People Before Profit blog

Cuban-trained American doctor helps save lives in Haiti

Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:44:00 +0000

HAVANA - As an Indiana working-class native, I was deeply moved after Haiti's devastating earthquake of 2010. I was in Cuba at that time in my forth year of medical school at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM).

The school sought out a group of Americans from the 2010 graduating class to incorporate into the "Brigada Medica Cubana." This is a famous brigade that rushes to the aide of neighboring and developing countries after a disaster.

One of these new doctors and 2010 ELAM graduate, Dr. Gregory Wilkinson, still works as a general practitioner in Haiti, servicing the dilapidated communities from tents. He is completing a family practice residency program.

Wilkinson comes from Oakland, Calif., studied at Merritt Community College, and then sociology at Iona College in New Rochelle, N.Y. With Jamaican roots, Wilkinson said he is proud and eager to complete the medical school's scholarship requirement of working in an underserved community, as he is doing in Haiti.

Dr. Wilkinson shared his story with me about how he adapted to his new home. (Slideshow follows the interview.)

Where have you been living?

I have been in the village Lester, center of the largest department in Haiti named Artibonite, and includes the river near the cholera outbreaks.

What are your primary duties?

First order of business was the cholera treatment. The higher incidence, the harder the work. We operate in six-day cycles. For example, one can start off the week with consultations, where you classify patients into two categories- cholera and no cholera. After consultations one rotates next to CTC (the Cholera Treatment Center). Next one rotates into pediatrics for one day and adults the consecutive day. Lastly, one does a 16-hour on-call shift followed by a 24-hour free day before you restart the cycle all over again.

Due to the great separation of families, are you able to treat children if a parent is not present.

Yes, but it is rare a child will arrive unsupervised. Some adult will accompany them, be it a friend or distant relative. Most people are brought in by somebody else, especially the critical cases. We have grown accustomed to reacting quickly when we see someone brought into us in the wheelbarrow, which is a Haitian taxi.

After the earthquake, which was named the "Worst Disaster of the Planet," how was your living situation when you first arrived to Haiti? living situation when you first arrived to Haiti?

When I arrived to Haiti it was six months after the earthquake, so little structure restoration had taken place. The facility that I work in now started off as rows of tents and we all lived in 10'x 5' tents and slept on cots. Electricity was slim to none. We were conducting intravenous punctures with our flashlights. Once I used my cell phone to assist a surgeon operating without light.

Now thanks to the collaborative effects of the Cuban Medical Brigade, UNICEF, and the United Nations we have a hospital with a generator in it. During the initial phases of construction, we received bigger and sturdier tents for the Cholera Treatment Center and I dwelled in a hallway of the hospital.

Personally, I prefer to rest on the roof of the hospital that is why the community named me "Chat blanc de l'hopitale" meaning white cat on top of the hospital. Conditions change and improve daily.

How are critical cases handled?

First of all we have no division among ourselves. A doctor is a nurse and a nurse can be a doctor. We all work together side by side. We are trained to identify dehydration and it is the first order of business. When I am alongside a specialist putting in an IV, there is not competition. Our focus is to save a life.

When someone shows up in the wheelbarrow with sunken in eyes a weak pulse and no perceptual blood pressure, everybody moves fast to hydrate the patient. A patient can come in thin, lethargic, and in a state of shock, however within the hour they are plump, stable and revived. We are well known for how we can "raise the dead" with dopamine.

Are you given opportunities to engage in the community?

Once a week we do "clínica móvil," terrain work where we go into the mountains to establish clinics with supplies like chorine tablets, hydration salts, basic antibiotics, promote health care and cholera preventive techniques.

Normally we take a vehicle high into the mountains and when the road runs out we get out and walk. We, with all our supplies, march into high altitudes where some people have never seen a doctor before.

What is a common thing that you treat?

We treat minor infections and superficial lesions. One of the most important things is to educate the people on how to purify their water, minimizing the spread of the [Cholera] epidemic and future contamination.

While in Haiti I heard something exciting happened to you.

Well, Fidel Castro, the ex-president of Cuba, called me on Christmas. He called to speak with myself and my ELAM colleague and fellow American, Dr. Narciscio Ortiz. I was so nervous. I responded to him in Haitian Creòle. He called us because he had been informed that [the ELAM] center maintained the lowest mortality rate during the climax of the cholera epidemic, despite the plight of having the highest influx of cholera cases. It is not difficult work, but it is at a great magnitude. [At times, the staff saw 250-plus people during one shift.] Personally, I find it exciting every time I save a life.

In retrospect, can you name one thing that could have helped you do your job better?

Hard to say because everything is a learning process. People are always where they are when they need to be. When you stop learning is when you punch the clock.

I guess I could say I wish I had learned Creòle before I arrived, but honestly the one thing that helped me most was being genuine. Haitians are smart enough to see through the BS. I have learned the valuable lesson that human contact is important, and it is the difference between doctors that know of a disease from a doctor that can cure a disease. It is all about making connections.

After my interview with Dr. Wilkinson, I was even more inspired to organize a similar brigade after my 2012 graduation. What other country in the Western Hemisphere is most known for its poverty apart from Haiti? The medical assistance that was mandated to Haiti was inadequate despite the help from neighboring countries. To date my Haitian brothers and sisters are still confronted by poverty as a way of daily life.

Photo: One of the Cuban medical brigades in Haiti. (Courtesy of Gregory Wilkinson and Chasiti Falls)

Chile resists - students and labor join forces

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:50:00 +0000

On its second day, August 25, a national strike called by the Workers' United Center of Chile (CUT), massed 400, 000 people in the capital city of Santiago and 200,000 elsewhere. The labor federation was demanding a new labor code and protesting against privatization and cuts in pensions, education and health care. Above all, it was about basic change. Banners said: "A new political Constitution," "I fight for my children," and "Chile must be different." CUT president Arturo Martinez spoke of "a new economic model and a new constitution." "Society is expressing itself to advance toward equality in every sense," he told an interviewer.

President Sebastián Piñera labeled the work stoppage as "illegal and unjustified." The police arrested 1394 marchers, wounded dozens, and killed a 16-year-old boy.

This year popular mobilizations are confronting the market-driven system serving Chile's elite, a legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship. They are on a scale last seen during the era of President Salvador Allende, who was overthrown in a brutal, U.S. assisted coup in 1973.

Copper miners have struck, indigenous activists are taking over land and fasting, protests are surging against dams blocking off Patagonian rivers, gay and lesbian people are demonstrating, earthquake victims are protesting homelessness, poor people in Magellanes are fighting against high natural gas prices, while others in Calama want the world's largest copper mine, nearby, to benefit them.

These actions are backdrop for an emboldened student movement. For almost four months students have conducted larger and larger demonstrations and marches, even hunger strikes. The Piñera government cut interest rates on student loans, promised increased education spending, and agreed to constitutional amendments guaranteeing quality education, and protest continued. The students' campaign culminated on August 21 in a gathering in Santiago's O'Higgins Park. One million young people heard performances by 15 bands and listened to public speakers.

The 23-year-old president of the Student Federation of the University of Chile (FECH), Camila Vallejo, told them "this neoliberal model is not working for us. Its ultimate purpose is the profit and business of a few. We believe it's necessary to advance toward a system more egalitarian and inclusive. [We want] a free country, a just country, more democratic, more egalitarian. And for that we need a quality education for all."

Some, remembering Dolores Ibárruri, Spanish Civil war hero, refer to Communist Youth member Vallejo as "La Pasionaria of 2011." She's under police protection because of death threats.

Building on mobilizations in 1997-97 and in 2006, "The Chilean Student movement has been the most important in Latin America in the last 50 years," asserts one Punto Final writer. Observers say university students' awareness of their overall middle class origins has impelled leaders to reach out to organized workers to strengthen a movement for basic societal change. Students provided the impetus for the CUT national strike and filled the ranks of demonstrators then.

They call for opening up education to those unable to pay, for renationalization of copper mines and tax reforms to cover costs. They protest municipalities now being given authority over educational standards, no longer the national government, and demand a plebiscite to define the purpose of education in Chile. They point out that the 1980 constitution, product of the Pinochet dictatorship, contains provisions like the "qualified quorum" and "binomial electoral system" that impede change toward real democracy. They join unionists and social movements in calling for a constituent assembly.

Now over the last 30 years, 60 percent of basic and secondary schools and most universities in Chile have been privatized. Even public universities require heavy fees, with indebtedness affecting 70 percent of all university students. Some 65 percent of university students from poor families drop out. Monthly university costs range from $250 to $860. Chileans' average monthly salary is $1150.

The state dedicates only 4.4 percent of Chile's GDP to education, but UNESCO recommends 7 percent or more. Students and families pay 75 percent of Chilean educational costs. Chile now ranks within the world's 15 most unequal countries.

Because of the student movement, "Chilean society has woken up after being half asleep for two decades," says analyst Victor de la Fuente. "The student movement struck out at the very bases of the neoliberal system, demanding a role for the state and asking that education not be regarded as a piece of merchandise. They require an end to an educational system based on profit, left over from the military dictatorship."

In mid August, Communist Party President and Chamber of Deputies delegate Guillermo Teillier told foreign correspondents that "the next government of Chile can't put aside demands in the street today." He predicted governments formed by rightwing or center-left coalitions, products of the binomial electoral system, will disappear. Teillier lauded "a new generation no longer afraid of what the dictatorship will do if they are out in the streets."

Photo: Sign that reads in Spanish "Chile must be different, national strike on August 24 and 25," at protest in Plaza Nunoa, Santiago, Aug. 23. (Roberto Candia/AP)

Bombing of UN's Nigeria office raises questions

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 12:28:00 +0000

Partially destroyed by a bomb on Friday, the UN complex in Nigerian's capital Abuja employed 400 people. Boko Haram (BH), a group of Islamist militants operating in northern Nigeria, claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing that destroyed most of the ground floor when a car exploded at the main entrance.

Northern Nigeria, united politically before 1967 as one of three federal divisions, is the more arid and sparsely populated half of the country where most residents are Muslim and large numbers are Hausa-Fulani. Along with the Igbos and Yorubas, they are one of the three ethnic groups dominant in the country.

While active since the 1960's, Boko Haram gained attention in 2002 after initiating attacks against police officers in the northeastern Yobe State. Similar groups also favor the introduction of Sharia law, which is already in place in twelve of Nigeria's thirty-six states. In February BH postered buildings in Maiduguri with statements that they engaged in attacks there to 'establish the Sharia system of government in the country.'

Boko Haram has also had a distinctive focus on opposition to Western cultural institutions, principally secular Western education. And it opposes the lack of enforcement on alcohol bans in many Sharia-governed jurisdictions.

In recent years, most attacks have taken place in Borno State, another northeastern jurisdiction, but over the summer there has been increasing aggression toward targets in the states of Bauchi, Kano and Katsina.

Traditionally, BH focuses on the security forces and government of Nigeria itself. As well, the country has witnessed a shift toward targeting symbols of foreign and Western influence such as Abuja's international hotels, Christian religious sites and sites of international organizations such as NGOs and the UN. Foreign journalists have been attacked.

Influenced by Islamist ideologies, the group's aims and motives recently appear to be more internationally oriented. Some observers say they may be collaborating with al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) or other groups, and there are allegations of links to northern politicians who benefit from the violence or wish to destabilize the national government. One southwestern state governor, Kayode Feyemi, has alleged that the group is in fact "a creation of northern politicians who were bent on holding on to power."

However, analysts also point to the role of poor governance and socioeconomic conditions in Nigeria as indirect causes of these and similar sectarian tensions, and rates of poverty are higher in many parts of the north.

Conflict studies scholar Nathanial Danjibo, says that even students from affluent families in northern Nigeria "roam in the streets" and must often resort to begging, making them "vulnerable to social vices [such as] being a ready-made army that can be recruited to perpetrate violence."

The region also has a history of imposed cultural protectionism: British colonial authorities, collaborating with the ruling Northern elite, built few Western schools there. This has been identified as helping create an environment where "Christian evangelism and even academic research are ... perceived to be part of the agenda of Western imperialism."

While the international community and Nigeria itself have condemned Boko Haram's attacks, human rights groups have also accused the Nigerian government's military response as brutally disproportionate, featuring indiscriminate killing of civilians, even extra-judicial killings, and torture.

"Boko Haram must stop its reign of terror in the country," said Tawanda Hondora, an Amnesty International official commenting on the violence in June. The Nigerian government must address the violence by "investing heavily in reforming the criminal justice system', she added, which 'subjects thousands to human rights violations," said AI's accompanying press release.

In July, lawmakers in Borno state also condemned the national government's military responses, and its governor Kashim Shettima admitted that the "excesses of the [Nigerian military], who are operating under a very tense environment" need to be "curtailed" through a new code of conduct.

Nigeria has an extensive history of political corruption, though international media reported comparatively less fraud and violence during the election of President Goodluck Jonathan last May. Nevertheless, his administration continues to face criticism, importantly including his management of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, a key anti-corruption agency.

"The country's governing elite continues to squander and siphon off the nation's tremendous oil wealth, neglecting basic health and education services for the vast majority of ordinary citizens," said a Human Rights Watch press release on Thursday.

Nigeria is a significant producer and exporter of oil, but is plagued by the ongoing conflict in the oil-rich Niger Delta, a site of tension between competing ethnic groups, foreign oil companies, and government security forces.

In 2009, violence between BH and Nigerian security forces in four northeastern Nigerian cities left 800 people dead. It is estimated that the wider Sharia conflict in Nigeria has killed 10 thousand people since 1953 and displaced thousands more.

AP image

Summer months heat up West Papua conflict

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 13:17:00 +0000

Analysts of the West Papua conflict have observed an escalation in violent incidents through the year, with a pronounced uptick since May. Journalists and members of the West Papua community themselves have previously warned that the situation is deteriorating, with the Australia West Papua Association writing an open letter to then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in March, calling for him to raise human rights issues with the Indonesian government.

West Papuans are being "arrested for simply taking part in peaceful rallies", the letter said, and urged Rudd to pressure Indonesia to release political prisoners, as well as cut Australian military ties with the Indonesian special forces unit Kopassus.

Between July of 2010 and March of this year, fourteen shootings occurred around Freeport's copper and gold mines, including one that saw the killing of Drew Grant, an Australian mine technician.

Following Indonesia's independence from The Netherlands in 1949, West Papua continued to be administered by the Dutch until Indonesia invaded in 1961. The Netherlands resisted West Papua's full absorption into Indonesia, but were pressured by the United States and Australia to proceed with decolonization. Soon passing under the authority of a United Nations administration, a referendum on the territory's future produced results in favor of integration. However, independence activists dispute the vote's legitimacy and have continued to engage in armed resistance, principally through the Free Papua Movement (OPM).

Earlier this month, police sources reported the killing of four civilians by OPM forces in the Paniai Regency, in addition to shootings on police officers and soldiers. In July, there were shootings on vehicles outside Jayapura that killed four army personnel, but local OPM commander Lambert Pekikir denied involvement by their forces. Two other soldiers were killed in July by unknown attackers.

Meanwhile, the West Papua Advocacy Team has collected a number of accounts from June detailing a rise in Indonesian security force operations. These include accounts of detention of civilians without identification; residents being "forced to clear their gardens and prepare landing positions" for military aircraft; the destruction of two churches and twelve houses; and the rape of a pregnant woman. They were said to have occurred in the Puncak Jaya Regency, an inner highland district.

Low-level armed resistance in West Papua has existed for decades, prompting Indonesia to maintain military and police forces in the region. The Indonesian government has significant economic interests in West Papua, such wood, palm oil and natural gas resources, in addition to gold and copper. Indonesian security forces also benefit from providing protection services.

Human rights organizations continue to condemn the Indonesian military for abuses, with civilians sympathetic to the OPM facing indiscriminate violence and imprisonment.

Papuans have rejected Indonesia's autonomy measures as mere symbolic, while officials from Indonesia's London embassy emphasized in 2009 that "all human rights abuses will be duly investigated [and] abusers of human rights will be punished." In January, soldiers who tortured two Papuan farmers received sentences of less than a year.

It is estimated that more than 100 thousand Papuans have died as a result of the Indonesian occupation since 1962.

Photo: Papuanese students protest, demanding that Freeport-McMoran Copper and Gold Mine Inc. halt their operations in West Papua and asking the Indonesian government to stop sending military aid. (Firdia Lisnawati/AP)

Note from the editor: While the indigenous peoples of the Melanesian island known as New Guinea have been there for over 40,000 years, since the 16^th century the island has been subjected to repeated colonization and artificial divisions by several colonial powers, including: Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and Indonesia.

The term West Papua may refer to the province of West Papua or to the region of the western half of the island.

The eastern half of the Pacific island of New Guinea is the country of Papua New Guinea. The western half of the island is currently made up of two provinces of the country of Indonesia: Papua and West Papua.

The province of Papua comprises most of the western half of the island and nearby islands. Its capital is Jayapura.

The province of West Papua covers the Bird's Head (Doberai) and Bomberai peninsulas and the surrounding islands of Raja Ampat.

To end corruption in India, go after the source

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:46:00 +0000

NEW DELHI - The hunger strike launched by Anna Hazare in Delhi has led to an outpouring of support from all over the country. The agitation for a Jan Lokpal (citizens' oversight) bill has found support predominantly from the urban middle classes and a substantial section of youth belonging to this strata.

There is no doubt that since the first hunger strike launched by Hazare in April, the anti-corruption movement has gained momentum.

The attitude of the United Progressive Alliance government and its failure to tackle corruption has fuelled widespread anger.

Firstly, the UPA government is seen as complicit in corruption. This has been the most corrupt government in the history of independent India. The paradox of a "clean Prime Minister" heading such a government has sunk into the consciousness of the urban middle classes. This is the very constituency that had been singing the praises of Manmohan Singh as a reformer who was clean and whose integrity was unquestioned.

The manner in which the ministers in the government defended the corrupt practices indulged in the 2G spectrum allocation, stating that there was zero loss of revenue for the government, confirmed the fears of many that this government, steeped in corruption, cannot take any meaningful action.

In all the cases - whether it be the 2G or the Commonwealth Games - it has been agencies external to the government - the Supreme Court, or, the Comptroller and Auditor General, which spurred the Central Bureau of Investigation into action to investigate and to prosecute the guilty.

The problem has been compounded by the government introducing a Lokpal (oversight) Bill, which seeks to carry on with the earlier arrangement of the vigilance and investigation agencies. The Prime Minister is excluded from the purview of the Lokpal. The method of appointment of the Lokpal will not make it an independent authority. The Lokpal set-up by this bill would be ineffective and unable to independently act against the higher echelons in the government, or, the big business-ruling politician-bureaucratic nexus.

Secondly, the Congress party leadership has been put in the dock for the manner in which Anna Hazare and his colleagues were arrested on the morning of August 16 before they began the hunger strike.

The symbolism of a corrupt government putting an anti-corruption crusader in Tihar Jail was not lost on the people. The brazen attack on the democratic rights of citizens to protest peacefully isolated the government among the people and inside Parliament.

The ruling party decries the Hazare-led movement as an attack on Parliament and democratic institutions. They claimed that since the government has introduced a bill in Parliament, any agitation against it is an attack on Parliament.

This is specious reasoning. Political parties and citizen's organizations have the right to oppose and agitate against any bill introduced in Parliament. The Left parties and trade unions have opposed many bills, which are anti-working class and organized protest actions and struggles against them. Strikes have taken place against proposed legislation, which seeks to liberalize the financial sector - the insurance, banks etc.

Even the Congress party opposed the Prevention of Terrorism (POTA) Bill, which was introduced in Parliament in 2002 by the BJP-led government. Subsequently it continued to oppose it even after it was enacted as a law and demanded its withdrawal.

Corruption has become a major issue and people are increasingly becoming conscious and determined to fight it. This is welcome.

But there is need for a proper understanding of what is the cause for this rampant corruption, which has affected all spheres of public life.

The CPI(M) has set out its understanding of the present malaise of corruption, the causes and the effects.

In the last two decades, with the advent of liberalization and the neo-liberal policies, high-level corruption has become institutionalized. The neo-liberal regime has led to an exponential rise in corruption.

Much of this corruption stems from the big business-ruling politician-bureaucratic nexus, which has been established. We have seen how, in the seven years of the UPA government and the earlier six years of the National Democratic Alliance government, policy making has been suborned to serve the interests of big business; how privatization and the loot of natural resources are facilitated by this nexus in operation; how the UPA government panders to big business - Indian and foreign - by putting in place policies and mechanisms to facilitate the transfer of resources like land, minerals, natural gas, etc., to business barons.

The neo-liberal regime has affected the political system with big capital holding sway. Increasingly, politics is being converted into a business and business is conducted through politics.

The fight against high-level corruption, therefore, requires a multi-pronged effort.

There has to be an effective Lokpal authority; there has to be electoral reforms to curb money power for politics; there has to be a separate mechanism to curb corruption in the higher judiciary through a separate legislation; there has to be firm measures to unearth black money and crack down on the persons who have stashed away illegal money abroad in tax havens.

Above all, the features of the neo-liberal regime, which encourage accumulation of capital through corrupt means, and facilitate the loot of natural resources by big business, should be ended.

The main source of support for the Hazare-led movement is the urban middle class. Many of them were supporters of the liberalization policies and reforms ushered in by the Singh government.

Now plagued with corruption, they want a messiah to get rid of corruption, which constantly affects their daily life. They would like corruption to end while maintaining the economic regime that has conferred benefits on them. Hence they are unable to see the organic link between the neo-liberal policies and the corruption that they have engendered.

The middle class propensity to be anti-political, to blame all politicians and to hold Parliament in contempt are all on display in the Anna Hazare movement. The constant harping against all political parties and the setting of unilateral deadlines for Parliament to act have raised apprehensions about their intent and commitment to democratic values. This has only detracted from the rightness of the cause and the popular support it has evoked.

There is legitimate anger against the plutocracy that has come to dominate the political system. But this plutocracy and the corrupt nexus cannot be fought by targeting political parties and concentrating fire only on the petty corruption that citizens face in their daily life.

Given the amorphous nature of the movement gathered around Anna Hazare, the rightwing forces, including the corporate media, seek to support and direct the movement away from the focus on the fountainhead of corruption. There is a constant masking of the real causes of corruption in society.

In a recent poll conducted by the Centre for the Study of Development Societies published in The Hindu, to a question "Who is the most corrupt?" among those surveyed, 32 per cent said government employees were the most corrupt; 43 per cent said elected representatives were the most corrupt; and only three per cent thought businessmen and industrialists were the most corrupt. This is the dominant opinion among the middle classes.

In every major corruption scandal in the recent period, there was big business, or, corporations involved in the act of corrupting public servants - whether they are ministers, or, civil servants. In the 2G spectrum case, the Commonwealth Games, the KG gas basin contract and so on. In each of these cases the hidden hand of big business exists.

The government's Lokpal Bill does not address this issue at all. The Jan Lokpal (citizen's ombudsman) Bill at least has clauses providing for cancellation of contracts with business enterprises that are found to be illegally obtained. But the thrust of the anti-corruption movement, by and large, misses this main factor.

The CPI(M) and the Left will continue to campaign for a set of measures to combat corruption. Along with the Lokpal Bill, there has to be a judicial accountability legislation, which will cover the setting up of both a National Judicial Commission for the appointment of judges and a body to enquire into charges of corruption.

The Left parties will continue the fight against the privatization drive, which seeks to handover public assets and resources to big business.

At present, however, the fight against corruption can be taken forward only when a strong Lokpal authority is constituted. The government's Lokpal Bill has been rejected by large sections of the people; it is not acceptable to the Left parties and most of the opposition parties. In such a situation, there is no other way for the government, but to bring a modified or fresh bill, which can pave the way for an effective Lokpal.

For this, there is no other way except for the Manmohan Singh government to bow down to public pressure. The government should hold talks with the Anna Hazare group forthwith. It should bring a fresh bill for discussion and adoption by Parliament.

Prakash Karat is general secretary of the Communist Party of India - Marxist. This article appeared in The Hindu and the Aug. 28 issue of People's Democracy.

Photo: Anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, standing front right in white, campaigns for his program, April 5, 2011. (V. Malik/CC)

Small movement on Korea nuclear issue

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:01:00 +0000

North Korea signaled recently that it was ready to end its nuclear testing and return to anti-nuclear talks. Still, the U.S. and South Korea were hardly moved, and anything resembling normal state-to-state relations on the peninsula seems far off.

Though eclipsed in recent months by other world happenings, notably the Arab Spring and the international economic crisis, the peninsula remains volatile, with the states on both sides of the DMZ trading threats and barbs. As such, any move towards de-escalation of tensions has been met with relief by parties involved.

Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader, said in an Aug. 24 meeting with Russian President Dimitry Medvedev he was ready for a nuclear moratorium and a return to the six-party talks between the North and South, the U.S., Japan, China and Russia.

Kim's trip to Russia has generated buzz, as he infrequently travels abroad. Still, not many are expecting a big diplomatic breakthrough. South Korean and U.S. officials have been wary of taking Kim's announcement particularly seriously. While it is a "welcome first step," said U.S. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland in a State Department press briefing, it was not enough "to resume the six-party talks."

Nuland continued that the statement was simply a reiteration of the North's position over the past few years, and went on to cite a disclosure by North Korea of a previously secret uranium enrichment program in November 2010. This has been running for years alongside the well-known plutonium enrichment operation, the basis for Pyongyang's 2006 and 2009 nuclear tests. The uranium enrichment has been feared by the U.S. and others a second path towards the acquisition of nuclear weapons by the north.

"As you know, their disclosure last November of uranium enrichment facilities remains a matter of serious concern to us, and these activities are a clear violation of their obligations under U.N. Security Council Resolutions," Nuland said, referring UNSC Resolution 1718, which condemned the nuclear test and imposed sanctions on the north, as well as called for an immediate resumption of the six-party talks.

The statements by Kim and the U.S. are the latest in a back-and-forth cycle between North Korea and other nations dating back years: The North accuses the U.S. of attempting to "stifle" its development, pointing back to the Korean War, the lingering presence of U.S. military personnel in the South and nuclear weapons some believe the U.S. has secreted in South Korea. In turn, it makes provocative statements, and sometimes backs them up with action, such as the nuclear tests. The U.S. and South Korea then respond harshly as well, a crisis is reached and barely averted as the two sides make some sort of deal, usually in the form of economic benefits for the North in exchange for a scaling back of its nuclear program.

In order to normalize the situation long term, most agree that the Korean War, which was never ended with a peace treaty, but only an armistice agreement, needs to be officially ended. Complicating matters has been a demand by the North that it be allowed to sign a peace treaty with the U.S. directly - not South Korea or the UN. The U.S. counters that this is impossible, given that the war was fought between UN forces and North Korea's military. Behind the North's demand is the belief that the UN was, at the time, simply a fig leaf for U.S. aggression.

Now, analysts say, some form of peace is even further off than had been the case through 2001. While it is widely perceived that the North simply uses its nuclear program as a bargaining chip designed to extract concessions and aid from the U.S. and Japan, Pyongyang argues that, after it was labeled part of an "axis of evil" by the Bush administration - one member of which was invaded by the U.S. in the Iraq War - it needs nuclear weapons as a "deterrent." As the U.S. says it cannot sign a peace treaty and North Korea will not agree to peace negotiations with the "puppet" South or the UN, it is hard to see how the situation will be normalized anytime soon.

Meanwhile, Russia's President Medvedev, writes Fyodor Lukyanov, a columnist for Russia's state-run RIA-Novosti press agency, seems to be trying his own version of peace making - which would also economically benefit Moscow. Russia has long wanted a pipeline to sell its natural gas in South Korea, but such a line must go through the North. It is likely that this is the main reason for Kim's meeting with the Russian president.

Were the pipeline to become a reality, North Korea would gain some leverage internationally: Just like the Ukraine and Belarus, it would have the power to interfere with Russia's profits and another nations' natural gas supply by tampering with the pipeline. This would, perhaps, make the regime feel less susceptible to outside pressure, and therefore more likely to give up its nuclear weapons. It would also allow the North to generate tens of millions of dollars in gas transit fees.

In the meantime, however, the standoff continues.

Photo: The U.S. Army // CC 2.0

Impunity reigns in Colombia, Piedad Cordoba leaves

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:31:00 +0000

In Colombia, wholesale murder and impunity go hand in hand, as was indicated Aug. 9, when the state took responsibility for one victim of the 1994 Patriotic Union (UP) slaughter, and on Aug. 19 when Colombians for Peace leader Piedad Cordoba announced her forced departure from Colombia.

The Aug. 9 event marked both the 17th anniversary of the shooting death of Patriotic Union senator Manuel Cepeda Vargas and Interior Minister Germán Vargas Lleras's recognition this year before Congress of state responsibility for the killing. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights had announced the responsibility finding with the proviso that the government make its acknowledgment public, express regret and work to name and judge perpetrators. The Court is considering possible crimes against humanity prosecutions related to the UP catastrophe.

Without naming individuals, the government took only collective responsibility for the murder of only one of an estimated 5,000 victims. They were members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Communist Party, plus other leftists participating in UP election campaigns. Electoral activity came about under a 1984 agreement between conservative President Belisario Betancur and the FARC, allowing leftist insurgents to enter routine political life. UP candidates became mayors, municipal councilors and local and national legislators. In the ensuing slaughter two presidential candidates were assassinated.

Violence has hit Piedad Cordoba's extended family. On June 7, 2011, her cousin Ana Fabricia Cordoba was shot dead on a bus in Medellin. Ana Fabricia's two sons were murdered in 2004 and 2010, and her husband and two brothers even earlier. As with tens of thousands of killings in Colombia, murderers remain unidentified. Ana Fabricia's surviving children report continuing death threats and intimidation. Their mother had served as a high profile advocate for families, like her own, who have been displaced from their land.

Piedad Cordoba, principal spokesperson for a negotiated settlement of civil war, indicated Aug. 19 she was leaving Colombia. Unmarked cars were following her, telephone death threats were routine and she has learned that serious assassination plot is in the works. Paramilitaries had forced her into exile in 1999. Invoking discredited evidence, Inspector General Alejandro Ordoñez removed Cordoba from her Liberal Party Senate seat last year, alleging ties with the FARC. Cordoba had facilitated the FARC's humanitarian release of prisoners.

So far in 2011, murderers have killed 29 Colombian unionists and over 200 inhabitants of Cordoba department, where 600 people were killed last year. Government rejection of peace initiatives is clear from the UP catastrophe recalled by the Manuel Cepeda event, from Piedad Cordoba's departure and from pervasive impunity. Priorities are evident in Colombia's $11.1 billion military budget, making up 14.2 percent of state spending; almost 300,000 military personnel on active duty - nineteenth in the world on that score; and U.S. provision of almost $7 billion over a decade for Colombia's police and military.

Manuel Cepeda was a leader of Colombia's Communist Party. Prior to his senate term he edited that party's Voz newspaper. As a Communist Party leader and current Voz director, Carlos Lozano addressed the gathering on Aug. 9. He called for an end to war and impunity and for social justice and political settlement of conflict. He is Piedad Cordoba's colleague in Colombians for Peace.

Lozano condemned "the criminal instinct of those ... who accept no competitors or dissenters [and] who practice forced unanimity and exclusion." He castigated "the intellectual authors of extermination with enemies seen as 'combining forms of struggle,'" as if "delivery of a public sociology lecture on national realities or having a real understanding of the cause and societal background of conflict were equivalent to having a dangerous terrorist arsenal."

On the other hand, "The Communist Party has been proposing a negotiated political solution since 1981 as the only way to overcome conflict in Colombia. There are no intermediate solutions to peace with democracy and social justice." He speculated that Cepeda would have been part of Colombians for Peace, "with Piedad, with Ivan (Manuel Cepeda's son) and all of us, saying forcefully that there's no possibility of a military solution to the conflict."

"Manuel, as a communist, believed in peace and paid with his life," Lozano said. "We follow that path ... Not all is lost. There are always new opportunities. There are not many reasons to be optimistic, but the most important is that there is life. In spite of so many assassinations along the way, while there's life, there is hope."

Photo: Agencia Prensa Rural // CC 2.0

Cuba denounces inclusion in State Department “sponsors of terrorism” list

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 11:30:00 +0000

Once again, the U.S. Department of State has included Cuba, along with Sudan, Syria and Iran, in its list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism."

The list was first issued in 1979, and Cuba was on it for the first time in 1982, and has been included thirteen times since then. The current list, announced on Aug. 18, covers the situation in 2010.

As usual, the State Department's rationale for including Cuba in the list is paper thin:

Designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1982, the Government of Cuba has maintained a public stance against terrorism and terrorist financing in 2010, but there was no evidence that it had severed ties with elements from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and recent media reports indicate some current and former members of the Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA) continue to reside in Cuba. Available information suggested that the Cuban government maintained limited contact with FARC members, but there was no evidence of direct financial or ongoing material support. In March, the Cuban government allowed Spanish Police to travel to Cuba to confirm the presence of the suspected ETA Members.

Further:

Cuba continued to denounce U.S. counterterrorism efforts throughout the world, portraying them as a pretext to extend U.S. influence and power.

Finally:

Cuba did not sponsor counterterrorism initiatives or participate in regional or global operations against terrorists in 2010.

The issue of the FARC and ETA contacts is mendacious and the State Department knows it. Cuba has, on and off, played a mediating role between the Colombian government and the FARC (and also the ELN, another insurgent group in Colombia). To that end, the Cuban government allowed the FARC to have a small office in Havana, with the full knowledge and consent of the Colombian government. It is very likely that Cuba may be asked to play a similar mediating role in the future, in which case the FARC contacts will be essential. Likewise, the ETA members were allowed to settle in Cuba with the full agreement of Felipe Gonzalez, the Spanish Prime Minister at the time. There is absolutely no evidence that Cuba allows these people to mount terrorist attacks from its national territory, or finances the FARC or the ETA or any other such group.

The final statement, that Cuba has not sponsored counterterrorism efforts or participated in regional or global operations against terrorists, is untrue. Cuba has worked with Venezuela and other countries to intercept and arrest terrorists. The trouble is that these are terrorists planning violent acts against Cuba, which, for the State Department, somehow doesn't count.

The Cuban government responded forcefully to the slur. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted a statement on its website.

The Cuban statement concentrates on pointing the hypocrisy of the United States, with its history of not only supporting but sponsoring terrorist attacks against Cuba and other countries, sitting in judgment on Cuba "to justify the cruel and repudiated policy of the blockade against Cuba."

"The U.S. government acts as if it had not protected, permanently, the confessed criminal Luis Posada Carriles, whom it has refused to prosecute on terrorism charges...." in spite of knowing full well that he and the late Orlando Bosch had organized the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civil airliner, in which 73 people were killed, plus other, more recent terrorist incidents. Posada was tried on immigration fraud charges last year, but got off due to serious errors by an apparently biased judge. But the U.S. has never charged him with terrorism.

The Ministry statement continues: "Some 3,478 Cubans have been killed and 2,099 have been maimed as the result of terrorist actions organized, funded perpetrated from U.S. territory often with the very [sic] complicity of the government of the United States...Cuba demands that the U.S. government punishes the real terrorists who now reside in U.S. territory, and free the Five anti-terrorist heroes and end the policy of blockade and hostility against our country, which threatens the legitimate interests of both peoples."

In fact, the short Cuban note did not cover many other terrorists, besides Posada, whom the United States has either sponsored or tolerated. The website http://contrainjercencia.com gives a more complete list. The failure of successive U.S. administrations to crack down on anti-Cuba terrorism coming out of the exile community in South Florida has created a feeling of impunity in such circles. So it was possible for Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, now Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, to openly call for the assassination of former Cuban President Fidel Castro, without any consequences to her or even a major public scandal.

A double standard, indeed.

Photo: twicepix // CC 2.0

Power struggle rages in Iran

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 19:36:00 +0000

With less than two years to go before the next presidential election in Iran a power struggle to determine its outcome is in full swing.

Uncertainty and instability are not usually associated with autocratic regimes such as the Islamic Republic of Iran. The 2009 presidential election, which saw Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reinstated for a second term, changed all of that as thousands of Iranians poured onto the streets in protest at an election result that was widely seen as being rigged.

For the clergy and the revolutionary guards, the real power in Iran, Ahmadinejad was seen as a safe pair of hands. Having tolerated eight years of the reform-minded president Khatami from 1997 to 2005, the hard line taken by Ahmadinejad in his first term was enough to satisfy the clerics that a further four years was necessary, whichever way the Iranian people actually chose to vote.

Opposition candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi subsequently suffered threats and harassment. They are now effectively under indefinite house arrest. Their supporters in the Green Movement, along with others in the political opposition and trade union movement, have been subject to regular violence, imprisonment and, in some cases, execution.

Yet two years into Ahmadinejad's second term all is not well. In April the president disappeared from office for a full 11 days after his decision to fire intelligence minister Heydar Moslehi was overturned by Ayotollah Khamenei. Having fired the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, in December last year, in spite of Mottaki being a favorite of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad thought that he had a free hand in reshaping his government.

Of course there can be no such freedom under the Iranian system where the Supreme Leader has the final veto. The extent of presidential power is still reliant on the support of the religious zealots at the heart of Iran's power structures. Undeterred, Ahmadinejad recently attempted to streamline his Cabinet with the merger of eight ministries into four. The move was formally blocked by Khamenei, assisted by the parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani. Nevertheless, Ahmadinejad has fired three ministers and taken temporary control of the oil ministry.

Needless to say this move has been unpopular in the Iranian parliament and has put Ahmadinejad on a collision course with both the parliament and the religious establishment. The dispute has reached the point where Ayotollah Khamenei has appointed a mediator, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi, to resolve the dispute between the president and parliament. Shahroudi will chair a five-member panel made up of hardliners known for their opposition to any reforms within the ruling system.

As Ahmadinejad is unable to run again, it is widely believed that his preferred successor is his current chief of staff Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. However, Mashaei is deeply unpopular with the religious establishment because of his views on the importance of promoting pre-Islamic Persian history as part of the culture of Iran, suggesting that the country should be an "Iranian republic" rather than an "Islamic Republic."

Such talk is seen as the precursor to reducing the role of the clergy in the constitution to a largely symbolic one, with increased powers for the presidency. While on the surface Mashaei's position has the veneer of modernity, he is nevertheless a deeply conservative politician. His current positioning is widely seen as an attempt to woo those disaffected by the outcome of the 2009 election, by positioning himself as a modernizing voice within the Iranian system.

His views with the voters remains to be seen, however. In recent weeks at least 25 people close to the president and Mashaei have been arrested by the security forces and are facing charges ranging from revolutionary "deviancy" to espionage.

More recently it has appeared that the current parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, may be positioning himself as the hard line candidate. In relation to the recent dispute between the president and parliament Larijani has backed the role of Ayotollah Khamenei in settling any differences, stating:

"We at the Majlis (Parliament) sometimes pass something but when we realize that the leader has a different view, then we change our position. I think this is one of the positive aspects of the Majlis, in that when it understands the views of the leader, it acts on it."

This sounds very much like Larijani offering himself as the safe pair of hands the ayotollahs will be looking for in 2013.

While the struggle for position in the 2013 presidential race goes on, the Iranian people are already the losers before the official campaign begins. Flying in the face of reality, President Ahmadinejad praised Iran's economic development in a speech on February 28, asserting, "Iran is one of the few countries in the world where no one goes to sleep hungry."

However, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) Iran report (December 2010) high inflation will be a factor in Iran's economy for the next four years. The current inflation rate is 15 percent, which Ahmadinejad has responded to by keeping the exchange rate artificially high. The outcome of this strategy is that the price of foreign goods remains more stable than those produced in Iran, meaning that Iranian-produced goods remain on the shelves. The reality has been that the doubling of the price of bread and the quadrupling of gas prices has pushed many ordinary Iranians further into poverty and, in spite of Ahmadinejad's pronouncements, hunger.

The instability of the next two years is not likely to help Iran's position on the international stage. The threat of external attack, whether from the U.S. or Israel, is never far away. There has already been speculation that an Israeli attack on Iran could happen before the September meeting of the UN Security Council, which is scheduled to discuss the issue of Palestinian statehood.

While political moves are played out in Iran's ruling circles the economy continues to be in freefall, the international position of the country is uncertain and the lives of the Iranian people are a daily struggle against unemployment and inflation. The removal of subsidies on fuel, food and other daily essentials has led to recent unrest with labor protests over delayed salary payments and rising unemployment. This is where the hope for the Iranian people lies, in their own hands. Action by the people in Egypt and Tunisia is showing what is possible. Iran's leaders are well aware that, for all their maneuvering, the people may yet decide the election outcomes in ways that may not be to the liking of the establishment.

Photo: An Iranian lawmaker walks through the parliament, Tehran, Iran, Aug. 17. (Vahid Salemi/AP)

The student leader who put Chile’s government against the ropes

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:47:00 +0000

Camila Vallejo Dowling, 23, a geography student at the University of Chile and president of the Student Federation of the same university (FECH), has become the most popular and inspiring leader of the current and massive student movement that have brought to its knees, for the last 3 months, Sebastián Piñera's right wing government.

Even opinion polls carried out by media supporters of the current government can't ignore the truth; Camilla is the most popular activist/politician in Chile with nearly 70% approval. Clearly she is not the only leader that fights for the cause of education in Chile, as it is really a whole generation of eloquent, savvy and dedicated youth, but Camila has become the most visible face of this, thus far, peaceful rebellion.

Camila Vallejo, a card carrying member of the Young Communist League of Chile (J.J.C.C), daughter of Communist Party members who fought against the repressive regime of Augusto Pinochet, has attracted international media attention for her youth, her beauty and eloquence, but more importantly for the clarity and accessibility of her policy proposals and the strong resistance to the counter proposals driven by the government that have failed to illicit support from the public.

Her voice and attitude reveals a measured, unhurried and very charismatic personality that has a deep understanding, unlike many of her elders, of the power of the media and social networks, Camilla seems undeterred even in the face of repeated death threats received, some even clumsily sent via Twitter and issued by government officials aligned with the Piñera government.

That is not to say her enemies have not tried to destroy her by many other means. The government and big business owners of Chile's media continue to attempt to discredit her and her comrades with a constant media barrage, but these calculated efforts have done more to enlarge the mess that has swept the government.

On August 21, 2011, students mobilized nearly a million people in Santiago and the government is by most accounts simply desperate, with no clear solution to a set of demands that strike at the heart of the social inequality and unequal distribution that is affecting even the middle class in Chile and that has persisted in Chile uninterrupted since the fall of Pinochet's dictatorship and the return to a controlled democracy, all this in spite of record economic growth.

What started as a general call for better education has turned into a PR nightmare for a government convinced that with the previous miners rescue it had persuaded the general population that the country was heading in the right direction. The reality has proven radically different with an ongoing hunger strike and a call by the largest worker's group in Chile for a massive general strike for this upcoming week. Nobody knows the outcome of the protests but everyone knows that Chile has changed forever.

View/listen to one of the musical anthems of the student movement:

Theis article originally appeared on alternavox.net and is rposted with the permission of the author.

Mikhail Saavedra was born in Chile and now lives in Toronto. He is founder and member of the editorial board of Alternavox, a news, arts and culture project.

Photo: University of Chile student president Camila Vallejo Dowling during a protest in Santiago, Chile, Aug. 18. (Roberto Candia/AP)

Latin American alliance confronts economic crisis

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 12:02:00 +0000

The Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has emerged from a bevy of regional alliances to assume a major role in work toward Latin American integration. With the Paraguayan Senate's approval August 13 of Paraguay's entry into UNSUR, the alliance now includes all 12 South American nations.

UNASUR has, since 2008, carried out independent, cooperative planning in a variety of areas, but none of them economic. Now, debt crises, worldwide economic slowdown, and a possible devaluation of the U.S. dollar have impelled them to action. What is needed, according to the Argentinean Communist Party newspaper Nuestra Propuesta, is "a common strategy to shield South America from contamination by the so-called 'central countries'...profoundly sick and fully decadent."

On July 28 an extraordinary UNASUR summit took place in Lima, Peru, so timed because heads of state were attending the inauguration that day of Ollanta Humala as Peru's new president. A proposed agenda was shelved in favor of economic matters. Leaders and advisors established broad goals and determined a schedule of future meetings.

UNASUR finance ministers met in Lima on August 5 and again in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 12, this time joined by central bank officials. That gathering served as the eleventh meeting of the UNASUR working group on financial integration and the inaugural meeting of UNASUR's South American Economic and Financial Council.

Argentina's Economics minister, Amado Boudou, afterwards told reporters that UNASUR would be "developing a regional fund for dealing with the international financial crisis." Absorbing a smaller fund created in 1978, this new one, aimed at countering speculative attacks on local currencies, would be supported by "monetary authorities and central banks" and by commercial transactions. Local currencies and the sucre, a new continent - wide currency, would replace the dollar in regional transactions. Plans were laid to develop the Bank of the South and form strictly South American development banks. Three working groups were established, one each on currencies, reserve funds, and regional development banks.

Economic specialists will meet again in Buenos Aires on August 24, this time with UNASUR foreign ministers, for a review of recommendations prior to a regular UNASUR summit meeting set for Asunción, Paraguay, on October 29. There, heads of state are expected to approve what is shaping up as an overarching plan for economic sustainability.

"We have shown more resistance to the crises and [have been] much more dynamic in being able to survive them than the central economies," explained Minister Boudou, adding that, "South America is being converted into one of the principal motor economies of the world." Later on in Caracas, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez agreed: "South America is destined to be a bloc," he said, predicting that for the sake of economic overhaul, internal conflicts will be resolved and ideological differences overcome.

Acceptance by left leaning UNASUR founders of right wing Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos' nomination of María Emma Mejía to the post of UNASUR Secretary General bears out Chavez' last point. Mejia, speaking earlier in Buenos Aires, highlighted South American economic strengths, noting that the region's economy is growing at a 4.5 percent annual rate, dollar reserves total $600 billion, and South American internal commerce, worth $100 billion annually, is projected at $120 billion. South America survived the 2008 economic crisis remarkably intact, reports Aporrea.org writer Raúl Crespo.

Soon after the August 12 meeting, President Chavez announced repatriation of gold worth $12 billion, transfer of Venezuelan cash reserves from U.S. and European to Russian, Brazilian, and Chinese banks, and nationalization of Venezuela's gold mining industry.

Obstacles to UNASUR plans include: divided loyalties of Brazilian and Argentinean capitalists tied to the U.S. and European economies; cash flight to foreign banks from Argentina and other countries; likely reluctance of multi-national corporations to deal in regional currencies; and international oil and food price volatility, fed by speculation. And, according to Crespo, new dependence on raw materials sales to China adds risk from reduced demand there stemming from a possible economic downturn.

Argentinean Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel joined others in critiquing a meeting held behind closed doors lacking representation from social movements. Food sovereignty and environmental sustainability are still not on the agenda, say critics.

In any event, the August 12 meeting was, according to Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro "the first time in 200 years that South America got together to talk about the economy. In another era, the IMF would have already arrived with its structural adjustment programs. We are breaking off ties with neo-liberalism. [This is] work carried out in unity to confront the systemic crisis of northern capitalism."

Photo: South America's leaders at historic meeting of UNASUR in Lima, Peru, July 28. Bottom row, from left to right, Chile's President Sebastian Pinera, Uruguay's President Jose Mujica, Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos, Peru's President Ollanta Humala, Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, Guyana's Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Paraguay's Foreign Minister Jorge Lara. Top row, from left to right, Venezuela's Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, Bolivia's President Evo Morales, Unasur Secretary General Maria Emma Mejia, Surinam's President Desire Delano Bouterse, Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez and Ecuador's President Rafael Correa. (Karel Navarro/AP)

Argentina president Fernandez does well in primary elections

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 12:47:00 +0000

The incumbent president of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, confounded skeptics and hostile media by doing extremely well in primary elections on August 14. However, supporters warn that the right wing opposition still may have tricks up its sleeve.

Fernandez is the widow of former President Nestor Kirchner, who ruled Argentina from 2003 to 2007. Mr. Kirchner is credited by many for having pulled Argentina out of a terrible economic crisis including a default on international debts, through the "unorthodox" approach of turning away from the "Washington Consensus" neoliberal policies of free trade, privatization and austerity. Instead, he turned his government's financial resources toward raising the living standard of the Argentine people, to restore internal markets. In spite of doomsayers, Kirchner's policy was mostly a success, and eventually Argentina was able to renegotiate its debts and restore its relationship to lenders.

The Kirchners' left-wing faction of the Justicialist (Peronist) Party, the Front for Victory (Frente Para la Victoria) lost control of both houses of the legislature in October 2009 and then ex-President Nestor Kirchner died unexpectedly in October 2010. The two events were touted by the Argentine right as spelling doom for Cristina Fernandez and her center-left policies. The doomsayers seemed to assume that she would not be able to win the elections without her husband by her side, reflecting entrenched patriarchal and even misogynistic attitudes, plus the fantasies of an unrelentingly hostile press.

President Fernandez de Kirchner had pushed through the law creating primary elections in 2009, so this was the first primary ever. In practical terms, this primary did not work the way primaries do in the United States (as internal elections within parties) because the parties still nominated their candidates by traditional means. So the importance of the vote is that it gave an idea of the possible results of the general elections on October 23 rather than deciding who would be the parties' candidates.

Earlier victories by right wing candidates for the governorships of Buenos Aires and two other important provinces, Cordoba and Santa Fe, led to questions about whether Ms. Fernandez could make it. She did far better than expected, garnering just over 50% of the vote. This represented an overwhelming victory over the next closest candidates, Ricardo Alfonsin (son of former President Raul Alfonsin) of the Radical Civic Union and former President Eduardo Duhalde of the Peronist right, each of whom got about 12%.

In other words, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was 38 percentage points ahead of her nearest opponent. Furthermore, she got the largest number of votes in all but one of Argentina's 23 provinces, plus in Buenos Aires.

In the general elections, to avoid a runoff the leading candidate has to get 45 % of the vote, or 40% plus with a lead of at least 10 points over the nearest competitor. This means that Ms. Fernandez may well win the October elections outright.

Furthermore, it is possible that her party, the Front for Victory, or Peronist left, may win back both houses of the Argentine Congress, making it much easier for her to implement her policies.

Most commentators attributed Ms. Fernandez's victory to improvements in the living condition of Argentine workers and other ordinary people under her and her husband's administrations, in spite of various labor and other disputes, especially involving the agricultural sector.

The Communist Party of Argentina supported Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's candidacy, through its own united front mechanism, New Encounter (Nuevo Encuentro). Party Secretary General Patricio Echegaray praised the election results, saying, "It should be emphasized that by the [level of] participation and the content of the vote, those sectors who represent the proposal to recreate the Washington Consensus, to return to the policies of the 1990s, have been beaten down."

However, Echegaray warned that a triumphant attitude that assumes that victory in October is in the bag could represent a danger, and urged the government to go even further in implementing progressive policies.

The election results were also good news for other left and left-center governments and opposition movements in Latin America. Under the Kirchners, Argentina has been a key player in trying to free the region from U.S. economic domination. It has done this by promoting a series of regional economic blocs, including UNASUR and Mercosur in which the Argentine government has played an extremely active role.

Photo: Argentina's President and candidate for re-election Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, right, and her Finance Minister and vice-presidential candidate Amado Boudou, at a press conference at the government house in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Aug. 15. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP)

Mexico: New government attacks against electrical workers

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:46:00 +0000

The government of Mexican President Felipe Calderon, of the right wing National Action Party (PAN), has launched a new attack on the militant Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME, for Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas). The SME is calling for worldwide solidarity.

The SME has managed to keep its independence from Mexico's system where unions are often subordinate to the party in power. When the Mexican government signed on, after 1982, to the full neo-liberal program of free trade, privatization and austerity, the SME was one of the few unions that consistently protested. In particular, the SME was a bulwark in opposition to what its leaders suspect is a plan of stealth privatization of electrical services.

In 2009, the government refused to recognize the results of the SME's internal elections. This right to "toma de nota" (literally "taking note") has been used by the Mexican government to withhold recognition of officers elected by other recalcitrant or independent unions.

Then on the night of October 10 and 11 of 2009, federal police entered workplaces represented by the SME in the government-owned company "Luz y Fuerza del Centro" (LFC, Central Light and Power), and ousted the union members.

The government then declared LFC dissolved. Services to Mexico City and the center of the country formerly provided by SME members were handed over to another company, the CFE (Comision Federal de Electricidad), whose workers are represented by one of the nationally approved.

This left 44,000 active SME workers and 22,000 retirees in the street. The government launched a vicious media campaign against SME, and exerted every kind of pressure on the fired workers.

But the SME leadership has hung on, as have 16,000 workers who would not accept severance pay in exchange for quitting the union.

SME challenged the legality of the dissolution of the LFC and has been carrying out militant direct action, including a "planton" (long running sit-in) in the Zocalo, or main downtown plaza, of Mexico City. The current demand is for the government to obey a law which requires it to find an "alternate employer" for the people laid off by the closing of LFC.

On September 16, Mexico celebrates its national independence by a ceremony, the "grito" (shout) in the Mexico City Zocalo, presided over by the president of the Republic. But the SME "planton" is still there, in spite of federal government demands that Mexico City regional Governer Marcelo Ebrard, of the center-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) forcefully remove it, which he refuses to do.

The question arises as to how the "grito" can happen in the same place where the electrical workers are protesting. This may have been part of the motive for the latest repressive actions against the SME, though the mere refusal of the SME to lie down and die sticks in President Calderon's craw.

In July, the SME held internal elections again, and the leadership that has been carrying on the resistance, headed by SME General Secretary Martin Esparza, was handily reelected. The Federal Minister of Labor, Javier Lozano Alarcon, refused the "toma de nota" once more.

SME members began to report increased incidents of harassment, in at least once case (in Nexaca, in Puebla State) by military personnel. Then, the week before last, the government announced that it has ordered the arrest of Esparza as well as the union's Labor Affairs Secretary, Eduardo Bobadilla, and Legal Counsel, Amalia Vargas Rios. The reason is laughable: After the October 2009 government coup, the union officers tried access money in the SME's bank accounts in the National Savings and Financial Services Bank, which had been frozen by the government (and still are), an action which, according to a judicial ruling, they had the right to do. So the government accuses the union of trying to steal its own money.

The union and its allies are mounting a spirited resistance. In a press release, the SME accused the government of escalating repression against it, and issued a list of demands including respect for the union's autonomy and for Article 87 of the International Labor Organization treaty of the UN, to which Mexico is signatory.

They also demand that the union's funds be un-frozen, and of course that the charges against the three officers be dropped. The SME is already being supported in this by the AFL-CIO and the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union in the United States, as well as the World Federation of Trade Unions and at least 40 other unions and civic organizations in Mexico. The SME has joined forces with other organizations fighting against the Calderon administration's policies and will announce in the coming weeks a new united front political organization of the left to carry on the struggle.

What unionists in the United States can do is explained on the Mexican Labor News and Analysis website of the United Electrical Workers.

In UK riots, Conservative Party rewriting doesn't wash

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:31:00 +0000

Iain Duncan Smith told BBC's Panorama that our recent riots were nothing to do with unemployment.

Our Work and Pensions Secretary said that joblessness was not an issue, because "these riots were not riots like the ones in the '80s. These were intensely criminal activities"

This made it sound like Duncan Smith was a bit of a fan of '80s riots, disappointed with today's version.

Was the minister suggesting that Britain had better riots when he was a lad?

Bemoaning the decline of the English riot?

Iain Duncan Smith - IDS for short - implied that today's riots were all about "street gangs" and "dysfunctional families" using disorder to cover their looting, when in the 1980s they were plucky fellows protesting about unemployment.

To believe IDS now, you have to imagine he went through the '80s chanting about "burning Babylon."

IDS is trying to dismiss the social causes of today's riots by implying he and his kind accepted the social causes of yesterday's riots.

But they didn't.

IDS's heroes did all they could to deny the economic and social roots past riots as well.

The only reason people look back to the riots of the '80s and think that unemployment was part of the problem is because nobody believed the Conservative Party, known as the Tories, then.

Nor should we now.

There is no mystery about the riots. The spark comes from perceptions of police injustice. The fuel comes from unemployment and bad conditions.

Believing that you don't have much of a future makes some people reckless about the present.

A Tory government with a cuts agenda in the middle of an economic crisis is a recipe for riots. It was in 1981, and it was in 2011.

Denying that the riots are a response to economic conditions is what Tories do, then and now.

Riots can be thuggish, violent, bullying, self-destructive responses to economic conditions. Burning people's houses or beating them, or bashing up your corner shop are all bad responses to bad conditions.

But the answer is about the economy and the state, not morality and the family.

History doesn't repeat itself exactly, but it is easy to forget that the 1981 riots involved looting and burning. This was especially true in Toxteth, but shops were also ransacked in Brixton and Wood Green. There were also vicious assaults in the 1981 and 1985 riots.

The balance between rioting and looting and the political atmosphere might be different, but the basic features were similar. The other common features were a Conservative government, an economic squeeze and aggressive policing. The final feature is Tory politicians claiming otherwise.

Thatcher stood up in Parliament on July 9, 1981, after national disorder, particularly after Toxteth, and said that it "had nothing to do with problems of bad housing and unemployment. It was a spree of naked greed."

She was asked about unemployment, but blamed lawless children.

Labour Party Member of Parliament Ron Leighton asked Thatcher "if society rejects those young people and says that it has no use for them, they are likely to reject society and act in an anti-social way."

The Iron Lady snapped back: "In the area where violence and rioting has occurred, a good deal of it has been carried out by children of school age, some of them aged between nine and 16. That has nothing whatever to do with the dole queue."

For Thatcher the riots couldn't be about bad conditions because they happened in "an area where a great deal of money has been poured in through urban programs." Enraged Liverpool Labour MP Eric Heffer called out "stupid woman" twice, and was more or less physically restrained by the Labour whip.

Even Norman Tebbit's "get on your bike" quip was an argument that riots were not fuelled by unemployment. He said that his dad in the '30s was faced with unemployment but "he didn't riot, he got on his bike and looked for work."

There was plenty of blaming "criminal elements" in the '80s as well, although more by police than politicians. According to the police, the 1985 Brixton Riot, sparked by the shooting of Cherry Groce, was about "criminal elements."

West Midlands Chief Constable Geoffrey Dear blamed the 1985 Handsworth riot on "the black criminal element." He said that drug dealers were the "people who were behind this riot, acting in defense of enormous profits. There is a criminal element that is acting for its own ends. It is attempting to create a vacuum in which drug dealers can carry on, and so can others interested in robbery and other criminal activities."

IDS's other big idea is all about culture. He imported this idea from U.S. Republicans. The 1992 Los Angeles riot involved looting, burning, inter-racial violence and attacks on small shopkeepers. Police beat and shot rioters, but rioters also beat, humiliated and killed ordinary citizens - 53 people were killed at the hands of rioters and police.

Even so, British papers including the Mail and Times used words like "revolt" or even "uprising" and accepted police violence and poverty helped prompt the ugly riot.

But one man didn't. Vice-president Dan Quayle stepped forward and started making noises like IDS. Quayle said, "I believe the lawless social anarchy which we saw is directly related to the breakdown of family structure, personal responsibility and social order in too many areas of our society." He especially argued that welfare payments made poor black people into feckless rioters. He spoke about a "culture of poverty," an "underclass" where gangs are "like family." Quayle called for "dismantling a welfare system that encourages dependency and subsidizes broken families."

People were wary of Quayle because of his general idiocy, including an inability to spell the word "potato." And this speech was seen as an embarrassment, especially as he argued in it that a TV comedy about a single mother was part of the moral breakdown leading to the riots. But now it seems that Dan Quayle's daftness has been reborn, and made sensible, in the mouth of IDS.

So we either stick with the Tory formula, the IDS formula and the Quayle formula, or we start changing the social conditions behind the riots.

This article originally appeared in the Morning Star newspaper.

Right-wing music fest gets punked by anti-racists with Trojan Ts

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 15:42:00 +0000

Hundreds of right-wing neo-Nazis and fascists got a big surprise when they went home and washed their new T-shirts from a German right-wing music festival: a message of hope and tolerance.

Right-wing music fans from all over eastern Germany flocked to the highly nationalist "Rock for Germany" festival in Thuringia Germany recently. Upon arriving, 250 right-wing music fans were treated to a free T-shirt to commemorate the event donated anonymously by a group "in lieu of a donation". What the fans did not know was that the anonymous donor was a group called Exit Deutschland that works to give young neo-Nazis the initiative and tools to break away from the right-wing cultural scene.

The shirts read "Hardcore Rebels" and it were adorned with nationalist flags and a skull and cross bones like the SS symbol.

However when washed the t-shirts read in translation, "If your T-shirt can do it, you can do it too - we'll help you get away from right-wing extremism".

Exit Deutschland was approached with the idea by a supporter at Trojan T-shirts who had been working on designing the special disappearing ink. The founder of Exit Deutschland told the Guardian of the new innovation "It had never been done before. It was completely new. We had to experiment with it a lot to make sure it worked, to ensure the top layer would not wash away in rain, for example,"

Founder of the Rock for Germany festival and member of the ultra-right National-Democratic Party which sponsored the event, Gordon Richter expressed that he thought the stunt was nothing but a waste of money. Bernd Wagner the founder of Exit Deutschland says, "It was all paid for by private money - not one cent came from taxpayers," and that they "wanted to raise awareness about our programme, especially among the young and less committed." He added. "There were so many points along the way where our plan could have failed, but it all went perfectly."

Neo-Nazi and fascist hate groups have been heavily recruiting in the eastern Germany states. Der Spiegel, the German weekly news magazine, has even reported that "neo-Nazi thugs are trying to brainwash toddlers with tactics reminiscent of the Third Reich, including applying to run day care centers, recruiting [racist] skinhead teachers and sneaking children's books praising Hitler into kindergartens."

The numbers are also troubling here at home. Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that "The number of hate groups in America has been going up for years, rising 54% between 2000 and 2008 and driven largely by an angry backlash against non-white immigration and, starting in the last year of that period, the economic meltdown and the climb to power of an African-American president."

While many militant anti-racist groups feel that the only way to fight fascism is with brass knuckles, Exit Deutschland is taking a different tact. Some youths come to the right-wing music and culture through the theories and beliefs that they espouse, but many of them are simply troubled young people who were snatched up much like a street gang would target disenfranchised teens.

Exit Deutschland is taking the approach that many anti-gang recruitment organizations have taken. To talk to the kids one on one and show them that there is another way and that they can get out of the right-wing scene whenever they choose.

Who knows if these strategies will work, but if they do, anti-racist activists on this side of the Atlantic might do well to learn from the experience and attempt to approach these young fascists in the clubs instead of attacking them in the streets.

Photo: At a countrywide German protest against cuts in education called an education strike. The sign reads, " we are the future" (Daniel Maurer/AP)

Cuban Five prisoner Gerardo Hernandez demands justice

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:09:00 +0000

U.S. authorities are blocking a last-ditch attempt by Gerardo Hernandez, one of five Cuban prisoners held in U.S. federal prisons after a much criticized Miami trial, to secure his legal rights. Hernandez's many supporters are asking the public to demand he be given his day in court.

Respected appeals court judges have called the trial in which Hernandez and four other men were convicted a "perfect storm" of bias. Persecution of the "Cuban Five" continues. They are victimized presumably as proxies for an unvanquished revolution. Now U.S. authorities are blocking a last ditch attempt by Hernandez to secure his legal rights.

Hernandez was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder when Cuban fighter jets shot down two small aircraft that had invaded Cuban air space on Feb. 24, 1996, killing four Cuban-American men aboard. Hernandez contends he had nothing to do with this. He was also convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, along with fellow prisoners Ramon Labañino and Antonio Guerrero. Hernandez received two life sentences. Life sentences for Labañino and Guerrero were reduced on appeal to 30 and 22 years respectively, while prisoners Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, convicted on less serious charges, were sentenced to 19 and 15 years respectively.

Hernandez' lawyers filed a Habeas Corpus appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, a remedy available to defendants or convicted prisoners who demand release from jail or a new trial based on evidence not yet considered. His lawyers were required to have submitted exculpatory material (meaning material which might support the prisoner's plea of innocence) prior to or during the week of Aug. 14. The U.S. government, however, has refused to release key material Hernandez' lawyers have requested. To rub salt into Hernandez' wounds, prison authorities are denying him ready access to his lawyers and to Cuban consular officials. They've restricted or impeded the delivery of letters sent from all over the world.

Using the Freedom of Information Act, solidarity groups including the National Committee to Free the Five, Liberation newspaper, and The Partnership for Civil Justice Foundation recently obtained and publically displayed documentation showing that Miami area reporters, as well as radio and television commentators, accepted payments totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the U.S. government. Advocates for Hernandez say such pay-offs from the same government that was carrying out the prosecution made a fair trial impossible. Both before and during their trial, local media were flooded with florid allegations from these publicists as to dangers the five men posed to U.S. peace and security. It seems, too, that some of the journalists had engaged in violent anti-Cuban actions and are thus qualified to epitomize, themselves, terrorism unleashed against Cuba.

Hernandez' lawyers have also been unable to pry loose satellite images from the U.S. government showing, they say, that the small planes heading for Cuba from southern Florida in 1996, piloted by Cuban-American extremists, actually entered Cuban air space. The point is that under international law Cuba has a right to defend its airspace by military means, and that Hernandez bears no responsibility in the deaths of the pilots.

The Cuban National Assembly on Aug.1 issued a demand that Washington release material sought by the lawyers, so that justices deciding the Habeas Corpus appeal can examine crucial evidence. Otherwise the cards are stacked against Hernandez.

In his presentation that day, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon said, "We must demand that Washington release the concealed information about its conspiracy with the so-called 'journalists' of Miami" and also "reveal the satellite images it has hidden for 15 years."

"We must raise to a higher plane the struggle for the freedom" of the Cuban Five, he declared.

On Aug.11, the Cuban diplomatic mission to the United Nations communicated a press release from the National Assembly, which pointed out that time was running out to have evidence entered into the Habeas Corpus appeal. "U.S. authorities [must] put an end to this unjust and illegal situation," the communiqué said.

In summarizing the dire legal situation facing Gerardo Hernandez at U.S. hands, the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5 asks that solidarity activists contact the White House and U.S. embassies "demanding an end to the illegal and arbitrary treatment against Gerardo Hernández." Messages can be sent to the White House by email, by phone to 202-456-1111, or through the mail to President Barack Obama, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500.

And your letters to Gerardo Hernandez expressing friendship, solidarity and support would be very welcome. His address is: Gerardo Hernandez, No. 58739-004, U.S.P. Victorville, P.O. Box 5300, Adelanto, CA 92301.

Photo: Signs in support of the Cuban Five are common in Havana. In English, the sign says, "They will return." Carlos ten Brink // CC 2.0

British right spreads anti-youth message

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:19:00 +0000

British responses to the rioting spreading throughout England have had a sharp anti-youth tone. The violence was sparked after the police murder of a young black father and an attack on a demonstration protesting the killing.

Press reports are full of references to drunken "gangs of youth."

The editor of the Observer newspaper, John Mulholland, reported from Hackney, "There are close to a hundred or so in running battles with police at the Bethnal Green end of Mare Street. Youths looting shops, including the boarded-up Texaco garage... Many youths walking around with spoils of their looting, swigging from bottles of Martell."

That many of those referred to as "swigging from bottles of Martell" are youth of color is an undeniable subtext to the reporting.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who leads a Conservative Party-Liberal Democratic Party coalition government, said after returning from vacation in Italy, "Let me completely condemn these sickening scenes; scenes of looting, scenes of vandalism, scenes of thieving, scenes of people attacking police, of people even attacking firefighters." He added, "This is criminality pure and simple."

While there may be criminality, it is neither pure nor simple. Underlying the riots are the monumental cutbacks of the Conservative-Liberal Democratic government, which have had a disproportionate effect on the lives of young people.

The Young Communist League of Great Britain issued a statement saying they "condemn the reckless violence and widespread criminality of recent nights but understand it as a direct product of the capitalist system and the resulting dangerous lack of security and stability for the youth of today, accompanied by disenfranchisement and exacerbated by unprecedented levels of alienation."

They continued, "The YCL notes that the cuts in public spending have had a disproportionate impact on both the youth and ethnic minority groups."

Young people of color are being specifically burdened by the current social conditions; almost half the black youth of Great Britain are being raised by single parents. And rising food costs have added to their difficulties.

As for the relationship with the police, statistics tell a story of an out-of-control police force, with 333 deaths of British citizens in police custody since 1998. There has not been one conviction of any police officer for their crimes. Even the Police Complaint Authority has openly stated that "a disproportionate number of people who die in custody or specifically following restraint are from minority ethnic groups."

Last fall, proposed tuition increases prompted mass protests in central London and Conservative cutbacks have added to economic insecurity. A whole new wave of cutbacks threatens to effect living allowances for the disabled.

Early this year the unemployment rate among young people in the UK hit a record 20.5 percent, far higher than the 7.9 percent average. As in the U.S. the unemployment among youth of color is far higher.

This was but one of the many factors, including cuts in social programs and education, that led to the riots in the UK over the past winter.

Trent, a member of the British YCL, said in speaking of the coalition government, "Give us careers, give us a future, and stop caring only about yourselves, and maybe these acts would stop."

Commentary on both sides of the Atlantic are drawing comparisons between the British cutbacks and those orchestrated by the Republican right to address the so-called debt crisis. Writing in the New York Times, Richard Sennett and Saskia Sassen said, "Americans ought to ponder this aspect of Britain's trauma ...The American right today is obsessed with cutting government spending. In many ways, Mr. Cameron's austerity program is the Tea Party's dream come true. But Britain is now grappling with the consequences of those cuts, which have led to the neglect and exclusion of many vulnerable, disaffected young people who are acting out violently and irresponsibly - driven by rage rather than an explicit political agenda."

With tuition increases and high unemployment here in the U.S. among youth as a result of the tea party Republican-controlled House of Representatives, one wonders when and not if the youth of America will break under the pressure in a similar fashion. With very few opportunities in education and the job market many young people in America are already feeling bitter despair and desperation.

Photo: Gene Hunt // CC 2.0

CIA presence provokes fear in Mexico

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 10:28:00 +0000

A controversy has arisen over a New York Times article revealing that at least two-dozen CIA agents, as well as those of the Drug Enforcement Agency and other U.S. agencies, are now operating inside Mexico with the full cooperation of the right-wing government of President Felipe Calderon. Although both governments claim that the U.S. agents are operating under the control of Mexican officials, past experiences with the CIA in Mexico and in all of Latin America have set alarm bells ringing.

The CIA and DEA agents are supposedly assigned to help the Calderon government in its bloody war against major drug and crime cartels. After Calderon was declared president in the wake of the much criticized 2006 elections, he announced a military policy toward the cartels, similar to "Plan Colombia," in which the U.S. government has heavily supported the Colombian military in armed operations. This entailed, eventually, putting 50,000 troops in Mexican cities. In 2008, the Bush administration announced the "Merida Initiative," whereby an initial $1.6 billion in U.S. aid would be provided to Mexico in support of Calderon's war. So far, most of this money, which is dwarfed by the tens of millions of dollars the drug trade brings in, has gone to purchase military hardware from U.S. suppliers.

The upshot of Calderon's war on drugs has been that 40,000 people have been killed, including drug cartel members, police, military personnel and innocent bystanders. There have also been thousands of "disappearances," and many complaints about human rights violations by the military. Calderon has stated that the high death toll is, in a sense, a good sign because it shows that, having lost a number of leaders to military and police action, the cartels are in turmoil and subordinate leaders are killing each other's "soldiers" in rivalry for leadership.

But there is strong dissent within Mexico over Calderon's entire "military" approach. Many question the authorities' position that the killings and kidnappings are going on only among people mixed up in the drug trade. For example, the Zetas especially have developed a method of kidnapping Central American economic migrants who travel through Mexico to cross over into the United States, holding them for ransom and either enslaving or massacring those who can't pay. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, have been killed and buried in mass graves, a situation which has led to mass demonstrations in Mexico and diplomatic protests from the governments of Mexico's neighbors to the south: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador especially. Frequently, it is Mexican security personnel themselves who are shaking down immigrants.

Many Mexicans remember the lawless history of the CIA in the region and within Mexico, and so have trouble seeing "the Agency" as a benign presence helping maintain law and order. Activities of the CIA in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond, in which it instigated the Mexican government to crack down violently on the Mexican Communist Party and militant peasants' and workers' movements, as well as CIA defector Philip Agee's revelations about the CIA's penetration of the Mexican government (in his 1975 book "Inside the Company"), have created the strong impression that the presence of the CIA has political purposes, namely to keep the right wing in power beyond the 2012 general elections. Also not forgotten is the role played by the CIA in the Iran-Contra scandal, which involved drug dealing through Mexico into the United States.

So the CIA has no public credibility in Mexico. The legality of the presence of foreign operatives of this kind was raised as soon as the New York Times story came out. Senator Ricardo Monreal Avila, of the Labor Party said, "Since the days of Santa Anna we have not had such a sell-out and unpatriotic government...the Constitution is being violated, it is direct interference by a foreign government in our internal politics."

The leader of the center-left Revolutionary Democratic Party, Jesus Zambrano, recalled that the revelation of the CIA presence comes right after the revelations of "Operation Fast and Furious", in which the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and possibly other U.S. entities including the CIA, deliberately allowed contraband high powered weapons to be smuggled into Mexico. Zambrano warned of a possible "Colombianization" of the situation in Mexico.

Javier Sicilia, poet and head of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, who has been leading mass marches and demonstrations against Calderon's "military" strategy in the drug war since his son was killed by cartel operatives in March, denounced the idea of the CIA-DEA presence as "illegal and inadmissible" and demanded that Interior Minister Jose Francisco Blake be summoned to Congress to explain what is going on. Legislators have in fact summoned Blake and also Foreign Minister Patricia Espinoza to hearings.

Sicilia and his organization are now adding the issue of the CIA and DEA presence to that of a new "National Security Law" which would institutionalize the military approach, to a demonstration they are organizing for Aug. 14.

Photo: LWY // CC 2.0

British riots spurred by "greed is good" society

Wed, 10 Aug 2011 13:44:00 +0000

London Mayor Boris Johnson opens his mouth so often that it is inevitable that he will make sense once in a while.

That is the case with his statement that now is not the "time to think about making substantial cuts in police numbers." Johnson is an ardent backer of the government's cuts program, but even he can see that slashing police numbers demoralizes staff and public alike.

However, his support for so-called "robust policing" shows the same Conservative Party, or Tory, lack of imagination over how to deal with the current wave of unrest in many English cities. Where robust policing gives way to police brutality is a moot point, although it is a detail to which the London mayor will pay little heed since his class will not be in the firing line.

This minted politician, who has basked in the lap of luxury all his life, has the temerity to claim that young people have been accorded an "endless sense of entitlement." That might well apply to young people of his background and that of the multimillionaires who clutter up Prime Minister David Cameron's cabinet, but it does not correspond in any way to those rioting, looting and fighting the police in city streets.

Johnson's comments indicate his utter ignorance of the current state of the country and the extent of social division. Over 30 years of neoliberal policies have eroded the postwar consensus, accepted by Labour and Tory parties, that government had a duty to avoid any return to the mass poverty and deprivation of the 1930s.

That consensus was laid down by the 1945 Labour government, with the establishment of the National Health Service, a welfare state, progress to comprehensive state education, modern local authority housing and a commitment to the goal of full employment.

For sure there were political differences between the parties on issues such as public ownership, but even the Tories felt obliged to defend jobs and communities by nationalizing the Upper Clyde shipyards and airplane engine maker Rolls Royce. This consensus was shattered by ruling class demands to reverse the declining rate of corporate profits by reducing welfare spending and giving tax breaks to big business and the rich.

While Labour opposed many aspects of the ruling-class offensive carried out by Margaret Thatcher's Tory administrations throughout the 1980s at the time, the party's capture by new Labour secured a new political consensus behind neoliberalism.

The "greed is good" years did not solely infect the London dealers, bankers and company directors who became incredibly rich as a result of speculation. Similar attitudes - without the same rewards - were expressed by other sections of society, reproduced so grotesquely by the needy inadequates who try to pass themselves off as ruthless entrepreneurs on TV shows such as The Apprentice.

We are told that selfishness and dog-eat-dog competition are human nature.

Quite simply, this is rubbish. Humanity could not have survived and prospered on the basis of ruthless individualism. Progress has been achieved through co-operation. That was exemplified by the collective efforts of communities to stand together to defend shops and homes from attack in recent days.

Similar unity of purpose is ever more necessary to thwart the combined assault on public services and workers' living standards by the current Conservative Party-Liberal Democratic Party coalition government. Strengthening the public sector and collective solidarity is the way to rebuild the economy and provide the jobs and hope that alone will prevent future social explosions of the kind witnessed recently.

This article originally appeared in the Morning Star newspaper. Photo: Fire fighters and riot police survey the area as fire rages through a building in Tottenham, north London, August 7. (Lewis Whyld/AP)

Massive protests shake up Israel

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:02:00 +0000

The Israeli Knesset (Parliament) is convening a special session to figure out how to respond as unprecedented protests sweep the country against budget cuts, the skyrocketing cost of housing and other basics, and growing inequality.

On Saturday evening, nearly 300,000 Israelis took to the streets in Tel Aviv alone, chanting "The people demand social justice," Israeli news media reported. (Considering Israel's tiny population of about 7.5 million, that would equate to about 12 million people protesting in Washington.) Another 30,000 demonstrated in Jerusalem, and thousands more around the country.

It followed three weeks of steadily mounting protests, involving workers, retirees, students and professionals from across Israeli's political spectrum, including Jews, Arabs and others. Tent cities have been set up in the heart of Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel, echoing the "Arab Spring" movement in Egypt.

At a demonstration by retirees at government offices in Tel Aviv on Monday, the head of the pensioners' union. Gideon Ben Yisrael, told the Haaretz newspaper that Israeli retirees identify with the nationwide social struggle but demand specific solutions to their sector's problem.

Another retiree said, "The last time I protested was in 1947 against the British... open your eyes, look at what is happening around you - it's a terrible thing." Another speaker at the protest said: "The youth and the pensioners will oust Bibi Netanyahu together." He was referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, popularly known as Bibi.

A sharpening housing crisis is one of the hot issues.

Tali Nir, director of the Social and Economic Rights Department in the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, writes in the Jerusalem Post that the government has been selling off public land to private entrepreneurs without requiring them to create affordable or public housing. Luxury apartment construction has surged and government mortgage assistance has been slashed.

"As a result," Nir writes, "many population groups have been left without affordable housing ... Social polarization is increasing, because instead of mixed population neighborhoods, only homogeneous neighborhoods for the wealthy are being built."

Among protests last Friday, Haaretz reported, were dozens of people from the Western Galilee - including Jewish, Arab and Druze activists who created tent encampments in the region.

Gadi Shabtai, one of the leaders of the protest there, said it was clear that most Western Galilee residents support the protest. Shabtai said the issues go beyond the lack of housing and include the high cost of living overall, from the price of electricity to dairy products and other foods.

Doctors are on strike at Israeli hospitals and health clinics, following a large social workers' strike, reports JTA, a U.S.-based Jewish news agency. Both groups cited low wages as their reasons.

"A boycott last month of cottage cheese to protest rising prices for an Israeli staple appears to have been a symptom of widespread economic discontent that the housing protests also are tapping into," JTA says.

The Adva Center, an Israeli research institute, documents slashes in government spending on education, health care and other services, accompanied by tax cuts for corporations and the rich. It reports soaring income inequality, growing poverty, and the "shrinking of the middle class."

The research center has previously reported on the heavy economic price Israelis are paying for the continuing occupation of the Palestinian West Bank. Today's protesters are well aware that while they are being priced out of housing, the government is subsidizing housing for Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

Netanyahu said this week he recognizes a need to change his economic policies. To what, remains to be seen.

On Monday, protest leaders, including leaders of social organizations and student and youth groups, circulated a joint Vision Document, Haaretz reported. It says, "For a number of decades, the various governments of Israel have opted for an economic policy of privatization that leaves the free market without reins. This economic policy ... has become our daily existence - a war for survival to subsist with dignity."

Haaretz reported that "dozens" of nonprofit and social organizations will hold an emergency conference Wednesday. Giora Rozen, head of Israel's umbrella organization of non-profit groups, said that "there can't be a solution without dealing with Israel's poor population together with civil society organizations."

One protest organizer, Gil Sasson, told Ynet News: "We have here an unprecedented collective awakening; we are witnessing a people sobering up .... what started as a battle for affordable housing has turned into a protest movement that is snowballing and is now aiming for a system-wide change."

At the Tel-Aviv rally, a mother of five told Ynet: "Today, all the people here think that the government fails to show concern for you and I, but rather, but only cares for those who are very wealthy - that's wrong and it needs to be changed."

Photo: Thousands of Israelis march through the streets in central Tel Aviv, Saturday evening, Aug. 6, waving flags, beating drums and chanting: "Social justice for the people." (AP/Oded Balilty)