VENEZUELA’S CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM:

A Threat to What Was Won Through Struggle

from El Libertario, Caracas

This is the editorial from the November edition of the Venezuelan anarchist journal El Libertario, analyzing the controversy over the pending constitutional reform, from a position harshly critical of both the Hugo ChĂĄvez government and the conservative opposition. In El Libertario’s view, the conflict is between rival sectors of Venezuela’s elite for control of the country’s lucrative energy resources—with the Chavista sector now making a grab for total power. This translation provided by El Libertatio was slightly edited by WW4 REPORT.

Once again we must consider the dilemma of whether to participate or not in the electoral contest, this time with the difference that it is not a case of choosing a candidate but rather constitutional norms. This situation requires careful reflection. We have a ruling party that accepts en masse the reforms proposed by the Boss and increased embarrassingly in a premeditated manoeuvre by a servile National Assembly. The absurdities of the original constitutional reforms [of 1999] were so many that it set the scene for the comical debate which has resulted in a plastering of equally aberrant additions. There is no serious debate of content and reasons, only discourses that are submissive to the tyrant, without any other sustaining logic than the desire to keep him in power. On the other hand, the institutional opposition stumbles in the darkness, not knowing how to confront it, relying on discourses and spokesmen from the past. They content themselves with showing through the media a small part of the absurdities that the Constitutional Reform contains—precisely those parts that threaten their own narrow interests, such as the rule changes of the political game—without any clear position or concrete campaign.

Thus, we suggest that faced with the alternatives of either voting for the rejection of the Constitutional Reform or abstaining, it is better to renounce participation in the Referendum and promote abstention. The timid questions that arise from the grassroots supporters of the Chavez regime clearly demonstrate the general [low] level of analysis and understanding of the proposals, highlighting the infantilization of the discourse promoted equally by the leaders of the militaristic pseudo-left in power and the right-wing and social democrat opposition.

We can partially see the logic behind the rush to change what up until recently has been sold as the “best constitution in the world.” The oil bonanza allows the executive to increase its broad client network in readiness for the coming electoral showdown. In addition to this is the clear opportunism by which, bypassing proper electoral norms, the Government conducts its “Yes” campaign, forcing the support of public sector employees and everyone else who is dependent on public finance. The precariousness and lack of independence of the electoral process is illustrated by the trajectory of the last head of the CNE [National Electoral Council], Jorge RodrĂ­guez, who is now Vice-President.

We believe that with or without voters, the Reform will be passed. However, through abstention it is possible to make it illegitimate, even when it is [technically] legal. A very low number of voters in the coming poll would be a way of debilitating the regime from making any further moves, demonstrating that there is no “revolution” in popular participation, but rather a deepening of presidential personalism. If you believe that this is unimportant because the Government will consolidate its power anyway (which will happen regardless), or because people prefer to be on the winning side even when its victory is deceitful or fraudulent, remember that there is always a space to negate the validity of the leadership due to its illegitimacy. An illegitimate Government, despite maintaining itself in power, dissolves the tacit relationship of obedience that the population bestows upon it, removing, even if partially, the collective acceptance of its activity, and thus the implementation of its mandates have to based increasingly on the authoritarian exercise of power.

A significant abstention would mark the separation of the people, their aspirations and desires from those who hold State power, breaking the voluntary servitude that makes it possible to govern. It would also highlight the failure of the State as an institution that manages collective life… Of course the transition from the current situation to a clear and coherent horizon of social justice and liberty will not be achieved in a short period of time. The avoidance of shortcuts and a focusing on the reconstruction of intransigent and autonomous grassroots social movements is, without doubt, a long road, but it is also the most realist. A first step in this direction would be a complete understanding of what confronts us in this country, a perspective that is both realist and utopian, which will not be found in the ballot boxes this December.

It is also relevant to consider the situation after the ineluctable ratification of the Reform. From January 2008, new powers granted by the National Assembly to the President, based in the approved constitution and through the mechanism of the Ley Habilitante (which gives Chavez the ability to pass laws without recourse to Congress) will be established. It will be necessary to withhold efficiency from the offensive prepared by the ruling party in order to have absolute power…. We underline the fact that Governmental and State actions to imprison public opinion in their own hands have already begun. This process implies a set of measures tending towards silencing dissidence, criminalizing protest, squashing any sort of opposition to the State and leading the country in an authoritarian manner, ready to punish dissenting attitudes…

The State’s economic boom is not exclusively subordinate to the price of a barrel of oil… The plans for social support are financially backed up by the current surplus of funds, but if this ceased to be the case, due to the overwhelming financial liabilities of the state, it would be necessary to employ regressive policies that would negatively affect the population such as devaluations, tax increases, cutbacks in the Misiones program [grassroots development initiative] and other measures… These factors will generate social conflicts that will be suffocated by different repressive means according to each case.

Faced with this panorama, those of us who don’t renounce liberty and social justice must prepare ourselves to confront a general increase of coercion and collective control. This must be done without becoming paranoid; we know that we are not faced with the military government of Myanmar but rather an expression of neo-militarism as an efficient model for maintaining the despotic domination of Venezuelan society, in the service of the global energy market. All of this suggests that we must prepare ourselves for the escalation of repression, legitimized by the constitution that will be approved in December and that will consecrate the architecture of the totalitarian State. Moving beyond the conservative and reactionary elements of the media-driven opposition, the social struggle must confront the governmental Leviathan by developing new, creative and unexpected forms of organization and resistance.

—-

This article first appeared in the November issue of El Libertario, Caracas
http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario

RESOURCES

Text of the Ley Habilitante
Venezuelan Ministry of Popular Power
http://www.mintra.gov.ve/legal/leyesordinarias/leyhabilitante.html

Misiones Bolivarianas
Venezuelan Ministry of Popular Power
http://www.misionesbolivarianas.gob.ve/

See also:

FREE SPEECH IN VENEZUELA
The case of RCTV and the fictional democratization of communication
from El Libertario, Caracas
WW4 REPORT, July 2007
/node/4155

From our weblog:

Venezuela destabilization document emerges: real?
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2007
/node/4726

——————-

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

Continue ReadingVENEZUELA’S CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM: 

VENEZUELA’S CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM:

What’s at Stake

by Sujatha Fernandes, ZNet

On Sunday Dec. 2, Venezuelans will return to the voting booths to ratify or reject two slates of constitutional reforms, 33 of which have been proposed by President Hugo Chávez and 36 additional reforms made by the National Assembly. Included in the proposed reforms to Venezuela’s 1999 constitution are an increase in the presidential term from six to seven years and a removal of the two-term limit, a shortening of the work week to 36 hours, the suppression of the right to information during national emergencies, the elimination of the autonomy of the central bank, increased funding for communal councils, the creation of new forms of collective property, the requirement of gender parity in positions of public office, and the recognition of Afro-Venezuelan groups, in addition to indigenous groups included in the previous reforms.

This mixed bag of proposed reforms has provoked polarized reactions across the country, and from international observers. The familiar cries of “dictadura” (dictatorship) coming from the opposition camp are no surprise, but the student protests coming out of the main public and private universities of Caracas, and the renegade voices within ChĂĄvez’s own administration have caused some confusion over where the fault lines lie. Some social movements supporting ChĂĄvez have been concerned that retrogressive proposals are mixed together with progressive reforms, making it difficult to campaign and vote on the issues as a bloc. What is at stake in Venezuela’s upcoming reform referendum? Does the outcry over the reforms signal yet again the frustrations of a thwarted opposition in its ongoing tussles with the government, or is there something more at play?

It is important to understand the anatomy of the various social forces who have thrown their hat into the ring. The long-term anti-Chavista camp, opposed to the proposed reforms, is divided over what strategy to take to the reform referendum. Some opposition parties, including Primero Justicia, Un Nuevo Tiempo, and the Christian Democratic COPEI have begun a campaign to encourage people to vote “No” to the reforms. By contrast, the National Resistance Command, which includes opposition parties such as AcciĂłn DemocrĂĄtica (AD), Alianza Bravo Pueblo and Bandera Roja called for a boycotting of the referendum and have mobilized people in the streets for their cause, although the AD retracted this position and joined the “No” campaign just a few days later. Like in earlier moments, the opposition’s indecisiveness and its inability to come to a united decision about how to confront ChĂĄvez has weakened its political impact.

In a surprising move, ChĂĄvez’s former Defense Minister Raul Isais Baduel who had played an important role in restoring ChĂĄvez to power during the 2002 coup, also came out against the constitutional reforms and urged people to vote “No” in the upcoming referendum. The former army commander described the changes as a “coup d’Ă©tat” that would concentrate further power in the hands of the president, saying that there was no need to overhaul the 1999 constitution. Some were concerned that the defection of a senior military figure could have an impact on the armed forces, but so far there is no indication that this should be the case. It also seems that Baduel’s opposition stems from his concerns over the proposed changes to Article 328, which would require changes to the structure of the Armed Forces.

Resistance to the reforms has also come from opposition-identified student protesters from the large public Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), as well as private institutions such as the Andrés Bello Catholic University and the Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB). During October and early November, students marched four times to the National Assembly, the National Electoral Council (CNE), and the Supreme Court to demand that the referendum be stopped. The students attacked security forces with rocks and bottles, breaking down security barriers, and starting fires, and the forces responded with tear gas and water cannons, producing violent clashes in the streets that received national and international coverage. Pro-Chåvez students organized counter-rallies to protest in support of the reforms. The pro- and anti-Chåvez student activists are divided along class lines, with aspiring upwardly mobile or privileged elite students forming the core of the large demonstrations that are opposing the reforms.

The violence between anti-ChĂĄvez and pro-ChĂĄvez students reached a climax on Nov. 7, when a group of opposition students returning to the UCV from a rally surrounded the School of Social Work, a traditionally left-wing division, and held a siege of the building where 123 pro-ChĂĄvez students and staff had been making posters and planning their activities for the “Yes” campaign. In the opposition-controlled media, the events were falsely reported as a case of masked gunmen who opened fire on peaceful opposition student protesters.

On the day that the National Assembly approved the set of proposed reforms to go before a public referendum, JosĂ© Manuel GonzĂĄlez, the president of FedecĂĄmaras, the Venezuelan business association, announced that “Venezuelan democracy was buried today.” Opposition parties and media, the business federation, Gen. Baduel, and opposition-identified students all frame their disapproval of the reforms as a concern that democracy is being eroded. This framing is consistent with the charges that the opposition has leveled at the ChĂĄvez government from the start, and is in keeping with their limited notion of democracy as procedural democracy.

Procedural democracy, derived from Western experiences of representative government, is based on the rule of law, free and fair elections, and a separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and the judicial branches of government. At the time of the drawing up of the 1999 constitution, opposition critics complained that the executive branch was being expanded at the expense of other branches. The opposition expressed concerns that ChĂĄvez threatened judicial autonomy by intervening in the court system through disbarring judges and increasing the size of the Supreme Court, and that he had unduly increased the power of the military. They continue to make the same charges against the current proposed reforms to expand the presidential term by a year and remove limits on holding office, saying that this concentrates power in the executive.

Yet this focus on procedural democracy functions as a means of protecting hierarchies of existing power. The abstract concepts of the rule of law, separation of powers, and procedure inherent in liberal discourse assume the participation of rational, autonomous individuals who share equality under the law, without taking into account the tremendous inequalities in Venezuelan society. For marginal sectors, the liberal logic of procedural democracy can not be easily reconciled with histories of discrimination in a class and racially stratified landscape. Some have argued that the greater power being given to the executive may indeed be necessary in order to bring about the redistribution of social wealth and property that could alter the entrenched class structure.

At the same time, some in the Chavista camp are also uneasy about the reforms, albeit for different reasons. In October, community media activists from the National Association of Free and Alternative Media (ANMCLA) had expressed concern over the proposed changes to Article 337, which would remove the right to information of citizens during states of emergency. The move was justified by the ChĂĄvez government as a response to the manipulation by the media that took place during the 2002 coup. But activists from ANMCLA see the proposed restrictions on the right to information during times of emergency as dangerous recourse to a tool that has been used by powerful sectors throughout Latin American history to detain, persecute, and silence the population. The revolution should not be defended through censorship, argue ANMCLA, but rather through millions of voices on the air, as demonstrated during the 2002 coup.

The Agency of Alternative News (ANA), the ANMCLA agency that provides an alternative news source to the government-controlled Bolivarian Agency of News (ABN), also circulated a piece written by UCV Sociologist Javier Biardeau that questioned the route of constitutional reform as a means to effect changes in Venezuelan society. Referring to reforms in the legal arena as a “minefield,” Biardeau argues that constitutional reforms are a limited means to transform the state in a transition towards socialism. He concurs with journalist and blogger JosĂ© Roberto Duque, who acknowledges that the constitutional reform is an attempt to accelerate and deepen the revolutionary process, but that for the moment it has only succeeded in sparking some dramatic exchanges without really touching any powerful interests.

The path of constitutional reform by plebiscite that has been taken by the ChĂĄvez government has also closed off other, more inclusive forums for the discussion of changes to the constitution. Rather than having a small group of representatives decide on the proposed reforms and then put them to the people in a referendum, Biardeau argues that it would have been preferable to convoke another Constituent Assembly to allow for a public debate and the broad participation of a range of social movements and popular groups. Through the proposed reforms, argues Biardeau, “21st century socialism” is being decreed from above rather than democratically debated and given substance from below.

As can be seen from the criticisms coming from social movements and commentators supportive of the Chávez government, it is possible and necessary to criticize the state’s attempts to monopolize power, not in the name of a procedural democracy, as the free-market proponents of the opposition would have it, but rather in the name of a substantive democracy that puts decision-making power in the hands of people organized within communal councils, assemblies, and popular organizations. On this account, “participation” is not limited to campaigning and mobilizing people to vote in the recall referendum on articles that have already been decided by a small group of representatives. It aspires to a local level of decision-making that would have people themselves determine the content of their laws and institutions.

—-

This story first appeared Nov. 11 on ZNet, and was also run by Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1000/68/

From our weblog:

Venezuela destabilization document emerges: real?
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2007
/node/4726

——————-

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

Continue ReadingVENEZUELA’S CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM: 

AGAINST U.S. AGGRESSION; AGAINST THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

Iranian Left-Opposition Activist Azar Majedi Says No to Both

by Riposte Laique

Azar Majedi is founder of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iran, and a veteran of a generation of struggle against dictatorial regimes—first against the Shah, and then against the Islamic Republic. Forced to flee the country in 1982, Majedi has continued her activities in exile in Europe. She now produces programs in Farsi and English on New Channel TV, an independent satellite station broadcasting into Iran, which can also be seen on the Internet. Her weekly program “No to Political Islam” is a critical voice for secularism and women’s rights. She also publishes the journal Reflections, and is a leading member of the Worker-communist Party of Iran. She lives in England with her three children. This interview first ran in the French progressive journal Riposte Laique.

The interview was published just as Britain’s Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB) has drawn up a “code of conduct” on “civic responsibility” and tolerance for Muslims in the UK. Dissidents in the Muslim community protest that MINAB—which emerged from a Home Office taskforce on extremism in the wake of the 2005 London Underground attacks—is a male-dominated body which has failed to sufficiently emphasize women’s rights and dignity. Taking a stronger stance, avowedly secular critics such as Majedi and Riposte Laique view talk of “multiculturalism” and “tolerance” as too often a cloak for oppression and protecting privilege. At the same time, they oppose the culture of Islamophobia as paradoxically fueling Islamist reaction. They are especially critical of elements in the British left—including the Socialist Workers Party (UK), a leading force in the Stop the War Coalition—for failing to make this critical distinction.

Would you say that the British have become aware of the danger of multiculturalists’ policies since the London terrorist attacks?

Azar Majedi: It is difficult to judge the British public opinion, as it is usually the media that makes and shapes the public opinion. As far as the British political arena is concerned, I must say no, it has not changed. The British government continues the policy of appeasement of the so-called “Moslem leaders,” whom to my opinion, are self appointed. Consulting with these religious men, in order to “win the hearts of Muslim community,” is British government’s key policy.

Unfortunately, an atmosphere of mistrust has developed between the so-called Muslim community and the general public. The Muslim community feels isolated and discriminated against. It has been stigmatized. This is the negative effect of the present tension In the eyes of some, whoever considers themselves Muslim, has their origin in the region associated with Islam, or looks “Muslim” is considered a terrorist suspect. This attitude deepens the tension and friction in the society and deepens the existing separation.

On the left, perhaps with a good intention—to fight racism and stigmatization of Muslim community, the general mood is to support the Islamist movement, the veil, gender apartheid, and all the Islamic values which are deeply reactionary, discriminative and misogynist. This is very wrong. This is in effect racism—to say that gender apartheid and discrimination is OK for the “Muslim.” This is in fact a double standard.

We should first and foremost distinguish between “ordinary Muslims” and the Islamist movement. Second, we should feel free to criticize Islam just as we feel free to criticize any other religion, ideology or set of beliefs. However, part of the left movement does not distinguish between these categories and accepts the self-appointed Muslim leaders’ proclamations. The Islamist movement is not the representative of Muslim, is not the representatives of Palestinians’ or Iraqi people’s grief. This should be stressed.

I believe we need a healthy debate. We need to criticize Islam and the Islamist movement and at the same time fight racism, stigmatization and defend individual rights. Since the tragic events of September 11, many civil liberties have been eroded in the society, in the name of security. We should try and reverse this tide.

Has the Trotskyite SWP distanced itself from the Islamic fundamentalists or does it carry on openly in public with them as it did at the 2005 Social European Forum in London?

Azar Majedi: I must admit that I do not follow this party’s actions closely. As far as I know SWP has not changed its policy towards the Islamists. I believe they still fully support this reactionary and terrorist movement.

What’s your opinion about [London Mayor] Ken Livingstone’s Big Mosque project?

Azar Majedi: I am totally against it. We don’t need more mosques. There are already too many of them. What we need is better and more schools for the children and youth in the Muslim community, a better and better-funded education for them, more leisure centers and sports facilities. Much more funds have to be poured into these communities to improve the social environment. These mosques are the place for brainwashing of the children and the youth. Usually the underprivileged and marginalized youth are drawn into these mosques and are being fed by hatred and reactionary and misogynist values. It is proven that some of these mosques, for example the Finsbury, have been used to [indoctrinate] terrorists. We should also be aware that Islamist governments, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, are behind such monumental projects. This is quite telling about the goals for building such monuments.

You are hostile to Iran’s ayatollahs. What’s your stand concerning the war threats relayed by [French Foreign Minister Bernard] Kouchner?

Azar Majedi: Yes, I am a staunch enemy of the Islamic Regime in Iran. This is a brutal regime that has executed more than hundred thousand people. It is a brutal dictatorship that oppresses the people and it is misogynist to its bones. I have been fighting this regime from the day it came to power.

Having said that, I must add that I am totally against the war. Military attack will be a catastrophe. It is the people in Iran and the region who will suffer as a result of this war. This, to my opinion, is a war of terrorists. There are two poles of terrorism, state terrorism and Islamic terrorism, which are inflaming this war. Such a war has no positive result for humanity, for peace, or for the people of Iran and the region.

This war will strengthen the Islamic regime, just as the Iraq war strengthened the Islamists and Islamic regime of Iran, just as the war in Lebanon strengthened Hezbollah and the Islamic movement. As soon as the threat of war becomes imminent, the Islamic regime will make more restrictions for the people. It would brutally crush any sign of discontentment. It will execute people even more mercilessly.

The war will also be an environmental catastrophe. Attacking the nuclear sites will mean a nuclear hell in the region. I am totally against the war. We should try and stop this war. It will create a chaotic situation, a black scenario, which will only be a breeding place for terrorism. Look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon—the future for Iran will be if not more disastrous, just as catastrophic.

We must take the volatile political situation in Iran into consideration. People in Iran are resisting this regime. There is a great protest movement in Iran—workers’, women’s rights and youth movements against Islamic restriction and for cultural freedom. There is a significant secular movement in Iran. The war will have devastating effects on these popular and progressive movements. I believe our slogan should be “No to the war and no to the Islamic regime!” International left and progressive movements must support these movements in Iran

We should also expose America’s war-mongering propaganda. I should add that dismantling the Islamic regime’s nuclear power is a pure misrepresentation of the war’s aim, just like the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a pure lie. The American government has been defeated in Iraq. To win back its position as the bully of the world it needs another war. The Islamic regime was the actual winner in Iraq. By attacking Iran, the US will show the world it still has the muscles to fight this regime, to attack any country, or do whatever it so pleases to, for that matter.

How did you react when you heard about the Vosges case? [Concerning Yvette “Fanny” Truchelut, hostel owner in Vosges who was fined 8,000 euros for demanding that two female Muslim boarders remove their headscarves in the public rooms of the establishment.] Do you think that forbidding the headscarf altogether is the best solution to the headscarf offensive throughout Europe?

Azar Majedi: This is a complex issue. I must first state that I am against the veil. I believe that the veil is the tool and symbol of women’s oppression and enslavement. Moreover, nowadays the veil has become the banner of the Islamist movement. Many women both in the west and in the Middle East and North Africa wear the veil as a political gesture. American aggression, the wars in Iraq and Lebanon and America’s full-fledged support of Israel vis-a-vis the Palestinians have motivated many young women to wear the veil as a sign of protest against the US and the West’s policies.

I have been fighting against the veil and have tried to expose its nature. Moreover, I am for banning the veil for underage girls. I think no child should be forced to wear the veil. A child has no religion. It is the parent’s religion that is forced upon them. The veil restricts greatly the physical and mental development of a child, and must be banned. I am also in favor of banning the burqa in all circumstances.

However I do not believe that other forms of the veil should be banned for adult women, except in public institutions and schools, as the French law has prescribed. I believe more than would be restricting individual rights of citizens to freedom of clothing and religion.

I believe a complete ban on the veil will have more negative effects than positive ones and will create a negative backlash which will damage our goals for a free and secular society, and for the freedom and equality of women. Instead of a total ban on the veil, we should campaign strongly against the veil, the Islamic movement and American aggression. We should expose both poles of terrorism to open up the eyes and minds of those women who have “freely” chosen the veil as political manifestation. The Islamic movement is trying to portray itself as the liberator of the people in the Middle East, the Palestinians, and the Iraqis. This is a big lie. We have to expose that. We need to fight against the Islamists and their banner the veil in the ideological and political sphere as well.

——

RESOURCES

Azar Majedi
http://www.azarmajedi.com/

Organization for Women’s Liberation in Iran (OWLI)
http://azadizan.com/

New Channel TV
http://www.newchannel.tv/

Worker-communist Party of Iran
http://www.wpiran.org/

Riposte Laique
http://www.ripostelaique.com

REFERENCES

France renews threats against Iran
Press TV, Iran, Nov. 18, 2007
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=31590&sectionid=351020104

The battle over mosque reform
BBC, Nov 29, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7118503.stm

Watchdog for UK mosques launches
BBC, June 27, 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5120338.stm

See also:

IRAN: STATE STILL STONES WOMEN
by Assieh Amini, Stop Stoning Forever Campaign
WW4 REPORT, August 2007
/node/4281

From our weblog:

Free women activists in Iran
WW4 REPORT, Nov. 20, 2007
/node/4686

UK Class War bashes “leftist” Hezbollah cheerleaders
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 2, 2006
/node/2407

——————-

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

Continue ReadingAGAINST U.S. AGGRESSION; AGAINST THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC 

VOICE OF THE TUAREG RESISTANCE

Issouf ag-Maha on Music, Culture and the Guerilla Struggle in Niger

by Bill Weinberg

Issouf ag-Maha is a political leader of the Tuareg people of Niger, and a social activist involved in numerous humanitarian efforts in Niger and elsewhere in West Africa. Born into the traditional nomadic way of life, he was a goat and camel herder and stockbreeder before going on to become a trained agronomist specializing in development and environmental issues. He participated in the armed Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s, and after the 1995 peace accords he was elected mayor of the town of Tchirozerine.

Ag-Maha now serves as a spokesman for the Nigerien Justice Movement (Mouvement des Nigeriens pour la Justice-MNJ), a new rebel organization that took up arms earlier this year, charging the Niger government with failing to live up to the accords, especially provisions on regional autonomy and control of natural resources. In recent weeks, army attacks have forced the entire population of villages in northern Niger to flee across the desert to Algerian territory, where ag-Maha is now helping to organize an emergency relief effort. MNJ representatives also report Niger government forces are systematically attacking the camel herds which sustain the nomadic Tuareg tribes—with army troops killing up to 100 camels in one day in November.

On Nov. 13, Issouf ag-Maha, spoke with Bill Weinberg over the airwaves of WBAI Radio in New York City. He discussed the threats to Tuareg way of life from climate change, uranium mining and militarism; the role of music and culture in the Tuareg struggle, and the roots of the new guerilla movement. Geoffroy de Laforcade of Wesleyan University, who helped organize ag-Maha’s trip to the United States, translated from the French.

Bill Weinberg: Issouf, how long are you in the United States for? What brings you to New York City?

Issouf ag-Maha: I am in the United States on a three-week tour, visiting universities to discuss the current situation of the Tuareg people and the political crisis in Niger.

BW: Which has been heating up quite dramatically in recent weeks…

IM: It’s true, it is getting worse by the day. It something we find very worrisome, especially since we’ve always hoped that peace could prevail, that a reasonable solution could be found. And we’re still working as well as we can towards that goal.

BW: Tell us something about your life, and how you came to be a representative of your people’s struggle.

IM: Well, I was born in the nomadic camps. I attended school by chance, and was able to work my way all the way up through higher education. I’ve had personal, professional and social activities that have given me some authority in Niger and have led me to the situation where I’m qualified to be a spokesperson for my people.

I’ve had a very unique life. I’m very familiar with the nomadic lifestyle and the traditions of the Tuareg, but also of the unemployed young people who have to migrate to the shanty-towns. I talk about it in a memoir that I wrote that was published recently in France, called Touareg du XXIĂšme siĂšcle [Tuareg of the 21st Century], which we’re working on getting translated in English, so we can bring that testimony to the people here in the United States. The book tells my life story as a means to understand some of the fundamental issues that have faced the Tuareg, such as devastating droughts, ongoing political difficulties, and of course the Tuareg rebellion that broke out in Niger and the surrounding regions between 1991 and 1995 and culminated in peace accords. I’ve used all of that experience, personal and political, to try to allow young generations and the future leaders of the Tuareg people to understand their history as well.

BW: During that period, the world was very closely watching what was happening in Bosnia and Rwanda and other terrible conflicts around the world, but what was happening to the Tuareg was largely invisible. I only became aware of it after the fact, when since the peace accords there has been a tremendous renaissance of Tuareg language, music and culture, and some of the wonderful music began to reach me here at WBAI.

IM: You’re right, music plays an important role in the political and social struggle of the Tuareg. Culture has a lot importance in Tuareg society traditionally. We have a traditional musical instrument called the imzad, which actually embodies our culture and our code of ethics, since historically the Tuareg don’t have a written law. But we have a code we call the hasheq, a customary law that is actually enshrined in the instrument, and we look to ceremonies in which the instrument is played for guidance.

BW: A stringed instrument?

IM: It is a one-stringed violin. It is a very simple instrument, but one that has a lot of symbolism and depth in our culture. And the modern music which is very new and interesting and important is still rooted in the traditional role of culture and music in our society, where everything started.

People should know that we’re a nomadic people with a long history. We occupy the largest desert in the world, the Sahara. We’re a pastoralist people, we practice extensive herding and stock-breeding. And the most important aspect of our society is that the land is absolutely communally owned. It belongs to no-one, and we don’t recognize the modern concept of property.

The most important part of the desert, the sacred place, for these pastoralist peoples is the well. Our saying is “Water is life.”

The need to belong to a community and have strong traditions is really necessary. This feeling of solidarity is not just an ideal, its a matter of survival in a very hostile and difficult environment. And that’s why the imzad is so important. Because when we play it, it invokes solidarity and brings people together and gives them a feeling of belonging to something durable that can survive.

Because of the phenomenon of global warming, the Tuareg and West Africa in general have suffered tremendous droughts, catastrophic droughts that have been disastrous for our very existence. As a result of that, a lot of Tuareg youth—massive numbers—have been forced to migrate into urban shanty-towns as unemployed. A whole generation of people who were deprived of their traditional means of subsistence found themselves uprooted and cut off from their traditional lifestyle. Other Tuareg who stayed behind had to make a conversion to some level of semi-nomadism or sedentary farming.

BW: This process began when…?

IM: It began around three decades ago.

BW: What exactly was that traditional way of life, and to what extent does it continue to exist today in spite of everything?

IM: Well, the first thing is nomadism. The Tuareg people are never idle. They never stop moving around in search of rain, in search of water, or in search of pasture. And there’s no sense of property; all the land is shared, it’s wide open and everyone can wander. In order to live that lifestyle, people need to have herds. We have herds of camels, goats, sheep, cows. So when the herds die massively because of climatic conditions and disasters, the means of subsistence fades. People are forced into displacement, and it creates a culture shock.

Entire generations have found themselves completely lost and without direction. Because the Tuareg have never received a modern education. They weren’t prepared for the demands of an urban economy. So not only did the traditional culture suffer, but there was a need to find a means of survival in the new circumstances.

A lot of young people raised in these circumstances felt quite rebellious and dissatisfied with their situation, and they left. Waves of them went to other countries in the region, to seek work abroad. Through exile and migration, they were exposed to other lifestyles and other idioms. This generation actually gave themselves a colloquial name, which is ishoumar, from the French term for the unemployed, chĂŽmeur.

So they created a new trend in music that was called ishoumar music, which is much more militant, much more of a social commentary, than the traditional music that we were used to hearing in the camps. This music is a call for resistance. It is a call for raising consciousness among the Tuareg people. It seeks to explain the tradition of the Tuareg people today, their dispersal, their vicitmization by phenomenon such as the arbitrary drawing of boundaries by colonial powers.

BW: Is this when the electric guitar entered Tuareg music? When did this genre begin to emerge?

IM: These young people were the children of the displaced migrants from the 1970s who suffered from the droughts. In the 1980s, they grew up in a situation of distress and despair, with an acute sense of awareness that something was seriously wrong with the society at large. And in exile, they met with young people from other cultures and movements, and developed a sort of criticism from the outside. And this developed into a brand new style of music, a brand new idiom, and a brand new outlook on the very critical situation that the Tuareg in both Mali and Niger are undergoing.

BW: Where did this exile experience take place, for the most part?

IM: The two main countries where young Tuareg went were Algeria and Libya. And the young people who came from Mali and Niger met up with other young people from elsewhere in Africa, and it was a kind of coming-together of a whole generation that was becoming aware that it had become fractured by forces of history, such as the drawing of boundaries and colonization.

One of the strengths of the Tuareg movement is the very strong sense of belonging to a culture that transcends state borders, that has a coherence that’s much more ancient and meaningful than the abstract and artificial administrative boundaries and the empty shells of nation states that have been created over the years.

BW: Tuareg country is largely divided between Niger and Mali, and in the early ’90s Tuareg guerilla resistance emerged in both those countries. Tell us how that went down.

IM: To understand the situation, you have to go all the way back to the 1885 Conference of Berlin and the colonial partition, where European states that were unlikely to take the socio-economic realities on the ground into consideration—because they were completely ignorant of them—divided up this region into various zones of influence. We’re talking about France, England, Germany, Spain, Italy—they all argued, and they partitioned Africa. As a result, the Tuareg people, who had been around for thousands of years, were arbitrarily divided between five main states. You have Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Libya. From being a people with a territory, we became ethnic minorities—roughly one-fifth of the Tuareg people live in each of those countries, and as ethnic minorities, of course, we became discriminated against and oppressed.

It is well-known that at the time of independence after World War II, new countries emerged with names like Niger, Upper Volta, Ivory Coast—all of these countries had flags, national anthems, constitutions, bureaucracies that were all forged by the colonial powers and that remained. And in the new context of independence, the Tuareg people were told “Now, whatever confederation you belong to, whatever your culture is, whatever language you speak, you’re now Nigerien, or Malian—and that’s it. You’re just going to have to live with it, and you don’t have a choice.”

In Africa historically there has been some degree of co-existence between a wide variety of people. When the modern notions developed in Europe of republican democracy appeared, people began competing for pieces of power and resources. So there was more and more ethnic conflict. And we rapidly realized that this talk of democracy can also be a form of dictatorship, if large groups end up dominating and excluding smaller groups from power.

The Tuareg haven’t had an intense consciousness of this because they weren’t directly colonized, or they were weakly colonized. They were completely cut off from the world economy and world politics, because they had a subsistence lifestyle based on ancestral nomadic traditions. So they didn’t have the education, awareness or even the language to understand what was going on at a national level, or even to demand their inclusion in politics.

So with the droughts and displacement and the pain caused by that, people came into contact with the world around them. And this gave them an acute awareness of not only of the causes of the crisis that was affecting them, but a consciousness of their existence as a people and of the need to engage in some kind of cultural resistance. That’s why this youth movement that we call ishoumar has been so critical in structuring our identity in the contemporary world.

Unfortunately, the national states reacted brutally. So many of these young people found that the only way to make themselves heard was to take up arms. And this was the beginning of the conflict, in the early 1990s. In the first half of the 1990s, in those five years, the entire traditional territory of the Tuareg was kind of a no-man’s-land, where there was brutal repression, torture and suffering. We have a very forceful memory of what we had to go just to be able to continue to exist.

But the result of this rebellion was, at the time, quite satisfactory for all parties involved. We obtained a new policy of administrative decentralization, and the promise of at least local elections ion which the Tuareg people could have representatives that they could choose themselves.

So we obtained in principle equal rights, we managed to get the state to recognize its obligation to fairly distribute wealth and resources, and to provide us with education, access to jobs, and some influence in the policies of the entire country.

BW: This was the 1995 peace accord. And what was the name of the organization that had taken up arms?

IM: First there was an organization called the FLAA—the Liberation Front of the Air and Azawad, which over the course of the conflict splintered into several groups and which reunited in a broad organization called the ORA, the Organization of Armed Resistance. And that was the organization that signed the peace accords on the 24th of April, 1995.

BW: What are the Air and Azawad?

IM: These are the names of large territories that span over several national boundaries. The Air is a massif that separates the deserts of the Azawad and the Tenere—vast, barren stretches of desert.

BW: As I understand it, the Tuaregs have traditionally maintained semi-permanent settlements in the massif, and then would bring their herds and caravans into the desert in a seasonal migration.

IM: Exactly. And you must remember that the main economic activity in this region was the trans-Saharan caravan trade which united the peoples of North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. So the Tuareg have a very long experience and an expertise in cross-cultural communication between the peoples of Africa.

BW: Now, at the same time there was a Tuareg guerilla struggle underway in Mali. So what was the relationship between the guerilla organizations in Niger and Mali?

IM: Well, throughout these years the Tuareg people had become very scattered. An entire generation had lost the custom of crossing paths. So each region where Tuareg confederations live has its own specific characteristics. The Tuareg were united in the struggle, they shared a common ground and a common cultural discourse. But in practice, each movement regionally had a different enemy, a different state, a different government, with its own characteristics, its own blindness or administrative flexibility or lack thereof. So we led a struggle that had several centers.

The movement in Mali was very fractured. The organization that was best known was the MPA, the Popular Movement for Azawad. But the Malian government was more inclined to obtain a durable peace with the various Tuareg organizations. Whereas in Niger, we may have been more unified, but we had a more reluctant state.

BW: Yet there was terrible repression in the Adrar des Ifoghas, the massif in Mali which was the Tuareg stronghold.

IM: There was rebellion in the region you are talking about in 1963, early in the independence era, where the government of Modibo Keita, who had the support of the Soviet Union, led a fierce struggle against the Tuareg, a repression that we sometimes call “the genocide.” So there is a long history there, and a lot of bitterness.

In the 1990s, there was a real civil war in Mali, a struggle for land, with other ethnic groups seizing Tuareg lands as property and the government playing divide-and-conquer. This was possible because the Tuareg were traditionally very isolated in Mali.

In Niger, there was more interaction between the Tuareg. Military governments have tried, but it is impossible to completely isolate the Tuareg from the rest of the population in Niger. So our struggle had more national resonance, and it was less of a civil war environment.

BW: The peace deal in Mali was in 1996, one year after the peace deal in Niger. In both cases, the dialogue was brokered by Algeria. But by then, many thousands had been forced to flee. Have most been repatriated at this point?

IM: There were several waves of emigration. First, due to the poverty and droughts and loss of means of subsistence. Then there were huge waves of political flight as a result of the repression and persecution. Thousands of people went into exile. And then when peace returned in 1995, the UN High Commission on Refugees organized the repatriation.

So people came back to Mali and Niger. But they came back to the realization that there was no infrastructure there to greet them, that things hadn’t really changed. There was absolutely no work, no means of subsistence, no way to survive.

BW: I understand there are still Tuareg refugees in Burkina Faso and Mauritania.

IM: Yes, there are still people there who haven’t returned. Because they understand that in order to return, you need capital. You need to come back with the means to re-establish the traditional lifestyle. Concretely, that capital means herds. We are stock-breeders. We need camels. And if they know they don’t have the capital needed to resume the lifestyle, the alternative is to end up impoverished or in urban shanty-towns. We need water, we need medicine, we need access to the land. Those things weren’t guaranteed, and the word gets around.

BW: Which brings us to the current situation. Just in the past year, there’s a been a sense of history repeating itself, and Tuareg leaders both in Niger and in Mali have returned to armed resistance.

IM: About eight months ago, a group of Tuareg in Niger decided to alert the population and the government to the deterioration of the situation and the non-respect of the agreements that had been signed in 1995. The country is currently run by an elected president named Tandja Mamadou who was a colonel in the army and one of the men primarily responsible for the historic Tchintabaraden massacre in May of 1990 that actually started the first war. It was a classic case of a brutal military official becoming all of a sudden a friendly politician in a formal democracy, and achieving international recognition as such.

So Tandja responded to this new uprising eight months age with absolutely brutal and decisive violence. His government has made a decision that once and for all this situation must end, and the Tuareg and opposition must be completely annihilated. He seeks to eliminate Tuareg expression in politics and society entirely. So the situation has been made much worse in a very short time.

He brought back old habits. Anybody identified as a Tuareg is automatically suspected of supporting or being a part of the rebellion. Tuareg community leaders and intellectuals are being singled out and forced into exile as a result of the repression.

BW: So there’s been a new wave of displacement just in the last few months…

IM: Exactly. And these months have also seen a spectacular rise in the popularity of the MNJ, the movement that was created to express the discontent of the Tuareg people at the beginning of this year.

BW: That’s the Justice Movement of the People of Niger.

IM: Yes, and it called that because it is not just a Tuareg movement. It is a movement that has rallied people from across the country. It is a resistance movement of all the peoples of Niger. There are representatives from the majority as well as minority peoples. It has turned into a popular rejection of corruption and arbitrariness

BW: And it has been engaging in low-level harassment of army patrols and so on in the north of the country. What are the MNJ’s demands?

IM: The main demand is a very basic one—fairness and rights. Also, the sharing of wealth, a better understanding of regional needs in Niger. But the most important new phenomenon in this particular conflict is the widespread and arbitrary sale by the national government of huge tracts of land in the desert to foreign uranium companies that are acquiring legal rights to our ancestral lands, without any of the peoples of northern Niger being consulted or even informed.

We fully understand that one of the poorest countries in the world can’t afford to not take advantage of the existence of a significant resource that’s in demand. We’re not saying that uranium shouldn’t be touched. But the very survivial of a whole people is at stake here. What we say, is that the conditions for the exploitation of this resource, the system which is put in place to extract it, how the whole economy of this resource is regulated, the accountability of the firms—all of these things have to be discussed by the population.

And what about the consequences on the environment, which is already in a bad state. We’re dealing with a radioactive resource here. It’s not too much to ask that there be some consultation, that we be involved. We’re being dispossessed arbitrarily of lands and resources for the survival of our way of life, without any kind of democratic deliberation.

BW: I thought one of the things to come out of the 1995 peace accords was precisely provisions for consultation of the Tuareg people on local development and a return of the profits from resources exploited on their lands. Are you saying that the government has failed to live up to this?

IM: Yes, that was the main factor that led the people to rebel—the understanding that none of the accords were being implemented, at a time when many foreign countries were becoming eager to enter Niger. The largest one is China—which has a gigantic appetite for energy and resources, but very little consideration for basic things such as the environment, social conditions, culture. It is this basic disconnect of the foreign companies from local realities that caused the Tuareg to take up arms again.

BW: And I understand the government of Niger is calling the MNJ “bandits” and is refusing to negotiate at all.

IM: Yes, we are called bandits, drug-traffickers, terrorists. They have completely excluded negotiations. They say we are just a selfish movement that wants to take all of the uranium wealth for the Tuareg. But nothing could be further from the truth. Not only is this a rapidly expanding movement all over Niger, but its sole demand, the main purpose of this show of force, is to achieve the right to simply exist, to be equal partners in discussions on the future of the country.

BW: What rationale is the government using to justify failing to comply with the 1995 accords?

IM: They say the peace accords were brokered by France and Algeria, yet neither France nor Algeria gave the government the resources to carry them out. So its the fault of the foreign powers. And they accuse the Tuareg of bad faith and of refusing to apply their own accords.

BW: I understand there were just meetings, once again in Algiers, to try to mediate the conflict which has broken out again both in Niger and Mali. But it was just a meeting attended by Tuareg leaders to try to establish some kind of groundwork for dialogue, and representatives of the governments of Mali and Niger did not attend.

IM: Yes, it was an initiative by Algeria based on previous experience. But the problem is that the Tuareg need to get the attention of the government of Niger. And with the Algerians unable to meet that goal, the steps towards negotiations were really a futile exercise.

The government was perfectly aware of the invitation from Algeria, but they basically stated that their position is never, ever will they negotiate with, or even recognize the existence of this rebellion.

BW: And the position of the government of Mali is the same?

IM: They did not attend the Algiers meeting, but they have established contacts with the rebels in Mali for negotiations.

BW: The new rebel movement in Mali is calling itself the Democratic Alliance for Change. So, once again, what is the relation between the MNJ in Niger and the Democratic Alliance for Change in Mali? Are you formally allied, or just informally support each other?

IM: There’s no formal alliance. There’s mutual recognition and dialogue, but they’re dealing with the Malian government and we’re dealing with the Nigerien government

BW: The United States has been directly drawn into the fighting in Mali recently. A US military supply plane was bringing in supplies for Malian military forces in the north of country in September, and Tuareg guerillas apparently opened fire on it. The US has Green Berets stationed in both Niger and Mali now under the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorist Initiative, allegedly in response to the presence of al-Qaeda in the region. How do you view this situation?

IM: It is a service that the United States has rendered to both governments, in Mali and Niger, to go around claiming and trying to persuade people that al-Qaeda is involved in any way, shape or form in the region. They are certainly not with the Tuareg. But the government has been able to say that they have no choice but to collaborate with American anti-terrorism. When you talk about al-Qaeda, George Bush gets all excited and gets involved personally. So this has been propaganda that has justified government policies, and the Tuareg see it as a gigantic mystification.

BW: What is your message to people in New York City and the United States?

IM: The US government has a lot of leverage it could use—rather than engaging in military and anti-terrorist operations—to pressure the governments to negotiate and dialogue and acknowledge the existence of democratic movements and bring peace in the region.

Another thing I’d like to mention is that some of the young Tuareg have left the country have come to the United States. All of them are trying to make a future for themselves and their people. A lot of them are becoming students and going to school. And the government of Niger is never going to provide aid or scholarships to these people. So maybe something could be done to make people aware of the need to support youth in the diaspora as well.

——

RESOURCES

Mouvement des Nigeriens pour la Justice-MNJ
http://m-n-j.blogspot.com/

Rebellion in the Sahara
Radio Netherlands, Nov. 19, 2007
http://www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/071119-sahara-rebellion

From our weblog:

Ethnic cleansing in Niger
WW4 REPORT, Nov. 30, 2007
/node/4721

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

Continue ReadingVOICE OF THE TUAREG RESISTANCE 

FLASHPOINT IN THE FLATHEAD

US-Canada War Looms Over Energy, Water

by Bill Weinberg, World War 4 Report

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

Middle East Oil Wars and the Northwest Passage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Energy Wars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surveillance Scandal Hits the Heartland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Battle for the Flathead

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Water Wars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Real Wars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

——

RESOURCES

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

Atlantica
http://www.atlantica.org/

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

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

NYRI
http://www.nyri.us

MATL
http://www.matl.ca/

Altalink
http://www.altalink.ca/

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

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

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

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

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

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

REFERENCES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See also:

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

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

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

From our weblog:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From our archive:

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

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

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

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

——————-

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

Continue ReadingFLASHPOINT IN THE FLATHEAD 

RADICAL NOIR

Sam Spade Meets Emiliano Zapata in Mexico’s Twilight Zone

by Chesley Hicks, WW4 REPORT

Book Review:

The Uncomfortable Dead (What’s Missing is Missing):
A Novel of Four Hands
by Paco Ignacio Taibo II and Subcomandante Marcos
Akashic Books, New York, 2006

The search for the “Evil and the Bad” is the quest that underlies The Uncomfortable Dead, an epistolary mystery, leftist political primer, and love letter to Mexico’s eternal soul.

Mixing surrealism with real-time realism, authors Marcos and Taibo write alternating chapters, each of them taking the voice of one of two detectives who meet in modern-day Mexico City as they unravel the truths behind a murder and cryptic phone messages from a dead man, leading them deeper into the search for the Evil and the Bad.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, strategist and public voice for the longstanding rebel Zapatista movement, probably needs no introduction here. Atop his periodic communiquĂ©s, he’s also written numerous books and essays, often noted for their parabolic approach to conveying his global messages on the plight of indigenous peoples, human rights, and environmental justice.

Paco Ignacio Taibo II, a Spanish-born author and activist who has made Mexico his home for over forty years, is a writer of fiction and nonfiction, especially known for penning Che Guevara’s biography, Ernesto Guevara: Also Known as Che, as well as his pulp noir mysteries. The Uncomfortable Dead features one of Taibo’s recurring protagonists, the philosophical, world-weary, one-eyed, lame-legged detective HĂ©ctor BelascoarĂĄn Shayne.

Shayne is based in Mexico City, where he crosses paths with Marcos’ protagonist, Zapatista detective ElĂ­as Contreras, who has journeyed from the rural southeastern mountains to the city (ambivalently nicknamed “The Monster”) on the orders of one Commandante Insurgente
El Sup, a barely-veiled Marcos.

Shayne is hired to investigate the cryptic phone messages—ostensibly from a dead man, a left-wing dissident who was imprisoned and murdered 34 years earlier during Mexico’s Dirty War.

Contreras—who had been on the trail of a disappeared follower of Mexico’s new rebel movement in the southern mountains—is now traversing Mexico City, meeting urban Zapastista compadres, picking up secret packages, and following El Sup’s instructions based on coded communiquĂ©s and messages in the packages.

The two gumshoes’ separate pursuits eventually find them both tracking a man named Morales, an everyman of evil, who, it soon becomes apparent, threads the novel as both a metaphor and real person.

All The Uncomfortable Dead‘s characters and settings are playfully sculpted out of real events, real people, and fiction. For instance, it is revealed that the Osama bin Laden the world sees on TV is actually a Los Angeles taco vendor who moonlights as a porno star, and is unwittingly hired by the US government to create the infamous terrorist’s videotapes. This—coming from Marcos, himself a media mystery figure who relies on broadcast communiquĂ©s—falls in line with The Uncomfortable Dead‘s patterns of layered commentary and pointed ironies. It’s absurd: and alongside the novel’s other deadpan send-ups on world events and parochial, paranoid certitude, seems nearly plausible.

The authors also name-check Ernesto Zedillio, president of Mexico from 1994 to 2000; former Mexican federal security chief Miguel Nazar Haro; former ambassador Carlos Tello MacĂ­as; right-wing secret society El Yunque; President Bush; and Gustav Mahler, among many, referring to them with both humor and historical accuracy.

Despite its layers, The Uncomfortable Dead is a pithy page-turner, and more of whoisit than a whodunit. In one passage, Contreras says, “Everywhere I went, I ran into people like us Zapatistas, which means people who are screwed, which means people willing to fight, which means people who don’t give up.” These are The Uncomfortable Dead‘s heroes—heroes in a story where the passionate downtrodden and misfits sometimes win the day, where righteousness finds a voice if not always victory, where haplessness finds redemption, textured by both writers’ love for the stuff of close-to-the-ground Mexican life: for pozole and chorizo, for principled people, for smoking tobacco and sensually inhaling beauty in the form of a slow, smoggy Mexico City sunset.

Both writers’ literary humor belies the medicine they take to stomach the inequality and corruption they’ve made their lives confronting. Marcos’s writing is more vernacular and stream-of-conscious and occasionally tends toward proselytizing, where Taibo’s style is more descriptively direct and narrative-forward. Still, the authors share plenty of common ground, especially in Mexico, absurdity, a deep rage against injustice, and a taste for therapeutic jest. For instance, When Shayne learns of the taco-terrorist-tape theory, Taibo writes: “Juancho-bin Laden was more than he could take. This was a planetary intrusion. It was like all of a sudden, Mexico would run off with the World Cup, the Olympics and the Davis Cup. It was like, without the like, a Mexican taco vendor had taken over CNN.”

And Marcos’s wry humor works especially well when he spoofs the things he clearly holds dear. In one such example, when a beef-and-cheese dish cooked by an Italian Zapatista supporter (named August) based on a Sup recipe, turns out to be barely edible, Marcos writes, “but August is one of those people who believes the Zapatistas are never wrong, so he claimed the problem was the salsa brand he used.” And his real villains sometimes catch a kind-of break: “The evil is the system and the bad are those who serve the system,” he reveals midway through the book.

Both writers know that both evil and good come in many shades and grades, a theme which plays out in their characters’ relationship with their home country: Mexico is corrupt, Mexico is pure; it’s destructive and its nurturing; it’s poor and it’s rich; it’s soul is worth saving—and might more easily soar the heights of greatness if it were cleansed of few unsavory technocrats, bigots, and corrupt politicos.

Overall, the alternating chapters crossover gracefully, and the two writers’ voices meld well as they send their all-too-human heroes in pursuit of people, things and meaning, which ultimately finds them following the unraveling of human integrity via frayed strands of political and corporate intrigue in Mexico. The pages simmer with anger and move ahead with hope, which give way to nothing save for the inevitability of death. And in The Uncomfortable Dead, even death does not stop the righteous fighter. The dead might be uncomfortable, but they haven’t lost their sense of humor—reminding us that he who laughs last, laughs best.

———

From our weblog:

Subcommander Marcos unveils Osama bin Laden theory
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 4, 2006
/node/2588

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

Continue ReadingRADICAL NOIR 

EL SALVADOR: MARCH FOR WATER RIGHTS DEMANDS “BLUE DEMOCRACY”

by Jason Wallach, Upside Down World

After tens of thousands of Salvadorans marched against water privatization on Oct. 5th, the Legislative Assembly voted to advance a measure that would guarantee all Salvadorans the right to water access and ensure environmental controls over water usage. The bill was supported by the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), Christian Democratic Party (PDC), and National Conciliation Party (PCN). A final floor vote on the bill could come as early as next week, though some analysts voiced skepticism that right-wing PDC and PCN were sincere in their support of the legislation.

Demanding “blue democracy,” Salvadorans, led by a coalition of over 125 unions and social organizations, crowded tightly into the plaza outside of the Chamber of Deputies. The march was attended by former US Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White and Maryland politician Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. Ana Sol Gutierrez, who represents Maryland’s 15th District in that state’s House of Delegates and was born in Santa Ana, El Salvador, also attended.

“The law should be a legal vessel that allows everyone” water access, said Gutierrez, “We cannot stand silent knowing that 12,000 children are dying because of diseases caused by the lack of hygiene and health that clean water provides.”

FMLN Deputy Lourdes Palacios, a member of the legislative Assembly’s environmental Committee, concurred: “This has been a huge march, a clear manifestation that the public rejects water privatization.”

Palacios questioned whether there was sincere political will to pass the anti-privatization measures into law, but explained the importance of doing so, “This country needs to regulate water usage in a way that guarantees it as a right. There should be access, quality and [an adequate] quantity [of water] for Salvadoran families in a way that doesn’t privilege economic interests.”

Legislating Water

The left-wing FMLN, and the right-wing PDC and PCN supported the bill, which was scribed in large part by environmentalists, consumer advocates, and human rights workers in the faith community. PDC and PCN support of the water bill mimicked a strategy employed in January by those parties to spur Salvadoran President Tony Saca into action on water reform.

Saca has supported water “decentralization”-a euphemism, say detractors, for privatization. However, his Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) party has been hesitant to push specific proposals since August 2006, when Saca tried to submit a bill that would have allowed for local municipalities to contract water services with private companies for up to 50 years. Activists caught wind of the proposal and generated a firestorm of opposition.

Interviewed last week by the left-leaning Diario Co-Latino, PCN deputy Orlando Arévalo expressed disdain that the executive branch had not yet presented its water management reform proposal.

“The executive [branch] has spent many years studying and elaborating a proposal, and nothing ever gets to the Assembly.”

That claim echoed statements Arévalo made in January 2007, which were published in the national daily paper La Prensa Gråfica. At the time, his statement was largely seen as an effort to kick-start executive action.

Funes: “Hey, we tried!”

In January of this year, the chief of the Salvadoran national water company, known as ANDA, grabbed headlines at one major news daily exclaiming, “The water law is 80% complete!” The declaration was a signal to all that ARENA was willing to flex its political muscle and move toward privatization. ANDA director Cesar Funes, who is a possible presidential candidate in the upcoming 2009 election, forwarded a proposal for a “General Water Law” to Saca, but nothing has came of it.

Shortly afterward, reports surfaced that Saca was holding back due to internal disagreement between industry leaders, some of whom favor a restructuring of industrial water tariffs and others who benefit from the current fee structure. The resulting stall in legislative momentum was a windfall for activists opposed to such legislation. They spent the time slowly organizing community-based opposition to any potential Saca plan.

That resistance came to a head on July 2, 2007 when police attacked an anti-privatization protest in Suchitoto-30 miles northeast of San Salvador and charged 14 protesters, including four prominent movement leaders, with “acts of terrorism.” The arrests catapulted the issue into the national spotlight.

In late August, members of SETA, the water workers’ union at ANDA (Sindicato de Empresa de Trajabadores de ANDA), met with Funes to check in about the delay in legislation. Funes told them the political situation was too hot for him present anything before the end of the year.

With the 2009 presidential campaign just around the corner, any attempt by ARENA to present a controversial bill would be considered political suicide for their candidate on the campaign trail. However, observers close to the situation said that civic groups are unlikely to let their guard down.

Considering the massive character of October’s march, the Assembly’s action toward progressive water management reform, and the upcoming “terrorism” trial of the July 2 protesters, it doesn’t seem as if things will cool down any time soon.

———

This story first appeared Oct. 10 in Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/936/1/

See also:

EL SALVADOR’S WATER: NOT FOR SALE
Popular Movement Stands Up to Privatization
by Jason Wallach, Upside Down World
WW4 REPORT, October 2006
/node/2576

From our weblog:

El Salvador: anti-privatization protesters jailed
WW4 REPORT, Sept. 17, 2007
/node/4443

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

Continue ReadingEL SALVADOR: MARCH FOR WATER RIGHTS DEMANDS “BLUE DEMOCRACY” 

DARFUR: NOT A “CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS”

Global Capital Connives with African Genocide

by Ba Karang, The Hobgoblin, UK

Going by the most recent estimates, in Darfur more than 200,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million displaced as refugees. But, despite rhetorical pronouncements against the genocide, the world seems to be more preoccupied with other business and “values” (sic) than the lives of Black Africans dying in the desert.

This is not a clash of civilizations; it is common in war that oppression creates and mixes with racial arrogance. Yes, it is the Arab ruling class of Sudan who have unleashed the Janjaweed militia against poor Black Africans. But the brutality is not fundamentally about ideology—control of resources and the interests of global capital lie in the background.

The poverty, decadence, and oppression in Darfur is the result of many years of marginalization—first by the colonial masters, Britain; and then by Arabs. Darfur was effectively an independent state after 1898 following the British war against the Mahdi [Sufi anti-colonial rebel Mohammed Ahmed]. During World War I, the British invaded Darfur to prevent Turkish influence and in 1916 incorporated Darfur into Sudan.

In Darfur’s total estimated population of 7.4 million, largely engaged in subsistence farming and cattle rearing, the semi-nomadic and mainly pastoralist Bedouin Arabs have established themselves in a relatively privileged position through access to grazing lands. In 1980 they established the Tajamu al-Arabi in Darfur, a Pan-Arab Nationalist movement, inspired by Libyan strongman Mommar Qadaffi. Their main political message was nothing other than Arab supremacy. At the time of the war in neighboring Chad, a back yard was created in Darfur for the Libya-supported Chadian rebel movement. The Arab vigilante group now known as the Janjaweed was born out of the Tajamu al-Arabi as a rearguard support network allied with the Chadian rebels.

In 1989, the Sudanese Islamists lunched a military coup and established the present Islamic state of Sudan. The Islamist government started rearming the Janjaweed, who wasted no time in unleashing their terror against the already marginalized Black population. The Janjaweed, by now very powerful, and winning greater state recognition, was assigned to deal with the Black population who had been in constant confrontation with Arab nomads over pastoral land. By this time, the war in Southern Sudan was the preoccupation of the Sudanese government, which was very confident that the low-scale peasant revolt against Arab racism and brutality in Darfur could easily be put under control by the vigilante groups.

In Southern Sudan, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) was delighted by the news of the emerging Darfur resistance movement in 2003, when a military assault was launched against government targets by the newly formed rebel groups.

Land grabs, the drought, hunger and increasing brutality from the Janjaweed forced the villagers of Darfur to form the Sudan Liberation Army (SLM). Another rebel movement, the JEM (Justice and Equality Movement), led by Khalid Ibrahim, also joined the armed struggle as an independent group.

While the SLM was eventually brought to the negotiating table, the JEM was marginalized in the internationally-brokered Darfur peace process. Last year, the JEM and a hold-out faction of the SLM brought together other groups and individuals involved in the armed struggle at Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, to form the National Redemption Front. This organization consists of people who never recognized the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA), which was negotiated by the African Union, EU and the USA and signed in Abuja, Nigeria, on May 5, 2006 by the Sudanese government and SLM.

The National Redemption Front’s founding document says the group seeks to “Uphold Sudan as multicultural, multi-religious and multiethnic country where diversity constitutes the basis of citizenship for individuals, and unity of our nation.” For now, an independent Darfur is not on either the agenda of the rebel movements. The genocide is a result of the demand of the Black African Darfurians for their rights to the land to be recognized, and to be rid of Arab racism.

Despite the 2005 peace accords with the SPLM, the conflict in Southern Sudan is not yet truly over, and Darfur poses an interesting puzzle in that conflict. By 2009 there will be an election in Sudan as part of the 2005 peace plan, and the SPLM is without doubt going to control the South. Darfur consists of almost a quarter of the Sudanese electorate, so the votes from Darfur will play an important role in the composition of the parliament. More importantly still, by 2011 there is to be a referendum (also mandated by the 2005 peace plan) on the question of an independent Southern Sudan—and as things stand now, there is no doubt that the Southern Sudanese will vote for an independent state. This would put more pressure on the Darfur rebel movements to move towards independence—potentially opening a new round of bloody conflict.

Any thing more genuine than the periodic pronouncements against the genocide by European and American leaders will have to come to a direct confrontation with the interests of global capital. Sudan is the backyard of Chinese and Russian capital, and Western Europe and America are very much sensitive to this fact. They have Iraq and Iran to contain and rely greatly on the support of both China and Russia In the so-called war against terrorism.

Recently, Amnesty International accused China and Russia for selling arms to Sudan, and there is no secret in the military cooperation between China and the Sudanese government. As always, arms follow oil investments. China, through the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), is planning an investment of $1 billion to create Africa’s largest refinery, which will expand the Khartoum refinery from 50,000 barrels a day to 90,000 barrels a day. Oil revenue has contributed about $2 billion to the racist Sudanese state’s coffers. Thus the oil in Sudan, which the Chinese are confident of controlling and which the Russians are sniffing at, will determine to what extend capitalism values human life.

China met with 48 African states in November 2006 to form a new strategic partnership, with trade deals worth of $1.9 billion and plans to increase it to $100 billion in four years. There can be no serious discussion on Darfur while Chinese-made bullets are killing Dafurians and AU members struggling to make a difference. When Amnesty International accused the Chinese government of supplying arms to the racist Sudanese government, Lord David Triesman, British minister for African affairs, insisted that China is doing all it can to help resolve the crisis in Dafur.

The stance of the USA is also hypocritical in this conflict. The periodic threats and hand-wringing about Sudan by the US administration and in the media do give the impression that they are very concerned. But it is time to ask why is it that US sanctions against Sudan are not effective—and even if they are meant to be. If the US is serious about sanctioning Sudan, sanctions against the oil industry alone will be enough to bring the Khartoum government to its knees. But the USA has never made any serious attempt to hurt the oil industry in Sudan, because of US industrial interests.

Take gum Arabic, a substance used in the production of soft drinks and other consumer products; the company that produces this product was “mistakenly” put on the US sanction list in 1997 only to be removed from the list after a protest from American industries who depend on the supply of this product from Sudan. While sanctions have effectively barred US oil companies from Sudan, Western companies that operate in the US also invest in the CNPC. And Washington realizes that any serious move against this will antagonize sectors of US capital as well as leading to a direct confrontation with China.

Sudan has now agreed to a peacekeeping force of 20,000, which will be comprised of both UN and AU forces. However, the newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy organized a conference in Paris on the way forward for Darfur June 25—without a single African nation or even the AU invited to attend. What is actually known to have come out of that meeting is nothing new—just another statement from the West intended for public consumption, while the terrible condition of millions of Black people remains the same. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at the end of the meeting declared in a press conference that the world is failing Darfur. But it is not the world that is failing the people of Darfur—it is those Great Powers who have a direct interest in Sudan who are failing the Dafurians.

———

This story first appeared, in slightly different form, in The Hobgoblin, British journal of Marxism-Humanism
http://www.thehobgoblin.co.uk/#darfur

RESOURCES

Death in Darfur:
Analysis of factors confounding previous estimates leads to the conclusion that hundreds of thousand of people rather than tens of thousands have died as a result of the conflict in Darfur.
by John Hagan and Alberto Palloni
Science Journal, September 2006
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/313/5793/1578

Darfur Death Toll is Hundreds of Thousands Higher Than Reported, Study Says
National Geographic News, Sept. 14, 2006
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060914-darfur-deaths.html

Darfur and the Olympics: A call for international action
Testimony by Eric Reeves, Adviser to the “Olympic Dream for Darfur Campaign,” to the Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, June 7, 2007
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article22273

US Energy Department page on Sudan oil sanctions
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/sanction.html

Darfur Minority Rights
Minority Rights Group, 1995
http://www.angelfire.com/space/almassar/new_page_12.htm

See also:

DESTINATION DARFUR: A NEW COLD WAR OVER OIL
by Vijay Prashad, Frontline, Chennai, India
WW4 REPORT, October 2007
/node/4497

From our weblog:

Darfur rebels boycott peace talks, target oil industry
WW4 Report, Oct. 28, 2007
/node/4598

What is Eritrea’s Sudan strategy?
WW4 Report, Oct. 5, 2007
/node/4527

From our archives:

BP-AMOCO linked to Osama’s Sudan protectors
WW4 REPORT, Oct. 6, 2001
/static/2.html#whoisosama3

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

Continue ReadingDARFUR: NOT A “CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS” 

IRAQ: EXPOSING THE CORPORATE AGENDA

by Antonia Juhasz, Oil Change International

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Q: Why hasn’t Bush been impeached?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

———

RESOURCES

Oil Change International
http://priceofoil.org/

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

See also:

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

From our weblog:

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

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

—————————-

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

Continue ReadingIRAQ: EXPOSING THE CORPORATE AGENDA 

ISRAELI HIGH COURT RETURNS PALESTINIAN LANDS?

Don’t Believe the Hype!

by David Bloom, WW4 REPORT

Despite over a thousand nonviolent protests, international media attention, worldwide condemnation, a decision by the International Court of Justice at The Hague declaring Israel’s “Separation Wall” illegal where it is built inside the occupied West Bank, and over 120 petitions to the Israeli courts, Israel’s High Court has issued only five decisions supporting changes in the wall’s route. As a result, only a small percentage of Palestinian land has been “returned” to the eastern side of the barrier. The wall still encloses 11.9% of the West Bank’s land, according to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

A review of the decisions shows that even in the few cases where the High Court decided in favor of Palestinians, the benefits to the villages have been minimal. In one case, around the settlement of Alfe Menashe in the northern West Bank, the court’s decision actually made the situation worse for some of the villagers.

Lower courts have also heard cases. Sheikh Sa’ed, a neighborhood in the village of Sawahra, East Jerusalem, had the wall moved to the neighborhood’s eastern flank by the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court last year. This cut the neighborhood off from the rest of the West Bank, instead of Sawahra and East Jerusalem. This was an improvement for the village, but it is still negatively impacted through separation from the West Bank.

As of Oct 1 2007, the Israeli courts have heard over 120 Palestinian complaints against the wall, 89% of which runs through Palestinian territory inside the West Bank. In an Aug. 6 article, the fence’s main architect, Col. Danny Tirza—a settler—told the Washington Post that he lost only three of those challenges. As of Jan. 3, 2007 the Defense Ministry reported that 39 petitions against the barrier had still to be decided.

In a widely publicized ruling, on Sept. 4, the town of Bil’in won a case at the High Court to have the barrier moved, saving 500 acres of its farmland which had been isolated from the rest of the village by the wall. But the very next day, in a separate ruling that received little media attention, the court ruled that Matityahu East, a large, new settlement outpost being built within the wall on part of Bil’in’s land, could stay. So while the publicized decision returned lands to Bil’in, the quiet one upheld an illegal grab of other, more outlying village lands.

Israeli anti-wall activist Nir Shalev says the court “laundered” Mattiyahu East with its ruling. According to correspondent Akiva Eldar of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, the court couldn’t countenance dispossessing all the settlers living in Matitatyu East — despite the fact that it was built illegally according to Israel’s own laws.

Mohammed Khatib, a leader of Bil’in’s non-violent resistance movement, wrote on Alternet Sept. 26, “In Bil’in we celebrated, along with our Israeli and international supporters. But Israel’s Supreme Court demonstrated both the power of nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation, and its limits. On September 5 the court rejected our petition to stop the construction of another Israeli settlement, Mattiyahu East, on our land even further to the west. Israel, with US support, appears determined to retain major West Bank settlement blocs, including one west of Bil’in, that carve the West Bank into bantustans.”

The court’s bait-and-switch tendency demonstrated with the two Bil’in decisions is not new. Indeed it has been in evidence since its first rulings on the wall’s path.

On June 30, 2004, one week before the International Court of Justice in The Hague was to give its ruling declaring the barrier route illegal, the Israeli High Court ruled the route in Beit Surik was disproportionately harmful to the village. The ruling appeared timed to blunt the impact of the Hague court’s, and at the time drew some praise.

However, Muhammed Khaled, the former mayor of Beit Surik, in a Deccember 2005 article on the website Stop the Wall, wrote: “But the Occupation court decision was worth nothing and made things even worse.” The wall’s location in Beit Surik was moved, but it still effectively surrounds the village on all sides, which is penned in additionally by a settler-only road. And Khaled writes that the Israeli army retaliated against those who had brought the petition: “Right after the court decision, they started uprooting my land for the Wall’s new path. My land is situated in the middle of its path—the only reason why they started from the middle was to retaliate against me and to intimidate whoever else wants to resist the Occupation. My land was planted with olive and almond trees as well as grapes. I carried the resolution and went to the soldiers who were working there in order to stop the uprooting of my trees. In response, they beat me very badly and then they arrested me.”

The Israeli state twice simply ignored the High Court’s order to dismantle a 41-kilometer section south of Hebron, along Route 317, affecting the villages of At-Tuwani and Yatta. The court first ordered the barrier removed in six months, in a 2006 ruling. According to a March 8, 2007 article in the Isreali daily Yediot Aharonot, Chief Justice Dorit Beinish noted: “The State
despite the court order, intends to keep the existing barrier
 [T]he State chose not to comply with a court order
” As of July 24, 2007 it still had not been moved, according to Ha’aretz. The state was then given fourteen days to dismantle it, and according to Christian Peacemaker teams, it was finally dismantled on Aug. 7. A Palestinian leader of the non-violent movement in the area told CPT, “The IDF routinely disregards Israeli court decisions. We believe what happened is a success for the people’s nonviolent resistance. This is a very important step.”

On Sept. 15, 2005, the High Court ordered part of the fence dismantled where it enclosed five villages, Arab a-Ramadan, Arab Abu Farde, Wadi a-Rasha, Ja’arat a-Dara and Hirbet Ras a-Tira, with a collective 2,000 residents, inside the barrier with the settlement Alfe Menashe, just south of Qalqilya. At the time, the decision was hailed as a significant, precedent-setting victory. The villagers’ lawyer, Michael Sfard, declared, “The High Court has saved five Palestinian villages from utter annihilation, because if the fence had been left in place, they would not have been able to continue to exist”

But on July 31, 2007, the court changed its decision, leaving Arab a-Ramadan and Arab Abu-Farde trapped inside the barrier along with the settlement, according to the Jerusalem Post. These two villages, with a total population of 400, said they would be worse off with the re-routing of the wall, because they are now cut off from the other three villages and the city of Qalqilya. But the court rejected their petition.

Reached for comment, attorney Michael Sfard said, “Naturally, I am disappointed. The second decision strips the first of most of its humanitarian concerns and achievements.”

A Dec. 18 2003 report by the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign of the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON) had warned, “The completion of the Wall and its ghettoization of Arab Ramadin are turning a community of shepherds into exploited workers for Israeli settlement industrial zones, as they are unable to sustain their lives.”

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), which brought the petition on behalf of the five villages, said in a press release Dec. 26, 2006: “Moreover, the solution being formulated by the military authorities regarding the two villages that were not removed from the enclave (Abu-Farde and Arab a-Ramadan) is a shameless one that is based on population transfer. Although this transfer has been presented as ‘voluntary’ and ‘consensual,’ in fact the villages are being pressurized into accepting a process of immoral and illegal transfer of protected persons from their land.”

ACRI added, “The proposed route will also result directly in the destruction of 1,400 acres of cultivated land, and will cause a great deal of damage, indirectly, to large tracts of land. This is in addition to the destruction of some 2,000 acres of agricultural land that is required for the construction of this section of the barrier. The ‘amended” route of the Barrier places it in extremely close proximity to the homes of the residents, something that has already been proven to pose a real danger to their lives by a number of cases in the past in which villagers were shot and killed. Any movement close to the Barrier, which is almost on top of their homes, arouses the suspicion of the soldiers and others guarding the Barrier. In some cases this has resulted in the security forces opening fire.”

Across the valley from Alfe Menashe, to the north of Qalqilya, the villages of Azzon and Nabi Elias south of the settlement of Zufim also brought petitions against the barrier. The first, in 2002, was turned down by the court. A second, in June of 2006 succeeded, though it has yet to be implemented, Ynet reported last year. A ten kilometer section was ordered moved, to return more than 250 acres to the villages, within six months. The reason the first petition failed, according to Meron Rapaport in Ha’aretz, was that fence designer Col. Danny Tirza, in a 2002 affidavit defending the route, did not mention that the route of the fence was planned for the sake of building an industrial zone, expanding Zufim further onto privately held village lands. Tirza claimed only security considerations were involved.

Justice Aharon Barak appeared shocked by Tirza’s lack of candor, writing in his decision that “a grave phenomenon has been revealed in this petition. The High Court was not presented with the entire picture in the first petition. The court rejected the appeal based on partial information.” B’Tselem was more blunt: “The High Court of Justice in fact ruled that the State lied when it claimed that the fence route is only based on security considerations.”

Tirza’s failure to mention the industrial zone led Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to tell the then-Defense Minister Amir Peretz that this was “a severe gaffe that must not be tolerated.” Yet in spite of being ordered by Peretz to desist from appearing before the court representing the Defense Ministry, Tirza continued to do so. On March 3, 2006, Palestinians petitioned to have Tirza dismissed, arguing that as a settler, he has a conflict of interest in designing the fence route.

On the northern side of Zufim are the villages of Jayyous and Falamya. On Oct. 30, 2006, according to Jayyous farmer Shareef Khaled Omar, the Israeli courts issued a recommendation to move the barrier on Jayyous’ lands. Khaled said, “the army told our advocate that they would move the path of the wall to release 1,500 of the 8,600 dunums [375 of 2,140 acres] currently isolated from the village by the wall. This does not make us feel glad. The new path of the wall may even fall within the 1,500 dunums that they will release. We would like them to move the wall to the Green Line.”

Two other routes suggested by the army are also seen as inadequate, and the villages’ lawyer is insisting on the Green Line as the only alternative route. Omar points out that on the Green Line adjacent to Jayyous, “there are two fences, one electric, the other razor-wire, that will never allow a cat or a dog to pass through. So, if it is a matter of security, those two fences are sufficient and it is not necessary to build others six kilometers to the east of the Green Line in Jayyous land!”

In July 2006, on the second anniversary of The Hague ruling that the barrier had to be dismantled, the Israeli government approved a revised route for the barrier that had only “marginal overall effect” in reducing harm to the Palestinians’ fabric of life. The new route was actually thirty kilometers longer than the old route, and only one-half of one percent of the total area in the West Bank was removed from the “seam zone,” as Israel calls the area between the barrier and the Green Line. Four Palestinian villages, totaling 2,300 residents—were placed back on the Palestinian side, but at the same time another village of 900 was placed inside the “seam zone.” The human rights organization Bimkom reported that “some 250,000 Palestinians will be trapped in enclaves either on the ‘Israeli’ side of the security barrier or almost completely surrounded by concrete walls or fences inside the West Bank.”

Tel Aviv University psychologist Carlo Stenger writing in Ha’aretz on Sept. 25, warned that Israel is “On the way to [becoming] a pariah state… Behaving in a manner befitting the standards of the Western world is far more important for Israel’s long-term survival than gaining a few square miles here and there, by building the security wall through Palestinian territories, tearing apart villages, homes and schools, and expanding settlements. Every such act is not just a moral outrage; it pushes Israel one step closer to being disqualified from belonging to the West.”

——

See also:

ANATOMY OF THE WEST BANK “REALIGNMENT”
Strategic Pull-Back to Perpetuate Occupation
by David Bloom, WW4 REPORT, June 2006
/node/2023

RESOURCES:

Israel’s Security Fence, Ministry of Defense
http://www.securityfence.mod.gov.il/Pages/ENG/news.htm#news49

Col. Danny Tirza boast to Washington Post, Aug. 7, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080601661.html

B’tselem on the Sheikh Sa’ed decision, Occupation Magazine, March 21, 2006
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=12804

Nir Shalev on the Bi’lin decision, Occupation Magazine, Sept. 5, 2007
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=22172

Mohammed Khatib on the Bil’in decision, Alternet, Sept. 26
http://www.alternet.org/audits/63640/

Muhammad Khaled on the Beit Surik decision, Stop the Wall, Dec. 20, 2005
http://stopthewall.org/communityvoices/1064.shtml

Yediot Aharonot on the Route 317 decision, March 8, 2007
http://www.peace-security-council.org/news.events.asp?id=638

Christian Peacemaker Teams on the dismantling of Route 317, Aug. 20, 2007
http://www.cpt.org/archives/2007/aug07/0020.html

Michael Sfard on Arab a-Ramadan, et al, The New Standard, Sept. 16, 2005
http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2370

Jerusalem Post on Arab a-Ramadan, et al, Aug. 31, 2007
http://www.peace-security-council.org/news.events.asp?id=656

Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) on Arab a-Ramadan, et al, Dec. 26, 2006
http://www.acri.org.il/english-acri/engine/story.asp?id=348

YNet on Azzoun and Nabi Elias decisions, June 15, 2006
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3263267,00.html

Meron Rapaport on Azzoun and Nabi Elias decisions, Ha’aretz, June 25, 2006
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=14709

Amira Hass on Col. Danny Tirza, Ha’aretz, March 3, 2006
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=12441

More from Ha’aretz on Col. Danny Tirza, Aug. 24, 2006
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=15934

Bimkom on the enclosure of 250,000 Palestinians, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 22, 2007
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467790412&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

Carlo Stenger on Israel as “pariah state,” Ha’aretz, Sept. 25, 2007
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/906924.html

——————-

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

Continue ReadingISRAELI HIGH COURT RETURNS PALESTINIAN LANDS? 

PIRATES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN

America’s First War on Islamic Terrorism

by Bill Weinberg, Middle East Policy

Book Review:

VICTORY IN TRIPOLI
How America’s War with the Barbary Pirates Established the US Navy and Built a Nation
by Joshua E. London
John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, NJ, 2005

JEFFERSON’S WAR
America’s First War on Terror, 1801-1805
by Joseph Wheelan
Carroll & Graf, New York, 2003 (paperback edition 2004)

Few Americans today know much about the Tripoli crisis of 1801-5, aside from a vague sense of the origins of the line “to the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Corps hymn. But it is actually surprising that the affair has received so little attention given both its critical role in shaping early US military and especially naval power, and its startling parallels to the “war on (Islamic) terrorism” that would be launched precisely two centuries later.

These points are certainly not lost on Joseph Wheelan and Joshua London, authors of two post-9-11 histories of the Tripoli affair. Both books are competent histories, with an emphasis on the military side of things. But both strike a triumphalist tone that borders on the embarrassing. Neither is subtle about contemporary analogies.

Most Americans are aware that US citizens were held hostage by Islamic militants when Ronald Reagan took the oath of office in 1981. Few are aware this was also the case when George Washington took the oath in 1789. While the seamen being held on North Africa’s Barbary Coast did not occupy the center of the US political stage as the 1980 hostage crisis would, how to resolve the dilemma was an issue of the day, and an early dividing line between the Federalists, who favored military force, and the Democratic-Republicans who were suspicious of any such solution. (This divide was the seed of the contemporary two-party system; with a few twists and turns, the Federalists would ultimately emerge as today’s Republicans, and the Democratic-Republicans as the Democrats.)

But the situation played out in a paradoxical way. It was the Democratic-Republican, perceived anti-militarist Thomas Jefferson who, within days of taking office in 1801, ordered a squadron of warships to the Mediterranean, without any Congressional or public debate. The popular shorthand for the depredations of the Barbary corsairs at the time was “the Terror”; Wheelan makes the point clearer by calling it “state sponsored-terrorism,” and the payment of ransom in the form of tribute to the Barbary states “arms for hostages deals.” Both writers extol Jefferson as a hardliner who would take no more of this humiliation

The Barbary states consisted of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli (contemporary Libya), all officially tributaries of the Ottoman empire but in fact basically autonomous; and the independent sultanate of Morocco. All maintained fleets of corsairs, and impounded the ships, goods and crews of any nation that did not pay them tribute. The crisis with the US began just over a year after the War of Independence had ended—in October of 1784, when the merchant ship Betsey was seized with its crew by Moroccan corsairs off the Spanish coast; nine months later the ships Dauphin and Maria were similarly taken by Algerian corsairs.

Both authors note that Morocco’s sultan Sidi Muhammed ibn Abd Allah, presumably pleased to see Europe losing its colonial holdings, expressed interest in recognizing the US as early as 1780—when the outcome of the War of Independence was by no means certain. It was the new republic’s apparent reticence to enter into a treaty with the sultanate that prompted Morocco to force the matter. Consuls were dispatched to the Barbary states, and in 1786, the US did strike a treaty with Morocco and the crew of the Betsey was released. But internecine jealousies complicated matters when the consuls attempted to negotiate treaties with the three other Barbary states.

Jefferson (then minister to France) and his Federalist friend and rival John Adams (minister to Britain) were also dispatched to London to meet with representatives of the Barbary states. After meeting with the Tripolitan ambassador, Adams wrote to Foreign Secretary John Jay that he had been told the Barbary states were “the sovereigns of the Mediterranean; and that no nation could navigate that sea without a treaty of peace with them.” Jefferson, following such a meeting, wrote that he was told “every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.” Adams lamented that “the policy of Christendom has made cowards of all their sailors before the standard of Mahomet.”

The American statesmen clearly had matters other than freeing hostages on their minds. John Jay openly saw the crisis as an opportunity to strengthen the federal government. “War alone can bring together the various States, and give a new importance to Congress,” he wrote. Jefferson held that “the liberation of our citizens” has “an intimate connection with the liberation of our commerce in the Mediterranean.”

In 1788, as Jefferson returned home to become Washington’s secretary of state, he authored a “Proposal to Use Force against the Barbary States,” which openly called for selling Muslim captives in the slave market in Malta to finance the expedition. In 1793, more US ships were captured by Algiers, and the following year Congress approved an “Act to Provide a Naval Armament”—initially consisting of six frigates, including the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” which would achieve glory in the War of 1812. One Federalist congressman even warned of “Algerines off the coast of America” if the corsairs were not beaten back in the Mediterranean.

Later in 1793, however, the US consuls in Algiers struck deals in which the hostage crewmen, who had been put to hard labor, were released for cash payments. Treaties with Tunis and Tripoli also followed. But the issue did not go away, and meanwhile there was the so-called Quasi-War with France—also a largely naval affair, this one mostly in the Caribbean. In 1798, with the Federalist standard-bearer Adams then president, the Department of Navy and the Marines were created by acts of Congress.

Right on time, the Barbary situation started to heat up again. In July 1800, the US shipCatherine was captured by Tripoli, then petitioning for a better treaty. The crew was released a few months later—but on threat of war if terms were not met. Then in September, the USSGeorge Washington, on the first Mediterranean port of call by an American warship, was comandeered by Bobba Mustapha, the dey of Algiers, and ordered to sail to Constantinople to deliver a payment of Algerian tribute. Captain William Bainbridge acquiesced, under threat of having his ship destroyed by the dey’s harbor guns, taking both the tribute shipment and a large contingent of Algerians on board. Wheelan notes how Bainbridge’s crew exacted a perverse revenge: “The Americans took pleasure in tacking into the wind whenever the Moslems prostrated themselves facing east toward Mecca, as they were required to do five times a day. This forced the worshippers to change position incessantly so they always faced approximately east, toward Mecca.”

In Constantinople, Bainbridge met the Ottoman sultan, Selim III, who we are told (implausibly) had never heard of the United States before. But he noted that both the US and Ottoman flags were adorned with “heavenly bodies,” connoting to him a spiritual connection. Writes London: “To his mind, America was not a Christian nation and thus was not like the nations of Europe.”

The consul to Tunis, William Eaton, a veteran of campaigns against Indians in the Ohio Valley who would emerge as the crucial figure in the Barbary drama, was aghast at Bainbridge’s capitulation to Algerian threats: “Nothing but blood will blot out the impression… Will nothing rouse my country?” And: “There is but one language which can be held to these people, and that is terror.”

The complacency that New Englander and Federalist sympathizer Eaton decried would be broken in an unanticipated way. In the electoral upset of 1800, Jefferson was elected by the tie-breaking House of Representatives. It was the outgoing Adams who, seeing the move as inevitable under the incoming Democratic-Republican, eviscerated the nascent Navy, selling off most of its ships. But immediately upon taking office, Jefferson dispatched four warships from the depleted US fleet to the Mediterranean. Writes Wheelan: “His decision not to consult Congress established the president’s authority to unilaterally send armed forces abroad.” Historians have dubbed the Mediterranean squadron the “Nursery of the Navy.”

The move only precipitated war. The Tripolitan ruler, Pasha Yusuf Karamanli, declared hostilities in his traditional way—having his soldiers chop down the flag at the US consulate, sending consul James Cathcart packing for Italy.

A blockade was thrown up around Tripoli harbor, and Gibraltar was policed to hole up the Tripolitan corsair ship Meshuda—none other than the former Betsey which (we are never told how in either book) seems to have been transferred to Tripolitan hands. The first battle came in August, when Lt. Andrew Sterett, commanding the USS Enterprise, captured another corsair ship, the Tripoli, while on a water run to Malta.

Then, both writers bristle, almost nothing happened for two years. In 1802, Morocco briefly declared war on the US to demand the release of the Meshuda, but nothing much came of it. In June 1803, US Marines finally touched those fabled sands of Tripoli, in what Wheelan notes was “the first US amphibious landing on a hostile shore.” But the incursion was brief and failed to intimidate Yusuf Karamanli. Jefferson, growing impatient, dispatched more ships, and a new, more aggressive commander, Commodore Edward Preble.

In October 1803 came what both writers call (in identically entitled chapters) “the Philadelphiadisaster.” The frigate Philadelphia, commanded by Bainbridge, ran aground on a reef just off Tripoli’s coast. Bainbridge surrendered without a fight, and both the ship and crew were taken captive. Preble, based in Syracuse, Sicily, plotted revenge. In February 1804, he dispatched the captured Tripolitan corsair Mastico, now dubbed the Intrepid and flying under British colors as a ruse de guerre, to Tripoli—where a hidden crew of Marines revealed themselves, boarded the Philadelphia and set it aflame before escaping. It went straight down.

Preble followed up with a sea battle in Tripoli harbor in August. The Constitution shelled the city, wreaking random death and toppling a minaret. Preble threatened to “reduce Tripoly to a heap of Ruins…” But all the action is seen through the eyes of the Americas: US Naval officer James Decatur is mortally wounded while boarding a corsair ship, and his brother Stephen, the mission commander who would later gain fame in the War of 1812, exacts vengeance, taking the ship and killing the captain. In September, the explosives-laden Intrepid is sent to destroy Tripoli’s harbor defenses, but explodes prematurely, destroying only the ship and crew.

Europe was finally impressed. Lord Horatio Nelson, Britain’s hero of Trafalgar, hailed Decatur’s mission as “the most bold and daring act of this age.” Said Pope Pius VII: “The American commander, with a small force and in a short space of time, has done more for the cause of Christianity than the most powerful nations of Christendom have done for ages.”

But as things approached a climax, the decisive tactics switched from conventional warfare to intelligence intrigues. William Eaton was sent in as “Naval agent for the Barbary Regencies,” with a design to form an alliance with Hamet Karamanli, the former pasha of Tripoli who had been dethroned and exiled by his brother Yusuf in 1795. Hamet had taken refuge in Egypt—then in the throes of a chaotic four-way war among the Ottomans, British, French and the local dynasty, the Mamluks.

Eaton landed at Alexandria in November and made his way up the Nile to Cairo, where he received the blessings of the Ottoman viceroy. He established contact with Hamet, hurriedly assembled a polyglot army of Marines, Turks, Greeks and Bedouin, and began marching west across the desert into Tripolitan territory. Wheelan hails Eaton as “America’s first modern intelligence operative” and “America’s Lawrence.”

In April 1805, “General” Eaton and his ragged army succeeded in taking Derna, easternmost of the Tripolitan cities, for the first time raising the stars and stripes over foreign soil. Eaton’s program of “regime change” (as Wheelan calls it) was well underway.

And, predictably, it was undercut by the bureaucracy. Tobias Lear, the general consul for the Barbary states, opposed Eaton’s mission, but exploited the tight spot it had put Pasha Yusuf in, negotiating a deal in which the Philadelphia captives would be ransomed, but no annual tribute paid. The war was over. Sailing out of Derna, Eaton wrote that his erstwhile comrade Hamet “falls from the most flattering prospects of Kingdom to beggary!” The men who had fought for Eaton and Hamet were left to their own devices, not trusting Yusuf enough to accept his amnesty offer. While both Wheelan and London expended much ink portraying the Bedouin soldiery as an undisciplined rabble that Eaton successfully struggled to master, we are told nothing of how they fared in the expedition’s aftermath.

Eaton wrote that the deal was “more honorable than any peace obtained by any Christian nation with a Barbary regency at any period within a hundred years: but it might have been more favorable and more honorable.” We can hope that his concern was not merely with US prestige.

The new treaty with Tripoli contained a secret clause which allowed Yusuf to keep Hamet’s family, who had been seized in his coup of 1795, imprisoned for four years more, as insurance against further uprisings. Hamet was exiled to Syracuse and paid a “paltry” sum for his efforts. After much pleading, he finally prompted the US to bring pressure to have his family released to Sicily in 1807.

Back in the USA, Eaton was hailed as the “modern Africanus” (a reference to Scipio Africanus, the Roman general who defeated Hannibal) and “inheritor of the mantle of Alexander the Great!” But his growing bitterness that his regime change plans were betrayed turned him, like the whole affair, into a political pawn. The Federalists blasted the treaty as a betrayal (an “inglorious deed” said a Senate committee called to investigate the matter) while the Democratic-Republican press portrayed Hamet as a degenerate “addicted to sordid propensities,” contrasting Yusuf’s “elevated centiments” (sic). Eaton was elected to the Massachusetts state legislature, but, drawn into endless political intrigues and, ultimately, alcoholism, he died in obscurity, a pathetic figure.

The trouble in Barbary wasn’t quite over. Tunis threatened war over the return of Tunisian ships confiscated in the Tripoli blockade. A warship under Decatur was dispatched to the scene, and the crisis was resolved with what had become the usual admixture of threats and diplomacy. In November 1807, Algiers, this time goaded by Britain, seized more American ships. In a sideshow to the War of 1812, war with Algiers was formally declared in 1814. Decatur was dispatched yet again, and Lear threatened: “Algiers will be humbled to the dust.” But it ended in a truce before that happened. Ironically, it was the British themselves who really did shell Algiers into submission two years later. The glory days of the Barbary corsairs were over.

The authors document the Orientalist prejudices that served war propaganda in the Barbary campaigns. Bainbridge wrote that if Americans could see “the weakness of their garrisons, and the effeminacy of their people, I am sure they would not be long tributary to so pitiful a race of infidels.” Eaton wrote of the North Africans that “they have no property in the soil to inspire an ambition to cultivate it. They are abject slaves to…the despotism of priestcraft. They live in more solemn fear of the frowns of a bigot who has been dead and rotten above a thousand years than of the living despot whose frown would cost them their lives.” He describes Dey Bobba Mustapha as “a huge, shaggy beast…with his hind legs gathered up like a tailor or a bear,” and expresses disgust at having to kiss his hand.

Unfortunately, both authors share in these prejudices, portraying the Arabs as gutless, conniving and greedy (using shameless adjectives like “perfidious” and “irascible”), while ascribing the highest of motives to the Americans—even while acknowledging that they also engaged in ruses and trickery.

The American officers and consuls were aghast at what they saw as an oppressive society in Barbary, but seemed blissfully blind to their own oppressions. Wheelan notes that Preble ran what was known as a “tight ship”—meaning, for instance, that he had the word MUTINEER burned with a branding iron into the forehead of a seaman who circulated a letter of protest about onboard conditions among the crew. The 320 lashes he was subsequently given must have seemed a mere afterthought. London notes that Eaton, to his credit, really grappled (in his journal) with the contradiction that they were fighting to free Americans from slavery, even as America practiced slavery at home.

Alternative histories such as Peter Lamborn Wilson’s cult classic Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs & European Renegadoes (Autonomedia, New York, 1995) have portrayed the Barbary states as multi-cultural autonomous zones where Iberian, French and Balkan converts to Islam were welcomed as brothers-in-plunder. Wilson concludes that many“renegadoes” (Europeans who had “turned Turk” and joined the corsairs) were drawn to Islam and piracy by the lure of cultural and even sexual freedom, a “proto-individualist-anarchist” ethic, and a rage against oppressive Euro-Christian society. While the fact that captives who converted were freed from forced labor was also doubtless a factor, Eaton actually vindicates Wilson’s thesis somewhat, writing that the corsair ships were commanded by “scoundrels who had just escaped from certain Christian countries to evade the punishment which their crimes merited…” Wheelan notes that the Muslims’ (perceived) sexual lasciviousness and acceptance of homosexuality helped fuel the war fever.

We are told that the Tripolitan grand admiral Murad Reis—commader of the Meshuda and later the chief defender of Tripoli’s harbor—was actually the Scottish renegado Peter Lisle. Wheelan mentions that Barbary raids had reached as far as Iceland, but fails to note that the notorious 1627 expedition to that northern isle was carried out by an earlier Murad Reis, for whom the Tripolitan grand admiral was named. And (as PL Wilson notes) the 17th-century Murad Reis, who sailed for Morocco, was also a renegado—born Jan Janz, a Dutchman.

Wheelan and London both provide some cursory historical background, tracing the roots of the corsair jihad to the 1492 expulsion of the Moors from Spain, followed by Muslim raids on their former Iberian homeland, prompting, in turn, Spanish-Hapsburg incursions into North Africa (e.g. Charles V’s attempted invasion of Algiers in 1541). The Barbary states appealed to Constantinople for aid, and the centuries-long contest was on. The authors’ attempts to reach deeper into history get confused, with Wheelan stating, for instance, that the Crusaders had fought the Ottoman Turks. (It was the Seljuk Turks who ruled the Middle East back then). Inaccuracies aside, both writers flirt with the tiresome “clash of civilizations” thesis.

Many of the historical analogies are left unspoken, but they become obvious with just a little imagination. Before going to war over its captive seamen, the US sought the aid of the Holy Order of Redemption of Captives (known as the Redemptionists, Mathurins or Trinitarians)—who were accused of perpetuating the slave trade by buying back hostages. This was an early echo of the contemporary controversy around groups that have similarly intervened in the Sudanese slave trade.

Muslim piracy itself is again a reality off the coast of Somalia, where the US is again backing one faction against another.

The spectacle of the rival Karamanli brothers being adopted by rival factions in the US elites may remind contemporary readers of the CIA promoting Iyad Allawi as Iraq’s leader while the Pentagon was supporting Ahmad Chalabi. And Jefferson’s treatment of Hamet Karamanli’s partisans recalls George HW Bush’s betrayal of the rebel Kurds and Shi’ites in the aftermath of Operation Desert Storm.

Aside from the Marine Corps hymn, the Tripoli affair has found its way into other bits of Americana. The USS Reuben James, which famously galvanized pro-war sentiment when it was torpedoed by the Nazis in 1941, was named for a sailor who was at the siege of Tripoli and is credited with saving Stephen Decatur’s life. More significantly, Francis Scott Key’s first prototype for “The Star-Spangled Banner” was inspired by the Tripoli war, with lines like “And pale beam’d the Crescent, its splendor obscur’d/By the light of the star-bangled flag of our nation” and “the turban’d head bowed to the terrible glare.”

London’s very last lines note the fall of Algiers to the French in 1830, and he hails this victory for European colonialism as a triumph of civilization without a trace of irony. “The terror of Barbary was finally laid to rest,” he happily concludes.

But if these books are, on some level, “really” about contemporary Iraq and Afghanistan, there are some obvious differences. One senses that, whatever its roots, the Barbary states’ jihad had become a largely mercenary affair by Jefferson’s day. As Richard O’Brien, consul to Algiers, remarked: “Money is the God of Algiers and Mahomet their prophet.” The contemporary jihadis, in contrast, are motivated by a genuine rage. And however criminal their tactics and totalitarian their ideology, the reasons for that rage are real and obvious.

It is instructive that neither author mentions the famous line from the US-Tripoli treaty of 1796 which for two centuries has been pointed to by defenders of American secularism: “As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,—and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

From the first days of the republic, there has been a tension between secularism and what some have called “Christian nationalism” in the United States. It is an irony that the latter has the upper hand just as the US has launched a global crusade ostensibly to protect the Western secular tradition from Islamic extremism.

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This review first appeared in the Fall 2006 issue of Middle East Policy Journal
http://www.mepc.org/journal_vol13/0609_Weinberg2.asp

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

Continue ReadingPIRATES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN 

INDIGENOUS ANARCHISM IN BOLIVIA

An Interview with Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui

by Andalusia Knoll, Rustbelt Radio, Pittsburgh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RESOURCES:

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

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

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