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South India voters reject BJP

R.K. Sharma — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:12:00 -0400

Indian voters rejected the reactionary Hindu-nationalist party, known as the BJP, in a recent state election. The huge loss spells trouble for the ultra-right party in the 2014 national elections.

Out of the four southern Indian states, Karnataka was the only state where the BJP had found a foothold. In the 2007 elections, voters there had delivered a disgusting surprise by putting the BJP into power. The southern Indian states have, in general, a progressive voter base and a strong secular tradition both of which run contrary to the BJP agenda.

The BJP government in Karnataka has been mired in corruption and personal power feuds, which led to its downfall. Voters refused to give a second term. Its strength reduced from 110 seats to only 40 in a state assembly of 224.

The big winners are the ruling Congress Party, which increased its tally to 121 seats, and another secular party, JDS, which has worked in alliance with the left parties in past. The JDS bagged 40 seats.

This election has a great impact on Indian politics and sets the stage for the next general election to be held in 2014. The BJP holds about 19 of 20 parliamentary seats from Karnataka and may loose most of them to secular parties, including Congress.

Political analysts attributed the Karnataka victory to the Congress Party leadership trio: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi, who is being groomed for the PM position. This election has given a great facelift to otherwise sinking prospects of the Congress Party, which is also corruption-laden.

In other news, Indian Minister for External Affairs Salman Khurshid travelled to Beijing to negotiate Chinese withdrawal from Indian territory along a disputed boundary line. The incursion point was 12 miles within the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh area of Jammu and Kashmir State of Northern India. As India and China have fought in the past over boundaries, it was indeed a victory of peace forces on both sides to end the issue diplomatically. A section of Indian media has been hawkishly raising voices against China's incursions. The Chinese agreed to withdraw its troops to the Line of Actual Control, without accepting that it had trespassed.

India and China are partners in ever increasing trade and agreed to cooperate in future projects. The Chinese foreign minister will visit India soon and complete some of the remaining agenda.

Photo: The Indian state of Karnataka is highlighted (CC).

Is the world of advertising swallowing Russia?

Victor Grossman — Fri, 17 May 2013 22:52:00 -0400

MOSCOW - I came here for a visit recently, for the first time in many years. Now the city seems engulfed by the modern world of advertising; the signs, ads and billboards sometimes remind me of Times Square.

Many offerings are of Russian make, but logos and company names are all too familiar for my taste: KFC, Subway, and the ubiquitous McDonald's are perhaps the most intrusive.

Moscow has many beauties. I found the powerful, redbrick Kremlin with its towers more impressive than in all my recollections or television views of it. And next to it is the broad Red Square with the Lenin mausoleum and the Kremlin wall with its interred urns - among them the three American labor heroes: "Big Bill" Haywood, Charles Ruthenberg and John Reed.

New for me was the cluster of modern, curving skyscrapers, undoubtedly impressive to their owners and probably to many Muscovites as well.

Another presence that is much bigger than before the restoration of capitalism is that of the Church. Yes, before the restoration of capitalism there was the many-colored St. Basil's Cathedral on Red Square, built for Ivan the Terrible, and the massively walled-in Novodevichy (New Maiden's) Convent, built for Peter the Great (or for his errant sister and wife).

But other onion-shaped towers, large and small, often in shining gold, seem to have multiplied in all directions. Crowning them all is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the largest Orthodox church in the world, built for a series of 19th century tsars, torn down by Stalin, replaced by Khrushchev with the world's largest out-door swimming pool, and then rebuilt for pious Christians after 1990.

But still there are islands that evoke the past. The Museum of the Great Patriotic War, an imposing, quiet new building, necessarily based on Soviet times, offered dramatic dioramas of key events during the war: Leningrad, the decisive battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, the Dnieper crossing, and the liberation of Berlin. In the dimly lit Hall of Remembrance and Sorrow countless filaments with small glass beads hung from the ceiling, symbolizing tears for the dead.

With traffic jams reaching well out into the suburbs it took our bus over seven hours to reach the city of Ivanovo, only 250 km away (about 150 mi).

A large city, the size of Miami with 400,000 inhabitants, it was once Russia's main textile center, like Manchester in England or Lawrence and Lowell in Massachusetts. But as in so many textile cities outside Asia, the industry has died almost completely. To a visitor, Ivanovo seems a conglomerate of big, empty factories, tall apartment buildings from the Soviet era contrasting with streets lined with traditional little wooden homes, some with skilful wood carvings on eaves or windows and brief glimpses of comfortable interiors, others, hardly more than log cabins, empty and falling apart.

We finally arrived at our destination on the town's outskirts, a complex of eight handsome buildings comprising the unusual school known as Interdom, short for "International House," whose 80th anniversary ceremonies our mixed German, Spanish and Russian group was here to share in.

Interdom's founding was linked with Germany, especially with the small town of Elgersburg in Thuringia. Here, in 1924, Communist Party leader Wilhelm Pieck - 25 years later the president of the German Democratic Republic - opened a "Red Aid" home for the children of people persecuted for their leftist views and actions, mostly German but also Bulgarian and Austrian. In those extremely difficult times a large number of the children were undernourished, some were rachitic, not a few had tuberculosis.

Place to learn and recuperate

This was a both a school and a place to recuperate, regain health - and keep the leftist views of their parents. Although supported by famous sponsors like Einstein, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, stage director Erwin Piscator and the artists Käthe Kollwitz, Max Liebermann and Otto Dix, pressure from the government of Thuringia increased rapidly; its Social Democratic-Communist coalition government had been driven from office by German government troops in October, 1923. And as the Nazis grew stronger and stronger the school was increasingly endangered.

The International Red Aid, abbreviated MOPR in Russia and called International Labor Defense in the U.S.), now stepped in with the offer, supported by the textile workers of Ivanovo, to replace the German school with a new one in their city. By the time the Nazis came to power this had become a dire necessity. Money was collected in the whole Soviet Union and the new school opened in the spring of 1933.

The pupils here aim at a college education when possible and are evidently better prepared than most children to get the necessary good grades in entrance examinations. But they are also given the opportunity to learn a hand-working trade; in woodworking or metal shop for the boys and designing and dressmaking for the girls. When I questioned this division I was told that the girls could also learn a trade in the shops if they wished - but I got the impression that this was hardly common if at all the case. This seemed an echo of the thinking of past years - or perhaps of present Russian reality.

The evening of May Day featured an outdoor picnic outside the gym and swimming pool. There was sack racing, bowling - with a basketball and big soda bottles as pegs, throwing baskets, hopping on one leg and trying to push the opponent off balance, walking a straight line backwards using a mirror, skipping rope and tug of war, hop scotch and walking blind-folded a slalom line between pegs. I was most affected by the happy, natural atmosphere, with never a cross word between older and younger pupils, white and black, Russian and Chechen, boys and girls.

I must be very cautious in generalizing. I could be mistaken in my vivid admiration of this school. Yet another thought crossed my mind. Was this an isolated island, far removed from the facts of modern life? In some ways it recalled the innocent ways of long past, perhaps never really existent "school days"; no television, and hand phones -only once did I see a boy playing an electronic game on his hand-held phone.

No coke or any other vending machines, no smoking on the grounds, no racism or sexism (unless the choice of trades could be so labeled). No commercialism and no demonstrative religion; I was told that pupils could practice any religion they desired, but the school itself was completely secular.

Of course no guns were to be seen anywhere. But perhaps most interesting: no rejection of the Soviet past, which had provided, after all, the foundation for this school. Can one live properly on such an island? And should one? And will these youngsters adjust later, after arriving in the outside world?

Americans ride to free the Cuban Five

Ismael Parra — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:25:00 -0400

On Sunday, May 5, two Americans rode their bikes in a 40-mile ride that passed through over 20 different towns in the area of Lake Como, Italy.

This year the annual Garibaldina cycling event, in which hundreds of cyclist participate, was co-sponsored by the Italy-Cuba Friendship Circle of Como City.

The riders called on the U.S. government to set free the unjustly imprisoned five Cubans who were active in the U.S. in 1998 to stop terrorist attacks by anti-Castro organizations that are based in Florida.

The five Cubans had provided information to the Cuban government on U.S.-based terror plots by anti-Communist exiles such as the bombings of hotels.

When the Cuban government gave information to the FBI, the five Cubans were arrested. The terrorist groups were not dismantled and are still active.

The event in Como was followed by a banquet lunch where American and Swiss riders were able to meet and speak with fellow Italian riders as well as with the Cuban Ambassador to Italy, Milagros Carina Soto Agüer, and a representative from the Cuban consulate in Milan, Eduardo Vidal Chirino.

Also present were national regional heads of the Italy-Cuba Friendship Association which has organized groups, called circles, throughout Italy.

One of the Five, Rene Gonzalez, has been released and is now back in Cuba.

Photo: Activist bike riders in Italy. Ismael Parra/PW

Cuban Five’s Rene Gonzalez freed, push continues

Emile Schepers — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:37:00 -0400

Rene Gonzalez, one of the "Cuban Five" who have been imprisoned in the United States since 1998, is now free and back in Cuba. But the remaining four still have many years in prison ahead of them, unless people of conscience in the United States can make our case to the U.S. public so that enough pressure is exerted on the Obama administration to achieve their freedom.

Over the years, the real story of why the Cuban 5 were arrested, why they were tried in Miami in spite of the very prejudicial atmosphere there, and why they were given such draconian sentences, has emerged.

The Five were part of a network of Cubans and Cuban-Americans who were keeping under surveillance right-wing Cuban exile groups in South Florida who had been launching terroristic attacks on Cuba for years. The most famous was the bombing of a Cuban passenger airliner in 1976, which resulted in the deaths of 73 passengers and crew. But more recently, there had been bombings aimed at tourist destinations in Cuba, in one of which an Italian traveler, Fabio de Celmo, was killed. Cuba had repeatedly asked the United States government to crack down on the groups sponsoring these actions. The two masterminds of the airliner bombing, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, were neither prosecuted for it in the United States, nor extradited to Cuba or Venezuela (where the terroristic act was planned). Bosch died in 2011 but Posada, a former CIA asset, is living comfortably in Florida.

The Five were not spying on the U.S., nor doing anything to harm the interests of U.S. citizens. In fact, the information they gathered was handed over to the F.B.I. by the Cuban government itself, with the request that it be acted on.

However, the U.S. security agencies had themselves developed unhealthy relations with the self-same extremist exile groups and leaders. Supporters of the Five point out that one of the top F.B.I. officials in the area, Hector Pesquera, shared much of the ideology of the right-wing Cuban exiles. Evidently it was his idea to move against the Five, and he had some trouble persuading then-Attorney General Janet Reno to go along.

So the Five were arrested, subjected to long periods of solitary confinement and other abuses, put on trial and given draconian sentences. Objections by defense attorneys that the Five could not get a fair trial in right-wing, exile-dominated Miami were brushed aside. Later it was found that the U.S. government was subsidizing some of the Miami journalists who made the biggest uproar about the Five.

The guilty verdicts were handed down on June 8, 2001.

Gonzalez was given a 15-year prison term for "general conspiracy and conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent." Since October 27, 2011, he has been out on parole. He was able to briefly return to Cuba to visit his dying brother last year: This was allowed by a judge over the protests of the U.S. government. This year, he was allowed again to go and visit his family after his father died, and the U.S. did not object to his appeal to stay there, on condition he renounce his U.S. citizenship (he was born in Chicago and had dual citizenship).

Ramon Labañino Salazar was convicted of general conspiracy, conspiracy to commit espionage, false identity and conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent. He was given life in prison plus 18 months, but on appeal this was reduced to 30 years. So he has 17 years to go.

Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez was found guilty of general conspiracy, conspiracy to commit espionage, and conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent. After appeal, he ended up with a sentence of 21 years 10 months, so he has about 9 years to go.

Fernando Gonzalez Llort was found guilty of general conspiracy, conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent, and False Identity. After appeal, he ended up with a sentence of 17 years, leaving him with four years to serve.

The most tragic case is that of Gerardo Hernandez. He was originally charged with general conspiracy, conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, false identity and conspiracy to act as a non-registered foreign agent. But seven months after his arrest the government added two murder charges.

This was because on the flimsiest of evidence, the government claimed that Hernandez had known that the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft that had been illegally penetrating Cuban air space at rooftop level to drop leaflets and religious medallions would be shot down by Cuban fighter jets on February 24, 1996, and therefore was complicit in the act. In fact, everybody, including the U.S. government, knew that such an event was likely; U.S. authorities could have easily prevented the incident by revoking the "Brothers" license. Hernandez did not have any ability to stop this.

But nonetheless, he was given two life terms plus 15 years as a result of this farcical trial. To add to the pain, the government has consistently refused to let his wife, Adriana Perez, visit him in jail.

These are people who should be given medals instead of being buried alive in U.S. dungeons. Three of them (Gonzalez Llort, Rene Gonzalez and Hernandez) participated as volunteers in the Cuban mission to defend Angola against aggression by apartheid South Africa. All of them have maintained a front of total solidarity, although there surely must have been attempts to play them off against each other. Being told that Gonzalez was now free, Hernandez insisted that they are not now the "Cuban Four", the Five will be the Five forever.

There is a worldwide movement to Free the Five, which has organized activities in their support in many countries and counts on the support of many distinguished friends of human freedom, including artists like Danny Glover, labor leaders like Dolores Huerta, poets like Alice Walker and no less than ten Nobel Prize winners.

One of the ideas for achieving the freedom for the Five has been a humanitarian exchange for Alan Gross, a U.S. government contractor who is serving a 15-year sentence in Cuba for illegal activities in support of the destabilization of that country. The Cuban government has hinted broadly that it is open to such an exchange, but the United States has not so far responded.

From May 30 to June 5, there will be "Five Days for the Cuban Five" in Washington DC., with many speakers and cultural events.

Photo: Rene Gonzalez, center, with daughter and unidentified man. (AP)

Ex-Guatemalan dictator found guilty of genocide

Emile Schepers — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:54:00 -0400

On May 10 a court in Guatemala found former dictator Efrain Rios Montt guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for his part in the massacre of native Americans of the Ixil Maya group during his brief presidency from 1982 to 1983.

A three-judge panel headed by Judge Jazmin Barrios sentenced him to 80 years in prison: 50 for the genocide, 30 for crimes against humanity. An associate, former intelligence chief Jose Rodriguez Sanchez, was acquitted. Under Guatemalan law, nobody can serve more than 50 years, but Rios Mont is 86.

Rios Montt seized power in a coup d'etat against another military dictator, Fernando Lucas Garcia, in 1982. Paz in turn had been the latest in a series of dictators who had ruled Guatemala after the United States overthrew democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954.

Arbenz was overthrown because his land reform plans threatened both the local landholding elites and the interests of the monster - United Fruit Company (ancestral to today's Chiquita Banana) which held vast amounts of idle land in Guatemala.

Major investors in United Fruit included U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Alan Dulles. Arbenz was replaced by a military man, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who repealed Arbenz' measures and instituted a harshly repressive regime against the left.

Castillo was assassinated in 1957 but after him came a series of military strongmen who carried out a bloody war against left wing guerillas as well as farmers and workers. This war was increasingly funded by the United States, as U.S. and Israeli advisors gave the Guatemalan military tips on methods of torture and murder. The war cost an estimated 200,000 lives, with 93 percent of the killing done by government troops and right-wing paramilitaries allied with them. A 1996 peace accord ended the formal fighting, but left Guatemala scarred and still plagued by violence.

Rios Montt seized power in March, 1982 and only ruled until August of the following year. In this short period he showed himself to be an overachiever in the murder and mayhem departments: Troops under his command are thought to have killed at least 40,000 people.

He was tried, however, only for one specific campaign, against the Ixil subgroup of the Maya indigenous people. In this operation, Rios Montt's men destroyed 600 indigenous villages. He was found guilty of command responsibility in the slaughter of 1,771 people including women, children and old people. Small babies were killed by picking them up by the feet and smashing their heads against walls.

Eventually, Rios Montt was himself overthrown and replaced by another brutal military dictator, Oscar Mejia Victores, who continued the repression.

The fall of Rios Montt had less to do with his cruelty and violence and more with the fact that as a fanatical evangelical Christian (the Church of the Word), he had gotten on the nerves of Catholic elites in Guatemala. He fell in spite of the fact that he had excellent relations with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who publicly praised Rios Montt as a man of "integrity."

Rios Montt was a graduate of what was then called the "School of the Americas" in Fort Benning, Georgia, which has produced scores of the Latin American military's worst murderers and human rights violators, giving them training in how to "win the hearts and minds" of the people by means of various forms of torture. A specialty of the Rios Montt period was the creation of "self-defense" patrols which would pit Maya villagers against each other; another was the "Kabiles," an elite killer squad which still exists and is being used by the U.S. and allies in the "humanitarian" task of chasing down Joseh Kony in Central Africa.

The people around Rios Montt, including his daughter, Zury Rios, are still powerful and influential in Guatemala, and still have powerful connections in the United States. Rios is married to former Republican Congressman Jerry Weller of Illinois. In the 2006 elections, the Rios Montt's party, the Guatemalan Republican Front, organized violent riots in Guatemala city, which many saw as a chilling reminder that the days of the general could return.

At the time the genocide in Guatemala was being carried out, the reason given to outsiders was that to get rid of the plague of "communism", it was necessary to kill everybody who showed signs of being infected. Now, however, Rios Montt claims, as his defense in the trial, that he, as president of the country and commander in chief of the armed forces, had no idea these things were going on and never gave the orders.

There was an element of uncertainty in the trial, due to the power still exercised over the judiciary and other institutions by wealthy economic strata which have been the support of the military regimes and the political right. An attempt was made to get the trial annulled, but this failed. Although a large group of Ixil Maya survivors and technical specialists testified to the events, the current president of Guatemala, General Otto Perez Molina, has denied that genocide ever took place and is himself reported to have played a subordinate role in the repression against the Ixil. However, President Perez has also said he will abide by the court's decision. For his part, Rios Montt says he will appeal up to the Supreme Court if necessary.

For the many people in the United States who are nauseated and horrified by the Guatemalan genocide, we still have important tasks to do. One is to shut down the School of the Americas, now euphemistically renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation." Another is to bring to book surviving U.S. government and private individuals who aided, abetted and inspired Rios Montt and his cohorts in their bloody deeds. Reagan has gone to his reward, but there are plenty left. Above all, we must never let this happen again.

Photo: Efrain Rios Montt Moises Castilo/AP

No U.S. bases in Afghanistan!

Marilyn Bechtel — Fri, 10 May 2013 22:17:00 -0400

In this week's news has come a sobering wake-up call for anyone hoping the end of 2014 will really mark the end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

In what may be a premature revelation of what's happening in negotiations for a Bilateral Security Agreement, Afghan President Hamid Karzai on May 8 proclaimed that his country "can agree" to give the U.S. nine bases he said Washington seeks.

Karzai told an audience at Kabul University that the U.S. "staying on after 2014 is for the good of Afghanistan. The condition is that they bring peace and security and take action quickly ... on the basic strengthening of Afghanistan, helping the economy of Afghanistan."

He added, "We are trying to ensure the interests of both countries are satisfied in this agreement. We want roads, electricity, hydropower dams, and strengthening of the Afghan government."

The White House was quick to back away from Karzai's statement. Answering a reporter's question, Press Secretary Jay Carney asserted that "the United States does not seek permanent military bases in Afghanistan, and any U.S. presence after 2014 would only be at the invitation of the Afghan government and aimed at training Afghanistan forces and targeting the remnants of Al Qaeda."

Carney declined to answer a question about how close President Obama is to deciding U.S. troop levels there after 2014.

Despite the denials, it sounds like Karzai has let a very big cat out of the bag.

Negotiations between the two countries for an agreement on what will happen after the stated deadline for U.S. withdrawal of combat troops began last November.

Karzai's spokesperson Aimal Faizy told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview this week that the bases the U.S requested last month include facilities in and near the capital, Kabul, and in Helmand and Kandahar in the south, Herat near the Iranian border, Gardez and Jalalabad in the east, and the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Much of what is happening in the ongoing talks remains unclear. But what is clear is that despite more than 11 years of war and occupation and attempts to train Afghan armed forces, the military situation in Afghanistan remains highly unstable. Taliban forces can mount actions in supposedly secure areas, while the situation of the civilian population remains dire.

And Al Qaeda, the pretext for continuing U.S. engagement in Afghanistan, is virtually nonexistent there.

Despite efforts to paint U.S. training efforts with a rosy glow, Afghan forces continue to face problems with corruption, "attrition," coordination and combat ability.

Meanwhile, over 2,200 U.S. soldiers have died in Afghanistan-related actions, and civilian deaths have by some estimates soared well over 100,000.

So what to do?

As international affairs commentator Conn Hallinan pointed out earlier this year that the only sane course is for the U.S. "to get out, and as quickly as possible."

And leading peace advocates in Congress have been pressing for exactly that approach.

U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, D-Calif., earlier this year reintroduced her "Responsible End to the War in Afghanistan Act," which would restrict Afghanistan war funding to that needed for "safe and orderly withdrawal" of all U.S. military and contractor personnel. The measure has 40 co-sponsors.

The bill, H.R. 200, is currently before the House Committees on Armed Services and Foreign Affairs. Helping to build support for this measure is one very positive way to respond to the latest news.

Photo: U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, via The U.S. Army.

So far, Obama resists pressure to attack Syria

Susan Webb — Thu, 09 May 2013 12:53:00 -0400

Two recent developments sharply ratcheted up pressure for direct U.S. military intervention in Syria: Israeli airstrikes hit sites near Damascus, and accusations intensified that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons. So far, it appears President Obama is resisting the pressure, but that could change if moves for a political solution to the war in Syria do not succeed.

On Tuesday in Moscow, Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced they will work to convene an international diplomatic conference in the coming weeks to negotiate an end to the war. They said they will seek to get representatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and opposition leaders to attend. If that happens, and an agreement is reached to end the war, it would halt a two-year-old conflict that has become a magnet for sectarian extremists and threatens to engulf the entire region. If a political settlement is achieved it would also be a big foreign policy success for Obama.

But that's a big "if."

Last weekend, U.S. ally Israel launched two missile attacks against reported Syrian government military installations close to Damascus. The airstrikes set off huge explosions. Israeli officials portrayed the attacks as defensive, saying they targeted missiles being shipped from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to be used against Israel. Others saw the airstrikes on Syria as a lead-up to an Israeli attack on Iran.

But they could also have been intended to test Syria's defenses and responses, serving as a stalking horse for wider military action, by the U.S. or others.

The Israeli actions were certainly used that way by U.S. warhawks like Sen. John McCain. McCain, speaking Sunday on FOXNews, said the Israeli airstrikes showed that Syria's defenses were not that strong. "The Israelis seem to be able to penetrate it fairly easily," he said. McCain said the U.S. could disable Syrian air defenses "with cruise missiles" and by using Patriot missile batteries to set up a "safe zone" for rebels. Michigan Republican Rep. Mike Rogers said the U.S. could enforce a no-fly zone over part of Syria without putting American pilots at risk by using "better technology" - which implies using surface-to-air missiles.

U.S. military leaders and analysts, however, said any such action would require massive U.S. military involvement.

Meanwhile, charges that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons against opponents, first raised last year, reached a new height in recent weeks, with Syrian rebels producing testimony and evidence to bolster the accusations. The chemical weapons issue has been all over the U.S. media. However the evidence is in dispute.

The White House said on April 25 it believed "with some degree of varying confidence" that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons - specifically the nerve agent sarin - against its own people. Prominent figures such as British Prime Minister David Cameron declared it is "very likely" the Syrian government has used chemical weapons. However United Nations commissioner Carla Del Ponte drew headlines last week when she said testimony from victims of the conflict in Syria suggested that rebels may have used sarin.

"This is not the first time rebel forces in Syria have come under suspicion for using chemical weapons." said BBC correspondent Bridget Kendall. "But allegations ... coming from a senior UN official is a different matter. Carla del Ponte is a former war crimes prosecutor and serves on a UN commission looking into human rights abuses in Syria. So any comments from her carry weight."

Del Ponte is a former Swiss attorney-general and prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. "I was a little bit stupefied by the first indications we got" from interviews with victims, doctors and others, "they were about the use of nerve gas by the opposition," she told Swiss TV. She said government troops might also have used chemical weapons, but more investigation was needed.

UN officials later stated there was thus far "no conclusive proof" that either side in the Syria conflict had used chemical weapons.

Others say use of chemical weapons, by either side, may have been accidental.

It is all reminiscent of the "weapons of mass destruction" talk in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Syria crisis probably would undoubtedly not have become so bloody and dangerous if the U.S. had not over the past year helped the reactionary Saudi Arabian and Qatari governments funnel money to Syrian rebels. The emergence of al-Qaeda-type groups in Syria happened during this period. Now, the fact that the president is exercising caution at this point is, for many, a positive change from the Bush-Cheney approach.

Photo: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov address reporters after their meeting on Syria at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Guesthouse in Moscow, May 7, 2013. State Department photo

Professor Falk stirs a firestorm

Sam Webb — Wed, 08 May 2013 15:04:00 -0400

It doesn't take much to agitate the defenders of the official orthodoxy. A case in point is the smear campaign aimed at a recent commentary by Richard Falk reflecting on the horrific terrorist attack in Boston.

Falk is a distinguished emeritus professor of international law at Princeton University and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.

He began his article noting that the response by government officials and the public to the Boston tragedy has been by and large constructive:

"The dominant reactions to the horrific bombings on April 15th, the day of the running of the Boston Marathon, as well as the celebration of Patriots Day, have been so far: compassion for the victims, a maximal resolve to track down the perpetrators, a pundit's notebook that generally agrees that Americans have been protected against terrorist violence since 9/11 and that the best way to prevail against such sinister adversaries is to restore normalcy as quickly as possible. In this spirit, it is best to avoid dwelling on the gory details by darkly glamorizing the scene of mayhem with flowers and homage. It is better to move forward with calm resolve and a re-commitment to the revolutionary ideals that midwifed the birth of the American nation."

Not much to quarrel with here - certainly not grounds for the firestorm that greeted Falk's reflections.

Then the distinguished professor went on to say:

"Although there are many distressing continuities that emerge if the Obama presidency is appraised by comparison with the counter-terrorist agenda of his predecessors, there are also some key differences of situation and approach. ... [T]emporarily at least, the Beltway think tanks and the government are doing their best to manage global crises without embarking on further wars in a spirit of geopolitical intoxication ... At least it seems that for the present irresponsible and unlawful warfare are no longer the centerpiece of America's foreign policy, as had become the case in the first decade of the 21st century..."

Now if Falk had ended his commentary here, the article would have probably gone unnoticed, except for a few rumblings from the militarist wing in elite circles that is still committed to using military power to maintain U.S. global domination now and for the foreseeable future.

But Falk cast caution to the wind and went on.

"The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world," he wrote. "In some respects, the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks, and these may yet happen, especially if there is no disposition to rethink US relations to others in the world, starting with the Middle East.

"Some of us naively hoped that Obama's Cairo speech of 2009 was to be the beginning of such a process of renewal ... But as the months passed, what became evident, especially given the strong pushback by Israel and its belligerent leader, Bibi Netanyahu, were a series of disappointing reactions by Obama ..."

Ouch! If Falk's earlier remarks barely caused a ripple of criticism, these remarks set of a torrent of diatribe against Falk from varied quarters: the Heritage Foundation, Breitbart.com, Haaretz, Jewish Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, FOX News, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird, the British Mission to the UN, the UN Secretary-General of the UN to name a few.

Falk was called "grotesque," "anti-American," "anti-Semitic" and "a self-hating Jew." Nearly all claimed that he was blaming U.S. foreign policy for the Boston attack.

But Falk wasn't ready to leave his critique here. He continued with this observation, which only further enlarged and enraged his growing circle of establishment critics:

"[S]elf-scrutiny and mid-course reflections on America's global role is long overdue. Such a process is crucial both for the sake of the country's own future security and also in consideration of the wellbeing of others."

And he continued, "Such adjustments will eventually come about either as a result of a voluntary process of self-reflection or through the force of unpleasant events ... We should be asking ourselves at this moment, 'How many canaries will have to die before we awaken from our geopolitical fantasy of global domination?'"

Now I might quarrel with some of the specific phrases that Falk employed, but the general thrust of his article is on point, in my opinion, despite the demonization of him coming from official circles. His insistence that blowback from our massive global footprint is inevitable, that fundamental policy changes are imperative in the Middle East (and elsewhere), and that we need to engage in "self-scrutiny and step back from our "geopolitical (I would add geoeconomic) fantasy of global domination," is timely advice, especially as pressures mount on the Obama administration to sink us in the civil/sectarian war in Syria.

Of course, effecting such a U-turn in U.S. foreign policy is easier said than done. It runs up against powerful forces in Washington and in corporate suites. These forces are both captives and agents of an economic and social system whose logic is to relentlessly expand and dominate a fragile planet and its finite resources, regardless of the human and ecological toll.

But for our sake and the sake of future generations, today's progressive movement here and abroad has to embrace the challenge of pressing for such a change. There is no alternative!

In the meantime, why not send a note to Professor Falk thanking him for his courage?

Photo: Richard Falk, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian occupied territories since 1967, briefs journalists on his work. UN Photo/JC McIlwaine

Britain to pay out to Mau Mau victims

Morning Star — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:43:00 -0400

(Morning Star) Britain is negotiating compensation for thousands of Kenyans who were [tortured and] severely mistreated by their colonial rulers during the 1950s Mau Mau uprising.

According to a letter sent to lawyers, the Foreign Office is adjourning an appeal against last October's High Court ruling which gave victims the green light to sue the government.

Instead, Britain is offering to negotiate a settlement.

"The parties are currently exploring the possibility of settling the claims," the Leigh Day law firm told Britain's Guardian newspaper.

The High Court heard allegations that Paulo Muoka Nzili, Wambugu Wa Nyingi and Jane Muthoni Mara were subjected to torture and sexual mutilation.

Photo: Kenyans are rounded up by the British in March 1953 during the Mau Mau uprising. (AP)

Neonazi murder trial opens to protests

Morning Star — Tue, 07 May 2013 12:27:00 -0400

(Morning Star) The highest-profile neonazi murder trial in Germany in decades opened today, with the five accused appearing in public for the first time since their arrest more than a year ago.

Police erected security barriers in anticipation of possible protests by far-right extremist groups at the start of a trial scheduled to last for more than a year.

The main defendant is Beate Zschaepe, who is accused of complicity in the murder of eight Turks, a Greek and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007. If convicted she faces life imprisonment.

Ms Zschaepe is also accused of involvement in at least two bombings and 15 bank robberies carried out by her accomplices Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boenhardt, who died in an apparent murder-suicide in November 2011.

Four male defendants are facing accusations of assisting the self-styled National Socialist Underground in a series of murders.

Photo: Ismail Yozgat , right, and Ayse Yozgat , left, attend a memorial event on the anniversary of the murder of their son Halit, who was killed by the neonazi NSU terror group, in Kassel, Germany. (AP)

Oaxacan teachers challenge the test

David Bacon — Mon, 06 May 2013 15:56:00 -0400

Recently an American Federation of Teachers resolution declared that U.S. public schools are held hostage to a "testing fixation rooted in the No Child Left Behind Act," and condemned its "extreme misuse as a result of ideologically and politically driven education policy." AFT President Randi Weingarten proposed instead "public education should be obsessed with high-quality teaching and learning, not high-stakes testing." In Seattle teachers at Garfield High have refused to give them.

Many Mexican teachers would find these sentiments familiar. The testing regime in Mexico is as entrenched as it is in the United States, and its political use is very similar - undermining the rights of teachers, and attacking unions that oppose it. In Michoacán, in central Mexico, sixteen teachers went to jail because they also refused to administer standardized tests. But the teachers' union in the southern state of Oaxaca, Section 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE), has not only refused to implement standardized tests - it has proposed its own reform of the education system, one designed by teachers themselves.

Program for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca (PTEO)

Tranquilino Lavarriega Cruz, coordinator of the union's Center for the Study of Educational Development, has taught for 11 years in primary schools in poor communities. Today he works full time coordinating the Program for the Transformation of Education in Oaxaca (PTEO). "The PTEO is a product of the vision of all the teachers in Oaxaca," he explains. "It covers the infrastructure of schools, conditions of the students, evaluation, teachers' training, and compensation. The program is more than a written document. It seeks to transform people's lives."

Nationalist governments after the Revolution of 1910-20 started Mexico's public education system. Today children start preschool at three, and move to a six-year primary school at 6. At twelve, they start secondary school, which ends when they're fifteen. These twelve years are mandatory. The Department of Public Education administers the national school system, while each state also has its own department. All Mexican teachers belong to the SNTE, the largest union in Latin America, and each state has its own section.

The national union's leaders were loyal supporters of Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) for over 70 years, but teachers' movements in many states fought to change what many viewed as a repressive bureaucracy. Today "this internal movement fights for the democratization of the union and for educational reform," according to Manuel Perez Rocha, former president of the Autonomous University of Mexico City and one of the country's most respected educators.

Over the last two decades, however, corporate influence has grown over Mexico's educational system. "They started creating mechanisms for controlling the ideology of both teachers and students," Lavarriega says, "trying to certify education in the same way they'd certify a product - to sell it."

Parallels with the U.S.

Perez Rocha sees parallels with the U.S. "The Mexican right always copies the United State's right," he laughs. "The politics of merit pay and the correlation with standardized exam results is identical between the two countries. The right wants to convert education into a commodity and students into merchandise-'Let's fill their heads with information and put them to work.'" Nevertheless, he notes, there are important differences, because the national union in Mexico is an entrenched part of the power structure.

In 2008 the recently removed leader of the teachers union, Esther Elba Gordillo Morales, signed an agreement with then Mexican President Felipe Calderon called the Alliance for Quality Education (ACE). Just weeks after taking office, Mexico's new president, Enrique Peña Nieto, ordered her arrest on corruption charges, shortly after the Mexican Congress gave its final approval to an education reform program based on ACE that is hated by most of the country's teachers. Gordillo may prove to be guilty of the embezzlement charges leveled against her. But what placed her in the cross hairs of Mexico's corporate elite was more likely her inability to keep teachers under control as protests against testing and U.S.-style education reform spread across the country.

Union's alternative reform plan

The ACE is based on a national standardized test for students called ENLACE. Pedro Javier Torres Hernandez, a biology teacher since 1989, has been working for twelve years on the union's alternative reform plan, most recently on its proposal regarding evaluations. He criticizes the ACE and the ENLACE test because "they don't take context into account. A school in the city isn't the same as one in a remote community. Sixteen languages are spoken in Oaxaca, and in Mexico there are great differences between communities. Some schools function very well because they have resources while others don't. That shouldn't justify bad conditions, but to think that teachers are the only ones responsible is wrong."

The impact of the testing regime on curriculum is similar to that in many U.S. schools. Humanities, art and philosophy have all but disappeared from the curriculum, Perez Rocha charges. History and literature are drastically reduced and placed in other programs.

"Under the ACE," Torres says, "if students at a school don't achieve good test results, the Secretary of Public Education declares their teachers incompetent, and they're removed. They have to go to a private school and pay to take courses, and later take tests. If they don't score well, they're fired." The ACE also incorporates a previous reward system, called Teaching Careers, where teachers accumulate points based on their own test results, and can qualify for salary increases. "However those who have been given awards are not necessarily the best teachers, and it divides teachers against each other," he believes.

So teachers in Oaxaca refused to implement the ENLACE test. There is resistance in other states as well. Sixteen teachers were arrested in Michoacán for refusing. "But Oaxaca is the stone in the shoe," Lavarriega says.

Section 22's alternative to the ACE proposes programs for infrastructure, student needs and financial incentives, and systems for evaluating and training teachers. For Lavarriega, "Education must be diverse because Oaxaca is an extremely diverse state. Schools in the heart of the city should be equal to those in marginalized communities. Communities should be able to generate their own educational process, and teachers should be part of it."

To critics who claim this sounds like deemphasizing education standards, he responds, "We're not saying that all knowledge is contextual. A five is a five, no matter what part of the world you're living in. There are universal elements of the curriculum that we shouldn't modify. But many of us look at the textbook almost like God, not just in Oaxaca but everywhere in the world. We believe we can't function without one. Isn't reality around us also a great opportunity to develop content?"

In indigenous communities Torres says "you hear parents saying they want more instruction in their own language, as well as better instruction in the sciences. What the PTEO tries to do is to harmonize things. The fundamental linchpin of this plan is forming groups or collectives. You could, for instance, set up a collective in a school, or one for an entire community in which there are various schools. These collectives bring together teachers, students, and their families, and they work on educational projects."

The PTEO's main difference with the ACE is its approach to evaluation. Instead of a standardized test, "evaluation should be a process," Lavarriega asserts, "a means, not an end. ENLACE simply gives the test, and that's it. Evaluation should be a process of dialogue, should be global and holistic, and should evaluate everything. It should be multidisciplinary, where teachers to work together to evaluate a student."

In place of the test, the PTEO proposes that teachers and students keep diaries, and maintain portfolios of work. "While we don't discard totally conventional tests, we should also have interviews and surveys," Torres says. "Teachers and families should sit down together and analyze what they find in the diaries and portfolios. Teachers of biology, for instance, can ask each other, how did you explain a certain idea? How well did it work?"

Proponents of standardized exams allege that teachers and schools can't be relied on to impartially evaluate themselves. "We don't reject external evaluation," Torres continues, "so that someone outside can understand what we're doing. But we need to combine external and internal evaluations to make decisions and obtain information, not just to compare schools or students. What's important isn't just the achievement of the student but the process of learning."

Hotly debated question

One of the most hotly debated questions in Mexico involves how teachers themselves are trained, and in particular the role of the "normales"-the teacher training schools. These schools have been hotbeds of activism, where students have challenged the government and educational authorities. Just a year ago police killed three students from the Ayotzinga Normal School in Guerrero, after a student march left the campus and blocked a public highway.

The normal schools have also been a way for the children of poor farming families to get better jobs as teachers. Under neoliberal economic reforms this role has eroded, however and Oaxaca is the only state left where students are still guaranteed jobs when they graduate.

Leftwing politics and class demographics make them a target for conservative reformers. In June 2011 SNTE President Gordillo joined Claudio X. Gonzalez, a wealthy rightwing businessman who heads Mexicanos Primero, the country's corporate education reform lobby, to condemn them. Gonzalez demanded that the schools be replaced with private ones, calling the normales "mediocre, and a mess of politics and complainers." Gordillo said they were graduating "monsters" instead of "ducklings."

The PTEO envisions "a training program that sees a teacher as an agent of social change," Lavarriega counters, "someone who has roots in a community, is interested in all the problems of the children, is familiar with the culture of the people, who can promote education projects with parents. In other words, a teacher the ruling class doesn't want."

In the PTEO vision, teacher training should develop critical thinking and creativity, rather than dependence on rigid curriculum and a textbook. "But it won't happen just because we give a workshop or some five-day course," he cautions. "We ourselves are too much the product of the training we want to change. Nevertheless, if we start a gradual process, I think that in several years we can create new teachers."

Those new teachers will join a workforce with a reputation for stopping work every spring to fight with the government over salaries. Ninety percent earn between 3000 and 3500 pesos ($240-280) every two weeks. Many interns make as little as 1500 pesos, on six-month contracts with no Social Security benefits. "In a marginalized community," Lavarriega says, "teachers can spend 10 to 15% of their salaries on supplies for the students-crayons, markers, binders."

However the PTEO would actually end the individual bonuses given under the Teaching Career system. In its place it proposes financial rewards for schools and collectives that develop effective educational projects. This would encourage collectivity, the union believes, and ties with the community.

Schools without water, sewer connection

More than 26,000 of Mexico's 223,144 basic education campuses have no water and more than 100,000 no connection to sewers. Four-fifths of the furniture doesn't comply with safety standards. The PTEO proposes that teacher collectives, and groups of parents and community authorities, design buildings appropriate to the local environment, using resources that come from the federal government. But the PTEO and the state of Oaxaca don't control those resources. "In Oaxaca alone there's a documented budgetary need for 16 billion pesos, and each year they only appropriate 180 million," Lavarriega charges.

The existence of a state program like the PTEO that differs from the federal ACE is a product of Oaxaca's intense political turmoil. Teachers there were bitter enemies of the PRI governors who ruled the state for 70 years, and a teachers' strike became a virtual insurrection in 2006. But in 2010 Section 22 joined with other independent political forces and defeated the PRI, electing Gabino Cue governor. That opened the door to the union's reform proposals.

"Because the money comes from the federal Department of Public Education, we need their agreement to implement the PTEO," Lavarriega explains. "The state helped form a joint committee of the Institute of Public Education (Oaxaca's state education department) and Section 22. We agreed on our proposal, and Governor Cue and [then] union president Chepi signed it. The next step is to present it to the federal Department of Public Education and the national union. There has been a change with this new government in Oaxaca. There's greater flexibility, and more willingness to work together. We still lack a lot, but the door is opening."

Section 22 set up the first work groups to design alternatives to the federal reforms in 2008. It organized assemblies and distributed a booklet at the start of every school year describing the developing proposals. When it established the first school collectives, it included the families of students. Finally last May and June the first parts of the PTEO were implemented in 280 pilot schools. Each was responsible for setting up a collective, analyzing the needs of students and the community, and developing an educational project.

Torres' school wasn't chosen as a pilot, but he says the PTEO has affected it nonetheless. "My school has a lot of very marginalized families," he explains. "They want their school to get a lot of awards, to be very beautiful, and their students to get straight As. But a better school is also one that can help those who need it most - single mothers, families with lots of economic problems. Our parents are beginning to ask, what is the function of a school? It's more than shining floors, with all the teachers wearing ties. Our school should be changing reality. That's what helping students really means."

Photo: David Bacon

Cyclists to ride for the Cuban 5 in Italy

Ismael Parra — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:53:00 -0400

On May 5, there will be a 40-mile bike ride through various towns around the Lake Como area in northern Italy as part of the worldwide movement calling for the release of "The Cuban Five." The Ride For The Five in Italy is only one of many activities planned in many countries on the 5^th of each month by those that understand the injustice done to these five Cuban patriots. Of particular interest to us in the U.S. is that there will also be two young American riders participating in the Lake Como bike ride.

GARIBALDINA BICYCLE RIDE 2013 for the Five Cuban patriots

The local Italy/Cuba Friendship Circle, part of the national organization in Italy, will co-sponsor the bike ride. There are more than 250 bike riders expected and all will receive "Free the 5" t-shirts.

The men know as the Cuban 5 were legally in the U.S. monitoring ultra-right Cuban exiles here who, with the support of successive U.S. administrations, committed acts of terrorism against Cuba and its citizens that Cuba says have resulted in 3,400 deaths in that country.

In the late 1990s, the Cuban government had presented evidence gathered by the five to the U.S. government. Instead of following up on the evidence U.S. officials arrested the five! They were indicted for conspiracy to commit espionage, and one of them, Gerardo Hernandez, was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder,

Since then, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino and Gerardo Hernandez have been condemned in what international observers have described as a biased trial.

They have been incarcerated in various prisons while their appeal process drags along. Authorities have denied two of the five, Rene Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, the right to receive visits from their wives, Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez, respectively.

Rene Gonzalez has now been released with the requirement that he stay in the United States for an additional three years, and that he not frequent areas where terrorists might be found. The original judge in the trial granted him permission, over the objections of the federal government, to go to Cuba temporarily to visit his critically ill brother.

Starting at the end of May and through the first week of June culminating on June 5, there will be other activities in Washington D.C. Friends in solidarity with Cuba and people of good will from the U.S. and from abroad will be part of this series of actions, including a number of parliamentarians, lawyers, trade unionists, activists and supporters of the Cuban 5 from all over the world and the United States.

Among those participating in the week in Washington D.C are: Angela Davis, legendary activist, scholar and author; Dolores Huerta, co founder of the United Farm Workers (UFW); Danny Glover, activist and actor; Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, former General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States; Saul Landau, filmmaker and author; Martin Garbus, American lawyer member of the legal team of the Cuban Five; Wayne Smith, former Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, and many more.

For more information and the agenda, click here.

Photo: Creative Commons, Flickr.

Bangladesh disaster: Who pays the real price of your clothing?

David Bacon — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:28:00 -0400

This article was reposted from The Progressive

Seven hundred workers have died in factory fires in Bangladesh since 2005, the most recent being the 112 who burned or jumped to their deaths at the Tazreen factory on November 24th. Now hundreds more bodies are being pulled from the rubble of the Rana Plaza building, in an industrial district 18 miles from Dhaka.

At Tazreen the owners didn't build fire escapes. They'd locked the doors on the upper floors "to prevent theft," trapping workers in the flames. At Rana Plaza, factory owners refused to evacuate the building after huge cracks appeared in the walls, even after safety engineers told them not to let workers inside.

Workers told IndustriALL union federation representatives they'd be docked three days pay for each day of an absence, and so went inside despite their worries. As a result, the death toll is already over 250 and more are still trapped under debris.

Perhaps the building codes at Rana Plaza were not enforced, and permits never even obtained, because Sohel Rana, the building's owner, is reportedly active in Bangladesh's ruling party, the Awami League. At Tazreen the company was cited by fire inspectors, but never forced to install safety equipment.

But Bangladesh's development policy is based on attracting garment production by keeping costs among the world's lowest. Safe buildings that don't collapse or trap workers in fires raise those costs. So do wages that might rise above Bangladesh's 21 cents per hour -- not a livable wage there or anywhere else.

The beneficiaries of those costs are the big brands whose clothes are sewn by the women in those factories. They give production contracts to the factories that make the lowest bids. Factories then compete to cut costs any way they can.

Tazreen made clothes for Walmart, among other big brands. The Rana Plaza building held several factories where 2500 women churned out garments. According to the International Labor Rights Forum, "one of the factories in the Rana complex, Ether-Tex, had listed Walmart-Canada as a buyer on their website." Labor activists found other documents in the rubble listing cutting orders from Benetton and other labels.

Workers have been trying for years to organize militant unions to raise wages and enforce safety codes. If they'd been successful, they would have had the power to make the factories safe. The morning after the Rana collapse, 20,000 poured out of neighboring factories in protest - other factory owners had ordered them to keep working as though nothing had happened.

Meanwhile, the giant companies controlling the industry insulate themselves from responsibility for the conditions they create. And their most important accomplice is the corporate social responsibility industry.

According to a report just released by the AFL-CIO, Responsibility Outsourced, just before a fire at the Ali Enterprises factory in Pakistan killed 262 workers in 2012, clothing manufacturers hired an auditing firm, Social Accountability International, to certify it was safe. SAI then subcontracted inspection to an Italian firm, RINA, which subcontracted it yet again to a local firm RI&CA. Ali Enterprises was certified that August. "Nearly 300 workers died in a fire two weeks after," the report charges.

Certifying factories that kill workers has become an $80 billion industry that "helped keep wages low and working conditions poor, [while] it provided public relations cover for producers," Responsibility Outsourced says. "Manufacturing work has left countries in which there were laws, collective bargaining and other systems in place to reduce workplace dangers," it says, while "jobs instead have gone to countries with inadequate laws, weak enforcement and precarious employment relationships."

This transfer was enabled by corporate-friendly trade agreements guaranteeing the products of these factories unfettered access to U.S. and European markets. They simultaneously put pressure on developing countries to guarantee the rights of foreign corporate investors and an environment of low wages, lax enforcement of worker protections, and attacks on unions.

In Bangladesh, after the Tazreen fire, a binding agreement was developed by IndustriALL, the ILRC and other labor NGOs, that seeks to prevent fires and increase safety by guaranteeing workers' right to organize and enforce better conditions. Some companies, including PVH and Tchibo have signed on. Walmart and Sears, however, not only refused, but would not even pay compensation to the Tazreen fire victims.

As Bangladesh workers pull the bodies of their friends from ruin of Rana Plaza, people half a world away wearing the clothes they sew should not turn their faces away. They need real knowledge about how their shirts and blouses are produced, and who produces them. Rather than the image manipulation of Social Accountability International and its competitor, the Fair Labor Association, they should demand the truth, and then use their power as consumers.

They should drive companies guilty of industrial homicide out of the world's markets.

Photo: AP

The White House's flawed Korea policies

Conn Hallinan — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:21:00 -0400

This article has been reposted from Dispatches from the Edge.

In the current crisis on the Korean Peninsula, the Obama administration is virtually repeating the 2004 Bush playbook, one that derailed a successful diplomatic agreement forged by the Clinton administration to prevent North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. While the acute tensions of the past month appear to be receding-all of the parties involved seem to be taking a step back- the problem is not going to disappear and, unless Washington and its allies re-examine their strategy, another crisis is certain to develop.

A little history.

In the spring of 1994, the Clinton administration came very close to a war with North Korea over Pyongyang's threat to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, expel international inspectors, and extract plutonium from reactor fuel rods. Washington moved to beef up its military in South Korea, and, according to Fred Kaplan in the Washington Monthly, there were plans to bomb the Yongbyon reactor.

Kaplan is Slate Magazine's War Stories columnist and author of "The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War."

"Yet at the same time," writes Kaplan, "Clinton set up a diplomatic back-channel to end the crisis peacefully." Former President Jimmy Carter was sent to the Democratic Peoples' Republic of North Korea (DPRK) and the Agreed Framework pact was signed, allowing the parties to back off without losing face.

In return for shipping their fuel rods out of the country, the U.S., South Korea and Japan agreed to finance two light-water nuclear reactors, normalize diplomatic relations, and supply the DPRK with fuel. The U.S. pledged not to invade the North. "Initially, North Korea kept to its side of the bargain," say Kaplan, "The same cannot be said for our side."

The reactors were never funded and diplomatic relations went into a deep freeze. From North Korea's point of view, it had been stiffed, and it reacted with public bombast and a secret deal with Pakistan to exchange missile technology for centrifuges to make nuclear fuel.

However, the North was still willing to deal, and DPRK leader Kim Jong-il told the Clinton administration that, in exchange for a non-aggression pact, North Korea would agree to shelve its long-range missile program and stop exporting missile technology. North Korea was still adhering to the 1994 agreement not to process its nuclear fuel rods. But time ran out and the incoming Bush administration torpedoed the talks, instead declaring North Korea, along with Iran and Iraq, a member of an "axis of evil."

Nine days after the U.S. Senate passed the Iraq war resolution on Oct. 11, 2002, the White House disavowed the 1994 Agreed Framework, halted fuel supplies, and sharpened the economic embargo the U.S. had imposed on the North since the 1950-53 Korean War. It was hardly a surprise when Pyongyang's reaction was to toss out the arms inspectors, fire up the Yongbyon reactor, and take the fuel rods out of storage.

Kaplan points out, however, that even when Pyongyang withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in early 2003, the North Koreans "also said they would reverse their actions and retract their declarations if the United States resumed its obligations under the Agreed Framework and signed a non-aggression pledge."

But Bush, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and Vice-President Dick Cheney, banking that increased sanctions would eventually bring down the Kim regime, were not interested in negotiations.

Ignoring North Korea, however, did not sit well with Japan and South Korea. So the White House sent U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly to Pyongyang, where the North Koreans told him they were willing to give up nuclear weapons development in return for a non-aggression pact. Bush, however, dismissed the proposal as "blackmail" and refused to negotiate with the North Koreans unless they first agreed to give up the bomb, a posture disturbingly similar to the one currently being taken by the Obama administration.

But "the bomb" was the only chip the North Koreans had, and giving it up defied logic. Hadn't NATO and the U.S. used the threat of nuclear weapons to checkmate a supposed Soviet invasion of Europe during the Cold War? Wasn't that the rationale behind the Israeli bomb vis-à-vis the Arabs? Pakistan's ace in the hole to keep the vastly superior Indian army at bay? Why would Pyongyang make such an agreement with a country that made no secret of its intention to destabilize the North Korean regime?

North Korea is not a nice place to live and work, but its reputation as a nuclear-armed loony bin is hardly accurate. Every attempt by the North Koreans to sign a non-aggression pact has been either rebuffed or come at a price-specifically giving up nuclear weapons-Pyongyang is unwilling to pay without such a pledge. The North is well aware of the fate of the "axis of evil": Iraq was invaded and occupied, and Iran is suffocating under the weight of economic sanctions and facing a possible Israeli or U.S. attack. From North Korea's point of view, the only thing that Iraq and Iran have in common is that neither of them developed nuclear weapons.

Indeed, when the U.S. and NATO overthrew the Gadaffi regime in Libya, a North Korean Foreign Ministry official told the Korean Central News Agency that the war had taught "the international community a grave lesson: the truth that one should have the power to defend peace." Libya had voluntarily given up nuclear weapons research, and the North Koreans were essentially saying, "We told you so."

There are a number of dangers the current crisis poses. The most unlikely among them is a North Korean attack on the U.S. or South Korea, although an "incident" like the 2010 shelling of Yeonpyeong Island and the sinking of South Korean warship, the Cheonan, is not out of the question. More likely is a missile test.

All of the parties-including China and Russia- know that North Korea is not a serious danger to the U.S. or its allies, Japan and South Korea. Which is why China is so unhappy with the U.S.'s response to Pyongyang's bombast: deploying yet more anti-missile systems in the U.S. and Guam, systems that appear suspiciously like yet another dimension of Washington's "Asia pivot" to beef up America's military footprint in the region. Russia and China believe those ABM systems are aimed at them, not North Korea, which explains an April 15 accusation by the Chinese Defense Ministry that "hostile western forces" were using tensions to "contain and control our country's development."

While the western media interpreted a recent statement by Chinese President Xi Jinping as demonstrating China's growing impatience with North Korea, according to Zackary Keck, assistant editor of the Asian-pacific focused publication The Diplomat, the speech was more likely aimed at the U.S. than at Pyongyang. Keck argues that China is far more worried about growing U.S. military might in the region than rhetorical blasts from North Korea.

The Russians have also complained about "unilateral actions...being taken around North Korea." Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, "We believe it is necessary for all not to build up military muscle and not to use the current situation as an excuse to solve certain geopolitical tasks in the region through military means."

Tension between nuclear powers is always disconcerting, but the most immediate threat is the possibility of some kind of attack on North Korea by the U.S. or South Korea. Conservative South Korean President Park Geun-hye told her military to respond to any attack from the North without "political considerations," and the U.S. has reaffirmed that it will come to Seoul's defense in the event of war. It is not a war the North would survive, and therein lays the danger.

According to Keir Lieber of Georgetown University and Daryl Press, coordinator of Dartmouth's War and Peace Studies, current U.S. military tactics could trigger a nuclear war. "The core of U.S. conventional strategy, refined during recent wars, is to incapacitate the enemy by disabling its central nervous system...leadership bunkers, military command sites, and means of communication." While such tactics were effective in Yugoslavia and Iraq, they could prove counterproductive "if directed at a nuclear-armed opponent." Faced with an overwhelming military assault there would be a strong incentive for North Korea to try and halt the attacks, "a job for which nuclear weapons are well suited."

Council of Foreign Relation's Korea expert Scott Snyder says, "The primary danger is really related to the potential for miscalculation between the two sides, and in this kind of atmosphere of tensions, that miscalculation could have deadly consequences."

The demand by the Obama administration that North Korea must denuclearize before serious talks can begin is a non-starter, particularly when the Washington and its allies refuse to first agree to a non-aggression pledge. And the White House will have to jettison its "strategic patience" policy, a fancy term for regime change. Both strategies have been utter failures.

There are level heads at work.

South Korea recently praised China for helping to manage the crisis, and Seoul has dialed back some of its own bombast. The U.S. canceled a military maneuver, and a "senior administration" official warned about "misperception" and "miscalculation," remarks that seemed aimed more at South Korea than at the North. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry also says Washington is open to talks with China and North Korea.

But such talks are predicated, according to the U.S. State Department, on Pyongyang proving "its seriousness by taking meaningful steps to abide by its international obligations." In short, dismantling its nuclear program and missile research. Neither of those will happen as long as the North feels militarily threatened and economically besieged.

In a way, the Korean crisis is a case of the nuclear powers being hoist on their own petard. The 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was not aimed at just stopping the spread of nuclear weapons, but, according to Article VI, at eliminating those weapons and instituting general disarmament. But today's world is essentially a nuclear apartheid, with the nuclear powers threatening any countries that try to join the club-unless those countries happen to be allies. North Korea should get rid of its nuclear weapons, but then so should China, Russia, the U.S., Britain, France, Israel, Pakistan, and India.

As far as ending the current crisis, one could do worse than follow up on what basketball great Dennis Rodman said North Korean leader Kim Jong-un told him: "Obama should call me."

Good place to start.

Photo: stephan/Flickr (CC)

Rightist wins Paraguay presidency, Left advances in Congress

Emile Schepers — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:06:00 -0400

On June 21, Paraguayan voters elected Horacio Cartes Jara, candidate of the right wing Colorado Party as president. However, the left made some modest but significant advances in legislative seats, especially in the Senate. All neighboring states immediately recognized the results of the election.

Cartes is a wealthy tobacco farmer and businessman who had not even voted until 2008, and at one time or another has been under investigation for involvement with drug traffic and financial offenses. His Colorado Party was for decades the political base for General Alfredo Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay from 1954 to 1989 as a repressive dictator.

Cartes decided to run as a way of countering the left-wing political trend that has been sweeping many Latin American countries in recent years, and has been noted for his lurid homophobic statements. In Sunday's election, he got 1,095,469 or 45.8 percent of the vote. Far behind him was Efrain Alegre of the "Paraguay Alegre" (Happy Paraguay) Front, which includes the Liberal Party of the incumbent President Federico Franco with 36.94 percent of the vote, Mario Ferreiro of the left-center Avanza Pais (Forward Country) alliance with 5.88 percent, and Anibal Carillo of the left-wing Guasú Front, with 3.32 percent. The Guasú Front is a group of 11 parties including the Communist Party of Paraguay, and was supported by former President Fernando Lugo. Six other parties also competed. Guasú representatives complained that they were not allowed full access to media and that their poll watchers were impeded in their work.

The death of another right-wing candidate, former General Lino Oviedo, in a helicopter crash in January probably helped Cartes to win; Oviedo's voters evidently swung over to the Colorado candidate.

In the 45 seat Senate, Cartes' Colorados failed to achieve a majority, though they did get 19 seats. The Liberals (Authentic Radical Liberal Party) which in Paraguay is a conservative party, got the next highest number of seats with 12. The leftist Guasú front made an important advance, winning 5 seats, or 9.6 percent of the Senate vote. One of the Guasú seats will be held by former President Lugo. Ferrerio's Forward Country will have 2 to 3 seats. The left-center Democratic Progressive Party will have 3 seats.

In the 100 member Chamber of Deputies, or lower house, seats have not yet been distributed among the parties pending a finalization of the vote counting. According to preliminary results, the Colorados have won 37.3 percent, the Liberals 13.0 percent, National Union of Ethical Citizens 8.8 percent, Beloved Fatherland Party 8.8 percent, Forward Country 8.1 percent and the Guasú Front only 2.8 percent.

The lead up to this election began in June of last year when the Paraguayan Congress impeached the leftist President Fernando Lugo and removed him from office.

The reason given was that earlier that month, there had been a clash between landless laborers and police at an estate at Curuguaty in the East of the country, in which 17 laborers and police lost their lives. The laborers had been occupying an estate owned by Blas Riquelme, an important Colorado Party politician, which they claimed (it would appear, correctly) had been acquired illegally. Many people think the Curuguaty incident was a provocation or setup designed to discredit the Lugo government.

Lugo was elected in 2008 on a platform which included defense of the rights of poor farmworkers. However, he never had a supportive Congress and had to rule through shaky alliances with the Liberal Party and others well to the right of him. Wikileaks cables show that important figures such as the late general and arch-conspirator Lino Oviedo had been planning for a while to find a pretext to remove Lugo.

The Liberals immediately ditched Lugo and set the impeachment process in motion. It went forward with lightning speed; Lugo was given only 24 hours to prepare his defense against the charges and was removed from office by the Senate with only 4 votes dissenting. Many Paraguayans as well as the governments of neighboring countries felt that this was a coup d'etat with a thin veneer of constitutional legality, and Paraguay was suspended from the MERCOSUR trade group pending a clean new election. Ironically the suspension Paraguay made it possible for MERCOSUR to approve the application for membership of leftist Venezuela, the outcome that the Paraguayan right least wanted.

Paraguayans are now wondering what kind of president Horacio Cartes will turn out to be. His platform called for increasing direct foreign investment by the implementation of neo-liberal methods, including especially reducing employment in the public sector. His election will come as pleasant news to those foreign based monopolies that have already been grabbing up properties in Paraguay, specifically the Monsanto agri-business giant which is eager to turn even more Paraguayan farmland over to vast soybean production, and the Canadian mining giant Rio Tinto-Alcan, which is also eagerly expanding its Paraguay operations against considerable popular opposition.

The neo-liberal program of President elect Cartes (who will be sworn in in August) and the projected plans of Monsanto and Rio Tinto-Alcan translate into more displacement of poor farmers and more environmental damage. This will create more uproar in the Paraguayan countryside, as urban citizens find that Cartes' promises of more jobs brought by foreign investment turns out to be the pipe dream that other poor countries have already experienced. But the leftist Guasú Front promise that with their increased representation in the Senate they are ready to fight for the interests of the poor.

Paraguayan farmers protest the use of transgenic soy and herbicides during a march organized by the National Farmers Federation's (FNC) in Asuncion, Paraguay, March 21. The FNC demands the government prohibit transgenic soy and herbicides. President Federico Franco approved the use of transgenic soy and herbicides in Oct. 2012 by presidential decree. Jorge Saenz/AP

U.S. must recognize Venezuela's elections

Dan Kovalik — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:06:00 -0400

The United States is refusing to recognize the results of the Venezuelan elections, insisting that Venezuela conduct a re-count of 100 percent of the votes in light of the narrow margin of victory for Nicolas Maduro. The facts surrounding the voting process and election outcome in Venezuela, the U.S.'s own experiences with close presidential elections, and the U.S.'s recent recognition of coup governments in Latin America demonstrate that the U.S.'s position in regard to Venezuela has nothing to do with the U.S.'s alleged concerns for democracy, but rather, its complete disdain for it.

I just returned from Venezuela where I was one of over 170 international election observers from around the world, including India, Guyana, Suriname, Colombia, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Scotland, England, the United States, Guatemala, Argentina, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Brazil, Chile, Greece, France, Panama and Mexico. These observers included two former presidents (of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic), judges, lawyers and numerous high-ranking officials of national electoral councils. What we found was an election system, which was transparent, inherently reliable, well run and thoroughly audited.

Indeed, as to the auditing, what has been barely mentioned by the mainstream press is the fact that around 54 percent of all votes are, and indeed have already been, audited to ensure that the electronic votes match up with the paper receipts which serve as back-up for these electronic votes. And, this auditing is done in the presence of witnesses from both the governing and opposition parties right in the local polling places themselves. I witnessed just such an audit at the end of election day on Sunday. And, as is the usual case, the paper results matched up perfectly with the electronic ones. As the former Guatemalan President, Alvaro Colom, who served as an observer, opined, the vote in Venezuela is "secure" and easily verifiable.

In short, the observers' experience this past week aligns with former U.S. president Jimmy Carter's observation last year that Venezuela's electoral system is indeed the "the best in the world."

And so, what were the results of the election? With an impressive 79 percent of registered voters going to the polls, Nicolas Maduro won by over 260,000 votes, with a 1.6 percentage point margin over Henrique Capriles (50.7 to 49.1 percent). While this was certainly a close race, 260,000 votes is a comfortable victory, certainly by U.S. election standards. Thus, recall that John F. Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960 with 49.7 percent of the vote to Nixon's 49.6 percent. In addition, George W. Bush became president in 2000, though losing the popular vote to Al Gore, with 47.87 percent of the vote to Gore's 48.38 percent, and with the entire race coming down to several hundred votes in Florida, with the Supreme Court actually blocking a hand recount in Florida. In none of these cases, did any nation in the world insist upon a recount or hesitate in recognizing the man declared to be the winner. Indeed, had a country like Venezuela done so, we would have found such a position absurd. The U.S.'s current position vis à vis Venezuela is no less absurd.

The U.S.'s position is all the more ridiculous given its quick recognition of the coup government in Paraguay after the former bishop-turned president, Fernando Lugo, was ousted in 2012, and its recognition of the 2009 elections in Honduras despite the fact that the U.S.'s stated precondition for recognizing this election -- the return of President Manuel Zelaya to power after his forcible ouster by the military -- never occurred. Of course, this even pales in comparison to the U.S.'s active involvement in coups against democratically-elected leaders in Latin America (e.g., against President Árbenz in Guatemala in 1954, against President Allende in Chile in 1973, and against President Aristide in Haiti in 2004).

And, the U.S.'s failure to recognize the Venezuelan elections is having devastating consequences in Venezuela, for it is emboldening the Venezuelan opposition to carry out violence in order to destabilize that country. Unlike Al Gore in 2000 who stepped aside for George W. Bush in the interest of his country and the U.S. Constitution, the Venezuelan opposition, being led by Henrique Capriles, clearly wants to foster chaos and crisis in Venezuela in order to topple the Maduro government by force (just as the same forces represented by Capriles forcibly kidnapped and briefly overthrew President Chavez, with U.S. support, in 2002). Thus, reasonably believing itself to have the backing of the U.S. and its military, the opposition is causing mayhem in Venezuela, including burning down clinics, destroying property, attacking Cuban doctors and destroying ruling party buildings. In all, seven Venezuelans are dead and dozens injured in this opposition-led violence.

There is no doubt that the U.S. could halt this violence right now by recognizing the results of the Venezuelan elections, just as the nations of the world recognized, without question, the results of the elections which put John F. Kennedy in power in 1960 and George W. Bush in power in 2000. The reason the U.S. is not doing so is obvious: It does not like the Venezuelans' chosen form of government, and welcomes that government's demise, even through violence. The U.S., therefore, is not supporting democracy and stability in Venezuela; it is intentionally undermining it.

Originally published in the Huffington Post.

Photo: Supporters of Nicolás Maduro rally in Caracas, April 11, before the presidential elections (LuisCarlos Diaz/CC).

Japanese workers fight Sony "downsizing room"

Akahata — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:04:00 -0400

(Japan Press Weekly) - As a result of a union's struggle, a Sony's subsidiary company in Tagajo City, Miyagi Prefecture, gave new job assignments to all 14 workers who had been transferred to a so-called "downsizing room," Akahata reported on April 14.

The Sony workers' union Sendai branch stressed that their efforts finally resulted in action. However, the union branch points out that Sendai Technology Center (Sendai TEC) has not given up its restructuring plan.

A so-called "downsizing room" is used by large corporations as a humiliating pressure tactic to force their employees to quit their jobs. Targeted workers who keep refusing to accept early retirement offers at individual meetings with management are transferred to a "downsizing room" where they sit without work to do.

The union stated that some of the new job assignments offered to the workers are hardly acceptable. For example, some were ordered to move to a distant office, and a worker who had had a heart attack was told to work the night shift.

Large companies often give workers such harsh job transfer offers as a way to press them to choose either the transfer or retirement. This is a well-known tactic of large companies to bully targeted employees into leaving their workplaces.

The union branch expressed its determination to fight until the Sony subsidiary abolishes the room and provides its workers with decent working conditions.

It is estimated that more than 250 workers of the Sony Group are confined in "downsizing rooms" at group companies in Miyagi's Tagajo City, Tokyo, and Atsugi City, Kanagawa Prefecture.

The "downsizing room" problem has provoked public attention as it tramples on workers' rights. The Japanese Communist Party has repeatedly taken up the matter in the Diet and urged the government to instruct large companies to refrain from using such a cruel tactic in carrying out their retirement schemes.

Photo: (xsix/CC)

U.S. taxes support Venezuelan right-wing opposition

Anita Waters — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 11:32:00 -0400

In media accounts of last Sunday's Venezuelan election, the loser, Henrique Capriles, is portrayed as an underdog with none of the resources of the incumbent and winner of the contest, Nicolás Maduro.

In the Guardian (4/14/2013), for example, Virginia Lopez reported Capriles' complaint that Maduro had special advantages, including support from official news channels, use of presidential aircraft for the campaign, and "resources and personnel" from state owned enterprises. But she never mentioned the substantial support that the Venezuelan opposition receives from United States taxpayers.

Our tax dollars, funneled through the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Department of Defense, and nominally "non-partisan" organizations like the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have trained, supported and equipped members of the Venezuelan opposition, including Henrique Capriles, for at least a dozen years.

Take, for example, the National Endowment for Democracy, a "nonpartisan" foundation that spends 1.5 million tax dollars on projects with virtuous and wholesome goals like: "creation of a new generation of political leaders with a deeper understanding of democratic values" and "promote dialogue among Venezuelan youth on the importance of freedom of expression." One can imagine how a deeper understanding of democratic values is conveyed with pro-U.S. messages of allegiance toward the United States, and "freedom of expression" that doesn't include expressing support for Hugo Chavez.

Just how these programs actually work on the ground can be gleaned from other reports. Almost $400,000 of the NED's budget went through the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), a nonprofit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which, in turn, invested in its "partner," (as local organizations are referred to in contemporary development-aid-speak), the Center for Dissemination of Economic Knowledge (CEDICE), a Venezuelan "free-market think tank" which claims alliances with ultra-conservative organizations like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation and sponsors events with titles like "The Antidote to XXI Century Socialism - Overthrow is Constitutional."

CEDICE's mission statement states clearly and openly its opposition to the government and programs of Hugo Chávez. In the pages of Forbes magazine, CEDICE's vice president, Alejandro Chafuen, recommends allying with his organization and doing business with its affiliated companies as something that U.S. firms can do to undermine the programs begun by Hugo Chávez. Chafuen also remarks that his organization has had ties with Henrique Capriles since 1999.

The International Republican Institute is chaired by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and purports to "advance freedom and democracy worldwide." It has been at work in Venezuela since 1994, seeking "to enhance healthy competition in Venezuelan politics" with "building assistance, technical training and organizational assistance to political parties." Since 2009, according to its website, it has begun a program at the local level across Venezuelan municipalities, "encouraging citizen participation in the decision-making process." The goals of the donor agencies, USAID and other government entities, have been so clearly anti-Chávez for so long that we can be sure that only certain forms of citizen participation are encouraged. Engagement on the municipal level is another strategy to gain audiences for their messages of discontent with Chávez and now, Maduro.

The virtuous mission statements promulgated by these organizations serve to conceal the U.S. connection with the decidedly anti-democratic outcomes that their programs cause. U.S.-affiliated agencies use extreme caution and circumspection when describing their own actions. When chaos or violence breaks out under their influence, American diplomats can disavow any connection and claim that they are completely innocent of any wrong-doing. In 2002, when a coup attempt against Hugo Chavez was launched by the "new generation of leaders" that U.S. tax dollars helped to train, the U.S. proclaimed that none of its agencies had broken any U.S. law.

Right now, the Venezuelan opposition doesn't seem to know that the first characteristic of a democratic process is rule by the people. Instead, the U.S. hand-picked presidential candidate Henrique Capriles refuses to concede that he lost the election. How deep can his understanding of democratic values be if he cannot accept defeat at the polls?

Photo: Image depicts the "out of control" right-wing opposition, in some cases violent, and a thoughtful, calm young Bolivarian Revolution supporter.

Battling crisis, Iraq’s communists remain optimistic

Susan Webb — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:10:00 -0400

Ten years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, pretty much no one is optimistic about the prospects for democracy and a decent life for the people in that cradle of civilization. No one, that is, except for Iraq's communists. Amidst a society hobbled by corrupt power struggles and parasitic oil millionaires, the tenacious Iraqi Communist Party sees the seeds of positive social change emerging at the grassroots. "This is why we are optimistic," said Communist Party spokesman Salam Ali in an April 12 phone interview. "This is not a bleak situation."

The challenges are formidable.

Iraq's politics today are dominated by a group of well-financed self-serving power blocs. This is one legacy of the U.S. occupation, which from the start adopted policies that fanned religious sectarianism, shunned democratic and left groups, and instead anointed opportunistic self-styled leaders deemed cooperative with U.S. interests. While the country is safer now than a few years ago, continued violence - including almost weekly bomb attacks - is largely linked to power struggles among these dominant groups over influence and access to Iraq's enormous oil wealth. The violence has been intensifying in the lead-up to April 20 provincial elections, the first nationwide elections since the U.S. withdrawal in December 2011. These elections are seen as a dress rehearsal for national elections in 2014.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who heads a Shiite Islamic alliance, is pursuing "divisive politics - a heightened level of sectarian agitation - to divide his opponents, whether among his own Shiite allies or others, and to stir up his base" said Ali. Other major blocs, Sunni or Shia, are doing likewise.

Although oil revenues are booming, Iraq has over 25 percent unemployment - with the real rate being closer to 50 percent. Youth unemployment is rampant. Oil production actually produces relatively few jobs. But agriculture and non-oil industries account for no more than 4 percent of the gross national product. Except for oil, major national industries are at a standstill, operating at 20 percent of capacity, at best. Electricity is still irregular at best. Agriculture, in the former global "breadbasket," has huge potential, but most of Iraq's food is imported today. Iraq has become increasingly dependent on imports from Turkey and Iran, in particular.

But oil wealth and corruption has led to the emergence of a new parasitic class of millionaires who have no interest in rebuilding Iraq on a sound basis - not even a working market economy, Ali said. Instead their main concern is retaining their status.

"Sectarian politics is being used to divert attention from immediate problems," Ali said. "But it is pushing Iraq to the brink of war. It's a very dangerous situation."

The Maliki government has responded harshly to legitimate protests over lack of democracy and economic issues, and at the same time has moved very slowly, if at all, to address the real problems. This in turn has provided an opportunity for al-Qaeda-type groups and other ultra-reactionaries including Saddam Hussein supporters to mobilize and ramp up more extreme slogans and actions - even calling for taking up arms and setting up a Syria-type "Free Iraqi Army."

Iraqi commentator Seerwan Jafar has analyzed Iraq's homicide statistics and finds that the violence is confined to just half of Iraq's 18 provinces. The other half have homicide rates lower than Western countries including the U.S. Why? "Many of unsafe Iraq's provinces are former bases for extremist Sunni Muslim groups like al-Qaeda." Violence there "comes because of the clash between them and Iraq's federal government forces," he writes.

"[T]he perpetrators of extremist and violent acts are a mixture of religious radicals, both local and foreign, die-hard elements from the former regime headed by Saddam Hussein, former army officers, unemployed youth without prospects, random criminal elements that emerged in the post-2003 chaos and which have yet to be subdued and more generally, violent elements that are supported by Iraqi political groups to utilize violence to advance their own political agendas."

For the first time since some U.S. officials floated the idea several years ago, some in Iraq talk of dividing the country along sectarian lines - Sunni, Shiite and Kurd. So far, said Ali, the idea has not gained traction. But the crisis in Syria is growing increasingly sectarian, and could have a destabilizing impact on Iraq.

Hanaa Edwar, a prominent Iraqi women's advocate who heads the nongovernmental Iraqi Amal Association, said recently that women's status has suffered from "a fabricated sectarian hatred which started in 2006 and which has been imposed and boosted from the highest levels to divide and rule through violence and fear."

For example, she said, domestic violence crimes are on the rise and women not wearing the hijab - the Islamic veil - are being discriminated against.

"The lack of dialogue between the leading political parties, and the ever growing role of religion is choking our society," she said.

Yet there is considerable push-back against efforts to repress women, Ali noted, and the government has been forced to pay lip-service to women's rights. Other protests have compelled the government to retreat on a number of regressive measures. At Basra University, students are waging an ongoing campaign against a ban on graduation celebrations. Human rights organizations are active throughout the country. Unions are resisting government efforts at repression. A new Journalists Union was formed earlier this year. And a broad Iraqi Democratic Current coalition of left and liberal groups is organizing Iraqi people to oppose sectarian politics.

The Iraqi Communist Party's membership is growing. Last month it held a lively celebration of its 79th anniversary in a public park in Baghdad, attended by representatives of Iraq's president and leading political figures from Maliki's bloc and others. The party has gained recognition for holding mass forward-looking events like this, and is seen as a party of "clean hands" amidst the surrounding corruption.

This is why Iraq's Communists remain optimistic.

Photo: Supporters of the Iraqi Communist Party march in Baghdad, July 14, 2011. The demonstrators marked July 14, 1958 coup that toppled the Iraqi monarchy and brought to power left-leaning nationalist Abdul Karim Qassem. AP

Right-wing push to destabilize Venezuela after close election

Emile Schepers — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:27:00 -0400

Violence, instigated by the right wing opposition, has broken out in Venezuela after leftist candidate Nicolas Maduro narrowly won the special election necessitated by the death of Hugo Chavez.

Revised figures show Maduro, the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), beating the right wing candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski by 50.75 percent to 48.9 percent.

Capriles demanded a recount, as did the United States, Spain, the European Union and the Organization of American States. The White House, which did not congratulate Maduro as winner (it also did not congratulate Chavez on his election victory in October, and USAID funded NGO's have been working to defeat "Chavismo", according to Wikileaks reports) said that a recount would be "prudent and necessary".

Maduro quickly agreed to this "audit" of results on principal, but electoral authorities are reluctant according to reports. Many governments worldwide, including those of most Latin American countries, even those with relatively conservative governments such as Mexico, Haiti and Colombia, have congratulated Maduro on his victory. Most election observers, including a multi-party team from Spain, gave the elections a clean bill of health.

Venezuela uses a sophisticated electronic voting system which also provides voters with paper receipts for their votes. This system has been praised by many outside observers, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

This did not prevent Capriles from calling on his supporters to "take to the streets" to protest the results. In well off neighborhoods and right wing strongholds, demonstrations developed which in some cases have turned violent.

In several areas, right wing mobs set fire to installations belonging to the PSUV and government agencies, including health facilities.

The headquarters of TELESUR, the international TV channel based in Venezuela, was besieged by a right wing mob.

Rioters tried to burn the house of Adan Chavez, governor of Barinas State, who is also the brother of the late president. Another PSUV state governor was shot at, among many incidents reported.

President Maduro angrily denounced these actions and accused their masterminds of trying to initiate a coup.

A rumor was started that Cuban doctors, thousands of whom provide health services in Venezuela in exchange for discounted supplies of Venezuelan oil for Cuba, were involved in destroying ballot materials. No evidence has surfaced about any ballot materials being burned.

During the election campaign, Capriles denounced Cuba and engaged in red-baiting the gist of which was that Maduro is a Cuban puppet. He swore that if elected, he would cut off the supply of discounted oil to Cuba. Capriles was involved in attacks on the Cuban embassy in Caracas during a 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chavez, and has connections with right wing Cuban exiles in the United States. Latest reports are that a medical center where Cuban doctors were working was targeted by right wing demonstrators demanding that the Cuban doctors be expelled from Venezuela.

According to local reports, at least four people have been killed in these disturbances. All were pro-Maduro people shot by anti-Maduro protesters.

Earlier, the Venezuelan government had warned that violent destabilization efforts were being planned, involving mercenaries from El Salvador connected with the U.S. right.

More demonstrations by both pro-Maduro and pro-Capriles groups are scheduled for today, Tuesday.

Diosdado Cabello, the PSUV President of the Venezuelan parliament, denounced the actions and said that he will call for a parliamentary investigation of Capriles' role in instigating the violence.

Photo: Residents wait in line to enter a polling station to vote in the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, early Sunday, April 14. Ariana Cubillos/AP