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FLASHPOINT IN THE FLATHEAD

US-Canada War Looms Over Energy, Water

by Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report

Washington’s new tensions with its northern neighbor and largest trading partner appear to be over perceived Canadian reticence to support US imperial adventures in the Middle East. But the vast resources of Canada itself—made more critical both by instability in the energy-rich Mideast and by shortages of such basic commodities as water brought on by climate change—may be providing a long-term source of conflict between the two giants of North America. While on the economic front all talk is currently of integration and falling trade barriers, battles are already being waged by the grassroots both sides of the border against resource plunder and mega-development schemes. These could eventually mean war between the two longtime allies if a populist government comes to power in Ottawa and tries to turn off the spigot of south-bound resources—and the Pentagon has already drawn up plans for this contingency. Rumbles are already being felt in such unlikely places as the rolling farmlands of upstate New York, the grizzly-haunted pine forests of Montana’s wild Flathead Valley, the windswept high plains of northern Alberta, and the remote passages of the Arctic Sea.

Middle East Oil Wars and the Northwest Passage

This summer, global warming for the first time opened the long-sought Northwest Passage, as area covered by sea ice in the Arctic shrank to its lowest level since satellite measurements began 30 years ago. The normally ice-bound passage was now navigable to commercial ship traffic—and will likely become more so in the years to come. A new study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research finds that the Arctic Ocean could become nearly devoid of ice during summer as early as 2040.

A navigable route between the Atlantic and Pacific as an artery for trade and resource exploitation had been sought for centuries, and was the elusive goad of the Lewis & Clark expedition. Now that it has been opened—if inadvertently—it will mean easier access to the Arctic and its resources, including oil. Ironically, it could thereby exacerbate global warming. It will likely also exacerbate the geopolitical struggle over the far north. Russian authorities have already announced they will open new ports on the Arctic Sea as major petroleum hubs for the 21st century.

This development comes just as Canada has been asserting sovereignty over Northwest Passage—in an unsubtle message to Washington.

The US Navy has for years sent its nuclear submarines under the ice through the Arctic Sea passage—a route that passes hundreds of Canadian islands, through straits as narrow as 20 kilometers. But when Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper took power in Ottawa last year, he immediately announced it must stop. The US said no dice.

Parliamentary Secretary Jason Kenney said: “Any foreign government should ask permission before entering our territorial waters.” Sean McCormack of the US State department retorted: “We believe it is an international strait. It’s a longstanding policy of the US government.”

Ottawa announced it was dispatching troops to the Arctic to assert tis sovereignty claim: up to 52 soldiers in five snowmobile patrols to cover 4,500 kilometers, building airstrips on the sea ice, installing electronic sensing equipment, and laying the groundwork for two High Arctic bases. Harper’s government also proposed to build a new deep-water port for three armed icebreakers on the Arctic Sea.

Ottawa’s rift with Washington has been little abated by the switch from a Liberal to Conservative government last year. Canada has 2,500 troops in Afghanistan under NATO command—where they have sustained more than 70 fatalities, including one in a “friendly fire” incident when Canadian positions were strafed by US jets in Kandahar last September, leaving dozens more wounded. But Ottawa has declined to join Washington’s “coalition of the willing” in Iraq. And Canada is considering withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, according to an interim report by the Canadian Senate committee on national security and defense. The report demands more money for the operation and a bigger commitment from other NATO countries within a year. If these demands are not met, Ottawa should reconsider its mission, the head of the Senate committee Colin Kenny said upon release of the report. He asked: “Are Canadians willing to commit themselves to decades of involvement in Afghanistan, which could cost hundreds of Canadian lives and billions of dollars with no guarantee of ending up with anything like the kind of society that makes sense to us?”

President Bush angered some northern neighbors this February when his speech calling for an all-out allied effort against the Taliban failed to mention Canada. Bush singled out for praise the UK, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Turkey, Greece and Iceland. While the Foreign Affairs ministry was conciliatory (“I’m certain it’s just, maybe, a little error,” said Minister Peter MacKay), opposition leaders were far less sanguine. “Maybe with Harper leading Canada, he thinks it’s become the 51st American state,” said Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe. “That might explain it.”

In 2005, Liberal PM Paul Martin declined to participate in the missile defense system the US is building for North America. “This is our airspace, we’re a sovereign nation and you don’t intrude on a sovereign nation’s airspace without seeking permission,” Martin said. Paul Cellucci, the outgoing US Ambassador to Canada, saying he was “perplexed” by the decision, made clear that the US would not respect Canadian airspace in the event of an attack: “We simply cannot understand why Canada would in effect give up its sovereignty—its seat at the table—to decide what to do about a missile that might be coming towards Canada.”

A joint US-Canadian “Americas Command” proposed by the Pentagon after 9-11 has also failed to come into fruition, with Ottawa accusing Ambassador Cellucci of undue pressure on Canada to raise its defense budget.

Pressure from below was definitely felt in Ottawa in these matters—and especially from Canada’s increasingly restive First Nations. For over six months in 2001, the Dene Suline Indians of Cold Lake, Alberta, reoccupied their traditional territory at the Primrose Lake Air Weapons Range in protest of the NATO bombing of their territory. The Dene established a camp at the main entrance of the weapons range, accusing the Canadian government of illegally holding the land in violation of an expired 20-year lease—with Dene burial sites, and hunting and fishing grounds destroyed by daily bombing practice runs, and the Dene reduced to poverty in their own land, with alarmingly high rates of alcoholism and suicide. In June 2001, the Dene Suline also blocked an Alberta Energy Corporation (AEC) access road in the area and established a camp there, re-asserting their title to their homelands under the 1997 Delgamuukw Canadian Supreme Court decision, which affirmed the inherent rights of Native peoples. AEC is exploiting oil in the area, and has access to the Weapons Range, while the Dene do not.

In July 2007, First Nations activists held protests across Canada over the Canada Day holiday weekend in a National Day of Action against the Conservative government emphasizing land claims and other disputes. In Ontario, camouflage-clad Mohawks, some reportedly armed, blocked Highway 401 between Belleville and Napanee for more than 10 hours June 29 and also halted passenger and freight train service along the Canadian National Railway’s busiest corridor. Rail service between Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa was shut for several hours.

Energy Wars

On the face of it, tensions notwithstanding, the trajectory since NAFTA has been all towards integration—in both the economic and military spheres.

This August, Harper, Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderon met in Montebello, Quebec, for a third session on the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP, or ASPAN in Spanish), an agreement increasing military and police cooperation between the three NAFTA partners. About 5,000 protesters, some dressed as clowns or guerrilla fighters, chanted “Bush go home!” near the Chateau Montebello, where the three leaders were meeting. Riot police, used tear gas, pepper spray and club to drive the protesters back at the gates.

In June, several were arrested at a protest in Halifax, Nova Scotia, against a conference to promote the “Atlantica” free trade zone proposal, with police using pepper spray and electric stun- guns. The Atlantica project, officially known as the International Northeast Economic Region (AINER), envisions new ports, transmission lines and superhighways to integrate Canada’s Maritime provinces with New England and upstate New York.

Massive new energy transfers are already planned—and are meeting local opposition both sides of the border.

The US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman Oct. 3 finalized designation of two controversial Mid-Atlantic Area National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor. Canadian power developers had been awaiting the Washington’s approval to supersede almost unanimous New York and Pennsylvania state and local objections to the corridors. The move was immediately protested by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. “This designation will allow the federal government to pre-empt New York’s legitimate oversight and process for reviewing and siting transmission projects within our state borders,” Spitzer said in a statement.

Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the Secretary of Energy has the power to designate National Corridors, under which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) can issue permits for new transmission facilities over the heads of state and local authorities.

At immediate issue is the New York Regional Interconnect (NYRI), a proposed 190-mile 1,200-megawatt line of 130-foot pylons linking Marcy to New Windsor, NY, following the Delaware Valley, to deliver Canadian power to the New York City metropolitan area. NYRI Inc., which proposes to build the lines, is a secretive group of private investors headed by a Canadian entrepreneur, Richard Muddiman. Much of the right-of-ways for the line are to be seized by eminent domain. NYRI Inc. has threatened to sue New York State over legislation signed by outgoing Gov. George Pataki last year limiting NYRI’s use of eminent domain.

When the Marcy Line, the first major link between the New York and Canadian grids, was built in the 1970s following the first big thrust of hydro-electric development in northern Quebec, there were angry protests—especially at the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation straddling the New York-Canadian border of the St. Lawrence River, where Indians blockaded construction equipment. But critics point out that the NYRI would cut far closer to towns and homes than the Marcy Line did.

Also at issue in the Corridor is a plan by Allegheny Power of Pennsylvania to build a 37-mile line through the west of the state, delivering power from its coal-fired generators to out-of-state markets.

The Energy Department additionally approved a Southwest Area National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor, which will allow a 230-mile transmission line to connect Arizona’s Palo Verde nuclear plant to the California grid—over the veto of Arizona state authorities.

But it is in the northern Rockies of Montana and British Columbia that acrimony over planned energy transfers and resource exploitation have resulted in a government surveillance scandal—and alarmingly bellicose cross-border rhetorical sniping by local politicians.

Surveillance Scandal Hits the Heartland

A front-page story by reporter Jessie McQuillan in the Oct. 11 issue of Montana’s weekly Missoula Independent reveals that members of the Alberta Energy Utility Board (EUB) this year hired four private investigators who infiltrated meetings and eavesdropped on conversations of landowners and their attorneys as they discussed opposition to proposed new international transmission lines in the region.

The project in question is a new Calgary-Edmonton line proposed by Altalink, Canada’s largest electricity transmission company. Altalink says the new transmission capacity is needed to supply Calgary’s power in coming years, but critics believe the line—to be built with taxpayer money but owned entirely by Altalink—would be used primarily to export power to the United States. Opponents have teamed up with other landowners who are organizing against another transmission line—proposed by Montana Alberta Tie Limited (MATL)—that would link Lethbridge, Alberta, to Great Falls, providing the first Canadian link to the Montana grid and a possible connection to the Altalink line.

Landowners had suspected that someone was spying on them during numerous hearings in spring 2007, but both Altalink and the EUB denied it. Finally, activists obtained documents under Canada’s Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIP) that revealed that a private EUB investigator posing as a concerned landowner had (at least) joined a conference call between Albertans and Montanans opposed to the Altalink project.

One of the legitimate callers, Katrina Martin, who lives on a farm near Dutton, MT, along MATL’s proposed route, told the Independent: “The fact that a quasi-judicial agency would hire agents to do intelligence gathering on citizens engaged in an open, public process is scary and appalling. Obviously that board has decided who the enemy is, and that the people who have audacity to question these issues should be infiltrated and spied upon.”

Joe Anglin, president of the 800-member Lavesta Area Group in Alberta that’s fighting Altalink’s proposal, is among those who filed for the documents under the FOIP. He told the Independent: “We knew they were infiltrating our group from the beginning because we knew everyone in our group… in the middle of a bunch of grandmothers sat some 300-pound ex-RCMP-looking guy eating all the cookies!”

The EUB insists it hired the spies to help ensure security at tense public meetings—at one of which an elderly woman swung (and missed) at an EUB commissioner. But two separate investigations by the Canadian government concluded the EUB’s actions were illegal and “repulsive.” In September, the scandal resulted in the appointment of a new EUB chairman, William Tilleman, and the disbanding of the agency’s security unit. But farmers say EUB commissioners themselves should be held accountable—and on Sept. 30 chairman Tilleman announced it was voiding all the proceedings on the Altalink line. The review process that began in 2004 will start fresh once Altalink reapplies to construct the project.

“This EUB decision is the equivalent of granting a mistrial,” Tilleman said in a statement. “Albertans must be confident that this Board acts fairly, responsibly and in the public interest. Mistakes have been made on this file, and I believe the only way to re-establish public confidence is to go back to square one on this process.”

Hearings on the MATL line, meanwhile, opened in October at Lethbridge, Alberta—attended by wary activists from the local Citizens for Responsible Power Transmission. Said Lethbridge llama rancher Margaret Lewis: “It will be very difficult for us going into this hearing to forget what happened and to believe we’re having a fair hearing.”

And there will be plenty of opportunities for more such political battles in the years to come if the continental energy planners get their way. Energy giant TransCanada is planning a new massive series of power lines collectively known as NorthernLights, to facilitate future power transfers. The NorthernLights project envisions three new 3,000-megawatt arteries: one linking Montana to Los Angeles across the Rockies, a second stretching from northern Alberta down the West Coast to California, and a third connecting the oilfields of northeast Wyoming to Las Vegas, with possible extensions to LA and Phoenix.

While the MATL is being built ostensibly to export wind power, Canada’s vast hydrocarbon resources play explicitly into the NorthernLights plan—despite the boast on its website of “environmentally attractive” electricity. The Alberta leg of the NorthernLights project would start in the oil sands boomtown of Fort McMurray. Planned massive expansion of Canadian hydrocarbon exploitation provides another source of trans-border tension.

The Battle for the Flathead

Canada is the USA’s largest foreign supplier of energy. In 2006 Canada exported south 2.3 million barrels per day of oil and petroleum products (11% of U.S. supply); 3.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (16% of US supply); and 41.2 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity (1% of US supply).

The biggest chunk of Canada’s energy resources sit directly north of Montana, in Alberta—including 80% of its natural gas and the bulk of its crude supply. The crude, sunk deep in the tar sands below northern Alberta’s subarctic boreal forests, were long considered too difficult and expensive to access. But recent soaring oil prices have changed this.

The tar sands contain a thick substance called bitumen—a mix of oil, sand, water and clay—and the northern forests of Alberta are being rapidly razed to get at it. The process means scooping up two tons of tar sands for every barrel of oil that will finally be produced. The process also requires two to three barrels of clean water for each extracted barrel of bitumen, which then must be further refined. Much of the water needed for bitumen extraction is being drained from the Athabasca River. Alberta’s Pembina Institute boasts that oil sands production more than doubled to 1.1 million barrels per day between 1995 and 2004. The Alberta government anticipates oil sands production will grow to three million barrels per day by 2020 and five million barrels per day by 2030.

While development of the oil sands centers in Alberta’s far north, Montana’s Gov. Brian Schweitzer has proposed a series of seven new bitumen refineries for the state to process the imports.

Additionally, where coal is concerned, Alberta’s new thrust of energy development is sparking yet another cross-border imbroglio. Gov. Schweitzer himself is aggressively pushing a big expansion of the coal industry within Montana’s borders, but a proposed new coal mine just above the Montana line in Alberta is causing controversy—because of its proximity to Glacier National Park, and potential impact on a scenic river that flows south into US territory.

US and Canadian officials met this October in Paris to discuss how the international park on their border could be protected from a proposed coal mine nearby. Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park was designated by the UN as a World Heritage site in 1995. The mine, proposed by Canada’s Cline Mining Co., would be north of Montana’s Glacier National Park, which abuts Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, where the province meets British Columbia. The two parks make up the international park—and topped the agenda at the World Heritage Convention that convened in Paris Oct. 24-25.

Montana Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester have urged that Washington work to add Waterton-Glacier to the UN’s list of endangered World Heritage Sites. Of some 850 World Heritage Sites, about 30 are classified as endangered. In a letter to the US Interior Department on the matter, Baucus and Tester said the mining could “contaminate one of the park’s most pristine rivers, destroy the habitat of endangered species, and compromise the natural character that makes the peace park a world treasure.”

Locals are especially worried about the impacts of the mining on the Flathead River, which flows from British Columbia into Montana. The wild Flathead Valley lies adjacent to Glacier National Park on the west. South of the park it broadens to make up the heartland of the Flathead Indian Reservation, which protects some of the USA’s last native bison range. South of the reservation, the Flathead meets the Clark Fork River, a tributary of the Columbia.

Cline Mining is currently seeking British Columbia’s approval for a mountaintop mine just above the headwaters of the Flathead’s North Fork. The mine would produce an annual 2 million tons of coal per year, to be shipped to China.

Cline is nearly done with the first step in British Columbia’s permitting process, outlining the issues that have to be addressed in a formal application. The state of Montana, the US Interior Department, State Department and Environmental Protection Agency have all commented, voicing concerns about potential downstream impacts—but “most of the comments were not included in the [permit] document,” according to Rich Moy, chairman of the nonprofit Flathead Basin Commission. That omission prompted Montana’s Gov. Schweitzer to draft a letter to the Canadian government calling for a more extensive environmental assessment.

Meanwhile, the grassroots is mobilizing. The towns of Whitefish, MT, and Fernie, BC, are currently considering a joint resolution urging Gov. Schweitzer and BC Premier Gordon Campbell to meet and discuss “trans-boundary issues”—specifically, potential threat to the Flathead River by coal-mining upstream in Canada.

There are indications other, bigger corporate players could be following Cline into the Flathead. This year, BP opened an office in Fernie, with an eye towards exploring for oil and coal in the valley.

In February 2007, British Columbia’s top mining minister Bill Bennet stepped down amid outrage at his anti-American sentiments—and Montanans who had been negotiating with the province over the controversial coal project were openly happy to see him go. “Mr. Bennett’s resignation may clear the way for a more constructive government-to-government discussion,” said Whitefish state senator Dan Weinberg, whose district adjoins Bennett’s, with only the international boundary separating the two.

In January, Bennett, a provincial lawmaker and who then held the Cabinet-level post of BC minister for mining, received an e-mail from a Fernie constituent, Maarten Hart—a veterinarian, hunter and president of the local Rod and Gun Club—who expressed concern about the coal project, charging that the BC government “bows to the almighty dollar and faces east three times each day (not to Mecca, but to Wall Street.)”

Bennett shot back cybernetically: “Let me be very direct with you, as you were with me. It is my understanding that you are an American, so I don’t give a shit what your opinion is on Canada or Canadian residents.”

Bennett’s response focused on the fact that Hart, as a “landed immigrant,” was once a US citizen. He called Hart a “fool,” “dumb” and a “self-inflated, pompous, American know-it-all.” Bennett wrote he was “not about to take that kind of bullshit from someone who, for all I know, is up here as an American spy who is actually interested in helping the US create a park in the Flathead.”

When news of the e-mail was leaked to the Vancouver Sun, Bennett resigned his Cabinet post. Premier Campbell called Bennett’s e-mail “unacceptable,” and even Bennett admitted it was “stupid and wrong,” attributed his “earthy” response to a rough life of bar brawls and knife fights, and of never finishing high school. But Hart responded that Bennett’s tirade was inappropriate—especially “for a man who is charged with representing sensitive mining and environmental negotiations with Americans.”

Bennett has championed the proposed mine, and repeatedly launched verbal assaults on lawmakers—including Sen. Baucus, who he once said was not welcome in Canada. Weinberg—who went camping in the contested wilderness last summer with a group of Canadian lawmakers—put a positive spin on the flame-out, saying he remained encouraged that “we have a great deal more in common than we have disagreements.”

He insisted that recent meetings between Montana and BC officials “showed that an overwhelming majority of local residents agree that the transboundary Flathead Valley is a great place that should not be mined.”

But the incident betrays the passions that can be unleashed when fortunes are to be made. And the conflict is likely to be even more impassioned when the resource in question is one which is necessary for life itself: water.

Water Wars

Water levels in the Great Lakes, a key artery for cross-border trade, are dramatically falling, with Lake Ontario about seven inches below where it was a year ago and levels in all five below long-term averages. For every inch of water that the lakes lose, the ships that ferry bulk materials across them must lighten their loads by 270 tons. As a result, more ships are needed, adding millions of dollars to shipping companies’ operating costs, experts in maritime commerce estimate.

The International Joint Commission, which advises the US and Canada on water resources, is conducting a $17 million, five-year study to determine whether the shrinking of the Great Lakes is a result of climate change.

With almost a third of the Southeast now covered by an “exceptional” drought—the worst drought category—the notion of trans-border water transfers from Canada is likely to be floated once again. This idea, a perennial of Western water-brokers and engineering giants, has for decades been dismissed as technically unworkable—only to be revived in times of water crisis.

In July 2001, President Bush told reporters the United States would be interested in piping Canadian water down to the thirsty Southwestern states and that he would raise the issue with then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien at the upcoming G8 Summit in Genoa. The Canadian government immediately responded by insisting bulk exports of water from Canada weren’t on the table.

The Council of Canadians, which has led the campaign against water exports with the support of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and the Canadian Environmental Law Association, expressed outrage at Bush’s statement. The Council’s chair Maude Barlow accused Chretien of being willing “turn the tap”—despite his denial. “Canadians wanted bulk exports banned and the Liberals are opening the floodgates,” she charged.

Judy Darcy, CUPE’s national president, raised the prospect of a mass privatization of Canada’s water resources. “What is more fundamental to democracy than control over the water we drink?” she asked. “Access for all Canadians to a basic source of life is what’s at stake. Multinational corporations are trying to privatize water services in hundreds of Canadian municipalities and turn our water resources into an export commodity. They can’t buy the air we breathe, so now they want to buy and control the water we drink. What we are saying is simple: No water for profit.”

Journalist Philip Lee, in a series on the global water crisis for the Ottawa Citizen, noted that several Canadian politicians continued to openly push for water exports. A company called McCurdy Enterprises was seeking to export 49 billion liters of water a year from Newfoundland’s Gisborne Lake—with the support of the province’s Premier Roger Grimes

A California company, Sun Belt Water Inc., took Canada to court to force British Columbia to sell bulk water to the US, and claimed millions of dollars in damages for the business it says it has lost through Canada’s refusal to adhere to what it claims are the terms of NAFTA.

The great-grandfather of such proposals was the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA), designed by the Southern California engineering firm Parsons in cooperation with the provincial utility BC Hydro in the 1960s. NAWAPA called for reversing the flow of British Columbia’s Fraser River and diverting it into the Columbia system, and thence via a series of tunnels and canals to California and the Southwest.

An eastern branch of the scheme was devised in the ’70s by then-Quebec premier Robert Bourassa, whose massive James Bay hydro-electric complex was then under development. Bourassa’s proposal, dubbed the GRAND (Great Replenishment and Northern Development) Canal, called for damming the mouth of James Bay—a vast southern inlet of Hudson Bay, 100 miles across—and turning it into a giant fresh-water reservoir, fed by the rivers that Hydro-Quebec was already damming for power to be exported to the US Northeast. The GRAND Canal would divert the James Bay water into the Great Lakes, and thence (via a miracle of mega-engineering) into the Missouri River and points west.

The conventional wisdom is that the tide has turned against such hubristic schemes. In 1998 when Ontario granted the private Nova Group approval to export millions of liters of Lake Superior water by tanker to Asia, there was an immediate outcry on both sides of the border. The following year, the Canadian government announced a water export prohibition policy, introducing amendments to the International Boundary Waters Treaty Act to bar bulk-water removal from the Great Lakes.

The Canadian and US governments asked the International Joint Commission—established by the Boundary Water Treaty of 1909—to prepare a report on the bulk exports issue. After holding public hearings, the commission’s report recommended that governments “should not permit any new proposal for removal of water from the Great Lakes Basin to proceed unless the proponent can demonstrate that the removal would not endanger the integrity of the Great Lakes Basin.” The commission said there should be “no net loss” of water from the lakes—and argued that the era of major water diversions and transfers had passed, with dams across the American West being dismantled in the interests of ecological restoration.

The NAWAPA idea was kept alive by such fringe organizations as the far-right Lyndon LaRouche cult. But Bush’s 2002 comments indicate the resiliency of the concept in the corridors of power.

Another ominous sign is the revival of mega-scale hydro-electric development in northern Quebec—the so-called “James Bay II” project. The first series of hydro-dams on the rivers feeding James Bay under Bourassa in the 1970s provided the power for export to Con Edison and other Northeast utilities that necessitated construction of the Marcy Line. When Bourassa returned to power in 1984, he immediately announced the next phase of development, which called for damming all the remaining rivers flowing into James Bay, and lined up new contracts with Con Ed for the provincial utility Hydro-Quebec. As Bourassa’s book Power From the North made clear, his envisioned next phase would be the GRAND Canal project.

But the contracts were canceled (before the “grace period” ran out) in 1991 following an activist campaign both sides of the border. This was undertaken in solidarity with the Cree and Inuit indigenous inhabitants of the James Bay region, whose traditional lands were inundated in phase one of the project. The Cree had signed on to the first phase in return for economic benefits after the Canadian courts had ruled they could not stop the project, and the provincial government claimed that agreement also covered phase two. The Cree disagreed; the campaign was launched, the contracts axed, and James Bay II put on hold. Now Quebec, under Premier Jean Charest, has announced a downsized version of James Bay II, which calls for diverting the flow of the Rupert River a hundred miles north into the system of phase-one hydro-dams already built on the Eastmain River. While the Cree Grand Council has signed off on the project, the proposal has bitterly divided the Cree nation.

Meanwhile, the already-existing dams and reservoirs conceived as arteries of NAWAPA are sources of cross-border conflict. Lake Koocanusa, behind the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Libby Dam on the Kootenai River, a Columbia tributary, straddles the BC-Montana border, and was envisioned by NAWAPA’s architects as a key link in their ultra-ambitious scheme. The Kootenai is the next major river to the west of the Flathead, some 50 miles away over the Salish and Whitefish mountains—and also a source of US-Canada tension.

The Columbia River Treaty, negotiated to apportion waters to be affected by the Libby Dam in 1960, had already expired when the dam came online in 1975. Now, with environmentalists demanding sufficient water levels downstream to maintain threatened trout species, British Columbia has complained about insufficient water in the north end of the lake. BC Hydro has even threatened to divert the Kootenai River (spelled Kootenay in Canada) over the divide at Canal Flats into the Lake Columbia, the source of the Columbia River proper—which would leave Lake Koocanusa, the Kootenai and the Libby Dam dry.

Since the signing of NAFTA, Canadian energy exports to the US cannot fall below 1993 levels. Does that include water? Legal scholars argue that once any Canadian water is exported south, it would become a commodity subject to the provisions of the trade agreement. NAFTA guarantees equal access to natural resources on either side of the US-Canadian line. So once the faucet is turned on, it may be impossible to turn it off: it could be a treaty violation and cause for war.

Once infrastructure—and therefore subsistence and survival in a highly organized society—is dependent on imported water, Canadian water resources become a US national security issue. Whether it is oil, electricity or water, any future Canadian effort to re-assert sovereign control over resources could be challenged by Washington as NAFTA-illegal—and, ultimately, a casus belli.

Real Wars

The Canadian press has already reported secret Pentagon contingency plans to use upstate New York’s Ft. Drum as a springboard for a US invasion of Quebec. Details were also revealed in the Washington Post of Dec. 30, 2005, in an article amusingly entitled “Raiding the Icebox.” It revealed a 94-page document called “Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan—Red,” with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. The document calls for a Naval force to capture the port of Halifax, blockade Vancouver and secure the Great Lakes, while a land invasion starts by seizing the Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls. Army columns are then to advance on three fronts—marching up the shores of Lake Champlain to take Montreal, and across the Great Plains to take the railroad center at Winnipeg and the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.

War Plan Red was actually designed for a war with Great Britain. In the 1920s, US military strategists developed plans for a war with Japan (code name Orange), Germany (Black), Mexico (Green) and England (Red). Military theorists imagined a conflict between the US (Blue) and UK over international trade: “The war aim of RED in a war with BLUE is conceived to be the definite elimination of BLUE as an important economic and commercial rival.”

Since then, the plan has been repeatedly updated to changing political circumstances—most recently to a War on Terrorism context.

A 2002 study by a Toronto think-tank, the C.D. Howe Institute, warned that the US could use the military to seal the Canadian border if officials fear national security is threatened by loose Canadian immigration policy and policing. Said military historian J.L. Granatstein, author of the report: “Although terrorism poses a real threat, it is not the most serious crisis. The danger lies in wearing blinkers about the United States when it is in a vengeful, anxious mood… The United States is deadly serious about homeland defense. The Americans will act, alone if necessary.”

The US has already deployed specially-trained customs agents to detect explosives and unconventional weapons at Canada’s three busiest ports: Halifax, Montreal, and Vancouver—an unprecedented undertaking that media accounts openly said “would have been unthinkable prior to Sept. 11.” US troops have been assigned to northern border posts, and military helicopters patrol what was once hailed as the world’s longest undefended border.

Canadian intelligence services warn that at least 50 international terrorist groups—from al-Qaeda to Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers—operate in Canadian cities, and officials on both sides of the border now warn Canada is unprepared. “Montreal has a large multiethnic population into which it is easy for North Africans and other Muslims to disappear, but the real attraction is its location right on the Great Satan’s doorstep,” said David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and now chief of consulting firm Insignis Strategic Research. “Until Canada deals with an out-of-control immigration and refugee situation, the situation will deteriorate. We are heavily penetrated…forcing [the US] to take ever more defensive measures at the northern border.”

But as in Afghanistan and Iraq—where the facade of opposing “terrorism” and “weapons of mass destruction” has crumbled to reveal a naked grab for strategic oil reserves—designs on Canada’s vast natural resources may be the real imperative that underlies the tensions, militarization and war plans.

——

RESOURCES

Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America
http://www.spp.gov/

Atlantica
http://www.atlantica.org/

Stop the Power Lines
Citizen opposition to the Mid-Atlantic Area National Corridor
http://www.stopthepowerlines.com/

Say No to NYRI
http://www.sayno2nyri.com/

NYRI
http://www.nyri.us

MATL
http://www.matl.ca/

Altalink
http://www.altalink.ca/

NorthernLights
http://www.transcanada.com/company/northernlights.html

Flathead Basin Commission
http://www.flatheadbasincommission.org

International Joint Commission
http://www.ijc.org/

Pembina Institute
http://www.pembina.org/

CD Howe Institute
http://www.cdhowe.org/index.cfm

LaRouche-ite Schiller Institute on NAWAPA
http://www.schillerinstitute.org/economy/phys_econ/phys_econ_nawapa_1983.html

REFERENCES

Abrupt Ice Retreat Could Produce Ice-Free Arctic Summers by 2040
Geophysical Research Letters, December 12, 2006
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2006/arctic.shtml

Power play by feds has Spitzer unhappy
Albany Times-Union, Oct. 6, 2007
http://timesunion.com/ASPStories/Story.asp?storyID=627841&newsdate=10/23/2007&BCCode=MBTA

Feds approve controversial power corridor
Pike County Courier, PA, Oct. 4, 2007
http://www.strausnews.com/articles/2007/10/06/pike_county_courier/news/1.txt

US rule jolts power line foes
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Oct. 3, 2007
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07276/822430-55.stm

Feds, state at odds over California-Arizona transmission line
Business Journal of Phoenix, Oct. 2, 2007
http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2007/10/01/daily28.html

Behind the Blackout
Thanks to deregulation, Queens merely a pawn in the utilities’ board game
by Bill Weinberg, Village Voice, Aug. 8, 2006
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0632,weinberg,74118,5.html

Power Surge:
How a government spying scandal and Alberta’s energy boom hit home in Montana
by Jessie McQuillan, The Missoula Independent, Oct. 11, 2007
http://www.missoulanews.com/index.cfm…

US and Canada to discuss coal mine near Waterton-Glacier Int’l Peace Park
Canadian Press, Oct 2, 2007
http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jdvAXr1JOtloG1uQYKc1AvQg1ccg

US, Canada to discuss Glacier-area coal projects
The Missoulian, Oct. 3, 2007
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/10/03/news/mtregional/news08.txt

Whitefish-Fernie resolution would call for coal summit
Whitefish Pilot, MT, Oct. 11, 2007
http://www.whitefishpilot.com/articles/2007/10/11/news/news03.txt

Battle line on the northern border
High Country News, May 9, 2007
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=17022

Inch by Inch, Great Lakes Shrink, and Cargo Carriers Face Losses
New York Times, Oct. 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/nyregion/22oswego.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Cost, not emotion, likely to kill export idea
by Philip Lee, The Ottawa Citizen, Aug. 16, 2001
Online at EnvironmentProbe
http://www.environmentprobe.org/EnviroProbe/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=2422

Raiding the Icebox
Behind Its Warm Front, the United States Made Cold Calculations to Subdue Canada
by Peter Carlson, Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2005
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/29/AR2005122901412.html

See also:

QUEBEC: PROTESTS ROCK NAFTA SECURITY SUMMIT
As Reports Reveal Free Trade’s Empty Promise
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
WW4 REPORT, September 2007
/node/4365

HYDRO-COLONIALISM ADVANCES IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH
Cree Nation Divided Over James Bay Mega-Project
by Bill Weinberg, Indian Country Today
WW4 REPORT, June 2007
/node/3980

THE QUEENS BLACKOUTS: KENNETH LAY’S REVENGE?
by Bill Weinberg
WW4 REPORT, August 2006
/node/2258

From our weblog:

Canadians march against Afghan mission
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 29, 2007
/node/4595#comment-307474

Ecology scapegoated in Southern California disaster
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 25, 2007
/node/4586

Montana to Kurdistan: global oil prices react
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 18, 2007
/node/4577

Global warming opens Northwest Passage
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 16, 2007
/node/4431

NAFTA security summit held in Ottawa
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 25, 2007
/node/3230

Canada reaches sovereignty deal with Cree nation
WW4 REPORT, July 17, 2007
/node/4235

Canada: Mohawks block roads, rail lines in National Day of Action
WW4 REPORT, July 3, 2007
/node/4172

Native nations protest US-Canada border restrictions
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 16, 2007
/node/3156

Canada to withdraw from Afghanistan?
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 16, 2007
/node/3153

Montana flashpoint for looming US-Canada war
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 15, 2007
/node/3150

Afghanistan: thousands displaced in Kandahar fighting
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 7, 2006
/node/2435

Canada asserts sovereignty over Northwest Passage
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 24, 2006
/node/1650

From our archive:

Chretien waffles on “Star Wars” participation
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 16, 2002
/static/64.html#canadian1

Ottawa-DC sniping slows military integration
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 9, 2002
/static/63.html#canada1

Alberta Indians resist NATO
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 9, 2002
/static/63.html#canada8

Who’s next: Canada?
WW4 REPORT, June 23, 2002
/static/39.html#who’snext6

——————-

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Nov. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

IRAQ: EXPOSING THE CORPORATE AGENDA

by Antonia Juhasz, Oil Change International

Antonia Juhasz, a fellow at Oil Change International, spoke at All Souls Church, a venerable Unitarian-Universalist institution on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, on June 6, 2007, upon the release of the paperback edition of her book The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time (HarperCollins). In her talk, she dissected the corporate interests that have driven Bush’s Iraq adventure, and explored how the quest for global control of oil to assure continued US hegemony in the 21st century interlocks with these interests. Finally, she discussed strategies for building an effective movement to end the occupation of Iraq. This transcript is provided by WW4 REPORT from a video taken by independent journalist Zaya Haynes. Bracketed clarifications and elaborations were added by Juhasz via e-mail. Audience questions have been paraphrased.

I finished my book a year ago, and sadly the analysis has only gotten more pertinent. I remember having conversations with my publisher before the book came out, where he was saying, “You know, I think the war is going to be over, and all these issues are not going to be relevant anymore, and nobody’s going to be concerned about oil anymore, and I’m not sure how this is gonna fly.” And I said, “I hope you’re right, I hope you’re right!” Unfortunately, the war continues, the issues have become far more pressing as we edge closer to a potential war against Iran, we face conflicts around the world—increasingly more violent, and spreading—over, I would argue, economic issues, many of which have their basis in oil.

The analysis I put forward attempts to put an economic face on these issues that we’re confronting, and to help direct our activism—because I wrote this book to help create, sustain, build out movement, and to give us some clear targets for our activism. And the targets I keep coming back to over and over in my long history of doing this work, are a handful of corporations, and their relationship to a handful of government leaders. And I entitled the book The Bush Agenda not to give undue credit to George Bush, but also to make clear that he’s in no way a random character in this story. It’s under his administration that a series of very powerful trajectories and ideas have culminated and—hopefully—reach an apex. But I must add that it’s an agenda that preceded him, one that its advocates certainly hope will outlast him, and its one that it certainly behooves us to understand so we can resist it…

This is the first time in history that the president, vice president and secretary of state are all are all former oil or energy company officials. In fact, the only other president to come out of the oil industry is… [waits for audience response] Yes, his father, George Bush Sr. Now while its very well appreciated at this point that Condoleezza Rice had a Chevron oil tanker named after her, the Condoleezza—it is less appreciated (as is frequently the case for women) that she earned it. She spent ten years on the board of directors of Chevron. She was the head of their policy committee. She is an expert in the former Soviet republics, the Caspian region, which is awash—although it was thought to be far more awash in oil than it actually is, but in any case a source of great interest for oil companies. And she helped facilitate the movement of Chevron in particular into that region. She is intimately connected to the industry, and is a very skilled tactician and deserves a good deal of credit—credit that she’s not often given.

I think it’s well known that President Bush comes out of the oil industry. I think its also well-known that he has a tendency to run oil companies into the ground. But nonetheless that is his background, it is where he comes from and where many of his connections still remain. And of course Vice President Dick Cheney’s background in the Halliburton corporation is well known. Halliburton is the largest energy services corporation in the world.

To understand the agenda put forward by this group of men (and woman), it’s useful to look back. I go back in the book quite far in tracing the history of US economic interests in the Middle East and in Iraq, but I’m going to start tonight just going back ten years, and just understanding the different links between the first Bush war on Iraq and the second Bush war on Iraq.

With the first Bush war, I believe the motivation had a great deal to do with the fact that from 1984 the United States had been successfully and increasingly making headway into Iraq. President Reagan opened up economic relations with Saddam Hussein, he aggressively pushed an economic agenda with Hussein, and was helped along quite well in that course by Henry Kissinger. Kissinger’s new group at that time, Kissinger Associates, advised companies seeking access to Iraq. The Bechtel corporation of San Francisco managed a chemical complex for Saddam Hussein that made the precursor to mustard gas. Halliburton built oil infrastructure. Lockheed-Martin sold him helicopters. Chevron was able to market his oil. The list goes on and on of US companies that were able to get in.

But they were denied one very important thing, and continued to be denied even after Reagan pushed to get greater entrance, even after Bush pushed even harder, loaned Saddam Hussein a billion dollars worth of cash, did all sorts of thing to help Saddam Hussein. Hussein would not do one very important thing. He wouldn;t let US oil companies into Iraq. He wouldn’t give foreign companies ownership of his oil. And his oil is—or was, now it’s Iraq’s—the second largest oil reserves in the world. Very, very important oil reserves that the US is being denied access to.

Now, the urgency for getting this oil increased over time. Right around the mid-’70s, the United States hit itw own peak of oil production, and from that point on we’ve been on the down slope. That mean we’ve been looking further afield for oil. We also increasingly realized that the [largest concentration of the] remaining oil in the world—about two thirds of the world’s oil—is in the Middle East. And the United States increasingly built an agenda that stated quite clearly that it would use its military to get its hands on Mideast oll.

But that’s a hard thing to do when you have to project your military all the way across the world to get your hands on a resource. The United States needed a reason to get troops on the ground in the Middle East. We also had Saddam Hussein increasingly resisting the agenda put forward by the first Bush administration. For instance, the Bechtel corporation didn’t just want to manage petro-chemical plants, it wanted to build a pipeline to get Iraqi oil out of Iraq to the port of Aqaba, Jordan. And George Schultz, Reagan’s secretary of state and a former president of the Bechtel corporation, worked aggressively to try to get that pipeline for Bechtel. Many other people worked, Kissinger worked. Hussein said no.

He also threatened Israel. He also kept saying, “I’m gonna be the big guy on the block in the Middle East.” And the United States decided it would be a very good idea to replace Saddam, and to have a reason to bring US troops into the Middle East.

So the United States went to war against Saddam Hussein—unsuccessfully, however, was not able to unseat him, realized it wasn’t going to be worth the effort to stay in place, didn’t want, in the words of Dick Cheney, to “own Iraq” at the time.

So half a million US troops went into Saudi Arabia at the time of the first Gulf war, and a lot of them stayed. And the United States began to build up its military presence in the Middle East from that point forward.

Some very important thing changed in between the first Bush war on Iraq and the second. One of the most important things that changed was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Suddenly the United States was the lone superpower, and suddenly the United States was trying to figure out what did that mean and what did we want to do in that position. Some people thought we should enjoy the “peace dividend,” right? And have full healthcare for all, and free education, and all these great ideas—none of which came to pass.

Others, who increasingly came to put into a school called the neoconservatives, believed that we should use this position to become not just the lone superpower, but to become a truly imperial power, and they stated it as such. A full 16 members of the current Bush administration worked in the Project for the New American Century in between the first Bush and the second Bush war on Iraq, and that’s where they wrote specifically that the United States is an imperial power, like Rome, should be an imperial power, like Rome, and should be such an economic and military force that no country in the world would even consider challenging us. And we should do the things that Rome did, including invading, including fundamentally transforming the countries we went into, so that they would resemble us and serve our economic interests. And that was a very different frame from the realization of the world that the first Bush administration had,

Another thing that happened in the intervening years was Clinton. One of the wonderful things Clinton did for the world [smirks], was to aggressively push corporate globalization policies—through the World Trade Organization, through the North American Free Trade Agreement, through the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (and if you don’t realize, I’m being sarcastic that this is a wonderful thing). The effect that this had was a tremendous consolidation of power and political influence and monetary influence in the hands of…who? [Waits for audience reaction.] Corporations! Corporations became much, much more powerful. A shift in power—of economic power, of political influence—happened.

Clinton also, by the way, implemented the brutal, horrific, deadly sanctions against Iraq—and military interventions, bombings. I would argue, however, that the sanctions were very, very different in terms of the agenda of the Clinton administration. I think the Clinton administration wanted to keep Iraq at arm’s length. The Clinton administration serviced—and the future Clinton administration, if there is one, will also service—different corporate interests. The oil and gas industry is the industry of the Republicans. There have been outliers, but it mostly always has been, and is. The Democrats have different corporate interests that they service, but oil isn’t generally one of them. I don’t think the Clinton administration was particularly interested in advancing a war for oil.

A number of consolidations happened at this time, and were particularly advanced when the second Bush administration came to power. At this time, Exxon merged with Mobil. Chevron merged with Texaco, and bought Unocal. Conoco merged with Pillips. Where there used to be hundreds of oil companies, there were now just a very small handful, and they became uber-companies. ExxonMobil is the largest company in the world. It surpassed Wal-Mart last year to earn that title. In 2003, ExxonMobil earned the highest profits of any corporation in world history, ever. Adjusted for inflation, period. Then it topped in 2004, topped it in 2005, and topped it again this year—$40 billion in pure profit. What does $40 billion buy you? An administration that is part and parcel to yourself and your own interests. An administration that’s willing to go that extra mile and get you that oil.

Now, US oil corporations—and BP and Shell—face a particularly difficult situation, and did entering into this administration. There’s not much oil left that they own. There’s only about ten years left of oil that they own, in their reserves. That’s very troubling for an oil company. They need more.

Another very troubling thing happened right when this Bush administration took office, the first ten days into the Bush administration. Vice President Cheney organized the Cheney Energy Task-Force. This was the group that was going to decide future energy policy for the United States. And who was on it? Was it the Sierra Club? [Laughter.] No. Exxon. Chevron. Bechtel. Halliburton—they were all in the room. Also coal, and also nuclear power. And they said, “Hmmm, what should our future energy policy be?”

And they took a map of Iraq and they laid it out on a table. And they looked at where all Iraq’s oilfields were, and how much oil they had. And a phrase that I’ve used to describe Iraq—and I’ve actually received e-mails asking me to stop doing it, but darn it, I’m gonna do it anyway—I think they see Iraq as a pimple of oil that has yet to be plucked. [Laughter.] OK? It is bursting at the seams with oil. It is right below the surface, it is inexpensive to get at.

For US oil companies, the average cost to get a barrel of oil out of the ground is between 10 and 20 dollars a barrel. In Iraq, it costs 60 cents a barrel to get it out of the ground. What a good deal that is, right? Iraq has about 80 fields of oil; only about 17 have even begun to be developed. It is literally a bonanza of oil. They know where it is. They know how much is in each field…

Now, they’re looking at this map of oil, right? They’re also looking at a list that says “foreign suitors to Iraqi oil.” Saddam Hussein had been signing contracts for that ting that the United States had been denied all this time, this oil under the ground—and he was signing these contracts with companies from China, France and Russia. Does anybody know what these three countries have in common? They’re all members of the Security Council. He was signing these contracts with the members of the Security Council to try to get the sanctions removed. He was dangling lucrative oil contracts in front of their faces and saying “If you want these, you have to cancel the sanctions.”

The companies were signing contracts, but their governments hadn’t quite gotten around to standing up to the United States to end the sanctions. So these guys were standing around this table saying, If the sanctions are removed and Saddam Hussein remains in power, all of this oil is going to go to all of these other companies. all these other countries, and we are going to be shut out.” Not desirable.

Contrary to public opinion, there was a very clear, detailed post-invasion plan for Iraq. It was an economic plan, it was ready before the war, it was written by private companies, it was implemented to a T by Paul Bremer, the head of the occupation government of Iraq. He issued 100 orders—they’re known as the Bremer orders. They are so neatly delineated in my book, that they’ve appeared out of my book on websites for industries that are trying to get US businesses excited about going to Iraq and doing reconstruction there and taking over. They list my analysis of the Bremer Orders and say “See, it’s a free-market haven, you can go there!” Not the purpose that I wrote this book for, so I’m eagerly hoping you will take it and use the analysis to better purpose!

[Several oil companies were involved in the drafting through their positions as advisors to the U.S. and Iraqi governments at the start of the war. More directly, all of the largest oil companies are on the board of the International Tax and Investment Centre which is very public about its direct participation in drafting the oil law. All of the oil companies were also represented on the Cheney Energy Task Force. Thus, I surmise that Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Marathon, Shell and BP all had a hand in the drafting.]

This plan was put in place by Bremer. The plan implements, for those of you who are familiar with corporate globalization policy, every wish of every World Bank policy, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization—everything they couldn’t get but wanted to get—was implemented in Iraq.

What is explicitly excluded is the oil—not for lack of trying by certain sectors of the conservative movement in the United States. But how do you fight a war for oil? What does it look like? Do the tanks come in and then Exxon comes behind with a flag and puts the flag in the ground and says “Our oil”? Well, there were certainly some people on the right who wanted to do that. They wanted Bremer to privatize Iraq’s oil, straight up. Saner minds prevailed—realizing that the Iraqis might not really take to kindly to this particular thing. One of the things Bremer did was to fire the entire Iraqi military and send half a million men home with their guns. And some people thought this might not be such a good combination, you know? [Laughter.]

So they said, we should use a subtler process. And that process started before the war as well. What it looks like is, you write a law. And the law takes Iraq from a nationalized oil system, essentially closed to foreign oil companies, particularly US ones, and privatizes it. Turns it over to foreign oil companies. Here’s the law, we’ve got it. Now the Iraqis need to implement it, so it looks like it’s their law.

So the Iraqi government is put in place, and the Bush administrations starts to put pressure on the Iraqis immediately to pass this law. The Iraqis resist, resist, resist. Then in January, President Bush finally announces publicly—on the same day he announces the surge—the Iraqis must pass the oil law. Essentially, although he didn’t say these words, the Iraqis must privatize their oil, they must turn it over to US oil companies. We’re going to introduce a surge of US troops to insure that you do it. And the language he did use, was that the surge will provide the political space for the Iraqis to work on what he called the “benchmarks.” And this was one of the benchmarks.

Now how many of you have heard of the revenue-sharing plan for Iraqi oil? The revenue-sharing plan is three sentences out of a 40-page law. The 40 pages take Iraq’s oil revenue and give it to US oil companies. The Iraqis get to share among themselves the five dollars left over when the five billion has gone out the door. [Figurative, not literal—no actual figures available.] And that’s not even guaranteed. The revenue-sharing part is three sentences that say the Iraqis should start looking at plans to maybe think about one day sharing the revenue, if they change the constitution and pass another law… That’s what the three sentences say.

So, the president announces the benchmark. Now, I just wrote the new afterward to The Bush Agenda in February, and I was very excited in the afterward about the Democrats taking over the House and the Senate. [Laughter.] One of the main reasons I was excited was that the Democrats taking over the House and the Senate was a reflection of tremendous activism and organizing—a resistance by the American public to the war, to the Bush administration, to the administration’s policies. Getting people out to vote, voicing their opposition to the war, organizing against the war, getting the Democrats in… The Democrats came in, we were all excited. I was one of half a million people who marched in Washington DC [Jan. 27, 2007]. I was able to speak at a panel organized by Congressman [Maxine] Waters and [Lynn] Woolsey, where I told them that the next time we come if the Democrats haven’t ended the war, we’re gonna sit down around the capital, and we’re gonna bring or sleeping bags, and we’re gonna stay until you end the war! And they responded very positively to that idea. They were excited, that that’s what they were there to do, was end the war.

Then what happened? Lots of politics, lots of politcking. And the Democrats adopted the language of the benchmarks. And there was all this debate going back and forth—”the Democrats want Bush to include the benchmarks, Bush doesn’t want to include the benchmarks…” The benchmarks were the oil law, and a bunch of other really ridiculous stuff… The Democrats adopted the language of the benchmarks, and they said Iraq has to pass the oil law, and if it doesn’t… first they said, when the negotiations were happening—we’ll end the war! That was OK! Good! [Laughter.] Then they said, Oh wait a minute, we didn’t mean that. Then they said, Pass the oil law or…we will cut off the reconstruction funds! And that’s the language that was included in the supplemental war spending bill, that’s the language that President Bush signed, and that’s what we’ve got today: A very clear message to the Iraqis from the United States Congress.

Iraqi oil workers went on strike yesterday. [Applause.] They went on strike for better wages, for better benefits, for better working conditions—and in opposition to the oil law, and in opposition to their government’s consideration of the law. The oil law has now passed the Iraqi cabinet, and is now sitting in the parliament. There is tremendous resistance to it in the parliament. What Iraqis have asked us to do is to continue to push, continue to demonstrate that we absolutely refuse to in a war being fought for oil.

Now just to be clear—a war for oil is about corporate profits, its definitely about that; its about Chevron and Exxon and Conoco. But its also about a lot more than that. Its about the imperial designs that this administration has, its about hegemonic power, its about denying the oil to other countries that might want to buy it, its about being the most powerful country in the world that owns it. And it is a moment in time when we’re being asked by the world to say that we, the American public, don’t agree with that.

People, I know, are getting tired of protesting… People feel at this point, we got these guys elected and they failed us, we march and it fails… And our friends and family members say, “What’s the point of all this political activism you’re doing?” The answer is that this is the only thing that’s ever ended wars. Activism, social change, is hard. It’s slow. You don’t always get your picture on the front page of the paper. You don’t always get accepted by your friends and family. You don’t always march on Saturday and then the thing you wanted happens on Sunday, and you get to go home and it’s great! No, its not like that. Not at all. Sometimes you don’t even see the change you want in a whole lifetime of working. But it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. And when we protest, people around the world also see it. It may not come up in our newspapers—but believe me, it gets carried everywhere else. And they get to say, “Oh, there are people in the United States who are different from their government! Wow!”

And that’s what they say, they say “wow.” Because I go around the world, and I meet people who say “I didn’t know there were Americans who felt this way, I feel so much better!” So that’s one of the things we get to do, we get to have the privilege of doing this work here—and not trying to do it in Iraq, and not trying to do it in Iran, and not trying to do it in Syria, and not trying to do it in Afghanistan.

Question: Can you talk about the reconstruction contracts and the permanent military bases that are supposedly being built?

There has been $50 billion spent on reconstruction in Iraq. Who do you think got the money…? Bechtel and Halliburton. US corporations, 150 of them, have received all the reconstruction money [up to 2007]. I detail in the book how the money’s been spent, and who spent it. One of the most important things in the reconstruction story if the Bremer Order that said Iraqis could not be given preference in the reconstruction effort, but US companies could. Now, US companies have gotten that money, and they have failed miserably at the reconstruction. However, because of the soldiers on the ground, because of the captains and commanders complaining every day for four years that this is insanity, that the Iraqis have to do this work, this has slowly begun to shift. And Iraqi companies and Iraqi workers have increasingly—not nearly enough—started to receive reconstruction money. And every positive example you’ve ever read about in the reconstruction in Iraq. it’s always been an Iraqi company.

Now there’s at least tow things that need to happen. The first is, US companies that received money for jobs they have not done in Iraq have to return the money. Period. Simple. Easy. Done. That money needs to go to Iraq. There are desperate reconstruction needs. Before the war, there was water, there was electricity, there was sewage. There was healthcare, there was education. Now there are none of those things. Before the war there was 24 hours a day of electricity. Today there are between four and six. The electricity runs the water systems, runs the sewer systems. Without one you can’t have the other. There’s no electricity in the hospitals. This has nothing to do with the violence right now—nothing. This has to do with the failure of the reconstruction. It’s a travesty. That money needs to go to Iraqi companies and Iraqi workers.

The money has also gone to build permanent military bases. Now, there’s been Congressional language introduced saying no permanent military bases. [This language has been included now in several appropriations bills.] Here’s how they’ve gotten around that is in the definition of “permanent.” They’re building a base and its “secure”—there’s lots of cement and big buildings. But it’s “secure,” its not “permanent.” They can bulldoze it at any time.

That’s a problem. And the way to solve it isn’t to say you want less safe military bases, but to bring the troops home so they won’t have a need for the military bases. And we need to say that we actually know the difference; this is game of words…

The other strategy is being put forward is the Korea strategy. Yeah? We’re going to stay there to keep the peace and separate out the warring forces, just like we are doing between South and North Korea. We’re gonna be there for 50 years.

One of the details of the oil law is 30-year contracts for foreign corporations. If you’re gonna have a 30-year contract and you’re in a war zone, what are you gonna need? [Audience: “Permanent military bases.”] Yeah.

Q: How can we address our addiction to automobiles and airplanes, that consume so much of the oil that we use?

I’m writing a new book. And that’s gonna be called The Break-Up: The Case for Taking Apart Big Oil. And I think one of the main things that we have to do to be able to kick those addictions is to get rid of the political forces that are making it impossible to have this discussion on an equal basis. And that’s a big point. [Applause.]

So that’s putting pressure on the producers. At the same time, we also have to put pressure on ourselves, the consumers. We have to be given alternatives, though. For most of us—though if you live in New York City it’s a slightly different situation from the rest of the country—public transit simply doesn’t exist. The country was built intentionally to use cars. We know the history of how the industry killed attempts at public transit, how it killed existing public transit. However, much of the United States was built using federal highway dollars to intentionally move us out [of the urban centers], to get us to use the car. We have to do a lot of re-investing, rethinking, to move ourselves into communities where we can walk.

Q: Why hasn’t Bush been impeached?

I was working on the Hill for Congressman [John] Conyers during the Clinton impeachment proceedings, and my job became reading the Starr Report. And I decided that wasn’t particularly what the Detroit tax-payer wanted me to be doing with my time. That was one of the reasons I decided it wasn’t such a good idea for me to be working on the Hill.

There is an amazing impeachment movement alive and well in the United States. We are also seeing this administration crumble before out eyes. That’s not random. That’s through years of activism and organizing. Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz. Libby. And that’s just the beginning, and it’s important. We don’t nearly enough celebrate our victories and declare them as our own. Rumsfeld wasn’t fired because Bush woke up one day and saud, “Gee, I guess it’s time to get rid of Rumsfeld.” That was four years of organizing and effort. Who here was part of the “Give Rumsfeld the Pink Slip” movement? Code Pink dressed up in pink slips to demand they give Rumsfeld the pink slip!

So the impeachment movement is working and needs to be heralded. I think talking about impeachment is a critically important step in the road to what I actually think is the most important thing, which is ending the war. And we need to link the two as much as possible in our discussion. I worry somewhat when impeachment is seen as an end in itself, and not a tool to help us achieve other ends. Because if Bush is impeached and Cheney’s impeached, and a wonderful representative from San Francisco, Miss Pelosi became president, the war wouldn’t be over.

Q: Is this war about privatizing oil, or about America’s rivalry with China, as some say?

It’s bigger than oil. Oil. as I said, isn’t just about “oil.” Oil is about China. Oil is about making sure that the United States remains the hegemon. And the way to do that is to make sure that we have the oil, not China. Now, when I give this talk in front of more conservative audiences, they raise their hand and say, “We have to get the oil, because China will get it otherwise. Don’t you understand, Antonia? This is important. China is our big rival. If China gets the oil, then they’ll become a superpower…” And then, I don’t know, they don’t finish the sentence so I don’t know what happens next, but it’s bad! [Laughter.] Definitely bad.

Getting the oil is about China. It is about denying other powers form challenging US supremacy. That’s what it’s about. Guaranteeing US supremacy.

Q: What do you think would happen if the US left Iraq, and how do you respond to the propaganda that it would create a regional conflagration?

What I can say is that the Iraqis don’t want us in Iraq. A poll was taken of the broad Iraqi public, and it found about 72% want the occupation to end. But a poll taken of Baghdad residents found that around 75% said they would feel safer if US troops left. Not just they want us to go, but they would feel safer. A year ago, a poll taken of US troops on the ground found a similar percentage said US troops should be gone within a year—that we’ve done our job, we’ve done the best we could. And that is an incredibly unprecedented sentiment by troops on the ground.

So the Iraqi public doesn’t want us in Iraq. The troops on the ground don’t want us there. A number of generals have come out to say we shouldn’t be fighting the war. The American public doesn’t want us in the war. So we know one thing… There’s really just about five people who want us in Iraq. And they’re the ones who are seeking to profit from this war.

Now, Iraqis don’t say, “Leave, because tomorrow we’ll have peace if you leave.” No, they say, “The first thing we need to get things moving in the right direction is for you to stop occupying our nation. And then we’ll figure out the rest from there.”

That’s the answer. Nobody can tell you what’s going to happen. But we know that the occupation has to end.

———

RESOURCES

Oil Change International
http://priceofoil.org/

Interview online at Google Video
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3012158261260226138

See also:

VOICES OF IRAQI OIL WORKERS
Oil & Utility Union Leaders on the Struggle Against Privatization
from Building Bridges, WBAI Radio
WW4 REPORT, July 2007
/node/4160

From our weblog:

NYT op-ed: no to Iraqi oil “denationalization”
WW4 REPORT, March 14, 2007
/node/3344

Alan Greenspan vs. Naomi Klein: who has rights to Iraq’s oil?
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 27, 2007
/node/4481

—————————-

Transcribed and edited by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Nov. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

INDIGENOUS ANARCHISM IN BOLIVIA

An Interview with Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui

by Andalusia Knoll, Rustbelt Radio, Pittsburgh

The South American nation of Bolivia has filled the headlines of the global press with its fight against water privatization, struggle for nationalization of gas, non-compliance with free trade policies, and the 2005 election of the continent’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales. These struggles are rooted in the long history of indigenous resistance to colonialism and imperialism in Bolivia. In an interview conducted during her recent stay in Pittsburgh, subaltern theorist, Aymara sociologist and historian Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui discussed Bolivian anarchism, the health benefits of the coca plant and the cocaleros’ (coca growers) fight for sovereignty. Rivera Cusicanqu is a founder of the Taller de Historia Oral Andina (Workshop on Andean Oral History) and author of Oppressed But Not Defeated: Peasant Struggles Among the Aymara and Quechua in Bolivia, 1910-1980 (United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1987). She was born in 1949 in La Paz.

Andalusia Knoll: Could you talk about some of the things that you have uncovered in your research about anarchism in Bolivia as related to the struggles of the Aymara and Quecha people?

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui: We started as an Aymara collective that basically wanted to uncover the Aymara and Quechua struggles and we discovered that there were many links with urban Aymara communities that had organizations linked both to the indigenous communities and to the union movement, which in the 20’s was basically anarchist.

What happened in Bolivia is that there have been two official histories: the official history written by the [Revolutionary] Nationalist Party—MNR—that basically denies all the agency of both workers and peasants and indigenous peoples; and the official history of the left that forgets about anything that was not Marxist, thus eclipsing or distorting the autonomous history of anarchist unions,

It’s the links between the anarchists and the indigenous people that gave them another nuance, because their communities are self-sustained entities and they basically are places where anti-authoritarian type of organization can take roots. They don’t need this leadership that is like permanent leadership. The communities have leaders, but as a rotational thing that is a service to the community. It’s kind of a burden to be a leader for a community, you know? It’s something you do once in a lifetime and you do because you ought to do, and that the community says its your turn or the turn of your family. So, that creates a totally different relationship with power structures and, in a way, it decolonizes power and to a certain extent gives it back to the people.

That is what fascinated us most about the communities and, on the other hand, it led us to discover that communities were not only rural but also urban and worked with [1920s anarchist] Luis Cusicanqui and other anarchist leaders because they had such an affinity between the way they saw struggle, autonomy, domination, and oppression.

AK: Anarchism in general, I think, is perceived as a European tradition that has been brought to the United States and places like Argentina and people don’t generally associate anarchism with places like Bolivia or places in Africa, et cetera. Could you talk about how anarchism was in line with many of the beliefs of the Aymara and Quechua people and the way their communities were governed.

SRC: A general point of departure of Bolivian history with the rest of Latin America is that many—especially anarchists—have had to go through the filter of their own traditions of struggle that are basically anti-colonial. So, what happened is that there was like a mutual breeding, a mutual fertilization of thought and an ability to interpret universal doctrine that is basically a European doctrine in Bolivian, Chola and Aymara terms.

That’s why Bolivian anarchism is so important, because it has roots in the grassroots urban unions. Because most urban workers were also Indian in Bolivia and still are. 62 percent of the population in Bolivia self-identify as indigenous, as Aymara, Quechua, Guarani and as many other indigenous peoples.

So we have a majority, even in urban settings, and therefore have a particular brand of anarchism. I would say it is Anarcho-Indianism. And also it is Anarcho-Indianism-Feminism because the chola figure, the women, the female fighter, the female organizer, is part of Bolivian daily life. If you have been there you know what the market looks like, how strong these women are, how in solidarity they are when there is a march coming from the cocaleros, when there are these marches that last ten, twenty days without much to eat. These women prepare these huge pots of soup they give away to the poorest people. They have such a tradition of union associations that self-organize. And they self-organize basically in the administration of space,. The market is a space and it’s very symbolic that they take over this space and just grab it from the municipality or from the central state.

So, you have a very specific chola brand of anarchism that explains why it was so attractive for so, so many people. And it explains why one of the most salient things in Bolivian anarchist history is that their leaders made their speeches in Aymara. And just thinking that another non-Western language, non-European language is filtering the thoughts of anarchists and helping to phrase, to express the rage, the proposals, the ideas—it gives such richness, you know? In Aymara you can say, “us” in four different ways.

AK: How do these struggles of indigenous people in the ’20s and ’30s relate to struggles against neoliberalism today?

SRC: Liberalism made its big reforms in the late 19th century, which were anti-Indian reforms. They killed the market for indigenous crafts and goods. They took Indian lands. They jailed all the leaders of the communities. They wanted them to become servants of the haciendas and have a quiet and domesticated, low-paid labor force in the mines and in the factories.

You have a second liberalism here now that wants basically the same thing, except for the issue of haciendas. Haciendas are out of date in Bolivia because of agrarian reform. Yet there is still a need for agrarian reform because the big land ownership has moved, it has been displaced to the lowlands and still it’s doing the same thing. It’s usurping indigenous lands.

So you have basically the same set of problems and aggressions, but you obviously have cultural differences, a cultural gap. Because in those times, you didn’t have much of a literate working class, or literate leadership in the communities. The communities had many problems just trying to understand the language of the documents that decreed their extinction, or decreed the laws against them. So they created a movement in favor of schools. That was another link with the workers, because the workers, especially the anarchists, had their own self-organized schools. The indigenous communities came in search for support for their schools and found a very fertile terrain in the anarchist unions.

AK: Could you talk more about the struggles of the cocaleros? Here in the United States there’s very little dialogue about their struggle and people don’t even realize that there is a difference between coca and cocaine.

SRC: Well, let me tell you, I have been researching, and every time I come to the US I go to the libraries with one question: Why is coca so underground, so unknown, so mistreated, so stigmatized? Why do people believe all these lies? Why can you get any drug but not coca? It’s because if coca was a drug you could get it.

And I’m finding a big conspiracy against coca in the late 19th century by the pharmaceutical industry. And it is a conspiracy against people’s health in general. But the conspiracy against coca was particularly mean and ill because it was a conspiracy against a people. The Indians had been in touch with coca for millennia and have been able to use it in a variety of ways; as a mild stimulant for work, as a ritual item, as a recreational commodity that you chew at parties, at wakes, at weddings, or even as a symbol of identity and of struggle.

So, coca leaves are almost pervasively present in the Bolivian context but there is like this press blindness, blindness of the media. Blindness of the media that in many senses is dictated by the US embassy, you know? It’s the US embassy that dictates the policy on coca and blackmails the government so that if we don’t do as they say, the funds for development or, I don’t know, the funds they give to the Bolivian government will be cut. I always said to the leaders, “Let them cut! We won’t die! And we can’t live forever on somebody else’s alimony.”

It’s hard because really there is a problem of poverty; but poverty in Bolivia is constructed, it’s a result of bad policies! And it’s a result of being robbed of our resources. And so I think the coca issue is very, very enlightening in terms of what the power of interests of corporations can do to truth… Just veil the truth to such an extent that…common sense has been overcome by this absurd idea that coca is cocaine. I have chewed coca since I was 16 years old. When I came to the states, of course you miss everything you don’t have, but I’m not in a [withdrawal] syndrome. I have a [withdrawal] syndrome of coffee! When I quit coffee I had symptoms of being addicted to coffee, but the coca leaves are not addictive. I just chew them and enjoy them everyday and if I don’t have them I don’t chew them and that’s it. And I’m very healthy and I think so many people would be rid of osteoporosis and calcium deficits and gastric disorders and obesity and cardio-vascular problems and diabetes [if coca were available].

And that’s why it is an enemy of the pharmaceuticals; because we wouldn’t need all their shit! All their pills, all their venoms that make us believe that they are good and then they have side effects and then you go back, and they give you another thing, and you keep on going back and then you end up with having a full pharmacy in your drawer and then you feel miserable and you have lost control of your life. That’s what they want and that’s what we’re against and coca is our big, big shield against companies taking over our bodies.

AK: Earlier you had mentioned one of the marches of the cocaleros. Could you talk about some of the actions that people have taken to defend their rights to grow coca and their sovereignty?

SRC: Yes. Well, I like to talk about things I really know first and there have been many, many marches. One of the most impressive ones was in 1994 and it is really very incredible to be a part of one of these events. And in 1998, when things were getting really bad because of forced eradication and assassinations of cocaleros, and army raids where they into the coca fields and destroyed everything was a daily occurrence… there was this big march that I joined… And I was able to get into the rank-and-file cocaleros within the march and see how there is this Gandhian ethic of self-sacrifice accompanied with coca. It’s also a Gandhian ethic of not eating too much, because…[i]t is the force of the spirit and the force of the belief that goes and carries your body. And so your body has to be light. And that’s why you learn a lot about ethics when you do this type of struggle… [Y]ou’re doing a sacrifice for a cause that is for the good of many people and it really feeds your spirit. It is very important to have something beyond your own belly… [A]nd also to go for a cause that is for the whole of the Bolivian people, because sovereignty is the missed task. No revolution of whatever kind—liberal revolution, nationalist revolution, leftist—has really been freed from imperialism, freed from colonial domination.

So, that task requires all the strength and these marches, vigils and hunger strikes have been, always, a typical characteristic of the Bolivian people. A peaceful type of non-violent actions—but so massive! so massive!–where people are ready to die. And that generosity…is very, very heart-lifting, you know? And so, it gives people a strength to overcome many obstacles, to overthrow governments, and to even take governments. And so, I think that’s a result of our strength; our collective strength.

——

This interview originally appeared on Rustbelt Radio, Pittsburgh Indymedia’s weekly review of news from the grassroots. To hear the complete interview, go to http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2007/03/26831.php

It also ran July 25 in The Defenstrator, Philadelphia, PA
http://www.defenestrator.org/silvia_rivera_cusicanqui

RESOURCES:

Anarkismo en Bolivia, Radio Perdida, September 2007
http://radioperdida.blogspot.com/2007/09/anarkismo-en-bolivia.html

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Oct. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

COLOMBIA: PARAS, ARMY STILL KILLING PEASANTS

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

Recent headlines from Colombia tell of imprisoned paramilitary warlords, politicians forced to step down for their links to the paramilitaries—and an unprecedented legal victory, with Chiquita Bananas fined $25 million for underwriting the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a State Department-designated “foreign terrorist organization.” However, the impression created by these stories that the paramilitary terror is a thing of the past is a false one. On the ground in Colombia’s rural war zones, terror grinds on nearly unabated. The AUC seems to have fractured into a new generation of paramilitary outfits, such as the Black Eagles, who have carried out atrocities nearly throughout the country. As before, evidence points to close paramilitary collaboration with the official armed forces. As before, the Colombian army itself also continues to be implicated in assassinations and torture of campesinos and civil leaders. And as before, the targets are often not guerilla collaborators, but leaders of nonviolent civil initiatives such as the San Josecito Peace Community, which assert the right of campesinos to neutrality and non-involvement in the civil war. This overview of recent attacks is provided by Weekly News Update on the Americas.

On the afternoon of July 13, two men who the previous day had identified themselves as members of the Black Eagles paramilitary organization stopped a public bus, forced community leader Dairo Torres out of the vehicle, and shot and killed him in a place very close to a police checkpoint on the road between the towns of Apartado and San Jose in Antioquia department, in northern Colombia. Torres had been involved in the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado since 2004; at the time of his death he was coordinator of the Alto Bonito humanitarian zone, located about a four hour walk from the San Josecito Peace Community. The two paramilitaries who killed him had been seen earlier in the day sitting next to the police at the nearby checkpoint, talking to them. The previous day, July 12, the same two paramilitaries had threatened members of the Peace Community. (Colombia Support Network, July 14; Comunidad de Paz de San Jose de Apartado, July 14)

On July 14, two hooded individuals shot to death Mario Sereno Toscana, a member of the El Palmar Association, and fled after stealing a watch and chain from him. While the attack had the appearance of a common crime, Sereno is the second member of the El Palmar Association to be murdered recently. The association was formed by campesinos reclaiming land in the south of Bolivar department, an area controlled by paramilitaries working in the service of large landholders. (Agencia Prensa Rural, July 15)

On July 16 in Norte de Santander department, campesino Luis Carlos Angarita Rincon was returning from San Pablo, Teorama municipality, where he had gone to carry out a market transaction, to his farm in Aguachica, Puente Real, San Calixto. At an army checkpoint along the road between San Pablo and Bijagual he was apparently detained and tortured to death the next morning by soldiers from the Mobile Brigade No. 15. Angarita, 25 years old, was the father of a two-year-old son and a 10-month-old baby, and also supported his parents and three sisters with disabilities. The family learned of his death when they heard on Radio Catatumbo that his body was in the morgue in Ocana. The radio reported that Angarita was a “member of the Resistencia Bari mobile column of the FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia], killed in combat by the Mobile Brigade No. 15.” An autopsy showed Angarita had no bullet wounds; he appeared to have bled to death. The skin and some of the flesh had been pulled off his arms and buttocks, and his body showed signs of heavy blows in the face and chest. The army now denies any knowledge of the circumstances of Angarita’s death. The community held a silent march on July 20 in San Pablo to demand justice for Angarita and reject the militarization of the zone. (Agencia Prensa Rural, July 20)

On July 17, soldiers from the army’s Mobile Brigade No. 12 set up a checkpoint on the road between the village of El Tigre and the community La Cooperativa, in Vista Hermosa municipality, Meta department. At the checkpoint they stopped a pickup truck driven by Ramiro Romero Bonilla, accompanied by Arnulfo Guerra. The soldiers detained the two campesinos and forced them to board a military helicopter. Three days later there had still been no news of the whereabouts of the two men. (Notimundo, July 20 via Agencia Prensa Rural)

On July 17, two members of the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) abducted 50-year old Pedro Nel Canole Polo as he was cutting wood on his farm in the community of Santo Domingo, Cantagallo municipality, also in the south of Bolivar. Canole had been a resident of the area for over 20 years. An hour after his abduction, his body was found at El Perillo, on the road linking Santo Domingo to Puerto Matilde. (Asociacion Campesina del Valle del Rio Cimitarra, July 19 via Agencia Prensa Rural)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Sept. 3

Early on Aug. 23, a group of Colombian soldiers arrived at the home of campesino Ruben Dario Luna Triana on the Las Delicias farm in the rural community of San Pablo in Chaparral municipality, Tolima department. The soldiers forced Luna out onto his front yard and tortured him in front of his wife and children before cutting his chest and stomach open with a knife. The soldiers then delivered a “coup de grace” pistol shot to Luna’s head and reported him as a “guerrilla killed in combat.” The soldiers were accompanied by Nilson Medina Cometa, a man known in the region for his criminal conduct and now working as an informant for the army’s Jose Domingo Caicedo Battalion.

The community believes the crime is part of a plan by the army to murder campesinos and present them as guerrillas killed in combat, in response to pressure from President Alvaro Uribe Velez and the military high command to show results in the counterinsurgency war.

Luna was the fourth campesino from the region to be murdered in just over a month, and the ninth in less than a year. Camilo Aviles Morales and Jesus Maria Riano were murdered on July 19 in the Espiritu Santo community of Chaparral; and Isaul Buitrago was murdered on Aug. 7 in the community of Gaitan in neighboring Rioblanco. Four more campesinos were killed in Rioblanco in November 2006: Miguel Ipus Medina was killed on Nov. 20 in the La Pradera community; and Heremildo Valero Bedoya, Virginia Hernandez Valero and Abelino Rada Vargas were murdered on Nov. 29 in the Maracaibo community. Another campesino, Harsai Yate Urbano was murdered on May 20, 2007, between the communities of La Cristalina and El Cambrin in Rioblanco. (Adital, Sept. 30 from Prensa Rural)

From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Sept. 30

——

Weekly News Update on the Americas
http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html

See also:

COLOMBIA’S PARAMILITARY PARADOX
Far-Right Militias Survive “Peace Process” and “Para-Politics” Scandal
by Memo Montevino, WW4 REPORT, August 2007
/node/4286

COLOMBIA: “DEMOBILIZED” PARAS TERRORIZE PEASANTS
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
WW4 REPORT, August 2007
/node/4287

From our weblog:

Colombia holds drug lords in floating prisons
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 19, 2007
/node/4450

Chiquita fined $25 million in Colombia terror case
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 19, 2007
/node/4449

Colombia: paras kill more in Chocó
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 6, 2007
/node/4391#comment-306971

Colombia: another killing at San Josecito Peace Community
WW4 REPORT, July 15, 2007
/node/4224

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Oct. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

DESTINATION DARFUR: A NEW COLD WAR OVER OIL

by Vijay Prashad, Frontline, Chennai, India

In February, George W. Bush announced the creation of a new unified combatant command for Africa. After several years of deliberation, the Pentagon finally agreed to create the African Command (AFRICOM), which will relieve the European Command (EUCOM) and the Central Command (CENTCOM), which earlier shared responsibility for Africa.

In July, Bush appointed General William “Kip” Ward to run AFRICOM, which will be based in Germany until it finds an African home (Liberia, home to a Pentagon Omega surveillance tower from 1976 to 1997, is openly lobbying to play host). Sensitive to criticism that AFRICOM seeks military solutions to African problems, the US Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, Theresa Whelan, said, “Africa Command is not going to reflect a US intent to engage kinetically in Africa. This is about prevention. This isn’t about fighting wars.”

Navy Rear Admiral Robert Moeller, who led the Africa Command Implementation Planning Team, pointed out that “the increasing importance of the continent to the US,” particularly on strategic and economic grounds, makes this development necessary. The proximate issues used to push for AFRICOM were the ongoing crisis in Darfur and the failure of the US to act in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

And the less-talked-about issue is the importance of African resources for the US economy and for multinational corporations. Oil is, of course, a central character in this story.

—

In September 2002, The New York Times ran an article with a telling headline, “In Courting Africa, US likes the Dowry: Oil.” The article quoted then Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who said, “Energy from Africa plays an increasingly important role in our energy security.” The following year, a senior Pentagon official told The Wall Street Journal, “A key mission for US forces [in Africa] would be to ensure that Nigeria’s oilfields, which in the future could account for as much as 25 per cent of all US oil imports, are secure.” This figure comes from National Intelligence Council report of 2000 (when the US imported 16% of its oil needs from sub-Saharan Africa).

Since 9-11, the urgency of a stable source of oil has increased. Historian John Ghazvinian’s new book, Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil, points out that not only is African oil of high quality, but it bears other significant political advantages: most African countries are not Organizations of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) members, their oil is not owned by powerful state oil companies, and the oil is largely offshore, which means “that even if a civil war or violent insurrection breaks out onshore [always a concern in Africa], the oil companies can continue to pump out oil with little likelihood of sabotage, banditry or nationalist fervor getting in the way.”

Eighty percent of the oil reserves discovered between 2001 and 2004 come from West Africa, where the US currently procures only 12% of its total supply. West Africa is a crucial site for US interests—so much so that the US is willing to be openly hypocritical about its promotion of democracy and human rights when it comes to the region.

In April 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warmly welcomed her “special friend,” Equatorial Guinea’s man of all seasons and many decades, Teodoro Obiang. Her own Department annually chastises Obiang’s regime for corruption, human rights violations and electoral fraud. Despite being home to some of the poorest people in Africa, Equatorial Guinea is the third largest oil producer in the continent, whose oil the US government hopes will flow across the Atlantic to power the US. The US has been loath to put pressure on Nigeria for the very same reasons.

For decades, the oil regions in West Africa have been “swamps of insurgency” (as the International Crisis Group put it in a 2006 report). Wars in the Niger Delta, for instance, claim lives and communities, as well as barrels of oil. Both the Nigerian and US governments are concerned about “resource control,” and it has been the task of the Nigerian military to clamp down on dissent. Resource wars in the Congo (over diamonds and coltan) and in West Africa (over oil) have set the continent on fire. The US has thus far engaged with these conflicts through Africa’s national armies, who have increasingly become the praetorian guards of large corporations. None of this can be justified directly as protection of the extraction of resources, so it has increasingly been couched in the language of the War on Terror.

The Pan-Sahel Initiative (created in 2002) draws US Special Operations Forces to Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. In 2004, the US extended this to the major oil-producing countries of Algeria, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia and renamed it the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI). After 9-11, the US moved a Special Operations Force into a former French Foreign Legion base, Camp Lemonier, in Djibouti. In July 2003, the US earned the right to deploy P-3 Orion aerial surveillance aircraft in Tamanrasset, Algeria. Under the guise of the War on Terror, the US government moved forces into various parts of Africa, where they trained African armies and have been able to intervene in the increasingly dangerous resource wars.

If the US government is quieter in its approach, right-wing think tanks in the US feel no such compunction. The Heritage Foundation lobbied for the creation of AFRICOM for several years, and arguably its work moved Donald Rumsfeld to consider an African Command. In a 2003 study entitled “US Military Assistance for Africa: A Better Solution,” the Heritage Foundation argued: “Creating an African Command would go a long way towards turning the Bush Administration’s well-aimed strategic priorities for Africa into a reality.” Rather than engage Africa diplomatically, it is better to be diplomatic through the barrel of a gun. “America must not be afraid to employ its forces decisively when vital national interests are threatened,” the study said. Nevertheless, the US will not need always to send its own soldiers. “A sub-unified command for Africa would give the US military an instrument with which to engage effectively in the continent and reduce the potential that America might have to intervene directly.” AFRICOM would analyze intelligence, work “closely with civil-military leaders,” coordinate training and conduct joint exercises. In other words, the US would make the friendly African military forces “inter-operatable” not only with US hardware but also with US interests. When AFRICOM became a reality, Heritage’s Brett Schaefer welcomed the “long overdue” move.

—

At a May gathering of African leaders in Shanghai, the Chinese government promised $20 billion for the continent’s development. Madagascar’s President Marc Ravalomanana enthusiastically said, “We in Africa must learn from your success.” In January, the Chinese Foreign Ministry released a White Paper that pointed out that unlike US and European investment, Chinese finance for Africa would be driven by equity and sustainable development. Technology transfer, the entry of African goods into the Chinese market without barriers, and the entry of Chinese finance for development projects are the main elements of the Chinese strategy (also the main features of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the Addis Ababa Action Plan of 2004-06). With the US and European aid at a low point and with resistance from the US and Europe to compromise on the debt burden of African states, the Chinese proposal was welcomed in many parts of Africa.

But in Washington, among the US establishment’s strategic planners (such as those in the Heritage Foundation), China’s entry into Africa has provoked concern. For people in the Heritage Foundation and in the White House, AFRICOM is as much a response to China as it is to the increased anti-terrorist efforts in the continent.

China is not in Africa for altruistic reasons. A quarter of China’s crude oil imports already come from Africa. African governments are well aware of the competition between the US and China, and they have used that standoff to their partial advantage (when the US would not act fast enough to get Nigeria’s armed forces 200 patrol boats and funds, the Nigerian government turned to China).

A new Cold War over oil has begun in Africa, but the new players are the US (as the face of global oil corporations) and China. The US government’s response has not been able to match the Chinese initiative dollar for dollar. Instead, the US has gone after China for its dealings with the government of Sudan. China promised to invest $10 billion in Sudan, and it currently purchases 70% of Sudanese oil (US-based oil firms cannot trade with Sudan as a result of an embargo in force since 1997). The price for this oil is greater, however, than money.

China blocked votes in the United Nations Security Council on the ongoing violence in Darfur, although global pressure has now forced Beijing to appoint a special envoy to Darfur and put some modest pressure on Khartoum. The close relationship between the US and the leaders of Equatorial Guinea or Nigeria is repellent but not half as dubious as that between the Chinese and Sudanese governments. The US government has, therefore, a potent weapon to wield against Beijing’s claim to be in favor of African development.

—

Since 1984-85, the western Sudanese province of Darfur has been in a prolonged crisis. The drought of those years made it hard for pastoralists to find grazing ground for their camel herds. Battles over land went on for two decades before an embattled and split Islamist government in Khartoum armed the most impoverished of the tribes (who had begun to regain their self-respect through a virulently supremacist ideology promoted by a group called Tajamu al-Arabi, or the Arab Gathering).

These tribes began an onslaught against their settled neighbors, with Khartoum’s support. In a few years over a million people were driven out of their homes to neighboring Chad. The UN estimates that around 70,000 have been killed [as of the end of 2004—WW4R]. (These numbers, incidentally, are dwarfed by the death toll and the population displacement forced by the US occupation of Iraq.) The UN called the Sudan situation a “crime against humanity,” while the US, uncharacteristically, labeled it genocide. For a while the African Union was able to stabilize the situation, although it did not succeed in crafting a political solution to the problem. The African Union, created in 1999, has neither the financial ability to pay its troops nor the logistical capacity to do the job. The European Union, which paid the troops’ salaries, began to withhold funds on grounds of accountability, and this gradually killed off the peacekeeping operations.

Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University (one of the world’s leading experts on contemporary Africa), says of this: “There is a concerted attempt being made to shift the political control of any intervention force inside Darfur from inside Africa to outside Africa.” In other words, the US and Europe are eager to control the dynamics of what happens in Africa and not allow an indigenous, inter-state agency to gain either the experience this would provide or the respect it would gain if it succeeds. The African Union has been undermined so that only the US can appear as the savior of the beleaguered people of Darfur, and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, it suits the US that the campaigns to save the people of Darfur concentrate on the role of China and on what is often framed as an “Arab” assault on “Africans.” The Save Darfur Coalition in the US, for instance, has a report on the “Deadly Partnership” between Sudan and China but says nothing of the role of the US in undermining the African Union’s attempts. The Coalition is more sophisticated than can fit into the Arab-African stereotypes, but its members include groups that are less careful (the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, for instance, is an organizational member; it has not yet tried to distance itself from its parent organization’s role in the Gujarat pogroms).

The Save Darfur Coalition, which is the largest US umbrella organization, was formed in 2004 through the work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Jewish World Service. People who have been motivated by the efforts of the group are aware of what is happening in Darfur. This is a worthwhile goal, particularly if it is able to bring a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement in Darfur. But, the movement seems to have no viable strategy to do this beyond putting pressure on China and pleading with the US government to take “tough” stands against Khartoum. The complexity on the ground is irrelevant.

The heads of the Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention Network (set up by the Center for American Progress) are all liberal Democrats who played some kind of a role in the Bill Clinton administration. The Darfur campaign enables them to distance themselves from the excesses of the Bush regime and yet preserve an essential element of the Clinton foreign policy arsenal, “humanitarian intervention” (as in the Kosovo war of 1999). For that reason, these groups have begun to offer the slogan, “Out of Iraq and Into Darfur.” At a forum in New York City on July 15, a young woman asked why the US could not use its superior firepower to defeat the Janjaweed in Sudan. At the same event, the documentary film The Devil Came on Horseback shows the former US Marine Brian Steidle photograph a band of Janjaweed militia leave a village and wish he could exchange his telephoto lens for a gun-scope to “end it now.” Private mercenary armies such as the International Peace Operations Association and DynCorp International clamor to cross the Chad border and conduct operations against the Janjaweed.

The language of “no-fly zones” and sanctions is not only in the air, but it is close to becoming a reality. The New York Times’ Nicholas D. Kristof on July 16, called for the creation of a US-run “no-fly zone” over Darfur, which would be an entry point into the militarization of the response to what is, by the authority of the African Union and Human Rights Watch, a messy political situation. (The rebel groups have split up and are themselves attacking humanitarian workers).

In May, Bush unilaterally implemented tighter economic sanctions, and promised to move another Security Council resolution. That the first head of AFRICOM is the former commander of the battalion that led Operation Restore Hope in Somalia in 1993 is an ominous sign. Would a cruise missile strike on Khartoum (a replay of 1998) and an invasion of Darfur create a solution to the current crisis, or would it only create an Iraq in Africa?

——

Vijay Prashad teaches at Trinity College, Hartford, CT.

This article originally ran in Frontline, Chennai, India
http://www.frontline.in/fl2415/stories/20070810506906200.htm

It also appeared Aug. 19, 2007 in Toward Freedom
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1100/1/

RESOURCES:

China & Sudan: Deadly Partnership, Save Darfur Campaign
http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/china_and_sudan

UN estimates about 180,000 people have died in Darfur
AP, March 16, 2005
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-03-16-darfur_x.htm

UN puts Darfur dead at 70,000
CNN, Dec. 21, 2004
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/12/21/sudan.darfur.dead/index.html

In Quietly Courting Africa, U.S. Likes the Dowry: Oil
by James Doo, New York Times, Sept. 19, 2002
via CommonDreams
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0919-09.htm

See also:

CHINA IN AFRICA: THE NEW DEBATE
by Walden Bello, Foreign Policy in Focus
WW4 REPORT, May 2007
/node/3738

NIGER DELTA: BEHIND THE MASK
Ijaw Militia Fight the Oil Cartel
by Ike Okonta
WW4 REPORT, January 2007
/node/2974

SAVE DARFUR: ZIONIST CONSPIRACY?
Exploiting African Genocide for Propaganda
by Ned Goldstein, WW4 REPORT, October 2006
/node/2582

From our weblog:

Darfur: Sudan woos some rebels —bombs others
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 15, 2007
/node/4429

Mali: Tuareg rebels fire on US military plane
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 14, 2007
/node/4427

Africa Command: “Follow the oil”
WW4 REPORT, Feb. 16, 2007
/node/3154

More denial on Darfur —this time from the “left”
(WW4R takes issue with Mahmood Mamdani’s analysis)
WW4 REPORT, March 18, 2007
/node/3368

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Oct. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

BOOTS, BEARDS, BURQAS, BOMBS

The Politics of Militarism and Islamist Extremism in Pakistan

by Beena Sarwar, Himal Southasian

The Pakistan Army emerged victorious from the Lal Masjid battle that took place in Islamabad on July 10, following a week’s standoff. But it is a victory achieved at a heavy price. The bloodshed in the Red Mosque upped the ante in the ongoing war between the “boots and the beards,” to use the terminology of young Pakistanis for the military and the religious extremists. It also involves the burqas—hundreds of young girls and women affiliated with the Jamia Hafsa girls’ madrassa adjacent to the mosque became an integral part of the story.

By the end of the army operation, the mosque’s name, derived from the red bricks with which it is built, took on a new, bloody connotation. Elite units of the Pakistan Army pounded the sprawling two-acre compound with automatic and chemical weapons for more than 12 hours, fiercely resisted by armed militants inside. By the end of the fighting, over 70 of the mosque’s affiliates, including their leader, Ghazi Abdul Rasheed, were dead. So were ten army men. The number of dead may have been much higher than the official number, however. Some were burnt beyond recognition, and may have included women and children. Smoke that still lingered over the site two days later was identified as residue from the Pakistan Army’s use of white phosphorus, a hot-burning substance prohibited by the Geneva Convention for use against civilians.

For months, Gen. Pervez Musharraf had allowed the militants of the Lal Masjid to run a parallel Taliban-style government in the heart of the capital. They had damaged billboards and other property that they deemed “vulgar,” and ransacked music and video shops. Female students from the madrassa occupied a children’s library in January; their spiriting away of six Chinese massage-parlor girls was apparently the last straw. It is believed that pressure from Beijing, Pakistan’s long-time ally, finally goaded Gen Musharraf into besieging the mosque, and ordering its inmates to surrender. A week later, he launched Operation Silence, originally expected to last only a couple of hours.

Ghazi and Abdul

The Lal Masjid saga exploded in July but it actually dates back to the late 1970s, when America enlisted Pakistan, led by the all-too-willing Gen. Zia ul-Haq, as a frontline state against the Russian communists who had invaded Afghanistan. Soon the Pakistani madrassas were flush with American and Saudi money. The influx coincided with the rise of Khomeini’s Shi’ite Iran, perceived as a threat by the Saudis who until then were the undisputed “leaders” of the Muslim world. More madrassas, mostly financed by the Saudis but some also by the Iranians, began appearing in Pakistan, along with training camps for the Mujahideen. Afghanistan’s fight for national independence was transformed into a jihad. (Ironically, Gen. Zia’s son, Ijaz ul-Haq, Pakistan’s Minister for Religious Affairs, was among the negotiators trying to work out a solution to the situation, until talks failed reportedly due to pressure from Washington, DC).

Hailing from a poor family of Baloch Mazaris in southern Punjab, Ghazi Abdul Rasheed’s father, Maulana Abdullah, was the first khateeb (chief orator) of the Lal Masjid, when the government’s Auqaf (department for religious affairs) built it in 1965. Abdullah retained this post for the following three decades. The Lal Masjid, like so many others during that time, eventually developed into the fortified, multi-storied mosque-madrassa complex that was the focus of international television networks for a week in July. When a gunman, believed to belong to a rival Islamist group, murdered Abdullah in the mosque courtyard in 1998, it was just part of a by-then familiar pattern.

Ghazi Abdul Rasheed began as a moderate youth who initially rejected his father’s religious training. Instead of going into the madrassa, he did a Masters in International Relations from the well-regarded, secular Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. He worked at the Ministry of Education and UNESCO, married into a moderate family, and attended mixed gatherings. Rasheed’s subsequent radicalization itself reflects the rise of “militant Islam” in Pakistan.

After the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1988-89, the world turned its attention away from the war-ravaged country. The purpose had been served: communism had been defeated. The Mujahideen, who for the previous decade had been steeped in the mindset of jihad and violence, began fighting each other. Many returned to a Pakistan bereft of their chief patron, Gen Zia, who had been killed in an as-yet unexplained mid-air explosion in August 1988.

It is no coincidence that the farce of Pakistan’s “return to democracy” was marked not only by governments being regularly dissolved by caretaker set-ups overseeing fresh elections, but by a rise in sectarian violence that claimed hundreds of lives. Maulana Abdullah appears to be but one of the casualties of a fire that he himself was involved in stoking.

The Maulana’s murder brought his younger son, Ghazi Abdul Rasheed, back into the fold, guided by his elder brother, Abdul Aziz, who inherited the title of mosque khateeb. Rasheed continued his job with the Ministry of Education but became increasingly drawn to the faith, growing a beard and taking more interest in the affairs of the mosque and its madrassa. The turning point for him was September 11, 2001 and the ensuing US invasion of Afghanistan. In 2004, he was at the centre of a controversial fatwa, according to which Pakistan Army soldiers killed during operations in South Waziristan were to be considered infidels not worthy of a Muslim burial. The Lal Masjid’s links with al-Qaeda were also revealed that year. Rasheed was accused of plotting to attack government installations, but was soon mysteriously cleared of those charges, supported by Ijaz ul-Haq. A group of Uzbeks were instead found guilty.

The Lal Masjid again came into the limelight following the London bombings of July 2005, when it was reported that some of the perpetrators had recently visited the mosque. But the Islamabad government again sat back, making no attempt to arrest the brothers, even after declaring them as wanted criminals.

Blowback

The links between Pakistan’s intelligence agencies and the country’s militant Islamists have long been apparent. Those affiliated with the Lal Masjid are no exception. Abdul Aziz told journalists that he often visited intelligence-agency officers disguised in a burqa. These links seem to have been behind the ineffectual attempts by Gen. Musharraf’s administration to deal with the unfolding situation at the mosque—the indecisiveness in direct contrast to the heavy-handedness with which liberal or secular protests are handled.

The government’s inaction emboldened the Lal Masjid affiliates to start undertaking vigilante action in Islamabad, along the lines of the Taliban’s Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Department, or Saudi Arabia’s Morality Police—something that their brothers in Peshawar and areas bordering Afghanistan had long been doing with impunity. The government did nothing to put down this growing monster in the country’s capital. The Lal Masjid had encroached on government land to build the Jamia Hafsa women’s madrassa, and so electricity, gas and water to the illegal structure could have been cut off long ago. The madrassa had been in operation for years before the government served it notice in January, in a drive to demolish illegal buildings. It was in protest of this order that Jamia Hafsa students occupied the children’s library.

All of this was well before Gen. Musharraf suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on spurious charges. This sparked off a lawyers’ movement for constitutionality that erupted into widespread public protest in March—and was then conveniently relegated to the background by the drama surrounding the Lal Masjid. On July 20, in a landmark judgment, the Supreme Court ruled that Chaudhry be reinstated, and quashed the charges of misconduct against him. While the Chaudhry issue has significantly reduced Gen. Musharraf’s political standing, the Lal Masjid affair weakened his links to the crucial religious right.

Dire predictions of Gen Musharraf’s underestimation of the ramifications of the Lal Masjid calamity began immediately. “The government, with its ham-handed handling of the situation, has in fact created the potential for further problems ahead,” warned lawyer Asma Jahangir, chair of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. “The deaths of so many at the hands of state forces may act only to pave the way for greater extremism in society and support for the violent cause militants espouse.”

The US-based think tank Statfor noted in early July that radical Islamist forces constitute a minority in Pakistan, although a significant one. “While the vast majority of Pakistanis do not support jihadists, they do not necessarily support Musharraf’s agenda either,” Stafor’s researchers noted. The report also predicted that the Red Mosque operation is likely to be “the beginning of a long confrontation between the state and radical/militant Islamist forces,” which could lead to military operations in North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the tribal areas, “as well as nationwide social unrest.”

These apprehensions were soon borne out. Since July 10, pro-Taliban elements have increasingly clashed with the Pakistani military, and have intensified suicide attacks around the country, taking scores of lives. For the first time, a suicide bomber targeted a lawyers’ pro-democracy rally on July 17 in Islamabad, just minutes before Iftikhar Chaudhry was to arrive to address the meeting. The target, a welcome stall set up by workers of Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples’ Party, raised speculation that the bomber was aiming at not just the lawyers’ movement but also Bhutto, for having supported Gen. Musharraf’s action against the Lal Masjid. Two days later, three separate attacks killed more than 40 people in Balochistan and NWFP, where more than 100 had been killed during the previous week alone.

This is a situation that military action alone will never resolve. What is needed is a long-term political road-map, to bring Pakistan back into the fold of democracy. Meanwhile, as Gen. Musharraf battles religious zealots and political liberals, unable to take assistance from one against the other, it is clear that there is more violence, rather than less, written in Pakistan’s immediate future.

——

This story first appeared in the August issue of Himal Southasian, Kathmandu, Nepal
http://www.himalmag.com/2007/august/analysis_lal_masjid_beena.htm

It also ran in the September issue of Peacework, Cambridge, MA
http://www.peaceworkmagazine.org/

See also:

RAPE AND REFORM IN PAKISTAN
Real Change on Anti-Woman “Hudood” Laws?
by Abira Ashfaq, Peacework
WW4 REPORT, April 2007
/node/3494

From our weblog:

It hits the fan in Pakistan —as pipeline talks open with Iran
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 25, 2007
/node/4473

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Oct. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

BOLIVIA: END OF THE NEW SOCIAL PACT?

Fears of “Civil War” as Constituent Assembly Deadlocks

by Federico Fuentes, Green Left Weekly

Having come out of an intense period of political confrontation, including the biggest mobilization in Bolivia’s history, this landlocked country situated in the heart of rebellious South America seems on the verge of plunging into a new phase of open conflict. At the center of this is the country’s Constituent Assembly—a central plank of Bolivia’s cultural and democratic revolution, led by the country’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales—which was convened over a year ago with the goal of achieving a new social pact between Bolivia’s conflicting sectors and drafting a new constitution that would for the first time include the country’s indigenous majority.

Both sides of the political line now openly talk about the possibility of the closure of the assembly, which has already passed its initial Aug. 6 deadline to present a new draft constitution without a single article having been approved. Outside the assembly, in the streets of Sucre, the number of pickets and people on hunger strike continues to grow. Protests by locals in Sucre continue to radicalize, angered by the assembly’s vote to leave out any debate over where the capital of Bolivia should be.

On Aug. 22, the ABI news service reported that “mobilizations in Sucre, spilled over this Wednesday into acts of vandalism, persecution of constituent delegates, attacks against houses, looting of union headquarters, destruction of media installations, and physical aggressions against journalists.” The assembly indefinitely suspended its sessions due to the lack of any guarantees for the safety of delegates. While Sucre is the historic capital of Bolivia, ever since the 1899 civil war La Paz has been the country’s political capital. The cries for the return of the capital to Sucre, stoked by the right-wing opposition to the Morales government, have raised tensions across Bolivia and revived fears of another “civil war.”

The previous day, brawling broke out in Bolivia’s congress following moves by Morales’s party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), to elect new members to the Constitutional Tribune and replace the current judges—aligned with the neoliberal right—who had suspended four members of the Supreme Court legally appointed by Morales at the end of last year. MAS. pushed through its agenda in the chamber of deputies, without the presence of the opposition. The vote now must go to the opposition-controlled senate.

Responding to the increased threats to the process of change the country is undergoing, Maximo Romero, a cocalero (coca-grower) leader from the Chapare region, was quoted by ABI on Aug. 20: “If some sectors, political parties and others, do not allow the Constituent Assembly to advance, it will be necessary for the social organizations to organize ourselves, and we will respond to the provocations by surrounding Sucre” in order to “defend the continuity of the assembly.”

Romero’s comments came as the Six Federations of the Tropics of Cochabamba—Bolivia’s chief cocalero organization, where Morales began his political career in the ’80s—began to mobilize 7,000 cocaleros to march on Sucre. Other campesino groups, including the Union Confederation of Campesinos of Bolivia (CSCB), will join them. The ABI article quoted CSCB relations secretary Rosendo Mita declaring that “whether they [the opposition] want it or not, the assembly will continue its work until December.”

“They [the right-wing opposition] are calling for violence. If we don’t resolve this via consensus, it has to be resolved via violence,” said Bolivia’s Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera. “Those that don’t want the assembly are proposing violence.”

Warning of the impact of the impending mobilizations of the cocaleros and campesinos, first vice president of the Constituent Assembly Roberto Aguilar said, “We are searching for channels of dialogue to impede confrontation.”

On Aug. 22 Garcia Linera was quoted by ABI as saying: “To wear down the old powers will cost a lot, it will be conflictive, the population needs to be conscious of this, and the best way to defend the continuity of the process of change is through democratic mobilization to back this transformation and to put an end to the history of these old elites, of their old privileges, of their old shameful quotas, so that they never return to the country.”

Troubles in the Constituent Assembly

Since convening on Aug. 6, 2005, the Constituent Assembly has been plagued by confrontations as a re-emergent opposition—organized out of the city of Santa Cruz in the east of Bolivia and which has at its core the Santa Cruz elite, gas transnationals, large agribusiness, and the United States embassy—has attempted to derail the process of change.

Aiming to mobilize the white, middle-class sectors in opposition to Morales’s indigenous revolution and defend their economic power, these elites have raised the banner of departmental (regional) autonomy as a way of shielding themselves from the measures taken by Morales’s government.

By blocking any steps forward by the national government, particularly in the Constituent Assembly, they hope to sow disillusion and pave the way for their return to government. These same interests, which never wanted the Constituent Assembly, have been working from within it and from without to ensure it fails.

For the first eight months, the assembly was deadlocked over rules of procedure and debate, with the opposition demanding a two-thirds majority for all votes as a way to prevent the possibility of any radical measures being introduced into the new constitution.

Once this was won, a combination of factors soon acted to again stall the process. First, when voting began within the assembly’s 21 commissions over what report to present to the assembly as a whole, MAS. maneuvered in a few of the key commissions so that, in alliance with some smaller parties, it could essentially present both the majority and minority report and lock out the right.

Threatening to walk out of the assembly, the right wing retreated to its trenches in Bolivia’s east. On July 2, the anniversary of a national referendum on departmental autonomy, the opposition in Santa Cruz launched its proposed statutes for autonomy, warning that the eastern half of the country would reject any constitution that did not incorporate its proposals.

At the same time, almost out of nowhere, the demand for the return of the capital to Sucre emerged. The protests, which began in Sucre, were supported by the opposition so as to create a diversionary debate and heighten tensions. It also saw it in its interest to have the capital closer to the east and away from the combative social movements predominately based in the country’s west. In response, around 1.5 million people mobilized in La Paz on July 20 to defend its position as the capital.

As the Aug. 6 deadline continued to draw closer, a debate opened up as to who had the power to extend the assembly’s mandate. Given the opposition’s majority in the senate, allowing it to block any extension, the ultra-right separatist wing of the Santa Cruz elite began to raise fears of MAS imposing its own constitution against the will of the “half moon” (Bolivia’s four eastern states—Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, and Tarija) and forcing the country into a “civil war.”

The specter of an indigenous-military parade scheduled to occur in Santa Cruz the day after the assembly’s deadline, with the legendary “Red Ponchos” (Aymara militants with a long history of armed resistance) marching side by side with the armed forces in heart of the east, was used to conjure up the threat of “indigenous revenge” against the region. Meanwhile, more and more evidence emerged of the movement of illegal arms into the hands of right-wing militias in the east.

From One Challenge to the Next

Only at the last minute did the Bolivian congress vote to extend the Constituent Assembly deadline until Dec. 14. Then, on Aug. 7, rather than the prophesied “racial revenge” and threats of clashes, thousands flocked to view the indigenous-military parade.

Venezuela’s El Nacional reported the following day that during his speech at the parade, Morales stated: “The presence of the armed forces and indigenous peoples is in no way a provocation against anyone, it is so that all of us can get to know each other. We are united with the social movements to take forward the cultural revolution and the process of change within democracy.”

Sending a clear message to Santa Cruz’s ultra-right separatists, Gen. Wilfredo Vargas, chief of the armed forces, was quoted as saying: “Today the institutionality of the country is threatened by abominable enemies who are not in agreement with our development and independence.” The general added that Bolivia’s armed forces “are always alert in order to confront the enemies of the homeland.”

However, protests continued over the issue of the capital, and the east continued to maintain its threat to boycott the assembly and reject any constitution that does not enshrine the version of departmental autonomy pushed by the elite.

The groundwork for a future confrontation has already been laid.

At stake with the question of the extension of the assembly’s deadline was the possibility that, needing to produce a constitution in a few days, the assembly would end up with a majority report from MAS, supported by the indigenous and social movements, and a minority report from the opposition. The aim of the opposition would then have been to get a majority for its draft in the east and demonstrate in practice the “validity” of the concept of “two Bolivias,” triggering a possible disintegration of the country.

While that threat was averted, the pact agreed to by all the parties—including MAS and the opposition—in order to facilitate the extension may have created a minefield for assembly delegates. According to the agreement, once the deadline is over, those articles where a two-thirds majority could not be reached in the assembly will be put to a national referendum. Those that are supported by voters will then go back to the assembly and be incorporated into the draft constitution. The draft would then, in turn, go to a national referendum.

This could create a number of future problems for MAS. First, the whole process could take up to the end of next year, increasing the possibility of general discontent with constitutional reform as a whole. While the polls still show a large majority support the assembly, the opposition’s campaign of stalling has had an impact.

Secondly, the opposition may be able to present its “alternative” constitution, in the form of numerous key articles that will go to the first referendum. It will undoubtedly be aiming to win a majority in the east for these articles. In fact, the process may act as an incentive for the right to not seek any consensus and instead to test the strength of the two camps in the referendum.

Bolivia’s Future

Lastly, as MAS constituent delegate Raul Prada pointed out to Erbol radio station on Aug. 4, the law to extend the deadline means that “the Constituent Assembly has been converted into an appendix of the congress and lost all its originario character.” This pact has demonstrated in practice that the Constituent Assembly, despite all the discussion over whether it is originario—that is, above the current constituted state bodies—is for now subordinated to the constituted powers. This is undoubtedly part of the reason why MAS is intent on electing new judges to the Constitutional Tribunal.

Bolivia’s mainstream media portrays the pact as a decisive step by MAS toward the center of politics and away from the radical left and indigenous movements, playing on divisions that have begun to emerge.

However, faced with a growing polarization, an emergent right with a real base in the east, transnationals that continue to oppose nationalization of the country’s significant gas reserves, the presence of American troops over the border in Paraguay and the very real threat of the disintegration of Bolivia, attempting to reach pacts in order to buy time and build up forces for future confrontations may be a sensible move by MAS.

Moreover, it is necessary for MAS to avoid unnecessary and premature confrontation. Part of the political struggle is projecting a viable and convincing course to defend the territorial integrity of Bolivia and overall social stability. These issues weigh heavily on the minds of middle-class elements and on important sections of the armed forces. They add weight to the need to concentrate on widening the scope of political struggle against the right.

The right, well aware of this, resorts to provocations, street violence and threats to defy constitutional authority wherever it senses it has the strength to do so.

This is why the government has been quick to charge that those who are in favor of closing the assembly are in favor of violence and are actually acting against the call for autonomy—because departmental autonomy can only be agreed to within the framework of the assembly.

Nevertheless, Argentine journalist Pablo Stefanoni, a former adviser to Morales, warned in an article in Pulso of a current policy of “unfocused pactism” being pushed by MAS—seeking pacts at all cost—which could send the Constituent Assembly to “the cemetery,” or produce a constitution that suits neither the social movements nor the Santa Cruz elite.

For Prada, it seems that only two exits to the current situation exist: conclude working in an honorable way within the rules of the game, or definitively kick over the table and search for new conditions, breaking with the constituted powers. Either way, MAS will need to continue to mobilize Bolivia’s poor majority, centered around the country’s powerful indigenous and campesino movements, behind a firm defense of indigenous self-determination and national integrity against imperialism, and against the separatist Santa Cruz oligarchy. The actions of MAS and the social movements up until now, and the renewed calls for mobilization emanating from the heart of MAS—the cocaleros—are, on the whole, signs for optimism in this dangerous battle for Bolivia’s future.

——

This story first appeared Aug. 27 Green Left Weekly, New South Wales, Australia
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/722/37494

See also:

BOLIVIA: STREET HEAT FOR NATIONALIZATION
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
WW4 REPORT, March 2007
/node/3264

CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM IN BOLIVIA
Between Electoral Theater and Revolution
by Ben Dangl, Upside Down World
WW4 REPORT, Aug. 2006
/node/2261

From our weblog:

Bolivia: massive march for national unity
WW4 REPORT, July 23, 2007
/node/4254

——————-

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Sept. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

MAURITANIA: WILL NEW ANTI-SLAVERY LAW BE ENOUGH?

from IRIN

The Mauritanian government must take additional measures to ensure a new law criminalizing slavery has an effect, human rights activists say.

“The new law is a very positive first step. It is only a first step though,” said Romana Cacchioli, Africa Program Coordinator for the British nongovernmental pressure group, Anti-Slavery International. “We don’t eradicate slavery just by introducing a law.”

On Aug. 8, Mauritania’s National Assembly unanimously adopted a law criminalizing slavery, which continues to exist in Mauritania in both traditional and contemporary forms. The law, passed by the Senate on Aug. 22, makes slavery punishable by 5-10 years in prison. It marks the first time in Mauritanian history that slaveholders have been sanctioned.

However, in the wake of the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition on Aug. 23, local and international organizations are calling on the government to do more to give the law real meaning for the estimated half million slaves in Mauritania.

“Accompanying measures are necessary so that this law is not forgotten-so that it actually contributes to the emancipation of former slaves,” said Mamadou Moctar Sarr, executive secretary of the forum of national human rights organizations in Mauritania.

“It’s not too soon to start talking about the next steps that should be taken,” said Julia Harrington of the Open Society Justice Initiative, an international program for law reform. “The existing law is not really going to be effective all by itself,” she told IRIN from Nouakchott, where she was meeting with NGO’s to discuss how best they could lobby the government.

Other Steps Are Necessary

NGO.s are asking for a monitoring and implementation mechanism that would apply the law, investigate allegations of slavery, mediate the release of slaves, and award compensation.

“The passage of this law is incredibly important and symbolic, but there’s still a lack of clarity about what its practical effect is going to be,” Harrington said.

As it stands now, victims of slavery must take their complaints to the police, “who probably don’t have the mentality and definitely don’t have the resources to implement the law.” She said victims also need the legal right to take their masters to court in a civil suit, a provision that was not included in the law.

The NGOs insist former slaves need social and economic reintegration projects if they are to be truly free. They want the government to set up welcome centers for slaves who leave their masters and give them access to land and income-generating activities.

“Even if they are no longer slaves, as long as there is financial dependency, they will never be totally free,” said Sarr, of the forum of Mauritanian human rights organizations.

Another key demand is free education for children of slave descent. “All these people need to know their rights, so that they know that they are whole persons who should be proud of themselves,” Sarr added.

The groups say an awareness campaign is essential to spread the news that slavery is a criminal offence, and that it has been deemed incompatible with Islam. Mauritania is West Africa’s only Islamic republic. According to Cacchioli, religious leaders have promised to talk about the abolition of slavery in their sermons.

The groups are also pushing for a comprehensive law against discrimination, which would address the relationship between slavery and discrimination. “Many of the legacies of slavery are around discrimination,” Cacchioli added, noting some people of slave descent have been prevented from owning land, accessing water, and running in elections.

Longstanding Practice

Slavery has existed for centuries in Mauritania, a Sahelian country that falls geographically and culturally between Arab North Africa and black sub-Saharan Africa. The enslavement of the black Arabic speakers (Haratines) is not limited to the upper class white Moores (Berber-Arabs) but also exists among black Africans, mostly of the Halpulaar and Soninké ethnic groups.

Prevalence of the internationally banned practice is hard to quantify. One estimate by the Open Society Justice Initiative places the number of slaves and former slaves at 20 percent of the population – or about 500,000 people – but the organization says the numbers are impossible to confirm. According to most estimates, the Haratine cast-slaves, former slaves, or the descendants of slaves-make up between 40-50 percent of the Mauritanian population, although the government has not officially released results from the last census.

Forms of slavery in Mauritania range from people who live independently but cannot get married without their master’s permission to people who “don’t get a single bit of food unless it comes from their master’s hands, spend their lives looking after their masters, and get beaten every day,” according to the Justice Initiative’s Harrington.

Shift in Attitudes

NGOs say that despite its shortcomings, the new law marks a huge shift in government attitude. Slavery was banned in Mauritania in 1981, but previous governments always denied the practice existed and the subject remained taboo.

“This law is a recognition that the practice exists,” said Boubacar Messaoud, president of SOS-Esclaves, the local NGO that led the push for an anti-slavery law.

All NGOs contacted by IRIN said they believed Mauritania’s first democratically elected government-elected in March 2007-was sincere in its promise to eradicate slavery and would take their requests seriously.

“We are optimistic,” Messaoud said. “And we will continue to push for these accompanying measures until one day we get them because they are the solution to the problem.”

———

This story was first run Aug. 24 by the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), a United Nations news service
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73936

RESOURCES:

Anti-Slavery International
http://www.antislavery.org/

Open Society Justice Initiative
http://www.justiceinitiative.org/

Mauritanian Human Rights Watch
http://www.almarsad.org/

SOS-Escalves
http://www.sosesclaves.org/

See also:

FROM DARFUR TO MAURITANIA
The African Liberation Forces of Mauritania Speak
On Slavery and Genocide in the Sahel
by Bill Weinberg
WW4 REPORT, October 2006
/node/2572

From our weblog:

Mauritania to repatriate 20,000 refugees?
WW4 REPORT, June 23, 2007
/node/4111

—————————-

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Sept. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

YEMEN: THE NEXT QUAGMIRE

Washington’s New Terror War Flashpoint?

by Mohamed Al-Azaki

MARIB, Yemen – “After the Spaniards, who will be next to die in this vibrant, ‘living museum,’ as Yemenis call their country?” So asked one member of a group of Italian tourists leaving Yemen after the horrible attack.

It is a dreadful question after the al-Qaeda car bomb attack detonated near the Sun Temple archeological site in Marib province, some 150 km east of the capital Sana’a, killing eight Spanish tourists and two Yemenis on July 2.

There have been no arrests in the case, and a $76,000 reward offered by President Ali Abdullah Saleh for any information about those responsible for the attack is still valid. Exactly one month after the attack, Yemen’s Interior Ministry published photographs of 10 men it said were involved in the attack.

The photographs of the suspects appeared in the military newspaper 26 September, which reported that the Interior Ministry identified the bomber as Abdo Saad Rahiqa—who is said to have carried out the attack with the help of five Yemenis, a Saudi Arabian and an Egyptian national.

“It was almost a revenge story for the killing of their senior al-Qaeda operative, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harthi,” says a security official in Marib, who declined to provide any further details because of the sensitivity of the situation. Al-Harthi was a suspect in the USS Cole bombing that his car was attacked in Marib by a Hellfire missile launched from an unmanned Predator drone in November 2002

Yemen’s oil and gas industry—tiny by global standards but the source of two thirds of Yemen’s GDP—was also attacked last September. The attacks on the state-owned refinery at Safer in Marib, and Canadian-owned storage facility at Athubah in Hadhramout, left a security guard and the four attackers dead.

An al-Qaeda message at the time of the attacks warned that they were “only the first spark” and that future operations would be “severe and bitter.” Now it has turned its sights on the tourism industry, the second arm of the national economy and the source of a third of Yemen’s GDP.

“Al-Qaeda group vows to turn Yemen into a ‘quagmire’ for the West and US in particular, due to the Yemen’s alliance with the US-led war on terrorism that targeted Islam, as they see it,” says Abdul-Elah Shayiee, Yemeni specialist in terrorism affairs at the state-owned SABA news agency.

Could Yemen follow on the heels of Afghanistan and Iraq as the third major venue in the war on terrorism?

Thirty-six suspects are on trial in the capital Sana’a, accused of forming an “al-Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula-Yemen.” Accused of involvement in the oil facility attacks, they have pleaded not guilty, saying they were tortured by security forces and forced to sign false confessions.

This swathe of ancient Arabia—a magical mix of green mountains and deserts and cloud-high villages where time often seems to stand still—has become a “living museum” where tourists are escorted by soldiers dressed in white robes, combat jackets and checkered head clothes. They often demand tourists give them money for buying qat—“hag-al-qat” in Yemeni dialect—a mildly narcotic leaf which is chewed by the majority of Yemeni adults near the end of every day across the country.

Travel roads are dotted with checkpoints controlled by soldiers—or by tribesmen with a proclivity for abducting foreigners to pressure the government into providing better services or to secure the release of jailed relatives. Usually hostages are treated like honored guests and released unharmed, but in 1998, four Westerners were killed during a botched rescue attempt.

A former German government minister, his wife and three children were kidnapped in Yemen in December 2005. Five Italian tourists were kidnapped in Yemen in January 2006 and then released. In all these cases, the hostages were released unharmed. But even a very short news story on the abducting of Western tourists in Yemen is enough to erase the efforts of several years of investment and tourism promotions.

Extreme patience is required for a tour outside the capital to Marib, the most important archeological zone, where the Queen of Sheba once ruled over an empire of myrrh and frankincense. Tribes in Marib have had a strained relationship with central government for decades.

The local economy has suffered since the July attacks. “Everything went upside down,” says Ahmed Salim, owner of a tourism company in Marib. “Tourism is the backbone of economy here, but the challenge is how to get the trust of tourists over again.”

Yemen has been trying to make the Queen of Sheba temple, known for its imposing columns marking the entrance, a major tourist attraction following its recent renovation.

Yemen is one of the oldest continuously inhabited regions in the world, its locales referenced in the Old Testament and Koran. According to Yemen’s folklore, Sana’a was built by the eldest son of Prophet Noah, Shem or Sam in Arabic; it may also have been the town of Azal referenced in the book of Zechariah. To this day, Sana’a is locally nicknamed “Sam City.”

About 150 kilometers east of Sana’a, Marib was the capital of Sheba, or Saba, the mightiest kingdom of ancient Arabia, and the most famous archaeological site in modern Yemen. Islam’s holy book, the Koran, in a chapter called “The City of Saba,” describes the Sheba kingdom this way: “There was indeed a sign for Sheba in their dwelling place: Two gardens on the right hand and the left (as who should say): Eat of the provision of your Lord and render thanks to Him. A fair land and an indulgent Lord!” (Surah 34:15)

The Bible talks about a visit made by the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon in Jerusalem, where she took with her camels bearing spices, gold and precious stones. “Never again did spices come in such quantity as that which the queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon,” according to 1 Kings 10.

In Old Marib, now deserted on top of a small hill, mud-brick buildings built by local tribespeople sit among the remains of the ancient city. A few kilometers away are the remnants of the throne and Mahram Bilqis (Temple of Bilqis)—Bilqis being the name given to the Queen of Saba in the later stories in the Islamic tradition. Not far away lies what remains of the famous old dam of Bilqis, which was built in the 8th century BC and stood for well over 1,000 years.

But uncomfortable relations between the government and the Marib tribes on one hand, and al-Qaeda’s deadly threats on the other stand as a barrier against the exploitation of these wonders.

Marib, home to four powerful tribes with more than 70 branches, has earned a reputation for being lawless—and, more recently, a hotbed of support for al-Qaeda and related militant networks.

“In Marib, the hotels are not the perfect places to relax,” says one of soldiers in yellow and brown camouflage fatiguestationed at the gate of a main hotel. “If the hotel was left unguarded, tribesmen could easily grab tourists from their beds, or maybe al-Qaeda comes to blow it up.”

———

Mohamed Al-Azaki is a Yemeni independent journalist and researcher on Islamic militants at the Saba Center for Political and Strategic Studies based in Sana’a, Yemen.

RESOURCES:

Yemeni court charges 35 suspects over oil attacks
Reuters, March 4, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL04670927

See also:

YEMEN: ON THE BRINK OF SECTARIAN WAR
Shi’ite Insurgency in Washington’s Strategic Red Sea Ally
by Mohamed Al-Azaki
WW4 REPORT, April 2007
/node/3491

From our weblog:

Al-Qaeda behind Yemen suicide blast?
WW4 REPORT, July 4, 2007
/node/4173

From our archives:

US citizen dead in CIA hit an al-Qaeda in Yemen?
WW4 REPORT, Nov. 11, 2007
/static/59.html#elsewhere1

—————————-

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Sept. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

THE ISRAEL LOBBY & AND GLOBAL HEGEMONY: REVISITED

The Mearsheimer-Walt Thesis Deconstructed by Bill Weinberg, WW4 REPORT The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy is this month to be released as a book—for which authors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are said to have received a $750,000 advance… Read moreTHE ISRAEL LOBBY & AND GLOBAL HEGEMONY: REVISITED

COLOMBIA’S PARAMILITARY PARADOX

Far-Right Militias Survive “Peace Process” and “Para-Politics” Scandal

by Memo Montevino, WW4 REPORT

On July 24, Colombia’s imprisoned paramilitary warlords announced they were cutting off cooperation with prosecutors investigating massacres and other atrocities—throwing into question the country’s peace process. The move was taken to protest the July 11 ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice that paramilitary fighters and “parapoliticos” (politicians who collaborate with the paras) are not automatically charged with “sedition”—meaning politically motivated violence, carrying reduced penalties under the legislation establishing the peace process.

“With this decision the reconstruction of the historical truth, the handing over of mass graves and other legal obligations assumed under the peace pact are frozen,” said Antonio López, once-commander of Medellin’s feared Bloque Cacique Nutibara and now appointed spokesman for the imprisoned warlords. “We can’t allow our fighters to be treated like common criminals.” López said he was speaking for some 30 top commanders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and 30 other mid-level commanders, being held at Itagüí maximum security prison outside Medellin.

The ruling came in the case of Orlando Cesar Caballero, an Antioquia AUC commander accused of arms smuggling and other crimes. The court’s decision denies him benefits such as a maximum eight-year sentence in exchange for renouncing violence and confessing crimes to special prosecutors.

“To accept that instead of criminal conspiracy, paramilitary members committed treason not only supposes they acted with altruistic aims for the collective good, but also flaunts the rights of victims and society to obtain justice and truth,” the court wrote.

President Alvaro Uribe also protested ruling, asserting that “if the sedition of the guerilla is recognized, the sedition of the same elements paramilitarismo should be recognized, and if the sedition of paramilitarismo is denied, the sedition of the guerilla should be denied for the same reasons.”

Administration Shaken by Para-Scandal

However, the “sedition of the guerilla” is only recognized theoretically, as Uribe has never re-established talks with Colombia’s left-wing insurgents. In fact, it was his hardline anti-guerilla creds that allowed him to bring the AUC into a peace process.

The peace process has officially led to the disarmament of some 31,000 paramilitary fighters, and the exhumation of several mass graves earlier this year, mostly in the Putumayo rainforest region along the Ecuador border. But it has not yet secured reparations for the AUC’s victims, or won major confessions from the 60 imprisoned warlords.

Ironically, Uribe—the man who was able to effect the AUC’s official “demobilization”—has simultaneously seen his administration rocked by a scandal over links to the outlawed paramilitaries.

On July 7, Jorge Noguera, former chief of Colombia’s secret police, was arrested on charges of paramilitary collaboration—for the second time. Noguera, freed from prison three months earlier due to procedural errors, was ordered detained again by Colombia’s chief prosecutor, Mario Iguaran. He is accused of providing the paras with information that led to several slayings.

Noguera, who ran Colombia’s Administrative Security Department (DAS) from 2002 to 2005, was but the closest Uribe ally to be imprisoned in the co-called “para-politics” scandal.

Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo stepped down Feb. 19, four days after the Supreme Court of Justice ordered the arrest of her brother Senator Alvaro Araujo, and 12 other legislators for their ties to the AUC. The court also called for an investigation into the suspected paramilitary activities of Araujo’s father, Alvaro Araujo Noguera, including the kidnapping and extortion of a businessman.

In early May, imprisoned AUC jefe Salvatore Mancuso fingered the vice president, defense minister and top Colombian businessmen as collaborators in an explosive judicial hearing. He also said the paramilitaries were aided by top army brass in training and logistics. Uribe told national radio that he had “every confidence in the honesty and moral fiber” of Vice President Francisco Santos and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos.

National Police chief Gen. Jorge Daniel Castro and his intelligence boss Gen. Guillermo Chaves were forced to retire May 14 following claims that agents illegally tapped calls of opposition political figures, journalists and members of the government. The scandal broke when news-weekly Semana reported the interception of phone conversations revealing that the imprisoned warlords continued to operate their networks from behind bars. The scandal was dubbed the “Colombian Watergate.”

Colombia’s lower house voted overwhelmingly May 23 to request President Alvaro Uribe “immediately remove for incompetence” Sergio Caramagna, head of the OAS peace mission in the country, responsible for overseeing the “safe haven” established for demobilizing AUC fighters at Santa Fe de Ralito, in Cordoba department. José Castro Caycedo, the legislator who sponsored the resolution, told the Associated Press that paramilitaries made a mockery of the peace talks by “holding orgies on the negotiating table.” The resolution followed press reports that paras held all-night, whiskey-fueled orgies with high-class prostitutes, football stars and famous Mexican mariachi bands. The revelations were based on transcripts of phone conversations between paramilitary bosses and several madams published by Semana.

Corporate Connection Emerges

Captains of industry in the US as well as Colombia have been touched by the scandal.

In June, advocates for the families of 173 people murdered in the banana-growing regions of northern Colombia filed suit against Chiquita Brands International, in US District Court in Washington, DC. The families allege that Chiquita paid millions of dollars to the AUC. “This is a landmark case, maybe the biggest terrorism case in history,” said attorney Terry Collingsworth. “In terms of casualties, it’s the size of three World Trade Center attacks.” Collingsworth has filed similar suits against Coca Cola, Drummond, and Nestle for the targeted killings of union leaders by the AUC.

The case began with an investigation by the US Justice Department, which filed criminal charges in March. Chiquita admitted the truth of the charges, and agreed to cooperate in the DOJ’s ongoing investigation. Although Chiquita got off with a $25 million dollar fine and no prison time for executives‚ their admissions set the stage for the multi-billion dollar lawsuit.

“Chiquita’s victims are living in dire poverty,” said Paul Wolf, co-counsel in the case, who met with victims’ groups at shanty towns in northern Colombia where terrorized families have sought refuge. “Reparations can’t bring back the dead, but there are a lot of widows and orphans with no means of support. Most of them have fled their homes, and don’t know where their next meal will come from,” said Wolf.

Also in June, a lawyer for the United Steelworkers asked the US State Department to investigate AUC infiltration of Uribe’s first electoral campaign, based on a video showing then-candidate Uribe meeting with a group that included a man identified as Frenio Sánchez Carreño, AKA “Comandante Esteban”—AUC chief for the violence-torn oil city of Barrancabermeja. The footage was apparently taken at a 2001 campaign stop outside the city. In a statement to Miami’s Nuevo Herald, Uribe’s office replied to questions about the video: “I beg you to abstain from making malevolent insinuations.”

“This video raises grave concerns about the interconnection between the AUC and the Uribe campaign, and quite possibly, the current Uribe administration,” United Steelworkers attorney Daniel Kovalik wrote in his letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “It stands to reason that Mr. Uribe must have known that he was meeting with members of the AUC, including ‘Comandante Esteban,’ given his broad notoriety.”

Kovalik represents relatives of three employees of the Alabama-based Drummond coal company murdered by paramilitaries in 2001, who have filed a civil suit against the company. Kovalik wrote in his letter that he obtained the video during his investigation for the suit, but could not reveal the source for reasons of security.

Aid, Trade Deal Threatened

As the scandals mounted, Congressional Democrats proposed unprecedented amendments to the Bush administration’s annual foreign aid appropriations request for Colombia. If the Democrats prevail, overall funding will be cut by 10%, while 45% of the total package will be devoted to economic and humanitarian aid, the remainder to the military. While this still means the majority of the aid would go to the military, it represents the most significant reduction since Plan Colombia was launched under the Clinton administration.

Even if the aid cuts go through, Colombia is “expected to get an additional $150 million in purely military and police assistance through a separate appropriation in the defense budget bill,” the Houston Chronicle reported June 7. But years of activist pressure on Congress does appear to be finally bearing fruit.

“The Uribe government’s support of the paramilitary preserves a situation of misery, exploitation and exclusion, which, on a daily basis, tramples upon labor rights and robs the Colombian people of freedom,” wrote Jorge Enrique Gamboa, President of the Colombian Oil Workers Union (USO) in a letter to the US Congress in February. Up to 77 trade unionists were murdered in Colombia in 2006, and many more were threatened, attacked or kidnapped. Even the. State Department’s annual human rights report on Colombia found: “Violence against union members and antiunion discrimination discouraged workers from joining unions and engaging in trade union activities, and the number of unions and union members continued to decline.”

The AFL-CIO reports that more than 400 unionists have been murdered since Uribe took office in 2002, with only seven convictions. Of the 236 murdered from 2004 to 2006, there has been only one conviction, according to AFL-CIO figures.

The para scandal is also taking a toll on another lynchpin of Bush’s strategy for Latin America: a free trade pact with Bogotá—already passed by Colombia’s congress, and seen as a step towards an Andean Free Trade Agreement. “You cannot put together a free-trade agreement when there isn’t freedom for workers in terms of their basic international rights,” Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-MI), chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on trade, told the Washington Post in April.

When Uribe was in Washington the following month to petition for the deal (and continued economic and military aid), he was dressed down by Democratic lawmakers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement: “Many of us expressed our growing concerns about the serious allegations of connections between illegal paramilitary forces and a number of high-ranking Colombian officials.”

Pelosi’s statement failed to actually mention the pending trade agreement. And a statement from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) included an implicit promise of capitulation. “It is possible we can work out something” to address the concerns of US lawmakers, Rangel told reporters.

“We are going to find a way to get Colombia passed. It is very important,” Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus (D-MT) would tell the press in July. But his statement revealed that real obstacles had emerged. Some House Democrats want a vote delayed for one to two years to see if Colombia has reduced violence against unionists and brought more killers to justice. Pressure from labor groups prompted Pelosi and senior Democrats to say they could not support the agreement until Colombia has shown “concrete evidence of sustained results on the ground.”

Uribe reacted bitterly to the Congressional humiliation. In a June 30 press release, he protested that he’s no “Somoza” (US puppet dictator), and that Colombia is no “banana republic” (rather an ironic assertion in light of the Chiquita revelations). He claimed many of the dead unionists were killed in “proven vendettas and clashes between the guerrilla bands of FARC and ELN.”

He had some especially strong words for Congress: “US congressmen forgot that they were actually addressing a sovereign allied republic and not a puppet nation… We are not going to allow our relationship with the United States to become that of Master and Colombia as the servile republic.”

The Struggle for Narco-Power

While Uribe has barred extradition of AUC figures to face drug charges in the US in the interests of the “peace process,” two members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were tried in Washington federal courts this year: Sonia (Anayibe Rojas), charged with drug trafficking, and Simón Trinidad (Ricardo Palmera), accused of kidnapping. Uribe and Bush alike were clearly hoping convictions would demonstrate the “narco-terrorist” nature of the FARC.

Sonia was convicted in February, but Trinidad had to be tried twice for the same crime, after a hung jury in November 2006. Even the second time, the jury had difficulty reaching a verdict, and asked Judge Royce Lamberth to declare a mistrial. In a bizarre compromise, Trinidad was convicted of conspiring to kidnap three US military contractors, but mistrial was declared for the charges of actually kidnapping them, or of providing material support to the FARC.

Meanwhile, the para-scandal was revealing the AUC’s narco-corruption in no uncertain terms. The New York Times July 28 ran a profile of imprisoned AUC top commander Salvatore Mancuso, who openly admitted to drug trafficking to finance his operations, ostensibly because the guerillas were doing so. “I could not lose the war,” Mancuso said. “We have a narco-economy. We are a narco-society.”

“New Generation” Paramilitaries

In May, a special report from the International Crisis Group, which monitors the Colombian conflict, warned that despite the supposed AUC demobilization, there is “growing evidence that new armed groups are emerging that are more than the simple ‘criminal gangs’ that the government describes. Some of them are increasingly acting as the next generation of paramilitaries…”

Citing data from the OAS Peace Support Mission in Colombia, the report, “Colombia’s New Armed Groups,” found: “These new groups do not yet have the AUC’s organisation, reach and power. Their numbers are disputed but even the lowest count, from the police and the OAS mission, of some 3,000 is disturbing, and civil society groups estimate up to triple that figure.” The report especially cited the New Generation Organization in southern Narino department, and the Black Eagles in Norte de Santander.

Colombia’s paramilitaries have been, perhaps, downsized by the demobilization process and para-scandal—but by no means broken. The real question is whether the ties to official power have really been cut, and rogue elements are now sustained entirely by cocaine profits. Or, is there a shadow play at work—with Uribe, Mancuso and their collaborators in the security forces and private sector alike quietly running the new generation of right-wing terrorists?

———

RESOURCES:

Simon Trinidad Convicted of Conspiracy to Take Hostages
ANNCOL, July 11
http://www.anncol.org/uk/site/doc.php?id=295

Uribe press release, June 30
translated by Publius Pundit
http://publiuspundit.com/2007/07/colombias_president_responds_t.php

See related story, this issue:

COLOMBIA: “DEMOBILIZED” PARAS TERRORIZE PEASANTS
from Weekly News Update on the Americas
/node/4287

See also:

AUTOPSY OF A NARCO-GUERILLA
Justice Department Scores One Against the FARC
by Paul Wolf
WW4 REPORT #131, March 2007
/node/3262

COLOMBIA: THE PARAS & THE OIL CARTEL
State Terror and the Struggle for Ecopetrol
by Bill Weinberg
WW4 REPORT #129, January 2007
/node/2975

From our weblog:

Colombia: para commanders break off peace process
WW4 REPORT, July 28, 2007
/node/4277

Congress to cut Colombia military aid?
WW4 REPORT, June 29, 2007
/node/4143

Democrats dress down Colombia’s Uribe —sort of
WW4 REPORT, May 5, 2007
/node/3763

—————————-

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

IRAN: THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST CASE AGAINST NUCLEAR POWER

by Reza Fiyouzat, Dissident Voice

Those in the Iranian socialist opposition arguing for a nuclear-free Iran have either been absent from the Western left’s discourse—or have been getting the short end of the stick from some in the US left. Trapped in a mentality as simplistic as that of George Bush, a good part of the US left has been repeating a similar logic, saying that either you can go along with the imperialists’ plans and support Bush or else find excuses to support the Iranian government’s pursuit of nuclear energy.

This in spite of the fact that the same American left-leaning activists and writers have a strong tradition of taking an anti-nuclear stance when it has come to the US society. May EP Thompson’s soul rest in eternal peace, but his spirit must be spinning in his grave.

The point of discussion here is not nuclear weapons, but the use of nuclear power for the peaceful purpose of producing energy.

Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a disaster to awaken people’s deadened responses. The US left has recently had the opportunity to be re-sensitized to the dangers of nuclear power as a result of the recent earthquake in Japan, which caused the shut-down of a nuclear power plant. We have consequently seen many insightful articles questioning the wisdom of pursuing the nuclear route for providing energy, most notably by Ralph Nader and Harvey Wasserman, to name only two.

The disaster that gave everybody a wake-up nudge was the earthquake that rocked the western coast of Honshu Island on July 16, causing the shut down of Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station, in the Niigata prefecture. More earthquakes as well as several aftershocks kept the area trembling well into the day and night. The resultant shutdown of the power plant has attracted the critical attention of many observers—exposing many problems worrying the government officials, energy-producing company officials, experts, pundits, and ordinary citizens alike.

Increasing numbers of reports have focused on both the attempted cover-ups by company officials in the immediate aftermath of the quake, as well as the understatements regarding the real and potential dangers of the radioactive leakage into the atmosphere and the surrounding water, and the its potential impacts.

The fact that Japan sits atop a very active earthquake zone has meant that over the centuries and especially over the last century, measures have been taken to design and implement high earthquake-proofing standards for buildings—and particularly for nuclear power plants, which provide for some 30 percent of Japan’s energy needs.

We know that it is customary for capital to wish to save costs. Since safety measures cost money, nuclear energy providers are likely to meet building requirements not maximally, but just barely adequately. To make things worse, even if and when standards are devised, enforced and followed, earthquakes have dynamics of their own and may not necessarily limit themselves to the scope wished for by human-made regulations. For example, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant was built to withstand earthquakes of up to 6.5 magnitude. Unfortunately, the July 16 quake measured 6.8; hence, the problems that arose.

This particular quake scenario has not escalated to the worst-case scenario—but it very easily could have.

The same occurrence in Iran, however, almost definitely would have turned into a huge disaster. If an earthquake of such magnitude had erupted in the tectonically active south-southwestern coastal plains of Iran, with the Bushehr reactor having gone live, you can bet your house that cover-up and evasion would have been the only “aid” sent by the government to the people affected there; plus some troops to make sure, much like in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, that things didn’t get too out of hand.

For one thing, how much can we really trust the seismological surveys carried out to determine how near or far major fault lines are from the Bushehr reactor? What about the safety regulations? What about the environmental-impact studies for the best-case scenario? Has any thinking gone into plans for a worst-case scenario? Or, are the gentlemen in Tehran too dependent on good luck and divine protection?

And what about evacuation procedures should the worst happen? Iran’s roads are not exactly extensive or kept in any decent order. We know from New Orleans’ experience with Katrina that even in a country with extensive highway systems, evacuating large populations can take very long and therefore be very hazardous or even murderous deal, even when advance preparations are possible. A nuclear accident, by contrast, is capable of precipitating extremely poisonous atmospheric conditions in less than an hour.

Iran stands atop many very active and large fault lines. Of the major earthquakes that do occur in Iran, a good many are stronger than magnitude 6 on the Richter scale (from which point on, major damages increase exponentially). Here are some facts about major earthquakes since 1972:

* Dec. 26, 2003: Bam, Southeastern Iran, magnitude 6.5; 26,000 killed.

* June 22, 2002: Qazvin province, Northwestern Iran, magnitude 6; at least 500 killed.

* May 10, 1997: Northern Iran near Afghanistan, magnitude 7.1; 1,500 dead.

* June 21, 1990: Northwest Iran around Tabas, magnitude 7.3-7.7; 50,000 killed.

* Sept. 16, 1978: Northeast Iran, magnitude 7.7; 25,000 killed.

* April 10, 1972: Southern Iran near Ghir Karzin, magnitude 7.1; 5,374 killed.

In each of these cases, thousands if not tens of thousands more suffered dislocation and complete loss of livelihood, which was never compensated for. Now, imagine the additional casualty and displaced figures if any of these quakes had been combined with the meltdown of a nuclear reactor!

It should be pointed out that the deaths occurring as a result of these quakes are far larger than they should have been, mostly because of lax building codes in Iran. While Japan has some of the world’s highest standards for earthquake proofing, we can easily state that no such standards exist at all in Iran. Additionally, the building codes that do exist are regularly ignored and violated by unscrupulous contractors, developers and even individual home-builders more inclined to bribe an official than bear the larger costs of building safely.

We would therefore be right to wonder aloud about the building codes implemented in the construction of Bushehr’s nuclear power plant. Likewise, we should be worried about the maximum quake strengths the plant is supposed to be able to withstand, and even more worried about safety and rescue procedures foreseen for a worst-case scenario.

Forget IAEA inspections! In Iran what we really need is a guaranteed right of citizens‚ groups consisting of independent scientists, activists, and citizens‚ direct representatives, to carry out inspections of nuclear facilities on demand. Transparency and open accountability is the most legitimate demand of any citizenry as regards governmental activities; when it comes to meddling with nuclear power, transparency in accountability becomes absolutely essential.

In Iran, however, there is no accountability for anything the government does. For example—and directly related to this topic—there is no accountability for the fact that in an oil-rich country, refined oil (for the everyday consumption of the people) is mostly imported! Refining oil is not exactly nuclear science (no puns intended, but take as many as you like). This is a century-old technology. Why is it that the Iranian government is not investing some of its vast sums of petro-euros and dollars on improving the oil-refining capabilities of the nation, thus reducing the need for importing (much more expensive) refined oil products? Would this not be safer, more logical, more efficient, and a more economical short-to-mid-term investment of the national resources?

In Iran, it would be impossible to even bring to justice any government official who plays with peoples’ lives and livelihoods. We do not have the most rudimentary legal structures in place guaranteeing the citizens’ right of oversight over anything the governmental does.

As any Iranian could tell you, there is only one branch of government in Iran, the Executive branch; the other two stems (the legislature and the judiciary) merely decorate that one branch so it doesn’t look too bare. As enshrined into a theocratic constitution, the legislature, is not even a rubber stamp; it can easily be overturned by the Supreme Leader, as it has been repeatedly. The same goes for the judiciary, which has historically been a mere enforcer of the Executive’s will rather than an adjudicator of the laws of the land.

This situation clearly does not allow for a realistic system for citizens to keep a vigilant eye on the government’s handling of nuclear power. Indeed, should any disasters occur (which is to say, when a disaster does occur), the government is virtually guaranteed to act in the least responsive manner possible and to shirk as much responsibility as needed, leaving the citizens to bear the costs of a nuclear disaster on their own.

It is therefore the duty of any democratically inclined person—and more so the duty of leftists, environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists in the West—to stand on the side of the well-being of the Iranian people and unambiguously oppose any nuclear energy development in Iran carried out by an unaccountable government.

No doubt some “leftists” will argue that demands for a halt to all nuclear activities in Iran amount to aiding and abetting the imperialists, especially at this historical juncture. But such logic smells too much like the knee-jerk Zionists retort of “anti-Semitism” to anybody daring to criticize anything about Israel. In the end, all fanatics argue in the same way: You are either with me, or against me!

What those so-called leftists do not understand, or willfully ignore, is that imperialism feeds on oppressed, un-represented people. To the extent that the Iranian regime stifles its own people and their potentials, to the extent that Iranian people’s well-being is undermined by their government, they as a whole are more likely to be swallowed up by the plans and designs of the imperialists. Empowered people are the best defense against imperialist aggression.

Those who, like the Islamic regime in Iran, insist that pursuing nuclear power as an automatic right must also be prepared to bear the responsibility of fully accounting for any and all activities relating to the handling of nuclear materials, especially if nuclear facilities are built near dense population areas, and most definitely if those reactors are located on active tectonic plates, as is the case with the Bushehr reactor.

Lacking transparent accountability for the preparations that have occurred so far, as well as for the future full operations of Bushehr’s nuclear power plant, people have a legitimate right to demand a halt to all activities that could lead to the enormous health threats from radioactive poisoning, potentially lasting hundreds of years, causing mutations in the gene pools of all living organisms in the area, and destroying the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people.

Nobody has an automatic right to take people down this kind of road! And definitely not a government that refuses to be accountable to any on this earth, least of all its own citizenry.

——-

Reza Fiyouzat is an Iranian writer and activist currently working abroad.

This story first appeared July 24 in Dissident Voice
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/no-nukes-for-iran/

RESOURCES:

Atomic Blowback: The New Face of Nuclear Power (Same as the Old)
by Ralph Nader, Counterpunch, July 21, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader07212007.html

Lies and Leaks: The Earthquake That Screamed “No Nukes!”
by Harvey Wasserman, Counterpunch, July 20, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman07202007.html

From our weblog:

“Bad nuke” closes in North Korea; “good nuke” leaks radiation in Japan
WW4 REPORT, July 17, 2007
/node/4234

Oil prices rise as Iran nuclear deadline passes
WW4 REPORT, Feb 27, 2007
/node/3247

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Aug. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

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