People Before Profit blog

In South America, left-wing presidents face military aggression

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:09:00 +0000

Two leftist South American presidents are under the gun. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez faces off against Colombia with which his country shares a 1,380 mile border. And domestic conspiracies threaten President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay. Each president is also up against U.S. corporate and military power.

"We are preparing to avoid aggression," Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva told El Tiempo. But preservation of "internal public order" requires attention to "guerrillas at the highest level located in Venezuela."

As if in response, President Chavez stated that "We do not have any plans against Colombia. But this does not depend upon us...The Yankees want to make us fight."

U.S. actions recently are nothing if not inciting. There is the reactivation in 2008 of the Navy's Fourth Fleet for surveillance duties around South and Central America. The agreement signed in October for seven new U.S. bases in Colombia, one to be fitted out for cross continent flights, has provoked region-wide condemnation. Widely circulated U.S. documents refer to "full spectrum military operations" against terrorists and "anti-U.S. governments in the region." Venezuela cut diplomatic and trade relations with Colombia, leading to a 70 percent dip in Colombian exports to Venezuela.

U.S. measures against foreign terrorists and insurgencies are seen as actual or potential national sovereignty violations. Ecuador released a report last month, for example, documenting crucial U.S. intelligence assistance for Colombia's murderous destruction March 1, 2008, of a FARC campsite inside Ecuador.

The U.S. State Department has protested Venezuelan trade relations with Iran. Washington has promoted media reports alleging Venezuelan anti terrorist and anti-narcotic shortcomings.

Claiming that FARC guerrillas find sanctuary inside Venezuela, the Colombian government is preparing a $1.5 million base for 1000 soldiers - plus U.S. troops and military contractors - in Guajira state, close to major Venezuelan oil extraction facilities. U.S funding and equipment are anticipated. Colombia's military will be activating six Air Force battalions deploying two of them along the Venezuelan border. U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assistance, written into the U.S. - Colombian bases agreement, is anticipated.

Venezuela sees Colombian paramilitaries and intelligence operatives as central to destabilization activities and violent anti-government protests in its western states. Links are alleged between paramilitaries and Colombia's Defense Ministry. With U.S. help, Colombia's Air Force has added aircraft and sophisticated equipment. While Venezuelan military supply purchases are up $4 billion, its military budget last year was one third that of Colombia. U.S. military aid over nine years exceeds $6 billion.

As the year ended, President Chavez accused Colombia and the United States of flying an unmanned aircraft - a drone- over Zulia state, promising to shoot down any other. Chavez recently blamed the Dutch government for tolerating U.S. military expansion in Aruba and Curazao, Dutch islands near Venezuela's northern coast.

U.S. influence in Paraguay is less obvious. There, oligarchic forces in power for decades are conspiring to remove President Fernando Lugo, swept into power through popular mobilization in 2008. In November, Lugo again had to replace leading Army officers accused of plotting. Calling Lugo a traitor, Vice President Federico Franco has signaled readiness to replace him.

Lugo is blamed for the guerrilla kidnapping last October of a wealthy cattle rancher, alleged corruption related to land reform efforts, and a paternity scandal from his time as Catholic bishop. Paraguay's opposition controlled Congress is working on impeachment. Communist Party General Secretary Najjeb Amado told an interviewer Lugo is targeted as a stand-in for burgeoning social movements.

Following Honduran President Manuel Zalaya's lead, Lugo seeks entry into ALBA, the Venezuelan - Cuban inspired alliance of progressive Latin American governments. Citing Paraguayan leftists, TeleSUR portrays anti-Lugo plotting as "a copy of what Honduran coup instigators put into effect to bring down Zelaya."

U.S. Southern Command head General Douglas Fraser, having shepherded the U.S. military through the Honduran coup, stepped into Paraguay's crisis with a visit December 18 aimed at, he said, "reinforcing ties with the Paraguayan armed forces." Arthur Valenzuela, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, was also in Asunción.

Ultimahora.com noted Fraser's warning against Venezuelan arms purchases and expression of "disillusion" over President Lugo's refusal to allow U.S. military exercises in Paraguay. He protested connections between "illicit [drug] trafficking and terrorists."

Fraser's Southern Command has invited the coup - perpetrating Honduran military to join U.S. regional military exercises. He confirmed that the airplane removing President Zalaya from Tegucigalpa to Costa Rica, stopped en route at the U.S. Palmerola military base in Honduras.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/smoreno2007/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Iranian group calls for world protests as arrests mount

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:03:00 +0000

Ibrahim Yazdi, the leader of the nationalist Iran's Freedom Movement and the first Iranian foreign minister after the 1979 revolution, was arrested early Dec. 28. The arrest followed those of Mehdi Arabshahi, a leader of the Tahkim Vahdat, the powerful national student movement, and Mohammad Moein, the son of Mostafa Moein, a former minister of higher education and reformist candidate in the 2005 presidential election. Many others have also been arrested. The authorities have confirmed the arrests of 300 opposition activists Dec. 27.

There are widespread fears that the regime will attempt to arrest more leaders and activists of the protest movement in the coming days. Pressure is mounting upon the regime, following recent protests on the festival of Ashura on Dec. 27.

Reacting to this, Jamshid Ahmadi, assistant general secretary of CODIR (Committee for the Defence of Iranian People's Rights), said in a statement Monday:

"The theocratic regime, caught by surprise by the numerical strength and radical slogans of the protest demonstrations in recent days, is resorting to extremely suppressive measures. The regime has ordered the disabling of the mobile phone networks and today the Internet system is malfunctioning."

CODIR is calling on people across the world to protest the killing of demonstrators in Iran. Ahmadi said, "We call for the release of all those arrested and an end to all attempts to intimidate protesters demanding democracy and human rights. We also call for an immediate reinstatement of the communication network."

Ahmadi further called on the labor and trade union movement across the world to protest to the Iranian regime over its brutal policies.

"We should remind the theocratic regime in Iran about its obligations under the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which Iran is a signatory," Ahmadi said.

CODIR, established in 1981 and based in London, has campaigned to expose human rights abuses in the Islamic Republic of Iran. It works closely with the trade union movement in the UK, the peace movement, all major political parties and Amnesty International to press the case for an end to torture in Iran's prisons.

CODIR has published Iran Today, its quarterly journal, since 1981, explaining developments in Iran and the most effective ways for world public opinion to demonstrate solidarity with the people of Iran.

In recent years CODIR has worked closely with Britain's Stop the War Coalition and has been vocal against any form of foreign intervention in the internal affairs of Iran.

Among CODIR's supporters are former left Labour Party MP Tony Benn, and leaders of the UNISON and FBU unions.

More information is available at its web site or via e-mail to codir_info@btinternet.com.

Photo: (AP) This photo, taken by an individual not employed by the Associated Press and obtained by the AP outside Iran shows Iranian protestors flashing the victory sign, as they cover their faces to avoid to be identified by government security agents, during an anti-government protest in Tehran, Dec. 27. As a result of an official Iranian government ban on foreign media covering some events in Iran, the AP was prevented from independent access to this event.

Iran: Regime change by the people, for the people!

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:56:00 +0000

The death of reformist cleric Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri on Dec. 19 has sparked a run of protests in Iran which have both caught the authorities off guard and surprised the opposition by their scale. Official reports suggest that the turnout at Montazeri's funeral on Dec. 21 was up to 500,000 people. Opposition sources claim that the numbers were nearer to one million. Either way, this convergence upon Qom, a city with a population of only 700,000, is significant.

Montazeri had been one of the pillars of the 1979 revolution in Iran but fell out with Ayotollah Khomenei, whom he was designated to succeed, over the Islamic Republic's human rights record and specifically the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988. Montazeri questioned the legality and necessity of the execution of political prisoners. Montazeri was put under house arrest in1997 for criticising the current Supreme Leader, Ayotollah Ali Khamenei. Earlier this year he made clear his opposition to the manipulated outcome of the June 2009 election, which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency by a "landslide" and sparked the current wave of nationwide protests in Iran.

In this context, the death of Montazeri has helped to re-ignite an already volatile situation. On key occasions since the June elections the Iranian people have taken to the streets to demonstrate their opposition to the regime. These have included the ceremony to swear in President Ahmadinejad on Aug. 5; Quds Day on Sept. 18; the Nov. 4 anniversary of the U.S. Embassy occupation; and, most recently, Students Day on Dec. 7.

The protests on Dec. 7 included students waving Iranian flags without the Islamic Republic's emblem and burning posters of Ayotollah Ali Khamenei. Security forces used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the protests and attempted to suppress news of the events by sealing off universities, blocking Internet and mobile phone communications. In spite of these measures images of the protests reached Western media and showed widespread violence against protesters.

Even without the death of Montazeri further flashpoints were inevitable. The 27th of December is the festival of Ashura, the most important day in the Shia calendar, and the opposition once again took to the streets. The resulting clashes were the bloodiest yet with the security forces firing live ammunition at protesters. Latest estimates suggest that up to 15 people are reported dead, including Ali Mousavi, the nephew of reformist movement leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. YouTube footage showed police motorcycles burning in the streets, crowds freeing protesters from the Basiji militia and police being stripped of their uniforms and weapons.

The events of Dec. 27 may yet be significant for three further reasons. Firstly, the unprecedented use of force by the security services undermines the claims of the state to be upholding Iran's religious traditions. The festival of Ashura commemorates Imam Hossein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammad and regarded as a martyr in the fight against oppression. Secondly, unlike in previous demonstrations where many protesters covered their faces, images from Dec. 27 show many people with their faces exposed, indicating a growing level of defiance on the part of the opposition. Thirdly, reports suggest that some members of the security forces refused to obey orders when asked to fire on protesters.

If true, this final point is perhaps the most significant, as the identification of the security and armed forces with the cause of the people would signify a major shift in the balance of power. While it may be too early to proclaim such a shift in the power balance in Iran, the fact that protests have not subsided following the June election and that they have increasingly focused upon the authority of Ayotollah Ali Khamenei will give the authorities cause for concern. Such a shift begins to raise questions about the legitimacy of the Islamic Republic itself, not just the government.

How this balance changes will be the critical factor in determining the fate of Iran into 2010 and in particular the fate of the Islamic Republic. The ongoing response of the Iranian people to continued repression should be matched by an equal level of solidarity in the labor, trade union and peace movements across the world to ensure that Iran moves in the direction of genuine democracy. With the hovering threats of both Israel and the United States casting their shadow, it is vital that regime change in Iran is by the people, for the people and not imposed by external forces to meet an external Western agenda. Moving into 2010, this will be the main task of those across the world looking to support the true voices and the actions of the Iranian people.

Jane Green is the national campaign officer of the UK-based CODIR, Committee for the Defence of the Iranian People's Rights.

Photo: The funeral of Ayatollah Montazeri in Tehran, Dec. 21. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamed/ / CC BY 2.0

World Notes: Austria, Bolivia, Cuba, Eritrea, Gaza, South Korea

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 13:29:00 +0000

Austria: Gay civil union gets green light

The Austrian Parliament last month authorized civil unions between gays, making pension benefits available to surviving partners. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown responded by called for recognition in Eastern Europe of British civil partnerships between gay persons. The legislation, which takes effect on Jan. 1, 2010, made Austria the 18th European nation granting legal status to civil unions. Observers say such action in one majority Catholic country will encourage similar reforms in others in Eastern Europe where gays endure persecution and occasionally violent confrontations. Gay rights activist Tomasz Szypula told IPS, "What happened in a Catholic country with support from conservative, Christian politicians" could be "a good example for Poland." Belgium, Spain, Holland and Sweden allow for marriage between gays.

Bolivia: President wants international climate change meeting

Calling for a "great mobilization," Bolivian President Evo Morales last week announced a world conference in Bolivia for April 22, 2010, as follow-up of the recently concluded Copenhagen climate conference. On Morales' initiative, the UN General Assembly this year designated that day as International Day of Mother Earth. Social movements, scientists, academicians and political leaders will gather at an "alternative forum" to shape proposals for the next UN climate conference set for Mexico in December, 2010. Morales told reporters, according to www.Bolpress.com, that "irrational and unlimited industrialization" accounts for the climate crisis. "The people are going to have to make them change," he warned. Morales, a UN "World Hero of Mother Earth," emphasized threats posed by food and water shortages.

Cuba: Recognition for providing nutritional adequacy

The United Nations' Children's Fund issued a report recently indicating that of 146 million children worldwide under age five who are underweight, none are Cuban. They include 28 percent of Sub-Saharan African children, 17 percent in the Middle East and Northern Africa, 15 percent in East Asia, and seven percent in Latin America. Prensa Latina commentary attributes favorable results to provision of basic food necessities to all, nutritional supplementation during pregnancies, free meals in day care centers and schools, and breast feeding for all babies. Despite severe shortages following the fall of the Soviet Bloc, young children received a quart of milk daily. Cuba receives World Food Program assistance during times of special need, as, for example, in Eastern Cuba, where drought presently prevails.

Eritrea: United Nations places sanctions

The UN Security Council last week imposed an arms embargo against Eritrea in response to U.S. and African Union accusations that Eritrea has armed and funded Islamist al-Shabaab insurgents in Somalia, thereby violating a UN arms ban. Eritrea is blamed also for illegally occupying border areas near Djibouti. The sanctions include travel restrictions and selective freezing of assets. The Financial Times highlights the role of Ethiopia, Eritrea's enemy, in serving as pretext for Eritrean meddling in Somalia, an allegation Eritrea denies. Under U.S. auspices, Ethiopia has, for three years, backed the Transitional Somalian government that al-Shabaab has targeted. Sanctions come as Eritrea's poverty rate approaches 70 percent and Eritrean refugees stream into Sudan.

Palestine: PFLP marks 42^nd anniversary

Some 70,000 supporters of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) joined the group's 42nd anniversary rally in Gaza on Dec. 12, reports the Ma'an news agency.

"From the early morning hours," writes an author on the PFLP website, "crowds of young and old, men, women and children traveled from the various provinces of the Strip and all camps and villages to Gaza City to the rally, answering the call of the Front to attend under the slogan of 'Unity, Steadfastness and Resistance - Towards Victory!'"

The PFLP calls for armed struggle and asserts that negotiations have failed. Other left Palestinian groups, like the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Palestine People's Party, have differed on the best way to win a just and viable Palestinian homeland, but all are represented in the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people.

Unity of the Palestinian people is utmost, say the PFLP and others. Speaking on television last week, PFLP general secretary Abed Al Raheem Malouh blamed the Hamas movement for blocking national reconciliation, pointing out that all other resistance groups had signed an Egyptian-mediated document calling for cooperation. Talks among Palestinian factions were progressing at the time in Egypt on possible unity between Fatah and Hamas, according to imemc.org.

South Korea: Hyundai workers accept wage freeze, bonuses

Some 62 percent of 42,146 voting Hyundai autoworkers opted last week for keeping 2009 wages in place and taking in bonuses worth $12,700. Workers will forego a wage increase for the first time in 15 years and may be entering a strike-free year for only the second time since 1987. Other South Korean corporations freezing wages include Samsung and Hyundai Heavy Industries.

The bonus package consists of a $4,200 "incentive" pay out, the equivalent of wages for three months, and 40 shares of Hyundai stock. Hyundai registered a record high $827.3 million in third quarter profits this year.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gleevak/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Mexico City approves gay marriage

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:08:00 +0000

By a vote of 31 to 24 with nine abstentions, the Legislative Assembly of the Federal District, the jurisdiction to which Mexico City belongs, has passed legislation authorizing gay marriage. This action, taken on December 21, is the first of its kind in Latin America where the hold of traditional Roman Catholic social policy has been so strong that until recently, divorce was illegal in some of countries, and women's reproductive rights are still severely restricted.

The measure also legalizes adoption by same-sex couples. In 2006, the Assembly had granted civil union rights to gay couples.

The gay marriage rights bill was introduced by legislators from the Revolutionary Democratic Party and the Labor Party, with opposition coming from the conservative National Action Party (PAN), which controls the national presidency, plus legislators from the formerly ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the Green Ecological Party (PVEM). The Mexican Greens are a right-wing party who push for a restoration of the death penalty and other conservative positions.

The reaction from the Roman Catholic Church and smaller Evangelical churches was immediate and condemnatory. Mexico City Archbishop Norberto Rivera, the Roman Catholic Primate of all of Mexico called the action "immoral" and a disaster for society, arguing that, since the purpose of marriage is procreation, same-sex couples who, obviously, can not procreate, should not be allowed to marry.

Angry PAN, PRI and PVEM legislators have called on the Executive of the Federal District (approximately, Mayor of Mexico City), the PRD's Marcelo Ebrard, to veto the decision but it appears he will not. A constitutional challenge is also being prepared, similar to one that was threatened when the Legislative Assembly legalized abortion.

In spite of the opposition, some national figures of both the PAN and the PRI have said they see it as a positive move for equal rights among all Mexicans. And the federal Minister of Health, Jose Angel Cordova, was quoted by the Mexico City daily La Jornada as saying "How great that there is respect for all persons."

The history of the church's involvement in social policy in Mexico is long and conflicted. After the initial Spanish conquest, the church, while denouncing some of the worst violence of the conquistadores, tried to establish a monopoly over all belief, employing the Holy Inquisition to go after dissenters and heretics. After independence, major conflicts developed between the feudal-minded church hierarchy and modernizing political forces such as president Benito Juarez. In 1856 the Ley Lerdo ("Lerdo's Law") promoted by liberal secularist politician Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, tried to restrict the church's economic activities (it was a major landowner). In a bloody civil war, conservatives allied with the church drove President Juarez into internal exile and, in alliance with Napoleon III of France, brought in Archduke Maximilian, the younger brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria, as "Emperor of Mexico". But Juarez returned to power and renewed enforcement of anti-clerical legislation. After the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, anti-clerical laws were strengthened. Church properties were confiscated, and clergy forbidden from voting, holding office or even going out in public in clerical garb. In the 1920s, repression of the church was followed by a Catholic rebellion in West-Central Mexico, called the Cristiada or Cristero movement. Atrocities were committed by both sides, with followers of "Christ the King" burning secular schoolteachers to death, and the army devastating the affected areas.

This bloody history has ingrained a strong anti-clerical and secularist tendency in Mexican political culture, while the Church has retained a strong influence over social customs. The PAN, to which President Felipe Calderon belongs, was founded in 1939 by people who wanted to reverse this tendency. It includes on its right fringe people who can be classified as clerical fascists. Some PAN state governors and local leaders have shown an inclination to impose church-based sexual morality by legislation or decree, which has been criticized as an infraction of the separation of church and state.

So, while the vote of the Legislative Assembly was a big victory for Mexico's gay and lesbian community, there is a long struggle ahead.

World Notes: Western Sahara, Iraq, Chile, Canada, Indonesia, Cuba

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:50:00 +0000

Western Sahara: Morocco relents, hunger striker returns home

After taking Aminatou Haidar to a hospital on Dec. 17, Spanish authorities removed the "Saharan Gandhi" from the Canary Islands to Western Sahara. Morocco had blocked her from entering the contested region on November 14 because she insisted on Western Saharan, not Moroccan, nationality. Officials sent her to the Canary Islands after seizing her passport. There the mother of two conducted a hunger strike for 32 days, until Morocco, under growing international pressure, allowed her unconditional return. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a reporter "the United Nations needs to do more on political negotiations." Morocco seized the former Spanish colony in 1975, provoking armed rebellion, and has refused to implement a UN ordered independence referendum

Iraq: Executions loom

Amnesty International warned earlier this month that the government is preparing to execute over 900 prisoners in the weeks prior to parliamentary elections next March. Their appeals are exhausted, and the Presidential Council has approved their death sentences. The Bertrand Russell Tribunal Committee claimed they are denied access to lawyers, and "none of the condemned had a fair trial." Iraq's rate of executions is one of the world's highest. The government restored the death penalty after the U.S Coalition Provisional Authority abolished it in 2003. Iraqi prisoners, say critics, are subjected to torture, overcrowding, removal to secret prisons, and demands placed upon families for ransom.

Chile: Survey estimates views on democracy

The Chilean based Latinobarómetro polling organization last week released its annual public opinion report, based this time on 20,204 people surveyed in 18 countries. Notable results include: 58% of Hondurans opposed the June 28 coup while only 24 percent of all Latin Americans were favorable. Most Hondurans approving were "more educated and older." Venezuelans ranked third, behind Uruguayans and Costa Ricans, in affirming their country as "totally democratic." Tops in crediting their own country's fairness in distributing wealth were 34 percent of Bolivians, Venezuela's 32 percent, and 28 percent in Ecuador. Most Latin Americans - 92% - think "marches, protests, and street protests are normal in a democracy," up from 63% in 2008.

Canada: Flunking grades at Copenhagen

"Canada is the dinosaur at these talks," said Canadian David Cadman, president of the international local government group hosting a conference at the recent Copenhagen climate summit. He blamed the government, intent upon "protecting Canada's fossil fuel sector," for violating commitments undertaken according to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. That binding agreement calls for six percent greenhouse gas reductions by 2010. Yet conservative Stephen Harper government promises cuts of only three percent under 1990 levels by 2020. It rejects 1990 as the base year while emissions have risen 34 percent since then. We "see them (the Canadians) as criminal," said Ugandan activist Kodili Chandia. Alberta tar sands oil production is tagged as the world's biggest single industrial source of carbon release, according to analyst Stephen Leahy.

Indonesia: Censorship backfires

The Alliance of Independent Journalists last week threatened a constitutional court challenge if the government enforces its ban on presentations of an Australian anti-war movie showing Indonesian military atrocities prior to the 1975 East Timor invasion. Government censorship prevented showing of the little-known film at a film festival earlier in the month. Since then sales of pirated DVD versions have skyrocketed. The journalists' group, that began as a Suharto-era clandestine free speech movement, has been showing the motion picture throughout the country. "We are trying to scrap legacies of the dictatorship piece by piece," according to a spokesperson cited by AP. Previous constitutional court rulings have lifted restrictions on other films about East Timor and rebellious Aceh province.

Cuba: Austerity budget up for approval

In preparation for this week's plenary session of the National Assembly, delegates heard from permanent legislative work commissions and government ministries as to income, expense, and subsidy figures for 2009, plus projections for next year. Recommendations from nationwide discussion groups will enter into expected Assembly approval of the 2010 national budgetary law. "Plans have had to be readjusted to implementation marked by strict rationality, savings, discipline, and organization," according to Cubadebate.

Parliamentarians learned that after expanding 4.1 percent in 2008 and 1.4 percent this year, the economy is projected to achieve one percent growth next year. Reports were heard that electricity and petroleum use fell in 2009, that the 30,000 new houses were constructed (100,000 were targeted) and that 58 percent of 600,000 hurricane-damaged housing units have been repaired. While foreign industries operating in Cuba fell to 258 from 362 in 2007, investments in foreign-based enterprises increased. Emphasis is being placed on infrastructure improvements serving passenger and cargo transport.

Food production and processing both gained in 2009, although the crucial need for food import reductions remains. Radio Havana reported recently that in Las Tunas, milk and rice production was up last year and that 150,000 acres of land have been leased out to private farmers under a new program aimed at utilizing idle farm land.

Photo by Saharauiak. Aminatou Haidar visits Nelson Mandela's prison cell in South Africa in 2006. http://www.flickr.com/photos/sahara/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Kool & the Gang sing in Havana

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 11:28:00 +0000

HAVANA - Robert "Kool" Bell, leader of the U.S. rhythm and blues group Kool & the Gang said Dec. 20 that the group's concert scheduled that day at Havana's Jose Marti Anti-Imperialist Tribune would be dedicated to the fraternity and unity of the peoples.

At a press conference held at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Bell explained that he did not come as a politician but as a musician.

He noted that there has always been an important relationship between the music of his country and that of Cuba, a fact that so far has not changed.

He said the inspiration for this visit was his father - an outstanding boxer of the 1950s who fought in matches on the island and who greatly admired its music and culture.

Bell said he expected to have very good exchanges with Cuban musicians, an experience from which he'd like to draw a lot of energy to be instilled into his music and that therefore he had as special guest for his concert the great Cuban trumpeter Alexander Abreu.

Dyana Williams, president of the International Foundation of the African-American Music Association, who coordinated this visit of Kool & the Gang to Cuba, said that coming here was a special moment and he considers it a historical cultural exchange.

For his part, trombonist Clifford Adams said he has traveled worldwide with the band, that people want the same everywhere - peace, and that although the distance and differences create stereotyped propaganda, when you visit them and talk to them people turn out to be beautiful.

George Brown, the band's percussionist, said that all over the world people can appreciate a good song, that he knows Cubans like quality music and that this is the reason why they make an effort to turn every new piece into a celebration.

Kool & the Gang was founded in 1964. Its leading members are Robert "Kool" Bell on the bass, Ronald Bell on tenor sax, George Brown on the drums, Robert Mickens on the trumpet and Dennis Thomas on the alto sax.

Also part of Kool & the Gang are Claydes Charles Smith on the guitar, Clifford Adams on the trombone, and Rick Westfield on the keyboards.

Originally posted at www.cubanews.ain.cu/2009/1220koolandthegang.htm.

Photo: cubanews.ain.cu

Cuba racism charge rebuffed

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 10:53:00 +0000

Cuban and U.S. activists are strongly protesting a letter circulated among prominent African Americans alleging systemic racial discrimination in Cuba. The letter was circulated by Cuban exile Carlos Moore and actively supported by right-wing Cubans living in Miami.

The letter calls attention to the case of a Cuban doctor, Darsi Ferrer, who AfroCubaWeb says is "long a darling of the hard right in Miami." The letter alleges among other things that the socialist island employs a "racial system."

Several Afro-Cuban academics and artists responded immediately to the letter, dismissing the claim of systemic racial discrimination and pointing out that its legal and institutional basis had been overcome by Cuba's 1959 revolution.

"It is probable," they write, "that those who signed the document also ignore the fact that from the earliest days following the popular victory of 1959, the institutional and legal bases that sustained a racist society were dismantled."

They continue: "As never before in the history of our nation, black and mestizo Cubans have found opportunities for social and personal development in transformative processes that have been ongoing for the past half a century."

The Cubans indicate that despite considerable progress, problems persist, a phenomenon they say Fidel Castro spoke about several years ago as the persistence of subjective discrimination associated with "poverty and historical monopoly of knowledge." The Cubans also point to the foreign aid Cuba has rendered African countries, particularly Southern Africa, at the cost of thousands of Cuban lives, as further proof of a strongly anti-racist stance.

African Americans activists and scholars have also responded with a "We Stand With Cuba" statement calling the letter "divisive and misguided." The statement says, "We, the undersigned, believe that the Carlos Moore originated petition is designed to create a wedge in the African American support base for Cuba. Moore's petition is also an attempt to dismiss Cuba as a modern example of how socialism is a practical system that ensures an equitable distribution of its resources for ALL Cubans." The statement can be found here.

According to James Early, who visited Cuba recently along with Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover, Cuba is in the midst of an important discussion of racial discrimination. Early says there was "no doubt among themselves or among us that an important ideological and political debate about race and discrimination and what is to be done is under way, but in the context of the broader debate and policy formulation among all Cubans about all aspects of improving their revolution."

Communist Party USA Executive Vice Chairman Jarvis Tyner pointed out that Cuba more than any other country has made big contributions toward combating discrimination and training Black doctors, scientists, engineers, computer scientists and other workers. "I recall over 25 years ago visiting a dental clinic where all the dentists were Black women," he said. "There were probably more Black dentists in that room than in all of New York City at the time."

U.S.-Cuba relations have improved somewhat as indicated by an ease in travel restrictions. The Cuban government, however, has noted a recent uptick in hostile actions. Negotiations on travel are due to resume in February.

ALBA marks fifth anniversary at Havana summit

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:12:00 +0000

Cuban President Raul Castro welcomed representatives of ALBA nations to Havana Dec. 11-14 for their eighth summit meeting. "The confrontation between two historical forces is intensifying," he observed. He contrasted an "elitist and exploitative model, a legacy of colonialism" with the "advance of the revolutionary and progressive political forces ...committed to the real independence of the peoples."

This summit marked the fifth anniversary of ALBA's founding by Cuba and Venezuela - in Havana - as an alliance that would become, according to Prensa Latina, "a dynamic nucleus of integration placing emphasis on solidarity, complementary relations, justice and cooperation."

ALBA signifies the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - People's Trade Agreement. The latter refers to a commercial and trade system under ALBA proposed earlier by Bolivian President Evo Morales. The summit approved a time schedule for institution of "fair trade" emphasizing "social development as an alternative to neoliberal free trade agreements." ALBA member nations include: Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, Antigua and Barbuda, San Vincent and the Grenadines, and Dominica.

The eighth summit undertook to evaluate accomplishments and problems evident during ALBA's first five years and to assess "perspectives, challenges, and opportunities." Strengthened operating efficiency and mechanisms for integration were on the agenda.

Success was noted in extending health care, including sight restoration for one million people; dissemination of medical education, and removal of illiteracy from Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. President Castro highlighted studies underway in several countries toward improving the lives of disabled people. Other proposals included creation of a regional scientific center in Caracas, improved access to education up to the secondary level, creation of an ALBA cultural center, and an initiative identified with the name of Jose Marti for advancing regional integration.

Plans were laid for use, beginning in January 2010, of the sucre, a virtual currency for transactions among member states. Funding of the sucre will derive from deposits by ALBA members of currently used currencies in a central bank in Caracas. The aim is to reduce dependency on the U.S. dollar.

President Morales introduced the notion of an ALBA defense council as a "permanent necessity." The presence of U.S. military bases in Latin America requires that people "must organize themselves, lose their fear and defend not only the sovereignty of our countries, but their dignity."

The summit approved the ALBA resolution that Presidents Morales and Chavez would take with them to the Copenhagen Climate Summit. It called upon industrialized nations to adhere to scientific recommendations on reducing greenhouse gases and make good on reimbursing poor nations for climate damage.

The summit lauded the Dec. 6 electoral victory of Morales in Bolivia.

A closing statement denounced the U.S. economic blockade against Cuba, new U.S. military bases in Colombia, U.S. persecution of the Cuban Five prisoners, and the military coup and recent presidential vote in Honduras. "The coup d'etat was not only against Honduras, it was also against ALBA," declared Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Foreign minister-in-exile Patricia Rodas was on hand representing the legitimate Honduran government. After the summit concluded, de facto President Roberto Micheletti asked the Honduran Congress to retract its year-old ALBA membership. From the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa deposed President Manuel Zalaya accused Micheletti of diverting $100 million provided under ALBA from projects for the poor to his own devices.

Concluding the ALBA summit, which unfolded on the 15th anniversary of his first visit to Cuba, President Chavez read a letter from Fidel Castro honoring the occasion. The former Cuban president wrote, "The empire is mobilizing the Latin American right-wing forces." Nevertheless, he suggests, "The most important political battle of human history is being fought [at the Copenhagen climate conference] at this very moment." That fight is "not only for justice but also for human survival."

On the summit sidelines, Cuba and Venezuela signed agreements worth almost $3 billion on joint manufacturing, health care, education, and food projects. Trade between Cuba and Venezuela reached $5.28 billion last year, up from $945 million in 2003.

Cuba’s detention of U.S. agent is revealing

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 00:02:00 +0000

Facts every now and then intrude upon fakery and secrets. The New York Times reported Dec. 11 on the detention a week earlier of a U.S. agent in Havana. Described as a "United States government contract worker, who was distributing cell phones, laptops and other communications equipment in Cuba on behalf of the Obama administration," he had entered Cuba on a tourist visa.

He apparently worked for Maryland based Developmental Alternatives Inc. (DAI). The Times report portrays DAI is "a kind of do-it-all development company that provides services to the United States government."

But according to U.S.-Venezuelan lawyer Eva Golinger, DAI is "one of the largest U.S. government contractors providing services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development." DAI is the conduit for most of Congress' $40 million funding last year of opposition forces inside Cuba.

Golinger points out that DAI has operations in 14 Latin American nations. She invokes the authority of the late CIA whistle-blower Phillip Agee to claim that the company and the USAID work for the CIA. The USAID delegates many of its CIA projects through DAI, she said.

Golinger last week summarized DAI maneuverings in Venezuela. With funding of $10 million for two years, DAI opened an Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) under USAID auspices. The OTI paid for publicity and personnel to undertake the campaign of economic sabotage and oil industry shut-down that struck Venezuela in 2002-03. The OTI paid the high-visibility Sumate group for activities directed at defeating President Chavez in the 2004 recall referendum. DAI operates presently in Venezuela with a $7 million annual budget and ties to 533 opposition groups and projects.

The present story of a DAI contractor jailed in Cuba is reminiscent of the drama of early 2003 when 75 writers and self described journalists were detained in Cuba, tried, and sentenced. That episode cast light upon U.S. efforts to undermine the Cuban government. The defendants turned out to be mercenaries paid by the U.S. government. Cuban intelligence personnel posing as colleagues had provided evidence.

Golinger last week also expanded upon CIA - USAID ties. She recalled CIA use of the USAID to train and arm 1 million police officers in poor countries, a program closed down by Congress in 1974. Golinger cited USAID-CIA cooperation during the Vietnam War and in the overthrow of Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Last year Bolivian President Evo Morales expelled the USAID because it was funding separatist opposition groups. The governments of Eritrea, Ethiopia, Russia, and Belarus have done likewise.

This year, the USAID became part of the U.S. government's Interagency Counterinsurgency Initiative, along with the Pentagon and the State Department. The USAID role in counterinsurgency (COIN) is described, reports Golinger, in the 2007 State Department document, "Counterinsurgency for U.S. Government Policy Makers: A Work in Progress."

There is a bow there to "fostering economic growth and promoting human health," but emphasis also on "enhancing democracy in developing countries." The USAID works in 100 countries. Prominent among the 3,500 private U.S. businesses the USAID claims as associates - along with thousands of public and private organizations - is DAI.

The U.S. contractor's apparent connection with DAI invokes both history and present realities. Nevertheless, The New York Times delivers a little lecture: Detention of the contractor "demonstrated that President Raul Castro of Cuba had not abandoned the hard-line tactics used for years by his older brother, Fidel, to stifle dissent."

That's as if, in an imaginary world, the U.S. government had given a free pass to a Soviet operative wandering about in major U.S. cities handing out reading material and devices allowing easy communication between U.S. citizens and enemies, as it were, of the state.

World Notes: Kenya, Thailand, Egypt, France, Colombia, Cuba

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:32:00 +0000

Kenya: Waste disposal violates human rights

The Dandora waste disposal site serves Nairobi's four million people. Burning of chemical, hospital, industrial, agricultural, and domestic waste is continuous. Two years ago the United Nations Environmental Program estimated 900,000 people living in nearby poverty stricken areas are affected by toxic fumes. Half the children tested are poisoned by lead, half suffer from respiratory disease, and many have neurologic and endocrine diseases. Local communities have mobilized, demanding relocation of the operation to a non- residential area, a waste management policy, a recycling program, and jobs. Organizers held a forum on December 10, World Human Rights Day, followed by a visit of government officials and UNEP representatives to the Dandora site where, according to www.habitants.org, they met with community members.

Thailand: Mekong River dams change lives downstream

At the completion of the Mekong Media Forum last week in Chiang Mai, tensions were evident among the journalists, film makers, public officials, and NGOs on hand who, discussing diverse uses of Mekong waters, focused on effects of Chinese dams on the well being of people downstream. Nine dams are contemplated for hydroelectric power, with three already in place. Fluctuating water levels along downstream portions of the 3,032 mile waterway have damaged agriculture and fisheries, in the process threatening to change the diet and reduce the income of 60 million Mekong Basin people. Changes in water flow patterns and sediment deposits are anticipated. The Chinese government has remained silent on consequences of the dams, according to Inter Press Service.

Egypt: Measures taken to seal Gaza border

According to the BBC, Egypt has begun work on what will be a seven mile barrier along its border with Gaza. U.S. Army engineers designed the impenetrable steel wall which extends 18 meters below the surface, and are helping with construction. Component parts are being made in the United States. The Egyptian government has refused to comment on the project which will take 18 months to complete. The underground barrier will be sunk close to the existing perimeter wall. Its purpose is to block cross border tunnels that presently serve as conduits for food and essential materials in short supply inside Gaza because of the Israeli blockade. Israel says they also allow entry for banned people, weapons and rocket components.

France: Migrant workers to take to the streets

Journalist Nadia Lamarkbi last month opened a face book page titled "A day without immigrants: 24 hours without us." Within hours, 33,000 members had signed on. Planning since has advanced toward a strike on March 1, 2010, the fifth anniversary of the "Code of Entry and Residence of Foreigners" taking effect. That legislation is criticized for its excessively "utilitarian and economic" view of immigration, reports www.rebelion.org. Bloggers in the provinces and in Italy have begun regional planning efforts - See www.Lajourneesansimmigres.org - so that "French society will realize the true wealth derived from immigration." What has become a movement is modeled on the May 1, 2006, demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of mostly Latino immigrants in the U.S.

Colombia: Political leader denounces assassination plan

Bogota City Counselor Jaime Caycedo notified the attorney general last week that paramilitary groups are preparing to assassinate him. He has been targeted, according to www.pacocol.org, because of his denunciations, in the media and before the city council, of the growing presence of heavily armed paramilitaries in half the city's districts. Caycedo, a leader of the Alternative Democratic Pole, referred also to a "black list" of other leaders of that leftist electoral coalition named as potential victims. He condemned governmental failure to investigate intelligence and police operatives who illegally monitor him. The Inter-American Commission of Human Rights provides precautionary surveillance for Caycedo as a survivor of the massacre of Patriotic Union activists that began two decades ago. Caycedo is General Secretary of Colombia's Communist Party.

Cuba: Imports down, trade relations reshuffled

La Jornada newspaper last week reported that Cuba has cut off some 50 European and Latin American companies providing the island with goods and services. They include the Canadian oil company Pebercan, which after 15 years now accounts for seven percent of Cuba's crude oil production. Cuba has frozen accounts worth millions of dollars of several dozen companies, and delayed payments. Corruption is given as the reason for a "massive adjustment" of foreign providers. Penalties may be imposed. Official sources indicated, however, that funds could be released to companies willing to renew shipments. Cuban promises of payments through foreign sources of credit are intended as encouragement. Cuban foreign trade is down 36 percent this year, due mostly to reduced imports.

Color in Cuba

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:15:00 +0000

Editor's note: The article below is in response to a recent declaration signed by a number of African Americans calling on Cuba to end "racial discrimination." The document was circulated by a Cuban exile living in Brazil, Carlos Moore. PW will continue to follow this story.

It would be absurd to think that in Cuba, there are no racial problems, negative stereotypes, discrimination or racism, not just as burdens but also as something that society, in its imperfection, can still produce.

A recent declaration, promoted by some African-Americans in alleged support of the struggle for human rights in our country, manipulates the issue of race and magnifies it hoping to show that in Cuba, the racial problem is similar to that of any other country in this hemisphere, which is not true.

This is the opinion of Dr. Esteban Morales, political scientist and essayist and signer of a statement that Cuban intellectuals sent to their African-American colleagues reflecting on the truth of this controversial issue.

"The fundamental weakness in the [African-American] declaration is that it was based on the same accusations made by the US government: that we have a totalitarian dictatorship here, that we are a country without human rights that is undemocratic for blacks, blaming the government and its political leadership for the problems.

"The humanitarian policy of the Revolution has helped to overcome this problem. There is no institutional racism. That is a phenomenon carried on and reproduced over a relatively long time that we neglected to address. We idealistically proclaimed it resolved in 1962, but it was only hidden and re-emerged in the midst of the economic crisis.

"Contrary to what they are suggesting, in March 1959, Fidel Castro himself recognized in several speeches the existence of racism and discrimination that had to be resolved, considering them a social evil.

"He took up the issue again in a speech during the Special Period in the UNEAC congresses and pedagogical meetings, and his approaches are still very relevant."

Why do those statements persist?

Professor Morales admits, "We have made mistakes. The first: to imagine that because of the policies of the Revolution, racism would slowly disappear like other burdens we inherited. Cuba is possibly the most advanced country in its eradication, especially of the inequality and injustice that comes with it, but 50 years of revolution, however radical it may have been, are not sufficient to end a problem from 450 years of colonialism.

"All Cubans have to continue struggling against that deformity in the areas of education and culture to promote an awareness that the problem exists and must be solved. We cannot speak of an integrated general culture if it is not resolved, but the Cuban reality is far removed, for examples, from that of the United States, which is the most racist society the universe has known in spite of having elected a black president.

"We have in our country many shortcomings in the teaching of history. Multicolor does not enter the textbooks, as it should; the racial issue is not mentioned or explained. There is almost no instruction about Africa, Asia, the Middle East, which severely hinders children from leaving school with a deep sense of what the roots of Cuban culture are. These difficulties are being discussed in national commissions established for that purpose.

"The second error was not to take variable skin color into account. It is an index of social differentiation defining the boundaries of the racial groups that formed the country.

The Spaniards came by choice; the blacks were brought in slave ships, gathered on the west coast of Africa or sold by their own tribes. Their lot was slavery, which on this side of the world took on color because, while in the classical world, the slave could be blond and blue-eyed, here they were Indian and black." From the mixture of these and others emerged the Cuban color.

"Today, you walk the streets of Havana and understand what I am saying. Although at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology there are a number of young blacks, in our neighborhoods you find many marginal people who cannot receive the benefits that the Revolution has provided.

"And they cannot do it because they start from different places. This can be seen in a number of parameters of everyday life: housing, job quality, the role played by institutions, access to public and business positions, and above all, to the so-called new economy.

"The level of democracy and civil rights we have achieved is the same for all racial groups and the degree to which we must perfect them is for everyone. Some people can take better advantage of them than others can because they are in a better position to do so.

"The racial problem in our country is not simply an economic one. It touches on everything and politically, the issue must be on the agenda of the organizations and be debated."

So, another attack on the Revolution?

Returning to the statement of those African-Americans, Professor Esteban Morales stated categorically, "Those people latch onto these difficulties to attack the Revolution, but Cuba is the only country where blacks and mestizos have the state and government as allies. If there had never been a revolution, we blacks would have had to make one in order to reach the level that many of us have reached.

"I am convinced that some who signed that statement do not know what they signed; they were subjects of manipulation. There was one person who asked that her name be removed because she realized that there were distortions in the statement that tried to twist reality and inject itself into our internal debate to convert it into a dissident discussion."

Is the aid Cuba gives to African nations evidence that the Cuban Revolution is not racist?

"It is evidence as is the fact that Cuban doctors, teachers and technicians -- black and white -- reach the remotest corners of the world to help the needy. However, that is practical evidence lacking in theory because, while we do it, we do not discuss the racial issue in an open, full and profound deep way, which we must do internally.

"There is a contradiction in that; it seems to be demagoguery. We deal well with the issue abroad, we are friends of blacks, Indians and the vilified of the world but here, there was a certain atmosphere of social repression where one could be accused of being a racist and divisive for even talking about it. We thought that there was no problem, that we did not need to discuss it, that it would eventually be resolved through a seriously humanistic policy. It is clear that, even as capitalism is ended, racism remains in the consciousness, in institutions and in the people's way of life."

There are experts who assure us that the statement could affect the Obama administration. What do you think?

"We cannot know exactly what effects it will cause. Obama has always wanted to distance himself from the racial issue. He did not even present himself as a black presidential candidate. He tried to circumvent it and he succeeded.

"But Obama has fallen back on the conditioning and criticism against Cuba and the statement goes in that direction. The document signed by these people is being discredited as shown by the fact that signatures are being added to our statement while some are being removed from theirs. There is much sensitivity to this issue in the United States."

At times, there is an emphasis on numbers to gauge the representation of blacks in our organizations. Is that a demonstration of racism?

"That was a failed effort, an error in our thinking about how representativeness could be achieved, but the problem is more complicated. We have many black people who are still not counted as black.

"There exists the whitening phenomenon, and if you are black and do not present yourself for what you are, you are taking an unethical demagogic position. It is fundamental in Cuban culture that people be taken for what they are. The challenge is in forming a consciousness in which there is no racial prejudice, stereotypes or racism.

"We have to create all the conditions for educating boys and girls in this process. We have to create other conditions in the cultural sphere, in empowerment and economic equality. Between you and me, there can be economic equality but not social equality, legal equality and not social equality. Social equality is something that is much more complex.

"It does not mean anything that we are all born in the same hospital, that we go to the same recreation centers, to the same schools. From the social point of view, the issue is more profound. It is a phenomenon transferred from generation to generation, which implies having awareness that equality is the project. The lack of it is what we collide with every day.

"Social equality is an integrated system in which individuals have to manage their identity. I am a Cuban, an intellectual, a party militant and a black; that is my identity." All mixed.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/emeryjl/ / CC BY 2.0

Conservative presidential candidate takes Chilean vote

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:45:00 +0000

Presidential and congressional elections on Dec. 13 were bad news for the Chilean left and working class. Sebastián Piñera, presidential candidate for the right wing Alliance for Chile coalition took 44 percent of the votes. Former President Eduardo Frei, running for the left - center Concertación, gained barely 30 percent of the six million votes cast. President Michelle Bachelet, Concertación victor in the 2006 elections, remains hugely popular, but was forbidden from running for a second consecutive term by the constitution.

The Concertación has controlled the presidency since 1989 when dictator Augusto Pinochet stepped down. No previous Concertación candidate has achieved less than 45 percent in first round voting. Frei himself had won 58 percent of first round voters in 1993.

In a surprising third place, former Socialist Party member Marco Enríquez-Ominami, who earlier had broken from the Concertación, obtained 20 percent of the vote. The energetic, 36 - year candidate, son of an assassinated guerrilla leader, had disparaged the Concertación leadership as tired, old and threadbare.

Jorge Arrate, candidate of the Juntos Podemos Mas (Together We Can Do More) coalition comprising the Communist Party, the Christian Left Party and other nonelectoral parties and movements, gained 6 percent of the votes, an improvement from previous coalition outings. Arrate, a former cabinet minister in Concertación governments, ran on a program calling for a new constitution, renationalization of copper mining, an end to indigenous repression, and protection of human rights.

Billionaire Sebastián Piñera, an airline and media mogul who flew his own helicopter to campaign stops, is favored to win a run-off vote set for Jan. 17. He benefits from divisions plaguing the Chilean left. A win would make him the first right winger elected president since 1958 and end the Concertación's 20-year hold on power.

Piñera promised six percent economic growth and corporate tax breaks. The Concertación lost votes to a left disenchanted by what looked like the Bachalet government's stinginess in distributing copper earnings to social programs and its failure to beef up education and health care.

Enríquez-Ominami denounced "cruel market forces" represented by Piñera, but overall articulated an ambiguous program. Never, however, had a candidate outside Chile's two main voting blocks scored as well in a presidential vote. Afterwards Enríquez-Ominami refused to ask disenchanted Concertación partisans supporting him to back Frei in the second round. The choice is "between two men of the past," he opined. Reaching out to Enríquez-Ominami voters, Piñera promised, "We will adopt many of Marco's proposals."

The finding just weeks before the election that Frei's father Eduardo Frei Montalva, another former president, had been poisoned in 1982 after a hernia operation, presumably by Pinochet operatives, served as a reminder of Chile's cruel past.

The right's hold on "economic, financial, cultural, and media power" portends a Piñera run-off victory, according to www.rebelion.org. Leftist observers say such an outcome would create an opening "to the geopolitical interests of Washington."

Voting for the Chamber of Deputies resulted in a near tie between a list combining Concertación and Juntos Podemos voters and Piñera's Alliance for Chile, with the Concertación ultimately losing chamber control. Piñera's coalition now commands 17 out of 38 Senate seats leaving the Concertación with a slight majority.

The defeat of rightist Valparaiso Senator Joaquín Lavín was unexpected. His Independent Democratic Union Party, friendly to the Pinochet legacy, weighs heavily in the national Congress with 36 deputies and nine senators.

Left forces took encouragement from the congressional victories of three Communist Party candidates, including party President Guillermo Teillier, its secretary general Lautaro Carmona and human rights lawyer Hugo Gutiérrez. They will become the first Communist members of the Chamber of Deputies since 1973.

Running as an independent, Rodrigo García Pinochet, grandson of Augusto Pinochet, took only ten percent of the votes cast in an upscale Santiago district for a Chamber of Deputies seat. Maria Isabel Allende Bussi, daughter of ousted President Salvador Allende, won a Senate seat.

Meanwhile, as Concertación forces gird for the runoff, theologian Jaime Escobar of the Christian Left Party told teleSUR that a big effort is required to confront "the capitalist and neoliberal model included in Sebastián Piñera's plans." The notion of "everyone to the table" is not included, he added.

Photo: Chilean presidential candidates, from left to right, Jorge Arrate, Marco Enríquez-Ominami, Eduardo Frei, Sebastián Piñera. Wikimedia

Class conflict surfaces at climate summit

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:09:00 +0000

Half way into the 15th UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen on December 7-18, 100,000 demonstrators from 500 different organizations were in the streets protesting, and a parallel People's Climate Summit was making news. The official meeting was splintered. Heads of state arriving at the Summit's end likely will be unable to celebrate a single plan for reducing greenhouse gases.

The Summit's task was implementation of the 1997 Kyoto Protocols through legally binding agreements to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gaseous emissions of fossil fuel combustion. The object is to prevent mean global temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius in the future. The scientific community recommends a 40 percent reduction by 2020 of emissions prevailing in 1990. The United Nations has called for 25 to 40 percent reductions for developed nations and 15 to 30 percent cuts for underdeveloped nations, who had no Kyoto obligations.

Ignacio Ramonet had set the stage. Click here: The former Le Monde Diplomatique editor pointed out that the Kyoto Protocol, rejected by the United States, remained in force and did represent international law. In his view, the Summit should assess each state's historical responsibility for climate degradation, develop a plan of assistance for poor countries coping with global warming, and establish a schedule of progressive reductions of emissions for all countries.

Ramonet notes a "serious contradiction between the logic of capitalism - uninterrupted growth, profiteering, and worldwide exploitation - and a new austerity required for avoiding the climate catastrophe." He envisions worldwide popular mobilization for basic fairness.

Many of the 30,000 government, officials, journalists and NGO representatives arriving at the Summit took offense at a leaked Danish government document. It outlined a pre-Summit plan by U.S., British, and Danish officials, and others, for cuts in CO2 emissions by underdeveloped states more restrictive per capita than limits placed on rich nations. Critics, particularly the G77 group of 130 developing nations, said the plan would bypass Summit deliberations and transfer power from the United Nations to the World Bank.

Speaking to African representatives, the Sudanese chief G77 negotiator Lumumba Di-Aping tearfully announced, "We have been asked to sign a suicide pact." "After 500 years-plus of interaction with the West we [Africans] are still considered disposable."

Very poor African nations allied to small island states contested larger, richer underdeveloped nations, who resisted tight CO2 restrictions. Aiming to keep the global temperature rise to under 1.5 degrees C, island nations are demanding a 45 percent reduction from 1990 levels.

Adding to the confusion was "climategate," a fracas set off by charges that Penn State climatologist Michael Mann and others had used unwarranted extrapolations from old observational data to validate recent temperature elevations.

Meanwhile environmental and social justice activists meeting at Klima Forum09 for an alternative summit, attended workshops, discussions, and rallies on issues like reparations, climate migrants, alternative development models, and indigenous rights. "Shock Doctrine" author Naomi Klein, discussing reparations there, cited the "inverse relationship between the people who created the problem and where the effects of those problems are being felt." Rich nations, she said, hold onto money, despite science and treaties. Her remedy is "movement muscle" provided by social movements. Klein redefines environmentalism "as a class war that is being waged by the rich against the poor. "That struggle was evident in the fight over the "historical climate debt," obligations upon rich nations to provide financial and technical support to poor nations. Proposals circulated (commitments are lacking) of a $10 billion payout over three years, a suggestion ridiculed by Kemal Djemouai, spokesperson for African nations. He pointed out the $1.4 trillion paid out to counter the financial crisis.

Preliminary proposals for CO2 emission reductions varied. The United States offered a 17 percent reduction by 2020, to 2005 levels. Great Britain offered 34 percent; Japan, 25 percent; Brazil, 38-40 percent; and the European Union, 20 percent. All these proposals called for reductions to 1990 levels of CO2 emissions. Because U.S. emissions have risen 15 percent since then, the U.S. proposal targeting a return to 2005 levels represented a less than six percent cut. Underdeveloped nations are demanding 45 to 50 percent reductions by industrialized nations, in accordance with scientific recommendations.

China, under no obligations imposed by the Kyoto Protocol, voluntarily offered reductions of 40 to 45 percent in what it calls "carbon intensity," a measure tying emission reductions to units of GDP, with the result that its total gaseous production will increase along with rising GDP.

At the Summit mid-point, two draft agreements had been released. Neither expressed "clear numbers or language on any of the most contentious issues," according to www.timesonline.co.uk. The rival documents reflect contending views on obligations from underdeveloped nations. Their responsibility is limited, they say, because their 80 percent of the world population has accounted for only 20 percent of the released gases, and they will do most of the suffering.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cnphch/ / CC BY 2.0

Terrorist activities surface as anti-terrorists are sentenced

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 07:02:00 +0000

Critics of the resentencing this month of three of the Cuban Five prisoners in U.S. jails focused once more on U. S. "double standards." They cite U.S. government hypocrisy in calling itself the leader of a global war on terror while prosecuting and persecuting the Cuban Five, who were fighting against terrorists.

The Cuban Five were in Florida to defend Cuba against terrorist attacks emanating from southern Florida. At the time they were arrested 11 years ago, Cuba had been besieged for decades by murderous attacks and sabotage engineered by Cuban-American paramilitary groups based in the Miami area.

A new flurry of reports has cropped up recently that the U.S. government itself promoted terrorist attacks, especially in Latin America. For U.S. government agencies to be responsible for criminal attacks constitutes a far more serious indictment than mere hypocrisy. And besides, "Cuban-American terrorists continue to enjoy total impunity," said the three resentenced Cuban Five prisoners, in a joint statement.

For example, declassified documents released in October by the National Security Archives (NSA) confirm Luis Posada Carriles' ties with the CIA and the Cuban American National Foundation. His completion of preparations for bombing Soviet and Cuban ships in Veracruz, Mexico in 1965 is noted approvingly in a CIA report. The NSA previously released extensive documents outlining Posada's arrangements to bomb a Cuban airliner in 1976, in the process killing all 73 passengers aboard. The U.S. government has refused to extradite Posada, as requested, to Venezuela, where much of the bombing plot was hatched. He lives undisturbed in Miami.
Writing in the Cuban daily Granma, Jean-Guy Allard recently took note of the former Batista partisan Armando Valladares' new role in propping up the Roberto Micheletti, coup regime in Honduras. He had slipped away from his post in New York as head of the Human Rights Foundation, allegedly linked to the CIA, once its ties to murderous plotters against Bolivian President Evo Morales were exposed last April.

Allard also reported on declassified U.S. intelligence documents published last month by the Spanish Daily El Mundo. They demonstrated prior knowledge by the CIA, U.S. State Department, and Spanish intelligence services of U.S. trained soldiers' impending attack in El Salvador that in 1989 would kill seven Jesuit academicians, their housekeeper, and her daughter.
On December 2, Raúl Álzaga of the "Truth and Justice Commission of Puerto Rico" released a report that declassified U. S. intelligence documents confirmed FBI knowledge of preparations by Reynol Rodriguez and other Miami based Cuban-Americans to kill Puerto Rican independence leader Juan Mari Brás. In the end, terrorists killed his son Santiago Mari Pesquera on March 24, 1976, leaving the father alive. Reynol Rodriguez is currently military chief of Alpha 66, a southern Florida paramilitary Group.

Inquiries by the San Juan Daily Sun, directed at Miami FBI spokesperson Judy Orihuela, revealed little about FBI involvement. Interviewed by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in 2004, Orihuela stated that "terrorists in Miami are not a priority" for the FBI. A year before, she indicated all investigations of Luis Posada, in jail then in Panama, were closed. Shortly thereafter FBI documents and evidence relating to Posada were destroyed as part of "routine cleaning."

Then there is the matter of passing off responsibility for murder onto the innocent, in this case Gerardo Hernandez, one of the Cuban Five.

Reporting last month on interviews and on its survey of declassified federal documents, Florida CBS4 news service claims Washington could have prevented the deaths of four pilots of two Cessna planes downed by Cuban fighter planes on February 24, 1996. Gerardo Hernandez received one life sentence for conspiracy to murder those pilots.

Clinton Cuba advisor Richard Nuccio suggested Miami based Brothers to the Rescue flyers were carrying out "a political agenda of harassing and threatening the Cuban government by over flights." Cuban protests against repeated flights over Cuban territory were well documented, as were U.S diplomats' firsthand knowledge of the infractions.

José Basulto, head of the Brothers to the Rescue, complained that federal authorities issued no meaningful warnings. "We wouldn't have flown that day had we known," he said. Uncharacteristically, no United States military jets took off to intercept the Cuban aircraft, according to the report.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thivierr/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

World Notes: Russia, Nepal, Israel, Uganda, Venezuela, Cuba

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:06:00 +0000

Nepal: World's highest cabinet meeting sends message

Speaking to the BBC, Nepal's Prime Minister M.K. Nepal last week wanted "to stress one point: that the Himalayas are a global treasure." His 21-member cabinet had just gathered at 17,000 feet, on the approach to Mt. Everest, to endorse the "Shara Matar (Top of the World) Declaration" that Nepal would read at the Copenhagen climate summit the following week. For Buddhist monk Nawang Tenge, "Nature is God. But we are not treating our God fairly." There was no rain or snow last year, he pointed out, and "temperatures go up with every passing year." The Prime Ministers characterized the mountains as "the water towers of Asia, feeding its largest rivers and nourishing hundreds of millions of people downstream."

Russia: Union federations will merge

According to Boris Kravchenko, president of the All-Russia Confederation of Labor, his 1.3 million-member federation of steelworker, autoworker, and service employee unions will be merging with the slightly smaller Russian Labor Confederation, centered in the transportation industry. Last week he identified the unification conference set for early next year "as the most serious event in the past 20 years in terms of labor organization." The impetus for the merger is joblessness - 7.7 percent in October - and waning union influence in shrinking industries. The new formation will be dwarfed by the 26 million- member Federation of Independent Unions of Russia.

Israel: Army does target civilians

The Israeli Defense Force has adopted a new combat doctrine with two basics: no Israeli casualties and maximum civilian havoc. This finding of the Public Committee against Torture in Israel came out of its analysis of "Operation Cast Lead," Israel's 22-day war in Gaza beginning December 27, 2008. The group's report, released Dec. 2, claims the military converted "suffering into an essential element of its combat." Civilian infrastructure is destroyed to undermine enemy authority. The report asserts that the IDF "cast a moral stain upon us." Not only do its actions promote international isolation and subject soldiers to possible war crimes charges, but they "may even endanger our continued existence in the Middle East."

Uganda: Anti-gay bill promises heavy penalties

An anti-homosexual bill is on the verge of passage by the Ugandan government. It calls for life in prison for a single homosexual act and possible execution for multiple infractions or homosexual sex with minors. Failure to report homosexual persons to the police would entail jail terms, reports alternet.com. With widespread domestic political support, the bill has provoked international political and religious opposition, notably from the Canadian and British prime ministers. A few Ugandan religious officials, while supporting the bill, have denounced its death penalty provisions. Quoted by Guardian.co.uk, Anglican Canon Gideon Byamugisha referred to "state-legislated genocide against a specific community of Ugandans."

The Swedish government last week announced plans to cut $50 million in annual development aid should proposed anti-homosexual legislation become law.

Venezuela: Communist Party joins with new international journal

The Communist Party of Venezuela recently announced affiliation, through its theoretical journal Open Debate, with the newly formed International Communist Review, an electronic publication published in Athens. Articles appearing in the first issue, dated Dec. 1, are accessible at www.iccr.gr. They are translated into English, Spanish, and Russian. A print version in English is anticipated. According to the Popular Tribune web site, communist parties with shared theoretical and ideological positions will use the journal to analyze reverses following the Soviet collapse and current impediments to class based struggle. The goal they proclaim is ideological and political unity. Joining Open Debate editors in the venture are counterparts associated with similar journals in Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Spain, Latvia, Luxemburg, Mexico, Russia and Turkey.

Cuba: Famous blogger has help

Blogger Yoani Sánchez, purveyor of bad news about the Cuban revolution, heard directly last month from President Barack Obama. Her blog "provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba," he opined. Sánchez has gained multiple awards recently, and cash prizes.

Analyst Hernando Calvo Ospina of rebellion.org last week noted that Yoani Sánchez returned from stays in Switzerland and Germany with funding sufficient to use computer facilities in Havana hotels. Her server, located in Germany, normally refuses to host bloggers. The domain for her blog is registered through "Go Daddy," an entity the Pentagon utilizes for cyber war. Among Cuba's 700 bloggers, government critics among them, only Sánchez benefits from funding, world recognition and access to U.S. computer technology. Her blogs are immediately translated into 18 languages, a reach achieved only by the UN and EU.

Photo: Nepal's Cabinet meet in the Himalayas. Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP

Former guerilla wins Uruguayan presidency

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:58:00 +0000

Now 74 years old, José Mujica was a guerrilla fighter who, when amnestied in 1985, had spent 14 years in jail under Uruguay's dictatorship. In a runoff election on Nov. 29, he won the presidency by a 52 to 43 percent margin over former president Luis Alberto Lacalle of the right wing National Party.

Mujica, formerly a senator, served as agricultural minister in the Broad Front government of incumbent President Tabaré Vázquez. He takes office on March 1, 2010, and will serve for five years.

"There were no winners or losers," Mujica told supporters after the vote, adding that, "It is a mistake to think that power comes from above, when it comes from within the hearts of the masses ... it has taken me a lifetime to learn this."

Mujica's style is said to be direct, unstudied and relaxed. A day after his victory, he met with defeated opponents Lacalle and Pedro Bordaberry, the Colorado Party leader. He invited representation of their parties in his cabinet.

A meeting with leaders of Uruguay's main labor federation PIT-CIT followed. "This was a new form of relationship," observed Secretary-General Juan Castillo. Under discussion were reforms in health care, education, taxes, and labor relations. Federation official Fernando Pereira told reporters that "we communicated with Mujica that from our point of view, the state must be oriented toward development of production, distribution of wealth and social justice," and workers must have a "protagonist role." He expressed hope the new government would "solidify achievements of the Tabaré Vázquez government - the best in the last 50 years."

There was agreement that a "Work Commission" would be formed to include representatives of the Broad Front government and the union federation. The PIC-CIT asked that Mujica attend the MERCOSUR labor summit set for Montevideo Dec 7-8.

The center-left government Mujica will head faces criticism from the left that the awarding of cabinet seats to right-wing ministers signifies perpetuation of a status quo, giving banks and transnational corporations free rein. Critics point out that officials of state owned banks and businesses hold only sub secretarial rank, and they are excluded from cabinet deliberations.

Uruguayan writer and former political exile Eduardo Galeano, however, added perspective. Mujica's victory is important, he suggests, as representing a defeat of "an oligarchy that was imagining it was going to rule for all eternity, but the people responded." He attributed the strength of the Broad Front to the "diversity of affiliated parties and the respect they gained" working within the coalition. The present Broad Front administration of President Vázquez had kept the government on a stable course by melding strong debate with collective decision-making. Also, Mujica's hand will be strengthened by the election of slim majorities for his coalition in both houses of Congress in the October 25 general election.

Galeano expressed regret that voters in November failed to pass a referendum overturning the 1986 "Ley de Caducidad" (law of expiration) which awards impunity for human rights abuses committed during the dictatorship era. He also lamented the government's failure to pass legislation allowing Uruguayans living abroad to vote absentee.

Mujica will be buoyed along by successes of the Tabaré Vázquez government. Despite severe drought and the world economic crisis, Uruguay has avoided recession. Instead, over five years, the GDP grew from US$2.5 billion to US$5 billion with a 40 percent industrial growth rate. Direct investment in industry and infrastructure rose by 340 percent; there are 30,000 new jobs, and the public debt is down.

Poverty has fallen from 46.2 percent in1986, to 31.9 percent in 2004, to 20.3 percent presently. Extreme poverty fell from 7.7 percent in 1986 to 1.4 percent last year. Tax reform has benefitted working and retired people.

Education reformers are calling the government's Plan Ceibal "the world's most ambitious roll-out of educational technologies." One of its goals is one laptop for every child, another for every teacher.

The Broad Front for which Vasquez and President-elect Mujica are standard bearers was founded in 1971 as a coalition of leftist parties. It was illegal during the years of military dictatorship, 1973 - 1984. Left - center formations joined the Front in the past decade. It preserves strong ties with the PIT-CIT labor federation.

Photo: José Mujica http://www.flickr.com/photos/vincealongi/ / CC BY 2.0

Two Cuban Five prisoners are resentenced

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:19:00 +0000

A federal judge in Miami has reduced the jail time of two more of a group of five Cubans who were given draconian sentences in a controversial and highly politicized 2001 trial.

In Miami on December 8, U.S. district Judge Joan Lenard reduced Fernando González's 19 year sentence to 17 years, nine months and Ramón Labañino's life term plus 18 years to 30 years. In 2001, she had sentenced these two men and three others collectively to four life terms plus 75 years.

The Cubans had arrived in Florida in the 1990s to monitor Cuban-Americans' preparations for terrorist attacks against the Cuban people, and report to their government. An international campaign has been mounted to gain their freedom.

Each man entered the court room with his "head up, fist raised, and a smile of encouragement to supporters," according to a Cuban reporter on hand. "This is an important day, a victorious day," said Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon/ "This must serve as an additional argument, not only to continue the fight but to intensify it," "It's now Obama's turn," he emphasized, highlighting the campaign to pressure the U.S. president to release them by executive order

Two months earlier, Judge Lenard cut the life sentence of another of the five, Antonio Guerrero, to 21 years, ten months. On that occasion, a prosecutor, mindful of "international noise" emanating from the solidarity movement for the Five, conceded, "It is necessary to improve the image of U.S. justice."

A year ago, a federal appeals court ordered all three men resentenced because of Judge Lenard's flawed penalties. Gerardo Hernandez' sentence of two life terms plus 15 years and Rene Gonzalez' 15-year term were left untouched.

In a statement, Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, and Labañino underscored the prosecutors' admission that the Five had not harmed U.S. national security. They proudly recounted their refusal to collaborate with prosecutors for the sake of reduced sentences. They insisted that Gerardo's fate "remains the principal injustice in our case" and echoed Alarcon's call for the U.S. president to release the Five on his own.

The legal effort to secure resentencing for Gerardo Hernandez remains a priority.
Hernandez is serving one life sentence for conspiracy to commit murder and another for conspiracy to commit espionage, the same charge imposed upon Ramón Labañino and Antonio Guerrero. The murder conviction was based on flimsy circumstantial evidence of Gerardo having told the others not to go out on a "Brothers to the Rescue" flight on the day that two of the Brothers planes were shot down by a Cuban air patrol after buzzing Havana.

The political campaign to secure Adriana Pérez' and Olga Salanueva's right to visit husbands Gerardo and René in jail, denied so far by the State Department, continues.

An "International Colloquium" held in Holguin, Cuba last month issued an "Action Plan" on the Five. Key points included: "widen working spaces," work with parliamentarians and trade unions, expand the use of information technology, recognize cultural and intellectual achievements of the Five, and lastly, enhance solidarity. This last refers particularly to encouraging opponents of the U.S. anti- Cuban blockade to take up the cause of the Five.
Delegates united on pressuring President Obama He "has the legal and constitutional power to put an end to this injustice," according to their final document.

Judge Lenard, resentencing Labinino and Fernando Gonzalez, observed that "It is important that foreign governments know that such activities are not tolerated in this country." Presumably she was referring to spying.

In fact, U.S. tolerance of "such activities" serves as a marker for persecution of the Cuban Five, especially in regard to their sentencing. Iraqi citizen Khaled Abdel-Latif Dumeisi, for example, monitored Iraqis in the United States for Saddam Hussein. His sentence: 3 years and 10 months. Leonardo Aragoncillo was found with 736 secret U.S. documents intended for the Philippine government. His sentence: ten years. Jihadist José Padilla, charged with conspiracy to commit murder - as was Gerardo Hernandez - was sentenced to 17 years, four months. Former State Department official Donald Keyser, guilty of unauthorized possession of secret documents and contacts with Taiwanese intelligence, spent one year in jail. For passing information on U.S. Iran policy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Lawrence Franklin suffered 10 months of house arrest.

Reports in the corporate media almost uniformly refer to all five prisoners having been charged with "spying." Yet three of the prisoners were charged with "conspiracy to commit espionage," not espionage. The two others were charged with neither spying nor conspiracy to spy.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thivierr/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Iraq bombings tied to political power struggle

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:39:00 +0000

As Iraq set national elections for March 7, a series of car bombings rocked Baghdad Tuesday. The coordinated attacks hit government buildings, colleges, a mosque and a bank, killing at least 121 people and wounding hundreds. The attacks followed two similar massive bombings targeting government institutions, one in August and another in October.

In a statement yesterday, the Iraqi Communist Party called the attacks a "terrorist operation" aimed at "inflicting greatest harm to our people and the political process, and eventually serving to achieve the evil objectives (of the terrorist forces) of restoring the rule of tyranny and dictatorship."

Just days earlier, Iraq's political leaders finally adopted a new law to govern the elections that will choose a new Parliament for the next four years - a crucial period that will shape Iraq as it emerges from U.S. occupation. Adoption of the law was delayed by wrangling among the currently dominant political parties, and by controversy over provisions that hand votes to the dominant parties at the expenses of smaller parties. Bickering between the big political blocs turned into a vicious fight over their share of seats in the forthcoming Parliament. That fight renewed and heightened sectarian and ethnic tensions, just as the country had been moving away from sectarian politics, with the public demanding action on economic and social needs. The result now is that sectarian political alignments have re-emerged.

The Communist Party, which holds two seats in the current 275-member Parliament, called it "noteworthy" that Tuesday's attacks came "in the aftermath of intensified political struggles between the ruling forces over the undemocratic amendment to the law for electing the Parliament."

The nasty political power struggle, the party said, was "bound to have a negative impact on the security situation, giving impetus to the activity of terrorist forces that have committed this heinous criminal operation."

The Communists called upon the government to step up protection of its citizens, "speed up purging the security forces from corrupt elements, pursue relentlessly the remnants of Saddam's Baath party, al-Qaeda, militias and gangs of organized crime, and hand them to justice."

Beyond that, the party said all "patriotic, democratic and Islamic forces" that are truly concerned about the Iraqi people need to "put the national interest above any other consideration" and work together to put a decisive end to terrorist activity.

The election law passed by Parliament on Dec. 6, after a last-minute deal involving high-level American pressure, retains the undemocratic provisions of the original draft. Its most glaring flaw is that it hands over to the largest electoral slates all the votes for small slates that do not meet a certain vote threshold. Thus, those voters are essentially disenfranchised, and small parties face enormous obstacles in gaining representation in Parliament.

Despite the undemocratic nature of the law, left and progressive figures announced they have formed a nationwide election slate called People's Unity (Ittihad al-Shaab). The coalition is led by the Iraqi Communist Party and includes the National Democratic Party (First), the Democratic Chaldeo-Assyrian List, the Arab Workers' Revolutionary Party, the Party of Fraternity and Peace, and several prominent personalities. The announcement, at the National Theater in central Baghdad, drew a crowd of more than 2,000. The slate put forward a detailed program emphasizing construction of a democratic Iraqi state, civil liberties and rights, and economic and social development.

Salam Ali, of the Iraqi Communist Party, said that in this electoral slate his party will seek to raise public political awareness, mobilize the people in defense of their rights and strengthen the party's links to the people, as part of its efforts to build a mass party. "We will do our best, of course, to surpass the electoral threshold for the provinces and win parliamentary seats," he said.

Photo: U.S. soldiers and a private security guard are dwarfed by a Baghdad mural depicting Iraqi striving for freedom and a better life.(http://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/ / CC BY 2.0)

Polish president attempts ban of communist symbols

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:19:00 +0000

Anticommunist hysteria in Poland crossed the boundaries of common sense long, long ago. Recently it has crossed the boundaries of absurdity.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the former prime minister and leader of the previously ruling political party, stated publicly that communism was responsible for dozens of billions of victims. If a lie serves anticommunism, the sky's the limit. Anything goes that stirs up public hatred. Statements like this can be published without any consequences. Nobody even asks him the obvious question, i.e. if he knows what the world's population actually is. [6.5 billion, Eds.]

Society is treated like a bunch of idiots who don't know, don't want to know and who can't count.

At the same time, President Lech Kaczynski, his twin brother, signed a law that is equally absurd. In its new form, Article 256 of the Criminal Code states:

Art. 256 §1. Any person who publicly propagandizes for fascism or any other state totalitarian regime, or calls down hatred against national, ethnic, racial, religious or non-religious [groups], shall be subjected to the penalty of a fine, restriction of liberty, or deprivation of liberty for a term of up to two years.

§2. The same punishment shall be imposed on anyone who, in order to propagandize, produces, records, imports, purchases, stores, presents, transports or sends any other item containing matter described in §1, or which carries communist symbolism.

§3. A perpetrator of the banned act does not commit a crime if the act was [part of] an artistic, educational or scientific activity.

§4. In the case of a conviction for an offense defined in §2, the court will declare the forfeiture of the items mentioned in §2, even if they were not the property of the perpetrator.

The amendment to the existing act, which adds clauses 1 through 4, comes into force half a year after being published in the [statute book]. It has not been published yet. It is worth mentioning that the ban on communist symbols comes together with other amendments. One of them increases the punishment for pedophilia; the purpose being to create the impression that communism is one of the social diseases.

Both [Kaczynski] brothers are worshippers of anticommunism. This is a criminal ideology, worse than imaginary totalitarianisms. It [anticommunism] is an ideology that produced a huge number of victims. It was responsible for Hitler's plunging Europe into the inferno of war. It was responsible for the organized and deliberate genocide. It was responsible for the Japanese occupation of China and other countries, for the barbaric war in Korea, and for the plan to use nuclear weapons on a massive scale. It was also responsible for the barbaric war in Vietnam and the use of chemical warfare and crimes against civilians.

Capitalism, as a social formation, has exploitation and repression of the human person inscribed on its banner. Under this banner, English, French and Belgian colonialists have plundered natural resources and committed genocide. They have forced the entire populations of other countries to work as slaves for their profits. They have done this both openly and secretly.

Has any political party that openly worships anticommunism and capitalism ever heard of accusations because of these things? The answer is no, as only capitalism can be openly promoted. Anyone who questions that can be charged with imaginary crimes or criminal intent, and now there are attempts being made to imprison those [who ask such questions]. And at the same time, they prattle about democracy.

The officials of the capitalist regime have become so arrogant and insolent that they have transformed the parliament into a court in which they can sit in judgment over their political opponents. Since it was impossible to prove that communists propagate totalitarianism or intend to commit any crimes, they found that, after 20 years of slanders and lies, they could attribute such intentions to communists by means of legislation.

The Communist Party of Poland is a political party registered in the court. [The government] failed to prove that its statutes and program contain anything illegal. The CP of Poland acts within the Polish Constitution and laws concerning political parties. State institutions are obliged to treat all political parties equally.

However, this requirement is not complied with. Practically only the parliamentary parties are allowed into the public debate. The CP of Poland is subjected to systematic and particular discrimination. Its ideology is the constant theme of debate. There have been words to stir up hatred. There are state institutions which appear to be public institutions, which are financed by public funds but whose openly declared purpose is to carry on political struggle by means of the revision and extreme politicization of history, equating of communism with fascism, myth-making and even making threats of repression. This revision of history is the result of the revengeful tendencies of social classes, the bourgeoisie and the landowners, which lost their privileges when the people's forces gained power after World War II, as well as the growing fears of those classes which gained a privileged position after the systemic transformation of 1989.

Even before the act was passed, the Institute of National Remembrance tried to threaten local authorities with criminal responsibility for being slow to change place names in accordance with the imperatives of official ideology. State institutions were not only transformed into loudspeakers for proclaiming anticommunist hatred, they themselves also broke or bent the law in many ways.

The Parliament, however, carried out the violation of the basic principles of law and order in an open and flagrant manner. It passed an amendment to the criminal code that is aimed at one particular political party. The adjective describing the criminal action prohibited in the amendment is part of the proper name of the Communist Party of Poland.

Can anyone imagine what would happen if the Communist Party of Poland were to propose in its program similar measures to be taken against its opponents? Wouldn't we be accused of a crime for merely announcing such an intention? Wouldn't they use Article 13 of the Polish Constitution, which states that "Political parties and other organizations whose programs are based upon totalitarian methods and the modes of activity of Nazism, fascism and communism, as well as those whose programs or activities sanction racial or national hatred, the application of violence for the purpose of obtaining power or to influence the state, or provide for the secrecy of their own structure or membership, shall be prohibited", against the CP of Poland in order to make it illegal for merely referring to such totalitarian practices?

This amendment is exceptionally totalitarian. It interferes with the realm thoughts and of means of expression. The possession of items that contain unspecified elements can be penalized by a simple declaration that it is the symbolic carrier of unpopular political ideas, since what a communist symbol is or is not, has not been defined.

The Amendment to Article 256 of the Criminal Code contradicts the Political Parties Act (dating from June 26, 1997) which mandates equal treatment and protection for party graphic symbols; and the Polish Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and of conscience, and the right to propagate information (Article 53 p.1 and Article 54 p.1). Parliament appears also to be flouting international agreements, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (signed on December 16, 1966, Articles 18 and 19) and the European Convention on Human Rights (Articles 9 and 10).

The Communist Party of Poland is strongly contesting these undemocratic practices by all possible means, and is preparing for a confrontation with the aim of exposing the absurdity, obscurantism, irresponsibility and malice of their perpetrators.

Photo: "Working Class Hero http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurek_durczak/ / CC BY 2.0