NATO Vs SATO
April 18, 2008
South America looks to set up its own version of NATO after Colombia destabilises the region.
Chávez & JobimThe governments of Brazil and Venezuela are leading efforts to create a NATO-style South American Defense Council, which could be formed by the end of the year.
-
The regional body would coordinate defense policies, deal with internal conflicts and presumably wane Washington’s influence in its “backyard.” The idea gained traction after Colombia illegally launched a military operation in Ecuador to assassinate members of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army (FARC-EP). The governments of Ecuador and Venezuela responded by sending troops to their countries’ Colombian border, causing fear that a larger conflict could ensue.
Washington, at least in public, has supported the idea of the South American initiative.
“I not only have no problem with it, I trust Brazil’s leadership and look forward to coordination with it,” said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
Brazilian Defense Minister Nelson Jobim reportedly told Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley that the U.S. should “watch from the outside and keep its distance.”
Arming the Israel of Latin America
April 3, 2008
The Israel of Latin America is being armed for a showdown. Vast growth in its military has seen it jump from 5th most powerful in the region to 2nd in the last 4 years – logistically supported by the USA. It seems the States is looking to spread ‘Plan Colombia’ to the neighbouring countries of Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil.
The military operative executed by Colombian soldiers on Ecuadorian soil to kill the FARC commander Raul Reyes is part of the strategy of the United States to alter the military balance in the region. In the crosshairs is Venezuelan and Ecuadorian oil; however it also serves as a check on Brazil as an emerging regional power.
In official declarations, the objective of the operative is the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), or rather narco-terrorism. But in reality, the Colombian-American military operative that violated the sovereignty of Ecuador is directed specifically at Hugo Chavez. What we are witnessing could be the first phase of a vast offensive to destabilize the “Bolivarian Revolution” and to alter the relationship between the powers in South America. This strategy has been implemented in stages. First there was Plan Colombia, intended to strengthen the military capacity of the Colombian state and place it among the most powerful on the continent. Next came the “spilling over” of the internal war into neighboring countries. The third stage seems to be “pre-emptive war,” which has become the Pentagon’s most widely used military strategy since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
This is the first time in a long time that Washington has taken the offensive in the region, and it is capable of putting a significant portion of Latin American countries behind its strategy. It is also a show of force during moments in which Chavez is encountering serious internal difficulties and is unable to receive support for this strategy of responding to tension with more tension.
The first thing that stands out is the lack of decency of those involved. The FARC present themselves as a revolutionary and popular organization, when in reality they are an armed group that violates human rights, recruits minors for its ranks, abuses women and the hostages that they maintain in their power, and are financed thanks to drug trafficking. Many countries consider them a terrorist organization.
Read the rest of this entry »
Colombian attack on FARC in Ecuador
March 6, 2008
Pepe Escobar: Tension grows between Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador.
Based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Pepe Escobar writes The Roving Eye for Asia Times Online. He has reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China. He is the author of the recently published Red Zone Blues. Pepe is a regular analyst for The Real News Network.
Cuba and the Liberal Propaganda Media
March 2, 2008
Today’s excellent guest editorial from my friend toni solo in Nicaragua.
Cuba was ranked at 51 in the 2007 UN Human Development Index. One place above Mexico. You will never read that fact in corporate mainstream reporting on Cuba. Nor will you read that around 90% of those eligible voted in Cuba’s recent elections. Nor will you read a thorough comparison between Cuba and similar countries like, say, Jamaica or the Dominican Republic.
The Human Development Index is a comparative measure of standard of living among UN member countries. In last year’s Human Development Index, Jamaica sits at 101 and Dominican Republic at 79. Among Caribbean countries only the Bahamas, at 49, and Barbados, at 31, do better than Cuba. Among Central American countries only Costa Rica, at 48, does better.
Lula’s Dissent
June 4, 2007
It appears some of Chavez’s defiance is rubbing off on Lula. For the first time since he singled out US citizens for strict visa controls in reponse to the harassment of Brazilian citizens at American airports, Lula is showing signs of a spine.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has flatly rejected President Bush’s proposals for parallel global negotiations to combat climate change, insisting that countries come to agreement at the United Nations, and not under US leadership…
“The Brazilian position is clear cut,” Mr Lula said. “I cannot accept the idea that we have to build another group to discuss the same issues that were discussed in Kyoto and not fulfilled.
“If you have a multilateral forum [the UN] that makes a democratic decision … then we should work to abide by those rules [rather than] simply to say that I do not agree with Kyoto and that I will develop another institution,” said Mr Lula…
The Bush administration has sought to cultivate President Lula as an ally, seeing the former trade unionist as a centre-left alternative in Latin America to the more radical anti-American socialism espoused by Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez…
However, on overall climate change policy, President Lula was dismissive of the Bush approach, calling it “voluntarism”, meaning a reliance on “coalitions of the willing” rather than establish global institutions and the pursuit of voluntary goals rather than binding commitments. “We cannot let voluntarism override multilateralism,” he said…
But Mr Lula, Brazil’s president since 2003, rebuked Mr Bush for seemingly sidestepping the UN and not taking its global responsibilities seriously. “I am open-minded about talking to President Bush … I will never refuse to discuss any idea, but we should respect the decisions made in the multilateral forums. It is the only thing we have all agreed on in a democratic way,” he said. “If the US is the country that most contributes with greenhouse gases, in the world, it should assume more responsibility to reduce emissions.”
The German hosts of this week’s G8 summit at Heiligendamm have also flatly rejected the idea of creating a separate process to deal with climate change. Chancellor Angela Merkel called it “non-negotiable”.
A Yelp in the Corner
Meanwhile in the periphery, a muted yelp was heard.
Tony Blair has been a lonely voice on the world stage, hailing the Bush plan as an “important step forward”.
The Bio-fuel Debate
[Lula's] promotion of bio-fuels has brought criticism from Mr Chavez, the continent’s leading oil producer and Castro, who has argued that growing bio-fuels is equivalent to taking food crops from the mouths of the poor and putting it in the petrol tanks of the wealthy.
Mr Lula picked his words on his fellow presidents carefully. “Its normal that those countries that have oil feel a bit strange about this idea of bio-fuels,” he said, but he suggested it was time for the Latin American left to move beyond its instinctive anti-Americanism. “A long time ago I learned not to put the blame for backwardness in Brazil on the US,” he said. “We have to blame ourselves. Our backwardness is caused by an elite which for a century didn’t think about the majority and subordinated itself to foreign interests.” …
The only more important issue in the world than trade, President Lula said, is climate change, and both are nearing a potential turning point.
“In the Doha round, I want to solve the issues of today and tomorrow,” the Brazilian leader said. “On the climate issue I have to solve the problem of planet earth, the only one we know of on which we can survive … So for God’s sake, let’s take care of planet earth.”
Standby Brazil, Here Comes British Justice
May 12, 2007
Considering the fact that most British courts are graced with portraits of such paragons of moral rectitude as the individuals who forced China to open its markets to British opium produced in its colonies in the Indian subcontinent, one can be fogiven for finding the phrase ’British justice’ something of an oxymoron. However, thanks to the education system bequeathed by the retreating Brits, in many postcolonial states many still live under the illusion that Britain has a justice system. It does not. What is has is no different than Zimbabwe. Except perhaps in Zimbabwe the use of state terror is less blatant. The execution of Jean Charles de Menezes is the most egregious — and for the victim, tragic – example of state terror. As an apparent acknowledgement of the agency in this execution, the British establishment has just announced that the 11 people involved in the murder are not even going to face disciplinary action, let alone be punished for it. BBC reports:
After months of leaks and a frenzy of speculation, the Crown Prosecution Service had concluded that no individual was to be charged over the fatal shooting of the 27-year-old Brazilian electrician at Stockwell Underground station on 22 July 2005.
Elsewhere it says:
The family of Mr Menezes – shot eight times at Stockwell Tube station after being mistaken for a suicide bomber – said the decision was “disgraceful”.
The family’s reaction is understandable; however, BBC’s insistence on regurgitating the discreditec story, that was only exposed thanx to a leak from a courageous person within the IPCC, is not. Contrary to the Police’s initial claims, it was revealed that Menezes never jumped the turnstile, was not running and neither was he wearing a puffa jacket. On the contrary, he was under surveillance from the moment he left his home, he walk all the way to a bus, got in, got off, walked to an underground station, bought a ticket, and walked to the tube. That is when he was grabbed by members of the police death squad, and seven bullets were pumped into his head, while he had already been immobilized by two members of the team. Had the police suspected him of being a suicide bomber, would they not have tackled him when he was walking to the Bus? After all, how could they be sure he was not a bus-bomber, rather than a tube-bomber?
So how does the Crown Prosecution Service get away with this whitewash? What tortuous reasoning was employed to back this egregious failure of justice?
The family had wanted to see the CPS bring murder charges against the two officers who fired the fatal shots. They had gambled on perhaps achieving a manslaughter trial…
A murder charge would require lawyers to prove in court, beyond reasonable doubt, that the two officers did not genuinely and honestly believe that Mr Menezes was about to blow himself up. And that would be too difficult to prove, the CPS said.
Manslaughter was discounted, as was the related possibility of forgery charges relating to claims that documents were doctored as part of a cover-up.
Only the health and safety charges would have any possibility of succeeding in an English court room, argued the CPS, and that meant no individual could possibly be held singularly responsible for Mr Menezes’ death.
The family of Jean Charles must clearly be in awe of this exemplary carriage of justice.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Mr Pereira. “We’ve had to wait for a whole year – and it’s been a hard year – to end up with something that does not make sense to the family.
“We just don’t know what we have been waiting for all this time. The family in Brazil are shocked.”
The BBC then innocently asks,
At the heart of the death of Mr Menezes remains the unanswered question of why the two unnamed firearms officers who followed him into the Tube at Stockwell shot at him 11 times.
Unlike the average disempowered Brit, however, this is not one family that is ready to let someone get away with the murder of one of their own.
They are taking deep breaths and preparing for a longer battle. Whatever the truth, they believe that they are victims of a strategy to delay and procrastinate in order to wear them down. Nothing could be further from the truth, say the investigating authorities.
But in the short-term, the family may challenge the CPS’s ruling, saying that health and safety laws designed to prevent building site accidents are not exactly appropriate for the shooting to death of a commuter.
But for such a challenge to work, they would face the uphill task of proving that prosecutors do not understand the crime of murder. The even more difficult business of a private prosecution would only be considered as a “last, desperate resort” they say.
But with the anniversary of the death approaching, they are also demanding that Mr Menezes inquest be held, in the hope that it will lead to the publication of the Independent Police Complaints Commission’s so far unseen report…
“An inquest would give them the opportunity to interrogate the officers [who shot], to cross-examine them and the evidence, rather than be excluded from the entire legal process.”
Billions and the Billionaire
March 22, 2007
Sixty men today own more than the collective worth of half of the world’s population, James Petras reveals in his study of the global ruling class and the means through which they accumulated their wealth. The number of billionaires has grown from from 793 in 2006 to 946 this year with more than half of the current billionaires come from just three countries: the US (415), Germany (55) and Russia (53). India and China lead Asia with 36 and 20 billionaries respectively. Brazil and Mexico lead Latin America, with 20 and 10 Billionaires respectively.
The total wealth of this global ruling class grew 35% year to year topping $3.5 trillion USD, while income levels for the lower 55% of the world’s six-billion-strong population declined or stagnated. The 35% increase in wealth mostly came from speculation on equity markets, real estate and commodity trading, rather than from technical innovations, investments in job-creating industries or social services.
While India’s 36 billionaires collectively own $191 billion, its rural poor continue to suffer in privation, the clearest manifestation of which is the high rate of farmer suicides. Growing resentment among the masses is a natural corrollary to such concentration of wealth, and according to Petras, “Prime Minister Singh declared that the greatest single threat to ‘India’s security’ were the Maoist led guerrilla armies and mass movements in the poorest parts of the country.” Similarly in China, the ruling elite ”confronting nearly a hundred thousand reported riots and protests, have increased the number of armed special anti-riot militia a hundred fold, and increased spending for the rural poor by $10 billion USD in the hopes of lessening the monstrous class inequalities and heading off a mass upheaval.”
Meanwhile, 870 million people go to to bed hungry every night.
So how did all this money end up in the hands of these oligarchs?
Among the newest, youngest and fastest-growing group of billionaires, the Russian oligarchy stands out for its most rapacious beginnings. Over two-thirds (67%) of the current Russian billionaire oligarchs began their concentration of wealth in their mid to early twenties. During the infamous decade of the 1990’s under the quasi-dictatorial rule of Boris Yeltsin and his US-directed economic advisers, Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar the entire Russian economy was put up for sale for a ‘political price’, which was far below its real value…
This ‘Shock Treatment’ was encouraged by a Harvard team of economic advisers [led by Bono's buddy, Jeffrey Sachs and Noreena Hertz,, both of whom featured prominently in the "Make Povery History campaign] and especially by US President Clinton in order to make the capitalist transformation irreversible. Massive privatization led to the capitalist gang wars and the disarticulation of the Russian economy. As a result there was an 80% decline in living standards, a massive devaluation of the Ruble and the sell-off of invaluable oil, gas and other strategic resources at bargain prices to the rising class of predator billionaires and US-European oil and gas multinational corporations…
Yet as President Putin recently pointed out, the new billionaires have failed to invest, innovate and create competitive enterprises, despite optimal conditions…The reason is that the oligarchs have ‘diversified’ into stock speculation (Suleiman Kerimov $14.4 billion USD), prostitution (Mikhail Prokhorov $13.5 billion USD), banking (Fridman $12.6 billion USD) and buyouts of mines and mineral processing plants…
Behind every great fortune is a great crime
In the mid 19th century, Honoré Balzac, surveying the rise of the respectable bourgeois in France, pointed out their dubious origins: “Behind every great fortune is a great crime…”
If blood and guns were the instruments for the rise of the Russian billionaire oligarchs, in other regions the Market, or better still, the US-IMF-World Bank orchestrated Washington Consensus was the driving force behind the rise of the Latin American billionaires. The two countries with the greatest concentration of wealth and the greatest number of billionaires in Latin America are Mexico and Brazil (77%), which are the two countries, which privatized the most lucrative, efficient and largest public monopolies. Of the total $157.2 billion USD owned by the 38 Latin American billionaires, 30 are Brazilians or Mexicans with $120.3 billion USD. The wealth of 38 families and individuals exceeds that of 250 million Latin Americans; 0.000001% of the population exceeds that of the lowest 50%. In Mexico, the income of 0.000001% of the population exceeds the combined income of 40 million Mexicans. The rise of Latin American billionaires coincides with the real fall in minimum wages, public expenditures in social services, labor legislation and a rise in state repression, weakening labor and peasant organization and collective bargaining. The implementation of regressive taxes burdening the workers and peasants and tax exemptions and subsidies for the agro-mineral exporters contributed to the making of the billionaires…
The principal cause of poverty in Latin American is the very conditions that facilitate the growth of billionaires…
Half of Mexican billionaires inherited their original multi-million dollar fortunes on their way up to the top. The other half benefited from political ties and the subsequent big payola from buying public enterprises cheap and then selling them off to US multi-nationals at great profit. The great bulk of the 12 million Mexican immigrants who crossed the border into the US have fled from the onerous conditions, which allowed Mexico’s traditional and nouveaux riche millionaires to join the global billionaires’ club.
Brazil has the largest number of billionaires (20) of any country in Latin America with a net worth of $46.2 billion USD, which is greater than the new worth of 80 million urban and rural impoverished Brazilians. Approximately 40% of Brazilian billionaires started with great fortunes — and simply added on — through acquisitions and mergers. The so-called ‘self-made’ billionaires benefited from the privatization of the lucrative financial sector (the Safra family with $8.9 billion USD) and the iron and steel complexes…
In both Latin America and Russia, the billionaires grabbed lucrative state assets under the aegis of orthodox neo-liberal regimes (Salinas-Zedillo regimes in Mexico, Collor-Cardoso in Brazil, Yeltsin in Russia) and consolidated and expanded under the rule of supposedly ‘reformist’ regimes (Putin in Russia, Lula in Brazil and Fox in Mexico). In the rest of Latin America (Chile, Colombia and Argentina) the making of the billionaires resulted from the bloody military coups and regimes, which destroyed the socio-political movements and started the privatization process…
In both Latin America and Russia, the billionaires grabbed lucrative state assets under the aegis of orthodox neo-liberal regimes (Salinas-Zedillo regimes in Mexico, Collor-Cardoso in Brazil, Yeltsin in Russia) and consolidated and expanded under the rule of supposedly ‘reformist’ regimes (Putin in Russia, Lula in Brazil and Fox in Mexico). In the rest of Latin America (Chile, Colombia and Argentina) the making of the billionaires resulted from the bloody military coups and regimes, which destroyed the socio-political movements and started the privatization process…
The Chavez Insurgency
The billionaires’ and the White House’s anger and hostility toward President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is precisely because he is reversing the policies which create billionaires and mass poverty: He is re-nationalizing energy resources, public utilities and expropriating some large landed estates. Chavez is not only challenging US hegemony in Latin America but also the entire PDD edifice that built the economic empires of the billionaires in Latin America, Russia, China and elsewhere.
Brazil Greets Bush
March 9, 2007
So W flies to to Brazil on the first leg of his Latin American tour ”with a simple message: the US cares.” That is touching. But what about the Brazilians?
Democracy Now! reports:
In Brazil, an estimated 30,000 people took to the streets of Sao Paolo Thursday as President Bush landed for the first stop of his Latin America tour. Demonstrators marched through the downtown core chanting slogans including “Out with Bush!” and No to War!”. Thousands more turned out for protests in other cities and towns across Brazil.
Guardian reports:
Violent clashes were taking place between police and masked protesters in the financial centre of Sao Paulo, the president’s first stop. Rioters threw rocks at police who answered with rubber bullets and tear gas bombs. Bystanders fled the smoke-filled streets outside the art museum as running battles erupted. Several loud explosions shook the area.
Earlier protesters in Brazil signalled widespread hostility to the US leader by briefly shutting down an iron mine, invading an ethanol distillery, occupying a bank and unfurling a banner in parliament.
A massive security effort will mobilise about 4,000 police officers and soldiers as Mr Bush’s cavalcade of 60 vehicles drives through the sprawling metropolis.
A warm — indeed, hot! — welcome, I’d say. [visit Democracy Now! for extensive coverage of the protests]
The real agenda behind Bush’s visit is of course to contain Hugo Chávez. However, the Venezuelan president is merely articulating the resentment felt generally in Latin America over years of American exploitation. Some of the language that I heard used to describe Bush and “Yankee” interference during my trip to Brazil and Venezuela last year, would suggest Chavez is too restrained in his denunciations.
American power is on the wane today, primarily because of events in Iraq, but the fact that total Ameican aid to the region has been only $1.6bn annualy – most of it spent on Colombia’s military — does little to win hearts and minds long resentful of its influence.
According to the Guardian, he is meeting Lula to “discuss cooperation in development of ethanol, an alternative fuel, and in Uruguay there will be talk of a trade deal with the US.” That sounds fantastic – literally! Since ethanol has been successfuly kept out of the US market mostly through the familiar colonial instrument: an unreasonably high tarriff.
Guardian in the Gutter Still
This Leader from the Guardian may very well have been written by a first-year undergrad or the New York Times’ editors; it is symptomatic of what makes phoney Liberal journalism so unreadable. The editors find the two opposite poles of the argument and squat right in the middle, inventing some facts along the way in order to appear sufficiently “balanced”. The only fidelity in this mode of journalism is to an image, not to accuracy. It is pathetic.
