BOLIVAR’S SWORD

Venezuela’s Recognition of the Colombian Insurgency

by Paul Wolf

“Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” — I Samuel 15:3

Venezuelan President Hugo ChĂĄvez took the world by surprise in January when he asked the Colombian government to stop calling the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN) “terrorists.” ChĂĄvez then appealed to the international community to formally recognize the belligerent status of the two insurgent groups. Then came a resolution of the Venezuelan National Assembly backing the president’s statement. It comes very close to the legal recognition of the FARC and ELN by the Venezuelan government. Not quite as exciting as the recent release of two hostages by the FARC, to be sure, but far more significant.

The Colombian government reacted to the Venezuelan declarations by panicking. Reinforcements were called in from the USA. Admiral Michael Mullin, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, flew to BogotĂĄ to publicly affirm that, indeed, the Colombian guerrillas are terrorists. Then Jan. 19, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe flew to Europe to launch a “diplomatic offensive,” fearing that the European Union will consider removing the guerrillas from their official terrorist list. Yet the implications go well beyond labeling and name-calling.

First of all, recognition of the FARC and ELN as belligerents would provide Venezuela with a legal basis it could use to intervene in the Colombian conflict, either by arming the guerrillas, or more directly. There is no indication that Venezuela would want to do that, but legal recognition is a step in this direction. Venezuela can treat the government and the insurgents on equal terms. This is quite threatening to the Colombian government.

On a more positive note, recognition of belligerent status brings with it the responsibility of the guerrillas to act in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, which among other things, prohibit kidnapping, killing civilians, and using indiscriminate weapons. Opening this door for the FARC might, for the first time in 50 years, offer an incentive for the group to mend its ways. For the ELN, decimated by the murder of thousands of its cadre over the last decade, it could offer a way to get out of this alive. The ELN is already in negotiations with the Colombian government, which are being mediated by Cuba. They are slow-moving and the ELN is not demobilizing. That could change.

While Colombian politicians are busy wringing their hands over what they anticipate will be a debate over this in Europe, and some conservative politicians are even warning that Venezuela may intervene in the Colombian conflict militarily, it’s far more productive—and, presumably, President ChĂĄvez’s intent—to consider recognition of belligerent status as the best way to bring the insurgency under control. Colombia’s relentless media campaign, the goal of which is always to denounce the guerrillas as terrorists, may stimulate the troops, but it has an equal and opposite effect on the guerrillas. The repeated use of this term, “terrorist,” is calculated to inflame the conflict, not resolve it. It is pointless to talk about negotiations when one of the parties won’t tone down its rhetoric.

So how can recognition of the belligerent status of the guerrillas help to bring peace? First of all, there will no longer be any excuse for not engaging in a dialog with the guerrillas. The Colombian government will be forced to negotiate, and that is the only way the conflict can ever end. Secondly, the guerrillas will have an incentive to not engage in the kinds of behaviors that the Colombian government is so quick to point out. These are two good reasons for supporting Chavez’s position.

It’s useful to take a look at the laws that apply here, to understand what is at stake and where things may be heading in Colombia. Let’s digress for a moment and consider how the term terrorist is used to equate one’s enemies with the people responsible for blowing up the World Trade Center. That’s the comparison people using the term want to make.

War has always been an awful business. It’s the ultimate expression of man’s capacity for barbarism. Efforts to rein in the worst of it reached their zenith following the horrors of World War II, in the form of multilateral treaties stating that humanity would no longer tolerate torture, genocide, and the wholesale bombing of cities. The wars of the future would be conducted by humanitarians, it was believed. Unfortunately, the tactics of war have become more, not less, brutal.

Today’s wars are not, as a rule, waged across the national borders of the opponent. They are waged in homes, streets, universities, and meeting places, through subversion, infiltration, and guerrilla warfare. Today’s combatants include civilians, guerrillas, special operations forces, and paramilitary death squads. That’s an unfortunate but undeniable fact. Whether they’re homegrown revolutions, or proxy wars for global domination, the modern day combatant could easily be described as a terrorist.

The traditional laws of war are entirely too chivalrous and impractical for the modern-day warrior. Revolutionaries lack the capacity for regular warfare or the facilities to take care of prisoners, whereas the government often lacks the popular support needed to separate the revolutionary cadre from the civilian population. The reality is often that both sides engage in terrorism to discourage the civilian population from supporting the other. Governments don’t respond to insurgencies according to legal rules and procedures, but on the basis of prudential calculations, despite the fact that their citizens value the avoidance of gratuitous suffering and destruction. Likewise, insurgents promise a better society while justifying the brutal methods of guerrilla warfare on the basis that they have no other way to win. For both, the laws of war are seen as somewhat sentimental and naĂŻve when applied to their own side. Human rights finds its use in the moral justifications of war propaganda and the denunciation of atrocities committed by the enemy. It’s rare indeed for human rights defenders to criticize their own. Yet this was the noble intention of the founders of the League of Nations and the United Nations who sought to create a more humane world.

So how should insurgent groups such as the FARC, ELN, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP) be treated by the international community? Should we make a list of groups using irregular warfare methods – a list that could include practically every insurgency in world history – and call them terrorists? It seems wildly unrealistic to try to impose order in the world by labeling insurgents as the enemies of mankind. SimĂłn BolĂ­var and George Washington would, by today’s standards, be candidates for the terrorist list. So how does international law treat insurgent groups?

Traditionally, the legal status of an insurgent group depended on their degree of success. When an insurgent group was able to maintain a sustained campaign and control a substantial portion of the national territory, the counter-government could be accorded insurgent status by third states, which would thereafter be obligated to take into account the condition of warfare in their relations with the state. If the hostilities persisted, it was permissible, and perhaps even obligatory, to recognize the condition of belligerency, provided that insurgent forces acting under responsible authority observed the rules of warfare, and that there was some need for the third state to define its attitude towards the conflict. This need could occur if the rebels became so strong in some geographical area that the third government found it necessary to deal with them as well as with the established government. Recognition was simply made by public declaration. Formal procedures for third-party recognition have never existed, except in the very rare cases where the parties agreed to submit their disputes to a tribunal for settlement.

The classic example of a belligerency is the American Civil War. The North declared the South to be in a state of belligerency, for the purpose of asking European nations to respect a blockade of Southern ports. This declaration was upheld by the US Supreme Court. In the Prize Cases, Justice Robert C. Grier held that large-scale insurrection constitutes war in the legal sense:

Insurrection against a government may or may not culminate in an organized rebellion, but a civil war always begins by insurrection against the lawful authority of the government. A civil war is never solemnly declared; it becomes such by its accidents – the number, power, and organization of the persons who originate and carry it on. When the party in rebellion occupy and hold in a hostile manner a certain portion of territory; have declared their independence; have cast off their allegiance; have organized armies; have commenced hostilities against their former sovereign; the world acknowledges them as belligerents, and the contest is war… Therefore, we are of opinion that the President had a right jure belli [war power], to institute a blockade of ports in possession of the states in rebellion, which neutrals are bound to regard.

This was a rare example of a nation formally declaring a state of belligerency within its borders, for the purpose of obtaining foreign assistance in blockading the rebels. Such declarations are rarely made, because the recognition of belligerency also implies the formal recognition of other legal rights of the insurgents. Any government would be ill-advised to acknowledge that such rights exist. In fact, no government has formally recognized the belligerent status of insurgents within its territory since World War II.

In today’s world, there is almost no reliance by third states on the traditional legal definitions of rebellion, insurgency, and belligerence. Instead, governments normally determine their relations with the competing factions on the basis of their own foreign policy goals. This often translates into supporting the forces of “law and order” in allied states, and the forces of “self-determination” in rival states. Nevertheless, the legal status of insurgents should be a matter of serious concern to the courts, which are supposed to decide cases based on objective legal standards, rather than on whether the defendant is a member of an official enemies list. That is the rule of guilt by association. The new crime of providing material support to a terrorist organization takes us back to the days of the inquisition. It is the crime of helping a group on the official enemies list of the United States or the European Union.

Recently, a court in Copenhagen dismissed charges against persons selling t-shirts bearing FARC and PFLP logos. The defendants had advertised that five Euros from each sale would be donated to those organizations. The court made factual findings that the FARC and PFLP are not, under Danish law, terrorist organizations because their actions are intended to overthrow their governments, not to terrorize civilians.

In the United States, this kind of political designation is not reviewable by the courts, even though it determines the rights of the individual “terrorists.” When FARC guerrilla SimĂłn Trinidad was put on trial for conspiracy to commit hostage-taking for his admitted role as a prisoner exchange negotiator for the group, the court not only did not review the FARC’s status as a terrorist organization, but also held that Trinidad could not be a prisoner of war, because the United States and Colombia are not at war. Trinidad is the first “international terrorist” ever extradited and tried in the US under the new law prohibiting the provision of material support to an officially designated terrorist organization.

Chavez’ call to the international community will have wide-ranging implications—for foreign insurgents being tried as ordinary criminals in places like Washington DC, for ordinary Colombians who should not have to fear being kidnapped or blown up by a land mine, and for the irrational and war-mongering “global war on terrorism,” whatever that is. It could begin to undo the immense damage this one word – terrorist – has inflicted on the world in recent years.

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Paul Wolf is an attorney in Washington DC practicing international human rights law.

From our weblog:

FARC: “terrorists” or “belligerents”?
WW4 Report, Jan. 21, 2008
/node/4962

Danish court: FARC, PFLP not terrorists
WW4 Report, Dec. 16, 2007
/node/4810

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

Continue ReadingBOLIVAR’S SWORD 

Final Message to Our Readers?

Dear WW4 Report Readers:

We hate to admit that we are at an existential crisis. We think that it is bad form to hold out our demise as a threat to get readers to donate. But after five years, World War 4 Report is starting to look unsustainable. We need to be able to reliably raise $2,000 at least once a year to continue, and our donations have only been decreasing over the past year. We do not understand why.

We know there are a lot of lefty websites out there. But shouldn’t there be ONE that has consistent, detailed coverage of the Iraqi civil resistance and other secular anti-imperialist movements in the Middle East? Of the Zapatistas and other indigenous struggles in Mexico, Central America and the Andes? Of the cultural survival struggles of peoples such as the Tuareg of Niger and Naga of India, facing the twin threats of militarism and oil development on their ancestral lands?

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Shouldn’t there be ONE?

Isn’t there a place for a progressive website that is relentlessly diligent, comprehensive and fact-oriented, which does not condescend to the reader with smarmy attitude? That refuses to cut slack for mass murderers of any ideological stripe? That seeks to loan a voice to anti-militarist movements and indigenous cultures everywhere that the US and its proxies are on the attack—not only those which are in the headlines?

We understand that our website is not very visually exciting, and we are working to change that—beginning with this month’s photo essay “Pictures from Palestine” by Ellen Davidson and Judith Mahoney Pasternak. We want to improve—but our shoestring budget is a big part of what is holding us back. If everyone who reads WW4 Report regularly sent $10 tomorrow, we’d be set for the next year and on the road to a better website. But that means everyone.

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Are we unrealistic? Is it time to call it quits? We need to raise $2,000 this fund drive to keep going. So far we’ve raised $200.

If you can’t give anything, can you at least write us and tell us what we’re doing wrong?

Once again—by supporting us now, you’ll receive an informative, hard-hitting token of our appreciation. We are currently producing two new additions in our pamphlet series. First, in cooperation with Shadow Press of Lower Manhattan, we will soon present Petro-Imperialism: the Global War on Terrorism and the Struggle for the Planet’s Oil, by yours truly. This will actually be a mini-book, clocking in at around 60 pages. You can receive a personally signed copy for a donation of $25.

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Continue ReadingFinal Message to Our Readers? 

FEAR AND LOATHING IN BOLIVIA

New Constitution Escalates Polarization

by Ben Dangl, Upside Down World

“Let’s go unblock the road, compañeros!” a man in an old baseball cap yells as he joins a group of people hauling rocks and tires from a central intersection in Cochabamba. This group of students and union activists are mobilizing against a civic strike led by middle-class foot soldiers of the Bolivian right. These actions in the street are part of a political roller coaster which is dramatically changing Bolivia as it enters the new year.

Two major developments marked the close of the year in Bolivia: the passage of a new constitution and the worsening of political polarization in the country. The new constitution reflects the socialistic policies advocated by indigenous president Evo Morales, while racism, regional and political divisions still threaten to push Bolivia into a larger conflict.

In the final weeks of 2007, a variety of protest tactics were used by political factions to advocate competing visions for the future of the country. From November 24-25, clashes between security forces and opposition protesters in Sucre left three people dead and hundreds wounded, forcing the assembly rewriting the country’s constitution to move to Oruro. Anarchists dressed in black and pounding drums marched against racism in Cochabamba, while older Bolivians in La Paz organized rallies in support of a new pension plan. In the town of Achacachi, Aymara indigenous leaders sacrificed two dogs in a ceremony declaring war on the wealthy elite in Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz is a department with a capital city of the same name and is the center of the right’s growing movement against the Morales government. The Bolivian right is led by four governors in the eastern departments of Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz and Tarija; civic committees, business and land owners; and the political party Democratic and Social Power (PODEMOS). The right organized various civic strikes throughout 2007, while supporters of the Movement Toward Socialism, (MAS, the political party of Morales), also flexed their political muscle in protests, blockades and strikes. Though government and media battles often carve new policies and shape debates, street mobilizations remain a vital part of Bolivian politics.

Transformation Through a New Constitution?

On December 8-9, MAS assembly participants and their allies passed the new constitution in Oruro. Opposition party members boycotted the meeting. Representatives of neighborhood councils, mining unions, coca growers’ unions, student and farmer groups mobilized in Sucre to defend the assembly from right-wing intervention. Activists blew up dynamite to intimidate political opponents while assembly participants chewed coca to stay awake throughout the weekend-long gathering.

The new constitution paves the way for many of the changes the government has been working toward since Morales was elected in 2005. The document gives the state greater control over natural resources and the economy, and guarantees expanded autonomy for departmental governments and indigenous communities. It also calls for a mixed economy, where the rights of private, public and communal industries are protected. Indigenous community justice systems are better recognized through the new constitution and the document establishes that Supreme Court judges are to be elected instead of appointed by congress. The constitution also lifts the block on second consecutive terms for the president. This change would allow Morales to run again for two more terms in a row, in addition to his current time in office.

Though it was passed in the assembly in Oruro, the new constitution still has to be approved in a national referendum along with a vote on an article on land reform which is still in dispute. This controversial article puts a limit on private ownership of land to 100,000 hectares. Such a policy would greatly impact large land holdings in the department of Santa Cruz and other regions. On top of these challenges will be the difficulty of actually implementing these policy changes which so far only exist on paper.

Right-wing assembly members from PODEMOS, civic leaders and governors announced that they will not recognize the new constitution as it was passed without their support. MAS’s take on this, as represented by Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, is that the light-skinned elite do want to give up any of their privileges. Linera told the Los Angeles Times that these elites “have to understand that the state is no longer a prolongation of their haciendas [estates.]”

As a way out of the tense divisions, Morales announced that a referendum would be held in 2008 on his presidency and all governorships. In this referendum, which is scheduled to happen sometime before September, Morales established a rule that he has to receive over 54% of votes – what he received when elected president in 2005 – supporting his presidency to remain in office. If he doesn’t receive this support, he is to hold elections within 90-120 days. At the same time, there will be a referendum on whether the governors will stay in office. If the governors do not receive more votes than they did when they were elected in 2005, then they can be replaced by an interim governor of Morales’ choosing until the next elections.

This referendum could be a way for Morales to strengthen his own mandate, while weakening the right. Though criticism among Morales’ base of support has increased recently, when given a choice between supporting the right and Morales, this large voter group would likely vote for Morales. There is also a lack of alternatives to Morales among the Bolivian left. A massive voter registration drive, largely in rural areas, launched by the Morales administration is also likely to play into the president’s favor in this referendum. A recent poll conducted by Ipsos Apoyo, OpiniĂłn y Mercado showed that 56% of the population currently approves the performance of Morales.

The Right and New Polarization

Shortly after Morales announced plans for the referendum, the right made another bold announcement which made political negotiations even more unlikely. On December 15, right wing leaders in Santa Cruz declared autonomy from the central government. Leaders announced the creation of Santa Cruz ID cards, a television station and its own police force; the Bolivian national police force will no longer be recognized. In addition, the autonomy declaration establishes that 2/3 of taxes from the oil and gas industry in that department will remain in Santa Cruz, rather than going to the central government. Expanded autonomy for four of the opposition-led, resource rich, departments would further threaten the stability of the Morales government.

Meanwhile, strikes, road blockades and protests have been organized among all political factions and violence has often erupted throughout what has been a turbulent end to the year. There have been approximately eight political bombings in Bolivia in 2007. Most of these incidents involved dynamite or grenades, and the majority of them were against leftist unions or MAS party officials

Morales and his opponents have shown interest in meeting to negotiate some kind of compromise. Such a meeting was put at risk when on December 31 right-wing leaders said they threw the new constitution into the garbage. Morales responded by saying that their autonomy statute should be thrown in the garbage. These declarations are likely to further erode relations between political opponents and increase division in the country.

A government plan to redirect gas industry taxes from departmental governments into a national pension plan has resulted in outcries from the right, and praise from MAS supporters. This pension, called the Dignity Salary, was approved in congress on November 27 without many opposition members present. The pension plan gives Bolivians over age 60 approximately $26 per month. The funds, which are to be an estimated $215 million annually, would be redirected from current gas tax funds which had previously gone to departmental governments. Right-wing governors protested the pension, demanding that this redirected tax money stay in their departments.

Another of the right’s criticisms of the Morales administration is that the president’s policies are bad for business and international relations. Recent events and reports prove otherwise. On January 1, the government announced that in 2007 the Bolivian economy grew by 4.2%, which is more than the 1.7% growth in 2001 when Jorge Tuto Quiroga was vice president of the country. Quiroga, of PODEMOS, is a key leader of the current opposition against Morales.

In mid-December, Brazilian president Luiz InĂĄcio Lula da Silva and Chilean president Michelle Bachelet met with Morales in Bolivia to show their support for his government and the new constitution. The three heads of state negotiated a plan to develop a $600 million highway from Santos, Brazil, across Bolivia and to sea ports in Arica, Chile. During the same visit, the Brazilian hydrocarbon company Petrobras announced it would invest up to $1 billion to further develop the Bolivian gas industry.

Morales also cut a deal with a South Korean company to collaborate with Bolivian state-owned COMIBOL to exploit a copper mine in Corocoro, outside La Paz. On December 21, Bolivian foreign minister David Choquehuanca, during a visit in Beijing, announced proposals for Chinese investment in Bolivian telecommunications, transportation, hydrocarbons and minerals. Though specific deals with China were not discussed, Choquehuanca told Reuters, “We need investment but we need investment that gets us out of poverty, not investment that strips our natural resources and leaves us poor.”

Last November, in the cold lobby of a museum in La Paz, Bolivian vice president Garcia Linera arrived late to a panel on political change in Latin America. It was raining heavily in the Bolivian capital and the political crisis threatened to tear the country apart. Throughout the presentation, Linera left the panel to field numerous cell phone calls. When he finally commented on the polarization and conflicts in the country, he warned about the risk of widespread division, and said this moment of “bifurcation” is “much closer than it appears.” He spoke of how the “new state is consolidating itself” and how the right may “gradually accommodate” itself to these changes. Yet, he warned, the right could also work to block the government’s changes to revert to a past balance of power, which could create more tension. As Bolivia enters the new year, this tension is more present than ever.

Bolivia ended 2007 with more questions than answers about the future of the nation. Will the government be able to transform the state into something useful for a majority of Bolivians? What role will the social movements of Bolivia play in pushing for radical change? Will the policies in the new constitution be applied in effective ways? Though many of these issues may not be resolved in 2008, the good news is that Bolivia is directly addressing these critical questions.

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

This story first appeared Jan. 3 on Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1067/1/

See also:

CONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICT ROCKS BOLIVIA
Deadly Violence as Draft Charter Approved
from the Andean Information Network
WW4 Report, December 2007
/node/4752

From our weblog:

Bolivia’s constitutional crisis: rival “decentralizations”
WW4 Report, Dec. 8, 2007
/node/4855

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

Continue ReadingFEAR AND LOATHING IN BOLIVIA 

ORWELLIAN LIBERAL SPITZER SAYS “I DO” TO SURVEILLANCE STATE

Moribund National ID Act Revived by Spitzer-Chertoff Love Fest

By A. Kronstadt, The Shadow

Even here in sophisticated New York City where we are all supposed to know something and be savvy about politics, everyone thinks that there is a big difference between Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer and former Republican New York City Mayor and presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani. Spitzer is certainly identified by most as a New York liberal, whether those doing the identifying like him for that or not. It is becoming more and more apparent, however that Spitzer’s credentials resemble more those of Giuliani than, say, Mario Cuomo, in the sense that Spitzer has a prosecutorial background and mentality and has little respect for the rights of the individual, except perhaps for the big real estate individuals of which he is also one. Spitzer’s role as a “stealth liberal” whose sleek profile is an illusion to disguise a greedy control junkie, is becoming apparent to more and more people, and this is one of the reasons why his popularity is in a tailspin, with a majority of Democrats admitting that they would like a chance to vote for somebody else. Spitzer’s role in promoting and indeed reviving the much-detested Real ID Act, legacy of the Republican Congress that was voted out of office in 2006, shows that his respect for privacy and the American tradition of individual liberties is nil.

With his prosecutorial and real estate background, Spitzer was already an insider in New York State and New York City government, and his victory in the 2006 gubernatorial race with 69% of the vote over little-known Republican John Faso was not the result of any upsurge in old-fashioned Democratic party liberalism or populism. Indeed, after less than a year in office, Spitzer is showing his right-wing prosecutorial side along with a scary ability to cloak his repressive intentions with liberal rhetoric. Spitzer’s plan to “grant driver’s licences to illegal aliens” enabled the right-wing press to skewer him as a wild-eyed liberal, but a careful examination of that controversy reveals the Democratic governor as one of the few enablers that the Bush Administration can count on in its effort to impose a national ID card on the US.

After eight years of Republican misrule in Albany, many here in New York City, who were the biggest victims of the anti-tenant and anti-poor policies of Gov. George Pataki and right-wing, upstate politicians led by State Senate Speaker Joe Bruno, welcomed the victory of Democrat Eliot Spitzer in 2006. Spitzer rose through the prosecutorial ranks, making a name for himself at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office with his probes into mafia control of the garment district, and later as New York State Attorney General, where he spearheaded major probes into Wall Street corruption and earned a reputation as a protector of the American investor. Spitzer is the son of real estate developer Bernard Spitzer, whose fortune has been estimated at upward of $500 million and who is the landlord of several Manhattan high rises including the Corinthian on East 38th Street, as well as the futuristic 200 Central Park South and numerous properties on Madison Avenue. Eliot Spitzer financed his own campaign for Attorney General in 1998 to the tune of $9 million.

Spitzer has demonstrated a tight relationship with Manhattan real estate developers, in particular Larry Silverstein, who acquired a 99-year lease on the buildings and land of the World Trade Center on July 24, 2001. When the buildings were destroyed just a couple of weeks later, Silverstein became embroiled in litigation with his insurers, who insisted that the impact of the planes comprised only one incident, entitling Silverstein to a $3.55 billion payout. Silverstein contended that the attack constituted two separate incidents, entitling him to 7.1 billion dollars. As the case progressed in 2003, Spitzer took time from his busy schedule as NY State Attorney General to file an amicus curiae brief with the 2nd Circuit Court backing the claims of his fellow real estate mogul, who was eventually awarded 4.5 billion dollars in insurance payments in a federal court ruling. (Silverstein is also reported to have hired a former Spitzer advisor, Roberto Ramirez, as his personal lobbyist and pipeline to the governor.)

The ID card controversy began on Sept. 21, 2007, when Spitzer declared that he would implement by executive order a policy whereby the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants living in New York State would be able to obtain valid driver’s licenses. Spitzer justified the measure as promoting road safety by reducing the number of unlicensed drivers. As the governor phrased it “The DMV is not the INS,” referring, respectively, to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles and the US Immigration and Naturalization Service—now folded into the Homeland Security Department.

Spitzer was immediately accused of having failed to consult either Homeland Security or the County Clerks charged with administering driver’s licenses in their localities. Spitzer counted on the support of immigrants rights advocates and Latino elected officials such as State Senator Ruben Diaz, who were early supporters of the license plan. Even Republican kingpin Joe Bruno himself, at first, rode the bandwagon. Rapidly, however, an upstate and suburban backlash sent Spitzer waffling. He consulted with his long-time friend and collaborator in hunting down mafia dons: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Chertoff had warned Spitzer that his department was about to come out against the governor’s initial, more nebulous plan to grant driver’s licenses irrespective of immigration status. Spitzer and Chertoff held a joint press conference on Oct. 27 at which they announced their Memorandum of Agreement, in which the Department of Homeland Security would consent to a form of Spitzer’s proposal to grant driver’s licenses without regard to immigration status—in the context of New York State’s compliance with the Federal Real ID Act. A system of three “tiers” of driver’s license would be created, the upper two of which would be compliant with the requirements of Real ID. Let us restate the sinister provisions of the Real ID Act, which was passed by the Republican-dominated Congress in 2005, tacked onto a military appropriations bill, with no debate:

1. It mandates that all states meet certain minimum requirements for the information that needs to be included in driver’s licenses and state ID cards, including: requirement for “biometric parameters,” understood to mean fingerprints from at least two of the person’s digits.

2. It standardizes the documentation that states must require from applicants for such cards, including proof of a real address.

3. It calls for linking of all state ID information to a national database and to similar databases in Canada and Mexico.

4. It demands that all state-issued ID cards conform to a common machine-readable technology based on magnetic strips or RFID proximity card reading technology.

5. It includes a hodgepodge of other sinister, authoritarian provisions, including a provision nullifying state laws that interfere with the building of the border fence between the US and Mexico and another allowing the Department of Homeland Security to determine at will the legal meaning of the word “terrorist.”

The Real ID Act does not precisely mandate that every citizen needs to carry identification papers as in Russia, China, or apartheid-era South Africa, but it bars, for all intents and purposes, persons refusing to carry an ID card featuring the requirements described above from boarding airplanes or entering federal buildings, or from carrying out numerous other official activities that might be essential to people’s lives.

The Real ID Act attempts to mandate a national ID card at the expense of the individual states, since the bill (originally HR 418, passed as part of HR 1268) does not include any federal funding. Seventeen states have already passed legislation distancing themselves in various ways from the provisions of Real ID, ranging from requiring federal funding as a condition for implementation to outright refusal to implement the Act or calling upon Congress to repeal it. But Eliot Spitzer is by no means a member of the broad coalition of left and right that has formed in opposition to this affront to American individualism. Indeed, he has been one of the few state elected officials nationwide to embrace the Real ID Act (comprising a total of ten states that have made any commitment to the act), and to assert that his state is capable of funding this “unfunded mandate.” At his Oct. 27 press conference with Chertoff, Spitzer stated:

“We can implement—and the Secretary has indicated that we will already be in substantial compliance, based upon what we already do and what we already intend to do. So I think other states will look at this and say, the cost issues can be addressed, and it is, as the Secretary said, in that context, good policy, from a security perspective.”

At that press conference, Spitzer moved off of his initial position that there should be equal access to licenses for all state residents, switching to a position forged in consultation with Chertoff whereby three “tiers” of license would be available. According to the Spitzer/Chertoff Memorandum of Agreement signed at the end of October, the highest and most expensive tier would be simultaneously compliant with the Real ID Act and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, a treaty that includes Canada and Mexico. This version of the new driver’s license would include the RFID chip and biometric parameters (e.g., fingerprint or face-recognition technology) that are included among the maximum goals of Real ID.

The RFID chip is touted as making it very easy for upstaters to cross the Canadian border via a remote “Easy Pass” type of system that can be read automatically from a toll booth. It would be a particular convenience for residents of New York’s northernmost upstate counties to be able to travel across the Canadian border easily, since commerce with Canada is vital in that part of the state. The only other ID that would otherwise be acceptable for travel into Canada or Mexico under the post-9-11 border regulations would be a passport, which is much more expensive.

There would also be a middle tier of license that would comprise regular driver’s licenses (or non-driver ID that the state Department of Motor Vehicles also issues). These would be technically simpler, but would still require proof of citizenship, several prior forms of ID to establish name and address, and possibly the biometric parameters. This ordinary type of license would be acceptable as ID for boarding airplanes and entering federal buildings, as well as for driving.

The third and lowest tier would be valid only for driving and not for official federal purposes, and that would be the equivalent of the infamous “illegal aliens” license that Spitzer had earlier proposed. This lowest tier of license would also be subject to a lower fee. It would also be stamped “Not Valid for Federal Purposes” in compliance with the Real ID Act. Spitzer was asked whether such a system would stigmatize a person who presented such a “driver’s only” license to the police at a traffic stop as someone likely to be in the country illegally. Spitzer maintained that no stigma would be attached to the lower-tier license and that citizens and legal residents who do not travel, who already have other forms of ID, e.g., green cards, or who have already invested in more expensive US passports for travel purposes would be interested in a cheaper “driving only” license that does not qualify as ID.

At that point, Spitzer had succeeded in framing the issue such that in order to support the right of undocumented people who are living and working in the state to drive a car, one now has to support this plunge into authoritarianism in the form of a nationally standard ID card. It was the conservatives like Joe Bruno who were attacking the proposal because it failed to punish illegal immigrants by taking away their right to drive, The liberals on the other hand, were led up and forced to shake hands with the sinister Michael Chertoff, and to agree to the principle that we all need to accept less privacy and less freedom of movement in this post-9-11 world.

However, with his popularity dropping and his plan to grant licenses to the undocumented identified as his biggest drag in the polls, on November 13, Spitzer withdrew the proposal to grant the “driver’s only” license to persons unable to prove legal residency, leaving the issue completely up in the air. He also announced that he would take a “wait and see” approach on the issuance of Real ID-compliant licenses. Indeed , on that same day, Michael A. L. Balboni, the governor’s top
domestic security aide, said:

“How can it be a nationally secure driver’s license if only 10 states are going to do it? In which case, it would make the entire debate academic…The federal government has a tremendous amount of work to do to convince the nation that Real ID is truly the way to secure this nation’s air travel.”

So, the Spitzer administration is waffling on Read ID, but, seeing the relationship that he has established with Chertoff and Homeland Security, one can only suppose that there is still movement behind the scenes to keep the sinister bill alive in New York State.

To sum it all up, appearing to be compromising to save his generous, egalitarian proposal of granting driver’s licenses even to the undocumented, Spitzer allowed the police-state measure passed by a long-gone Republican Congress to get its foot in the door. By having Chertoff shepherd him through the process and stay by his side as he justified it, he made it look as if it were Chertoff’s idea, so that liberals would still think that he was just compromising. But, with their decades of illustrious service as prosecutors—Chertoff federal and Spitzer state—we are taking about two men who have prosecutorial mentalities and want nothing other that additional tools to enhance their reach and their power. Chertoff and Spitzer worked hand in hand during the ’80s and ’90s, wiretapping and spying in their efforts against organized crime, pushing the envelope of government intrusion in an effort to create a utopia where only the government is allowed to commit crimes. Privacy, to the Spitzers and Chertoffs and Giulianis, is a thing of the past and an emotional excess that has no place in a world where government nannies have a responsibility to protect everyone. Were it not for the fanatics and emotional people like ourselves at the Shadow and a substantial number of others who do not like to have a number placed upon us to identify our status in the anthill, they would go all the way and force us to carry an internal passport like in old-time Russia, which was an even more effective tool for identifying and prosecuting the guilty. After all, what do we have to hide?

——

This story appeared December 2007 in The Shadow, NYC

RESOURCES

National Identity Card Bill Passes in Senate Without Debate
The Shadow, July 2007
http://shadowpress.org/national_id_card.52.html

Silverstein Places Big Bet on Spitzer Over Ground Zero
New York Sun, March 21, 2006
http://www.nysun.com/article/29467?page_no=1

From our weblog:

Spitzer capitulates on license plan
WW4 Report, Oct. 30, 2007
/node/4605

Enviros lose border-fence fight
WW4 Report, Dec. 20, 2006
/node/4799#comment-307675

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Jan. 1, 2008
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingORWELLIAN LIBERAL SPITZER SAYS “I DO” TO SURVEILLANCE STATE 

BETRAYAL AT BALI

Toward a People’s Agenda for Climate Justice

by Brian Tokar, Toward Freedom

With all the fanfare that usually accompanies such gatherings, delegates to the recent UN climate talks on the Indonesian island of Bali returned to their home countries declaring victory. Despite the continued obstructionism of the US delegation, the negotiators reached a mild consensus for continued negotiations on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, and at the very last moment were able to cajole and pressure the US to sign on.

But in the end, the so-called “Bali roadmap” added little beside a vague timetable to the plans for renewed global climate talks that came out of a similar meeting two years ago in Montreal. With support from Canada, Japan and Russia, and the acquiescence of former ally Australia, the US delegation deleted all references (except in a nonbinding footnote) to the overwhelming consensus that reductions of 25 to 40 percent in annual greenhouse gas emissions are necessary by 2020 to forestall catastrophic and irreversible alterations in the earth’s climate.

In Kyoto in 1997, then Vice President Al Gore was credited with breaking the first such deadlock in climate negotiations: he promised the assembled delegates that the US would support mandatory emissions reductions if the targeted cuts were reduced by more than half, and if their implementation were based on a scheme of market-based trading of emissions. The concept of “marketable rights to pollute” had been in wide circulation in the US for nearly a decade, but this was the first time a so-called “cap-and-trade” scheme was to be implemented on a global scale. The result, a decade later, is the development of what British columnist George Monbiot has aptly termed “an exuberant market in fake emissions cuts.” Of course, the US never signed the Kyoto Protocol, and the rest of the world has had to bear the consequences of managing an increasingly cumbersome and ineffectual carbon trading system.

Given the increasingly narrow focus on carbon trading and offsets as the primary official response to global climate disruptions, it is no surprise that Bali resembled, in the words of one participant, “a giant shopping extravaganza, marketing the earth, the sky and the rights of the poor.” All manner of carbon brokers, technology developers and national governments were out displaying their wares to the thousands of assembled delegates and NGO representatives. Numerous international organizations used the occasion of Bali to release their latest research on various aspects of global warming, including an important new report from the Global Forest Coalition highlighting the consequences for the world’s forests of the current global push to develop so-called “biofuels” from agricultural crops, grasses and trees.

Indeed, the problem of deforestation, which is now responsible for 20% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, was very much on the agenda in Bali. In anticipation of a future UN scheme to address what it calls “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation” (REDD), the World Bank announced the creation of a new “Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.” World Bank funds will now be available for governments seeking to preserve forests, but given the Bank’s long history of funding environmental destruction, observers remain skeptical. The effort mainly perpetuates the fatuous idea that wealthy nations (and individuals) can “offset” their excessive carbon dioxide emissions by paying for nominally carbon-saving projects in poorer countries.

Carbon offsets have already spurred the replacement of vast native forests with timber plantations, more readily assessed for their carbon sequestration potential, and able to be harvested for “energy crops” such as palm oil and highly speculative cellulose-derived ethanol. A statement issued by nearly 50 critical NGOs assembled in Bali stated, in part, “The proposed REDD policies could trigger further displacement, conflict and violence; as forests themselves increase in value they are declared ‘off limits’ to communities that live in them or depend on them for their livelihoods.” A central underlying assumption of the REDD, as with similar World Bank initiatives in recent years, is that traditional forest-dwelling communities are incapable of managing their forests appropriately, and that only international experts affiliated with the Bank, national governments, and compliant environmental organizations such as Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund are capable of doing so. Ultimately, timber companies and plantation managers, in league with the World Bank, will be demanding, in the words of Simone Lovera of the Global Forest Coalition, “compensation for every tree they don’t cut down.”

The Bali meetings also led to the creation of a new UN fund to help poor countries adapt to climate changes. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made it clear in their exhaustive 2007 report that the people least responsible for climate change will likely bear the worst consequences, as they are most vulnerable to the widespread increases in floods, droughts, wildfires and other effects of a rapidly changing climate. The UN’s biannual Human Development Report, also released in Bali, states that at least one out of every 19 people in the so-called developing world was already affected by a climate-related disaster between 2000 and 2004.

The new UN adaptation fund will be managed by the Global Environment Facility, a semi-independent partnership of the UN’s environment and development programs and the World Bank, and funded through a two-percent levy on carbon offset transactions under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM’s carbon offset schemes, however, have been widely criticized for manipulations, abuses and the funding of highly questionable projects including, once again, large scale commercial timber plantations displacing tropical rainforests. The new adaptation fund binds governments of poor countries even more tightly to the questionable practice of carbon offsets, even as it offers only a miniscule fraction of the estimated $86 billion needed just to sustain current UN poverty reduction programs in the face of the myriad new threats related to climate change.

So while the continued obstructionism of the Bush administration is the main story in the international press, the successful entrenchment in the UN system of “market-driven” policies introduced by the Clinton-Gore administration may prove to be the more lasting obstacle to real progress on global warming. Carbon trading and offsets help to further enrich Gore’s colleagues in the investment banking world, but contribute almost nothing to actually reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. What are we to do?

Over the past year, activists across the US and in other industrial countries have begun to dramatize the reality of potentially catastrophic global warming and pressure their governments to do something about it. Al Gore’s movie has had a positive educational impact, as has the latest IPCC report, documenting the “unequivocal” evidence that global warming is real and that we can already see the consequences. But most public events up to now, at least in the US, have been rather timid in their outlook, and minimal in their expectations for real changes. The failure of the Bali talks suggests the urgency of a far more pointed and militant approach, a genuine People’s Agenda for Climate Justice. Such an agenda would have at least four central elements:

1. Highlight the social justice implications of global climate disruptions. Global warming is not just a scientific issue, and it’s certainly not mainly about polar bears. As the UN’s Human Development Report describes so eloquently, global warming is a global justice issue, and its implications for the half of the world’s people that live on less than $2 per day are truly staggering. Bringing home these implications can go a long way toward humanizing the problem and raise the urgency of global action.

2. Dramatize the links between US climate and energy policies and US military adventures, particularly the war in Iraq, which is without question the most grotesquely energy-wasting activity on the planet today. Author Michael Klare has documented that troops in the Persian Gulf region consume 3.5 million gallons of oil a day, and that worldwide consumption by the US military—about four times as much—is equal to the total national consumption of Switzerland or Sweden. This past October, people gathered under the banner of “No War, No Warming” blocked the entrances to a Congressional office building in Washington, demanding an end to the war and real steps to prevent more catastrophic climate changes. Similar actions across the country could go a long way toward raising the pressure on politicians who consistently say the right thing and blithely vote the opposite way.

3. Expose the numerous false solutions to global warming promoted by the world’s elites. Billions of dollars in public and private funds are wasted on such schemes as a revival of nuclear power, mythical “clean coal” technologies, and the massive expansion of so-called biofuels (more appropriately termed agrofuels): liquid fuels obtained from food crops, grasses, and trees. Carbon trading and offsets are described as the only politically expedient way to reduce emissions, but they are structurally incapable of doing so. We need mandated emission reductions, a tax on carbon dioxide pollution, requirements to reorient utility and transportation policies, public funds for solar and wind energy, and large reductions in consumption throughout the industrialized world. Buying more “green” products won’t do; we need to buy less!

4. Envision a new, lower-consumption world of decentralized, clean energy and politically empowered communities. Like the anti-nuclear activists of 30 years ago, who halted the first wave of nuclear power in the US while articulating an inspiring vision of directly democratic, solar-powered communities, we again need to dramatize the positive, even utopian possibilities for a post-petroleum, post-mega-mall world. The reality of global warming is too urgent, and the outlook far too bleak, to settle for status-quo false solutions that only appear to address the problem. The technologies already exist for a locally-controlled, solar-based alternative, at the same time that dissatisfaction with today’s high-consumption, high-debt “American way of life” appears to be at an all-time high. Small experiments in living more locally, while improving the quality of life, are thriving everywhere. So are experiments in community-controlled renewable energy production. Al Gore is correct when he says that political will is the main obstacle to addressing global warming, but we also need to be able to look beyond the status-quo and struggle for a different kind of world.

—-

Brian Tokar’s books include Earth for Sale (South End), Redesigning Life? (Zed Books), and Gene Traders (Toward Freedom).

This story first appeared Dec. 18, 2007 in Toward Freedom.

RESOURCES:

Climate Talks in Montreal: Can we save the planet?
by Brian Tokar, Z Magazine, February 2006
http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/14110

UN Human Development Reports
http://hdr.undp.org/en/

Global Forest Coalition
http://www.globalforestcoalition.org/

No War, No Warming
http://www.nowarnowarming.org/

Solartopia
http://solartopia.org/

See also:

THE REAL SCOOP ON BIOFUELS
“Green Energy” Panacea or Just the Latest Hype?
WW4 Report, December 2006
/node/2864

From our weblog:

Indigenous peoples protest UN climate meet
WW4 Report, Dec. 8, 2007
/node/4770

New coalition bridges Iraq war, climate change
WW4 Report, March 10, 2007
/node/3326

——————-

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

Continue ReadingBETRAYAL AT BALI 

IRAQ’S CIVIL RESISTANCE

The Secular Left Opposition Stands Up

by Bill Weinberg, WW4 Report

July 4, 2007 saw the Fred Hampton-style execution of the leader of a popular citizen’s self-defense force in Baghdad. According to the Iraq Freedom Congress, the group Abdelhussein Saddam was associated with, a unit of US Special Forces troops and Iraqi National Guards raided his home in Baghdad’s Alattiba neighborhood at 3:00 AM, throwing grenades in before them—and opening fire without warning at him and his young daughter. The attackers took Saddam, leaving the girl bleeding on the floor. Two days later, his body was found in the morgue at Yarmouk Hospital.

Abdelhussein had been the leader of the Safety Force, a civil patrol organized by the IFC civil resistance coalition to protect their communities. Like many IFC leaders, he had been an opponent of the Saddam Hussein regime, and was imprisoned for two years in the ’90s. Head of the Safety Force since late last year, his death went unnoted by the world media.

But on Aug. 3, some 100 activists from the Japanese anti-war group Zenko—an acronym for National Assembly for Peace and Democracy—gathered near the US embassy in Tokyo to protest the slaying. One banner read: “Do US-Iraqi security forces promote civil rights or Big Brother thuggery? Abdelhussein found out!”

Among those speaking were two IFC leaders who had flown in for the 37th annual Zenko conference. IFC president Samir Adil addressed the rally: “Because he said ‘no Sunni, no Shi’ite, yes to human identity,’ because he wanted to build a civil society in Iraq without occupation, without sectarian militias—for that they killed Abdelhussein. They think they can defeat the IFC, the only voice in Iraq that says yes to a free society, yes to a nonviolent society; no to occupation, no to sectarian gangsters. But contrary to that, after the assassination, many people joined the IFC, we received messages of solidarity from around the world. As long as have the support of people like you, we will never give up.”

The IFC was formed in 2005, bringing together trade unions, women’s organizations, neighborhood assemblies and student groups around two demands: an end to the occupation, and a secular state for Iraq. Zenko’s most significant achievement over the past year has been the raising of $400,000 which allowed the IFC to establish a satellite station, Sana TV.

Nadia Mahmood, an exile from Basra who is the chief presenter at Sana TV’s London studio, told the protesters: “We established the IFC to oppose occupation or rule by Sunni or Shi’ite militias. That is why the US, which says it came to Iraq to bring democracy, assassinates our leaders and raids our offices. And that is why we must demand an end to the occupation.”

Sana TV: Voice of Progressive Iraq

The protest was given extra urgency by news that another IFC figure, Prof. Mohammed Jasam, had been killed the previous day in an ambush on the road from Baghdad to Siwera. The killers were this time presumably members of an as yet unidentified sectarian militia. Jasam had been a reporter and commentator on labor issues for Sana TV, which began broadcasting in this spring in Arabic, Kurdish and English, with studios in Baghdad and London.

Mahmood says Sana TV regularly produces programming on labor struggles, women’s concerns, and the impact of the occupation on Iraqi society. Its Baghdad studio continues to face material challenges—such as unreliable electricity, necessitating on-site generators. Mahmood says Sana TV hopes to build “mobile studios” for Iraq, citing the threat of attack from either occupation forces or sectarian militias.

The US supports its own TV networks in Iraq, while Iran and the Gulf states have satellite stations operating in the country that promote Shi’ite and Sunni political Islam, respectively. Yet it is Sana TV which has been singled out for attack.

The Baghdad office which serves as Sana TV’s studio and the IFC headquarters was raided by US troops on June 7. The premises were damaged when the soldiers forced down the door, and five of the office’s guards were arrested and their weapons confiscated. Documents were also seized. September 2006 saw a more violent raid, in which a mixed force of US and Iraqi troops ransacked the office, destroying furniture and equipment and confiscating records and documents, according to the IFC.

Mahmood and Adil say the IFC is becoming more of a threat because of its growing successes—uniting with organized labor to oppose the pending privatization of Iraq’s oil, bringing together secular anti-occupation forces in a common front, and liberating space in Baghdad and other cities from rule by sectarian militias.

Autonomous Zones of Co-Existence

While Adil says the Safety Force does bear arms—”every home has a rifle in Iraq, it is just a question of how they are used”—he emphasizes that they are not insurgents, and the IFC is pursuing a civil struggle. “In principle, we believe in the right of armed resistance,” says Adil. “But we believe a civil resistance is needed in Iraq now. Armed resistance has only brought terrorism to Iraq, turned the country into an international battlefield.”

He also cites the human cost—and the potential to build solidarity with the American citizenry. “In four years of occupation, there are 3,500 US troops dead and perhaps a quarter of a million Iraqis. There is no difference between the pain of Cindy Sheehan and mothers in Iraq.” And finally a tactical consideration: “It is not so easy to attack the civil resistance.”

Adil is a veteran of political struggle against the Saddam Hussein dictatorship and a follower of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, founded after Operation Desert Storm to oppose both the regime and US designs on the Persian Gulf region. Born in Baghdad in 1964, he was imprisoned for six months in 1992 for labor activities in the construction trade. He was tortured in prison—he never removes his cap, but a long scar can be seen extending down his scalp to his temple. Supporters in Canada launched an international campaign which finally won his release. Realizing he was no longer safe in Saddam’s Iraq, he fled first to the Kurdish zone, then Turkey, and finally Canada. He returned to Iraq in December 2005 to help revive an independent political opposition.

Adil is clear that this opposition faces two enemies: the occupation and what he calls “political Islam”—a Sunni wing linked to al-Qaeda and supported by Saudi Arabia, and Shi’ite militias with varying degrees of support from Iran. These have turned Baghdad into a patchwork of ethnically cleansed, hostile camps. The IFC includes secular Muslims (and non-believers) of both Sunni and Shi’ite background in its leadership, as well as Kurds and people of mixed heritage. Adil claims the IFC now has a presence in 20 cities, including Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Kirkuk and Tikrit. “We have thousands of followers,” he says, “and we are growing every day.” The IFC’s first national convention, held Oct. 21 in Kirkuk, was attended by elected delegates from all of Iraq’s major cities.

The IFC’s self-governing zone of some 5,000 in Baghdad, established in the district of al-Awaithia last September, is an island of co-existence in a city torn by sectarian cleansing, says Adil. Thanks to the Safety Force, the district has become a no-go zone for the sectarian militias. “There has been no sectarian killing in Husseinia since September 2006,” Adil boasts. Despite the slaying of Abdelhussein Saddam, the Safety Force is continuing to grow, he says, with new training sessions underway.

The IFC is now establishing a second self-governing zone in Baghdad’s Husseinia, also a mixed Sunni-Shi’ite district that militias on either side are trying to cleanse. The IFC’s first autonomous zone was established in late 2005 in a community they dubbed al-Tzaman (Solidarity) in the northern city of Kirkuk. Al-Tzaman has a mixed population of 5,000 Sunni Arabs, Christians, Turcomans and Kurds.

Adil is clear on where he places the blame for the crisis of violent sectarianism in Iraq. “The occupation and the US-imposed constitution have divided Iraq, Sunni against Shiite. The IFC is the only force to oppose this division of society.” He calls the IFC’s success in carving out zones of co-existence a testament to “the power of the people.”

In addition to securing the IFC’s self-governing zones, the Safety Force is active throughout Baghdad. In April, a sniper started shooting at children attempting to flee a school in Alatba’a suburb when fighting between US troops and insurgents was closing in on the district; the Safety Force arrived, calmed the students and teachers, promised to defend them, and established a perimeter around the school until the danger passed. When residents in Babalmuadham district sought to prevent the Shi’ite Mahdi militia from establishing a camp there, they called on the Safety Force, which secured the area and confronted the militiamen, who retreated. The Safety Force has worked to protect residents from looters who take advantage of the chaos when fighting breaks out.

A related effort, IFC Doctors, has started to provide free health services from the IFC headquarters in Baghdad, as well as forming traveling teams to provide treatment off-site for people who cannot reach the office.

The Safety Force is increasingly made up of trade unionists, a growing pillar of support for the IFC. In November 2006, the General Federation of Trade Unions-Iraq (GFTU-I) merged with the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI), already an IFC member organization. Workers from both groups have volunteered for the SF. And more unions are joining with the IFC’s new campaign against Iraq’s pending US-written oil law, which would grant unprecedentedly free access to foreign multinationals.

Struggle for the Oil

In a Sept. 8 press conference in Basra, representatives of the IFC’s Anti-Oil Law Front joined with leaders of Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU) to warn the Iraqi parliament against passing the draft oil law. IFOU president Hassan Jumaa, also a member of the IFC’s central council, announced that the union will shut down the pipeline leading from Iraq’s southern oilfields if the law is approved, and is prepared to halt operations entirely if the Anti-Oil Law Front calls for a strike. Five days earlier, the Front staged a protest in Baghdad’s Liberation Square. US forces surrounded the rally, blocking access to the square, and took pictures of the protesters who carried banners reading “The oil law is the law of occupation.”

An IFOU march against the oil law in Basra on July 16 brought out thousands, with simultaneous protests in Amara and Nassiryya. Local governate officials made statements in support of their demands. The 26,000-strong IFOU calls for immediate and complete withdrawal of all occupation forces from Iraq, and has already demonstrated its muscle. On June 4, it went on strike for four days to protest the oil law and demand the release of delayed benefits due workers, paralyzing the Basra-Baghdad pipeline.

Four IFOU leaders, including Hassan Jumaa, were ordered arrested for “sabotaging the Iraqi economy.” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had averted a strike in May by promising dialogue in a meeting with IFOU leaders, now warned he would meet threats to oil production “with an iron fist.” The arrest orders, never formally dropped, hadn’t been carried out when the strike ended. But a heavy presence of Iraqi army troops remained in Basra, surrounding and blocking marches by the oil workers. The government recently threatened to carry out the arrest orders if the unions go ahead with a new strike to protest the oil law.

“The oil law does not represent the aspirations of the Iraqi people,” Hassan Jumaa said at a May press conference. “It will let the foreign oil companies into the oil sector and enact privatization under so-called production-sharing agreements. The federation calls on all unions in the world to support our demands and to put pressure on governments and the oil companies not to enter the Iraqi oil fields.”

The IFOU, which is demanding the resignation of the general manager of the Southern Oil Company for corruption, also went on strike over these demands in September 2006. It has carried out its own reconstruction work on rigs, ports, pipelines and refineries since the invasion with minimal, mostly local resources.

Iraq’s labor leaders are, of course, targeted for repression and death.

On Sept. 18—just two days after the notorious Blackwater massacre in Baghdad—IFOU announced that an engineer and leading union member, Talib Naji Abboud, was killed in an “unprovoked attack” by US forces on Basra’s Rumaila oilfields. Sabah Jawad of the IFOU’s support committee in the UK says the troops opened fire on his car without warning while he was on his way to work—admitting that it could have just been a case of “trigger-happy” soldiers rather than a targeted assassination.

In al-Aadhamiya, outside Baghdad, municipal workers started a strike August 30 to protest the raid of their offices by US troops. The soldiers broke doors and windows and smashed the employees’ desks, under the pretext of a general search for arms in the municipality.

In February, US-led forces twice raided the Baghdad offices of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW), destroying office equipment and arresting a member of the union’s security staff. Also that month, the Iraq Syndicate of Journalists was raided, and computers and membership records were confiscated.

In January, militia gunmen abducted eight Oil Ministry engineers on their way to a FWCUI press conference on fuel price increases. Four were released, but one engineer, Abdukareem Mahdi, was later found dead, with signs of torture. The other three remain missing and are presumed dead. Days later, FWCUI organizer Mohammed Hameed was among a group of 15 civilians who were randomly gunned down in a marketplace in southern Baghdad.

In July 2006, Kurdish security forces in Suleimanyia opened fire on striking workers at a cement factory, leaving three dead and more wounded. A month later, sectarian militias in Mahmoodya, near Baghdad, assassinated the local secretary of the health workers union and IFC member Tariq Mahdi. Ali Hassan Abd (better known as Abu Fahad), a leader at the Southern Oil Company’s refinery, was gunned down while walking home with his young children in February 2005. That same month, Ahmed Adris Abbas, a leader in Baghdad’s transport union, was assassinated by a hit squad in the city’s Martyrs’ Square.

Yet despite danger and intimidation, the effort against the oil law is building. A second rally at Baghdad’s Liberation Square called by the Anti-Oil Law Front Sept. 22 brought out hundreds—a significant achievement in an atmosphere of terror.

For a Secular State

An incident which helped spark the IFC’s founding came in March 2005, when a Christian female student was physically attacked by Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia at a campus picnic at Basra University, and a male student who came to her defense was shot and killed. Thousands of students marched in protest, a solidarity march was held by students in Suleimanyia, and the Mahdi militia was driven from the campus. These struggles led to the establishment of the National Federation of Student Councils, another IFC member organization.

Another of the IFC’s founding organizations, the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), led a campaign against Iraq’s new constitution. Article 41 of the new constitution overturned the more secular 1959 Personal Status Law, enshrined as Article 118 of the old constitution, which barred gender discrimination. The new measure instead refers family disputes to sharia courts—Shi’ite or Sunni depending on the affiliation of the litigants. In 2004, a campaign by OWFI and allied groups—including street protests—succeeded in keeping the sharia measure out of the draft constitution, by a narrow vote of the then-Governing Council. However, a basically identical measure is in the permanent constitution approved by referendum the following year. OWFI believes the sharia courts will mean denial of divorce, inheritance and child custody rights to women.

OWFI leader Yanar Mohammed says the new constitution is encouraging an atmosphere in which acid attacks are on the rise even in once-secular Baghdad against “immodest” women who refuse to take the abaya (Iraq’s version of the veil). The Mahdi Army as well as its rival Sunni militias publicly flog and even hang women accused of “adultery” (which can include having been raped). Last year, OWFI sent teams to Baghdad’s morgue under cover of searching for missing relatives to reveal the horrific nature of Iraq’s reality. They found that hundreds of unclaimed women’s corpses turning up monthly at the morgue—many beheaded, disfigured or bearing signs of extreme torture.

OWFI runs a shelter in Baghdad for women fleeing “honor killings,” which have surged under the occupation. Mohammed, of course, has received numerous death threats.

The draft constitution for the Kurdish region also includes a measure recognizing sharia law as a foundation for legislation. OWFI’s spokesperson for the Kurdish region, Houzan Mahmoud, has also received e-mailed death threats—even as she pursues her education at the University of London.

Samir Adil says sectarian militias and US troops alike tear down IFC posters reading “No Sunni, no Shi’ite, occupation is the enemy.”

Appeal for Solidarity

In addition to Zenko, IFC solidarity groups have been established in the UK, France and South Korea. In America, US Labor Against the War has brought Iraqi union leaders on speaking tours. IFOU general-secretary Faleh Abood Umara was in Ohio on tour with USLAW when the arrest order was issued against him in the summer. The American Friends Service Committee also brought Samir Adil on a tour of the Northeast in 2006.

But there is still little awareness in the US about Iraq’s civil resistance. The dichotomized vision of occupation-vs-Islamist insurgents infects the mainstream as well as the anti-war forces. In its efforts to groom proxies, as with the Sunni “Guardians” in Anbar, the US is exacerbating the civil war—co-opting one gang of tribal reactionaries to fight against another. Meanwhile, when a progressive and secular self-defense force emerges—in opposition to the occupation, rather than collaboration, giving it real legitimacy—the US executes its leader. And the anti-war movement remains largely oblivious.

When asked about secular civil resistance movements in Iraq, Middle East scholar Juan Cole, publisher of the popular Informed Comment blog, says: “I don’t know of any significant such groups; they don’t show up in the Arabic language newspapers I read, and nobody votes secular when they vote… I think they are by now mostly in exile. The religious groups are better organized, get outside money, and have paramilitaries.”

Gilbert Achcar, author of The Clash of Barbarisms: September 11 and the Making of the New World Disorder, largely concurs. “What is tragic is that in the whole area actually, left-wing, progressive, emancipatory forces are quite marginal. As a product of historical defeat—or even bankruptcy, because of very wrong policies in some cases—the overwhelming forces in the mass movement have been of a very different nature, mainly Islamic fundamentalist forces. Iraq is a country where you have had historically a very powerful communist party with a tradition of building workers’ movements and all that, and one would have hoped that this would at least lead to the survival of a progressive current—but the problem is that the communist party joined the governing council set up by Bremer and ruined its credibility as an anti-imperialist force by doing so.”

Achcar also takes a dim view of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq. The WCPI was founded in 1991 in response to Desert Storm, the demise of the Soviet Union and emergence of the US as the single superpower, viewing these developments as mandating a return to militant workers’ self-organization in the Persian Gulf region. Samir Adil and other IFC leaders are followers of the Worker-Communist Party, which views the Iraqi regime as illegitimate and collaborationist. But in Achcar’s view, the Worker-Communist Party’s anti-clericalism is too dogmatic. “They have a discourse which is very violently opposed to all Islam—not only Islamic fundamentalism,” he says. “They have formulas that would be provocative for ordinary Muslim believers, I would say. They denounce Islamic fundamentalist forces, but they don’t take the necessary precaution of clearly making a distinction between these currents and the religion of Islam.”

The IFC, however, insist that they also have secular and progressive Muslims in their leadership. Recently, the IFC has held meetings with traditional tribal leaders in Basra province, issuing joint statements of unity against the occupation and Oil Law. In any case, the decision to launch the IFC has prompted a split in the WCPI, with the hard-liners who reject coalition politics leaving to form a “Left-Worker Communist Party of Iraq.”

Achcar does acknowledge worthwhile work by WCPI followers. “They organized activities on the women issue, and a trade union movement,” he says. “I mean, when you look at the landscape in Iraq, they are much more progressive than most of what you’ve got.”

And Achcar urges support for the oil workers, with whom the IFC are now allied. “What I think would be worth support in Iraq is the oil and gas workers union in Basra,” he says. “This is a genuine union, a genuinely autonomous union, not the off-shoot of any party. And they are in a very sensitive position because the oil industry is the main resource of Iraq, and that’s the main target of the occupation, of course. Therefore I think they deserve strong support in their fight, which is presently concentrated on opposing the privatization plans or designs concerning the oil industry…”

Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies articulates the dilemma: “There has been a huge problem since the beginning of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, that the only resistance we hear about is the military resistance. Certainly Iraqis have the right under international law to fight against an illegal military occupation, including through use of military force—but that has never been the only kind of resistance. Key sectoral organizations—oil workers, women, human rights defenders and many others-have all continued their work to oppose the occupation, at great risk to their own safety. Many of them operate in local areas, and almost all function outside the US-controlled ‘green zone,’ so few western journalists, and almost no mainstream US journalists, have access to their work.”

She too sees hope in the struggle of the oil workers. “The oil workers union has provided one of the extraordinary models of local/national mobilization in defense of workers rights as well as defense of Iraqi sovereignty and unity (through the unions’ opposition to the US-drafted oil law which would privatize a huge part of Iraq’s oil industry). The international solidarity mobilized by the oil workers unions, particularly among trade unionists in Europe and the US, has provided an important model of how that kind of cross-border collaboration can take shape. The work of US Labor Against the War, in mobilizing labor opposition to the Iraq occupation and simultaneously building support for the Iraqi oil workers, also provides a model for international solidarity from the other side.”

That the work of the IFC goes largely unnoticed outside Iraq is particularly ironic in light of Bush’s recent statement that there can be no “instant democracy in Iraq” because “Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.” As the death of Abdelhussein Saddam indicates, Bush is continuing the work of Saddam Hussein in eliminating progressive Iraqis who support co-existence. However, despite the best of his efforts, they are not all dead yet.

“The occupation and puppet government in Iraq created this conflict,” says Nadia Mahmood. “They supported the militias and opened the door to terrorist networks to come and function in Iraq. Before the war, George Bush said he had to invade Iraq because of al-Qaeda—but what happened was al-Qaeda came after the occupation. They control many cities in Iraq and are imposing the most reactionary practices on the civil population. Before, Iran had no role in Iraq, but now we see the Iranian government empowering militias in many cities in Iraq, especially in Basra. The US is not supporting political freedom in Iraq. They just seek to loot our resources, and its time to go.”

But she emphasizes that if the US exit is to lead to peace and a secular order, the civil resistance will also need support from friends abroad. “The victory against US forces in Iraq will not be a local victory—it will be an international victory.”

—-

A shorter version of this story appeared Dec. 24 in The Nation, and also ran on AlterNet and US Labor Against the War.

RESOURCES

Iraq Freedom Congress
http://www.ifcongress.com/

Organization of Womens’ Freedom in Iraq (OWFI)
http://www.EqualityinIraq.com/

Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI)
http://www.uuiraq.org/

General Federation of Iraqi Workers (GFIW)
http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/

General Union of Oil Employees in Basra-IFOU
http://www.basraoilunion.org/

Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI)
http://www.wpiraq.net/

Left Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (LWCPI)
http://www.socialismnow.org/

National Organization for the Iraqi Freedom Struggles (NO-IFS)
http://www.no-ifs.org/

See also:

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

From our weblog:

Iraq: public-sector workers launch sit-in campaign
WW4 Report, Dec. 23, 2007
/node/4853

——————-

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

Continue ReadingIRAQ’S CIVIL RESISTANCE 

Weekly News Update on the Americas

Weekly News Update on the Americas is published nearly every Sunday (since 1990) by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, 339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012; phone 212-674-9499; fax 212-674-9139; e-mail weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. The Update is distributed via e-mail and regular mail, together with Immigration News Briefs, a weekly supplement. Free one-month trial subscriptions are available on request.

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Continue ReadingWeekly News Update on the Americas 

CONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICT ROCKS BOLIVIA

Deadly Violence as Draft Charter Approved

from the Andean Information Network


Meeting in a military academy on the outskirts of Sucre, Bolivia’s Constituent Assembly approved a new draft constitution late Nov. 24 with the support of 136 of the 255 delegates—with little presence by the conservative opposition. Protesters demanding greater autonomy for in Bolivia’s lowland east and a change of the national capital from La Paz to Sucre—traditional seat of the old oligarchy—meanwhile battled security forces, in violence that left three dead that weekend. The reform process initiated by President Evo Morales and his Movement to Socialism (MAS) is now being assailed as illegitimate by large swaths of Bolivia’s political elite. The Andean Information Network, based in Cochabamba, provides this report.

The chaotic conflict over the seat of the capital escalated over the weekend of Nov. 23-5, leaving three people dead and 200 wounded. The constitutional assembly’s refusal to reopen discussion about the capital issue sparked the protests. The protests once again turned violent with the assembly’s subsequent approval of a draft of a new constitution with the presence of only MAS representatives inside a military installation. Protests by civic groups spread from Sucre to Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Tarija but, following the established cycle of conflict, the violence in Sucre has at least temporarily subsided. The issues raised by the clashes and the future of the new constitution will have a profound effect on future political developments, as opposing sectors have become even more firmly entrenched in their positions.

As in the January conflict in Cochabamba, the actions of the MAS government and those of Sucre leaders have exacerbated the situation. Both groups blame their political opponents for the violence and deaths, while neither has backed down or apologized. It is important to note, though, that the Bolivian military did not participate in efforts to control the protests, which could have led to a higher death toll. The police force has formally withdrawn from Sucre to Potosi after pro-Sucre protesters destroyed police vehicles and sacked police installations.

It is difficult to establish with precision the details of the conflict as the mainstream press has shown a bias in favor of pro-Sucre protesters and journalists have denounced physical abuse from police and threats from unidentified sources.

Suspended assembly reconvenes at military base

During the past three and a half months, attempts to reconvene the Constitutional Assembly in Sucre have been repeatedly thwarted by pro-Sucre protesters demanding the shift of the nation’s capital from La Paz to their city. Lowland departmental governments and other opposition groups support Sucre’s demand, apparently in an attempt to weaken the MAS power base. Beyond the political issues, moving the capital to the small, colonial city would be impractical and costly. The Sucre Civic Committee and a Pro-Sucre umbrella organization have repeatedly called for protests to put the capital issue on the assembly’s agenda and to prevent the assembly from meeting until it does so. The sometimes violent protests, which included beatings of some MAS assembly members, have made it impossible for the sessions to take place. The continual delays have increased pressure on MAS to comply with their campaign promise of a new constitution, as the Dec. 14 deadline to finish proceedings quickly approaches.

Although the assembly planned to convene on Nov. 9, pro-Sucre protesters burned tires and the door of the assembly headquarters the night before the scheduled meeting. The protesters also surrounded the building and detonated dynamite and firecrackers. The assembly leadership called off the meeting citing safety concerns. In response, pro-MAS social movements vowed to go to Sucre to defend the assembly and the new constitution. On Nov. 14 protests prevented another attempt to reinstate assembly proceedings.

On Nov. 23, MAS Assembly leadership transferred the proceedings to a military installation on the outskirts of Sucre from the centrally located theater the assembly has met in for the past fifteen months. The government declared the transfer legal and justified the move due to the lack of a guarantee of safety for assembly members. However, the change of location infuriated protesters and opposition groups, and the conflict escalated.

MAS aggravates conflict by approving a preliminary constitution

While protests raged just outside the base and throughout the city of Sucre, 136 MAS and allied party assembly members present at the military base voted to approve a draft of the constitution. At the Nov. 24 meeting just 139 of the 255 assembly members attended the meeting representing ten of the sixteen assembly political parties. Opposition members refused to attend the assembly session.

The approved text incorporates articles previously consented to by committees as well as MAS (majority) versions of articles on contentious issues. Preliminary reports suggest that topics in the draft include: the four levels of autonomy proposed by MAS (departmental, indigenous, municipal, and regional), state ownership of natural resources, a unicameral legislature, basic services such as water to be administered by public entities, a multiethnic plurinational state, free healthcare and education, the right to private property, the condemnation of large landholdings, the possibility of consecutive re-election of the president and vice president, the creation of referendums to revoke the mandates of elected leaders, referendums to approve international accords, and the intensification of the decentralization process.

MAS political opponents and opposition civic groups immediately announced that they will not accept the new constitutional draft. The protests that began Nov. 23 intensified and continued through the night of Nov. 25.

During the clashes four people died as a result of the protests. Although the National Police commander stated that no police officers used lethal weapons, news footage showed what appeared to be both plainclothes police officers and civilians with firearms.

* Gonzalo DurĂĄn Carazani, a 29-year-old lawyer and Sucre resident, died of a bullet wound in the chest near dawn on Nov. 24. According to Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramon Quintana, the bullet that killed Duran was from a small caliber weapon, such as a .22, and was not fired by the security forces. Official autopsy reports have not been released.

* Juan Carlos Serrudo, a 25-year-old carpenter and Sucre resident died from the impact of a tear gas canister in his chest as protesters attempted to enter Traffic Police headquarters on Nov. 25.

* José Luis Cardozo, a 19-year-old university student received a bullet wound to the head on Saturday and died the morning of Nov. 26.

* Media reports vary on the number of wounded though it appears to be between 100 and 200 and Sucre hospitals are at capacity.

* Police had announced that protesters lynched Officer Jimmy Quispe Colque on Nov. 24 and threw his body into a ravine. On Nov. 27, Officer Quispe was found alive and had been in hiding in Potosi.

Pro-Sucre protesters attack police installations

Protesters attacked the governor’s office, police installations, and the prison. At the jail, protesters burned police vehicles and freed over 100 prisoners, although alternate accounts suggest that the police liberated them, fearing that protesters would set fire to the building. As the attacks against the police worsened, National Police Commander Miguel Vasquez lamented that Sucre civic leaders did nothing to impede or dissuade their followers from attacks on police property. He further stated that the police had no political position and that since their safety could not be guaranteed, the police forces present would leave Sucre and remain in Potosi until further notice.

Journalists denounced that police insulted and hit them, complaining that they were not reporting the dead and wounded in the police force.

After the police withdrawal, the Sucre Civic Committee called for people to calmly return to their homes. Due to the lack of police presence and unstable peace in the city, protests may begin again and rapid investigations appear improbable.

Placing the blame

Both MAS supporters and the opposition continue to deny any responsibility for the conflict, and continue to rely on inflamed rhetoric to blame their opponents instead of proposing compromises or solutions. MAS representatives blamed “fascists” from the opposition for instigating the protests. In a speech on Nov. 25, President Morales requested a full investigation of the protests and lamented that the citizens of Sucre “have been totally manipulated by groups that do not want the profound changes the new constitution will bring.” He stated that the opposition had raised a series of issues in an attempt to close the assembly, including the two-thirds voting regulations, private property and the location of the capital. “But the capital issue is the worst; without a doubt, it’s a [legitimate] demand of two departments, and we respect that, but now they’ve turned it into purely political issue.”

Government Minister Alfredo Rada blamed Sucre civic leaders Jhon Cava and Jaime Barron for the deaths. Cava and Barron in turn demanded a trial for Rada, who they claimed was unwilling to negotiate and came to command the repression of the protesters.

In a statement to the press, opposition leader Jorge Quiroga dramatically asked that President Morales not follow the “bad example” of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He went on to reject the MAS-approved draft of the constitution stating that it “is worth as much as used toilet paper… A constitution approved in a barracks by MAS members…stained with the blood of the people has no value, it is worth as much as the decrees that [dictators] GarcĂ­a Meza and Arce Gomez sent from the barracks.” Quiroga did not make reference to the dictatorship of Hugo Banzer, for whom he later served as Vice President.

The governmental and business leaders of six of Bolivia’s nine departments called a work stoppage for Nov. 28 to protest the constitution approved by MAS, and blaming President Morales for the violence in Sucre. Santa Cruz business leader Branco Marinkovic stated, “We have nothing to do with the violence, the only one responsible is president Morales who sent the armed forces and police to repress his own people. He gave the order to kill and now wants to wash his hands like Pontius Pilate.”

Mediating the conflict?

It is unclear what the role of national human rights monitors has been in documenting the violence. The Human Rights Ombudsman, who is attending a conference in South Africa, offered to mediate in the conflict. A request for dialogue and investigations from the ombudsman will most likely be rejected by pro-Sucre groups, who perceive him to be too closely allied with the national government.

The Catholic Bishops conference has also emitted a statement offering to mediate, stating, “We ask that the political, social and civic leaders provide guidance to their rank and file by overcoming their biases to work for the pacification and well-being of the nation.” Opposition leader Jorge Quiroga’s request for Church mediation will likely lead MAS supporters to reject their offer.

As in previous conflicts, anti-MAS forces have called for intervention from international organizations, hoping that they would chastise the Morales administration. Santa Cruz Prefect Ruben Costas called for UN- or OAS-led investigations and intervention in the conflict. According to the Bolivian Government Information Agency, a spokesperson for the UN confirmed that the organization would intervene only in response to a specific request from the Bolivian government. A UN press release requested that all sides abstain from violence and seek consensus. The Minister of the Presidency discounted OAS intervention as unnecessary. In short, there appears to be no organization or entity that all sides in the conflict trust sufficiently to mediate in the increasingly polarized conflict.

Protests delay assembly further

After the Nov. 24 vote, Assembly president Silvia Lazarte said that the assembly would be on hold indefinitely until a special commission produces a proposal about contentious issues. According to assembly procedures, the next step is an article-by-article vote by the entire plenary. Then a revised draft must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the entire assembly. In a popular referendum, Bolivian citizens will vote between the majority and minority article proposals for any article that does not achieve a two-thirds approval. A second referendum will occur to approve the entire constitution. It’s unclear whether or not the assembly will stick to these procedures, and its approved timeline is unclear. Referring to the approval process, Lazarte stated, “all of this will be defined once I call a meeting of the assembly leadership.”

What will happen in the coming weeks remains unclear. The steps taken by MAS to move the process forward and to approve the preliminary text of the constitution in absence of opposition may create greater difficulties and frictions. With the December 14 deadline fast approaching, it remains to be seen whether the opposition will reenter the process. If the opposition continues to boycott the process, the assembly cannot approve anything by two-thirds, and thus every one of the 408 articles would have to be sent to the Bolivian public for approval. This would create almost insurmountable logistic difficulties in a referendum and could result in the further erosion of the legitimacy or the termination of the constitutional assembly.

The future of the constitutional process and a return to political stability in Bolivia depends on the ability of competing forces and interests groups to seek compromise. There is an acute need to enter into a genuine dialogue about how to peacefully coexist, instead of merely retreating to await future opportunities for conflict. Sadly, recent events suggest that this possibility is becoming increasingly distant.

——

This story first appeared Nov. 26 on the Andean Information Network, and was also run by Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1018/1/

See also:

BOLIVIA: END OF THE NEW SOCIAL PACT?
Fears of “Civil War” as Constituent Assembly Deadlocks
by Federico Fuentes, Green Left Weekly
WW4 REPORT, September 2007
/node/4363

From our weblog:

Bolivia: right-wing strikers pledge more protests
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2007
/node/4727

Bolivia: deadly unrest over autonomy plan
WW4 REPORT, Jan. 12, 2007
/node/3027

——————-

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

Continue ReadingCONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICT ROCKS BOLIVIA 

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DOWNWINDERS CATCH THE DRIFT

Survivors of Cold War Nuclear Testing Say No to Revived Weapons Program

by Lisa Mullenneaux

They have heard it all before. Residents near the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles from Las Vegas, call themselves “downwinders” because they disproportionately suffer from cancers, leukemia, and other fallout-related illnesses. They know the government’s deceit carries a deadly payload. That’s why in 2006 when the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) announced a test of 700 tons of explosive (50 times the power of our largest conventional weapon), anti-nuclear groups in four states and the Shoshone Nation gave DOE a blast of their own.

Downwinders didn’t share DTRA head James Tegnelia’s euphoria that the test, code-named Divine Strake, would send contaminated dirt sky high. “I don’t want to sound glib here,” Tegnelia told reporters, “but it is the first time in Nevada that you’ll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons.” In February 2007 the agency cancelled Divine Strake, replacing it with plans for “smaller blasts” aimed at underground enemy targets.

Small or large blasts, what downwinders fear is the Bush administration’s aggressive pursuit of new nuclear weapons and renewal of underground tests, banned since 1992. They have reason to be wary. In 2002 Bush accelerated the Doomsday Clock by reneging on an agreement with Putin to destroy 4,000 nuclear warheads, and rejecting the Anti-Ballistic Missile and Comprehensive Test Ban treaties. In 2003 Congress reopened the door to research and development of low-yield nuclear arms by repealing the Spratt-Furse ban, but has since balked at funding more ambitious programs like the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrators (“bunker busters”). Undaunted, the Bush White House this year requested $88 million for “Reliable Replacement Warheads” to upgrade the existing nuclear arsenal. Just in case those warheads need to be tested, an “enhanced” Nevada Test Site—cost: $25 million—will be ready.

“I remember my father telling me about how people in southern Utah would watch the sky light up from the nuclear tests in Nevada,” says Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah), “and how they supported the program because they were strong patriots, who believed in their country and trusted their government.” Neither Matheson nor his neighbors trust the Bush administration’s assurances that funding new nuclear weapons won’t lead to testing them nor that underground testing is foolproof. Why should they? According to the Department of Energy’s 1996 report, radioactive material escaped from 433 underground tests between 1961 and 1992. In 2004, Matheson introduced the Safety for Americans from Nuclear Weapons Testing Act, that would require health and safety assessments prior to tests, Congress to authorize those tests, and independent radiation monitoring.

Downwinders in Nevada and Utah heard and read the Atomic Energy Commission’s (and later DOE’s) insistence “there is no danger” for 47 years, often in the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. Not until 1980 did Congress admit what downwinders already knew: the danger of radiation was “not only disregarded but actually suppressed,” as a House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations concluded.

In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, but for many victims and their families it was too late. A total of 928 above- and below-ground nuclear tests were conducted at the Nevada Test Site between 1951 and 1992 and 21 subcritical nuclear weapons tests since 1997, most recently in February 2006. Though the site has been renamed an “Environmental Research Park” by the DOW, it’s not a park you would want to picnic in. Soil at the site and for miles around is contaminated with radioactive material—which is why downwinders want to ban all tests.

Says Preston “Jay” Truman, who heads Downwinders, a Salt Lake City-based organization of those who were exposed to radioactive fallout: “Back in the ’50s, we were given a booklet on the first day of kindergarten that read, ‘You people who live near the test site are, in a very real sense, active participants in this nation’s testing program.’ We had no idea then how much we were at risk, but in opposing Divine Strake, we showed how much we have learned since then. When DOE refused to allow public hearings on the project, we held our own hearings. The government got 11,000 comments.”

Another Downwinder, Salt Lake City journalist and cancer survivor Mary Dickson premiered her play this year about the effects of radiation poisoning called “Exposed.” “I like to think the people do have power so I can go on thinking this fighting we do matters,” Dickson says. But sweet as the Divine Strake victory was, the Downwinders know they are fighting a Goliath in the weapons industry.

Some of those fighting Goliath lost family members who worked on the construction of test sites. Beverly Aleck’s husband Nick helped drill the mile-deep pit for the Cannikin test on Alaska’s Amchitka Island in 1971; four years later, he died of myelogenous leukemia. Aleck, an Aleut, has waged war with the DOE ever since to open the records and begin a health monitoring program for Amchitka workers. When the Alaska District Council of Laborers of the AFL-CIO investigated in the early ’90s, at Aleck’s insistence, the DOE claimed none of the workers had been exposed to radiation. They later admitted that exposure records and dosimeter badges had been lost.

Amchitka was the site of three large underground nuclear tests, including Cannikin, the most powerful nuclear explosion the US ever detonated. To allay fierce public opposition, then AEC chairman James Schlesinger claimed, “The site was selected—and I underscore the point—because of the virtually zero likelihood of any damage.” But the AEC already knew from Nevada tests there was no guarantee that radiation released by the blasts could be safely contained underground. In fact, research by Greenpeace and the DOE show it began to leak almost immediately. Amchitka remains the only national wildlife refuge chosen to test bombs.

Environmentalists, the Deptartment of the Interior, and the Auke Tribe all failed to save Amchitka or to change a pattern of military secrecy established years earlier in the Pacific. When Bikinians and others in the Marshall Islands were relocated starting in 1946, they were never told their homelands would be unsafe for 30,000 years. They were never told they would be used as guinea pigs in their new locations so the US military could better understand radiation poisoning. After many small tests, in 1954 the US exploded a hydrogen bomb, code-named BRAVO, and islanders experienced fallout over 7,000 square miles. Its gruesome results are cancers and malformed children called “jellyfish babies.” Darlene Keju-Johnson, a public health official born on Ebeye Island, has dedicated her life to interviewing Marshallese women and exposing their fear of ever bearing normal children. “They know they’ll be dying out soon. They are dying now—slowly.”

Russian women fear the same birth deformities as the Marshallese because of fallout from nuclear tests and accidents like Chernobyl. A 2005 conference organized to mark the 51st anniversary of the first hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll allowed survivors to compare the patterns of secrecy that led to their radiation exposure, including still-classified government documents. “The reason the exposure [at Chernobyl] was so bad,” said Dr. Lyudmyla Porokhnyak, “is that we were lied to all the time.” After Chernobyl in 1986 and the BRAVO nuclear test in 1954, Russia and the US denied health risks and delayed evacuating residents. Fallout continues to be treated by US officials as the inevitable price for military superiority.

After President Bush’s Star Wars speech on May 1, 2001, when he argued that Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) could no longer guarantee our national security, companies began getting orders for fallout shelters for the first time since the Cold War. This year Huntsville, Alabama, dusted off its civil defense manual and announced plans to create a fallout shelter in an abandoned mine large enough for 20,000 people. Fighting the Red Menace during the 1950s was a bonanza for companies that sold pre-fab shelters, protective clothing, first-aid kits, disposable toilets, and books with titles like How to Have a Baby in a Bomb Shelter and America Under Attack! But while Eisenhower and Kennedy wanted nuclear preparedness they didn’t want national panic. An issue of Life, September 1961, devoted to the importance of fallout shelters, advised taking hot tea and aspirin for radiation sickness. “You can recover from a mild case of radiation sickness just as you can recover from a cold it’s not contagious. It loses its deadliness rapidly.”

Created in 1951, the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) was a shill for the weapons industry, designed to convince Americans they could survive a nuclear war by, among other things, ducking under a “sturdy table.” Its mascot was Bert the Turtle, who taught kids with a catchy jingle to “duck and cover” when the air raid siren sounded. Serious treatment of fallout, as in the film “On the Beach,” was condemned by the FCDA “because it produced a feeling of utter hopelessness, thus undermining efforts to encourage preparedness.” More entertaining were films like Mickey Rooney’s The Atomic Kid (1952) and Them! (1954) that exploited bizarre effects of genetic mutations.

Though scientists knew more than the public about radiation, their level of ignorance is astounding based on what we know today. As described by Gerard J. DeGroot in The Bomb: A Life, visitors were allowed into the Trinity site at Alagomordo, NM, in 1946 to collect Trinitite—the glassy substance of melted sand created by the blast—and local shops sold it as souvenirs. In September 1945, more than a thousand US servicemen were sent to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to help reconstruction. They were given no protective clothing, dosimeter badges, nor any precautionary advice. Meanwhile back in the US, secret experiments were being conducted in hospitals and prisons to study the effects of radiation on human beings. When the details of the experiments were released, the son of one of the women injected with bomb grade plutonium said: “I was over there fighting Germans who were conducting these horrific medical experiments. At the same time, my own country was conducting them on my mother.”

Part of the military’s pattern of secrecy is to use “nukespeak,” words that sanitize the horror of nuclear war: “collateral damage” for human death, “low-use segment of the population” for expendable downwinders. It speaks of “clean bombs” that release a bigger bang but less radiation than “dirty bombs,” calls the MX missile (Peacekeeper) a “damage limitation weapon,” speaks of a “limited nuclear war.” It justifies nuclear weapons research as “science-based stockpile stewardship.” Aware of US commitment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to the cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament,” the Bush administration speaks covertly about its own testing plans while decrying those of other nations.

Pushing in 2003 for funds to research a new generation of mini-nukes, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was careful to insist the Pentagon wanted to study them, “not to develop, not to deploy, not to use” them. From a low of $3.4 billion in 1995, US spending on nuclear weapons rose to $6.5 billion in 2004, far surpassing average yearly spending during the Cold War. “All the saber-rattling leads me to fear that they might try to resume testing,” says Nevada State Senator Dina Titus, who has written extensively on the state’s history of weapons testing. “We won the arms race, so why are we starting it again?”

No wonder downwinders are protesting—they’re catching the drift. And why should we worry? Because if studies by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) and National Cancer Institute are correct, we are all downwinders, exposed to radioactive fallout carried thousands of miles and lodged in food chains. Downwinders in Nevada are like canaries in the mine. They know what reactivating the Nevada Test Site means to them and their families or to having the nation’s nuclear waste dumped at Yucca Mountain. Chip Ward, who lives near the Nevada Test Site, writes, “Once again in a new age of nuclear testing, American citizens will be the first victims of our own weapons. We will live with uncertainty and doubt while waiting for the results of our own military folly to unfold in our tissues, our blood, our chromosomes, and our bones.”

RESOURCES

Downwinders
http://www.downwinders.org/

Shundahai Network
http://www.shundahai.org/yucca_mt.html

Defense Threat Reduction Agency
www.dtra.mil/

REFERENCES

Pentagon Plans Gigantic Explosion at Nevada Site, Reuters, March 30, 2006
http://forum.grasscity.com/general/88583-pentagon-plans-gigantic-explosion-nevada-site.html

Scientists Say Planned Blast a Part of Nuclear Testing
The Las Vegas Sun, April 6, 2006
Online at CommonDreams
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0406-06.htm

Experts: Divine Strake ‘mushroom cloud’ could have sickened many
The Las Vegas Sun, June 27, 2007, from AP
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2007/jun/27/062710103.html

The Spratt-Furse Law on Mini-Nuke Development
Union of Concerned Scientists, May 2003
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/the-sprattfurse-law-on-mininuke-development.html

Bush Speech on Missile Defence, Nuclear Reductions, May 1, 2001
Online at the Acronym Institute
http://www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd56/56bush.htm

The Low-Use Segment
Idaho’s downwinders got their hearing. But are their voices being heard?
by Nicholas Collias, Boise Weekly, Nov. 17, 2004
http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A2656

See also:

RESISTING THE NEW EURO-MISSILES
Czech Dissidents Stand Up Again—This Time to the Pentagon!
by Gwendolyn Albert,
WW4 REPORT, June 2007
/node/3977

NUCLEAR AGENDA 2005
Bush Charts New Generation of Warheads
by Chesley Hicksby Gwendolyn Albert,
WW4 REPORT, March 2005
/node/271

From our weblog:

“Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight
WW4REPORT, Jan. 18, 2007
/node/3062

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

Continue ReadingDOWNWINDERS CATCH THE DRIFT 

PLAN MEXICO

Militarization and the “MĂ©rida Initiative”

by Laura Carlsen, Foreign Policy in Focus

After months of talks, President George W. Bush finally announced the “security cooperation” plan for Mexico. On Oct. 22, he sent a request for $500 million in supplemental aid for 2008 as part of a $1.4 billion dollar multi-year package.

No surprises there. The Bush administration has been negotiating the package with President Felipe CalderĂłn’s administration for months. In the lead-up to the announcement, both governments marshaled studies and statistics to support the dual—and contradictory—thesis that the drug war in the United States and Mexico has reached a crisis point and that current efforts on both sides of the border have been very successful.

From what’s known of it, the package—officially dubbed the “MĂ©rida Initiative” but more commonly referred to as “Plan Mexico”—contains direct donations of military and intelligence equipment, and training programs for Mexican law enforcement officials. A White House fact sheet lists surveillance equipment, helicopters and aircraft, scanners for border revisions, communications systems, and training programs for “strengthening the institutions of justice.” An additional $50 million dollars is earmarked for Central American countries to support their fight against “gangs, drugs, and arms.”

The Washington Post, which obtained a copy of the “Overall Justification Document,” reported that more than a third of the package will be spent on aerial surveillance and facilitating the rapid deployment of troops.

But what has legislators and civil society worried on both sides of the border is not the money involved or the equipment to be sent. It’s the reach of Plan Mexico in recasting the binational relationship, to create what the Bush administration calls “a new paradigm for security cooperation.”

The Politics of Counternarcotics

Characteristic of the “war on drugs” model, Plan Mexico takes a serious transnational problem and casts it in such a way as to promote the specific interests of the US and Mexican right-wing governments.

Following his narrow and questionable electoral triumph, President CalderĂłn has made the war on drugs a cornerstone of his government. After taking office CalderĂłn rapidly built an image of strength in arms. He dispatched over 24,000 army troops to Mexican cities and villages, dressed himself and his children in army uniforms for public appearances, and created an elite corps of special forces under his direct supervision.

The message of a weak presidency bolstered by a strong alliance with the military has not been lost on Mexican citizens. Many have criticized the repressive undertones, increasing human rights violations, constitutional questions, and threats to civil democratic institutions.

For the Bush administration, Plan Mexico has a dangerously misguided political thrust as well. Mexico is one of only two far-right governments among the major countries in the hemisphere. The other, Colombia, has received billions of dollars of US military aid, also originally as part of a war on drugs that soon broadened into an overall military alliance.

Washington officials have been lavish in their praise of the CalderĂłn government and stated explicitly that the National Action Party’s government permits an “historic” level of cooperation in security matters. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Tom Shannon spoke openly about the newfound commonality of interests between two nations with a history of conflict: “The CalderĂłn government has acted with alacrity, with intelligence and with boldness in its fight against organized crime and drug trafficking, and we want to be part of that.”

But Bush administration interests go well beyond aiding the Calderón government in its domestic drug battles. Stephen Johnson, deputy assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs in the Defense Department, recently made the connection between Plan Mexico and Washington’s bid to recover its influence in a slipping geopolitical context.

“While a groundswell seems to exist for greater engagement with the United States, there are challenge states such as Venezuela, Cuba, and to some extent Bolivia and Ecuador. For now, Venezuela and Cuba are clearly hostile to the United States, western-style democracy, markets, and are actively trying to counter our influence. Our challenge is not to confront them directly, but instead do a better job working with our democratic allies and friendly neighbors.”

In this context, Johnson—a former Heritage Foundation analyst—cites Plan Mexico as an excellent example of the direction to move in, stating, “With some 2,000 execution-style murders this year on the part of drug mafias, Mexico is under siege. Yet, this is an historic opportunity for the United States to cement closer ties with its closest Latin American neighbor and encourage a sea-change in law enforcement.”

The concept of a joint security strategy for North America goes back at least as far as the creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) in March of 2005. Since that time, the Bush administration has attempted to push its Northern American trade partners into a common front that would assume shared responsibility for protecting the United States from terrorist threats and bolstering US global hegemony in the region.

The Bush administration and the right-wing think tanks that have developed the strategy explicitly formulate hemispheric security policy in these terms. The American Enterprise Institute’s Thomas Donnelly calls the Western Hemisphere “America’s third border” and argues that “American hegemony in the hemisphere is crucial to U.S. national security.”

Plan Mexico twists the plot by presenting Bush administration efforts to create a North American security strategy in the guise of a war on drugs. It builds on SPP security negotiations that included expanding the presence of US drug enforcement and customs agents within Mexico, requiring legislation to commit Mexico to fight “international terrorism,” and curtailment of civil liberties similar to those found in the US PATRIOT Act that would legalize increased spying. Although not formally announced as elements of SPP agreements, the Mexican government has complied with all these requests.

Blanket Security

The MĂ©rida Initiative Joint Statement reads, “Our shared goal is to maximize the effectiveness of our efforts to fight criminal organizations—so as to disrupt drug-trafficking (including precursor chemicals); weapons trafficking, illicit financial activities and currency smuggling, and human trafficking.”

According to the terms of the security aid package, there is virtually no difference between an international terrorist, a migrant farm-worker, a political protestor, and a drug trafficker. The most unexpected and pernicious feature of Plan Mexico is that it targets all these groups indiscriminately. Lumping together all “transnational threats” and stripping them of any social or historical context creates a broad definition of security in the region and justifies a blanket regional security strategy.

In this way, Plan Mexico goes beyond Plan Colombia, which at least began with close congressional oversight to assure that military aid focused on drug trafficking. Plan Mexico skips the focused stage and leaps right into a wastebasket definition of security so broad that it could encompass an unlimited range of problems and actors.

In her testimony before Mexican Senate committees, Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa cited four target areas of Plan Mexico: counter-narcotics, counter-terrorism and border security, public security and administration of justice, and institutional strengthening and law enforcement. The inclusion of anti-terrorist activities “to detect terrorists who might try to attack our neighbor” drew fire from legislators as proof that the US seeks to impose its own security agenda.

Espinosa’s admission that the plan contained a program to digitalize information on migration and apply detection and control measures on the southern border also caused controversy. Mexico has a history of offering refuge to Central Americans and accepting them into its society. That has been changing as the US government has pressured Mexico to intercept Central American migrants before they make it to the northern border.

Plan Mexico advances that process and increases Mexican participation in stopping its own migrants at the northern border too. For Mexican workers thrown out of a job by the US-Mexico trade agreement, being snagged as criminals by their own government at the border is a cruel irony.

Reactions North and South

Both governments have sought to avoid the moniker “Plan Mexico,” which despite their efforts tends to be the media’s favorite in the messaging battle. The name “Plan Mexico” invites comparison to the failed Plan Colombia, which has entrenched violence and corruption in that South American country while failing to reduce drug flows. The “MĂ©rida Initiative” implies that it is an agreement put together by the two nations exclusively to address the drug offensive—MĂ©rida is the name of the Caribbean state capital where Bush and CalderĂłn met last spring.

Despite their efforts, the announcement has been a PR flop. President Bush’s unilateral announcement of the package annoyed Mexican legislators, and the plan lost credibility on its claim to be a binational program.

It also didn’t help that it was tacked onto the Iraq supplementary funding request. Any linkage between Plan Mexico and the reviled US security doctrine as applied in Iraq increases suspicions among Mexican politicians and public. In any case, it appears the Mexican legislature has little say in the matter. Although there was some confusion as to whether the Mexican government would put up funds for the plan, the CalderĂłn administration denied any specific funding commitment. Therefore the aid plan is not subject to congressional review in Mexico.

In the US Congress, meanwhile, it seems lately you can sell anything to the democratic leadership if it has a “security” label on it. House leader Nancy Pelosi was quoted as admitting to not knowing the content of the new plan and in the same breath implying she would support it since national security “is our highest priority.”

Although US troop presence in Mexico has been ruled out, Mexican civil society has begun to react to what they see as forms of interference included in the plan. Members of the judicial system, including judges from the Supreme Court and lower courts, have publicly stated objections to US funds for the court system. Foreign participation in military training is even more questionable and its expansion under Plan Mexico has raised concerns on both sides of the border. The School of the Americas military training program in Fort Benning barely survived a recent vote in the US Congress and Mexican and US citizens have expressed human rights concerns surrounding US training methods.

The role of private contractors in implementing the package remains unclear and a source of dismay. Security analyst Sam Logan says Blackwater will be likely be the major beneficiary, despite its tarnished reputation following its shooting of Iraqi civilians. Corruption in contracts related to both training and equipment purchase seems a certainty given recent experience in Iraq.

But by far the biggest complaint in both congresses is the lack of information. The Mexican Senate immediately demanded that Foreign Minister Espinosa appear to explain the security package negotiated with the United States. In the United States, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) protested the secrecy and stated that without details, it was impossible to evaluate the plan.

The Need for a Different Plan

Faced with a real problem—the strength of drug cartels in Mexico and the United States—Plan Mexico proposes solutions that replicate the logic of force and patriarchal control that the drug cartels rely on. Then it applies these solutions not only to a bloody frontal battle with drug traffickers, but to a multitude of complex security threats with roots deep in Mexican society.

The “commitment to a regional security strategy,” which uses counter-narcotics as a starting point and moves on from there, also entails a radical break with Mexico‚s traditional neutrality in foreign policy. The sheer scope of the package reflects the Bush administration’s military/police focus in international security issues, just when those strategies have hit a low point in popularity within the United States.

While heralded as binational cooperation, Plan Mexico seeds grave divisions within Mexico and in the long-term between the two nations.

It also drives an ideological stake into the heart of Latin America. By scooping Mexico up into a “common regional security strategy” the Bush administration creates technological, military, financial and political dependencies that seal the already overwhelming economic dependency Mexico has on the United States and isolates it from the rest of the hemisphere.

Unless checks and balances appear that have so far not been revealed, Plan Mexico could contribute to the creation of a police state in Mexico.

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Laura Carlsen is a program director of the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy.

This story first appeared Oct. 30 on Foreign Policy in Focus
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4684

RESOURCES

The Merida Initiative
US State Department fact-sheet, Oct. 22, 2007
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/oct/93800.htm

Thomas A. Shannon, Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs
Testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Nov. 15, 2007
http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/rm/07/q4/95278.htm

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

See also:

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

From our weblog:

White House prepares “Plan Mexico” drug war package
/node/4530
WW4 REPORT. Oct. 6, 2007

SOA survives House vote
/node/4123
WW4 REPORT. June 25, 2007

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

Continue ReadingPLAN MEXICO