Jim Craven (Omahkohkiaayo i’poyi) teaches economics in Vancouver. He is a veteran and long-time activist on behalf of anti-imperialism, which includes the ongoing imperial predations of the US and Canada against the First Nations. We (virtually) met on the former “Crashlist” hosted by Mark Jones, to whom Jim refers in this post pasted in below.
Here he posts some cmprehensive thoughts on Zionism from his unique perspective as an American “Palestinian” living among the settlers, in the settlers’ state (PalestIndian, he calls himself).
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One of Mark’s [Jones] ideas for the [former “Crashlist”] list, one the moderators share I’m sure, is that the list could be used to share weapons of struggle. Anyone who has done serious mass work, I mean the kind away from the keyboard, knows that sometimes a pithy quote, an uncovered source, an irrefutable fact, a way of phrasing, a piece of reasoning, hypocrisy exposed, an infiltrator outed, a great “expert” really grilled, etc can cause a kind of critical mass and cause all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds to take a quantum leap in consciousness or at least take a fork in the road on a whole new direction.
I have been invited several times to debate Zionists on Palestine (usually in the role of a “PalestIndian” as we see Palestinians as the Indians of the Middle East). By debatng Zionists, I mean, the official kind, as in working in paid positions for open Zionist organizations clearly tied in with Israel, in the capacity of roving and officially designated “Speakers”. It is Palestinian friends who invite me to join them.
I have found that taking away “The Holocaust Card” right off the bat throws the Zionists into fits and throws them off for the rest of the debate. By taking away the “Holocaust Card” I mean only taking away the typical cynical and contrived Zionist use of the Nazi Holocaust that actually desecrates the memory of the Jewish and non-Jewish victims, in many Nazi-like ways, under the banner of “honoring” their memory.
How might this be done? I have had the most success working in three phases.
First, when the immediate and pro-forma reference is made to “Six Million Jews” and to “Holocaust Denial and Deniers” I start there. What does “Holocaust Denial” mean? First of all it usually means denying: 1)that the Nazi Holocaust ever happened; and/or 2) that it happened as is usually portrayed in history books; and/or 3) that it occurred with the scope and depth of barbarism and murder as is commonly portrayed in the history books. That is what most people who are not “Holocaust Deniers” consider “Holocaust Denial”. I start there.
Is “Holocaust Denial” also not the denying and/or ranking ordering of other genocides and/or even the denying that other genocides should be considered “Holocausts” so as to promote the rank-ordering of human beings and victims
(which is what Nazis do)? And isn’t “Holocaust Denial” also involved when victims of ANY genocide or Holocaust are given special mention and focus to the detriment of mention and focus of others? How is it possibly a desecration of the memories of the Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust to mention also Sinti-Roma, Homosexuals, Trade Unionists, “Righteous Gentiles”, “Slavs”, Communists, Socialists, POWs of some select nations, “Disabled” People, in other words ALL the targeted and actual victims of any given genocide? Or, how is it a desecration of the memories of the Jewish victims to use the term “Holocaust” in reference to other genocides in order to show the parallels in methods and scopes and common humanity of all victims?
No, those who rank-order any genocide or any victims of a given genocide are doing exactly not only what Nazis do, but also what allowed the Nazis to do what they did/do: dividing and rank-ordering human beings and victims in order to ultimately exterminate various populations and segments within them.
But I also note immediately that it is an absolute and irrefutable FACT that there are anti-Semites (in the usual sense of that term who are haters of Jews and all that is Jewish and who do want the total destruction of Jewish People), that they wear many masks, that they do indeed dress-up their anti-Semitism under the banner of “anti-Zionism”, and they do use selective mention or non-mention of other victims of the Nazi Holocaust or other Holocausts to try to dillute, diffuse or distract away from, any mention or focus or sensitivity on Jews or Jewish victims of historical forms of anti-Semitism. But, is that also not exactly what the Zionists are doing? Are they also not trying to “deny” and distract any attention or sensitivity to certain victims of the Nazi Holocaust and/or other Holocausts for their own exclusionary and racist interests, agenda and paradigms?
Next I get into Zionists even daring to raise and use the Nazi Holocaust because of Zionism’s own collaboration with and even celebration of, Naziism, anti-Semitism, Nazi eugenics, ranking-ordering “acceptable” versus “unacceptable” victims of Naziism to be saved (see below) etc. I tell a true story.
Victor Ostrovsky is a former Mossad officer who not only left Mossad but was the subject of several asassination atttempts by Mossad. He wrote several books (”By Way of Deception” and “Another Side of Deception”) and had a radio show called “Spytalk” in Arizona. One time he had a program on the USS Liberty, an US NSA [National Security Agency] Spy ship attacked and sunk and repeatedly strafed to try to kill all on board. I called his program to add the point made in James Bamford’s book “Body of Secrets”, which was that the real reason for the Israeli attack on the Liberty was that Israel was doing mass executions (exactly like the Nazi SS Einsatzgruppen) of Egyptian and other prisoners in the Sinai (forcing them to dig their own graves before being lined up to be shot) under the leadership of Sharon, and the Israelis thought that their radio communications admitting and facilitating the mass executions had been intercepted by the Liberty; they therefore wanted the ship sunk and all crew dead which is why they strafed the ship over almost five hours. The Israelis did not know that those same radio commmunications had also been intercepted by a NSA EC-121 also in the area picking up SIGINT [Signals Intelligence].
Well Ostrovksy not only did not try to silence what I was getting at, he encouraged more. So I began to discuss the fact that while Israel was selling cluster bombs and training the internal security forces of Pinochet in Chile, the main “Internal Security Advisor” to Pinochet was none other than Walter Rauff, the high-level Nazi and designer of the first mobile gas vans (dressed up as Red Cross ambulances) who had been sentenced to death in absentia as a major war criminal in the second Nuremberg trials. So here is Israel, cynically using the Nazi Holocaust and memory for SOME selected victims for their own purposes, and they are actively collaborating with actual wanted Nazis. I also mentioned South Africa where Israel not only openly supported the Apartheid regimes and even collaborated with them in making nuclear weapons, but also, when they did, along with using poor Blacks of Soweto and other “Bantustans” for medical experiments prohibited on Israelis in Israel by law, it was with regimes run by former members of the South African Nazi Party who had been interned by the British as Nazi agents.
Well Ostrovsky joined in to top that one. He said on the air, and I have it on tape, that when he was in the Israeli Navy (a former Commander), and later in Mossad, he saw evidence that in 1949, Otto Skorzeny, while still officially a wanted war criminal, was in Israel training Israeli commandos. For those who might not know or remember, Otto Skorzeny, SS was known as “Hitler’s Commando”. He led the assault team that rescued Mussolini. He led the forces that put down the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler and executed some 5,000 participants. After the War, in addition to being recruited by CIA (while on a wanted list of war criminals by the US Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps), Skorzeny was an active Nazi (the rest of his life), the head of the infamous ODESSA (organization for helping wanted Nazis escape and to prepare new Nazis to build a “Fourth Reich”) and an ally/advisor to several fascist and pro-Nazi parties of several different countries.
The third phase is to document who and what directly inspired the German Nazis and their scopes, methods and instruments of genocide (including how to hide it and/or get mass acceptance of it) which was the Eugenics Laws and other historical practices and forms of genocide–past and PRESENT– of the US and Canada against Indigenous Peoples (which Hitler openly declared to be his inspiration–from the “Wild West” novels of Karl May).
I then get into the present-day EXACT parallels between Nazi practices and ideology and Zionist practices and Ideology and show not only parallels or analogs, but actual PRESENT-DAY connections and alliances between PRESENT-DAY Zionists and outright NAZIS including even present-day Holocaust Deniers of the really overt and covert anti-Semitic varieties. I will include for example, medical experimentation, the Nes Ziiyona facility near Tel Aviv for “ABC” (Atomic, Biological, Chemical) Warfare and where kidnapped and captured Palestinians are used for medical experiments–fatal ones.
Hope it is useful for someone in some concrete actions. At all meetings, below is what I pass out from my website to audiences (which got me a talking to by the Vice-president of Instruction at my college the other day when someone in a “Mature Learning” course complained.) One more thing: If you know yourself and know what you really are about and intend, then one need neither fear nor make any accomodation to the charge of “anti-Semitism.
The “Spirit” of “Dr.” Josef Mengele Alive and Well in Israel The Spirit of “Dr.” Josef Mengele Alive and Well in Israel
From: “The Other Side of Deception” by Victor Ostrovsky (former Mossad), Harper Collins, N.Y. 1994
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” That was where I would come in as a military police officer; my job was to take the prisoners to a holding facility in Nes Ziyyona, a small town south of Tel Aviv. I’d always assumed that it was an interrogation facility for the Shaback. We all knew that a prisoner brought there would probably never get out alive, but the brainwashing we’d gone through in our short lifetimes had convinced us that it was them or us; there was no gray area.
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It was Uri who enlightened me regarding the Nes Ziyyona facility. It was, he said, an ABC warfare laboratory–ABC standing for atomic, bacteriological, and chemical. It was where our top epidemiological scientists were developing various doomsday machines. Because we were so vulnerable and would not have a second chance should there be an all-out war in which this type of weapon would be needed, there was no room for error. The Palestinian infiltrators came in handy in this regard. As human guinea pigs, they could make sure the weapons the scientists were developing worked properly and could verify how fast they worked and make them even more efficient. What scares me today, looking back at that revelation, is not the fact that it was taking place but rather the calmness and understanding with which I accepted it.
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Years later, I met Uri again. This time he was in the Mossad, a veteran ‘katsa’ in the Al department, and I was a rookie. He had come back from an assignment in South Africa. I was then a temporary desk man in the Dardasim department in liaison helping him prepare for a large shipment of medication to South Africa to accompany several Israeli doctors who were headed for some humanitarian work in Soweto, a black township outside Johannesburg. The doctors were to assist in treating patients at an outpatient clinic for the Baragwanath hospital in Soweto, a few blocks away from the houses of Winnie Mandela and bishop Desmond Tutu. The hospital and clinic were supported by a hospital in Baltimore, which served as a cut-out for the Mossad. Uri was on a cooling-off period from the United States.
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‘What is the Mossad doing giving humanitarian assistance to blacks in Soweto?’ I remember asking him. There was no logic to it; no short-term political gain (which was the way the Mossad operated) or any visible monetary advantage.
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‘Do you remember Nes Ziyyona?’ His question sent shivers up my spine. I nodded. ‘ This is very much the same. We’re testing both new infectious diseases and new medication that can’t be tested on humans in Israel, for several of the Israeli medicine manufacturers. This will tell them whether they’re on the right track, saving them millions in research.’
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‘ What do you think about all of this?’ I had to ask.
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‘ It’s not my job to think about it.’
–(pp. 188-89)
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The Ringworm Children: How the Israeli Government Irradiated 100,000 Israeli Kids Israel Insider October 28 2005 By Barry Chamish
On August 14, at 9 PM, Israel’s Channel Ten television screened a documentary film which exposes the ugliest secret of Israel’s Labor party founders: the deliberate mass radiation poisoning of nearly all Sephardi youths of a generation.
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“The Ringworm Children” (translated in Hebrew as “100,000 Rays”), directed by David Belhassen and Asher Hemias, recently won the prize for “best documentary” at the Haifa International film festival, and in the past year has made the rounds of Jewish and Israeli film festivals around the world. But it had yet to come to Israeli television screens. The subject is the mass irradiation of hundreds of thousands of young Israeli immigrants from Middle Eastern countries — Sephardim, as they are called today. The story goes like this:
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In 1951, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, Dr. Chaim Sheba, flew to America and returned with seven x-ray machines, supplied to him by the American army.
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They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year. The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today.
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To fool the parents of the victims, the children were taken away on “school trips” and their parents were later told the x-rays were a treatment for the scourge of scalpal ringworm. 6,000 of the children died shortly after their doses were given, while many of the rest developed cancers that killed thousands over time and are still killing them now. While living, the victims suffered from disorders such as epilepsy, amnesia, Alzheimer’s disease, chronic headaches and psychosis.
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That is the subject of the documentary in cold terms. It is another matter to see the victims on the screen.
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To watch the Moroccan lady describe what getting 35,000 times the dose of allowable x-rays in her head feels like. “I screamed make the headache go away. Make the headache go away. Make the headache go away. But it never went away.”
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To watch the bearded man walk hunched down the street. “I’m in my fifties and everyone thinks I’m in my seventies. I have to stoop when I walk so I won’t fall over. They took my youth away with those x-rays.”
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To watch the old lady who administered the doses to thousands of children: “They brought them in lines. First their heads were shaved and smeared in burning gel. Then a ball was put between their legs and the children were ordered not to drop it, so they wouldn’t move. The children weren’t protected over the rest of their bodies. There were no lead vests for them. I was told I was doing good by helping to remove ringworm. If I knew what dangers the children were facing, I would never have cooperated. Never!”
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Because the whole body was exposed to the rays, the genetic makeup of the children was often altered, affecting the next generation. We watch the woman with the distorted face explain, “All three of my children have the same cancers my family suffered. Are you going to tell me that’s a coincidence?”
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The majority of the victims were Moroccan because they were the most numerous of the Sephardi immigrants. The generation that was poisoned became the country’s perpetual poor and criminal class. It didn’t make sense. The Moroccans who fled to France became prosperous and highly educated. The common explanation was that France got the rich, thus smart ones. The real explanation is that every French Moroccan child didn’t have his brain cells fried with gamma rays.
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The film made it perfectly plain that this operation was no accident. The dangers of x-rays had been known for over forty years. We read the official guidelines for x-ray treatment in 1952. The maximum dose to be given a child in Israel was .5 rad. There was no mistake made. The children were deliberately poisoned.
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David Deri makes the point that only Sephardi children received the x-rays: “I was in class and the men came to take us on a tour. They asked our names. The Ashkenazi children were told to return to their seats. The dark children were put on the bus.”
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The film presents a historian who first gives a potted history of the eugenics movement. In a later sound bite, he declares that the ringworm operation was a eugenics program aimed at weeding out the perceived weak strains of society. The Moroccan lady is back on the screen. “It was a Holocaust, a Sephardi Holocaust. And what I want to know is why no one stood up to stop it.”
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David Deri, on film and then as a panel member, relates the frustration he encountered when trying to find his childhood medical records. “All I wanted to know was what they did to me. I wanted to know who authorized it. I wanted to trace the chain of command. But the Health Ministry told me my records were missing.” Boaz Lev, the Health Ministry’s spokesman chimes in: “Almost all the records were burned in a fire.”
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We are told that a US law in the late ’40s put a stop to the human radiation experiments conducted on prisoners, the mentally feeble and the like. The American atomic program needed a new source of human lab rats and the Israeli government supplied it. Here was the government cabinet at the time of the ringworm atrocities:
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Prime Minister - David Ben Gurion; Finance Minister - Eliezer Kaplan; Settlement Minister - Levi Eshkol; Foreign Minister - Moshe Sharrett; Health Minister - Yosef Burg; Labor Minister - Golda Meir; Police Minister - Amos Ben Gurion.
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The highest ranking non-cabinet post belonged to the Director General of the Defence Ministry, Shimon Peres.
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That a program involving the equivalent of billions of dollars of American government funds should be unknown to the Prime Minister of cash-strapped Israel is ridiculous. Ben Gurion had to have been in on the horrors and undoubtedly chose his son to be Police Minister in case anyone interfered with them.
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Finance Minister Eliezer Kaplan was rewarded for eternity with a hospital named after him near Rehovot. But he’s not alone in this honor. Chaim Sheba, who ran Ringworm Incorporated, had a whole medical complex named after him. Needless to say, if there is an ounce of decency in the local medical profession, those hospital names will have to change.
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After the film ended, there was a panel discussion which included a Moroccan singer, David Edri, head of the Compensation Committee for Ringworm X-Ray Victims, and Boaz Lev, a spokesman for the Ministry Of Health.
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TV host Dan Margalit tried to put a better face on what he’d witnessed. He explained meekly that “the state was poor. It was a matter of day to day survival.” Then he stopped. He knew there was no excusing the atrocities which the Sephardi children endured.
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But it was the Moroccan singer who summed up the experience best. “It’s going to hurt, but the truth has to be told. If not, the wounds will never heal.”
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There is one person alive who knows the truth: Shimon Peres. The only way to get to the truth and start the healing is to investigate him for his role in the mass poisoning of over 100,000 Sephardi children and youth.
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But here is why that won’t happen. The film was aired at the same time as the highest-rated TV show of the year, the finale of Israel’s talent-hunt show: “A Star Is Born.” The next day, the newly-born star’s photo took up half the front pages. There was not a word about “The Ringworm Children” in any paper, nor on the Internet. Until now.
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Zionism and Anti-Semitism
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From Tom Segev, “The Seventh Million: Israelis and the Holocaust” Hill and Wang, NY, 1993
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” On January 31, 1933, the day after Hitler became chancellor, the independent liberal daily ‘Haaretz’ decried this ‘hugely negative historical event’. Ten days later it ran a headline that read, ‘BLACK DAYS IN GERMANY.’ The paper followed the ongoing ‘anti-Semitic horror’, but during those first weeks it, like the British press, generally aimed at reassuring its readers: ‘One must suppose that Hitlerism will now renounce terrorist methods: government brings responsibility.’ the right-wing ‘Doar Hayom’ agreed: ‘There can be no doubt that Hitler the chancellor will be different from the Hitler of the public rallies.’ But from the start, ‘Davar’–the left-wing daily published by the Histadrut (Labor Federation)–was more pessimistic: ‘It was a bitter and ill-fated day when the New Vandal came to power’, the newspaper wrote the day after the change of government in Germany. It described Hitler as a man of hate and demagoguery who would ‘tear Jews out by their roots.’ ” (p 17)
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“More than anything else, though, the rise of the Nazis was seen as confirming the historical prognosis of Zionist ideology. ‘Hapoel Hatsair’ described the nazi persecution of the Jews as ‘punishment for their having tried to integrate into German society instead of leaving for Palestine while it was still possible to do so.’ Now they would have to run in a panic ‘like mice in flight’, the paper said. ‘The Jews of Germany are being persecuted now not despite their efforts to be part of their country but because of those efforts.’ The holocaust would later be the primary argument fro the establishment of the State of Israel and for its wars of survival.” (p. 18)
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“Ben-Gurion hoped that the Nazis victory would become ‘a fertile force’ for Zionism.” (p. 18) “The ‘haavara’ (’transfer’) agreement–the Hebrew term was used in the Nazi documents as well–was based on the complementary interests of the German government and the Zionist movement: the Nazis wanted the Jews out of Germany; the Zionists wanted them to come to Palestine. But there was no such mutuality of interests between the Zionists and German Jewry. Most German Jews would have preferred to stay in their country. The tension between the interests of the ‘yishuv’ [Jewish community in Palestine] (and, in time, the State of Israel) and those of world Jewry was to become a central motif in the story of the Israelis’ attitude to the Holocaust.” (p.20)
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“The revisionist right, by contrast, had long been sympathetic to Benito Mussolini’s Fascism and now and then even to Adolf Hitler’s Naziism–except, of course, his anti-Semitism. Betar, Jabotinsky’s youth movement, fostered classic Fascist ideas and forms. In 1928, Abba Ahimeir, a well-known Revisionist journalist, had a regular column, ‘From the Notebook of a Fascist’, in the newspaper ‘Doar Hayom’. In anticipation of Jabotinsky’s arrival in Palestine, he wrote an article titled ‘On the Arrival of Our Duce’ ” (p. 23)
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“Four years later, in early 1932, Ahimeir was among those brought to trial for disrupting a public lecvture at Hebrew University. The incident and the resulting trial are worthy of note only because of a declaration by defense attorney Zvi Eliahu Cohen in response to a speech by the prosecutor comparing the disruption of the lecture with the Nazi disturbances in Germany. ‘The comment on the Nazis’, Cohen said, ‘went too far. Were it not for Hitler’s anti-Semitism, we would not oppose his ideology. Hitler saved Germany.’ This was not an unconsidered outburst; the Revisionist paper ‘Hazit Haam’ praised Cohen’s ‘brilliant speech.’ ” (p. 23)
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“…[from Hazit Haam] ‘Social Democrats of all stripes believe that Hitler’s movement is an empty shell.’, the newspaper explained, but ‘we believe that there is both a shell and a kernel. The anti-Semitic shell is to be discarded, but not the anti-Marxist kernel. The Revisionists, the newspaper wrote, would fight the Nazis only to the extent that they were anti-Semites.” (p. 23)
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“The haavara agreement was a central issue in the elections in the summer of 1933 for representatives to the Eighteenth Zionist Congress. The Revisionists rejected [in a turnabout] any contact with Nazi Germany. It was inconsistent with the honor of the Jewish people, they said; Jabotinsky declared it ‘ignoble, disgraceful and contemptible’. The Revisionist press now castigated the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency as ‘Hitler’s allies’, people ‘who have trampled roughshod on Jewish honor, on Jewish conscience, and on Jewish ethics…dark characters who have come to trade on the troubles of the Jews and on the land of Israel…low types who have accepted the role of Hitler’s agents in Palestine and in the entire Near East…traitors…deceivers who lust after Hitler’s government.’ ” (p.
24)
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“After reading the Nazi Party newspaper, Ben-Gurion wrote, it seemed to him that he was reading the words of Zeev Jabotinsky in Doar Hayom: ‘the same thing, the same style, and the same spirit.’ ” (p. 24)
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“In his impassioned speech, Ben-Gurion called for the rescue of German Jewry, ‘a tribe of Israel’, and their transfer to Palestine, rather than action against Hitler. ‘ I do not believe that we can oust him and I am not interested in anything other than saving these 500,000 Jews,’ he said. Ben-Gurion saw the debate between rescue and boycott as a debate between Zionism and assimilation, between the nationalist interests of Jewish settlement in Palestine and the international war against anti-Semitism. The assumption imnplicit in his words was that the war against anti-Semitism was not a part of the Zionist mission.” (pp. 24-25)
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“To make his point, Ben-Gurion used harsh language that would in time be employed by anti-Zionists: ‘If I knew that it was possible to save all the children in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by transporting them to Palestine, I would choose the second–because we face not only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jewish people.’ In the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, Ben-Gurion commented that the ‘human conscience’ might bring various countries to open their doors to Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and warned: ‘Zionism is in danger.’ ” (p 28)
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“Nevertheless, the pragmatists were convinced that the boycott of Germany could not advance the interests of Palestine, that their ends could best be accomplished through contact with the Nazis. Thus the leaders sought to keep relations with Nazi Germany as normal as possible: Two months after Hitler came to power the Jewish Agency executive in Jerusalem had sent a telegram straight to the Fuhrer in Berlin, assuring him that the yishuv had not declared a boycott against his country; the telegram was sent at the request of German Jewry in the hope of halting their persecution, but it reflected the Jewish Agency’s inclination to maintain correct relations with the Nazi Government. Many years later, Menachem Begin revealed that the Zionist Organization had sent Hitler a cable of condolence on the death of President Hindenburg.” (p. 29)
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“Traveling on to Cairo, he [Eichmann] summoned a Jew from Jerusalem, one Fiebl Folkes. A report from Eichmann wrote of his trip and the record of his interrogation by the Israeli police decades later indicate[s] that Folkes was a member of the Haganah–the clandestine Jewish defense force–and a Nazi agent. On one occasion he even met with Eichmann in Berlin. The Nazis paid him for his information, mostly rather general political and economic evaluations. Among other things, Eichmann quoted Folkes to the effect that Zionist leaders were pleased by the persecution of German Jewry, since it would encourage immigration to Palestine.” (p.
30)
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“Ironically the Revisionists also had fairly wide-ranging links with the Nazis. The Betar youth movement was active in Berlin and several other German cities. About half a year before the Nazis came to power, the movement’s leadership distributed a memorandum to its members that was both commonsensical and cautious. The Nazis should be treated politely and with reserve, the memorandum instructed. Whenever Betar members were in public, they should remain quiet and refrain from vocal debates and critical comments. Under no circumstances should anyone say anything that could be interpreted as an insult to the German people, to its institutions, or to its prevailing ideology.
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The Nazis allowed Betar to continue its activities–meetings, conventions, summer camps hikes, sports, sailing, and agricultural training. Members were allowed to wear their uniforms, which included brown shirts, and they were allowed to publish mimeographed pamphlets, including Zionist articles in a nationalistic, para-Fascist tone, in the spirit of the times. The German Betar pamphlets focused on events in Palestine, and their exuberant nationalism targeted the British, the Arabs, and the Zionist left. The contained no references to the political situation in Germany. With this exception, they were similar to the nationalist German youth publications, including those published by the Nazis. Jabotinsky decried the influence Hitlerism was having on the members of Betar.” (pp. 32)
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In the second half of 1940, a few members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization)–the anti-British terrorist group sponsored by the Revisionists and known by its acronym Etzel, and to the British simply as the Irgun–made contact with representatives of Fascist Italy, offering to cooperate against the British. Soon the Etzel split, and the group headed by Avraham “Yair” Stern formed itself into the Lehi (from the initials of its Hebrew name, Lohamei Herut Yisrael–Fighters for the Freedom of Israel), also known as the Stern Gang. A representative of this group met with a German foreign ministry official and offered to help Nazi Germany in its war against the British. The Germans understood that the group aimed to establish an independent state based on the totalitarian principles of the Fascist and Nazi regimes. Many years after he tried to forge this lik with Nazis, a former Lehi leader explained what had guided his men at the time: ‘Our obligation was to fight the enemy. We were justified in taking aid from the Nazi oppressor, who was in this case the enemy of our enemy–the British.’ ” (p. 33)
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“The question was what to do with those refugees who were neither Zionist nor fit to help build the new society in Palestine. ‘Only God knows how the poor little land of Israel can take in this stream of people and emerge with a healthy social structure’, Chaim Weizmann wrote. The German Immigrants Association complained that the Jewish Agency’s representatives in Berlin were giving immigration certificates to invalids. ‘ The human material [direct quote and their words] coming from Germany is getting worse and worse’, the association charged after almost a year of Nazi rule. ‘They are not able and not willing to work, and they need social assistance.’ A year later the association sent to Berlin a list of names of people who should not have been sent. Henrietta Szold, who headed the Jewish Agency’s social-work division, also frequently protested about the sick and needy among the immigrants. From time to time Szold demanded that certain of such ‘cases’ be returned to Nazi Germany so that they would not be a burden on the yishuv.” (p. 43)
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“In 1937 the Joint Distribution Committee, an American organization that assisted needy Jews, negotiated with the German authorities for the release of 120 Jewish prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp. ‘I am not so sure that from a political point of view it is desirable that all those released come to Palestine’, a Jewish Agency official wrote to one of his colleagues. Most were not Zionists; and there may even have been Communists among them.” (pp 43-44)
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“Senator [Werner Senator of the Jewish Agency] who was active in bringing German Jews to Palestine, warned the Jewish Agency office in Berlin that if it did not improve the quality of the ‘human material’ it was sending, the agency was liable to cut back the number of certificates set aside for the German capital. The immigrants from Germany enjoyed all sorts of special benefits, Senator wrote. They received immigration certificates after only six months of agricultural training, while in other countries up to two years was required. Requests for family reunification from Germans with relatives in Palestine were also quickly approved. All this required special attention to the quality of immigrants, who should be true pioneers. Senator was not referring to occasional errors in judgment, he assured his colleagues; he was talking about a trend. More and more ‘ welfare cases’ were arriving from Germany, as well as too many ‘businessmen with children’ rather than single men and women. At one point it was decided that candidates above the age of thirty-five would receive immigration certificates ‘only if there is no reason to believe that they might become a burden here.’ Accordingly they had to have a profession. ‘Anyone who was a merchant’, the decision stated, or of similar employment, will not receive a certificate under any circumstances, except in the case of veteran Zionists.’ This was in 1935. ‘ In days of plenty, it was possible to handle this material [emphasis added]’ , explained Yitzhak Gruenbaum. ‘In days of shortages and unemployment, this material [emphasis added] will cause us many problems…We must be allowed to choose from among the refugees those worthy of immigration and not accept them all.’ ”
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(p. 44) Footnote: “In 1939 the world press followed the drama of the St Louis, a boat carrying several hundred Jewish refugees from Germany. No country would give them asylum. The Joint Distribution Committee asked the Jewish Agency to allot the passengers several hundred immigration certificates from the quota. The Jewish Agency refused. In the end the refugees were allowed into Antwerp. [note where many were exterminated after the takeover of Belgium by the Nazis.]. (p. 44)
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” German Jews who were given immigration permits ‘merely as refugees’ were also considered ‘undesirable human material’ by Eliahu Dobkin, a Mapai member of the Jewish Agency executive. ‘I understand very well the special situation in which the overseas institutions dealing with German refugees find themselves, but I would like to believe that you would agree with me that we must approach this question not from a philanthropic point of view but from the point of view of the country’s needs’, Dobkin wrote to one of his colleagues. ‘My opinion is that from among the refugees we must bring only those who meet this condition.’ Leaders of the German immigrants agreed. ‘As I see it, 90 percent of them are not indispensible here’, one of them wrote to another.” (pp 44-45)
–
“It was an incomparably cruel reality: every Jew who received an immigration certificate during those years lived in Palestine knowing that some other Jew who had not received that certificate had been murdered. This was the basis for the sense of guilt that would later trouble so many Israelis who escaped the Holocaust.” (p 45)
–
From Zionism in the Age of the Dictators by Lenni Brenner:
–
In June of 1895, the first entry into his new journal on Zionism, Theodor Hertzl wrote: “In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.”
–
To be a Good Zionist one must be Somewhat of an Anti-Semite: Although blut was a recurrent theme in pre-Holocaust Zionist literature, it was not as central to its message as boden. As long as America’s shores remained open, Europe’s Jews asked: if anti-Semitism could not be fought on its home ground, why should they not just follow the crowd to America? The Zionist response was double-barrelled: anti-Semitism would accompany the Jews wherever they went and, what was more, it was the Jews who had created anti-Semitism by their own characteristics. The root cause of anti-Semitism, Zionists insisted, was the Jews’ exile existence. Jews lived parasitically off their ‘hosts’…
–
These tenets combined were known as ’shelilat ha’galut (the Negation of the Diaspora),and were held by the entire spectrum of Zionists who varied only on matters of detail. They were argued vigorously in the Zionist press, where the distinctive quality of many articles was their hostility to the entire Jewish people. Anyone reading these pieces without knowing their source would have automatically assumed that they came from the Anti-Semitic press. The Weltanschauung of the youth organization Hashomer Hatzair (Young Watchmen), originally composed in 1917, but republished again as late as 1936, was typical of these effusions: The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both pysically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligations, knows no order nor discipline. (pp 22-23)
–
Similarly, in 1935 an American Ben Frommer, a writer for the ultra-right Zionist-Revisionists, could declare of no less than 16 million of his fellow Jews that: The fact is undeniable that the Jews collectively are unhealthy and neurotic. Those professional Jews who, wounded to the quick, indignantly deny this truth are the greatest enemies of their race, for they thereby lead them to search for false solutions, or at most palliatives.” (p. 23)
–
And: In 1925 the most vehement protagonist of total abstentionism, Jacob Klatzkin, the co-editor of the massive “Encyclopedia Judaica”, laid down the full implications of the Zionist approach to anti-Semitism: “If we do not admit the rightfulness of antisemitism, we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism. If our people is deserving and willing to live its own national life, then it is an alien body thrust into the nations among whom it lives, an alien body that insists on its own distinctive identity, reducing the domain of their life. It is right therefore, that they should fight against us for their national integrity…Instead of establishing societies for defense against antisemites, who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defense against our friends who desire to defend our rights.” (p. 30)
Warning:
Since what follows is STILL GOING ON, perhaps a Rez/Casino few miles up the road from some, once reading this, cognitive dissonance will make forgetting about what is going on a few miles up the road at the nearest Rez, in lieu of what is going on at some exotic locale on the other side of the world, more and more problematic and perhaps even physiologically and psychologically disturbing.
What Inspired Hitler
“It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habitating so closely in these schools, and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this alone does not justify a change in the policy of this Department, which is geared towards the FINAL SOLUTION OF OUR INDIAN PROBLEM.” (Department of Indian Affairs Superintendent D.C. Scott to B.C. Indian Agent-General Major D. McKay, DIA Archives, RG 10 series). April 12, 1910 (emphasis added))
According to James Pool in his “Hitler and His Secret Partners”:
Hitler drew another example of mass murder from American history. Since his youth he had been obsessed with the Wild West stories of Karl May. He viewed the fighting between cowboys and Indians in racial terms. In many of his speeches he referred with admiration to the victory of the white race in settling the American continent and driving out the inferior peoples, the Indians. With great fascination he listened to stories, which some of his associates who had been in America told him about the massacres of the Indians by the U.S. Calvary.
He was very interested in the way the Indian population had rapidly declined due to epidemics and starvation when the United States government forced them to live on the reservations. He thought the American government’s forced migrations of the Indians over great distances to barren reservation land was a deliberate policy of extermination. Just how much Hitler took from the American example of the destruction of the Indian nations his hard to say; however, frightening parallels can be drawn. For some time Hitler considered deporting the Jews to a large ‘reservation’ in the Lubin area where their numbers would be reduced through starvation and disease. (p. 273-274).
And:
The next morning Hitler’s ‘plan’ was put in writing and sent out to the German occupation authorities as ‘The Fuehrer’s Guidelines for the Government of the Eastern Territories: ‘ the Slavs are to work for us. Insofar as we don’t need them, they may die. Therefore compulsory vaccination and German health services are superfluous. The fertility of the Slavs is undesirable. They may use contraceptives And practice abortion, the more the better. Education is dangerous. It is sufficient… if they can count up to a hundred. At best an education is admissible which produces useful servants for us. Every educated person is a future enemy. Religion we leave to them as a means of diversion. As to food, they are not to get more than necessary. We are the masters, we come first.’
Always contemptuous of the Russians, Hitler said: ‘For them the word ‘liberty’ means the right to wash only on feast-days. If we arrive bringing soft soap, we’ll obtain no sympathy…There’s only one duty: to Germanize this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins.’ Having been a devoted reader of Karl May’s books on the American West as a youth, Hitler frequently referred to the Russians as ‘Redskins’. He saw a parallel between his effort to conquer and colonize land in Russia with the conquest of the American West by the white man and the subjugation of the Indians or ‘Redskins’. ‘I don’t see why’, he said, ‘a German who eats a piece of bread should torment himself with the idea that the soil that produces this bread has been won by the sword. When we eat from Canada, we don’t think about the despoiled Indians.” (James Pool, Ibid, pp.
254-255)
And from a speech by Heinrich Himmler (date not given):
I consider that in dealing with members of a foreign country, especially some Slav nationality…in such a mixture of peoples there will always be some racially good types. Therefore I think that it is our duty to take their children with us, to remove them from their environment, if necessary, by robbing or stealing them… (Telford Taylor “Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials”, Alfred A Knopf, N.Y. 1992, p. 203)
And from John Toland, preeminent biographer of Adolf Hitler:
Hitler’s concept of concentration camps as well as the practicality of genocide owed much, so he claimed, to his studies of English and United States history. He admired the camps for Boer prisoners in South Africa And for the Indians in the Wild West; and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America’s extermination-by starvation and uneven combat-of the ‘Red Savages’ who could not be tamed by captivity. (John Toland, “Adolf Hitler” Vol II, p 802, Doubleday & Co, 1976)
“Set the blood-quantum at one-quarter, hold to it as a rigid definition of Indians, let intermarriage proceed…and eventually Indians will be defined out of existence. When that happens,the federal government will finally be freed from its persistent Indian problem.” (Patricia Nelson Limerick, “The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West” p338)
Government paper warns of risks of apologizing for residential schools WENDY COX July 27, 1998 from Ottawa Citizen
OTTAWA (CP) - Government officials were urged two years ago to provide a compensation package to aboriginal people who suffered in residential schools as an attempt to control the potentially explosive costs of lawsuits, an internal document shows. The report, stamped Secret and obtained by The Canadian Press, compares the pros and cons of forcing claimants to go to court with offering financial redress to victims. It concludes that in the long run, compensation would be cheaper.
“The number of individual claims as well as any negative implications for the federal government in defending such actions (lawsuits) would likely be minimized if a government policy, including some form of redress package, were adapted,” says the 20-page report. The document also warns against using the word “apology,” preferring instead “an acknowledgment or expression of regret.” “It could be worded in such a fashion so as to not lay blame on anyone.”
Government officials confirmed the report, which is titled simply Residential Schools Discussion Paper, was written in late 1995 or early 1996 for Ron Irwin, then the minister of Indian Affairs. It may also have been prepared for the Justice Department. The report never reached current Indian Affairs Minister Jane Stewart and the advice in it never formed the basis for actions she later took, officials say. Earlier this year, Stewart issued a Statement of Reconciliation, saying the government was “deeply sorry” for those who suffered the “tragedy” of physical and sexual abuse at the schools.
The statement also included a $350-million healing fund. “It was critical that the apology meant something to us,” said Shawn Tupper, spokesman for the minister on the residential schools file. “We can point to (the $350-million healing fund) and say we’re actually doing something substantive to back it up.” The statement has been accepted by national Chief Phil Fontaine, however other native leaders said at the time that it wasn’t good enough. But critics who have read the 1996 document say the federal government has followed the advice to the letter. They say it’s evidence the statement is not an apology at all but merely an attempt to control costs. Ovide Mercredi, a former national chief, said the document shows “the minister didn’t follow her heart or her sense of justice.” “She followed legal advice and the advice was to reduce legal liability at all costs and the government measure is designed to do that.” Fontaine was unavailable for comment.
The document advises that forcing former students to take the government to court would ensure they would have to prove their claims. As an added advantage, it would also limit lawsuits, the report states.
“There is a general disinclination by persons who have suffered abuse to testify on such a personal and painful matter in a public and adversarial forum,” the report says.
“A litigation approach may well keep the number of claimants down to a minimum.”
However, going to court would cost the government dearly in money and in bad press, the report concludes. The author, who is unnamed, recommends a compensation package instead. Since the report was written, thousands of former students have joined class action suits or have filed individual lawsuits against the federal government. A landmark B.C. court ruling last month declared for the first time that both the federal government and the United Church are legally liable for widespread sexual and physical abuse at a Port Alberni, B.C., school and ordered them to compensate about 30 former students. A figure for the compensation has not yet been decided. The mounting lawsuits are anticipated in the 1996 report, but the document also cautions that apologizing is dangerous territory.
“Whatever it is called, the department will want to ensure that the statement cannot subsequently be used to establish a cause of action against the Crown in any particular individual cause,” it states. “It would appear that this government is committed to looking ahead and in these tough economic times, it would not want to be involved in anything that is too expensive or linked to the past.” Tupper said the department’s thinking has evolved since the report. When asked at a news conference last January if the statement of reconciliation was an apology, Stewart responded yes. “In our view, the statement of reconciliation is not an acknowledgment of guilt in a court of law,” Tupper said. It is an acknowledgment of a historic policy and the negative impacts of that policy and it is a commitment to do something about it.” However, John McKiggan, a lawyer for about 800 former students at the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia, said the internal document reveals the federal government’s strategy. “There is an amazing similarity between the present and suggestions made in the paper,” he said. “The statement of reconciliation does not apologize for government actions. It recognizes the pain. It doesn’t admit responsibility for that pain.” -The Canadian Press, 1998
Alberta sterilization victims also used as guinea pigs
Revelation comes as 40 victims win $4M settlement Marina Jimenez National Post 10/28/98
As many as 100 of the children at the centre of the Alberta sterilization scandal of the late 1960s and early 1970s were also used as guinea pigs in drug trials, the National Post has learned. The children lived at the Provincial Training School in Red Deer. Some were wards of the province and others were placed in the school by their parents, who did not consent to the sterilization or medical experimentation, which included the administration of powerful steroids and anti-psychotic drugs. Experts say one of the drugs used, the anabolic steroid norbolethone, is illegal today. The anti-psychotic tranquilizer haloperidol was also used. Its effect on children is said to be akin to hitting them over the head with a sledge hammer.
Yesterday, 40 people who were sterilized against their will reached a settlement totalling $4-million with the government of Alberta. This brings to 540 the number of people who have settled with the province for being sterilized under the now-defunct Alberta Sterilization Act, which was in effect from 1928 to 1972. The operations were ordered by Alberta’s eugenics board to prevent the mentally disabled from passing on their defects to offspring. Lawyers say they want more money from the government for victims who had to endure being tested with powerful drugs in addition to being sterilized. “Invading people’s rights in the form of unauthorized research and taking advantage of people who couldn’t look after themselves is the kind of thing that courts award punitive damages for,” said Jon Faulds, an Edmonton lawyer representing 109 sterilization victims still negotiating settlements.
Allan Garber, another Edmonton lawyer acting for the former training school residents, said they were treated like cattle. “The experimental drug treatment only compounds the evil that was done to our clients.” Dr. Leonard J. LeVann, medical superintendent from 1949 to 1974 at the Red Deer school, published the results of his drug experiments in scholarly journals, which were recently turned over to lawyers for the victims. The articles show that Dr. LeVann, who is dead, gave 100 undersized children the anabolic steroid norbolethone over a 12-month period in 1971. The drug — now illegal in Canada — made the children gain weight. But it also produced some side effects: the genitals of two boys increased in size and one girl’s voice deepened.”The treatment of retarded growth in children with anabolic agents is controversial,” he wrote in the September 1971 edition of the International Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Therapy and Toxicology. Nonetheless, he called the drug study “entirely satisfactory.”
Norbolethone is illegal today because of its powerful side effects - damage to the liver and negative psychological symptoms. Anabolic steroids can also increase aggressive sexual behaviour in men and cause secondary sexual characteristics, for example, facial hair in girls. Dr. LeVann also gave 100 children haloperidol, an anti-psychotic tranquilizer, over a period of 40 days in the late 1960s to counter hyperactivity and excitability. Dr. Louis Pagliaro, a professor of educational psychology and the associate director of the substance abusology research unit at the University of Alberta, says haloperidol “would essentially knock (children) out. (It) generally decreases people’s ability to learn and adversely affects memory and behaviour.” Dr. LeVann’s studies are “full of half-truths, assumptions and by today’s standards, lack proper research methodology,” says Dr. Pagliaro.
About 2,800 people were sterilized in Alberta before the Sexual Sterilization Act was finally repealed. Documents now show that many of the people sterilized were not mentally disabled. In 1996, the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench ordered the provincial government to pay Leilani Muirer $740,000 for being wrongfully confined in the Red Deer school and sterilized. Her landmark victory opened a floodgate of litigation. In June, 1998, the government agreed to pay 500 more sterilization claimants up to $100,000. Many continue to live in the Red Deer facility, known today as the Michener Centre. The province has spent $54 million on settlements to date. The compensation deal for the sterilizaiton victims announced yesterday, much the same as those announced last June, gives claimants $75,000 now and another $25,000 after three years, if they are then living outside institutions.
Here is one more that shows a nexus between US/Canadian genocide actually directly inspiring Nazi genocide (methods, possible scope, depth, techniques of concealment, techniques of engineering mass acceptance, eugenics the whole lot) on the Nazis, as evidenced by the Nazis own words, and then the influence of the Nazis on Zionists including active collaboration and then you have Bush and his family not only early financial supporters of Hitler and the Nazis from 1924 onward, caught selling nazi bonds AFTER Pearl Harbor, co-investors with Fritz Thuyssen in a synfuel plant at Auschwitz which was liquidated and cerated George HW Bush’s $1.5 milion trust fund, but also, the Bushes were involved in eugenics and pioneered the race and sterilization laws that were models for the nazis, plus they helped to hide a bunch of wanted nazi war criminals in the CIA and on the Ethnic Heritage Council of the Republican Party, and now you have Bush pimping for the Israelis (can you spell blackmail maybe?) who have used and are using human beings for medical experiments, while the South Africans have given up the nuclear weapons they co-developed with the Israelis, the Israelis keep them with a Samson Option of Doomsday for the whole world (lighting off some 200 nukes) if Israel sense Armageddon…
No one could make this shit up it is just too fantastic and it is all true and carefully sourced.
This all reminds me of a passage in John LeCarre’s “The Russia House” where Barley Scott Blair, a drunken Englishman who has inherited a failing publishing house that he is further running into the ground. and British intelligence corners him to work for them because a Soviet disident has covertly sent a book to be published by Blair’s company and Blair goes to the USSR all the time andis sent to find out who the dissident scientist is and urge him to defect. Well this Barley Scott Blair is drunk at some Dacha, and seeing nothing but treachery everywhere around him, says the following:
“If there is to be hope, we must all ‘betray’ our country. We have to save each other because all victims are equal and none is more equal than others.
It is everone’s duty to start the avalanche. Nowadays you have to think like a hero just to behave like a merely decent human being.”
Of course the ones really “betraying” this country and its People are the likes of Bush and his types along with a lot of spineless Dems.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
Iraq’s Death Squads: An Instrument Of The Occupation by Ghali Hassan
On November 14, 2006 militias and death squads dressed as police commandos kidnapped up to 150 staff and visitors in broad daylight raid – one of daily raids throughout Iraq – on the Higher Education Ministry annexe in central Baghdad. Although some hostages have been released, the fate of others is unknown. It is alleged that large number of the hostages have been tortured and others were murdered. The totality of the raids, kidnapping, torture, ongoing civilian massacres and murder were part of the illegal and racist war of aggression perpetrated by the U.S. and Britain against a defenceless nation in disregard of International Law and contempt for International institutions.
Let me stating the obvious. The U.S. did not invade Iraq to establish “democracy” and “free Iraqis”. The U.S. invaded and destroyed Iraq in order to humiliate and divide Muslims – Arabs in particular –, protect Israel’s Zionist expansion and control Iraq’s natural wealth. So, the U.S.-imposed democracy by force is fraud. ‘Democracy is like a plant; it grows from bottom up, not from top down’. The U.S. sabotage of democracy in Palestine and U.S. support for Israel’s criminal destruction of Lebanon are just two current examples of U.S. love for democracy. Also the idea that the U.S. and its allies are in Iraq to stabilise the situation is a falsehood. Destabilisation was one of the aims of U.S. foreign policy. The unprovoked war of aggression and the continuing U.S. presence in Iraq, including the illegal building of U.S. military bases and the largest C.I.A. station in the world on Iraqi soil, are major destabilising factors. The U.S. objectives have always been to weaken Iraq, divide the people and control Iraq behind a façade of corrupt stooges, with poorly trained and poorly armed army and police.
Long before the invasion, the U.S. and its allies were involved in the training and arming of tens of thousands of militias and anti-Iraq collaborators....
In target=_new>Let a Thousand Militias Bloom , Arun Gupta writes that ‘the U.S. government is not only aware of these illegal militias but is arming, training and funding them for use in their counter-insurgency operations’. According to Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, the “special police commandos” – is being used throughout Iraq and has been conducting criminal assassinations known as the “Salvador option” with the full knowledge of U.S. forces. “Pound for pound, though, they are the toughest force we’ve got”, Col. Dean Franklin, a senior officer in Gen. David Petraeus’s command told Greg Jaffe (WSJ, February 16, 2005). The occupying forces have also succeeded in turning one militia group against the other using the civilian population as a fodder. “And it's all happening under the eyes of US commanders, who seem unwilling or unable to intervene”, revealed Deborah Davies in a special Channel 4 investigation, ‘Iraq’s Death Squads’.
To destroy Iraq as an independent nation, the U.S. initiated the criminal campaign of “De-Ba’athification”, which implied the liquidation of anyone associated with the Ba’ath Party as well as anyone with anti-Occupation nationalist views. “De-Ba’athification” is simply a murderous campaign for inciting violence and destroying the Iraqi society. Together with the Israeli Mossad, U.S. Special Forces, the pro-Occupation militias and death squads have embarked on deliberate campaign of assassinations and ethnic cleansing. Thousands of scientists, including more than 350 scientists specialized in nuclear science have been assassinated. Thousands of professors, prominent politicians, and medical doctors have been murdered in cold blood. The Ministry of Higher Education reported that at least 210 teachers have been murdered and some 3,700 have fled Iraq to neighbouring countries. According to the UN more than 3,000 Iraqis flee to Syria and Jordan every day to avoid being killed. More than 1.7 million Iraqis have fled the country.
The aim is to create a climate of terror and incite civil war among Iraqis in order to justify the ongoing Occupation of Iraq and the fraudulent “war on terror”. The growing number of daily civilian massacres, rapes and torture of Iraqis by U.S. forces and their collaborators are deliberately ignored by the media, making Iraq the biggest hidden U.S. atrocity in the U.S. history of violence against defenceless people. It is also possible that the violence is created to provide a “safety net” for foreign troops' withdrawal and discredit the heroic struggle and Resistance against the Occupation and deny Iraqis victory against the most violent and powerful war machine in history....
The U.S. policy of “let them kill each other” is an integral part of U.S. foreign policy carefully executed to serve U.S. imperialist interests. Hence, the comment of Senator Carl Levin, “We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves”, designed to deflect any U.S. responsibility away from war crimes and misleadingly presenting the Occupation as the saviour of Iraqis. We know that the vast majority of Iraqis disagree and want the immediate end of the Occupation. More than 61 per cent of Iraqis approve of the Resistance attacks against the occupying forces. The U.S. and its allies bear full responsibility for the destruction of Iraq and for the death of more than 700,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.
Iraqis have gone many generations without fighting each other. Iraqi (males and females) worked studies and conducted their business in a safe environment. Regardless of their religious affiliations and ethnic backgrounds, the Iraqi people were living in peaceful environment despite the horror of the West-imposed genocidal sanctions. Why have they suddenly started fighting? Why all these crimes and bloodshed did not take place under the government of Saddam Hussein, even when his government was scrutinised by Western NGOs and human rights organisations? Today, these NGOs and human rights organisations have remained silent, preferring to use the fraudulent and farcical trial of Saddam to claim credibility of “defending” human rights. In less than four years, the U.S. and U.S.-trained and armed death squads and militias have destroyed Iraq beyond comprehension.
The immediate arrest of senior police commandos after the raid on the Higher Education Ministry annexes and the immediate release of some hostages shed light on the extent of U.S. complicity in the ongoing crimes against the Iraqi people. Therefore, the longer the U.S. forces stayed in Iraq, the more violence they generate. Only full and immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces and mercenaries will contribute to the end of violence and ongoing suffering of the Iraqi people.
Let me stating the obvious. The U.S. did not invade Iraq to establish “democracy” and “free Iraqis”. The U.S. invaded and destroyed Iraq in order to humiliate and divide Muslims – Arabs in particular –, protect Israel’s Zionist expansion and control Iraq’s natural wealth. So, the U.S.-imposed democracy by force is fraud. ‘Democracy is like a plant; it grows from bottom up, not from top down’. The U.S. sabotage of democracy in Palestine and U.S. support for Israel’s criminal destruction of Lebanon are just two current examples of U.S. love for democracy. Also the idea that the U.S. and its allies are in Iraq to stabilise the situation is a falsehood. Destabilisation was one of the aims of U.S. foreign policy. The unprovoked war of aggression and the continuing U.S. presence in Iraq, including the illegal building of U.S. military bases and the largest C.I.A. station in the world on Iraqi soil, are major destabilising factors. The U.S. objectives have always been to weaken Iraq, divide the people and control Iraq behind a façade of corrupt stooges, with poorly trained and poorly armed army and police.
Long before the invasion, the U.S. and its allies were involved in the training and arming of tens of thousands of militias and anti-Iraq collaborators....
In target=_new>Let a Thousand Militias Bloom , Arun Gupta writes that ‘the U.S. government is not only aware of these illegal militias but is arming, training and funding them for use in their counter-insurgency operations’. According to Greg Jaffe of the Wall Street Journal, the “special police commandos” – is being used throughout Iraq and has been conducting criminal assassinations known as the “Salvador option” with the full knowledge of U.S. forces. “Pound for pound, though, they are the toughest force we’ve got”, Col. Dean Franklin, a senior officer in Gen. David Petraeus’s command told Greg Jaffe (WSJ, February 16, 2005). The occupying forces have also succeeded in turning one militia group against the other using the civilian population as a fodder. “And it's all happening under the eyes of US commanders, who seem unwilling or unable to intervene”, revealed Deborah Davies in a special Channel 4 investigation, ‘Iraq’s Death Squads’.
To destroy Iraq as an independent nation, the U.S. initiated the criminal campaign of “De-Ba’athification”, which implied the liquidation of anyone associated with the Ba’ath Party as well as anyone with anti-Occupation nationalist views. “De-Ba’athification” is simply a murderous campaign for inciting violence and destroying the Iraqi society. Together with the Israeli Mossad, U.S. Special Forces, the pro-Occupation militias and death squads have embarked on deliberate campaign of assassinations and ethnic cleansing. Thousands of scientists, including more than 350 scientists specialized in nuclear science have been assassinated. Thousands of professors, prominent politicians, and medical doctors have been murdered in cold blood. The Ministry of Higher Education reported that at least 210 teachers have been murdered and some 3,700 have fled Iraq to neighbouring countries. According to the UN more than 3,000 Iraqis flee to Syria and Jordan every day to avoid being killed. More than 1.7 million Iraqis have fled the country.
The aim is to create a climate of terror and incite civil war among Iraqis in order to justify the ongoing Occupation of Iraq and the fraudulent “war on terror”. The growing number of daily civilian massacres, rapes and torture of Iraqis by U.S. forces and their collaborators are deliberately ignored by the media, making Iraq the biggest hidden U.S. atrocity in the U.S. history of violence against defenceless people. It is also possible that the violence is created to provide a “safety net” for foreign troops' withdrawal and discredit the heroic struggle and Resistance against the Occupation and deny Iraqis victory against the most violent and powerful war machine in history....
The U.S. policy of “let them kill each other” is an integral part of U.S. foreign policy carefully executed to serve U.S. imperialist interests. Hence, the comment of Senator Carl Levin, “We cannot save the Iraqis from themselves”, designed to deflect any U.S. responsibility away from war crimes and misleadingly presenting the Occupation as the saviour of Iraqis. We know that the vast majority of Iraqis disagree and want the immediate end of the Occupation. More than 61 per cent of Iraqis approve of the Resistance attacks against the occupying forces. The U.S. and its allies bear full responsibility for the destruction of Iraq and for the death of more than 700,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.
Iraqis have gone many generations without fighting each other. Iraqi (males and females) worked studies and conducted their business in a safe environment. Regardless of their religious affiliations and ethnic backgrounds, the Iraqi people were living in peaceful environment despite the horror of the West-imposed genocidal sanctions. Why have they suddenly started fighting? Why all these crimes and bloodshed did not take place under the government of Saddam Hussein, even when his government was scrutinised by Western NGOs and human rights organisations? Today, these NGOs and human rights organisations have remained silent, preferring to use the fraudulent and farcical trial of Saddam to claim credibility of “defending” human rights. In less than four years, the U.S. and U.S.-trained and armed death squads and militias have destroyed Iraq beyond comprehension.
The immediate arrest of senior police commandos after the raid on the Higher Education Ministry annexes and the immediate release of some hostages shed light on the extent of U.S. complicity in the ongoing crimes against the Iraqi people. Therefore, the longer the U.S. forces stayed in Iraq, the more violence they generate. Only full and immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces and mercenaries will contribute to the end of violence and ongoing suffering of the Iraqi people.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
What We're Up Against (Lessons from Guatemala) by Mickey Z.
There are many battles being fought in the name of social justice... some more pitched than others. In general, however, these struggles do not result in victory thanks to a petition, a candlelight vigil, or a ballot pull. In other words, those seeking peace, justice, and solidarity should never underestimate the relentless and brutal power of what they are up against. I am reminded of this every time I re-read Bridge of Courage: Life Stories of the Guatemalan Compañeros and Compañeras, (Common Courage Press, 1995) an amazing book by Jennifer Harbury.
Guatemala (a nation perched on the border of Chiapas, Mexico) is an easy place to overlook. Therefore, if we were to trust the corporate media, our knowledge would be limited to ill-informed, racist diatribes like this from Clifford Krauss of The New York Times (April 9, 1995): "Guatemala required neither Karl Marx nor the Central Intelligence Agency to be consumed by class and ethnic war, and ... The Guatemalan army, currently in the news because some of its officers received secret CIA payments, is essentially finishing the job that the conquistadors started. The cross and the sword may have been replaced by modern counterinsurgency tactics, but the essential driving forces of Guatemalan history remain the same ... the fact remains that Guatemalans do not need prompting to kill one another."
Krauss went on to tell of chickens "sacrificed . . . to . . . pre-Columbian gods" and "bizarre" religious cults (Krauss' tactics are indeed for those seeking to absolve the U.S. from any culpability in the wanton destruction of a people). While admitting CIA complicity in the 1954 coup that saw the end of Jacobo Arbenz, Krauss is quick to remind us "modern Guatemalan political history began not with the coup of 1954."
He has a point. It was at a February 1945 conference that State Department Political Advisor Laurence Duggan called for "An Economic Charter of the Americas," complaining that "Latin Americans are convinced that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country's resources should be the people of that country." From this unacceptable premise, the seeds of the 1954 coup were sown, and the U.S.-sponsored results include possibly irreversible environmental devastation and upwards of 200,000 civilians killed or "disappeared."
In a landslide victory, Jacobo Arbenz was freely and fairly elected president of Guatemala in 1951. Wishing to transform his country, Arbenz' modest reforms and his legalizing of the Communist Party were frowned upon in American business circles. The Arbenz government became the target of a U.S. public relations campaign. Two years after Arbenz became president, Life magazine featured a piece on his "Red" land reforms, claiming that a nation just "two hours bombing time from the Panama Canal" was "openly and diligently toiling to create a Communist state." It matters little that the USSR didn't even maintain diplomatic relations with Guatemala; the Cold War was in full effect. Ever on the lookout for that invaluable pretext, the U.S. business class scored a public relations coup when Arbenz expropriated some unused land controlled by United Fruit Company. His payment offer was predictably deemed inappropriate. "If they gave a gold piece for every banana," Secretary of State John Foster Dulles clarified, "the problem would still be Communist infiltration."
The CIA put Operation Success into action. "A legally elected government was overthrown by an invasion force of mercenaries trained by the CIA at military bases in Honduras and Nicaragua and supported by four American fighter planes flown by American pilots," explains Howard Zinn. Operation Success ushered in 40 years of repression, more than 200,000 deaths, and what William Blum calls "indisputably one of the most inhumane chapters of the 20th century." These chapters could never have been written without permission from the United States and its proxies, e.g. Israel.
"The Israelis may be seen as American proxies in Honduras and Guatemala," stated Israeli journalist, Yoav Karni in Yediot Ahronot. Also, Ha'aretz correspondent Gidon Samet has explained that the most important features of the US-Israeli strategic cooperation in the 1980s were not in the Middle East, but with Central America. "The U.S. needs Israel in Africa and Latin America, among other reasons, because of the government's difficulties in obtaining congressional authorization for its ambitious aid programs and naturally, for military actions," Gamet wrote on November 6, 1983, adding that America has "long been interested in using Israel as a pipeline for military and other aid" to Central America. Earlier that same year, Yosef Priel reported in Davar that Latin America "has become the leading market for Israeli arms exports."
Who are these governments so willingly snapping up weapons manufactured in the Holy Land? One illustrative example is, yes, Guatemala. In 1981, shortly after Israel agreed to provide military aid to this oppressive regime, a Guatemalan officer had a feature article published in the army's Staff College review. In that article, the officer praised Adolf Hitler, National Socialism, and the Final Solution-quoting extensively from Mein Kampf and chalking up Hitler's anti-Semitism to the "discovery" that communism was part of a "Jewish conspiracy." Despite such seemingly incompatible ideology, Israel's estimated military assistance to Guatemala in 1982 was $90 million.
What type of policies did the Guatemalan government pursue with the help they received from a nation populated with thousands of Holocaust survivors? This question brings us back to Harbury's book, a book filled with the "inhumane chapters" Blum mentions. One member of the Guatemalan resistance Harbury interviewed was Lorena and her story provides a good example of what happens in a U.S. client state (with Israeli help).
Lorena's lover, a compañero named Daniel, was out with a small unit to engage Guatemalan soldiers when he was hit by enemy fire. Lorena tells what happened next: "The other compañeros ran to where Daniel had fallen and found him dying there, quiet but very clear-minded. He refused to let them try and bandage him up, telling them to first go and find the others who had a chance of surviving. The he gave away the things in his pack, the food, the blanket, his small book. He writing a note, shaken but determined, when they left him. The note was for me, but I never received it."
When Lorena learned of Daniel's injuries, she and a comrade named Roberto ran to find him. "Roberto and I arrived, breathless, at the place where he had left Daniel," Lorena said, "but at first we could see nothing." When Roberto tried to shield her from looking in on particular direction, Lorena broke away to see. "Daniel was not there," she said. "His body had vanished, with his pack, his boots, his book, and the note for me. There on the ground lay only his brain, bloody and intact." Lorena concluded: "The soldiers had found Daniel first."
(Aside: Can anyone imagine Americans organizing under such onerous conditions? We throw a hissy fit if someone brings 11 items to the supermarket express lane.)
As another resistance fighter in Bridge of Courage explained: "Don't talk to me about Gandhi; he wouldn't have survived a week here."
Similar stories can be culled from countries throughout the region, but apparently have had little effect on the foreign policy of the U.S. or Israel. For example, when Israel faced an international arms embargo after the 1967 war, a plan to divert Belgian and Swiss arms to the Holy Land was implemented. These weapons were supposedly destined for Bolivia where they would be transported by a company managed by Klaus Barbie. As in "The Butcher of Lyon."
Any moral reservations of such an arrangement are dismissed with a vague "national security" excuse that should sound familiar to any American. "The welfare of our people and the state supersedes all other considerations," pronounced Michael Schur, director of Ta'as, the Israeli state military industry in the August 23, 1983 Ha'aretz. "If the state has decided in favor of export, my conscience is clear."
One Jewish figure that might be expected to find fault with such policy is Elie Wiesel. An episode from mid-1985, documented by Yoav Karni in Ha'aretz, should put to rest any exalted expectations of the revered moralist. When Wiesel received a letter from a Nobel Prize laureate documenting Israel's contributions to the atrocities in Guatemala, suggesting that he use his considerable influence to put a stop to Israel's practice of arming neo-Nazis, Wiesel "sighed" and admitted to Karni that he did not reply to that particular letter. "I usually answer at once," he explained, "but what can I answer to him?"
One is left to only wonder how Wiesel's silent sigh might have been received if it was in response to a letter not about Jewish complicity in the murder of Guatemalans but instead about the function of Auschwitz during the ‘40s.
In 1951, Guatemalan president Juan Jose Arévalo (whose term gave that country a ten-year respite from military rule during which he provoked U.S. ire by modeling his government "in many ways after the Roosevelt New Deal") stepped down to be replaced by his ill-fated successor and kindred spirit, the aforementioned Arbenz. This to what Arévalo had to say about the aftermath of a war known as "good": "The arms of the Third Reich were broken and conquered . . . but in the ideological dialogue . . . the real winner was Hitler."
Never forget: This is what we're up against.
Mickey Z. is the author of several books, most recently 50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to Know (Disinformation Books). He can be found on the Web at: www.mickeyz.net.
Guatemala (a nation perched on the border of Chiapas, Mexico) is an easy place to overlook. Therefore, if we were to trust the corporate media, our knowledge would be limited to ill-informed, racist diatribes like this from Clifford Krauss of The New York Times (April 9, 1995): "Guatemala required neither Karl Marx nor the Central Intelligence Agency to be consumed by class and ethnic war, and ... The Guatemalan army, currently in the news because some of its officers received secret CIA payments, is essentially finishing the job that the conquistadors started. The cross and the sword may have been replaced by modern counterinsurgency tactics, but the essential driving forces of Guatemalan history remain the same ... the fact remains that Guatemalans do not need prompting to kill one another."
Krauss went on to tell of chickens "sacrificed . . . to . . . pre-Columbian gods" and "bizarre" religious cults (Krauss' tactics are indeed for those seeking to absolve the U.S. from any culpability in the wanton destruction of a people). While admitting CIA complicity in the 1954 coup that saw the end of Jacobo Arbenz, Krauss is quick to remind us "modern Guatemalan political history began not with the coup of 1954."
He has a point. It was at a February 1945 conference that State Department Political Advisor Laurence Duggan called for "An Economic Charter of the Americas," complaining that "Latin Americans are convinced that the first beneficiaries of the development of a country's resources should be the people of that country." From this unacceptable premise, the seeds of the 1954 coup were sown, and the U.S.-sponsored results include possibly irreversible environmental devastation and upwards of 200,000 civilians killed or "disappeared."
In a landslide victory, Jacobo Arbenz was freely and fairly elected president of Guatemala in 1951. Wishing to transform his country, Arbenz' modest reforms and his legalizing of the Communist Party were frowned upon in American business circles. The Arbenz government became the target of a U.S. public relations campaign. Two years after Arbenz became president, Life magazine featured a piece on his "Red" land reforms, claiming that a nation just "two hours bombing time from the Panama Canal" was "openly and diligently toiling to create a Communist state." It matters little that the USSR didn't even maintain diplomatic relations with Guatemala; the Cold War was in full effect. Ever on the lookout for that invaluable pretext, the U.S. business class scored a public relations coup when Arbenz expropriated some unused land controlled by United Fruit Company. His payment offer was predictably deemed inappropriate. "If they gave a gold piece for every banana," Secretary of State John Foster Dulles clarified, "the problem would still be Communist infiltration."
The CIA put Operation Success into action. "A legally elected government was overthrown by an invasion force of mercenaries trained by the CIA at military bases in Honduras and Nicaragua and supported by four American fighter planes flown by American pilots," explains Howard Zinn. Operation Success ushered in 40 years of repression, more than 200,000 deaths, and what William Blum calls "indisputably one of the most inhumane chapters of the 20th century." These chapters could never have been written without permission from the United States and its proxies, e.g. Israel.
"The Israelis may be seen as American proxies in Honduras and Guatemala," stated Israeli journalist, Yoav Karni in Yediot Ahronot. Also, Ha'aretz correspondent Gidon Samet has explained that the most important features of the US-Israeli strategic cooperation in the 1980s were not in the Middle East, but with Central America. "The U.S. needs Israel in Africa and Latin America, among other reasons, because of the government's difficulties in obtaining congressional authorization for its ambitious aid programs and naturally, for military actions," Gamet wrote on November 6, 1983, adding that America has "long been interested in using Israel as a pipeline for military and other aid" to Central America. Earlier that same year, Yosef Priel reported in Davar that Latin America "has become the leading market for Israeli arms exports."
Who are these governments so willingly snapping up weapons manufactured in the Holy Land? One illustrative example is, yes, Guatemala. In 1981, shortly after Israel agreed to provide military aid to this oppressive regime, a Guatemalan officer had a feature article published in the army's Staff College review. In that article, the officer praised Adolf Hitler, National Socialism, and the Final Solution-quoting extensively from Mein Kampf and chalking up Hitler's anti-Semitism to the "discovery" that communism was part of a "Jewish conspiracy." Despite such seemingly incompatible ideology, Israel's estimated military assistance to Guatemala in 1982 was $90 million.
What type of policies did the Guatemalan government pursue with the help they received from a nation populated with thousands of Holocaust survivors? This question brings us back to Harbury's book, a book filled with the "inhumane chapters" Blum mentions. One member of the Guatemalan resistance Harbury interviewed was Lorena and her story provides a good example of what happens in a U.S. client state (with Israeli help).
Lorena's lover, a compañero named Daniel, was out with a small unit to engage Guatemalan soldiers when he was hit by enemy fire. Lorena tells what happened next: "The other compañeros ran to where Daniel had fallen and found him dying there, quiet but very clear-minded. He refused to let them try and bandage him up, telling them to first go and find the others who had a chance of surviving. The he gave away the things in his pack, the food, the blanket, his small book. He writing a note, shaken but determined, when they left him. The note was for me, but I never received it."
When Lorena learned of Daniel's injuries, she and a comrade named Roberto ran to find him. "Roberto and I arrived, breathless, at the place where he had left Daniel," Lorena said, "but at first we could see nothing." When Roberto tried to shield her from looking in on particular direction, Lorena broke away to see. "Daniel was not there," she said. "His body had vanished, with his pack, his boots, his book, and the note for me. There on the ground lay only his brain, bloody and intact." Lorena concluded: "The soldiers had found Daniel first."
(Aside: Can anyone imagine Americans organizing under such onerous conditions? We throw a hissy fit if someone brings 11 items to the supermarket express lane.)
As another resistance fighter in Bridge of Courage explained: "Don't talk to me about Gandhi; he wouldn't have survived a week here."
Similar stories can be culled from countries throughout the region, but apparently have had little effect on the foreign policy of the U.S. or Israel. For example, when Israel faced an international arms embargo after the 1967 war, a plan to divert Belgian and Swiss arms to the Holy Land was implemented. These weapons were supposedly destined for Bolivia where they would be transported by a company managed by Klaus Barbie. As in "The Butcher of Lyon."
Any moral reservations of such an arrangement are dismissed with a vague "national security" excuse that should sound familiar to any American. "The welfare of our people and the state supersedes all other considerations," pronounced Michael Schur, director of Ta'as, the Israeli state military industry in the August 23, 1983 Ha'aretz. "If the state has decided in favor of export, my conscience is clear."
One Jewish figure that might be expected to find fault with such policy is Elie Wiesel. An episode from mid-1985, documented by Yoav Karni in Ha'aretz, should put to rest any exalted expectations of the revered moralist. When Wiesel received a letter from a Nobel Prize laureate documenting Israel's contributions to the atrocities in Guatemala, suggesting that he use his considerable influence to put a stop to Israel's practice of arming neo-Nazis, Wiesel "sighed" and admitted to Karni that he did not reply to that particular letter. "I usually answer at once," he explained, "but what can I answer to him?"
One is left to only wonder how Wiesel's silent sigh might have been received if it was in response to a letter not about Jewish complicity in the murder of Guatemalans but instead about the function of Auschwitz during the ‘40s.
In 1951, Guatemalan president Juan Jose Arévalo (whose term gave that country a ten-year respite from military rule during which he provoked U.S. ire by modeling his government "in many ways after the Roosevelt New Deal") stepped down to be replaced by his ill-fated successor and kindred spirit, the aforementioned Arbenz. This to what Arévalo had to say about the aftermath of a war known as "good": "The arms of the Third Reich were broken and conquered . . . but in the ideological dialogue . . . the real winner was Hitler."
Never forget: This is what we're up against.
Mickey Z. is the author of several books, most recently 50 American Revolutions You're Not Supposed to Know (Disinformation Books). He can be found on the Web at: www.mickeyz.net.
From the S&L Crisis to the Iraq Study Group - Omitting the Obvious with James Baker By ROBERT BRYCE
After months of hype and speculation, James A. Baker III and the Iraq Study Group are on the verge of releasing their recommendations. And yet after all of that hype, the group won't provide a single deadline for getting American troops out of Iraq nor will the group address the seminal question when it comes to America's future in Iraq, which, obviously is: should we stay, or leave?
That Baker and the rest of his group fail to provide guidance on this essential point shouldn't be surprising. Baker has made a career out of omitting the obvious whenever it suits his political purposes. That's made abundantly clear in his new book, Work Hard, Study and Keep Out of Politics.
In that tome, a 460-page auto-hagiography that recounts his career working for presidents from Ford to Reagan to the First George Bush to the Second George Bush, Baker neglects to mention a single word about his role in one of the defining events of the Reagan/Bush era: the savings and loan debacle.
Baker perhaps more than any other single American bears primary responsibility for the loss of more than $100 billion in taxpayer money during the savings and loan meltdown of the 1980s. Baker served as Reagan's treasury secretary from early 1985 to August 1988, a time period when fraudsters and con artists were looting banks and thrifts all over the country, but particularly in Texas. Throughout his stint at the treasury, and particularly in 1988, Baker worked hard to downplay the magnitude of the growing S&L disaster for obvious reasons: admitting the scope of the mess would make Texas look bad, it would make Reagan look bad, and in doing so, it would hurt Baker's crony, the First George Bush, who was running for president in November 1988.
The smoking gun for the cover up is most evident when looking at Baker's testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee on April 19, 1988. During that appearance, Baker said that the $10.8 billion that had recently been appropriated to the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation to clean up the S&L disaster was all that was needed. That amount of money, Baker told the panel, "will provide FSLIC with enough resources to handle the problems of the industry over the next three years." Baker went on to say that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures banks, had plenty of funds. "There are some commercial banks that are having problems, but the FDIC's fund, currently with about $18.6 billion in it, should be able to handle these problems," he declared.
Even Baker's own deputy, George D. Gould, the treasury department's undersecretary for finance and the Reagan Administration's top policy maker for banking and finance, was saying more money was needed. In May 1988, the month after Baker appeared before the House subcommittee, Gould told the Associated Press that $20 billion was "probably not enough."
Not only did Baker hide the extent of the cost, he agreed to get rid of Edwin Gray, the aggressive head of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the agency that regulated S&Ls. In 1986, Gray, a political appointee, had launched an aggressive investigation of Texas S&Ls including Vernon Savings, which was being looted by a group of bandits led by Don Dixon. In 1987, rather than appoint Gray to another four year term, the Reagan White House decided to replace him with M. Danny Wall, a bureaucrat whose only real job qualification was the fact that he'd been the Republican staff director of the Senate Banking Committee when it drafted the S&L deregulation law (Garn-St. Germain) that had opened the vaults to the fraudsters and looters in the first place.
In June 1985, just a few months after he moved to treasury after working for four years as the White House chief of staff under Reagan, Baker received a confidential letter from the chairman of the FDIC, William Isaac, who warned him that the "problems of the thrift industry are of such proportions that they will soon overwhelm" the FSLIC. Baker ignored Isaac.
In my book, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate, I wrote about the S&L mess and Baker's role in it. I quoted William Black, an attorney who helped clean up the S&L mess while working for the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation and later, as the deputy director of the Office of Thrift Supervision. Black told me that the Reaganites were "willing to do the most outrageous, unprincipled and dangerous things to maintain the cover up" of the S&L disaster. And said Black, Baker was one of "the centerpieces of this strategy."
To be fair, Congress shares the blame for the S&L meltdown. Jim Wright, the Democratic Speaker of the House worked hard to prevent federal regulators from cracking down on S&Ls in Texas. On the other side of the Capitol building, the Keating Five, a group of senators which included 2008 presidential hopeful John McCain, ran interference on behalf of disgraced S&L boss Charles Keating, the chairman of California-based Lincoln Savings and Loan.
But none of those men were the secretary of the treasury. None of those men had their signatures on American greenbacks. None of those men had the power to appoint aggressive regulators to delve into the unfolding S&L disaster. Baker did. And yet he did nothing.
For the record, 1,169 savings and loans in the United States failed. Texas had the most failures, 237. That's more than twice as many as any other state. In 2000, the FDIC said that the S&L disaster cost taxpayers some $124 billion. But that sum does not reflect the entire bill. In order to pay for the S&L bailout, the federal government sold bonds. By the time those bonds are finally retired in 2020 or so, the total cost of the S&L mess will likely be some $300 billion.
Despite those numbers, despite the magnitude of the S&L mess, despite the fact that he was on the job during the worst of the fraud and looting, none of this information appears in Work Hard. In fact, the phrase "savings and loan" doesn't even appear in Baker's book.
Given that omission, given his record of malfeasance during the S&L disaster, is it any surprise that Baker has failed to address the central question in Iraq?
Robert Bryce lives in Austin, Texas and managing editor of Energy Tribune. He is the author of Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate. He can be reached at: robert@robertbryce.com
That Baker and the rest of his group fail to provide guidance on this essential point shouldn't be surprising. Baker has made a career out of omitting the obvious whenever it suits his political purposes. That's made abundantly clear in his new book, Work Hard, Study and Keep Out of Politics.
In that tome, a 460-page auto-hagiography that recounts his career working for presidents from Ford to Reagan to the First George Bush to the Second George Bush, Baker neglects to mention a single word about his role in one of the defining events of the Reagan/Bush era: the savings and loan debacle.
Baker perhaps more than any other single American bears primary responsibility for the loss of more than $100 billion in taxpayer money during the savings and loan meltdown of the 1980s. Baker served as Reagan's treasury secretary from early 1985 to August 1988, a time period when fraudsters and con artists were looting banks and thrifts all over the country, but particularly in Texas. Throughout his stint at the treasury, and particularly in 1988, Baker worked hard to downplay the magnitude of the growing S&L disaster for obvious reasons: admitting the scope of the mess would make Texas look bad, it would make Reagan look bad, and in doing so, it would hurt Baker's crony, the First George Bush, who was running for president in November 1988.
The smoking gun for the cover up is most evident when looking at Baker's testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee on April 19, 1988. During that appearance, Baker said that the $10.8 billion that had recently been appropriated to the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation to clean up the S&L disaster was all that was needed. That amount of money, Baker told the panel, "will provide FSLIC with enough resources to handle the problems of the industry over the next three years." Baker went on to say that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which insures banks, had plenty of funds. "There are some commercial banks that are having problems, but the FDIC's fund, currently with about $18.6 billion in it, should be able to handle these problems," he declared.
Even Baker's own deputy, George D. Gould, the treasury department's undersecretary for finance and the Reagan Administration's top policy maker for banking and finance, was saying more money was needed. In May 1988, the month after Baker appeared before the House subcommittee, Gould told the Associated Press that $20 billion was "probably not enough."
Not only did Baker hide the extent of the cost, he agreed to get rid of Edwin Gray, the aggressive head of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the agency that regulated S&Ls. In 1986, Gray, a political appointee, had launched an aggressive investigation of Texas S&Ls including Vernon Savings, which was being looted by a group of bandits led by Don Dixon. In 1987, rather than appoint Gray to another four year term, the Reagan White House decided to replace him with M. Danny Wall, a bureaucrat whose only real job qualification was the fact that he'd been the Republican staff director of the Senate Banking Committee when it drafted the S&L deregulation law (Garn-St. Germain) that had opened the vaults to the fraudsters and looters in the first place.
In June 1985, just a few months after he moved to treasury after working for four years as the White House chief of staff under Reagan, Baker received a confidential letter from the chairman of the FDIC, William Isaac, who warned him that the "problems of the thrift industry are of such proportions that they will soon overwhelm" the FSLIC. Baker ignored Isaac.
In my book, Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate, I wrote about the S&L mess and Baker's role in it. I quoted William Black, an attorney who helped clean up the S&L mess while working for the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation and later, as the deputy director of the Office of Thrift Supervision. Black told me that the Reaganites were "willing to do the most outrageous, unprincipled and dangerous things to maintain the cover up" of the S&L disaster. And said Black, Baker was one of "the centerpieces of this strategy."
To be fair, Congress shares the blame for the S&L meltdown. Jim Wright, the Democratic Speaker of the House worked hard to prevent federal regulators from cracking down on S&Ls in Texas. On the other side of the Capitol building, the Keating Five, a group of senators which included 2008 presidential hopeful John McCain, ran interference on behalf of disgraced S&L boss Charles Keating, the chairman of California-based Lincoln Savings and Loan.
But none of those men were the secretary of the treasury. None of those men had their signatures on American greenbacks. None of those men had the power to appoint aggressive regulators to delve into the unfolding S&L disaster. Baker did. And yet he did nothing.
For the record, 1,169 savings and loans in the United States failed. Texas had the most failures, 237. That's more than twice as many as any other state. In 2000, the FDIC said that the S&L disaster cost taxpayers some $124 billion. But that sum does not reflect the entire bill. In order to pay for the S&L bailout, the federal government sold bonds. By the time those bonds are finally retired in 2020 or so, the total cost of the S&L mess will likely be some $300 billion.
Despite those numbers, despite the magnitude of the S&L mess, despite the fact that he was on the job during the worst of the fraud and looting, none of this information appears in Work Hard. In fact, the phrase "savings and loan" doesn't even appear in Baker's book.
Given that omission, given his record of malfeasance during the S&L disaster, is it any surprise that Baker has failed to address the central question in Iraq?
Robert Bryce lives in Austin, Texas and managing editor of Energy Tribune. He is the author of Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate. He can be reached at: robert@robertbryce.com
México: Oaxaca - Guerra sucia contra la APPO por Erika Ramírez, David Cilia
Tortura física y psicológica, amenazas de muerte, encierro e incomunicación, son algunos de los agravios que más de una centena de personas sufrieron desde la entrada de los efectivos de la Policía Federal Preventiva (PFP) a la capital oaxaqueña.
5 de diciembre de 2006
Oaxaca, Oax. El 2 de noviembre decenas de hombres y mujeres fueron presa de elementos del Grupo de Operaciones Especiales, cuando los policías pretendían remover una barricada puesta por los integrantes de la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) en Ciudad Universitaria y el crucero de Cinco Señores.
Era la primera vez que subían a un helicóptero, pero éste no sería un viaje de placer. La aeronave los trasladaba a la Base Aérea Militar 22, de El Tequio, amontonados como bultos más de 15 personas de diferentes edades aprehendidas el Día de Muertos por agentes de la PFP.
En esa jornada, los uniformados de gris y negro se enfrentaron durante siete horas a miles de estudiantes, colonos y padres de familia. En el combate que replegó a los efectivos se lanzaron granadas de gas lacrimógeno y agua disparada a presión desde las tanquetas que el gobierno federal mandó a Oaxaca para “imponer la paz y el orden”. Los que defendían su trinchera se armaban con piedras, petardos y bombas molotov. Ahí comenzaron las historias de tortura, injusticia y represión.
Luego de que los agentes federales ejecutaran las órdenes de sus mandos superiores para iniciar la que fuera una batalla campal, comenzaron las aprehensiones. No se discriminó edad, sexo, ni afiliación política para empezar con los golpes, las ofensas e intimidaciones.
Desde ese sitio los detenidos fueron llevados a la base aérea a bordo de una camioneta blanca. En el trayecto un uniformado preguntaba a cada una de sus presas “quieres caer de día o de noche”, las risas del resto de los policías que habían abordado el vehículo estremecía a los demás prisioneros que eran trasladados atados de pies y manos con cinta canela. La sangre corría.
Abordo del helicóptero que llevaría a José Flores y a otros 15 más al Centro de Readaptación Social (Cereso) de Cuicatlán, otro oficial amenazaba: “ahora sí vas a aprender a volar”: El hombre de 48 años que ocupaba un lugar en el helicóptero sólo temblaba.
El inicio
Comerciante, oriundo de Magdalena Yodocono de Porfirio Díaz, uno de los municipios más pobres de la entidad, José Flores recuerda los momentos de temor que pasó desde su captura.
Cuando se intentaba el desalojo de la barricada “vi que venían los policías de frente, me quedé parado y esperé a unos 20 metros de mi casa. De pronto ya estaba rodeado por elementos de la PFP. Ellos me agarraron, me torcieron la mano y me agacharon para que ya no volviera a levantar la cara, prácticamente me secuestraron. Me subieron a una camioneta blanca y adentro estuve custodiado por más policías”.
En el vehículo que lo trasladaría a la Base Aérea Militar 22 había aproximadamente 20 detenidos, mientras los policías seguían con el operativo en la trinchera. “¡Te va a llevar la chingada por andar de chismoso, pinche viejo!” espetaban con furia los uniformados.
A base de golpes le exigían que revelara “cuántos más son los líderes”. Sin cesar en el amedrente decían al comerciante: “Ya estás grande para andar con tus chingaderas. Esto es apenas el comienzo. Ahorita los vamos a llevar a la sierra a tirarlos”.
De origen campesino, José recuerda que pasó aproximadamente 24 horas en la base aérea, tirado a campo abierto. Luego los elementos de la PFP le dieron un rondín para seguir con los golpes.
“Me regresaron a la base aérea, iban como seis policías. Nos tuvieron tirados en un campo. Cuando me di cuenta ya éramos como 40 personas. Nos subieron a un helicóptero para trasladarnos al penal de Cuicatlán y al subirnos nos tiraron uno sobre otro. Íbamos como 16 en cada aparato.
“Si queríamos levantar la cabeza nos pisaban. Nos amenazaban con que ya iban a tirar al primero. Se oía como si jalaran a uno. Yo venía más abajo. Tenía miedo. Pensaba: a qué hora nos toca. Había gente que se iba quejando de dolor. Unos más lastimados que otros de la nariz, boca, costillas”, relata a pocos días de haber sido liberado.
La espera
Victoria Ortiz Medrano espera diariamente desde hace más de una semana la liberación de su hijo Samuel. Como muchos otros, ella asiste diariamente a las reuniones que sostienen a las afueras de la Iglesia de Santo Domingo, donde permanece el plantón de la APPO, para conocer la situación jurídica de los detenidos.
La mujer indígena zapoteca vivió momentos de angustia cuando supo que su hijo había sido detenido. Samuel es un albañil que llegó a la capital en compañía de sus padres y hermanos en busca de trabajo. Él participó en las obras de remodelación del Centro Histórico que por mandato del gobernador Ulises Ruiz se realizaron.
Victoria no acaba de sufrir. La detención de Samuel y la presencia de los elementos de la PFP son la zozobra cotidiana.
La mujer de más de 60 años de edad, que apenas puede hablar el español cuenta cómo un menor de sus hijos fue sometido. “Samuel salió a apoyar a la APPO cuando se dio la entrada de la PFP. Él tiene 26 años. Lo detuvieron y llevaron, yo no sé que pasa con él, cómo está, si le dan de comer”, dice con angustia.
Cuando se entera de que algunos de los que ya fueron liberados tuvieron que pagar una fianza de 4 mil pesos, la mujer dice: “yo no tengo dinero para pagar eso, lo único que pido es ayuda para que lo dejen libre”.
El secuestro
Martín Vargas, de 24 años de edad, fue otro de los detenidos el Día de Muertos. Permanecer cerca de la encrucijada fue el motivo para que los elementos de la fuerza pública lo privaran de su libertad.
Su hermano Fernando relata cómo Martín fue sometido a distintos actos de intimidación y tortura. Mientras, espera que los integrantes de la Limeddh informen sobre la situación jurídica de su familiar después de ocho días de haber ocurrido los hechos.
“Él no tenía nada que ver con el movimiento de la APPO y ya es culpado por los delitos de ataque a las vías de comunicación, sedición y resistencia. Si se encontraba cerca del lugar es porque iba camino al trabajo, pero no por tener la intención de participar en la gresca”, dice.
Trasladado al reclusorio fenemil de Tlacolula, Martín Vargas, quien buscó trabajo como mesero luego de que las actividades escolares fueran suspendidas, no tuvo oportunidad de mantener contacto con sus familiares durante las primeras 16 horas de su aprehensión. Él también fue sometido a golpes, “interrogatorios absurdos” y amenazas.
“Los de la PFP no tenían porqué hacer esto con mi hermano. No tenían pruebas para apresarlo. Cuando me enteré del maltrato que había recibido me indigné mucho porque no es posible que los traten de esa manera.
“Para toda la familia estos días han sido muy angustiantes. No tenemos ninguna certeza de que lo liberen pronto, va pasando el tiempo y la humillación crece. Los policías no tienen elementos que lo incriminen”, se indigna Fernando.
Al darse cuenta de que pasan las horas y que todavía no hay noticias respecto a la liberación de Martín, su hermano se desespera y con lágrimas en los ojos dice: “esto no es justo. Le están quitando uno de los más preciosos derechos, la libertad. Él entiende que esta es una situación inusitada en el país y que llegan a ocurrir este tipo de situaciones, de injusticias pero definitivamente esto es un secuestro”.
La ficha
Fotografías de frente, perfil, en el pecho un número de serie y la impresión de las huellas dactilares son más elementos que se agregan a los sometimientos a los que han sido expuestos los de detenidos.
Carlos, de 32 años, que asegura no tener nada que ver con el movimiento recuerda que “de repente se dejó venir la PFP y nos empezó a agarrar a todo el mundo, yo iba a hacer una llamada”.
Compañero de viaje de José Flores para que ambos fueran recluidos en el Cereso de Cuicatlán, revive los momentos de humillación que vivió. “Dormimos en la base aérea. Los de la PFP no querían que levantáramos la vista para nada. Nos decían que nos iban a llevar a Almoloya o que nos iban a desaparecer”.
Golpeado brutalmente, todavía tiene rastros visibles de su tortura. Moretones en la costilla del lado izquierdo y piernas. “Nos amarraron de pies y manos y nos gritaban que si éramos mucha madre y muy buenos para aventar piedras. Rogábamos por el agua y nos decían que ni a eso teníamos derecho”.
Carlos, quien es chofer de particulares, tuvo que pagar una fianza de 4 mil pesos para obtener su libertad. Los delitos que se le imputaron fueron: sedición, asociación delictuosa, atentar contra las vías de comunicación y conspiración al gobierno del estado. Al ser cuestionado sobre la posición que tiene respecto a la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca puntualiza: “ellos están haciendo su lucha, yo lucho con la vida, hay que seguir trabajando.
Ante los hechos de represión y tortura que han registrado diversas organizaciones defensoras de los derechos humanos, la procuradora general de Justicia del estado, Lizbeth Caña Cadeza niega a Contralínea que hayan existido. Sin embargo, acepta que por el "énfasis que han puesto las organizaciones al respecto, podríamos iniciar averiguaciones para que no queden impunes".
Publicado: Diciembre 1a quincena de 2006 | Año 5 | No. 69
Erika Ramírez
Los artículos de esta autora o autor
5 de diciembre de 2006
Oaxaca, Oax. El 2 de noviembre decenas de hombres y mujeres fueron presa de elementos del Grupo de Operaciones Especiales, cuando los policías pretendían remover una barricada puesta por los integrantes de la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) en Ciudad Universitaria y el crucero de Cinco Señores.
Era la primera vez que subían a un helicóptero, pero éste no sería un viaje de placer. La aeronave los trasladaba a la Base Aérea Militar 22, de El Tequio, amontonados como bultos más de 15 personas de diferentes edades aprehendidas el Día de Muertos por agentes de la PFP.
En esa jornada, los uniformados de gris y negro se enfrentaron durante siete horas a miles de estudiantes, colonos y padres de familia. En el combate que replegó a los efectivos se lanzaron granadas de gas lacrimógeno y agua disparada a presión desde las tanquetas que el gobierno federal mandó a Oaxaca para “imponer la paz y el orden”. Los que defendían su trinchera se armaban con piedras, petardos y bombas molotov. Ahí comenzaron las historias de tortura, injusticia y represión.
Luego de que los agentes federales ejecutaran las órdenes de sus mandos superiores para iniciar la que fuera una batalla campal, comenzaron las aprehensiones. No se discriminó edad, sexo, ni afiliación política para empezar con los golpes, las ofensas e intimidaciones.
Desde ese sitio los detenidos fueron llevados a la base aérea a bordo de una camioneta blanca. En el trayecto un uniformado preguntaba a cada una de sus presas “quieres caer de día o de noche”, las risas del resto de los policías que habían abordado el vehículo estremecía a los demás prisioneros que eran trasladados atados de pies y manos con cinta canela. La sangre corría.
Abordo del helicóptero que llevaría a José Flores y a otros 15 más al Centro de Readaptación Social (Cereso) de Cuicatlán, otro oficial amenazaba: “ahora sí vas a aprender a volar”: El hombre de 48 años que ocupaba un lugar en el helicóptero sólo temblaba.
El inicio
Comerciante, oriundo de Magdalena Yodocono de Porfirio Díaz, uno de los municipios más pobres de la entidad, José Flores recuerda los momentos de temor que pasó desde su captura.
Cuando se intentaba el desalojo de la barricada “vi que venían los policías de frente, me quedé parado y esperé a unos 20 metros de mi casa. De pronto ya estaba rodeado por elementos de la PFP. Ellos me agarraron, me torcieron la mano y me agacharon para que ya no volviera a levantar la cara, prácticamente me secuestraron. Me subieron a una camioneta blanca y adentro estuve custodiado por más policías”.
En el vehículo que lo trasladaría a la Base Aérea Militar 22 había aproximadamente 20 detenidos, mientras los policías seguían con el operativo en la trinchera. “¡Te va a llevar la chingada por andar de chismoso, pinche viejo!” espetaban con furia los uniformados.
A base de golpes le exigían que revelara “cuántos más son los líderes”. Sin cesar en el amedrente decían al comerciante: “Ya estás grande para andar con tus chingaderas. Esto es apenas el comienzo. Ahorita los vamos a llevar a la sierra a tirarlos”.
De origen campesino, José recuerda que pasó aproximadamente 24 horas en la base aérea, tirado a campo abierto. Luego los elementos de la PFP le dieron un rondín para seguir con los golpes.
“Me regresaron a la base aérea, iban como seis policías. Nos tuvieron tirados en un campo. Cuando me di cuenta ya éramos como 40 personas. Nos subieron a un helicóptero para trasladarnos al penal de Cuicatlán y al subirnos nos tiraron uno sobre otro. Íbamos como 16 en cada aparato.
“Si queríamos levantar la cabeza nos pisaban. Nos amenazaban con que ya iban a tirar al primero. Se oía como si jalaran a uno. Yo venía más abajo. Tenía miedo. Pensaba: a qué hora nos toca. Había gente que se iba quejando de dolor. Unos más lastimados que otros de la nariz, boca, costillas”, relata a pocos días de haber sido liberado.
La espera
Victoria Ortiz Medrano espera diariamente desde hace más de una semana la liberación de su hijo Samuel. Como muchos otros, ella asiste diariamente a las reuniones que sostienen a las afueras de la Iglesia de Santo Domingo, donde permanece el plantón de la APPO, para conocer la situación jurídica de los detenidos.
La mujer indígena zapoteca vivió momentos de angustia cuando supo que su hijo había sido detenido. Samuel es un albañil que llegó a la capital en compañía de sus padres y hermanos en busca de trabajo. Él participó en las obras de remodelación del Centro Histórico que por mandato del gobernador Ulises Ruiz se realizaron.
Victoria no acaba de sufrir. La detención de Samuel y la presencia de los elementos de la PFP son la zozobra cotidiana.
La mujer de más de 60 años de edad, que apenas puede hablar el español cuenta cómo un menor de sus hijos fue sometido. “Samuel salió a apoyar a la APPO cuando se dio la entrada de la PFP. Él tiene 26 años. Lo detuvieron y llevaron, yo no sé que pasa con él, cómo está, si le dan de comer”, dice con angustia.
Cuando se entera de que algunos de los que ya fueron liberados tuvieron que pagar una fianza de 4 mil pesos, la mujer dice: “yo no tengo dinero para pagar eso, lo único que pido es ayuda para que lo dejen libre”.
El secuestro
Martín Vargas, de 24 años de edad, fue otro de los detenidos el Día de Muertos. Permanecer cerca de la encrucijada fue el motivo para que los elementos de la fuerza pública lo privaran de su libertad.
Su hermano Fernando relata cómo Martín fue sometido a distintos actos de intimidación y tortura. Mientras, espera que los integrantes de la Limeddh informen sobre la situación jurídica de su familiar después de ocho días de haber ocurrido los hechos.
“Él no tenía nada que ver con el movimiento de la APPO y ya es culpado por los delitos de ataque a las vías de comunicación, sedición y resistencia. Si se encontraba cerca del lugar es porque iba camino al trabajo, pero no por tener la intención de participar en la gresca”, dice.
Trasladado al reclusorio fenemil de Tlacolula, Martín Vargas, quien buscó trabajo como mesero luego de que las actividades escolares fueran suspendidas, no tuvo oportunidad de mantener contacto con sus familiares durante las primeras 16 horas de su aprehensión. Él también fue sometido a golpes, “interrogatorios absurdos” y amenazas.
“Los de la PFP no tenían porqué hacer esto con mi hermano. No tenían pruebas para apresarlo. Cuando me enteré del maltrato que había recibido me indigné mucho porque no es posible que los traten de esa manera.
“Para toda la familia estos días han sido muy angustiantes. No tenemos ninguna certeza de que lo liberen pronto, va pasando el tiempo y la humillación crece. Los policías no tienen elementos que lo incriminen”, se indigna Fernando.
Al darse cuenta de que pasan las horas y que todavía no hay noticias respecto a la liberación de Martín, su hermano se desespera y con lágrimas en los ojos dice: “esto no es justo. Le están quitando uno de los más preciosos derechos, la libertad. Él entiende que esta es una situación inusitada en el país y que llegan a ocurrir este tipo de situaciones, de injusticias pero definitivamente esto es un secuestro”.
La ficha
Fotografías de frente, perfil, en el pecho un número de serie y la impresión de las huellas dactilares son más elementos que se agregan a los sometimientos a los que han sido expuestos los de detenidos.
Carlos, de 32 años, que asegura no tener nada que ver con el movimiento recuerda que “de repente se dejó venir la PFP y nos empezó a agarrar a todo el mundo, yo iba a hacer una llamada”.
Compañero de viaje de José Flores para que ambos fueran recluidos en el Cereso de Cuicatlán, revive los momentos de humillación que vivió. “Dormimos en la base aérea. Los de la PFP no querían que levantáramos la vista para nada. Nos decían que nos iban a llevar a Almoloya o que nos iban a desaparecer”.
Golpeado brutalmente, todavía tiene rastros visibles de su tortura. Moretones en la costilla del lado izquierdo y piernas. “Nos amarraron de pies y manos y nos gritaban que si éramos mucha madre y muy buenos para aventar piedras. Rogábamos por el agua y nos decían que ni a eso teníamos derecho”.
Carlos, quien es chofer de particulares, tuvo que pagar una fianza de 4 mil pesos para obtener su libertad. Los delitos que se le imputaron fueron: sedición, asociación delictuosa, atentar contra las vías de comunicación y conspiración al gobierno del estado. Al ser cuestionado sobre la posición que tiene respecto a la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca puntualiza: “ellos están haciendo su lucha, yo lucho con la vida, hay que seguir trabajando.
Ante los hechos de represión y tortura que han registrado diversas organizaciones defensoras de los derechos humanos, la procuradora general de Justicia del estado, Lizbeth Caña Cadeza niega a Contralínea que hayan existido. Sin embargo, acepta que por el "énfasis que han puesto las organizaciones al respecto, podríamos iniciar averiguaciones para que no queden impunes".
Publicado: Diciembre 1a quincena de 2006 | Año 5 | No. 69
Erika Ramírez
Los artículos de esta autora o autor
Empieza la pesadilla de Calderón por Ana Lilia Pérez
Legisladores de distintos grupos parlamentarios prevén que durante su primer año de administración Felipe Calderón no podrá satisfacer las demandas sociales que se requieren para legitimar su gobierno, pues no existen, dicen, ni las condiciones económicas ni sociales para ello y que, frente al caos que Vicente Fox entrega, el michoacano difícilmente logrará la estabilidad y no podrá evitar un estallido social que pudiera llevarlo incluso a su derrocamiento.
4 de diciembre de 2006
____________________________________________
En diciembre de 2000, Vicente Fox Quesada, el primer presidente surgido de las filas del Partido de Acción Nacional, recibió un país cargado de problemas en todos los sectores, producto de 70 años de hegemonía del Partido Revolucionario Institucional, pero llegó legitimado por el bono democrático y con la esperanza de la sociedad en un cambio que nunca apareció.
Uno a uno fracasaron los ofrecimientos del guanajuatense: desde la promesa de combatir la corrupción, la inseguridad y el narcotráfico, hasta resolver en 15 minutos el conflicto en Chiapas, cambiar las formas de gobierno, distribuir equitativamente la riqueza, crear 10 millones de empleos y atrapar a los peces gordos en el mar de la corrupción gubernamental.
En contraste, a lo largo del sexenio crecieron los índices de marginación y pobreza. Un informe del Banco Mundial (BM) sobre el sexenio indica que Vicente Fox deja 85 por ciento de mexicanos pobres en zonas rurales y 42 por ciento de pobres en zonas urbanas. El BM dice que fracasaron los 12 programas sociales de Fox, creció el desempleo y se generó únicamente empleo informal.
En el rubro combate a la corrupción, la Secretaría de la Función Pública no atrapó un solo pez gordo, pero sí sepultó hasta los expedientes de corrupción del propio Vicente Fox y familia. Se desbordó el narcotráfico y la inseguridad. El crimen organizado se movió a sus anchas y cobró facturas, y en el último año de la administración foxista sumaron 2 mil las ejecuciones de delincuentes, policías y sociedad civil en todo el país.
Al concluir su mandato, el gobierno de Vicente Fox queda manchado por la represiva respuesta que dio a los conflictos laborales y sociales, como el caso Atenco, la represiva respuesta en Sicartsa, la resistencia social en Oaxaca, cuya figura se reproduce ya en otros estados, y la reciente reaparición pública de los grupos más duros de la guerrilla.
En la magra herencia que le deja a su predecesor, Felipe Calderón pagará el costo de su propia ilegitimidad en momentos en que la estabilidad en el país pende de un hilo. La ingobernabilidad en México será para el michoacano el principal reto a vencer a partir de este 1 de diciembre, según evaluación de integrantes de la LX Legislatura.
Con este negro panorama, legisladores de oposición prevén pocos logros en el sexenio del ex secretario de Energía, cuyo principal reto, dicen, será alcanzar la gobernabilidad antes de que el caos impere en todos los sectores sociales.
En entrevista con Contralínea los coordinadores de los grupos parlamentarios en la Cámara de Diputados hablan de la herencia negra de Vicente Fox a Felipe Calderón y de los retos que enfrentará el michoacano para sortear su propia falta de legitimidad.
El país dividido: PRI
“Vicente Fox hereda a Felipe Calderón un país profundamente dividido, francamente destrozado, y con una de las crisis políticas más severas de la historia contemporánea de México. La división y la polarización que dejaron las elecciones del 2 de julio no fue superada, los conflictos sociales y las olas de violencia, provocadas por el narcotráfico en los estados de la República, nunca fueron resueltas, y la pobreza que sigue lacerando al país -no obstante las cifras que divulga el gobierno y los programas Oportunidades y Seguro Popular- salta a la vista”, dice el diputado Enrique Benítez Ojeda, vocero del Partido Revolucionario Institucional de la LX legislatura.
El priísta dice que derivado de la severa crisis política y social que vive México, Calderón Hinojosa tendrá que recomponer el tejido social e iniciar una profunda reforma del Estado a partir de su poder de negociación con todas las fuerzas sociales y partidos políticos representados en el Congreso: “para que seamos corresponsales el Legislativo y el Ejecutivo, y que no sea solamente el Ejecutivo el que haga, proponga y disponga”.
A Felipe Calderón le tocará pagar los tropiezos de su predecesor con el Legislativo, cuyas desavenencias, recuerda el congresista, se vivieron hasta las últimas semanas del sexenio, cuando el Congreso le negó una última gira Australia y Vietnam.
“Vicente Fox nunca cumplió aquello de que el presidente propone y el Congreso dispone, tan no lo cumplió que a unos días de concluir su mandato hizo el berrinche de su vida y se enojó porque no se le permitió salir al extranjero a un asunto familiar con su hija, entonces Fox termina en estas circunstancias. Por supuesto quedará para la historia como el presidente de la transición, pero no como el presidente del cambio”.
En las dos cámaras, los legisladores de todos los partidos han planteado agendas que tienen que ver con lograr acuerdos y avances en materia de desarrollo, infraestructura, programas sociales, campo, salud y de forma general toda la reestructuración del sistema político mexicano. De manera general los integrantes de la LX Legislatura se asumen como el poder que podría marcar la diferencia entre un sexenio socialmente estable, pero por mucha disposición de los partidos representados en el Congreso, dice Benítez Ojeda, los avances dependerán de si Calderón Hinojosa logra mantener la estabilidad en el país.
“Si no hay gobernabilidad, acuerdo y diálogo, toda la agenda que tenemos los partidos será infructuosa porque no estaremos ni siquiera dispuestos a sentarnos a platicar sobre los problemas del país. Previo a la toma de protesta el Calderón, la reaparición de guerrillas, bombas y el narcotráfico a todo lo que das. El asunto es la gobernabilidad, y la gente de Felipe Calderón debe buscar condiciones para la gobernabilidad, el acuerdo y el diálogo, porque si no hay esto toda la agenda de cualquier partido será infructuosa, porque no estaremos siquiera dispuestos a sentarnos a platicar sobre los problemas del país”.
Y aun con la acertada dirección que pudiera tener el actual jefe del Ejecutivo, de los primeros meses de su gestión los legisladores estiman que no habrá avance alguno, pues no existen las condiciones presupuestales que cubran los cambios planteados como promesa de su gobierno, dice el vocero del tricolor, por lo que augura un resurgimiento de los brotes de descontento a su gestión “y a Calderón le costará mucho más legitimar su gobierno”.
Indica que será hasta mediados del 2007, una vez aprobado el paquete económico y el proyecto de presupuesto de egresos, “cuando Felipe Calderón pueda hablar de su agenda a largo plazo”.
Aun con sus promesas de erigirse como un verdadero “presidente del empleo”, lo que ofrecerá Calderón Hinojosa en el primer año de su gobierno, dice el vocero del PRI, “no será nada nuevo, porque no hay condiciones para llevar nada nuevo, tendrá que ser en términos ordinarios y normales como cada año”.
La ilegitimidad presidencial:
Convergencia
El coordinador de los legisladores del partido Convergencia, Alejandro Chanona Burguete, define como una “herencia pobre” la de Vicente Fox a Felipe Calderón, en medio de “una gran crisis política y de legitimidad de la institución presidencial”.
Chanona Burguete dice que la sombra que sobre Felipe Calderón dejará la crisis postelectoral del 2 de julio sigue opacando su imagen, razón por la que aún con su ascensión al poder este 1 de diciembre, a ojos de un alto porcentaje de mexicanos sea visto como presidente espurio.
“Los últimos días de Fox en el poder: la situación en Oaxaca, los bombazos en la ciudad de México y evidentemente el conjunto de relaciones que hizo para muy tempranamente retirarse de la presidencia y dar por terminada su gestión desde que sacó la famosa frase de ’bajo la cortina’, hablan de un presidente que nunca pudo lograr las maniobras políticas para evitar una sociedad donde las cosas se iban polarizando.
“En su trayectoria deja en el camino grandes saldos, es decir, no resolvió el conflicto en Chiapas, pasando por el conflicto en Atenco y la no instrucción de un nuevo aeropuerto en la ciudad de México, hasta los conflictos internacionales que provocó su desatinada política exterior. La herencia es muy pobre. Los conflictos con Cuba, con otros países de América Latina, el fracaso del cabildeo en Estados Unidos”.
En la entrevista, Burguete Chanona hace un minucioso análisis de cada uno de los programas del sexenio y no haya más que fracasos, cuyo reclamo social, dice, buscará eco para hacer pagar a Calderón las torpezas del guanajuatense.
“No es suficiente con tener estabilidad macroeconómica, no es suficiente con que se hayan mantenido los índices de inflación bajos, las tazas de interés bajas, yo creo que también le falló a los mexicanos en el sentido de no haber podido combatir pronta y frontalmente la pobreza, no es suficiente un Seguro Popular. Simplemente si valoramos los índices de seguridad humana, son insatisfactorios en educación, salud, entre otros, y los índices de pobreza humana también hablan mal de él. Finalmente quedaron cerca de 20 millones de mexicanos viviendo en pobreza extrema y cerca de 60 millones considerados en condiciones de pobreza.”
El coordinador del grupo parlamentario que en la pasada legislatura encabezó una de las dos comisiones que se crearon en el seno del Congreso para investigar la corrupción de la familia presidencial, con Jesús González Schamll a la cabeza de los legisladores, destaca que Calderón Hinojosa hereda de Fox la falta de credibilidad de los mexicanos en la figura presidencial, sumada a su propia falta de legitimidad, por lo que “tendrá que hacer un doble esfuerzo para realmente demostrar que hay vocación para renovar las instituciones del país, hacer una revisión integral de la Constitución y, desde luego, llevar a cabo un conjunto de reformas que no pudo hacer el régimen anterior.”
Destaca también la “operación limpieza” que deberá hacer Calderón en los sistemas de seguridad y justicia a fin de combatir la corrupción que impera en el Poder Judicial, en el que “las redes que corrompen el Ministerio Público y las redes entorno al Poder Judicial han impedido que se imparta justicia para los más pobres. Son las cárceles receptáculo de gente por delitos de menos de 8 mil pesos, es importante avanzar en materia de juicio oral, reparación del daño y en romper con el monopolio de impartición de justicia del Ministerio Publico.”
De no lograr acuerdos a corto plazo, coincide Alejandro Chanona, se detonará el riesgo de ingobernabilidad que en estos momentos está latente. “Ese es ahora su talón de Aquiles”.
Gobernará la IP: PRD
Irónico, Javier González Garza, coordinador de los diputados del PRD, dice que la herencia de Fox a Calderón tiene que ver con la falta de comprensión de los mexicanos a sus promesas de campaña.
“Nos dijo que iba a crear empleos, pero no le entendimos que los empleos iban a ser de emigrante a Estados Unidos, y así en cada uno de los rubros”.
El coordinador de los legisladores que durante meses amenazaron la toma de protesta de Calderón Hinojosa en San Lázaro, habla de los fracasos del foxismo que causó, dice, que el PAN perdiera la oportunidad de validarse como un partido “del cambio”:
“Lo que Fox vino dejando en cada uno de los rubros fueron fracasos; si tu tomas política exterior, política interior, desarrollo, educación, lo que quieras, el tema que quieras, lo va a dejar peor que como lo recibió hace seis años. Los índices educativos son ejemplo claro, decreció la calidad en los programas educativos y el gasto en ciencia y tecnología que se había comprometido a llevarlo al uno por ciento del Producto Interno Bruto, lo recibió con el .36 por ciento del PIB y lo va a dejar este año con menos del .03, así que le estuvo bajando año con año y así fue en todos los sectores. “
¿Los avances?
“Lo único que ha avanzado en este país tiene que ver con los asuntos de inseguridad, y del narcotráfico y el crimen organizado. Es una batalla que parece absolutamente perdida, este año crímenes por narcotráfico en este país son más grandes que los muertos de Irak. Y las cantidades de dinero que se mueven en el crimen organizado es brutal”.
¿Fue falta de capacidad?
“El asunto para mí es la alianza de Fox con los sectores económicos del poder económico que lo llevan al poder, y luego se cumple una serie de compromisos y que lo obligó a hacer todos los otros compromisos, allí está el asunto del ’Pemexgate’, acaba siendo aliado de los líderes petroleros, allí está el problema de la educación: cuando se alió con Elba Esther, y absolutamente con la corrupción, y se fue aliando sistemáticamente con la corrupción del país, pero además, muy en concreto, al servicio de los grandes capitales. Esperamos un saqueo mayor con Calderón. Fox se subió a ese carro del saqueo, junto con su familia y todos sus amigos, y se volvieron ricos. El problema es que se beneficio sólo a los empresarios.”
El coordinador de los legisladores perredistas estima que Calderón no logrará avances sociales por la presión que sobre su gobierno hará el sector empresarial, a quien éste deberá pagar su propia factura, recaudos que reclamarán los integrantes del Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, quienes no sólo invirtieron en su campaña previo al 2 de julio, sino en toda la campaña postelectoral en radio y televisión mientras el Tribunal Federal Electoral fallaba a su favor.
En el sexenio que comienza, estima el legislador, será la iniciativa privada la que tome las decisiones en Los Pinos, buscará que se validen en el Congreso con la ventaja que tienen, por medio del PAN en ambas cámaras, representantes directos del sector empresarial.
“Calderón tendrá a los empresarios encima”, es decir, influirán en cada una de las decisiones del Ejecutivo.
La aseveración de Garza tiene fundamentos suficientes, la injerencia que el Consejo Coordinador Empresarial tendrá en este sexenio será no sólo de empresarios que hagan negociaciones de forma externa, sino en el seno del Congreso mismo, donde en la LX Legislatura, más de 13 por ciento de los legisladores son empresarios y tienen o tuvieron vínculos con el CCE, desde el coordinador de los empresarios, Héctor Larios Córdova, que se desempeñó como director del Centro Empresarial del Norte de Sonora de la Confederación Patronal de la República Mexicana (Coparmex) y hasta otros 55 legisladores de Acción Nacional que en un momento presidieron o integraron las diferentes delegaciones del CCE, de la Coparmex, de la Confederación de Cámaras Nacionales de Comercio (Concanaco), y de la Cámara Nacional de la Industria de la Transformación (Canancintra).
Los cobros a las primeras facturas a cuenta de la IP que invirtió para la campaña y el reconocimiento de Calderón por el Tribunal Federal Electoral, y que ahora nuevamente invierte en legitimar en campañas de radio y televisión a Felipe Calderón como presidente, dice, se comienzan ya a cobrar en San Lázaro:
“En el momento en que anuncia la alza a la gasolina y la leche, se autoriza los permisos de los bancos y allí no sólo fue Vicente Fox, sino el propio Calderón que ya empieza a pagar las facturas de la gente que lo llevó al poder. El mismo día les entregaron los bancos a sus benefactores (las autorizaciones que otorgó la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público es a los bancos Wal-Mart de México, Prudencial Bank, Banco Comercial del Noreste, Banco Fácil, Bancoppel) y le pega a los pobres. El alza no resolvía nada para el país, en términos globales y financieros para el país esta alza no significaba nada. Es un acto socialmente ofensivo, que no va a aportar nada a la economía, el único asunto es que va a cobrar más del 28 por ciento a los más pobres y esa será la tendencia.”
Para hablar de la herencia que deja el primer presidente surgido del PAN, Contralínea solicitó la entrevista a Héctor Larios Córdova, coordinador de este partido en San Lázaro, pero ésta fue negada.
Publicado: Diciembre 1a quincena de 2006 | Año 5 | No. 69
4 de diciembre de 2006
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En diciembre de 2000, Vicente Fox Quesada, el primer presidente surgido de las filas del Partido de Acción Nacional, recibió un país cargado de problemas en todos los sectores, producto de 70 años de hegemonía del Partido Revolucionario Institucional, pero llegó legitimado por el bono democrático y con la esperanza de la sociedad en un cambio que nunca apareció.
Uno a uno fracasaron los ofrecimientos del guanajuatense: desde la promesa de combatir la corrupción, la inseguridad y el narcotráfico, hasta resolver en 15 minutos el conflicto en Chiapas, cambiar las formas de gobierno, distribuir equitativamente la riqueza, crear 10 millones de empleos y atrapar a los peces gordos en el mar de la corrupción gubernamental.
En contraste, a lo largo del sexenio crecieron los índices de marginación y pobreza. Un informe del Banco Mundial (BM) sobre el sexenio indica que Vicente Fox deja 85 por ciento de mexicanos pobres en zonas rurales y 42 por ciento de pobres en zonas urbanas. El BM dice que fracasaron los 12 programas sociales de Fox, creció el desempleo y se generó únicamente empleo informal.
En el rubro combate a la corrupción, la Secretaría de la Función Pública no atrapó un solo pez gordo, pero sí sepultó hasta los expedientes de corrupción del propio Vicente Fox y familia. Se desbordó el narcotráfico y la inseguridad. El crimen organizado se movió a sus anchas y cobró facturas, y en el último año de la administración foxista sumaron 2 mil las ejecuciones de delincuentes, policías y sociedad civil en todo el país.
Al concluir su mandato, el gobierno de Vicente Fox queda manchado por la represiva respuesta que dio a los conflictos laborales y sociales, como el caso Atenco, la represiva respuesta en Sicartsa, la resistencia social en Oaxaca, cuya figura se reproduce ya en otros estados, y la reciente reaparición pública de los grupos más duros de la guerrilla.
En la magra herencia que le deja a su predecesor, Felipe Calderón pagará el costo de su propia ilegitimidad en momentos en que la estabilidad en el país pende de un hilo. La ingobernabilidad en México será para el michoacano el principal reto a vencer a partir de este 1 de diciembre, según evaluación de integrantes de la LX Legislatura.
Con este negro panorama, legisladores de oposición prevén pocos logros en el sexenio del ex secretario de Energía, cuyo principal reto, dicen, será alcanzar la gobernabilidad antes de que el caos impere en todos los sectores sociales.
En entrevista con Contralínea los coordinadores de los grupos parlamentarios en la Cámara de Diputados hablan de la herencia negra de Vicente Fox a Felipe Calderón y de los retos que enfrentará el michoacano para sortear su propia falta de legitimidad.
El país dividido: PRI
“Vicente Fox hereda a Felipe Calderón un país profundamente dividido, francamente destrozado, y con una de las crisis políticas más severas de la historia contemporánea de México. La división y la polarización que dejaron las elecciones del 2 de julio no fue superada, los conflictos sociales y las olas de violencia, provocadas por el narcotráfico en los estados de la República, nunca fueron resueltas, y la pobreza que sigue lacerando al país -no obstante las cifras que divulga el gobierno y los programas Oportunidades y Seguro Popular- salta a la vista”, dice el diputado Enrique Benítez Ojeda, vocero del Partido Revolucionario Institucional de la LX legislatura.
El priísta dice que derivado de la severa crisis política y social que vive México, Calderón Hinojosa tendrá que recomponer el tejido social e iniciar una profunda reforma del Estado a partir de su poder de negociación con todas las fuerzas sociales y partidos políticos representados en el Congreso: “para que seamos corresponsales el Legislativo y el Ejecutivo, y que no sea solamente el Ejecutivo el que haga, proponga y disponga”.
A Felipe Calderón le tocará pagar los tropiezos de su predecesor con el Legislativo, cuyas desavenencias, recuerda el congresista, se vivieron hasta las últimas semanas del sexenio, cuando el Congreso le negó una última gira Australia y Vietnam.
“Vicente Fox nunca cumplió aquello de que el presidente propone y el Congreso dispone, tan no lo cumplió que a unos días de concluir su mandato hizo el berrinche de su vida y se enojó porque no se le permitió salir al extranjero a un asunto familiar con su hija, entonces Fox termina en estas circunstancias. Por supuesto quedará para la historia como el presidente de la transición, pero no como el presidente del cambio”.
En las dos cámaras, los legisladores de todos los partidos han planteado agendas que tienen que ver con lograr acuerdos y avances en materia de desarrollo, infraestructura, programas sociales, campo, salud y de forma general toda la reestructuración del sistema político mexicano. De manera general los integrantes de la LX Legislatura se asumen como el poder que podría marcar la diferencia entre un sexenio socialmente estable, pero por mucha disposición de los partidos representados en el Congreso, dice Benítez Ojeda, los avances dependerán de si Calderón Hinojosa logra mantener la estabilidad en el país.
“Si no hay gobernabilidad, acuerdo y diálogo, toda la agenda que tenemos los partidos será infructuosa porque no estaremos ni siquiera dispuestos a sentarnos a platicar sobre los problemas del país. Previo a la toma de protesta el Calderón, la reaparición de guerrillas, bombas y el narcotráfico a todo lo que das. El asunto es la gobernabilidad, y la gente de Felipe Calderón debe buscar condiciones para la gobernabilidad, el acuerdo y el diálogo, porque si no hay esto toda la agenda de cualquier partido será infructuosa, porque no estaremos siquiera dispuestos a sentarnos a platicar sobre los problemas del país”.
Y aun con la acertada dirección que pudiera tener el actual jefe del Ejecutivo, de los primeros meses de su gestión los legisladores estiman que no habrá avance alguno, pues no existen las condiciones presupuestales que cubran los cambios planteados como promesa de su gobierno, dice el vocero del tricolor, por lo que augura un resurgimiento de los brotes de descontento a su gestión “y a Calderón le costará mucho más legitimar su gobierno”.
Indica que será hasta mediados del 2007, una vez aprobado el paquete económico y el proyecto de presupuesto de egresos, “cuando Felipe Calderón pueda hablar de su agenda a largo plazo”.
Aun con sus promesas de erigirse como un verdadero “presidente del empleo”, lo que ofrecerá Calderón Hinojosa en el primer año de su gobierno, dice el vocero del PRI, “no será nada nuevo, porque no hay condiciones para llevar nada nuevo, tendrá que ser en términos ordinarios y normales como cada año”.
La ilegitimidad presidencial:
Convergencia
El coordinador de los legisladores del partido Convergencia, Alejandro Chanona Burguete, define como una “herencia pobre” la de Vicente Fox a Felipe Calderón, en medio de “una gran crisis política y de legitimidad de la institución presidencial”.
Chanona Burguete dice que la sombra que sobre Felipe Calderón dejará la crisis postelectoral del 2 de julio sigue opacando su imagen, razón por la que aún con su ascensión al poder este 1 de diciembre, a ojos de un alto porcentaje de mexicanos sea visto como presidente espurio.
“Los últimos días de Fox en el poder: la situación en Oaxaca, los bombazos en la ciudad de México y evidentemente el conjunto de relaciones que hizo para muy tempranamente retirarse de la presidencia y dar por terminada su gestión desde que sacó la famosa frase de ’bajo la cortina’, hablan de un presidente que nunca pudo lograr las maniobras políticas para evitar una sociedad donde las cosas se iban polarizando.
“En su trayectoria deja en el camino grandes saldos, es decir, no resolvió el conflicto en Chiapas, pasando por el conflicto en Atenco y la no instrucción de un nuevo aeropuerto en la ciudad de México, hasta los conflictos internacionales que provocó su desatinada política exterior. La herencia es muy pobre. Los conflictos con Cuba, con otros países de América Latina, el fracaso del cabildeo en Estados Unidos”.
En la entrevista, Burguete Chanona hace un minucioso análisis de cada uno de los programas del sexenio y no haya más que fracasos, cuyo reclamo social, dice, buscará eco para hacer pagar a Calderón las torpezas del guanajuatense.
“No es suficiente con tener estabilidad macroeconómica, no es suficiente con que se hayan mantenido los índices de inflación bajos, las tazas de interés bajas, yo creo que también le falló a los mexicanos en el sentido de no haber podido combatir pronta y frontalmente la pobreza, no es suficiente un Seguro Popular. Simplemente si valoramos los índices de seguridad humana, son insatisfactorios en educación, salud, entre otros, y los índices de pobreza humana también hablan mal de él. Finalmente quedaron cerca de 20 millones de mexicanos viviendo en pobreza extrema y cerca de 60 millones considerados en condiciones de pobreza.”
El coordinador del grupo parlamentario que en la pasada legislatura encabezó una de las dos comisiones que se crearon en el seno del Congreso para investigar la corrupción de la familia presidencial, con Jesús González Schamll a la cabeza de los legisladores, destaca que Calderón Hinojosa hereda de Fox la falta de credibilidad de los mexicanos en la figura presidencial, sumada a su propia falta de legitimidad, por lo que “tendrá que hacer un doble esfuerzo para realmente demostrar que hay vocación para renovar las instituciones del país, hacer una revisión integral de la Constitución y, desde luego, llevar a cabo un conjunto de reformas que no pudo hacer el régimen anterior.”
Destaca también la “operación limpieza” que deberá hacer Calderón en los sistemas de seguridad y justicia a fin de combatir la corrupción que impera en el Poder Judicial, en el que “las redes que corrompen el Ministerio Público y las redes entorno al Poder Judicial han impedido que se imparta justicia para los más pobres. Son las cárceles receptáculo de gente por delitos de menos de 8 mil pesos, es importante avanzar en materia de juicio oral, reparación del daño y en romper con el monopolio de impartición de justicia del Ministerio Publico.”
De no lograr acuerdos a corto plazo, coincide Alejandro Chanona, se detonará el riesgo de ingobernabilidad que en estos momentos está latente. “Ese es ahora su talón de Aquiles”.
Gobernará la IP: PRD
Irónico, Javier González Garza, coordinador de los diputados del PRD, dice que la herencia de Fox a Calderón tiene que ver con la falta de comprensión de los mexicanos a sus promesas de campaña.
“Nos dijo que iba a crear empleos, pero no le entendimos que los empleos iban a ser de emigrante a Estados Unidos, y así en cada uno de los rubros”.
El coordinador de los legisladores que durante meses amenazaron la toma de protesta de Calderón Hinojosa en San Lázaro, habla de los fracasos del foxismo que causó, dice, que el PAN perdiera la oportunidad de validarse como un partido “del cambio”:
“Lo que Fox vino dejando en cada uno de los rubros fueron fracasos; si tu tomas política exterior, política interior, desarrollo, educación, lo que quieras, el tema que quieras, lo va a dejar peor que como lo recibió hace seis años. Los índices educativos son ejemplo claro, decreció la calidad en los programas educativos y el gasto en ciencia y tecnología que se había comprometido a llevarlo al uno por ciento del Producto Interno Bruto, lo recibió con el .36 por ciento del PIB y lo va a dejar este año con menos del .03, así que le estuvo bajando año con año y así fue en todos los sectores. “
¿Los avances?
“Lo único que ha avanzado en este país tiene que ver con los asuntos de inseguridad, y del narcotráfico y el crimen organizado. Es una batalla que parece absolutamente perdida, este año crímenes por narcotráfico en este país son más grandes que los muertos de Irak. Y las cantidades de dinero que se mueven en el crimen organizado es brutal”.
¿Fue falta de capacidad?
“El asunto para mí es la alianza de Fox con los sectores económicos del poder económico que lo llevan al poder, y luego se cumple una serie de compromisos y que lo obligó a hacer todos los otros compromisos, allí está el asunto del ’Pemexgate’, acaba siendo aliado de los líderes petroleros, allí está el problema de la educación: cuando se alió con Elba Esther, y absolutamente con la corrupción, y se fue aliando sistemáticamente con la corrupción del país, pero además, muy en concreto, al servicio de los grandes capitales. Esperamos un saqueo mayor con Calderón. Fox se subió a ese carro del saqueo, junto con su familia y todos sus amigos, y se volvieron ricos. El problema es que se beneficio sólo a los empresarios.”
El coordinador de los legisladores perredistas estima que Calderón no logrará avances sociales por la presión que sobre su gobierno hará el sector empresarial, a quien éste deberá pagar su propia factura, recaudos que reclamarán los integrantes del Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, quienes no sólo invirtieron en su campaña previo al 2 de julio, sino en toda la campaña postelectoral en radio y televisión mientras el Tribunal Federal Electoral fallaba a su favor.
En el sexenio que comienza, estima el legislador, será la iniciativa privada la que tome las decisiones en Los Pinos, buscará que se validen en el Congreso con la ventaja que tienen, por medio del PAN en ambas cámaras, representantes directos del sector empresarial.
“Calderón tendrá a los empresarios encima”, es decir, influirán en cada una de las decisiones del Ejecutivo.
La aseveración de Garza tiene fundamentos suficientes, la injerencia que el Consejo Coordinador Empresarial tendrá en este sexenio será no sólo de empresarios que hagan negociaciones de forma externa, sino en el seno del Congreso mismo, donde en la LX Legislatura, más de 13 por ciento de los legisladores son empresarios y tienen o tuvieron vínculos con el CCE, desde el coordinador de los empresarios, Héctor Larios Córdova, que se desempeñó como director del Centro Empresarial del Norte de Sonora de la Confederación Patronal de la República Mexicana (Coparmex) y hasta otros 55 legisladores de Acción Nacional que en un momento presidieron o integraron las diferentes delegaciones del CCE, de la Coparmex, de la Confederación de Cámaras Nacionales de Comercio (Concanaco), y de la Cámara Nacional de la Industria de la Transformación (Canancintra).
Los cobros a las primeras facturas a cuenta de la IP que invirtió para la campaña y el reconocimiento de Calderón por el Tribunal Federal Electoral, y que ahora nuevamente invierte en legitimar en campañas de radio y televisión a Felipe Calderón como presidente, dice, se comienzan ya a cobrar en San Lázaro:
“En el momento en que anuncia la alza a la gasolina y la leche, se autoriza los permisos de los bancos y allí no sólo fue Vicente Fox, sino el propio Calderón que ya empieza a pagar las facturas de la gente que lo llevó al poder. El mismo día les entregaron los bancos a sus benefactores (las autorizaciones que otorgó la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público es a los bancos Wal-Mart de México, Prudencial Bank, Banco Comercial del Noreste, Banco Fácil, Bancoppel) y le pega a los pobres. El alza no resolvía nada para el país, en términos globales y financieros para el país esta alza no significaba nada. Es un acto socialmente ofensivo, que no va a aportar nada a la economía, el único asunto es que va a cobrar más del 28 por ciento a los más pobres y esa será la tendencia.”
Para hablar de la herencia que deja el primer presidente surgido del PAN, Contralínea solicitó la entrevista a Héctor Larios Córdova, coordinador de este partido en San Lázaro, pero ésta fue negada.
Publicado: Diciembre 1a quincena de 2006 | Año 5 | No. 69
James Petras: Calderón entregista por Nydia Egremy
Para James Petras, Felipe Calderón es peor que un presidente bananero, es, en el mejor de los casos, un presidente petrolero entreguista que supera lo que se puede uno imaginar.
El profesor estadounidense James Petras.
_____________________________________________________
Minutos antes de dictar una conferencia en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, James Petras, autor del término “Estado imperial”, al que identifica a Estados Unidos como el país que “impone nuevas reglas que moldean el comportamiento de los demás estados", comparte su análisis sobre la herencia política que recibe de su antecesor el próximo presidente de México.
¿Recibe Calderón Hinojosa una república bananera como herencia de Vicente Fox?
No creo que sea un presidente bananero, sino un presidente petrolero en el sentido de que su principal meta es profundizar la privatización de Pemex, como ha dicho el famoso investigador John Saxe Fernández en su libro La compra-venta de México, y eso me parece fundamental. No lo confundamos con los Somoza del pasado, que entregaban bananas, ahora hablamos de la principal fuente de energía en el mundo y particularmente para Estados Unidos. Es mucho peor que un bananero, el petrolero entreguista es lo peor que puedes imaginar.
Es claro que Calderón es un continuador de Fox en todo sentido, sin Fox no podría haber ganado las elecciones, porque todo estaba arreglado a partir del instituto electoral, los fraudes y las diferentes maniobras que utilizaron. Incluso, Fox utilizó el aparato del Estado, por eso Felipe Calderón tenía muchos recursos para presentarse.
Petras es el mismo intelectual de acción que tras el golpe de Estado de Augusto Pinochet integró el Tribunal Bertrand Russell sobre la represión en América Latina, de la mano con Julio Cortázar y Gabriel García Márquez.
La producción editorial de este luchador social alimentó ya a dos generaciones de estudiantes y simpatizantes que devoran su temática especializada en la problemática latinoamericana, sus reflexiones sobre el conflicto entre clases sociales, el imperialismo, el Estado y la transición a la democracia.
¿El gobierno de Calderón tendrá que alinearse a la guerra contra el terrorismo que comanda Bush?
Lo vemos en la aplicación de la represión en Oaxaca, la militarización de un pueblo, la represión y desaparición de docenas de maestros que buscan mejorar su vida y las condiciones de trabajo. Esa es una indicación de la lógica interna de esta guerra.
Más allá, la expresión más contundente es el hecho que la CIA y la DEA, así como la FBI, funcionan aquí en México como en Texas y en California, como si fuera territorio estadounidense. No hay ningún respeto a las fronteras, y en este sentido yo observaría que no se trata de un problema de colonialismo económico, sino de un colonialismo de los servicios especiales de Estados Unidos, que han penetrado la sociedad y hacen lo que se les da la gana.
James Petras es doctor en filosofía por la Universidad de California, que antes de graduarse fue militante de los derechos humanos y entre 1960 y 1973 enseñó y dirigió investigaciones en América Latina, particularmente en Chile, donde colaboró con el gobierno de Salvador Allende.
¿El Estado mexicano impondrá a los ciudadanos una política de seguridad semejante a la que la administración Bush impuso a los estadounidenses?
Me llamaron de México para decirme que me entrevistarían a la una y media de la tarde, cuando llegó el momento de esa entrevista mi teléfono dejó de funcionar por más de una hora y después volvió a funcionar. Eso fue para bloquear la entrevista con la radio nacional de México. Eso es algo normal ahora.
Está muy extendida esta política de lo que llaman ’seguridad’, que realmente es de inseguridad que tenemos de comunicarnos por teléfono, por Internet, por correo electrónico, por fax. El gobierno de los Estados Unidos ha dicho públicamente que tiene bajo vigilancia a miles o cientos de miles, si no millones de personas en todas sus comunicaciones más íntimas y creo que México, bajo los gobiernos actuales, es una extensión de la política estadounidense, es muy factible que estén aplicando las mismas medidas aquí.
El profesor de la Universidad del Estado de Nueva York en Binghamton afirma que todos los días no despierta pensando que vive en la mayor superpotencia de la historia, “no pienso en la omnipotencia, pienso en nuestra resistencia y el desgaste tremendo del presidente Bush por la lucha de millones de hormigas que debilitamos la política imperialista. Hemos denunciado el poder del sionismo en el gobierno y hemos tenido impacto ampliando el número de simpatizantes, se puede ver en el repudio a George W. Bush en las pasadas elecciones legislativas”.
Publicado: Diciembre 1a quincena de 2006 | Año 5 | No. 69
El profesor estadounidense James Petras.
_____________________________________________________
Minutos antes de dictar una conferencia en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, James Petras, autor del término “Estado imperial”, al que identifica a Estados Unidos como el país que “impone nuevas reglas que moldean el comportamiento de los demás estados", comparte su análisis sobre la herencia política que recibe de su antecesor el próximo presidente de México.
¿Recibe Calderón Hinojosa una república bananera como herencia de Vicente Fox?
No creo que sea un presidente bananero, sino un presidente petrolero en el sentido de que su principal meta es profundizar la privatización de Pemex, como ha dicho el famoso investigador John Saxe Fernández en su libro La compra-venta de México, y eso me parece fundamental. No lo confundamos con los Somoza del pasado, que entregaban bananas, ahora hablamos de la principal fuente de energía en el mundo y particularmente para Estados Unidos. Es mucho peor que un bananero, el petrolero entreguista es lo peor que puedes imaginar.
Es claro que Calderón es un continuador de Fox en todo sentido, sin Fox no podría haber ganado las elecciones, porque todo estaba arreglado a partir del instituto electoral, los fraudes y las diferentes maniobras que utilizaron. Incluso, Fox utilizó el aparato del Estado, por eso Felipe Calderón tenía muchos recursos para presentarse.
Petras es el mismo intelectual de acción que tras el golpe de Estado de Augusto Pinochet integró el Tribunal Bertrand Russell sobre la represión en América Latina, de la mano con Julio Cortázar y Gabriel García Márquez.
La producción editorial de este luchador social alimentó ya a dos generaciones de estudiantes y simpatizantes que devoran su temática especializada en la problemática latinoamericana, sus reflexiones sobre el conflicto entre clases sociales, el imperialismo, el Estado y la transición a la democracia.
¿El gobierno de Calderón tendrá que alinearse a la guerra contra el terrorismo que comanda Bush?
Lo vemos en la aplicación de la represión en Oaxaca, la militarización de un pueblo, la represión y desaparición de docenas de maestros que buscan mejorar su vida y las condiciones de trabajo. Esa es una indicación de la lógica interna de esta guerra.
Más allá, la expresión más contundente es el hecho que la CIA y la DEA, así como la FBI, funcionan aquí en México como en Texas y en California, como si fuera territorio estadounidense. No hay ningún respeto a las fronteras, y en este sentido yo observaría que no se trata de un problema de colonialismo económico, sino de un colonialismo de los servicios especiales de Estados Unidos, que han penetrado la sociedad y hacen lo que se les da la gana.
James Petras es doctor en filosofía por la Universidad de California, que antes de graduarse fue militante de los derechos humanos y entre 1960 y 1973 enseñó y dirigió investigaciones en América Latina, particularmente en Chile, donde colaboró con el gobierno de Salvador Allende.
¿El Estado mexicano impondrá a los ciudadanos una política de seguridad semejante a la que la administración Bush impuso a los estadounidenses?
Me llamaron de México para decirme que me entrevistarían a la una y media de la tarde, cuando llegó el momento de esa entrevista mi teléfono dejó de funcionar por más de una hora y después volvió a funcionar. Eso fue para bloquear la entrevista con la radio nacional de México. Eso es algo normal ahora.
Está muy extendida esta política de lo que llaman ’seguridad’, que realmente es de inseguridad que tenemos de comunicarnos por teléfono, por Internet, por correo electrónico, por fax. El gobierno de los Estados Unidos ha dicho públicamente que tiene bajo vigilancia a miles o cientos de miles, si no millones de personas en todas sus comunicaciones más íntimas y creo que México, bajo los gobiernos actuales, es una extensión de la política estadounidense, es muy factible que estén aplicando las mismas medidas aquí.
El profesor de la Universidad del Estado de Nueva York en Binghamton afirma que todos los días no despierta pensando que vive en la mayor superpotencia de la historia, “no pienso en la omnipotencia, pienso en nuestra resistencia y el desgaste tremendo del presidente Bush por la lucha de millones de hormigas que debilitamos la política imperialista. Hemos denunciado el poder del sionismo en el gobierno y hemos tenido impacto ampliando el número de simpatizantes, se puede ver en el repudio a George W. Bush en las pasadas elecciones legislativas”.
Publicado: Diciembre 1a quincena de 2006 | Año 5 | No. 69
Poverty in Latin America Continues to Decrease for the Third Consecutive Year - ECLAC
ECLAC --- 5 Dec. 2006 --- Latin America has turned in its best performance in 25 years in economic and social terms. Progress in poverty reduction, together with improvements in unemployment and, in some countries, income distribution, as well as increases in the number of jobs, are the main factors underlying the positive trend in a number of the region's countries.
These encouraging trends are reflected in the most recent estimates of poverty and indigence, which decreased, for the third consecutive year, in 2005. According to the latest available figures, in that year 39.8% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean (some 209 million people) lived in poverty and 15.4% (81 million people) lived in extreme poverty or indigence. This represents a decrease of more than 4% in relation to figures for 2002, which registered levels of poverty and indigence of 44% and 19.4%, respectively.
The Social Panorama of Latin America 2006, released today by ECLAC's Executive Secretary José Luis Machinea, also gives estimates of the magnitude of poverty for 2006. Its projections for this year estimate that the number of people living in poverty and extreme poverty in the region will continue to decline to 38.5% (205 million people) and 14.7% (79 million).
These figures indicate decreases in rates of poverty and extreme poverty in numerous countries in the region, as compared to 2001 and 2002. The most significant improvements occurred in Argentina (26% poverty rate in 2003-05, compared to 45.4% in 2000-02) and Venezuela (37.1% in 2003-05, compared to 48.6% in 2000-02). Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru also presented decreases of nearly 4 percentage points.
While overall progress in Latin America is encouraging, poverty levels remain high and the region still faces a great task, the ECLAC report states.
ECLAC uses these new figures as the basis for a fresh examination of regional progress toward the first target of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG): eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by the year 2015. The projected decrease in extreme poverty for 2006 represents a 69% advance toward meeting the first MDG. In this respect, the region is well-positioned in its commitment to reduce extreme poverty by half by the year 2015.
While the long-term perspective suggests that income disparities will persist, the past six years have seen overall improvements, especially in four countries: Brazil, El Salvador, Paraguay and Peru.
The report also compares measurements of absolute and relative poverty.
The 2006 edition of the Social Panorama examines changes in labour market indicators and compares trends over the 2003-2005 period with those from 1990-2002. ECLAC concludes that the upturn in employment and, partly, in wages over the last two years has not been accompanied by significant changes in the quality of new jobs.
The report indicates that the current levels of coverage of employment-based social security systems cannot sustain progress toward universal pension and retirement regimes in which minimum benefits can be financed over the long-term.
This year's ECLAC report addresses two issues of special relevancy for Latin America and the Caribbean: the socio-economic inequalities faced by indigenous peoples, and the changes currently underway in the region in family composition.
As regards indigenous populations, ECLAC highlights two main points: the emergence of indigenous groups as active social and political agents, and the consolidation of the international standard of rights, and its implications for public policy. The diversity among indigenous groups and the persistent inequality and inequities that affect them pose a great challenge to 21st-century democracies in terms of State reforms and policies.
In its chapter on the Social Agenda, the Social Panorama of Latin America analyses changes in the structure of families and reviews family-oriented programmes and policies in the region. The report takes account of the continuing trend toward greater variety of family types, and particularly the greater proportion of single-person and female-headed single-parent households.
This requires changes to overcome the current limitations of public institutions responsible for family issues in the region and a new approach by governments to family policies and programmes.
These encouraging trends are reflected in the most recent estimates of poverty and indigence, which decreased, for the third consecutive year, in 2005. According to the latest available figures, in that year 39.8% of the population of Latin America and the Caribbean (some 209 million people) lived in poverty and 15.4% (81 million people) lived in extreme poverty or indigence. This represents a decrease of more than 4% in relation to figures for 2002, which registered levels of poverty and indigence of 44% and 19.4%, respectively.
The Social Panorama of Latin America 2006, released today by ECLAC's Executive Secretary José Luis Machinea, also gives estimates of the magnitude of poverty for 2006. Its projections for this year estimate that the number of people living in poverty and extreme poverty in the region will continue to decline to 38.5% (205 million people) and 14.7% (79 million).
These figures indicate decreases in rates of poverty and extreme poverty in numerous countries in the region, as compared to 2001 and 2002. The most significant improvements occurred in Argentina (26% poverty rate in 2003-05, compared to 45.4% in 2000-02) and Venezuela (37.1% in 2003-05, compared to 48.6% in 2000-02). Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru also presented decreases of nearly 4 percentage points.
While overall progress in Latin America is encouraging, poverty levels remain high and the region still faces a great task, the ECLAC report states.
ECLAC uses these new figures as the basis for a fresh examination of regional progress toward the first target of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG): eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by the year 2015. The projected decrease in extreme poverty for 2006 represents a 69% advance toward meeting the first MDG. In this respect, the region is well-positioned in its commitment to reduce extreme poverty by half by the year 2015.
While the long-term perspective suggests that income disparities will persist, the past six years have seen overall improvements, especially in four countries: Brazil, El Salvador, Paraguay and Peru.
The report also compares measurements of absolute and relative poverty.
The 2006 edition of the Social Panorama examines changes in labour market indicators and compares trends over the 2003-2005 period with those from 1990-2002. ECLAC concludes that the upturn in employment and, partly, in wages over the last two years has not been accompanied by significant changes in the quality of new jobs.
The report indicates that the current levels of coverage of employment-based social security systems cannot sustain progress toward universal pension and retirement regimes in which minimum benefits can be financed over the long-term.
This year's ECLAC report addresses two issues of special relevancy for Latin America and the Caribbean: the socio-economic inequalities faced by indigenous peoples, and the changes currently underway in the region in family composition.
As regards indigenous populations, ECLAC highlights two main points: the emergence of indigenous groups as active social and political agents, and the consolidation of the international standard of rights, and its implications for public policy. The diversity among indigenous groups and the persistent inequality and inequities that affect them pose a great challenge to 21st-century democracies in terms of State reforms and policies.
In its chapter on the Social Agenda, the Social Panorama of Latin America analyses changes in the structure of families and reviews family-oriented programmes and policies in the region. The report takes account of the continuing trend toward greater variety of family types, and particularly the greater proportion of single-person and female-headed single-parent households.
This requires changes to overcome the current limitations of public institutions responsible for family issues in the region and a new approach by governments to family policies and programmes.
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