By Manuel Valenzuela
Catastrophic Success
The occupation of Iraq, still illegal and immoral by any sense of human understanding, has now run into its fourth bloody and horrific year, becoming a quagmire for America and a vast killing field for Iraqis. Indeed, for Iraqis, America’s invasion and subsequent occupation has been and will continue to be one massive war crime, an onslaught of criminality against humanity not seen since World War Two. It is they, the Iraqi people, who have undergone tremendous hardship, and it is they who will continue to suffer in horrific ways, due to the lunacy and delusions of America’s miscreant leaders. Indeed, hell on Earth has been imported into Iraq without so much as a care, concern or bother from the American people, without so much as a protest or two by the world entire.
For America and her people, on the other hand, to say that the Iraq debacle is the greatest strategic disaster in American foreign policy history is an understatement, for the implications of America’s defeat at the hands of Iraqis have only now begun to be seen, with its reverberations to be felt for years to come. What was once considered a cakewalk by an arrogant nation, basking in the glory of exceptionalism and ignorance, blinded to reality by addictions to materialism and televised charades, instead turned into an inextricable sand trap that threatens to turn a New American Century into the Last American Decade.
For unlike Vietnam, a backwater nation at the outer periphery of world affairs, where America’s defeat did not disturb the grand chess match of Cold War geostrategy or cause worldwide geopolitical earthquakes, Iraq is at the epicenter of the world, sitting atop vast oil fields, possessing two fresh water rivers in a region where water is scarce, situated in the middle of vitally strategic lands sought by rising powers and dwindling empires. A defeat in Iraq, as is already apparent, and had long since been predicted by many, would thus severely damage the interests of America, thereby altering a global balance of power where one superpower dominates the rest of the world. Inside her shores, a defeat would, similar to what happened after Vietnam, alienate her people away from further wars of conquest, thus making it harder to implement the plans for a New American Century, thus destroying the once great controlling power engendered by the New Pearl Harbor.
The occupation of Iraq has and will continue to severely cripple America, both in treasure and blood, bogging it down in a grueling guerilla war of attrition for years to come. Already the war and occupation has lasted longer than America’s involvement in World War II. Already it has cost, in only four years, over one trillion dollars. Already, America’s military is overstretched, overstressed, overburdened and overworked. So far, close to 3,500 troops have died, with up to 30,000 maimed and injured; tens of thousands of personnel have been forced to serve more than two tours of duty. The psychological costs to thousands of soldiers will never be quantified, as will the societal damage done by people returning home with different minds, different lives and altered circumstances.
Yet in spite of the apparent defeat, the apparent debacle taking place in Iraq, the American leviathan, that corporatist element within the parameters of the state, that elitist cabal embedded in predatory capitalist markets, will not allow itself or the nation to be extricated from Iraq, for the price of such a calamity would be disastrous. For the Iraq War was first and foremost a war for control of oil, that most important of natural resources, that devil’s excrement needed to run the engine called modern human civilization.
The subsequent occupation of Iraq, beyond the obvious lies of WMD, bringing democracy and freedom, ridding Iraqis of tyranny and Saddam, and fighting al-Qaeda in the “war on terror,” was built on the necessity of pacifying and controlling the Iraqi populace so that the rape and pillage of Iraq’s oil could commence. For this war has always been and will always be about black blood, that dark substance that condemns and curses all who live above it, and empowers and enriches those who extract it. He who controls the oil controls the world, after all, and he who controls the world controls humankind’s destiny.
It is the devil’s excrement that sustains modern civilization; its births Empire and makes overlords of those that control it. It is also a truism that those who seek the power of modern empire must make a deal with the devil to drink blood from its veins. It is this deal with the devil that invariably resurrects violence, destruction, suffering and the worst in human wickedness.
Empire’s Gas Station
As such, to purposefully give up such a prize as the oil fields of Iraq, along with its perfect strategic location, would be tantamount to giving up on a burgeoning empire, something the elite and the corporatists of the nation are not yet ready to do. Controlling the oil markets of the world, along with the spigots, pipelines and oil fields of Iraq, dictating supply and demand to the globe, possessing the power to control the amount of oil a rival or rising superpower is allowed to have, and establishing a beachhead for further attempts at acquiring yet more oil and gas, this time in Iran and Central Asia, is too tempting a proposition for America’s elite to extricate their armies from Mesopotamia. In truth, to leave Iraq would be to leave behind all delusions of a New American Century. It would be akin to declaring defeat to Russia and China, in essence granting these rising powers Iraq’s oil fields on a silver platter and cementing the precipitous fall of the American Empire itself.
Iraq is too valuable, in the minds of America’s elite and her corporatists, to simply walk away from. For all intents and purposes, therefore, Iraq has become America’s 51st state, a colony that will act as America’s gas station for decades to come. Iraq is destined to become the grease that provides the lubrication needed to run the great American engine. It will act as America’s aircraft carrier, the easier to patrol the world’s most strategic region. In time, Iraq will be used to invade, threaten, hold hostage and/or conquer the oil fields of Iran and those of the central Asian basin. From Iraq America’s new national security infrastructure, such as pipelines and refineries, can best be defended from any barbarian horde. Iraq is today the gateway towards attaining the Empire the elite and the delusional have always envisioned. It is the gateway towards power, control and untold wealth.
Of course the sacrifice of American treasure and blood is and will continue to be of no significance to those possessing the delusional blueprints of a New American Century. After all, it is not their children sent off to war, becoming cannon fodder, returning in a body bag, with missing appendages, burned bodies or psychologically maimed minds. It is not their wages being taxed in order to pay for the ever-expanding corporatist army. It is not their hard earned money being expropriated so that energy giants can further enrich themselves to the tune of tens of billions of dollars in profits every year.
To the elite way of thinking, the sacrifice of 3,500 dead soldiers, most poor and working class, from rural cesspools or urban jungles, is a minor and inconsequential inconvenience, along with the injury of 30,000 more, in the pursuit of Empire. These brave and oftentimes naïve and brainwashed soldiers are simply the expendable tools of wealth accumulation and empire building, the robots needed to pull the levers and push the buttons of the vast arsenal of killing machines developed by the military industrial complex. They are cannon fodder used not for defending freedom and democracy, but for defending the corporate bottom line and its shareholder wealth. In a nation of 300 million people, the death in Iraq of 3,500 soldiers, or 30,000 for that matter, is of little importance to the elite who see poor men and women as a means to an end. They are the collateral damage sacrificed in the name of predatory and debauched capitalism. They are the catalysts for corporatism to thrive.
Sadly, America will remain in Iraq for decades to come, occupying sand and dune, living behind massive concrete walls, inside enormous embassies and bases, all built to protect the ultimate prize of the 21st century: oil. Iraq is now a giant American forward operating base, a geostrategic prize from where the delusional elite can amplify their presence both in the Middle East and the Caspian basin. From Iraq the oil and natural gas fields of Iran are but a stone’s throw away. From Iraq and Afghanistan Central Asia becomes easier to threaten and control, easier for its energy resources to be exploited and defended against potential adversaries. From Iraq it is easier for the rising empire to contain, control and check the advancements of Russia, China and India.
The future death of thousands of American soldiers, and the maiming of tens of thousands more, is a reality that will inevitably come in the years ahead, will be but the price of doing business, of maximizing profit and power, of controlling the black blood necessary for empire to rise and breathe. Thousands dead and tens of thousands maimed is of little consequence or importance to those whose vision of delusion includes an empire greeted by the world as liberator, with flowers and candy thrown at its feet. Sacrifices need to be made for the sake of consumerism and materialism, for gluttony and greed, after all. Just not for the elite that steer the American ship. The trillions of dollars that have already been spent, and those trillions that will invariably be needed in the future will of course be taken from the American people, their treasure pillaged, their wages raped in the pursuit of empire. It will be us, the common peasant, that will be forced to absorb the present and future costs of delusions of grandeur and self-aggrandizing hubris. It will be our children who will have to sacrifice freedom, rights and blood.
The added benefit to the elite of this robbery of the American taxpayer is that for every dollar that goes to the Iraq War, to the military-industrial complex, to the bank accounts of the war profiteers and the energy corporatists, one less dollar is allocated for social services, education, healthcare, infrastructure and the general welfare of the American people. One more dollar taken out through taxes equals one less dollar in the pocket of the people, thereby eviscerating the middle class and shifting the burden of war from the wealthy to the middle and working classes. By gutting the middle class, by putting severe pressure on its ability to subsist on already diminishing wages, the elite further separate themselves from the rest of us, increasing the wealth gap, and by consequence, increasing their power and control over us as well. When the rich get richer and the poor poorer, only a nation of fools fails to see who wins and who loses.
As such, the Iraq War is also a war against the American people, for it is designed to make us anemic creatures dependent on the decisions of the elite. It is engineered in part to increase injustice, inequality, exploitation and dominion over us, robbing us of our power to mobilize and seek change. By redistributing America’s treasure away from the people and to the few elite and the corporations, using war as pretext and fear as a conditioning element, government is being rewired to stop acting in the interest of the masses. Meanwhile, it is being made to serve the interests of the corporate world, which have been getting enormously powerful through the looting of our treasure, under the rubric of fighting the fictional war on terror and under the illusion of destroying a nation only to later rebuild it. The shifting of resources away from what helps the people to what empowers the corporate world is but one more sign that the age of American corporatism is upon us.
The belief that the Iraq War will end once the Bush administration leaves office, and that American soldiers will return home, is an illusion and a mirage, a concoction of wishful thinking that has no basis in reality. America has cemented its presence, firmly planting the foundations for a long and prolonged occupation. Permanent military bases have been erected, as has the largest embassy the world has ever seen. It has manipulated elections so that its puppets are elevated to the highest echelons of Iraqi power. It has written oil laws favorable to its interests that it then demands be passed by so called sovereign Iraqi lawmakers, in essence writing the same laws it needs to make legal the exploitation and robbery of Iraq’s oil fields.
The Middle East is the most vital region in the world in terms of energy allocation and its subsequent strategic control, and is therefore of tremendous national importance to a nation desiring to elevate itself to full-fledged empire status. It has controlled the region for decades now, either by military force, destruction of democracy and through its large cadre of puppets, and by occupying Iraq with a large military force, it now possesses a stranglehold on the world’s second largest energy reserves. And, by making colonies of Afghanistan and Iraq, by supporting the tyrants of Central Asia, it now surrounds the third largest oil reserves in the world, namely those of Iran. Its rich oil and gas fields, now targeted for conquest, are located just across the Iraq border, within invading distance for American forces, far away from Tehran, close enough to smell the fumes.
Iraq, therefore, is a prize that will never be relinquished, and is the reason America will never extricate herself from the debacle it has created. No amount of pre-invasion ignorance, occupying incompetence and blinding arrogance will force America to abandon her cherished possession. No continued bleeding through a thousand cuts will force it to return home in defeat. To the architects of empire, there is more than enough cannon fodder, more than enough treasure from which to maintain control of Iraq’s oil fields. There is too much invested already, too much left to gain, too many fragile egos to appease, too many insecure men to protect, to simply abandon a prize that has been cherished by the elite for decades.
We are in Iraq, and though broken by our hands, though destroyed by our military, she is now ours, for our greed and our love of comfort and consumerism demands that she be pillaged of her oil and raped of her sovereignty. Our addiction to her black blood demands that we care nothing for the plight of her people or for the decimation of her society. It demands that we cast a blind eye to the holocaust now taking place there and the ethnic cleansing destroying families and neighborhoods.
It demands that we see Iraqis as subhuman brown skinned aliens, their plight and suffering ignored, their decimation at the hands of our military and our government lost in hollow memory banks. It is because of oil, after all, that we can share in the privileges of living in the wealthiest nation the world has ever known. And so to continue living in comfort and consumerism, the beast must be fed, it must gorge upon the dark liquid of the third world, and the deal with the devil must, invariably, continue well into the future.
As such, no matter which member of the political duopoly is in the White House, no matter how loudly the citizenry demands a pullout, the United States will not leave Iraq in the foreseeable future. The two headed hydra is, after all, attached to the same body, obeying the same master. No amount of lies or spin or promises will alter this reality. We live in the New American Century, after all, where reality is the domain of those in power. As the will of the people no longer matters or counts, our voices will be silenced, our growing anger suppressed. Sure the illusion of troops returning home will be created, with scenes of families reuniting and hero’s coming home gracing the airwaves, yet in the real world, back in the land of permanent bases and rich oil fields, back where enormous and modern embassies rise on the banks of ancient rivers, tens of thousands of troops will remain, guarding America’s ultimate prize, the blood that sustains Empire, comfort and the military-industrial-energy complex.
The mirage of American troops returning from Iraq with their heads held high, as always marching triumphantly, as always having defeated evil, will captivate millions of ignorant but otherwise well-intentioned Americans. To millions more, however, this charade will be seen for the fiction that it is, for Iraq will remain a very dangerous place, especially for energy exploiters and oil conglomerates eager to further enrich themselves by pillaging a nation blind. Tens of thousands of American soldiers will remain, we will be told, to secure democracy and freedom for the Iraqi people, to ensure security in the cities, to make sure the “democratically” elected puppet is protected from al-Qaeda. We will be made to think our soldiers need to remain to protect Iraqis from themselves.
In truth, tens of thousands of soldiers will establish a permanent presence in Iraq because the Anglo-American energy consortium will need protection while it pillages and rapes Iraq of her natural resources. America’s military will be needed to defend from the targeted sabotage and rebellion of freedom fighters, from the expected assassinations and kidnappings of energy workers. It will ask to protect pipelines, oil fields and their infrastructure; it will be told to suppress strikes and the rage of Iraqi oil workers. The safety and freedom of Iraqis will mean absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of greed and gluttony and American empire. To the empire, oil trumps blood just as much as profit trumps people.
Brand Marketing
Of course to hear the Iraq War apologists tell it, and there are many of these individuals in government and the corporatist media, America is in Iraq because we are fighting al-Qaeda, and nobody else. To the dwindling delusionists and supporters of this illegal war who are somehow inexplicably still given a voice in the media and in print, the illusion must be made that America is at war, given this war on terror, with the dreaded bogeymen from al-Qaeda, those same evildoers who attacked us on 9/11. This is the only way to keep the charade going in the minds of millions that America must remain in Iraq, staying the course, as always knowing that the deeply embedded myth of America being the epitome of good and always triumphing over evil, epitomized by whatever convenient scapegoat is needed, will again capture the minds of the naïve and gullible.
This fantasy, of course, is the last refuge of scoundrels, for it has been proven over and over again that only two to five percent of fighters in Iraq are foreign. But this does not preclude scoundrels from preaching lies to the congregation nonetheless. A convenient enemy is needed to validate the Iraq occupation, however, one that has already been conditioned into the American mind as being nefarious and monstrous.
Indeed, what America confronts is guerilla warfare in an urban setting. Her soldiers, sent to protect the interests of the elite and those of the military-industrial-energy complex, are engaged in a battle against freedom fighters, the vast majority from Iraq, most common peasants once living ordinary lives who want nothing more than to rid their land of the occupying forces. From the beginning of time resistance fighters have waged war against the more powerful invading and occupying force, as always using their skills and talents to bleed their rivals to death.
Like American Revolutionaries, Iraq’s freedom fighters fight for independence and freedom, for nationality and to expel foreign forces from their country. If America or any other nation were invaded and occupied, resistance fighters would immediately spring up as well, forming an army of brave patriots using the tactics of the poor to try and contain the weapons of the much more powerful and wealthier military. Unfortunately, it is the poor of both countries waging war against each other, killing and maiming one another, for the benefit of the wealthy and powerful. Such is war that the poor are always made to fight each other when it is the elite that is their common enemy.
Yet the truth of who and what America’s army is fighting can never be mentioned, for a myth has been embedded into the average American mind that America is in Iraq to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, not to fight their freedom fighters or rape their women. Since an occupying power cannot fully dehumanize a legitimate resistance movement, given that its cause is nobler than that of the occupying force itself, it must resort to the realm of fiction and propaganda, concocting lies and distortions to smear the resistance. Only by making freedom fighters seem subhuman or evil in the eyes of its people can the occupying force thereby make it acceptable to mass murder, dehumanize, torture and illegally detain Iraqis.
Indeed, resistance movements such as those fighting the American military in Iraq are allowed under international law. When such an invasion and subsequent occupation has been proven to be based on lies and deceit, becoming immoral and illegal, a crime against humanity, any resistance movement would find broad support among the peoples of the world. Indeed, these movements are romanticized and applauded, for they become brave patriots and freedom fighters against criminality, illegality and immorality. Such was the case with the French resistance against the Nazis, the Jewish resistance in the ghettos, the plight of blacks in apartheid South Africa and the struggle of Palestinians against the oppressive and apartheid methods of the Israelis.
As such, in order to marginalize and vilify the resistance, in order for the American populace to accept wanton destruction and killing, in order to transform individuals fighting for independence and for an end to occupation, the impression must be made by the creators of reality that the Iraqi mujahedeen are really al-Qaeda in Iraq, thereby becoming the central myth of why America is in Iraq and why it must continue to remain there. This way, the dreaded evildoer extraordinaire, that entity that continuously haunts the American mind, that bogeyman that in the original conspiracy theory was said to have brought down World Trade Center towers 1,2 and 7 through controlled demolitions and at freefall speed, killing 3,000 innocent Americans in the process, can continue to spread fear and insecurity in the belief structure of millions of Americans who, like Pavlovian dogs, cower in fear at the sound of the word al-Qaeda. It is al-Qaeda, after all, and not Iraq freedom fighters, who attacked us on 9/11. It is al-Qaeda, after all, that planned war games on the day of 9/11 and ordered fighter planes to stand down, not Iraqi resistance fighters.
Thus, by using the concocted scapegoat of al-Qaeda, having escaped the caves and mud huts of Afghanistan, this time festering and planning to take over Iraq if we let them, and hiding the reality of whom exactly the American military is fighting in Iraq, millions of Americans readily accept the continued occupation as being beneficial to their own safety and security. For, as the scoundrels and the liars love to tell us, we are fighting them there so we do not have to fight them here. If we leave, we are told, they, being al-Qaeda, will follow us back, undoubtedly to wage holy jihad in the little towns of Indiana and Nebraska. This way, the creators of the new reality hide the true rival in Iraq while at the same time manipulating the American public into allowing the continued debacle taking place.
As long as the term al-Qaeda is used in symphony with Iraq, as long as Iraq and the so-called war on terror are similarly correlated, millions of Americans will continue to support an occupation that is illegal and immoral. As such, the Iraqi resistance movement will continue to gain strength, it will continue to engage the American military, and a war of attrition will continue to kill and maim both Americans and Iraqis. This way, a vicious cycle of violence will not cease, for Americans will continue to associate the need to wage war in Iraq, believing, albeit mistakenly, that America fights al-Qaeda in the fictional war on terror, not knowing or understanding the true nature of the rival.
With violence begetting violence, more resistance fighters will join the movement, as naturally occurs in a guerilla war against an occupation. With manipulations and lies, the American people will be made to believe that al-Qaeda in Iraq is growing more dangerous, that it is expanding, that it will indeed follow us home if we leave, that it presents a clear and present danger that must be defeated. Thus, the ingredients for the endless war the elite have dreamt about for decades, and the key to staying permanently in Iraq, have managed to rise out of one nation’s desire to be free of occupation and another’s systematically damaged and manipulated psyche, born on 9/11, that freezes in horror and loses all ability to reason and think logically at the mention of the words al-Qaeda and war on terror. As long as the term al-Qaeda is used over the airwaves, as long as it retains its corroding effect, the American people will allow the fictional war on terror to continue. Such is the damage done by the masters of reality.
Quite conveniently, then, Iraq’s freedom fighters are morphed by the state and the corporatist media into al-Qaeda, thereby validating America’s presence and continued occupation of a nation, and a people, fighting for her freedom. The liberty and ease by which the apologists of the war grant al-Qaeda franchises throughout Iraq, indeed, wherever America seems to pick fights, without even a hint at investigation by the corporatist media, underlies the fallacy of this myth. Along with the purported death of probably 100 al-Qaeda’s number two’s, it also demonstrates the level of propaganda and manipulation the Pentagon and its lackeys fill the media, and thus our minds with. Truth is the first casualty of war, after all. Therefore, under the auspices of fighting terrorism, America can stay and focus on the real and most important task at hand, namely the complete control, rape and pillage of Iraq’s oil fields and pipelines.
The Curse of Black Gold
And so America will continue fighting in Iraq because the state says we are fighting al-Qaeda, because it blames Iraq’s puppet government for its own incompetence and ignorance, because it says through its stenographers and talking heads that the war on terror must be fought, even if it takes decades to win, and because America is good and exceptional and she must defeat evil, just as she has always done. Along with our permanent occupation, we will continue mass murdering, torturing, dehumanizing and falsely imprisoning hundreds of thousands of Iraqis whose only crime, whose only curse, is living atop the devil’s excrement, that dark liquid waiting to be gorged on by a most greedy, ignorant and arrogant drug addict.
For when it comes to dominating that black gold called oil, easily available for conquest in various third world nations, either through puppets, market colonialism or military might, no dark skinned, non-European looking human is safe from the tentacles of modern empire, for soon subhuman you will be called, seen as primitive, as an animal, needing the “enlightened” hand of Western intervention for salvation. When the aim of categorizing you as alien, evil and below the parameters of being human is achieved your family will be murdered, your people displaced, your life forever altered, your plight ignored. Your death will never equal that of an American or a British citizen, for you are a third worlder, a person of the southern globe, bred to be exploited and oppressed, your lands becoming the feudal estates of corporatism, your blood, sweat and tears falling only after you have slaved yourself for the north’s comfort and wealth.
The death of your son will not be counted, the rape of your daughter will be dismissed as lies, the dehumanization of your father and the torture of your brother will never see light of day, for your country has been targeted as the next petrol station that will invariably be forced to pay tribute to the purple robe of empire. Whether you live in Nigeria, Venezuela, the Caspian Sea basin or Iran, it does not matter, for you live where black gold abounds, where the drug of oil can be found. As such your lands will become toxic, your air and water filled with poison. All the while, even as your natural resources are pillaged, your nation raped, your nation collapsing, you will never see a dime from the corporations of the empire. For poverty is your destiny, even as vast wealth lies below your feet. Subsisting on garbage, living in shacks, your national wealth stolen and embezzled, you thus realize that the black gold you were told would transform your nation has been nothing but a terrible curse you wish never existed.
Of course if you live where the devil’s excrement is bountiful you cannot help but notice the addiction of the empire, and how maddened it becomes if its fix is not satiated. You realize that death, destruction and suffering are the only realities and expectations for nations not willing to pay tribute to the empire. Thus, if you are not careful, if you are not ready, the next knock on your door might very well be that of a most immoral and criminal addict, ready to kill you and destroy your nation for its next much needed fix. And then you will automatically become the Empire’s next enemy, its next terrorist scapegoat, becoming the evildoer chosen to strike fear in the American populace. Inevitably, your face, your people and your culture will become the poster children in the next marketing campaign and psychological war against the American citizenry, designed, as always, by fascism’s public relations experts, its army of little Goebbels.
Deal With the Devil
America cannot exorcise itself from its addiction to oil that, like a demon inside our body, possesses us day and night, demanding that we satisfy our insatiable thirst for black blood. In this deal with the devil that we long ago made, we became dependent on a natural resource that, while not plentiful inside our own shores, is readily abundant in the Middle East, Central Asia, West Africa and Venezuela. For this reason the Middle East has become a militarized region, a vast feudal estate owned by the masters and lords of energy, protected by the Empire itself. For this reason it has become the world’s most volatile and sought after region. Inside its borders puppets and despots and proctors overlook America’s oil fields, proclaiming themselves princes, kings and presidents, as always oppressing and exploiting their people, as always overseeing the empire’s interests.
In our deal with the devil, the more we taste the more we want; the more we continue to grow the bigger we want to get. The more powerful we are the greedier and more gluttonous we become, expanding the size of everything we own, including our stomachs. Millions of us believe oil is abundant, as if it grows yearly in some global breadbasket. Millions of us fail to understand that hundreds of thousands of human beings are killed and maimed, and tens of millions live in perpetual indigence and oftentimes are forced to confront armed conflict because of our insatiable addiction to oil. Millions of us fail to see that it is our standards of living, our greed and gluttony, that contributes to so much misery and destruction worldwide.
Yet year after year our greed compels us toward ever larger vehicles and homes, bigger toys and an exponentially growing consumption habit. Through our actions it seems that we care nothing for the planet or its inhabitants, instead filling our minds with the arrogance and apathy of a spoiled child, transforming ourselves into a most insecure schoolyard bully. We behave as if we are entitled to what does not belong to us, in essence forcing the school’s other kids to give us their lunch money, threatening with violence those that decline or stand up for themselves.
Our greed and gluttony, our indifference and arrogance, our insistence on maintaining and even expanding our standards of living, all at the expense of the planet and its people, is the reason we invade, occupy and exploit weaker nations. It is the reason Iraq is in chaos, why Nigeria is on the verge of full rebellion, why Central Asia is full of despotic leaders and why Venezuela is vilified. It will be the reason why Russia and China will in the years ahead become rivals and enemies, why more and more people around the globe hate America and why we spend more on military equipment and weapons than the entire world put together. It is when we look in the mirror that the devil’s excrement can be seen, acting like an aura around our head, smearing our face with the darkness of wickedness and the madness of addiction.
We can continue believing the exceptionalism of America, the grandeur of her virtues, that of her leaders and her people, yet reality and truth are altogether different, presenting circumstances too uncomfortable for us to contemplate yet important enough to try and understand. We can continue living the delusion of myth and the charade of the American Dream. We can continue being brainwashed and conditioned that our way of life is the only way of life, that the world entire must conform to this way of life, and that bogeymen hate us for said way of life. Yet to confront the evil’s done in our name by the government we elect or fail to stop, we must realize that in many ways, we are to be blamed, we are guilty in failing to act, in putting a stop to an unsustainable standard of living.
Until we realize the damage we do around the planet so that we may live in comfort, so that we may enjoy the highest standards of living humans have ever had, so that we may drive giant SUVs and live in expansive, heated and air-conditioned homes, America will remain in Iraq indefinitely, her military garrisoned inside bases clustered around oil fields, facilities and pipelines. Until we confront the predatory capitalism that is turning America into a corporatist state and the world into a giant sweatshop Iraq and others like it will continue. Until we look ourselves in the mirror and realize that it is our failure to act and alter a doomed course, that it is our indifference to the damage our lifestyles cause Earth, we will finally grasp that it is ourselves, more than anything else, that are the reason we will remain in Iraq long into the future, for our way of life must be maintained and fed through the world’s last remaining petroleum reserves.
Until we realize our gluttony and greed, until we decide to put a stop to our addiction and arrogance, a new version of Iraq will metastasize every decade or so, popping up somewhere around the globe where black gold exists, every time new oil fields are needed to expand our economy or our comfort level, causing untold suffering and destruction in the process, resulting in resistance, conflict and a ever-growing hatred of America. To feed itself the empire thus needs to increase its military, it thus needs to maintain over 750 bases worldwide. To feed its peoples’ ever-growing greed and gluttony, its ever expanding waistline, Iraq must remain within the empire’s violent and voracious claws, becoming a colony of imperialism, to be exploited and raped.
No amount of propaganda or brainwashing or delusion or denial can make extinct this truth. We are thus stuck in Iraq for the long term, for her resources and land is needed to sustain and maintain the America we live in. To believe the empire will ever leave voluntarily is to live in delusion and fall prey to the myths of our conditioning. We have made a deal with the devil, and now we must pay its consequences.
Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator, international affairs analyst and Internet essayist. His articles as well as his archive can be found at his blog, http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com and at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info as well as at other alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a fiction novel. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Heroin is "Good for Your Health": Occupation Forces support Afghan Narcotics Trade
Multibillion dollar earnings for organized crime and Western financial Institutions
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
The occupation forces in Afghanistan are supporting the drug trade, which brings between 120 and 194 billion dollars of revenues to organized crime, intelligence agencies and Western financial institutions.
The proceeds of this lucrative multibllion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan.
The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liason with NATO occupation forces and the British military. In recent developments, British occupation forces have promoted opium cultivation through paid radio advertisements.
"A radio message broadcast across the province assured local farmers that the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would not interfere with poppy fields currently being harvested.
"Respected people of Helmand. The soldiers of ISAF and ANA do not destroy poppy fields," it said. "They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. ISAF and the ANA do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods." ( Quoted in The Guardian, 27 April 2007)
While the controversial opium ads have been casually dismissed as an unfortunate mistake, there are indications that the opium economy is being promoted at the political level (including the British government of Tony Blair).
The Senlis Council, an international think tank specialising in security and policy issues is proposing the development of licit opium exports in Afghanistan, with a view to promoting the production of pharmaceutical pain-killers, such as morphine and codeine. According to the Senlis Council, "the poppies are needed and, if properly regulated, could provide a legal source of income to impoverished Afghan farmers while, at the same time, depriving the drug lords and the Taliban of much of their income." (John Polanyi, Globe and Mail, 23 September 2006)
The Senlis Council offers an alternative where "regulated poppy production in Afghanistan" could be developed to produce needed painkillers. The Senlis statement, however, fails to address the existing structure of licit opium exports, which is characterised by oversupply .
The Senlis' campaign is part of the propaganda campaign. It has contrbuted to providing a false legitimacy to Afghanistan's opium economy. (See details of Senlis Project), which ultmately serves powerful vested interests.
How much opium acreage is required to supply the pharmaceutical industry? According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which has a mandate to exame issues pertaining to the supply of and demand for opiates used for medical purposes, "the supply of such opiates has for years been at levels well in excess of global demand".(Asian Times, February 2006) The INCB has recommended reducing the production of opiates due to oversupply.
At present, India is the largest exporter of licit opium, supplying approximately 50 percent of licit sales to pharmaceutical companies involved in the production of pain-killing drugs. Turkey is also a major producer of licit opium.
India's opium latex "is sold to licensed pharmaceutical and/or chemical manufacturing firms such as Mallinckrodt and Johnson & Johnson, under rules established by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the International Narcotics Control Board, which require an extensive paper trail." (Opium in India)
The area allocated to licit State controlled opium cultivation in India is of the order of a modest 11,000 hectares, suggesting that the entire demand of the global pharmaceutical industry requires approximately 22,000 hectares of land allocated to poppy production. Opium for pharmaceutical use is not in short supply. The demand of the pharmaceutical industry is already met.
Soaring Afghan Opium Production
The United Nations has announced that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has soared. There was a 59% increase in areas under opium cultivation in 2006. Production of opium is estimated to have increased by 49% in relation to 2005.
The Western media in chorus blame the Taliban and the warlords. Western officials are said to believe that "the trade is controlled by 25 smugglers including three government ministers." (Guardian, op. cit).
Yet in a bitter irony, US military presence has served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade. Opium production has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 under the Taliban to 6100 tons in 2006. Cultivated areas have increased 21 fold since the 2001 US-led invasion.
What the media reports fail to acknowledge is that the Taliban government was instrumental in 2000-2001 in implementing a successful drug eradication program, with the support and collaboration of the UN.
Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban's drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.
The Vienna based UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that the 2006 harvest will be of the order of 6,100 tonnes, 33 times its production levels in 2001 under the Taliban government (3200 % increase in 5 years).
Cultivation in 2006 reached a record 165,000 hectares compared with 104,000 in 2005 and 7,606 in 2001 under the Taliban
Multibillion dollar trade
According to the UN, Afghanistan supplies in 2006 some 92 percent of the world's supply of opium, which is used to make heroin.
The UN estimates that for 2006, the contribution of the drug trade to the Afghan economy is of the order of 2.7 billion. What it fails to mention is the fact that more than 95 percent of the revenues generated by this lucrative contraband accrues to business syndicates, organized crime and banking and financial institutions. A very small percentage accrues to farmers and traders in the producing country.
(See also UNODC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan,
http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf , Vienna, 2003, p. 7-8)
"Afghan heroin sells on the international narcotics market for 100 times the price farmers get for their opium right out of the field".(US State Department quoted by the Voice of America (VOA), 27 February 2004).
Based on wholesale and retail prices in Western markets, the earnings generated by the Afghan drug trade are colossal. In July 2006, street prices in Britain for heroin were of the order of Pound Sterling 54, or $102 a gram.
Narcotics On the Streets of Western Europe
One kilo of opium produces approximately 100 grams of (pure) heroin. 6100 tons of opium allows the production of 1220 tons of heroin with a 50 percent purity ratio.
The average purity of retailed heroin can vary. It is on average 36%. In Britain, the purity is rarely in excess of 50 percent, while in the US it can be of the order of 50-60 percent.
Based on the structure of British retail prices for heroin, the total proceeds of the Afghan heroin trade would be of the order of 124.4 billion dollars, assuming a 50 percent purity ratio. Assuming an average purity ratio of 36 percent and the average British price, the cash value of Afghan heroin sales would be of the order of 194.4 billion dollars.
While these figures do not constitute precise estimates, they nonetheless convey the sheer magnitude of this multibillion dollar narcotics trade out of Afghanistan. Based on the first figure which provides a conservative estimate, the cash value of these sales, once they reach Western retail markets are in excess of 120 billion dollars a year.
(See also our detailed estimates for 2003 in The Spoils of War: Afghanistan's Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade, by Michel Chossudovsky, The UNODC estimates the average retail price of heroin for 2004 to be of the order of $157 per gram, based on the average purity ratio).
Narcotics: Second to Oil and the Arms Trade
The foregoing estimates are consistent with the UN's assessment concerning the size and magnitude of the global drug trade.
The Afghan trade in opiates (92 percent of total World production of opiates) constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion.
(Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000).
Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes "the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade." (The Independent, 29 February 2004).
Afghanistan and Colombia (together with Bolivia and Peru) consitute the largest drug producing economies in the world, which feed a flourishing criminal economy. These countries are heavily militarized. The drug trade is protected. Amply documented the CIA has played a central role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.
The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003).
A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics, one third of which is tied to the Golden Crescent opium triangle.
Michel Chossudovsky is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Under the Taliban, opium production in Afghanistan had been reduced to 181 tons. Now under the U.S. and British military and the Mi5 and CIA Drug Lords it reached 6100 tons in 2006.
The occupation forces in Afghanistan are supporting the drug trade, which brings between 120 and 194 billion dollars of revenues to organized crime, intelligence agencies and Western financial institutions.
The proceeds of this lucrative multibllion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan.
The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liason with NATO occupation forces and the British military. In recent developments, British occupation forces have promoted opium cultivation through paid radio advertisements.
"A radio message broadcast across the province assured local farmers that the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) would not interfere with poppy fields currently being harvested.
"Respected people of Helmand. The soldiers of ISAF and ANA do not destroy poppy fields," it said. "They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. ISAF and the ANA do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods." ( Quoted in The Guardian, 27 April 2007)
While the controversial opium ads have been casually dismissed as an unfortunate mistake, there are indications that the opium economy is being promoted at the political level (including the British government of Tony Blair).
The Senlis Council, an international think tank specialising in security and policy issues is proposing the development of licit opium exports in Afghanistan, with a view to promoting the production of pharmaceutical pain-killers, such as morphine and codeine. According to the Senlis Council, "the poppies are needed and, if properly regulated, could provide a legal source of income to impoverished Afghan farmers while, at the same time, depriving the drug lords and the Taliban of much of their income." (John Polanyi, Globe and Mail, 23 September 2006)
The Senlis Council offers an alternative where "regulated poppy production in Afghanistan" could be developed to produce needed painkillers. The Senlis statement, however, fails to address the existing structure of licit opium exports, which is characterised by oversupply .
The Senlis' campaign is part of the propaganda campaign. It has contrbuted to providing a false legitimacy to Afghanistan's opium economy. (See details of Senlis Project), which ultmately serves powerful vested interests.
How much opium acreage is required to supply the pharmaceutical industry? According to the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which has a mandate to exame issues pertaining to the supply of and demand for opiates used for medical purposes, "the supply of such opiates has for years been at levels well in excess of global demand".(Asian Times, February 2006) The INCB has recommended reducing the production of opiates due to oversupply.
At present, India is the largest exporter of licit opium, supplying approximately 50 percent of licit sales to pharmaceutical companies involved in the production of pain-killing drugs. Turkey is also a major producer of licit opium.
India's opium latex "is sold to licensed pharmaceutical and/or chemical manufacturing firms such as Mallinckrodt and Johnson & Johnson, under rules established by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the International Narcotics Control Board, which require an extensive paper trail." (Opium in India)
The area allocated to licit State controlled opium cultivation in India is of the order of a modest 11,000 hectares, suggesting that the entire demand of the global pharmaceutical industry requires approximately 22,000 hectares of land allocated to poppy production. Opium for pharmaceutical use is not in short supply. The demand of the pharmaceutical industry is already met.
Soaring Afghan Opium Production
The United Nations has announced that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has soared. There was a 59% increase in areas under opium cultivation in 2006. Production of opium is estimated to have increased by 49% in relation to 2005.
The Western media in chorus blame the Taliban and the warlords. Western officials are said to believe that "the trade is controlled by 25 smugglers including three government ministers." (Guardian, op. cit).
Yet in a bitter irony, US military presence has served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade. Opium production has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 under the Taliban to 6100 tons in 2006. Cultivated areas have increased 21 fold since the 2001 US-led invasion.
What the media reports fail to acknowledge is that the Taliban government was instrumental in 2000-2001 in implementing a successful drug eradication program, with the support and collaboration of the UN.
Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban's drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.
The Vienna based UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that the 2006 harvest will be of the order of 6,100 tonnes, 33 times its production levels in 2001 under the Taliban government (3200 % increase in 5 years).
Cultivation in 2006 reached a record 165,000 hectares compared with 104,000 in 2005 and 7,606 in 2001 under the Taliban
Multibillion dollar trade
According to the UN, Afghanistan supplies in 2006 some 92 percent of the world's supply of opium, which is used to make heroin.
The UN estimates that for 2006, the contribution of the drug trade to the Afghan economy is of the order of 2.7 billion. What it fails to mention is the fact that more than 95 percent of the revenues generated by this lucrative contraband accrues to business syndicates, organized crime and banking and financial institutions. A very small percentage accrues to farmers and traders in the producing country.
(See also UNODC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan,
http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf , Vienna, 2003, p. 7-8)
"Afghan heroin sells on the international narcotics market for 100 times the price farmers get for their opium right out of the field".(US State Department quoted by the Voice of America (VOA), 27 February 2004).
Based on wholesale and retail prices in Western markets, the earnings generated by the Afghan drug trade are colossal. In July 2006, street prices in Britain for heroin were of the order of Pound Sterling 54, or $102 a gram.
Narcotics On the Streets of Western Europe
One kilo of opium produces approximately 100 grams of (pure) heroin. 6100 tons of opium allows the production of 1220 tons of heroin with a 50 percent purity ratio.
The average purity of retailed heroin can vary. It is on average 36%. In Britain, the purity is rarely in excess of 50 percent, while in the US it can be of the order of 50-60 percent.
Based on the structure of British retail prices for heroin, the total proceeds of the Afghan heroin trade would be of the order of 124.4 billion dollars, assuming a 50 percent purity ratio. Assuming an average purity ratio of 36 percent and the average British price, the cash value of Afghan heroin sales would be of the order of 194.4 billion dollars.
While these figures do not constitute precise estimates, they nonetheless convey the sheer magnitude of this multibillion dollar narcotics trade out of Afghanistan. Based on the first figure which provides a conservative estimate, the cash value of these sales, once they reach Western retail markets are in excess of 120 billion dollars a year.
(See also our detailed estimates for 2003 in The Spoils of War: Afghanistan's Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade, by Michel Chossudovsky, The UNODC estimates the average retail price of heroin for 2004 to be of the order of $157 per gram, based on the average purity ratio).
Narcotics: Second to Oil and the Arms Trade
The foregoing estimates are consistent with the UN's assessment concerning the size and magnitude of the global drug trade.
The Afghan trade in opiates (92 percent of total World production of opiates) constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion.
(Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000).
Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes "the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade." (The Independent, 29 February 2004).
Afghanistan and Colombia (together with Bolivia and Peru) consitute the largest drug producing economies in the world, which feed a flourishing criminal economy. These countries are heavily militarized. The drug trade is protected. Amply documented the CIA has played a central role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.
The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003).
A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics, one third of which is tied to the Golden Crescent opium triangle.
Michel Chossudovsky is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
US Health System Ranks Last Compared to Other Countries
WASHINGTON - The US health care system ranks last among other major rich countries for quality, access and efficiency, according to two studies released Tuesday by a health care think tank.
The studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that the United States, which has the most expensive health system in the world, underperforms consistently relative to other countries and differs most notably in the fact that Americans have no universal health insurance coverage.
"The United States stands out as the only nation in these studies that does not ensure access to health care through universal coverage and promotion of a 'medical home' for patients," said Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis.
"Our failure to ensure health insurance for all and encourage stable, long-term ties between physicians and patients shows in our poor performance on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and health outcomes."
In "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care", the study focused on interviews with physicians and patients in Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United States who were asked to speak about their experiences and views on their health systems.
The US ranked last in most areas, including access to health care, patient safety, timeliness of care, efficiency and equity. Americans were also last in terms of whether they had a regular physician.
"The US spends twice what the average industrialized country spends on health care but we're clearly not getting value for the money," Davis told AFP.
She also noted that 45 million Americans, or 15 percent of the US population, have no health insurance, which contributes to the country's medical woes.
The United States is also far behind in adopting modern health information technology, which translates into spiralling costs and poor care.
"We pride ourselves on being advanced on so many areas of technology but it's not the case on health information technology," Davis said. "Other countries have just moved ahead."
Britain got the top score in overall ranking among the countries in the study, followed by Germany. New Zealand and Australia tied for third followed by Canada and the United States.
The second study delves into why health costs in the United States are so much higher than in eight other countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
The study, "Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data," found that even though the US spends the most on publicly and privately financed health insurance, its citizens had the most potential years of life lost due to circulatory and respiratory diseases as well as diabetes.
"This study blows a lot of myths about the US health system," Davis said. "We spend three times what the average country spends on a day of hospital care and we also spend twice what the average country spends on prescription medication."
Health care is likely to be a prominent issue in the 2008 US presidential elections with various candidates already promising to tackle rising costs and the burden placed on big business to provide health insurance.
The studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that the United States, which has the most expensive health system in the world, underperforms consistently relative to other countries and differs most notably in the fact that Americans have no universal health insurance coverage.
"The United States stands out as the only nation in these studies that does not ensure access to health care through universal coverage and promotion of a 'medical home' for patients," said Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis.
"Our failure to ensure health insurance for all and encourage stable, long-term ties between physicians and patients shows in our poor performance on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and health outcomes."
In "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care", the study focused on interviews with physicians and patients in Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United States who were asked to speak about their experiences and views on their health systems.
The US ranked last in most areas, including access to health care, patient safety, timeliness of care, efficiency and equity. Americans were also last in terms of whether they had a regular physician.
"The US spends twice what the average industrialized country spends on health care but we're clearly not getting value for the money," Davis told AFP.
She also noted that 45 million Americans, or 15 percent of the US population, have no health insurance, which contributes to the country's medical woes.
The United States is also far behind in adopting modern health information technology, which translates into spiralling costs and poor care.
"We pride ourselves on being advanced on so many areas of technology but it's not the case on health information technology," Davis said. "Other countries have just moved ahead."
Britain got the top score in overall ranking among the countries in the study, followed by Germany. New Zealand and Australia tied for third followed by Canada and the United States.
The second study delves into why health costs in the United States are so much higher than in eight other countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and New Zealand.
The study, "Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data," found that even though the US spends the most on publicly and privately financed health insurance, its citizens had the most potential years of life lost due to circulatory and respiratory diseases as well as diabetes.
"This study blows a lot of myths about the US health system," Davis said. "We spend three times what the average country spends on a day of hospital care and we also spend twice what the average country spends on prescription medication."
Health care is likely to be a prominent issue in the 2008 US presidential elections with various candidates already promising to tackle rising costs and the burden placed on big business to provide health insurance.
Cuba asks UN to circulate official protest on Posada’s release
CUBA has asked the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council to circulate, as an official document among their members, a statement protesting the release in the United States of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.
In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Cuban Ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca affirms that “an authority of the United States justice system dismissed, on May 8, all charges brought against that terrorist and freed him.”
Cuba holds the U.S. government responsible for that ruling, which is further evidence of the double standard applied by that country in its so-called “war on terrorism,” states the letter, summed up by Prensa Latina.
It adds that the decision to not classify this individual as a terrorist is not only a violation of U.S. law by the U.S. government itself, it also clearly fails to comply with commitments made via international agreements and treaties.
Malmierca reiterated that freeing Posada Carriles is a violation of pertinent resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council.
The Cuban ambassador issued his most energetic condemnation of this latest maneuver, which he described as an insult to the Cuban people, and the victims and family members of the detestable terrorist act against a Cuban civilian airliner, which killed 73 innocent people.
He expressly requested the secretary-general to circulate that letter and its appendix with the statement by the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba, dated May 9, 2007, as an official document of the General Assembly’s 61st Session.
The circulation of the document is in accordance with items 66, 80 and 100 of the current session period.
Those items deal with, respectively, the right of nations to self-determination, the rule of law nationally and internationally and measures to eliminate international terrorism.
Malmierca also requested for Havana’s statement to be circulated as an official document.
Translated by Granma International
In a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, Cuban Ambassador Rodrigo Malmierca affirms that “an authority of the United States justice system dismissed, on May 8, all charges brought against that terrorist and freed him.”
Cuba holds the U.S. government responsible for that ruling, which is further evidence of the double standard applied by that country in its so-called “war on terrorism,” states the letter, summed up by Prensa Latina.
It adds that the decision to not classify this individual as a terrorist is not only a violation of U.S. law by the U.S. government itself, it also clearly fails to comply with commitments made via international agreements and treaties.
Malmierca reiterated that freeing Posada Carriles is a violation of pertinent resolutions of the General Assembly and the Security Council.
The Cuban ambassador issued his most energetic condemnation of this latest maneuver, which he described as an insult to the Cuban people, and the victims and family members of the detestable terrorist act against a Cuban civilian airliner, which killed 73 innocent people.
He expressly requested the secretary-general to circulate that letter and its appendix with the statement by the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba, dated May 9, 2007, as an official document of the General Assembly’s 61st Session.
The circulation of the document is in accordance with items 66, 80 and 100 of the current session period.
Those items deal with, respectively, the right of nations to self-determination, the rule of law nationally and internationally and measures to eliminate international terrorism.
Malmierca also requested for Havana’s statement to be circulated as an official document.
Translated by Granma International
Noam Chomsky on Recent Developments in Venezuela
By: Kabir Joshi-Vijayan and Matthew Skogstad-Stubbs
Kabir Joshi-Vijayan and Matthew Skogstad-Stubbs: A friend, returning from Caracas, described a bus attempting to scale a mountain, gradually making its way up the slope, frequently stalling or stopping as the engine sputtered, but eventually reaching the summit. It reminded him of the Venezuelan revolutionary process. Why don’t we begin today by describing both the process and the impact that the Bolivarian revolution of today has had. Could you lay out how the Venezuelan society, and the daily life of its people, has changed since Chavez’s inauguration in 1999.
Noam Chomsky: There have been some changes. I don’t think they’re dramatic. This is probably the first time in Venezuelan history that there’s a government that’s making more than gestures towards using its huge resources to help the poorer parts of the population. This is mostly towards health, education, cooperatives and so on. Just how great the impact is it’s pretty hard to say. But certainly we know the popular reaction to them, which is after all the most important question. What’s important is not what we think about it, but what Venezuelans think about it. And that’s pretty well known. There are pretty good polling agencies in Latin America, the main one is Latinobarometro, which is in Chile. Very respected organization. There are similar polls in the United States in less detail. They monitor attitudes throughout Latin America on all sorts of crucial issues. The most recent one in Chile, in December, found - as earlier ones have - support for democracy and support for the government have been rising very sharply in Venezuela since 1998. Venezuela is now essentially tied with Uruguay at the top in support for the government and support for democracy. It’s well ahead of the other Latin American countries in support for the economic policies of the government and also well ahead in the belief that the policies help the poor, meaning the huge majority, instead of elites. And there are similar judgments on other issues, and as I say it has been rising rather sharply... Despite the obstacles there has been a degree of progress that has been considered by the population as very meaningful, and that’s the best measure.
With the announcement of the creation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, PSUV, and the acceleration in their attempted appropriation of various services and companies, can you predict the maturing of this revolution?
It’s not easy to say. There are conflicting tendencies, and the question for Venezuela is which one will prevail. There are democratizing tendencies, devolution of power, popular assemblies, communities taking control of their own budgets, workplace cooperatives and so on. All of that is building towards democracy. There are also authoritarian tendencies: centralization, charismatic figure, and so on. These policies in themselves you can’t really judge in which direction they’ll go. For a country to control its own resources is certainly perfectly reasonable.
Take, say Chile, which is considered the poster-boy of democratic capitalism, the advocate of the free-market, and so on and so forth. That’s the standard party line. More or less suppressed in this story is that Chile’s major export is copper - that’s its main source of income - and the world’s largest copper producer, CODELCO, is in Chile, and it happens to be nationalized. It was nationalized by Allende, and it’s still nationalized. There are also private producers. CODELCO, the government producer, provides probably ten times as much revenue to the state as the private ones, which send the revenue abroad. And that funds what there is of Chilean social programs, and so on. And many other countries control their own resources. It’s taken for granted. So if Venezuela takes greater control of its own resources, that could be a very positive development. On the other hand, it might not be. So for example, when Saudi Arabia nationalized its oil in the 1970s, that did mean that they were controlling their own oil instead of foreign corporations - mainly ARAMCO - which is to the good. On the other hand it’s in the hands of a pretty harsh tyranny. Washington’s major and most valued ally in the region, which is a pretty brutal tyranny and the most extreme Islamist fundamentalist state in the world. So the story depends on how the resources are used.
Mercosur, the common market of the southern cone, is a group that boasts the largest economies of South America. It is founded on free-market style arrangements, like NAFTA, and does not seem to be leaning towards any alternative to the prevailing neoliberal doctrine. Could you comment on the organization?
Mercosur for the moment is more of a hope than an actuality. It has plans, and has made some steps. The latest Mercosur meeting was actually in Brazil, this past December, and it did lay plans along with the meeting of Latin American leaders in Cochabamba. They’re sort of making plans for a European Union type federation. This is extremely important, historically the Latin American countries have been very much separated from one another, oriented towards the imperial power that happened to be dominant, most recently the United States. Separated from one another there was no integration in Latin America, and moves towards integration are very significant, and they’re just beginning really in a serious way. Mercosur is part of it, Cochabamba meetings are another step, and there are other steps. Integration is a powerful step towards maintaining sovereignty and independence. When countries are separated from one another they can kind of be picked off, either by force or by economic strangulation. If they integrate and cooperate, they’re much more free from external control, meaning U.S. control in the last half-century - but it goes back much farther than that.
So that’s an important step, but there are barriers. One barrier is that there is also a desperate need in Latin America for internal integration. Each of the countries has a very sharp divide between a small wealthy Europeanized, mostly white, elite, and a huge mass of deeply impoverished people, usually indian, black and mestizos. The race correlation isn’t perfect, but it’s a correlation. Latin America has some of the worst inequality in the world, and those problems are also beginning to be overcome. There’s a long way to go, but there are steps towards them. In Venezuela, in Bolivia, to some extent in Brazil, in Argentina, and not much elsewhere for the moment. Maybe Ecuador, with the new government. But both the internal integration and the external integration among the countries, these are quite important steps, and it’s really the first time since the Spanish colonization 500 years ago, so that’s of some significance.
Let’s return to some of the criticisms of authoritarianism that have followed term extensions and the recent so-called enabling law.
Well those laws were passed by the parliament. The parliament happens to be almost completely dominated by Chavez, but the reason for that is that the opposition refuses to take part. Probably under U.S. pressure. I don’t like those laws myself. How they turn out depends on popular pressures. They could be steps towards authoritarianism. They could be steps towards implementing constructive programs. It’s not for us to say, it’s for the Venezuelan people to say, and we know their opinion very well.
Oil wealth in Venezuela has given the country the opportunity to extend aid to poor communities in the West, including New York and London, and it has allowed it to buy up the debt of Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador. Could you speak to the uses that Venezuela has put its oil wealth.
Let’s begin with its aid to the West, which is a little ironic. But there’s a little bit of background to that. It began with a program right here in Boston, where I am. What happened is that a group of Senators approached the 8 major energy corporations and asked if they could provide short-term assistance to poor people in the United States, to get through the harsh winter, when they were unable to pay their oil bills because of the high oil prices. They got one response, from Citgo, the Venezuelan owned company, and that one company did indeed provide temporary low-cost oil in Boston, then the Bronx in New York and elsewhere, to survive the harsh winter. That’s the Western aid. So there’s more to it than just Chavez giving aid.
As for the rest, yes Chavez did buy up a quarter, or a third of the debt of Argentina. That was an effort to help Argentina rid themselves of the IMF, as the President of Argentina put it. The IMF, which is sort of an off-shoot of the US Treasury Department, has had a shattering effect in Latin America. Its programs have been followed more rigorously in Latin America than any other part of the world outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, and they’ve been a disaster. So take say Bolivia. They’ve been following IMF policies for 25 years, and at the end per-capita income is lower than it was in the beginning. Argentina was the poster-child of the IMF. It was marvelous, it was doing all the things right, they were urging everyone else to follow the same policies, same for the World Bank and the US Treasury Department. Well what happened is it led to a total economic catastrophe. Argentina did manage to get out of the catastrophe by radically violating IMF rules, and they determined to rid themselves of the IMF, as Kirchner put it, and Venezuela helped them. Brazil was doing the same thing in its own way and now Bolivia is doing it with Venezuelan help. The IMF is in fact in trouble because it’s financing came largely from debt collection and if the countries refuse to accept it’s borrowing because the policies are too harmful, well it’s not clear what they’re going to do.
There was also Petrocaribe. A program to provide oil on favorable terms, with delayed payment, to many of the Caribbean countries as well to some others. Another program was called Operation Miracle. It uses Venezuelan funding to send Cuban doctors - Cuban doctors are very highly trained, they have a very advanced medical system, comparable to the first-world systems - to places like Jamaica, and other countries of the region. It began by finding people who are blind, have completely lost vision, but could be surgically treated to recover vision, and they are identified by Cuban doctors, brought back to Cuba, and treated with their high-class medical facilities, and returned to their countries able to see. That leaves an impression.
There was some effort apparently by the United States and Mexico to do something similar, but it never got anywhere. In fact, the impact of Chavez’s programs can be seen very clearly by George Bush’s last trip. The press talked about his new shift of programs towards Latin America, but what actually happened if you look, is that Bush was picking up some of Chavez’s rhetoric. That’s the wonderful new programs. Picking up some of the rhetoric of Chavez, but not implementing it. Or barely implementing it.
The interview was conducted March 16th.
Kabir Joshi-Vijayan and Matthew Skogstad-Stubbs: A friend, returning from Caracas, described a bus attempting to scale a mountain, gradually making its way up the slope, frequently stalling or stopping as the engine sputtered, but eventually reaching the summit. It reminded him of the Venezuelan revolutionary process. Why don’t we begin today by describing both the process and the impact that the Bolivarian revolution of today has had. Could you lay out how the Venezuelan society, and the daily life of its people, has changed since Chavez’s inauguration in 1999.
Noam Chomsky: There have been some changes. I don’t think they’re dramatic. This is probably the first time in Venezuelan history that there’s a government that’s making more than gestures towards using its huge resources to help the poorer parts of the population. This is mostly towards health, education, cooperatives and so on. Just how great the impact is it’s pretty hard to say. But certainly we know the popular reaction to them, which is after all the most important question. What’s important is not what we think about it, but what Venezuelans think about it. And that’s pretty well known. There are pretty good polling agencies in Latin America, the main one is Latinobarometro, which is in Chile. Very respected organization. There are similar polls in the United States in less detail. They monitor attitudes throughout Latin America on all sorts of crucial issues. The most recent one in Chile, in December, found - as earlier ones have - support for democracy and support for the government have been rising very sharply in Venezuela since 1998. Venezuela is now essentially tied with Uruguay at the top in support for the government and support for democracy. It’s well ahead of the other Latin American countries in support for the economic policies of the government and also well ahead in the belief that the policies help the poor, meaning the huge majority, instead of elites. And there are similar judgments on other issues, and as I say it has been rising rather sharply... Despite the obstacles there has been a degree of progress that has been considered by the population as very meaningful, and that’s the best measure.
With the announcement of the creation of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, PSUV, and the acceleration in their attempted appropriation of various services and companies, can you predict the maturing of this revolution?
It’s not easy to say. There are conflicting tendencies, and the question for Venezuela is which one will prevail. There are democratizing tendencies, devolution of power, popular assemblies, communities taking control of their own budgets, workplace cooperatives and so on. All of that is building towards democracy. There are also authoritarian tendencies: centralization, charismatic figure, and so on. These policies in themselves you can’t really judge in which direction they’ll go. For a country to control its own resources is certainly perfectly reasonable.
Take, say Chile, which is considered the poster-boy of democratic capitalism, the advocate of the free-market, and so on and so forth. That’s the standard party line. More or less suppressed in this story is that Chile’s major export is copper - that’s its main source of income - and the world’s largest copper producer, CODELCO, is in Chile, and it happens to be nationalized. It was nationalized by Allende, and it’s still nationalized. There are also private producers. CODELCO, the government producer, provides probably ten times as much revenue to the state as the private ones, which send the revenue abroad. And that funds what there is of Chilean social programs, and so on. And many other countries control their own resources. It’s taken for granted. So if Venezuela takes greater control of its own resources, that could be a very positive development. On the other hand, it might not be. So for example, when Saudi Arabia nationalized its oil in the 1970s, that did mean that they were controlling their own oil instead of foreign corporations - mainly ARAMCO - which is to the good. On the other hand it’s in the hands of a pretty harsh tyranny. Washington’s major and most valued ally in the region, which is a pretty brutal tyranny and the most extreme Islamist fundamentalist state in the world. So the story depends on how the resources are used.
Mercosur, the common market of the southern cone, is a group that boasts the largest economies of South America. It is founded on free-market style arrangements, like NAFTA, and does not seem to be leaning towards any alternative to the prevailing neoliberal doctrine. Could you comment on the organization?
Mercosur for the moment is more of a hope than an actuality. It has plans, and has made some steps. The latest Mercosur meeting was actually in Brazil, this past December, and it did lay plans along with the meeting of Latin American leaders in Cochabamba. They’re sort of making plans for a European Union type federation. This is extremely important, historically the Latin American countries have been very much separated from one another, oriented towards the imperial power that happened to be dominant, most recently the United States. Separated from one another there was no integration in Latin America, and moves towards integration are very significant, and they’re just beginning really in a serious way. Mercosur is part of it, Cochabamba meetings are another step, and there are other steps. Integration is a powerful step towards maintaining sovereignty and independence. When countries are separated from one another they can kind of be picked off, either by force or by economic strangulation. If they integrate and cooperate, they’re much more free from external control, meaning U.S. control in the last half-century - but it goes back much farther than that.
So that’s an important step, but there are barriers. One barrier is that there is also a desperate need in Latin America for internal integration. Each of the countries has a very sharp divide between a small wealthy Europeanized, mostly white, elite, and a huge mass of deeply impoverished people, usually indian, black and mestizos. The race correlation isn’t perfect, but it’s a correlation. Latin America has some of the worst inequality in the world, and those problems are also beginning to be overcome. There’s a long way to go, but there are steps towards them. In Venezuela, in Bolivia, to some extent in Brazil, in Argentina, and not much elsewhere for the moment. Maybe Ecuador, with the new government. But both the internal integration and the external integration among the countries, these are quite important steps, and it’s really the first time since the Spanish colonization 500 years ago, so that’s of some significance.
Let’s return to some of the criticisms of authoritarianism that have followed term extensions and the recent so-called enabling law.
Well those laws were passed by the parliament. The parliament happens to be almost completely dominated by Chavez, but the reason for that is that the opposition refuses to take part. Probably under U.S. pressure. I don’t like those laws myself. How they turn out depends on popular pressures. They could be steps towards authoritarianism. They could be steps towards implementing constructive programs. It’s not for us to say, it’s for the Venezuelan people to say, and we know their opinion very well.
Oil wealth in Venezuela has given the country the opportunity to extend aid to poor communities in the West, including New York and London, and it has allowed it to buy up the debt of Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador. Could you speak to the uses that Venezuela has put its oil wealth.
Let’s begin with its aid to the West, which is a little ironic. But there’s a little bit of background to that. It began with a program right here in Boston, where I am. What happened is that a group of Senators approached the 8 major energy corporations and asked if they could provide short-term assistance to poor people in the United States, to get through the harsh winter, when they were unable to pay their oil bills because of the high oil prices. They got one response, from Citgo, the Venezuelan owned company, and that one company did indeed provide temporary low-cost oil in Boston, then the Bronx in New York and elsewhere, to survive the harsh winter. That’s the Western aid. So there’s more to it than just Chavez giving aid.
As for the rest, yes Chavez did buy up a quarter, or a third of the debt of Argentina. That was an effort to help Argentina rid themselves of the IMF, as the President of Argentina put it. The IMF, which is sort of an off-shoot of the US Treasury Department, has had a shattering effect in Latin America. Its programs have been followed more rigorously in Latin America than any other part of the world outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, and they’ve been a disaster. So take say Bolivia. They’ve been following IMF policies for 25 years, and at the end per-capita income is lower than it was in the beginning. Argentina was the poster-child of the IMF. It was marvelous, it was doing all the things right, they were urging everyone else to follow the same policies, same for the World Bank and the US Treasury Department. Well what happened is it led to a total economic catastrophe. Argentina did manage to get out of the catastrophe by radically violating IMF rules, and they determined to rid themselves of the IMF, as Kirchner put it, and Venezuela helped them. Brazil was doing the same thing in its own way and now Bolivia is doing it with Venezuelan help. The IMF is in fact in trouble because it’s financing came largely from debt collection and if the countries refuse to accept it’s borrowing because the policies are too harmful, well it’s not clear what they’re going to do.
There was also Petrocaribe. A program to provide oil on favorable terms, with delayed payment, to many of the Caribbean countries as well to some others. Another program was called Operation Miracle. It uses Venezuelan funding to send Cuban doctors - Cuban doctors are very highly trained, they have a very advanced medical system, comparable to the first-world systems - to places like Jamaica, and other countries of the region. It began by finding people who are blind, have completely lost vision, but could be surgically treated to recover vision, and they are identified by Cuban doctors, brought back to Cuba, and treated with their high-class medical facilities, and returned to their countries able to see. That leaves an impression.
There was some effort apparently by the United States and Mexico to do something similar, but it never got anywhere. In fact, the impact of Chavez’s programs can be seen very clearly by George Bush’s last trip. The press talked about his new shift of programs towards Latin America, but what actually happened if you look, is that Bush was picking up some of Chavez’s rhetoric. That’s the wonderful new programs. Picking up some of the rhetoric of Chavez, but not implementing it. Or barely implementing it.
The interview was conducted March 16th.
9/11 Toxic Dust: Official Who Knowingly Lied Refuses To Testify
Whitman in the frame to take the fall for Guiliani, Rice and The White House
The former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who knowingly lied and signed off on falsified scientific research on the toxicity of the air in the aftermath of 9/11, has refused a request by Rep. Jerrold Nadler that she testify before a congressional hearing on the federal government's response to be tabled later this month.
The New York Sun today reported:
Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA administrator at the time, has declined an invitation to appear before a House subcommittee that Mr. Nadler chairs, an aide to the congressman said yesterday. Mr. Nadler, whose district includes ground zero, is expected to ask Ms. Whitman again before considering whether to seek to compel her testimony with a subpoena, the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.
Yesterday we reported on the fact that Hillary Clinton had announced, along with New York Congressman Jerry Nadler, D-NY, that she will chair the probe looking into the federal government's response and environmental clean-up efforts in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Clinton/ Nadler press release stated that one intention of the probe was to take a close look at the EPA's inadequate program to test and clean residential areas in Manhattan.
Part of the press release stated:
In a recent decision, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found that former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman's falsely reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the September 11, 2001 attacks were "without question conscience-shocking." The court also found the facts "support an allegation of a violation of the substantive due process right to be free from official government policies that increase the risk of bodily harm" by Whitman's misstatements regarding the air quality of the affected area. An EPA Inspector General review reached similar conclusions.
An AP report last month on these legal findings was posted last month and can be read here.
We have postulated that the left arm of the Washington power elite will be unlikely to fully expose the reality of the monumental criminal culpability of the Bush Administration on this particular issue, but will instead seek to once again close off the issue. Indeed it seems that Whitman is in the frame to take the fall and once cover the behinds of the ever increasingly unaccountable Neocon crime syndicate in the White House.
In August 2003 it was revealed that the Government ordered the EPA to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers on September 12 it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available and Asbestos levels were known to be three times higher than national standards.
Further documents were obtained by CBS news last September, revealing that Lower Manhattan was reopened a few weeks following the attack even though the air was not safe.
The two devastating memos, written by the U.S. and local governments, show they knew. They knew the toxic soup created at Ground Zero was a deadly health hazard. Yet they sent workers into the pit and people back into their homes.
"Not only did they know it was unsafe, they didn't heed the words of more experienced people that worked for the city and E.P.A.," said Joel Kupferman, with the group Environmental Justice Project.
An EPA whistleblower, Dr. Cate Jenkins then wrote a letter to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and other members of the New York congressional delegation blasting the EPA for hiding dangerous toxins from Ground Zero workers in the aftermath of 9/11.
The Letter claimed that EPA-funded research on the toxicity of breathable alkaline dust at the site “falsified pH results” to make the substance appear benign, when it was, in reality, corrosive enough to cause first responders and other workers in lower Manhattan to later lose pulmonary functions and, in some cases, to die.
In an even more shocking development it was revealed that Whitman apparently had financial interests in reassuring the public that all was well and that lower Manhattan could safely be reoccupied.
In a New York Post piece which has since been memory holed, but that was reported on here, these facts became clearly evident:
Meanwhile, Whitman's newly released financial-disclosure forms show that she said seven months before 9/11 that she would not get involved in any issue related to the finances of the Port Authority - which owns the WTC site - because she or her family owned PA bonds. Its finances could be impacted by lawsuits growing of the cleanup.
"I understand the following interests that belong to me, my spouse or my children present a conflict of interest," Whitman wrote at the time. She then listed various investments, including the bistate agency.
But Whitman was involved at Ground Zero despite that refusal, although she or her family also owned shares of Citigroup, whose insurance-company subsidiary, The Travelers, paid out hundred of millions of dollars in claims to downtown residents displaced by the attacks.
Not surprising then that Whitman does not want to testify. She is totally compromised and clearly in very deep trouble. Congressman Nadler himself blasted Whitman when this was revealed stating:
"She conspired [with the White House] to convince people to go into an unsafe environment . . . For that, she ought to be prosecuted," Nadler said. "People are dead because of her."
However, it must be remembered that Whitman and the EPA are accountable to the White House and act under the direct authority of the Bush Administration.
It was the 2003 EPA Inspector General's investigation that revealed that it was the White House that had pressured EPA into changing its press releases to add more "reassuring" language.
The further memos revealed that Whitman conspired with the White House to falsely reassure New Yorkers that the air was safe.
The New York Post also reported on the fact that the internal documents show it was Condoleezza Rice's office that gave final approval to the infamous Environmental Protection Agency press releases days after 9/11 claiming the air around Ground Zero was "safe to breathe,".
Now Secretary of State, Rice was then head of the National Security Council - "the final decision maker" on EPA statements about lower Manhattan air quality, the documents say.
And it cannot be forgotten that Rudolph Guiliani, who was mayor at the time, also said repeatedly that the air was safe.
Furthermore it has been the Bush Administration that has PURPOSEFULLY blocked millions in health compensation programs for ground zero workers and continuously attempted to stonewall the issue because to do otherwise would be an admission of responsibility for exposure to harmful substances after the government had already given the all clear. It has been the Bush administration that has allowed 9/11 heroes to die while at the same time disgracefully using the event as a cart blanche excuse for their own criminal actions at home and abroad.
It seems Whitman knew immediately that she was being fingered as the ultimate scapegoat. When the new information broke last September, she was quick to blame the city for not forcing Ground Zero workers to wear respirators.
In a "60 Minutes" interview, Whitman maintained that the nation's leading environmental agency did not have authority to enforce rules at the site, though the agency did warn the city about dangers in the air at Ground Zero.
"We didn't have the authority to do that enforcement, but we communicated to the people who did," Whitman stressed.
A 2004 report by the Sierra Club however detailed gross malfeasance by EPA, FEMA, and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) and then suggested a cover-up of the public health hazards of Ground Zero ensued.
The report found that the EPA and FEMA, in concert with New York City's own health department, told families that they could clean up the contaminated dust themselves with wet rags. In fact, they actually discouraged area residents from wearing safety masks.
Some preliminary scientific studies have indicated that as many as 400,000 people were exposed to toxic ground zero dust. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of people have fallen ill, and several have died from lung ailments blamed on inhaled Trade Center ash.
Any probe into this issue that cannot establish these basic conclusions and pinpoint those at fault AT ALL LEVELS WITHIN THE GOVERNMENT will be highly suspicious. It is blatantly clear that not only Whitman and her EPA counterparts were complicit in a conspiracy and cover up the environmental hazards at ground zero, but also that high ranking officials with the Bush administration are also complicit.
It is also apparent from reports that Whitman had significant financial interests in the ground zero site, which should also be investigated in addition to the financial interests other officials complicit in this diabolical case also had before and after 9/11.
The Nadler's hearing is scheduled for May 22, Clinton's is set for June 20.
Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/05/17/2007-05-17_cluck_cluck_cluck_cluck.html
Wednesday, May 16th 2007, 7:30 PM
Christie Whitman is a coward. No other word will suffice. Rather than clearing the air (pun intended) over her post-9/11 performance as Environmental Protection Agency administrator, she is hiding behind her lawyer's briefs instead of answering a call to testify before Congress.
Whitman was invited to appear next week before Rep. Jerry Nadler's House judiciary subcommittee, which is investigating the federal "handling of air quality issues" after the terrorist attacks and possible violation of "due process rights" of people living and working downtown. She has demurred, through her attorney, who said it would be "inappropriate" if Whitman testified since there is 9/11-related litigation pending against her. Also because: "Gov. Whitman is not a lawyer and would be unlikely to assist the subcommittee on this subject."
And the dog ate her homework. And she stepped on a crack and broke her mother's back. And she suffers from the heartbreak of psoriasis.
In his column yesterday, Juan Gonzalez called attention to this dodging by Whitman, who should be thankful for the opportunity to defend herself and her agency. Unless, of course, their behavior was indefensible. She owes an awful lot of explaining to an awful lot of people, particularly first-responders who were sickened by Ground Zero air - and the families of other first-responders whose lung ailments proved fatal.
On Sept. 18, 2001, Whitman declared: "I'm glad to reassure the people of New York that their air is safe to breathe." She insists she distinguished between the ambient air downtown and the miasma at the pile, where workers were told to wear respirators. But not required.
In any case, that reassurance came before final air quality test results were in. So why was she reassuring? There's also the matter of EPA press releases fixed, fudged or cooked to add positive statements and delete cautionary advice - such fixing, fudging or cooking having been ferreted out by the EPA's inspector general. But this is just the tip of the airberg.
If Whitman has nothing to hide, she shouldn't be hiding.
Slap her with a subpoena.
The former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, who knowingly lied and signed off on falsified scientific research on the toxicity of the air in the aftermath of 9/11, has refused a request by Rep. Jerrold Nadler that she testify before a congressional hearing on the federal government's response to be tabled later this month.
The New York Sun today reported:
Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA administrator at the time, has declined an invitation to appear before a House subcommittee that Mr. Nadler chairs, an aide to the congressman said yesterday. Mr. Nadler, whose district includes ground zero, is expected to ask Ms. Whitman again before considering whether to seek to compel her testimony with a subpoena, the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.
Yesterday we reported on the fact that Hillary Clinton had announced, along with New York Congressman Jerry Nadler, D-NY, that she will chair the probe looking into the federal government's response and environmental clean-up efforts in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Clinton/ Nadler press release stated that one intention of the probe was to take a close look at the EPA's inadequate program to test and clean residential areas in Manhattan.
Part of the press release stated:
In a recent decision, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York found that former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman's falsely reassuring and misleading statements of safety after the September 11, 2001 attacks were "without question conscience-shocking." The court also found the facts "support an allegation of a violation of the substantive due process right to be free from official government policies that increase the risk of bodily harm" by Whitman's misstatements regarding the air quality of the affected area. An EPA Inspector General review reached similar conclusions.
An AP report last month on these legal findings was posted last month and can be read here.
We have postulated that the left arm of the Washington power elite will be unlikely to fully expose the reality of the monumental criminal culpability of the Bush Administration on this particular issue, but will instead seek to once again close off the issue. Indeed it seems that Whitman is in the frame to take the fall and once cover the behinds of the ever increasingly unaccountable Neocon crime syndicate in the White House.
In August 2003 it was revealed that the Government ordered the EPA to give the public misleading information, telling New Yorkers on September 12 it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available and Asbestos levels were known to be three times higher than national standards.
Further documents were obtained by CBS news last September, revealing that Lower Manhattan was reopened a few weeks following the attack even though the air was not safe.
The two devastating memos, written by the U.S. and local governments, show they knew. They knew the toxic soup created at Ground Zero was a deadly health hazard. Yet they sent workers into the pit and people back into their homes.
"Not only did they know it was unsafe, they didn't heed the words of more experienced people that worked for the city and E.P.A.," said Joel Kupferman, with the group Environmental Justice Project.
An EPA whistleblower, Dr. Cate Jenkins then wrote a letter to Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and other members of the New York congressional delegation blasting the EPA for hiding dangerous toxins from Ground Zero workers in the aftermath of 9/11.
The Letter claimed that EPA-funded research on the toxicity of breathable alkaline dust at the site “falsified pH results” to make the substance appear benign, when it was, in reality, corrosive enough to cause first responders and other workers in lower Manhattan to later lose pulmonary functions and, in some cases, to die.
In an even more shocking development it was revealed that Whitman apparently had financial interests in reassuring the public that all was well and that lower Manhattan could safely be reoccupied.
In a New York Post piece which has since been memory holed, but that was reported on here, these facts became clearly evident:
Meanwhile, Whitman's newly released financial-disclosure forms show that she said seven months before 9/11 that she would not get involved in any issue related to the finances of the Port Authority - which owns the WTC site - because she or her family owned PA bonds. Its finances could be impacted by lawsuits growing of the cleanup.
"I understand the following interests that belong to me, my spouse or my children present a conflict of interest," Whitman wrote at the time. She then listed various investments, including the bistate agency.
But Whitman was involved at Ground Zero despite that refusal, although she or her family also owned shares of Citigroup, whose insurance-company subsidiary, The Travelers, paid out hundred of millions of dollars in claims to downtown residents displaced by the attacks.
Not surprising then that Whitman does not want to testify. She is totally compromised and clearly in very deep trouble. Congressman Nadler himself blasted Whitman when this was revealed stating:
"She conspired [with the White House] to convince people to go into an unsafe environment . . . For that, she ought to be prosecuted," Nadler said. "People are dead because of her."
However, it must be remembered that Whitman and the EPA are accountable to the White House and act under the direct authority of the Bush Administration.
It was the 2003 EPA Inspector General's investigation that revealed that it was the White House that had pressured EPA into changing its press releases to add more "reassuring" language.
The further memos revealed that Whitman conspired with the White House to falsely reassure New Yorkers that the air was safe.
The New York Post also reported on the fact that the internal documents show it was Condoleezza Rice's office that gave final approval to the infamous Environmental Protection Agency press releases days after 9/11 claiming the air around Ground Zero was "safe to breathe,".
Now Secretary of State, Rice was then head of the National Security Council - "the final decision maker" on EPA statements about lower Manhattan air quality, the documents say.
And it cannot be forgotten that Rudolph Guiliani, who was mayor at the time, also said repeatedly that the air was safe.
Furthermore it has been the Bush Administration that has PURPOSEFULLY blocked millions in health compensation programs for ground zero workers and continuously attempted to stonewall the issue because to do otherwise would be an admission of responsibility for exposure to harmful substances after the government had already given the all clear. It has been the Bush administration that has allowed 9/11 heroes to die while at the same time disgracefully using the event as a cart blanche excuse for their own criminal actions at home and abroad.
It seems Whitman knew immediately that she was being fingered as the ultimate scapegoat. When the new information broke last September, she was quick to blame the city for not forcing Ground Zero workers to wear respirators.
In a "60 Minutes" interview, Whitman maintained that the nation's leading environmental agency did not have authority to enforce rules at the site, though the agency did warn the city about dangers in the air at Ground Zero.
"We didn't have the authority to do that enforcement, but we communicated to the people who did," Whitman stressed.
A 2004 report by the Sierra Club however detailed gross malfeasance by EPA, FEMA, and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) and then suggested a cover-up of the public health hazards of Ground Zero ensued.
The report found that the EPA and FEMA, in concert with New York City's own health department, told families that they could clean up the contaminated dust themselves with wet rags. In fact, they actually discouraged area residents from wearing safety masks.
Some preliminary scientific studies have indicated that as many as 400,000 people were exposed to toxic ground zero dust. Hundreds and perhaps thousands of people have fallen ill, and several have died from lung ailments blamed on inhaled Trade Center ash.
Any probe into this issue that cannot establish these basic conclusions and pinpoint those at fault AT ALL LEVELS WITHIN THE GOVERNMENT will be highly suspicious. It is blatantly clear that not only Whitman and her EPA counterparts were complicit in a conspiracy and cover up the environmental hazards at ground zero, but also that high ranking officials with the Bush administration are also complicit.
It is also apparent from reports that Whitman had significant financial interests in the ground zero site, which should also be investigated in addition to the financial interests other officials complicit in this diabolical case also had before and after 9/11.
The Nadler's hearing is scheduled for May 22, Clinton's is set for June 20.
Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/05/17/2007-05-17_cluck_cluck_cluck_cluck.html
Wednesday, May 16th 2007, 7:30 PM
Christie Whitman is a coward. No other word will suffice. Rather than clearing the air (pun intended) over her post-9/11 performance as Environmental Protection Agency administrator, she is hiding behind her lawyer's briefs instead of answering a call to testify before Congress.
Whitman was invited to appear next week before Rep. Jerry Nadler's House judiciary subcommittee, which is investigating the federal "handling of air quality issues" after the terrorist attacks and possible violation of "due process rights" of people living and working downtown. She has demurred, through her attorney, who said it would be "inappropriate" if Whitman testified since there is 9/11-related litigation pending against her. Also because: "Gov. Whitman is not a lawyer and would be unlikely to assist the subcommittee on this subject."
And the dog ate her homework. And she stepped on a crack and broke her mother's back. And she suffers from the heartbreak of psoriasis.
In his column yesterday, Juan Gonzalez called attention to this dodging by Whitman, who should be thankful for the opportunity to defend herself and her agency. Unless, of course, their behavior was indefensible. She owes an awful lot of explaining to an awful lot of people, particularly first-responders who were sickened by Ground Zero air - and the families of other first-responders whose lung ailments proved fatal.
On Sept. 18, 2001, Whitman declared: "I'm glad to reassure the people of New York that their air is safe to breathe." She insists she distinguished between the ambient air downtown and the miasma at the pile, where workers were told to wear respirators. But not required.
In any case, that reassurance came before final air quality test results were in. So why was she reassuring? There's also the matter of EPA press releases fixed, fudged or cooked to add positive statements and delete cautionary advice - such fixing, fudging or cooking having been ferreted out by the EPA's inspector general. But this is just the tip of the airberg.
If Whitman has nothing to hide, she shouldn't be hiding.
Slap her with a subpoena.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light on US Air War
by Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan; Japan Focus; May 12, 2007
United States bombings in Afghanistan have "given a propaganda windfall to the Taliban." [1] Is history repeating itself? In 1975, Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge forces took power in Cambodia after a massive U.S. bombing campaign there. New information reveals that Cambodia was bombed far more heavily during the Vietnam War than previously believed -- and that the bombing began not under Richard Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson.
In the fall of 2000, twenty-five years after the end of the war in Indochina, Bill Clinton became the first US president since Richard Nixon to visit Vietnam. While media coverage of the trip was dominated by talk of some two thousand US soldiers still classified as missing in action, a small act of great historical importance went almost unnoticed. As a humanitarian gesture, Clinton released extensive Air Force data on all American bombings of Indochina between 1964 and 1975. Recorded using a groundbreaking IBM-designed system, the database provided extensive information on sorties conducted over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Clinton's gift was intended to assist in the search for unexploded ordnance left behind during the carpet bombing of the region. Littering the countryside, often submerged under farmland, this ordnance remains a significant humanitarian concern.
It has maimed and killed farmers, and rendered valuable land all but unusable. Development and de-mining organizations have put the Air Force data to good use over the past six years, but have done so without noting its full implications, which turn out to be staggering.
The Bombing Database
The still-incomplete database (it has several "dark" periods) reveals that from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941 tons' worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having "unknown" targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all. Even if the latter may arguably be oversights, the former suggest explicit knowledge of indiscretion. The database also shows that the bombing began four years earlier than is widely believed -- not under Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson. The impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a coup d'état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately the Cambodian genocide. The data demonstrates that the way a country chooses to exit a conflict can have disastrous consequences. It therefore speaks to contemporary warfare as well, including US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite many differences, a critical similarity links the war in Iraq with the Cambodian conflict: an increasing reliance on air power to battle a heterogeneous, volatile insurgency.
"We heard a terrifying noise which shook the ground; it was as if the earth trembled, rose up and opened beneath our feet. Enormous explosions lit up the sky like huge bolts of lightning; it was the American B-52s."
-- Cambodian bombing survivor, Kampong Thom
On December 9, 1970, US President Richard Nixon telephoned his national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to discuss the ongoing bombing of Cambodia. This sideshow to the war in Vietnam, begun in 1965 under the Johnson administration, had already seen 475,515 tons of ordnance dropped on Cambodia, which had been a neutral kingdom until nine months before the phone call, when pro-US General Lon Nol seized power. The first intense series of bombings, the Menu campaign on Vietnamese targets in Cambodia's border areas -- which American commanders labeled Breakfast, Lunch, Supper, Dinner, Dessert, and Snack -- had concluded in May, 1970 shortly after the coup.
Nixon was facing growing congressional opposition to his Indochina policy. A joint US–South Vietnam ground invasion of Cambodia in May and June of 1970 had failed to root out Vietnamese Communists, and Nixon now wanted to covertly escalate the air attacks, which were aimed at destroying the mobile headquarters of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army (vc/nva) in the Cambodian jungle. After telling Kissinger that the US Air Force was being unimaginative, Nixon demanded more bombing, deeper into the country: "They have got to go in there and I mean really go in . . . I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out of them. There is no limitation on mileage and there is no limitation on budget. Is that clear?"
Kissinger knew that this order ignored Nixon's promise to Congress that US planes would remain within thirty kilometres of the Vietnamese border, his own assurances to the public that bombing would not take place within a kilometre of any village, and military assessments stating that air strikes were like poking a beehive with a stick. He responded hesitantly: "The problem is, Mr. President, the Air Force is designed to fight an air battle against the Soviet Union. They are not designed for this war . . . in fact, they are not designed for any war we are likely to have to fight."
"Anything that flies, on anything that moves"
Five minutes after his conversation with Nixon ended, Kissinger called General Alexander Haig to relay the new orders from the president: "He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything. It's an order, it's to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?" The response from Haig, barely audible on tape, sounds like laughter.
The US bombing of Cambodia remains a divisive and iconic topic. It was a mobilizing issue for the antiwar movement and is still cited regularly as an example of American war crimes. Writers such as Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens, and William Shawcross condemned the bombing and the foreign policy it symbolized.
In the years since the Vietnam War, something of a consensus has emerged on the extent of US involvement in Cambodia. The details are controversial, but the narrative begins on March 18, 1969, when the United States launched the Menu campaign. The joint US–South Vietnam ground offensive followed. For the next three years, the United States continued with air strikes under Nixon's orders, hitting deep inside Cambodia's borders, first to root out the Viet Cong (VC)/North Vietnam Army (NVA) and later to protect the Lon Nol regime from growing numbers of Cambodian Communist forces. Congress cut funding for the war and imposed an end to the bombing on August 15, 1973, amid calls for Nixon's impeachment for his deceit in escalating the campaign.
The Secret Bombing of 1965
Thanks to the Air Force database, we now know that the US bombardment started three-and-a-half years earlier, in 1965, under the Johnson administration. What happened in 1969 was not the start of bombings in Cambodia but the escalation into carpetbombing. From 1965 to 1968, 2,565 sorties took place over Cambodia, with 214 tons of bombs dropped. These early strikes were likely designed to support the nearly two thousand secret ground incursions conducted by the CIA and US Special Forces during that period. B-52s -- long range bombers capable of carrying very heavy loads -- were not deployed, whether out of concern for Cambodian lives or the country's neutrality, or because carpet bombing was believed to be of limited strategic value.
Nixon decided on a different course, and beginning in 1969 the Air Force deployed B-52s over Cambodia. The new rationale for the bombings was that they would keep enemy forces at bay long enough to allow the United States to withdraw from Vietnam. Former US General Theodore Mataxis depicted the move as "a holding action . . . . The troika's going down the road and the wolves are closing in, and so you throw them something off and let them chew it." The result was that Cambodians essentially became cannon fodder to protect American lives.
The last phase of the bombing, from February to August 1973, was designed to stop the Khmer Rouge's advance on the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. The United States, fearing that the first Southeast Asian domino was about to fall, began a massive escalation of the air war -- an unprecedented B-52 bombardment that focused on the heavily populated area around Phnom Penh but left few regions of the country untouched. The extent of this bombardment has only now come to light.
Exceeding the World War II Payload
The data released by Clinton shows the total payload dropped during these years to be nearly five times greater than the generally accepted figure. To put the revised total of 2,756,941 tons into perspective, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during all of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 15,000 and 20,000 tons, respectively. Cambodia may well be the most heavily bombed country in history.
A single B-52d "Big Belly" payload consists of up to 108 225-kilogram or 42 340-kilogram bombs, which are dropped on a target area of approximately 500 by 1,500 metres. In many cases, Cambodian villages were hit with dozens of payloads over the course of several hours. The result was near-total destruction. One US official stated at the time, "We had been told, as had everybody . . . that those carpetbombing attacks by B-52s were totally devastating, that nothing could survive." Previously, it was estimated that between 50,000 and 150,000 Cambodian civilians were killed by the bombing. Given the fivefold increase in tonnage revealed by the database, the number of casualties is surely higher.
The Cambodian bombing campaign had two unintended side effects that ultimately combined to produce the very domino effect that the Vietnam War was supposed to prevent. First, the bombing forced the Vietnamese Communists deeper and deeper into Cambodia, bringing them into greater contact with Khmer Rouge insurgents. Second, the bombs drove ordinary Cambodians into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, a group that seemed initially to have slim prospects of revolutionary success.
Pol Pot himself described the Khmer Rouge during that period as "fewer than five thousand poorly armed guerrillas . . . scattered across the Cambodian landscape, uncertain about their strategy, tactics, loyalty, and leaders."
Years after the war ended, journalist Bruce Palling asked Chhit Do, a former Khmer Rouge officer, if his forces had used the bombing as anti-American propaganda. Chhit Do replied:
"Every time after there had been bombing, they would take the people to see the craters, to see how big and deep the craters were, to see how the earth had been gouged out and scorched . . . . The ordinary people sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told. It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on co-operating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer Rouge, sending their children off to go with them. . . . Sometimes the bombs fell and hit little children, and their fathers would be all for the Khmer Rouge."
A Cambodian witness responded to an earlier publication of this article by writing:
"I could not agree with you more based on my experiences during the bombing in Takeo around 1972. The bombings were [spreading] further into towns and villages. My parents' house was hit by the bombs, and we had to move to the opposite side of the country. We had known [that] almost the entire village that survived from the bombings had joined forces with the Khmer Rouge."
The Nixon administration knew that the Khmer Rouge was winning over peasants. The CIA's Directorate of Operations, after investigations south of Phnom Penh, reported in May 1973 that the Communists were "using damage caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda," and that such propaganda was "effective." But this does not seem to have registered as a primary strategic U.S. concern.
"They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in our way"
The Nixon administration kept the air war secret for so long that debate over its impact came far too late. It wasn't until 1973 that Congress, angered by the destruction the campaign had caused and the systematic deception that had masked it, legislated a halt to the bombing of Cambodia. By then, the political as well as the social damage was already done. Having grown to more than two hundred thousand troops and militia forces by 1973, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh two years later. They went on to subject Cambodia to a Maoist agrarian revolution and a genocide in which 1.7 million people perished. Now the burgeoning US-China alliance led Washington to quietly support the Khmer Rouge regime. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Thailand's foreign minister on November 26, 1975, "You should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in our way."
The Nixon Doctrine had relied on the notion that the United States could supply an allied regime with the resources needed to withstand internal or external challenges while the US withdrew its ground troops or, in some cases, simply remained at arm's length. In Vietnam, this meant building up the ground-fighting capability of South Vietnamese forces while American units slowly disengaged. In Cambodia, Washington gave military aid to prop up Lon Nol's regime from 1970 to 1975 while the US Air Force conducted its massive aerial bombardment.
Kissinger's 2nd 'Rule of Engagement' for the bombing of Cambodia: "No strikes within one kilometre of a village"
Bombing Iraq
US policy in Iraq may yet undergo a similar shift. Bombing is likely to play a key role in a continued U.S. occupation. Moreover, as Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker in December 2005, a key element of any drawdown of American troops will be their replacement with air power. "We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting -- Iraqi infantry with American support and greater use of air power," said Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. [2]
Critics argue that a shift to air power will cause even greater numbers of civilian casualties, which in turn will benefit the insurgency in Iraq. Andrew Brookes, the former director of air power studies at the Royal Air Force's advanced staff college, told Hersh, "Don't believe that air power is a solution to the problems inside Iraq at all. Replacing boots on the ground with air power didn't work in Vietnam, did it? "
It's true that air strikes are generally more accurate now than they were during the war in Indochina, so in theory, at least, unidentified targets should be hit less frequently and civilian casualties should be lower. In addition, many of the indiscriminate bombardment tactics used in the past, such as those that destroyed much of Tokyo and killed 100,000 of its citizens in a single night, are no longer deemed morally acceptable. Yet lessons from Cambodia's agony remain unlearned. Civilian deaths have been the norm during the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, as they were during the bombing of Lebanon by Israeli forces over the summer. As in Cambodia, insurgencies are the likely beneficiaries. To cite one example, on January 13, 2006, an aerial strike by a US Predator drone on a village in a border area of Pakistan killed eighteen civilians, including five women and five children. The deaths undermined the positive sentiments that may have been created by the billions of dollars in aid that had flowed into that part of Pakistan after the massive earthquake months earlier. A key question remains: along with its humanitarian and moral hazards, is bombing worth the strategic risk?
If the Cambodian experience teaches us anything, it is that miscalculation of the consequences of civilian casualties stems partly from a failure to understand how insurgencies thrive. The motives that lead locals to help such movements don't fit into strategic rationales like the ones set forth by Kissinger and Nixon. Those whose lives have been ruined don't care about the geopolitics behind bomb attacks; they tend to blame the attackers. The failure of the American campaign in Cambodia lay not only in the civilian death toll during the unprecedented bombing, but also in its aftermath, when the Khmer Rouge regime rose up from the bomb craters, with tragic results. The dynamics in Iraq, or even Afghanistan, could be similar.
Notes:
[1] The New York Times, May 3 and 10, 2007.
[2] Seymour Hersh, "Up in the Air. Where is the Iraq war headed next?" The New Yorker, Dec 5, 2005.
Taylor Owen is a doctoral candidate and Trudeau Scholar at the University of Oxford. In 2004, he was a visiting fellow in the Yale Genocide Studies Program. Daily writings and published work can be found at www.taylorowen.com
Ben Kiernan, professor of history and director of the Genocide Studies Program, is the author of How Pol Pot Came to Power and The Pol Pot Regime.
This is a revised and expanded version of an article that appeared in The Walrus (Canada), October 2006.
United States bombings in Afghanistan have "given a propaganda windfall to the Taliban." [1] Is history repeating itself? In 1975, Pol Pot's genocidal Khmer Rouge forces took power in Cambodia after a massive U.S. bombing campaign there. New information reveals that Cambodia was bombed far more heavily during the Vietnam War than previously believed -- and that the bombing began not under Richard Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson.
In the fall of 2000, twenty-five years after the end of the war in Indochina, Bill Clinton became the first US president since Richard Nixon to visit Vietnam. While media coverage of the trip was dominated by talk of some two thousand US soldiers still classified as missing in action, a small act of great historical importance went almost unnoticed. As a humanitarian gesture, Clinton released extensive Air Force data on all American bombings of Indochina between 1964 and 1975. Recorded using a groundbreaking IBM-designed system, the database provided extensive information on sorties conducted over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Clinton's gift was intended to assist in the search for unexploded ordnance left behind during the carpet bombing of the region. Littering the countryside, often submerged under farmland, this ordnance remains a significant humanitarian concern.
It has maimed and killed farmers, and rendered valuable land all but unusable. Development and de-mining organizations have put the Air Force data to good use over the past six years, but have done so without noting its full implications, which turn out to be staggering.
The Bombing Database
The still-incomplete database (it has several "dark" periods) reveals that from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941 tons' worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having "unknown" targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all. Even if the latter may arguably be oversights, the former suggest explicit knowledge of indiscretion. The database also shows that the bombing began four years earlier than is widely believed -- not under Nixon, but under Lyndon Johnson. The impact of this bombing, the subject of much debate for the past three decades, is now clearer than ever. Civilian casualties in Cambodia drove an enraged populace into the arms of an insurgency that had enjoyed relatively little support until the bombing began, setting in motion the expansion of the Vietnam War deeper into Cambodia, a coup d'état in 1970, the rapid rise of the Khmer Rouge, and ultimately the Cambodian genocide. The data demonstrates that the way a country chooses to exit a conflict can have disastrous consequences. It therefore speaks to contemporary warfare as well, including US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Despite many differences, a critical similarity links the war in Iraq with the Cambodian conflict: an increasing reliance on air power to battle a heterogeneous, volatile insurgency.
"We heard a terrifying noise which shook the ground; it was as if the earth trembled, rose up and opened beneath our feet. Enormous explosions lit up the sky like huge bolts of lightning; it was the American B-52s."
-- Cambodian bombing survivor, Kampong Thom
On December 9, 1970, US President Richard Nixon telephoned his national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to discuss the ongoing bombing of Cambodia. This sideshow to the war in Vietnam, begun in 1965 under the Johnson administration, had already seen 475,515 tons of ordnance dropped on Cambodia, which had been a neutral kingdom until nine months before the phone call, when pro-US General Lon Nol seized power. The first intense series of bombings, the Menu campaign on Vietnamese targets in Cambodia's border areas -- which American commanders labeled Breakfast, Lunch, Supper, Dinner, Dessert, and Snack -- had concluded in May, 1970 shortly after the coup.
Nixon was facing growing congressional opposition to his Indochina policy. A joint US–South Vietnam ground invasion of Cambodia in May and June of 1970 had failed to root out Vietnamese Communists, and Nixon now wanted to covertly escalate the air attacks, which were aimed at destroying the mobile headquarters of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army (vc/nva) in the Cambodian jungle. After telling Kissinger that the US Air Force was being unimaginative, Nixon demanded more bombing, deeper into the country: "They have got to go in there and I mean really go in . . . I want everything that can fly to go in there and crack the hell out of them. There is no limitation on mileage and there is no limitation on budget. Is that clear?"
Kissinger knew that this order ignored Nixon's promise to Congress that US planes would remain within thirty kilometres of the Vietnamese border, his own assurances to the public that bombing would not take place within a kilometre of any village, and military assessments stating that air strikes were like poking a beehive with a stick. He responded hesitantly: "The problem is, Mr. President, the Air Force is designed to fight an air battle against the Soviet Union. They are not designed for this war . . . in fact, they are not designed for any war we are likely to have to fight."
"Anything that flies, on anything that moves"
Five minutes after his conversation with Nixon ended, Kissinger called General Alexander Haig to relay the new orders from the president: "He wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything. It's an order, it's to be done. Anything that flies, on anything that moves. You got that?" The response from Haig, barely audible on tape, sounds like laughter.
The US bombing of Cambodia remains a divisive and iconic topic. It was a mobilizing issue for the antiwar movement and is still cited regularly as an example of American war crimes. Writers such as Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens, and William Shawcross condemned the bombing and the foreign policy it symbolized.
In the years since the Vietnam War, something of a consensus has emerged on the extent of US involvement in Cambodia. The details are controversial, but the narrative begins on March 18, 1969, when the United States launched the Menu campaign. The joint US–South Vietnam ground offensive followed. For the next three years, the United States continued with air strikes under Nixon's orders, hitting deep inside Cambodia's borders, first to root out the Viet Cong (VC)/North Vietnam Army (NVA) and later to protect the Lon Nol regime from growing numbers of Cambodian Communist forces. Congress cut funding for the war and imposed an end to the bombing on August 15, 1973, amid calls for Nixon's impeachment for his deceit in escalating the campaign.
The Secret Bombing of 1965
Thanks to the Air Force database, we now know that the US bombardment started three-and-a-half years earlier, in 1965, under the Johnson administration. What happened in 1969 was not the start of bombings in Cambodia but the escalation into carpetbombing. From 1965 to 1968, 2,565 sorties took place over Cambodia, with 214 tons of bombs dropped. These early strikes were likely designed to support the nearly two thousand secret ground incursions conducted by the CIA and US Special Forces during that period. B-52s -- long range bombers capable of carrying very heavy loads -- were not deployed, whether out of concern for Cambodian lives or the country's neutrality, or because carpet bombing was believed to be of limited strategic value.
Nixon decided on a different course, and beginning in 1969 the Air Force deployed B-52s over Cambodia. The new rationale for the bombings was that they would keep enemy forces at bay long enough to allow the United States to withdraw from Vietnam. Former US General Theodore Mataxis depicted the move as "a holding action . . . . The troika's going down the road and the wolves are closing in, and so you throw them something off and let them chew it." The result was that Cambodians essentially became cannon fodder to protect American lives.
The last phase of the bombing, from February to August 1973, was designed to stop the Khmer Rouge's advance on the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. The United States, fearing that the first Southeast Asian domino was about to fall, began a massive escalation of the air war -- an unprecedented B-52 bombardment that focused on the heavily populated area around Phnom Penh but left few regions of the country untouched. The extent of this bombardment has only now come to light.
Exceeding the World War II Payload
The data released by Clinton shows the total payload dropped during these years to be nearly five times greater than the generally accepted figure. To put the revised total of 2,756,941 tons into perspective, the Allies dropped just over 2 million tons of bombs during all of World War II, including the bombs that struck Hiroshima and Nagasaki: 15,000 and 20,000 tons, respectively. Cambodia may well be the most heavily bombed country in history.
A single B-52d "Big Belly" payload consists of up to 108 225-kilogram or 42 340-kilogram bombs, which are dropped on a target area of approximately 500 by 1,500 metres. In many cases, Cambodian villages were hit with dozens of payloads over the course of several hours. The result was near-total destruction. One US official stated at the time, "We had been told, as had everybody . . . that those carpetbombing attacks by B-52s were totally devastating, that nothing could survive." Previously, it was estimated that between 50,000 and 150,000 Cambodian civilians were killed by the bombing. Given the fivefold increase in tonnage revealed by the database, the number of casualties is surely higher.
The Cambodian bombing campaign had two unintended side effects that ultimately combined to produce the very domino effect that the Vietnam War was supposed to prevent. First, the bombing forced the Vietnamese Communists deeper and deeper into Cambodia, bringing them into greater contact with Khmer Rouge insurgents. Second, the bombs drove ordinary Cambodians into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, a group that seemed initially to have slim prospects of revolutionary success.
Pol Pot himself described the Khmer Rouge during that period as "fewer than five thousand poorly armed guerrillas . . . scattered across the Cambodian landscape, uncertain about their strategy, tactics, loyalty, and leaders."
Years after the war ended, journalist Bruce Palling asked Chhit Do, a former Khmer Rouge officer, if his forces had used the bombing as anti-American propaganda. Chhit Do replied:
"Every time after there had been bombing, they would take the people to see the craters, to see how big and deep the craters were, to see how the earth had been gouged out and scorched . . . . The ordinary people sometimes literally shit in their pants when the big bombs and shells came. Their minds just froze up and they would wander around mute for three or four days. Terrified and half crazy, the people were ready to believe what they were told. It was because of their dissatisfaction with the bombing that they kept on co-operating with the Khmer Rouge, joining up with the Khmer Rouge, sending their children off to go with them. . . . Sometimes the bombs fell and hit little children, and their fathers would be all for the Khmer Rouge."
A Cambodian witness responded to an earlier publication of this article by writing:
"I could not agree with you more based on my experiences during the bombing in Takeo around 1972. The bombings were [spreading] further into towns and villages. My parents' house was hit by the bombs, and we had to move to the opposite side of the country. We had known [that] almost the entire village that survived from the bombings had joined forces with the Khmer Rouge."
The Nixon administration knew that the Khmer Rouge was winning over peasants. The CIA's Directorate of Operations, after investigations south of Phnom Penh, reported in May 1973 that the Communists were "using damage caused by B-52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda," and that such propaganda was "effective." But this does not seem to have registered as a primary strategic U.S. concern.
"They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in our way"
The Nixon administration kept the air war secret for so long that debate over its impact came far too late. It wasn't until 1973 that Congress, angered by the destruction the campaign had caused and the systematic deception that had masked it, legislated a halt to the bombing of Cambodia. By then, the political as well as the social damage was already done. Having grown to more than two hundred thousand troops and militia forces by 1973, the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh two years later. They went on to subject Cambodia to a Maoist agrarian revolution and a genocide in which 1.7 million people perished. Now the burgeoning US-China alliance led Washington to quietly support the Khmer Rouge regime. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Thailand's foreign minister on November 26, 1975, "You should also tell the Cambodians that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won't let that stand in our way."
The Nixon Doctrine had relied on the notion that the United States could supply an allied regime with the resources needed to withstand internal or external challenges while the US withdrew its ground troops or, in some cases, simply remained at arm's length. In Vietnam, this meant building up the ground-fighting capability of South Vietnamese forces while American units slowly disengaged. In Cambodia, Washington gave military aid to prop up Lon Nol's regime from 1970 to 1975 while the US Air Force conducted its massive aerial bombardment.
Kissinger's 2nd 'Rule of Engagement' for the bombing of Cambodia: "No strikes within one kilometre of a village"
Bombing Iraq
US policy in Iraq may yet undergo a similar shift. Bombing is likely to play a key role in a continued U.S. occupation. Moreover, as Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker in December 2005, a key element of any drawdown of American troops will be their replacement with air power. "We just want to change the mix of the forces doing the fighting -- Iraqi infantry with American support and greater use of air power," said Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. [2]
Critics argue that a shift to air power will cause even greater numbers of civilian casualties, which in turn will benefit the insurgency in Iraq. Andrew Brookes, the former director of air power studies at the Royal Air Force's advanced staff college, told Hersh, "Don't believe that air power is a solution to the problems inside Iraq at all. Replacing boots on the ground with air power didn't work in Vietnam, did it? "
It's true that air strikes are generally more accurate now than they were during the war in Indochina, so in theory, at least, unidentified targets should be hit less frequently and civilian casualties should be lower. In addition, many of the indiscriminate bombardment tactics used in the past, such as those that destroyed much of Tokyo and killed 100,000 of its citizens in a single night, are no longer deemed morally acceptable. Yet lessons from Cambodia's agony remain unlearned. Civilian deaths have been the norm during the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, as they were during the bombing of Lebanon by Israeli forces over the summer. As in Cambodia, insurgencies are the likely beneficiaries. To cite one example, on January 13, 2006, an aerial strike by a US Predator drone on a village in a border area of Pakistan killed eighteen civilians, including five women and five children. The deaths undermined the positive sentiments that may have been created by the billions of dollars in aid that had flowed into that part of Pakistan after the massive earthquake months earlier. A key question remains: along with its humanitarian and moral hazards, is bombing worth the strategic risk?
If the Cambodian experience teaches us anything, it is that miscalculation of the consequences of civilian casualties stems partly from a failure to understand how insurgencies thrive. The motives that lead locals to help such movements don't fit into strategic rationales like the ones set forth by Kissinger and Nixon. Those whose lives have been ruined don't care about the geopolitics behind bomb attacks; they tend to blame the attackers. The failure of the American campaign in Cambodia lay not only in the civilian death toll during the unprecedented bombing, but also in its aftermath, when the Khmer Rouge regime rose up from the bomb craters, with tragic results. The dynamics in Iraq, or even Afghanistan, could be similar.
Notes:
[1] The New York Times, May 3 and 10, 2007.
[2] Seymour Hersh, "Up in the Air. Where is the Iraq war headed next?" The New Yorker, Dec 5, 2005.
Taylor Owen is a doctoral candidate and Trudeau Scholar at the University of Oxford. In 2004, he was a visiting fellow in the Yale Genocide Studies Program. Daily writings and published work can be found at www.taylorowen.com
Ben Kiernan, professor of history and director of the Genocide Studies Program, is the author of How Pol Pot Came to Power and The Pol Pot Regime.
This is a revised and expanded version of an article that appeared in The Walrus (Canada), October 2006.
We Can’t Have Our Ethanol and Eat It Too — Fidel Castro on Biofuels
Fidel Castro here mostly quotes Atilio Borón, as he acknowledges in the opening graf. It’s a good summary of the biofuels scam and its terrifying implications. The fundamental points he states openly and with refreshing honesty: “a scenario is being prepared where a head-on confrontation will take place between the 800 million prosperous car owners and the food consumers… Transforming food into fuels is a monstrosity.” It’s a pity that most American readers are so terrified by, or conditioned into reflex hostility to, the name of Castro, that they would almost certainly be unable to assimilate any of the information in this article under this byline. Already there is a strong denial movement among rightwing Americans that denounces global climate change as a Leftist propaganda trick, etc. — how to get people past this ideological blinkering and in touch with basic physics, geology, and biology is a daunting problem.
REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
THE DEBATE HEATS UP
Atilio Borón, a prestigious leftist intellectual who until recently headed the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), wrote an article for the 6th Hemispheric Meeting of Struggle against the FTAs and for the Integration of Peoples which just wrapped up in Havana; he was kind enough to send it to me along with a letter.
The gist of what he wrote I have summarized using exact quotes of paragraphs and phrases in his article; it reads as follows:
Pre-capitalist societies already knew about oil which surfaced in shallow deposits and they used for non-commercial purposes, such as waterproofing the wooden hulls of ships or in textile products, or for torches. Its original name was ‘petroleum’ or stone-oil.
By the end of the 19th century -after the discovery of large oilfields in Pennsylvania, United States, and the technological developments propelled by the massive use of the internal combustion engine– oil became the energy paradigm of the 20th century.
Energy is conceived of as just merchandise. Like Marx warned us, this is not due to the perversity or callousness of some individual capitalist or another, but rather the consequence of the logic of the accumulation process, which is prone to the ceaseless “mercantilism” that touches on all components of social life, both material and symbolic. The mercantilist process did not stop with the human being, but simultaneously extended to nature. The land and its products, the rivers and the mountains, the jungles and the forests became the target of its irrepressible pillage. Foodstuffs, of course, could not escape this hellish dynamic. Capitalism turns everything that crosses its path into merchandise.
Foodstuffs are transformed into fuels to make viable the irrationality of a civilization that, to sustain the wealth and privilege of a few, is brutally assaulting the environment and the ecologic conditions which made it possible for life to appear on Earth.
Transforming food into fuels is a monstrosity.
Capitalism is preparing to perpetrate a massive euthanasia on the poor, and particularly on the poor of the South, since it is there that the greatest reserves of the earth’s biomass required to produce biofuels are found. Regardless of numerous official statements assuring that this is not a choice between food and fuel, reality shows that this, and no other, is exactly the alternative: either the land is used to produce food or to produce biofuels.
The main lessons taught us by FAO data on the subject of agricultural land and the consumption of fertilizers are the following:
–Agricultural land per capita in developed capitalism almost doubles that existing in the underdeveloped periphery: 3.26 acres per person in the North as opposed to 1.6 in the South; this is explained by the simple fact that close to 80 percent of the world population live in the underdeveloped periphery.
–Brazil has slightly more agricultural land per capita than the developed countries. It becomes clear that this nation will have to assign huge tracts of its enormous land surface to meet the demands of the new energy paradigm.
–China and India have 1.05 and 0.43 acres per person respectively.
–The small nations of the Antilles, with their traditional one-crop agriculture, that is sugarcane, demonstrate eloquently its erosive effects exemplified by the extraordinary rate of consumption of fertilizers per acre needed to support this production. If in the peripheral countries the average figure is 109 kilograms of fertilizer per hectare (as opposed to 84 in developed countries), in Barbados the figure is 187.5, in Dominica 600, en Guadeloupe 1,016, in St. Lucia 1,325 and in Martinique 1,609. The use of fertilizers is tantamount to intensive oil consumption, and so the much touted advantage of agrifuels to reduce the consumption of hydrocarbons seems more an illusion than a reality.
The total agricultural land of the European Union is barely sufficient to cover 30 percent of their current needs for fuel but not their future needs that will probably be greater. In the United States, the satisfaction of their current demand for fossil fuels would require the use of 121 percent of all their agricultural land for agrifuels.
Consequently, the supply of agrifuels will have to come from the South, from capitalism’s poor and neocolonial periphery. Mathematics does not lie: neither the United States nor the European Union have available land to support an increase in food production and an expansion of the production of agrifuels at the same time.
Deforestation of the planet would increase the land surface suitable for agriculture (but only for a while). Therefore this would be only for a few decades, at the most. These lands would then suffer desertification and the situation would be worse than ever, aggravating even further the dilemma pitting the production of food against that of ethanol or biodiesel.
The struggle against hunger -and there are some 2 billion people who suffer from hunger in the world- will be seriously impaired by the expansion of land taken over by agrifuel crops. Countries where hunger is a universal scourge will bear witness to the rapid transformation of agriculture that would feed the insatiable demand for fuels needed by a civilization based on their irrational use. The only result possible is an increase in the cost of food and thus, the worsening of the social situation in the South countries.
Moreover, the world population grows 76 million people every year who will obviously demand food that will be steadily more expensive and farther out of their reach.
In The Globalist Perspective, Lester Brown predicted less than a year ago that automobiles would absorb the largest part of the increase in world grain production in 2006. Of the 20 million tons added to those existing in 2005, 14 million were used in the production of fuels, and only 6 million tons were used to satisfy the needs of the hungry. This author affirms that the world appetite for automobile fuel is insatiable. Brown concluded by saying that a scenario is being prepared where a head-on confrontation will take place between the 800 million prosperous car owners and the food consumers.
The devastating impact of increased food prices, which will inexorably happen as the land is used either for food or for fuel, was demonstrated in the work of C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, two distinguished professors from the University of Minnesota, in an article published in the English language edition of the Foreign Affairs magazine whose title says it all: “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor”. The authors claim that in the United States the growth of the agrifuel industry has given rise to increases not only in the price of corn, oleaginous seeds and other grains, but also in the prices of apparently unrelated crops and products. The use of land to grow corn which will feed the faucets of ethanol is reducing the area for other crops. The food processors using crops such as peas and young corn have been forced to pay higher prices in order to ensure their supplies. This is a cost that will eventually be passed on to the consumer. The increase in food prices is also hitting the livestock and poultry industries. The higher costs have produced an abrupt decrease in income, especially in the poultry and pork sectors. If income continues to decrease, so will production, and the prices of chicken, turkey, pork, milk and eggs will increase. They warn that the most devastating effects of increasing food prices will be felt especially in Third World countries.
Studies made by the Belgian Office of Scientific Affairs shows that biodiesel causes more health and environmental hazards because it creates a more pulverized pollution and releases more pollutants that destroy the ozone layer.
With regards to the argument claming that the agrifuels are harmless, Victor Bronstein, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, has demonstrated that:
–It is not true that biofuels are a renewable and constant energy source, given that the crucial factor in plant growth is not sunlight but the availability of water and suitable soil conditions. If this were not the case, we would be able to grow corn or sugarcane in the Sahara Desert. The effects of large-scale production of biofuels will be devastating.
–It is not true that they do not pollute. Even if ethanol produces less carbon emissions, the process to obtain it pollutes the surface and the water with nitrates, herbicides, pesticides and waste, and the air is polluted with aldehydes and alcohols that are carcinogens. The presumption of a “green and clean” fuel is a fallacy.
The proposal of agrifuels is unviable, and it is ethically and politically unacceptable. But it is not enough just to reject it. It is necessary to implement a new energy revolution, but one that is at the service of the people and not at the service of the monopolies and imperialism. This is, perhaps, the most important challenge of our time, concludes Atilio Borón.
As you can see, this summary took up some space. We need space and time; practically a book. It has been said that the masterpiece which made author Gabriel García Márquez famous, One Hundred Years of Solitude, required him to write fifty pages for each page that was printed. How much time would my poor pen need to refute those who for a material interest, ignorance, indifference or even for all three at the same time defend the evil idea and to spread the solid and honest arguments of those who struggle for the life of the species?
Some very important opinions and points of view were discussed at the Hemispheric Meeting in Havana. We should talk about those that brought us real-life images of cutting sugarcane by hand in a documentary film that seemed a reflection of Dante’s Inferno. A growing number of opinions are carried by the media every day and everywhere in the world, from institutions like the United Nations right up to national scientific associations. I simply perceive that the debate is heating up. The fact that the subject is being discussed is already an important step forward.
Fidel Castro Ruz
May 9, 2007, 5:47 p.m.
REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
THE DEBATE HEATS UP
Atilio Borón, a prestigious leftist intellectual who until recently headed the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), wrote an article for the 6th Hemispheric Meeting of Struggle against the FTAs and for the Integration of Peoples which just wrapped up in Havana; he was kind enough to send it to me along with a letter.
The gist of what he wrote I have summarized using exact quotes of paragraphs and phrases in his article; it reads as follows:
Pre-capitalist societies already knew about oil which surfaced in shallow deposits and they used for non-commercial purposes, such as waterproofing the wooden hulls of ships or in textile products, or for torches. Its original name was ‘petroleum’ or stone-oil.
By the end of the 19th century -after the discovery of large oilfields in Pennsylvania, United States, and the technological developments propelled by the massive use of the internal combustion engine– oil became the energy paradigm of the 20th century.
Energy is conceived of as just merchandise. Like Marx warned us, this is not due to the perversity or callousness of some individual capitalist or another, but rather the consequence of the logic of the accumulation process, which is prone to the ceaseless “mercantilism” that touches on all components of social life, both material and symbolic. The mercantilist process did not stop with the human being, but simultaneously extended to nature. The land and its products, the rivers and the mountains, the jungles and the forests became the target of its irrepressible pillage. Foodstuffs, of course, could not escape this hellish dynamic. Capitalism turns everything that crosses its path into merchandise.
Foodstuffs are transformed into fuels to make viable the irrationality of a civilization that, to sustain the wealth and privilege of a few, is brutally assaulting the environment and the ecologic conditions which made it possible for life to appear on Earth.
Transforming food into fuels is a monstrosity.
Capitalism is preparing to perpetrate a massive euthanasia on the poor, and particularly on the poor of the South, since it is there that the greatest reserves of the earth’s biomass required to produce biofuels are found. Regardless of numerous official statements assuring that this is not a choice between food and fuel, reality shows that this, and no other, is exactly the alternative: either the land is used to produce food or to produce biofuels.
The main lessons taught us by FAO data on the subject of agricultural land and the consumption of fertilizers are the following:
–Agricultural land per capita in developed capitalism almost doubles that existing in the underdeveloped periphery: 3.26 acres per person in the North as opposed to 1.6 in the South; this is explained by the simple fact that close to 80 percent of the world population live in the underdeveloped periphery.
–Brazil has slightly more agricultural land per capita than the developed countries. It becomes clear that this nation will have to assign huge tracts of its enormous land surface to meet the demands of the new energy paradigm.
–China and India have 1.05 and 0.43 acres per person respectively.
–The small nations of the Antilles, with their traditional one-crop agriculture, that is sugarcane, demonstrate eloquently its erosive effects exemplified by the extraordinary rate of consumption of fertilizers per acre needed to support this production. If in the peripheral countries the average figure is 109 kilograms of fertilizer per hectare (as opposed to 84 in developed countries), in Barbados the figure is 187.5, in Dominica 600, en Guadeloupe 1,016, in St. Lucia 1,325 and in Martinique 1,609. The use of fertilizers is tantamount to intensive oil consumption, and so the much touted advantage of agrifuels to reduce the consumption of hydrocarbons seems more an illusion than a reality.
The total agricultural land of the European Union is barely sufficient to cover 30 percent of their current needs for fuel but not their future needs that will probably be greater. In the United States, the satisfaction of their current demand for fossil fuels would require the use of 121 percent of all their agricultural land for agrifuels.
Consequently, the supply of agrifuels will have to come from the South, from capitalism’s poor and neocolonial periphery. Mathematics does not lie: neither the United States nor the European Union have available land to support an increase in food production and an expansion of the production of agrifuels at the same time.
Deforestation of the planet would increase the land surface suitable for agriculture (but only for a while). Therefore this would be only for a few decades, at the most. These lands would then suffer desertification and the situation would be worse than ever, aggravating even further the dilemma pitting the production of food against that of ethanol or biodiesel.
The struggle against hunger -and there are some 2 billion people who suffer from hunger in the world- will be seriously impaired by the expansion of land taken over by agrifuel crops. Countries where hunger is a universal scourge will bear witness to the rapid transformation of agriculture that would feed the insatiable demand for fuels needed by a civilization based on their irrational use. The only result possible is an increase in the cost of food and thus, the worsening of the social situation in the South countries.
Moreover, the world population grows 76 million people every year who will obviously demand food that will be steadily more expensive and farther out of their reach.
In The Globalist Perspective, Lester Brown predicted less than a year ago that automobiles would absorb the largest part of the increase in world grain production in 2006. Of the 20 million tons added to those existing in 2005, 14 million were used in the production of fuels, and only 6 million tons were used to satisfy the needs of the hungry. This author affirms that the world appetite for automobile fuel is insatiable. Brown concluded by saying that a scenario is being prepared where a head-on confrontation will take place between the 800 million prosperous car owners and the food consumers.
The devastating impact of increased food prices, which will inexorably happen as the land is used either for food or for fuel, was demonstrated in the work of C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, two distinguished professors from the University of Minnesota, in an article published in the English language edition of the Foreign Affairs magazine whose title says it all: “How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor”. The authors claim that in the United States the growth of the agrifuel industry has given rise to increases not only in the price of corn, oleaginous seeds and other grains, but also in the prices of apparently unrelated crops and products. The use of land to grow corn which will feed the faucets of ethanol is reducing the area for other crops. The food processors using crops such as peas and young corn have been forced to pay higher prices in order to ensure their supplies. This is a cost that will eventually be passed on to the consumer. The increase in food prices is also hitting the livestock and poultry industries. The higher costs have produced an abrupt decrease in income, especially in the poultry and pork sectors. If income continues to decrease, so will production, and the prices of chicken, turkey, pork, milk and eggs will increase. They warn that the most devastating effects of increasing food prices will be felt especially in Third World countries.
Studies made by the Belgian Office of Scientific Affairs shows that biodiesel causes more health and environmental hazards because it creates a more pulverized pollution and releases more pollutants that destroy the ozone layer.
With regards to the argument claming that the agrifuels are harmless, Victor Bronstein, a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, has demonstrated that:
–It is not true that biofuels are a renewable and constant energy source, given that the crucial factor in plant growth is not sunlight but the availability of water and suitable soil conditions. If this were not the case, we would be able to grow corn or sugarcane in the Sahara Desert. The effects of large-scale production of biofuels will be devastating.
–It is not true that they do not pollute. Even if ethanol produces less carbon emissions, the process to obtain it pollutes the surface and the water with nitrates, herbicides, pesticides and waste, and the air is polluted with aldehydes and alcohols that are carcinogens. The presumption of a “green and clean” fuel is a fallacy.
The proposal of agrifuels is unviable, and it is ethically and politically unacceptable. But it is not enough just to reject it. It is necessary to implement a new energy revolution, but one that is at the service of the people and not at the service of the monopolies and imperialism. This is, perhaps, the most important challenge of our time, concludes Atilio Borón.
As you can see, this summary took up some space. We need space and time; practically a book. It has been said that the masterpiece which made author Gabriel García Márquez famous, One Hundred Years of Solitude, required him to write fifty pages for each page that was printed. How much time would my poor pen need to refute those who for a material interest, ignorance, indifference or even for all three at the same time defend the evil idea and to spread the solid and honest arguments of those who struggle for the life of the species?
Some very important opinions and points of view were discussed at the Hemispheric Meeting in Havana. We should talk about those that brought us real-life images of cutting sugarcane by hand in a documentary film that seemed a reflection of Dante’s Inferno. A growing number of opinions are carried by the media every day and everywhere in the world, from institutions like the United Nations right up to national scientific associations. I simply perceive that the debate is heating up. The fact that the subject is being discussed is already an important step forward.
Fidel Castro Ruz
May 9, 2007, 5:47 p.m.
CubanaBomber Death Watch: You have a right to be informed!
From Aporrea, we have this little item on just how far the Bush Crime Family is willing to go to conceal the evidence of its misdeeds:
The Venezuelan documentary, "Posada Carriles: Terrorism Made in USA", which tells the history of this terrorist and his connection to the CIA, has been confiscated by US security services at the airport of Miami. The film, in DVD format, was found in a parcel of mail from Caracas, bound for El Paso, Texas, where a social organization was to receive it today, Friday, May 11, to be shown as part of a program of activities there against the release of the terrorist Posada Carriles.
The film is now in the hands of the Bush government, and the US mail services report that it will be "held for inspection". This occurred yesterday (Thursday) at 1:30, and the film is being held in custody, which is to say that the showing slated for today will be suspended, as the documentary will not arrive on time. The only information we received from Miami Airport is that the inspection "will take 8 days or more".
Is the White House so desperate in the case of Posada Carriles that it would order its agents at the airport to confiscate a DVD? Why is the Bush government "inspecting" this documentary? Eight days to "inspect" a 90-minute film? Do they suspect that the DVD is concealing some kind of WMD? Will the DVD pass the lie-detector test in an interrogation? Will it be re-edited? Or will they send it to terrorist groups in Miami so that they include us on their hit list? Is this some kind of test of the limits of people's patience for absurdity, since BushCo chose to liberate the terrorist Posada Carriles, but take into custody the documentary "Posada Carriles"?
It's clear the Bush is an imperialist clown, but that bad??? It's clear that he's afraid of history, but to the extent of confiscating a documentary???
Today, in El Paso, the CENSORSHIP of the Bush government kept the North American public from viewing a historical documentary on the terrorist Posada Carriles, but whatever way this documentary will reach its destination, it will reach it. Take that, Bush. The motto of the entrance to your CIA reads "The truth shall set you free", and the truth is the patrimony of the people and will not be confiscated at any airport, nor stopped by censorship.
There are hundreds of voices of torture victims and relatives calling for justice, and thousands of declassified documents giving testimony to the crimes of Posada Carriles as a CIA agent, and there is much evidence of the involvement of Bush with these and other terrorists of that calibre. Every day more voices join the protest, because it is not just an extradition order from the government of Venezuela, it is the yearning of a people fed up with the abuse of power and offences against human rights. These voices, these pieces of evidence, this clamor for justice and against terrorism, will not be silenced by censorship nor by the manipulations of the White House, because it is a global clamor.
PRISON FOR THE TERRORIST POSADA CARRILES!
NO MORE SUPPORT FROM BUSH FOR MIAMI TERRORIST GROUPS!
LET THE TRUTH BE KNOWN ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP OF BUSH-POSADA-CIA!
FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!
NO TO TERRORISM!
DOWN WITH CENSORSHIP!
The Venezuelan documentary, "Posada Carriles: Terrorism Made in USA", which tells the history of this terrorist and his connection to the CIA, has been confiscated by US security services at the airport of Miami. The film, in DVD format, was found in a parcel of mail from Caracas, bound for El Paso, Texas, where a social organization was to receive it today, Friday, May 11, to be shown as part of a program of activities there against the release of the terrorist Posada Carriles.
The film is now in the hands of the Bush government, and the US mail services report that it will be "held for inspection". This occurred yesterday (Thursday) at 1:30, and the film is being held in custody, which is to say that the showing slated for today will be suspended, as the documentary will not arrive on time. The only information we received from Miami Airport is that the inspection "will take 8 days or more".
Is the White House so desperate in the case of Posada Carriles that it would order its agents at the airport to confiscate a DVD? Why is the Bush government "inspecting" this documentary? Eight days to "inspect" a 90-minute film? Do they suspect that the DVD is concealing some kind of WMD? Will the DVD pass the lie-detector test in an interrogation? Will it be re-edited? Or will they send it to terrorist groups in Miami so that they include us on their hit list? Is this some kind of test of the limits of people's patience for absurdity, since BushCo chose to liberate the terrorist Posada Carriles, but take into custody the documentary "Posada Carriles"?
It's clear the Bush is an imperialist clown, but that bad??? It's clear that he's afraid of history, but to the extent of confiscating a documentary???
Today, in El Paso, the CENSORSHIP of the Bush government kept the North American public from viewing a historical documentary on the terrorist Posada Carriles, but whatever way this documentary will reach its destination, it will reach it. Take that, Bush. The motto of the entrance to your CIA reads "The truth shall set you free", and the truth is the patrimony of the people and will not be confiscated at any airport, nor stopped by censorship.
There are hundreds of voices of torture victims and relatives calling for justice, and thousands of declassified documents giving testimony to the crimes of Posada Carriles as a CIA agent, and there is much evidence of the involvement of Bush with these and other terrorists of that calibre. Every day more voices join the protest, because it is not just an extradition order from the government of Venezuela, it is the yearning of a people fed up with the abuse of power and offences against human rights. These voices, these pieces of evidence, this clamor for justice and against terrorism, will not be silenced by censorship nor by the manipulations of the White House, because it is a global clamor.
PRISON FOR THE TERRORIST POSADA CARRILES!
NO MORE SUPPORT FROM BUSH FOR MIAMI TERRORIST GROUPS!
LET THE TRUTH BE KNOWN ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP OF BUSH-POSADA-CIA!
FREE THE CUBAN FIVE!
NO TO TERRORISM!
DOWN WITH CENSORSHIP!
Setting the Stage for Turmoil in Caracas - Washington’s New Imperial Strategy In Venezuela
By: Chris Carlson - Venezuelanalysis.com
First used in Serbia in 2000, Washington has now perfected a new imperial strategy to maintain its supremacy around the globe. Whereas military invasions and installing dictatorships have traditionally been the way to control foreign populations and keep them out of the way of business, the U.S. government has now developed a new strategy that is not so messy or brutal, and much sleeker; so sleek, in fact, that it’s almost invisible.
It was so invisible in Serbia that no one seemed to notice in 2000 when a regime was toppled, the country was opened to massive privatization, and huge public-sector industries, businesses, and natural resources fell into the hands of U.S. and multinational corporations. Likewise, few have noticed as countries in the former Soviet-bloc have recently been victims of the same strategy, with the exact same results.
Nations that do not give in to the demands of the empire and the expansion of global capitalism are targeted by an undercover, well-designed plan to change the political situation in the country, and open it up to corporate investors. U.S.-supported groups inside the country overthrow the president, making it seem like there is no outside intervention. And now, Washington has turned toward its new biggest threat: Latin America, and more specifically, Venezuela.
The Rise of the New World Order
During the second half of the twentieth century, capitalists in the first world began to saturate domestic opportunities for investment and growth. Big business reached a point where possibilities for expansion within national borders were mostly exhausted, and the only option for growth was to look for new opportunities abroad. Growing corporate conglomerates looked to expand their operations throughout the world, investing, privatizing, and buying up everything they could get their hands on. National capital was looking to go international, and by the end of the century, capitalism had become truly global.
"Get big, or get eaten," was their new philosophy, and they decided to get big by eating whole nations. With the help of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, economies everywhere were opened up to privatization. The phone systems, electrical grids, water systems, and natural resources were bought up by wealthy capitalists in countries around the world. Free-market capitalism now ruled the day; a paradise for international capital as the world’s wealth became more and more concentrated in their hands.[1]
Some nations, however, were determined to not be eaten. Privatization was an unpopular idea among populations that had developed the crazy idea that their natural resources belonged to them, and not foreign corporations. Resistance developed in several areas of the world, and some nations would not consent to the logic of global capitalism. Washington, however, was determined to open the world up to corporate expansion. They would oblige those countries that didn’t comply, either by force or by cunning.
The Case of Yugoslavia: A Model for Regime Change
It was in Yugoslavia, and more specifically, in Serbia, where Washington’s new strategy would really take shape for the first time. From here they would carry it on to other countries in an attempt to repeat the tremendous success of the Serbian experience. And it’s not hard to see why. After the toppling of the Milosevic regime allowed for mass privatization, all that remained of the formerly socialist country, including some of Europe’s largest reserves of natural resources, soon fell into the hands of U.S. and international investors.
The strategy is a sophisticated one. With the intention of ousting an undesirable regime, the U.S. government dedicates itself to strengthening and uniting opposition to the government. This includes funding opposition political parties, and creating non-governmental organizations dedicated to toppling the regime in power. On top of this, the U.S. might contract political consultants and polling agencies to help their favored candidate win at the ballot box. But in the event they cannot win the election, fake polls cast doubt on the official electoral results, and the opposition claims fraud. Massive protests and media attention put pressure on the regime to step down, or to give in to opposition demands.[2]
As implausible as it might sound, it was exactly this strategy that toppled Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 2000. After the war in Kosovo and NATO bombing had failed to produce regime change, the United States worked to strengthen Milosevic’s internal opponents by uniting them behind one candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, and pumping about $40 million into his election campaign.[3] U.S.-funded NGO’s and electoral consultants helped create a propaganda campaign surrounding the elections, and worked behind the scenes to help organize mass resistance to the Milosevic regime.[4] U.S.-trained “election helpers” were deployed around the country on election day to monitor results. The U.S. even provided young activists with thousands of cans of spray paint and campaign stickers to cover the country with anti-Milosevic slogans.[5]
According to official results of the first round elections, neither candidate had won a majority of the vote, and so it would require a second round run-off. But U.S. consultants published their own “exit polls,” giving Kostunica a huge victory and Milosevic refused to recognize them.[6] The opposition claimed fraud and U.S.-backed groups staged acts of non-violent resistance to put pressure on the government. Armed groups stormed the Federal Assembly and the state television headquarters.[7] Massive protests and rebellion forced Milosevic to step down. There would be no second round election, and Washington’s candidate Vojislav Kostunica took power. The strategy had worked.
But why had the U.S. targeted Serbia, and, even more specifically, the small province of Kosovo? The answer goes back to the Reagan administration and a 1984 secret document on “US Policy towards Yugoslavia.” A censored version was revealed in 1990, advocating “expanded efforts to promote a ‘quiet revolution’ to overthrow Communist government and parties.”[8]
The US government had worked on dismantling and dividing socialist Yugoslavia for years, supporting any and all independence movements within the individual provinces, including the 1999 military intervention to help the province of Kosovo break away. What was once a relative economic success under the famous Josip Tito, the socialist economy, based on socially-owned, worker-controlled companies, did not allow for foreign investment or US capital. This was a mortal sin in modern global capitalism. As Michael Parenti put it:
“Yugoslavia was the only country in Eastern Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy. It was the only one that did not beg for entry into NATO. It was - and what's left of it, still is - charting an independent course not in keeping with the New World Order.”[9]
Breaking up the country into smaller, dependent states and destroying their public-sector economy was the ultimate goal, and Milosevic, an admirer of socialist Tito, was the only thing standing in their way.
The rewards for their work were substantial. Once Milosevic was gone, one of the first actions taken by the new government was to repeal the 1997 privatization law and allow 70% of a company to be sold to foreign investors.[10] In 2004 the UN Mission in Kosovo announced the privatization of 500 enterprises, and U.S. corporations were the big winners. Phillip Morris bought up a $580 million tobacco factory, U.S. Steel got a $250 million deal on a steel producer, Coca-Cola grabbed a bottled water producer for $21 million, and the list goes on.[11]
In addition, western investors now had access to what the New York Times called the “war’s glittering prize,” the second largest coal reserves in Europe and large reserves of lead, zinc, gold, silver, and, even petroleum.[12] And the real gem was located in the province of Kosovo; the huge Trepca mine complex, valued at over $5 billion, now open to the highest bidder.[13]
The success of the strategy in Serbia was an important lesson for the Washington policy makers. They would repeat it several more times throughout Eastern Europe in places like Georgia (2003), the Ukraine (2004), Kyrgyzstan (2005), and Belarus (unsuccessfully in 2001). In what became known as the “Color Revolutions,” each U.S.-aided movement would remove a regime in exchange for one more favorable to the “free-market” policies promoted by Washington.[14] The preferred strategy for regime change became this new sort of non-violent resistance, and now the empire turned its gaze on South America, where a new threat to global capitalism had suddenly emerged.
The Problem of Venezuela
If the Trepca mine in Kosovo was the jackpot of the Serbian intervention, in Venezuela it is the state-owned oil company, PDVSA. Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world, possibly passing Saudi Arabia in total reserves if all extra-heavy crude deposits are included. And it is PDVSA that dominates in Venezuela with a total monopoly over the nation’s oil resources. With a production capacity of 3.3 billion barrels per day, and a $65 billion yearly revenue, the company also possesses a network of more than 13,000 gas stations in the United States, including several refineries in both the U.S. and Europe, making it the second largest company in all of Latin America.[15]
You can be sure that corporate investors would love to get their hands on PDVSA, along with other public sector companies in Venezuela. In fact, they were doing just that throughout the 1990’s. By 1998, multinational corporations had already bought up the national phone company, the largest electricity company, and PDVSA was going through what they called an “opening” to international capital; a prettier way of saying privatization.[16]
But that same year, Hugo Chavez was elected president on an anti-imperialist platform, and the auctioning-off of Venezuela came to an abrupt halt. In fact, Hugo Chavez has become a real problem for the corporate imperialists and their servants in Washington. Not only has he stopped privatization, but he is reversing it by re-nationalizing all that was once privatized. The privatization of the state oil company is now prohibited by law, and his government has taken complete control of it, using it to finance the country’s development.
But what is even more worrying for Washington and their corporate sponsors is how this trend is spreading through Latin America. The Chavez government has built close ties to many of his neighbors, and many are following in his footsteps. Countries like Bolivia and Ecuador are taking greater control of their gas and oil reserves, leaving less room for the huge corporations that hoped to one day own them.
And so, just as they did in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and others, Washington has deployed its forces in Venezuela with the intention of getting rid of the Chavez menace. After trying many things over the years, including a short-lived coup, electoral manipulation, and mass protests, Washington has not been able to topple the popular leader. But they haven’t given up. To the contrary, they’ve actually just continued to increase their level of involvement.
Repeating the East European experience in Venezuela
The new imperial strategy includes something called “American Corners.” These “corners” are small offices set up by Washington throughout the target country that basically serve as mini-embassies. It is not completely clear what exactly these “corners” do, but inside you will find an array of information about the United States, including study abroad opportunities, English classes, and pro-U.S. propaganda. On top of this, the mini-embassies also organize events, trainings, and lectures for young students.
Interestingly, they seem to be very abundant in countries that Washington seeks to destabilize. The former Yugoslav countries have a total of 22 American Corners, including 7 in Serbia. The Ukraine has 24, Belarus 11, Russia 30, even Iraq, with 11. By far the highest concentration of the “corners” is in Eastern Europe, where Washington has focused its destabilization efforts in recent years.[17]
There are at least 4 “American Corners” in Venezuela, the most for any Latin American country, and the U.S. also finances literally hundreds of organizations throughout the country, to the tune of more than $5 million a year.[18] Together, these U.S.-funded organizations are working to implant the Eastern European experience in Venezuela. As reported by Reuters, the Venezuelan opposition is already learning the Serbian tactics to overthrow a regime from a retired U.S. army colonel named Robert Helvey.
“Helvey, who has taught young activists in Myanmar and Serbian students who helped topple the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, is giving courses on non-violent opposition tactics this week at an east Caracas university,” said the article. “Neither Helvey nor the organizers of the Caracas seminar would give details of exactly what opposition tactics were being taught. But in his work in Serbia before Milosevic’s fall, Helvey briefed students on ways to organize a strike and on how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime,” reported Reuters.[19]
And more recently, in the university city of Mérida, history professor from Texas, Neil Foley, hosted an event sponsored by the U.S. embassy and the Venezuelan-American Center (Cevam), not an official “American Corner” but serving the same purpose. Foley, who has also spoken in various “American Corners” in Serbia, gave speeches in both Bolivia and Venezuela on “American values.”[20]
I attended one of Foley’s speeches and, as expected, it was a complete pro-U.S. propaganda campaign imposed upon the university students. The professor gave exactly the message that the U.S. Embassy had paid him to give, speaking wonders about American society and “American democracy.” According to Foley, the United States solves all of its problems by tolerance for others and an all-inclusive “dialogue,” between opposing parties. And sending a clear hint to the Venezuelan students, Foley implied that any government that does not live up to these standards “must be overthrown.”[21]
All of these efforts come together into a nationwide campaign to unite, strengthen, and mobilize opposition to the democratically elected Chavez government. The ultimate goal, of course, is to destabilize the government by organizing and directing opposition groups to commit acts of peaceful resistance and mass protests. Just like they did in 2002, when the Venezuelan opposition groups staged massive protests that turned violent, and eventually led to the temporary overthrow of the Chavez government, the U.S.-financed campaign seeks to destabilize the government in any way they can, perhaps provoking violence for which they will later blame the government.[22]
Now nearly every element of the strategy used in Serbia and other Eastern European countries has been implemented in Venezuela as Washington directs and controls the campaign of the Venezuelan opposition. The same “electoral consultants” that were used in Serbia, the Washington-based Penn, Schoen and Berland, have also been used in Venezuela to publish fake exit polls in an effort to cast doubt on Venezuelan elections. This strategy of electoral manipulation was used during the 2004 recall referendum when the U.S.-funded NGO Sumate and the Penn, Schoen and Berland firm released false exit polls claiming that Chavez had lost the referendum. They did the same thing before the 2006 elections, claiming that Chavez’ opponent “clearly has the momentum.”[23] Both in 2004 and 2006 the fake polls would give credence to the opposition’s claims of fraud with the hope of producing massive protests against the government. The strategy mostly failed, but it did cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Chavez government and weakened its image internationally.
The destabilization attempts are taking form in a concrete way in the coming weeks in the form of huge anti-government protests in Caracas to reject the government’s actions against the private TV channel RCTV. Opposition groups have organized around the government decision, claiming that it steps on their “freedom of expression,” and have organized a series of large protests in the capital leading up to a massive march on May 27th, the day RCTV’s broadcast license expires.
All the private media have played a role in advertising and calling on viewers to attend the march to protest the government. All expectations are that there will be a huge turnout by both pro-government and anti-government groups, and the government has already warned of the possibility that violence could be used during the march in an attempt to blame the government and destabilize the regime. In the last few days, government intelligence found five sniper rifles in the hands of opposition groups as well as 144 Molotov cocktails in what appears to be evidence that there are plans for some sort of violence.[24]
It was exactly this kind of protest in 2002 that led to dozens of deaths, hundreds wounded, and the temporary overthrow of the Chavez government. Private media channels like RCTV manipulated video footage to blame deaths on Chavez supporters, and condemned the government for human rights abuses. So this time government officials have called on pro-government activists to monitor the opposition protests with photos and video on May 27th and May 28th in order to avoid a situation similar to the 2002 coup.
If it had not been for huge pro-government protests after Chavez had been overthrown in 2002, Washington’s strategy might have already gotten rid of the popular president. But the strategy failed, and so the empire keeps trying. Just as they did in the Ukraine, Serbia, Georgia and others, the strategy requires getting a large number of people into the streets to protest against the government. Regardless of whether the government is popularly-supported or not, or democratically-elected or not, opposition groups attempt to impose their will on the government by putting on the pressure.
What most protesters probably do not know is that they are simply pawns in a larger strategy to open up the world to “free-market” global capitalism and corporate-dominated privatizations. While huge multinational corporations carve up the world among themselves, small nations like Serbia and Venezuela are simply unfortunate obstacles to their objectives. In the worldwide scramble to see who will get bigger and who will get eaten, the fact that some countries would prefer not to be eaten simply doesn’t matter to the bureaucrats in Washington.
[1] To read more about how the World Bank and IMF force privatization on poor countries, Third World Traveler has a large section devoted to the topic. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/IMF_WB/IMF_WB.html
[2] Michael Barker has a 4 part series of articles on Znet that explain this strategy in further detail. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10987
[3] Michael A. Cohen and Maria Figueroa Küpçü, Privatizing Foreign Policy, World Policy Journal, Volume xXII, No 3, Fall 2005 http://worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj05-3/cohen.html
[4] Chulia, Sreeram. Democratisation, Colour Revolutions and the Role of the NGO’s: Catalysts or Saboteurs?, Global Research, December 25, 2005, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051225&articleId=1638
[5] Michael Dobbs, ‘US advice guided Milosevic opposition: political consultants helped Yugoslav opposition topple authoritarian leader’, The Washington Post, 11 December 2000, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A18395-2000Dec3¬Found=true
[6] Ian Traynor explains how opposition “exit polls” have been strategically used to weaken or overthrow regimes in Eastern Europe in his November 2004 article in The Guardian. “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1360236,00.html
[7] Chris Marsden, “How the West organised Milosevic's downfall,” World Socialist Web Site, 13 October 2000, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/oct2000/yugo-o13_prn.shtml
[8] Finley, Brooke. “Remembering Yugoslavia: Managed News and Weapons of Mass Destruction,” from the book Censored 2005, Project Censored, Seven Stories Press, 2004.
[9] Michael Parenti, The Media and Their Atrocities, You Are Being Lied To, pg. 53 , The Disinformation Company Ltd., 2001
[10] Neil Clark, “The Spoils of Another War – NATO’s Kosovo Privatizations,” Znet, September 21, 2004, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6275
[11] Elise Hugus, “Eight Years After NATO’s “Humanitarian War” – Serbia’s new “third way”, Z Magazine, April 2007, Volume 20 Number 4, http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Apr2007/hugus0407.html
[12] Hedges, C., "Kosovo War's Glittering Prize Rests Underground," New York Times, 08/08/98
[13] Michel Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Global Research February 19, 2002, Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1996-06-18, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MIC20020219&articleId=370
[14] Jonathan Mowat, “Coup d’État in Disguise: Washingtons’s New World Order “Democratization” Template,” Global Research, February 9, 2005, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOW502A.html
[15] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petróleos_de_Venezuela
[16] Steve Ellner, The Politics of Privatization, NACLA Report on the Americas, 30 April 1998, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/42/170.html
[17] http://veszprem.americancorner.hu/htmls/american_corners_worldwide1.html
[18] Jim McIlroy & Coral Wynter, “Eva Golinger: Washington's 'three fronts of attack' on Venezuela,” Green Left Weekly, 17 November 2006, http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/691/35882
[19] Pascal Fletcher, ”US democracy expert teaches Venezuelan opposition,” Reuters, April 30, 2003, http://www.burmalibrary.org/TinKyi/archives/2003-05/msg00000.html
[20] On the web page of the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia it shows that Neil Foley gave a speech in La Paz, Bolivia for “U.S. Culture Week” the week before he was in Venezuela. http://www.megalink.com/USEMBLAPAZ/english/Pressrel2007En/0404-USweek-eng.pdf
[21] From my personal notes of Mr. Foley’s speech at the University of the Andes in Merida, Venezuela on April 16, 2007
[22] For the best, most detailed, account in English of the 2002 coup, read Gregory Wilpert’s recent article, “The 47-Hour Coup That Changed Everything,” www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=2018
[23] See my previous article “Coup d’État in Venezuela: Made in the U.S.A. – The U.S.-designed Plan to Overthrow Hugo Chavez in the Days Following the Election,” Venezuelanalysis.com, November 22, 2006 www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1884
[24] President Chavez announced that his intelligence had infiltrated opposition groups and found a man belonging to an opposition group with 5 sniper rifles with silencers and scopes. “Chávez anuncia incautación armas vinculadas a complot en su contra,” Milenio.com, May 6th, 2007, http://www.milenio.com/index.php/2007/05/05/65937/ Also, police in Los Teques, near Caracas, found 144 Molotov cocktails all ready to be used to “take them out to the street next week with the intention of disturbing the public order and for direct confrontation with authorities,” Prensa Latina, May 9, 2007, http://www.prensalatina.com.mx/article.asp?ID=%7BEEAA37C7-DE27-48EB-A23B-CDC19EAD2ADA%7D)
First used in Serbia in 2000, Washington has now perfected a new imperial strategy to maintain its supremacy around the globe. Whereas military invasions and installing dictatorships have traditionally been the way to control foreign populations and keep them out of the way of business, the U.S. government has now developed a new strategy that is not so messy or brutal, and much sleeker; so sleek, in fact, that it’s almost invisible.
It was so invisible in Serbia that no one seemed to notice in 2000 when a regime was toppled, the country was opened to massive privatization, and huge public-sector industries, businesses, and natural resources fell into the hands of U.S. and multinational corporations. Likewise, few have noticed as countries in the former Soviet-bloc have recently been victims of the same strategy, with the exact same results.
Nations that do not give in to the demands of the empire and the expansion of global capitalism are targeted by an undercover, well-designed plan to change the political situation in the country, and open it up to corporate investors. U.S.-supported groups inside the country overthrow the president, making it seem like there is no outside intervention. And now, Washington has turned toward its new biggest threat: Latin America, and more specifically, Venezuela.
The Rise of the New World Order
During the second half of the twentieth century, capitalists in the first world began to saturate domestic opportunities for investment and growth. Big business reached a point where possibilities for expansion within national borders were mostly exhausted, and the only option for growth was to look for new opportunities abroad. Growing corporate conglomerates looked to expand their operations throughout the world, investing, privatizing, and buying up everything they could get their hands on. National capital was looking to go international, and by the end of the century, capitalism had become truly global.
"Get big, or get eaten," was their new philosophy, and they decided to get big by eating whole nations. With the help of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, economies everywhere were opened up to privatization. The phone systems, electrical grids, water systems, and natural resources were bought up by wealthy capitalists in countries around the world. Free-market capitalism now ruled the day; a paradise for international capital as the world’s wealth became more and more concentrated in their hands.[1]
Some nations, however, were determined to not be eaten. Privatization was an unpopular idea among populations that had developed the crazy idea that their natural resources belonged to them, and not foreign corporations. Resistance developed in several areas of the world, and some nations would not consent to the logic of global capitalism. Washington, however, was determined to open the world up to corporate expansion. They would oblige those countries that didn’t comply, either by force or by cunning.
The Case of Yugoslavia: A Model for Regime Change
It was in Yugoslavia, and more specifically, in Serbia, where Washington’s new strategy would really take shape for the first time. From here they would carry it on to other countries in an attempt to repeat the tremendous success of the Serbian experience. And it’s not hard to see why. After the toppling of the Milosevic regime allowed for mass privatization, all that remained of the formerly socialist country, including some of Europe’s largest reserves of natural resources, soon fell into the hands of U.S. and international investors.
The strategy is a sophisticated one. With the intention of ousting an undesirable regime, the U.S. government dedicates itself to strengthening and uniting opposition to the government. This includes funding opposition political parties, and creating non-governmental organizations dedicated to toppling the regime in power. On top of this, the U.S. might contract political consultants and polling agencies to help their favored candidate win at the ballot box. But in the event they cannot win the election, fake polls cast doubt on the official electoral results, and the opposition claims fraud. Massive protests and media attention put pressure on the regime to step down, or to give in to opposition demands.[2]
As implausible as it might sound, it was exactly this strategy that toppled Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 2000. After the war in Kosovo and NATO bombing had failed to produce regime change, the United States worked to strengthen Milosevic’s internal opponents by uniting them behind one candidate, Vojislav Kostunica, and pumping about $40 million into his election campaign.[3] U.S.-funded NGO’s and electoral consultants helped create a propaganda campaign surrounding the elections, and worked behind the scenes to help organize mass resistance to the Milosevic regime.[4] U.S.-trained “election helpers” were deployed around the country on election day to monitor results. The U.S. even provided young activists with thousands of cans of spray paint and campaign stickers to cover the country with anti-Milosevic slogans.[5]
According to official results of the first round elections, neither candidate had won a majority of the vote, and so it would require a second round run-off. But U.S. consultants published their own “exit polls,” giving Kostunica a huge victory and Milosevic refused to recognize them.[6] The opposition claimed fraud and U.S.-backed groups staged acts of non-violent resistance to put pressure on the government. Armed groups stormed the Federal Assembly and the state television headquarters.[7] Massive protests and rebellion forced Milosevic to step down. There would be no second round election, and Washington’s candidate Vojislav Kostunica took power. The strategy had worked.
But why had the U.S. targeted Serbia, and, even more specifically, the small province of Kosovo? The answer goes back to the Reagan administration and a 1984 secret document on “US Policy towards Yugoslavia.” A censored version was revealed in 1990, advocating “expanded efforts to promote a ‘quiet revolution’ to overthrow Communist government and parties.”[8]
The US government had worked on dismantling and dividing socialist Yugoslavia for years, supporting any and all independence movements within the individual provinces, including the 1999 military intervention to help the province of Kosovo break away. What was once a relative economic success under the famous Josip Tito, the socialist economy, based on socially-owned, worker-controlled companies, did not allow for foreign investment or US capital. This was a mortal sin in modern global capitalism. As Michael Parenti put it:
“Yugoslavia was the only country in Eastern Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy. It was the only one that did not beg for entry into NATO. It was - and what's left of it, still is - charting an independent course not in keeping with the New World Order.”[9]
Breaking up the country into smaller, dependent states and destroying their public-sector economy was the ultimate goal, and Milosevic, an admirer of socialist Tito, was the only thing standing in their way.
The rewards for their work were substantial. Once Milosevic was gone, one of the first actions taken by the new government was to repeal the 1997 privatization law and allow 70% of a company to be sold to foreign investors.[10] In 2004 the UN Mission in Kosovo announced the privatization of 500 enterprises, and U.S. corporations were the big winners. Phillip Morris bought up a $580 million tobacco factory, U.S. Steel got a $250 million deal on a steel producer, Coca-Cola grabbed a bottled water producer for $21 million, and the list goes on.[11]
In addition, western investors now had access to what the New York Times called the “war’s glittering prize,” the second largest coal reserves in Europe and large reserves of lead, zinc, gold, silver, and, even petroleum.[12] And the real gem was located in the province of Kosovo; the huge Trepca mine complex, valued at over $5 billion, now open to the highest bidder.[13]
The success of the strategy in Serbia was an important lesson for the Washington policy makers. They would repeat it several more times throughout Eastern Europe in places like Georgia (2003), the Ukraine (2004), Kyrgyzstan (2005), and Belarus (unsuccessfully in 2001). In what became known as the “Color Revolutions,” each U.S.-aided movement would remove a regime in exchange for one more favorable to the “free-market” policies promoted by Washington.[14] The preferred strategy for regime change became this new sort of non-violent resistance, and now the empire turned its gaze on South America, where a new threat to global capitalism had suddenly emerged.
The Problem of Venezuela
If the Trepca mine in Kosovo was the jackpot of the Serbian intervention, in Venezuela it is the state-owned oil company, PDVSA. Venezuela has some of the largest oil reserves in the world, possibly passing Saudi Arabia in total reserves if all extra-heavy crude deposits are included. And it is PDVSA that dominates in Venezuela with a total monopoly over the nation’s oil resources. With a production capacity of 3.3 billion barrels per day, and a $65 billion yearly revenue, the company also possesses a network of more than 13,000 gas stations in the United States, including several refineries in both the U.S. and Europe, making it the second largest company in all of Latin America.[15]
You can be sure that corporate investors would love to get their hands on PDVSA, along with other public sector companies in Venezuela. In fact, they were doing just that throughout the 1990’s. By 1998, multinational corporations had already bought up the national phone company, the largest electricity company, and PDVSA was going through what they called an “opening” to international capital; a prettier way of saying privatization.[16]
But that same year, Hugo Chavez was elected president on an anti-imperialist platform, and the auctioning-off of Venezuela came to an abrupt halt. In fact, Hugo Chavez has become a real problem for the corporate imperialists and their servants in Washington. Not only has he stopped privatization, but he is reversing it by re-nationalizing all that was once privatized. The privatization of the state oil company is now prohibited by law, and his government has taken complete control of it, using it to finance the country’s development.
But what is even more worrying for Washington and their corporate sponsors is how this trend is spreading through Latin America. The Chavez government has built close ties to many of his neighbors, and many are following in his footsteps. Countries like Bolivia and Ecuador are taking greater control of their gas and oil reserves, leaving less room for the huge corporations that hoped to one day own them.
And so, just as they did in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and others, Washington has deployed its forces in Venezuela with the intention of getting rid of the Chavez menace. After trying many things over the years, including a short-lived coup, electoral manipulation, and mass protests, Washington has not been able to topple the popular leader. But they haven’t given up. To the contrary, they’ve actually just continued to increase their level of involvement.
Repeating the East European experience in Venezuela
The new imperial strategy includes something called “American Corners.” These “corners” are small offices set up by Washington throughout the target country that basically serve as mini-embassies. It is not completely clear what exactly these “corners” do, but inside you will find an array of information about the United States, including study abroad opportunities, English classes, and pro-U.S. propaganda. On top of this, the mini-embassies also organize events, trainings, and lectures for young students.
Interestingly, they seem to be very abundant in countries that Washington seeks to destabilize. The former Yugoslav countries have a total of 22 American Corners, including 7 in Serbia. The Ukraine has 24, Belarus 11, Russia 30, even Iraq, with 11. By far the highest concentration of the “corners” is in Eastern Europe, where Washington has focused its destabilization efforts in recent years.[17]
There are at least 4 “American Corners” in Venezuela, the most for any Latin American country, and the U.S. also finances literally hundreds of organizations throughout the country, to the tune of more than $5 million a year.[18] Together, these U.S.-funded organizations are working to implant the Eastern European experience in Venezuela. As reported by Reuters, the Venezuelan opposition is already learning the Serbian tactics to overthrow a regime from a retired U.S. army colonel named Robert Helvey.
“Helvey, who has taught young activists in Myanmar and Serbian students who helped topple the former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, is giving courses on non-violent opposition tactics this week at an east Caracas university,” said the article. “Neither Helvey nor the organizers of the Caracas seminar would give details of exactly what opposition tactics were being taught. But in his work in Serbia before Milosevic’s fall, Helvey briefed students on ways to organize a strike and on how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime,” reported Reuters.[19]
And more recently, in the university city of Mérida, history professor from Texas, Neil Foley, hosted an event sponsored by the U.S. embassy and the Venezuelan-American Center (Cevam), not an official “American Corner” but serving the same purpose. Foley, who has also spoken in various “American Corners” in Serbia, gave speeches in both Bolivia and Venezuela on “American values.”[20]
I attended one of Foley’s speeches and, as expected, it was a complete pro-U.S. propaganda campaign imposed upon the university students. The professor gave exactly the message that the U.S. Embassy had paid him to give, speaking wonders about American society and “American democracy.” According to Foley, the United States solves all of its problems by tolerance for others and an all-inclusive “dialogue,” between opposing parties. And sending a clear hint to the Venezuelan students, Foley implied that any government that does not live up to these standards “must be overthrown.”[21]
All of these efforts come together into a nationwide campaign to unite, strengthen, and mobilize opposition to the democratically elected Chavez government. The ultimate goal, of course, is to destabilize the government by organizing and directing opposition groups to commit acts of peaceful resistance and mass protests. Just like they did in 2002, when the Venezuelan opposition groups staged massive protests that turned violent, and eventually led to the temporary overthrow of the Chavez government, the U.S.-financed campaign seeks to destabilize the government in any way they can, perhaps provoking violence for which they will later blame the government.[22]
Now nearly every element of the strategy used in Serbia and other Eastern European countries has been implemented in Venezuela as Washington directs and controls the campaign of the Venezuelan opposition. The same “electoral consultants” that were used in Serbia, the Washington-based Penn, Schoen and Berland, have also been used in Venezuela to publish fake exit polls in an effort to cast doubt on Venezuelan elections. This strategy of electoral manipulation was used during the 2004 recall referendum when the U.S.-funded NGO Sumate and the Penn, Schoen and Berland firm released false exit polls claiming that Chavez had lost the referendum. They did the same thing before the 2006 elections, claiming that Chavez’ opponent “clearly has the momentum.”[23] Both in 2004 and 2006 the fake polls would give credence to the opposition’s claims of fraud with the hope of producing massive protests against the government. The strategy mostly failed, but it did cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Chavez government and weakened its image internationally.
The destabilization attempts are taking form in a concrete way in the coming weeks in the form of huge anti-government protests in Caracas to reject the government’s actions against the private TV channel RCTV. Opposition groups have organized around the government decision, claiming that it steps on their “freedom of expression,” and have organized a series of large protests in the capital leading up to a massive march on May 27th, the day RCTV’s broadcast license expires.
All the private media have played a role in advertising and calling on viewers to attend the march to protest the government. All expectations are that there will be a huge turnout by both pro-government and anti-government groups, and the government has already warned of the possibility that violence could be used during the march in an attempt to blame the government and destabilize the regime. In the last few days, government intelligence found five sniper rifles in the hands of opposition groups as well as 144 Molotov cocktails in what appears to be evidence that there are plans for some sort of violence.[24]
It was exactly this kind of protest in 2002 that led to dozens of deaths, hundreds wounded, and the temporary overthrow of the Chavez government. Private media channels like RCTV manipulated video footage to blame deaths on Chavez supporters, and condemned the government for human rights abuses. So this time government officials have called on pro-government activists to monitor the opposition protests with photos and video on May 27th and May 28th in order to avoid a situation similar to the 2002 coup.
If it had not been for huge pro-government protests after Chavez had been overthrown in 2002, Washington’s strategy might have already gotten rid of the popular president. But the strategy failed, and so the empire keeps trying. Just as they did in the Ukraine, Serbia, Georgia and others, the strategy requires getting a large number of people into the streets to protest against the government. Regardless of whether the government is popularly-supported or not, or democratically-elected or not, opposition groups attempt to impose their will on the government by putting on the pressure.
What most protesters probably do not know is that they are simply pawns in a larger strategy to open up the world to “free-market” global capitalism and corporate-dominated privatizations. While huge multinational corporations carve up the world among themselves, small nations like Serbia and Venezuela are simply unfortunate obstacles to their objectives. In the worldwide scramble to see who will get bigger and who will get eaten, the fact that some countries would prefer not to be eaten simply doesn’t matter to the bureaucrats in Washington.
[1] To read more about how the World Bank and IMF force privatization on poor countries, Third World Traveler has a large section devoted to the topic. http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/IMF_WB/IMF_WB.html
[2] Michael Barker has a 4 part series of articles on Znet that explain this strategy in further detail. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=10987
[3] Michael A. Cohen and Maria Figueroa Küpçü, Privatizing Foreign Policy, World Policy Journal, Volume xXII, No 3, Fall 2005 http://worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj05-3/cohen.html
[4] Chulia, Sreeram. Democratisation, Colour Revolutions and the Role of the NGO’s: Catalysts or Saboteurs?, Global Research, December 25, 2005, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20051225&articleId=1638
[5] Michael Dobbs, ‘US advice guided Milosevic opposition: political consultants helped Yugoslav opposition topple authoritarian leader’, The Washington Post, 11 December 2000, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A18395-2000Dec3¬Found=true
[6] Ian Traynor explains how opposition “exit polls” have been strategically used to weaken or overthrow regimes in Eastern Europe in his November 2004 article in The Guardian. “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/ukraine/story/0,15569,1360236,00.html
[7] Chris Marsden, “How the West organised Milosevic's downfall,” World Socialist Web Site, 13 October 2000, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/oct2000/yugo-o13_prn.shtml
[8] Finley, Brooke. “Remembering Yugoslavia: Managed News and Weapons of Mass Destruction,” from the book Censored 2005, Project Censored, Seven Stories Press, 2004.
[9] Michael Parenti, The Media and Their Atrocities, You Are Being Lied To, pg. 53 , The Disinformation Company Ltd., 2001
[10] Neil Clark, “The Spoils of Another War – NATO’s Kosovo Privatizations,” Znet, September 21, 2004, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=6275
[11] Elise Hugus, “Eight Years After NATO’s “Humanitarian War” – Serbia’s new “third way”, Z Magazine, April 2007, Volume 20 Number 4, http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Apr2007/hugus0407.html
[12] Hedges, C., "Kosovo War's Glittering Prize Rests Underground," New York Times, 08/08/98
[13] Michel Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Global Research February 19, 2002, Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1996-06-18, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=MIC20020219&articleId=370
[14] Jonathan Mowat, “Coup d’État in Disguise: Washingtons’s New World Order “Democratization” Template,” Global Research, February 9, 2005, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MOW502A.html
[15] http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petróleos_de_Venezuela
[16] Steve Ellner, The Politics of Privatization, NACLA Report on the Americas, 30 April 1998, http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/42/170.html
[17] http://veszprem.americancorner.hu/htmls/american_corners_worldwide1.html
[18] Jim McIlroy & Coral Wynter, “Eva Golinger: Washington's 'three fronts of attack' on Venezuela,” Green Left Weekly, 17 November 2006, http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/691/35882
[19] Pascal Fletcher, ”US democracy expert teaches Venezuelan opposition,” Reuters, April 30, 2003, http://www.burmalibrary.org/TinKyi/archives/2003-05/msg00000.html
[20] On the web page of the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia it shows that Neil Foley gave a speech in La Paz, Bolivia for “U.S. Culture Week” the week before he was in Venezuela. http://www.megalink.com/USEMBLAPAZ/english/Pressrel2007En/0404-USweek-eng.pdf
[21] From my personal notes of Mr. Foley’s speech at the University of the Andes in Merida, Venezuela on April 16, 2007
[22] For the best, most detailed, account in English of the 2002 coup, read Gregory Wilpert’s recent article, “The 47-Hour Coup That Changed Everything,” www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=2018
[23] See my previous article “Coup d’État in Venezuela: Made in the U.S.A. – The U.S.-designed Plan to Overthrow Hugo Chavez in the Days Following the Election,” Venezuelanalysis.com, November 22, 2006 www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1884
[24] President Chavez announced that his intelligence had infiltrated opposition groups and found a man belonging to an opposition group with 5 sniper rifles with silencers and scopes. “Chávez anuncia incautación armas vinculadas a complot en su contra,” Milenio.com, May 6th, 2007, http://www.milenio.com/index.php/2007/05/05/65937/ Also, police in Los Teques, near Caracas, found 144 Molotov cocktails all ready to be used to “take them out to the street next week with the intention of disturbing the public order and for direct confrontation with authorities,” Prensa Latina, May 9, 2007, http://www.prensalatina.com.mx/article.asp?ID=%7BEEAA37C7-DE27-48EB-A23B-CDC19EAD2ADA%7D)
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