People Before Profit blog

Many in Germany see through NATO designs on Ukraine

Mon, 31 Mar 2014 13:16:00 +0000

BERLIN - The crisis in the Ukraine continues to be big news here on front pages and screens.

The major political parties here have always wanted regime change in the Ukraine and had been working to achieve it for years, setting many hopes on two opposition leaders. One was the petroleum oligarch, Yulia Timoshenko, whose suffering in a prison hospital with a long, painful back ailment evoked tearful media calls for her freedom and for treatment in Berlin's famous Charité hospital, one of the best in Europe. Now that she is free, however, and calling for the use of nuclear weaponry against Russia, the agitation on her behalf by leading German politicians has cooled down a bit.

The other was hulking (6'6") heavyweight champion Vitali Klitchko, who switched from pro boxing to a Ukrainian political career, saying modestly, "I feel the people there need me." But he kept strong ties to his adopted second homeland, Germany, where he was supported and almost certainly financed by the Adenauer Stiftung, a think tank and finance source based on Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU). In a Kiev mayoralty campaign he also hired New York's ex-GOP Mayor Giuliani as advisor, and lost, but his commanding figure and loud voice seemed to dominate demonstrations and riots on Maidan Square in Kiev, and his backers saw him as president - after regime change.

With a powerful punch and durable chin he was never knocked down as a boxer. But politically a vital error brought Vitali down. He chose the wrong manager. In that oh so embarrassing telephone call by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, she discussed in finest detail with the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev just how regime change was to be managed.

Their man, Arseny Yatsenyuk, was to be president, not boxer Klitchko or far-right anti-Semite Tyahnybok. "I don't think 'Klitsch' should go into the government... I don't think it's a good idea. I think 'Yats' is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience. He ... needs 'Klitsch' and Tyahnybok on the outside... talking to them four times a week." Then she uttered those nasty words "F*ck the EU!" - indicating Washington's true attitude towards its "eternal friends and partners for freedom and democracy" in the European Union.

A promising compromise, backed by German, French, and Polish foreign ministers, seemed to be save the day. Opposition members were to be taken into the government and new elections were to be held. The deal was scuttled by the extreme right, however, and met by a new burst of violent bloodletting on Maidan Square, mostly by masked men with fiery projectiles and sharp-shooting guns. The corrupt but nevertheless democratically elected president fled for his life. And so, believe it or not, things worked out just exactly the way Nuland had determined, with "Yats" on top and the others outside.

Merkel, the EU's leading figure, called Nuland's obscenity "absolutely unacceptable." But, like Washington's nasty snubs regarding NSA tapping of her private cellphone (and all telephones in Germany), she and most media swallowed their pride and quickly dropped the matter. After all, the Federal Republic of Germany, though a leading force in Europe, neither wished nor dared to sneak out of its almost seventy-year-old ties to the NATO leader across the Atlantic.

Nuland is not a nobody! Once Dick Cheney's foreign policy adviser and married to leading neo-con Robert Kagan, whose think-tank "Project for the New American Century" pushed military regime change in Iraq and a strategy for global control, she is a key policy-maker. Dismayed German leaders might have recalled the words of a famous countryman, King Frederick II (known as the Great): "Do not forget your big guns, which are the arguments most to be respected ..."

Such words were now dangerously relevant, no longer in a figurative sense: the U.S. Navy reported that the USS Truxtun, a guided missile destroyer and part of an aircraft carrier strike group that left the U.S. in mid-February, was to conduct "training exercises" with the Romanian and Bulgarian navies in the Black Sea. The Pentagon also said its fighter jets would join NATO patrols on missions in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia near the northern Russian borders.

Perhaps ludicrously, that other hopeful in German plans, Yulia Timoshenko, had also been bitten by the weapons bug. After her release from a prison hospital, she was whisked away at last to Berlin's Charité hospital where, after therapy swift enough to put even Lourdes to shame, she was back shouting loudly in Kiev, as if her back had never bothered her. But here again a phone call was tapped and made public, topping even Nuland in obscenity and ferocity.

Had she ruled the roost

If only she had ruled the roost, she lamented: "I'm sorry that I am unable to be there in charge of these processes; they wouldn't have had a f*ck*ng chance of getting Crimea off me... would have found a way to finish off those bastards...I hope I can use all my connections and get the whole world to rise up so that not even scorched earth will be left of Russia." As to Ukraine's eight million ethnic Russians, Timoshenko said they should be "nuked." And how she would take care of Putin!

She later apologized - for the expletives. But her remarks were so hateful and obviously hysterical, that even old friends in the German government were forced to disown - and perhaps abandon her.

Washington's vitriol was a bit less crude and not quite so hysterical - if one overlooks Hillary Clinton's comparison of Putin with Hitler. But despite Germany's loss of influence and that EU- insult, Merkel, Vice-Chancellor Gabriel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier climbed onto Obama's anti-Putin train, and joined in calling for sanctions and other vague measures. But it displayed a little hesitancy, even moderation.

The German media were not so moderate; anti-Russian headline belligerency in rags like BILD made some wonder at their seeming forgetfulness about the death of at least 25 million Soviet soldiers and civilians after the German invasion 75 years ago, facts which Putin could hardly forget when he saw NATO forces, allegedly barred from expansion eastward in 1990, advancing menacingly, closer and closer to the heart of Russia.

Some saw in Merkel's more measured tones a recollection of early visits to the Soviet Union and her knowledge of Russian. Others noted that opinion polls show over half of German citizens viewing Putin's moves in Crimea as understandable or justified and while they may well worry about military maneuvers or statements like Sen. McCain's that "eventually Russians will come for Mr. Putin in the same way and for the same reasons that Ukrainians came for Viktor Yanukovich," they simply laugh when John Kerry, curiously forgetting Iraq, says: "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext."

But a more convincing explanation for Merkel's rather moderate tone is that six thousand German companies export $60 billion worth of goods to Russia in a year and receive plenty of valuable oil and gas in exchange. But all the same, while calling for negotiations on the crisis and even urging the new Kiev rulers to undertake "reforms in regard to human rights," German leaders are making to keep some toes in Ukrainian politics; despite mounting evidence of extreme right-wing elements in the ruling clique and increasing tales of vicious anti-Semitism and discrimination against Russians, they maintain their support, most recently offering to train police forces there!

But while the media fulminated against Putin two voices from the past suddenly contradicted all of them. Right-wing Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt, chancellor from 1979 to 1982 and now 95, is still sagely quoted by the media on almost every topic. But no more, for he defied a major no-no and defended Vladimir Putin's Crimea policy! "I find it completely understandable," he said and added his doubts that it violated international law. And the planned punitive sanctions, he said, were "stupid nonsense."

Then another former right-wing Social Democrat popped up, Gerhard Schröder, chancellor from 1998 to 2005. He upset people even more by admitting that he had himself violated international law as chancellor when Germany joined in the Kosovo war against Serbia. Kosovo, he said, was a blueprint for what was now happening. And he compared the referendum of Crimean Russians and their breakaway from the Ukraine with Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia.

But such words smashed precious chinaware - and many political taboos, especially for the party of the Greens, once seen as leftish. It was their boss and foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, who had justified the bombing of Serbia as a great humanitarian mission, like freeing Auschwitz. Now his one-time partner, Schroeder, had demolished that position. And it was the current leading Greens who were outdoing all the others in angry words and loud threats against Putin and Russia, almost as wildly as Yulia Timoshenko.

A weird resolution

Two leading Greens in the European Parliament proposed a weird resolution that Schröder should "make no more public statements on subjects concerning Russia." This gag rule got nowhere. Then another prominent Green sent out, on Twitter and Facebook, a photo montage showing Sahra Wagenknecht of the Left Party backed up by tough-looking Russian soldiers with Kalashnikovs and the words "News Item: Left Party now for foreign troop deployment." This also went too far for fair-minded Greens, while top party leaders justified it as an intended provocation aimed at calling attention to pro-Russian sentiments by some Left Party leaders - "as in former years."

The intent was clear: to win away Left votes in the coming European Parliament election while encouraging a split in the Left Party between "reformers" and "radicals," thus demolishing the party, always a rival in winning voters and currently neck and neck in opinion polls (at 10 percent each).

There were indeed differences in the Left Party, with some defending Putin's Crimean policy as a reaction to the menace of having Russia surrounded and cut out of vital Black Sea seaports. Others, like caucus head and best-known party figure Gregor Gysi, criticized Putin for violating international law but went on to hit harder still at the NATO and EU forces which had so obviously built up the Ukrainian threat to Russian safety - and now supported a force in Kiev including extreme right-wingers and fascists like Oleh Tyahnybok who gave Hitler salutes, denounced the "criminal activities" of "organized Jewry" and praised Ukrainian nationalist hero Stepan Bandera, who had "fought against the Russians, Germans, Jews, and other scum who wanted to take away our Ukrainian state." (For the terms "Russians" and "Jews" he used extremely derogatory slur words.)

In order to avoid a split in the Left party a compromise was reached and Gysi reprimanded Putin but warned vigorously about the dangers from the neo-Nazis, who even had ties to Germany's neo-Nazi NPD party. For this the Left was denounced and again ostracized by all the others, especially the Greens. They all insisted on ignoring or playing down the dangers in Kiev as secondary or controllable: "The opposition party in the newly elected parliament does not yet show obvious extreme right-wing tendencies in its parliamentary work," it was asserted.

There were a few others, aside from the Left Party who, like Schröder and Schmidt, had some courage. Günter Verheugen, 69, once a right-wing SPD leader and European Commissioner, warned clearly (but largely ignored): "The problem is not really in Moscow or here with us. The problem is in Kiev, where we now have the first government in the 21st century in which fascists are seated."

Photo: Ukrainians celebrate reunification with Russia. AP

Cuban doctors attend to Brazil's underserved

Fri, 28 Mar 2014 16:57:00 +0000

Cuban family doctor Teresa Rosales has been working in Brejo da Madre de Deus (Swamp of the Mother of God) in impoverished, drought-stricken Pernambuco state in Brazil since September 2013. Patients, she reports, are grateful. They are "on their knees on the floor thanking God. They give kisses.

"What we Cuban doctors see primarily is humanity," says compatriot Angela Zunila; "I want to help the Brazilian people improve their heath." Now working in Canarana in Bahia, she and her physician husband served as doctors previously in South Africa and Venezuela. Their 3-year-old son remains in Cuba under his grandmother's care.

Rosales, Zunila, and 400 other Cuban doctors arrived in Brazil in September 2013 under a bi-national agreement mediated by the Pan-American Health Organization. Some 5000 were on hand at the end of November and 2000 more arrived in mid January 2014.

They are part of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's "More Doctors" program joined too by several hundred physicians from Uruguay, Argentina, Spain, and Portugal and 1096 from Brazil itself. According to Health Minister Fernando Menezes, they are serving in "areas with a low index of human development, most of whose people live in extreme poverty." Eventually 15,000 doctors will be caring for 100 million Brazilians living in 4070 municipalities in 26 states . Opinion surveys estimate that from 74 to 85 percent of Brazilians are enthusiastic about the program.

Rousseff introduced "More Doctors" in July 2013 following nationwide protests over health care and public transportation deficiencies. Brazil's Constitution guarantees health care for all, yet Brazil has only 1.8 doctors per 1000 persons. The U.S. rate is 2.4/1000, Argentina's is 3.2/1000, Spain's rate is 4.0/1000, and Cuba claims 6.7 physicians for 1000 people. Brazilian healthcare is marred by disparities in health services between rich and poor, between cities and the countryside. Almost half of Brazilians lack ready access to primary care.

Cuba was ready to respond to the Brazilian request. Medical schools there regularly graduate 10 percent more physicians than are needed at home. Beginning with Algeria in 1963, Cuba has sent no less than 134,849 doctors to 107 countries. Presently 40,000 Cuban health care providers are serving in 58 countries.

Cubans cite purposes of human solidarity, humanitarianism, and "South-South" cooperation." Now new demands emerge related to Cuba's efforts to steer its economy toward sustainability. Cuba is counting on resource-rich countries like Venezuela, Qatar, South Africa, and Brazil to pay for health care collaboration. The aim is partial self-sufficiency for health care at home and international medical missions.

Brazilian funds transferred to Cuba cover the $4200 monthly payment due on behalf of Cuban doctors slated to work in Brazil for three years. Doctors similarly involved from other countries receive the same pay. Cuba's new sustainability ethos dictates that the government retains two thirds of that amount. Originally, Cuban doctors in Brazil were receiving room and board, plus $1000 per month, divided between $400 available at once and $600 deposited into an account in Cuba. While doctors are abroad, their families are receiving payments equivalent to their former salaries in Cuba. But these arrangements changed.

Brazilian doctors' organizations claimed that Cuban doctors represented "slave labor" and were poorly trained. That Brazilian medical students educated in Cuba scored higher on qualifying exams helped dispel the latter notion. And as of February, 2014, the amount Cuban doctors received increased to $1245 per month, with $1000 of that delivered to them in Brazi l. Relatively high living expenses in Brazil and the early departure of a few Cuban doctors may have prompted the pay hike.

In fact, Brazil's use of Cuban doctors re-opened wounds left over from the U.S. Cuban Medical Professional Parole program (CMPP). The U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security had jointly launched the program in 2006, assigning administrative tasks to the Cuban American National Foundation, a well-known sponsor of anti-Cuban terror attacks. The goal was to induce Cuban health workers on international missions to defect and, further, to score propaganda points and "undermine Cuban medical diplomacy." Provisions of the 1965 Cuban Adjustment Act enabled defectors to gain permanent U.S. residence and expect citizenship.

During the first eight months of the "More Doctors" program," at least 25 Cuban doctors dropped out. Most returned to Cuba, but at least two migrated to the United States under CPPP auspices. Cuban journalist José Manzaneda highlights the irony of worldwide media silence on the program itself and unrestrained news coverage of Cuban doctor Ramona Matos Rodríguez, who ended up in Miami by way of the U.S. embassy in Brasilia.

President Rousseff's affection for the Cuban doctors is no secret. Offering Facebook commentary on an article in the Porto Alegre newspaper Zero Hora, she observed that, "They are few but are profoundly changing in Brazil the way professionals act in the area of health care and doctor-patient relations. ... They are here to change the profile of preventative medicine in Brazil. They dress simply, keep their house clean, and carry their own snacks for lunch. They are systematic, dedicated to the treatment of patients, and furthermore are partygoers, like Brazilians. They are breaking the barrier of prejudices and the corporation-derived style of Brazilian professionals."

Obama, Francis find common ground on income inequality

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 15:32:00 +0000

VATICAN CITY (AP) - President Obama and the Vatican gave distinctly different accounts of the president's audience with Pope Francis on Thursday, with Obama stressing their common ground on poverty and inequality but Vatican officials emphasizing concerns over Obama's health care law, which mandates contraception coverage.

Obama described himself as "incredibly moved" by his nearly hour-long session with the popular pontiff. He said the two spent the most time discussing the plight of the poor and the marginalized as well as regions of conflict and the elusive nature of peace around the world.

The Vatican, in a statement shortly after the meeting, said discussions centered on questions of particular relevance for the church in the U.S., "such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life, and conscientious objection" - issues that have fueled divisions between Obama and the church.

Contraception coverage and religious freedom have been central to the church's objections to Obama's health care law, which is facing a challenge on those grounds before the Supreme Court.

But Obama said those discussions took place with the Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, not with Francis. "We actually didn't talk a whole lot about social schisms in my conversations with His Holiness," he added. "In fact, that really was not a topic of conversation."

"I was grateful to have the opportunity to speak with him about the responsibilities that we all share to care for the least of these, the poor, the excluded," Obama said later during a news conference with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Rome. "And I was extremely moved by his insights about the importance of us all having a moral perspective on world problems and not simply thinking in terms of our own narrow self-interests."

The marked difference in emphasis introduced a perplexing element to the long-anticipated meeting, which the White House has looked forward to as way to validate Obama's economic policies. In a report on Vatican Radio the day before the meeting, the Vatican had signaled that the divisive issues would indeed be on the agenda.

Obama emerged visibly energized from his audience with the pope, during which he invited Francis to visit the White House.

"It is a great honor. I'm a great admirer," Obama said after greeting the pope with a slight bow as they shook hands. "Thank you so much for receiving me."

Although Obama and the church remain deeply split over social issues, Obama considers the pontiff a kindred spirit on issues of inequality, and their private meeting in the Papal Library ran longer than scheduled. After they emerged to cameras, Francis presented Obama with a copy of his papal mission statement decrying a global economic system that excludes the poor. Obama said he would keep it at the White House.

"You know, I actually will probably read this when I'm in the Oval Office, when I am deeply frustrated and I am sure it will give me strength and will calm me down," Obama said.

"I hope," the pope responded.

Obama is the ninth president to make an official visit to the Vatican. Later, Obama recalled the meeting as an elevated discussion about the role of empathy in public and private life.

"It's the lack of empathy that makes it very easy for us to plunge to wars," he said. "It's the lack of empathy that allows us to ignore the homeless on the streets."

But he also said that while he shared the pope's economic views, he didn't expect Francis to form a coalition or partnership with him on any issue.

"His job is a little more elevated," Obama said with a chuckle. "We're down on the ground, dealing with the often profane, and he's dealing with higher powers."

Obama arrived at the Vatican amid all the pomp and tradition of the Catholic Church, making his way in a long, slow procession through the hallways of the Apostolic Palace led by colorful Swiss Guards and accompanied by ceremonial attendants. The two greeted one another in the Small Throne Room, before sitting across from one another at the pope's desk, as is custom for a papal audience.

Obama presented the pope with a seed chest with fruit and vegetable seeds used in the White House garden, mentioning that he understands the pope is opening the gardens at the papal summer residence to the public. The chest was inscribed with the date of their meeting and custom-made of leather and reclaimed wood from the Baltimore Basilica - one of the oldest Catholic cathedrals in the U.S.

"If you have a chance to come to the White House, we can show you our garden as well," Obama said.

"Why not?" the pope responded in his native Spanish.

Although the Vatican has not yet confirmed the trip, it is likely that Francis will travel to the U.S. in September 2015 for the church's World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. Popes have attended these family celebrations five of the past seven times they have been held, and Francis has put family issues at the forefront of his agenda.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has extended an invitation to the pope to address Congress when he visits the United States.

As Obama departed, he asked the pope, "Please pray for me and my family."

It was an echo of how Francis usually ends his meetings, asking for people to pray for him.

Photo: Gabriel Bouys/AP

Cuban medical professionals working around the world

Thu, 27 Mar 2014 13:45:00 +0000

Solidarity is a way of life for the Cuban people and their elected government. Currently this solidarity in seen in the number of Cuban doctors and other medical professionals that are working in countries outside of Cuba. They number more than 50,000. They are providing services in 66 countries found in Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. In Brazil there will be 11,430 by the end of March of this year. These medical personnel also serve to help the Cuban economy since they generate over $6 billion a year for the Cuban people from the compensation paid for their servicres. This amount is more than twice the $2.5 billion generated by tourism to the tropical island paradise.

One might think, "Well what about the medical needs in Cuba?" A fair question. Roberto Morales, the minister of health care in Cuba, assured the daily news paper Juventud Rebelde that people's medical coverage in Cuba is not affected by the solidarity being provided overseas by Cuban doctors and other medical professionals. In fact, by United Nations Standards, Cuban people have one of the best health care delivery systems in the world. Morales went on to say that there is no justification for deficiencies related to lack of cleanliness, providing of meals, bed clothing and worker dicipline which can all tarnish the work of medical personnel in Cuba.

The president of Cuba, Raul Castro, announced in February a pay increase scheduled for medical sector workers because the main income for the Cuban econony comes from the work done by so many doctors and medical professionals working in these other countries.

Roberto Morales also spoke about the shortages in Cuba in "materials and technologies" in some hospitals, clinics and doctor's offices and he announced for this year an investment of $91 million to buy replacement items and equipment and to introduce new technologies to address these shortages.

Photo: Students head to class at the Latin American Medical School (ELAM) in Havana, Cuba. Javier Galeamo/AP

Exxon Mobil deal with Ukraine factors in Russia’s Crimea policy

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 15:31:00 +0000

The August 2012 awarding of rights to develop a major natural gas find in the Black Sea near Crimea to a consortium led by Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell may have strongly predisposed Russia to support the referendum which resulted in the reunion of Crimea with Russia. The Skifska gas field is estimated to hold recoverable gas reserves in the range of 200-250 billion cubic meters. The field is likely to produce five billion cubic meters of gas annually once developed.

The Skifska gas field was not the only reason for Russian support of the referendum - NATO threats to the Black Sea Fleet base at Sevastopol and the possibility of NATO nuclear weapons being stationed on Russia's borders, as well as the coup which brought virulent nationalist and neo-nazi political parties to power and threats to the Russophone population of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, were the primary reasons. However, it was certainly a major consideration.

A consortium of Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Romania's OMV Petrom, and Ukraine's state oil company, Nadra Ukrainy, outbid Russia's OAO Lukoil Holdings to gain access to the field. A predetermined condition of the tender required the winning group to compensate the government with 2.4 billion hryvnias (roughly $300 million) subsequent to signing the 50-year production sharing agreement. This payment to the Ukrainian government has been lost by the investors as a result of Crimea's nationalization of the field and the Crimean companies who originally held the rights.

Russia intends to use Gazprom - the Russian firm which is the world's largest natural gas exporter - to develop the off-shore gas reserves of Chornomornaftohaz and Ukrtransgaz, two firms nationalized by the Crimean parliament which held the rights to the Skifska field before the auction. By reuniting Crimea with Russia, Russia gained control of about 70 percent of Ukraine's Black Sea off-shore oil and gas drilling rights.

The Skifska deal paralleled the deal which doomed the economic fortunes of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who tried to sell a controlling interest in the Russian Yukos oil company to Exxon Mobil in 2003. The government of President Vladimir Putin reacted decisively to the proposed deal which would have put Russia in the position of paying Exxon Mobil for its own oil. Khodorkovsky was prosecuted in 2003 for fraud and tax evasion, and in 2010 for embezzlement and money laundering. He was amnestied by the Duma in 2013 after serving ten years in prison and permitted to go abroad.

Revenue from the Skifska field will easily allow Russia to weather any Western economic sanctions, as Russia moves to concentrate oil and gas exports in Asia and away from Western Europe, focusing on expanding ties to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as it completes a major pipeline terminating on the Pacific.

Control of the Skifska field also tightens Russia's hold over Ukrainian access to gas and oil. Sixty-five percent of Ukraine's natural gas is currently imported from Russia, and Russia has indicated that it intends to charge the new government in Kiev full market price for gas and oil exports, as well as to press Ukraine for repayment of more than $50 billion in debts to Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Photo: Crimeans celebrate reunification with Russia. AP

Socialist Bachelet returns to Chile presidency

Mon, 24 Mar 2014 12:17:00 +0000

For the second time, Michelle Bachelet was sworn in as president of Chile, Mar. 11. Bachelet's first term as president of Chile ran from 2006 to 2010. After her term ended, she was chosen to head "UN Women," a newly created United Nations entity that promotes gender equality. The Chilean Constitution prevented Bachelet from running for two consecutive terms.

Bachelet accepted the presidential sash from Senate President Isabel Allende, the daughter of Chile's late Socialist president, Salvador Allende. Both women have had remarkable lives given the hardships both have had to endure.

Bachelet's father Air Force General Alberto Bachelet was loyal to democracy and to the democratically elected Allende presidency, but because of this on September 11, 1973, the day of the Pinochet/Nixon-Kissinger coup, he was jailed. General Bachelet died March 12, 1974, in one of Pinochet's prisons; he died of a heart attack after being tortured. Michelle Bachelet and her mother were also imprisoned for a short time but fortunately they were able to flee the country spending about a year in Cuba and 15 years in Mexico.

Another interesting milestone for Bachelet was that prior to her winning the presidency she had spent time as head of the Chilean military. An action taken to ensure that the abuses of the past would never happen again.

Bachelet has made one of her primary goals to be improving Chile's education system. She has said she will increase taxes on corporations and the very wealthy.

2014 brought two firsts since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship: Michelle Bachelet as a two-term president and the other is Allende being the first woman Senate president. Even more important to many is the symbolism: the daughters of democratic Chile elected as the country's top leaders.

"Symbolically it's very potent," said Camila Vallejo, the former student leader who rose to international prominence during the 2011 rebellion against then-President Sebastian Pinera's education policies. Vallejo was elected to parliament last year on the Communist Party ticket, advocating for human rights and gender equality as top priorities for the new government, the BBC reported.

Bachelet's election continues the trend of left and left-center governments throughout South and Central America, including Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Jose Mujica of Uruguay, Ollanta Humala of Peru, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, and most recently, Salvador Sanchez of El Salvador.

Photo: President Michele Bachelet receives Chile's presidential sash from Senate President Isabel Allende, March 11 in Santiago. AP

Canadians fight voter suppression efforts

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 17:06:00 +0000

VANCOUVER - Opposition continues to grow against efforts by the right-wing Conservative government of Stephen Harper to impose voter suppression legislation in Canada.

In "An Open Letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Parliament of Canada", 150 political scientists across Canada are calling on the Conservatives to reconsider key parts of Bill C-23. They claim that ending the practice of allowing one person to vouch for another person (used by 120,00 people in the 2011 elections) who does not have ID will only discourage voting and this change was never warranted because there is no evidence that people are misusing vouching to fraudulently vote. "By eliminating vouching, the Fair Elections Act would disenfranchise many of these citizens."

It criticizes the creation of the new Elections Commissioner in charge of investigating electoral fraud who will have no power to call witnesses or require parties to keep receipts or documents about spending, "which makes it impossible to ensure compliance with spending limits."

The letter charges that Bill C-23, which increases campaign donations from $1,200 to $1,500, allows fundraising as an election expense and permits candidates to donate $5,000 to their own campaigns, will only benefit large parties with big donor's lists and increase the role of big money in influencing electoral results. " Allowing money to influence electoral outcomes stands at stark odds with principles of political equality and democratic fairness. In contrast to our neighbor to the south, Canada has consistently recognized that allowing money into the political arena prevents those without financial backing from being heard and discourages participation when citizens perceive that the playing field of politics tilts toward wealth."

The letter criticized the legislation for barring Elections Canada [the independent, non-partisan agency responsible for conducting federal elections and referendums]from directly communicating with Canadians about electoral fraud or to promote voter participation. "Bizarrely, the Bill forbids Elections Canada from promoting democratic participation and voting through 'get out the vote' campaigns. Elections Canada would even be prevented from publishing its research reports on the electoral process. This gag on Elections Canada would make Canada an outlier among liberal democracies, instead of the global leader it now is."

More objections to Bill C-23

The political scientists object to Bill C-23 allowing political parties that came first in the last election to appoint poll supervisors to oversee elections in each polling station, rather than a neutral person selected by Elections Canada. "Electoral irregularities are often the result of partisan calculations by people working in polling stations."

The Conservatives said recently they will amend Bill C-23 to allow the Chief Elections Officer to speak his mind on election matters, however, they will not withdraw other proposed changes. The legislation in its current form muzzles the Chief Elections Officer. The Conservatives claim that Bill C-23, which they have dubbed "the Fair Elections Act", is intended to fight electoral fraud.

Leadnow [An independent advocacy organization that brings generations of Canadians together to achieve progress through democracy.]recently delivered 53,000 signatures collected online to Parliament calling on the Harper government to drop the legislation and has run radio ads. The group is planning to stage cross country demonstrations in front of the offices of Conservative Member's of Parliament (MPs) in ridings across Canada on March 25 "to stop the Conservative's new election law from making U.S. style voter suppression a part of Canadian law."

The center left New Democratic Party (NDP), the official opposition in Canada's Parliament, has launched a website "SaveYourVote.ca" to collect signatures online against the legislation and its MPs in Ottawa continue to filibuster the legislation to slow down passage. "Hundred of thousands of voters will be prevented from exercising their right to vote if Bill C-23 is adopted", stated leader Tom Mulcair. "There is a groundswell of opposition to this bill and we believe Canadians should be allowed to express themselves-and as elected officials, it is our duty to make sure they are heard."

"The Conservative refusal to hear from Canadians is a slap in the face. Stephen Harper is trying to skew the rules unilaterally to benefit his own party, a dangerous and unprecedented move in our democracy," said NDP Deputy leader David Christopherson. NDP MPs intend to fan out across Canada and hold their own public hearings on Bill C-23.

Critics are alarmed with the haste in which the Harper Conservatives are pushing through the 242-page bill. One day after introducing it to Parliament, the Conservatives-who control 54 percent of seats-moved a motion to limit debate. The Conservatives then refused opposition requests to hold public hearings on the bill, saying it would create a circus like atmosphere.

Parliament is on a break and debate on the bill is expected to resume in committee on March 25.

Critics believe that the Harper Conservative government is retaliating against Elections Canada for past conflicts.

Not the first accusation of rigging elections

This is not the first time the Harper Conservatives have been accused of rigging elections. In 2012, evidence emerged suggesting that the Conservative Party committed widespread election fraud to win the 2011 elections. Tens of thousands of automated phone calls were sent to non-conservative voters across Canada directing them to non-existent polling stations and altering voting results to favor Conservative party candidates. Elections Canada traced 7,000 of those phone calls to the telecommunications company Racknine in Alberta that does contract work for the Conservative Party.

Critics said the voter suppression scheme could not have been carried out without callers having access to the Conservative Party database on voters' intentions. The Conservatives are widely acknowledged to have the largest and most developed database on voters in Canada, identifying not only its own voters, but those of rival parties. Bill C-23 comes as Elections Canada is moving to conclude its investigation of the electoral fraud in the 2011 elections, dubbed "the robo call scandal", which could implicate the Conservative Party.

John Fryer, an adjunct professor of the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria, and a winner of the Order of Canada, claimed that he attended a Conservative campaign school in 2010 where it was taught that misleading phone calls to suppress voting were acceptable. Fryer said in January 2010 he received an e-mail invite from the Manning Centre for Democracy to attend a campaign school: "Intrigued, I signed up for the three-day event. Topics covered included voter identification. Discussion ensued about suppression techniques. Instructors explained voter suppression tactics were borrowed from those used by the U.S. Republican Party," wrote Fryer in a letter published by the Vancouver Sun and Globe and Mail newspapers in 2011.

"Many kinds of suppression calls were canvassed. Another instructor gave detailed explanations of how robo-calls worked, techniques for recording messages plus costs involved. He distributed his business card upon request. Instructors made clear that robo-calling and voter suppression were perfectly acceptable and a normal part of winning political campaigns."

"The denials now expressed by the Prime Minister and his Parliamentary associates thus ring hollow if not something worse. Having attended this Campaign School it's obvious that for Conservatives voter suppression strategies are standard in their playbook on how to conduct elections."

"Having thus lowered their standard of election ethics to that of their Republican cousins it is hardly surprising that the result is a so-called majority government that was voted for by 39 percent of the 61 percent who managed to get to their proper polling station. A majority government supported by a mere 26 percent of Canadians," wrote Fryer.

Fryer claimed in an interview that in a question and answer session at the campaign school, attendees discussed voter suppression tactics. They talked about posing as a member of another party, and about making rude calls at inconvenient times as a strategy to get the supporter of another party to not go out and vote for their candidate.

Photo: Leadnow.ca.

South Africa: Parties split over Zuma corruption claims report

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 16:07:00 +0000

South African politicians split down party lines in their reaction to Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's report on public expenditure on President Jacob Zuma's private residence at Nkandla.

Opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko said Ms. Madonsela's findings were damning.

She demanded that Speaker Max Sisulu recall the national assembly and that Mr. Zuma be impeached "for this flagrant abuse of public money."

African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Gwede Mantashe took issue with the timing of the report's release, noting that it had "provided some ammunition to many of these parties that have nothing to offer to the electorate."

He condemned "mischievous and downright false assertions by some political pundits and opposition politicians that the ANC intends to either ignore the Public Protector's report or undermine the validity of her findings."

Mr. Mantashe said that the report confirmed the essential findings of a government report released in December.

These were that no state money had been spent on the president's private dwellings, that Mr. Zuma had told the truth when he told parliament that he had built his own home with a private mortgage, that there had been no political interference in the building project and that the personal security of presidents and deputy presidents is the responsibility of the state.

"Therefore the call by some for an impeachment of the president is a premeditated position that has nothing to do with the report presented by the Public Protector," he said.

South African Communist Party spokesman Alex Mashilo also drew attention to the timing of the report so close to the general election.

He said that Ms. Madonsela's public pronouncements since August 2012, when she addressed a DA Women's Day rally, had increasingly chimed with that party's positions.

The Public Protector's report concluded that the security work carried out by the state at Nkandla had benefited the president's private property and that he should repay 246 million rand (£13.6m).

ANC Youth League national convener Mzwandile Masina went further than Mr. Mashilo, accusing Ms. Madonsela of having "compromised herself to the bone."

She ought to "finalise the outstanding urgent tasks and do an honourable act of resigning."

Reposted from Morning Star

Photo: ANC press conference on the public protector's final report onto security upgrades in the president's Nkandla residence. ANC Flickr.

Revival of fascism a growing concern in Europe

Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:48:00 +0000

Commenting on Ukrainian developments, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius pooh-poohed the idea that there is a fascist danger:

"When one accuses that government [that has seized power in Kiev] of being on the extreme right, that's false, that's false.....there are three members of the Svoboda Party [in the interim Ukrainian cabinet].... which is a party further to the right than the others."

This statement was criticized by the Russian government and by elements of the French press. It is inaccurate; there are at least six Svoboda members in Arseny Yatsenyuk's government, as well as elements from the even more extreme Right Sektor. Far right extremists hold key positions controlling internal security, defense, the prosecutor's office and economic ministries, as well as the national bank. Further, the statement by Fabius that Svoboda is "more to the right" than other parties seems to suggest that they are a just a wee bit conservative, but most observers see them as neo-Nazi or fascist. That Yatsenyuk is of Jewish origin does not negate past anti-Semitic utterances of Svoboda leaders.

The fascist presence is real and is not confined to the Ukraine. It is found in many Eastern European countries, and some Western ones, including France itself. The growth of the Jobbik party in Hungary, the Slovak National Party in Slovakia, and others in the Balkan and Baltic countries, is evidence. In Greece the Golden Dawn party got into parliament in spite of violence against immigrants, and the crowd that backs former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Italy is riddled with fascists.

What is the root of the new burst of fascism?

Many European countries are facing an extreme economic crisis. We hear about Greece, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland, but Ukraine is in the worst shape of all, with a per-capita gross domestic product of $7,421, lowest in Europe and about the same as El Salvador.

European governments, pressured by their own ruling classes and by the "troika" of the European Central Bank, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, have tried to "resolve" the crisis almost exclusively by austerity measures: Laying off millions of public employees, cutting wages and pensions, selling off state assets and shredding the social safety net. These measures are designed to protect Europe's one percent by shifting the entire burden onto the shoulders of the most vulnerable elements of the 99 percent.

The governments say they have to impose these painful measures or they will not get any of the loans that the troika is facilitating exclusively for countries that toe its line. Spokespersons of the new Kiev regime have bluntly stated they will impose yet more austerity even if it amounts to "political suicide."

The social democratic parties, out of power, have denounced the austerity measures but, once in power, have been unable or unwilling to sharply change direction, and end up implementing the same austerity policies. Discredited and thrown out of power, they are replaced by openly right-wing parties. This has happened in Greece, Spain, and Portugal and, if elections were held today, would happen in France too.

On the left, the communist parties and their allies have worked consistently, along with the unions, to organize mass resistance to austerity. They would like to replace the top down "unity" of the European Union and Eurozone with international working-class solidarity, but are not yet strong enough.

On the far right, the Svoboda-type of extremist party tries to shift the focus of the people's anger to scapegoats: Jews, immigrants, Roma, minorities, neighboring countries, gay people, communists, and the left. Their anti-austerity rhetoric and their nationalistic railing against the European Union are demagogic and serve ruling class interests.

The communists and allies have some grassroots strength in some countries (Portugal, Czech Republic, and Ukraine). In others, they are not as strong, and in yet others they are repressed. In many countries the fascist ultra-right is advancing. That people like Mr. Fabius, a nominal socialist, denigrate fears about a fascist resurgence adds to the peril, especially as his government has tried to neutralize France's fascists (the Frente Nacional) by borrowing from their anti-Roma program.

The anti-communism of the fascist and neo-Nazi ultra right, which has involved demands by Svoboda for the banning of the Communist Party and attacks not only on statues of Lenin, but of monuments to soldiers who fought and died in the struggle against Hitler, has the practical purpose of weakening the right's most most natural rivals for the allegiance of the discontented victims of the crisis-the communists themselves.

On Mar. 16 neo-Nazis marched in Riga, Latvia, to "honor" surviving Latvian Waffen SS troops who served in World War II. Anti-Nazis who wanted to enter Latvia to participate in counter demonstrations were stopped. The Latvian prime minister found it necessary to fire her environment minister, Einars Cilinskis, of the National Party, because he marched with the SS men in defiance of her orders.

Photo: Scene from a recent protest against racism and neo-Nazism near Athens, Greece. AP

Free Bahareh Hedayat, Iranian student leader, women's rights activist

Fri, 14 Mar 2014 16:56:00 +0000

Bahareh Hedayat will be 32 years old next month. She looks likely to mark that birthday in prison unless the Iranian government can be persuaded to free her.

Hedayat is one of the leaders of the powerful student movement in Iran and a woman's rights activist. She was a member of the executive committee and spokesperson for Iran's pro-democracy student movement, the Daftar-e Takhim-Vahdat (Office for Consolidating Unity). She was also an initiator and active in the One Million Signatures Campaign that seeks to end legal discrimination against women in Iran.

Hedayat has been sentenced to nine and a half years in prison and is serving that time in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

Around midnight on Dec. 31, 2009, she was arrested by the Intelligence Ministry of the theocratic regime in Iran for the fifth time in four years and taken to unit 209 of Evin prison. Hedayat met with one of the harshest punishments ordered against the student activist movement over recent years. She was sentenced for participating in legal, peaceful activities and for challenging the existing discriminatory laws against women.

The injustices and oppression inflicted upon Hedayat are retaliation for her activism as a female university student. The sentence imposed upon her by a Tehran court comprised two years for "insulting the Supreme Leader"; six months for "insulting the President"; and five years for "acting against national security and publishing falsehoods." She was also sentenced to an additional two years in prison for "acting against national security through holding a protest gathering for women," currently suspended.

Hedayat is suffering from serious health issues that require urgent medical attention, without which her life could be in danger.

As well as Bahareh Hedayat at least 14 other high-profile women rights campaigners are incarcerated in Iran's political prisons for demanding their rights. In recent weeks, we have witnessed the passing of inhumane long-term jail sentences against a number of women activists.

One such example is Mariam Shafi' Pour, a university student activist who was arrested in 2010, in Qazvin. She was suspended from the university and was expelled in her eighth term at the university. She had been sentenced to one year's suspended sentence, but this was extended to seven years after 67 days in solitary confinement. She suffered torture and beatings, because she had refused to admit to crimes she had not committed. She had been threatened by her interrogator that she would get a long sentence, and her seven-year sentence suggests the power of interrogators in the judicial system.

This year, the Democratic Organization of Iranian Women celebrates the 71^st anniversary of its foundation. In all these years the organization has campaigned tirelessly for women's rights and freedoms, and against traditionalist and reactionary laws.

However, the regime in Tehran continues to consider laws that worsen the lives of women in Iran and marginalize them in the economic and social arenas.

In March last year, the employment of women by the state became limited to those who work part-time. Their salaries, benefits and pensions were halved accordingly. The presence of women in workplaces has been limited further by the introduction of home work for women. This is publicized as a progressive move to enable women to look after their children by working from home.

The last government (under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) initiated a policy for increasing the population by closing down the Family Planning Unit in 2010. The Minister of Health at the time said, "The Ministry's Pregnancy Prevention programs have been removed completely. No birth control is promoted any more - on the contrary - the Ministry of Health's new policy is population growth."

In the education sphere the regime has introduced the strict segregation of sexes in universities. The opening of 10 women-only universities in different towns and cities in Iran was heralded as the dawn of the Islamization of universities. There has been a significant reduction in the acceptance of women in universities.

Against this background women such as Bahareh Hedayat, who are prepared to make their voices heard and speak out for the rights of Iranian women, continue to be dealt with severely.

Since his election as president in August 2013, Hassan Rouhani has been trying to present a more liberal face to the West, to give the impression that conditions for the opposition in Iran are not as harsh as solidarity movements suggest. It is worth noting that the security forces prevented hundreds of women from holding an International Women's Day celebration last Saturday, March 8.

While some political prisoners were freed in September and on the eve of Rouhani's much publicized appearance and speech at the General Assembly of the United Nations, many are still languishing in prisons. The continued incarceration of Bahareh Hedayat and others gives the lie to Rouhani's claims of liberalization.

The women's movement in Iran has gained itself a prominent place in the struggle of the Iranian people for freedom and equal rights. It has been intelligent in its choice of tactics to reach the masses and to publicize its demands. Over the last decade the women of Iran have been at the forefront of major campaigns against the reactionary rulers of Iran. The One Million Signatures Campaign organized by progressive women against discrimination and inequality against women was very successful in galvanizing women, gaining international recognition and support and forcing the regime to notice. The persecution and imprisonment of the activists has not succeeded in silencing it.

On the occasion of International Women's Day 2014, the Committee for the Defense of the Iranian People's Rights (CODIR) renewed its call for the release of Bahareh Hedayat; renewed its call for the Islamic Republic of Iran to grant equal status in law to its female citizens; and reaffirmed its solidarity with the women in particular, and the people of Iran in general, in their struggle to achieve true peace and democracy.

CODIR calls upon all those concerned for women's rights and freedom in Iran to put pressure upon the Iranian government to free political prisoners in general, and to release Bahareh Hedayat in particular. If the claims of President Rouhani to be leading a more liberal regime are to have any credence, such action would be a small but necessary first step.

Photo: Bahareh Hedayat. United4Iran CC

WikiLeaks shows NATO’s role in Ukraine crisis

Wed, 12 Mar 2014 13:53:00 +0000

Is the Russian occupation of the Crimea a case of aggressive expansionism by Moscow or aimed at blocking a scheme by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to roll right up to Russia's western border? WikiLeaks has revealed a secret cable describing a meeting between French and American diplomats that suggests the latter, a plan that has been in the works since at least 2009.

Titled "A/S Gordon's meeting with policy makers in Paris," the cable summarizes a Sept. 16, 2009 get-together between Philip Gordon, then assistant U.S. Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and French diplomats Jean-David Levitte, Damien Loras, and Francois Richier. Gordon is currently a special assistant to President Obama on the Middle East.

While the bulk of the cable covers an exchange of views concerning Iran, the second to last item is entitled "NATO's enlargement and strategic concept." At this point Levitte, former French ambassador to the U.S. from 2002 to 2007, interjects that "[French] President [Nicholas] Sarkozy was 'convinced' that Ukraine would one day be a member of NATO, but that there was no point in rushing the process and antagonizing Russia, particularly if the Ukrainian public was largely against membership." Gordon goes on to paraphrase Levitte's opinion that, "the Bucharest summit declaration was very clear that NATO had an open door and Ukraine and Georgia have a vocation in NATO."

Levitte is currently a fellow at the conservative Brookings Institute.

At the April 2008 NATO summit in Romania, Croatia and Albania were asked to join - they did so in 2009 - and postponed a decision concerning Georgia and Ukraine until December 2008. But in August, Georgian forces attacked the breakaway province of South Ossetia - possibly under the delusion that NATO would come to their aid - setting off a short and disastrous war with Russia. The vote on Georgia and Ukraine was shelved both by that war and a Gallup Poll indicating that 40 percent of Ukrainians considered NATO a threat, while only 17 percent had a favorable view of the alliance.

The move by NATO to extend the alliance to the Russian border is a controversial one that violates the spirit, if not the letter, of a February 1990 agreement between then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, and Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany.

The issue at the time was Germany and NATO. Under the treaty ending World War II, the Soviets had a right to keep troops in Eastern Germany. The U.S. and the Germans were trying to negotiate a reunion of the two Germanys that would remove the 380,000 Soviet troops in the East, while maintaining U.S. and NATO forces in the West.

The Russians were willing to exit their troops, but only if U.S. and NATO forces did not fill the vacuum. On Feb. 9, Gorbachev told Baker "any extension of the zone of NATO would be unacceptable." Baker assured him that "NATO's jurisdiction would not shift one inch eastward."

The Baker-Gorbachev meeting was followed the next day by a meeting between Gorbachev and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who assured the Soviet leader that "naturally NATO could not expand its territory" into East Germany. And, in a parallel meeting between West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, Genscher told Shevardnadze "for us, it stands firm: NATO will not expand to the East."

But none of the assurances were put in writing and, as the Soviet Union began to implode, the agreement was ignored and NATO forces moved into the old East Germany. Despite Russian President Boris Yeltsin's complaint that NATO's eastward march "violated the spirit" of the agreement, Russia was in no position to do anything about it.

As former New Republic editor Peter Beinart notes in The Atlantic, the decision to expand NATO was considered to be "recklessly provocative" by a number of foreign policy experts. "As eminent Cold War historian John Lewis wrote, "Historians - normally so contentious - are in uncharacteristic agreement: with remarkably few exceptions, they see NATO enlargement as ill-considered, ill-timed, and above all ill-suited to the realities of the post-Cold War world."

But with Russia severely weakened, Cold War triumphalism took over: President Bill Clinton took NATO to war in Yugoslavia in 1995, and put troops into Bosnia. By 1997 Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO, followed in 2004 by seven Soviet bloc countries, including former Soviet republics Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. NATO's "Partnership for Peace" was expanded to include the former Soviet Republics of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

The recent "bailout" offer to Ukraine by the European Union contained a clause that would have tied Kiev to the EU's military organization.

In short, Russians feel like they are surrounded by hostile forces, a fact critics of Moscow's moves in the Crimea should keep in mind.

The danger of pushing a military alliance up to the borders of a potential adversary was made clear this week when NATO began deploying forces in the Baltics and Poland, and the U.S. sent a guided missile destroyer into the Black Sea.

The Pentagon announced it was sending F-16 fighter-bombers and F-15 fighters to Poland and the Baltic States, as well as C-130 transport planes and RC-135 aerial tankers. In the case of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, this will result in an increase in NATO forces on Russia's northern border.

The USS Truxtun is an Arleigh Burke class destroyer armed with cruise missiles and anti-ship Harpoon missiles. Cruise missiles can carry a nuclear warhead. According to the U.S. Navy, the Truxtun's mission has nothing to do with the crisis in the Ukraine but is simply carrying out joint maneuvers with the tiny Romanian and Bulgarian navies.

It is unlikely that the USS Truxtun will go looking for trouble or that the F-15s and F-16s will play chicken with Russian MIGs and Sukhois, but mistakes happen, particularly when tensions are high. It is exactly the current situation that Gorbachev was trying to avoid back in 1990, and why NATO's relentless march east puts more than the Ukraine in harm's way.

This article was originally posted at Conn Hallinan's blog Dispatches from the Edge.

Photo: MONS, Belgium - U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Frank Kisner, commander of NATO's Special Operations Headquarters, and other U.S. millitary brass participate in a groundbreaking ceremony for construction of a $20 million NATO Special Operations Headquarters in Mons, Belgium. Carol E. Davis/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers CC

Congressional backing of Venezuela protests raises tough questions

Wed, 12 Mar 2014 13:04:00 +0000

With violent anti-government protests continuing in Venezuela since early February, Florida Republican Rep. Elena Ros-Lehtinen introduced a resolution entitled "Supporting the People of Venezuela as They Protest Peacefully for Democracy, a Reduction in Violent Crime and Calling for an End to Recent Violence."

On Mar. 4 Congress approved Resolution 488 by a 393-1 margin. All House Democrats gave assent except for seven who, with 29 Republicans, did not vote. A procedure called "suspension of the rules" was in force. It's used for "legislation of non-controversial bills."

Realities in Venezuela contradict the resolution's assumptions. House members following Ros-Lehtinen's lead were blind to the truth, or disregarded it. More importantly, they signaled congressional approval for expanded U.S. hostilities against Venezuela's current government.

As of Mar. 7, Venezuelan security forces had killed three people, one a government supporter. Opposition protesters had shot five people dead, three of whom were National Guard soldiers. Opposition roadblocks caused six additional deaths and indirectly led to 30 more deaths of people unable to reach emergency services. Despite all of this, the government arrested intelligence officers violating orders not to confront protesters

Foreign and domestic media have misrepresented protesters' backing and their identity. Protests play out mainly in 18 of 335 municipalities, all inhabited by middle and upper class Venezuelans and governed by opposition politicians. Protesting students generally attend private universities. Polling in 13 states showed that 85.5 percent of respondents disagreed "with protests continuing throughout the country."

Nor is democracy in Venezuela as scarce as the resolution suggests. Venezuelan governments of the past 15 years have won 17 out of 18 national elections. The experienced U.S. Carter Center says Venezuelan elections are "the best in the world." And press freedom thrives. Most newspapers are privately owned and support the opposition. Private broadcasters command 90 percent of the TV viewing audience.

A democracy ought to promote the good of all. In Venezuela, poverty dropped from 50 percent in 1998 to 32 percent in 2011. Social spending as a percent of GDP increased from 11 percent to 24 percent. Pension recipients rose from 500,000 to 2.5 million; college graduates, from 600,000 to 2.3 million. Secondary school enrollment increased 42 percent. Childhood malnutrition and infant mortality fell dramatically. Each year the minimum wage increased by 10 - 20 percent.

Perhaps House members' awareness of U.S. meddling in Venezuela forced their hand. Analyst Mark Weisbrot documents financial aspects: "About $90 million in U.S. funding to Venezuela since 2000 ... including $5 million in the current federal budget." Another report indicates, "Over one third of U.S. funding, nearly $15 million annually by 2007, was directed towards youth and student groups ...to mobilize political activism." And, "Embassy cables also reveal U.S. government funding of opposition parties." Discussing his leadership of the National Endowment for Democracy, a prime source of U.S. funding, Allen Weinstein told the Washington Post in 1991 that "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

House members knowing that anti-Venezuelan terrorists have long found safe haven in and around the congresswoman's Miami home turf persevered in backing her resolution. Cuba-born Robert Alonso, for example, escaped to Miami in 2004 after Venezuelan authorities discovered 153 Colombian paramilitaries lodged at his farm near Caracas. Wearing Venezuelan army uniforms, they were planning to assassinate President Chavez. Alonso participated in the U.S.- supported coup attempt against Chavez in 2002.

On Feb. 23 Alonso hosted a "patriotic lunch" at his successor farm outside Miami. He sought "the help and solidarity of unyielding Cuban exile combatants in their campaign to augment resistance to [President] Maduro's misrule."

Reinol Rodríguez, "military chief" of the Alpha 66 paramilitaries, was on hand. José Dionisio Suárez, self-confessed assassin of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier, was there. So too was anti-Cuban terrorist Armando Valladares, implicated in a violent plot to overthrow Bolivian President Evo Morales.

Another meeting dedicated to overthrowing Venezuela's elected government took place in Miami in 2009. Present were Venezuelan exile Patricia Poleo, linked to the assassination in 2004 of prosecutor Danilo Anderson and former Venezuelan army officer Gustavo Diaz, Pedro Carmona's accomplice in attempting to overthrow Chavez in 2002.

Other anti-Venezuelan terrorists living in Miami include: Jose Antonio Colina Pulido, implicated in embassy bombings in Caracas in 2003; Raul Diaz Peña, jailed in Venezuela for the same crimes; former Venezuelan intelligence chief Joaquim Chaffardet, partner in crime with terrorist Luis Posada (living in Miami); and Johan Peña, accused of killing Danilo Anderson.

After escaping from prison in 2010, Raul Diaz Peña first appeared in public in Rep. Ros-Lehtinen's Miami office. Reporters learned that the fugitive's escape and U.S. entry had cost $100,000. Ros-Lehtinen admitted she "had been lobbying the U.S. government to bring the convicted terrorist to the U.S."

Congresspersons voting for Ros-Lehtinen's resolution probably knew at least some of these truths beforehand. In backing Ros-Lehtinen's resolution despite all, they provided official verification for an amplified U.S. campaign to undermine Venezuela's government. They were thereby joining forces with Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who had already called for economic sanctions against the Venezuelan government.

Photo: Violent protests - as seen here - by right-wing opponents of the Venezuelan government have led to the deaths of numerous supporters of the government. Rodrigo Abd/AP

Left candidate wins in El Salvador elections

Wed, 12 Mar 2014 11:51:00 +0000

The candidate of the left wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), Salvador Sanchez Ceren, appears to have won the Mar. 9 presidential runoff elections in El Salvador, although by a much smaller margin than polls had predicted.

Sanchez Ceren had won a plurality of votes in the first round of the election on Feb. 2., but with 48.93 percent of the vote, to 36.96 percent for the right wing ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance) party's Norman Quijano, Sanchez Ceren was not able to avoid a runoff. In the first round, former President Antonio Saca, also a rightist, had won 11.44 percent of the vote.

Polls going into the runoff showed Sanchez Ceren far ahead of Quijano, but when the votes were counted, although the FMLN candidate was still ahead, the difference was much smaller, at 50.11 percent for Sanchez Ceren to 49.89 percent for Quijano. Both candidates claimed victory and Quijano, yelling fraud, asked for a recount, while also hinting that intervention by the military might not be a bad idea. The recount is going forward but election officials think the original count will hold.

If his election is confirmed, Sanchez Ceren will succeed current President Mauricio Funes, who was also elected with FMLN support in 2009. But whereas Funes, a popular media personality, was not part of the FMLN in its guerrilla days in the Salvadoran Civil War of 1980 to 1992, Sanchez Ceren, currently Funes' vice president, was an important commander of Marxist guerrilla forces which fought against a series of extreme right wing, military-dominated governments supported by the United States. Specifically, he was a leader of the FPL, the Farabundo Marti People's Liberation Forces, which became one of the five main branches of the FMLN. So by some both in El Salvador and out, Sanchez Ceren was seen as "to the left" of Funes. Sanchez Ceren's running mate for vice president, Oscar Ortiz, is the popular mayor of the city of Santa Tecla, and was a member of the same guerilla group as Sanchez Ceran during the civil war.

President Funes has emphasized improving social and economic conditions for poor Salvadoran workers and farmers, through programs of economic justice and social betterment. These programs are very popular and explain the increase in the rural vote for Sanchez Ceren.

However, El Salvador suffers from a very high rate of violent crime, a topic which Quijano hammered on during the campaign. The reasons for this high crime rate are not hard to understand. In the first place, during the civil war, thousands of Salvadorans fled to the United States, which refused to recognize them as refugees or give them asylum. Many of them ended up eking out a living in slum areas of Los Angeles and other U.S. cities, and some young people got sucked into the life of street gangs. Many of these got caught and deported, creating a dangerous problem of gangs, called "maras," in El Salvador. On top of this, El Salvador (like neighboring Honduras and Guatemala which have similar problems) is on the route for drugs coming up from South America through Central America and Mexico to the huge market in the United States. Battles to control the drug routes, in which very violent Mexican drug cartels are now involved, have intensified the problem.

Mauricio Funes' government has tried to deal with this by providing economic and social alternatives for poor youth, and by supporting a negotiated peace pact among the maras. The peace pact held for a while but some complain it is falling apart, there is public skepticism, and the right has called loudly for more repressive measures.

During the last part of the Salvadoran presidential campaign, rioting, instigated by the right, was going on in Venezuela. The right in El Salvador, advised by Venezuelan right-wingers, tried to use doctored and manipulated images of the Venezuelan events to frighten Salvadoran voters into not supporting Sanchez Ceren.

In that section of the U.S. political right that has links to fascist and ultra-right groups in Latin America, there was considerable propaganda activity which tried to depict the FMLN and its candidates as tied to criminal gangs and drug pushers, as well as being puppets of Venezuela, which for them now has almost replaced Cuba as the source of all evil. The old neo-cons left over from the Reagan, Bush I and Bush II administrations, such as Roger Noriega and Elliot Abrams, continue to focus on destabilizing existing left wing governments in Latin America and elsewhere, as well as keeping others from coming to power. This type of misinformation campaign is an important part of their bag of tricks. This time, they appear not to have succeeded.

Photo: Salvador Sanchez Ceren. AP

Intellectual property rights and the TPP

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:31:00 +0000

Over 200 years ago Thomas Jefferson grasped the essence of the debate over "Intellectual Property":

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me."

Ever since Jefferson's time there has been a contest between two principal propositions on intellectual property (IP).

One says that only by the state assigning exclusive property rights to an idea for some period of time can there be an adequate incentive (royalties, etc) to innovation and new ideas; in particular, new ideas that result in market success. People voting with their dollars is a powerful vote in making markets do the thing they do best: improve the efficiency of labor and other resources, and thus, advancing overall wealth, at least wealth in commodities.

The other holds that the wide dissemination of knowledge, science, craft and art is the key foundation for sustained research, development, especially human capital development, and thus marketplace innovation as well. This trend also asserts that the role of reputation in a reward system can be very powerful, and competitive with financial rewards in many areas. The "open source" software movement and related spinoffs demonstrate this.

There is inherent tension between these competing principles. But, at least within a market, or mixed social democratic economy, there is truth in both. The answer is to find a balance that says when rents become excessive and when copyrights and patents should enter the public domain.

Jefferson's observation that ideas are inherently public goods previews Paul Samuelson's more formal definition of an economic public good, as a good that is non-exclusive, and non-rival.

The attributes and incarnations of an idea give it no natural protection of its exclusive use by "owners", in the way a physical object like a hammer does. Further, enjoyment (use) of the idea does not prevent or diminish enjoyment by another (rival). So, the property argument goes, the state must provide this protection in the form of patents, copyrights, industrial design rights, trade secrets, and trade dress (product appearance).

In a democratic society, however, state intervention on this scale must be justified by serving a public interest. So far, that public interest has been defined as "promoting innovation." But critics point to grave distortions in enforcement of intellectual property rights that actually undermine innovation, and the stability of trade agreements.

The Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement, for which the Obama administration is seeking "fast track" authority to push through Congress un-amended, would actually not change much in trade with the currently participating countries, according to Paul Krugman, who is a left-wing free-trader. Tariffs and duties between these countries are already low. But, it would allegedly expand and strengthen intellectual property rights through international enforcement tribunals independent of national governments, tribunals with presumably the power to levy fines and other economic sanctions.

Entertainment, software, and pharmaceutical companies are the big players here. They say their intellectual property is being copied without compensation around the world. It is. In the U.S. alone, an army of lawyers and consultants are hired to troll for copyrights and copyright violations, and then intimidate alleged violators into paying damages to avoid impossible legal costs. This intimidates innovation.

But reality is not going to cooperate for the IP true believers.

First, there is no patented pharmaceutical that is not composed of AT LEAST 97 percent knowledge in the public domain. Demanding lifetime exclusive returns, especially when narrowing knowledge or use increases public health risks, loses public justification. And, one may assume, some part of the remaining portion is less innovation and more marketing spin.

Second, there is no piece of software that, as any programmer knows, is not composed of reams of collective and public domain, as well as original, code. The free/open/community-licensed software in use now is so ubiquitous that most web services these days are run on non-proprietary software. In addition, no one can prevent the programmer from walking out the door of his employer with the software design in all essentials in his head-and the programmer cannot be "dispossessed", as Jefferson notes.

If ideas can be property, then it's time for the rights of all human capital to a fair return on the social and individual investments in their education, training and experience. If, and when, they are not "private" property, then we return Einstein's reward: a good reputation! Maybe everyone with an idea should join the National Writers Union now and fight for the best of both worlds!

Not mentioned often in the IP debate is the fact that most nations joining the TPP do not have the infrastructure to self-enforce intellectual property rights. Some countries barely have a private property law of any kind. Consequently, litigation, grievances, violations are processed typically in the United States. In the past, trading countries have often not been able to raise the legal costs to compete with corporate resources. This handicap to weaker nations introduces a form of imperialism into agreements, where the supposedly independent tribunals can be manipulated by wealthy U.S. interests and clients.

Strengthening IP rights through side agreements in trade deals has nothing to do with trade per se, or improving the gains from trade, and a lot to do with political manipulation of participating governments in the interest of multinational corporations. Today's should be less intellectual and more public property rights.

Image: UNECE

No quiet on the eastern front: "Stalingrad"

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 12:56:00 +0000

Based loosely on Soviet author Vasily Grossman's novel, "Life and Fate," the film Stalingrad (directed by Fedor Bondarchuk, screenplay by Sergey Snezhkin and Ilya Tilken), a treatment of World War II's "bloodiest battle in human history," is a laborious undertaking, subjecting viewers to an overwrought visual and auditory pummeling.

Considered by most historians to be the turning point of the war in Europe, the battle of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) took place from August, 1942 to February 1943. The German Sixth Army was pitted against the Red Army and in that attenuated battle an astounding 2 million people died or were wounded.

Stalingrad is a big-budget video war game extravaganza, the Russians vs. the Germans, with a barebones storyline. A compelling work of art allows one to suspend disbelief, and it is simply not possible to accept this film's basic conceit from the very beginning. War is hell, to be sure: arbitrary, unfair, unnecessary, futile, stupid, but we only barely glimpse what this war was all about. An early miscue occurs when a building becomes a burning inferno, the Germans rush out, their bodies aflame, screaming toward the Soviet trenches, hoping to set their enemies on fire as well. The scene plays like a doomsday sci-fi movie involving zombies from the underworld.

The film's paper-thin narrative thread involves five "fathers," five Soviet soldiers teaming to rescue Katya, a teenage woman found inside the building they're trying to defend. The voiceover narration sketches a bit of the back stories of these five, enough to humanize them for us, but barely enough to allow them to emerge as full characters through the smoke and ashes of war.

The building's basement houses some of the original tenants, plus some other refugees, including the young Russian woman Masha, who becomes the lover of a German officer. Fittingly, the basement is tricked out with the bleak effects of a Piranesi dungeon. Strangely, no one looks particularly hungry, and the two young women who are the romantic objects of love appear especially well-groomed and fetching.

We do see a portrait of Lenin on an apartment wall in the building, Maxim Gorki on another, and facing the street we see an architectural bas-relief depicting Stalin and recognizable Soviet imagery. Yet the film focuses more on the Russianness of the soldiers (in what early on took on the name of Great Patriotic War), not the socialist, Soviet character of the USSR. It seems like a latter-day attempt to recall the hard-won glory of victory without acknowledging the social basis of the nation that won the battle, and the war. We even have an older soldier praying and speaking of God (no objection here except to ask if such activities would have been sanctioned by the Red Army's political commissars). We do have one officer correcting a Russian soldier who speaks of "retards," saying we have mental patients in Russia, but we don't have "retards."

Stalingrad appeals to a certain demographic: not the curious audience wishing to understand the importance of the battle, its complex geopolitical background, or the history of invasions of Russian soil. No, the ideal viewers here are young men whose film-going preferences run to 3D testosterone-driven mayhem, exploding bombs, bullets, and blood, very much like the trailers for many other shoot 'em up movies coming soon to theaters near you.

One of the five "fathers" is Sasha Nikiforov, a former opera singer, so we anticipate hearing him sing at some point, and of course we do. The aria he performs at Katya's bombed-out birthday party is Puccini's "E lucevan le stelle" from "Tosca," the tenor solo Cavaradossi sings just before he is to die as a victim of assassination. The song returns on the soundtrack also for the German officer in command, telling us that all death in war is horrible. A question occurs: Is not the death of a defender of his homeland more poignant than that of the invader?

An epilogue from the narrator says that Stalingrad turned the course of the war, and that millions and millions of people were liberated from the Nazi threat. Fortunately, he says, he never had to know another war. The filmmakers have conveniently forgotten the decade-long Afghanistan episode.

If the viewer is familiar with the basic story of Stalingrad, Stalingrad won't serve to advance your knowledge or educe your feelings of empathy. Unless 3D testosterone is your thing, stay away from this one.

Stalingrad

Director: Fedor Bondarchuk

Writers: Sergey Snezhkin, Ilya Tilkin

Stars: Mariya Smolnikova, Yanina Studilina, Pyotr Fyodorov

IMAX 3D, rated R for scenes of war violence, 131 minutes

Photo: Still from Stalingrad.

Western leaders belittle legitimate Russian concerns about fascism

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 12:29:00 +0000

Hillary Clinton was quoted last week comparing Russia's President Putin to Hitler because he is using stories about potential mistreatment of ethnic Russians as a pretext to intervene in the Ukraine and, specifically, Crimea.

In the lead-up to the World War II, German dictator Adolf Hitler complained that the government of Czechoslovakia was mistreating ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland, a Czech region near the German border. At the same time, Nazi agents were stirring up anti-Czech activities among the Sudeten Germans. The British and French governments carried out a "mediation" of this conflict that resulted in the Munich betrayal of 1938, which stripped Czechoslovakia of its fortified border regions and left the country defenseless in the face of the German intervention.

In the current crisis over the Ukraine, Russia has intervened in the Crimean Peninsula, where most of the population is Russian (to be precise, 12 % are Crimean Tatars, 24% are ethnic Ukrainians and most of the rest are Russians). Crimea is autonomous within the Ukraine and is the site of a major Russian naval base at Sevastopol, currently leased from the Ukraine.

This base is of supreme importance to Russia because it guards Russia's only means of access to the Mediterranean. Use of the Black Sea makes essential a friendly relationship with Turkey, which controls the Bosporus between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles between the Sea of Marmara and the Mediterranean. During World War II, very tough battles were fought in the Crimea between Nazi German and Soviet troops.

Secondly, the forces that have taken over the Ukrainian government in Kiev include neo-Nazi and fascist elements with pre-Word War II roots. Some elements from these groups have been given key positions in the "interim" government put in essentially by a coup d'état against the discredited but nevertheless legally elected President Victor Yanukovych. Both political leaders and corporate-controlled media in the United States and Western Europe have either not mentioned this fact or have downplayed it.

But in Russia the memories of the Nazi invasion of June 1941, of the war that followed and of the activities of local Nazi collaborators, including Ukrainian ones historically linked to the present crowd of extremists in Kiev, are strong.

High school history texts and Hollywood war films have trained two generations in the United States to believe that the United States almost singlehandedly beat Hitler. In fact, the Soviet Union's armed forces killed far more Germans and also suffered losses of both military personnel and civilians far greater than the losses suffered by the United States. In the process the Soviet forces pinned down huge numbers of Nazi troops who would otherwise have been deployed against the Western countries.

In the United States there are many thousands of people who still mourn for loved ones killed in World War II. But in Russia, various estimates put the military and civilian losses in that "Great Patriotic War" in the tens of millions. At least 8.6 million Soviet soldiers, sailors and officers were killed. The war also killed at least 13 million Soviet civilians, in bombing and shelling attacks, mass executions, and individual murders, and as the result of slave labor in Germany and other axis countries. Jews, Roma and communists were subject to genocide. Thousands of villages, towns, cities, factories and farms were completely razed by the Nazis and their allies, including Ukrainian and other local fascist collaborators. Vast numbers of livestock were destroyed and areas occupied by the Nazis were plundered of all wealth.

There is no way to quantify the suffering.

Soviet soldiers and civilians killed in the war included people from all ethnic groups, including more than a million Ukrainians who fought with great bravery against the German invaders.

So when people in Russia hear about a revival of fascist tendencies in the Ukraine they don't think about the amusing Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz of "Hogan's Heroes." They think of their dead; there is nothing more horrible to contemplate that that the history of fascism in the 20^th century should repeat itself.

Since the Soviet Union fell apart, the United States and its allies have worked hard to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), bringing it right up against the Russian border. The idea of NATO- allied anti-Russian fascists occupying the Sevastopol base must not be pleasant. To compare Russia to the Nazi Germans adds insult to injury.

Russia today is not the Soviet Union. I make no apologies for Putin, who is a backward, heavy-handed nationalist. But Hillary Clinton and others, in acting and speaking as they do, fail to recognize that Russia, like any sovereign state has legitimate security interests, and that history has taught its people to take fascism seriously.

U.S. politicians and media should also do so.

Photo: Ukrainian fascists have been rallying for years in Kiev. In this 2005 photo a Ukrainian veteran who fought on the side of the Nazis carries a portrait of Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera during a march in Kiev. Efrem Lukatsky/AP

Big questions emerge over congressional backing for Venezuelan protests

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 16:48:00 +0000

With violent anti-government protests continuing in Venezuela since early February, Florida Republican Rep. Elena Ros-Lehtinen introduced a resolution in the U.S. House of Representatives titled, "Supporting the people of Venezuela as they protest peacefully for democracy, a reduction in violent crime and calling for an end to recent violence."

On March 4, Congress approved House Resolution 488 by a 393-1 margin. All House Democrats gave assent except for seven who, with 29 Republicans, did not vote. A procedure called "suspension of the rules" was in force. It's used for "legislation of non-controversial bills."

The idea of Venezuelans "protesting peacefully" reflects media bias. In fact, as protests mounted in early February in Táchira, Mérida, and Caracas, the police didn't intervene until government offices and officers were attacked or burned or until food and medical supply trucks were waylaid. As of Mar. 7, Venezuelan security forces had killed three people, one a government supporter. Opposition protesters had shot five people dead, three being National Guard soldiers. Opposition roadblocks caused six additional deaths and indirectly led to 30 more deaths of people unable to reach emergency services. The government arrested intelligence officers violating orders not to confront protesters.

Foreign and domestic media have misrepresented protesters' backing and their identity. Protests play out mainly in 18 of 335 municipalities, all inhabited by middle and upper class Venezuelans and governed by opposition politicians. Protesting students generally attend private universities. Polling in 13 states of Venezuela showed that 85.5 percent of respondents disagreed "with protests continuing throughout the country."

Nor is democracy in Venezuela as scarce as the resolution suggests. Venezuelan governments of the past 15 years have won 17 out of 18 national elections. The experienced U.S. Carter Center says Venezuelan elections are "the best in the world." And press freedom thrives there. Most newspapers are privately owned and support the opposition. Private broadcasters command 90 percent of the TV viewing audience.

Perhaps House members' awareness of U.S. meddling in Venezuela forced their hand. Analyst Mark Weisbrot documents financial aspects: "about $90 million in U.S. funding to Venezuela since 2000 ... including $5 million in the current federal budget." Another report indicates, "Over one third of US funding, nearly $15 million annually by 2007, was directed towards youth and student groups ...to mobilize political activism." And, "Embassy cables also reveal US government funding of opposition parties." Discussing his leadership of the National Endowment for Democracy, a prime source of U.S. funding, Allen Weinstein told the Washington Post in 1991 that "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."

House members, surely knowing that anti-Venezuelan terrorists have long found safe haven in and around the congresswoman's Miami home turf, persevered in backing her resolution. Cuba-born Robert Alonso, for example, escaped to Miami in 2004 after Venezuelan authorities discovered 153 Colombian paramilitaries lodged at his farm near Caracas. Wearing Venezuelan army uniforms, they were planning to assassinate President Chavez. Alonso participated in the U.S.- supported coup attempt against Chavez in 2002.

On February 23 Alonso hosted a "patriotic lunch" at his farm outside Miami. He sought "the help and solidarity of unyielding Cuban-exile combatants in their campaign to augment resistance to [President] Maduro's misrule."

Congresspersons voting for Ros-Lehtinen's resolution probably knew at least some of these truths beforehand. In backing Ros-Lehtinen's resolution despite all, they provided official verification for an amplified U.S. campaign to undermine Venezuela's government. They were thereby joining forces with Senators Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who had already called for economic sanctions against the Venezuelan government.

Photo: Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican, chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. House Committee on Foreign Affairs CC.

Iraqi women protest proposed Islamic law

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 14:48:00 +0000

BAGHDAD - Iraqi women demonstrated Saturday in Baghdad against a draft law approved by the Iraqi cabinet that would permit the marriage of nine-year-old girls and automatically give child custody to fathers.

The protest, held on Mar. 8, International Women's Day, came a week after the cabinet voted for the legislation, based on Shi'ite Islamic jurisprudence, allowing clergy to preside over marriages, divorces and inheritances. The draft now goes to parliament.

"On this day of women, women of Iraq are in mourning," the protesters shouted. "We believe that this is a crime against humanity," said Hanaa Edwar, a prominent Iraqi human rights activist. "It would deprive a girl of her right to live a normal childhood."

The United Nations representative to Iraq, Nickolay Mladenov, also condemned the legislation. Mladenov wrote on Twitter the bill "risks constitutionally protected rights for women and international commitment".

The legislation goes to the heart of the divisions in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, as Shi'ite Islamists have come to lead the government and seek to impose their religious values on society at large. The bill would institutionalize the Shia clerical establishment and give it a larger say in the state legal system.

It describes girls as reaching puberty at nine, making them fit for marriage, makes the father sole guardian of his children at age two and condones a husband's right to insist on sexual intercourse with his wife whenever he wishes.

The legislation is referred to as the Ja'afari Law, named after the sixth Shi'ite imam Ja'afar al-Sadiq, who founded his own school of jurisprudence in the 8th century.

The draft was put forward by Justice Minister Hassan al-Shimari, a member of the Shi'ite Islamist Fadila party, and approved by the cabinet on Feb. 25 with 21 of 29 cabinet ministers voting for it.

It must now be reviewed by parliament, but the draft could get stalled, with national elections scheduled for April 30, and vocal opposition among secularists.

Shi'ite religious parties first attempted to pass a version of the law in 2003 under U.S. occupation, angering secular Iraqis and prompting protests. Policies adopted by the U.S. occupation authority led to the empowering of Shi'ite Islamists and largely excluded Shi'ite secularists from the new government that emerged.

It was widely believed that the Bush administration promoted Shia Islamists as part of a strategy to create a kind of "Islamic democracy" as a counter to extremists but also to blunt left and progressive forces. As a result, an article in Al-Ahram notes, "Shia religious groups have controlled the government and dominated the national political space, pushing leftists, nationalists, liberals and secularists to the sidelines."

The struggle between Iraq's secularists and Islamists continues.

The announced of the bill in the run-up to the Apr. 30 elections, is seen by some as an attempt by the leading Shia political groups to play on the sectarian sentiments of sympathetic Shia voters.

Iraq's current personal status law 188 (enacted in 1959) enshrines women's rights regarding marriage, inheritance, and child custody, and has often been held up as the most progressive in the Middle East.

It established at least partial equality between women and men in a number of areas, restricted polygamy, created a judicial procedure for divorce and required marriage to be performed only in state-run courts. The law, which was later amended several times, also set an 18-year minimum age for marriage. A later amendment allowed marriage for persons over the age of 15 but under that of 18 in very strict cases and only by authorization of a state judge.

Photo: Iraqi women protest the draft of the "Jafaari" personal status law in Mutanabi Street in central Baghdad, on Friday, March 7, 2014. Mutanabi Street, famous for its book stalls, is a focal point for cultural events and peaceful protests on Fridays, which are a holiday in Iraq. Tareeq al-Shaab

Coffee Brigade will harvest peace, justice and coffee in Colombia

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 12:09:00 +0000

If ever there was a need for international solidarity with farming families in Colombia, that time is now. That is why the Alliance for Global Justice, at the invitation of the Astracatol agricultural workers union of Tolima, Colombia, is organizing a Just Peace Coffee Brigade to help farming families in the municipality of Dolores bring in their May and June coffee harvests.

Each of these families is facing the possibility of forced displacement due to ongoing repression in the region. The brigade will not only help gather the coffee, but also be a strong statement of international solidarity for peace and farmer/labor rights. The effort will take place May 23-June 8, 2014, and participants are encouraged to come for one or two weeks, depending on their availability. (For more information, contact James Jordan at james@afgj.org or call 202-540-8336, ext. 3.)

While the Colombian peace process underway in Havana is making significant progress, repression is also on the rise, and rural communities are the most negatively affected. According to Somos Defensores (We Are Defenders), assaults on human rights defenders are the highest in 10 years, and 97 percent of those assassinated are from farming areas. And according to CODHES (the Consultancy on Human Rights and Displacement), in 2012 forced displacement rose by 83 percent. The majority of those displaced are farming, indigenous and Afro-Colombian families.

The municipality of Dolores, Tolima, is one of the most targeted rural areas. With the discovery of oil in 1997 came the permanent presence of the Colombian Armed Forces starting in 2003, followed by a series of heavy-handed measures including the assassinations of five community members, multiple arrests of union and local leaders and mass displacement. Between 1993 and 2005, the date of the last census, Dolores lost 2,000 residents. Since then, there have been at least two forced migrations not yet counted. A poignant example of the repression there was the 2008 closing of the local school in the village of Las Vegas after the teacher was kidnapped, tortured and made to leave.

Over the past year, villages in Dolores have twice been raided by the Armed Forces, resulting in the detention of some 16 peasant leaders. Rural workers were also negatively affected by a series of violent crackdowns on three agrarian strikes that occurred in 2013. Farmers were striking for price protection, an end to free trade agreements with the U.S., Europe and Canada, the establishment of Peasant Reserve Zones to protect rural communities, and inclusion of popular movements in peace talks.

Dolores families are worried, with so many jailed or otherwise unable to work, that they will not be able to bring in their coffee harvests. One young man who was wounded during one of the strikes said:

"I was unarmed, but they shot me. ... The government and the state promised us help, but there is nothing. Instead, they kill us, they beat us, they put us in jail - and they ignore us. For six months I haven't been able to work and I don't know how we will be able to bring in the coffee harvest this year. If we can't, we can't pay our bills, I can't feed my family. I am afraid we are going to have to leave everything and go to Bogotá to seek work. I am afraid we are going to be among the forcibly displaced."

Don Guillermo Cano is a member of the Coordinating Committees for Astracatol, Fensuagro and the Patriotic March movement for a just peace. Don Guillermo is also the Coordinator for Astracatol's Human Rights Commission. Don Guillermo was detained for his role in one of the farmers' strikes in May 2013 and is now under house arrest.

According to Don Guillermo,

"Supposedly there was a witness who said that 'Guillermo Cano has operated an armed farmers strike in this region'. ... But there was never an armed contingent of these strikes in the Department of Tolima, and much less so in this municipality. ... Never!"

Don Guillermo reports:

"In 2002 ... the communities organized and presented a Project for the Development of the Community [calling for] ... for example, schools, universities for this zone, good roads to connect the area. Not for one moment did the communities go to the companies and tell them to "get out!" ... But when they presented these ideas, every company rejected them. ..."

"There are significant interests of the transnationals here. ... The oil companies ... and the leaders of this process want us to leave and to take away our space to make claims. ...

"In 2013, the oil companies returned to begin again to make some explorations, but they have encountered resistance. ... At this time the repression is severe."

When asked about the role of international awareness and solidarity, Don Guillermo replied:

"We, the politically persecuted, think ... the solidarity is very special ... and we want our sister organizations of the United States to unite and come share with us, that you might divulge to the entire world what really exists in Colombia. ... Here, we don't want an Empire. ...There are sectors in the United States and other parts of the world that share this with us and consider that our struggle for democracy in Colombia is just. ...

"Capitalism has a world character, and we must, too. When I think about the genocide against the Patriotic Union [a political party formed as a result of the peace process of the 1980s and '90s that was destroyed after 5,000 of its candidates and elected officials were murdered] and the threat to the whole peace process - I believe that it was the lack of international solidarity that made that genocide possible and that led to the failure of the peace process back then. Well, it is happening again. ... But I think in this moment, we have to seek peace. ... We want peace and therefore we have to open the space and not hide ourselves. ... As many sister organizations that want to accompany us ... this is what has to be done."

Photo: A young girl who lives on a coffee farm in Cauca, southwestern Colombia. Neil Palmer/CIAT CC

Communists join Nepal government

Fri, 07 Mar 2014 12:00:00 +0000

After weeks of negotiations, Nepal has a government in which the Communists are equal partners with the leading centrist political party and top vote getter. The Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist joined the Nepali Congress Party to form a coalition government, Feb. 25. The two political parties won the most seats in the Himalayan nation's November 2013 parliamentary elections.

But in this former monarchy, besieged for decades by war, repression and poverty, the road to adopting a democratic constitution is fraught with difficult twists and turns. These last three months were no exception.

On Feb. 10, the Communists agreed to back Congress' Sushil Koirala for prime minister after hammering out a number of "points of agreement" for the coalition government and arriving at verbal agreements on the ministerial appointments.

However once elected, Koirala refused to appoint the UML to the powerful home minister position, as agreed to, the UML said. That forced the party to reject Congress as a coalition partner, tying Koirala's hands from moving forward with a Cabinet. Nepal's legislative branch, the Constituent Assembly, elects the prime minister who appoints Cabinet ministers. Once posts are filled, this becomes the "government" (the executive branch).

Finally, Koirala and Congress acquiesced and allotted the post to the UML. Each party will have 10 ministries with several other parties taking remaining ministerial portfolios.

In the November 2013 election, no party received a majority in those elections, but the top two vote getters were NC and UML. In Nepal's 601-seat Constituent Assembly, 575 seats are filled by a combination of direct elections and proportional representation. Twenty-six are reserved for women and others to help round out representation. Out of the elected seats, 194 went to NC and 175 to UML and 80 to the former-ruling Maoist party. Other minor parties got the remainder.

The country's once popular Maoists, who won the election overwhelmingly in 2008, charged election fraud and refused to join the Constituent Assembly until the NC and UML agreed to an investigation.

Both parties had committed to delivering a constitution quickly. People have been frustrated by the constant bickering in the previous assembly.

Maoists waged an armed insurgency for 10 years against the King of Nepal, which was the only Hindu monarchical state in the world, while others, including the UML chose to wage the struggle for democracy through civil disobedience, electoral and other mass protest means. Eventually, the anti-monarchy/pro-democracy forces won, establishing a Constituent Assembly tasked with drafting a democratic constitution. In 2008, the Maoist communists swept the election winning two-to-one over the NC and UML and catapulted to the prime minister post. But problems arising from the armed insurgency and the call for thousands to lay down their arms or be absorbed into Nepal's army, stymied efforts to move the country forward. President Jimmy Carter helped negotiate a successful resolution, eventually. The PM resigned and others from other parties, including UML stepped up to try to fulfill the voters' mandate. However the task of approving a constitution remains.

Photo: via Communist Party of Nepal-UML/FB