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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.

Continue ReadingHOPE AND HORROR IN SIERRA LEONE 

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

Continue ReadingCANCUN: GLOBOPHOBES KICK CORPORATE ASS! 

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

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

BOLIVIA: GAS WAR RESUMES

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

Continue ReadingBOLIVIA: GAS WAR RESUMES 

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

Continue ReadingVENEZUELA: WHOSE SIDE IS THE OIL CARTEL ON? 

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/

Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA: URIBE FINGERED AS DRUG-TRAFFICKER 

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/

Continue ReadingIsrael: Civil War Looming? 

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION PROTESTS:

MASSIVE CONVERGENCE IN NEW YORK CITY SAYS NO TO BUSH

by Anne Petermann Global Justice Ecology Project

EDITOR’S PREAMBLE: The Republican National Convention protests in New York City were preceded by a First Amendment show-down in the federal courts over whether the main march, organized by United for Peace & Justice, would have access to Central Park’s Great Lawn. At the eleventh hour, the courts ruled against the protest coalition and for the Republican administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Consequently, the big march of Aug. 29, the day before the convention opened, brought out historically large numbers but concluded anti-climactically with no rally–and the entire route was closely contained behind police barricades, with access restricted to a few choke-points. Throughout the convention, several blocks around Madison Square Garden were a “frozen zone,” closed to all pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

The protests were also preceded by a full-fledged anarchist scare, with the media sensationalizing about impending street chaos (Daily News front-page banners: “Anarchy Threat to City,” July 12; “Anarchy Inc.,” Aug. 26) Police response to the Friday Aug. 27 Critical Mass bike ride in midtown Manhattan set the tone, with some 250 cyclists arrested indiscriminately as police blocked off streets. Media reported a total of 1,821 arrests at the RNC protests–overwhelmingly on legally-dubious charges. Detainees were taken to an improvised jail at Pier 57, an old bus depot on the Hudson River, before being transferred to Manhattan Central Booking (the notorious “Tombs”). Harsh conditions at Pier 57 included overcrowding, old motor oil and other filth on the floor, and inadequate access to water and sanitation. The glacial pace at which protesters were released resulted in further litigation by the NY Civil Liberties Union. On Sept. 3, a state judge found the city to be in contempt of court, and imposed a $1,000 fine for each of the 470 still being held.

Police surveillance of the protests was carried out by a Fuji Film blimp which hovered over Midtown throughout the convention. Creative use of the law against protesters was also in evidence. Activists who hung a banner from the roof of the Plaza Hotel Aug. 26 (with arrows pointing in opposite directions reading “Bush” and “Truth”) were charged with felony assault after an arresting officer put his foot through a skylight. A federal subpoena was issued against the NY Independent Media Center after the names of Republican delegates were posted to their web site. Despite the draconian degree of control, activists from ACT UP and Code Pink actually managed to infiltrate the convention site at Madison Square Garden–the latter even heckling Bush’s acceptance speech on the closing night before being hauled off by security.

Anne Petermann of the Vermont-based Global Justice Ecology Project provides the following day-by-day eye-witness report of the protests, beginning with the historic Aug. 29 march. Photos of the protests by Orin Langelle are on the Global Justice Ecology Project web site (www.globaljusticeecology.org)–WW4 REPORT

Sunday August 29

Protesters from all over the country began amassing at 10:30 in the morning near Union Square Park in Manhattan in preparation for a huge march. They stepped off at approximately 11:45 AM and it wasn’t until around 5:45 PM that the last demonstrators started the 28-block march route.

“Official” estimates of the number of marchers ranged from the absurdly low 120,000 to a reported 750,000. United for Peace and Justice, the march organizers, put the estimate at somewhere around a half million. No matter which estimate you use, the march is being called the largest-ever protest in the US at a political convention.

While the organizers may have intended for the march to be an indictment of war and injustice in Iraq and Afghanistan, the overwhelming cry of the march was simply against the Bush Administration. Issues represented included pro-choice, anti-war, the environment, education, health care, labor rights, justice for veterans, and almost every other issue you could imagine. The cacophony of concerns was united by the cry to overturn the Bush Administration–despite the reality that Democratic candidate John Kerry shares many of the same positions, with only slight variations.

The march was lively despite the hot, humid New York day. There were only a few arrests. The New York Times reported a couple of dozen arrests related to a “bike bloc” blockade of an intersection on the outskirts of the march near Madison Square Garden–the site of the Republican National Convention (RNC). A few others were reportedly arrested when some people set fire to a big papier-mache dragon. There was speculation whether the igniters were in fact demonstrators, or undercover police dressed as protesters, trying to discredit the march.

Because the City of New York refused to grant a permit to United for Peace and Justice for a rally after the march, once participants arrived at Union Square Park, the end point, they were asked to disperse. Many lingered, enjoying a rest in the shade before moving on. An unofficial call passed by word of mouth to reconvene in Central Park–where UFPJ had applied for the post-march rally. By about 4 PM, several thousand people had gathered on the Great Lawn in defiance of the city for a festive afternoon and evening. A marching band played, drummers added a continuous rhythm, and people danced, played frisbee, and generally relaxed after a hot day of pounding the streets. In one section of the Great Lawn, participants were trained in the art of direct action, in preparation for events later in the week.

The City had refused the permit ostensibly to “protect the lawn.” In June 1982, however, nearly a million people gathered on the Great Lawn to protest nuclear weapons. Somehow the grass survived. UFPJ even offered to put up a bond to pay for repairs to the lawn, but to no avail.

Later in the evening, the “mouse bloc” marched through the theater district, where RNC delegates were attending performances. The mouse bloc was so named in response to the invasion of Republican “elephants” into New York City–elephants being afraid of mice. There were reports of over 150 arrests related to this un-permitted expression of the right to assemble.

Monday, August 30

Demonstrations directed at the Republican National Convention continued today in Manhattan with numerous marches and a “living mural” of the Statue of Liberty.

In the morning the “Still We Rise” march departed from Union Square and marched up to the intersection of 8th Avenue and 30th Street, adjacent to Madison Square Garden, where the RNC is taking place. This “march for the poor” was attended by 3,000 or so people and was very lively and festive. In the march were AIDS activists, advocates for the homeless, and many others in a very culturally diverse gathering.

At the end of the march, police penned in activists with barriers on three sides of the group that extended for at least two blocks. There were no reports of arrests in this spirited march.

Shortly after that event, Code Pink activists converged on Central Park to create a giant “living mural” of the Statue of Liberty with their pink-clad bodies and bright pink flagging. The intended message was “Vote for change.” Eventually word came via cell phone that the perfect photo had been taken from atop a nearby building. The participants celebrated with a rousing howl before they got up and moved on to the next event.

On the heels of the living mural came the day’s second poor people’s march. The un-permitted “March For Our Lives,” organized by Philadelphia’s Kensington Welfare Rights Union, began at 4 PM with a rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza outside of the United Nations building.

With chants like “No Bush, No Kerry, Revolution is Necessary” and the slight variation, “No Police, No Military, Revolution is Necessary,” this energetic march had a very anti-authoritarian flavor. A route was reportedly negotiated with the police that would take the group to the corner of 8th Ave. and 30th Street, the same location where the morning march had stopped.

Along the march route, which continued past dark, people in apartments, restaurants and local businesses leaned out of windows, and stood out on balconies and rooftops waving peace signs and fists and shouting in solidarity with the marchers.

There were reports of police grabbing a few demonstrators along the march route, but otherwise the march was relatively peaceful–until the end. At the end point–the protest pen–police again erected barricades on three sides of the march, while participants continued to chant and drum.

This time, however, after fencing the protesters in, police amassed at the back of the march and, on the given order, rushed the crowd. Officers on foot ran at full speed toward the back of the march while police on motorcycle scooters sped into the crowd from behind. Several protesters were reportedly injured when they were run into by the scooters. There were also reports of police using tear gas and pepper spray. Some protesters speculated that the police were trying to panic the crowd to provoke the activists into reacting violently, which would discredit the otherwise peaceful event. New York Indymedia reported that one detective was injured when he overzealously ran headlong into the middle of the demonstrators, slamming into several people along the way. The Indymedia article further stated that an irate protester then pushed the officer over. Mainstream media sources report that the detective suffered a concussion.

Police arrested eleven protesters, and kept hundreds of them penned in for two hours or more, allowing them to leave in individual groups of two or three.

Tuesday, August 31

Police scrambled to suppress demonstrations throughout the day at locations all over midtown Manhattan on “A-31,” the day when civil disobedience had been called to oppose the war in Iraq and the Bush agenda.

At almost every location protesters had chosen as gathering points for, police showed up in force. They quickly selected a few protesters–seemingly at random–and arrested them. Police then ordered the space cleared under threat of further arrests.

This tactic was first displayed at around 2 PM at Union Square Park following a press briefing by the A-31 media team. Police first instigated protester anger by arresting three or four activists, reportedly for having cardboard on their arms. Officers then entered the outraged throng of chanting protesters, singling out another four or five people for arrest.

Police repeated this tactic at around 5:30 at the New York Public Library at 5th Ave. and 42nd Street, where a group of protesters attempted to unfurl a banner on the building’s steps. Some by-standers got caught up in the sweep. One young woman who did not appear to be a protester was relaxing at an outdoor table at the library when she was ordered to leave by police. When she moved too slowly, they shoved her and her musical instrument (presumably a banjo or a mandolin in its case) onto the ground. When she looked up at them from the ground in shock and horror, they arrested her. Also arrested was an elderly man. Some eight-to-ten people were arrested at the scene.

In the evening, protesters amassed at Herald Square, where MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews was taping an RNC-related special show. Protesters gathered on the sidewalks surrounding the square chanting anti-war and anti-Bush slogans. The police moved rapidly to pen in the protesters with orange snow fence, followed later by metal barriers, obstructing them from entering the street to conduct the planned civil disobedience action. The police themselves, however, effectively blocked off the square from traffic, accomplishing the protesters’ goal of impeding rush-hour. The stand-off lasted for several hours.

Elsewhere in Manhattan, “flash mobs” of protesters gathered, blocking traffic and keeping police vehicles screaming late into the night. Throughout the city, New Yorkers expressed hostility to the RNC invasion of their town and the extreme police presence that accompanied it. It would be difficult to imagine a more hostile location for the RNC to have selected. Their reasoning, of course, was exploitation of the 9-11 tragedy for their political gain. While this callous strategy may work elsewhere in the country, in New York City it seems to have elicited only outrage.

Wednesday, Sept. 1

Today, a labor rally called by New York City’s Central Labor Council brought some ten thousand workers to the designated protest zone at 8th Ave. and 30th Street. In the evening, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) led a march to the offices of several media companies in Manhattan in protest of mainstream coverage of both the protests and the war in Iraq. Few arrests were reported

Thursday, Sept 2

Tonight’s nomination by the GOP of George W Bush saw a spontaneous march up 8th Ave. towards Madison Square Garden. As Bush addressed the convention, several thousand gathered at Union Square in a candle-light vigil to mourn the deaths of the victims of “Ground Zeros” from Manhattan to Falluja, and all who have been killed by the policies of the Bush regime. Following the nomination speech, hundreds poured into the streets from Union Square, eventually joining a rally at 8th Ave. and 30th Street, outside the Garden. This time police closely followed, but did little to interfere.

Complete text with photos on line at: Global Justice Ecology Project

(http://www.globaljusticeecology.org/index.php?page=news)

Earlier on Thursday, a new coalition called Artists & Activists United for Peace held a march in Harlem under the slogan “Eyes are on Iraq, but we’re still under attack.” The lively and spirited march wound through the neighborhood from the Harlem State Office Building at 125th Street, led by NYC Council Member and mayoral candidate Charles Barron and long-time activist Rev. Herbert Daughtry. Speakers included Chuck D of Public Enemy.

(http://www.aaupcoalition.org/)

For more on the protester detainments, see: “Guantanamo on the Hudson,” by Sarah Ferguson, Village Voice, Sept. 2

(http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0435/ferguson3.php)

Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Sept. 6, 2004

Continue ReadingREPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION PROTESTS: 

THE RETURN OF PLAN PUEBLA-PANAMA

The New Struggle for the Isthmus

by Bill Weinberg, WW4 REPORT

Mexico, Colombia and seven Central American nations held a 24-hour summit April 10 in Campeche, on the Yucatan’s Caribbean coast. They issued a nine-point plan for revitalizing the regional development alliance known as the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP). Joining Mexico’s President Felipe Calderón were the presidents of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia, and the prime minister of Belize. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was—significantly—represented by his vice-president, Jaime Moreno.

Calderón waxed eloquent. “Latin American integration is not a dream,” he told the gathering. “As our Octavio Paz saw, it’s a reality that we’re constructing day by day.” The major achievement of the summit was an agreement to pursue a region-wide oil refinery, to be located in an as-yet undetermined Central American country. Officials said four companies have expressed interest in bidding on the project.

The project was slated to process 230,000 barrels of oil a day when it was first proposed by Calderón’s predecessor Vicente Fox in 2001, but it is now scaled down to 80,000 barrels per day. Most of the oil to be refined at the planned facility will come from Mexico’s giant parastatal Pemex.

The nine PPP states also pledged to step up security and military cooperation. “We’re facing international organized crime that requires us to organize against an enemy that knows no borders,” Calderón said.

Ten days later, Nicaragua announced construction of an oil refinery on its national territory, with aid from Venezuela as part of Hugo Chávez’s proposed Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). Work is to begin on the “Sandino-Bolivar” refinery by June, when Chávez is slated to visit Nicaragua. It is of course, named for Augusto C. Sandino and Simón Bolívar-the respective historical heroes of Nicaraguan and Venezuelan left-nationalism.

Francisco López, director of state oil company Petronic, said that besides meeting Nicaragua’s annual demand of 10 million barrels, the refinery will supply the other countries of the isthmus from Guatemala to Panama. López compared the project to the Panama Canal in its magnitude. The oil is, of course, to be supplied by the Venezuelan parastatal PDVSA. The facility is slated for Nagarote, in León department on the Pacific coast, some 20 miles out side the capital Managua.

Two development initiatives are in a race to industrialize the Central American isthmus—the PPP, led by Washington-allied neoliberal Calderón, and ALBA, led by “21st century socialism” advocate Chávez. The other ALBA nations are Cuba and the Bolivia of Evo Morales. Now, thanks to Daniel Ortega, ALBA may be ahead in the race for the isthmus.

CAFTA and Oil

First proposed by the Inter-American Development Bank in 2001 to build the infrastructure for expanded trade, the PPP envisioned grid integration, industrial zones and new trans-isthmus highway and rail links. Recognizing that the process had become moribund, Calderón made revival of the PPP a part of his presidential campaign last year. In October, president-elect Calderón flew to Costa Rica to meet with fellow free-trade advocate President Oscar Arias. The two publicly pledged to revitalize the Plan, and also announced that they would invite in Colombia-Washington’s closest South American ally.

Costa Rica is the only signatory to the pending Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) not to yet win approval for the pact from its legislature. But last November’s election of Daniel Ortega of the left-nationalist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), changes the political balance.

Despite repudiating the Marxism he professed when the FSLN was in power in the 1980s, Ortega has wasted little time in making clear his radical populist stance.

In a clear tilt to Venezuela, Ortega anounced April 19 that Nicaragua will request the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, the Cuban militant just freed by US immigration authorities. Posada Carriles is wanted in Venezuela and Cuba for terrorist activities, and the US has refused to extradite. Said Ortega: “We are giving instructions for Nicaragua, besides condemning his release, to offer its territory so that Posada Carriles can be tried in our country, taking into account that he also committed terrorist acts here.” Posada Carriles was an operative in the “Contragate” network that supported right-wing guerillas in Nicaragua in the 1980s—the last time Ortega was president.

On April 23, when Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki stopped in Managua on a tour of Latin America, Ortega took the opportunity to express his support for Tehran’s nuclear program.

Days later, preparing for a meeting with International Monetary Fund officials, Ortega said the line of credit Nicaragua is now seeking will be its last. “Within five years Nicaragua will be free from the fund,” he pledged. “It is a blessing to be free of the fund, and for the fund it will be a relief to rid itself of a government that defends the interests of the poor.”

Even the conservative governments of the isthmus made recent moves to extend greater public control over resources—to the displeasure of Washington. In January, President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, insisting it was “not a nationalization,” announced the seizure of the country’s oil storage terminals from a group including Shell, ExxonMobil and Chevron. The move was recommended by a Honduran congressional commission to lower fuel prices and combat what Zelaya called “energy terrorism.” US Ambassador Charles Ford immediately protested the “lack of respect to private property” and warned that “the consequences of this situation could be very serious.” Two days later, the Honduran government reversed its decision.

These questions take on greater importance in light of the PPP’s visions of Central America’s future role as an inter-oceanic conduit for global oil.

Geography Wars

In his no-show at Campeche, Ortega was also said to be miffed by Colombia’s participation in the summit. When Colombia was added to the PPP group in 2006, Ortega protested that it is not an isthmus nation. Speaking before the Campeche meeting, he explicitly invoked Nicaragua’s sea-border dispute with Colombia, and accused Bogotá of colluding with other Central American governments against his country: “Colombia has been politicking with Honduras and Costa Rica to form alliances in order to strip Nicaragua of its territories in the Caribbean Sea, thus the presence of Colombia in this summit is disturbing.”

Ortega was referring to a Colombia-Honduras maritime agreement which would deprive Nicaragua of much of its Caribbean coastal waters: “We want to make it clear that under no circumstances does our participation in the summit mean that we are recognizing the attempts by Colombia to take control of Nicaraguan territory in conspiracy with Honduras and Costa Rica which decided to set the border at the 15th parallel, placing Nicaragua in a difficult situation.” Nicaragua has filed a World Court suit in the matter.

José Obdulio Gaviria, advisor to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, responded that questioning Colombia’s participation in the PPP summit was “a little out-of-place.” Colombian Foreign Affairs Minister Fernando Araujo followed up with a statement that charged: “While Nicaragua neglects the boundary agreements in full or partially, Colombia has developed its relations with bordering countries with respect and according to international law.” The communiqué reiterated Bogotá’s claim to the San Andrés archipelago as Colombian territory—a cluster of islands also claimed by Nicaragua.

Not surprisingly, the issue of oil lies behind the dispute—which, even before Ortega’s election, has prompted alarming sabre-rattling from Bogotá. In May 2003, Colombia’s Defense Minister Martha Lucia Ramirez warned that her government was prepared to use force if Nicaragua allowed oil exploration in the San Andrés archipelago. Nicaragua responded that it had granted exploration concessions to four US companies in Caribbean offshore waters, but that the project did not involve waters under dispute. “The concessions do not include any territory claimed by other countries,” said Octavio Salinas, then director of the Nicaraguan Energy Institute, adding that they were all “in territory historically of Nicaraguan sovereignty.'”

Colombia claims the San Andrés islands under a 1928 treaty, which Nicaragua considers invalid and has disputed before The Hague. The Colombian navy routinely patrols the waters around the archipelago—about 400 miles off the Colombian coast, and some 150 miles off Nicaragua. “The navy has sufficient capacity to defend and guarantee the sovereignty of our waters,” Ramirez told Radio Caracól in Bogotá. “We hope we obtain peaceful solutions. We don’t think that this should be solved in a military scenario.” But Sen. Enrique Gomez Hurtado, head of the Colombian senate’s foreign relations commission, said that if Nicaragua proceeds with the oil exploration, “we will have to use force.”

Neither government seemed concerned with the potential environmental impacts of oil development in the area. The San Andrés islands are surrounded by some of the largest and most productive coral reefs in the Western Hemisphere, according to the Ocean Conservancy.

The New Orleans-based minnow MKJ insist began exploration in the disputed zone. Nicaragua maintained the exploration zone was west of the 82nd meridian, and therefore under Nicaraguan sovereignty by terms of the 1928 treaty.

Some Colombian officials were said to privately agree, but there was formal stand-down. Colombia—with a vastly superior military to Nicaragua—did not go to war, but as a retaliatory measure refused to grant visas for San Andrés’ 50,000 residents to enter Nicaraguan territory.

At the time the 1928 Esquerra-Barcenas Treaty was drawn up, Nicaragua was under a dictatorship propped up by US Marines, and Augusto Cesar Sandino was leading an insurgency in the name of national sovereignty. Thus, Nicaragua argues, no legitimate Nicaraguan government ever approved the treaty.

Nicaragua’s sea border dispute with Costa Rica is also heating up at the current juncture. Nicaragua’s Foreign Minister Samuel Santos April 16 defended his navy’s seizure of Costan Rican leisure boat El Privilegio, saying the vessel had violated Nicaraguan waters. He rejected Costa Rica’s demand for the boat’s immediate return. A statement from Santos charged the vessel “was in clear violation of international security norm… No one aboard had verifiable official documentation.” He said the detention was “in the context of…fighting crimes at sea.”

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Bruno Stagno, in turn, accused the Nicaraguan military of crossing into Costa Rican waters to seize the boat, illegally detaining four Costa Ricans and two US citizens. He also rejected Ortega’s charges of Costa Rican collusion with Colombia and Honduras to pillage Nicaraguan resources. “Naturally my government rejects this… attitude that goes against our nations’ historical links of friendship and brotherhood,” Stagno said.

Costa Rica and Nicaragua are currently attempting to negotiate a treaty over their maritime borders.

As governments bicker, popular opposition to any oil development is mounting. MKJ of New Orleans opted for the disputed San Andrés archipelago after plans to drill for oil near Limón on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast were halted the previous year in the face of concerted opposition from local fishermen and environmentalists.

Costa Rican activists in the citizens’ coalition Acción de Lucha Anti-petrolera (Action for Anti-Petroleum Struggle, ADELA) also mounted effective opposition to an offshore drilling contract granted to George W. Bush’s former company Harken Energy of Houston in 2002. Including over 60 municipal governments, environmental and indigenous groups and fishing and tourism concerns, ADELA organized media campaigns and public protests that finally moved Costa Rica’s Ministry of Environment & Energy to cancel the deal.

In January 2004, when Harken sent former US senator Robert Torricelli to negotiate in the company’s demands for $9 million in compensation for the cancelled contract, he was met with with a large protest of ecologists with drums and large banners.

When Guatemala announced the opening of an oil exploration zone in the Lake Izabal region in 2002, a similar coalition emerged to oppose it—with local Kekchi Maya communities at the forefront. Municipal leaders even threatened to shut down the ports of Puerto Barrios and Santo Tomas, Guatemala’s only access to the Atlantic—prompting then-President Alfonso Portillo to cancel the concession.

The Specter of the Canal

Far more geo-strategically significant than access to a small archipelago (even one with oil potential) is the question of control of corridors for inter-oceanic trade—the most ambitious visions of the PPP. The Panama Canal can no longer accommodate modern super-tankers, and the ultimate aim of the PPP is to build a replacement elsewhere on the isthmus.

Last October, with the presidential elections still pending, Nicaragua announced plans to build a new canal through its territory. Then-President Enrique Bolaños said the new artery would cost $18 billion and take 12 years to complete. Speaking to a Managua meeting of Western defense ministers—including Donald Rumsfeld—Bolaños called for international backing for the Inter-Oceanic Nicaragua Canal. “The galloping increase in world business demands another canal in addition to a widened Panama Canal,” he said.

The announcement came days before Panamanians went to the polls Oct. 22 to vote on an unprecedented expansion of their existing canal. Under the proposal, wider locks and deeper access lanes would enable the canal to accommodate ships carrying up to 10,000 containers. The current limit is 4,000 containers. Critics argued that by the time it is finished in 2015, it will already be outmoded. But voters approved the project, and in March Panama hosted a conference to announce what contracts would be up for grabs—attended by more than 600 representatives from 222 companies from 31 countries.

So another race appears to be underway. But the obvious place for the Nicaraguan canal is on another contested border—the Rio San Juan, which forms the frontier with Costa Rica. This strategic artery flows from giant Lake Nicaragua to the Caribbean, leaving only a narrow strip of land between the lake and the Pacific. It was eyed as a canal route in the 19th century, but the US chose Panama after an 1893 revolution brought the nationalist regime of José Santos Zelaya to power in Nicaragua. Today the river is claimed wholly by Nicaragua. Costa Rica challenges this claim—and in September 2005 brought suit over the matter at The Hague. Nicaragua responded with a reprisal entry tax levied on Costa Rican citizens, and Managua officials even invoked Nicaragua’s historical claim to the northern Costa Rican province of Guanacaste.

The most ambitious scheme which has been floated for the San Juan basin is the “Grand Canal,” which envisions the historical of irony of Nicaragua as the replacement for the Panama Canal. In a revival of the 19th-century scheme, the Rio San Juan would be dramatically widened and dredged, and the strip between the lake and the sea blasted through. However, the Grand Canal would cost more then ten times Nicaragua’s annual GDP.

Others in Managua have proposed an “Eco-Canal,” priced at just $50 million, which would make “low-impact” use of the river and lake. The river would be dredged in places but maintain its natural banks. Instead of traditional locks, air-powered moveable dams would be used to assist cargo barges to pass two stretches of rapids. The Eco-Canal would serve national and regional trade, rather than compete for a share of the international container market. Nicaragua’s National Assembly approved a feasibility study for the Eco-Canal in 2003.

Numerous “dry” schemes for a Nicaraguan inter-oceanic link are also pending. The Florida-based Phenix Group is seeking to build an oil pipeline across Nicaragua. In 2001, two companies—Interoceanic Canal of Nicaragua (CINN) and Global Intermodal Transport System (SIT-Global)—were granted approval by Nicaragua’s National Assembly to conduct feasibility studies for a “Dry Canal” of pipelines, highways and high-speed rail with free trade zones and containerized shipping ports on either side. Parsons Brinckerhoff of California conducted similar studies in the 1990s.

The “dry” project’s planned route actually cuts north of the San Juan basin and Lake Nicaragua, linking the little Caribbean coast town of Monkey Point to the Pacific port of Corinto. Either the San Juan basin or “dry canal” route would cut through remote rainforest and impoverished peasant regions.

The “dry” projects are strongly opposed by the community of Monkey Point, made up of Black Creoles, mestizos and Rama indigenous. Under the Phenix project, tankers would anchor two miles off Monkey Point and connect to oil-collecting buoys. The oil would then be pumped through an underwater pipeline to a Monkey Point marine terminal. From there, up to 480,000 barrels would be pumped daily across Nicaragua through three underground pipelines to Corinto. Phenix CEO Rick Wojcik said in 2003: “We’re looking at long-term funding with the World Bank, we’re in discussions with the World Bank, [and] we’ve been assigned a case officer from the World Bank.”

Researcher Ben Beachy of the Nicaragua Network, a US-based solidarity group, noted that forested areas in the path of the projected pipeline include the Cerro Silva Natural Reserve. The pipeline would also sever the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, a World Bank project purportedly established to protect the rich biodiversity of Central America’s rainforests. But Wojcik told Beachy: “We’re not a clear-cutting timber company.” He claimed the project would require “only a couple hundred meters through the jungle.”

Wojcik claimed that after pledging that pipeline would adhere to environmental guidelines, Phenix received a letter from Monkey Point residents indicating their “full support” for the project—signed by Pearl Watson, a village nurse. But when asked by members of the Nicaragua Network if she signed the letter, “Watson laughed, said she had never signed or seen such a letter, and declared the community’s opposition to the proposed pipeline project.”

Watson told the Nicaragua Network: “People [in Monkey Point] live on the fishing and producing of the land. What benefit will we get from losing our sea goods, losing our wildlife?” She also expressed concerns about oil spills in the area. “I don’t care how much you take care; the oil will spill in the water.” Finally, she feared that local residents will be stuck with the mess after the corporations move on. “In 25 or 30 years you won’t have much forest around [and] after there is no more oil to pass through the pipeline, they [Phenix] are going to leave and the community will have no fish in their streams. We inherited this land from our ancestors, and if we destroy this land we will leave nothing for our children and grandchildren but barren land, from which they can produce nothing.”

Nicaraguan indigenous rights lawyer Maria Luisa Acosta told the Nicaragua Network that Monkey Point does have some legal tools to obstruct the project. With the passage of the “Demarcation Law Regarding the Properties of the Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Communities of the Atlantic Coast, Bocay, Coco and Indio Maiz Rivers” in 2002, the Nicaraguan government officially recognized that Monkey Point and its surrounding lands belong to their indigenous inhabitants. Under this law, Phenix is legally obligated to conduct formal consultations with Monkey Point community members and provide “full disclosure” before implementing development plans.

However, Nicaragua’s National Commission for Demarcation of Indigenous Lands (CONADETI) has been under-funded and fraught with scandal despite the urgency of its task, leaving indigenous communities like Monkey Point without clear title to their territories. Cesar Paiz, a representative of the planned demarcation commission, told the Nicaragua Network: “We know that behind many of the worst [land rights] conflicts there are powerful business interests, seeking to exploit the lands inappropriately. It is important now to get organized and seek support to enable the law to be properly implemented.”

New Pressures from Below

Mexico, the leader of the PPP, has seen similar opposition from indigenous and peasant communities, environmentalists and popular movements. This was clearly evidenced in the days around the Campeche summit.

Security at the Campeche summit site was overwhelming. The city’s hotel zone and convention center were cordoned off by five lines of police and military troops, with reinforcements standing by in two army trucks. Sharpshooters in camouflage gear were stationed on rooftops in the zone. Nonetheless, some 150 protesters from the Broad Progressive Front (FAP) and other organizations braved this intimidation.

However, April 10 also marked the 88th anniversary of the assassination of Emiliano Zapata, and marches held in commemoration elsewhere in the country denounced the PPP. In Xalapa, capital of Veracruz state, followers of the Agrarian Indigenous Zapatista Movement, the Popular Front of Organizations of Southeast Veracruz, the Regional Council of Nahua and Nuntaj Pueblos and the Zapatista “Other Campaign” held a march against the PPP. Protest leader Daniela Griego said the project would represent the “destruction of our natural resources.”

In conflicted Chiapas state, thousands marched in the capital Tuxtla Gutierrez and blocked roads throughout the state under the slogan “Por Un Nuevo Reparto Agrario” (For a New Agrarian Reform). The protests were organized by the National Front of Struggle for Socialism (FNLS) and the Chiapas State Coordinator of Autonomous Organizations.

In Oaxaca, Carlos Beas Torres, leader of the Union of Indigenous Communities of the Isthmus Northern Zone (UCIZONI), an affiliate of the Mexican Alliance for the Self-Determination of the Pueblos (AMAP), told a meeting against the PPP that the only ones to profit from the project would be people like Mexican magnate Carlos Slim, “the world’s third richest man,” whose Grupo Carso would likely win lucrative contracts in oil and telecommunications development. He said the PPP “is not a development strategy,” but “clearly a business plan that undermines our national sovereignty.”

Protests were also held in Mexico City, where campesinos from Veracruz, Oaxaca and elsewhere marched on the Government Secretariat and blocked traffic. Representatives of both radical bodies such as the Popular People’s Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) and the semi-official National Campesino Confederation (CNC) participated.

The PPP has become a key concern of the movement for indigenous autonomy which has been building in Mexico since the 1994 Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas. In 2001, after years of fitful negotiations, Mexico’s Congress approved a package of constitutional reforms on indigenous rights as a measure to end the Chiapas conflict. However, the Zapatistas rejected the reforms after lawmakers stripped all binding provisions on indigenous control of land and natural resources. The package was nonetheless upheld by the Mexican supreme court in 2002. While continuing to observe their cease-fire, the Zapatisas have not returned to the dialogue table since.

In December 2002, the Coordinator in Defense of Territory and Indigenous Peoples of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec issued a statement denouncing the non-binding referendum planned by the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples (CNDPI) for the Indians of Oaxaca, saying the vote amounted to a “tacit acceptance” that the Zapatista peace plan on indigenous rights will not be fulfilled. The group also denounced the vote as propaganda for the PPP. Oaxaca’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec is another location historically eyed as a candidate for an inter-oceanic canal. Although the government denies that various mega-development projects planned for Oaxaca are part of the PPP, one question in the referendum asked: “Would you be in favor of projects for your community if they were financed by the Puebla-Panama Plan?”

Mexican authorities have nearly openly acknowledged that pressure from below has slowed progress on the PPP. In October 2003, at a Mexico City summit with his counterparts from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica, as well as high-level representatives from Nicaragua and Panama, Mexico’s then-Foreign Relations Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista held a joint press conference in which he stressed that the assembled governments are committed to the PPP. But he also said that the governments have not done enough to emphasize the benefits of the development project to civil society.

After the meeting, the Mexican Alliance for Peoples’ Self-Determination (AMAP), representing various indigenous and campesino groups in Puebla, Veracruz, Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas, issued a statement protesting the “silent imposition” of the PPP. The statement charged that development projects are advancing “without even minimal consultation with indigenous peoples and campesino communities.” The statement especially cited expansion of the Benito Juarez hydro-electric plant in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and construction of the Oaxaca-Huatulco super-highway, cutting through Oaxaca’s marginalized Sierra del Sur. The statement also demanded liberation for political prisoners arrested after involvement in building Zapatista-style “autonomous municipalities” in Veracruz and other states.

Earlier that year, calling the PPP “a crime against our communities,” Marcelino Diaz de Jesus of the Nahua Council of the Alto Balsas, an indigenous group based in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, formally filed a complaint before Geneva hearings on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, held by the UN Subcommission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. A complaint against the mega-project was also filed by the US-based International Indian Treaty Council (IITC).

Little more than a month after the supreme court approved the gutted constitutional reforms in 2002, hundreds of Zapatista sympathizers marked Dia de la Raza (Oct. 12) by blocking the entrance to the main Chiapas military base, Rancho Nuevo, to demand demilitarization of the conflicted southern state—and to protest the PPP. “These lands belong to the people and we will not abandon them,” said one protest leader. “The riches belong to those of us who have lived here for centuries and we will oppose their globalization.”

Zapatista sympathizers also filled Mexico City’s central plaza, the Zócalo, to protest the PPP—many with their faces hidden by the signature red bandana of the Zapatista rebels. Led by an elderly couple carrying a Mexican flag, the marchers stopped along the Paseo de la Reforma to pay homage to the statue of Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec emperor. “Although the infamous invaders burned his feet, the heroic Cuauhtémoc never turned over the gold, as we won’t turn over the country!” shouted Efran Capiz, leader of the Emiliano Zapata Union of Communities.

Mixtec and Zapotec Indians also blocked highways in Oaxaca to protest then-President Fox’s mega-development plans for the state. “The people who live here are campesinos. These projects will take away their livelihoods,” said Gabriela Rangel Faz of the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade, which helped coordinate the protests. “Look at what happened with other dams they built in the south. The government said the people would have nice homes, good land, schools and roads when their land was taken. They got only low-quality land and tiny shacks.” In conjunction with the protests, activists formally petitioned the International Labor Organization (ILO) to censure Mexico for non-compliance with ILO-69, a treaty stating that indigenous peoples must be consulted on development projects that will affect their lands.

Such principles were also raised in the statement issued by leaders of the Dia de la Raza march in Chiapas, representing several local indigenous and campesino groups, including the Emiliano Zapata Campesino Organization, the National Coordinator of Indigenous Peoples, and Civil Society in Resistance. The statement said the Supreme Court decision “definitively closes the doors to a dialogue necessary to construct peace in the state of Chiapas and all Mexico… The ‘indigenous law’ traitorously imposed by the Congress of the Union and by Vicente Fox, and now ratified by the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, only serves the great multinational companies that seek to plunder the strategic resources of Mexico through the Puebla-Panama Plan and the Free Trade Area of the Americas.”

As governments fight it out over the fate of the Mesoamerican isthmus in the 21st century, popular and indigenous movements may ultimately have the last word on whether the numerous mega-development projects will be able to proceed.

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RESOURCES:

Plan Puebla-Panama
http://www.planpuebla-panama.org

Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA)
http://www.alternativabolivariana.org/

See also:

INDIGENOUS OPPOSITION TO PLAN PUEBLA-PANAMA
by Bill Weinberg
WW4 REPORT #91, August 2003
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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, May 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

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