CHAVEZ FACING GEOPOLITICAL NADIR?

by Nikolas Kozloff, NACLA News

For Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and his Bolivarian Revolution, it’s both the best and worst of times. Ever since the firebrand politician came to power in 1998, Chávez has campaigned against US-style free trade economic policies throughout South America. A fierce critic of international financial institutions, Chávez resisted so-called neoliberal economic orthodoxy by nationalizing the oil, telephone and electric companies, and boosting government spending on key sectors like health and education.

Now that the financial system in the US has imploded, Chávez has reaped maximum political advantage from the crisis. The Venezuelan leader has said that the rich countries have spent billions of dollars to bail out banks while shirking their responsibilities in fighting poverty with the excuse of lack of money. The Bush administration expected to weather the crisis “by running the money printer and I strongly doubt we’ll be able to resolve the crisis that way,” Chávez said. The maverick South American politician, who has labeled capitalism unsustainable and even evil, declared that “the Washington consensus has collapsed.”

In Caracas, Chávez exclaimed that the wider region was fortunate in that it had balked at the US proposal for a Free Trade Area of the Americas. Such an idea, he said, would have been “the greatest disaster,” as failing US banks would have “swallowed up” banks in Latin America. Employing his usual penchant for biting political sarcasm, Chávez said that the International Monetary Fund shared some blame for the financial crisis and that it should “commit suicide” and be dissolved.

Bush has long served as Chávez’s perennial punching bag: the Venezuelan leader has, at different times over the past eight years, called his US counterpart a genocidal maniac, a drunkard, a donkey, Mr. Danger, and even the devil. It was no surprise then that Chávez took advantage of the financial crisis to once again deride his favorite enemy. The US president, Chávez said, was a hypocrite for criticizing Venezuelan nationalizations while simultaneously buying stocks in US banks. “Bush is to the left of me now,” Chávez exclaimed. Going yet further, he said that Bush was responsible for the financial meltdown and that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue should be put on trial.

Seeking to reap maximum political advantage from global economic disarray, Chávez called for an economic summit of small countries in Caracas designed to deal with the financial crisis. Chávez said he would invite representatives from the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas trade bloc (known by its Spanish acronym ALBA) and members of the Petrocaribe oil initiative to attend. ALBA, which seeks to encourage solidarity and reciprocity among left-leaning countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, is designed to counteract Bush’s corporate-friendly free trade schemes.

Chávez called the ALBA summit in opposition to a recent meeting in Washington DC attended by members of the wealthy G-20 countries. “We need to hope that this meeting will end with some positive ideas…but I doubt they will reach any decisions in Washington to solve this crisis. The hurricane that triggered this crisis came from Washington,” Chávez remarked. The Venezuelan leader said that his alternative summit, to be held in “the last days of November,” would be attended by Bolivian President Evo Morales and Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega. Other countries to be invited to the summit would include Cuba, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic.

The Geopolitical Limits of Oil
With the implosion of the global financial system, Chávez should be riding a popular geopolitical wave in South America. And yet, the Venezuelan leader has been unsuccessful at exporting his political and economic model to many of the larger and more important countries throughout the hemisphere.

True, Chávez has been able to garner friends through ALBA and his skillful use of oil diplomacy. But Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and a handful of other impoverished Central American and Caribbean nations do not constitute a formidable geopolitical bloc of countries. Much has been made of Chávez’s incipient alliance with Argentina, a significant development to be sure, but the Kirchner government in Buenos Aires is hardly moving towards anti-imperialist, populist mobilization and would seem to prefer the political and social status quo.

Chávez has several problems. First of all, Venezuela itself is hardly immune from the global economic slowdown. Earlier, Chávez had said that Venezuela would survive the global credit crunch as its economy was one of most stable economies in the world. But last week, Chávez remarked, “The fall in oil prices due to the current global financial crisis may have a negative influence on the economy of Venezuela. The world is on the brink of a catastrophe, and this catastrophe will affect everyone. One cannot hide from it, it will cover everyone like an ocean wave.”

The downturn in world oil prices stands to adversely affect both Chávez’s ambitious domestic and foreign policy agenda. As long as oil prices were soaring, Chávez was free to dole out petrodollars with abandon both at home and abroad. In Venezuela, the government built health clinics and schools. Simultaneously, Chávez sent cheap oil to Cuba and bankrolled his newfound allies in Argentina who were hard pressed to pay off the country’s debt.

Now that oil prices have fallen, the question is how Chávez will react to the new economic milieu. Energy sales account for 95% of the country’s export revenue and half of the government budget. Prices for Venezuela’s crude have fallen by almost 60% since July, to as low as $53 per barrel. That leaves Chávez dangerously short, since Venezuela needs $95 per barrel to finance operations and pay for imports, including food.

With dwindling funds to carry out his Bolivarian Revolution, Chávez won’t have excess cash to throw around in the wider region. Venezuela is a medium-sized country with just 27 million people. For the past five years or so, Chávez has had disproportionate geopolitical influence in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean because of the high price of oil, but a question mark now hangs over this extended influence.

The Obama Factor
On the surface at least, the election of Barack Obama in the United States stands to benefit Venezuela. For years, the Bush administration, as well as the right-wing media, has heaped scorn and derision on Chávez. As a result, many US citizens think that Venezuela is a military and political threat to the United States.

Obama on the other hand famously stated that he would meet with what he called “rogue” nations like Venezuela without preconditions. If Chávez was able to pull off a meeting with Obama it would represent a public relations coup for the Venezuelan leader and help to rehabilitate his image in the eyes of the US public. In the process, however, Chávez would lose a lot of his rhetorical edge. Chávez was able to rise to world attention as a result of his hard-hitting critiques of the Bush administration and imperialist excesses around the world. Now that Bush stepping down, Chávez will not have his usual whipping boy to throw around.

An Obama White House will undercut Chávez’s support in a number of ways. To begin with, Obama starts off with an enormous amount of goodwill in South America simply by dint of his racial origins. Millions of Afro-Latin Americans will be interested in the rich historic symbolism of a black man taking over the reins of power in the White House. Chávez has long championed the rights of oppressed Afro-Venezuelans and Indians, and has even touted his own mixed racial heritage. But with an Obama administration in place, Chávez no longer has a lock on the racial narrative.

Secondly, if Obama starts to withdraw troops from Iraq it will make the United States look like less of an imperialist aggressor to many throughout the Third World. If Obama follows that up by hammering out South American free trade agreements with some concessions to labor and environmental rights, he may succeed slightly in rehabilitating the United States in the public eye. Of course, Obama will be hamstrung given that the United States is hardly in an ideal position to counter Chávez’s geopolitical ambitions. With the economy in crisis, Washington is not in a position to dole out economic assistance to poverty-stricken South American countries.

Then again, time may not be on Chávez’s side. South Americans have not been exposed to the same level of blatant and direct US military intervention as Central America and Mexico. To be sure, few people on the streets of Buenos Aires will have kind words to say about the International Monetary Fund and the US free trade agenda. But to many, the United States is rather abstract. To the extent that average people do become involved in politics, they may be more concerned with getting rid of corruption and confronting local elites than countering hegemonic US interests. If Chávez continues to employ his usual strident, anti-imperialist rhetoric he may find that it does not resonate as much as before.

Chávez has another problem, and it has to do with his aggressive military posturing.
At different times, the Venezuelan leader has tried to stir up a military alliance among sympathetic South American governments to confront Washington. But even with the Bush administration in power, Chávez failed in his efforts. The Venezuelan leader recently called for joint naval maneuvers in the Caribbean with another petro-power, Russia, in order to challenge the renewed presence of the Pentagon’s Fourth Fleet. But here Chávez is not on the same page as other South American countries that are more interested in securing economic advantages from the United States rather confronting Obama with military posturing.

Venezuelan Election: A Critical Milestone
On top of these problems, Venezuela’s once-discredited opposition has recently been gaining ground politically. Having won reelection in 2006 to a six-year term, Chávez hoped to build on his ballot box success by promoting a constitutional referendum. Though Chávez and his followers had already enacted a new constitution in 1999, the president claimed that the document was in need of an overhaul so as to pave the way for a new socialist state.

Chávez sought to reduce the work week from 44 to 36 hours; to provide social security to informal sector workers such as housewives, street vendors and maids; to shift political power to grassroots communal councils; to bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or health; to extend formal recognition to Afro-Venezuelan people; to require gender parity for all public offices; to formalize the right to adequate housing and a free public education; to protect the full rights of prisoners, and to create new types of property managed by cooperatives and communities.

The progressive provisions would have done much to challenge entrenched interests in Venezuela and encourage the growth of a more egalitarian and democratic society based on social, gender, racial, and economic equality. Unfortunately, Chávez sabotaged any hope of success by simultaneously seeking to enhance his own personal power. Under the constitutional reform, Chávez could declare a state of emergency, and the government would have the right to detain individuals without charge and to close down media outlets. Chávez’s own term would be extended from six to seven years, and he would be allowed the right to run indefinitely for president.

On Election Day the opposition failed to increase its voter share but was able to eke out a tiny margin of victory when some of the Chávez faithful grew disenchanted and failed to turn out to vote. Perhaps, if Chávez had merely backed the progressive provisions within the referendum and not tried to increase his own power, the vote would have tipped the other way. But by backing the retrograde measures, Chávez gave much-needed ammunition to the opposition.

Failure to pass the constitutional referendum surely represented a severe setback for Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution, but did not necessarily represent a total rout. Unfortunately, the Venezuelan President played right into the hands of the opposition again by backing an unpopular intelligence law. Following an outcry from human rights groups, Chávez repealed the decree less than a fortnight after its introduction.

Within this uncertain political milieu, Venezuela approaches regional elections on Nov. 23. Venezuelans will cast ballots to determine 22 governors, 328 mayors, and two metropolitan mayors—every significant office besides the presidency and the National Assembly. In the last regional elections held four years ago, Chávez supporters secured 21 state governments and about 300 city governments. However, opinion polls and analysts are predicting a slightly different political map this time. Indeed, some suggest that the opposition will be much more competitive in many states.

For Chávez, the political stakes are high: the Venezuelan leader wants a huge electoral mandate so that he might call for another constitutional referendum that would extend his presidential term after 2012. But if the opposition makes electoral gains, Chávez’s long-term aspirations could be significantly complicated. At campaign rallies, Chávez has made the election into a referendum on his own rule. He recently declared, “What’s at stake here is the future of the revolution, of socialism, of Venezuela, of the government and the future of Hugo Chávez himself.”

If Chávez is able to eke out a victory if he manages to minimize his losses—a big “if”— then he could try to extend his rule and use the financial crisis as means to advance his geopolitical agenda and alternative economic arrangements such as ALBA. If the global slowdown worsens, perhaps poor countries will be more amenable to Chávez’s overtures. Even with a win, however, Chávez will confront significant challenges such as the fall in world oil prices and a new Obama administration that stands to negate the Venezuelan leader’s anti-imperialism.

On the other hand, an electoral victory for the opposition would constitute the second straight reversal for Chávez in under a year and lead many in Venezuela and the region to wonder whether the Bolivarian Revolution has real staying power.

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Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2008).

This story first appeared Nov. 21 on NACLA News.

See also:

THE NEXT CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS?
The Russo-Venezuelan Military Alliance & Cold War Deja Vu
by Nikolas Kozloff, NACLA News
World War 4 Report, October 2008

From our Daily Report:

Medvedev, Chávez meet on eve of naval maneuvers
World War 4 Report, Nov. 30, 2008

Venezuela: elections mandate or “hard blow” for Chávez?
World War 4 Report, Nov. 24, 2008

Latin America plays leading role at first G20 summit; Fidel unimpressed
World War 4 Report, Nov. 19, 2008

Chávez, Evo hail Obama’s victory, call for “new relations”
World War 4 Report, Nov. 7

Ecuador says no to ALBA —for now
World War 4 Report, June 18, 2008

Venezuela: Chávez issues 26 decrees, extending state power
World War 4 Report, Aug. 8, 2008

Chávez retreats on intelligence decree
World War 4 Report, Aug. 8, 2008

Chávez accepts defeat —”for now”
World War 4 Report, Dec. 3, 2007

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Dec. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCHAVEZ FACING GEOPOLITICAL NADIR? 

COLOMBIA: U’WA FIGHT NEW OIL EXPLORATION

by Bart Beeson, NACLA News

‘Bloodied’ pipeline is installed into Oxy’s lobby with three activists locked inside, April 1998. Photo: Amazon Watch” title=”‘Bloodied’ pipeline is installed into Oxy’s lobby with three activists locked inside, April 1998. Photo: Amazon Watch” class=”image image-_original” width=”400″ height=”274″ />‘Bloodied’ pipeline is installed into Oxy’s lobby with three activists locked inside, April 1998. Photo: Amazon WatchThe last time oil companies threatened to drill on indigenous U’wa land in northeast Colombia, the native group threatened to commit mass suicide in protest. Nearly ten years later, U’wa leader Luis Sirakubo says encroachment on his peoples’ lands by Colombia’s national oil company, Ecopetrol, is not a question of if, but when.

“We don’t know what the Colombian government’s plans are,” says Sirakubo, “we just know that sooner or later they are going to try come in and start extracting oil from our land.”

Sirakubo and the U’wa have been resisting attempts by oil companies to operate in and around their lands for over two decades. Oil extraction is an unconscionable act for the U’wa, who consider oil to be “the blood of Mother Earth,” according to Sirakubo.

Having successfully resisted efforts made by foreign oil companies in the past, the U’wa are now facing off against Ecopetrol, the partially state-owned company. Their latest act of defiance was a thousand-strong march in northeast Colombia in protest of Ecopetrol’s plans to prospect for oil on their ancestral lands.

The protest came amid growing signs the company plans to drastically expand its operations. Ecopetrol recently began trading 10% of its shares on the New York Stock Exchange—an indication the company is seeking investment for more oil exploration. And in a Sept. 24 luncheon at the Council of the Americas in New York City, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe touted the listing of Ecopetrol on the stock exchange as evidence that his country provides an attractive atmosphere to foreign investors.

Uribe also signaled the public offering would help the company continue its vigorous exploration efforts: “Colombia, when our administration began, explored 10 wells per year. This year, the country will explore more than 100.” Ecopetrol president Javier Gutiérrez echoed the president’s statement, saying the company is “greatly increasing exploration.” The U’wa fear that at least part of this expansion will threaten their lands in northeastern Colombia along the border with Venezuela.

The U’wa have always been a fiercely independent people. According to their oral history, when the Conquistadors came to subdue the group, hundreds of U’was committed suicide, throwing themselves off a cliff, rather than submit to Spanish slavery. They also fought off missionaries’ attempts to proselytize deep within their territory.

In recent decades, the U’wa have become battle-hardened experts in fending off oil companies trying to drill on their land. It started in the 1990s, when the Colombian government awarded the Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum and Shell, a British multinational, the right to extract oil on U’wa land.

The U’wa waged an international campaign against the drilling along with their allies abroad, including San Francisco-based Amazon Watch and the U’wa Defense Project. Celebrities from Martin Sheen to Alicia Silverstone have written letters in support of the U’wa. Shell eventually withdrew in 1999, while Oxy pulled out in 2002, publicly citing a lack of proven reserves. But many analysts attribute the oil companies’ withdrawal to the international pressure from the U’wa as well as human and indigenous rights groups.

The U’wa not only oppose oil extraction on cultural and environmental grounds, but also for reasons of security. The civil war’s armed factions violently contest Colombia’s oil-producing regions because of their strategic and economic value.

“Historically, the Colombian war and conflict have really been about resources,” says Natalia Cardona of the American Friends Service Committee. “Companies are now realizing that oil is found on indigenous land, they want to go in and explore.” When the armed groups—namely, guerrillas, paramilitaries, and army—fight over oil regions, Cardona says innocent civilians “end up being used as human shields by all the armed actors.”

The presence of armed groups in the area is certainly not new. In 1999, three US activists were kidnapped and killed by guerrillas after visiting U’wa territory. Last May, U’wa authorities issued a public statement denouncing the presence of armed groups within their indigenous reserve. The statement blamed the groups for stealing harvests from family crops, the sexual harassment of young women, and the illegal occupation of U’wa land. If the oil companies come, say the U’wa, an already deteriorating security situation will only become more violent.

With Ecopetrol looking for new wells, the U’wa have restated their opposition to oil activity on their land. In a statement issued last month, the group denounced the government and Ecopetrol for the implications of the stock offering in New York. It also accused the company of “exterminating indigenous cultures… contaminating the environment, and denying the rights that the Colombian native indigenous population has to their ancestral lands.”

In the risk section of a report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ecopetrol acknowledged its plans to drill on U’wa land, but noted indigenous opposition could delay the exploration and extraction:

We may not begin to explore for or produce hydrocarbons in these regions until we reach an agreement with the indigenous communities living on these lands. Generally these consultations last between four and six months, but may be significantly delayed if we cannot reach an agreement. For example, we conduct operations in areas of the Northeastern region which are inhabited by the U’wa community. Commencement of operations on two blocks in this region have been delayed for 16 years and seven years, respectively, and as of June 2008 we have not received approval to undertake activities in these two blocks by the indigenous authorities.

<em><strong>Map of U’wa territory and former Occidental exploration bloc</strong></em>” title=”<em><strong>Map of U’wa territory and former Occidental exploration bloc</strong></em>” class=”image image-_original” width=”423″ height=”627″ /></a><span class=Map of U’wa territory and former Occidental exploration bloc

The U’wa, however, contest this claim, arguing that in fact Ecopetrol is already operating on their land: “It is not true that Ecopetrol is respecting the U’wa culture, because, in this moment, they are working on the Gibraltar 3 well, which is on our property.”

Part of the controversy revolves around conflicting demarcations of U’wa lands. The indigenous group claims a substantially larger area than the government-recognized indigenous reserve. The U’wa also maintain that even if the oil activities are carried out in areas near U’wa land, the increased violence and possible environmental damage would undoubtedly spill over into those living nearby, regardless of whether the activity is on officially recognized U’wa territory.

The amount of oil amid U’wa lands has yet to be determined, but with oil prices at record levels, the interest in exploring in U’wa territory is only going to increase. Meanwhile, the U’wa have refused to participate in the constitutionally mandated negotiation process known as “prior consultation” with Ecopetrol, arguing that the process “does not seek to guarantee the respect of our rights.”

The U’wa know they have a difficult battle on their hands. But, according to Luis Sirakubo, their decision has been made: “We will not negotiate our natural resources; without them there is no life, and there are no U’wa.”

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Bart Beeson is Campaign Coordinator of the Central America Program at the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC.

This story first appeared Oct. 29 on NACLA News.

See also:

McCAIN’S BIG OIL TIES —FROM IRAQ TO COLOMBIA
by Nikolas Kozloff, NACLA News
World War 4 Report, August 2008

From our Daily Report:

Colombia: indigenous march arrives in Bogotá
World War 4 Report, Nov. 24, 2008

Colombia announces 20% privatization of state oil company
World War 4 Report, Sept. 14, 2006

RESOURCES

Colombia: Ecopetrol’s Siriri Oil Project
Amazon Watch

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Dec. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA: U’WA FIGHT NEW OIL EXPLORATION 

FELTON FLOWS ON

A California Town Beats Back the Water Cartel

by Rachel Aronowitz, Terrain, Berkeley, CA

After a nearly six-year fight to acquire its water system from the German-owned corporate energy behemoth, RWE (Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk AG), residents of Felton, Calif., prevailed in regaining local control of their water.

Since the 1800’s, the small town of Felton, nestled along the coastal redwoods outside Santa Cruz, had no real problems with the private ownership of their water. This all changed in 2001 when then-owner, privately held Citizen Utilities, sold the water system to Cal-Am or California-American whose parent company is American Water. Though these names sound very local, the subsidiaries ultimately answer to Germany’s RWE, which is the third largest private water company in the world. RWE is also one of the world’s largest energy giants, with more than 640 subsidiaries worldwide and annual revenues of more than $50 billion. It is one of the world’s top suppliers of electricity and natural gas, with operations across Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa and Australia. It provides water and wastewater services to 18 million customers in 29 states in the US.

Immediately after the acquisition was finalized, Cal-Am asked the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC) for a 78% rate hike. Cal-Am’s justification was that the system was old and they incurred many expenses through the sale. According to Felton activist Jim Mosher, they used the argument that “people don’t understand the true cost of water,” and hoped they would get what they asked for.

When Felton residents heard about the rate hike, they immediately mobilized, gathering in the local firehouse. At this initial gathering, they formed a citizens group called FLOW, or Friends of Local Water, and vowed to buy back their water system. The county supported FLOW’s plan, quickly agreeing to contribute $127,000 in legal fees, and the fight began. Despite the public outcry, the PUC allowed Cal-Am a still exorbitant 44% rate hike. Soon after this was finalized, Cal-Am came back with yet another request for a rate hike of 60%.

FLOW met to plan their strategy, but after the PUC decision, the county said it couldn’t contribute to the legal fees. This didn’t stop the determined members of FLOW who relied on old-fashioned community dances, bake sales and garage sales to raise money. Luckily, the lawyers took on the job and trusted they would be compensated later.

Finances started to look up when FLOW eventually realized they could qualify for “intervener compensation” to pay for their expenses to fight the second rate hike and received another $60,000 in lawyers fees from the county. The Intervener Compensation Program is intended to ensure that individuals and groups that represent residential or small commercial utility customers have the financial resources to bring their concerns and interests to the PUC during formal proceedings.

Founding FLOW member and PR director Jim Graham explains that with about 70 committed volunteers, FLOW’s strategy consisted of contacting over 1,000 local households at least three times to create “one-on-one contact.” Members went door to door in their neighborhoods. They believed it was important for residents to see the faces of everyone who was involved in the fight. Volunteers even gave out their personal cell phone numbers to be available for any questions they could answer from their neighbors. Graham recalls that the overriding concern of local residents was whether or not their bills would go up. “What is this going to cost me?” they asked. FLOW members explained that even if local property taxes increased it would still be in the best financial interests of Felton residents to go ahead with the buyout.

In order to go forward with the plan to purchase the system, residents had to put a measure on the city of Felton’s ballot that would raise a sufficient pot of money. Measure W was created, which would raise $11 million in property taxes—hopefully a large enough amount to purchase the water system. According to Graham, Cal-Am reacted to the creation of Measure W with a “campaign of misinformation”—including leaflets that tried to convince residents they would get the raw end of the deal if the measure passed.

Graham tells the story of how FLOW “got a lucky break when an anonymous party sent a copy of Cal-Am’s strategy book to the FLOW office, which included dirty tricks such as what is referred to as “push polling”—an the hiring of consultants to cold-call residents and elicit angry reactions on hot-button issues, and then forward the manipulated calls to a local officials. In this way, the official receives hundreds of messages from residents saying exactly what the company wants them to say. Cal-Am tried this tactic in Monterey, Calif., where residents are currently trying to buy back their water system.

On July 31, 2005, Measure W passed by a whopping 74.8%. With the support of Felton tax payers, Santa Cruz County was now prepared to approach Cal-Am with a bid. The San Lorenzo Valley Water District offered California-American $7.6 million, but Cal-Am refused to sell. Its leadership stated, flatly, that the system was not for sale at any price and expressed its determination to oppose all public acquisition efforts so that Felton did not start a domino effect of citizens taking control of their water resources.

Without the cooperation of Cal-Am, the county and Felton residents continued full-speed ahead and entered into the eminent domain process. Graham says this turn of events was completely expected and “is a common tactic when water companies refuse offers from the public.”

The eminent domain process required that the county hire an appraiser to calculate the value of the water system in preparation for a new purchase price. This included the watershed lands and associated infrastructure.

Graham noticed that while the government looked at the actual revenue or income of the company, which was about $100,000 a year, Cal-Am looked at the “fair market value.” Therefore, the two parties came up with wildly different amounts. While the county’s valuation was around $10 million, Cal-Am’s was closer to $25 million.

However, just before an eminent domain trial could move forward, a mediator was brought in and the two parties quickly settled on a price of $10.4 million. Graham believes that “Am-Water wanted to avoid a trial because it would bring them bad press, and show that their high-risk valuation was a fallacy which would end up on public record.”

With the water now in local hands, residents found that their biggest worry—that they wouldn’t actually end up with affordable monthly water bills to the new owner, the San Lorenzo Valley Water District—was mostly unfounded. While a small percentage of Felton residents are paying more because their property taxes exceed $600 a year, in a few years this discrepancy will even out and bills will become increasingly more affordable. Graham admits “Yes, we paid a little more than we would have liked, but we won!”

With all their hard-gained knowledge and experience after the long six year battle, FLOW continues to fight the good fight by educating other communities around the country that are interested in taking back local water rights form corporate control. Inspired by this unlikely victory, citizens and their elected officials are hopeful that they can restore local, democratic controlof their water systems.

Jim Graham and others are now preparing to head to Speckles, Calif., which lies just outside the town of Salinas. Local residents are looking at a 100% increase from Cal-Am and are in the initial stages of organizing. He plans to talk with locals about their own battle plans, discuss their options and give them the hope and skills necessary to inspire residents to fight back.

More and more, communities are realizing that they don’t want their water to be owned by corporations who put their profits ahead of affordability. Residents in Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, Ontario, Canada and throughout California are turning to local officials and to their neighbors to take back control of local utilities. Seeing the writing on the wall, RWE recently announced that due to the growing opposition to rate increases and water privitization at the local level, it is getting out of the water business altogether and plans to sell American Water.

In addition, RWE announced on their web page to concerned stockholders that “the benefits anticipated from creating a global water business did not materialize. Water is a local business and although economies of scale can be realized locally and regionally, this has not proved possible on a global scale.”

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A version of this story will appear in an upcoming issue of Terrain Magazine of Berkeley, Calif.

RESOURCES

Felton FLOW
http://www.feltonflow.org

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Dec. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingFELTON FLOWS ON 

WHO IS BEHIND THE ASSAM TERROR?

Converging Conflicts in Northeast India

by Nava Thakuria, World War 4 Report

Northeast India is no stranger to conflicts. Killing and explosions have almost become the order of the day for the 50 million people of the region, which is adjacent to conflicted countries like Bangladesh and Burma.

But the series of explosions that took place in Assam on Oct. 30 have shaken the psyche and conscience of the people. Citizens of Guwahati, the capital, went on a self-imposed curfew after the attacks. Shops closed, streets emptied, and an unbelievable silence descended on the fastest growing city of India. Altogether, nine blasts rocked Assam that Thursday morning, killing over 80 and wounding nearly 400. Three explosions took place in the high-security and crowded areas of central Guwahati, including in front of the judicial buildings. Another bomb exploded in the Pan Bazar, a crowded marketplace. Another hit the Ganeshguri area, near the Legislative Assembly building and also a marketplace. Three other blasts took place in rural districts of lower Assam—Kokrajhar, Barpeta and Bongaigaon.

Significantly, all the explosions took between 11:15 and 11.45 AM, the busiest part of the day. Pinky Pradhan, an Assamese girl living in the national capital narrated her agony after the explosions, “Sitting at home in Delhi, an inconsolable anger filled me, as I helplessly watched the televised images of charred and mangled bodies, injured and shell-shocked people lying all around, sprawling in pools of blood; dismembered body parts and angry people protesting against the failure of the state machinery. Thick smoke covered the city. Metallic skeletal of cars, scooters, lied everywhere. My city, my home, my people, my identity were burning up in unquenchable flames.”

The police initially suspected the United Liberation Front of Asom (UFLA) as the sole outfit behind the handiwork. But the banned armed group promptly denied its role in the explosions. Soon the security agency started fingering foreign Islamist elements for the attacks. The first suspect was the Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI). One school of thought was that HuJI planned and supplied the materials and the local ULFA cadres implemented the heinous acts.

But the Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi went on arguing that the act was masterminded by none other than ULFA cadres. His cabinet colleague Himanta Bishwa Sarma also echoed his version. However, even they would later say—while still avoiding pronouncing the name of HuJI—that “every act of terrorism perpetrated in the state has its link with Bangladesh.”

The opposition political parties—including the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—called for the dismissal of the Gogoi government for its response to the bombings.

Meanwhile, an unknown militant organization named the “Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahedeen” claimed responsibility for the explosions. Sending an SMS to a Guwahati-based satellite television channel, the organization also threatened further attacks. The Indian Mujahideen also claimed responsibility for recent explosions in Jaipur, Ahmedabad and New Delhi.

After three days of self-imposed curfew, Guwahati turned into a city of protest and demonstrations. Student unions and civil society groups held public meetings and candle-light processions to discuss and condemn the terror. Members of the All-Assam Students’ Union burned and hanged the effigies of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his cabinet. Two general strikes (bandhs) were observed against the violence.

The first bandh was called by BJP and its supporting organizations on Nov. 1. The second, called by AASU on Nov. 3, reached beyond the capital to Assam’s Brahmaputra and Barak valleys.

Singh and his ally United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi visited Assam during the BJP bandh. Paying respects at the attack locations and also attending to the injured in the hospitals, Singh assured that “There will be no compromise on terror.”

But it is the BJP that has most effectively claimed the issue. BJP president and prime minister candidate LK Advani was the first high-profile politician to visit the locations of the attacks in Guwahati. He arrived in Guwahati the very next morning and straight went to the locations. He was even ahead of Chief Minister Gogoi to pay visit to victims in the city. Advani criticized both the central and state governments for not taking effective legal and administrative measures to prevent the infiltration of militants from Bangladesh. He asserted that the UPA government led by the Congress Party lacks both the political will and ability to fight terror.

Most alarmingly, he repeatedly argued that the problem of terrorism in Assam is aggravated by illegal migration, and especially linked the new terror attack to undocumented Bangladeshi settlers. Claiming that there are 35 million such Bangladeshi settlers in India, Advani called upon New Delhi to impose diplomatic pressure on Dhaka
to address the issue.

A local civic group, the Asom Nagarik Samaj (Assam Citizens Society), held a public meeting Nov. 2, calling for a peace process for the state—and condemning not only the terror attacks, but the recent ethnic clashes in Darrang and Udalguri districts of Assam. Noted playwright Arun Sarma and eminent intellectual Hiren Gohain, addressing the gathering, called for all sectors of society to join together to fight against violence and terror.

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Nava Thakuria is an independent journalist based in Guwahati, Assam. He writes widely for media outlets in Asia on socio-political issues in Northeast India, Burma, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.

See also:

ASSAM IN FLAMES
Jihad and Ethnic Conflict Heat Up India-Bangladesh Borderlands
by Nava Thakuria
World War 4 Report, November 2008

From our Daily Report:

India: “Deccan Mujahedeen” claim Mumbai attacks
World War 4 Report, Nov. 27, 2008

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Special to World War 4 Report, Dec. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingWHO IS BEHIND THE ASSAM TERROR? 

THE NEW TEXAS GAS WAR

Fort Worth Communities Confront Corporate Colonization

by Peter Gorman, Fort Worth Weekly

When a natural gas pipeline blew outside the little town of Stairtown, Tex., Aug. 28, 2008, fire officials more than 10 miles from the blast site says they could feel the explosion. And hair went up on thousands of necks in Fort Worth, more than 225 miles away from the blast.

“That was a 36-inch gas pipe that blew,” says Gary Hogan, a member of the Fort Worth Gas Drilling Task Force that’s trying to come up with some ordinances to better regulate safety and environmental impacts related to gas drilling in the Barnett Shale geological formation that lies below 19 counties in North Texas. These include both Dallas and Tarrant County, which covers Fort Worth. But it is what locals call “the Fort,” with its large rail yards and more suburban-style layout, which has become the test case for urban drilling.

“We’ve got 36-inch gas pipes running all over the place under the city, and we’re going to have a lot more soon,” Hogan says. “I don’t want to think about what that would have meant if it had happened here.”

As it was, the explosion, in a rural area, left no one hurt. But the same explosion, occurring downtown, would have been devastating. So would dozens of other gas well and pipeline explosions that have rocked Texas in the last year. It was just one more grim reminder that what residents were told when the landmen first came knocking on Fort Worth’s doors a few years back offering money for mineral rights was not the whole story of gas well drilling.

What wasn’t told includes everything from the number of trucks needed to put up a rig and drill a well—and the damage they do to street—to the thousands of miles of new pipelines that will soon be laid under our city, and the fact that eminent domain can be used to secure the land in which to lay them.

“There’s so much we weren’t told, it’s hard to know where to begin,” says Liane Janovsky, a lawyer who became an activist in her Ryan Place historic neighborhood in South Fort Worth two years ago.

Who knew that odorless gas would be running through pipelines beneath city streets, or that those pipelines corrode from the inside becoming more dangerous the older they get? Who knew that gas companies would condemn private property and even homes to secure convenient pipeline routes? Or that compressor stations—where water and other by-products of drilling are removed from the natural gas—would dot the city, and that they give off poisonous gas and need to run 24-7 at loud decibel levels? And who could have guessed that some of the things that give the Fort her charm—like the Trinity Trees, an historic grove on the banks of the Trinity River, partially destroyed to make way for gas wells last January—would come under the gun? Or that despite a 600-foot automatic protective spacing between well heads and homes, landowners platting out new housing developments would permit wells to be drilled prior to the homes going up—putting new homeowners as close as 200 feet to a potentially explosive well?

The fact is that John Q Public keeps discovering new and disturbing elements to the business of gas wells. By the time 8,000 wells have been dug within Loop 820—the city core—residents fear Fort Worth will not be the city they once knew. More than 880 have been drilled since 2005 within the Loop, more than 650 were approved in 2008, more than 1,500 are in the pipeline for approval, and more than 5,000 have been broached

Janovsky got involved right after she discovered that eight gas wells were planned along the 8th Ave. train tracks, just across the street from her neighborhood’s stately and historic gates. At the time she was against the drilling for a number of reasons: increased traffic, noise pollution, roads being ruined, home devaluation, and, scariest of all, the possibility of explosions if train sparks come in contact with leaking gas. Now, despite those wells having been moved under community pressure away from the historic neighborhoods of Berkeley, Ryan Place and Mistletoe Heights (and into poorer areas), Janovsky remains incensed at the drillers’ arrogance.

“I don’t think the average citizen knew that this was in the pipeline when Ken Barr was mayor, as far back as maybe 2001 or 2002. I asked Frank Moss, the city councilman from District 5 [1998-2004 and 2007-present], why we didn’t do more to prepare the urban core for this sort of intense drilling. And he says that when the gas companies were discussing city drilling they only discussed rural city areas and he didn’t know they were interested in inner city drilling. So nobody planned anything.”

Janovsky says she is frustrated about a lot to do with the Barnett Shale exploitation, from the leasing of mineral rights right to delivering the gas. “The average person knows nothing about mineral rights laws. So when those landmen came into neighborhoods where people had no experience, those people didn’t know the gas companies couldn’t take their minerals by eminent domain. Yet many landmen told people they could, just to bully them into signing. People were taken advantage of; they didn’t know how to negotiate with these companies and landmen. They didn’t even know they could negotiate.”

For the novice who’s never been around drilling, mineral rights are often not even a consideration when purchasing a house or land. But in Texas, subsurface mineral rights trump surface rights every time, and if you’ve bought a dream house without knowing that the previous owner kept the mineral rights, you might wake up to discover that a gas company has moved onto your property and is setting up a rig there. Or putting an access road to a rig on your property.

Robert West of the Hills of Gilmore Creek subdivision discovered just how that worked when he returned from an out-of-town trip in 2005 to discover that gas drillers had put a 300-by-400-foot drill pad (cleared area for a well, including waste pond and trailers for workers) on his six acres, taking about half of it to drill two wells, and not offering anything in return. Adding insult to injury, he’s still stuck paying the taxes on that land. In West’s case, he convinced the appraisal district that his property value has gone done, and they reduced his taxes. For one year. The next year he had to go back and get the reduction again. And he’ll probably have to do that every year for the next 50 years.

The next set of issues deals with the leases. Gas leases are trickier than they look. On the face of it, you sign a paper that gives gas companies three-to-five years to begin exploration and drilling in your area, called a pool. In return you get a signing “bonus”—which has skyrocketed from $200 per acre in rural areas just four years ago to over $25,000 per acre in urban areas—and then receive monthly royalty checks if the well or wells produce. “Mailbox money” is how the landmen put it. Pool size can vary from a minimum of 20 acres to hundreds of acres, and your royalty share will be determined by how many square feet of the pool area you own. In urban areas that will probably come to $20-$50 per well per month. Before taxes and before any gas company fees the fine print in your lease makes you responsible for.

But it’s not as simple as that always. Some landmen (the brokers who get residents to sign the leases and then sell them to the gas companies for a profit) don’t pay the royalties they’ve promised—as discovered by dozens and perhaps hundreds of people who signed with a company called TriStar Gas Partners, LLD. And though that frees the landowner to sign with someone else, it generally takes hiring a lawyer and months of work to actually get the original lease back.

Even when everything is fine, collecting royalties is sometimes difficult. Mortgage companies, who own the deed to your house, have the right of first refusal on any and all monies made from your property. As a rule, if a person is paying their mortgage on time, the banks and mortgage companies let the monies generated from things like gas wells go to the homeowner. But some companies charge a fee to the homeowner for filing what’s called a Subordination of Deed of Trust allowing the homeowner to collect. This can run into several hundred dollars—often more than the homeowner stands to make from the royalties. And some banks prevent a homeowner from collecting royalties at all.

“The issue,” says Tom Fleischer, a Ft. Worth attorney who works with business and real estate litigation, “is that there’s no incentive for mortgage companies to sign the subordination. They don’t have to by law, and from their point of view you’re selling off some of the value of the surety they have, which include your home and mineral rights.”

“That’s one that’s starting to come up more and more,” says Hogan. “Anything you do to your property that may effect the value, you’re supposed to notify the lender of your actions, and they say yea or nay. Let’s say you wanted to turn your house into a lease property, they would want to know. And with gas wells, it’s a mess. Some mortgage companies want the royalty money paid to them; some companies are keeping the royalty money in an escrow account for clients who have a history of paying late. Some companies won’t sign off on a subordination at all, leaving the money in limbo. I always tell people—and I’m not a lawyer by any means—that they should check with their mortgage company to find out what their policy is before they ever sign a lease. Cause people are going to find out just how hard it is to actually get their hands on their royalty money as more of these wells go online.”

Threatened Water Resources
Once the leases are signed and the acreage pooled, drilling begins. With that comes its own set of issues that few in the Fort were aware of. Millions of gallons of water are needed to help drill and then frac the well to release the gas trapped in the shale. The water is hauled in by trucks weighing 80,000 pounds that have destroyed city streets and state highways, and as yet Fort Worth doesn’t even have a plan in place for getting monies from the companies to repair them. Susan Alanis, director of planning and development for the city, told the Weekly that “operators are required to post a bond that the city can call on if there is truck damage.” She adds that the process was “very complicated.”

Michael Peters, the TxDot spokesman for the Fort Worth area says the state has no regulations concerning road damage fees either. “I will say that the Barnett Shale has severely stressed our roadways statewide, but any sort of fee would have to be set by the state legislature.”

State Representative Lon Burnam (D-Fort Worth) says that behind-the-scenes work to begin to address the impact the Barnett Shale has had on TxDot roadways has begun in preparation for the upcoming legislative session. “Without naming names, I’ve begun talking to Republicans and Democrats alike about a package of legislation to address legitimate public interests and concerns on a number of issues that have come up because of the Barnett Shale, but which legislation has thus far not addressed.” Those issues, he says, relate not only to TxDot, but to the state Railroad Commission—which overseas gas and oil drilling and production in the state—and to water pollution as well.

Another issue concerning roads is the number of over-sized loads on small roads and the number of rigs utilizing relatively raw drivers because of the demand. Unfortunately, finding out how many accidents have involved gas company drivers is not possible, as neither the Fort Worth police, the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department or the Texas Department of Transportation keep such records. Anecdotal evidence suggests it’s not an insignificant number, however.

Several insurance companies contacted for this story says that information was proprietary and wouldn’t respond further.

Other issues, like noise and sound and dust pollution caused by well drilling, are often temporary—lasting the month or so it takes to drill a well. But what people weren’t told and didn’t know was that gas companies will often return to the same pad site repeatedly to drill new wells—so that month of hell might be repeated several times over the course of a year as rigs become available.

The real issues involving the drilling process include water, waste and danger. Water issues range from acquiring the 3-5 million gallons needed per well—it’s taken from a range of sources, including the city of Fort Worth, Tarrant County and private wells—to disposing of the waste water.

The majority of Fort Worth shale water probably comes from private wells, either drilled on site or purchased from private homeowners. The Texas “capture” rule allows anyone to capture as much water as they can, whether from streams crossing their land or wells they’ve dug. In many areas of the state, Groundwater Protection Districts have been set up to monitor and regulate the water supply, but the Texas Water Code exempts wells used exclusively for oil and gas purposes from that regulation.

“Water is always a concern,” says Dr. Billy Caldwell, a geologist and consultant to oil and gas companies, “because without it you have nothing. So you don’t want to keep punching holes in the ground and taking it from there. To that end, I think Fort Worth is going to have some success with using sewage water for fraccing wells. But there is nothing better than simply reusing water rather than capturing ground water or water from an aquifer.” Some companies have been moving in this direction, he says. “Devon’s been working on recycling well water and I hope they can get it working completely.”

Still, Caldwell admits that until those strategies become large-scale realities, water use by shale drillers will remain an issue. But while depleting the water tables in the region is a concern, the bigger problem is the disposal of it once it’s been used. Freshwater that’s used both in the drilling and later fraccing processes—short for fracturing, or forcing water and sand and chemicals into the shale, which releases the natural gas trapped in it—flows back up the bore full of sand and salt and drilling chemicals. The gas companies routinely refer to this water as salt water, but “it’s really toxic waste,” says Jim Popp, who recently won a case against the permitting of an injection well—the wells where the gas water is dumped—in Wise County. “When it comes to injection wells, we were simply lied to by the gas companies. We were told they were salt water injection wells, but they’re not. There are at least 17 different chemicals in that water, including benzene. They’re toxic waste injection wells. If they were called what they really are, no one would have let them be put in place.”

Water wells in Chico and Panola Counties were contaminated by faulty injection wells, and Popp sees the potential for the same in Fort Worth. “Right now, the companies operating in Fort Worth are bringing their waste out here to the injection wells in Wise and elsewhere, but nobody here wants that toxic waste except the owners of those injection wells. If Fort Worth wants the gas money so badly, they should be able to live with the waste it produces.”

At the moment, only one injection well has been permitted in Fort Worth, and a moratorium is in place on others. And while that well, owned by Chesapeake, is not supposed to be utilized at the moment, residents of the east Fort Worth area where it’s located claim that water trucks continually enter the property weighted down and leave looking as though they’ve been emptied.

“People don’t understand is how dangerous this stuff is,” says Popp. “Several water separators have blown up in the area when lightning struck them. In another case a water tanker blew up when a driver waiting his turn to empty his truck lit a cigarette and blew up three trucks. When was the last time you saw salt water blow up?”

Popp isn’t exaggerating. After a number of explosions involving well waste water—at least a few of which caused deaths—the Federal Chemical Safety Board classified it as a flammable material.

That same toxic water, generally held in pits at the well site until it can be trucked away, has been found in unlined pits or pits in which the lining was torn on dozens of sites throughout Tarrant and nearby counties—which means a lot of it is seeping into the groundwater.

The only monitoring of well waste water is done by the Railroad Commission—as gas and oil companies are exempt from both the federal Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Water Act under new regulations promulgated by the Bush administration. Worse, the Texas Auditor’s office says that injection well monitoring is done mostly on the honor system.

Another issue concerning water involves the actual fraccing process. In many instances throughout the Barnett Shale region, homeowners dependent on private water wells have seen their water discolored and starting to smell of sulphur after wells have been bored. In a recent case in Hill County, three homeowners suddenly discovered hydrocarbons in their well water, which killed several animals. The water cannot even be used for lawn watering much less for cooking, washing dishes or showering. To date, gas companies almost universally deny that their operations have caused any of these problems. Affected homeowners repeatedly told the Weekly that gas company representatives have told them that the companies are prepared to tie them up in litigation for a good long expensive time if they choose to sue.

“Big gas companies never want to affect ground water,” says Caldwell. “But anytime you’re dealing with drilling wells you’re going to have occasional accidents and water contamination. That’s just a fact of life. What’s important is to discover them and get those waters cleaned up. Of course, even if you do, you’re liable to have that sulfur smell in the water for a good long time.”

Caldwell added that the big Barnett players like XTO, Chesapeake, Devon and Encana work hard to prevent contamination. “But certainly those accidents are going to occur occasionally anyway.”

The drilling of the well itself poses its own problems. When gas wells—which are head over heels more dangerous than oil wells—are drilled out in the countryside, leaks and explosions, even large ones, frequently do little damage other than to the ground surface or the operators equipment. But as drilling is done in urban areas, those risks increase considerably. The 2006 death of Robert Dale Gayan, 49, in a well explosion while working on a rig in nearby Forest Hill brought home the potential danger to Fort Worth, and Mayor Montcreif immediately asked that the distance between well bores and homes in Fort Worth be increased from 300 to 600 feet.

Apart from explosions, gas leaks have forced evacuations in several nearby areas, and even water separator tanks on well sites have exploded when struck by lightning, despite the use of lightning arrestors.

Pipeline Threats
As if all of those elements most residents were not aware of when the landmen dangled mailbox money the way Eve dangled an apple weren’t bad enough, the worst is yet to come. It’s coming in the form of pipelines, particularly the gathering lines that are needed to connect gas at the well head and get it to transmission lines that carry the gas to compressor stations where it’s cleaned and compressed into high pressure dry gas and sent to users.

Jerry Lobdill, a retired physicist and chemical engineer, estimates that there will be at least 175 miles of gathering lines that will have to be put under Fort Worth inside Loop 820, “and the reality is that there will probably be twice that number.”

Those lines will be carrying what is called “wet gas”—gas that’s been through a water separator at the well head but which still contains water and salt and chemicals. “The problem with those lines,” explained Greg Hughes of the Coalition for a Reformed Drilling Ordinance (CREDO), a citizen’s group trying to secure a moratorium on new gas drilling within Fort Worth, “is that they are carbon steel and they corrode from the inside. Those pipelines have corrosion protection on the outside that prevents rust from occurring between the pipe and the earth, but there is nothing to prevent rust from occurring inside the lines. There are mechanical devices that you can run inside your lines called ‘smart pigs’ which can detect corrosion after it occurs, but to stop it you would have to halt gas in the line, dig up the pipe and replace it, a very expensive proposition.”

Based on the major explosions that have occurred in the Barnett Shale zone over the last several years, Lobdill says that the simple mathematics of having that many miles of wet gas lines running under a city with 3,000 wells is that “we can expect a major incident every six months.”

That is a frightening number. Even if he’s wrong by the power of 10, we could still expect a major incident every five years. And if a pipeline in the country goes, it’s often a stand-alone pipe. In Fort Worth, an explosion in one line is more than likely to set off further explosions in the other lines running parallel to it—as well as destroy water, sewage and electrical utility lines running under the same streets.

“And what if it’s not an explosion, but just a leak?” asked Task Force member Gary Hogan. “They’re putting unodorized gas under the city streets in pipelines that are not platted with the city so if anything should go wrong it would be a disaster. Our hazmat people won’t even know which way to evacuate people.”

Susan Alanis, Fort Worth’s director of planning and development, told the Weekly that platting of pipelines is not required to be provided to the city—only the property owner and the Railroad Commission. But she says that “because there is a little lag time in accessing the platting records from the Railroad Commission, we’re looking at the [gas and pipeline] companies having to provide as-built drawings to us as their pipelines are put in place.”

A retired high-profile Houston attorney who worked for more than 20 years in the pipeline industry and asked that his name not be used, says it’s just crazy to put wet gas beneath Ft. Worth, and even crazier to have wet, unodorized gas. He told the story of a Houston man who lived on a line a company he worked with had built and one cold morning “it leaked and a man walked into his house, flipped on his light and his house exploded, killing him. The same thing happened to two little girls I remember.”

He told the story of the New London school gas explosion in which unodorized gas seeped into the school building in 1937. “Children had been nauseated for several days but no one could figure out what was causing it. Well, there was an unodorized gas leak and when a janitor turned on an electric switch the gas ignited, blowing up the school and exploding 300 children.”

Jim Bradbury, an attorney and another member of the Gas Drilling Task Force says that the issue of unodorized gas came up at a task force meeting. “The oil company representatives says it was problematic to odorize the gas at the wellhead because the odorization would foul the compressor station equipment. Someone else from the industry noted that since compressors release some of the gas they’re processing you would have too many ‘false positives’ if people smelled odorized gas. But I ask, what’s the cost of a false negative?”

Mayor Mike Montcrief subsequently took that issue off the task force’s agenda and gave it to the city staff to handle.

Locals Left With the Mess
“One of the pipeline issues that’s been bothering us,” says former city councilman Clyde Picht, a member of the CREDO coalition, “is what’s happens to the wells when the big companies lose interest?”

Picht and many others who want a moratorium in well permitting in Fort Worth until the issue can be properly looked at, is concerned about what happens 10 years down the road. “When those wells stop producing enough, Chesapeake will head back to Oklahoma and sell them to a mid-sized company. They’ll run them for some time but finally they’ll be sold to some cut-rate company that won’t check the pipeline at all.”

Gary Hogan notes that homeowners oughtn’t forget about repercussions from leaks or explosions, either in the wells themselves or the pipelines moving their product. “I predict that if we ever do have blowouts and neighborhoods affected—even if they’re not catastrophic events—that the insurance companies are not going to sit on their thumbs. They’re going to send out notices that if you’re within a certain area of a well or pipeline they’ll either not cover you for your losses or they’ll give you a new premium and maybe even a deductable. And that’s going to come out of the $15,000 or so in royalties an average Ft. Worth homeowner can expect over the next 30 years.”

And if pipeline explosions and leaks weren’t discussed by the landmen and gas company public relations flacks who came calling, you can bet that the gas companies’ ability to secure pipeline routes by eminent domain certainly wasn’t. That issue is new and galvanizing people around the city who see a great deal of difference between putting a gas line through a cow pasture in the country and a front lawn in the inner city. The gas companies and their pipeline subsidiaries, however, have the same right to condemn property as public utilities for the placement of gas lines.

That issue was in the national spotlight for some weeks as Jerry Horton, an elderly Carter Avenue resident, held out against permitting Chesapeake’s pipeline branch, Texas Midstream Gas Services, to put a pipeline under her lawn. When she couldn’t come to an agreement with the company, she was threatened with eminent domain. On Aug. 21, shortly after Horton came to terms with Texas Midstream, the company filed suit to condemn property belonging to five other Carter Ave. homeowners for the same pipeline.

Sometimes the arrogance goes further than that. On June 21, Red Oak Energy Partners filed a suit against the city of Flower Mound in state district court over Flower Mound’s refusal to grant variances to the gas company for a proposed well site. Says one city official, “We knew it was going to happen somewhere. The gas companies simply believe they have absolute rights to these minerals, and things like cities and ordinances and the rights of citizens come second to those. And if it wasn’t Flower Mound, it would have been somewhere else.”

“Everybody is wondering what the next surprise is going to be that they haven’t told us about,” says Susan de los Santos, a member of the Gas Drilling Task Force. “And that distrust has been earned by the gas companies because of their behavior to this point.”

One of those surprises probably won’t come for at least another 10 or 15 years, until the big companies begin selling off their wells. That’s when they’ll begin drilling into a second strata of the shale, one deeper than the current one. It’s not something the gas companies have discussed publicly.

“At one of the gas drilling meetings,” says Hogan, “I overheard the oil reps discussing a second strata and asked what they were talking about. They says we shouldn’t worry, that they weren’t interested in the deeper shale and so forth. Not yet, anyway. But they will be if it’s valuable and then they’ll be back drilling again and the whole cycle will start over again.”

Hogan suggests that if you haven’t signed a lease yet, you’d better make sure it has a clause that says it’s only for one strata—otherwise you’ll be tied into today’s bonus and royalty rates when and if they come back and drill new wells.

And long-term environmental and health issues have hardly been considered at all in the rush for the gas. “What effect will the injection wells have on our water?” Asked Don Young, founder of Fort Worth Citizens Against Neighborhood Drilling Ordinance (CanDo) who has been telling people for years to Just Say No to gas drilling. “What about a major accident? And what about the physical and psychological impacts on people? We have no idea what those will be. What will the impact be on your health by having to put up with more noise, more pollution, more trucks on the road? The only escape will be the cultural center of the city. Around it will be an industrial nightmare.”

Young’s complaints and protests have mostly fallen on deaf ears. Gary Hogan says gas company representatives have tried to marginalize Young, treating them like kooks for sounding the alarm while people were still dreaming of royalty riches and before the reality of gas drilling began to sink in. For Fort Worth, that didn’t happen until established historic district communities—Berkeley, Mistletoe Heights and Ryan Place—realized the drillers were taking aim at their homes and planning on putting rigs in their back yards.

“I think people all over the city began to wake up when those neighborhoods got together and says no,” says De Los Santos. “I think that turned the tide on understanding that mineral rights’ owners have some power.”

Eventually, there was enough noise from the public that Mayor Mike Moncrief formed the Gas Drilling Task Force to make recommendations to the city council to revise Ft. Worth’s gas well ordinance. However, that experience is proving frustrating for several of the non-gas-industry people who represent the Fort’s citizenry on the Task Force.

“Soon as we started talking about the problems and hazards of pipelines, the mayor took it out of the task force’s hands and says the pipeline recommendations would be made by city staff instead,” says Bradbury.

Moncrief did the same with the gas companies’ public-notice policy and road impact. And even with the issues left in the hand of the task force, its make-up is so lopsided in favor of gas company representatives and those who want urban drilling that the companies generally get their way on what recommendations will be made to the city council.

“I thought I could make a difference on this task force,” says Hogan, a veteran of the first task force as well. “But it’s hard to make a difference when you”ve got a deck stacked against you.”

During August that frustration reached a point where some citizens suggested to the five members of the task force who are regularly voted down by gas industry reps that they simply walk away. “Some people suggested that we resign in protest, explaining that the gas industry controls the task force. But when we talked it over we thought that Mayor Moncrief might just say we walked from the table and have his staff write up the ordinance. So we decided to stay.”

“The task force should have had voting power resting with the citizens on the panel, with the experts being there to give input regarding the wells,” says De Los Santos. “But that’s hot how it was formed. So I think you can look forward to a minority report from the citizens who represent the people of Fort Worth and in it we will make the recommendations that we feel should go into the gas drilling ordinance.”

She was asked if she thought a minority report would have any impact on the council members’ final decisions.

“I think the council will have to take it into consideration if our voices are echoed by community leaders and the public. The people associated with CREDO are highly visible and influential. Three of them are former city council members. If they and the presidents of neighborhood associations and the League of Women Voters come to council and say they agree with what the minority report recommends, I don’t think the council will have any choice but to take it under advisement.”

But will they be willing to buck the system to make recommendations the gas drilling companies don’t like?

Lon Burnam is skeptical. “The public needs to understand that any time you have a 500-pound gorilla in the room—and that gorilla is the gas companies—you don’t have to spell it out to the city council. There is an implied threat that if you don’t do things the gorilla’s way, you’ll need to hit the highway.”

So does Fort Worth just give up?

“No,” says Burnam. “In Fort Worth the gorilla doesn’t always win. There are moments of democratic impulse here and I think this is one of them. This is non-ideological. It’s brought together the politically right-wing and left-wing because this is about protecting your home.

“This is a runaway train and it is always harder to stop a runaway train than it is to prevent it in the first place. And right now we’ve got a mayor who is totally aligned with the gas industry. But the city has a right to establish a moratorium to see how it’s going to address this gas boom.”

“The more we learn about what’s happening and what’s going to happen,” says Hogan, “the more it looks like Don Young with his ‘Just Say No to Urban Drilling’ was right all along. Unfortunately, it’s too late for that. It’s here now. But let’s do this in the right way. And I don’t think it’s too late for that, to make the companies do their drilling in a way that will minimize impact on health, safety and the environment. If we don’t, who’s going to want to live here? It’ll be a total loss for the average citizen.”

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This story first appeared Sept. 10 in the Fort Worth Weekly.

RESOURCES

Coalition for a Reformed Drilling Ordinance (CREDO)
http://www.fw-credo.com

Fort Worth Citizens Against Neighborhood Drilling Ordinance (FWCanDo!)
http://www.fwcando.org

Oil and Gas Industry Exempt From New Clean Water Rules
New York Times, March 8, 2003

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Dec. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingTHE NEW TEXAS GAS WAR 

IRAQ’S CIVIL RESISTANCE

Eclipsed from the headlines by the ongoing carnage in Iraq, there is an active civil resistance in the country that opposes the occupation, the regime it protects, and the jihadist and Baathist "resistance" alike. This besieged opposition—under threat of repression and assassination—is fighting to keep alive elementary freedoms for women, leading labor struggles against Halliburton and other U.S. contractors, opposing privatization of the country's oil and resources, and demanding a secular future for Iraq. They note that what they call "political Islam" dominates both sides in the Iraq war—the collaborationist regime and the armed "resistance."

See our full reports:

IS THE U.S. PULLING THE PLUG ON IRAQI OIL WORKERS?
/node/9051

IRAQI LABOR LEADERS SPEAK
Their Fight for Workers and Against the Occupation
/node/7883

IRAQ'S CIVIL RESISTANCE
The Secular Left Opposition Stands Up
/node/4896

FROM BAGHDAD TO TOKYO
Japanese Anti-War Movement Hosts Iraqi Civil Resistance
/node/1660

Iraqi Secular Forces Struggle Against US and Religious Fundamentalists
/node/7183

See our recent posts on Iraq's civil resistance:

Baghdad: three killed in Green Zone protests
/node/14828

Iraq: protesters camp out in Green Zone
/node/14792

Iraq: protesters demand new government
/node/14765

Mass protests shake Baghdad regime
/node/14231

Resistance to ISIS mounts in Syria, Iraq
/node/13401

Charges dropped against Iraq oil union leader
/node/12767

Iraq: civil resistance leader assassinated
/node/12733

Iraq: workers protest "apartheid-like" conditions at oil fields
/node/10451

Iraq drafts harsh anti-protest law as Baghdad gets Tahrir Square movement
/node/10124

Iraq: thousands of protesters defy curfew
/node/9585

Iraq: UN concerned over repression of protesters
/node/9562

Iraq gets a Tahrir Square
/node/9528

Iraq: deadly sreeet clashes in Kurdistan
/node/9505

Protests spread to Iraq —but not Syria (yet)
/node/9428

Iraq: police raid electricity unions
/node/8874

Iraq: protests mount to "recolonization" of Rumaila oil field
/node/7943

Iraq: Basra oil pipeline workers score labor victory
/node/7299

Iraq: labor conference pledges to fight for workers' rights, against privatization
/node/7118

Iraqi unions announce new confederation at international labor conference
/node/7036

Iraqi civil resistance statement on International Women's Day
/node/6993

Iraqi workers march against Gaza aggression
/node/6653#comment-315923

Iraq unions call for international labor conference in Irbil
/node/6624

Iraq: civil resistance leader injured in Kirkuk terror blast
/node/6516

Campaign to stop polygamy in Iraqi Kurdistan
/node/6391

Iraq's civil resistance to Obama: end the occupation
/node/6299

Iraq: Basra workers march against austerity
/node/6225

Iraq: workers protest IMF policies
/node/6210

Interviews:

Samir Adil, president of the Iraqi Freedom Congress, June 2006
Houzan Mahmoud  of the Iraqi Women's Rights Coalition, June 2006 
Yanar Mohammed of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, August 2004
Khayal Ibrahim of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq and Samir Noory of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq, May 2004
Interview with Issam Shukri of the Union of Unemployed in Iraq, May 2004
 

Continue ReadingIRAQ’S CIVIL RESISTANCE 

Obama Watch

UN resolution against Israeli settlements
/node/15238

Obama formally ends 'Muslim registry' program
/node/15174#comment-453896

Obama 'permanently' bans Arctic offshore drilling?
/node/14386#comment-453891

CIA: Russia meddled in US election
/node/15176#comment-453848

Obama drug war commutations surpass 1,000
http://globalganjareport.com/node/1263

Dakota Access pipeline blocked —for now
/node/15201

Syria and Iraq in the Trump world order
/node/15159

Burma sanctions lifted amid ethnic cleansing
/node/15099

Syria: nuclear flashpoint
/node/15089

Trump plays Jerusalem card for Jewish vote
/node/15054

Syria: hideous escalation fruit of bogus 'ceasefire'
/node/15052

Yemen: Saudis bomb anti-bombing demonstration
/node/14989

White House releases (contested) drone kill count
/node/14901

Obama signs draconian new drug law
/node/14500#comment-453513

India: court convicts 24 in 2002 Gujarat pogrom
/node/14851

US rejects autonomy for Syrian Kurds
/node/14838

Is Obama really helping Cuban dissidents?
/node/14728

Argentina: Kissinger crimes in the news again
/node/14727

Obama delivers Gitmo closure plan to Congress
/node/14656

Plan Colombia to become 'Peace Colombia'?
/node/14647

Obama's seventh year: a World War 4 Report scorecard
/node/14571

National protests against immigration raids
/node/14563

Rights groups criticize arms sale to Saudi Arabia
/node/14510

Drone memos may stay secret: US appeals court
/node/14479

Contradictions of post-Paris anti-ISIS convergence
/node/14466

Obama and the KXL-TPP contradiction
/node/14434

US embraces Iran as (ironic) 'peace' partner in Syria
/node/14421

Obama's nuclear upgrade: Euro-missiles redux?
/node/14405

Yemen: Amnesty demands halt to arms transfers
/node/14360

Four Corners haze: harbinger of climate change
/node/14228

Obama pursues nuclear 'modernization' —not disarmament
/node/14224

Turkey continues to bomb anti-ISIS forces
/node/14218

US betrays Rojava Kurds (inevitably)
/node/14208

Protests as Japan moves toward remilitarization
/node/14192

Iran, world powers reach nuclear agreement
/node/14185

Obama disses Kurdish 'partners' against ISIS
/node/14170

Iraq: US sends more troops —amid reprisals
/node/14115

White House criticizes Egypt, supports military aid
/node/14114

Drone strike survivors file suit against US
/node/14113

SCOTUS rules in Jerusalem passport case
/node/14111

US drops Cuba from terrorism list
/node/14083

Obama vetoes Keystone pipeline bill
/node/12778#comment-452828

Obama's new offshore plan: don't believe the hype
/node/13940

Obama's sixth year: a World War 4 Report scorecard
/node/13917

Threat to South Korean nuclear plants: no thanks
/node/13838

Venezuela: US imposes sanctions on officials
/node/13839

Cuba: US agrees to normalize relations
/node/13842

Immigration enforcement: anti-labor tool
/node/13810

US and China in new carbon pact; trading seen
/node/13719

Net neutrality and the extinction of journalism
/node/13180

Judge orders release of Gitmo force-feeding videos
/node/13606

Warlords cut deal on Afghan electoral dispute
/node/13564

Obama, Assad and ISIS: our grim vindication
/node/13522

Obama sees long war against ISIS
/node/13512

Iraq: great power convergence against ISIS
/node/13351

Obama to send 300 military 'advisors' to Iraq
/node/13313

Obama climate plan: too little, too late
/node/13279

US POW released in exchange for Gitmo detainees
/node/13273

Gov study: climate change happening now
/node/11658#comment-452093

Rival trade pacts vie for Pacific hegemony
/node/13207

Obama's fifth year: a World War 4 Report scorecard 
/node/12965

Obama, Mandela and Castro: absurd hypocrisy
/node/12712

Gitmo lawyer: declassify interrogation techniques
/node/12712

Syria: what is the imperial agenda?
/node/12663

Will Obama cut Egypt military aid?
/node/12532#comment-451591

US troops to Philippines amid Mindanao fighting
/node/12436

Will 'peace' mean betrayal of Afghan women?
/node/12362

Obama preparing martial law?
/node/12346

NSA collecting phone call data under top secret court order 
/node/11668#comment-451338

Samantha Power signals Syria intervention?
/node/12308

Will OAS summit broach drug decrim?
/node/12298

Obama addresses drone strikes, steps to close Gitmo
/node/12269

Obama addresses Gitmo hunger strike
/node/12238

No Miranda rights for bombing suspect?
/node/12203#comment-450244

US to redeploy troops as Morocco axes war game
/node/12194

Jerusalem: troops fire on Palestinian protesters
/node/12110

Israeli forces surround new "village"
/node/12106

Obama schmoozes petro-oligarchs
/node/11859#comment-450091

Court upholds statutory protection for polar bears
/node/12058

Press was prone on drones, but cover blown
/node/11962

Prison evidence at issue in 9-11 trial
/node/11925

Obama's fourth year: a World War 4 Report scorecard
/node/11896

Bolivia wins coca-chewing victory at UN
/node/11870

Chuck Hagel: revenge of the paleocons?
/node/11854

Obama signs NDAA —despite Gitmo restrictions
/node/11850

North Korea joins ICBM club —but why now?
/node/11781

PSY sells out —but righties use him to bash Obama
/node/11769

Cornhuskers pack Keystone XL hearing
/node/11767

Military coup d'état against Obama?
/node/11739

Israel launches new assault on Gaza
/node/11690

Petraeus prostration: Benghazi blowback?
/node/11676

Obama's re-election: more historic than 2008?
/node/11669

ACLU urges Obama to close Gitmo in second term
/node/11668

Obama and Romney both fudged facts on Libya
/node/11615

Obama urges Supreme Court to limit corporate liability
/node/11597

Italy high court upholds sentences of 23 former CIA agents in rendition case
/node/11532

East China Sea flashpoint for Sino-Japanese war?
/node/11515

Unprecedented maneuvers in Strait of Hormuz
/node/11514

From Afghanistan to Tunisia: back to GWOT?
/node/11513

Will provocateur film derail Arab Spring?
/node/11507

Yemen drone war: 29 dead in eight days
/node/11480

Jerusalem political football in US horserace
/node/11477

Holder closes investigation into alleged torture deaths of CIA detainees
/node/11454

Petro-oligarchs play presidential candidates —again
/node/11427

Keystone vs Enbridge: race or stratagem?
/node/11416

Pakistan NATO resupply deal: house of mirrors
/node/11260

Republicans push "Fast and Furious" conspiracy theory
/node/11220

Supreme Court partially strikes down Arizona immigration law
/node/11213

Congressman to sue Obama over new immigration policy
/node/11170

Federal judge dismisses lawsuit over US medical experiments in Guatemala
/node/11169

US to downsize drones amid growing outcry over civilian casualties
/node/11154

US resumes arms sales to Bahrain —despite ongoing abuses
/node/11075

Iraq: court dismisses charges against former US detainee
/node/11067

Full-on propaganda push for fracking
/node/11059

Obama wins Afghan deal for extended troop presence
/node/11053

Obama approves Colombia FTA —despite continued anti-labor violence
/node/11004

American Indians reach trust settlement with federal government
/node/10987

Anti-Obama conspiracies seen in oil price spike
/node/10884

US, Mexico open transboundary waters to oil and gas exploitation
/node/10868

Drones cleared to patrol US cities; avatar robots not far behind
/node/10857

Another Gitmo detainee to face military tribunal; second under Obama
/node/10844

Obama acknowledges Pakistan drone strikes
/node/10782

Obama shilling for drilling, backing fracking
/node/10761

Azerbaijan drawn into Iranian spy-vesus-spy intrigues
/node/10757

Obama's third year: a World War 4 Report scorecard
/node/10749

Obama denies permit for Keystone XL pipeline
/node/10736

Protests mark tenth anniversary of Guantánamo Bay prison camp
/node/10720

Pentagon prepares for new cold war with China
/node/10701

Obama signs NDAA with indefinite detention provisions —despite "reservations"
/node/10687

US transfers final detainee to Iraqi government
/node/10659

Obama resumes military aid to Uzbekistan dictatorship
/node/10604

Obama's Australia deployment signals new cold war with China?
/node/10546

Obama announces final Iraq pull-out (except special forces)
/node/10452

Hezbollah leader could get US military trial: report
/node/10365

War criminal Burhanuddin Rabbani eulogized by Obama
/node/10341

White House expands drug watch list to include all Central America
/node/10332

Obama caves in on smog regulations
/node/8167#comment-327783

Cuba high court upholds US contractor's 15-year sentence
/node/10200

Brutal ICE raids continue —despite Obama's new policy
/node/10192

Iraq: US announces talks to stay beyond December deadline —as new atrocity is reported
/node/10189

Afghanistan draw-down modeled on "Sons of Iraq" program
/node/10060

Libya: France arms rebels as DC pols prevaricate
/node/10058

Congress and the Libya war: Orwellian logic on both sides
/node/10031

Libya: Qaddafi exploits civilian casualties, Gates says air-strikes are "not hostilities"
/node/10011

Libya: mercenaries fighting on both sides?
/node/9973

Patriot Act extended through 2015
/node/9932

Obama's Mideast speech: risking Jewish support to domesticate Arab Spring
/node/9907

Obama to open Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve
/node/9889

Libya: Contact Group to fund rebels
/node/9847

Osama bin Laden, the GWOT and the Arab Spring: what has changed?
/node/9846

Did Osama bin Laden hit violate international law?
/node/9839

Was Osama bin Laden sheltered by Pakistan regime?
/node/9838

Petraeus to CIA; regime change on agenda?
/node/9827

Supreme Court hears arguments in global warming case
/node/9796

Colombia agrees to FTA labor conditions; opponents don't buy it
/node/9758

Lawmaker proposes halt to US military action in Libya
/node/9704

US signs nuclear development deal with Chile —amid Fukushima disaster
/node/9686

Obama: no retreat from "clean nuclear power" plans
/node/9685

US and Britain join air-strikes against Libya; Congress to approve action?
/node/9664

Yemen: 30 dead in massacre of protesters
/node/9658

Obama orders resumption of Gitmo military trials
/node/9608

Mexico: Calderón fights WikiLeaks fallout in DC
/node/9605

Yemen: embattled prez blames Israeli subversion (of course)
/node/9566

Fatah calls for "day of rage" against US
/node/9511

Mexico: federal police fire on Oaxaca protesters
/node/9510

US Defense Secretary says Gitmo closing unlikely
/node/9508

Egypt: military dismantles Mubarak regime —and protest movement
/node/9480

Egypt: protesters defy push for "normality"
/node/9460

Egypt: Mubark hangs on, Washington sends more mixed signals
/node/9433

Egypt: will US dump Mubarak?
/node/9427

Egypt: protesters prepare "departure day" march as street battles continue
/node/9422

Italy: court convicts former Gitmo detainee
/node/9417

Egypt: "march of a million" gives Mubarak three days to leave country
/node/9415

Fear in Washington, Israel as general strike is declared in Egypt
/node/9407

Obama administration won't dump Mubarak as protests paralyze Egypt
/node/9403

Obama exploits South Sudanese independence struggle for propaganda
/node/9387

Obama pays lip service to Tunisians —betrays Egyptians, Algerians, Yemenis
/node/9386

Pakistan: thousands march against US drone strikes
/node/9374

Tunisian virus spreads to Algeria
/node/9372

Obama's second year: a World War 4 Report scorecard
/node/9367

US to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014: Biden
/node/9365

Obama administration may resume military commission trials: NYT
/node/9366

Angry protests spread in Jordan
/node/9335

White House acknowledges Gitmo to remain open for foreseeable future
/node/9284

UN investigator calls for inquiry into Iraq rights abuses
/node/9200

Obama administration invokes state secrets to block targeted killings lawsuit
/node/9141

Clinton: Mexico needs "equivalent" of Plan Colombia
/node/9090

Last US "combat troops" leave Iraq; private sector to pick up slack
/node/8966

Iraq: countdown to withdrawal?
/node/8943

Merida Initiative funds mired in red tape: GAO report
/node/8858

ZOG theory goes mainstream
/node/8824

Gitmo detainee to be repatriated to Yemen after judge orders release
/node/8791

McChrystal ouster: the neocons strike back?
/node/8783

Haiti: Obama signs HELP sweatshop law
/node/8698

Obama to send National Guard to Mexican border; Fox fuels terror scare
/node/8666

Kerry-Lieberman climate bill wins praise —and outrage
/node/8617

Obama Justice Department urges Supreme Court not to hear Maher Arar appeal
/node/8615

Robert Gates does Colombia, Peru; calls for more bases, free trade
/node/8592

Obama threatens to nuke Iran?
/node/8526

Obama names new chief for Gitmo tribunals
/node/8512

Napolitano halts work on "virtual" border fence
/node/8466

UN rights experts urge civilian trials for 9-11 suspects
/node/8438

White House revives military commission option for 9-11 trials: reports
/node/8416

Obama plans "dramatic reductions" in n-arms —but not "no first use" pledge
/node/8414

Federal judge upholds detention of Yemeni Gitmo detainees
/node/8371

White House mulls indefinite detention: Sen. Graham
/node/8350

Holder "flexible" on trying 9-11 suspects in civilian or military courts
/node/8336

Moscow demands answers on US-Romania "missile shield" deal
/node/8320

Pentagon abandons two-war doctrine —but not the two wars
/node/8314

White House asks Congress for $410 million under Merida Initiative
/node/8312

US, Russia agree to nuclear arms reduction treaty
/node/8300

White House to boost nuclear weapons funding
/node/8293

White House drops "Plan Colombia" nomenclature
/node/8291

US imperialism to outsource lunar invasion
/node/8285

Obama orders government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2020
/node/8267

Obama's first year: a World War 4 Report scorecard
/node/8237

UK rights group urges further investigation of Gitmo suicides
/node/8231

"Doomsday Clock" moves one minute away from midnight
/node/8206

US officials concealed details of immigrant deaths in detention: NYT
/node/8182

Afghan authorities commit to taking over former Bagram detention facility
/node/8181

EPA proposes stricter smog regulations
/node/8167

Obama administration announces new rules for public land drilling leases
/node/8166

New airline passenger screening unconstitutional: rights groups
/node/8154

Obama declassification order rolls back Bush secrecy legacy
/node/8151

Guantánamo prison may remain open until 2011: reports
/node/8108

Obama's peace prize and its anti-war critics: Which is more Orwellian?
/node/8045

Obama administration calls for dismissal of suit against John "torture memo" Yoo
/node/8044

Afghanistan's secular opposition dissents from Obama's troop surge
/node/8027

Gitmo detainees to Illinois?
/node/7952

Obama adminstration to open new Afghan detention facility
/node/7951

Holder announces federal trials for accused 9-11 conspirators
/node/7941

Anti-nuclear protesters greet Obama in Japan
/node/7937

Honduras: US seeks "happy end" —at cost of democracy?
/node/7934

Obama's EPA silences dissent to carbon trading
/node/7928

Honduras: US and Latin America split over elections
/node/7925

US citizen sentenced in Tehran protests; neocons charge Obama with betrayal
/node/7856

Obama at crossroads on Afghanistan —and anti-war movement?
/node/7800

Afghanistan: new Bagram rules "step in wrong direction"?
/node/7763

Honduras: repression continues; Obama acquiescing in coup?
/node/7697

Obama and the Honduran coup: our readers write
/node/7682

Honduran golpista: Obama a "little black man who knows nothing"
/node/7537

White House loosens up on ICE workplace policy; "gang" raids continue
/node/7531

Bolivia bashes Obama over trade sanctions
/node/7528

Obama pledges progress on FTA in meeting with Uribe
/node/7508

Obama to Muslims: let's chill out!
/node/7470

Obama border strategy emphasizes enforcement
/node/7413

Obama in Cairo: selective historical memory
/node/7408

Obama denies White House to run GM
/node/7395

White House announces national vehicle emissions policy
/node/7329

Obama places Chrysler under heavy manners
/node/7328

Obama administration reviving military commission system —with changes
/node/7319

UN rights chief urges US to hold Bush-era officials accountable for torture
/node/7315

Obama seeking delay of torture photos release
/node/7313

Obama affirms position that waterboarding is torture
/node/7267

Our readers write: How rad is Obama's agenda?
/node/7252

Obama open to prosecuting CIA interrogation memo authors
/node/7230

Obama reassures CIA on torture
/node/7221

Latin leftists bash Obama at Caribbean confab
/node/7216

Obama pledge not to prosecute CIA interrogators draws criticism
/node/7204

Obama moves against Mexican cartel finances
/node/7194

Mexico: Obama met with protests on immigration reform
/node/7193

Obama administration to appeal Bagram detainees' habeas ruling
/node/7173

CIA says no more secret prisons —and rendition?
/node/7170

Pakistan: thousands flee US drone attacks
/node/7153

Iraq: Obama won't speed pullout; clashes in Baghdad
/node/7110

Obama forges "Af-Pak" strategy as Taliban insurgency spreads
/node/7090

Obama administration drops GWOT nomenclature
/node/7074

Obama's Nowruz message to Iran: "appeasement" or Trojan horse?
/node/7048

Freeman affair opens window on intra-elite paleo-neocon wars
/node/7032

Obama administration drops "enemy combatant" nomenclature
/node/7022

Panetta: Obama to continue GWOT; widening of Pakistan air strikes seen
/node/6975

Obama and the GWOT: our readers write
/node/6942

50,000 combat troops to remain in Iraq after "withdrawal"
/node/6925

Obama should cut military aid to Israel: Amnesty International
/node/6892

Obama: no rights for Afghan detainees
/node/6887

Afgahanistan: five-year troop build-up seen
/node/6875

Obama orders 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan; civilian casualties soar
/node/6867

Pakistan: drones versus sharia?
/node/6864

UK sends team to Gitmo in Binyam Mohamed case
/node/6853

Obama has four years to save planet: leading scientist
/node/6838

Obama urged to halt military detention of journalists
/node/6837

Obama continues Bush-era "state secrets" argument in Gitmo torture case
/node/6836

Sheriff Arpaio's ugly publicity stunt: Obama's immigration reform wake-up call?
/node/6810

Obama White House bullies Britain on Gitmo torture case?
/node/6781

Obama and Lincoln: our readers write
/node/6763

Obama brother busted for ganja in Nairobi
/node/6764

Latin America: reactions as Obama takes office
/node/6741

UN torture rapporteur calls for charges againt Bush, Rumsfeld
/node/6737

Obama directs EPA to reconsider Bush auto emission policy
/node/6736

Potsdam peaceniks give Obama a chance
/node/6735

Chávez hot and cold on Obama
/node/6729

Afghanistan: US air-strike sparks protests —again
/node/6719

Pakistan: pro-government leader, family wiped out in US air-strike
/node/6718

Obama's State Department to Mauritania: restore "constitutional order"
/node/6717

US bombs Pakistan —again
/node/6713

Obama orders on Gitmo, torture leave "wiggle room"?
/node/6711

Deported Mexican activist to Obama: stop the immigration raids
/node/6710

Obama moves to halt Bush regs on ecology, public lands
/node/6704

Obama calls Abbas; Hamas holds victory rally
/node/6703

Obama calls for halt to Gitmo tribunals
/node/6702

Obama to maintain Cuba embargo…for now
/node/6697

Obama names George Mitchell as Middle East envoy
/node/6696

Activists fast to demand Obama close Gitmo
/node/6641

Obama inspires Black Iraqi freedom movement
/node/6637

Activists to Obama: demand Israel lift Gaza siege
/node/6619

Obama's rightward tilt: our readers write
/node/6600

Lipan Apache to Obama: stop border wall construction
/node/6564

Cuba: no "turning point" with US
/node/6554

Climate scientists warn of coal threat —is Obama listening?
/node/6547

Obama to close Gitmo —in two years?
/node/6541

Obama USDA pick another "biofuel" booster
/node/6536

Obama urged to suspend CAFTA
/node/6528

Obama Energy Department pick is "biofuel" booster
/node/6511

Obama drug czar pick linked to fraud, Christian right, anti-Semitism
/node/6504

Obama pick for National Intelligence director linked to East Timor genocide
/node/6458

Obama team member linked to Hindutva fascist movement
/node/6457

Anti-Obama backlash: right-wingers broach "secession"
/node/6426

Mexico: Calderón warns Obama on NAFTA revision
/node/6420

"Humanitarian" interventionist Samantha Power back on Obama team
/node/6406

Czech Green Party MP asks Obama to reconsider missile shield
/node/6405

Obama: ominous appointment for Homeland Security
/node/6360

Bolivia's Evo Morales seeks "improved relations" with Obama White House
/node/6359

Eric Holder: death-squad defender
/node/6357

Tom Daschle: "regime change" extremist
/node/6356

Al-Qaeda disses Obama, invokes Malcolm X
/node/6355

Obama: out of Iraq, into Afghanistan?
/node/6345

HRW urges Obama to repudiate "abusive" counter-terrorism policies
/node/6339

Obama pressured following election-week ICE raids in Florida
/node/6338

Emanuel disavows dad's diss of Arabs
/node/6331

Taliban to Obama: pull out now
/node/6321

Russia to Obama: rebuild "strategic partnership"
/node/6283#comment-314754

Emanuel: Obama won't link Colombia FTA to stimulus package
/node/6306

Iraq's civil resistance to Obama: end the occupation
/node/6299

Obama on board with policy-elite consensus for Iran attack?
/node/6288#comment-314715

Obama's first appointment: pro-Israel hardliner
/node/6292

Right wing prepares anti-Obama "underground"
/node/6289

And in related news…

Deepwater Horizon: the petro-oligarchs strike back
/node/8572

Gitmo detainee repatriated to Kuwait
/node/7802

Abu Ghraib photos depict rape, sexual assault: ex-US general
/node/7377

Panama: trouble for FTA in US Congress?
/node/7367

Cheney defends Bush-era interrogation policies
/node/7350

Senate passes amendment delaying Gitmo closure funds
/node/7332

Military judge grants government motion for continuance in Gitmo case
/node/7331

France to accept one Gitmo detainee
/node/7145

Hugo Chávez offers to accept Gitmo detainees
/node/7123

Pakistan between two poles of terrorism
/node/7106

US, Yemen should allow "meaningful legal process" in Gitmo repatriation: HRW
/node/7103

Spanish judge weighs probe of US federal attorneys on Gitmo
/node/7092

Mexico: US backpedals on "failed state" claim
/node/7087

Netanyahu expects blank check from Obama; green light for Israeli far-right?
/node/7080

Rights advocates welcome rehearing denial in detainee photo case
/node/7038

US pledges to respect neutrality in Salvador elections —despite GOP bluster
/node/7026

Maine neo-Nazi prepared "dirty bomb"?
/node/7021

Mexico tops agenda for new Drug Czar
/node/7018

Iraq: more terror as Obama begins draw-down
/node/7003

Holder: Gitmo will close, despite "improvements"
/node/6919

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WORLD REVOLUTION IN THE 21st CENTURY?

The New Anti-Capitalism and the Challenge of Political Islam

Book Review:
THE WORLD WE WISH TO SEE
Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century
by Samir Amin
Monthly Review Press, 2008

by Vilosh Vinograd, World War 4 Report

There are few things so frustrating as a book that takes on a vital issue that few others are grappling with, and appears to make a serious stab at it—only to fall back in the end on customary denial and formulaic dogmas, seemingly afraid of the conclusions it had been moving towards. Samir Amin’s The World We Wish to See is such a book.

Amin, an Egyptian by birth and a veteran of the Nasserist bureaucracy, has since the ’60s worked in development both for governments and the UN in West Africa, and is Africa director of the NGO Third World Forum. His book (translated from his adoptive French) purports to point towards answers to Lenin’s old question of “what is to be done” for a world still dominated by capital and imperialism, but fundamentally transformed from that of 1917. Since Amin’s formative years in the Cold War, the world has witnessed the collapse of the East Bloc and the reign of globalized super-capitalism, the emergence of new anti-capitalist movements (crystalized in the 1994 Chiapas rebellion and the 1999 Seattle protests), and a surgence of ethnic and religious fundamentalism which has increasingly occupied the populist space left by demise of the (traditional) left. Especially since 9-11, the most significant of these on the global stage has been political Islam.

The post-Cold War anti-capitalist movements have largely failed to effectively respond to this surgence, either remaining in denial about the threat represented by political Islam and similar maladies, or (worse) misreading them as potential allies.

Amin gets creds for at least correctly identifying the question. But it quickly becomes clear that he is less rooted in the new anti-capitalism than his rhetoric would superficially indicate, and is more informed by a nostalgia for the Cold War order. This, as we shall see, leads him to his own fatal misreading of political Islam.

Amin concedes the “undemocratic practices” (not, significantly, undemocratic nature) of the Leninist model, and states that it has “rightly” been “reproached” (not, significantly, rejected). He even concedes a place to feminism, anarchism and radical environmentalism in the new anti-capitalist convergence.

But while rightly critiquing the “naive” post-anti-imperialism of Hart and Negri, and “apolitical” conceptions of civil society, Amin displays his own naivete about what used to be called “actually existing socialism.” He hails the “contributions of Maoism” and China’s “incontestably brilliant results.” He even praises post-Mao China’s “refusal to call into question collective property”—apparently unaware of the breaking up of collective farms into small private plots, and the increasing appropriation of these for industrial zones and real estate development, leading to a wave of angry peasant protests in the People’s Republic. Worse than illusions about Maoism is the illusion that it still exists!

Perhaps these kinds of illusions are forgivable for someone of Amin’s generation. Far more disappointing is his highly selective outrage at the ethno-religious fundamentalisms which he correctly identifies as competing with the left for the mantle of anti-imperialist opposition. When he bemoans the ascendence of “fabricated ethnic authenticity” in the Balkans, he invokes as examples the Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Kosovars—but not Serbs. When he writes that anti-imperialists are “disoriented and agree to line up behind questionable leaders who wave the flag of religious or ethnic identity,” he mentions Osama bin Laden, “Latvian Nazis”—and the Dalai Lama! Elsewhere, he equates wrong-headed leftist flirtation with political Islam and progressive sympathy for the “ravings of the Dalai Lama.”

Two mentions of the Dalai Lama in this regard, and none of Slobodan Milosevic—who has also won an amen corner among “anti-imperialists” (Ed Hermann, Diana Johnstone, even Noam Chomsky). Amin writes: “Anti-democratic movements, which de facto submit their peoples to the requirements of capitalist globalization, despite their anti-Western, culturalist verbiage, in reality are part of the alliance of the world Right.” This is a very good description of Milosevic’s program. But Amin’s omission of the late demagogue from his litany of examples suggests he may accept the pseudo-left propaganda that Milosevic was defending “socialism.”

In this light, Amin’s warnings against “fundamentally reactionary allies,” “chauvinistic ethnic movements” and “para-fascist responses to the challenges” of globalization ring slightly hollow. Any single-standard progressive analysis would recognize the bitterly opposed forces of Serb ethno-nationalism and political Islam as different manifestations of essentially the same phenomenon. The left is in danger of making the same grave error again in Georgia—lining up with Ossetian ethno-nationalism simply because US imperialism is backing Georgian ethno-nationalism. But Amin’s rejection of ethno-nationalism only seems to apply to those varieties which imperialism, for its own purposes, chooses to back.

Amin is perceptive in simply stating the central issue: “The new imperialist order will be called into question. But who will question it? And what will result from this? Such are the challenges confronting the states and peoples on the periphery today.” But when he calls for “defeat of Washington’s project for military control of the planet,” he fails to make clear if he means its political defeat by progressive anti-capitalist forces, or military defeat by what we might call the “actually existing resistance” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amin notes that two generations ago there was the potential for an “Islamist left,” rooted in the concept of fiqh al-tahrir (which he calls Islamic “liberation theology”; more literally “jurisprudence of freedom”) and exemplified by the ideas of Mahmoud Taha (a Sudanese independence advocate later hanged for heresy by the post-independence regime). But he states: “Quite simply, it does not exist.”

However, this refreshing honesty is offset by an oversimplified portrayal of political Islam as a pawn of imperialism. Despite Amin’s denial of a “conspiratorial conception of history,” his thesis of “support by the CIA for Islamic fundamentalist groups” extends to “the possible passive if not active complicity in the events of September 11th.”

What promises to be the most important discussion in the book—the first appendix, “Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism”—is the most bitterly disappointing. After all his warnings against “para-fascist responses,” Amin apparently cannot conceive the means by which political Islam has stolen the left’s fire in the Muslim world. Rather than acknowledge the populist stance of the Islamists, he writes that “their leaders repeat incessantly that [social] conflicts are unimportant,” that “political Islam aligns itself with the camp of dependent capitalism,” that it “defends the principle of the sacred character of property and legitimizes…all the requirements of capitalist reproduction.”

A movement that obsessively blows up oil infrastructure, nightclubs, hotels, pizza parlours, skyscrapers and other private enterprises “defends the…sacred character of property”? He cites in defense of this assertion the Muslim Brotherhood’s support for laws that protect the rights of property owners against those of tenant farmers in Egypt. One imagines this is a strategy to keep money coming in from Egypt’s conservative oligarchs, while the Brotherhood employs very different rhetoric while addressing their potential cannon fodder.

Amin concedes that “Political Islam is not anti-imperialist, even if its militants think otherwise.” (Emphasis added.) But his analysis of the relationship between the Islamists and imperialism (and its local intermediaries) is utterly lacking in the nuance this statement might lead us to expect. He writes that “political Islam has always counted in its ranks the ruling classes of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.” Such a clear-cut statement would have made sense in the ’80s, when Riyadh and Islamabad were backing the Mujahedeen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. It makes considerably less sense when al-Qaeda is blowing up targets in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is waging a counter-insurgency war against Islamist militants.

Amin admits that “political Islam mobilizes numerous popular masses.” He states: “The power of the Islamist street is, in large part, simply the reverse side of the weakness of the organized Left…” But he fails to explore how political Islam has succeeded in meeting this challenge, while the left has fallen dramatically short.

This failure is all the more frustrating given Amin’s timely warning against a left alliance with political Islam: “If some unfortunate Leftist organizations come to believe that political Islamic organizations have accepted them, the first decision the latter would make, after having succeeded in coming to power, would be to liquidate their burdensome ally with extreme violence, as was the case in Iran…” But Amin insufficiently acknowledges why such an alliance is a lure for the remnants of the left.

Tackling the argument that the left must bloc with political Islam to combat Islamophobia, Amin astutely recognizes that “the two reactionary ideological campaigns promoted by the racist Right in the West and by political Islam mutually support each other…” But he cannot conceive that political Islam has such a relationship with imperialism. He can only portray the prior as a creation and tool of the latter.

He overstates the case again and again. The Muslim Brotherhood was “created” by the British in 1920s Egypt. The organization’s mass return from Saudi exile after Nasser’s death was “organized” by the CIA. The US “created” the Islamic Conference to counteract the Bandung Conference. It is “well known that the Israelis supported” Hamas in its early years. Political Islam had the “continual, powerful, and resolute support of the United States” in its spread beyond the borders of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. No evidence is provided in support of these assertions.

Amin’s distorting biases, as well as his lax standards for accuracy, are exemplified in his invocation of Afghanistan in this litany: “We are all acquainted with the history of the Taliban, formed by the CIA in Pakistan to fight the ‘communists’ who had opened the schools to everyone, boys and girls.” How many things are wrong with this statement? First, the Taliban was born in 1994, two years after the last Soviet-backed leader of Afghanistan, Najibullah, had been overthrown. Amin is presumably refering to the Mujahedeen. Second, if we assume he means the Mujahedeen, it s a vast overstatement and a denial of local context to assert that they were “formed” by the CIA—although the agency did of course massively back them. Third, the Communists (why the scare quotes?) in addition to opening schools to girls, also committed horrific atrocities in the countryside, driving the rural populace into the hands of the Mujahedeen.

(An aside: Amin’s book is an exemplar of the chronic factual sloppiness that is endemic to contemporary expository writing. On page 50, in a prescient argument that capitalism requires state policing, he has New York’s former attorney general Eliot Spitzer putting Wall Street millionaires in handcuffs. In fact, while both men went after Wall Street corruption, that particular media trick was only used by federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani nearly 20 years earlier. On page 53 he lumps the neo-conservatives, who always purport to act in the interests of pluralism and democracy, in with the post-modernists as “anti-Enlightenment.” On page 96, he has the British occupation of Egypt—which ended in 1922, with a 1942-5 reprise, unless one includes the policing of the Suez Canal zone as an “occupation”—lasting until 1956. On page 30, there is an egregious reference to conjugating nouns. One hopes this last one was a translator’s error.)

Amin concludes this appendix with a discussion of the four “front line countries” in the Islamic world: Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Iran. He begins it with a refreshingly clear, concise and astute outline of the motives underlying the US adventure in Iraq. None of the cant that plagues far too much left-wing commentary about Zionists seizing control of US foreign policy, or oil companies and defense contractors angling for a windfall. Instead he identifies four fundamental factors. First, the need to control the Persian Gulf’s strategic oil resources to assure the US a “privileged position” vis-a-vis both allies like Europe and rivals like China. Second, Iraq’s strategic geographic position, affording a “permanent military threat” to actual or potential rivals (China, Russia, India). Third, Iraq’s weakness after years of sanctions and war, assuring an easy victory. Fourth (and, appropriately, last), Israel’s presence in the region.

Once again, given this excellent start, the paucity of intellectual seriousness in the discussions that follow is all the more frustrating. The Afghanistan discussion is characterized by an unreconstructed defense of the Soviet position. “Afghanistan experienced the best period in its modern history during the so-called communist republic.” This period included army massacres, mass arrests and torture of the opposition, and Soviet aerial bombardment. Again, he conflates the Mujahedeen, the armed resistance of this era, with the Taliban, which followed a decade later, as well as throwing in a fictional “Pakistani military offensive” against Najibullah. He writes that “Afghanistan was devastated by the intervention of the United States and its allies and agents,” which is true enough—but completely exculpates the Soviets, who bore (at least) an equal share of the blame.

Hamid Karzai is “a clown without roots in the country”—an absurdity: there is plenty to be said against Karzai, but he was born and raised in Afghanistan, and is a scion of the Durrani dynasty that ruled the country nearly continuously from its birth as an independent nation through the Communist-backed coup of 1978. Amin also repeats as fact the widespread but unsubstantiated claim that Karzai worked as a consultant for a “Texas transnational” (Unocal—actually based in California). He calls the NATO presence an “occupation,” which is certainly defensible—but he never uses this word to describe the Soviet military presence of 20 years ago. The Soviet troop presence in Afghanistan peaked at 115,000. The US and NATO together have half as many in the country at present. And they are there, like the Soviet troops in the ’80s, at the ostensible invitation of Afghanistan’s internationally recognized government.

He concludes the Afghan discussion with a call for removal of all foreign troops from the country. That the US/NATO presence only fuels the Taliban insurgency is an arguable position. But Amin writes as if we could turn the clock back to 1978 and replace the US and Karzai with a modernist, secular regime. With nearly all of Afghanistan’s secular intellectuals and bureaucrats either dead or long exiled, no evidence suggests this.

Next comes Iraq. Amin offers brief acknowledgment that the “bloody dictatorship” of Saddam Hussein was “real enough.” But again he can’t resist a Manichean paradigm in which the Communists are the good guys. He writes that Iraq’s Communist Party was subject to a “systematic destruction” under Saddam. In fact, in Saddam’s long reign the Communist Party faced periods of both repression and cooptation—and is now actually collaborating with the US-backed regime! He exculpates Saddam of “stirr[ing] up the conflict between the Sunni and Shia”—ignoring the systematic exclusion of the Shi’ites under his rule, and the near-genocidal repression of their revolts. (He writes that the Shi’ites “rarely produced” bureaucrats, as if Saddam had nothing to do with this!) And despite his disavowal of conspiracy theory, he writes: “One day, we will certainly learn how the CIA (and undoubtedly Mossad) organized many of these massacres”—meaning the internecine sectarian slaughter which has characterized the US occupation.

Turning to the Kurds, Amin once again displays his double standard. He writes: “The repression of Kurdish demands has never attained in Iraq and Iran the level of police, military, political, and moral violence carried out by Ankara. Neither Iran nor Iraq has ever gone so far as to deny the very existence of the Kurds.” No, and Turkey never went so far as to gas them, as Saddam did at Halabja in 1988, instantly killing 5,000. Amin is merely inverting imperialism’s double standards, instead of adopting a single moral standard—the left’s greatest and most universal intellectual failing.

Amin mentions the gassing of the Kurds, and Saddam’s bombing of Basra to put down the Shi’ite rebellion in the aftermath of Desert Storm—but says these “excesses” (!) were a “response to the maneuvers of Washington’s armed diplomacy.” He calls these acts “criminal,” but his alarming use of the word “excesses” implies that some repression would have been OK!

Most appalling is Amin’s complete failure to square with the realities of Iraq’s contemporary insurgency. Having dismissed (on no evidence) the sectarian massacres as CIA black ops, he offers no acknowledgment that the insurgents are overwhelmingly reactionary jihadis—and this in an ostensible discussion of political Islam! He points to one program printed in a Lebanese newspaper as representing that of “the resistance”—ignoring the proliferation of factions. He then calls on progressives to “support the proposals of the Iraqi resistance”—ignoring the reality of self-declared “Islamic kingdoms” run by Taliban-style sharia law in the enclaves they have seized.

Amin’s assertion that “[t]he longer the occupation lasts, the more dismal will be the aftermath of its inevitable end” is all too plausible. But his call for a “US defeat”—presumably by the (Islamist) insurgents—is no prescription for anything better. A US political defeat by Iraq’s trade unions and secular civil resistance movements is what stands a chance of improving the post-occupation prospects. But Amin offers not a word about this.

Next comes Palestine—and similar confusion. He again portrays Hamas as having been groomed by Israel to undermine the PLO—and then states that its electoral victory was “probably desirable”! He accuses Israel of “the supreme crime against humanity” in denying the Palestinians “the right to exist,” and writes: “The accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ addressed to those who reject this crime is only a means for appalling blackmail.” This assertion is obvious enough. What complicates the matter is that the charge of anti-Semitism, even when cynically employed to justify Israeli crimes, is often true. The Hamas charter, after all, openly cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Again, failure to even address this uncomfortable reality makes nonsense of the appendix’ very raison d’etre.

Finally Iran, and perhaps the worst contradiction of all. After all of his warnings to leftists against the lure of an alliance with political Islam, Amin adopts the widespread hard-left position of defending Iran’s nuclear ambitions! “Why should this country, just like others, not have the right to pursue [nuclear] capabilities, up to and including becoming a nuclear military power? By what right can the imperialist powers and their Israeli accomplice boast about granting themselves a monopoly over weapons of mass destruction?”

These are two very distinct questions. The answer to the second, of course, is: none. But the answer to the first is the Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran and the US alike (although not Israel) are signatories. A second, and more fundamental answer is what should be the progressive demand for a nuclear-free world. The same NPT which legally bars Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons also mandates that the US and other Great Powers negotiate terms for their own disarmament. Of course, they have done no such thing. But we can’t very well demand that they do so while actively cheering proliferation. While on one hand rejecting political Islam, Amin would on the other see it armed with the ultimate weapon!

In his conclusion, Amin names three forces on the political stage of the contemporary Greater Middle East: corrupt and domesticated post-nationalists (presumably Mubarak, Assad and their ilk), political Islam, and neoliberals posing as “democrats” (presumably Lebanon’s “Cedar” alliance, US-backed dissident movements in Egypt and Syria, etc.). He writes: “The consolidation of power by any of these forces is not acceptable to a Left that is attentive to the interests of the popular classes.” And “American diplomacy keeps all these irons in the fire, since it is focused on using the conflicts among them for its exclusive benefit.” Both these assertions are unarguable. So is his warning against left “alliances with one or another of these tendencies (preferring the regimes in place to avoid the worst, i.e. political Islam or, on the other hand, seeking to be allied with the latter in order to get rid of the regimes).” But he offers no prescriptions for how to even add the left as a distant fourth to his triad. Ending with yet one more call for “defeating Washington in the region” sounds superficially good, but yet again dodges the critical question of who will be doing the defeating.

—-

RESOURCES

Monthly Review page on The World We Wish to See
http://www.monthlyreview.org/worldwewish.php

Samir Amin biography, Monthly Review, September 1992
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_/ai_12663251

Third World Forum
http://www.forumtiersmonde.net/fren/index.php

——————-

Special to World War 4 Report, Nov. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution
 

Continue ReadingWORLD REVOLUTION IN THE 21st CENTURY? 

ASSAM IN FLAMES

Jihad and Ethnic Conflict Heat Up India-Bangladesh Borderlands

by Nava Thakuria, World War 4 Report

The October 30 synchronized terrorist attacks in the northeastern India state of Assam left more than 70 dead and authorities wondering if the culprits were the state’s armed separatist movement or Islamist militants who infiltrated in from neighboring Bangladesh. The attacks came weeks after a wave of deadly clashes between Bangladeshi undocumented immigrants in Assam and the Bodo indigenous people—two historically marginalized groups that have been pitted against each other. While little noted by the world media, the situation in Assam grabbed national attention in India—with the Hindu nationalist BJP cast in the ironic role of defending the state’s tribal peoples. Journalist Nava Thakuria offers this exclusive report.

The influx of migrants from Bangladesh to Assam has been a matter of concern in Assamese society for a long time. The clashes that broke out in central Assam in October brought home the fears of the region’s indigenous people in the face of a growing number of undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants on their traditional lands.

The hostilities between the indigenous Bodo people and Bangladeshi settlers—primarily in Udalguri and Darrang districts and the overlapping Bodo Territorial Autonomous District (BTAD)—left over 50 dead and rendered 150,000 homeless. The violence also resulted in the torching of more than 500 houses belonging to both the communities.

India and Bangladesh have more than 4,000 kilometers of porous border. There are wild speculations regarding the number of Bangladeshis living in Assam and the rest of India’s Northeast. Some say it amounts to more than 16 million migrants.

In 1998, then-governor of Assam, Lt. Gen. (retired) SK Sinha, sent a report to New Delhi describing the volatile situation emerging in the state. He argued that if the demographic issue was not addressed, the Assamese culture would soon be extinct.

“As a result of the population movement from Bangladesh, the specter looms large of the indigenous people of Assam being reduced to a minority in their home state. Their cultural survival will be in jeopardy, their political control will be weakened and their employment opportunities will be undermined. This silent and insidious demographic invasion of Assam may result in the loss of geostrategically vital district of Lower Assam (on the border of Bangladesh). The influx of these illegal migrants is turning these districts into a Muslim-majority region. It will then only be a matter of time when a demand for their merger with Bangladesh may be made,” the governor elaborated.

The problem has persisted for a long time. India’s 1931 Census Report stated: “Probably the most important event during the last twenty five years, which seems likely to alter permanently the whole future of Assam and to destroy surely more than what Burmese invaders did in 1820, the whole structure of Assamese culture and civilisation, has been the invasion of a vast horde of land-hungry Bengali immigrants mostly Muslim from the districts of East Bengal and in particular from Mymensingh.”

In fact, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the father of Pakistani nation, claimed Assam as a part of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) during the partition in 1947. He used the argument that the 1941 census in Assam (then Greater Assam) showed the population of Hindus was only 42%. However, this figure excluded the tribal peoples, who are neither Hindu nor Muslim, but followers of their own indigenous traditions.

The All Assam Students’ Union led a movement in ’80s demanding the deportation of undocumented Bangladeshi immigrants from Assam. The agitation that swept the entire state came to an end in 1985 after signing an accord with New Delhi. Known as the Assam Accord, it called for detection and deportation of Bangladeshis who arrived after March 25, 1971 (when the mass exodus from the war in Bangladesh began). But the government agency admits that only a few undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh were actually deported.

Initially the violence in Udalguri and Darrang was accepted as another communal clash of the kind recently seen in may places in India. A different dimension emerged when the local residents reported witnessing the hoisting of Pakistani flags in at least two places in affected areas on the eve of the violence. There were reports in Assam’s newspapers—which were picked up by national television—that some apparent settlers shouted pro-Pakistani slogans after hoisting the flags. The reports sparked an outcry across India.

While ruling Congress Party leaders initially denied that the Pakistani flags were raised, the right-opposition BJP seized on the issue. Former Assam MP and BJP national vice-president Bijoya Chakraborty termed the flag incidents as shocking. She asserted that Assam’s Congress Party Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had failed to respond to the provocation and should be removed immediately.

Following the BJP’s lead, All Assam Students’ Union and the All Bodo Students’ Union representatives also visited the affected localities and expressed their outrage that “the indigenous people of Assam were forced to leave their residences to take refuge in the relief camps.” AASU adviser Samujjal Bhattacharya accused Gogoi of compromising India’s national security by protecting those involved in the incident.

Dilip Saikia, the Assam state president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuba Morcha, the youth wing of the BJP, raised the specter Islamist militant infiltration. “The recent violence in Udalguri and Darrang districts was nothing but a conspiracy of the Islamic fundamentalists to chase away the indigenous people and provide space for the settlement of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants,” he asserted.

After visiting the affected areas, Saikia also attacked local politicians—of both the Gogoi administration and the Bodoland Territorial Council. He stated, “The BTAD chief Hagrama Mohilary and state ministers Himanta Biswa Sarma and Rockybul Hussain have put the indigenous population of Assam on way to a bleak future for the sake of votes.”

The Assam Public Works (APW), a civil organization linked to the Assam separatist movement, held protests in the state capital, Guwahati, at which Pakistani flags were burned. the APW also termed the violence the “handiwork of HuJI and other fundamentalist forces.” APW leader Abhijit Sarma argued that it was a retaliation to the recent killing of seven Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami militants who had apparently infiltrated from Bangladesh by Indian soldiers in Dhubri, Assam. The army said the HuJI militants were on their way to Guwahati for terrorist activities.

Chief Minister Gogoi initially argued that the raised banners were not Pakistani flags, but was pennants related to Eid festival. But Gogoi took a week to visit the location where the flag was seen in the early hours of Oct. 4. By then the region had exploded into violence.

The violence erupted with a small incident of cattle stealing by apparent Bangladeshis from a Bodo village. The flame of communal violence rapidly engulfed the adjacent areas and finally it spread widely in Udalguri, Darrang, Baksa and Chirang sectors of the Bodoland Autonomous District.

The state government tried its best to bring the situation under control. Thousands of police, army and paramilitary troops were deployed in the strife-torn areas. Army choppers were also engaged for air surveillance. A curfew was clamped down for more than a week, though it was relaxed during the daytime as the situation started improving. The government transferred the Udalguri deputy commissioner George Basumatary and suspended the Superintendent of Police Anup Kumar Singh for their failure to prevent the violence.

The situation turned worse when a Pakistani portal called Pakistan Daily carried an article entitled “Pakistan’s flag is a symbol of freedom in India” by one Ahmed Quraishi. Highlighting the hoisting of the Pakistani flag in Assam, the article described, “Pakistan’s media and intelligence agencies should project these incidents and gather support inside these Indian states as retaliation for Indian terrorism inside Pakistan’s Balochistan, tribal belt and other cities.” India’s BJP and other opposition parties quickly alleged that Pakistan’s ISI spy agency was involved in the flag incident.

But as politicians in India and Pakistan alike exploit the situation, Assam’s indigenous population remain in fear for their land and culture. The violence in Udalguri and Darrang highlighted their apprehensions loud and clear.

—-

Nava Thakuria is an independent journalist based in Guwahati, Assam. He writes widely for media outlets in Asia on socio-political issues in Northeast India, Burma, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal.

RESOURCES

Bodoland Territorial Council
http://www.bodolandcouncil.org

“Pakistan’s Flag Is A Symbol Of Freedom In India” by Ahmed Quraishi, Pakistan Daily, Oct. 8
http://www.daily.pk/politics/politicalnews/7699

From our Daily Report:

India: separatists or jihadis behind Assam terror?
WW4 Report, Oct. 30, 2008
/node/6239

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Special to World War 4 Report, Nov. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingASSAM IN FLAMES 

LOMAS DE POLEO: LAND STRUGGLE IN CIUDAD JUAREZ

from Frontera NorteSur

When land conflicts in Mexico make the US news at all, they are generally in the impoverished deep-south states of Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero, while violence in Mexico’s industrialized north more often concerns the drug cartel wars. But the struggle between an untitled community and local land barons at Lomas de Poleo, just outside the border city of Juárez, brings this issue right to the United States’ southern frontier. El Paso-based Frontera NorteSur news service has the latest development.

Tensions in a land dispute that pits members of a prominent Ciudad Juárez family against long-time residents of a poor neighborhood and their supporters were revved up a notch the weekend of Oct. 20. A citizen’s forum scheduled for that Saturday, at a school in Lomas de Poleo, a working-class settlement on the outskirts of Ciudad Juárez, was prevented from convening by guards employed by Pedro and Jorge Zaragoza. Members of non-governmental organizations from Mexico and the United States arrived at Lomas de Poleo to discuss the land ownership battle only to find access to the neighborhood blocked by Zaragoza security personnel.

Zaragoza representative Catarino del Rio Camacho argued that as private property owners his bosses had a right to prevent outsiders from entering the legally contested lands. “The people who live here have free access but those who come to create conflict can’t enter because we don’t see any reason for them to be here.”

Forum organizers earlier said they planned to conduct a peaceful meeting between NGOs and Lomas de Poleo residents. Groups supporting Lomas de Poleo residents include the Border Agricultural Workers Union, Paso del Sur Group, Pastoral Obrera, Mexico Solidarity Network, Rezizte, the Other Campaign, and many others.

In a statement distributed late Oct. 19 evening, Lomas de Poleo residents and their supporters denounced the presence of large numbers of armed men who were surrounding the neighborhood in an apparent attempt to thwart the next day’s planned forum. The statement criticized the deployment as an escalation of the violence which has punctuated the land dispute during the last few years.

“One resident has been murdered, [and] two children have been burned to death inside a home purposely set on fire as part of the demolitions of more than 40 homes by the Zaragoza guards,” the statement charged. “The Lomas de Poleo inhabitants have been cut off from the rest of the city and are currently within a state of siege at the hands of the powerful developers mentioned above.”

Once a wind-swept, largely forgotten mesa that housed maquiladora workers and others trying to get by in Ciudad Juárez, Lomas de Poleo is now a prime chunk of real estate as city development creeps towards the planned binational city of Jeronimo-Santa Teresa. Lomas de Poleo is also close to Sunland Park, New Mexico, which could see a new international crossing and become a border business hub within the next few years. In 1996, Lomas de Poleo gained international notoriety as one of the places where the bodies of raped and murdered women were dumped.

As a result of Saturday’s incident, the official Chihuaha State Human Rights Commission initiated an investigation to determine possible violations of residents’ and supporters’ rights, including the right to free transit. “The people have showed me the authorization of the director of the school to hold this event and the gate stops it from happening,” said commission representative Gustavo de la Rosa Hickerson.

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This story first appeared Oct. 21 on Frontera NorteSur and El Paso’s Newspaper Tree.

From our Daily Report:

Mexico: narco-killing spree in Ciudad Juárez —and throughout country
WW4 Report, Oct. 14, 2008
/node/6155

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Nov. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingLOMAS DE POLEO: LAND STRUGGLE IN CIUDAD JUAREZ 

BOLIVIA: CONGRESS APPROVES CONSTITUTIONAL REFERENDUM

by Benjamin Dangl, Upside Down World

Constitution supporters march to La Paz/ABI” title=”Constitution supporters march to La Paz/ABI” class=”image img_assist_custom” height=”292″ width=”450″>Constitution supporters march to La Paz/ABI

After months of street battles and political meetings, a new draft of the Bolivian constitution was ratified by Congress on October 21. A national referendum on whether or not to make the document official is scheduled for January 25, 2009.

“Now we have made history,” President Evo Morales told supporters in La Paz. “This process of change cannot be turned back… Neoliberalism will never return to Bolivia.”

If the constitution is approved in the January referendum, a new general election will take place in December of 2009.

Leading up to Congress’ approval, Morales participated in sections of a march from Caracollo in Oruro to La Paz, a distance of over 100 miles and involving an estimated 100,000 union members, activists, students, farmers and miners.

The march took place to pressure opposition members in Congress into backing the constitution and referendum. When marchers arrived in La Paz they packed the center of the city to historic levels. Some media outlets said the march, which stretched 15 kilometers, was the longest one ever in the capital.

“Those who have been kicked out to the chicken coop, those who have been hidden in the basement, are jailed no more,” Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera said of the approval of the constitution, according to the Associated Press.

The road to this new constitution has been a long, complicated and often violent one. One key event in this process was the July 2, 2006 election of assembly members to the constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. Later, in December of 2007, the new constitution was passed in an assembly meeting in Oruro which was boycotted by opposition members.

<em>Leonilda Zurita, Chaparé union leader, at La Paz rally/ABI</em>” title=”<em>Leonilda Zurita, Chaparé union leader, at La Paz rally/ABI</em>” class=”image img_assist_custom” height=”260″ width=”400″><span class=Leonilda Zurita, Chaparé union leader, at La Paz rally/ABIGiven Morales’ support across the country, this new constitution is expected to pass in the January 2009 referendum. “The public support expressed for [Morales] Monday, coming on top of the 67 percent vote of confidence he was given in the Aug. 10 recall referendum, make it clear that he is the most popular president in the last 26 years of democracy in Bolivia,” Franz Chávez reported in IPS News.

The draft constitution includes, among other things, changes to allow the redistribution of land and gas wealth to benefit the majority of the country, and give increased rights to indigenous people. Questions still exist regarding what was fully changed in this version of the constitution which led to opposition politicians supporting it. For example, it’s still unclear to what extent eastern provinces will be granted autonomy.

However, in what was perhaps Morales’ biggest concession to the opposition, a change was made to the constitution which prevents him from running for two additional terms, as an earlier draft of the constitution allowed. Under the new changes—if the constitution is approved in the referendum—Morales will run for his last consecutive term in general elections in December of 2009.

This move indicates that the opposition got at least some of what they wanted in negotiations, and that the Movement Toward Socialism, Morales’ political party, may have plans to diversify its central leadership.

Morales commented on these changes in a speech in La Paz, “Here we have new leaders who are rising up, new men and women leaders who are coming up like mushrooms to continue this process of change.”

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Benjamin Dangl is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press, 2007).

Photos by José Luis Quintana/Agencia Boliviana de Información

This story first appeared Oct. 23 on Upside Down World.

See also:

TOTAL RECALL IN BOLIVIA
Divided Nation Faces Historic Vote
by Ben Dangl, Toward Freedom
World War 4 Report, August 2008
/node/5844

From our Daily Report:

Bolivia: Evo leads march for new constitution
WW4 Report, Oct. 18, 2008
/node/6174

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Nov. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingBOLIVIA: CONGRESS APPROVES CONSTITUTIONAL REFERENDUM 

SUDAN: PREPARING FOR MASSIVE DEMOBILIZATION

Will Darfur Conflict Sabotage North-South Peace Process?Will Sudan’s child soldiers demobilize?” title=”Will Sudan’s child soldiers demobilize?” class=”image thumbnail” height=”79″ width=”100″>Will Sudan’s child soldiers demobilize?

from IRIN

Sudan is planning to disarm, demobilize and re-integrate over 180,000 soldiers into civilian life, but the ambitious scheme to rebuild war-shattered communities could raise false expectations, observers warn.

“We are looking in total at the demobilisation and reintegration of 182,900 adults across east, north and south Sudan, not including any possible operations in Darfur,” said Adriaan Verheul, chief of the UN program supporting the government-run scheme.

“This will make it the biggest DDR operation in the world.”

The program is a key part of a 2005 north-south peace deal that ended one of Africa’s longest civil wars, in which over 1.5 million people are estimated to have been killed and another six million displaced.

Run jointly by northern and southern government commissions, the numbers will be split equally between the northern Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the southern ex-rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

“It will serve [the] stabilization of peace in the country,” said William Deng Deng, chairman of the southern DDR commission, in recent comments to Sudan’s official news agency SUNA.

Initial lists run to 50,000 names, and planning maps mark out proposals for work to begin. Child soldiers are the first focus, with some 1,300 already demobilized.

In addition, 2,900 ex-rebels in eastern Sudan, who fought for a decade in separate battles before a 2006 peace deal, have taken the first tentative steps towards peace.

“The aim is to turn soldiers into civilians able to make enough money to take care of themselves and their families without their army salaries,” Verheul told IRIN.

The head of the northern DDR commission, Sulaf al-Dein Salih, said progress was going well in the east, expressing “satisfaction” at the disarmament process “in both north and southern Sudan”.

Staggered demobilization scheme
Under a staggered demobilization scheme, soldiers put forward by their commanders will be assessed, electronically registered and given medical checks at special centers.

They will also get a US$400 lump-sum payment, 10 weeks rations for a family of five, and a package to help start a new life as civilians, including basic tools, a mosquito net, plastic sheeting and a wind-up radio.

Later, each retiring fighter will receive reintegration support worth $1,750, including vocational training to learn a new career, or backing to establish a small business or farm.

“It’s a political process with security objectives, but uses development methods and has a humanitarian impact,” said Verheul.

Darfur poses threat
Building peace in Sudan is a slow and often shaky process. Many worry that continuing war in the western region of Darfur could destabilize peace efforts elsewhere, especially with potential genocide charges looming over President Omar al-Bashir.

National elections are due in 2009, followed by a 2011 referendum in the semi-autonomous south on whether it should become fully independent.

Tensions remain high, especially in flashpoint border zones, and former enemy armies are watching over their neighbor’s capabilities with concern, nervous of reports that the other is rearming.

In the grossly underdeveloped south, an area about the size of Spain and Portugal combined but with virtually no tarred roads, militias and heavily armed civilians still dominate many regions.

Even apparently basic tasks, such as transporting fighters to demobilization centers, will pose giant logistical challenges.

“You cannot demobilize a soldier and then put him out on the street without the means to survive and a minimum of dignity,” said Verheul.

“Reintegrating former military personnel is often difficult; they may not find the new life appealing, or they don’t have the right education for civilian jobs – or there might not be enough jobs for them on the market.”

Guaranteed funding needed
Experts say it is vital core funding is guaranteed before the bulk of demobilization begins, warning that ex-soldiers not provided with a new means of income could themselves pose considerable risks.

And the program is far from cheap—costing US$385 million for the crucial three-year reintegration phase.

The cash is planned to come from the UN, international donors, and $45 million from Sudan.

Officials are upbeat about the prospects: “Policies are in place, planning is under way and the funding for some initial steps is available,” the UN’s top envoy to Sudan, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, said in a recent report.

A pilot project for adult fighters is due to start in November in Blue Nile State, with around 1,000 soldiers from both north and south expected to take part.

“If successful, this will be repeated in other areas,” Verheul said.

Building confidence
However, around half of the first batch of 50,000 put forward are war-wounded or disabled, a point some critics say means that active military forces will not be reduced.

Verheul dismissed this, arguing there is a need to treat all ex-combatants with respect, to encourage those still able to fight to find a new income.

“No parties in a DDR programme come forward with their best soldiers first,” said Verheul. “One must build confidence, to get a more serious reduction in military forces later.”

Many Sudanese who were affected by the war are hoping for the best. Like many whose villages were destroyed in Sudan’s 21-year civil war, tea seller Mary Jok knows the cost of conflict.

“There’s been fighting most of my life,” said the 40-year old widow, who ekes out a living from a tiny street stall in the Sudanese capital, [Khartoum] where she fled a decade ago. “My daughters died and my sons were taken to fight,” she said.

On the scattered stools in the dust around Mary Jok’s tea stall, customers say there is both hope and cynicism at the program.

“We have heard grand plans before,” said Ahmed Ali Mohammed, a teacher. “But we want peace to develop Sudan. We need it to work – there are too many people today who know only how to fight.”

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This story first appeared Oct. 21 on the Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN), news agency of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

See also:

DARFUR AND SUDAN: A REVOLUTION IN THE MAKING
by Savo Heleta, Pambazuka News
World War 4 Report, November 2008
/node/6248

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Reprinted by World War 4 Report, Nov. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingSUDAN: PREPARING FOR MASSIVE DEMOBILIZATION