"Fidel es todo hombre y mujer que en el mundo esté dispuesto a luchar y luche porque un mundo mejor sea posible"

Discurso pronunciado por el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba, en la sesión plenaria del Coloquio Internacional Memoria y Futuro: Cuba y Fidel
"Fidel es todo hombre y mujer que en el mundo esté dispuesto a luchar y luche porque un mundo mejor sea posible"

Felipe Pérez Roque
Rebelión

Querido Pablito Guayasamín;
Queridos compañeras y compañeros de la Presidencia;

Amigos queridos;

Compañeras y compañeros:

Queridos amigos, desde los demás diversos confines de la Tierra, han venido no solo a celebrar el cumpleaños 80 de Fidel, sino también a dar un nuevo testimonio de solidaridad y de cariño con la Revolución Cubana, con el pueblo noble y generoso que ha desafiado tempestades, bloqueos y agresiones sin perder el optimismo, sin que le hayan podido matar la esperanza y la alegría, y los recibe a ustedes, en este momento peculiar de nuestra historia en el que los cubanos, tranquilos, firmes, esperanzados, acompañamos la convalecencia de Fidel, hecho inédito en estas casi cinco décadas de bregar, porque Fidel ha tenido, además, la suerte de una salud de hierro, que probablemente es el resultado de un cuerpo obligado por la idea a ni siquiera tener derecho a enfermarse, y ha podido capear enormes tensiones, con apenas algún que otro eventual catarro o padecimiento menor. Por lo tanto, estos meses han sido para nosotros una experiencia nueva, y nuestro pueblo los ha enfrentado con una madurez y una confianza en sí mismo, que se inscribe ya también como un resultado de las enseñanzas y el ejemplo de Fidel, y como una página de aprendizaje para las actuales y futuras generaciones de cubanos; nuestro pueblo, en esta circunstancia peculiar, le da más valor a la presencia de ustedes entre nosotros.

Sabemos el esfuerzo personal que cada uno ha hecho para estar aquí, y créanme que hablando no como Ministro del Gobierno Revolucionario, sino como hijo de este pueblo, sentimos en la presencia de ustedes aquí un deseo especial de alentarnos, de darnos fuerza, además de venir a celebrar y a desear mejoría y felicidad al compañero Fidel.

Cuando pensaba qué decir aquí en esta tarde tenía dudas, porque la mayoría de los que están aquí han estado probablemente en Cuba otras veces, son cercanos al tema de las luchas de la Revolución Cubana, de la acción solidaria que desde su triunfo ha ejercitado y que desde antes de su triunfo había proclamado. Muchos han dicho aquí las palabras que yo no podría ni improvisar ni decir aunque lo intentara. Muchos nos han hecho un nudo en la garganta a los que estamos aquí y a los millones de cubanos que por la televisión han podido seguir los debates que han tenido lugar en estos paneles.

Por lo tanto, más que intentar un discurso hecho y rehecho, y tratar de revisarlo intentando la perfección, o arreglarle los mínimos detalles, decidí que mejor era abrir en torrente los sentimientos y decir lo que cualquier cubano, en cualquier esquina de Cuba, podría decirles a ustedes sobre lo que para nosotros es Fidel, la Revolución y nuestra independencia, que, a fin de cuentas, todo eso es lo mismo y está profundamente mezclado hoy y para siempre.

De ahí que garabateé estas ideas, que no pretenden, por supuesto, dictar cátedra ni dar por concluido este tema, y que tienen la virtud solo de la honestidad, el respeto y el cariño por ustedes, que han venido a testimoniar en nuestra patria sus simpatías con nuestra lucha, su firme creencia en nuestra capacidad de defender ahora y en el futuro, y de hacer trascender más allá de nuestras vidas, las ideas por las que hemos luchado.

Por eso identifiqué 14 ó 15 ideas que considero que, siendo cualidades personales de Fidel, han terminado siendo cualidades de la Revolución Cubana e incluso del pueblo cubano, porque un aporte indiscutible del bregar y el magisterio de Fidel en estos casi 50 años es que algunas de sus cualidades, de sus concepciones y de sus ideas han terminado siendo parte de una nueva nación, que es la Cuba que tomó la herencia, por supuesto, que tiene de los siglos anteriores, pero que está marcada por los últimos 50 años, en que una profunda, genuina y autóctona revolución social se llevó a cabo y se defendió victoriosa en esta pequeña isla.

La primera cualidad que considero que Fidel aportó a la Revolución y que es hoy centro y brújula de la acción de nuestro pueblo es su concepto de la unidad , el aporte de Fidel a la unidad; la unidad como condición básica para la defensa y la sobrevivencia de una revolución e incluso para el triunfo de una idea. No puede triunfar una idea, por justa que fuere, si no se unen los que creen en ella para sumar y defender juntos la idea.

La Revolución Cubana se salvó, se ha salvado y se ha mantenido victoriosa porque supo construir y defender la unidad, y solo podrá permanecer y salvarse en el futuro si conserva la unidad.

Otras revoluciones se perdieron precisamente porque faltó la unidad; porque en el momento culminante en que surgen, como es natural en procesos de tal intensidad y de tanta hondura, divergencias, puntos de vista distintos, pueden hacer que se fracture la unidad, o que no fragüe en el momento y la hora en que era necesario y pueden dar al traste con una revolución.

La unidad en Cuba es especialmente el aporte del carácter y las ideas de Fidel. No es una unidad lograda a base de la imposición de los criterios de un hombre o de un grupo, sobre otros hombres y otros grupos.

En esta sala hay sentados algunos de los protagonistas que podrían, con más autoridad que yo, dar fe de cómo surgió en Cuba la unidad de las fuerzas revolucionarias, la construcción de un solo Partido, y cómo este no es el resultado de la persecución de los que tenían la opinión distinta, o de la imposición, o del negociado de las cuotas de poder o participación, sino el resultado de un proceso que está íntimamente ligado a la personalidad y al aporte de Fidel.

Eso que surgió al calor de la Revolución es hoy cualidad de los revolucionarios cubanos y el pueblo cubano, y dondequiera que haya uno de nosotros estará propugnando siempre la unidad. Surgen, como es lógico, entre nosotros, a veces, disensiones

—broncas les llaman en Cuba—, pero siempre todos bajo la idea definitiva y clave de que la unidad es precondición para el triunfo y la victoria. Ese es un aporte de Fidel. Eso no fue así en Cuba antes de Fidel.

Anteriores guerras y jornadas de lucha por los derechos del pueblo cubano a la independencia, a la soberanía se frustraron por la falta de unidad. La primera gran guerra de los cubanos por su independencia del poder colonial español, que duró 10 años de cruenta lucha, entre 1868 y 1878, se frustró por la falta de unidad, y había en ella líderes y hombres con no menos compromisos y no menos cualidades que Fidel; sin embargo, aquella guerra heroica no terminó en el triunfo, en particular, por la falta de unidad, y muchas otras veces eso ocurrió en la historia de la Revolución Cubana hasta el momento en que Fidel convirtió, en tarea esencial, desde su modestia, desde su capacidad de escuchar a los otros, desde su capacidad de convencer, persuadir y no imponer o dictar la construcción de la unidad.

Cómo sería para que un hombre como el Che Guevara decidiera aquella noche en la casa de María Antonia, en México, sumar su vida a aquella epopeya después de conocer a Fidel, solo en la primera conversación, un hombre de la agudeza del Che, del nivel, de la capacidad, la honestidad y la pureza del Che, cómo pudo aquella noche, en la primera conversación decidir seguir a aquellos hombres que proponían la idea que parecía imposible de venir en un pequeño barco a Cuba a desarrollar una lucha guerrillera y derrotar a un ejército apoyado por Estados Unidos que tenía nada más y nada menos que 80 000 hombres, 1 000 por cada uno de aquellos expedicionarios que se lanzaron al Granma ...

No sé si a ustedes les ha pasado, si alguna vez han intentado pararse frente al yate Granma y contar a ver cómo es posible que 82 hombres, más las armas y el parque quepan en aquel pequeño barco diseñado para 12 ó 15 pasajeros. Dicen que cuando el barco sale de las tranquilas aguas del río, en la noche oscura, a las 2:00 de la mañana, el Che preguntó: “¿Pero, bueno, cuándo llegamos al barco en que iremos hacia Cuba?” (Risas.) Creía que el Granma era el barquito en el que llegarían al barco más grande. Eran secretos los preparativos, lógicamente, era muy compartimentado todo, y el Che y seguro que otros lo pensaron aunque no preguntaron, creía que habría un barco más grande para viajar a Cuba.

Hoy es un día en que se cumplen 50 años de aquel navegar. Un día como hoy faltaban todavía dos días para llegar a Cuba.

La unidad es la primera idea que anoté entre mis garabatos; la segunda, la ética.

La ética. Aquí se dijo —creo que fue Gilberto López y Rivas—, que Fidel y la Revolución Cubana habían convertido la ética en razón de Estado. La ética tiene raíces en el pensamiento de Martí, pero es la práctica de Fidel a lo largo de 50 años lo que convierte la ética en una cualidad imprescindible de la Revolución Cubana. Con la práctica de Fidel y la concepción de la ética como componente esencial de la actuación política y revolucionaria, no se asume la idea de que el fin justifica los medios. Para Fidel, el fin no justifica los medios. No se puede lograr el objetivo o la victoria a cualquier precio. Es por eso que no se ha torturado nunca en Cuba a un prisionero, aun cuando su conocimiento valioso, la información que podía dar, hubiera podido evitar otros crímenes, hubiera podido evitar un nuevo ataque terrorista

Los viejos combatientes cuentan esa prédica de Fidel a los luchadores cubanos, a los combatientes de la Seguridad, muchas veces los fundadores eran campesinos que recién se alfabetizaban. Nadie recuerda nunca la idea de que se permitiera, se estimulara, se tolerara la idea de la tortura o del asesinato como método de lucha, y por eso la Revolución Cubana hizo el centro de su actuación la derrota del ejército enemigo y de sus tropas invasoras, y no acudió a otras tácticas de lucha, ni “al ojo por ojo y diente por diente”.

La ética hizo a los revolucionarios cubanos, pese a la propaganda adversa y tendenciosa, hacerse querer, y respetaron siempre la idea de que no se les podía confiscar a los campesinos lo que tuvieran, y el pequeño ejército guerrillero, hambriento y descalzo, pagaba a los campesinos la gallina o el poco de arroz y frijoles que pedían para su sustento.

La idea de que se pierde la autoridad moral si falta la ética en la actuación, es un aporte indiscutible de Fidel a la Revolución, y en momentos de enfrentamientos muy duros, porque hay que recordar que más de 3 500 cubanos cayeron víctimas de actos terroristas y que en Cuba hay más de 2 000 cubanos con limitaciones físicas debido a bombas, a actos terroristas, a bombardeos contra poblaciones civiles de la aviación o de buques en las costas, la ética presidió siempre la actuación de la Revolución.

Eso es Fidel, y por eso la Revolución se defendió, pero dentro de unos límites en los que no cupo nunca la idea de imitar los métodos del enemigo o de que, como ya dije, el fin justifique los medios. Ese es un aporte de Fidel, los cubanos lo saben bien.

Se le pueden llevar a Fidel propuestas de cómo actuar, pero se sabe de antemano que si se le propone salirse un milímetro de lo que constituye la ética, los principios, las ideas en las que la Revolución cree, se obtendrá, cuando menos, una negativa, y casi siempre un huracán de ideas.

La tercera, el desprendimiento. El desprendimiento de Fidel por las cosas materiales, por los homenajes, por las vanidades de los que todos —dicen— llevamos algo dentro, en Fidel alcanza categoría de cualidad esencial. No es solo su conducta personal, casi espartana; no es solo su total ausencia de vanidad. Dicen que pudo ser un excelente abogado, brillante estudiante; dicen sus primeros compañeros de bufete —acabados de graduar de la Facultad de Derecho, fundaron con él un bufete otros dos compañeros de estudio— que rápidamente propusieron a Fidel dejar el bufete y dedicarse a otra cosa, porque los contrataba un rico dueño de un terreno para hacer un pleito para desalojar a unos pobres que estaban en las tierras, y Fidel terminaba defendiendo a los pobres y el bufete perdía el contrato (Risas).

Pero ese desprendimiento de Fidel termino siendo cualidad esencial de la Revolución Cubana. Aquí se han dado hoy testimonios: la idea de la solidaridad entregada como deber y no como arma de influencia política. Por eso uno y otro testimoniante dijeron aquí: “Cuba ayudó sin pedir nada a cambio.”

Muchas veces en el mundo se ayudó, pero a cambio se pidieron favores o la toma de determinadas decisiones. Nadie puede decir nunca, no hay un solo ejemplo, que la Revolución Cubana pidió algo a cambio. Ejerció generosa y puramente la solidaridad; entregó no lo que le sobraba, sino compartió lo que tenía sin pedir nunca nada a cambio, y yo creo que eso explica la presencia de ustedes y de muchos como ustedes que quizás no han podido estar aquí.

Nos podemos equivocar como todo ser humano, nuestra obra no es perfecta; podemos errar y de hecho lo hacemos, pero no nos hemos equivocado nunca, pienso, en el ejercicio de la solidaridad como deber, y nunca como instrumento del interés. Esa es una cualidad que alcanza hoy al pueblo cubano, al que se le reconoce por los visitantes. Fue, quizás, cualidad en sectores de nuestra población, algunas de esas cualidades estaban en la idiosincrasia del cubano; pero en la Revolución la idea de compartir se hizo masiva. Por eso, en Cuba se hizo un festival de estudiantes y de jóvenes, en un momento de crisis muy dura del período especial, alojando a los visitantes en las casas. Por eso todo el mundo reconoce como cualidad del pueblo y de la Revolución la idea del compartir.

Tenemos otros defectos, pero no el de la falta de desprendimiento, y por eso hemos defendido como pueblo la idea de que vale más la dignidad y la independencia que las cosas materiales; por eso no hemos pactado ni hemos negociado nuestro derecho a ser libres rindiéndonos para que nos levanten el bloqueo, y por eso hemos sabido decir que no, y yo creo que eso es esencialmente el resultado de un magisterio y un aporte de Fidel.

En cuarto lugar, la coherencia. No es solo que si usted lee lo que Fidel dijo en el año 1961 sobre un tema encontrará, con admiración y sorpresa, que son ideas que volvió a repetir

muchas veces —no todas, porque hay cosas que cambian,

lógicamente—, sino que cuando hablo de la coherencia, hablo, por ejemplo, de que nunca un diplomático cubano ha tenido que defender en una tribuna una causa en la que no cree, un principio con el que no esté de acuerdo. Nunca un diplomático cubano ha tenido que pasar la dura y amarga experiencia que nosotros vemos a diario en otros diplomáticos, de tener que decirle a alguien: “Perdóname, yo no estoy de acuerdo con eso que me mandaron a decir; mi gobierno me mandó a decir eso, pero yo personalmente no estoy de acuerdo”, nunca hemos sido puestos en esa situación. Y digo un diplomático, puedo decir cualquier representante de nuestra Revolución, de nuestro pueblo.

La idea de que la Revolución ha tenido una coherencia en los principios y de que nunca nos ha puesto en la disyuntiva de si defender un principio en el que creemos o responder a una razón de Estado. La coherencia ha sido también razón de Estado en Cuba y los principios por encima de los intereses han sido también razón de Estado en la Revolución Cubana. Eso es obra de Fidel.

El ejemplo personal es la quinta de mis anotaciones.

Fidel entronizó en Cuba la idea de que no se le puede pedir a la gente lo que uno no está dispuesto a hacer antes. Quizás uno no lo hace, pero los que lo siguen tienen que saber que uno está o estuvo dispuesto a hacerlo. Por eso Fidel, desde que recibió al primer ciclón en Cuba, después del triunfo, en el lugar probable por donde el ciclón llegaría —y lo hizo así durante 45 años y el pueblo lo vio allí, en el medio del huracán, dirigiendo, arriesgándose con los que estaban ahí—, desde ese momento lo convirtió en práctica para los cubanos.

No hay un dirigente cubano que no esté cortado con esa tijera, que no entienda la idea de que el ejemplo personal es esencial y es deber, y que los jefes han de ir delante; que los jefes solo tienen derecho a más sacrificio, y que el único privilegio que puede dar un cargo o una militancia en Cuba, porque militar en nuestro Partido es resultado de un proceso que incluye también el que los compañeros, la masa de los que no son militantes, consideren que ese aspirante tiene ejemplaridad y autoridad suficientes, por eso no es masivo nuestro Partido; la idea de que militar en el Partido de la vanguardia o tener una responsabilidad da solo derecho a más sacrificios y más restricciones, es un legado de Fidel. Por eso no hubo en Cuba combate, huracán, trabajo que requiriera sacrificio y esfuerzo, en el que Fidel no estuviera.

Bueno, las misiones internacionalistas; por razones obvias Fidel no podía salir. No tuvo el privilegio que tenía el Che, era un compromiso con él desde aquella conversación de México de que un día no se le reclamarían esas razones. La misión internacionalista de Fidel fue convertir a Cuba, como se dijo aquí, no en una isla perdida en el mar, sino en tierra firme para todos los que lucharon por la justicia y la dignidad en cualquier parte del mundo.

El ejemplo personal, la autoridad que emana de ir delante, de dar el ejemplo, de guiar con la actuación propia es un aporte de Fidel; la idea de que uno no se puede quedar atrás y lanzar a los otros porque después no habría cómo mirarles a los ojos.

Recuerdo cuando Fidel dijo: “Yo veo a los hombres de mi escolta que se preparan para si un día hay un nuevo atentado contra mí; se preparan para evacuarme a mí, sacarme del lugar, y ellos quedarse allí combatiendo. Yo los dejo, no les digo nada, pero ellos no saben que el día que eso pase, a mí hay que matarme allí junto con ellos, porque después, ¿con qué cara yo podría venir a mirarlos si los dejo combatiendo por mí en el lugar?” (Aplausos.)

Esa cualidad llevada a todos los actos de la vida ha sido una de las razones esenciales de la autoridad de Fidel en Cuba y explicación del cariño del pueblo por él. El pueblo sabe, el pueblo sabe más de cuatro cosas y no puede ser engañado; y al cubano, que conoce el sacrificio, pero conoce también —y es un elemento de su nacionalidad— el disfrute del placer, que es alegre, es expansivo, le gusta la fiesta, le gusta la alegría y la disfruta, y está dispuesto a renunciar a ella, y lo ha hecho más de una vez, pero al cubano no le gusta que lo engañen, o que lo manden delante y se queden detrás.

Para guiar a este pueblo hay que encabezarlo, y encabezarlo quiere decir ir en la punta de la vanguardia (Aplausos). Ese es un legado de Fidel, es el resultado del magisterio de Fidel, porque no es que cuatro o cinco lo hagan como él, eso ha alcanzado la masividad, se ha convertido en fenómeno de masas, y vale tanto para una fábrica como para una empresa agrícola o un ministerio del gobierno. Los jefes tienen que ir delante, los jefes dan el ejemplo, guían el camino con su conducta personal.

El Che, ministro del gobierno del que Fidel era Primer Ministro, es paradigma.

En sexto lugar, la verdad. La verdad es el arma; la verdad, condición para ser respetado.

Recuerdo cuando se le propuso no decir una parte de la verdad. Él no estuvo de acuerdo, se le insistió: “Pero, bueno, no decir toda la verdad no es decir mentira.” Fidel dijo: “Bueno, cuando no se dice toda la verdad, eso es una media verdad, y estamos hablando de decir la verdad”, y por eso nunca el enemigo ha podido hacer con nosotros lo que tantas veces nosotros hemos hecho, que es decir: “Mire, miente; aquí está la prueba de que usted miente.” Nunca la Revolución ha tenido la debilidad de tener que reconocer una mentira. Esa es práctica y enseñanza de Fidel.

En séptimo lugar —escribí aquí en mis desordenados garabatos— la sensibilidad. Fidel trasladó esa cualidad personal a las políticas y a la actuación de la Revolución.

Recuerdo que cuando siendo su joven e inexperto ayudante secretario, en el año 1992 ó 1993, yo, abrumado por el hecho de que era la media noche, y había no menos de 30 visitantes que querían reunirse con Fidel, y yo veía que eso no era posible, y después de una reunión larga y agotadora, Fidel no había comido en todo el día, de una en otras reuniones; estábamos en pleno período especial, eran muy duros los años: los apagones, la falta de electricidad, de alimentos, de medicamentos, el país puesto ante el reto de enfrentar una situación inédita y repentina que cortó el 85% de nuestro comercio exterior, lo que nos hizo tener que buscar nuevos mercados, todo eso bajo la presión de un bloqueo que se hizo más duro en aquellos años, Fidel no paraba, era el día entero... Así cumplió sus 70 años en el año 1996, aquí con Guayasamín, que le hizo aquel retrato de las manos, y Fidel le protestó durante el retrato: “¡Pero, Oswaldo, esas manos que me estás pintando están muy flacas y muy pálidas!” Y Guayasamín le decía: “¿Pero es que no entiendes, Fidel? Estas no son manos, ¿no te das cuenta?, son palomas, son puras, nunca han robado ni se han manchado de sangre” (Aplausos).

En esos años duros era uno de esos días, y yo le dije: “Mire, tiene estos visitantes, le propongo ver a este mañana, a este otro..., y ahora le propongo que vaya a descansar. Solo quedaría sin resolverse este señor, Trudeau, que se va mañana, a primera hora” —el exprimer ministro canadiense, había venido a Cuba, lo unió siempre una amistad con Fidel—, y dice Fidel: “Pero, ¡cómo! ¿Está aquí Trudeau y tú no me lo has dicho? Y se va mañana, ¡tengo que verlo!” Digo: “Pero, bueno, es que son muchos; además, usted no ha comido hoy en todo el día.” Dice Fidel: “No, hay que verlo.” Digo: “Pero, bueno, mire, además, él no es ya Primer Ministro”, dije yo. Aprendí ese día para siempre la lección (Risas); pero ese día dije: “Si en definitiva él es un exprimer ministro. Si él fuera el Primer Ministro... pero él fue, ya no es...” Y Fidel dio media vuelta y a dos milímetros de mi cara me dijo: “Nunca más me propongas eso; no me interesan los cargos, sino los hombres. Es más, me interesan más los hombres cuando no están en los cargos” (Aplausos).

Esa sensibilidad no es la cualidad de un hombre o de unos pocos hombres o mujeres, me refiero a cómo eso caló profundamente junto con la obra social de la Revolución.

Esa sensibilidad fue la que hizo a Fidel entrar al cuarto donde Ana Fidelia Quirot, la corredora destacada, la campeona cubana de atletismo, se debatía entre la vida y la muerte y llevó a Fidel a ocuparse con pasión de salvarle la vida a Ana Fidelia. Esa sensibilidad personal, esa capacidad de sentir por los otros, de sentir como propio el dolor o la angustia de otros es una cualidad que Fidel convirtió en patrimonio de millones en Cuba.

En octavo lugar —no sé si demoro y abuso de ustedes, no están organizadas estas ideas y me da pena (Aplausos)—, la modestia y la ausencia total de vanidades. Por eso Fidel usa en lo esencial el mismo uniforme, muchas veces raído. Por eso no hay una condecoración en el pecho de Fidel, por eso nunca ha tenido una condecoración, y solo su autoridad personal hizo que compañeros con muchos méritos en Cuba aceptaran recibirla; por ejemplo, Raúl y Almeida aceptaron solo la estrella de Héroes de la República de Cuba que llevan hoy en sus pechos, porque Fidel impuso su argumento y su persuasión, porque no la querían recibir, decían: “Si Fidel no la ha recibido”, y Fidel los convenció. Bueno, se sabe que el que se deje tirar el brazo de Fidel por el hombro y oiga sus argumentos, con mucha probabilidad será convencido (Risas).

Fidel ha hecho de esa modestia, de esa ausencia total de vanidad una aspiración para nosotros.

A Tomás Borge, que está sentado aquí y que dijo en la mañana palabras que nos emocionaron a todos, Fidel le recordó la frase de Martí: “Toda la gloria del mundo cabe en un grano de maíz.” Esa ha sido su brújula, esa ha sido la frase siempre lista para ser citada de memoria por Fidel, no como consigna vacía, sino como práctica permanente en su vida. Por eso su grado es el que tenía en la Sierra, grado de Comandante; por eso el pueblo le dice Fidel, y es cuando él se siente más cómodo, cuando le dicen Fidel, no cuando le citan los cargos.

Por eso Fidel se ha enfrascado en una discusión profunda sobre un tema de medio ambiente con el chofer de un automóvil, o con el camarero de un hotel a donde ha ido, tomándolo totalmente en serio.

Por eso Fidel nunca ha dicho: “No, esta persona no está a mi nivel para discutir conmigo”; Fidel está ausente de todo eso. Por eso Fidel nunca ha creído en ningún protocolo y por eso el protocolo que se usa en Cuba más o menos es el que acomoda a esta sensibilidad. Hoy está más organizado, pero, bueno, Fidel nunca ha aceptado la idea de que no se puede ir a ver a un visitante, por razones protocolares, por eso se apareció la noche antes en que el visitante iba a ser recibido oficialmente y por eso esa cualidad de tener una ausencia total de vanidades. La modestia como conducta diaria, que millones de cubanos aspiramos a imitar y tomamos como modelo hoy, es un aporte de Fidel también a las cualidades de nuestra Revolución, diría que de nuestra nación.

En noveno lugar escribí: “El deber de un político revolucionario es aprender” , por lo tanto, en Fidel la curiosidad infinita, las cien y mil preguntas de un tema hasta saber los detalles; el afán de leer que llevó a que siempre haya un libro a mano en su auto con una pequeña lamparita. El afán de leer, de estudiar; no es solo afición por los libros o por un tema, sino deber de revolucionario y de político.

En Fidel aprender, saber, leer, estudiar, es deber y no solo afición o hobby, y por eso dondequiera que él esté hay libros, pero en la oficina usted puede abrir los libros que dicen: “Teoría del pasto y el forraje para el ganado”, porque era pueblo en el gobierno intentando mejorar la ganadería, producir, multiplicar los panes y los peces. Usted toma cualquiera de esos libros y tiene las anotaciones de Fidel: “Ojo, revisar; debo ver esto con Fulano; preguntar en la universidad el resultado del estudio.” Así ve: Teoría del pastoreo , André Voisin; Mejoramiento de suelos ; Indicadores principales de la industria mecánica . Cualquier tema de la biología, la química está ahí, no como afición para tiempo libre, sino como escalón de aprendizaje para un revolucionario que considera aprender y saber, un deber y no una afición.

En décimo lugar escribí: “El rigor personal”, la aspiración a la perfección no como asunto de vanidad personal, sino de deber con sus responsabilidades. Por eso en lo que esté involucrado Fidel, él tratará de que eso sea lo mejor. Muchas veces lo que él hizo no se sabe; muchas veces me han felicitado por un discurso, la mitad del cual o las dos terceras partes las escribió Fidel; claro, no lo puedo decir ahí donde lo digo, porque sería un problema, pero... (Aplausos).

Muchos de nosotros hemos sido testigos de esa aspiración de Fidel, muchas veces anónima, no ligada a la vanidad ni mucho menos, y que no es ni será reconocida, porque no se sabe.

Su aspiración a que las cosas queden bien; ese rigor, ejemplar para nosotros, de hacerlo bien, porque es el compromiso con el pueblo, porque es la manera de ayudar a la causa que estamos defendiendo, porque es lo que nos toca hacer como revolucionarios o como cuadros en la Revolución.

En onceno lugar: “La derrota no es tal hasta que no es aceptada”, mientras que no se acepte se está en plena lucha para revertir la derrota y es solo episodio temporal que podrá ser convertido en victoria. Esa es una cualidad —en Cuba dicen: “A Fidel no le gusta perder ni a las postalitas”—, la idea de que no se acepta la derrota, y yo creo que eso es cualidad hoy, más allá de Fidel, de los revolucionarios cubanos, de nuestro pueblo. Por ahí se dice: “Ustedes los cubanos son como son”, y por eso los atletas y por eso nuestro pueblo, y la idea de que se puede hacer más, de que no se acepta la derrota.

García Márquez escribe en su prólogo al libro de Gianni Miná, al que veo allí en el público, que la idea de Fidel de no aceptar la derrota es lo mismo si es para ensartar una aguja que para librar una batalla en Angola a 10 000 kilómetros, y lo intentará una y otra vez hasta que logre hacerlo. Ese no es el ejemplo que él cita, pero es algo así como eso. Eso ya es una cualidad de la Revolución.

Si no hubiéramos creído en que la victoria es posible mientras se luche por ella y se crea en ella, quizás no estaríamos aquí, no habríamos resistido casi 50 años de bloqueo, agresiones, actos terroristas; la agresión de la potencia imperial más poderosa que ha existido en la historia.

A la pregunta de cómo pudo resistir el pequeño país cuando se quedó solo —porque durante 30 años hubo el apoyo de la Unión Soviética, pero después, en los últimos 15 años, solos nosotros aquí; muchas veces los amigos creían que no era posible que pudiéramos enfrentar la adversidad que vino ante nosotros—, habrá que responder: Porque Fidel convirtió en patrimonio de millones en Cuba la idea de que la derrota no es tal hasta que no se acepta, de que siempre existe la posibilidad de revertir una derrota temporal. Por eso el Granma no terminó en derrota final, fue solo derrota temporal, como antes lo había sido el Moncada. Y siempre fue el volver a empezar, el empezar de cero otra vez, y por eso estamos aquí.

Número doce, escribí: “La aspiración a la justicia para todos”. Hay quienes aspiran a la justicia solo para sí mismos, luchan quizás por ser ricos o por alcanzar una determinada meta personal; hay quienes piensan en la justicia para su familia o para su entorno más cercano, digo la justicia entendida como el logro de las metas. Hay quienes la han aspirado incluso para su pueblo, para su nación; pero para Fidel la idea de luchar por la justicia no tiene fronteras y por eso ha luchado por ella no solo para los cubanos, que ya era bastante: el sentido de dedicar su vida a la lucha por la justicia de un pueblo, sino la ha convertido en causa universal.

Por eso cuando en Cuba había 6 000 médicos y 3 000 se fueron, estimulados, pagados por el gobierno de Estados Unidos que trató de que no quedara ninguno, quedaron 3 000 médicos en Cuba en el año 1959 —eran 6 millones los cubanos—, ayer se recordaron aquí las palabras de Fidel: “Formaremos muchos médicos.” Hoy tenemos 25 médicos por cada uno de aquellos que se fueron, y Fidel dijo: “Formaremos, porque los necesitaremos en Cuba y en el resto del mundo.” Si esa idea de aspiración universal a la justicia no hubiera estado presente, Cuba no tendría hoy casi 30 000 colaboradores de la salud, de los cuales 21 000 son médicos, trabajando en 69 países.

Por eso esa aspiración a la justicia para todos, más allá de nuestra tierra, de nuestra nación, de nuestra condición de Estado, hace que los científicos cubanos trabajen arduamente, y Fidel ha estimulado todos esos proyectos personalmente, por una vacuna contra la malaria, que es una enfermedad que no existe en Cuba.

Las transnacionales no gastan dinero en investigación para eso, porque dan más dinero los productos cosméticos o las pastillas para bajar de peso, que las vacunas contra la malaria, porque esas son medicinas de pueblos pobres y, por lo tanto, no están destinadas a tener un gran mercado. Los científicos cubanos han trabajado por vacunas para curar enfermedades que no existen en Cuba, y trabajan hoy bajo la idea de que la aspiración a la justicia es a la justicia para todos, y creo que eso es una enseñanza y un aporte también de Fidel.

Número 13, escribí aquí, “la fuerza de las ideas”. La convicción personal, que es martiana también, de que una idea justa, desde el fondo de una cueva, puede más que un ejército. Por eso nuestra batalla se llama batalla de ideas, el terreno clave donde librar la lucha.

En el número 14 escribí otra cualidad de Fidel que se ha trasladado, digamos, como patrimonio de nuestro pueblo, “la idea de que nunca ha dejado de sentirse un ser humano”. A Fidel, ni el reconocimiento, ni el apoyo, ni el mito en que terminó siendo convertido, en particular, por el acoso enemigo; ni su autoridad inmensa, emanada de su ejemplo; ni su experiencia, ni su conocimiento superior a los que le rodean, nunca lo hizo, ni lo ha hecho, dejar de sentirse un ser humano capaz de ponerse en el lugar del otro, de imaginar lo que el otro está pensando o sintiendo, de compartir y comprender el dolor, la duda, el temor de los otros.

Recuerdo bien también el día en que yo, abrumado por un error que cometí —yo había cometido un error, no me había dado cuenta— al tramitar una indicación de Fidel, me había equivocado, y Fidel me vio tan abrumado, y de pronto empezó: “¿Quieres que te diga una cosa, ahora que lo veo bien? Al final creo que ha sido muy positivo esto que ha pasado, y esto que tú has hecho me parece que va a terminar ayudándonos.” Mi depresión aumentaba, porque veía que él trataba de convencerme de una cosa distinta a lo que era evidente para mí. Ahí no estaba actuando el Comandante en Jefe de la Revolución Cubana, ahí no estaba actuando el Presidente del Consejo de Estado de nuestro país, ahí no estaba actuando siquiera el luchador curtido, que sabe que un error en un pequeño detalle puede dar al traste con un gran proyecto; ahí estaba actuando el ser humano que comprendía que yo quería que me tragara la tierra, pero la tierra no me acaba de tragar como yo quería, y yo me moría de la vergüenza y ya no podía arreglar aquello que había pasado, y Fidel se empeñó —muchas veces lo he visto también con otros compañeros— en demostrarme a mí que mi error, a fin de cuentas, iba a ser muy positivo para el resultado final del trabajo. Ese es el Fidel ser humano, que aun cuando él se propone la perfección para sí y se flagela si no la obtiene, sin embargo es capaz de no exigírsela a un grado de injusticia a los otros, y es capaz de comprender que el otro puede equivocarse y Fidel tiene una frase de aliento para él. Y eso es su magisterio, porque en Cuba el que no haga eso, que los cubanos en millones han visto hacer a Fidel, es un “pesado”, un atorrante, los cubanos no lo aceptan, porque eso es cualidad ya hoy, derecho, digamos, que reclama el pueblo en la conducta de los demás.

Por último, escribí el número 15, “la ausencia total de odio hacia cualquier persona”. El Che había dicho que una revolución es una profunda obra de amor. Fidel solo tiene odio para la injusticia, odio profundo hacia la injusticia, hacia el hambre, hacia la discriminación racial, pero no hacia las personas, aun si han sido o son sus enemigos. No ha actuado nunca la Revolución Cubana llevada por sentimientos de odio, como no sea odio a la injusticia, pero no hacia los que han provocado, digamos, o son responsables de la injusticia. La Revolución cubana, por eso, no se basa en odios, ni siquiera para los traidores. Hay que ver a Fidel respondiéndole a Ramonet —que lo veo también ahí en el público—, cuando Ramonet le pregunta por traidores. No destila odio, no hay una palabra de odio en más de 700 páginas de respuestas de Fidel a Ramonet. Y así es en el libro de Gianni Miná y así es en el de Tomás Borge. Le pregunta por traidores, le pregunta por hombres que atentaron contra su vida, y Fidel apenas dice una frase. No es en eso donde se concentra, no hace la gran descripción de ese que mereció el castigo.

Por eso viven muchos de los terroristas que hicieron sufrir y todavía hoy son responsables del sufrimiento de miles de familias cubanas. Porque la Revolución ha sido muy fuerte; y podía ir, guiada por el odio, a perseguir a hombres que cometieron asesinatos muy graves y actos de terrorismo contra nuestro país, y la Revolución no lo ha hecho, no lo hizo. Esa es una herencia del pensamiento de Fidel, la idea de que no hay que intentar ajusticiar a los instrumentos, pues al final pueden surgir otros, sino que hay que derrotar al imperialismo, que es el que los creó y los apoyó. Y, por eso, asesinos, torturadores que escaparon de Cuba en la alborada del Primero de Enero, la Revolución no los persiguió, e incluso no los ajustició cuando regresaron como invasores a nuestra patria. Algunos están vivos y lo pueden testimoniar. Hay ausencia total de odio en Fidel.

Se le pregunta a Fidel por los presidentes de Estados Unidos, se le pregunta por Kennedy, por su hermano Robert. Kennedy fue el Presidente de la época de la Operación Mangosta, de los planes —no fue el único, porque eso duró décadas, no ha terminado hasta hoy—; usted no ve odio en Fidel.

Recuerdo el día en que la hermana de John y de Robert, Eunice, pidió a Fidel que diera un testimonio, porque se cumplían 30 años de la Crisis de Octubre. Fidel tenía mucho trabajo, no quería, y ella le dijo: “Se lo vengo a pedir en nombre de nuestra familia, Presidente, que, sabiendo la manera en que nuestros hermanos lo adversaron a usted, y no estando de acuerdo con algunas cosas de las que ellos hicieron, respetamos en usted su ausencia total de odio, y el hecho de que usted nunca ha tenido hacia nuestros hermanos, que le dieron motivos para ello, sentimientos de odio.” Fidel terminó accediendo y dio una entrevista que es uno de los testimonios más completos sobre la Crisis de Octubre y sus antecedentes.

Fidel ha sembrado esas cualidades en nosotros, eso no es patrimonio sólo de la conducta de Fidel. Los revolucionarios cubanos no actúan llevados por el odio, aun cuando fueron más de 350 000 cubanos a luchar en el sur de África —aquí se habló de eso—, a enfrentar a las tropas poderosas del apartheid, que tenían incluso varias armas nucleares. Dos mil cubanos cayeron allí. Nuestros combatientes enfrentaron allí un ejército poderoso. Quince años duró aquella guerra que se selló con la integridad territorial de Angola preservada y la independencia de Namibia. No existiría hoy Angola y hubiera demorado mucho más la derrota del apartheid, si las tropas cubanas no hubieran enfrentado allí, en el sur de África, a miles de kilómetros de nuestra patria, que tiene más mérito todavía cuando eso se hizo en un momento en que ya se derrumbaba la Unión Soviética, se desintegraba el campo socialista, solos.

Piero Gleijeses habló aquí y escribió un libro revelador sobre esos temas, y cuando esa guerra terminó y regresaron nuestros combatientes, y se cumplió lo que había dicho Amílcar Cabral: que los cubanos regresarían de África llevándose solo los huesos de sus muertos, porque no somos allí dueños de minas, ni de pozos petroleros, ni de tierras, ni de bosques, porque no fuimos allí buscando diamantes, petróleo, fuimos luchando por una idea de justicia, cualidad y herencia de Fidel a nuestro pueblo, se puede decir que no hubo ni un solo momento de odio, ni nuestras tropas actuaron, sino con un gran altruismo. Así había sido en la Sierra Maestra, donde se curaba primero a los heridos del ejército enemigo. Así fue en Girón, así fue siempre, y así fue en Angola.

Esa ausencia total de odio, como no sea odio a la injusticia, al imperialismo, a la exclusión, como fenómenos, es una cualidad también de Fidel. Por eso, esa ausencia total de rencor. Usted le pregunta y él no dice una frase de odio al que traicionó, al que agredió. Yo creo que ese es otro legado de Fidel.

No he querido —ya lo dije— que esto se vea como un ensayo, ni una pieza académica o rigurosa. Si tiene una virtud, es su honestidad total.

Yo no diría estas palabras aquí si no fuera por creer, como cualquier otro cubano lo haría, profundamente en ellas, porque Fidel también nos ha enseñado el rechazo total a todo lo que sea vanidades, adulonerías. No hay nada que moleste más a Fidel que un adulón. Y si tienen otra cualidad estas palabras, es un profundo cariño que es, diría, el sentimiento mayor que nuestro pueblo siente por Fidel, en el que ve al padre, hermano mayor, familia propia, más allá de sus responsabilidades y de sus méritos.

Los enemigos de la Revolución Cubana, que es decir los enemigos de la justicia, de la verdad, de la dignidad, los enemigos cuentan los minutos esperando y deseando la muerte de Fidel, sin comprender que Fidel ya no es solo Fidel, que Fidel es su pueblo y que Fidel es, a fin de cuentas, todo hombre y mujer que en el mundo esté dispuesto a luchar y luche porque un mundo mejor sea posible.

Los enemigos sueñan y se equivocan con la idea de que la ausencia de Fidel puede significar la ausencia de sus ideas, y que las convicciones y los principios que Fidel ha sembrado a nivel masivo en su pueblo y en el mundo pueden desaparecer; Fidel, que aspira a que de él solo queden las ideas y que, convaleciendo, recuperándose y regresando al combate propinará a esos enemigos asentados en el odio y la mediocridad una nueva derrota.

Gracias a todos por venir.

Gracias por habernos permitido celebrar de esta manera el cumpleaños de Fidel. A los cubanos solos, Fidel no nos lo hubiera permitido.

Gracias a la Fundación Guayasamín, a Pablito, al resto de sus familiares, a Cachito Vera.

Gracias a la Fundación que, como lo había hecho antes, logró imponerle a Fidel la celebración de su cumpleaños y convencerlo de que su cumpleaños no era solo su cumpleaños, sino una oportunidad para dar otra vez, en el terreno de las ideas, una batalla a favor de la justicia y la solidaridad.

Si ustedes no estuvieran aquí, nuestra celebración habría tenido que ser íntima y modesta, y Fidel no la habría permitido; pero un deber de caballerosidad, de simpatía y agradecimiento con los que vienen, le ha impedido a él oponerse a esta celebración nacida del —nosotros lo sabemos bien— más puro cariño y solidaridad con nuestro pueblo y con Fidel.

Les damos las gracias a ustedes y les prometemos que nosotros seguiremos luchando por las ideas y los sueños a los que Fidel ha dedicado su vida. Que lo haremos con él otra vez al frente de nuestro pueblo; pero que cuando él y los hombres de su generación no estén, nosotros tenemos la convicción de que nuestro pueblo habrá hecho para siempre ya suyas esas ideas y esos principios.

Ese es nuestro regalo mayor a Fidel: defender y combatir cada día de nuestra existencia por esas ideas.

Muchas gracias.

Versiones Taquigráficas-Consejo de Estado

The uprising: The pink revolution that kicked out the "Yanquis"

Greg Grandin
Published 04 December 2006

Washington has seen the countries south of its border as a backyard where it can bribe, bully and even choose the rulers. But a new generation of populist leaders is just saying No. Greg Grandin on the pink revolution that kicked out the "Yanquis"

As Venezuelans go to the polls, they bring to a close not just a contest between President Hugo Chávez and his main challenger, Manuel Rosales, but a year-long, continent-wide campaign. Those sharply critical of Washington-backed economic liberalisation have been pitted against those in favour of freer trade with the United States. It's been a race to the wire, with leftists taking Bolivia, Chile, Uruguay, Nicaragua and Ecuador, and centrists and conservatives holding Colombia, Peru, Costa Rica and Mexico.

Those committed to a vision of globalisation as it proceeded in the 1990s - reduced tariffs, deregulation, tight money and privatisation - have worked hard to brush off the importance of this election cycle. The Wall Street Journal and the Economist, for instance, repeatedly point out, correctly, that many of Latin America's new leftists, such as Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil or Michelle Bachelet in Chile, are fiscal moderates, and that the firebrand style of Chávez is the exception not the rule for the region's reformers.

Yet, despite policy differences, and largely independently of the outcome of specific elections, Latin America is undergoing a political and economic realignment. The White House is hoping for an upset in Venezuela, but even if the impro bable happens and Chávez loses, this will only slow, not stop, the decline of US influence in the area that used to be called its "backyard".
During the cold war, Washington counted on Latin America to watch its back as it moved about in the world. Regional governments voted en bloc in favour of the US and against the USSR at the United Nations, while bilateral economic treaties gave US corporations and banks special preference, ratifying Latin America's status as a province of the United States within an increasingly open world. When a country tried to break out of this system, the US supported coups that installed more co-operative military regimes, with death-squad auxiliaries eliminating those who continued to dissent.

Following the demise of the Soviet Union, Washington moved away from its reliance on repressive Latin American proxies, banking instead on its ability to project its power through elections and economic pressure.

This worked throughout the 1990s, as heavily indebted countries governed by centrists, grasping for the carrot of foreign investment, submitted to the command of the IMF. Ever mindful of the punishing stick of currency-market sell-offs, they cut back social spending, privatised national industries, weakened the power of organised labour, deregulated the financial sector, and did away with trade barriers that protected local manufacturers and peasant producers.

Over the past few years, however - roughly since Chávez's landslide victory in 1998 - the system has begun to break down. The Washington consensus, as this set of policies came to be called, proved an absolute disaster.

Between 1980 and 2000, the region grew cumulatively by only 9 per cent in per capita terms. Compare that with the 82 per cent expansion of the previous two decades, and add to it the financial crises that have rolled across Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina over the past 15 years, sweeping away accumulated savings, destroying the middle class, and wrecking the agricultural sector, and you will get a sense of why voters have turned left.

Efforts to move beyond free-trade orthodoxy have been aided by the significant stores of capital that have been built up in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, which have helped wean Latin America off its dependence on US finance. Likewise, high oil prices have transformed Venezuela into a regional creditor, with Caracas investing its petrodollars not in US banks but in infrastructure and bonds that help neighbouring countries break free from the IMF.
When, in 2004, the Argentinian president, Néstor Kirchner, offered the holders of his country's $170bn external debt 30 cents per dollar, many predicted the markets would punish Argentina by withholding future investment. But, with Chinese capital pouring in, and Kirchner's economic prudence proving a profitable bet, such threats are not as persuasive as they once were. Similar access to alternative sources of investment has allowed not just the leftist governments of Bolivia and Venezuela, but even a conservative one in Ecuador, to negotiate more favourable contracts with multinational energy companies.

Co-operation among the region's economies is also providing Latin America with leverage. Earlier this year, the Montevideo-based Latin American Integration Association reported that trade among its 12 member nations had grown 110 per cent since 2003, a much faster pace than had been predicted. In addition, rapidly expanding trade with Europe and Asia, particularly China, has helped the region gain considerable autonomy from US markets.
With financial independence comes political freedom. Over the past couple of years, governments from across the political spectrum have demonstrated a steadfast unwillingness to enlist in Washington's "war on terror". They have rejected the Pentagon's efforts to subordinate their militaries to US command; opposed the invasion of Iraq; refused to elect the US-backed candidate to the leadership of the Organisation of American States (OAS); declined to pass a law that would have exempted the US from the International Criminal Court; and rebuffed calls to isolate Venezuela. Such dissent was unthinkable during the cold war.
In response to this independence movement, the White House has tried to sell the idea that there are "two lefts" in Latin America: a responsible one it is willing to work with and an irresponsible one that is a threat to democracy. It gets help from commentators such as Jorge Castañeda, who divides Latin America between bad populists and good reformers, and Álvaro Vargas Llosa, who writes about a "carnivorous" and a "vegetarian" left.

Yet such a simplistic split does not hold. For one thing, it is the supposed red-meat left that has had the most economic success. Growth in Venezuela and Argentina is off the charts, with impressive declines in poverty and unemployment, while Chile and Brazil are experiencing sluggish performance.

And the "good reformers" themselves don't buy it. Leaders from Lula, Bachelet and Morales to Kirchner and Chávez share a commitment to integration, diversification and policies that spur not just growth, but fairness. It is this common agenda that led Bachelet, responding to the Bush administration's attempt to use her moderation to criticise Chávez, to defend Venezuela as a country working to "eradicate poverty and eliminate inequality". It is also what led Lula to make his first post-re-election trip abroad to Caracas, where he announced his support for Chávez's third-term campaign.

There are real conflicts among Latin American nations that Washington could exploit: between Bolivia and Brazil over energy issues, say, or Argentina and Uruguay over trade. It is having a hard time, however, backing up its divide-and-rule strategy with real incentives. The US has tried to weaken opposition to the Free Trade Areas of the Americas by picking off low-hanging fruit such as Paraguay and Peru with bilateral economic pacts. But the Democrats, now in control of Congress, have just declared that they will block ratification of free-trade treaties with Peru and Colombia because they fail to protect labour rights. Likewise, the steady decline of the dollar has reduced the importance of the US market. So, when Washington recently threatened to revoke trade concessions to Argentina and Brazil as punishment for their resistance to regional free-trade agreements, Buenos Aires and Brasília refused to budge.
With its political and economic influence in the region waning, the US is at a crossroads. It can either work with Latin American nationalists to develop equitable economic policies, or return to the days when it relied on repressive strongmen to enforce its authority locally. That the Pentagon last month announced an increase in military aid to Latin America in response to the rise of the left suggests that it has already taken a step in the wrong direction.

Greg Grandin teaches history at New York University. His latest book is "Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the rise of the new imperialism" (Metropolitan Books)

The End of the Bush Dynasty - by Stephen Lendman

The Bush family has been characterized in various ways including the Bush dynasty, crime family or syndicate. George Bush is just the latest in a line of unsavory characters but clearly the bad or worst seed and, in the eyes of most honest observers, the least worthy of an unworthy lot. He was supposed to be the latest in the Bush family line chosen to lay another golden egg for the dynasty but turned out instead to be an ugly duckling who's just been an embarrassment and much worse because of the course he chose and his rigid ideological obstinacy to change even in the face of failure.

The Bush family considers itself among the special chosen ones if based only on its royal heritage. The family is connected by blood to every European monarch on and off the throne including every member of the British House of Windsor. That relationship is more than familial and extends to the president's father having close business dealings with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip who themselves are connected to the notorious Carlyle Group that also employs GHW Bush as a "senior consultant" and master-rainmaker/fixer-arranger at a very high price for his services.

George W. Bush, of course, is in the bloodline and is a distant cousin of the Queen and Prince Charles. This American "royal" family traces its heritage back to 15th century Britain at the time of Henry VIII or earlier, but its royal connection is not unique to Washington politicos as both Al Gore and John Kerry also have familial ties to the British crown, and ironically Gore is a distant cousin of his former presidential rival from having been a direct descendant of Charlemagne when he was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Truth is indeed stranger or at least more ironic than fiction.

The modern-era Bush family dynasty goes back four generations and was connected to the military-industrial complex of its day during and after WW I much like the most recent two Bush generations are to the present one. It began with George H. Walker and Samuel Prescott acting as duel founding fathers of what turned out to be a criminal enterprise run under the family name much like it is under a local Godfather except for much bigger stakes and with the government of the United States acting as protector, benefactor and enforcer.

Walker was a St. Louis financier who later went to work for Averell Harriman as president of WA Harriman & Company, a banking business that invested in railroads, shipping, aviation and commodities like oil. Samuel Prescott Bush, the current president's other great grandfather, was a major Ohio industrialist and ran the Buckeye Steel Castings Co. that produced armaments. He later went to Washington to run the small arms, ammunition and ordnance section of the War Industries Board and became a close advisor to Herbert Hoover.

The president's grandfather Prescott Bush, Sam's son, had a varied career as a US Senator, Wall Street investment banker with Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH and same Harriman) and as a director of various companies involved in war production including Dresser Industries where his son, the president's father, later worked for a time. A hundred years ago, the Bush family was also connected to John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil and later with a number of Wall Street firms as well as with the US intelligence community since WWI.

Above all, this is a family that formed strong ties to the institutions of power that began in industry and Wall Street and was parlayed to become a powerful political dynasty that included a US senator, two governors, a congressman, vice-president, CIA director and two presidents (the current president's father, of course, having been a congressman, CIA director and vice-president before being elected president in 1988).

Prescott, the president's grandfather, had a particularly unsavory connection as recently declassified documents show. He was a director of New York based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that was a holding company for the Nazis and represented the German steel industrialist Fritz Thyssen who was intimately involved with the Nazi regime. He was also a director and shareholder of various other companies involved with Thyssen. UBC bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, oil, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany that helped build and support the Nazi war machine. Prescott was also with Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) when the firm did business with the Nazis during the 1930s that continued during the early years of WW II until the company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

What BBH did and paid a price for, many other US corporations did as well, prospered from and were never held to account for their lawlessness. Charles Higham documented much of it in his 1983 book called Trading with the Enemy in which he showed evidence of how major companies in America like the Rockefellers' Chase Bank and Standard Oil, Ford, General Motors and other corporate giants had no political or ideological problem doing business routinely with Nazi Germany during the war. It was just business with another good customer, no matter what the customer's business was.

Particularly heinous was the role of IBM Headquarters System Engineering, Design Automation and Management (not covered in the Highman book) when it was run by Thomas Watson. The company used IBM tabulation equipment to set up a system for the Nazis to locate all the Jews of Europe and then sort, file and categorize them for extermination in the death camps using the company's equipment and whose camp personnel IBM employees trained. All the while this went on, IBM managed to fend off US War Department probes into its illicit activities so it could continue to profit handsomely from the Nazi genocide the company knew was taking place and was facilitating - all for the big "blood money" profits involved. Current shareholders of the company's stock might wish to take note of this and reconsider their investment choice.

BBH had no problem cashing in either, and by the late 1930s claimed to be the world's largest investment banking firm in business like all others to make money, and like most others, as willing to do it with regimes like the Nazis as with any other customer. George Herbert Walker and Averell Harriman, who later became a prominent politician and diplomat serving under four US presidents, have been characterized by some as two evil geniuses who saw no difference in dealing with the Bolsheviks in Russia as with Hitler and the Nazis. For them, business was business just the way it is today and in the 1980s when GHW Bush as vice-president and president was willing and eager to be part of the scheme to arm Saddam Hussein who then became public enemy number one to be demonized for using the weapons supplied him by US and other western corporations when he was an ally.

Before his son succeeded him in the Oval Office (8 years removed), GHW Bush was involved in a long laundry list of criminal activities he never could have gotten away with under a system of law and order with those violating it held to account. He never was. As CIA chief in 1976 under Gerald Ford, the elder Bush was in charge of covering up the Agency's involvement in coup d'etats and assassinations of foreign leaders including its connection to an earlier September 11 - the one in 1973 ousting and murdering democratically elected President Salvador Allende in Chile that established the 17 year fascist dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet who, despite his despotism, became a close US ally.

The president's father was also deeply involved in the secret, illegal negotiations with Iran in the 1980s, when he was vice-president, that led to the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal that broke in 1986. With the help of friends in the Congress, including Dick Cheney who served then in the House and the corporate media that always looks the other way, he was able to escape investigation and scrutiny. They helped him get away with a strategy of lies and aggressive cover-ups to stay untarnished. It freed him to pursue and secure the Republican presidential nomination in 1988 and the highest office in the land he always wanted to hold, maybe because he felt his royal blood entitled him to it.

In 1992, Iran-Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh (who took his job seriously unlike his successors) uncovered evidence linking the president to the illegal operation and lying to the public about it, but "trickier-than-Nixon" Bush pardoned six indicted Iran-Contra figures shortly before he left office to bury the evidence against himself and slither away unscathed again. He's now seen as an esteemed elder statesman, his past buried, forgotten and above rebuke. No matter the truth is quite another matter that went down "the memory hole" and is no longer part of the "official" historical record. That judgmental error paved the way for a member of the next Bush generation to ascend to the nation's highest office, a move not turning out as planned.

A Dynastic Success Story Now on Shaky Footing

A Bush family tradition of lying with impunity, operating freely outside the law and getting away with it was no obstacle for the next family member in line, George W. Bush, to be chosen by his party to enter the presidential race in 2000. He got the nomination after serving six years as Texas governor distinguished only by a record of indifference to the public and a total dedication to the business interests in the state. It meant giant corporations were salivating at the thought of having a man like this in the White House serving them in that capacity the same way he did it for the business community in Texas. Thanks to a fraud-laden election, he got the job the old-fashioned way - his influential friends and family stole it for him as arranged by family consigliere and master-fixer Jim Baker securing the necessary 25 Florida electoral votes helped along by the complicity of five friendly Supreme Court justices who had to be in on the scheme.

The corporate interests got their main man in Washington, and for a short time seemed to be in "good hands" with him. But lying and getting away with it only works when the schemes lied about go according to plan. Bumps aside, the rise of the Bush dynasty to prominence and power, went well through the ascendency and tenure of George Herbert Walker Bush, the president's father, which included the election and reelection George W. Bush's younger brother Jeb as governor of Florida after an initial failed bid for the office in 1994 and George W's time as Texas governor.

Nothing lasts forever though, and as best laid as the plans were, they went awry with the misguided selection of the younger George to carry the family banner as the rightful successor to assume the position of supreme leader of the free world and lord and master of the universe. He wasn't the family's first choice and only got bumped up to that spot in line after brother Jeb's initial gubernatorial defeat - one the family must now look back on as a major turning point in the family's political fortunes that going forward may be irreversible.

It should have been an omen of things to come when if it hadn't been for the intervention of Jim Baker and those five arrogant High Court justices, in an election Al Gore clearly won, George Bush would have had to have found another line of work. The justices chose to rewrite the law giving themselves the power to annul the vote of the electorate to install their preferred candidate in the office they gifted to him the same way he's gotten everything else in his privileged life he never deserved and never had to work for. It's the way it's always been for a man of questionable ability and dubious character going back to his days as a youth when at best his behavior could only be charitably described as mischievous and without significant achievement. This is a man who rose to the top the way former Texas governor Ann Richards described it - as "someone born on third base (thinking) he hit a triple."

Six disastrous years later, this man now must not only choose a new career path in two more years, he must also employ a good legal defense team at the ready for the inevitable law suits sure to be filed against him once he leaves office in January, 2009 - a time that can't come soon enough for most and that many wanting him impeached and ousted aren't willing to wait for and may press their demands he go a lot sooner and face the music for his high crimes of war, against humanity and against the people of the United States.

As the current holder of the nation's highest office, George Bush is not unique. As Noam Chomsky rightfully observes: "If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-(WW II) American president would have to be hanged (like the worst of the Nazi war criminals found guilty)." Other than the Vietnam era (that family influence let him bypass in a comfortable Texas National Guard slot he rarely showed up for), and arguably the Korean war one as well, the only difference about George Bush as president is the immensity of his crimes and his hard line arrogance and indifference about them and toward the people he's harmed at home and abroad. He's undeterred and committed to press on with what he sees as a messianic mission, or even royal prerogative, and that makes him stand out as a special rogue who's already surpassed all others before him holding the nation's highest office.

Plans to Save the Bush Administration and Its Disastrous Misadventure in Iraq

With a lot of help from the Congress and complicit corporate media that continues to shield him, George Bush not only took the nation to war against two countries that never threatened us based on lies, deceit and cover-up, he's determined to push on to a victory that can't be won and is listening to sinister advice from the wrong people telling him to do it. Proposals of what happens going forward are showing up in a number of reports (related to the work of the Iraq Study Group - ISG) including one on November 16 in the London Guardian and a later one on November 30 discussed below. They follow a meeting George Bush, the vice-president and key administration officials had with the ISG, or Baker Commission, that was formed in March to draft a new course in Iraq because the current one isn't working, and it's led many high level business and political figures to believe it's leading the country to an inevitable disastrous train wreck unless redirected. It's also trying to rescue the family's reputation and presidency of the current incumbent, but it will be hard-pressed to do either.

The Guardian reported that the president told his senior advisors (or more likely Dick Cheney and other hard liners told him) the US military (with any help it can get) must make "a last big push" to win the war in Iraq and instead of beginning a drawdown in force strength, he may send an additional 20,000 more soldiers into this cauldron even against the advice of his Central Command (CENTCOM) commander-in-chief on the ground General John Abizaid who testified before Congress the same day the president was ignoring his advice that now may be changing after hearing what his boss had to say.

Whatever is said publicly or is released in the ISG report, all that matters is what, in fact, will happen going forward and that may be a clear example of a clinical definition of insanity - continuing to do the same things (more or less) that have failed, expecting a different result. It may also be more evidence that was first reported in Capitol Hill Blue on September 5 that Bush has gone over the edge and that Republican and Bush family insiders, including the president's father, are worried George Bush may be heading for a "full-fledged mental breakdown" judging by his bizarre or irrational behavior.

Jeffrey Steinberg writing in Executive Intelligence Review said GHW Bush fears his son is obsessed with his messianic mission and is "unreachable" even by some of his closest advisors like Secretary Rice. That view was also stated by prominent psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank, who wrote Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. He said: "With every passing week, President Bush marches deeper and deeper into a world of his own making. Central to Bush's world is an iron will which demands that external reality be changed to conform to his personal view of how things are." Dr. Frank added that George Bush needs psychiatric help.

The US military and the public along with all Iraqis better hope it comes soon before he inflames the entire Middle East and a lot more with it. That's what the Baker Commission and president's father are determined to avoid even though the plan they draft, or what we're told about it, will likely have no better solution in the end than the one Bush and his hard liners are now pursuing.

According to the Guardian report, the ISG is circulating its recommendations in a four-point "victory strategy" developed with help from Pentagon officials advising them. It's also getting lots of advice from a number of influential conservative think tanks whose members are part of "working groups" dealing with issues of the military and security, the economy and reconstruction, the political structure, and fine-tuning geostrategy that includes no change in the country's imperial agenda meaning the US military is in Iraq to stay whatever the final ISG report says.

Point One - calls for an initial increase in force size that may be the 20,000 George Bush is calling for to "secure Baghdad" where along with most all of al-Anbar province is where most of the country's violence is.

Point Two - stresses the importance of regional cooperation that will have to include Iran and Syria along with Iraq's other immediate neighbors. It could involve convening an international conference requesting diplomatic, political and financial help - the latter mostly from the Saudis and Kuwaitis.

Jim Baker knows without Iranian and Syrian cooperation, any hope for conflict resolution in Iraq is impossible, and even with it it's doubtful at best. Unspoken in the report and commentary is the one player with all the trump cards that's left out of the high-level consultations - the Iraqi resistance and great majority of Iraqi people who'll settle for nothing less than what the Baker Commission will never propose and George Bush and the neocons will never agree to - a full and unconditional withdrawal, no strings attached with reparations for the damage done that's almost incalculable. That reality is what all the high-level thinkers and planners are up against. Jim Baker surely knows this whatever his final proposal is. In another article on the ISG, this writer characterized Baker's efforts as a job for Superman and then some, and any hope for success is even more than the redoubtable Jim Baker and his high-level insider team are likely to achieve. Making it even harder will be the influence of the powerful Israeli Lobby that wants the US to press on at least with an attack against Iran and surely not engage the Iranians or Syrians in constructive dialogue about Iraq or anything else.

Point Three - focuses on an effort toward reconciliation among the sectarian ethnic and religious groups to win over consensus among them. The report cited the belief that doing this is crucial to convincing neighboring countries that Iraq can again become a fully functioning state, but conflicting reports about this idea are now surfacing days ahead of the ISG report's release.

If these ideas end up being adopted, they'll violate everything the Bush administration did since March, 2003 when the strategy was, and still is, to destroy all the institutions of a modern secular society in the country along with its historical treasures to transform this once modern and prosperous nation into an impotent desert kingdom populated by easily controlled serfs. It will take more than just a major effort, if one is even intended, to put that "Humpty Dumpty" back together again.

Oddly, or maybe in just a momentary case of bad judgment, the Guardian writer said neocon ideas about "imposing" western-style democracy will have to be set aside. It's hard to imagine the writer doesn't understand that's the one thing US imperial strategy never tolerates and was never part of the plan for "the new Iraq." A nation of serfs is not one of democracy, and predatory capitalism and democracy go no better together than fire and water.

The report goes on to say that partitioning Iraq into a tripartite loose federation won't be recommended as it would only lead to a large-scale humanitarian crisis. It's hard to imagine anything worse than the US-created one now on the ground that's out-of-control by any measure.

Point Four - calls for increased resources to be allocated for additional troop deployments and to train and equip an expanded Iraqi army and police. It will also call for efforts to stem corruption that reportedly has involved the theft of billions, most of which has been pilfered by US contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel Corporation (closely tied to the White House) that either did shoddy work they were assigned (other than for US installations) or little or none at all but still pocketed many billions of US taxpayer dollars with nary a wink or nod of disapproval from the Bush administration that effectively gave them and others a license to steal.

This point also will call for improving local government and curtailing the power of religious courts and mentions that Bush may be mesmerized by the "Svengali" or "Rasputin" advice of fellow war-criminal Henry Kissinger who believes winning in Iraq is just a matter of "political will" - just the way it worked for Henry in Vietnam. Bush echoed that advice ironically while visiting the capital of the country's last "Waterloo." When arriving in Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, he was asked about comparisons of Iraq to Vietnam and said: "We'll succeed unless we quit. We tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while."

It's taking quite a long while as the US has now been at war in Iraq against a guerrilla resistance longer than it took the country to defeat the Nazis and Japanese in WW II, and those countries had a lot more going for them than car and roadside bombs to fight us. That reality and Bush's remarks show how in denial this man is just like the country's leadership was in the 1960s and 70s believing (in their public statements at least) staying the course would achieve the victory beyond their reach.

But hold on - Bush's "Svengali" seems to be advising him one way and commenting another in a BBC November 19 interview where away from the US media spotlight he said he now believes military victory in Iraq is no longer possible, the administration's policy failed and is headed for "disastrous consequences (to haunt the world) for many years....we have to redefine the course ("stay" is now "redefine")....I don't think the alternative is between military victory....or total withdrawal," and there should be a regional conference of the permanent members of the UN Security Council and Iraq's regional neighbors including Iran to work out a way forward - meaning the Bush administration got us into this mess so will Iraq's regional neighbors and other world powers please help get us out of it. Now which way is it Henry - will the real Henry Kissinger please stand up and show us who the real one is.

He may or may not be helped by a November 30 report in the New York Times, Washington Post, online in Capitol Hill Blue and elsewhere. It cites a well-placed source saying the ISG decided to recommend a major withdrawal of US forces from Iraq in a process of transitioning from a combat to a support role over the next year or so but with no specific timetable recommended. It all depends "on a series of conditions and qualifications" governing the drawdown in language suggesting as much smoke and mirrors backside-covering fudging as any real substantive change of policy.

That's apparently the message from national security advisor Stephen Hadley in a November memo to George Bush saying (the ISG report) "is neither 'cut and run' nor 'stay the course.' " It's also what an unnamed senior Pentagon military officer involved in crafting Iraq policy likely meant when he said: "The question is whether it doesn't look like a timeline to Bush, and does to (Iraq prime minister) al-Maliki." It's another example of what the New York Times calls "a classic Washington compromise" - meaning "now you see a change of policy, and now you don't."

In harsher terms, it's what Newsweek magazine writer Michael Hirsh calls "A Bust in Bakerville" in his November 29 article subtitled "Iraq can no longer be won or lost. Why the study group won't solve anything." But Hirsh spoils his article toward its end by suggesting Iraq is "manageable" and what's needed, instead of consensus, is a "no-nonsense negotiator who can grapple with the reality of the American failure....and seek the most honorable way out (like a) Richard Holbrooke or Henry Kissinger....(or) the best hope for....an adult solution (from Defense Secretary-designate) Robert Gates."

It all seems surreal at this point, but what it comes down to is an attempt to pacify the US public and critics of the war. It's to buy more time for a failed Bush presidency looking more all the time like a house of cards nearing collapse, hoping to save it along with the family's name and reputation. By couching recommendations in terms of possibilities to be decided later depending on conditions in the country, the ISG report apparently will be "much ado about nothing" signaling no real change at all and a faint hope at best to rescue George Bush from the fate he deserves.

There's no hiding from the fact that conditions in Iraq are deplorable and out-of-the-control of the US military looking pathetic against an opponent it can't even see and impossible to subdue. It's not likely to fare much better going forward than it has up to now in the face of a determined resistance and mass Iraqi opposition to an occupation they want to end and will keep fighting against it until it does whether the US military stays in the streets or is hunkered down in its self-contained permanent super-bases.

Still, with a brave face, the report apparently will recommend that US forces redeploy to its key bases inside the country and elsewhere in the region and turn over more responsibility to Iraqi security forces for frontline operations when and if they can handle them. So far they can't and aren't likely to do much better ahead as many recruited into them are from the very resistance forces the US military is fighting and most others joined up for a paycheck with no ideological commitment to the occupying power offered in return for it - not the best set of circumstances for building an effective satrap security force.

The report will also call for convening a regional conference of Iraq's neighbors that will have to include Iran and Syria which the Israeli Lobby is fighting to prevent and so far the Bush administration has preconditions for unacceptable at least to the Iranians.

Further, the report mentions recommendations being considered by the Pentagon Joint Chiefs who seem to be leaning toward a brief increase in force size followed by a partial drawdown and a shift, like the ISG plan, from a combat role to one involving training, advising and backup. The Pentagon option is called "go long" and apparently calls for a large US military presence in Iraq for five to ten years which sounds very much like cover saying there will be no exit strategy just the way it turned out in South Korea still occupied by about 30,000 US forces a half century after the war there ended, and there are no hostilities or threats unless the US provokes one. The Times and Post said the ISG report (said to be about 100 pages) will be released on December 6, at least whatever portion of it the public gets to see.

One other supposedly "classified memorandum" on the war showed up on pages of the New York Times on December 3. It's from former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent to the White House on November 6, two days before he was sacked from the job he showed he couldn't handle long ago. On the one hand, it's a rather surprising admission of personal failure and need for a change of course, but on the other it may more of a thinly-veiled, late-in-the-game attempt to burnish an image too tarnished for any public relations makeover at this stage. But you can't blame the guy for trying, and he'll probably get some media-directed help ahead for what little good it may do.

In language trying to convey an image of elder statesman but dripping with mea culpas, Rumsfeld acknowledges "In my view it is time for a major adjustment....Clearly, what US forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough." Of course, they're doing what he ordered them to do, and he, more than anyone else, bears the most responsibility for all that's happened in Iraq since the war began - but you won't hear that in the media-directed attempted makeover.

The former secretary then lays out the policy changes he recommends in a set of attractive "Above the Line Illustrative Options" and less attractive "Below the Line" ones. Some of it sounds much like what the ISG will propose and the "new" direction the Pentagon seems to be leaning to in its planning. But Rumsfeld can't resist suggesting a lot of the blame goes to the Iraqi puppet government that must "pull up (its) socks" and change its "bad behavior." This kind of talk is now coming out of the White House and echoed in the corporate media - a shameless attempt to shift blame for what US forces have done and bear full responsibility for to an installed Iraqi government with no authority and no power to do anything more in the country than clear away the daily carnage on the streets caused by the US presence there. Mr. Rumsfeld and his administration allies planned, directed and lied their way into this mess, and now he and they are trying to lie their way out of it by shifting the blame to the Iraqis that had nothing to do with it with a lot of help from their corporate media allies. It's a classic example of Washington-spin dutifully picked up and echoed in the mainstream hoping to make the victim look like the responsible party.

Cheerleading 101 - It's What the Dominant Corporate-Controlled Media Does Best, and They're At It Again

When in trouble, as the Bush administration clearly is, it can count on its corporate media allies to step up and help out just as they did it during the Johnson-Nixon years when they backed their "stay the course" and "Vietnamization" agendas. They're always out in front delivering the "proper message" and leading the cheerleading as they are now for what's highlighted above and the new Bush rhetoric of "success" however Henry Kissinger and others define it. It's highlighted in a November 16 article by media critic and columnist Norman Solomon titled The New Media Offensive to Prolong the Iraq War posted on Counterpunch. In it, he says the pro-war cheerleading is being featured on the front page of the New York Times (as it always is) by columnist Michael Gordon just like it was in the run-up to March, 2003 by the now-disgraced Judith Miller in her daily hawkish screeds practically pleading for hostilities and echoing the propaganda handed her by the White House and Pentagon.

This is the same Michael Gordon today who was the lead reporter on the Times front page in the lead-up to the Iraq war who wrote the false and discredited story (he never apologized for) about the threat of Saddam's aluminum tubes. Michael's back now and again doing what's expected of him as a paid propagandist for "the newspaper of record" that never met an act of US aggression it didn't support even when it turned out to be a hopeless debacle as is true now.

The Gordon piece on November 15 is certain to be followed by more. It's another in a long line of thinly-veiled NYT empire-supportive kinds of "journalism" leading the media pack with its cheerleading even when war crimes are committed or the public interest is being ignored or harmed. The Times, as always, knows what it's role is, and no journalist need apply for work there without being willing to be part of the same dirty business that includes supporting all imperial wars the nation pursues. So it is now. And Solomon goes on to say many other journalists are joining the chorus against the pullout option in Iraq the same way they did during the Vietnam era. They go even further warning Democrats that, despite strong public opinion to the contrary, not to go that far "if they know what's good for them," and, right or wrong, it's the president's call in all cases whether to go to war or continue one, and the Congress should stay out of it - even if they have lie to the public to do it the way the New York Times does.

These journalists need a lesson in constitutional law as that view is fraudulent on it face and contradicts what the founders stood for and put in the Constitution for those who care to read it. It's a further reckless endangerment of a democratic republic scarcely able to draw breathe anymore. It's the result of corrupted government officials and complicit corporate media journalists ignoring what Thomas Jefferson helped codify, teach us, believed in passionately and said: "The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people....Light and liberty go together.....Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."

Jefferson added no nation can ever be free if it's kept ignorant, and no part of the corporate-controlled media is more guilty of that sin than the "paper of record" that's the closest thing in the country to an official ministry of information and propaganda that's leading the way for all the others. It functions to serve the interests of wealth and power violating the Jeffersonian spirit and the constitutional law of the land he helped draft in 1787.

It allows George Bush to sell his war agenda knowing it'll be supported in the echo chambers of major front page dailies and headlined on TV newscasts. It may be his last gasp, but he's at it again calling for a "last push" strategy for victory in Iraq in a futile attempt to refurbish his image and give Republicans time to regroup from their drubbing in the mid-term elections and prepare for the 2008 presidential campaign. It's hard to imagine how continuing what hasn't worked up to now and won't will accomplish anything more than raise the level of public anger wanting change and not getting it.

The Real State of Things in Iraq the Corporate Media Won't Report

To learn what's really happening in Iraq just read unembedded independent journalist Patrick Cockburn's November 28 column in the London Independent (and all his others there) called Slaughter House Iraq. In it he says "Iraq is rending itself apart. The signs of collapse are everywhere. In Baghdad, the police often pick up more than 100 tortured and mutilated bodies in a single day. Government ministries make war on each other." He goes on to explain the country is in an "ominous stage of disintegration" and may be approaching what the Americans call "the Saigon moment" when it's plain as day "the government is expiring."

Covering the region, freelance journalist and author Nir Rosen is just as ominous in his latest article in the Boston Review on November 27, 2006 called Anatomy of a Civil War - Iraq's descent into chaos. Rosen says: "Shia religious parties such as the Iran-supported Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) controlled the country, and Shia militias had become the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army, running their own secret prisons, arresting, torturing, and executing Sunnis in what was clearly a civil war. And the Americans were merely one more militia among the many, watching, occasionally intervening, and in the end only making things worse."

Almost everyone in Washington and Whitehall know all this except Bush and Blair and their most loyal acolytes who've lost all touch with reality and are in a state of denial that the longer the occupation continues the worse things will get. The human toll, according to Cockburn, is 1000 Iraqis killed each week and 1000 US forces killed or wounded every month, and these may be low estimates of even greater numbers unknown or carefully concealed preventing people at home from knowing how desperate things really are, what the human cost is, that the war in Iraq is lost, and the longer US forces stay in the country the worse things will get.

And consider what publisher and editor Bob Chapman writes in his November 29 edition of his long-running, well-respected online publication The International Forecaster. He says "the insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes the occupation has been unable to prevent." He believes they raise $70 - $200 million a year from these activities and concludes with the dramatic observation that the resistance groups can hold off the most powerful military in the world with that amount of money compared to $100 billion or more spent by the Pentagon with all their super-weapons trying and failing to defeat them. It can't and won't no matter how many more billions are spend or for how long.

That's the dilemma mandarins like Jim Baker and the heavyweights on his Commission have to deal with. The spillage of six disastrous years under the younger Bush is so immense, and the fallout from it so beyond repair, that two years from now or sooner the rule and influence of a family dynasty will end and whatever succeeds it will inherit less power than any US administration since WW II as the American empire heads into an irreversible decline that didn't begin under George Bush but was measurably accelerated under his discredited leadership that turned out to be none at all.

The Price of Imperial Overreach

After a mediocre start to his presidency, fate, or more likely a sinister master-plan, handed George Bush and his allies their chance to be untethered from any restraint and be able to go for the big prize they wanted all along but needed public support to do it. It was the gift of the 9/11 tragedy his administration ruthlessly exploited as a launching platform to pursue an imperial agenda of permanent war against enemies invented for the enterprise including former CIA asset against the Soviets in Afghanistan Osama bin Laden in the lead role.

With the help and complicity of round-the-clock daily corporate media fed invented terror threat warnings, color-coded on television for added impact, it scared the public enough and made the Congress willing enough to go along with the scheme the administration had in mind all along and had envisioned from the work of the right wing Project for the New American Century think tank (PNAC) document called Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century. Conceived by future key Bush administration officials, it was a grand imperial plan for US global dominance to extend well into the future to be enforced with unchallengeable military power - a blueprint for the current "war on terror" now rebranded as a "long war" against "Islamic fascism" with goals spelled out in the May, 2000 Department of Defense (DOD) Joint Vision 2020 calling for "full spectrum (world) dominance" that was code language meaning total control over all land, sea, air, outer space and information with enough overwhelming power to defeat any potential challenger or adversary with no restraint on the use of any weapons, including nuclear ones.

This "Vision" was one of several imperial documents looking ahead that included the Nuclear Policy Review of 2001, the FY 2004 Air Force Space Command Strategic Master Plan, the Pentagon's 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review and the National Security Strategy of 2002, updated in 2006. Together they laid out a "grand imperial strategy" that included the notion of "preventive war" updated to a "long war" against "Islamofascists" that was set in motion by the trigger of the 9/11 tragedy to target those parts of the world of greatest strategic value like the oil-rich Greater Middle East including Central Asia and its Caspian Basin riches.

These plans were embellished on October 6, 2006 when George Bush quietly signed the National Space Policy superceding a September, 1996 version of the same directive. The plan lays out US space policy goals that include implementing an "innovative human and robotic exploration program" to extend the presence of humans in space. It calls on NASA to "execute a sustained and affordable human and robotic program of space exploration and develop, acquire, and use civil space systems to advance fundamental scientific knowledge of our Earth system, solar system, and universe." It supports the use of nuclear power systems and implies without so stating that includes nuclear weapons that will be deployed there to use when and if necessary. That's very much the message from the language that this policy is designed "to ensure space capabilities....to further US national security, homeland security, and foreign policy objectives (that include defending) our interests there....(and having The Director of National Intelligence) provide a robust foreign space intelligence collection and analysis capability....to support national and homeland security."

With all the pieces of its grand imperial scheme in place, the best-laid plans, nonetheless, don't always go as designed especially when they encompass more than can be digested and the forces against them are determined enough to resist and do it effectively. What began with world support for a global "war on terror" began to unravel in the wake of the Bush administration's notion of endless wars and its unilateral intent to invade and occupy Iraq in spite of growing opposition to it that was ridiculed, spurned and arrogantly defied. Even the world's only superpower should have known no nation, no matter how powerful, can challenge the rest of the world and get away with it without enough support, especially when the two adventures it undertook in Iraq and Afghanistan unravelled so fast and the economic and political costs incurred from them are so enormous and increasing they've made visible fissures in the hegemon's superstructure making it vulnerable.

The cost of Bush administration go-it-alone adventurism accelerated a decline of US imperial power that began, according to some astute observers, with its futile losing gambit in Vietnam. It's now repeating it and then some in the Greater Middle East and as a result lost its stature as a failed model of a once democratic state flaunting the rule of law and ignoring the values it claims to stand for while doing just the opposite in reckless pursuit of its own interests. It's now seen for what it is - an out-of-control rogue state threatening all others wanting no part of it and a growing number of them willing to challenge its supremacy in the process.

This behavior fits the definition of what Noam Chomsky calls a "failed state" in his 2006 book titled Failed States while explaining the notion of what this means, in fact, is imprecise at best. It may be a nation unable to protect its citizens from violence or destruction but could also be one that flaunts the rule of international law and acts as an aggressor. The US uses this term for nations seen as potential threats to our security we feel justified intervening against in self-defense. Chomsky says if we evaluate our own agenda by that definition "we should have little difficulty in finding the characteristics of 'failed states' right at home."

Blame much of it on how noted historian and author Gabriel Kolko characterizes the Bush administration - "the worst set of incompetents ever to hold power in Washington. It 'shocked and awed'....itself." Winston Churchill called himself an optimist and once remarked that "the United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative." Not a chance as long as George Bush is president and neocons are in charge. That's a hurdle even Churchill's optimism couldn't have cleared.

It shows how a once proud country lost its legitimacy and with it the power to face down a growing number of nations willing to confront its authority and get away with it, even small players that once wouldn't have dared. In the hemisphere, Cuba has been joined by Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua on November 7 with the reelection of Sandinista FSLN leader and former US nemesis Daniel Ortega, and now in Ecuador on November 26 with the impressive election of populist candidate Rafeal Correa in the run-off presidential election against the Washington-backed billionaire oligarch.

Elsewhere in Asia, China and North Korea have defied US authority as has Russia in Eurasia and Iran and Syria in the Middle East. Resistance groups everywhere have now learned the lessons from Iraq, Afghanistan and Hezbollah in Lebanon. These groups have asymmetrical guerrilla-tactic power that when used effectively can hold their own against the most powerful nation on earth beating it at its own game by outlasting it or rendering its super-weapons useless against an opponent that can't be seen until its bombs go off and bullets start flying and often not even then. They've also inspired the courageous people of Mexico and their epicenter of resistance in Oaxaca taking to the streets in their courageous fight against electoral fraud and an end to decades of abuse and injustice and doing it with little more than their bodies and a redoubtable spirit that won't quit.

Add to this the growing unease and discontent of an aroused and angered public at home. It sent a powerful message of disgust and contempt for six failed years of imperial madness and corrupted right wing neocon Republican rule by drubbing its candidates in the mid-term elections. It wants change in Washington even though there's little chance to get it when the new leadership takes control of the Congress in January. Beyond the usual post-election continuation of campaign-style rhetoric, already it's clear the Democrat party mission is to move the ship of state forward with its agenda largely intact but with them in charge including in the White House if they can prevail in the 2008 election. It's the way things always work in the nation's Capitol where those holding power owe their allegiance to the interests of wealth and power that put them there, and, in the end, the people be damned and "let 'em eat cake" but the language is more subtle.

It won't work for the new congressional leadership any more than it did for the president who brought down the house of Bush ending the family dynasty's reign while turning the nation's imperial dreams into its death throes by his arrogance and ineptness. He'll now live in infamy as the man who accelerated the American empire's decline. His imperial madness buried it in the caves and rubble of Afghanistan and the burning sands of the Middle East financing it with an unrepayable mountain of Federal Reserve-created debt in an age of aberrant capitalism gone wild and transformed into a fiscal weapon of mass-destruction that may end up throttling the US and world economies. It's what out-of-control greed and delusions of grandeur always lead to - self-aggrandizing excess that eventually undermines the "irrationally exuberant" dreams of fools and despots that go well beyond the limits of reason or any hope for success.

If George Bush lasts another two years, it'll be thanks to the kindness of his dwindling number of hard core friends and strangers who still think they can pick something from the bones of his tenure before payment for his imperial overreach comes due. When it does, it'll be high, painful and inevitable just like it always is the way it was for that French queen of "let em eat cake" fame who along with her husband, King Louis XVI, lost their heads for their misdeeds. "King" George may keep his, but the family dynasty has been undone and defrocked by the sins of the unworthy scion ill-chosen to carry its reign forward to pass on to the next in line after him. It wasn't to be as the dominance of another powerful family passes into history, never to be trusted again with the seat of power in a nation accelerating in decline in the new century that was planned to be an American one but already is not six years into it.

Whereto from here with a disgraced head of state and unindicted war criminal already an artifact or relic of an era past, his power ebbing and marking time going through the motions despite the same bravado, smirk and all, that resonates less with each public appearance. It's intended to keep his weakened presidency from collapsing that may just take one more good shove to do it. Despite desperate efforts to save it, in the end who but the family will care if it does and who will ever again believe a serial liar once exposed and disgraced making him unwelcome in the halls of power that once embraced him. Success, as they say, has many parents and friends, but failure is an unwanted orphan, and it's showing up as some of the hard core faithful voice their displeasure openly and walk away.

It now remains for his final exit that can't come soon enough for most who want him out now and may act to force it if the Congress won't act as a majority of the public demands. Whatever happens from here, the king is dead (even with his head in place), and with it the power and influence of a family dynasty brought down by the poisoned chalice of its ill-chosen successor, unworthy and unable to wear the crown and pass it to the next in line. Henceforth, all will know what should have been clear all along. Behind every "Bush," there's a crime, and some of them are too great to hide, make up for or overcome. So it is with the lesson of George Bush, a very bad seed and a president only a mother can love. And even that's in doubt in a family that doesn't take defeat very well. Give them time, they'll acclimate.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Presidente Chávez se impuso en todos los estados venezolanos

Por: Agencias
Fecha de publicación: 04/12/06


Caracas, 4 dic. -El presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, ganador de los comicios para un nuevo mandato al frente de la República, se impuso en todos los estados durante la votación del 3 de diciembre, informaron hoy fuentes oficiales.

Según un reporte preliminar del Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE), máxima autoridad comicial del país, el mandatario alcanzó un total de seis millones 191 mil 652 votos, equivalentes al 61,62 por ciento del total.

Por su parte, el opositor Manuel Rosales llegó a tres millones 830 mil 370, para el 38,12 por ciento.

Los resultados por estados muestran el margen mas estrecho de diferencia en Zulia, donde Chávez llegó al 50,57 por ciento (630 mil 207 votos) frente al 49,26 por ciento de su rival (613 mil 881).

La brecha mas amplia se apreció en Portuguesa (75,27 frente al 24,44 por ciento), en tanto concluyeron por encima del 70 por ciento a favor del mandatario los territorios de Amazonas (73,37), Aragua (71,12) y Cojedes (71,73).

Asimismo, destacaron Delta Amacuro (74,37 por ciento), Sucre (73,04 por ciento), Guarico (70,59) y Monagas (70,43 por ciento).

Con resultados superiores al 60 por ciento para Chávez quedaron Anzoátegui (60,19 por ciento), Apure (69,10), Barinas (68,74), Bolívar (67,16), Carabobo (60,59), Falcón (60,96), Distrito Capital (61,56), Lara (64,87), Trujillo (68,86), Vargas (68,70) y Yaracuy (63,85).

Mientras, cifras por encima del 50 por ciento se reportaron en Mérida (52 por ciento), Miranda (55,09), Nueva Esparta (58,49) y Táchira (50,81), además de Zulia.

Por su parte, Rosales obtuvo votaciones superiores al 40 por ciento en los estados de Mérida (47,75 por ciento), Miranda (44,66 por ciento), Nueva Esparta (41,27) y Táchira (48,91).

El resultado más bajo para el principal aspirante opositor fue en Portuguesa, con el 24,44 por ciento (77 mil 110 votos), mientras que en cantidad física se registró en Amazonas, con siete mil 659 sufragios (26,4 por ciento).

William Fletcher on Apartheid in South Africa and Israel

William Fletcher discusses Apartheid-era South Africa and compares it with Apartheid-like conditons in Israel today. He is a Visiting Professor at Brooklyn College, in NYC, an ex-CEO of the TransAfrica Forum, and a former assistant to the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney. Professor Fletcher spoke at "The Palestine Center," located in our nation's capital.

The U.S. Has a History of Using Torture By Alfred W. McCoy

Mr. McCoy is J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).

In April 2004, Americans were stunned when CBS broadcast those now-notorious photographs from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, showing hooded Iraqis stripped naked while U.S. soldiers stood by smiling. As this scandal grabbed headlines around the globe, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted that the abuses were "perpetrated by a small number of U.S. military," whom New York Times’ columnist William Safire soon branded "creeps"--a line that few in the press had reason to challenge.

When I looked at these photos, I did not see snapshots of simple brutality or a breakdown in military discipline. After more than a decade of studying the Philippine military’s torture techniques for a monograph published by Yale back 1999, I could see the tell-tale signs of the CIA’s psychological methods. For example, that iconic photo of a hooded Iraqi with fake electrical wires hanging from his extended arms shows, not the sadism of a few “creeps,” but instead the two key trademark’s of the CIA’s psychological torture. The hood was for sensory disorientation. The arms were extended for self-inflicted pain. It was that simple; it was that obvious.

After making that argument in an op-ed for the Boston Globe two weeks after CBS published the photos, I began exploring the historical continuity, the connections, between the CIA torture research back in the 1950s and Abu Ghraib in 2004. By using the past to interrogate the present, I published a book titled A Question of Torture last January that tracks the trail of an extraordinary historical and institutional continuity through countless pages of declassified documents. The findings are disturbing and bear directly upon the ongoing bitter debate over torture that culminated in the enactment of the Military Commissions law just last October.

From 1950 to 1962, the CIA led a secret research effort to crack the code of human consciousness, a veritable Manhattan project of the mind with costs that reached a billion dollars a year. Many have heard about the most outlandish and least successful aspect of this research -- the testing of LSD on unsuspecting subjects and the tragic death of a CIA employee, Dr. Frank Olson, who jumped to his death from a New York hotel after a dose of this drug. This Agency drug testing, the focus of countless sensational press accounts and a half-dozen major books, led nowhere.

But obscure CIA-funded behavioral experiments, outsourced to the country’s leading universities, produced two key findings, both duly and dully reported in scientific journals, that contributed to the discovery of a distinctly American form of torture: psychological torture. With funding from Canada’s Defense Research Board, famed Canadian psychologist Dr. Donald O. Hebb found that he could induce a state akin to psychosis in just 48 hours. What had the doctor done—drugs, hypnosis, electroshock? No, none of the above.

For two days, student volunteers at McGill University, where Dr. Hebb was chair of Psychology, simply sat in comfortable cubicles deprived of sensory stimulation by goggles, gloves, and ear muffs. One of Hebb’s subjects, University of California-Berkeley English professor Peter Dale Scott, has described the impact of this experience in his 1992 epic poem, “Listening to the Candle”:

nothing in those weeks added up
yet the very aimlessness

preconditioning my mind…

of sensory deprivation

as a paid volunteer

in the McGill experiment

for the US Air Force

(two CIA reps at the meeting)

my ears sore from their earphones’

amniotic hum my eyes

under two bulging halves of ping pong balls

arms covered to the tips with cardboard tubes

those familiar hallucination

I was the first to report

as for example the string

of cut-out paper men

emerging from a manhole

in the side of a snow-white hill

distinctly two-dimensional

Dr. Hebb himself reported that after just two to three days of such isolation “the subject’s very identity had begun to disintegrate.” If you compare a drawing of Dr. Hebb’s student volunteers published in “Scientific American” with later photos of Guantanamo detainees, the similarity is, for good reason, striking.

During the 1950s as well, two eminent neurologists at Cornell Medical Center working for the CIA found that the KGB’s most devastating torture technique involved, not crude physical beatings, but simply forcing the victim to stand for days at time—while the legs swelled, the skin erupted in suppurating lesions, the kidneys shut down, hallucinations began. Again, it you look at those hundreds of photos from Abu Ghraib you will see repeated use of this method, now called “stress positions.”

After codification in its 1963 KUBARK manual, the CIA spent the next thirty years propagating these torture techniques within the US intelligence community and among anti-communist allies across Asia and Latin America.

Although the Agency trained military interrogators from across Latin America, our knowledge of the actual torture techniques comes from a single handbook for a Honduran training session, the CIA’s “Human Resources Exploitation Manual — 1983.” To establish control at the outset the questioner should, the CIA instructor tells his Honduran trainees, “manipulate the subject’s environment, to create unpleasant or intolerable situations, to disrupt patterns of time, space, and sensory perception.” To effect this psychological disruption, this 1983 handbook specified techniques that seem strikingly similar to those outlined 20 years earlier in the Kubark Manual and those that would be used 20 years later at Abu Ghraib.

After the Cold War

When the Cold War came to a close, Washington resumed its advocacy of human rights, ratifying the UN Convention Against Torture in 1994 that banned the infliction of “severe” psychological and physical pain. On the surface, the United States had apparently resolved the tension between its anti-torture principles and its torture practices.

Yet when President William Clinton sent this UN Convention to Congress for ratification in 1994, he included language drafted six years earlier by the Reagan administration—with four detailed diplomatic “reservations” focused on just one word in the convention’s 26-printed pages. That word was “mental.”

Significantly, these intricately-constructed diplomatic reservations re-defined torture, as interpreted by the United States, to exclude sensory deprivation and self-inflicted pain—the very techniques the CIA had refined at such great cost. Of equal import, this definition was reproduced verbatim in domestic legislation enacted to give legal force to the UN Convention--first in Section 2340 of the US Federal Code and then in the War Crimes Act of 1996.

Remember that obscure number--Section 2340—for, as we will see, it is the key to unlocking the meaning of the controversial Military Commissions Law enacted by the US Congress just last September.

In effect, Washington had split the UN Convention down the middle, banning physical torture but exempting psychological abuse. By failing to repudiate the CIA’s use of torture, while adopting a UN convention that condemned its practice, the United States left this contradiction buried like a political land mine ready to detonate with such phenomenal force, just 10 years later, in the Abu Ghraib scandal.

War on Terror

Right after his public address to a shaken nation on September 11, 2001, President Bush gave his White House staff wide secret orders, saying, “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.”

In the months that followed, Administration attorneys translated their president’s otherwise unlawful orders into U.S. policy into three controversial, neo-conservative legal doctrines: (1.) the president is above the law, (2.) torture is legally acceptable, and (3.) the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay is not US territory.

To focus on the single doctrine most germane to the history of psychological torture, Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee found grounds, in his now notorious August 2002 memo, for exculpating any CIA interrogators who tortured, but later claimed their intention was information instead of pain. Moreover, by parsing the UN and US definitions of torture as “severe” physical or mental pain, Bybee concluded that pain equivalent to “organ failure” was legal—effectively allowing torture right up to the point of death.

Less visibly, the administration began building a global gulag for torture at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo, and a half-dozen additional sites worldwide. In February 2002, the White House assured the CIA that the administration’s public pledge to abide by spirit of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to its operatives; and, significantly, it allowed the Agency ten “enhanced” interrogation methods designed by Agency psychologists that included “water boarding.”

Waterboarding

Over the past three years, this term “water boarding” has surfaced periodically in press accounts of CIA interrogation without any real understanding of psychologically devastating impact of this seemingly benign method. It has a venerable lineage, first appearing in a 1541 French judicial handbook, where it was called “Torturae Gallicae Ordinariae” or “Standard Gallic Torture.” But it would now become, under the War on Terror, what CIA director Porter Goss called, in March 2005 congressional testimony, a “professional interrogation technique.”

There are several methods for achieving water boarding’s perverse effect of drowning in open air: most frequently, by making the victim lie prone and then constricting breathing with a wet cloth, a technique favored by both the French Inquisition and the CIA; or, alternatively, by forcing water directly and deeply into the lungs, as French paratroopers did during the Algerian War.

After French soldiers used the technique on Henri Alleg during the Battle for Algiers in 1957, this journalist wrote a moving description that turned the French people against both torture and the Algerian War. “I tried,” Alleg wrote, “by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I couldn’t hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me.”

Let us think about the deeper meaning of Alleg’s sparse words--“a terrible agony, that of death itself.” As the water blocks air to the lungs, the human organism’s powerful mammalian diving reflex kicks in, and the brain is wracked by horrifically painful panic signals--death, death, death. After a few endless minutes, the victim vomits out the water, the lungs suck air, and panic subsides. And then it happens again, and again, and again--each time inscribing the searing trauma of near death in human memory.

Guantanamo

In late 2002, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld appointed General Geoffrey Miller to command Guantanamo with wide latitude for interrogation, making this prison an ad hoc behavioral laboratory. Moving beyond the CIA’s original attack on sensory receptors universal to all humans, Guantanamo’s interrogators stiffened the psychological assault by exploring Arab “cultural sensitivity” to sexuality, gender identity, and fear of dogs. General Miller also formed Behavioral Science Consultation teams of military psychologists who probed each detainee for individual phobias, such as fear of dark or attachment to mother.

Through this total three-phase attack on sensory receptors, cultural identity, and individual psyche, Guantanamo perfected the CIA’s psychological paradigm. Significantly, after regular inspections of Guantanamo from 2002 the 2004, the Red Cross reported: “The construction of such a system…cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture.”

Abu Ghraib

These enhanced interrogation policies, originally used only against top Al Qaeda operatives, soon proliferated to involve thousands of ordinary Iraqis when Baghdad erupted in a wave of terror bombings during mid 2003 that launched the resistance to the US occupation. After a visit from the Guantanamo chief General Miller in September 2003, the U.S. commander for Iraq, General Ricardo Sanchez, issued orders for sophisticated psychological torture.

As you read the following extract from those orders, please look for the defining attributes of psychological torture--specifically, sensory disorientation, self-inflicted pain, and that recent innovation, attacks on Arab cultural sensitivities.

U. Environmental Manipulation: Altering the environment to create moderate discomfort (e.g. adjusting temperatures or introducing an unpleasant smell)…

V. Sleep Adjustment: Adjusting the sleeping times of the detainee (e.g. reversing the sleeping cycles from night to day).

X. Isolation: Isolating the detainee from other detainees ... [for] 30 days.

Y. Presence of Military Working Dogs: Exploits Arab fear of dogs while maintaining security during interrogations…

AA. Yelling, Loud Music, and Light Control: Used to create fear, disorient detainee and prolong capture shock...

CC. Stress Positions: Use of physical posturing (sitting, standing, kneeling, prone, etc.

Indeed, my review of the hundreds of still-classified photos taken by soldiers at Abu Ghraib reveals, not random, idiosyncratic acts from separate, sadistic minds, but just three psychological torture techniques repeated over and over ad nauseum: hooding for sensory deprivation; short shackling, long shackling, and enforced standing for self inflicted pain; and dogs, total nudity, and sexual humiliation for that recent innovation, exploitation of Arab cultural sensitivity. It is no accident that Private Lynndie England was photographed leading an Iraqi detainee leashed like a dog.

After Abu Ghraib

Let’s look at the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib scandal, seeing how America moved by degrees to legalization of these CIA psychological torture techniques. Confronted by public anger over detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib, the Bush White House has fought back by defending torture as a presidential prerogative. By contrast, an ad hoc civil society coalition of courts, press, and human rights groups has mobilized to stop the abuse.

In a dramatic denouement of June 2006, the US Supreme Court decided in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that Bush’s military commissions were illegal because they did not meet the requirement, under common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, that Guantanamo detainees be tried with “all the judicial guarantees…recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

Then on September 6, in a dramatic bid to legalize his now-illegal policies in the aftermath of the Hamdan decision, President Bush announced he was transferring fourteen top Al Qaeda captives from secret CIA prisons to Guantanamo Bay. At once both repudiating and legitimating past abuses, Bush denied that he had authorized “torture” while simultaneously defending the CIA's use of a tough “alternative set of procedures” to extract “vital information.” To allow what he called the “CIA program” to go forward, President Bush announced that he was sending legislation to Congress that would legalize the same presidential prerogatives in treating detainees that had been challenged by the Supreme Court.

At first, Bush’s bill seemed to arouse strong opposition by three Republican veterans on the Senate Armed Services Committee--Senators Graham, McCain, and Warner. But after tense, daylong negotiations inside Vice President Cheney’s Senate office on September 21, these Republican partisans reached a compromise that sailed through Congress within a week, and without any amendments, to become the Military Commissions Law 2006.

Among its many objectionable features, this law strips detainees of their habeas corpus rights, sanctions endless detention without trial, and allows the use of tortured testimony before Guantanamo’s Military Commissions. Most significantly, this law allows future CIA interrogators ample latitude for use of psychological torture by using, verbatim, the narrow definition of “severe mental pain” the U.S. first adopted back in 1994 when it ratified the UN Convention Against Torture and enacted a complementary Federal law, Section 2340 of the US code, to give force to this treaty.

The current law’s elusive definition of “severe mental pain” is concealed under Para. 950 V, Part B, Sub-Section B on page 70 of the 96-page “Military Commissions Law 2006” that reads: “Severe Mental Pain or Suffering Defined: In this section, this term ‘severe mental pain…’ has the meaning given that term in Sect. 2340 (2) of Title 18 [of the Federal code].”

And what is that definition in section 2340? This is, of course, the same highly limiting definition the US first adopted back in 1994-95 when it ratified the UN Anti-Torture Convention.

Simply put, this legislation’s highly restricted standard for severe mental suffering does not prohibit any aspect of the sophisticated torture techniques that the CIA has refined, over the past half-century, into a total assault on the human psyche.

To make this point clear, let us compare the law’s very narrow, four-part standard for “severe mental suffering” with the CIA’s psychological techniques to see which, if any, of the agency’s actual methods are banned. Under this law, Section 2340, there are only four practices that constitute, in any way, “severe mental pain,” including: drug injection; death threats; threats against another; and extreme physical pain.

In actual practice, this definition does not ban any of the dozens of CIA psychological methods developed over five decades, which include:

--First, self-inflicted pain, via enforced standing and so-called “stress positions” which are cruel contortions enforced by shackling.

--Second, sensory disorientation through temporal and environmental manipulation exemplified sleep deprivation, protracted isolation, and extremes of heat and cold, light and dark, noise and silence, isolation and intensive interrogation.

--Third, attacks on cultural identity through sexual humiliation and use of dogs.

--Fourth, attacks on individual psyche by exploiting fears and phobias.

--Fifth, hybrid methods such as water boarding.

--Sixth and most importantly, creative combinations of all these methods which otherwise might seem, individually, banal if not benign.

If you wish an analogy to make the curious exclusionary logic of this legislation perfectly clear, it would be as if US homicide law had taken a leaf from the popular board game “Clue” and defined murder as only those killings “done by Mrs. White, in the Conservatory, with the Candlestick”—thus, by its omissions, legalizing all murders done by more conventional means such as poison, pistols, rifles, knives, ropes, clubs, or bombs.

To test my critical, perhaps overly cynical assessment of this new law, let us ask whether this new law bans the most extreme of the CIA’s “enhanced” methods--water boarding. While the White House has refused comment, Vice President Cheney stated recently that using “a dunk in water” to extract information was “a no-brainer for me.” As the administration’s leader on interrogation policy, Cheney’s words make clear, despite White House denials, that water boarding is legal under the new law.

By its omissions, this legislation has effectively legalized the CIA’s right to use methods that the international community, embodied in the Red Cross and the UN Human Rights Committee, considers psychological torture. For the first time in the 200 years since 1791 when United States ratified the Fifth Amendment banning self-incrimination, Congress has passed a law allowing coerced testimony into US courts.

The implications of this Military Commissions Law are profound and will most certainly face legal challenge. Indeed, just a few weeks ago seven retired Federal judges challenged this law before the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, saying that it has “one specific and fundamental flaw”: i.e., it allows the military tribunals to accept evidence obtained by torture. But when this case reaches the Supreme Court, we cannot expect that a more conservative Roberts court will overturn this law with the same ringing rhetoric that we have seen in two recent landmark decisions, Rasul v. Bush and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

Conclusion

If this law stands, with its provisions for torture and drumhead justice, then the United States will suffer continuing damage to its moral leadership in the international community. Looking through a glass darkly into the future, Washington may try to return to that convenient contradiction that marked US policy during the Cold War: public compliance with human rights treaties and secret torture in contravention of those same diplomatic conventions.

Yet the world is no longer blind to these once-clandestine CIA methods and this attempt at secrecy will likely produce another scandal similar to Abu Ghraib. But next time our protestations of innocence will ring hollow and the damage to US prestige will be even greater.

The (CIA backed) opposition in Venezuela calls for a demonstration "Against the Fraud"

Here is a story dated December 2nd on the discovery of plans (CIA backed) to claim the election in Venezuela was a fraud and show the "opposition" candidate as the winner. My translation follows:

They prepare for the defeat before the elections
The opposition calls for a demonstration "Against the Fraud"

The material, a full color banner (notice) in which, among other things, Rosales appears [dressed as] President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela - calling the followers of the opposition candidate to support the "Great Avalanche Against Fraud" on December 5th. The demonstration is scheduled for 10 AM starting in the Altimara Plaza and goes to Miraflores, in Caracas.

Early today [December 2nd], the Armed Forces confiscated material alluding to a demonstration called by the leaders of the Manuel Rosales campaign committee, because of a [supposed] fraud that would occur in the Presidential Elections 2006.

[this paragraph just lists the military officers who - in the video - presents the information to the press]

The material, a full color banner (notice) in which, among other things, Rosales appears [dressed as] President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela - calling the followers of the opposition candidate to support the "Great Avalanche Against Fraud" on December 5th. The demonstration is scheduled for 10 AM starting in the Altimara Plaza and goes to Miraflores, in Caracas.

For the members of the National Armed Forces [of Venezuela] (FAN), material of this type clearly denotes intentions - of this opposition group - to subvert [civil] order and create chaos. It is unknown how many of these [posters and flyers] have been distributed.

It is our hopes that in exposing this destabilizing plan to the [court of ] public opinion, those responsible will become known.

Pérez Leal explained that he got the information from members of the same organization [that set up the plan] who are not in agreement with these antidemocratis acts.

"There is an anarchic group among them [the conspirators] that have no representative base, but who generate problems that the majority rejects. Many people in the organization have given me information regarding this act."

HERE IS THE VIDEO FROM VENEZUELA:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqfj1_la-derecha-no-acepta-la-derrota


Venezuela
02-12-2006
Se preparan para la derrota antes de las elecciones
La oposición convoca una manifestación "Contra el Fraude"
ViveTv

El material, un aviso a todo color en el que, entre otros elementos, aparece Rosales como Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, hace un llamado a los adeptos del candidato opositor a acudir a la "Gran Avalancha Contra el Fraude" el próximo 05 de diciembre. Dicha manifestación, pautada para las 10:00 a.m. partiría de la Plaza Altamira hasta Miraflores, en Caracas.


Hoy en horas de la madrugada, la Fuerza Armada Nacional incautó un material con información alusiva a una marcha convocada por el comando de campaña de Manuel Rosales contra un presunto fraude que ocurriría en las Elecciones Presidenciales 2006.

La información la dieron a conocer el G.D. del Ejército, Juan Paredes Torrealba, Cdte.1era División de Infantería y Guarnición de Maracaibo; G.D. de la Guardia Nacional, Castor Pérez Leal, Cdte. Comando Regional 3; y el G.B del Ejército, Cliver Alcalá Cordones, Cdte de la 11ava. Brigada de Infantería.

El material, un aviso a todo color en el que, entre otros elementos, aparece Rosales como Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, hace un llamado a los adeptos del candidato opositor a acudir a la "Gran Avalancha Contra el Fraude" el próximo 05 de diciembre. Dicha manifestación, pautada para las 10:00 a.m. partiría de la Plaza Altamira hasta Miraflores, en Caracas.

Para los miembros de la FAN, material como este denota claramente las intenciones de subvertir el orden, crear caos, de un grupo de la oposición. Indicaron que aún desconocen la cantidad de estos avisos que ya han sido distribuidos.


Esperan que al haber dado a conocer ante la opinión pública este plan desestabilizador, al menos, aparezca alguien que asuma la responsabilidad por el hecho.

Pérez Leal señaló que obtuvieron la información a través de personas de esa misma organización que no están de acuerdo con vías antidemocráticas.

"Hay un grupo entre ellos, anárquico, que no tiene mayor representación pero generan problemas, la mayoría rechaza eso. Muchas personas de esa organización se han acercado a mi activamente para darme información con relación a esto".

Ver vídeo:

La derecha no acepta la derrota


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