitute for Bush’s “terrorism.”
The reaction to the Obama speech in the American media was across-the-board enthusiasm. Liberal David Corn of Mother Jones magazine said Obama’s great advantages were “his personal history, his non-Bushness, his recognition of US errors, his willingness to at least talk as if he wants to be an honest broker in the Mideast.”
Michael Crowley wrote in the pro-war liberal magazine New Republic, “to see him unfold his biography, to cut such an unfamiliar profile to the world, is to appreciate how much America will benefit from presenting this new face to the world.”
Perhaps most revealing was the comment by Max Boot, a neoconservative arch-defender of the war in Iraq, who wrote: “I thought he did a more effective job of making America’s case to the Muslim world. No question: He is a more effective salesman than his predecessor was.”
In his speech in Cairo, Obama was playing the role for which he was drafted and promoted by a decisive section of the US financial elite and the military and foreign policy apparatus. This role is to provide a new face for US imperialism as part of a shift in the tactics, but not the strategy, of Washington’s drive for world domination.
Nearly two years ago, former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski gave his public backing to the presidential candidacy of a still-obscure senator from Illinois, holding out the prospect that as an African-American with family ties to the Muslim world, Obama would improve the worldwide image of the United States.
Brzezinski was the leading hawk in the administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter and helped instigate the political upheavals in Afghanistan in the hopes of inciting a Soviet invasion that would trap the Moscow bureaucracy in a Vietnam-style quagmire. He has remained steadily focused on what he calls the “great chessboard” of Eurasia, and particularly on oil-rich Central Asia, where a struggle for influence now rages between the United States, Russia, China and Iran.
According to Brzezinski in August 2007, Obama “recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America’s role in the world... Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand. He has a sense of what is historically relevant and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world.”
Brzezinski, a ruthless defender of the interests of US imperialism, has issuing warnings to the American ruling elite of the danger of what he calls the “global political awakening.”
In one particularly pointed comment, he told the German magazine Der Spiegel, only months before he endorsed Obama, that the vast majority of humanity “will no longer tolerate the enormous disparities in the human condition. That could well be the collective danger we will have to face in the next decades.”
To call it by its right name, what the more perceptive elements in the US ruling class fear is world revolution. The effort to prevent such a social upheaval is what impelled them to install Obama in the White House and what set him on his pilgrimage to Cairo.
200,000 Suicides
Why Are Indian Farmers Committing Suicide and How Can We Stop This Tragedy?
by Vandana Shiva
The factors that have caused 200,000 suicides in India are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization which ensnare farmers in a spiral of indebtedness, generating despair.
In a land where reincarnation is a commonly held belief, where the balance sheet of life is sorted out over lifetimes, where resilience and recovery has been the characteristic of the "kisan," the peasant cultivation, why are Indian farmers committing suicide on a mass scale?
200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997.
Farmers’ suicides are the most tragic and dramatic symptom of the crisis of survival faced by Indian peasants.
Rapid increase in indebtedness is at the root of farmers’ taking their lives. Debt is a reflection of a negative economy. Two factors have transformed agriculture from a positive economy into a negative economy for peasants: the rising of costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization.
In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved.
Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new expense increases poverty and leads to indebtness.
The shift from saved seed to corporate monopoly of the seed supply also represents a shift from biodiversity to monoculture in agriculture. The district of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh used to grow diverse legumes, millets, and oilseeds. Now the imposition of cotton monocultures has led to the loss of the wealth of farmer’s breeding and nature’s evolution.
Monocultures and uniformity increase the risk of crop failure, as diverse seeds adapted to diverse to eco-systems are replaced by the rushed introduction of uniform and often untested seeds into the market. When Monsanto first introduced Bt Cotton in 2002, the farmers lost 1 billion rupees due to crop failure. Instead of 1,500 kilos per acre as promised by the company, the harvest was as low as 200 kilos per acre. Instead of incomes of 10,000 rupees an acre, farmers ran into losses of 6,400 rupees an acre. In the state of Bihar, when farm-saved corn seed was displaced by Monsanto’s hybrid corn, the entire crop failed, creating 4 billion rupees in losses and increased poverty for desperately poor farmers. Poor peasants of the South cannot survive seed monopolies. The crisis of suicides shows how the survival of small farmers is incompatible with the seed monopolies of global corporations.
The second pressure Indian farmers are facing is the dramatic fall in prices of farm produce as a result of the WTO’s free trade policies. The WTO rules for trade in agriculture are, in essence, rules for dumping. They have allowed wealthy countries to increase agribusiness subsidies while preventing other countries from protecting their farmers from artificially cheap imported produce. Four hundred billion dollars in subsidies combined with the forced removal of import restriction is a ready-made recipe for farmer suicide. Global wheat prices have dropped from $216 a ton in 1995 to $133 a ton in 2001; cotton prices from $98.2 a ton in 1995 to $49.1 a ton in 2001; Soya bean prices from $273 a ton in 1995 to $178 a ton. This reduction is due not to a change in productivity, but to an increase in subsidies and an increase in market monopolies controlled by a handful of agribusiness corporations.
The region in India with the highest level of farmers suicides is the Vidharbha region in Maharashtra — 4000 suicides per year, 10 per day. This is also the region with the highest acreage of Monsanto’s GMO Bt cotton. Monsanto’s GM seeds create a suicide economy by transforming seed from a renewable resource to a non-renewable input which must be bought every year at high prices. Cotton seed used to cost Rs 7/kg. Bt-cotton seeds were sold at Rs 17,000/kg. Indigenous cotton varieties can be intercropped with food crops. Bt-cotton can only be grown as a monoculture. Indigenous cotton is rain fed. Bt-cotton needs irrigation. Indigenous varieties are pest resistant. Bt-cotton, even though promoted as resistant to the boll worm, has created new pests, and to control these new pests, farmers are using 13 times more pesticides then they were using prior to introduction of Bt-cotton. And finally, Monsanto sells its GMO seeds on fraudulent claims of yields of 1500/kg/year when farmers harvest 300-400 kg/year on an average. High costs and unreliable output make for a debt trap, and a suicide economy.
While Monsanto pushes the costs of cultivation up, agribusiness subsidies drive down the price farmers get for their produce.
Cotton producers in the US are given a subsidy of $4 billion annually. This has artificially brought down cotton prices, allowing the US to capture world markets previously accessible to poor African countries such as Burkina Faso, Benin, and Mali. This subsidy of $230 per acre in the US is untenable for the African farmers. African cotton farmers are losing $250 million every year. That is why small African countries walked out of the Cancun negotiations, leading to the collapse of the WTO ministerial.
The rigged prices of globally traded agriculture commodities steal from poor peasants of the South. A study carried out by the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE) shows that due to falling farm prices, Indian peasants are losing $26 billion annually. This is a burden their poverty does not allow them t bear. As debts increase — unpayable from farm proceeds — farmers are compelled to sell a kidney or even commit suicide. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life.
Farmers suicides in the state of Chattisgarh have recently been before in the news. 1593 farmers committed suicide in Chattisgarh in 2007. Before 2000 no farmers suicides are reported in the state.
Chattisgarh is the Centre of Diversity of the indice varieties of rice. More than 200,000 rices used to grow in India. This is where eminent rice scientists Dr. Richaria did his collections and showed that tribals had bred many rices with higher yields than the green Revolution varieties.
Today the rice farming of Chattisgarh is under assault. When indigenous rice is replaced with green Revolution varieties, irrigation becomes necessary. Under globalization pressures, rice is anyway a lower priority than exotic vegetables. The farmers are sold hybrid seeds, the seeds need heavy inputs of fertilizers and pesticides, as well as intensive irrigation. And crop failure is frequent. This pushes farmers into debt and suicide.
Chattisgarh is also a prime target for growing of Jatropha for biofuel. Tribals farms are being forcefully appropriated for Jatropha plantations, aggravating the food and livelihood crisis in Chattisgarh. The diesel demand of the automobile industry is given a priority above the food needs of the poor.
The suicide economy of industrialized, globalised agriculture is suicidal at 3 levels — it is suicidal for farmers, it is suicidal for the poor who are derived food, and it is suicidal at the level of the human species as we destroy the natural capital of seed, biodiversity, soil and water on which our biological survival depends.
The suicide economy is not an inevitability. Navdanya has started a Seeds of Hope campaign to stop farmers suicides. The transition from seeds of suicide to seeds of hope includes:
A shift from GMO and non renewable seeds to organic, open pollinated seed varieties which farmers can save and share A shift from chemical farming to organic farming A shift from unfair trade based on false prices to fair trade based on real and just prices The farmers who have made this shift are earning 10 times more than the farmers growing Monsanto’s Bt-cotton.
by Vandana Shiva
The factors that have caused 200,000 suicides in India are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization which ensnare farmers in a spiral of indebtedness, generating despair.
In a land where reincarnation is a commonly held belief, where the balance sheet of life is sorted out over lifetimes, where resilience and recovery has been the characteristic of the "kisan," the peasant cultivation, why are Indian farmers committing suicide on a mass scale?
200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997.
Farmers’ suicides are the most tragic and dramatic symptom of the crisis of survival faced by Indian peasants.
Rapid increase in indebtedness is at the root of farmers’ taking their lives. Debt is a reflection of a negative economy. Two factors have transformed agriculture from a positive economy into a negative economy for peasants: the rising of costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization.
In 1998, the World Bank’s structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta. The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved.
Corporations prevent seed savings through patents and by engineering seeds with non-renewable traits. As a result, poor peasants have to buy new seeds for every planting season and what was traditionally a free resource, available by putting aside a small portion of the crop, becomes a commodity. This new expense increases poverty and leads to indebtness.
The shift from saved seed to corporate monopoly of the seed supply also represents a shift from biodiversity to monoculture in agriculture. The district of Warangal in Andhra Pradesh used to grow diverse legumes, millets, and oilseeds. Now the imposition of cotton monocultures has led to the loss of the wealth of farmer’s breeding and nature’s evolution.
Monocultures and uniformity increase the risk of crop failure, as diverse seeds adapted to diverse to eco-systems are replaced by the rushed introduction of uniform and often untested seeds into the market. When Monsanto first introduced Bt Cotton in 2002, the farmers lost 1 billion rupees due to crop failure. Instead of 1,500 kilos per acre as promised by the company, the harvest was as low as 200 kilos per acre. Instead of incomes of 10,000 rupees an acre, farmers ran into losses of 6,400 rupees an acre. In the state of Bihar, when farm-saved corn seed was displaced by Monsanto’s hybrid corn, the entire crop failed, creating 4 billion rupees in losses and increased poverty for desperately poor farmers. Poor peasants of the South cannot survive seed monopolies. The crisis of suicides shows how the survival of small farmers is incompatible with the seed monopolies of global corporations.
The second pressure Indian farmers are facing is the dramatic fall in prices of farm produce as a result of the WTO’s free trade policies. The WTO rules for trade in agriculture are, in essence, rules for dumping. They have allowed wealthy countries to increase agribusiness subsidies while preventing other countries from protecting their farmers from artificially cheap imported produce. Four hundred billion dollars in subsidies combined with the forced removal of import restriction is a ready-made recipe for farmer suicide. Global wheat prices have dropped from $216 a ton in 1995 to $133 a ton in 2001; cotton prices from $98.2 a ton in 1995 to $49.1 a ton in 2001; Soya bean prices from $273 a ton in 1995 to $178 a ton. This reduction is due not to a change in productivity, but to an increase in subsidies and an increase in market monopolies controlled by a handful of agribusiness corporations.
The region in India with the highest level of farmers suicides is the Vidharbha region in Maharashtra — 4000 suicides per year, 10 per day. This is also the region with the highest acreage of Monsanto’s GMO Bt cotton. Monsanto’s GM seeds create a suicide economy by transforming seed from a renewable resource to a non-renewable input which must be bought every year at high prices. Cotton seed used to cost Rs 7/kg. Bt-cotton seeds were sold at Rs 17,000/kg. Indigenous cotton varieties can be intercropped with food crops. Bt-cotton can only be grown as a monoculture. Indigenous cotton is rain fed. Bt-cotton needs irrigation. Indigenous varieties are pest resistant. Bt-cotton, even though promoted as resistant to the boll worm, has created new pests, and to control these new pests, farmers are using 13 times more pesticides then they were using prior to introduction of Bt-cotton. And finally, Monsanto sells its GMO seeds on fraudulent claims of yields of 1500/kg/year when farmers harvest 300-400 kg/year on an average. High costs and unreliable output make for a debt trap, and a suicide economy.
While Monsanto pushes the costs of cultivation up, agribusiness subsidies drive down the price farmers get for their produce.
Cotton producers in the US are given a subsidy of $4 billion annually. This has artificially brought down cotton prices, allowing the US to capture world markets previously accessible to poor African countries such as Burkina Faso, Benin, and Mali. This subsidy of $230 per acre in the US is untenable for the African farmers. African cotton farmers are losing $250 million every year. That is why small African countries walked out of the Cancun negotiations, leading to the collapse of the WTO ministerial.
The rigged prices of globally traded agriculture commodities steal from poor peasants of the South. A study carried out by the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE) shows that due to falling farm prices, Indian peasants are losing $26 billion annually. This is a burden their poverty does not allow them t bear. As debts increase — unpayable from farm proceeds — farmers are compelled to sell a kidney or even commit suicide. Seed saving gives farmers life. Seed monopolies rob farmers of life.
Farmers suicides in the state of Chattisgarh have recently been before in the news. 1593 farmers committed suicide in Chattisgarh in 2007. Before 2000 no farmers suicides are reported in the state.
Chattisgarh is the Centre of Diversity of the indice varieties of rice. More than 200,000 rices used to grow in India. This is where eminent rice scientists Dr. Richaria did his collections and showed that tribals had bred many rices with higher yields than the green Revolution varieties.
Today the rice farming of Chattisgarh is under assault. When indigenous rice is replaced with green Revolution varieties, irrigation becomes necessary. Under globalization pressures, rice is anyway a lower priority than exotic vegetables. The farmers are sold hybrid seeds, the seeds need heavy inputs of fertilizers and pesticides, as well as intensive irrigation. And crop failure is frequent. This pushes farmers into debt and suicide.
Chattisgarh is also a prime target for growing of Jatropha for biofuel. Tribals farms are being forcefully appropriated for Jatropha plantations, aggravating the food and livelihood crisis in Chattisgarh. The diesel demand of the automobile industry is given a priority above the food needs of the poor.
The suicide economy of industrialized, globalised agriculture is suicidal at 3 levels — it is suicidal for farmers, it is suicidal for the poor who are derived food, and it is suicidal at the level of the human species as we destroy the natural capital of seed, biodiversity, soil and water on which our biological survival depends.
The suicide economy is not an inevitability. Navdanya has started a Seeds of Hope campaign to stop farmers suicides. The transition from seeds of suicide to seeds of hope includes:
A shift from GMO and non renewable seeds to organic, open pollinated seed varieties which farmers can save and share A shift from chemical farming to organic farming A shift from unfair trade based on false prices to fair trade based on real and just prices The farmers who have made this shift are earning 10 times more than the farmers growing Monsanto’s Bt-cotton.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Assassination Threat
Chávez Cancelled Trip to El Salvador Due to Assassination Threat
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez did not attend the swearing in ceremony of new left wing president of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes on Monday, because of suspected assassination plans.
Chavez was to travel to the ceremony with Bolivian president Evo Morales, from Venezuela. Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega first announced the assassination plan during his speech at the ceremony when he said both presidents couldn’t make it for “security reasons”. At that stage he said it was better not to enter into details.
Later, the Venezuelan minister for foreign affairs, Nicolas Maduro spoke at the ceremony. He said that the Venezuelan government hadn’t provided information about their suspicions earlier in order to safeguard the investigations. However, he said it was known that “ultra right wing assassination groups …in Venezuela…linked to ultra conservative coup sectors, together with the international ultra right…” were involved in “the possibility of an assassination.”
Talking to press later, Maduro said that Alejandro Esclusa could be involved in the plans. Esclusa is a right wing Venezuelan who, according to Maduro, has worked with the CIA on numerous occasions, and was in El Salvador advising the opposition party Arena in its campaign against Funes.
Maduro said they would look at rescheduling Chavez’s visit to El Salvador, and that the Venezuelan delegation attending the ceremony brought its support, solidarity and commitment to the El Salvadorian people.
After being absent from the public light since Saturday, Chavez spoke to the media on Tuesday afternoon while he was inspecting the construction of 1,100 government houses in Vargas state. He explained that he had received a message warning about the assignation plans from Ortega and “it was information with a lot of weight that motivated the suspension of our travels.”
“In this case the information was very precise, [it indicated] that they were going to launch one or several rockets at the Cubana airline plane that was already ready to leave from Maiquetia [airport in Venezuela],” he said, and explained that the Venezuelan presidential plane was being repaired at the time and that Cuba had lent him one of its planes for his travels. Chavez and Morales were going to travel to El Salvador together in the plane.
Chavez blamed “Luis Posada Carriles’ people” for the assignation plan. Carriles is an ex-CIA agent and Cuban-born Venezuelan who was involved in the 1976 attack on a Cubana plane, which saw 73 people die. He was charged with the bombing but escaped from prison in 1985, before he going on trial and Venezuela has sought his extradition from the U.S. since 2005.
“We have to remember that there, in El Salvador [Carriles] lived and did what ever he felt like… and they were preparing this attack against us… when we were to be arriving or leaving [Salvadoran capital] San Salvador,” said Chavez.
“I accuse Luis Posada Carriles and I demand that [US] President Barack Obama brings about justice and complies with the law… send us this terrorist… to put him where he should be, in prison.”
Chavez said other Venezuelan ex-military personnel were also involved in the assassination plans, “Daniel Ortega knows the details… some Venezuelan coup plotters entered San Salvador two weeks ago. And I know them… they have sworn to me that they were going to kill me, because they say its my fault that they lost their jobs and didn’t reach the highest military ranks.”
“The government of the United States is behind all of this. And I’m not accusing Obama. No. As Fidel [Castro] has said, I think Obama has good intentions, but beyond Obama there is a whole empire: The CIA and all its tentacles, is alive and kicking… President Obama its time to dismantle all this machinery of terror.”
Regarding his three days of unaccounted absence, from Saturday through to Monday, and the “wave of rumours” in the mainstream press, as he put it, Chavez commented that in 10 years of governing he hadn’t had a single vacation, “I’m glad [the opposition] miss me so much!” he joked.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez did not attend the swearing in ceremony of new left wing president of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes on Monday, because of suspected assassination plans.
Chavez was to travel to the ceremony with Bolivian president Evo Morales, from Venezuela. Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega first announced the assassination plan during his speech at the ceremony when he said both presidents couldn’t make it for “security reasons”. At that stage he said it was better not to enter into details.
Later, the Venezuelan minister for foreign affairs, Nicolas Maduro spoke at the ceremony. He said that the Venezuelan government hadn’t provided information about their suspicions earlier in order to safeguard the investigations. However, he said it was known that “ultra right wing assassination groups …in Venezuela…linked to ultra conservative coup sectors, together with the international ultra right…” were involved in “the possibility of an assassination.”
Talking to press later, Maduro said that Alejandro Esclusa could be involved in the plans. Esclusa is a right wing Venezuelan who, according to Maduro, has worked with the CIA on numerous occasions, and was in El Salvador advising the opposition party Arena in its campaign against Funes.
Maduro said they would look at rescheduling Chavez’s visit to El Salvador, and that the Venezuelan delegation attending the ceremony brought its support, solidarity and commitment to the El Salvadorian people.
After being absent from the public light since Saturday, Chavez spoke to the media on Tuesday afternoon while he was inspecting the construction of 1,100 government houses in Vargas state. He explained that he had received a message warning about the assignation plans from Ortega and “it was information with a lot of weight that motivated the suspension of our travels.”
“In this case the information was very precise, [it indicated] that they were going to launch one or several rockets at the Cubana airline plane that was already ready to leave from Maiquetia [airport in Venezuela],” he said, and explained that the Venezuelan presidential plane was being repaired at the time and that Cuba had lent him one of its planes for his travels. Chavez and Morales were going to travel to El Salvador together in the plane.
Chavez blamed “Luis Posada Carriles’ people” for the assignation plan. Carriles is an ex-CIA agent and Cuban-born Venezuelan who was involved in the 1976 attack on a Cubana plane, which saw 73 people die. He was charged with the bombing but escaped from prison in 1985, before he going on trial and Venezuela has sought his extradition from the U.S. since 2005.
“We have to remember that there, in El Salvador [Carriles] lived and did what ever he felt like… and they were preparing this attack against us… when we were to be arriving or leaving [Salvadoran capital] San Salvador,” said Chavez.
“I accuse Luis Posada Carriles and I demand that [US] President Barack Obama brings about justice and complies with the law… send us this terrorist… to put him where he should be, in prison.”
Chavez said other Venezuelan ex-military personnel were also involved in the assassination plans, “Daniel Ortega knows the details… some Venezuelan coup plotters entered San Salvador two weeks ago. And I know them… they have sworn to me that they were going to kill me, because they say its my fault that they lost their jobs and didn’t reach the highest military ranks.”
“The government of the United States is behind all of this. And I’m not accusing Obama. No. As Fidel [Castro] has said, I think Obama has good intentions, but beyond Obama there is a whole empire: The CIA and all its tentacles, is alive and kicking… President Obama its time to dismantle all this machinery of terror.”
Regarding his three days of unaccounted absence, from Saturday through to Monday, and the “wave of rumours” in the mainstream press, as he put it, Chavez commented that in 10 years of governing he hadn’t had a single vacation, “I’m glad [the opposition] miss me so much!” he joked.
