People Before Profit blog

Afghanistan: Is it really the end game?

Thu, 30 May 2013 11:50:00 +0000

"Gunmen in Pakistan on Monday set ablaze five trucks carrying NATO equipment out of Afghanistan as the international military alliance winds down it combat mission there, officials said." -Agence France Presse, 3/1/13

There is nothing that better sums up the utter failure of America's longest war than getting ambushed as you are trying to get the hell out of the county. And yet the March 1 debacle in Baluchistan was in many ways a metaphor for a looming crisis that NATO and the U.S. seem totally unprepared for: with the clock ticking down on removing most combat troops by 2014, there are no official negotiations going on, nor does there seem to be any strategy for how to bring them about.

"I still cannot understand how we, the international community and the Afghan government have managed to arrive at a situation in which everything is coming together in 2014-elections, new president, economic transition, military transition--and negotiations for the peace process have not really started," said Bernard Bajolet, former French ambassador to Kabul and current head of France's foreign intelligence service.

When the Obama administration sent an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan in 2009 as part of the "surge," the goal was to secure the country's southern provinces, suppress opium cultivation, and force the Taliban to give up on the war. Not only did the surge fail to impress the Taliban and its allies, it never stabilized the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. Both are once again under the sway of the insurgency and opium production has soared. What the surge did manage was to spread the insurgency into the formally secure areas in the north and west.

With the exception of the current U.S. commander in Afghanistan, virtually everyone has concluded that the war has been a disaster for all involved.

The Afghans have lost more than two million dead over the past 30 years, huge sections of the population have been turned into refugees, and the country is becoming what one international law enforcement official described to the New York Times as "the world's first true narco state." According to the World Bank, 36 percent of Afghans are at or below the poverty line, and 20 percent of Afghan children never reach the age of five.

The war has cost American taxpayers over $1.4 trillion, and, according to a recent study, the final butcher bill for both Iraq and Afghanistan will top $6 trillion. The decade-long conflict has put enormous strains on the NATO alliance, destabilized and alienated nuclear-armed Pakistan, and helped to spread al-Qaeda-like organizations throughout the Middle East and Africa.

Only U.S. Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Dunford, head of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) thinks the war on the Taliban is being won, and that the Afghan Army is "steadily gaining in confidence, competence, and commitment." Attacks by the Taliban are up 47 percent over last year, and the casualty rate for Afghan soldiers and police has increased 40 percent. The yearly desertion rate of the Afghan Army is between 27 percent and 30 percent.

In theory, ISAF combat troops will exit Afghanistan in 2014 and turn the war over to the Afghan Army and police, organizations that have yet to show they can take on the insurgency. One of the Army's crack units was recently overrun in eastern Afghanistan. Given the fragility of the Afghan government and its army, one would think that the White House should be putting on a full court press to get talks going, but instead it is following a strategy that has demonstrably failed in the past.

The tactic of "shooting and talking" that is central to the surge has produced lots of casualties but virtually zero dialogue, hardly a surprise. That approach has never worked in Afghanistan.

Part of the problem is that the call for talks is so heavily laden with caveats and restrictions that that they derail any possibility of real negotiations, among them are that the Taliban have to accept the 2004 constitution and renounce violence and "terrorism."

However, the Taliban argue that the 2004 constitution was imposed from the outside, and they want a role in re-writing it. As for "terrorism," the Taliban denounced international terrorism five years ago.

As Anatol Lieven, a King's College London professor, senior researcher at the New American Foundation, and probably the best informed English language writer on Afghanistan, points out, the Americans consistently paint themselves into a corner by demonizing their opponents.

That, in turn, leads to "a belief that any enemy of the United States must inevitably be evil. Not only does this tendency make pragmatic compromises with opponents much more difficult (and much more embarrassing should they eventually be reached), but, consciously or unconsciously it allows the U.S. government and media to blind the U.S. public, and often themselves, to the evils of America's own allies."

For instance, the Americans will not talk with the Haqqani group, a Taliban ally, even though it is the most effective military force confronting the NATO occupation. The same goes for Iran, even though Teheran played a key role in organizing the 2003 Bonn conference that led to the formation of the current Kabul government. Iran also has legitimate interests in the current war. Because opium and heroin are not a major problem in the U.S., Washington can afford to turn a blind eye to the Afghan government's alliance with drug dealing warlords. Heroin addiction, however, constitutes a national health crisis in Iran and Russia.

It is not exactly clear what will happen in 2014. While American combat units are supposed to be withdrawn, in accordance with a treaty between NATO and the government of President Harmid Karzai, several thousand Special Forces, trainers, CIA personal, and aircraft will remain on nine bases until 2024. That agreement was the supposed reason for the massive suicide bomb May 16 in Kabul that killed 6 Americans and 16 Afghans. Hezb-i-Islami, an insurgent group based around Kabul and the eastern part of the country, took credit for the attack.

That attack underlines how difficult it will be to forge some kind of agreement.

Hezb-i-Islami pulled off the bombing, but the party's political wing is a major player in the Karzai government, holding down the posts of education minister and advisor to the president. Hezb-i-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is also a rival of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and the bombing could just as well have been a maneuver to make sure Hezb-i-Islami has a seat at the table if talks start up. Hekmatyar has offered to negotiate with NATO in the past.

The Taliban itself is divided into several factions, partly because the Americans' systematic assassination of high and mid-level Taliban leaders has decentralized the organization. The Taliban is increasingly an alliance of local groups that may have very different politics.

The Haqqanis' have a strong presence in Pakistan, which requires that the organization maintain cordial relations with Pakistan's Army and intelligence services. They scratch each other's backs. So any understanding to end the war will have to be acceptable to the Haqqanis and Islamabad. No agreement is possible without the participation of both.

Instead of recognizing the reality of the situation, however, the Obama administration continues to ignore the powerful Haqqanis, sideline Iran, and to alienate the average Pakistani though its drone war.

As complex as the situation looks, a solution is possible, but only if the White House changes course. First, the "shoot and talk" nonsense must end immediately, General Dunford's hallucinations not withstanding. If the U.S. couldn't smother the insurgency during the surge, how can it do so now with fewer troops? All the shooting will do is get a lot more people killed-most of them Afghan soldiers, police, and civilians caught in the crossfire-and sabotage any potential talks.

According to Lieven, the Taliban are far more realistic about the current situation than is the White House. Last July, he and a group of academics met "leading figures close to the Taliban" during a trip to the Persian Gulf. He says there was "a widespread recognition within the Taliban that while they can maintain a struggle in the south and east of Afghanistan indefinitely," they could never conquer the whole country. Further, "in their own estimate," they have the support of about 30 percent of population. A recent Asia Foundation poll came to a similar conclusion.

While the Taliban refuse to negotiate with the Karzai government, Lieven says they told the delegation, "there can be no return to the 'pure' government of mullahs," and "most strikingly, they said that the Taliban might be prepared to agree to the U.S. bases remaining until 2024." The latter compromise will not make the Iranians, Chinese, or Russians very happy-not to mention Hezb-i-Islami-but it reflects a deep-seated philosophy in Afghan politics: figure out a way to cut a deal.

The Taliban's rejection of talks with the Kabul government means that going ahead with next year's presidential election is probably a bad idea. An all-Afghan constitutional convention would be a better idea, with elections postponed until after a new constitution is in place.

There are numerous issues that could sink a final agreement because there are many players with multiple agendas. Regardless, those agendas will have to be addressed, even if not quite to everyone's satisfaction. And everyone has to sit at the table, since those who are excluded have the power to torpedo the entire endeavor. This means all the combatants, but also Iran, India, China, Russia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan.

And the White House needs to get off its butt. Afghan President Karzai, just returned from an arms buying spree in India, asked New Delhi to increase its presence in Afghanistan. This will hardly be popular with Pakistan and China, and Islamabad can make serious mischief if it wants to.

The ambush in Pakistan brings to mind Karl Marx's famous dictum about history: it happens first as tragedy, then as farce.

The first time this happened was during Britain's first Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42), when Afghans overran an East India Company army retreating from Kabul. Out of 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 civilians, a single assistant surgeon made it back to Jalalabad.

The most recent ambush certainly had an element of farce about it. Four masked gunmen on two motorbikes forced the trucks to stop, sprinkled them with gasoline and set the vehicles ablaze. One driver received a minor injury.

There is no need for a chaos-engulfed finale to the Afghan War. There is no reason to continue the bloodshed, which all the parties recognize will not alter the final outcome a whit. It is time for the White House to step up and do the right thing and end one of the bloodiest wars in recent history.

This article has been reposted from Dispatches from the Edge.

Photo: U.S. Army soldiers conduct a patrol through the village of Kowtalay in the Nuristan province of Afghanistan June 12, 2007. (U.S. Army/Staff Sgt. Michael Bracken)

All out for five-day push to free Cuban 5

Wed, 29 May 2013 15:24:00 +0000

One member of the Cuban 5 group, Rene Gonzalez, is free, but those remaining imprisoned in the United States still insist on calling themselves "the Cuban 5." The push is now intensifying among progressive individuals and organizations in this country to free the others as well.

The Cuban 5 are five men who were arrested in South Florida in 1998 and have been serving long federal prison sentences for having gathered information on hard right Cuban exile organizations who have, in the past, committed terrorism against Cuba with impunity.

The Cuban government shared this information with the F.B.I. in the hope that the United States would act to suppress the terrorist groups; instead, the F.B.I. rounded up the Five and the government put them through a farce of a trial. Now they are serving draconian sentences.

A massive international campaign has been mounted for their freedom, involving public figures and ordinary people in dozens of countries, but so far the U.S. government has remained unmoved. So the struggle goes on.

The International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5 has been organizing events in Washington D.C. and around the country to up pressure to "Free the Five." The next one coming up is from this coming Friday, May 31 through Tuesday June 5, in Washington D.C. and nearby Takoma Park, Md.

Among the speakers and other participants are: Angela Davis, activist, scholar and author; Dolores Huerta, historic leader of the farm workers' movement; Danny Glover, Actor; Wayne Smith, scholar and former head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana under President Carter; Martin Garbus, one of the attorneys for the Cuban 5; Sofia Clark d'Escoto, Nicaraguan diplomat; Yeidcol Polevensky, former president of the Mexican Senate; Arnold August, Canadian writer and author of several important books about Cuba.

Former President Jimmy Carter in 2011 said, "I believe that the detention of the Cuban 5 makes no sense, there have been doubts expressed in U.S. courts and by human rights organizations around the world. They have now been in prison 12 years and I hope that in the near future they will be freed to return to their homes."

There will be special events with parliamentarians from several countries, labor union activists and legal experts.

A major dimension of the event will be visits to members of the U.S. Congress to ask their support for freedom for the Five. Details can be found on the website of the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5.

Creative Commons, Flickr.

Venezuela to pay pensions to full-time mothers

Tue, 28 May 2013 20:19:00 +0000

(Care2) - I can't think of any woman who's a mother who wouldn't respond in the affirmative to the question "is motherhood a full-time job?" There are certainly women who are able to be full-time mothers, but many, (myself included) must work. Many of us (myself also included) like working and, for all the demands of juggling a career and caring for children, we are glad to do it. But it is true, one does appreciate knowing that one's efforts to do not one but two jobs are acknowledged.

Venezuela, a country that has been making the news for a shortage of toilet paper, is providing mothers with a benefit quite unheard of (certainly in the U.S.). Under the country's new labor law, full-time mothers will be able to collect a pension.

The Chavistas' new labor law gives "recognition to non-salaried work traditionally done by women," Thomas Ponniah of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin America Studies and the Department of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University writes in ONTD Political. Ponniah's explanation of the rationale behind a decision that American women can only dream of (if that) has to do with the efforts of the Chavistas to continue "struggle against inequality" and to work towards economic redistribution.

Gender inequality is certainly one form of ongoing inequality in society. As Ponniah writes, redistributing resources is not sufficient to break down inequality because it ignores the "crucial role that identity and diversity play in society." That is, who we are plays a huge part in where we are on the social hierarchy. Simply providing those who have historically been economically disenfranchised is not enough to create a truly equal society or, at least, one seeking to be as equal as possible.

Indeed, writes Ponniah, Venezuela's 1999 Constitution is "explicitly anti-sexist" as it guarantees "women's right to work, to health services, to social security and pensions." Even more, by supporting the notion that women who are mothers should receive pensions, it in effect recognizes the "monetary value of housework."

How this policy will play out in Venezuelan society remains to be seen. If it is known that a woman who is a full-time mother will receive a pension, might husbands and families use this law as reason to discourage or even prevent women from working?

Still, I find the paying of pensions to full-time mothers intriguing. Placing a specific monetary value on motherhood challenges the notion that "being a mother is priceless; it's the sort of thing that one could never put a price tag on." While I am glad to know that being a mother is esteemed so valuable, it is often conservative thinkers espousing "traditional family values" and that it is better for women to stay at home in the house who offer such views.

Currently the U.S. ranks in the same category as Liberia and Papua New Guinea in how little it provides in the way of maternity leave. Venezuela has the world's third-longest maternity leave, providing mothers with six weeks of pre-natal leave and twenty post-natal. Fathers may receive two weeks of paternal leave. Parents who adopt a child under three years of age can receive the same benefits.

What can I say? When is the U.S. going to wake up and smell the coffee some mothers (myself) drink too much of as we go about our full-time work as mothers, teachers, lawyers and so much more?

Photo: Woman with two children walking to catch a bus in Chaguaramal, Miranda State, Venezuela (Wilfredor/CC)

South Africa: Guptagate and the class nature of corruption

Tue, 28 May 2013 20:14:00 +0000

PRETORIA - The so-called Guptagate scandal that has gripped South Africa over the past month has further exposed the scale of corruption dogging the ruling African National Congress (ANC).

The story exploded at the end of April when members of the wealthy Gupta family transported 200 of their relatives and friends from India to South Africa on a privately chartered jet to attend the wedding of one of the Gupta dynasty.

The jet was mysteriously allowed to land at Waterkloof Air Force Base, in Pretoria. The entourage were given fast-track customs and immigration clearance, and then whisked away by a fleet of BMWs, accompanied by heavy security posing as police, to the gambling and holiday resort of Sun City, a few hours drive away. Along the route regular traffic had to stop to make way for the Guptas' convoy.

Workers at Sun City later alleged that the Guptas refused to be waited on by black serving staff, a complaint being pursued by the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

The Indian-born Guptas are one of South Africa's wealthiest families. They own the opportunistically pro-government New Age newspaper and a string of companies, and they have made hefty donations to the ruling party. They have close ties to President Jacob Zuma, and two of his sons are directors of Gupta-owned companies.

When the story hit the headlines, there was a storm of condemnation of the special treatment given to the Guptas, and their illegal use of a military air base. Who had allowed such a thing to happen? Zuma was reportedly incandescent with rage that the family had been given such special treatment.

The ANC's alliance partners, COSATU and the South African Communist Party, lambasted the use of state resources to pamper the Guptas and their friends. The ANC leadership too decried the whole affair.

No one owned up. Government ministers who might have been involved said they knew nothing. They all blamed lesser functionaries in state protocol and foreign ministry departments, some of whom were promptly suspended.

Now a full investigation has been completed, and Parliament has debated the Gupta scandal. Zuma has been the main target of attacks over the matter by a mass media and conservative opposition that never miss an opportunity to bay for his blood. But he too has condemned as illegal the use of "name dropping" to access special privileges.

The investigation revealed that the Indian High Commission in South Africa was able to pull enough strings to allow the Guptas to use the Air Force base, bypassing government because of the tacit understanding that the Guptas had enough of a special relationship with the state to do what they liked.

It also revealed that the security and car rental companies the Guptas used are of dubious provenance, and used flashing blue lights - a police prerogative - illegally.

The affair has put a stronger spotlight on the corruption crisis in the country, particularly its patronage-driven momentum.

That no one at ministerial level knew what was going on to facilitate the Guptas' lavish partying has hardly let the government off the hook: ignorance of events in this case being as damning as hands on complicity.

The government has been fighting both rearguard and proactive battles against corruption, trying to thwart its endemic presence while tackling its newer manifestations.

But Guptagate has blown the lid off how patronage between arrant wealth and political power can lead to a corporate elite such as the Guptas thinking it pretty cool to use South Africa as its playground - and in the process giving a blatant middle finger to the impoverished majority of South Africans.

The government has robust anti-corruption initiatives, and not a day goes by without people in power being investigated.

In South Africa, as elsewhere on the continent, corruption is inextricably linked to mass poverty. The country is one of the world's most unequal, characterized by islands of wealth in an ocean of poverty. This in itself is a breeding ground for corruption.

The ANC commands nearly three-quarters of the vote at election time. In most communities it's the only game in town, the sole channel for people to get work and to access local and state resources. The plethora of government tenders and grey area of insider dealing over who gets them has given rise to a whole new sub-class of the post-1994 business elite - dubbed "tenderpreneurs."

At the same time, while corruption in the state and the public sector as a whole endlessly gets highlighted, corruption in the private sector remains rampant and practically uninvestigated. And the private sector is the constant paradigm extolled the length and breadth of civil society as worth emulating.

It is little wonder, then, that people see the public sector and its myriad facilities as an open trough to be exploited for all it is worth.

But government contrition in speedily investigating Guptagate, getting Parliament to debate it, and the general air of repugnance at the arrogance of the haughty bourgeoisie may turn out to have a positive impact on anti-corruption struggles.

Photo: Ruling party ANC president Jacob Zuma at their elective conference at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa, Dec. 17, 2012. Themba Hadebe/AP

Court throws out Guatemala genocide verdict

Fri, 24 May 2013 21:47:00 +0000

The Guatemalan Constitutional Court on May 20 threw out the guilty verdict of General Efrain Rios-Montt on technical grounds, plunging the whole country into a state of new insecurity. Just 10 days earlier, a Guatemalan court had found the former dictator guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity, and sentenced him to 80 years in prison.

During the original trial, various attempts had been made to stop the proceedings. These attempts we the results of pressure from the country's far-right business and landholding elites. The current president of Guatemala, General Otto Perez Molina, also has said that during Rios-Montt's tenure of a year and a bit, in 1982 and 1983, no genocide was committed. The killing of perhaps 40,000 people overall, and the crime for which Rios Montt was convicted, namely the murder 1,771 of people of the Ixil Maya ethnic group in "Operation Sofia", was not genocide because the women, children and old people who were slaughtered with mind-boggling brutality were assumed to be providing support for the guerillas in the forests and were killed because of this and not because of their ethnicity. Besides, the army unleashed by Rios-Montt on the Ixil Triangle only killed about 5.5 percent of the Ixil population, not enough to be considered genocide.

So runs the argument of the defenders of Rios-Montt. It is a revealing one, because it shows that these people think they were justified in killing anybody who agreed with or was in communication with the guerillas, as well as guerillas who were taken prisoner, who were generally massacred by the troops. It ignores the "detail" that there would have not been a guerilla insurgency in Guatemala in the first place had it not been for the fact that in 1954, the United States Central Intelligence Agency had overthrown the legally elected government of President Jacobo Arbenz because of the threat his progressive policies represented to the interests of U.S. corporations, especially politically connected United Fruit. After that coup, the United States government continued to support one military, or military dominated, regime after another, and did far less than nothing to help Guatemalans restore democracy. The obvious sadistic racism of the Guatemalan ruling elites and military brass was ignored.

In Latin America, military officers who show this kind of attitude are generally referred to as "gorillas," which is most unfair to the African apes.

A lot of people, and not only in Guatemala, had reason to fear the repercussions of the guilty verdict. Many people were saying "who's next", and that President Perez Molina's name came up in the trial, as a lower level officer in Rios-Montt's forces during the bloodiest period, brought these fears to the highest level of government. The Reagan administration had strongly supported Rios Montt's bloodbath in the Ixil Triangle, and, although Reagan has gone to his reward, there are discussions both in Guatemala and the United States about which U.S. civil and military officials could and should still be prosecuted for abetting the Rios-Montt genocide. There were many reports of threats of violence to the judge, to the prosecutors and to the witnesses during the trial. Many of the witnesses were older peasants from the Ixil group who showed great courage in testifying in the face of this kind of threat; now they may have to go through the whole thing all over again, and are sure to be subjected to even more intense death threats and other pressure.

Rios-Montt's attorneys are claiming that the whole trial has to be started over again with "new judges", meaning right wing ones. One of their main complaints against the original trial was that the Judge, Jasmin Barrios, was prejudiced in favor of the prosecution. Right-wing media in Guatemala are hinting that the judiciary is now "communist infiltrated." It is unclear at this point, however, precisely what will happen next.

On a related note, on May 17, former Argentine Dictator Jorge Videla died in prison at age 87. He was also serving a sentence for crimes committed during Argentina's "dirty war" in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There is a direct relationship with the events in Guatemala; the Argentine dictatorship, as well as the governments off the United States and Israel, had provided "material aid" in the form of equipment, training and advisors to Guatemala's bloodthirsty rulers.

There is much information on the details of this tragic period Latin American history at the website of an excellent organization with the improbable name of "National Security Archive."

Photo: Efrain Rios Montt Moises Castilo/AP

Israelis rally for peace protester

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:39:00 +0000

Dozens of supporters of Israeli conscientious objector Natan Blanc demonstrated outside military headquarters on Tuesday.

The Israeli military has jailed Mr Blanc 10 consecutive times, amounting to six months continuous imprisonment so far, for refusing to serve because of his opposition to Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

Last week more than 30 Israeli legal experts, including the dean of Hebrew University's law school, signed an open letter urging the army to release 20-year-old Mr Blanc and saying the detention violated his freedom of conscience.

His father David said that his son was supposed to be inducted for compulsory military service last November and, after refusing to serve, was sent to a military prison and remains there with no end in sight.

Natan Blanc said: "The main reason that I am refusing to serve is that I feel that our country is going toward a non-democratic situation of civil inequality between us and the Palestinians."

"I believe the Israeli military plays a major role in preserving this situation and my conscience does not allow me to participate in it."

Military service is compulsory in Israel, but in reality thousands of Israelis are exempted.

Mr Blanc has offered to serve in Israel's civilian paramedic service but has been refused permission.

The army won't provide statistics on conscientious objectors.

But Yesh Gvul activist Ishai Menuchin, whose group assists objectors, estimated that dozens of Israeli youths refuse to serve each year.

Earning an exemption as a "pacifist" requires approval from a special committee and is almost never granted, he said.

In most cases, the military dismisses objectors as "unfit" for physical or psychological reasons.

A small number are sent to jail for short stints, and then agree to meet a mental health officer to receive an exemption on psychological grounds.

"The army prefers this. You accept that there is something wrong with you," he said.

But Mr Blanc has refused to leave on psychological grounds.

"He's not going to lie to get out. That's apparently what's required," said his father.

This article was reposted from Morning Star.

South India voters reject BJP

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:12:00 +0000

Indian voters rejected the reactionary Hindu-nationalist party, known as the BJP, in a recent state election. The huge loss spells trouble for the ultra-right party in the 2014 national elections.

Out of the four southern Indian states, Karnataka was the only state where the BJP had found a foothold. In the 2007 elections, voters there had delivered a disgusting surprise by putting the BJP into power. The southern Indian states have, in general, a progressive voter base and a strong secular tradition both of which run contrary to the BJP agenda.

The BJP government in Karnataka has been mired in corruption and personal power feuds, which led to its downfall. Voters refused to give a second term. Its strength reduced from 110 seats to only 40 in a state assembly of 224.

The big winners are the ruling Congress Party, which increased its tally to 121 seats, and another secular party, JDS, which has worked in alliance with the left parties in past. The JDS bagged 40 seats.

This election has a great impact on Indian politics and sets the stage for the next general election to be held in 2014. The BJP holds about 19 of 20 parliamentary seats from Karnataka and may loose most of them to secular parties, including Congress.

Political analysts attributed the Karnataka victory to the Congress Party leadership trio: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi, who is being groomed for the PM position. This election has given a great facelift to otherwise sinking prospects of the Congress Party, which is also corruption-laden.

In other news, Indian Minister for External Affairs Salman Khurshid travelled to Beijing to negotiate Chinese withdrawal from Indian territory along a disputed boundary line. The incursion point was 12 miles within the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh area of Jammu and Kashmir State of Northern India. As India and China have fought in the past over boundaries, it was indeed a victory of peace forces on both sides to end the issue diplomatically. A section of Indian media has been hawkishly raising voices against China's incursions. The Chinese agreed to withdraw its troops to the Line of Actual Control, without accepting that it had trespassed.

India and China are partners in ever increasing trade and agreed to cooperate in future projects. The Chinese foreign minister will visit India soon and complete some of the remaining agenda.

Photo: The Indian state of Karnataka is highlighted (CC).

Is the world of advertising swallowing Russia?

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:52:00 +0000

MOSCOW - I came here for a visit recently, for the first time in many years. Now the city seems engulfed by the modern world of advertising; the signs, ads and billboards sometimes remind me of Times Square.

Many offerings are of Russian make, but logos and company names are all too familiar for my taste: KFC, Subway, and the ubiquitous McDonald's are perhaps the most intrusive.

Moscow has many beauties. I found the powerful, redbrick Kremlin with its towers more impressive than in all my recollections or television views of it. And next to it is the broad Red Square with the Lenin mausoleum and the Kremlin wall with its interred urns - among them the three American labor heroes: "Big Bill" Haywood, Charles Ruthenberg and John Reed.

New for me was the cluster of modern, curving skyscrapers, undoubtedly impressive to their owners and probably to many Muscovites as well.

Another presence that is much bigger than before the restoration of capitalism is that of the Church. Yes, before the restoration of capitalism there was the many-colored St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square, built for Ivan the Terrible, and the massively walled-in Novodevichy (New Maiden's) Convent, built for Peter the Great (or for his errant sister and wife).

But other onion-shaped towers, large and small, often in shining gold, seem to have multiplied in all directions. Crowning them all is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the largest Orthodox church in the world, built for a series of 19th century tsars, torn down by Stalin, replaced by Khrushchev with the world's largest out-door swimming pool, and then rebuilt for pious Christians after 1990.

But still there are islands that evoke the past. The Museum of the Great Patriotic War, an imposing, quiet new building, necessarily based on Soviet times, offered dramatic dioramas of key events during the war: Leningrad, the decisive battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, the Dnieper crossing, and the liberation of Berlin. In the dimly lit Hall of Remembrance and Sorrow countless filaments with small glass beads hung from the ceiling, symbolizing tears for the dead.

With traffic jams reaching well out into the suburbs it took our bus over seven hours to reach the city of Ivanovo, only 250 km away (about 150 mi).

A large city, the size of Miami with 400,000 inhabitants, it was once Russia's main textile center, like Manchester in England or Lawrence and Lowell in Massachusetts. But as in so many textile cities outside Asia, the industry has died almost completely. To a visitor, Ivanovo seems a conglomerate of big, empty factories, tall apartment buildings from the Soviet era contrasting with streets lined with traditional little wooden homes, some with skilful wood carvings on eaves or windows and brief glimpses of comfortable interiors, others, hardly more than log cabins, empty and falling apart.

We finally arrived at our destination on the town's outskirts, a complex of eight handsome buildings comprising the unusual school known as Interdom, short for "International House," whose 80th anniversary ceremonies our mixed German, Spanish and Russian group was here to share in.

Interdom's founding was linked with Germany, especially with the small town of Elgersburg in Thuringia. Here, in 1924, Communist Party leader Wilhelm Pieck - 25 years later the president of the German Democratic Republic - opened a "Red Aid" home for the children of people persecuted for their leftist views and actions, mostly German but also Bulgarian and Austrian. In those extremely difficult times a large number of the children were undernourished, some were rachitic, not a few had tuberculosis.

Place to learn and recuperate

This was a both a school and a place to recuperate, regain health - and keep the leftist views of their parents. Although supported by famous sponsors like Einstein, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, stage director Erwin Piscator and the artists Käthe Kollwitz, Max Liebermann and Otto Dix, pressure from the government of Thuringia increased rapidly; its Social Democratic-Communist coalition government had been driven from office by German government troops in October, 1923. And as the Nazis grew stronger and stronger the school was increasingly endangered.

The International Red Aid, abbreviated MOPR in Russia and called International Labor Defense in the U.S.), now stepped in with the offer, supported by the textile workers of Ivanovo, to replace the German school with a new one in their city. By the time the Nazis came to power this had become a dire necessity. Money was collected in the whole Soviet Union and the new school opened in the spring of 1933.

The pupils here aim at a college education when possible and are evidently better prepared than most children to get the necessary good grades in entrance examinations. But they are also given the opportunity to learn a hand-working trade; in woodworking or metal shop for the boys and designing and dressmaking for the girls. When I questioned this division I was told that the girls could also learn a trade in the shops if they wished - but I got the impression that this was hardly common if at all the case. This seemed an echo of the thinking of past years - or perhaps of present Russian reality.

The evening of May Day featured an outdoor picnic outside the gym and swimming pool. There was sack racing, bowling - with a basketball and big soda bottles as pegs, throwing baskets, hopping on one leg and trying to push the opponent off balance, walking a straight line backwards using a mirror, skipping rope and tug of war, hop scotch and walking blind-folded a slalom line between pegs. I was most affected by the happy, natural atmosphere, with never a cross word between older and younger pupils, white and black, Russian and Chechen, boys and girls.

I must be very cautious in generalizing. I could be mistaken in my vivid admiration of this school. Yet another thought crossed my mind. Was this an isolated island, far removed from the facts of modern life? In some ways it recalled the innocent ways of long past, perhaps never really existent "school days"; no television, and hand phones -only once did I see a boy playing an electronic game on his hand-held phone.

No coke or any other vending machines, no smoking on the grounds, no racism or sexism (unless the choice of trades could be so labeled). No commercialism and no demonstrative religion; I was told that pupils could practice any religion they desired, but the school itself was completely secular.

Of course no guns were to be seen anywhere. But perhaps most interesting: no rejection of the Soviet past, which had provided, after all, the foundation for this school. Can one live properly on such an island? And should one? And will these youngsters adjust later, after arriving in the outside world?

Americans ride to free the Cuban Five

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:25:00 +0000

On Sunday, May 5, two Americans rode their bikes in a 40-mile ride that passed through over 20 different towns in the area of Lake Como, Italy.

This year the annual Garibaldina cycling event, in which hundreds of cyclist participate, was co-sponsored by the Italy-Cuba Friendship Circle of Como City.

The riders called on the U.S. government to set free the unjustly imprisoned five Cubans who were active in the U.S. in 1998 to stop terrorist attacks by anti-Castro organizations that are based in Florida.

The five Cubans had provided information to the Cuban government on U.S.-based terror plots by anti-Communist exiles such as the bombings of hotels.

When the Cuban government gave information to the FBI, the five Cubans were arrested. The terrorist groups were not dismantled and are still active.

The event in Como was followed by a banquet lunch where American and Swiss riders were able to meet and speak with fellow Italian riders as well as with the Cuban Ambassador to Italy, Milagros Carina Soto Agüer, and a representative from the Cuban consulate in Milan, Eduardo Vidal Chirino.

Also present were national regional heads of the Italy-Cuba Friendship Association which has organized groups, called circles, throughout Italy.

One of the Five, Rene Gonzalez, has been released and is now back in Cuba.

Photo: Activist bike riders in Italy. Ismael Parra/PW

Cuban Five’s Rene Gonzalez freed, push continues

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:37:00 +0000

Rene Gonzalez, one of the "Cuban Five" who have been imprisoned in the United States since 1998, is now free and back in Cuba. But the remaining four still have many years in prison ahead of them, unless people of conscience in the United States can make our case to the U.S. public so that enough pressure is exerted on the Obama administration to achieve their freedom.

Over the years, the real story of why the Cuban 5 were arrested, why they were tried in Miami in spite of the very prejudicial atmosphere there, and why they were given such draconian sentences, has emerged.

The Five were part of a network of Cubans and Cuban-Americans who were keeping under surveillance right-wing Cuban exile groups in South Florida who had been launching terroristic attacks on Cuba for years. The most famous was the bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner in 1976, which resulted in the deaths of 73 passengers and crew. But more recently, there had been bombings aimed at tourist destinations in Cuba, in one of which an Italian traveler, Fabio de Celmo, was killed. Cuba had repeatedly asked the United States government to crack down on the groups sponsoring these actions. The two masterminds of the airliner bombing, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, were neither prosecuted for it in the United States, nor extradited to Cuba or Venezuela (where the terroristic act was planned). Bosch died in 2011 but Posada, a former CIA asset, is living comfortably in Florida.

The Five were not spying on the U.S., nor doing anything to harm the interests of U.S. citizens. In fact, the information they gathered was handed over to the F.B.I. by the Cuban government itself, with the request that it be acted on.

However, the U.S. security agencies had themselves developed unhealthy relations with the self-same extremist exile groups and leaders. Supporters of the Five point out that one of the top F.B.I. officials in the area, Hector Pesquera, shared much of the ideology of the right-wing Cuban exiles. Evidently it was his idea to move against the Five, and he had some trouble persuading then-Attorney General Janet Reno to go along.

So the Five were arrested, subjected to long periods of solitary confinement and other abuses, put on trial and given draconian sentences. Objections by defense attorneys that the Five could not get a fair trial in right-wing, exile-dominated Miami were brushed aside. Later it was found that the U.S. government was subsidizing some of the Miami journalists who made the biggest uproar about the Five.

The guilty verdicts were handed down on June 8, 2001.

Gonzalez was given a 15-year prison term for "general conspiracy and conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent." Since October 27, 2011, he has been out on parole. He was able to briefly return to Cuba to visit his dying brother last year: This was allowed by a judge over the protests of the U.S. government. This year, he was allowed again to go and visit his family after his father died, and the U.S. did not object to his appeal to stay there, on condition he renounce his U.S. citizenship (he was born in Chicago and had dual citizenship).

Ramon Labañino Salazar was convicted of general conspiracy, conspiracy to commit espionage, false identity and conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent. He was given life in prison plus 18 months, but on appeal this was reduced to 30 years. So he has 17 years to go.

Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez was found guilty of general conspiracy, conspiracy to commit espionage, and conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent. After appeal, he ended up with a sentence of 21 years 10 months, so he has about 9 years to go.

Fernando Gonzalez Llort was found guilty of general conspiracy, conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent, and False Identity. After appeal, he ended up with a sentence of 17 years, leaving him with four years to serve.

The most tragic case is that of Gerardo Hernandez. He was originally charged with general conspiracy, conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, false identity and conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent. But seven months after his arrest the government added two murder charges.

This was because on the flimsiest of evidence, the government claimed that Hernandez had known that the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft that had been illegally penetrating Cuban air space at rooftop level to drop leaflets and religious medallions would be shot down by Cuban fighter jets on February 24, 1996, and therefore was complicit in the act. In fact, everybody, including the U.S. government, knew that such an event was likely; U.S. authorities could have easily prevented the incident by revoking the "Brothers" license. Hernandez did not have any ability to stop this.

But nonetheless, he was given two life terms plus 15 years as a result of this farcical trial. To add to the pain, the government has consistently refused to let his wife, Adriana Perez, visit him in jail.

These are people who should be given medals instead of being buried alive in U.S. dungeons. Three of them (Gonzalez Llort, Rene Gonzalez and Hernandez) participated as volunteers in the Cuban mission to defend Angola against aggression by apartheid South Africa. All of them have maintained a front of total solidarity, although there surely must have been attempts to play them off against each other. Being told that Gonzalez was now free, Hernandez insisted that they are not now the "Cuban Four", the Five will be the Five forever.

There is a worldwide movement to Free the Five, which has organized activities in their support in many countries and counts on the support of many distinguished friends of human freedom, including artists like Danny Glover, labor leaders like Dolores Huerta, poets like Alice Walker and no less than ten Nobel Prize winners.

One of the ideas for achieving the freedom for the Five has been a humanitarian exchange for Alan Gross, a U.S. government contractor who is serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba for illegal activities in support of the destabilization of that country. The Cuban government has hinted broadly that it is open to such an exchange, but the United States has not so far responded.

From May 30 to June 5, there will be "Five Days for the Cuban Five" in Washington DC., with many speakers and cultural events.

Photo: Rene Gonzalez, center, with daughter and unidentified man. (AP)

Ex-Guatemalan dictator found guilty of genocide

Mon, 13 May 2013 20:54:00 +0000

On May 10 a court in Guatemala found former dictator Efrain Rios Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for his part in the massacre of native Americans of the Ixil Maya group during his brief presidency from 1982 to 1983.

A three-judge panel headed by Judge Jazmin Barrios sentenced him to 80 years in prison: 50 for the genocide, 30 for crimes against humanity. An associate, former intelligence chief Jose Rodriguez Sanchez, was acquitted. Under Guatemalan law, nobody can serve more than 50 years, but Rios Mont is 86.

Rios Montt seized power in a coup d'etat against another military dictator, Fernando Lucas Garcia, in 1982. Paz in turn had been the latest in a series of dictators who had ruled Guatemala after the United States overthrew democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954.

Arbenz was overthrown because his land reform plans threatened both the local landholding elites and the interests of the monster - United Fruit Company (ancestral to today's Chiquita Banana) which held vast amounts of idle land in Guatemala.

Major investors in United Fruit included U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Alan Dulles. Arbenz was replaced by a military man, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who repealed Arbenz' measures and instituted a harshly repressive regime against the left.

Castillo was assassinated in 1957 but after him came a series of military strongmen who carried out a bloody war against left wing guerillas as well as farmers and workers. This war was increasingly funded by the United States, as U.S. and Israeli advisors gave the Guatemalan military tips on methods of torture and murder. The war cost an estimated 200,000 lives, with 93 percent of the killing done by government troops and right-wing paramilitaries allied with them. A 1996 peace accord ended the formal fighting, but left Guatemala scarred and still plagued by violence.

Rios Montt seized power in March, 1982 and only ruled until August of the following year. In this short period he showed himself to be an overachiever in the murder and mayhem departments: Troops under his command are thought to have killed at least 40,000 people.

He was tried, however, only for one specific campaign, against the Ixil subgroup of the Maya indigenous people. In this operation, Rios Montt's men destroyed 600 indigenous villages. He was found guilty of command responsibility in the slaughter of 1,771 people including women, children and old people. Small babies were killed by picking them up by the feet and smashing their heads against walls.

Eventually, Rios Montt was himself overthrown and replaced by another brutal military dictator, Oscar Mejia Victores, who continued the repression.

The fall of Rios Montt had less to do with his cruelty and violence and more with the fact that as a fanatical evangelical Christian (the Church of the Word), he had gotten on the nerves of Catholic elites in Guatemala. He fell in spite of the fact that he had excellent relations with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who publicly praised Rios Montt as a man of "integrity."

Rios Montt was a graduate of what was then called the "School of the Americas" in Fort Benning, Georgia, which has produced scores of the Latin American military's worst murderers and human rights violators, giving them training in how to "win the hearts and minds" of the people by means of various forms of torture. A specialty of the Rios Montt period was the creation of "self-defense" patrols which would pit Maya villagers against each other; another was the "Kabiles," an elite killer squad which still exists and is being used by the U.S. and allies in the "humanitarian" task of chasing down Joseh Kony in Central Africa.

The people around Rios Montt, including his daughter, Zury Rios, are still powerful and influential in Guatemala, and still have powerful connections in the United States. Rios is married to former Republican Congressman Jerry Weller of Illinois. In the 2006 elections, the Rios Montt's party, the Guatemalan Republican Front, organized violent riots in Guatemala city, which many saw as a chilling reminder that the days of the general could return.

At the time the genocide in Guatemala was being carried out, the reason given to outsiders was that to get rid of the plague of "communism", it was necessary to kill everybody who showed signs of being infected. Now, however, Rios Montt claims, as his defense in the trial, that he, as president of the country and commander in chief of the armed forces, had no idea these things were going on and never gave the orders.

There was an element of uncertainty in the trial, due to the power still exercised over the judiciary and other institutions by wealthy economic strata which have been the support of the military regimes and the political right. An attempt was made to get the trial annulled, but this failed. Although a large group of Ixil Maya survivors and technical specialists testified to the events, the current president of Guatemala, General Otto Perez Molina, has denied that genocide ever took place and is himself reported to have played a subordinate role in the repression against the Ixil. However, President Perez has also said he will abide by the court's decision. For his part, Rios Montt says he will appeal up to the Supreme Court if necessary.

For the many people in the United States who are nauseated and horrified by the Guatemalan genocide, we still have important tasks to do. One is to shut down the School of the Americas, now euphemistically renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation." Another is to bring to book surviving U.S. government and private individuals who aided, abetted and inspired Rios Montt and his cohorts in their bloody deeds. Reagan has gone to his reward, but there are plenty left. Above all, we must never let this happen again.

Photo: Efrain Rios Montt Moises Castilo/AP

No U.S. bases in Afghanistan!

Fri, 10 May 2013 22:17:00 +0000

In this week's news has come a sobering wake-up call for anyone hoping the end of 2014 will really mark the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

In what may be a premature revelation of what's happening in negotiations for a Bilateral Security Agreement, Afghan President Hamid Karzai on May 8 proclaimed that his country "can agree" to give the U.S. nine bases he said Washington seeks.

Karzai told an audience at Kabul University that the U.S. "staying on after 2014 is for the good of Afghanistan. The condition is that they bring peace and security and take action quickly ... on the basic strengthening of Afghanistan, helping the economy of Afghanistan."

He added, "We are trying to ensure the interests of both countries are satisfied in this agreement. We want roads, electricity, hydropower dams, and strengthening of the Afghan government."

The White House was quick to back away from Karzai's statement. Answering a reporter's question, Press Secretary Jay Carney asserted that "the United States does not seek permanent military bases in Afghanistan, and any U.S. presence after 2014 would only be at the invitation of the Afghan government and aimed at training Afghanistan forces and targeting the remnants of Al Qaeda."

Carney declined to answer a question about how close President Obama is to deciding U.S. troop levels there after 2014.

Despite the denials, it sounds like Karzai has let a very big cat out of the bag.

Negotiations between the two countries for an agreement on what will happen after the stated deadline for U.S. withdrawal of combat troops began last November.

Karzai's spokesperson Aimal Faizy told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview this week that the bases the U.S requested last month include facilities in and near the capital, Kabul, and in Helmand and Kandahar in the south, Herat near the Iranian border, Gardez and Jalalabad in the east, and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Much of what is happening in the ongoing talks remains unclear. But what is clear is that despite more than 11 years of war and occupation and attempts to train Afghan armed forces, the military situation in Afghanistan remains highly unstable. Taliban forces can mount actions in supposedly secure areas, while the situation of the civilian population remains dire.

And Al Qaeda, the pretext for continuing U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, is virtually nonexistent there.

Despite efforts to paint U.S. training efforts with a rosy glow, Afghan forces continue to face problems with corruption, "attrition," coordination and combat ability.

Meanwhile, over 2,200 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan-related actions, and civilian deaths have by some estimates soared well over 100,000.

So what to do?

As international affairs commentator Conn Hallinan pointed out earlier this year that the only sane course is for the U.S. "to get out, and as quickly as possible."

And leading peace advocates in Congress have been pressing for exactly that approach.

U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, D-Calif., earlier this year reintroduced her "Responsible End to the War in Afghanistan Act," which would restrict Afghanistan war funding to that needed for "safe and orderly withdrawal" of all U.S. military and contractor personnel. The measure has 40 co-sponsors.

The bill, H.R. 200, is currently before the House Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Affairs. Helping to build support for this measure is one very positive way to respond to the latest news.

Photo: U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, via The U.S. Army.

So far, Obama resists pressure to attack Syria

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:53:00 +0000

Two recent developments sharply ratcheted up pressure for direct U.S. military intervention in Syria: Israeli airstrikes hit sites near Damascus, and accusations intensified that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons. So far, it appears President Obama is resisting the pressure, but that could change if moves for a political solution to the war in Syria do not succeed.

On Tuesday in Moscow, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced they will work to convene an international diplomatic conference in the coming weeks to negotiate an end to the war. They said they will seek to get representatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and opposition leaders to attend. If that happens, and an agreement is reached to end the war, it would halt a two-year-old conflict that has become a magnet for sectarian extremists and threatens to engulf the entire region. If a political settlement is achieved it would also be a big foreign policy success for Obama.

But that's a big "if."

Last weekend, U.S. ally Israel launched two missile attacks against reported Syrian government military installations close to Damascus. The airstrikes set off huge explosions. Israeli officials portrayed the attacks as defensive, saying they targeted missiles being shipped from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to be used against Israel. Others saw the airstrikes on Syria as a lead-up to an Israeli attack on Iran.

But they could also have been intended to test Syria's defenses and responses, serving as a stalking horse for wider military action, by the U.S. or others.

The Israeli actions were certainly used that way by U.S. warhawks like Sen. John McCain. McCain, speaking Sunday on FOXNews, said the Israeli airstrikes showed that Syria's defenses were not that strong. "The Israelis seem to be able to penetrate it fairly easily," he said. McCain said the U.S. could disable Syrian air defenses "with cruise missiles" and by using Patriot missile batteries to set up a "safe zone" for rebels. Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Rogers said the U.S. could enforce a no-fly zone over part of Syria without putting American pilots at risk by using "better technology" - which implies using surface-to-air missiles.

U.S. military leaders and analysts, however, said any such action would require massive U.S. military involvement.

Meanwhile, charges that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons against opponents, first raised last year, reached a new height in recent weeks, with Syrian rebels producing testimony and evidence to bolster the accusations. The chemical weapons issue has been all over the U.S. media. However the evidence is in dispute.

The White House said on April 25 it believed "with some degree of varying confidence" that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons - specifically the nerve agent sarin - against its own people. Prominent figures such as British Prime Minister David Cameron declared it is "very likely" the Syrian government has used chemical weapons. However United Nations commissioner Carla Del Ponte drew headlines last week when she said testimony from victims of the conflict in Syria suggested that rebels may have used sarin.

"This is not the first time rebel forces in Syria have come under suspicion for using chemical weapons." said BBC correspondent Bridget Kendall. "But allegations ... coming from a senior UN official is a different matter. Carla del Ponte is a former war crimes prosecutor and serves on a UN commission looking into human rights abuses in Syria. So any comments from her carry weight."

Del Ponte is a former Swiss attorney-general and prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. "I was a little bit stupefied by the first indications we got" from interviews with victims, doctors and others, "they were about the use of nerve gas by the opposition," she told Swiss TV. She said government troops might also have used chemical weapons, but more investigation was needed.

UN officials later stated there was thus far "no conclusive proof" that either side in the Syria conflict had used chemical weapons.

Others say use of chemical weapons, by either side, may have been accidental.

It is all reminiscent of the "weapons of mass destruction" talk in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Syria crisis probably would undoubtedly not have become so bloody and dangerous if the U.S. had not over the past year helped the reactionary Saudi Arabian and Qatari governments funnel money to Syrian rebels. The emergence of al-Qaeda-type groups in Syria happened during this period. Now, the fact that the president is exercising caution at this point is, for many, a positive change from the Bush-Cheney approach.

Photo: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov address reporters after their meeting on Syria at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Guesthouse in Moscow, May 7, 2013. State Department photo

Professor Falk stirs a firestorm

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:04:00 +0000

It doesn't take much to agitate the defenders of the official orthodoxy. A case in point is the smear campaign aimed at a recent commentary by Richard Falk reflecting on the horrific terrorist attack in Boston.

Falk is a distinguished emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.

He began his article noting that the response by government officials and the public to the Boston tragedy has been by and large constructive:

"The dominant reactions to the horrific bombings on April 15th, the day of the running of the Boston Marathon, as well as the celebration of Patriots Day, have been so far: compassion for the victims, a maximal resolve to track down the perpetrators, a pundit's notebook that generally agrees that Americans have been protected against terrorist violence since 9/11 and that the best way to prevail against such sinister adversaries is to restore normalcy as quickly as possible. In this spirit, it is best to avoid dwelling on the gory details by darkly glamorizing the scene of mayhem with flowers and homage. It is better to move forward with calm resolve and a re-commitment to the revolutionary ideals that midwifed the birth of the American nation."

Not much to quarrel with here - certainly not grounds for the firestorm that greeted Falk's reflections.

Then the distinguished professor went on to say:

"Although there are many distressing continuities that emerge if the Obama presidency is appraised by comparison with the counter-terrorist agenda of his predecessors, there are also some key differences of situation and approach. ... [T]emporarily at least, the Beltway think tanks and the government are doing their best to manage global crises without embarking on further wars in a spirit of geopolitical intoxication ... At least it seems that for the present irresponsible and unlawful warfare are no longer the centerpiece of America's foreign policy, as had become the case in the first decade of the 21st century..."

Now if Falk had ended his commentary here, the article would have probably gone unnoticed, except for a few rumblings from the militarist wing in elite circles that is still committed to using military power to maintain U.S. global domination now and for the foreseeable future.

But Falk cast caution to the wind and went on.

"The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world," he wrote. "In some respects, the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks, and these may yet happen, especially if there is no disposition to rethink US relations to others in the world, starting with the Middle East.

"Some of us naively hoped that Obama's Cairo speech of 2009 was to be the beginning of such a process of renewal ... But as the months passed, what became evident, especially given the strong pushback by Israel and its belligerent leader, Bibi Netanyahu, were a series of disappointing reactions by Obama ..."

Ouch! If Falk's earlier remarks barely caused a ripple of criticism, these remarks set of a torrent of diatribe against Falk from varied quarters: the Heritage Foundation, Breitbart.com, Haaretz, Jewish Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, FOX News, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, the British Mission to the UN, the UN Secretary-General of the UN to name a few.

Falk was called "grotesque," "anti-American," "anti-Semitic" and "a self-hating Jew." Nearly all claimed that he was blaming U.S. foreign policy for the Boston attack.

But Falk wasn't ready to leave his critique here. He continued with this observation, which only further enlarged and enraged his growing circle of establishment critics:

"[S]elf-scrutiny and mid-course reflections on America's global role is long overdue. Such a process is crucial both for the sake of the country's own future security and also in consideration of the wellbeing of others."

And he continued, "Such adjustments will eventually come about either as a result of a voluntary process of self-reflection or through the force of unpleasant events ... We should be asking ourselves at this moment, 'How many canaries will have to die before we awaken from our geopolitical fantasy of global domination?'"

Now I might quarrel with some of the specific phrases that Falk employed, but the general thrust of his article is on point, in my opinion, despite the demonization of him coming from official circles. His insistence that blowback from our massive global footprint is inevitable, that fundamental policy changes are imperative in the Middle East (and elsewhere), and that we need to engage in "self-scrutiny and step back from our "geopolitical (I would add geoeconomic) fantasy of global domination," is timely advice, especially as pressures mount on the Obama administration to sink us in the civil/sectarian war in Syria.

Of course, effecting such a U-turn in U.S. foreign policy is easier said than done. It runs up against powerful forces in Washington and in corporate suites. These forces are both captives and agents of an economic and social system whose logic is to relentlessly expand and dominate a fragile planet and its finite resources, regardless of the human and ecological toll.

But for our sake and the sake of future generations, today's progressive movement here and abroad has to embrace the challenge of pressing for such a change. There is no alternative!

In the meantime, why not send a note to Professor Falk thanking him for his courage?

Photo: Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian occupied territories since 1967, briefs journalists on his work. UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

Britain to pay out to Mau Mau victims

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:43:00 +0000

(Morning Star) Britain is negotiating compensation for thousands of Kenyans who were [tortured and] severely mistreated by their colonial rulers during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising.

According to a letter sent to lawyers, the Foreign Office is adjourning an appeal against last October's High Court ruling which gave victims the green light to sue the government.

Instead, Britain is offering to negotiate a settlement.

"The parties are currently exploring the possibility of settling the claims," the Leigh Day law firm told Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The High Court heard allegations that Paulo Muoka Nzili, Wambugu Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara were subjected to torture and sexual mutilation.

Photo: Kenyans are rounded up by the British in March 1953 during the Mau Mau uprising. (AP)

Neonazi murder trial opens to protests

Tue, 07 May 2013 12:27:00 +0000

(Morning Star) The highest-profile neonazi murder trial in Germany in decades opened today, with the five accused appearing in public for the first time since their arrest more than a year ago.

Police erected security barriers in anticipation of possible protests by far-right extremist groups at the start of a trial scheduled to last for more than a year.

The main defendant is Beate Zschaepe, who is accused of complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007. If convicted she faces life imprisonment.

Ms Zschaepe is also accused of involvement in at least two bombings and 15 bank robberies carried out by her accomplices Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boenhardt, who died in an apparent murder-suicide in November 2011.

Four male defendants are facing accusations of assisting the self-styled National Socialist Underground in a series of murders.

Photo: Ismail Yozgat , right, and Ayse Yozgat , left, attend a memorial event on the anniversary of the murder of their son Halit, who was killed by the neonazi NSU terror group, in Kassel, Germany. (AP)

Oaxacan teachers challenge the test

Mon, 06 May 2013 15:56:00 +0000

Recently an American Federation of Teachers resolution declared that U.S. public schools are held hostage to a "testing fixation rooted in the No Child Left Behind Act," and condemned its "extreme misuse as a result of ideologically and politically driven education policy." AFT President Randi Weingarten proposed instead "public education should be obsessed with high-quality teaching and learning, not high-stakes testing." In Seattle teachers at Garfield High have refused to give them.

Many Mexican teachers would find these sentiments familiar. The testing regime in Mexico is as entrenched as it is in the United States, and its political use is very similar - undermining the rights of teachers, and attacking unions that oppose it. In Michoacán, in central Mexico, sixteen teachers went to jail because they also refused to administer standardized tests. But the teachers' union in the southern state of Oaxaca, Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), has not only refused to implement standardized tests - it has proposed its own reform of the education system, one designed by teachers themselves.

Program for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca (PTEO)

Tranquilino Lavarriega Cruz, coordinator of the union's Center for the Study of Educational Development, has taught for 11 years in primary schools in poor communities. Today he works full time coordinating the Program for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca (PTEO). "The PTEO is a product of the vision of all the teachers in Oaxaca," he explains. "It covers the infrastructure of schools, conditions of the students, evaluation, teachers' training, and compensation. The program is more than a written document. It seeks to transform people's lives."

Nationalist governments after the Revolution of 1910-20 started Mexico's public education system. Today children start preschool at three, and move to a six-year primary school at 6. At twelve, they start secondary school, which ends when they're fifteen. These twelve years are mandatory. The Department of Public Education administers the national school system, while each state also has its own department. All Mexican teachers belong to the SNTE, the largest union in Latin America, and each state has its own section.

The national union's leaders were loyal supporters of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for over 70 years, but teachers' movements in many states fought to change what many viewed as a repressive bureaucracy. Today "this internal movement fights for the democratization of the union and for educational reform," according to Manuel Perez Rocha, former president of the Autonomous University of Mexico City and one of the country's most respected educators.

Over the last two decades, however, corporate influence has grown over Mexico's educational system. "They started creating mechanisms for controlling the ideology of both teachers and students," Lavarriega says, "trying to certify education in the same way they'd certify a product - to sell it."

Parallels with the U.S.

Perez Rocha sees parallels with the U.S. "The Mexican right always copies the United State's right," he laughs. "The politics of merit pay and the correlation with standardized exam results is identical between the two countries. The right wants to convert education into a commodity and students into merchandise-'Let's fill their heads with information and put them to work.'" Nevertheless, he notes, there are important differences, because the national union in Mexico is an entrenched part of the power structure.

In 2008 the recently removed leader of the teachers union, Esther Elba Gordillo Morales, signed an agreement with then Mexican President Felipe Calderon called the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE). Just weeks after taking office, Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, ordered her arrest on corruption charges, shortly after the Mexican Congress gave its final approval to an education reform program based on ACE that is hated by most of the country's teachers. Gordillo may prove to be guilty of the embezzlement charges leveled against her. But what placed her in the cross hairs of Mexico's corporate elite was more likely her inability to keep teachers under control as protests against testing and U.S.-style education reform spread across the country.

Union's alternative reform plan

The ACE is based on a national standardized test for students called ENLACE. Pedro Javier Torres Hernandez, a biology teacher since 1989, has been working for twelve years on the union's alternative reform plan, most recently on its proposal regarding evaluations. He criticizes the ACE and the ENLACE test because "they don't take context into account. A school in the city isn't the same as one in a remote community. Sixteen languages are spoken in Oaxaca, and in Mexico there are great differences between communities. Some schools function very well because they have resources while others don't. That shouldn't justify bad conditions, but to think that teachers are the only ones responsible is wrong."

The impact of the testing regime on curriculum is similar to that in many U.S. schools. Humanities, art and philosophy have all but disappeared from the curriculum, Perez Rocha charges. History and literature are drastically reduced and placed in other programs.

"Under the ACE," Torres says, "if students at a school don't achieve good test results, the Secretary of Public Education declares their teachers incompetent, and they're removed. They have to go to a private school and pay to take courses, and later take tests. If they don't score well, they're fired." The ACE also incorporates a previous reward system, called Teaching Careers, where teachers accumulate points based on their own test results, and can qualify for salary increases. "However those who have been given awards are not necessarily the best teachers, and it divides teachers against each other," he believes.

So teachers in Oaxaca refused to implement the ENLACE test. There is resistance in other states as well. Sixteen teachers were arrested in Michoacán for refusing. "But Oaxaca is the stone in the shoe," Lavarriega says.

Section 22's alternative to the ACE proposes programs for infrastructure, student needs and financial incentives, and systems for evaluating and training teachers. For Lavarriega, "Education must be diverse because Oaxaca is an extremely diverse state. Schools in the heart of the city should be equal to those in marginalized communities. Communities should be able to generate their own educational process, and teachers should be part of it."

To critics who claim this sounds like deemphasizing education standards, he responds, "We're not saying that all knowledge is contextual. A five is a five, no matter what part of the world you're living in. There are universal elements of the curriculum that we shouldn't modify. But many of us look at the textbook almost like God, not just in Oaxaca but everywhere in the world. We believe we can't function without one. Isn't reality around us also a great opportunity to develop content?"

In indigenous communities Torres says "you hear parents saying they want more instruction in their own language, as well as better instruction in the sciences. What the PTEO tries to do is to harmonize things. The fundamental linchpin of this plan is forming groups or collectives. You could, for instance, set up a collective in a school, or one for an entire community in which there are various schools. These collectives bring together teachers, students, and their families, and they work on educational projects."

The PTEO's main difference with the ACE is its approach to evaluation. Instead of a standardized test, "evaluation should be a process," Lavarriega asserts, "a means, not an end. ENLACE simply gives the test, and that's it. Evaluation should be a process of dialogue, should be global and holistic, and should evaluate everything. It should be multidisciplinary, where teachers to work together to evaluate a student."

In place of the test, the PTEO proposes that teachers and students keep diaries, and maintain portfolios of work. "While we don't discard totally conventional tests, we should also have interviews and surveys," Torres says. "Teachers and families should sit down together and analyze what they find in the diaries and portfolios. Teachers of biology, for instance, can ask each other, how did you explain a certain idea? How well did it work?"

Proponents of standardized exams allege that teachers and schools can't be relied on to impartially evaluate themselves. "We don't reject external evaluation," Torres continues, "so that someone outside can understand what we're doing. But we need to combine external and internal evaluations to make decisions and obtain information, not just to compare schools or students. What's important isn't just the achievement of the student but the process of learning."

Hotly debated question

One of the most hotly debated questions in Mexico involves how teachers themselves are trained, and in particular the role of the "normales"-the teacher training schools. These schools have been hotbeds of activism, where students have challenged the government and educational authorities. Just a year ago police killed three students from the Ayotzinga Normal School in Guerrero, after a student march left the campus and blocked a public highway.

The normal schools have also been a way for the children of poor farming families to get better jobs as teachers. Under neoliberal economic reforms this role has eroded, however and Oaxaca is the only state left where students are still guaranteed jobs when they graduate.

Leftwing politics and class demographics make them a target for conservative reformers. In June 2011 SNTE President Gordillo joined Claudio X. Gonzalez, a wealthy rightwing businessman who heads Mexicanos Primero, the country's corporate education reform lobby, to condemn them. Gonzalez demanded that the schools be replaced with private ones, calling the normales "mediocre, and a mess of politics and complainers." Gordillo said they were graduating "monsters" instead of "ducklings."

The PTEO envisions "a training program that sees a teacher as an agent of social change," Lavarriega counters, "someone who has roots in a community, is interested in all the problems of the children, is familiar with the culture of the people, who can promote education projects with parents. In other words, a teacher the ruling class doesn't want."

In the PTEO vision, teacher training should develop critical thinking and creativity, rather than dependence on rigid curriculum and a textbook. "But it won't happen just because we give a workshop or some five-day course," he cautions. "We ourselves are too much the product of the training we want to change. Nevertheless, if we start a gradual process, I think that in several years we can create new teachers."

Those new teachers will join a workforce with a reputation for stopping work every spring to fight with the government over salaries. Ninety percent earn between 3000 and 3500 pesos ($240-280) every two weeks. Many interns make as little as 1500 pesos, on six-month contracts with no Social Security benefits. "In a marginalized community," Lavarriega says, "teachers can spend 10 to 15% of their salaries on supplies for the students-crayons, markers, binders."

However the PTEO would actually end the individual bonuses given under the Teaching Career system. In its place it proposes financial rewards for schools and collectives that develop effective educational projects. This would encourage collectivity, the union believes, and ties with the community.

Schools without water, sewer connection

More than 26,000 of Mexico's 223,144 basic education campuses have no water and more than 100,000 no connection to sewers. Four-fifths of the furniture doesn't comply with safety standards. The PTEO proposes that teacher collectives, and groups of parents and community authorities, design buildings appropriate to the local environment, using resources that come from the federal government. But the PTEO and the state of Oaxaca don't control those resources. "In Oaxaca alone there's a documented budgetary need for 16 billion pesos, and each year they only appropriate 180 million," Lavarriega charges.

The existence of a state program like the PTEO that differs from the federal ACE is a product of Oaxaca's intense political turmoil. Teachers there were bitter enemies of the PRI governors who ruled the state for 70 years, and a teachers' strike became a virtual insurrection in 2006. But in 2010 Section 22 joined with other independent political forces and defeated the PRI, electing Gabino Cue governor. That opened the door to the union's reform proposals.

"Because the money comes from the federal Department of Public Education, we need their agreement to implement the PTEO," Lavarriega explains. "The state helped form a joint committee of the Institute of Public Education (Oaxaca's state education department) and Section 22. We agreed on our proposal, and Governor Cue and [then] union president Chepi signed it. The next step is to present it to the federal Department of Public Education and the national union. There has been a change with this new government in Oaxaca. There's greater flexibility, and more willingness to work together. We still lack a lot, but the door is opening."

Section 22 set up the first work groups to design alternatives to the federal reforms in 2008. It organized assemblies and distributed a booklet at the start of every school year describing the developing proposals. When it established the first school collectives, it included the families of students. Finally last May and June the first parts of the PTEO were implemented in 280 pilot schools. Each was responsible for setting up a collective, analyzing the needs of students and the community, and developing an educational project.

Torres' school wasn't chosen as a pilot, but he says the PTEO has affected it nonetheless. "My school has a lot of very marginalized families," he explains. "They want their school to get a lot of awards, to be very beautiful, and their students to get straight As. But a better school is also one that can help those who need it most - single mothers, families with lots of economic problems. Our parents are beginning to ask, what is the function of a school? It's more than shining floors, with all the teachers wearing ties. Our school should be changing reality. That's what helping students really means."

Photo: David Bacon