People Before Profit blog

War in the East

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:44:00 +0000

As Veterans Day in the United States approaches we will likely see a temporary increase in television programming focusing on the wars in which Americans have fought. World War II is often the focus of these feature films and documentaries. Those who participated in this struggle against fascism abroad and in many cases returned home to campaign for peace, have even been termed America's "greatest generation."

It is surprising therefore with this sort of annual homage to these veterans that Americans know so little of the role of their most crucial ally during the war - the USSR.

In 1978 the Soviets aimed to end this ignorance with an English language documentary entitled, "The Unknown War," the complete series of which is now thankfully available on DVD.

Sadly, upon it's original release in the United States, anti-communist hysteria prevented the program from getting much publicity or even air time. I recall that in my own hometown one television station aired it during their final evening time slot, just prior to concluding transmission for the day.

Each of the 20 installments is introduced and narrated by Academy Award winning actor Burt Lancaster. The episodes occasionally feature short interviews with war survivors who are both everyday citizens and historical notables of the period, but mostly it is wall to wall sustained footage from the war, and amazing footage it is.

The production is very comprehensive and includes information often overlooked by documentaries in the West. It details the Soviets desperate pre-war bids for peace, first appealing to the governments of Poland, Great Britain and France in August of 1939 to form an alliance for defense against fascism. When talks with Poland broke down the Soviet Defense Minister made proposals to Britain and France alone, proposals that would go unanswered and forcing the USSR into a non-aggression pact with Germany to buy time and build defenses.

Time and again the series details the grim determination of the Soviet people to survive. In a familiar pattern of treachery carried out by the capitalist powers, the Nazis, not unlike their Japanese allies at Pearl Harbor, did not bother to declare war before hurling five million men against the USSR along an 1,800 mile front on June 22, 1941. The German ambassador had assured a nervous Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov only a day prior that Germany wished only for peace.

US Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall informed President Roosevelt that the Soviet Union would fall in less than three months. Thankfully, in the 10 years prior to the invasion, the Soviet people had initiated a crash program of industrialization with workers mastering new technology and learning as they labored. If they had not built up this independent economy the outcome may well have been similar to the capitalist nations of Western Europe with quickly collapsed, capitulated or collaborated when challenged by the Third Reich.

The series not only covers in detail the battles with which even most casual observers of history are familiar - the siege of Leningrad, the battle for Moscow, the defense of Stalingrad, but also those aspects of the Soviet war effort that even dedicated historians are barely familiar. One of these comes near the close of the documentary in an episode entitled 'The Last Battle of the Unknown War' and covers the Soviet war against Japan and even includes footage of Soviet soldiers liberating American POW's who had been languishing for years in Japanese captivity. Other episodes focus on the contributions of the Soviet Navy, Air force and the Partisans; citizen soldiers who waged war even after their villages became trapped behind enemy lines. And always and everywhere there are the staggering and grim statistics of the number of lives lost and homes destroyed.

Americans would do well to recall that 80 percent of the Nazi armies causalities were sustained on the Russian front. Were it not for the sacrifice of the heroic Soviet people the world may well have fallen to those who promised "a thousand year Reich" and sought to purify the world by first consigning the works of Voltaire, Darwin, and Marx to the bonfires and later sending human beings into the fires as well. Viewing this magnificent production is an excellent way to both learn and remember.

Photo: Amazon.com

A ragged ragout from Berlin and Swabia

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:36:00 +0000

BERLIN - This bulletin is a mix of items, an attempt to make up for time spent finishing off my book (in German - which is about 34 great American women, mostly unknown in Europe).

Decent news to begin with: Near Berlin's Brandenburg Gate a memorial was finally unveiled to mark the murder of approximately 500,000 Roma people (often called Gypsies) in Nazi death camps. The decision to erect it was made in 1992, the year a pogrom in the East German city of Rostock was unleashed when Roma refugees were forced to camp outdoors in public gardens, angering (almost certainly intentionally) the local neighborhood.

It took twenty years to overcome controversies and problems concerning the simple monument, by Israeli architect Dani Karavan, a circular water pool about 12 meters wide (c. 40 feet) with a low triangular stele in the center, to be lowered and raised daily and bearing a single fresh flower.

Nearby are the names of the death camps, a chronicle of events, and a poem, "Auschwitz," by the Italian Roma musician Santino Spindelli.

Chancellor Merkel spoke movingly, followed by a survivor of the annihilation of so many of the Roma population who spoke of the "forgotten holocaust" and of his regret that society had learned "almost nothing" since then, in view of continuing discrimination from France to the Balkans.

That was on October 24^th. On October 25^th Merkel's Interior Minister, Hans-Peter Friedrich, demanded that entrance visa and asylum rules for people from Serbia and Macedonia be sharply tightened, that decisions on approving or rejecting applications be speeded up, and that skimpy cost-of-living allowances for those waiting should be reduced. He avoided the word - but it is common knowledge that 90 percent of these would-be immigrants are Roma people, whose living conditions in much of southeastern Europe have become intolerable.

Meanwhile, a protest camp of people seeking political asylum here spent a third week in tents in a square in Berlin's borough of Kreuzberg. About 60 people, mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan but also from several African countries, walked 28 days from Wurzburg in Bavaria to Berlin, 250 miles, some with small children, to demand humane treatment.

Kept on waiting lists for months and years, often housed in old barracks or public buildings in wooded areas isolated from towns or cities, they are restricted from leaving the one county they are assigned to, even to visit friends and family members.

They are not allowed to take jobs to increase paltry allowances sometimes given them in vouchers instead of money. The mayor of Kreuzberg, a left-wing member of the Green party, obtained permission for them to remain until the end of November, but cold weather is already taking its toll. Some of the group began a hunger strike near the Brandenburg Gate - not far from the handsome new memorial.

Not big news

For most media, such hunger strikes, if mentioned at all, are not big news. Berlin's big news for months dealt with a local calamity, the giant new Willy Brandt airport in Schönefeld, southwest of the city, a hub to compete with Frankfurt/Main and Munich. A ballyhoo crescendo preceded the big opening on June 3, 2012. Invitations had been mailed out, new hotels, bus services and retail shops were ready to go.

Suddenly, four weeks before the big day, Mayor Wowereit, co-chairman of the oversight committee, announced shamefacedly that the deadline could not be met; the fire emergency system was flawed.

As a new opening date was planned for August, then October, December, March - now precariously standing at a year from now, October 27^th - it became clear that not just one system was flawed! The original cost plan, two billion euros, now stands at 4.2 billion and is as unsteady as the opening date. One thing seems definite; Mayor Wowereit, a Social Democrat, who headed the popularity list polling in Berlin for years, was last seen down around ninth place (of ten).

This was not the only fiasco. Aside from big and little breakdowns in the elevated train system, by now almost normal, the giant new headquarters for the Federal Intelligence Bureau (BND), at the site of a main stadium in former GDR times, was also hit by delays caused by mismanagement; the price tag, originally set at 720 million euros, has already reached 912 million.

This bad-luck espionage center, less a sister of the CIA than its daughter, was set up in 1956 by a top Nazi espionage general, Rudolf Gehlen, after absolving his service with the American cloak and dagger chiefs. He immediately staffed his organization near Munich (where it remains until the Berlin building problems are overcome) with all his old SS, Gestapo and other war criminal buddies. The more anti-Communist they were the better their chances of a good job - until a scandal in the 1960's forced him to fire 71 of the very bloodiest. By now those men have died off, a small consolation to judge from the present lot. And no one here seems overly worried about delays in this particular moving day.

This BND agency also has a German sister, the Constitutional Protection Bureau - rather like the CIA and FBI siblings in the USA. But the sister also directed its main attention to obstreperous leftists or, more recently, other sinister elements who don't even speak German properly. Thus it somehow overlooked a widespread neo-Nazi underground network which killed people (mostly immigrants) and set off bombs for over ten years without being detected, even though rightwing groups and the neo-Nazi "National Democratic Party" are filled, even staffed, with highly-paid secret government agents.

Lengthy investigations of what has obviously been collusion were rendered more difficult because this government agency shredded thousands of relevant documents when the facts first started to bubble up out of the morass. The investigations are still in progress.

But alas, there is further bad news from the construction sector! Stuttgart often made headlines last year when tens of thousands objected to a major alteration of the famous main station and a neighboring park, both favorite city treasures. Months of almost daily demonstrations, with occasional violent clashes with the police, were finally resolved when a thin showing of voters voted in favor of reconstruction, even though here too the original price tag had long been crumpled up and thrown away.

Not 2.5 billion euros but 4.5 billion were required, and they are still counting. And what has happened now? Since work began there have been three train accidents in or near the construction sites, luckily with only a few lighter injuries, but frequent enough to make people wonder whether the largely national railway system and the giant private companies they hired know what they are doing.

Last year Baden-Wurttemberg, this once so conservative home of both Daimler-Benz and Porsche, elected the first Green politician to head a German state. This October 21 the voters in Stuttgart, its capital and sixth largest German city, elected a Green mayor, the very first to rule in a state capitol.

Both the new mayor, Fritz Kuhn, 57, and Minister President Winfried Kretschmann, 64, are from the conservative wing of their party (Kretschmann views his brief spell as a communist student a "fundamental political mistake").

Their success in winning jobs formerly held almost eternally by Christian Democrats was only a local setback for Angela Merkel's party, but did indicate the disappointment of many German voters in both the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, both of them now striving to break out of the 30 percent range before national elections next September.

Merkel's "Christians" still leading

Merkel's "Christians" are still leading, but their partners, the big-biz friendly Free Democrats, seem unable to break out of the 4 percent doldrums, which would leave them out of the Bundestag and possibly erase them altogether from the national blackboard.

This would likely lead to an unholy "Grand Coalition" of Christians and Social Democrats, as from 2005 to 2009, which would not bode well for working people in Germany, now being torn by almost daily switches from optimistic to pessimistic prophesies for the near future.

If these two biggies join together again that would leave the Greens (with their current 14 percent) out in the cold, despite the recent victories in the Swabian southwest corner.

And the others? The Free Democrats, as mentioned, are gasping for breath and grabbing at straws. Their youthful leader, the handsome, Vietnamese-born Philipp Rösler, a man of the right, has pretty well botched their chances. The once hopeful Pirates, with their cool clothes and hair fashions, are no longer so hot, either. Aside from stale calls for transparency and internet freedom they can agree on no policies, right or left, and their inner party wrangling makes it seem ever more likely that they, too, will miss the magic 5 percent level.

That leaves the Left Party. It slides up and down the polls between 6 and 8 percent, and must keep on its toes if it wants to make it back into the Bundestag. Its internal quarrels have seemingly subsided and it is beginning to sound more aggressive, with its two new leaders sounding interesting new notes.

Katja Kipping of Dresden, 34, has a personal wish to see a guaranteed basic income for everyone, whether working or not - a view not widely shared in the party but open to discussion - like her recent, equally unusual statement echoing the French leftist Mélenchon, that 40,000 euros a month are easily enough to live on handsomely, and all above that might well be taxed 100 percent.

Such radical views are balanced by her West German co-president Bernd Riexinger, a quiet union-man but evidently a fighter, who defied the rabid German media by joining protest crowds in Athens recently when Angela Merkel came to push for further cuts in the ravaged Greek living standards. Most indications are that members of the Left Party approved of his courage and international spirit and hope that rapport between the two co-presidents will help push the Left Party "onward and upward" in the months ahead.

For all the Germans in miserably low-paid jobs or no jobs at all, and now fearful of rising rental costs, the party's pressure is badly needed.

I will end with a biting joke sent by a reader and email friend, and reflecting the resentment of many Greeks towards German bankers and weapons dealers - with memories of the past: When Merkel entered Greece she was asked her name at immigration. "Angela Merkel" she replied. "Occupation?" asked the agent, "No," said Merkel, "I'm only staying a few days."

Photo: The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Thomas Wolf/Wikipedia

Romney’s hedge fund pals hoping to shape foreign policy

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 12:53:00 +0000

The seizure in the Ghanaian port of Tema of an Argentine Navy ship may serve as a warning of the degree to which U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's entanglement with sleazy "vulture fund capitalists" could have a negative influence on U.S. foreign policy.

The ARA Libertad is a large sailing ship often seen in "tall ship" events. It is employed by the Argentine Navy to train its own naval cadets and those of neighboring countries. Earlier this month, it was on a goodwill visit to Ghana, but the goodwill has suddenly turned to an international incident.

On October 2, a Ghanaian judge ruled that Ghana's authorities must seize the ARA Libertad pending resolution of a debt claim by Elliot Management Corporation.

Elliot Management is headed by Paul Singer, a U.S. hedge fund manager who has his business address in the Cayman Islands. Singer is the chairman of the Board of the business friendly Manhattan Institute. He heads the lobbying group American Task Force Argentina.

He is also a major funder of the 2012 electoral campaigns of Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and other Republicans. According to muckraking journalist Greg Palast, Singer and his company have contributed more than $2.3 million to Republican candidates in this election cycle.

They have made a fortune buying up distressed sovereign debt from countries such as Peru, Congo-Brazzaville and Argentina, at sharply discounted prices. They then go after the countries in question to demand payment of the full original amount, hoping to make huge killings. This is the strategy that these people have used within the United States, most spectacularly with Delphi, the auto parts manufacturer, as Palast has also detailed.

The Argentine sovereign debt was accrued during the military dictatorship of the 1980s and the corrupt government of Carlos Menem in the 1990s. By the beginning of the 21^st century, Argentina was in deep economic and political trouble, the government caught between the demands of its creditors and those of its increasingly impoverished and angry people.

The late President Nestor Kirchner, elected in 2003, opted to emphasize the latter, and defaulted. Since that time Argentina has been able to pull itself out of its slump, while gradually restructuring the original debt, paying its creditors at about 30 cents on the dollar. But Elliot Management and its subsidiary NML Capital, who didn't lose a penny on the default, have refused this deal and demand full payment of the original amount, to the excess of $300 million. If Argentina gives in to this demand, it would harm Argentina's and other countries' ability to deal with their sovereign debt.

So Singer and his minions took advantage of Ghanaian courts to go after Argentine government assets in the form of the Libertad. Heretofore, there was no quarrel between the two countries, and the court action in seizing the ship has absolutely nothing to do with Ghana.

But according to Judge Richard Adjei Frimpong's interpretation, Singer has the right to go to court in Ghana merely because of the presence of the ship there. This may harm Ghana's interests. Recently, the left-leaning group of Latin American countries, of which Argentina is an important member, has been in discussions with African governments about economic cooperation that would be greatly to Africa's benefit. Will this ridiculous incident harm such negotiations, at least as far as Ghana is concerned?

At writing, the Libertad is still tied up at the quay in Tema, though Ghanaian authorities have asked the captain to move it as it is creating problems for commercial shipping. Judge Frimpong has also ordered the government to cut off the electrical and water supply to the ship, making life aboard untenable.

Most of the crew has been flown back to Argentina leaving just the captain and a skeleton crew of 43. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has gone to the Security Council of the United Nations to ask for its intervention, based on international law that protects ships belonging to state entities.

It is unlikely that the UN will intervene, however, until the case has been adjudicated by the Ghanaian Supreme Court. President John Dramani Mahama may be unwilling to shortcut the judicial procedure, as he is up for re-election in December, and may fear being seen as acting unconstitutionally.

Given the closeness of Romney, Ryan and other Republican politicians such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida to Singer, will they show their gratitude for the massive campaign season largesse of these vulture capitalists by acting as their international debt collectors?

The Obama administration has not been very supportive of the leftward movement in Latin America, and has also butted heads with Argentina on the debt issue. It has moved to block international loans to Argentina.

But it refused to seize Argentine Central Bank deposits in the United States to pay the demands of Singer and his ilk. Romney, personally beholden to people like Singer and Elliot Management because of their campaign contributions, might be much more aggressive in helping his vulture capitalist friends.

That is yet another reason we can't let Romney win by default on November 6.

Photo: Occupy Detroit Oct. 14, 2011. John Rummel/PeoplesWorld.org

Chilean student leaders inspire U.S. activists

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:48:00 +0000

NEW YORK - Chilean student leaders Camila Vallejo and Noam Titelman began their U.S. visit with their counterparts from the United States and Canada here recently at a panel discussion on organizing strategies, the struggle for quality, affordable higher education and its relationship to democracy. The City University of New York Graduate Center hosted the panelists.

Vallejo, vice president of the Universidad de Chile Student Federation, and Titelman, president of the Universidad Catolica Student Federation, were in the U.S. to receive a human rights award on behalf of the Chilean student movement. Vallejo became internationally known last year for her leadership in the student struggle that challenged the right-wing government of Sebastián Piñera and for her membership in the Young Communist League of Chile. The New York Times called her a "glamorous revolutionary," a tagline the media uses, often underplaying her intellect, social media savvy and leadership skills.

During the panel, all the student speakers emphasized the importance of democratizing their societies, expanding ethnic studies, access to higher education for youth of color, and the need for the composition of student bodies to reflect the economic and racial diversity of the societies in which they exist.

Both Titelman and Vallejo spoke from a unique perspective of young visionaries who are helping to lead their generation out of a post-dictatorship period. Vallejo explained that the Chilean student movement, which mobilized 90 percent of Chilean students in 2011 to protest government attacks on higher education, was not only a the largest protest movement in recent history, but a massive civics lesson, where thousands of students learned how political structures of the country are organized and can be affected.

Vallejo explained that under Augosto Pinochet's brutal regime, which began with a coup in 1973 and did not officially end until 1990, one of the first casualties were civics classes. Pinochet's goal, she said, was to eliminate democratic participation and knowledge in the country. While the dictatorship is over, Vallejo said, many of the anti-democratic institutional designs still exist. For example, 70 percent of Chilean students don't know how the president or other political leaders are elected. Or at the University of Chile, one of the most prominent universities in the country, there is no department of political education but there is a business school.

These reasons are why the Chilean movement is educating young people about local and national elections, expanding democratic participation in the education and political systems and addressing class discrimination in education access. Chilean student movement demands include introducing a progressive tax on the wealthy, expanding quality education to the poor, and ending privatization of "knowledge production" so national investment in public education benefits everyone.

Vallejo and Titelman's experiences in the post-dictatorship period, with parents who were directly affected by the massive trauma and terror of Pinochet's government, make their ability to envision a truly democratic Chilean society all the more impressive and instructive. This society, they hope, will be free of imperialism and American neoliberal policies that helped instigate the military coup, overthrowing the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.

After pushing her way past dozens of cameras and fans that surrounded her when the panel finished, Vallejo made her way to meeting with leaders of the Communist Party USA and Young Communist League. Vallejo makes it a point to meet with the Communist Party in every country she visits. As a leader of the Chilean YCL, Vallejo says she wants to learn about the activities of other Communists around the world. Titelman also joined the meeting.

Vallejo said she knew about and appreciated the long history of solidarity between Chilean and American Communists. She and Titelman were interested in the CPUSA's strategy of defeating the ultra-right danger electorally and helping to build movements of the main class and social forces capable of doing just that. Titelman said in his experience he has seen a difference between having a massive "naïve" movement that does not affect politics, and having a massive "effective" movement that does. Titelman said that if the U.S. far right is in power it is a threat to progressive movements and people around the world.

Vallejo and Titelman left New York for Washington, D.C. where they accepted on behalf of the entire Chilean student movement the Institute for Policy Studies' Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award. The award is named after Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean diplomat and director of IPS' Transnational Institute and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, an IPS development associate, who were murdered on September 21, 1976, by agents of Pinochet. IPS gives the award "to honor these fallen colleagues while celebrating new heroes of the human rights movement from the United States and the Americas."

Photos: Camila Vallejo speaks with reporters in New York and poses with CPUSA leaders Libero Della Piana, Jarvis Tyner and Lisa Bergman. (PW/Libero Della Piana)

Protests in Panama against privatization scheme, child killed

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 11:50:00 +0000

Protests against a privatization scheme in Panama's second city, Colon, have resulted in many arrests and the death of a 9 year old boy and, according to some reports, two others.

Colon is largely Afro-Panamanian, and has suffered from a history of poverty and discrimination. However, it is also the site of a large free trade zone connected to the Panama Canal, which has given employment to many of its residents. Up until now, the land and the infrastructure of the free trade zone have been publicly owned.

However, Panama's right wing president, Ricardo Martinelli, and the conservative coalition which dominates the legislature, have decided to privatize the free trade zone. Concretely, this means selling off the land and infrastructure, including cable and wireless services, with 30 percent of the proceeds to be put into a social welfare trust, the rest to go to the national treasury. The privatization law was passed earlier on Friday and immediately signed by Martinelli, without input from the residents of Colon.

The privatization scheme was immediately met with angry rejection from the parliamentary opposition, and also from ordinary residents of Colon, who fear that the net effect will be to lower incomes in the area and perhaps allow the zone to be bought up by transnational corporations. They demand, rather, that the government raise rents on companies currently leasing facilities in the free trade zone, to generate funds for human services. There are also complaints that the project is unconstitutional.

On Friday and continuing on Monday, large scale demonstrations took place in the streets of Colon, with police using harsh methods of repression in response. Scenes of police clubbing and kicking captured demonstrators have been circulating on the internet.

Martinelli was elected in 2009 when Panama, whose relative wealth among Latin American countries is based partly on its role as a regional financial center, was hard hit by the 2008 world financial crisis. He and his Democratic Change party ousted centrist President Martin Torrijos, son of the left-wing strongman Omar Torrijos, by a wide margin at that time. However, some "buyers' remorse" may be setting in. Martinelli has pushed neo-liberal policies including a new "free" trade agreement with the United States which comes into force, some would say appropriately, on Halloween, October 31.

The Party of the People (Panama), which is Panama's communist party, denounced both the privatization scheme and the repression, and published on its website a call by the Broad Front of [the people of] Colon for demonstrations all over the country to demand an end to the repression and a renegotiation of the privatization law so as to protect the interests of the people of Colon by preventing privatization of their resources.

Photo of the Panamanian president, Ricardo Martinelli. Luis Carlos Díaz // CC 2.0

Carter: Chance for peace is 'vanishing'

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 11:37:00 +0000

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter warned during a visit to Jerusalem on Monday that the prospect of Israeli-Palestinian peace is "vanishing."

Mr. Carter called the current situation "catastrophic" and blamed Israel for the growing isolation of east Jerusalem from the West Bank.

He said a Palestinian state was becoming "unviable."

"We've reached a crisis stage. The two-state solution is the only realistic path to peace and security for Israel and the Palestinians."

Mr. Carter is leading a delegation known as The Elders, which includes former Irish president Mary Robinson and former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.

They met Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The delegation expressed concern about the ongoing division between the main Palestinian parties, Fatah and Hamas, and vowed to support Palestine's bid for observer-state status at the United Nations General Assembly in November.

Originally published in the Morning Star. Photo: Stock image of former President James Carter. Talk Radio News Service // CC 2.0

Cuba drops most restrictions on foreign travel

Tue, 23 Oct 2012 12:25:00 +0000

On October 16, the Cuban government announced new policies on foreign travel from Cuba to take effect January 14, 2013.

Beginning then, Cubans may leave the island for any purpose on presentation of a valid passport and an entry visa, if required. Prospective travelers won't need to secure exit visas or letters of invitations from foreign hosts. They'll save the $150 cost of the former and a $200 levy for processing the latter.

Permission to stay abroad is extended from 11 months to 24 months, when Cubans resident overseas must apply at a consulate for extended permission. Until now, Cubans overstaying their allowed time have risked losing citizenship and rights to social security, health care, and return. An old law enforcing confiscation of ex-citizens' property is repealed.

Cubans living abroad will no longer need re-entry permits for return visits to Cuba. (In the past, the permits had targeted returning counter-revolutionaries.) Cubans permanently resident elsewhere may freely return for up to 180 days. Non-citizen Cuban residents may visit for three months, up from one month. Provisions are made for children's travel and for workers to retain their jobs after foreign travel.

Some observers attribute impetus for the changes to hopes some workers recently laid off from state employment will find work overseas and send remittances home. More importantly, the government was responding to longstanding complaints from Cubans both at home and abroad.

Crucially, the stage is now set for upending one big part of the U.S. regimen of anti-Cuban hostility: the Cuban Adjustment Act. Editorializing on the reforms, Cuba's Granma newspaper criticized "U.S. policy which encourages illegal emigration on the one hand and, on the other, creates obstacles for those who wish to emigrate in a legal, well-ordered and safe manner." The purpose, they conclude, is to "foment internal destabilization."

The Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA), a U.S. federal law enacted in 1966, gains unaccustomed visibility because of this change in Cuba's foreign travel rules. That 1966 law insured that undocumented Cubans arriving in the United States would obtain social services and, a year later, authorization for permanent residence. Cubans were thus enticed into making perilous boat trips from Cuba, across the Florida Straits to Key West.

During the 1980's the U.S. government forced many Cubans into the CAA mechanism by regularly failing to meet entry visa totals stipulated in old agreements. Refugees portrayed as having escaped communist oppression served propaganda purposes.

The CAA made for problems, however. In 1980 around 125,000 Cubans came by small boats from Mariel in Cuba to Florida. Local authorities at once had to provide for needy migrants competing with distressed locals for job opportunities and social services. To handle massed refugees more efficiently, U. S. authorities in 1994 diverted 40,000 Cuban rafters to U.S. military bases in Guantanamo and Panama and from there to the United States.

Subsequently the U.S. government, perhaps taken aback, began reliably to issue the 20,000 entry visas required by new migratory agreements. The U.S. Coast guard started to return migrants picked up at sea to Cuba.

In fact, opines Cuba analyst Walter Lippmann, "Washington set a trap for itself with the Cuban Adjustment Act." That's because with easier exit from Cuba, many Cubans can go to Canada or Mexico and then step across the U.S. border, or enter the United States by way of Europe, taking advantage of the United States not requiring entrance visas for European visitors. And significantly: the CAA depended on now non-existent Cuban exit restrictions for part of its propaganda appeal.

Some restrictions do continue. Foreign media have highlighted those applying to workers in economically, militarily, and strategically important sectors. Health workers, scientists, and high-profile athletes are affected. Foreign travel is also restricted for criminal defendants, Cubans ready for the military draft, and others subject to national security considerations.

Cuban planners have long tried to deal with the same disappointment other poor countries face in providing university training for young people only to see industrialized nations benefitting from their skills. The much resented exit restrictions represented Cuba's response to this "brain drain."

Over 50 years ago, the hewly victorious Cuban revolutionaries found that by 1961 half of Cuba's 6000 physicians had departed, mostly to the United States. Cuba subsequently prepared 80,000 of its own physicians thus becoming vulnerable to cruelly aggressive hostility. The United States, at least 20 percent of whose practicing physicians were schooled in poor countries, mounted its "Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program" in 2006. Cuban doctors serving on overseas missions are offered inducements to abandon Cuba for the United States.

Interviewed on October 19, Washington lawyer and Cuban native Jose Pertierra observed, "Perhaps President Obama sees the irony that Cuba recognizes the right of Cubans to visit the United States, but that Washington keeps on violating the right of U.S. citizens to visit Havana." Pertierra called for an end to U.S. travel restrictions, repeal of the CAA, and no more "measures designed to seduce Cuban doctors."

Photo: The entrance of Havana's José Martí International airport in Cuba. José Julián Martí Pérez (1853 - 1895) was a Cuban national hero, an activist, jorrnalist and political theorist. Franklin Reyes/AP

French president recognizes 1961 massacre of Algerians, right cries “Lie!”

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:15:00 +0000

A traumatic event in the life of a friend of mine occurred in October 1961, when she was visiting Paris. At that time, the Algerian War of Independence was going full blast, with some violence spilling over into France itself. On Oct. 17, supporters of the FLN, the Algerian independence movement, organized a peaceful protest in downtown Paris. But the Paris police chief, Maurice Papon, had forbidden the demonstration, and set his police on the demonstrators like a pack of wild dogs. My friend witnessed some of the repression. Nobody knows how many were killed because from that day to this, the French government has not published the data. It may have been as many as 300. Some were herded into the courtyard of police headquarters and clubbed to death there; others were knocked unconscious and thrown into the Seine to drown.

Yesterday, the 51st anniversary of the "Paris Massacre," French President Francoise Hollande issued a short statement acknowledging this atrocity:

"On 17 October 1961, Algerians who were protesting for independence were killed in a bloody repression. The Republic recognizes these facts with lucidity. I pay homage to victims 51 years later."

The French right and ultra-right were quick to denounce this muted and long overdue action. This reaction came, as one might expect, from the far right, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant National Front leader Marine LePen (who implied that the 1961 massacre never happened), but also from former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, of ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP Party. Fillon said he was "shocked" by Hollande's statement, which he said was inappropriate from the mouth of the head of state, and asked why atrocities perpetrated by Algerian nationalists were not also denounced.

In Le Pen's case, the reaction was logical. Her father, National Front founder Jean Marie LePen, was involved with the events that led to the 1961 massacre. He has been accused of atrocities in the Algerian independence war, and in 1961 was already a young right-wing member of parliament who was agitating for repression. But that the "respectable right," as exemplified by Fillon, should also to be aggressively denialist might surprise some.

The Paris Police Chief in 1961, Maurice Papon (1910 - 2007), had been a major collaborator with the Vichy regime that had taken power in France after its defeat by Hitler's Germany at the beginning of the Second World War. It was later revealed that he had been heavily implicated in the rounding up and deportation, to their deaths, of at least 1,600 members of France's Jewish population. This information must have been known to post-war French government leaders, including de Gualle, but it did not stop Papon from being named, in 1949, to the position of Chief of Police of the Constantine District in Algeria, then a French colony, where he gained a reputation as a brutal thug and torturer. In spite of this reputation he was appointed prefect of the Paris Police in 1958. One theory is that his anti-communism served him well in covering up his collaborationist past. .

The 1961 events were not Papon's last excursion into atrocity-land. In 1962, he did a repeat performance, this time massacring nine trade union demonstrators, most of them members of the French Communist Party, at the Charonne Metro Station, evidently to suppress a demonstration against the fascist "Secret Army Organization." But Papon lost his job in 1965 after he was implicated in the disappearance of the Moroccan revolutionary leader Mehdi Ben-Barka.

Nevertheless, subsequent right-wing French governments continued to employ Papon.

Finally, he was denounced, tried, convicted in 1998 and sentenced to prison for his wartime activities against the Jews. He was released for health reasons and died in 2002.

President Hollande took advantage of a coming visit to Algeria to issue his statement recognizing the 1961 massacre. The Algerian government, in turn, expressed its appreciation, but some in France called for acts beyond the mere recognition of the crime. French Communist Party Secretary Pierre Laurent said, "This is a victory for all the anti-colonialist fighters and a blow against all who today seek to rehabilitate the supposed benefits of colonialism." But Laurent demanded the opening of all government archives about the 1961 incident.

The bad reaction by the UMP's Fillon and others is based in the fact that the line between the right, as represented by his party and by ex-President Sarkozy, and the ultra-right, as represented by the LePens, father and daughter, is not as clear as some suppose. Papon was shielded, fostered and promoted by "respectable" French government leaders, including the much revered Charles de Gaulle, without whose help and support he would never had been able to get into a position to do anyone more harm; indeed, he might have ended up facing the death penalty like other Vichy-era collaborators such as ex-Prime Minister Pierre Laval.

There is a lesson for us in the United States in this also: There is not such a huge difference between "respectable conservative" politicians such as Mitt Romney, and our own equivalents of Maurice Papon and the LePens. The one hand washes the other.

Photo: French President Francois Hollande, of the Socialist Party, speaking earlier this year at a celebration marking the anniversary of the end of slavery. Photo Benjamin Géminel.

Mexico's labor law reform sparks massive protests

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 11:57:00 +0000

MEXICO CITY - As the Mexican Senate tried to convene last week, unionists, youth protesters from the #YoSoy132 movement and social activists of every stripe blocked the chamber's doors, trying to prevent legislators from meeting to consider the reforma laboral. On October 2, tens of thousands marched from the Tlatelolco (Plaza of Three Cultures), where hundreds of students were shot down by Mexican Army troops on the same date in 1968, to the Zocalo at the city center. Reverberating chants signaled an equally massive rejection of this deeply unpopular proposal.

The Mexican Senate has begun its 30-day consideration of a proposed reform of the country's labor laws. Its provisions will have a profound effect on Mexico's workers, changing the way they are hired, their rights at work, and their wages. Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of one of the country's most democratic unions, the Authentic Labor Front (FAT), calls it "a monstrous law."

The basic thrust of the reforma laboral is greater flexibility for employers. It would replace pay per day with pay by the hour. At Mexico's current minimum wage of about 60 pesos per day, this would produce an hourly wage of 7.5 pesos, less than 60 cents. Employers would gain the legal right to hire workers indirectly through labor contractors. If workers are fired for protesting or organizing against the new regime, or for any other illegitimate reason, employers' liability for back pay would end after a year.

In the ears of U.S. workers, the wages may sound low, but the kind of flexibility the reform envisions has been the norm in workplaces north of the border for decades. Not so in Mexico, however. In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, and then in the radical upsurge that followed in the '30s and '40s, Mexican workers won a broad set of rights and protections. On paper, the rights of Mexican workers are far more extensive than those of their U.S. counterparts.

In the Federal Labor Law, which the reform would amend, the workday was officially set at 8 hours, and workers could only be hired by the day, not by the hour. Minimum wages were set as well. Employers had to give workers permanent employment status quickly, and hiring through contractors was prohibited. If workers were fired unjustly, they could collect back pay for the time they were out of work. If they were laid off, their employer had to pay severance based on their length of service. Companies had to declare their profits, and share them according to a set schedule.

Employers have never liked these laws, but the political offensive to change them grew much stronger as Mexico opened its economy to foreign investors. Over time those rights were eroded in fact, if not yet in law. As the maquiladora factories on the U.S./Mexico border grew to employ 2 million workers (before the current recession), the actual conditions of employment changed, despite what the law said. Workdays extended well past eight hours. Workers were routinely cheated out of profit sharing. When they tried to organize independent unions, their legal right to bargain and strike was violated with impunity by employers, the government and unions connected to Mexico's old ruling party, the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party).

Using labor contractors was illegal in theory, but it became the employers' weapon of choice in the fierce labor battles of the past decade. The five-year strike by copper miners in Cananea, just south of the Arizona border, was declared illegal a year ago. Then Grupo, Mexico, the huge corporation that owns mines on both sides of the border, brought in strikebreakers using contractors.

Humberto Montes de Oca, international secretary of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), notes bitterly that Cananea was the birthplace in Mexico of the fight for the eight-hour day, in the famous uprising of 1906 that heralded the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. "Now if you go to Cananea," he says, "you find subcontracted workers in the mine putting in 12-hour days with no overtime pay. In the heart of the town where the eight-hour-day struggle started, workers now have a 12-hour day."

Montes de Oca's own union suffered a similar fate. In 2009 Mexican President Felipe Calderón dissolved the state-owned Power and Light Company of central Mexico and declared that the union no longer existed. The SME, one of the country's oldest and most democratic unions, has been fighting ever since for the right of workers to return to their jobs, and to regain its legal status.

"Our members were also replaced by subcontracted workers with no union," Montes de Oca says. "These new replacements had no training or experience, and as a result, there were countless accidents. Some of these workers died. This is the employment model promoted by the labor law reform. What happened to us anticipated the changes the reform will bring everywhere."

Martinez adds, "For workers who don't accept this, and are fired when they try to protest or organize, the employer isn't liable for more than a year of back pay. No one will bring a case against his or her boss because the employer will have such a strong motivation to delay endlessly. Given the Mexican legal system, that will be very easy."

When the PRI lost the presidency in 2000, proposals for changing labor law were made by the incoming National Action Party. Some, promoted by the World Bank, were so extreme in restricting the rights of workers and unions that even more liberal-minded employers objected. Independent and progressive unions mobilized opposition, defeated them, and then proposed their own alternatives.

One centered on guaranteeing the right of workers to elect union officials by secret ballot. PRI-affiliated unions have a long history of violence and corruption in the election of their leaders. Another would have ended "protection contracts," the secret agreements signed by corrupt unions to protect employers when workers organize independently. Those proposals had support from Mexico's left-leaning Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), but not from the PRI.

In last July's national election, however, the PRI regained the presidency. Then in September a reforma laboral proposal passed through the Chamber of Deputies at breakneck speed, pushed by an alliance between the PAN and the PRI. The Senate, which must ratify it, has yet to take a vote. But it's likely that the PAN/PRI alliance will pass it there too. Calderón would presumably sign it before he leaves office.

Using the same arguments heard from employers and Republicans in the U.S. presidential campaign, reform supporters argue that removing restrictions on employers will encourage them to hire more workers, producing more jobs. Rosalinda Vélez Juárez, Secretary of Labor and Social Welfare, asserted that the reforms constituted "a watershed" that would generate an additional 400,000 jobs per year. "Even the opposition will eventually see the benefit," she declared.

Critics point out, however, that 900,000 young people enter the Mexican job market every year. Since the Calderón administration took office in 2006, however, only 1.54 million people have gained formal employment, according to the Social Security Institute-about 250,000 per year, or less than a third of those needing work. That is just one element of the economic pressure producing waves of migration to the United States. Evaluating the reforma laboral, the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean found that it would not create any new jobs, but merely encourage contractors to hire workers already in the informal sector. "We may see an increase in jobs, but they will be very precarious ones at very low pay," Montes de Oca argues.

What the reform will also do, however, according to unions and other critics, is increase the productivity of the workforce by making workers more vulnerable to pressure by employers. A rise in productivity actually diminishes the need for new workers.

"The ultimate effect will be to impoverish workers even further," says Martinez. "On the one hand, it makes it much easier to fire workers. On the other, the ability to subcontract workers paid by the hour gives employers a reason to fire permanent employees. This opens the doors of paradise for them." Unions will certainly find it more difficult to organize workers who increasingly need better wages and conditions, but are even more frightened of losing the precarious jobs they have.

In response to the unions' earlier proposals, one provision added to the reform as it was debated would have given workers the right to elect the officers of their unions in direct, secret-ballot elections. That provision, however, was removed by those deputies who are also leaders of unions affiliated to the PRI or to minor parties backing the reform. One deputy, Lucila Garfias Gutiérrez, speaking for the conservative leadership of the Mexican Teachers Union, asserted, "We say yes to union democracy, but also to respecting the principle of autonomy Š only the workers should have the right to decide how to organize [the internal election process in their own unions.]"

She was challenged, however, by the progressive Coordinadora movement in her own union. Francisco Bravo Herrerra, leader of Mexico City's Seccion Local 9, told the Mexican daily La Jornada that support for the reform was a criminal act-"the biggest blow against workers of the past hundred years."

Once the provision was removed, the PRI deputies who are union leaders voted for the reforma laboral. "The supposed worker representatives in the Chamber of Deputies who approved this law betrayed their principles and their own members, and the whole Mexican people," Martinez fumed. "They handed workers over to the bosses on a silver platter."

Both Martinez and Montes de Oca predict that the fight against the reform won't end even if the Senate approves it. In just one indication of the depth of that resistance, workers from the huge Nissan auto plant in Morelos stopped work and blocked the main highway from Mexico City to the coast, to demand rejection of the reforma laboral. Orozco and others believe that the reform is unconstitutional, and plan to challenge it legally.

On October 11 a huge rally of unions outside the Senate brought together both independent unions like the FAT and the SME, and even sections of the PRI unions, to protest the reforms. Fissures are appearing inside the PRI itself, and one PRI senator, Armando Neyra Chavez, who also heads the old-guard union, the Confederation of Mexican Workers in Mexico state, called on the newly elected PRI administration to restore the jobs and legal status of the fired electrical workers, instead of passing the reform bill.

The cost of the reforma laboral will be felt, however, not just in Mexico, but also in the United States. The purpose of increased flexibility is to encourage investment, including from U.S. corporations like Ford, Walmart, Kimberly Clark and others, who already play a central role in the Mexican economy. More U.S. investment also means, though, that more jobs move south. The movement of production facilitated by the North American Free Trade Agreement has already cost at least 800,000 U.S. jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

Further job outsourcing to Mexico, spurred by lowered wages, subcontracted work and diminished rights for workers, will create more unemployment and displacement of workers north of the border. But the cost of low wages and increasingly precarious work is displacement in Mexico too. Workers who can't live on 7.5 pesos an hour, or find permanent work in a new world of labor contractors, will have little alternative to migration across that border.

Photo: David Bacon

Extremism, regional politics play growing role in Syria war

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:13:00 +0000

The war in Syria has taken a turn for the worse with two recent developments: Turkey's military involvement, and the growing role of extremist groups.

On Oct. 3 and several days following, Turkey fired artillery "deep inside Syria." Turkey said it was in response to mortars fired from Syria, including one that killed two women and three children and wounded several others. Some of the Syrian mortars may have crossed the border accidentally, but Reuters said others appeared to be aimed at Syrian rebel encampments on the Turkish side.

Turkey's parliament then passed a bill authorizing the government to send troops into Syria or use warplanes to strike Syrian targets.

Tensions along the Syria-Turkey border have been high for months. "Syrian rebel groups have been using Turkish territory as a base for their operations against the troops of Syrian President Bashar Assad," the Associated Press reports. The New York Times reported in June that the 550-mile border has been used "by an increasingly sophisticated network of activists in southern Turkey smuggling crucial supplies into Syria, including weapons, communications gear, field hospitals and even salaries for soldiers who defect."

In June, Syria shot down a Turkish warplane that it said had crossed into Syrian airspace. Turkey claimed the plane was in international airspace. However, use of planes to test another government's air defenses is not an unknown tactic. At the time, the New York Times reported, "some American and allied officials privately raised questions about whether the Turkish warplane ... had been on a spy mission." In addition, the Times said, "there may have been more to the aircraft's mission than just a routine training exercise to test Turkey's air defenses." In any event, Turkey responded by putting anti-aircraft missiles on its border and saying any approaching Syrian military "elements" could be treated as a target.

Last week, Turkey forced down and detained a Syrian plane, claiming it was carrying military equipment.

The latest incidents raised concern at the White House that the Syria crisis could become a regional conflict with unknown repercussions. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters, "The fact that there are now exchanges fired between these two countries raises additional concerns that this conflict could broaden."

Some see Turkey as aiming to assert its military power in the region, perhaps as a co-equal or rival to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Those two countries have been supplying money and probably also weapons to Syrian opposition forces for months now, with U.S. support. It has never been clear exactly what groups are receiving this aid.

But news reports increasingly point to "hard-line" extremist Islamists as the beneficiaries. "Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster," the New York Times reports.

For this reason, the Obama administration has expressed concerns about supplying advanced weaponry. On the other hand, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said recently he would ensure rebels "obtain the arms they need," suggesting, according to the Times, that "he would approve the transfer of weapons like antiaircraft and antitank systems that are much more potent than any the United States has been willing to put into rebel hands so far, precisely because American officials cannot be certain who will ultimately be using them."

"The presence of a powerful Salafi strand among Syria's rebels has become irrefutable," says the International Crisis Group. Salafism is an extreme reactionary religious trend with roots in Saudi Arabia. Its Saudi version is known as wahabbism. Not all Salafis take up arms. But the political aim is a medieval Islamic state with rigidly puritanical social codes. Much like what Saudi Arabia and Qatar have today, in fact.

Syria is a largely secular country. Many if not all of the extremist forces fighting there are reported to be coming from other countries.

Robin Wright, writing in the New York Times, wonders why "Washington still embraces authoritarian Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia."

Wright notes "oil needs" and "threats from Iran" as factors. "But," she writes, "there is something dreadfully wrong with tying America's future position in the region to the birthplace and bastion of Salafism and its warped vision of a new order."

The role of Arabian Peninsula oil as a U.S. "national security" interest dates back to the 1940s, after oil was discovered in Saudi Arabia. Aware of the growing importance of oil to the U.S. economy, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1943 declared that "the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States." Efforts by President Obama to promote a "green" economy freed from oil-dependence have been blocked by Republicans. GOP candidates Romney and Ryan count oil companies among their biggest supporters.

Our continued reliance on oil and the reactionary oil monarchies is playing out now in the Syria crisis.

The Syria death toll has reached 30,000, with some half million refugees, according to United Nations figures. In another indication of escalated violence, the Syrian government has been accused of using cluster weapons.

UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi is pressing for a three-day ceasefire for the Muslim holiday of Id-al-Adha, starting Oct. 25. The prospects for this to happen do not seem bright.

Photo: In this Oct. 13 photo, smoke rises from a damaged building in Aleppo, Syria. Manu Brabo/AP

Pakistan rallies around Malala Yousafzai

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:25:00 +0000

Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old Pakistani woman gravely wounded in a Taliban attack last week, has come to symbolize a broadening struggle in that country, against the extremist views the Taliban seeks to enforce there and in neighboring Afghanistan.

Yousafzai, struck in the head and neck by Taliban gunfire Oct. 9 as she rode home in a school bus, arrived in Britain Oct. 15, to be treated in a British hospital that specializes in care of British service members injured in Afghanistan. Doctors there say she has a chance to make a good all-round recovery, but will need prolonged treatment.

Two other young women, Shazia Ramzan and Kainat Ahmed, were injured, but not as severely.

Despite her youth, Yousafzai has long been an outspoken advocate of education for girls and young women, in a region where this has often been a sharply contested issue.

Her hometown, Mingora, lies in the Swat Valley, in northern Pakistan, an area controlled by the Taliban from 2007 until 2009.

Taliban spokesperson Ihsanullah Ihsan immediately credited his organization with the attack, saying Yousafzai had become "a symbol of western culture in the area," and vowing the Taliban would try again to kill her if she survived.

Public responses followed quickly.

Just days later, 50 Islamic clerics in the Sunni Ittehad Council issued a religious ruling against the Taliban attack, declaring it "un-Islamic." The Council declared, "Islam doesn't prohibit women from getting education," and accused the attackers of violating Islamic principles.

On Oct. 16, as the Council marched to protest U.S. drone attacks and the anti-Islam film, "Innocence of Muslims," its chairman, Sahibzada Fazal Karim, again condemned the attack on Yousafzai, calling it a conspiracy against Islam, which he said is a religion of peace, tolerance and brotherhood.

Tens of thousands protested in Karachi Oct. 14, in the largest rally to date, organized by the Muttahida Quami Movement, a liberal secular party.

As he visited the public school headed by Yousafzai's father, Interior Minister Rehman Malik announced Oct. 16 that Yousafzai will receive one of Pakistan's highest civilian awards for bravery, and offered a bounty for Taliban spokesman Ihsan. Malik also visited Yousafzai's two injured companions, bringing them monetary awards.

The Indian newspaper The Hindu reported that children were increasingly participating in daily vigils for Yousafzai's recovery, with parental encouragement: "Even in Peshawar - where there are indications of various terrorist outfits regrouping and mobilizing after a brief lull - girls are coming out in support of Malala, fearing that silence is no longer an option."

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who heads Pakistan's army, visited Yousafzai in the hospital before she was evacuated to Britain, and blasted the "twisted ideology" of the "cowards" who attacked her.

Nor were demonstrations limited to Pakistan.

In Afghanistan the Education Ministry organized a nationwide prayer vigil for Yousafzai in schools.

The United Nations this week declared a petition in Yousafzai's name, with the slogan, "I am Malala," calling on Pakistan to establish a plan to educate every child, urging all countries to outlaw discrimination against girls, and urging international organizations to make sure 61 million children around the world who aren't in school now, be there by the end of 2015.

Yousafzai first came to public attention when at age 11, she began to blog, under a pen name, for the British Broadcasting Company's Urdu programming. Her father, poet, education activist and school owner Ziauddin Yousafzai, fully supported his daughter's role in the struggle for girls' education during a period when the Taliban was destroying schools in the area.

Yousafzai was earlier nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize, received Pakistan's National Youth Peace Prize, and has had a girls' school named after her.

"Malala may become a role model not just for girls in the region but also for peace, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid wrote in The New Yorker this week. "Her story now has the potential, if fully utilized, to bring about serious geopolitical change in the region that could actually help stabilize both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Photo: Get well soon Malala Yousafzai. From Britain's HOPE not hate website.

Burden of Colombian past weighs on peace negotiations

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:10:00 +0000

Twenty-five years ago on October 11 1987, someone killed Jaime Pardo Leal, presidential candidate of the Patriotic Union electoral coalition formed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and Colombian communists. In all, 4,000 other UP activists were murdered. Also on October 11, the Colombian government announced that current members of FARC and the Communist Party, always endangered, would be protected.

There was a catch, however. Protection must await a successful outcome of peace negotiations which were set to begin in Norway on October 17 between the Colombian government and the FARC. However, bad weather has now delayed their start.

The negotiations may well give rise to other inconsistencies, unless, of course, they break down beforehand. That's because both sets of negotiators have limited bargaining powers as a result of old divisions on both sides.

The government, for instance, must cope with an old-guard of big landowners, agribusiness interests, narco-traffickers, and military chieftains. The leader of these entrenched interests is ex-President Alvaro Uribe, a strident critic of negotiations. They're used to free rein in rural Colombia where civilian government authority and services are in short supply.

Now, conservative President Juan Manuel Santos would end authoritarian rule and military repression in the countryside, also the "gigantic scandals," corruption, drug money in politics, and police violence. Prominent human rights leader and Congressional Representative Ivan Cepeda says the Santos government is looking to restore Colombia's international credibility and profit-making potential by reassuring foreign investors that criminal behavior won't be tolerated. Toward that end, the government would abandon civil war.

Investors are indeed useful: The Colombian economy grew at an annual 4.9 percent rate from April through June 2012 thanks mainly to an 18.4 percent expansion in construction and 8.6 percent growth in the mining and energy sectors, the latter fueled by 46 percent direct foreign investment. Nevertheless, powerbroker heirs to a tradition of rough and ready autonomy may not be convinced.

Nor will FARC negotiators work in isolation. Their cause is peace with social justice for which the FARC requires collaboration from those with broader experience in popular struggle than theirs. From its start, the Marxist insurgency has focused on land use injustices derived from concentrated land ownership originating with Spanish colonists and continuing under large-scale agricultural operators and drug traffickers. Early FARC militants were the so-called "colonos," small farmers scratching out a living in areas far removed from state authority, or dispossessed.

On the day of its formation, July 20, 1964, the FARC issued its "Agrarian Program" calling "for a fundamentally changed social structure of the Colombian countryside [and] delivering land completely free to small farmers working or wanting to work the land." Continuing that line in February 2012, FARC Secretariat member Iván Márquez wrote that land "belongs to us, because we were born on it...Our own country has been converted into a treasure coveted by transnational piracy [and] land investment is a strategic pursuit today."

In 1986 British historian Eric Hobsbawm offered an opinion on the FARC's revolutionary potential, which may still hold. The recently deceased Hobsbawm, who had visited FARC encampments, seconded the insurgency's goal of creating a "peasant - labor radical party" to exert pressure on urban liberals. Conditioned by the "wild west" aspects of its environs and by ultimate power being lodged in cities, the FARC was ill prepared to take on independent political leadership within an entire society.

Recent social data are dismal enough to suggest all hands are required. Under Gini coefficient reckonings, Colombia is the third most unequal country in the world. Some 54 percent of Colombians live in poverty with higher rates in rural areas. Half of all Colombians lack "basic necessities," including 60 percent of indigenous people and 68 percent of Afro Colombians. United Nations figures show that, annually, 20,000 Colombian children under the age of five die of malnutrition and that 12 percent are undernourished.

Thus FARC negotiators rely upon far - removed allies for help in settling crucial issues. A recently staged nationwide "Week of Indignation," for example, included demonstrations, academic forums, encampments, and cultural events. On October 12, its last day, 300,000 protesters demonstrated throughout the country on behalf of health care, quality education, better housing, bi-lateral ceasefire, and basic structural reforms.

Contradictions, however, persist. Peaceful protest triggered armed repression on the eve of peace negotiations: "illegal arrests of peasants and stigmatization by military commanders were flaring up in time for the October 12 date when city and country people alike march for peace and to reclaim social, economic, and environmental rights for the excluded." News reports on the October 12 outpouring highlighted multiple arrests and photos of bloodied demonstrators.

Not least among determinants of likely ambiguous outcome markers of any accord is U.S. government maneuvering. Through military and intelligence assistance programs, the United States has been beating up on FARC combatants from before they even formed a revolutionary organization.

Indigenous protesters killed in Guatemala

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 11:09:00 +0000

Guatemalan police and military forces shot and killed several indigenous protesters on Oct. 4. About 40 were wounded; six apparently died. The incident happened at the Alaska Peak near the town of Totonicapán, population 94,000, in the Western Highlands of this Central American country. All the dead were local indigenous people, speakers of the K'iche' Maya language. They had been participating in peaceful civil disobedience, blocking a section of the Interamerican Highway at the Four Crossroads.

The protest had been organized by the Indigenous Mayoral Council (Alcaldía Indígena), which is regarded by the Mayas as representing 48 of their communities in their relations with the national government in Guatemala City. Among their demands were: cutbacks in recently increased electricity fees, improvements in the national school system, and that the government backed down from constitutional reforms which would give the military a greater role in civil society.

The protesters were met by elements of the armed forces and the National Civil Police, who, evidently ordered to disperse them, opened fire, resulting in the deaths and injuries.

The role of the military in Guatemalan society is an extremely sore point. In 1954, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency organized the overthrow of left-wing President Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz had angered both Guatemalan economic elites and the U.S. with land reform projects that targeted the holdings of big landowners and also of the United Fruit Corporation, in which U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA head Alan Dulles, had investments.

The overthrow of Arbenz put an end, not only to any attempts at land and social reform, but to anything more than the pretence of democratic government in Guatemala for decades. Military dictators and puppet civilian presidents followed each other in office, while in the countryside, both indigenous and non-indigenous guerrilla fighters fought a lopsided war with the government's forces.

The successive governments of Guatemala were over-achievers in the atrocity department. The war cost at least 200,000 lives (Guatemala's population today is 14 million). The number of atrocities, the vast majority perpetrated by the military, police and government-run militias, is mind-boggling. The government's repressive activities were supported by the U.S. government and by U.S., Israeli, and Argentine advisers.

In 1996, the main rebel coalition signed a peace agreement with the government, and there has not been another coup d'état. But personal security and abuses by military and police are still very problematic, and the increase in the drug trade has negatively affected Guatemala as it has its neighbors to the south, El Salvador and Honduras. Some of the worst offenders against human rights are still around and active in Guatemalan politics, including the most bloodthirsty dictator of them all, General Efrain Rios Montt, who ruled from 1982 to 1983.

The current right-wing president of Guatemala, General Otto Perez Molina, was elected in November 2011 after the former president, centrist Alvaro Colom, failed in an attempt to get around the Constitution so his popular wife could run for the position. Perez Molina has been accused of involvement with human rights violations in his former capacity as a military officer in the K'iche' speaking area of the Western Highlands.

So worry about an increase in repression is part of the background of the Oct. 4 Totonicapán incident. The incident has raised fears of a return to the bad old days. Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum, who is herself a K'iche' Maya from the Western Highlands (several of the dead and wounded bear the Maya surname Menchú), has demanded that the Oct. 4 incident be investigated and the people responsible brought to justice. Menchú has worried about a return to a militarization of security work, and has called for an investigation by the International Tribunal Against Impunity in Guatemala and other bodies.

Civil society organizations are also demanding the demilitarization of all public security activities and adherence to the 1996 peace accords.

The nation's chief prosecutorial officer, Claudia Paz y Paz, who got her job in 2010 before Perez Molina's election and has shown a strong independent streak, has diligently pursued prosecution of human rights violations, including by Rios Montt. She has now opened an investigation into the Totonicapán incident, and a colonel and eight soldiers have already been arrested in the case. In a preliminary statement, Ms. Paz y Paz faulted the officer in charge of the military unit on the scene for running away and thus losing control of his troops.

President Perez Molina, after initially trying to deny that the event had happened, also made a conciliatory statement, to the effect that military personnel would no longer be employed to suppress demonstrations.

Photo: Guatemala's current right-wing leader, Otto Perez Molina. Flickr

Iranian people pay the price for crisis

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:21:00 +0000

Although millions of Iranians receive a monthly government payment to compensate for a cut in subsidies, the value of this is diminishing as the currency value collapses. Over the past three months Iran's currency, the rial, has lost 57% of its value and is down 75% compared to late last year.

A basket of shopping which cost 120,000 rials only a month ago will now cost 300,000 rials, a stark illustration of the extent to which ordinary families are having to tighten their belts and bear the brunt of the government's economic policy and the sanctions regime.

The Iranian national currency hit an all time low at the beginning of the month with the rial dropping by 15% to its lowest ever level against the dollar on Oct. 1. By midday trading it took 34,500 rials to buy $1 compared to 29,600 rials at close of trading on the weekend.

Since July, when the latest U.S. and EU sanctions came into effect, the prices of basics such as chicken, milk, cheese, bread and yogurt have been rising daily.

The mismanagement of the economy, which has perpetuated the economic crisis and generated high unemployment, has been a feature of Iranian life for many years. The government has been able to mask the consequences of this, up to a point, due to the high price of oil which generates 80% of the country's export revenue and most of its foreign currency. However this very dependency has meant that the embargo has had a major impact.

In an attempt to fight back the Iranian government launched a counter-offensive with an appeal to non-aligned nations in India last week. Energy Minister Majid Namjoo urged non-aligned nations to develop a new structure of international relations and to resist sanctions imposed by the Western powers.

India itself has major power shortage issues and imports large amounts of Iranian oil. While it has been trying to reduce the total, under U.S. pressure, trade between the two countries is significant. With the current sanctions regime in place however, Indian diplomats privately play down their trade links with Iran.

At a meeting of EU foreign ministers next week it is no secret that Britain, France and Germany hope to tighten already tough sanctions on Iran. While fears of an imminent Israeli military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities appear to have subsided, at least until after the U.S. presidential election, there can be no guarantee that the volatility of the situation in Iran may not tempt the Israelis to strike while they see an opportunity.

While the U.S. elections in November mark the next key watershed before any major international diplomacy is likely to be initiated, they are bookended by the Iranian presidential elections scheduled for June 2013. This period is a window of opportunity which some Western powers recognize as one in which serious negotiating with the Iranian regime, rather than sabre rattling, may have to take place. Iran is a potentially significant market as far as Europe is concerned and there is a growing recognition in the EU that the impact of sanctions is not a one way street, especially in a period of poor economic growth.

For the Iranian people the position remains one of uncertainty and fear. Living once again in what is effectively a war economy the threat of military aggression remains a fear, while the impact of economic aggression is a daily reality. For those in the peace and democratic movements across the world who are concerned with the plight of those in Iran, ending sanctions and stepping back from the threat of military action remains an urgent requirement.

Photo: A man sits by the road in Esfahan, Iran, August 2012. Elian Chrebor CC 2.0

Mali stalemate is dangerous dilemma for Africa

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:32:00 +0000

The probability of outside military intervention in the West African country of Mali, with possible participation of both regional armies and, at least indirectly, of NATO forces, has increased sharply. French President Francois Hollande has announced that he will ask UN Security Council sanction for such an action by African troops. The United States is likely to support this. The Malian government, after much wrangling, now is definitely asking for intervention.

With the fall of Libyan leader Muammar Gadaffi last year, vast quantities of armaments fell into the hands of irregular fighters in neighboring countries. In Mali, this led to a surge of armed Tuareg separatist activity in late 2011 and early 2012. Tuareg rebels, grouped in the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), aim at creating an independent state (Azawad) for their people, who are spread over vast desert regions of Mali, Algeria, Libya, Niger and Burkina Faso.

On March 21 of this year, Captain Amadou Sanogo, a U.S.-trained army officer, overthrew the government of President Amadou Toumani Touré which, Sanogo complained, was not providing enough support for Malian soldiers fighting the Tuareg rebellion. But instead of bolstering the fight, the coup completely disorganized it, and the rebels took advantage of the situation to seize the entire northern two-thirds of the country, including the historic city of Timbuktu.

Mali's neighbors were shocked by the Tuareg rebel advance and also by the fact that it opened the door to militant Islamic extremist salafist forces linked to al Qaeda, whom the MNLA considered to be tactical allies but who soon eclipsed and pushed aside the Tuareg group. The salafists have established themselves as rulers of Timbuktu, Gao and other places in the North. While the MNLA advocates a separate Tuareg state, the salafist groups, some of whom have enriched themselves by various kinds of smuggling and kidnapping activities, do not want to break up Mali but want to force their brand of Islam on the whole country.

In April, Sanogo was pressured by neighboring countries into stepping aside to make way for a veteran civilian politician, Diancounda Traouré, to take the position of "interim president." But the soldiers did not step completely out of the picture and Sanogo still asserts some power. On May 21, acting President Traouré was ambushed in his office by Sanogo supporters and beaten so badly that he had to be taken to France for two months of treatment, leading to further delays of efforts to find a solution.

Meanwhile, the salafists, said to include many non-Malians, were consolidating their hold on the north. Not only neighboring countries but also France and the other NATO powers, including the United States, were becoming more and more worried that Mali would become the launching pad for new al-Qaeda style terrorist attacks in Africa and beyond.

In the north, the new rulers, including Ansar Dine, al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, have been implementing their own strict interpretation of sharia law, in sharp conflict with the easygoing, sufi-influenced Islam of the region. There are many reports of sufi shrines being destroyed, and of people being whipped for drinking, smoking or listening to music. Thieves' feet and hands have been cut off, and women have been harassed for going out unveiled or unaccompanied. Child soldiers are also being recruited.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), consisting of Mali and 14 other West African countries, has wanted to organize a regional military intervention in Mali, but this has been opposed by Sanogo and his supporters. But now ECOWAS and the Malian government appear to have agreed on an intervention. On Thursday, there was also a large demonstration in Mali's capital, Bamako, demanding ECOWAS intervention.

Several hundred thousand people have fled northern Mali, swamping the resources of neighboring governments and humanitarian agencies. This comes on top of chronic distress caused by creeping desertification of the whole Sahel area, and a severe drought this year. Aid agencies fear that any military intervention in the north will exacerbate this crisis.

Many commentators have concluded that rebel groups, including the similar Boko Haram ("Western Education is Evil") group in Nigeria, are able to recruit followers because of the economic neglect of the population. The suggestion is that if the money to be spent for military might were spent for food and education, better results might ensue. But is it now too late?

People in countries neighboring Mali, such as Mauretania, express worry that an armed intervention, especially if it involves Western troops, might create an even bigger conflict. Others are extremely suspicious of any French involvement, given the heavy handed role France has sometimes played in the region since independence.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has called for extreme caution in any action in Mali.

Photo: French President Francois Hollande addresses the press at Mediterranean summit of southern European and North African countries, in Valletta, Malta, Oct. 5. At the summit of five European and five African nations, France pushed for a military intervention in Mali. Andrew Medichini/AP

Wall Street Journal wailing over Chavez victory in Venezuela

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 13:20:00 +0000

The reelection, for a third term, of Venezuela's left wing president, Hugo Chavez of the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), has set off wails of anguish in the right-wing media and political circles in the United States. In fact, it is a supremely important development with profound implications for the hemisphere and the world.

The Wall Street Journal outdid itself by comparing the people who voted for Chavez with the 47 percent in the United States who Mitt Romney claimed were hopelessly dependent on government handouts. According to the Journal, by vastly improving Venezuela's public services in health and education, and by helping millions of Venezuelans out of poverty, Chavez has created massive dependency on government on an unprecedented scale.

No silver lining here, helping people to improve their incomes is all bad, unless they are already rich. The way the right and the ruling class see the functions of government is reflected in such statements with crystal clarity.

The actual implication of the Venezuelan election is that Latin America may now finally escape from its dependency on, and subordination to, the United States and U.S.-based corporations. In his famous 1823 "Doctrine," U.S. President James Monroe asserted the right of the United States to take action to prevent interference in the Western Hemisphere. But Monroe did not promise that the United States itself would not do some interfering.

This was manifested by the U.S. war with Mexico from 1846-1848, and by the 1904 (Theodore) Roosevelt corollary whereby the U.S. government awarded itself the role of "enforcer" over the internal and external affairs of the other hemispheric states.

Since then, the United States has interfered in almost every single Latin American country. After the Cuban Revolution triumphed on January 1, 1959, this interference developed a special focus on overthrowing the Cuban government and preventing leftists, broadly defined, from triumphing anywhere in the Americas. It led to bloody incidents such as the overthrow of the progressive government of President Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala in 1954, the intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1964, the overthrow of socialist President Salvador Allende of Chile in 1973, the "Contra Wars" against progressives in Central America during the 1980s and 1990s, the overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya in Honduras in 2009, and others too numerous to mention.

But gradually, the nations of the hemisphere have been forging internal and external bonds which promise to break the pattern. The ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for Our America), consisting mostly of countries whose governments proudly announce their socialist orientation (Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela and some small island nations) is the most left-leaning of a series of structures that serve this purpose. Venezuela, with its oil wealth, is the key player in ALBA and also in Petrocaribe, an 18-nation bloc through which Venezuelan oil is marketed regionally on very easy credit terms.

Beyond these, there are UNASUR and MERCOSUR, in which left, center and right-wing governed countries all participate. Finally, there is CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States), which includes 33 countries, that is, all the area's independent states except the United States and Canada. CELAC may soon displace the venerable Organization of American States, which, ceding to U.S. demands, has excluded active Cuban participation since the revolution. As if to highlight the change, Cuba has just been chosen to preside over CELAC for the coming period, including in economic negotiations with the European Union starting in January of next year.

Not least because of Venezuela's efforts, the Free Trade Area of the Americas died an unmourned death.

Partly because of the economic impact of its oil wealth, Venezuela has played a key role in the entire "Bolivarian" process of integrating the Latin American economies while reducing the role of the United States in the region. This is why the Wall Street Journal, and a whole lot of other people, are wailing and gnashing their teeth. The right-wing opposition presidential candidate in the Venezuelan elections, Enrique Capriles Rodonski, had promised to end Venezuelan petroleum aid to Cuba and the other poorer countries in the hemisphere. Had he been elected, and had he kept his word, this "Bolivarian Project" would have been severely jeopardized.

And what of the United States? The Obama administration pointedly congratulated the Venezuelan people, and not Chavez, for the elections. Romney claimed that the current administration has been "soft" on Venezuela, and that he would somehow do something different. As usual, he gave no specifics whatsoever.

Last year, one of Mexico's most prominent left-wing politicians, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador sent an open letter to Hillary Clinton suggesting that the United States should return to the "Good Neighbor" policy of Franklin Roosevelt, i.e. of non-interference in other countries' affairs.

It is not too late, and there are no other options.

Photo: Bernardo Londoy // CC 2.0

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wins third term

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 15:53:00 +0000

Facing a media offensive inside and outside his country, a unified and vigorous opposition, and a cancer diagnosis, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on October 7 overwhelmingly defeated Henrique Capriles, presidential candidate of the right-wing Roundtable of Democratic Unity Coalition. Chavez will continue as Venezuela's president through 2019.

National Electoral Council head Tibisay Lucena announced the results at 10 p.m. on Election Day, even though some polls were still open to accommodate citizens waiting to vote. She complimented voters for their civility. Conceding defeat, Capriles told supporters that "to know how to win, you need to know how to lose." Together with flawless conduct of the election, Capriles' public concession disappointed many of Chavez's enemies, including those in the United States, who were quite prepared to use election cheating and opposition intransigence as fuel for continuing the fight.

With 97 percent of the votes counted, Chavez secured 8.062.056 votes (55.14 percent), while Capriles got 6.468.450 votes (44.24 percent). Chavez prevailed in 21 states and the Capital District, losing only in Mérida and Táchira states. Voter abstention, having fallen from 46.3 percent in the 2000 presidential to 26.3 percent in 2006, was 19.1 percent. Chavez has won four presidential elections, three of them under Venezuela's 1999 Constitution; he also decisively turned back a recall vote in 2004.

The victory announcement triggered celebrations in Venezuelan cities. Videos show red-shirted people of all ages waving banners and dancing in the streets. Early on October 8, from Caracas' Miraflores Palace, Chavez addressed thousands of celebrators. "Venezuela will never again go back to neo-liberalism and will keep on moving toward democratic socialism of the 21st century," he told them. And: "No imperialist force, no matter how big, can ever stand up against the people of Simon Bolivar ... Today, Latin America won, together with the people of Venezuela." He congratulated opposition leaders, "inviting them to dialogue, discussion, and working together."

Since then analyses flooding the Internet have speculated on why Chavez won and what Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution means. There is undoubted authenticity, however, in reflections a North American political activist emailed at 5 a.m. on October 8 to friends and supporters. Having lived in Latin America for three decades, in rural Venezuela for over 20 years, she was responding to North American friends "wondering why Chavez was going to lose, die, or steal the elections, or all of the above."

"How about, for a start," she writes, "free health care, and right in your local community?" She recounts her return to Venezuela recently from the United States. She was sick and a friend took her to "the local government health post. As I stumbled in, the waters parted and soon I was on a gurney with young Cuban and Venezuelan doctors patiently asking me many questions and examining me. [I was] having a reaction to pain medication ... I was sent home with new meds and a smile, never interchanging a single ID or form of any payment."

Her friend was hospitalized soon afterwards: "We arrived at a four-story brand new building in the heart of Petare, one of the most populous and poorest sectors of the country." Two days later the friend went home following an appendectomy and incidental hernia repair. "Total bill: $0!"

But, she writes, "If free health care isn't enough reason to explain Venezuela's election results, maybe you can look to the faces of the young people who were jumping up and down last night in front of the presidential palace." She recalled an interchange between North American and local students. She realized difficulties she had in translating "student loans" for the young Venezuelans "wasn't a question of translation, but of opposing realities."

Among young people attending the cultural center she established "all [of those] between ages 17-20, and all hailing from these barrios ... were studying at the university. Tuition was free and some even had scholarships to cover food and transportation. Student loans?"

Her neighbor Erika, mother of six, "grew up having to pick coffee instead of going to school. Three years ago she got her grade school degree from the mission school, and is now well on her way to a high school degree. She is thinking of what to study at the university level, maybe social work. She often repeats to me: "'Comadre, notice how Chavez always says, WE the poor. He is one of us.'"

Commenting on Chavez' appearance on the Miraflores balcony, the email correspondent reports that, "As Chavez held up [Bolivar's'] sword, he and the crowd swayed as they spoke and cheered that real independence was finally coming to Latin America, a continent increasingly configuring itself as one: UNASUR, ALBA, CELAC, all variations of Bolivar's dream." These are all organizations in which Venezuela is an active participant and which are working toward Latin American economic integration and freedom from U.S. domination. Independence was coming "from a colonizer that took over no sooner than Spaniards had departed: my country [the U.S.]."

Photo: Bernardo Londoy/Flickr

School of the Americas: key tool for empire

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 11:19:00 +0000

"How would you describe the School of the Americas?" Opera Mundi interviewer Giorgio Trucchi recently asked Father Roy Bourgeois, director of School of the Americas Watch. "As a school of assassins, torturers, and leaders of coups," replied the Vietnam War veteran and Catholic priest who founded School of the Americas Watch in 1990.

Bourgeois continued: "They've trained more than 60,000 soldiers there, half of whom are Colombian. For more than 20 years we've monitored the trajectory of these graduates, and we've found hundreds of connections with the most serious atrocities committed in Latin America beginning with the military dictators of decades past. Besides, it's a clear symbol of the foreign policy of my country."

The U.S. government established SOA in Panama in 1946, moving the U.S. Army school to Ft. Benning, Ga., in 1984. For military personnel who are its students, SOA inculcates U.S.-style tactics and strategy, with attention to counter-insurgency capabilities. The school's name was changed in 2000 to the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation," but nothing more changed, says Bourgeois. A primary SOA goal is to cement tight personal relations amongst U.S. and Latin American military leaders, he asserts.

SOA Watch has brought public attention to dictators, military strongmen, and murderers who were SOA graduates. Until recently, the organization centered its campaign on closing down the school. Its emblematic action has been a vigil and protest held annually outside a Ft. Benning gate. Over 180 protesters have served jail time because of civil disobedience at the vigils. Because of his own anti-SOA actions, Father Bourgeois has spent four years in prison.

The vigil this year takes place in Columbus, Ga., November 17-18, with educational sessions beginning on November 16.

Reporter Trucchi asked: "How does SOA represent U.S. foreign policy?"

Bourgeois: "The United States is used to expanding in a continent it considers its own, and does it through extending its forces and influence in order to control any type of progressive or leftist movement in Latin America. SOA has always been part of this strategy. It's no accident that attempted coups in Venezuela (2002), Honduras (2009), and Ecuador (2010) were led by SOA graduates."

Trucchi: "Are there economic ties with interests in the region, beyond political and strategic ones?"

Bourgeois: "Of course, there are. The Pentagon says they teach democracy and defense of human rights there, which is absurd. The SOA role is still defense of U.S. economic interests and those of transnational corporations, in collusion with local oligarchs. Of course, the people are waking up. They are organizing and uniting and they are telling the empire that now it can't come into these countries the way the conquistadors did, to exploit resources and peoples. There are already six countries - Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Nicaragua - that have said they aren't going to send any more soldiers to Ft. Benning."

Father Bourgeois' evocation of imperial designs is matched by SOA Watch, broadening its agenda recently to take on U.S. militarization itself. That is not a far stretch from the group's accustomed role of fighting U.S. preparation of criminal security forces.

International Law Enforcement Academies operated by the U.S. government are now located in Peru and El Salvador - and in Hungary, Thailand, and Botswana. This year a seaside U.S. training facility for urban warfare took root under U.S. Southern Command auspices in Concón, Chile. In 2011, a Ft. Bragg Special Forces contingent arrived unannounced in Buenos Aires, Argentina, ready to train local police. The U.S. government is backing Colombian military and police trainers working in Mexico, Honduras, and Paraguay.

Roy Bourgeois' view that SOA serves imperial purposes takes on added credibility with news that a SOA replica is operating in Iraq, a region newly prepared for exploitation. On June 17, 2012, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad celebrated the opening of the Al-Nahrain Center for Strategic Studies. A press release explained: "The center, which includes Iraq's National Defense University and National Defense College, the Iraq War College, and the Iraq Language Institute, will facilitate regional dialogue and serve as a basis for partnership building between Iraq and other nations throughout the region." The U.S. government paid $15 million to build the facilities.

For New York University Professor Sinan Antoon, writing for the independent Jadaliyya website, this was not good news: "The language in the press release and the code words (military training, strategic and regional cooperation) are reminiscent of the discourse and practices of the notorious School of the Americas. In fact, he warns, it's the "Baghdad Campus of the School of the Americas."

Photo: Al Viola/SOA Watch Facebook

Post-Fukushima Japan looking into fracking?

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 16:26:00 +0000

With anti-nuclear protests heating up after Japan revoked a previous anti-nuke plan, the country is desperately looking for energy alternatives. But on Oct. 3, petroleum company Japex successfully extracted crude oil from a gas field's test sample, marking the country's first discovery of domestic shale gas deposits. Now, to the chagrin of environmentalists, Japan may be the next country to dabble in the dangerous gas extraction process known as fracking.

Japex, or Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., estimated there could be as much as five million barrels of shale oil deposits in the gas field in Akita prefecture, where the test sample was taken. The company is enlisting the help of crony capitalist resource developer Halliburton Co. in the U.S. to release the oil.

This interest in fracking dates back partially to late 2011 in Fort Worth, Texas, when energy executives there with drilling company Quicksilver Resources hosted a delegation from Japan to study gas extraction and production techniques in the Barnett Shale. Mayor Betsy Price reportedly discussed the supposed economic benefits of fracking with Takashi Ishikawa, president of Japan's Ashikaga Gas Company over breakfast at a hotel.

Two months afterward, Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry Yukio Edano remarked, "Shale gas in North America is most interesting to Japan. In the immediate future, shale gas is the greatest interest for us."

And in August of this year, Japex acquired a small stake in the Eagle Ford shale project near the Texas-Mexico border, its first energy investment of the sort.

With just two of Japan's nuclear reactors currently active, the negative response toward atomic energy there (not without justification) after the Fukushima disaster has forced the government to question their reliance upon it. Unfortunately, with little clean energy development in the country so far - and a corporate push for fossil fuels - Japan is attempting to address the issue, many believe, by pursuing fracking.

Natural gas and oil extraction methods like fracking can potentially cause environmental and health disasters, and has been definitely linked by scientists to tremors and earthquakes. The chemicals used in the process can also leak into and poison nearby water supplies. In a country that is still reeling from a powerful earthquake and dealing with high radiation levels from the Fukushima meltdown, many experts believe the health risks of fracking are not worth the venture.

Japanese researchers added that even without fracking, Tokyo has a 70 percent chance of enduring an earthquake of magnitude seven or higher within the next four years; that becomes a 98 percent chance within the next 30 years. A magnitude 7.3 quake, for example, might kill an estimated 5,600 people, injure 159,000, and destroy 850,000 structures, the government says.

But all signs point to a decision by Japan to move forward with fracking, and to, moreover, explore other areas outside of Akita prefecture. Fracking would allow Japan to largely cut its reliance on energy imports, especially from Russia.

Meanwhile, Shinichi Sakai, associate professor at Japan's Earthquake Research Institute, explained that the odds of a quake occurring had increased since March. "The government, individuals, and corporations should make preparations for that now," he said.

Photo: Oil storage tanks in Tokyo. Japan currently relies on oil imports, and is looking for other ways to achieve energy independence with the recent outrage directed toward nuclear energy. Itsuo Inouye/AP