The Hillary Myth and the Good Reverend Wright? By John S. Phillips

The History of the present King … is a history of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let the Facts be submitted to a candid world.

- Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

For this is a year of choice - a year when we choose not simply who will lead us, but where we wish to be led; the country we want for ourselves, and the kind we want for our children. If this year of choice we fashion new polices out of old illusions, we ensure ourselves nothing but crisis for the future, and we bequeath to our children the bitter harvest of those crisis.

- Robert F. Kennedy, March 18, 1968

It is 3AM in the morning and the phone rings at the White House who should the American public entrust to answer the phone. A man whose ties to the Reverend Wright make his views radical and out of touch with reality or a talented Senator from New York who already has 8 years experience in the White House. Listening to the media coverage since the evolution of the Wright issues, the public is led to believe; this is a simple question of Right from Wrong? But the sudden rise of Reverend Wright as a decisive political issue deserves more investigation especially considering that his recent speaking engagement at the National Press Club was arranged and sponsored by an ardent Hilary supporter.

The media has focused its criticism of Reverend Wright on two main ideas he presented:

1) The 9/11 tragedy was caused in part by past US government policies

2) the AIDS virus came from US government labs and is part of a larger conspiracy to keep Black America in chains

Reverend Wright is neither the first nor the last US citizens to come to these conclusions. The corporate media has once again failed the public by ignoring the historical basis of these comments, preferring to paint Reverend Wright and therefore Senator Obama as anti-American and a believer in the radical conspiracy theories of the far left, the Anti-War movement, and what Wayne Madsen has aptly termed the Internet irregulars.

The good Reverend Wright unfortunately is behind the times. He does not understand the cause of the 9/11 tragedy or its connection to the most important problem facing Black Americans for the last 40 years, the illegal drug trade. There is no single issue more important for improving the lives of Black Americans or the inner city poor than the drug issue. With the number of US citizens in prison and jail approaching 3 million at an estimated cost of over $300 billion a year by conservative estimates, the drug problem has crippled the chance of the recovery of the inner city. There is no chance for its recovery with out the full disclosure of the role that the US government played in this problem. The US government has been actively involved in importing narcotics into the United States since the death of John F. Kennedy.

The single most important debate that has not even touched the lips of the corporate media is that both Bill and Hilary Clinton were involved in the importation of cocaine into the Untied States during the Iran Contra Affair. If Hilary were to get the Democratic nomination and be elected President, we can be assured of the fact that like Presidents Clinton and Bush before her she will do nothing to address the biggest scandal in US history: US government involvement in the narcotics trade. A complete investigation into this problem is the start of any program to rebuild the inner city. The final recovery of the money generated by the illegal drug trade is the funding solution for rebuilding inner city life.



And while Hilary and Bill cannot be singled out in this regard if Bill had not been involved in the trade during his tenure as Governor of Arkansas, the shape of the current political landscape would be vastly different both politically and economically. The rebuilding of America inner cities is going to be a multi trillion-dollar project; the cash that can be recovered from the drug trade will provide a good start for this project. But the first step in solving this problem is putting someone in the White House who was not part of the problem.

The History: Vietnam: A bag of heroin a day keeps the Democrats at bay

No other political movement has profited more from the sale of illegal drugs than the Central Intelligence Agency. I say political movement because it has been clear from the start that the use of the sale of illegal drugs has been a major fundraising practice for individuals with corrupt political agendas. This began in earnest when the CIA and FBI established its kiss and don't tell policy with Organized Crime. This relationship has been responsible for the creation of more havoc in US cities over the last 5 decades than any external enemy that we have previously faced or ever will face. The amount of money that has been obtained illegally through these activities is greater than our national debt. The recovery of the profits from these illegal actively would more than stabilize Social Security and it might even balance the budget. Our duty as concerned citizens is to recover these ill gotten gains and to restore American Faith in this Republic.

CIA's involvement in the drug trade has been more than just a little help for a close friend. In 1971 former Green Beret, Sgt. Paul Withers testified at "The Winter Soldier Hearings" in Boston, about his job description while he was on loan to the CIA in 1966.

"The mission in Laos was to make friends with the Meo people and organize and train them to fight the Pathet Lao. One of the main tasks was to buy up the entire local opium crop. About twice a week an Air American plane would arrive with supplies and kilo bags of gold dust. Paul gave the gold to the Meo in return for their bags of opium which were loaded on the plane."[i]

As Richard Nixon prepared his run for the White House, he proposed that American's not only seek to destroy the communists in Vietnam, but also asked Americans to band together in an all out War on Drugs. As it turned out, Nixon's War on Drugs had two prime objectives. The first was to put the international heroin trade and its tremendous cash flow in the hands of his political allies. Secondly, by blaming the anti-war movement for the drug problem, he intended to give the public the idea that the peace movement was set on destroying the American way of Life. This was the prefect fuel for Nixon's law and order domestic agenda.



Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, believes the details of this strategy were planned shortly after Nixon's reelection in 1968. He states:

"Involved in one way or another in the planning, the execution, or both, were: President Nixon and part of the White House staff; Meyer Lansky's corporate gangsters syndicate - in particular its Cuban exile wing run by Florida capo Santo Trafficante, Jr.; The Cuba/China lobby; ultra reactionary forces in Southeast Asia, primarily the Kuomintang Chinese on Taiwan, and in the Golden Triangle; and intelligence and law enforcement factions of the CIA and BNDD/DEA."[ii]

Alfred McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, convincingly outlines the results of US government complicity in the drug trade.

"From 1934 to 1970, the slow pressure of League drug diplomacy had forced a reduction in global opium production from 7,600 tons to only 1,000. In the following 20 years, however, the failure of the DEA's suppression efforts combined with the CIA complicity in the global traffic allowed world opium production to multiply fourfold to 4,200 pounds by 1989. Significantly, some 3000 tons, or 73 percent of the 1989 total, came from Southeast Asia, where CIA had worked with the region's drug lords for twenty-four years."[iii]

During both the Vietnam era, and the 1980's the Republicans road the drug issue into office. America was being consumed by liberal culture according to them, and it was leading to the downfall of the American Youth, and destruction of the American way of life. And here is the smoking gun, while using the media and research institutions to back up their political ideology; they simultaneously flooded the American Streets with heroin in the case of the Vietnam War, and Cocaine during the conflicts in Central America.

The Carter Years

The first goal of Jimmy Carter was to stop CIA covert action abroad. If his policy to stop human right policies aboard was to succeed, he knew the U.S. must set a good example. The first step he took to accomplish this step was to fire George Bush as head of the CIA. Unfortunately Carter did not realize that the CIA had sufficient funding to run covert actions with the profits from the drug trade.

On March 18, 1978 an article in the Boston Globe proclaimed: "Senate Investigation into drug trading should begin at home.

"But of all government and government agencies complicit in heroin traffic none should be of more interest to the Senate Intelligence Committee than the Central Intelligence Agency."

The extent of the intelligence community's complicity in drug trafficking will only be known with a complete release of all documents in this area. But what we do know from empirical science is that prior to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, there were approximately 50,000 addicts, and 10 years later at the height of the Vietnam War, there were closer to 1,000,000 addicts. What role the FBI and CIA had in this heroin epidemic will only be known by the release of still secret documents from this era. One thing that we know for sure is that the amount of money generated from the trading of illegal drugs skyrocketed after Kennedy's assassination. In 1960 the total heroin consumption for a group of 50,000 addicts amounted to about $1.8 Billion per year. By the end of the decade, with a 1,000,000 addicts the cash flow would amount to $36 Billion or about $69 million per day. Once you understand that the heroin trade was the pay off for the Kennedy Assassination understanding how the history of the 70's unfolded is much easier.



As presidential election season grew near, the Republicans began to mold their political machine much in the fashion that Nixon had during the Watergate Era. This new effort to control public opinion through disinformation would come into a new era during 1978 and 1979. Bill Weinberg, "George Bush, The Superspy, Drug-dealing President", writes:

Bill Casey, the CIA man who was an old friend of Bush's dad, was appointed Reagan campaign manager, and would be rewarded with the post of CIA director after the Reagan victory. Casey had a vision of a "private CIA" which would not be funded by - or answerable to - Congress. Honneger says that Casey and Bush launched this spy network during the 1980 campaign. She quotes an aid to Representative John Conyers: "William Casey set up a mammoth intelligence operation, including past and present members of the military and intelligence communities, to spy on Carter's negotiations with Iran."[iv]

This new privately funded "Secret Team" was already hard at work planning to expand its drug distribution network. This, of course, is the same secret team that has been involved in the illegal torture and

debriefing of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, now famous for the Iraqi prison abuse scandal. This secret team had perfected technique for torturing prisoners, and as we will learn American citizens for more than 50 years. This secret team played a major role in defeating Jimmy Carter in 1980, much as they played the same role in Florida for George Bush Light during the 2000 presidential race. Now with control of the White House, they unleashed their new political weapon that seemed like it had unlimited potential, Cocaine.

While Reagan took to the airwaves much like Nixon had 10 years before to initiate his own personal 'War on Drugs'. Bush as head of the South Florida Task Force began to arrange a plan of action. A cocaine epidemic had gone from the planning stages to a plan of action. While the media highlighted a series of cocaine seizures, George Bush's first move would be to close down Central America's only DEA office in Honduras. [v] Within a few months the CIA was moving large quantities of Cocaine to the US through various places in Central America.

While DEA publications and efforts focused on the threat of drugs over the Mexican border, a new supply network was set up.

"Under North's direction, Shackley and Clines recruited their old Operation Mongoose pals to run contra's re-supply operation at El Salvador's Eloping, formed shadow companies to build clandestine jungle airstrips-established the Contras as a link in the Medellin Cartel's Andesto-Maimi cocaine trail."[vi]

How successful would this new smuggling operation be? Between 1976 and 1988 the amount of cocaine entering the US had increased from 16 metric tons to 90 metric tons. Gang wars in city streets turned American political opinion more conservative assuring Republican victories at election time. The operation had gone as planned.



Appearing on the television show hosted by Geraldo Rivera, `Now It Can Be Told', Richard Breneke described his first job for the illegal Contra Supply network. Southern Air Transport, a subsidiary of Air America famous for transporting heroin during the Vietnam War, had hired Breneke. Upon returning to an airstrip in Mena Arkansas from Central America, he discovered a large box had been placed in his plane for return shipment to the US. He opened the box and discovered it was filled with pure cocaine. He became enraged and called his supervisor, national security advisor, Donald Gregg, Vice President Bush's National Security Advisor. Gregg told Breneke to mind his own business that his job was as a pilot not as a policy setter.[vii]

Reports also surfaced during the show that a prisoner was being held in prison in Washington State who had evidence of the use of 5 different US airstrips by the Contra Supply network to smuggle drug to fund Oliver North and his contra army.

Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA

The public…has the right to know about the CIA sponsoring candidates for U.S. Presidency and, thereby, compromising themselves and their values. We wrote this book because, otherwise, there would be no assurances that the truth would ever be told. [viii]

In 1994 Terry Reed and John Cummings wrote, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, that outlined a strategy where by the Bush family sought to compromise the Democrats by involving them in a scandal he had been part of since before the Vietnam War, cocaine trafficking. During the early 1980's, Arkansas became a central hub not only for planes landing with shipment of Cocaine from Central America, but also for the laundering of the profits from the trade. Terry Reed had been recruited by Oliver North to help coordinate the trade of illegal weapons and cocaine with North's partners in Central America. Central in this planning effort was the notorious Barry Seal.

Barry Seal had played a major role in CIA complicity in the drug trade for many years. He knew more about the inner workings of the DEA, CIA, FBI and other agencies that turned blind eye to US government involvement in drug trafficking than anyone. In a 1986 the Louisiana Attorney General wrote a letter to Edwin Messe stating that Barry Seale had been personally responsible for the importation of $3 to $5 billion worth of cocaine into the United States.

According to Reed, Seal's planes were outfitted with sophisticated military style communication systems that received its flight plans from satellites allowing it to evade detection flying in and out of the United States. On one such flight Seal reveals to Reed how cocaine was being used to neutralize Bush's potential political opponents.



"So you've got direct knowledge of the Republicans trying to neutralize some Democrats before they can nuke Bush with this?"

"Hell yeah. I've been part of it. Remember in that meeting I told you I had a plan to blow the lid off the whole damn Mena deal and shut it down due to adverse publicity? Well, what I didn't tell you was that project was already in effect, and the Republicans were already trying to neutralize some important people in Arkansas...namely the Clinton family."

"Let's don't call it cocaine. Let's just call it neutralizin' powder. Least that's the way the Bush family saw it. This is just one family warrin' against another. Just like the Mob."[ix]

In 1996 Michael Ruppert, prepared a statement for the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigating allegations of US government involvement in drug trafficking. Ruppert had dedicated his life to stopping US government involvement in drug trafficking since discovering as a Los Angles police officer that the enforcement community was turning a blind eye to the importation of drugs into the Untied States. He documented efforts by the CIA in operation Pegasus, and Watchtower to install radar beacons that allowed planes flying out of Columbia to evade radar as they headed for Manuel Noriega's Panama. He states: The missions are Iran-Contra era operations and directly link to admitted Agency operations at Mena, Arkansas where tons of cocaine were smuggled by Agency personnel into this country. That smuggling took place under direct orders from the highest levels of this government.

The investigative material, contrary to denials, is overwhelming, irrefutable and shows a direct link between then Governor Bill Clinton and CIA operations.[x]

Like many before them Reed and Seal suffered the consequences of eating from the hand of the beast. Reed survived, Seal did not. Reed was framed in an insurance fraud scheme. During the discovery phase of his trail, he obtained a 1987 document proving what he had known all along that the FBI was warning the DEA and the CIA that the operation in Mena Arkansas was about to be exposed by the media. The documents also confirmed that Seal was a CIA operative.[xi]

Barry Seal a year before being sentenced on drug trafficking charges, traveled to Washington DC to testify before the Presidents Commission on Organized Crime. He stated that he was moving drugs for the cartel with direct support of the US government. He described how he had used Department of Defense navigation and communication equipment designed for nuclear war to avoid being detected by military radar while making gun and drug shipments.[xii] Shortly after accepting a plea bargain from the US Attorney in Louisiana, Seal died in a hail of gun fire from members of the Medellin cartel on February 18, 1987. The media characterized the assassination as a successful attempt by the Medellin Cartel to silence a potential witness against them. Those who understand history know this was the killing of a man who could connect many powerful government officials with a coordinated effort to raise money for illegal political activities at home and abroad.

In 1997 article titled, "CIA Linked to Seal's Assassination", Daniel Hopsicker interviews two New Orleans attorneys who provide important details about Barry Seal. Sam Dalton, representing the Seal's Columbian assassins, questioned the CIA about its involvement in Seals death during the penalty phase of their trail. During discovery Dalton gained access to the contents of Seal's trunk. It was apparent that the FBI had done a good job removing any incriminating evident before they handed over the contents of the truck, but they missed the "smoking gun". Dalton states: "But they had missed a few things that indicated just how valuable that trunk was. Because that's where that phone number was. That's where we found George Bush's private phone number. They were regularly talking to each other very seriously over what was probably a secure phone. Barry Seal was in direct contact with George Bush."[xiii]

Lewis Unglesby who represented Barry Seal in 1986 recalled the first time he became aware of how high Barry Seal's connections in the Untied States government were. He states: "I sat him down one time, and said: I cannot represent you effectively unless I know what is going on. Barry smiled, and gave me a number, and told me to call it, and identify myself as him (Seal.)

I dialed the number, a little dubiously, and a pleasant female voice answered: 'Office of the Vice President.'"

"This is Barry Seal," Unglesby said into the phone.

"Just a moment, sir," the secretary replied. "Then a man's voice came on the line, identifying himself as Admiral somebody, and said to me, 'Barry, where have you been?'"

"Excuse me, Sir," Unglesby replied, "but my name is Lewis Unglesby and I am Barry Seal's attorney."

There was a click, Unglesby relates. The phone went dead. "Seal just smiled when I looked over at him in shock, and then went back to treating me on a need-to-know basis."[xiv]

In 1997 Celerino "Cele" Costillo III, a retired member of the DEA and author of the book "POWDERBURNS, Cocaine, Contras & The Drug War outlines the history of crack cocaine epidemic in the Untied States for the House Permanent Committee on Intelligence.

Facts of my investigation on CIA-Contras drug trafficking in El Salvador:

The key to understanding the "crack cocaine" epidemic, which exploded on our streets in 1984, lies in understanding the effect of congressional oversight on covert operations. In this case the Boland amendment(s) of the era, while intending to restrict covert operations as intended by the will of the People, only served to encourage C.I.A., the military and elements of the national intelligence community to completely bypass the Congress and the Constitution in an eager and often used covert policy of funding prohibited operations with drug money.

As my friend and colleague Michael Ruppert has pointed out through his own experience in the 1970s, CIA has often bypassed congressional intent by resorting to the drug trade (Vietnam, Laos, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc).

When the Boland Amendment(s) cut the Contras off from a continued U.S. government subsidy, George Bush, his national security adviser Don Gregg, and Ollie North, turned to certain foreign governments, and to private contributions, to replace government dollars. Criminal sources of contributions were not excluded. By the end of 1981, through a series of Executive Orders and National Security Decision Directives, many of which have been declassified, Vice President Bush was placed in charge of all Reagan administration intelligence operations. All of the covert operations carried out by officers of the CIA, the Pentagon, and every other federal agency, along with a rogue army of former intelligence Operatives and foreign agents were commanded by George Bush."[xv]

Since their arrival on the national scene in 1992, Hilary has always insisted that she and Bill are a two for one package. Many of Hilary's supporters claim that it is unfair to tie her to the sins of her husband much like supports of our current president insisted that he not be linked with the crimes against humanity by his father. But in reality Bill and Hilary are linked by the political forces that empower them knowing that an independent Justice Department Investigation into these activities will destroy the political ambitions of the people involved.



In an article originally appearing in Penthouse magazine in 1995, and later mysterious dropped by the Washington Post after accepting it for publication, "The Crimes of Mena", Sally Denton and Roger Morris: "The tons of drugs that Seal and his associates brought into the country, officials agree, affected tens of thousands of lives at the least, and exacted an incalculable toll on American society. And for the three presidents, the enduring questions of political scandal are once again apt: What did they know about Mena? When did they know it? Why didn't they do anything to stop it … The crimes of Mena were real. That much is now documented beyond doubt. The only remaining issues are how far they extended, and who was responsible."[xvi]

The Clintons' involvement in this scandal has done more to harm the Democratic Party over the last 20 years than any other single issue. The illegal drug trade has provided the money and political muscle to mislead the public on the issue of Homeland Security. The current War of Terrorism is a carbon copy of the PSY-OPS program used by the Nixon administration when they launched the War on Drugs. With an understanding of this history in place, we can now proceed to dissect Reverend's Wright allegation that 9/11 was caused in part by past US government policies. For the seeds for 9/11 where buried deep in the politics of the international drug and arms trade.

BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, John S. Phillips, has spent 30 years investigating Government Involvement in the Narcotics Trade. A 1995 graduate of Harvard College, he has been involved in researching the issue of drug treatment for over 30 years. His website is: wbpnet.org. Click here to contact Mr. Phillips.

[i] Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, Southeast Asia: The Opium Trail, Boston, 1972, p.62

[ii] H. Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup, Boston: South End Press, 1980 p.122

[iii] A. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin, New York: Lawrence Books, 1991. p.19 This book was originally published in 1972 under the title, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. When it was re-released in 1991 it was almost impossible to find on bookstore shelves and reports surfaced that the Central Intelligence Agency was buying up as many copies as it could.

[iv] Bill Weinberg, High Times, November 1992.

[v] P.D. Scott, Cocaine Politics, 1991. Scott outlines the details of the strategy used to set up the movement of Cocaine through Honduras and Costa Rica.

[vi] B. Weinberg, Ibid., p.58

[vii] For more information see: THE ORAL DEPOSITION OF RICHARD J. BRENNEKE, a witness produced at the request of the Attorney General's Office, taken in the above-styled and numbered cause 21st day of June, 1991, before Jeff Bennett, C.C.R., Certificate of BUSHMAN COURT REPORTING, INC., Notary and for White County, Arkansas at the Office of the Attorney 323 Center Street, Little Rock, Arkansas at 10:10 a.m.

[viii] Terry Reed and John Cummings, Compromised: Clinton, Bush and the CIA, p9-10, S.P.I. Books, New York, New York, 1994.

[ix] Ibid., p. 213

[x] Michael Ruppert prepared for Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, November 15, 1996.

[xi] Compromised, p 198

[xii] Ibid., p. 221

[xiii] Daniel Hopsicker, CIA Linked to Seal's Assassination, George Bush's Personal Phone Number Found in Seals' Trunk, The Washington Weekly, Aug. 18, 1997

[xiv] Ibid., p. 2

[xv] Written Statement of Celerino Castillo III, For the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, April 27, 1998.

[xvi] Sally Denton and Roger Morris, "The Crimes of Mena", Penthouse Magazine, February 1995.

River of Resistance How the American Imperial Dream Foundered in Iraq By Michael Schwartz

On February 15, 2003, ordinary citizens around the world poured into the streets to protest George W. Bush's onrushing invasion of Iraq. Demonstrations took place in large cities and small towns globally, including a small but spirited protest at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Up to 30 million people, who sensed impending catastrophe, participated in what Rebecca Solnit, that apostle of popular hope, has called "the biggest and most widespread collective protest the world has ever seen."

The first glancing assessment of history branded this remarkable planetary protest a record-breaking failure, since the Bush administration, less than one month later, ordered U.S. troops across the Kuwaiti border and on to Baghdad.

And it has since largely been forgotten, or perhaps better put, obliterated from official and media memory. Yet popular protest is more like a river than a storm; it keeps flowing into new areas, carrying pieces of its earlier life into other realms. We rarely know its consequences until many years afterward, when, if we're lucky, we finally sort out its meandering path. Speaking for the protesters back in May 2003, only a month after U.S. troops entered the Iraqi capital, Solnit offered the following:

"We will likely never know, but it seems that the Bush administration decided against the 'Shock and Awe' saturation bombing of Baghdad because we made it clear that the cost in world opinion and civil unrest would be too high. We millions may have saved a few thousand or a few tens of thousand of lives. The global debate about the war delayed it for months, months that perhaps gave many Iraqis time to lay in stores, evacuate, brace for the onslaught."

Whatever history ultimately concludes about that unexpected moment of protest, once the war began, other forms of resistance arose -- mainly in Iraq itself -- that were equally unexpected. And their effects on the larger goals of Bush administration planners can be more easily traced. Think of it this way: In a land the size of California with but 26 million people, a ragtag collection of Baathists, fundamentalists, former military men, union organizers, democratic secularists, local tribal leaders, and politically active clerics -- often at each others throats (quite literally) -- nonetheless managed to thwart the plans of the self-proclaimed New Rome, the "hyperpower" and "global sheriff" of Planet Earth. And that, even in the first glancing assessment of history, may indeed prove historic.

The New American Century Goes Missing in Action

It's hard now even to recall the original vision George W. Bush and his top officials had of how the conquest of Iraq would unfold as an episode in the President's Global War on Terror. In their minds, the invasion was sure to yield a quick victory, to be followed by the creation of a client state that would house crucial "enduring" U.S. military bases from which Washington would project power throughout what they liked to term "the Greater Middle East."

In addition, Iraq was quickly going to become a free-market paradise, replete with privatized oil flowing at record rates onto the world market. Like falling dominos, Syria and Iran, cowed by such a demonstration of American might, would follow suit, either from additional military thrusts or because their regimes -- and those of up to 60 countriesworldwide -- would appreciate the futility of resisting Washington's demands. Eventually, the "unipolar moment" of U.S. global hegemony that the collapse of the Soviet Union had initiated would be extended into a "New American Century" (along with a generational Pax Republicana at home).

This vision is now, of course, long gone, largely thanks to unexpected and tenacious resistance of every sort within Iraq. This resistance consisted of far more than the initial Sunni insurgency that tied down what Donald Rumsfeld pridefully labeled "the greatest military force on the face of the earth." It is already none too rash a statement to suggest that, at all levels of society, usually at great sacrifice, the Iraqi people frustrated the imperial designs of a superpower.

Consider, for example, the myriad ways in which the Iraqi Sunnis resisted the occupation of their country from almost the moment the Bush administration's intention to fully dismantle Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime became clear. The largely Sunni city of Falluja, like most other communities around the country, spontaneously formed a new government based on local clerical and tribal structures. Like many of these cities, it avoided the worst of the post-invasion looting by encouraging the formation of local militias to police the community. Ironically, the orgy of looting that took place in Baghdad was, at least in part, a consequence of the U.S. military presence, which delayed the creation of such militias there. Eventually, however, sectarian militias brought a modicum of order even to Baghdad.
In Falluja and elsewhere, these same militias soon became effective instruments for reducing, and -- for a time -- eliminating, the presence of the U.S. military. For the better part of a year, faced with IEDs and ambushes from insurgents, the U.S. military declared Falluja a "no go" zone, withdrew to bases outside the city, and discontinued violent incursions into hostile neighborhoods. This retreat was matched in many other cities and towns. The absence of patrols by occupation forces saved tens of thousands of "suspected insurgents" from the often deadly violence of home invasions, and their relatives from wrecked homes and detained family members.

Even the most successful of U.S. military adventures in that period, the second battle of Falluja in November 2004, could also be seen, from quite a different perspective, as a successful act of resistance. Because the United States was required to mass a significant proportion of its combat brigades for the offensive (even transferring British troops from the south to perform logistical duties), most other cities were left alone. Many of these cities used this respite from the U.S. military to establish, or consolidate, autonomous governments or quasi-governments and defensive militias, making it all the more difficult for the occupation to control them.

Falluja itself was, of course, destroyed, with 70% of its buildings turned to rubble, and tens of thousands of its residents permanently displaced -- an extreme sacrifice that had the unexpected effect of taking pressure off other Iraqi cities for a while. In fact, the ferocity of the resistance in the predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq forced the American military to wait almost four years before renewing their initial 2004 efforts to pacify the well-organized Sadrist-led resistance in the predominantly Shia areas of the country.

The Rebellion of the Oil Workers

In another arena entirely, consider the Bush administration's dreams of harnessing Iraqi oil production to its foreign policy ambitions. The immediate goals, as American planners saw it, were to double prewar output and begin the process of transferring control of production from state ownership to foreign companies. Three major energy initiatives designed to accomplish these goals have so far been frustrated by resistance from virtually every segment of Iraqi society. Iraq's well-organized oil workers played a key role in this by using their ability to bring production to a virtual stand-still in order to abort the transfer -- only a few months after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein's regime -- of the operation of the southern oil port of Basra to the management of then-Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

This and other early acts of labor defiance turned back the initial assault on the Iraqi government-controlled system of oil production. Such acts also laid a foundation for successful efforts to prevent the passage of oil policies shaped in Washington that were designed to transfer control of energy exploration and production to foreign companies. In these efforts, the oil workers were joined by both Sunni and Shia resistance groups, local governments, and finally the new national parliament.

This same sort of resistance extended to the whole roster of neoliberal reforms sponsored by the U.S.-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). From the beginning of the occupation, for instance, there were protests against mass unemployment caused by the dismantling of the Baathist state and the shuttering of state-owned factories. Much of the armed resistance was a response to the occupation's early violent suppression of these protests.

Even more significant were local efforts to replace the government services discontinued by the CPA. The same local quasi-governments that had nurtured the militias sought to sustain or replace Baathist social programs, often by siphoning off oil destined for export onto the black-market to pay for local services, and hoarding local resources such as electrical generation. The result would be the creation of virtual city-states wherever U.S. troops were not present, leading to the inability of the occupation to "pacify" any substantial portion of the country.
The Sadrist movement and the Mahdi Army militia of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was probably the most successful -- and most anti-occupation -- of the Shia political parties-cum-militias that systematically sought to develop quasi-government organizations. They tried to meet, however minimally, some of the basic needs of their communities, supplying food baskets, housing services, and serving a host of other functions previously promised by the Baathist government, but forsworn by the U.S. occupation and the Iraqi government that the United States installed when "handing over" sovereignty in June 2004.

The American occupationaires expected that their plans for the rapid privatization and transformation of the state-driven economy would indeed generate resistance, but they were convinced that this would subside quickly once the new economy kicked into gear. Instead, as the occupation wore on, demands for relief grew more strident and insistent, while the country itself, in chaos and near collapse, became visible evidence of the failure of the Bush administration's "free market" policies.

An Iraqi Agenda for Withdrawal

Occupation officials faced the same dilemma in the political realm. The original goal of the Bush administration was a stable, pro-Washington government, stripped of its economic and political dominance over Iraqi society, but a bastion of resistance to Iranian regional power. This vision, like its military and economic cousins, has long since disappeared under the weight of Iraqi resistance.

Take, for example, the two high profile Iraqi elections, celebrated in the mainstream American media as a unique Bush administration accomplishment in the otherwise relentlessly autocratic Middle East. Inside Iraq, however, they had quite a different look. It is important to remember that the United States initially planned to sustain its direct rule -- the Coalition Provisional Authority -- until the country was fully pacified and its economic reforms completed. When the CPA became a hated symbol of an unwanted occupation, planning shifted to the idea of installing an appointed Iraqi government, based on community meetings that only supporters of the occupation could attend. Full-scale elections would be postponed until winners fully supportive of the Bush agenda were assured. An outpouring of protest from the predominantly Shia areas of the country, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, forced CPA administrators to move on to an election-based strategy.

The first election in January 2005 delivered a sizeable parliamentary majority voted in on platforms calling for strict timetables for a full U.S. military withdrawal from the country. American representatives then forcefully pressured the newly installed cabinet to abandon this position.

The second parliamentary election in December 2005 followed a similar pattern. This time, the backroom bargaining was only partially effective. The newly installed prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, reneged on his campaign promises by publicly supporting an ongoing American military presence, which caused deep fissures in the ruling coalition. After a year of unproductive negotiations, the 30 Sadrists in parliament, originally a key part of Maliki's ruling coalition, withdrew from both that coalition and the cabinet in protest over the prime minister's refusal to set a date for the end of the occupation. Subsequent parliamentary demands for a date certain for withdrawal were ignored by both the government and U.S. officials. While Maliki continued in office without a parliamentary majority, the controversy contributed to the soaring popularity of the Sadrists and waning support for the other Shiite governing parties.

By early 2008, with provincial elections looming in November, there was little doubt that the Sadrists would sweep to power in many predominantly Shia provinces, most critically Basra, Iraq's second largest city and southern oil hub. To prevent this debacle, Iraqi government troops, supported and advised by the U.S. military, sought to expelthe Sadrists from key areas of Basra.

This use of military force to prevent electoral defeat was only one of many indications that the Iraqi government was feeling the pressure of public opinion. Another was the reluctance of Prime Minister Maliki to maintain an antagonistic stance toward Iran. Despite fervent Bush administration efforts, his government has promoted social, religious, and economic relationships between Iraqis and Iranians. These included facilitating visits to the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf by hundreds of thousands of Iranian Shia pilgrims, as well as supporting extensive oil transactions between Basra and Iranian firms, including distribution and refining services that promised to integrate the two energy economies. A formal military relationship between the two countries was vetoed by U.S. authorities, but this did not reverse the tide of cooperation.

The River of Resistance

As the occupation wore on, the Bush administration found itself swimming against a tide of resistance of a previously unimaginable sort, and ever further from its goals. Today, cities and towns around the country are largely under the sway of Shia or Sunni militias which, even when trained or paid by the occupation, remain militantly opposed to the U.S. presence. Moreover, though the prostrate Iraqi economy has been formally privatized, these local militias -- and the political leaders they worked with -- continue to raise demands for vast government-funded reconstruction and economic development programs.

The formal political leadership of Iraq, locked inside the heavily fortified, U.S.-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, remains publicly compliant when it comes to Bush administration plans to transform Iraq into a Middle Eastern outpost -- including the continued presence of American troops on a series of mega-bases in the heart of the country. The rest of the government bureaucracy and the bulk of Iraq's grass roots are increasingly insistent on an early American departure date and a full-scale reversal of the economic policies first introduced by the occupation.

In Washington, for Democratic as well as Republican politicians, the outpost idea remains at the heart of the policy agenda for Iraq in this election year, along with a neoliberal economy featuring a modernized oil sector in which multinational firms are to use state-of-the-art technology to maximize the country's lagging oil production.

Iraqi resistance of every kind and on every level has, however, prevented this vision from becoming reality. Because of the Iraqis, the glorious sounding Global War on Terror has been transformed into an endless, hopeless actual war.

But the Iraqis have paid a terrible price for resisting. The invasion and the social and economic policies that accompanied it have destroyed Iraq, leaving its people essentially destitute. In the first five years of this endless war, Iraqis have suffered more for resisting than if they had accepted and endured American military and economic dominance. Whether consciously or not, they have sacrificed themselves to halt Washington's projected military and economic march through the oil-rich Middle East on the path to a new American Century that now will never be.
It is past time for the rest of the world to shoulder at least a small share of the burden of resistance. Just as the worldwide protests before the war were among the upstream sources of the Iraqi resistance-to-come, so now others, especially Americans, should resist the very idea that Iraq could ever become the headquarters for a permanent United States presence that would, in the words of Bush speechwriter David Frum, "put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans." Unlike the Iraqis, after all, the citizens of the United States are uniquely positioned to bury this imperial dream for all time.

Michael Schwartz, Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency. His analyses of America's Iraq have appeared regularly at Tomdispatch.com, as well as Asia Times, Mother Jones, and Contexts. His forthcoming Tomdispatch book, War Without End: The Iraq Debacle in Context (Haymarket, June 2008) explores how the militarized geopolitics of oil led the U.S. to dismantle the Iraqi state and economy while fueling a sectarian civil war. His email address is Ms42@optonline.net.

Controversy Over Guajira U.S. Military Bases in South America By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

Despite his record unpopularity, it would appear that President Bush wants to go out of office with a bang. Having failed to overthrow Hugo Chávez through an attempted coup, the White House now hopes to escalate pressure on Venezuela's President by other means.

On Saturday, a U.S. navy plane strayed into Venezuelan airspace. Venezuelan Defense Minister Gustavo Rangel said that the aircraft "practically flew over" the island of La Orchila - where Venezuela has a military base and President Hugo Chávez has a residence - and another island before turning back. U.S. officials claimed the plane had "navigational problems."

"This is just the latest step in a series of provocations," Rangel said.

From Orchila to the Fourth Fleet

Indeed, tensions have been mounting in recent days. The Navy is now reactivating its fourth fleet in the Caribbean. The fleet, which will include a nuclear aircraft carrier, will be based in Mayport, Florida.

The fleet hasn't seen any action in Caribbean waters since World War II. In February 1942, the Germans sank a number of oil tankers full of Venezuelan crude. The attack caused a nationalist outcry in Venezuela and Caracas began to side more openly with the allies. In response to the attacks the U.S. patrolled the area, hunting down Nazi submarines which were wreaking havoc on allied shipping. After the war, with no more German U-boats prowling Caribbean waters, the Fourth Fleet was dissolved.

So, why resuscitate the fleet now?

The navy claims the move is necessary to protect maritime security. The real reason however may have more to do with Washington's desire to wage a kind of psychological war against the Chávez government and to foment a climate of political tension.

From Laptops to Border Incursions

In its quest to get rid of Chávez, the White House has also sought to spark tensions between Colombia and Venezuela. There's a good chance that the U.S. Southern Command passed crucial military intelligence to the Bogotá government when the latter attacked an encampment of FARC guerrillas inside Ecuadoran territory. After the March 1 assault, which resulted in the deaths of guerrilla leader Raúl Reyes as well as 20 other insurgents, and which arguably constituted an act of international terrorism, the Colombian authorities claimed that Chávez and Rafael Correa, Ecuador's pro-Venezuelan President, were doing their utmost to support the FARC.

As evidence they produced documents allegedly found on FARC laptop computers which remarkably survived the attack intact. The documents, Colombia says, prove that Chávez has provided weapons, munitions, and $300 million in aid to the FARC. After conducting its owninvestigation, Interpol declared that Colombia did not modify, delete or create any files, although the Andean nation did not always follow internationally accepted methods when handling the computers. The agency stated that the documents came from a FARC camp, but investigators could not conclusively prove that the information contained within the documents was totally accurate.

In Washington, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack pounced on Interpol's report, remarking that the laptop files indicating Venezuelan support for the FARC were "highly disturbing." Chávez has rejected the accusations, calling the Interpol report a "clown show" that "doesn't deserve serious comment." The Venezuelan leader said all relations with Colombia as well as his country's cooperation with Interpol would undergo "deep review." Seeking to rhetorically destroy his adversaries, Chávez referred to Interpol chief Ronald Noble as a "mafioso" and "an aggressive Yankee cop." In yet another memorable outburst from the Venezuelan leader, Chávez added that Noble's true name was "Mr. Ignoble."

As if relations between Colombia and Venezuela could slip no further, on Saturday, the same day that the U.S. navy plane passed into Venezuelan airspace, Chávez accused Bogotá of sending its troops across the border in an illegal incursion. The two South American nations share a 1,370-mile border that winds through mountains and thick patches of jungle. In a written statement, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro said that 60 Colombian troops had been intercepted in Venezuela's western Apure state, about 875 yards from the nations' shared border.

Controversy Over Guajira

Amidst ominous signs that the U.S. might be seeking to destabilize the Venezuelan government, a new controversy is swirling. William Brownfield, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, recently remarked that the U.S. would consider relocating its military air base at Manta, Ecuador to Colombia. According to the New York Times, an area mentioned in later reports was the Guajira region near the Venezuelan border. Colombia's foreign minister, Fernando Araújo, quickly denied that Colombia had any plans to allow the United States to establish a base in Guajira.

The controversy could not have come at a worse time.

Already, tensions have risen as a result of secessionist efforts in the westernmost state of Zulia which spans the Venezuelan Guajira region. Recently, the Chávez opposition in Zulia proposed a feasibility study for potential independence from the federal government. What's more, Zulia Governor Manuel Rosales, who lost to Chávez in the December 2006 presidential election, announced his support for his state's autonomy.

Speaking on his weekly TV show Aló, Presidente!, Chávez warned opposition leaders that any move towards Zulia autonomy would lead to confrontation. "I advise those individuals who want to break up Venezuela to think it through very well. We won't tolerate a political fragmentation of our country," he declared, adding that any such attempts would be met with force. The Venezuelan leader went on to say that Zulia autonomy constituted an "imperial plan" designed and supported by the United States to take control of strategic oil areas.

An impoverished region, the Guajira is home to Wayúu Indians who come and go across the frontier. The area is full of barren desert and straddles the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Geographically remote, the Guajira has historically been embroiled in diplomatic controversy. In 1928, Colombian authorities were so concerned about secessionist plots in the region that Bogotá's House of Deputies met in secret session to discuss "moves of Yankee agents in the Departments of Santander and Goagira which sought to provoke a separatist movement which, united to Zulia [in the midst of the Venezuelan oil zone] would form the Republic of Zulia."

As a result of the tangled history, any talk of installing a U.S. presence in the area inevitably stirs nationalist passions. Chávez has stated that "We will not allow the Colombian government to give La Guajira to the empire," referring to the U.S. As media reports surfaced, local authorities in the Guajira raised their voices in protest. Eber Chacón, a Chávez supporter and the Mayor of Páez, a local indigenous municipality, called on the Wayúu in Colombia and Venezuela to repudiate attempts by the Venezuelan opposition to divide them with their "autonomist and separatist positions." Chacón added that installing a U.S. base in Guajira would represent a potential threat to hemispheric security.

From Manta to Colombia

How did we get to the point where the U.S. is actually thinking about closing its military base in Manta, Ecuador and opening a new one in Colombia? That is a question I seek to answer in my book,Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan), just released in April of this year.

In Ecuador it is difficult to ignore the public climate of hostility towards the U.S. military base at Manta, which is used for drug over flights of Colombian air space. The facility, located 160 miles southwest of Quito on the coast, is a large installation which is technically not controlled by the United States but belongs to the Ecuadoran air force.

Many Ecuadorans believe that the United States is trying to draw their nation more deeply into the Colombian conflict, which has spilled over the border. The air base at Manta was leased to the U.S. military for 10 years in 1999, and President Rafael Correa made it clear even before he was elected that he did not plan to extend the lease once it expired in 2009.

During a trip to Quito, I found myself on the campus of the city's Catholic University. At a table, a woman was registering people to go on a bus trip to the coast to protest the base at Manta. In the hallway, I met Gualdemar Jiménez, a local activist.

U.S. Air Base at Manta: A Social Disaster

"Manta used to be a purely fishing town," he explained. "Now the fishermen don't have access to certain parts of the ocean, which are closed off for security reasons." On the sea, U.S marines had intercepted Ecuadoran boats, even sinking some vessels. "The marines are not the Ecuadoran coast guard," Jiménez declared indignantly.

He went on to tick off a number of other problems associated with the U.S. airbase. For example, the base had gradually expanded over time. This expansion had displaced campesino farmers from their traditional lands. In addition, there had been environmental damage: within the local area, hillsides had been destroyed in an effort to acquire the necessary raw materials to mix asphalt and repave the runway.

The Manta air base contributes some $7 million to the local economy annually, but activists are critical of the lack of real economic development in the area. The marines don't do any shopping in Ecuadoran markets, nor do they utilize local transportation. "The only thing they contribute to is local discos and prostitution," Jiménez explained bitterly.

"What you´re describing is hardly unique," I remarked. "It reminds me of the history of other U.S. military bases."

"It´s a trend that is repeated around the world," Jiménez said. "In Vietnam, you had houses of prostitution springing up as well."

Now that Correa is likely to give the U.S. the boot, the Americans must figure out where they may go next. The Defense Department doesn't have too many options: across South America, Pink Tide nations are unlikely to host a prolonged U.S. military presence on their soil. About the only country which might agree is Colombia, but for different reasons such a move would prove perilous.

If U.S. troops were deployed to Colombia, they would be stationed in the middle of a war zone and would be exposed to attacks by the FARC. Politically, opening a new base on Colombian soil would further antagonize Chávez across the border. Whether the Pentagon decides to station its base in Guajira amongst the Wayúu or elsewhere in Colombia, the installation is likely to give rise to prostitution and other negative social consequences for the local population, just like Manta.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), and Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave Macmillan, April 2008).

Colombia's army is passing off murdered civilians as guerrillas in its war on FARC, says Mike Power

Army murders mar victories over FARC
Colombia's army is passing off murdered civilians as guerrillas in its war on FARC, says Mike Power

Mariel Munoz was out selling food near her home in Vista Hermosa, Colombia, when a local boy ran up to her and said: "The army took Jailler and I think they killed him."
By the time Munoz (right) found her son, the soldiers had dressed his corpse in guerrilla army fatigues and planted a radio, a gun and grenade on him. Under pressure from President Alvaro Uribe to show gains in the endless fight to destroy FARC - the leftist rebel army which has been at war with the Colombian state since the 1960s - the soldiers were trying to pass off 15-year-old Jailler as a guerrilla.

There is no evidence that the boy was ever a member of FARC. "He worked by his father's side," his mother told me. "When he wasn't here, he'd tell me where he was. He was a decent boy, he didn't like drinking, he

liked watching TV and playing football."

Jailler worked stripping the leaves from coca plants - an illegal but common enough job in Colombia, the world's biggest cocaine producer - or as a wood carrier. "Everyone loved Jailler," his mother said. "They killed him for supposedly being a guerrilla, but he never liked the guerrillas, or the army. They killed him because they felt like it."

Mariel Munoz's story might be treated as the outpourings of a grieving mother unable to bear the truth - if her story wasn't a common one. Last month, Amnesty International USA published a report on extra-judicial killings in Colombia, and detailed cases where peasants have been seized by the army in civilian clothes, killed and later dressed in guerrilla fatigues in a phenomenon known as 'false positives'.

Jailler died in 2006. Last year, Munoz decided to launch a legal case to question the killing. In February she had to leave her home when army officers threatened her after learning about the lawsuit.


The army came to my home. One of them said, 'What a shame that I let you escape'
them said, 'What a shame that I let you escape,' And then he made a gesture like he was slitting someone's throat. I left everything dumped there, and fled with the clothes I was wearing. They didn't give me time to get anything else."

She now lives in Bogota, supported by friends. "What else am I going to do? I'll keep on fighting," she says.

Jailler's death came in a wave of executions carried out with almost complete impunity by the Colombian army, according to Ramiro Orjuela, a Bogota-based lawyer working for victims of state violence. In the Meta province alone - a cattle-ranching region south-east of the capital - 300 people have been killed since 2006. The army's 12th Mobile Brigade operates there, and is believed to be responsible for most of the killings.

I met Mariel Munoz just as the news was emerging of the capture of FARC leader Nelly Avila Moreno (right), known as Karina, wanted for a string of murders, abductions and extortion. Karina - women make up more than a third of the ranks of FARC - was


Behind the government celebrations of Karina's capture, the army's casual slaughter of civilians goes on
reported to be "nearly dying of hunger" when she handed herself in after President Uribe guaranteed her safety if she surrendered.

However, behind the government celebrations of Karina's capture, and of the recent high-profile raid into neighbouring Ecuador to execute FARC's number two, Raul Reyes, the army's casual slaughter of innocent people continues.

As John Lindsay-Poland, of New York's Fellowship for Reconciliation, puts it, the killings are easy: the army are rarely if ever prosecuted for killing civilians, and they measure success by body count. "The predominant proclamation of success is how many guerrillas were killed in combat. There is seldom any punishment for killing a civilian." Out of 955 reported cases of military killings of civilians over five years - including 'false positives' - only two have resulted in convictions.

Mariel Munoz recalls the moment she confronted the officers who confirmed they had killed her son. "They laughed, right there and then."

FIRST POSTED MAY 21, 2008


http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/36199,features,army-murders-mar-victories-over-farc

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Posada, the Exiles and the CIA Failed - Cuba Will Live By SAUL LANDAU

Posada, the Exiles and the CIA Failed

Cuba Will Live

By SAUL LANDAU

At a May 2 dinner in Miami hundreds of Cuban exiles, the vast majority of them in the Viagra generation, feted Luis Posada Carriles. This homage to the man suspected of masterminding the bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner that blew up over Barbados in October 1976 attracted a well known, aging radio personality. Tomas Garcia Fuste described Posada as "a real hero who has spent his life fighting for the freedom of Cuba." Fuste, who attended the dinner, said "Posada saw from the beginning that Fidel was a communist and began his heroic fight against him."

One of the dinner's organizers called Posada "a great Cuban ... a great patriot who has suffered a lot." Several of those interviewed denied Posada had authored the airplane sabotage that killed all 73 passengers and crew members, even though the actual perpetrators of the bombing identified him to police. Other evidence pointed directly to Posada. His adorers also discounted facts showing he had orchestrated bombings of Cuban tourist centers in the late 1990s. One tourist died; scores of others suffered injuries. Posada lovers in Miami blamed the Cuban government for destroying its own airplane "to create martyrs" and "staging" the tourist bombings "to get sympathy."

If Posada didn't plan these events, does he deserve the "combatiente legendario" honor only for his failed assassination plots against Fidel?

Posada and the crowd of retired lawyers, businessmen and professionals in Miami spoke of fighting to restore freedom to Cuba. Did no one recall that Posada worked as a Batista police agent? Had the crowd at the Posada fete forgotten that Batista staged a coup to grab the presidency in 1952? That his repressive forces killed 20,000 until the revolutionaries overthrew them? Posada's vision of a good society means returning to the good old Batista days –without internal turmoil. What a gap between their perspective and the Cuba that exists 90 miles from the Florida coast!

After fifty years, aspirations of those who still want to recover their property, perks and privileges grow ever dimmer. Posada, slurring his words badly as a result of damage done by a gunman who shot him in the face fifteen years ago, said: "We are coming to the end of a terrible stage. The end of our struggle is near." Applause! -Since the 1991 Soviet collapse, Cubans have lived through a "special period," the euphemism that meant drastic decline in living standards. Cuba lost its annual Soviet aid of billions of rubles and its advantageous trade with Soviet bloc nations. The state had to break its part of the social contract: it could no longer provide Cubans with sufficient food and clothing. Even the fabled health care and education deteriorated. Rations were reduced and most Cubans experienced a social morph from communism (sharing) to individualism (dog eat dog) – for survival.

Seventeen years of "special period" cost the revolution. Despite signs of recovery, however, spurred by foreign investment, the soaring price of nickel and the discovery of oil deposits, thousands of Cubans – mostly young people -- continue to leave their island in rafts or smugglers' boats to seek more opportunity in Florida. Engineers, scientists and PhDs in literature choose not to spend their work lives making pizzas or paper boxes, or teaching grade school.

By 2007, Cuban leaders began to address some problems developed in the post-Soviet period. The leadership, however, had no intention of going into the Chinese or Vietnamese models. On July 26, 2007, Raul Castro spoke of solving pressing issues like daily adversity, shortage of food and low agricultural productivity, within a socialist model.

The government has responded to popular discontent, alienation, and downright cynicism and over the last two years imported 35% more food. Raul also admitted that "wages are clearly insufficient to meet people's needs." This statement does not mean what U.S. journalists report or sneer at when they report that the average Cuban wage comes to $20 a month. They don't factor in free health care and education from nursery school to PhD; no rent or taxes; practically free transportation, entertainment, and subsidized food. But it is still a long way from the cradle-to grave security Cubans experienced before the Soviet demise.

Allowing more goods for sale will not mean a mass rush of sales because most Cubans do not possess excess foreign cash. Cubans will have to choose between the new items available – including stays at posh hotels. Cubans who receive remittances from family members abroad or get paid in hard currency continue to enjoy buying privileges – institutionalized inequality – that grate at much of the population. But freedom to shop cannot sustain a socialist country – especially a third world nation built on the twin themes of justice and equality.

The new mood has extended to artists and intellectuals who declared they would not tolerate censorship. The leadership agreed. But ending censorship does not relate to several thousand Cubans fleeing the island monthly for Florida. They don't leave because of censorship, but for freedom to practice their professions and earn a better living.

Fidel Castro warned Cubans they could lose their own revolution. In his April 3, 2008 letter to Artists and Writers Union President Miguel Barnet, Castro wrote: "Everything that ethically fortifies the Revolution is good; everything that weakens it is bad." In 1961 he told Cuba's intellectuals: "Inside the revolution, everything; outside the revolution; nothing." If one agreed and sympathizes, one also winced when Cuban leaders acted in ways that seemed to contradict this statement.

"The Cuban revolution was born to be different," the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano once wrote "Assailed by the incessant hounding from the empire to the north, it survived as it could and not as it wished. The people, valiant and generous, sacrificed a great deal to stay on their feet in a world of rampant servility. But as year after year of trials buffeted the island, the revolution began to lose the spontaneity and freshness that marked its beginning."New Internationalist July 2003

No kidding. In 1960, I watched creative chaos dominate everyday life. Like Galeano, I have seen, over 48 years, "revolutionary virtue" turned into "obedience to orders from above." Loss of initiative is an ironic result of almost fifty years of US punishing Cuba for disobedience. Washington blocked "the development of democracy in Cuba, feeding the militarization of power and providing alibis for bureaucratic rigidity," Galeano continued. "The revolution which was capable of surviving the fury of 10 American presidents and 20 CIA directors needs the energy that comes from participation and diversity to face the dark times that surely lie ahead. I say with sadness: Cuba hurts."

Cuba resisted 638 assassination attempts against Fidel. The CIA says this is slightly exaggerated, but it admits launching thousands of attacks against Cuba. For half a century, the United States maintained a blockade, alongside psychological and possibly biological and chemical warfare, survived and got wounded in the process. In March 2008, however, a change began. Beyond offering freedom to buy electronic appliances and cell phones and own their own houses free and clear, Cuban leaders signed the UN covenants on civil and political rights, which means that unions cannot be part of government and free speech, press, and politics must be respected.

A citizen told Vice President Carlos Lage at a conference that the government lacked sensitivity to people's social needs and psychological problems, stuff money can't fix. Lage apologized. Cubans watched it on TV. Earlier this year, in Juventud Rebelde, an official newspaper, the government was ripped for fudging statistics on unemployment. Changes have begun, but the smugglers remain. The boats remain full as well.

The Cuban revolution succeeded. It achieved independence and sovereignty, educated and made healthy its population, provided them with basic needs and educated its people to dance on the stage of world history. Cubans altered the destiny of southern Africa when its troops helped defeat the apartheid South African armies at Cuito Cuanavale in 1987-8. Mandela hugged Fidel at his inauguration. "You made this possible," he said for the world to hear. Cubans played a vital role in helping Angola maintain her independence and for Namibia to get hers. They played roles in the Vietnam War, the Yom Kippur war, and led the charge to slay the Monroe Doctrine.

Fifty years ago, Washington controlled Latin America; not one leader dared challenge its hegemony or its economic policies. Today, four of Fidel's ideological sons run countries (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua) and several of his cousins direct others (Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and Panama).

Cuban doctors and scientists, artists and dancers, writers and filmmakers have etched their names in the honor rolls of countless countries through their sterling performances. The Cuban revolution created them. Although Cuban doctors continue to save eyesight throughout the third world and perform other humanitarian tasks, the question now is: can Cuba overcome the legacy of the special period, when individualism eroded the collective spirit, and can she transcend the three decades of the Soviet model that she had to adopt for survival? Her leaders have lived for the revolution and imparted its values to the population. Can Cubans respond and grab the initiative to maintain the enormous gains or succumb to the shiny lure of mass consumerism?

No matter what happens, Luis Posada "el combatiente legendario" will not return to Cuba as one of its new rulers, gracias a Dios!

Saul Landau received the Bernardo O'Higgins award from Chile. He is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and author of A Bush and Botox World (AK/CounterPunch).

A Nazi in the (pocket) is worth four in the Bush (family)

Prescott Bush, granpa of Dubya

The Nazi's American Banker

What is interesting about the history of the Bush family are the connections; Avril Harriman, Allen Dulles, the Rockefellers (the start of the oil connection), James Baker III, Gulf Oil, Pennzoil, Osama bin Laden…on and on it goes.

A lapse of memory?

By William Bowles

05/07/03: (Information Clearing House) It's as well to remember that the Web never forgets, at least the US pres should take note of this fact and be careful of his utterances and how they can come back to haunt him. In fact four generations of Bush family history and too many skeletons in too many closets to count are to be found on the Web.

And given all the 'pullpit pounding' (more of which below) by ol' Duyba and his minions, over the dubious moral character of Saddam and his cronies, much of which has underpinned the justification for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, it's as well to compare the two sets of rogues. Not surprisingly, there's little to choose between the two except that, in the case of the Bush gang, they have a 'pedigree' in perfidy which extends back almost a century and four generations that makes Saddam look positively angelic by comparison.

Prescott Bush – setting a family example

In a previous piece (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3243.htm) a quote I used mentioned Prescott Bush the present pres's granpa (http://www.americanpolitics.com/20030210Koop.html) so I decided to do a little researching to see what other dirty little secrets the Bush family have hidden in the dark recesses of the WWW and lo and behold, there's a load of stuff out there (7,630 links to be precise, according to good ol' google just on granpa Prescott Bush).

Geronimo!

It's 1918 and, well you know students, they're always up to innocent pranks. It seems Grandpa Bush set his grandson some fine family precedents starting with digging up Geronimo's skull,

"In 1918, Prescott Bush and two companions crept into the cemetery near Fort Sill and pried open the grave of Geronimo.

The head was taken out, spiffed up and forwarded to New Haven, where it was given pride of place for goofy rituals that have been attended by generations of Bushes and a veritable army of powerful types."

http://www.post-gazette.com/columnists/20000923roddy.asp

The Apache nation (what was left of it anyway) was not amused. Okay, we'll forgive granpa Bush his 'juvenile pranks' but it seems that this set the scene for the rest of his miserable life until his death in 1972 from carcinoma of the lung.

From skulls to Zyklon B (and back again)

But it seems that great-granpa George Walker was also in on the business of making money out of death (like great-granpa like great grand-son),

"George Walker, GW's great-grandfather, also set up the takeover of the Hamburg-America Line, a cover for I.G. Farben's Nazi espionage unit in the United States. In Germany, I.G. Farben was most famous for putting the gas in gas chambers; it was the producer of Zyklon B and other gasses used on victims of the Holocaust. The Bush family was not unaware of the nature of their investment partners. They hired Allen Dulles, the future head of the CIA, to hide the funds they were making from Nazi investments and the funds they were sending to Nazi Germany, rather than divest."

Source: http://www.disinfo.com/pages/dossier/id195/pg1/

Banking on Fascism

It just doesn't stop does it, as Prescott Bush, son of George continued in the 'grand tradition' of skullduggery by also doing deals with the Nazis,

"On October 20, 1942, the US Alien Property Custodian, under the "Trading With the Enemy Act," seized the shares of the Union Banking Corporation (UBC), of which Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder. The largest shareholder was E. Roland Harriman. (Bush was also the managing partner of Brown Brothers Harriman, a leading Wall Street investment firm.)

"The UBC was established to send American capital to Germany to finance the reorganization of its industry under the Nazis. Their leading German partner was the notorious Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who wrote a book admitting much of this called "I Paid Hitler."

"Among the companies financed was the Silesian-American Corporation, which was also managed by Prescott Bush, and by his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, who supplied Dub-a-Ya with his name. The company was vital in supplying coal to the Nazi war industry. It too was seized as a Nazi-front on November 17, 1942. The largest company Bush's UBC helped finance was the German Steel Trust, responsible for between one-third and one-half of Nazi iron and explosives.

"Prescott Bush was also a director of the Harriman Fifteen Corporation, (this one owned largely by Roland's brother, Averell Harriman), which owned about a third of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation, the rest owned by Friedrich Flick, (a member of Himmler's "Circle of Friends" who donated to the S.S.)."

Source: http://www.lpdallas.org/features/draheim/dr991216.htm

What is interesting about the history of the Bush family are the connections; Avril Harriman, Allen Dulles, the Rockefellers (the start of the oil connection), James Baker III, Gulf Oil, Pennzoil, Osama bin Laden…on and on it goes. It looks like this'll have to be part one of an on-going series on the Bush dynasty and their dirty dealings.

Double Dutch?

The story of steel magnate and billionaire bankroller of the Nazis, Fritz Thyssen and his Bush family connection is so incredible, that it deserves to be turned into a movie (obviously not by Hollywood). It all starts with John Loftus, a former U.S.Department of Justice Nazi War Crimes prosecutor who is the source of the following,

"From 1945 until 1949, one of the lengthiest and, it now appears, most futile interrogations of a Nazi war crimes suspect began in the American Zone of Occupied Germany…. [The interrogation of] [m]ultibillionaire steel magnate Fritz Thyssen-the man whose steel combine was the cold heart of the Nazi war machine."

They were trying to find out what had happened to Thyssen's billions but without success. Why?

"What the Allied investigators never understood was that they were not asking Thyssen the right question. Thyssen did not need any foreign bank accounts because his family secretly owned an entire chain of banks. He did not have to transfer his Nazi assets at the end of World War II, all he had to do was transfer the ownership documents - stocks, bonds, deeds and trusts--from his bank in Berlin through his bank in Holland to his American friends in New York City, Prescott Bush and Herbert Walker. Thyssen's partners in crime were the father and father-in-law of a future President of the United States [my emph. WB].

…

"The British and American interrogators may have gravely underestimated Thyssen but they nonetheless knew they were being lied to. Their suspicions focused on one Dutch Bank in particular, the Bank voor Handel enScheepvaart, in Rotterdam. This bank did a lot of business with the Thyssens over the years. In 1923, as a favor to him, the Rotterdam bank loaned the money to build the very first Nazi party headquarters in Munich.

"If the investigators realized that the US intelligence chief in postwar Germany, Allen Dulles, was also the Rotterdam bank's lawyer, they might have asked some very interesting questions. They did not know that Thyssen was Dulles' client [my emph. WB] as well. Nor did they ever realize that it was Allen Dulles's other client, Baron Kurt Von Schroeder who was the Nazi trustee for the Thyssen companies which now claimed to be owned by the Dutch [my emph. WB]. The Rotterdam Bank was at the heart of Dulles' cloaking scheme, and he guarded its secrets jealously.

…

"[T]he Dutch connection remained unexplored until 1994 when I published the book "The Secret War Against the Jews." As a matter of historical curiosity, I mentioned that Fritz Thyssen (and indirectly, the Nazi Party) had obtained their early financing from Brown Brothers Harriman [my emph. WB], and its affiliate, the Union Banking Corporation. Union Bank, in turn, was the Bush family's holding company for a number of other entities, including the "Holland American Trading Company."

Source: http://www.baltech.org/lederman/bush-nazi-fortune-2-09-02.html

There are so many twists and turns to this story, that this is not the place to to go into all the labyrinthine links between the Nazis, the Bush Family and the CIA (via Allen Dulles) or indeed, a host of other corporate connections. But this final quote from the same source, gives you an idea of just how much money is involved,

"The enormous sums of money deposited into the Union Bank prior to 1942 is the best evidence that Prescott Bush knowingly served as a money launderer for the Nazis. Remember that Union Banks' books and accounts were frozen by the U.S. Alien Property Custodian in 1942 and not released back to the Bush family until 1951. At that time, Union Bank shares representing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of industrial stocks and bonds were unblocked for distribution. Did the Bush family really believe that such enormous sums came from Dutch enterprises? One could sell tulip bulbs and wooden shoes for centuries and not achieve those sums. A fortune this size could only have come from the Thyssen profits made from rearming the Third Reich, and then hidden, first from the Nazi tax auditors, and then from the Allies."

For the full story please go to the link above.

Crocodile tears

All of which makes the following quote from Dubya all the more sickening,

"In April 1999, [then] Texas Governor George W. Bush proclaimed a week of remembrance for the Holocaust. He said, "I urge Texans to never forget the inhumanity of those who perpetrated the Holocaust, and reflect upon our own humanity and our responsibility to respect all peoples."

Source: http://www.disinfo.com/pages/dossier/id195/pg1/

Like granpa like grand-son? Well given where Dubya got his money from, and his continuing in the 'grand tradition of the Bush gang, I'm feeling quite biblical about things, so I thought following,

Short diversion

Would be useful. I know there will be some among you who think I've just got it in for the Bushes, so in my wanderings over the Web, I came across this little gem from http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/herskowitz.html

"Duty, Honor, Country

The Life and Legacy of Prescott Bush

By Mickey Herskowitz

This paean to the life of Prescott Bush, by a conservative writer is a salutory warning to us all. I quote,

"He [Prescott Bush] was a unifier, not a divider. And he was of such high integrity [sic] that behind the scenes was where he was at his best. He was a man of great faith. His grandfather was a minister whose faith and integrity were fully ingrained in the Bush family. Prescott always emphasized honesty, charity, fairness and proactive dedication to God, family and country."

From a review by Susan Kurz.

I could go on quoting, but I'm afraid I'll throw up. Check it out for yourself at http://www.townhall.com/bookclub/herskowitz.html. Townhall.com is, by the way, "the first truly interactive community on the Internet to bring Internet users, conservative public policy organizations, congressional staff, and political activists together under the broad umbrella of "conservative" thoughts, ideas and actions."

There's none so blind as those that refuse to see.

From Eugenicist to anti-abortionist

Not content with digging up the ancestors, supporting Fascism,laundering Nazi money through a Dutch-based bank, selling weapons to the mullahs of Iran, trading guns for drugs, doing business deals with Osama bin Laden, the Bush family in the form of ol' granpa Prescott was an early supporter of the Eugenics movement (or racial purity, to give it its real name). And a rather embarassing connection it is too, as Bush Snr discovered,

"…And the Birth Control League was there, which had long trumpeted the need for eugenical births--fewer births for parents with "inferior" bloodlines. Prescott [Bush's] partner Tighe was a Connecticut director of the league, and the Connecticut league's medical advisor was eugenics advocate Dr. Winternitz of Yale Medical School.

Now in 1950, people who knew something about Prescott Bush knew that he had very unsavory roots in the eugenics movement. There were then, just after the anti-Hitler war, few open advocates of sterilization of "unfit" or "unnecessary" people. (That would be revived later, with the help of General Draper and his friend George Bush
Then, very late in the 1950 senatorial campaign, Prescott Bush was publicly exposed for being an activist in that section of the old fascist eugenics movement. Prescott Bush lost the election by about 1,000 out of 862,000 votes

In his foreword to a population control propaganda book, George Bush wrote about that 1950 election: "My own first awareness of birth control as a public policy issue came with a jolt in 1950 when my father was running for United States Senate in Connecticut. Drew Pearson, on the Sunday before Election day, 'revealed' that my father was involved with Planned Parenthood.... Many political observers felt a sufficient number of voters were swayed by his alleged contacts with the birth controllers to cost him the election...."

Source: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Exhibit/2412/eugenics/Bush.html

The Bush story is such a fascinating history of capitalist corruption and power that it needs to be presented to a public that is consistently lied to, not only by the corporate media but by our so-called leaders. In Part Two, I'm going to give you the low-down on the Bush family's involvement in the scams and dealings of the Reagan years, the Iran-Contra scandal and one of the biggest rip-offs in history, the savings and loan scandal, which cost the US taxpayer literally trillions of dollars. Yeah, you read right, trillions!

Spinning the News - The FARC-EP Files, Venezuela and Interpol - by Stephen Lendman

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2008/05/spinning-news-farc-ep-files-venezuela.html


Spinning the News - The FARC-EP Files, Venezuela and Interpol - by Stephen Lendman

First some background. On March 1, the Colombian military (with US Special Forces help) illegally attacked a FARC-EP rebel camp inside Ecuador. US satellite telephone tracking located the site. Washington signed off on the mission. Over 20 people were killed, including 16 or more FARC-EP members while they slept. Key among them was Paul Reyes, the FARC-EP's second-in-command, key peace negotiator and public voice, and lead figure in the Chavez-led hostage negotiations with Colombia.

The action was a clear act of aggression and premeditated murder. It's not how the dominant media played it. Hostile verbal exchanges took place between Hugo Chavez and Ecuador's Raphael Correa on the one hand and Colombia's Alvaro Uribe and George Bush on the other. US presidential candidates, as expected, supported the White House and Bogota.

Tensions heightened further when Colombia's vice-president, Francisco Santos Calderon, revealed his nation's army recovered three laptops and other material at the FARC-EP camp with provocative evidence on their hard drives. He claimed it showed Chavez and Correa have links to the FARC-EP, and Venezuela provided weapons, munitions, and $300 million or so to the rebel group. In addition, the FARC-EP was accused of acquiring 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of uranium, that it wishes to sell it for a radioactive dirty bomb, it also sold 700 kilograms of cocaine for about $1.5 million, and more.

The story is preposterous, but the media grabbed hold of it. No evidence exists, so they invent it. In March, Colombian authorities asked Interpol to examine the computer files for authenticity. The organization released its report on May 15. On its web site, it states that Secretary General Ronald Noble "advised senior Colombian law enforcement officials that INTERPOL's team of forensic experts discovered 'no evidence of modification, alteration, addition or deletion' in the user files of any of the three laptop computers, three USB thumb drives and two external hard disks seized during a Colombian anti-narcotics and anti-terrorist operation on a FARC camp on 1 March 2008."

But Interpol admitted that lacking evidence doesn't prove "there was no tampering." In fact, some files had future date stamps and other indications of data alteration. It questions their authenticity, and Interpol (deep in its report) acknowledged that Columbia likely manipulated the contents - with an explanation needing close reading to understand. It delegitimizes Colombian claims and would get an international court to dismiss them out of hand. Reporters doing their job should as well. Data accuracy can't be verified or worse - they may be entirely fraudulent, and made-in-Washington mischief may be behind it.

Interpol's report continued saying "between 1 and 3 March, direct access to the seized computer exhibits....did not follow internationally recognized principles in the handling of electronic evidence under ordinary circumstance." Its experts "verified that this....had no effect" on file contents, but other report evidence contradicts that statement. Interpol, in fact, stated that "Direct access may complicate validating this evidence for purposes of its introduction in a judicial proceeding because law enforcement is then required to demonstrate or prove that the direct access did not have a material impact on the purpose for which the evidence is intended."

In short, hard drive data prove nothing and may, in fact, be fake. With US involvement clear, it wouldn't be the first time, and Washington is rich in talent to do it.

Independent computer experts are also troubled. They believe that failure to follow standard evidence handling procedures seriously jeopardizes its reliability. With care, forensic specialists or computer professionals can add, delete or alter hard drive material without leaving a footprint.

Dominant media reports ignored this and more. They passed over or played down key findings, including Interpol's statement: that its experts didn't "evaluate the accuracy or the source of the exhibits' content." How could they? The volume was enormous amounting to the equivalent of "39.5 million pages in Microsoft Word...." At the rate of 100 pages a day, "it would take more than 1000 years to read" it.

That alone begs the question. In a few days or even weeks, how were Colombian authorities able to analyze the data to discover provocative information therein. That notion also got no attention in the dominant media. Neither did most other parts of the truth.

Spinning the News - How Big Media Does It

Here's how Murdoch's Wall Street Journal's played it on May 16. Its editorial page said Interpol's May 15 report "won't make Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez's day." It reported Interpol's claim about no evidence of file tampering, but ignored the issues of authenticity, accuracy, manipulation, or impossible "speed-reading" skills of Colombian verifiers. It concluded that "Interpol's certification proves that Mr. Chavez is trying to destabilize a US ally (and that he's a) proven supporter of terrorism in our own hemisphere."

The New York Times' Simon Romero was little better. His May 16 article was headlined: "Files Tying Venezuela to Rebels Not Altered, Report Says." He called Interpol's report "a setback for Venezuela, which had claimed that the computer files....were fabrications...." It "may advance efforts under way in the Congress to add Venezuela to the United States' list of state sponsors of terrorism...."

Well down in his report, Romero admitted that "Interpol could not vouch for the accuracy of the files" and that "a Colombian antiterrorism unit (seized them improperly and) in violation of internationally recognized rules on handling electronic evidence...." No further comment was added.

In contrast, Romero played up State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, saying these "are serious allegations about Venezuela supplying arms and support to a terrorist organization....that has deep implications for the people of the region." He had to acknowledge, however, what credible experts agree on. Given the importance of US and Venezuelan relations, chances of declaring the country a state sponsor of terrorism is highly remote - "particularly without more evidence (read any evidence) of the country's support of the FARC..."

Latin American history professor Greg Grandin goes further. He believes "Almost all of Latin America and most of the world would take Venezuela's side in this dispute. Any move (against the Chavez government) would further isolate the United States in a region where it has been hemorrhaging influence."

That doesn't phase Romero. Piling on is his specialty. Truth isn't. He returned on May 18 with a provocative feature story headlined: "Chavez Seizes Greater Economic Power." Some key points in it are:

-- "Chavez is intensifying state control of the Venezuelan economy through a wave of takeovers of private companies and creation of government-controlled ventures with allies like Cuba and Iran; fears are intensifying (over) more nationalizations;"

-- it's happening "just months after voters rejected a referendum to give the president sweeping constitutional power (leading critics to accuse him of being) more interested in consolidating power than in fixing Venezuela's problems;"

-- "while he has argued that (he aims) to correct social injustices and fight soaring inflation, his critics say his moves are instead compounding these troubles;" no supporter voices in sight;

-- to avoid "outright confiscation (he's) offering 'some' compensation;" unmentioned is it's fair market value and nothing was, is or will be "confiscated;"

-- Romero stresses Venezuela's ties to Iran and China with joint ventures and infrastructure projects; also that Chavez will "export more oil to China in exchange for more Chinese investment in Venezuela;" implied, of course, are his relations with US rivals, and, in the case of Iran, a country George Bush calls "the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism;"

-- he ignores Venezuela's successes; along with Argentina, it's the fastest growing regional economy and one of the fastest in the world at a time of economic weakness; its impressive employment growth with most of it coming in the private sector; that Chavez is friendly to business and boosts the private economy; the country's huge social gains; and Chavez's immense popularity and growing world stature; instead he lists problems - high inflation, less foreign investment, food shortages, capital flight, and more that are only mitigated by "high oil prices;"

-- near the article's end, he's forced to admit what economist Mark Weisbrot explains - that Chavez "is so far mainly just reversing some of the privatizations that took place in the 1990s;"

-- Romero reverts to form with some provocative ending quotes about Chavez "stimulating a pre-insurrectional climate;" that his nationalizations aim "to annihilate the productive apparatus so that we depend more on petroleum, which is to depend more on the state, or in other words, to depend more on Chavez."

For the dominant US media, Chavez-bashing is full-time. Washington Post writers excel at it on any pretext, and Juan Forero's May 16 Interpol report article was typical. It's headlined: "FARC Computer Files Are Authentic, Interpol Probe Finds." He echoed the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and said files seized "contain e-mails (Interpol never mentioned any) and other documents that show how Venezuela's populist leader had formed such a tight bond with guerrilla commanders that his key lieutenants had offered help in obtaining sophisticated weaponry such as surface-to-air missiles while delivering light arms. The files also document links between FARC and Ecuador's president, Raphael Correa, a close ally of Chavez."

Similar reports appeared throughout the US and western media. They never miss a chance to play down facts and attack populist leaders. In response, Hugo Chavez dismissed the allegations as "ridiculous." He urged Colombia's president to have "a moment of reflection (and added) The government of Columbia is capable of provoking a war....to justify a US intervention in Venezuela." He also called Colombia's assertion "a new act of aggression." It means relations with his neighbor will come "under deep review," and Reuters reported May 15 that "Venezuela is deeply revising diplomatic, economic and political relations with Colombia" following Interpol's report and the Uribe government's allegations.

Ecuador's Correa was abroad in France, but took time to say the computer file documents "prove absolutely nothing. We have information that the Colombian government had the computers for some time and prepared all this." Quite possibly because the entire story is unraveling. But don't expect Big Media to report it.

Revving Up Gunboat Diplomacy

While it continues, the Pentagon announced in April that it's resurrecting its Fourth Fleet in Latin America and the Caribbean after a 60 year hiatus. It was created during WW II and disbanded in 1950. Reasons given were vaguely stated - to "conduct varying missions including a range of contingency operations, counter narco-terrorism, and theater security cooperation activities."

US Naval Forces Southern Command chief Admiral James Stevenson said the move would send a message to the entire region, not just Venezuela. Commandant of the National War College, General Robert Steel added that: "The United States' obsession with Venezuela, Cuba and other things indicates they are going to use more military force, going to use that instrument more often." Bolivian President Evo Morales called the move "Fourth Fleet....intervention."

The Fleet begins operating in July and will be headquartered out of Florida's Mayport Naval Station. It'll be part of the Pentagon's Southern Command, extending from the Caribbean to the continent's southern tip. Its strength will be formidable - aircraft carriers, submarines, various attack ships, and several nuclear-armed ones.

With no Latin American threat, why then this move, and why now with an administration nearing its end and bogged down in two unwinnable wars? Like the Middle East and Central Asia, the region's importance is crucial. Venezuela alone is why. Its proved oil reserves were just raised to 130 billion barrels, but include what's uncounted and they're far higher. On its web site, the US Department of Energy (DOE) estimates the country's extra-heavy oil at 1.36 trillion barrels, or 90% of the world's total. That's more than all "proved" world reserves combined and in addition to Venezuela's "proved" light sweet resources of around 80 billion barrels that alone ranks it seventh in the world behind the five largest Middle East producers and Canada.

With stakes that high, it's significant that Admiral Joseph Kernan will become Fleet commander when it's activated. He currently heads the Naval Special Warfare Command that includes Navy Seals and other counterinsurgency units. His choice is troublesome, and regional leaders are mindful. Hugo Chavez especially. It may be why he's buying nine Russian submarines, but against America it hardly registers. In total, Venezuela spends $1 - 2 billion on its military annually or less than half of 1% of the Pentagon's budget. Nonetheless, it's another reason Washington targets him with a hawkish commander now charged to do it.

Rumor also is that the Pentagon plans building a Colombian military base near Venezuela's border. Washington's Colombian ambassador, William Brownfield, said it's possible if its Manta, Ecuador one is closed. Its lease expires in 2009, and Raphael Correa said renewal depends on the US granting Ecuador equivalent basing rights in South Florida - his way of confirming renewal won't happen.

Chavez is justifiably alarmed at the prospect of US troops on his border. He warned Colombia not to do it and said this action will force Venezuela to revive a decades-old territorial conflict over its possible La Guajira location. He further added: "We will not allow the Colombian government to give La Guajira to the empire." Stationing US troops there will be "a threat of war at us." So far, neither Washington or Colombia confirm what's planned. But Colombia's defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, denies the base rumor, at least in La Guajira. In a May 14 televised address, Chavez called it "good news." Nonetheless, the situation bears watching.

Chavez is justifiably wary. As long as he's president, he'll be vilified and targeted. Latin America is vital to Washington. Venezuela is a key part of it. But America's dominance is weakening, neoliberal pillage caused it, the Bush administration accelerated it, Bolivarianism challenges it, so muscular militarism may replace diplomacy to restore it.

Colombia's belligerency, the FARC-EP files, Fourth Fleet reactivation, continued funding of Venezuela's opposition, CIA's covert mischief, disruptive street violence, and other planned schemes are troublesome. They're to reassert regional control and rid Washington of its leading hemispheric antagonist. No guessing who, and no telling when the next attempt will come or in what form. Everything tried so far failed. Even worse, it's been counterproductive. Chavez has enormous stature and immense popular support.

That makes him an even greater threat and hints at something bigger coming. So far, it's just speculation, however, with the administration's tenure winding down. But it may or may not deter those running it who are always wrong, never in doubt, and apparently willing to risk making a bad situation worse. Stay tuned, expect surprises, and be assured the months ahead won't be boring.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on Republic Broadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.

The Bushes and Hitler's Appeasement by Robert Parry

The irony of George W. Bush going before the Knesset and mocking the late Sen. William Borah for expressing surprise at Adolf Hitler's 1939 invasion of Poland is that Bush's own family played a much bigger role assisting the Nazis.

If Borah, an isolationist Republican from Idaho, sounded naïve saying "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided," then what should be said about Bush's grandfather and other members of his family providing banking and industrial assistance to the Nazis as they built their war machine in the 1930s?

The archival evidence is now clear that Prescott Bush, the president's grandfather, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from and collaborated with key financial backers of Nazi Germany.

That business relationship continued after Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and even after Germany declared war on the United States following Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. It stopped only when the U.S. government seized assets of Bush-connected companies in late 1942 under the "Trading with the Enemy Act."

So, perhaps instead of holding up Sen. Borah to ridicule, Bush might have acknowledged in his May 15 speech that his forebears also were blind to the dangers of Hitler.

Bush might have noted that his family's wealth, which fueled his own political rise, was partly derived from Nazi collaboration and possibly from slave labor provided by Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

A more honest speech before the Knesset – on the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding – might have contained an apology to the Jewish people from a leading son of the Bush family for letting its greed contribute to Nazi power and to the horrors of the Holocaust. Instead, there was just the jab at Sen. Borah, who died in 1940.

President Bush apparently saw no reason to remind the world of a dark chapter from the family history. After all, those ugly facts mostly disappeared from public consciousness soon after World War II.

Protected by layers of well-connected friends, Prescott Bush brushed aside the Nazi scandal and won a U.S. Senate seat from Connecticut, which enabled him to start laying the foundation for the family's political dynasty.

In recent years, however, the archival records from the pre-war era have been assembled, drawing from the Harriman family papers at the Library of Congress, documents at the National Archives, and records from war-crimes trials after Germany's surrender.

Managers for the Powerful

One can trace the origins of this story back more than a century to the emergence of Samuel Bush, George W. Bush's great-grandfather, as a key manager for a set of powerful American business families, including the Rockefellers and the Harrimans. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Bush Family Chronicles: The Patriarchs."]

That chapter took an important turn in 1919 when investment banker George Herbert Walker teamed up with Averell Harriman, scion to a railroad fortune, to found a new investment banking firm, W.A. Harriman Company.

The Harriman firm was backed by the Rockefellers' National City Bank and the Morgan family's Guaranty Trust. The English-educated Walker assisted in assembling the Harriman family's overseas business investments.

In 1921, Walker's favorite daughter, Dorothy, married Samuel Bush's son Prescott, a Yale graduate and a member of the school's exclusive Skull and Bones society. Handsome and athletic, admired for his golf and tennis skills, Prescott Bush was a young man with the easy grace of someone born into the comfortable yet competitive world of upper-crust contacts.

Three years later, Dorothy gave birth to George Herbert Walker Bush in Milton, Massachusetts.

Lifted by the financial boom of the 1920s, Prescott and Dorothy Bush were on the rise. By 1926, George Herbert Walker had brought his son-in-law in on a piece of the Harriman action, hiring him as a vice president in the Harriman banking firm.

By the mid-Thirties, Prescott Bush had become a managing partner at the merged firm of Brown Brothers Harriman. The archival records also show that Brown Brothers Harriman served as the U.S. financial service arm for German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, an early funder of the Nazi Party.

Thyssen, an admirer of Adolf Hitler since the 1920s, joined the Nazi Party in 1931 when it was still a fringe organization. He helped bail the struggling party out with financial help, even providing its headquarters building in Munich.

Meanwhile, Averell Harriman had launched the Hamburg-Amerika line of steamships to facilitate the bank's dealings with Germany, and made Prescott Bush a director. The ships delivered fuel, steel, coal, gold and money to Germany as Hitler was consolidating his power and building his war machine.

Other evidence shows that Prescott Bush served as the director of the Union Banking Corp. of New York, which represented Thyssen's interests in the United States and was owned by a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands.

As a steel magnate, Thyssen was amassing a fortune as Hitler rearmed Germany. Documents also linked Bush to Thyssen's Consolidated Silesian Steel Company, which was based in mineral-rich Silesia on the German-Polish border and exploited slave labor from Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz. But records at the National Archives do not spell out exactly when Bush's connection ended or what he knew about the business details.

In 1941, Thyssen had a falling out with Hitler and fled to France where he was captured. Much of Thyssen's empire went under the direct control of the Nazis, but even that did not shatter the business ties that existed with Prescott Bush and Harriman's bank.

It wasn't until August 1942 that newspaper stories disclosed the secretive ties between Union Banking Corp. and Nazi Germany.

After an investigation, the U.S. government seized the property of the Hamburg-Amerika line and moved against affiliates of the Union Banking Corp. In November 1942, the government seized the assets of the Silesian-American Corp. [For more details, see an investigative report by the U.K. Guardian, Sept. 25, 2004.]

No Kiss of Death

For most public figures, allegations of trading with the enemy would have been a political kiss of death, but the disclosures barely left a lipstick smudge on Averell Harriman, Prescott Bush and other business associates implicated in the Nazi business dealings.

"Politically, the significance of these dealings – the great surprise – is that none of it seemed to matter much over the next decade or so," wrote Kevin Phillips in American Dynasty.

"A few questions would be raised, but Democrat Averell Harriman would not be stopped from becoming federal mutual security administrator in 1951 or winning election as governor of New York in 1954. … Nor would Republican Prescott Bush (who was elected senator from Connecticut in 1952) and his presidential descendants be hurt in any of their future elections."

Indeed, the quick dissipation of the Nazi financial scandal was only a portent of the Bush family's future. Unlike politicians of lower classes, the Bushes seemed to travel in a bubble impervious to accusations of impropriety, since the Eastern Establishment doesn't like to think badly of its own. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

To this day – as President Bush showed by mocking the long-forgotten Sen. Borah and then wielding the Nazi "appeasement" club against Barack Obama and other Democrats – the assumption remains that the bubble will continue to protect the Bush family name.

However, the evidence from dusty archives suggests that the Bush family went way beyond appeasement of Adolf Hitler to aiding and abetting the Nazis.
_______

Salvador Allende and Hugo Chavez by James Petras

I have known and advised three left wing presidents including President Papandreou (Greece 1981-85), President Salvador Allende of Chile (1970-73) and President Hugo Chavez.

Both Allende and Chavez share many strategic goals and embrace policies favoring the working class, peasantry and the urban poor. They also pursued programs regaining national control over the strategic sectors of the economy, redistributing land (agrarian reform), reallocating budgetary expenditures in favor of social programs for the poor and pursuing independent anti-imperialist foreign policies.

In broad historical and sociological terms, they also share a common belief in constitutional, electoral processes, in a multi-party system, a mixed economy and independent trade unions, business and civic associations.

Despite the convergences and similarities between Allende and Chavez, there are important political differences, which account for their different trajectories. Chavez proceeded toward political change before undertaking a deep socio-economic structural transformation, thus creating a solid constitutional and political framework. Allende, on the other hand, accepted the existing political system and proceeded to implement radical socio-economic changes. As a result, Allende constantly faced political blockages, institutional obstacles that limited his capacity to realize the full potential of the structural changes. In contrast, Chavez' political reforms led to the compatibility between political institutions and socio-economic change — minimizing opposition obstructionism.

Secondly Allende's government lasted less than three years, while Chavez has governed for nearly a decade and is still very popular. The military coup in Chile in September 1973 destroyed the Popular Unity Government and the military dictatorship lasted 15 years (until 1989). In Venezuela, a military coup (April 11-12 2002) lasted 48 hours before it was defeated and Chavez was restored to power. The reason why the coup succeeded in Chile and failed in Venezuela was because Chavez had built a substantial loyalist base among the military and developed a strategic alliance between the military-popular masses, while Allende mistakenly trusted the so-called "professionalism" of the military. Both Allende and Chavez faced "bosses" lockouts, attempts by the capitalist class to shut down the economy in order to foment discontent and overthrow the government. In both countries the mass of workers, technicians and some managers intervened to support the government. However, while Allende returned the majority of the factories to their capitalist owners, Chavez fired 15,000 managers and supervisors who led the lock-out and replaced them with loyalists. Similarly while Allende allowed the rightwing generals to purge loyalist military officers in the run-up to the coup, Chavez expelled and jailed military officers after the failed coup.

In other words, Chavez is a political realist who understood better than Allende the limits of bourgeois democracy, and was willing to use the prerogatives of executive power to defend popular democratic rule against its internal oligarchic and external imperial enemies.

Chavez sees the revolutionary democratic and socialist transition process based on institutional and popular power organized through mass organizations. Allende saw socialist change principally through the established institutions and minimized the role of popular power institutions — creating a constant tension between the political parties and the community councils.

Chavez and Allende opposed US imperialism, its wars (Vietnam in the 1960-1970's), Iraq and Afghanistan (today). But Chavez' foreign policy is much more pro-active, in promoting Latin American integration via ALBA, Banco Sur and bilateral trade and arms agreements with China, Russia, Iran, Brazil and Argentina. Allende looked more to the Andean Pact, the Non-Aligned Movement and links with social democratic European regimes like Sweden and Germany. As a result Chavez has been more successful in isolating and defeating Washington diplomatically than Allende with his constant effort to conciliate with the US.

The political paradox is that the Allende government, based primarily on self-identified "Marxist" parties and trade unions, never achieved hegemony over the majority of the masses (especially poor women) while President Chavez has established Chavista majorities in 12 national and local elections and referendums.
During his tenure in office President Allende represented his time — a clear democratic-socialist alternative to US-controlled client regimes. Even today, the establishment of worker-controlled factories, popular neighborhood councils and popular power under Allende serve as important reference points for the present transition to socialism in Venezuela. But President Chavez has gone much further and deeper in some areas of social transformation: He has introduced popular militias, decentralized the budgetary expenditures to local neighborhood councils and organized a unified mass socialist party, to avoid the intra-party conflicts which plagued the multi-party coalition of the Allende Government.

Conclusion

While there are important historical continuities between the democratic socialism of Allende and the 21st century socialism of Chavez, and both reflect important milestones on the road to national liberation, it is clear that Chavez, much more than Allende, sees the clear and decisive importance of building a mass base for popular power outside of the strictly electoral parliamentary arena. Where Allende mistakenly idealized Chile's bourgeois democratic institutions, attributing to them a classless character, Chavez combines the democratic norms of electoral politics with the need to build independent organizations of class power. History has demonstrated, at least so far, that Chavez' realism has been much more effective in gaining and retaining popular power than Allende's idealism.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest books are The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006) and Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (Clarity Press, 2007). He can be reached at:jpetras@binghamton.edu. Read other articles by James, or visit James's website.

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