Posted May 1, 2010 By Penknife Press

Immigration Rally in Chicago

Posted April 30, 2010 By MORGAN LEE

Rescue mission under way for Mexican journalists

OAXACA, Mexico -- Police and rescuers failed to find two journalists stranded for a third day among feuding militants in a remote village after their caravan of Mexican and European rights activists was caught in a deadly ambush.

Authorities struggled to locate the missing journalists Thursday near the remote Triqui Indian town of San Juan Copala, where a violent dispute between rival political factions has reportedly cut off basic supplies and services to residents.

The convoy members killed were Finnish human rights activist Jyri Jaakkola, who reportedly came to document deteriorating conditions in the village, and Mexican political activist Beatriz Carino Trujillo.

But the caravan also included members of a radical leftist movement that seized control of the Oaxacan capital for five months in 2006 in a failed attempt to dislodge the governor of Oaxaca. There were fears a long-standing conflict between the group and the state government could be reignited.

On Thursday, Oaxaca state Interior Secretary Evencio Martinez suggested the caravan participants - who included some of the state government's bitter foes - might bear part of the responsibility for Tuesday's bloodshed.

"Whoever organized this caravan will have to answer for it, whoever invited these people and the way in which they were invited without taking precautions, because I think these people did not know what the situation and problems in the area were," Martinez told the Milenio television station.

"They (the caravan members) will have to answer, too, for having accepted the invitation."

The last two activists to emerge from the area brought word that photographer David Cilia was wounded in the foot by gunfire. Reporter Erika Ramirez was unhurt, but without water or food, and the two planned to approach local militia members whom they feared for help if there were not rescued soon, the other survivors said.

The staff of their Mexico City-based Contralinea magazine were on edge late Thursday after Cilia's father and the director of the magazine, Miguel Badio, boarded a state police helicopter in the afternoon to participate in the rescue - but still had not returned long after sunset. State police have only entered the area for shot periods of time, concerned that rescuers might be attacked, too.

"They were dropped off and the helicopter returned without them," said Nancy Flores, a spokeswoman for Contralinea. "They're inside the area, and we have no word from them."

She also expressed concern for the health of the missing journalists. "Celia has lost blood. The two of them are very dehydrated, they haven't eaten anything," she said.

Most of those who escaped the ambush Tuesday afternoon hid in the bush and gradually made their way on foot beyond the disputed area.

Participants say five Europeans participated in the convoy of 27 people. Cars were draped with banners declaring that press and international observers were on board. Two of the foreigners were from Finland, but the nationality of the other three was not clear.

Europeans in the caravan included Meri Marjaana Mononen of Finland, who told The Associated Press on Thursday that she was invited by a civic group on a humanitarian mission to document the suffering of people reportedly living without schools, electricity and food.

Instead, she found herself watching a friend die in a war zone.

"This was a scene from a war with so many bullets without end," said Mononen, a resident of Helsinki who said she was in Oaxaca as a representative of the Finnish Union for Peace.

The body of Jaakkola, 33, was recovered from a bullet-riddled SUV on Wednesday. He appeared to have been shot in the head.

Mononen said she was seated behind Jaakkola when the caravan found the highway blocked with large rocks. Shots rang out and bullets perforated the windshield.

She wondered why Jaakkola didn't bend down for cover.

"I'm saying to him, 'Get down, get down,'" Mononen, recalling the events two days later. "He isn't moving much and I can see that he's bleeding like this. It's a horror movie."

Jaakkola was a member of a small, Finnish civil rights group, Uusi Tuuli (New Wind), based in the southwestern city of Turku. He traveled to Mexico about two months ago on his own initiative, financing the trip mainly with his savings, and planned to stay a year advocating for human rights, group spokesman Jani Nevala said.

Mononen said she and her European colleagues told a militant group that supports the state government warned against traveling to San Juan Copala, saying their "safety was not guaranteed." But they didn't imagine they could be targeted.

"It's not like we thought that's the same thing as, 'Here you come, we're going to kill you without warning."

---

Associated Press writers Ixtli Martinez in Oaxaca city, Mark Stevenson in Mexico City and Matti Huuhtanen in Helinski contributed to this report.

Posted April 30, 2010 By Jeremy Kryt

Return of the Death Squads

Honduran oligarchs target members of the National Front of Popular Resistance.

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS-Late in the afternoon on February 3, Vanessa Zepeda, a 28-year-old registered nurse, left a union hall after a meeting and began walking to the supermarket to buy school supplies for her children and formula for her baby girl.

She never made it.

According to witnesses, as she was leaving the union hall parking lot in this sprawling capital city, Zepeda was forced into an unmarked white sedan by two masked men dressed in fatigues.

A few hours after she was kidnapped, her corpse, still dressed in blue hospital scrubs, was tossed from a moving car in the Loarque neighborhood on the southern side of the city-a well-known stronghold of the resistance movement.

Zepeda was a member of the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP), which like many countries, including Brazil and Argentina, does not recognize the military-backed government of President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo, who took office in January after much-disputed elections.

Zepeda was also a leader in the Social Security Workers Union. Prior to her abduction, she had attended the meeting at the Bottling Plant union building to talk about the need to join with other unions to peacefully resist the Lobo government.

"Vanessa was very committed to helping others," says Bessi Torrez, Zepeda's mother, in a phone interview with In These Times. (Torrez had agreed to meet in public, but later canceled due to fear of being seen with a foreign journalist.) "She also worked hard to help unite the different syndicates, so that they could consolidate their interests. She sacrificed everything for the Resistance."

After Zepeda's body was found, her mother was notified and told to come straight to the morgue, instead of the crime scene itself. When Torrez arrived, she was not allowed to see any of the forensic evidence or investigation records.

"It was very strange," she says. "The process has been so mysterious."

Since the coup last June, a number of union leaders have died under equally mysterious circumstances. Many Hondurans believe the military-backed government to be responsible for these assassinations. Of the 43 members of the FNRP that have been killed, about half have been trade unionists.

Gilda Batista, director of the Tegucigalpa-based human rights organization Refuge Without Limits (ASL), has investigated the murder of Zepeda and other recently executed union leaders. Batista says her research leads her to believe that assassination squads are being "financed by the corporatocracy and military."

Batista believes the targeting of key individuals like Zepeda "sends a message to the Resistance that union members will be murdered if they meddle in the political arena." In Zepeda's case, forensics experts finally labeled the case a homicide, but still have not disclosed any details about the cause of death. More than three weeks after the autopsy, Torrez is still awaiting an explanation from the government concerning her daughter's murder.

"[The Lobo government] knows that the trade unionists are one of the biggest threats economically. The labor movement has been really central to the resistance," says Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in an interview in a Tegucigalpa human rights office. "In Tegucigalpa, many of the biggest Resistance meetings are happening in the Bottling Plant Union building. The unions are a direct economic threat [because] they have a larger vision for Honduras."

There are no government statistics detailing how much of the country's workforce is unionized, but according to the office of the Honduran Labor Secretary, there are currently 527 different syndicates, or workplace-based unions, representing both public and private Honduran workers.

'80s-style death squads?

Although the U.S. State Department does recognize the Lobo government, assassinations of union leaders and other human-rights abuses in Honduras have reached such a pitch that nine members of the House of Representatives sent a letter to Hillary Clinton in early March, asking the secretary of state to investigate the violence.

"I am extremely concerned that U.S. attention to ongoing human-rights abuses in Honduras will wane now that the acute political crisis has ended," Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) wrote in an e-mail to In These Times. "It's tempting for the United States to immediately normalize relations and resume aid now that Honduras has held elections, but I believe that we need to keep the focus on the serious violations that continue to occur."

Rep. Schakowsky, who traveled to Honduras on a fact-finding trip in November 2009 and signed the March letter, says she saw the deterioration of human rights "firsthand." "I am extremely concerned that these abuses are continuing under the new government," she wrote.

Frank, author of Bananera: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America, is especially concerned about the ongoing assassinations. Five journalists and 13 members of the FNRP were gunned down between March 1 and April 8 alone. Of those 13 FNRP victims, nine were active union members, including one teacher who was shot in front of his students as he lectured, according to the Honduran Teachers Association (COPEMH). Frank believes paramilitary forces reminiscent of the 1980s-when military-funded death squads terrorized the country-are responsible.

"This has been going on for decades in Latin America," Frank says. "Private contractors-they're not officially the military, but they're paid by the military. ? They have their secret lists of people they want to kill in the Honduran Resistance and these people come in the night and beat people up or kill or kidnap them. The Lobo government is supporting this kind of activity. They're not denouncing it. They're not investigating these assassinations."

Frank also pointed out that certain figures associated with internal human-rights violations have recently been given prominent positions of power in the new government. Infamous 1980s death-squad leader Billy Joya is now a special advisor to the Lobo regime. And Romeo Vasquez, the U.S.-trained general who orchestrated the putsch itself, was named to be head of the Honduran national phone company last month.

Honduran Secretary of Labor Felicito Avila Ordonez laughingly dismisses the idea that death squads are operating again. "It's true, we do have a security problem in the streets, in the markets," says Ordonez during an interview in his office. "We can't have peace without employment."

Honduras' unemployment rate was at about 51 percent just before last year's coup. Ordonez declined to provide a more recent figure, saying only, "It's quite bad." (According to the Tegucigalpa-based Chamber of Commerce and Industry, more than 100,000 jobs have been lost since the coup.) Replying to a question about what can be done to curb unemployment, the Lobo-appointed labor secretary says, "Confidence! Faith! We know the government must be more transparent. This will be a more Christian government!"

Ordonoz, a former trade union leader, says he feels loyal to both workers and employers, and that the Lobo government's official attitude toward the unions is one of peace and reconciliation. "But we can't have anarchy," he says. "Laborers must respect how the law works." When pressed to provide an explanation for the recent killing of union leaders, Ordonez replies: "Maybe it's the Resistance thinking how they can make trouble for the country," he laughs. "Probably it's just common crime."

Frank strongly disagrees.

"[These killings] were made to look like common crimes, but these [victims] are all people involved in the Resistance. The military is being very clever," she says. "They're not knocking off the top leaders. They know that if that happened, they would have a tremendous international reaction. So instead they're going after people in the middle. It's a form of state terror."

Maquila oligarchy

Like other countries in Latin America, Honduras has long been dominated by the economic interest of the north. For decades, banana corporations familiar to Americans-like Dole and United Fruit (now Chiquita)-controlled the economy and the government. "Honduras is the original banana republic," Frank says. But because of the lucrative and labor-intensive trade of which they were part, workers on Honduran plantations have historically been able to demand good contracts, including wage increases, healthcare and even anti-domestic violence workshops.

However, as the country's economy has diversified in recent decades, other trade unions within Honduras have been unable to equal the success of the banana workers. This is because of the uniquely massive nature of the banana industry, which employs organized workers suffering under similar circumstances throughout Latin America-workers who could wield tremendous cumulative power if they strike together.

But even the once-powerful banana unions are under threat. Dole and Chiquita have developed a common strategy of selling off fincas (or plantations) to smaller independent subcontractors, who refuse to honor previous labor contracts.

"[The banana unions] still have vestigial power because they are so well-coordinated across the banana sector in Latin America, and with strong solidarity ties in Europe and the U.S. But [that power is] always being chipped away," Frank writes.

Other cash-crop workers in Honduras are on less equal footing.

Farmers in the highly lucrative African palm industry "are obviously exploited," Jose Serrano, coordinator of the Committee of Popular Organizations of Aguan (COPA), tells In These Times. The Aguan basin, on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, has been the scene of an intense, five-month stand-off between palm oil workers, and the military dictatorship. Poor farmers were originally granted collective land rights by the Agrarian Reform Law, enacted in 1962. But since then, both Honduran and transnational companies have illegally re-purchased the valuable farms resulting, says Serrano, in the farmers once again becoming powerless, low-wage serfs.

In response, the palm workers (the oil is used in cooking products worldwide) have peacefully but "permanently" occupied several plantations in the district. According to COPA, these pacifist actions have resulted in the death of seven farmers so far, as private security forces have repeatedly opened fire on the campesinos, in attempts to drive them from their land.

"On the palm-oil fincas, the workers receive just 95 lempira (about $5) a day," Serrano says. The farmers who have occupied the plantations in the Aguan Basin finally rose up, he says, because they were "existing without sufficient food or clean drinking water. A typical work week is six or seven days long."

In other GDP-leading industries like lumber and tourism, and within the factory system, unions have been successfully discouraged. Workers in maquilas-transnationally owned factories that operate in tax-free zones to manufacture things like textiles, garments and athletic shoes for export-are essentially powerless, according to Honduran workers' rights activists, despite their great numbers.

"As for maquiladoras, the sad fact is that almost no one, anywhere in [Latin America] has been able to establish unions that last," Frank says. "There are a handful of organized factories in Honduras, but usually everyone just gets fired and blacklisted as soon as they sign the petition asking for an election."

A representative for Honduran maquila workers agrees.

"If the girls try to organize at all, the leaders are fired right away," says Maria Luisa Regalado, coordinator general for Honduran Women's Collective (CODEMUH), an NGO that specializes in the maquila sector. The average maquila worker in Honduras earns 121 lempira (about $6.40) per day, Regalado says during an interview in the industrial city of San Pedro Sula. From this wage, women-and most maquila workers are female-must pay for transportation, housing, food and day care.

"The owners don't want unions in the factories, because there are so many workers, and such a union would be too powerful for them," she says. According to CODEMUH, maquila workers in Honduras number more than 130,000 people. "And yet these companies don't pay any taxes, they give nothing back to the communities. They steal our labor and pay nothing for it. It is unjust and inhuman," Regalado says, referring to companies like Hanes, Active Wear and Loveables.

A spokesperson for a public-relations company that represents maquila owners insists that nothing is amiss. "The maquilas bring a lot of good to those communities," says Tesla Callejas de Flores, communication and marketing coordinator for the Honduran Manufacturers Association, based in San Pedro Sula. "When these women have jobs, they have equilibrium in their lives. For instance, they may not need to feel dependent, or stuck in an abusive relationship with a man. That's why so many people want to work here." Maquila owners have a "deep respect for workers rights" and all workers receive "full medical benefits" after a job-sustained injury, she says.

Regalado, however, tells a different story. "There is very little compensation for injuries, despite what they say," she says, citing the case of Reina Quintania, a 22-year-old woman who lost one eye and suffered damage to the other as the result of an on-the-job accident in a Hanes factory. "They removed [the object] from her punctured eye, treated her with simple first aid in the infirmary, and then sent her back to work," Regalado says. "Afterwards, they only paid for 35 percent of Reina's medical bills. Now the girl is practically blind, and she can't work, and she's in debt for the operation she had to undergo. And of course [Hanes] doesn't offer any kind of disability for injured workers. Since they aren't allowed to unionize, the workers are helpless."

The Honduran Manufacturers Association denied any knowledge of the Quintania case.

Teaching resistance

"We have a very unified movement, a very representative movement," says FNRP leader Rafael Alegria, who is also president of the powerful Honduran farmworkers union Via Campesina. "We demand an end to the violence and repression. We support the laborers, who continue to receive death threats. We support the unemployed, who have a right to work." Alegria spoke after a Feb. 25, 2010, march in Tegucigalpa on the National Congress building by approximately 60,000 members of the FNRP, which has modeled itself on nonviolent social movements.

The FNRP also continues to push for a better public education system, a goal held by ousted President Manuel Zelaya. The country's education and literacy levels are seriously compromised by endemic poverty, and the student-teacher ratio is on average 40-to-one. The day after soldiers kidnapped and exiled Zelaya in June 2009, tens of thousands of teachers went on strike.

?"Zelaya had actualized free education for all Hondurans, as is stipulated in the constitution," says Jamie Rodriguez, president of COPEMH, one of the country's largest teachers unions. Although last year's strike has now ended, Rodriguez says the teachers are still playing a vital role in the FNRP. In late April, they began conducting a nationwide poll to determine if there is democratic support for the creation of a constitutional assembly. (Zelaya was swept from office for his willingness to allow a similar referendum.) The goal is to collect signatures from at least half of the Honduran electorate.

"This is our chance to re-found our country," Rodriguez says, adding that the new constitution would do away with "laws designed only to serve the rich."

Zelaya had set up government programs to pay for lunches, travel to schools and tuition. Zelaya's reforms allowed about 450,000 children to begin attending school, "but all of that was canceled after the coup," Rodriguez says.

He had done more than just help students. The economy made significant strides while he was in office, according to a study published by the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. The country's GDP increased an average of seven percent annually during Zelaya's first two years in office, and the percentage of Hondurans living in poverty dropped from about 66 to 61. But many experts say it was precisely this slight leveling of the economic playing field that angered the dozen or so wealthy families that have traditionally ruled Honduras and led to the military coup against the president.

Putschists in power

In the months following the coup, 155,000 jobs were lost and the poverty rate began to grow again as wary governments cut foreign aid. Tourism, the third-largest industry in Honduras, fell by 70 percent. The cost of mobilizing police and armed forces-estimated at about $50 million U.S. dollars per day during the weeks Honduras was under martial law after the coup-as well as the general economic slow-down, resulted in the second-poorest nation in Central America declaring bankruptcy in February.

Due to public concern about human-rights abuses and top-level corruption in the central government, just 49 percent of the Honduran electorate turned out for the ballot vote that brought Lobo to power last November. Many observers have claimed that elections under the military-imposed government were neither free nor fair.

The Lobo government has tried to fight the public's perception of corruption. "Suddenly on the television here in Honduras, we're hearing all about campaigns against corruption," says Frank, referring to a series of advertisements produced by Lobo, who backed the putsch against Zelaya. "Well, who are the corrupt people? Who are the people who have been robbing the coffers of this country for decades? Who are the people that take humanitarian aid and line their pockets with it?"

"Now the new, illegitimate Lobo government says it wants reconciliation," says teachers union leader Rodriguez. "They talk about wanting peace, but they are still killing people in the streets." Some teachers particularly vocal in their opposition to the government have stopped receiving pay checks, Rodriguez says, and police recently gassed a "dissident" school while teachers and students were still inside. In all, according to COPEMH's Rodriguez, five teachers have died in politically motivated assassinations since the coup, and one has disappeared.

Alegria says the Lobo government appears to be little more than an extension of the regime of Roberto Micheletti, who became de facto president after the coup. "The power structure is still intact. The same Congress that backed the coup. The same military junta-all the same putschists in power," Alegria says.

Rep. Schakowsky is worried about these trends, as well as the cozy relationship the Lobo government has so far enjoyed with the U.S. State Department. "I hope the secretary [Clinton] will look into the reports of human rights abuses," she wrote to In These Times. "Human rights considerations must be part of any process of aid resumption and diplomatic normalization."

But for those who have lost loved ones at the hands of the military regime, normalization will be a long and painful process. "I want justice," says Torrez, mother of slain union leader Zepeda. "Not just for Vanessa, but for all those who have lost their lives for the Resistance."

Posted April 30, 2010 By Latin American Herald Tribune

Colombian Militia Threatens Lawmakers, Rights Activists

Los Rastrojos, a band of drug-trafficking rightist paramilitaries, has made deaths threats against three Colombian senators and some 60 other individuals and groups active on behalf of social justice, the human rights organization Codhes said.

The threats were conveyed via e-mail and pamphlets, according to Codhes, which was among the targets.

Also threatened were the Colombia office of the U.N. Development Program, as well as Sens. Alexander Lopez, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo and Jorge Enrique Robledo, all with the main opposition leftist PDA party.

Leaders of displaced communities and union members likewise figure on the list of people and organizations accused by Los Rastrojos of collaborating with Colombia's FARC and ELN rebel groups.

The recipients of the threats are invited "to put aside the archaic subversive discourse in favor of the rights and ideologies of the ?narcoterrorists' of the FARC and ELN and all their accomplices of past and present, attacking the government's good and noble intentions in favor of peace."

If the targets fail to comply, Los Rastrojos vow to "go beyond threats and return to actions of the (19)90s without any mercy or fear."

Regarded as Colombia's largest criminal organization, Los Rastrojos emerged after the ostensible demobilization of some 31,000 militiamen as part of a peace process with the government of President Alvaro Uribe.

The militias are blamed for well in excess of 20,000 deaths since the mid-1980s. Though the paramilitaries claimed to be defending the populace from the FARC and the ELN, militia chiefs grew wealthy from drug trafficking, land grabs, theft of livestock and other assets and extortion.

Paramilitaries were also paid by business interests to drive peasants off their lands and suppress attempts to organize unions.

Uribe, due to step down in August after two four-year terms, has himself accused domestic and international human rights organizations of siding with the rebels, though groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are as critical of the FARC and ELN as they are of Colombian security forces.

Posted April 27, 2010 By Anne-Marie O'Connor

Seven Honduran broadcasters slain since March 1

Honduran television reporter Jorge Alberto "Georgino" Orellana had just left the station where he hosted his own show when a man stepped from the shadows, shot him dead and vanished. On Tuesday, Orellana became the seventh Honduran broadcaster to be gunned down since March 1 in a country where complaints about human rights abuses have increased since a military-led coup in June.

Most of the victims had reported on organized crime in the northern coastal region of Honduras, a key transshipment point for U.S.-bound cocaine.

Reporters Without Borders recently declared Honduras "the world's deadliest country for the media."

"This is unprecedented," said Carlos Lauria of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. "Journalists are being targeted, and the state is almost absent. It's a green light for these people." Lauria said the killings appeared to be "the work of hit men, very professional."

Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch said the government of President Porfirio Lobo has shown little willingness to solve a pattern of threats, harassment and attacks on grass-roots leaders, unionists and priests since the coup.

"Lobo just recently woke up and realized this could become a serious obstacle on his agenda to rejoining the international community," Vivanco said. "But it's not good enough. It's too little, too late. They need to investigate and prosecute those responsible for threats and abuses. They need to prosecute those who are in bed with organized crime."

Lobo has been trying to persuade the Organization of American States to reinstate Honduras, which was suspended after the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya in June. OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said in December that the reinstatement of Honduras "will only be possible when this country reaches a true restoration of its democratic regime and the outcome of the coup of June 28 has been overcome."

Honduran media watchdog groups say that finding a single motive in the killings is difficult but that the modus operandi in each case is similar.

Two of the journalists, Jose Bayardo Mairena and Manuel Juarez, were driving through eastern Honduras when assassins riddled their car with bullets on March 27 and then shot them at close range, according to media reports.

Both men worked for a radio program that has reported on under-the-table logging contracts awarded to private enterprise in violation of national environmental codes. Mairena had covered organized crime and a contentious land dispute.

Nahum Palacios Arteaga, who had reported on the same land dispute, was driving in the northern town of Tocoa on March 14 when gunmen in two cars fatally shot him with AK-47 assault rifles. Palacios had complained about death threats, which he believed came from the military.

During the coup, troops raided Palacios's office and home, confiscated his car and equipment, and held his children at gunpoint, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which had urged officials to provide him with security.

After his death, the commission lamented "that the state did not implement precautionary measures to protect his life."

David Meza, a reporter for El Patio radio station, was shot to death from a van March 11 as he drove in the lush seaside town of La Ceiba. Meza, who had reported on organized crime, had received anonymous calls warning him to be "careful," according to the media groups and local reports.

Joseph Hernandez Ochoa, 26, an entertainment show host, was shot to death as he drove home from work March 1. A radio show host who supported the coup, Karol Cabrera, was wounded in the attack and believes she was the target. Three months earlier, gunman had killed her 16-year-old pregnant daughter.

Luis Antonio Chavez, 22, who hosted a children's radio program, was shot to death April 13.

Alexis Quiroz, the executive director of the Committee for Freedom of Expression in Honduras, said professional killings have been used in a variety of disputes since Mexican organizations began recruiting Honduran gangs to transport drugs.

"Assassins for hire are very common now," Quiroz said. "What we are trying to determine is the motive."

Posted April 27, 2010 By Robert Evans

Killings, violence wrack rural Colombia: Red Cross

Murder, rape and general violence have driven tens of thousands from their homes in rural Colombia in the last year in a problem ignored during the presidential election campaign, the ICRC said on Monday.

Indigenous communities and those descended from African slaves in the south and along the Pacific coast were the worst hit, the humanitarian organization's chief representative in the Latin American country said.

"Many are being forced to flee because of threats to their lives. Other are subjected to extra-judicial killings or to sexual violence, and yet most of their tragedies go unreported," the official, Christophe Beney, told a news conference.

The Swiss-based ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross, had recorded some 800 alleged violations of global humanitarian law over the past year, all linked to fighting involving the army, paramilitaries and Marxist rebels, he said.

These included 28 killings, 61 direct attacks against civilians and communities, and 84 disappearances. Death threats were widely used to force people to flee their homes.

The first round of elections for a successor to President Alvaro Uribe, whose focus on crushing the rebels has shifted the conflict away from large towns and cities, is due to take place on May 30 with a run-off in June.

All the leading candidates, including front runner and former defense minister Juan Manuel Santos, have said they will largely continue Uribe's security policies, which have been strongly backed by the United States.

Uribe's drive against the rebels, some of whom are accused of running drugs, have attracted foreign investment to Colombia by making the cities and major highways across the country safer than they have been for many years.

But the new focus of the fighting in more remote regions -- especially in the south along the border with Ecuador and along the Pacific coast -- means that the plight of the rural poor who bear the brunt of it has become almost invisible, said Beney.

Official figures, he said, showed that the total number of people displaced by years of violence now stood at 3.3 million -- out of a total population of around 46 million -- and very few dared to return home

The ICRC, which has offices in many parts of Colombia and provides relief and help in setting up income-generating projects for the displaced, said another problem for rural people was posed by mines laid by the sides in the fighting.

Posted April 27, 2010 By Kari Lydersen

Welcome to the New Honduras, Where Right-Wing Death Squads Proliferate

The new regime in Honduras is assassinating union leaders, teachers and journalists. Why does the U.S. support it?

Things are back to normal in Honduras.

At least that's the message of right-wing president Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo Sosa and much of the international community. Several U.S. and international agencies are in the process of restoring aid to Honduras. U.S. biofuels, mining and other businesses are ramping up for increased investment in the impoverished Central American country. The massive repression of public protests, curfews and censorship that followed last summer's coup d'etat have abated.

But this image ignores a new reality in Honduras: the emergence of what many are calling death squads carrying out targeted assassinations, brutal attacks and threats. They have created an extreme climate of fear for the campesinos (peasants), teachers, union members, journalists and other community leaders involved in the resistance movement that continues to oppose the coup and Lobo's election.

Dozens were killed in street violence between the June 28 coup and the November 29 election, with the deaths largely attributed to police, military forces and other coup supporters. Lobo has tried to distance himself from the coup regime, but since the election, at least a dozen people have been killed and others beaten or raped in attacks with clear political hallmarks. The victims include a teacher shot in front of his students; a young union leader whose body was found with signs of torture after she disappeared; the daughter of a prominent anti-coup TV reporter shot in her home; five journalists killed in March alone; and a TV reporter killed April 21. In December, well-known gay rights activist Walter Trochez was kidnapped in Tegucigalpa and interrogated about the resistance while being pistol-whipped in the face. He escaped, but was murdered a week later. In February, a woman who was raped after a post-coup protest was kidnapped and terrorized by men including the rapist, who said "Pepe says hi," a clear allusion to the president.

Authorities have largely attributed the murders and attacks to random crime and gang violence. Street crime has been at epidemic levels in Honduras for years, and has reportedly increased since the coup. And a few prominent victims of attacks or threats have been coup supporters. But international rights groups say a trend of violence and threats against community-based resistance leaders is undeniable and part of a highly orchestrated campaign to tamp down the popular resistance movement which continues to call for a new constitutional assembly and a reshaping of Honduran society, including the restoration of worker protections and social policies instituted under deposed president Manuel Zelaya but terminated since the coup.

"They've pulled away from the mass repression in the streets and gone for individual assassinations," said Victoria Cervantes of the Chicago group La Voz de los de Abajo, who met with resistance groups in Honduras after the coup and the election. "You don't look like a military regime, and it's cheaper than sweeping up people in the streets. But it terrorizes large groups of people, perhaps more effectively than the mass repression."

This spring at least one campesino has been murdered and at least four shot in a land struggle in the Bajo Aguan area, where campesinos are trying to reclaim land from wealthy palm plantation owners. Campesinos who occupy and lay claim to unused land have long suffered violence from police and hired guns. Zelaya was largely supportive of such campesino movements, which are legal under agrarian reform laws, but the conflicts have escalated since his ouster.

In the Bajo Aguan area, locals say, former Colombian paramilitary members have been hired to terrorize campesinos. And Billy Joya, a notorious member of the "Battalion 316" death squad during the 1980s military dictatorship, has reportedly returned to train militias to fight drug traffickers and "guerrillas," which is taken to mean the resistance movement. Post-dictatorship, Joya was charged with illegal detention, torture and murder of opponents. He has since lived in Spain and the U.S., continually pleading his innocence while working as an international businessman and security adviser. A 2006 report by the Mesoamerica Institute for Central America Studies says Joya worked as an adviser to Zelaya?s security secretary Alvaro Romero. Another of Zelaya?s cabinet ministers, Milton Jimenez, was among the six students Joya was charged with illegally detaining and torturing in 1982.

While the land struggles Joya was hired to fight predate the coup, campesino and resistance leaders say they are integral to the larger struggle over Honduras's political and economic future which has driven the past year's events.

In light of the violence and human rights abuses, Honduran and international rights groups have decried Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's move to restore more than $30 million in aid, including military aid. After the U.S. announced on March 4 that it would fully restore all aid to Honduras, the Inter-American Development Bank agreed to release half a billion dollars suspended since the coup. The International Monetary Fund has committed $160 million in new funding, and the World Bank also recognizes the new government. The Organization of American States is considering re-admitting Honduras, at Clinton's behest. Many Latin American governments have likewise recognized or promised to recognize Lobo's regime. But governments including Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Argentina, Bolivia and Nicaragua still refuse.

The restoration of aid, while theoretically a boon to the poor, is crucial for the Lobo administration and business interests that backed the coup as a symbol of legitimacy.

"The main lobbyists for lightening the sanctions from the U.S., the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank were coming from the business sector," said Alex Main, a policy analyst with the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "They were very worried about the economic effects [of the coup] and since they themselves were involved they had to defend it."

Cervantes and Alexy Lanza, a Honduran now living in Chicago, said during October and January visits resistance members told them they want aid withheld regardless of the economic impacts, to avoid legitimizing the coup and elections.

"The resistance is worried about normalization of this new golpe (coup government), where death squads, privatization and intimidation become the new normal," said Lanza.

Main pointed to Lobo's appointment of former military commander and coup leader Romeo Vasquez Velasquez to head the Hondutel telecommunications agency as a prime example of coup plotters profiting from the new regime. Vasquez has said he will use his authority over telecommunications to do surveillance on drug traffickers and others; many take this to include the resistance.

"That's ugly stuff, and it didn't even merit rebuke from the U.S.," said Main. "The U.S. could have crippled Honduras with trade restrictions, the U.S. was in a position to change things in a matter of days, but they chose not to."

Honduras has relatively little trade with countries other than the U.S. and its small Central American neighbors. And its maquiladora sector, producing textiles largely for the U.S. market, has been hard hit by competition from Asian producers and the economic downturn.

Hence the political situation in Honduras would seem to have little impact on the U.S. or regional economies and to be of relatively little interest to other governments. But Honduras's economic and political symbolism has far exceeded its actual economic impact since the coup. All sides see it as a symbol of the tension between an increasingly integrated and powerful Latin American bloc excluding the U.S. and based on the social democratic Bolivarian ideals advanced by Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador?or the previously dominant neoliberal model characterized by the influence of the U.S. and multinational companies.

"Honduras can be seen as a test case -- people in the State Department are nervous about what they see as the [Venezuelan president Hugo] 'Chavez menace' and the growing left in Latin America," said Adrienne Pine, an assistant anthropology professor at American University and senior research associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). "Honduras would seem like a weak link easy to pick off. If they can succeed there, similar coups can be carried out in places like Nicaragua and Venezuela."

COHA executive director Larry Birns noted that the symbolism is so important, the U.S. has been willing to alienate powerful trading partner Brazil -- which vehemently opposed the coup -- with its stance. "Washington almost made a calculated decision that Honduras was more important than Brazil, it was a decision which country the U.S. will identify with," said Birns.

Under the brief reign of coup leader Robert Micheletti, the Honduran Congress voted to withdraw from ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, in Spanish) the Latin American trade and support bloc that had provided low cost or free medical care, tractors and other necessities to Honduras. The prime feature of ALBA is the PetroCaribe alliance wherein Venezuela had provided Honduras oil on generous credit terms: 20,000 barrels of crude a day, 40 percent of it paid at just a 1 percent interest rate over 25 years. The Honduran government is still technically party to the PetroCaribe arrangement, but since Venezuela does not recognize the Lobo government, no oil is forthcoming. The Lobo administration has reportedly engaged Zelaya's former UN ambassador, Jorge Arturo Reina, as an ambassador to ALBA to try to restore oil assistance.

"Lobo would be happy to keep PetroCaribe and even go into ALBA and get all of the member countries to recognize his administration, but he knows it is impossible for him to do so and not alienate his allies, the Honduran business elites, conservative political groups, the military -- all of whom orchestrated, funded and backed the coup -- and of course the U.S.," said Rodolfo Pastor de Maria y Campos, Zelaya?s deputy chief at the Honduran embassy in Washington through February. He now works with the advocacy group Hondurans for Democracy. "He depends on all of the above to remain president and has been warned to behave if he wishes to prevent being kicked out like Zelaya."

Any aid is sorely needed in the country known as Latin American's third poorest after Guyana and Nicaragua. But Hondurans say the economic impact of the coup and subsequent repression paired with the economic effects of stepped-up privatization and neoliberal policies mean increasing poverty, rural migration to already overburdened cities and migration to the U.S. and other countries.

"There are people leaving daily, much more than before," said Luther Castillo Harry, a doctor in the Atlantic coastal communities of Garifuna, African-descended Hondurans considered indigenous. "Many of them are dying on the way to the U.S."

Since government funding was revoked after the coup, Castillo has seen 11 local community clinics with live-in doctors shuttered, and the hospital he runs struggles to secure basic necessities and medications. This is just one example of how conditions for Hondurans living outside the elite business and military class have deteriorated since the coup. A report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research notes that after healthy economic growth under Zelaya, the economy contracted since the coup, and the coup regime's curfew alone cost about $50 million.

"Tourism has been crushed, really large sectors of the economy are just not functioning, the whole public sector has just been devastated," said Pine, author of a book about maquiladoras, violence and alcohol in Honduras. "At the height of the massive repression there were almost constant curfews, so people were forced to stay inside their homes and weren?t able to go to work. Many lost jobs, businesses folded, people who survived by selling things on street had no way to maintain themselves."

Lobo's proposed new budget won't help. It raises taxes but cuts spending on most social, education and health programs, while increasing budgets for the military by 23 percent and expanding subsidies to promote business by 15 percent.

Honduran and international rights groups say the U.S. must reverse course to suspend aid and otherwise pressure the Lobo government to stop human rights abuses and allow the peaceful resistance movement to follow its course, including the call for a popular assembly to vote on drafting a new Honduran constitution. It was exactly this proposal, which, contrary to propaganda would not have extended Zelaya's term, sparked the coup in the first place.

Honduras is one of few Central American countries that has never had a powerful united leftist movement. Hence during the civil wars that wracked the region in the 1980s, Honduras was not at war itself but served as "an unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the U.S., in Birn's words, to carry out its proxy wars. Honduran residents and U.S. analysts say events of the past year may have galvanized a new level of political resistance and coordination in Honduras.

"Honduras will become a tinder box," said Birns. "That was one of the great things that happened under Zelaya ? he set forth a chain of events to create a new country no longer willing to tolerate receiving miserable handouts from society."

Since its days as a banana republic run essentially as a huge plantation for foreign companies, Honduras has been economically enslaved by foreign interests who capitalized on its resources and labor pool giving little in return. Many critics say this pattern was furthered across the region with the adoption of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which was signed by Zelaya and originally shepherded by former president Ricardo Maduro.

Opponents say CAFTA has already increased poverty, economic inequality and displacement in Central America.

"The recent surge in violence in Honduras -- like last year's coup -- has its roots in the country's profound political and economic polarization, brought on by decades of failed trade and economic policies," said Todd Tucker, research director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "Honduran leaders should have long ago cultivated an economic development strategy with substantial yet targeted state involvement and a focus on value-added manufactures and the domestic and regional

market. What Hondurans got instead was a series of governments that did the opposite."

Main thinks if the targeted attacks, threats and murders continue without censure from the U.S. or international agencies, the resistance movement faces a dim future.

"They're picking off resistance activists from different sectors," he said. "If they can keep doing it with impunity, I don't see how the resistance can survive."

But Juan Almendares, a Tegucigalpa-based doctor well known internationally for his public health and human rights work over three decades, is confident the resistance will bear fruit. He sees it as the convergence of long-time campesino struggles with a growing awareness of environmentalism, labor rights, LGBT rights and other issues among the Honduran public.

"The resistance is the most beautiful experience of my life," he said. "It's transformative. The spirit of the people has been released. This is a pre-revolutionary process, with solidarity and unity. It's a new pueblo, a new people."

Kari Lydersen, a regular contributor to AlterNet, also writes for the Washington Post and is an instructor for the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in Chicago.

Posted March 18, 2010 By David Ariosto, CNN

Pro-government demonstrators swarm human rights march in Cuba

Hundreds of pro-government demonstrators in Havana, Cuba, chanted "this street belongs to Fidel" as they surrounded a slow-moving march of human rights protesters Thursday.

The Ladies in White, as the human rights protesters call themselves, meandered down streets in the old section of the Cuban capital, drawing onlookers and pro-government demonstrators who drowned out the ladies' cries of "freedom."

Thursday marked the seventh anniversary of a major political crackdown in Cuba in which the government arrested 75 dissidents. The women have staged marches throughout the week, demanding greater political freedom and the release of dissidents who remain imprisoned.

On Wednesday, a similar march drew hundreds of pro-government demonstrators. Plainclothes security agents and police officers closely monitored the scene as demonstrators swarmed the small group of marching women.

Thirty of the women were forcibly detained, dragged onto waiting buses by female security officers. They were immediately driven home.

This week's marches also come on the heels of two dissident hunger strikes that drew international attention.

Last month, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who was jailed in 2003 during the crackdown on political opposition, died after a hunger strike that lasted for more than 80 days. He began the strike to demand better prison conditions.

In an unprecedented government statement, Cuba President Raul Castro "lamented the death of Cuban prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died after leading a hunger strike."

He blamed the United States for the death, but did not explain why.

"Tortured people do not exist," Castro added. "There were no tortured people. There was no execution."

Another dissident, Guillermo Farinas, took up a hunger strike last month, demanding the release of 26 ailing political prisoners.

"I am ready to die," he said, looking frail among friends and family at his home in Santa Clara, Cuba, last week.

Cuba says it has no political prisoners, calling many of the dissidents "mercenaries" being paid by the United States and other countries to undermine the government. They say the fact that a U.S. diplomat turned up at each march this week is evidence of U.S. involvement in dissident activity.

This week's marches also coincide with the release Wednesday of an Amnesty International report that calls on the Cuban government to revoke laws that restrict freedom of expression, assembly and association and to release all political prisoners.

Amnesty International also asked Castro to allow United Nations experts and representatives from other human rights organizations access to the island to monitor civil liberties.

Before the demonstration Thursday, Amnesty International urged Castro to ensure the safety of a group of female relatives of prisoners of conscience.

Posted March 18, 2010 By Mark Weisbrot

The anti-Venezuela election campaign

Venezuela has an election for its national assembly in September, and the campaign has begun in earnest. I am referring to the international campaign. This is carried out largely through the international media, although some will spill over into the Venezuelan media. It involves many public officials, especially in the US. The goal will be to generate as much bad press as possible about Venezuela, to discredit the government, and to delegitimise the September elections â?? in case the opposition should choose to boycott, as they did in the last legislative elections, or refuse to recognise the results if they lose.

There's no need for conspiracy, since the principal actors all know what to do. Occasionally some will be off-message due to lack of co-ordination. A fascinating example of this occurred last week when Senator John McCain tried to get General Doug Fraser of the US Southern Command to back his accusations that Venezuela supports terrorist activities. Testifying before the Senate armed services committee on March 11, General Fraser contradicted McCain:

"We have continued to watch very closely. We have not seen any connections specifically that I can verify that there has been a direct government-to-terrorist connection."

Oops! Apparently Fraser didn't get the memo that the Obama team, not just McCain, is in full campaign mode against Venezuela. The next day, he issued a statement recanting his testimony:

"Assistant Secretary Valenzuela [the state department's top Latin America official] and I spoke this morning on the topic of linkages between the government of Venezuela and the Farc. There is zero daylight between our two positions and we are in complete agreement.

"There is indeed clear and documented historical and ongoing evidence of the linkages between the government of Venezuela and the Farc â?¦ we are in direct alignment with our partners at the state department and the intelligence community."

Well it's good to know that the United States still has civilian control over the military, at least in the western hemisphere. On the other hand, it would be even better if the truth counted for anything in these Congressional hearings or in Washington foreign policy circles generally. The general's awkward and seemingly forced reversal went unnoticed by the media.

The "documented and historical and ongoing evidence" mentioned by General Fraser refers to material alleged to come from laptops and hard drives allegedly found by the Colombian military in a cross-border raid into Ecuador in 2008. Never mind that this is the same military that has been found to have killed hundreds of innocent teenagers and dressed them up in guerrilla clothing. These laptops and hard drives will continue to be tapped for previously undisclosed "evidence", which will then be deployed in the campaign against the Venezuelan government. We will be asked to assume that the "captured documents" are authentic, and most of the media will do so.

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's attacks on Venezuela during her trip to South America were one of the opening salvos of this campaign. Most of what will follow is predictable. There will be hate-filled editorials in the major newspapers, led by the neocon editorial board of the Washington Post (aka Fox on 15th Street). Chávez will be accused of repressing the media, even though most of the Venezuelan media - as measured by audience - is still controlled by the opposition. In fact, the media in Venezuela is still far more in opposition to the government than is our own media in the United States, or for that matter in most of the world. But the international press will be trying to convey the image that Venezuela is Burma or North Korea.

In Washington DC, if I try to broadcast on an FM radio frequency without a legal broadcast licence, I will be shut down. When this happens in Venezuela, it is reported as censorship. No one here will bother to look at the legalities or the details, least of all the pundits and editorial writers, or even many of the reporters.

The Venezuelan economy was in recession in 2009, but will likely begin to grow again this year. The business press will ignore the economic growth and hype the inflation, as they have done for the past six years, when the country's record economic growth cut the poverty rate by half and extreme poverty by 70% (which was also ignored). Resolutions will be introduced into the US Congress condemning Venezuela for whatever.

The US government will continue to pour millions of dollars into Venezuela through USAid, and will refuse to disclose the recipients. This is the non-covert part of their funding for the campaign inside Venezuela.

The only part of this story that is not predictable is what the ultimate result of the international campaign will be. In Venezuela's last legislative elections of 2005, the opposition boycotted the national elections, with at least tacit support from the Bush administration. In an attempt to delegitimise the government, they gave up winning probably at least 30% of the legislature.

At the time, most of the media - and also the Organisation of American States - rejected the idea that the election was illegitimate simply because the opposition boycotted. But that was under the Bush administration, which had lost some credibility on Venezuela due to its support for the 2002 coup, and for other reasons. It could be different under an Obama administration.

That is why it is so ominous to see this administration mounting an unprovoked, transparently obvious campaign to delegitimise the Venezuelan government prior to a national election. This looks like a signal to the opposition: "We will support you if you decide to return to an insurrectionary strategy," either before or after the election.

The US state department is playing an ugly and dangerous game.

Posted March 15, 2010 By CISPES

One year after the People's Victory in El Salvador!

On Sunday, March 14, the streets of San Salvador once again filled with red t-shirts, hats, bandanas and FMLN flags to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the victory of the FMLN's presidential and vice-presidential candidates, Mauricio Funes and Salvador Sánchez Cerén (March 15, 2009). In a speech before the crowd of 25,000, historic leader of the FMLN and current Deputy to the Central American Parliament Nidia Díaz declared, "Today we reassert the effort and the heroism of thousands of compatriots that continue fighting and those that gave their lives, without which this victory would not have been possible."

Looking back on the accomplishments of the first year, many Salvadorans are quick to point out that the most significant accomplishment of the 2009 elections was the electoral defeat of the right-wing, most notably of the ARENA (Nationalist Republican Alliance) party, whose "president for life" is Roberto D'Aubuisson, the founder of the Salvadoran death-squads. For twenty years, consecutive ARENA presidents implemented drastic neoliberal measures, from the privatization of most public services like electricity and telecommunications to CAFTA, the Central America Free Trade Agreement, resulting in an unemployment rate of at least 55%. ARENA's "iron fist" and "super iron fist" policing policies failed to lower the country's violent crime rates and in 2008 El Salvador's homicide rate became the highest in the Western Hemisphere, with a documented resurgence of death squad-style "social extermination" groups. The level of political, economic and military power held by the elite, not to mention their near-unconditional backing from Washington, made their ouster last March a truly historic accomplishment, one that has been compared to the 1992 signing of the Peace Accords that ended the Civil War and toppled the country's military dictatorship.

Leading into the 2009 elections, many Salvadorans said that the country simply could not survive another five years of ARENA. One year ago today, Salvadorans mobilized en masse to the polls, casting aside the right-wing and media's vicious fear campaign against the FMLN as well as the threats made by Republicans in the U.S. Congress to deport Salvadoran immigrants in the event of an FMLN victory. Many credit the sheer number of voters as a key factor in being able to supersede the fraud committed by the right-wing parties, most notably the buses of "voters" that arrived overnight from Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. The highly-organized community response to the fraud (several buses were blocked and turned away at the border!) was more pronounced during the 2009 elections than any other in recent history, demonstrating both the high level of opposition to allowing ARENA to rule for another five years and the high level of popular organization that will make social and economic transformation in El Salvador possible.

One of the major achievements of the new government of President Mauricio Funes and Vice President Salvador Sánchez Cerén has been the re-orientation of the government towards the needs of the majority, especially through the social ministries. While President Funes' commitment to creating a "unity government" means there are many other sectors besides the FMLN represented in the new government, the appointment of FMLN leaders to the ministries that work most closely with the population has been critical to the success of the new administration. As FMLN general coordinator Medardo González declared during Sunday's victory celebration, "These are measures that, step by step, indicate the vision of a leftist government." Some notable examples:

Health: The required payment-insultingly known as a "voluntary fee"-at all public hospitals and clinics has been abolished and the foundation has been laid for a new maternity hospital.
Education: For the first time, the government is providing school uniforms, shoes and school supplies to every child in El Salvador, as well as extending the school meal program to urban schools, thereby addressing some of the main impediments for poor families to send their children to school. The Minister of Education, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, has also launched a national program to end illiteracy in the style of successful programs in Nicaragua and Cuba.
Agriculture: President Funes has stated that El Salvador needs to return to food production for domestic consumption in order to ensure food sovereignty for the Salvadoran people. Through subsidized seeds and fertilizers and new lines of credit for small farmers, the government is making important steps to addressing the decimation of the El Salvador's agricultural sector caused by neoliberal policies. The government granting of over 4,000 land titles to campesinos/as has begun to rectify past governments' failure to complete promised land reform policies.
Labor: For perhaps the first time, El Salvador's Minister of Labor, is truly representing the interests of workers. Dr. de Avilés is transforming the Ministry from an institute that impeded workers' searches for justice to an institute that defends workers' rights and supports the organized union movement. Several unions, including in the maquila sector, have finally been recognized, drawing the ire of the business elite; unions in sectors who have been completely or partially privatized, like telecommunications and water, have finally been granted industrial union status.
Housing and Public Works: Through the Casa para Todos program, the new government plans to build 25,000 houses and generate 100,000 jobs in the process. After Tropical Storm Ida, priority was given to the communities hit by the storm; the government has purchased land to be able to permanently move entire communities to safer ground. Long-time FMLN leader Gerson Martinez is now at the head of the most historically corrupt ministry in El Salvador, dramatically re-orienting its priorities to ensure community benefit, safety, seismic resistance, and accessibility for people with disabilities.

The FMLN, as a political party, was clear that whenever they were able to take the reigns of the government, their highest priority would be to rescue the democratic function of the State. Especially during the past two decades, the state institutions were profoundly corrupted; millions of dollars disappeared annually into the personal and political coffers of the right wing (perhaps the Funes campaign promise that scared them the most was to "open the books"!) One of the highest priorities of the Funes administration is to re-create a functional, democratic state, starting with a strict opposition to corruption. A new Inspector General was brought on board at the National Civilian Police, resulting in charges against at least 40 officers within the first month of the program, and the new Minister of the Interior, FMLN leader Humberto Centeno, has brought charges against former government functionaries including ex-President Saca's right-hand man, former Minister of the Interior Rene Figueroa. Other significant movement toward a real democracy has been initiated in FMLN municipalities; El Salvador's first ever popular consultation was held in Zacatecoluca and many FMLN mayors continue to promote other participatory processes of governance. Both the FMLN and the Salvadoran popular movement see these steps toward "rescuing the state" as essential precursors to more fundamental structural change in the future.

Another of the most significant factors that has changed the political landscape in El Salvador is the near-collapse of the right-wing political parties. Due to power struggles within ARENA, especially as former President Saca was blamed for the party's electoral defeat, a third of the party's Legislative Deputies defected and formed a new right-wing fraction, GANA, which will be requesting political party credentials this year. While not ideologically much different from ARENA, the breakup has been a blow to the right-wing dominance in the Legislative Assembly, forcing different fractions to negotiate with the FMLN as the party with the largest number of seats (36 out of 84). Furthermore, the victory of the leftist party has made many of the other parties want to appear as "populist" as possible, making it much easier for the FMLN to pass important legislation, for example, to approve the budget.

However, long-time revolutionary leaders of the party, its members, and the social movement share the understanding that the victory of Funes is far from all that is needed to challenge the power structure in El Salvador. For one thing, though the right-wing parties may be floundering, the Salvadoran elite still hold an incredible amount of power and the policies they created for their own benefit are still in place. As Medardo González said to the crowd gathered on Saturday, ARENA "was defeated but not overcome," as they still have "partial control of the state apparatus."

The new government inherited a nearly bankrupt state, heavily indebted to the U.S. and international institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. Though large sums of that money were stolen by former Presidents, Funes has nonetheless assumed responsibility for paying it all back. With extremely little state income and a right-wing that goes on the attack anytime someone suggests big businesses should be paying more taxes, the new government has continued to accept the "generous" offers of the U.S. and multi-lateral financial institutions in the form of even more loans. While there is no doubt that the Funes administration and all of the ministries will use this income to the best extent possible, and for needed improvements in the country, the vicious cycle remains in place.

To the disappointment of many in the social movement, the FMLN and the international solidarity movement, President Funes has also publicly stated that he will not seek to re-negotiate CAFTA, nor will he join the ALBA, the co-operative Latin American trade agreement with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia. Even a massive investment in social spending to alleviate the effects of poverty and unemployment will reach its limit as long as El Salvador and the rest of Central America remain strangled by CAFTA. The recent lawsuits by two North American mining companies, demanding hundreds of millions of dollars from El Salvador, have re-energized the popular and labor movements against CAFTA, despite President Funes' unwillingness to challenge it.

Another significant challenge this new phase of revolutionary struggle is the increasingly visible contradictions between the Executive Office and the FMLN-the political party that brought Funes to power. Alongside the social movement, the FMLN has opposed CAFTA and called for El Salvador to join the ALBA. As a revolutionary party, founded as an armed struggle, the party is committed to larger projects like 21st Century Socialism, Latin American integration and anti-imperialism. In one strong contradiction, the FMLN strongly denounced and mobilized against the June coup in Honduras; President Funes, however, has decided to recognize the presidency of Pepe Lobo and is calling for Honduras to be re-admitted into the OAS. In his speech on Sunday, FMLN coordinator Medardo González summed it up as follows, "We aren't going to coincide on everything. The nature of the FMLN, as a party, is to be a revolutionary project with a socialist angle, and the project of the national unity government is broader."

But perhaps the coup in Honduras is one of the very reasons why President Funes is being so moderate in his position, especially with regard to foreign policy. Immediately after the coup, the Salvadoran right-wing told Funes to watch out, lest he be "looking in the mirror." Pressure from the U.S. was not far behind; in a meeting about immigration reform between U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and El Salvador's Minister of Foreign Relations Hugo Martínez following the Honduran coup, Clinton's main request of El Salvador was to play a more "protagonist" role in finding an "exit to the crisis in Honduras." Many speculated that the U.S. State Department used the over 2 million Salvadoran immigrants living in the U.S. as leverage to ensure that El Salvador would get on board with the Honduran elections in November. The tremendous amount of U.S. "aid" money, through such channels as USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the ILEA, and the FBI, make it nearly impossible for the Salvadoran government to act independently without fear of U.S. retaliation. Obama and Clinton have praised Funes as being "pragmatic," and indeed it seems the Funes administration has made the decision to act within the established parameters, while doing the most they can to improve the quality of life and the state of democratic governance for the Salvadoran people.

Before his death in 2006 long time leader of the FMLN and 2004 presidential candidate Schafik Hándal wrote that the Salvadoran social movement must always stay more radical than the party. Social movement organizations are currently in the process of reinvigorating their bases after the movement's activity waned during the post-election "honeymoon period" and determining priorities based on their new relationship with the government. The only way President Funes will feel capable of making farther-reaching changes is if a visible segment of society demands them and gives him a mandate to make them. Though El Salvador's social movement is facing its own set of challenges, for example, they face a right-wing media poised to exploit any and all contradictions, real or imagined, between the party, the social movement, and Funes, this role is clear. Certain sectors of the struggle, including the anti-mining movement, are also contending with a violent terror campaign (assassinations, kidnappings, and death threats) that demonstrates institutionalized impunity in the Attorney General's Office and National Civil Police (PNC) resulting from a century of military dictatorships and right-wing rule.

Despite the challenges, the social movement and the FMLN remain committed to strengthening popular organizing, as their consolidation and mobilization will be the only ways to ensure that the next FMLN government is able to take even more dramatic steps in challenging the neoliberal system. One of the priorities of the social movement in the following year is base-building and political education, such that greater and greater numbers of the population will question why the current changes are not enough. Furthermore, if the FMLN can win a majority in the Legislative Assembly (43 seats), they will have much greater ability to lead the country in a new direction. The recent popular consultation in Zacatecoluca is another step towards the participatory democracy and construction of popular power that began with the "Open Social Dialogues" to collectively establish the FMLN's platform for 2009-2014.

It's impossible to know whether President Funes would be taking more radical steps if El Salvador were not in such a vulnerable position with regard to the United States, but such a situation calls for a strong international solidarity movement against U.S. economic, political and military intervention. U.S. intervention and allegiance with the elite remains one of the major impediments to revolutionary change in Latin America, much as it was in the 1980s.

The strength and promise of the Salvadoran struggle today lies in its ability to work both within and outside of the system, to create change within the government when possible and to mobilize the social movement when those changes reach their circumscribed limits; in doing so, they will consolidate greater popular and political force to continue to change the system itself.

Posted March 1, 2010 By Mac Margolis

Cuba Invades Venezuela

Cuba may be a fading star in the socialist firmament and run by a sclerotic dynasty, but don't tell Hugo Chavez.

The Venezuelan president is giving the Castro franchise a second life by farming out more and more of his crisis-battered government to Havana. A growing number of corner offices in Chavez's bureaucracy--including defense, national security, police, immigration control, and now energy--are occupied by Castrocrats. Ramiro Valdas, Fidel's former comrade in arms and an ex-interior minister, was recently picked to coordinate Venezuela's response to an energy emergency causing widespread blackouts. (Critics note that Cuba has long been afflicted by power failures.) Chavez's foes suspect that Valdas, famed for policing the Internet in Cuba, was hired to spy on Venezuelan dissidents. Other Havanians are serving as key advisers in the Defense Ministry and the newly reformed Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, and dealing on Caracas's behalf with trade unions, coffee growers, and hospitals (apparently the final straw for the health minister, who quit on Feb. 10). Chavez argues that no one is better prepared to handle domestic crises than the Cubans. Most Venezuelans shudder for the same reason.

Posted February 28, 2010 By Rick Rozoff

South Atlantic: Britain May Provoke New Conflict With Argentina

On February 22 two major developments occurred in the Americas south of the Rio Grande. The two-day Rio Group summit opened in Mexico and Great Britain started drilling for oil 60 miles north of the Falklands Islands, known as Las Malvinas to Argentina.

The meeting in Mexico was identified as a Unity Summit because for the first time the 24 members of the Rio Group (minus Honduras, not invited because of the illegitimacy of its post-coup regime) - Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela - were joined by the fifteen members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM): Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago. (Haiti, Jamaica and Suriname are members of both organizations.)

Ahead of the summit the Financial Times wrote, "The Mexican-led initiative, a clear sign of Latin America's growing confidence as a region, will exclude both the US and Canada. Some observers believe it could even eventually rival the 35-member Organisation of American States (OAS), which includes the US and Canada and has been the principal forum for hemispheric issues during the past half century." [1]

In fact on the first day of the summit Bolivian President Evo Morales called for a "a new US-free OAS," [2] stressing Washington's centuries-long history of perpetrating military coups, blackmail, looting of natural resources and, over the past generation, the scourge of neo-liberalism in the Americas.

In 1986 the Rio Group grew out of the four-member Contradora Group consisting of Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela which was formed in response to Washington's Contra and death squad campaigns in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1980s. Part of the legacy Bolivia's Morales was referring to.

Coinciding to the day if not the hour of the beginning of the summit, the British Desire Petroleum company began exploring for oil and gas off the Falklands/Las Malvinas, seized from Argentina by Britain in 1833 and fought over by the nations in a 74-day war in 1982. "Neighbouring Argentina, which lays claim to the islands, is fiercely opposed to the drilling. Earlier this month, the Argentinian government filed a formal protest with the British government." [3]

Britain lost 255 soldiers in the conflict, the highest wartime fatalities it had suffered since the Korean War and the Malayan conflict. The British death toll in Afghanistan recently surpassed that number.

London's energy grab in the South Atlantic did not go unnoticed in Mexico, where 26 presidents and prime ministers were among the participants at the Unity Summit. Argentine President Cristina Fernandez denounced the British actions as "unilateral and illegal" [4] and a breach of her nation's sovereignty.

She further stated "There continues to be systematic violation of international law that should be respected by all countriesâ?¦.In the name of our government and in the name of my people I am gratefulâ?¦for the support this meeting has given to our demands." [5]

Fernandez characterized the unanimous backing provided her at the summit as an "exercise in self-defence for all" [6] and blasted nations with permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council - she undoubtedly meant Britain, the United States and France - for "continu[ing] to use that place of privilege to disregard international law." [7]

Her Venezuelan colleague President Hugo Chavez, indicating the dangerous dimension a new British-provoked altercation with Argentina can escalate into, said, "The English are still threatening Argentina. Things have changed. We are no longer in 1982. If conflict breaks out, be sure Argentina will not be alone like it was back then." [8]

Before the summit began he said, "We support unconditionally the Argentine government and the Argentine people in their complaints. That sea and that land belongs to Argentina and to Latin America." [9]

He reiterated that position during his speech on February 22. While highlighting the military threat posed by Britain off the coast of Argentina, he alluded to a British submarine site in the Falklands/Las Malvinas and said "we demand not only [that] the submarine platformâ?¦be removed, but also [that] the British governmentâ?¦follow the resolutions of the United Nations and give back that territory to the Argentine People." [10]

Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega, also in attendance at the summit, stated "We will back a resolution demanding that England return Las Malvinas to its rightful owner, that it return the islands to Argentina." [11]

The Times of London quoted Marco Aurelio Garcia, foreign policy adviser to Brazil's President Lula da Silva, as adding: "Las Malvinas must be reintegrated into Argentine sovereignty. Unlike in the past, today there is a consensus in Latin America behind Argentina's claims." [12]

The comments by Venezuela's president, addressing as they did the threat of a new military confrontation between Britain and Argentina, bear particular scrutiny in light of recent actions by London and statements by its head of state.

In late December Britain conducted a two-day military operation off the coast of the Falklands/Las Malvinas which included the use of Typhoon multi-role fighters and warships. The exercises, code-named Cape Bayonet, "took place during a tour of the Falklands by British forces ahead of the start of drilling in the basin in February 2010â?³ and "simulated an enemy invasionâ?¦." [13]

A news report at the time added, "Britain has strengthened its military presence in the Falklands since the [1982] war and has a major operational base at Mount Pleasant, 35 miles from the capital Stanley.

"The prospect of the islands transforming into a major source of oil revenue for Britain has raised the military's argument for more funding to beef up the forces in South Atlantic." [14]

Four days before British drilling began off the islands, Prime Minister Gordon Brown stated "We have made all the preparations that are necessary to make sure that the Falkland Islanders are properly protected," [15] although Argentine officials have repeatedly denied the possibility of a military response to British encroachments and provocations in the South Atlantic Ocean.

On the same day, February 18, Argentina's Vice Minister of Foreign Relations Victorio Taccetti accused Britain of "a unilateral act of aggression and subjugation" [16] in moving to seize oil and gas in the disputed region. Buenos Aires has prohibited ships from going to and coming from the Falklands/Las Malvinas through Argentine waters.

What is at stake are, according to British Geological Survey estimates, as many as 60 billion barrels of oil under the waters off the Falklands/Las Malvinas.

In late January a Russian military analyst explained that even that colossal energy bonanza is not all that Britain covets near the Falklands/Las Malvinas and further south.

Ilya Kramnik wrote that "along with the neighboring islands controlled by the U.K., the Falklands are the de facto gateway to the Antarctic, which explains London's tenacity in maintaining sovereignty over them and the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, as well as territorial claims regarding the South Shetland and South Orkney Islands under the Antarctic Treaty."

Regarding Antarctica itself, "Under the ice, under the continental shelf, there are enormous mineral resources and the surrounding seas are full of bio-resources. In addition, the glaciers of Antarctica contain 90% of the world's fresh water, the shortage of which becomes all the more acute with the growth in the world's population." [17]

A Chinese analysis of over two years earlier described what Britain in part went to war for in 1982 and why it may do so again: Control of broad tracts of Antarctica.

"The vastness of seemingly barren, ice-covered land is uncovered and exposed to the outside world, revealing a 'treasure basin' with incredibly abundant mineral deposits and energy reservesâ?¦.A layer of Permian Period coal exists on the mainland, and holds 500 billion tons in known reserves.

"The thick ice dome over the land is home to the world's largest reservoir for fresh water; holds approximately 29.3 million cubic kilometers of ice; and makes up 75% of earth's fresh water supply.

"It is possible to say that the South Pole could feed the entire world with its abundant supplies of food [fish] and fresh waterâ?¦[T]he value of the South Pole is not confined to the economic sphere; it also lies in its strategic position.

"The US Coast Guard has long had garrisons in the region, and the US Air Force is the number one air power in the region." [18]

The feature from which the preceding excerpts originated ended with a warning: "[T]he South Pole [Antarctic] Treaty points out that the South Pole can only be exploited and developed for the sake of peace; and can not be a battle ground. Otherwise, the ice-cold South Pole could prove a fiercely hot battlefield." [19]

Two days before the May 13, 2009 deadline for "states to stake their claims in what some experts [have described] as the last big carve-up of maritime territory in history," [20] Britain submitted a claim to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf for one million square kilometers in the South Atlantic reaching into the Antarctic Ocean.

An article in this series written five days afterward detailed the new scramble for Antarctica initiated by Britain and Australia, the second being granted 2.5 million additional square kilometers in the Antarctic Ocean in April of 2008. [21]

A newspaper in the United Kingdom wrote about London's million-kilometer South Atlantic and Antarctic ambitions beforehand that "Not since the Golden Age of the Empire has Britain staked its claim to such a vast area of land on the world stage. And while the British Empire may be long gone, the Antarctic has emerged as the latest battleground for rival powers competing on several fronts to secure valuable oil-rich territoryâ?¦.The Falklands claim has the most potential for political fall-out, given that Britain and Argentina fought over the islands 25 years ago, and the value of the oil under the sea in the region is understood to be immense. Seismic tests suggest there could be about 60 billion barrels of oil under the ocean floor." [22]

Last autumn a Russian news source warned about the exact initiative of this February 22 in stating "Many believe that the 1982 war between Britain and Argentina with almost 1,000 servicemen killed in the hostilities was all about oil and gas fields in the South Atlantic. In this sense, Desire Petroleum should certainly think twice before starting to capitalize on what was a subject of the bloodbath in 1982â?¦."

Regarding the territorial claims submitted by Britain last May (still in deliberations at the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf), the report pointed out London's "eagerness to expand its Falkland Islands' continental shelf from 200 to 350 nautical miles, which would enable Britain to develop new oil fields in South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands," and ended with a somber warning:

"Given London's unwillingness to try to arrive at a political accommodation with Buenos Aires, a UN special commission will surely have tougher times ahead as far as its final decision on the continental shelf goes. And it is only to be hoped that Britain will be wise enough not to turn the Falkland Islands into another regional hot spot." [23]

Unlike the first South Atlantic war of 1982, when the regime of General Leopoldo Galtieri garnered no support from other Latin American nations, a future standoff or armed conflict between Argentina and Britain over the Falklands/Las Malvinas will see Latin American and Caribbean states acting in solidarity with Argentina.

If the United Kingdom succeeds in provoking a new war, it in turn will appeal to its NATO allies for logistical, surveillance and other forms of assistance, including direct military intervention if required. In addition to the U.S. and Canada, Britain's NATO allies in the Western Hemisphere include France and the Netherlands with their possessions and military bases in the Caribbean and South America.

Britain is playing with fire and if it ignites a new conflict it could rapidly spread far beyond the waters off the southern tip of South America.

1) Financial Times, February 19, 2010
2) Prensa Latina, February 22, 2010
3) Radio Netherlands, February 22, 2010
4) Associated Press, February 22, 2010
5) Reuters, February 22, 2010
6) Deutsche Presse-Agentur, February 22, 2010
7) Ibid
8) The Times (London), February 23, 2010
9) Reuters, February 22, 2010
10) Xinhua News Agency, February 23, 2010
11) The Times, February 23, 2010
12) Ibid
13) United Press International, December 28, 2009
14) Ibid
15) Reuters, February 18, 2010
16) Xinhua News Agency, February 19, 2010
17) Russian Information Agency Novosti, January 28, 2010
18) People's Daily, December 4, 2007
19) Ibid
20) Reuters, October 7, 2007
21) Scramble For World Resources: Battle For Antarctica
Stop NATO, May 16, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/scramble-for-world-resources-battle-for-antarctica
22) The Scotsman, October 23, 2007
23) Voice of Russia, September 16, 2009

Posted February 28, 2010 By Nil Nikandrov

Why Obama's Administration needs to get rid of Chavez already in 2010

The US SOUTHCOM electronic surveillance base has been functioning in Aruba for several years. One day, an individual looking like a typical American, wearing shorts, a Hawaii shirt, and sunglasses, walked into it effortlessly and started roaming around. The US marines must have been too tired of the heat and assumed he actually was one of their countrymen -- the base has been hosting numbers of visitors from the US recently amid the preparations for serious operations against Venezuela.

The visitor moved across the site with its standard blocks, glanced at the impressively proportioned radar and froze by the door to a large room with four giant screens in it. The screens were showing the contours of Venezuela's Tachira and Zulia states and the locations of military installations, tank parks, aerodromes, and army bases as well as Venezuela's industrial infrastructure including oil fields, refineries, pipelines, and plants. Even a brief look made it clear that the Caribbean coast and the west of Venezuela were under permanent surveillance from the base.

The Western media say noting about the build-up of the US surveillance activity at Aruba and Curacao bases and generally filter away any information concerning the US espionage targeting Venezuela. The US intelligence services are spying on the country from Colombia, Puerto-Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Washington wants to know everything about Venezuela's military capabilities and mobilization plans, to assess the level of loyalty to the government in the ranks of the country's officer corps and the combat readiness of its armed forces, and to find out to what extent those are prepared to engage in long-term "asymmetric" guerrilla warfare.

The US was alarmed by H. Chavez' statement that the seizure of Venezuela's oil fields and refineries would be prevented at any cost in the case of US aggression. Did he mean blowing up the infrastructures?

Pentagon planners are no less worried over the potential strengthening of leftist guerrilla fronts in Colombia and their mushrooming in the Latin American countries currently hosting US military bases. The CIA and NSA regarded it as a cause for concern that leftist groups emerged in Mexico, the traditional backyard of the US. Mexican guerrillas have already claimed responsibility for several acts of sabotage at oil pipeline networks. In fact, Mexico's Chiapas state has been de facto controlled for years by the guerrilla groups led by the legendary Subcommandante Marcos who clearly would not opt for neutrality in case the US attacks Venezuela, the country which contributed a lot to the Indian cause in Latin America.

No doubt, any aggressive steps taken by the US would trigger overall radicalization across the continent. It is already obvious that the comeback of the right in several Latin American countries and the reversion to the ruthless liberal economic course that ensued are meeting with widespread opposition and that the rise of new populist regimes in the region is only a matter of time. Mexico and Peru, the countries where F. Calderon and A. Garcia were propelled to power by the US financial and propaganda support regardless of how the poorest strata of the populations felt about the developments, are the prime candidates.

There will be no chance to contain the spread of populism reflecting mass discontent with poverty and with the prosperity being limited to a small cohort of "efficient asset-holders" in the settings of the ongoing economic crisis. As in the epoch when Latin America was -- with the US democratic blessing -- run by cruel dictators, it is going to take bloodshed to impede the onslaught of populism in the region. Will the greedy operators of the XXI century world order with its permanent predatory privatizations and asset seizures dare to order shooting at the furious crowds of disillusioned people? After the very first shot, nations will have the moral right to respond to force with force.

This is the reason why Obama's Administration needs to get rid of Chavez already in 2010 -- it regards Venezuela as the epicenter of Anti-Americanism in the western hemisphere. Washington hopes that the demise of Chavez' regime would set in motion a cascade of likewise falls of the regimes it believes he has helped to come into being. At the moment, the global propaganda campaign backing the preparations for an aggression against Venezuela is at full swing.

Venezuela's leading analyst Diaz Rangel said the media grands have unleashed a new round of a carefully coordinated propaganda war against Chavez and his socioeconomic alternative known as the XXI century socialism. The liberal media keep holding that no alternative to capitalism deserves to exist and unabashedly denies Chavez the right to social innovation.

Rangel criticized Newsweek, Associated Press, and BBC for bias and downright lies in covering Venezuela. Their projection is that Chavez would be displaced already this year by the military (that is, the Venezuelan military, but assisted by their US and Colombian "peers"), that his socialist experiment will collapse, and that thus the county will overcome "disorder and chaos." Evidence of bias in Western media abounds: they never report pro-Chavez rallies attended by thousands of people, pretend not to know about his stable 59-60% support rating (which the West claims to reach only 45-48%), and avoid mentioning the implementation of a range of social missions in Venezuela including social residence construction.

Instead, the West never stops airing its list of grievances concerning Venezuela. Allegations are made that Chavez uses petrodollars to support terrorists and supplies weaponry to Mexican and Colombian guerrilla groups, where Russian-made Kalashnikov assault rifles have recently been confiscated. Western media maintain that Chavez is the key figure behind all Latin American drug cartels, though it is an open secret that the US Drug Enforcement Administration is the actual number one player in the business in the region.

Until 2000, the US propaganda used to portray Cuba as the worst evil in Latin America and called for its isolation and eventual elimination. The strengthening of Venezuela's positions, its endeavors in the framework of the ALBA integration project and calls for upgrading it to include a military alliance, as well as other Venezuelan initiatives unacceptable to Washington led the US to declare Venezuela the center of evil.

Since the very inauguration of Chavez the Western media have kept talking about chaos in Venezuela, the divisions in the Venezuelan army, etc. Statements concerning the army could contain an element of truth till the 2002 attempted coup during which a bunch of US-trained officers managed to displace Chavez for 72 hours and intended to kill him on the CIA order. Since then, the Venezuelan army has been reorganized and at present the majority of its officers uphold revolutionary-nationalist views. To ensure control over the country's armed forces, the Venezuelan government pays the officers relatively high salaries and provides housing and medical care for them and their families. The army appreciates the government's efforts to modernize the country's defense potential, which is done largely with the help of Russia. Nevertheless, the illusion that Venezuela is weak in the military sense is so widespread that Obama's Administration expects to rout Chavez' defiant regime in a snap offensive. The corresponding plan is akin to those Germany had at the early phase of World War II -- the US will rely on Venezuelan fifth column, Colombian ultra-right paramilitary groups, and its own special forces which are already launching raids in Venezuela's border regions.

The infrastructure for the aggression is ready. The Pentagon seized every opportunity to set up military bases along the Venezuelan borders.

Washington sent a heavily armed expedition corps, an aircraft carrier, and several warships to Haiti using the recent earthquake as a pretext, thus effectively securing another military base in the Caribbean.

Experts suppose that the military group now based in Haiti can be used by the Pentagon to prevent Cuba from helping Venezuela in case it comes under the US attack. Chavez and the Castro brothers spoke a number of times about their common military obligations.

Venezuela will hold parliamentary elections in September, 2010 during which the opposition is going to compete with desperation. Chavez already addressed the nation with the statement indicating that loss of control over parliament would be a catastrophe for the Bolivarian regime.

In the run-up to the elections, its foreign and domestic foes are resorting to the standard set of instruments including the scenarios of color revolutions and the Honduran coup as well as to calls for military intervention against Venezuela.

The coup in Honduras is by no means bloodless -- simply the killing of supporters of the overthrown M. Zelaya are disguised as ordinary street crimes. As for the scale of repressions awaiting Venezuela in the case of a successful coup -- they evade imagination.

Posted February 26, 2010 By Tiwy.com

TeleSur: Free Television in Latin America

This May, TeleSur channel, initiated by President Hugo Chavez, will open broadcasting. To do this he was undoubtedly urged by the permanent media war that is fought against his government by the "engaged mass media" of the USA, Great Britain and Latin America itself.

Bolivarian revolutionary reforms, their progressive trend, Venezuelan strives to establish sovereignty and independence get on the nerves of the present "globalization crusaders" for whom dissidence of any kind - politics, economy, energy, integration - is liable to punishment. Everyone must match the "empire"!

The initial TeleSur capital was received from the Venezuela government (70%) as well as 20% from Argentina and 10% from Uruguay.

The television studios are being built at an accelerated pace in the neighbourhood with the pavilions of the state television of Venezuela. TeleSur news offices are opened in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Mexico and the United States.

For broadcasting TeleSur will employ a satellite that is being developed by the Chinese specialists on the Venezuelan order. For now the TeleSur "picture" will be distributed via commercial channels. The programmes of this Latin American channel will be received in all countries of the Western Hemisphere, Europe, western coast of Africa. In due course TeleSur will cover the whole planet.

Apart from that, Latin Americans will have a chance to speak of themselves truly, without falsification, reticence, perversions and fabricated facts. Against this background it will be more difficult to the "crusade promoters" to fight a media war against the unfavourable regimes in Latin America.

And, no doubt, Latin Americans will be able to know more about one another as compared to the recent past when there was "an informational curtain" between the countries of the continent more like the "iron" one.

Posted February 26, 2010 By Prensa Latina, Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, Xinhua, Mercopress

Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELC) Creates Organization to Replace the OAS!

This new formation, which will ultimately replace the Organization of American States, is an expression of the Latin America and the Caribbean peoples' desire for regional solidarity and national sovereignty free from outside interference. The proposal for such a body expressly excludes the U.S. and Canada which are viewed as undermining the national sovereignty of Latin American and Caribbean nations.

The CELC was formed at the Latin American Unity Summit held from February 22-23 in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. It will be formally established on July 5, 2011 at a summit in Caracas, once its charter has been developed. The new body will amalgamate the Summit of Latin America and the Caribbean and the Rio Group, while it will co-exist with other sub-regional organizations. The normal functions of the Group of Rio and the Latin American and Caribbean Congress will continue until the new organization's institutions are completely formed.

On Monday, in his opening speech to inaugurate the summit, Calderón emphasized plans to create a new united organization for the region, saying that hopes of unity across the Americas was a dream in the early 19th century, when the region's leaders began to fight for their independence from European colonial powers. "The dream of unity is part of the independence we are celebrating," Calderón said, referring to the start of Mexican celebrations to mark 200 years of its independence. "And this summit represents an important increase in our integration."

"Today we will be examining the first step, the jumping off point for a new future," Calderón said. "Today we have the opportunity to create a common space for all the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean."

The Rio Group and the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) together comprise 33 countries. Of these 32 were represented at the summit (Honduras has notably been excluded from Rio Group functions since the coup), 26 of them by their presidents or prime ministers, including Raul Castro of Cuba, René Préval of Haiti, Mauricio Funes of El Salvador, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, �lvaro Uribe of Colombia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Luiz "Lula" Da Silva of Brazil, Evo Morales of Bolivia, as well as Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, President-Elect of Uruguay José Mujica, Michelle Bachelet of Chile and Cristina Fernandez of Argentina, amongst others. Peru, the Bahamas, Guyana, Saint Lucia, Surinam and Trinidad and Tobago are represented by members of their cabinets.

Besides the Rio Group and CARICOM, several other regional bodies were represented at the summit: the Latin American and Caribbean Economic System (SELA), the Latin America Integration Association (LAIA), the Latin American Parliament, the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), the Andean Community. Altogether, more than twenty representatives of international bodies took part as observers.

At the conclusion of the summit, Mexican President Felipe Calderón, indicated that Community of Latin American and Caribbean States was a provisional name that might change at future meetings. "We have decided to create an organization CELC that includes all the organizations of Latin America and the Caribbean. We have decided to base an organization on shared values including sovereignty, opposition to the use of force including threats of force, international cooperation, ever closer integration of Latin America and the Caribbean and permanent political dialogue," he said.

In his closing speech to the summit, Cuban President Raul Castro began with a fraternal message from the Cuban people to Mexico, a country that gave shelter to many Latin Americans, including the pioneers of the Cuban Revolution. Castro emphasized the historical significance of the creation of such a mechanism, pointing out that to be an independent nation is an indispensable requirement to join this body, which will be characterized by the respect for cultural diversity and for the different geographic and economic dimensions, the political system adopted by each country, the disparity in natural resources and differences in social development, he pointed out. The next summit in Caracas will be a great opportunity to conclude the work to make the organization operational and Cuba will work hard to ensure this takes place, he added.

President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, also pointed out the historic significance of the decision to create a new regional integration bloc without the presence of the United States. "Wherever the United States is present, democracy is not guaranteed, peace with social equity is not guaranteed," he said.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stated that "The peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean are trying to retake the path of our own republics, we are taking the path taken by Simon Bolivar." He welcomed the summit's unanimous decision to give his country "the great task of starting to organize the [next] summit in July, 2011." He expressed his hope that next year in Caracas it will be possible to approve the basic principles of the organization, the community, the unity of states or republics which has begun to be born. "We expect that in a year, with hard work, the articles of incorporation and basis of the organization can be approved. Whether it is in Caracas, next year, or in Santiago, two years later, it does not matter. What matters most is a good start to what is developing," Chavez stated.

President of Brazil Luiz "Lula" Da Silva said: "It is important to remember that this Summit does not represent a minor historic deed. I would rather say that it is a historic event of large dimensions. [... We are affirming] our personality as a region that has decided to create a Community of Latin American and Caribbean countries [...] We are discovering ourselves as a region, from the smallest island to the largest country." President Da Silva pointed out that it is necessary to consolidate regional integration in order to achieve real development in the individual countries. "We have progressed in an extraordinary way, because we are consolidating democracy as ever with this meeting," he added.

As part of the summit's proceedings, President Calderón on handed over the pro tempore secretariat of the Rio Group to Chile, which will coordinate the regional mechanism until 2012. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet in accepting the post, affirmed Chile's commitment to build regional unity and solidarity. On the creation of the new regional body, Bachelet declared countries have the task of consolidating the integration into a fundamental political forum. She pointed out that countries in the region are at a crucial juncture in which the socio-political development of the peoples is a challenge for governments. In her acceptance speech, President Bachelet told those assembled that Chile was taking on the task of Rio Group secretariat at a time that marks a watershed in world history. "The international community has abandoned the idea of laissez faire, the idea that the market can completely regulate itself," Bachelet said. "In the words of Mexican poet Octavio Paz, the market has no mercy and no conscience."

The summit approved two main declarations, the Declaration of Cancun, and the Declaration of the Unity Summit, which establish the main programmatic commitments to political and economic coordination and cooperation.

In addition, several other special documents were passed on the following concerns: migratory cooperation, solidarity with Haiti, a declaration on the Malvinas issue backing Argentina's legitimate rights in its dispute with the UK, a resolution against the economic, trade and financial blockade the U.S. government has maintained against Cuba for almost 50 years, as well as a declaration congratulating Guatemala for the outcome of investigations by the International Commission against Impunity. Likewise, the meeting passed a resolution supporting Ecuador's commitment not to exploit 846 million barrels of oil that lie under the subsoil of Yasuní National Park. Yet another document expresses solidarity with Ecuador after the Financial Action Task Force included it, in a manipulative move, on the list of countries that have failed to adequately address money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Also on the agenda was a discussion of Honduras' status within the Rio Group and its successor organization because of the illegitimacy of the current Porfirio Lobo regime put in place by the coup.

Firm Commitment to Rebuilding Haiti in Respect of Its Sovereignty

In his speech to open the summit, President Calderón described the work to rebuild Haiti as the "cause of all Latin America and the Caribbean." He thanked President Préval of Haiti (a Rio Group and CARICOM member) for taking time to come to the conference when there are so many urgent needs in his nation.

On Sunday, Mexico hosted a summit with CARICOM leaders where Préval expressed his thanks to member nations for their support. He reported that the death toll from the quake may reach 300,000 and that with the rainy season on the way, shelter for the nation's 1.5 million homeless was Haiti's highest priority.

President Bachelet, in accepting the secretariat of the Rio Group remarked, "We are all working to face the difficult situation that is taking place in one of our member nations, Haiti." Bachelet added that the body would ensure that the nation can be rebuilt better than before "as all Haitians deserve."

President Da Silva called for strengthened solidarity and concrete support for Haiti, noting that even before the earthquake it was already facing huge structural problems.

Cuban President Raul Castro declared that the rebuilding of Haiti requires and merits long-term international aid of great magnitude and that help should be unselfish, with complete respect for the country's sovereignty and to its government and carried out under UN authority.

He cited the example of Cuba's solidarity, which has collaborated for more than a decade in Haiti, during which time its doctors have carried out 14 million consultations, 200,000 surgeries, 100,000 births and 45,000 eye operations.

President Castro pointed out that President Hugo Chavez, with his particular sensitivity and generosity, as well as Cuba and other countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, plan to maintain and increase their efforts.

Presidents Calderón and Chavez each said the grouping had committed new funds to Haiti. Calderón noted that Haiti would get $25 million from the Inter-American Development Bank and the Andean Development Corporation, while Chavez said that the island nation would receive $30 million directly from members.

U.S. Blockade of Cuba Denounced

President Castro expressed Cuba's appreciation for the approval of the special document demanding the end of the unjust U.S. economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba, as well as the solidarity towards his country expressed at the summit. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez who was part of Cuba's delegation to the summit stated that "There is a unanimous position of all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean condemning the U.S. blockade against Cuba and they urge the U.S. Government to immediately lift it."

In his closing remarks, President Da Silva also criticized the U.S. blockade against Cuba and expressed optimism for its prompt end, as demanded by the international community.

Support for Argentine Claim over Malvinas

On the first day of the proceedings, participants in the Unity Summit gave their support to Argentina's claim of sovereignty over the Malvinas (also known as the Falkland Islands) and rejected the exploitation of oil resources in the area by the United Kingdom. "There continues to be systematic violation of international law that should be respected by all countries," said Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, addressing the plenary of the summit. "On behalf of our government and my people I express thanks for the support this meeting has thrown behind our claims."

Fernandez added her country will continue its efforts to make the UK observe all the resolutions reaffirming Argentina's sovereignty over the southern archipelago that was forcibly taken from the South American country in 1833. She pointed out that the deployment in the Malvinas of the Ocean Guardian, an oil drilling platform belonging to British firm Desire Petroleum, "is a violation of all of the United Nation's previous dispositions."

Buenos Aires, Argentina, February 23, 2010: Demonstration against British oil exploration in the Malvinas. Signs read

"British Out of the Malvinas."

Several speakers in the first session expressed their solidarity with the South American country regarding the unilateral decision of the UK to engage in oil prospecting in the area. "That is one of the clearest demonstrations of neocolonialism," said President Chavez. President of Bolivia Evo Morales also spoke out in support of Argentina's just claim.

President Da Silva also underscored that it was necessary to demand that the United Nations reopen the debate over the Malvinas. He also urged the United Nations to undertake its mandate in a democratic manner and take an appropriate decision on the Malvinas, which "are and have to be Argentinian."

Exclusion of Honduras

Regarding the absence of Honduras at the Summit, President Da Silva stressed that the country was not invited because it does not have a legitimate representative.

"Honduras is not here, and will not be, for a simple reason, because even if Hondurans went to elections, they were called by cutting short the presidency of a man [President Zelaya] who was democratically elected. We cannot accept that those experiences of military juntas in Honduras prevail in other Latin American and Caribbean countries," the President of Brazil emphasized.

In related news, the National Front of Popular Resistance to the Coup in Honduras on February 19 issued a communique addressed to the summit, which is posted below.

***

To the State and Government representatives who comprise the Permanent Organization for Consultation and Political Coordination meeting in Cancun, Mexico in the context of the 23rd Summit of the Rio Group, we declare:

Honduras continues to live under a de facto regime, installed and supported by force of arms since June 28, 2009 to date, a period during which the Honduran people have been subject to constant human rights violations.

In a vain attempt to mask the illegitimacy and illegality of the actual regime the faces of the figures who administer the state are being changed, but they are not succeeding in fooling anybody because it is public knowledge that these people obey the same powerful groups that are ordering the repression and assassinations and preventing the development of a true democracy.

The electoral process, with which the new ombudsmen of the dictatorship attempt to validate themselves, was clearly illegal, having been organized and administered by the authorities complying with the coup d'etat, who prevented the free participation of the opposition and ignored the predominating atmosphere of terror. For these reasons no credible institution, government or regional integration organization sent observers to the process.

The illegitimacy of the process was reinforced by the abstention of the vast majority of the Honduran population from voting and consequently the results are unknown. It is no accident that the people are continuing their non-violent struggle to defeat the current totalitarian regime and return to democratic order.

The human rights situation is desperate and is deteriorating. More assassinations, hostage-takings and persecution against the people organized in the Popular Resistance have been registered -- particularly since those charged with directing the State security organs announced a military offensive to put an end to the opposition to the regime.

Various sectors of the international community, friendly governments, social organizations and defenders of human rights have expressed their refusal to recognize the current regime.

For these reasons:

a. We call on the representatives of the government and State members of the Rio Group to maintain your position of refusal to recognize the Honduran dictatorship as long as the democratic constitutional order is not re-established and the violations of human rights are not ended.

b. We will continue our struggle regardless of the acts of terror committed by the State controlled by the coup.

c. We thank the friendly governments and social organizations for your concern about the serious situation our country is going through and for your acts of solidarity to overcome the crisis.

(Translated from the Spanish original by TML Daily)

Posted February 25, 2010 By Mark Weisbrot

Independent Latin America Forms Its Own Organization

Latin America took another historic step forward this week with the creation of a new regional organization of 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The United States and Canada were excluded.

The increasing independence of Latin America has been one of the most important geopolitical changes over the last decade, affecting not only the region but the rest of the world as well. For example, Brazil has publicly supported Iran's right to enrich uranium and opposed further sanctions against the country. Latin America, once under the control of the United States, is increasingly emerging as a power bloc with its own interests and agenda.

The Obama Administration's continuation of former President Bush's policies in the region undoubtedly helped spur the creation of this new organization, provisionally named the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Most importantly, the Obama team's ambivalence toward the military coup that overthrew the democratic government of President Mel Zelaya in Honduras last summer provoked deep resentment and distrust throughout the region.

Although the Obama administration was officially against the coup, numerous actions from day one - including the first White House statement that failed to condemn the coup when it happened - made it clear in the diplomatic world that its real position was something different. The last straw came in November 2009 when the Obama administration brokered a deal for the return of Zelaya, and then joined the dictatorship in reneging on it. Washington then stood against the vast majority of the region in supporting the November elections for a new president under the dictatorship, which had systematically repressed the basic rights and civil liberties necessary to an electoral campaign.

Arturo Valenzuela, the US State Department's top official for Latin America, said that the new organization "should not be an effort that would replace the OAS".

The differences underlying the need for a new organization were clear in the statements and declarations that took place in the Unity Summit, held in Cancun February 22 -23. The summit issued a strong statement backing Argentina in its dispute with the UK over the Malvinas (as they are called in Argentina) or Falklands Islands. The dispute, which dates back to the 19th century and led to a war in 1982, has become more prominent lately as the UK has unilaterally decided to explore for oil offshore the islands. President Lula da Silva of Brazil called for the United Nations to take a more active role in resolving the dispute. And the Summit condemned the U.S. embargo against Cuba.

These and other measures would be difficult or impossible to pass in the OAS. Furthermore, the OAS has long been manipulated by the United States, as from 2000-2004 when it was used to help build support for the coup that overthrew Haiti's elected president. And most recently, the U.S. and Canada blocked the OAS from taking stronger measures against the Honduran dictatorship last year.

Meanwhile, in Washington foreign policy circles, it is getting increasingly more difficult to maintain the worn-out fiction that the United States' differences with the region are a legacy of President Bush's "lack of involvement," or to blame a few leftist trouble-makers like Bolivia, Nicaragua, and of course the dreaded Venezuela. It seems to have gone unnoticed that Brazil has taken the same positions as Venezuela and Bolivia on Iran and other foreign policy issues, and has strongly supported Chávez. Perhaps the leadership of Mexico -- a right-wing government that was one of the Bush Administration's few allies in the region - in establishing this new organization will stimulate some re-thinking.

There are structural reasons for this process of increasing independence to continue, even if - and this is not on the horizon - a new government in Washington were to someday move away from its Cold War redux approach to the region. The United States has become increasingly less important as a trading partner for the region, especially since the recent recession as our trade deficit has shrunk. The region also increasingly has other sources of investment capital. The collapse of the IMF's creditors' cartel in the region has also eliminated the most important avenue of Washington's influence.

The new organization is sorely needed. The Honduran coup was a threat to democracy in the entire region, as it encouraged other right-wing militaries and their allies to think that they might drag Latin America back to the days when the local elite, with Washington's help, could overturn the will of the electorate. An organization without the U.S. and Canada will be more capable of defending democracy, as well as economic and social progress in the region when it is under attack. It will also have a positive influence in helping to create a more multi-polar world internationally.

Posted February 24, 2010 by IACHR

IACHR PUBLISHES REPORT ON VENEZUELA

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today published the report entitled Democracy and Human Rights in Venezuela.

In the report, the IACHR identifies a series of issues that restrict the full enjoyment of human rights. Among other issues, the IACHR analyzes a series of conditions that indicate the absence of an effective separation and independence of the public branches of power in Venezuela. The report finds that not all individuals are ensured full enjoyment of their rights irrespective of their positions on government policies. The Commission also finds that the punitive power of the State is being used to intimidate or punish people on account of their political opinions. The Commission believes that conditions do not exist for human rights defenders and journalists to be able to freely carry out their work. The IACHR also detects the existence of a pattern of impunity in cases of violence, which particularly affects media workers, human rights defenders, trade unionists, participants in public demonstrations, people held in custody, campesinos (small-scale and subsistence farmers), indigenous people, and women.

In terms of economic, social, and cultural rights, the IACHR recognizes the State's achievements with regard to the progressive observance of these rights, including, most notably, the eradication of illiteracy, the reduction of poverty, and the increase in access by the most vulnerable sectors to basic services such as health care. In addition, the Commission notes that there are serious shortcomings with respect to union rights as well as in relation to the right of indigenous peoples to their lands.

The Commission emphasizes that observance of other fundamental rights cannot be sacrificed for the sake of realizing economic, social, and cultural rights inVenezuela. Human rights constitute an indissoluble whole, and, as the American Convention sets forth in its preamble, "the ideal of free men enjoying freedom from fear and want can be achieved only if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as his civil and political rights."

In the report's conclusions, the Commission finds that political intolerance; the lack of independence of the branches of the State in dealing with the executive; constraints on freedom of expression and the right to protest peaceably; the existence of a climate hostile to the free exercise of dissenting political participation and to monitoring activities on the part of human rights organizations; citizen insecurity; violent acts perpetrated against persons deprived of their liberty, trade union members, women, and campesinos; and, above all, the prevailing impunity affecting cases of human rights violations are factors that contribute to the weakening of the rule of law and democracy in Venezuela and that have resulted in serious restrictions to the full enjoyment of the human rights guaranteed in the American Convention on Human Rights.

The IACHR believes that the State must increase its efforts to combat these challenges and achieve better and more effective protection of the rights guaranteed in the American Convention on Human Rights.

The IACHR prepared this report without having been able to conduct an observation visit to Venezuela, due the government's refusal to grant its consent. The Commission's last visit to Venezuela took place in May 2002. The observations made during that visit were reflected in the report the IACHR published in December 2003. Since then, the Commission has taken multiple steps to seek the Stateâ??s permission to conduct an observation visit. The fact that the State to date has refused to allow the IACHR to visit not only undermines the powers assigned to the Commission as the principal body of the OAS for the promotion and protection of human rights, but also seriously weakens the collective protection system created by the Organizationâ??s Member States.

In the report, the Commission analyzes the evolution of human rights in Venezuela based on the information it has received through its various protection mechanisms. It also bases its analysis on information submitted by the State of Venezuela in response to requests made by the Commission.

The Inter-American Commission reiterates its offer to work with the government, and with Venezuelan society as a whole, to effectively comply with the recommendations contained in its report and thereby contribute to strengthening the defense and protection of human rights within a democratic context in Venezuela.

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who act in a personal capacity, without representing a particular country, and who are elected by the OAS General Assembly.

Posted February 24, 2010 by AFP

Claudia Larissa Brizuela, daughter of FNRP activist, assassinated

A well-known activist with the Resistance Front against the Coup of June 28 in Honduras, Claudia Brizuela, was shot at and assassinated today, Wednesday, February 24, in San Pedro Sula, north of country, this group denounced.

"Today at 2:00 pm, unidentified people came to the Celeo Gonzales neighborhood, north of the city, knocked on Claudia Larissa Brizuela's (36 years old) door and shot her several times, killing her immediately," said a communique of the National Resistance Popular Front, as it goes by its new name.

Brizuela was Pedro Brizuela's daughter, ex-union member and one of the oldest militants with the Honduran Communist Party. Nowadays, he works with the Unified Democratic Party (UD) and is a columnist with La Prensa newspaper.

"Pedro has manifested that the action was a message to him and members of the Front, and that it was a cowardly crime that shows the systematic aggression of terrorist groups and escalation of criminality taking place with the consent of the government," said the communique.

He declared that this was part of a "systematic and selective aggression against members of the National Front of Resistance," and those who opposed the coup against Manuel Zelaya, but continue their fight for a Constituent National Assembly, the foundation of the republic but more importantly, a new constitution.

Posted February 14, 2010 by COHA Research Fellow Alexandra Deprez

Climate Migration in Latin America: A Future 'Flood of Refugees' to the North?

This Council on Hemispheric Affairs research paper, by COHA Research Fellow Alexandra Deprez, has been under preparation for a year. In it, she brilliantly synthesizes current developments regarding environmentally-driven human migration -and more specifically, migration caused by the environmental manifestations of anthropogenic climate change- which are capable of exposing their potential harmful effects in Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean. Although this region has received far less media attention and academic focus than Western Africa, South East Asia or the Pacific Islands, it certainly houses the climate and non-climate factors that could cause mass human displacement as a result of a strategy threat to the safety and welfare of a strategic threat to the safety and welfare of affected areas of sizable parts of the world.

The first section introduces the concept of environmentally-induced migration, expounding upon the current state of the debate surrounding it and the challenges it faces. This is followed by an examination of different climate processes and natural disasters as drivers of migration in Latin America. It also addresses non-climate factors such as poor governance, poverty, overpopulation, and unequal land distribution that can compound these migratory pressures.

The second section opens with a case study of Mexico, a country several reports have identified as a potential hotspot for environmentally-induced migration in Latin America, due to the confluence of climate and non-climate migration factors it houses. The relevance of this study is also increased due to Mexico's position as the largest immigration feeder to the United States. The segment goes on to discuss larger developmental impacts of environmentally-induced migration in Latin America -such as the effects on regions of origin and destination, the health and security issues migrants face, and the debate between environment, migration and national security factors- before ending with a speculation of which potential actions the United States might eventually take to address what could be a looming problem.

PART 1: Environmentally Induced Migration in Latin America and Beyond;

Climate and Non Climate Drivers of Migration in Latin America

Typhoon Morakot, the unusually strong tropical storm that hit South East Asia in mid-August 2009, displacing more than 1.5 million people in China alone, is only one of the most recent natural disasters that raise questions about environmental change and its link to migration. This link has increasingly attracted attention over the past few years, in particular since 2007, when the 4th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report confirmed that human migration would be one of the most important consequences of anthropogenic climate change. The manifestations of environmental change derived from human activities notably include sea level rise (SLR), intensified drought or rainfall, and the increasing attracted recurrence and strength of natural hazards such as hurricanes.1 Although estimates vary widely and their reliability are questioned by migration experts, the frequently quoted figure of 200 million environmental displacees by 2050 testifies to this phenomenon's looming importance. The developmental charity, Christian Aid, has increased its figure of estimated victims to a catastrophic 1 billion by mid-century.2

Policy and non-profit actors' increasing awareness of environmentally-induced migration coincides with recent scientific confirmations that not only is anthropogenic climate change bound to occur no matter what mitigation steps are taken, but moreover it will prove more drastic than previously predicted.3 A paradigm shift in the policy response to climate change -from an exclusive focus on its prevention to a greater importance given to adaptation strategies, which may, inevitably, include migration itself- is a necessary consequence to this state of affairs.

Despite the recent spike of interest in the past few years, human populations have long employed environmentally-induced migration as a coping strategy - with studies indicating that it was commonplace in ancient societies of Egypt and Mesopotamia.4 Although the frequently used term 'environmental refugee' was first coined more than three decades ago,5 international organizations and scholars have still not reached a consensus on how to define those populations who migrate by choice or necessity due to environmental modifications in their regions of origin. Divergent expressions such as "environmentally induced migrant,"6 "environmentally displaced person,"7 "climate refugee,"8 or "climate migrant"9 populate international migration reports and journal articles. Most definitions place particular emphasis on those environmental processes and events that may arise or are intensified due to anthropogenic climate change, while broader terms also tend to take into account environmental modifications such as earthquakes, which are less directly related to human activity. In his seminal 1985 definition, Professor Essam el Hinnawi includes case specific human events that may have an impact on the environment - such as large-scale development projects, industrial accidents, and conflicts. He describes environmental refugees as:

"Those people who have been forced to leave their traditional habitat, temporarily or permanently, because of a marked environmental disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardized their existence and/or seriously affected the quality of their life."10

Although el Hinnawi's definition would designate Haitian victims of the January 12, 2010 earthquake as potential environmental refugees, the Haiti case deserves to be addressed in literature exclusively devoted to it. This COHA research memorandum instead will adopt a narrower definition of environmentally induced migration, emphasizing those environmental events and processes which have been linked to anthropomorphic climate change, as well as natural and man-induced land degradation, which holds a particular historic importance in Latin America.

As manifested by the lack of a universal definition and the large variation between predictions, the debate over environmental change (and more particularly climate change) and migration is still at an embryonic phase, riddled with complexities, unknowns, and diverse actors that have yet to work in a more interdisciplinary, cooperative fashion.11 Predictions of extensive migration may have been publicized by environmental scientists like Norman Myers, with the intention of raising awareness and promoting action against climate change, as well as by human rights organizations that jumped at the opportunity to advocate protection for these potential new victims.12 However, these large-scale ominous predictions have also alarmed Western policymakers that a new "flood of refugees"13 would add to the migratory and asylum pressures their countries already face and have been seeking to manage and contain. Reports on different aspects of environmentally induced migration that have been prolifically produced over the past few years by international organisms such as the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), further demonstrate the heightened importance recently placed upon these issues.

Nonetheless, the recent hype surrounding climate migration may seem disproportionate to the limited amount of visible victims, particularly in light of the sometimes-sparse attention given to many other issues at the forefront of the international migration and refugee organisms' agendas.14 Although the present number of individuals who fall directly into the category of 'climate' migrants or refugees15 might be dwarfed by the large number of international migrants, the UNHCR estimated that in 2002, 24 million individuals around the world were displaced due to natural disasters,16 a figure nearly double that of the current amount of refugees, estimated above 15 million.17 This fact attests to the veritable potential that anthropogenic climate change has in inducing large-scale population displacements, while the numerous legal, developmental and humanitarian consequences of these potential movements underscore the issue's importance and the urgent attention which it merits.

But what are the implications for Latin America?

Specialists and scholars have determined that environmentally induced migration initially will take place in developing regions around the globe, with South-East Asia, West Africa and low-lying islands being particularly at risk.18 Even though the impact climate change may have on migration in Latin America is rarely mentioned and has yet to be exclusively studied in depth, this region bears a combination of factors that may converge to give rise to 'hot spots' for mass population movements. Indeed, not only is it host to a number of environmental processes and events that will most likely be intensified and accelerated due to anthropogenic climate change, but it also possesses conditions such as poverty and an unequal geographical distribution of the population that heighten their vulnerability to these effects, thus compounding the migratory potential.

Predictions of environmentally-induced migration concur that the majority of cases will occur within the same state or region. But, with such well-established migration channels between most Latin American countries and the United States, it is plausible that the manifestations of climate change may have an increasingly stronger impact on South-North human flows in the Western hemisphere. Developed nations such as the United States hold a responsibility vis-à-vis the anthropogenic climate change their industrial activities helped engender, as well as the economic conditions that may have contributed to perpetuate an unequal geographical distribution of the population in Latin America. However, the United States' present migration policy does not give significant consideration to environmental factors, and this is clearly not likely to change in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, this COHA memorandum seeks to raise awareness of an issue that Western policymakers -and particularly North American policymakers- might one day not have the luxury to continue to ignore.

The current state of the debate over environmentally induced migration

The first and basic point of contention in this debate is how to characterize those affected by environmental change: are they migrants or refugees? The expression 'environmental refugees' was first used in the 1970s as a way to depoliticize the displacement of populations within their own country -due, for example, to famines or droughts- prior to the introduction of the term Internally Displaced Person (IDP) in 1998.19 Today, some human rights organizations have reclaimed it as a way to point to the urgency of addressing the issue and providing aid to those mobilized by environmental change. However, it has encountered strong opposition from practically all other actors involved in the debate.

Roger Zetter, the director of the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC) at Oxford University, notes that the use of 'refugee' here is problematic, "not least for its conceptual inadequacy in interpreting the complex structural causes and consequences of flight."20 It is also legally incorrect, as 'environmental persecution' - to term it that way - is not part of the 5 causes of persecution included in the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

Using the expression 'environmental refugee' may also strongly undermine the scale of the problem at hand as it only refers to those forced to leave their country, thus failing to include the numerous individuals affected by climate change who either have been displaced within their own country or who choose to migrate abroad.21 Western governments are certainly not keen to expand the UN's definition, for fear that this would exponentially raise the number of asylum applicants to their countries, while refugee specialists oppose the inclusion of the environment as a cause of persecution, predicting it would place unnecessary stress on already strained resources devoted to those fleeing their countries from racial, religious, gender, membership of a particular social group, or political discrimination.22

Other terms have been proposed, but with little overall success, and the UN is still in the process of agreeing on a "phraseology to describe the phenomenon."23 'Environmental migrant' raises opposition due to its negative implication that those people who are moving are doing so solely out of their own will, while more conciliatory terms, such as 'environmentally displaced person' may be criticized by some for being too broad to be of any use. In particular, RSC's report favored the tripartite definition proposed by Fabrice Renaud - an academic official at the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) - composed of "environmentally motivated migrants," "environmentally forced migrants," and "environmental refugees."24 What is certain is that no matter what designation is used, until it is given legal authority, individuals currently displaced by natural disasters and environmental degradation, as well as the future victims of 'climate migration' will continue to "fall through the cracks" of international protection and aid distribution.25

The second argument centers on the validity of environmentally-induced migration as a phenomenon. Some scholars have gone as far as to affirm that there is no such thing as environmentally-induced migration and that all migration is necessarily motivated by other reasons. Nonetheless, the description of human displacement presented by Stephen Castles - director of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford - as comprising "complex patterns of multiple causality, in which natural and environmental factors are closely linked to economic, social, and political ones,"26 seems to embody the emphasis that has been placed on multi-causality in this ongoing debate. Although there may be relatively limited instances in which environmental change can be seen as the only factor of human displacement - such as when people are forced to leave their homes due to a natural disaster - it is most certainly already influencing an ever larger number of migration cases, and has the potential to induce further unprecedented migration in decades to come.

However, determining the degree of environmental factors in migratory movements, and separating it from other factors, has proven challenging. This difficulty, as well as the lack of a formal definition of the phenomenon that would help delineate which causes would be permissibly included in data collection and future predictions, only hint at the problems inherent in undertaking these measuring processes. Another complication is the lack of reliable and current figures, which must be placed in context with the current situation of data collection in migratory flows at large. Unlike with the populations defined as refugees, for whom the UNHCR produces annual figures, precise data on the extent of international migration worldwide is much more complicated to compile.

According to Hiroyuki Tanaka, research assistant at the Washington DC-based Migration Policy Institute, "many industrialized economies don't collect data on immigration, and those that do, collect data in different ways and apply different definitions for 'immigrant.' Reliable comparative data is very hard to come across, given the limited government data we have access to."27 The fact that up to 50 percent of migration may be irregular (term preferred to 'illegal' by migration specialists) further complicates measurement intents.28 Internal displacements of populations remain even less documented, as many countries either do not want to publish these figures or simply lack the capacity to collect them.29

Additional difficulties have also been encountered by attempts to predict the future impact of climate change on migration. The areas - and consequently the populations - at risk vary widely depending on which climate models are used, and there is great uncertainty as to which model will most accurately represent future reality.30 There has also been a tendency to directly equate the number of those populations who will be affected to those who will migrate; this clearly does not take into account the extensive amount of other adaptive measures those populations may instead choose to take.31 However, despite widely varying in number, recent predictions seem to concur that future environmentally induced migration will primarily take place internally, in developing countries, and be mostly temporal in nature.

Better collection of data and the increased accuracy of future predictions are very important to appropriately address environmentally induced migration. This has been rightfully sensed by agencies such as the IOM, who in 2008 released a 100-page report on ways to improve those methodologies currently used.32 However, over the past few years there has been a general shift from a focus on global numerical predictions toward a more empirically based approach. This approach notably emphasizes the analysis, mapping, and monitoring of migration 'hotspots,' located at areas of convergence between environmental and non-environmental migration drivers. Although still approximate at best, the RSC states that, "a focused mapping program, which could be conducted by national agencies, is the key to more accurate prediction of the nature, scale and time-scale of environmentally-induced migration crises in the making, and how these might be mitigated."33

Climate processes and natural disasters as drivers of migration in Latin America: drought, sea level rise, melting glaciers and hurricanes

Anthropogenic climate change will in part predictably manifest itself discretely, through an intensification of environmental processes such as drought, sea level rise and the melting of glaciers. Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean, are not spared from any of these natural phenomena. Climate change will modify rain patterns geographically and temporally, inducing a shift in the start of rainy seasons as well as an increase of precipitation in some temperate areas, and a decrease in other regions, particularly in the tropics. This decline in rainfall may produce an intensification of aridity and a more recurrent drought with a capacity to negatively impact crop yields.34

The exact impact of severe drought on migration has not yet been satisfactorily determined. Sabine Perch-Nielsen, Michèle Bättig and Dieter Imboden, who undertook an in-depth analysis of the link between different climate processes and human displacement, explain that drought is the "most complex and least understood natural hazard," and that there are a number of adaptive measures households might take before recurring to migration.35

Notwithstanding, new research suggests that the likelihood of migration as an adaptive measure is higher in response to certain selective environmental phenomena, such as droughts. In 2005, the UN's Millennium Ecosystem Assessment concluded that the third of the global population that lives in areas already suffering from aridity is most vulnerable to the effects of increased drought.36 Indeed, empirical examples indicate that out-migration is already occurring in some regions affected by it. Northern Mexico, where 60 percent of arid or semi-arid land suffers from erosion, has over the past few decades seen a decrease in precipitation that has been projected to steadily worsen.37 The United Nations University's (UNU) influential June 2009 report Control, Adapt or Flee: How to Face Environmental Migration stated, "based on Mexican Government's data, approximately 900,000 people left arid and semi-arid areas every year [since the mid 1990s] in part because of their inability to make a living from the land due to excessively dry conditions and soil erosion."38 Another salient example of the effect of drought on migration in Latin America may be found in Northeastern Brazil. In this primarily agricultural region, spikes in out-migration to the country's southern regions have been observed following decreases in crop yields during years that suffered from severe droughts.39

Another environmental process that will be intensified by anthropogenic climate change is sea level rise (SLR); differing streams of predictions have posited a change of 50 cm to 1.5 meters by the end of the 21st century. It has been widely assumed to be the 'climate-process' with the strongest and most direct push effect on migration. In their Climatic Change article, Perch-Nielsen, Bättig, and Imboden agreed that although the current amount of information available is insufficient to reach a fairly accurate prediction, "the potential extent of migration due to sea level rise is large."40 Even though the greatest impact is sure to be felt in the very densely populated coasts of South East Asia, media coverage has been almost exclusively been placed upon the fate of low-lying islands in the Pacific Ocean. One such island is Tuvalu, where, due to fears of SLR, almost 30 percent of the population has already migrated to New Zealand.41

Although drawing practically no press coverage, several Caribbean islands are also at risk of being partially or completely submerged.42 In absolute terms, the number of potential victims of SLR in the Caribbean may pale in comparison to that in South East Asia. However, as more than 50 percent of the islands' inhabitants live less than 1.5 km inland from the coast, the relative impact of SLR on the Caribbean population has the potential to be strongly felt.43 But specific predictions researching the future of the SLR in this region - as well as on most of the coastlines of Latin America - and its impact on migration up to now are sparse. The European Commission's Environmental Change and Forced Migration Scenarios (EACH-FOR) Project, which has started to map the regions most likely to be affected, has currently undertaken only one case study in the this region - on the island of Hispaniola - with an exclusive focus on deforestation.44

The melting of glaciers is a third process that has been taking place since the industrial revolution, and due to the ever increasing concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it will continue to occur at an accelerated pace. In South America, this translates into concerns about how the Andes Mountain range may now be seeing a reduction of water availability for agricultural and personal consumption, as well as an increased risk of fires during the dry season,45 and a change in rain patterns, all of which could provoke greater flooding during the rainy season.46

The Argentine EACH-FOR case study, which partially focuses on the pre-Andean regions of Patagonia and Cuyo, remarked that while a few years ago the two regions were still the sites of incoming migration, they have now started to experience emigration flows linked to justified environmental fears.47 Reduction of water availability is of particular relevance and concern in this region, as it may place even greater economic pressures on the poorer sectors of society, who already have been strongly affected by the wave of provocative water privatizations which have swept over the continent during the past twenty years.48 In short, these economic pressures are likely to translate into stronger migratory impulses.

Climate change is also being manifested through the intensification and increased recurrence of certain natural hazards. Natural disasters - those natural acts of devastation that have intersected infrastructure and human settlements - reportedly have been on the rise over the past decades.49 From 1980 to 2000, inhabitants of developing countries accounted for more than 95 percent of all of those who lost their houses in natural disasters.50 The extremely disproportionate impact that these events have had on the world's developing regions may be explained by the much higher vulnerability they face in comparison to Western nations. Not only are the tropics -where most of the developing regions are located - at higher risk of experiencing natural hazards, but a combination of political, economic and social factors lower their populations' resiliency and capacity to respond effectively to these disasters.

Although examples of lack of risk preparation and disaster response can be found in industrialized nations (Hurricane Katrina comes most quickly to mind), these characteristics are significantly more common and recurrent in developing countries. Undeniably, an environmental event of the same scale will have a higher humanitarian cost - and consequently a potential damaging migratory impact - in the latter. The situation of disaster prevention and relief in Central America, where hundreds of thousands of people are periodically left homeless during the hurricane season, may serve as an illustration of the normally low capacity of response present in areas of Latin America. Costa Rica's disaster response plan, which offered an only somewhat acceptable response to the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that hit its Central Valley in January 2009, is indeed considered the best in the region.51 Unacceptable delays and insufficient responses, such as those given by ex-president Manuel Zelaya when he declared a state of emergency three weeks after Honduras was shaken by a 7.1 earthquake in June 2009, are much more common in the isthmus. Of course, these examples are now slighted by the incomparable catastrophe the poorest country in the Western hemisphere has been suffering following the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti's capital on January 12, 2010, incurring a death toll of over 200,00052 and the damage or destruction of almost 300,000 residences and commercial buildings.53

An article published in the August 2009 issue of the scientific journal Nature strongly supported the theory that as the oceans' temperature continues to rise due to climate change, tropical storms will become increasingly recurrent and potent.54 This trend was particularly noted in the Caribbean basin, the region most strongly affected by hurricanes in the Western hemisphere. Studies of the region's past hurricanes and their responses, particularly in Mexico, indicate that the vast majority of the populations who suffered from the events - and thus those who might have been displaced - intended to remain in their homeland or to return as soon as possible. Although predictions posit that migration will continue to be mostly temporal and internal, it is reasonable to presume that as hurricanes hit the Caribbean with more frequency and strength, households that have repeatedly suffered from these events may increasingly consider permanent or international migration as an adaptation strategy.55 The latter option may be facilitated by the existence of strong migration ties and networks between Latin American countries and the U.S.

Non-climate drivers and the question of unequal land distribution in Latin America

The largest amount of climate migration is most likely to be concentrated in areas where 'non-environmental' factors - such as poor governance, political persecution, population pressures, and poverty - are already present and exercise migratory pressures on the local populations. The authors of the RSC's report assimilate the conjunction of poor governance or political persecution and environmental migration to Amartya Sen's famous adage that famines are not bound to occur in a democracy.56 Similarly, environmental changes should not induce mass migrations in a country that has an accountable and responsive government.

At the interface of climate and non-climate drivers, UNU's June 2009 report In Search of Shelter asserts that the loss of 'ecosystem services' such as arable soil, clean air, and water, will be the principal cause of mass environmental migration.57 Specialists argue that as climate change - in conjunction with unsustainable human usages and population pressures - starts to overwhelm an ecosystem, it will progressively become less capable to provide 'its services.'58 Those populations mostly dependent on these 'services' for their livelihood - such as farmers, who could suffer from reductions in crop yield s- will be harshly affected by these changes, making them more likely to choose migration or be obligated to resort to it as an ultimate adaptive option.59

General economic pressures, as well as a lack of natural hazard risk assessments and zoning laws, may push those less fortunate populations onto marginal areas, as happened in the case of Typhoon Marakot, and its particularly strong effect on Taiwan's rural poor. Incidentally, these marginal lands may be at greater risk of suffering from natural hazards as floods or mudslides. But, in a region such as Latin America where, in addition to current economic forces, historical factors have also fatefully contributed to these displacements, it becomes necessary to analyze and include the population's geographical distribution in this region's future debate of environmentally-prompted - and more specifically - climate migration.

In his article Roots of Flight: Environmental Refugees in Latin America, York University Professor Andil Gosine explains the processes that forced indigenous populations and small farmers from the rich arable valleys onto marginal arid or mountainous lands, often putting such areas at greater risk of suffering from climate processes or events.60 The arrival of European 'Conquistadores' to Latin America marked the installation of a very unequal land tenure system, visible to this day in countries such as Nicaragua, where in 2003 less than 25 percent of the rural population owned almost 85 percent of the country's land.61 The capitalist systems established in many Latin American countries in the 19th century, exerted economic pressures on the region to produce monocultures for export. According to Gosine, this trend, that was further emphasized by the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) infamous Structural Adjustment Plans of the 1960s - which strongly supported the production of cash crops - has served to perpetuate until the present day an unequal geographical distribution of the population.62

Relegated to less productive lands, small farmers in Latin America face undeniable economic hardships as their produce customarily has to compete against strongly subsidized American and European agricultural goods. The migratory pressures already in place due to these hardships will most likely be cemented by climate change, and the inequality in land distribution only further underscores the disproportionate influence it is bound to have on the poorer sectors of Latin American society.

Posted February 14, 2010 By Bill Van Auken

Honduras: The making of a death squad democracy

With the restoration of diplomatic relations and the resumption of aid and credits from the world's major governments and financial institutions, Honduras is being welcomed back into the fold of "democratic" nations, even as the organizers of last year's coup remain at their posts and death squad murders continue.

The Obama administration is leading the way in affirming that an election held last November under state-of-siege rule and the inauguration of Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo as president late last month have washed away all the sins of the past. For Washington, the June 28 military overthrow of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, along with the brutal repression that followed, is a dead letter.

Earlier this month, Honduran Minister of Security Oscar Ãlvarez met with US Ambassador Hugo Llorens to sign a bilateral agreement that will resume the direct flow of US military aid to the armed forces and police of the Central American country. In July 2009, the Obama administration withheld $16.5 million in military aid to the coup regime headed by Roberto Micheletti as one of the few and inconsequential sanctions imposed in response to Zelaya's overthrow.

This week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Lobo to announce that civilian aid programs would also resume shortly and to praise him for working to strengthen the "unity of Honduran society."

High-level Spanish delegations have also flown to Tegucigalpa, and French officials have indicated that relations with Paris will soon be resumed. The Organization of American States is preparing to consider readmitting Honduras, which was expelled from the OAS following the coup.

Finally, the World Bank announced on Wednesday that it is restoring loans that had been frozen in the aftermath of the coup, increasing the amount on offer from $270 million to $390 million, assuring the further indebtedness of the impoverished country and a new round of austerity measures and attacks on the already miserable living standards of Honduran workers.

The supposedly democratic transformation that has made all of this possible took place on January 27, with the inauguration of right-wing National Party candidate Lobo, a product, like Zelaya, of the land-owning oligarchy. In an earlier stage of his career, Lobo was a supporter of Stalinism, active in the Honduran Communist Party and educated at Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.

In his more recent political incarnation he is an advocate of the death penalty and economic development based on free trade and maquildaora sweatshops. He is also a loyal ally of Washington.

The assumption of power by Lobo in what amounts to the legitimization of the June 28 coup was prepared through protracted political maneuvers and negotiations involving the Obama administration, Zelaya, the coup regime, and sections of the Latin American bourgeoisie.

From the outset of this process, Zelaya counted on Barack Obama to restore him to the presidential palace. He, like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, accepted Obama's talk about a new era of "mutual respect" between the US and Latin America as good coin. In reality, this rhetoric was merely window dressing for a more aggressive policy of US imperialism in the region, which included the covert backing of the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies for the Honduran coup.

US aims were indicated recently in the testimony of Obama's national intelligence director, Dennis Blair, before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Blair accused Venezuela's Chavez of forging an "anti-US alliance" in Latin America and seeking to "undermine moderate, pro-US governments." He noted with satisfaction, however, that Chavez's influence "may have peaked," pointing out that "recently" Honduras had removed from that alliance.

Zelaya agreed to the parameters laid down by Washington in negotiations orchestrated by its principal agent in Central America, Costa Rican President Ã?scar Arias. These included his returning to office as a figurehead president in a government of "national reconciliation" dominated by the right-wing politicians and military officers who overthrew him.

In the end, the coup's organizers were not interested in such a resolution. With the support of US officials, they devised another "compromise" that conditioned Zelaya's reinstatement on a vote of the congress and the recommendation of the high court, both of which had backed the coup. Predictably, both institutions rubberstamped the decision of the Honduran oligarchy not to allow Zelaya back in office, even for a day.

A day before the inauguration, all accounts were settled, with the supreme court ruling that the military commanders who carried out the coup merely acted to preserve the peace and with Zelaya leaving the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, where he had been holed up for more than four months, for a second exile, this time in the Dominican Republic.

Just as Zelaya subordinated his attempt to return to office to decisions made in Washington, so the leaders of the mass movement that emerged to challenge the coup subordinated the struggle undertaken by Honduran workers, peasants and youth to Zelaya and the futile quest for "dialogue" with the leaders of the coup regime.

Despite the heroism of Honduran working people in the face of vicious repression, the bankrupt perspective of the leaders of the National Front of Resistance led this powerful movement into a political blind alley, leaving the masses unprepared to confront Zelaya's capitulation and the "democratic" charade through which the coup regime has consolidated its power under Lobo.

Now, César Ham, the leader of the "left" Democratic Unification Party, which was counted as Zelaya's closest political supporter, has agreed to join the Lobo government, allowing it to posture as a regime of "national unity and reconciliation."

While Washington and other governments are praising Lobo's democratic credentials, the repression continues unabated, with workers, journalists and others who resisted the coup facing kidnappings, torture and assassinations.

In one recent case, Vanesa Yaneth Zepeda, a 29-year-old nurse and mother of three who was active in the anti-coup demonstrations, disappeared on February 2. Her lifeless body was thrown out of a car in Tegucigalpa two days later.

The "democratic" consolidation of the coup in Honduras represents a stark warning to working people across Latin America and internationally. Under conditions of the deepening global economic crisis, the ruling elites throughout the capitalist world are prepared to dispense with all democratic forms of rule in order to carry out lethal violence against any challenge to their interests.

The Honduran events have also once again demonstrated that workers in Latin America cannot advance their struggle by means of political subordination to supposedly "left" and nationalist representatives of the bourgeoisie, such as Zelaya and Chavez. Those calling themselves "socialists" who promote illusions in these figures are disarming the working class and preparing even greater defeats. The only way forward for Latin American workers is to forge their political independence from all sections of the ruling elites and unite in a common struggle for workers' governments and the socialist transformation of the entire hemisphere.

Posted February 10, 2010 By German-Foreign-Policy.com

The Great Powers' Priorities

Berlin is elaborating concepts for major western powers to take long-term control over Haiti. The German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) writes in a recent strategy paper, that the great powers are obviously pursuing the objective "of developing Haiti in accordance to their own priorities," but "the appropriate form" must "still be found". The SWP is examining four different versions, ranging from the establishment of a ?development agency" in Haiti, to placing Haiti under UN control, a model, resembling the former Kosovo occupation administration. This model is generally being discussed "in cases of failing states", according to SWP. With the deployment of its Gendarmerie Force, the EU is emphasizing its claim on participating in having control over Haiti. The activities of European police and military units - including the deployment of German repressive forces - are therefore expanding in the Caribbean and in Latin American costal regions. These measures assure European presence in the US backyard, particularly in the close vicinity of recalcitrant countries like Venezuela and Cuba.

Renewed Interference

The Berlin government think tank, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) has elaborated concepts in a recent strategy paper, aimed at long-term control over Haiti by the major western powers. Haiti, a country that was submitted to direct interference from Europe and the USA, including military interventions and protectorate rule for the past 200 years is suffering "under the symptoms of a failing state,"[1] according to the strategy paper. The SWP asserts that "it is difficult to imagine that the most urgent needs of the population (?) could be satisfied without renewed interference ("taking over of responsibility") of the western powers ("international community"). But "the appropriate form" for an external intervention in Haiti "has to still be found". The paper is examining four versions.

Ad-hoc-Group

The author of the SWP strategy paper considers it problematic to think that "western activities in Haiti could be placed under the auspices of the existing UN "mission" MINUSTAH. After all, MINUSTAH was established in 2004 with the justification that Haiti is posing a threat to peace (Chapter 7 of the UN Charta). It is "quite difficult" to sustain this assertion after the earthquake, writes the SWP. According to the paper, it would not be optimal to turn Haiti into an "international protectorate" "without special authorization under international law" - meaning an unauthorized occupation on the basis of a voluntary or forced demand by the government in Port-au-Prince. It is "questionable, if Haiti (?) is the appropriate terrain to introduce a model, which impinges upon basic questions of legitimacy."[2] The "establishment of a development agency" under UN auspices "or ad hoc group of member states" seems the most practical version, writes the author. "In cooperation" with the elected Haitian government, this agency should "shape the reconstruction."

Colony

The SWP is giving special attention to the idea of reviving the system of UN "trust territories" in accordance with Chapter XII of the UN Charta. This idea is being particularly discussed in the USA concerning in general "the case of failing states", writes the SWP. Former UN "trust territories" were colonies, which were to receive their sovereignty, a process that in some cases took dozens of years. Applying this model to Haiti, could be "attractive to key actors of the international community", particularly if the experiences gained with the occupation administration in Kosovo are taken into consideration and if Haiti' administration is adapted to this model, writes the author of the strategy paper. But he cautions that the "option of an international interim administration" is not applicable "to UN member states, such as Haiti."[3]

Military Bases

No matter what decision will be taken on western interference in Haiti, Germany - according to the SWP - "can participate just as effectively as it does in the technical aid for the reconstruction."[4] In the meantime, the EU has emphasized its claim to participate by deploying its Gendarmerie Force to this Caribbean country. The activities of the police and military units of European countries are therefore being expanded in the Caribbean and costal regions of Latin America with the participation of Germany - as opposed to the EU Gendarmerie Force. Paris maintains military bases in its colony French Guyana, where - according to intelligence service experts - its intelligence service Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, DGSE maintains listening posts in cooperation with the German intelligence service BND.[5] In French Guyana the German combat unit KSK is also training in jungle warfare. In Martinique, another French colony, Paris established a naval base (Fort Saint Louis) that the German navy used during a naval exercise last year. London is maintaining the "British Army Training Support Unit Belize" in its former cColony Belize, where its "International Jungle Patrol Course" also serves the KSK for its training. And since 2006, the German Bundeswehr is also training officers from Belize.

Tensions

The deployment of European repressive forces to the region does not only secure a long-term presence in the backyard of the US. It is also sending a signal to countries like Venezuela and Cuba, which are resisting US-European hegemony. When in 2009 the deployment and training unit of the German Navy entered the Columbian harbor Cartagena de Indias, it was perceived as a clear signal to Venezuela because of serious tensions between Columbia and Venezuela. German and Columbian battle ships subsequently participated in a multinational naval exercise. Den Haag has a naval base ("Hato Navy Air Station") on the Dutch Antilles, a Dutch colony 60 kilometers off the coast of Venezuela, used by the USA as a Forward Operating Location. The serious tensions between Venezuela and its allies on the one hand and the USA and Columbia show the significance of European military bases and troops in the region. This is also true for the new US-European presence in Haiti. SWP is elaborating concepts for formalizing this presence: Haiti is only 60 kilometers form Cuba.

[1], [2], [3], [4] Günther Maihold: Haiti: Was kommt nach der Katastrophenhilfe? SWP-Aktuell 9, Januar 2010
[5] Udo Ulfkotte: Der Krieg im Dunkeln: Die wahre Macht der Geheimdienste, Frankfurt am Main 2006

Posted February 9, 2010 By Bill Van Auken

Haiti: hunger sparks growing protests

On Sunday, Haiti saw one of its largest protests since the January 12 earthquake, as four weeks after the disaster, frustration with continuing hunger and homelessness mount.

Thousands of demonstrators, most of them women, marched through the streets of Petionville, a Port-au-Prince suburb, denouncing the local mayor, Lydie Parent, for hoarding food for resale and not distributing it to the hungry.

A significant amount of food aid has been channeled into Haiti's informal markets, sold at elevated prices and clearly yielding a profit for some officials who are in charge of its distribution.

Congregating in front of the local municipal building, the demonstrators chanted "if the police shoot at us, we will burn everything," Reuters reported.

"I am hungry, I am dying of hunger," one of the marchers told the news agency. "Lydie Parent keeps the rice and doesn't give us anything. They never go distribute where we live."

Petionville, up the mountain from the capital, has traditionally been the preserve of Haiti's economic elite. Shanty towns sprung up around the walled mansions of the country's businessmen and politicians, however. Since January 12, one of the principal watering holes of the well-heeled, the Petionville Club, has been transformed into the capital's biggest homeless encampment, where more than 40,000 quake victims have sought refuge on the club's nine-hole golf course.

Sent in to police this yawning social divide are 360 US combat troops from the 82nd Airborne Division, who have set up camp around the club's swimming pool and restaurant.

Last Friday, former US President Bill Clinton was also met by protests upon his return to Haiti. Hundreds gathered outside the judicial police headquarters, the makeshift headquarters of the Haitian government, during Clinton's visit there with the country's President Réne Préval.

"Our children are burning in the sun. We have a right to tents. We have a right to shelter," one of the protesters, Mentor Natacha, 30, a mother of two, told Agence France Presse.

Clinton, who was named the United Nations special envoy to Haiti last May, was forced to acknowledge the failure of sufficient aid to reach the majority of the Haitian people nearly a month after the earthquake. "I'm sorry it's taken this long," he said. "I'm trying to get to what the bottlenecks are."

Clinton also visited the Gheskio medical clinic in Port-au-Prince, announcing the donation of various supplies by his foundation. However, the clinic's director, Jean William Pape, told AFP that the facility is overwhelmed and has not received adequate aid.

"It has been huge on us because in addition to providing the care to our HIV/AIDS patients, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, we have to take care of around 6,000 refugees," said Pape. "We don't have enough supplies. We don't have tents for them and the rainy season is coming and we live in a flood area."

According to press reports, barely 10,000 tents of the 200,000 requested by the Haitian government have arrived in the country. Clinton said that another 27,000 would come in the next week, still grossly inadequate to meet the massive need.

The ex-US president felt compelled to deny that he had been sent in as a de facto colonial governor of the devastated Caribbean nation. "What I don't want to be is the governor of Haiti," said Clinton. "I want to build the capacity of the country to chart its own course. They can trust me not to be a neocolonialist, I'm too old."

Whatever Clinton's personal role, his attempt at self-deprecating humor cannot hide the fact that Washington is playing precisely the role of a neocolonial power in Haiti. Within hours of the earthquake, the Pentagon launched an operation that has thus far seen the deployment of some 16,000 troops and the assumption of US military control over the country's airports and port facilities. US naval warships and Coast Guard vessels have imposed a blockade off Haiti's shores, ensuring that any of the earthquake's victims seeking to escape to the US will be swiftly repatriated.

Colonel Gregory Kane, the operations officer for US Task Force Haiti, said that US troops would remain in Haiti as long as necessary. "We are in Haiti as long as needed and are welcomed by the government of Haiti," he said.

Aid groups and government officials in Europe and Latin America have sharply questioned the US militarization of the response to the Haitian disaster. Many blame Washington's making the deployment of US troops?rather than the provision of desperately needed aid?the top priority in the first critical days following the earthquake for increasing the death toll.

The militarization of aid and obsession with security remain clearly in evidence nearly a month after the earthquake. This was reflected in a report by the AFP on food distributions over the weekend. "Surrounded by dozens of heavily-armed US soldiers, old ladies and even young men struggled under the burning tropical sun to carry away sacks of rice," the news agency reported. "In another part of the city a detachment of around a dozen Argentine troops, some enclosed in an armored personnel carrier equipped with a turret gun, escorted a small flat-bed truck laden with food to its destination."

For its part, the Haitian government has appeared largely powerless and has grown increasingly unpopular with the Haitian people. Graffiti reading "Down with Préval," the Haitian president, has begun appearing with increasing frequency on walls in the capital.

President Préval, who has been virtually unseen by the population since the quake hit, announced over the weekend, while meeting with officials from the neighboring Dominican Republic, that the estimate of the number of people killed in the earthquake has risen to a quarter of a million, while 250,000 homes have been destroyed and more than a million people are facing an urgent need for temporary shelter with the rainy season fast approaching.

Speaking with the media on Saturday, he urged the Haitian population to remain calm. "We understand the difficulties faced by the people who sleep outside, homeless, we understand the frustration about food and water distribution being difficult," he said. "But it is in discipline, in solidarity, in patience that we will be able to solve the problems that confront us."

The real class position of the Haitian regime was evident in an interview given by the country's Prime Minister to the Colombian daily País. "The ones who lost the most in Haiti on January 12 weren't the poor, it was what was left of the middle class," he said. "Because the poor didn't have houses before, and they still don't have houses. The middle class, which had stayed in Haiti, which had made some effort to build a house, a small business, lost everything."

The fact that the poor "didn't have houses" has been cited by relief organizations as a significant factor in the present crisis, in that they have no means of rebuilding and nowhere to go. According to the Catholic relief group Caritas International, 70 percent of those displaced by the earthquake in the capital did not own their own homes before the disaster struck.

More than half a million of these people have left Port-au-Prince, with the encouragement of the government, to return to rural areas from which many of the capital's poorer layers had migrated and where they still have relatives.

The reason that people had migrated to the capital in the first place, however, was that they could not sustain themselves through agriculture. Now these areas have seen a massive influx of hungry people for which there is little or no food. Relief supplies have yet to arrive in the rural areas, and there is growing fear that farmers will begin using their seed supplies for food, endangering next year's harvest and leaving even greater hunger.

Meanwhile, the Miami Herald reported Saturday that there is a new crisis with the emergency medical flights that bring severely injured Haitian children to US hospitals for treatment, and that once again it is costing lives.

Last month, the military suspended the flights after Florida Governor Charlie Crist sent a letter to the Obama administration questioning whether the federal government would assume responsibility for the costs being incurred at the state's hospitals, where most of the young Haitian victims had been brought.

After a growing public outcry over the suspension, the Obama administration agreed to foot the bill through the US Department of Health and Human Services.

But now, the department has imposed such stringent eligibility requirements for the medical flights that few patients qualify, and those who don't are dying in Haiti.

"They want paperwork. We don't have paperwork," Miami Children's Hospital Dr. William Muinos, who heads the pediatric unit of a field hospital in Port-au-Prince told the Herald. "They don't have passports. They don't have IDs. They don't have homes. They don't have anything."

The paper cited the case of a 15-year-old girl, Whitney Constant, who was told she would be taken to Florida for treatment, but then was stopped by the government requirements. Three days after she was to have been flown out, she contracted gangrene, forcing doctors to amputate the lower half of one leg and the foot of the other.

Another 14-year-old child died of a pulmonary embolism last Tuesday. Doctors said she would have survived had she been evacuated. "She was told she would leave," said Dr. Muinos. "Within 24 hours, that promise was denied."

"The Department of Health and Human Services lifted the embargo on flights but made the criteria so strict that you can't get anybody in," said Elizabeth Grieg, director of the field hospital. She told the Herald that since the flights resumed only nine of the hospitals' patients have been accepted, six of whom had been scheduled to go out before the military suspended them last month.

Posted February 5, 2010 by GREG GRANDIN

Muscling Latin America

In September Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, delivered on an electoral promise and refused to renew Washington's decade-old, rent-free lease on an air base outside the Pacific coast town of Manta, which for the past ten years has served as the Pentagon's main South American outpost. The eviction was a serious effort to fulfill the call of Ecuador's new Constitution to promote "universal disarmament" and oppose the "imposition" of military bases of "some states in the territory of others." It was also one of the most important victories for the global demilitarization movement, loosely organized around the International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases, since protests forced the US Navy to withdraw from Vieques, Puerto Rico, in 2003. Correa, though, couldn't resist an easy joke. "We'll renew the lease," he quipped, "if the US lets us set up a base in Miami."

Funny. Then Washington answered with a show of force: take away one, we'll grab seven. In late October the United States and Colombia signed an agreement granting the Pentagon use of seven military bases, along with an unlimited number of as yet unspecified "facilities and locations." They add to Washington's already considerable military presence in Colombia, as well as in Central America and the Caribbean.

Responding to criticism from South America on the Colombian deal, the White House insists it merely formalizes existing military cooperation between the two countries under Plan Colombia and will not increase the offensive capabilities of the US Southern Command (Southcom). The Pentagon says otherwise, writing in its 2009 budget request that it needed funds to upgrade one of the bases to conduct "full spectrum operations throughout South America" to counter, among other threats, "anti-U.S. governments" and to "expand expeditionary warfare capability." That ominous language, since scrubbed from the budget document, might be a case of hyping the threat to justify spending during austere times. But the Obama administration's decision to go forward with the bases does accelerate a dangerous trend in US hemispheric policy.

In recent years, Washington has experienced a fast erosion of its influence in South America, driven by the rise of Brazil, the region's left turn, the growing influence of China and Venezuela's use of oil revenue to promote a multipolar diplomacy. Broad social movements have challenged efforts by US- and Canadian-based companies to expand extractive industries like mining, biofuels, petroleum and logging. Last year in Peru, massive indigenous protests forced the repeal of laws aimed at opening large swaths of the Amazon to foreign timber, mining and oil corporations, and throughout the region similar activism continues to place Latin America in the vanguard of the anti-corporate and anti-militarist global democracy movement.

Such challenges to US authority have led the Council on Foreign Relations to pronounce the Monroe Doctrine "obsolete." But that doctrine, which for nearly two centuries has been used to justify intervention from Patagonia to the Rio Grande, has not expired so much as slimmed down, with Barack Obama's administration disappointing potential regional allies by continuing to promote a volatile mix of militarism and free-trade orthodoxy in a corridor running from Mexico to Colombia.

The anchor of this condensed Monroe Doctrine is Plan Colombia. Heading into the eleventh year of what was planned to phase out after five, Washington's multibillion-dollar military aid package has failed to stem the flow of illegal narcotics into the United States. More Andean coca was synthesized into cocaine in 2008 than in 1998, and the drug's retail price is significantly lower today, adjusted for inflation, than it was a decade ago.

But Plan Colombia is not really about drugs; it is the Latin American edition of GCOIN, or Global Counterinsurgency, the current term used by strategists to downplay the religious and ideological associations of George W. Bush's bungled "global war on terror" and focus on a more modest program of extending state rule over "lawless" or "ungoverned spaces," in GCOIN parlance.

Starting around 2006, with the occupation of Iraq going badly, Plan Colombia became the counterinsurgent marquee, celebrated by strategists as a successful application of the "clear, hold and build" sequence favored by theorists like Gen. David Petraeus. Its lessons have been incorporated into the curriculums of many US military colleges and cited by the Joint Chiefs of Staff as a model for Afghanistan. Not only did the Colombian military, with support from Washington, weaken the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), Latin America's oldest and strongest insurgency, but according to the Council on Foreign Relations, it secured a state presence in "many regions previously controlled by illegal armed groups, reestablishing elected governments, building and rebuilding public infrastructure, and affirming the rule of law." Plan Colombia, in other words, offered not just a road map to success but success itself. "Colombia is what Iraq should eventually look like," wrote Atlantic contributor Robert Kaplan, "in our best dreams."

Traditionally in most counterinsurgencies, the "clear" stage entails a plausibly deniable reliance on death-squad terror--think Operation Phoenix in Vietnam or the Mano Blanca in El Salvador. The Bush administration was in office by the time Plan Colombia became fully operational, and according to the Washington Post's Scott Wilson, it condoned the activities of right-wing paramilitaries, loosely organized as the United Self-Defense Forces, or AUC in Spanish. "The argument at the time, always made privately," Wilson writes, "was that the paramilitaries"--responsible for most of Colombia's political murders--"provided the force that the army did not yet have." This was followed by the "hold" phase, a massive paramilitary land grab. Fraud and force--"sell, or your widow will," goes many an opening bid--combined with indiscriminate fumigation, which poisoned farmlands, to turn millions of peasants into refugees. Paramilitaries, along with their narcotraficante allies, now control about 10 million acres, roughly half of the country's most fertile land.

After parts of the countryside had been pacified, it was time to "build" the state. Technically, the United States considers the AUC to be a terrorist organization, part of the narcoterrorist triptych, along with FARC and the narcos, that Southcom is pledged to fight. But Plan Colombia did not so much entail an assault on the paras--aside from the most recalcitrant and expendable--as create a venue through which, by defining public policy as perpetual war, they could become the state itself. Under the smokescreen of a government-brokered amnesty, condemned by national and international human rights groups for institutionalizing impunity, paras have taken control of hundreds of municipal governments, establishing what Colombian social scientist León Valencia calls "true local dictatorships," consolidating their property seizures and deepening their ties to narcos, landed elites and politicians. The country's sprawling intelligence apparatus is infiltrated by this death squad/narco combine, as is its judiciary and Congress, where more than forty deputies from the governing party are under investigation for ties to the AUC.

Plan Colombia, in other words, has financed the opposite of what is taking place in neighboring Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela, where progressive movements are fitfully trying to "refound" their societies along more inclusive lines. In place of the left's "participatory democracy," Colombian President Álvaro Uribe offers "democratic security," a social compact whereby those who submit to the new order are promised safe, even yuppified cities and secure highways, while oppositional civil society suffers intimidation and murder. Colombia remains the hands-down worst repressor in Latin America. More than 500 trade unionists have been executed since Uribe took office. In recent years 195 teachers have been assassinated, and not one arrest has been made for the killings. And the military stands accused of murdering more than 2,000 civilians and then dressing their bodies in guerrilla uniforms in order to prove progress against the FARC.

It also seems that many right-wing warriors are not cut out for the quiet life offered by the Paz Uribista. The Bogotá-based think tank Nuevo Arco Iris reports mini civil wars breaking out among "heirs of the AUC" for control of local spoils. Yet Plan Colombia continues to be hailed. Flying home from a recent Bogotá-hosted GCOIN conference, the former head of Southcom wrote on his blog that Colombia is a "must see" tourist spot, having "come a long, long way in controlling a deep-seated insurgency just over two hours flight from Miami--and we could learn a great deal from their success."

Seen in light of his escalation in Afghanistan, Obama's support for the Colombian base deal endorses the kind of elastic threat assessment that has turned the "long war" against radical Islam into a wide war where ultimate victory will be a world absent of crime--"counterinsurgen-?cies without end," as Andrew Bacevich recently put it.

Shortly after the fall of Baghdad, Washington tried to conscript all of Latin America in the fight. In October 2003 it pushed the Organization of American States to include corruption, undocumented migration, money laundering, natural and man-made disasters, AIDS, environmental degradation, poverty and computer hacking alongside terrorism and drugs as security threats. In 2004 an Army War College strategist proposed "exporting Plan Colombia" to all of Latin America, which Donald Rumsfeld tried to do later that year at a regional defense ministers meeting in Ecuador. He was rebuffed; countries like Chile and Brazil refuse to subordinate their militaries, as they did during the cold war, to US command.

So the United States retrenched, setting about to fight the wide war in a narrower place, creating a security corridor running from Colombia through Central America to Mexico. With a hodgepodge of treaties and projects, such as the International Law Enforcement Academy and the Merida Initiative, Obama is continuing the policies of his predecessors, spending millions to integrate the region's military, policy, intelligence and even, through Patriot Act-like legislation, judicial systems. This is best thought of as an effort to enlarge the radius of Plan Colombia to create a unified, supra-national counterinsurgent infrastructure. Since there is "fusion" among Latin American terrorists and criminals, goes a typical argument in a recent issue of the Pentagon's Joint Force Quarterly, "countering the threat will require fusion on our part."

At the same time, schemes like the Mesoamerican Integration and Development Project are using World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank financing to synchronize the highway, communication and energy networks of Mexico, Central America and Colombia, blending the North American and Central American free-trade treaties and, eventually, the pending Colombian Free Trade Agreement into a seamless whole. Thomas Shannon, Bush's top envoy to Latin America and Obama's ambassador to Brazil, called these initiatives "armoring NAFTA."

"Fusion" is a good word for this integration, since the melding of neoliberal economics and counterinsurgent diplomacy is explosive. One effect of Plan Colombia has been to diversify the violence and corruption endemic to the cocaine trade, with Central American and Mexican cartels and military factions taking over export of the drug to the United States. This cycle of violence is reinforced by the rapid spread of mining, hydroelectric, biofuel and petroleum operations, which wreak havoc on local ecosystems, poisoning land and water, and by the opening of national markets to US agroindustry, which destroys local economies. The ensuing displacement either creates the assorted criminal threats the wide war is waged to counter or provokes protest, which is dealt with by the avengers the wide war empowers.

Throughout Latin America, a new generation of community activists continues to advance the global democracy movement that was largely derailed in the United States by 9/11. They provide important leadership to US environmental, indigenous, religious and human rights organizations, working to develop a comprehensive and sustainable social-justice agenda. But in the Mexico-Colombia corridor, activists are confronting what might be called bio-paramilitarism, a revival of the old anticommunist death-squad/planter alliance, energized by the current intensification of extractive and agricultural industries. In Colombia, Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities fighting paras who have seized land to cultivate African palm for ethanol production have been evicted by mercenaries and the military [see Teo Ballvé, "The Dark Side of Plan Colombia," June 15, 2009]. From Panama to Mexico, rural protesters are likewise targeted. In the Salvadoran department of Cabañas, for instance, death squads have executed four leaders--three in December--who opposed the Vancouver-based Pacific Rim Mining Company's efforts to dig a gold mine in their community.

And in Honduras, human rights organizations say palm planters have recruited forty members of Colombia's AUC as private security following the June overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya. That coup was at least partly driven by Zelaya's alliance with liberation-theologian priests and other environmental activists protesting mining and biofuel-induced deforestation. Just a month before his overthrow, Zelaya--in response to an investigation that charged Goldcorp, another Vancouver-based company, with contaminating Honduras's Siria Valley--introduced a law that would have required community approval before new mining concessions were granted; it also banned open-pit mines and the use of cyanide and mercury. That legislation died with his ouster. Zelaya also tried to break the dependent relationship whereby the region exports oil to US refineries only to buy back gasoline and diesel at monopolistic prices; he joined Petrocaribe--the alliance that provides cheap Venezuelan oil to member countries--and signed a competitive contract with Conoco Phillips. This move earned him the ire of Exxon and Chevron, which dominate Central America's fuel market. Since the controversial November 29 presidential elections, Honduras has largely fallen off the media's radar, even as the pace of repression has accelerated. Since the State Department's recognition of that vote, about ten opposition leaders have been executed--roughly half of the number killed in the previous five months.

It didn't have to be this way. Latin America does not present a serious military danger. No country is trying to acquire a nuclear weapon or cut off access to vital resources. Venezuela continues to sell oil to the United States. Obama is popular in Latin America, and most governments, including those on the left, would have welcomed a demilitarized diplomacy that downplays terrorism and prioritizes reducing poverty and inequality--exactly the kind of "new multilateralism" Obama called for in his presidential campaign.

Yet because Latin America presents no real threat, there is no incentive to confront entrenched interests that oppose a modernization of hemispheric relations. "Obama," said a top-level Argentine diplomat despairingly, "has decided that Latin America isn't worth it. He gave it to the right."

The White House could have worked with the Organization of American States to restore democracy in Honduras. Instead, after months of mixed signals, Obama capitulated to Senate Republicans and endorsed a murderous regime. Washington could try to advance a new hemispheric economic policy, balancing Latin American calls for equity and development with corporate profits. But the Democratic Party remains Wall Street's party, and shortly after taking office Obama abandoned his pledge to renegotiate NAFTA. With Washington's blessing the IMF continues to push Latin American countries to liberalize their economies. In December Arturo Valenzuela, Obama's assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, caused a scandal in Argentina when he urged the country to return to the investment climate of 1996--which would be something like Buenos Aires calling on the United States to reinflate the recent Greenspan bubble.

The Obama administration could reconsider Plan Colombia and the Pentagon's base agreement. But that would mean rethinking a longer, multi-decade, bipartisan, trillion-dollars-and-counting "war on drugs," and Obama has other wars to extricate himself from--or not, as the case may be.

Unable or unwilling to make concessions on these and other issues important to Latin America--normalizing relations with Cuba, for instance, or advancing immigration reform--the White House is adopting an increasingly antagonistic posture. Hillary Clinton, following a visit to Brazil by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, warned Latin Americans to "think twice" about "the consequences" of engagement with Iran. Bolivia denounced the comments as a threat, Brazil canceled a scheduled meeting between its foreign minister and Valenzuela, and even Argentina, no friend of Iran, grew irritated. As the Argentine diplomat quoted above told me, "The Obama administration would never talk to European countries like that."

Insiders report that high-level State Department officials are furious at Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who in recent months has been as steadfast as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez in opposing Washington's ongoing militarism, particularly the White House's attempt to legitimize the Honduran coup. Having successfully thwarted a similar destabilization campaign against Bolivian president Evo Morales in 2008, Brazil, according to Lula's top foreign-policy adviser, Marco Aurélio Garcia, is worried that Obama's Honduras policy is "introducing the 'theory of the preventive coup' in Latin America"--by which Garcia means an extension of Bush's preventive war doctrine.

In a region that has not seen a major interstate war for more than seventy years, Brazil is concerned that the Pentagon's Colombian base deal is escalating tensions between Colombia and Venezuela. The US media have focused on Chávez's warning that the "winds of war" were blowing through the region, but Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorim, places blame for the crisis squarely on Washington. Chávez, Amorim said, "had backed away from that statement. To talk about war--a word which should never be uttered--is one thing. Another is the practical and objective issues of the Colombian bases.... If Iran or Russia were to establish a base in Venezuela, that would also worry us."

There are also indications that the White House is hoping an upcoming round of presidential elections in South America will restore pliable governments. On a recent trip to Buenos Aires, for instance, Valenzuela met with a number of extreme right-wing politicians but not with moderate opposition leaders, drawing criticism from center-left President Cristina Fernández's government. In January a right-wing billionaire, Sebastián Piñera, was elected president of Chile. And if Lula's Workers Party loses Brazil's October presidential vote, as polls indicate is a possibility, the Andean left will be increasingly isolated, caught between the Colombia-Mexico security corridor to the north and administrations more willing to accommodate Washington's interests to the south. Twenty-first-century containment for twenty-first-century socialism. Fidel Castro, normally an optimist, has recently speculated that before Obama finishes his presidency, "there will be six to eight rightist governments in Latin America."

Until that happens, the United States is left with a rump Monroe Doctrine and an increasingly threatening stance toward a region it used to call its own.

Posted February 1, 2010 By Mark Weisbrot

Why Washington Cares About Countries Like Haiti and Honduras

When I write about U.S. foreign policy in places like Haiti or Honduras, I often get responses from people who find it difficult to believe that the U.S. government would care enough about these countries to try and control or topple their governments. These are small, poor countries with little in the way of resources or markets. Why should Washington policy-makers care who runs them?

Unfortunately they do care. A lot. They care enough about Haiti to have overthrown the elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide not once, but twice. The first time, in 1991, it was done covertly. We only found out after the fact that the people who led the coup were paid by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. And then Emmanuel Constant, the leader of the most notorious death squad there - which killed thousands of Aristide's supporters after the coup - told CBS News that he too, was funded by the CIA.

In 2004, the U.S. involvement in the coup was much more open. Washington led a cut-off of almost all international aid for four years, making the government's collapse inevitable. As the New York Times reported, while the U.S. State Department was telling Aristide that he had to reach an agreement with the political opposition (funded with millions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars), the International Republican Institute was telling the opposition not to settle.

In Honduras this past summer and fall, the U.S. government did everything it could to prevent the rest of the hemisphere from mounting an effective political opposition to the coup government in Honduras. For example, they blocked the Organization of American States from taking the position that it would not recognize elections that took place under the dictatorship. At the same time, the Obama administration publicly pretended that it was against the coup.

This was only partly successful, from a public relations point of view. Most of the U.S. public thinks that the Obama administration was against the Honduran coup, although by November of last year there were numerous press reports and even editorial criticisms that Obama had caved to Republican pressure and not done enough. But this was a misreading of what actually happened: The Republican pressure in support of the Honduran coup changed the Administration's public relations strategy, but not its political strategy. Those who followed events closely from the beginning could see that the political strategy was to blunt and delay any efforts to restore the elected president, while pretending that a return to democracy was actually the goal.

Among those who understood this were the governments of Latin America, including such heavyweights as Brazil. This is important because it shows that the State Department was willing to pay a significant political cost in order to help the Right in Honduras. It convinced the vast majority of Latin American governments that it was no different than the Bush administration in its goals for the hemisphere, which is not a pleasant outcome from a diplomatic point of view.

Why do they care so much about who runs these poor countries? As any good chess player knows, pawns matter. The loss of a couple of pawns at the beginning of the came can often make a difference between a win or a loss. They are looking at these countries mostly in straight power terms. Governments that are in agreement with maximizing U.S. power in the world, they like. Those who have other goals - not necessarily antagonistic to the United States -- they don't like.

Not surprisingly, the Obama administration's closest allies in the hemisphere are right-wing governments such as Colombia or Panama, even though President Obama himself is not a right-wing politician. This highlights the continuity of the politics of control. The victory of the Right in Chile last week, the first time that it has won an election in half a century, was a significant victory for the U.S. government. If Lula de Silva's Workers' Party were to lose the presidential election in Brazil this fall, that would really be a huge win for the State Department. While U.S. officials under both Bush and Obama have maintained a friendly posture toward Brazil, it is obvious that they deeply resent the changes in Brazilian foreign policy that have allied it with other social democratic governments in the hemisphere, and its independent foreign policy stances with regard to the Middle East, Iran, and elsewhere.

The United States actually intervened in Brazilian politics as recently as 2005, organizing a conference to promote a legal change that would make it more difficult for legislators to switch parties. This would have strengthened the opposition to Lula's Workers' Party (PT) government, since the PT has party discipline but many opposition politicians do not. This intervention by the US government was only discovered last year through a Freedom of Information Act request filed in Washington. There are many other interventions taking place throughout the hemisphere that we do not know about. The United States has been heavily involved in Chilean politics since the 1960s, long before they even organized the overthrow of Chilean democracy in 1973.

In October of 1970, President Richard Nixon was cursing in the Oval Office about the Social Democratic President of Chile, Salvador Allende. "That son of a bitch!" said Richard Nixon on October 15, 1970. "That son of a bitch Allende - we're going to smash him." A few weeks later he explained why:

"The main concern in Chile is that [Allende] can consolidate himself, and the picture projected to the world will be his success...if we let the potential leaders in South America think they can move like Chile and have it both ways, we will be in trouble..."

That is another reason that pawns matter, and Nixon's nightmare did in fact come true a quarter-century later, as one country after another elected independent left governments that Washington did not want. The United States ended up "losing" most of the region. But they are trying to get it back, one country at a time.

The smaller, poorer countries that are closer to the United States are the most at risk. Honduras and Haiti will have democratic elections some day, but only when Washington's influence over their politics is further reduced.

Posted January 30, 2010 By Patrick Martin

Troops fire on starving crowds in Haiti

Troops under United Nations command have opened fire on crowds of hungry Haitians seeking food, an ominous sign of impending confrontation between the people of the earthquake-wracked country and the armed forces dispatched there under the auspices of the imperialist powers.

On Monday, Uruguayan troops, part of the UN peacekeeping force deployed here since 2004, fired rubber bullets at people who crowded around food trucks, eventually pulling out and leaving sacks of rice to be fought over.

The next day, Brazilian troops proceeded more aggressively, using pepper spray and tear gas to hold off a crowd seeking food at a tent camp on the grounds of the devastated presidential palace. People ran from the spray coughing and with their eyes streaming.

Two tanks were brought up to menace the crowds when they began to reform, although Fernando Soares, a Brazilian army colonel, told the press: "They're not violent, just desperate. They just want to eat."

One soldier loaded a shotgun as the crowd watched, but did not fire. "They treat us like animals, they beat us, but we are hungry people," one Haitian, Muller Bellegarde, told an American reporter.

The World Food Program (WFP) was delivering 107 cubic tons of rice, oil and beans to the palace camp, enough to feed 20,000 people for two weeks. As the trucks rolled up, thousands came out of their tents and began lining up, but the queues soon became disorderly as it became clear that there was not enough food for all who needed it. Another man told Reuters, "We are too many. Two trucks are not enough for us. They will fight, and the soldiers will shoot and fire gas."

Violence also broke out in the seaside town of Jacmel, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal, after initially peaceful protests over the scarcity of tents for earthquake survivors.

Force was used as well by Haitian police at a food-distribution site in Cite Soleil, the largest and most impoverished section of the capital city. Police swung sticks and clubs to drive back the crowd.

While Haitians seeking food and scavenging in the rubble have been portrayed as "looters" by the media, and targeted for repression by both foreign troops and Haitian police, it was so-called looters who found a man buried in the rubble of a building on Rue de Miracle in downtown Port-au-Prince Tuesday. They brought US soldiers with the necessary equipment to pull the man, Rico Dibrivell, 35, out alive. He had a broken leg and severe dehydration, but said he had been trapped for 12 days rather than 14, falling victim to an aftershock rather than the original 7.0 quake.

On Wednesday, a teenage girl was pulled alive and apparently unhurt, though severely dehydrated, from beneath another smashed building. Coming 15 days after the main tremor, this marks the longest known survival of an earthquake victim in modern history. US and other rescue efforts were called off at the weekend.

The total number of American military personnel in Haiti, including those on ships just offshore, rose to 15,400 by Tuesday. One third of these are soldiers on the ground in and around Port-au-Prince, with the bulk of them from the 82nd Airborne Division, an elite unit that specializes in combat, not logistical support.

The heavy-handed US military presence has generated considerable criticism. Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia boycotted a donors' conference in Montreal to protest the US occupation of the country.

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro wrote in Granma, the country's official newspaper, that the focus on US military deployment had blocked entry of doctors and medical supplies. "Send doctors, not soldiers," he wrote. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez declared, "The U.S. government is taking advantage of a humanitarian tragedy to militarily take over Haiti."

These sentiments were expressed, not just by regimes long at odds with Washington, but by officials of longtime US allies France and Italy. A French cabinet official, Alain Joyandet, said in a radio interview January 19 that the role of the U.S. in Haiti should be clarified. "It's about helping Haiti, not occupying Haiti."

The top Italian official dispatched to Haiti, Guido Bertolaso, the civil protection minister, said Monday that the US intervention had been "pathetic?. It's a truly powerful show of force, but it's completely out of touch with reality. They don't have close rapport with the territory and they certainly don't have a rapport with international organizations and aid groups."

Clearly referring to the photo-op appearance by former US President Bill Clinton, who passed through the island and briefly unloaded water bottles at the airport, he said, "Unfortunately there's this need to make a bella figura in front of the television cameras rather than focusing on underneath the debris?. Some individuals were putting on a vanity show for the television cameras instead of rolling up their sleeves."

Such comments clearly stung, as shown by the comments by Clinton's wife, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Speaking to a group of State Department employees, she declared, "I deeply resent those who attack our country, the generosity of our people and the leadership of our president in trying to respond to historically disastrous conditions after the earthquake. Some of the international press either misunderstood or deliberately misconstrued what was a civilian and military response, both of them necessary in order to be able to deliver aid to the Haitians who desperately needed it."

Haitian President Réné Preval, who has been virtually invisible to the people of his country for the past two weeks, emerged to denounce suggestions that the occupation of his country by foreign troops was a threat to its sovereignty. At a press conference with Jose Miguel Insulza, secretary-general of the Organization of American States, he rebuffed a question about the occupation, saying, "We are talking about people suffering and you are talking about ideology."

A French reporter asked why US troops were controlling flights into the Port-au-Prince airport. Preval replied: "You need to run the airport, you need technical help and they offered it to us. I really can't understand why the need for that is so difficult to accept."

Preval also announced that Haitian legislative elections, previously scheduled for February 28, would be postponed indefinitely.

The major initiative of Preval's government is a program to relocate 500,000 people from Port-au-Prince to villages outside the capital region, but there have been few takers among those living in the rubble. A reporter for the French news agency AFP visited Croix des Bouquets, one of the relocation sites, and described it as "a vast, gravel wasteland with just a few people hanging about hoping for work."

Meanwhile an extraordinary denunciation of the Obama administration's conduct in Haiti was published in the Wall Street Journal, issued by three New York City doctors, Soumitra R. Eachempati, incoming president of the New York State Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, and Dean Lorich and David Helfet, orthopedic surgeons and colleagues of Dr. Eachempati at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.

Their statement appeared under the headline, "Haiti: Obama's Katrina, Many post-quake deaths could have been prevented." The three doctors, who were among the first to reach Haiti after the quake, wrote that the delays imposed by the US military on relief groups entering the county "proved tragic. Upon our arrival at the Haiti Community Hospital we found scores of patients with pus dripping out of open fractures and crush injuries. Some wounds were already infested with maggots. Approximately one-third of the victims were children. Most of the patients already had life-threatening infections, and all were dehydrated. Many had been waiting in the hospital compound for days without water, antibiotics or even pain medicine. The hospital smelled of infected, rotting limbs."

They continued: "The U.S. response to the earthquake should be considered an embarrassment. Our operation received virtually no support from any branch of the US government, including the State Department. As we ran out of various supplies we had no means to acquire more?. Later, as we were leaving Haiti, we were appalled to see warehouse-size quantities of unused medicines, food and other supplies at the airport, surrounded by hundreds of US and international soldiers standing around aimlessly."

Posted January 30, 2010 By Carly Everson, Associated Press Writer

Push to send FEMA trailers to Haiti stirs backlash

The trailer industry and lawmakers are pressing the government to send Haiti thousands of potentially formaldehyde-laced trailers left over from Hurricane Katrina -- an idea denounced by some as a crass and self-serving attempt to dump inferior American products on the poor.

"Just go ahead and sign their death certificate," said Paul Nelson of Coden, Ala., who contends his mother died because of formaldehyde fumes in a FEMA trailer.

The 100,000 trailers became a symbol of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's bungled response to Katrina. The government had bought the trailers to house victims of the 2005 storm, but after people began falling ill, high levels of formaldehyde, a chemical that is used in building materials and can cause breathing problems and perhaps cancer, were found inside. Many of the trailers have sat idle for years, and many are damaged.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which is coordinating American assistance in Haiti, has expressed no interest in sending the trailers to the earthquake-stricken country. FEMA spokesman Clark Stevens declined to comment on the idea and said it was not FEMA's decision to make.

Haitian Culture and Communications Minister Marie Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue said Thursday she had not heard of the proposal but added: "I don't think we would use them. I don't think we would accept them."

In a Jan. 15 letter to FEMA, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the trailers could be used as temporary shelter or emergency clinics.

"While I continue to believe that these units should not be used for human habitation, I do believe that they could be of some benefit on a short-term, limited basis if the appropriate safeguards are provided," he wrote.

For the recreational-vehicle and trailer industry, which lost thousands of jobs during the recession, the push to send the units to Haiti is motivated by more than charity.

Bidding is under way in an online government-run auction to sell the trailers in large lots at bargain-basement prices -- something the RV industry fears will reduce demand for new products. Some of the bids received so far work out to less than $500 for a trailer that would sell for about $20,000 new.

Lobbyists for the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association -- which includes some major manufacturers in Elkhart, Ind., among them Gulf Stream -- have been talking with members of Congress, the government and disaster relief agencies to see if it would be possible to send the trailers to Haiti instead.

"This isn't really the best time for the RV industry to have very low-priced trailers put out onto the market," said the group's spokesman, Kevin Broom.

How much formaldehyde the trailers contain -- or if they still have any at all -- isn't known. The auction site warns that the trailers may not have been tested for the chemical, and FEMA said buyers must sign an agreement not to use the auctioned trailers for housing. Broom contends the majority are "perfectly safe," and "the handful of trailers that might have a problem" can be removed.

Though the formaldehyde fumes in the trailers may have lessened with time, Haiti's hot, humid weather would boost the amount released, said Becky Gillette, the formaldehyde campaign director for the Sierra Club.

Lindsay Huckabee, who blames a rash of illnesses on the two years she lived with her husband and five children in FEMA trailers in Kiln, Miss., said that while "some shelter is better than no shelter," sending FEMA trailers is a bad idea without tight controls and warnings.

"I think it's very self-serving to hand off a product that's not good enough for Americans and say, 'Hey, we're doing a good thing here,'" she said.

In Haiti, Ermite Bellande said she has had no shelter since losing her three-story house. Still, she doesn't want one of the trailers. "We have nothing," she lamented. "But I would rather sleep outside than be in a metal box full of chemicals."

Joseph Pacious, who was hoping to find shelter at a tent city near the Port-au-Prince airport, disagreed. "The trailers may be hot, and they may make us sick," he said. "But look at how we are living already. How bad can it be?"

Myriam Bellevu, who is sleeping in a tent because she does not feel safe in her damaged home, said: "If the trailers are not good, the Americans must keep them for themselves. It's true that we are poor, but if they want to help, they must help in a good way."

Among the lawmakers backing the idea is Mississippi state Sen. Billy Hewes.

"If I had the choice between no shelter and having the opportunity of living in a shelter that might have some fumes, I know what I'd choose," he said. "If these trailers were good enough for Mississippians, I would think they were good enough for folks down in Haiti as well."

Posted January 30, 2010 By bill Quigley

Haiti -hell and hope

Smoke and flames rose from the sidewalk. A white man took pictures. Slowing down, my breath left me. The fire was a corpse. Leg bones sticking out of the flames.

Port Au prince police headquarters is gone, already bulldozed. A nearby college is pancaked. Goverment buildings are destroyed. Stores fallen down. Tens of thousands of buildings destroyed. Hundreds of thousands homeless.

Giant piles of concrete, rebar, metal pipes, plastic pipes, doors and wires.

Corpses are still inside many of the mountains of rubble. No estimates of how many thousands of people are dead inside.

Electrical poles bend over streets, held up by braids of thick black wires. On some side streets the wires are stll down in the street.

Buildings take unimaginable shapes. Some are half up while the other side slopes to the ground. Some like collapsed cakes. Others smashed like childre's toys.

Everywhere are sheet shelters. In parks, soccer fields, in the parking lot of the tv station, tens of thousands literally in the streets and on sidewalks.

Thousands of people standing in the hot sun waiting their turn. Outside the hospital, clinics, money transfer companies, immigration offices, and the very few places offering water or food.

Troops and heavy machinery are only seen in the center of the city.

After days in port Au prince I have seen only one fight - two teens fighting on a streetcorner over a young woman. No riots. No machetes.

Hope is found in the people of Haiti. Despite no electricity, little shelter, minimal food and no real goverment or order, people are helping one another survive.

Men and boys are scavenging useful items from the mounds of fallen buildings. Women are selling mangoes and nuts on the street. Teens are playing with babies.

Beautiful hymns are lifted as choirs calling to god in every sheet camp every evening. People pray constantly. The strikingly beautiful tap tap cabs trumpet in god we trust or merci Jesus on bright colors.

Everyone needs tents and food and medical care and water. But when you talk to them, most will lead you to the ailing great grandma or the malnourished child.

What should outsiders do, I asked Lavarice Gaudin? Lavarice, who helps the st. Clares community feed thousands each day through their What If Foundation, said "help the most poor first. Some who labored their whole lives to make a one bedroom home will likely never have a home again. Haiti needs everything. But we need it with a plan. Pressure the Haitian goverent, pressure usaid to help the poorest."

International volunteers who work hand in hand with Haitians are welcomed. Others not so much

Lavarice saw the associated press story that reported only one penny of every us aid dollar will go directly in cash to needy Haitians. "I can understand that they distrust the government but why not distribute aid through the churches and good community organizations?"

"We hope this will help us develop strong leadership that listens and responds to the people."

"No matter what, we will never give up. Haitians are strong hopeful people. We will rebuild."

Posted January 30, 2010 By SHAILA DEWAN

Cost Dispute Halts Airlift of Injured Haiti Quake Victims

The United States has suspended its medical evacuations of critically injured Haitian earthquake victims until a dispute over who will pay for their care is settled, military officials said Friday.

The military flights, usually C-130s carrying Haitians with spinal cord injuries, burns and other serious wounds, ended on Wednesday after Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida formally asked the federal government to shoulder some of the cost of the care.

Hospitals in Florida have treated more than 500 earthquake victims so far, the military said, including an infant who was pulled out of the rubble with a fractured skull and ribs. Other states have taken patients, too, and those flights have been suspended as well, the officials said.

The suspension could be catastrophic for patients, said Dr. Barth A. Green, the co-founder of Project Medishare for Haiti, a nonprofit group affiliated with the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine that had been evacuating about two dozen patients a day.

"People are dying in Haiti because they can't get out," Dr. Green said.

It was not clear on Friday who exactly was responsible for the interruption of flights, or the chain of events that led to the decision. Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Mr. Crist, said the governor's request for federal help might have caused "confusion."

"Florida stands ready to assist our neighbors in Haiti, but we need a plan of action and reimbursement for the care we are providing," Mr. Ivey said.

Mr. Crist's request did not indicate how much the medical care was costing the State of Florida, but the number and complexity of the cases could put the total in the millions of dollars. The expenditure comes at a time when the state is suffering economically and Mr. Crist, a Republican, is locked in a tough primary battle for the Senate seat that had been held by Mel Martinez.

"Recently, we learned that plans were under way to move between 30 to 50 critically ill patients a day for an indefinite period of time," Mr. Crist wrote in a letter to Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services. "Florida does not have the capacity to support such an operation."

A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services said the decision to suspend the flights was made by the military, not the federal health department. A military spokesman said that the military had ended the flights because hospitals were becoming unwilling to take patients.

"The places they were being taken, without being specific, were not willing to continue to receive those patients without a different arrangement being worked out by the government to pay for the care," said Maj. James Lowe, the deputy chief of public affairs for the United States Transportation Command.

Florida officials, meanwhile, said the state's hospitals had not refused to take more patients. Jeanne Eckes-Roper, the health and medical chairwoman of the domestic security task force for the South Florida region ? where the Super Bowl will be played on Feb. 7 ? said she had requested only that new patients be taken to other areas of the state, like Tampa.

The Health and Human Services spokeswoman, Gretchen Michael, who works for the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, said the agency was reviewing Mr. Crist's request for financial assistance. The request would involve activating the National Disaster Medical System, which is usually used in domestic disasters and which pays for victims' care.

Some of the patients being airlifted from Haiti are American citizens and some are insured or eligible for insurance. But Haitians who are not legal residents of the United States can qualify for Medicaid only if they are given so-called humanitarian parole ? in which someone is allowed into the United States temporarily because of an emergency ? by United States Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Only 34 people have been given humanitarian parole for medical reasons, said Matthew Chandler, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. The National Disaster Medical System, if activated, would cover the costs of caring for patients regardless of their legal status.

Some hospitals have made their own arrangements to accommodate victims of the earthquake, which occurred on Jan. 12. Jackson Health System, the public hospital system in Miami, treated 117 patients, 6 of whom were still in critical condition, said Jennifer Piedra, a spokeswoman.

The system has established the Haiti's Children Fund to cover the costs of treating pediatric earthquake victims.

In the aftermath of the earthquake, Haitian medical facilities were quickly overwhelmed. Since then, medical help has come in the form of mobile hospitals and other aid. Major Lowe said that as medical care had become available in Haiti, the need for the flights had declined significantly. But Dr. Green and nonprofit groups with a presence in Haiti said the need for evacuations remained dire.

"Right now we have in the queue dozens of paraplegics, burn victims and other patients that need to be evacuated," Dr. Green said. "And other facilities are asking us to coordinate the evacuation of their patients."

A spokeswoman for Partners in Health, a Boston charity with doctors and nurses in Haiti, said the group had a backlog of patients, many with head, spine or pelvic injuries, who needed surgery that could not be performed there.

Major Lowe said patients could still be evacuated in private planes, but Dr. Green said medically equipped planes were very expensive and generally could carry only one or two patients.

Federal officials could not provide the total number of earthquake patients airlifted to the United States, but Florida seemed to have received the bulk of them.

In his letter, Mr. Crist outlined his state's efforts to support the rescue effort, helping both the healthy and the sick streaming into the state. "Florida's health care system is quickly reaching saturation," he wrote.

Posted January 27, 2010 by Stephen Lendman

Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs

On January 15, Haaretz reported that:

"The Israel Defense Forces' aid mission to Haiti left Israel overnight (January 14) with equipment for setting up an emergency field hospital. Around 220 soldiers and officers (were) in the delegation, including 120 medical staff (to) operate the hospital in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince." According to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it includes "40 doctors, 25 nurses, paramedics, a pharmacy, a children's ward, a radiology department, an intensive care unit, an internal department and a maternity ward (able to) treat approximately 500 patients each day," including in two surgery rooms.

On January 20, Lebanon's Al-Manar TV reported on the mission, citing a damning You Tube video posted by an American named T. West from a group called AfriSynergy Productions.

"The video presents something to think about while exploiting the horrible tragedy that has befallen Haiti where Israeli occupation soldiers are engaged in organ trafficking."

Israel faced these charges before. In November 2009, Alison Weir's article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs headlined, "Israeli Organ Trafficking and Theft: From Moldova to Palestine." She cited an August Donald Bostrom article in Sweden's Aftonbladet suggesting that Israel illicitly removes body parts, including from Palestinians.

She stated:

"....Israeli organ harvesting - sometimes with Israeli governmental funding and the participation of high Israeli officials, prominent Israeli physicians, and Israeli ministries - have been documented for many years. Among the victims have been Palestinians."

Nancy Scheper-Hughes is a UC Berkeley Professor of Medical Anthropology, founder of Organ Watch, author of scholarly books and articles on the subject, and "unflinchingly honest in (citing) the Israeli connection."

"Israel is at the top," she states. "It has tentacles reaching out worldwide. (It has) a pyramid system at work that's awesome....they have brokers everywhere, bank accounts everywhere; they've got recruiters, they've got translators, they've got travel agents who set up the visas."

They pay "the poor and the hungry to slowly dismantle their bodies" or simply take what they want from fresh corpses. Body parts are commodities, to be harvested and sold to the rich, even though organ sales are prohibited in most countries, but not in international law.

Relevant International Law

The UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime calls organ extraction for profit human exploitation. In 2008, Israel banned the practice, but it persists.

On October 13, 2009 at a UN press conference on the subject, Marja Ruotanen, Director of Cooperation of the Council of Europe, stated:

"We have legislation and definitions covering the trafficking in human beings for the purpose of organ removal, but the study points out that there is a legal vacuum for the traffic in organs, tissues and cells (OTC)."

Human trafficking for any purpose is a crime. Global instruments cover OTC trafficking, but missing are "internationally agreed-upon definitions within an international convention." One is needed that clearly defines the practice, protects donors, but prosecutes brokers, medical staff, and others engaging in it.

Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics of the University of Pennsylvania, Arthur Caplan, and Austria's Public Prosecutor, Carmen Prior, say many nations are taking steps to address the issue, emphasizing that OTC material should only be gotten by "voluntary altruism." In other words, donated, not sold for profit.

Caplan explained that "money for parts" violates "basic human dignity and medical ethics." It also exploits the poor, and they stay poor after the sale. Also, their organ quality is usually low, and procedures used to extract them often harm buyers and sellers.

UN Secretary-General Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women, Rachael Mayanja, didn't predict when the world body will begin work on a convention, but she hoped it would be soon. Discussions to this point are "just the beginning," she said, "and it gives us an impetus to go forward."

Kawther Salam - "The Body Snatchers of Israel"

Salam is a West Bank-based Palestinian journalist, active in reporting on human rights abuses by the Israeli military (IDF). In 2003, she was one of 28 writers in 13 countries to receive a Hellman/Hammett Grant from Human Rights Watch "in recognition of (her) courage in the face of political persecution."

On August 24, 2009, her above titled article presented what she "witnessed, saw, observed and heard during (her) 22 years of journalistic work under the Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza."

She states that from the early 1970s, the IDF kept bodies of Palestinians they killed, then later buried them in secret, numbered graves. In other cases, Israel's civil administration and military commanders returned corpses to families on condition they be buried immediately, late at night, for "security reasons."

They followed funeral processions in "armored grey cars," monitoring them through burial. Why so, asked Salam? "If the burial is normal, and the organs of the victims were not stolen, then why should they be buried in the dark of the night? The families of the victims all knew that they were receiving empty bodies, filled with cotton, to be buried in the middle of the night."

Salam said she "personally....witness(ed) Israeli soldiers and military vehicles kidnapping the bodies of dead Palestinians from (hospital) emergency rooms. In other cases, (she) saw the soldiers following the Palestinians to the cemetery, to steal the body from the family before burial. This practice became so widespread that many people started carrying the bodies of the murdered to be buried at home, in the garden, under the house or under trees, instead of waiting for the ambulance to take them to the hospital."

She said "everybody in Palestine" knows that Israel steals bodies for their organs. It was common IDF practice to "kidnap" Palestinians from emergency rooms in Hebron, Nablus, Ramallah, Jenin, and most everywhere throughout Occupied Palestine, then transfer them to an Israeli hospital.

Her article lists names of IDF commanders and civil administration officials involved in the practice. "Everybody knew" they were doing it, yet their families were told sincere efforts were made "to release the bodies of their relatives from the military headquarters," calling it a favor, when, in fact, their organs were stolen.

Perhaps "thousands of bodies and even people known to have been alive were transferred to the Abu Kabir" Forensic Institute near Tel Aviv, Israel's only autopsy facility involved in organ trafficking, a matter that became a scandal inside the country. Its director, Dr. Yehuda Hiss, admitted doing it, never was held accountable, and until recently remained the institute's chief pathologist.

In 2002 and 2005, he was investigated over the large scale theft of body parts, the practice Yediot Aharonot journalists broke, saying he had "price listings" for organs sold to universities and medical schools.

On January 4, 2002, Israel National News.com headlined, "Abu Kabir Operating Organ Warehouse," saying Hiss was:

"accused of a long list of charges from inappropriate behavior as a medical professional to criminal acts such as the illegal sale of and dealings in organs and body parts, removing organs from deceased persons without consent, and misrepresenting organs in returned bodies."

Other allegations were that:

"in some cases (organs he took without consent were stuffed with) toilet paper rolls and metallic rods in their place to fill the voids and hide the theft of the organs. A court-ordered search of the institute revealed large supplies of stored organs illegally taken from bodies," thousands taken without permission.

During the first Intifada and other times, Salam said she "personally witnessed how the Israeli military were kidnapping Palestinian bodies and gravely injured people from the emergency room of Princess Alia hospital in Hebron (and dead bodies from) Al-Ahli hospital." The area was declared a military zone, the hospitals surrounded and invaded, and no one was allowed to move inside them.

Israeli organ harvesting is a longstanding practice, well known by "most if not all the Israeli medical establishment (who) keep silent because they either get money, or they are rewarded in other ways...."

Jerusalem Center for Democracy and Human Rights Director, Salim Khalleh, said JDCHR documented 270 cases of "reserved" Palestinian bodies, buried in numbered graves in secret cemeteries, or in numbered compartments of cooling facilities.

According to the Palestinian National Authority (PA) Director of the Department of Statistics, Abed Al-Naser Ferwana, many Palestinians were murdered in detention during the second Intifada, their bodies kept in secret Israeli cemeteries, some released weeks later. He calls this more proof that their organs were harvested illegally.

Israeli "Transplant Tourism"

Rich Israelis take advantage, availing themselves of what's called "transplant tourism," traveling wherever a needed organ can be found, sometimes from fresh corpses, usually from the desperately poor.

The Israeli government acts as facilitator, providing subsidies of up to $80,000 for "transplant holidays." According to Scheper-Hughes, Israeli officials exhibit "amazing tolerance....toward outlawed 'transplant tourism.' "

She said the Israeli Ministry of Defense is involved in a practice by which "bodies are broken, dismembered, fragmented, transported, processed, and sold in the interests of a more socially advantaged population....," Israel engaging in more of this globally than any other nation.

Its medical teams apparently are doing it in Haiti, exploiting fresh corpses and the living. The Manar TV cited You Tube said "there are people operating in Haiti who do not have a conscience and are members of the search and rescue teams, including the Israeli occupation forces," far from home harvesting Haitian organs, and the pickings are plentiful.

Apparently, the publicity about providing humanitarian aid is cover for this illicit operation, another crime against humanity among Israel's growing list, matched and exceeded by its Washington benefactor with generations more practice.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Posted January 27, 2010 by Glen Ford

US Military's Haiti "Relief" Ops A Rehearsal For Troop Deployments in Latin America

When the U.S. sent thousands of troops into Port au Prince airport, earthquake relief was clearly not the primary mission. Otherwise, ships and whole military units would not have arrived with only supplies for themselves. "U.S. naval units sailed into Haitian waters without bothering to load up with food, water and medicine at the nearby U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

The American commandeering of the airport at Port au Prince and de facto seizure of sovereignty over Haiti looked exactly like an invasion and occupation - except that Haiti had already been invaded in 2004 by the U.S., which then turned over occupational duties to its servants in the United Nations. To speak of a U.S. "invasion" of Haiti is getting a little bit redundant. The Americans never left, and they and their flunkies walk all over Haiti like an old rug.

Clearly, however, the U.S. was not on an earthquake rescue mission. U.S. naval units sailed into Haitian waters without bothering to load up with food, water and medicine at the nearby U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. What kind of "relief" mission was this, in which the rescuer comes empty-handed? Thousands of paratroopers were flown in from Fort Bragg, North Carolina - and then sat at the Port au Prince airport for several days, claiming not to have transportation into town. They could have walked! The city is just beyond the airport fence and downtown and the port are only a couple of miles away. A BBC reporter noted that, several days after the paratroopers landed, they sent small relief missions to outlying areas. Meanwhile, literally right down the street was the vast shantytown of Cite Soliel. But the Americans didn't go there.

The United States military, except for its special operations units, is the "heaviest" fighting force in the world. That means, the Americans require more logistical support - more pounds of equipment, more fresh food, more support personnel for every grunt with a gun - than any military on the planet. When the U.S. decided to airlift thousands of troops into Port au Prince, commanders knew the logistical needs of that force, alone, would overwhelm the airport's capacity, leaving little room for actual relief supplies. The Americans knew they would be creating a bottleneck that would become an impediment to relief efforts by the rest of the world. But they hogged the air and runways, anyway. What was the purpose?

"The Americans knew that they would be creating a bottleneck that would become an impediment to relief efforts by the rest of the world."

The explanation is quite simple. For the Americans, the operation was not primarily a rescue mission. Often, they carried only supplies for themselves. I don't buy into speculation that the Americans were attempting to worsen the Haitian situation through deliberate delays, in order to justify taking over the country. It was clear from the first day that the earthquake was a visitation from hell that would create more than enough drama than the U.S. would ever need - and besides, the Americans and their minions were already in charge of Haiti. But the Americans' actions make perfect sense when understood as an air and naval exercise to test the capabilities of the U.S. Southern Command to move its own men and machines from one place to another, quickly. The Southern Command's 4th Fleet was just taken out of mothballs last year, and has been staging exercises in the Caribbean to threaten Venezuela. The U.S. has just opened 7 new bases in Colombia, and would be anxious to test its ability to support them with quick infusions of large units of troops and equipment. The Haiti earthquake was a good excuse. But the mission was not about them.

Posted January 27, 2010 by Tom Loudon

Honduran Coup d'état, a 'win' for the U.S.?

Today, Pepe Lobo will be inaugurated as the new President of Honduras in what many consider to be an institutionalization of the coup d'état which took place seven months ago. Lobo comes to the Presidency as a result of a highly disputed election process carried out by the coup regime. The elections, which have been widely condemned as illegitimate were boycotted by a large percentage of the Honduran population.

U.S. Undersecretary Thomas Shannon, in a maneuver that totally subverted an extended negotiation process, announced that the U.S. would recognize the election, even if there was not a prior return to constitutional order. The U.S. celebrates today's inauguration as the 'way forward' for Honduras and has aggressively pressured other Latin American countries to recognize Lobo's government.

While the United States is eager normalize the situation and to get on with business as usual, the June 28th coup d'état has yielded unexpected consequences for Washington, both inside and outside of Honduras. Unforeseen by the coup plotters and the United States, the military takeover of Honduras unleashed a broad based, sustained resistance movement inside the country. A spirit long dormant in Honduras was awakened, transforming the country into a hub of political activity previously unimaginable.

The resistance movement has brought together people from many sectors of Honduran society, including large numbers of disaffected Liberal Party members. The unifying theme is that they no longer accept the status quo for their country. Events of the last seven months have accelerated and deepened a process demanding deep structural change. Organizations such as "Los Necios", a small, left wing organization of students and young people struggled to maintain a membership of around 100. In these few months, their membership has swelled to over 1000.

Currently 57 local expressions of the national resistance organization operate in cities and towns around Honduras. Confounding the coup leader's strategy, the movement is gaining strength despite brutal repression, state terror and the attempt to institutionalize the coup via elections. The resistance movement is holding large protest marches today and is working to implement a four-year plan for movement building in preparation for the next national elections.

In Latin America, the coup in Honduras is widely understood to be a test case for U.S. policy towards Latin America. By attacking the weakest and most vulnerable of the ALBA countries, the U.S. hoped to strike a blow to this alternative economic block which the U.S. counts as enemy. However, in the wake of the coup, the U.S. found itself in a historically unprecedented position at the OAS. Viewed by Latin American governments from both the right and the left as a potential direct threat to each of them, the OAS took a unanimous position denouncing the coup and ejecting Honduras from the OAS. The U.S. was forced to accept this decision. Most countries in Latin America continue to refuse to recognize the results of the coup regime sponsored "elections" on November 29th despite heavy pressure and arm twisting on the part of the Unites States to do so.

Disappointment stemming from the contradiction between statements of a recently inaugurated President Obama to Latin American heads of state at the Summit of the Americas in April of 2009, and a virtually unchanged U.S. policy has been articulated by leaders throughout Latin America. Three recent 'moments' have contributed to a rapid readjustment of expectations. First was the coup in Honduras and refusal of the U.S. to take proactive policy measures against it. Second was the announcement of seven new U.S. military bases in Colombia. And the third was Secretary of State Clinton's declaration that Latin America countries should "think twice about flirting with Iran."

The willingness of Latin American countries to challenge U.S. positions indicates a slowly changing balance of power in the Hemisphere. Soon after Arturo Valenzuela was confirmed as Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere he paid a visit to the Mercosur Countries. Far from the diplomatic protocol to which the U.S. is accustomed, in Brazil and Argentina, the first two countries which he visited, Mr. Valenzuela was not received by the President or the Foreign Minister in either country. In a press statement near the time of Valenzuela's visit, Brazil's Foreign Minister, Celso Amorim criticized the US for being "extremely tolerant" of the coup and the de facto regime.

What seems most clear is that the U.S. State Department remains mired in an outdated cold war mentality, failing to recognize and adapt to the profound and complex changes that have occurred in Latin America during the last decade. Unfortunately, there seem to be few signs that this will change anytime soon.

Today's inauguration in Honduras is happening in a context in which the old ghosts from the worst decades of U.S. policy toward Latin America have been conjured in an attempt to silence opposition. The sharp escalation of human rights violations and use of state terror in an attempt to destroy the resistance movement has now entered a phase which human rights defenders describe as "silent, selective and systematic." Death squads and paramilitaries relentlessly pursue those resisting the coup. Many have been executed, and others have fled in order to save their lives.

The repression continues in the context of a people who are empowered, determined and who are not afraid. The resistance movement has declared that it will not recognize Porfirio Lobo as President, but rather consider him to be the continuation of the dictatorship imposed though the June 28th military coup. Their non-violent struggle for deep structural change via a constituent assembly will continue. What has happened in Honduras serves as a marker for change in Latin America. It signals that attempts by the United States to rule the hemisphere through coercion and force will be met with new and unexpected challenges and forms of resistance.

Posted January 26, 2010 by COHA Senior Research Fellow Adrienne Pine

Honduras' Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo: Another Disaster for Central American Democracy Waiting in the Wing

Tomorrow, January 27th, as the world's eyes continue to be riveted on the unfolding disaster in Haiti, Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo will be installed as Honduras' president, succeeding de facto president Roberto Micheletti. Lobo, a supporter of the June 28th military coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya, was chosen in a November election held under conditions of qualified state terror. As the majority of Hondurans boycotted the elections, and dozens of candidates for lower offices withdrew, the vast majority of countries around the world classified the ballot as illegitimate.

In the hours and days following the election, the illegally-appointed Supreme Electoral Tribunal committed fraud by announcing a voter turnout that was indisputably more than 12 percentage points higher than its own officially-published numbers. The doctored higher figure was cited repeatedly by Lobo, Secretary of State Clinton, and other friendly faces to legitimize the disputed ballot. Many Honduran and foreign observers argue that later international support for the Lobo Administration will eventually ensure the invalidation of Zelaya's most important reforms. This support will guarantee long-term repression and a growing degree of tight-fisted control in the country, as well as endangering democratic institutions and social justice reforms throughout the hemisphere as the result of an echo effect.

Though State Department officials insist that the Honduras election process was transparent, in fact, no international observers were present to confirm the tally because?as announced by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on September 23rd?the conditions for a free and fair election were not present. A scathing 147-page report released Wednesday, January 20th, by the Inter-American Human Rights Commission corroborates this, citing a litany of well-documented human rights abuses, including numerous political assassinations committed prior to, and following the election. The report describes a militarized environment in which dissonant or critical opinions have been officially prohibited in "an egregious, arbitrary, unnecessary and disproportionate restriction, in violation of international law, of the right of every Honduran to express himself or herself freely, and to receive information from a plurality and diversity of sources."

While no official international observers were on the ground election day, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) sent "monitors" to oversee the Honduran election that the OAS and Carter Center had refused to legitimize with their presence. Both the NDI and IRI are funded by the U.S. Congress through a highly conservative Reagan-era umbrella organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The archly conservative IRI has supported efforts implicated in the ousting of democratically-elected presidents in Haiti and Venezuela in recent years. The day of the election, the NDI had its monitors caught on tape refusing to discuss police violence, which they had witnessed outside the polls in Honduras' industrial city of San Pedro Sula.

The parallels between Honduras and Haiti are striking; each country has been saddled by a history of undeserved debt?an enduring legacy of colonialism?and in each country's case (after over a century of often U.S.-installed dictatorships) an elected president who was responsibly engaged with bringing social justice to its citizens, was evicted from office. The vehicle for this was a military coup at least tacitly backed by Washington. By aiding the foes of Manual Zelaya in Honduras and Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Washington indirectly or directly ousted from power those who had been prepared to protect public resources from the pressing demands of the IMF for privatization, and shrink the public sector infrastructure of both countries. The skewed development of these countries, as well as guidance from private entities and the U.S. government, subjected the national interests of Haiti and Honduras to be hostage to the view of these outsiders. This is a situation that could turn the smallest windstorm into a hurricane, when it comes to a natural disaster's impacts on the average resident and outside political manipulations.

Although President Obama initially joined the international community in condemning the Honduran coup and calling for the restoration of democratic order as a precondition for recognition of elections in that country, Washington in fact has been aggressively lobbying other Latin American presidents to recognize the incoming Lobo government. Despite the de facto government's refusal to reinstate Zelaya or follow the time line and process laid out by the Guaymuras Accords, the Obama Administration has signaled its intention to recognize a "unity" government representing only the coup leaders, and to support the Honduran Congress' decision to give amnesty to those responsible for the military coup and the thousands of human rights abuses that followed. In a recent interview with COHA, independent Honduran journalist and filmmaker Oscar Estrada expressed some of the opposition's apprehensions about Lobo:

"With the entrance on the scene of Porfirio Lobo Sosa, there begins a new phase in the project of domination begun by the June 28th coup d'état. [Lobo's] recent reconciliation agreement is nothing more than an attempt to whitewash the coup and demobilize the popular resistance."

Lobo, the man who speaks today of dialogue and peace, has offered safe conduct for Mel Zelaya to leave the country. But, just days ago, he proposed a neoliberal "national plan" for the next 28 years. By means of his own legislative bloc, he seeks to approve an amnesty that principally favors the country's violators of human rights, and plans to govern with the backing and protection of the paramilitary structures that have terrorized the people during the past six months.

Honduran opponents of the coup, who since June 28th have organized almost daily protest actions, including numerous marches numbering in the hundreds of thousands, similarly plan to protest Lobo's inauguration.

The Obama Administration has so profoundly bungled the situation in Honduras that it has destroyed hope among many of its citizens as well as Latin Americans that a ?new era' of relations with the United States is in the making. Add to that the multiplication of U.S. military bases in Colombia, the mistakes being made in response to the tragedy in Haiti, and the missed opportunities in Cuba, and one cannot claim with any degree of optimism that Obama is off to a robust start to implement an energized and enlightened new Latin American policy.

COHA Senior Research Fellow Adrienne Pine, Ph.D, also serves an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University. Dr. Pine recently authored the book Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras (University of California Press).

Posted January 26, 2010 by COHA Research Fellows Guy Hursthouse and Tomás Ayuso

¿Cambio? The Obama Administration in Latin America: A Disappointing Year in Perspective

In a memorandum written as Barack Obama assumed office in January 2009, COHA's Research Fellows Guy Hursthouse and Tomás Ayuso considered widespread Latin American expectations of a dramatic shift in approach from Washington under the new president, and outlined an agenda for change aimed at achieving those hopes as the result of a bold new direction for U.S. relations with the region. A year later, they offer their evaluation of developments to date and conclude that a clear and meaningful program of change has failed to materialize under Obama, his Secretary of State, and the leadership team to which he has looked for drafting his regional agendas. At best, their fractured approach to Latin American issues has delivered mixed results. Looking ahead, the authors ask, despite the continued backing Obama continues to enjoy from a resilient public that still refuses give up on him, can we expect the president's second year in office to deliver that coherent mixture of realism and idealism which has up to now proved elusive?

Barack Obama assumed the presidency twelve months ago amidst "strained hemispheric relations." Productive cooperation on a variety of shared regional concerns had been all but ignored by a Bush administration completely distracted by the Iraqi War and in favor of an approach characterized by confrontation, diplomatic bullying, and the continued pursuit of policies detrimental to the interests of both Latin America and the United States. Apparently recognizing this, Obama brought with him a promise to begin a "new chapter in the story of the Americas," in which the U.S. leader would follow an inclusive and relevant approach to regional diplomacy, coupled with a pledge to begin "matching rhetoric with deeds."

Writing as Obama took up office, COHA called on the new administration to make good on these foundations and implement a program of change which would not only reverse eight years of failed initiatives under Bush, but also manage to address a series of new political and economic tasks that would have a positive impact on the hemisphere. However, as the presidential campaign wore on, Obama's own position on a number of key issues became disturbingly contradictory. He recognized "nearly 50 years of failure" on Cuba, while pledging to continue "holding back ? relaxation of the trade embargo" until certain preconditions were met. He supported continued provision of U.S. military aid under Plan Colombia despite its failed militarization of the War on Drugs, while ostensibly refusing to back Bush's free trade agreement with Colombia because of the violent effects of that militarization. He also called for diplomatic engagement with Venezuela, only to sharply criticize its President, Hugo Chávez, for "[interrupting] progress in the region."

Voicing additional concern with Obama's appointment of a host of Bush and Clinton-era officials to key administration posts, COHA expressed doubt that the president's desire to bring change would match the region's hope for a break from past Cold War-inspired policies. Twelve months later, placing the unforeseen headache of the Honduran coup alongside the list of policy matters that were isolated for analysis last year, the authors will assess whether their original predictions were accurate, or whether Obama has in fact succeeded in delivering on his "new chapter."

The Honduran Crisis: Obama's New Multilateralism Tested

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted from power by the country's armed forces by order of the Honduran Supreme Court on June 28, 2009, in what Roberto Micheletti, who as acting President of the National Congress temporarily assumed the presidency, claimed was a move designed to preserve the country's democracy. The symptoms of Zelaya's approaching ejection had been noticeable for months, as the Honduran president clashed relentlessly with the other branches of government over his alleged illegal ambitions. This scuffling went unperceived by the Obama Administration and other foreign actors, even though just three weeks prior to the culmination of the country's institutional volatility, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in San Pedro Sula for an OAS meeting.

Obama joined the rest of the world in condemning Zelaya's ousting as an illegal coup, but the administration's line on Honduras since then has been rather muddied. On the one hand it has remained consistent: no amount of semantic athleticism will change the fact that it was a coup, and that Zelaya remains the democratically elected leader of Honduras until his term ends tomorrow, on January 27, 2010. However, instead of recalcitrantly breaking off all ties with Honduras, like Venezuela and Argentina did, or blocking trade in the manner of Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, the U.S. afforded itself the ability to be flexible in its approach by viewing the coup as a longer event than simply a single flashpoint.

While countries usually critical of U.S. interventionism urged for more pressure from Washington, and a pitch that did not yaw, Obama was eager to avoid parallels with deeply unpopular past misadventures, especially since a few months prior to the coup he had declared the era of U.S. unilateralism in Latin America to be over. Perhaps hoping for the crisis to work itself out without any U.S. intrusion, Washington looked towards the highly pliable and unusually unrealistic Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to mediate and find a Central American solution to a Central American problem. However, the already dubious San Jose Accord, which sought to reinstate a powerless version of Zelaya and end the crisis in a peaceful manner, was promptly rejected by both Zelaya and Micheletti. Consequently, the U.S., the only country with any real leverage over Honduras, began to episodically freeze aid and suspend most visas for members of Micheletti's cabinet, while continuing to maintain its insistence on the reinstatement of Zelaya, until the deposed president surreptitiously reentered the country in September, and holed up in the Brazilian embassy, perhaps happy to call Washington's bluff.

The impasse caused by the obstinate personalities of both Zelaya and Micheletti, a Janus-minded OAS, and an unfocused Washington, dragged on until a few weeks before the November 29 elections, when the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Shannon was sent to the country to broker an agreement. Nary a day after landing in Tegucigalpa, it was ultimately a diplomat from Washington and not San Jose or Brasilia who managed to force a deal out of Micheletti. The highly controversial elections ? boycotted by the usual contingent of observers but declared by the U.S. to be fair and transparent ? resulted in Porfirio Lobo Sosa's election.

The administration's ambivalence towards Micheletti and his coup regime, and its ultimate recognition of the elections, has caused many to see Obama as an echo of past imperial presidencies. However, not all the blame can be placed on the U.S.; Arias, Shannon and OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza all aired their concern during the crisis about a lack of political will to move forward.

Micheletti's defiant comments even against the U.S. and Costa Rica, as well as against Venezuela made it easy to see who was culpable in that respect. Micheletti's obstinance and caudillo-style leadership were hardly conducive to any productive diplomacy or conciliation of Zelaya; indeed, he ultimately reneged on even the agreement he signed with Shannon.

It is apparent that few outside of Honduras saw the coup coming, and this is certainly true of the Obama Administration. Nevertheless, its handling of the crisis was more considered than could be expected from past US governments. However, Obama's supposed embrace of partnership and cooperation in Latin America hit a bottleneck with the crisis presented by his wavering over Honduras; he will need to work harder over time to convince the region of his dedication to this policy, and demonstrate that he possesses principles and the wisdom to use them.

Colombia: Status Quo Prevails in Trade and Defense Policy

The other significant development in U.S.-Latin American relations during 2009 merely increased regional suspicion of the new administration in Washington. Dictated by the framework of the War on Terror, Washington's approach to Colombia under President Bush was simple: prioritize affording it the military assistance deemed necessary to fight the guerrilla insurgency and the problems related to narcotics production, and couple this with the pursuit of a free trade agreement. In theory this would lead to the bolstering of a strategic geopolitical foothold for the U.S. in an otherwise hostile South America. Despite bringing a more tolerant and relaxed rhetoric and attitude to the White House, Obama, much to his discredit, has appropriated wholesale this myopic and simplified approach in his own policy towards Colombia, which now bears little resemblance to the position he held as a principled senator.

In October, Obama boosted a military approach towards drug interdiction which has largely failed to quell overall violence or lower drug production, and has seen millions displaced, by signing a new deal on the U.S. use of Colombian air bases, and, in doing so, angered virtually every South American government.

Regional alarm was justified by the secrecy of the bilateral negotiations that produced the agreement, along with U.S. Air Force comments ? undermining the official line that the bases will be used solely for internal operations ? that the deal "provides a unique opportunity for full spectrum operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from narcotics-funded insurgencies, anti-US governments, endemic poverty and recurring natural disasters." It is additionally worth noting that the U.S. military designated the principal base in question, Palanquero, as off-limits for aid after 17 civilians were killed in a 1998 bombing carried out by troops stationed there, and only resumed such assistance in April 2008.

Moreover, having opposed Bush's U.S.-Colombian Free Trade Agreement (FTA) during his campaign when he expressed concerns about Colombia's record on anti-labor union violence, as president, Obama has since reversed his position. "I commended President Uribe on the progress that has been made on human rights in Colombia and dealing with the killings of labor leaders there," he said after meeting the Colombian leader at the White House in June. Subsequently, in September, the Obama Administration okayed the State Department's annual certification of Colombia on human rights in order to facilitate continued military assistance.

As COHA reported in June, the administration has seemingly turned a blind eye to the human rights situation in Colombia in order to justify its policies. After reaching a low under Uribe in 2007, killings of trade unionists rose by 25 percent in 2008, to 49. Colombia's connected problem of impunity means that convictions in cases of anti-union attacks are virtually unheard of there. The Justice and Peace process continues under siege in the country, with right-wing paramilitary groups resurgent following Uribe's ineffective demilitarization program. The country's security service (DAS) was implicated last February in an illegal wiretapping scandal which involved some key pro-government politicians, and the military stands accused of "False Positives" practices, whereby soldiers murdered innocent civilians in order to meet targets for killing guerrilla insurgents.

U.S. and Colombian relations with Hugo Chávez's Venezuela were those most restively affected by the base agreement, which witnessed Chávez mobilizing his armed forces along the Colombian border and introducing a still-existing trade embargo. Rhetoric between Washington and Caracas has retained its vacillating nature, with Secretary of State Clinton saying before relations soured in the wake of the air base deal, "The prior administration tried to isolate [hostile governments], tried to support opposition to them, tried to ? turn them into international pariahs. It didn't work." On January 17, 2010, a week after his administration apparently changed its tone by meeting with U.S. embassy officials to discuss Venezuelan spying claims, Chávez said, "it's possible that there could be an easing of tensions."

The "hostile rhetorical shots" COHA warned the Obama Administration to stop firing at Chávez and his allies last January may have diminished, but they have been succeeded by equally worrisome actions. By continuing to pursue a free trade agreement with Bogotá, and continuing to advance the largely ineffective Plan Colombia in spite of the convincing body of evidence against President Uribe's credentials as a defender of human rights, and in the face of the concerns of virtually every South American government, President Obama has seriously damaged his claims to be bringing "change" to U.S.-Latin American relations.

Guantánamo Symbolizes Disappointment Over U.S. Policy While Cuba Reform Stalls

On January 22, 2009, two days after his inauguration, President Obama ordered the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay to be closed "no later than one year from now." Writing at the time, COHA welcomed the announcement, but warned the president that this was just the first step towards realizing "change." As events transpired, Obama proved unable to deliver on even this most modest of promises, admitting on November 18 that his deadline for the prisoners' departure would not be met. It will now likely be 2011 at the earliest before the administration has secured and equipped a new facility in Illinois to house the remaining detainees.

This lamentable disappointment has left only one significant change in U.S. policy towards Cuba under the Obama Administration. The president announced in April that U.S. citizens would be granted the right of unlimited travel to the island in order to see relatives, rather than being restricted to one visit every three years as they were under Bush, while simultaneously lifting the $300-per-quarter cap on remittances.

Common to both of these flagship Cuba policies is the fact that they simply rescind measures put in place by President Bush's executive decrees. The centerpiece policy positions ? restrictions on travel for most Americans, the decades-old trade embargo, and de facto occupation of the land at Guantánamo Bay ? all remain in effect, despite Obama's laudable assertion several years ago that the embargo, having "utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro," should be lifted.

Bilateral discussions about immigration last July, talks in Havana on September 17 over the reinstatement of a direct postal service, and recent cooperation over the use of Cuban airspace for aid delivery in the wake of the January 12 Haitian earthquake, are all to be viewed as constructive steps. However, progress has slowed as a result of various recent developments, including the December 4 arrest of a U.S. contractor in Havana on espionage charges, and Washington placing Cuba on a list of states deemed by it to pose a "security risk" in the aftermath of the foiled Christmas Day airline bombing.

Were he seriously inclined to pursue "change" in this country's relations with Cuba, Obama could do worse than begin by backing the efforts of the House Democrats who have considerable backing for a bill which would end the ban on travel to Cuba for all U.S. citizens, before addressing the formidable barrier to change posed by the Helms-Burton Act. However, it would appear that the president's appetite for change has vanished. Obama continues to demand preconditions from Cuba on human rights issues ? notably some action regarding its political prisoners ? as a preliminary step toward any further meaningful relaxation of U.S. sanctions.

The case of Cuba provides an excellent illustration of the nature of Obama's approach towards wider Latin American ties with this country. Rhetoric has somewhat softened, and diplomacy has become more accommodating and less paranoid. At the same time, though, significant policy change has not been forthcoming. This will likely continue to be the case for as long as the Obama White House ignores history and maintains the failed approach of enforcing preconditions for lifting its trade embargo which will continue to be refused by Havana.

Drug War: US Shirks, Mexico Bleeds

Drug-related violence in Mexico reached new peaks during 2009, with a staggering 7,800 homicides reported there, bringing to more than 16,000 the number of deaths that have been caused since President Felipe Calderon's anti-trafficking offensive began in 2007. However, one of the unforeseen consequences of Mexico's attempts to purge the major cartels and criminal gangs from its territory has been an increase in common crime across Central America. Over the last year, most notably in Honduras and Guatemala, domestically-organized crime syndicates serving as proxies for Mexican cartels have openly targeted their home governments and their security forces.

The Honduran head of anti-drug trafficking operations, General Julian Aristides Gonzalez, was gunned down in Tegucigalpa in December after seizing several large compounds thought to be owned by the Sinaloa cartel. During the past year, Honduras has also earned the dubious distinction of having one of the highest murder rates in the world, at 53 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. Owing to its proximity to Mexico and the attraction offered to gangs of its environment of impunity and corruption, Guatemala has not fared much better. Most troubling has been the persistent intimidation carried out by the Zetas, the erstwhile armed wing of the Gulf Cartel, which is now a criminal enterprise in its own right. In March, its members threatened President Colom's life after he denounced their infiltration of the Guatemalan government and security apparatus.

One of the most significant stories at the time of Obama's inauguration, the drug war in Mexico and Central America has since been relegated to the back burner. Aid assigned to Mexico City under the terms of the Merida Initiative, the controversial U.S.-sponsored security pact intended to stem the influence of drug trafficking organizations in Mexico and Central America, has yet to materialize; to date, only 3 percent of the allotted $1.4 billion has been released.

Secretary of State Clinton has argued that complications delaying the disbursement of funds are costing lives in the region. However, as Plan Colombia already has proved, the militarization of what essentially should be a domestic US health issue is now being viewed as a highly ineffective approach. Indeed, Calderon's military offensive has failed to end the cycle of violence which has gripped his country since 2007. High profile victories by the state against the cartels, such as the killing of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, and the arrests of Teodoro Garcia and Carlos Beltrán Leyva, have continued to be routinely followed by acts of even more violent reprisal and intimidation, and violent struggles are reflected in the brutal power vacuums they leave. Despite the optimistic claims of the U.S. and Mexican governments, the Washington-backed drug war in Mexico is in no way reducing the strength, capability or brazenness of drug trade organizations.

Early in 2009, former Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia issued a plea to President Obama urging him to reconsider the present direction of the failing U.S.-led "drug war." States across the United States are legalizing medicinal marijuana, a considerable leap considering the draconian laws that existed over the past three decades, but stopping far short of decriminalizing or even legalizing general consumption. But while the various movements towards liberalizing drug consumption policies have also gained momentum in Mexico, Argentina and even Colombia, as long as the Obama Administration ignores such pleas and continues to target the vast majority of its resources at stemming the supply from abroad, the northbound traffic of narcotics will persist.

The Indomitable Brazil

Much like the rest of Latin America's engagement with Washington during 2009, the story of Brazil's rapport with the U.S., at the dawn of Barack Obama and coinciding with the twilight of Lula da Silva, has taken place in two acts, with the coup in Honduras representing the pivotal event. Prior to June 28, the leaders built on former President Bush's efforts to establish a strong, if shallow relationship between Brasilia and Washington. However, the institutional explosion witnessed in Honduras was the first in a series of notable ruptures between the governments, culminating with Lula referring to Obama as a "disappointment." Nevertheless, Lula is in the last year of his final term, and as sure as Brazil's global profile will continue to rise after he steps down, the Obama Administration's multipolar worldview must include the South American giant.

Brazil's intentions to become, if it is not already, a truly non-aligned superpower which can wield great influence on climate change negotiations, vie for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, seek to protect democracy in its sphere of influence and inject itself into the Middle East peace process, have been made perfectly clear in 2009. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's controversial state visit in November rubbed Washington the wrong way, but it is this very relationship of mutual respect, despite some divergent interests, that President Obama should seek out with Brazil. Natural allies who in fact share many common concerns, the U.S. and Brazil have developed what could be the beginnings of a resilient rapport that can be expected to weather occasional differences and disagreements.

After a few tense months of public verbal sparring (and sometimes worse) regarding the Honduran crisis, the Colombian base controversy and the Ahmadinejad visit, President Obama has proposed to President Lula a joint U.S.-Canadian-Brazilian task force to provide aid, relief, security and rebuilding efforts in the wake of the recent devastation in Haiti. Brazil's existing peacekeeping enclave in that nation combined with about 20,000 US troops who will be deployed to the island will certainly prove invaluable. Despite their sporadic differences, the natural partnership between both countries ought to be further encouraged by their respective governments and should remain a high priority for Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela and Obama's agenda for the region.

Assembling a Staff

Regarding personnel, the absence of key officials proved the biggest impediment to sound regional policy over the past twelve months, as Republican Senator Jim DeMint, unhappy with Obama's Honduras policy, blocked the confirmation of Valenzuela until November. The Georgetown professor eventually joined Obama's other Latin America appointees; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Frank Mora, and Dan Restrepo, the director of Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council. Valenzuela aside, some of the remaining figures are an unknown quantity, but taken as a team, their record up to now has been far from compelling.

Once confirmed, COHA celebrated Valenzuela's considerable experience of Latin American affairs, and his welcome pragmatic style that appears to fit Obama's measured diplomatic approach to the region. Nevertheless, Valenzuela, one of the authors of Plan Colombia under President Clinton, hardly seems the person to offer an alternative approach to that, and other failed policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations. Moreover, during his first official visit to the region in December, Valenzuela reportedly riled the Argentine government with comments about the country's unpaid debts, a concern of vulture funds, but few others. According to El País, Valenzuela spent the majority of his time meeting opposition leaders, before talking to journalists about North American companies' "worry" over the country's "legal insecurity."

In keeping with the administration's overall approach, Secretary of State Clinton's tone has fluctuated between the status quo hard line and one of accommodating tolerance. Despite making comments that suggest an improvement in relations between the U.S. and its critics in the region, she subsequently has proffered advice ? for example, that doing business with Iran is "a really bad idea" ? which will have been wholly unwelcome.

Over the past year, Trade Representative Ron Kirk has buttressed his free trade credentials, unsurprisingly praising the Uribe government's "remarkable progress" on anti-union violence. Moreover, the administration has lost its valuable White House counsel Greg Craig, lauded by COHA last year as an inspired appointment, after recriminations over the lack of progress on Guantánamo, and the special envoy for the region Obama promised to appoint during his campaign has failed to materialize.

In spite of its apparent unwillingness to make bold policy changes, and its readiness to continue fractured relations with many of the region's governments inherited from Bush, the new administration appears to still retain a considerable measure of goodwill among the Latin American public. A poll conducted by Gallup between July and September found that 51 and 61 percent of respondents approved of the U.S. leadership and president's performances respectively. Moreover, 71 percent of respondents to the annual Latinobarómetro poll were happy with Obama.

By predominantly appointing Clinton administration veterans, Obama has ensured that his administration's approach to Latin America will, in policy terms, adhere almost entirely to an inherited status quo. While a full compliment of Obama appointees may well bring more coherence, Valenzuela's ill-timed Argentine gaffe hardly suggests a promising future, and Obama's public support will likely subside as disillusionment takes hold over a program that posits few surprises.

Slow Diplomatic Change Meets Policy Intransigence

The indications that Barack Obama's campaign trail contradictions and the administration appointments made both before and after his inauguration concerning the likely direction of his Western Hemisphere policy, were sufficient to instill concern among well informed policy groups and academic circles at the time, and those worries will not have subsided. Over the past twelve months, a pattern has emerged whereby the Obama Administration's rhetoric on U.S.-Latin American relations has been belied by the limited actions the president has to date been interested in taking.

While it ultimately failed to realize the aim of a multilateral solution to the crisis in Honduras, and in doing so invoked widespread criticism of its approach towards hemispheric affairs, the Obama Administration at least showed a willingness to sidestep unilateralism, only forced into single-handedly brokering a deal as a last resort. Since then, the administration's dealings with Brazil at least have proved that a good working relationship with Washington no longer has to be predicated on slavish adherence to the White House's world view. Under Bush, President Lula's recent engagement with Iran would almost certainly have seen Brasilia shunned, but Obama's subsequent cooperation with the Brazilian leader has provided evidence of change and maturity in that respect. In a similar vein, the Obama Administration has succeeded in toning down much of the belligerent rhetoric aimed at Hugo Chávez under Bush.

Nevertheless, when one looks at the administration's concrete policy actions to date, it is clear that the status quo continues to prevail. Shortly after Obama called for "a new era of engagement" in a speech at the UN in September, Hugo Chávez remarked astutely, "Sometimes one gets the sensation that there are two Obamas. One, who gave the speech, is good. The other makes decisions that are contradictory to his speech." Indeed, rhetoric and diplomacy are only one side of the coin.

It is telling that Obama's most significant policy measure up to now has been to sign a highly controversial military agreement with Colombia, signaling an intention to continue pursuing the same militarized approach to the War on Drugs which failed to yield significant results in reducing coca cultivation under Clinton or Bush. Higher up on the distribution chain, the Mexican anti-drug offensive is entering its third year with no end in sight. The Merida Initiative, which, most likely, will not quell the violence, has yet to take off. Obama and members of his cabinet have begun to draw down their War on Drugs rhetoric, while simultaneously challenging the U.S.- supported structures that end up underpinning the Mexican cartels. These are but small steps in the right direction towards finally shelving the War for good, but the bottom line remains that until the U.S. addresses its own addiction problems, peace will not emerge in any of the countries caught in the corridors of drug trafficking.

In the meantime, the continued militarization of the drug war, coupled with an about-turn in favor of the U.S.-Colombian FTA, demonstrates that strategic geopolitical concerns remain at the forefront of Washington's collective thinking, to the detriment of the thousands of Colombian victims of human rights abuses, the millions of displaced in that country, and the thousands of dead in Central America. This represents a snub of fellow regional governments, despite the administration's rhetoric of diplomacy and concern.

The status quo approach to Cuba also has persisted under Obama, where despite reversing some of Bush's more damaging exercises, he has failed to push further, insisting on reciprocal action from Havana, an approach which has failed U.S. policy makers for almost 50 years.

Looking ahead, Obama is beginning his second year as president with a new hemispheric issue to contend with. The earthquake which devastated Haiti on January 12 drew swift pledges of financial aid and troops from Washington, but at the time of writing, recriminations are flying regarding the chaotic nature of the relief efforts. While it is too soon to judge the Obama Administration on its approach, Haiti will prove a good test of Washington's willingness to address seriously the consequences of another failed U.S. foreign policy arena and will undoubtedly inform an assessment of its regional policy six or twelve months from now.

Currently, the greatest hope for change comes not from the White House but from the House of Representatives, where Democrats have succeeded in holding up the Colombian FTA for almost three years, and are closing in on passing significant legislation which would lift the Cuban travel ban. The officials appointed by Obama to important administration positions have now been confirmed and, while doubt should be expressed about the degree of change they are capable of initiating, they must be given a chance before judgment is passed. Likewise, Obama seems genuine in his attempts to alter the U.S.'s worldview, and time will provide a better picture of his success in forging a comprehensive multilateral approach to diplomacy as the region deals with challenges in Haiti and new issues arise. Nevertheless, while policy continues to move in the wrong direction on a number of fronts, regional disappointment surrounding the president's first year in office is entirely justified, with the question remaining whether the White House is capable of doing more for the region than tossing feel-good rhetoric at its multiple problems.

Posted January 25, 2010 By Stephen Lendman

Washington's Militarized Takeover Of Haiti

Haiti is no stranger to adversity and anguish - over 500 years of severe oppression, slavery, despotism, colonization, reparations, embargoes, sanctions, deep poverty, starvation, unrepayable debt, and natural calamities from destructive hurricanes to a dozen magnitude 7.0 or greater Caribbean region earthquakes in the past 500 years. The last major one was in 1946 at 8.1 in the adjacent Dominican Republic, also striking Haiti. Earlier catastrophic ones were in 1751 and 1770, both devastating Port-au-Prince, and the 1842 one destroying Cap-Haitien in the north.

On September 25, 2008, Phoenix Delacroix quoted geologist Patrick Charles of Havana's Geological Institute saying:

"conditions are ripe for major seismic activity in Port-au-Prince. The inhabitants of the Haitian capital need to prepare themselves for an event which will inevitably occur."

Citing a real danger, he explained that the dangerous Enriquillo Fault Zone extends across Port-au-Prince, starting in Petionville, traversing the Southern Peninsula to Tiburon. Noting earlier tremors in the area, he said a larger earthquake usually follows, yet no precautions were taken, leaving Haitians vulnerable to what happened - vast destruction, perhaps hundreds of thousands dead, countless numbers seriously injured, and disease, depravation, and militarized occupation haunting survivors in the aftermath.

After Washington ousted President Jean-Betrand Aristide in February 2004, UN Blue Helmets (MINUSTAH) occupied Haiti as paramilitary enforcers. They still do, subordinate to around 20,000 US land and sea based troops, including Marines, Army 82nd Airborne paratroupers, Navy assault ships, and Coast Guard vessels offshore, a powerful force for indefinite occupation, severe repression, and ruthless exploitation for American interests - obstructing, not providing, humanitarian aid, and facilitating potentially hundreds of thousands of deaths from starvation, dehydration, disease, untreated wounds, trauma, and for some perhaps just giving up and expiring unnoticed, unreported, and uncared about by forces able to help.

It's an old story for Haitians, beleaguered for over 500 years and under America's thumb for nearly two centuries, unrecognized, embargoed, exploited, and slaughtered to assure their freedom is denied. Now again, but first some background.

Occupied Haiti

On April 30, 2004, the UN Security Council authorized MINUSTAH - paramilitary peacekeepers, illegally sent for the first time ever to support a coup d'etat regime in place of a democratically elected president.

Rebel thugs got free reign to join them in the streets, the result being hundreds turned up dead or missing. The state Port-au-Prince morgue was swamped with bodies. Many showed up with their hands tied behind their backs and bags placed over their heads. Ruthlessness was empowered. Orders came from Washington.

Bodies turned up everywhere, in streets, on beaches, abandoned as food for pigs, and anyone connected with Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party (FL) was fair game.

US Marines and foreign troops arrived, not to deliver aid or for protection, but to intimidate, terrorize, crush resistance, solidify coup d'etat rule, and destroy Haitian democracy under Aristide and prevent any chance of it returning.

MINUSTAH and the reconstituted Haitian National Police (the force Aristide abolished with the army) took over from the initial Multinational Interim Force (MIF), terrorizing Haitians through thousands of political killings, disappearances, torture, and unlawful arrests and incarcerations.

FL was effectively destroyed and Aristide's remarkable accomplishments ended in areas of healthcare, education, free expression, economic and social reforms, human rights and justice, lost under coup d'etat rule and thereafter under the Preval government, a pseudo one subservient to Washington.

In the 2006 presidential and parliamentary elections, he agreed to painful concessions, surrendered his authority, and yielded power to US and elitist Haitian interests - a shameless betrayal of his people.

After the coup and thereafter, episodes like the following were commonplace:

On December 22, 2006, Blue Helmets assaulted Cite Soleil (one of Port-au-Prince's most impoverished communities), randomly shot and killed 30 or more people, supposedly to capture a gang member, but in fact to terrorize.

In an earlier July 6, 2005 incident, hundreds of heavily armed troops attacked Cite Soleil with an array of powerful weapons - high-powered assault ones atop armored personnel carriers, precision rifles for assassinations, and a type of gattling gun firing depleted uranium tipped armor-piercing bullets. Thousands of rounds were indiscriminately fired. About 70 people were murdered, and many were left unattended to bleed to death on streets or in their homes.

On January 23, 2007, MINUSTAH forces were back, open fired randomly for hours, and used helicopters to reign death from the skies, killing dozens, then removing the dead to prevent a body count.

From February 2004 - December 2005 alone, Wayne State University School of Social Work researchers estimated that 8,000 people were murdered and 35,000 women sexually assaulted in the greater Port-au-Prince area - attributed to MINUSTAH, the Haitian National Police (PNH), Haitian demobilized army members, and anti-Aristide paramilitary gangs enlisted to commit terror. Also reported were documented kidnappings, extrajudicial detentions, assaults other than rape, death threats, physical threats, and threats of sexual violence against helpless people. The report concluded that "crime and systematic abuse and human rights were common in Port-au-Prince" involving criminals but also "political actors and UN soldiers."

Today, similar abuses crush resistance, prevent the restoration of democracy, and keep Haitians cowed, abused and exploited. Washington decides their fate, and now the Marines are back along with thousands of combat paratroupers and naval forces (an authorized 20,000 force mostly arrived), not to provide aid, to deny it and perhaps let hundreds of thousands perish - a crime of genocidal proportions, a US specialty, honed and perfected from decades of ritual slaughter, especially against people of color, deemed inferior to American "exceptionalism" and "moral superiority."

Marines came earlier in 1915, stayed 20 years, ravaged the country, destroyed Haitian society and institutions, and committed horrendous crimes against humanity. Most notorious was the infamous 1929 slaughter of 264 peasants protesting in Les Cayes. In addition, corvee or forced labor was employed, brutally exploited, and new weapons tested like today, including aerial bombing years before the Nazis did it against Guernica (in April 1937) in support of Spanish fascists in the country's civil war.

Haiti's Catastrophic Tragedy

After its worst catastrophe in nearly 170 years, millions in the country need everything, not Marines - food, water, medical care, shelter, and deep compassion at their greatest time of need.

Instead, the country is occupied, militarized, denied aid, and taken over for greater exploitation. General Ken Keen, in charge of forces, says US troops will "be here as long as needed," signaling an open-ended commitment for years.

On her January 16 photo-op visit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton practically announced an emergency decree, suspension of the rule of law, and authorization of curfews and martial law under Pentagon control. She said:

"The decree would give the government an enormous amount of authority, which in practice they would delegate to us," omitting that its choice was do it or else.

Despite the calm and lack of disorder, it's now official under Pentagon command enforcing a state of emergency and martial law. US troops control Port-au-Prince's airport and port facilities, blocking and slowing aid, including relief flights from France, Brazil, Italy and other countries, diverting them to the neighboring Dominican Republic, hours from Port-au-Prince on bad roads. In addition, the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders report aid flights can't land for fast access to treat the injured, ill and dying. Pentagon troops obstruct them, willfully letting people suffer, die, and be ethnically cleaned from Port-au-Prince areas wanted for new development. More on that below.

According to General Keen:

"If an air traffic controller doesn't know what's on an incoming plane, then he doesn't know what priority to give it."

Military flights in and ones out with US citizens and foreign nationals have top priority. Saving lives don't matter. They're just Haitians, poor, black, unimportant, to be removed, using the earthquake as a pretext to do it, dead or alive.

In natural disasters, immediate aid is critical. After that, casualties multiply fast and in Haiti they're exploding, from a lack of medical supplies and equipment, vital surgeries, infections, diseases, extreme trauma, and inadequate essential to life supplies not let in or delayed. Three million or more Haitians need help. A fraction of that number are getting it. As a result, thousands are dying daily.

Phillippe Bolopion from FRANCE24 TV said supplies are piling up at the airport and not being delivered. Desperate people can't "understand why the generosity of the world isn't getting to them. It's really hard to comprehend."

Radio Television Esponola's (RTVE) Fran Sevilla reported:

"There continues to be no distribution of humanitarian aid, of food and water. I ask myself how all these human beings survive. I ask if anyone is helping them, if they are receiving anything, and the answer is always no. They survive thanks to the solidarity between them, sharing between families and groups of friends what little they have, what they can get."

President Rene Preval is disturbingly absent and silent, reportedly at the airport, out of sight, playing no role in the relief effort - something he should lead, not abstain from, and do it visibly, actively, on the ground in Port-au-Prince, what Aristide would do if there.

Despite the obstacles, some nations are doing what they can, Venezuela for one, a critical Hugo Chavez saying on his weekly Sunday broadcast:

"It seems that the United States is militarily occupying Haiti, taking advantage of the tragedy....Thousands of (soldiers) are disembarking in Haiti as if it were a war. (Haiti) needs doctors, tents, rescue teams and machinery....Now, who said soldiers, rifles and machine guns are necessary?"

Venezuelan and Cuban aid were some of the first to arrive, and Chavez and Castro promise more, including food, water, doctors, medical supplies and rescue equipment, yet Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicholas Maduro said shipments were diverted to the Dominican Republic, losing precious hours to deliver it to victims.

So far, Venezuela alone has sent fuel, 616 metric tons of food, and 116 metric tons of equipment, including water purification systems, electrical generators and heavy equipment for moving rubble, Chavez saying:

"The Venezuelan people (will do more and) will donate all the fuel the Haitian people need. We are coordinating with the president of the Dominican Republic, Leonel Fernandez, who put the terminal of the refinery of his country at our service."

Chavez later announced that another five ships loaded with food and medical supplies left for Haiti on January 19 with Venezuelan soldiers on board to "protect the safety of everyone, but not to militarily occupy (the country) as the US intends to do."

Venezuela and other ALBA nations (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas) pledged generous aid, additional shiploads already sent carrying thousands of tons of food and other supplies.

America's Response - Occupation, Not Aid

In a show of strength, US paratroupers took control of the Presidential Palace, symbol of the nation's sovereignty, wanting it for a command center, and angering one Haitian to say:

"I haven't seen the Americans in the streets giving out water and food, but now they come to the palace."

From another:

"It's an occupation. The palace is our power, our face, our pride," now taken, occupied, a deep humiliation while critical needs go begging.

Besides control, security is top priority, never mind how calm, resilient, compassionate, and committed able Haitians are to help, asking no more than for vital supplies to survive at a time they can't provide them on their own. Yet Keen claims:

"incidents of violence (are) imped(ing) our ability to support the (Haitian) government and answer the challenges that this country faces as they're suffering a tragedy of epic proportions," one America exacerbates along with repressive MINUSTAH forces, to be reinforced with thousands of additional troops.

In separate incidents, they fired tear gas and rubber bullets at a crowd close to the Port-au-Prince airport, and Hatian police did as well against civilians in the city center. Another report said police were shooting Haitians and letting them bleed to death in the street.

"We don't need military aid. What we need is food and shelter," shouted one man at UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during his one-day visit with officials and UN forces, not to assess the tragedy and direct massive aid to address it.

Arriving on January 17, he left the same day, an appalling display of arrogance and indifference. During a photo-op near a tent city, he was heckled by angry crowds demanding help from the international community. Instead he said:

"Coordination will improve as we are better organized. Deliveries are now being made in a more effective and efficient manner."

In fact, they're being obstructed and prevented from landing, and much getting in is stacked at the airport, not delivered or delayed. The result is death, devastation, and human suffering everywhere while Ban, Hillary Clinton and husband Bill come for photo-ops and shameless comments like the former president saying:

"There was an extraordinary amount of time devoted to try and dig through those buildings to try to find living and dead."

If fact, no heavy equipment was delivered. UN and US troops didn't help, and Haitians had to use small implements and their bare hands to rescue a bare handful of people on their own while perhaps hundreds of thousands perished.

At the same time, desperation grows, arousing one woman to say:

"I have been here every day. I heard they gave away some food but there was a riot....we have been on this spot since the day of the earthquake and we have not seen anyone give away anything but water," and not enough.

Another man shouted:

"Have we been abandoned? Where is the food?"

Head of mission of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Michelle Chouinard, described their enormous challenges:

-- limited supplies of everything;

-- extreme crush injuries, partial amputations and open fractures;

-- people in severe pain with festering wounds;

-- a young man, typical of others, with a traumatic crush injury; he was young and strong, but his leg was dead and had to come off;

-- gangrenous limbs removed to save lives;

-- after surgeries, patients can't go home; they have none and need care - to prevent infections, change dressings and control pain;

-- many amputees and the paralyzed need lifelong care, but from where, by whom, and the numbers are so great it's impossible to help everyone;

-- thousands of children have been orphaned;

-- shocked, traumatized people are everywhere;

-- the number of people needing surgery is overwhelming; teams work under makeshift conditions around the clock with inadequate supplies running out as well as enough fuel for refrigerating medicines; and

-- people are dying and will die without essential treatment, and for the seriously ill, survival depends on leaving Haiti for what's not available internally - but Washington is blocking Haitian citizens from leaving, even parents whose children are US citizens; they can go, not their parents.

Two million or more are homeless, living on streets or, if lucky, in tents. Partners in Health, (with 25 years experience providing healthcare to Haitians), estimates 20,000 are dying daily from lack of surgery and essential treatment. The human tragedy is incalculable. Tens of thousands of bodies get dumped in mass graves like garbage.

MSF's Dr. Greg Elder fears:

"The next health risk could include outbreaks of diarrhea, respiratory tract infections, and other diseases among hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in overcrowded camps with poor or nonexistent sanitation."

On January 20, even The New York Times reported that:

"....people (are) writhing in pain (in squatter camps around the capital), their injuries bound up by relatives but not yet seen by a doctor eight days after the quake struck. On top of that, the many bodies still in the wreckage increase the risk of diseases spreading, especially, experts say, if there is rain."

The Wall Street Journal reported that Port-au-Prince General Hospital is besieged by over 1,000 patients needing surgery. "....thousands of injured, some grievously, wait outside virtually any hospital or clinic, pleading for treatment."

BBC correspondents said aid arriving by sea is taken to the airport, "where it is piling up and not being distributed to those who need it." As a result, most Haitians are getting little or nothing. An estimated two hundred thousand or more have died. Many more will perish for lack of help.

At the same time, MINUSTAH and US forces provide security, not aid, leaving Haitians on their own, at the mercy of what relief agencies can provide and doctors from Cuba, Venezuela and other concerned nations, not America, not the EU, not Canada, not the world's wealthiest states able to mount a sustained, large-scale effort but won't.

Instead, reports say flyers are being circulated throughout Port-au-Prince, telling people to evacuate to safer places. It's reminiscent of New Orleans post-Katrina, a mass ethnic cleansing exodus to level the city's most valued parts, prepare it for upscale development, and prevent poor Haitians from returning.

On January 22, AP reported that:

"Haitian officials are planning a massive relocation of 400,000 people from makeshift camps to the outskirts of the capital....to help residents survive the aftermath of the catastrophic earthquake."

In fact, Pentagon forces run everything, providing aid not their concern. They're relocating people, dumping and forgetting about them, out of sight and mind.

The New York Times ignores it, referring only to aid groups helping the homeless by "an epic relocation (of) up to one million people." Not a word about capitalizing on disaster for profit.

Before the quake, Haiti had over 10,000 NGOs profiteering on the nation's misery, preparing now for a bonanza at the expense of the poor, displaced and immiserated.

Blocking a Haitian Exodus

The Pentagon has Haiti under siege. Five US Coast Guard vessels and Navy warships patrol offshore to interdict those fleeing and forcibly return them back home.

On January 19, cnn.com reported that:

"A US Air Force plane serving as an airborne radio station is broadcasting messages to Haitians (warning) them not to attempt ocean voyages to the United States, saying they will be intercepted and turned back home if they do."

The message comes from Raymond Joseph, Haiti's US ambassador, saying in Creole:

"Listen, don't rush on boats to leave the country. If you do that, we'll all have even worse problems....If you think you will reach the US and all the doors will be wide open to you, that's not at all the case. And they will intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from."

If large numbers flee, they'll be incarcerated at Guatanamo's Krome Service Processing Center under conditions others earlier faced. After the 1991 coup deposed President Aristide, thousands fled to America. Most were sent home, but around 300 were held at Guantanamo because tests showed they were HIV positive. In subsequent years, thousands more were interned there.

Conditions were deplorable. Treated like prisoners, they were held behind razor wire in leaky barracks with bad sanitation, poor food, and little medical care even for the sick and pregnant women. After one protest and a hunger strike, crackdowns were severe, and many were imprisoned.

In October 2002, 212 Haitians reached South Florida seeking asylum and safety. Instead, they were rounded up, handcuffed, held in detention, and grossly mistreated. Families were separated from children, husbands from wives, and siblings from each other, but it wasn't an isolated incident under a secret Bush administration policy authorizing what now is the Department of Homeland Security to detain South Florida arrivals, regardless of their asylum eligibility.

It's how Washington always treated Haitians since they began arriving over 50 years ago to escape repression, only to be treated abusively once here.

Today, sick and dying Haitians are denied visas for emergency medical treatment and those with them can't leave. On January 19, the Miami Herald reported that commercial flights from Haiti are banned because checks can't screen out potential terrorists, a policy applying to Haitians, not US citizens or others allowed to depart.

Abducting Haitian Children

Noted international law and human rights expert Professor Francis Boyle reports the following:

"The USA is stealing the alleged 'orphans' of Haiti, taking them away from their families. Haiti is currently being occupied by the United States....Obama basically told Preval he was taking over the country, and Preval said OK -- no choice in the matter" as Washington does what it pleases, especially against defenseless countries like Haiti.

"....the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to this situation. It clearly states in Article 2:

'The Convention shall also apply to all cases of partial or total occupation of the territory of a High Contracting Party, even if the said occupation meets with no armed resistance.' "

Under Fourth Geneva, Haitian "orphans are protected persons under the terms of the (Convention). Hence, they cannot be moved from Haiti for any reason. To do so is a serious war crime."

Boyle added that Defense Secretary Gates said America won't police Haiti. However, under Fourth Geneva, occupying the country and displacing its sitting government (even in weakened form) is precisely what Washington is doing.

On January 19, The New York Times headlined, "53 Haitian Orphans Are Airlifted to US," then explained that some Haitian orphanages "are fronts for traffickers who buy children from their parents and sell them to couples in other countries." Now profiteers are stealing them.

According to UNICEF spokesperson Christopher de Bono:

"In orphanages in Haiti, there are an awful lot of children who are not orphans."

According to UNICEF adviser Jean Luc Legrand, children are also missing from hospitals.

"We have documented around 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals and not with their own family at the time. UNICEF has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children....that existed beforehand. Unfortunately, many of the....networks have links with the international adoption market."

Fast-track adoptions are proceeding in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and America.

They're victims of child-traffickers, now aided by Homeland Security's January 18 announced policy of waiving visa requirements on humanitarian grounds for Haitian children approved for adoption, or perhaps abducted to be sold for profit, never to see their parents again or know if they're alive. DHS is facilitating a crime, a practice it's expert at targeting Latino immigrants, including documented US citizens.

Boyle asks who gives "the White Racist United States (the) Divine Right to go around the world (stealing) Black Children from Third World Countries, depriving those children and their countries of their future?"

"The forcible transfer of children of one group (Black Hatians) to another group (White Americans) is genocide under the 1948 Genocide Convention (besides violating Fourth Geneva)."

It may also violate America's "Genocide Implication Act as amended by the Genocide Accountability Act and perhaps the US War Crimes Act."

The White House pressured the Haitian government to comply, forcing it to be complicit in child abductions - trafficking potentially thousands of Haitian children for profit at a time they're most vulnerable.

"Notice the duress and coercion involved here. The Black Haitian government was forced by the White Racist USA to surrender up their Children to White American child thieves," parents complicit in a crime with lawyers helping them who know better but are well paid to stay silent.

Boyle asks:

"Are we American Lawyers going to stand by and let their genocidal thievery of Haitian babies happen? Or are we going to do something to stop it?"

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Posted January 25, 2010 By Ben Ehrenreich

Why Did We Focus on Securing Haiti Rather Than Helping Haitians?

By the weekend, it was clear that something perverse was going on in Haiti, something savage and bestial in its lack of concern for human life. I'm not talking about the earthquake, and certainly not about the so-called "looting," which I prefer to think of as the autonomously organized distribution of unjustly hoarded goods. I'm talking about the U.S. relief effort.

For two days after the quake, despite almost unimaginable destruction, there were reasons to be optimistic. With a few notable exceptions?Pat Robertson and David Brooks among them?Americans reacted with extraordinary and unhesitating generosity of spirit and of purse. Port-au-Prince is not much farther from Washington, D.C., than, say, New Orleans, and the current president of the United States, unlike his predecessor, was quick to react to catastrophe. Taking advantage of "our unique capacity to project power around the world," President Barack Obama pledged abundant aid and 10,000 troops.

Troops? Port-au-Prince had been leveled by an earthquake, not a barbarian invasion, but, OK, troops. Maybe they could put down their rifles and, you know, carry stuff, make themselves useful. At least they could get there soon: The naval base at Guantanamo was barely 200 miles away.

The Cubans, at least, would show up quickly. It wasn't until Friday, three days after the quake, that the "supercarrier" USS Carl Vinson, arrived?and promptly ran out of supplies. "We have communications, we have some command and control, but we don't have much relief supplies to offer," admitted Rear Adm. Ted Branch. So what were they doing there?

"Command and control" turned out to be the key words. The U.S. military did what the U.S. military does. Like a slow-witted, fearful giant, it built a wall around itself, commandeering the Port-au-Prince airport and constructing a mini-Green Zone. As thousands of tons of desperately needed food, water, and medical supplies piled up behind the airport fences?and thousands of corpses piled up outside them?Defense Secretary Robert Gates ruled out the possibility of using American aircraft to airdrop supplies: "An airdrop is simply going to lead to riots," he said. The military's first priority was to build a "structure for distribution" and "to provide security." (Four days and many deaths later, the United States began airdropping aid.)

The TV networks and major papers gamely played along. Forget hunger, dehydration, gangrene, septicemia?the real concern was "the security situation," the possibility of chaos, violence, looting. Never mind that the overwhelming majority of on-the-ground accounts from people who did not have to answer to editors described Haitians taking care of one another, digging through rubble with their bare hands, caring for injured loved ones?and strangers?in the absence of outside help. Even the evidence of "looting" documented something that looked more like mutual aid: The photograph that accompanied a Sunday New York Times article reporting "pockets of violence and anarchy" showed men standing atop the ruins of a store, tossing supplies to the gathered crowd.

The guiding assumption, though, was that Haitian society was on the very edge of dissolving into savagery. Suffering from "progress-resistant cultural influences" (that's David Brooks finding a polite way to call black people primitive), Haitians were expected to devour one another and, like wounded dogs, to snap at the hands that fed them. As much as any logistical bottleneck, the mania for security slowed the distribution of aid.

Air-traffic control in the Haitian capital was outsourced to an Air Force base in Florida, which, not surprisingly, gave priority to its own pilots. While the military flew in troops and equipment, planes bearing supplies for the Red Cross, the World Food Program, and Doctors Without Borders were rerouted to Santo Domingo in neighboring Dominican Republic. Aid flights from Mexico, Russia, and France were refused permission to land. On Monday, the British Daily Telegraph reported, the French minister in charge of humanitarian aid admitted he had been involved in a "scuffle" with a U.S. commander in the airport's control tower. According to the Telegraph, it took the intervention of the United Nations for the United States to agree to prioritize humanitarian flights over military deliveries.

Meanwhile, much of the aid that was arriving remained at the airport. Haitians watched American helicopters fly over the capital, commanding and controlling, but no aid at all was being distributed in most of the city. On Tuesday, a doctor at a field hospital within site of the runways complained that five to 10 patients were dying each day for lack of the most basic medical necessities. "We can look at the supplies sitting there," Alphonse Edward told Britain's Channel 4 News.

The much-feared descent into anarchy stubbornly refused to materialize. "It is calm at this time," Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, deputy commander of the U.S. Southern Command, admitted to the AP on Monday. "Those who live and work here tell me that the level of violence that we see right now is below pre-earthquake levels." He announced that for in a city of more than 2 million, aid-distribution points had been set up on the sixth day of the crisis.

So what happened? Why the mad rush to command and control, with all its ultimately murderous consequences? Why the paranoid focus on security above saving lives? Clearly, President Obama failed to learn one of the basic lessons taught by Hurricane Katrina: You can't solve a humanitarian problem by throwing guns at it. Before the president had finished insisting that "my national security team understands that I will not put up with any excuses," Haiti's fate was sealed. National security teams prioritize national security, an amorphous and expensive notion that has little to do with keeping Haitian citizens alive.

This leaves the more disturbing question of why the Obama administration chose to respond as if they were there to confront an insurgency, rather than to clear rubble and distribute antibiotics and MREs. The beginning of an answer can be found in what Rebecca Solnit, author of A Paradise Built in Hell, calls "elite panic"-the conviction of the powerful that their own Hobbesian corporate ethic is innate in all of us, that in the absence of centralized authority, only cannibalism can reign.

But the danger of hunger-crazed mobs never came up after the 2004 Pacific tsunami, and no one mentions security when tornados and floods wipe out swaths of the American Midwest. This suggests two possibilities, neither of them flattering. The first is that the administration had strategic reasons for sending 10,000 troops that had little to do with disaster relief. This is the explanation favored by the Latin American left and, given the United States' history of invasion and occupation in Haiti (and in the Dominican Republic and Cuba and Nicaragua and Grenada and Panama), it is difficult to dismiss. Only time will tell what "reconstruction" means.

Another answer lies closer to home. New Orleans and Port-au-Prince have one obvious thing in common: The majority of both cities' residents are black and poor. White people who are not poor have been known, when confronted with black people who are, to start locking their car doors and muttering about their security. It doesn't matter what color our president is. Even when it is ostensibly doing good, the U.S. government can be racist, and, in an entirely civil and bureaucratic fashion, savagely cruel.

Posted January 22, 2010 By Wayne Madsen

Obama authorizes covert economic war against Venezuela

WMR's intelligence sources have reported that the Obama administration has authorized an economic war against Venezuela in order to destabilize the government of President Hugo Chavez.

After a successful coup against Chavez ally, President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, and the very thin 51-49 percent electoral win by Chile's billionaire right-winger Sebastian Pinera on January 17, a buoyed Obama White House has given a green light for political operatives in Venezuela, many of whom operate under the cover of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), to set the stage for massive street demonstrations to protest Chavez's devaluation of the bolivar, Venezuela's currency.

Chavez devalued the bolivar by 50 percent to make Venezuelan oil exports less expensive, thus boosting revenue for his country. However, the devaluation has also seen price rises and inflation in Venezuela and the CIA and its subservient NGOs have wasted little time in putting out stories about consumers rushing to the stories ahead of an increase in consumer products, with imported flat-screen televisions being the favorite consumer item being hyped by the corporate media as seeing a huge price increase and long lines at shopping malls favored by the Venezuelan elites.

The state has exempted certain consumer goods such as food, medicines, school supplies, and industrial machinery from being affected by the bolivar's devaluation through a different exchange rate and price controls, but it is the price increases on televisions, tobacco, alcohol, cell phones, and computers that has the anti-Chavez forces in Venezuela and abroad hyping the ill-effects on the Venezuelan consumer.

To battle against businessmen who are trying to capitalize on the devaluation of the bolivar, Chavez has threatened to close and possibly seize any business that gouges the consumer by inordinately raising prices. The first target of a temporary closure was a Caracas store owned by the French firm Exito.

International investment analysts praised Chavez's decision to devalue the bolivar and said the decision was overdue considering the fall of oil prices worldwide. However, the CIA and NGOs, many aligned with George Soros's Open Society Institute and the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy are planning large street demonstrations against Chavez's handling of the economy.

National Assembly elections are scheduled for September but the Obama administration has decided that if Chavez can be removed now, his allies in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, and some Caribbean island states will quickly abandon Chavez's alternative to American-led Western Hemisphere financial contrivances and free trade pacts, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA).

The Obama planners then see Cuba, once again, being isolated in the hemisphere and ripe for increased U.S. political pressure. Cuba was placed on the list of 14 countries requiring additional airline passenger screening as part of the policy to pressure and isolate Cuba. There is a possibility that with the outbreak of U.S.-inspired violence in the streets of Venezuela, that nation could join Cuba on the list as the 15th country.

The Obama administration's assault is two-fold: economic and political. Pressure is being applied against the gasoline chain Citgo, which is owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, PDVSA, and Venezuelan investment favorability ratings. Politically, the U.S. is overtly and covertly funneling money to anti-Chavez groups through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and groups affiliated with George Soros.

There is also a small military component to Obama's strategy of undermining Chavez. U.S., P-3 Orion overflights of Venezuelan airspace from bases in Aruba and Curacao are designed to intimidate Chavez and activate Venezuelan radar and command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I) systems to gather electronic and signals intelligence data that would be used by the United States to jam Venezuelan military networks in the event of a U.S.-inspired uprising against Chavez by U.S. loyalists embedded in the Venezuelan military, police, PDVSA, and media. The U.S. is also stoking cross-border incursions into Venezuela by Colombian paramilitaries to gauge Venezuela's border defenses. Last November, Colombian right-wing paramilitary units killed two Venezuelan National Guardsmen inside Venezuela in Tachira state. Weapons caches maintained by Colombians inside Venezuela have been seized by Venezuelan authorities. Venezuela has also arrested a number of Colombian DAS intelligence agents inside Venezuela.

Obama signed a military agreement with Colombia that allows the United States to establish seven air and naval bases in Colombia. An additional agreement by Obama with Panama will see the U.S. military return to that nation to set up two military bases.

It is estimated that some 25 percent of Venezuelans are likely Fifth Columnists who would take part in a revolt against Chavez. Many of them based in the Venezuelan oil-producing state of Zulia and the capital of Maracaibo, where successive U.S. ambassadors in Caracas have stoked secessionist embers and where the CIA and U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency have concentrated much of their efforts. In November, Venezuelan police arrested in Maracaibo, Magaly Janeth Moreno Vega, also known as ?The Pearl,? the leader of the right-wing United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which has been directly linked to Colombia's pro-U.S. President Alvaro Uribe and members of his government, including former Colombian Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio Isaza, appointed by Uribe as Colombia's ambassador to Mexico.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2010 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).

Posted January 22, 2010 By PressTV

Latin American leaders say US occupying Haiti

Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua say the US is using the international relief operation in Haiti as a cover-up for a military takeover.

Bolivian President Evo Morales said that he will request an emergency UN meeting to reject what he calls the US military occupation of Haiti.

"It's not right that the United States should use this natural disaster to invade and militarily occupy Haiti," Morales told a press conference on Wednesday.

"If you have all these problems with the injured and the dead from the earthquake, you have to go there to save lives, and you don't do that from a military standpoint," he added.

An outspoken critic of US policies, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez also had accused Washington of occupying Haiti "under the guise of the natural disaster."

Nicaragua also has taken a similar stance toward US with respect to the situation in Haiti.

The United States is deploying up to 20,000 troops to Haiti. US servicemen have taken control of the country's international airport.

The Pentagon has sent one of its biggest aircraft carriers to Haiti, along with other navy and coast guard vessels.

On Friday, Arturo Valenzuela, the US assistant secretary of state for Western hemisphere affairs, rejected that the US was occupying Haiti.

"Haiti is a sovereign country, everybody respects Haiti's sovereign country, the United States respects Haiti's sovereignty," said Arturo Valenzuela.

Posted January 22, 2010 By Radio Havana Cuba

Haiti: New U.S. Military Base?

The U.S. government is making full opportunistic use of the tragedy caused by the earthquake in Haiti. The white house forced the local government to agree to fill their country with U.S. Marines and troops of the 82nd Airborne Division, in an operation which has nothing to do with humanitarian assistance but with military occupation.

Thus, the streets of Port au Prince, full of rubble and with a bewildered population with infinite needs, are scenes of a large deployment of U.S. soldiers armed to the teeth more common in a military conflict than in a humanitarian catastrophe.

The gardens of the ruined National Palace, seat of the Haitian government and symbol of sovereignty, suffered the ígnominy of being used as a landing strip for helicopters which, instead of bringing aid to the thousands of survivors crowded around the palace, have started to occupy the center of the city, after taking control of the airport.

Some people must have noticed the repetition of the events of 1914 when, with the pretext of protecting U.S. citizens allegedly threatened by a popular uprising, the U.S. troops landed in Port-au-Prince after fierce bombings and remained there for 19 years.

The middle-aged and youngest people should remember the two most recent invasions in 1994 and 2004. In both cases the United States employed the argument that the intérnal instability of the country was threatening international security.

This time Washington used the earthquake as a pretext to complete its strategic control in the Caribbean.

The U.S. military forces in Haiti are already comprised of 13,000 troops. They are supported by the Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, the Underwood and Normandy warships, with the capacity of launching cruise míssiles, as well as the Bataan helicopter carrier. Of course, they are not part of the U.N.contingent or belong to the Mission for the Stabilization in Haiti, the MINUSTAH.

The United States with the Haiti under its control would be closing a strategic square of the entíre Caribbean Sea. This square would be formed at both western ends by Haiti, and the illegal naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in the east by the facilities in Aruba and Curacao, and Colombia.

Remember that in the islands under Dutch control, the Pentagon maintains the constant presence of 300 men with combat capability, as well as five F-15 or F-16 planes, three reconnaissance aircrafts, a flying radar Awac type with continental scope, and maritime control devices.

Colombia has allowed itself to be turned into a giant U.S. aircraft carrier after the military agreement which betrays any spirit of peaceful Latin American coexistence, and places loaded missiles aiming at its neighbors, including Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia, Brazil and Nicaragua.

To all this armed capacity, the Pentagon has added four facilities in Panama, a radar station in Costa Rica, a military base in Soto Cano or Palmerola, Honduras, another military base in Ilopango, El Salvador, and the ones in Puerto Rico.

If we imagine the Caribbean as a huge diamond, we realize that it is full of U.S. troops from north to south and from east to west. This presence is not in for nothing, it is a real threat to all our peoples, particularly to those where the struggle for freedom is so advanced.

The United States is a genetically aggressive and expansionist nation. This isn't anything new for us. It was predicted by our founding fathers who wisely warned us about the need of uniting together, of standing our ground and not to give in to the enormous danger this military power represents for our life and our dignity.

Posted January 22, 2010 By Bill Van Auken

Haitians dying by the thousands as US escalates military intervention

Thousands of Haitians are dying every day for lack of medical care and supplies, according to a leading humanitarian aid group. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has announced that it is expanding the US military presence in the country, maintaining Washington's priority of troops over humanitarian aid.

The US-based medical aid group Partners in Health has warned that as many as 20,000 Haitians may be dying daily due to infections such as gangrene and sepsis that have set in, as the majority of the injured receive no medical care or are treated in facilities that lack the most basic supplies.

"Tens of thousands of earthquake victims need emergency surgical care now!!!," the organization said in a statement posted on its web site. "The death toll and the incidence of gangrene and other deadly infections will continue to rise unless a massive effort is made to open and staff more operating rooms and to deliver essential equipment and supplies."

Partners in Health has worked in Haiti for more than 20 years. Its co-founder, Dr. Paul Farmer, is the deputy United Nations envoy to Haiti and a senior professor of public health at Harvard University.

While Haitian officials and other organizations have claimed the Partners in Health figure is too high, it is indisputable that Haiti confronts a disaster that could equal or even eclipse that of the quake itself because of the delays in the provision of health care to hundreds of thousands of sick and injured people.

The New York Times Thursday quoted Dr. Eduardo de Marchena, a University of Miami cardiologist overseeing one field hospital in Haiti, who provided a similarly grim prognosis. "There are still thousands of patients with major fractures, major wounds, that have not been treated yet," he said. "There are people, many people, who are going to die unless they're treated."

As the Times reported, "In the squatter camps now scattered across this capital, there are still people writhing in pain, their injuries bound up by relatives but not yet seen by a doctor eight days after the quake struck. On top of that, the many bodies still in the wreckage increase the risk of diseases spreading, especially, experts say, if there is rain."

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Port-au-Prince General Hospital is continuously besieged by more than 1,000 patients waiting for surgery. "Armed guards in tanks kept out mobs," the newspaper reported. It added, "At any given moment, thousands of injured, some grievously, wait outside virtually any hospital or clinic, pleading for treatment."

CNN's Karl Penhaul reported from Port-au-Prince General Hospital, where US paratroopers have taken up positions. He said that Haitians questioned why so many US troops were pouring into the country. "They say they need more food and water and fewer guys with guns," he reported.

He also indicated that American doctors at the hospital seemed mystified by the military presence. "They say there has never been a security problem here at the hospital, but there is a problem of getting supplies in." He added, "They can get nine helicopters of troops in, but some of the doctors here say if they can do that, then why can't they also bring with them IV fluids and other much needed supplies."

The Spanish daily El País quoted one of these American doctors, Jim Warsinguer: "We lack a lot of things, too many for so much time having passed since the earthquake: betadine, bandages, gloves. And, above all, morphine. We have to do amputations without anesthesia. You see them suffer, and it is terrible. The Haitians are very brave, but they are suffering a lot."

The desperate conditions and lack of sanitation for the estimated 2 million Haitians left homeless by the earthquake threaten to trigger a public health disaster. "The next health risk could include outbreaks of diarrhea, respiratory tract infections and other diseases among hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in overcrowded camps with poor or non-existent sanitation," said Doctors Without Borders deputy operations manager Greg Elder.

While media reports claim that ever-growing amounts of material aid are coming into the country, reporters on the ground have said that there is still no sign that it is getting into the hands of the overwhelming majority of those who need it.

The British Broadcasting Corporation reported Thursday, "Correspondents say the aid that has thus far arrived at the port is being driven for 45 minutes across the city to the airport, where it is piling up and not being distributed to those who need it."

The BBC continued, "The US and UN World Food Programme insist the distribution of food and water is well under way, but the BBC's Adam Mynott in Port-au-Prince says many people have still seen no international relief at all."

Aid organizations have charged that since establishing its unilateral control over the Port-au-Prince airport and the city's port facilities, and assuming essential governmental powers in Haiti, the US military has given the beefing up of its presence in the country priority over the provision of aid. Doctors Without Borders, for example, has protested that military air traffic controllers have since January 14 refused permission to land to five of its planes carrying 85 tons of medical supplies.

With the Haitian catastrophe now in its 10th day, it is becoming increasingly clear that the response of the Obama administration and the Pentagon, which have made military occupation of the Caribbean nation its first objective, has deepened the immense suffering of millions of injured, homeless and hungry people.

The Pentagon has announced that it is sending 4,000 more troops to Haiti, which will boost the US military occupation force to 16,000. For the first time, a unit that had been slated for deployment by the US Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is being diverted to the Caribbean nation.

Meanwhile, a naval encirclement of Haiti's coastline is growing. The Miami Herald reported Thursday that the US military has also prepared a detention camp at the Guantánamo Bay Navy Base in Cuba-site of the infamous prison where detainees were tortured-to hold up to 1,000 Haitians should they manage to elude the US warships.

By using Guantánamo as a holding pen for refugees fleeing the horrific conditions of Haiti, the US government will insist that they have no legal rights and cannot appeal their deportation back to their homeland. This same procedure was used in 1991, when thousands of Haitians fled the country following a violent military coup.

The claim that this military "surge" into Haiti is an indispensable prerequisite for delivering aid to the Haitian people is a lie. Relief agencies operating in the country insist that they have not been threatened by the Haitian people, but rather hindered by the attempt to impose war zone-style security over their efforts.

The US media never so much as hints that there could be anything but the sincerest humanitarian motives behind Washington's assertion of control over Haiti. It makes no reference to the country's history, which includes a two-decade US occupation at the beginning of the twentieth century, the deployment of US troops twice in the last 20 years, and Washington's orchestration of a 2004 coup that ousted and exiled Haiti's elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

In publications reflecting the views of the military-intelligence apparatus, however, there are franker assessments of Washington's objectives and the real mission. The American Enterprise Institute's Center for Defense Studies issued a "crisis update" on Haiti, warning: "Conducting a 'humanitarian relief' mission in a poor country stricken by a natural disaster can quickly embroil the United States in local politics. And desperate people can easily become violent people."

The statement continued by affirming, "Beyond delivering relief, US soldiers and Marines will inevitably find themselves securing the peace." Part of this mission, it added, would be "to ensure that Haiti's gangs-particularly those loyal to ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide-are suppressed."

Similarly, William Kristol and Thomas Donnelly, writing in the Weekly Standard, argued that beyond the humanitarian pretext for intervening in Haiti, "the strategic case is also compelling."

"With a transition looming in Cuba and challenges in Central America among others, there is a political reason to be-and to be seen to be-a good and strong neighbor."

In other words, Washington is exploiting the tragedy that has been inflicted upon the people of Haiti to assert colonial-style control over the country. Its aim is to reaffirm US imperialist hegemony in the broader region and to suppress any social revolt by the Haitian masses.

It is only a matter of time before the horrendous death toll caused by the January 12 earthquake will be augmented by victims shot to death by US occupation forces.

Posted January 20, 2010 By NELSON P. VALDÉS

The Rescue Operation's Priorities in Haiti

"The contempt we have been taught to entertain for blacks, make us fear many things that are founded neither in reason nor experience."

- Alexander Hamilton in letter to John Hay, 1799.

"Only those who hate the black population, see hatred in blacks"

- José Martí, Montecristi Manifesto, 1895

The recent earthquakes that have demolished the city of Port au Prince and its surroundings has left Haiti stateless, ever poorer, desperate and in need of long term global assistance. A world-wide rescue operation has been initiated. But, it is questionable to what extent the best interests of the people of Haiti have been and will be considered, in the long run.

First, the foreign aid teams "rescued" and took out of the country the non-Haitians, particularly the Europeans, Americans and assorted other tourists. The Voice of America on Jan. 16 reported: "In the last day or so the United States and French governments have started running passenger flights out of the country [Haiti] for evacuees from those countries. People line up and wait for a plane to arrive so they can leave Haiti and leave behind what is a very difficult, traumatic experience for many." [1]

Second, five days have gone by without any real significant distribution of medical supplies, food or water to the neediest people.

The facts indicate clear priorities: the Haitians are not first in line. In fact, the rescuers seem to have a widespread fear of the poor and desperate Haitians. A Scottish reporter said, "aid workers in Haiti today called for more security amid fears of attacks by increasingly desperate earthquake survivors." [2]

Yet, the Haitians have been extraordinarily patient despite the fact that their world has collapsed around them.

The assistance teams seem reluctant to distribute until they feel secure. Thus, the US government sent troops to bring aid and the Haitian government dispatched police to provide "security," and respond to the exaggerated rumors of "looting." Indeed, there have been reports that the security squads moved the aid providers to "secure" places. [3]

The Haitian people who wait for basic needs have not been mobilized to work on their own behalf. Rather, the "humanitarians" treat them as children, with no thought to providing them with the tools to help themselves. One Haitian consul to Brazil, George Samuel Antoine declared two days ago that any country that happens to have Africans is cursed! [4] Shades of Pat Robertson and David Brooks.

Seemingly, the outsiders coming to help the people don't trust the natives, despite the fact that the Haitians are dying, hungry, thirsty, sick, homeless, and with most of their families gone or lost. The Haitian chief of police, like most people in positions of authority, is a foreigner appointed by the United Nations.

Meanwhile, the twice elected and twice removed political leader of the Haitians - Jean-Bertrand Aristide is not permitted to enter his own country. In fact, President Obama appointed one of those who ousted him - George W. Bush - to help "supervise" the "reconstruction" of Haiti. Bush merited his appointment presumably because of the wonderful job he did supervising the post Katrina aid program. Meanwhile, for all intent and purposes there is no longer, except symbolically, a Haitian government.

Perhaps it is too harsh but it appears as if those in charge think that a few thousand more Haitians dead would make it easier to control the situation. USA Today has reported, "Rescuers pulled a dehydrated but otherwise uninjured woman from the ruins of a luxury hotel in the Haitian capital early Sunday, drawing applause from onlookers who have seen little to cheer as the body count continued to rise from Tuesday's earthquake."

They expect Haitians to remain patient, without food or water or aid to rescue their friends and relatives. Haitians are not even informed as to what to expect or when.

Some US TV channels have begun broadcasting about vodou burials. The US mass media has turned the whole tragedy into another narcissistic story about how Americans handle disasters. Thus, Hillary at one end, and Bill on the other travel...to Haiti to see for themselves! [5] As if such voyages have inherently curative powers!

Ironically, US and NATO can quickly deliver death from the air, but, apparently won't unleash their technology and resources to quickly save lives. United Nations tanks have been sent to different locations throughout what remains of the city, particularly the poorer neighborhoods such as Cité Soleil. [6] A poor substitute for food and water.

In Afghanistan drones fire at will with no one at the Pentagon expressing minimal concern, yet, in the Haitian case dropping food and water has been avoided "for fear of riots." Apparently no one has figured that people will riot because of the absence of drinking water or food; unless they have to go without either for enough time so that the Haitians experience a Caribbean version of the final solution.

On January 15th, the United Nations' Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs issued a report stating, "Haiti is currently at UN Security Phase 3. This will implicate ongoing operations in terms of limiting the ability to move around the city and work at night (which is also hindered by the lack of electricity). Patrols reported that the situation is calm in general, but there are reports of stone throwing at passing vehicles, looting and acts of vandalism. ICRC has inspected several prisons. The central prison was completely destroyed, meaning up to 4,000 prisoners have escaped." [7] Under Security Phase III all international staff and families are relocated inside or outside the country.

It is unclear who is directing what. Rear Admiral Ted Branch, the most senior military official aboard the USS Carl Vinson stated, "We have lift, we have communications, we have some command and control, but we don't have much relief supplies to offer?We have no supplies at the airport that we have access to. There are other supplies there that are under the control of other agencies, other organizations and we haven't yet coordinated together to make those supplies available for anyone to deliver." [8] The United Nations and the US authorities on the ground, are telling those who directly want to deliver help not to do so because they might be attacked by "hungry mobs." [9] Two cargo planes from Doctors Without Borders have been forced to land in the Dominican Republic because the shipments have to be accompanied within Port au Prince by US military escort, according to the US command. [10]

One American on the ground summed up the situation: "For the aid to work and the teams of search and rescue workers to be able to do their job there is going to need to be a major effort of all people to lay down their own fear and personal need and allow the help to get to the worst off. Pray that people will think of others as best they can and that relief will begin to get to the places it is needed most." [11] Such fears, created and nurtured in colonial times, have been reproduced for over two hundred years. Alexander Hamilton and José Martí recognized the humanity of the former black slaves turned revolutionaries and told us to put our fears aside. As Linda Polman writes in The Times of London class and racial fear by the rescue teams is costing the lives of thousands in Haiti. [12]

Nelson P Valdés is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, founder of the Latin America Data Base and director of the Cuba-L Project. He is a specialist on Latin America and writes for CounterPunch.

The author wishes to think the suggestions by Sandra Levinson, Ned Sublette and Saul Landau.

Posted January 20, 2010 by Glen Ford

US Humanitarian Aid Looks More Like US Invasion

"U.S. governments regard masses of Black people, first, as potential threats to security, and only second as fellow human beings deserving of assistance."

It is understandable that many African Americans are making comparisons between the militarized character of the U.S. intervention in Haiti's earthquake disaster and the federal government's largely military response to the Katrina catastrophe in New Orleans, four and a half years ago. It is quite reasonable to conclude that the U.S. government is more concerned about law and order issues than in attending to the immediate needs of desperate disaster victims - especially when the victims are Black. History tells us that U.S. governments regard masses of Black people, first, as potential threats to security, and only second as fellow human beings deserving of assistance. Nevertheless, the heavy-handed militarization of U.S. disaster aid to Haiti should be seen in a larger context. As a matter of established American policy, the military has been assigned prime responsibility for U.S. foreign disaster relief, worldwide.

It's not just Haiti and New Orleans, or Black people in. When the biggest tidal wave in recorded history killed nearly 230,000 people in 14 countries in 2004 - a death toll that some fear may be reached in Haiti - the face of U.S. disaster aid was overwhelmingly military, so much so that the government of Indonesia, the epicenter of the undersea earthquake, was initially hesitant to allow the Americans in. The Pakistani government's response was much the same the next year, when 80,000 people died in an earthquake. The American "aid" mission to Pakistan looked more like an invasion - which was not an irrational fear, as subsequent events have shown.

"More often than not, the uniformed military is the dispenser of a wide range of U.S. foreign aid in Africa."

It's not just disaster relief that has been militarized. The U.S. military command in Africa, AFRICOM, has assumed responsibility for much of the day-to-day duties once performed by the State Department and other civilian agencies. More often than not, the uniformed military is the dispenser of a wide range of U.S. foreign aid in Africa, as part of a general militarization of U.S. relations with the rest of the planet.

This U.S. policy of putting the military in charge of, not only disaster relief, but foreign assistance in general, is an outgrowth of the collapse of the Soviet Union, nearly two decades ago. As the world's only superpower, the Americans began comparing themselves to ancient Rome. If weaker nations recoil at the prospect of American legions stomping around their country, well, that's too bad. If they want American aid, they'll have to accept the U.S. military presence.

The military's dominance in U.S. relations with other nations is also evident in the size of the embassies the U.S. is building around the world. The largest is in Iraq, and is designed more like a junior Pentagon than a civilian facility. The sheer size of the embassy the Americans are building in Pakistan is a huge source of public outrage and fear. And the fifth largest U.S. embassy in the world sits in Haiti, one of the planet's most economically unimportant nations. What purpose could it possibly serve, other than as a U.S. military and and dirty tricks base for the U.S. Southern Command - which now decides what gets in and out of Haiti. For all practical purposes, the U.S. Southern Command is the occupying power in Haiti. What we are observing is imperialism in action, under cover of disaster.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com [2].

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Posted January 20, 2010 by IACHR

IACHR PUBLISHES REPORT ON HONDURAS

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today published the report entitled Honduras: Human Rights and the Coup d'État. The IACHR conducted an on-site visit to Honduras on August 17-21, 2009, and prepared this report, which covers the human rights situation from the time of the coup that overthrew the democratically elected President on June 28, 2009.

The report states that along with the loss of institutional legitimacy caused by the coup d'état, serious human rights violations have occurred. These include deaths; the arbitrary declaration of a state of exception; the repression of public demonstrations through the disproportionate use of force; the criminalization of social protest; the arbitrary detention of thousands of individuals; cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and poor detention conditions; the militarization of the territory; an increase in situations of racial discrimination; violations of women's rights, arbitrary restrictions on the right to freedom of expression; and serious infringements of political rights.

The IACHR also verified the ineffectiveness of judicial remedies to safeguard human rights. The violations of the rights to life, humane treatment, association, personal liberty, a fair trial, freedom of expression, political rights, and the rights of women and minority groups were exacerbated by the lack of an institutional order that would make it possible to channel complaints, investigate the facts, punish those responsible, and provide remedies to the victims.

The sectors of Honduran society that condemn the coup d'état told the IACHR that they feared suffering reprisals on the part of security agents and distrusted the actions of those institutions that have not forcefully condemned the interruption of the democratic institutional order and have failed to act in the face of publicly known allegations. The de facto authorities and the Supreme Court of Justice of Honduras systematically deny the existence of these violations, a circumstance that results in a state of inactivity and tolerance that makes it easier for such acts to be repeated with impunity.

The bodies of the inter-American human rights system have maintained on numerous occasions that the democratic system is the principal guarantee for the effectiveness of human rights. Indeed, it can be inferred from the report that the human rights violations that are alleged are a direct consequence of the interruption of the constitutional order. The Commission condemns the fact that, despite the efforts of the international community, President Zelaya has not been allowed to return to the Presidency of Honduras. The Commission believes that the return to the democratic institutional order in Honduras is necessary for the conditions to be in place for the effective protection and fulfillment of the human rights of all the people of that country.

A principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (OAS), the IACHR derives its mandate from the OAS Charter and the American Convention on Human Rights. The Commission is composed of seven independent members who act in a personal capacity, without representing a particular country, and who are elected by the OAS General Assembly.

Posted January 18, 2010 by Chris Kraul

Billionaire Piñera wins Chile runoff

Reporting from Bogota, Colombia - Right-wing billionaire Sebastian Piñera won Chile's runoff presidential election Sunday, defeating former President Eduardo Frei, the man he bested by a big margin in December's first round of voting.

Piñera's triumph ends a 20-year hold on power by Frei's Concertacion political alliance, which is also the party of incumbent President Michelle Bachelet. The coalition has held power since Gen. Augusto Pinochet's 17-year authoritarian regime ended in 1990.

Frei conceded the race when -- with 60% of the votes counted -- Piñera had tallied 51.87%. Frei said the results demonstrated the "solidity of Chilean democracy."

Piñera seemed a cinch to win after he beat Frei in December's first round 44% to 30%, but he saw his advantage in polls narrow to under 2 points in the final days of the campaign after a poor performance in a Jan. 11 televised debate. Frei had hammered away at Piñera's supposed sympathies with the military dictatorship and got crucial backing from a leftist lawmaker who finished a strong third in last month's initial voting.

Piñera ran on promises to streamline the bureaucracy, improve educational standards and steer Chile toward more industrialization and away from a reliance on exports of commodities such as copper, wine and fresh fruit.

Although outgoing President Bachelet is immensely popular, with recent opinion polls giving her a 79% approval rating, many Chileans are impatient with the nation's sluggish economy and high unemployment.

"I came to vote early because a change is necessary," said Norma Maino, a 55-year-old homemaker, after casting her ballot at Cervantes school in the capital, Santiago. Voting is obligatory in Chile, and 8 million were expected to cast ballots.

Piñera lost some ground in last week's televised debate when Frei asked him to promise not to appoint any ex-Pinochet officials to his government. That part of the debate allowed the Pinochet ghost to intrude, constituting a strategic error on Piñera's part, said Patricio Navia, professor of global studies at New York University.

Frei's campaign also had insisted that Piñera would curtail the extensive social programs, including universal healthcare and pensions, instituted under Concertacion rule. Although Piñera took pains to assure voters that he would retain the social safety net, doubts persisted among some voters.

"I voted for Frei because, if Piñera wins, we are going to lose everything that we have gained socially in health and other things," said Julio Pavez, a 62-year-old college professor who also arrived at the opening of the polls.

Bachelet publicly questioned whether Piñera was willing to remove himself from his considerable business interests, and she praised Frei for having sold or placed in trust about $2 million in holdings.

Piñera, who holds a doctorate in economics from Harvard, said he would wait until after the election to distance himself from his fortune, which includes a minority interest in Chile's flagship airline LAN, a TV station and the country's most popular professional soccer team.

Chile's bloody past came to the fore in the final week of the campaign when Bachelet, a victim of torture during the dictatorship, inaugurated the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. Frei was invited to the Jan. 11 ceremony but Piñera was not, an omission that he complained bitterly about.

Frei had promised to repeal a 1978 amnesty law shielding alleged military torturers and killers from prosecution for possible crimes dating back to September 1973, when then-President Salvador Allende was overthrown. Piñera, meanwhile, told 700 retired army officers that he would oppose any effort to prosecute retired military officers for crimes during that period if they hadn't already been charged.

Piñera has tried to move his right-wing orientation to the center by appealing to gay voters and indicating his support for abortion rights. But his plan to partly privatize state-controlled companies, including copper giant Codelco, has galvanized opposition from unions.

Such privatization is opposed by most Chileans.

Special correspondent Eva Vergara in Santiago, Chile, contributed to this report.

Posted January 18, 2010 by JEAN-GUY ALLARD

When Will They Make an Inventory of the Terrorists who Reside in USA?

The United States, the country that trying to find, absurdly, terrorists from Al Qaeda on flights coming from Cuba, is the privileged sanctuary of an important colony of terrorists, torturers, henchmen and murderous leaders.

Besides having initiated, oriented, financed and managed the terrorism against Cuba through their intelligence organs or Miami groups whose existence they have promoted; the United States has encouraged, godfathered or inspired illegal activities throughout the continent, whose authors they have then harbored.

From Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, confessed authors of the destruction, in flight, of a Cuban airliner in 1976, causing the death of its 73 passengers, up to the authors of acts of terrorism against the progressive governments of today's Latin America, Washington has never been offended by seeing the perpetrators of murderous conspiracies or individuals, created or recruited by its services to sow death, appearing in its territory.

Concerning Posada, the Internet is full of his confessions and his relations with crimes either as a terrorist instructor in the Everglades, the Basilio police commissary in Caracas, drug dealer giving weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras, author of multiple plans to kill leaders or promoter of acts of terrorism in Cuban territory.

Of his accomplice Orlando Bosch, a psychopathic pediatrician, the archives of 60 years of the Miami press reflect without any scruples his "feats" as head of the terrorist MIRR, of the "Anticommunist Cuban Army" or of "Acción Cubana."

He was head, always in the hands of the CIA, of the terrorist Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU) whose operations figured among the bloodiest in the whole history of terrorism in the continent.

On July 28, 1960, Bosch arrived in Miami with a visa for 30 days. But 50 years later, after making fun of Venezuelan Justice and enjoying like Carriles and many others with the active protection of the CIA and of the Mafia politicians, he is recovering from intermittent senility in a bungalow in Hialeah.

AN ENDLESS LIST OF MURDERERS

The list of terrorists, residing today in the United States that conspired and acted against Cuba with techniques taught in the US academies of terror and that continue benefiting from the complicity or the condescension of the apparatus, is endless.

Right from the fall of the pro-US dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, the most repugnant Cuban murderers, such as Esteban Ventura, Rolando Masferrer, Julio Laurent, and Pilar García, found immediate refuge in Florida, where they lived luxuriously with the money stolen from the State on their exit from the Island.

From the years of the Miami CIA station, the multimillion dollar JM/WAVE, came the enormous contingent of gangsters that the agency recycled, after the Bay of Pigs, in key elements of its continental operations, as much in the Venezuelan DISIP, as in the ranks of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet's secret police and in the apparatuses of repression of the different regimes, to whom it granted unmentionable support.

From the Novo Sampoll brothers, Pedro Crispín Remón Rodríguez and Gaspar (Gasparito) Jiménez, to Reinol Rodríguez, Antonio (Tony) Calatayud, Nelsy Ignacio Castro Matos, Roberto Martin Pérez and Sixto Reinaldo Aquit Manrique, Héctor Francisco Alfonso Ruiz, alias Héctor Fabián, and Ángel Alfonso German, there are dozens and dozens of murderers that continue there with untouchable status.

MURDEROUS PINOCHET ASSASSINS AND VENEZUELAN COUP PROMOTERS

The list of these terrorists, torturers, henchmen and murderous leaders hosted and aided by the United States is even longer. It extends from the torturers of the Argentinean military régime to the agents of Pinochet, such as Michael Townley, murderer with the Novo brothers of the Chilean Foreign Minister, Orlando Letelier.

Among the many other Salvadorean Fascists military, is Captain Álvaro Saravia, the murderer of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who has also benefited from American hospitality.

Mercenaries of the Nicaraguan Contras and Tonton Macoute from Haiti also appear in this inventory that still has to be completed and investigated.

When considering revolutionary Venezuela, there appear in Miami torturers like Joaquín Chafardet; authentic Fascists like Salvador Romaní and Ricardo Koesling; former agents of the DISIP Johan Peña, Pedro Lander, José Antonio Guevara who participated in the plot to murder the former District Attorney Anderson, together with Patricia Poleo, also have refuge in Florida.

Carlos Andrés Pérez, CAP as his cronies call him, in charge of the repression against the popular Venezuelan rising in 1989, known as The Caracazo, are today in exile in the United States.

Torturer and murderer from the secret police under CAP, Henry López Sisco is tied to a long succession of murders, disappearances and abuses unleashed in the 1970s to eliminate rebellious youth groups.

Alfredo Peña, the former mayor of the Metropolitan District of Caracas who was responsible for the deaths that happened in that city in April 2002 is also hiding in the USA.

Also in Miami are the coup leaders Carlos Fernández, former head of Fedecámaras, and Daniel Romero, who read in public the ordinance that suspended the National Assembly and the democratic institutions.

GONI CONSPIRES WITH THE STOLEN MILLIONS

The former Bolivian leader Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada (Goni) was responsible for a genocidal repression against the people in 2003 that cost the life of 67 civilians and more than 300 wounded with bullets.

From the US, Goni is now devoted to financing movements against the government of President Evo Morales.

Hugo Achá Melgar, identified as the representative in Bolivia of the Human Rights Foundation (FHR), was backer of the disjointed terrorist gang on April 16, 2009 in Santa Cruz, while he concocted the murder of Evo, has also chosen the road to the United States like several other people of the same affiliation.

Without any argument Washington is defaming Cuba, while it remains arms crossed concerning the terrorists and confessed promoters of terror within its own frontiers.

Taken from Granma Daily

Posted January 9, 2010 by Xinhua News Agency

Chavez: Venezuela sent F-16 jets to intercept U.S. military plane

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Friday that he had ordered F-16 jets to intercept a U.S. military plane that twice violated Venezuelan airspace earlier in the day.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Chavez said that the U.S. plane, based on the Netherlands' Curacao island in the Caribbean, intruded into Venezuelan airspace twice, the first for 15 minutes and the second 19 minutes.

The F-16s escorted the U.S. plane out, he added.

However, the U.S. military denied that any of its planes entered Venezuelan airspace on Friday.

"As a matter of policy we do not fly over a nation's air space without prior consent and coordination," the U.S. Southern Command, which is in charge of U.S. military activities in the hemisphere, said in a statement. "We operate with the utmost respect for the sovereignty of the nations in our hemisphere.

Last month, Chavez accused the United States of flying an unmanned spy plane into Venezuela's airspace and vowed to shoot down any similar aircraft in the future.

Venezuela suspended diplomatic ties with Colombia in July in response to a U.S.-Colombian military base deal, saying it would pave the way for the United States to invade Venezuela. Both Washington and Bogota denied the allegation.

Posted January 6, 2010 by NIDIA DIAZ

PARAGUAY - Watch out! Coup in Sight

IT was to be expected that former bishop Fernando Lugo's real battle would begin from the day that he assumed the Paraguayan presidency on August 15, 2008. The setback suffered by the Colorado Party forces in the elections after more than 60 years in government did not make them a constructive opposition; on the contrary, they dusted off their dirty arsenal of slander campaigns ? in which they are experts ? and all kinds of tricks to remove Lugo from power.

To do so, they would have had the support of the landowning oligarchy, business owners grown rich off smuggling, and the old political practice of selling votes to ensure their violent hold on corrupt power for decades.

We cannot forget that Lugo's candidacy was first opposed by high-ranking religious officials; in fact, the Vatican suspended him a divinis, depriving him of his right to celebrate mass and administer the sacraments, but the impoverished majority clamored for their good shepherd, the "bishop of the poor" as they call him, the only man who would then be able to free them from so much injustice.

To fulfill that mandate, Lugo headed the Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC), made up of a large number of movements and parties, including the Authentic Radical Liberal Party (PLRA), the Christian Democrats, the National Encounter, the País Solidario, the Movement Toward Socialism Party (P-MAS), the Tekojoja Movement, the National and Popular Bloc, the National Citizens' Resistance Movement, and the Republican Force Movement. He also had to take as his vice president Federico Franco of the PLRA, the only opposition party permitted during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. Now, Franco has publicly stated that he is "prepared" to replace Lugo if the corrupt right-wing's desire to remove him from power is fulfilled.

It is no coincidence that after the coup d'état perpetrated ? with the support and cynical complicity of the U.S. government ? against Honduran President José Manuel Zelaya, the right-wing oligarchic and corporate forces of Paraguay are ready to reenact the same script written by Washington, above all because the former bishop has expressed his intention of entering the ALBA bloc (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), a mechanism of integration, solidarity and cooperation that has yanki right-wing extremists losing sleep.

Outside of that, President Fernando Lugo's administration has focused on guaranteeing free and high-quality public services such as health and education; initiating a process of closing down and expelling U.S. military bases from Paraguayan territory; and accepting popular demands to begin a constitutional reform, in order to instigate its social project of change.

Let us not be fooled. Lugo's administration has not been characterized by rapid decisions directed at dismantling the old and corrupt political apparatus of the Paraguayan state, or by the radicalization of its campaign platform.

As was the case in Honduras, a simple tweak of the establishment raises the hackles of the oligarchy and traditional political parties, which are not willing to cede one inch on their privileges and interests, and far less anger their powerful northern neighbor by defending national sovereignty and self-determination.

It is in that context that some of the measures passed by Lugo's administration have irritated them. We are referring, for example, to the registration of agricultural properties, which in Paraguay's case is controlled at gunpoint by the hired thugs of Paraguayan and Brazilian landowners who took over those lands through illegal means and forcible eviction, in most cases.

Just this past September, the president canceled the military exercises carried out by 500 U.S. soldiers and an equal number of Paraguayan ones, under the euphemistic name of "New Horizons."

Lugo himself said at the time that it would not be prudent to engage in such military exercises because they could be questioned by the "fraternal countries of MERCOSUR," given that regional opposition to the expansion and establishment of seven U.S. military bases in Colombia is reaching confrontation point.

Rapidly, the U.S. ambassador in Asunción, Liliana Halladle, "regretted" the Paraguayan administration's decision, and in a tone of warning, expressed her "hope" that the measure would not affect other programs that the powerful northern neighbor maintains with the country. Typical yanki coercion.

Those events, however, were sufficient to have provoked diverse anti-Lugo alternatives cooked up during the year by Paraguay's right-wing and fascist forces, which were not buried with the dictator Stroessner. All of these plots are aimed at overthrowing him, whether by force or by an "institutional" coup via the legislative branch, currently controlled by the Liberal, Colorado and "ethical" Colorado forces of retired General Lino Oviedo.

These maneuvers have not gone unnoticed by the former bishop, who has continually exposed them in the national and international media, and has even informed the accredited diplomatic corps in the country: "There have been numerous attempted coups d'état against me since I took office."

As the year ends, the anti-Lugo campaigns could be summed up into three, but they all conceal the need of the right-wing forces to remove him from power because they are afraid of him intensifying his government's program with the support of the social movements. We are referring the kidnapping of rancher Fidel Zavala, which was used as a pretext by the old civilian and military oligarchy to blame a alleged guerrilla force known as "The Paraguayan People's Army," and to claim that the government is doing nothing to stop it.

In a similar sense, a supposed corruption case is being constructed within the Legislature against Lugo for purchasing land to hand over to campesino families, and also, there is a scandal over linked cases of paternity, with the goal of discrediting him. It is worth remembering that in the Paraguayan Senate, only two of the 45 senators would vote in favor of the president, and a similar figure in the Chamber of Deputies, giving the rightists sufficient votes to remove him from power via a political trial.

Nevertheless, given this scenario of confrontation, President Lugo has called upon the parties of the left to coordinate a new political bloc not only to support the government, but more importantly, to support its programs benefiting the poor. According to national observers, this new alliance has been joined by campesino organizations with the aim of closing ranks and nipping in the bud plots to put the president on political trial.

It is a question of creating a resistance front, the only guarantee for struggling against the de facto powers that have gone into operation, encouraged by the impunity with which the same forces, with Washington's support, acted and are acting in Honduras.

Next year will be a decisive one in Paraguay. There, the mists have cleared and the rightists are disposed to removing Fernando Lugo from power, but not just him: everything that represents a change from the old, corrupt political model that guaranteed them their privileges and benefits for more than six decades.

Posted January 6, 2010 by Andres Thomas Conteris

From Coup-lite to Truth-lite: US Policy and Death Squad Democracy in Honduras

In the Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side the United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras, Mark Weisbrot correctly illustrates U.S. backing for the coup regime and its lack of support for democracy. For more than 100 days, I have been holed up inside the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, accompanying President Manuel Zelaya and covering the story for Democracy Now! and other independent media. In case Mark's points were not convincing, here are 10 more ways to help you decide.

10. The resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on June 30th strongly condemned the coup in Honduras. The United States, however, prevented the UN Security Council from taking strong measures consistent with the resolution.

9. When President Zelaya returned to Tegucigalpa and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy on September 21st, Lewis Amselem, the U.S. representative at the Organization of American States (OAS), called it "foolish" and "irresponsible." Amselem, whose background is with the U.S. Southern Command, is known in the halls of the OAS as "the diplomator." He led the charge for validating the Honduran elections, while most countries opposed recognition of elections held under the coup regime.

8. The U.S. Southern Command sponsored the PANAMAX 09 joint maneuvers from September 11-21 off the coast of Panama with military forces from 20 countries. Even though the U.S. publicly stated that ties had been severed with the Honduran military, the invitation for Honduras to participate in these maneuvers stood firm. The Honduran armed forces finally said they would withdraw from the exercises, only after several Latin American countries threatened to boycott them.

7. Key members of the Honduran military involved in the coup received training at the School of the Americas (which changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation -- WHISC), including Generals Romeo Vasquez and Luis Javier Prince. Even after the June 28th coup, the Pentagon continued training members of the Honduran military at WHISC in Ft. Benning, Georgia.

6. The negotiating teams for both sides of the conflict reached an Accord on October 30th. Days later, when the U.S. made it clear it would honor the November 29th election whether or not he were reinstated as president, Zelaya declared the Accord to be a "dead letter". In spite of the U.S. claim that they only recognize Zelaya as the president of the country, they refuse to accept that he withdrew from the Accord. The practice of ignoring the will of the Honduran president is also evidenced by the failure Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and President Barack Obama to respond to letters he sent them.

5. Although U.S. officials continue to sing the praises of the Accord, they have been cherry picking around which parts of the agreement to underscore and which to ignore. The Verification Commission mandated by the Accord only came together on one occasion for a photo-op. The Accord stipulates the need for international aid for the Commission to function, but the U.S. provided no economic or political support. Had the Verification Commission been activated, it would have denounced the November 5th deadline passing without the formation of a government of national unity. It would have to consider rebuking coup leader Roberto Micheletti for assuming he would preside over this new government. Given these violations, the Commission would have to rule whether or not the November 29th elections should have proceeded, or be recognized.

4. The U.S. supports a comprehensive amnesty, a component intentionally left out of the Accord. The coup regime filed 24 criminal charges against President Zelaya, yet he is willing to face all of them in an impartial court of law. He has called for an independent international tribunal and rejected the option of amnesty for himself and the coup perpetrators. If amnesty is declared, impunity will be enshrined for the "golpistas," as well as for the U.S. Pentagon and civilian officials complicit in the crimes of the coup.

3. The Accord calls for the establishment of a Truth Commission during the first half of 2010. U.S. officials say they favor this; however, "truth-lite" seems to be what they prefer. In recent decades, most Truth Commissions have limited truth-telling to circumstances within their country's borders. One exception occurred in Chad where the role of foreign governments in funding and training the perpetrators of human rights crimes was investigated. If Honduras followed Chad's example, its Truth Commission could examine the U.S. role before, during and after the coup. Some possible questions: What role did those formerly employed by the U.S. government, like John Negroponte, Otto Reich, and Lanny Davis, play before and after the coup? Why did the plane carrying the kidnapped president on June 28th land just 60 miles away from the capital at the airbase where the U.S. Joint Task Force Bravo is headquartered? (U.S. officials claim it was to "refuel"). Why did the U.S. allow aid to continue to flow to the coup regime while not declaring that a "military coup" took place against the advice of the State Department's legal advisors? Top U.S. officials labeled what happened in Honduras as a coup; but given their actions, it's more like "coup-lite."

2. In August 2009, at the Summit of North American Leaders in Mexico, President Obama had harsh words for opponents of his policy by declaring, "The same critics who say that the United States has not intervened enough in Honduras are the same people who say that we're always intervening. . . I think what that indicates is that maybe there's some hypocrisy involved in their approach to U.S.-Latin American relations. . ."

The ongoing U.S. intervention and hypocrisy in Honduras goes well beyond what Mark Weisbrot and I have described. Aid continues to flow to the de facto regime, despite U.S. law that mandates cutting aid to military coups; that is intervention. Lifting the symbolic sanctions temporarily imposed on the dictatorship after the Accord was signed but not implemented; that is intervention. Bestowing harsher criticism on President Zelaya and his nonviolent supporters rather than on the perpetrators of gross human rights crimes; that is hypocrisy.

1. Here in the Brazilian embassy, death threats are part of the psychological warfare directed against those who continue to accompany President Zelaya. Elsewhere in Honduras: resistance leader Carlos Turcios was kidnapped and beheaded on December 16th; two members of the United Peasant Movement of Aguan were abducted by four hooded men on December 17th; resistance member Edwin Renán Fajardo, age 22, was tortured and murdered on December 22nd. In an open letter to fellow Central American Presidents on December 28th, President Zelaya cited over 4,000 human rights violations by the coup regime, including 130 killings, over 450 persons wounded, over 3000 illegal detentions, and 114 political prisoners.

The silence of the U.S. government over the last six months regarding the ongoing human rights atrocities by the "golpistas" in Honduras confirms that the Obama regime has sought to support a death-squad democracy, rather than reinstating its elected leader.

That is intervention. That is hypocrisy.

Posted January 4, 2010 By Ramón Alberto Garza

Mexico Is On the Brink of Its Third Revolution

The question is if that revolution will be peaceful, with a change of attitude and a re-founding of the Republic that would be developed beyond the interests that currently paralyze the nation?

Or if it will be violent, through force, with the uprising of millions of destitute people who can't manage to guarantee their survival in the present, much less bet on a brighter future.

Let's look at writer and historian Francisco Martin Moreno's x-ray of the revolutions that forged the Mexico of today. And with the reflections of historians Patricia Galena, Enrique Serna, and Alejandro Rosas, let's evaluate the similarities of the conditions that would allow us to understand the changes that are upon us. Let's analyze?

The Third Revolution

Mexico is on the brink of its third revolution.

Everyone is aware that the political, economic, and social models that the country experimented with in the 20th century are worn out; they've expired. They no longer respond to current demands.

The structures forged in political centralism, which manipulates democracy, and in monopolistic practices of an economy that feigns free competition did not produce results sufficient to close the social gap.

At the dawn of 2010, 100 years after the Revolution and 200 years after Independence, the vices that provoked those revolts and that today create an opportune medium for a shake-up of the system and, consequently, the nation is being recycled.

The demands for fiscal autonomy, which was what set off the Independence, are mirrored in the tax centralism of a federal government that is insatiable, obese, and inefficient.

A government that first feeds its noble bureaucracy and then uses the leftovers to buy new regional leaders, the current governors.

The demands for effective suffrage, the same ones that detonated the explosion in 1910, have arisen once again in the face of a party-ocracy that with its self-serving laws kidnaps the political system and impedes that any Mexican could aspire to hold an elected position. It has to be according to its rules, subdued by its rules.

The legislative seats that decide, those that have real power, aren't won in the ballot boxes. They are pacted as plurinominals by leaders who are co-opted by de facto power. And the votes that decide the winner in many cases are not the citizens', but rather the unions' who serve the highest bidder. Who currently represents Mexicans? Congress? Who listens and complies with their wishes?

A handful of dignitaries decide, as if they were colonial or Porfirian lords, the political, economic, and media game that allows them to impose their conditions over public interest. The benefits are for the few who have more. And those who pay taxes or for overpriced goods and services are the many who have less.

And the inequality that pops up in a nation that, 100 years after its great revolution, is incapable of weaving, beyond its recycled discourses, a horizon of hope for its downtrodden.

The registry that over the past few years has gained more followers was not the registry of the electors, nor the enterprisers, nor the creators of wealth, nor the growing middle class, nor the Mexicans with more or better education. The registry that grew more was that of the poor.

One hundred years after the revolution that demanded social justice, one out of every two Mexicans are inscribed on the ignominious list under the seal of "poor." The country's viability is at risk.

Even more when there are two powers that have settled on top of those who should legitimately govern the nation.

One is the power of neo-Porfirism; the control of a privileged caste that enthrones itself in politics and the economy after 70 years of rule by the Institutional Revolution Party (PRI). A political and economic elite that closed ranks behind Salinas' neoliberalism that even today continues imposing its will upon the national routine.

The same men who inherit legislative seats, the same men who dominate public and private businesses, the same men who, installed in union reserves, charge an arm and a leg for their protection. The other is the power of neo-Villaism. That of a handful of bandits labeled as drug traffickers, the members of so-called organized crime, who impose their law upon the State.

The difference is that at least Francisco Villa put forward a social cause in order to justify his capacity as a bandit. The neo-villaists of today only buy the system at all levels.

What hurts the most is that they corrupt the national health promoting addictions.

And social mobility, which was what set off the growth and consolidation of a middle class during the 1950's-1980's, is frozen. People work, not to grow nor to be patriotic, but rather to survive, trapped in a spiral of cycles of crisis upon crisis.

And this whole process occurs while in the nation's classrooms mediocrity and resignation are incubated. The education system is neither creative nor productive. It is a poorly oiled machine of political control that is incapable of preparing world-class Mexican professionals.

The model that dried up with Luis Echeverria in the Presidency. The first outbreak of insurgency occurred with clandestine armed movements that confronted the established order. But the system turned a deaf ear.

Neither Jose Lopez Portillo nor Miguel de la Madrid could rescue it. [Due to] one's frivolity and the other's mediocrity, they barely survived their terms. Carlos Salinas de Gortari designed a revolution of institutions with a vision that seemed almost perfect.

But he failed in the implementation. And he wound up trapped in the same vices of the old system built on control, submission, ignorance, and corruption.

Even worse, the riches generated by his term's favoritism and the fortunes amassed by the politicians of his administration are the moneys that now oil the machinery that armors the status quo that defines their privileges.

The outbreak of a budding Zapatista neo-revolution and the modern version of a Tragic Decade, brought forth with the assassinations of Luis Donaldo Colosio and Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, stopped the modernizing advances of that were occurring at the time.

The privatizations that were praised by the national and international elites ended up in the hands of a few privileged friends, and the crisis of post-Salinasism, aggravated during Ernesto Zedillo's administration, brought on the neoliberal Santa Anna effect.

The banking system, the economic territory of the national system of payments, was put in foreigners' hands, the only such case in the world.

Mexican petroleum wound up being processed by multinationals, and the riches generated were consumed by the running cost of bureaucracy.

Even though Ernesto Zedillo understood the signs of the times, and in respecting the results in the 2000 presidential election he de-pressurized the discontent generated by the recurrent crisis, the political transition was aborted.

Vicente Fox remained trapped in the same fears that Francisco I. Madero had. Subjugated by the interests that refused to give up their spaces to make way for the nation's new model and letting a Ouija board determine the nation's destiny.

The "Administration of Change's" hopeful horizon ran into the president's incapacity to dismantle the complex network of interests that, faced with the lack of will and decision, returned to the hands of the Salinistas.

The modern Limantours took possession of the national Treasury, and the axis of power moved from Los Pinos [the president's residence] to the unions, the media, the monopolist businessmen's offices, and the residences of ex-presidents. To all of those who benefited from the old system. The kidnapping of Felipe Calderon through PRIista electoral favors in order to legitimize his win forced him to cede the urgencies of profound changes, those that demanded a revolution of consciences and a shaking-off of the elite's privileges.

And while the nation is kidnapped by private monopolies, by official [government-controlled] unions, by political parties, and by the Congress who take away whatever margin of maneuvering that channels Mexico towards progress and liberty, which, undoubtedly, is deserved when it takes its place amongst the greats in the 21st century.

That's why the year 2010 that begins today is more than just a symbolic date. Because, with other names, the landowners and the day laborers persist.

Because with different clothing, those who feel that the nation has been deeded to them survive.

A new revolution becomes indispensable in order to alter the course of history that is being shaped with a very unhappy ending.

To close the eyes to this reality is to bet on a new outburst, a new uprising without control. Because in contrast to the times of the Independence and the Revolution, today the conditions exist to develop a movement that is not armed, but rather a revolution of national consciousness.

A real and substantial change in the national attitude in order to set specific reforms that break up the circles of political, economic, union, and media privilege which inhibit the development of a Mexico that urgently needs to recuperate its global position, which today is taking a nose-dive.

It is curious that without insurgencies or confrontations, Latin American nations such as Chile and Brazil, with leftist governments, are achieving in just a few years a real modification of their political and economic systems, positively reflected in the war on poverty and the recuperation of hope in the national spirit.

That's why Reporte Indigo today invited Francisco Martin Moreno, one of Mexico's most read historians and writers. To make an evaluation of the conditions of the conditions that existed in 1810, in 1910, and those that prevail in 2010.

The author of Mexico Negro and Mexico Mutilado also dialogued about the peculiarities of the insurgent movements and the conditions under which we are currently living with three top-notch historians: Patricia Galeana, Enrique Serna, and Alejandro Rosas.

In the dawn of the bicentennial of our Independence and the centennial of the Revolution, we invite you to reflect together with us about where we are and where we want to go.

About how to take advantage of the vast natural wealth, the immense agricultural expanses, the forests, the coastlines and the seas, to generate the wealth necessary to rescue millions of fellow countrymen from misery.

But above all, to try to debate what we need to do to avoid the repetition of the violent cycle that dominated the past two centuries. We still have time to change history.

Posted December 31, 2009 by Eva Golinger

CIA Agents assassinated in Afghanistan worked for "contractor" active in Venezuela, Cuba

At least eight U.S. citizens were killed on a CIA operations base in Afghanistan this past Wednesday, December 30. A suicide bomber infiltrated Forward Operating Base Chapman located in the eastern province of Khost, which was a CIA center of operations and surveillance. Official sources in Washington have confirmed that the eight dead were all civilian employees and CIA contractors.

Fifteen days ago, five U.S. citizens working for a U.S. government contractor, Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), were also killed in an explosion at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) office in Gardez. That same day, another bomb exploded outside the DAI offices in Kabul, although no serious injuries resulted.

The December 15 incident received little attention, although it occurred just days after the detention of a DAI employee in Cuba, accused of subversion and distribution of illegal materials to counterrevolutionary groups. President and CEO of DAI, Jim Boomgard, issued a declaration on December 14 regarding the detention of a subcontractor from his company in Cuba, confirming that, "the detained individual was an employee of a program subcontractor, which was implementing a competitively issued subcontract to assist Cuban civil society organizations." The statement also emphasized the "new program" DAI is managing for the U.S. government in Cuba, the "Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program". DAI was awarded a $40 million USD contract in 2008 to help the U.S. government "support the peaceful activities of a broad range of nonviolent organizations through competitively awarded grants and subcontracts" in Cuba.

On December 15, DAI published a press release mourning "project personnel killed in Afghanistan". "DAI is deeply saddened to report the deaths of five staff associated with our projects in Afghanistan?On December 15, five employees of DAI's security subcontractor were killed by an explosion in the Gardez office of the Local Governance and Community Development (LGCD) Program, a USAID project implemented by DAI."

DAI also runs a program in Khost where the December 30 suicide bombing occurred, although it has yet to be confirmed if the eight U.S. citizens killed were working for the major U.S. government contractor. From the operations base in Khost, the CIA remotely controls its selective assassination program against alleged Al Qaeda members in Pakistan and Afghanistan using drone (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) Predator planes.

A high-level USAID official confirmed two weeks ago that the CIA uses USAID's name to issue contracts and funding to third parties in order to provide cover for clandestine operations. The official, a veteran of the U.S. government agency, stated that the CIA issues such contracts without USAID's full knowledge.

Since June 2002, USAID has maintained an Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Venezuela, through which it has channeled more than $50 million USD to groups and individuals opposed to President Hugo Chávez. The same contractor active in Afghanistan and connected with the CIA, Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), was awarded a multi-million dollar budget from USAID in Venezuela to "assist civil society and the transition to democracy". More than two thousand documents partially declassified from USAID regarding the agency's activities in Venezuela reveal the relationship between DAI and sectors of the Venezuelan opposition that have actively been involved in coup d'etats, violent demonstrations and other destabilization attempts against President Chávez.

In Bolivia, USAID was expelled this year from two municipalities, Chapare and El Alto, after being accused of interventionism. In September 2009, President Evo Morales announced the termination of an official agreement with USAID allowing its operations in Bolivia, based on substantial evidence documenting the agency's funding of violent separtist groups seeking to destabilize the country.

In 2005, USAID was also expelled from Eritrea and accused of being a "neo-colonialist" agency. Ethiopia, Russia and Belarus have ordered the expulsion of USAID and its contractors during the last five years.

Development Alternatives, Inc. is one of the largest U.S. government contractors in the world. The company, with headquarters in Bethesda, MD, presently has a $50 million contract with USAID for operations in Afghanistan. In Latin America, DAI has operations and field offices in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

This year, USAID/DAI's budget in Venezuela nears $15 million USD and its programs are oriented towards strengthening opposition parties, candidates and campaigns for the 2010 legislative elections. Just two weeks ago, President Chávez also denounced the illegal presence of U.S. drone planes in Venezuelan airspace.

Posted December 31, 2009 By NRW

The Venezuelan government is accusing the Netherlands of helping the United States prepare an attack from Dutch islands in the Caribbean

A statement says that the warlike U.S. government, aided by the Netherlands, is preparing an assault on the territory of the Venezuelan people. The Netherlands had earlier assured Venezuela that US troops were only on the islands of Aruba and Curaçao to combat the drugs trade. However, Venezuela is insisting its airspace has been violated by US military planes based on the Dutch islands.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez regularly lashes out at what he sees as US aggression. Recently the Netherlands has increasingly been included in his accusations.

Posted December 26, 2009 By Jorge Rueda

Hugo Chavez claims Colombia, US could simulate attack on fake rebel camp in Venezuela

President Hugo Chavez is accusing Colombia and the United States of plotting to set up a fake rebel camp on Venezuelan soil to discredit his government.

Chavez accused Colombia of preparing what he called a "false positive" operation, saying on Monday that it's feasible the neighbouring country could build a makeshift camp in a remote location, then plant corpses and guns to make it look like a rebel camp had been discovered.

Colombian officials have said that leftist rebel commanders from their country are taking refuge in Venezuela. Chavez says the officials are falsely trying to portray him as being in cahoots with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which Colombia has been battling for decades.

"The verbal war against Venezuela began weeks ago, saying that we have I don't know how many guerrilla chiefs hidden here ... that in Venezuela there are rebel camps protected by the Venezuelan government, which is absolutely false," Chavez told troops during a televised speech in the western border state of Zulia.

"We have evidence that the Colombian government, instructed and supported, or rather directed by the United States, is preparing a 'false positive,"' Chavez said.

He said he believes Colombia could bring bodies "to a mountain in Venezuelan territory, build some huts, an improvised camp, put some rifles there ... and say 'There it is, the guerrilla camp in Venezuela."'

Last year, Colombian troops raided a FARC camp inside Ecuador, killing 25 people including a FARC commander. That attack triggered sharp tensions with Ecuador and Venezuela.

Chavez's accusations are the latest in a protracted diplomatic conflict with Colombia that has led to a sharp drop in trade this year and has prompted the Venezuelan leader to warn of a possible armed conflict.

Chavez has accused Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's government of allowing the United States to expand its military presence at its bases to prepare a possible attack against Venezuela.

Both the U.S. and Colombia say the American troops are solely aiding Colombia to combat drug trafficking and guerrillas internally. They both have repeatedly denied planning to invade Venezuela and his opponents have accused Chavez of using an invasion threat to distract attention from domestic problems.

Chavez addressed troops at Fort Mara, where he said a group of soldiers recently reported spotting an unmanned spy plane.

Colombian Defence Minister Gabriel Silva has ridiculed that claim, saying Venezuelan troops might have mistaken Santa's sleigh for a drone and that his military doesn't have aircraft that could perform such an espionage mission.

Soldiers who stood facing Chavez displayed some of the weapons that Venezuela has recently bought from Russia, including shoulder-fired Igla-S surface-to-air missiles and Dragunov sniper rifles. Chavez said his military now has thousands of Igla-S weapons.

"They're defensive weapons. This is like the boxer's jab," Chavez said.

He said the military will soon be receiving new arms including Russian-made T-72 tanks.

Venezuela has already bought more than $4 billion worth of Russian arms since 2005, including 24 Sukhoi fighter jets, dozens of helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles. In September, Russia agreed to lend Venezuela $2.2 billion to buy more weapons.

Copyright © 2009 The Canadian Press. All rights reserved

Posted December 26, 2009 by Committee of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras

Another young member of resistance Renán Fajardo Argueta found dead

Committee of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras (COFADEH) dnounces crime committed against Renán Fajardo Argueta

The Committee of Family Members of the Detained and Dsiappeared in Honduras, COFADEH, denounces the crime committed Teusday afternoon against the young man Edwin Renán Fajardo Argueta (22), an active member of the Resistance. His body was found this past December 23rd in the afternoon after a constant search by family members and friends worried about his absence as he was supposed to travel on Wednesday to Roatán, Islas de la Bahía, for Christmas with his family.

COFADEH received the information about finding his body in an apartment in the San Rafael neighborhood in Tegucigalpa, in the Villar Rosales Building, where he had lived for a long time. There was a cord found around his neck and a broom stick behind his head and there were signs of violence as everything was strewn about. The act may have occurred between four and five in the afternoon on Tuesday December 22nd.

His killers tried to simulate a suicide but his body was found in a small closet of his apartment bleeding from its nose and his body was dirty like it had been tied up according to the neighbors who saw the scene of the crime. The people responsible for his death took his camera and a computer.

On Monday of this week he had communicated to friends that he was very worried because he felt pursued because he had received text messages in his telephone and didn't want to leave for Roatán where his family was because of the danger of being in public places and that's also why he didn't want to go see friends who wanted to meet up.

Several neighbors said they had seen suspicious cars without license plates and with tinted windows circulating around the area in recent days, this has generated much fear because since August strange things have been seen.

His die-hard activism in the National Front of Resistance included participation in marches, sit-ins, and all the activities by that organization of which he was always in the front lines and where he took photographs with the camera that they stole from him. He also traveled to different places around the country to raise consciousness about the need for a National Constitutional Assembly.

Edwin Renán was a very admired young man in his neighborhood for being so respectful and responsible. The apartments he lived in were very secure, nobody could enter if they didn't live in them.

An agent of the investigation manifested that the autopsy will determine the causes of his death and added that in his neck was the cord and the broom stick behind his head and that, "it would be hard for it to have been a suicide because the broomstick would have broken with the weight of his body," he said. A vigil for Edwin Renán will happen in the building where he lived and his body will be taken to Roatán at seven in the morning.

COFADEH condemns this new act of violence that blinds the life of a young man with a promising future for Honduras. The killings of active members of the Resistance have increased in recent days in a selective way, using simulations of criminal violence to cover up the deaths.

We make an urgent call to the international community and especially to human rights organizations to carry out urgent necessary actions to stop this human hunt against the Honduran population who continues in resistance since the 28th of June when the military-political-business-imperialist coup was perpetrated.

Posted December 23, 2009 by Joseph Shansky

KILLING ACTIVISTS IN HONDURAS

"As a revolutionary I will be today, tomorrow and forever on the front lines of my people, all the while knowing that I may lose my life." - Walter Trochez, 25, murdered in Tegucigalpa on 12/13/09

The bodies of slain activists are piling up in Honduras. While it's being kept quiet in most Honduran and international media, the rage is building among a dedicated network of friends spreading the word quickly with the tragic announcement of each compañero/a.

Now that the world heard from mainstream news outlets such as the New York Times of a "clean and fair" election on Nov. 29 (orchestrated by the US-supported junta currently in power), the violence has increased even faster than feared.

The specific targets of these killings have been those perceived as the biggest threats to the coup establishment. The bravest, and thus the most vulnerable: Members of the Popular Resistance against the coup. Their friends and family. People who provide the Resistance with food and shelter. Teachers, students, and ordinary citizens who simply recognize the fallacy of an un-elected regime taking over their country. All associated with the Resistance have faced constant and growing repercussions for their courage in protesting the coup. With the international community given the green light by the US that democratic order has returned via elections, it's open season for violent forces in Honduras working to tear apart the political unity of the Resistance Front against the coup.

The killings are happening almost faster than they can be recorded.

On Sunday, Dec. 7, a group of six people were gunned down while walking down the street in the Villanueva neighborhood of Tegucigalpa. According to sources, a white van with no license plates stopped in front of the group. Four masked men jumped out of the van and forced the group to get on the ground, where they were shot. The five victims who were killed were:

· Marcos Vinicio Matute Acosta, 39

· Kennet Josué Ramírez Rosa, 23

· Gabriel Antonio Parrales Zelaya, 34

· Roger Andrés Reyes Aguilar, 22

· Isaac Enrique Soto Coello, 24

One woman, Wendy Molina, 32, was shot several times and played dead when one of the assassins pulled her hair, checking to see if anyone in the group was still alive. She was taken to the hospital and survived.

The Honduran independent newspaper El Libertador reports that the group members were all organizers against the coup. According to a resident in the area, "The boys had organized committees so that the neighbors could get involved in the Resistance Front."

This massacre was part of a string of Resistance-related murders during the past few weeks alone. On December 3, Walter Trochez, 25 a well-known activist in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community was snatched off the street and thrown into a van, again by four masked men, in downtown Tegucigalpa. In the report that he later filed to local and national authorities, Walter said he was interrogated for hours for information on Resistance members and activities, and was beaten in the face with a pistol for refusing to speak. He was told that he would be killed regardless, and he eventually escaped by throwing open the van door, falling into the street, and running away.

It wasn't the first time Walter had been subject to these kinds of threats. He was a much-loved organizer against the coup who had been documenting human rights violations, particularly in the gay community. Walter had just published two articles. One following the elections was titled "The Triumph of Abstentionism", on the success of the effort by the Resistance to encourage citizens to refuse to vote. The other was called "Escalation of Hate and Homophobic Crimes against the LGBTT Community Rooted in the Civil-Religious-Military Coup d'état in Honduras".

In both, he concludes: "As a revolutionary I will be today, tomorrow and forever on the front lines of my people, all the while knowing that I may lose my life".

On Dec. 13, one week later, Walter was shot in the chest by a drive-by gunman while walking home. He died at the hospital.

On Dec. 5, Santos Garcia Corrales, an active member of the National Resistance Front, was detained by security forces in New Colony Capital, south of Tegucigalpa. He was then tortured for information on a local merchant who was providing food and supplies to the Resistance. After reporting the incident to local authorities, Santos' body was found five days later on Dec 10, decapitated.

There have been others as well, notably a rise in murders in the LGBT community since the coup. In particular, several transvestites have been recently killed in similarly gruesome ways. Human rights advocates report that "up to 18 gay and transgender men have been killed nationwide ? as many as the five prior years ? in the nearly six months since a political crisis rocked the nation."

The latest victim, Carlos Turcios, was kidnapped outside his home in Choloma Cortes, at three in the afternoon of Wednesday Dec. 16. He was found dead the next day, with his hands and head cut off. Carlos had been vice-president of the Choloma chapter of the Resistance Front, a town located a few hours outside of the capital. Andres Pavón, president of CODEH (Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras), commented: "We believe this horrendous crime joins others where the bodies show signs of brutal torture?This aggression is directed to the construction of collective fear."

It is a sinister effort to shake up a community that is now in fact stronger than ever. As Walter Trochez noted (and CNN confirmed), most of the country refused to go to the polls that day. Many of the world's governments, including most of Latin America, refused to recognize the results.

In this climate of fierce repression, citizens can no longer depend on authorities for the most basic protective rights, and those fearful for their lives cannot report to the police. Complaints they file, such as those of Santos and Walter, could soon become signatures to their own death letters. Many believe with good reason that the killings are state-sponsored. At the very least, they are the result of new conditions which allow for the widespread deterioration of state protection.

Pavón and other human rights leaders in Honduras have been extremely vocal in denouncing these atrocities, but the story has remained under the radar for most Hondurans and almost all international media. At the time when Hondurans most need exposure to these abuses, they've been left to fend for themselves.

How did this happen? Why are people being randomly executed in dark corners of the country for simply standing in opposition to a military coup?

Most of the bloodshed is on the hands of coup president Roberto Micheletti and other leaders of the regime. However, President Barack Obama and the US State Department played a major role in allowing conditions to get to this point. The US government took no concrete action against the thousands of documented violations since the coup took place June 28. It's no shock that the violence has worsened dramatically with the eyes of the world now averted.

In a recent interview, Francisco Rios of the National Front Against the Coup reiterated Frente communiqués which stated that the Resistance, though now lying low, is preparing a massive organization effort for next year and beyond. Rios reported that they have stopped meeting publicly as a safety measure for now, but will soon begin dividing into chapters around the country with plans to emerge as a new, strengthened political force. Walter, Santos, Carlos, and all of the Resistance fighters who gave their lives have inspired others in the movement to continue the struggle for justice in Honduras.

Joseph Shansky was reporting from Honduras during the recent military coup, and can be reached at fallow3@gmail.com.

Posted December 21, 2009 By Bradley Brooks

Report: Brazil police killed more than 11,000

Police in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo have killed more than 11,000 people in the past six years, many execution-style, according to a report released Tuesday by Human Rights Watch.

Few of the officers have been charged in the extrajudicial killings, which are often labeled in police reports as the deaths of suspects who resisted arrest, the report said.

The 122-page declaration echoes a 2008 United Nations' finding that police throughout Brazil were responsible for a "significant portion" of 48,000 slayings the year before.

"Extrajudicial killing of criminal suspects is not the answer to violent crime," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "The residents of Rio and Sao Paulo need more effective policing, not more violence from the police."

Isabel Figueiredo, Brazil's coordinator-general of human rights and public safety, acknowledged that police violence is a widespread problem and "it concerns the federal government a great deal."

Figueiredo said authorities have launched a series of initiatives to confront the problem, including training police to respect human rights and the appropriate use of force, in addition to the purchase of less-lethal weapons for state police forces.

Security forces "have begun to understand that instead of solving the problem, confronting criminals with weapons leads to casualties on both sides," she said.

Officials from the Rio and Sao Paulo police departments did not comment.

But Rio state Public Safety Director Jose Beltrame, in charge of the city's armed security forces, previously took issue with the 2008 U.N. report, saying critics don't recognize that his officers must constantly confront drug gangs who rule over slums and are armed with military rifles, grenades and anti-aircraft weapons.

"We have to deal with something few others face: armed combat with drug traffickers who are equipped with heavy weapons coming from abroad," Beltrame said in an October interview with The Associated Press. "That is a unique attribute our police deal with."

He spoke after Rio gangs had unleashed a wave of violence in which they downed a police helicopter, killing three of the six officers aboard - just a mile (two kilometers) from the Maracana stadium, where the 2016 Olympics' opening and closing ceremonies and the 2014 World Cup final will be held.

The Human Rights Watch report examined 51 cases in Rio and Sao Paulo in which it seemed that police had killed an alleged criminal, but then reported the victim died while resisting arrest.

In 33 cases, forensic evidence "was at odds with the official version of what took place" - including 17 cases in which autopsies indicated police shot the person at point-blank range, the report said, adding that "the 51 cases do not represent the totality of potential extrajudicial killings, but are indicative of a much broader problem."

Using government statistics, the report noted that police have killed more than 11,000 people in Sao Paulo and Rio since 2003. In Rio, the killings reached a high of 1,330 in 2007.

The report also states that Rio police killed one of every 23 people arrested, and Sao Paulo police one of every 348 in 2008. In comparison, police in the U.S. killed one of every 37,000 people arrested that year.

The report recommends creating specialized units within state prosecutors' offices to investigate "resistance" killings and ensure that officers responsible for extrajudicial executions are brought to justice.

Posted December 21, 2009 By Ted Galen Carpenter

The American Conservative - New War Order: How Panama set the course for post-Cold War foreign policy

For a fleeting moment 20 years ago, the United States had the chance to become a normal nation again. From World War II through the collapse of European communism in 1989, America had been in a state of perpetual war, hot or cold. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall, all of that could have changed. There were no more monsters to destroy, no Nazi war machine or global communist conspiracy. For the first time in half a century, the industrialized world was at peace.

Then in December 1989, America went to war again-this time not against Hitler or Moscow's proxies but with Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega. Tensions between George H.W. Bush's administration and Noriega's government had been mounting for some time and climaxed when a scuffle with Panamanian troops left an American military officer dead. On Dec. 20, U.S. forces moved to oust and arrest Noriega. Operation Just Cause, as the invasion was called, came less than a month after the Berlin Wall fell, and it set America on a renewed path of intervention. The prospect of reducing American military involvement in other nations' affairs slipped away, thanks to the precedent set in Panama.

How real was the opportunity to change American foreign policy at that point? Real enough to worry the political class. Wyoming Sen. Malcolm Wallop lamented in 1989 that there was growing pressure to cut the military budget and that Congress was being overwhelmed by a "1935-style isolationism." But the invasion of Panama signaled that Washington was not going to pursue even a slightly more restrained foreign policy.

That the U.S. would topple the government of a neighbor to the south was hardly unprecedented, of course. The United States had invaded small Caribbean and Central American countries on numerous occasions throughout the 20th century. Indeed, before the onset of Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy in the 1930s, Washington routinely overthrew regimes it disliked.

During the Cold War, however, such operations always had a connection to the struggle to keep Soviet influence out of the Western Hemisphere. The CIA-orchestrated coup in Guatemala in 1954 and the military occupations of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and Grenada in 1983 all matched that description. Whatever other motives may have been involved, the Cold War provided the indispensable justification for intervention. And for all the rhetoric about democracy and human rights that U.S. presidents employed during the struggle against communism, there was no indication that Washington would later revert to the practice of coercing Latin American countries merely, in Woodrow Wilson's infamous words, to teach those societies "to elect good men." Thus the invasion of Panama seemed a noticeable departure. Odious though he may have been, Noriega was never a Soviet stooge.

The motives that President Bush cited for the Panama intervention foreshadowed the rationales for nation-building and so-called humanitarian missions that would recur frequently over the next two decades. Among other goals, the president said, the invasion aimed to "defend democracy in Panama." He expressed hope "that the people of Panama will put this dark chapter of dictatorship behind them and move forward as citizens of a democratic Panama." Bush emphasized that "the Panamanian people want democracy, peace, and a chance for better life in dignity and freedom. The people of the United States seek only to support them in pursuit of these noble goals"-apparently with U.S. troops, if necessary.

Questions immediately arose in the media and elsewhere as to whether the Panama mission was an isolated example-or whether it was a template for a new American global strategy. Time correspondent George J. Church asked the question that was on many minds: "Does this suggest a new post-cold war foreign policy that casts the U.S. as a different kind of global policeman, acting to save democracy rather than to stop Soviet expansionism?" He noted that administration officials "affirm that Bush is showing a new willingness to use American military power to further U.S. interests that have little or nothing to do with communism."

The worrisome question was how those "U.S. interests" would be defined. An answer came less than a year later, in an area far removed from the Western Hemisphere, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The Bush administration's initial reaction seemed surprisingly restrained. Secretary of State James Baker reportedly quipped to his cabinet colleagues that it "appeared that the sign on the [Middle East] gas station just changed," an attitude that conveyed little alarm about a possible threat to American interests. It was not clear that the president ever shared that complacency, however. He certainly didn't after a bracing conversation with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who admonished him not to "go wobbly." The United States ultimately adopted a policy that was the antithesis of wobbly, sending more than half a million American troops to the Persian Gulf, at first to dissuade Saddam from expansionist designs he might have on Saudi Arabia, then finally to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. But if President Bush at times justified this large-scale military venture in language that echoed his Panama rhetoric, there were at least some tangible U.S. interests at stake, notably keeping the main global source of oil production and reserves in friendly hands. That was not even remotely the case in the next, and last, military intervention of the elder Bush's administration, where we saw the full flowering of the Panama precedent: the humanitarian mission in Somalia.

That mission, launched in December 1992, confirmed what Panama had suggested: that the ideology of democracy, human rights, and nation-building had become a motive for police action anywhere in the world. America had no stake in Somalia, vital or otherwise, and administration officials made little attempt to pretend that it did. The justifications for sending more than 20,000 troops halfway around the world were purely altruistic. The narrow object of the U.S. military intervention in East Africa was to distribute food and medical supplies to relieve Somalis long caught up in a multisided civil war. But such small-scale humanitarian goals were never realistic, and perhaps not even sincere. U.S. forces soon became entangled in Somalia's complex, chaotic politics. The involvement of the United Nations, which Bush embraced, meant that the mission would inevitably have a wider, nation-building aspect. Any reluctance that the outgoing president might have had on that score was not shared by incoming Clinton officials. The new president's spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers candidly stated, "We went in there with a clear vision of humanitarian relief and nation-building." To that was added a murky vision of regime change. Just as the Panama invasion centered on the person of Manuel Noriega, and Saddam Hussein personified evil during the Gulf War, Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed became the focus of President Clinton's-and the media's-attention. Aideed proved more elusive than Noriega: a botched attempt to arrest him led to a running firefight in the capital of Mogadishu and left 18 Army Rangers dead. The Clinton administration ultimately withdrew U.S. forces following that bloody incident, but the president and his advisers did not lose their enthusiasm for nation-building and regime change. Indeed, Somalia was just the beginning. The following year U.S. troops landed in Haiti to restore the elected president (and populist demagogue) Jean Bertrand Aristide to office.

Later, U.S. air power was brought to bear against Bosnian Serbs to influence the civil war in Bosnia. That was followed by the dispatch of ground forces to implement the Dayton Accords.

This was the new norm-there may no longer have been a global menace to contend against, but dictators and warlords now had to be overthrown or hemmed in to ensure democracy and human rights. Virtually no one in the Clinton administration argued that Bosnia was essential to the security and well-being of the United States. Although Secretary of State Warren Christopher made a feeble attempt to justify intervention on the basis of general American security concerns-much as canal security and the wider implications for the drug war had been invoked in the Panama invasion-even he did not seriously argue that a parochial conflict could trigger another world war. Instead, he asserted, "This is an important moment for our nation's post-Cold War role in Europe and the world. It tests our commitment to the nurturing of democracy and the support of environments in which democracy can grow and take root." The U.S. was now responsible for guaranteeing order everywhere, not only in our relative "backyard" of Latin America but from the Middle East to the Horn of Africa to the Balkans. The United States had assumed an identity as leader and defender of the free world during the Cold War. After the fall of European communism, the whole world was "free"-or should have been, in the eyes of our foreign-policy elites. There was no systematic challenger to U.S. power, and the only thing standing in the way of universal prosperity and democracy was the occasional Third World strong man. The Cold War itself had never been about democracy or human rights-not really-but it became an incubator for this new ideology.

After the Berlin Wall fell, the war against the Noriegas of the world could begin-and it provided a convenient pretext for maintaining U.S. military power at Cold War levels. There was a new world to order, after all. Operation Just Cause was a catalyst for Washington's new role not only as worldwide policeman, but as global armed social worker. There was a time two decades ago when empire could have been forsaken. But instead of coming home, we went to Panama City.

Posted December 21, 2009 By Judy Somberg

Anti-Mining Activist Ramiro Rivera Assassinated in Cabañas

Ramiro Rivera Gómez, vice-president of CAC (Comité Ambiental de Cabañas/ the Environmental Committee of Cabañas) and a local leader in the community struggle against the environmentally-destructive gold mining projects proposed by Pacific Rim, was assassinated on Sunday, December 20, 2009 in the Trinidad neighborhood of Ilobasco, in the department of Cabañas where he lived.

Héctor Berríos reports that Ramiro Rivera was killed by hitmen carrying M-16 rifles. Ramiro's thirteen-year old daughter who was with him on Sunday afternoon was also injured but is reportedly in stable condition.

On August 7 of this year, Ramiro Rivera was shot 8 times, but survived the vicious attack. Oscar Menjívar, previously implicated in physical attacks on anti-mining activists, was arrested and charged with Ramiro's attempted murder. Community members report that Menjívar had previously worked for Canadian mining company Pacific Rim; Pacific Rim denies that he has ever been an employee.

Since his recovery, Mr. Rivera had been under the protection of two police officers from the Witnesses and Victims Protection Unit of the National Civilian Police. On the afternoon of December 20th, they were apparently unable to protect him.

Since June of 2009, when anti-mining and FMLN activist Marcelo Rivera (no relation to Ramiro) was found tortured and killed in Cabañas, there have been continued attacks, death threats and attempted kidnappings of community members and activists who have vehemently opposed the proposed El Dorado gold mine. The Ministry of Environment denied mining exploitation permits to Pacific Rim, a Vancouver-based mining company, which subsequently announced a $77 million dollar lawsuit against the Salvadoran government under CAFTA, the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (watch the Real News video here).

Despite the overtly political overtones of this wave of violence, local police authorities and the former Attorney General's office have classified these cases as common crimes. Salvadorans are fearful and outraged by the continued violence but also by the inability or unwillingness of the police and the office of the Attorney General to protect community activists like Ramiro Rivera and to halt the violence.

Posted December 1, 2009 by Kristin Bricker

Chiapas Anti-Mining Organizer Murdered

Mariano Abarca Led a Growing Movement to Kick Canadian Mining Companies Out of Mexican Communities

Mariano Abarca Roblero, one of Mexico's most prominent anti-mining organizers, was shot to death on the evening of November 27, 2009, in front of his house in Chicomuselo, Chiapas. He left behind a wife and four children. Another man was wounded in the shooting.

The incident comes just days after Abarca filed charges against two Blackfire employees, Ciro Roblero Perez and Luis Antonio Flores Villatoro, for threatening to shoot him if he didn't stop organizing against Canadian mining company Blackfire's barium mine in Chicomuselo. According to a formal complaint filed by a government employee who works in the Chicomuselo municipal building, Roblero Perez arrived at the municipal building to say that he had gone to look for Abarca to "fuck him up in a hail of bullets." He also reportedly said that Abarca and other people were on a list of people Blackfire management wants to hurt. Blackfire public relations manager Luis Antonio Flores Villatoro was mentioned in the government employee's complaint as one of the people responsible for the list.

Ejido* authorities from the Nueva Morelia ejido in Chicomuselo county took the complaint seriously and helped Abarca launch an investigation. The day before the murder, Roblero Perez and Flores Villatoro were summoned to testify regarding the alleged death threats, but they failed to appear.

A History of Harassment

Even though local authorities acted to try to protect Abarca, the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA) blames the Chiapas state government for failing to protect the mining leader. On the contrary, the state government seems to have been complicit in Blackfire's legal harassment of Abarca.

On August 17, 2009, unidentified armed men in unmarked cars kidnapped Abarca as he was leaving an elementary school in Chicomuselo. He had visited the school to request permission on behalf of his organization, REMA, to use the building for an anti-mining meeting scheduled for August 29-30.

The kidnappers turned out to be police. They had arrested Abarca on charges filed by Blackfire regarding a June-July 2009 highway blockade REMA set up to prevent the passage of Blackfire trucks. REMA was protesting the company's failure to comply with promises it allegedly made regarding community development projects and environmental stewardship. According to community leaders, Blackfire's open-pit barium mine uses too much of the area's scarce water resources. They are concerned that the pollution could effect their crop cultivation in the near future.

The acting on Blackfire's formal complaint, the state government charged Abarca with attacks against public roadways, criminal association, organized crime, and offenses against the peace. Theoretically, organized crime charges are reserved for drug, arms, and human traffickers, and other members of Mexico's expansive mafia network. However, the Chiapas government has been known to accuse activists and community organizers of organized crime in order to take advantage of restricted due process rights for people accused of organized crime.

That is what happened in Abarca's case. The organized crime charged allowed the Chiapas government to imprison him under the highly controversial and international criticized legal instrument of "arraigo" or pre-charge detention. Under arraigo, the government can arrest a suspect and isolate him or her for months while it pressures and sometimes tortures the person into confessing.

The state government detained Abarca for eight days before it ceded to international public pressure to release him. Abarca was released and the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. His lawyer, Miguel Angel de los Santos, criticized the Chiapas government for ceding to the mining company's pressure to arrest Abarca. "There was no legal justification for his arrest and detention. Preliminary investigation began on June 12th, two days after the blockade, and was only just beginning to come together. The investigation had not advanced," he told Proceso in August following Abarca's release.

Structural Adjustment Strikes Again

Social discontent regarding mines in Mexico has been steadily building over the past ten years, beginning when the effects of a World Bank-mandated mining sector deregulation scheme were first felt. A confidential World Bank document entitled "Implementation Completion Report: Mexico Mining Sector Restructuring Project," which Narco News makes available to the public, outlines exactly how a nine-year loan project drastically transformed Mexico's mining sector.

The project, first proposed by the Word Bank in 1989 and quickly adopted by the Mexican government, aimed to deregulate the mining industry in Mexico. The Bank proposed the project because, as its Implementation Completion Report (ICR) explains,

Past lending of the Bank for mining in Mexico was oriented towards specific investment projects, with direct lines of credit to the sector... The lessons learned from those operations were that the continued development of the mining sector required increased access to land rights, reduced ownership limitations, revision of the tax legislation, a restructuring of existing institutional setups, as well as policies that stimulate private investment in mining by both domestic and foreign firms. The Bank Mining Sector Review identified an inadequate regulatory and institutional framework as the major constraint to increase private investment and further growth of the sector.

One of the Bank's main goals for the project was to open up Mexico's previously protected national mining industry to foreign companies; the Bank listed "open the sector to foreigners" as its first "strategy to restructure the sector." It hoped to do so by privatizing state-owned mining companies, slashing taxes, awarding mineral and land rights to private companies, and facilitating foreign companies' ownership of Mexican land in order to "contribute to the increased exploration and exploitation of the vast mining potential of the country, to take advantage of Mexico's strategic location near the United States and Canada."

The Bank proposed a set of changes to Mexican law in its Mining Sector Report, and the Mexican government--at that point still under one-party rule--rushed to implement them under a plan called the National Mining Modernization Program. In just four years (1990-1994), the legal framework for mining in Mexico underwent a radical change. Before the ink on the new laws was dry, the Bank began to dole out money to private mining companies to "help finance the surge in demand for investment funding that was expected to result from the improved policy and institutional setting for mining operations."

The Bank was thrilled with the results of the National Mining Modernization Program and its subsequent loans. According to the Bank, over the course of the project, which ended in 1998, over 8.7 million hectares of land were released and 17,220 new mining concessions were granted. As a result of the legal changes mandated by the loan, the time required for processing mining concessions went down from 5 years to 5 months, and the Mexican government's backlog of about 14,000 concession requests that were pending since 1989 disappeared virtually overnight. The Bank was so pleased with the results of the Mining Sector Restructuring Project that it wrote, "Future Bank participation in the sector does not seem justified anymore, in view that mining exploration/exploitation is now open to domestic and foreign investors."

The Bank's structural adjustment of Mexico's mining sector has played a key role in the battle for "land and territory" (as the Zapatistas refer to it) in the country. Private ownership, increased economic pressure on small and subsistence farmers, and top-down "development" projects are acutely felt in mineral-rich communities. According to Gustavo Castro Soto of the Chiapas-based non-profit Otros Mundos, "Beginning in 2000, almost 10% of the national territory has been ceded to transnational companies through mining concessions." REMA notes that in Chiapas, 15.21% of the state's total territory has been ceded through mining concessions. Many of those concessions don't expire until the year 2050. If the social unrest that frequently follows mining concessions is any indicator, Mexicans are not willingly handing over their land to foreign mining companies.

Mining Industry Under Fire

Mariono Abarca's murder comes at a time that the mining industry in Mexico is feeling the heat from Mexico's social movements. Inspired by the national movement of communities affected by hydroelectric dam projects, mining-affected communities are joining forces in a unified front against destructive mining practices.

In 2008, representatives from Chicomuselo travelled to the state of Jalisco to found REMA during the First Encounter of the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining. Representatives from mining-affected communities in eleven states and the Federal District participated in the historic event: Chihuahua, Sonora, Nayarit, Jalisco, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, Mexico City, México State, San Luis Potosí, Coahuila, and Veracruz. REMA agreed at that meeting to raise consciousness about the social and environmental effects of mining. It also pledged that member organizations would support each other in their struggles against destructive mines in their communities.

One of the most high-profile joint actions that REMA carried out was a protest encampment in front of the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City this past July. Abarca and representatives from other communities affected by Canadian mining companies participated in the encampment, which demanded the withdraw of Metallic Resources/NewGold, a Canadian company, from Cerro de San Pedro, San Luis Potosi. At the protest, Abarca spoke about Canadian mining companies' contamination of traditional water sources.

Following the protest, mining-affected communities won a temporary victory: just last month, a federal judge ordered that the Cerro de San Pedro mine be closed because the mining company had failed to comply with environmental stipulations. The closure comes after ten years of struggle waged by a broad coalition of San Luis Potosi civil society organizations, which include organizations linked to Mexico's center-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and groups affiliated with the Zapatista's Other Campaign. They opposed the gold mining project because, in addition to environmental concerns, the Cerro de San Pedro is an official historic monument. NewGold has promised to appeal the ruling.

In Chiapas, Abarca led a previously mentioned highway blockade that prevented Blackfire trucks from entering and leaving the Chicomuselo mine this past June and July. The community was protesting the company's excessive use of scarce water supplies, its failure to follow through on commitments it reportedly made to the community, and its back-door maneuverings that allowed it to purchase 13.5 hectares of ejido land without the required approval of the ejido assembly. Blackfire claims it lost $120,000 pesos ($9,334 dollars) as a direct result of the blockade.

This past August, REMA held its Second Encounter of the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining in Chiapas. Guatemalan communities who are resisting mining projects traveled to Chiapas to participate and share their experienes. Abarca helped organize the Encounter, and as previously mentioned, it was during the Encounter's organizing process that state police kidnapped Abarca and charged him with organized crime at Blackfire's request.

A communique signed by 25 Mexican organizations from six states and Mexico City holds Blackfire's owners responsible for Abarca's shooting and any resulting violence in the region. They call for a protest encampment outside of the Canadian Embassy and the Ministry of Economy headquarters in Mexico City on December 3 in solidarity with the people of Chicomuselo.

*An ejido is commonly-held land traditionally managed by assembly.

Posted December 21, 2009 By Eva Golinger

Blackwater in Colombia

In early 2008, the U.S. Army Missile Command and Space Defense awarded contracts in the amount of 15 billion dollars to a group of private contractors, including Blackwater. The contract, which includes intelligence operations, espionage and reconnaissance, among other things, faces two countries in Latin America, Mexico and Colombia.

Not surprisingly, came the revelation in Ecuador of Washington's role in the illegal invasion of Ecuadorian territory in March 2008. The participation of military and U.S. intelligence agents, then located at the military base of Manta, was initially suspected in the operation that killed persons in a FARC camp. Now an official report from Ecuador confirms this fact. It reaffirms further that where there are military bases used by the U.S. military, action be carried out by Washington - no matter what the rules, laws and regulations of the host country.

The controversial military agreement between Colombia and the United States, signed on Oct. 30, means the largest military expansion in Latin America by Washington. The agreement allows the presence of private contractors to service the needs of Washington agencies in Colombia, with all the same immunity granted to U.S. officials and military. This is not new. Under the agreement of Plan Colombia, Washington used by over 30 contractors for 10 years to perform military and intelligence work and espionage in Colombia. Some of them are the most powerful companies of the military industrial complex, such as DynCorp, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, the Rendon Group, and Raytheon, among others.

Within the new military agreement, the amount of contractors - or mercenaries of war - will increase. The privatization of war and the use of private companies to perform security operations, defense and intelligence, is now the modus operandi of Washington. The Blackwater company is certainly more controversial, now known as Xe Services. During the past eight years, Blackwater has earned over 1.4 billion dollars in contracts from the State Department and Pentagon. Since 2005, Blackwater has also gotten semi-secret contracts with the Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. for security and defense operations within the country, which have been seen as the beginning of the creation of a privatized state police to suppress and control a population that each day is in a more desperate economic situation.

Posted December 20, 2009 By Eva Golinger

US Military Aggression against Venezuela escalating

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez revealed today on his Sunday television and radio program, Aló Presidente, that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have illegally entered Venezuela's airspace during the past several days. "A few days ago, one of these military planes penetrated Venezuela as far as Fort Mara," a Venezuelan military fort in the State of Zulia, bordering Colombia. The drone was seen by several Venezuelan soldiers who immediately reported the aerial violation to their superiors. President Chávez gave the order today to shoot down any drones detected in Venezuelan territory. Chávez also directly implicated Washington in this latest threat against regional stability by confirming that the drones were of US origen.

On Thursday, President Chávez denounced military threats against Venezuela originating from the Dutch islands Aruba and Curazao, situated less than 50 miles off Venezuela's northwest coast. Both small islands host US air force bases as a result of a 1999 contract between Washington and Holland establishing US Forward Operating Locations (FOLs) in the Caribbean colonies. Originally, the contract stipulated US military presence in Aruba and Curazao soley for counternarcotics missions. However, since September 2001, Washington uses all its military installations to combat perceived terrorist threats around the world. The military bases in Aruba and Curazao have been used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaisance missions against Venezuela during the past several years.

In 2006, Washington began conducting a series of high level military exercises using Curazao as the principal zone of operations. Hundreds of US aircraft carriers, warships, combat planes, Black Hawk helicopters, nuclear submarines and thousands of US military troops have been engaging in different military exercises and missions in the Caribbean region during the past three and a half years, causing substantial alarm and concern to nations in the region, particularly Venezuela, which has also been subject to hostile and agressive diplomatic actions from Washington.

In 2008, the Pentagon reactivated the Navy's Fourth Fleet, charged with defending US interests in the Latin American region. The Fourth Fleet was deactivated in 1950, after accomplishing its original defense mission during World War II. The fleet's reactivation nearly 60 years later was perceived by a majority of nations in Latin America as a direct threat to regional sovereignty and provoked South American countries to establish a Defense Council to deal with external threats. The Pentagon responded by proudly admitting the Fourth Fleet's reactivation was a "showing of US force and power in the region" and a demonstration that the US "will defend its regional allies". This was perceived as direct support to Colombia, and an attempt to intimidate Venezuela.

On October 30, Colombia and the US signed a military cooperation agreement authorizing US occupation of seven military bases in Colombian territory and all other installations as required. The agreement is seen as the largest US military expansion in Latin American history. Although the two governments publicly justified the agreement as an increased effort to fight drug trafficking and terrorism, official US Air Force documents revealed that the US would conduct "full spectrum military operations" throughout South America from the Colombian bases. The Air Force documents also justified the disproportional military expansion as necessary to combat "the constant threat?from anti-US governments in the region". The documents further revealed that the US presence in Colombia will increase the success of "Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaisance" operations and will improve the Pentagon's capacity to conduct "expeditionary warfare" in Latin America.

Since 2006, Washington has classified Venezuela as a nation "not fully collaborating with the war against terror". In 2005, Venezuela was labeled by the State Department as a nation "not cooperating with counter-narcotics operations". Despite no substantive evidence to prove such dangerous accusations, the US has utilized these classifications to justify an increase in aggression towards the Venezuelan government. In 2008, the Bush Administration attempted to place Venezuela on the list of State Sponsors of terrorism. The initiative was unsuccessful primarily because Venezuela is still a principal supplier of oil to the US. Should Washington consider Venezuela a terrorist state, all relations would be cut off, including oil supply.

Nevertheless, Washington still views Venezuela as a major threat to US interests in the region. The US is particularly concerned about Latin American nations engaging in commercial relations with countries such as China, Russia and Iran, perceived as economic threats to US control and domination in the region. Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a warning to countries in Latin America that have recently forged relations with Iran, such as Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua and Venezuela. "?I think that if people want to flirt with Iran, they should take a look at what the consequences might well be for them, and we hope that they will think twice?", Clinton stated during remarks made regarding the State Department's Latin American policy.

The Colombian government announced yesterday that a new military base will be built right near the border with Venezuela, with funding and equipment from the United States. Colombia's Defense Minister Gabriel Silva also announced the activation of two air battalions at other border areas near Venezuela. The new military base, located in the Guajira peninsula, which borders the Venezuelan State of Zulia, would have up to 1,000 troops and would also allow the presence of US armed forces and private military contractors. This announcement clearly ups the anty against Venezuela.

Today's statements made by President Chávez regarding the US military drones discovered violating Venezuelan territory just days ago further escalate the growing tensions between Venezuela and Colombia. The MQ-1 Predator UAV, a type of combat drone, has been used over the past year in Afghanistan and Pakistan to assassinate suspect terrorists. The drones are equipped with Hellfire missiles and are capable of hitting ground targets in sensitive areas.

Venezuela is on high alert in the face of this dangerous threat. Chávez made the statements regarding the drone detection during the launching of the new National Police Force, a recently created communal police force directed at preventive security operations and community-based service.

Posted December 14, 2009 By Eva Golinger

CIA agent captured; was also funding opposition groups in Venezuela

An article published in the December 12 edition of the New York Times revealed the detention of a US government contract employee in Havana this past December 5. The employee, whose name has not yet been disclosed, works for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), one of the largest US government contractors providing services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The employee was detained while distributing cellular telephones, computers and other communications equipment to Cuban dissident and counterrevolutionary groups that work to promote US agenda on the Caribbean island. Last year, the US Congress approved $40 million to "promote transition to democracy" in Cuba. DAI was awarded the main contract, "The Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program," with oversight by State and USAID. The use of a chain of entities and agencies is a mechanism employed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to channel and filter funding and strategic political support to groups and individuals that support US agenda abroad. The pretext of "promoting democracy" is a modern form of CIA subversion tactics, seeking to infiltrate and penetrate civil society groups and provide funding to encourage "regime change" in strategically important nations, such as Venezuela, with governments unwilling to subcomb to US dominance.

DAI IN VENEZUELA

DAI was contracted in June 2002 by USAID to manage a multimillion dollar contract in Venezuela, just two months after the failed coup d'etat against President Hugo Chavez. Prior to this date, USAID had no operations in Venezuela, not even an office in the Embassy. DAI was charged with opening the Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI), a specialized branch of USAID that manages large quantities of liquid funds destined for organizations and political parties favorable to Washington in countries of strategic interest that are undergoing political crises.

The first contract between USAID and DAI for its Venezuela operations authorized $10 million for a two year period. DAI opened its doors in the Wall Street of Caracas, El Rosal, in August 2002, and began to immediately fund the same groups that just months earlier had executed -- unsuccessfully -- the coup against President Chavez.

The USAID/DAI funds in Venezuela were distributed to organizations such as Fedecamaras and the Confederacion de Trabajadores Venezolanos (CTV), two of the principal entities that had led the coup in April 2002 and that later headed another attempt to oust Chavez by imposing an economic sabotage and oil industry strike that crippled the nation's economy. One contract between DAI and these organizations, dated December 2002, awarded more than $10,000 to help design radio and television propaganda against President Chavez. During that time period, Venezuela experienced one of the most vicious media wars in history. Private television and radio stations, together with print media, devoted non-stop programming to opposition propaganda for 64 days, 24 hours a day.

In February 2003, DAI began to fund a recently created group named Sumate, led by Maria Corina Machado, one of the signatories of the "Carmona Decree," the famous dictatorial decree that dissolved all of Venezuela's democratic institutions during the brief April 2002 coup d'etat. Sumate soon became the principal opposition organization directing campaigns against President Chavez, including the August 2004 recall referendum. The three main agencies from Washington operating in Venezuela at that time, USAID, DAI and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), invested more than $9 million in the opposition campaign to oust Chavez via recall referendum, without success. Chavez won with a 60-40 landslide victory.

USAID, which still maintains its presence through the OTI and DAI in Venezuela, had originally announced that it would not remain in the country for more than a two year period. Then chief of the OTI in Venezuela, Ronald Ulrich, publically affirmed this notion in March 2003, "This program will be finished in two years, as has happened with similiar initiatives in other countries, the office will close in the time period stated? Time is always of the essence."

Technically, the OTI are USAID's rapid response teams, equipped with large amounts of liquid funds and a specialized personnel capable of "resolving a crisis" in a way favorable to US interests. In the document establishing the OTI's operations in Venezuela, the intentions of those behind its creation were clear, "In recent months, his popularity has waned and political tensions have risen dramatically as President Chavez has implemented several controversial reforms?The current situation augers strongly for rapid US government engagement?"

To date, the OTI still remains in Venezuela, with DAI as its principal contractor. But now, four other entities share USAID's multimillion dollar pie in Caracas: International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), Freedom House, and the PanAmerican Development Foundation (PADF). Of the 64 groups funded from 2002-2004 with approximately $5 million annually, today the OTI funds more than 533 organizations, political parties, programs and projects, mainly in opposition sectors, with an annual budget surpassing $7 million. Its presence has not only remained, but has grown. Obviously this is due to one very simple reason: the original objetive has still not been obtained; the overthrow or removal of President Hugo Chavez.

DEVELOPMENT ALTERNATIVES INC. IS A CIA FRONT ORGANIZATION

This organization dedicated to destabilizing governments unfavorable to US interests has now made its appearance in Cuba, with millions of dollars destined to destroy the Cuban revolution. Ex CIA officer Phillip Agee affirmed that DAI, USAID and NED "are instruments of the US Embassy and behind these three organizations is the CIA." The contract between USAID and DAI in Venezuela confirms this fact, "The field representative will maintain close collaboration with other embassy offices in identifying opportunities, selecting partners and ensuring the program remains consistent with US foreign policy." There is no doubt that "selecting partners" is another term for "recruiting agents" and "consistent with US foreign policy" means "promoting Washington's interests," despite issues of sovereignty.

Clearly, all DAI activities are directly coordinated by the US Embassy, a fact which negates the "private" nature of the organization.

The detention of a DAI employee is a very important step to impede destabilization and subversion inside Cuba. This episode also confirms that there has been no change of policy with the Obama Administration towards Cuba -- the same tactics of espionage, infiltration and subversion are still being actively employed against one of Washington's oldest adversaries.

VENEZUELA SHOULD ALSO EXPELL DAI

Now that Cuba has exposed the intelligence operations that DAI was engaging in (recruiting agents, infiltrating political groups and distributing resources destined to promote destabilization and regime change are all intelligence activities and illegal), the Venezuelan government should respond firmly by expelling this grave threat from the country. DAI has now been operating in Venezuela for over seven and a half years, feeding the conflict with more than $50 million dollars and promoting destabilization, counterrevolution, media warfare and sabotage.

In an ironic twist, currently in the United States five Cuban citizens are imprisoned on charges of alleged espionage, yet their actions in US territory were not directed towards harming US interests. But the DAI employee detained in Cuba -- working for a CIA front company -- was engaged in activities intended to directly harm and destabilize the Cuban government. The distribution of materials to be used for political purposes by a foreign government with the intent of promoting regime change in a nation not favorable to US interests is clearly a violation of sovereignty and an act of espionage.

Development Alternatives, Inc. is one of the largest US government contractors in the world. Currently, DAI has a $50 million contract in Afghanistan. In Latin America, DAI is presently operating in Bolivia, Brasil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haití, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Peru, Republica Dominicana and Venezuela.

Posted December 8, 2009 By El Libertador

The Death Squads are Back

Yesterday, Sunday night, a vehicle without plates took the lives of 5 people, all identified as members of the popular resistance against the dictatorship that was installed in the country 5 months ago.

The event occurred in sector 6 of the Villanueva neighbourhood of Tegucigalpa, where the occupants of a white vehicle without license plates, opened fire without saying a Word, on the five now dead men who were near a traffic circle by the ring road.

According to one of the residents of the area, who for obvious reasons of security declined to give his name, "the boys (the victims) were active members of the Resistance. They had organized the committees in the Honduras and Víctor F Ardón neighbourhoods so that the neighbours could get involved in the Resistance Front."

The names of the deceased are: Isaac Coello, (24); Roger Reyes (22), Kenneth Rosa (23), Gabriel Parrales and Marco Vinicio Matute (39), while one woman, Wendy Reyes, was wounded and is receiving treatment at the medical school hospital.

Area residents said that in the hours prior to the bloody event, there was an agent of the National Criminal Investigation Directorate (DNIC) watching the area where the crime took place and who mysteriously left shortly before the killings.

José Luna, a sub-inspector of the Preventative Policía responded to questions about the killings by saying ?Whenever there are murders, there are people who say the victims were good people." He added that the police are tracking those responsible for the massacre. So far, however, they have not been able to locate the vehicle described in the incident.

During the last few weeks, double cabin pick-ups with no plates have taken on the task of intimidating members of the Popular Resistance Against the Coup d'etat. Reporters of this publication have also complained of being followed and observed by vehicles with similar characteristics, and human rights organizations are also been aware of such anomalies.

Posted December 8, 2009 By Carlos Osorio

Operation Mexico: Secret Argentine Rendition Program Illuminated by Declassified Documents

As the case of "Operation Mexico"--death squad murders, disappearances and rendition efforts by the Argentine secret police--is presented to a court in Rosario, Argentina, the National Security Archive today posted a selection of records that corroborate the testimony of the only surviving witness, Jaime Dri. The documents were provided to a tribunal of five judges yesterday by Archive analyst Carlos Osorio who testified that "the records reveal how the Argentine dictatorship conducted its campaign of transnational terror in the 1970's."

"Operation Mexico" was the codename for a clandestine Argentine rendition program aimed at kidnapping and disappearing leaders of the Montoneros living in exile in Mexico City in the late 1970s. In 1978, members of that militant group who had already been taken prisoner and were being held in a clandestine prison in Rosario were forced to travel with intelligence agents to Mexico to identify their colleagues. The operation was intercepted and disrupted by Mexican authorities. To cover up the failed mission, the Argentine secret police executed 14 of the 15 prisoners who were aware of Operation Mexico.

The documents include a secret Argentine report that confirmed that Jaime Dri was the lone survivor of the prisoners who knew about the secret Mexico rendition mission. According to the document, "DRI JAIME 'Pelado'" was present when "the commission that accompanies 'TUCHO'" Valenzuela--one of the prisoners forced to accompany the intelligence operatives to Mexico City to identify his colleagues--"returned from Mexico."

The secret report was discovered by Osorio, who directs the Southern Cone Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, among papers at the Archivo del Terror in Paraguay. Osorio testified yesterday before Judge Otmar Paulucci, who heads the Federal criminal tribunal No. 1 in Rosario. The tribunal is currently hearing the "Guerrieri case," named for one of the members of the paramilitary unit "121" who is being prosecuted for executing 14 members of the Montoneros in a secret prison in Rosario.

In January 2008, the National Security Archive exposed "Operation Mexico," publishing declassified documents found in Mexican national archives from the Federal Directorate of Security. Those documents showed that Mexican security officers had arrested and interrogated two of the Argentine intelligence agents in January 1978 before deporting them and their two Montonero prisoners they had brought with them back to Argentina. The two were among those fourteen subsequently executed. Dri's account of "Operation Mexico" was described in the book Recuerdo de la Muerte, written by Argentine investigator Miguel Bonasso in 1994.

"These new documents complete the international triangulation of evidence from Mexico, Argentina and Paraguay," according to Osorio, "and confirm Argentina's bloody pursuit of cross border repression."

Posted December 3, 2009 By Jean Friedman-Rudovsky

Morales' Big Win: Voters Ratify His Remaking of Bolivia

Bolivian President Evo Morales isn't South America's first indigenous head of state - that honor belongs to Alejandro Toledo, a Quechua Indian who was President of Peru from 2001 to 2006 - but he's certainly the first to capture the imagination of the world outside South America. Morales, first elected in 2005, was the continent's Barack Obama before there was Obama. He is an Aymara Indian and former coca-growers union leader who won the presidential palace while still in his 40s, just decades after a time when Bolivians of his class and skin color weren't even allowed to vote. Morales hit the global stage with retro, Che Guevara-inspired leftist politics and colorful Aymara fashions. But the real question was whether he could actually govern and even improve South America's poorest and most volatile nation. (See the 10 worst dressed world leaders.)

Bolivian voters, at least, issued a resounding yes in Sunday's presidential election: the initial tally shows Morales, now 50, winning re-election with 63% of the vote, almost 10 points better than his 54% showing four years ago. He defeated his closest opposition candidate by 40 points. His party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), won two-thirds of the seats in Bolivia's Congress. As a result, said Morales, "I am obligated to accelerate the pace of change." The statement was sure to buoy the indigenous majority that makes up his base while vexing the more conservative white minority he has sometimes violently butted heads with.

Morales sailed to victory thanks largely to that indigenous cohort, which is concentrated in Bolivia's Western highlands and makes up about two-thirds of the country's population. Like Hugo Chávez, his left-wing counterpart in Venezuela, Morales has lavished unprecedented social programs on the poor, including free medical care, stipends for new mothers and the elderly, and a massive program for literacy that includes payments to low-income families who make sure their children attend school. "Evo knows what it's like to be like us," said Ilda Condori, an indigenous voter waiting outside a polling station in the impoverished city of El Alto that adjoins the capital, La Paz, 12,000 ft. high in the Andes. Looking down at her 8-year-old daughter, Condori added, "Because of Evo, I can afford to buy this one schoolbooks and some clothes every year." (See a video about how Bolivia's opposition is losing ground.)

But analysts say it wasn't just Morales' social largesse that ensured a larger landslide this time. Critics foresaw macroeconomic disaster three years ago when Morales, fulfilling a campaign promise, nationalized Bolivia's vast natural-gas reserves. Among the doubters was the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington. Today the IMF is hailing Bolivia's projected economic growth rate of almost 3%, one of the hemisphere's highest, as well as the fact that the country's economy has averaged almost 5% annual growth since Morales came to office, Bolivia's best performance in three decades. "Bolivia is the most profound example that the conventional wisdom of economic growth - that you need to attract foreign capital at all costs - is just not true," says Mark Weisbrot, director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.

Despite the energy nationalization and Morales' strident anticapitalist rhetoric, Weisbrot adds, foreign investment is higher now than it was under many of Morales' predecessors. Much of that success was driven by the decade's abnormally high prices for commodities like natural gas, and it was hardly expected from a man who, like Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, did not attend college and concedes he didn't know what inflation meant before he became President. "When Morales admitted [during a visit to the U.S.] that it wasn't until after his election that the concept was explained to him, eyes grew wide," says Martin Sivak, author of a Morales biography, Evo Morales, due out soon in English. "He barely finished high school, but he's honest about his lack of knowledge, and he makes up for that by surrounding himself with experts."

But while Morales has stabilized Bolivia's economy, he has all too often polarized its politics at home and abroad. "The country has become much more conflictive because of Evo," says Ximena Delvillar, 36, who lives in a relatively affluent section of La Paz. Bolivia, in fact, seemed on the verge of a civil war last year between the indigenous people and the white economic élite of the Eastern lowlands. That upper class is hardly blameless, but even Bolivians sympathetic to Morales complain that he and MAS have consolidated inordinate power and are wielding it with a vengeance against political foes. Several opposition leaders are under seemingly arbitrary investigation for financial fraud, illegal land holdings or ties to a supposed terrorist cell the government claims plotted to assassinate Morales last spring. The government also has flooded the country with enough Evo hagiography to rival Fidel Castro's overweening personality cult in communist Cuba. (See a story about Bolivia's bizarre conspiracy plot.)

Sivak acknowledges Morales' sometimes autocratic bent. "He inherited this from his years as a union leader," he says. "He has trouble trusting others, and so it means he's involved in 50 decisions every day, which is not always a good thing." But the process earlier this year to rewrite Bolivia's constitution, which increased indigenous rights and let Morales run for President one more time, satisfied democratic criteria; and even Morales' decision last year to expel the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, for allegedly meddling in Bolivian politics was supported by most Bolivians, who feel Washington's insistence on drug-war and free-market cooperation hurt the country in the 1980s and '90s.

Sources close to the Bolivian President tell TIME that as U.S.-Bolivia relations improve under Obama, Morales plans to reinstate a U.S. ambassador soon. Meanwhile, the crowd outside the presidential palace in La Paz Sunday night, Dec. 6, seemed to celebrate Bolivia's indigenous past as well as its first indigenous President. Banners and T-shirts sported the faces not only of Che but of Tupac Katari, the leader of an 18th century Aymara uprising that almost drove out the Spanish colonizers. Katari was eventually captured and drawn and quartered, but before dying, he warned, "I will return, and I will be made of millions." His quote has been oft repeated since Morales won his first term, and it will no doubt be heard again throughout the second.

Posted December 7, 2009 by Jan Susler

MESSAGE FROM CUBA TO AFROAMERICAN INTELLECTUALS AND ARTISTS

A Yoruba proverb states: "The lie may run for a year, the truth will catch up with it one day". Although the most intolerant political circles and most powerful mass media have tried to impose a distorted image of contemporary Cuban society on American public opinion for a long time, one way or another, in the end, reality leads the way.

We are sure that's the way it will happen when the arguments refuting those deceitful statements about our society contained in a document circulated on December 1st in the name of a group of Afro-American intellectuals and leaders are considered.

To say that among us there is a "callous disregard" for black Cubans, that they are "den[ied] civil liberties on the basis of race," and to "stop the unwarranted and brutal harassment of black citizens in Cuba who are defending their civil rights," would seem a delirious vagary if the evil intention of adding respectable voices from the Afro-American community to the anti-Cuban campaign that attempts to undermine our sovereignty and identity were not behind those fictions.

If the Cuba of these times was that racist nation they want to invent, its citizens would not have contributed massively to the liberation of the African people. More than 350,000 Cuban volunteers fought alongside their brothers of Africa against Colonialism. More than 2,000 combatants from the Island fell in the lands of that Continent. A personality of undisputed worldwide import, Nelson Mandela, has recognized the role of those volunteers in the definitive defeat of the infamous Apartheid regime. From Africa we brought back only the remains of our dead.

If the Cuba of today felt such disrespect for the black race, more than 35,000 African young persons wouldn't have been trained in our schools over the past 40 years, nor would 2,600 young people from some 30 nations of that region be studying right now in our universities.

A people sick with racism would refuse to collaborate in the training of medical doctors and other human resources for health at the Schools of Medical Sciences founded in Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, and Eritrea.

It would have turned its back on the health assistance programs that have saved thousands of lives in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the African Diaspora is significant, and they would have not provided services to the more than 20,000 Haitians and English speaking Afro-Caribbeans who recovered their eyesight through surgical operations performed in our country, free of charge.

It is very probable that the majority of those who signed the document aren't aware that when the City of New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, dozens of Cuban medical doctors and paramedics volunteered to provide help to storm victims in a humanitarian gesture that received no response from the American authorities.

It is probable that those who signed the document also ignore the fact that from the earliest days following the popular victory of 1959, the institutional and legal bases that sustained a racist society were dismantled.

In 1959 the Cuban Revolution found a critical situation in the majority of the population. Cubans of African descent, who were among the victims that suffered most from the Neo-colonial model that existed here, immediately benefited from the battle carried out by the Revolution which put an end to any form of exclusion, including the fierce racism that characterized Cuba during those years.

Cuba's policy against any form of discrimination and in favor of equality, has Constitutional backing, found explicitly in the chapters of the Cuban Constitution that refer to the essential political, social and economic foundations of the State, and about the rights and obligations and guarantees of its citizens.

These Constitutional Rights, as well as the mechanisms and means to uphold them and the restoration of legality before any violation of them, are guaranteed by means of very precise complementary legislation.

As never before in the history of our nation, black and /mestizo/ Cubans have found opportunities for social and personal development in transformative processes that have been ongoing for the past half a century. These opportunities are conveyed through policies and programs that made possible the initiation of what Cuban Anthropologist Don Fernando Ortiz, called the non-deferrable integration phase of Cuban society. It is a process, we know, that is not exempt from conflicts and contradictions on which inherited social disadvantages and deeply-rooted prejudices play an important role.

Six years ago, Fidel Castro, in a dialog that took place in Havana with Cuban and foreign pedagogues, commented how "even in societies like Cuba, that arose from a radical social revolution where the people had reached full and total legal equality and a level of revolutionary education that interred the subjective component of discrimination, it does exist in another form," He described it as objective discrimination, a phenomenon associated with poverty and a historical monopoly on knowledge.

Whoever observes daily life anywhere in the country will be able to see how a sustained effort is underway to bring an end to the factors that provide the conditions for that situation through new programs oriented towards eliminating any social disadvantage.

Afro-American intellectuals must know how their Cuban colleagues have dealt with these topics and promote actions from the prominent position they hold in civil society.

Some of the programs to which we have made previous references came into being as a result of the debates that took place in 1998 during the VI Congress of the Cuban Association of Writers and Artists (UNEAC), in an open and sincere dialog with the State's highest authorities and then-President Fidel Castro.

It should be remembered that UNEAC, which brings together the vanguard of Cuba's intellectual and artistic movement, had as its President and founder, a black poet, Nicolas Guillen, one of the most important poets in the Spanish language during the 20th century, an active fighter against racial discrimination, and personal friend of Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson.

Within UNEAC, an organization that never turned its back on these problems, a permanent Committee has been created to fight against any remains of discrimination and racial prejudices from a cultural perspective.

In a racist country it would be inconceivable to found and operate institutions like the House of Africa, the Fernando Ortiz Foundation, the House of the Caribbean of Santiago de Cuba, the Center of Caribbean Studies of the House of the Americas, and the National Institute of Anthropology, which, among others, conducts in-depth research into the African legacy in our culture and interracial relations in our country.

Likewise, artistic organizations and entities such as the National Folklore Group, the Camagüey Folkloric Ballet, and the Oriente Folkloric Group would not have received support and the most widespread social recognition,

The Museum of the Slave Route would not have existed. The first of its kind in Latin America and the Caribbean, The Museum is one of the first results of Cuba's commitment to the UNESCO-sponsored program to vindicate the contribution made by Africans forcibly removed from their lands of o