Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Halliburton, Cheney, and Dubai - Corruption as Usual
The actual reason Halliburton and its chairman David Lesar are moving their corporate digs to Dubai is that the UAE's lax laws on corporate record keeping and the opaqueness of business transactions in the emirates will allow the firm to avoid responding to congressional subpoenas for its scandalous war profiteering in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations. A source with extensive ties in Dubai also reports that after leaving office, Dick Cheney will be spending "a lot of time in Dubai." WMR was told that Cheney will likely start looking for property in the emirate -- there are a number of highly-secured gated communities springing up in Dubai, which is fast becoming the "Hong Kong" of the Middle East.
Halliburton will also be able to avoid paying U.S. corporate taxes as a UAE-headquartered corporation.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
The Seymour Hersh Mystery - A Journalist Writing Bloody Murder…And No One Notices
Let me see if I've got this straight. Perhaps two years ago, an "informal" meeting of "veterans" of the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal -- holding positions in the Bush administration -- was convened by Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams. Discussed were the "lessons learned" from that labyrinthine, secret, and illegal arms-for-money-for-arms deal involving the Israelis, the Iranians, the Saudis, and the Contras of Nicaragua, among others -- and meant to evade the Boland Amendment, a congressionally passed attempt to outlaw Reagan administration assistance to the anti-communist Contras. In terms of getting around Congress, the Iran-Contra vets concluded, the complex operation had been a success -- and would have worked far better if the CIA and the military had been kept out of the loop and the whole thing had been run out of the Vice President's office.
Subsequently, some of those conspirators, once again with the financial support and help of the Saudis (and probably the Israelis and the Brits), began running a similar operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Cheney's office. They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have never been accounted for since the American occupation began. Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
All of this was being done as part of a "sea change" in the Bush administration's Middle Eastern policies aimed at rallying friendly Sunni regimes against Shiite Iran, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Syrian government -- and launching secret operations to undermine, roll back, or destroy all of the above. Despite the fact that the Bush administration is officially at war with Sunni extremism in Iraq (and in the more general Global War on Terror), despite its support for the largely Shiite government, allied to Iran, that it has brought to power in Iraq, and despite its dislike for the Sunni-Shiite civil war in that country, some of its top officials may be covertly encouraging a far greater Sunni-Shiite rift in the region.
Imagine. All this and much more (including news of U.S. military border-crossings into Iran, new preparations that would allow George W. Bush to order a massive air attack on that land with only 24-hours notice, and a brief window this spring when the staggering power of four U.S. aircraft-carrier battle groups might be available to the President in the Persian Gulf) was revealed, often in remarkable detail, just over a week ago in "The Redirection," a Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker. Hersh, the man who first broke the My Lai story in the Vietnam era, has never been off his game since. In recent years, from the Abu Ghraib scandal on, he has consistently released explosive news about the plans and acts of the Bush administration.
Imagine, in addition, that Hersh went on Democracy Now!, Fresh Air, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer and actually elaborated on these claims and revelations, some of which, on the face of it, seem like potentially illegal and impeachable offenses, if they do indeed reach up to the Vice President or President.
Now imagine the response: Front-page headlines; editorials nationwide calling for answers, Congressional hearings, or even the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into some of the claims; a raft of op-ed page pieces by the nation's leading columnists asking questions, demanding answers, reminding us of the history of Iran-Contra; bold reporters from a recently freed media standing up in White House and Defense Department press briefings to demand more information on Hersh's various charges; calls in Congress for hearings and investigations into why the people's representatives were left so totally out of this loop.
Uh…
All I can say is: If any of this happened, I haven't been able to discover it. As far as I can tell, no one in the mainstream even blinked on the Iran-Contra angle or the possibility that a vast, secret Middle Eastern operation is being run, possibly illegally and based on stolen funds and Saudi money, out of the Vice President's office. You can certainly find a few pieces on, or reports about, "The Redirection" -- all focused only on the possible build-up to a war with Iran -- and the odd wire-service mention of it; but nothing major, nothing Earth-shaking or eye-popping; not, in fact, a single obvious editorial or op-ed piece in the mainstream; no journalistic questions publicly asked of the administration; no Congressional cries of horror; no calls anywhere for investigations or hearings on any of Hersh's revelations, not even an expression of fear somewhere that we might be seeing Iran-Contra, the sequel, in our own moment.
This, it seems to me, adds up to a remarkable non-response to claims that, if true, should gravely concern Congress, the media, and the nation. Let's grant that Hersh's New Yorker pieces generally arrive unsourced and filled with anonymuous officials ("a former senior intelligence official," "a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel"). Nonetheless, Hersh has long mined his sources in the Intelligence Community and the military to striking effect. Undoubtedly, the lack of sourcing makes it harder for other reporters to follow-up, though when it comes to papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times, you would think that they might have Washington sources of their own to query on Hersh's claims. And, of course, editorial pages, columnists, op-ed editors, Congressional representatives, and reporters at administration news briefings don't need to do any footwork at all to raise these subjects. (Consider, for instance, the White House press briefing on April 10, 2006, where a reporter did indeed ask a question based on an earlier Hersh New Yorker piece.) As far as I can tell, there haven't even been denunciations of Hersh's report or suggestions anywhere that it was inaccurate or off-base. Just the equivalent of a giant, collective shrug of the media's rather scrawny shoulders.
Since the response to Hersh's remarkable piece has been so tepid in places where it should count, let me take up just a few of the many issues his report raises.
"Meddling" in Iran
For at least a month now, our press and TV news have been full to the brim with mile-high headlines and top-of-the-news stories recounting (and, more rarely, disputing) Bush administration claims of Iranian "interference" or "meddling" in Iraq (where U.S. military spokesmen regularly refer to the Iraqi insurgents they are fighting as "anti-Iraq forces"). Since Hersh published "Plan B" in the New Yorker in June 2004 in which he claimed that the Israelis were "running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria," he has been on the other side of this story.
In "The Coming Wars" in January of 2005, he first reported that the Bush administration, like the Israelis, had been "conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since" the summer of 2004. In April of 2006 in "The Iran Plans," he reported that the Bush administration was eager to put the "nuclear option" on the table in any future air assault on Iranian nuclear facilities (and that some in the Pentagon, fiercely opposed, had at least temporarily thwarted planning for the possible use of nuclear bunker-busters in Iran). He also reported that American combat units were "on the ground" in Iran, marking targets for any future air attack, and quoted an unnamed source as claiming that they were also "working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast. The troops ‘are studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds,' the consultant said. One goal is to get ‘eyes on the ground'… The broader aim, the consultant said, is to ‘encourage ethnic tensions' and undermine the regime."
In "The Redirection," he now claims that, in search of Iranian rollback and possible regime change, "American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the [Iranian] border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq." In his Democracy Now! radio interview, he added: "[W]e have been deeply involved with Azeris and Baluchis and Iranian Kurds in terror activities inside the country… and, of course, the Israelis have been involved in a lot of that through Kurdistan… Iran has been having sort of a series of backdoor fights, the Iranian government, because… they have a significant minority population. Not everybody there is a Persian. If you add up the Azeris and Baluchis and Kurds, you're really 30-some [%], maybe even 40% of the country."
In addition, he reported that "a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours," and that its "new assignment" was to identify not just nuclear facilities and possible regime-change targets, but "targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq."
Were there nothing else in Hersh's most recent piece, all of this would still have been significant news -- if we didn't happen to live on a one-way imperial planet in which Iranian "interference" in (American) Iraq is an outrage, but secret U.S. operations in, and military plans to devastate, Iran are your basic ho-hum issue. Our mainstream news purveyors don't generally consider the issue of our "interference" in Iran worthy of a great deal of reporting, nor do our pundits consider it a topic worthy of speculation or consideration; nor, in a Congress where leading Democrats have regularly outflanked the Bush administration in hawkish positions on Iran, is this likely to be much of an issue.
You can read abroad about rumored American operations out of Pakistan and Afghanistan aimed at unsettling Iranian minorities like the Baluchis and about possible operations to create strife among Arab minorities in southern Iran near the Iraqi border -- the Iranians seem to blame the British, whose troops are in southern Iraq, for some of this (a charge vociferously denied by the British embassy in Tehran) -- but it's not a topic of great interest here.
In recent months, in fact, several bombs have gone off in minority regions of Iran. These explosions have been reported here, but you would be hard-pressed to find out what the Iranians had to say about them, and the possibility that any of these might prove part of a U.S. (or Anglo-American) covert campaign to destabilize the Iranian fundamentalist regime basically doesn't concern the news mind here, even though past history says it should. After all, many of our present Middle Eastern problems can be indirectly traced back to the Anglo-American ur-moment in the Middle East, the successful CIA-British-intelligence plot in 1953 to oust Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (who had nationalized the Iranian oil industry) and install the young Shah in power.
After all, in the 1980s, in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, the CIA (with the eager connivance of the Pakistanis and the Saudis) helped organize, arm, and fund the Islamic extremists who would someday turn on us for terror campaigns on a major scale. As Steve Coll reported in his superb book Ghost Wars, for instance, "Under ISI [Pakistani intelligence] direction, the mujahedin received training and malleable explosives to mount car-bomb and even camel-bomb attacks in Soviet-occupied cities, usually designed to kill Soviet soldiers and commanders. [CIA Director William] Casey endorsed these despite the qualms of some CIA career officers."
Similarly, in the early 1990s, the Iraq National Accord, an organization run by the CIA's Iraqi exile of choice, Iyad Allawi, evidently planted, under the Agency's direction, car bombs and explosive devices in Baghdad (including in a movie theater) in a fruitless attempt to destabilize Saddam Hussein's regime. The New York Times reported this on its front page in June 2004 (to no effect whatsoever), when Allawi was the Prime Minister of American-occupied Iraq.
Who knows where the funding, training, and equipment for the bombings in Iran are coming from -- but, at a moment when charges that the Iranians are sending into Iraq advanced IEDs, or the means to produce them, are the rage, it seems a germane subject.
In this country, it's a no-brainer that the Iranians have no right whatsoever to put their people, overtly or covertly, into neighboring Iraq, a country which, back in the 1980s, invaded Iran and fought a bitter eight-year war with it, resulting in perhaps a million casualties; but it's just normal behavior for the Pentagon to have traveled halfway across the planet to dominate the Iraqi military, garrison Iraq with a string of vast permanent bases, build the largest embassy on the planet in Baghdad's Green Zone, and send special-operations teams (and undoubtedly CIA teams as well) across the Iranian border, or to insert them in Iran to do "reconnaissance" or even to foment unrest among its minorities. This is the definition of an imperial worldview.
Sleepless Nights
Let's leave Iran now and briefly take up a couple of other matters highlighted in "The Redirection" that certainly should have raised the odd red flag and pushed the odd alarm button here at home far more than his Iranian news (which did at least get some attention):
1. Iran-Contra Redux: Does it raise no eyebrows that, under the leadership of Elliot Abrams (who in the Iran-Contra period pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress and was later pardoned), such a meeting was held? Does no one want to confirm that this happened? Does no one want to know who attended? Iran-Contra alumni in the Bush administration at one time or another included former Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter, Otto Reich, John Negroponte (who, Hersh claims, recently left his post as Director of National Intelligence in order to avoid the twenty-first century version of Iran-Contra -- "No way. I'm not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. [National Security Council] running operations off the books, with no [presidential] finding."), Roger Noriega, and Robert Gates. Did the Vice President or President sit in? Was either of them informed about the "lessons drawn"? Were the Vice President's right-hand men, I. Lewis Libby and/or David Addington in any way involved? Who knows? In the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan administration drew together the seediest collection of freelance arms dealers, intelligence agents, allies, and -- in the case of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian regime -- sworn enemies in what can only be called "amateur hour" at the White House. Now, it looks like the Bush administration is heading down a similar path and, given its previous "amateur hour" reputation in foreign policy, imagine what this is likely to mean.
2. Jihadis as Proxies: Using jihadis as American proxies in a struggle to rollback Iran -- with the help of the Saudis -- should have rung a few bells somewhere in American memory as another been-there, done-that moment. In the 1980s -- on the theory that my enemy's enemy is my friend -- the fundamentalist Catholic CIA Director William Casey came to believe that Islamic fundamentalists could prove tight and trustworthy allies in rolling back the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan, as a result, the CIA, backed by the Saudis royals, who themselves represented an extremist form of Sunni Islam, regularly favored and funded the most extreme of the mujahedeen ready to fight the Soviets. Who can forget the results? Today, according to Hersh, the Saudis are reassuring key figures in the administration that this time they have the jihadis to whom funds are flowing under control. No problem. If you believe that, you'll believe anything.
3. Congress in the Dark: Hersh claims that, with the help of Saudi National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan (buddy to the Bushes and Dick Cheney's close comrade-in-arms), the people running the black-ops programs out of Cheney's office have managed to run circles around any possibility of Congressional oversight, leaving the institution completely "in the dark," which is undoubtedly exactly where Congress wanted to be for the last six years. Is this still true? The non-reaction to the Hersh piece isn't exactly encouraging.
To summarize, if Hersh is to be believed -- and as a major journalistic figure for the last near-40 years he certainly deserves to be taken seriously -- the Bush administration seems to be repeating the worst mistakes of the Reagan administration and of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, which led inexorably to the greatest acts of blowback in our history. Given what we already know about the Bush administration, Americans should be up nights worrying about what all this means now as well as down the line. For Congress, the media, and Americans in general, this report should have been not just a wake-up call, but a shout for an all-nighter with NoDoz.
In my childhood, one of the Philadelphia papers regularly ran cartoon ads for itself in which some poor soul in a perilous situation -- say, clinging to the ledge of a tall building -- would be screaming for help, while passersby were so engrossed in the paper that they didn't even look up. Now, we have the opposite situation. A journalist essentially writing bloody murder in a giant media and governmental crowd. In this case, no one in the mainstream evidently cares -– not yet anyway -- to pay the slightest attention. It seems that there's a crime going on and no one gives a damn. Think Kitty Genovese on a giant scale.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.
Subsequently, some of those conspirators, once again with the financial support and help of the Saudis (and probably the Israelis and the Brits), began running a similar operation, aimed at avoiding congressional scrutiny or public accountability of any sort, out of Vice President Cheney's office. They dipped into "black pools of money," possibly stolen from the billions of Iraqi oil dollars that have never been accounted for since the American occupation began. Some of these funds, as well as Saudi ones, were evidently funneled through the embattled, Sunni-dominated Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to the sort of Sunni jihadi groups ("some sympathetic to al-Qaeda") whose members might normally fear ending up in Guantanamo and to a group, or groups, associated with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.
All of this was being done as part of a "sea change" in the Bush administration's Middle Eastern policies aimed at rallying friendly Sunni regimes against Shiite Iran, as well as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Syrian government -- and launching secret operations to undermine, roll back, or destroy all of the above. Despite the fact that the Bush administration is officially at war with Sunni extremism in Iraq (and in the more general Global War on Terror), despite its support for the largely Shiite government, allied to Iran, that it has brought to power in Iraq, and despite its dislike for the Sunni-Shiite civil war in that country, some of its top officials may be covertly encouraging a far greater Sunni-Shiite rift in the region.
Imagine. All this and much more (including news of U.S. military border-crossings into Iran, new preparations that would allow George W. Bush to order a massive air attack on that land with only 24-hours notice, and a brief window this spring when the staggering power of four U.S. aircraft-carrier battle groups might be available to the President in the Persian Gulf) was revealed, often in remarkable detail, just over a week ago in "The Redirection," a Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker. Hersh, the man who first broke the My Lai story in the Vietnam era, has never been off his game since. In recent years, from the Abu Ghraib scandal on, he has consistently released explosive news about the plans and acts of the Bush administration.
Imagine, in addition, that Hersh went on Democracy Now!, Fresh Air, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer and actually elaborated on these claims and revelations, some of which, on the face of it, seem like potentially illegal and impeachable offenses, if they do indeed reach up to the Vice President or President.
Now imagine the response: Front-page headlines; editorials nationwide calling for answers, Congressional hearings, or even the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into some of the claims; a raft of op-ed page pieces by the nation's leading columnists asking questions, demanding answers, reminding us of the history of Iran-Contra; bold reporters from a recently freed media standing up in White House and Defense Department press briefings to demand more information on Hersh's various charges; calls in Congress for hearings and investigations into why the people's representatives were left so totally out of this loop.
Uh…
All I can say is: If any of this happened, I haven't been able to discover it. As far as I can tell, no one in the mainstream even blinked on the Iran-Contra angle or the possibility that a vast, secret Middle Eastern operation is being run, possibly illegally and based on stolen funds and Saudi money, out of the Vice President's office. You can certainly find a few pieces on, or reports about, "The Redirection" -- all focused only on the possible build-up to a war with Iran -- and the odd wire-service mention of it; but nothing major, nothing Earth-shaking or eye-popping; not, in fact, a single obvious editorial or op-ed piece in the mainstream; no journalistic questions publicly asked of the administration; no Congressional cries of horror; no calls anywhere for investigations or hearings on any of Hersh's revelations, not even an expression of fear somewhere that we might be seeing Iran-Contra, the sequel, in our own moment.
This, it seems to me, adds up to a remarkable non-response to claims that, if true, should gravely concern Congress, the media, and the nation. Let's grant that Hersh's New Yorker pieces generally arrive unsourced and filled with anonymuous officials ("a former senior intelligence official," "a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel"). Nonetheless, Hersh has long mined his sources in the Intelligence Community and the military to striking effect. Undoubtedly, the lack of sourcing makes it harder for other reporters to follow-up, though when it comes to papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times, you would think that they might have Washington sources of their own to query on Hersh's claims. And, of course, editorial pages, columnists, op-ed editors, Congressional representatives, and reporters at administration news briefings don't need to do any footwork at all to raise these subjects. (Consider, for instance, the White House press briefing on April 10, 2006, where a reporter did indeed ask a question based on an earlier Hersh New Yorker piece.) As far as I can tell, there haven't even been denunciations of Hersh's report or suggestions anywhere that it was inaccurate or off-base. Just the equivalent of a giant, collective shrug of the media's rather scrawny shoulders.
Since the response to Hersh's remarkable piece has been so tepid in places where it should count, let me take up just a few of the many issues his report raises.
"Meddling" in Iran
For at least a month now, our press and TV news have been full to the brim with mile-high headlines and top-of-the-news stories recounting (and, more rarely, disputing) Bush administration claims of Iranian "interference" or "meddling" in Iraq (where U.S. military spokesmen regularly refer to the Iraqi insurgents they are fighting as "anti-Iraq forces"). Since Hersh published "Plan B" in the New Yorker in June 2004 in which he claimed that the Israelis were "running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria," he has been on the other side of this story.
In "The Coming Wars" in January of 2005, he first reported that the Bush administration, like the Israelis, had been "conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since" the summer of 2004. In April of 2006 in "The Iran Plans," he reported that the Bush administration was eager to put the "nuclear option" on the table in any future air assault on Iranian nuclear facilities (and that some in the Pentagon, fiercely opposed, had at least temporarily thwarted planning for the possible use of nuclear bunker-busters in Iran). He also reported that American combat units were "on the ground" in Iran, marking targets for any future air attack, and quoted an unnamed source as claiming that they were also "working with minority groups in Iran, including the Azeris, in the north, the Baluchis, in the southeast, and the Kurds, in the northeast. The troops ‘are studying the terrain, and giving away walking-around money to ethnic tribes, and recruiting scouts from local tribes and shepherds,' the consultant said. One goal is to get ‘eyes on the ground'… The broader aim, the consultant said, is to ‘encourage ethnic tensions' and undermine the regime."
In "The Redirection," he now claims that, in search of Iranian rollback and possible regime change, "American military and special-operations teams have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence and, according to a Pentagon consultant on terrorism and the former senior intelligence official, have also crossed the [Iranian] border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq." In his Democracy Now! radio interview, he added: "[W]e have been deeply involved with Azeris and Baluchis and Iranian Kurds in terror activities inside the country… and, of course, the Israelis have been involved in a lot of that through Kurdistan… Iran has been having sort of a series of backdoor fights, the Iranian government, because… they have a significant minority population. Not everybody there is a Persian. If you add up the Azeris and Baluchis and Kurds, you're really 30-some [%], maybe even 40% of the country."
In addition, he reported that "a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours," and that its "new assignment" was to identify not just nuclear facilities and possible regime-change targets, but "targets in Iran that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq."
Were there nothing else in Hersh's most recent piece, all of this would still have been significant news -- if we didn't happen to live on a one-way imperial planet in which Iranian "interference" in (American) Iraq is an outrage, but secret U.S. operations in, and military plans to devastate, Iran are your basic ho-hum issue. Our mainstream news purveyors don't generally consider the issue of our "interference" in Iran worthy of a great deal of reporting, nor do our pundits consider it a topic worthy of speculation or consideration; nor, in a Congress where leading Democrats have regularly outflanked the Bush administration in hawkish positions on Iran, is this likely to be much of an issue.
You can read abroad about rumored American operations out of Pakistan and Afghanistan aimed at unsettling Iranian minorities like the Baluchis and about possible operations to create strife among Arab minorities in southern Iran near the Iraqi border -- the Iranians seem to blame the British, whose troops are in southern Iraq, for some of this (a charge vociferously denied by the British embassy in Tehran) -- but it's not a topic of great interest here.
In recent months, in fact, several bombs have gone off in minority regions of Iran. These explosions have been reported here, but you would be hard-pressed to find out what the Iranians had to say about them, and the possibility that any of these might prove part of a U.S. (or Anglo-American) covert campaign to destabilize the Iranian fundamentalist regime basically doesn't concern the news mind here, even though past history says it should. After all, many of our present Middle Eastern problems can be indirectly traced back to the Anglo-American ur-moment in the Middle East, the successful CIA-British-intelligence plot in 1953 to oust Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh (who had nationalized the Iranian oil industry) and install the young Shah in power.
After all, in the 1980s, in the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, the CIA (with the eager connivance of the Pakistanis and the Saudis) helped organize, arm, and fund the Islamic extremists who would someday turn on us for terror campaigns on a major scale. As Steve Coll reported in his superb book Ghost Wars, for instance, "Under ISI [Pakistani intelligence] direction, the mujahedin received training and malleable explosives to mount car-bomb and even camel-bomb attacks in Soviet-occupied cities, usually designed to kill Soviet soldiers and commanders. [CIA Director William] Casey endorsed these despite the qualms of some CIA career officers."
Similarly, in the early 1990s, the Iraq National Accord, an organization run by the CIA's Iraqi exile of choice, Iyad Allawi, evidently planted, under the Agency's direction, car bombs and explosive devices in Baghdad (including in a movie theater) in a fruitless attempt to destabilize Saddam Hussein's regime. The New York Times reported this on its front page in June 2004 (to no effect whatsoever), when Allawi was the Prime Minister of American-occupied Iraq.
Who knows where the funding, training, and equipment for the bombings in Iran are coming from -- but, at a moment when charges that the Iranians are sending into Iraq advanced IEDs, or the means to produce them, are the rage, it seems a germane subject.
In this country, it's a no-brainer that the Iranians have no right whatsoever to put their people, overtly or covertly, into neighboring Iraq, a country which, back in the 1980s, invaded Iran and fought a bitter eight-year war with it, resulting in perhaps a million casualties; but it's just normal behavior for the Pentagon to have traveled halfway across the planet to dominate the Iraqi military, garrison Iraq with a string of vast permanent bases, build the largest embassy on the planet in Baghdad's Green Zone, and send special-operations teams (and undoubtedly CIA teams as well) across the Iranian border, or to insert them in Iran to do "reconnaissance" or even to foment unrest among its minorities. This is the definition of an imperial worldview.
Sleepless Nights
Let's leave Iran now and briefly take up a couple of other matters highlighted in "The Redirection" that certainly should have raised the odd red flag and pushed the odd alarm button here at home far more than his Iranian news (which did at least get some attention):
1. Iran-Contra Redux: Does it raise no eyebrows that, under the leadership of Elliot Abrams (who in the Iran-Contra period pleaded guilty to two counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress and was later pardoned), such a meeting was held? Does no one want to confirm that this happened? Does no one want to know who attended? Iran-Contra alumni in the Bush administration at one time or another included former Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter, Otto Reich, John Negroponte (who, Hersh claims, recently left his post as Director of National Intelligence in order to avoid the twenty-first century version of Iran-Contra -- "No way. I'm not going down that road again, with the N.S.C. [National Security Council] running operations off the books, with no [presidential] finding."), Roger Noriega, and Robert Gates. Did the Vice President or President sit in? Was either of them informed about the "lessons drawn"? Were the Vice President's right-hand men, I. Lewis Libby and/or David Addington in any way involved? Who knows? In the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan administration drew together the seediest collection of freelance arms dealers, intelligence agents, allies, and -- in the case of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian regime -- sworn enemies in what can only be called "amateur hour" at the White House. Now, it looks like the Bush administration is heading down a similar path and, given its previous "amateur hour" reputation in foreign policy, imagine what this is likely to mean.
2. Jihadis as Proxies: Using jihadis as American proxies in a struggle to rollback Iran -- with the help of the Saudis -- should have rung a few bells somewhere in American memory as another been-there, done-that moment. In the 1980s -- on the theory that my enemy's enemy is my friend -- the fundamentalist Catholic CIA Director William Casey came to believe that Islamic fundamentalists could prove tight and trustworthy allies in rolling back the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan, as a result, the CIA, backed by the Saudis royals, who themselves represented an extremist form of Sunni Islam, regularly favored and funded the most extreme of the mujahedeen ready to fight the Soviets. Who can forget the results? Today, according to Hersh, the Saudis are reassuring key figures in the administration that this time they have the jihadis to whom funds are flowing under control. No problem. If you believe that, you'll believe anything.
3. Congress in the Dark: Hersh claims that, with the help of Saudi National Security Adviser Prince Bandar bin Sultan (buddy to the Bushes and Dick Cheney's close comrade-in-arms), the people running the black-ops programs out of Cheney's office have managed to run circles around any possibility of Congressional oversight, leaving the institution completely "in the dark," which is undoubtedly exactly where Congress wanted to be for the last six years. Is this still true? The non-reaction to the Hersh piece isn't exactly encouraging.
To summarize, if Hersh is to be believed -- and as a major journalistic figure for the last near-40 years he certainly deserves to be taken seriously -- the Bush administration seems to be repeating the worst mistakes of the Reagan administration and of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, which led inexorably to the greatest acts of blowback in our history. Given what we already know about the Bush administration, Americans should be up nights worrying about what all this means now as well as down the line. For Congress, the media, and Americans in general, this report should have been not just a wake-up call, but a shout for an all-nighter with NoDoz.
In my childhood, one of the Philadelphia papers regularly ran cartoon ads for itself in which some poor soul in a perilous situation -- say, clinging to the ledge of a tall building -- would be screaming for help, while passersby were so engrossed in the paper that they didn't even look up. Now, we have the opposite situation. A journalist essentially writing bloody murder in a giant media and governmental crowd. In this case, no one in the mainstream evidently cares -– not yet anyway -- to pay the slightest attention. It seems that there's a crime going on and no one gives a damn. Think Kitty Genovese on a giant scale.
Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and, most recently, the author of Mission Unaccomplished: Tomdispatch Interviews with American Iconoclasts and Dissenters (Nation Books), the first collection of Tomdispatch interviews.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela
Hugo Chavez addresses an anti-imperialist protest rally in Venezuela on Friday, March 10, 2007. In this clip he gives George Bush a history lesson on the real comparison between George Washington and Simon Bolivar.
Rapprochement between the Bush administration and North Korea, Sun Myung Moon's organization and the Falun Gong and the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan.
Chinese and Japanese intelligence are from cautious to suspicious about the diplomatic rapprochement between the Bush administration and North Korea. After years of acrimony between the Bush neo-cons and Pyongyang there are strong indications that Washington will soon normalize relations with the reclusive North Korean Communist government. It is no secret that the Bush administration and North Korean-born religious cult leader Sun Myung Moon have close ties. In fact, a number of Moon's Unification Church members hold high office in the Bush administration, incluidng the State Department. Moon has extensive financial interests in North Korea, including holdings in the hotel, automotive manufacturing, and shipping sectors. It is also unclear what role the new UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon (no relation to Sun Myung Moon, but non-committal about his non-denominational Korean Christian links in Korea) may have had in the Washington-Pyongyang rapprochement.
Beijing and Tokyo suspicious about Bush-North Korea rapprochement.
What has Beijing and Tokyo worried are the ties between Sun Myung Moon's organization and the Falun Gong movement in China and the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan. The Aum cult has attempted to acquire weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from North Korea. In 1995, it launched a deadly sarin attack on Tokyo's subway system. There are also links between Aum and the Russian-Israeli mafia, especially relating to the smuggling of chemical and biological weapons, including VX and hydrogen cyanide. The Falun Gong is considered a major subversive organization by Beijing, which fears it has a number of adherents inside the Communist Party.Intelligence professionals in Asia figure that there is more to the story of the Washington-Pyongyang diplomatic dance. In 2002, George W. Bush referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a "pygmy," a racial epithet usually applied to the Twa people of central Africa.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
Beijing and Tokyo suspicious about Bush-North Korea rapprochement.
What has Beijing and Tokyo worried are the ties between Sun Myung Moon's organization and the Falun Gong movement in China and the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan. The Aum cult has attempted to acquire weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, from North Korea. In 1995, it launched a deadly sarin attack on Tokyo's subway system. There are also links between Aum and the Russian-Israeli mafia, especially relating to the smuggling of chemical and biological weapons, including VX and hydrogen cyanide. The Falun Gong is considered a major subversive organization by Beijing, which fears it has a number of adherents inside the Communist Party.Intelligence professionals in Asia figure that there is more to the story of the Washington-Pyongyang diplomatic dance. In 2002, George W. Bush referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as a "pygmy," a racial epithet usually applied to the Twa people of central Africa.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
POSIÇÃO DA VIA CAMPESINA SOBRE AGRO-COMBUSTÍVEL
POSIÇÃO DA VIA CAMPESINA SOBRE AGRO-COMBUSTÍVEL
Caros amigos e amigas do MST,
O MST esteve em Mali, na África, como parte de uma delegação de 12 representantes de movimentos camponeses e entidades ambientalistas brasileiras, somando-se aos mais de 600 dirigentes de todos os continentes, além de cientistas, ambientalistas, militantes do movimento de mulheres e de diversas outras organizações e entidades, para debater os problemas relacionados à defesa da soberania alimentar em cada país.
Aprofundou-se no Fórum Mundial Pela Soberania Alimentar o debate sobre a necessidade de os movimentos sociais em todo o mundo priorizarem a luta em defesa da produção de alimentos e da soberania alimentar de cada povo. Essa luta envolve também um combate amplo à ofensiva do capital internacional sobre o campo, principalmente na questão do controle dos agro-combustíveis.
Isso porque há uma aliança que unificou os interesses de três grandes setores do capital internacional: a) as empresas petroleiras; b) as corporações transnacionais que controlam o comércio agrícola e as sementes transgênicas c) e as empresas automobilísticas. O único objetivo é manter o atual padrão de consumo do primeiro mundo e as altas taxas de lucro de suas empresas transnacionais.
1. Objetivo das transnacionais e do presidente Bush:
Convencer os governos do hemisfério sul a utilizarem seu território na produção de energia, a partir de produtos agrícolas, com o objetivo de manter o padrão de consumo do “american way of life” no primeiro mundo. A energia vegetal que está dentro dos grãos, na forma de óleo, ou de árvores, é na verdade uma metamorfose agro-química da energia solar. Depois, através do óleo vegetal ou do álcool, se transforma em combustível.
Por isso eles precisam dos países do sul, de maior incidência anual da energia solar e que ainda possuem áreas de terra agricultáveis disponíveis para produção de vegetais oleaginosos como girassol, milho, soja, amendoim, feijão-manso, palma africana ou dendê, ou para produção de álcool a partir da cana-de-açúcar, do milho e de árvores.
Por outro lado, querem impor a produção em monocultivo e, no caso da soja e milho, combinar com sementes transgênicas, o que lhes garantiria um mercado de sementes, de agrotóxicos e ainda a cobrança de royalties para suas empresas transnacionais.
Eles querem apenas lucro e não se importam com a situação do meio ambiente, o aquecimento global e com a vida dos trabalhadores rurais. Resolveram fazer essa ofensiva na produção de energia renovável, para se livrar da dependência de importar petróleo de países agora com governos nacionalistas, como Venezuela e Irã.
Além disso, existe hoje uma enorme instabilidade política na Nigéria, Angola e Arábia Saudita que também são fornecedores dos Estados Unidos e da Europa. Sem falar do fracasso da invasão do Iraque, que também é fornecedor desse combustível.
2. Posição dos movimentos camponeses em todo mundo:
Não podemos chamar esse programa de biocombustível e muito menos de biodiesel. A expressão “bio” que relaciona energia à vida, de forma genérica, é uma clara manipulação de um conceito que não existe. Devemos adotar sim, em todos os idiomas, o conceito de agro-combustíveis. Ou seja, energia gerada a partir de produtos vegetais oriundos da produção agrícola. Embora reconheçamos que o prefixo agro, ainda é muito genérico, e nossos cientistas estão estudando um novo conceito mais preciso.
Concordamos que o uso de agro-combustível é mais adequado para o meio ambiente do que o petróleo. No entanto, ele não afeta a essência do problema da humanidade, que é a atual matriz energética e de transporte, baseado no uso de veículos individuais. Defendemos a substituição radical da atual forma consumista e poluente de transporte individual, pelo transporte coletivo, através de trens, metros, bicicletas, etc.
Não aceitamos que esse plano use produtos agrícolas destinados atualmente à alimentação humana, como milho, soja, girassol, etc., para transformá-los em energia para automóvel.
Mesmo no caso da produção necessário do agro-combustível, devemos produzi-lo de uma forma sustentável. Ou seja, combatemos o atual modelo neoliberal de produção em grandes fazendas e na forma de monocultivo desses produtos. O monocultivo em grande escala é prejudicial ao meio ambiente e expulsa mão-de-obra do campo.
A monocultura afeta o aquecimento do planeta, pois destrói a biodiversidade e impede que a água e a umidade das chuvas se mantenham em equilíbrio com a produção agrícola. Além disso, faz uso intenso de agrotóxicos e máquinas.
Podemos produzir energia, combustível, a partir de produtos agrícolas, porém cultivados de forma sustentável, em pequenas e médias dimensões, que não desequilibrem o meio ambiente e que representem uma maior autonomia dos camponeses no controle da energia e no abastecimento das cidades.
Condenamos veementemente a iniciativa do governo de George W. Bush, que nos próximos dias visita os governos do Brasil, Colômbia, Guatemala para cooptá-los e seduzi-los a multiplicarem a produção de álcool para exportarem aos Estados Unidos.
Em troca, os capitalistas estadunidenses dos três grandes setores do capital exigem o direito de comprar e/ou instalar dezenas de novas usinas de álcool em todo o continente, sendo que propuseram a construção de 100 novas usinas apenas no Brasil.
Para viabilizar esse plano, o governo Bush propõe que se crie uma nova mercadoria internacional, uma “commoditie energética” do álcool, que não seria considerada agrícola para fugir das atuais normas da Organização Mundial do Comercio (OMC).
A Casa Branca propõe também que Brasil, Índia e África do Sul, entre outros, negociem um novo padrão tecnológico comum, para o etanol, seja de milho, de cana ou de árvores. Assim, haveria uma fórmula aceita internacionalmente, formando uma nova Opep de energia agrícola para controlar o comércio mundial.
Um possível sucesso desse plano estadunidense seria uma tragédia para agricultura tropical, transformaria grandes extensões de nossas melhores terras em imensos monocultivos, eliminaria ainda mais a biodiversidade e a produção de alimentos, apenas para abastecer seus carros. Expulsaria milhões de trabalhadores do campo em todo mundo, que se amontoariam ainda mais nas favelas das metrópoles.
O debate e a luta estão apenas iniciando. Esperamos que as organizações sociais possam reagir e que os meios de comunicação possam informar sobre essas questões, que são fundamentais para o futuro de nossos povos.
Por isso, durante as atividades do dia 08 de Março, as mulheres trabalhadoras do campo e da cidade levantam a bandeira da “Luta por Soberania Alimentar, Contra o Agronegócio”, contra as transnacionais que atuam no campo e em defesa dos trabalhadores e da biodiversidade. Soma-se a pauta, o fato de o representante maior do imperialismo, o senhor George W. Bush, desembarcar em território brasileiro nos próximos dias, fomentando ainda mais a luta contra o neoliberalismo.
Secretaria Nacional do MST.
Caros amigos e amigas do MST,
O MST esteve em Mali, na África, como parte de uma delegação de 12 representantes de movimentos camponeses e entidades ambientalistas brasileiras, somando-se aos mais de 600 dirigentes de todos os continentes, além de cientistas, ambientalistas, militantes do movimento de mulheres e de diversas outras organizações e entidades, para debater os problemas relacionados à defesa da soberania alimentar em cada país.
Aprofundou-se no Fórum Mundial Pela Soberania Alimentar o debate sobre a necessidade de os movimentos sociais em todo o mundo priorizarem a luta em defesa da produção de alimentos e da soberania alimentar de cada povo. Essa luta envolve também um combate amplo à ofensiva do capital internacional sobre o campo, principalmente na questão do controle dos agro-combustíveis.
Isso porque há uma aliança que unificou os interesses de três grandes setores do capital internacional: a) as empresas petroleiras; b) as corporações transnacionais que controlam o comércio agrícola e as sementes transgênicas c) e as empresas automobilísticas. O único objetivo é manter o atual padrão de consumo do primeiro mundo e as altas taxas de lucro de suas empresas transnacionais.
1. Objetivo das transnacionais e do presidente Bush:
Convencer os governos do hemisfério sul a utilizarem seu território na produção de energia, a partir de produtos agrícolas, com o objetivo de manter o padrão de consumo do “american way of life” no primeiro mundo. A energia vegetal que está dentro dos grãos, na forma de óleo, ou de árvores, é na verdade uma metamorfose agro-química da energia solar. Depois, através do óleo vegetal ou do álcool, se transforma em combustível.
Por isso eles precisam dos países do sul, de maior incidência anual da energia solar e que ainda possuem áreas de terra agricultáveis disponíveis para produção de vegetais oleaginosos como girassol, milho, soja, amendoim, feijão-manso, palma africana ou dendê, ou para produção de álcool a partir da cana-de-açúcar, do milho e de árvores.
Por outro lado, querem impor a produção em monocultivo e, no caso da soja e milho, combinar com sementes transgênicas, o que lhes garantiria um mercado de sementes, de agrotóxicos e ainda a cobrança de royalties para suas empresas transnacionais.
Eles querem apenas lucro e não se importam com a situação do meio ambiente, o aquecimento global e com a vida dos trabalhadores rurais. Resolveram fazer essa ofensiva na produção de energia renovável, para se livrar da dependência de importar petróleo de países agora com governos nacionalistas, como Venezuela e Irã.
Além disso, existe hoje uma enorme instabilidade política na Nigéria, Angola e Arábia Saudita que também são fornecedores dos Estados Unidos e da Europa. Sem falar do fracasso da invasão do Iraque, que também é fornecedor desse combustível.
2. Posição dos movimentos camponeses em todo mundo:
Não podemos chamar esse programa de biocombustível e muito menos de biodiesel. A expressão “bio” que relaciona energia à vida, de forma genérica, é uma clara manipulação de um conceito que não existe. Devemos adotar sim, em todos os idiomas, o conceito de agro-combustíveis. Ou seja, energia gerada a partir de produtos vegetais oriundos da produção agrícola. Embora reconheçamos que o prefixo agro, ainda é muito genérico, e nossos cientistas estão estudando um novo conceito mais preciso.
Concordamos que o uso de agro-combustível é mais adequado para o meio ambiente do que o petróleo. No entanto, ele não afeta a essência do problema da humanidade, que é a atual matriz energética e de transporte, baseado no uso de veículos individuais. Defendemos a substituição radical da atual forma consumista e poluente de transporte individual, pelo transporte coletivo, através de trens, metros, bicicletas, etc.
Não aceitamos que esse plano use produtos agrícolas destinados atualmente à alimentação humana, como milho, soja, girassol, etc., para transformá-los em energia para automóvel.
Mesmo no caso da produção necessário do agro-combustível, devemos produzi-lo de uma forma sustentável. Ou seja, combatemos o atual modelo neoliberal de produção em grandes fazendas e na forma de monocultivo desses produtos. O monocultivo em grande escala é prejudicial ao meio ambiente e expulsa mão-de-obra do campo.
A monocultura afeta o aquecimento do planeta, pois destrói a biodiversidade e impede que a água e a umidade das chuvas se mantenham em equilíbrio com a produção agrícola. Além disso, faz uso intenso de agrotóxicos e máquinas.
Podemos produzir energia, combustível, a partir de produtos agrícolas, porém cultivados de forma sustentável, em pequenas e médias dimensões, que não desequilibrem o meio ambiente e que representem uma maior autonomia dos camponeses no controle da energia e no abastecimento das cidades.
Condenamos veementemente a iniciativa do governo de George W. Bush, que nos próximos dias visita os governos do Brasil, Colômbia, Guatemala para cooptá-los e seduzi-los a multiplicarem a produção de álcool para exportarem aos Estados Unidos.
Em troca, os capitalistas estadunidenses dos três grandes setores do capital exigem o direito de comprar e/ou instalar dezenas de novas usinas de álcool em todo o continente, sendo que propuseram a construção de 100 novas usinas apenas no Brasil.
Para viabilizar esse plano, o governo Bush propõe que se crie uma nova mercadoria internacional, uma “commoditie energética” do álcool, que não seria considerada agrícola para fugir das atuais normas da Organização Mundial do Comercio (OMC).
A Casa Branca propõe também que Brasil, Índia e África do Sul, entre outros, negociem um novo padrão tecnológico comum, para o etanol, seja de milho, de cana ou de árvores. Assim, haveria uma fórmula aceita internacionalmente, formando uma nova Opep de energia agrícola para controlar o comércio mundial.
Um possível sucesso desse plano estadunidense seria uma tragédia para agricultura tropical, transformaria grandes extensões de nossas melhores terras em imensos monocultivos, eliminaria ainda mais a biodiversidade e a produção de alimentos, apenas para abastecer seus carros. Expulsaria milhões de trabalhadores do campo em todo mundo, que se amontoariam ainda mais nas favelas das metrópoles.
O debate e a luta estão apenas iniciando. Esperamos que as organizações sociais possam reagir e que os meios de comunicação possam informar sobre essas questões, que são fundamentais para o futuro de nossos povos.
Por isso, durante as atividades do dia 08 de Março, as mulheres trabalhadoras do campo e da cidade levantam a bandeira da “Luta por Soberania Alimentar, Contra o Agronegócio”, contra as transnacionais que atuam no campo e em defesa dos trabalhadores e da biodiversidade. Soma-se a pauta, o fato de o representante maior do imperialismo, o senhor George W. Bush, desembarcar em território brasileiro nos próximos dias, fomentando ainda mais a luta contra o neoliberalismo.
Secretaria Nacional do MST.
THE NEXT WAR, AND THE NEXT, The militarization of outer space By Jack A Smith
(For the first part of this two-part article, see The futuristic battlefield)
Outer space begins where Earth's atmosphere ends, some 100 kilometers above the globe's surface. The United States wants the ability to militarize outer space to sustain its world dominance. The Pentagon can already monitor the world from space. Now it seeks to develop and deploy military systems in space that allow the US to strike with great force anywhere on Earth in less than an hour.
The Defense Department's Global Strike Integration policy seeks to "gain and maintain both global and theater space superiority and deliver tailored, integrated, full-spectrum space support to the theater commander, while maintaining a robust defensive global counter-space posture".
This means occupying space with surveillance and reconnaissance satellites and anti-satellites, ballistic missiles, missile or kinetic interceptors, and other advanced technology weapons to assist US land, sea and air forces in maintaining military hegemony throughout the world. It also means preventing any other country, by force if necessary, from using space for similar purposes, including self-defense.
Aside from the satellites, which have become key to the Pentagon's battle plans, most of the other technology is in the research and development stage or awaiting deployment decisions from the White House that are complicated by political complexities.
The George W Bush administration - especially the Defense Department and particularly the US Air Force (USAF) - is anxious to launch a full-scale militarization of space, regardless of its enormous expense and the fact that it will inspire worldwide condemnation, generate a dangerous arms race in outer space, and undoubtedly enhance prospects for major wars in this century.
The rightists and neo-conservatives are not unaware of these potential consequences but they are confident the US will prevail because of its overwhelming power. In effect, "It's worth the price."
But that mindset is not shared so far by most Americans outside the hard right, particularly in the absence of any other country that could come near to threatening the United States for global primacy. In addition, virtually every other nation in the world, including Washington's close allies in Canada and the European Union, opposes the weaponization of space, as is evident from repeated votes at the United Nations.
What this means is that the US is clearly heading toward space militarization - more slowly during the Bill Clinton administration, more swiftly during the Bush administration - but not yet with the acceleration the war hawks demand or the Bushites would prefer.
The annual US space budget amounts to about US$36 billion. This constitutes 73% of what the world's nations collectively spend on space, including China, Russia, the European Union, Japan and India, according to the Space Security Project.
At a certain point, perhaps in the not distant future, one Washington administration or another may be able to convince the American people, and particularly the elite that rules the country, that Russia, China or both have become such grave threats to US hegemony that survival depends on extending the reach of Fortress Americana into the heavens. Since the Second Cold War against both these countries is getting under way, the pretext is in the process of becoming established.
The plan to use outer space as part of America's war preparations was put forward by the right wing during the vehemently anti-Soviet years of the 1980s, resulting in president Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" anti-missile program and the creation of the Air Force Space Command in 1982, the mission of which is to "defend North America through its space and intercontinental-ballistic-missile operations - vital force elements in projecting global reach and global power".
By the 1990s, the neo-conservatives were developing ideas for projecting US power throughout the world, including the militarization of space - resulting in an influential document published in 2000 by the Project for the New American Century titled Rebuilding America's Defenses. A year after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center, President Bush included most of these ideas in a new National Security Strategy for the United States. At about the same time, Bush withdrew the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which had barred development of missile defenses and space-based systems.
One complication for the Pentagon is that the US, as a signatory of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, may not "place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction (chemical or biological killers), install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner".
Thus at this stage the US military space program is based on "conventional" warfare, not weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but with a few adjustments this could change. For instance, more than 70% the Pentagon's "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad during the first days of the invasion of Iraq was coordinated and sent to target through military satellites in space. These bombs were conventional explosives, but satellites could have guided nuclear weapons as long as they were not launched from space.
According to Hans M Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, "Although Global Strike is primarily a non-nuclear mission, the information collected [about the program] reveals that nuclear weapons are surprisingly prominent in both the planning and command structure for Global Strike."
Both China and Russia, among many nations, have been attempting to gain UN passage of a new treaty banning conventional weapons in space as well as WMD, and also prohibiting the use of satellites to guide warfare on the ground. True to its militarist imperative, the US will not allow any such treaty to interfere with its plans.
Bush put forward a 10-page unclassified version of the new US National Space Policy last October, superseding the Clinton administration policy of September 1996, but it generally obfuscated the government's real intentions. The new policy was similar in some instances to the Clinton era policy but more unilateral, arrogant and favorable toward space militarization, though not coming out with it honestly.
Only by reading between the convoluted lines was it possible to comprehend fully that the US government intends to do as it pleases militarily in outer space, including preventing other countries from obtaining a similar strategic advantage.
Here is an example: "The United States is committed to the exploration and use of outer space by all nations for peaceful purposes, and for the benefit of all humanity. Consistent with this principle, 'peaceful purposes' allow US defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national interests."
(Translation: Since we respect your peaceful purposes, you must respect ours, so butt out.)
Here's another: "The United States will oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit US access to or use of space. Proposed arms-control agreements or restrictions must not impair the rights of the United States to conduct research, development, testing, and operations or other activities in space for US national interests." (Translation: The US intends to militarize space, and as the principal member of the Security Council and world hegemon, we will not allow a new treaty to abrogate our rights.)
Another: Under the title "National Security Space Guidelines", the document declared that the Defense Department would:
(Translation: We're ready to roll, so move out of the way.)
Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information, said that while the new policy "doesn't go as far as some space hawks wanted it to in openly endorsing the strategy of fighting 'in, from and through' space, neither has it served to put a blanket - even a thin one - on those ambitions. And in taking a decidedly 'us against them' tone, it is likely to further cement the view from abroad that the United States has taken on the role of a 'Lone Space Cowboy'."
It took four years and three dozen revisions until a final version of the National Space Policy was approved - a reflection of how complex it must be to transform a military plan to control the world into a space travelogue. The report was actually delayed for 15 months after press reports revealed that Bush was leaning toward a USAF request for a presidential directive permitting the deployment of weapons in space. The uproar evidently persuaded the Bushites to tone down the policy - a problem solved by not mentioning it.
Moscow and Beijing have been calling for years for an international ban on any kind of weaponization of outer space, including militarized reconnaissance and communications satellites, and conventional weapons as well as WMD. In 2002, China and Russia, co-sponsored by Vietnam, Syria, Indonesia, Belarus and Zimbabwe, presented a proposal to the United Nations for a treaty to demilitarize space completely, tentatively called the "Prevention of the Deployment of Weapons in Outer Space [and] the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects". The US not only rejected the possibility of such a treaty, it refused even to discuss the matter.
Meanwhile, a number of other resolutions have also been introduced concerned with preventing an arms race in space and gained impressive majorities.
In 2000, for example, a resolution on the Prevention of an Outer Space Arms Race was passed with a vote of 163-0 with three abstentions, Micronesia, Israel and the United States. In 2003, the UN vote to prevent an arms race in space was 174-4, with the Marshall Islands joining the "Big Three", which all voted in opposition this time. Last year, the UN General Assembly vote on preventing an arms race in space was passed 166-1. Israel abstained. The US voted No.
Publicly, Washington maintains that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and other legal measures render a new treaty redundant, but that's only because the treaty allows the US to militarize space via the back door of satellites with battlefield connections and weapons other than WMD. Most of the rest of the world opposes any militarization of space, and Washington and Israel evidently cannot even always rely on the Marshall Islands and Micronesia.
The Bush administration has repeatedly expressed contempt for the Russia-China treaty proposal and similar efforts from other countries. Former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, perhaps the most vociferous of the neo-conservative initiators of the Iraq war, declared in October 2002, "Space offers attractive options not only for missile defense, but for a broad range of interrelated civil and military missions." Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, another war hawk, commented in Geneva in September 2004, "We are not prepared to negotiate on the so-called arms race in outer space. We just don't see that as a worthwhile enterprise."
The White House is reluctant openly to acknowledge its intention to militarize space, but the USAF in particular has been quite frank. In 1996, the then head of the Space Command, General Joseph W Ashy, was quoted as saying: "We're going to fight from space, and we're going to fight into space. That's why the US has development programs in directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms. We will engage terrestrial targets some day - ships, airplanes, land targets - from space."
In 2004, Under Secretary of the Air Force Peter B Teets, discussing America's intentions in space, declared bluntly, "We are paving the road of 21st-century warfare." In May 2005, the New York Times quoted General Lance Lord, another head of the Space Command, as revealing, "Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny. Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future." He did not explain how space superiority is obtained, but there is only one way - dominant military force.
The USAF acknowledges that the militarization of space is a prime objective. Air Force Doctrine Document 2-2.1 on "Counterspace Operations", published in August 2004 (and available online), states: "US Air Force counter-space operations are the ways and means by which the air force achieves and maintains space superiority. Space superiority provides freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack."
General John P Jumper, air force chief of staff in 2004, wrote in the foreword to Document 2-2.1: "Counter-space operations are critical to success in modern warfare. The rapid maturation of space capabilities and the evolution of contingency operations have greatly enhanced the effectiveness of air and space power. Combatant commanders leverage space capabilities such as communication; position, navigation, and timing; missile warning; environmental sensing; and reconnaissance to maintain a combat advantage over our adversaries. Space superiority ensures the freedom to operate in the space medium while denying the same to an adversary. The development of offensive counter-space capabilities provides combatant commanders with new tools for counter-space operations."
So what has the Pentagon accomplished so far? Here are some hints from Giuseppe Anzera, an Italian professor, in Star Wars: Empires strike back (August 18, 2005), an article circulated by the Power and Interest News Report:
On the technological level, the Pentagon's planning is in the advanced stage: some projects - aimed at space weaponization - have already been in place for some time. Among the (partially known) Pentagon's new plans, the two most interesting projects are the "Global Strike" program and the "Rods from God" program. Global Strike involves the employment of military space planes capable of carrying about 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of high-precision weapons (with a circular error probability less than 3 meters) with the primary use of striking enemy military bases and command and control facilities in any point of the world.
The main strength of military space planes is the ability to reach any spot on the globe within 45 minutes. This is a short period of time that could provide US forces with a formidable quick-reaction capability, as opposed to the enemy's subsequent inability to organize any effective defense. Such a weapon's primary target would be the enemy's strategic forces and - according to US Air Force sources widely quoted in the news - the Pentagon is inclined to give priority to this project. One of the main reasons, these sources say, is that the Pentagon itself - after spending more than US$100 billion - has finally admitted its failure to create an infallible Earth-based, anti-missile system to protect American soil from ballistic strikes.
The so-called Rods from God project, according to Anzera, "consists of orbiting platforms stocked with metal tungsten rods about 6.1 meters long (20 feet) and 30 centimeters (1 foot) in diameter that could be satellite-guided to targets anywhere on the Earth within minutes, for the rods would move at more than 11,000 km/h (6,835mph). This weapon exploits kinetic energy to cause an explosion the same magnitude of that of an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, but with no radioactive fallout. The system would function due to two satellites, one of which would work as a communications platform, while the other would contain an arsenal of tungsten rods."
The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency is developing space-based missile interceptors (SBIs) at a cost of up to $600 million over several years, complete with a test bed for experimentation. This would appear to be a weapon in space, but Bush administration spokesman Tony Snow managed not to crack a smile when he answered a press-conference question on October 18 by declaring that "defense from space is different than the weaponization of space".
Other projects on the Pentagon's space drawing boards or in development include the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile that can travel at 5,800km/h; space-mirror satellites redirecting laser beams from Earth against any orbit or surface target, and satellites that send out radio waves with a high range in power and breadth; high-energy lasers of various kinds; a robotic spacecraft capable of determining whether a particular satellite is a "danger" to the US, in which case it will be able to sabotage the offending instrument; rockets with blunt heads that function as kinetic-energy interceptors; a weaponized glider known as the Common Aero Vehicle that can be rocketed into space and travel at hypersonic speeds to target objects on Earth; an experimental spacecraft system; and much more.
On February 15, the Associated Press reported that Russia is fed up with US proposals for an ABM system not only in space but particularly Washington's plan to deploy anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, practically in President Vladimir Putin's face. The news agency quoted General Yuri Baluyevsky, the chief of the Russian General Staff, as indicating Moscow might withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty if the US sets up missile defense in Eastern Europe. The IRNFT eliminated medium-range missiles that had been based in Europe.
Fearing that the momentum toward space war preparations will dissipate when Bush and the neo-conservatives leave office, the right-wing warmaking faction has accelerated its campaign for the weaponization of space. A legion of conservative hawks from various think-tanks banded together last year as the "Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, the Space Relationship and the 21st Century", and published a document of more than 200 pages calling for an extensive military space program.
Writing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (January/February 2007), Theresa Hitchens said the document was "written in language so incendiary it should be banned from carry-on luggage, [and] lashes out against opponents of the weaponization of space, branding them as a cabal of 'arms-control extremists, pacifists, realpolitik practitioners, [and] anti-Americans' bent on 'unilateral disarmament' of the US".
In conclusion, we return to the theme introduced at the beginning of this two-part article - US militarism.
As Chalmers Johnson wrote in The Sorrows of Empire, "The United States has been inching toward imperialism and militarism for many years. Disguising the direction they were taking, American leaders cloaked their foreign policy in euphemisms such as 'lone superpower', 'indispensable nation', 'reluctant sheriff', 'humanitarian intervention', and 'globalization'."
However, with the advent of the Bush administration in 2001, these pretenses gave way to assertions of the Second Coming of the Roman Empire. Bush didn't transform the United States into a militarist society. Militarism developed long before he took office, at least by the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s, when America's political leaders initiated a virtual state of perpetual war preparations and warfare that continues to this day, long after the US has become a near-impregnable fortress, long after the demise of any possible enemies of substance.
Nor did Bush transform the United States into an imperialist country. Imperialism motivated Washington's unjust seizure of Mexican lands in 1848. Imperialism motivated the 1898 war against Spain to extend US hegemony to Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and it has continued ever since, growing stronger in the post-Soviet period of unipolar geopolitical domination supported by unparalleled military power.
Bush is arguably the most dangerous president in US history - he has launched unjust wars, threatened many countries, and broken treaties. But he could not have done so without the political weapons of militarism and imperialism, weapons that have been handed down from president to president for some 60 years.
At issue in this exploration of the US government's warmaking preparations and intentions is not simply what progressive-thinking people are going to do about Iraq today or Venezuela, Iran and China tomorrow. The real question is what will they do about the catastrophic combination of militarism and imperialism that makes continual war preparations and warfare an indelible characteristic of the American state. It is not simply a matter of getting rid of George W Bush because of Iraq or getting rid of Lyndon Johnson because of Vietnam. If we do not get rid of militarism and imperialism we are simply paving the way for the next war, and the next, and the next.
Jack A Smith is former editor of the (US) Guardian Newsweekly and editor of the Hudson Valley (New York) Activist Newsletter.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
Outer space begins where Earth's atmosphere ends, some 100 kilometers above the globe's surface. The United States wants the ability to militarize outer space to sustain its world dominance. The Pentagon can already monitor the world from space. Now it seeks to develop and deploy military systems in space that allow the US to strike with great force anywhere on Earth in less than an hour.
The Defense Department's Global Strike Integration policy seeks to "gain and maintain both global and theater space superiority and deliver tailored, integrated, full-spectrum space support to the theater commander, while maintaining a robust defensive global counter-space posture".
This means occupying space with surveillance and reconnaissance satellites and anti-satellites, ballistic missiles, missile or kinetic interceptors, and other advanced technology weapons to assist US land, sea and air forces in maintaining military hegemony throughout the world. It also means preventing any other country, by force if necessary, from using space for similar purposes, including self-defense.
Aside from the satellites, which have become key to the Pentagon's battle plans, most of the other technology is in the research and development stage or awaiting deployment decisions from the White House that are complicated by political complexities.
The George W Bush administration - especially the Defense Department and particularly the US Air Force (USAF) - is anxious to launch a full-scale militarization of space, regardless of its enormous expense and the fact that it will inspire worldwide condemnation, generate a dangerous arms race in outer space, and undoubtedly enhance prospects for major wars in this century.
The rightists and neo-conservatives are not unaware of these potential consequences but they are confident the US will prevail because of its overwhelming power. In effect, "It's worth the price."
But that mindset is not shared so far by most Americans outside the hard right, particularly in the absence of any other country that could come near to threatening the United States for global primacy. In addition, virtually every other nation in the world, including Washington's close allies in Canada and the European Union, opposes the weaponization of space, as is evident from repeated votes at the United Nations.
What this means is that the US is clearly heading toward space militarization - more slowly during the Bill Clinton administration, more swiftly during the Bush administration - but not yet with the acceleration the war hawks demand or the Bushites would prefer.
The annual US space budget amounts to about US$36 billion. This constitutes 73% of what the world's nations collectively spend on space, including China, Russia, the European Union, Japan and India, according to the Space Security Project.
At a certain point, perhaps in the not distant future, one Washington administration or another may be able to convince the American people, and particularly the elite that rules the country, that Russia, China or both have become such grave threats to US hegemony that survival depends on extending the reach of Fortress Americana into the heavens. Since the Second Cold War against both these countries is getting under way, the pretext is in the process of becoming established.
The plan to use outer space as part of America's war preparations was put forward by the right wing during the vehemently anti-Soviet years of the 1980s, resulting in president Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" anti-missile program and the creation of the Air Force Space Command in 1982, the mission of which is to "defend North America through its space and intercontinental-ballistic-missile operations - vital force elements in projecting global reach and global power".
By the 1990s, the neo-conservatives were developing ideas for projecting US power throughout the world, including the militarization of space - resulting in an influential document published in 2000 by the Project for the New American Century titled Rebuilding America's Defenses. A year after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center, President Bush included most of these ideas in a new National Security Strategy for the United States. At about the same time, Bush withdrew the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which had barred development of missile defenses and space-based systems.
One complication for the Pentagon is that the US, as a signatory of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, may not "place in orbit around the Earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction (chemical or biological killers), install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner".
Thus at this stage the US military space program is based on "conventional" warfare, not weapons of mass destruction (WMD), but with a few adjustments this could change. For instance, more than 70% the Pentagon's "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad during the first days of the invasion of Iraq was coordinated and sent to target through military satellites in space. These bombs were conventional explosives, but satellites could have guided nuclear weapons as long as they were not launched from space.
According to Hans M Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, "Although Global Strike is primarily a non-nuclear mission, the information collected [about the program] reveals that nuclear weapons are surprisingly prominent in both the planning and command structure for Global Strike."
Both China and Russia, among many nations, have been attempting to gain UN passage of a new treaty banning conventional weapons in space as well as WMD, and also prohibiting the use of satellites to guide warfare on the ground. True to its militarist imperative, the US will not allow any such treaty to interfere with its plans.
Bush put forward a 10-page unclassified version of the new US National Space Policy last October, superseding the Clinton administration policy of September 1996, but it generally obfuscated the government's real intentions. The new policy was similar in some instances to the Clinton era policy but more unilateral, arrogant and favorable toward space militarization, though not coming out with it honestly.
Only by reading between the convoluted lines was it possible to comprehend fully that the US government intends to do as it pleases militarily in outer space, including preventing other countries from obtaining a similar strategic advantage.
Here is an example: "The United States is committed to the exploration and use of outer space by all nations for peaceful purposes, and for the benefit of all humanity. Consistent with this principle, 'peaceful purposes' allow US defense and intelligence-related activities in pursuit of national interests."
(Translation: Since we respect your peaceful purposes, you must respect ours, so butt out.)
Here's another: "The United States will oppose the development of new legal regimes or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit US access to or use of space. Proposed arms-control agreements or restrictions must not impair the rights of the United States to conduct research, development, testing, and operations or other activities in space for US national interests." (Translation: The US intends to militarize space, and as the principal member of the Security Council and world hegemon, we will not allow a new treaty to abrogate our rights.)
Another: Under the title "National Security Space Guidelines", the document declared that the Defense Department would:
"Develop and deploy space capabilities that sustain US advantage and support defense and intelligence transformation."
Provide "reliable, affordable, and timely space access for national-security purposes".
"Provide space capabilities to support continuous, global strategic and tactical warning as well as multi-layered and integrated missile defenses."
"Develop capabilities, plans, and options to ensure freedom of action in space, and, if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."
(Translation: We're ready to roll, so move out of the way.)
Theresa Hitchens, director of the Center for Defense Information, said that while the new policy "doesn't go as far as some space hawks wanted it to in openly endorsing the strategy of fighting 'in, from and through' space, neither has it served to put a blanket - even a thin one - on those ambitions. And in taking a decidedly 'us against them' tone, it is likely to further cement the view from abroad that the United States has taken on the role of a 'Lone Space Cowboy'."
It took four years and three dozen revisions until a final version of the National Space Policy was approved - a reflection of how complex it must be to transform a military plan to control the world into a space travelogue. The report was actually delayed for 15 months after press reports revealed that Bush was leaning toward a USAF request for a presidential directive permitting the deployment of weapons in space. The uproar evidently persuaded the Bushites to tone down the policy - a problem solved by not mentioning it.
Moscow and Beijing have been calling for years for an international ban on any kind of weaponization of outer space, including militarized reconnaissance and communications satellites, and conventional weapons as well as WMD. In 2002, China and Russia, co-sponsored by Vietnam, Syria, Indonesia, Belarus and Zimbabwe, presented a proposal to the United Nations for a treaty to demilitarize space completely, tentatively called the "Prevention of the Deployment of Weapons in Outer Space [and] the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects". The US not only rejected the possibility of such a treaty, it refused even to discuss the matter.
Meanwhile, a number of other resolutions have also been introduced concerned with preventing an arms race in space and gained impressive majorities.
In 2000, for example, a resolution on the Prevention of an Outer Space Arms Race was passed with a vote of 163-0 with three abstentions, Micronesia, Israel and the United States. In 2003, the UN vote to prevent an arms race in space was 174-4, with the Marshall Islands joining the "Big Three", which all voted in opposition this time. Last year, the UN General Assembly vote on preventing an arms race in space was passed 166-1. Israel abstained. The US voted No.
Publicly, Washington maintains that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and other legal measures render a new treaty redundant, but that's only because the treaty allows the US to militarize space via the back door of satellites with battlefield connections and weapons other than WMD. Most of the rest of the world opposes any militarization of space, and Washington and Israel evidently cannot even always rely on the Marshall Islands and Micronesia.
The Bush administration has repeatedly expressed contempt for the Russia-China treaty proposal and similar efforts from other countries. Former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz, perhaps the most vociferous of the neo-conservative initiators of the Iraq war, declared in October 2002, "Space offers attractive options not only for missile defense, but for a broad range of interrelated civil and military missions." Former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton, another war hawk, commented in Geneva in September 2004, "We are not prepared to negotiate on the so-called arms race in outer space. We just don't see that as a worthwhile enterprise."
The White House is reluctant openly to acknowledge its intention to militarize space, but the USAF in particular has been quite frank. In 1996, the then head of the Space Command, General Joseph W Ashy, was quoted as saying: "We're going to fight from space, and we're going to fight into space. That's why the US has development programs in directed energy and hit-to-kill mechanisms. We will engage terrestrial targets some day - ships, airplanes, land targets - from space."
In 2004, Under Secretary of the Air Force Peter B Teets, discussing America's intentions in space, declared bluntly, "We are paving the road of 21st-century warfare." In May 2005, the New York Times quoted General Lance Lord, another head of the Space Command, as revealing, "Space superiority is not our birthright, but it is our destiny. Space superiority is our day-to-day mission. Space supremacy is our vision for the future." He did not explain how space superiority is obtained, but there is only one way - dominant military force.
The USAF acknowledges that the militarization of space is a prime objective. Air Force Doctrine Document 2-2.1 on "Counterspace Operations", published in August 2004 (and available online), states: "US Air Force counter-space operations are the ways and means by which the air force achieves and maintains space superiority. Space superiority provides freedom to attack as well as freedom from attack."
General John P Jumper, air force chief of staff in 2004, wrote in the foreword to Document 2-2.1: "Counter-space operations are critical to success in modern warfare. The rapid maturation of space capabilities and the evolution of contingency operations have greatly enhanced the effectiveness of air and space power. Combatant commanders leverage space capabilities such as communication; position, navigation, and timing; missile warning; environmental sensing; and reconnaissance to maintain a combat advantage over our adversaries. Space superiority ensures the freedom to operate in the space medium while denying the same to an adversary. The development of offensive counter-space capabilities provides combatant commanders with new tools for counter-space operations."
So what has the Pentagon accomplished so far? Here are some hints from Giuseppe Anzera, an Italian professor, in Star Wars: Empires strike back (August 18, 2005), an article circulated by the Power and Interest News Report:
On the technological level, the Pentagon's planning is in the advanced stage: some projects - aimed at space weaponization - have already been in place for some time. Among the (partially known) Pentagon's new plans, the two most interesting projects are the "Global Strike" program and the "Rods from God" program. Global Strike involves the employment of military space planes capable of carrying about 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of high-precision weapons (with a circular error probability less than 3 meters) with the primary use of striking enemy military bases and command and control facilities in any point of the world.
The main strength of military space planes is the ability to reach any spot on the globe within 45 minutes. This is a short period of time that could provide US forces with a formidable quick-reaction capability, as opposed to the enemy's subsequent inability to organize any effective defense. Such a weapon's primary target would be the enemy's strategic forces and - according to US Air Force sources widely quoted in the news - the Pentagon is inclined to give priority to this project. One of the main reasons, these sources say, is that the Pentagon itself - after spending more than US$100 billion - has finally admitted its failure to create an infallible Earth-based, anti-missile system to protect American soil from ballistic strikes.
The so-called Rods from God project, according to Anzera, "consists of orbiting platforms stocked with metal tungsten rods about 6.1 meters long (20 feet) and 30 centimeters (1 foot) in diameter that could be satellite-guided to targets anywhere on the Earth within minutes, for the rods would move at more than 11,000 km/h (6,835mph). This weapon exploits kinetic energy to cause an explosion the same magnitude of that of an earth-penetrating nuclear weapon, but with no radioactive fallout. The system would function due to two satellites, one of which would work as a communications platform, while the other would contain an arsenal of tungsten rods."
The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency is developing space-based missile interceptors (SBIs) at a cost of up to $600 million over several years, complete with a test bed for experimentation. This would appear to be a weapon in space, but Bush administration spokesman Tony Snow managed not to crack a smile when he answered a press-conference question on October 18 by declaring that "defense from space is different than the weaponization of space".
Other projects on the Pentagon's space drawing boards or in development include the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile that can travel at 5,800km/h; space-mirror satellites redirecting laser beams from Earth against any orbit or surface target, and satellites that send out radio waves with a high range in power and breadth; high-energy lasers of various kinds; a robotic spacecraft capable of determining whether a particular satellite is a "danger" to the US, in which case it will be able to sabotage the offending instrument; rockets with blunt heads that function as kinetic-energy interceptors; a weaponized glider known as the Common Aero Vehicle that can be rocketed into space and travel at hypersonic speeds to target objects on Earth; an experimental spacecraft system; and much more.
On February 15, the Associated Press reported that Russia is fed up with US proposals for an ABM system not only in space but particularly Washington's plan to deploy anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, practically in President Vladimir Putin's face. The news agency quoted General Yuri Baluyevsky, the chief of the Russian General Staff, as indicating Moscow might withdraw from the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty if the US sets up missile defense in Eastern Europe. The IRNFT eliminated medium-range missiles that had been based in Europe.
Fearing that the momentum toward space war preparations will dissipate when Bush and the neo-conservatives leave office, the right-wing warmaking faction has accelerated its campaign for the weaponization of space. A legion of conservative hawks from various think-tanks banded together last year as the "Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, the Space Relationship and the 21st Century", and published a document of more than 200 pages calling for an extensive military space program.
Writing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (January/February 2007), Theresa Hitchens said the document was "written in language so incendiary it should be banned from carry-on luggage, [and] lashes out against opponents of the weaponization of space, branding them as a cabal of 'arms-control extremists, pacifists, realpolitik practitioners, [and] anti-Americans' bent on 'unilateral disarmament' of the US".
In conclusion, we return to the theme introduced at the beginning of this two-part article - US militarism.
As Chalmers Johnson wrote in The Sorrows of Empire, "The United States has been inching toward imperialism and militarism for many years. Disguising the direction they were taking, American leaders cloaked their foreign policy in euphemisms such as 'lone superpower', 'indispensable nation', 'reluctant sheriff', 'humanitarian intervention', and 'globalization'."
However, with the advent of the Bush administration in 2001, these pretenses gave way to assertions of the Second Coming of the Roman Empire. Bush didn't transform the United States into a militarist society. Militarism developed long before he took office, at least by the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s, when America's political leaders initiated a virtual state of perpetual war preparations and warfare that continues to this day, long after the US has become a near-impregnable fortress, long after the demise of any possible enemies of substance.
Nor did Bush transform the United States into an imperialist country. Imperialism motivated Washington's unjust seizure of Mexican lands in 1848. Imperialism motivated the 1898 war against Spain to extend US hegemony to Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and it has continued ever since, growing stronger in the post-Soviet period of unipolar geopolitical domination supported by unparalleled military power.
Bush is arguably the most dangerous president in US history - he has launched unjust wars, threatened many countries, and broken treaties. But he could not have done so without the political weapons of militarism and imperialism, weapons that have been handed down from president to president for some 60 years.
At issue in this exploration of the US government's warmaking preparations and intentions is not simply what progressive-thinking people are going to do about Iraq today or Venezuela, Iran and China tomorrow. The real question is what will they do about the catastrophic combination of militarism and imperialism that makes continual war preparations and warfare an indelible characteristic of the American state. It is not simply a matter of getting rid of George W Bush because of Iraq or getting rid of Lyndon Johnson because of Vietnam. If we do not get rid of militarism and imperialism we are simply paving the way for the next war, and the next, and the next.
Jack A Smith is former editor of the (US) Guardian Newsweekly and editor of the Hudson Valley (New York) Activist Newsletter.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
THE NEXT WAR, AND THE NEXT, The futuristic battlefield By Jack A Smith
"We will export death and violence to the four corners of the Earth in defense of our great nation."
- President George W Bush in Bob Woodward's book Plan of Attack
While most Americans are concentrating on extricating the US government from the debacle in Iraq, and most peace activists are simultaneously concerned that the Bush administration will launch a war against Iran, the leaders of the Pentagon are planning how to win wars 10, 20, and 50 years from now.
Washington is preparing for every contingency, from rooting out a handful of suspected terrorists halfway around the world to possible wars with Russia and China.
The Defense Department's drawing boards are groaning under the weight of blueprints for sustaining total military dominance of land, sea, air and outer space throughout this century. The costs of supporting the US government's martial propensities will be astronomical in terms of the social programs and benefits denied American working people, not to mention the consequences of living in a state of permanent warfare.
The recent decision to escalate the Iraq war with a "surge" of 21,000 more troops, the plan to increase the armed forces by another 92,000 troops, and President George W Bush's request for US$716 billion to meet the Pentagon's warmaking needs in fiscal year 2008 are a harbinger of what's coming next - new technologies for fighting future wars on the ground, improvements in the nuclear stockpile and delivery systems, and the militarization of outer space, among other military goals.
The Pentagon's futuristic war plans and the 2008 war budget leave no doubt that the US has discarded president George Washington's warning in 1796 to avoid "overgrown military establishments", or president Dwight D Eisenhower's advice in 1961 to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military-industrial complex".
The 2008 war budget not only exceeds the combined military budgets of the rest of the world's nations, but means the cost of Bush's "war on terrorism" (including Iraq and Afghanistan) amounts to more in inflation-adjusted dollars than the cost of the Korean or Vietnam wars.
Washington's ever-expanding forces of war, combined with more than 750 major military bases around the world to secure America's economic and political empire, mean that the United States, despite the absence of helmeted brutes in hobnailed boots parading on cobblestone streets, is a militaristic society that is a danger to world peace.
"Today, as never before in their history," writes Andrew J Bacevich in his stunning book The New American Militarism, [1] "Americans are enthralled with military power. The global supremacy that the US presently enjoys - and is bent on perpetuating - has become central to our national identify. Americans in our own time have fallen prey to militarism, manifesting itself in a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, [and] have come to define the nation's strength and well-being in terms of military preparedness [and] military action."
Unless militarism is curtailed, Chalmers Johnson predicts in The Sorrows of Empire, four things will happen: "First, there will be a perpetual state of war, leading to more terrorism against Americans wherever they may be. Second, there will be a loss of democracy and constitutional rights. Third, an already well-shredded principle of truthfulness will increasingly be replaced by a system of propaganda, disinformation, and glorification of war, power and the military legions. Lastly, there will be [national] bankruptcy."
Let's look at some of those Pentagon blueprints for the next war, and the next, and the next, focusing first on America's high-tech plans for ground wars (Future Combat Systems), then nuclear wars (Complex 2030), and, following directly, space wars (the new National Space Policy).
A whole new battlefield
Future Combat Systems (FCS) is the Pentagon's name for an effort to "build an entirely new army, reconfigured to perform the global policing mission", according to the Office of Management and Budget. This is a system of modern warfighting based on dominating any possible adversary through the use of nearly 50 new technologies. The objective is to improve strategic agility, increase battlefield lethality, and kill more of the "enemy" while reducing American casualties even further.
The New York Times has described FCS as "a seamless web of 18 different sets of networked weapons and military robots. The program is at the heart of [a Defense Department] plan to transform the army into a faster, lighter force in which stripped-down tanks could be put on a transport plane and flown into battle, and information systems could protect soldiers of the future as heavy armor has protected them in the past. Combat soldiers, weapons and robots are to be linked by a $25 billion web [known as] Joint Tactical Radio Systems. The network would transmit the battlefield information intended to protect soldiers."
The February 2007 issue of Harper's magazine contains a revealing article on FCS titled "The coming robot army" by Steve Featherstone, who writes:
The practice of warfare has changed dramatically in the past 60 years. Since Vietnam, the American military machine has been governed by two parallel and complementary trends: an aversion to casualties and a heavy reliance on technology. The Gulf War reinforced the belief that technology can replace human soldiers on the battlefield and the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia made this belief an article of faith. Today, any new weapon worth its procurement contract is customarily referred to as a "force multiplier", which can be translated as doing more damage with fewer people. Weaponized robots are the ultimate force multiplier, and every branch of the military has increased spending on new unmanned systems.
At $145 billion [not including the cost of the radio network mentioned above], the army's Future Combat Systems is the costliest weapons program in history, and in some ways the most visionary as well. The individual soldier is still central to the FCS concept, but he has been reconfigured as a sort of plug-and-play warrior, a node in what is envisioned as a sprawling network of robots, manned [and unmanned] vehicles, ground sensors, satellites, and command centers. In theory, each node will exchange real-time information with the network, allowing the entire system to accommodate sudden changes in the "battle space". The fog of war would become a relic of the past, like the musket, swept away by crystalline streams of encrypted data. The enemy would not be killed so much as deleted.
According to a report last June by the congressional Committee on Appropriations, the cost of FCS could reach an extraordinary $200 billion to become fully operational by the projected date of 2025. Even then, all this money will be able to equip only 15 out of 70 combat brigade teams with the full array of FCS technology. The original cost was supposed to be $100 billion, and some sources are predicting the price may go up to $300 billion before its finished.
The US Navy is modernizing, as well. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), "The navy in 2006
introduced a new ship force structure plan that calls for achieving and maintaining a 313-ship fleet," including another three aircraft carriers to join the existing dozen already in service.
US Air Force modernization includes obtaining 60 F-22A Raptors (out of 183 on order, each costing more than $100 million (but $300 million each when research and development expenses are added to production costs) and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, which the CRS describes as the largest aviation program in terms of estimated cost ($276 billion) and numbers (2,458 aircraft). In addition, contracts are out for building 180 C-17 Globemaster strategic airlifters, a sure sign the Pentagon anticipates quickly flying a great deal of military tonnage to distant countries.
Upgrading the nuclear force
According to Article VI of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the existing nuclear powers - primarily the US and Russia - are obligated to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control".
Washington and Moscow did in fact reduce the number of nuclear warheads in the 15 years since the end of the Cold War, but there have been absolutely no steps toward general and complete nuclear disarmament - the only way to end nuclear proliferation and to prevent nuclear war. Russia (including when it was the USSR) affirms a willingness to rid the world of nuclear weapons but insists that all states, including the US, must be willing to do so as well before Moscow destroys its stockpiles. Washington will not agree.
At this stage, the US has about 6,000 strategic warheads compared with Russia's 5,000, down from the 1990 total of about 14,000 and 11,000 respectively. (A "strategic" nuclear weapon can produce thousands of kilotons of explosive force. One kiloton equals 1,000 tons of TNT. The largest ever tested was 50,000 kilotons in 1961. A "tactical" nuclear weapon possesses the explosive power of a fraction of a kiloton. The small 12-kiloton atomic bomb with which the United States decimated Hiroshima in 1945 killed more than 150,000 people immediately or in its aftermath.)
According to the terms of the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), the US and Russia must reduce the number of their deployed strategic warheads to 2,200 by 2012 when the treaty expires - a size that can still destroy the entire population of our planet many, many times over. The key word here is "deployed", meaning mounted and ready to be fired in minutes. SORT does not call for the remaining strategic warheads to be destroyed, which means the weapons will be put in storage, along with thousands of tactical weapons. The treaty does not cover tactical weapons.
The latest plan for increasing US nuclear power was made public on October 20 under the title Complex 2030, the number standing for the year of its supposed completion. The cost at minimum will be $150 billion, but it will end up with a much higher price tag. This program, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, will "entail upgrading the entire US nuclear-weapons complex while designing and producing a series of new nuclear warheads".
These new weapons, produced through the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) Program, would ultimately replace the entire US nuclear arsenal. Under Complex 2030, "the US nuclear weapons laboratories would return to the Cold War cycle of nuclear weapon design, development, and production. This initiative would risk a return to underground nuclear testing and would undercut US efforts to limit the development of new nuclear weapons by other countries."
The Bush administration's proposed new budget calls for spending $89 million in 2008 on research and development of the new warheads, double the amount for fiscal 2007. Incidentally, the Pentagon's existing stockpile of nuclear weapons is expected to remain viable for another 50 years, but the new warheads evidently will be more technically proficient.
The Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Agency, which is in charge of the warheads, claims Complex 2030 will not entail nuclear-weapons testing, but this could change. The US signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, but it has not been ratified by the Senate. Under the terms of the NPT, the US was supposed to have ratified the treaty years ago.
War hawks in and around the Bush administration are worried about reducing the strategic arsenal to 2,200 warheads at the ready, even when enhanced by Complex 2030. A subcommittee of the Defense Science Board, an important advisory group to the Defense Department, reported in December that the new program does "not provide for a nuclear-weapons enterprise capable of meeting the nation's future needs".
Wade Boese, writing in Arms Control Today (January-February 2007), says the task force wants the reduction to be "reversible in case relations sour with China or Russia". The Defense Science Board is evidently contemplating World War III, and it is clearly not alone.
According to the authoritative magazine Foreign Affairs (March/April 2006), "Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike.
"This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces. Unless Washington's policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China - and the rest of the world - will live in the shadow of US nuclear primacy for many years to come."
To ensure its ability to deliver a knockout blow with a first strike, the Bush administration is moving ahead with a so-called "defensive" anti-missile system intended to destroy any possible retaliatory blow from the few possible nuclear weapons that were not destroyed in the initial US attack.
During the Cold War the US and USSR avoided a nuclear war through the policy of mutually assured destruction (MAD). The nuclear equivalency of the time meant that a first strike would not be able to destroy all the other side's retaliatory strike force, assuring that any attack would be met with a counterattack, killing hundreds of millions on both sides - so there was no nuclear war. Now, with the US moving swiftly toward first-strike supremacy and an anti-ballistic-missile system under construction, a catastrophic nuclear exchange in the decades ahead cannot be ruled out.
As an indication of the present world danger, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in January moved the hands of its Doomsday Clock two minutes ahead to 11:55pm - five minutes to annihilation midnight.
Much to Russia's and the world's disappointment, the Bush administration withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002 to develop an ABM system to eliminate the chance that a nuclear-wounded "enemy" might be able to launch its few remaining nuclear warheads toward the United States. In addition, despite pleas to do so from Moscow, Washington has no intention of renewing - or even discussing renewing - the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) when it expires in 2009.
According to an article about the end of START in the January Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (online) by Pavel Podvig of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the US "plans to keep the capability to maintain an arsenal of thousands of nuclear warheads for decades to come".
There is not much hope that the current political climate will produce proposals that could change the substance of nuclear-policy discussions. Instead, we see the growing acceptance of the idea that nuclear forces should be preserved (more or less) in their current form, even if no one can clearly formulate missions for these forces.
At the very least, the START process has kept some pressure on the United States and Russia (and indirectly on other countries) to think about nuclear-arms reductions and has provided the framework for implementing these reductions. Now that this process is ending, there is nothing to replace it.
Not only Russia but other countries will strengthen or create their own atomic strike force as a result of America's quest for nuclear domination. For instance, the fear of a US nuclear attack was certainly a motive for North Korea to develop a rudimentary nuclear weapon. In this connection, Russia long ago agreed to a no-first-strike pledge, but the US still refuses to follow suit, maintaining that such a pledge would reduce its options. Washington even maintains it has the right to use nuclear weapons preemptively against non-nuclear states.
Both Russia and China are acutely aware that they are potential targets of a US attack, not least because of their strenuous objections to the concept of a unipolar world with Washington at its epicenter. This was one of the reasons Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered an exceptionally strong critique of US foreign-military policy on February 10 during the Munich Conference on Security Policy. Obviously exercising Russia's new sense of having restored itself to great-power status in recent years, the Russian leader declared:
Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centers of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of force - military force - in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result, we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.
We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state's legal system. One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this? And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasize this - no one feels safe!
Note
1. Jim Lobe reviews The New American Militarism along with Anatol Lieven's America Right or Wrong in The specter of two 'isms', Asia Times Online, July 9, 2005.
Part 2: The militarization of outer space
Jack A Smith is former editor of the (US) Guardian Newsweekly and editor of the Hudson Valley (New York) Activist Newsletter.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
A shameful injustice by Philip Agee
Cuba's 50-year defiance of US attempts to isolate it is an inspiration to Latin America's people
Philip Agee
Saturday March 10, 2007
The Guardian
There is a wave of progressive change sweeping Latin America and the Caribbean after the many lonely years in which Cuba held high the torch, with free universal healthcare and education, and world-class cultural, sports and scientific achievements. Although you won't find a Cuban today who says things are perfect - far from it - probably all would agree that compared with pre-revolutionary Cuba, there is a world of improvement.
George Bush, the antithesis of this process, is now in Brazil at the start of a mission to lure five countries away from regional economic integration. However, the many thousands in the streets demonstrate the region's vast repudiation of Bush and what he stands for, something polls reflect unanimously.
All Cuba's achievements have been in defiance of US efforts to isolate Cuba; every dirty method has been used, including infiltration, sabotage, terrorism, assassination, economic and biological warfare and incessant lies in the media of many countries. I know these methods too well, having been a CIA officer in Latin America in the 1960s. Altogether nearly 3,500 Cubans have died from terrorist acts, and more than 2,000 are permanently disabled. No country has suffered terrorism as long and consistently as Cuba.
The Cuban revolution has always needed intelligence capabilities in the US for defence purposes, even before it took power in 1959. Such was the fully justified mission of the Cuban Five, who have been in jail since 1998 after being convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in Miami, where they had no chance of a fair trial. Their sights were set exclusively on terrorist operations against Cuba - activities ignored by the FBI - and they neither sought nor received any classified government information. Their cases are still on appeal, and will be for years, but their biased convictions rank with the legal lynching in the 1920s of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the anarchist immigrants, among the most shameful injustices in US history.
Current US policy can be found in the 2004 report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (updated last year with a secret annexe). A fundamental goal - the same, I remember, as in 1959 - is the isolation of Cuba to stop this bad example spreading. If successful, this would mean no less than annexation by, and complete dependence on, the US, in fact if not in law. Other goals still intact are to foment an internal political opposition and economic hardship, leading to hunger and despair.
Yet nearly 50 years of US economic warfare hasn't worked, even though Cubans estimate the cost to them at more than $80bn. After the freefall in the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economy began to recover in 1995. By 2005 growth was 11.8% and in 2006 12.5%, the highest in Latin America. Exports of services, nickel and pharmaceutical and other products are booming, and the US has not been able to stop this.
In the end efforts to isolate Cuba have failed. Last September Cuba was elected, for the second time, to lead the Non-Aligned Movement of 118 countries, and two months later the UN voted for the 15th consecutive year to condemn the US embargo, by 183 to 4. In 2007 Cuba has diplomatic or consular relations with 182 countries, and Havana hosts seemingly endless international conferences. In recent years Cuba's resorts have been attracting more than 2 million tourists annually. Far from isolating Cuba, the US has isolated itself.
More than 30,000 Cuban doctors and health workers are saving lives in 69 countries, many in difficult areas. Meanwhile 30,000 young people from dozens of countries are studying medicine in Cuba on full scholarships. All come from areas lacking doctors.
Cuba's literacy programme, known as "Yes I can", has been adopted in nearly 30 countries, with thousands of Cuban volunteers teaching. The scheme, conducted in Spanish, Portuguese, English, Creole, Quechua and Aymara, has helped some 2 million people to read and write, most of whom continue their education afterwards.
Thanks to this international assistance, Cuban prestige and influence - and international solidarity with Cuba, - have never been greater. It was to defend these worthy programmes that the Cuban Five, unjustly convicted, went to Miami in the 1990s. Freedom for them should be the cause of everyone for whom human rights and justice are important, both in the US and around the world; and that cause can be supported in 300 Free the Five solidarity committees in 90 countries. Philip Agee, a former CIA secret operations officer, is author of Inside the Company: CIA Diary. He travels in Cuba and Latin America as a campaigner, and manages an online travel service to Cuba.
philipagee@yahoo.com
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano
Sunday, March 11, 2007
En el día Internacional de la Mujer, La Fortaleza de la Mujer del SUR (8 de Marzo)
CMI Cochabamba 08 Mar 2007 22:54 GMT
La Fortaleza de la Mujer del SUR - 7.2M
Warmi (Mujer)
En las primeras décadas del siglo XX, las celebraciones del 8 de marzo se enmarcan en el contexto de una creciente actividad de los partidos de izquierda y el auge del movimiento sindical. Sólo a partir de la aparición de las corrientes feministas en los años setenta, esta fecha adquiere un nuevo significado que no solo esta asociado al trabajo laboral de las mujeres. Sin embargo la lucha del feminismo europeo de los 70s, conformado principalmente por mujeres de clase media y de clase media alta, demandaba igualdad de oportunidades y eso las sacaba del hogar para convertirse en filosofas, escritoras, científicas, artistas, profesionales al igual que sus maridos. En cambio es otra la realidad que vino para las mujeres del sur, donde muchas están obligadas a salir a trabajar con horarios de más de 10 o 12 horas y con multiplicidad de tareas. Dentro estas tareas si hablamos del trabajo domestico, para muchas mujeres del sur esta labor continua en condiciones muy desiguales.
Estas desigualdades que generan opresión se van reproduciendo por medio de una estructura jerárquica donde simbólicamente el primer opresor es el hombre blanco de clase alta como estereotipo de hombre en la sociedad quien genera opresión respecto a otra mujer blanca también de clase alta que se rige con los patrones de belleza como estereotipo de mujer en la sociedad. Esta mujer al mismo tiempo genera opresión respecto a un hombre moreno de clase media, baja o pobre del sur que no se rige a los patrones según los estereotipos de la sociedad, pero este hombre dentro la estructura de represión reprime también a su compañera, una mujer pobre, indígena, siendo ella la ultima en la escala de represión además triplemente discriminada por ser mujer, pobre e indígena. Por su puesto dentro este análisis el color ya no es un indicativo en la escala de represión pero la condición económica y de poder en el contexto político si.
Esto refleja dentro de estas opresiones que se dan en todos los estratos sociales, la mujer en el sur es quien mas resiste con una infinidad de tareas pero además realizando las tareas domésticas.
A continuación describimos pedazos del cotidiano vivir de algunas mujeres en Bolivia:
Maura Salvatierra de 38 años de edad, una mujer casada que actualmente tiene dos hij@s estudiando en la universidad, trabaja en el comedor del mercado vendiendo comida. Describiendo un día cotidiano para ella, empieza su trabajo levantándose cada día a las cuatro de la mañana para recibir agua en el mercado, hacer hervir los caldos, papas, arroz, limpiar las mesas, ordenar las sillas. Luego junto a su esposo se va al mercado de verduras para realizar las compras necesarias para la venta del día, recogen a sus hijos para despacharlos a la universidad, vuelve al mercado para rebanar la carne y se queda vendiendo hasta las 4 de la tarde. Después vuelve a su casa y cocina algo para la cena. Al final de la tarde realiza algunos quehaceres de la casa y finalmente se ducha para dormir.
Maura luego de contarnos gran parte de su cotidiano vivir nos comento que con este negocio no es posible asistir a invitaciones, otras salidas, etc. debido a su trabajo en el que emplea todos los días de la semana de lunes a domingo y todos los meses del año de enero a diciembre incluyendo los feriados.
Y su trabajo no termina cuando llega a la casa, ya que su esposo trabaja como chofer de un auto y llega muy tarde en la noche por lo que Maura tiene que realizar también los quehaceres de la casa.
Cuando le preguntamos que opinaba sobre el día internacional de la mujer, ella comento:
“Es bueno que haya ese día para recordar porque todo el mundo trabaja y todos tienen que reconocer que las mujeres trabajan mas dentro o fuera del hogar”.
Al final de su conversación aconsejo: “A todas las señoritas, que un día serán mamas, prepárense!”.
Sara Flores de 40 años, otra mujer casada con dos hijos, trabaja también en el mercado pero vendiendo cosméticos, nos comenta acerca de su cotidiano vivir:
Sara se levanta de la cama a las cinco de la mañana para realizar los quehaceres de la casa para luego ir a su trabajo a las 8 de la mañana. Otros días se levanta a las cuatro de la mañana para cocinar y preparar la comida para su hijo que se encuentra en la premilitar (Servicio militar). En su trabajo se dedica a vender cosméticos y artículos de aseó personal y se queda vendiendo hasta las 8:30 o 9 de la noche. Al volver a su casa asea su cocina antes de dormir. Sara se dedica a realizar esta labor durante 15 años, de lunes a domingo y con énfasis nos comenta: “Tienes que trabajar para comer todos los días porque sino no hay…”
¿Que opina sobre el día internacional de la mujer?
“Esta fecha yo casi no la recuerdo porque nunca ni descanso, ni hay un festejo, mas se recuerda el día de la madre y el día de la mujer nacional”
Sara continúa trabajando aun en el día de la madre ya que este día puede vender más productos…
¿Qué mensaje daría a otras mujeres jóvenes?
“Que estudien, que tengan una profesión porque cuando uno es profesional por lo menos tiene sábado y domingo para estar con su familia… ”
Alicia (vestimenta tipica de mujeres del altiplano-paceña) de 35 años nacida en la comunidad de Curawara de Carangas ubicada en la ciudad de Oruro, es soltera y vive sola con su hija de 17 años. Desde hace dos años se dedica a vender batidos de huevo con maltín (un refrigerio). Y cada día se levanta a las 5 de la mañana para preparar el desayuno y cocinar para su hija que se encuentra estudiando en la secundaria. Alicia mantiene su familia compuesta por ella y su hija además de correr con los gastos de los estudios de su hija y al igual que muchas mujeres trabaja de 8 de la mañana a 8 de la noche. Sus comentarios luego de hacerle algunas preguntas:
¿Y este negocio es suficiente para vivir?
“No, casi no. A veces vendo, a veces no, por eso también voy a lavar ropa.”
¿Qué mensaje le daría a su hija?
“Que estudie, no quisiera que mi hija venda como yo en la calles..”
En Bolivia al igual que en muchos países del Sur las mujeres aun trabajan durante 12 o mas horas al día, y su trabajo no es reconocido.
Revisando un poco la historia, muchas mujeres en todas partes del mundo se rebelaron frente a esta realidad, en Bolivia también se rebelaron nuestras tatarabuelas indígenas, abuelas, etc. ya en los años 30, 40 organizándose de manera autónoma para reclamar sus derechos. Durante estos años, las mujeres comerciantes de los mercados, las culinarias, las floristas lucharon no solo por mejores condiciones de trabajo sino que resistieron y resisten a las transformaciones culturales que vinieron con estructuras coloniales discriminadoras y excluyentes.
Luego la generación de los 70s y 80s rompió con todo lo que las abuelas, tatarabuelas habían desarrollado en los 30.
“Nuestras abuelas en las épocas de dictadura permanecieron en sus casas o en el mejor de los casos se metieron en los partidos de izquierda, donde como mujeres fueron botín sexual de los caudillos y destinadas a las tareas domésticas como servir café, hacer panfletos, cocer los carteles y otros servilismos, pero en la toma de decisiones y de posiciones políticas, ni que hablar”. (Julieta Paredes - Feminismo, género y Religión en Bolivia)
Históricamente las tareas domesticas fueron relegadas a las mujeres en un 90%, trabajo que requiere de muchas horas al día y años de nuestra vida; es así que actualmente el trabajo domestico es el menos reconocido por la sociedad pero la sociedad vive de el. Son tantos los saberes que están incluidos en este trabajo, saberes que tienen que ver con la economía, la salud, la higiene, con la felicidad de los integrantes de la familia.
Sabemos que para que funcione la sociedad se requiere que tod@s lleguen a tiempo a sus trabajos, limpios y alimentados, como un fabril a la fábrica, un minero a las minas, un policía al cuartel, un empleado publico a su oficina, un juez, un recolector de basura, etc. Entonces como se beneficia la sociedad a través del estado?
Primeramente es el Estado Patriarcal quien se beneficia de este trabajo ya que a través de esta labor el Estado logra un orden social en todas sus dimensiones. Y así como muchos hombres deben llegar en hora a sus respectivos trabajos, también llegan a horario muchas mujeres que trabajan en el mundo laboral que aunque no este igualmente reconocido, es reconocido finalmente. Es aquí donde ocurre que las mujeres que pertenecen a una clase trabajadora deben realizar dos trabajos el trabajo de plusvalía pero reconocido aunque menos y el trabajo de sub plusvalía que es el trabajo del hogar y no se paga. (Genoveva Ferrari, Revista De Boca en Boca).
Como decía la obrera textil Jorgelina Martínez, “Las mujeres no sólo queremos dar la vida, queremos cambiarla” y para muchas mujeres realizar solo tareas domesticas para atender a los miembros de la familia, renunciando a tantas cosas en la vida tiene un precio muy alto.
Las mujeres en Bolivia somos diversas como en todo el mundo y por eso además de exigir que se reconozca el trabajo doméstico no queremos que se nos aplique ningún patrón de belleza, ni que se compre nuestro cuerpo, no queremos ser excluidas por ser bajas, altas, flacas, gordas, morenas, blancas o por nuestro origen étnico o racial. Somos estudiantes, asalariadas, amas de casa, universitarias, trabajadoras domésticas, comerciantes y muchas más cosas, pero ante todo somos personas. ¡no queremos la exclusión!
Estamos acostumbradas a las flores y la retórica que adornan este día.
Manifestación callejera en Polonia
“Más derechos, menos flores”. (Dra. Marta Paz)
homepage:: http://www.bolivia.indymedia.org
La Fortaleza de la Mujer del SUR - 7.2M
Warmi (Mujer)
En las primeras décadas del siglo XX, las celebraciones del 8 de marzo se enmarcan en el contexto de una creciente actividad de los partidos de izquierda y el auge del movimiento sindical. Sólo a partir de la aparición de las corrientes feministas en los años setenta, esta fecha adquiere un nuevo significado que no solo esta asociado al trabajo laboral de las mujeres. Sin embargo la lucha del feminismo europeo de los 70s, conformado principalmente por mujeres de clase media y de clase media alta, demandaba igualdad de oportunidades y eso las sacaba del hogar para convertirse en filosofas, escritoras, científicas, artistas, profesionales al igual que sus maridos. En cambio es otra la realidad que vino para las mujeres del sur, donde muchas están obligadas a salir a trabajar con horarios de más de 10 o 12 horas y con multiplicidad de tareas. Dentro estas tareas si hablamos del trabajo domestico, para muchas mujeres del sur esta labor continua en condiciones muy desiguales.
Estas desigualdades que generan opresión se van reproduciendo por medio de una estructura jerárquica donde simbólicamente el primer opresor es el hombre blanco de clase alta como estereotipo de hombre en la sociedad quien genera opresión respecto a otra mujer blanca también de clase alta que se rige con los patrones de belleza como estereotipo de mujer en la sociedad. Esta mujer al mismo tiempo genera opresión respecto a un hombre moreno de clase media, baja o pobre del sur que no se rige a los patrones según los estereotipos de la sociedad, pero este hombre dentro la estructura de represión reprime también a su compañera, una mujer pobre, indígena, siendo ella la ultima en la escala de represión además triplemente discriminada por ser mujer, pobre e indígena. Por su puesto dentro este análisis el color ya no es un indicativo en la escala de represión pero la condición económica y de poder en el contexto político si.
Esto refleja dentro de estas opresiones que se dan en todos los estratos sociales, la mujer en el sur es quien mas resiste con una infinidad de tareas pero además realizando las tareas domésticas.
A continuación describimos pedazos del cotidiano vivir de algunas mujeres en Bolivia:
Maura Salvatierra de 38 años de edad, una mujer casada que actualmente tiene dos hij@s estudiando en la universidad, trabaja en el comedor del mercado vendiendo comida. Describiendo un día cotidiano para ella, empieza su trabajo levantándose cada día a las cuatro de la mañana para recibir agua en el mercado, hacer hervir los caldos, papas, arroz, limpiar las mesas, ordenar las sillas. Luego junto a su esposo se va al mercado de verduras para realizar las compras necesarias para la venta del día, recogen a sus hijos para despacharlos a la universidad, vuelve al mercado para rebanar la carne y se queda vendiendo hasta las 4 de la tarde. Después vuelve a su casa y cocina algo para la cena. Al final de la tarde realiza algunos quehaceres de la casa y finalmente se ducha para dormir.
Maura luego de contarnos gran parte de su cotidiano vivir nos comento que con este negocio no es posible asistir a invitaciones, otras salidas, etc. debido a su trabajo en el que emplea todos los días de la semana de lunes a domingo y todos los meses del año de enero a diciembre incluyendo los feriados.
Y su trabajo no termina cuando llega a la casa, ya que su esposo trabaja como chofer de un auto y llega muy tarde en la noche por lo que Maura tiene que realizar también los quehaceres de la casa.
Cuando le preguntamos que opinaba sobre el día internacional de la mujer, ella comento:
“Es bueno que haya ese día para recordar porque todo el mundo trabaja y todos tienen que reconocer que las mujeres trabajan mas dentro o fuera del hogar”.
Al final de su conversación aconsejo: “A todas las señoritas, que un día serán mamas, prepárense!”.
Sara Flores de 40 años, otra mujer casada con dos hijos, trabaja también en el mercado pero vendiendo cosméticos, nos comenta acerca de su cotidiano vivir:
Sara se levanta de la cama a las cinco de la mañana para realizar los quehaceres de la casa para luego ir a su trabajo a las 8 de la mañana. Otros días se levanta a las cuatro de la mañana para cocinar y preparar la comida para su hijo que se encuentra en la premilitar (Servicio militar). En su trabajo se dedica a vender cosméticos y artículos de aseó personal y se queda vendiendo hasta las 8:30 o 9 de la noche. Al volver a su casa asea su cocina antes de dormir. Sara se dedica a realizar esta labor durante 15 años, de lunes a domingo y con énfasis nos comenta: “Tienes que trabajar para comer todos los días porque sino no hay…”
¿Que opina sobre el día internacional de la mujer?
“Esta fecha yo casi no la recuerdo porque nunca ni descanso, ni hay un festejo, mas se recuerda el día de la madre y el día de la mujer nacional”
Sara continúa trabajando aun en el día de la madre ya que este día puede vender más productos…
¿Qué mensaje daría a otras mujeres jóvenes?
“Que estudien, que tengan una profesión porque cuando uno es profesional por lo menos tiene sábado y domingo para estar con su familia… ”
Alicia (vestimenta tipica de mujeres del altiplano-paceña) de 35 años nacida en la comunidad de Curawara de Carangas ubicada en la ciudad de Oruro, es soltera y vive sola con su hija de 17 años. Desde hace dos años se dedica a vender batidos de huevo con maltín (un refrigerio). Y cada día se levanta a las 5 de la mañana para preparar el desayuno y cocinar para su hija que se encuentra estudiando en la secundaria. Alicia mantiene su familia compuesta por ella y su hija además de correr con los gastos de los estudios de su hija y al igual que muchas mujeres trabaja de 8 de la mañana a 8 de la noche. Sus comentarios luego de hacerle algunas preguntas:
¿Y este negocio es suficiente para vivir?
“No, casi no. A veces vendo, a veces no, por eso también voy a lavar ropa.”
¿Qué mensaje le daría a su hija?
“Que estudie, no quisiera que mi hija venda como yo en la calles..”
En Bolivia al igual que en muchos países del Sur las mujeres aun trabajan durante 12 o mas horas al día, y su trabajo no es reconocido.
Revisando un poco la historia, muchas mujeres en todas partes del mundo se rebelaron frente a esta realidad, en Bolivia también se rebelaron nuestras tatarabuelas indígenas, abuelas, etc. ya en los años 30, 40 organizándose de manera autónoma para reclamar sus derechos. Durante estos años, las mujeres comerciantes de los mercados, las culinarias, las floristas lucharon no solo por mejores condiciones de trabajo sino que resistieron y resisten a las transformaciones culturales que vinieron con estructuras coloniales discriminadoras y excluyentes.
Luego la generación de los 70s y 80s rompió con todo lo que las abuelas, tatarabuelas habían desarrollado en los 30.
“Nuestras abuelas en las épocas de dictadura permanecieron en sus casas o en el mejor de los casos se metieron en los partidos de izquierda, donde como mujeres fueron botín sexual de los caudillos y destinadas a las tareas domésticas como servir café, hacer panfletos, cocer los carteles y otros servilismos, pero en la toma de decisiones y de posiciones políticas, ni que hablar”. (Julieta Paredes - Feminismo, género y Religión en Bolivia)
Históricamente las tareas domesticas fueron relegadas a las mujeres en un 90%, trabajo que requiere de muchas horas al día y años de nuestra vida; es así que actualmente el trabajo domestico es el menos reconocido por la sociedad pero la sociedad vive de el. Son tantos los saberes que están incluidos en este trabajo, saberes que tienen que ver con la economía, la salud, la higiene, con la felicidad de los integrantes de la familia.
Sabemos que para que funcione la sociedad se requiere que tod@s lleguen a tiempo a sus trabajos, limpios y alimentados, como un fabril a la fábrica, un minero a las minas, un policía al cuartel, un empleado publico a su oficina, un juez, un recolector de basura, etc. Entonces como se beneficia la sociedad a través del estado?
Primeramente es el Estado Patriarcal quien se beneficia de este trabajo ya que a través de esta labor el Estado logra un orden social en todas sus dimensiones. Y así como muchos hombres deben llegar en hora a sus respectivos trabajos, también llegan a horario muchas mujeres que trabajan en el mundo laboral que aunque no este igualmente reconocido, es reconocido finalmente. Es aquí donde ocurre que las mujeres que pertenecen a una clase trabajadora deben realizar dos trabajos el trabajo de plusvalía pero reconocido aunque menos y el trabajo de sub plusvalía que es el trabajo del hogar y no se paga. (Genoveva Ferrari, Revista De Boca en Boca).
Como decía la obrera textil Jorgelina Martínez, “Las mujeres no sólo queremos dar la vida, queremos cambiarla” y para muchas mujeres realizar solo tareas domesticas para atender a los miembros de la familia, renunciando a tantas cosas en la vida tiene un precio muy alto.
Las mujeres en Bolivia somos diversas como en todo el mundo y por eso además de exigir que se reconozca el trabajo doméstico no queremos que se nos aplique ningún patrón de belleza, ni que se compre nuestro cuerpo, no queremos ser excluidas por ser bajas, altas, flacas, gordas, morenas, blancas o por nuestro origen étnico o racial. Somos estudiantes, asalariadas, amas de casa, universitarias, trabajadoras domésticas, comerciantes y muchas más cosas, pero ante todo somos personas. ¡no queremos la exclusión!
Estamos acostumbradas a las flores y la retórica que adornan este día.
Manifestación callejera en Polonia
“Más derechos, menos flores”. (Dra. Marta Paz)
homepage:: http://www.bolivia.indymedia.org
Saturday, March 10, 2007
In Search Of Justice Under the Argentine Witness Protection Program by Michael Fox
Two large undercover security guards arrive first in a separate car to survey the parking garage. They radio "all clear" back to the second car, carrying her and her escort. The first guards then scout out the route to the restaurant and stake out her table according to lowest security risk.
"We are custodians of the architect Patricia Isasa", they say to the concierge flashing their badge, "She will be eating here this evening." Isasa arrives shortly thereafter, escorted by at least one more bodyguard. Her return home is similar to her arrival, including the security check underneath her car to ensure that no bomb has been placed while they ate.
Isasa's house is under constant surveillance, her transportation and destinations chosen carefully. Her emails and phone calls are revised, and she receives a weekly list of those who called.
"My life is crazy," Isasa admits.
Isasa- who was disappeared, tortured and held prisoner for nearly 2 and a half years during Argentina's military dictatorship -is the lead witness in a trial set to begin this year, which could bring nine influential Argentine's to justice for torture, complicity, or even genocide. She is one of approximately 2,000 witnesses across the country that could give their testimony to the crimes committed during the dictatorship, but one of only a handful protected under the Argentine Witness Protection Program with such high-level security.
Isasa's life has changed dramatically since Argentina finally lifted the amnesty for crimes committed under the military dictatorship, 1976- 1983, and began to try the perpetrators last year. Last September she fled to the States after a series of death threats and the disappearance of the lead witnesses in a landmark trial which landed the known torturer and former police commissioner, Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, 77, life in prison for genocide. Etchecolatz is the second to be convicted so far and one of 900 former officers and collaborators from the dictatorship that could reportedly face trial.
But the sentences have not been without their cost. In his final remarks, Etchecolatz called himself a "political prisoner" and launched back at the court, declaring, "This tribunal is not condemning me, you are condemning yourselves."
The next day, lead witness, Jorge Julio Lopez, 77- whose testimony was instrumental in Etchecolatz's conviction -disappeared. His body, like tens of thousands during the military dictatorship, has yet to be found.
On September 19, the day after Lopez's disappearance, Isasa received suspicious calls at two former residences (and one home where the telephone line was registered under her name, but where she had never lived) from someone interested in meeting with her.
"When will Patricia return? I have information for her," they said.
Isasa did not answer. The calls persisted. Less than a week later, the federal judge in charge of Isasa's trial, Reynaldo Rodriguez, received the identical threat letter as the main judge on the Etchecolatz trial, sent from the same location. Isasa, the lead witness in her case and the only one whose testimony can incriminate all of those on trial, was immediately placed under the Argentine Witness Protection Program.
"You are the next in line," they told her.
Just under three weeks later, she was on a plane to the United States, afraid for her life.
The situation remained tense. In late November, death threats were left for the first time on her voice machine at her own home in Buenos Aires, the day she was set to return to the country. In December another witness, Luis Gerez, 51, disappeared for two days before a plea from Argentine President Nestor Kirchner appears to have forced his release.
Isasa returned home to Buenos Aires in January to pressure for the trial, which has already languished for more than two years, and which she feared without her presence might be delayed further.
"It's my commitment... I need to find justice," she responded to Amy Goodman, who asked her why she would return in an interview on Democracy Now! last fall. Isasa's trial is the culmination of over ten years of personal investigation by the Argentine architect, in which she has amassed 4000 pages of documents which she says proves the guilt of her torturers (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051226/fox).
As a result, the defendants in Isasa's case are currently awaiting trial behind bars or under house arrest, and Isasa received the good news at the beginning of last month, that because of the sensitivity of the case, Rodriquez has extended their incarceration for at least a year longer. Rodriguez additionally assured Isasa that her case is the second in line and that it will go to trial before July and be completed by the end of the year.
But it's not that easy. Isasa's torturers are high profile, including former federal judge Victor Hermes Brusa; former mayor of San Jose del Rincon, Mario Jose Facino; and former Secretary of Security for the Province of Santa Fe, Nicolas Correa. Isasa also does not underestimate what she says is "the difficulty of trying Brusa and the other eight accused in the same trial where he was judge for more than ten years and named almost 80% of the workers, and where the Secretary was his secretary."
Nevertheless, Isasa is going to push. She has plans to return to Santa Fe (her hometown and location of her both of her kidnappings, torture and detention) to "declare" against her torturers, denounce the slow speed of the trial, and add renewed information including another name to the already nine defendants.
Although she will take precautions, she is afraid. She is not naive about the potential of her torturers in this region even if they are currently behind bars. As a result, Isasa has plans to meet soon with Argentina's Secretary of Human Rights, Dr. Eduardo Luis Duhalde, to talk about her security in Santa Fe, and the realities of trying Brusa in the district where he has held so much power.
"They have a lot of power. A lot of money," Isasa says.
In Santa Fe, Isasa says that the incessant broken windows in her father's bedroom window finally convinced him to install a grate to block the rocks. "He thinks they are stones from the neighborhood kids," Isasa said recently, but Isasa's father has not received any verbal threats and Isasa doesn't believe he will.
"They don't want to threaten this time," she says matter-of-factly. "They want to kidnap me, to kill me."
"I'm the only witness that accuses all nine repressors. In other words, kill me and there almost wouldn't be a trial... but what I want to do is declare so that even if they kill me I have my declaration opened, so that it would be unnecessary to kill me in order to block the trial. It's a way of self-protecting me," she said recently in an email to friends.
Isasa is also relying on the support of national and international solidarity and her relatively high profile for the promotion of her case and her safety. El Cerco (Cuatro Cabezas, 2006), a documentary on her trial, was aired late last April on Argentine television before an audience of millions, thrusting Isasa in to temporary stardom.
For now, however, Isasa's real safety is in the hands of Argentina's "finest", who keep their vigilant eye on the architect. Ironically, however, this is the same police force that only thirty years ago was waging a silent war on Argentina's citizens, and which would lead to the assassination and disappearance of 30,000 Argentineans.
Nevertheless, Isasa believes she is safer under the "program" than out of it. But this irony has led many witnesses, such as Lopez and Gerez, to decline protection from the Argentine government with fears that it may still have connections to their former repressors.
Bodyguards and security precautions may be a nuisance, but for now Isasa doesn't see any way around it.
"That's life," she says.
--- Michael Fox is a freelance journalist, reporter and translator based in South America. His articles have been published with The Nation, Counter Punch, Venezuelanalysis and others.
"We are custodians of the architect Patricia Isasa", they say to the concierge flashing their badge, "She will be eating here this evening." Isasa arrives shortly thereafter, escorted by at least one more bodyguard. Her return home is similar to her arrival, including the security check underneath her car to ensure that no bomb has been placed while they ate.
Isasa's house is under constant surveillance, her transportation and destinations chosen carefully. Her emails and phone calls are revised, and she receives a weekly list of those who called.
"My life is crazy," Isasa admits.
Isasa- who was disappeared, tortured and held prisoner for nearly 2 and a half years during Argentina's military dictatorship -is the lead witness in a trial set to begin this year, which could bring nine influential Argentine's to justice for torture, complicity, or even genocide. She is one of approximately 2,000 witnesses across the country that could give their testimony to the crimes committed during the dictatorship, but one of only a handful protected under the Argentine Witness Protection Program with such high-level security.
Isasa's life has changed dramatically since Argentina finally lifted the amnesty for crimes committed under the military dictatorship, 1976- 1983, and began to try the perpetrators last year. Last September she fled to the States after a series of death threats and the disappearance of the lead witnesses in a landmark trial which landed the known torturer and former police commissioner, Miguel Osvaldo Etchecolatz, 77, life in prison for genocide. Etchecolatz is the second to be convicted so far and one of 900 former officers and collaborators from the dictatorship that could reportedly face trial.
But the sentences have not been without their cost. In his final remarks, Etchecolatz called himself a "political prisoner" and launched back at the court, declaring, "This tribunal is not condemning me, you are condemning yourselves."
The next day, lead witness, Jorge Julio Lopez, 77- whose testimony was instrumental in Etchecolatz's conviction -disappeared. His body, like tens of thousands during the military dictatorship, has yet to be found.
On September 19, the day after Lopez's disappearance, Isasa received suspicious calls at two former residences (and one home where the telephone line was registered under her name, but where she had never lived) from someone interested in meeting with her.
"When will Patricia return? I have information for her," they said.
Isasa did not answer. The calls persisted. Less than a week later, the federal judge in charge of Isasa's trial, Reynaldo Rodriguez, received the identical threat letter as the main judge on the Etchecolatz trial, sent from the same location. Isasa, the lead witness in her case and the only one whose testimony can incriminate all of those on trial, was immediately placed under the Argentine Witness Protection Program.
"You are the next in line," they told her.
Just under three weeks later, she was on a plane to the United States, afraid for her life.
The situation remained tense. In late November, death threats were left for the first time on her voice machine at her own home in Buenos Aires, the day she was set to return to the country. In December another witness, Luis Gerez, 51, disappeared for two days before a plea from Argentine President Nestor Kirchner appears to have forced his release.
Isasa returned home to Buenos Aires in January to pressure for the trial, which has already languished for more than two years, and which she feared without her presence might be delayed further.
"It's my commitment... I need to find justice," she responded to Amy Goodman, who asked her why she would return in an interview on Democracy Now! last fall. Isasa's trial is the culmination of over ten years of personal investigation by the Argentine architect, in which she has amassed 4000 pages of documents which she says proves the guilt of her torturers (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051226/fox).
As a result, the defendants in Isasa's case are currently awaiting trial behind bars or under house arrest, and Isasa received the good news at the beginning of last month, that because of the sensitivity of the case, Rodriquez has extended their incarceration for at least a year longer. Rodriguez additionally assured Isasa that her case is the second in line and that it will go to trial before July and be completed by the end of the year.
But it's not that easy. Isasa's torturers are high profile, including former federal judge Victor Hermes Brusa; former mayor of San Jose del Rincon, Mario Jose Facino; and former Secretary of Security for the Province of Santa Fe, Nicolas Correa. Isasa also does not underestimate what she says is "the difficulty of trying Brusa and the other eight accused in the same trial where he was judge for more than ten years and named almost 80% of the workers, and where the Secretary was his secretary."
Nevertheless, Isasa is going to push. She has plans to return to Santa Fe (her hometown and location of her both of her kidnappings, torture and detention) to "declare" against her torturers, denounce the slow speed of the trial, and add renewed information including another name to the already nine defendants.
Although she will take precautions, she is afraid. She is not naive about the potential of her torturers in this region even if they are currently behind bars. As a result, Isasa has plans to meet soon with Argentina's Secretary of Human Rights, Dr. Eduardo Luis Duhalde, to talk about her security in Santa Fe, and the realities of trying Brusa in the district where he has held so much power.
"They have a lot of power. A lot of money," Isasa says.
In Santa Fe, Isasa says that the incessant broken windows in her father's bedroom window finally convinced him to install a grate to block the rocks. "He thinks they are stones from the neighborhood kids," Isasa said recently, but Isasa's father has not received any verbal threats and Isasa doesn't believe he will.
"They don't want to threaten this time," she says matter-of-factly. "They want to kidnap me, to kill me."
"I'm the only witness that accuses all nine repressors. In other words, kill me and there almost wouldn't be a trial... but what I want to do is declare so that even if they kill me I have my declaration opened, so that it would be unnecessary to kill me in order to block the trial. It's a way of self-protecting me," she said recently in an email to friends.
Isasa is also relying on the support of national and international solidarity and her relatively high profile for the promotion of her case and her safety. El Cerco (Cuatro Cabezas, 2006), a documentary on her trial, was aired late last April on Argentine television before an audience of millions, thrusting Isasa in to temporary stardom.
For now, however, Isasa's real safety is in the hands of Argentina's "finest", who keep their vigilant eye on the architect. Ironically, however, this is the same police force that only thirty years ago was waging a silent war on Argentina's citizens, and which would lead to the assassination and disappearance of 30,000 Argentineans.
Nevertheless, Isasa believes she is safer under the "program" than out of it. But this irony has led many witnesses, such as Lopez and Gerez, to decline protection from the Argentine government with fears that it may still have connections to their former repressors.
Bodyguards and security precautions may be a nuisance, but for now Isasa doesn't see any way around it.
"That's life," she says.
--- Michael Fox is a freelance journalist, reporter and translator based in South America. His articles have been published with The Nation, Counter Punch, Venezuelanalysis and others.
"How Cuba Survived Peak Oil"
Left I at the Movies: "How Cuba Survived Peak Oil"
In the early 1990's, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc nations dealt what could have been a fatal blow to the Cuban economy. From 1989 to 1992, Cuba experienced a 34% decline in its GDP. Its exports and imports dropped by 80%, and its oil imports dropped by more than half, as the Soviet Union unilaterally voided existing agreements. Thus began the "Special Period in Peacetime" in Cuba.
In "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil," the filmmakers combine footage of life in Cuba with interviews with a variety of Cubans and others to explore how Cuba dealt with a situation which, while not a "real" "peak oil" situation, effectively became one for Cubans, as they adjusted to life with fewer energy resources than they were used to.
The scope of the Cuban response, and the film's coverage of the response, covers a wide swath: agriculture, education, health, transportation, housing, and energy alternatives. Agriculture gets the most focus, as the film discusses how Cuba shifted almost completely (80%) to organic farming, with its use of pesticides dropping from 21,000 tons in the 80's to less than 1,000 tons now. A massive campaign to use every available plot of land for urban gardening lead to today's Cuba, where more than 50% of the total vegetable needs for the 2.2 million Havana residents is supplied by urban agriculture, with smaller cities and towns reaching 80-100%, thus removing the need to transport food over long distances and cutting fuel usage.
In every area, Cuba worked to reduce its consumption of non-renewable fuels - more solar panels, more public transportation, widespread installation of energy efficient appliances and fluorescent lightbulbs (those last two items aren't actually in the film), and on and on. Scientists brought their energies to bear on every aspect of the problem. In this, Cuba was aided by its previous decades of emphasis on education - Cuba has only 2% of the population of Latin America, but 11% of its scientists.
But above all, the changes were made possible by a new attitude towards consumption, epitomized by this quote from Roberto Pérez, one of many Cubans who appear in the film: "If we don't take care of the earth, earth will take care of us...and get rid of us." The film does a remarkable, and inspiring, job, of showing why and how this is possible.
The film's weakness is indicated by the title of the film - "The Power of Community." The Cuba Program Manager of the organization (The Community Solution) which made the film, Pat Murphy, is quoted in the film describing the goal of the film as answering this question, "What is it in the Cuban people and the Cuban culture that allowed them to go through this very difficult time?," and the website of the organization tells us that "small communities offer the best solution to "Peak Oil," the end of fossil fuels." And, while this is certainly part of the answer, and one which is shown by the film, its only a partial answer. Because it wasn't just "the Cuban people and the Cuban culture" which was responsible for organizing and implementing the response to the crisis, but the Cuban government, quite likely the only government in the world which could have done so.
Although the role of the Cuban government does occasionally come up in the movie (e.g., "the government imported 1.3 million bicycles from China"), a viewer who isn't familiar with Cuba might get the impression, for example, that communities all over Cuba just spontaneously decided to take similar steps towards solving the energy shortage problem. In fact, programs such as the urban gardening program, while implemented on a local scale, were initiated and organized and motivated on a national scale by the government, as was everything else the film shows. All of the experts shown describing how they created and implemented solutions to the problems work for government agencies and companies, but again that's totally unclear to the uninformed viewer, who might assume that "Cuba Solar" is some kind of private company. It's not.
The word "Socialism" is never mentioned in this film. The "Community Solution" people don't seem to realize that at the heart of "Socialism" is the word "social" - Socialism is the ultimate "community solution." That the solutions shown in the film will never happen under capitalism is actually encapsulated in this quote from Bruno Enriquez, an energy analyst for Cuba Solar:
"If I'm in Cuba, I say, 'people we have problems, we must turn off all the lights that we are not using,' and everybody said, 'ok, we are going to turn off.' But if I say, in United States, 'people we must turn off all the lights, because we need...,' everybody say, 'Why? If I pay?'"
Enriquez is right about what happens in the United States, but he leaves out one aspect of the not-so-hypothetical answer (one that came up explicitly during recent debates over banning the sale of incandescent lightbulbs) - "freedom." The anti-social(ist) American would also say, "Nothing should infringe on my 'freedom' to leave the lights on (or use an incandescent lightbulb or drive a Hummer) if I want." And here's what I think about that: everyone knows the classic definition of the limits of freedom - you don't have the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater. But here's the thing - we live in the equivalent of a crowded theater, and leaving the lights on (or whatever other behavior you choose) is the equivalent of shouting "Fire!" The metaphorical stampede might not trample the people who are alive today, but it may well kill their children, or their children's children, just as surely as if they were right there in the theater.
Socialism is the only possible future for humanity that can deal with these problems, a "social" or "community" solution in which we recognize that we are all in the same crowded theater (or the same boat, to use a more standard metaphor), and we have to work together for the good of all. Capitalist solutions cannot solve the fundamental problem - the Tragedy of the Commons. Cuba has been showing the way to that future for nearly 50 years, but even more so during the last 15 as they adapted to a situation that will face the entire planet before too long.
"How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" is a must-see film. You can purchase your own copy here.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
In the early 1990's, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Bloc nations dealt what could have been a fatal blow to the Cuban economy. From 1989 to 1992, Cuba experienced a 34% decline in its GDP. Its exports and imports dropped by 80%, and its oil imports dropped by more than half, as the Soviet Union unilaterally voided existing agreements. Thus began the "Special Period in Peacetime" in Cuba.
In "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil," the filmmakers combine footage of life in Cuba with interviews with a variety of Cubans and others to explore how Cuba dealt with a situation which, while not a "real" "peak oil" situation, effectively became one for Cubans, as they adjusted to life with fewer energy resources than they were used to.
The scope of the Cuban response, and the film's coverage of the response, covers a wide swath: agriculture, education, health, transportation, housing, and energy alternatives. Agriculture gets the most focus, as the film discusses how Cuba shifted almost completely (80%) to organic farming, with its use of pesticides dropping from 21,000 tons in the 80's to less than 1,000 tons now. A massive campaign to use every available plot of land for urban gardening lead to today's Cuba, where more than 50% of the total vegetable needs for the 2.2 million Havana residents is supplied by urban agriculture, with smaller cities and towns reaching 80-100%, thus removing the need to transport food over long distances and cutting fuel usage.
In every area, Cuba worked to reduce its consumption of non-renewable fuels - more solar panels, more public transportation, widespread installation of energy efficient appliances and fluorescent lightbulbs (those last two items aren't actually in the film), and on and on. Scientists brought their energies to bear on every aspect of the problem. In this, Cuba was aided by its previous decades of emphasis on education - Cuba has only 2% of the population of Latin America, but 11% of its scientists.
But above all, the changes were made possible by a new attitude towards consumption, epitomized by this quote from Roberto Pérez, one of many Cubans who appear in the film: "If we don't take care of the earth, earth will take care of us...and get rid of us." The film does a remarkable, and inspiring, job, of showing why and how this is possible.
The film's weakness is indicated by the title of the film - "The Power of Community." The Cuba Program Manager of the organization (The Community Solution) which made the film, Pat Murphy, is quoted in the film describing the goal of the film as answering this question, "What is it in the Cuban people and the Cuban culture that allowed them to go through this very difficult time?," and the website of the organization tells us that "small communities offer the best solution to "Peak Oil," the end of fossil fuels." And, while this is certainly part of the answer, and one which is shown by the film, its only a partial answer. Because it wasn't just "the Cuban people and the Cuban culture" which was responsible for organizing and implementing the response to the crisis, but the Cuban government, quite likely the only government in the world which could have done so.
Although the role of the Cuban government does occasionally come up in the movie (e.g., "the government imported 1.3 million bicycles from China"), a viewer who isn't familiar with Cuba might get the impression, for example, that communities all over Cuba just spontaneously decided to take similar steps towards solving the energy shortage problem. In fact, programs such as the urban gardening program, while implemented on a local scale, were initiated and organized and motivated on a national scale by the government, as was everything else the film shows. All of the experts shown describing how they created and implemented solutions to the problems work for government agencies and companies, but again that's totally unclear to the uninformed viewer, who might assume that "Cuba Solar" is some kind of private company. It's not.
The word "Socialism" is never mentioned in this film. The "Community Solution" people don't seem to realize that at the heart of "Socialism" is the word "social" - Socialism is the ultimate "community solution." That the solutions shown in the film will never happen under capitalism is actually encapsulated in this quote from Bruno Enriquez, an energy analyst for Cuba Solar:
"If I'm in Cuba, I say, 'people we have problems, we must turn off all the lights that we are not using,' and everybody said, 'ok, we are going to turn off.' But if I say, in United States, 'people we must turn off all the lights, because we need...,' everybody say, 'Why? If I pay?'"
Enriquez is right about what happens in the United States, but he leaves out one aspect of the not-so-hypothetical answer (one that came up explicitly during recent debates over banning the sale of incandescent lightbulbs) - "freedom." The anti-social(ist) American would also say, "Nothing should infringe on my 'freedom' to leave the lights on (or use an incandescent lightbulb or drive a Hummer) if I want." And here's what I think about that: everyone knows the classic definition of the limits of freedom - you don't have the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater. But here's the thing - we live in the equivalent of a crowded theater, and leaving the lights on (or whatever other behavior you choose) is the equivalent of shouting "Fire!" The metaphorical stampede might not trample the people who are alive today, but it may well kill their children, or their children's children, just as surely as if they were right there in the theater.
Socialism is the only possible future for humanity that can deal with these problems, a "social" or "community" solution in which we recognize that we are all in the same crowded theater (or the same boat, to use a more standard metaphor), and we have to work together for the good of all. Capitalist solutions cannot solve the fundamental problem - the Tragedy of the Commons. Cuba has been showing the way to that future for nearly 50 years, but even more so during the last 15 as they adapted to a situation that will face the entire planet before too long.
"How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" is a must-see film. You can purchase your own copy here.
"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell
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