People Before Profit blog

Bush-Cheney vs. the Armenian genocide

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 05:36:00 +0000

During World War I, the Turkish-controlled Ottoman Empire was crumbling. In the decades before the war, economic dislocation and political crisis intensified the long-standing oppression of the Armenian Christian minority. World War I (1914-1918) was a bloody war between rising and aging empires: the Ottoman Empire was allied with the German monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the losing side, against an alliance of Czarist Russia, Britain, France, Japan and the United States.

It was a war between two rival alliances seeking in effect to redivide the world, the winners taking from the losers their colonies, foreign markets and investment zones. Also, both alliance systems had for decades been fighting colonial wars in which their losses were relatively small compared with the enormous death and destruction they created for the peoples of Africa and Asia. They had come to see war as a relatively cheap and painless way to get what they wanted in world affairs. With imperialist arrogance, they stumbled into what became the biggest war in human history up to that point.

Mass murder by a crumbling empire

After an Ottoman attack against Russian forces in Czarist Russian Georgia ended in a disastrous military defeat in 1915, it became the trigger for the ultranationalists in power in Istanbul to undertake the mass murder of the empire’s Armenian population. Propaganda was unleashed portraying Armenians as subversive agents of Russia. To this was added traditional stereotypes of Armenians as greedy businessmen exploiting Turks, as Christians plotting against Islam, as bandits and criminals.

Legislation confiscating the property of Armenians was passed in 1915. Armenians in the Turkish army were arrested and large numbers were executed without trial. The Turkish military and “special forces,” made up of thousands of recently released criminals, were unleashed to confiscate Armenian property and “resettle” Armenians in death marches, leaving innocent men, women and children to fight as best they could for their lives against armed representatives of the Ottoman state.

These events were widely publicized in Britain, France and — thanks to the activities of Henry Morgenthau Sr., U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, and other U.S. officials, who observed and commented upon the mass murder — the then-neutral U.S., where campaigns were mounted to help the “starving Armenians.”

After World War II, scholars discovered evidence in various German archives corroborating the existence of this mass murder. (Germany, which had been an ally of the Ottomans, had no interest in publicizing this information.) But there was never any doubt that what was happening in the period 1915-1917 was the attempted mass murder of a whole nationality as part of Ottoman government policy. Under the United Nations Charter this constitutes genocide. After the genocide carried out by Nazi Germany and its fascist allies against all the Jewish people whom it could capture and kill during World War II, the genocide carried out by the Ottoman state against all Armenians whom it could capture and kill within its far-flung empire is the most researched genocide in history.

This history is important to Americans today because the Bush administration has acted to block an attempt by the House of Representatives to join more than 20 other nations in specifically condemning these events as genocide. After the Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006, many hoped that this long-delayed resolution would finally be enacted.

Chauvinism used by Turkish right wing

Mustapha Kemal, an Ottoman general, established the modern Turkish Republic after World War I, combining an authoritarian nationalist ideology with various modernizing reforms. He remains the object of a large personality cult in Turkey, particularly among the business and military ruling groups who have always used Turkish chauvinist ideology against their enemies on the left and against their religious rivals.

Turkey, which was neutral during World War II and then became a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization because it was an anti-Soviet and anti-Communist state, has sought to prevent nations from using the term genocide for the mass murder of the Armenians, which it has largely denied, minimized and blamed in part on Armenian wartime subversion.

Over the decades the U.S. and other nations, including, for its own regional military reasons, the government of Israel, have gone along with these efforts by Turkey. It was recently revealed that the Turkish government has employed a lobbying firm led by the disgraced former Republican House leader Robert Livingston to defeat the Armenian genocide condemnation. Livingston’s firm has used the $12 million which it reportedly received from the Turkish government to buy opposition to the bill, news reports indicate. This, along with Bush administration propaganda that the House resolution would endanger U.S. troops in Iraq, has reduced support for the measure.

An unholy alliance

The Bush administration has undermined the separation of church and state in the U.S. in an unprecedented way and has allied itself domestically with conservative evangelical Christians. Yet it is actively seeking to keep the U.S. Congress from condemning the extermination of a Christian minority carried out on both racist and religious anti-Christian grounds. In the name of supporting “our troops,” the Bush administration is appeasing a Turkish government and military whose oppression of the multinational Kurdish minority in the region, and previous history as an oppressive colonial power, make it a source for instability in the area. Turkey’s one big drawing card for the White House, though, is its military power, which is the only thing that matters for this administration.

If the Bush administration were serious about peace and stability in the region, it would use its influence to encourage the Turkish government to deal with its contemporary denial of cultural rights to its Kurdish and other minorities, not appease it in the hope that it will continue to act as a regional military henchman, the way the German Empire in World War I hoped that the Ottomans would act to advance its war aims.

The Bush administration policy in Iraq is an ongoing, open-ended disaster which benefits only military contractors and their lobbyists in the U.S. The soldiers who have been sent to Iraq include many National Guardsmen often pulled from vital public sector occupations like police and firefighting. They will not return to the U.S. like some of their generals, who retire to become rich lobbyists for military contractors. And they won’t be joining the gravy train of well-connected Republican members of Congress like Robert Livingston, who has now become a rich genocide-denying lobbyist for the Turkish government.

We should contact our House members and senators and demand that they support the resolution on the Armenian genocide.

In 1939, Hitler said privately to his officers, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

Who does? Civilized people throughout the world.

We must all tell the Bush administration that we do, or the horror will continue and perhaps a generation from today some other tyrant will say, to defend another attack on another people, “Who, after all, speaks today about the annihilation of the Jews?”

Norman Markowitz is a history professor at Rutgers University.

Government stumbles in Holy Land trial

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:46:00 +0000

DALLAS — The long-awaited verdicts in one of the country’s most critical civil rights cases were revealed Oct. 22 at the Earle Cabell Federal Building downtown. The Holy Land Foundation, the largest organization providing charitable aid to beleaguered Palestinians, was effectively exonerated of “terrorism” charges.

The judge declared a mistrial, a maneuver that, while it laid the basis for another possible trial and the continued short-term suppression of the charity, nevertheless represented a stiff setback to the Bush administration’s six-year effort to tarnish Muslim charitable efforts.

One of the five leading defendants was found “not guilty” outright on 31 of 32 counts, and two of the others had most charges dismissed. But dissenting comments by three of the 12 jurors created a confusing ending for the days’ decisions. The prosecutors quickly called the entire process a “hung jury,” and publicly vowed to retry the defendants.

Dallas civil rights activists were all smiles. The Hungry for Justice Coalition said in a statement, “The charges brought against these individuals were viewed by many people in this country and worldwide as an attempt to block humanitarian assistance to Palestinians suffering under a brutal Israeli occupation.”

It continued: “They were also seen as a means to chill the First Amendment rights and charitable giving of American Muslims and other people of conscience opposed to our nation’s one-sided policies in the Middle East.”

The coalition called the proceedings “in essence … an Israeli trial tried on American soil in which guilt by association was used as a substitute for actual evidence.”

The Bush administration’s efforts began in 2001, when it shut down the charitable institution and froze its assets. A general chill in all Islamic fund-raising operations was clearly the goal, although the administration claimed to be “fighting terrorism” by denying contributions that might have gone to Hamas, which had recently been designated a terrorist organization.

The government never dared claim the organization was directly associated with any violent acts, but relied on obscure references, some of them from secret and unnamed Israeli intelligence agents.

Legal maneuvers continued for years. Even in the last few weeks, the trial continued to make headlines because a juror had to be replaced for mysterious reasons. Eventually, a verdict was reached, but it had to be sealed for three days to await the trial judge’s return. When the verdict was finally read, some jurors, also for unknown reasons, decided to dispute it.

Texas has never seen such a long trial nor such questionable activities around the delivering of jury verdicts that had must have been unanimous just days earlier. None of the accounts by commercial newspersons seems to have taken note of this apparent contradiction, reporting instead a “hung jury.”

Beginning last August, civil liberties activists in North Texas set up lunchtime vigils across the street from the federal building. Various organizations, including the Dallas Peace Center, declared themselves in solidarity with the defense effort.

Activist John Wolf was there every day. “These are good people to the heart,” he said. “This is about Islamophobia. It’s about a foreign charge being tried in an American court.” Wolf pointed out that all the organizations in the occupied territories to which the foundation had sent funds are still open and receiving donations, and thus the defendants had not sent any money to terrorist groups.

“I think that [today’s events] mean the rule of law still exists in this country, and that ultimately jurors can determine guilt — not the federal government, not government policy, not FBI implementing any policy instead of law,” Wolf said.

Asked if he thought there would be a celebration, he replied, “I think just tears. These people are really loved by the community. When the Holy Land ‘not guilty’ verdict was announced, there was not a dry eye among all the many people upstairs.”

Activist Beth Freed, who has worked with Hungry for Justice since the trial began, said, “I’m very happy now. Of course, the whole time we were cautiously optimistic. I was very hopeful, especially as the deliberations went on. The jury was seeing through the government’s convoluted arguments.”

She continued: “I saw so many things in this case that made me feel sad as an American. I felt like the government overstepped their boundaries in what’s considered legitimate in our justice process. But the outcome has really given my faith back in the justice process.”

flittle7 @yahoo.com

Gore, global warming and the whole damn thing

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 08:33:00 +0000

Al Gore, former U.S. vice president and presidential candidate, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate on Climate Change, a UN-sponsored group of scientists, have jointly won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for their work on global warming. Like most things in life, this is a mixture of good and bad, positive and negative.

On one side, the global warming skeptics and reactionaries are foaming at the mouth about how Gore made this all up to reignite his political career, a patently ignorant and phony claim. On the other side, many liberals are now speculating about how this might affect Gore, about how he might run for president in 2008, a possibility he has denied many times. Both of these viewpoints miss what is most important about this award.

Much ink and airspace will be wasted focusing on Gore’s political career rather than on the real issues. Some ink and airspace may try to explain the positions of the IPCC, but without exploring the limitations of their proposals.

Human-caused climate change threatens many aspects of human societies — cities and communities near sea level, how we manufacture necessary goods, how we get our energy, our food production, our transportation systems. This Nobel award calls greater attention to these threats and that is a good thing. Both Gore’s work calling public attention to the looming threats from global warming and the patient, careful work of the IPCC to deliver the best summary of scientific knowledge about climate change are worth celebrating. Partly due to their work, the world is now much more aware of the real and pressing problems and threats we face, and that will help develop the political will to make necessary changes.

But there are several shortcomings with the way the world’s attention is being focused. The environmental problems confronting humanity involve more than just global warming. To name just a few, these include industrial pollution, rapid growth of persistent organic pollutants accumulating everywhere, increasing stresses on water and agricultural systems, the unequal impact of any major crisis on the already poor, exploited and oppressed, the rapid urbanization of the world’s population, the spread of new diseases and the spread to new areas of old ones. If we focus on global warming to the exclusion of these other issues, we won’t make the changes necessary to rebalance humanity’s needs with the needs of the natural systems on which we depend.

In addition, the potential solutions put forward by both Gore and the IPCC have built-in limitations. They are constricted, by choice or by current political realities or both, from considering any basic changes in economic systems, so they point to “market solutions” and personal choices. They end up placing the blame on “humanity” or “industrial development” or “the ways in which humans waste energy.” This lets the capitalists off the hook, as if all humans have benefited equally from industrial development, as if we all are responsible for the way the oil industry operates, as if we all decided to impose capitalism and capitalist globalization on the whole world. In this way, even as he explains the scientific problems we face, Gore ignores crucial economic and social factors.

Now, we can’t wait for socialism everywhere before tackling global warming, so it is important to find ways that some capitalists can make money from changing to more environmentally friendly production, distribution, power generation, etc. But in most cases these are temporary measures, not solutions. They can contribute to slowing down the problems, but not to fundamentally resolving them.

Technological improvements are part of the solution, personal choices to conserve and to have less carbon dioxide impact are part of the solution, but fundamental economic and social changes are also required. And as long as we limit ourselves to tinkering with the systems, tinkering with technology, adjusting here and there, we won’t address the fundamental problem: the relationship between capitalist development and environmental degradation.

Marc Brodine (marcbrodine@inlandnet.com) is chair of the Washington State Communist Party and co-authored the second edition of the CPUSA environmental program, “People and Nature Before Profits.”

Cubas wonder of the modern world: Latin American school of medicine

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:56:00 +0000

HAVANA — “Best decision I ever made,” said medical student Cori Marshall of Chicago characterizing her first year at Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (LASM). The school graduated its third class of new doctors on July 24. The 2,188 health professionals receiving diplomas at a graduation spectacular at Karl Marx Theater here included eight U.S. medical students who had finished six years of study.

Thousands were looking on: families from numerous countries, faculty members, political leaders, and participants with the 18th Pastors for Peace Friendshipment, the present writer included.

Speaking at the ceremony, the Rev. Lucius Walker, director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization/Pastors for Peace, lauded “this unique and revolutionary institution,” one that espouses “availability of health care for the poorest, the humblest, those without hope.” The school, Walker said, shows the “true human face of Cuba,” which “opened its heart and resources.” He characterized the new doctors as “transformative ambassadors,” especially in Africa. They are “new citizens of a new world.”

Becoming a doctor, changing the world

Marshall hadn’t thought much about being a doctor until she found out about medical school in Cuba — paid for by the Cuban government. She liked science in college and wanted to work with people, but high costs for college and graduate education had cast a cloud over her future plans.

Similarly, on leaving college, Marshall’s fellow student Aida Alston of Long Beach, Calif., didn’t know what she wanted to do. She had “all these ideas how to help the world — a huge heart, but no skills,” she said in an interview here. Then she too heard about LASM.

The school opened in March 1999, just months after Hurricane Mitch struck Central America, and Cuba sent hundreds of doctors to provide disaster relief there. The plan was to train physicians to replace Cuban doctors working in Honduras and other countries. The idea has taken off since then.

Over 13,000 students have attended the medical school, 4,465 have graduated and 10,200 students are currently enrolled. They come from 29 countries, including eight African countries and the United States. This year’s graduating class included 1,220 physicians, 112 dentists, 204 nurses and 646 allied health professionals from 25 foreign countries. There were 341 foreign medical students graduating from other Cuban medical schools this summer, along with 2,470 Cuban students.

The number of students from individual countries presently enrolled at LASM is impressive. There are 826 Venezuelan students there; more than 500 each from Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay, Haiti, Panama and Peru; over 400 each from Chile, Nicaragua, Argentina and Honduras, followed closely by the Dominican Republic and Uruguay. East Timor accounts for 274 students; Zimbabwe, 144; Nigeria, 96; and the United States, 91.

Medical school without walls

Speaking the next day to the Pastors for Peace delegation and a few U.S. students and their families, LASM President Juan Carrizo indicated that with 12,000 students studying medicine in Cuba’s newly conceived “medical school without walls,” the total of foreign medical students studying in Cuba has risen now to 22,000. He cited Fidel Castro’s goal announced in 2005 of graduating 100,000 foreign medical students and 28,000 nursing students by 2015, with 60,000 of them from Venezuela and 30,000 from other Latin American countries. Cuban doctors are already teaching 13,000 medical students in Venezuela as part of that nation’s community medical school program.

The World Health Organization declared in 2005 that over 4 million additional health care providers are needed throughout the world. In 47 poor countries served by Cuban-trained physicians, there is one doctor, on the average, for 1,020 people. By comparison, in the United States there is one doctor for 333 persons; and in Cuba, one for every 159.

Carrizo suggested that Cuba was adding a “grain of sand, maybe 2-3 grains,” toward these needs. He sees a “battle for health in the world” to which “individualistic medical training” does not contribute. LASM graduates, seen as “true pastors, missionaries, apostles of health care,” are crucial to this venture, he suggested. Cuba “shares with sister nations the greatest contribution of the revolution … nothing extraordinary, [just] our own training and nature.”

History of health care solidarity

The impulse behind LASM is not new. Beginning in Yemen in 1976, Cuba has founded eight schools of medicine in the Third World and provided faculty for medical schools in South Africa, Angola, and other African nations. From 1962-2004, Cuba hosted some 47,000 foreign students including 4,000 medical students. In December 2006, Venezuela entered 412 medical students from 14 Latin American and Caribbean nations into its own LASM.

The opportunity for U.S. students to study at Cuba’s LASM came in early 2000 when members of the Congressional Black Caucus, visiting in Cuba, met with Cuban President Fidel Castro. Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi outlined gaps in health care afflicting poor Black residents of that state’s Delta region. Responding later that year in a speech in New York, Castro announced 250 full-ticket scholarships available to young North Americans from poor, marginalized families who commit themselves to providing health care needs in underserved areas in the U.S.

Interviewed in Havana, Evelyn Erickson of New York City was clear: “Without Cuba’s help, it wouldn’t have been possible to study medicine.” Her father, auto mechanic Evelio Erickson, grew up in the Dominican Republic and came to Havana with family members to witness his daughter’s graduation.

Prohibitively high medical education costs had discouraged Evelyn, 25, away from her college pre-medical track. She and others lacking family wealth had been unable, or unwilling, to take on debt loads averaging almost $200,000. She taught in the New York City public schools and now is looking for a U.S. residency program to prepare her to become a pediatrician.

Fighting blockade, too

Pastors for Peace has taken responsibility for recruiting and providing support for U.S. students at LASM. In his remarks at the graduation, the Rev. Walker praised the 28 U.S. congresspersons who blocked the Bush administration’s attempt in 2004 to put LASM off-limits for U.S. students, alleging they were violating newly tightened U.S. blockade rules.

Practicing in the U.S.

Students and the Pastors for Peace team are confident that the students will be able to pass U.S. tests and secure residency posts, necessary for U.S. licensure. Cedric Edwards, the first U.S. graduate of LASM in 2006, is working at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. According to Ellen Bernstein of Pastors for Peace, “Many doctors and hospitals in the U.S. have shown special interest [in LASM students] because they have specialist training in primary and preventive care, a global perspective about health care … and they are fully bilingual.”

Graduate Melissa Barber of the Bronx, planning to become an obstetrician, believes LASM teaching is special. “One of the great experiences,” she said, “is a social medical system that is community-based and hands-on.” With limited resources, you “use what you have.” She was taught to exhaust all diagnostic modalities before “you send away for the labs.” You first “look, see, smell and touch.”

Quality medical education

LASM students spend two years learning basic medical sciences at the school complex, a former naval base west of Havana, and then spend four years doing clinical work at teaching hospitals throughout Cuba, with the U.S. students assigned to Havana’s Salvador Allende Hospital. In their sixth year, putting into practice what they have learned, they serve as interns under teachers’ supervision, caring for 15 or so hospitalized patients at a time.

Many LASM students begin their studies several months earlier than others to catch up on pre-medical work or to take a 20-week Spanish immersion class. Of the U.S. students, 85 percent entering the school remain. Overall, the students represent over 100 ethnic groupings, and half are women.

The U.S students give their teachers high marks for dedication and enthusiasm. They are said to be always available for extra help. The assumption is that all students will succeed and competition among students is minimized. Students help each other under the direction of a fellow student, elected as a so-called “monitor.” Groups of 25 students are taught by practitioner-teachers responsible for student evaluations. Teachers encourage group discussions and oral presentations, according to med student Marshall. Full-time faculty members offer lectures to larger groups of students.

Preventive and community-based care

Barber and Marshall appreciated involvement beginning in their first year with family doctors. That underscored the importance of preventive and community-oriented care within the Cuban health system. As a delegate to an international conference in 2001, Marshall stayed with a pediatrician who was familiar enough with her patients’ medical histories that reviewing patients’ records was unnecessary. That the pediatrician could expound upon public health statistical data impressed her. Marshall drew a contrast with U.S. health care providers she knew.

For Marshall, the driving force is to “be in a position to make concrete changes in a U.S. system that is flawed [and that does] not focus on people being healthy.” With “something to stick my hands in,” she will “work for real change.”

British citizen John Waller heads up organizing for the Friendshipment caravans. Following LASM head Carrizo’s report, Waller commented that LASM epitomizes the Bolivarian dream of Latin American unity manifested currently in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, the unity pact initiated by Cuba and Venezuela and joined by Bolivia and Nicaragua.

Waller went further: When one day “we have seven wonders of the new world [to match the seven wonders of the ancient world], one will be the Latin American School of Medicine.”

Nevertheless, for Marshall, who was heading back to Cuba after a one-month summer break, the best thing about LASM was her “amazing” dance class. She described student projects like theater, writing groups, sculpture classes and sports leagues as part of the LASM experience, along with curriculum-based physical education classes.

That may be bad news for imperial officials in Washington. The Cubans appear to be sending out young people dedicated not only to serving people, but, worse, to preserving their own humanity, and likely as not, honoring that of others.

W.T. Whitney (atwhit @megalink.net) writes on international affairs for the People’s Weekly World and is a peace and solidarity activist living in Maine. He has traveled to Cuba and is a pediatrician.

Colombian scores second hung jury

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 05:52:00 +0000

The most recent trial in Washington, D.C., of Ricardo Palmera, a leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), ended in a hung jury on Oct. 4.

Palmera, 57, was extradited to the U.S. in 2004. Denied visitors or a lawyer of his choice, he has faced a variety of charges during his three years of solitary confinement. This time he was charged with conspiracy to export drugs to the United States.

The charge of drug trafficking has been a common way of trying to discredit the FARC, a four-decades-old guerilla movement whose declared aims include defending the country’s rural poor, opposing foreign exploitation and establishing a more just society.

After listening to the prosecution’s case against Palmera for four weeks, Kimi Johnson, one of seven jurors refusing to convict Palmera, reportedly asked herself: “My God, is that all they have?

“He was a political adviser of the group,” she said. “His responsibilities were political, not drug trafficking.”

Federal prosecutors indicated they would retry the FARC leader, a former professor and high-level negotiator in prisoner exchanges, in March 2008. Palmera’s supporters criticized Judge Royce Lambert for declaring a mistrial rather than declaring the FARC leader innocent.

A trial of Palmera staged in November 2006 also ended without a verdict as jurors, impressed with a paucity of evidence against Palmera and his compelling exposition of the FARC’s social aims, refused to convict him for “conspiracy to take hostages.” Those charges stemmed from the FARC’s capture of three U.S. mercenaries whose plane was shot down over a remote jungle area in Colombia in 2003, something Palmera had nothing to do with.

The prosecution and trials of Palmera, also known as Simon Trinidad, have been marred by multiple irregularities. His second trial, set for March of this year, was called off when the judge was found to have authorized prosecution interviews of jurors after the first trial without informing defense lawyers. A subsequent trial, which took place in July under a replacement judge (Lambert), resulted in Palmera’s conviction of “conspiracy,” but not terrorism, which U.S. prosecutors had sought.

atwhit @megalink.net

Iranian Americans urge dialogue, not war

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 05:00:00 +0000

In the wake of the Bush administration’s continued saber rattling against Iran, including its not-so-subtle threats to unleash U.S. bombing attacks against Iranian nuclear energy and military installations, a growing number of people and groups worldwide have called for diplomacy, not war, to resolve any disputes.

Among these calls is one from a coalition of groups representing Iranian expatriates in the United States, the United Kingdom and other Western countries. About 20 groups, including the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (www.campaigniran.org) and the National Iranian American Council (www.niacouncil.org) issued an Oct. 9 statement that says, “We are united in our firmly held opinion that military confrontation will do nothing to solve the problems that exist between Iran and the West, but rather that such an approach would create a ghastly long-term dynamic in the region.”

Warning that “assaults, invasion, bombing, cross-border raids or destabilizing acts on the part of any of the players in the situation” will result in “far more destruction than we have seen to date in the region,” the signers stress that “the way forward must be through serious and genuine dialogue.”

Only through dialogue, without preconditions, will tensions be lowered and will the peoples of the Middle East be able “to coexist and together address the common problems of violence, poverty, illness and environmental degradation,” they said.

Along the same lines, Peace Action, a U.S.-based group, has an online petition to the Bush administration calling for no war on Iran. For more information, visit .

The U.S. and repressive rule

Fri, 05 Oct 2007 09:17:00 +0000

Readers’ Corner

According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the “UN has it wrong: Africa’s problem is repressive rule.” Zimbabwe, Tanzania, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Togo, and Niger are cited as examples in a recent Philadelphia Inquirer commentary by Claudia Rosett.

A review of U.S. history shows that hostile U.S. policies, and not the United Nations, are at fault. Not only in Africa, but in many other parts of the globe, our tax dollars are used to obtain cheap labor, create dictators and, in return, deny funds to our cities.

In Mexico, our tax dollars were used to protect NAFTA investments. The information comes from a 1994 Washington Post article reporting on the preparations for rebellion by Mexican workers against NAFTA conditions, including 18, 13-ton water cannons from Cadillac Gage Textron in Warren, Mich., at a cost of $500,000 each — $40 million in total — used for crowd control, and several 17-ton Cobra riot control vehicles from Custom Armoring Pittsfield, Mass., each vehicle equipped with plows to destroy barricades, indelible dye to mark protesters for subsequent arrest, and rows of gun ports.

U.S. financial interests control sweatshops in many countries in Latin America. Those financial interests extend to Southeast Asia, where sweatshops provide vast corporate revenues. To prevent revolution, more than 1 million Indonesians were killed in an anti-communist purge backed by the Lyndon Johnson administration. And 200,000 East Timorians were murdered in 1975 on U.S. State Department instructions with President Gerald Ford’s approval. So long as it profits Wall Street, U.S. intervention remains an international threat.

In the Congo, the U.S. was the main supporter of dictator Joseph Mobutu, who used his U.S.-supplied arsenal, including arms, ammunition, sabotage materials and training, to repress his own people and plunder his nation’s economy for three decades. The CIA even hand-delivered $250 million to Mobutu when Congress disallowed the “aid.” The U.S. sent Joseph Kasa-Vubu, Mobutu’s predecessor, “aid” including military equipment used to oust and murder Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, the first legally elected leader in the Congo.

The U.S. helped build the arsenals of eight of the nine governments directly involved in the Congo war that has ravaged the Democratic Republic of the Congo since Laurent Kabila’s 1997 coup. Throughout the Cold War (1950-1989), the U.S. delivered weaponry and training costing billions of dollars to Africa, including to dictatorships in Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan and the Congo (both Kinshasa, DRC, and Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo). The Reagan administration defied the anti-apartheid boycott and provided assistance to South African racists throughout Reagan’s two terms.

U.S. special forces have trained military personnel, under the Pentagon’s Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, from at least 34 of Africa’s 53 nations, including troops fighting on both sides of the DRC’s civil war — from Rwanda and Uganda (supporting the rebels) to Zimbabwe and Namibia (supporting the Kabila regime).

U.S. military and political intervention has brought about dictatorships for more than 100 years. Wall Street relies on war and military and political intervention as multinational corporations amass great wealth through investments in cheap labor and cheap resources. While Wall Street grows rich, U.S. schools, health care, public transit and the environment suffer. While Wall Street grows rich, cities suffer with poverty and crime.

Lou Incognito, retiree and social justice activist, lives Philadelphia, Pa.

War, peace and the Greens of Germany

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 08:01:00 +0000

BERLIN — The color green is not usually associated with anger. A fair number of leaders of the Green political party in Germany lost their cool color and turned purple with rage last month. And they are still simmering.

The party of the Greens is not the same as the related party in other countries. True, the party developed in West Germany during the 1970s and 1980s as a militant fighting outfit opposing nuclear energy plants and devoted to environmental protection, feminism, anti-fascism, social improvements and pacifism.

In those days, it was the leading party on the left, and its members’ unusually informal clothing, and the taking of babies to meetings with male and female members busily knitting during conferences, were ridiculed in the press. But the Greens brought some fresh winds into the stuffy legislatures of the day.

Then there was a split between the so-called Fundies — the fundamentalists, who insisted on left-wing goals and slogans like socialism, and the Realos — the realists, the pragmatic wing of the party. The latter won out and many leftists quit. They were partially replaced by members of the “Alliance 90” from East Germany, intellectuals who had been active in bringing about the downfall of the East German (GDR) government and who were hardly leftist in their views.

It became easier for the Greens to move upwards in the political scene, winning seats in provincial legislatures and then in the Bundestag. In 1998, when the Social Democratic Party (SPD) needed a junior partner to gain a majority in the Bundestag, the Greens became part of the government coalition under Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder, and were granted three Cabinet posts, including the important foreign minister job held by Joschka Fischer.

Sadly, their years in office, lasting until 2005, robbed them of any last claims to political virginity. They made one compromise after another, joining in economic “reforms” devastating to millions of the jobless and even supporting the bombing of Serbia in the name of “humanitarianism.”

Like Schroeder, they did oppose the war in Iraq (though not the huge U.S. bases in Germany which served the invasion), but most Green deputies in the Bundestag have continually supported German involvement in the military struggle in Afghanistan.

No, we are not speaking here of direct participation in the NATO struggle led by the United States, but in the alleged reconstruction efforts by German soldiers, restricted thus far to the more pacified areas in the north, but viewed by Afghans as a military presence just as much as the more openly belligerent Operation Enduring Freedom.

The German forces, too, have been under attack and are able to accomplish virtually nothing in the way of reconstruction. Even their training of Afghani police is marred when many of the newly trained cops quickly desert to the Taliban or other resistance groups.

Finally, the German government decided to send Tornado fighter planes to Afghanistan, only for reconnaissance purposes, they insisted, but used inevitably to spot Taliban fighters for NATO attacks. Many civilians have been bombed and killed in these operations.

All members of the new Left Party in the Bundestag opposed sending German warriors abroad in any military mission, pointing out that the German constitution permitted armed forces only for the defense of Germany. But according to then Defense Minister Struck (a Social Democrat), the defense of Germany is “located in the Hindu Kush Mountains.” All of the other major parties supported the move, though a number of conscience-stricken Greens and Social Democrats defied party pressure and also joined the Left Party to vote no on sending the planes.

Now the military mission in Afghanistan is again due for a vote. Since nearly two-thirds of the population and those independently-thinking deputies willing to join the Left Party in opposing the use of Tornado fighter planes, the Christian Democratic-Social Democratic coalition thought up a clever trick. They coupled the decision to send troops for reconstruction purposes with the sending of Tornado fighter planes, forcing deputies to confirm both, oppose both, or abstain.

While the Left Party continued its opposition to both — and organized a demonstration in Berlin to demand that Germany “Get out of Afghanistan” (adding the slogan, “No war in Iran”) , the Green leaders were in a quandary. They would like to support one-half of the decision but not the other half — the Tornados — but can no longer choose between them (or abstain). Very much against their will, the leaders were forced to hold a special congress on Sept. 15 to decide how party deputies should vote. Most leaders wanted a yes vote, but in view of grassroots opposition, they reluctantly tried to compromise, leaving the decision up to individual deputies.

Then came the big surprise. A virtually unknown party member named Robert Zion made a motion insisting that when the issue comes up in October, the Green deputies should oppose any and all motions that involve keeping Tornado fighters in Afghanistan. Either vote against the double motion or abstain. And this motion won by a solid majority.

The Green leaders, amazed by such impertinence, were outraged. Some said they might defy the decision. The other main parties immediately launched a severe attack on the Greens, who had “removed themselves from political relevance,” to quote one of the gentler statements. They were accused of supporting the ostracized positions of the Left Party, which would now no longer stand alone in the voting. They clearly feared that this decision might encourage more independent Social Democrats and even some from the conservative parties to buck the government’s commands.

There will hardly be enough votes to alter the decision; there are not that many willing to buck the government, but there should be enough no votes to prove a great embarrassment to those powerful elements in Germany yearning to expand their military outreach to all sections of the world, over and above the Horn of Africa, Bosnia or the coast of Lebanon where they are already present.

Thus, the decision was a triumph for the growing grassroots opposition within the Green Party and for the sentiments of a majority of the German people, who want the billions in taxpayers’ money to be spent for urgent needs back home, not wasted in ever bloodier military adventures abroad.