NEW YORK, Jan 12 (IPS) - U.S. activists are heading to the Sixth World Social Forum (WSF) with a renewed sense of optimism and international solidarity, despite Washington's animosity toward the hemisphere's growing slate of leftist governments.
Up to 100,000 visitors are expected in Caracas, Venezuela from Jan. 24-29, while parallel forums will take place in Bamako, Mali from Jan. 19-23, and Karachi, Pakistan in March.
The WSF was founded in 2001 to counter the unabashedly neo-liberal agenda promoted at gatherings like the World Economic Forum, held annually in Davos, Switzerland. It has grown larger every year since, drawing thousands of trade unionists, anti-debt campaigners, environmental and fair trade activists, peasants' groups and others representing economic and social justice movements around the world.
Although the WSF has a relatively low profile in the United States, groups that attended in the past are sending more people this time around, and others are planning their maiden voyage to the conference.
Global Exchange, an international human rights group headquartered in San Francisco, California, is sending 200 people -- nearly four times the number it sent to the WSF gathering in Porto Alegre, Brazil last year.
"The main purpose of the trip is to educate people to look deeper into the realities of Venezuela, so they can come back and fight the media blitz and put pressure on the government," said Zach Hurwitz, the "South America Reality Tours" coordinator for Global Exchange.
Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez has been painted by both Washington and the mainstream media here as a demagogue and a threat to regional stability, with the George W. Bush administration going so far as to support a failed coup against the government in 2002.
His populist "Bolivarian Revolution" has rejected the model of corporate-led globalisation, instead promoting grassroots political participation, poverty alleviation and economic self-sufficiency.
The Global Exchange delegations will meet with representatives from all walks of Venezuela's political and economic life, including the Afro-Venezuelan Network, women's and indigenous groups, agricultural cooperatives, grassroots media and student activists. They also plan to speak with officials involved in projects like the Cuban doctors' programme and Mision Habitat, which addresses urban housing issues.
The groups are focusing on four themes: gender, cultural diversity and new political voices; people's development and the Venezuelan social contract; youth leadership; and oil, natural resources and sustainability.
"A lot of people have asked what Venezuela is going to do when the oil runs out in the next 50 to 75 years, so we're looking at what is being done to create a forward-thinking, green economy -- although the first step is to cut down on consumption of oil in this country," Hurwitz told IPS.
This time last year, the world was grieving for the victims of the catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunamis, and Bush had just won re-election, to the dismay of anti-war activists here and many people abroad who questioned the U.S.-led "war on terror".
But now, the outlook has changed, Hurwitz and other U.S. activists say.
"There is a huge sense of optimism about the possibility for change in the United States," he noted. "Many things have happened over the past year that worked in favour of this optimism, like the incredibly low support for the Iraq war, the exposure of corruption in Congress, and the torture cases and other scandals in the administration."
"The Venezuelans want to be friends with people in the United States," Hurwitz added, noting that Citgo, a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., the state-owned oil company, has donated or substantially discounted some eight million gallons of heating oil for poor communities and homeless shelters in several U.S. states.
"More and more people are catching on to the idea that the Bush administration is radically aggressive based on self-interest, while Venezuela is looking out for the welfare of people around the world," he said.
Media activism, and particularly the growth of community radio, is the focus of the Prometheus Radio Project delegation, which is sending 15 people from across the United States to visit local television and radio stations, as well as the state communications ministry.
The members of the Prometheus collective, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, started out as "pirate" broadcasters. When their equipment was seized by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, they vowed to open 10 new stations for every one that was shut down.
The group has successfully lobbied for low-power, non-commercial broadcasting here, and has also shared its technical expertise with communities in Nepal, Colombia, Guatemala and Tanzania to set up their own local radio projects.
"In the U.S., there is a fairly large alternative media movement, including people that work inside the (Washington) Beltway on media reform, but it tends to be quite specialised, as opposed to a broad social movement," said Pete Tridish of Prometheus.
"We've observed that movements to reform the media and change the information infrastructure of society (in other countries) tend to be much more tightly connected to large grassroots movements for social change, and we're hoping to learn about the connections between those movements in a context that is different from the U.S," he told IPS.
"We're particularly interested in the case of Venezuela, where the corporate media was highly complicit in the attempted coup against the democratically-elected president, Hugo Chavez."
Other groups involved with the Prometheus delegation include Third World Majority, Reform the Media, the New Mexico Media Literacy Project, Pacifica's Free Speech Radio News, Casa Guatemala and the Consumers Union.
"I see the WSF as a very hopeful development," Tridish concluded. "I don't believe that American progressives by themselves are going to steer a new course. Countries (and activists) around the world have to band together."
While most U.S. delegates appear to be headed for Venezuela, some have also been invited to Bamako, Mali, where 35,000 activists from the region and abroad are expected.
John Catalinotto, who attended previous WSF meetings, hopes to speak about issues ranging from opposition to the Iraq war, to the race and class fault lines exposed by Hurricane Katrina, the attack on workers' pensions illustrated by the recent Transit Workers Union strike that paralysed New York City's subway system, and the challenges faced by immigrants here.
"People from Africa, Asia and other regions may not know the details of the struggles that have taken place, or even that there is a real class struggle here," said Catalinotto, who will be representing the New York-based International Action Centre, a lead organiser of anti-war actions in the United States.
"At the WSF, there are different forces, and some would like to keep it as a talkfest," he added, "while others want to see it move in the direction of 'let's do something against neo-liberalism, against the war,' etc."
"I hope we will see more international days of action this year," he said.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Riverbend - Baghdad Burning - Thank You for the Music...
Thank You for the Music...
When I first heard about the abduction of Christian Science Monitor journalist Jill Carroll a week ago, I remember feeling regret. It was the same heavy feeling I get every time I hear of another journalist killed or abducted. The same heavy feeling that settles upon most Iraqis, I imagine, when they hear of acquaintances suffering under the current situation.
I read the news as a subtitle on tv. We haven't had an internet connection for several days so I couldn't really read about the details. All I knew was that a journalist had been abducted and that her Iraqi interpreter had been killed. He was shot in cold blood in Al Adil district earlier this month, when they took Jill Carroll... Theysay he didn't die immediately. It is said he lived long enough to talk to police and then he died.
I found out very recently that the interpreter killed was a good friend- Alan, of Alan's Melody, and I've spent the last two days crying.
Everyone knew him as simply 'Alan', or "Elin" as it is pronounced in Iraqi Arabic. Prior to the war, he owned a music shop in the best area in Baghdad, A'arasat. He sold some Arabic music and instrumental music, but he had his regular customers - those westernized Iraqis who craved foreign music. For those of us who listened to rock, adult alternative, jazz, etc. he had very few rivals.
He sold bootleg CDs, tapes and DVDs. His shop wasn't just a music shop- it was a haven. Some of my happiest moments were while I was walking out of that shop carrying CDs and tapes, full of anticipation for the escape the music provided. He had just about everything from Abba to Marilyn Manson. He could provide anything. All you had to do was go to him with the words,"Alan- I heard a great song on the radio... you have to find it!" Andhe'd sit there, patiently, asking who sang it? You don't know? Ok- was it a man or a woman? Fine. Do you remember any of the words? Chances were that he'd already heard it and even knew some of the lyrics.
During the sanctions, Iraq was virtually cut off from the outside world.We had maybe four or five local tv stations and it was only during the later years that the internet became more popular. Alan was one of those links with the outside world. Walking into Alan's shop was like walking into a sort of transitional other world. Whenever you walked into the store, great music would be blaring from his speakers and he and Mohammed, the guy who worked in his shop, would be arguing over who was better, Joe Satriani or Steve Vai.
He would have the latest Billboard hits posted on a sheet of paper near the door and he'd have compiled a few of his own favorites on a 'collection' CD. He also went out of his way to get recordings of the latest award shows- Grammys, AMAs, Oscars, etc. You could visit him twice and know that by the third time, he'd have memorized your favorites and found music you might be interested in.
He was an electrical engineer- but his passion was music. His dream was to be a music producer. He was always full of scorn for the usual boy bands - N'Sync, Backstreet Boys, etc. - but he was always trying to promote an Iraqi boy band he claimed he'd discovered,"Unknown to No One". "They're great- wallah they have potential." He'd say. E. would answer, "Alan, they're terrible." And Alan, with his usual Iraqi pride would lecture about how they were great, simply because they were Iraqi.
He was a Christian from Basrah and he had a lovely wife who adored him- F. We would tease him about how once he was married and had a family, he'd lose interest in music. It didn't happen. Conversations with Alan continued to revolve around Pink Floyd, Jimmy Hendrix, but they began to include F. his wife, M. his daughter and his little boy. My heart aches for his family- his wife and children...
You could walk into the shop and find no one behind the counter- everyone was in the other room, playing one version or another of FIFA soccer on the Play Station. He collected those old records, or 'vinyls'. The older they were, the better. While he promoted new musical technology, he always said that nothing could beat the soundof a vintage vinyl.
We went to Alan not just to buy music. It always turned into a social visit. He'd make you sit down, listen to his latest favorite CD and drink something. Then he'd tell you the latest gossip- he knew it all. He knew where all the parties were, who the best DJs were and who was getting married or divorced. He knew the local gossip and the international gossip, but it was never malicious with Alan. It was always the funny sort.
The most important thing about Alan was that he never let you down. Never. Whatever it was that you wanted, he'd try his hardest to get it. If you became his friend, that didn't just include music- he was ready to lend a helping hand to those in need, whether it was just to give advice, or listen after a complicated, difficult week.
After the war, the area he had his shop in deteriorated. There were car bombs and shootings and the Badir people took over some of the houses there. People went to A'arasat less and less because it was too dangerous. His shop was closed up more than it was open. He shut it up permanently after getting death threats and a hand grenade through his shop window. His car was carjacked at some point and he was shot at so he started driving around in his fathers beaten-up old Toyota Cressida with a picture of Sistani on his back window, "To ward off the fanatics..." He winked and grinned.
E. and I would stop by his shop sometimes after the war, before he shut it down. We went in once and found that there was no electricity,and no generator. The shop was dimly lit with some sort of fuel lampand Alan was sitting behind the counter, sorting through CDs. He was ecstatic to see us. There was no way we could listen to music so he and E. sang through some of their favorite songs, stumbling upon the lyrics and making things up along the way. Then we started listening to various ring tones and swapping the latest jokes of the day. Before we knew it, two hours had slipped by and the world outside was forgotten, an occasional explosion bringing us back to reality.
It hit me then that it wasn't the music that made Alan's shop a haven- somewhere to forget problems and worries- it was Alan himself.
He loved Pink Floyd:
Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we
Had to run for shelter when the
Promise of a brave, new world
Unfurled beneath the clear blue sky?
Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on.
Goodbye, blue sky
Goodbye, blue sky.
Goodbye. Goodbye.
(Goodbye Blue Sky - Pink Floyd)
Goodbye Alan...
Arab armed forces in Iraq?
For more than a year now, the US has been floating the idea of resorting to coercing its Arab allies (specifically those who received a healthy dosage of aid dollars) to commit troops to Iraq.
This has been an idea previously floated by Democrats during overseas visits.
Now, as Republicans begin to call for at least a phased withdrawal to pull up their pants ahead of a November election, the idea is resurfacing as the White House realizes the catastrophe it will leave in its wake - an Iran dominated Iraq.
So, hoping to appear to be filling the vacuum, the US will lean on Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, the UAE, and others to send armed contingents to Iraq.
In my opinion, this is far more insane than sending US forces to Iraq in the first place. But the US is between Iraq and a hard place (sorry for the weak humor).
The Coalition of the willing has decreased in number by about 27% and the total number of soldiers have been cut by about 48%.
And more will have left by year's end. So, turning to the Arabs.
First off, the Arab armies are incompetent at best, rabble at worst. None of them have fought guerilla warfare, nor house to house urban warfare, nothing that a modern, mechanized army is required to know first-hand.
Secondly, the aforementioned countries are known throughout the Arab world for their poor human rights record, their torture record is abysmal and for the quashing of democratic enterprise in their own countries.
Now, these countries also happen to be Sunni. Egypt, has acknowledged a 700,000 Shia community, but has never afforded them minority status like, say, the Copts.
Jordan has borne the brunt of freely publicized hostility from both Iran and the government run by Jaafary and the Badr/SCIRI tyranny.
And Iran will not quickly forget that Jordan heavily sided with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. King Hussein, a Hashemite, of the Banu Hashem, a direct descendant of the Prophet, and now his son, King Abdullah, who warned of the Shia Crescent threatening the Middle East.
Nor will Iran likely forget Egypt's role in affording the late Shah asylum when no one else took him in. Nor will Egypt forget that Iran named a street in honor of one of Sadat's assassins.
Or Egypt's role in providing Iraq with arms as early as 1981, and later, military experts, some of whom helped in the retaking of the Fao Peninsula on April 17, 1988.
Egyptians fought in the Iraqi Army, although many feel they were forced to by Saddam's secret police. But Yemen did send a contingent to fight alongside the Iraqis during the Iraq-Iran war, and they were known to have fought bravely, according to one Iraqi officer who told me of their conduct many years later.
The UAE has an ongoing territorial dispute with the UAE. Bahrain is about 80% Shia ruled by a Sunni monarchy.
So, which Arab country will send a strong enough force to Iraq?
There are more problems to consider. Let us say a Jordanian unit captures a Badr Brigade militia member trying to kidnap a Sunni tribesman. If the Jordanian unit detains this man, you can bet the Badrists will have the excuse they are looking for to shed some Jordanian blood. After all, do they not blame Jordan for Zarqawi? And did they not mount very threatening protests against Jordan prompting a freeze between the two countries, albeit temporarily?
And what if an Egyptian unit captures an Egyptian terrorist, sees him being roughed up by the wild pack of so-called Iraqi police, how will they react then?
And what of the Arab press which is now focusing on the Iranian nuclear issue and Ahmedinjad's remarks as a way to divert attention from their real prize - Iraq?
How will their editorialists react if one of their own is killed?
There is mounting sympathy for the Sunnis among Arabs today. And among many fundamentalist Islamic groups in Jordan and Egypt, the Shia are considered apostates, although this is not directly stated.
And didn't La3nat Allah Rouhallah Khoemini once say that Egypt is the soul of the Shia world? You can check Islamic history for a clarification on that one, it's just too complicated to go into here.
Can you imagine these Arab forces with a fraction of the US training and none of the body armor, protected Humvees, mechanized divisions, and so on?
It's the worst idea I can possibly imagine for Iraq. It is mired in failure from the get-go.
But then again so was this entire war.
This has been an idea previously floated by Democrats during overseas visits.
Now, as Republicans begin to call for at least a phased withdrawal to pull up their pants ahead of a November election, the idea is resurfacing as the White House realizes the catastrophe it will leave in its wake - an Iran dominated Iraq.
So, hoping to appear to be filling the vacuum, the US will lean on Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, the UAE, and others to send armed contingents to Iraq.
In my opinion, this is far more insane than sending US forces to Iraq in the first place. But the US is between Iraq and a hard place (sorry for the weak humor).
The Coalition of the willing has decreased in number by about 27% and the total number of soldiers have been cut by about 48%.
And more will have left by year's end. So, turning to the Arabs.
First off, the Arab armies are incompetent at best, rabble at worst. None of them have fought guerilla warfare, nor house to house urban warfare, nothing that a modern, mechanized army is required to know first-hand.
Secondly, the aforementioned countries are known throughout the Arab world for their poor human rights record, their torture record is abysmal and for the quashing of democratic enterprise in their own countries.
Now, these countries also happen to be Sunni. Egypt, has acknowledged a 700,000 Shia community, but has never afforded them minority status like, say, the Copts.
Jordan has borne the brunt of freely publicized hostility from both Iran and the government run by Jaafary and the Badr/SCIRI tyranny.
And Iran will not quickly forget that Jordan heavily sided with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. King Hussein, a Hashemite, of the Banu Hashem, a direct descendant of the Prophet, and now his son, King Abdullah, who warned of the Shia Crescent threatening the Middle East.
Nor will Iran likely forget Egypt's role in affording the late Shah asylum when no one else took him in. Nor will Egypt forget that Iran named a street in honor of one of Sadat's assassins.
Or Egypt's role in providing Iraq with arms as early as 1981, and later, military experts, some of whom helped in the retaking of the Fao Peninsula on April 17, 1988.
Egyptians fought in the Iraqi Army, although many feel they were forced to by Saddam's secret police. But Yemen did send a contingent to fight alongside the Iraqis during the Iraq-Iran war, and they were known to have fought bravely, according to one Iraqi officer who told me of their conduct many years later.
The UAE has an ongoing territorial dispute with the UAE. Bahrain is about 80% Shia ruled by a Sunni monarchy.
So, which Arab country will send a strong enough force to Iraq?
There are more problems to consider. Let us say a Jordanian unit captures a Badr Brigade militia member trying to kidnap a Sunni tribesman. If the Jordanian unit detains this man, you can bet the Badrists will have the excuse they are looking for to shed some Jordanian blood. After all, do they not blame Jordan for Zarqawi? And did they not mount very threatening protests against Jordan prompting a freeze between the two countries, albeit temporarily?
And what if an Egyptian unit captures an Egyptian terrorist, sees him being roughed up by the wild pack of so-called Iraqi police, how will they react then?
And what of the Arab press which is now focusing on the Iranian nuclear issue and Ahmedinjad's remarks as a way to divert attention from their real prize - Iraq?
How will their editorialists react if one of their own is killed?
There is mounting sympathy for the Sunnis among Arabs today. And among many fundamentalist Islamic groups in Jordan and Egypt, the Shia are considered apostates, although this is not directly stated.
And didn't La3nat Allah Rouhallah Khoemini once say that Egypt is the soul of the Shia world? You can check Islamic history for a clarification on that one, it's just too complicated to go into here.
Can you imagine these Arab forces with a fraction of the US training and none of the body armor, protected Humvees, mechanized divisions, and so on?
It's the worst idea I can possibly imagine for Iraq. It is mired in failure from the get-go.
But then again so was this entire war.
Another US Army [racist] Scandal
This has been a bad week for the US military. From one scandal to another. From accusations of barbarity to common thievery and now to this:
"The Army closed a criminal investigation of abuse allegations by an Iraqi detainee last year, finding no reason to believe his claims, even though no Americans involved in the case were questioned, according to Pentagon records made public Thursday." More here ...
No reason to believe his claims. Why? Well, because he is an Iraqi. And Iraqis in their own country under the boot of the foreign occupation must be lying.
Abu Ghraib was an imagination.
The article goes on to say that investigators were blocked from conducting their investigation, that the names of the American (could they have been Israeli?) interrogators were faked, and that no effort was made to identify the alleged interrogators despite explicit descriptions from the detainee.
Can you imagine if this was a US soldier who had made such an allegation about his captors in say ... Tanzania. The US would have nuked Tanzania.
Or if this was an Israeli held by some faction in Lebanon?
But it's an Iraqi, and after Abu Ghraib, its cool.
This report came fast on the heels of an earlier report that General Geoffrey Miller who was in charge of detainees in Iraq from March to December 2005 pleaded the fifth amendment when asked about the use of dogs during interrogation.
You got guts, Geoff. Seriously. A General too cowardly to admit/deny his role in violating the Geneva Conventions and soiling the reputation of the US. Can you imagine the trend he sets for his troops?
Hey, did the Nazis plead the fifth at the Nuremberg Trials? I wonder ...
Hold on, there's more good news of roasting Iraqis.
Five Danish soldiers, including a female officer, were found guilty of abusing Iraqi detainees in southern Iraq.
Justice served, right?
Wrong. A judge ruled that because of ""extenuating circumstances" they five Danish soldiers would walk free.
No punishment.
So, what exactly is the message here.
Let's take a look at history. The Nazis committed atrocious crimes during World War II, both against Slavic Europeans and also against the Jews.
But, we have stories of the French committing atrocities in Algeria. And before them, the Italians in Ethiopia and Libya.
And the white Apartheid government in South Africa.
And the My Lai massacre.
And Napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam.
The actual real roasting of a Somali over a fire pit by Belgian UN soldiers.
Abu Ghraib in Iraq and thousands of other stories of valiant US soldiers abusing, torturing and murdering Iraqis.
What's going on here?
Let's do a quick review of the above.
Nazis, white, western. French, white, western. Italians, white, western. South Africa, white, western. My Lai, white, western. Somalia, white, western. Abu Ghraib, white, western.
I don't mean to talk race and color here, but seriously Jack, am I to understand that the lives of Easterners are considered forfeit?
By eastern, I refer to everything east of Vienna.
Once again, let's look at the victims here.
Nazis, Jews and Slavs. French, Algerian Arabs and Berbers. Italians, Arabs and Africans. South Africa, Black Africans. My Lai, Asians. Somalia, Africans and Arabs. Abu Ghraib, Arabs, Muslim.
I would like to ask the reader to play a simple mind game: switch them around. Imagine a black South African torturing a White Afrikaans man in jail and beating him till death. Or imagine an Iraqi interrogator torturing a 15-year old Irish-American in Chicago.
What would the reaction be?
Hmm ...
Racism. It has always been about racism. The way the World Bank dishes out loans that further impoverish a nation - racism. The way the G8 talk trade and finance - racism. The way the WTO functions - racism.
Look at the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. All White, except for China, which they dared not ignore.
Liberators? Reconstruction? Aid?
Code words for oppression, destruction, wanton war and violence, enslavement, torture, rape, and murder.
The 19th century's imperialism is alive and well and very kosher, thank you.
"The Army closed a criminal investigation of abuse allegations by an Iraqi detainee last year, finding no reason to believe his claims, even though no Americans involved in the case were questioned, according to Pentagon records made public Thursday." More here ...
No reason to believe his claims. Why? Well, because he is an Iraqi. And Iraqis in their own country under the boot of the foreign occupation must be lying.
Abu Ghraib was an imagination.
The article goes on to say that investigators were blocked from conducting their investigation, that the names of the American (could they have been Israeli?) interrogators were faked, and that no effort was made to identify the alleged interrogators despite explicit descriptions from the detainee.
Can you imagine if this was a US soldier who had made such an allegation about his captors in say ... Tanzania. The US would have nuked Tanzania.
Or if this was an Israeli held by some faction in Lebanon?
But it's an Iraqi, and after Abu Ghraib, its cool.
This report came fast on the heels of an earlier report that General Geoffrey Miller who was in charge of detainees in Iraq from March to December 2005 pleaded the fifth amendment when asked about the use of dogs during interrogation.
You got guts, Geoff. Seriously. A General too cowardly to admit/deny his role in violating the Geneva Conventions and soiling the reputation of the US. Can you imagine the trend he sets for his troops?
Hey, did the Nazis plead the fifth at the Nuremberg Trials? I wonder ...
Hold on, there's more good news of roasting Iraqis.
Five Danish soldiers, including a female officer, were found guilty of abusing Iraqi detainees in southern Iraq.
Justice served, right?
Wrong. A judge ruled that because of ""extenuating circumstances" they five Danish soldiers would walk free.
No punishment.
So, what exactly is the message here.
Let's take a look at history. The Nazis committed atrocious crimes during World War II, both against Slavic Europeans and also against the Jews.
But, we have stories of the French committing atrocities in Algeria. And before them, the Italians in Ethiopia and Libya.
And the white Apartheid government in South Africa.
And the My Lai massacre.
And Napalm and Agent Orange in Vietnam.
The actual real roasting of a Somali over a fire pit by Belgian UN soldiers.
Abu Ghraib in Iraq and thousands of other stories of valiant US soldiers abusing, torturing and murdering Iraqis.
What's going on here?
Let's do a quick review of the above.
Nazis, white, western. French, white, western. Italians, white, western. South Africa, white, western. My Lai, white, western. Somalia, white, western. Abu Ghraib, white, western.
I don't mean to talk race and color here, but seriously Jack, am I to understand that the lives of Easterners are considered forfeit?
By eastern, I refer to everything east of Vienna.
Once again, let's look at the victims here.
Nazis, Jews and Slavs. French, Algerian Arabs and Berbers. Italians, Arabs and Africans. South Africa, Black Africans. My Lai, Asians. Somalia, Africans and Arabs. Abu Ghraib, Arabs, Muslim.
I would like to ask the reader to play a simple mind game: switch them around. Imagine a black South African torturing a White Afrikaans man in jail and beating him till death. Or imagine an Iraqi interrogator torturing a 15-year old Irish-American in Chicago.
What would the reaction be?
Hmm ...
Racism. It has always been about racism. The way the World Bank dishes out loans that further impoverish a nation - racism. The way the G8 talk trade and finance - racism. The way the WTO functions - racism.
Look at the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. All White, except for China, which they dared not ignore.
Liberators? Reconstruction? Aid?
Code words for oppression, destruction, wanton war and violence, enslavement, torture, rape, and murder.
The 19th century's imperialism is alive and well and very kosher, thank you.
Iraqi resistance vs the CIA's Al-Qaida operations
Iraqi resistance vs the CIA's Al-Qaida operations
On this blog I have reiterated two things:
1) The Iraqi Resistance is NOT Al-Qaida and therefore could not be branded and labeled in the thick brush of "insurgency".
2) The Iraqi Resistance has been fighting ongoing ideological and military battles with Al-Qaida since October 2004.
When Al-Qaida and its head criminal first surfaced in Iraq, Iraqis quickly said it was an effort to undermine the legitimacy of the Iraqi Resistance. Iraqis attributed this to a foreign effort, an effort funded and organized outside Iraq. Some said it was the CIA, some said the US military.
When Al-Qaida began killing Shia and soon thereafter Sunnis, Iraqis realised that this foreign outfit was not really out to liberate Iraq.
Tasfiya - one Iraqi put it to me in an Arab Gulf country last year. Eradication, settling of scores and lives. No more Iraqis. No more threat to Kuwait. To Saudi Arabia, to Israel, the list goes on.
Then, Al Qaida increased its attacks on Shia, calling them apostates - something no Iraqi has ever done. Or will ever do.
The Al Azhar University in Cairo, the leading Sunni establishment of Islamic jurisprudence for the past 1000 years has never called the Shia apostates.
How can this rogue group of murderers say it is fighting for the honor of Iraqis, when it knows nothing of Iraqi traditions.
Arabs, disenchanted with the corruption and debauchery in their own Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Jordan decided it was a good idea to wage Jihad in Iraq.
Because someone in the pay of someone else told them so.
They became holier-than-thous not holy warriors. They killed our women and children with never a hint of remorse.
They took credit for attacks on US soldiers that all Iraqis know they never launched.
But Iraqis, are not stupid. Well, okay, some of the bloggers are, but Iraqis of my father's generation, the ones who built this country in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and endured the purges of the Baathists, the anti-Baathists, and then the Baathists again - those Iraqis decided the situation could not go on.
So, as early as last year, the Iraqi resistance sent out fliers and memos, some by way of email, that they would not harm Iraqi civilians and that such actions have never been part of their agenda.
They also vowed not to attack Iraqis on 30 January, that day of voting, but this went unreported.
Now, everything is out in the open, according to this New York Times article.
But the split within the insurgency is coinciding with Sunni Arabs' new desire to participate in Iraq's political process, and a growing resentment of the militants. Iraqis are increasingly saying that they regard Al Qaeda as a foreign-led force, whose extreme religious goals and desires for sectarian war against Iraq's Shiite majority override Iraqi tribal and nationalist traditions.
Error. It is not a split, because Iraqis were never part of the Al Qaida ideal.
Not when the towers fell in NYC, not after, and not now.
When the US invaded and opened the door for every murderer and zealot to come into Iraq, the Iraqi Resistance was formed to oust the foreign invader. The same in France. The same in Russia. The same in Vietnam.
This is the history of mankind. Come into my house irrespective of whatever lie you use to justify your action, and you will be met with a reaction.
When Zarqawi arrived on the spot and said he would oust the Americans, Iraqis of course welcomed that someone would take up their cause as well.
But Zarqawi, the strategy, not the man, because no such man exists, was never about ousting the foreign horde. It was about gaining the trust of the Iraqi people before turning its guns on them, sowing dissent between families, tribes.
Dissent the diaperheads in Iran could utilize to their gain. Dissent the US could point to and say, we are preventing a civil war.
And when the Iraqi Resistance continued its successful campaigns, Zarqawi's anti-Iraqi, anti-Shia rhetoric grew, almost as if to signal who Zarqawi (the strategy, not the man) was funded by.
Then the Zarqawi strategy became to create a civil war. But Iraqis weren't buying. Oh, the Badrists and the SCIRIsts were, because Mama Iran wanted them to.
But normal Iraqis. No.
So, now, maybe, just maybe, those who speak so openly of insurgency this and fighters that can start to believe what the Iraqi Resistance is after and what the foreign funded Al Qaida is after.
In any case, the pathetic cowardly Arab mercenaries are no match for the Iraqis.
They will chase them out and then return to chasing out the other foreign horde.
On this blog I have reiterated two things:
1) The Iraqi Resistance is NOT Al-Qaida and therefore could not be branded and labeled in the thick brush of "insurgency".
2) The Iraqi Resistance has been fighting ongoing ideological and military battles with Al-Qaida since October 2004.
When Al-Qaida and its head criminal first surfaced in Iraq, Iraqis quickly said it was an effort to undermine the legitimacy of the Iraqi Resistance. Iraqis attributed this to a foreign effort, an effort funded and organized outside Iraq. Some said it was the CIA, some said the US military.
When Al-Qaida began killing Shia and soon thereafter Sunnis, Iraqis realised that this foreign outfit was not really out to liberate Iraq.
Tasfiya - one Iraqi put it to me in an Arab Gulf country last year. Eradication, settling of scores and lives. No more Iraqis. No more threat to Kuwait. To Saudi Arabia, to Israel, the list goes on.
Then, Al Qaida increased its attacks on Shia, calling them apostates - something no Iraqi has ever done. Or will ever do.
The Al Azhar University in Cairo, the leading Sunni establishment of Islamic jurisprudence for the past 1000 years has never called the Shia apostates.
How can this rogue group of murderers say it is fighting for the honor of Iraqis, when it knows nothing of Iraqi traditions.
Arabs, disenchanted with the corruption and debauchery in their own Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Libya, Jordan decided it was a good idea to wage Jihad in Iraq.
Because someone in the pay of someone else told them so.
They became holier-than-thous not holy warriors. They killed our women and children with never a hint of remorse.
They took credit for attacks on US soldiers that all Iraqis know they never launched.
But Iraqis, are not stupid. Well, okay, some of the bloggers are, but Iraqis of my father's generation, the ones who built this country in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and endured the purges of the Baathists, the anti-Baathists, and then the Baathists again - those Iraqis decided the situation could not go on.
So, as early as last year, the Iraqi resistance sent out fliers and memos, some by way of email, that they would not harm Iraqi civilians and that such actions have never been part of their agenda.
They also vowed not to attack Iraqis on 30 January, that day of voting, but this went unreported.
Now, everything is out in the open, according to this New York Times article.
But the split within the insurgency is coinciding with Sunni Arabs' new desire to participate in Iraq's political process, and a growing resentment of the militants. Iraqis are increasingly saying that they regard Al Qaeda as a foreign-led force, whose extreme religious goals and desires for sectarian war against Iraq's Shiite majority override Iraqi tribal and nationalist traditions.
Error. It is not a split, because Iraqis were never part of the Al Qaida ideal.
Not when the towers fell in NYC, not after, and not now.
When the US invaded and opened the door for every murderer and zealot to come into Iraq, the Iraqi Resistance was formed to oust the foreign invader. The same in France. The same in Russia. The same in Vietnam.
This is the history of mankind. Come into my house irrespective of whatever lie you use to justify your action, and you will be met with a reaction.
When Zarqawi arrived on the spot and said he would oust the Americans, Iraqis of course welcomed that someone would take up their cause as well.
But Zarqawi, the strategy, not the man, because no such man exists, was never about ousting the foreign horde. It was about gaining the trust of the Iraqi people before turning its guns on them, sowing dissent between families, tribes.
Dissent the diaperheads in Iran could utilize to their gain. Dissent the US could point to and say, we are preventing a civil war.
And when the Iraqi Resistance continued its successful campaigns, Zarqawi's anti-Iraqi, anti-Shia rhetoric grew, almost as if to signal who Zarqawi (the strategy, not the man) was funded by.
Then the Zarqawi strategy became to create a civil war. But Iraqis weren't buying. Oh, the Badrists and the SCIRIsts were, because Mama Iran wanted them to.
But normal Iraqis. No.
So, now, maybe, just maybe, those who speak so openly of insurgency this and fighters that can start to believe what the Iraqi Resistance is after and what the foreign funded Al Qaida is after.
In any case, the pathetic cowardly Arab mercenaries are no match for the Iraqis.
They will chase them out and then return to chasing out the other foreign horde.
Cuba and Venezuela: A Bolivarian Partnership
Two of Latin America’s most respected independence figures, José Martí and Simón Bolívar, recognized nearly a century ago, that their homelands would never be free of imperial domination, until Latin America came together in solidarity as a united force.
In the lands of these timeless figures, a unique partnership has developed between Cuba and The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which defies the logic of neo-liberalism. Cuba and Venezuela are demonstrating an alternative relationship based on humanism and solidarity. This ‘demonstration effect’ displays to a world were all are forced into a ‘race to the bottom’, that focusing on the poorest people through a needs-based partnership is not only possible, but also desirable. Their mutual-aid exchanges in educational materials, medical services, and preferential prices of oil are a living counter-example to the competitive and exploitative nature of ‘free trade’.
While Martí and Bolívar advocated for regional unity in the face of colonialism of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, their insights remain all the more relevant in the age of neo-liberal globalization. The former colonists have been replaced by trans- and multi-national corporations and imperial states with the ability to blow up the world many times over. In addition, seemingly untouchable economic governing bodies (i.e. International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization) allow state and capital to come together to decide the most effective ways to control the world, amass wealth, and terrorize the global populace.
In the lands of Martí and Bolívar
For many decades, the Cuban Revolution has played a distinct role throughout the South as an openly anti-imperialist country interested in relationships based in solidarity, while actively pushing for a more humane economic and social system. On the international scale, Cuba has provided assistance to other countries based on humanistic values instead of solely economic incentives. Although a poor island with little material resources, and highly crippled by the US imposed Blockade, Cuba offers the world medical expertise and humanitarian support. Nationally, the Cuban Revolution has brought literacy and education to its entire population, free and quality medical assistance to all, housing to the homeless, and food to the hungry. Cuba has, when possible, actively supported countries and movements who share similar goals of social equity and economic justice.
The rise of the Bolivarian Revolutionary movement to power in 1998, through the election of Hugo Chávez, has meant real change for the poor of Venezuela and the initiation of a different kind of relationship with Cuba. Reinvigorating the visions of Martí and Bolívar—while respecting one another’s differing systems and different paths toward revolution and change—Cuba and Venezuela have built a relationship based on humanism, solidarity, mutual aid, and a shared vision of a world without poverty and imperialism. The aid that Cuba has provided is most notable in the social sphere. Cuba, rich in human capital and revolutionary experience, is aiding Venezuela as it goes down its own revolutionary path, with its Bolivarian projects and Missions.
Literacy and Healthcare without Borders
The Cuban Revolution has inspired two of the Bolivarian Revolution’s largest accomplishments. The socialization of education and health were an important focus for the Cuba, and similarly today, education and health initiatives are at the core of the Bolivarian project.
With illiteracy affecting 1.5 million people nationally, Venezuela, with assistance from Cuba, set out to devise a literacy program modeled after the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign.[i] In Cuba, students, armed with pencils and paper, traveled throughout the island teaching reading and writing. Utilizing modern technology, Misión Robinson, Venezuela’s literacy campaign, employs a video literacy program, which was made by Cuba.[ii] Cuba donated thousands of these videos along with TV and VCR sets, printed material for the classroom, reading glasses, and aids to train Venezuelan teachers. Venezuela has adopted these methods and translated the video into different indigenous languages. This tremendous joint effort has eradicated illiteracy in Venezuela.[iii]
Accessible and affordable education and healthcare are essential pieces of the Bolivarian and Cuban Revolutions. In addition to Cuba’s aid in Misión Robinson, Cuba’s support has been vital for Venezuela’s Barrio Adentro (Inside the Neighborhood), a program that brings medical assistance to the poor. Over 20,000 Cuban doctors have participated in the program to date. First doctors lived in people’s homes, but are now working out of offices, and providing free, basic and preventative health care in the poorest neighborhoods of Venezuela. They provide care for seventeen million Venezuelans, nearly two-thirds of the population, many of whom have never before received healthcare. The doctors live within the communities they serve and are on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Clinics are stocked with equipment and medicines from Cuba. Additionally, Cuban health specialists have joined the effort to teach about health, diet, and exercise, focusing on preventative care and healthy living.[iv]
It is not solely the medical expertise but also, the experience of working within a system that prioritizes healthcare, which allows the Cuban doctors to aid in the Bolivarian Revolution’s first healthcare initiatives. In order to meet all of the medical needs of the population and for the project to truly become its own, Venezuela is training doctors, so that Barrio Adentro can be fully staffed and expanded. Many Venezuelans are learning to be doctors through education Missions within Venezuela. While thousands more are receiving free education in Cuba, attending the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, and upon their return, will be integrated into the Barrio Adentro program.[v]
Oil, Trade, and Solidarity
The integral relationship between Venezuela and Cuba has further demonstrated the same values of humanism and solidarity can effectively be applied to trade. Cuba has benefited economically the most through the unique trade agreements.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block, between 1989 and 1991, and the addition of extra-territorial stipulations to the U.S. blockade, threw the Cuban economy into deep crisis, resulting in the implementation of the ‘Special Period’, a literal economy of desperation, survival, and scarcity. Although Cuba has officially recovered from its economic depression, increased trade with Venezuela has been a relief. Venezuela has become Cuba’s top trading partner, providing oil, food, and construction materials at preferential prices. This assistance is essential to the maintenance of Cuba’s social system, achieved by the revolution.
Defying hedonistic neo-liberal and ‘free market’ dogma, whereby a country uses a ‘comparative advantage’ to exploit its trading partners, Cuba and Venezuela have committed to oil accords, selling oil at below market value, and to a system of bartering. Venezuela has agreed to sell oil at a preferential rate to Cuba, so that despite rising prices in the world market, Cuba will purchase oil below this price. Moreover, the two nations have been bartering oil for medical services and technical services in the agricultural, tourist and sports industry, demonstrating a humanistic approach to trade which values health and sustainability as important ‘resources’.[vi]
Cuba and Venezuela are constructing a relationship that transcends the logic of markets and profits as the primary elements that should define trade. In effect, the two nations assess what goods and services will be exchanged based on analysis of each others’ needs and capabilities. This fosters an economic partnership that views the goods and resources of each nation as potential tools in supporting and aiding in the other’s revolutionary processes. The larger effect of the mutual-exchange model is the demonstration of an ‘efficient’ alternative to market-driven ‘free-trade’, offering a vision for Latin American unity and integration that is radically different from the dominant neo-liberal model.
Towards a United Latin America
In 2002, Cuba’s Fidel Castro tried to capture the nature of the distinctive Cuban-Venezuelan relationship, stating: “We share a mutual awareness of the need to unite the Latin American and Caribbean nations and to struggle for a world economic order that brings more justice to all people”. Revitalizing the ideals of José Martí and Simón Bolívar for a united Latin America, Cuba and Venezuela have together taken steps to eventually make this a reality.[vii]
One such example toward a cooperative integration is exhibited through Misión Milagro (Mission Miracle), a hemisphere-wide program dedicated to providing eye surgery to the poor, free of charge. Venezuela provides the air travel to Cuba, and Cuban doctors perform the operation. Thousands have already participated in this hemispheric program, and Misión Milagro is designed to assist hundreds of thousands more. With Venezuela offering the travel, and Cuba, the treatment, this truly internationalist initiative is able to provide a specific medical service for the poor of the Americas.[viii]
Cuba and Venezuela have also collaborated with Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina to create the first Latin American joint venture satellite television station, TeleSur (Television from the South). The station is designed to be an alternative to CNN, providing viewpoints and voices from the South. TeleSur broadcasts international news and specializes in Latin American-made independent documentaries, relaying both a political and artistic perspective from Latin America.
Two further projects for Latin American integration are PetroAmerica, and the more encompassing ALternativa Bolivariana para las Americas (ALBA), a counter proposal to the US-backed ALCA (Free Trade Area of the Americas).
PetroAmerica would consolidate the energy resources such as oil, natural gas, and electricity within the Caribbean, South and Central America, guaranteeing Latin America all of its energy needs. Moreover the semi-continentalist venture would provide autonomy over natural resources for the respective nations to use for their collective benefit, effectively shutting out the ability of foreign capital to export the profits away from the native populations and into the Global North.
Similarly, although more grandiose, ALBA would integrate the economies of Latin American based on the principles and methods between Cuba-Venezuelan of mutual-exchange, planning trade around the values of humanism, solidarity and self-determination and by assessing needs and capabilities.[ix] An overall contrast to the Social Darwinist policy of ALCA, where profits are the sole arbiter of success, as opposed to, the elimination of poverty, or the overall development of poor nations.
Limitations
Although Cuba and Venezuela are nurturing the visions of Martí and Bolívar, they face economic and political limitations that threaten the realization of their grand project. As Chávez contends in a 2002 interview with Marta Harnecker, “There has been a change in the legal-political structure” but, “the essence of the socio-economic structure of the country, we have advanced very little.”[x] Up to this point, Venezuela has heavily relied on utilizing its petroleum reserves and revenues as a means of contributing to the unification of the Americas as well as internal social progress, however, these capabilities are not infinite. If and when oil runs out, or prices fall in the world market, along with Venezuela’s socio-economic structure continuing to be tied to corporate power, the integration of the Americas will be limited in its reach and scope.
As for Cuba—remaining isolated in the Caribbean—their integration into a Latin American-centered economy cannot be achieved with Venezuela alone. The US-imposed blockade has asphyxiated the Cuban economy and hence, its ability to initiate programs that reach beyond its own survival. As the United States moves forward with the FTAA, a proposed free-trade bloc that incorporates every country of the hemisphere, except Cuba, Cuba is further marginalized. Cuba’s future largely depends on a change in the current balance of power. A united, anti-imperialist Latin America could bring about this transformation.
Ever since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the pending Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and many political leaders of the Americas signing on to a US agenda; a united counter-hegemonic force of the kind Cuba and Venezuela seek is all the more difficult. At this point, much of Cuba and Venezuela’s hope has relied on Leftist leaders being swept into power by popular movements in Latin America. Unfortunately, Lula, Kirchner, and Vasquez of Uruguay have not fulfilled many of their electorate promises. While invoking populist and often times, anti-imperialist language many of the claimed ‘leftist’ leaders have capitulated to the center, either by their own politics or by the pressures of foreign capital and debt. Although Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay have contributed to TeleSur, promoting a shift from US domination of the media, their collaboration only goes as far as mounting a united counter-power to Northern hegemony. In many cases, they play by the rules of neo-liberalism, in the hopes that a United South America could out-compete the US, and beat them at their own game.
Despite concessions and limitations, Cuba and Venezuela have met other nations willing to challenge the hyper-power to the North, with open arms, in hopes that the strength of their unity can encourage their neighbors to move in a more progressive direction.
Looking Forward
With a strategy based in the election of leftist leaders, the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia holds great promise of a united anti-imperialist Latin America. Morales, an indigenous socialist, will assume the presidency of Bolivia in January of 2006. He has spoken to the necessity of the nationalization of natural resources, redistribution of wealth, collaboration with Venezuela and Cuba, and has openly condemned U.S. imperialism.
Directly following his election, Morales visited Cuba and Venezuela, signing cooperation agreements based on solidarity, humanism, and the advancement of Latin American integration. Evo and Fidel signed a bilateral agreement in which Cuba will fully equip two eye care centers; one in La Paz and the other in Cochabamba, providing free eye care to Bolivians. Additionally, Fidel extended 5,000 scholarships for the training of Bolivian doctors and specialists. With the help of Cuba and Venezuela, a program to eradicate literacy will begin in July, 2006. Evo and Chávez have agreed on a process in which Venezuela will help with Bolivia’s Constitutional Assembly. Chávez has also promised to provide Evo’s government with a $30 million donation for social projects. Furthermore, Venezuela will supply all of Bolivia’s diesel fuel needs in direct exchange for Bolivia’s agricultural products.
Cuba and Venezuela’s ‘demonstration effect’ of mutual exchange, rooted in humanism and solidarity is breathing life into ALBA. Now, as Bolivia joins their ranks there is greater possibility for the vision of Martí and Bolívar. Evo Morales shares this vision, as he has stated, “[t]ogether, united, we are going to change history, not only in Bolivia but in all of Latin America and free ourselves from US imperialism.”[xi]
[i] Brian Lyons and Rich Palser (2005) Cuba and Venezuela: Breaking the Chains of Underdevelopment in Latin America, North London Cuban Solidarity Campaign. pp. 71 & 73.
[ii] Named after Simón Bolivar’s friend and teacher Simón Rodríguez, who changed his named to Samuel Robinson after Robinson Crusoe.
[iii] Richard Gott (2005), Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, Verso. p. 258.
[iv] See ibid. pgs. 257-258; Brian Lyons and Rich Palser (2005), pp. 69-73; Claudia Jardim, “Prevention and Solidarity: Democratizing Health in Venezuela,” Monthly Review, January 2005. Also see, Hugo Chavez’s speech to the United Nations in New York City, 2005.
[v] See; Peter Maybarduk, “A People’s Health System: Venezuela Works to Bring Healthcare to the Excluded,” Multinational Monitor, October 2004; and Richard Gott (2005), p. 257.
[vi] Steve Ellner, “Venezuela’s ‘Demonstration Effect’: Defying Globalization’s Logic,” NACLA, reprinted at Venezuelanalysis.com at www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1579 on Monday, Oct 17, 2005.
Marta Harnecker (and translated by Chesa Boudin) (2005), Understanding The Venezuelan Revolution: Hugo Chávez Talks to Marta Harnecker, Monthly Review Press, p.120.
[vii] Fidel Castro wrote these words in his book: War, Racism, and Economic Injustice, Ocean Press, Melbourne: 2002, pp. 63-64, but cited here from Brian Lyons and Richard Palser (2005), p.77.
[viii] See Hugo Chavez’s speech to the United Nations, 2005.
[ix] Marta Harnecker (and translated by Chesa Boudin) (2005), pp. 122-23 and pp. 113, 120-21.
[x] ibid. p.107.
[xi] Joaquin Rivery Tur (January 1, 2006).
In the lands of these timeless figures, a unique partnership has developed between Cuba and The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which defies the logic of neo-liberalism. Cuba and Venezuela are demonstrating an alternative relationship based on humanism and solidarity. This ‘demonstration effect’ displays to a world were all are forced into a ‘race to the bottom’, that focusing on the poorest people through a needs-based partnership is not only possible, but also desirable. Their mutual-aid exchanges in educational materials, medical services, and preferential prices of oil are a living counter-example to the competitive and exploitative nature of ‘free trade’.
While Martí and Bolívar advocated for regional unity in the face of colonialism of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century, their insights remain all the more relevant in the age of neo-liberal globalization. The former colonists have been replaced by trans- and multi-national corporations and imperial states with the ability to blow up the world many times over. In addition, seemingly untouchable economic governing bodies (i.e. International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization) allow state and capital to come together to decide the most effective ways to control the world, amass wealth, and terrorize the global populace.
In the lands of Martí and Bolívar
For many decades, the Cuban Revolution has played a distinct role throughout the South as an openly anti-imperialist country interested in relationships based in solidarity, while actively pushing for a more humane economic and social system. On the international scale, Cuba has provided assistance to other countries based on humanistic values instead of solely economic incentives. Although a poor island with little material resources, and highly crippled by the US imposed Blockade, Cuba offers the world medical expertise and humanitarian support. Nationally, the Cuban Revolution has brought literacy and education to its entire population, free and quality medical assistance to all, housing to the homeless, and food to the hungry. Cuba has, when possible, actively supported countries and movements who share similar goals of social equity and economic justice.
The rise of the Bolivarian Revolutionary movement to power in 1998, through the election of Hugo Chávez, has meant real change for the poor of Venezuela and the initiation of a different kind of relationship with Cuba. Reinvigorating the visions of Martí and Bolívar—while respecting one another’s differing systems and different paths toward revolution and change—Cuba and Venezuela have built a relationship based on humanism, solidarity, mutual aid, and a shared vision of a world without poverty and imperialism. The aid that Cuba has provided is most notable in the social sphere. Cuba, rich in human capital and revolutionary experience, is aiding Venezuela as it goes down its own revolutionary path, with its Bolivarian projects and Missions.
Literacy and Healthcare without Borders
The Cuban Revolution has inspired two of the Bolivarian Revolution’s largest accomplishments. The socialization of education and health were an important focus for the Cuba, and similarly today, education and health initiatives are at the core of the Bolivarian project.
With illiteracy affecting 1.5 million people nationally, Venezuela, with assistance from Cuba, set out to devise a literacy program modeled after the 1961 Cuban Literacy Campaign.[i] In Cuba, students, armed with pencils and paper, traveled throughout the island teaching reading and writing. Utilizing modern technology, Misión Robinson, Venezuela’s literacy campaign, employs a video literacy program, which was made by Cuba.[ii] Cuba donated thousands of these videos along with TV and VCR sets, printed material for the classroom, reading glasses, and aids to train Venezuelan teachers. Venezuela has adopted these methods and translated the video into different indigenous languages. This tremendous joint effort has eradicated illiteracy in Venezuela.[iii]
Accessible and affordable education and healthcare are essential pieces of the Bolivarian and Cuban Revolutions. In addition to Cuba’s aid in Misión Robinson, Cuba’s support has been vital for Venezuela’s Barrio Adentro (Inside the Neighborhood), a program that brings medical assistance to the poor. Over 20,000 Cuban doctors have participated in the program to date. First doctors lived in people’s homes, but are now working out of offices, and providing free, basic and preventative health care in the poorest neighborhoods of Venezuela. They provide care for seventeen million Venezuelans, nearly two-thirds of the population, many of whom have never before received healthcare. The doctors live within the communities they serve and are on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Clinics are stocked with equipment and medicines from Cuba. Additionally, Cuban health specialists have joined the effort to teach about health, diet, and exercise, focusing on preventative care and healthy living.[iv]
It is not solely the medical expertise but also, the experience of working within a system that prioritizes healthcare, which allows the Cuban doctors to aid in the Bolivarian Revolution’s first healthcare initiatives. In order to meet all of the medical needs of the population and for the project to truly become its own, Venezuela is training doctors, so that Barrio Adentro can be fully staffed and expanded. Many Venezuelans are learning to be doctors through education Missions within Venezuela. While thousands more are receiving free education in Cuba, attending the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana, and upon their return, will be integrated into the Barrio Adentro program.[v]
Oil, Trade, and Solidarity
The integral relationship between Venezuela and Cuba has further demonstrated the same values of humanism and solidarity can effectively be applied to trade. Cuba has benefited economically the most through the unique trade agreements.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block, between 1989 and 1991, and the addition of extra-territorial stipulations to the U.S. blockade, threw the Cuban economy into deep crisis, resulting in the implementation of the ‘Special Period’, a literal economy of desperation, survival, and scarcity. Although Cuba has officially recovered from its economic depression, increased trade with Venezuela has been a relief. Venezuela has become Cuba’s top trading partner, providing oil, food, and construction materials at preferential prices. This assistance is essential to the maintenance of Cuba’s social system, achieved by the revolution.
Defying hedonistic neo-liberal and ‘free market’ dogma, whereby a country uses a ‘comparative advantage’ to exploit its trading partners, Cuba and Venezuela have committed to oil accords, selling oil at below market value, and to a system of bartering. Venezuela has agreed to sell oil at a preferential rate to Cuba, so that despite rising prices in the world market, Cuba will purchase oil below this price. Moreover, the two nations have been bartering oil for medical services and technical services in the agricultural, tourist and sports industry, demonstrating a humanistic approach to trade which values health and sustainability as important ‘resources’.[vi]
Cuba and Venezuela are constructing a relationship that transcends the logic of markets and profits as the primary elements that should define trade. In effect, the two nations assess what goods and services will be exchanged based on analysis of each others’ needs and capabilities. This fosters an economic partnership that views the goods and resources of each nation as potential tools in supporting and aiding in the other’s revolutionary processes. The larger effect of the mutual-exchange model is the demonstration of an ‘efficient’ alternative to market-driven ‘free-trade’, offering a vision for Latin American unity and integration that is radically different from the dominant neo-liberal model.
Towards a United Latin America
In 2002, Cuba’s Fidel Castro tried to capture the nature of the distinctive Cuban-Venezuelan relationship, stating: “We share a mutual awareness of the need to unite the Latin American and Caribbean nations and to struggle for a world economic order that brings more justice to all people”. Revitalizing the ideals of José Martí and Simón Bolívar for a united Latin America, Cuba and Venezuela have together taken steps to eventually make this a reality.[vii]
One such example toward a cooperative integration is exhibited through Misión Milagro (Mission Miracle), a hemisphere-wide program dedicated to providing eye surgery to the poor, free of charge. Venezuela provides the air travel to Cuba, and Cuban doctors perform the operation. Thousands have already participated in this hemispheric program, and Misión Milagro is designed to assist hundreds of thousands more. With Venezuela offering the travel, and Cuba, the treatment, this truly internationalist initiative is able to provide a specific medical service for the poor of the Americas.[viii]
Cuba and Venezuela have also collaborated with Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina to create the first Latin American joint venture satellite television station, TeleSur (Television from the South). The station is designed to be an alternative to CNN, providing viewpoints and voices from the South. TeleSur broadcasts international news and specializes in Latin American-made independent documentaries, relaying both a political and artistic perspective from Latin America.
Two further projects for Latin American integration are PetroAmerica, and the more encompassing ALternativa Bolivariana para las Americas (ALBA), a counter proposal to the US-backed ALCA (Free Trade Area of the Americas).
PetroAmerica would consolidate the energy resources such as oil, natural gas, and electricity within the Caribbean, South and Central America, guaranteeing Latin America all of its energy needs. Moreover the semi-continentalist venture would provide autonomy over natural resources for the respective nations to use for their collective benefit, effectively shutting out the ability of foreign capital to export the profits away from the native populations and into the Global North.
Similarly, although more grandiose, ALBA would integrate the economies of Latin American based on the principles and methods between Cuba-Venezuelan of mutual-exchange, planning trade around the values of humanism, solidarity and self-determination and by assessing needs and capabilities.[ix] An overall contrast to the Social Darwinist policy of ALCA, where profits are the sole arbiter of success, as opposed to, the elimination of poverty, or the overall development of poor nations.
Limitations
Although Cuba and Venezuela are nurturing the visions of Martí and Bolívar, they face economic and political limitations that threaten the realization of their grand project. As Chávez contends in a 2002 interview with Marta Harnecker, “There has been a change in the legal-political structure” but, “the essence of the socio-economic structure of the country, we have advanced very little.”[x] Up to this point, Venezuela has heavily relied on utilizing its petroleum reserves and revenues as a means of contributing to the unification of the Americas as well as internal social progress, however, these capabilities are not infinite. If and when oil runs out, or prices fall in the world market, along with Venezuela’s socio-economic structure continuing to be tied to corporate power, the integration of the Americas will be limited in its reach and scope.
As for Cuba—remaining isolated in the Caribbean—their integration into a Latin American-centered economy cannot be achieved with Venezuela alone. The US-imposed blockade has asphyxiated the Cuban economy and hence, its ability to initiate programs that reach beyond its own survival. As the United States moves forward with the FTAA, a proposed free-trade bloc that incorporates every country of the hemisphere, except Cuba, Cuba is further marginalized. Cuba’s future largely depends on a change in the current balance of power. A united, anti-imperialist Latin America could bring about this transformation.
Ever since the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the pending Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), and many political leaders of the Americas signing on to a US agenda; a united counter-hegemonic force of the kind Cuba and Venezuela seek is all the more difficult. At this point, much of Cuba and Venezuela’s hope has relied on Leftist leaders being swept into power by popular movements in Latin America. Unfortunately, Lula, Kirchner, and Vasquez of Uruguay have not fulfilled many of their electorate promises. While invoking populist and often times, anti-imperialist language many of the claimed ‘leftist’ leaders have capitulated to the center, either by their own politics or by the pressures of foreign capital and debt. Although Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay have contributed to TeleSur, promoting a shift from US domination of the media, their collaboration only goes as far as mounting a united counter-power to Northern hegemony. In many cases, they play by the rules of neo-liberalism, in the hopes that a United South America could out-compete the US, and beat them at their own game.
Despite concessions and limitations, Cuba and Venezuela have met other nations willing to challenge the hyper-power to the North, with open arms, in hopes that the strength of their unity can encourage their neighbors to move in a more progressive direction.
Looking Forward
With a strategy based in the election of leftist leaders, the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia holds great promise of a united anti-imperialist Latin America. Morales, an indigenous socialist, will assume the presidency of Bolivia in January of 2006. He has spoken to the necessity of the nationalization of natural resources, redistribution of wealth, collaboration with Venezuela and Cuba, and has openly condemned U.S. imperialism.
Directly following his election, Morales visited Cuba and Venezuela, signing cooperation agreements based on solidarity, humanism, and the advancement of Latin American integration. Evo and Fidel signed a bilateral agreement in which Cuba will fully equip two eye care centers; one in La Paz and the other in Cochabamba, providing free eye care to Bolivians. Additionally, Fidel extended 5,000 scholarships for the training of Bolivian doctors and specialists. With the help of Cuba and Venezuela, a program to eradicate literacy will begin in July, 2006. Evo and Chávez have agreed on a process in which Venezuela will help with Bolivia’s Constitutional Assembly. Chávez has also promised to provide Evo’s government with a $30 million donation for social projects. Furthermore, Venezuela will supply all of Bolivia’s diesel fuel needs in direct exchange for Bolivia’s agricultural products.
Cuba and Venezuela’s ‘demonstration effect’ of mutual exchange, rooted in humanism and solidarity is breathing life into ALBA. Now, as Bolivia joins their ranks there is greater possibility for the vision of Martí and Bolívar. Evo Morales shares this vision, as he has stated, “[t]ogether, united, we are going to change history, not only in Bolivia but in all of Latin America and free ourselves from US imperialism.”[xi]
[i] Brian Lyons and Rich Palser (2005) Cuba and Venezuela: Breaking the Chains of Underdevelopment in Latin America, North London Cuban Solidarity Campaign. pp. 71 & 73.
[ii] Named after Simón Bolivar’s friend and teacher Simón Rodríguez, who changed his named to Samuel Robinson after Robinson Crusoe.
[iii] Richard Gott (2005), Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, Verso. p. 258.
[iv] See ibid. pgs. 257-258; Brian Lyons and Rich Palser (2005), pp. 69-73; Claudia Jardim, “Prevention and Solidarity: Democratizing Health in Venezuela,” Monthly Review, January 2005. Also see, Hugo Chavez’s speech to the United Nations in New York City, 2005.
[v] See; Peter Maybarduk, “A People’s Health System: Venezuela Works to Bring Healthcare to the Excluded,” Multinational Monitor, October 2004; and Richard Gott (2005), p. 257.
[vi] Steve Ellner, “Venezuela’s ‘Demonstration Effect’: Defying Globalization’s Logic,” NACLA, reprinted at Venezuelanalysis.com at www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1579 on Monday, Oct 17, 2005.
Marta Harnecker (and translated by Chesa Boudin) (2005), Understanding The Venezuelan Revolution: Hugo Chávez Talks to Marta Harnecker, Monthly Review Press, p.120.
[vii] Fidel Castro wrote these words in his book: War, Racism, and Economic Injustice, Ocean Press, Melbourne: 2002, pp. 63-64, but cited here from Brian Lyons and Richard Palser (2005), p.77.
[viii] See Hugo Chavez’s speech to the United Nations, 2005.
[ix] Marta Harnecker (and translated by Chesa Boudin) (2005), pp. 122-23 and pp. 113, 120-21.
[x] ibid. p.107.
[xi] Joaquin Rivery Tur (January 1, 2006).
The Bush family, the Cuban mafia and the Kennedy assassination
One of the most tantalizing nuggets about Nixon's possible inside knowledge of JFK assassination secrets was buried on a White House tape until 2002. On the tape, recorded in May of 1972, Nixon said:
"And it was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated,"- without making clear why he considered the Warren Commission findings a sham and a hoax.
The Bush family, the Cuban mafia and the Kennedy assassination
BY REINALDO TALADRID and LAZARO BAREDO
IN 1959, a young officer and businessman from Texas received directions to cooperate in funding the nascent anti-Castro groups that the CIA decided to create, but it wasn’t until 1960 that he was assigned a more specific and overt mission: to guarantee the security of the process of recruiting Cubans to form an invasion brigade, a key aspect within the grand CIA operation to destroy the Cuban Revolution.
The CIA Texan quickly took a liking to the Cuban assigned to him for his new mission. The system of work, although intense, was simple. Féliz Rodríguez Mendigutía, "El Gato," would propose a candidate to him, who would then be checked out, both in the Agency and among the Miami groups, and finally, the Texan would give the go-ahead.
In that period, Félix Rodríguez already knew quite a few Cubans, like Jorge Mas Canosa (subsequently the leader of various counterrevolutionary organizations and then president of the Cuban-American National Foundation) and had confirmed his loyalty to "the cause" and to the Americans. For that reason he was among the first to be proposed. He passed through the process satisfactorily, and in a meeting in the city of Miami, which the Texan liked to make as formal as possible, Jorge Mas Canosa officially became an agent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Jorge Mas didn’t know how to thank Félix for what he had done for him. From that moment he was constantly grateful to him and, at the same time, obedient to his every petition.
But Jorge Mas was far from imagining the significance of this recruitment on the rest of his life. The significance rested on the fact that that Texan officer who undertook his recruitment process, approved it and then notified him at that meeting, was none other than George Herbert Walker Bush, the same man who, later, between 1989 and 1992, was the 41st president of the United States.
Various sources coincide on the foregoing. Paul Kangas, a Californian private investigator, published an article containing part of his investigations in The Realist in 1990, in which he affirms that a newly discovered FBI document places Bush as working with the now famous CIA agent Félix Rodríguez on the recruitment of ultra-right wing exiled Cubans for the invasion of Cuba.
For his part, in his "Report on a Censored Project," Dr. Carl Jensen of Sonoma State College states: "… there is a record in the files of Rodríguez and others involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion, which expounds the role of Bush: the truth is that Bush was a senior CIA official before working with Félix Rodríguez on the invasion of Cuba."
But Kangas is more precise in his quoted article, when he states:
"Traveling from Houston to Miami on a weekly basis, Bush, with Félix Rodríguez, spent 1960 and 1961 recruiting Cubans in Miami for the invasion."
Other publications that have referred to the theme are The Nation magazine, whose August 13, 1988 edition reveals the finding of "a memorandum in that context addressed to FBI chief J. Edward Hoover and signed November 1963, which reads: Mr. George Bush of the CIA;" or the Common Cause magazine that, on March 4, 1990, affirmed: "The CIA put millionaire and agent George Bush in charge of recruiting exiled Cubans for the CIA’s invading army; Bush was working with another Texan oil magnate, Jack Crichton, who helped him in terms of the invasion."
Without knowing it, Jorge Mas had become part of something far more complex than the planned mercenary invasion. The recent recruited CIA agent became one of the participants in what was originally known as Operation 40.
Operation 40 was the first plan of covert operations generated by the CIA to destroy the Cuban Revolution and was drawn up in 1959 on the orders of the administration of President Ike Eisenhower.
In his book Cuba, la Guerra secreta de la CIA (Cuba, the CIA’s Secret War), Divisional General (ret) Fabián Escalante Font, former head of the Cuban Counterintelligence Services, explained what occurred in the early 1960.
"A few days later (end of 1959), Allen Dulles, chief of the CIA, presented to the King (Colonel, chief of the Western Hemisphere Division of the CIA) memorandum to the National Security Council, which approved the suggestion of forming a working group within the agency which, in the short term, would provide ‘alternative solutions to the Cuban problem.’"
The group, Escalante Font relates, was composed of Tracy Barnes as head, and officials Howard Hunt, Frank Bender, Jack Engler and David Atlee Phillips, among others. Those present had one common characteristic: all of them had participated in the fall of the Jacobo Arbenz government in Guatemala.
General Escalante recounts in his book that, during the first meeting, Barnes spoke at length on the objectives to be achieved. He explained that Vice President Richard Nixon was the Cuban "case officer" and had met with an important group of businessmen headed by George Bush and Jack Crichton, both Texas oil magnates, to collect the necessary funding for the operation.
In a 1986 edition of the Freedom Magazine U.S. journalist L.F. Proury explains that Richard Nixon had long and close links with the Bush family dating back to 1946 when Nixon, responding to a petition by Preston Bush (George’s father) presented himself as a candidate for the U.S. Congress, financed by the old Bush.
The group constituted within the CIA, states Escalante in his book, set up various teams in charge of organizing clandestine operations, psychological warfare actions and exerting economic and diplomatic pressure, which would put paid to the island government. This was compounded by the preparation of an elite group of Cuban agents who, after specialized training, would infiltrate Cuba and deal a mortal rearguard blow to the Revolution, which included the assassination of its principal leaders.
Jorge Mas Canosa gave his recruiters a very positive impression and was immediately assigned to a special mission. "Now things are going to take off," he said enthusiastically.
In the Exito magazine, Mabel Dieppa narrates:
"He was sent to a U.S. Marines training camp close to the Mississippi River, where he was trained to participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion."
But Jorge Mas, as stated, had been attached to a very special group, still within the preparations for the mercenary invasion. The group was composed of 160 men of total confidence and was headed by the traitor and likewise CIA agent Higinio Díaz Ane (Nino). In the abovementioned book, General Escalante explains: "These men were given the mission to attack the town of Baracoa, in the easternmost part of the island, in order to distract the revolutionary forces when the brigade landed at the Bay of Pigs." Once they had taken Baracoa, they were to head for the Guantánamo Naval Base and, simulating Cuban troops, organize a provocation by attacking the installation, thus facilitating a U.S. military response with a formal reason for intervening in the conflict created by the mercenary invasion. That plan was the secret mechanism that the CIA and the Pentagon had up their sleeve, and nobody, not even President Kennedy, knew of it.
On the day of the invasion, the 160 "elite" agency men left in a boat for their destination but, on reaching Baracoa, fear at the movement of Cuban troops in the area won out over the sterling training they had received, and they confined themselves to continue navigating south of the island until they reached the westernmost extreme. From there, they headed for Puerto Rico, arriving there the same day. In Miami, as a joke, this action was christened "Skirting round Cuba."
After the Bay of Pigs defeat in April 1961 the CIA recouped its men. It reiterated its confidence in them and assigned them new missions, maintaining the objectives that gave rise to Operation 40.
In the weekly Política, the author Natacha Herrera explained:
"Along with another 207 agents, Mas went to Fort Benning, Georgia for basic U.S. army training and was selected to take a special intelligence, clandestine communication and propaganda course."
In his extensive work published for the Esquire magazine in January 1993, Gaeton Fonzi affirms that in Fort Benning, Mas Canosa’s friends with whom he was most closely linked in complex covert operations were Félix Rodríguez and Luis Posada Carriles," the latter of whom became notorious for the sabotage of a Cubana Airline passenger plane in full flight over Barbados in 1976.
"After Fort Benning," says the U.S. investigator, "there was some CIA connection in every move or action in Jorge Mas’ career."
Precisely because of the outstanding results obtained in Fort Benning, the Agency later assigned Mas Canosa to another delicate mission. On this occasion, he would have to move to an "ultra-secret" base located a little south of Fort Benning, to join what was known as the "New Orleans group." That group, which took its name from the location of the base on the outskirts of the southern U.S. city, was mainly composed of veterans from the Bay of Pigs and Fort Benning, although some agents of confidence like Antonio Veciana, recently arrived from the island and reportedly very close to Jorge Mas in that period, were incorporated. Their preparation was sui generis. The group took a course on the use of means and methods of combat of the Cuban army.
The content of the mission was disclosed by General Escalante in his book: "Once again, the plot consisted of a self-provocation against the Yankee base (of Guantánamo), via the infiltration of a commando of 150 men who trained in an ultra-secret CIA base on the outskirts of the southern U.S. city of New Orleans."
The mission was cancelled due to the occurrences that gave rise to the Missile Crisis in October 1962, which convinced the organizers of the inevitability of a direct military intervention by the U.S. army without the need of any pretext."
After this new failure, Mas Canosa was full of rage and impotence and acknowledged to the U.S. writer Pat Jordan in an interview that, "the two men he most hated were Fidel Castro and John F. Kennedy."
In the United States, the media has once again picked up on the relationship of the émigré Cubans who worked for the CIA with the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.
During a long conversation with the investigator Gaeton Fonzi in Havana, we discovered a story that, given its content, it is worth reproducing. Fonzi is not just any common or garden investigator. He had devoted much of his life to working for various congressional committees, including those responsible for investigations into the covert activities of the CIA and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
A few years ago, and after much effort, Fonzi managed to get a private interview with Antonio Veciana, the same old buddy of Jorge Mas in the "New Orleans group," where the two of them became close friends while fulfilling CIA missions. Veciana had been interrogated by the Grand Jury charged with investigating the assassination of President Kennedy, and years later, had had some drug-related problems; but he vehemently affirmed to Fonzi that these difficulties were nothing more than a "trap" set up by somebody.
"I have a lot of information, but I am keeping that to myself because it is my life insurance," Veciana told Fonzi."
Antonio Veciana Blanch was a public accountant who worked for the Cuban sugar magnate Julio Lobo. He rapidly opposed the Cuban Revolution and, in 1960 was recruited by the CIA in Havana. He received his initial training in an English Language Academy supervised by the U.S. embassy in the Cuban capital. In October 1961, after the failure of a plot he devised to assassination Prime Minister Fidel Castro with a bazooka during an event at the former Presidential Palace, Veciana fled Cuba.
In the interview that he gave to Fonzi he related that, once in Miami, he was looked after by a CIA official who used the pseudonym of Maurice Bishop. Among other tasks, this "Bishop" ordered Veciana to promote the creation of the ALPHA 66 organization.
"Bishop" had frequent contact with Veciana from 1962-1963 in the city of Dallas. Veciana recalled that, at one of those meetings in a public building, he saw Lee Harvey Oswald.
Fonzi noted that various acts of disinformation were organized as part of the operation that cost the life of President Kennedy: one in Dallas, another in Miami and a third in Mexico City. The objective of the disinformation was to manufacture the image of a "revolutionary" Oswald, a "defender of the Cuban Revolution."
Hence the ex-marine was filmed in acts of solidarity with Cuba, demonstrating in a very aggressive manner. But the most daring act of disinformation was effected in Mexico City. There, Lee Harvey Oswald turned up at the Cuban embassy to ask for an entry visa to the island. All of that was filmed from a surveillance post that the CIA had opposite the Cuban embassy, so that it would be documented.
The strange thing is, as Veciana told Fonzi, in one of his contacts with "Bishop" in early 1963, the latter said that he knew that he (Veciana) had a cousin in Cuban Intelligence, who was located at the Cuban embassy in Mexico. "Bishop" stated that if it suited his cousin to work for them in a very specific action, he would pay him whatever he wanted. Veciana commented to Fonzi that he had never spoken of this cousin to "Bishop" and also, at that time, "Bishop" was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Mexico City and even went directly from the Mexican capital to some contacts in Dallas.
In fact Veciana was the cousin of the wife of the then Cuban consul in Mexico City, Guillermo Ruiz, and in the days following the assassination of Kennedy, that woman was the victim of a recruitment attempt in the same city, with the clear proposition that, once in the United States, she would testify as to Oswald’s "complicity" with the Cuban secret services.
Questioned by Fonzi as to the existence of renewed contacts with "Bishop" after the Dallas homicide, Veciana answered that there had been, particularly in 1971, when he received an order to leave for Bolivia and work in the U.S. embassy in that country, where he would appear as an official for the Agency for International Development (USAID) and should wait for a visit from a known person. Fonzi checked the USAID archives in Washington and found an application form to enter the USAID in the name of Antonio Veciana, handwritten in letters distinct from those of Veciana and unsigned.
The "known person" who contacted him in Bolivia was "Bishop," at that time located in the U.S. embassy in Chile. "Bishop" immediately incorporated him into a team plotting an attempt on the life of President Fidel Castro, who was to visit the South American country.
Fonzi told us that he interviewed Antonio Veciana again, but this time accompanied by a specialist with the aim of composing a photofit of "Maurice Bishop" so as to determine his real identity.
Veciana gave a detailed description and the photofit was made. Fonzi spent weeks trying to identify the character, and one Sunday, suddenly received a call at home from a Republican senator for Pennsylvania for whom he was working at the time, and whom he had consulted on the identity of the man in the drawing.
The senator assured him that the he was absolutely sure that the man using the pseudonym of Maurice Bishop was none other than David Atlee Phillips. He was a veteran CIA officer who was in Havana on a working visit in 1958 as a specialist in psychological warfare, participated in the creation of Operation 40 and later, as part of the same, organized the Radio Swann transmitter. With time, Phillips would become head of the Western Hemisphere Division of the Agency.
However, at the end of 1993, in the documentary ¿Caso cerrado? (Case Closed?), the former chief of Cuban Security , Divisional General (ret) Fabián Escalante, revealed a secret report from one of his agents, which spoke of a meeting between Antonio Veciana and David Phillips in a hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the early 70s.
"Veciana told me," said the Cuban agent, "that he was a CIA agent and it was the CIA that assassinated Kennedy and that senior CIA officials including David Phillips, the official attending to him, were behind it all. Veciana never wanted to give me any details of that affirmation, but recently, I have been able to confirm it, because once when I was in a hotel with Veciana, I heard a conversation that he had with his officer, David Phillips, in which Veciana swore that he would never talk about what happened in Dallas in 1963."
General Escalante guarantees that the source has direct access to Veciana, and was in his total confidence:
"I believe," Escalante affirmed, "that that is very important information because I have to say that, in 1973, when Antonio Veciana was liquidated by the CIA; in other words, when the CIA took him off their books, he received a compensation payment of $300,000."
But there is more. According to Cuban State Security investigations disclosed by General Escalante in the above mentioned documentary, various witnesses quoted by the Warren Commission described two Cubans, one of them black, leaving the Daley Plaza Book Deposit in Dallas, a few minutes after the assassination was effected. In parallel, through secret information and public testimony (the statement by Marita Lorenz, ex-CIA agent to a congressional committee), Cuban Security knew that two days before the assassination various Cubans were in Dallas with weapons and telescopic sights, including Eladio del Valle and Herminio Díaz, two paid killers and expert sharpshooters linked to the Mafia and Batista politics. The physical characteristics of Del Valle and Herminio Díaz matched the descriptions that various witnesses gave to the Warren Commission of the two Cubans seen leaving the building seconds after the president had been assassinated.
The really curious fact is the final fate of both of them: Eladio del Valle was brutally murdered in Miami when Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney initiated his investigation into the Kennedy assassination; Del Valle was chopped into pieces with a machete. Even more interesting was the end of Herminio Díaz, who died near the Havana coast in 1965, when he collided with a patrol boat while trying to infiltrate the island with the mission of assassinating Osvaldo Dortícos and submachine gunning the Riviera Hotel.
In order to fulfill the mission on which he was sent, Díaz had to infiltrate the island right in the capital via Monte Barreto in Miramar (where a number of hotels are currently going up) at a time when, because of an incident at the Guantánamo naval base, the Cuban army was on combat alert, and aerial and coastal vigilance was been reinforced to the maximum. In the eyes of experts, and the Cuban Security, the operation was a veritable suicide mission.
The financial organizer and planner of such "a strange mission" was none other than Jorge Mas Canosa.
But the history of the CIA's links with its Cuban agents and the Kennedy assassination has not only been explored by Fonzi. Many other authors and investigators, and even the film studios that gave origin to the U.S. movies Executive Action and JFK, have covered the subject.
In an article published in The Realist magazine, the investigator Paul Kangas affirms:
"Among other members of the CIA recruited by George Bush for the (Bay of Pigs) invasion) were Frank Sturgis, Howard Hunt, Bernard Baker and Rafael Quintero… On the day that JFK was assassinated, Hunt and some of the subsequent Watergate team were photographed in Dallas, as well as a group of Cubans, one of them with an opened umbrella as a signal, alongside the president’s limousine, right where Kennedy was shot… Hunt and Sturgis fired on JFK from a grassy knoll. They were photographed and seen by 15 witnesses."
On May 7, 1990, in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Frank Sturgis acknowledged:
"…the reason why we robbed in Watergate was because (Richard) Nixon was interested in stopping the news leaks related to the photos of our role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."
Another of Bush's recruits for the Bay of Pigs invasion, Rafael Quintero, who was also part of this underworld of organizations and conspiracies against Cuba, stated:
"If I was to tell what I know about Dallas and the Bay of Pigs, it would be the greatest scandal that has ever rocked to nation."
Up to here are certain details of one of the existing theories on the above-mentioned event but, will the whole truth come out some day? Will Antonio Veciana, former member of the "New Orleans group," decide to reveal his "life insurance" or Rafael Quintero, to tell what he knows and thus, "rock the nation?" •
NB Quotes in English retranslated from the Spanish.
Miners and campesinos to escort Evo Morales, the new Bolivian president in his inauguration parade
LA PAZ.—Columns of miners and campesinos are to flank the victory walk that Evo Morales, the new president of Bolivia, is to make through the streets of La Paz after his investiture.
Grover Cardozo, the coordinator of the Protocol Commission for the transfer of power, told PL that, at Morales’ request, those workers will form the first security line of the walk.
“We want to demonstrate that those people who took Evo Morales to the presidency will be the ones who back, defend and protect his government,” explained the Movement Toward Socialism representative (MAS).
After the two ranks of miners with their traditional helmets and campesinos dressed in their indigenous clothing, will come the armed forces and the police, officially responsible for the leader’s security, Cardozo said.
The president elect is to advance on foot for approximately one kilometer between those columns on January 22, along the old Comercio Street, a pedestrian walkway, to the Plaza de los Héroes, a usual scenario for popular demonstrations.
In that space, where Morales initiated his electoral campaign, the Bolivian leader will ratify before what is expected to be a giant rally, his commitment to govern for his people, in a kind of third investiture.
On January 22, he is to assume the presidency before Congress, and the day before that, to receive the indigenous symbols of leadership in a ceremony in Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco), among the pre-Colombian stone structures on that archeological site.
Aymara campesinos will also provide security for Morales in Tiwanaku, affirmed Cardozo, who also denied that the police had suggested to the president-elect that he should use a bulletproof vest during the investiture ceremony.
Meanwhile, Alvaro García Linera, the vice president elect, affirmed that the new relationship and possible agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be – above anything – subjected to national sovereignty and dignity.
He also confirmed that, for the MAS and Morales it is a priority to change – although not immediately – the neoliberal economic model, whose functioning in Bolivia has been supervised by the IMF since 1985, because it has only caused poverty and suffering for the Bolivian people. (PL)
Grover Cardozo, the coordinator of the Protocol Commission for the transfer of power, told PL that, at Morales’ request, those workers will form the first security line of the walk.
“We want to demonstrate that those people who took Evo Morales to the presidency will be the ones who back, defend and protect his government,” explained the Movement Toward Socialism representative (MAS).
After the two ranks of miners with their traditional helmets and campesinos dressed in their indigenous clothing, will come the armed forces and the police, officially responsible for the leader’s security, Cardozo said.
The president elect is to advance on foot for approximately one kilometer between those columns on January 22, along the old Comercio Street, a pedestrian walkway, to the Plaza de los Héroes, a usual scenario for popular demonstrations.
In that space, where Morales initiated his electoral campaign, the Bolivian leader will ratify before what is expected to be a giant rally, his commitment to govern for his people, in a kind of third investiture.
On January 22, he is to assume the presidency before Congress, and the day before that, to receive the indigenous symbols of leadership in a ceremony in Tiwanaku (Tiahuanaco), among the pre-Colombian stone structures on that archeological site.
Aymara campesinos will also provide security for Morales in Tiwanaku, affirmed Cardozo, who also denied that the police had suggested to the president-elect that he should use a bulletproof vest during the investiture ceremony.
Meanwhile, Alvaro García Linera, the vice president elect, affirmed that the new relationship and possible agreements with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be – above anything – subjected to national sovereignty and dignity.
He also confirmed that, for the MAS and Morales it is a priority to change – although not immediately – the neoliberal economic model, whose functioning in Bolivia has been supervised by the IMF since 1985, because it has only caused poverty and suffering for the Bolivian people. (PL)
Col. Westhusing, the Army's chief ethics expert was murdered, according to Carlyle Group insider.
January 14, 2006 -- Serious questions remain concerning Col. Westhusing's "suicide" in Iraq. Army's chief ethics expert was murdered, according to Carlyle Group insider.
According an informed source within The Carlyle Group business consortium, Col. Ted Westhusing, the Army's top military ethicist and professor at West Point, did not commit suicide in a Baghdad trailer in June 2005 as was widely reported in the mainstream media five months later. At the time of his death, Westhusing was investigating contract violations and human rights abuses by US Investigations Services (USIS), formerly a federal agency, the Office of Federal Investigations (OFI), which operated under the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
In 1996, OFI, which conducted background investigations for civil service personnel, was privatized. The 700 government employees of OFI became employee-owners as part of USIS. In January 2003, the New York investment firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson, and Stowe, described by a Carlyle insider as a virtual shadow operation for The Carlyle Group, bought USIS for $545 million. With 5000 current and former employees of USIS sharing $500 million, the deal made them wealthy with the stroke of a pen. However, upper management within USIS became much wealthier than the rank-and-file. Insiders report that the twelve top managers at USIS became multimillionaires as a result of their cashing in of their Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). Many of these instant millionaires already had a close relationship with The Carlyle Group.
Carlyle had been a shareholder in USIS since 1999 and with the buy-out deal via the Welsh, Carson, Anderson, and Stowe deal, Carlyle became the major shareholder.
USIS continues to have a virtual exclusivity deal to perform background security investigations for OPM. The company bills itself as "one of the largest Intelligence and Security Services companies in North America.”
With the Iraq invasion, USIS obtained lucrative Pentagon private security contracts in Iraq. At a 2004 job fair in Falls Church, Virginia, USIS was advertising for "interrogators" and "protection specialists" for "overseas assignments." While he was in Iraq training Iraqi police and overseeing the USIS contract to train police as part of the Pentagon's Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, Westhusing received an anonymous letter that reported USIS's Private Services Division (PSD) was engaged in fraudulent activities in Iraq, including over-billing the government. In addition, the letter reported that USIS security personnel had murdered innocent Iraqis. After demanding answers from USIS, Westhusing reported the problems up the chain of command. After an "investigation," the Army found no evidence of wrongdoing by USIS.
That decision signed Col. Westhusing's death sentence. USIS and Carlyle have powerful allies in the administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Princeton roommate of Carlyle Chairman Emeritus and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci. Former President George H. W. Bush, former Secretary of State James Baker, and former British Prime Minister John Major are Carlyle international advisers. George W. Bush was formerly employed by a Carlyle subsidiary and the Bin Laden business cartel was a one-time investor in the firm.
Westhusing, who, according to friends and colleagues, showed no signs of depression, left a suicide note the Army concluded was in his handwriting. However, Westhusing's family and friends have thrown cold water on the Army's investigation.
Col. Ted Westhusing: Chalk up another victim of the Bush crime family
WMR can report that based on information obtained from Carlyle insiders, Col. Westhusing's death was not caused by suicide. The fact that Westhusing was investigating one of the most politically and financially powerful firms in the world resulted in higher-ups wanting him out of the way. According to the Los Angeles Times, all of the witnesses who claimed Westhusing shot himself were USIS employees. In addition, a USIS manager interfered with the crime scene, including handling Westhusing's service revolver. The USIS manager was not tested for gunpowder residue on his hands.
Westhusing's investigation threatened to unearth a network of fraudsters looting the US Treasury that included the Bush family and some of their closest financial partners. After Westhusing's murder, USIS management sent a vaguely-worded memo to employees about how to respond to derogatory information in the media or rumors about USIS. Management's attention, described as "psychotic" in nature, was on USIS's upcoming IPO (initial public offering), according to a well-placed source.
USIS also owns Total Information Services of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a commercial personal data mining operation.
According an informed source within The Carlyle Group business consortium, Col. Ted Westhusing, the Army's top military ethicist and professor at West Point, did not commit suicide in a Baghdad trailer in June 2005 as was widely reported in the mainstream media five months later. At the time of his death, Westhusing was investigating contract violations and human rights abuses by US Investigations Services (USIS), formerly a federal agency, the Office of Federal Investigations (OFI), which operated under the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
In 1996, OFI, which conducted background investigations for civil service personnel, was privatized. The 700 government employees of OFI became employee-owners as part of USIS. In January 2003, the New York investment firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson, and Stowe, described by a Carlyle insider as a virtual shadow operation for The Carlyle Group, bought USIS for $545 million. With 5000 current and former employees of USIS sharing $500 million, the deal made them wealthy with the stroke of a pen. However, upper management within USIS became much wealthier than the rank-and-file. Insiders report that the twelve top managers at USIS became multimillionaires as a result of their cashing in of their Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). Many of these instant millionaires already had a close relationship with The Carlyle Group.
Carlyle had been a shareholder in USIS since 1999 and with the buy-out deal via the Welsh, Carson, Anderson, and Stowe deal, Carlyle became the major shareholder.
USIS continues to have a virtual exclusivity deal to perform background security investigations for OPM. The company bills itself as "one of the largest Intelligence and Security Services companies in North America.”
With the Iraq invasion, USIS obtained lucrative Pentagon private security contracts in Iraq. At a 2004 job fair in Falls Church, Virginia, USIS was advertising for "interrogators" and "protection specialists" for "overseas assignments." While he was in Iraq training Iraqi police and overseeing the USIS contract to train police as part of the Pentagon's Civilian Police Assistance Training Team, Westhusing received an anonymous letter that reported USIS's Private Services Division (PSD) was engaged in fraudulent activities in Iraq, including over-billing the government. In addition, the letter reported that USIS security personnel had murdered innocent Iraqis. After demanding answers from USIS, Westhusing reported the problems up the chain of command. After an "investigation," the Army found no evidence of wrongdoing by USIS.
That decision signed Col. Westhusing's death sentence. USIS and Carlyle have powerful allies in the administration, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Princeton roommate of Carlyle Chairman Emeritus and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci. Former President George H. W. Bush, former Secretary of State James Baker, and former British Prime Minister John Major are Carlyle international advisers. George W. Bush was formerly employed by a Carlyle subsidiary and the Bin Laden business cartel was a one-time investor in the firm.
Westhusing, who, according to friends and colleagues, showed no signs of depression, left a suicide note the Army concluded was in his handwriting. However, Westhusing's family and friends have thrown cold water on the Army's investigation.
Col. Ted Westhusing: Chalk up another victim of the Bush crime family
WMR can report that based on information obtained from Carlyle insiders, Col. Westhusing's death was not caused by suicide. The fact that Westhusing was investigating one of the most politically and financially powerful firms in the world resulted in higher-ups wanting him out of the way. According to the Los Angeles Times, all of the witnesses who claimed Westhusing shot himself were USIS employees. In addition, a USIS manager interfered with the crime scene, including handling Westhusing's service revolver. The USIS manager was not tested for gunpowder residue on his hands.
Westhusing's investigation threatened to unearth a network of fraudsters looting the US Treasury that included the Bush family and some of their closest financial partners. After Westhusing's murder, USIS management sent a vaguely-worded memo to employees about how to respond to derogatory information in the media or rumors about USIS. Management's attention, described as "psychotic" in nature, was on USIS's upcoming IPO (initial public offering), according to a well-placed source.
USIS also owns Total Information Services of Tulsa, Oklahoma, a commercial personal data mining operation.
Bush could seize absolute control of U.S. government and achieve the dictatorship he so covets.
Bush could seize absolute control of U.S. government and achieve the dictatorship he so covets.
President George W. Bush has signed executive orders giving him sole authority to impose martial law, suspend habeas corpus and ignore the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits deployment of U.S. troops on American streets. This would give him absolute dictatorial power over the government with no checks and balances.
Bush discussed imposing martial law on American streets in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by activating “national security initiatives” put in place by Ronald Reagan during the 1980s.
These “national security initiatives," hatched in 1982 by controversial Marine Colonel Oliver North, later one of the key players in the Iran-Contra Scandal, charged the Federal Emergency Management Agency with administering executive orders that allowed suspension of the Constitution, implementation of martial law, establishment of internment camps, and the turning the government over to the President.
John Brinkerhoff, deputy director of FEMA, developed the martial law implementation plan, following a template originally developed by former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida to battle a “national uprising of black militants.” Gifuffrida’s implementation of martial law called for jailing at least 21 million African Americans in “relocation camps.” Brinkerhoff later admitted in an interview with the Miami Herald that President Reagan signed off on the initiatives and they remained in place, dormant, until George W. Bush took office.
Brinkerhoff moved on the Anser Institute for Homeland Security and, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, provided the Bush White House and the Pentagon with talking points supporting revised “national security initiatives” that would could allow imposition of martial law and suspension of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1978, the law that is supposed to forbid use of troops for domestic law enforcement.
Brinkerhoff wrote that intentions of Posse Comitatus are “misunderstood and misapplied” and that the U.S. has in times of national emergency the “full and absolute authority” to send troops into American streets to “enforce order and maintain the peace.”
Bush used parts of the plan to send troops into the streets of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. In addition, FEMA hired former special forces personnel from the mercenary firm Blackwater USA to “enforce security.”
Blackwater USA, in its promotional materials, describes itself as “the most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world,” adding that “we have established a global presence and provide training and operational solutions for the 21st century in support of security and peace, and freedom and democracy everywhere.”
Blackwater is also a major U.S. contractor in Iraq and has a contract with the Bush White House to provide additional security work “on an as-needed basis.”
The Department of Homeland Security established the “Northern Command for National Defense,” a wide-ranging program that includes FEMA, the Pentagon, the FBI and the National Security Agency. Executive orders already signed by Bush allow the Northern Command to send troops into American streets, seize control of radio and television stations and networks and impose martial law “in times of national emergency.”
The authority to declare what is or is not a national emergency rests entirely with Bush who does not have to either consult or seek the approval of Congress for permission to assume absolute control over the government of the United States.
The White House press office would neither confirm nor deny existence of Bush’s executive orders or the existence of the Northern Command for National Defense. Neither would the Department of Homeland Security.
But my sources within the White House and DHS tell me the plans are in place, ready for implementation when the command comes from the man who keeps telling the American public that he is a “war time president” who will “do anything in my power” to impose his will on the people of the United States.
And he has made sure that power will be absolute when he chooses to use it.
Friday, January 13, 2006
[narconews] DEA Responds to Narco News Story, Says It Will Investigate Agents in Colombia
January 13, 2006
Please Distribute Widely
Dear Colleague,
The DEA is already feeling the heat from Bill Conroy’s explosive report published in Narco News this week. Conroy received a leaked internal memo written by attorney Thomas M. Kent, an attorney with the U.S. Justice Department. The memo accused Drug Enforcement Administration agents working in Colombia of massive corruption, of cooperating with drug
traffickers, of murdering informants, and of helping that country’s dreaded rightwing paramilitaries to launder drug money.
Read that report here, in The Narco News Bulletin:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue40/article1543.html
Now, just four days later, the DEA is responding to questions from journalists with the following emailed statement, promising a full investigation into these "extremely serious" allegations:
- DEA PRESS STATEMENT
- The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) holds our workforce to the highest ethical standards and regards the ethical performance of duty as our first priority. DEA takes very seriously any allegations of misconduct, abuse of position, or criminal action. The allegations that are reported in the Narco News Bulletin are extremely serious. DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating the allegations that have been made. DEA will continue to ensure the fair and impartial administration of justice and uphold the integrity and reputation of our outstanding workforce.
- Garrison K. Courtney
- DEA Public Affairs
The silence has been broken, and soon the DEA will have to explain why it failed to respond to these allegations for over a year and silenced those agents who did try to denounce the corruption.
But take this announcement with a grain of salt. The same DEA Office of Professional Responsibility that promises to investigate these charges is named in the Kent memo as a leader of the cover-up that stopped them from coming to light long ago.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2006/1/13/124530/189
This story is only going to keep gathering speed, so stay tuned...
From somewhere in a country called América,
Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com
webmaster@narconews.com
Narco News is supported by:
The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 241
Natick, MA 01760
http://www.authenticjournalism.org
Please Distribute Widely
Dear Colleague,
The DEA is already feeling the heat from Bill Conroy’s explosive report published in Narco News this week. Conroy received a leaked internal memo written by attorney Thomas M. Kent, an attorney with the U.S. Justice Department. The memo accused Drug Enforcement Administration agents working in Colombia of massive corruption, of cooperating with drug
traffickers, of murdering informants, and of helping that country’s dreaded rightwing paramilitaries to launder drug money.
Read that report here, in The Narco News Bulletin:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue40/article1543.html
Now, just four days later, the DEA is responding to questions from journalists with the following emailed statement, promising a full investigation into these "extremely serious" allegations:
- DEA PRESS STATEMENT
- The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) holds our workforce to the highest ethical standards and regards the ethical performance of duty as our first priority. DEA takes very seriously any allegations of misconduct, abuse of position, or criminal action. The allegations that are reported in the Narco News Bulletin are extremely serious. DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating the allegations that have been made. DEA will continue to ensure the fair and impartial administration of justice and uphold the integrity and reputation of our outstanding workforce.
- Garrison K. Courtney
- DEA Public Affairs
The silence has been broken, and soon the DEA will have to explain why it failed to respond to these allegations for over a year and silenced those agents who did try to denounce the corruption.
But take this announcement with a grain of salt. The same DEA Office of Professional Responsibility that promises to investigate these charges is named in the Kent memo as a leader of the cover-up that stopped them from coming to light long ago.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2006/1/13/124530/189
This story is only going to keep gathering speed, so stay tuned...
From somewhere in a country called América,
Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com
webmaster@narconews.com
Narco News is supported by:
The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 241
Natick, MA 01760
http://www.authenticjournalism.org
Victim of Pinochet Era Asks Chilean Voters to Make History - Bachelet set to become South America's first elected woman president.
"I am a woman, a socialist, separated and agnostic - all the sins together," said Chilean presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet with a laugh.
Then, asked about her favorite food, she beamed with her trademark smile: "Ahhh! That is my problem, I like everything, seafood, pastas, beans ..."
Whether joking about being a political outsider or being overweight, this 54-year-old mother of three has become the darling of Chilean politics. Her perceived humor and honesty have catapulted her to the top of the ratings and she is a clear favorite to win Sunday's presidential elections.
A poll released yesterday shows Ms. Bachelet with a 53% share of the vote - a five-point lead over her opponent, billionaire businessman Sebastián Piñera.
If elected Ms. Bachelet, a pediatrician who was tortured and lost her father under the Pinochet regime, will become the first woman elected president of a South American nation.
"She is going to take the reins of this country as if it were a big house. She is going to manage us well," said Juan Ángel Gaete, a real estate broker in Santiago who said only a woman was capable of solving Chile's problems. "Look at us men, we do one thing at a time, while the mom is cooking, talking on the phone, feeding the children and listening to the radio!"
For a single mother, with little money and no famous last name, Ms. Bachelet's rise to power has been remarkable. Chilean politics are as traditional as the rest of this conservative Catholic nation. Never before has a woman politician been considered a serious candidate.
At first sight Ms. Bachelet, a fluent English speaker who has both lived and worked in the US, looks like a friendly schoolteacher. She often drives her own car, uses no bodyguards and refuses to attack her political opponents. This non-confrontational style has been criticized as superficial, yet Chileans consistently rank her as the most honest and capable politician in the nation.
This week Segolene Royal, the French socialist politician, flew to Chile to support her campaign. For yesterday's campaign finale Spanish singers including Miguel Bosé were sponsoring a free concert for an estimated 100,000 Bachelet supporters in downtown Santiago.
A sense of spontaneity and distance from traditional politics has provided Ms. Bachelet with an extremely loyal base of supporters.
"I lived the dictatorship and have very bad memories of Pinochet, I am afraid of the rightwing parties," said Ricardo Yanez, 46, a school teacher. "With Bachelet, I share her values."
While leftwing governments across the continent - notably Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and incoming Bolivian President Evo Morales - are questioning the free market model, Ms. Bachelet is expected to maintain Chile's wide open economy.
Ricardo Lagos, the current charismatic leader, has presided over an economic boom that has seen the economy growing at 5% and exports doubling in less than three years. It has made Chile a model of stability in the otherwise tumultuous region.
In addition to the economic success, Mr. Lagos has showcased Chilean leadership, particularly in his refusal to bow to pressure from George Bush to support the war in Iraq.
A member of the socialist party, Ms. Bachelet has focused her campaign promises on pre-school education, the rights of working mothers and enforcing Chile's lax labor laws.
"Everywhere I go, a construction site, the supermarket - it is the same, workers approaching me and asking about their rights! About not being paid overtime or being fired without warning," said Ms. Bachelet in an interview. "In my government, we are going to crack down on these abuses."
The rise of Bachelet comes as former dictator Augusto Pinochet disappears from the political stage. Pinochet, 90, is increasingly seen by Chileans as a criminal and fraud. With numerous arrest orders and tax investigations, he is politically and socially isolated. Ms. Bachelet has refused to answer reporters asking if, as president, she would allow a state funeral for the ailing former dictator.
As a life-long opponent of Pinochet, Bachelet knows first hand the torture techniques practiced by DINA, the military intelligence agency that organized the murder of some 3,000 Chileans during the 1973-1990 military rule.
In January 1975, kidnapped by a squad of soldiers, she was beaten and tortured for weeks. Her mother was locked underground without food or water for five days. The military government suspected that Ms. Bachelet worked as a courier in clandestine communications networks in Santiago, ferrying messages among resistance groups. Her father and boyfriend were both tortured to death.
Mother and daughter were exiled together first to Australia, then East Germany, where Ms. Bachelet received her medical degree and organized international resistance to the Pinochet regime.
Bachelet returned to Chile in the late 1970s and worked in a health clinic, where she specialized in children traumatized by the torture and terror of military rule. When Mr. Lagos took power in 2000 he named Ms. Bachelet as his health minister.
In 2002 Mr. Lagos made Ms. Bachelet minister of defense, the first time in the history of South America that a woman held the post. It was a signal to the conservative Chilean military that the Pinochet era was over.
But her critics say she lacks leadership qualities. "Michelle is a valiant woman, who has had a hard life," said Mr. Piñera during a debate. "She is capable, but to be president you need much more than being a professional or a business leader. You need tenacity and leadership."
Ms. Bachelet brushes such criticism aside. In a recent debate she said: "Together we recovered democracy in Chile. Now I invite you to be part of another historic moment by electing Chile's first woman president. Let's make history."
China and India forge alliance on oil
China and India, the world’s two fastest growing energy consumers, on Thursday set aside long-standing rivalries and agreed to co-operate in securing crude oil resources overseas.
The agreement, aimed at preventing the two nations’ competition for oil assets pushing up prices, symbolises their increasingly assertive role in global energy politics.
In an age of growing energy insecurity “it makes sense for India and China to co-operate [rather] than compete . . . the time of access to easy oil is in the past”, said Jim Steenhagen, managing director at PFC Energy, the US consulting firm.
The agreement came as fears over a serious threat to oil supplies from Iran began to rattle the market yesterday. Prices rose above $65 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as Tehran’s nuclear ambitions threatened instability at the centre of the world’s main oil-producing region.
The Sino-Indian agreement was signed in Beijing by Mani Shankar Aiyar, India’s petroleum minister, and Ma Kai, the head of the National Reform and Development Commission, China’s chief economic planning and energy ministry.
The agreement comes after India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp lost out to Chinese rivals in the race to acquire fields in Angola, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Ecuador.
But a recent joint purchase of a stake in a Syrian oilfield by ONGC and the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp could set a pattern for future deals. Mr Aiyar hailed this as a model.
Oil executives said co-operation between China and India could benefit international energy companies by reducing the ferocity of the bidding.
Under their agreement, Chinese and Indian oil companies will establish a formal procedure to exchange information about a possible bid target, before agreeing to co-operate formally.
Their memorandum of understanding also covers possible co-operation across the energy industry, from exploration to marketing. But India and China’s national oil companies could still compete in third countries.
Sceptics say Chinese companies are unlikely to share their real business plans with Indian rivals, especially as they have mostly been able to outbid them. “Governments like to sign pieces of papChina and India, the world’s two fastest growing energy consumers, on Thursday set aside long-standing rivalries and agreed to co-operate in securing crude oil resources overseas.
The agreement, aimed at preventing the two nations’ competition for oil assets pushing up prices, symbolises their increasingly assertive role in global energy politics.
In an age of growing energy insecurity “it makes sense for India and China to co-operate [rather] than compete . . . the time of access to easy oil is in the past”, said Jim Steenhagen, managing director at PFC Energy, the US consulting firm.
The agreement came as fears over a serious threat to oil supplies from Iran began to rattle the market yesterday. Prices rose above $65 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as Tehran’s nuclear ambitions threatened instability at the centre of the world’s main oil-producing region.
The Sino-Indian agreement was signed in Beijing by Mani Shankar Aiyar, India’s petroleum minister, and Ma Kai, the head of the National Reform and Development Commission, China’s chief economic planning and energy ministry.
The agreement comes after India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp lost out to Chinese rivals in the race to acquire fields in Angola, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Ecuador.
But a recent joint purchase of a stake in a Syrian oilfield by ONGC and the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp could set a pattern for future deals. Mr Aiyar hailed this as a model.
Oil executives said co-operation between China and India could benefit international energy companies by reducing the ferocity of the bidding.
Under their agreement, Chinese and Indian oil companies will establish a formal procedure to exchange information about a possible bid target, before agreeing to co-operate formally.
Their memorandum of understanding also covers possible co-operation across the energy industry, from exploration to marketing. But India and China’s national oil companies could still compete in third countries.
Sceptics say Chinese companies are unlikely to share their real business plans with Indian rivals, especially as they have mostly been able to outbid them. “Governments like to sign pieces of paper, but it often doesn’t amount to much,” one analyst said.
India is more dependent on oil imports than China. Mr Aiyar believes India’s import dependency will increase from 70 per cent of consumption this year to about 85 per cent in 15 years. China imports about half its oil.
Li Zhaoxing, China’s foreign minister, this week started a trip to Africa that will underpin Beijing’s search for energy security.
The agreement, aimed at preventing the two nations’ competition for oil assets pushing up prices, symbolises their increasingly assertive role in global energy politics.
In an age of growing energy insecurity “it makes sense for India and China to co-operate [rather] than compete . . . the time of access to easy oil is in the past”, said Jim Steenhagen, managing director at PFC Energy, the US consulting firm.
The agreement came as fears over a serious threat to oil supplies from Iran began to rattle the market yesterday. Prices rose above $65 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as Tehran’s nuclear ambitions threatened instability at the centre of the world’s main oil-producing region.
The Sino-Indian agreement was signed in Beijing by Mani Shankar Aiyar, India’s petroleum minister, and Ma Kai, the head of the National Reform and Development Commission, China’s chief economic planning and energy ministry.
The agreement comes after India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp lost out to Chinese rivals in the race to acquire fields in Angola, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Ecuador.
But a recent joint purchase of a stake in a Syrian oilfield by ONGC and the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp could set a pattern for future deals. Mr Aiyar hailed this as a model.
Oil executives said co-operation between China and India could benefit international energy companies by reducing the ferocity of the bidding.
Under their agreement, Chinese and Indian oil companies will establish a formal procedure to exchange information about a possible bid target, before agreeing to co-operate formally.
Their memorandum of understanding also covers possible co-operation across the energy industry, from exploration to marketing. But India and China’s national oil companies could still compete in third countries.
Sceptics say Chinese companies are unlikely to share their real business plans with Indian rivals, especially as they have mostly been able to outbid them. “Governments like to sign pieces of papChina and India, the world’s two fastest growing energy consumers, on Thursday set aside long-standing rivalries and agreed to co-operate in securing crude oil resources overseas.
The agreement, aimed at preventing the two nations’ competition for oil assets pushing up prices, symbolises their increasingly assertive role in global energy politics.
In an age of growing energy insecurity “it makes sense for India and China to co-operate [rather] than compete . . . the time of access to easy oil is in the past”, said Jim Steenhagen, managing director at PFC Energy, the US consulting firm.
The agreement came as fears over a serious threat to oil supplies from Iran began to rattle the market yesterday. Prices rose above $65 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange as Tehran’s nuclear ambitions threatened instability at the centre of the world’s main oil-producing region.
The Sino-Indian agreement was signed in Beijing by Mani Shankar Aiyar, India’s petroleum minister, and Ma Kai, the head of the National Reform and Development Commission, China’s chief economic planning and energy ministry.
The agreement comes after India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp lost out to Chinese rivals in the race to acquire fields in Angola, Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Ecuador.
But a recent joint purchase of a stake in a Syrian oilfield by ONGC and the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp could set a pattern for future deals. Mr Aiyar hailed this as a model.
Oil executives said co-operation between China and India could benefit international energy companies by reducing the ferocity of the bidding.
Under their agreement, Chinese and Indian oil companies will establish a formal procedure to exchange information about a possible bid target, before agreeing to co-operate formally.
Their memorandum of understanding also covers possible co-operation across the energy industry, from exploration to marketing. But India and China’s national oil companies could still compete in third countries.
Sceptics say Chinese companies are unlikely to share their real business plans with Indian rivals, especially as they have mostly been able to outbid them. “Governments like to sign pieces of paper, but it often doesn’t amount to much,” one analyst said.
India is more dependent on oil imports than China. Mr Aiyar believes India’s import dependency will increase from 70 per cent of consumption this year to about 85 per cent in 15 years. China imports about half its oil.
Li Zhaoxing, China’s foreign minister, this week started a trip to Africa that will underpin Beijing’s search for energy security.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Venezuela's CITGO, Maine Gov. and Tribes Sign Low-Cost Heating Oil Deal
CITGO is the only oil corporation answering the call made by U.S. senators to use part of their record profits to help U.S. lower classes.
Jan 12, 2006.- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez´s promise to provide relief for low income U.S. residents by delivering cheaper oil products, continues to be fulfilled.
Today, Maine State Governor John Baldacci, along with representatives from the state’s heating oil assistance program, signed an agreement with CITGO Petroleum Corporation, the century-old U.S. refining and retailing arm of Venezuela´s state oil company Petróleos de Venezuela - PDVSA, to provide 8 million gallons of heating oil at a 40% discount to low-income residents in the state of Maine.
This humanitarian aid will also reach four Native American tribes and homeless shelters in the state of Maine.
Maine Gov. John Baldacci signed the agreement with CITGO at the home of the Lyons, a retired couple who have raised five children of their own and has eight foster children.
“It is imperative we act to ensure our citizens are safe and warm this winter. The cost of heating oil has risen dramatically and the federal government has failed to provide the resources needed to help Maine citizens. We are grateful to CITGO and the Venezuelan government for their generosity,” Governor Baldacci said.
Under the terms of the agreement, recipients of the U.S. Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) will receive an additional $100 in LIHEAP benefits. These additional funds have been donated by Venezuela for distribution through LIHEAP. The amount of the donation will be equal to a 40% discount on the spot market price of 8 million gallons of heating oil.
Maine estimates that CITGO’s donation will be approximately 5.5 million dollars.
In addition, the government of Venezuela has agreed to provide 120,000 gallons of heating oil to homeless shelter in Maine. This oil will be delivered to more than 40 homeless shelters by their heating oil suppliers. Moreover, 900,000 gallons of heating oil at a 40% discount to four Native American tribes.
Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez denied that politics is behind the decision to make the donation. “Some have tried to read politics into these outreach programs”, he said. However, critics of the Venezuelan government argue that this gesture is aimed at embarrassing the U.S. government, which has ideological differences with the left-wing policies of Venezuelan President Chavez.
“This program has a human face. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made a promise in New York City following hurricanes Katrina and Rita and this Maine heating oil program represents the goodwill between the people of Venezuela and the United States. Help for those who need it most is a cornerstone of the new Venezuelan economy under President Chavez, and this program, following similar ones in Massachusetts and the Bronx, is part of a new effort to increase regional integration.”
"This is about life"
“CITGO is pleased to be part of another assistance program for those in need,” said CITGO’s CEO Felix Rodriguez.
“CITGO has over 160 gas stations in Maine, and we are proud to be responsible corporate citizens in the communities in which we operate, especially when the need is great. This is not about politics, this is not about oil. This is about life, about improving the lives of poor people. This is about people helping people.”
“Thanks to Venezuela for making this help available to us,” said Maine Resident Mary Lyons.
The Government of Venezuela announced a statewide heating oil assistance program in Massachusetts on Nov. 22, and a similar program in The Bronx borough of New York on Dec. 6, 2005. Discussions for further expansion of the program are underway in several other states, including Delaware, Vermont, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
Last week, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the entity in charge of the city of Chicago´s public transportation, rejected an offer from CITGO to provide discounted diesel for its fleet of public buses. However, faced with a 17 million budget deficit, and under pressure from local and Illinois state politicians and community leaders, the CTA agreed to sit down with CITGO to find ways to accept the fuel. To cover for the deficit, the CTA had authorized an increase in cash bus fares, which went into effect in recent weeks.
“If other major cities are working with CITGO to reduce the strain of skyrocketing energy prices this winter, why is the CTA leaving Chicago out in the cold?” U.S. Congressman Luis Gutierrez asked at a press conference.
CITGO and Chicago officials will meet again before the end of January.
Given the record profits made by oil companies, last year, a group of U.S. senators urged 10 major oil companies to donate a portion of their profits to help the poor. So far, only CITGO has responded.
According to an article by USA Today, U.S. President George Bush praised CITGO´s aid efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "The good works of CITGO demonstrate the character and great strength of our nation," Bush wrote CITGO Sept. 27.
Both the U.S. State Department and the Energy Department have provided tacit support for CITGO´s efforts. State Department spokesperson Adam Ereli provided no objections to the CITGO's offers at a Dec 8 briefing.
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said that the U.S. government has no problems with Venezuela's offer. "We view it, as corporate philanthropy. We're all for that. Nobody in the Energy Department, or in the government for that matter, is going oppose that. If that's what Mr. Chavez and his colleagues who own CITGO choose to do, I'm certainly not going to criticize," Bodman told CNN Dec 9.
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