People Before Profit blog

New hope blooms for Colombia prisoner exchange

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 12:09:00 +0000

The gratitude two liberated Colombian hostages displayed as they set foot on Venezuelan soil raised hopes that the long sought-goal of humanitarian prisoner exchange in Colombia might gain new life.

Clara Rojas, a 44-year-old lawyer, former vice-presidential running mate and assistant to presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, who remains a hostage, had been seized by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in February 2002. Ex-Congressperson Consuelo Gonzalez, 57 years old, had been captured six months earlier.

The FARC, said to field 20,000 guerrilla combatants, has engaged U.S.-backed conservative governments serving business and landowning interests since 1964. The Marxist insurgency controls an estimated 40 percent of Colombian territory.

The FARC now holds 44 high-profile hostages, some for over ten years, along with an estimated 700 captured Colombian soldiers. The possibility of exchanging the hostages for at least 500 FARC guerrillas in Colombian Army hands has long been seen as a necessary first step in any peace negotiations between the rebels and the Colombian state.

High Colombian leaders, most recently Bush protégé President Alvaro Uribe, have said that to free the hostages, they will only rely on military rescue, called “blood and fire” in the Colombian press. Keen on preserving their loved ones’ lives, hostage families reject such plans.

Their pressure and intercession from foreign capitals — notably the French government, concerned about Colombian-French citizen Betancourt — induced President Uribe last August to appoint leftist Senator Piedad Cordoba as facilitator and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as mediator in a renewed prisoner release effort.

President Chavez focused on direct contacts with FARC leaders. He and Cordoba apparently skirted negotiations over establishing demilitarized zones in Colombia where talks and eventual prisoner exchanges could take place safely. That phase of their work ended in November when Uribe dismissed Chavez as mediator.

His and Cordoba’s efforts continued, however, with the result that in late December, amidst media hoopla and with foreign diplomats looking on, two helicopters flew into Colombia to wait for FARC instructions about another landing field where Gonzalez, Rojas, and Rojas’ three-year-old son Emmanuel, born in captivity, could be picked up.

Instructions were never communicated, and the mission was called off. President Uribe attributed the FARC no-show to the guerrillas’ failure to produce Emmanuel, whom the government demonstrated had been lodged in a Bogota orphanage since eight months of age. The FARC accused the government of spooking its hostage delivery team with military threats.

Once in Caracas, both women told the media that in December, Colombian soldiers had closely monitored their trek through the forest with their captors to the helicopter rendezvous. “Our lives were in danger,” Rojas said.

They expressed gratitude to President Chavez, described by Gonzalez as “an extraordinary, democratic person, committed to life.” She advised him to “not let down his guard” in working for prisoner exchange. The two women said their lives henceforth would be dedicated to the liberation of prisoners and to peace in Colombia.

Chavez called upon world governments to recognize the FARC and the National Liberation Army, Colombia’s other rebel group, as “insurgent forces, that have a political, Bolivarian project that is respected here,” not as terrorists. He told Consuelo Gonzalez that “the resurrection of Grand Colombia comes via peace in Colombia and unity of this immense territory.”

Three U.S. congresspersons, led by James McGovern (D-Mass.), have been in contact with families of the remaining hostages. El Tiempo newspaper reports he is willing to negotiate with the FARC on their behalf, if authorized by the Colombian government.

atwhit @ roadrunner.com

Cleveland workers protest toxic imports

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:20:00 +0000

CLEVELAND - Forty protesters, some wearing “Hazmat” suits, picketed the federal building here Jan. 16 in support of legislation to protect consumers from toxic imports.

Initiated by the United Steelworkers of America (USWA), the action, calling for support for the Food and Product Responsibility Act (S. 2081), was one of 100 demonstrations held simultaneously at congressional offices across the country.

At a rally prior to the demonstration, Gary Steinbeck, representing the USWA, gave numerous examples of unsafe and substandard goods imported from China, India and other countries, including drugs, food, toys, tires, lipstick, toothpaste, structural steel and electrical parts that have been recently recalled.

The Food and Drug Administration, he said, inspects only one percent of regulated imports.

Harriet Applegate, executive secretary of the North Shore AFL-CIO, called the poisonous consumer products “wages of sin” stemming from the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other similar treaties.

Despite strong warnings and protests by organized labor, she said, free trade deals have resulted in the export of jobs and the import of inferior goods.

With these agreements in place, consumer protections are labeled “barriers to trade” by the World Trade Organization, said Maria Wilkinson of Cleveland Jobs With Justice.

As the pickets chanted and beat a drum, a delegation went into the office of Sen. George Voinovich (R-Oh.) to ask his support for the pending legislation. The Food and Product Responsibility Act would require importers to carry insurance to cover the cost of recalls and damage claims on behalf of individuals harmed or killed by toxic imports.

They presented the senator’s staff with a box of letters in support of the bill collected door-to-door by Cleveland Working America.

In recognition of the national actions, Rep. Betty Sutton (D-Ohio) introduced companion legislation on the same day in the House of Representatives.

“I am very proud to join my Steelworker brothers and sisters and other union members from all across this country to work on an issue so important to our families,” Sutton said in a statement warning against the dangers of weakened safety standards imposed by free trade agreements.

“Astonishingly, these agreements eliminate the ability of our own federal officials from vigorously inspecting imported goods,” Sutton’s statement continued. “It’s truly amazing that our policies have prioritized expanding trade over our responsibility to protect American citizens from tainted products and food.”

Brazil celebrates The Year of Oscar Niemeyer

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 10:08:00 +0000

Oscar Niemeyer, one of the world's greatest architects, celebrated his 100 birthday on Dec. 14, 2007. Best known for the pioneering, breathtaking buildings he designed for Brazil's capital, he has inspired generations of architects with his embrace of curves, creative use of concrete, and reliance on local materials and techniques.

And, as a communist who has experienced persecution, exile, and the shifting fortunes of our movement over the past century, his dedication to the struggle for a better world serves as an inspiration to a new generation of activists.

Niemeyer joined the Brazilian Communist Party in 1945 because, as he told the French newspaper L'Humanitė, 'I understood right away that we had to change things. The path to change was the Communist Party. I joined the Party and have remained in the Party up to today, following all the ups and downs that life has imposed.'

Born on Dec. 15, 1907, in Rio de Janeiro, Niemeyer has spent his life melding his profession and his politics. His buildings are designed to convey hope for a just future while forcing rich and poor to interact in cultural, governmental, and residential settings. As he explained in the UK’s Guardian, 'Many of my buildings have been political and civic monuments, but perhaps some of them have given ordinary people, powerless people, a sense of delight. That is what architects can do'

Niemeyer is a giant of the Modernism school of architecture, often hailed as a genius for his unique and influential contributions. Describing his work, Niemeyer recently told the Financial Times, 'Mine is an architecture of curves, the body of a woman, the sinuous rivers, the waves of the sea.'

In 1956, Brazil's populist president, Juscekino Kubitschek came up with the idea of building a new capital in the country's central savannah. He invited his friend Niemeyer to design some of its most prominent structures, including the presidential residence, the congress building, the Palace of Justice, and the cathedral as well as a series of apartment blocks. The city, named Brasilía, was completed in only four years and Niemeyer's creations dazzled the architectural world.

Today, Brazil's capital has a population of 2.2 million and is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Legislation recently proposed by Brazil's president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has declared 2008 'The Year of Oscar Niemeyer,' would designate all of Niemeyer's buildings in the country as special landmarks.

When the military staged a coup in 1964, Niemeyer's offices were raided and his work was halted. He went into exile the following year, settling in Paris, where he continued to create architectural marvels such as the headquarters of the French Communist Party in Paris, the Penang State Mosque in Malaysia, and the campus of Constantine University in Algeria. He finally returned to Brazil in the 1980s after the collapse of the right-wing regime and since then has been based in his hometown of Rio.

In his office overlooking the beach, Niemeyer enjoys cigarillos and coffee, working on new commissions, hosting weekly political discussions, and welcoming visits by friends. He counts amongst his closest Fidel Castro, who once joked 'Niemeyer and I are the last communists on this planet.'

At 100, he remains very active, designing cultural centers in Spain and Brazil and a new capital city for Angola as well as developing a magazine. And last year, he married his longtime assistant, Vera Lúcia Cabreira, eight years his junior.

Niemeyer often says it is life, not architecture that is really important. In an interview with the German magazine Spiegel, he declared 'You have to keep your mind alive, work, help others, laugh, cry and experience life intensively. It only lasts for a brief moment.'

And in L'Humanitė, he offered these words of encouragement to fellow communists: 'There are too many injustices. But commitment to the Communist Party provides hope, solidarity, and the realization that it is possible to struggle together for a better world.'

The murder of Bhutto: Cold War fallout

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:32:00 +0000

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan last month has a direct relationship to the war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the subject of “Charlie Wilson’s War,” the Hollywood “comedy” in which a corrupt congressman and a wily CIA man win “the Cold War” against the “evil Soviet empire” in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan bordered the Soviet Union, and ethnic groups who also were part of the Soviet Union were minority populations in Afghanistan. The Soviets had helped to educate a significant number of Afghanis and an influential Communist Party existed in the city of Kabul. Feudal and pre-feudal nomadic elites were predominant in much of the country and the Muslim religion was the primary unifying force.

Communists took power in Kabul in 1978, faced with threats from Pakistan’s military dictatorship and also hoping to advance a social revolution, bringing mass education, land reform and other vital social reforms to the people. The Pakistani dictator Gen. Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq had publicly executed Muhammad Ali Bhutto, the civilian prime minister whom he overthrew (father of Benazir Bhutto). Zia’s regime turned increasingly to rightist clerical elements as a base of support and also worked with Saudis to establish right-wing religious primary schools in a country where large sections of the population, including most women, were illiterate.

Afghani Communists tragically were unable to achieve the unity that is a prerequisite for Communist parties everywhere — they were divided into rival factions that fought each other fiercely over policy. Along with important gains, there were disastrous errors in seeking to advance the revolution into the countryside, great ineptitude in the land reform policy among cadre with a limited understanding of agriculture, and an aggressive self-defeating anti-clericalism in response to the clerical opposition to the revolution.

With Zia aiding right-wing Muslim guerrillas, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski gained Carter’s support to use the CIA to aid to the guerrillas. Brzezinski saw this aid as creating an “Afghan trap” for the Soviets, manipulating them into a military intervention which, he hoped, would be their “Vietnam.”

The Soviets intervened in 1979 to both save the Kabul government and advance a social revolution against fiercely reactionary and imperialist forces. For the Soviets, the intervention was also a protection of their own borders.

CIA aid to Afghan “freedom fighters” grew under the Reagan administration before the real Charlie Wilson got into the act. Reagan, George H. W. Bush and the CIA deserve the lion’s share of the “credit” for the “victory” in Afghanistan that led to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the present “war on terrorism.”

The CIA recruited thousands of fighters from Muslim countries and trained them in Afghan-Pakistani border areas to attack Afghanistan. Money was raised not only from U.S. appropriations but also from heroin traffic that led Pakistan in the 1990s to have the highest per capita number of heroin addicts in the world. Today, Al Qaeda and Taliban forces attack the U.S.-backed Afghan government, serving as Frankenstein’s monsters whom their creators can’t destroy.

Benazir Bhutto became Pakistan’s prime minister after Zia’s death in a mysterious plane crash in 1988. After she failed to seriously address the economic and social problems of the people, she was defeated in elections and then returned to power in 1993 after her Muslim League opponents failed in their policies. Gen. Pervez Musharraf established a military dictatorship in 1999 and remains, in effect, military dictator, as U.S. media and politicians talk about scheduled elections in Pakistan. (Pakistani elections over the years have been stolen, canceled, or simply declared null and void when the dominant factions of the Muslim League and military didn’t approve of the results.)

Now Benazir Bhutto has been murdered under Musharraf. Bhutto was undoubtedly a lesser of two evils compared with Musharraf, and her death is a tragedy. But while she was prime minister, she did not seek any real resolution of Pakistan’s long and inflammatory conflict with neighboring India, and in her second government many feel she gave de facto support to the Taliban regime in Afghanistan as part of her anti-India policies. The Bush administration apparently wanted to see a Bhutto-Musharraf coalition take shape, since Bhutto had not been an opponent of U.S. imperialism in the region.

Continued U.S. support for Musharraf and the reactionary ruling groups in Pakistan strengthens Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in the region and intensifies the misery of the Pakistani people. Moreover, one hallmark of U.S. imperialist policy has been denial that Pakistan and India were part of the same national community and that there must be a larger policy of reconciliation and development for all of South Asia, including the three states that represent what was once India. A progressive U.S. policy for the region, one that works for and builds peace, must begin by withdrawing military support for Pakistan, including its adventures against India, and making regional cooperation and disarmament, including nuclear disarmament, the centerpiece.

World notes: Jan. 12, 2008

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:15:00 +0000

Nigeria: Russians compete for natural gas Reuters reported that Gasprom, Russia’s natural gas conglomerate, is negotiating with Nigerian officials over plans to invest up to $2.5 billion toward the extraction and processing of natural gas. To develop agriculture and industry, the seven-month-old government of President Yar’Adua has embarked upon exploitation of natural gas in Nigeria, location of the world’s seventh largest reserves. Two British companies have offered competing investment proposals, while European multinationals are already engaged in exporting Nigerian liquified natural gas. Each day, some 2.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas released during oil extraction operations are burnt off due to lack of infrastructure. Russian authorities viewing Central Asian natural gas supplies as precarious are looking to Africa for alternative sources.

Turkey: Women win strike A strike that began Sept. 26, 2006, ended Jan. 2 when 84 workers — 82 of them women, returned to work at the German-owned Novamed medical equipment factory in Antalya, Turkey. Their union, Petrol-Is, had support from the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, and Mine Workers’ Unions, the federation’s German affiliate IGBCE, and Turkish unions, women’s groups, and other nongovernmental organizations. Demonstrators worldwide marked International Women’s Day last year, March 8, by rallying on the workers’ behalf. The first unionized workforce inside a Turkish free trade zone, the workers gained a 5 percent wage increase set for this year and 4 percent raises during each of the next two years. They also won paid holidays and bonus possibilities, the ICEM web site reported.

China: Legislation benefits workers China’s new Labor Contract Law that took effect Jan. 1 entitles workers employed continuously for at least 10 years to open-ended contracts providing for severance pay if their contracts expire or if they resign or are terminated. The law protects workers from dismissal without cause and requires employers to contribute to workers’ social security accounts. China’s People’s Daily suggested that the government wanted to “narrow the economic and social gap between China’s poor and the rich.” It quoted academician Wang Chunguang praising the law as “beneficial to the job stability for migrant workers.” Additional legislation adopted Dec. 29 that takes effect on May 1 calls for mediation and arbitration to be applied to labor disputes. National statistics show that monthly wages rose 18.8 percent during the first nine months of 2007.

Italy: Marchers denounce U.S. base March organizers had hoped for a turn out of 20,000, given that Dec. 15 in Vicenza was cold and snow was falling. Instead, more than 80,000 people filled the streets of a city notable for Renaissance architecture to protest their government’s acceptance of a new U.S. military base in nearby Dal Molin. The peakers condemned U.S. bases in Europe as key components of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Italian media have lined up in favor of the new base. But, according to envirosagainstwar.org, activists take encouragement from Czech citizens who recently rejected U.S. military installations in their area by a 99 percent vote. Vicenza citizens have camped out day and night at the edge of the proposed site. A neighboring town recently turned down a proposed residential village for U.S. troops.

Venezuela: Chavez issues amnesty Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has pardoned leaders of both the failed military coup of April 2002 and the oil industry strike that happened a few months later. Chavez said Dec. 31 that he wanted to “send a message to the country that we can live together despite our differences.” The amnesty covered many who signed a decree issued by coup leader Pedro Carmona dissolving Venezuela’s Supreme Court and National Assembly. According to Venezuelanalysis.com, the president’s action did not apply to coup and strike participants who violated human rights, committed “crimes of war,” or are fugitives. Among the latter is unionist Carlos Ortega, who engineered the oil industry shutdown. Right-wing opponents of Chavez, including the Catholic Church hierarchy, criticized Chavez for denying amnesty to police officers. Some Chavez supporters are resentful that plotters seen as dangerous or without remorse are going free.

World Notes are compiled by W.T. Whitney Jr. (atwhit@roadrunner.com).