Saturday, June 23, 2007
Bolivarian students speak before the National Assembly
Here is the first Oil Wars sub-titled video. It is student Cesar Trompiz speaking in the National Assembly after the opposition students left with nothing to say:
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
No tendrán jamás Cuba
Reflexión y Manifiesto para el Pueblo de Cuba
No tendrán jamás Cuba
por Altercom*, Fidel Castro Ruz*
No tendrán jamás Cuba
por Altercom*, Fidel Castro Ruz*
«Cuba continuará desarrollando y perfeccionando la capacidad combativa de su pueblo, incluida nuestra modesta pero activa y eficiente industria de armas defensivas, que multiplica la capacidad de enfrentar al invasor dondequiera que se encuentre, posea las armas que posea. Continuaremos adquiriendo el material necesario y las bocas de fuego pertinentes, aunque no creciera el famoso Producto Interno Bruto del capitalismo, que tantas cosas incluye, como el valor de las privatizaciones, las drogas, los servicios sexuales, la publicidad, y tantas excluye, como los servicios de educación y salud gratuitos para todos los ciudadanos.»
Espero que nadie diga que arremeto gratuitamente contra Bush. Comprenderán sin dudas mis razones para criticar duramente su política.
Robert Woodward es un periodista y escritor norteamericano que se hizo famoso por la serie de artículos publicados en el Washington Post suscritos por él y Carl Bernstein, y que finalmente condujeron a la investigación y renuncia de Nixon. Es autor y coautor de diez best-sellers. Con su temible pluma se las arregla para arrancar confesiones del entrevistado. En su libro Estado de Negación, afirma que el 18 de junio del 2003, a tres meses de iniciada la guerra de Iraq, saliendo de su despacho en la Casa Blanca después de una importante reunión, Bush da unas palmaditas en el hombro de Jay Garner, y le dice:
—"Oye, Jay, ¿quieres hacer lo de Irán?
—"Señor, ya los chicos y yo hablamos sobre el tema y queremos esperar por Cuba. Pensamos que el ron y los tabacos son mejores. Las mujeres son más bellas."
Bush respondió: "Lo tendrás. Tendrás a Cuba."
A Bush lo traicionó el subconsciente. Era lo que pensaba desde que declaró lo que debían esperar decenas de oscuros rincones donde Cuba ocupa un lugar especial.
Garner, un general de tres estrellas recién retirado al que había nombrado Jefe de la Oficina de Planificación para la Posguerra en Iraq, creada por una Directiva Presidencial de Seguridad Nacional secreta, era considerado por Bush un hombre excepcional para llevar a cabo su estrategia bélica. Designado para el cargo el 20 de enero del 2003, fue sustituido el 11 de mayo de ese mismo año a instancias de Rumsfeld. No tuvo el valor de explicarle a Bush sus fuertes discrepancias sobre la estrategia seguida en Iraq. Pensaba en otra con idéntico propósito. En las últimas semanas miles de infantes de marina y un grupo de portaaviones norteamericanos, con sus fuerzas navales de apoyo, han estado maniobrando en el Golfo Pérsico a pocas millas del territorio iraní, en espera de órdenes.
Nuestro pueblo está a punto de cumplir 50 años de cruel bloqueo; miles de sus hijos han muerto o han sido mutilados como consecuencia de la guerra sucia contra Cuba, único país del mundo al que se aplica una Ley de Ajuste que premia la emigración ilegal, otra causa de muerte de ciudadanos cubanos, incluidos mujeres y niños; perdió hace más de 15 años sus principales mercados y fuentes de suministro de alimentos, energía, maquinarias, materias primas, financiamientos a largo plazo y bajo interés.
Primero cayó el campo socialista y casi de inmediato la URSS, desgajada pedazo a pedazo. El imperio arreció e internacionalizó el bloqueo; las proteínas y calorías, bastante bien distribuidas a pesar de nuestras deficiencias, se redujeron aproximadamente un 40 por ciento; vinieron enfermedades como la neuritis óptica y otras; la escasez de medicamentos, igualmente bloqueados, se generalizó: solo como obra caritativa podían entrar, para desmoralizarnos; estos, a su vez, se convertían en fuente de compraventa y negocios ilícitos.
Sobrevino inevitablemente el período especial, que fue la suma de todas las consecuencias de la agresión y las medidas desesperadas que nos obligó a tomar, potenciado el conjunto de acciones nocivas por el colosal aparato publicitario del imperio. Todos esperaban, unos con tristeza, otros con júbilo oligárquico, el derrumbe de la Revolución cubana.
Mucho daño hizo a la conciencia social el acceso a las divisas convertibles, en mayor o menor volumen, por las desigualdades y debilidades ideológicas que creó.
A lo largo de toda su vida la Revolución instruyó al pueblo, formó cientos de miles de maestros, médicos, científicos, intelectuales, artistas, informáticos y otros profesionales universitarios y posgraduados en decenas de carreras. Esa riqueza atesorada permitió reducir la mortalidad infantil a mínimos no imaginables en un país del Tercer Mundo y elevar las perspectivas de vida y el promedio de conocimiento de la población a niveles de noveno grado.
La Revolución Bolivariana de Venezuela, al ofrecer a Cuba petróleo con facilidades de pago cuando el precio de este subía vertiginosamente, significó un alivio importante y abrió nuevas posibilidades, ya que nuestro país comenzaba a producir su propia energía en cifras crecientes.
Desde años antes, el imperio, preocupado por sus intereses en ese país, ya tenía planeado liquidar aquella revolución, lo que intentó en abril del 2002 e intentará de nuevo cuantas veces pueda, para lo cual preparan su resistencia los revolucionarios bolivarianos.
Mientras tanto, Bush arreció sus planes de ocupar Cuba, al extremo de proclamar leyes y un gobierno interventor para instalar una administración imperial directa.
A partir de los privilegios concedidos a Estados Unidos en Bretton Woods y la estafa de Nixon al eliminar el patrón oro que ponía límite a la emisión de billetes, el imperio ha comprado y pagado con papeles decenas de millones de millones de dólares, cifras de más de doce guarismos. Con ello ha mantenido su insostenible economía. Gran parte de las reservas mundiales en divisas están constituidas por bonos de la Tesorería y billetes norteamericanos. Por ello, muchos no desean una crisis del dólar como la de 1929, que convertiría en agua esos papeles. El valor en oro de un dólar es hoy, por lo menos, dieciocho veces menor que el que tenía en los años de Nixon. Lo mismo ocurre con el valor de las reservas en esa moneda.
Esos papeles han sostenido su escaso valor actual sobre la base de que con ellos se pueden adquirir fabulosas cantidades de armas modernas, cada vez más caras, que nada producen. Estados Unidos exporta más armas que el resto del mundo. Con esos mismos papeles el imperio desarrolló los más sofisticados y mortíferos sistemas de armas de destrucción masiva, con las que sostiene su tiranía mundial.
Tal poder le permite imponer la idea de convertir los alimentos en combustibles y hacer trizas cualquier iniciativa y compromiso para evitar el calentamiento global, que se acelera visiblemente.
Hambre y sed, ciclones más violentos e invasiones del mar es lo que sufrirán tirios y troyanos, como frutos de la política imperial. El respiro para la humanidad, que ofreciera una esperanza a la supervivencia de la especie, está en un drástico ahorro de energía, de lo cual no se preocupa en absoluto la sociedad consumista de los países ricos.
Cuba continuará desarrollando y perfeccionando la capacidad combativa de su pueblo, incluida nuestra modesta pero activa y eficiente industria de armas defensivas, que multiplica la capacidad de enfrentar al invasor dondequiera que se encuentre, posea las armas que posea. Continuaremos adquiriendo el material necesario y las bocas de fuego pertinentes, aunque no creciera el famoso Producto Interno Bruto del capitalismo, que tantas cosas incluye, como el valor de las privatizaciones, las drogas, los servicios sexuales, la publicidad, y tantas excluye, como los servicios de educación y salud gratuitos para todos los ciudadanos.
De un año para otro el nivel de vida puede elevarse si se incrementan los conocimientos, la autoestima y la dignidad de un pueblo. Basta con que el despilfarro se reduzca y la economía crece. A pesar de todo, iremos creciendo lo necesario y lo posible.
«La libertad cuesta muy cara, y es necesario, o resignarse a vivir sin ella, o decidirse a comprarla por su precio», dijo Martí.
«Quien intente apropiarse de Cuba recogerá el polvo de su suelo anegado en sangre, si no perece en la lucha», proclamó Maceo.
¡No somos los primeros revolucionarios en pensar así! ¡Y no seremos los últimos!
Un hombre puede ser comprado, nunca un pueblo.
Durante muchos años pude sobrevivir, por azar, a la máquina de matar del imperio. Pronto se cumplirá un año desde que me enfermé y, cuando estaba entre la vida y la muerte, expresé en la Proclama del 31 de julio del 2006: «No albergo la menor duda de que nuestro pueblo y nuestra Revolución lucharán hasta la última gota de sangre».
¡No lo dude usted tampoco, señor Bush!
¡Le aseguro que no tendrán jamás a Cuba!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Venezuela y su profunda libertad de expresión
Luis Britto García
APM
Venezuela es el país donde hay más libertad de expresión en el mundo. En ella el sector privado acumula 90 periódicos, 700 radioemisoras comerciales, 78 por ciento de las televisoras VHF y 82 por ciento de las VHF. Salvo dos diarios que guardan un cierto equilibrio informativo, los medios privados predican el derrocamiento violento del gobierno democrático y divulgan falsedades y puntos de vista contrarios a él sin que éste haya respondido jamás con medidas de censura, cierre, suspensión ni confiscación de ediciones.
Venezuela es el país con menos libertad de expresión. Los medios privados suplantan a los partidos políticos, inventan partidos y dirigencias mediáticas, incitan a la discriminación étnica y social, a la guerra civil, al sabotaje de la industria petrolera y al golpe de Estado, colaboran activamente en éste al interferir las emisiones del gobierno democrático y difundir falsa información, pactan con la dictadura mediática, imponen un apagón comunicacional a favor de ella, vetan medio millar de comunicadores y mantienen un interdicto contra toda persona, noticia o institución que no se ajuste a su línea editorial. Decir que en Venezuela la telebasura equivale a libertad de expresión es ser cómplice de agresión contra ésta.
Para sostener que las limitadas concesiones del espectro radioeléctrico son propiedad absoluta y perpetua de particulares y no del pueblo, las agencias publicitarias que comandan la oposición presentan la imagen de un maquillado opositor que se arrodilla ante un policía que no le hace nada como si fuera “el estudiantado”; y a éste como “el país”.
Pero en Venezuela no se han movilizado a favor de la telebasura ni trabajadores ni empresarios ni militares ni medios audiovisuales, salvo la frenética Globovisión. Mucho menos el estudiantado.
El gobierno bolivariano ha incrementado del 3 por ciento al 9 por ciento del PIB la inversión educativa. Para 1998, la matrícula en educación media, diversificada y profesional totalizaba 400.794 alumnos. Gracias al proyecto bolivariano, para 2005 alcanza a 618.898, de los cuales sólo 172.711 están en dependencias privadas.
De éstos, se han movilizado unos cuantos centenares de la Universidad Católica Andrés Bello y de la Universidad Metropolitana, y otros centenares de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, la Universidad Simón Bolívar y la de los Andes. Ni siquiera en ellas son mayoría los opositores que estudian: en todas los bolivarianos han realizado concentraciones contra la renovación de concesión; en la Central, perdieron la Federación de Centros porque concurrieron a las elecciones divididos.
Más que al síndrome de retiro de la telebasura, los niños bien obedecen a su origen de clase. En el Informe de la Defensoría del Pueblo para 2005, Luis Fuenmayor Toro explica que desde 1989 los universitarios “ingresan por vía de mecanismos como pruebas internas, cursos propedéuticos y lo que se conoce como acceso ‘discrecional’ es decir, por decisión del Decano”. Según la Defensoría, “esta práctica ha traído como efecto la exclusión sistemática de la población de más bajos recursos de la educación superior”. Los opositores que estudian protestan contra la posibilidad de que otros puedan seguir estudios.
Por la boca muere el pez, y por la lengua quien defiende el privilegio. El 7 de junio queda al desnudo la inopia ideológica instilada por la telebasura. Examinemos su Decálogo.
Diez opositores que estudian dicen no tener libertad de expresión, exigen un debate en la Asamblea Nacional, y se les otorga. (Primer Mandamiento: Concederás cuanto se nos antoje). Cuando otros estudiantes van a hablar, los opositores se marchan. (Segundo Mandamiento: Nuestra libertad de expresión es negársela a los demás). El documento que reclama la confrontación demanda: "Solicitamos que dicho debate sea difundido a través de todos los Medios de Comunicación públicos y privados" (Tercer Mandamiento: Sólo protestarás para las cámaras). Al teledifundido debate acuden diez oposicionistas y sólo habla uno (Cuarto Mandamiento: Mi pluralidad será unanimidad). En la telegénica decena no hay una sola mujer, un solo moreno, un solo indígena (Quinto Mandamiento: El Club de Toby no acepta chicas ni razas no arias). En lugar de debatir, el portavoz lee un papel (Sexto Mandamiento: No pensarás). La chuleta se le queda y resulta estar redactada en papel con membrete de la publicidad ARS (Séptimo mandamiento: Permítanos pensar por usted).
El único fundamento que se alega para las protestas es el interés de un cliente de publicidad ARS: “Nos encontramos en esta tribuna para manifestar nuestro repudio al cierre arbitrario de RCTV. En un principio nuestra movilización nace en respuesta a la medida tomada de manera injusta contra RCTV responde a la apropiación indebida de las antenas de transmisión de RCTV.La bandera de RCTV la mantendremos hasta que la señal del Canal 2 vuelva a su legítima frecuencia. No estamos luchando por los intereses de un grupo empresarial” (Octavo Mandamiento: El cliente tiene siempre la razón).
Tras protestas políticas ante instituciones políticas, informan que “no estamos luchando en nombre de intereses internacionales, no estamos luchando a favor de una tendencia política, estamos en la calle haciendo política sin los políticos tradicionales” (Noveno Mandamiento: Tirarás la piedra del golpe suave y esconderás la mano antipolítica).
El publicitario documento no aduce razón alguna para las protestas: “También quisiéramos aclarar que no venimos aquí a exponer nuestras tendencias políticas y nuestro proyecto de país, simplemente porque como colectivo aún estamos construyéndolo” (Décimo Mandamiento: No aclares, porque oscureces). Sentenció Oscar Wilde que los periodistas ingleses no tenían nada que decir, y lo decían. Los voceros de la telebasura exigen el monopolio total de medios e instituciones para expresar el cero. Llevan cuatro décadas haciéndolo.
En reciente artículo en Rebelión, Pascual Serrano manifestó su asombro ante estudiantes que se movilizan a favor de una marca de fábrica, hoy RCTV, quizá mañana Coca Cola o CNN.
Es la pesadilla de Melanie Klein en No Logo: las ideas sustituidas por marcas. Ni siquiera eso. En su programa “En confianza”, de la televisión de servicio público, Ernesto Villegas pregunta a algunos defensores del canal cuya concesión caducó, qué programas de él les gustaban. No recuerdan ninguno. Apenas alguien contesta “en las tardes, Radio Rochela”. Pero ésta no se transmitía “en las tardes”, sino por la noche, una vez a la semana. El dolor por el ingreso a la educación de los menos favorecidos, más que la nostalgia de la telebasura, detona la rabieta de los niños bien.
El derecho a que los demás no tengan derechos es defendido por los procedimientos que cabe esperar. La tarde del 27 de mayo el país y el mundo vio por televisión que los manifestantes reunidos ante la Comisión Nacional de Telecomunicaciones embestían y desmantelaban la cerca de protección de la Policía Metropolitana; que impactos de bala dejaban huellas en paredes y postes inmediatos a ésta; que ese día fueron heridos once efectivos y ningún manifestante.
Posteriormente otro policía quedó parapléjico por un balazo en Mérida. En la Universidad Católica Andrés Bello el 11 de junio una multitud acosó al estudiante bolivariano Robert Serra arrojándole latas, peroles y monedas. Las autoridades confesionales de dicha casa de estudios juegan a la picaresca académica eliminando el examen final para promover automáticamente a quienes manifiestan.
En conversaciones telefónicas grabadas y teledifundidas, políticos tradicionales confiesan tener el control remoto de los manifestantes, y añaden que no los acompañan para no desacreditarlos. Abandonando la máscara, el oposicionista que estudia Yon Goicoechea aparece en las páginas sociales de El Nacional del 16 de junio partiendo un confite con Marcel Granier y las dirigencias golpistas del partido Primero Justicia.
En la concentración “apolítica” frente a la Defensoría del Pueblo, lucen pancartas del partido Acción Democrática. A una de las marchas a favor de RCTV se une Rowen Rosten, director de la CIA para América Latina. Los logos de quienes protestan lucen el mismo puño del movimiento OTPOR, promotor de un golpe dirigido por la CIA en Serbia.
Las protestas son pretextos de un golpismo suave que no se atreve a decir su nombre y juega su única carta a la intervención extranjera. De allí las pancartas redactadas en inglés, los viajes de delegaciones de opositores ante el Parlamento Europeo, ante la OEA, ante Guillermo Endara, potentado de la banca transnacional y ex presidente títere de un gobierno de ocupación estadounidense en Panamá.
A tales hechos, tal falsificación mediática. Una vez más, los medios retransmiten de manera continua una manifestación aislada, para fingir que sucede en todo el país y todo el tiempo, e ignoran las concentraciones populares de apoyo a la no renovación de la concesión.
Tras el debate ante la Asamblea Nacional, los opositores que estudian piden ser protegidos en vehículos de los cuerpos de seguridad: El Nacional y El Universal publican fotografías y titulares mintiendo que han sido detenidos. La página web de la oposición publica fotos, nombres, teléfonos y direcciones de los estudiantes bolivarianos que les respondieron, invitando al acoso de idéntica manera que se hizo con los directivos del Consejo Nacional Electoral.
You Tube censura el espacio que le había concedido a Luigino Brasci, y borra de él cerca de cuatrocientos videos que defienden el proceso bolivariano. Dos sicarios ultiman a una estudiante de la UCAB, y los medios proclaman que ha sido víctima de los chavistas, a pesar de que los asesinos confiesan que han actuado por órdenes de la heredera del grupo comunicacional De Armas.
El diario español El País corea la falsedad, y se niega a desmentirla a pesar de repetidos reclamos. Cuando se agota el cuarto de hora de celebridad de RCTV, los medios la sustituyen por el tema de la libertad de expresión, luego por el de la autonomía universitaria. Cuando resulta evidente que las universidades privadas en las cuales estudian los opositores son justamente las que carecen de autonomía, cambian el disco por el de la reconciliación. Por el prontuario anterior, es obvio que, una vez más, la telebasura requiere de una reconciliación urgente con la imparcialidad, con la veracidad y sobre todo con la ética.
Mientras los voceros de la telebasura exponen libremente estas perlas por todos los medios públicos y privados como legitimación del golpe suave y escenifican protestas que no se aventuran fuera de las zonas residenciales de lujo o las escalinatas eléctricas del Centro Comercial Sambil, y en las cuales sólo salen heridos los policías, un millón de venezolanos manifiesta en la avenida Bolívar a favor de la no renovación de las concesiones; el Tribunal Supremo de México anula por inconstitucional una ley que pretendía hacerlas perpetuas, y en Brasil se discute sobre la renovación o no de concesiones a 28 televisoras y 153 radios. Venezuela reabre el debate entre pueblos y medios, entre monopolio de la comunicación y libertad de expresión, y la manipulación mediática no hace más que avivarlo.
Luis Britto García es un destacado intelectual latinoamericano
APM
El sector privado acumula 90 periódicos y 700 radioemisoras comerciales. Salvo dos diarios que guardan un cierto equilibrio, todos predican el derrocamiento violento del gobierno.
Venezuela es el país donde hay más libertad de expresión en el mundo. En ella el sector privado acumula 90 periódicos, 700 radioemisoras comerciales, 78 por ciento de las televisoras VHF y 82 por ciento de las VHF. Salvo dos diarios que guardan un cierto equilibrio informativo, los medios privados predican el derrocamiento violento del gobierno democrático y divulgan falsedades y puntos de vista contrarios a él sin que éste haya respondido jamás con medidas de censura, cierre, suspensión ni confiscación de ediciones.
Venezuela es el país con menos libertad de expresión. Los medios privados suplantan a los partidos políticos, inventan partidos y dirigencias mediáticas, incitan a la discriminación étnica y social, a la guerra civil, al sabotaje de la industria petrolera y al golpe de Estado, colaboran activamente en éste al interferir las emisiones del gobierno democrático y difundir falsa información, pactan con la dictadura mediática, imponen un apagón comunicacional a favor de ella, vetan medio millar de comunicadores y mantienen un interdicto contra toda persona, noticia o institución que no se ajuste a su línea editorial. Decir que en Venezuela la telebasura equivale a libertad de expresión es ser cómplice de agresión contra ésta.
Para sostener que las limitadas concesiones del espectro radioeléctrico son propiedad absoluta y perpetua de particulares y no del pueblo, las agencias publicitarias que comandan la oposición presentan la imagen de un maquillado opositor que se arrodilla ante un policía que no le hace nada como si fuera “el estudiantado”; y a éste como “el país”.
Pero en Venezuela no se han movilizado a favor de la telebasura ni trabajadores ni empresarios ni militares ni medios audiovisuales, salvo la frenética Globovisión. Mucho menos el estudiantado.
El gobierno bolivariano ha incrementado del 3 por ciento al 9 por ciento del PIB la inversión educativa. Para 1998, la matrícula en educación media, diversificada y profesional totalizaba 400.794 alumnos. Gracias al proyecto bolivariano, para 2005 alcanza a 618.898, de los cuales sólo 172.711 están en dependencias privadas.
De éstos, se han movilizado unos cuantos centenares de la Universidad Católica Andrés Bello y de la Universidad Metropolitana, y otros centenares de la Universidad Central de Venezuela, la Universidad Simón Bolívar y la de los Andes. Ni siquiera en ellas son mayoría los opositores que estudian: en todas los bolivarianos han realizado concentraciones contra la renovación de concesión; en la Central, perdieron la Federación de Centros porque concurrieron a las elecciones divididos.
Más que al síndrome de retiro de la telebasura, los niños bien obedecen a su origen de clase. En el Informe de la Defensoría del Pueblo para 2005, Luis Fuenmayor Toro explica que desde 1989 los universitarios “ingresan por vía de mecanismos como pruebas internas, cursos propedéuticos y lo que se conoce como acceso ‘discrecional’ es decir, por decisión del Decano”. Según la Defensoría, “esta práctica ha traído como efecto la exclusión sistemática de la población de más bajos recursos de la educación superior”. Los opositores que estudian protestan contra la posibilidad de que otros puedan seguir estudios.
Por la boca muere el pez, y por la lengua quien defiende el privilegio. El 7 de junio queda al desnudo la inopia ideológica instilada por la telebasura. Examinemos su Decálogo.
Diez opositores que estudian dicen no tener libertad de expresión, exigen un debate en la Asamblea Nacional, y se les otorga. (Primer Mandamiento: Concederás cuanto se nos antoje). Cuando otros estudiantes van a hablar, los opositores se marchan. (Segundo Mandamiento: Nuestra libertad de expresión es negársela a los demás). El documento que reclama la confrontación demanda: "Solicitamos que dicho debate sea difundido a través de todos los Medios de Comunicación públicos y privados" (Tercer Mandamiento: Sólo protestarás para las cámaras). Al teledifundido debate acuden diez oposicionistas y sólo habla uno (Cuarto Mandamiento: Mi pluralidad será unanimidad). En la telegénica decena no hay una sola mujer, un solo moreno, un solo indígena (Quinto Mandamiento: El Club de Toby no acepta chicas ni razas no arias). En lugar de debatir, el portavoz lee un papel (Sexto Mandamiento: No pensarás). La chuleta se le queda y resulta estar redactada en papel con membrete de la publicidad ARS (Séptimo mandamiento: Permítanos pensar por usted).
El único fundamento que se alega para las protestas es el interés de un cliente de publicidad ARS: “Nos encontramos en esta tribuna para manifestar nuestro repudio al cierre arbitrario de RCTV. En un principio nuestra movilización nace en respuesta a la medida tomada de manera injusta contra RCTV responde a la apropiación indebida de las antenas de transmisión de RCTV.La bandera de RCTV la mantendremos hasta que la señal del Canal 2 vuelva a su legítima frecuencia. No estamos luchando por los intereses de un grupo empresarial” (Octavo Mandamiento: El cliente tiene siempre la razón).
Tras protestas políticas ante instituciones políticas, informan que “no estamos luchando en nombre de intereses internacionales, no estamos luchando a favor de una tendencia política, estamos en la calle haciendo política sin los políticos tradicionales” (Noveno Mandamiento: Tirarás la piedra del golpe suave y esconderás la mano antipolítica).
El publicitario documento no aduce razón alguna para las protestas: “También quisiéramos aclarar que no venimos aquí a exponer nuestras tendencias políticas y nuestro proyecto de país, simplemente porque como colectivo aún estamos construyéndolo” (Décimo Mandamiento: No aclares, porque oscureces). Sentenció Oscar Wilde que los periodistas ingleses no tenían nada que decir, y lo decían. Los voceros de la telebasura exigen el monopolio total de medios e instituciones para expresar el cero. Llevan cuatro décadas haciéndolo.
En reciente artículo en Rebelión, Pascual Serrano manifestó su asombro ante estudiantes que se movilizan a favor de una marca de fábrica, hoy RCTV, quizá mañana Coca Cola o CNN.
Es la pesadilla de Melanie Klein en No Logo: las ideas sustituidas por marcas. Ni siquiera eso. En su programa “En confianza”, de la televisión de servicio público, Ernesto Villegas pregunta a algunos defensores del canal cuya concesión caducó, qué programas de él les gustaban. No recuerdan ninguno. Apenas alguien contesta “en las tardes, Radio Rochela”. Pero ésta no se transmitía “en las tardes”, sino por la noche, una vez a la semana. El dolor por el ingreso a la educación de los menos favorecidos, más que la nostalgia de la telebasura, detona la rabieta de los niños bien.
El derecho a que los demás no tengan derechos es defendido por los procedimientos que cabe esperar. La tarde del 27 de mayo el país y el mundo vio por televisión que los manifestantes reunidos ante la Comisión Nacional de Telecomunicaciones embestían y desmantelaban la cerca de protección de la Policía Metropolitana; que impactos de bala dejaban huellas en paredes y postes inmediatos a ésta; que ese día fueron heridos once efectivos y ningún manifestante.
Posteriormente otro policía quedó parapléjico por un balazo en Mérida. En la Universidad Católica Andrés Bello el 11 de junio una multitud acosó al estudiante bolivariano Robert Serra arrojándole latas, peroles y monedas. Las autoridades confesionales de dicha casa de estudios juegan a la picaresca académica eliminando el examen final para promover automáticamente a quienes manifiestan.
En conversaciones telefónicas grabadas y teledifundidas, políticos tradicionales confiesan tener el control remoto de los manifestantes, y añaden que no los acompañan para no desacreditarlos. Abandonando la máscara, el oposicionista que estudia Yon Goicoechea aparece en las páginas sociales de El Nacional del 16 de junio partiendo un confite con Marcel Granier y las dirigencias golpistas del partido Primero Justicia.
En la concentración “apolítica” frente a la Defensoría del Pueblo, lucen pancartas del partido Acción Democrática. A una de las marchas a favor de RCTV se une Rowen Rosten, director de la CIA para América Latina. Los logos de quienes protestan lucen el mismo puño del movimiento OTPOR, promotor de un golpe dirigido por la CIA en Serbia.
Las protestas son pretextos de un golpismo suave que no se atreve a decir su nombre y juega su única carta a la intervención extranjera. De allí las pancartas redactadas en inglés, los viajes de delegaciones de opositores ante el Parlamento Europeo, ante la OEA, ante Guillermo Endara, potentado de la banca transnacional y ex presidente títere de un gobierno de ocupación estadounidense en Panamá.
A tales hechos, tal falsificación mediática. Una vez más, los medios retransmiten de manera continua una manifestación aislada, para fingir que sucede en todo el país y todo el tiempo, e ignoran las concentraciones populares de apoyo a la no renovación de la concesión.
Tras el debate ante la Asamblea Nacional, los opositores que estudian piden ser protegidos en vehículos de los cuerpos de seguridad: El Nacional y El Universal publican fotografías y titulares mintiendo que han sido detenidos. La página web de la oposición publica fotos, nombres, teléfonos y direcciones de los estudiantes bolivarianos que les respondieron, invitando al acoso de idéntica manera que se hizo con los directivos del Consejo Nacional Electoral.
You Tube censura el espacio que le había concedido a Luigino Brasci, y borra de él cerca de cuatrocientos videos que defienden el proceso bolivariano. Dos sicarios ultiman a una estudiante de la UCAB, y los medios proclaman que ha sido víctima de los chavistas, a pesar de que los asesinos confiesan que han actuado por órdenes de la heredera del grupo comunicacional De Armas.
El diario español El País corea la falsedad, y se niega a desmentirla a pesar de repetidos reclamos. Cuando se agota el cuarto de hora de celebridad de RCTV, los medios la sustituyen por el tema de la libertad de expresión, luego por el de la autonomía universitaria. Cuando resulta evidente que las universidades privadas en las cuales estudian los opositores son justamente las que carecen de autonomía, cambian el disco por el de la reconciliación. Por el prontuario anterior, es obvio que, una vez más, la telebasura requiere de una reconciliación urgente con la imparcialidad, con la veracidad y sobre todo con la ética.
Mientras los voceros de la telebasura exponen libremente estas perlas por todos los medios públicos y privados como legitimación del golpe suave y escenifican protestas que no se aventuran fuera de las zonas residenciales de lujo o las escalinatas eléctricas del Centro Comercial Sambil, y en las cuales sólo salen heridos los policías, un millón de venezolanos manifiesta en la avenida Bolívar a favor de la no renovación de las concesiones; el Tribunal Supremo de México anula por inconstitucional una ley que pretendía hacerlas perpetuas, y en Brasil se discute sobre la renovación o no de concesiones a 28 televisoras y 153 radios. Venezuela reabre el debate entre pueblos y medios, entre monopolio de la comunicación y libertad de expresión, y la manipulación mediática no hace más que avivarlo.
Luis Britto García es un destacado intelectual latinoamericano
Monday, June 18, 2007
Fidel Castro Ruz: They will never have Cuba
Reflection and Manifesto for the People of Cuba
They will never have Cuba
They will never have Cuba
I hope that no-one say that I am gratuitously attacking Bush. Surely they will understand my reasons for strongly criticizing his policies.
Robert Woodward is an American journalist and writer who became famous for the series of articles published by The Washington Post, written by him and Carl Bernstein, and which eventually led to the investigation and resignation of Nixon. He is author and co-author of ten best-sellers. With his fearsome style he manages to wrench confessions from his interviewees. In his book, State of Denial, he says that on June 18, 2003, three months after the Iraq war had begun, as he was on the way out of his White House office following an important meeting, Bush slapped Jay Garner on the back and said to him:
“Hey, Jay, you want to do Iran?
“Sir, the boys and I talked about that and we want to hold out for Cuba. We think the rum and the cigars are a little better...The women are prettier."
Bush laughed. “You got it. You got Cuba.”
Bush was betrayed by his subconscious. It was in his mind when he declared what scores of dark corners should be expecting to happen and Cuba occupies a special place among those dark corners.
Garner, a recently retired three-star general who had been appointed Head of the Post-War Planning Office for Iraq, created by secret National Security Presidential Directive, was considered by Bush an exceptional man to carry out his war strategy. Appointed for the post on January 20, 2003, he was replaced on May 11 of that same year at the urging of Rumsfeld. He didn’t have the nerve to explain to Bush his strong disagreements on the matter of the strategy to be pursued in Iraq. He was thinking of another one with identical purpose. In the past few weeks, thousands of marines and a number of US aircraft carriers, with their naval supporting forces, have been maneuvering in the Persian Gulf, a few miles off the Iranian territory.
It will very soon be 50 years since our people started suffering a cruel blockade; thousands of our sons and daughters have died or have been mutilated as a result of the dirty war against Cuba, the only country in the world to which an Adjustment Act has been applied inciting illegal emigration, yet another cause of death for Cuban citizens, including women and children; more than 15 years ago Cuba lost her principal markets and sources of supply for foods, energy, machinery, raw materials and long-term low-interest financing.
First the socialist bloc collapsed followed almost immediately by the USSR, dismantled piece by piece. The empire tightened and internationalized the blockade; the proteins and calories which were quite well distributed despite our deficiencies were reduced approximately by 40 percent; diseases such as optical neuritis and others appeared; the shortage of medicines, also a result of the blockade, became an everyday reality. Medicines were allowed to enter only as a charitable act, to demoralize us; these, in their turn, became a source of illegal business and black-market dealings.
Inevitably, the “special period” struck. This was the sum total of all the consequences of the aggression and it forced us to take desperate measures whose harmful effects were bolstered by the colossal media machine of the empire. Everyone was awaiting, some with sadness and others with oligarchic glee, the crumbling of the Cuban Revolution.
The access to convertible currency greatly harmed our social consciousness, to a greater or a lesser degree, due to the inequalities and ideological weaknesses it created.
Throughout its lifetime, the Revolution has taught the people, training hundreds of thousands of teachers, doctors, scientists, intellectuals, artists, computer engineers and other professionals with university and post-graduate degrees in dozens of professions. This storehouse of wealth has allowed us to reduce infant mortality to low levels, unthinkable in any Third World country, and to raise life expectancy as well as the average educational level of the population up to the ninth grade.
By offering Cuba oil under favorable terms of payment at a time when oil prices were escalating dramatically, the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution brought a significant relief and opened up new possibilities, since our country was already beginning to produce her own energy in ever-growing amounts.
Concerned over its interests in that country, the empire had for years been planning to destroy that Revolution, and so it attempted to do it in April 2002, as it will attempt to do again as many times as it can. This is why the Bolivarian revolutionaries are preparing to resist.
Meanwhile, Bush has intensified his plans for an occupation of Cuba, to the point of proclaiming laws and an interventionist government in order to install a direct imperial administration.
Based on the privileges granted to the United States in Bretton Woods and Nixon’s swindle when he removed the gold standard which placed a limit on the issuing of paper money, the empire bought and paid with paper tens of trillions of dollars, more than twelve digit figures. This is how it preserved an unsustainable economy. A large part of the world currency reserves are in US Treasury bonds and bills. For this reason, many would rather not have a dollar crisis like the one in 1929 that would turn those paper bills into thin air. Today, the value of one dollar in gold is at least eighteen times less than what it was in the Nixon years. The same happens with the value of the reserves in that currency.
Those paper bills have kept their low current value because fabulous amounts of increasingly expensive and modern weapons can be purchased with them; weapons that produce nothing. The United States exports more weapons than anyone else in the world. With those same paper bills, the empire has developed a most sophisticated and deadly system of weapons of mass destruction with which it sustains its world tyranny.
Such power allows it to impose the idea of transforming foods into fuels and to shatter any initiative and commitment to avoid global warming, which is visibly accelerating.
Hunger and thirst, more violent hurricanes and the surge of the sea is what Tyranians and Trojans stand to suffer as a result of imperial policies. It is only through drastic energy savings that humanity will have a respite and hopes of survival for the species; but the consumer societies of the wealthy nations are absolutely heedless of that.
Cuba will continue to develop and improve the combative capacities of her people, including our modest but active and efficient defensive weapons industry which multiplies our capacity to face the invaders no matter where they may be, and the weapons they possess. We shall continue acquiring the necessary materials and the pertinent fire power, even though the notorious Gross Domestic Product as measured by capitalism may not be growing, for their GDP includes such things as the value of privatizations, drugs, sexual services and advertising, while it excludes many others like free educational and health services for all citizens.
From one year to the next the standard of living can be improved by raising knowledge, self-esteem and the dignity of people. It will be enough to reduce wastage and the economy will grow. In spite of everything, we will keep on growing as necessary and as possible.
“Freedom costs dearly, and it is necessary to either resign ourselves to live without it or to decide to buy it for its price”, said Martí.
“Whoever attempts to conquer Cuba will only gather the dust of her soil soaked in blood, if he does not perish in the fight”, exclaimed Maceo.
We are not the first revolutionaries to think that way! And we shall not be the last!
One man may be bought, but never a people.
Fate decreed that I could survive the empire’s murderous machine. Shortly, it will be a year since I became ill and, while I hovered between life and death, I stated in the Proclamation of July 31, 2006: “I do not harbor the slightest doubt that our people and our Revolution will fight until the last drop of blood."
Mr. Bush, don’t you doubt that either!
I assure you that you will never have Cuba!
Fidel Castro Ruz
June 17, 2007
2:03 p.m.
Explaining How Depleted Uranium Is Killing Civilians, Soldiers, Land - Nano-particles pinpointed
By Christopher Bollyn
Global Research, June 17, 2007
American Free Press - 2004-01-04
Depleted uranium weapons, and the untold misery they wreak on mankind, are taboo subjects in the mainstream media. This exclusive report should break the media embargo imposed on the American people.
Despite being a grossly under-reported subject in the mainstream, there is intense public interest in depleted uranium (DU) and the damage it inflicts on humankind and the environment.
While American Free Press is actively investigating DU weapons and how they contribute to Gulf War Syndrome, the corporate-controlled press ignores the illegal use of DU and its long-lasting effects on the health of veterans and the public.
In August 2004 American Free Press published a ground-breaking four-part series on DU weapons and the long-term health risks they pose to soldiers and civilians alike. Information provided to AFP by experts and scientists, some of it published for the first time in this paper, has increased public awareness of how exposure to small particles of DU can severely affect human health.
Leuren Moret, a Berkeley-based geo-scientist with expertise in atmospheric dust, corresponds with AFP on DU issues. Recently Moret provided a copy of her letters to a British radiation biologist, Dr. Chris Busby, about how nanometer size particles—less than one-tenth of a micron and smaller—of DU once inhaled or absorbed into the body, can cause long-term damage to one’s health.
Busby is one of the founders of Green Audit, a British organization that monitors companies “whose activities might threaten the environment and health of citizens.”
Moret’s writings were meant to assist Busby in a legal case being heard in the High Court in London where a former defense worker, Richard David, 49, is suing Normal Air Garrett, Ltd., an aircraft parts company now owned by Honeywell Aerospace, claiming exposure to DU on the job has made his life a “living hell.”
David worked as a component fitter on fighter planes and bombers but had to quit due to health problems. He says he developed a cough within weeks of starting work.
Today, David suffers from a variety of symptoms like those known as Gulf War Syndrome, including respiratory and kidney problems, bowel conditions and painful joints. Medical tests reveal mutations to his DNA and damage to his chromosomes, which, he says, could only have been caused by ionizing radiation. He has also been diagnosed with a terminal lung condition.
Honeywell denies DU was ever used at the plant in Yeovil, Somerset, where David worked for 10 years until 1995. David claims that DU’s existence at the plant was denied because it is an official secret.
David has asked the High Court for more time to gather evidence. The hearing is due to resume in April. “I don’t have any legal representation,” David said, “so I am representing myself. It is a real David versus Goliath case.
“I am confident I will win. I hope to set a precedent for other cases of people who have suffered from the effects of depleted uranium,” he said.
Moret’s letters on the particle effect of DU is based on research done by Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist and former scientist with the Manhattan Project and the National Laboratory at Livermore, Calif. Fulk, who has developed a “particle theory” about how DU nano-particles affect human DNA, donates his time and expertise to help bring information about DU to the public.
Asked about Fulk’s particle theory, Busby said it is “quite sound.”
“DU is much more dangerous than they say,” Busby added. “I’ve always said that it contributes significantly to Gulf War Syndrome.”
When Moret’s correspondence to Dr. Busby was posted on the Internet over the New Year’s holiday under the title “How Depleted Uranium Weapons Are Killing Our Troops,” some 6,000 people read the letter in the first two days. The following Monday, a producer from BBC’s Panorama program contacted Moret to arrange an interview.
If the BBC follows up with an investigation on the health effects of DU, it may be hard for the U.S. media to maintain their cover-up. More than 500,000 “Gulf War Era” vets currently receive disability compensation, many of them for a variety of symptoms generally referred to as Gulf War Syndrome. Experts blame DU for many of these symptoms.
“The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse,” Robert C. Koehler of the Chicago-based Tribune Media Services wrote in an article about DU weapons entitled “Silent Genocide.”
“DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe it or touch it; the substance also alters one’s genetic code,” Koehler wrote. “The Pentagon’s response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American media is its moral co-conspirator.”
U.S. GOVERNMENT KNOWS
The U.S. government has known for at least 20 years that DU weapons produce clouds of poison gas on impact. These clouds of aerosolized DU are laden with billions of toxic sub-micron sized particles. A 1984 Department of Energy conference on nuclear airborne waste reported that tests of DU anti-tank missiles showed that at least 31 percent of the mass of a DU penetrator is converted to nano-particles on impact. In larger bombs the percentage of aerosolized DU increases to nearly 100 percent, Fulk told AFP.
DU is harmful in three ways, according to Fulk: “Chemical toxicity, radiological toxicity and particle toxicity.”
Particles in the nano-meter (one billionth of a meter) range are a “new breed of cat,” Moret wrote. Because the size of the nano-particles allows them to pass freely throughout the organism and into the nucleus of its cells, exposure to nano-particles causes different symptoms than exposure to larger particles of the same substance.
Internalized DU particles, Fulk said, act as “a non-specific catalyst” in both “nuclear and non-nuclear” ways. This means that the uranium particle can affect human DNA and RNA because of both its chemical and radiological properties. This is why internalized DU particles cause “many, many diseases,” Fulk said.
Asked if this is how DU causes severe birth defects, Fulk said, “Yes.”
MILITARY AWARE
The military is aware of DU’s harmful effects on the human genetic code. A 2001 study of DU’s effect on DNA done by Dr. Alexandra C. Miller for the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., indicates that DU’s chemical instability causes 1 million times more genetic damage than would be expected from its radiation effect alone, Moret wrote.
Dr. Miller requested that questions be sent in writing and copied to a military spokesman. She did tell AFP that it should be noted that her studies showing that DU is “neoplastically transforming and genotoxic” are based on in vitro cellular research.
Studies have shown that inhaled nano-particles are far more toxic than micro-sized particles of the same basic chemical composition. British toxicopathologist Vyvyan Howard has reported that the increased toxicity of the nano-particle is due to its size.
For example, when mice were exposed to virus-size particles of Teflon (0.13 microns) in a University of Rochester study, there were no ill effects. But when mice were exposed to nano-particles of Teflon for 15 minutes, nearly all the mice died within 4 hours.
“Exposure pathways for depleted uranium can be through the skin, by inhalation, and ingestion,” Moret wrote. “Nano-particles have high mobility and can easily enter the body. Inhalation of nano-particles of depleted uranium is the most hazardous exposure, because the particles pass through the lung-blood barrier directly into the blood.
“When inhaled through the nose, nano-particles can cross the olfactory bulb directly into the brain through the blood brain barrier, where they migrate all through the brain,” she wrote. “Many Gulf era soldiers exposed to depleted uranium have been diagnosed with brain tumors, brain damage and impaired thought processes. Uranium can interfere with the mitochondria, which provide energy for the nerve processes, and transmittal of the nerve signal across synapses in the brain.
“Damage to the mitochondria, which provide all energy to the cells and nerves, can cause chronic fatigue syndrome, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and Hodgkin’s disease.”
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press , 2004
Global Research, June 17, 2007
American Free Press - 2004-01-04
Depleted uranium weapons, and the untold misery they wreak on mankind, are taboo subjects in the mainstream media. This exclusive report should break the media embargo imposed on the American people.
Despite being a grossly under-reported subject in the mainstream, there is intense public interest in depleted uranium (DU) and the damage it inflicts on humankind and the environment.
While American Free Press is actively investigating DU weapons and how they contribute to Gulf War Syndrome, the corporate-controlled press ignores the illegal use of DU and its long-lasting effects on the health of veterans and the public.
In August 2004 American Free Press published a ground-breaking four-part series on DU weapons and the long-term health risks they pose to soldiers and civilians alike. Information provided to AFP by experts and scientists, some of it published for the first time in this paper, has increased public awareness of how exposure to small particles of DU can severely affect human health.
Leuren Moret, a Berkeley-based geo-scientist with expertise in atmospheric dust, corresponds with AFP on DU issues. Recently Moret provided a copy of her letters to a British radiation biologist, Dr. Chris Busby, about how nanometer size particles—less than one-tenth of a micron and smaller—of DU once inhaled or absorbed into the body, can cause long-term damage to one’s health.
Busby is one of the founders of Green Audit, a British organization that monitors companies “whose activities might threaten the environment and health of citizens.”
Moret’s writings were meant to assist Busby in a legal case being heard in the High Court in London where a former defense worker, Richard David, 49, is suing Normal Air Garrett, Ltd., an aircraft parts company now owned by Honeywell Aerospace, claiming exposure to DU on the job has made his life a “living hell.”
David worked as a component fitter on fighter planes and bombers but had to quit due to health problems. He says he developed a cough within weeks of starting work.
Today, David suffers from a variety of symptoms like those known as Gulf War Syndrome, including respiratory and kidney problems, bowel conditions and painful joints. Medical tests reveal mutations to his DNA and damage to his chromosomes, which, he says, could only have been caused by ionizing radiation. He has also been diagnosed with a terminal lung condition.
Honeywell denies DU was ever used at the plant in Yeovil, Somerset, where David worked for 10 years until 1995. David claims that DU’s existence at the plant was denied because it is an official secret.
David has asked the High Court for more time to gather evidence. The hearing is due to resume in April. “I don’t have any legal representation,” David said, “so I am representing myself. It is a real David versus Goliath case.
“I am confident I will win. I hope to set a precedent for other cases of people who have suffered from the effects of depleted uranium,” he said.
Moret’s letters on the particle effect of DU is based on research done by Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist and former scientist with the Manhattan Project and the National Laboratory at Livermore, Calif. Fulk, who has developed a “particle theory” about how DU nano-particles affect human DNA, donates his time and expertise to help bring information about DU to the public.
Asked about Fulk’s particle theory, Busby said it is “quite sound.”
“DU is much more dangerous than they say,” Busby added. “I’ve always said that it contributes significantly to Gulf War Syndrome.”
When Moret’s correspondence to Dr. Busby was posted on the Internet over the New Year’s holiday under the title “How Depleted Uranium Weapons Are Killing Our Troops,” some 6,000 people read the letter in the first two days. The following Monday, a producer from BBC’s Panorama program contacted Moret to arrange an interview.
If the BBC follows up with an investigation on the health effects of DU, it may be hard for the U.S. media to maintain their cover-up. More than 500,000 “Gulf War Era” vets currently receive disability compensation, many of them for a variety of symptoms generally referred to as Gulf War Syndrome. Experts blame DU for many of these symptoms.
“The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse,” Robert C. Koehler of the Chicago-based Tribune Media Services wrote in an article about DU weapons entitled “Silent Genocide.”
“DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe it or touch it; the substance also alters one’s genetic code,” Koehler wrote. “The Pentagon’s response to such charges is denial, denial, denial. And the American media is its moral co-conspirator.”
U.S. GOVERNMENT KNOWS
The U.S. government has known for at least 20 years that DU weapons produce clouds of poison gas on impact. These clouds of aerosolized DU are laden with billions of toxic sub-micron sized particles. A 1984 Department of Energy conference on nuclear airborne waste reported that tests of DU anti-tank missiles showed that at least 31 percent of the mass of a DU penetrator is converted to nano-particles on impact. In larger bombs the percentage of aerosolized DU increases to nearly 100 percent, Fulk told AFP.
DU is harmful in three ways, according to Fulk: “Chemical toxicity, radiological toxicity and particle toxicity.”
Particles in the nano-meter (one billionth of a meter) range are a “new breed of cat,” Moret wrote. Because the size of the nano-particles allows them to pass freely throughout the organism and into the nucleus of its cells, exposure to nano-particles causes different symptoms than exposure to larger particles of the same substance.
Internalized DU particles, Fulk said, act as “a non-specific catalyst” in both “nuclear and non-nuclear” ways. This means that the uranium particle can affect human DNA and RNA because of both its chemical and radiological properties. This is why internalized DU particles cause “many, many diseases,” Fulk said.
Asked if this is how DU causes severe birth defects, Fulk said, “Yes.”
MILITARY AWARE
The military is aware of DU’s harmful effects on the human genetic code. A 2001 study of DU’s effect on DNA done by Dr. Alexandra C. Miller for the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute in Bethesda, Md., indicates that DU’s chemical instability causes 1 million times more genetic damage than would be expected from its radiation effect alone, Moret wrote.
Dr. Miller requested that questions be sent in writing and copied to a military spokesman. She did tell AFP that it should be noted that her studies showing that DU is “neoplastically transforming and genotoxic” are based on in vitro cellular research.
Studies have shown that inhaled nano-particles are far more toxic than micro-sized particles of the same basic chemical composition. British toxicopathologist Vyvyan Howard has reported that the increased toxicity of the nano-particle is due to its size.
For example, when mice were exposed to virus-size particles of Teflon (0.13 microns) in a University of Rochester study, there were no ill effects. But when mice were exposed to nano-particles of Teflon for 15 minutes, nearly all the mice died within 4 hours.
“Exposure pathways for depleted uranium can be through the skin, by inhalation, and ingestion,” Moret wrote. “Nano-particles have high mobility and can easily enter the body. Inhalation of nano-particles of depleted uranium is the most hazardous exposure, because the particles pass through the lung-blood barrier directly into the blood.
“When inhaled through the nose, nano-particles can cross the olfactory bulb directly into the brain through the blood brain barrier, where they migrate all through the brain,” she wrote. “Many Gulf era soldiers exposed to depleted uranium have been diagnosed with brain tumors, brain damage and impaired thought processes. Uranium can interfere with the mitochondria, which provide energy for the nerve processes, and transmittal of the nerve signal across synapses in the brain.
“Damage to the mitochondria, which provide all energy to the cells and nerves, can cause chronic fatigue syndrome, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and Hodgkin’s disease.”
www.globalresearch.ca contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to our readers under the provisions of "fair use" in an effort to advance a better understanding of political, economic and social issues. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes other than "fair use" you must request permission from the copyright owner.
For media inquiries: crgeditor@yahoo.com
© Copyright Christopher Bollyn, American Free Press , 2004
Levitate the Pentagon By Pepe Escobar
THE ROVING EYE
Forty years ago down in sunny Monterey, California, an ultra-cool black cat from Seattle named James Marshall Hendrix set the world on fire. "Respect" by Aretha Franklin (written by Otis Redding) was the No 1 hit single in the US (to be replaced, a month later, by "Light My Fire" by The Doors). Hendrix and Otis in Monterey merged into the Summer of Love - the apotheosis of Make Love Not War, vinyl treasures and Indian mottoes dressed in caftans and granny dresses.
Already in the spring of 1967 a stirring wave of counterculture fusion between London and San Francisco was irresistible. Dismissed Harvard sage Tim Leary ordered everyone to "turn on, tune in, drop out" (The Beatles, already in 1966, were quoting from Leary's version of The Tibetan Book of the Dead - "turn off your minds, relax and float downstream").
While the radically politicized were yelling "Kill the pigs!" the Beatles were inventing whole new groovy sounds in the studio and beat poet Allen Ginsberg was singing the praise of Bob Dylan's victims in "Chimes of Freedom" - and assisting LSD experiments unsupervised by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The irretrievably fragmented consciousness of the whole Western world was unifying, at least in the hearts and minds of young people everywhere, even for a fleeting moment in time. It was a river flowing out of the postwar consumer boom, from jazz to the beats to rebels without a cause to Dylan to The Beatles.
The Grateful Dead loved Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (from 1955) so much they set it to music. The doors of perception were being cleansed by what Ginsberg defined as "the divine herbs and greases" and by LSD - the crucial catalyst.
Yippie icon Abbie Hoffman, who defined The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as "Beethoven coming to the supermarket", later recalled that "at the height of the American Empire we had all the bombs, all the cops in the world - and it was all ours - the Cadillacs, the two-car garages, the split-level ranch houses".
But then young people, spiritually unfulfilled, started to think there might be something else. Flower power met the East, met unbounded optimism - before, in 1968, reality came crashing down and despair set in.
From 1967 to 2007
Today Leary's motto would be "turn off, tune out, drop dead". At the decline of American Empire, young people have all the bombs, all the post-September 11, 2001, cops in the world - and it is not theirs. They have Hummers, holidays in Cambodia, neo-Byzantine condos. But then, spiritually unfulfilled even though they have been to all the five-star healing spas in the world, they still think there is nothing else - apart from a shot at TV celebrity.
Nobody gives a damn: the best lack all conviction (and take refugee in their iPods) while the worst simply lord over all, unchallenged. In overwhelmingly dumbed-down global medialand, airhead heiress Paris Hilton is the Queen of News, governments are no more than "political commissars of economic power", in the formulation of Portuguese Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, and the Bush administration/industrial-military complex merrily fight proxy wars in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Somalia.
History does repeat itself - as farce. By early 1967, the US had half a million troops in Vietnam. Massacres of civilians and torture - the precursors of Abu Ghraib - were routine. Half a million Vietnamese - the precursors of Iraqis - had already been killed. President Lyndon Johnson, another regular guy from Texas, was not going to "negotiate with terrorists".
Vietnam was being destroyed with napalm and Agent Orange. Laos had been bombed for three years without the US Congress even knowing about it (during the administration of Richard Nixon, the victim would be Cambodia). By the Summer of Love, young people everywhere in the affluent West - and all around universities in the satellite global South - already knew the Vietnam War was no less than undiluted state-sponsored terror.
Muhammad Ali refused the draft - joining the throngs of "hell, no, we won't go". No one could possibly come up with a sound reason for shooting unknown Asians in far-off jungles (as if there is a good reason for shooting unknown Arabs in far-off deserts). The Vietcong were regarded as true freedom fighters (as are Sunni or Shi'ite Iraqi nationalists today).
Hippies and blacks were uniting against the Man (the white, conservative system) - but unfortunately there was not a lot of communal action, as blacks increasingly started feeling themselves members of a separate nation led by Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Stokely Carmichael. The year 1967 in San Francisco, London and Amsterdam was not exactly multi-racial: it was in essence a white phenomenon.
But politics did cross culture. Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertrand Russell became the executive and honorary presidents of a war-crimes tribunal set up in Sweden to try the US government for its crimes in Vietnam, including dropping more bombs than in the entire World War II, unleashing chemical poisoning and herding more than 8 million peasants into barbed-wire gulags. The tribunal had two sessions - in May and then in November 1967. In his speech, read by his American secretary, Bertrand Russell, in pure beat/countercultural mode, said:
Never in Western civilization had a war been stopped by public pressure - in fact, the pressure of a whole generation - like the Vietnam War. Then there was a book - The City in History by Lewis Mumford, in which the Pentagon is described as an ancient malignant structure that has to be destroyed to ensure a peaceful world. Magic realism met political theater. Why not try to exorcise and levitate the Pentagon?
Abbie Hoffman dropped in to visit the malignant structure, measured it, got arrested - but also got a lot of free publicity. The happening took place on October 21, 1967. Norman Mailer, who immortalized 1967 in Armies of the Night, reflected on how totalitarianism breeds apathy: there was no confrontation at the gates of the Pentagon because the Man had channeled the protesters - a mix of new yippies and ex-hippies, dressed from native American to all shades Eastern - toward an empty parking lot. But the ceremony proceeded. Ed Sanders of The Fugs chanted a magical sort of mantra - to the sound of bells, cymbals, drums and brass.
In the name of the generative power of Priapus, in the name of totality, we call upon the demons of the Pentagon to rid themselves of the cancerous rumors of the war generals, all the secretaries and soldiers who don't know what they're doing, all the intrigue, bureaucracy and hatred, all the spewing coupled with a prostate cancer in the deathbed. Every Pentagon general lying alone at night with a tortured psyche and an image of death in his brain, every general lying alone, every general lying alone. Out Demons, out, Out Demons, out.
The times they-are-a-changin' ... not.
So where are the Bertrand Russell-style tribunals now? Where are the civic consciousness and the responsibility toward history of bloated pop stars, financial-system moguls and celebrities hawking their own line of clothing? Now more than ever, a triumph of the imagination is needed. The only way to stop the insanity of the Iraq - and soon Iran - war is through total, visceral mobilization of US public opinion.
Only mega-successful levitation would force the Pentagon to get rid of its must-list of four "enduring bases" (whatever the costs) in Iraq: al-Asad Air Base in Anbar province; sprawling Balad Air Base, with attached Camp Anaconda in the Sunni belt; Tallil Air Base in the south; and Camp Qayyaragh near Irbil, Kurdistan. And we're not even talking of the three Baghdad bases - Camp Victory (adjacent to Baghdad, formerly Saddam Hussein International Airport); Camp Taji (25 kilometers north); and of course the 10-square-kilometer, hit-every-day-by-mortars Green Zone, which is a base in itself containing the Vatican-sized, 40-hectare, biggest embassy in the world.
Both the White House and the Pentagon have just confirmed on the record what every distressed observer of the Iraq tragedy already knew: this is naked Empire on steroids, aiming at securing control over Iraq's oil wealth and establishing permanent bases to control the Pentagon-denominated "arc of instability" from the Middle East to Central Asia.
Two weeks ago, Pentagon supremo Robert Gates stressed the "Korea model" and the US bent on securing a "long and enduring presence" in Iraq. And then White House spokesman Tony Snow reconfirmed that this is what President George W Bush wants and needs to fight "the larger war on terror".
Blowback is a given: more and more Shi'ites will actively support the Sunni Arab, Iraqi nationalist guerrillas, and they may be supported in their cause by Iranian Shi'ites as well. Pentagon desperation - or cunning - is evident in the fact there are no more holds barred now to divide Sunni and Shi'ite to project an appearance of ruling.
The Bush administration and its neo-con advisers' latest not-so-covert plan is to convince US public opinion of a nebulous Iranian government-Iraqi guerrilla connection - in plain English, another pre-packaged lie (echoes of Vietnam, echoes of Iraq). This carefully manufactured lie establishes the precious casus belli to bomb Iran. Call it Bombing Iran as an Extension of Destroying Iraq.
Any ludicrous disinformation trick in the book goes - such as Dick Cheney and National Security Council supremo Stephen Hadley accusing Iran of developing a new Shahab-3 missile capable of reaching more than 2,500km and striking Rome. In a sane world, the proposition of US anti-missile shields in Eastern Europe to "protect" the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from Iranian missiles would be dismissed as a (mediocre) exercise in black humor. What is actually a fact is Russia's new multi-warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of smashing any missile defense known to man, plus new cruise missiles that President Vladimir Putin will have to point toward Western Europe if the Pentagon keeps on treating Russia as a delinquent kid.
Power to the people
Forty years after the levitation of the Pentagon, there's no "democracy" to speak of anywhere. This is a plutocratic world. There's no formidable push to change the world for the better anywhere - but there are already rumblings of repressed anger from all corners of the global South, capable of exploding like a thousand volcanoes.
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek evaluates how hard it is today to think of a credible alternative to the current system: "Thanks to all these Hollywood movies and the catastrophic scenarios depicted by ecologists, it is easier today to imagine a total catastrophe destroying all life on Earth than a radical change in social life. In sum, an asteroid touches the Earth, but capitalism survives."
In 1967, the Pentagon did not engage in liftoff. It did not turn pink. But the 1967 levitation ceremony at least gave the world the indelible poetic metaphor of a rose down the barrel of a M16 - and the flowers dropping from the helmets of trembling 21-year-old soldiers. The Pentagon was humbled, anyway. It was - at least metaphorically - levitated. And the US - losing any intellectual support from its elites - started losing the war on Southeast Asians for good. It was a triumph of the human imagination over heavy-metal greed.
Can US public opinion - or at least the iPod generation - muster the will, the commitment and the courage to do it all over again?
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
"I read the news today oh boy." - The Beatles, A Day in the Life, 1967.
"The only enemy of Iraq is the occupation." - Muqtada al-Sadr, 2007.
Forty years ago down in sunny Monterey, California, an ultra-cool black cat from Seattle named James Marshall Hendrix set the world on fire. "Respect" by Aretha Franklin (written by Otis Redding) was the No 1 hit single in the US (to be replaced, a month later, by "Light My Fire" by The Doors). Hendrix and Otis in Monterey merged into the Summer of Love - the apotheosis of Make Love Not War, vinyl treasures and Indian mottoes dressed in caftans and granny dresses.
Already in the spring of 1967 a stirring wave of counterculture fusion between London and San Francisco was irresistible. Dismissed Harvard sage Tim Leary ordered everyone to "turn on, tune in, drop out" (The Beatles, already in 1966, were quoting from Leary's version of The Tibetan Book of the Dead - "turn off your minds, relax and float downstream").
While the radically politicized were yelling "Kill the pigs!" the Beatles were inventing whole new groovy sounds in the studio and beat poet Allen Ginsberg was singing the praise of Bob Dylan's victims in "Chimes of Freedom" - and assisting LSD experiments unsupervised by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The irretrievably fragmented consciousness of the whole Western world was unifying, at least in the hearts and minds of young people everywhere, even for a fleeting moment in time. It was a river flowing out of the postwar consumer boom, from jazz to the beats to rebels without a cause to Dylan to The Beatles.
The Grateful Dead loved Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" (from 1955) so much they set it to music. The doors of perception were being cleansed by what Ginsberg defined as "the divine herbs and greases" and by LSD - the crucial catalyst.
Yippie icon Abbie Hoffman, who defined The Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as "Beethoven coming to the supermarket", later recalled that "at the height of the American Empire we had all the bombs, all the cops in the world - and it was all ours - the Cadillacs, the two-car garages, the split-level ranch houses".
But then young people, spiritually unfulfilled, started to think there might be something else. Flower power met the East, met unbounded optimism - before, in 1968, reality came crashing down and despair set in.
From 1967 to 2007
Today Leary's motto would be "turn off, tune out, drop dead". At the decline of American Empire, young people have all the bombs, all the post-September 11, 2001, cops in the world - and it is not theirs. They have Hummers, holidays in Cambodia, neo-Byzantine condos. But then, spiritually unfulfilled even though they have been to all the five-star healing spas in the world, they still think there is nothing else - apart from a shot at TV celebrity.
Nobody gives a damn: the best lack all conviction (and take refugee in their iPods) while the worst simply lord over all, unchallenged. In overwhelmingly dumbed-down global medialand, airhead heiress Paris Hilton is the Queen of News, governments are no more than "political commissars of economic power", in the formulation of Portuguese Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, and the Bush administration/industrial-military complex merrily fight proxy wars in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Somalia.
History does repeat itself - as farce. By early 1967, the US had half a million troops in Vietnam. Massacres of civilians and torture - the precursors of Abu Ghraib - were routine. Half a million Vietnamese - the precursors of Iraqis - had already been killed. President Lyndon Johnson, another regular guy from Texas, was not going to "negotiate with terrorists".
Vietnam was being destroyed with napalm and Agent Orange. Laos had been bombed for three years without the US Congress even knowing about it (during the administration of Richard Nixon, the victim would be Cambodia). By the Summer of Love, young people everywhere in the affluent West - and all around universities in the satellite global South - already knew the Vietnam War was no less than undiluted state-sponsored terror.
Muhammad Ali refused the draft - joining the throngs of "hell, no, we won't go". No one could possibly come up with a sound reason for shooting unknown Asians in far-off jungles (as if there is a good reason for shooting unknown Arabs in far-off deserts). The Vietcong were regarded as true freedom fighters (as are Sunni or Shi'ite Iraqi nationalists today).
Hippies and blacks were uniting against the Man (the white, conservative system) - but unfortunately there was not a lot of communal action, as blacks increasingly started feeling themselves members of a separate nation led by Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Stokely Carmichael. The year 1967 in San Francisco, London and Amsterdam was not exactly multi-racial: it was in essence a white phenomenon.
But politics did cross culture. Jean-Paul Sartre and Bertrand Russell became the executive and honorary presidents of a war-crimes tribunal set up in Sweden to try the US government for its crimes in Vietnam, including dropping more bombs than in the entire World War II, unleashing chemical poisoning and herding more than 8 million peasants into barbed-wire gulags. The tribunal had two sessions - in May and then in November 1967. In his speech, read by his American secretary, Bertrand Russell, in pure beat/countercultural mode, said:
We have no armies and no gallows. We lack power, even
the power of mass communication. It is overdue that those
without power sit in judgement over those who have it ...
We are responsible before history.
Never in Western civilization had a war been stopped by public pressure - in fact, the pressure of a whole generation - like the Vietnam War. Then there was a book - The City in History by Lewis Mumford, in which the Pentagon is described as an ancient malignant structure that has to be destroyed to ensure a peaceful world. Magic realism met political theater. Why not try to exorcise and levitate the Pentagon?
Abbie Hoffman dropped in to visit the malignant structure, measured it, got arrested - but also got a lot of free publicity. The happening took place on October 21, 1967. Norman Mailer, who immortalized 1967 in Armies of the Night, reflected on how totalitarianism breeds apathy: there was no confrontation at the gates of the Pentagon because the Man had channeled the protesters - a mix of new yippies and ex-hippies, dressed from native American to all shades Eastern - toward an empty parking lot. But the ceremony proceeded. Ed Sanders of The Fugs chanted a magical sort of mantra - to the sound of bells, cymbals, drums and brass.
In the name of the generative power of Priapus, in the name of totality, we call upon the demons of the Pentagon to rid themselves of the cancerous rumors of the war generals, all the secretaries and soldiers who don't know what they're doing, all the intrigue, bureaucracy and hatred, all the spewing coupled with a prostate cancer in the deathbed. Every Pentagon general lying alone at night with a tortured psyche and an image of death in his brain, every general lying alone, every general lying alone. Out Demons, out, Out Demons, out.
The times they-are-a-changin' ... not.
So where are the Bertrand Russell-style tribunals now? Where are the civic consciousness and the responsibility toward history of bloated pop stars, financial-system moguls and celebrities hawking their own line of clothing? Now more than ever, a triumph of the imagination is needed. The only way to stop the insanity of the Iraq - and soon Iran - war is through total, visceral mobilization of US public opinion.
Only mega-successful levitation would force the Pentagon to get rid of its must-list of four "enduring bases" (whatever the costs) in Iraq: al-Asad Air Base in Anbar province; sprawling Balad Air Base, with attached Camp Anaconda in the Sunni belt; Tallil Air Base in the south; and Camp Qayyaragh near Irbil, Kurdistan. And we're not even talking of the three Baghdad bases - Camp Victory (adjacent to Baghdad, formerly Saddam Hussein International Airport); Camp Taji (25 kilometers north); and of course the 10-square-kilometer, hit-every-day-by-mortars Green Zone, which is a base in itself containing the Vatican-sized, 40-hectare, biggest embassy in the world.
Both the White House and the Pentagon have just confirmed on the record what every distressed observer of the Iraq tragedy already knew: this is naked Empire on steroids, aiming at securing control over Iraq's oil wealth and establishing permanent bases to control the Pentagon-denominated "arc of instability" from the Middle East to Central Asia.
Two weeks ago, Pentagon supremo Robert Gates stressed the "Korea model" and the US bent on securing a "long and enduring presence" in Iraq. And then White House spokesman Tony Snow reconfirmed that this is what President George W Bush wants and needs to fight "the larger war on terror".
Blowback is a given: more and more Shi'ites will actively support the Sunni Arab, Iraqi nationalist guerrillas, and they may be supported in their cause by Iranian Shi'ites as well. Pentagon desperation - or cunning - is evident in the fact there are no more holds barred now to divide Sunni and Shi'ite to project an appearance of ruling.
The Bush administration and its neo-con advisers' latest not-so-covert plan is to convince US public opinion of a nebulous Iranian government-Iraqi guerrilla connection - in plain English, another pre-packaged lie (echoes of Vietnam, echoes of Iraq). This carefully manufactured lie establishes the precious casus belli to bomb Iran. Call it Bombing Iran as an Extension of Destroying Iraq.
Any ludicrous disinformation trick in the book goes - such as Dick Cheney and National Security Council supremo Stephen Hadley accusing Iran of developing a new Shahab-3 missile capable of reaching more than 2,500km and striking Rome. In a sane world, the proposition of US anti-missile shields in Eastern Europe to "protect" the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from Iranian missiles would be dismissed as a (mediocre) exercise in black humor. What is actually a fact is Russia's new multi-warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles, capable of smashing any missile defense known to man, plus new cruise missiles that President Vladimir Putin will have to point toward Western Europe if the Pentagon keeps on treating Russia as a delinquent kid.
Power to the people
Forty years after the levitation of the Pentagon, there's no "democracy" to speak of anywhere. This is a plutocratic world. There's no formidable push to change the world for the better anywhere - but there are already rumblings of repressed anger from all corners of the global South, capable of exploding like a thousand volcanoes.
Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek evaluates how hard it is today to think of a credible alternative to the current system: "Thanks to all these Hollywood movies and the catastrophic scenarios depicted by ecologists, it is easier today to imagine a total catastrophe destroying all life on Earth than a radical change in social life. In sum, an asteroid touches the Earth, but capitalism survives."
In 1967, the Pentagon did not engage in liftoff. It did not turn pink. But the 1967 levitation ceremony at least gave the world the indelible poetic metaphor of a rose down the barrel of a M16 - and the flowers dropping from the helmets of trembling 21-year-old soldiers. The Pentagon was humbled, anyway. It was - at least metaphorically - levitated. And the US - losing any intellectual support from its elites - started losing the war on Southeast Asians for good. It was a triumph of the human imagination over heavy-metal greed.
Can US public opinion - or at least the iPod generation - muster the will, the commitment and the courage to do it all over again?
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Robert Fisk: Welcome to 'Palestine'
How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.
Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.
No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over ?
And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".
I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people?
All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand province).
We love Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose torturers have not yet finished with the Muslim Brotherhood politicians recently arrested outside Cairo, whose presidency received the warm support of Mrs - yes Mrs - George W Bush - and whose succession will almost certainly pass to his son, Gamal.
We adore Muammar Gaddafi, the crazed dictator of Libya whose werewolves have murdered his opponents abroad, whose plot to murder King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia preceded Tony Blair's recent visit to Tripoli - Colonel Gaddafi, it should be remembered, was called a "statesman" by Jack Straw for abandoning his non-existent nuclear ambitions - and whose "democracy" is perfectly acceptable to us because he is on our side in the "war on terror".
Yes, and we love King Abdullah's unconstitutional monarchy in Jordan, and all the princes and emirs of the Gulf, especially those who are paid such vast bribes by our arms companies that even Scotland Yard has to close down its investigations on the orders of our prime minister - and yes, I can indeed see why he doesn't like The Independent's coverage of what he quaintly calls "the Middle East". If only the Arabs - and the Iranians - would support our kings and shahs and princes whose sons and daughters are educated at Oxford and Harvard, how much easier the "Middle East" would be to control.
For that is what it is about - control - and that is why we hold out, and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now Gaza belongs to Hamas, what will our own elected leaders do? Will our pontificators in the EU, the UN, Washington and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched, ungrateful people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands) or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of Palestine (Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring the elected, militarily successful Hamas in Gaza?
It's easy, of course, to call down a curse on both their houses. But that's what we say about the whole Middle East. If only Bashar al-Assad wasn't President of Syria (heaven knows what the alternative would be) or if the cracked President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wasn't in control of Iran (even if he doesn't actually know one end of a nuclear missile from the other).
If only Lebanon was a home-grown democracy like our own little back-lawn countries - Belgium, for example, or Luxembourg. But no, those pesky Middle Easterners vote for the wrong people, support the wrong people, love the wrong people, don't behave like us civilised Westerners.
So what will we do? Support the reoccupation of Gaza perhaps? Certainly we will not criticise Israel. And we shall go on giving our affection to the kings and princes and unlovely presidents of the Middle East until the whole place blows up in our faces and then we shall say - as we are already saying of the Iraqis - that they don't deserve our sacrifice and our love.
How do we deal with a coup d'état by an elected government?
Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.
No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over ?
And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".
I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people?
All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand province).
We love Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose torturers have not yet finished with the Muslim Brotherhood politicians recently arrested outside Cairo, whose presidency received the warm support of Mrs - yes Mrs - George W Bush - and whose succession will almost certainly pass to his son, Gamal.
We adore Muammar Gaddafi, the crazed dictator of Libya whose werewolves have murdered his opponents abroad, whose plot to murder King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia preceded Tony Blair's recent visit to Tripoli - Colonel Gaddafi, it should be remembered, was called a "statesman" by Jack Straw for abandoning his non-existent nuclear ambitions - and whose "democracy" is perfectly acceptable to us because he is on our side in the "war on terror".
Yes, and we love King Abdullah's unconstitutional monarchy in Jordan, and all the princes and emirs of the Gulf, especially those who are paid such vast bribes by our arms companies that even Scotland Yard has to close down its investigations on the orders of our prime minister - and yes, I can indeed see why he doesn't like The Independent's coverage of what he quaintly calls "the Middle East". If only the Arabs - and the Iranians - would support our kings and shahs and princes whose sons and daughters are educated at Oxford and Harvard, how much easier the "Middle East" would be to control.
For that is what it is about - control - and that is why we hold out, and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now Gaza belongs to Hamas, what will our own elected leaders do? Will our pontificators in the EU, the UN, Washington and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched, ungrateful people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands) or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of Palestine (Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring the elected, militarily successful Hamas in Gaza?
It's easy, of course, to call down a curse on both their houses. But that's what we say about the whole Middle East. If only Bashar al-Assad wasn't President of Syria (heaven knows what the alternative would be) or if the cracked President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wasn't in control of Iran (even if he doesn't actually know one end of a nuclear missile from the other).
If only Lebanon was a home-grown democracy like our own little back-lawn countries - Belgium, for example, or Luxembourg. But no, those pesky Middle Easterners vote for the wrong people, support the wrong people, love the wrong people, don't behave like us civilised Westerners.
So what will we do? Support the reoccupation of Gaza perhaps? Certainly we will not criticise Israel. And we shall go on giving our affection to the kings and princes and unlovely presidents of the Middle East until the whole place blows up in our faces and then we shall say - as we are already saying of the Iraqis - that they don't deserve our sacrifice and our love.
How do we deal with a coup d'état by an elected government?
Chavez and RCTV - Tilting the Balance against 'The Bad Guy'
As we have previously reported* Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has long been demonised by the Western media as a "leftist firebrand" (The Independent), "Venezuela's demagogue" (Washington Post), and as a "militaristic strongman" (Financial Times).
No surprise, then, that Chavez's decision not to renew the licence of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) has elicited outrage across Britain and America. In an article titled, '"He is losing the country's respect",' Catherine Philp wrote in the Times:
"The move has fuelled accusations that Mr Chavez is moving towards an increasingly authoritarian rule and is quashing dissent against his 'socialist revolution'." (Philp, '"He is losing the country's respect",' The Times, May 29, 2007)
The Washington Post described the action as an attempt to silence opponents, supplying further "proof" that Chávez is a "dictator". (FAIR, Media Advisory, 'Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs - Distorting the Venezuelan media story,' May 25, 2007; click here)
One might think from these comments that Chavez is indeed behaving like a stereotypical "strongman". So why is he refusing to renew the licence?
According to CNN reporter TJ Holmes the motive lies in the fact that RCTV "has been critical of his government" (Ibid). The Associated Press also stressed that RCTV "has been critical of Chávez". (Ibid) A Guardian headline carried the same emphasis: "Chavez silences critical TV station - and robs the people of their soaps." (Rory Carroll, The Guardian, May 23, 2007) A Financial Times news report was titled: "Chavez pulls plug on dissenting TV station." (Benedict Mander, Financial Times, May 9, 2007)
These and similar claims have given the impression that Chavez is simply crushing dissent. An Independent leader came closer to the truth:
"President Chavez has long detested RCTV, accusing it of helping to incite a coup against him in 2002." (Leader, 'A show of intolerance,' The Independent, May 30, 2007)
As this suggests, the problem with RCTV does not revolve around political differences with Chavez; it revolves around RCTV's attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela.
A consistent theme of media reporting has been to ascribe this "accusation" to Chavez personally. Thus the Independent wrote of the "station, which Mr Chavez believes was plotting against him". ('Anti-Chavez protesters clash with police,' The Independent, May 29, 2007)
The Times reported: "President Chavez withdrew its licence, accusing the network of 'coup plotting'". (Philp, op. cit)
Likewise the Financial Times: "Chavez has repeatedly alleged that it supported the [2002] coup..." (Richard Lapper, 'TV channel axed in latest Chavez drama,' Financial Times, May 26, 2007)
And the BBC: "He [Chavez] says they were involved in a coup that nearly toppled him five years ago." (James Ingham, 'Venezuelans protest over TV issue,' BBC Online, May 27, 2007; click here)
These media reports thus all distort the truth by attributing a mere "claim" to Chavez, someone they have all previously demonised as an authoritarian "strongman". This earlier demonisation acts to undermine the credibility of the charge against RCTV in readers' minds, so reinforcing the bias of ostensibly balanced reporting against the Venezuelan government. Robert McChesney and Mark Weisbrot explain:
"This is a common means of distorting the news: a fact is reported as accusation, and then attributed to a source that the press has done everything to discredit." (McChesney and Weisbrot, 'Venezuela and the Media: Fact and Fiction,' Common Dreams, June 1, 2007; click here)
Consider, for example, that the BBC's Ben Brown said of Saddam Hussein:
"He claims UN sanctions have reduced many of his citizens to near starvation - pictures like these [of a malnourished baby and despairing mother] have been a powerful propaganda weapon for Saddam, which he'll now have to give up." (Brown, BBC News, June 20, 1996)
And ITN's John Draper:
"The idea now is targeted or 'smart' sanctions to help ordinary people while at the same time preventing the Iraqi leader from blaming the West for the hardships they're suffering." (Draper, ITN, 22:30 News, February 20, 2001)
And the Observer:
"The Iraqi dictator says his country's children are dying in their thousands because of the West's embargoes." (John Sweeney, 'How Saddam "staged" fake baby funerals,' The Observer, June 23, 2002)
Viewed from the perspective of honest reporting, the opinion of Saddam Hussein - a thoroughly demonised and non-credible source - was irrelevant to an analysis of the effects of sanctions. A range of very credible reports from the United Nations, aid agencies and human rights groups all blamed mass death in Iraq on sanctions. These were the views that mattered for anyone who cared about the truth.
Likewise, it is a simple fact, not a claim, that RCTV was deeply complicit in the 2002 military coup - and the views of the West's Venezuelan bete noire should be placed front and centre only if we are content for media demonisation to undermine this truth.
A Climate Of Transition - Overthrowing Chavez
In a rare example of media honesty, the Los Angeles Times reported last month that RCTV had initially been focused on providing entertainment:
"But after Chavez was elected president in 1998, RCTV shifted to another endeavour: ousting a democratically elected leader from office." (Bart Jones, 'Hugo Chavez versus RCTV - Venezuela's oldest private TV network played a major role in a failed 2002 coup,' Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2007; click here)
Controlled by members of the country's ruling elite, including station chief Marcel Granier, the channel saw Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" in defence of Venezuela's poor as a threat to established privilege and wealth.
Thus, for two days before the April 11, 2002 coup, RCTV cancelled regular programming and instead ran constant coverage of a general strike aimed at ousting Chavez. A stream of commentators delivered fierce criticism of the president with no response allowed from the government. RCTV also ran non-stop adverts encouraging people to attend an April 11 march aimed at toppling the government and broadcast blanket coverage of the event. When the march ended in violence, RCTV ran manipulated video footage falsely blaming Chavez supporters for the many deaths and injuries.
On the same day, RCTV allowed leading coup plotter Carlos Ortega to call for demonstrators to march on the presidential palace. After the overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a journalist: "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you." Another grateful leader remarked: "I must thank Venevisión and RCTV." (Fair, op. cit)
RCTV news director Andres Izarra later testified at National Assembly hearings on the coup attempt that he had received clear orders from superiors at the station:
"Zero pro-Chavez, nothing related to Chavez or his supporters... The idea was to create a climate of transition and to start to promote the dawn of a new country." (Bart Jones, op. cit)
While the streets of Caracas erupted with public outrage against the coup, RCTV turned a blind eye and showed soap operas, cartoons and old movies instead.
On April 13, 2002, RCTV's Marcel Granier and other media moguls met in the Miraflores palace to offer their support to the country's new dictator, Pedro Carmona who, at a stroke, demolished Venezuela's democratic institutions - eliminating the Supreme Court, the National Assembly and the Constitution.
Finally, when Chávez returned to power (April 13, 2002), the commercial stations again refused to cover the news.
In a leader titled, 'Chavez clampdown: Closing TV station is part of pattern of authoritarianism,' the Financial Times observed last month:
"The closure limits freedom of expression and reflects the arbitrary and authoritarian approach that has come to characterise Mr Chavez's government. In a region where the media have been becoming more open in recent years after the dark period of military rule in the 1970s and 1980s, this is a backward and worrying step." (Leader, Financial Times, May 29, 2007)
The irony is bitter indeed. It was a "backward and worrying step" of exactly this kind that RCTV attempted to impose on Venezuela by means of a military coup. As the coup appeared to have succeeded in April 2002, the Financial Times helped create "a climate of transition" for British readers:
"But while the Chavez administration was hobbled by inefficiency, a lack of support across class lines and an inability to tackle the country's economic problems and rising crime rate, it was Mr Chavez's overbearing and authoritarian style that analysts said transformed the public's resigned acceptance of an ineffectual government into an active desire among a majority to see it removed." (Richard Lapper and Andy Webb-Vidal, 'Militaristic president falls victim to military revolt,' Financial Times, April 13, 2002)
As for the Venezuelan media's involvement in this "backward and worrying step", the Financial Times had no complaints, other than to comment:
"An example of Mr Chavez's militaristic style has been his confrontational relationship with the local media, particularly television. On Tuesday, when the business sector and union confederation began what was then a 24-hour strike, the state began interrupting broadcasts that showed the success of the work stoppage with turgid interviews with ministers and old video footage of oil wells operating normally." (Andy Webb-Vidal, 'Chavez tests limits of nation's patience,' Financial Times, April 12, 2002)
The liberal media - often considered great bastions of democracy and honest reporting - queued up to present the overthrow of Chavez as an inevitable response to his alienating authoritarianism and multiple failures. With Chavez apparently gone for good, Alex Bellos wrote in the Guardian of "the leftwing firebrand":
"Mr Chavez was elected in 1998 on a wave of popular support and quickly established a reputation as Latin America's most charismatic leader. But his popularity plummeted as he antagonised almost every sector of society and failed to improve the lot of the poor."
Bellos concluded:
"Mr Chavez polarised the country by his attacks on the media and Roman Catholic church leaders, his refusal to consult with business chiefs and his failed attempt to assert control on the unions. The US accused his government of provoking the crisis by ordering its supporters to fire on peaceful demonstrators." (Alex Bellos, 'Ousted Chavez detained by army,' The Guardian, April 13, 2002)
In fact it turned out that the US had conspired with the coup plotters to overthrow the government. Likewise, Chavez supporters had been +defending+ themselves against sniper attack. The Venezuelan media had misrepresented film footage to present the required version of events.
In similar vein, the Independent wrote of Chavez:
"His authoritarian style, his friendship with Fidel Castro and his inability to reverse Venezuela's 20-year slide into poverty and corruption, took their toll on his popularity ratings... Convinced he was embarked on a 'Bolivarian revolution', inspired by the ideals of his hero, independence leader Simon Bolivar, Mr Chavez was messianic in his fervour. He alienated every organised group from the former leftist guerrillas of Bandera Roja to the employers' federation, Fedecamaras." (Phil Gunson, 'Deposed Chavez to be exiled as anti-coup rebels speak out,' The Independent on Sunday, April 14, 2002)
And The Observer weighed in:
"In almost four years in office Chavez alienated most sections of Venezuelan society and was fast becoming as much of an irritant to the US as Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader."
The conclusion:
"His popularity waned in recent months as he became more autocratic, pushing through constitutional changes and alienating former supporters. He exasperated many Venezuelans by implementing economic policies by decree, and accused the news media and Roman Catholic leaders of conspiring to overthrow him." (Faisal Islam, 'Venezuelan civil war fears as ousted president leaves,' The Observer, April 14, 2002)
Even after days of non-stop media broadcasts had succeeded in working for the overthrow of Chavez, for this Observer journalist talk of a media conspiracy remained merely Chavez's accusation.
The opinions of these ostensibly well-informed, highly-trained professional journalists were instantly rubbished by the vast popular uprising that restored Chavez to power, and in the longer term by Chavez's eleven election wins in nine years. In truth the coup was a class-based revolt by and for privileged elites, led by Pedro Carmona who, as the BBC reported, was "head of Venezuela's biggest business organisation, Fedecamaras". Carmona, it was, who "marshalled business and trade union opposition to Mr. Chavez's economic policies". ('Profile: Pedro Carmona,' BBC Online, May 27, 2002; click here)
Genuine Attacks On Free Speech That Go Unnoticed
A May 30 Independent leader declared:
"RCTV was the sole opposition-aligned station with a national reach. Now it has gone. All governments need media opposition to keep them honest. But it appears that President Chavez does not have much time for this concept." (Leader, 'A show of intolerance,' The Independent, May 30, 2007)
Refusing to renew the licence of a TV channel complicit in the demolition of democracy described above is somehow "a show of intolerance" for the Independent. In fact RCTV has not "gone" - it is being allowed to continue operating by satellite and cable.
The Venezuela Information Centre (VIC) notes:
"In Britain, TV and radio must adhere to the Broadcasting Code which embodies objectives that Parliament set down in the Communications Act of 2003. This states that 'Material likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder must not be included in television or radio services' and that 'Broadcasters must use their best endeavours so as not to broadcast material that could endanger lives.' RCTV's role in the coup would have clearly violated these laws." ('The truth about RCTV - VIC briefing,' click here)
FAIR also makes the obvious point: "Were a similar event to happen in the U.S., and TV journalists and executives were caught conspiring with coup plotters, it's doubtful they would stay out of jail, let alone be allowed to continue to run television stations, as they have in Venezuela." (FAIR, op. cit)
The BBC reported: "The decision to close RCTV has received international condemnation, including from the EU, press freedom groups, Chile and the US, which urged Mr Chavez to reverse the closure." ('Venezuela head in new TV warning,' BBC Online, May 29, 2007; click here)
Almost unmentioned anywhere in the media are the statements of support made by a number of countries and leaders, such as Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil. The BBC report cited RCTV's general manager Marcel Granier who described the "closure" as "abusive" and "arbitrary" - not a word was written of Granier's role in the 2002 coup.
In a letter published in the Guardian (May 26, 2007), Gordon Hutchinson of VIC noted that despite claims made by opponents of Chavez, there is no censorship in Venezuela, where 95% of the media is fiercely opposed to the government. This includes five privately owned TV channels controlling 90% of the market. All of the country's 118 newspaper companies, both regional and national, are held in private hands, as are 706 out of 709 radio stations.
While the British and American press focus intensely on the alleged crushing of free speech in Venezuela, little is written about comparable actions elsewhere. A report on 21 countries, including the US and in Europe, by J. David Carracedo published in the magazine Diagonal, found that there have been at least 236 closures, revocations, and non-renewals of radio and TV licences. (See: VIC, 'The truth about RCTV,' op. cit)
There is also little media interest in genuine attacks on media freedom elsewhere in Latin America.
In Honduras, beginning May 28, 2007, President Manuel Zelaya ordered all TV and radio stations to broadcast daily one-hour prime-time programmes for ten days to counteract what he called "misinformation" on his administration provided by the press. (Ibid)
The BBC reported Zelaya's actions on May 25 (Will Grant, 'Honduras TV gets government order'; click here) A June 11 media database search found that in the previous two weeks the US press had mentioned Zelaya's actions in four articles - the highest-profile outlet being the Miami Herald. Over the same period, the US press had mentioned the words "Chavez" and "RCTV" in 207 articles. The British press had not mentioned Zelaya's actions at all - Chavez and RCTV had been mentioned in 23 articles.
In Colombia, President Álvaro Uribe was asked if he would have refused to renew RCTV's licence. Uribe replied: "I would not do that to anybody."
The Inter Press Service News Agency commented wryly:
"But the rightwing Uribe cannot shut down opposition TV stations for the simple reason that there aren't any." (Diana Cariboni, 'Easy to See the Speck in the Other's Eye,' May 30, 2007; click here)
In October 2004, Uribe closed the public Instituto de Radio y Televisión (Inravisión). The Colombian government argued that Inravisión was "inefficient." But the underlying problem "was the strength of the union" of Inravisión employees, according to Milciades Vizcaíno, a sociologist who worked for nearly 27 years in educational programming for the channel. (Ibid)
In Nicaragua in 2002, La Poderosa radio station lost its licence and had its equipment seized without any legal proceedings by the Enrique Bolaños administration. La Poderosa was an outspoken critic of the government.
These and many other attacks on free speech across the region do not make the front pages of the British and American press. As usual, alleged concerns for democracy and human rights mask deeper priorities: protecting governments that toe the line dictated by Western power, and undermining those that do not.
SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you decide to write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Ask the following journalists why, for example, they cite Chavez as the source for a mere "claim" that RCTV was deeply involved in the military coup to overthrow Chavez. Why do they not state RCTV's involvement in the coup as an undeniable fact?
Write to Catherine Philp
Email: catherine.philp@thetimes.co.uk
Write to Richard Lapper at the Financial Times
Email: richard.lapper@ft.com
Write to James Ingham at BBC
Email: james.ingham@bbc.co.uk
Write to Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Write to Simon Kelner, Independent editor
Email: s.kelner@independent.co.uk
Please send a copy of your emails to us
Email: editor@medialens.org
This media alert will shortly be archived here:
www.medialens.org/alerts/07/070613_Chavez_and_rctv.php
*
"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 nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
No surprise, then, that Chavez's decision not to renew the licence of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV) has elicited outrage across Britain and America. In an article titled, '"He is losing the country's respect",' Catherine Philp wrote in the Times:
"The move has fuelled accusations that Mr Chavez is moving towards an increasingly authoritarian rule and is quashing dissent against his 'socialist revolution'." (Philp, '"He is losing the country's respect",' The Times, May 29, 2007)
The Washington Post described the action as an attempt to silence opponents, supplying further "proof" that Chávez is a "dictator". (FAIR, Media Advisory, 'Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs - Distorting the Venezuelan media story,' May 25, 2007; click here)
One might think from these comments that Chavez is indeed behaving like a stereotypical "strongman". So why is he refusing to renew the licence?
According to CNN reporter TJ Holmes the motive lies in the fact that RCTV "has been critical of his government" (Ibid). The Associated Press also stressed that RCTV "has been critical of Chávez". (Ibid) A Guardian headline carried the same emphasis: "Chavez silences critical TV station - and robs the people of their soaps." (Rory Carroll, The Guardian, May 23, 2007) A Financial Times news report was titled: "Chavez pulls plug on dissenting TV station." (Benedict Mander, Financial Times, May 9, 2007)
These and similar claims have given the impression that Chavez is simply crushing dissent. An Independent leader came closer to the truth:
"President Chavez has long detested RCTV, accusing it of helping to incite a coup against him in 2002." (Leader, 'A show of intolerance,' The Independent, May 30, 2007)
As this suggests, the problem with RCTV does not revolve around political differences with Chavez; it revolves around RCTV's attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela.
A consistent theme of media reporting has been to ascribe this "accusation" to Chavez personally. Thus the Independent wrote of the "station, which Mr Chavez believes was plotting against him". ('Anti-Chavez protesters clash with police,' The Independent, May 29, 2007)
The Times reported: "President Chavez withdrew its licence, accusing the network of 'coup plotting'". (Philp, op. cit)
Likewise the Financial Times: "Chavez has repeatedly alleged that it supported the [2002] coup..." (Richard Lapper, 'TV channel axed in latest Chavez drama,' Financial Times, May 26, 2007)
And the BBC: "He [Chavez] says they were involved in a coup that nearly toppled him five years ago." (James Ingham, 'Venezuelans protest over TV issue,' BBC Online, May 27, 2007; click here)
These media reports thus all distort the truth by attributing a mere "claim" to Chavez, someone they have all previously demonised as an authoritarian "strongman". This earlier demonisation acts to undermine the credibility of the charge against RCTV in readers' minds, so reinforcing the bias of ostensibly balanced reporting against the Venezuelan government. Robert McChesney and Mark Weisbrot explain:
"This is a common means of distorting the news: a fact is reported as accusation, and then attributed to a source that the press has done everything to discredit." (McChesney and Weisbrot, 'Venezuela and the Media: Fact and Fiction,' Common Dreams, June 1, 2007; click here)
Consider, for example, that the BBC's Ben Brown said of Saddam Hussein:
"He claims UN sanctions have reduced many of his citizens to near starvation - pictures like these [of a malnourished baby and despairing mother] have been a powerful propaganda weapon for Saddam, which he'll now have to give up." (Brown, BBC News, June 20, 1996)
And ITN's John Draper:
"The idea now is targeted or 'smart' sanctions to help ordinary people while at the same time preventing the Iraqi leader from blaming the West for the hardships they're suffering." (Draper, ITN, 22:30 News, February 20, 2001)
And the Observer:
"The Iraqi dictator says his country's children are dying in their thousands because of the West's embargoes." (John Sweeney, 'How Saddam "staged" fake baby funerals,' The Observer, June 23, 2002)
Viewed from the perspective of honest reporting, the opinion of Saddam Hussein - a thoroughly demonised and non-credible source - was irrelevant to an analysis of the effects of sanctions. A range of very credible reports from the United Nations, aid agencies and human rights groups all blamed mass death in Iraq on sanctions. These were the views that mattered for anyone who cared about the truth.
Likewise, it is a simple fact, not a claim, that RCTV was deeply complicit in the 2002 military coup - and the views of the West's Venezuelan bete noire should be placed front and centre only if we are content for media demonisation to undermine this truth.
A Climate Of Transition - Overthrowing Chavez
In a rare example of media honesty, the Los Angeles Times reported last month that RCTV had initially been focused on providing entertainment:
"But after Chavez was elected president in 1998, RCTV shifted to another endeavour: ousting a democratically elected leader from office." (Bart Jones, 'Hugo Chavez versus RCTV - Venezuela's oldest private TV network played a major role in a failed 2002 coup,' Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2007; click here)
Controlled by members of the country's ruling elite, including station chief Marcel Granier, the channel saw Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution" in defence of Venezuela's poor as a threat to established privilege and wealth.
Thus, for two days before the April 11, 2002 coup, RCTV cancelled regular programming and instead ran constant coverage of a general strike aimed at ousting Chavez. A stream of commentators delivered fierce criticism of the president with no response allowed from the government. RCTV also ran non-stop adverts encouraging people to attend an April 11 march aimed at toppling the government and broadcast blanket coverage of the event. When the march ended in violence, RCTV ran manipulated video footage falsely blaming Chavez supporters for the many deaths and injuries.
On the same day, RCTV allowed leading coup plotter Carlos Ortega to call for demonstrators to march on the presidential palace. After the overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a journalist: "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you." Another grateful leader remarked: "I must thank Venevisión and RCTV." (Fair, op. cit)
RCTV news director Andres Izarra later testified at National Assembly hearings on the coup attempt that he had received clear orders from superiors at the station:
"Zero pro-Chavez, nothing related to Chavez or his supporters... The idea was to create a climate of transition and to start to promote the dawn of a new country." (Bart Jones, op. cit)
While the streets of Caracas erupted with public outrage against the coup, RCTV turned a blind eye and showed soap operas, cartoons and old movies instead.
On April 13, 2002, RCTV's Marcel Granier and other media moguls met in the Miraflores palace to offer their support to the country's new dictator, Pedro Carmona who, at a stroke, demolished Venezuela's democratic institutions - eliminating the Supreme Court, the National Assembly and the Constitution.
Finally, when Chávez returned to power (April 13, 2002), the commercial stations again refused to cover the news.
In a leader titled, 'Chavez clampdown: Closing TV station is part of pattern of authoritarianism,' the Financial Times observed last month:
"The closure limits freedom of expression and reflects the arbitrary and authoritarian approach that has come to characterise Mr Chavez's government. In a region where the media have been becoming more open in recent years after the dark period of military rule in the 1970s and 1980s, this is a backward and worrying step." (Leader, Financial Times, May 29, 2007)
The irony is bitter indeed. It was a "backward and worrying step" of exactly this kind that RCTV attempted to impose on Venezuela by means of a military coup. As the coup appeared to have succeeded in April 2002, the Financial Times helped create "a climate of transition" for British readers:
"But while the Chavez administration was hobbled by inefficiency, a lack of support across class lines and an inability to tackle the country's economic problems and rising crime rate, it was Mr Chavez's overbearing and authoritarian style that analysts said transformed the public's resigned acceptance of an ineffectual government into an active desire among a majority to see it removed." (Richard Lapper and Andy Webb-Vidal, 'Militaristic president falls victim to military revolt,' Financial Times, April 13, 2002)
As for the Venezuelan media's involvement in this "backward and worrying step", the Financial Times had no complaints, other than to comment:
"An example of Mr Chavez's militaristic style has been his confrontational relationship with the local media, particularly television. On Tuesday, when the business sector and union confederation began what was then a 24-hour strike, the state began interrupting broadcasts that showed the success of the work stoppage with turgid interviews with ministers and old video footage of oil wells operating normally." (Andy Webb-Vidal, 'Chavez tests limits of nation's patience,' Financial Times, April 12, 2002)
The liberal media - often considered great bastions of democracy and honest reporting - queued up to present the overthrow of Chavez as an inevitable response to his alienating authoritarianism and multiple failures. With Chavez apparently gone for good, Alex Bellos wrote in the Guardian of "the leftwing firebrand":
"Mr Chavez was elected in 1998 on a wave of popular support and quickly established a reputation as Latin America's most charismatic leader. But his popularity plummeted as he antagonised almost every sector of society and failed to improve the lot of the poor."
Bellos concluded:
"Mr Chavez polarised the country by his attacks on the media and Roman Catholic church leaders, his refusal to consult with business chiefs and his failed attempt to assert control on the unions. The US accused his government of provoking the crisis by ordering its supporters to fire on peaceful demonstrators." (Alex Bellos, 'Ousted Chavez detained by army,' The Guardian, April 13, 2002)
In fact it turned out that the US had conspired with the coup plotters to overthrow the government. Likewise, Chavez supporters had been +defending+ themselves against sniper attack. The Venezuelan media had misrepresented film footage to present the required version of events.
In similar vein, the Independent wrote of Chavez:
"His authoritarian style, his friendship with Fidel Castro and his inability to reverse Venezuela's 20-year slide into poverty and corruption, took their toll on his popularity ratings... Convinced he was embarked on a 'Bolivarian revolution', inspired by the ideals of his hero, independence leader Simon Bolivar, Mr Chavez was messianic in his fervour. He alienated every organised group from the former leftist guerrillas of Bandera Roja to the employers' federation, Fedecamaras." (Phil Gunson, 'Deposed Chavez to be exiled as anti-coup rebels speak out,' The Independent on Sunday, April 14, 2002)
And The Observer weighed in:
"In almost four years in office Chavez alienated most sections of Venezuelan society and was fast becoming as much of an irritant to the US as Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader."
The conclusion:
"His popularity waned in recent months as he became more autocratic, pushing through constitutional changes and alienating former supporters. He exasperated many Venezuelans by implementing economic policies by decree, and accused the news media and Roman Catholic leaders of conspiring to overthrow him." (Faisal Islam, 'Venezuelan civil war fears as ousted president leaves,' The Observer, April 14, 2002)
Even after days of non-stop media broadcasts had succeeded in working for the overthrow of Chavez, for this Observer journalist talk of a media conspiracy remained merely Chavez's accusation.
The opinions of these ostensibly well-informed, highly-trained professional journalists were instantly rubbished by the vast popular uprising that restored Chavez to power, and in the longer term by Chavez's eleven election wins in nine years. In truth the coup was a class-based revolt by and for privileged elites, led by Pedro Carmona who, as the BBC reported, was "head of Venezuela's biggest business organisation, Fedecamaras". Carmona, it was, who "marshalled business and trade union opposition to Mr. Chavez's economic policies". ('Profile: Pedro Carmona,' BBC Online, May 27, 2002; click here)
Genuine Attacks On Free Speech That Go Unnoticed
A May 30 Independent leader declared:
"RCTV was the sole opposition-aligned station with a national reach. Now it has gone. All governments need media opposition to keep them honest. But it appears that President Chavez does not have much time for this concept." (Leader, 'A show of intolerance,' The Independent, May 30, 2007)
Refusing to renew the licence of a TV channel complicit in the demolition of democracy described above is somehow "a show of intolerance" for the Independent. In fact RCTV has not "gone" - it is being allowed to continue operating by satellite and cable.
The Venezuela Information Centre (VIC) notes:
"In Britain, TV and radio must adhere to the Broadcasting Code which embodies objectives that Parliament set down in the Communications Act of 2003. This states that 'Material likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder must not be included in television or radio services' and that 'Broadcasters must use their best endeavours so as not to broadcast material that could endanger lives.' RCTV's role in the coup would have clearly violated these laws." ('The truth about RCTV - VIC briefing,' click here)
FAIR also makes the obvious point: "Were a similar event to happen in the U.S., and TV journalists and executives were caught conspiring with coup plotters, it's doubtful they would stay out of jail, let alone be allowed to continue to run television stations, as they have in Venezuela." (FAIR, op. cit)
The BBC reported: "The decision to close RCTV has received international condemnation, including from the EU, press freedom groups, Chile and the US, which urged Mr Chavez to reverse the closure." ('Venezuela head in new TV warning,' BBC Online, May 29, 2007; click here)
Almost unmentioned anywhere in the media are the statements of support made by a number of countries and leaders, such as Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil. The BBC report cited RCTV's general manager Marcel Granier who described the "closure" as "abusive" and "arbitrary" - not a word was written of Granier's role in the 2002 coup.
In a letter published in the Guardian (May 26, 2007), Gordon Hutchinson of VIC noted that despite claims made by opponents of Chavez, there is no censorship in Venezuela, where 95% of the media is fiercely opposed to the government. This includes five privately owned TV channels controlling 90% of the market. All of the country's 118 newspaper companies, both regional and national, are held in private hands, as are 706 out of 709 radio stations.
While the British and American press focus intensely on the alleged crushing of free speech in Venezuela, little is written about comparable actions elsewhere. A report on 21 countries, including the US and in Europe, by J. David Carracedo published in the magazine Diagonal, found that there have been at least 236 closures, revocations, and non-renewals of radio and TV licences. (See: VIC, 'The truth about RCTV,' op. cit)
There is also little media interest in genuine attacks on media freedom elsewhere in Latin America.
In Honduras, beginning May 28, 2007, President Manuel Zelaya ordered all TV and radio stations to broadcast daily one-hour prime-time programmes for ten days to counteract what he called "misinformation" on his administration provided by the press. (Ibid)
The BBC reported Zelaya's actions on May 25 (Will Grant, 'Honduras TV gets government order'; click here) A June 11 media database search found that in the previous two weeks the US press had mentioned Zelaya's actions in four articles - the highest-profile outlet being the Miami Herald. Over the same period, the US press had mentioned the words "Chavez" and "RCTV" in 207 articles. The British press had not mentioned Zelaya's actions at all - Chavez and RCTV had been mentioned in 23 articles.
In Colombia, President Álvaro Uribe was asked if he would have refused to renew RCTV's licence. Uribe replied: "I would not do that to anybody."
The Inter Press Service News Agency commented wryly:
"But the rightwing Uribe cannot shut down opposition TV stations for the simple reason that there aren't any." (Diana Cariboni, 'Easy to See the Speck in the Other's Eye,' May 30, 2007; click here)
In October 2004, Uribe closed the public Instituto de Radio y Televisión (Inravisión). The Colombian government argued that Inravisión was "inefficient." But the underlying problem "was the strength of the union" of Inravisión employees, according to Milciades Vizcaíno, a sociologist who worked for nearly 27 years in educational programming for the channel. (Ibid)
In Nicaragua in 2002, La Poderosa radio station lost its licence and had its equipment seized without any legal proceedings by the Enrique Bolaños administration. La Poderosa was an outspoken critic of the government.
These and many other attacks on free speech across the region do not make the front pages of the British and American press. As usual, alleged concerns for democracy and human rights mask deeper priorities: protecting governments that toe the line dictated by Western power, and undermining those that do not.
SUGGESTED ACTION
The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you decide to write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Ask the following journalists why, for example, they cite Chavez as the source for a mere "claim" that RCTV was deeply involved in the military coup to overthrow Chavez. Why do they not state RCTV's involvement in the coup as an undeniable fact?
Write to Catherine Philp
Email: catherine.philp@thetimes.co.uk
Write to Richard Lapper at the Financial Times
Email: richard.lapper@ft.com
Write to James Ingham at BBC
Email: james.ingham@bbc.co.uk
Write to Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Write to Simon Kelner, Independent editor
Email: s.kelner@independent.co.uk
Please send a copy of your emails to us
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"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 nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
Kurt Waldheim ist kaputt
by Sabina Becker
Gott sei dank, jetzt ist die Welt um einen Nazi-Mistbock leichter. Nur schade, dass es so lange gedauert hat...
The former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Josef Waldheim has died aged 88, Austrian media has reported.
The career of Mr Waldheim, who headed the UN from 1972 to 1982, was overshadowed by a scandal about his secretive World War II service.
Despite allegations he belonged to a German army unit that committed atrocities in the Balkans, he was elected Austria's president in 1986.
Admitted to hospital in Vienna last month, he died of heart failure.
The allegations arose in 1986, shortly after his nomination for the role of Austrian president.
The World Jewish Congress claimed he had been an officer attached to a German Army command which sent more than 42,000 Greek Jews from Salonika to their deaths, and was responsible for the massacre of thousands of Yugoslavs in the Kozara mountains.
[...]
Many Austrians did not believe the accusations against the man they elected president.
But they sparked international censure. The US, for example, banned him from visiting the country.
Later, Mr Waldheim said that the scandal surrounding his presidency forced Austrians to admit that they were not all passive victims of Nazi Germany.
Well, DUH.
I should say they were not. After all, Austria is the same country that gave us Hitler--the crummy little no-account who rose from the lowly rank of Gefreiter (Private First Class, not even a corporal!) to the chancellor's chair in the Reichstag. For many Austrians, that day must have felt like a coup, and the Anschluss was something they yearned for, and were proud of. At war's end those same ones got off very lightly, given their location and politics. That country remains more Nazified today than Germany, and that's no coincidence either. In 1949, for instance, former Nazis were allowed to stand for election--imagine that happening in postwar Germany! There is a whole slew of Austrian history still to be uncovered--particularly that of its Catholic Church, whose anti-semitic attitudes, going back centuries, nourished Adolf Hitler's mania.
I hardly need say that the real Austria bears no resemblance to the idyllic picture painted by The Sound of Music. Except, of course, for the scenery. It really does look that pretty in Salzburg. (And yes, I have been there. It's a lovely place to visit, especially the Mozart-Haus. But that movie is not only sugar-coated, it's horribly revisionist. Even Maria Trapp would eventually admit as much.)
And Kurt Waldheim was living proof that the Austrian connection was left untouched. Not just inadvertently, but on purpose. The official version had to be propped up somehow, and to admit that there were war criminals in Austria (not just Germany proper!), was to admit that an entire country was complicit. In fact, Austria wanted the Anschluss, and was annexed without even the pretence of a fight. Those inconvenient truths alone would shatter the "we were passive victims" myth.
Hitler could not have done what he did all alone; he had a lot of help. He had help as a beer-hall bully, in the pre-electoral days, both from his own SA goon squad and the Freikorps (which even the "leftist" Social Democrats could not resist employing to keep the Socialists and the Communist Party from rising to power). He had help from the conservatives, whose backroom deals made him unelected Chancellor in order to keep German (and foreign) business leaders "safe" from evil, wicked trade unionists (and, again, those damn commies). He had help in Eastern Europe, with its long bloody history of czarist pogroms, where the hatred of Jews was much stronger than in Germany, and where there was no shortage of willing collaborators. And then there were the right-wing leaders of France, Italy, Spain and Portugal...and Austria. Kurt Waldheim was one of Austria's many collaborators.
And now, he's totally gotten away with it. He has never been arrested, never been tried, and has died despised, but unpunished. Who says you can't get away with murder?
I find it odd, though, that the US only banned him from visiting after he became president of Austria. Yet not earlier, when he was Secretary-General of the UN and would have had to work in New York? What on Earth could that mean? And what were people thinking, electing him to that post (or any other) with such a cloud hanging over him? Questions, questions, inconvenient questions.
Seems to me that there is still no shortage of collaborators, only now they are too cowardly to strap on a swastika so that the rest of us may know them for what they really are.
"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 nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
Gott sei dank, jetzt ist die Welt um einen Nazi-Mistbock leichter. Nur schade, dass es so lange gedauert hat...
The former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Josef Waldheim has died aged 88, Austrian media has reported.
The career of Mr Waldheim, who headed the UN from 1972 to 1982, was overshadowed by a scandal about his secretive World War II service.
Despite allegations he belonged to a German army unit that committed atrocities in the Balkans, he was elected Austria's president in 1986.
Admitted to hospital in Vienna last month, he died of heart failure.
The allegations arose in 1986, shortly after his nomination for the role of Austrian president.
The World Jewish Congress claimed he had been an officer attached to a German Army command which sent more than 42,000 Greek Jews from Salonika to their deaths, and was responsible for the massacre of thousands of Yugoslavs in the Kozara mountains.
[...]
Many Austrians did not believe the accusations against the man they elected president.
But they sparked international censure. The US, for example, banned him from visiting the country.
Later, Mr Waldheim said that the scandal surrounding his presidency forced Austrians to admit that they were not all passive victims of Nazi Germany.
Well, DUH.
I should say they were not. After all, Austria is the same country that gave us Hitler--the crummy little no-account who rose from the lowly rank of Gefreiter (Private First Class, not even a corporal!) to the chancellor's chair in the Reichstag. For many Austrians, that day must have felt like a coup, and the Anschluss was something they yearned for, and were proud of. At war's end those same ones got off very lightly, given their location and politics. That country remains more Nazified today than Germany, and that's no coincidence either. In 1949, for instance, former Nazis were allowed to stand for election--imagine that happening in postwar Germany! There is a whole slew of Austrian history still to be uncovered--particularly that of its Catholic Church, whose anti-semitic attitudes, going back centuries, nourished Adolf Hitler's mania.
I hardly need say that the real Austria bears no resemblance to the idyllic picture painted by The Sound of Music. Except, of course, for the scenery. It really does look that pretty in Salzburg. (And yes, I have been there. It's a lovely place to visit, especially the Mozart-Haus. But that movie is not only sugar-coated, it's horribly revisionist. Even Maria Trapp would eventually admit as much.)
And Kurt Waldheim was living proof that the Austrian connection was left untouched. Not just inadvertently, but on purpose. The official version had to be propped up somehow, and to admit that there were war criminals in Austria (not just Germany proper!), was to admit that an entire country was complicit. In fact, Austria wanted the Anschluss, and was annexed without even the pretence of a fight. Those inconvenient truths alone would shatter the "we were passive victims" myth.
Hitler could not have done what he did all alone; he had a lot of help. He had help as a beer-hall bully, in the pre-electoral days, both from his own SA goon squad and the Freikorps (which even the "leftist" Social Democrats could not resist employing to keep the Socialists and the Communist Party from rising to power). He had help from the conservatives, whose backroom deals made him unelected Chancellor in order to keep German (and foreign) business leaders "safe" from evil, wicked trade unionists (and, again, those damn commies). He had help in Eastern Europe, with its long bloody history of czarist pogroms, where the hatred of Jews was much stronger than in Germany, and where there was no shortage of willing collaborators. And then there were the right-wing leaders of France, Italy, Spain and Portugal...and Austria. Kurt Waldheim was one of Austria's many collaborators.
And now, he's totally gotten away with it. He has never been arrested, never been tried, and has died despised, but unpunished. Who says you can't get away with murder?
I find it odd, though, that the US only banned him from visiting after he became president of Austria. Yet not earlier, when he was Secretary-General of the UN and would have had to work in New York? What on Earth could that mean? And what were people thinking, electing him to that post (or any other) with such a cloud hanging over him? Questions, questions, inconvenient questions.
Seems to me that there is still no shortage of collaborators, only now they are too cowardly to strap on a swastika so that the rest of us may know them for what they really are.
"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 nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
Alarcón demands justice for victims of U.S. aggression against Vietnam
BY MARTIN HACTHOUN
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, June 14 (PL).— Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban Parliament, demanded justice today for victims of Agent Orange, which the United States used to bomb Vietnam during its war on that country.
Alarcón expressed that demand after he visited Tu Duc Hospital here, as well as what is known as Village of Peace (Hoa Binh), where attention is provided for children and adolescents who suffer from severe problems caused by this substance.
“The least that the United States should do is acknowledge the justice of that demand,” Alarcón affirmed after his tour of the Museum of the Vestiges of War in Ho Chi Minh City.
In reality, it would be good for all U.S. federal judges to visit this place to see, with their own eyes, the consequences of that war, he emphasized.
“The hospital and museum show the horror experienced by Vietnam in the 1960s and early ‘70s, and whose after-effects still endure today,” noted the Cuban leader, who was concluding his visit to this country.
From 1962 to 1971, the U.S. forces dropped millions of tons of chemical agents over Vietnam, including 400,000 tons of Agent Orange. In addition, they dropped 14,300,000 tons of different types of bombs.
The U.S. invasion of Vietnam killed 3 million people, injured 2 million and resulted in 300,000 missing.
Alarcón described the war and the methods and tactics used by the invading army as a barbarity of humanity.
“I wish the entire world could come through here, because today imperialism is using the same methods in other parts of the world, the same secret prisons, the same torture, the same bombs,” he exclaimed. “Humanity must be prevented, at all costs, from forgetting this barbarity, registered here in a very eloquent way, and which can never been forgiven,” he added.
"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 nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, June 14 (PL).— Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban Parliament, demanded justice today for victims of Agent Orange, which the United States used to bomb Vietnam during its war on that country.
Alarcón expressed that demand after he visited Tu Duc Hospital here, as well as what is known as Village of Peace (Hoa Binh), where attention is provided for children and adolescents who suffer from severe problems caused by this substance.
“The least that the United States should do is acknowledge the justice of that demand,” Alarcón affirmed after his tour of the Museum of the Vestiges of War in Ho Chi Minh City.
In reality, it would be good for all U.S. federal judges to visit this place to see, with their own eyes, the consequences of that war, he emphasized.
“The hospital and museum show the horror experienced by Vietnam in the 1960s and early ‘70s, and whose after-effects still endure today,” noted the Cuban leader, who was concluding his visit to this country.
From 1962 to 1971, the U.S. forces dropped millions of tons of chemical agents over Vietnam, including 400,000 tons of Agent Orange. In addition, they dropped 14,300,000 tons of different types of bombs.
The U.S. invasion of Vietnam killed 3 million people, injured 2 million and resulted in 300,000 missing.
Alarcón described the war and the methods and tactics used by the invading army as a barbarity of humanity.
“I wish the entire world could come through here, because today imperialism is using the same methods in other parts of the world, the same secret prisons, the same torture, the same bombs,” he exclaimed. “Humanity must be prevented, at all costs, from forgetting this barbarity, registered here in a very eloquent way, and which can never been forgiven,” he added.
"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 nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
FABIAN ESCALANTE, EX-CHIEF OF CUBAN INTELLIGENCE: Posada knows too much
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Granma International staff writer—
“POSADA is a killer, an assassin who kills without any emotion whatsoever, but he does know too much and constitutes a real danger for those who used him for more than 40 years,” commented Fabian Escalante, former chief of the Cuban intelligence services, recalling in an interview with Granma International the terrorist offensive of 1976, in the midst of which Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles masterminded the explosion in full flight of a Cubana Aviación DC-10.
After heading the Cuban counterintelligence services, Escalante was appointed chief of the State Security Department, precisely in January of that fateful year of 1976 when Bosch and Posada executed the series of attacks that culminated in the assassination in Washington of the former Chilean foreign minister, Orlando Letelier and the destruction of the Cuban passenger plane that left 73 people dead.
On that subject, Escalante related some unknown facts of that period. “By chance, and that came out later, at the same time as Bosch and various of his accomplices arrived in Santiago in December 1974 to place themselves at Pinochet’s disposition and become his paid terrorists, the Cuban security services began an important operation against the CIA in various Latin American countries, in search of information related to these activities, known to be underway.
“Bosch was going to offer himself to Pinochet along with this group of terrorists of Cuban origin who would become killers within Operation Condor. He met up with General Manuel Contreras, made contact with the U.S. agent Michael Townley and, a few months later, organized the kidnapping of two Cuban officials in Argentina, who were brutally murdered.
“The Security services organized an operation to discover what the terrorist plans being prepared were. Of course, we didn’t know of the existence of Operation Condor, but we already knew its instruments. I reiterate that we had no idea of its dimensions, but we did know of the danger and resources that the main organizers had at their disposal.
“Moreover, I reiterate, we did have significant information via the penetration that we had achieved within the CIA structures that a subversive mechanism, at that time called ‘autonomous operations,’ had been activated.”
GENESIS OF THE TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS
The concept of autonomous organization was coined in 1963 and was approved by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Escalante recalled.
“Basically, this concept established that the CIA was creating organizations of Cuban counterrevolutionaries to operate outside of U.S. territory. The CIA assigned them case officers to attend to them, fix their objectives for actions, subsidize them in terms of money and war materials and¼ discovered the result of their actions in the newspapers.
“And, precisely then, in 1974, we found out that these organizations had been reactivated, that operational concept which developed into the genesis of the terrorist organizations.
Did you know about Bosch’s stay in Chile?
We didn’t know that Bosch was in Santiago de Chile. We didn’t know that. But we did know that these groups where Bosch was, with Alvin Ross, the Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll brothers; with Luis Posada Carriles and Ricardo ‘El Mono’ Morales Navarrete in Venezuela; Antonio Veciana Blanch in Bolivia, were being prepared to unleash an operation against Cuba. An operation that, in 1976, Orlando Bosch himself called ‘the war around the world.’
We had information and we were working on that. But we didn’t have all the information and the details.
Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to discover the plans as a whole. They were highly secret plans. But even so, we began to prepare and activate all the agents infiltrated into the CIA networks to seek out this information.
Paradoxically, on the same date that Bosch was embarking on his activities in Santiago de Chile, selecting his collaborators and safe houses to place them at the service of the Condor mechanism, at that very moment, very close to them, the Cuban services initiated their penetration of the CIA networks which, in the end, made it possible to dismantle some of the conspiracies planned.
I remember that one byproduct of that operation was the exposé and unmasking of the then CIA station head in Lima, Peru, which was an important operative base for the agency in the region. As a result of these actions, the CIA had no alternative but to withdraw it and locate it in another country.
By 1975 we had achieved a significant penetration and I am referring to the CIA networks directed to working against Cuba and a number of the terrorist groups acting against our homeland from Miami, where they had had a powerful operational base up until 1969.
In those years there was intense fighting in the shadows. Information is obtained to act upon. There were a series of plans that were dismantled and others that regrettably were not. I am referring to placing bombs in aircraft, attempts on the lives of officials and diplomats working abroad, terrorist attacks on companies trading with Cuba in various countries of the region.
To what point did you manage to locate each of the many groups active at that time?
We were searching on many fronts at the same time, in many countries. Those people moved around a lot; they were in Mexico, in Central America, in Venezuela, where Posada Carriles was virtually deputy chief of the DISIP (Venezuelan Intelligence Police) and Ricardo Morales Navarrete was chief of the Counterintelligence Department. They had a strong base there.
They were also in Bolivia, where Antonio Veciana Blanch was. They had created structures – with the assassination of Che; that is to say at the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s – and moreover, drug trafficking networks, because the common trait of all these people is that in addition to their actions against Cuba, they are linked to the whole business of drug trafficking, of contraband. That was their way of making more money. It has to be said that the war on Cuba, the country where they were born, became for them a way of making money, lots of money.
Information that emerged from investigations by the U.S. Congress on CIA conspiracies to assassinate Fidel, reveals that Antonio Veciana received a payment of $360,000 from his CIA case officer in 1976. Why that payment, when one would suppose that all the operations in which he took part were punctually funded? Is it because they were trying to buy his silence on an extremely delicate matter?
What other million-dollar sums have been paid to Bosch, Posada and their other associates in all these years of terror? And the Cuban-American National Foundation hadn’t yet been created.
And then 76 arrived, with its succession of attacks. How did you confront those events?
The year of 76 was a very hard year for us. We prepared ourselves, dismantled a good number of these terrorist projects. There were frustrated actions, known in advance by the Cuban Intelligence Services and which thus remained unknown. However, regrettably, there were many others, those known publicly, that we couldn’t dismantle and all those terrorist actions of 76 were going to culminate in the explosion of the Cuban passenger plane.
In that year the wave of terror carefully planned by the CIA – at that time directed by George Bush Senior, was unleashed. Pinochet ordered the assassination of Generals Prats of Chile and Juan José Torres of Bolivia; the Cuban embassy in Lisbon was blown up; a number of Cuban diplomats and officials were killed in countries in the region; former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier’s car was blown up right in the middle of Washington; and finally, a Cuban civilian aircraft was brought down in full flight by two bombs. These are plots that these people were carrying out as part of Operation Condor.
What was known in Cuba at that time about Luis Posada Carriles?
In ‘76, we had very fragmented information on Posada. Orlando Bosch , Antonio Veciana, the Novo Sampoll brothers, Nazario Sargén, Jorge Mas Canosa and many other organization leaders were the ones who were planning and had contact with the CIA and thus gave us the opportunity of directly discovering when and where they planned to act and, for that reason, were among the priorities then.
Posada was never the leader of anything. Posada is a hired assassin, a paid terrorist. He is a killer, an assassin like those in U.S. movies, who would murder anymore without a trace of emotion, just for money, out of self-interest.
But he is a very, very dangerous witness.
I remember that in 1971 information emerged in relation to a conspiracy to assassinate Fidel during his visit to Chile in which Posada was involved. Afterwards, years later, the details came out. The conspiracy was really diabolical. Its first phase consisted of using a film camera to conceal a revolver with which two of Posada’s henchmen, accredited as Venezuelan journalists, were to shoot the Cuban leader during his initial press conference on reaching Santiago de Chile. To that end, Antonio Veciana and his Alpha 66 group had smuggled in arms and explosives to have available other options of assassinating the Commander in Chief, in the event of the first attempt failing.
A Plan B was carefully prepared by Posada Carriles, then chief of operations of the Venezuelan political police. As it happened, a correspondent of the Soviet TASS news agency who was also a KGB officer was in Caracas. Posada arranged things to photograph his two agents while they were talking with the Russian, so that after the assassination of the Comandante, a media campaign would be unleashed showing the photos and accusing the Soviets of being the perpetrators of the crime, given the “existing political contradictions.” Posada and Veciana had fixed things with Eduardo Sepúlveda, colonel of the Chilean Mounted Police, responsible for security in the location where Fidel would give his press conference, so that instead of detaining the assassins, he would eliminate them and thus avert any indiscretion.
Where were you when the Cubana passenger plane exploded?
I was on an official visit to the USSR. That was a terrible day. With the time difference, I heard about it late at night on the 6th (October) or in the early hours of the next day. There were two or three of us Cubans there together¼ it was a terrible night because we realized that we had not done everything that we should have done. My impression was¼ of much pain, a feeling of great impotence. I returned immediately.
Our government immediately sent a team of technicians and investigators to Barbados. Within a few days, thanks to the investigations made and the statements of Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, caught in Trinidad and Tobago, we discovered almost all the details, and the masterminds, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada.
Recently declassified documents demonstrate that the CIA, the FBI and the U.S. embassy in Venezuela knew about it¼ And nobody did anything at all to avert that monstrous crime.
Did you penetrate the CORU at any point?
The CORU no, but the organizations comprising it, yes. Sometimes I have thought that if the Cuban services had available to them the ultramodern communications equipment that the CIA had then, more conspiracies would definitely have been avoided. In that period, they were working with so-called rapid fire communications equipment, which transmitted messages in 15 to 16 seconds. Speed of communications was the main problem that we had: gathering information and bringing it in for analysis. Because information is valuable when you can compare it with other information, when it is analyzed and meditated upon.
In those years, information took many days to arrive. I remember the case of an informant who, with important information in his hands, stole a speedboat in Miami and came here to Cuba to deliver it. At that time, correspondence both into and out of Cuba had to go through a center that the CIA had set up in Mexico City, where it was carefully revised.
From the end of ‘76, in ‘77 and in ‘78, these acts of terrorism gradually disappeared as a result of the actions of the Cuban Intelligence and Counterintelligence Services and the important – I would say decisive – political measures taken in terms of Cuban emigration which, as it turned out, became a neutralizing element of the first order.
What happened with the CIA and its autonomous organizations?
In the end I think they got out of control. The case of Bin Laden is one example. There is an interesting book by U.S. writer David Wise, The Invisible Government, on that theme. Organizations like the CIA or Mossad in Israel, and others in other regions of the world have acquired unlimited power, because they have information on their own presidents that they can manipulate or dress up and moreover, they have the capacity to act without controls to obtain secret results. Remember the Iran-Contra scandal where the U.S. Security Council was involved in a huge drug trafficking operation to fund the dirty war against Sandinista Nicaragua.
Just imagine, the Central Intelligence Agency in the 60s, with bases spread throughout the world, handling operations as delicate as the U-2 spy planes with ultramodern radars, with a large operations base in Miami with a $100-million budget (equivalent to $1 billion now) with 55 phantom enterprises that were producing uncontrolled profits. Where did all that money that produced the war on Cuba go?
There’s a fabulous U.S. film from the ‘70s called precisely Three Days of the Condor, with Robert Redford, which relates how a CIA unit dedicated to studying detective novels for errors or poor interpretation, comes across an ultra-secret covert operation in progress. The decision taken by the bosses is to eliminate all the employees, who are nothing more than novel readers and a number of characters attack the house where the unit is located and liquidate everyone, minus Redford, who had gone out to get food. That’s where the film starts, with Redford fleeing and pursued by all his bosses. The anecdote reflects how far things can get in that dark and shady underworld.
Isn’t that what happened to Posada in Guatemala?
I think drug trafficking was an issue there. Because, remember, Posada “escaped” in 85 from a Venezuelan prison and was received in El Salvador by Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, who made him CIA operations chief at Ilopango airport and responsible for the supply flights for the Nicaraguan Contras.
At that time, there was a man in Honduras, Mario Delamico of Cuban origin, closely linked to the CIA and the Honduran army, who was in contact with other mercenaries including a number of Cubans located in Costa Rica. They had various enterprises and were to take charge of receiving and distributing the flights loaded with arms sent by Posada and sending back Colombian drugs on the same planes for transportation to the United States.
This was the business handled by Luis Posada Carriles, directly subordinated to Félix Rodríguez, the assassin of Comandante Ernesto Guevara.
I don’t know what happened in Guatemala. But after the capture in Nicaraguan territory of the U.S. pilot Eugenio Hassenfus, when he was dropping weapons to the Contras, Posada had to dismantle his camp in El Salvador.
What he did afterwards, one would have to ask him, but I, for one, don’t know. It is said that when he went to Guatemala City, some hired killers – probably around drugs – wanted to kill him. That’s all the information we have. But now I ask myself: What money would he have been left with? What could he have done? Who would he have wanted to get out of the way?
What are your thoughts on the legal proceedings against Posada Carriles since his arrival in the United States? Where is all that going?
Well¼ to an official pardon. There’s not the slightest doubt of that. There is something underlying this, not only the case of Luis Posada Carriles. but all the current U.S. policy and it is its brutality and prepotency.
Before they were more professional, more skilful. Before there were more intelligent people. If there’s one thing I’m sure about, it is that this lot today are not intelligent.
Before there was a Robert Kennedy and a Richard Helms who thought up the autonomous operations to remove the mess from American soil and validate the U.S. doctrine of plausible negotiation. In other words, always having the elements to deny U.S. participation in a specific event.
Nowadays, these people are more ignorant, as ignorant as the U.S. president himself. It was evident that the United States couldn’t allow Posada to be tried.
First there was the situation in Panama, where they no alternative but to try him, because he was caught red-handed. And it became obvious that when Mireya Moscoso left power that she would pardon him because she was part of all that. She was a U.S. agent.
Then he went to ground in El Salvador, was in Yucatan and entered the United States on the orders of his bosses. Posada would never have done that without an express order. His handlers told him: ‘come over here, we’re doing to do the same for you as we did with Orlando Bosch.’
But they didn’t take into account the action of people in solidarity, of independent journalism and then came the condemnations and things became evident. The pressure by Cuba has been very decisive, so decisive that they probably wouldn’t have done what they had to do without the Cuban exposé, the combative marches, the roundtables, the open tribunals, international solidarity, all of which, in my view, are pressure mechanisms that have been essential in terms of forcing the United States to do everything that it has done, attempting to have Posada go on trial as an illegal immigrant.
But they have assured that they are still investigating the case Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, has just affirmed that That’s a fact, isn’t it?
All of that is a lie. A white lie to satisfy some “democrats,” for whom there has been no other remedy than to condemn Posada’s release and who need an argument to be able to say: “you see, the United States is going to do something.” No, the United States is not going to do anything at all.
Luis Posada Carriles could die at any time. I repeat: he will always be a very dangerous witness. And he knows too much.
==========================================
"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 nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow
“POSADA is a killer, an assassin who kills without any emotion whatsoever, but he does know too much and constitutes a real danger for those who used him for more than 40 years,” commented Fabian Escalante, former chief of the Cuban intelligence services, recalling in an interview with Granma International the terrorist offensive of 1976, in the midst of which Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles masterminded the explosion in full flight of a Cubana Aviación DC-10.
After heading the Cuban counterintelligence services, Escalante was appointed chief of the State Security Department, precisely in January of that fateful year of 1976 when Bosch and Posada executed the series of attacks that culminated in the assassination in Washington of the former Chilean foreign minister, Orlando Letelier and the destruction of the Cuban passenger plane that left 73 people dead.
On that subject, Escalante related some unknown facts of that period. “By chance, and that came out later, at the same time as Bosch and various of his accomplices arrived in Santiago in December 1974 to place themselves at Pinochet’s disposition and become his paid terrorists, the Cuban security services began an important operation against the CIA in various Latin American countries, in search of information related to these activities, known to be underway.
“Bosch was going to offer himself to Pinochet along with this group of terrorists of Cuban origin who would become killers within Operation Condor. He met up with General Manuel Contreras, made contact with the U.S. agent Michael Townley and, a few months later, organized the kidnapping of two Cuban officials in Argentina, who were brutally murdered.
“The Security services organized an operation to discover what the terrorist plans being prepared were. Of course, we didn’t know of the existence of Operation Condor, but we already knew its instruments. I reiterate that we had no idea of its dimensions, but we did know of the danger and resources that the main organizers had at their disposal.
“Moreover, I reiterate, we did have significant information via the penetration that we had achieved within the CIA structures that a subversive mechanism, at that time called ‘autonomous operations,’ had been activated.”
GENESIS OF THE TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS
The concept of autonomous organization was coined in 1963 and was approved by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Escalante recalled.
“Basically, this concept established that the CIA was creating organizations of Cuban counterrevolutionaries to operate outside of U.S. territory. The CIA assigned them case officers to attend to them, fix their objectives for actions, subsidize them in terms of money and war materials and¼ discovered the result of their actions in the newspapers.
“And, precisely then, in 1974, we found out that these organizations had been reactivated, that operational concept which developed into the genesis of the terrorist organizations.
Did you know about Bosch’s stay in Chile?
We didn’t know that Bosch was in Santiago de Chile. We didn’t know that. But we did know that these groups where Bosch was, with Alvin Ross, the Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll brothers; with Luis Posada Carriles and Ricardo ‘El Mono’ Morales Navarrete in Venezuela; Antonio Veciana Blanch in Bolivia, were being prepared to unleash an operation against Cuba. An operation that, in 1976, Orlando Bosch himself called ‘the war around the world.’
We had information and we were working on that. But we didn’t have all the information and the details.
Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to discover the plans as a whole. They were highly secret plans. But even so, we began to prepare and activate all the agents infiltrated into the CIA networks to seek out this information.
Paradoxically, on the same date that Bosch was embarking on his activities in Santiago de Chile, selecting his collaborators and safe houses to place them at the service of the Condor mechanism, at that very moment, very close to them, the Cuban services initiated their penetration of the CIA networks which, in the end, made it possible to dismantle some of the conspiracies planned.
I remember that one byproduct of that operation was the exposé and unmasking of the then CIA station head in Lima, Peru, which was an important operative base for the agency in the region. As a result of these actions, the CIA had no alternative but to withdraw it and locate it in another country.
By 1975 we had achieved a significant penetration and I am referring to the CIA networks directed to working against Cuba and a number of the terrorist groups acting against our homeland from Miami, where they had had a powerful operational base up until 1969.
In those years there was intense fighting in the shadows. Information is obtained to act upon. There were a series of plans that were dismantled and others that regrettably were not. I am referring to placing bombs in aircraft, attempts on the lives of officials and diplomats working abroad, terrorist attacks on companies trading with Cuba in various countries of the region.
To what point did you manage to locate each of the many groups active at that time?
We were searching on many fronts at the same time, in many countries. Those people moved around a lot; they were in Mexico, in Central America, in Venezuela, where Posada Carriles was virtually deputy chief of the DISIP (Venezuelan Intelligence Police) and Ricardo Morales Navarrete was chief of the Counterintelligence Department. They had a strong base there.
They were also in Bolivia, where Antonio Veciana Blanch was. They had created structures – with the assassination of Che; that is to say at the end of the 60s and beginning of the 70s – and moreover, drug trafficking networks, because the common trait of all these people is that in addition to their actions against Cuba, they are linked to the whole business of drug trafficking, of contraband. That was their way of making more money. It has to be said that the war on Cuba, the country where they were born, became for them a way of making money, lots of money.
Information that emerged from investigations by the U.S. Congress on CIA conspiracies to assassinate Fidel, reveals that Antonio Veciana received a payment of $360,000 from his CIA case officer in 1976. Why that payment, when one would suppose that all the operations in which he took part were punctually funded? Is it because they were trying to buy his silence on an extremely delicate matter?
What other million-dollar sums have been paid to Bosch, Posada and their other associates in all these years of terror? And the Cuban-American National Foundation hadn’t yet been created.
And then 76 arrived, with its succession of attacks. How did you confront those events?
The year of 76 was a very hard year for us. We prepared ourselves, dismantled a good number of these terrorist projects. There were frustrated actions, known in advance by the Cuban Intelligence Services and which thus remained unknown. However, regrettably, there were many others, those known publicly, that we couldn’t dismantle and all those terrorist actions of 76 were going to culminate in the explosion of the Cuban passenger plane.
In that year the wave of terror carefully planned by the CIA – at that time directed by George Bush Senior, was unleashed. Pinochet ordered the assassination of Generals Prats of Chile and Juan José Torres of Bolivia; the Cuban embassy in Lisbon was blown up; a number of Cuban diplomats and officials were killed in countries in the region; former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier’s car was blown up right in the middle of Washington; and finally, a Cuban civilian aircraft was brought down in full flight by two bombs. These are plots that these people were carrying out as part of Operation Condor.
What was known in Cuba at that time about Luis Posada Carriles?
In ‘76, we had very fragmented information on Posada. Orlando Bosch , Antonio Veciana, the Novo Sampoll brothers, Nazario Sargén, Jorge Mas Canosa and many other organization leaders were the ones who were planning and had contact with the CIA and thus gave us the opportunity of directly discovering when and where they planned to act and, for that reason, were among the priorities then.
Posada was never the leader of anything. Posada is a hired assassin, a paid terrorist. He is a killer, an assassin like those in U.S. movies, who would murder anymore without a trace of emotion, just for money, out of self-interest.
But he is a very, very dangerous witness.
I remember that in 1971 information emerged in relation to a conspiracy to assassinate Fidel during his visit to Chile in which Posada was involved. Afterwards, years later, the details came out. The conspiracy was really diabolical. Its first phase consisted of using a film camera to conceal a revolver with which two of Posada’s henchmen, accredited as Venezuelan journalists, were to shoot the Cuban leader during his initial press conference on reaching Santiago de Chile. To that end, Antonio Veciana and his Alpha 66 group had smuggled in arms and explosives to have available other options of assassinating the Commander in Chief, in the event of the first attempt failing.
A Plan B was carefully prepared by Posada Carriles, then chief of operations of the Venezuelan political police. As it happened, a correspondent of the Soviet TASS news agency who was also a KGB officer was in Caracas. Posada arranged things to photograph his two agents while they were talking with the Russian, so that after the assassination of the Comandante, a media campaign would be unleashed showing the photos and accusing the Soviets of being the perpetrators of the crime, given the “existing political contradictions.” Posada and Veciana had fixed things with Eduardo Sepúlveda, colonel of the Chilean Mounted Police, responsible for security in the location where Fidel would give his press conference, so that instead of detaining the assassins, he would eliminate them and thus avert any indiscretion.
Where were you when the Cubana passenger plane exploded?
I was on an official visit to the USSR. That was a terrible day. With the time difference, I heard about it late at night on the 6th (October) or in the early hours of the next day. There were two or three of us Cubans there together¼ it was a terrible night because we realized that we had not done everything that we should have done. My impression was¼ of much pain, a feeling of great impotence. I returned immediately.
Our government immediately sent a team of technicians and investigators to Barbados. Within a few days, thanks to the investigations made and the statements of Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, caught in Trinidad and Tobago, we discovered almost all the details, and the masterminds, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada.
Recently declassified documents demonstrate that the CIA, the FBI and the U.S. embassy in Venezuela knew about it¼ And nobody did anything at all to avert that monstrous crime.
Did you penetrate the CORU at any point?
The CORU no, but the organizations comprising it, yes. Sometimes I have thought that if the Cuban services had available to them the ultramodern communications equipment that the CIA had then, more conspiracies would definitely have been avoided. In that period, they were working with so-called rapid fire communications equipment, which transmitted messages in 15 to 16 seconds. Speed of communications was the main problem that we had: gathering information and bringing it in for analysis. Because information is valuable when you can compare it with other information, when it is analyzed and meditated upon.
In those years, information took many days to arrive. I remember the case of an informant who, with important information in his hands, stole a speedboat in Miami and came here to Cuba to deliver it. At that time, correspondence both into and out of Cuba had to go through a center that the CIA had set up in Mexico City, where it was carefully revised.
From the end of ‘76, in ‘77 and in ‘78, these acts of terrorism gradually disappeared as a result of the actions of the Cuban Intelligence and Counterintelligence Services and the important – I would say decisive – political measures taken in terms of Cuban emigration which, as it turned out, became a neutralizing element of the first order.
What happened with the CIA and its autonomous organizations?
In the end I think they got out of control. The case of Bin Laden is one example. There is an interesting book by U.S. writer David Wise, The Invisible Government, on that theme. Organizations like the CIA or Mossad in Israel, and others in other regions of the world have acquired unlimited power, because they have information on their own presidents that they can manipulate or dress up and moreover, they have the capacity to act without controls to obtain secret results. Remember the Iran-Contra scandal where the U.S. Security Council was involved in a huge drug trafficking operation to fund the dirty war against Sandinista Nicaragua.
Just imagine, the Central Intelligence Agency in the 60s, with bases spread throughout the world, handling operations as delicate as the U-2 spy planes with ultramodern radars, with a large operations base in Miami with a $100-million budget (equivalent to $1 billion now) with 55 phantom enterprises that were producing uncontrolled profits. Where did all that money that produced the war on Cuba go?
There’s a fabulous U.S. film from the ‘70s called precisely Three Days of the Condor, with Robert Redford, which relates how a CIA unit dedicated to studying detective novels for errors or poor interpretation, comes across an ultra-secret covert operation in progress. The decision taken by the bosses is to eliminate all the employees, who are nothing more than novel readers and a number of characters attack the house where the unit is located and liquidate everyone, minus Redford, who had gone out to get food. That’s where the film starts, with Redford fleeing and pursued by all his bosses. The anecdote reflects how far things can get in that dark and shady underworld.
Isn’t that what happened to Posada in Guatemala?
I think drug trafficking was an issue there. Because, remember, Posada “escaped” in 85 from a Venezuelan prison and was received in El Salvador by Félix Rodríguez Mendigutía, who made him CIA operations chief at Ilopango airport and responsible for the supply flights for the Nicaraguan Contras.
At that time, there was a man in Honduras, Mario Delamico of Cuban origin, closely linked to the CIA and the Honduran army, who was in contact with other mercenaries including a number of Cubans located in Costa Rica. They had various enterprises and were to take charge of receiving and distributing the flights loaded with arms sent by Posada and sending back Colombian drugs on the same planes for transportation to the United States.
This was the business handled by Luis Posada Carriles, directly subordinated to Félix Rodríguez, the assassin of Comandante Ernesto Guevara.
I don’t know what happened in Guatemala. But after the capture in Nicaraguan territory of the U.S. pilot Eugenio Hassenfus, when he was dropping weapons to the Contras, Posada had to dismantle his camp in El Salvador.
What he did afterwards, one would have to ask him, but I, for one, don’t know. It is said that when he went to Guatemala City, some hired killers – probably around drugs – wanted to kill him. That’s all the information we have. But now I ask myself: What money would he have been left with? What could he have done? Who would he have wanted to get out of the way?
What are your thoughts on the legal proceedings against Posada Carriles since his arrival in the United States? Where is all that going?
Well¼ to an official pardon. There’s not the slightest doubt of that. There is something underlying this, not only the case of Luis Posada Carriles. but all the current U.S. policy and it is its brutality and prepotency.
Before they were more professional, more skilful. Before there were more intelligent people. If there’s one thing I’m sure about, it is that this lot today are not intelligent.
Before there was a Robert Kennedy and a Richard Helms who thought up the autonomous operations to remove the mess from American soil and validate the U.S. doctrine of plausible negotiation. In other words, always having the elements to deny U.S. participation in a specific event.
Nowadays, these people are more ignorant, as ignorant as the U.S. president himself. It was evident that the United States couldn’t allow Posada to be tried.
First there was the situation in Panama, where they no alternative but to try him, because he was caught red-handed. And it became obvious that when Mireya Moscoso left power that she would pardon him because she was part of all that. She was a U.S. agent.
Then he went to ground in El Salvador, was in Yucatan and entered the United States on the orders of his bosses. Posada would never have done that without an express order. His handlers told him: ‘come over here, we’re doing to do the same for you as we did with Orlando Bosch.’
But they didn’t take into account the action of people in solidarity, of independent journalism and then came the condemnations and things became evident. The pressure by Cuba has been very decisive, so decisive that they probably wouldn’t have done what they had to do without the Cuban exposé, the combative marches, the roundtables, the open tribunals, international solidarity, all of which, in my view, are pressure mechanisms that have been essential in terms of forcing the United States to do everything that it has done, attempting to have Posada go on trial as an illegal immigrant.
But they have assured that they are still investigating the case Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, has just affirmed that That’s a fact, isn’t it?
All of that is a lie. A white lie to satisfy some “democrats,” for whom there has been no other remedy than to condemn Posada’s release and who need an argument to be able to say: “you see, the United States is going to do something.” No, the United States is not going to do anything at all.
Luis Posada Carriles could die at any time. I repeat: he will always be a very dangerous witness. And he knows too much.
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"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 nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow