CounterVortex

HYDRO-COLONIALISM ADVANCES IN CANADA’S FAR NORTH

Cree Nation Divided Over James Bay Mega-Project

by Bill Weinberg, Indian Country Today

Hydro-Quebec, the provincial utility which is a major energy exporter to the Northeast US, has commenced construction on a new mega-project on Cree lands of the far north James Bay region. The project, which would divert the waters of the Rupert River, has divided the Cree nation. The last chief of the Cree Grand Council, Ted Moses, signed on to the project and aggressively pushed it, but a new and more critical administration has since taken office in Cree country. The chiefs of the three communities to be directly affected by the water diversion are in active opposition.

“People aren’t aware of how it will impact us and our way of life,” says Robert Weistche, chief of Waskaganish, one of the three dissenting communities. “We would lose the majority of the river, because we live at the mouth, at the estuary. In light of global warming, one year there might not be any water at all.”

The project consists of a series of dams, tunnels and canals on the Rupert River, diverting 70% of the flow a hundred miles north into the system of hydro-dams already built in the Eastmain River watershed. The Rupert River diversion is slated to add 888 megawatts of power, flooding 600 square kilometers of traditional Cree lands. New roads, power lines, temporary cities, and two new power stations are to be built in the remote region of boreal forest. The deal which approved the project also includes rights to timber and mineral exploitation in the region.

Canada’s federal authorities approved the project in December after completion of an impact statement by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. But two federal commissioners disagreed with the assessment’s methodology for evaluating methyl mercury contamination in the river. A Sierra Club study also maintains that the impact statement underestimates the amount of mercury that will be released by the new project.

“We depend a lot on the fish, and we’re very concerned about the methyl mercury,” says Chief Weistche.

Mercury contamination was a disastrous result of the so-called “James Bay I” mega-project, which saw construction of a series of dams on La Grande and Eastmain rivers in the 1970s, flooding 11,000 square kilometers. Most of the Eastmain River was then diverted into La Grande’s watershed. James Bay I is already considered the world’s largest hydroelectric complex. But Hydro-Quebec has eventual plans to dam every river flowing into James Bay, a southern extension of Hudson Bay.

In addition to flooding Cree hunting grounds, the James Bay I project poisoned Cree waters, with the increased pressure of the floodplains leaching mercury from the soil. The Cree were barred from consuming fish from the rivers, further eroding their self-sufficiency.

Waskaganish and fellow dissident community Nemska are both along the Rupert River. The third dissenting community is Chisasibi, along La Grande River, downstream of the dams. Many residents there say James Bay I has changed local climate conditions. Chisasibi’s Chief Abraham Rupert, reached by telephone at his office, says: “This is March. All the rivers should be frozen. But I look out my window now they aren’t. The dams increase velocity and turbulence, and this prevents freezing. In the cold months of the year, January and February, we’re lucky if it freezes over for a few weeks now. With this new diversion, the river probably won’t freeze at all.”

Rupert says the failure of the rivers to freeze means more moisture in air during the harsh winters, affecting community health.

But Rupert says the impacts ripple far beyond the river banks. “The dams have had a great impact on the James Bay coast,” he says. “In the fall we used to have thousands of thousands of Canadian geese coming through. The eel grass they fed off grew in abundance along the coast. Now there’s none at all. It took around 20 years for that to happen after the La Grande project.”

Rupert says the Canadian and brant geese have disappeared with the eel grass, and points out that his community has traditionally relied on them for food. Rupert attributes the eel grass decline to increased sediment, caused in turn by the hydro dams causing fluctuating water levels.

Chief Weistche acknowledges that the Cree-Quebec agreement permitting the Rupert River project “bars chiefs speaking against the signed deal. But our communities voted against it, and we have a responsibility to represent our people.”

In early 2002, the Cree Grand Council held a community-by-community referendum approving the project. Of the nine Cree communities, only Chisasibi voted “no.” But the impact study had not then been completed, and critics say the Cree had voted without knowing the project’s full impact.

Under the deal, the Cree will receive $70 million per year for the next 40 years, plus a share in logging and mineral rights for the region.

The agreement—signed February 7, 2002 in Waskaganish, and dubbed Paix des Braves (Peace of the Brave)—stipulates that the Rupert diversion will not be allowed without the full support of local communities. Waskagnish, Chisasibi and Nemaska held their own vote in November 2006, which defeated the project by some 80 percent.

Says Chief Weistche: “This question of acceptability is still up in the air, because three communities are opposed to the project. Yet things are going ahead as planned. The provincial government takes the position that the Cree signed the deal. But people were told, ‘You’re not agreeing to diversion, just to the process, we’ll come back to you after the environmental review.’ That never happened. It was done very swiftly.”

Conceived as an improved successor to the 1975 James Bay Agreement which approved James Bay I after decades of litigation, the 50-year Paix des Braves pact allows for joint jurisdiction between the Quebec government and Cree in the seven municipalities of the James Bay region. Upon its signing, Cree Grand Chief Moses declared: “Quebec becomes a leader in the application of the principles recognized by the United Nations in regards of aboriginal development. Quebec will be able to show that the respect of aboriginals is compatible with her national interest. The federal government should inspire itself with this agreement in its negotiations with Natives across Canada.”

New Grand Chief Matthew Mukash, who took office in 2006, is proposing the development of wind power on Cree land instead of the Rupert diversion, which is slated to actually take place in the summer or fall of 2008.

Weistche supports this proposal. “There are alternatives,” he says. “It’s been estimated we have the potential to generate 100 thousand megawatts from wind power in Cree country.”

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper supports the Rupert River project, and Quebec’s Premier Jean Charest hails the Rupert diversion as the “biggest project of the decade.” However, Quebec, like the Cree Grand Council, has changed government since the Paix des Braves agreement. The pact was negotiated by Premier Bernard Landry of the separatist Parti Québécois.

In this year’s March 27 provincial elections, the PQ came in third place after Charest’s Liberals and the upstart conservative populist Action Democratique. All three parties support the Rupert River project, and all three predicate Quebec’s economic future on continued exports of James Bay hydro-power. But their divergent views on Quebec’s political future have implications for Cree country.

In 1995, the then-ruling PQ held a provincial referendum on secession from Canada, which was narrowly defeated. Just before the 1995 referendum, the Cree held a plebiscite of their own—and overwhelmingly voted to stick with Canada.

It is Canadian federal courts which have upheld the right of the Cree to be consulted in provincial development plans for their land—starting with the key ruling over James Bay I in 1973. Even though it was overturned on appeal, the ruling for the Cree’s aboriginal title that forced Quebec to the table and resulted in the James Bay Agreement. Quebec secession from Ottawa would certainly mean Cree secession from Quebec, and carries the potential for a showdown over the James Bay region.

Whether a separatist Quebec would have the right to take Cree country with it is open to question. The name for the Rupert River agreement was inspired by the 1701 Great Peace of Montreal, also known as “La Paix des Braves,” which ended a century of war between the French-allied Algonquins and the English-allied Iroquois. But the Cree, isolated in the far north, were not involved in this struggle, or a part of Quebec. The James Bay region was then known as Rupert’s Land, established in 1670 as a holding of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Its status as a part of Canada was not settled until Britain passed the Rupert’s Land Act in 1868, the year after Canadian independence. The region was not formally incorporated into Quebec until 1912.

Asked about their stance in the event that the PQ take power again and hold a new referendum, Chief Weistche and Chief Rupert both recall the experience of 1995. “We’d stick with Canada,” Rupert says.

Rupert warns that the in 2001, the Quebec National Assembly established a Municipality of Baie-James (MBJ) in 2001, for white settlers in the region. “The MBJ is expanding on to category 2 and category 3 lands,” Rupert charges. Category 2 lands are those put aside for the use of the Cree village centers, which are considered category 1. Category 3 are the wide expanses of public land between the communities, where the Cree have also traditionally trapped, fished and hunted. Rupert sees the MBJ as a strategy to set a precedent for eroding Cree land title, and notes that the Rupert River project will bring a flood of new settlers into the region.

In Nunavut, the self-governing Inuit homeland carved out of the Northwest Territories in 1999, leaders are also concerned that the Rupert River project to their south will impact their arctic domain, and say they should have been consulted. Nunavut legislator Peter Kattuk says traditional Inuit knowledge was not given enough weight in the federal study approving the Rupert River project. He told the CBC earlier this year that local Inuit have observed changes in ice conditions in Hudson Bay since the James Bay I project was built, which he attributes to disruption in the balance of fresh and salt water inflows.

Chief Rupert emphasizes that he supports development. “We have the technology and know-how to produce energy through wind power. But the cost of this river project is too much for Cree people to bear at this time.”

“They say this power from the north is clean and cheap,” says Chief Weistche. “Well, its not clean because it is impacting the Cree. When you start losing the rivers that we’ve been given the responsibility to take care of for future generations, its not right.

——

A shorter version of this story appeared in the April 24 issue of Indian Country Today http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096414898

RESOURCES:

Grand Council of the Crees
http://www.gcc.ca

Government of Nunavut
http://www.gov.nu.ca

Hydro-Quebec
http://www.hydroquebec.com

One of Canada’s Last Wild Rivers is to be Sacrificed
Sierra Club of Canada, Dec. 20, 2006
http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/media/item.shtml?x=1036

From our weblog:

Inuit petition on climate change rejected
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 18, 2006
/node/2922

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

From our archive:

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

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

AFRICA’S INDIGENOUS PEOPLES

The Fight for Inclusion

by Gumisai Mutume, Africa Renewal

The San, the indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana, won a major victory in December 2006, at the end of the longest and most expensive court proceeding in that country’s history. The High Court ruled that the state had wrongfully evicted them from a reserve four years earlier and that they could return home. Civil society activists around the world hailed the ruling as a historic precedent for the rights of indigenous people everywhere, especially in Africa, where many governments have been reluctant to recognize the concept of indigenous rights.

The Botswana case stemmed from the San’s eviction from the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR), one of the world’s largest reserves, in 2002. In response to a class action suit filed by the San that same year, the court ruled that the government had acted “unconstitutionally” and “unlawfully.” According to Rupert Isaacson of the Indigenous Land Rights Fund, a San advocacy group, “The removals were accompanied by beatings and the destruction of water sources.”

The British colonial government created the reserve, which is 52,800 square kilometers—larger than Switzerland—during the days leading up to Botswana’s independence in 1966. Anthropologists maintained that the San had inhabited the area for at least 40,000 years, but that their numbers were declining at an alarming rate. The colonial administration deemed them to be “endangered‚” and established the CKGR as a refuge.

After independence, the new government in Botswana encouraged the San to move out of the park into state-assisted settlements that were within reach of modern services such as schools and clinics and where they could assimilate into modern society. But many San refused, preferring to remain in a natural habitat where they could continue to live as hunters and gatherers, as they had done for thousands of years. Finally, the government decided to evict 3,000 San from the reserve, setting off the legal action.

Despite the court settlement, the battle is not over. The court ruled that the 189 applicants in the case and their children may return to the reserve. Some activists, such as members of the First Peoples of the Kalahari, contend that the ruling should cover all 50,000 San in the country. But the government of Botswana maintains that other San who wish to return may do so only if they apply for and obtain permits from the state.

Who is Indigenous?

The case of the San in Botswana brings to the fore a delicate question in Africa: who is an indigenous person? Some communities claim indigenous status in Africa today on the grounds that their ancestors resisted the influence of the massive waves of migration of Bantu-speaking agro-pastoralists who migrated from western to southern Africa beginning around 1000 BC. While some were subsumed by those migrations, others maintained their distinct linguistic, cultural and social characteristics, largely as communities of hunters, gatherers and herders.

Later, Arab language and culture spread across northern and eastern Africa. And finally, a number of European countries colonized the continent, bringing their own influences. Those colonial governments often favored the dominant, food-producing populations they found in their new colonies and marginalized the “aboriginal” peoples, as some historians refer to the indigenous people that had settled on the land before the Bantu.

Most governments that came to power following independence have been reluctant to acknowledge claims to rights, especially political rights, on the basis that a particular community regards itself as indigenous. After all, government officials argue, all black Africans consider themselves indigenous to the continent.

Nigel Crawhall, director of the Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC), says the argument for recognizing indigenous rights does not rest on historical precedence. Communities arising from the Bantu migrations, he acknowledges, are just as African as everyone else. “The claims of indigenous peoples need to be seen in the context of their systematic discrimination and marginalization” under contemporary political and economic conditions.

“It was colonialism that brought new economic and political structures that reinforced the power of agricultural peoples over herders and gatherers, and set down the rules of who had access to the state apparatus,” Crawhall explains. This meant that during colonial rule, agricultural peoples had easier—if still very limited—access to education, health care and other social services that were almost completely denied to indigenous communities. When colonialism ended, it was these educated elites that were able to take over the institutions of political and social power.

Bottom of the Hierarchy

At the bottom of the colonial hierarchy were nomadic hunters and gatherers. They often withdrew into less hospitable environments, such as deep forests and deserts. In the worst cases, as in colonial South Africa, recalls Crawhall, European settlers tried to virtually exterminate the San. “They were hunted on horseback, killed with diseases, families were destroyed and children were given to other people as servants,” he told Africa Renewal. Among Africa’s many indigenous peoples are the hunter-gatherer forest peoples (“pygmies”) of central Africa, nomadic pastoralists such as the Maasai and Samburu in East Africa, the San in Southern Africa and the Amazigh people (Berbers) of North Africa and the Sahel.

“We may not all agree on the definition of indigenous or the categorization of communities as indigenous,” notes Angela Khaminwa, a Nairobi-based expert on social inclusion policies. “Regardless of what label we place on ethnic communities that maintain traditional lifestyles and livelihoods, there is no doubt that many of these communities are vulnerable to labor and sexual exploitation.”

Many such groups are struggling with the encroachment of farming into their areas. Others are threatened by conservation policies intended to protect species of animals and plants, but that forbid local communities to hunt or gather. Their languages and ways of life are being eroded. “The hesitancy of governments to address the issue of internal difference full force may be due to a need to promote national cohesion,” says Khaminwa. Giving a community special protection, she adds, might be perceived as political favoritism.

The fears of African governments are not baseless. Insurgents and politicians have all too often dwelt on ethnic differences to mobilize support against their competitors. Claims by different ethnic communities over land and mineral rights, often justified on the basis of historical precedence, have frequently contributed to armed conflict.

“A Legitimate Call”

The UN estimates that there are about 370 million indigenous people in more than 70 countries around the world. They are among the most marginalized people in economic, social and cultural terms. Despite the challenges, the world’s indigenous people have scored notable achievements in their efforts to reclaim rights during the last decade, designated by the UN as the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People (1995-2004). That period saw many changes in Africa, notes Crawhall. One of the most profound was “the rise of an organized civil society representing diverse indigenous peoples from one end of the continent to the other.”

These civil-society groups lobbied the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, a continental body, to recognize that the concept of indigenous peoples is applicable in Africa. In 2003 the commission adopted a report of the commission’s Working Group on Indigenous Populations/Communities, which acknowledged that “certain marginalized groups are discriminated against in particular ways because of their particular culture, mode of production and marginalized position within the state…[a] form of discrimination that other groups within the state do not suffer from. The call of these marginalized groups to protection of their rights is a legitimate call to alleviate this particular form of discrimination.”

The adoption of the report, in theory, subscribed all 53 member governments of the commission to the aims of promoting indigenous rights. But in reality, the majority of countries continue to struggle with putting such concepts into practice, explains Lucy Mulenkei, director of the Indigenous Information Network in Kenya. While a number of African governments argue that recognizing indigenous rights will foster ethnic tensions, “we who are working among indigenous communities still say we want to have these people recognized in order to deal with issues of marginalization and so forth,” she told Africa Renewal.

Under pressure from organizations representing indigenous people, some countries have made significant progress, she notes. Recently, Burundi amended its constitution to guarantee representation in the national assembly to the indigenous Twa people, who live in several countries in Africa’s Great Lakes region. In neighboring Rwanda, the government is working with the main Twa organization to investigate war crimes perpetrated against them during the 1994 genocide, in which an estimated one third of all Twa in that country were killed.

Elsewhere in Africa, Cameroon recognizes “pygmies” and nomadic pastoralists as indigenous people. The government agreed to comply with policies to compensate and resettle indigenous people affected by the construction of the Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, an initiative supported by private investors and the World Bank. Morocco lifted a ban on the teaching of the Amazigh (Berber) language in schools and has set up a national commission to formulate policies on indigenous language and culture.

Contentious Negotiations

The Decade of the World’s Indigenous People also helped activists focus their attention on the creation of a Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the UN and draft a declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples. The Permanent Forum, which held its first meeting in 2002, gathers annually at UN headquarters to give a voice to the world’s indigenous people at an intergovernmental level.

Representatives of indigenous people and the international community first began working on the declaration on the rights of indigenous people in 1985. The draft was completed in 1993 and has been under negotiation since then. On the International Day of the World’s Indigenous People in August 2006, then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described it as the product of “many years of complex and at times contentious negotiations.” The declaration, he said, was “an instrument of historic significance for the advancement of the rights and dignity of the world’s indigenous peoples.”

The expected adoption of the declaration by the UN General Assembly in November of that year, Annan noted, would be a major achievement. But that was not to be. Namibia and other African countries, joined by Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US, blocked the adoption of the agreement.

The Namibian representative to the meeting explained that some of the declaration’s provisions ran counter to the national constitutions of a number of African countries. However, he added, the declaration was of such critical importance that it was only “fair and reasonable” to defer its adoption to allow more consultations.

Kenya’s representative said the declaration contained a number of contradictions. For instance, it talks of “self-determination” as if it were referring to people living under colonial rule. In his country, he said, all citizens enjoyed the right to self-determination. Another African delegate noted that the concept of self-determination was in direct contradiction to efforts to integrate indigenous people into the mainstream of society. The declaration was divisive, he argued, isolating groups and inciting them to establish their own institutions alongside existing central ones.

The General Assembly delayed the adoption of the declaration until its next session, in September 2007. The failure to approve the draft declaration surprised many observers because in June 2006, African and other states had adopted it at the UN Human Rights Council. “We feel very sad about the failure to adopt the declaration,” says Mulenkei, a member of Kenya’s indigenous Maasai community.

Mulenkei notes that many of the concerns that African countries are now bringing up have been debated for a long time, over two decades of negotiations. She believes the real reasons for blocking the resolution are political and economic. Many of the countries opposing the declaration fear that it would give indigenous people the authority to reclaim land and seek compensation for centuries of discrimination.

“All these years that the discussions on the draft declaration have been going on, we barely had African governments participating,” Mulenkei says. “And then at the last minute they come in and say no to the draft declaration. This takes us back many years.” But, she adds, it is now too late for governments to break the momentum. She foresees more progress on indigenous rights in the near future.

——

This story first appeared in the April issue of Africa Renewal, a United Nations publication
http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol21no1/211-indigenous-rights.html

Sidebar:

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
/node/3987

RESOURCES:

Indigenous Peoples of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC)
http://www.ipacc.org.za

African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR)
http://www.achpr.org/

Indigenous Information Network—Kenya
http://www.indigenous-info-kenya.org/

Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII)
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/

ALGERIA: DEMOCRACY CRUMBLING?

Islamist Violence and State Legitimacy

by Kanishk Tharoor, Madrid11.net

In recent months, the specter of Islamist violence has grown across North Africa. After enduring a brutal decade-long civil war, Algeria has seen Salafist radicals regrouping under the ominous banner of “al-Qaeda in the Maghreb” (AQMI). The emergence of AQMI heralded fears of the internationalization of political violence in the region, fueled in large part by the presence of numerous North Africans in the battlefields of Iraq. In Algeria, police and military posts in the interior of the country have come under increased threat in 2007, but on April 11, the AQMI threat hit the heart of the political establishment. Bombs ripped through Algiers killing at least 33 people, in the first such violence witnessed in the capital since the black days of the civil war. The blasts coincided with a number of aborted and successful attacks in Morocco. Violence there has continued after raids into impoverished slum areas of Casablanca prompted reprisal bombings.

The international dimension 1

Islamic terrorism in the region has long been considered a distinctly Algerian phenomenon, confined to the country that denied the Front Islamique de Salut (FIS)—rightfully elected to power in 1992—the right to rule. A civil war ensued in which over 100,000 civilians are thought to have been killed. The Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC)—the group said to have embraced the al-Qaeda cause last year—emerged in the turmoil of the war to fly the Islamist militant banner.

What was once mostly a national insurgency has now taken on the dimensions of the larger “war on terror.” Notably, Moroccan and Algerian officials have reacted very differently to recent developments. Algiers has readily acknowledged the involvement of “external” elements. At a recent rally against terrorism in the capital, Bouguerra Soltani, leader of the Islamist but moderate Mouvement de la Société pour la Paix (MSP), claimed that “we are living through a new genre of terrorism… [T]he executors of the attacks were Algerian, but the goal comes from the outside, from the cadre of international terrorism”.

Meanwhile, Rabat has insisted that its terrorists are “home-grown,” their causes restricted and local, despite evidence to the contrary. With Moroccans deeply involved in the Madrid bombings in Spain, the stern eye of international scrutiny has fallen on Morocco, as local officials scramble to head off the growing threat.

Adding to the muddle, Hassan Hattab, the founder of the GSPC, has disavowed his group’s new links with al-Qaeda and urged a process of political reconciliation between the government and local Islamists. Whom Hattab, nom de guerre “Abu Hamza”, speaks for at this point is uncertain. It also remains unclear to what extent the recent spurt of Islamic violence in the Maghreb derives material support and direction from a wider network of jihadists. Yet it is beyond doubt that the high profile of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of figureheads like Osama bin Laden, has galvanized militants across the region to adopt the symbols and trappings of a trans-national cause.

The international dimension 2

At the same time, the “local” conflicts in the Maghreb have become the stuff of international interest. Murli Deora, India’s petroleum and gas minister, toured Algeria last month in a bid to strengthen energy ties between New Delhi and Algiers. Talks will also touch upon security issues amidst fears over the stability of Algeria’s energy industry.

Russian and Algerian officials are also locked in negotiations that could make Algeria the largest buyer of Russian arms. A deal thought to be in the region of $7 billion is on the table, and would provide Algeria with new batches of fighter and bomber jets, tanks and air-defense systems.

Algiers’ growing strategic ties with the likes of Russia and India come at a time of growing domestic dissatisfaction with European policy on the Maghreb. Algerians and Moroccans resent the EU’s view of their countries as frontlines against terror, where violence welling up from the Sahel and the dusty interior of North Africa must be confined lest it spill across the Mediterranean. France, the former colonial master of the Maghreb, has grown particularly nervous about the re-emergence of the region’s Islamist militants. North African countries are also being increasingly relied upon to hold back the tide of African immigration, making them key parts of Europe’s regional security policy. Such a task is likely to become harder in the coming years unless significant work is done to mitigate the effects of climate change and growing economic discrepancies in sub-Saharan Africa.

The threat to democracy

Algeria’s human rights record has never been sparkling, particularly during the course of the civil war in the late 1980s and 1990s that saw the notorious intelligence service, the Département de Renseignement et de la Securité (DRS), cut its teeth in authoritarian control. The imperatives of safeguarding Europe’s frontier and Russian military support will heap further pressure on Algeria’s democratic institutions, cowed as they are by the robust voice of the army.

Algeria does boast a lively domestic press and a plethora of parties that operate with more than a modicum of freedom. In the wake of the April attacks, Algiers witnessed Madrid-style demonstrations against terrorism, urging civic action and a commitment to the democratic process. Politicians further encouraged participation in the impending May 17 elections as a “response” to the bombs and threats of the Islamist menace. The continuing heavy-handed activities of the DRS, like the disappearance of the Islamic student Abdelaziz Zoubida, will invariably undermine the legitimacy of such democratic pretensions, potentially spinning the Maghreb into further chaos.

——

This article first ran April 19 on Madrid11.net
http://www.madrid11.net/articles/algeria190407

RESISTING THE NEW EURO-MISSILES

Czech Dissidents Stand Up Again—This Time to the Pentagon!

by Gwendolyn Albert, WW4 REPORT

In violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the and commitments made in the year 2000 at the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, the United States is planning to expand its missile shield defenses—a system to target potential incoming missiles and shoot them down en route—to cover any potential missiles fired from the Middle East, seen as a growing threat due to Iran’s reported pursuit of ballistic missile technology.

The plan is to place 10 interceptor rockets in the northwestern town of Koszalin in Poland, and a radar base in the Brdy district southwest of Prague in the Czech Republic to track any incoming missiles. Iran reportedly is in possession of medium-range missiles now which could reach Israel or Turkey, and the US claims Iran could possess an ICBM by 2015. The cost of this European expansion of the missile defense shield is estimated at $3.5 billion. Around 200 US personnel, both military and civilian, are expected to work at the Czech base, which would be the first of its kind in Europe.

Since the idea of a missile defense shield was first proposed during the Reagan administration, the US has spent approximately $110 billion developing it. In response to the reported threat from North Korea, the US has already set up two sets of missile interceptors at Ft. Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California—again in violation of international non-proliferation agreements—to defend against incoming missiles from that country.

Critics of the effort say it will not work: In 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a 76-page report entitled “Technical Realities” which found “no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack.”

Undaunted, the Bush administration has also announced plans to place interceptors—missiles to shoot down other missiles—not on earth, but in orbit, reviving and expanding a proposal which prompted critics of the plan two decades ago to nickname it “Star Wars.” This expansion could cost as much as $200 billion. The militarization of space is obviously fraught with ethical and political problems which will increase existing tensions in an unstable world and accelerate the arms race.

Back to Wenceslas Square

The first rumblings of dissent against the plan to locate the US anti-missile radar base in the Czech Republic came from two segments of civil society which can in no way be described as having “popular” appeal in this country: the tiny peace movement (whose efforts to protest the Iraq war are consistently undermined by the Czech Communist Party driving away potential centrist supporters) and the slightly more institutionalized (but still small) women’s movement. These two groups were ahead of the game on this issue years ago, when rumors of the plans for the US base first surfaced, and their activism has spurred what has become a genuinely popular, nationwide wave of protest, “NE zakladnam” (“No to Bases”), complete with petition drives and demonstrations all over the country. Recent public opinion polls show more than 60 % of the country is opposed to a US anti-missile radar base on Czech territory.

May 26, 2007: yet another demonstration against the base is called for 3 PM on Wenceslas Square in the capital Prague, site of the famous demonstrations that accompanied the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Two thousand people turn out; in Poland, a similar demonstration draws one thousand people in the capital Warsaw. The “NE zakladnam” poster at the Prague protest reads “David vs. Goliath” and makes a pun on the similarity between the words “radar” and “zrada”—meaning treachery, betrayal, treason. Banners carried at the demonstrations often read: “1938 – Munich, 1968 – the Kremlin, 2006 – No more decisions about us without us!” The movement is not only protesting the planned base, but is calling for a nationwide referendum on the issue. Opinion polls show that as many as 73% of the Czech public agree a referendum should be held.

“Referendum” is a touchy word in this part of the world. Many here still remember Vaclav Havel’s hopeful prediction, prior to his political career, that the fall of the Berlin Wall would herald the dismantling of not only the Warsaw Pact, but also of NATO; that vision of a “peace dividend” and a nuclear weapons-free Europe has yet to be realized. As for including the public in decisions, referenda were never held on two of the largest decisions to ever affect this country, the decision to divide Czechoslovakia into two separate states and the decision to join NATO. A referendum on EU membership was held under the auspices of what was then a center-left government, and the Social Democrats, currently in opposition, are supporting the call for a referendum on the base issue as well.

One of the reasons the base strikes such a nerve with people here, besides their visceral dislike of the idea of foreign troops in a place that has had its fill of military occupation, is that it touches on the thorny issue of “sovereignty,” a concept which is not the territory of the right wing alone but resonates with the nationalism that is common currency across the political spectrum here. The issue is also providing a forum for Czech society to debate how it understands the events of the last twenty years of “transition,” as well as a test of the responsiveness of Czech democracy.

Czech critics of the radar base argue that there is no difference between a radar base and a missile base, and claim the base could be used offensively as well as defensively, all assurances notwithstanding. They say that by permitting the US base, the Czech Republic would simply become an instrument of America’s unilateral foreign policy, its attempt at military domination of the globe from space, and its “war on terror.” They argue that NATO membership does not require them to allow a US base to be located in the country, and finally, that the base will not only not make the Czech Republic more secure, it may actually make the country more of a target.

They also stress that the Czech authorities will have no right to monitor the US base as to its actual use once it is installed. Whether most opponents of the base genuinely identify with all these arguments is an open question; what is clear is that most people reject the idea because the decision to begin negotiations on the plan was made without their input. The question of whether to invite the US base in was never even raised during last year’s parliamentary election campaign.

The current right-wing government was only formed after an embarrassing post-election wrangling period of more than half a year, and it has a tenuous grip on power at best. The radar issue is not its only foreign policy challenge, but it is definitely the one that has prompted the most domestic debate and action. As on many other issues, the government has been its own worst enemy, with Czech PM Topolanek impatiently scoffing at the idea that the base is anything but a done deal. Indeed, attendance at a demonstration on the issue in Prague this winter was probably given an extra boost by the attempt of the (right-wing) Prague City Hall to “ban” the gathering, claiming it would “disrupt traffic.”

Technically the city has no powers to “ban” public gatherings; no official “permission” is required to assemble in public, just notification to the authorities of the planned location and route of the event. But the city can send police to disperse a gathering deemed unsafe, and the Czech media still use the term “ban” to describe the authorities’ expression of disagreement with certain gatherings. Turnout was higher than expected – the press reported 500 people gathered, but those attending estimated numbers at 2,000 – and the event took place without incident.

Who is the Enemy?

The mayors of 23 communities surrounding the military training area in Brdy, the planned site of the base, have written directly to the US Congress to express their opposition. Since the calls for a national referendum have so far gone unheeded, some local governments have held their own plebiscites on the matter, such as the village of Trokavec, located a mere two kilometers from the planned site. In that plebiscite 70 people voted against the radar, one voted in favor, and 16 eligible voters did not participate. Three more villages plan to hold plebiscites on the issue on June 2 in the run-up to President Bush’s planned visit here.

The votes are symbolic and have no legal effect, but they did prompt the US to send Gerald C. Augeri, assistant head of MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, to visit the mayors and address their concerns. among its other activities, the Lincoln Lab runs an R&D program developing sensor systems for use in the missile defense shield program. Augeri told local politicians that the radar station would not affect electronic devices or mobile phones and would be placed at least four kilometers from the nearest houses.

Czech Greenpeace has also been active on the issue, trying to leverage the fact that Czech Foreign Minister Schwarzenberg ran on the Green Party ticket and should theoretically be much more susceptible to pressure by environmentalists than if he were from any other party in the governing coalition. Czech Greenpeace executive director Jiru Tutter issued a sharp critique of the text of the diplomatic note between the USA and Czech Republic proposing terms for the base agreement, reminding the foreign minister that any foreign army to be stationed on Czech territory for longer than 60 days must, according to Article 43 of the Czech Constitution, receive the support of parliament. Certain terms used by the USA in the note seemed to be an attempt to help the Czech government try to circumvent this requirement, but that did not wash for long. As a result of all this public pressure, the Czech foreign affairs and defense ministries announced on May 22 that they will submit their own counterproposal to Washington’s initial proposal within two months, and that the counterproposal would outline what sorts of “services” the US should provide in exchange for the base being located here.

Some Czech political commentators have noted that the country’s stance on the issue has been complicated by the fact that the government does not present a clear (or even a unified) foreign policy. Czech Foreign Minister Schwarzenberg is perceived as a figurehead, with most analysts saying the foreign policy show is really being run by deputy PM for European affairs Alexander Vondra of the governing Civic Democratic Party (ODS), a former Czech ambassador to the US who is the main person reporting on the progress of the Czech negotiations to parliament.

Vondra has spoken of a potential rejection of the base in catastrophic terms, claiming it could lead to Prague breaking its ties with NATO, which would in turn require the reintroduction of compulsory military service in the Czech Republic. Compulsory service was abolished in 2005. Czech Defense Minister Vlasta Parkanova, another cabinet member from a minority party to have been more or less sidelined by Vondra’s advocacy of the base, immediately contradicted his analysis.

Even though the missile defense shield is a US plan (not a NATO one), Washington claims the 26 NATO allies will all receive protection under the shield. But Germany expressed concern in April that Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania would actually be left out of the shield’s protective radius. The US move means debate at NATO about its own plans for missile interception is now on the front burner, and the NATO countries have held high-level talks with Russia—which has expressed its objection in no uncertain terms.

Czech Defense Ministry officials have repeatedly insisted that the base is not intended for use against Russia or China, as the communists contend, and that the technical parameters of its configuration and geographical location mean it can only be used to detect potential missiles from the Middle East. This contention is disputed by Russia, which claims that Iranian, North Korean or Syrian rockets would probably not go across Central Europe on their way to the US, but that a radar station in the Czech Republic would be able to monitor rocket installations in central Russia and the Russian Northern Fleet.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to train his missiles on the Czech Republic and Poland should they host the bases coverage in both the Czech press and global media, as has the maneuvers of US, EU and NATO diplomats. But criticism from another Russian source has received surprisingly little coverage. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev made a statement in Kaliningrad on April 12, bluntly calling the planned US bases in the Czech Republic and Poland part of America’s plan to “control Europe.”

Certainly Germany, which currently holds the EU presidency, has not expressed the enthusiasm for the US plans that the UK has, but Germany has also not tried to raise the issue in NATO—which takes the position that the question is a purely bilateral one between the US and the countries concerned. Elsewhere in Europe, the issue was a key topic during the recent presidential elections in France, with the eventual right-wing victor Sarkozy expressing himself during the election campaign as follows: “It is rather disturbing, in my opinion, that the US is not discussing this anti-missile defense system with our European partners. I do not understand how anyone can say that this is simply a problem for the Czech Republic and Poland, and not a problem for Europe, unless we want to abandon our ambitions for a European defense policy.” At the European Parliament, Social Democratic MEPs from Austria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Poland have also written to the US Congress expressing the socialist faction’s view that the plan could “divide the international community and therefore seriously threaten efforts to restrict the further spread of weapons of mass destruction.” Austrian President Heinz Fischer has also expressed opposition to the plan.

What are the Chances?

What of the 30 % of the Czech Republic that supports the base, according to polls? Protests are sometimes attended by an iconoclast or two holding the American flag in staunch support of the US base. Their argument runs thus: the Americans saved us last time (meaning WWII), and the rest of you will be crying for them to come save us again sooner or later, this time from Iran, or North Korea, or Syria. The US helped us end communism and we are allies again at long last, so let their radar in. One group even held a demonstration in favor of locating missiles as well as radar on Czech territory, but theirs is clearly a minority opinion. Polls do show that 56% of the Czech public believe the country should defend itself against a possible missile attack-but on its own, without the assistance of the global superpower.

The Defense Ministry says that the Czech Republic is in fact already within range of the existing missile capability of the countries from which the threat is presumed to come, but has tried to downplay the critics’ assertion that this is precisely why building such a target on Czech territory is undesirable. They have also claimed an 80% effectiveness rate for the system in the Czech media—a remarkable claim to anyone who has followed the debate on the system in the US, where the efficacy of this entire idea has been questioned for decades now. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said last fall that the Pentagon had not yet performed operational testing with convincing enough results that the system would actually work when needed.

The Czech Defense Ministry website links to a fairly wide range of media coverage of the issue, including a piece on the actual equipment concerned, which is to be relocated from the Kwajalein atoll in the Pacific—a move which is also causing some controversy there. A poll in May 2007 for the Polish daily Rceczpospolita reported two-thirds of Poles also believe the decision to install the missile base in their country should be preceded by a national referendum. Fifty-one percent said they opposed the base, while 30% were in favor, a ratio similar to the Czech statistics. Plans are also afoot to locate another US radar base for the missile shield in the Caucasus.

The US has asked that the Czech Republic to make its final decision by next year, and that will depend on parliament. It is unclear at this time how the lower house will vote. The US Congress is also key, as it controls the funding for the plan, and members of the House Armed Services Committee are reluctant to commit funds without a clear, formal agreement with the Czech Republic and Poland and an expression of full support from NATO. The committee has already cut the Pentagon’s request for funds for the European part of the system by more than half, citing concerns that the technology is not ready, but the budget could still be restored later by the appropriations committee. If approved, the base would begin operations in 2011.

——

Gwendolyn Albert, a US citizen, is a permanent resident of the Czech Republic, a member of the Czech Government Human Rights Council representing civil society, and Director of the Women’s Initiatives Network at the Peacework Development Fund.

http://www.peacework.org

RESOURCES:

Technical Realities: An Analysis of the 2004 Deployment of a US National Missile Defense System
Union of Concerned Scientists, 2004
http://www.ucsusa.org/…

Czech Ministry of Defense — Information Campaign on Missile Defense
http://www.army.cz/scripts/detail.php?id=8798

From our weblog:

Putin: US missile shield threatens stability
WW4 REPORT, April 28, 2007
/node/3702

Syria: fortified missile city?
WW4 REPORT, April 30, 2007
/node/3724

From our archive:

Federal court: ABM treaty dead
WW4 REPORT, Jan. 13, 2003
/static/68.html#nuke1

Greenland Inuit protest “Star Wars” plans
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 30, 2002
/static/66.html#nuke6

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

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

HOPE AND HORROR IN SIERRA LEONE

BOOK REVIEW

HOW DE BODY?
One Man’s Terrifying Journey Through an African War
by Teun Voeten St. Martins Press, 2002

by Bill Weinberg

Belgium-based Dutch photojournalist Teun Voeten was already a veteran of the bloodbaths in Bosnia, Rwanda, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Colombia when he arrived in the West African nation of Sierra Leone in February 1998. A particularly brutal guerilla army, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), had been terrorizing Sierra Leone since 1991, and Voeten was there to photograph demobilized child soldiers who had been abducted and forced to fight for the rebels. At first, he is almost cynical about the whole ghastly affair, as if jaded to the point of complacency—the cliché of the hardbitten war journalist.

But shortly after his arrival, a ceasefire ended as the country was invaded by a multi-national intervention force led by Nigeria. RUF and government troops alike went on a rampage of looting and senseless killing, plundering what they could before Nigerian forces seized the country. As a European journalist, Voeten was an obvious target. He was forced to flee into the bush before he finally escaped across the border to Guinea weeks later. Voeten quickly loses his swagger after a few brushes with death. He was humbled by the selflessness of locals who put their lives on the line to help him survive, hiding him from the rebels, feeding and housing him. Voeten certainly wouldn’t have made it without the bravery and savvy of his colleague, local BBC correspondent Eddie Smith. When Voeten was safely back home in Brussels, Smith would be killed in a rebel ambush.

Reckoning with the experience sent Voeten back to Sierra Leone a year later—partly to deliver funds to a friend’s school project. It also drove him to dissect and understand the conflict, and how it has frayed Sierra Leone’s social fabric. “How de body?” is the common greeting in Krio, Sierra Leone’s creole tongue—which takes on a hideous irony in light of the rebels’ habit of ritual amputation of their victims. “Jamba” (marijuana) didn’t seem to mellow out these killers, who were also hootched up on amphetamines, heroin and worse stuff—the better to brainwash press-ganged pre-adolescents. As numerous war victims bitterly complained to Voeten, the Sierra Leone violence was even worse than that of Bosnia and Kosovo—yet the world paid little attention.

For all his vivid depictions of on-the-ground brutality, Voeten doesn’t overlook the international context for a near-forgotten war in a paradoxically impoverished but resource-rich part of Africa. His investigations also took him back to Belgium, where he interviewed sleazy Antwerp diamond merchants who funded the rebels and laundered their “conflict diamonds.” He documents how the British, meanwhile, snuck around an official embargo to sell arms to the government forces, who were hardly less brutal than the rebels. As in so many countries in Africa and the global south, Sierra Leone’s people were caught between hostile forces backed by foreign powers for their own ends.

How de Body?, illustrated with Voeten’s own photos, is a testament to the heroism of ordinary people around the world who struggle to keep alive a sense of simple humanity in wars that grind on outside the global media spotlight—portrayed only as decontextualized atrocity pornography, if at all. Voeten’s journeys through Sierra Leone’s nightmares shed light where too many other journalists have only seen hearts of darkness.

CANCUN: GLOBOPHOBES KICK CORPORATE ASS!

Global South and Anti-Corporate Activists Clinch Major Victory at Cancun WTO Summit

by Soren Ambrose

The fifth World Trade Organization ministerial conference has ended in Cancun, Mexico, and the measure of the organization’s worth can again be seen by the fact that for the majority of its member countries (as well as the non-governmental organizations and street protesters who plague it), the outcome–no agreement whatsoever–was precisely the greatest triumph they could have hoped for. When the day will come that governments begin to question the point of remaining in an organization they are mostly seeking to stall is an open question, but it certainly seemed to draw much closer in Cancun.

As at other international summits, Cancun had an “inside” and an “outside”–that is, opponents of the institution were to be found both in street protests and inside the meeting hall, where they attempted to counter the full-time media spinners employed by the wealthy governments. And as at the November 1999 protests in Seattle, these two forces–together with dissatisfied delegations from developing countries–all share credit for preventing the WTO from reaching an agreement. The greatest part, however, was played by the blind arrogance of the imperialist-capitalist nexus formed by the governments of the United States, Canada, Japan and the European Union.

Opponents of the WTO came from at least 40 countries. The numbers were smaller than some predicted–particularly those influenced by the inflated-expectations game now a familiar part of local authorities’ fear-as-fundraising tactics at each “globalization” gathering. Many articles had predicted 50,000 protesters, with one or two simply doubling that number to hype it even more. But organizers in Mexico always knew that such numbers were unlikely to materialize in Cancun, which was chosen for the summit because of the difficulty of organizing protests there. Indeed, the city itself is largely a product of contemporary globalization: the year-round inhabitants are mostly internal migrants drawn by the approximately 100 resort hotels catering to foreign tourists that have popped up in the last 30 years along the beautiful Caribbean coast. The workers often receive daily wages roughly equivalent to the price charged for two 20-ounce bottles of water in the Hyatt, Marriott, or Ritz Carlton resorts, and the city of Cancun–as distinct from the 21-kilometer strip of land where the bulk of the hotels stand–is dominated by districts with limited or no public services such as water. Gazing upon huge swimming pools lined up along the Gulf of Mexico must provoke vertigo for those who commute every day from the poorest parts of Cancun.

There were probably about 10,000 people at the height of the protests, maybe a few more. And despite the worldwide call for solidarity actions on September 13 (Saturday), the peak of the protests actually came earlier, on Wednesday, September 10. That was the day reserved for the peasants and farmers, or campesinos. Among the speeches that started the day were those recorded by two prominent Zapatista leaders and played for the assembled campesinos and international activists. Commandante Esther issued a hard-hitting message that focussed on gender relations, both global and local–which is to say both within the capitalist world and the revolutionary movements like the Zapatistas. Subcommandante Marcos’s statement was a more generic welcome to activists from around the world to southern Mexico, one which put a sort of official seal of Zapatista approval on the actions in the Yucatan peninsula.

Led by Via Campesina, the international network of small-scale agricultural producers, Wednesday’s march was both spirited and somber, conscious of the gravity of the issues of agricultural subsidies, which were center-stage at summit, for small farmers around the world. A contingent of nearly 200 farmers came from South Korea, along with some members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

The march on Wednesday had several contingents. The Mexican and Latin American campesinos generally sought to avoid direct confrontation with the authorities. But Mexican students, many of them masked, were more daring. And the Korean delegation seemed the most determined of all, though the language barrier made it difficult to know exactly what was in the offing. The Koreans ended up surprising the other marchers by mounting a charge against the barricade erected some 10 kilometers from the convention center where the conference was going on. The charge–with a battering ram reported to look like a large dragon–and attempted scaling of the fence, heightened the intensity of the action. It was at that point that a Korean farmer named Lee Kyun-Hae climbed to the highest reachable point with a sign reading “WTO Kills Farmers” and stabbed himself in the chest, performing a “self-immolation,” or honor suicide. Such deaths have become common among small-scale farmers in Asia, and even the US, when they find they cannot live through their farming work.

Lee’s death, which did not become general knowledge for some hours, galvanized the opponents of the WTO. Most did not know what the “proper” reaction was, but as it emerged that Lee had been dogging the WTO for several years, it became clear that this former head of a farmers’ union was not acting out of whim, but out of a determination formed over several years. Within the next 24 hours, he became the focal point for explaining the gravity of the issues being discussed, especially on agriculture.

Some of the campesinos came from Chiapas, which is relatively nearby. Many of them were known Zapatista sympathizers, and some of them were willing to identify themselves as such, including at an “encuentro” which was largely attended by people committed to solidarity with the Zapatista movement.

The march that was more widely publicized–Saturday’s–actually ended up being smaller than Wednesday’s, largely because most of the campesinos who had participated in the first action could not afford to stay so long in Cancun. It was, however, better organized–an expression of full solidarity between students and farmers, gringos and Mexicans. It culminated in a police barrier being taken down, but the action was largely symbolic, as the police did not intervene, and had subsequent barriers to ensure that no protesters could get close to the convention center.

The Mexican police were remarkably reserved most of the time in Cancun. They clearly had been instructed to let protesters blow off steam rather than confront them directly. Some incidents of violence did occur, however–though on several occasions it was introduced by activists throwing rocks. That inspired retaliation by the authorities, with at least 20 or so injured, and at least one taken to the local hospital.

While the authorities were able to close down the road connecting downtown Cancun to the hotel zone, and did so intermittently, they did not actually prohibit anyone from moving around the hotel zone. Doing so would have meant preventing hotel employees and tourists from getting to the restaurants and other attractions, essentially shutting down the tourist trade that constitutes Mexico’s most lucrative source of foreign exchange, already hit hard by cancellations because of the WTO meeting. At times of tension the authorities stopped all vehicles except those contracted to the WTO, boarding public buses and questioning occupants of taxis and private cars to check identification and suspicious objects. If anyone was detained in the process, we did not hear about it. By adopting innocuous poses, activists were thus able to get near the convention center to mount small street actions. And among the approximately 1,000 non-governmental organizations and several hundred media outlets accredited to the meetings, were many activists with access to parts of the convention center willing to make some noise. In fact, media stunts took place several times a day in the area closest to the press center.

For these smaller actions inside the hotel zone and near the convention center, the “hands-off” policy seemed to be the norm for the authorities–with the notable exception of a vigil held by Mexican students, who were forced out of the street and onto the sidewalk. A number of other actions, including a street take-over just outside the convention center that lasted nearly two hours, were resolved by negotiations and patience. In that way the “inside” actions were allowed to have their dramatic impact. They too were vital in setting a tone, a “buzz,” for journalists and delegates alike.

The ultimate collapse of the Cancun talks will likely be looked back upon as a momentous event. It represents the first time that a large number of developing countries–including Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, and reportedly Turkey and Indonesia–held firm and united to a position rejecting the demands of the United States and European Union. More than any single bargaining position, the important thing was the very existence of the so-called Group of 21, which first met in late August in Geneva. The commitments to unity made at a Tuesday press conference will be pledges that these Southern governments can and should be held accountable to.

With the failure of Cancun, countries in Latin America and throughout the world will next have to resist the US push for bilateral and regional trade treaties, such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and the Central American Free Trade Area (CAFTA). If the refusal to continue being bullied by the wealthy countries holds through the Miami ministerial of the FTAA in November, then Cancun may look more and more like an historic turning point, at which the current hyper-exploitative version of globalization was kicked to the curb, and at which developing countries began to unite forces to take control of their destinies.

Around the US, Canada, the Caribbean and Latin America, activists are now making plans now to be in Miami for the FTAA ministerial, on November 20 and 21, in Miami. If the wealthy countries are again denied the submission of the developing world, Cancun may well be viewed as a significant turning point in the history of North-South economic relations–the moment when the South stopped acquiescing to the clout of the North.

Soren Ambrose is a policy analyst with the 50 Years Is Enough Network

MORE CANCUN NEWS

MEXICO DENIES VISAS TO GLOBAL ACTIVISTS
The National Union of Regional Autonomous Campesino Organizations (UNORCA), the Mexican campesino group that took the lead in organizing the Cancun peasant contingent, issued a formal protest to the Mexican government after visas were denied to 38 peasant leaders from Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, India, Bangladesh, Thailand and Malaysia. Among those denied entry for the protests was the Bolivian indigenous campesino leader and national legislator Evo Morales. (La Jornada, Sept. 6)

GREENPEACE BLOCKS GM CORN AT VERACRUZ
On Sept. 12, Greenpeace activists blocked the freighter Ikan Altamira from entering Veracruz harbor for 13 hours. The freighter was delivering 40,000 tons of genetically modified corn from New Orleans. It finally reached the Veracruz port with a Mexican Navy escort. Greenpeace says the imports violate the International Protocol on Biosecurity. Mexico says it may prosecute the activists for interfering with international shipping. (La Jornada, Sept. 14)

September, 2003 World War 3 Report

INDIGENOUS OPPOSITION TO PUEBLA-PANAMA PLAN FACES REPRESSION

by Bill Weinberg

On July 21, leaders of indigenous, campesino and grassroots organizations from throughout the Central American nations and Mexico gathered in Tegucigalpa, capital of Honduras, for the Mesoamerican Forum, fourth in a series of meetings aimed at defending ecological culture throughout the isthmus–and opposing the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP), an isthmus-wide mega-development scheme aggressively promoted by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Meanwhile, in the Honduran countryside, three peasant ecologist leaders were assassinated just days before the Forum opened–casting the issues addressed at the meeting in a stark light.

In the southern province of La Paz, two Lenca Indian campesinos involved in an occupation of contested lands were killed in a dawn attack by presumed hired gunmen of a local landlord. In northern and remote Olancho province, a peasant leader who had been opposing illegal timber exploitation on communal lands was cut down at his home by an unknown pistolero. A banner above the check-in desk at the Forum read REMEMBER THE MARTYRS OF LA PAZ AND OLANCHO.

There was an irony that the Forum was held in a city dominated by the ubiquitous icons of corporate culture–Burger King, McDonalds, Pizza Hut. In contrast, the banner above the stage at Tegucigalpa´s Universidad Pedagogica, where the Forum was held, pictured a traditional Maya Indian design of a maize god.

The first Mesoamerican Forum was held in Spring 2001 in Tapachula, Chiapas, after the IDB and Mexican President Vicente Fox announced the PPP, which calls for new hydro-electric projects, trans-isthmus trade routes and industrial zones. The Forum convened again in Fall 2001 in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala; and in July 2002 Managua, Nicaragua. At the Tegucigalpa meeting, the agenda was topped by the issues of breakneck resource exploitation privatization of national resources and infastructure–especially water. A water privatization law currently pending in the Honduran national legislature would mandate that local municipalities allow private contracts to run their water systems. Honduras´ second city, San Pedro Sula, already has such a contract with an Italian firm.

Such privatization moves are IDB and World Bank prescriptions–but, as representatives from throughout the Mesoamerican subcontinent pointed out, they are taking place in atmosphere of lawlessness, in which public oversight is meaningless and opponents are targetted for assassination.

“ANOTHER MESOAMERICA IS POSSIBLE”

A featured speaker at the Forum was Mexican writer Armando Batra, author of The Heirs of Zapata, a study of post-revolutionary Mexican campesino movements, who called the PPP an example of “savage capitalism,” and claimed that it is dividing Mexico. “It serves the interests of the northern, white part of the country which is a neighbor to the US, and condemns to poverty the southern, indigenous part which is a neighbor to Guatemala.” But, echoing a frequent slogan at the Forum, he asserted that “another Mesoamerica is possible.” As an alternative development model, he called for “rebuilding the links between rural and urban sectors, with agricultural production for internal consumption based on local cooperatives.”

Indigenous representatives from Guatemala at the Forum included opponents of the planned massive hydro-electic project on the Usumacinta River, which forms the border between Guatemala and Mexico. Juan Ixbalan of Guatemala´s National Indigenous and Campesino Coordinator (CONIC) called the IDB-backed project, which would flood vast areas of rainforest, “a new conquest of Maya territory.”

Even as technocrats portray privatization and mega-development proposals as part of an inevitable march towards democracy and modernization, ghosts from Central America´s violent recent past are returning to haunt the isthmus. Guatemalan indigenous leaders are currently preparing a case against former military dictator–and current presidential candidate-Rios Montt on genocide charges for his 1980s “scorched-earth” campaign against Maya Indians. The indigenous-led Justice & Reconcilation Association (AJR)is coordinating witnesses to 1980s massacres from 24 communities in the departments of Quiche, Huehuetenango, Chimaltenango and Alta Verapaz. Said Neela Ghoshal, a New York City shcoolteacher who recently served as a human rights observer with the AJR and attended the Forum: “The Guatemalan courts probably won´t hear the case, so they will have to go to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. But they are really committed to seeking justice.”

On July 25, just days after the Forum ended, violent riots rocked Guatemala City as supporters of Rios Montt–mostly former members of his paramilitary “civil patrols”–took to the streets to protest a court ruling that barred his candidacy under a law blocking former coup leaders from the presidency. The protesters erected barricades of burning tires and attacked random pedestrians, leaving one television reporter dead of heart failure. Five days after the riots, Guatemala´s top Constitutional Court would overturn the ruling, allowing the ex-dictator´s presidential campaign to proceed. US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher quickly assured that US relations with Guatemala would not be disrupted if Rios Montt is elected.

Another speaker at the Forum, Raul Moreno of El Salvador, representing the rural development group Sinti Techan (Nahuatl for “maize for the people”) condemned the pending Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), asserting that these agreements would “modify the judicial order, subordinating the labor code, environmental laws and human rights. The PPP is not neutral–it benefits the US and its giant corporations. The PPP is not reformable.” Nor, he asserted, is it inevitable. “We can resist. Electricity and the national health system remain public in Costa Rica, despite the desire of the government and the World Trade Organization to privatize, because the people don´t want it.”

Magda Lanuza of Nicaragua´s International Study Center noted that plans for water privatization are even more advanced in her country than in Honduras. Several Nicaraguan departments–including Leon, Chinandega, Jinotega and Matagalpa–already have private contracts to manage their water systems with such firms as the French water giant Suez (whose contracts with local governments in South Africa have won international criticism as soaring water rates have left many poor communities without access). Now, as in Honduras, the water privatization program is to be instated nationwide–as a condition of a loan from the IDB. But Magda predicts a political battle. “Local communities are prepared to defend their water resources,” she says. “They understand that water is life.”

Hydro-energy is also being privatized in Nicaragua. The private firm Hydrogesa has won a contract to manage the Apenas dam in Jinotega, and the scandal-ridden Enron actually bid on it in 2002. But following public protest, the contract now suspended pending a national law on water privatization. Local Matagalpa Indians were relocated when the project was first built in 1960s, and now oppose its privatiztion.

HEIRS OF LEMPIRA STRUGGLE FOR THE LAND

The two Lenca Indians killed at La Paz, Fabian Gonzalez and Santos Carrillo, were part of a land occupation led by the National Center of Rural Workers (CNTC), one of the largest campesino unions in Honduras. The killers opened fire with AK-47 rifles in dawn attack on their encampment July 19. In an eerie coincidence, the very next day, July 20, is Dia de Lempira, a national holiday commemorating the death in 1536 of the Lenca warrior who resisted the conquistador Francisco Montejo. The land in question had been first occupied in 1985, under a provision of the Honduran agrarian reform law allowing peasants to move on to unused private lands, and begin a process for their eventual expropriation and title transfer to the campesinos. But the agrarian reform law has now been almost completely repealed in Honduras.

Lenca leader Berta Caceres notes an irony that Lempira has become a symbol of national pride even as Lenca land rights and culture have been lost to modernization. “The indigenous context has been invisible in Honduras for too long,” she says. “But there has been a new process of struggle since the 500 Years of Resistance campaign in 1992 and the Zapatista revolt in Chiapas in 1994. We are organzing to defend Lenca territory.”

Caceres is the coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), representing 47 communities in the Lenca heartland of La Paz, Intibuca and Lempira departments. It was founded in 1993, and has been at the forefront of a Lenca cultural and political renaissance. After the Forum, I visited COPINH´s modest office in the village of Itibuca.

The Lenca are among the northernmost Chibcha Indian groups, whose cultual sphere begins just south of that of the Maya and extends into South America. Their language only survives in some 45 words–mostly referring to animals and places, such as the local Sierra de Puca Opalaca, which means “high mountain” in Lenca. They have also adopted Nahuatl, the lingua franca of the Aztec-Maya cultural sphere, to communicate with neighboring peoples.

Since 1993, COPINH has organized a series of 4,000-strong “indigneous pilgrimages” to local sacred sites associated with saints and virgins (and, earlier, with Lenca deities and earth-spirits)–such as the Virgin of Lourdes in Ilama, Santa Barbara department, and the Virgin of Remedios in Tomala, Lempira. Caceres says these pilgrimages “linked the spiritual and cultural traditions of the Lenca with our political demands.” COPINH has also resorted to more militant tactics, such the 1993 occupation of local timber mills to protest deforestation.

COPINH´s demands have won some results–such as the redrawing of municpal borders to give local Lenca communities legal contol over their territories. In 1994, the first new municipality was created, San Francisco Opalaca in Intibua department–the only municipality in the country where all land is collectively owned and managed by an indigenous land council. Six other new municipalities followed in the ensuing years.

Under the Honduran agrarian reform, some national lands were transfred to peasant collectives, which held them privately, but not for resale. Under the 1992 Agrarian Modernization Law–known as the “contra-reforma”-they can now be resold. The “contra-reforma” also overturned provisions for expropriation of unused private lands for redistribution to peasant squatters. In addittion, the National Agrarian Institute (INA) started privatizing national lands and even “ejidos,” the traditional communal lands accruing to municipalities that had been protected since the colonial era.

Salvador Zuniga, a member of COPINH´s executive committee, notes the shift from the “populist” policy of the 1960s, when the agragian reform was initiated, to the “neoliberal” policy of today, which is supported by the US, World Bank and IDB, and calls for a return to the 19th-century Liberal ideology of privatization of public or collective lands and resources. In between was the harsh repression of th 1980s, which–if less severe than that in neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala–still saw the assassination and “disappearance” of hundreds of peasant leaders, and the decapitation of peasant cooperatives. “The neoliberal policy of today is the fruit of the low-intensity war of the 1980s,” says Zuniga.

And that war continues, as indigenous leaders are still marked for death. On May 17 of this year, Teodoro Martinez, a Tolupan Indian leader in the central department of Fracisco Morazan who had been leading a campaign against illegal timber operations, was assassinated. Martinez had been a leader of another indigenous alliance, the Confederation of Autochthonous Peoples of Honduras (CONPAH)–whose founder, Vicente Matute, was assassinated in 1989, the same year the organization was launched.

OLANCHO: TROUBLE ON THE WILD FRONTIER

In another trip into the Honduran countryside after the Forum, I joined a delegation to Olancho, organized by the country´s foremost human rights group, the Committee of the Families of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras (COFADEH), founded during the repression of the 1980s. The largest department in Honduras by territory, Olancho is largely inhabited by mestizo settlers from the central and southern zones of the country who were encouraged by the government to colonize the wild fronteir to the north in the 1960s and ´70s. But, as always, economic interests followed the settlers, and today the pine-clad mountains of Olancho are being rapidly denuded by local timber barons. On the road, we pass numerous trucks loaded with huge pine logs, heading south towards the Panamerican Highway and foreign markets. We also pass several timber mills cutting the big logs into boards.

On the night of July 18, Carlos Arturo Reyes was shot down by an unknown pistolero at his home in Olancho´s El Rosario municipality. Reyes had founded the local Olancho Environmental Movement (MAO)in 2001, and had led a cross-country March for Life in June 2003, in which 30,000 marched from Olancho to Tegucigalpa to demand a crackdown on outlaw timber operations. MAO used marches, community meetings and finally–in February of this year–physical blockades of logging roads to press thier demands for community participation in drafting what the group calls a “rational plan of exploitation.” Twenty other MAO members are now said to be targetted for death.

Other peasant ecologists have likewise been assassinated in Olancho in recent years. On June 30, 2001, Carlos Flores of La Venta, a village in Gualaco municipality, was gunned down in front of his home by AK-47 fire. As a leader of the local Heritage Center of La Venta, Gualaco (CEPAVEG), he had opposed a hydro-dam being built on the nearby Rio Babilonia by the private firm Energisa under contract to the Honduran government. Two of Energisa´s guards were eventually arrested in the case, but Gilberto Flores, Carlos´ cousin, says “the intellectual authors remain free.”

Gilberto, still involved in opposition to the hydro project, is now facing death threats himself, has a National Police officer assigned to protect him in La Venta. Gilberto reports that on June 14 he had a an AK-47 levelled at him from a passing car in Juticalpa, capital of Olancho department.

Gilberto emphasizes the necessity of halting Olancho´s deforestation and fighting to maintain public control over water resources: “In many municipalities in Olancho, there is no water. We dig wells and we find none. The department is going dry. This has happened over the last 20 years, along with the exaggerated exoploitation of our forests. There are around 100 trucks full of timber leaving Olancho each day for Trujillo,” the northern Caribbean port.

Also apparently targetted for death is Rafael Ulloa, former mayor of Gualaco. Ulloa protests that the appropriation of the Rio Babilonia for the hydro-dam represents a reversal of national priorities. “Officially, water is to go first for muncipal use, then for irrigation, and then for electrical generation. But downstream communities will lose thier access to the river by this project.”

The small Rio Babilonia plunges down from the mountain of that same name in a series of cascades, and eventually joins the Rio Tinto Negro that drains to the Caribbean to the north. The site of the dam is officially within the Sierra de Agalta National Park, and but for the construction activity the forest-cloaked mountain is indeed beautiful. From La Venta, we set out on horses and mules up the steep and muddy trail which is also used by the Energisa workers. This area is too rugged and inaccessible for heavy equipment, and the workers carry the plastic tubing up the mountain on their backs, or slung between makeshift wooden poles. The trail follows the ditch cut in the mountainside which will re-route the river through the plastic pipes to the power station below, still yet to be built. At the top, the dam itself is alrady intact, standing astride the first cataract, but the gates have yet to be closed and the floodplain which has been dug off to the side yet to be filled. An Energisa guard with a shotgun stands on duty.

The campesinos at La Venta also take us to nearby Las Delicias in neighboring San Estaban municipality–where national police and private gunmen evicted some 20 families from 83 manzanas of land on July 23. Across the barbed-wire fence we can see the remains of recently-razed homes. The families, settlers from Choluteca department in the south, had been on the land for over 20 years. They are now living in an overcrowded one-room schoolhouse and makeshift bivuoacs on adjacent municipal land. They say that the courts ruled for the local Calderon ranching family in the land dispute despite the campesinos´ title to the land. The case is pending before INA, but the families, who worked their land as a peasant collective, have little hope the decision will be reversed. They say their meager cattle were stolen in the eviction as well, and probably wound up on the already-expansive lands of the Calderon family. Says evicted grandmother Heribeta Aguilar: “We came here for a better life-now everything is gone.” Added evicted farmer Silverio Molina: “We will die fighting for land and water.”

The evicted campesinos show us a beat-up Toyota pick-up truck parked near thier bivouacs. It is riddled on the driver´s side with bullets from an AK-47 attack in the prelude to the eviction–allegedly by Calderon gunmen. The driver, Candido Cruz, lost his leg in the attack, and now hobbles on crutches.

Another environmental crusader facing death threats in Olancho is Padre Jose Andres Tamayo, a Salvadoran-born priest who now leads the parish that covers both Salama and El Rosario, where Carlos Reyes was killed. He too notes a dramatically declining productivity in Olancho´s land as a result of erosion and aridification related to destruction of the region´s forests. “Just five years ago, the campesinos here got 30 sacks of maize for every manzana,” he says. “Now they usually get twelve.”

On the road between Salama and El Rosario, Padre Tamayo points out a large expanse of mountainous and forested land owned by a local “cacique”-a land baron and political boss favored by the corrupt bureaucracy. He says trucks leave the cacique´s land hauling out timber frequently, and the mountainsides are rapidly being denuded. Across the road, more forested slopes form the opposite wall of the valley. These, Tamayo says, are the communal lands of local peasant communities. But they are also being denuded by the local timber barons, as campesino leaders are bought off with cash or alcohol. Tamayo asserts that 80% of the wood cut in Honduras is felled illegally.

On March 2, 2002, the Honduran daily El Heraldo reported that ex-head of the national forestry agency, COHDEFOR, Marco Vinicio Arias, faces corruption charges for illegally allowing the felling of trees in the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve, which stretches north from Olancho into the extremely remote lowland tropical rainforests of the Miskito Coast.

Tamayo says that six companies control the Olancho timber trade in a shady network that overlaps with that of the narco-gangs who use Olancho as an artery for US-bound cocaine between clandestine ports on the Miskito Coast and the Panamerican Highway. Timber revenues are used to launder narco-profits, and both go to arming paramilitary-style mafia enforcement gangs. Tamayo refers to the timber gangs as “narco-madereros.”

Tamayo claims that the timber is largely resold to US-based companies for export, and much of it is off-loaded in New Orleans and other US ports. Once again, corporate power appears to have an incestuous relationship with the criminal and paramilitary gangs that terrorize the isthmus. “This is the second conquest of Mesoamerica,” says Tamayo.

Our delegation to Olancho ended with an ominous coda. On July 29, the day after our return to Tegucigalpa, the daily La Prensa ran a front-page photo of masked men carrying rifles in a dense pine grove, claiming they were a group of radical environmentalists who were arming themselves to defend Olancho´s forests. Their supposed leader, “Comandante Pepe,” claimed to have 10,000 men under his command. In an accompanying article, Honduran President Ricardo Maduro was pictured looking in dismay at photos of “Pepe” from the same newspaper. He was quoted as saying, “They are doing a great damage to the country,” noting that the presumed eco-guerillas look like “Zapatistas or members of Sendero Luminoso.” He was also quoted pledging a crackdown: “I am not going to permit the existence of any armed groups that generate violence. I don´t care whose side they´re on, because in this case there is no justified reason.” Padre Tamayo was also quoted, saying that the mysterious Pepe and his followers were actually a creation of the timber gangs “to discredit the movement.”

August, 2003

U.S.-INDIA TERROR SUMMIT: WHO IS THE ENEMY?

by Bill Weinberg

“Osama bin Laden will be caught anytime–today or tomorrow.”

So said J. Cofer Black, US State Department coordinator for counter-terrorism, after meeting with officials in Bangladesh Sept. 5. Black boasted to reporters that 75 percent of al-Qaeda elements have been killed or arrested already, while a well-planned campaign is underway to eliminate the rest of the organization.

Black had just come from an anti-terror summit in the Indian capital, New Delhi, and broached the possibility of forming a joint Bangladesh-US working group on terrorism modeled on those the US has formed with India and Pakistan. (The New Nation, Bangladesh, Sept. 5)

(http://nation.ittefaq.com/artman/publish/article_12107.shtml)

At the Sept. 1 meeting of the US-India Joint Working Group on Terrorism, Black met with Meera Shankar, under-secretary for international security in the Ministry Of External Affairs, for talks focusing on cross-border terrorist operations and arms and narcotics trafficking in the region.

“The destabilizing impact of these linkages is a matter of growing concern to both countries,” said the joint statement released after the meeting. “Both sides agreed that, even as the challenge posed by international terrorism continues to mutate, it is important for the international community to strengthen counter-terrorism cooperation to effectively meet this challenge.”

New training and intelligence-sharing programs were also discussed, expanding the mission of the Joint Working Group, first established in 2000. (Indo-Asian News Service, Sept. 1)

(http://news.newkerala.com/india-news/index.php?action=fullnews&id=11027)

But India’s new “anti-terrorism” prowess is more likely to be used against ethnic guerilla armies fighting for independence in the country’s remote eastern corner than against al-Qaeda or related groups said to be operating in disputed Jammu and Kashmir in the north. The counter-insurgency wars India has waged in this forgotten region, sandwiched between Burma and Bangladesh, have claimed perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives since Indian independence in 1947. The neighboring states of Assam and Nagaland have been hardest hit–and the conflict in Assam is now rapidly escalating.

The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) is said to be responsible for a bomb that went off at an Indian Independence Day parade Aug. 15 in the Assam town of Dhemaji, killing 15, including seven children, and wounding several more. A second blast left 12 wounded. On Aug. 26, near-simultaneous bomb blasts on a train, bus station and oil refinery in Assam left dead six and over 70 wounded. That same day, a woman said to be a ULFA militant was arrested in the Dhemaji attack.

The rebel groups in Assam and Nagaland accuse the Indian government of illegally occupying their lands and even of genocide against the region’s peoples, as well as the plunder of oil, timber and other natural resources with little return to the impoverished residents. They maintain that the region was illegally annexed to India in 1947 and denied self-determination. But the recent targeting of civilians by the ULFA has led to tensions within the coalition that unites many of the region’s guerilla armies.

The faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland led by S.S. Khaplang (NSCN-K) strongly criticized the ULFA for the Aug. 15 attack. “The crime perpetrated against innocent school children by ULFA in Assam is unacceptable and we are not going to remain a silent spectator to any organization that…advocates terrorism,” K. Mulatonu, a senior NSCN-K leader, told Indo-Asian News Service by telephone from Mon in Nagaland. “We will be forced and compelled to sever all relationships with ULFA if they do not stop the genocide and fratricidal killings immediately.”

The NSCN-K is among the oldest and the most powerful of nearly 30 guerilla armies operating in India’s northeast. It uses territory across the border in Burma (Myanmar) as a staging ground, and seeks to unite Naga lands on both sides of the border as an independent state. The NSCN-K and the rival NSCN-IM (led by Isak Chisi Swu and Thuingaleng Muivah), have maintained a ceasefire with New Delhi since 1991, but Khaplang now heads an umbrella coalition of several guerilla armies, including ULFA–most of which are not covered by the ceasefire.

“We had maintained a good relationship with ULFA for more than 10 years now,” Mulatonu said. “We provided arms training to ULFA in our camps in Myanmar. We still have about 100 ULFA cadres sheltered in our camps in Myanmar.”

He said that top NSCN-K commanders are expected to meet ULFA leaders soon to discuss the recent violence in Assam. “We will soon meet the ULFA top brass to get a first-hand account of what is happening and prevail upon them to desist from such acts of genocide,” Mulatonu said.

The NSCN-K recently offered to broker peace talks between ULFA and New Delhi, even as Nagaland’s own status remains uncertain. At least 25,000 people have died in the insurgency in Nagaland, a state of two million people, since Indian independence. (IANS, Aug. 21)

(http://news.newkerala.com/india-news/index.php?action=fullnews&id=9033)

Indian intelligence often portrays the guerillas in the east as being backed by Pakistan and Islamic militant groups. But Assam is overwhelmingly Hindu, and Nagaland is a mostly Christian enclave. The guerillas’ roots are generally in the Maoist movements that shook India in the 1970s, and their concerns are now with ethnic and regional self-government, not religion.

The Indian army’s paramilitary auxiliary in the region, the Assam Rifles, is currently embroiled in a scandal concerning human rights abuses. On July 16, security forces used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a protest by women in Manipur state who were demanding that the paramilitary outfit be withdrawn following accusations that riflemen had raped and killed a local woman. Many of the woman protesters stripped naked to shame the security forces. The violence culminated a two-day general strike to demand withdrawal of the Assam Rifles from Manipur. (India Daily, July 16)

(http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/07-16c-04.asp)

RESOURCES

ULFA Web site:

http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/congress/7434/ulfa.htm

South Asia Terrorism Portal (anti-terrorist think-tank) page on ULFA:

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/assam/terrorist_outfits/Ulf a.htm

Free Nagaland homepage:

http://www.angelfire.com/mo/Nagaland/

South Asia Terrorism Portal page on NSCN-K:

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/states/nagaland/terrorist_outfits/ Nscn_k.htm

For more on the Assam struggle, see WW3 REPORT #94:

http://ww3report.com/static/94.html#subcontinent1

For more on J. Cofer Black, see WW3 REPORT #18:

http://ww3report.com/static/18.html#afghan11

(Bill Weinberg)
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Special to WORLD WAR 3 REPORT, Sept. 6, 2004
Reprinting permissible with attribution

BOLIVIA: GAS WAR RESUMES

from Weekly News Update on the Americas

At 4 AM on Aug. 16, some 300 campesinos from El Chore in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz department seized control of a British Petroleum (BP) oil production facility in the Santa Rosa del Sara region of Santa Cruz. The campesinos were demanding recognition and titling of their land, the expulsion of large landholders, construction of a road, $5 million for agricultural production and “fulfillment of the mandate” of a July 18 referendum in which Bolivian voters approved national control of gas and other resources. The company immediately issued a communique saying it was halting operations at the Humberto Suarez Roca facility “to safeguard the security of the personnel and the campesinos who are blocking the entrance.” The next day, Aug. 17, the campesinos also took over the facility’s Patujusal and Los Cusis oilfields. The facility, operated by BP’s Chaco-Amoco subsidiary, normally produces 2,000 barrels of oil a day. The campesinos ended their takeover late on Aug. 18 after reaching an agreement with the Santa Cruz governor’s office and the national government. (Econoticiasbolivia.com, Aug. 16; Los Tiempos, Cochabamba, Aug. 19; AFP, DPA, Reuters, Aug. 17, 18)

Late on Aug. 18, some 300 residents of Villamontes in Tarija department stormed the San Antonio gas compression plant, operated by the Transredes company, and shut down its valves, cutting off gas flow to the departmental capital, Tarija, as well as to Argentina and Brazil. The Villamontes residents are demanding construction of a highway linking Tarija to Paraguay via Villamontes. Residents began a civic strike on Aug. 10 or 11 after trying for more than eight months to get the government to respond to their demands. They also set up blockades along local roads leading to Argentina and Paraguay. The shutdown of the valves came at the close of a local assembly of the Villamontes Strike Committee where members discussed how to step up the pressure. (Los Tiempos, AP, Aug. 18)

Bolivian president Carlos Mesa Gisbert responded to the protest actions on Aug. 19 by sending military personnel to all the gas and oil facilities in the country to prevent new takeovers. In Santa Cruz, the government had already sent heavily armed police and military agents to protect the Palmasola refinery after the Santa Cruz Federation of Neighborhood Boards (FEJUVE) staged a massive march to the refinery and threatened to take it over to protest rising fuel prices. (Econoticiasbolivia.com, Aug. 18) On Aug. 19, bus drivers in Oruro department went on strike and marched through the departmental capital to demand that Mesa fulfill a promise to freeze fuel prices. Some 20 drivers in Oruro began a hunger strike on Aug. 20. Drivers are mobilizing across the country; they are planning a hunger strike and marches in La Paz and El Alto starting on Aug. 23, and have proposed taking over oil and gas refineries to pressure the government. They are also considering a general strike. (Los Tiempos; El Diario, La Paz; Europa Press, Aug. 20)

On Aug. 20, the Villamontes residents ended their protest after reaching an agreement with the government on their demands for the highway construction. Mesa resolved the conflict with the signing in La Paz of an executive decree which instructs the National Highway Service to put the project up for bidding within 180 days. The Brazilian government has agreed to finance the road. At the same time, the government threatened on Aug. 20 to pursue legal charges against those responsible for taking over oilfields or shutting down gas valves. (Los Tiempos, Aug. 21)

On Aug. 18 about 10 members of Bolivia’s Landless Movement (MST) began a hunger strike at the Bolivian Workers Central (COB) headquarters in La Paz to demand the release of MST leader Gabriel Pinto [one of nine suspects accused of instigating or carrying out the June 15 mob lynching of Benjamin Altamirano Calle, mayor of the town of Ayo Ayo in the Altiplano region of La Paz department]. MST members threatened to take over the Madrejones oil well in southern Bolivia if Pinto is not freed. Silvestre Saisari, leader of the MST’s eastern bloc, said members of his organization had already taken over two oil wells.

Leaders of the COB and the Coordinating Committee to Defend the Gas have announced that nationwide mobilizations will begin on Aug. 25 to reject the government’s constant fuel price increases and win the nationalization of Bolivia’s oil and gas resources.(Econoticiasbolivia.com, Aug. 18)

On Aug. 20, the Economic Development Commission of Bolivia’s Chamber of Deputies put a freeze on further discussion of Mesa’s proposed new Hydrocarbons Law, asking the government to address the bill’s shortcomings and submit a new proposal. The proposal leaves too many legal loopholes and gives the president too much power to approve contracts by decree, the deputies said. In addition, as Oscar Arrien of the rightwing Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) later pointed out, the bill submitted by Mesa provides for taxes and royalties of less than 20% on multinational oil companies, while the July 18 referendum called for taxes and royalties of up to 50%. Mesa responded to the deputies’ decision by threatening to veto any and every law passed by Congress until the Hydrocarbons Law is approved without further modifications. The threat comes as political parties prepare for municipal elections scheduled for Dec. 5; Congress must still make modifications to the electoral code in order to allow the vote to go forward. (Econoticiasbolivia.com, Aug. 20, 21)

Cocalero leader Evo Morales Ayma of the Movement to Socialism (MAS)–which is expected to dominate in the municipal elections–warned that if Mesa continues to “blackmail” Congress, he could follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, who fled the country after being ousted in a popular rebellion last Oct. 17. “The president is digging his own grave, he’s throwing the country into confusion, he’s provoking the people to mobilize, to unite. The president should respect the results [of the referendum], recovering the hydrocarbons. If the transnationals want to stay, let them stay, and if we need technology from the oil companies, we’ll have to do a service contract. They can’t keep deciding about the natural resources,” said Morales. (Econoticiasbolivia.com, Aug. 21)

(Weekly News Update on the Americas, Aug. 22)

(http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html)
—————————

Forwarded by WORLD WAR 3 REPORT, Sept. 6, 2004
Reprinting permissible with attribution

VENEZUELA: WHOSE SIDE IS THE OIL CARTEL ON?

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez survived a vote to oust him Aug. 15, in a referendum the conservative opposition hoped would culminate their long campaign to overturn the left-populist president.

“Now we can start the next phase of our revolution!” Chavez roared, pumping his fist from the presidential balcony after the vote. “This is a victory for all countries of Latin America that fight for liberation and alternatives to the neoliberal dictates of Washington!”

Opposition leaders refused to accept the official findings that Chavez had won by 58%. “We categorically and resoundingly reject these results,” said Henry Ramos Allup, head of the Democratic Coordinator opposition coalition. “The National Electoral Council has committed massive fraud.” But the victory was affirmed by international observers, including Jimmy Carter. There referendum drew a record 8.5 million of Venezuela’s 14 million registered voters, and many waited up to 12 hours to cast their ballot.

The vote was occasioned by some violence. One person was killed and four wounded on the 16th when Chavez supporters reportedly fired on a crowd of opponents marching through Caracas banging pots and pans and chanting “Fraud!” Earlier that day, opposition demonstrators crashed Carter’s press conference to denounce his findings. (Newsday, Aug. 17)

On July. 31, a Venezuelan court ordered the arrest of 59 dissident military officers accused of rebellion for taking part in anti-Chavez protests in October 2002, when over 100 military dissidents took over a public square and proclaimed their opposition to the regime. Authorities ordered the arrest of the officers for failing to appear at a hearing on charges of conspiracy, rebellion and inciting insurrection, the Venpres state news agency said. (Reuters, Aug. 1)

(http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040801/news_1n1venez.html)

Chavez was quick to point to Washington’s hand behind the unrest and the recall campaign generally. The US National Endowment for Democracy provided funds to opposition groups such as Sumate, which the New York Times acknowledged violated election norms by distributing survey results showing Chavez as losing while the vote was still pending. (NYT, Aug. 20)

Bernard Aronson, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs from 1989 to 1993 and now with “a private equity firm that manages investments in Venezuela and elsewhere,” had a New York Times op-ed piece day before the vote, “Venezuela’s Fake Democrat,” portraying Chavez as a dangerous demagogue. Aronson warned that if he was not defeated, Latin America’s future may belong to “leaders like Hugo Chavez: men who campaign to consolidate their power and inveigh against the oligarchs while their people descend deeper into poverty.” (NYT, Aug. 14)

Chavez, meanwhile, made much of his campaign to use Venezuela’s oil wealth to better the lives of the 80% of the country that lives in poverty, redirecting profits from the state company to education, health care, job training and other social programs. In the days before the vote, the Venezuelan Embassy ran a series of ads on the New York Times’ prestigious op-ed page boasting: “In the past, Venezuela’s oil wealth benefited a few. Today, it benefits a few *million.*” The ads directed readers to a website touting the benefits of the new oil-funded social programs, www.RethinkVenezuela.com.

Venezuela’s oil reserves, the largest outside the Middle East, are the real prize in the ongoing struggle. Chavez portrayed an international oil industry rooting for his victory as the best guarantor of a stabile investment climate in Venezuela. “My friends from Wall Street breathed easier overnight,” Chavez said after the vote. “Even in the White House there were people who breathed easier when they heard the results.” (Newsday, Aug. 17)

The reaction of international markets loaned credence to this boast. Oil prices, which had been rising the previous week in response to violence in Iraq and the potential for further instability in Venezuela, dropped as it became clear that Chavez had won. Low-sulfur crude oil closed Aug. 16 at $46.05 a barrel, down 53 cents on the New York Mercantile Exchange. (NYT, Aug. 16)

But other analyses indicate that petro-oligarchical relief at the Chavez victory is not universal. Wrote Brad Foss in a commentary for Canadian Press: “Exploration and production have suffered under Chavez, analysts said, because the populist ruler diverts too much money from the state-run oil company’s budget to finance social programs for the poor. If a better balance isn’t struck soon, they said Venezuela, a major supplier of fuel to the United States, faces a potential double whammy: The country could find itself marginalized within OPEC as other countries are given greater market share and that would mean less oil money available for Chavez’ social agenda.”

Venezuela’s current daily output is about 2.5 million barrels, or 400,000 barrels below its official OPEC quota, according to Foss. Total Venezuelan output was above three million barrels a day as recently as 2001, but has never quite recovered from a long strike by middle-management at the state company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) aimed at ousting Chavez, which lead to the firing of some 18,000 employees.

With proven reserves of 78 billion barrels and easy access to US markets, Venezuela is seen as critical by the international oil industry. But Foss portrays an industry impatient with perceived mismanagement of the oil sector by Chavez. He quotes Robert Cordray, a senior Latin America analyst at Washington-based PFC Energy Group: “It takes pretty substantial investment to sustain production, let alone increase it. And it appears that that investment is not happening. If these fields are left to their own devices, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where they’re not declining.”

PDVSA has spent only about a third of the $3.3 billion available for exploration and production in 2004, according to Cordray–and the amount allocated is down 33% from the $5 billion originally set aside, he claimed.

Said Steven Tholen, chief financial officer of Harvest Natural Resources, a Houston-based company that produces 20,000 barrels of oil a day in Venezuela in a joint deal with PDVSA: “We’re very anxious to try and grow our presence in Venezuela. From our standpoint, we’re apolitical.”

ChevronTexaco is considering a $6 billion investment to produce heavy crude in Venezuela’s Orinoco tar belt and upgrade its operations there, and Royal Dutch/Shell is said to be interested in a new project there, too. “However,” writes Foss, “one impediment to new foreign investment in oil exploration and production has been the country’s 2001 Hydrocarbons Law. It raised royalties private companies have to pay the government and guarantees Petroleos de Venezuela a majority stake in any new projects.” (AP, Aug. 25)

(http://www.canada.com/businesscentre/story.html?id=45BE9E98-2384-41F9-8E88-05DA D0C1F624)

A New York Times business section story July 24 hailed as “Herculean” PDVSA’s recovery from production that had dropped to under a million barrels a day at the height of the strike in late 2002. But it warned that foreign companies are wary of the tight control Chavez has established over PDVSA through his Ministry of Energy & Mines, and the redirecting of profits to literacy campaigns and other social programs at the expense of reinvestment in infrastructure and exploration. It even gave voice to some high-level skepticism about PDVSA’s recovery. “Coming back after the strike to reach 2.5 to 2.7 million barrels is pretty heroic,” said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the New York-based Petroleum Industry Research Foundation. “They should get credit for that, but we do not believe their numbers.”

The story saw nostalgia for the free-market days before Chavez, when ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips and Total of France struck deals with PDVSA in the Orinoco tar belt, known locally as the Faja. Said former PDVSA executive Antonio Szabo, who left the company before Chavez came to power and is now chief executive of Stone Bond Technologies, a Houston energy consulting firm: “Right now, PDVSA is not a mercantile entity. Right now, it’s an instrument of the Venezuelan government.” (NYT, July 24)

(http://www.americas.org/item_15763)

(Bill Weinberg)
—————————

Special to WORLD WAR 3 REPORT, Sept. 6, 2004
Reprinting permissible with attribution

WW3Report.com

COLOMBIA: URIBE FINGERED AS DRUG-TRAFFICKER

ATROCITIES HAVE DOUBLED UNDER U.S.-BACKED PRESIDENT

The emergence of a 1991 report from the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) naming current Colombian President Alvaro Uribe as a high-level operative of the notorious Medellin Cartel has been an embarrassment for both the US and its top South American ally. Meanwhile, rights groups in Colombia claim that atrocities have doubled under Uribe’s rule–and the anti-militarist movement has again been targeted for attack.

1991 DIA REPORT: URIBE WAS CARTEL OPERATIVE

The Sept. 23, 1991 DIA report was released under the US Freedom of Information Act to a DC-based research group, the National Security Archives. The report asserts that Uribe, then a senator from the department of Antioquia, was “dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin cartel at high government levels.” It named him as a “close personal friend” of cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar, and claimed he helped Escobar secure his seat as an auxiliary congressman.

An Uribe spokesman dismissed the report as preliminary, saying that Uribe was studying at Harvard in 1991 and had no business dealings in the US. Rob Zimmerman, a spokesman for the US State Department, told the New York Times: “We completely disavow these allegations about President Uribe. We have no credible information that substantiates or corroborates the allegations in an unevaluated 1991 report.”

But the National Security Archives’ Michael Evans said: “We now know that the DIA, either through its own reporting or through liaison with another investigative agency, had information indicating that Alvaro Uribe was one of Colombia’s top drug-trafficking figures.”

The report names 104 figures believed to be top traffickers, including Escobar, former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, international arms dealer Adnan Kashoggi, and Pedro Juan Moreno, a Colombian businessman and one-time friend of Uribe who has been often named as a trafficker but never formally charged.

Washington portrays Uribe as a key ally in the war on drugs and terrorism, boasting that his administration has extradited 150 accused traffickers to the US, more than twice the number extradited in his predecessor’s four-year term. But there have been persistent claims that as chief of Colombia’s civil aviation authority in the late 1980s, Uribe protected drug flights. When he was governor of Antioquia between 1995 and 1997, paramilitary activity exploded in the department. (NYT, Aug. 2)

(http://cocaine.org/colombia/secretreport.html)

Uribe, educated at Harvard and Oxford, was elected mayor of Medellin at the age of 26, just as the cartel was establishing its hegemony over the city. As Antioquia governor he instated the famous “Convivir” program, conceived as a civil auxiliary wing of the armed forces to combat guerillas in the countryside. The program was widely accused of providing a cover of legitimacy for paramilitary activity. (Colombia Journal, May 24, 2004)

(http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia185.htm)

RIGHTS ACTIVIST: ATROCITIES HAVE DOUBLED UNDER URIBE

Colombian human rights advocate Yenly Angelica Mendez of the group Humanidad Vigente, which works closely with peasant groups in militarized rural areas, said after the DIA report revelations that assassinations and arbitrary imprisonment have doubled under Uribe, especially in the conflicted eastern department of Arauca, which she called “a laboratory for the so-called Democratic Security policy of the current Colombian administration.”

In an interview with the independent Colombian press agency ANNCOL, Mendez said: “Since the start of the present administration human rights violations in Arauca have risen about 100 percent. The primary victims have been the social movements, who at the moment have more than 10 leaders jailed, primarily those with a record of uncompromising and dedicated protest against human rights violations, and of promoting a model of alternative development…”

Mendez harshly criticized US support for the Uribe regime: “The United States plays a primary role in the violation of human rights in Arauca, principally because they promote and finance the policy of ‘Democratic Security’ and because…they give large amounts of aid to the XVIII Brigade in Arauca, despite the prohibition against giving aid to military units who are involved in human rights violations. This Brigade is involved in many human rights violations, and this aid is used to continue them.”

She also condemned the increasing political-military role of foreign oil companies in Arauca, claiming that money from California’s Occidental Petroleum and Spain’s Repsol “partly finances the Prosecutor for Support Infrastructure, an agency created as part of the ‘Democratic Security’ policy, and which means nothing else but the militarization of the Prosecutor’s Office. Through this office, located inside the barracks of the XVII Brigade, the cases against the social leaders are prosecuted, based on testimony from reinserted former guerillas, who give ‘useful information against the guerillas’ in exchange for economic and judicial benefits. Given this situation, the impartiality and the independence of the Prosecutor’s Office is zero, which allows us to say that these cases are nothing more than judicial frame-ups aimed at stopping the denouncing of human rights violations and the naming of those responsible.”

(ANNCOL, Aug. 6)

PARA BOSSES ADDRESS CONGRESS

Meanwhile, Uribe’s so-called “peace dialogue” with the right-wing paramilitaries continues–which critics see as a means of legitimizing the terror network and bringing it under closer government control. On July 28, Salvatore Mancuso, now de facto leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), spoke before Colombia’s congress along with his fellow warlords Ramon Isaza and Ivan Roberto Duque. The leaders of the 20,000-strong AUC had been given safe-conduct to travel to Bogota from the “safe haven” the paramilitary network has been granted in the north of country as a condition of the talks. In his televised remarks, Mancuso said the para leaders should not be imprisoned, but should be honored for saving Colombia from becoming “another Cuba.”

Uribe is proposing that AUC leaders be “confined” for five to ten years, but not necessarily in prison, as a compromise measure. This possibility was not raised in prospective talks with the leftist National Liberation Army (ELN), whose imprisoned leader Francisco Galan addressed Colombia’s congress in June. (AFP, July 28)

(http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/print/99652/1/.html)

Mancuso and four others are wanted in the US on drug charges, and the AUC is including “no extradition” among its demands. US Ambassador William Wood refuses to budge on this question, saying of the AUC: “They have only one program: narcoterror. And only one agenda: destruction.” The two most recently indicted AUC commanders are Diego “Don Berna” Fernando Murillo and Vicente Castano, the brother of the group’s top commander Carlos Castano, who has been missing for several months. (NYT, July 23)

Another paramilitary network, the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Casanare, is not involved in the AUC negotiations, and is demanding a second demilitarized zone. It has been waging a local war with the AUC’s Centauros Bloc. (NYT, Aug. 3)

PEACE MOVEMENT UNDER ATTACK

Violence continues throughout the country. On Aug. 3, a car bomb exploded on a highway near Andinapolis where government troops were attacking FARC guerillas, killing nine National Police. (NYT, Aug. 4)

While the paras claim to oppose leftist guerillas, Colombia’s anti-militarist movement has been recently targeted for attack. On July 29, the home of a leading member of Red Juvenil, an anti-war group in Medellin, was visited by two armed men who first said they were from AUC, and later claimed to be from the Administrative Security Department (DAS), a government enforcement agency. The Red Juvenil activist was out at the time, but her mother was at home with a two-month-old baby. The mother was menaced with pistols, tied up and locked in the bathroom as the men searched the house. The men left with the mother still trapped and the baby asleep in another room–she managed to eventually free herself. Red Juvenil considers the invasion an implicit threat to members of the organization. (Red Juvenil press release, July 30)

New threats and violence are also reported from the Antioquia village of San Jose de Apartado, a self-proclaimed “peace community” which has declared its non-cooperation with all armed groups. On Aug. 11, a home in San Jose was torn by an explosion which left two women dead and two others injured, including the ten-year-old son of one of the women. The community’s statement on the incident said the explosion was caused by a grenade left behind by the army in March fighting with FARC guerillas in a banana-field in the hamlet of La Union. The grenade was brought back to the house by local residents, who alerted the authorities and were told a government agent would come to collect it. No agent ever showed up.

The statement also said that members of the peace community have been verbally threatened by paramilitaries in recent weeks, and that the road linking the village to the nearest town, Apartado, has become increasingly dangerous. On July 30, a local merchant who sold water in San Jose was killed by paramilitaries on the road. On August 2, paramilitaries told San Jose residents in the Apartado bus terminal that they would launch another blockade of the community and again threatened to kill the community’s leaders.

The statement closed with an expression of determination in the face of the threats and violence: “We again reiterate our commitment to continue building paths of dignity in the midst of the war.” (San Jose de Apartado Peace Community press release, Aug. 11)

(Bill Weinberg)

Special to WORLD WAR 3 REPORT, Sept. 6, 2004
http://www.worldwar3report.com/

Israel: Civil War Looming?

Settlers Pledge to Resist Evacuation, Even as IDF Grabs More Palestinian Lands

by David Bloom

As Ariel Sharon prepares–or at least goes through the motions–to put into effect his unilateral plan for “disengaging” from the Palestinians, Israel has announced a flurry of new construction in the Occupied Territories, and new military campaigns which have leveled more Palestinian fields and orchards. A violent conflict appears to loom between Israeli government forces and a hardcore of Israeli settlers who have pledged to resist evacuation of their homes in the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank. But some veteran Sharon-watchers think the entire disengagement plan is just another shadow play by the father of the settlement movement to stall for more time, as “facts on the ground” multiply.

The “separation barrier”–officially condemned by the UN for being built in occupied territory–will now surround the settlement of Ariel, some 15 kilometers into the West Bank. Also to be enclosed on the “Israeli” side of the barrier: the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, and the largest Jewish settlement, Ma’ale Adumim, to the east of Jerusalem and extending nearly to Jericho. A projected expansion of the settlement, connecting it with other settlements stretching contiguously to West Jerusalem, will effectively cut the West Bank into two, making a viable Palestinian state yet more problematic.

Israeli commentators and academics are now starting to openly call for sanctions to be placed on Israel to compel compliance with the opinion of the International Court of Justice that the security barrier must be dismantled. Such voices now include Haifa University professor Ilan Pappe, who said recently that Israel must be treated as apartheid South Africa was, and Ha’aretz journalist Gideon Levy. Yet sanctions could be forestalled indefinitely–as long as Sharon can keep playing for time, and Palestian militant groups respond violently to Israeli provocations, which may be Sharon’s strongest card.

ISRAELI DESTROYS 42,000 PALESTINIAN TREES IN GAZA

In a “reprisal” campaign that lasted a month leading up to early August, Israeli forces destroyed more than 42,000 olive, citrus and date trees in the Palestinian town of Beit Hanoun, on the edge of the occupied Gaza Strip. The Israelis’ stated purpose was to stop Hamas militants from using the area to fire crude rockets at the nearby Israeli town of Sderot. On June 28, the rockets killed two Israelis, including a three-year old, in Sderot, the first fatalities from such attacks. During the month-long incursion that followed in Beit Hanoun, 4,405 acres of agricultural land were flattened by the army, according to Palestinian officials, and 21 houses were demolished, with another 314 damaged. Five factories and 19 wells were also destroyed. Before withdrawing from the town, the army passed leaflets with a cartoon showing rockets bouncing back at Beit Hanoun from Sderot. The leaflet read: “Terror will kill you.”

Residents of Beit Hanoun had previously protested against Hamas using the town as a launching area for the rocket attacks. Earlier this summer, Hamas shot and killed a Palestinian youth who tried to stop militants from firing rockets from his family’s fields. “Everybody here agrees that the militants should not fire from a densely populated area,” said farmer Baisil al Masri, “but after this massive destruction, the people of Beit Hanoun will tell them to come and fire rockets from the tops of our houses.” Abdullah Musleh, whose factory was destroyed, called the Israeli action “deliberate destruction of our economy.” He added: “They have destroyed everything, three automatic pressing machines, the offices, the cement containers, even the marble floors under the machines. My 15 workers will be unemployed.” (UK independent, Aug. 6)

Despite the Israeli actions in Beit Hanoun, which was considered Gaza’s “bread basket,” the firing of improvised Qassem rockets at Sderot continues. (Ha’aretz, Sept. 8)

ISRAEL TO PLANT 72,000 TREES AROUND SETTLEMENTS

Israeli Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz announced a plan to plant 72,000 olive trees surrounding settlements in the occupied West Bank, for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers.

“This is seizing lands and preventing them from being turned over to Palestinians,” Katz declared, according to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth. “This is how we will strengthen our hold on Judea and Samaria [the biblical names of the lands that comprise the West Bank]… We will cling to every dunam of available farmland by means of either planting olive trees or grazing.” Yediot says 250 hectares of land are to be planted. (Yedioth Ahronot, July 27)

On Sept. 9, Katz announced plans to expropriate “without unnecessary delays” 8,000 acres of land in the Jordan Valley, to further expand sparsely populated Jewish settlements there. The expropriation is necessary, Katz says, “to hold [the land] and designate it for Jewish settlements in the valley and to prevent the possibility of [it] being taken over by hostile elements.” Subsidies will be used to encourage Jews to move to the Jordan Valley to farm.

The announcement followed plans to expand by 1,000 units in the West Bank’s five largest settlement blocs. The plan has been quietly assented to by the US government. (UK Guardian, Sept. 9; Ha’aretz, Sept.8)

Americans for Peace Now reported in a press release Aug. 6 plans for a new settlement in the Jordan valley. The settlement is earmarked for immigrants from the former Soviet Union. It will include an industrial park with technology infrastructure and “other resources for immigrant scientists who have not found their place in Israel.” APN says the World Zionist Organization and the Jordan Valley settlers’ regional council are excited by the project and are allocating land for it. (APN, Aug. 6: http://www.peacenow.org/nia/alerts/settlementexpansion.html)

A new settlement is also being built in the “seam zone” area between Israel’s “separation barrier” in the West Bank and the Green Line. Called Nof Hasharon, the enclave of 50 housing units is located in the Palestinian district of Qalqilya, south of the settlement of Alfe Menashe. Although it is associated with Alfe Menashe, a settlement of 5,000, Nof Hasharon is being hooked up to the grid of the Israeli town of Nirit, inside Israel just across the Green Line. Residents of Nirit are opposed to the settlement’s construction.

“We are not interested in a settlement being literally in our backyards, and sharing our facilities,” said Ilan Niv, chairman of Nirit’s secretariat. When construction began, children from Nirit blocked the bulldozers with their bodies. Nof Hasharon is “1,000 times worse than the expansion of a place like Ma’aleh Adumim,” said Nirit resident Yashi Eilat, referring to the West Bank’s largest settlement, “because it is a totally new form of settlement expansion.” The building of the new settlement and other settlement activity inside the “seam zone” is seen as an attempt to blur the distinction between land on the western side of the fence next to Israel, and the rest of the West Bank.

(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=10 93835912553&p=1078027574121)

SETTLER RABBIS: IT’S OK TO KILL CIVILIANS

Fourteen prominent Israeli rabbis sent a letter to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz Sept. 7, urging him to take even harsher measures against Palestinian resistance, even if means killing innocent civilians. “Should the army fight the enemy, if Palestinian civilians will be killed, or should the army refrain from fighting, and thus endanger our civilians?” the letter read, according to rabbi and former parliamentarian Haim Druckman.

“The rabbis quote the sage Rabbi Akiva as responding: ‘Our lives come first,'” Druckman said, referring to an ancient Torah scholar. Many of the rabbis are settlers and some run yeshivas that combine paramilitary training and torah study.

“The terrorists frequently hide among civilians,” claims Druckman. “As a result Israeli soldiers and Israeli children are dying in large numbers.”

“Christians preaching `turn the other cheek’ will not cause us to panic, and we will not view favorably those who prefer the lives of our enemies over our own lives,” said the letter. (CBS, Sept. 8; Ha’aretz, Sept. 8) Avmira Golan in Ha’aretz described these rabbis as having nurtured a “core of isolationist, racist and destructive Judaism.” Golan called on “secular Israelis, and you among the religious who refuse to swallow this dangerous cultural core” to “restore to the general public something that it has lost: the sense that it belongs to history and to the family of nations. That it is the scion of a developed nation. That it is not willing to allow a fanatic minority to lead it to the destruction of the Third Temple [Israel].” (Ha’aretz, Sept. 10)

(http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/474999.html)

JEWISH UNDERGROUND THREATENS TO DESTROY MUSLIM HOLY SITES

According to Reuters on July 26, there is increasing threat from Jewish ultra-nationalists to “remove” the Muslim holy site al-Haram al-Sharif–known to Jews as the Temple Mount, the site of two ancient Hebrew temples.

“Israel has to return to the Temple Mount and it will,” said a former leader of the Jewish underground, Yehda Etzion. “It doesn’t have to be tomorrow but it has to happen. Islam must remove its hands from the Temple Mount and descend from it.” Etzion has been barred from entering the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount since 1984, when he was imprisoned for plotting to blow up the complex.

The al-Aqsa mosque, built on the site in the 12th century, was attacked in 1969 by an Australian member of a protestant evangelical sect called the Church of God. Dennis Michael Rohan set fire to the ornate wooden and ivory minbar (alter) inside the mosque, causing severe damage. Rohan told an Israeli court he was acting as “the Lord’s emissary,” citing the Book of Zachariah. Rohan claimed he was trying to destroy the mosque so the Jewish temple could be rebuilt in its place. He was hospitalized in an Israeli mental institution, judged insane and deported.

Far-right Jewish radicals killed two Palestinian worshippers during a siege at the site in 1982, according to Reuters.

“We are worried,” said Adnan al-Husseini, head of the Muslim religious authority, the Waqf, which oversees the site. “Plotting against al-Haram al-Sharif is escalating. This subject is at the heart of the beliefs of Muslims all over the world.” (Reuters, July 26, Bibleplaces.com, Noblesanctuary.com)

See also: The Noble Sanctuary: On-line Guide to the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem:

(http://www.noblesanctuary.com/)

WW3 REPORT #83: http://www.worldwar3report.com/83.html#palestine4

RIGHT-WING PETITION: PRELUDE TO CIVIL WAR?

185 prominent Israeli rightists have signed a petition decrying Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to evacuate Israeli settlements from the occupied Gaza Strip and part of the occupied West Bank, and called on settlers to resist evacuation. Calling the evacuation a “crime against humanity,” the petition, published in the national-religious newspaper BeSheva, was signed by former members of the Israeli government, senior reserve officers in the Israeli army, scientists, professors, and other members of the Israeli establishment. The petition reads in part:

“Facing the Sharon government’s intention to destroy settlements in the land of Israel and to transfer them to enemy hands, we declare that the uprooting of the residents is a national crime, a crime against humanity and is a revelation of tyranny, evil and arbitrariness meant to deny Jews their rights…. We believe that the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] is meant to protect the country and is not meant to act against Jewish citizens. The IDF is the people’s army and does not belong to a political group…. Therefore, we call on public officials who are being asked to lay the groundwork for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from their homeland, and on all of the officers, troops and police officers, to listen to the voice of their conscience and not take part in acts that will sully them, and which they will regret for the rest of their lives.”

The petition called on settlers slated for evacuation “not to cooperate with the expulsion machine, not to accept monetary compensation, to resist the withdrawal without harming our people even though they are coming to destroy our homes.”

“In the last century, the only ones who expelled Jews because they were Jews were the Nazis,” said Haggai Ben-Artzi, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother-in-law on Israel Radio. “To any one who does this, I say this is a Nazi, anti-Semitic act.” Netanyahu himself did not sign the petition, but his father, brother, and uncle did.

Roman Bronfman, member of the Knesset in the center-left Yahad party, slammed the petition. “The settlers have a legitimate right to express their opinion, but this opinion lacks a conscience, is hypocritical and twists historical facts,” Bronfman said. “Withdrawing from the Gaza Strip is a correction of occupational war crimes on foreign lands…” Justice Minister Yosef Lapid of the centrist Shinui party, opined, “it is untenable that there is incitement to civil war in the name of love for the country.”

Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported Defense Minister Mofaz has been meeting with settler leaders to encourage them to “leave the IDF out of this argument.” But the paper said a settler leader told Mofaz that “in several weeks we will be in a situation in which we will repel IDF soldiers from our communities.”

Settler leader Eliezer Hasdai, who was present at the meeting with Mofaz, later told Israel Radio: “Two things could happen if this program goes ahead without being brought to democratic elections in Israel… The first is a mass refusal [to evacuate] among soldiers and officers in the army. The other is definitely a type of civil war.” Hasdai, whose daughter was killed in a Palestinian attack on her settlement, also said: “If any one dares to come and touch my daughter’s grave…whether a soldier or the chief of staff, I will shoot him.”

CHECKPOINT ABUSES UNABATED

Meanwhile, ongoing abuses continue to be reported at checkpoints in the Occupied Territories. The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv reported July 25 that an IDF soldier shot and seriously wounded a Palestinian man he claims called him a “liar” at an Israeli checkpoint north of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

According to Ha’aretz, Muhammed Kan’an, 26, a student at a-Najah University in Nablus, was trying to reach his home near Jenin, when the soldier refused to let him pass through the checkpoint.

“I asked to see an officer and the soldier attacked me,” Kan’an told the paper. “He cursed my mother and father and punched me, so I punched him back. Then he aimed his rifle at my chest and threatened to kill me. Other soldiers took away his gun and tried to subdue him.”

The incident was witnessed by Israeli activist Naomi Lalo, from Machsom [checkpoint] Watch, a women’s human rights group that monitors checkpoints. Lalo heard the soldier say, “You call me a liar, I’ll show you!” According to Lalo: “Suddenly he gave him two punches to the stomach and slammed his head into a concrete barrier.” Kan’an then tried to run away, but the soldier grabbed a rifle and shot him. “We heard gunshots and then saw him [the Palestinian] covered in blood, with a hole in his hand,” Lalo told Israeli Army Radio. (Ha’aretz, July 26)

In another case, a 23-year old Bedouin Israeli army officer has reached a plea deal with a Tel Aviv court, after being prosecuted for 10 beatings of Palestinians at the Huwarra checkpoint near Nablus. The defendant, who was not named, was actually filmed in the process of two of the beatings by the Israeli Defense Force’s educational branch. the film was being used for training purposes. The officer even knew he was being filmed when the beatings occurred. One of the Palestinians was handcuffed on orders from the officer; the officer punched the man in the stomach. The officer also punched a Palestinian man in the face and kicked him in the lower part of his body, while the man was standing next to his wife and kids. The officer also admitted to smashing ten car windshields with the butt of his rifle, supposedly for failure to not cross a line on the ground.

The officer was supported by a declaration signed by 72 paratroops who had recently finished serving in the West Bank.They protested that the use of force was necessary to them to carry out their mission, and not to be attributed to gratuitous sadism.

“If we are not taken seriously, we will not be able to fulfill the mission of preventing arms from entering Israel,” the declaration stated. (Haartez, Sept. 9)

Special to WORLD WAR 3 REPORT, Sept. 13, 2004
http://www.worldwar3report.com/