On Jul 21, the present writer offered the evaluation that an attack on Iran by the US and Israel was now emphatically back on the agenda after a two-year hiatus.1 More than two weeks after issuing that warning, it is possible to offer a second installment of evidence to buttress the original finding. The author considers that this evidence is now sufficient to confirm the Jul 21 analysis. The contours of the coming conflagration are becoming somewhat more distinct, and give us reason to fear not just a Middle East regional war, but possibly even a world war, with increasing danger that nuclear weapons will come into play. The most dramatic and outspoken confirmation of the views expressed here on Jul 21 comes from Fidel Castro. During the spring and summer of 2010, Castro referred several times to the growing war danger among the US, Israel, and Iran. On Aug 8, Castro took the unusual step of convening a special session of the Cuban parliament to discuss the nuclear war danger threatening the peace of the world. Essentially, Castro called for the worldwide mobilization of peace-loving forces to avoid the worst, and included a special personal appeal to Obama. According to the Cuban News Agency, this war avoidance agenda ‘was the purpose of the Cuban Revolution leader’s address to the Cuban parliament summoned for an extraordinary session in Havana, due to the urgency of mobilizing the world, faced with the danger of a nuclear war that would be triggered by a US-Israeli led aggression on Iran.’ Castro said:

Obama, in the instant he gives the order which only he could give, due to the power, speed and countless number of missiles accumulated in an absurd competition between powers, he would be ordering the instant death not only of hundreds of millions of people, including an immeasurable number of inhabitants of his own country, but also the crews of all US ships in the seas near Iran. Simultaneously, the war would break out in the Near and Far East and across Eurasia. If the war breaks out, the current social order will abruptly vanish and prices will be much higher.

Whatever one may think of Castro personally and politically, he is unquestionably one of the longest-serving national leaders in today’s world, and brings to the table his experience during the Cuban missile crisis of Oct 1962. In short, Castro knows what a nuclear confrontation looks like from the inside. The US public would do well to put aside the arrogance and impudence of the US mass media and pay attention to why this sick old man is putting so much of his flagging energy into an attempt to alert the world to a danger which is being widely ignored. Not surprisingly, the controlled Wall Street news media in the US did everything possible to trivialize, denigrate and ridicule this dramatic warning. Frivolity and inanity rule US news coverage this summer. The National Socialists had a word for this: Nachrichtensperre, the embargo of real news. To the extent they noticed Castro at all, the US networks focused on the state of Castro’s health, and on the soap opera rivalry between Fidel and his brother Raul, who had replaced him in the presidency several years ago. The account posted on CNN, in particular, avoided any direct reference to the questionable looming nuclear war until an oblique allusion in the final paragraph. The Time magazine article gave the war issue half a sentence, with no elaboration and no explanation. Many newspapers relied on the AP wire account, which did everything possible to downplay the urgency of Castro’s theme. This policy was typical of the attitude assumed by the US media starting several months earlier, which was to assiduously avoid the troubling hard news being generated in the Middle East in favor of an exclusive focus on domestic social wedge issues, including the New York City mosque, gay marriage, and the Arizona immigration law. The result is that the US people, somewhat like many Europeans of Aug 1914, are essentially living in a dream-world, even as the momentum for global tragedy builds up in many corners of the globe. When the shooting started in Aug 1914, many in Europe were surprised, having thought that the Sarajevo incident of several weeks earlier was no longer a current concern. For those Europeans, the shock of reality came in the form of declarations of war and mobilization decrees. For today’s world, the shock may be even more abrupt.

The clash which is materializing pits a group of countries, including most probably the US, Israel, the UK, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and perhaps some others against a rival coalition including the government of Lebanon, Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria, joined by guerrilla forces in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere. During the past two to three weeks, unusual military incidents have occurred at the main flash-points where these rival coalitions are likely to collide. The tense border between Israel and Lebanon is clearly one of these flashpoints. Here the Israeli forces confront a combination of the Lebanese national army along with independent units of heavily armed Hezbollah fighters. On Aug 3, this border was the scene of the most serious shooting incident since the Israel-Lebanon war of four years ago. A firefight started after the Israeli army began pruning a tree along the border. An Israeli lieutenant colonel was killed, an Israeli major severely wounded, and several Lebanese soldiers and a journalist killed. The casualties among Israeli officers suggest that this incident was a warning delivered by Hezbollah against the Israelis in the general context of rising tension. According to the Chinese news agency:

Israeli Defense Minister Barak on Wednesday said the “unplanned” border clash on Tuesday between Lebanese Army Forces and Israel Defense Forces soldiers would not widen into a real crisis. An Israel Defense Forces officer and four Lebanese were killed on Tuesday during a border clash, the fiercest one since the fighting between Israel and the Lebanon-based Shiite group Hezbollah four years ago.

According to press accounts, the US quickly intervened to prevent the Israelis from making this clash the detonator for military operations against Lebanon and possibly Syria on a larger scale:

The US voiced “greatest concern” over the deadly military clashes along the Israel-Lebanon border, urging both the Israeli and Lebanese sides to exercise “maximum restraint.” “We deeply regret the loss of life; we urge both sides to exercise maximum restraint to avoid an escalation and maintain the cease-fire that is now in place,” State Dept spokesman Crowley told reporters at the daily press briefing.

The shooting may have been connected to the imminent delivery of a UN report on the assassination of former Lebanese PM Hariri, which is expected to accuse Hezbollah. In a sign of continuing tension, Israel on Aug 8 fired warning shots at a Lebanese fishing boat in the eastern Mediterranean. A second front in the looming war is of course the Persian/Arabian Gulf and especially the critical choke-point of the straits of Hormuz, where Iran, if attacked, can be expected to retaliate against oil tanker traffic. The Straits of Hormuz also lend themselves to the creation of a war provocation by the US-led side, quite possibly in the form of a new Gulf of Tonkin incident. Political observers were therefore alarmed on Jul 28 when an explosion damaged the hull of a Japanese supertanker transiting Hormuz. According to a wire dispatch:

A damaged Japanese oil tanker headed back to the UAE, where officials hope to determine what caused an onboard explosion. Japan’s transport ministry said the M Star was passing through the Strait of Hormuz with about two million barrels of crude oil when the crew reported a blast. Japan’s Mitsui said that despite the explosion, the ship’s tanks did not rupture and that no oil is leaking.

Within a few days, UAE authorities were claiming that this was indeed a suicide attack by al Qaeda-liked terrorists using a small boat loaded with homemade explosive:

The UAE said Friday that a Japanese oil tanker was hit by an explosives-laden dinghy in the Persian Gulf in what would be the first attack in the strategic waterway where millions of barrels of oil are transported each day. The report, which came days after an al-Qaida-linked group claimed responsibility for attacking the vessel, raised fears about the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for many petroleum exporting countries. If the UAE report is confirmed, the Jul 28 incident would be the first militant attack in the strait, a narrow chokepoint between Oman and Iran. A group known as the Abdullah Azzam Brigades said it had carried out a suicide attack against the tanker to avenge the plunder of Muslim wealth and to destabilize international markets. The statement was issued by al-Qaida’s communications wing, the al-Fajr Media Center and posted on militant websites.

A collateral effect of the damage to the tanker was to begin pushing the world price of oil up above $80 per barrel, anticipating on a small scale the massive price increase which the Wall Street financial interests would like to occur as part of their desperate strategy to save the US dollar in extremis. Another front where Israeli forces are facing a pro-Iranian guerrilla movement is the Gaza Strip. An incident on Aug 2, the day before the shooting started on the Israel-Lebanon border, suggested that Hamas had acquired the ability to operate not just out of Gaza, but also in other parts of the Egyptian territory of the Sinai Peninsula. It was in Aug 2 that four or five Grad rockets were apparently fired from Egyptian territory against the Israeli city of Eilat and the Jordanian port of Aqaba. It should be recalled that the scene of the shooting is one of the most sensitive points in the entire Middle East, where Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia come together at the Gulf of Aqaba, the northeastern end of the Red Sea. One Jordanian was killed, and damage was otherwise slight, but Israel was alarmed enough to send the head of the Shin Bet to meet with his Egyptian counterpart. Within a few days, Egypt confirmed that Palestinians from Gaza, quite possibly Hamas, had launched the rockets:

Egypt, contradicting its initial denials, has acknowledged that Gaza militants operating in the country’s Sinai Peninsula launched the deadly rocket attacks on Israel and Jordan earlier this week. At least five rockets hit the Red Sea border area Monday, killing one Jordanian and wounding at least three others. Egypt’s state news agency blamed Palestinian factions from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, operating in the neighboring Sinai Peninsula, for the rocket volley. This is the second attack believed to originate from the Sinai in four months, highlighting Egypt’s ongoing internal security problems in the largely lawless, desert frontier.

Any increase in the military potential of Hamas is a very ominous sign for the Israelis. On Aug 1, US Joint Chiefs chair Adm Mullen shifted decidedly away from his personal brand of conciliatory rhetoric and towards the language of naked threats against Iran. Mullen stressed that the US does indeed possess a war plan against Iran. According to one summary:

Obama’s main military adviser said today the US does have a plan to attack Iran should it become needed as a means of stopping the Tehran regime from acquiring nuclear weapons. Mullen was asked by Meet the Press on NBC whether the military had a plan to attack Iran. “We do,” he replied. He said it was unacceptable for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, but he said that equally he would be “extremely concerned” about the prospect of a military engagement. Striking Iran could have “unintended consequences that are difficult to predict in what is an incredibly unstable part of the world.” As Mullen put it: “I hope we don’t get to that, but it’s an important option and it’s one that’s well understood.”

The war plan in question would have been drawn up by CENTCOM, mainly during the time that it was run by Gen Petraeus, the neocon leader who has now emerged as the virtual military czar of the hapless Obama regime. If war comes, Petraeus will gain immeasurably in power, with the obvious temptation to decree martial law. Mullen’s threats were quickly answered by a chorus of bellicose replies from the Iranian side:

The official Iranian news agency IRNA quoted Revolutionary Guard deputy chief Yadollah Javani as saying that security in the Persian Gulf would be jeopardized “if US commit the slightest mistake.”

Speaking from Moscow, Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki also rejected Mullen’s threats in vehement terms, hoping that better sense would prevail in Washington:

In case of an attack against Iran, their destiny will be worse than their pitiable destiny in Iraq and Afghanistan. They said they would go to some places and they went, but we have seen what happened to them. We think there are still rational people in the US who will not put US dignity on sale.

Foreign ministry spokesman Mehmanparast also dismissed Mullen’s remarks, telling reporters at his weekly news conference in Tehran:

We witness such inappropriate remarks by these US military officials. We think the reason behind it stems from the consecutive defeats in the region and its military adventurism which has resulted in deaths of innocent citizens and of their own forces.

Defence Minister Vahidi described Mullen’s comments as fascistic, quoted by state news agency IRNA as saying:

Such remarks are in contradiction to their claims of change that they are after dialogue and peace. They show that they are unable to stand against the will of Iran. Having plans to attack an independent nation in the third millennium is a clear violation of the UN charter.

These were eminently newsworthy exchanges, but so far as is known none of the Iranian replies made it onto the Wall Street-controlled US television evening news. In the meantime, Obama is revealing himself more and more as the most extreme warmonger among major US politicians, a niche which he seized in 2007 during the presidential campaign, although many pathetic left-liberals still cannot grasp the aggressive designs of which Obama is the bearer. Back during the regime of Bush 43, the standard White House jargon for issuing a threat against Iran was the mantra that “all options are on the table.” Over the past two years, Obama has been increasingly speaking this language more and more. Obama told Newsweek on May 17 2009, in advance of a visit by Netanyahu:

I’ve been very clear that I don’t take any options off the table with respect to Iran. I don’t take options off the table when it comes to US security, period.

About a year later, on May 4 2010, in the wake of reports that Iran and Syria were furnishing Hezbollah with new and more effective ballistic missiles, an antiwar blogger noted:

“The continued presence of all options on the table,” this is the disappointing message which a Nobel Peace Prize laureate dispatches internationally, in his latest interview with CBS news.

Most recently, Obama told Israeli television on Jul 7:

We are going to continue to keep the door open for a diplomatic resolution of this challenge. But I assure you that I have not taken options off the table.

In response to this, Netanyahu expressed cautious optimism that he had the current tenant of the White House in his pocket in the same way that he was able to dominate Bush:

But I am saying that the president’s position that all options are on the table might actually have the only real effect on Iran, if they think it’s true.

Even before the volley of threats from Mullen, Ahmadinejad had issued his forecast of a US attack, probably involving his country, criticizing the US-led drive for global sanctions to pressure Tehran over the nuclear issue. Ahmadinejad said:

The US and Israel have decided to attack at least two countries in the region in the next three months. Iran has very precise information that the US has hatched a plot according to which they are to wage a psychological war against Iran. The logic that they can persuade us to negotiate through sanctions is just a failure.

One day earlier, Iranian Defense Minister Vahidi had issued a separate warning of his own addressed to Israel. Vahidi stated:

Any injudicious action of Israel will trigger the countdown of its destruction. Israel is facing many setbacks in resolving its domestic, regional and international problems. Therefore, it is trying to get rid of this heavy burden through putting the blame on others.

The Iranian defense minister reiterated that public pressure on Israeli officials has prompted them to have some “false illusions” in their minds,’ a Syrian news service reported. The current deployment of US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq may well represent a grave weakness in the US military position in the region, since these fragmented forces are liable to be cut off and encircled by regular Iranian and pro-Iranian forces in case of general war. An awareness of this threat in US ruling circles is giving rise to more frequent calls to ratchet the Afghanistan adventure down to a more manageable level, so as not to give the Iranians such an opportunity. One of the clearest calls of this type has come from Jack Devine, the former deputy director of the CIA and head of the clandestine service. In a WSJ op-ed, Devine advocated getting US Army and Marine land forces largely out of Afghanistan, while perpetuating chaos there through a policy of predator drones for assassinations combined with special forces in small numbers and especially CIA negotiations with the principal warlords and druglords. This kind of the strategy has worked before, and it would work again, Devine argued:

In the ’80s we essentially ended the Cold War with a well-funded and broadly supported covert action program. In 2001, under similar political circumstances, a small band of CIA operators restored old ties to Afghan tribal leaders, teamed up with US Special Forces and, backed with US air power, toppled the Taliban in a matter of weeks. A smart covert action program should rest on worst-case scenarios. Afghanistan will likely enter a period of heightened instability leading up to and following our planned 2012 departure, so we should figure out now which tribal leaders, and, under specially negotiated arrangements, which Taliban factions, we could establish productive relationships with. We must also consider the possibility that our departure could precipitate the eventual collapse of the Karzai government. Thus we should cultivate relationships with leaders inside and outside the current regime who are most likely to fill the power vacuum.

Not mentioned was the tremendous advantage that would accrue to the CIA by controlling the totality of the Afghanistan opium, heroin, and morphine production, which would put the agency in a position to vastly increase its influence over US government and society for decades to come. Against the backdrop of these confused alarms of war, a group of intelligence community provocateurs calling themselves Wikileaks saw fit to publish a document dump of more than 90,000 low level specimens of US cable traffic from Afghanistan, primarily of the secret and sub-secret classifications. No scandals against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Obama, Biden, Gates, or any other top officials were contained among these dispatches. Instead, the documents tend to support the CIA’s thesis that ‘Osama bin Laden’ is an actual living person and a powerful enemy of the US, a manifest absurdity. Assange is also on record as saying that he finds challenges to the official US 9/11 story an annoyance. A separate essay on this important theme will be forthcoming shortly. For the moment it is enough to note that the mental strategic map which emerges from the Wikileaks document dump faithfully mirrors the intentions of some of the most dangerous factions in the US intelligence community. The interpretations of the document dump which were conveniently trumpeted by such ruling class news organs as the NYT, the London Guardian, and Der Spiegel of Germany conveniently stress that the Afghanistan war is futile, while the real enemies of the US and the Western world in general are the treacherous backstabbers of Pakistan who support the Taliban and kill US soldiers, and of course the Iranians, who do everything possible to defeat the US presence in the areas of western Afghanistan closest to their borders. In short, anyone creating an imperialist policy on the basis of the lessons of the Wikileaks document dump would tend to converge on something like the Devine plan, along with vigorous measures against both Pakistan and Iran. The much-touted document dump, which has been abundantly publicized by the controlled media of the world, is thus revealed as a CIA mind control operation in the tradition of Daniel Ellsberg and the 1971 Pentagon papers, which was a similar limited hang-out of self-serving disinformation by the spook community, designed to manipulate public opinion.

British PM Cameron appears to have a mind like a rag bag: lacking in mental discipline and astuteness, he appears to blurt out either total nonsense or fragments of the secret briefings he has been given. This means that important state secrets can sometimes be gleaned from what otherwise seemed to be his idiotic malapropisms. An example is Cameron’s early August charge that Iran already possesses nuclear weapons. Had Cameron’s Downing Street handlers jumped the gun, prepping him in advance for the war speech he might have to give a few weeks down the line? The BBC commented:

Labour has accused David Cameron of committing a gaffe by mistakenly claiming Iran has a nuclear weapon. Asked why he was backing Turkey to join the EU, he said it could help solve the world’s problems, “like the Middle East peace process, like the fact that Iran has got a nuclear weapon.” A No 10 source said the PM “misspoke,” later adding he had been talking about Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. But Labour said he was becoming a “foreign policy klutz.”

In reality, Cameron had tipped his hand too much. There is every indication that the UN commission investigating the Feb 2005 murder of former Lebanese PM Hariri will attempt to frame Hezbollah for this crime, while ignoring strong circumstantial evidence implicating the US, the UK and Israel, to name just a few. Hezbollah leaders have gotten out in front of the commission’s findings with a preventive condemnation of the likely fixed verdict. Press TV reports:

Lebanon’s Hezbollah Resistance Movement warns against falsely accusing its members of involvement in the assassination of Lebanon’s former premier Rafik Hariri. A top Hezbollah official, Sheikh Nabil Qaouq, warned about the dire consequences of trying to link the resistance movement to the assassination and called such accusations “dangerous.” Qaouq said the indictment of Hezbollah members was part of a US and Israeli conspiracy and called for the trial of the individuals, who testified in the case of Hariri’s assassination and whom Hezbollah regards as false witnesses, a Press TV correspondent reported. “We will continue confronting this conspiracy, and we will consider any indictment against the resistance an Israeli-US fabrication executed through local or international means,” he added.

Part of the US-led strategy appears to be the attempt to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran over these Lebanese events. Whether this crude stratagem can succeed or not is uncertain. A blunt and cynical appraisal of the crisis of the Obama regime and of Obama’s need for a wag the dog crisis to shore up his cratering poll numbers comes from Rob Shapiro, co-founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank close to the right wing Democrats of the Democratic Leadership Council. A Bilderberger activist, Shapiro served as a top official during the Clinton administration. An article in the London Financial Times about Obama’s alarming weakness contains this revealing assessment by Shapiro of how Obama might restore his authority:

The bottom line here is that USAians don’t believe in Obama’s leadership. He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.

The last week in July saw the Washington visit of Israeli Defense Minister Barak, who came close on the heels of Netanyahu. He told the WaPo in an interview:

It’s still time for sanctions, but probably, at a certain point, we should realize that sanctions cannot work.

According to Time magazine, Barak’s party line was that the economic sanctions imposed on Iran by the UNSC in early June are only a temporary expedient, and must be quickly followed by war. As the magazine reported, Barak arrived in Washington this week with the message that not even the far-reaching sanctions adopted by the US and its allies against Iran are likely to change Iran’s behavior:

It’s still time for sanctions, but probably, at a certain point, we should realize that sanctions cannot work.

Barak stressed joint US-Israeli efforts in the area of anti-ballistic missile defense, noting:

Israel is now developing, together with the US, the Super Arrow, a kind of a space-age kind of interceptor that protects us against incoming missiles from places like deep into Syria or from Iran.

Time identified Obama advisor Dennis Ross as a leading member of the US war party, suggesting that Ross is one of the handlers feeding Obama his belligerent “options” rhetoric and keeping the war option on the front burner. The magazine wrote:

Obama has insisted that a military option remains “on the table.” That insistence could be consistent with the perspective of his key adviser on Iran, Dennis Ross, who wrote two years ago, “When we say we are not taking force off the table, that must be more than a slogan. It is essential that the Iranians continue to believe that they may well be playing with fire if they persist in their pursuit of nuclear weapons.” Regardless of whether force is ever used, Ross was arguing, the only way Tehran will back down is if it’s convinced it will face US military action if it doesn’t.

The reactionary Republicans of the US House of Representatives claimed their part of the looming tragedy with a jingoistic draft resolution of genocidal intent, directed against Iran. As one commentator noted:

Republicans in the House or Representatives have unveiled H.R. 1553, a resolution providing explicit support for an Israeli bombing campaign against Iran. The measure, introduced by Texas Republican Louie Gohmert and forty-six of his colleagues, endorses Israel’s use of “all means necessary” against Iran “including the use of military force.” “We have got to act,” Gohmert has said in regard to the measure. “We’ve got to get this done. We need to show our support for Israel. We need to quit playing games with this critical ally in such a difficult area.” Gohmert’s resolution may be an unprecedented development. Congress has never endorsed pre-emptive military strikes by a foreign country. In fact, this measure is no small part of a neoconservative agenda to go to war with Iran. The green light resolution is precisely what John Bolton called for two weeks ago in a WSJ piece that reads as a playbook for dragging the US into military conflict with Iran.

Such statements violate the NPT, since they represent direct military threats by a nuclear state against Iran, a non-nuclear state under that treaty. The notion that coming hostilities involving Iran could also be extended to the Latin American continent is plausibly argued by Russian analyst Nil Nikandrov of the Moscow Strategic Culture Foundation, the think tank associated with Gen Leonid Ivashov. Nikandrov points to the increasingly close relations between Iran and Venezuela to suggest that the conflagration may well be extended to this latter country as well. Here a likely scenario involves the US playing off Columbia against Venezuela in a classic exercise of the imperialist buck-passing favored by the Brzezinski faction. As Nikandrov argues:

Under Obama, the US started to actively reinforce the existing and set up new military bases along the borders of Venezuela. The US maintains 10 military bases in Columbia alone, though on top of that the Pentagon enjoys unrestricted access to the de facto occupied country’s own military infrastructures. US army and navy bases have also been promptly built in Costa Rica and Panama. Experts believe the list of potential targets of the forces deployed at the bases includes both Venezuela and its regional allies Cuba, Nicaragua, and Ecuador. US military advisers are dispatched in increasing numbers to Guatemala, Honduras, and Salvador. Chavez speaks frequently about the threat posed by the US. This July, he mentioned several times the warnings about the higher than ever threat of the US aggression he received from a well-informed “secret friend” in Washington. Washington is waging a permanent smear campaign against Venezuela. Reports are circulated that Chavez hosts ETA terrorists or guerrillas from Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon and helps them to penetrate the US. The disinformation, easily disproved by Venezuela, will certainly reemerge when the US and Israeli forces hit Iran’s “nuclear infrastructures”, airports, and army bases. Ignoring Washington’s ire, Chavez openly sides with Iran. He visited Tehran on a number of occasions and keeps inviting the Iranian leaders to Caracas. Chavez pledges not to abandon Iran in trouble. The US is keenly aware what the signals sent by Chavez mean: against the backdrop of the war in Afghanistan and the coming war in Iran, Venezuela’s taking its barrels offline would send the oil prices skyrocketing up to $200 per barrel and thus reanimate the global economic crisis.

Unfortunately, increasing the price of oil is currently an enticement, rather than a deterrent, to the UK-US financiers. If things actually play out in this way, the resulting conflict, stretching from the Middle East to Latin America would indeed qualify as a new world war. One of the few bright spots in the present world intelligence picture is represented by the peace overtures to Chavez launched by new Colombian Pres Santos in his inaugural address on Aug 6. Santos signaled a possible break with the reckless policies of his predecessor Uribe, who had acted as a provocateur under the direction of the US. As VoA was forced to concede:

The presidents of Colombia and Venezuela are set to meet in an effort to repair a diplomatic break due to Venezuela’s alleged support of leftist rebels in Colombia. The security and trade partnership between the two countries has suffered during the past two years. The meeting in Santa Marta, Colombia, comes only three days after Santos took the oath of office as Colombia’s president. The former defense minister used his inauguration speech on Saturday to try to set a new tone with Venezuela. He said that as president, he will seek peace with Colombia’s neighbors. He offered a frank and direct dialogue with Chavez as soon as possible. In Caracas, Chavez welcomed the offer and said he would go to the meeting with an open heart and an extended hand.

At the same time that the exhausted and overstretched US military is preparing actions across a fast arc of countries stretching from Lebanon and Syria in the west to Pakistan in the east, the Obama regime is also assuming a decidedly bellicose demeanor in regard to China. Obama and company are evidently encouraged by their success in browbeating and blackmailing China into giving at least verbal assent to the latest round of UNSC economic sanctions against Iran. They are intent on creating diversions on the Chinese flanks to keep the Middle Kingdom tied down as much as possible in the moment that war might break out in the Middle East. Needless to say, this approach only underlines the inherent adventurism of the line currently dominant in Washington. On the one hand, Sec State Clinton has announced her intention to begin meddling on a grand scale in the already difficult disputes about islands and oil in the South China Sea, parts of which are claimed by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and so forth. As the NYT sums up Clinton’s demarche:

Opening a new source of potential friction with China, the Obama administration is stepping into a tangled dispute between China and its smaller Asian neighbors over a string of strategically significant islands in the South China Sea. Sec State Clinton, speaking at an Asian regional security meeting in Vietnam, stressed that the US remained neutral on which regional countries had stronger territorial claims to the islands. But she said that the US had an interest in preserving free shipping in the area and that it would be willing to facilitate multilateral talks on the issue. Though presented as an offer to help ease tensions, the stance amounts to a sharp rebuke to China. Beijing has insisted for years that all the islands belong to China and that any disputes should be resolved by China. In March, senior Chinese officials pointedly warned their US counterparts that they would brook no interference in the South China Sea, which they called part of the “core interest” of sovereignty.

Another prong of this attempt to keep the Chinese tied down in conflicts with hostile neighbors close to home is represented by the fast-moving negotiations between Washington and Hanoi for a nuclear technology sharing deal. This ploy obviously intends to scare the Chinese with the prospect of a nuclear-armed Vietnam, acting as a cat’s paw for the US in the same way that the US is trying to use India. As the WSJ reported:

The Obama administration is in advanced negotiations to share nuclear fuel and technology with Vietnam in a deal that would allow Hanoi to enrich its own uranium, terms that critics on Capitol Hill say would undercut the more stringent demands the US has been making of its partners in the Middle East. The State Dept-led negotiations could unsettle China, which shares hundreds of miles of border with Vietnam. It is the latest example of the US’s renewed assertiveness in South and Southeast Asia, as Washington strengthens ties with nations that have grown increasingly wary of Beijing’s growing regional might. US officials familiar with the matter say negotiators have given a full nuclear-cooperation proposal to the communist country and former Cold War foe, and have started briefing House and Senate foreign-relations committees. A top US official briefed on the negotiation said China hadn’t been consulted on the talks. “It doesn’t involve China,” the official said.

In the first three months of this year, we experienced a phase of growing US-Chinese hostility centering on the refusal of Google to obey relevant Chinese law regarding the Internet. After that, we had a short interval of relative calm, with the Chinese allowing their renminbi currency to float upwards to a limited and symbolic extent, and also voting for the UN sanctions against Iran demanded by the US. Now, tensions have abruptly begun to rise rapidly again in the Far East. But the Chinese are growing tired of being threatened and bullied by the US. One part of their response is the development of a new and powerful anti-ship missile, explicitly designed to sink US attack carriers. As AP reported:

US naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China: an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500km.

The last US aircraft carrier to be sunk by enemy action was the USS Princeton, which was lost to Japanese attacks during the Battle of Leyte Gulf off the Philippines in 1944. On Aug 3, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an association of retired intelligence officials, appealed to Obama to turn away from war while there was still time. This appeal was signed by Phil Giraldi, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, Patrick Lang, Coleen Rowley, and Ann Wright. This appeal states:

We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war. This can be stopped, but only if you move quickly to pre-empt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens. As we hope your advisers have told you, regime change, not Iranian nuclear weapons, is Israel’s primary concern.

The VIPS cite, among the motivations for Israel to launch a quick preemptive attack and drag the US into war, the possibility that the new National Intelligence Estimate on the Iranian nuclear weapons situation will reinforce the conclusion of the earlier NIE of Dec 2007 that there is no Iranian and nuclear weapons program. But this diagnosis appears to be overly optimistic, and does not take into account the growing power of the neocon faction at the expense of the Brzezinskyites which is reflected in the ascendancy of the neocon warlord Petraeus, as well as in Obama’s own increasingly desperate and bellicose rhetoric. There is no doubt that the entire neocon faction is now fully mobilized with the overriding goal of concocting a new NIE which brands Iran as a de facto nuclear weapons state, thus making a direct US attack mandatory. Among the reflections of this neocon agitation in the press, we can cite the WSJ article by Edward Jay Epstein in which the author attempts to use the recent Amiri affair to concoct a plausible explanation for why the Dec 2007 NIE was so adamant that there was no Iranian nuclear weapons program. This is the same Edward Jay Epstein who is otherwise notorious for his attacks on New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and on filmmaker Oliver Stone, attacks carried out in defense of the discredited Warren Commission report on the 1963 Kennedy assassination. Epstein had this to say about the connection between the Amiri affair and the Dec 2007 NIE:

One Iranian agent who supplied information to the CIA is Shahram Amiri, who defected to the US last year and re-defected back to Iran this month. He reportedly provided details about the termination of Project 111 that presumably dovetailed with other information we got from the CIA’s compromised network. Iran now claims Amiri was a double agent all along. Whether Iran controlled his secret reports to the CIA will be hotly debated for years to come. But willful blindness on our part should not be ignored. There were high-level people in the newly reorganized US intelligence community who wanted to believe Iran was ending its quest for the bomb, and messages to the CIA from agents inside the country that diplomatic pressure was accomplishing this task fell on receptive ears. Whether the erroneous conclusions in the 2007 NIE proceeded from Iranian deception or US self-deception, they undercut the case for taking more drastic action against Tehran. To the degree that other countries believed Iran had ended its nuclear program, they had little incentive to join us in imposing further sanctions.

The neocons intend to roll back all that as soon as possible. Most US newspapers never reported Ahmadinejad’s statement about the US getting ready to attack two countries within the next three months. Ironically, the only way this news crept into the WaPo was by way of a belligerent opinion screed by neocon Charles Krauthammer. For Krauthammer, the alliance of Iran and Hezbollah assumed almost apocalyptic significance. Krauthammer comments:

For all his clownishness, Ahmadinejad is nonetheless calculating and dangerous. What “two countries” was he talking about? They seem logically to be Lebanon and Syria. Hezbollah in Lebanon has armed itself with 50,000 rockets and made clear that it is in a position to start a war at any time. Fighting on this scale would immediately bring in Syria, which would in turn invite Iranian intervention in defense of its major Arab clients, and of the first Persian beachhead on the Mediterranean in 1,400 years.

True to the neocon party line, Krauthammer demands that Obama stay the course towards Middle East conflagration:

After 18 months of failed engagement, the administration is hardening its line. The hardening is already having its effect. The Iranian regime is beginning to realize that even Obama’s patience is limited, and that Iran may actually face a reckoning for its nuclear defiance. All this pressure would be enough to rattle a regime already unsteady and shorn of domestic legitimacy. Hence Ahmadinejad’s otherwise inscrutable warning about an Israeli attack on two countries. Israeli Defense Minister Barak asked Fox News, “Who is the second one?” It is a pointed reminder to the world of Iran’s capacity to trigger, through Hezbollah and Syria, a regional conflagration. This is the kind of brinkmanship you get when leaders of a rogue regime are under growing pressure. The only hope to get them to reverse course is to relentlessly increase their feeling that, if they don’t, the Arab states, Israel, the Europeans and the US will, one way or another, ensure that ruin is visited upon them.

William Kristol, another of the neocon dogs of war, offered Obama a column full of friendly political advice, concluding inevitably with a call for ‘military action military action against the Iranian nuclear program, and you’ll have a real shot at a successful presidency.” Before starting the Iran war, the Obama regime would like to finally set up a puppet regime in Iraq which would be as anti-Iranian as can be managed under the current situation. The chosen agent of influence to head such a government would be IAyad Allawi. But the Iraqi politicians have been bickering about a new government since the Mar 7 parliamentary elections, so far with no success. Biden has made four trips to Iraq in the hope of installing Allawi, but so far he has failed. The most recent meetings between Allawi and the pro-Iranian Maliki have also brought no results. As UPI reported:

A meeting between Iraqi PM Maliki and his rival Iyad Allawi produced no political breakthroughs, secular leaders said. Allawi met in Baghdad with Maliki following talks in Damascus with Moqtada Sadr. Hayder al-Mullah, a representative from Allawi’s Iraqiya slate, told the Voices of Iraq new agency Wednesday that Allawi expressed his determination to form a new government.

If the US strikes Iran, it is inevitable that the civil war inside Iraq will resume on a scale even more serious than what was observed in 2006-2007. Obama has also been calling for Iran to release three alleged US hikers who supposedly went for a walk in Iraqi Kurdistan and suddenly found themselves on the Iranian side of the border, where they were arrested. The case is suspicious because of CIA covert operations among Kurds, Arabs, Azeris, Turkmen, Baluchis, and other minority nationalities of the Islamic Republic. As Politico reported:

Obama called on Iran Friday to free three US hikers it detained one year ago. He also said that Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal never worked for the US government and were people who have demonstrated open-mindedness and a desire for social justice. Iran recently charged the three young University of California Berkeley graduates with having improperly crossed the border, while it continues to carry out an investigation. But it did not charge them with espionage, as it had previously threatened. Obama also called on Iran to provide information in the case of former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who went missing after a 2007 meeting on Kish Island.

By James Petras | 08.09.2010

Introduction

US policy toward Venezuela has taken many tactical turns, but the objective has been the same: to oust President Chavez, reverse the nationalization of big businesses, abolish the mass community and worker based councils and revert the country into a client-state.

Washington funded and politically backed a military coup in 2002, a bosses’ lockout in 2002-03, a referendum and numerous media, political and NGO efforts to undermine the regime. Up to now all of the White House efforts have been a failure – Chavez has repeatedly won free elections, retained the loyalty of the military and the backing of the vast majority of the urban and rural poor, the bulk of the working class and the public sector middle class.

Washington has not given up nor reconciled itself to coming to terms with the elected government of President Chavez. Instead with each defeat of its internal collaborators, the White House has increasingly turned toward an ‘outsider’ strategy, building up a powerful ‘cordon militaire’, surrounding Venezuela with a large-scale military presence spanning Central America, northern South America and the Caribbean. The Obama White House backed a military coup in Honduras, ousting the democratically elected government of President Zelaya in June 2009 , a Chavez ally, and replacing it with a puppet regime supportive of Washington’s anti-Chavez military policies. The Pentagon secured seven military bases in eastern Colombia in 2009 facing the Venezuelan frontier, thanks to its client ruler, Alvaro Uribe, the notorious narco-paramilitary President. In mid 2010 Washington secured an unprecedented agreement with the approval of right wing President Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica, to station 7000 US combat troops, over 200 helicopters, and dozens of ships pointing toward Venezuela, under the pretext of pursuing narco-traffickers. Currently the US is negotiating with the rightist regime of President Ricardo Martinelli of Panama, the possibility of re-establishing a military base in the former Canal Zone. Together with the Fourth Fleet patrolling off shore, 20,000 troops in Haiti, and an airbase in Aruba, Washington has encircled Venezuela from the West and North, establishing jumping off positions for a direct intervention if the favorable internal circumstances arise.

The White House’s militarization of its policy toward Latin America, and Venezuela in particular, is part of its global policy of armed confrontation and interventions. Most notably the Obama regime has widened the scope and extent of operations of clandestine death squads now operating in 70 countries on four continents, increased the US combat presence in Afghanistan by over 30,000 troops plus over 100,000 contract mercenaries operating cross border into Pakistan and Iran, and provided material and logistical assistance to Iranian armed terrorists. Obama has escalated provocative military exercises off the coast of North Korea and in the China Sea, evoking protests from Beijing. Equally revealing, the Obama regime has increased the military budget to over a trillion dollars, despite the economic crises, the monstrous deficit and the calls for austerity cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

In other words, Washington’s military posture toward Latin America and especially toward the democratic socialist government of President Chavez is part and parcel of a general military response to any country or movements which refuse to submit to US domination. The question arises – why does the White House rely on the military option? Why militarize foreign policy to gain favorable outcomes in the face of decided opposition? The answer, in part, is that the US has lost most of the economic leverage, which it previously exercised, to secure the ousting or submission of adversary governments. Most Asian and Latin American economies have secured a degree of autonomy. Others do not depend on US-influenced international financial organizations the IMF, World Bank ; they secure commercial loans. Most have diversified their trading and investment partners and deepened regional ties. In some countries, such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru, China has replaced the US as their principal trading partner. Most countries no longer look to US “aid” to stimulate growth, they seek joint ventures with multi-national corporations, frequently based outside of North America. To the extent that economic arm twisting is no longer an effective tool to secure compliance, Washington has resorted more and more to the military option. To the extent that the US financial elite have hollowed out the US industrial sector, Washington has been unable to rebuild its international economic levers.

Major diplomatic failures, resulting from its incapacity to adapt to basic shifts in global power, have also prompted Washington to shift from political negotiations and compromise toward military intervention and confrontation. US policymakers are still frozen in the time warp of the 1980’s and 1990’s, the heyday of client rulers and economic plunder, when Washington secured global support, privatized enterprises, exploited public debt financings and was relatively unchallenged in the world market. By the end of the1990’s, the rise of Asian capitalism, mass anti-neo-liberal uprisings, the ascendancy of center-left regimes in Latin America, the repeated financial crises and stock market crashes in the US and the EU and the increase in commodity prices led to a realignment of global power. Washington’s efforts to pursue policies attuned to the previous decades conflicted with the new realities of diversified markets, newly emerging powers and relatively independent political regimes linked to new mass constituencies.

Washington’s diplomatic proposals to isolate Cuba and Venezuela were rejected by all of the Latin American countries. The effort to revive free trade agreements, which privileged US exporters, were rejected. Unwilling to recognize the limits of imperial diplomatic power and moderate its proposals, the Obama regime turned increasingly toward the military option.

Washington’s struggle to re-assert imperial power, via interventionary politics fared no better than its diplomatic initiatives. The US-backed coups in Venezuela 2002 and Bolivia 2008 were defeated by mass popular mobilizations and the loyalty of the military to the incumbent regimes. Likewise in Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil, post-neo-liberal regimes, backed by industrial, mining and agro-export elites and popular classes were able to beat back traditional pro-US neo-liberal elites rooted in the politics of the 1990’s and earlier. The politics of destabilization failed to dislodge the new governments’ pursuing relatively independent foreign policies and refusing to return to the old order of US supremacy.

Where Washington has regained political terrain with the election of rightist political regimes – it has been through its ability to exploit the ‘exhaustion’ of center-left politics Chile , political fraud and militarization Honduras and Mexico , decline of the national popular left Costa Rica, Panama and Peru and the consolidation of a highly militarized police state Colombia . These electoral victories, especially in Colombia, have convinced Washington that the military option, combined with deep intervention and exploitation of open electoral processes, is the way to reverse the left turn in Latin America – especially in Venezuela.

US Policy to Venezuela: Combining Military and Electoral Tactics

US efforts to overthrow President Chavez’s democratic government borrow many of the tactics applied against previous democratic adversaries. These include border incursions by Colombian paramilitary and military forces similar to cross border attacks by the US sponsored “contras” against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua during the 1980’s. The attempt to encircle and isolate Venezuela is similar to Washington’s policy over the past half century against Cuba. The funneling of funds to opposition groups, parties, media and NGO’s via US agencies and “dummy” foundations is a repeat of the tactics applied to destabilize the democratic government of Salvador Allende of Chile 1970-73, Evo Morales in Bolivia 2006-2010 and numerous other governments in the region.

Washington’s multiple track policy, in its current phase, is directed at escalating a war of nerves, by constantly raising security threats. The military provocations, in part, are a ‘testing’ of Venezuela’s security preparations, probing for weaknesses in its ground, air and maritime defenses. These provocations also are part of a strategy of attrition, to force the Chavez government to put its defense forces on “alert” and mobilize the population and then to temporarily reduce the pressure until the next provocation. The purpose is to discredit the government’s constant reference to threats, in order to weaken vigilance and when circumstances allow making an opportune strike.

Washington’s external military build-up is designed to intimidate Caribbean and Central American countries who may be looking toward closer economic relations with Venezuela. The show of force is also designed to encourage the internal opposition toward more aggressive actions. At the same time the confrontational posture is directed at the “weak links” or “moderate” sectors of the Chavista government who are nervous and anxious for “reconciliation” even at the price of unprincipled concessions to the opposition and the new Colombia regime of President Santos. The increasing military presence is designed to slow the internal radicalization process and to preclude Venezuela’s growing ties with Middle Eastern and other regimes, adverse to US hegemony. Washington is betting that a military build-up and psychological warfare linking Venezuela with revolutionary insurgents like the Colombian guerrilla will result in Chavez’s allies and friends in Latin America putting distance toward him. Equally important Washington’s unsubstantiated accusations that Venezuela is harboring FARC guerilla encampments, is meant to pressure Chavez to lessen his support to all social movements in the region, including the landless Rural Workers of Brazil as well as non- violent human rights groups and trade unions in Colombia. Washington wants a military “polarization”: US or Chavez. It rejects the political polarization existing today which pits Washington against MERCOSUR, the organization of economic integration involving Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay with Venezuela in line for membership or ALBA economic integration involving Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and several Caribbean states.

The FARC Factor

Obama and now ex-President Uribe accused Venezuela of offering sanctuary for Colombian guerillas FARC and ELN . In reality this is a ploy to pressure President Chavez to denounce or at a minimum demand that the FARC give up their armed struggle on terms dictated by the US and Colombian regime.

Contrary to President Uribe and the State Department’s boasts that the FARC is a declining, isolated and defeated fragment of the past, as a result of their successful counter-insurgency campaigns, a recent detailed field study by a Colombian researcher La guerra contra las FARC y la guerra de las FARC demonstrates that in the last 2 years the guerrillas have consolidated their influence over one-third of the country, and that the regime in Bogota controls only half the country. After suffering major defeats in 2008, the FARC and ELN have steadily advanced throughout 2009-2010 inflicting over 1300 military casualties last year and probably near double this year. La Jornada 8/6/2010 . The resurgence and advance of the FARC has crucial importance as far as Washington’s military campaign again Venezuela. It also affects the position of its “strategic ally” – Santos regime. First it demonstrates that despite $6 billion plus in US military aid to Colombia, its counter-insurgency campaign to “exterminate” the FARC has failed. Secondly, the FARC’s offensive opens a “second front” in Colombia, weakening any effort to launch an invasion of Venezuela using Colombia as a “springboard”. Thirdly, faced with a growing internal class war, the new President Santos is more likely to seek to lessen tensions with Venezuela, hoping to relocate troops from the frontier of its neighbor toward the growing guerilla insurgency. In a sense, despite Chavez misgivings about the guerrillas and outspoken calls for ending the guerrilla struggle, the resurgence of the armed movements are likely a prime factor in lessening the prospects of a US directed intervention.

Conclusion

Washington’s multi-track policy directed at destabilizing the Venezuelan government has by and large been counter-productive, suffering major failures and few successes.

The hard line toward Venezuela has failed to “line up” any support in the major countries of Latin America, with the exception of Colombia. It has isolated Washington not Caracas. The military threats may have radicalized the socio-economic measures adopted by Chavez not moderated them. The threats and accusations emanating from Colombia have strengthened internal cohesion in Venezuela, except among the hard-core opposition groups. They have also led to Venezuela’s upgrading its intelligence, police and military operations. The Colombian provocations have led to a break in relations and an 80% decline in the multi-billion dollar cross border trade, bankrupting numerous Colombian firms, as Venezuela substitutes Brazilian and Argentine industrial and agrarian imports. The effects of the policies of tension and the “war of attrition” are hard to measure, especially in terms of their impact on the forthcoming crucial legislative elections on September 26, 2010. No doubt, Venezuela’s failure to regulate and control the multi-million flow of US funds to its Venezuelan collaborators has made a significant impact on their organizational capability. No doubt the economic downturn has had some effect in limiting public spending on new social programs. Likewise, the incompetence and corruption of several top Chavista officials, especially in public food distribution, housing and public safety will have an electoral impact.

It is likely that these “internal” factors are much more influential in shaping the alignment of Venezuela’s electoral outcome, than the aggressive confrontational politics adopted by Washington. Nevertheless, if the pro-US opposition substantially increases its legislative presence in the September 26 elections – beyond one-third of the Congress people – they will attempt to block social changes and economic stimulus policies. The US will intensify its efforts to pressure Venezuela to divert resources to security issues in order to undermine social-economic expenditures which sustain the support of the lower 60% of the Venezuelan population.

Up to now, White House policy based on greater militarization and virtually no new economic initiatives has been a failure. It has encouraged the larger Latin American countries to increase regional integration, as witnessed by new custom and tariff agreements taken at the MERCOSUR meeting in early August of this year. It has not led to any diminuation of hostilities between the US and the ALBA countries. It has not increased US influence. Instead Latin America has moved toward a new regional political organization UNASUR which excludes the US , downgrading the Organization of American States which the US uses to push its agenda. Ironically, the only bright lights, favoring US influence, comes from internal, electoral processes. Rightist candidate Jose Serra is running a strong race in the upcoming Brazilian Presidential elections. In Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia the pro-US right is regrouping and hoping to return to power.

What Washington fails to understand is that across the political spectrum from the left to the center-right, political leaders are appalled and opposed to the US push and promotion of the military option as the centerpiece of policy. Practically all political leaders have unpleasant memories of exile and persecution from the previous cycle of US backed military regimes. The self-proclaimed extra-territorial reach of the US military, operating out of its seven bases in Colombia, has widened the breach between the centrist and center-left democratic regimes and the Obama White House. In other words, Latin America perceives US military aggression toward Venezuela as a “first step” southward toward their countries. That, and the drive for greater political independence and more diversified markets, have weakened Washington’s diplomatic and political attempts to isolate Venezuela.

Colombia’s new President Santos, made out of the same rightist mold as his predecessor Alvaro Uribe, faces a difficult choice – continuing as an instrument of US military confrontation and destabilization of Venezuela at the cost of several billion dollars in trade losses and isolation from the rest of Latin America or lessening border tensions and incursions, dropping the provocative rhetoric and normalizing relations with Venezuela. If the latter takes place, the US will lose its last best instrument for its external strategy of “tensions” and psych warfare. Washington will be left with two options: a unilateral direct military intervention or funding of political warfare through its domestic collaborators.

In the meantime President Chavez and his supporters would do well to concentrate on pulling the economy out of recession, tackling state corruption and monumental inefficiency and empowering the community and factory-based councils to play a greater role in everything from increasing productivity to public safety. Ultimately Venezuela’s long term security from the long and pervasive reach of the US Empire depends on the strength of the organized mass organizations sustaining the Chavez government.

Chavez agrees to meet Santos

Hugo Chavez asked Obama to “look for another candidate” as US envoy to Caracas [Reuters]

Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has said he will meet with his Colombian counterpart on Tuesday to try to end a diplomatic rift between the two countries.

Juan Manuel Santos was inaugurated as the Colombian president on Saturday and immediately offered to talk with Chavez in hopes of mending Colombian-Venezuelan ties.

“We had a frank and direct dialogue, with both our countries’ aim to restore relations within a framework of transparency,” Maria Angela Holguin, the Colombian foreign minister, said on Sunday.

Chavez, who sent his foreign minster Nicolas Maduro to the swearing-in ceremony, said he was willing to “turn the page” and work with Santos, even offering to go to Bogota if necessary.

Venezuela broke off ties with Colombia last month in the latest swing in their on-again, off-again relationship. The previous Colombian government alleged that the leftist guerrillas it is fighting were hiding in Venezuela, and accused Caracas of aiding them.

Call to disarm

Colombia blames the rebels for killings, kidnappings and drug trafficking along the country’s long border with Venezuela. Chavez denies giving sanctuary to the rebels.

Juan Manuel Santos offered to meet Chavez over the diplomatic rift [Reuters]

Chavez on Sunday called for Colombian rebels to lay down their arms, and warned Santos’ government not to accuse his country of helping the guerrilla movement. Santos’ predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, had accused Chavez’s government of sheltering Colombian rebels.

Chavez tried to deflect the accusations by calling on rebels to give up their decades-old armed struggle and seek a negotiated solution.

“The guerrillas should come out in favour of peace. They should release all their hostages,” he said during his weekly “Alo Presidente” radio and television show. “They have no future by staying armed.”

“Furthermore, they have become an excuse for the [US] empire to intervene in Colombia, and threaten Venezuela from there,” he added, a reference to the US military presence in Colombia.

Chavez blocks US ambassador

Chavez also announced on Sunday that he will not allow the newly-nominated US envoy to take up his post in Caracas.

He said Barack Obama, the US president, should “look for another candidate” to replace Larry Palmer, whose nomination as ambassador to Venezuela is pending confirmation by the US senate.

“How can you think I’d accept this gentleman coming here?” Chavez said on his show. “You’d best withdraw him, Obama. Don’t insist, I’m asking you.”

“[Palmer] disqualified himself by breaking all the rules of diplomacy. He can’t come here as ambassador”

Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan president

Palmer last month voiced concern about Cuba’s growing influence in the Venezuelan military. He said the country’s military had “considerably low” morale and professionalism.

In written answers during a senate confirmation hearing, Palmer also said there were “clear ties” between leftist Colombian rebels and Chavez’s government.

On Thursday the Venezuelan foreign ministry protested Palmer’s statements as “interference and interventionism” and asked the United States for an explanation before he was confirmed in his post.

“[Palmer] disqualified himself by breaking all the rules of diplomacy. He messed with all of us. He can’t come here as ambassador,” Chavez said.

“The best thing the United States government can do is to look for another candidate [for ambassador to Venezuela].”

Palmer, who has served as ambassador in Honduras and charge d’affaires in Ecuador, was picked to try to manage the US’ difficult relationship with Venezuela.

When Israeli commandos attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters on May 31, murdered nine humanitarian aid workers and seized the cargo of badly needed supplies for Gaza, they touched off an international storm of outrage that continues to this day. The widespread anger has galvanized the international movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people, drawing in new forces and producing new initiatives. Following the attack on the flotilla, Palestinian civil society issued an appeal to progressive forces around the world to redouble their solidarity efforts and to strengthen the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. On Jun 7, the major Palestinian trade union federations appealed to dock workers to refuse to handle Israeli cargo. They said:

Gaza today has become the test of our universal morality and our common humanity. During the South African anti-apartheid struggle, the world was inspired by the brave and principled actions of dockworkers unions who refused to handle South African cargo, contributing significantly to the ultimate fall of apartheid. Today, we call on you, dockworkers unions of the world, to do the same against Israel’s occupation and apartheid. This is the most effective form of solidarity to end injustice and uphold universal human rights.

Workers in a number of countries responded to this call. The Swedish Dockers’ Union, which had supported the Freedom Flotilla, declared a one-week blockade on Israeli goods and ships beginning on Jun 23. The union also called for “a general blockade of Israeli goods until the rights of the Palestinian people are guaranteed and the blockade of Gaza is lifted.” On Jun 3, the Congress of South African Trade Unions called for “greater support for the international boycott, divestment and sanction campaign against Israel, which is proving again to be violent and ruthless in attacking and murdering those who stand in its way. We urge all South Africans to refuse to buy or handle any goods from Israel or have any dealings with Israeli businesses.” In a statement issued the same day, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, a COSATU affiliate, said:

We salute the Swedish dock workers for their blockade of all Israeli ships. We call for an escalation of the boycott of Israeli goods and call upon our fellow trade unionists not to handle them. We call upon our members not to allow any Israeli ship to dock or unload in any South African port.

In Feb 2009, following the Israeli assault on Gaza, members of SATWU refused to unload cargo from an Israeli ship in Durban. The South African Municipal Workers’ Union, another COSATU affiliate, declared that it would “immediately work towards making every municipality in South Africa an Apartheid Israel free zone.” It said that it would “engage every single municipality to ensure that there are no commercial, academic, cultural, sporting or other linkages whatsoever with the Israeli regime.” In Turkey, the dock workers’ union declared that it would “boycott ships from Israel, which has become a machine of death and torture. In this framework, no member of our union will give service to Israel in any docks where we are organized. The Liman-Is union invites all unions and NGO’s organized in our country and throughout the world to join this boycott and protest campaign.” Unions in the Port of Kochi Cochin in India also refused to handle Israeli cargo. In the first action of its kind in the US, on Jun 20 more than 700 unionists and community activists picketed at several entrances to the Port of Oakland, California, protesting the arrival of an Israeli-owned vessel. Two shifts of members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union refused to cross the picket line. The cargo was unloaded only 24 hours later, after the picket lines were lifted. The protest was organized by the Labor / Community Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian People, an ad-hoc coalition of local labour, Palestine solidarity, and social justice groups. Several hundred unionists responded to the call of the San Francisco and Alameda County labour councils and other unionists to support the action. Statements of support for the action were issued by the Oakland Education Association, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions and the Cuban labour federation, the Cuban Workers Central, among others. One group that did not support the action in Oakland was the US Socialist Workers Party. The SWP is opposed to boycotting Israel. It reaffirmed this stand at its national conference a few days before the picket in Oakland. The group first elaborated its position on the Palestinian struggle in a series of articles that appeared during the first half of 2009 in the Militant, a weekly newspaper that expresses its views. These articles argued that:
1. There is no Zionist movement today.
2. Anti-Zionism is a cover for anti-Semitism.
3. Israel’s rulers plan to give up control of most of the West Bank and Gaza.
4. Israel is not an apartheid state.
5. The BDS campaign is not only wrong. It is anti-Semitic.
6. The democratic, secular Palestine that the SWP envisages must grant a special right of immigration to the Jews of the world.
This position was first expressed in Jun 2010. This line of argument places the SWP in the Zionist camp. To be sure, the SWP opposes Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, but the thrust of its argument is directed against the solidarity movement. It endorses the slanders advanced by Israel’s supporters that anti-Zionism in general and the BDS movement in particular are anti-Semitic. The group also supports a privileged position for Jews in Palestine. A Zionist blogger welcomed the SWP’s support: Communists Against Boycotting Israel. These positions represent a breathtaking turnabout for a group that for decades unconditionally supported the Palestinian people and thoroughly opposed Zionism. The SWP’s previous position on these questions was explained in a resolution it adopted at its 1971 convention. The opening paragraphs of that resolution read:

The Socialist Workers Party gives unconditional support to the national liberation struggles of the Arab peoples against imperialism, that is, we support all these struggles regardless of their current leaderships. Our foremost task in implementing such support is to educate and mobilize the US people against US imperialist actions in the Mideast. Israel, created in accordance with the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state, could be set up in the Arab East only at the expense of the indigenous peoples of the area. Such a state could come into existence and maintain itself only by relying upon imperialism. Israel is a settler-colonialist and expansionist capitalist state maintained principally by US imperialism, hostile to the surrounding Arab peoples. The struggle of the Palestinian people against their oppression and for self-determination has taken the form of a struggle to destroy the state of Israel. The currently expressed goal of this struggle is the establishment of a democratic, secular Palestine. We give unconditional support to this struggle of the Palestinians for self-determination. Our revolutionary socialist opposition to Zionism and the Israeli state has nothing in common with anti-Semitism, as the pro-Zionist propagandists maliciously and falsely assert. Anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish racism used to justify and reinforce oppression of the Jewish people. Zionism is not, as it claims, a national liberation movement. Zionism is a political movement that developed for the purpose of establishing a settler-colonialist state in Palestine and that rules the bourgeois society headed by the Israeli state today in alliance with world imperialism.

It is immediately apparent that what the SWP says today is the polar opposite of these positions. Contrary to Marxist practice, the SWP has neither acknowledged the reversal nor explained why in its view it is necessary. The first indication that the SWP had changed its position on these questions came in an article in the Mar 2 2009 issue of the Militant. The article quoted SWP leader Norton Sandler as follows:

Class-conscious workers should drop the term Zionism,’ in the current context, Sandler added. ‘There is no Zionist movement today. The reality is, it has become an epithet, not a scientific description; a synonym for ‘Jew’ that helps fuel Jew-hatred, which will rise as the capitalist crisis deepens.

Sandler’s claim that the Zionist movement had vanished from the face of the earth was so at odds with current reality and with the SWP’s previous position that it was challenged by some readers of the paper. Sandler’s reply appeared in the Apr 13 issue.

I made these remarks at a Jan 31 public meeting in London. I was not addressing the history of the Zionist movement, or how the state of Israel came into being as an expansionist colonial-settler state. Zionism in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was a bourgeois political current contending with the communist movement for the allegiance of workers who were Jewish. Israel was established in 1948, more than six decades ago. There is no Zionist movement today and there hasn’t been for a long time.

Sandler’s historical survey evades the challenge posed by the readers. He merely repeats his assertion of the non-existence of Zionism today and “for a long time,” as though the repetition is proof enough. This claim is simply ludicrous. Zionism, promoting the existence of an exclusive Jewish state, is a political movement that transcends religious or ethnic factors. As the SWP’s 1971 resolution states, Zionism is the ruling ideology of the Israeli state. The founding principles of that state proclaim that it is a Jewish state, meaning that it is a state that claims to be the homeland for the Jews of the world and whose Jewish citizens enjoy privileges denied to other inhabitants. Israel is the dominant military power by far in the Middle East, thanks in no small measure to the support it receives from Washington. Israel’s ruling Zionists command an arsenal that includes between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads. Ever since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Western powers have favoured the dispossession of the Palestinian people, first through massive Jewish immigration to Palestine and subsequently through their support of the Jewish settler state. They have maintained this policy for nearly a hundred years because it was and is in the interests of these powers to promote the existence of an ethnically defined Jewish state, with special privileges for Jews, as a divisive force in opposition to the national liberation struggles of the peoples of the Middle East. That’s why Obama and PMs Harper and Cameron are as committed to Zionism as Netanyahu. Zionism is also a highly organized and influential international movement. North America is home to many prominent Zionist organizations such as AIPAC, the ADL, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, B’nai B’rith, ZOA, the Canada-Israel Committee and the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy. Right-wing Christian Zionists also actively advocate and raise funds for Israel. Supporters of human rights for Palestinians confront organized Zionist opposition every step of the way, from charges of anti-Semitism to hostile picket lines outside public meetings and disruptions during meetings, often organized by the vigilante JDL. In all these cases, Israel advocacy and support is based on Zionism, the idea that Israel must remain a Jewish state.

In the Mar 2 2009 article quoted above, Sandler and the SWP allege that it is anti-Semitic to oppose Zionism. Their logic is rather peculiar since it hinges on the SWP’s denial that Zionism exists. But the conclusion is all too familiar. It is the common coin of most defenders of Israel and its policies. Here the SWP finds itself in the company of openly reactionary forces. To be sure, Holocaust deniers, rightist politicians and others, actual Jew-haters, cloak their anti-Semitism in the garb of opposition to Zionism. The crimes of the Israeli state, which claims to represent all Jews, facilitate the propaganda of these hate-mongers. But it is a reactionary slander to tar all opponents of Zionism as anti-Semites. It is a slander first and foremost against the Palestinian people, who understand only too well what Zionism means and what it has done to them. For decades they have struggled heroically to overturn Zionism, and their struggle continues today. The vast majority of the world’s oppressed and exploited support them. It is also a slander against the anti-Zionist wing of the Palestine solidarity movement, including the small but growing number of Jews who oppose Zionism. Forces far more powerful than the SWP have laboured mightily to make this label stick, but they have failed. In his Apr 13 article, Sandler also expresses the view that the expansion of Israel’s borders is drawing to a close:

The majority of the Israeli ruling class has given up the dream of a ‘Greater Israel.’ They are forced to opt for what they consider the only pragmatic solution: maintaining a majority Jewish state within borders of their own choosing. This is hardly the Zionist movement’s dream of an Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

Other articles published between Feb-Jun 2009 make the same claim. Here Sandler and the SWP merely echo the Israeli rulers who never tire of claiming that their only aim is an Israel with defensible borders living in peace next to a Palestinian state. This has been Tel Aviv’s mantra ever since it occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 war. Israel’s actions reveal a different plan. Seen from the Palestinian perspective, history since 1967 has been one of unrelenting Israeli expansion onto Palestinian land and continual ethnic cleansing by the Zionist state. Approximately half a million Israeli settlers now live in the occupied West Bank, some nine percent of the Jewish Israeli population. The settlements, the wall, the Jewish-only road network, the draining of the water resources, these and many other features of the occupation are turning the West Bank into a series of isolated and dependent cantons. The settlement enterprise has not halted for a moment, not even during the recent phony temporary “settlement freeze” declared by Netanyahu under pressure from Obama. Meanwhile Israel maintains an iron grip on the Gaza Strip. “Greater Israel,” Israeli rule from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, has been the reality for more than forty years, that is, for more than two thirds of Israel’s existence. During this period Israel has steadily strengthened its hold on the conquered territories, although the Palestinians have resisted tenaciously and scored some successes along the way. The reality of “Greater Israel” that Palestinians face every day is documented in countless reports from the UN and many other organizations, including Israeli human rights groups. But Zionist propaganda appears to carry more weight with the SWP. Another major article appeared in the Apr 6 2009 issue of the Militant. Israel boycotts and divestment serve as cover for anti-Semitism was written by Paul Pederson, a member of the paper’s staff. He stated:

There are sweeping differences between the apartheid regime in South Africa and the capitalist regime in Israel, in terms of organization of labor, the character of the regimes, and the historical conditions under which they emerged. The attempt to paint them as the same simply obfuscates the real social and class relations in Israel and the tasks facing the toilers there to chart a revolutionary course forward. Applied to Israel the term “apartheid” is simply an epithet, rather than a scientific description of a social structure. Perhaps the most glaring difference between the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the fight for Palestinian national rights today is the existence of a revolutionary organization, the ANC under Nelson Mandela, in the case of South Africa.

The first sentence asserts that “there are sweeping differences between” South Africa and Israel. This is an empty platitude. There are also sweeping differences between capitalist rule in the US, Canada, and Great Britain. But there are also fundamental similarities, just as there are in the case of apartheid-era South Africa and Israel. The second sentence is another platitude, asserting that the false comparison leads to false conclusions. The third sentence states the SWP’s political position: Israel is not an apartheid state. This is a straightforward question of fact: is the Israeli system of rule fundamentally similar to the apartheid system in South Africa? Does it meet the common-sense or legal understanding of the term?

Israel was established in 1948 by the massacre and expulsion of most of the native inhabitants, who generations later still cannot return to their homes. It practices systematic discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and structural discrimination against these Palestinians is enshrined in its laws and the entire legal apparatus. In addition, Israel rules over millions of other Palestinians in the occupied territories through a combination of measures that ultimately rest on its military control. These inhabitants are systematically deprived of their land, their water, and other resources to the benefit of Jewish Israelis. The Jewish settlers who live on Palestinian land enjoy full rights of citizenship while Palestinians are denied basic human rights. This, in a nutshell, is the Israeli system of rule over the Palestinians. It bears a striking similarity to the system of apartheid in South Africa even if it differs in many particulars. For a more detailed analysis see Not an analogy: Israel and the crime of apartheid by Hazem Jamjoum. In the course of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, large numbers of people around the world came to understand that apartheid is a crime against humanity that must be eradicated wherever it might appear. In 1973 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, which specifies that a regime commits apartheid when it institutionalizes discrimination to create and maintain the domination of one racial group over another. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also defines apartheid as a crime. This statute came into effect in 2002, long after the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. Of course the experts on what is apartheid, and what it is not, live in South Africa. It is no accident that many unions and solidarity organizations in South Africa have endorsed the idea that Israel is an apartheid state. One of the most thorough and authoritative studies of Israeli apartheid in the occupied territories was published by the South African Human Rights Council in May 2009. The 302-page report by an international panel of experts concluded:

Israel, since 1967, has been the belligerent Occupying Power in the occupied Palestinian territories, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.

Today’s solidarity activists draw strength from this understanding of the crime of apartheid. They look at Israel in light of the experience gained in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and they are inspired by the victory that was won there. Their explanations of the Israeli apartheid system have been convincing and have helped to build the movement. Returning to the article cited above, only one element of the argument remains. Israel is not an apartheid state, Pederson states, because the Palestinian leadership is not revolutionary. It is, to say the least, rather bizarre to assert that the nature of the Palestinian leadership determines the nature of the Israeli state. Nevertheless, the assertion is revealing. It expresses how the SWP has come to condition its support for struggles against imperialism on its view of the leadership of such struggles. This provides a handy excuse for refusing to support them. In 2003 the SWP refused to support the large demonstrations against the war in Iraq. Its Canadian sister organization expelled supporters who argued that Marxists had a duty to defend the Iraqi people against imperialism by taking concrete action against the war. The SWP justified its abstention from the struggle by pointing to the bloody and reactionary record of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Over the last few years the SWP has adopted a similar approach toward the Palestinian struggle. Suffice it to say that this has more in common with dead-end sectarianism than it does with Marxism. The SWP used to understand this quite well. The 1971 resolution cited earlier begins with these words:

The Socialist Workers Party gives unconditional support to the national liberation struggles of the Arab peoples against imperialism, that is, we support all these struggles regardless of their current leaderships.

As noted earlier, the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel has made great strides in the past few years. BDS is now one of the most dynamic and fastest growing components of the international movement in solidarity with Palestine. Israel’s rulers recognize the power and potential of the boycott movement. On Jul 14, the Israeli Knesset approved the initial reading of a bill designed to punish residents of Israel who promote boycotts of the state or Israeli products. If enacted into law it will allow punitive fines to be levied against such persons. The bill is primarily aimed at Palestinians living in the West Bank and the small but growing number of Israeli citizens, Jewish and Palestinian, who form the “Boycott From Within” movement supporting the international boycott. In a speech to the Knesset, Netanyahu denounced the Boycott From Within movement as a “national scandal.” Neve Gordon, a professor at Ben Gurion University who endorsed an academic boycott of Israel last year, has received death threats. Gideon Sa’ar, the minister of education, has threatened to punish any lecturer or institution that supports a boycott of Israel. In February the Reut Institute, one of Israel’s most influential think tanks, published a report in which it warned of a dangerous decline in Israel’s international support. It urged the government to take more effective action against the forces promoting the “delegitimization” of the state of Israel, including the international BDS movement. The institute devoted the Jun 10 issue of its magazine to a detailed analysis of the movement, noting that:

The damage caused by the BDS Movement lies in its promotion of delegitimization towards Israel through creating the comparison, whether implicit or explicit, between Israel and the former apartheid South African regime. Therefore, BDS should be viewed first and foremost as a tool to brand Israel as a ‘pariah state’ with the ultimate aim of undermining the legitimacy of its political structure.

Although only five years old, the boycott movement has scored some notable successes, winning increasing support in many quarters. National trade union federations in South Africa, Ireland, Scotland, Quebec, and elsewhere have endorsed the boycott, as have numerous unions in various countries. On Jul 22, the annual conference of Unite, the largest union in Britain, with two million members, voted unanimously in favour of a complete boycott of Israeli goods and services. Earlier this year Israeli Apartheid Week, an educational activity promoting BDS, took place on more than 50 campuses worldwide. The number of participating campuses has grown steadily from year to year. Grass-roots organizing has been particularly effective in Europe, where a divestment campaign forced the French multinational Veolia to withdraw from a major transportation project in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israeli businesses have acknowledged a decline in their sales because European consumers are boycotting Israeli agricultural products. In the US and elsewhere, the movement is increasing its pressure on pension funds and university endowments to divest from companies such as Lockheed Martin, ITT, United Technologies, General Electric, Caterpillar and Motorola that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands while helping it carry out its war crimes. On Jun 2, students at Evergreen State College in Washington state voted by a large majority to demand that the college’s foundation divest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation and that the college ban the use of Caterpillar equipment on campus. Rachel Corrie, an Evergreen student, was killed by a weaponized Caterpillar bulldozer as she attempted to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip in 2003. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has been a particularly vocal supporter of the college divestment campaigns in the US. The BDS movement responds to an appeal for solidarity issued on Jul 9 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian organizations, including trade unions, political and social organizations, and women’s and youth groups. The signatories represent the three components of the Palestinian nation: refugees, Palestinians living under in the occupied territories, and Palestinian citizens of Israel. The appeal from Palestine said:

We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace. These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Res 194.

The BDS call does not advocate a particular political solution to the conflict. Its approach is to develop a grass-roots mass political campaign in favour of these three basic pillars of human rights for the Palestinian people. This approach serves not only to overcome divisions among the Palestinians, it also stands on the universal principles of human rights that have animated the struggle against racism in South Africa, the US, and elsewhere. The movement took another step forward in 2008 with the formation of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, a broadly representative group of Palestinians that serves as the leadership of the international BDS campaign. The rapid growth of the movement can be attributed to a number of factors: its origin in Palestine; the unity among Palestinians that it expresses; its new, rights-based approach to the struggle; its consistent anti-racism, which includes opposing Islamophobia and anti-Semitism; and the movement’s Palestinian leadership. The movement also offers many opportunities for grass-roots organizing of boycott and divestment campaigns as well as educational activities. As it has grown the movement has acquired experience and developed an increasing number of local leaders. It has also become more diverse, developing targeted academic and cultural boycotts of Israel similar to those used in the struggle against South African apartheid.

These developments have not gone unnoticed at the SWP’s headquarters. The group has taken up the cudgels against the boycott movement, waging a sustained campaign against it in the pages of its newspaper. Leaders of the group have denounced BDS in meetings organized to build the solidarity movement, from Israeli Apartheid Week to the recent US Social Forum. The SWP’s campaign is fundamentally dishonest. The Militant has not reported any of the basic facts about the boycott movement. The SWP has also chosen to ignore the appeal of Omar Barghouti, a leader of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, who wrote in a recent article:

Genuine solidarity movements recognize and follow the lead of the oppressed, who are not passive objects but active, rational subjects that are asserting their aspirations and rights as well as their strategy to realize them.

In the SWP’s eyes BDS is “a cover for anti-Semitism.” The article by Paul Pederson cited previously said this:

In the absence of any revolutionary perspective, campaigns such as the anti-Israel boycott can appear to be a radical substitute. But, as the crisis of capitalism deepens, the “anti-Israel” character of these campaigns is simply a modern form of Jew-hatred. All who genuinely support the battle for Palestinian national rights must oppose it.

Not to be outdone, in his reply to critical readers in the next issue of the Militant Norton Sandler compared advocates of BDS to the Nazis:

In London earlier this year the Marks & Spencer department stores and Starbucks coffee shops were targets of protests over the Israeli assault on Gaza. These businesses are supposedly Jewish-owned. Jewish businesses were a prime target of the Nazis in Germany after 1933. Why aren’t US-owned businesses targets during protests against Washington’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars?

The SWP’s allegation that the boycott movement is anti-Semitic and akin to Hitler’s targeting of Jews in Germany is beneath contempt. It assumes that readers of the Militant will not try to ascertain the facts for themselves. But facts are more powerful than such slanders, and the facts about the BDS movement are readily available. For example, the Militant repeatedly alleges that boycott activities in the UK target the Marks & Spencer department store chain because the company’s owners are Jewish. Like virtually everything else the SWP writes about the BDS movement, this is untrue. The Boycott Israeli Goods website lists seven major retailers in the UK that sell Israeli products. Each of them has been the target of pro-Palestinian protests in recent years. According to the website, Marks & Spencer has deep historical ties to the state of Israel. Also:

In 1998, Sir Richard Greenbury, then CEO of Marks & Spencer, received the Jubilee Award from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In 2000, the Jerusalem Report stated that ‘M&S supports Israel with $233m in trade each year.’

Supporters of the SWP might want to reflect on the fact that the group’s campaign against boycotting Israel places them to the right of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship in the US, which recently endorsed boycott, divestment and sanctions, and the Methodist Church of Great Britain, which has called on its followers to boycott all products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Already well on its way toward the Zionist camp, the SWP took another fateful leap at its national conference this June. The Militant reported that the conference featured a series of classes:

One on ‘World Capitalist Crisis, Israel, and the Roots of Jew Hatred’ took up the need for a multinational, working-class leadership to fight for a democratic, secular Palestine. Communists would fight for Palestine to be a refuge for all Jews facing persecution. Conference participants discussed how the call for a boycott of Israeli products is not a road toward winning self-determination for the Palestinians, but a dangerous concession to anti-Semitism.

This passage does more than repeat the familiar slander against the boycott movement. It introduces a new and far-reaching change in the SWP’s program. Its call for a democratic, secular Palestine now has a distinctly Zionist flavour: Palestine must be a homeland for world Jewry. This has several major implications. For one thing, what is it about Palestine that makes it the proper destination for Jews who may feel the need to emigrate? Why not the US, Canada, or Australia, much larger and wealthier countries? Religious Zionists believe that Palestine is the Holy Land and that God has granted the Jews the right to settle there. Secular Zionists advance other reasons. Both agree that the Palestinians must not obstruct Jewish immigration and colonisation. But what is the SWP’s reason for selecting Palestine for new waves of Jewish settlement? Furthermore, the SWP appears to give little weight to the possibility that “Jews facing persecution” at some point in the future might choose to defend their rights in the countries where they reside, struggling alongside the oppressed and exploited of those countries. It is Zionism, not Marxism, that insists on the need for a sanctuary for Jews in Israel/Palestine.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, the SWP’s vision for Palestine fails to mention the Palestinian refugees, victims of Israel’s wars. Many of them live in dismal refugee camps near Israel’s borders. According to Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees. One in three refugees in the world is Palestinian. Any settlement that deprives them of their right to return home, to receive redress for their dispossession and to live as full citizens in the land of their choice is an unjust settlement that will not endure. The Jul 26,2010 issue of The Militant published an excerpt from a report by the SWP’s central leader, Jack Barnes, in which he states that a new, revolutionary leadership in Palestine will be built around struggles on many fronts. Barnes provides a list of such progressive causes. He does not include the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. While barring all Palestinian refugees, Israel accords automatic citizenship to immigrants who are Jewish. The SWP appears to want to maintain this arrangement in some form in the new state that they envisage. Whatever else one might say about it, this state would be neither democratic nor secular. Although a logical extension of the positions first developed in early 2009, the SWP’s discovery of Palestine as a homeland for the Jews and its silence on the Palestinians’ right of return marks a fateful leap toward Zionism. The SWP’s embrace of Zionist arguments against the Palestinian struggle are the clearest and most extreme examples of the group’s steady rightward evolution. Unfortunately they are not an isolated case. A few other examples show the pattern.

For a number of years following the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the SWP refused to support the anti-war movement. It wrote article after article criticizing what it called the “middle class radicals” leading the movement while itself doing virtually nothing to oppose the war and occupation. It also repeatedly condemned acts of resistance by Iraqi fighters to the occupation of their country. More recently the SWP refused to support the Honduran people in their struggle for democracy. In Jun 2009 the Honduran army staged a coup d’état, overthrowing the elected government. President Manuel Zelaya had angered business leaders by raising the minimum wage. He had also alarmed Washington by joining the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Latin America, an alliance initiated by Venezuela and Cuba that conducts mutually favourable trade between Latin American countries, thereby weakening the US grip on the continent. In Honduras workers, peasants, aboriginal people and other toilers mobilized in large numbers against the coup, which they understood was a blatant attack on their democratic rights. Their struggle continued for months, while Cuba, Venezuela, and much of Latin America did all they could to restore constitutional rule in Honduras. The Honduran masses resisted valiantly but ultimately were defeated by the combined power of Washington, the Honduran army and the local oligarchy. The SWP urged its followers to remain aloof from the struggle against the coup, which it characterized as “part of the infighting between wings of the capitalist class.” The Jul 20 issue of Militant also falsely asserted that constitutional procedures had been followed after the army “arrested” the president. An editorial in the next issue declared that “the interests of Honduran workers and farmers do not lie in whether Zelaya returns to the presidency.” It warned against “the false claim by middle-class radicals that Zelaya’s ouster was a ‘right-wing’ coup ‘made in USA.’” The editorial also attacked ALBA.

In Aug 2008, Georgia provoked a war with Russia, attempting to reclaim territories then under Russian protection. Georgia was an ally of the US, which had provided it with $277m in military aid since 1997. It had troops in Iraq serving under US command. Soon after the war with Russia broke out, the US sent additional supplies to Georgia. It also mobilized international public opinion against Russia. The Militant’s coverage echoed the imperialist propaganda. “Russian troops out of Georgia!” was the title of an editorial in the Sep 1 2008 issue, which characterized the fighting as a Russian invasion and occupation. In Sep 2005, a Danish newspaper published blatantly anti-Islamic caricatures, provoking massive protests by Muslims in many countries. The SWP turned its back on their cry for dignity and equality and their outrage against the xenophobic intent of the cartoons’ publishers. The Militant joined in the reactionary uproar against the demonstrations, smearing them as “often violent protests.” The SWP refused to recognize that the protests embodied the fight against both national oppression and imperialism. This is a pattern of repeatedly bending to imperialist pressure in times of crisis. It is a disgraceful course of conduct for a group that calls itself socialist, particularly one located in the US, the heartland of imperialism.

Venezuelan Pres Chavez announced on Sunday that he will not allow the newly-nominated US envoy to take up his post in Caracas. He said Obama should “look for another candidate” to replace Larry Palmer, whose nomination as ambassador to Venezuela is pending confirmation by the US senate. Chavez said during his weekly radio and television show Alo Presidente:

How can you think I’d accept this gentleman coming here? You’d best withdraw him, Obama. Don’t insist, I’m asking you. He disqualified himself by breaking all the rules of diplomacy. He can’t come here as ambassador. The best thing the US government can do is to look for another candidate.

Palmer last month voiced concern about Cuba’s growing influence in the Venezuelan military. He said the country’s military had “considerably low” morale and professionalism. In written answers during a senate confirmation hearing, Palmer also said there were “clear ties” between leftist Colombian rebels and Chavez’s government. On Thursday the Venezuelan foreign ministry protested Palmer’s statements as “interference and interventionism” and asked the US for an explanation before he was confirmed in his post. Palmer has served as ambassador in Honduras and chargé d’affaires in Ecuador.

A LeftViews article by Art Young | August 6, 2010 | Excerpts

In the first action of its kind in the United States, on June 20 more than 700 unionists and community activists picketed at several entrances to the Port of Oakland, California, protesting the arrival of an Israeli-owned vessel. Two shifts of members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union refused to cross the picket line. The cargo was unloaded only 24 hours later, after the picket lines were lifted.

The protest was organized by the Labor / Community Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian People, an ad-hoc coalition of local labour, Palestine solidarity, and social justice groups. Several hundred unionists responded to the call of the San Francisco and Alameda County labour councils and other unionists to support the action.[7] Statements of support for the action were issued by the Oakland Education Association, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions and the Cuban labour federation, the Cuban Workers Central, among others.[8]

Opposing the boycott

One group that did not support the action in Oakland was the U.S. Socialist Workers Party. The SWP is opposed to boycotting Israel. It reaffirmed this stand at its national conference a few days before the picket in Oakland.

The group first elaborated its position on the Palestinian struggle in a series of articles that appeared during the first half of 2009 in The Militant, a weekly newspaper that expresses its views. These articles argued that:

1. There is no Zionist movement today.
2. Anti-Zionism is a cover for anti-Semitism.
3. Israel’s rulers plan to give up control of most of the West Bank and Gaza.
4. Israel is not an apartheid state.
5. The BDS campaign is not only wrong. It is anti-Semitic.
6. The democratic, secular Palestine that the SWP envisages must grant a special right of immigration to the Jews of the world.[9]

This line of argument places the SWP in the Zionist camp. To be sure, the SWP opposes Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, but the thrust of its argument is directed against the solidarity movement. It endorses the slanders advanced by Israel’s supporters that anti-Zionism in general and the BDS movement in particular are anti-Semitic. The group also supports a privileged position for Jews in Palestine.[10]

A complete reversal on Zionism

These positions represent a breathtaking turnabout for a group that for decades unconditionally supported the Palestinian people and thoroughly opposed Zionism.

The SWP’s previous position on these questions was explained in a resolution it adopted at its 1971 convention. The opening paragraphs of that resolution read:

The Socialist Workers Party gives unconditional support to the national liberation struggles of the Arab peoples against imperialism, that is, we support all these struggles regardless of their current leaderships. Our foremost task in implementing such support is to educate and mobilize the American people against U. S. imperialist actions in the Mideast.

Israel, created in accordance with the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state, could be set up in the Arab East only at the expense of the indigenous peoples of the area. Such a state could come into existence and maintain itself only by relying upon imperialism. Israel is a settler-colonialist and expansionist capitalist state maintained principally by American imperialism, hostile to the surrounding Arab peoples….

The struggle of the Palestinian people against their oppression and for self-determination has taken the form of a struggle to destroy the state of Israel. The currently expressed goal of this struggle is the establishment of a democratic, secular Palestine. We give unconditional support to this struggle of the Palestinians for self-determination….

Our revolutionary socialist opposition to Zionism and the Israeli state has nothing in common with anti-Semitism, as the pro-Zionist propagandists maliciously and falsely assert. Anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish racism used to justify and reinforce oppression of the Jewish people….

Zionism is not, as it claims, a national liberation movement. Zionism is a political movement that developed for the purpose of establishing a settler-colonialist state in Palestine and that rules the bourgeois society headed by the Israeli state today in alliance with world imperialism. [11]

It is immediately apparent that what the SWP says today is the polar opposite of these positions. Contrary to Marxist practice, the SWP has neither acknowledged the reversal nor explained why in its view it is necessary.

Zionism and anti-Zionism

The first indication that the SWP had changed its position on these questions came in an article in the March 2, 2009 issue of The Militant. The article quoted SWP leader Norton Sandler as follows:

“Class-conscious workers should drop the term Zionism,’ in the current context, Sandler added. ‘There is no Zionist movement today. The reality is, it has become an epithet, not a scientific description; a synonym for ‘Jew’ that helps fuel Jew-hatred, which will rise as the capitalist crisis deepens.”[12]

Sandler’s claim that the Zionist movement had vanished from the face of the earth was so at odds with current reality and with the SWP’s previous position that it was challenged by some readers of the paper. Sandler’s reply appeared in the April 13 issue.

I made these remarks at a January 31 public meeting in London. I was not addressing the history of the Zionist movement, or how the state of Israel came into being as an expansionist colonial-settler state. Zionism in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was a bourgeois political current contending with the communist movement for the allegiance of workers who were Jewish. Israel was established in 1948, more than six decades ago. There is no Zionist movement today and there hasn’t been for a long time.[13]

An end to Israeli expansionism?

In his April 13 article Sandler also expresses the view that the expansion of Israel’s borders is drawing to a close. “The majority of the Israeli ruling class has given up the dream of a ‘Greater Israel.’ They are forced to opt for what they consider the only pragmatic solution — maintaining a majority Jewish state within borders of their own choosing. This is hardly the Zionist movement’s dream of an Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.” Other articles published between February and June 2009 make the same claim.

Here Sandler and the SWP merely echo the Israeli rulers who never tire of claiming that their only aim is an Israel with defensible borders living in peace next to a Palestinian state. This has been Tel Aviv’s mantra ever since it occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 war. Israel’s actions reveal a different plan. Seen from the Palestinian perspective, history since 1967 has been one of unrelenting Israeli expansion onto Palestinian land and continual ethnic cleansing by the Zionist state. Approximately half a million Israeli settlers now live in the occupied West Bank, some nine percent of the Jewish Israeli population. The settlements, the wall, the Jewish-only road network, the draining of the water resources — these and many other features of the occupation are turning the West Bank into a series of isolated and dependent cantons. The settlement enterprise has not halted for a moment, not even during the recent phony temporary “settlement freeze” declared by Netanyahu under pressure from Obama. Meanwhile Israel maintains an iron grip on the Gaza Strip.

“Greater Israel,” Israeli rule from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, has been the reality for more than forty years — that is, for more than two thirds of Israel’s existence. During this period Israel has steadily strengthened its hold on the conquered territories although the Palestinians have resisted tenaciously and scored some successes along the way .

The reality of “Greater Israel” that Palestinians face every day is documented in countless reports from the United Nations and many other organizations, including Israeli human rights groups. But Zionist propaganda appears to carry more weight with the SWP.

No Israeli apartheid?

Another major article appeared in the April 6, 2009 issue of The Militant. “Israel boycotts and divestment serve as cover for anti-Semitism” was written by Paul Pederson, a member of the paper’s staff. He stated:

There are sweeping differences between the apartheid regime in South Africa and the capitalist regime in Israel—in terms of organization of labor, the character of the regimes, and the historical conditions under which they emerged. The attempt to paint them as the same simply obfuscates the real social and class relations in Israel and the tasks facing the toilers there to chart a revolutionary course forward. Applied to Israel the term “apartheid” is simply an epithet, rather than a scientific description of a social structure.

Perhaps the most glaring difference between the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the fight for Palestinian national rights today is the existence of a revolutionary organization—the ANC under Nelson Mandela—in the case of South Africa.[15]

The first sentence asserts that “there are sweeping differences between” South Africa and Israel. This is an empty platitude. There are also sweeping differences between capitalist rule in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. But there are also fundamental similarities, just as there are in the case of apartheid-era South Africa and Israel.

The second sentence is another platitude, asserting that the false comparison leads to false conclusions.

The third sentence states the SWP’s political position — Israel is not an apartheid state.

This is a straightforward question of fact: is the Israeli system of rule fundamentally similar to the apartheid system in South Africa? Does it meet the common-sense or legal understanding of the term?

Israel was established in 1948 by the massacre and expulsion of most of the native inhabitants, who generations later still cannot return to their homes. It practices systematic discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and structural discrimination against these Palestinians is enshrined in its laws and the entire legal apparatus. In addition, Israel rules over millions of other Palestinians in the occupied territories through a combination of measures that ultimately rest on its military control. These inhabitants are systematically deprived of their land, their water, and other resources to the benefit of Jewish Israelis. The Jewish settlers who live on Palestinian land enjoy full rights of citizenship while Palestinians are denied basic human rights.

This, in a nutshell, is the Israeli system of rule over the Palestinians. It bears a striking similarity to the system of apartheid in South Africa even if it differs in many particulars. For a more detailed analysis see “Not an analogy: Israel and the crime of apartheid” by Hazem Jamjoum.[16]

In the course of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, large numbers of people around the world came to understand that apartheid is a crime against humanity that must be eradicated wherever it might appear. In 1973 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, which specifies that a regime commits apartheid when it institutionalizes discrimination to create and maintain the domination of one racial group over another. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also defines apartheid as a crime. This statute came into effect in 2002, long after the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Of course the experts on what is apartheid, and what it is not, live in South Africa. It is no accident that many unions and solidarity organizations in South Africa have endorsed the idea that Israel is an apartheid state.[17]

One of the most thorough and authoritative studies of Israeli apartheid in the occupied territories was published by the South African Human Rights Council in May 2009. The 302-page report by an international panel of experts concluded “that Israel, since 1967, has been the belligerent Occupying Power in the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories], and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.”[18]

Today’s solidarity activists draw strength from this understanding of the crime of apartheid. They look at Israel in light of the experience gained in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and they are inspired by the victory that was won there. Their explanations of the Israeli apartheid system have been convincing and have helped to build the movement.

Returning to the article cited above, only one element of the argument remains. Israel is not an apartheid state, Pederson states, because the Palestinian leadership is not revolutionary.

It is, to say the least, rather bizarre to assert that the nature of the Palestinian leadership determines the nature of the Israeli state. Nevertheless, the assertion is revealing. It expresses how the SWP has come to condition its support for struggles against imperialism on its view of the leadership of such struggles. This provides a handy excuse for refusing to support them. In 2003 the SWP refused to support the large demonstrations against the war in Iraq. Its Canadian sister organization expelled supporters who argued that Marxists had a duty to defend the Iraqi people against imperialism by taking concrete action against the war. The SWP justified its abstention from the struggle by pointing to the bloody and reactionary record of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Over the last few years the SWP has adopted a similar approach toward the Palestinian struggle.

Suffice it to say that this has more in common with dead-end sectarianism than it does with Marxism. The SWP used to understand this quite well. The 1971 resolution cited earlier begins with these words: “The Socialist Workers Party gives unconditional support to the national liberation struggles of the Arab peoples against imperialism, that is, we support all these struggles regardless of their current leaderships.”

Israel boycott, a growing and dynamic movement

As noted earlier, the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel BDS has made great strides in the past few years. BDS is now one of the most dynamic and fastest growing components of the international movement in solidarity with Palestine.[19]

Israel’s rulers recognize the power and potential of the boycott movement.

On July 14 the Israeli Knesset parliament approved the initial reading of a bill designed to punish residents of Israel who promote boycotts of the state or Israeli products. If enacted into law it will allow punitive fines to be levied against such persons. The bill is primarily aimed at Palestinians living in the West Bank and the small but growing number of Israeli citizens, Jewish and Palestinian, who form the “Boycott From Within” movement supporting the international boycott. In a speech to the Knesset Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the Boycott From Within movement as a “national scandal.” Neve Gordon, a professor at Ben Gurion University who endorsed an academic boycott of Israel last year, has received death threats. Gideon Sa’ar, the minister of education, has threatened to punish any lecturer or institution that supports a boycott of Israel.

In February the REUT Institute, one of Israel’s most influential think tanks, published a report in which it warned of a dangerous decline in Israel’s international support. It urged the government to take more effective action against the forces promoting the “delegitimization” of the state of Israel, including the international BDS movement.[20] The institute devoted the June 10 issue of its magazine to a detailed analysis of the movement, noting that:

the damage caused by the BDS Movement lies in its promotion of delegitimization towards Israel through creating the comparison — whether implicit or explicit — between Israel and the former apartheid South African regime. Therefore, BDS should be viewed first and foremost as a tool to brand Israel as a ‘pariah state’ with the ultimate aim of undermining the legitimacy of its political structure.[21]

Although only five years old, the boycott movement has scored some notable successes, winning increasing support in many quarters. National trade union federations in South Africa, Ireland, Scotland, Quebec, and elsewhere have endorsed the boycott, as have numerous unions in various countries. On July 22 the annual conference of Unite, the largest union in Britain, with two million members, voted unanimously in favour of a complete boycott of Israeli goods and services. Earlier this year Israeli Apartheid Week, an educational activity promoting BDS, took place on more than 50 campuses worldwide. The number of participating campuses has grown steadily from year to year.

Grass-roots organizing has been particularly effective in Europe, where a divestment campaign forced the French multinational Veolia to withdraw from a major transportation project in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israeli businesses have acknowledged a decline in their sales because European consumers are boycotting Israeli agricultural products.

In the United States and elsewhere, the movement is increasing its pressure on pension funds and university endowments to divest from companies such as Lockheed Martin, ITT, United Technologies, General Electric, Caterpillar and Motorola that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands while helping it carry out its war crimes. On June 2 students at Evergreen State College in Washington state voted by a large majority to demand that the college’s foundation divest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation and that the college ban the use of Caterpillar equipment on campus. Rachel Corrie, an Evergreen student, was killed by a weaponized Caterpillar bulldozer as she attempted to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has been a particularly vocal supporter of the college divestment campaigns in the United States.

An appeal from Palestine

The BDS movement responds to an appeal for solidarity issued on July 9, 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian organizations, including trade unions, political and social organizations, and women’s and youth groups. The signatories represent the three components of the Palestinian nation — refugees, Palestinians living under in the occupied territories, and Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The appeal from Palestine said:

We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.

These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. resolution 194.[22]

The BDS call does not advocate a particular political solution to the conflict. Its approach is to develop a grass-roots mass political campaign in favour of these three basic pillars of human rights for the Palestinian people. This approach serves not only to overcome divisions among the Palestinians, it also stands on the universal principles of human rights that have animated the struggle against racism in South Africa, the United States, and elsewhere.

The movement took another step forward in 2008 with the formation of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, a broadly representative group of Palestinians that serves as the leadership of the international BDS campaign.

The rapid growth of the movement can be attributed to a number of factors: its origin in Palestine; the unity among Palestinians that it expresses; its new, rights-based approach to the struggle; its consistent anti-racism which includes opposing Islamophobia and anti-Semitism ; and the movement’s Palestinian leadership. The movement also offers many opportunities for grass-roots organizing of boycott and divestment campaigns as well as educational activities. As it has grown the movement has acquired experience and developed an increasing number of local leaders. It has also become more diverse, developing targeted academic and cultural boycotts of Israel similar to those used in the struggle against South African apartheid.

Israel boycott, ‘a cover for anti-Semitism’?

These developments have not gone unnoticed at the SWP’s headquarters. The group has taken up the cudgels against the boycott movement, waging a sustained campaign against it in the pages of its newspaper. Leaders of the group have denounced BDS in meetings organized to build the solidarity movement, from Israeli Apartheid Week to the recent U.S. Social Forum.

The SWP’s campaign is fundamentally dishonest. The Militant has not reported any of the basic facts about the boycott movement. The SWP has also chosen to ignore the appeal of Omar Barghouti, a leader of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, who wrote in a recent article that:

“genuine solidarity movements recognize and follow the lead of the oppressed, who are not passive objects but active, rational subjects that are asserting their aspirations and rights as well as their strategy to realize them.”[23]

In the SWP’s eyes BDS is “a cover for anti-Semitism.” The article by Paul Pederson cited previously said this:

In the absence of any revolutionary perspective, campaigns such as the anti-Israel boycott can appear to be a radical substitute. But, as the crisis of capitalism deepens, the “anti-Israel” character of these campaigns is simply a modern form of Jew-hatred. All who genuinely support the battle for Palestinian national rights must oppose it.

Not to be outdone, in his reply to critical readers in the next issue of The Militant Norton Sandler compared advocates of BDS to the Nazis:

In London earlier this year the Marks & Spencer department stores and Starbucks coffee shops were targets of protests over the Israeli assault on Gaza. These businesses are supposedly Jewish-owned. … Jewish businesses were a prime target of the Nazis in Germany after 1933. Why aren’t U.S.-owned businesses targets during protests against Washington’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars?[24]

The SWP’s allegation that the boycott movement is anti-Semitic and akin to Hitler’s targeting of Jews in Germany is beneath contempt. It assumes that readers of The Militant will not try to ascertain the facts for themselves. But facts are more powerful than such slanders, and the facts about the BDS movement are readily available.

For example, The Militant repeatedly alleges that boycott activities in the United Kingdom target the Marks & Spencer department store chain because the company’s owners are Jewish. Like virtually everything else the SWP writes about the BDS movement, this is untrue. The Boycott Israeli Goods website lists seven major retailers in the U.K. that sell Israeli products. Each of them has been the target of pro-Palestinian protests in recent years. According to the website, Marks & Spencer has deep historical ties to the state of Israel. Also, “in 1998, Sir Richard Greenbury, then CEO of Marks & Spencer, received the Jubilee Award from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In 2000, the Jerusalem Report stated that ‘M&S supports Israel with $233 million in trade each year.’”[25]

Supporters of the SWP might want to reflect on the fact that the group’s campaign against boycotting Israel places them to the right of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship in the U.S., which recently endorsed boycott, divestment and sanctions, and the Methodist Church of Great Britain, which has called on its followers to boycott all products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.[26]

A fateful leap toward Zionism

Already well on its way toward the Zionist camp, the SWP took another fateful leap at its national conference this June. The Militant reported that the conference featured a series of classes.

One on ‘World Capitalist Crisis, Israel, and the Roots of Jew Hatred’ took up the need for a multinational, working-class leadership to fight for a democratic, secular Palestine. Communists would fight for Palestine to be a refuge for all Jews facing persecution. Conference participants discussed how the call for a boycott of Israeli products is not a road toward winning self-determination for the Palestinians, but a dangerous concession to anti-Semitism.[27]

This passage does more than repeat the familiar slander against the boycott movement. It introduces a new and far-reaching change in the SWP’s program. Its call for a democratic, secular Palestine now has a distinctly Zionist flavour — Palestine must be a homeland for world Jewry.

This has several major implications.

For one thing, what is it about Palestine that makes it the proper destination for Jews who may feel the need to emigrate? Why not the United States, Canada, or Australia, much larger and wealthier countries? Religious Zionists believe that Palestine is the Holy Land and that God has granted the Jews the right to settle there. Secular Zionists advance other reasons. Both agree that the Palestinians must not obstruct Jewish immigration and colonisation. But what is the SWP’s reason for selecting Palestine for new waves of Jewish settlement?

Furthermore, the SWP appears to give little weight to the possibility that “Jews facing persecution” at some point in the future might choose to defend their rights in the countries where they reside, struggling alongside the oppressed and exploited of those countries. It is Zionism, not Marxism, that insists on the need for a sanctuary for Jews in Israel/Palestine.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, the SWP’s vision for Palestine fails to mention the Palestinian refugees, victims of Israel’s wars. Many of them live in dismal refugee camps near Israel’s borders. According to Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees. One in three refugees in the world is Palestinian.[28] Any settlement that deprives them of their right to return home, to receive redress for their dispossession and to live as full citizens in the land of their choice is an unjust settlement that will not endure.[29]

While barring all Palestinian refugees, Israel accords automatic citizenship to immigrants who are Jewish. The SWP appears to want to maintain this arrangement in some form in the new state that they envisage. Whatever else one might say about it, this state would be neither democratic nor secular.

Although a logical extension of the positions first developed in early 2009, the SWP’s discovery of Palestine as a homeland for the Jews and its silence on the Palestinians’ right of return marks a fateful leap toward Zionism.

Bending to imperialist pressure

The SWP’s embrace of Zionist arguments against the Palestinian struggle are the clearest and most extreme examples of the group’s steady rightward evolution. Unfortunately they are not an isolated case. A few other examples show the pattern.

For a number of years following the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the SWP refused to support the anti-war movement. It wrote article after article criticizing what it called the “middle class radicals” leading the movement while itself doing virtually nothing to oppose the war and occupation. It also repeatedly condemned acts of resistance by Iraqi fighters to the occupation of their country.

More recently the SWP refused to support the Honduran people in their struggle for democracy.

In June 2009 the Honduran army staged a coup d’état, overthrowing the elected government. President Manuel Zelaya had angered business leaders by raising the minimum wage. He had also alarmed Washington by joining the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Latin America ALBA , an alliance initiated by Venezuela and Cuba that conducts mutually favourable trade between Latin American countries, thereby weakening the U.S. grip on the continent. In Honduras workers, peasants, aboriginal people and other toilers mobilized in large numbers against the coup, which they understood was a blatant attack on their democratic rights. Their struggle continued for months, while Cuba, Venezuela, and much of Latin America did all they could to restore constitutional rule in Honduras. The Honduran masses resisted valiantly but ultimately were defeated by the combined power of Washington, the Honduran army and the local oligarchy.

The SWP urged its followers to remain aloof from the struggle against the coup, which it characterized as “part of the infighting between wings of the capitalist class.” The July 20 issue of The Militant also falsely asserted that constitutional procedures had been followed after the army “arrested” the president.[30] An editorial in the next issue declared that “the interests of Honduran workers and farmers do not lie in whether Zelaya returns to the presidency.” It warned against “the false claim by middle-class radicals that Zelaya’s ouster was a ‘right-wing’ coup ‘made in USA.’” The editorial also attacked ALBA.[31]

In August 2008 Georgia provoked a war with Russia, attempting to reclaim territories then under Russian protection. Georgia was an ally of the U.S., which had provided it with $277 million in military aid since 1997. It had troops in Iraq serving under U.S. command. Soon after the war with Russia broke out, the U.S. sent additional supplies to Georgia. It also mobilized international public opinion against Russia. The Militant’s coverage echoed the imperialist propaganda. “Russian troops out of Georgia!” was the title of an editorial in the September 1, 2008 issue, which characterized the fighting as a Russian invasion and occupation.[32]

In September 2005 a Danish newspaper published blatantly anti-Islamic caricatures, provoking massive protests by Muslims in many countries. The SWP turned its back on their cry for dignity and equality and their outrage against the xenophobic intent of the cartoons’ publishers. The Militant joined in the reactionary uproar against the demonstrations, smearing them as “often violent protests.”[33] The SWP refused to recognize that the protests embodied the fight against both national oppression and imperialism.

This is a pattern of repeatedly bending to imperialist pressure in times of crisis. It is a disgraceful course of conduct for a group that calls itself socialist, particularly one located in the United States, the heartland of imperialism.

———

[7] http://www.laborforpalestine.net/wp/2010/07/10/blockade-dockers-respond-to-israel-flotilla-massacre-and-gaza-siege/; and http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11348.shtml⁶

[8] http://www.laborforpalestine.net/wp/2010/06/19/support-pours-in-for-zim-lines-picket/⁷

[9] This position was first expressed in June 2010.

[10] A Zionist blogger welcomed the SWP’s support. “Communists Against Boycotting Israel,” http://www.thejudeosphere.com/?p=1388⁸

[11] http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp-us/24thconvention/zionism.htm⁹. Also available as a pamphlet by Gus Horowitz, Israel and the Arab Revolution, from amazon.com and pathfinderpress.com.

[12] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7308/730857.html¹⁰

[13] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7314/731436.html¹¹

[14] Estimates vary widely. This estimate is provided by the U.S.-based Center for Defense Information, http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=2965&programID=32¹²

[15] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7313/731336.html¹³

[16] http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10440.shtml¹⁴

[17] See, for example, the statement by the South African Municipal Workers’ Union quoted earlier in this article. Many other examples could be cited.

[18] “Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law”, Executive Summary, p. 5. Links to Executive Summary and full report at http://www.hsrc.ac.za/Media_Release-378.phtml¹⁵.

[19] For more information on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, see “BDS: A Global Movement for Freedom & Justice” by Omar Barghouti http://al-shabaka.org/policy-brief/civil-society/bds-global-movement-freedom-justice¹⁶ and “Pro-Israel Lobby Alarmed by Growth of Boycott, Divestment Movement” by Art Young http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/462¹⁷

[20] “The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall” http://www.reut-institute.org/en/Publication.aspx?PublicationId=3769¹⁸

[21] “The BDS Movement Promotes Delegitimization of the State of Israel”, http://reut-institute.org/data/uploads/PDFVer/20100612%20ReViews%20-%20BDS%20Issue%2016_1.pdf¹⁹

[22] “Palestinian Civil Society Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel,” http://www.stopthewall.org/downloads/pdf/BDSEnglish.pdf²⁰

[23] Barghouti http://al-shabaka.org/policy-brief/civil-society/bds-global-movement-freedom-justice¹⁶

[24] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7314/731436.html¹¹. Emphasis added.

[25] http://www.bigcampaign.org/index.php?page=who_sells_israeli_goods²¹

[26] http://epfnational.org/action-groups/epfs-executive-council-statement-on-divestment-boycott-and-economic-sanctions-as-a-means-of-nonviolent-resistance/²² and http://www.methodist.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=opentogod.newsDetail&newsid=453²³

[27] http://www.themilitant.com/2010/7426/742650.html²⁴. Emphasis added.

[28] http://www.al-awda.org/faq-refugees.html²⁵

[29] The July 26, 2010 issue of The Militant published an excerpt from a report by the SWP’s central leader, Jack Barnes, in which he states that a new, revolutionary leadership in Palestine will be built around struggles on many fronts. Barnes provides a list of such progressive causes. He does not include the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. http://www.themilitant.com/2010/7428/742853.html²⁶

[30] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7327/732752.html²⁷

[31] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7328/732820.html²⁸

[32] http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7234/index.shtml²⁹

[33] “Socialists Must Oppose Anti-Muslim Bigotry” by Sandra Browne and Robert Johnson. http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=91

A REPLY TO THE U.S. SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY

A LeftViews article by Art Young

When Israeli commandos attacked the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters on May 31, murdered nine humanitarian aid workers and seized the cargo of badly needed supplies for Gaza, they touched off an international storm of outrage that continues to this day. The widespread anger has galvanized the international movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people, drawing in new forces and producing new initiatives.

Following the attack on the flotilla, Palestinian civil society issued an appeal to progressive forces around the world to redouble their solidarity efforts and to strengthen the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign BDS against Israel. On June 7 the major Palestinian trade union federations appealed to dock workers to refuse to handle Israeli cargo. They said:

Gaza today has become the test of our universal morality and our common humanity. During the South African anti-apartheid struggle, the world was inspired by the brave and principled actions of dockworkers unions who refused to handle South African cargo, contributing significantly to the ultimate fall of apartheid. Today, we call on you, dockworkers unions of the world, to do the same against Israel’s occupation and apartheid. This is the most effective form of solidarity to end injustice and uphold universal human rights.[1]

Workers in a number of countries responded to this call.

The Swedish Dockers’ Union, which had supported the Freedom Flotilla, declared a one-week blockade on Israeli goods and ships beginning on June 23. The union also called for “a general blockade of Israeli goods until the rights of the Palestinian people are guaranteed and the blockade of Gaza is lifted.”[2]

On June 3 the Congress of South African Trade Unions called for “greater support for the international boycott, divestment and sanction campaign against Israel, which is proving again to be violent and ruthless in attacking and murdering those who stand in its way. We urge all South Africans to refuse to buy or handle any goods from Israel or have any dealings with Israeli businesses.”[3]

In a statement issued the same day, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union, a COSATU affiliate, said, “we salute the Swedish dock workers for their blockade of all Israeli ships. We call for an escalation of the boycott of Israeli goods and call upon our fellow trade unionists not to handle them. We call upon our members not to allow any Israeli ship to dock or unload in any South African port.”[4] In February 2009, following the Israeli assault on Gaza, members of SATWU refused to unload cargo from an Israeli ship in Durban.

The South African Municipal Workers’ Union, another COSATU affiliate, declared that it would “immediately work towards making every municipality in South Africa … an Apartheid Israel free zone.” It said that it would “engage every single municipality to ensure that there are no commercial, academic, cultural, sporting or other linkages whatsoever with the Israeli regime.”[5]

In Turkey the dock workers’ union declared that it would “boycott ships from Israel, which has become a machine of death and torture. In this framework, no member of our union will give service to Israel in any docks where we are organized. The Liman-Is union invites all unions and NGO’s organized in our country and throughout the world to join this boycott and protest campaign.”[6] Unions in the Port of Kochi Cochin in India also refused to handle Israeli cargo.

In the first action of its kind in the United States, on June 20 more than 700 unionists and community activists picketed at several entrances to the Port of Oakland, California, protesting the arrival of an Israeli-owned vessel. Two shifts of members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union refused to cross the picket line. The cargo was unloaded only 24 hours later, after the picket lines were lifted.

The protest was organized by the Labor / Community Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian People, an ad-hoc coalition of local labour, Palestine solidarity, and social justice groups. Several hundred unionists responded to the call of the San Francisco and Alameda County labour councils and other unionists to support the action.[7] Statements of support for the action were issued by the Oakland Education Association, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions and the Cuban labour federation, the Cuban Workers Central, among others.[8]

Opposing the boycott

One group that did not support the action in Oakland was the U.S. Socialist Workers Party. The SWP is opposed to boycotting Israel. It reaffirmed this stand at its national conference a few days before the picket in Oakland.

The group first elaborated its position on the Palestinian struggle in a series of articles that appeared during the first half of 2009 in The Militant, a weekly newspaper that expresses its views. These articles argued that:

1. There is no Zionist movement today.
2. Anti-Zionism is a cover for anti-Semitism.
3. Israel’s rulers plan to give up control of most of the West Bank and Gaza.
4. Israel is not an apartheid state.
5. The BDS campaign is not only wrong. It is anti-Semitic.
6. The democratic, secular Palestine that the SWP envisages must grant a special right of immigration to the Jews of the world.[9]

This line of argument places the SWP in the Zionist camp. To be sure, the SWP opposes Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, but the thrust of its argument is directed against the solidarity movement. It endorses the slanders advanced by Israel’s supporters that anti-Zionism in general and the BDS movement in particular are anti-Semitic. The group also supports a privileged position for Jews in Palestine.[10]

A complete reversal on Zionism

These positions represent a breathtaking turnabout for a group that for decades unconditionally supported the Palestinian people and thoroughly opposed Zionism.

The SWP’s previous position on these questions was explained in a resolution it adopted at its 1971 convention. The opening paragraphs of that resolution read:

The Socialist Workers Party gives unconditional support to the national liberation struggles of the Arab peoples against imperialism, that is, we support all these struggles regardless of their current leaderships. Our foremost task in implementing such support is to educate and mobilize the American people against U. S. imperialist actions in the Mideast.

Israel, created in accordance with the Zionist goal of establishing a Jewish state, could be set up in the Arab East only at the expense of the indigenous peoples of the area. Such a state could come into existence and maintain itself only by relying upon imperialism. Israel is a settler-colonialist and expansionist capitalist state maintained principally by American imperialism, hostile to the surrounding Arab peoples….

The struggle of the Palestinian people against their oppression and for self-determination has taken the form of a struggle to destroy the state of Israel. The currently expressed goal of this struggle is the establishment of a democratic, secular Palestine. We give unconditional support to this struggle of the Palestinians for self-determination….

Our revolutionary socialist opposition to Zionism and the Israeli state has nothing in common with anti-Semitism, as the pro-Zionist propagandists maliciously and falsely assert. Anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish racism used to justify and reinforce oppression of the Jewish people….

Zionism is not, as it claims, a national liberation movement. Zionism is a political movement that developed for the purpose of establishing a settler-colonialist state in Palestine and that rules the bourgeois society headed by the Israeli state today in alliance with world imperialism. [11]

It is immediately apparent that what the SWP says today is the polar opposite of these positions. Contrary to Marxist practice, the SWP has neither acknowledged the reversal nor explained why in its view it is necessary.

Zionism and anti-Zionism

The first indication that the SWP had changed its position on these questions came in an article in the March 2, 2009 issue of The Militant. The article quoted SWP leader Norton Sandler as follows:

“Class-conscious workers should drop the term Zionism,’ in the current context, Sandler added. ‘There is no Zionist movement today. The reality is, it has become an epithet, not a scientific description; a synonym for ‘Jew’ that helps fuel Jew-hatred, which will rise as the capitalist crisis deepens.”[12]

Sandler’s claim that the Zionist movement had vanished from the face of the earth was so at odds with current reality and with the SWP’s previous position that it was challenged by some readers of the paper. Sandler’s reply appeared in the April 13 issue.

I made these remarks at a January 31 public meeting in London. I was not addressing the history of the Zionist movement, or how the state of Israel came into being as an expansionist colonial-settler state. Zionism in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was a bourgeois political current contending with the communist movement for the allegiance of workers who were Jewish. Israel was established in 1948, more than six decades ago. There is no Zionist movement today and there hasn’t been for a long time.[13]

Sandler’s historical survey evades the challenge posed by the readers. He merely repeats his assertion of the non-existence of Zionism today and “for a long time,” as though the repetition is proof enough.

This claim is simply ludicrous.

Zionism — promoting the existence of an exclusive Jewish state — is a political movement that transcends religious or ethnic factors.

As the SWP’s 1971 resolution states, Zionism is the ruling ideology of the Israeli state. The founding principles of that state proclaim that it is a Jewish state — meaning that it is a state that claims to be the homeland for the Jews of the world and whose Jewish citizens enjoy privileges denied to other inhabitants. Israel is the dominant military power by far in the Middle East, thanks in no small measure to the support it receives from Washington. Israel’s ruling Zionists command an arsenal that includes between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads.[14]

Ever since the Balfour Declaration of 1917, the Western powers have favoured the dispossession of the Palestinian people, first through massive Jewish immigration to Palestine and subsequently through their support of the Jewish settler state. They have maintained this policy for nearly a hundred years because it was — and is — in the interests of these powers to promote the existence of an ethnically defined Jewish state, with special privileges for Jews, as a divisive force in opposition to the national liberation struggles of the peoples of the Middle East. That’s why President Barack Obama and Prime Ministers Stephen Harper and David Cameron are as committed to Zionism as Benjamin Netanyahu.

Zionism is also a highly organized and influential international movement.

North America is home to many prominent Zionist organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee AIPAC , the Anti-Defamation League, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, B’nai B’rith, the Zionist Organization of America, the Canada-Israel Committee and the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy. Right-wing Christian Zionists also actively advocate and raise funds for Israel. Supporters of human rights for Palestinians confront organized Zionist opposition every step of the way, from charges of anti-Semitism to hostile picket lines outside public meetings and disruptions during meetings, often organized by the vigilante Jewish Defence League.

In all these cases, Israel advocacy and support is based on Zionism — the idea that Israel must remain a Jewish state.

In the March 2, 2009 article quoted above, Sandler and the SWP allege that it is anti-Semitic to oppose Zionism. Their logic is rather peculiar since it hinges on the SWP’s denial that Zionism exists. But the conclusion is all too familiar. It is the common coin of most defenders of Israel and its policies. Here the SWP finds itself in the company of openly reactionary forces.

To be sure, Holocaust deniers, rightist politicians and others — actual Jew-haters — cloak their anti-Semitism in the garb of opposition to Zionism. The crimes of the Israeli state, which claims to represent all Jews, facilitate the propaganda of these hate-mongers.

But it is a reactionary slander to tar all opponents of Zionism as anti-Semites. It is a slander first and foremost against the Palestinian people who understand only too well what Zionism means and what it has done to them. For decades they have struggled heroically to overturn Zionism, and their struggle continues today. The vast majority of the world’s oppressed and exploited support them.

It is also a slander against the anti-Zionist wing of the Palestine solidarity movement, including the small but growing number of Jews who oppose Zionism. Forces far more powerful than the SWP have laboured mightily to make this label stick, but they have failed.

An end to Israeli expansionism?

In his April 13 article Sandler also expresses the view that the expansion of Israel’s borders is drawing to a close. “The majority of the Israeli ruling class has given up the dream of a ‘Greater Israel.’ They are forced to opt for what they consider the only pragmatic solution — maintaining a majority Jewish state within borders of their own choosing. This is hardly the Zionist movement’s dream of an Israel from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.” Other articles published between February and June 2009 make the same claim.

Here Sandler and the SWP merely echo the Israeli rulers who never tire of claiming that their only aim is an Israel with defensible borders living in peace next to a Palestinian state. This has been Tel Aviv’s mantra ever since it occupied Gaza and the West Bank in the 1967 war. Israel’s actions reveal a different plan. Seen from the Palestinian perspective, history since 1967 has been one of unrelenting Israeli expansion onto Palestinian land and continual ethnic cleansing by the Zionist state. Approximately half a million Israeli settlers now live in the occupied West Bank, some nine percent of the Jewish Israeli population. The settlements, the wall, the Jewish-only road network, the draining of the water resources — these and many other features of the occupation are turning the West Bank into a series of isolated and dependent cantons. The settlement enterprise has not halted for a moment, not even during the recent phony temporary “settlement freeze” declared by Netanyahu under pressure from Obama. Meanwhile Israel maintains an iron grip on the Gaza Strip.

“Greater Israel,” Israeli rule from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, has been the reality for more than forty years — that is, for more than two thirds of Israel’s existence. During this period Israel has steadily strengthened its hold on the conquered territories although the Palestinians have resisted tenaciously and scored some successes along the way .

The reality of “Greater Israel” that Palestinians face every day is documented in countless reports from the United Nations and many other organizations, including Israeli human rights groups. But Zionist propaganda appears to carry more weight with the SWP.

No Israeli apartheid?

Another major article appeared in the April 6, 2009 issue of The Militant. “Israel boycotts and divestment serve as cover for anti-Semitism” was written by Paul Pederson, a member of the paper’s staff. He stated:

There are sweeping differences between the apartheid regime in South Africa and the capitalist regime in Israel—in terms of organization of labor, the character of the regimes, and the historical conditions under which they emerged. The attempt to paint them as the same simply obfuscates the real social and class relations in Israel and the tasks facing the toilers there to chart a revolutionary course forward. Applied to Israel the term “apartheid” is simply an epithet, rather than a scientific description of a social structure.

Perhaps the most glaring difference between the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the fight for Palestinian national rights today is the existence of a revolutionary organization—the ANC under Nelson Mandela—in the case of South Africa.[15]

The first sentence asserts that “there are sweeping differences between” South Africa and Israel. This is an empty platitude. There are also sweeping differences between capitalist rule in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain. But there are also fundamental similarities, just as there are in the case of apartheid-era South Africa and Israel.

The second sentence is another platitude, asserting that the false comparison leads to false conclusions.

The third sentence states the SWP’s political position — Israel is not an apartheid state.

This is a straightforward question of fact: is the Israeli system of rule fundamentally similar to the apartheid system in South Africa? Does it meet the common-sense or legal understanding of the term?

Israel was established in 1948 by the massacre and expulsion of most of the native inhabitants, who generations later still cannot return to their homes. It practices systematic discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and structural discrimination against these Palestinians is enshrined in its laws and the entire legal apparatus. In addition, Israel rules over millions of other Palestinians in the occupied territories through a combination of measures that ultimately rest on its military control. These inhabitants are systematically deprived of their land, their water, and other resources to the benefit of Jewish Israelis. The Jewish settlers who live on Palestinian land enjoy full rights of citizenship while Palestinians are denied basic human rights.

This, in a nutshell, is the Israeli system of rule over the Palestinians. It bears a striking similarity to the system of apartheid in South Africa even if it differs in many particulars. For a more detailed analysis see “Not an analogy: Israel and the crime of apartheid” by Hazem Jamjoum.[16]

In the course of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, large numbers of people around the world came to understand that apartheid is a crime against humanity that must be eradicated wherever it might appear. In 1973 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid, which specifies that a regime commits apartheid when it institutionalizes discrimination to create and maintain the domination of one racial group over another. The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court also defines apartheid as a crime. This statute came into effect in 2002, long after the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Of course the experts on what is apartheid, and what it is not, live in South Africa. It is no accident that many unions and solidarity organizations in South Africa have endorsed the idea that Israel is an apartheid state.[17]

One of the most thorough and authoritative studies of Israeli apartheid in the occupied territories was published by the South African Human Rights Council in May 2009. The 302-page report by an international panel of experts concluded “that Israel, since 1967, has been the belligerent Occupying Power in the OPT [occupied Palestinian territories], and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.”[18]

Today’s solidarity activists draw strength from this understanding of the crime of apartheid. They look at Israel in light of the experience gained in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and they are inspired by the victory that was won there. Their explanations of the Israeli apartheid system have been convincing and have helped to build the movement.

Returning to the article cited above, only one element of the argument remains. Israel is not an apartheid state, Pederson states, because the Palestinian leadership is not revolutionary.

It is, to say the least, rather bizarre to assert that the nature of the Palestinian leadership determines the nature of the Israeli state. Nevertheless, the assertion is revealing. It expresses how the SWP has come to condition its support for struggles against imperialism on its view of the leadership of such struggles. This provides a handy excuse for refusing to support them. In 2003 the SWP refused to support the large demonstrations against the war in Iraq. Its Canadian sister organization expelled supporters who argued that Marxists had a duty to defend the Iraqi people against imperialism by taking concrete action against the war. The SWP justified its abstention from the struggle by pointing to the bloody and reactionary record of the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Over the last few years the SWP has adopted a similar approach toward the Palestinian struggle.

Suffice it to say that this has more in common with dead-end sectarianism than it does with Marxism. The SWP used to understand this quite well. The 1971 resolution cited earlier begins with these words: “The Socialist Workers Party gives unconditional support to the national liberation struggles of the Arab peoples against imperialism, that is, we support all these struggles regardless of their current leaderships.”

Israel boycott, a growing and dynamic movement

As noted earlier, the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel BDS has made great strides in the past few years. BDS is now one of the most dynamic and fastest growing components of the international movement in solidarity with Palestine.[19]

Israel’s rulers recognize the power and potential of the boycott movement.

On July 14 the Israeli Knesset parliament approved the initial reading of a bill designed to punish residents of Israel who promote boycotts of the state or Israeli products. If enacted into law it will allow punitive fines to be levied against such persons. The bill is primarily aimed at Palestinians living in the West Bank and the small but growing number of Israeli citizens, Jewish and Palestinian, who form the “Boycott From Within” movement supporting the international boycott. In a speech to the Knesset Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the Boycott From Within movement as a “national scandal.” Neve Gordon, a professor at Ben Gurion University who endorsed an academic boycott of Israel last year, has received death threats. Gideon Sa’ar, the minister of education, has threatened to punish any lecturer or institution that supports a boycott of Israel.

In February the REUT Institute, one of Israel’s most influential think tanks, published a report in which it warned of a dangerous decline in Israel’s international support. It urged the government to take more effective action against the forces promoting the “delegitimization” of the state of Israel, including the international BDS movement.[20] The institute devoted the June 10 issue of its magazine to a detailed analysis of the movement, noting that:

the damage caused by the BDS Movement lies in its promotion of delegitimization towards Israel through creating the comparison — whether implicit or explicit — between Israel and the former apartheid South African regime. Therefore, BDS should be viewed first and foremost as a tool to brand Israel as a ‘pariah state’ with the ultimate aim of undermining the legitimacy of its political structure.[21]

Although only five years old, the boycott movement has scored some notable successes, winning increasing support in many quarters. National trade union federations in South Africa, Ireland, Scotland, Quebec, and elsewhere have endorsed the boycott, as have numerous unions in various countries. On July 22 the annual conference of Unite, the largest union in Britain, with two million members, voted unanimously in favour of a complete boycott of Israeli goods and services. Earlier this year Israeli Apartheid Week, an educational activity promoting BDS, took place on more than 50 campuses worldwide. The number of participating campuses has grown steadily from year to year.

Grass-roots organizing has been particularly effective in Europe, where a divestment campaign forced the French multinational Veolia to withdraw from a major transportation project in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israeli businesses have acknowledged a decline in their sales because European consumers are boycotting Israeli agricultural products.

In the United States and elsewhere, the movement is increasing its pressure on pension funds and university endowments to divest from companies such as Lockheed Martin, ITT, United Technologies, General Electric, Caterpillar and Motorola that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands while helping it carry out its war crimes. On June 2 students at Evergreen State College in Washington state voted by a large majority to demand that the college’s foundation divest from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation and that the college ban the use of Caterpillar equipment on campus. Rachel Corrie, an Evergreen student, was killed by a weaponized Caterpillar bulldozer as she attempted to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip in 2003.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has been a particularly vocal supporter of the college divestment campaigns in the United States.

An appeal from Palestine

The BDS movement responds to an appeal for solidarity issued on July 9, 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian organizations, including trade unions, political and social organizations, and women’s and youth groups. The signatories represent the three components of the Palestinian nation — refugees, Palestinians living under in the occupied territories, and Palestinian citizens of Israel.

The appeal from Palestine said:

We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.

These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. resolution 194.[22]

The BDS call does not advocate a particular political solution to the conflict. Its approach is to develop a grass-roots mass political campaign in favour of these three basic pillars of human rights for the Palestinian people. This approach serves not only to overcome divisions among the Palestinians, it also stands on the universal principles of human rights that have animated the struggle against racism in South Africa, the United States, and elsewhere.

The movement took another step forward in 2008 with the formation of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, a broadly representative group of Palestinians that serves as the leadership of the international BDS campaign.

The rapid growth of the movement can be attributed to a number of factors: its origin in Palestine; the unity among Palestinians that it expresses; its new, rights-based approach to the struggle; its consistent anti-racism which includes opposing Islamophobia and anti-Semitism ; and the movement’s Palestinian leadership. The movement also offers many opportunities for grass-roots organizing of boycott and divestment campaigns as well as educational activities. As it has grown the movement has acquired experience and developed an increasing number of local leaders. It has also become more diverse, developing targeted academic and cultural boycotts of Israel similar to those used in the struggle against South African apartheid.

Israel boycott, ‘a cover for anti-Semitism’?

These developments have not gone unnoticed at the SWP’s headquarters. The group has taken up the cudgels against the boycott movement, waging a sustained campaign against it in the pages of its newspaper. Leaders of the group have denounced BDS in meetings organized to build the solidarity movement, from Israeli Apartheid Week to the recent U.S. Social Forum.

The SWP’s campaign is fundamentally dishonest. The Militant has not reported any of the basic facts about the boycott movement. The SWP has also chosen to ignore the appeal of Omar Barghouti, a leader of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, who wrote in a recent article that: “genuine solidarity movements recognize and follow the lead of the oppressed, who are not passive objects but active, rational subjects that are asserting their aspirations and rights as well as their strategy to realize them.”[23]

In the SWP’s eyes BDS is “a cover for anti-Semitism.” The article by Paul Pederson cited previously said this:

In the absence of any revolutionary perspective, campaigns such as the anti-Israel boycott can appear to be a radical substitute. But, as the crisis of capitalism deepens, the “anti-Israel” character of these campaigns is simply a modern form of Jew-hatred. All who genuinely support the battle for Palestinian national rights must oppose it.

Not to be outdone, in his reply to critical readers in the next issue of The Militant Norton Sandler compared advocates of BDS to the Nazis:

In London earlier this year the Marks & Spencer department stores and Starbucks coffee shops were targets of protests over the Israeli assault on Gaza. These businesses are supposedly Jewish-owned. … Jewish businesses were a prime target of the Nazis in Germany after 1933. Why aren’t U.S.-owned businesses targets during protests against Washington’s Iraq and Afghanistan wars?[24]

The SWP’s allegation that the boycott movement is anti-Semitic and akin to Hitler’s targeting of Jews in Germany is beneath contempt. It assumes that readers of The Militant will not try to ascertain the facts for themselves. But facts are more powerful than such slanders, and the facts about the BDS movement are readily available.

For example, The Militant repeatedly alleges that boycott activities in the United Kingdom target the Marks & Spencer department store chain because the company’s owners are Jewish. Like virtually everything else the SWP writes about the BDS movement, this is untrue. The Boycott Israeli Goods website lists seven major retailers in the U.K. that sell Israeli products. Each of them has been the target of pro-Palestinian protests in recent years. According to the website, Marks & Spencer has deep historical ties to the state of Israel. Also, “in 1998, Sir Richard Greenbury, then CEO of Marks & Spencer, received the Jubilee Award from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In 2000, the Jerusalem Report stated that ‘M&S supports Israel with $233 million in trade each year.’”[25]

Supporters of the SWP might want to reflect on the fact that the group’s campaign against boycotting Israel places them to the right of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship in the U.S., which recently endorsed boycott, divestment and sanctions, and the Methodist Church of Great Britain, which has called on its followers to boycott all products from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.[26]

A fateful leap toward Zionism

Already well on its way toward the Zionist camp, the SWP took another fateful leap at its national conference this June. The Militant reported that the conference featured a series of classes.

One on ‘World Capitalist Crisis, Israel, and the Roots of Jew Hatred’ took up the need for a multinational, working-class leadership to fight for a democratic, secular Palestine. Communists would fight for Palestine to be a refuge for all Jews facing persecution. Conference participants discussed how the call for a boycott of Israeli products is not a road toward winning self-determination for the Palestinians, but a dangerous concession to anti-Semitism.[27]

This passage does more than repeat the familiar slander against the boycott movement. It introduces a new and far-reaching change in the SWP’s program. Its call for a democratic, secular Palestine now has a distinctly Zionist flavour — Palestine must be a homeland for world Jewry.

This has several major implications.

For one thing, what is it about Palestine that makes it the proper destination for Jews who may feel the need to emigrate? Why not the United States, Canada, or Australia, much larger and wealthier countries? Religious Zionists believe that Palestine is the Holy Land and that God has granted the Jews the right to settle there. Secular Zionists advance other reasons. Both agree that the Palestinians must not obstruct Jewish immigration and colonisation. But what is the SWP’s reason for selecting Palestine for new waves of Jewish settlement?

Furthermore, the SWP appears to give little weight to the possibility that “Jews facing persecution” at some point in the future might choose to defend their rights in the countries where they reside, struggling alongside the oppressed and exploited of those countries. It is Zionism, not Marxism, that insists on the need for a sanctuary for Jews in Israel/Palestine.

Finally and perhaps most importantly, the SWP’s vision for Palestine fails to mention the Palestinian refugees, victims of Israel’s wars. Many of them live in dismal refugee camps near Israel’s borders. According to Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees. One in three refugees in the world is Palestinian.[28] Any settlement that deprives them of their right to return home, to receive redress for their dispossession and to live as full citizens in the land of their choice is an unjust settlement that will not endure.[29]

While barring all Palestinian refugees, Israel accords automatic citizenship to immigrants who are Jewish. The SWP appears to want to maintain this arrangement in some form in the new state that they envisage. Whatever else one might say about it, this state would be neither democratic nor secular.

Although a logical extension of the positions first developed in early 2009, the SWP’s discovery of Palestine as a homeland for the Jews and its silence on the Palestinians’ right of return marks a fateful leap toward Zionism.

Bending to imperialist pressure

The SWP’s embrace of Zionist arguments against the Palestinian struggle are the clearest and most extreme examples of the group’s steady rightward evolution. Unfortunately they are not an isolated case. A few other examples show the pattern.

For a number of years following the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, the SWP refused to support the anti-war movement. It wrote article after article criticizing what it called the “middle class radicals” leading the movement while itself doing virtually nothing to oppose the war and occupation. It also repeatedly condemned acts of resistance by Iraqi fighters to the occupation of their country.

More recently the SWP refused to support the Honduran people in their struggle for democracy.

In June 2009 the Honduran army staged a coup d’état, overthrowing the elected government. President Manuel Zelaya had angered business leaders by raising the minimum wage. He had also alarmed Washington by joining the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Latin America ALBA , an alliance initiated by Venezuela and Cuba that conducts mutually favourable trade between Latin American countries, thereby weakening the U.S. grip on the continent. In Honduras workers, peasants, aboriginal people and other toilers mobilized in large numbers against the coup, which they understood was a blatant attack on their democratic rights. Their struggle continued for months, while Cuba, Venezuela, and much of Latin America did all they could to restore constitutional rule in Honduras. The Honduran masses resisted valiantly but ultimately were defeated by the combined power of Washington, the Honduran army and the local oligarchy.

The SWP urged its followers to remain aloof from the struggle against the coup, which it characterized as “part of the infighting between wings of the capitalist class.” The July 20 issue of The Militant also falsely asserted that constitutional procedures had been followed after the army “arrested” the president.[30] An editorial in the next issue declared that “the interests of Honduran workers and farmers do not lie in whether Zelaya returns to the presidency.” It warned against “the false claim by middle-class radicals that Zelaya’s ouster was a ‘right-wing’ coup ‘made in USA.’” The editorial also attacked ALBA.[31]

In August 2008 Georgia provoked a war with Russia, attempting to reclaim territories then under Russian protection. Georgia was an ally of the U.S., which had provided it with $277 million in military aid since 1997. It had troops in Iraq serving under U.S. command. Soon after the war with Russia broke out, the U.S. sent additional supplies to Georgia. It also mobilized international public opinion against Russia. The Militant’s coverage echoed the imperialist propaganda. “Russian troops out of Georgia!” was the title of an editorial in the September 1, 2008 issue, which characterized the fighting as a Russian invasion and occupation.[32]

In September 2005 a Danish newspaper published blatantly anti-Islamic caricatures, provoking massive protests by Muslims in many countries. The SWP turned its back on their cry for dignity and equality and their outrage against the xenophobic intent of the cartoons’ publishers. The Militant joined in the reactionary uproar against the demonstrations, smearing them as “often violent protests.”[33] The SWP refused to recognize that the protests embodied the fight against both national oppression and imperialism.

This is a pattern of repeatedly bending to imperialist pressure in times of crisis. It is a disgraceful course of conduct for a group that calls itself socialist, particularly one located in the United States, the heartland of imperialism.

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[1] http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/712

[2] http://ibnkafkasobiterdicta.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/the-swedish-dockers-union-decides-on-a-blockade-against-israeli-ships-and-goods/

[3] http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?include=docs/pr/2010/pr0531d.html&ID=3395&cat=COSATU%20Today

[4] http://groups.google.com/group/cosatu-press/msg/a2ff0baff48201c4?pli=1

[5] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1264

[6] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1264

[7] http://www.laborforpalestine.net/wp/2010/07/10/blockade-dockers-respond-to-israel-flotilla-massacre-and-gaza-siege/; and http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11348.shtml

[8] http://www.laborforpalestine.net/wp/2010/06/19/support-pours-in-for-zim-lines-picket/

[9] This position was first expressed in June 2010.

[10] A Zionist blogger welcomed the SWP’s support. “Communists Against Boycotting Israel,” http://www.thejudeosphere.com/?p=1388

[11] http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/swp-us/24thconvention/zionism.htm. Also available as a pamphlet by Gus Horowitz, Israel and the Arab Revolution, from amazon.com and pathfinderpress.com.

[12] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7308/730857.html

[13] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7314/731436.html

[14] Estimates vary widely. This estimate is provided by the U.S.-based Center for Defense Information, http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm?documentid=2965&programID=32

[15] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7313/731336.html

[16] http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10440.shtml

[17] See, for example, the statement by the South African Municipal Workers’ Union quoted earlier in this article. Many other examples could be cited.

[18] “Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid? A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law”, Executive Summary, p. 5. Links to Executive Summary and full report at http://www.hsrc.ac.za/Media_Release-378.phtml.

[19] For more information on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, see “BDS: A Global Movement for Freedom & Justice” by Omar Barghouti http://al-shabaka.org/policy-brief/civil-society/bds-global-movement-freedom-justice and “Pro-Israel Lobby Alarmed by Growth of Boycott, Divestment Movement” by Art Young http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/462

[20] “The Delegitimization Challenge: Creating a Political Firewall” http://www.reut-institute.org/en/Publication.aspx?PublicationId=3769

[21] “The BDS Movement Promotes Delegitimization of the State of Israel”, http://reut-institute.org/data/uploads/PDFVer/20100612%20ReViews%20-%20BDS%20Issue%2016_1.pdf

[22] “Palestinian Civil Society Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel,” http://www.stopthewall.org/downloads/pdf/BDSEnglish.pdf

[23] Barghouti http://al-shabaka.org/policy-brief/civil-society/bds-global-movement-freedom-justice

[24] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7314/731436.html. Emphasis added.

[25] http://www.bigcampaign.org/index.php?page=who_sells_israeli_goods

[26] http://epfnational.org/action-groups/epfs-executive-council-statement-on-divestment-boycott-and-economic-sanctions-as-a-means-of-nonviolent-resistance/ and http://www.methodist.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=opentogod.newsDetail&newsid=453

[27] http://www.themilitant.com/2010/7426/742650.html. Emphasis added.

[28] http://www.al-awda.org/faq-refugees.html

[29] The July 26, 2010 issue of The Militant published an excerpt from a report by the SWP’s central leader, Jack Barnes, in which he states that a new, revolutionary leadership in Palestine will be built around struggles on many fronts. Barnes provides a list of such progressive causes. He does not include the right of return of the Palestinian refugees. http://www.themilitant.com/2010/7428/742853.html

[30] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7327/732752.html

[31] http://www.themilitant.com/2009/7328/732820.html

[32] http://www.themilitant.com/2008/7234/index.shtml

[33] “Socialists Must Oppose Anti-Muslim Bigotry” by Sandra Browne and Robert Johnson. http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=91

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LeftViews is Socialist Voice’s forum for articles related to rebuilding the left in Canada and around the world, reflecting a wide variety of socialist opinion.

Call: Day of Action to Confront US Militarism in the Americas

October 11, 2010
Our organizations urge you to join us in a National Day of Action to Confront US Militarism in the Americas on Monday, October 11, 2010. October 11 is the day the United States “celebrates” the beginning of the European invasion of the Americas and when indigenous peoples mark as the 518th year of resistance to invasion and colonialism.

We represent Latin America solidarity and peace groups. We are initiating and urge others to undertake the formation of local and regional coalitions – across movements for indigenous rights, immigrant justice, fair trade, peace, human rights, labor rights, gender justice, drug policy reform and other urgent goals – to confront the growing militarism of our culture and budget, the increasing propensity to commit national resources to wars of aggression, and the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, especially in Latin America.

We are calling on local coalitions to organize creative, strong actions consistent with these themes and issues of concern in your area. In border regions, actions might focus on militarization of the border and immigration policy. In urban areas, actions might focus on the militarization of law enforcement and prisons. In areas with major military contractors, actions might focus on war for profit, and in areas where there are military bases that act as staging areas for troop deployment to other countries, actions could focus on de-funding war and bringing the troops home now.

There is no city, town, or hamlet in the United States that does not have some connection to the war machine. We urge and support the organizing of myriad creative, coordinated actions on October 11 to draw attention to that fact and to imperative to redirect resources to meet domestic needs left wanting due to our nation’s expenditures on war.

To list and promote your local action [click here to add to our calendar]. For organizing materials you can adapt for your local needs go to www.lasolidarity.org. To have your local organizing materials posted so that others can adapt them, send them to info@lasolidarity.org.

Background

The United States spends as much on its war-making capabilities as the rest of the world combined. It has nearly 1,000 military facilities on foreign soil. It is engaged in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and supporting armed conflict in Pakistan, Somalia, Philippines, Mexico, Colombia, Palestine, and other countries. And it is threatening war against Iran.

The Obama administration has accelerated the militarization of US relations with Latin America, virtually erasing the goodwill with which Latin Americans welcomed the change of government in Washington. In June the United States signed an agreement with the government of Costa Rica – a pacifist nation that outlawed its army in 1948 – allowing unrestricted access for 7,000 Marines from 46 ships, armed with missiles, 200 helicopters, and other assault weapons; numbers totally disproportionate and inappropriate for official claims that it is to fight the drug war. This mobilization follows a basing agreement with Colombia for the use of seven bases; the recognition of a coup government and construction of a new naval base in Honduras; continued expansion of the U.S. military base in Curacao just over the horizon from Venezuela’s oil fields; and the military response to Haiti’s devastating earthquake in January 2010.

The goals for the Oct. 11 Day of action are to support:

1. Cancellation of the threatening and unnecessary U.S. military exercises in Costa Rica

2. Closing the School of the Americas now Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation

3. Ending the U.S. military presence on bases in Colombia, Honduras, Guantanamo, and elsewhere in hemisphere.

4. Ending the Merida Initiative and the increased militarization of the US border with Mexico

5. The proposal by Rep. Barney Frank to start reducing the social debt by cutting the US military budget immediately by 25%

Local coalitions are invited include their own goals for planned actions.

This Call is issued by members of the Latin America Solidarity Coalition and other organizations working for peace and justice. www.lasolidarity.org . To add your organization to the list of co-sponsors go to http://www.LASolidarity.org/endorse

Original Co-Sponsors:

Latin America Solidarity Coalition

Alliance for Global Justice

School of the Americas Watch

Campaign for Labor Rights

National Immigrant Solidarity Network

Nicaragua Network

United for Peace and Justice

INTERCONNECT

U.S.- El Salvador Sister Cities

Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador CISPES

Guatemala Human Rights Commission

CODEPINK

ANSWER Coalition

Witness for Peace

SOA Watch – Oakland

Mary Seat of Wisdom Parish

Committee on US-Latin America Relations CUSLAR

Illinois SOA Watch

Latin America Solidarity Committee, Milwaukee

Colectivo Morazan

Nicaragua Center for Community Action, Bay Area

School of the Americas Watch – Puget Sound

Syracuse Caribbean Latin America Coalition

Central New York S.O.A. Abolitionists

Nicaragua Solidarity Committee – Chicago

July 27, 2010, New York – On July 30, 2010 the Organization of American States’ High-Level Commission on Honduras is expected to make recommendations to the OAS member states with regards to the readmission of Honduras into the OAS. After the coup in June 2009, the OAS suspended Honduras’s membership. CCR’s Executive Director, Vincent Warren issued an Open Letter today to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking issue with Clinton’s characterizations of the situation in Honduras and the United States’ persistent lobbying of OAS member states for normalization of relations.

“The United States is taking a dangerous approach in leveraging its influence to lobby for the normalization of relations by the OAS,” stated CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren. “It rewards illegal, anti-democratic and violent regime change and should be abandoned.”

In the letter, Warren elaborated on a number of grave concerns about the situation in Honduras, particularly with regard to ongoing and serious human rights violations. The concerns were summarized into four main points:

1. The human rights situation in Honduras is dire and has continued to deteriorate;

2. The November elections were widely criticized. They were not “free and fair” as characterized by Secretary Clinton;

3. The situation in Honduras and the debates surrounding it have been clouded by pervasive disinformation about the events leading up to the coup, the public survey President Zelaya planned to conduct, and the purported legality of the actions of the military and Congress in removing him; and

4. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission established by the Lobo government has been cited by Clinton as a sign of progress in Honduras. However, the legitimacy, mandate, scope and methodology of the Commission have been questioned and criticized throughout Honduras and the international human rights communities.

Given these concerns, Warren stated, “The United States should not be supporting normalization of relations with the anti-democratic regime of Porfirio Lobo. Nor should any member state of the OAS.”

Attached Files

* CCR Letter to Clinton-Honduras.pdf

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

Facing pressure from universities and student groups, the apparel maker Nike announced on Monday that it would pay $1.54 million to help 1,800 workers in Honduras who lost their jobs when two subcontractors closed their factories.

Nike agreed to the payment after several universities and a nationwide group, United Students Against Sweatshops, pressed it to pay some $2 million in severance that the two subcontractors had failed to pay.

The University of Wisconsin, Madison terminated its licensing agreement with Nike over the Honduran dispute, and Cornell warned that it would do the same unless Nike resolved the matter.

You can make a capitalist be morally responsible, it's just not easy.

Image courtesy www.borev.net

Colombia: Uribe’s Farewell Spectacle - español

Atilio A. Boron

Translation: Machetera and Manuel Talens

Álvaro Uribe, the empire’s unconditional pawn, took his leave from the Colombian presidency with a new provocation: the denunciation of FARC camps which he claimed to be established on Venezuelan territory. Being neither dimwitted nor lazy, the U.S. State Department came out in unconditional support of the accusation put forth by Bogotá at the Organization of American States OAS , encouraged by the supposed “resounding” proof presented by Uribe, denouncing the government of Hugo Chávez for allowing the FARC camps to be set up and for carrying out various military training programs for some 1,500 guerrillas on Venezuelan soil. With amazing insolence, Philip Crowley, the State Department spokesperson declared that Venezuela’s response [in terminating diplomatic relations with Colombia] was “unfortunate” and “petulant” and threatened that “if Venezuela fails to cooperate in whatever follow-on steps are made, the United States and other countries will obviously take account of that.” It must be remembered that since 2006, the United States has included Venezuela in the list of countries that are unwilling to cooperate in the struggle against terrorism. Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela issued a declaration along the same lines, saying that Uribe’s denunciation was “very serious.” Both statements cast a heavy shadow of doubt about the intellectual capabilities of both officials and, what’s worse, feed the suspicion that with their fondness for lies, the moral caliber of both is not all that different from that of Álvaro Uribe.

It’s obvious that for imperial administrators, they will try to make anything that is convenient to their interests appear before public opinion as something “serious and overwhelming.” And these were the interests that moved the White House to ask for one last “proof of love” from the Colombian leader just a few days before leaving his presidency.

Manuel Noriega

As is commonly known, the file that the DEA, the CIA and the FBI have been building on Uribe for his intimate and prolonged links with the drug cartels keeps the Colombian leader from disobeying any kind of order coming from Washington, for fear of meeting the same fate as the former Panamanian president Manuel A. Noriega, and ending his days in a maximum security cell in the United States. [i]

The absurd claim from Uribe, an inveterate liar, comes like manna from heaven in Washington’s push to destabilize the Chávez government before the crucial Venezuelan elections scheduled for September 26^th and at the same time, it legitimizes the impressive program of U.S. militarization that is being imposed on Latin America; one of whose leading examples has been the signed Obama-Uribe treaty through which Colombia is ceding at least seven military bases for the use of U.S. armed forces. This is why those in the U.S. government pretend to consider the proof behind Uribe’s denunciation as “serious and overwhelming,” knowing that it is completely unfounded and nothing more than pure verbiage backed up with photographic montages. But lies are part of official U.S. discourse, essential elements in granting an aura of legitimacy to U.S. imperial designs, for a variety of reasons.

These are lies because, in the first place, if the FARC controls around 30% of Colombian territory something that is well known in Colombia it’s impossible to make sense of partitioning no less than 1,500 men from the theatre of operations, sending their leaders to vacation in Venezuela, and organizing 85 guerrilla camps in a neighboring country. If there is a politician who systematically lies in our region – and there are plenty! – Uribe is the crowning example: it’s in Colombia itself where the rotting oligarchic state in crisis allows for wide swathes of its territory, particularly in the jungle zones, to be controlled by guerrillas, narco-traffickers and paramilitaries.

After the attack that Colombian forces carried out on its territory, various Ecuadoran authorities commented that Ecuador’s northern border with Colombia is marked by nothing so much as a no-man’s land controlled by the organizations listed above. With boundless ignorance, Uribe accuses his neighbors of not doing what he has amply proven unable to do himself: control his own territory. Closing its eyes to this reality, the United States is using this false claim to hound the Bolivarian government for its lack of collaboration in the struggle against drug-trafficking, using the “free press” to hide the bothersome fact from the public that the greatest worldwide exporter of cocaine as well as drug traffickers is Colombia, militarized by Uribe and thanks to his invaluable collaboration, converted into a U.S. protectorate. Given this picture of political decay, the complaint that the FARC have taken up residence in Venezuela – with the support and complicity of Hugo Chávez’s government of all things! – is nothing more than a vulgar deceit in the service of empire; an accusation that is so completely lacking on any basis as to be taken even slightly seriously. It’s a lie that exposes someone as completely unscrupulous as Uribe.[ii]

In the second place, how can it be forgotten that Uribe was the man who lied so treacherously when his military forces, supported by those of the United States, made their incursion onto Ecuadoran territory, alleging that they were going after a column of the FARC?

Executions at Santa Rosa de Sucumbios, March 1, 2008

Forensic evidence showed that the guerrillas who they were supposedly chasing after a confrontation that took place on Colombian territory were sleeping – dressed in pajamas, even – when the attack took place, and therefore, what took place at Santa Rosa de Sucumbíos was not a battle but a plain and simple slaughter. This operation, carried out shortly after midnight on March 1^st, 2008, occurred with the logistic and material support of U.S. Americans housed at the Manta airbase in Ecuador, the only people with the aircraft and technology capable of the astonishingly accurate bombing of the jungle in the absolute dead of night.

One more example of Uribe’s unhealthy fondness for the lie was the story put forth about the famous laptop belonging to Raúl Reyes, which with unprecedented technological prowess survived unscathed from a bombing that destroyed everything in its path and whose hard drive would go on to produce extremely valuable information about the extensive contacts of Reyes and the FARC with all of the enemies of Uribe and the United States.[iii]

Third, how can a man be believed, who from the presidency of Colombia validated the actions of paramilitaries and state terrorism? On February 16^th of this year, the “Justice and Peace” unit of the Colombian Attorney General’s office published a report in which it was revealed that more than 4,000 paramilitaries from the United Self Defense Forces of Columbia Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – AUC said that they had perpetrated 30,470 murders in the period beginning in the 1980’s, until their “demobilization” in 2003-2006. Not only that: the Colombian Attorney General also took statements from paramilitaries accounting for 1,085 murders, 1,438 forced recruitments of minors, 2,530 forced disappearances, 2,326 forced displacements and 1,642 extortions, as well as 1,033 kidnappings.

Despite this woeful record, Uribe is considered by his bosses in Washington to be a champion in the struggle for human rights.[iv] In this regard, if the long-awaited Free Trade Agreement FTA between Colombia and the United States has still not been ratified by the U.S. Congress, it’s because, as the conservative Colombian newspaper El Tiempo points out, in 2009 alone, the paramilitaries and “security forces” killed 40 trade union leaders, turning Colombia into the most dangerous country in the world for this kind of activity. Out of a total of 76 union leaders killed worldwide, 52% of these murders took place in a country that the United States considers a paradigmatic example of the struggle for human rights and the struggle against terrorism. The United Central of Colombian Workers Central Única de Trabajadores de Colombia reported just a few months ago that 2,721 activists and leaders of that organization were killed by “security forces” since its founding in 1986.[v] Despite this, Colombia’s democratic credentials have never been in doubt in Washington. [vi]

The False Positives are State crimes

Fourth, the denouncer is no less than the person intellectually and politically responsible for the serial murders known as “false positives.” As pointed out in a series of notes published in Colombia by Crónicon: The Latin American Observer, during these last three years of the Uribe government, the balance sheet is dismal. It proved that in response to the government’s pressure to show concrete results in the struggle against guerrillas, the Colombian Army designed and carried out a criminal plan: moving through the country’s poorest villages and towns with offers of work among the huge masses of unemployed, the Army recruited a high number of poor, defenseless peasants and marginalized youth, who were later killed in cold blood, with their bodies dressed up afterwards as guerrillas killed in combat, in order to charge the bounty set up by the government and obtain bonuses or military career advancement.

According to very conservative estimates, these State crimes, perpetrated while the future Colombian president, Juan M. Santos, was the Defense Minister, surpassed 1,700 cases. [vii] Another facet of this criminal policy under the misnomer of democratic security, is provided in the discovery which came to light on February 16, 2010, of “the largest mass grave in modern history of the American continent, a horrendous discovery that has been made practically completely invisible” by the mainstream press in Colombia and around the world. “The mass grave, in La Macarena, in the Department of Meta, contains the remains of at least 2,000 people, and was discovered thanks to the perseverance of the family members of the disappeared and the visit of a delegation of union members and members of the British parliament who came to Colombia in December of 2009 to investigate the human rights situation.” It’s worth adding that this area had been an object of close attention by the Colombian armed forces since 2005, with the awful results that were recently revealed.[viii]

As with all the state terrorism that struck the region during the 1970’s, the crimes against humanity committed by their perpetrators also had a financial basis. In the case of Uribe’s Colombia, with his troupe of bloodthirsty freaks, millions of hectares left behind by the campesinos in their desperate exodus from the bombings and indiscriminate slaughters they faced were parceled out between the corrupt armed forces, the paramilitaries and the drug-traffickers. As Jomary Orteon Osorio, from the Colombian Lawyers Collective stated at a conference of the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights OHCHR convened in Geneva at the beginning of May this year, the figure for displaced peasants would reach 4,500,000, and their lands would later be transferred, to the great benefit of those charged with their displacement: to the landowners and agribusiness, the sponsors and financers of the paramilitaries. At this same conference it was established that despite these “successes” of the Uribe government, the number of displaced persons continues to grow at the rate of 150,000 people per year. The Colombian Planning Minister, Esteban Piedrahita Uribe, head of the Colombian delegation at the conference, did not deny the allegations and limited himself to saying that “we have confiscated 2,000,000 hectares from criminal groups who illegally seized these lands and now justice will decide their return to their rightful owners.” [ix] In any case, it must be emphasized that the calculation of the number of expropriated hectares in this savage remaking of the process of primitive accumulation of capital that Marx described in his famous Chapter 24 of the first volume of Capital is subject to heated controversy. There are those who maintain that the number of hectares transferred in this manner reaches 6 million, but there are others who put the figure at around 10 million. In any case, whatever the number finally established beyond any doubt, it’s certain that if the policy of democratic security did anything at all, it was to secure the expropriation of the peasant masses and their holdings in favor of capitalist agribusiness. [x]

This is the man who now raises his accusing finger against the Bolivarian revolution. It’s obvious that it is just one more maneuver, dictated by the empire’s strategists, to harass the government of Hugo Chávez and legitimize the policy of “hard power” of which it seems Obama has become even more enamored than his ignominious predecessor, despite the official declarations and writings of certain analysts close to the White House such as Joseph Nye, who insistently speak of the advantages of “soft power” traditional diplomacy or “smart power,” intelligent power, new diplomacy over the high cost and brutality of the former. However, the empire insists on the hard power at its impressive military disposition: therefore, the bases in Colombia; in Aruba and Curaçao only a few kilometers away from the Venezuelan coast; those in both El Salvador and Honduras and, now, the authorization to introduce no less than 7,000 Marines and all kinds of weapons as well as aircraft carriers, helicopters, amphibious ships and latest generation airplanes in neighboring Costa Rica.

USS Makin Island headed for Costa Rica

That’s also the reason for the Fourth Fleet’s presence. In this way, Uribe’s government performs a service of extraordinary importance in the facilitation of imperialism’s destabilizing, counter-constituent plans: unable to protect its 586 kilometer border with Ecuador, where it has dedicated barely 8 tiny military detachments, and even less unable to do so along the 2,216 kilometers of the Colombian-Venezuelan border – transformed into a free-for-all zone for drug dealers and paramilitary – it is trying by all possible means to create the conditions that would justify U.S. military intervention in South America; for the moment, the tension between Colombia and Venezuela following the presidential succession remains, preventing Santos from modifying the agenda of permanent confrontation instituted by Uribe against the Bolivarian revolution and muddying the waters so that Chávez will arrive at the September elections totally worn out and internationally harassed.

Worried about his personal future and burdened by the specter of Noriega rotting away in a Yankee jail cell, or being sued before the International Criminal Court, Uribe is making every effort until his last day in office to show his total submission to the dictates of imperialism. For that reason two things are of utmost importance: exposure of the man who is reporting the crime and demanding the UNASUR’s immediate intervention to deactivate Washington’s plans for Our America. This is not a case for the OAS an organization that failed to defuse Uribe’s provocation but for UNASUR, which with this incident, will be put to the test. Hopefully this newborn organization of South American countries will act immediately – right away – otherwise, it may be too late to avoid the serious consequences of all kinds that could result if the warmongering U.S. project implemented by Washington and its Latin American proxies is carried to its conclusion.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB131/index.htm

[ii] At a border more than 2,000 kilometers long with few natural demarcations like great rivers, lakes or mountain ranges, many people not just ordinary ones but also drug dealers, paramilitary, smugglers, criminals can cross back and forth as many times as they please. But to assume that the Chávez government endorses the establishment of sanctuaries for guerrilla training camps in Venezuela only speaks of the absolute dishonesty and lack of moral scruples of Uribe and his bosses in Washington.

[iii] See the compelling evidence contributed by Margarita Vallejo and Horacio López in , El ataque de Colombia en territorio ecuatoriano : detrás de las palabras y los hechos Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Centro Cultural de la Cooperación, 2009

[iv] See http://www.telesurtv.net/noticias/ secciones/nota/66984-NN/ex-paramilitares-colombianos- reconocen-haber-cometido-cerca-de-30-mil-500-asesinatos/

[v] Cf. http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/justicia/asesinados-40-sindicalistas-el-ano-pasado-en-colombia-denuncia-organizacion-de-trabajadores_7120268-1

[vi] To the previous should be added the 27 journalists killed for exercising their profession during the eight years of Uribe`s rule. Other sources claim a much larger number.

[vii] Cf. Fernando Arellano’s Cronicón http://www.cronicon.net/paginas/cronicon_menu.htm

[viii] Cf. http://www.publico.es/internacional/288773/aparece/colombia/fosa/comun/cadáveres; and also

http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=99507

[ix] See the website of the conservative radio and television network Cadena Caracol, May 4^th, 2010 http://www.caracol.com.co/nota.aspx?id=1019108

[x] See the data provided by the MOVICE, Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado: 4.5 million displaced peasants as of 2009:

http://www.movimientodevictimas.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=278&Itemid=64

Expropriated agricultural surface, 2009:

http://www.movimientodevictimas.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=274&Itemid=69

Argentinean sociologist and author Atilio Boron is a friend of Tlaxcala.

Machetera and Manuel Talens are members of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translators are cited.

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Mexican drug traffickers’ first car-bomb attack against police has revealed a new level of cold-blooded planning that is forcing this border city and security forces to change the way they confront violence.

Police said Friday that La Linea drug gang — the same group blamed for the March killing of a US Consulate employee and her husband — lured federal officers and paramedics to the site of a car bomb by dressing a bound, wounded man in a police uniform and calling in a false report of an officer shot.

The gang then exploded a car holding as much as 22 pounds of explosives, killing the decoy, a rescue worker, and a federal officer. A regional military commander said a cellphone might have been used to detonate the bomb.

The gang promised to strike again, with graffiti painted on the wall of a Ciudad Juárez shopping center. “What happened . . . is going to keep happening against all the authorities,’’ the message read. “We have more car bombs.’’

**********

Mayor José Reyes Ferriz said at least 14 police officers or other law enforcement officials have been killed in the past few weeks in and around the city....

Ciudad Juárez residents were emotionally shaken by the bombing, which scattered debris over a 300-yard radius and blew out the windows of a home.

Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, has become one of the most dangerous cities in the world, with more than 4,000 people killed since the beginning of 2009.

Police said Thursday’s attack was in retaliation for the arrest of a top leader of La Linea drug gang, Jesus Acosta Guerrero, earlier in the day.

Police said Acosta Guerrero, 35, was the “operations leader’’ of La Linea, which works for the Juárez drug cartel. He was responsible for at least 25 killings and ordered attacks on police.

Drug cartel battles have resulted in the deaths of about 25,000 people since late 2006 in Mexico.

While cartels have often used grenades and high-powered rifles against police and soldiers, Thursday’s attack was the first time a cartel has successfully used a sizable bomb against security forces.

Brigadier General Eduardo Zarate, the commander of the regional military zone, said as much as 22 pounds of explosives might have been used in the attack. Burned batteries connected to a mobile phone were found at the scene, he added.

Meanwhile, in the northeastern border city of Nuevo Laredo, 12 people were killed and 21 wounded in running gun battles between soldiers and cartel gunmen Friday.

Gunmen blocked some streets with hijacked vehicles at the height of the battles, which occurred in at least three points in the city, prompting the US Consulate to warn American citizens in the city to remain indoors....

The gunmen arrived at the party in Torreón in several cars and opened fire without saying a word, the Coahuila state attorney general’s office said in statement. At least 18 people were wounded.

Several of the victims were young and some were women, but their identities and ages had not yet been determined. Investigators had no suspects or information on a possible motive.

Police found more than 120 bullet casings at the scene.

Coahuila is among several northern states that have seen a sharp rise in drug-related violence that authorities attribute to a fight between the Gulf cartel and its former enforcers, known as the Zetas.

Related: Mexican Oil Siphoning Story Stinks

"Former" government commandos, huh?

Yeah, they are ALL GOVERNMENT SOMETHING!!!

In May, gunmen killed eight people at a bar in Torreón. Later that month, a television station and the offices of a local newspaper came under fire. A pregnant woman was wounded in the attack on the offices of Noticias de El Sol de la Laguna.

Across northern Mexico, there have been increasing reports of mass shootings at parties, bars, and rehab clinics.

In the worst such massacre this year, gunmen raided a drug rehab center in the northern city of Chihuahua and killed 19 people.

Also see: Mexican Drug Dealers Kill Clients

In January, gunmen barged into a private party in the border city of Ciudad Juárez and killed 15, many of them high school or university students. Relatives say it was a case of mistaken identity, while state officials believe someone at the party was targeted.

The massacre in Torreón came three days after the first successful car bombing by drug cartels introduced a new threat in Mexico’s raging drug war.

Drug gang members detonated the bomb after luring federal police and paramedics to the scene in Ciudad Juárez by shooting a bound man dressed in a police uniform and calling in a false report of a wounded officer. Three people were killed, including a doctor who had rushed to the scene to help.

Officials say 24,800 people have been killed in drug gang violence since President Felipe Calderon declared war on the cartels in December 2006.

That would mean over 2,000 in the last four days!

--more--"

And where are those weapons coming from, huh?

"Grenades from US in cartels’ arsenals; Devices are relics of the Cold War" by Nick Miroff, Washington Post | July 19, 2010

MEXICO CITY — Grenades made in the United States and sent to Central America during the Cold War have resurfaced as terrifying new weapons in almost weekly attacks by Mexican drug cartels.

Maybe the MILITARISM for EMPIRE wasn't such a good deal after all.

Sent a generation ago to battle communist revolutionaries in the jungles of Central America, US grenades are being diverted from dusty old armories and sold to criminal mafias, which are using them to destabilize the Mexican government and terrorize civilians, according to US and Mexican law enforcement officials.

The redeployment of US-made grenades by Mexican drug lords underscores the increasingly intertwined nature of the conflict, as President Felipe Calderon sends his soldiers out to confront gangs armed with a deadly combination of brand-new military-style assault rifles purchased in the United States and munitions left over from the Cold War.

Grenades have killed a relatively small number of the 25,000 people who have died since Calderon launched his US-backed offensive against the cartels. But the grenades pack a far greater psychological punch than the ubiquitous AK-47s and AR-15 rifles — they can overwhelm and intimidate outgunned soldiers and police while reminding ordinary Mexicans that the country is at war....

The majority of grenades have been traced to El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua, according to investigations by agents at the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and their Mexican counterparts. ATF has also found that almost 90 percent of the grenades confiscated and traced in Mexico are more than 20 years old.

The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush sent 300,000 hand grenades to friendly regimes in Central America to fight leftist insurgents in the civil wars of the 1980s and early 1990s, according to declassified military data obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Federation of American Scientists.

Most Americans don't even know about the centuries of U.S. slaughter south of them.

Atilio Boron

Translation: Machetera

With votes secured from the official National Liberation Party PLN , the Libertarian Movement, and Justo Orozco, the evangelical congressman from the Costa Rican Renovation party, on July 1^st, the Costa Rican Congress authorized the entry into that country of 46 warships from the U.S. Navy, 200 helicopters and combat aircraft and 7,000 Marines.

A good shitbath for the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. That’s what the Marines use to teach democracy in Iraq. Now they are installing themselves in Costa Rica to do the same with Latin Americans.

While the various published stories do not allow a clear view of the decision’s origins, the limited evidence available seems to indicate that it was Washington who asked for the presence of the troops. The extremely telling silence of the U.S. press on the subject and the absence of any kind of explicit reference to this authorization in the daily press bulletins of the State and Defense Departments feeds the suspicion that it was the White House that took the initiative that was favorably received by the Costa Rican Congress, and demanded the greatest discretion.

What was communicated to the Central American country was that the ruling situation in Mexico had forced the drug cartels to modify their traditional routes for approaching and entering the United States and that the deployment of a strong military force on the Central American isthmus was necessary to thwart this; a sine qua non condition for waging an effective battle against drug trafficking. As might have been expected, the government of President Laura Chinchilla – tightly linked over the years with USAID, no less – lent her entire support and that of her congressmen in obedient response to Washington’s request.

Women in the Marines also teach democracy.

Nobody should be surprised when Washington resorts to the drug trafficking pretext, since it’s what Washington commonly uses when others are lacking, such as an earthquake in oh, say, Haiti – to justify the intrusion of U.S. military personnel in the countries of Our America.

Nevertheless, what works against the credibility of this argument is the fact that the countries where there is a strong U.S. military presence are precisely those that stand out for their increased production and commercialization of drugs. As shown in “The Dark Side of Empire. The Violation of Human Rights by the United States,” the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime – an unimpeachable source – has proven with abundant statistics that since U.S. troops were installed in Afghanistan, huge advances have been made in the production and exportation of opium as well as the fabrication of heroin, while in Colombia, the U.S. presence has not prevented quite to the contrary the registration of a notable expansion in the area destined to the cultivation of coca.[1]

All this should not cause any surprise whatsoever, for a variety of reasons. One of them is that the country that assumes the right to fight drug trafficking worldwide shows an incapacity as amazing as it is suspicious to do the same within its borders, from dismantling the networks that link narco-mafias with authorities, police and local and federal judges who facilitate the drug business, to implementing a minimally meaningful campaign to contain addiction and treat addicts.

It’s not that surprising, actually, since drug trafficking moves some at least $400 billion dollars annually, that are later conveniently “laundered” in the numerous tax havens that the main capitalist countries starting with the United States and Europe have established far and wide throughout the globe in order to be re-introduced later on into the official banking system and in this way, strengthen the business of financial capital.

For another thing, the weakness and inconsistency of this pretext – that of the “fight against drug trafficking,” becomes even more obvious when it is learned that the United States is the number one worldwide producer of marijuana, something that according to a study from the Drug Science Foundation, reaches a sum of more than $35 billion dollars in that country, a figure that surpasses the combined value of wheat and corn production.[2]

Third, and finally, control and administration of the drug trafficking business as a means to sustain imperialist domination in the Empire’s provincial reaches cannot be underestimated. Wasn’t it Great Britain who re-introduced opium in China a drug that had been prohibited by the Emperor Yongzheng due to the damage it had caused his people the massive consumption of which allowed the British to balance their trade deficits with China? In order to push this addiction among the Chinese the British and the Portuguese waged two wars; one from 1839 to 1842, and another from 1856 to 1860, the result of which were the establishment of two beachheads for the organization of opium trafficking throughout China: one in Hong Kong, under British control, and the other in Macao, dominated by the Portuguese.

Why should we think that the United States, the putative offspring of the British Empire, would be motivated by any different interests when it pays lip service to the war on drugs? Isn’t it perhaps useful to U.S. interests to have a Latin America characterized by a proliferation of “failed states,” – eaten away by the corruption generated by drug trafficking and the consequences that ensue: social disintegration, mafias, paramilitaries, etc. – that for this very reason are incapable of offering the least resistance to imperial designs?

The permission granted by the Costa Rican Congress lasts for six months, starting on July 1^st of this year. Nevertheless, this concession, that came about in the context of the Mérida Initiative which includes Mexico and Central America is a project that has goals but no deadlines, for which reason the probability is practically zero that the U.S. troops will leave Costa Rica at the end of this year and return to their home bases.

Furthermore, international experience shows that in Europe as well as Japan, the U.S. troops stationed there after the Second World War for just a few years, later extended through the pretext of the Cold War, managed to prolong their stay in those locations for 65 years without their chief officers showing the least sign of boredom or desire to return home.

In Okinawa, the widespread rejection of the local population against the Yankee occupants – who, sheltered by immunity were murdering, raping and robbing to their hearts content – was insufficient to force the dismantling of the U.S. base there. Incidentally, this highlights the courage and effectiveness of President Rafael Correa’s government that did manage to achieve the ouster of U.S. troops from the Manta airbase. And in case a popular outcry should arise over just this one occurrence in Costa Rica, a few criminal operations of the type that the CIA knows very well how to carry out should be enough for an instant reversal, above all with a government such as that of Laura Chinchilla, eager to prove its unconditional submission to imperial dictates.

Just like the establishment of the Obama-Uribe treaty whereby Colombia initially ceded the use of seven military bases to the United States, in this case, the U.S. military personnel will enjoy complete immunity from Costa Rican justice, and its members will be able to enter and leave Costa Rica entirely at will, and move through the entire country dressed in their uniforms, carrying their combat gear and weapons. With this decision Costa Rican sovereignty is not only humiliated but reaches ridiculous limits for a country that in 1948 abolished its armed forces and, thanks in large measure to this, was able to develop an advanced social policy in the depressing context of the Central American region, precisely because the oligarch’s gendarme had been disarmed.

As far as arms go, the congressional authorization allows the entry of Coast Guard and smaller vessels, but also others such as the latest generation of aircraft carriers like Makin Island, launched in August of 2006 and with the capacity to house 102 officers and 1,449 Marines, transport 42 CH-46 helicopters, five AV-8B Harrier aircraft and six Blackhawk helicopters. Apart from this, the legislation that passed extends permission for ships such as USS Freedom, launched in 2008, with anti-submarine capacity and the ability to move in shallow waters. The permission also extends to other boats, like catamarans, a hospital ship and various vehicles known for their amphibian capacity to move on land as well as sea. Weapons and gear that basically, have little or nothing to do with drug trafficking, even in the unlikely case that this were the real desire of the Marines. It’s quite obvious that they have another objective.

The Makin Island aircraft carrier Hey, it’s just to fight drug trafficking, don’t automatically think the worst.

This U.S. government initiative must be situated in the context of the growing militarization U.S. foreign policy, whose most important expressions in the Latin American framework have been, until now, the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet, the signing of the Obama-Uribe treaty, the de facto military occupation of Haiti, the construction of a wall of shame between Mexico and the United States, the coup d’etat in Honduras and the later legitimization of the electoral fraud that elevated Porfirio Lobo to the presidency, the concession of new military bases by the reactionary government of Panama, to which is now added the disembarkation of Marines in Costa Rica. Of course, all these moves are articulated within the maintenance of the blockade and hounding of the Cuban Revolution, and the ongoing harassment of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. On an international level, the disembarkation of U.S. Marines in Costa Rica should be interpreted within the framework of an imminent war against Iran and the grotesque provocation against North Korea, the serious consequences of which have been warned about for some time by Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz in his Reflections.

Therefore, the Empire is advancing in its militarization of the region and in preparation for a military adventure of global proportions. If the aggression against Iran finally comes to pass, as predicted in recent days, the extremely serious international situation that will result will push the United States to try to guarantee, at all costs, seamless and absolute control over what its geopolitical strategists call the Great American Island, an enormous continent that extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, as separated from the Eurasian landmass as it is from Africa and which, according to them, plays a fundamental role in U.S. national security.

That is the fundamental reason for the preventive exorbitant militarization of U.S. foreign policy. It’s ridiculous to try to convince our people that the twenty-odd military bases established in Central and South America and the Caribbean, to which we now add the disembarkation in Costa Rica and the activation of the Fourth Fleet, has drug trafficking as its objective. As experience teaches us, drug trafficking cannot be fought with military strategy but with social policy. And the United States does not apply it within its borders nor permit it to be applied outside, thanks to the enormous influence that the IMF and World Bank have over vulnerable and indebted countries.

The experience in Colombia and now in Mexico with more than 26,000 dead since President Felipe Calderón declared his “war on drug trafficking” in December, 2006! is a testament to the fact that the solution to the problem does not rest with Marines, aircraft carriers, submarines and gunship helicopters, but with the creation of a just and fair society, something that is incompatible with the logic of capitalism and repugnant to the fundamental interests of the Empire.

In summary: the disembarkation of the Marines in Costa Rica has as its objective the reinforcement of U.S. domination in the region, the toppling by a variety of methods of those governments considered to be “enemies” Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador , weakening still more the vacillating and ambivalent “center-left” governments and reinforcing the rightwing that has made a resurgence along the Pacific Coast Chile, Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico . It is a rearrangement of the Empire’s “back yard” in order to have free hands and a secured rearguard while the arrogant Empire wages war in other latitudes.

[2] Ibid, The Dark Side of Empire, p. 72.

Argentinean sociologist and author Atilio Boron is a friend of Tlaxcala.

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are cited.

By Juan Reardon – Venezuelanalysis.com

San Francisco, July 15th, 2010 Venezuelanalysis.com – Yesterday, Venezuelan Minister for Internal Affairs Tarek El Aissami announced the arrest of opposition figure Alejandro Peña Esclusa after police supposedly found explosive materials in his home during a raid on Monday. The raid comes after the detention in Caracas last week of known Salvadorian terrorist Francisco Chávez Abarca who confessed to having been contracted by Luis Posada Carriles to carry out destabilizing acts in Venezuela in the run-up to the September national assembly elections.

The explosive materials allegedly found during the raid included 900 grams of C-4, electronic and thermal detonating devices and documents detailing plans for destabilizing Venezuela in the coming period, El Aissami said.

According to David Colmenares, Counterintelligence Director at the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service SEBIN , the court ordered raid on Peña Esclusa’s home was issued after the now-extradited Francisco Chávez Abarca provided information linking Peña Esclusa to destabilization plans.

Yesterday national assembly deputy Juan Mendoza, president of the assembly’s Committee on Defense, announced that Chávez Abarca had described plans to assassinate opposition deputy Pastora Medina of the Frente Humanista or Humanist Front in an attempt to provoke a political backlash from opposition forces. According to Mendoza, Chávez Abarca also spoke of plans to bomb a Caracas plaza during last Sunday’s world cup final.

Police arrested Pena Esclusa on Wednesday at the 6th Control Court, a criminal court in Caracas hearing terror cases. The judge, Luis Cabrera, ratified the decision by authorities to detain Peña on charges of possession of explosives and organized crime.

In response, Peña’s lawyers accused the courts of collaborating with an unlawful search of their client’s home, claiming they were not allowed to accompany police during the raid and therefore all evidence should be thrown out.

Indira de Peña, wife of Peña Esclusa, also accused police of planting the explosives in the couple’s home, stating that she had asked police to wait for Peña’s lawyers to arrive before allowing them in. “They began to pound on the door. Some of them removed their weapons. I thought of my daughters and decided to open the door, to prevent bad from getting worse,” Ms. Peña said.

Peña Esclusa is President of the Union of Democratic Organizations of the Americas, or UnoAmerica, one of the only organizations that celebrated the 2009 military coup in Honduras. In a July 10 2009 interview, Peña Esclusa was quoted as saying that “Only a process similar to that of Honduras can rescue democracy and freedom in Venezuela.” In November of last year the Honduran dictatorship of Roberto Micheletti decorated Esclusa with the order “José Cecilio del Valle” at a ceremony in which Micheletti himself presented Esclusa with the award.

He is also the founder of Fuerza Solidaria, or Solidarity Force, an opposition organization that claims to defend liberty, equal opportunity and solidarity in Venezuela and abroad. According to the organizations’ website, these values are, “incompatible with Castro-Communism, which is why Solidarity Force has directed its efforts at amplifying and organizing the resistance to the Cubanization of Venezuela.”

In response to Peña’s arrest, UnoAmerica has called for his immediate release and claims that his detention, “is part of a Cuban operation that looks to link opposition leaders with violent acts.”

In Honduras on Wednesday a small group of Peña supporters gathered outside the offices of the Organization of American States OAS to ask for the, “presence of God and the protection of Esclusa.” In Miami, Patricia Andrade of the Venezuela Awareness Foundation has denounced Esclusa’s arrest as, “a repressive wave to come in the run-up to the electoral process.”

In June 2009, Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Relations, Nicolás Maduro, described Peña Esclusa as a man that, “has spent his life tied to the CIA and numerous violent movements including the 2002 military coup [against president Hugo Chávez] and a member of violent right-wing groups that moved about Central America for long periods alongside Luis Posada Carriles, a terrorist protected by the North American justice system and wanted in Venezuelan.”

Colmenares confirmed that more raids are expected as authorities continue their follow-up on information provided by Chávez Abarca.

Tensions are high in Costa Rica following the announcement of the impending arrival of US military vessels. In the past year alone, a sudden expansion of United States military presence around Latin America has alarmed many in the region. Now it is spreading to the one nation which had previously been known for the absence of any standing permanent army, foreign or national.

After receiving a diplomatic request from the US Embassy, on July 1 the Costa Rican legislative assembly approved a measure to grant unprecedented access to a U.S. military fleet in Costa Rica’s waters. The vessels, which are to be stationed through the end of year, will arrive for at least six months to assist counter-narcotics operations by Costa Rican authorities. Costa Rica has long been used a stopping point of entry for drugs coming from Colombia and Panama on their way further north.
This type of partnership between the U.S. and Costa Rica is not new. Since 1999, a maritime agreement titled the “Joint Patrol” between the United States and Costa Rica has allowed the U.S. Coast Guard to operate in the waters of Costa Rica for similar purposes. However, this particular agreement goes far beyond previously established boundaries. The Joint Patrol agreement limited U.S. personnel to Coast Guard only, allowing for Costa Rican law enforcement to ride on U.S. ships if they have reason to suspect suspicious activity, and vice versa.

Under the new agreement the ships, which can occupy up to 7,000 Navy personnel and 200 helicopters, will join the Coast Guard and according to the Embassy letter, will “enjoy freedom of movement and the right to carry out activities they consider necessary for the fulfillment of their mission, which includes wearing their uniforms while exercising official functions.”

In other words, immunity from any actions they deem appropriate in the name of policing the waters.

The contract has drawn confusion about the intent of the ships more than anything else, stemming from a general distrust of US action in the region, likely based on recent events like the tacitly-approved military coup in Honduras and news emerging last week of new plans for another military base there , as well as last year’s controversial accord to establish seven new military bases in Colombia.

The announcement has already provoked a fierce response in Costa Rica. The measure, which can be also renewed after December 31, has drawn sharp criticism from both lawmakers and civilians. Critics say that a massive foreign military landing at their shores not only directly violates that constitution as it stands today, but tears at the moral fabric of a nation which constitutionally abolished its own army in 1949.

In an impassioned address to the assembly during the vote, Parliamentary leader José María Villalta, of the Frente Amplio Broad Front party, argued that apart from legal ramifications, the measure inherently goes against Costa Rican ideals.

“We cannot remain silent,” Villalta said. “The fundamental values of the Costa Rican State are stake, the core values that have distinguished this country- a country of peace, which rejects militarism, where we have a declaration of perpetual neutrality regarding conflicts of war in other countries and now we want to become complicit in a strategy of militarization is taking place in Latin America.”

In an interview with Upside Down World, Francisco Cordero-Gené, who served as former head advisor to the Costa Rican legislative assembly during the past two administrations prior to that of current President Laura Chinchilla, who has voiced support for the measure outlined the main legal contentions of those opposed.

“Aside from the dark procedure by which the permit was approved, it clearly provides unlimited access to ports for troops of the Navy Department of Defense, not just law enforcement authorities of the Coast Guard. Therefore, we argue that the reason given for giving the permit has been invalidated. It exceeds the responsibilities of Congress- no basis to authorize this invasion is theirs alone,” said Cordero-Gené.
Indeed, Article 12 of the 1949 Constitution reads: “Military forces may only be organized under a continental agreement or for the national defense; in either case, they shall always be subordinate to the civil power: they may not deliberate or make statements or representations individually or collectively.”

Because of this clause, there have been five legal recourse briefs recursos de amparo submitted so far in opposition to the Congressional decision, intended to declare the approval unconstitutional on these grounds.

Organizations such as the Quaker Friends Peace Center, of which Cordero-Gené belongs to, question the motives of the ships which will be dispersed to Costa Rica individually. At a time when there’s been violent labor disputes in Panama recently due to banana workers protesting new policies that would weaken the position of labor unions, allowing companies to fire or replace striking workers Cordero-Gené says he wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a connection.

“The lack of a debate in Congress makes one suspect that they will be operating militarily and not necessarily confined to the drug trafficking operations,” said Cordero-Gené. Is it a coincidence that ships arrive as a new port management is being put into practice, eliminating the authority of the state agency JAPDEVA Port Management Board of the Atlantic Coast Development and its group of unionized dock workers…and preventing any possibility of strikes, work stoppages and incidents in Limón, such as those in Panama? ”

So far there are no clear answers to these and many other questions, such as why the funds being used for this operation not instead being directed to help train and equip the Costa Rican Coast Guard.

Even the Washington Office on Latin America WOLA , widely regarded as the highest non-governmental domestic authority on all U.S. affairs in the area, seems to be left scratching its head.

“Once again, the government has not released a single public statement on this- no one is talking about it,” says Adam Isacson, a senior associate on WOLA’s Regional Security Policy program. “There is certainly a drug problem in the area, but we don’t know whether the 7,000 number of Marines being discussed is any bigger than what’s allowed in the 1999 agreement. The increase could be justified, but we simply don’t know at this point.”

Cordero-Gené agrees that drug security is popular issue in Costa Rica, but says that it’s a problem of perception rather than statistical increase in crime.

“The drug problem is not essentially the problem of security; because the assaults and crimes committed are due more to poverty in an increasingly violent culture…It’s obvious that this displacement is a response to the arms race and alliances to neutralize the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance ALBA ,” he added. “This front is undoubtedly linked to the accusations from both presidents of Colombia current President Alvaro Uribe and incoming President Juan Manuel Santos that Hugo Chavez supports the narco-guerrillas.”

Cordero-Gené is not alone in this line of geo-political thinking- these are just a few of the many explanations being floated around opposition circles since the announcement in Costa Rica. For now they remain only theories, but in the context of last year’s US agreements to new military bases and logistical training in countries like Colombia, Brazil, and Peru, many see them as unsurprising and plausible.

Public outrage against the measure is building in Costa Rica. Anti-militarization rallies have already been held in San José. In only a few days since the announcement, a Facebook group titled “¡No a la presencia militar en Costa Rica!” No military presence in Costa Rica! has gained over 20,000 supporters. A large demonstration amongst the public sectors is being planned for July 26, when the first of the ships is due to arrive.

Regardless of its stated intent, with so much uncertainty around the vague conditions of the agreement, a foreign military suddenly entering a nation with a proud tradition of peaceful conflict resolution, neutrality and disarmament is leading to far more questions than answers.

Joseph Shansky can be reached at fallow3 at gmail.com.

By Gabriel Elizondo | Al-Jazeera | July 13th, 2010

Hollman Morris is known in Colombia for path-breaking journalism, but US wont let him into the country for a Harvard fellowship.

Hollman Morris is a Colombian journalist who has received dozens of international awards for his work uncovering atrocities and human rights abuses in the decade’s-long armed conflict in his country.

But the United States apparently views him as a terrorist. More on this terrorist thing later .

For many years Morris, an independent television journalist, has risked his life trekking to remote and dangerous corners of Colombia to talk to victims of Colombia’s war. When there were allegations of the Colombia military or paramilitaries killing innocent people in a far away corner of the country, many journalists would report the story with a few press releases and phone calls from the comfort of Bogota. If it was reported at all. Not Morris. He would go to the source, often walking through the jungle for days to get to the location, speak to people, and find out what happened, and put it on television.

At its best, Morris’s work has led him to uncover evidence of atrocities potentially committed by actors of the state. At minimum, his reporting has often thrown doubt on official government positions few other journalists seem dare to challenge.

By all accounts, this has infuriated the outgoing president, Alvaro Uribe, who has publicly insinuated Morris is a terrorist sympathiser because of his interviews with the Farc guerilla group.

Morris and his family, including his young daughter, were victims of illegal spying by Colombia’s spy agency, the DAS among a handful of other journalists, lawyers, judges, opposition politicians, and human rights activists . Human rights groups say it was a deliberate attempt to dig up any personal dirt they could find on him to squash his reporting. The scandal was so big, the agency was going to be dismantled, but as of yet it has not.

Regarding the Farc, it’s true Morris has interviewed Farc commanders over the years. But so have countless other journalists from Colombia and abroad. If Colombia threw in jail every reporter who has had contact with the Farc, the jails would be full overnight.

But Morris’s critics – and there are many in Colombia – largely fail to recognise only a small portion of his stories deal with the Farc; most of his pieces have a razor sharp focus on human rights, giving a true and authentic platform for those otherwise with no outlet to tell their story.

It is true that because Morris aggressively pursues stories on the ‘front lines’ of conflict, he often finds himself in sticky situations. Like last year when he recorded brief interviews with several Farc hostages moments before they were granted freedom, a move that was criticised by some in Colombia as Morris allowing himself to be used by the Farc to promote a propaganda agenda. In journalism theory class, maybe so. But when in the jungles of Colombia caught in between a firefight between rebels and the Army as Morris has been on several occasions perhaps things are not as clear at the time.

And unlike many other journalists, Morris isn’t afraid to give his personal viewpoints on President Uribe especially after the government spying scandal against him , thrusting himself into the realm of activist-journalists, according to his critics.

But he and his brother, Juan Pablo – who is the executive producer at their Bogota-based Morris Productions – are recognised as respected, top shelf journalists by many people. They have done documentaries for Discovery Channel, European channels, and for many years had an independent programme on Colombian public TV called Contravia, partially funded by a grant from the European Union.

I first met Hollman and Juan Pablo almost eight years ago. We have since crossed paths in Peru, Honduras, Washington DC, and several times in Colombia. They have both worked for Al Jazeera on numerous occasions on a freelance basis, and specifically helped me on stories.

But the crowning recognition of Morris’s journalistic aptitude was being awarded a prestigious Nieman Fellowship at Harvard, where he was going to join an elite group of other journalist’s from around the world in this years class, and step back from his day-to-day reporting to study human rights issues that could enhance his theoretical understanding of the issues he reports on back at home.

But right as Hollman was making final preparations to head off to Harvard, brushing up on his English, the US government branded him with another label: “Terrorist”. As the Associated Press pointed out, his visa to study in the United States was denied, as US officials told him he was ineligible on grounds of a ‘terrorist activities’ section of the US Patriot Act.

Of course, US Embassy officials in Bogota won’t comment on individual cases.

So the speculation from human rights groups interviewed in a recent Washington Post article about the case, is that the Uribe administration – Washington’s closest friend in Latin America this decade under the George W Bush administration – orchestrated the visa rejection because of Morris’s reporting that questioned Uribe’s policies. Now some are pinning it on the Obama Administration.

I won’t pretend to know what the truth is on why the visa was denied and what role – if any – the Uribe administration played. It is no secret Morris’s reports over the years have annoyed Uribe to no end, and thus Uribe has tagged him a conspirator with terrorists, regardless of the fact he has never been charged with any such a crime. Groups such as Human Rights Watch protested Uribe’s comments.

The larger question is: What exactly is the objection from the US government to having an internationally recognised Colombian journalist do a Harvard-sponsored fellowship? What exactly is the evidence of his terrorist activities, or how exactly is he in violation of the Patriot Act?

Maybe ironically, the same US Embassy in Bogota that rejected his study visa to Harvard, singled him out in a 1997 human right report as having to flee the country because of death threats from illegal armed actors scroll down to the section titled “Freedom of Speech and Press” in the link above .

The Committee to Protect Journalists has sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking her department to reconsider Morris’s case.

For their part, the Nieman Foundation appears to stand behind Morris, but that is a small consequence because without a visa there is no chance to take part in the fellowship.

One of the comments by a reader identified as “vaalex” in the Washington Post article about the case said this: “His Morris’s work is too important to interrupt by wasting time at Harvard. The State Dept. decision is a blessing in disguise.”

A backhanded compliment to Morris, I guess, but still probably little consolation.

Because after Morris was accepted to Harvard, at first glance, one would think the US State Department would have opened the door and patted him on the shoulder with congratulations. Instead, the State Department slammed the door and slapped him across the face and branded him with the terrorist label.

National Conference to Bring the Troops Home Now!

July 23–25, 2010

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Albany, New York

In these troubled times, Washington’s wars and occupations rage, resulting in an ever increasing number of dead and wounded and the destruction of countries posing no threat to the U.S. Trillions are spent on seemingly endless conflicts in pursuit of profits and global domination, while trillions more are lost by working people in loss of jobs, homes, pensions, health care, and cuts to social programs and public services. The U.S. goes to war to plunder the world’s fossil fuel resources, the unrestrained use of which threatens the future of our planet.

We must demand the immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces, mercenaries and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq, and the end to drone attacks on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries and call for self-determination for the people of all countries. Moreover, we recognize that the Middle East cauldron today also encompasses Iran, Yemen, Palestine, and Israel, while countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa are targeted for intervention by a militarized U.S. foreign policy.

The urgency of the current world situation DEMANDS UNITY OF ACTION and purpose to generate the broad social movement we must create to not only end wars and occupations, but to fundamentally change the aggressive policies that inevitably lead our country to militarism, racism, and war. Our cry must be “Money for Human Needs; Not for Wars, Occupations, and Bail-Outs.”

Come to a conference where peace, social justice and environmental activists will come together to discuss the major concerns we face and to hammer out an ambitious program of action. The time is long overdue for such a gathering.

SCHEDULE:

Friday evening, July 23: Panel discussion on “Strategies & Tactics in the Struggle to End the Empire’s Wars and Occupations”; Presentation of Action Proposal

Saturday, July 24: Keynote Speakers; Workshops; Lunch panel on Government Repression, Defense of Political Prisoners, and Guantanamo Detainees; Plenary Discussion of Action Proposal, Amendments & Resolutions

Saturday evening, July 24: Public Gathering with speakers & cultural performances

Sunday, July 25: Plenary Discussion and Vote on Action Proposal; Workshops

CO-SPONSORS

After Downing Street, Arab American Union Members Council, Bail Out the People Movement, Black Agenda Report, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Campus Antiwar Network, Citizen Soldier, Code Pink, Fellowship of Reconciliation, International Action Center, Grandmothers Against the War, Granny Peace Brigade, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, May 1st Workers and Immigrant Rights Coalition, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, National Lawyers Guild, Office of the Americas, Peace Action, Peace of the Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Project Salam, September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, U.S. Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Voters For Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, World Can’t Wait

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

NOAM CHOMSKY, Internationally renowned political activist, author, and critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policies, MIT Professor Emeritus of Linguistics

DONNA DEWITT, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO; Co-Chair, South Carolina Progressive Network; Steering Committee, U.S. Labor Against the War; Administrative Body, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations

Additional Speakers: Joel Kovel, Dahlia Wasfi, Leila Zand, Cheri Honkala, Medea Benjamin, Pardiss Kebriaei, Kathy Kelly, Michael Ferner, Kevin Martin, Michael McPhearson, Nada Khader, Larry Holmes, Michael Eisenscher, David Swanson, Glen Ford, Blanca Missé, Pam Africa, Cindy Sheehan, Fahima Vorgetts, Kathy Black, Debra Sweet, Noura Erakat, Ann Wright partial list

PANEL ON POLITICAL REPRESSION, GUANTANAMO,

MUSLIM POLITICAL PRISONERS

Hear statements from political prisoners Attorney Lynne Stewart, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Imam Aref and speakers from Project Salam, the Muslim Solidarity Committee, and the Center for Constitutional Rights

Friday Night July 23 Panel on:

"Strategies and Tactics in the Struggle to End the Empire's Wars and Occupations"

Speakers

1. Medea Benjamin, CODE PINK

2. Michael Eisenscher, National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War

3. Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report

4. Chris Gauvreau, Administrative Body, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations

5. Teresa Gutierrez, International Action Center

6. Kathy Kelly, Creative Voices for Nonviolence

7. Nada Khader, Palestinian-American and Executive Director of the WESPAC Westchester Peace Action Coalition Foundation

8. Kevin Martin, Executive Director, Peace Action

9. Michael McPhearson, United for Peace and Justice Co-Chair; Veterans for Peace

10. Blanca Missé, Graduate Student, UC at Berkeley; played leading role in March 4 student protests

11. David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org formerly AfterDowningStreet.org

12. Deborah Sweet, National Director, World Can’t Wait

WORKSHOPS SCHEDULED FOR UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR CONFERENCE UNAC

The Human Costs of Targeting Iraq

Zaineb Alani - Iraqi writer, poet, activist living in US has large extended family in Iraq

Elaine Hills - epidemiologist/lecturer Dept of Anthropology SUNY Albany, writer on impact of war on Iraqi health, Coordinating Committee Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace

Ali Hossaini, M.D. - Iranian-Iraqi-American physician recently returned from Baghdad working with Health Dept. to establish health care facilities to train personnel in latest blood transfusion and blood banking techniques, led several humanitarian efforts to assist peoples of Iraq, Palestine, & Jordan

Dahlia Wasfi, M.D. - Iraqi American activist, speaker, writer on effects of occupation on Iraqis, visited Iraq twice since invasion

Afghanistan/Pakistan: What Is the Strategy Behind US Intervention?

Charlotte Dennett - public interest attorney, investigative journalist on role of Big Oil in US policy in Mideast and Latin America, author “The People v. Bush: One Lawyer's Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the Nationwide Grassroots Movement She's Encountered Along the Way”

Fahima Vorgetts - Women for Afghan Women

Michael Zweig - showing film excerpt “Why Are We in Afghanistan?” Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at SUNY Stony Brook. Author “What's Class Got To Do With It?” and “The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret”, union officer United University Professions Local 2190, American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO , Steering Committee US Labor Against the War

The Social Impact of US Military Intervention in Afghanistan & Pakistan

Kathy Kelly - Co-Coordinator Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Co-Founder Voices in the Wilderness defied sanctions to carry medicine to Iraq, served time in jail for non-violent actions, visited Iraq, Pakistan, Gaza & recently returned from Afghanistan

Fahima Vorgetts - Women for Afghan Women

Representative – Action for A Progressive Pakistan

Resistance to Israeli Apartheid in Palestine: Gaza, BDS, Nonviolent Resistance in the W. Bank & E. Jerusalem

Fadi Kanaan - Palestinian leader Palestine student support group at SUNY Albany

Nada Khader - Exec. Dir. WESPAC Foundation, Westchester peace and justice organization

Col. Ann Wright - Code Pink, just returned from Gaza Flotilla

Representative - Al-Awda NY

Israel & the Palestinian Struggle: Is a Two-State Solution Possible or Desirable?

Noura Erakat - Palestinian American Human Rights Attorney and activist, adjunct professor of international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University, helped launch the Palestinian equal rights lobby: the American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights, former National Grassroots Organizer and Legal Advocate U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

Joel Kovel - author “Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine

Representative - Al-Awda NY

Iran Under Threat from the US and Israel

Gareth Porter - historian, investigative journalist, policy analyst on US foreign & military policy

Phil Wilayto - Editor, The Virginia Defender, author “In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. Peace Delegation's Journey through the Islamic Republic”

Leila Zand - Fellowship of Reconciliation

US Economic & Military Expansion into Africa

Abayomi Azikiwe - Editor, Pan-African News Wire

The Truth of US Occupation of Haiti

Nellie Bailey - Harlem Tenants Council, just returned from Haiti

Marty Goodman - active in Haiti solidarity for 20 years

Ray Laforest - Haitian American labor leader AFSCME and Haitian community organizer, elected member of Pacifica National Board

Tony Savino - Award-winning photographer will present an eye-opening and critical slideshow on earthquake relief

David Wilson - US-based immigrant rights activist who was in Haiti during the earthquake

Closing Guantanamo

Pardiss Kebriaei - Staff Att’y Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative at Center for Constitutional Rights

Colombia: No U.S. Military Bases

Antoine Castro del Rio - Colombia Polo Democratico

Natalia Fajardo –

End US Support for the Honduran Coup Government

Joe Callahan - Honduras Solidarity Network

Alexy Lanza - Honduran, La Voz de los de Abajo & Casa Morazan in Chicago

Defending Muslim Political Prisoners

Mongi Dhaoudi - Executive Director, CT Chapter, CAIR Council on American Islamic Relations

Representative - Muslim Solidarity Committee from Albany

Representative - Project Salam

Organizing Veterans & Military Families

Chantelle Bateman - NE Regional Field Organizer Iraq Veterans Against the War

Ryan Henowitz - Iraq veteran

Patrick McCann - Board of Directors/DC-Area Chapter 016 President Veterans For Peace, Board of Directors, Montgomery County MD Education Association

Nikki Morse – Organizer, Military Families Speak Out

Organizing Active Duty GI’s & GI Resistance

Christine Beckermann or Michelle Roubidoux - members Toronto War Resisters Support Campaign

GI resisters living in Canada

Tod Ensign - Director Citizen Soldier GI/veterans rights advocacy group

Jimmy Massey - founding member of IVAW, founder Peace It Together

War, Militarization, & the Assault on Civil Liberties & Communities of Color

Pam Africa - Chair, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Abayomi Azikiwe - Editor Pan-African News Wire, Co-Founder Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice, Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shut-offs

Lillie "Ms K" Branch-Kennedy - Virginia prisoner advocacy group R.I.H.D. - Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged

Shahid Buttar - Executive Director National Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Representative - New York State Prisoner Justice Network

Poor People’s Movements & the Triple Evils of Racism, Economic Exploitation & Militarism

Ana Edwards - Founding Member Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality; Chair Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project; host radio program DefendersLIVE!

Cheri Honkala - Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign/March to US Social Forum

Immigration Reform & the Militarization of the US/Mexico Border

Cristobal Cavazos - DuPage, IL Immigrants Rights & Grassroots Immigrant Justice Network

Jaime Gonzalez - Mexico border wars, drugs, Grassroots Immigrant Justice Network

Monami Maulik Executive DirectorDRUM- Desis Rising Up & Moving

Dennis Wilson - co-author of “The Politics of Immigration”, produces Weekly News update on the Americas published by Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York

Women Against War

Maria Butler - Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Peacewomen Project Associate

Connie Frisbee Houde - Albany Women Against War group

Col. Ann Wright - Code Pink, just returned from Gaza flotilla

US Foreign Policy & the Economic Crisis: A Vital Labor Concern

Kathy Black - Co-Convenor, U.S. Labor Against the War; President Philadelphia Coalition of Labor Union Women; AFSCME District Council 47

Doug Bullock - 1st VP Albany Central Labor Council, Albany County Legislator

Michael Eisenscher - National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War

Barry Weisleder - lifelong Canadian antiwar and union activist, leader of the Socialist Caucus in the Labour Party, leader of Workers Solidarity & Union Democracy Coalition within the Ontario and Canadian Labor Councils.

Building Solidarity with Unions & Workers in Countries Targeted by US Imperialism

Amjad Ali - North American representative Iraq Freedom Congress and General Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq GFWCUI

Michael Eisenscher - National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War

Bring Our War Dollars Home: City Council, Town & State Legislature Meeting Resolutions & Voter Referendum Campaigns

Chris Hellman - Communications Liaison National Priorities Project, former military policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, frequent media commentator on military planning, policy, and budgetary issues

Mark Roman - Vietnam war resister, founding member Waterville Area Bridges For Peace And Justice, one of the organizers of the Bring Our War Dollars Home campaign in Maine

Paki Wieland – Lifelong peace activist, organizer Bring Our War Dollars Home campaign in Northampton, MA

Representative - Cut War Budget 25%

Electoral & Legislative Strategies against Militarism, War and Empire

Cole Harrison - Co-Convenor, UFPJ's Afghanistan Working Group; Convenor, Boston United for Justice with Peace Afghanistan/Pakistan Task Force, Co-Convenor of its Legislative Action task force

Howie Hawkins - NY Green Party candidate for Governor

Christopher Hutchinson - Socialist Action candidate for US Congress in CT

Kevin Martin - Executive Director, Peace Action

Mary-Nichols Rhodes - Ohio Congressional District Organizer, Progressive Democrats of America

Student Organizing: Budget Cuts & U.S. Wars

Ross Caputi - Iraq War Veteran, participated in the Second Battle of Fallujah, President Boston University Anti-War Coalition

Jackie Hayes/Colin Donnaruma - SUNY Albany Students Against the War

Pat Korte – student at the New School, organizer with International Solidarity Initiative

Blanca Misse - Berkeley student leader March 4 demos; shop steward, UAW Local 2865

Counter-Recruitment in High Schools

Jim Murphy - Coordinator NY Vets Speak Out & International Veterans Fellowship of Reconciliation

Dayl S. Wise Vietnam/Cambodia veteran, member, Vietnam Veterans Against the War & Veterans for Peace Presentation Fellowship of Reconciliation Youth and Militarism program

Global Warming & War: Breaking the Consumption-Fossil Fuel Cycle

Joel Kovel - academic, writer, eco-socialist, Editor-in-Chief journal “Capitalism Nature Socialism”

Maggie Zhou, Ph.D. - MA Coalition for Healthy Communities & Committee for a Secure Green Future

Health Care, Not Warfare

Andrew D. Coates, MD - secretary, Capital District chapter, Physicians for a National Health Program, teaches at Albany Medical College and practices internal medicine in Albany, NY, member Public Employees Federation, AFL-CIO.

Margaret Flowers, MD - Maryland chapter, Physicians for a National Health Program

Mary Nichols-Rhodes - Ohio Congressional District Organizer, Progressive Democrats of America

The Faith Community & the Antiwar Movement

Shamshad Ahmad

Mark Johnson - Executive Director, Fellowship of Reconciliation

Sybil Stock - Social Justice Committee at the Unitarian Universalist Association in Albany

Spiritual Approaches to Creating Peace

Blasé Bonpane - Executive Director, Office of the Americas

Kathy Kelly - Co-Coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Co-Founder, Voices in the Wilderness defied sanctions to carry medicine to Iraq, served time in jail for non-violent actions, visited Iraq, Pakistan, Gaza & recently returned from Afghanistan

Rev. Sam Trumbore

Paki Wieland

The Rise of Right Wing Populism & the Tea Party: Do We Need a Right-Left Coalition?

Medea Benjamin - Code Pink

Chris Gauvreau - CT United Against the War; Administrative Body, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations

Glen Ford - Black Agenda

Kevin Zeese - Co-Founder, Voters for Peace

Deepening the Base & Building Bridges between the Climate Change, Peace & Economic Justice Movements

Suren Moodliar - Majority Agenda Project organizing team, coordinator Mass. Global Action and Encuentro 5

Weimin Tchen - Majority Agenda Project organizing team, member Boston United for Justice with Peace

UNITED ANTIWAR CONFERENCE UNAC

For further information and to register, go to our website:

http://www.nationalpeaceconference.org

Or write UNAC, P.O. Box 21675, Cleveland, OH 44121; phone 518-227-6947

The Real News Network | July 12, 2010

Bio

Shir Hever is an economic researcher in the Alternative Information Center, a Palestinian-Israeli organization active in Jerusalem and Beit-Sahour. Researching the economic aspect of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, some of his research topics include international aid to the Palestinians and Israel, the effects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories on the Israeli economy, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of the economy of the Israeli occupation.

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay, and we’re in Jerusalem. Now joining us is Shir Hever. He’s an economist at the Alternative Information Center and author of the upcoming book Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation. Thanks for joining us Shir.

SHIR HEVER, ECONOMIST, ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER: Hello.

JAY: So, in talking to people in Israel, one thing I hear constantly is the fight here is about national identity, it’s about the defense of the Jewish state. I don’t hear very much about economics of Israel or the economics of occupation. So how does national identity relate to the economics here?

HEVER: Well, the economic reality of Israel, of course, plays a part in every aspect of Israel’s existence—in the politics, in the society, and, of course, also in identity issues as well. The occupation of the Palestinian territories defines Israel’s economy in a large way. About two-thirds of Israel’s history, it has been occupying power, controlling Palestinian territories. But even before that occupation, Israel has created a very particular system of economic control, which is designed to promote the idea of a Jewish state. The Jewish state is not merely a cultural idea; it’s not merely a symbolic idea; it’s a material reality which is designed to redistribute wealth in order to draw as many Jews as possible to this area and to maintain a sustainable control of the Jewish population over a piece of land which is by nature binational.

JAY: Now, in terms of the Israeli economy, what percentile at the top controls the majority of the Israeli economy in terms of ownership?

HEVER: Israel is very centralized in terms of capital, far more than most developed economies in the world. About 18 families in Israel control roughly 60 percent of the equity value of all companies in Israel. So it’s concentrated in the hands of 18 families. Of course, there are other rich people in Israel who control some more of that other 40 percent.

JAY: So what are we talking about? What kind of things do they control, in terms of what makes up the bulk of the Israeli economy and the ownership?

HEVER: The Israeli economy has a very strong banking sector and financial sector, which also includes insurance companies, so that’s a very big part of the Israeli economy. But Israel’s also one of the world’s biggest exporter of diamonds, Israel is one of the world’s biggest exporters of chemical fertilizer, and there are a lot of high tech industries. Much of that high-tech industry actually ties with a very large and very famous industry in Israel, which is the arms trade, the arms industry. A lot of the high-tech development in Israel is actually for what is known as homeland security technology. And so a lot of companies, especially companies set up by former military officers, specialize in developing homeland security products designed to track individuals and to help governments or corporations—.

JAY: Which we know have been sold in the past to South Africa, to Colombia, to Honduras.

HEVER: Yeah. Well, until the year 2000, Israel was about the tenth biggest arms exporter in the world, but the fourth biggest arms exporter to the developing world, because Israel was willing to sell weapons to clients, to customers which other countries were reluctant to sell to, such as South Africa during the apartheid and so on. But after September 11, after the attacks, there was a famous quote by Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently Israel’s prime minister. He said these attacks are good for Israel; they show the world that Israel fighting terrorism—or fighting Islam, basically—is a good thing.

JAY: So these 18 families, we’re talking families that are all billionaires, then, in terms of, amongst the families, the wealth that’s been accumulated. In terms of the size of the fortunes on a global scale, are they significant fortunes?

HEVER: Well, they are significant in those sectors. In the diamonds sector and the weapons sector and in the fertilizer sector Israel is a global player. In the high-tech sector not so much, but definitely in the homeland security sector.

JAY: So, then, these families, in terms of the Israeli politics, political parties, and the various governments that come and go, are the families split? Or are they involved in all the parties?

HEVER: Well, all the Zionist parties in Israel, starting from the so-called Zionist left or the liberal parties and all the way to the extreme right-wing, almost fascist parties, are almost indistinguishable from each other. And the controlling—the wealthy families, they know that. They contribute about equally to the centrist parties, or the so-called centrist parties, because they know that it doesn’t really matter whether it’s going to be Likud or Labor or Kadima. These parties have the same agenda, the same strategy, and the same platform.

JAY: Now, to what extent does the struggle with the Palestinians take attention off the 18 families? Or how visible are the 18 families in terms of popular perception?

HEVER: Well, they are visible. I think people know to a certain extent that there are these people who own the companies that they pay money to every day. You know that your cellular phone comes from a very large and powerful company that you see their signs every day. And so they do know about these companies. Many people also know even the names of the owners of these companies. But when you want to tie it to the struggle with the Palestinians, then, of course, that plays a role through different ways. You hinted that perhaps the struggle with the Palestinians helped to draw attention from the centralized capital in the year 2002. The chairman of the Manufacturers Association in Israel said that because of the struggle with the Palestinians, because of the intifada, Israelis have to learn that they cannot expect an increase in the minimum wage, or perhaps even they should expect a decrease in the minimum wage, meaning that the security constraints are used as a justification to stifle social struggle.

JAY: So 18 families, you said, own 60 percent of capitalization in Israel?

HEVER: Yeah.

JAY: Now, in terms of general social programs, social safety net, how much redistribution takes place amongst Israeli citizens?

HEVER: Well, Israel is the most unequal country in the developed world, second only to the United States. In the year 2009, Israel bypassed Mexico for the first time as more unequal than Mexico, making Israel indeed one of the most unequal countries in the world. And that is because while most countries in the developed world spend some of their budgets in redistributive efforts such as health care, unemployment benefits, infrastructure, creating jobs, that sort of thing, Israel actually spends about 75 percent less, in ratio comparisons, with most of these countries, with OECD countries, and that is because Israel spends so much on security, on the military.

JAY: Well, how much is it because they spend so much on security, and how much is it because of the accumulation of the 18 families? I guess, let me ask the question the other way: how taxed are the 18 families?

HEVER: Well, they are slightly less taxed than in most developed countries, mostly because Israel created a system of loopholes which allow, especially, wealthy Jewish people from around the world to bring their property to Israel with no questions asked. So there have been many cases of very wealthy Jews coming to Israel with their property, saying they’re doing a Zionist act, but in fact there were standing lawsuits against them in other countries. Israel will not extradite them, stating against the Zionist argument. And that was one of the reasons that Israel was able to draw a lot of capital in the past two decades.

JAY: So if great concentration of ownership and wealth in the top tier, not that much taxation, not very much social safety net—so to what extent is there a social movement demanding more economic justice for Israelis?

HEVER: Well, Israel historically had a very strong social movement and was considered an almost socialist state. In 1965 there was a survey of all countries in the world in terms of equality, and Israel was ranked between the Netherlands and Finland—one of the most equal countries in the world. Today, as I said before, Israel is one of the most unequal countries in the world. So something did happen.

JAY: Okay. So in the next segment of our interview let’s find out what happened. Please join us for the next segment of our interview with Shir Hever.

End of Transcript

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

WMR — After conducting its successful coup d’etat in Honduras against President Manuel Zelaya, the imperialistic Barack Obama administration is now bent on ousting Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega by massing a huge U.S. Coast Guard and Marine Corps presence in neighboring Costa Rica, a base of operations for Reagan administration-backed CIA operations in the 1980s in support of the Nicaraguan contras.

Costa Rican government officials, including President Laura Chinchilla, Vice President Luis Lieberman Ginsburg, Security Minister Jose Maria Tijerino, counter-narcotics Commissioner Mauricio Boraschi, and the Costa Rican Congress agreed to Operation Joint Patrol, which will see 7,000 US Marines, 46 mainly U.S. Coast Guard vessels, and 200 helicopters and 10 combat aircraft descend on Costa Rica, which does not have a military force, from July 1 to December 31.

At a time when the Coast Guard vessels could be used to assist in the clean-up of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, they will be used in an operation widely believed to be targeting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, which incurred the ire of Israel and its Zionist ally in San Jose, Costa Rica, Vice President Lieberman, by severing relations with the Tel Aviv regime over the Israeli attack on the Gaza aid flotilla.

The official reason for Operation Joint Patrol is to combat drug trafficking but few in the Costa Rican opposition and in Nicaragua believe that to be the sole reason. The Joint Patrol operation is being likened to Plan Colombia, which has targeted the governments of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa from Colombian territory. The Costa Rican opposition has denounced Chinchilla’s government for militarizing Costa Rica.

It is also believed by WMR’s sources in Costa Rica that Costa Rican Vice President Lieberman, a noted Zionist, has arranged for Israeli special forces to enter Costa Rica in order to participate in operations directed against the government of Nicaragua.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2010 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report subscription required .

Inside Costa Rica | July 3, 2010

As is customary, the US asks for authorization of Costa Rica’s legislature before entry of any US warship and soldiers in Costa Rican waters. And as customary, the Costa Rica legislature grants its permission, as was the case on Friday.

The permission allows the entry of 46 US war ships and 7.000 Marines for the balance of the year July 1 to December 31, 2010 .

The permission granted by the Costa Rica legislature could include docking of the USS Freedom pictured above on Costa Rica’s shores. Opposition parties say the decade old agreement was to allow entry of US coast guard vessels and not war ships.

Costa Rica’s opposition, however, see it different, describing the permission as illegal and in violation of national sovereignty.

The main opponents to the granting of the authority is the Partido Acción Cuidadana PAC , the Frente Amplio FA and the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana PUSC , arguing that the destructive force of the ships and manpower, that includes helicopters, is disproportianate to the threat caused by drug traffickers.

The 46 ships carry some 200 helicopters and war planes and includes the USS Freedom, combat submarines and a hospital ship.

Luis Fishman, head of the PUSC party and presidential candidate in the past elections, said the legislative approval was like handing over a “blank cheque”.

“We cannot support the illegal, we cannot allow our Constitution to be trampled”, said Fishman.

The PAC and the FA recalled that the bilateral agreement signed 10 years ago allowed the entry of coast guard vessels, but not war ships that have the capacity for military confrontations and war.

FA legislator José María Villalta questioned the conditions under which the permission was granted, since US personnel “will enjoy freedom of movement and the right to carry out the activities needed to fulfill their mission”.

The FA also urged consideration of the geopolitical situation in which naval forces will be allowed to enter a region considered by Washington as part of its sphere of influence.

The legislator recalled that the US applies in the region a “strategy of complete dominance”, which includes offensive actions such as the coup d’etat in Honduras and the installation of military bases in Colombia.

Opposition Deputies said they may take action, that could include an appeal with the Constitutional Court, against the decision of the Legislative Assembly since the permission for the ships, airships, helicopters and marines to enter the country violates the agreement reached a decade ago.

• mobilizations of the National Guard
• offshore shows of naval strength
• reinforcements of embassy personnel
• the use of non-Defense Department personnel such as the Drug Enforcement Administration
• military exercises
• non-combat mobilizations such as replacing postal strikers
• the permanent stationing of armed forces
• covert actions where the U.S. did not play a command and control role
• the use of small hostage rescue units
• most uses of proxy troops
• U.S. piloting of foreign warplanes
• foreign or domestic disaster assistance
• military training and advisory programs not involving direct combat
• civic action programs

Depleted Uranium Weapons: The Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke

Depleted uranium, despite its rather benign-sounding name, is not depleted of radioactivity or toxicity. The term "depleted" refers only to its being depleted of the U-235 isotope needed for fission reactions in nuclear reactors. The nuclear waste material from nuclear power plants, DU as it is known, is what is removed from the power plants' spent fuel rods and is essentially composed of the uranium isotope U-238 as well as U-236 a product of nuclear reactor fission, not found in nature , as well as other trace radioactive elements. Once simply a nuisance for the industry, that still has no permanent way to dispose of the dangerous stuff, it turns out to be an ideal metal for a number of weapons uses, and has been capitalized on by the Pentagon. 1.7 times heavier than lead, and much harder than steel, and with the added property of burning at a super-hot temperature, DU has proven to be an ideal penetrator for warheads that need to pierce thick armor or dense concrete bunkers made of reinforced concrete and steel. Once through the defenses, it burns at a temperature that incinerates anyone inside which is why we see the carbonized bodies of bodies in the wreckage of Iraqi tanks hit by US fire . Accordingly it has found its way into 30 mm machine gun ammunition, especially that used by the A-10 Warthog ground-attack fighter planes used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Kosovo . It is also the warhead of choice for Abrams tanks and is also reportedly used in GBU-28 and the later GBU-37 bunker buster bombs, each of which can have 1-2 tons of the stuff in its warhead. DU is also used as ballast in cruise missiles, and this burns up when a missile detonates its conventional explosive. Some cruise missiles are also designed to hit hardened targets and reportedly feature DU warheads, as does the AGM-130 air-to-ground missile, which carries a one-ton penetrating warhead. In addition, depleted uranium is used in large quantities in the armor of tanks and other equipment. This material becomes a toxic source of CU pollution when these vehicles are attacked and burned.

While the Pentagon has continued to claim, against all scientific evidence, that there is no hazard posed by depleted uranium, US troops in Iraq have reportedly been instructed to avoid any sites where these weapons have been used—destroyed Iraqi tanks, exploded bunkers, etc.—and to wear masks if they do have to approach. Many torched vehicles have been brought back to the US, where they have been buried in special sites reserved for dangerously contaminated nuclear materials. Thousands of tons of DU-contaminated sand from Kuwait, polluted with DU during the US destruction of Iraq's tank forces in the 1991 war, were removed and shipped to a waste site in Idaho last year with little fanfare. Suspiciously, international health officials have been prevented or obstructed from doing medical studies of DU sites in Iraq and Afghanistan. But an excellent series of articles several years ago by the Christian Science Monitor described how reporters from that newspaper had visited such sites in Iraq with Geiger-counters and had found them to be extremely "hot" with radioactivity.

The big danger with DU is not as a pure metal, but after it has exploded and burned, when the particles of uranium oxide, which are just as radioactive as the pure isotopes, can be inhaled or ingested. Even the smallest particle of uranium in the body is both deadly poisonous as a chemical, and over time can cause cancer—particularly in the lungs, but also the kidneys, testes and ovaries.

There are reports of a dramatic increase in the incidence of deformed babies being born in the city of Fallujah, where DU weapons were in wide use during the November 2004 assault on that city by US Marines. The British TV station SKY UK, in a report last month that has received no mention in any mainstream American news organization, found a marked increase in birth defects at local hospitals. Birth defects have also been high for years in the Basra area in the south of Iraq, where DU was used not just during America's 2003 "shock and awe" attack on Iraq, but also in the 1991 Gulf War.

Deformed baby born in post-US Invasion Iraq: DU's legacy?

Further, a report sent to the UN General Assembly by Dr Nawal Majeed Al-Sammarai, Iraq's Minister of Women's Affairs since 2006, stated that in September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 babies born, 24% of which died within their first week of life. Worse yet, fully 75% of the babies born that month were deformed. This compares to August 2002, six months before the US invasion, when 530 live births were reported with only six dying in the first week, and only one deformity. Clearly something terrible is happening in Fallujah, and many doctors suspect it's the depleted uranium dust that is permeating the city.

But the real impact of the first heavy use of depleted uranium weaponry in populous urban environments DU was used widely especially in 2003 in Baghdad, Samara, Mosul and other big Iraqi cities , will come over the years, as the toxic legacy of this latest American war crime begins to show up in rising numbers of cancers, birth defects and other genetic disorders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, as in the case of Agent Orange in Vietnam, the toxic effects of this latest battlefield use of toxic materials by the US military will also be felt for years to come by the men and women who were sent over to fight America's latest wars. As with Agent Orange, the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department have been assiduously denying the problem, and have been just as assiduously denying claims by veterans of the Gulf War and the two current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who claim their cancers and other diseases have anything to do with their exposure to DU.

The record on Agent Orange should lead us to be suspicious of the government's claims.

The deformed and dead babies in Iraq should make us demand a cleanup of Iraq and Afghanistan, medical aid for the victims, and a ban on all depleted uranium weapons.

Witnessing Resistance in Honduras

Quixote Centre Honduras Delegation update July 1st, 2010

Caitlin Power Hancey, Atlantic Regional Solidarity Network ARSN

The Honduran resistance movement is real—it is also strong, diverse, and decidedly non-violent.

This is the last day of our international accompaniment and observation delegation to Honduras. For the past week our delegation has been busy accompanying a range of events leading up to the anniversary of the coup on June 28th, or “the anniversary active of popular resistance in Honduras.” We also continued meetings with representatives from various sectors active in the resistance movement—including women’s rights organizations, LGBTI coalitions, youth groups, academics, teacher’s unions, and peace-building organizations.

Over the weekend, we accompanied members of the National Front of Popular Resistance FNRP as they collected signatures—actually “sovereign declarations”—calling for a National Constituent Assembly in the Tegucigalpa neighbourhood of La Esperanza. Nationally over 800,000 signatures have been collected, and the Front expects to have 1.2 million by September 15th, which is Independence Day in Central America. These signatures will give them the moral authority and political sway, as a coalition of social movements, to convoke the National Assembly and begin the process of creating a constitution representative of the diversity of peoples, regions, sectors and experiences that make up Honduras. The current constitution, for example, does not recognize the existence of any indigenous peoples in Honduras, while it is generally considered that there are nine indigenous groups within its borders. The largest groups are the Lenca in the west and Garífuna along the northern coast.

Sunday, on the eve of the anniversary, we accompanied a peaceful candlelight march that began at Francisco Morazán Pedagogical University. It was intended to go north on Miraflores Boulevard, veer right and stop at the presidential palace, then make its way west to the Congress in the centre of the city, where there was a vigil for all of the individuals who have lost their lives to state violence since the coup. When the crowd reached the first road leading to the palace, it was barricaded with cement blocks and chain-link fencing and guarded by soldiers in riot gear with machine guns. By the time the crowd reached Suyapa Boulevard, they had passed another route blocked by military in riot gear who’s shields read “POLICE,” in English , and the east side of the main intersection was blocked as well. The marchers stayed at the intersection for about 20 minutes, chanting at the soldiers, some marchers asking them what they were afraid of. After the crowd faced the soldiers and sang the national anthem, someone with a megaphone asked for a show of hands to determine where to go next. It was getting late, but most of the group continued on to the Congress. Before moving on, organizers sent pick-up trucks out to the edges of the crowd to try to ensure that those who weren’t continuing with the main crowd had a safe way home and that no one would be travelling alone.

About 11:15 that night in our guesthouse, I received a text message from a former colleague in Honduras that Berta Caceres, the leader of the Coordination of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras COPINH had been detained by the police in the department of La Esperanza and the charges were not being made clear. Within a half-hour I received another message that she was released. I was told the next morning that the police department had received at least a dozen calls from human rights activists in Honduras and the United States and responded to the pressure. This was the night before the anniversary of the coup, when marches were being planned all over the country.

No major incidents were reported to us on Monday, the day of the anniversary. Though the marches in Tegucigalpa and other major centres were not accounted for in mainstream Honduran media, most alternative sources estimate a minimum of 10,000 participants at the Tegucigalpa march. Most people we talked with presumed that the state was aware of the international eyes on Honduras during the anniversary and wouldn’t take overtly repressive action. They believed the violations would continue in a strategic, targeted, and “silent” way, which has been the pattern observed since the Lobo government took power at the end of January. In a country with an average of 15 violent deaths a day, it’s not considered difficult for those who want to pass off political violence—including assassinations—as common delinquency, or to smear the victim by insinuating involvement in criminal activity.

Our group temporarily left the anniversary march to observe the inauguration of the True Commission the alternative to the government-sponsored Truth and Reconciliation Commission , which others from the march soon joined. The energy was high in the auditorium, which was full, and international support from across the Americas was present. That afternoon and evening there was a concert on the grounds of the Pedagogical University showcasing Honduran musicians and original resistance music written since the coup.

After the anniversary our delegation had meetings with organizations representing the two groups hardest hit by political assassinations following the coup—the LGBTI community, who have lost 27, and teachers, who have lost 21 ?? . When our delegation members asked why each of those groups were so heavily targeted, representatives from ARCOIRIS, an organization that works with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people, said its in large part because they are considered by those responsible to be some of the most dispensable and disreputable members of the population, and therefore of the resistance. In our meeting with the presidents of five different teachers unions we were told simply that to repress teachers is to repress the next generation of resisters—and the strategy was clear.

We also met with representatives from Feminists in Resistance, a collective of individuals and women’s organizations that formed after the coup, who outlined the particular, gendered ways that women have been targeted in the resistance—from rape and sexualized beatings perpetrated by soldiers and police during demonstrations and curfews, to references in the mainstream media to “loose” and “irresponsible” women who take to the streets instead of taking care of their families. They also expressed clear determination to regain the ground they lost after the coup in terms of women’s rights, and sincere hope that with the increased organization and rejuvenation of their movement they would get even further. According to these representatives, since Lobo has taken power, the morning-after pill—and any education or advertising referencing it—has been made illegal. A new, inclusive sexual education guide that they had approved under the Zelaya government has been gutted, and the hard-won Institute for Women is being shut down and reportedly replaced with an “Institute for the Family.”

This morning, a couple of hours before delegation members were scheduled to leave for the airport and return home, we received a call that a highly-visible member of the resistance, whose partner was killed as a result of tear gas poisoning during a demonstration last year, had been arrested for a traffic violation. He was reportedly badly burned by pepper spray from the police officers, had been tasered, and also couldn’t open one eye. Some members went to the local police station to inquire about his welfare and ask if they could see him on their way to the airport. Shortly afterwards, we found out that a warrant was now out for the arrest of another outspoken member of the resistance because two years ago workers had cut down trees on her rural property, allegedly violating environmental laws.

On this Canada Day there is no shortage of recent events that encourage me to reflect on our country’s role internationally in support of violent, repressive regimes—such as backing the post-coup regime in Honduras, continuing support for Israel’s war on Gaza and the Palestinian people, and the recent signing of the bi-lateral free trade agreement with Colombia. And with the recent detentions, violence, and violations of civil liberties during the G20 meetings in Toronto, we’ve got several more reasons to doubt our current government’s respect for human rights at home, including the right to dissent.

I want to reiterate that the resistance movement is large, vibrant, multi-faceted, and decidedly present in Honduras. We do not hear about it via mainstream in North America, if we hear about the situation in Honduras at all, and major media in Honduras clearly misrepresents and undermines its existence. All representatives we met with insisted that as international delegates we must counteract the lies and omissions and let people in our countries know that their movement is real. In our meeting with him yesterday, Dr. Juan Almendares Bonilla, the Executive Director of the Centre for the Prevention and Treatment of Torture Victims and their Families CPTRT and an eminent human rights defender in Honduras, reminded us that international solidarity between peoples—despite the national boundaries and governments that divide us—is the most important and essential power we have, and we need to exercise it, mutually.

For more information about this delegation and additional updates or media releases:

The Quixote Centre: www.quixote.org

Common Frontiers Canada: http://commonfrontiers.ca

The Atlantic Regional Solidarity Network ARSN : http://arsncanada.blogspot.com

For more information about the recent situation in Honduras and Canada’s role:

Honduras: Democracy Denied http://www.ccic.ca/_files/en/working_groups/apg_2010-04_honduras_democra…

A Report from the Canadian Council for International Cooperation’s Americas Policy Group with Recommendations to the Government of Canada

National Conference to Bring the Troops Home Now!

July 23–25, 2010

Crowne Plaza Hotel, Albany, New York

In these troubled times, Washington’s wars and occupations rage, resulting in an ever increasing number of dead and wounded and the destruction of countries posing no threat to the U.S. Trillions are spent on seemingly endless conflicts in pursuit of profits and global domination, while trillions more are lost by working people in loss of jobs, homes, pensions, health care, and cuts to social programs and public services. The U.S. goes to war to plunder the world’s fossil fuel resources, the unrestrained use of which threatens the future of our planet.

We must demand the immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces, mercenaries and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq, and the end to drone attacks on Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries and call for self-determination for the people of all countries. Moreover, we recognize that the Middle East cauldron today also encompasses Iran, Yemen, Palestine, and Israel, while countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa are targeted for intervention by a militarized U.S. foreign policy.

The urgency of the current world situation DEMANDS UNITY OF ACTION and purpose to generate the broad social movement we must create to not only end wars and occupations, but to fundamentally change the aggressive policies that inevitably lead our country to militarism, racism, and war. Our cry must be “Money for Human Needs; Not for Wars, Occupations, and Bail-Outs.”

Come to a conference where peace, social justice and environmental activists will come together to discuss the major concerns we face and to hammer out an ambitious program of action. The time is long overdue for such a gathering.

SCHEDULE:

Friday evening, July 23: Panel discussion on “Strategies & Tactics in the Struggle to End the Empire’s Wars and Occupations”; Presentation of Action Proposal

Saturday, July 24: Keynote Speakers; Workshops; Lunch panel on Government Repression, Defense of Political Prisoners, and Guantanamo Detainees; Plenary Discussion of Action Proposal, Amendments & Resolutions

Saturday evening, July 24: Public Gathering with speakers & cultural performances

Sunday, July 25: Plenary Discussion and Vote on Action Proposal; Workshops

CO-SPONSORS

After Downing Street, Arab American Union Members Council, Bail Out the People Movement, Black Agenda Report, Campaign for Peace and Democracy, Campus Antiwar Network, Citizen Soldier, Code Pink, Fellowship of Reconciliation, International Action Center, Grandmothers Against the War, Granny Peace Brigade, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, May 1st Workers and Immigrant Rights Coalition, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations, National Lawyers Guild, Office of the Americas, Peace Action, Peace of the Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Project Salam, September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, U.S. Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Voters For Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, World Can’t Wait

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

NOAM CHOMSKY, Internationally renowned political activist, author, and critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policies, MIT Professor Emeritus of Linguistics

DONNA DEWITT, President, South Carolina AFL-CIO; Co-Chair, South Carolina Progressive Network; Steering Committee, U.S. Labor Against the War; Administrative Body, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations

Additional Speakers: Joel Kovel, Dahlia Wasfi, Leila Zand, Cheri Honkala, Medea Benjamin, Pardiss Kebriaei, Kathy Kelly, Michael Ferner, Kevin Martin, Michael McPhearson, Nada Khader, Larry Holmes, Michael Eisenscher, David Swanson, Glen Ford, Blanca Missé, Pam Africa, Cindy Sheehan, Fahima Vorgetts, Kathy Black, Debra Sweet, Noura Erakat, Ann Wright partial list

PANEL ON POLITICAL REPRESSION, GUANTANAMO,

MUSLIM POLITICAL PRISONERS

Hear statements from political prisoners Attorney Lynne Stewart, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Imam Aref and speakers from Project Salam, the Muslim Solidarity Committee, and the Center for Constitutional Rights

Friday Night July 23 Panel on:

"Strategies and Tactics in the Struggle to End the Empire's Wars and Occupations"

Speakers

1. Medea Benjamin, CODE PINK

2. Michael Eisenscher, National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War

3. Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report

4. Chris Gauvreau, Administrative Body, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations

5. Teresa Gutierrez, International Action Center

6. Kathy Kelly, Creative Voices for Nonviolence

7. Nada Khader, Palestinian-American and Executive Director of the WESPAC Westchester Peace Action Coalition Foundation

8. Kevin Martin, Executive Director, Peace Action

9. Michael McPhearson, United for Peace and Justice Co-Chair; Veterans for Peace

10. Blanca Missé, Graduate Student, UC at Berkeley; played leading role in March 4 student protests

11. David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org formerly AfterDowningStreet.org

12. Deborah Sweet, National Director, World Can’t Wait

WORKSHOPS SCHEDULED FOR UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR CONFERENCE UNAC

The Human Costs of Targeting Iraq

Zaineb Alani - Iraqi writer, poet, activist living in US has large extended family in Iraq

Elaine Hills - epidemiologist/lecturer Dept of Anthropology SUNY Albany, writer on impact of war on Iraqi health, Coordinating Committee Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace

Ali Hossaini, M.D. - Iranian-Iraqi-American physician recently returned from Baghdad working with Health Dept. to establish health care facilities to train personnel in latest blood transfusion and blood banking techniques, led several humanitarian efforts to assist peoples of Iraq, Palestine, & Jordan

Dahlia Wasfi, M.D. - Iraqi American activist, speaker, writer on effects of occupation on Iraqis, visited Iraq twice since invasion

Afghanistan/Pakistan: What Is the Strategy Behind US Intervention?

Charlotte Dennett - public interest attorney, investigative journalist on role of Big Oil in US policy in Mideast and Latin America, author “The People v. Bush: One Lawyer's Campaign to Bring the President to Justice and the Nationwide Grassroots Movement She's Encountered Along the Way”

Fahima Vorgetts - Women for Afghan Women

Michael Zweig - showing film excerpt “Why Are We in Afghanistan?” Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at SUNY Stony Brook. Author “What's Class Got To Do With It?” and “The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret”, union officer United University Professions Local 2190, American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO , Steering Committee US Labor Against the War

The Social Impact of US Military Intervention in Afghanistan & Pakistan

Kathy Kelly - Co-Coordinator Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Co-Founder Voices in the Wilderness defied sanctions to carry medicine to Iraq, served time in jail for non-violent actions, visited Iraq, Pakistan, Gaza & recently returned from Afghanistan

Fahima Vorgetts - Women for Afghan Women

Representative – Action for A Progressive Pakistan

Resistance to Israeli Apartheid in Palestine: Gaza, BDS, Nonviolent Resistance in the W. Bank & E. Jerusalem

Fadi Kanaan - Palestinian leader Palestine student support group at SUNY Albany

Nada Khader - Exec. Dir. WESPAC Foundation, Westchester peace and justice organization

Col. Ann Wright - Code Pink, just returned from Gaza Flotilla

Representative - Al-Awda NY

Israel & the Palestinian Struggle: Is a Two-State Solution Possible or Desirable?

Noura Erakat - Palestinian American Human Rights Attorney and activist, adjunct professor of international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University, helped launch the Palestinian equal rights lobby: the American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights, former National Grassroots Organizer and Legal Advocate U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

Joel Kovel - author “Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine

Representative - Al-Awda NY

Iran Under Threat from the US and Israel

Gareth Porter - historian, investigative journalist, policy analyst on US foreign & military policy

Phil Wilayto - Editor, The Virginia Defender, author “In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. Peace Delegation's Journey through the Islamic Republic”

Leila Zand - Fellowship of Reconciliation

US Economic & Military Expansion into Africa

Abayomi Azikiwe - Editor, Pan-African News Wire

The Truth of US Occupation of Haiti

Nellie Bailey - Harlem Tenants Council, just returned from Haiti

Marty Goodman - active in Haiti solidarity for 20 years

Ray Laforest - Haitian American labor leader AFSCME and Haitian community organizer, elected member of Pacifica National Board

Tony Savino - Award-winning photographer will present an eye-opening and critical slideshow on earthquake relief

David Wilson - US-based immigrant rights activist who was in Haiti during the earthquake

Closing Guantanamo

Pardiss Kebriaei - Staff Att’y Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative at Center for Constitutional Rights

Colombia: No U.S. Military Bases

Antoine Castro del Rio - Colombia Polo Democratico

Natalia Fajardo –

End US Support for the Honduran Coup Government

Joe Callahan - Honduras Solidarity Network

Alexy Lanza - Honduran, La Voz de los de Abajo & Casa Morazan in Chicago

Defending Muslim Political Prisoners

Mongi Dhaoudi - Executive Director, CT Chapter, CAIR Council on American Islamic Relations

Representative - Muslim Solidarity Committee from Albany

Representative - Project Salam

Organizing Veterans & Military Families

Chantelle Bateman - NE Regional Field Organizer Iraq Veterans Against the War

Ryan Henowitz - Iraq veteran

Patrick McCann - Board of Directors/DC-Area Chapter 016 President Veterans For Peace, Board of Directors, Montgomery County MD Education Association

Nikki Morse – Organizer, Military Families Speak Out

Organizing Active Duty GI’s & GI Resistance

Christine Beckermann or Michelle Roubidoux - members Toronto War Resisters Support Campaign

GI resisters living in Canada

Tod Ensign - Director Citizen Soldier GI/veterans rights advocacy group

Jimmy Massey - founding member of IVAW, founder Peace It Together

War, Militarization, & the Assault on Civil Liberties & Communities of Color

Pam Africa - Chair, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal

Abayomi Azikiwe - Editor Pan-African News Wire, Co-Founder Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice, Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shut-offs

Lillie "Ms K" Branch-Kennedy - Virginia prisoner advocacy group R.I.H.D. - Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged

Shahid Buttar - Executive Director National Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Representative - New York State Prisoner Justice Network

Poor People’s Movements & the Triple Evils of Racism, Economic Exploitation & Militarism

Ana Edwards - Founding Member Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality; Chair Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project; host radio program DefendersLIVE!

Cheri Honkala - Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign/March to US Social Forum

Immigration Reform & the Militarization of the US/Mexico Border

Cristobal Cavazos - DuPage, IL Immigrants Rights & Grassroots Immigrant Justice Network

Jaime Gonzalez - Mexico border wars, drugs, Grassroots Immigrant Justice Network

Monami Maulik Executive DirectorDRUM- Desis Rising Up & Moving

Dennis Wilson - co-author of “The Politics of Immigration”, produces Weekly News update on the Americas published by Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York

Women Against War

Maria Butler - Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Peacewomen Project Associate

Connie Frisbee Houde - Albany Women Against War group

Col. Ann Wright - Code Pink, just returned from Gaza flotilla

US Foreign Policy & the Economic Crisis: A Vital Labor Concern

Kathy Black - Co-Convenor, U.S. Labor Against the War; President Philadelphia Coalition of Labor Union Women; AFSCME District Council 47

Doug Bullock - 1st VP Albany Central Labor Council, Albany County Legislator

Michael Eisenscher - National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War

Barry Weisleder - lifelong Canadian antiwar and union activist, leader of the Socialist Caucus in the Labour Party, leader of Workers Solidarity & Union Democracy Coalition within the Ontario and Canadian Labor Councils.

Building Solidarity with Unions & Workers in Countries Targeted by US Imperialism

Amjad Ali - North American representative Iraq Freedom Congress and General Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq GFWCUI

Michael Eisenscher - National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War

Bring Our War Dollars Home: City Council, Town & State Legislature Meeting Resolutions & Voter Referendum Campaigns

Chris Hellman - Communications Liaison National Priorities Project, former military policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, frequent media commentator on military planning, policy, and budgetary issues

Mark Roman - Vietnam war resister, founding member Waterville Area Bridges For Peace And Justice, one of the organizers of the Bring Our War Dollars Home campaign in Maine

Paki Wieland – Lifelong peace activist, organizer Bring Our War Dollars Home campaign in Northampton, MA

Representative - Cut War Budget 25%

Electoral & Legislative Strategies against Militarism, War and Empire

Cole Harrison - Co-Convenor, UFPJ's Afghanistan Working Group; Convenor, Boston United for Justice with Peace Afghanistan/Pakistan Task Force, Co-Convenor of its Legislative Action task force

Howie Hawkins - NY Green Party candidate for Governor

Christopher Hutchinson - Socialist Action candidate for US Congress in CT

Kevin Martin - Executive Director, Peace Action

Mary-Nichols Rhodes - Ohio Congressional District Organizer, Progressive Democrats of America

Student Organizing: Budget Cuts & U.S. Wars

Ross Caputi - Iraq War Veteran, participated in the Second Battle of Fallujah, President Boston University Anti-War Coalition

Jackie Hayes/Colin Donnaruma - SUNY Albany Students Against the War

Pat Korte – student at the New School, organizer with International Solidarity Initiative

Blanca Misse - Berkeley student leader March 4 demos; shop steward, UAW Local 2865

Counter-Recruitment in High Schools

Jim Murphy - Coordinator NY Vets Speak Out & International Veterans Fellowship of Reconciliation

Dayl S. Wise Vietnam/Cambodia veteran, member, Vietnam Veterans Against the War & Veterans for Peace Presentation Fellowship of Reconciliation Youth and Militarism program

Global Warming & War: Breaking the Consumption-Fossil Fuel Cycle

Joel Kovel - academic, writer, eco-socialist, Editor-in-Chief journal “Capitalism Nature Socialism”

Maggie Zhou, Ph.D. - MA Coalition for Healthy Communities & Committee for a Secure Green Future

Health Care, Not Warfare

Andrew D. Coates, MD - secretary, Capital District chapter, Physicians for a National Health Program, teaches at Albany Medical College and practices internal medicine in Albany, NY, member Public Employees Federation, AFL-CIO.

Margaret Flowers, MD - Maryland chapter, Physicians for a National Health Program

Mary Nichols-Rhodes - Ohio Congressional District Organizer, Progressive Democrats of America

The Faith Community & the Antiwar Movement

Shamshad Ahmad

Mark Johnson - Executive Director, Fellowship of Reconciliation

Sybil Stock - Social Justice Committee at the Unitarian Universalist Association in Albany

Spiritual Approaches to Creating Peace

Blasé Bonpane - Executive Director, Office of the Americas

Kathy Kelly - Co-Coordinator, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Co-Founder, Voices in the Wilderness defied sanctions to carry medicine to Iraq, served time in jail for non-violent actions, visited Iraq, Pakistan, Gaza & recently returned from Afghanistan

Rev. Sam Trumbore

Paki Wieland

The Rise of Right Wing Populism & the Tea Party: Do We Need a Right-Left Coalition?

Medea Benjamin - Code Pink

Chris Gauvreau - CT United Against the War; Administrative Body, National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations

Glen Ford - Black Agenda

Kevin Zeese - Co-Founder, Voters for Peace

Deepening the Base & Building Bridges between the Climate Change, Peace & Economic Justice Movements

Suren Moodliar - Majority Agenda Project organizing team, coordinator Mass. Global Action and Encuentro 5

Weimin Tchen - Majority Agenda Project organizing team, member Boston United for Justice with Peace

UNITED ANTIWAR CONFERENCE UNAC

For further information and to register, go to our website:

http://www.nationalpeaceconference.org

Or write UNAC, P.O. Box 21675, Cleveland, OH 44121; phone 518-227-6947

Mérida, June 30th 2010 Venezuelanalysis.com – On Monday, United States President Barack Obama nominated Dr. Larry Palmer to be the new ambassador to Venezuela. Palmer is the former U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, a free trade advocate, and current president of the U.S. government-funded Inter-American Foundation.

Obama announced Palmer’s nomination along with nominations for new ambassadors to the Czech Republic, Indonesia, and Nigeria. A written White House statement quoted Obama saying, “I am proud to nominate such accomplished and dedicated individuals to fill these important roles. They will be valuable additions to my administration as we work to confront our challenges at home and abroad, and I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.”

Palmer, a former Peace Corps volunteer, holds a Ph.D. in Education. He was a university professor in Liberia and the U.S. during the 1970s, and joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1982. He held various diplomatic posts in the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Sierra Leone, South Korea, and Ecuador throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 2002-2005. In 1989, he worked as assistant to the president of the University of Texas at El Paso, where his portfolio included promoting the North American Free Trade Agreement NAFTA , according to the U.S. State Department website.

Palmer is currently the president of the Inter-American Foundation IAF , a U.S. foreign assistance agency which channels funds to non-governmental organizations in Latin America and the Caribbean and pledges to “promote entrepreneurship, innovation, and self-reliance; strengthen democratic principles; and empower poor people to solve their own problems,” according to its website.

The IAF’s Board of Directors, which appointed Palmer as president, includes Jack Vaughn Jr., a veteran oil industry manager; Roger Wallace, a vice president at the oil and gas company Pioneer Natural Resources Company; Kay Arnold, the vice president of public affairs at Entergy Corporation; Thomas Dodd, the former U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica and to Uruguay; and John Salazar, a corporate lawyer.

Venezuela-U.S. Relations

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Palmer will be the first ambassador to Venezuela appointed by Obama. He will replace Ambassador Patrick Duddy, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush in 2007.

Palmer will inherit a legacy of strained bilateral relations with Venezuela, an OPEC member that provides approximately one million barrels of oil per day to the U.S.

In 2002, the U.S. provided diplomatic and financial support for a two-day coup against the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chavez. U.S. foundations have given millions of dollars to Venezuelan opposition groups during Chavez’s two terms as president, prompting the Chavez administration to accuse the U.S. of destabilization and intervention.

The Chavez administration opposes the U.S.’s free trade agenda and military expansion in the region. In September 2008, recalled his ambassador to the U.S. in protest against the U.S.’s collaboration with violent elite separatist groups in Bolivia.

Shortly after taking office in 2009, Obama shook hands with Chavez and the two countries restored their respective ambassadors. However, the good will faded after the Obama administration tacitly supported a coup against the democratically elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and signed a military deal to expand the U.S. military operations on seven Colombian bases. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has continued the Bush era policy of arbitrarily placing Venezuela on a series of lists of countries that support terrorism and violate human rights.

A Change in U.S. Policy?

Speculation has already begun over whether Palmer’s nomination indicates a change in U.S. policy toward Venezuela.

Outgoing Ambassador Patrick Duddy said with Palmer’s arrival, “it is possible we could begin a new stage” in bilateral relations.

In a speaking event at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institute on Tuesday, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela said Venezuela is “the most difficult” relationship the U.S. has in the region. Valenzuela said the U.S. is “open to maintaining a dialogue with [Venezuela] about issues of mutual interest, but the discussion has to be frank.”

Eva Golinger, a lawyer and journalist of dual Venezuelan-U.S. citizenship, called Palmer a “diplomatic token of the Bush and Reagan era.”

Golinger said Palmer’s background at the IAF is a bad sign, considering that U.S. and European foundations have poured as much as $40 million into anti-Chavez organizations over the past ten years, according to Golinger’s most recent disclosure of a FRIDE Institute report. “[Palmer’s] principal work has been with social networks and organizations, financing and supporting them in what they call promotion of democracy, which is in reality a form of interference and subversion,” said Golinger.

While Palmer differs from previous U.S. ambassadors because he is African-American, his record as a diplomat is similar to those of Ambassador Duddy and former Ambassador William Brownfield. Duddy and Brownfield were both career U.S. State Department diplomats with extensive experience in Latin American and Caribbean countries. Duddy taught at the National War College in Washington, D.C.

In an opinion piece for the Venezuelan alternative news website Aporrea, Diogenes Diaz of the Venezuelan Afro-Descendants Network wrote, “The new U.S. ambassador, Larry Palmer, will dedicate himself to cleansing the image of the Obama government, a complicated task in these times, and to directing from Caracas the plans for enemy penetration in the afro-descendant movements.”

By Mark Weisbrot

This article was published by The Guardian Unlimited on June 30, 2010. If anyone wants to reprint it, please include a link to the original.

It would also turn out to be a pivotal moment for relations between the United States and Latin America – especially South America, where a new generation of left-of-center governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela were all hoping for a new relationship with Washington. This new American president, a former community organizer, had come to Trinidad just a few months earlier and shook hands with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, and actually listened to his southern neighbors. He was more like us, they thought – former trade unionists, two women, an indigenous leader, a progressive catholic bishop, political outsiders for the most part.

But it was not to be. The first signal came when, on the day of the coup, the White House did not condemn it, merely calling on “all social and political actors” to respect democracy. The White House later joined other countries in condemning the coup, but there was a noticeable difference: while the OAS, the United Nations, and other international organizations called for the “immediate and unconditional” reinstatement of President Zelaya, no U.S. official would ever utter those words over the next five months.

Nor would U.S. officials join human rights organizations from throughout the hemisphere and the world in condemning the violence and repression of the Honduran dictatorship. Its security forces raided and shut down independent radio and TV stations, and beat and arrested thousands of peaceful demonstrators. There were reports of torture and some opposition activists were killed in circumstances that implicated the government. Since this took place during the official campaign period for the fall elections, it made free elections impossible. The Obama administration’s silence was deafening.

President Zelaya traveled to Washington six times during his exile, but President Obama refused to meet with him. Meanwhile, Washington blocked the Organization of American States from taking stronger actions against the Honduran dictatorship.

The United States then supported elections under the dictatorship. The OAS and European Union refused to send observers. The vast majority of the hemisphere, including Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, were vehemently opposed to the elections. The Rio Group, which includes all of Latin America, signed a statement saying Zelaya’s immediate restitution to the presidency was “indispensable” to the recognition of elections. Even the right-wing governments of Panama and Colombia, and Peru – Washington’s closest allies in the region -felt obliged to sign on to the statement.

This created a rift that remains today: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently been campaigning for recognition of the Honduran government, but has so far found few takers. In South America, it is only Peru and Colombia that recognize the Lobo government – the official position of UNASUR is still non-recognition.

When Spain invited Pepe Lobo to Madrid for the EU-Latin America and Caribbean Summit in May, Ecuador, representing UNASUUR as chair at that time, protested; so did other countries including Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. Lobo was forced to cancel his visit.

Washington’s campaign to legitimize the government that was elected under a dictatorship accelerated with the inauguration of Lobo in January. A few days after the inauguration Hillary Clinton announced that the Honduran “crisis” had been “managed to a successful conclusion” and this “was done without violence.” Two days later Clinton announced that the US was restoring all assistance to Honduras despite a letter sent to her the day before by Democratic members of Congress asking her to “send a strong unambiguous message that the human rights situation in Honduras will be a critical component of upcoming decisions regarding the further normalizations of relations, as well as the resumption of financial assistance.”

The repression in Honduras has continued and perhaps worsened since the November election, with dozens of opposition activists and nine journalists murdered. On June 24, twenty-seven members of the U.S. Congress, including some of the Democratic leadership, wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “Members of social movements who oppose or criticize the government have been victims of violence and subject to ongoing intimidation . . .Violations of human rights and democratic order persist in Honduras on [President Lobo's] watch.”

There is impunity for those who carried out the coup and the repression, and the government has established a “Truth Commission” that appears set to sweep all these crimes under the rug. The general who headed the armed forces during the coup was put in charge of the state telecommunications company. He then stated that he would use his new position for intelligence gathering.

Presidents like Lula da Silva of Brazil, and Michele Bachelet – who was president of Chile when South America had to fight with Washington over Honduras – take the threat of military coups seriously. They both did prison time under military dictatorships. Most of the hemisphere feels the same way. It’s about time that the United States join them, and support the rights of Hondurans who are fighting for democracy, instead of fighting to legitimize a repressive regime.

I often thought of translating Vicky Peláez’s pieces but somehow never found the time. Here’s one from December of last year. It’s not too hard to imagine why the State Department would have liked to shut her up.

The Empire’s Elections in Honduras

Vicky Peláez – El Diario NY

Tuesday, December 1, 2009 – español

Translation: Machetera

Venceréis pero no convenceréis

[You’ll win but you won’t convince] – Miguel de Unamuno

The United States can change its strategy and tactics but its national interests are set in stone. It proved this when, without making much noise, threatening, or brandishing arms as it has in the past, it imposed its will by breaking the weakest link in the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America ALBA : Honduras. Ignoring every democratic precept that it has supposedly preached for the last 200 years, it threw human rights and international relations in the wastebasket, and forgot its promises of support for the deposed president, Manuel Zelaya. In this way, refusing to hear the clamor of the Honduran popular resistance and the opnion of the majority of the countries in the world, the Big Boss supported the putschists in order to hold illegal presidential elections, and now Honduras has a new wolf as its president.

This time the Marines weren’t sent in; rather, 800 people of Hispanic origin contracted by [U.S.] intelligence services, as well as a large group of Miami Cubans in order to “help prevent disorder during the elections,” which really meant intimidating the population. And they achieved it, along with 30,000 soldiers and national police deployed on the streets of the country, imposing the supposed “opposition candidate to the Micheletti coup:” Porfiero Lobo Sosa, of the National Party. Of course he won. They say that with 61% of votes cast he won 55.9% against the 38 percent for Micheletti’s candidate, Elvin Santos of the Liberal Party. What they don’t say is that there was a large abstention; between 65 and 75 percent of the electorate. In other words, the people didn’t vote.

This was already known, as well as the fact that Alan García and Álvaro Uribe, the presidents vying for the Big Boss’s favor, would hurry to recognize the elections, repeating Hillary Clinton’s instructions about “using elections to get rid of dictatorships.” Costa Rica, Panama, Japan and Israel also confirmed their loyalty to the United States in confirming the legality of the illegal. So Porfirio Lobo couldn’t help but win, and the Honduran oligarchy rejoices.

Son of prosperous landowners, and curiously, a former member of the Communist Party who trained at the School for Communist Leaders’ Cadres in the former Soviet Union, in the United States he turned into one of the privileged. In 1980, when “Pepe,” as Porfirio Lobo is known, renounced the Communist Party and became a member of the extreme rightwing National Party, it was suspected that he’d become a CIA infiltrator. No-one knows if he is guided by ideology or by personal ambition, but he finally ended up climbing the ladder of power in Honduras.

Meanwhile, the legitimate president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, remains trapped in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, without an exit, betrayed by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, in whom he placed his hopes for justice. He couldn’t figure out in time that the coup de’etat, his displacement to Costa Rica and even his return to Honduras in order to isolate him was planned by the Big Boss, deceiving him with promises of support.

The oligarchy retook power in Honduras but the resistance movement also strengthened itself and as long as injustice and poverty remain dominant, the struggle will continue. The ALBA countries have also been warned about the battles that await them.

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the author, source, and translator are cited.

This is a brief video tribute to people of the Honduran resistance and their determination to take their country back from the murderous thugs that kidnapped President Zelaya and violated their constitution.

Below are three videos:

The first video gives you a bird’s eye view of how the people of Honduras reacted on June 28, 2009, as word spread like wildfire that Zelaya had been kidnapped. You will see people banging on iron gates which are on the outside of the presidential palace.

JUNE 28, 2009 – Tegucigalpa, Honduras

The second video features the beautiful and compelling anthem of the Honduran Resistance which is entitled: “Nos tienen miedo porque no tenemos miedo” or in English, “They are afraid of us because we are not afraid.” This overlays a short video which is a good summary of the beginning days of the Resistance.

“NOS TIENEN MIEDO PORQUE NO TENEMOS MIEDO”

The third video also features the Resistance anthem and overlays a slide show with images you will not forget.

“NOS TIENEN MIEDO PORQUE NO TENEMOS MIEDO”

This column was published by The Guardian Unlimited on June 26, 2010. If anyone wants to reprint it, please include a link to the original.

Here in Washington, it is often only death and retirement that allows for the possibility of change – and yet the institutions remain immortal and often immutable. Nowhere is this more true than in the foreign policy establishment here.

In the last few weeks I have visited five countries and participated in numerous events surrounding a recently released documentary -like Guantanamera, “South of the Border” is also a road movie — which Oliver Stone directed and I wrote with Tariq Ali. Returning to Washington, the wide gulf that separates the United States foreign policy elite from the vast majority of its neighbors to the south hits you as a form of culture shock.

For these people, the historic changes that have swept Latin America – and especially South America – over the last decade are viewed through the narrow lens of a Cold War mentality that scores every change in terms of how it affects U.S. power in the region.

Jorge Castañeda is a former foreign minister of Mexico who teaches at New York University and has become a leading spokesperson in the media for the Washington foreign policy establishment. In a recent article, he divides the continent into “those that are either neutral in the confrontation between the United States and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuba , or openly opposed to the so-called “Bolivarian” governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela” – which he labels “Americas-2″ and “the radical left.”

For Castañeda, as for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it is particularly annoying that “as recently as June 7, the Bolivarian countries were able to block Honduras’ re-instatement into the OAS, despite the essentially free and fair elections that were held there last November.”

But it was not just the “Bolivarian countries” that can’t accept elections held under a dictatorship as “free and fair.” Brazil, Argentina, and governments representing most of the hemisphere are in the same camp. In fact, when the Rio Group issued a statement in November of 2009 saying that the immediate restitution of Mel Zelaya was a necessary condition for elections to be recognized, even the Obama administration’s right-wing allies – Colombia, Peru, and Panama – felt obliged to sign on.

The Honduran coup, carried out by U.S. allies and U.S.-trained military officers against the democratically elected President Mel Zelaya, was a watershed event in relations between Washington and Latin America. It was nearly one year ago, on June 28, that the remaining hopes that the Obama administration would treat its neighbors to the south differently than the Bush team did, were destroyed. While the Clintons’ close confidant and adviser Lanny Davis counseled and lobbied for the coup regime, the Obama administration did everything that it could to help the dictatorship survive and legitimize itself. This despite unanimous resolutions in the OAS and the United Nations calling for the “immediate and unconditional reinstatement” of President Zelaya, two words that the Obama administration would never utter, as it ignored for more than five months the murders, closing of independent media, and other massive human rights violations that made the “free and fair” elections last November in Honduras a sick joke. The European Union and Organization of American States did not even send observers.

But with Washington still struggling to legitimize the Honduran government – despite the murder of dozens of political activists and nine journalists since the “elected” government took power – it is typical to portray this effort as a struggle against “enemy” governments rather than a fight with most of the region. What these people cannot recognize, or perhaps even understand, is that this is about independence and self-determination, as well as democracy.

Michele Bachelet of Chile and Lula da Silva of Brazil were as upset as the “Americas 2″ governments when the Obama administration decided last August to expand its presence at seven military bases in Colombia. And it was Felipe Calderón, the right-wing president of Mexico, who hosted the February conference in Cancún that decided to create a new organization for the Americas, which could eventually displace the OAS, without the United States and Canada. The role of the US and Canada in blocking the OAS from taking stronger measures against the dictatorship in Honduras undoubtedly played a role in motivating this move.

Of course, Washington has the power to make its Cold War vision of the hemisphere at least half real, by singling out the more left governments for special treatment. In Bolivia, the election of Evo Morales brought changes analogous to the end of apartheid in South Africa, with the country’s indigenous majority gaining a voice in their government for the first time in 500 years. One would think the Obama administration would have enough common brains to get on the right side of that one. But no, they have carried over the trade sanctions that the Bush team had imposed on Bolivia under the so-called Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act ATPDEA , “de-certified” Bolivia as not co-operating in the “War on Drugs,” and still refuse to disclose exactly whom they are funding in Bolivia – i.e, which opposition groups – with money from the U.S. State Department.

I had the privilege of watching “South of the Border” in a soccer stadium filled with more than 6,000 people in Cochabamba, Bolivia, a few weeks ago. At one point in the film Evo Morales tells the story of Tupac Katari, an indigenous leader who fought against the Spanish colonialists in the 18th century. Evo recalls Tupac Katari’s last words, before he was drawn and quartered by the Spanish: “I die as one, but I will come back as millions.”

Evo then looks into the camera and says: “Now we are millions.”

Unlike in Washington, every person in that stadium knew exactly what he meant.