Western Bloc Barbarism
July 17, 2008
Today’s guest editorial is the latest in toni solo’s Globalization and terror series.
It has not always been so hard to map the frontiers of North Atlantic Treaty Organization country foreign policy beyond which US imperialism goes it alone. Nor, until now, have NATO countries’ relations with Israel encroached so blatantly on the enduring symbiosis between Israel’s militarist aggression and the US government’s militarist imperialism. If it is clear by now that US power and influence is less than it was even ten years ago, what might be the implications for how NATO is used and abused in terms of shifting international economic relations and, in particular, the diverse processes of corporate globalization?
A banal anecdote may help set those questions in some kind of manageable framework. Back in 1993, the Irish government, like many other Western European governments got on the transparency and participation bandwagon prior to that year’s UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna. So a bunch of NGOs working on a broad range of human rights matters were invited to a preparatory meeting in Iveagh House, the Department of Foreign Affairs’ building on St Stephen’s Green in Dublin. We all sat about a large conference table along with various DFA staff and an avuncular guy informally dressed who turned out to be an important member of the Irish government delegation to the United Nations.
Do What We Want Or Else…
June 30, 2008
Some highly respected intellectuals have added grist to the US-EU propaganda mill busy undermining the gains made by Nicaragua with ALBA, and Guardian propagandist Rory Carroll has been quick to pounce on it. In today’s guest editorial toni solo responds. (NB: Some of the same intellectuals — Chomsky, Zinn et al — are also being corralled by Stephen Zunes, a notorious Israel lobby denier, into signing a letter in support of velvet revolutionary Gene Sharp of the Albert Einstein Institute. Here is Michael Barker’s response).
Anyone stepping back from the recent hyped-up drama engineered by the minority right wing parties in Nicaragua and their overseas allies will see all the tell-tale signs of yet another instance of US and allied country intervention in the region designed to overthrow a non-compliant government. The national march led by the centre-right MRS party in Managua on June 27th, heavily funded by grants from the US government and related organizations, attracted between 6,000 (police estimates) and 15,000 (march organizers’ figure) participants. Opposition daily La Prensa reported that the march was “against hunger, the high cost of living, the ‘institutional dictatorship’ and in defence of democracy”.
The march followed last week’s decision by the Supreme Electoral Council to cancel the legal status of two opposition parties, the centre-right Movimiento Renovador Sandinista (MRS) and the Conservative Party. The electoral body, a power independent of the executive, the judiciary and the legislature under Nicaragua’s political constitution,judged that both those parties had failed to comply with the relevant electoral legislation. The MRS had been given almost 15 months to comply with its legal obligations, but did not do so.
Article 173 of Nicaragua’s political constitution authorises the Supreme Electoral Council to cancel or suspend the legal status of political parties that fail to comply with relevant electoral law. The electoral authority found that, with duly constituted departmental authorities in only 10 of the country’s 16 departments and two autonomous regions, the MRS left itself in non-compliance with Nicaragua’s electoral law and the party’s own statutes.
Nicaraguan opposition – dependent on foreign support
The opposition and its supporters accused the electoral body of acting under orders of the leaders of the two main political parties in Nicaragua, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional and the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista. Among the opposition’s supporters are the representatives of foreign development cooperation programmes in Nicaragua, the US government and foreign intellectuals. The day after the electoral tribunal’s decision was made, the foreign development cooperation programme representatives published a pronouncement in the country’s two main daily newspapers questioning the electoral authority’s ruling.
The pronouncement alleged that the ruling was open to question because it was based on an electoral law they thought left too much to the discretion of the CSE magistrates. The statement argued that this called into question the development of democratic governance in Nicaragua. This, it noted, suggested lack of compliance by the Nicaraguan government with the terms of relevant development cooperation agreements.
The pronouncement ended with an avowal that the development cooperation community would monitor developments closely.The blatantly presumputous neocolonial sub-text could hardly be clearer – “do what we want, or else…” The list of countries supporting that pronouncement consists almost entirely of US and allied countries and also multilateral bodies, like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, controlled by the US and its allies.
The electoral tribunal’s decision and the donor countries’ pronouncement came after a high-profile 11-day hunger strike by the opposition leader Dora María Tellez. The opposition won international publicity for Tellez’ protest when a group of leading international intellectuals including Eduardo Galeano, Noam Chomsky and Mario Benedetti published a letter supporting her call for a national dialogue. They may or may not have been aware that Dora Maria Tellez’s idea of dialogue is to demand in the most insulting possible terms that Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua’s President, resign.
NGOs – part of opposition electoral manoeuvres
This latest episode in the Nicaraguan opposition’s efforts to destabilise the FSLN coalition government re-runs similar US and allied-country funded conspiracies to overthrow democratically elected governments leading to the coups d’état in Venezuela in 2002 and Haiti in 2004. NGOs and the managerial class that lives by them are invariably important players in such coups. They mushroomed in Nicaragua after the Sandinista revolutionary government lost the watershed 1990 presidential election. Almost all are heavily dependent on funding from US and allied country governmental and non-governmental institutions and agencies.
With those resources Nicaraguan NGOs are able to play a political role in Nicaragua because they constitute in large part the electoral base for the centre-right MRS party, which won barely 7% of the vote in the 2006 presidential election. Because their political support is located overwhelmingly in Managua and other urban centres on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast, the MRS has difficulty complying with the electoral law. They voted for that law when the measure was passed in 1995 but have subsequently found it hard to consolidate the national structures that electoral law requires.
Faced with that difficulty and its very limited electoral support, the MRS, by default or by design, set itself up for elimination as a legal political party. Its leaders and the party’s right wing allies, principally Eduardo Montealegre, generally regarded as the leader of Nicaragua’s traditional oligarchy, seem to have carefully planned events around that predictable outcome. They have used their resource-rich NGO base to mobilise high profile protest. It chimes well with the motif of dictatorship and democratic crisis the US and allied country interventionist scenario demands.
In fact the electoral authority’s ruling may help the MRS party achieve two things. It makes it much easier for them to justify electoral alliances with the right because they can claim they have to do so in order to be able to participate in elections. It also means they can focus their resources on the electoral areas in Managua and the urban centres of Nicaragua’s Pacific coast where they have most support. This will help Nicaragua’ s right wing and centre-right consolidate their electoral campaign more effectively.
Democracy – look who’s talking
While the local European representatives talk human rights to Nicaragua, their European Union governments are accomplices both to the genocidal collective punishment applied by Israel to Palestinians in the Gaza strip and to systematic racist abuses and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Wherever one looks in the world, from Equatorial Guinea to Morocco to Uzbekistan, one will find that the same European countries currently threatening Nicaragua, support the most cruel and vicious tyrannies. Canada did the same in Haiti during that country’s long agony under the illegitimate Latortue regime.
These are the people warning Nicaragua’s FSLN-led coalition government to respect the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, The Inter-American Democratic Charter of the Organization of American States and the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Together with that contemptible hypocrisy, if one turns to the practice of democracy and transparency in Europe itself, the picture looks much worse than it does in Nicaragua.
European countries colluded in CIA torture flights and then obstructed investigation by the European Parliament into that appalling betrayal of public trust. One should remember episodes like the comprehensive ELF corruption scandal and the Taiwan frigates affair in France, the British Aerospace-Saudi Arabia scandal, the mass resignation of the European Commission in 1999, the corruption scandal around Helmut Kohl in Germany. In Italy, one has to recall the Parmalat scandal and the systematic corruption associated with Bettino Craxi’s regime, never mind Silvio Berlusconi.
The endemic corruption in Ireland embodied by the governments of Charles Haughey has been rife too in other small European countries like Greece or Portugal. Many scandals like those mentioned were found out. But the culture of corruption that sees them recur time and again survives, along with all the scandals that never see the light of day. And yet, these are the countries trying to wag their finger convincingly at Nicaragua about good governance.
As for the EU’s bogus espousal of democracy, all the EU countries except Ireland have denied their peoples a say on the corporate friendly Lisbon Treaty because these countries’ ruling elites know their peoples would very likely reject the treaty if they had the chance. That is what happened in Ireland, the only country whose constitution forced the ruling elite to put the Lisbon Treaty to a democratic vote. The European Union’s executive, the European Commission, is appointed, not elected. So it is absolutely clear that the development cooperation representatives of these countries in Nicaragua operate by longstanding neocolonial double standards.
Nicaraguan government stresses sovereignty
By contrast, the Nicaraguan government’s response has been fine, dignified and clear. The Vice-Minister of the office of External Cooperation said of the donor representatives, “they have not accepted that there are substantial changes, a fundamental transformation in the way we relate to each other, and here there are two keywords: sovereignty and dignity…..if they argue there is to be no cooperation because we don’t do a particular thing, we have no other option but to say “well, if you want to go off with it, then off you go”, that is dignity’s final argument, that is the final point.” (3)
Nicaragua’s FSLN-led coalition government is ultimately in a stronger position to resist foreign intervention than was, for example, Haiti’s President Jean Bertrand Aristide. But the strength of the Nicaraguan government’s position depends overwhelmingly on support from Venezuela. It is hard to see how Nicaragua could defend itself against consistent US and allied country blackmail and incessant destabilisation were it not a bona fide member of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, the ALBA bloc of countries comprised currently of Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Neither the US government nor its European allies look kindly on the socialist inspired, solidarity based, trade and development cooperation model being developed by the ALBA countries. They support the Nicaraguan opposition’s destabilisation campaign just as they support similar opposition campaigns in Venezuela and Bolivia. All these campaigns are part of US and allied government efforts to roll back attempts by Latin American countries to move towards progressive sovereign integration outside the capitalist scheme of corporate globalization.
As Orlando Nuñez, the director of Nicaragua’s landmark Zero Hunger program has said, the destabilization campaign in Nicaragua is the latest stage of an ongoing low-intensity war to re-establish the neocolonial debt-plus-aid model imposed for so long in Nicaragua and the rest of Latin America by the United States and its allies. They want to prevent Nicaragua’s progressive government implementing its programme successfully so as to ensure it loses electoral support. The next decisive battleground will be the municipal elections in November this year.
toni solo writes for tortillaconsal.com
Notes
1.“Campanazo” a gobierno Ortega
2. as above
3. Jaentschke ratifica principos de política exterior sandinista
Erudite, Irreverent, Irrepressible, Dead
June 23, 2008
George Carlin, a genius, is dead at 71. Mel Watkins reports.
George Carlin, the Grammy-Award winning standup comedian and actor who was hailed for his irreverent social commentary, poignant observations of the absurdities of everyday life and language, and groundbreaking routines like “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” died in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday, according to his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He was 71.
The cause of death was heart failure. Mr. Carlin, who had a history of heart problems, went into the hospital on Sunday afternoon after complaining of heart trouble. The comedian had worked last weekend at The Orleans in Las Vegas.
Recently, Mr. Carlin was named the recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He was to receive the award at the Kennedy Center in November. “In his lengthy career as a comedian, writer, and actor, George Carlin has not only made us laugh, but he makes us think,” said Stephen A. Schwarzman, the Kennedy Center chairman. “His influence on the next generation of comics has been far-reaching.”
In an interview with The Associated Press, Jack Burns, who performed with Mr. Carlin in the 1960’s as one half of a comedy duo, said “He was a genius and I will miss him dearly.”
At Work for John Negroponte?
June 19, 2008
Noam Chomsky, Tom Hayden, Ariel Dorfmann et al have published an open letter in Nicaraguan centre-right El Nuevo Diario. In today’s guest editorial toni solo takes apart its assertions.
On June 16th the Nicaraguan centre-right newspaper El Nuevo Diario published a letter [1] from various well known people calling for the Nicaraguan coalition government, led by the Sandinista FSLN, not to shut down political freedom and to hold a national dialogue to address the food crisis and the high cost of living in Nicaragua. This appeal was made in solidarity with Dora Maria Tellez, the former president of the neo-liberal social democrat Movimiento Renovador Sandinista. The letter’s signatories end their appeal by saying that Tellez represents a broad section of Nicaraguan political opinion and should be listened to.
The signatories’ response to criticism of their endorsement of the former MRS president’s oportunistically calculated, factitious appeal is likely to be that critics of their letter themselves offer misplaced solidarity the FSLN government does not merit. But a brief review of the facts of the MRS record in the last few years renders the dishonesty and shiftiness of Dora Maria Tellez and her colleagues in the MRS leadership very clear. Apologetics on behalf of the FSLN are superfluous in this case. The facts speak for themselves.
Ecuador, ALBA and the FARC
June 15, 2008
Today’s guest editorial from my friend toni solo on recent developments in Latin America and the ominous push back by global capital.
Recent remarks by Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez on the civil war in Colombia and Ecuador’s decision not to join the Alternativa Bolivariana de las Americas (ALBA) solidarity based cooperation initiative [1] shows progressive leaders are taking stock on Latin American integration. President Rafael Correa suggests his government’s decision is linked to efforts to revive the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) group which Venezuela abandoned when the Peruvian and Colombian government’s insisted on negotiating bilateral “free trade” agreements with the United States.
Aporrea.org reports Correa as admitting that he told Chavez in 2007, “you return to the CAN and Ecuador will immediately join ALBA”. Venezuela’s government may well be quietly relieved, since Ecuador’s decision is very ambivalent, keeping its options open and continuing to develop close bilateral trade links with Venezuela. It may well suit the ALBA countries — Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Nicaragua and Venezuela — to consolidate gains so far and to develop ALBA’s closely linked PETROCARIBE preferential energy and trade programme covering most of the Caribbean and much of Central America.
US Deficits, Cause for War
June 7, 2008
Today’s guest editorial by toni solo is the latest in his Globalization and terror series.
The US Congressional Joint Economic Committee’s monthly memorandum for June 2005 stated, “Without an increase in national saving, any reduction in the current account deficit would be accompanied by reduced national investment that would harm future growth.” Among the committee’s recommendations was the suggestion of reducing the US budget deficit. Instead, US budget deficits, inflated by military spending, have got worse.
For the moment, with their massive holdings of US government debt, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and European countries continue to help the US government operate large budget deficits without high interest rates. Since United States savings have been so low for so long, the US authorities rely on foreign savings for investment to sustain growth. Currently, sustaining any level of US economic growth depends on the country’s huge current account deficit.
Fomenting Inflation to Pay for War
June 1, 2008
Today’s guest editorial from toni solo, the latest in the Globalization and terror series, looks at the manipulation of oil prices to foment inflation by the US establishment.
Western Bloc central banks and financial and investment corporations are locked into an inflationary dynamic in order to sustain their system’s militarist imperialism. The Bloc’s European and Pacific components offer supportive economic collaboration. In exchange, the US serves as the Bloc’s global enforcer.
The US Treasury, Federal Reserve and corporate financial houses work together boosting dollar zone money supply, devaluing the dollar. Their partners take compensatory steps, intervening in G7 financial markets. They seek to keep their currencies in some kind of sustainable relationship for purposes of mutual trade and finance equilibrium so as to support US budget and current account deficits.
A Tool for the Laptop
May 23, 2008
There’s a south asian joke where a cuckold sighs relief at the death of his illegitimate son ‘because he looked like a dick anyway’. It would seem the father of this cretin (Ben Whitford) in the Guardian has not been afforded such satisfaction yet. However, this fellow doesn’t just look like a dick, he also acts like one. Look at this pathetic propaganda screed — this hack, to use Robert Newman’s words, has all the credulity of a 70s porn actress (‘Gee mister, you mean the time machine only works if I take off all my clothes?’). This may very well have been dictated by the US state department (and there is no reason to believe it wasn’t).
In the following, Forrest Hylton tells tells the Real News this is really about manufacturing threats. (Also check toni solo’s excellent analysis of the US-Colombian propaganda campaign)
Inspector Clouseau Meets Ocean’s 11
May 20, 2008
In today’s guest editorial, toni solo’s latest in his Globalization and Terror series, he takes a look at Colombia’s laptop fiasco.
The Pink Panther’s Inspector Clouseau has a new rival. Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble’s recent performance for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s narco-terror regime was an autopilot sub-routine derived from Colin Powell’s 2003 UN farrago justifying the attack on Iraq. Noble has form for this genre. Back in 1998 he justified giving evasive testimony (1) to the grand jury investigating allegations against Bill Clinton. At the time, Noble was one of Clinton’s security team. British civil servants call it being “economical with the truth”.
Colombia had asked Interpol to check out some computer gadgetry allegedly recovered from Colombia’s illegal attack on Ecuadoran territory on March 1st this year. Over twenty people were murdered in the attack including members of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), four Mexican students and an Ecuadoran. The Uribe gangster regime and its US and European allies mounted a vicious propaganda campaign alleging the computer hardware contained proof of financial and material support for the FARC from Venezuela and Ecuador.
One Palestine Complete
May 17, 2008
The solution to the conflict originated by Israel is a Palestinian State, writes Agustin Velloso in today’s guest editorial. Both the one-state and two-state arguments are generally framed in a context of Israeli ‘concessions’. It was the Palestinians who were wronged, and it is their land that was stolen; a discourse would only be meaningful if it is framed in terms of what concessions they are willing to make. It is time to rethink existing proposals, and move towards a third way based on justice, rather than expedience.
1. One State or Two?
The number of articles and statements about the solution to the Palestinian conflict has increased notably during 2008. The increase accompanies the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, established on May 14th, 1948. Millions of Palestinians have suffered the consequences since then. Israel was established and exists at the expense of the Palestinian people.
All these years Israel has shown clearly that its existence is incompatible with the human and political rights of the Palestinians as human beings and as a people. It is well-known that Palestinians have to pay a price, no matter how high, in death, exile, occupation that Israel considers appropriate for making the Zionist project in Palestine a success. This project turns on the acquisition of Palestinian and Arab lands for the exclusive benefit of the Jews from all over the world, together with the exclusion of their legitimate inhabitants.
Neither the numerous United Nations Resolutions devoted to the Palestinian conflict, nor the widespread and repeated criticism of Israel’s policies and acts, let alone Palestinian demands and resistance, have managed to stop the Zionist project.
