NEW DELHI: According to government sources, the United States has asked India to pull back troops along the Indo-Pakistan border as a gesture of goodwill.
India, in turn, has told America that the country hasn't moved more troops along the border, and that it was the neighbouring country, Pakistan, that deployed more troops along the Line of Control (LoC), and that America should ask Pakistan to pull back its troops.
Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon during his recent visit to the US made this clear to officials there, sources said.
Earlier, defence sources said that Pakistan had deployed several army brigades along Indo-Pak border in Jehlum-Chenab and Chenab-Ravi corridors sparking concern in the Indian armed forces .
The forces had been withdrawn from Pakistan's troubled north-western tribal belt where they were battling Taliban to put pressure on the US, which had been pressing Islamabad to act against terrorists operating from its soil, and diverted to the border with India, they said.
Pakistan had deployed several brigades (each comprising 4,000 to 6,000 personnel), including 33 brigade, 27 brigade, 7 brigade, 28 brigade, 331 brigade, two battalions (with 1,000 personnel each) of 37 Punjab and 39 Punjab Rawalkote in Hajira, Mandol, Hajipeer, Uri, Bhimber, Nikial, Kotli, Sailkote, Zafarwal, Neelam valley and other areas, sources said.
"The deployment had been a surprising move. It is an area of concern for us," they said adding that the Pakistani side has already cleaned the bunkers along the borderline.
The sources said "several brigades involved in the war against Taliban in north-western tribal belt had been withdrawn and deployed along Jehlum-Chenab corridor in the past one week."
The US Embassy here dismissed the media reports saying they were not accurate. In Washington, the State Department said the US has not made any such request as suggested in the media reports
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pull-back-troops-from-Pak-border-US-to-India-/articleshow/4288579.cmsObama The Warmonger-17 Bombed In Pakistan...Some "Change" huh?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aKTPIphDdAObama= WAR in Pakistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLhWg-8bafM&feature=relatedObama NEVER Leaving Iraq!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TovrzDZlqIMWhy is Obama leaving 50,000 troops in Iraq?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfGieb0NQdM&feature=relatedWhy is Obama leaving 50,000 troops in Iraq? Pt 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGkdEqCgKds&feature=channelObama endorses American imperialism - anti-war activist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StDdCPZUNTE'Obama is a would-be dictator' Alex Jones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCOkqiohXe8&feature=channel# Jet says :
30 April, 2009 [ 02:36 ]
Buzzito, "Rodrigo" used to go by "Phillip" and has always been this cuckoo. No one here takes what he says seriously anymore, which is why he resorts to just posting those silly youtube links lol. Best thing is just ignore his posts and skip to the ones posted by rational people.
# Rodrigo says :
30 April, 2009 [ 03:52 ]
The WHOLE WORLD H*** Amerikkka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy4p000WqB0
H*** Amerikkka
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKbEaZ-Jnws&feature=related
H*** Amerikkka 2 Death
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgZ5k2n8k4s&feature=related
H*** Amerikkka, Gently
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjvE3S2cOVU&feature=related
Behold to the Police State of Amerikkka!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jSH9zvP6FQ&feature=related
On the Theory of the Productive Forces (English)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JykCv7IHUc8&feature=related
Final Solution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aFINUlDJq8&feature=related
The American Holocaust
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-C2rAvCcuY&feature=related
# Rodrigo says :
30 April, 2009 [ 03:55 ]
True Face Of "America"
http://songun-blog.blogspot.com/2007/04/true-face-of-america.html
# Rodrigo says :
30 April, 2009 [ 04:07 ]
US Can't Stop North Korean Launch, Gates Says
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates predicted North Korea would launch a missile soon and said there's nothing the United States can do about it.
"I would say we're not prepared to do anything about it," said Gates during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday."
The United States and countries in Asia have been closely monitoring activity in North Korea after learning that the communist country had begun placing a Taepodong 2 missile at a launch facility. North Korea says the missile will be used to launch a communications satellite in early April. But the technology for a satellite deployment can also be used to launch a ballistic missile, and that's why the U.S. and allies have expressed concern that North Korea might test its ability to reach the United States with a missile.
Gates reiterated that concern on Sunday. "I don't know anyone at a senior level in the American government who does not believe this technology is intended to mask the development of an intercontinental ballistic missile," he said.
North Korea currently does not possess the ability to put a nuclear warhead atop its missile, but the country wants that capability, Gates added. Though the missile North Korea currently plans to launch cannot reach the West Coast of the United States, the military might move to strike it down should North Korea target Hawaii.
Gates called the launch of the missile "very troubling" and a sign that the series of meetings between the U.S., China, South Korea, Russia, Japan and North Korea known as six-party talks have not made any headway in getting North Korea to curb its nuclear program.
"If this is [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-il's welcoming present to a new president - launching a missile like this and threatening to have a nuclear test - I think it says a lot about the imperviousness of this regime in North Korea to any kind of diplomatic overtures."
A Japanese newspaper reports that North Korea is preparing to launch a short or medium range missile after it carries out plans to fire the long-range missile, per the Associated Press
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/03/us-cant-stop-no.html
Iran ready to defend itself from possible U.S. attack - speaker
ISLAMABAD, April 5 (RIA Novosti) - Iran is prepared to defend itself should the United States attack it, the speaker of Iran's parliament said Thursday.
The last few days have seen reports in Russian and foreign media that the U.S. has scheduled an operation, codenamed Bite, against Iran for 4:00 a.m. local time April 6. The operation, should it materialize, would deliver air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities over a 12-hour period.
"The Iranian people are ready and determined to protect their land and to repel any enemy attack," Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel said at a press conference during his visit to Pakistan.
However, he said it was highly unlikely the U.S. would attack his country, as "the U.S. has no real reason to do so."
The speaker added that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf had assured him that Pakistan would never get involved in any actions aimed at Iran.
The U.S. has not excluded a military option in the standoff with Iran over its refusal to abandon its uranium enrichment program.
The UN Security Council passed a new resolution on Iran two weeks ago toughening economic sanctions against the country and accepting the possibility of a military solution to the crisis.
The U.S. Administration sees Iran as a "rogue state" and is determined to stop the Islamic Republic, diplomatically or otherwise, from obtaining nuclear weapons. Washington now plans to deploy a missile defense shield in Central Europe allegedly to protect itself from potential missile strikes from Iran or North Korea.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20070405/63182392.html
# Rodrigo says :
30 April, 2009 [ 04:24 ]
Military Alliance: A New Way Forward in International relations
Military alliances which were once seen as threats to world peace are now emerging as new the directions in international relations. Whether these alliances are good for peaceful coexistence in today’s world remains unclear, but this new trend is once again demarcating the world into military zones reminiscent of the Cold War. As countries assemble militarily with the aims of strengthening their defense capabilities, as well as influencing world politics, it is clear that diplomacy which became a talking point during the formation of the United Nations is being replaced by military alliances. The means, the only alternative for weaker states is to organize themselves militarily if the hope to be relevant in world affairs.
Modern military alliance began when Germany formed the Triple Alliance with Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire to counter the threat of France following the Franco-Prussia War. In response, France, England and Russia formed the Entente, the outcome brought about World War I. Also following the Second World War, the United States and Britain organized to form North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO as counterweight to the Soviets military might. With NATO’s weight on its shoulder, the Soviets formed the Warsaw Pact, and the result was a Cold war. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1989, most nations, especially developing nations, most of whom bear the brunt of the cold war were convinced it was the end of global domination by military powers. It was assumed that diplomacy will replace militarisms as means of promoting world peace and cooperation. It was also assumed that military options will be the last resort in settling international disputes. However; behaviors by major military powers (U.S, Russia, China & France) in recent years have left weaker nations no option, but to seek refuges in the UN and various regional organizations. United States’ and NATO’s activities in world’s affairs, specifically its military expeditions in Kosovo and Afghanistan, recent decision by NATO to extend membership to former Warsaw members (Croatia and Albania), followed by agreement between NATO and Poland to deploy anti missile shield in Poland and Czech Republic, have heightened fear of renew cold war. NATO’s actions have also sparked the formation of newly organized eastern alliance known as Shanghai Corporation Organization or SCO; whose aim is to counter NATO global domination in world affairs. The existence of these two powerful military organizations is once again creating cloud of discomfort for weaker states which are usually trapped in the middle of this kind of rivalry.
In comparison to NATO, the Shanghai Corporation Organization comprises a quarter of the world’s population, extending from Europe to Asia. It was organized in 2001 as a counterweight to NATO and its members include Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. In Aug 2007, when SCO members met in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, among the agenda were mapping out Sino-Russian ties and upgrading bilateral strategic coordination. The Bishkek summit also adopted a declaration that took direct aim at the Bush administration’s foreign policy, including condemning what it sees as “unilateralism” and “double standards”. SCO members also pledged to support “multilateralism,” and “strict observance of international law”, as well as underlining the importance of the UN (People’s Daily, 2007). Nonetheless, this alliance, under the leadership of Russia and China has acted in ways that pose direct challenge to NATO’s influence. For example, when Russia approved and recognized the independence of breakaway Ossetia, amidst opposition and condemnation from the West, Russia’s action was given immediate legitimacy by China and other SCO members. Also, in response to NATO’s Anti Missile system to be deployed in Europe, China and Russia, acting on behalf of SCO announced a resumption of strategic air patrol, improving Russia’s and China’s anti missile system, modernizing their Intercontinental ballistic missile or ICBM and constructing new missile firing submarines to protect their members. The growing influence of the SCO is a major concerns of NATO, in part, because some of SCO allies include Iran, Vanezuela and North Korea; countries that the U.S and its allies view as enemies. It is not clear if SCO is going to metamorphose into NATO-like alliance with global domination, but it has certainly built itself a powerful case for geopolitical dominance.
The world is becoming too dangerous and the waves of conflicts and instabilities are becoming too cumbersome for United Nations alone to manage. Matters of international concerns are no longer steered by the UN, but by few military powers. NATO in particular has carried out military operation in numerous places without approval of the United Nations. In 1996, NATO launched a military air and ground campaigns on Kosovo without former UN Security Council’s approval in an effort to end the bloodshed. On 9, September 2001, when terrorists attacked the United States, Bush invoked articles IV of NATO’s Charter, “attacks on one, is attack on all”, to persuade NATO’s leaders to help with the invasion of Afghanistan without United Nations’ authorization. In 2001, Russia invaded Chechenya, without first consulting the UN Security Council, because according to Russia it was an “internal affairs”. Even china had behaved in ways that contravened international laws. China suppression of the people of Tibet, which has been condemned by the UN, Human Rights Watch and other international organizations, as well as it strong arming of Taiwan, despite UN reprobation suggest that the UN is either too weak to control the behaviors of these powerful countries or it lacks the courage to act against them.
United Nations may symbolize Peace and Security in today’s thinking, but it is obvious the real movers and shakers of the world are countries with military alliances. I do not intend to lessen the relevance of the UN as a result of major powers’ unilateral behaviors, but clearly the UN has not been courageous, as well as unwilling to control the behaviors of countries with military powers. United Nation’s influence has only been exerted against weaker powers, especially those in developing countries. This lack of balanced approach by the UN in dealing with issues that confront the world, tell that if developing countries, specifically African countries hope to someday influence world politics, it will require massive military alliances, since it seems, military alliance is the new direction in international relations.
http://www.liberiaitech.com/theperspective/2008/0916200803.html
Russia-China: SCO Military Alliance Challenges US-NATO Unipolar World
SCO REGIONAL CLOUT BOUND TO INCREASE
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO, ought to boost its political clout in settling regional conflict in the immediate future. A statement to this effect was made earlier in the week by a group of the Russia-based noted analysts during a Moscow-Beijing video news conference. Aside from maintaining stability and security in Central Asia, the SCO’s vast potential will certainly make it possible for the organization to handle other pressing international problems.
In the wake of Georgia’s aggression against South Ossetia on August 8, the SCO, which currently groups Russia ,China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is sure to play an important role in dealing with fresh geopolitical realities now underway on post-Soviet soils. According to Sergei Kuzyanin, head of the Institute for Eastern Studies, a recent SCO summit in Dushanbe was of great historic significance in terms of SCO support for Russia in the South Ossetian conflict and the organization’s looming enlargement. What’s more, the SCO is bound to play more important role in the Caucasus in the future, Sergei Luzyanin underscored.
The SCO should first of all focus on initiating an array of new proposals on ensuring regional security, Sergei Luzyanin says, adding that a final document is expected to include several peacekeeping missions-leaning initiatives fulfilled jointly with other regional organizations such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization. In addition, the Russian pundit contends, the SCO must continue to position itself as a complex regional structure to provide economic development and security by , notably, fighting terrorism and drug trafficking.
The head of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ center for SCO and regional problems, Anatoly Bolyatko, said that the recent conflict in the Caucasus underscored the need for a multipolar world order. If NATO and even the UN are unable to settle this conflict, the SCO could well become a viable platform for resolving such problems, even though it is not a military-political alliance:
"The SCO should eventually start playing a new role both in and outside the Caucasus. What we see now is a real crisis of the idea of a unipolar world now that the US and its NATO allies pretend they are unable to get to the core of what’s been happening in the Caucasus. I believe that organizations like the SCO and BRIC, that brings Russia together with Brazil, India and China, should play an important role here. Many people already realize the need for the SCO and other international organizations to start focusing more on ensuring global stability and security…"
Anatoly Bolyatko also said that closer interaction between the SCO and such observer nations as Iran, India and Pakistan could make it a major new instrument of collective security both in the former Soviet Union and neighboring regions.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10104
Is Attacking Iran a Viable Option?
The definitive end of U.S. military supremacy
I have written several articles on the Iran crisis pitting two expanding and important strategic alliances against each other and the similarities to the powder keg of Balkan and European alliances that erupted into World War I.
On one side is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Led by China and Russia, the SCO has four other permanent member states: Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Along with a senior official from India's oil and gas industry, the prime ministers of Pakistan, Mongolia, Afghanistan and Iran attended the last meeting in Shanghai on June 15. It was the first meeting since Iran announced that it had successfully enriched Uranium: Iran was invited to become a full member.
The meeting was about strengthening trade and exports but also had a strong undertone of strengthening the alliance. A verbal oath was sworn for defending each other in the event of any attack. China and Russia have already signed military cooperation agreements with and are the main suppliers of advanced weaponry to Iran and Syria. This gave them verbal military cooperation agreements with all the SCO members, including Iran.
A senior spokesperson for U.S. ally Japan said: "The SCO is becoming a rival block to the U.S. alliance; it does not share our values. We are watching it very closely." The U.S. too was watching it very closely, but from afar because their request for observer status at the meeting had been denied on the grounds that they shared neither land nor fluvial border with any of the SCO member states.
The meeting's undertone of warning the U.S. against attacking Iran was evident in Chinese President Hu Jintao's closing statement: "We hope the outside world will accept the social system and path to development independently chosen by our members and observers and respect the domestic and foreign policies adopted by the SCO participants in line with their national conditions."
Jintao's statement was immediately followed by the verbal agreement -- all members vowing to defend each other's sovereignty and the alliance as a whole.
The strengthening of this rival alliance and its challenge to U.S. supremacy was worrying amid speculation of advanced U.S. plans for war in Iran. The developments in the coming weeks and months increased the powder keg tensions of a well-backed Iranian nuclear standoff.
The start of July, with joint military exercises by U.S., Romanian and Bulgarian armed forces, which continued until September, coincided with the North Korean missile tests of July 5 and began an intense period of war games and weaponry testing from all the major players in both alliances.
Aug. 19 saw the beginning of Iranian military exercises and missile tests in all the border provinces likely to become the frontline in the event of a U.S. attack. The SCO and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) headed by China and Russia respectively, held joint exercises in coordination with the Iranian exercises, both launched Aug. 24 in Kazakhstan, which between them involved all 10 members of the SCO except Uzbekistan.
The Russian and Chinese exercises were thought to have come in response to mistrust of the U.S.'s intentions in the region, the threat of attack on Iran, the U.S. navy's involvement in the rebuilding of Kazakhstan's navy since 2003, and Iranian fears that the U.S. was attempting to build up their ally Azerbaijan to counter Iranian influence and dominance in the region. Hence, the Iranian exercises along the Azerbaijan border.
These provocative drills from all sides of the powder keg of alliances could easily have took us one step closer to war, because of the strong support from the Muslim world, Russia and China for Iran's stance that it has a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As the exercises continued, they coincided with Iran's response to the six-nations incentive package on Aug. 22, which was a practically flat refusal to suspend enrichment as a precursor for U.S.-involved talks. This made Iran's failure to comply with U.N. Resolution 1696 and suspend enrichment by Aug. 31 inevitable.
This lead to a stalemate, the U.S. maintaining its hard line toward the rogue regime and immediately pressuring for sanctions, the EU taking the middle ground, and Russia and China effectively vetoing any form of U.N. punishment against Tehran. China is of course heavily dependant on Iran's oil reserves on its path to becoming a world superpower.
As October comes to an end, we are still no closer to a compromise on ending Iranian enrichment and possible proliferation. The U.N. is split and sanctions just do not look viable in the foreseeable future. Yet another draft resolution has been drawn up by the U.S. and its allies and diplomats say it could be presented to Russian and Chinese officials this week. The proposed resolution aims to impose restrictions on Iran's nuclear progression similar to those imposed on North Korea last week with the passing of U.N. Resolution 1718.
However, the fact that North Korea angered China and Russia with its openly defiant and dangerous (for China) nuclear test, has put the bond between China and Russia, and the dependence of China on Iran, foremost in their decision making processes, not to mention strengthening the SCO alliance. All of which makes the passing of this draft resolution unlikely.
As the U.S. has always maintained that it will not let Iran get the bomb, decisive military action continues to become increasingly likely. Who knows, Bush may give us one last expensive war on his way out of office. All the signs seem to indicate that this is highly possible. North Korea, named alongside Iran and Iraq as part of Bush's axis of evil, performed its first nuclear test on Oct. 9. Its defiance of the international community in its six-nations format could and in my view will harden Bush's already hard-line stance toward Tehran's enrichment program and make military action a real possibility should Iran seem close to obtaining the bomb.
The months between Iran ignoring U.N. Resolution 1696 and North Korea's nuclear test brought many statements from senior Iranians. Many speaking on condition of anonymity threatened tough retaliation against any imposed sanctions. The latest announcement, on Oct. 23, that Iran had launched a second batch of 164 centrifuges, bringing the total to 328 interconnected centrifuges, which can enrich uranium for energy or weaponry purposes, further exasperated the Bush administration.
But according to a diplomat close to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, no UF6 uranium gas is being fed into the cascade, as has generally been the case with the first batch: "The second cascade was brought on line earlier this month but they appear to be just running it empty. That is, vacuum-testing to assess durability."
These reported advances in Iran's quest for nuclear power, either for civilian or military use, are increasing the pressure on the U.S., the EU and the fractured UN to end the standoff before it reaches a critical point like North Korea's defiant test. As is Israel's leadership, who have also constantly fueled the tensions over the past months by periodically threatening the use of its military might to end Iranian enrichment, a cycle of responding to Iran's slow but propagandized advances tit-for-tat. Therefore, in such a heightened climate, if Bush puts another wrong foot forward in his handling of Kim Jong-il (that is, concentrates on Iraq and pressurizes Iran while allowing North Korea's nuclear ambitions to become nuclear weapons and reach a catastrophic climax), it could strengthen the Iranians' resolve, which is already strong because of China's large dependence on Iranian oil.
Chinese dependence, which is empowering an Iranian regime bent on becoming a nuclear power, is a dangerous mix in itself. Add to this, reports from Chinese and Russian defectors that a catastrophic conflict with the U.S. has been in the planning for years and that the timetable is to be stepped up in the event of an attack on Iran, and it becomes very dangerous indeed.
Despite the consequences of a U.S. attack on Iran ranging from bad to catastrophic, depending on the strategy and success of the attack, the stalemate within the dysfunctional U.N. is threatening to leave Bush with no option. Speculation over the use of military force against Iran has been rife since Tehran's April announcement of successful uranium enrichment.
The latest surge in tensions is over proposed U.S. naval exercises with Britain, France, Bahrain and Kuwait in the Persian Gulf next week. Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted an unnamed Foreign Ministry official as calling the maneuvers dangerous and suspicious. The official also said the exercises, reported to be practice runs for intercepting and searching ships carrying WMDs, were not in line with the security and stability of the region but instead aimed at fomenting crisis. The source blamed the neoconservatives' warmongering, which is being used in an attempt to achieve success in the mid-term elections.
I believe the proposed exercises are another attempt by the U.S. to provoke Iran into a knee-jerk reaction, which would further it from alienate Russia and China and ultimately allow Bush to use military action to stop Iran's nuclear program.
According to a war game organized by The Atlantic with the help of retired air force colonel and specialist in the field Sam Gardiner, which simulated preparations for an assault on Iran by the next American administration be it Republican or Democrat, such an assault could involve any or all of three separate strategies: (1) a punitive raid on key Revolutionary Guard units to retaliate for Iranian actions in Iraq and elsewhere, (2) a pre-emptive strike on all possible nuclear facilities or (3) the forceful removal of the Mullah regime from Tehran in a regime change operation.
The war games panel decided that the first two could be carried out independently but that the third would require the success of the first two as preparation. In reality, the second option -- a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities -- is the one most often discussed. Also in reality, any one of these actions or the encouragement of similar actions from Israel's military forces could well unleash a catastrophic global conflict.
The earliest retaliation would likely come in the form of missile attacks on Israel and other U.S. allies within the range of Iranian missiles (1,280 kilometers), followed by the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil channel, as threatened in the event of sanctions. Also, Iran may decide that a bloody defeat for the U.S., even if it means chaos in Iraq, is something they might actually prefer and begin exerting their significant influence over the majority Shia militias in Iraq to more heavily join the war against U.S. forces. Iran has so far discouraged the Shia communities from becoming involved in the insurgency. This would mean that the number of U.S. forces in Iraq would be greatly reduced for the first time as forces would be needed for the Iran invasion, which would coincide with the most dramatic rise of violence against U.S. forces since the Iraq invasion began.
If the Iran invasion did not go according to plan, the subsequently shrinking number of U.S. troops in Iraq could shortly find themselves unable to control the rising violence and forced into a hasty withdrawal from the Green Zone. Such an outcome would be seen as a defeat and empower the Jihadists for decades to come.
If any or all of the SCO members (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) were dragged into the conflict with allegiance to Iran, in turn bringing involvement from U.S. allies (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, Japan, Israel and the U.K., although the latter two would quite possibly be involved in some capacity from the beginning), a catastrophic global conflict would become World War III.
If none of these countries became involved but the badly overstretched U.S. military failed to achieve regime change in Tehran, whatever Iranian nuclear capabilities remained would undoubtedly be channeled toward the rapid advancement of any existing nuclear weapons program.
Military action in Iran, therefore, should be consigned to the realm of fiction. But Bush's predisposition to falling for his own rhetoric, and the slim chances of achieving any form of sanctions against Tehran, leave a catastrophic global conflict that could easily become World War III looming over our heads. Whatever the strategy, if Bush or the next American president decides to use military force against Iran, it could easily result in the definitive end of U.S. military supremacy in the 21st century
http://www.uruknet.biz/?s1=5&p=27836&s2=31
# Carlos says :
30 April, 2009 [ 04:29 ]
Good Riddance to Capitalism – Bring on Socialism
Would socialism allow forty-five million of its citizens to go without healthcare? Would socialism allow a justice system to imprison millions for drug use instead of providing drug treatment? Would socialism allow one percent of the population to control the majority of the country’s wealth? Would socialism allow a financial system to go unregulated and thereby cause the greatest economic catastrophe in history?
For far too long those in power have controlled the masses by misleading us all to think that capitalism benefits us all, and that the mention of socialism should make us cringe and scream for help. For far too long we have allowed our so-called experts persuade us to think that America is the place to be because of “Capitalism.”
For far too long we have allowed the mass media to distract, misinform, influence or program us to chase a dream that was never within reach and would never come within reach in our lifetime except for a very few. The capitalism trick is to make a few successful while the majority of the people witness their success and continue to chase after that illusive dream which in the end is never realized. That is the misconception we’ve all had and each day it’s becoming more and more revealed as the “Big Lie,” that has been promulgated by the rich and powerful for generations.
What benefits the majority the most and best is the word those in power fear most, and that is “Socialism.” They want us to think of socialism as communism but it’s not. Socialism is caring for that next door neighbor or someone in your community. It’s the belief that we are our brother’s or sister’s keeper and so forth. It’s the “Pay It Forward,” philosophy. It’s the idea that everyone wins and not just a few.
Those in power want to keep us divided and believe that every man or woman should defend for him or herself when that certainly should not be the case. It goes against the teachings in the bible and the practice of anyone who believes in any form of a higher power, regardless of their religious beliefs. The fear those with power and money have is that they will lose their control and influence if majority of the people were playing on an equal playing field. They use money to separate and by that method alone, they are able to control the masses.
Think about capitalism and how many who actually benefits from it, go back and think of all the people you know in your life and be honest with yourself. How many of your friends own several houses in multiple states and countries, yachts, cars, and get million dollar bonuses for ruining a business?
Capitalism has created an illusion to us all. Make a few people very wealthy, a few more almost wealthy, a few more rich and leave the majority thinking that they can one day become rich while knowing that the system of capitalism only allows those with money to keep on making it and those that don’t to keep dreaming and thinking that they can one day become rich and wealthy. Well thanks to our financial geniuses in corporate America and Wall Street, that illusion is starting to fade and fade fast. The curse of capitalism is starting to be revealed to the masses and guess what? The masses don’t like what they are beginning to see.
People are beginning to realize that capitalism was just a host and never was meant to enrich everyone, only continue to mislead and perpetuate the cycle of the rich getting richer. But the powers that be, blinded by the chase of money, their very own greed have allowed the eyes of people around the world to see the truth. The truth of what really has been going on behind the curtain of capitalism was all based on deception, misinformation, corruption and greed.
If you really want to dig deep, do the research and find out exactly how the big corporations became so powerful in the first place. How did they get their money, how did they grow to become so influential? I would be willing to bet that is was not all ethical or legal. Does free labor or slavery ring a bell?
What if the majority of citizens stopped doing business with the big corporations and started shopping at small, community like stores? If we change our ways and our habits, the rich and powerful would have no choice but to stop their corrupt practices.
The corporate elites want us to think things are scarce when the opposite is true. We live in a world where there is an abundance of everything but scarcity allows the powerful to have control and make lots of money. What if we abolished money and our political system? What if we lived from a resourced based society where everything was in abundance and there was no need for money? These are things we should all ponder going forward.
http://www.wemustchange.org/2009/04/politics/good-riddance-to-capitalism-%E2%80%93-bring-on-socialism/
# Carlos says :
30 April, 2009 [ 04:33 ]
What Socialism is:
"Collective ownership and democratic control
of the material means of production
by the workers and the people
True socialism wants a totally democratic society.
Socialism elevates the common good to the number one priority in all spheres of decision-making. The Anglo-American tradition conceives of democracy primarily as a set of limitations on abusive government power. The socialist critique of capitalism understands that the power that matters in all societies is economic power-- the power to direct men and women in their work.
As a result, prudent socialism applies democracy as the universal anecdote to all abusive power, including capitalist power. Total democracy applies democracy to the economy-- the workplace, the plant, the office, the bank.
Socialism broadly includes many variations, but in all its forms it means:
Basic economic decisions, as well as political decisions, must reflect the common good. The entire economy should operate for the good of the entire society, with no one left behind.
No private concentrations of capital or other wealth, and no other types of private concentrations of power.
The end of money's domination over society. The end of the priority of property and private greed.
Socialism will complete what democracy began-- the transfer of sovereignty in all spheres from elites to the people.
"Communal ownership of land and capital."
--Bertrand Russell in Roads to Freedom.
Democratic socialism is centered on humanist ideals, with the ultimate goal of allowing each individual the opportunity and means for his or her personal development and individual satisfaction. Such self-realization becomes possible in a cooperative, non-competitive social context.
Socialists understand that individuals are embedded in their social and economic environments, and therefore believe that more often than not the good of the individual is best achieved in what is good for the collective as a whole.
Socialists are assured that people are predisposed to cooperation and joint social action. Socialists set up as their opposite the capitalist values of egotism and narcissism.
True socialism is antithetical to capitalism,
and therefore revolutionary.
Socialism elevates the common good to the number one priority in all decision-making, instead of the good of a small ruling class. Many democratic socialists around the world have used electoral politics as a way of becoming accommodating to the capitalist class. Now they refuse to use terms like "capitalist class," and reactionaries get away with denouncing even tepid liberalism as "class warfare."
You bet it's class warfare. The hard facts of the domination of the capitalist class persist and become more outrageous every year. History offers a multitude of examples to contradict the notion that capitalists will voluntarily cede power. German capitalists raised up Hitler in order to stop the socialists and communists. Capitalism has staged bloody and utter illegal means in Greece, Spain, Chile, Nicaragua, Indonesia. McCarthy-ite Conservatives in every country in the world have slandered, persecuted, jailed and murdered leftists, union organizers and civil liberties advocates. Socialism evolved in reaction to the hard fact of capitalist oppression, and thus is directly antithetical to it.
There are many ways of envisioning revolution, and it need not necessarily be a bloody thing. In this Bergonian fantasy, the radicals use electoral politics to score a big victory that paved the way for the subsequent revolution, and in fact Hitler's revolution came about as a result of parliamentary elections. Socialist electoral revolutions were violently aborted by the Fascist Uprising and Civil War in Spain, and by Pinochet in Chile.
But "social democracy" and "Fabian socialism" have not resulted in more than a reform of capitalism. While social democrats in Europe and other parts of the world have succeeded in obtaining pensions, health care, hour and wage protections and the like, a capitalist class still controls the means of production.
And what Socialism isn't:
It's not "Communism," and not necessarily Marxist.
Deriving from Engel's writings, Marxists explicitly recognize two types of socialists: their own kind, the enlightened camp of "scientific socialism," and the deluded and naive krypto-bourgeoisie "utopian socialists." It is true that
Marx of course offered the most complete economic criticism of capitalism, and his theories of surplus labor, money, class conflict, and alienation are useful to Bergonians today. But Marx never adequately asserted the democratic fundamentals of socialism. Nor did he ever realize that basic ethical considerations (e.g. "justice," "community," and "equality") are alone sufficient justifications for socialism. To Bergonians Marx made an extremely simple proposition into a needlessly complex doctrine. Marxists successfully destroyed capitalist tyranny in a number of nations, but in every case they replaced it with an even worse tyranny, contrary to the democratic spirit of socialism. Lenin and his spawn hijacked and betrayed socialism, with Stalin and Mao committing the worst offenses. Thus Red Star Communism is a mutation of socialism.
Non-Marxist Socialist Movements: Socialism-- the idea of collective ownership and economic equality--had a sunny youth before the hard-edged barnacles of Marxism encased it. (see cooperative socialism) This was the era of "utopian socialism." Parallel to the development of Marxist socialism, there have been other important tendencies that have rejected Marx:
(a) French socialism owes as much to Blanqui, Blanc and Proudhon as it does to Marx, and its greatest leader, Jean Jaurès, was hardly an orthodox Marxist.
(b) After the failed Paris Commune of 1871, many French socialists became convinced that workers unions through direct action, culminating in the "general strike," could do in capitalism; they became the syndicalists. See Industrial Workers of the World, the American version.
(c) Fabian Socialism in Britain advocated a gradual, non-revolutionary transition to socialism based on humanist foundations.
(d) Also in Britain were the guild socialists who advocated worker control and self-government, and opposed a strong state.
(e) After World War I the left split into separate communist and socialist movements. Most countries had socialist parties that participated in elections and opposed an active communist party. The split enabled the rise of Fascism, but the pattern prevailed again after World War II.
(f) Neo-Marxists in Western Europe became repulsed with Stalinism and realized the dangers of centralism and the importance of individual liberty. Their theoretical reformulations earned the scorn of the orthodox.
(g) The New Left, having its greatest moment in France, 1968, criticized post-war imperialism and corporate capitalism. In many countries it was associated with, and energized by, opposition to the Vietnam War.
(h) Anarchism shares socialism's enmity toward capitalism, but has opposed socialism in the past, and rightfully opposed socialist statism and all stultifying authoritarianism.
Socialism is not (necessarily) state control-- though a democratic state would coordinate and regulate socialist institutions and planning. One does speak of state socialism sometimes in describing the Soviet-style system, but as a pejorative. "...socialism is not statism, or the collective ownership of the means of production. It is a judgment on the priorities of economic policy. It is for that reason that I believe that... the community takes precedence over the individual in the values that legitimate economic policy. The first lien on the resources of a society therefore should be to establish that 'social minimum' which would allow individuals to lead a life of self-respect, to be members of the community. -- Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, p. xii
Capitalists themselves use the state as a tool to perpetuate control over the working class (e.g. Taft-Hartley), and also to provide regulation they find necessary or useful, allowing Michael Harrington's famous observation of "socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor."
Socialism is most certainly not state tyranny-- Self avowed "democratic socialists" have governed Western Europe without limiting press freedom or individual rights of conscience. In fact, for socialism to really work the way it was intended, the people must be free.
Socialist Idealism Socialism is universally hopeful about the perfectibility of humankind. Socialism most certainly rejects the capitalist model of man: self-centered, greedy, anti-social, driven, obsessed with things. This means that socialists necessarily believe in the historical progress.
But Socialism may expect too much good from people. Perhaps the process of revolution itself contaminates socialism. Revolutionaries are warriors, and warriors of every age & type harden their hearts in war. They start feeling justified in using any means, any method, to win the fight. War and struggle erode every good intention, and often the ideological justifications for the struggle become reduced to slogans.
But if the substance of socialism survives the revolutionary fire, it will remain fragile in the post-revolutionary period. No matter the good intentions underlying a socialist society, some men and women will develop ambition and greed. Others will use their offices or jobs to benefit relatives and friends or punish enemies. Socialism-- that is, true socialism-- is therefore not inevitable. Yes, socialism may expect too much of mankind, but then again so may Christianity and all other religion.
Never discount the idealists, even though conservatives of every age have vilified them and sneered at them.
Once upon a time slavery was assumed part of the natural order of things. Once upon a time every state in the world was despotic, while human rights and elected governments were at best fantasies. Once upon a time there were no such things as trials, and torture was the norm. Modern man breaks records for the size and scope of human cruelty, but modern man has succeeded in moving the norms very far toward the good. A society free of slavery, peonage, hereditary nobility, poorhouses and debtors prisons, with universal public education, socialized health care for everyone, a 40 hour work week, and a popularly elected republican government, would surely have seemed like a pie-in-the-sky utopia to someone alive in 1700. Who even a hundred years ago could have imagined the United Nations functioning as it does. Anyone who thinks we haven't made progress toward the good has not read history. Are Hitler & Stalin so exceptional? Not when we recall Sargon, the Assyrians, the Romans, the Mongols, the Moguls, and Ivan the Terrible. How often did people like Thomas Jefferson, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela appear before 1600?
In this respect, socialism does involve a certain belief in progress. Marx embraced the idea of progressive historical stages, leading to a communist society, and all socialists believe that a better day is always possible, and that good men will not shirk from working for that day.
We've heard it all before:
"Socialism just too pie in the sky. Capitalism will be around forever."
Yeah, right, they said the same thing about slavery, serfdom, monarchy, theocracy, and probably human sacrifice.
"Man is by nature greedy, and capitalism is man's greed harnessed in the best way."
This is Adam Smith's myth. Anthropology rebuts it by demonstrating that humankind is capable of many different cultures, many different motivations, and many different sets of values. Anyone who thinks man is by nature individualistic and selfishly motivated overlooks the many instances of self-sacrifice: the Aztec sacrificial victim, the Samurai & Kamikaze, the Christian martyr, the soldier on the battlefield, the hospital volunteer, the kid who turns in the wallet he found on the sidewalk. Human psychology is far more complex than the Smith Myth allows.
"Free market economies are much more efficient than command economies."
More efficient at what?
Mindless production? An empty goal by itself.
Producing quality goods cheaply? Consider how much price padding results from advertising, packaging, sales commissions, and profit-taking middlemen.
Economic "growth?" The USSR in its earlier decades grew far faster than any other economy ever has, before or since. At no time in American history did the economy grow faster than it did during the government-directed effort of WWII.
Making rich people richer? Yes, capitalism does that very efficiently.
"What's this socialist crap about everyone getting paid the same?"
Some socialists have argued "from every person according to his abilities, to every person according to their needs." However most socialists would allow some pay differential, but pay must relate to the nature of a man's work, not to passive ownership of property. Socialists wish that conservatives were as concerned about the sufferings of the poor as they are about protecting unearned wealth of the rich.
"Capitalism is democratic; socialism is dictatorship."
Conservatives compare the USSR with the "western democracies." But Stalinism and Maoism were malformations, both abhorrent to true socialists. A truly socialist society has yet to exist, but if a society isn't democratic, then by definition it won't be socialist. Neo-liberals take it as an article of faith that democracy & capitalism are co-extensive. It is true that modern capitalism is facilitated by a republican form of government, but there have been too many prosperous capitalist dictatorships to assume that capitalism is by nature democratic. Many modern European democratic states have significant socialist features. Socialists point out as well how badly capitalist money distorts electoral processes.
Capitalism promotes individualism, while socialism forces individuals into artificial collectives.
Well, up to a point this is true. But if one examines the full range of cultures in the world and throughout time, one discovers that American-style individualism is an anomaly. Americans are detached from their communities and families, alone, and subject to high stress. The supposedly free individual is utterly powerless, while groups exercise power. The supposedly free American individual is in fact very conformist and conventional. People are social animals, not quite on the order of cattle, more like dogs & wolves. If we as individuals had a duty to live moral lives, we have just as much a duty to work for a moral society. Socialists believe that wage-labor, like slavery and feudalism, distorts social relationships. Indeed, nowadays it is the mega-corporations that are forcing people into artificial collectives. Socialism most certainly would demand a lot out of an individual, but socialism would give every individual, through collective self-government, control of her own work, freedom from poverty, and liberty to pursue a good life-- and that's the way it should be.
http://www.bergonia.org/Gov/socialism.htm
# # Jet says : says :
30 April, 2009 [ 10:33 ]
# Jet says :
You must all excuse me. I have mental problems due to being abused by my Parents.
I enjoy making up stories of other People. Frankly I do not have a clue who Dr. Jason P. Smith Phd, Philipe or Rodrigo are. For I enjoy insulting anyone who has a difference of opion.
I also enjoy the fact that USA has bullied other countries and commited Genocide worldwide. I get angry at Hugo Chavez for helping poor People as this means US Corporations cannot exploit and Starve the poor People in Latin America.
I totally agree with NAFTA & The FTA as this promotes great wealth to the United States while promoting human misery Worldwide.
And I am very ashamed that China now finances the United States.
I despise the Chinese for having more power than the United States.
Any country that is stronger than the United States should be punished.
I agree with war against Russia, China, Iran, India and Pakistan . It does not matter if these countries have Nuclear Weapons or has other Military Alliances, Beacause lets face it USA will always win, I truly believe this. I am a very intelligent Man, I even watch Family Guy and The Simpsons as they are great intellectual role models.
# Jet says :
1 May, 2009 [ 02:05 ]
LOL Even when he tries to portray me as he did in the post above, Phillip still sounds like Phillip/Rodrigo.
The funniest part is when he brings up "mental problems" or " insulting based on difference of opinion" and yet, this is precisely what HE is known for.
No amount of name changes or using other peoples posting names will be able to hide that.
# hate the haters says :
1 May, 2009 [ 09:44 ]
Rodrigo:
Antipsychotic medications have been available since the mid-1950s. They have greatly improved the outlook for individual patients. These medications reduce the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia and usually allow the patient to function more effectively and appropriately.
# Rodrigo says :
2 May, 2009 [ 08:03 ]
Oh my HAHAHA someone spoke the truth about you. Dont get upset.
Wish it had been me. But then I would have made it a lot longer with video clips & articles just to prove a point.
Nah thats way to short to be me But whoever it was congratulations, unless it was you Jet says admitting your faults nah I doubt you are that truthful HAHAHAHA.
As for # hate the haters says : its you Jet says you are both the same person. You really do have mental problems HAHAHA.
# Jet says :
2 May, 2009 [ 23:09 ]
cuckoo cuckoo LOL
# hate the haters says :
3 May, 2009 [ 00:02 ]
Rodrigo,
There is help available and I can get you in touch with a mental health group and an I am sure if we search, there must be an incest support group that could help you somwhere.
# Jet says :
3 May, 2009 [ 01:49 ]
LOL
# Rodrigo says :
3 May, 2009 [ 07:27 ]
Viva Communism
Fck usa
# manuel says :
6 June, 2009 [ 15:06 ]
Dear Members of the U.S. Congress:
We are concerned Peruvian-Americans, immigrant organizations and human rights
advocates in the United States. We are writing to express our strong opposition to
the Free Trade Agreement with Peru (FTA) and to request its further renegotiation for
the following reasons:
LABOR RIGHTS
In August, Peru’s President Alan Garcia agreed to issue presidential decrees to clarify
specific labor laws during a congressional visit from U.S. Representatives Rangel and
Levin. Yet Peruvian labor leaders argue that this is insufficient because it does not
change the labor laws through legislation and will not guarantee effective
enforcement. Like many workers in Latin American countries, Peruvians face
constant threats to their labor rights. Violations include discrimination against union
organizers, illegal firings and forced overtime without pay. Further, the new system
of fixed-labor contracts and subcontracting radically undermines workers' rights
because it does not guarantee a 44 hour work week or labor standard. Nor will the
presidential decrees protect the rights of the majority of people, seventy-five
percent, who work in the informal sector. And many of the remaining twenty-five
percent work for private employment contracting agencies that are not obligated to
enforce labor rights.
A free trade agreement with Peru should not be approved by the U.S. Congress until
legislation is passed by Peruvian Congress, which guarantees compliance with ILO
standards and guarantees enforcement.
AGRICULTURE, POVERTY & IMMIGRATION
Agriculture is an integral part of Peru's economy with nearly a third of the population
depending on this sector for their livelihood. In the FTA, the U.S. demands that Peru
renounce its rights under the WTO agreements to apply Special Agricultural
Safeguards, designed to protect sensitive sectors. After a thorough analysis of the
trade text on agriculture, the Peruvian National Convention on Agriculture
(CONVEAGRO) estimated that hundreds of thousands of Peruvian farmers would be
negatively affected by the agreement. The U.S. agricultural subsidies constitutes
unfair competition for Peruvian agricultural goods and will impoverish the 700,000
producers of cotton, corn, barley, wheat, oilseeds and dairy products in that country.
Considering that only 3% of Peruvian farmers export their products, it’s very likely
that as hundreds of thousands of Peruvian small farmers lose their markets, they will
be pushed into drug production, and to migrate with their families to already
impoverished Peruvian cities, or as undocumented immigrants to countries like the
U.S.
Even though Peru's economy has been growing continuously in the last 7 years,
almost 50% of the population is still living under $2 per day as a result of neo liberal
economic policies that are very similar to those promoted by this FTA. According to
the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), close to one fourth of
Peruvians live in extreme poverty. People in rural areas are the worst affected;
nearly 70 percent of them are extremely poor.
After NAFTA, over 1.3 million small farmers lost their livelihoods in Mexico due to
agricultural rules that are nearly identical to those included in the U.S.-Peru FTA. As
a result, undocumented immigration from Mexico to the U.S. increased by 61 percent
in the years following the implementation of NAFTA, according to Pew Hispanic
Center. U.S. policies like NAFTA-style “free trade agreements” influence the
economy of Latin America directly. Therefore, solving the problem of undocumented
immigration is a shared responsibility, and it must be addressed by a comprehensive
immigration reform that includes fair trade legislation and that prevents interest
groups from promoting human trafficking, exploitation of workers, broken
communities and cheap labor.
CORRUPTION vs. DEMOCRACY
We must remind you that there are pending cases of human rights abuses and
corruption involving Garcia’s first government. Garcia was reelected in 2006 on a
platform against Toledo’s free trade policies and with a promise to renegotiate the
FTA – the agricultural rules in particular. But, once elected, he instead visited Bush to
request its approval.
This FTA was passed by Peruvian Congress in 2006 in a lame-duck session with very
little public support and ignoring a request for a national referendum. Eighty percent
of Peruvian Congress members who voted for this FTA had already lost their seats in
the elections that predated the vote.
Meanwhile foreign mining and natural gas corporations are making huge profits in
Peru but leave behind underpaid workers, pollution and environmental destruction.
The Garcia administration has ignored popular protests and strongly supports
extractive industries. The Garcia government has abandoned dozens of towns
destroyed by the recent earthquake, even though it has the biggest budget surplus in
history. Public protests regarding this matter have been silenced or ignored by the
government, including closing down a radio-TV station in the city of Pisco that had
been critical of the relief efforts.
We believe that if this FTA is ratified now by the U.S. Congress, it will send a signal
to the Garcia government that its current heavy-handed and anti-public interest
policies are supported by the U.S. Congress. It will further perpetuate the perception
that the U.S. favors the interests of multinationals over protecting human rights and
reducing corruption.
INDIGENOUS RIGHTS & THE ENVIRONMENT
Most Peruvians are of Indigenous and Afro descendant heritage. According to the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the poorest of the poor in
Peru are the Indigenous/Native peoples. About 73 percent in Indigenous communities
live below the poverty line. This FTA is a threat to indigenous peoples' heritage and
way of life, as it allows agribusiness and pharmaceutical corporations to take over
their traditional medicine and nutrition knowledge for profit.
Mining, oil and natural gas exploration and extraction projects would increase
dramatically with this FTA, leading to extensive damage to the Peruvian environment,
especially the Andes mountains region and the Amazon basin, which is the largest
virgin forest on the planet. With this FTA, multinational corporations would have the
right to sue governments if any attempt to protect the environment would cause the
companies to see their profits reduced. In addition, this agreement establishes secret
trade tribunals, making trade rules more powerful than democratic institutions and
domestic laws.
As a result, entire Indigenous communities could be displaced from their lands and
pushed into extermination. These FTA regulations directly contradict the Declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recently adopted by the United Nations, which
includes the rights to protect their land and natural resources.
PUBLIC HEALTH & INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
Hundreds of thousands of Peruvians will not be able to afford generic medicines
because of new patents and data-protection regulations included in this FTA are
intended to protect and boost the already outrageous profits of pharmaceutical
corporations. This FTA promotes the privatization and deregulation of services such
as water, health care and education. At the same time, it protects the interests of
multinational corporations benefiting from Peru's bungled privatization of its social
security system at the expense of workers, women, children, senior citizens and the
chronically ill.
CONCLUSION
We strongly encourage you to reject the Free Trade Agreement with Peru – and ask
instead for it’s further renegotiation – because it is not fair for most Americans nor
most Peruvians, and because it was negotiated ignoring the voice of the people of
both the United States and Peru.
We believe that a free trade agreement with Peru must provide safeguards that will
protect vulnerable sectors of Peruvian society, instead of worsening its economic,
social and political inequality.
Trade should be used to promote social justice and progress for all, and not just for
the benefit of the few rich and powerful. The United States can truly spread
democracy and freedom by example, not by imposing economic policies that will
increase corruption, poverty and abuse among impoverished nations.
We believe that fair trade is necessary to address poverty and hunger, and to
promote economic progress and decent living standards, while respecting the UN
Declaration of Human Rights and guaranteeing the protection of our planet.
Respectfully,
Peruvian-Americans for Fair Trade
National Network for Immigrants and Refugee Rights
League of United Latin American Citizens
Group of Andean Immigrants in DC
Casa de Maryland, Inc.
Manuel Zapata Olivella Center for Immigrant Education and Human Development
Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras
Intercontinental Congress of First Nation People of North and South America
NETWORK – National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
United Methodist Church - General Board of Church and Society
Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Washington Office on Latin America
Global Exchange
Global Rights
KAFT - Korean Americans for Fair Trade
AFRODES USA - Association of Displaced Afro Colombians
Mexico & U.S. Solidarity Network - Red Solidaria México & EEUU
NICANET – The Nicaragua Network
Movement for Peace in Colombia - Movimiento por la Paz en Colombia
NYC People’s Referendum on Free Trade
http://www.citizen.org/documents/ImmigrantFaithHRLettertoCongressFINAL.pdf
# Manuel says :
6 June, 2009 [ 15:12 ]
China deepens Latin America ties
China's President Hu Jintao has not been to Latin America since 2005.
But his presence at the Apec summit taking place in Lima this weekend, and his visits to Costa Rica and Cuba, have highlighted China's deepening engagement with the region.
But what exactly is China's interest in Latin America?
President Hu's last visit to an Apec summit in Latin America in November 2004 prompted a flurry of excitement about China's booming economic involvement in the region.
Mr Hu was famously quoted as saying he expected $100bn (£66bn) of Chinese investment in Latin America in the following 10 years.
The Chinese government later corrected this to $100bn in bilateral trade, not investment. That figure was reached sooner than expected last year, and represents a remarkable jump from $13bn (£8.6bn) in 2000.
It still amounts to much less than trade with the US ($560bn) or the EU ($250bn), but the trend is significant. China is buying more and more Latin American commodities like oil, minerals and soya.
 China is purchasing more Latin American commodities like soya |
"China now wants to show it is a responsible stakeholder in the region," says Dan Erikson, a specialist in China-Latin American relations from the Inter-American Dialogue.
"It has the image in Latin America of being 'mercantilist', or only interested in taking out commodities. Now it wants to show it is interested in Latin America's longer-term development."
Crucial partner
China launched its first ever policy paper on Latin America earlier this month. While the document was short on specifics, it aimed to show the world it was serious about the region. It had previously released similar policy papers on the EU in 2003 and Africa in 2006.
As a sign of its long-term intent, analysts point to new free trade agreements (FTAs) between China and individual Latin American countries:
- Chile was the first non-Asian country to sign an FTA with China in 2005
- Peru and China this week successfully concluded talks on a free trade deal
- And a third bilateral deal between Costa Rica and China is under negotiation.
Trade relations have certainly boomed for some Latin American countries since the last Hu Jintao visit. For two of the three Latin American members of Apec, Peru and Chile, China has become a crucial trading partner.
 China and Cuba signed agreements on economical and technical cooperation |
According to UN figures, in 2007 nearly 40% of Chile's exports went to the Asia-Pacific region, mostly China. For Peru, the figure was 19%.
The Peruvian government is keen to deepen trading relations, partly in the hope that China's continued economic growth can help it survive the global recession.
Deputy Foreign Minister Gonzalo Gutierrez described President Hu's visit to Peru - the first ever by a Chinese president - as "of the utmost importance".
However, for Mexico, Latin America's third Apec member, the relative importance of Asia-Pacific remains low (about 3% of its exports) because of Mexico's close ties with the US economy. And the trade that does exist is very much in China's favour.
In 2007 Mexico ran a $28bn trade deficit with China.
"For every $30 of Chinese goods that Mexico imports, Mexico only exports $1 of Mexican goods to China," says Mr Erikson.
Infrastructure
Some Latin American governments complain privately about the low level of Chinese direct foreign investment in the region, which is far less than that of the US or the EU. The official figure is more than $20bn, but critics say much of this goes into offshore tax havens.
According to figures from the Chinese embassy in Washington in early 2008 only about $2bn is direct investment in extractive industries like oil and minerals.
"Investment in infrastructure for example," says Mr Erikson, "has been very disappointing."
Osvaldo Rosales, from the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) , told the BBC there was a "huge asymmetry between the increasing level of trade between China and Latin America and the low level of Chinese investment".
But he blames Latin American governments for the lack of properly evaluated investment projects for China to invest in.
Football reward
Analysts say that despite some unease about China's close relations with Cuba and Venezuela, Washington is not unduly concerned about China's growing influence and presence in Latin America.
 President Hu was given a warm welcome by his Peruvian host |
President Hu's visit to Cuba was more about trade and meeting Raul Castro than cocking a snook at the US.
Cuba is also a major ally in a region that usually has diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Eleven of the remaining 23 countries that still recognise Taiwan are found in Central America and the Caribbean.
Eyebrows were raised when Hu Jintao chose to go to Costa Rica rather than say, Brazil, China's largest trading partner in Latin America. But Costa Rica was being rewarded with a presidential visit (and a new football stadium) for its decision last year to recognise China. It is the only Central American country to do so.
Even though China is obviously keen to enter into oil agreements with Venezuela, it has shown it does not want to be drawn into any tension between President Hugo Chavez and the US government.
Washington apparently did not object to China becoming a board member of the Inter-American Development Bank and having observer status at the Organisation of American States (OAS).
"So far, it is widely accepted that China trying to act in the region with self-restraint and prudence," Gonzalo Paz, a lecturer at George Washington University, wrote recently.
"The deepening economic crisis will undoubtedly have an important influence on how the next stage develops."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7737554.stm
# Manuel says :
6 June, 2009 [ 15:18 ]
What can Obama do in Latin America?
What if Barack Obama had picked the Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel or Democracy Now! anchor Amy Goodman to advise him at the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago this week? Unlikely, to say the least, but 75 years ago President Franklin Delano Roosevelt did something just like that, tapping a former Nation editor and fierce critic of U.S. militarism to advise his administration on Latin American policy. As a result -- consider this your curious, yet little known, fact of the day -- anti-imperialism saved the American empire.
FDR took office in 1933 looking not just to stabilize the U.S. economy, but to calm a world inflamed: Japan had invaded Manchuria the year before; the Nazis had seized power in Germany; European imperialists were tightening their holds over their colonies; and the Soviet Union had declared its militant "third period" strategy, imagining that global capitalism, plunged into the Great Depression, was in its last throes.
When, soon after his March inauguration, Roosevelt put forward a call to the "nations of the world" to "enter into a solemn and definitive pact of non-aggression," the colonialists, militarists, and fascists who ruled Europe and Asia balked. Because the new president's global reach came nowhere near his global ambitions, the London Economic Conference -- convened that July by the equivalent of today's G-20 -- broke up rancorously over how to respond to that moment's global meltdown.
Luckily for Roosevelt, the Seventh Pan-American Conference was scheduled to take place that December in Montevideo, Uruguay. Admittedly the very idea of pan-Americanism -- that the American republics shared common ideals and political interests -- was then moribund. Every few years, in an international forum, Latin American delegates simply submitted to Washington's directives while silently seething about the latest U.S. military intervention -- in Panama, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, or Haiti. (Take your pick.)
Momentum was then building among Latin American nations for a revision of international law, which effectively granted great powers the right to intervene in the affairs of smaller republics. Venezuelan diplomats, for instance, were insisting that the U.S. affirm the principle of absolute sovereignty. Argentines put forth their own "non-aggression" treaty codifying non-intervention as the law of the hemisphere. Caribbean and Central American politicians insisted that detachments of U.S. Marines, then bogged down in counterinsurgencies in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, get out.
FDR dispatched his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, to the summit, but instructed him not to offer anything more than a promise to build a few new roads. The demand that the U.S. give up the right of intervention was "unacceptable."
Yet Roosevelt, who had a way of mixing and matching unlikely advisors, also asked Ernest Gruening (recommended by Harvard law professor and soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter) to accompany Hull. In 1964, as a senator from Alaska, Gruening would become famous for casting one of only two votes against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which President Lyndon Johnson would use to escalate the Vietnam War, but in the 1930s, he was already a committed anti-imperialist.
In the pages of the Nation and other left-wing journals, he had helped expose the use of torture, forced labor, and political assassinations that took place under Marine occupations in the Caribbean, atrocities he likened to European brutality in India, Ireland, and the Congo. After touring Haiti and the Dominican Republic, he lobbied Congress to cut off the funding of counterinsurgency operations in the region, and he excoriated the "horde of carpet-bagging concessionaires that are the camp-followers of American militaristic imperialism." That such an uncompromising critic of U.S. diplomacy would be chosen to advise the Secretary of State reflects the strength of the left in the 1930s -- and Roosevelt's willingness to tap it.
Burnin' and Murdewin'
As the delegation set sail for Montevideo, Gruening was shocked to learn that the U.S. had "no program except to be friendly with everyone and radiate goodwill."
"Mr. Secretary," he reported himself telling Hull, "the one issue that concerns every Latin-American country is intervention. We should come out strongly for a resolution abjuring it."
Hull, whom Gruening later described as speaking in the thick accent of a born and bred member of the Tennessee gentry, dropping g's and wrestling with r's, replied that that would be a hard sell.
"What am Ah goin't to do when chaos breaks out in one of those countries and armed bands go woamin' awound, burnin', pillagin' and murdewin' Amewicans?" Hull asked. "How can I tell mah people that we cain't intervene?"
"Mr. Secretary," Gruening responded, "that usually happens after we have intervened."
Hull was, however, afraid of bad press. "If Ah were to come out against intervention," he said, "the Hearst papers would attack me fwom coast to coast... Wemember, Gwuening, Mr. Woosevelt and Ah have to be weelected."
"Coming out against intervention would help you get reelected," Gruening replied. It would, he insisted, help the New Deal jump off the merry-go-round of invasion, occupation, and insurgency that had badly crippled U.S. prestige throughout Latin America and much of the world.
He was right. In Montevideo, Gruening helped bridge the gap between U.S. envoys and "anti-American" Latin American diplomats, including those from Cuba where, well before Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, serial U.S. interventions had strained relations between Havana and Washington. Most importantly, he reconciled the Secretary of State to the principle of non-intervention.
Hull "rose to the occasion magnificently," Gruening wrote, announcing that the United States would henceforth "shun and reject" the "so-called right-of-conquest... The New Deal indeed would be an empty boast if it did not mean that." Latin American delegates broke out in "thunderous applause and cheers." And FDR, ever the agile politician, seized the moment, confirming that the "definite policy of the United States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention."
"Our Era of 'Imperialism' Nears its End," the New York Times announced. "'Manifest Destiny' Is Giving Way to the New Policy of 'Equal Dealing With All Nations.'"
Twenty-One Different Kinds of Hate
Not quite, of course. Washington would return to a policy of interventionism in the Cold War era. Nonetheless, the importance of this diplomatic sea-change cannot be overstated.
Montevideo was Roosevelt's first significant foreign policy success, marking a turn in the country's fortunes as an ascendant superpower. He then ordered the Marines to withdraw from Haiti, while giving the country back its national bank; he abrogated the Cuban constitution's hated Platt Amendment, which had turned the island into a U.S. vassal-state; and he began to tolerate a degree of economic nationalism in Latin America, including Mexico's expropriation of the holdings of Standard Oil.
FDR's enormous popularity in Latin America fired his aspirations to world leadership. Visiting Buenos Aires in 1936, he was greeted by more than a million ecstatic well-wishers who gave him a "wild ovation" and "pelted him with flowers." Even Buenos Aires's usually skeptical press heralded him as a "shepherd of democracy," while hospitals expected an "enormous crop of 'Roosevelts' among baby boys," despite a ban on foreign names for infants.
Improved relations with Latin America also helped the U.S. recover from the Great Depression. With Asia off limits and Europe headed for war, Washington looked south both for markets for manufactured goods and for raw materials, negotiating trade treaties with 15 Latin American countries between 1934 and 1942.
More importantly, Latin America became the laboratory for what eventually became known as liberal multilateralism -- the diplomatic framework that, after World War II, would allow the United States to accrue unprecedented power. With the League of Nations practically defunct, diplomats began to discuss the possibility of a new "League of the Americas," which would eventually evolve into both the Organization of American States and the United Nations. (Each would enshrine in its charter the principle of absolute non-intervention.) Roosevelt himself would hold up the "illustration of the republics of this continent" as a model for global postwar reconstruction.
Cordell Hull got the Nobel Peace Prize for helping to found the U.N. and FDR took credit for overcoming "many times 21 different kinds of hate" to "sell the idea of peace and security among the American republics." But the thanks really should go to anti-imperialists like Gruening and guerrilla fighters like Nicaragua's Augusto Sandino who rendered militarism an unsustainable foreign policy.
Seventy-Five Years Later...
The parallels with today are unmistakable: a global economy in tatters; a new president with a mandate for reform, but blocked abroad by rising rivals and hamstrung by the rapid recession of U.S. power and prestige thanks to years of arrogant, unilateral militarism. And coming on the heels of a London summit of economic powers, a Latin American conference: the Fifth Summit of the Americas to be attended by 34 heads of state representing every American country except Cuba.
The last time this summit convened at the Argentinean beach resort town of Mar del Plata in 2005, Argentines greeted George W. Bush not as a shepherd of democracy but as an evangelizer for war, militarism, and savage capitalism. Thousands turned up from all over the continent to burn the president in effigy. Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Bolivia's Evo Morales convened a festive parallel "People's Summit," while Argentine soccer legend Maradona called Bush "human rubbish" and "a bit of an assassin." To paraphrase Michael Moore's Academy Award homage to the Dixie Chicks, when Maradona is against you, your time in Latin America is up.
With an aircraft carrier stationed just offshore and fighter jets buzzing overhead, Bush still was nervous and seemed distinctly out of his league. Coming just a few months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, with Iraq careening out of control, Bush's disastrous performance in Argentina, combined with an impressive display of Latin American unity, hastened the demise of the pretension of the neoconservatives to global supremacy. "The United States continues to see things one way," said one Latin American diplomat at the Summit, "but most of the rest of the hemisphere has moved on and is heading in another direction."
And so it had, with a left turn that started with Chávez's 1998 election as Venezuela's president and still continues apace. Last year, after all, Paraguay elected a liberation theologian as president; and last month, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front -- the guerrilla group turned political party Ronald Reagan spent six billion dollars and 70,000 Salvadorean lives trying to defeat in the 1980s -- finally came to power in El Salvador.
This week many will be watching to see if Barack Obama, in what will be his first real engagement with Latin America, is ready to reverse course at this Summit as Roosevelt did more than three-quarters of a century ago. To the United States, Latin America has not just been a source of raw materials and markets, but a "workshop," a place where rising foreign-policy coalitions try out new ways to project U.S. power following periods of acute crisis. FDR did it, as did Reagan and the New Right when, in the 1980s, they used Central America to experiment with junking multilateralism, while remilitarizing and remoralizing foreign policy.
Today, President Obama is enormously popular in Latin America. A number of local politicians in the region even legally adopted his name to give themselves an edge on ballots, and undoubtedly quite a few baby boys will be called Barack. Brazil's president, known simply as Lula, says he is praying for Obama -- and even Maradona admits he likes him "a lot."
But popularity only goes so far. For the first time in many decades, an American president might find that the days when the U.S. could use Latin America as an imperial rehearsal space are drawing to a close.
The Colombian Option
So what will Obama offer in Trinidad and Tobago? He will, like Hull in 1933, be intent on "radiating goodwill," but he will not necessarily "be friendly with everyone." He's already poisoned the water by insisting that Hugo Chávez is an "obstacle" to progress. Love Chávez or hate him, he is recognized as a legitimate leader by all Latin American countries and is a close ally to many. For eight years, a Bush administration policy of driving a wedge between the rest of the region and the Venezuelan proved a dismal failure, except when it came to increasing the outflow of Washington's hemorrhaging power in the hemisphere.
On many fronts, however, the president is likely to discover that his real obstacles to progress south of the border lie uncomfortably close to home.
In preparation for the summit, the Obama administration has made some overtures to Cuba, responding to demands by nearly every Latin American country that Washington end its cold war against Havana. The need to keep Democratic senators from Florida and New Jersey (states with large Cuban-American populations) in the fold means that the general travel ban and trade embargo will, however, stay in place, at least for now. (In 1933, Hull tried to prevent the Cuban envoy from speaking, fearing that he would give a fiery anti-American speech; Gruening appealed to the principle of free speech to reverse the ban.)
Obama will probably reiterate recent official statements by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among others, that the United States bears real responsibility for Mexico's drug-war violence and perhaps bemoan the way an "inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border" fuels drug-related killings. Like every other administration, though, Obama's will have to answer to the National Rifle Association (NRA), which at this point carries out its own foreign policy.
In 2005, for example, when Brazil held a referendum to implement a stringent gun-control law, the NRA spent considerable money lobbying to successfully defeat it. So expect the NRA to fight any attempt to stem the flow of guns south of the border. In fact, Wyoming senator John Barrasso hopes to use the fear of Mexican drug violence to force a greater distribution of assault weapons. As he put the matter, "Why would you disarm someone when they potentially could get caught in the crossfire?... The United States will not surrender our second-amendment rights for Mexico's border problem."
And so it goes: On nearly every issue that could either actually help relieve the suffering of Latin Americans or allow the U.S. to win back strategic allies, domestic politics will hinder Obama's range of action, even if not his immediate popularity.
Just recently, a study group made up of some of Latin America's leading intellectuals and policy-makers, including former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, declared the U.S. war on drugs a failure and recommended the legalization of marijuana. Obama is obviously sympathetic to this position, having instructed his Justice Department to back off "medical marijuana" prosecutions. But will he be able to de-escalate the war on drugs in Latin America? Not likely.
As a candidate, the president did say he wasn't opposed to all wars, just stupid ones -- and this one is as stupid as they come. It hasn't lessened narcotics exports to the U.S., but has spread violence through Central America into Mexico, while entrenching paramilitary power in Colombia. Plan Colombia, the centerpiece of that war, is a legacy of Bill Clinton's foreign policy, and much of the six billion dollars so far spent to fight it has essentially been direct-deposited in the coffers of corporate sponsors of the Democratic Party like Connecticut's United Technologies and other northeastern defense contractors.
Rather than dismantling Plan Colombia, plans are evidently afoot to have it go viral beyond the Americas. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently commented that "many of us from all over the world can learn from what has happened with respect to the very successful developments of Plan Colombia," and suggested that it be franchised "specifically to Afghanistan." Washington Post White House correspondent Scott Wilson agrees, urging Obama to use Colombia as a "classroom for learning how to beat the Taliban." Buried deep in Wilson's recommendation was a revelation: U.S. officials, he wrote, "privately" told him that death-squad terror was a necessary first step in Plan Colombia, serving as a "placeholder" until the U.S. could train a "professional" army. The Bush administration kept "the money flowing to Colombia's army despite evidence of its complicity in paramilitary massacres."
The Path to Latin America Runs Through Brasilia...
Ultimately, imperial Washington's only real road may run through the Brazilian capital, Brasilia. After all, Obama approaches the region not as a leader of a confident superpower, but of an autumnal hegemon. As such, his best option may lie in forming a partnership with Brazil -- Latin America's largest, most diversified economy, with enormous, newly discovered offshore oil reserves and a fulsome set of political aspirations -- to administer the hemisphere. The White House clearly recognizes this to be the case, which was why an administration official called Lula's recent one-on-one meeting in Washington with Obama a recognition of Brazil's "global ascendancy."
Just before the G-20 meeting convened in London, Lula blamed the global financial collapse on the "irrational behavior of people that are white" and "blue-eyed." Standing next to the blanching British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he continued: "I do not know any black or indigenous bankers so I can only say [it is wrong] that this part of mankind, which is victimized more than any other, should pay for the crisis."
If these words came out of Chávez's mouth, they would have been taken as but the latest indication of his irrational anti-Americanism, but the Obama administration needs Lula. In London, Obama could barely contain himself: "That's my man right here," he said, grabbing Lula's hand as Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner looked on. "Love this guy. He's the most popular politician on earth. It's because of his good looks." That certainly represented an improvement over George Bush, who asked Lula's Brazilian predecessor, "Do you have blacks, too?"
Yet Brazil's cooperation will come at a price, which Obama will have trouble meeting. This country's baroque and bloated farm subsidy and tariff program -- which House and Senate members recently refused to let Obama cut -- will prevent the president from bowing gracefully to Lula's central demand: that the U.S. live up to its rhetoric about free trade and open its economy to Brazil's competitive agro-industry.
...Around Caracas...
And then there's Venezuela. Seventy-five years ago, Secretary of State Hull feared the Hearst papers would attack him "fwom coast to coast" if he renounced interventionism. Well, the more things change...
When Obama's State Department declared Venezuela's recent referendum to remove presidential term limits (and so allow Chávez to stand for reelection) an internal matter "consistent with democratic principles," it was attacked by the Houston Chronicle, which is owned -- you guessed it -- by the Hearst Corporation. More criticism followed, sending administration officials "scrambling," according to the Wall Street Journal, "to assert that the Obama administration hasn't softened U.S. policy toward Venezuela."
Since the ongoing demonization of Chávez carries absolutely no domestic costs and its easing plenty of potential debits, Obama might be forced to keep up some version of the Bush administration's hard-line, perhaps providing the president cover to moderate rhetoric, if not policy, in real danger spots where far more is at stake -- as in the Middle East.
...And Ends in Texas
Immigration is one area where Obama might have some room to maneuver, but he would have to overcome the Glenn-Beck wing of the Republican Party. Ordering Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to stop hunting undocumented Latin American workers (as the presidents of Mexico and Central America have demanded) and opening a real path to citizenship would go a long way toward improving relations with southern neighbors. It would also guarantee the loyalty of the Latino vote in 2012 and, by creating millions of new voters, perhaps even pull Texas closer to swing-state status.
Returning to the Scene of the Crime
Ultimately, however, Obama's vision will be limited by the smallness of the imaginations of the counselors he has surrounded himself with. There are neither Gruenings, nor even Hulls in that crowd. He has kept on George W. Bush's Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America Thomas Shannon and has picked Jeffrey Davidow to be his special advisor at the summit.
A career diplomat, Davidow's foreign service has been largely unremarkable, though his first posting was to Guatemala in the early 1970s when U.S.-backed death squads were running wild, and was followed by an assignment as a junior political officer in Chile, where he observed the 1973 U.S.-backed military coup that overthrew elected President Salvador Allende. Committed to the Clinton-era mantra of economic liberalization, these diplomats will never recommend the kind of game-changing ideas Gruening did.
Given that the global financial crisis will dominate this summit, Obama's appearance will be seen by some as a return to the scene of the crime. After all, it was in Chile that the now-discredited model of deregulated financial capitalism was first imposed. This occurred well before Presidents Reagan and Clinton adopted it in the U.S.
As it then spread through most of the rest of Latin America, the results were absolutely disastrous. For two decades, economies stagnated, poverty deepened, and inequality increased. To make matters worse, just as a new generation of leftists, taking measures to lessen poverty and reduce inequality, was recovering from that Washington-induced catastrophe, a reckless housing bubble burst in the U.S., bringing down the global economy.
Latin Americans will want an accounting. As even Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, a close U.S. ally, put it: "[The] whole world has financed the United States, and I believe that they have a reciprocal debt with the planet." Hugo Chávez couldn't have said it better.
Greg Grandin is the author of Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (Metropolitan) and Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, forthcoming in June. He can be reached at grandin@nyu.edu.
Copyright 2009 Greg Grandin
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/41702
# Manuel says :
6 June, 2009 [ 15:24 ]
Obama In Cairo: A New Face For Imperialism
By Patrick Martin
05 June, 2009
WSWS.org
The speech delivered by US President Barack Obama in Cairo yesterday was riddled with contradictions. He declared his opposition to the “killing of innocent men, women, and children,” but defended the ongoing US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US proxy war in Pakistan, while remaining silent on the most recent Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. These wars have killed at least one million Iraqis and tens of thousands in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories.
Obama declared his support for democracy, human rights and women’s rights, after two days of meetings with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, two of the most notorious tyrants in the Middle East. He said nothing in his speech about the complete absence of democratic rights in Saudi Arabia, or about the ongoing repression under Mubarak’s military dictatorship. In the days before the US president’s arrival at Al-Azhar University, the campus was raided by Egyptian secret police who detained more than 200 foreign students. Before leaving on his Mideast trip, Obama praised Mubarak as a “steadfast ally.”
While posturing as the advocate of universal peace and understanding, Obama diplomatically omitted any reference to his order to escalate the war in Afghanistan with the dispatch of an additional 17,000 US troops. And he tacitly embraced the policy of his predecessor in Iraq, declaring, “I believe the Iraqi people are ultimately better off without the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.” He even seemed to hedge on the withdrawal deadline of December 2011 negotiated by the Bush administration, which he described as a pledge “to remove all our troops from Iraq by 2012.”
Obama rejected the charge that America is “a self-interested empire”—a perfectly apt characterization—and denied that the United States was seeking bases, territory or access to natural resources in the Muslim world. He claimed that the war in Afghanistan was a “war of necessity” provoked by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This is the same argument made by the Bush-Cheney administration at the time, which deliberately conceals the real material interests at stake. The war in Afghanistan is part of the drive by US imperialism to dominate the world’s two most important sources of oil and gas, the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Basin.
There was of course a distinct shift in the rhetorical tone from the bullying “you’re either with or against us” of George W. Bush to the reassuring “we’re all in this together” of Obama. But as several commentators noted (the New Republic compared the speech line-for-line to that given by Bush to the United Nations on September 16, 2006), if you turned off the picture and the sound and simply read the prepared text, the words are very similar to speeches delivered by Bush, Condoleezza Rice and other officials of the previous administration.
The vague and flowery rhetoric, the verbal tributes to Islamic culture and the equal rights of nations, constitute an adjustment of the language being used to cloak the policy of US imperialism, not a change in substance. Obama made not a single concrete proposal to redress the grievances of the oppressed peoples of the Middle East. That is because the fundamental source of this oppression is the profit system and the domination of the world by imperialism, of which American imperialism is the most ruthless.
Obama made one passing reference to colonialism, and to the US role in the overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953. But in his litany of “sources of tension” in the region, he offered the same checklist as his predecessor, with the first place given to “violent extremism”, Obama’s rhetorical substitute for Bush’s “terrorism.”
The reaction to the Obama speech in the American media was across-the-board enthusiasm. Liberal David Corn of Mother Jones magazine said Obama’s great advantages were “his personal history, his non-Bushness, his recognition of US errors, his willingness to at least talk as if he wants to be an honest broker in the Mideast.”
Michael Crowley wrote in the pro-war liberal magazine New Republic, “to see him unfold his biography, to cut such an unfamiliar profile to the world, is to appreciate how much America will benefit from presenting this new face to the world.”
Perhaps most revealing was the comment by Max Boot, a neoconservative arch-defender of the war in Iraq, who wrote: “I thought he did a more effective job of making America’s case to the Muslim world. No question: He is a more effective salesman than his predecessor was.”
In his speech in Cairo, Obama was playing the role for which he was drafted and promoted by a decisive section of the US financial elite and the military and foreign policy apparatus. This role is to provide a new face for US imperialism as part of a shift in the tactics, but not the strategy, of Washington’s drive for world domination.
Nearly two years ago, former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski gave his public backing to the presidential candidacy of a still-obscure senator from Illinois, holding out the prospect that as an African-American with family ties to the Muslim world, Obama would improve the worldwide image of the United States.
Brzezinski was the leading hawk in the administration of Democrat Jimmy Carter and helped instigate the political upheavals in Afghanistan in the hopes of inciting a Soviet invasion that would trap the Moscow bureaucracy in a Vietnam-style quagmire. He has remained steadily focused on what he calls the “great chessboard” of Eurasia, and particularly on oil-rich Central Asia, where a struggle for influence now rages between the United States, Russia, China and Iran.
According to Brzezinski in August 2007, Obama “recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America’s role in the world... Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand. He has a sense of what is historically relevant and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world.”
Brzezinski, a ruthless defender of the interests of US imperialism, has issuing warnings to the American ruling elite of the danger of what he calls the “global political awakening.”
In one particularly pointed comment, he told the German magazine Der Spiegel, only months before he endorsed Obama, that the vast majority of humanity “will no longer tolerate the enormous disparities in the human condition. That could well be the collective danger we will have to face in the next decades.”
To call it by its right name, what the more perceptive elements in the US ruling class fear is world revolution. The effort to prevent such a social upheaval is what impelled them to install Obama in the White House and what set him on his pilgrimage to Cairo.
Copyright © 1998-2009 World Socialist Web Site
http://www.countercurrents.org/martin050609.htm
# Manuel says :
6 June, 2009 [ 15:46 ]
Socialist Revolution and Latin American Unity
Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski
In the 1960s the Cuban revolution projected itself as the beginning of the Latin American revolution, reviving and rearming the old utopia of Latin American unity. Since then I have studied the origins, history and validity of this utopia, in Cuba, Poland, which is my country of origin and in France. I wish to share my reflections with you.
Somebody once said that the historic legend, fabricated by scribblers in the service of the Latin American oligarchies and the colonial or imperialist powers, presents the Libertadores (Liberators) as partisans of the creation of a couple of dozen distinct states, and not one. And that this truly monstrous falsification of “official history” resides in the fact that, whereas in western Europe and the United States nations were constituted as the result of the victories of bourgeois democratic revolutions, in Latin America the states that appeared following the defeat of the bourgeois democratic revolution are considered as distinct nations.
Whoever the author was, it was very well said. Latin America has an extraordinary particularity on the world scale, which it shares with the Arab world, also divided. In his History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky said in relation to the national question, “language is the most important instrument of human communication, and consequently of industry. It becomes national together with the triumph of commodity exchange which integrates nations. Upon this foundation the national state is erected as the most convenient, profitable and normal arena for the play of capitalist relations”. [1].
It is true that many national states do not cover the totality of territories on which their national language is spoken and that - albeit in fairly exceptional circumstances - two neighbouring states sometimes have the same national language.
But what happened in Latin America is very specific. In a continuous territory where the state language is the same or similar, in the classic epoch of the formation of national states, not one state but around 20 were formed. The anomaly is undeniable and its scale is enormous. In it the condition of Latin America as a dependent, exploited and underdeveloped periphery of the world capitalist system is materialized. So it is natural than in Latin America the idea periodically resurges that the homeland is America, as happens also in the Arab world, with the existence of pan-Arab nationalism.
“The junker road was possible in Germany because the road of Münzer had failed”, said René Zavaleta Mercado, referring to the defeat in this country of the peasant war and to the subsequent development of German capitalism by the so-called Prussian, that is oligarchic, road. In the dominant centres of world capitalism all roads, whether democratic, involving the development of capitalism as the consequence of an active bourgeois revolution, led from below and complete, or oligarchic, taken following a passive bourgeois semi-revolution imposed from above, have led to an independent development.
However, in the periphery the oligarchic road could only be a dependent road of under-development of capitalism. As shown by Zavaleta Mercado, if it is precisely this road that has been imposed in Latin America, it is because the road of Túpac Amaru y Túpac Catari has not been taken. [2]
In 1780-81, parallel to the first North American revolution, namely the war of independence of the thirteen British colonies in North America, on the territory of the Inca civilization, a great insurrection for independence combined with a radical uprising of the indigenous peasantry, broke out under the leadership of Túpac Amaru y Túpac Catari. To a much greater extent than the north American revolution, which was fundamentally political, the Andean insurrection was a real and profound bourgeois democratic revolution.
In its class composition and on the basis of its own civilization, it had a much greater potential than any subsequent movement for independence to lay the bases for the unification of Latin America and a democratic and independent development of capitalism.
Its savage suppression and the destruction of the Inca civilization by the Spanish colonial power sounded the death knell of a revolution which could have changed the course of history of the Spanish or Iberian-American part of the hemisphere.
In North America the war of independence in the British colonies was victorious and led to the unification - concretely, to a federation - of the latter. But the maintenance and expansion of slavery in the southern states of the new union prevented the road of development of capitalism - democratic and independent or oligarchic and dependent - from being definitively taken for the next 80 years.
In Latin America the wars of independence waged in the first half of the 19th century, although victorious, were defeated as bourgeois revolutions: they did not succeed in transforming themselves into a Latin American national revolution and building a Latin American union or at least a solid base of support for its formation. Instead of forming a federation or, at least, a confederation, America freed of the Spanish yoke was fragmented into a constellation of states.
- Simon Bolivar
In close articulation with the defeat at this level, the wars of independence did not lead either to the suppression of the colony inside the new republics. On the contrary, after the wars of independence, through numerous civil wars, the dominant classes and the colonial modes of exploitation were preserved. Simon Bolivar had a bad, but brilliant, premonition that the union of the old British colonies in north America and the fragmentation of the former Spanish empire would determine their mutual relations, namely that the United States would dominate Latin America. For this reason he aspired to the unification of the former Spanish colonies in a single nation.
In the United States, 80 years after the first American revolution, the civil war between the states of the north, where capitalism had developed on the basis of the exploitation of wage labour, and the southern secessionist states, where capitalism was based on the exploitation of slave labour, became transformed into a revolutionary war for national reunification and the abolition of slavery. It was thanks to this terrible war that the United States definitively won its national unity. It also allowed the democratic and independent road of the development of capitalism to triumph over the oligarchic and dependent road. If the southern secessionist states had won, which was neither impossible nor improbable, the latter would have triumphed, the US would be divided and would have remained in the dependent periphery of world capitalism. Events a little after the defeat of the South are very revealing of the different and even opposed courses of history in the two parts of America.
In Latin America, a terrible genocidal war led by the triple Alliance of the oligarchies of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay with the support of Britain, the hegemonic world power, against Paraguay led to the complete and irreversible destruction of the sole attempt emerging from the wars of independence to ensure an independent development of capitalism.
The tragic end of this attempt, as audacious as it was disastrously provincial, shows us two things. First, that in this epoch, an independent capitalist development in the dependent Latin American periphery of the world capitalist system was not possible without a prolonged rupture with this system - a rupture as radical as that led by the founder and first governor of independent Paraguay, José Gaspar de Francia. Secondly, that already at this time a durable independent development was not possible in a single country in the Latin American periphery of the world system.
Against any fatalistic conception which suggests that the United States and Latin America were destined to follow the roads that they have effectively followed, it should be recalled that this attitude reflects the fact that history is written by the victors, that “history is not a teleological movement, with a road traced in advance, but a scenario in which classes confront each other”, as Agustín Cueva observed. “As this fatalism is only the other side of elitism, knowledge of the history of the revolutionary movements and the democratic alternatives of Latin America in the 19th century remains still “the bastard of history”. [3]
The big European powers of the time were very conscious that - as French prime minister François Guizot put it - it was the final result of the struggles between the “European party” and the “American party “ which would decide the destiny of Latin America.
Was the victory of the “American party” over the “European party” inevitable in the US, while the opposite was true in Latin America? No, in the two cases nothing was predestined or predetermined. It was in the class struggle and the battlefields of civil wars that the winning party was decided.
Were the big victorious combats waged under the leadership of the head of the “American party” in Mexico, Benito Juárez - the Reform, the civil war and the war of national resistance - destined to end in the super-oligarchic and super-dependent modernization of Mexican capitalism which happened under the regime of Porfirio Diaz? No, they could have ended in a radically different manner.
The calculus of probabilities included the effects of the almost simultaneous victories of the “American parties” in the wars in the US and in Mexico being rapidly extended, with the joint support of their governments, towards the south of the hemisphere, provoking a decisive clash of the continental “American party” with the bastion of the “European party”: the triple Alliance which would crush Paraguay. But this is not what happened, “the defeat of the bourgeois democratic alternative during the period of the Reform”, says Cueva, “consolidates, in any case, the channeling of the whole of Latin America along the reactionary - “oligarchic” - road of development of capitalism, which coincides perfectly with the imperialist phase which the world system had entered, defining a new period of our history” [4]
Two things should be very clear. First, we are talking about the historic epoch of the bourgeois democratic revolutions. Secondly this epoch was closed once and for all on a world scale, only a few years after the defeat of the “European party” of the slaveholders in the US, after the enormous blow administered by the Mexican people to the European bourgeoisie with the execution of the usurper Habsburg in Mexico and after the destruction of Paraguay by the “European party“ of the triple Alliance. It ended with the Paris Commune: the first proletarian revolution to seize power, although only in a transitory manner.
At the end of the epoch mentioned, we thus have two series of logical and historical correlations distributed between the two parts of the hemisphere: north American national unity, the democratic and independent development of capitalism and the promotion of the country to a central position in the world capitalist system; Latin American national fragmentation, oligarchic and dependent underdevelopment of capitalism and a durable peripheral positioning of Latin America in the world capitalist system.
With the transition of capitalism to its imperialist phase, these two series of correlations could produce nothing other than what Bolivar had anticipated: the polarization of the hemisphere between the developed capitalism of the US and the underdeveloped capitalism of Latin America, united inseparably by a relationship of domination and dependence. As Trotsky would say later, Latin America has been subjected by the US to ”national exploitation which completes and reinforces class exploitation”.
In the framework of world capitalism and on the basis of capitalist relations of production there is an unshakable union between these two series of correlations.
Although the historic epoch of the bourgeois democratic revolutions definitively ended in 1871, in every country in the world where the historic tasks of these revolutions have not been completed, they remain still unfulfilled. The contradiction between the irreversible end of this epoch and the delay in the full realization of these tasks means that they can no longer be resolved by the bourgeoisie or by any of its sectors or factions.
The entire subsequent course of history in Latin America and in other parts of the world has fully confirmed this. Now, faced with the bankruptcy of the Latin American bourgeoisie in the accomplishment of its historic tasks it is the revolutionary class whose ineluctable rise had been announced by the Paris Commune, which should accomplish once it had established its own power.
All the same, the idea of the great Latin American homeland survived among revolutionary Latin American nationalists. The most remarkable revolutionary to emerge in Latin America and indeed the whole colonial and dependent periphery during the transition of capitalism to the imperialist stage, José Martí, activated it as a revolutionary strategy.
Pedro Pablo Rodriguez a has described thus this strategy as applied to Cuba: “The war would be for independence, but would include other goals: this would be no more than a landmark in a very long term political strategy which, beginning in Cuba, would continue through the independence of Puerto Rico and the progressive unification of Latin America, in the face of the expansionist attempts of the US, where the West Indies were the first barrage.
This strategy would guarantee the elimination of all vestiges of Spanish colonialism in Latin American societies avoiding the creation of new colonialist forms. In the language of our times, one would call this a continental strategy of national liberation against imperialism (...) It is indubitable that on this road alone Bolivar preceded Marti, when he demanded a Latin American union as powerful as that which had been formed in the north of America.
Nonetheless, the epochs of the two men were very different; Bolivar led the war for the independence of South America when the US began their territorial expansion to the Pacific coast, seizing the lands of the Indians, and Great Britain was dominant in the developed capitalist world. Martí lived through the decisive years of the transition from pre-monopolist capitalism to imperialism in the US, which had ensured its hegemony in the countries of the Caribbean and threw it into competition with the Europeans in the south of the continent. What was a more or less distant possibility in the time of Bolivar was a reality in the time of Martí.” [5]
The references made throughout Martí’s work indicate that for him Latin American unity would imply also the formation of a single “new republic” on the Latin American scale, that is, as defined by Martí himself, a republic that would distinguish itself radically from the traditional Latin American republics because it would combat the colony that survived inside it.
Contrary to what might have been logically expected, the development of the Latin American workers’ movement and its Marxist parties was in no way translated by an appropriation of Bolivar’s and by Martí’s ideas of the great homeland. The first Latin American socialist parties, linked to the Second International, ignored them. It might be supposed that the Communist movement would break radically with this social-democratic legacy.
This was confidently expected by those revolutionary militants influenced by Bolivar and Martí who joined the movement, like Julio Antonio Mella, drawn irresistibly by the October Revolution. But they were quickly disillusioned.
The question was first posed in 1928, at the 5th congress of the Communist International. The Comintern’s main person responsible for Latin American affairs, the Swiss Communist Jules Humbert-Droz, proposed that the Communist movement recognize as one of its major revolutionary tasks the formation of the Union of Federated Workers and Peasants Republics of Latin America. His proposal, while obvious and indispensable, provoked a hostile reaction and he was accused of following a “petit bourgeois nationalist Latin Americanism” in a clear allusion to a movement like APRA. At the same congress, the Comintern eliminated from its programme the struggle for the Socialist United States of Europe.
This was one of the innumerable disastrous consequences of the rise to power of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and the subordination to its strategy of the construction of socialism in one country that it imposed on the international Communist movement. It followed a sharp break by the Communist parties with the policy, adopted under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, of the united anti-imperialist front and alliance with revolutionary nationalists - a rupture which enormously affected the development of Latin American revolutionary movements. Recall the radical distinction made by Mella between bourgeois and revolutionary nationalism, a political current which is very important in the history of Latin America, in which Mella said that he “wanted a free nation to put an end to the internal parasites and the imperialist invaders, recognizing that the principal citizens in any society are those who contribute to elevating it with their everyday work, without exploiting their fellow human beings.” [6] It is precisely in this sense that we use this term.
Faced with the Stalinization of the Comintern, it was the clearest thinkers and activists of revolutionary nationalism who would preserve the idea of Latin American unity as one of the essential tasks in the fight for liberation from imperialist domination. But, in the direct tradition of the October Revolution, whose original programme Stalin abandoned and betrayed, the main leader, besides Lenin, of this revolution, took up the idea rejected by the Comintern at his initiative. Trotsky not only took it up but also based it on his decisive contribution to Marxist thought, the theory of permanent revolution.
In Russia, not only up until the taking of power by the proletariat in October 1917, but for almost a year after, until autumn 1918, the revolution was proletarian through its leading social force, but bourgeois democratic rather than socialist in its immediate tasks. In taking power, the proletariat first carried out the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution still unfulfilled in this country, including one of the most important, the liberation of nationalities oppressed by the Russian empire, passing immediately, in an uninterrupted or permanent way, from the latter to the first socialist tasks.
Trotsky extended the theory of the permanent revolution, elaborated initially for the revolution in Russia, to all the underdeveloped, colonial and dependent countries. According to him, the possibility of the proletariat taking power in these countries is, naturally, largely determined by the role of this class in the economy of the country, and consequently by the level of its capitalist development. But this was not the sole criterion.
For Trotsky, a no less important question was whether there existed in the country a vast and incandescent “popular” problem, whose resolution would interest the majority of the nation and which demanded the most audacious revolutionary measures. Among the questions of this order he stressed the national question.
Given the insupportable national oppression exerted by the imperialist powers, the young and relatively small proletariat could come to power, in Trotsky’s view, on the basis of the national democratic revolution, before the proletariat of a highly developed country dominant in the world capitalist system could come to power on a purely socialist basis. If the proletariat did take the leadership of an oppressed nation and seize power, no national democratic revolution, even one as great as the Mexican Revolution led by leaders as radical and exceptional as Lázaro Cárdenas, could fulfill its task of freeing the nation from imperialist domination.
Whereas the Stalinized Comintern rejected the idea of Latin American unity in attributing to it the reformist petty bourgeois nationalism of APRA, Trotsky posed the question in a fundamentally different manner. In commenting on the positions of the chief Aprist, he wrote, “Haya de la Torre insists on the necessity of the union of the Latin American countries and ends his letter with this formula: ‘We, the representatives of the United Provinces of South America’. In itself, the idea is completely correct. The struggle for the United States of Latin America is inseparable from the struggle for national independence of each of the Latin American countries. Nonetheless it is necessary to respond clearly and precisely to the question of what road can lead to this unification Some extremely vague formulations by Haya de la Torre can lead one to conclude that he hopes to convince the current governments of Latin America to unite voluntarily... under the tutelage of the United States. In reality, one can only attain this objective with the revolutionary movement of the popular masses against imperialism, including “democratic” imperialism and its internal agents. It is a difficult road, we admit it, but there is no other.” [7]
In indicating the belated and already decadent character of a Latin American capitalism based on the semi-servile conditions of life in the countryside, Trotsky explained: “The American bourgeoisie, which has been capable, during its historic rise, of uniting in a single federation the northern half of the continent, now uses all the power that it has drawn from it to divide, weaken, reduce to slavery the southern half. Central America and South America can only uproot themselves from backwardness and slavery by uniting their states in one powerful federation.
But it is not the backward South American bourgeoisie, venal agency of foreign imperialism, which will be called to resolve this task, but the young South American proletariat, the leader chosen by the oppressed masses. The slogan in the struggle against the violence and intrigues of world imperialism and against the blood-soaked domination of the indigenous comprador cliques, is, then, the Soviet United States of Central and Southern America.” [8]
After having taken up this thesis, the Manifesto of the Fourth International on imperialist war and the world proletarian revolution, drawn up by Trotsky in May 1940, continued, “It is only under its own revolutionary leadership that the proletariat of the colonies and semi-colonies can realize an invincible collaboration with the proletariat of the metropolis and the working class as a whole.
"It is only this collaboration which can lead the oppressed peoples to their complete and definitive emancipation, through the overthrow of imperialism in the entire world. A victory of the international proletariat would deliver the colonial countries from the long and painful stage of capitalist development in opening to them the possibility of arriving at socialism hand in hand with the proletariat of the advanced countries. The perspective of permanent revolution does not mean in any case that the backward countries should await the signal from the advanced countries, or that the colonial peoples should wait patiently for the proletariat of the metropolis to free them. God helps those who help themselves. The workers should develop the revolutionary struggle in all countries, colonial or imperialist, where favourable conditions exist so as to set an example for the workers of other countries. Only initiative and activity, resolution and courage can really materialize the slogan ‘Workers of the word unite!’” [9]
The Cuban Revolution was the first revolution in Latin America which freed the nation from the imperialist yoke and carried out the other democratic tasks historically unfulfilled. It was capable of doing so for a fundamental reason: because in a similar manner to what happened in the Russian Revolution in 1917, it brought to power a consistently revolutionary force which identified itself with the immediate and historic interests of the proletariat and the popular masses and in a permanent and uninterrupted manner passed from the accomplishment of the tasks of the national democratic revolution to the accomplishment of the tasks of the socialist revolution.
Anyone familiar with the so-called stages theory of revolution, then adhered to by the absolute majority of forces on the Latin American and world left as constituting, since the coming to power of Stalin in the Soviet Union, a fundamental principle of the Communist movement, will know what an enormous rupture the Cuban Revolution brought about. The result of the application of the stageist theory has always been the same, where it was applied: not only was the socialist revolution always relegated to the Greek calends, but even the tasks of the first stage were not fulfilled. They could not be fulfilled, because the only possible way of ensuring the conquests of the national democratic revolution is to realize the tasks of the socialist revolution. It is the essence of the theory of permanent revolution. Julio Antonio Mella has summed it up thus: “To speak concretely, absolute national liberation can be won only by the proletariat through the means of the workers; revolution.” [10]
Moved by a powerful Latin American vocation, the Cuban Revolution brought together the programmatic aspirations of the most revolutionary currents of Latin American nationalism with the socialist revolution. For the first time since the death of Martí and inspired by his example, this revolution elaborated during the 1960s a strategy of continental revolution whose audacious implementation was assumed in Latin America by comandante Che Guevara at the head of an internationalist guerilla force. We know today that in Che’s strategic plans, the Army of National Liberation under his command was to unite on the basis of a single strategy all the Latin American revolutionary movements and would one day be integrated into the International Proletarian Army whose formation was announced in his Message to the Tricontinental. After having taken part in the Congolese revolution and witnessed its defeat, Che wrote: “The initiative of the International Proletarian Army should not die before the first setback.” [11]
When Che and his Cuban, Bolivian and Peruvian comrades fought in Bolivia, a historic event happened in Havana. The great majority of revolutionary currents and left organizations from all the countries of Latin America met at the conference of the Latin American Solidarity Organization (OLAS). “The organizations here represented” said Armando Hart, president of the Cuban delegation, “have met to elaborate a common strategy of struggle against Yankee imperialism and the bourgeois oligarchies and landowners, which are bent to the interests of the US government. The Cuban delegation represents a revolutionary party. Our theses are based on the ideology of Marx and Lenin. We are heirs to a fine revolutionary tradition of solidarity between the peoples of this continent. We should be faithful to this tradition. Karl Marx said at the time of the Paris Commune, that the objective of the popular revolution consisted in destroying the military bureaucratic machine of the state and replacing it by the armed people. Lenin said later that in this thought resided the fundamental lesson of Marx in relation to the tasks of the proletariat in the revolution, concerning the state. Our delegation considers that historical experience has confirmed these affirmations of Marx and Lenin. We consider that it is necessary to analyze these approaches of Marx and Lenin in terms of both the theory and their practical consequences.” [12]
In its report on the strategy of the continental revolution, the Cuban delegation recalled that “the value and the profundity of Martí’s conceptions can be measured bywhat follows: [Marti] deepened the Bolivarian ideal consisting in the conception of LatinAmerica as a single great country [and] posed the struggle for the independence of Cuba as part of the Latin American Revolution “. At the same time, the Cuban delegation stated that “today, the revolutionary solidarity of the peoples of Latin America has a greater depth than the antecedents which served as its basis, because the continental conception of a single Latin American people has been strengthened.” [13]
One year later Inti Peredo, a survivor of the Bolivian guerilla force, confirming his faith in “the triumph of the revolutionary forces which will establish socialism in Latin America” and his fidelity to “the dream of Bolivar and Che of politically and economically uniting Latin America”, said: “Our single and final objective is the liberation of Latin America, which is not only our continent, but also our country, currently divided into 20 republics.” [14]
Nearly 40 years later, it is urgent that we reclaim “the continental conception of a single Latin American people” and the idea, with which Che went to fight in Bolivia, that “Latin America will be a single country”, as it is urgent to inscribe Latin American socialist unity in the programmes of the popular movements and revolutionary currents. I believe that, without further delay, we must begin to prepare the conditions for the elaboration, once more, in a future which will probably prove much closer than it appears, of a strategy of continental revolution. A strategy which would correspond to Latin American and world conditions of neoliberal capitalist globalization and a unipolar world dominated by US imperialism, more than ever powerful, aggressive and mortally dangerous but at the same time more than ever decadent and rotten with explosive and insoluble contradictions.
Only the proletariat and its broad popular allies can win that which was not won by the wars of independence and what was irreversibly lost by the Latin American bourgeoisies, making the goal of the great struggles of the exploited and oppressed masses which approach inexorably the unification of Latin America as a single nation. Today, continental unity is posed in a vaster still framework which should be capable of attracting the diverse nationalities of the Caribbean.
In the report, already quoted, of the Cuban delegation to the conference of the OLAS in 1967, we read that there was “an obvious fact which has not been evaluated in all its dimensions: there has never been a group of peoples so numerous, with such a big population and so extended a territory, which nonetheless preserve very similar cultures and interests, and identical anti-imperialist goals. Each of us feels ourselves part of our America. Thus we have learnt from historic tradition, thus we have inherited from our ancestors, thus we have learnt from our predecessors! None of these ideas is new for the representatives of the revolutionary organizations of Latin America.
But have we sufficiently evaluated what these facts represent? Have we analyzed in depth the meaning of the fact that, since the distant epoch of the first years of the 19th century, we have a continental idea of struggle which has developed across Latin America? Have we analyzed with sufficient clarity the irrefutable fact that Latin America constitutes a single and great people?” [15] All these questions are today as pertinent as they were then.
To be a single nation, Latin America should be socialist. To be socialist, Latin America should be a single nation. For Latin America will achieve its second, true and definitive independence, announced more than 100 years ago by Marti and more than 40 years ago by Fidel Castro, when the Latin American revolution again goes on the march until it builds a single Latin American socialist nation. It seems that it is already on the march again with the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.
*Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski is editor of the Polish review “Rewolucja” (“Revolution”), devoted to the past, present and future of revolutionary movements in the world, a former leader of the Solidarnosc trade union in the Lodz region (1981) and a member of the Fourth International. We publish here his report, presented in the name of the author by Celia Hart, at a conference on “The Utopia we Need” organized on September 10, 2004 in Havana.
Zbigniew Kowalewski was in 1980-81 a member of the regional leadership of Solidarnosç in Lodz. As a delegate to the First Congress of Soldarnosç, he took part in the elaboration of the programme that was adopted. He was in Paris at the invitation of French trade unionists when the state of siege was declared in December 1981. He helped to edit Polish-language Inprekor, a journal of the Fourth International circulated clandestinely in Poland from 1981 to 1990, and published “Rendez-nous nos usines!” (“Give us Back our Factories!)” (La Brèche, Paris 1985). He is at present editor of the trade union weekly Nowy Tygodnik Popularny and of the theoretical journal Rewolucja.
NOTES
[1] Leon Trotsky, “History of the Russian Revolution”, volume 3, chapter 39, www.marxists.org
[2] R. Zavaleta Mercado, “Lo nacional-popular en Bolivia”, Siglo Veintiuno Editores, Mexico, 1986, p. 84-95.
[3] Agustín Cueva, “El desarrollo del capitalismo en America Latina: Ensayo de interpretacion historica”, Siglo Veintiuno Editores, Mexico, p. 49-59.
[4] A. Cueva, op. cit., p. 59-60.
[5] Pedro Pablo Rodriguez, “La idea de liberacion nacional en José Martí”, Pensamiento Critico no. 49, 1971, p. 144, 156.
[6] Julio Antonio Mella, “Documentos y articulos”, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1975, p. 190.
[7] L. Trotsky, “Oeuvres”, Institut Leon Trotsky, Paris 1985, vol. 19, pp. 160-161.
[8] L. Trotsky, “Oeuvres”, Publication de l’Institut Leon Trotsky, Paris 1979, vol. 4, pp. 56-57.
[9] L. Trotsky, “Oeuvres”, Institut Leon Trotsky, Paris 1987, vol. 24, pp. 55-56.
[10] L. Trotsky, “Oeuvres”, Institut Leon Trotsky, Paris 1987, vol. 24, pp. 55-56.
[11] Ernesto Che Guevara, “Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria: Congo”, Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 1999, p. 32.
[12] “Informe de la delegacion cubana a la Primera Conferencia de la OLAS”, La Habana, 1967, p. 5-6.
[13] Ibid., p. 30, 38-39.
[14] Guido “Inti” Peredo, “ÁLa guerrilla boliviana no ha muerto! Acaba apenas de comenzar”, Tricontinental - Suplemento Especial, 1968, p. 6.
[15] “Informe de la delegacion cubana”., op. cit., p. 26.
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# Buzzito says :
8 June, 2009 [ 17:47 ]
The USA has its faults, but the inaction of the majority of countries around the world to stand up to dictators etc outweighs your anti-America rants. My time as with all Americans, is much more valuable than to debate lengthy responses that are articles, quotes or links to videos. Too bad I'll have to cancel a subscription since these bizarre one-person dialogues are useless. Viva The USA and Peru! Viva a Rodrigo/Manuel on the moon!
# Raul says :
8 June, 2009 [ 22:55 ]
Why People Hate America
In the recently international poll, America was at the bottom of popularity nations list (“A Year After Iraq War”). Most US citizens can not believe this and wonder why it is. In spite of doing many good things, America is still hated because Americans impose their values on others, do many immoral things against other nations, maintain its monopoly status, and are the most self serving and arrogant.
First of all, Americans impose their values on others. Americans believe their country is the best of the world. It is the most democratic country. They think others nations are bad such as communism and Muslim. Nobody care about what Americans think until they tried to impose that on other countries. Americans want to interfere in other’s affairs. Americans do it by using their military, economy and media. America has the most powerful army of the world. They spend approximately 50% of global military spending , 626 billions dollars (Shah). They use their army not only to protect themselves but also protect the “freedom” of other countries. They thought communism did not have freedom, so they wanted to stop it from spreading. Particularly in the Viet Nam War, they protected “freedom” in South Viet Nam by invading two countries, Laos and Cambodia, and bombing another country, North Viet Nam.
Moreover, American government can use economic to control other countries. America is the richest country. Its GDP in 2007 was $13.543 trillion (Report for Selected Countries and Subjects.) American government uses its economic strength to put an embargo on other countries. An embargo is the prohibition of commerce and trade with a certain country, in order to isolate it and to put its government into a difficult internal situation. To overcome that problem, these countries have to follow American such as “freedom of speech” or “freedom of religion.” Actually, most leaders of these countries never change their way. America embargoed many countries such as Viet Nam, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Sudan, and Syria (U.S. Treasury). People of these countries live very hard because of this, so they hate America.
America also uses media to spread their ideal. Many Hollywood films were used for political purposes. These films are not true especially for the Vietnam War. In these movies, American soldiers are always heroes, superior, freedom protectors, weak-woman and little-kid protectors. One American can kill one hundred Viet Cong easily like Rambo. That is impossible. When watching them, Vietnamese feel angry. The world feels horrible about what America did in My Lai Massacre. The world knows how bitter when America withdrew from Vietnam. However, Americans are still annoyingly insistent about “freedom” and “democracy.” In brief, people hate America because Americans try to change them into American way.
America is hated not only because Americans impose its value on others but also they act violently against other nations. USA has invaded 67 countries from 1945 to 2004 and has killed some tens of millions of people in military conflicts in that time (Kennington). Americans always say they love peace. They always say the war crimes involved America are only the government’s failures. Actually they are using their own government as a scapegoat. They voted for that government and that government represents themselves. A government cannot oppose its voters’ ideas. For example, a USA Today/Gallup Poll indicated that 75% of US citizens felt the US did not make a mistake in sending troops to Iraq in March 2003 ("PollingReport.com Iraq Polls"). However, according to the same poll retaken in April 2007, 58% of the participants stated that the initial attack was a mistake. In May, 2007, the New York Times and CBS News released similar results of a poll in which 61% of participants believed the U.S. "should have stayed out" of Iraq (Sussman). Many Americans now are putting responsibility on Bush and his government. Bush is just a poor goat for millions of immoral Americans.
American military did many immoral things in the Vietnam War. 3,500,000 people died in this war (“Second Indochina War”). The most evil thing were My Lai massacre and bombing on Christmas days. The My Lai massacre was the mass murder of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), almost entirely civilians and the majority of them women and children, conducted by U.S. Army forces on March 16, 1968. Some of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, or maimed, and some of the dead bodies were mutilated. The massacre took place in the hamlets of My Lai and
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