MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Mon, Sep. 22, 2008

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/s...

Leftists to find a friend at General Assembly
BY FRANCES ROBLES
Nearly a quarter century ago, defrocked Catholic priest Miguel D'Escoto was
a foreign minister on a hunger strike, a liberation theologian protesting
U.S. military aggression in Nicaragua.

Back then, D'Escoto's Central American nation was at war. Now, the longtime
Sandinista Party stalwart begins a new era of politics in a time of peace --
as president of the United Nations 63rd General Assembly.

His leadership promises to provide a friendly forum for Latin America's left
in its rally cry against Washington, as presidents like Bolivia's Evo
Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega gather here this week to address the
international body.

They will be joined on the stage by the highest-ranking Cuban delegation to
visit the U.N. in eight years. Cuban First Vice President José Ramón Machado
Ventura -- Raúl Castro's No. 2 -- is scheduled to speak at a Harlem church
Monday, and take his turn before the General Assembly Wednesday morning.

While D'Escoto's job involves more protocol than power, he has already begun
to use his pulpit to ruffle Bush administration feathers. D'Escoto has said
his first priority will be to ''democratize'' the U.N. and reform the
''discredited'' 15-member Security Council.

''It is a sad but undeniable fact that serious breaches of the peace and
threats to international peace and security are being perpetrated by some
members of the Security Council that seem unable to break what appears like
an addiction to war,'' D'Escoto said after being sworn in last week.

``In the case of some of those members, the veto privilege seems to have
gone to their heads and has confused them to the point of making them think
they are entitled to do as they please without consequence.''

MAKE A CHOICE

D'Escoto, 75, was a Maryknoll priest assigned to the Nicaraguan town of
Estelí, north of the capital city of Managua, when he joined the Sandinista
government. He was Ortega's foreign minister from 1979 to 1990 -- during the
duration of the Sandinista war with the U.S.-backed Contra rebels -- and
drew the ire of the Catholic church because of it.

Pope John Paul II ordered him to make a choice: politics or sacraments.

D'Escoto stuck with his cabinet post, and in 1985 even gave up solid foods
for two months to protest U.S. military actions in the region. He lost 33
pounds before doctors warned him to give up his hunger strike.

Over the years, he remained a close advisor and ally of Ortega's. ''I think,
if anything, D'Escoto's visit will be one more Nicaraguan embarrassment in
its already weak foreign policy,'' said Manuel Orozco, a political analyst
at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C. 'Many of their foreign
policy moves have been `solidarity' and 'Third-Worldist' with little
decision-making involved.''

Under Ortega's leadership, Nicaragua joined Venezuela in breaking off
relations with Colombia earlier this year when a crisis erupted with
Ecuador. Nicaragua also sided with Russia in the war with Georgia and
strengthened relations with Iran.

It's unclear how much leeway D'Escoto will have to steer the 192-member
group. He will preside Tuesday before more than 123 foreign leaders.

DIPLOMATIC FLAP

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is not expected to attend the U.N. session,
although Morales is scheduled to speak Monday afternoon. Morales' visit
comes on the heels of a serious diplomatic flap with Washington, which ended
with both sides yanking their ambassadors. Chávez also pulled his ambassador
out of Washington -- a move he said was an act of solidarity with his
Bolivian ally.

Machado Ventura's trip to New York comes at a critical time for Cuba, which
was recently struck by two devastating storms. Machado Ventura has become
the most visible face of the Cuban government during the difficult recovery,
while Castro has remained behind the scenes.

''The Cubans could have sent Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque, who is
younger and fire-breathing, to New York,'' said Ted Henken, a Cuba expert at
Baruch College in New York. ``Machado Ventura is old, and can portray the
image of the old hard line while Raúl stays behind and works on what seems
like a pretty catastrophic crisis.''

AGING SOCIALISTS

Nicaraguan civic activist Roberto Courtney said D'Escoto belongs to that
same alliance of aging socialists.

''Expect D'Escoto to push his vision and the Nicaraguan government's vision
-- that would be the old left, not much changed from 1980 to now,'' Courtney
said by phone from Managua. ``He will not be like other members of Latin
America's left like Chile or Brazil, for example, who are more modern and
less adversarial.''

D'Escoto has said he wants General Assembly resolutions to become binding,
and said they are too often ignored by member states. A vocal critic of
President Bush, his attacks against Washington riled the American mission to
the U.N. as soon as he was named.

''The president of the General Assembly is supposed to be a uniter,''
Richard Grenell, a spokesman for the U.S. mission, said when D'Escoto was
nominated.

``We have made it clear that these crazy comments are not acceptable, and we
hope he refrains from this talk and gets to work on General Assembly
business.''

Chavez nationalizes Bank of Venezuela
Agence France Presse
July 31, 2008
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gevCxH...

CARACAS (AFP) - Leftist President Hugo Chavez said he will nationalize the Bank of Venezuela, one of the country's largest, and has asked the bank's Spanish owners, Grupo Santander, for a meeting to set a price for the deal.

"We're going to nationalize Bank of Venezuela. I'm calling on (Grupo Santander) to come and start negotiating," Chavez said Thursday in a speech on television and radio.

"They wanted to sell the bank to a Venezuelan banker, and as head of state I'm saying no. Sell it to the government, to the state.

"We're going to recuperate Bank of Venezuela. We're very much in need of a bank of that magnitude," Chavez said.

Chavez said the Santander group withdrew its offer to sell the bank to a private banker once the government expressed interest. He said he had a "copy of the pre-agreement document" between Santander and the banker, whose identity he did not disclose.

Chavez said he expected a backlash from Spain.

"There'll be headlines in the Spanish press, 'Is Chavez harming Spain'... to undo the (diplomatic) relations we've just mended," he said, alluding to his meetings last week in Spain with King Juan Carlos and Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

The meeting closed a diplomatic spat over a verbal squabble between Chavez and the king at a Latin American summit in Santiago in November, during which the king told Chavez to "shut up."

Reports point to Victor Vargas, owner of the Banco Occidental de Descuento, as the unnamed banker in question. Vargas is also a relative of the king of Spain.

Bank of Venezuela president Michel Goguikian in June denied his bank was up for sale after bank shares jumped on the Caracas stock market on rumors of an impending transaction.

Grupo Santander, Latin America's largest banking concern with 4,500 branches, drew one third of its profits in 2007 from the region. In its annual report it said its Venezuela operations were at risk.

"Political events in Venezuela pose an increased risk the Venezuelan government might nationalize or in other ways intervene in the operations of our Venezuelan subsidiary," the Santander statement said.

Bank of Venezuela was nationalized during the country's 1994 financial crisis and sold two years later in public auction to Grupo Santander for 351.5 million dollars.

With more than 300 branches across Venezuela, the bank's estimated assets are 891 million dollars. In 2007 it made 325.3 million in profits.

Since last year Chavez, a populist president first elected 10 years ago, has nationalized power, telecommunications, oil and cement companies, several of them foreign-owned.

The nationalizations, so far, have been reached after financial agreements with company owners.

During his recent trip to Europe, Chavez said that Venezuela will sell Spain up to 10,000 barrels of oil per day at 100 dollars a barrel in exchange for imports of medical equipment and other goods.

Chavez said he had also agreed during the visit to allow the Spanish oil company Repsol to boost its presence in the Orinoco oil belt in eastern Venezuela. The state-owned oil firm PDVSA estimates there are a total 235 billion barrels of crude in the Orinoco belt.

*************

The Philadelphia Inquirer

PhillyDeals: Venezuela marketing coffee through Citgo stations

By Joseph DiStefano

July 30, 2008

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/business/20...


The chief executive officer of Citgo Petroleum Corp. and the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States were in Brookhaven yesterday at a Citgo gas station and convenience store just north of the Chester city line, to launch what they hope is a lucrative new trade relationship based, not on fuel, but on stimulants.


Venezuela is better known for oil than for coffee. But the South American nation has decided to copy its neighbor, Colombia, and retail its aromatic caffeinate directly to North Americans - using Venezuelan-owned Citgo local gas stations and convenience stores as a distribution network.


So, appreciable corporate and diplomatic firepower gathered at a suburban gas station on a sweltering midsummer afternoon to discuss coffee.


"This was an initiative of Venezuela's president," said Citgo CEO Alejandro Granado, who came up from Citgo headquarters in Houston for the occasion.


"He asked us two or three years ago on behalf of the cooperative coffee growers if we could do something to benefit the market, with our network of thousands of service stations. We said we'd look into it, and we made it happen."


Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is known for his socialist policies at home and his confrontational diplomacy abroad, much of it directed at President Bush and what Chavez calls American imperialism.


In Brookhaven, Chavez's U.S. ambassador, Bernardo Alvarez, was all about conciliation and co-prosperity. "It will be another way of connecting our two peoples," he told the crowd. "We already export oil, baseball players, and now, well, coffee."


Venezuela wants to diversify its exports so it's not so dependent on oil, Granado said. Venezuela says it once produced almost as much coffee as Colombia, but farm exports dropped as oil became dominant in the last half-century. "Now, the perverse impact of oil monoculture is being reversed by new development policies," Granado said.


That includes coming to grips with capitalist marketing. "Formerly, it was very hard to be competitive in the U.S. market," said Alida Moreno, president of Cafe Venezuela, a group of 3,000 growers that provided the first seven-ton shipment of coffee to Citgo and is using the Citgo relationship to add more growers.


Colombian coffee cooperatives already reach U.S. markets through a chain of Juan Valdez-brand coffee bars in places such as Suburban Station and the shops just east of City Hall.


Alvarez said Venezuela required the cooperatives to guarantee a portion of profits to fund clinics, schools and roads in Venezuela's coffee regions.


We'd have to go to Venezuela to know how that's working.


Former Wawa Inc. executive John Sacharok has visited the country's Andean growing regions and the cooperatives' refurbished roasting plant at Pampan Trujillo, and he said he was impressed by improvements to the industry in recent years.


"They know they had great product. They just needed a vehicle for getting it to market," said Sacharok, who now heads Golden Valley Farms, the West Chester company that distributes Venezuelan coffee in the United States.


"Starbucks showed us customers are willing to pay $3 a cup," Sacharok said. Citgo's Venezuelan coffee and cappuccino starts at $1.09.


Citgo couldn't force its store operators to carry the coffee, company officials said.


"It's a good taste. That's the only reason I'm doing it," said Boris Berdichevsky, who runs the Brookhaven Citgo franchise and several others. "I think it's better than Colombian."


*****************

World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations collapsed today, July 29, after nine days of intense negotiations. Trade ministers from approximately 35 countries struggled to salvage the stalled seven-year-old Doha round. Optimistic signs and compromises surfaced as a result of last weekend’s supposed breakthrough, but these were soon followed by stubborn accusations from a number of combative nations, including the United States, China, and India. Constructing a 153-country consensus now seems even more cumbersome and talks will not resume for at least two years. During this past week in Geneva, country officials worked particularly long hours in an attempt to come up with the necessary concessions, as well as extending their stay in Switzerland in hopes of returning home “successfully.” Such a dream was, unfortunately, not to be realized.

This latest round of trade talks was launched in the Qatar capital in November 2001, but has long been stalemated over issues of farm subsidies called for by the U.S., Japan and the EU, as well as tariffs on industrial goods imposed by the developing economies of Latin America and Asia. Proposed changes included EU and U.S. farm subsidy reductions of up to 80 percent. The compromise was that developing countries would open their markets to imports of manufactured goods, removing so-called “import shields.”

In the deal last weekend, Latin American banana producers and EU officials appeared to begin the process of putting to rest a quarter-century banana “war.” Many Latin American banana exporters had contended for years that the EU routinely gave preferential treatment to their former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP), and had kept import tariffs artificially high on the fruit that originates on mainland Latin America.

The complaint was originally filed by the U.S. because three of the largest banana producers in Latin America are U.S. multinational corporations. COHA repeatedly has argued in the past that U.S. banana companies, and not Latin American economies, are likely to benefit from the removal of the tariffs (see “Banana Wars Continue – Chiquita Once Again Tries to Work Its Omnipotent Will, Now Under New Management: Likely Big Losers Will Be CARICOM’s Windward Islands”). In addition to this contention, many view the present Doha round as an inappropriate forum for banana talk to occur in the first place, as any new arrangement could anger some of the ACP nations and thus would endanger the future of the round. Nonetheless, it is important for the banana conflict to be resolved so that Latin America, as well as U.S. corporations and English-speaking Caribbean exporters (who in most cases depend upon such exports for their economic survival), can see the benefits from the sale of their largest cash crop. Throughout the negotiations, it can be said that the U.S. was less than sensitive to the importance of a favorable outcome to such islands as Dominica, Grenada, and St. Lucia- a matter of sheer survival.

One of the main issues of contention amongst developing countries was the possible existence of Special Safeguard Mechanisms (SSM). This provision would enable countries like China and India to raise agricultural tariffs to protect their farmers in case of a surge in imports. Latin American countries rejected the SSM proposal, saying that it would be damaging to their export interests. Venezuelan Industry and Trade Minister William Antonio Contreras said that “we are not here to block an agreement, but to defend our interests and to fulfill the command of the round that is the one of developing.” The dispute over the existence of these mechanisms, designed to help only certain nations, largely contributed to the collapse of the talks.

It now should be clearer than ever as to why WTO talks have been at a stand still for so many years. It is not an enigma why it has been so difficult to achieve consensus with a myriad of players in the field with a lot to gain, but even more to lose. Lucrative deals for some nations can be devastating to others: WTO negotiations certainly have not proven to be a win-win game.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associates Revaz Ardesher and Jessica Wayne
July 29th, 2008
http://www.coha.org/2008/07/wto-talks-coll...

Colombian Defense Minister's Visit to Washington
Monday, 28 July 2008, 4:44 am
Press Release: Council on Hemispheric Affairs

¿Qué Es Lo Que Quiere Juan Manuel Santos? The Colombian Defense Minister's Visit to Washington and His Likely Bid for the Presidency in 2010.

Colombian Defense Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, arrived in Washington D.C this week to promote the pending Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Colombia, one of Bogota's most sought after, and least likely to obtain, aspirations under President Uribe.

The defense minister will try to win over House and Senate Democrats on the FTA issue, and then wrap up his campaign to get a reluctant congress to pass the foundering legislation. Santos hopes to smooth over a wide crack in his relations with Washington by amazing his audience with the details of Operation Jaque, which led to the rescue of 15 hostages being held by the FARC, the left wing guerrillas who have been battling the government for decades.
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Santos might try to add to the goodwill in Washington by talking about the future of U.S. relations with Colombia. This might include the strong possibility of an offering to the Pentagon for the establishment of a new U.S military base in Colombia now that President Correa has determined that the lease wouldn't be extended for the U.S. military base at Manta, Ecuador. Therefore, talks may occur with the Pentagon and the State Department about the possible relocation of the U.S. military facility at Manta, Ecuador to Palanquero, Colombia (a base which already holds U.S. technology), and a debriefing on the July 12 meeting between Chávez and Uribe, are also likely to be on the agenda.

Although Santos emphatically denied on June 16 the possibility of a U.S. base in Colombia; in the course of an interview over Colombian radio station RCN, President Uribe left open the possibility of a future military base in the country. He stated that there haven't been talks between the U.S. and Colombia, but that they will continue doing "Whatever can do to strengthen the help from the United States in the goal of defeating narco-trafficking."

Juan Manuel Santos; The Heir to Uribe's Throne?

Juan Manuel Santos, one of the few political figures in the Uribe administration who has been practically left untouched by the para-politics scandal, is now extremely popular as a result of the enormous success of Operation Jaque. According to a Gallup poll Colombia survey taken after the rescue mission, Juan Manuel Santos enjoys a 70 percent favorability rate.

Unquestionably, he is an Uribista hardliner and very close to President Uribe. At the same time, his close associates acknowledge that Santos is predisposed to do whatever is necessary to advance his presidential ambitions, even if it means challenging Uribe in 2010 in a pitched battle for the seat. Moreover, if Uribe decides to step down after 2010, a Santos candidacy could result.

As Peruvian writer and politician Vargas Llosa stated in his article "Operation Jaque," for the newspaper El Pais, "The Minister of Defense Santos can replace Uribe when the latter's mandate ends." Santos' obdurate and hard line stance on the guerrilla problem in Colombia, is one of the reasons why the FARC has been wary of entering into negotiations with Colombian authorities.

At the Center for American Progress meeting on July 23, Santos blamed the guerrillas for not negotiating with the "generous hand of the government." In spite of invading Ecuador on March 1, killing their leaders and offering to pay a high reward for the murder or turning in of top leaders, Santos naively seems to believe that the FARC should be grateful to the one figure who has shown the greatest malevolence to it. Surely the Uribe government's policy does not reflect the attitude of a government committed to achieving a peace agreement with the guerrilla armies.

Although the FARC may now be facing its worst institutional year in its 44 years of existence, as Juan Manuel Santos maintains, "the FARC is weakened, not defeated." Nevertheless, continued military attacks will not solve the problem, and instead will undoubtedly instigate more violence in the future. Although the Uribe's administration has provided the Colombian population with short term fixes for some of the country's profoundly complex problems, the deep underlying social and economic problems are likely to remain, corroding Colombia's social and political fabric.

Santos has recently claimed that Plan Colombia was a "big success;" but for whom? It has not been a success for the 42.6 percent of the population who live under the poverty line in Colombia. It also has not been a success for the poor farmers who grow corn, bananas, and plantains, and mistakenly are often sprayed with a special mixture of glyphosate toxic herbicide under Plan Colombia, destroying their land, driving them into further poverty and forcing them into cultivating coca out of sheer survival.

Fundamentally, Santos represents a continuation of Uribe's harsh militarized policies in a country that desperately seeks reconciliation and healing. The FARC has already stated in their latest communiqué to Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega that "only a new government, a truly democratic one, created from a Great National Agreement" can offer a solution to the armed and social conflict that faces Colombia. This makes it highly unlikely that the FARC will even consider entering into negotiations with Santos. This can be seen in the July 24th release of FARC hostages to the Red Cross.

On July 17, the FARC kidnapped 11 tourists on boat traveling along the Atráto River and later felt either pressured or willingly decided to release these hostages. The fact that the hostages were handed over to the ICRC instead of to Colombian authorities demonstrates the reluctance of the FARC to deal in any way with Uribe's government.

Without a different political culture taking over in Colombia, the nation will not be able to easily see an early end to its debilitating armed conflict or be able to find a viable solution to the country's many grievous social, economic, and agrarian problems, which are likely to plague Colombia for years--maybe even decades--to come.

***

This analysis was prepared by Research Associate Erina Uozumi

July 24th, 2008

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described on the Senate floor as being "one of the nation's most respected bodies of scholars and policy makers." For more information, please see our web page at www.coha.org

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0807/S007...

Hawks Behind the Dove: Who Makes Obama’s Foreign Policy?
By Tim Shorrock, July 2008 Issue

Cuba’s dramatic announcement last February that Fidel Castro was stepping down as head of the Cuban government presented Barack Obama with an unprecedented opportunity to establish his foreign policy credentials and set himself apart from Hillary Clinton, as well as the Bush Administration and its heir-apparent, John McCain.

It should have been an easy shot: President Bush said U.S. policy toward Cuba, particularly the longstanding U.S. embargo, would not change one iota until “free and fair elections” were held in Cuba and the country had embraced his vision of democracy. McCain quickly echoed Bush’s Cold War declaration, which basically amounts to a call for regime change in Havana.

Clinton, asked during a debate if she would be willing to sit down with Raul Castro, Fidel’s successor, replied in similar language. Not “without some evidence that will demonstrate the kind of progress that is in our interest,” she said, pointing out later through a spokesperson that she “supports the embargo and our current policy toward Cuba.”

Obama, true to his pledge to change the U.S. approach to the world, said he would meet with Cuban leaders “without preconditions” because it’s important for the United States “not just to talk to its friends but also to talk to its enemies.” Despite calls from some of his advisers for America to trade with Cuba just as it does with China and Vietnam, however, Obama has been silent on lifting the embargo, though he has called for getting rid of restrictions on remittances and family travel to that country.

More recently, Obama has completely abandoned the skepticism about the embargo he expressed during his 2004 run for the Senate. In a May 23 speech to the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami, he flatly declared that, as President, he will “maintain the embargo. It provides us with the leverage to present the regime with a clear choice: If you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations.” The declaration drew cheers from the virulently anti-Castro crowd.

With Cuba, therefore, we have the basic outline of the foreign policy debate of 2008: more of the same from the Republicans, a generally hawkish approach from Clinton, and a nuanced stance from Obama that underscores his differences with both Clinton and McCain while demonstrating his fealty towards U.S. national security interests and the Democratic foreign policy mainstream.

These differences show up also on Iran.

When Clinton vowed to “totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, Obama sharply criticized her comment, saying that’s “not the language we need right now, and I think it’s language reflective of George Bush.”

While Clinton’s team talked recklessly of brandishing nuclear weapons, Obama endorsed proposals to eliminate nukes, and flatly ruled out the use of tactical nuclear weapons against terrorist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan (eliciting a warning from Clinton that Presidents should refrain from publicly discussing “the use and nonuse of nuclear weapons”).

Now that Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee, predicting what his actual policies will look like requires a careful look at the people he relies on for advice on foreign policy.

Obama’s most important foreign policy adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. In that role, he backed Carter’s aid to the brutal Indonesian government in East Timor, and he infamously pushed for funding the jihadist rebels in Afghanistan against the Soviets. But his hawkish views have mellowed over time. Last August, Brzezinski endorsed Obama and blasted Clinton’s foreign policy approach as “very conventional.” In contrast to Clinton’s advisers, who speak wistfully about Iraq as a policy gone wrong, Brzezinski denounces the war in unequivocal terms. Writing in The Washington Post in March 2008, he called the war a “national tragedy, an economic catastrophe, a regional disaster and a global boomerang for the United States,” and argued that it was “started deliberately, justified demagogically, and waged badly.”

Obama also relies for advice on Tony Lake, who was Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, and Susan Rice, a former assistant secretary of state for African affairs (she’s been busy lately moderating Obama’s stance on Cuba). Obama also listens to Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism czar, and Ivo Daalder, a former official in Bill Clinton’s NSC, who heads up Obama’s nonproliferation policies.

Leading Obama’s military advisers is retired Air Force General Tony McPeak, who backed George Bush in 2000 but began working with Obama after meeting him last year. McPeak says he was attracted by Obama’s strong opposition to the war in Iraq and his emphasis on diplomacy. Speaking last January during a West Coast campaign swing, McPeak said Obama would seek to negotiate with Iran, pointing out that, after the September 11 attacks, Tehran cooperated with Washington in tracking Al Qaeda suspects and donated more than $300 million to post-Taliban Afghanistan. The Bush Administration, he said, should have used that “constructive back-channel” to open discussions on other issues—implying that Obama would seize on such opportunities. Obama, he believes, will usher in a new era of foreign policy after the disasters of the Bush-Cheney era. “Our country’s international standing has been frittered away by people who don’t have the foggiest understanding of how the hell the world works,” McPeak told Rolling Stone last March. But McPeak has a hard edge. According to the journalist Allan Nairn, he oversaw the delivery of advanced fighter jets to Suharto in 1991, just after Suharto’s forces had carried out a deliberate massacre of anti-Jakarta demonstrators in Dili, East Timor.

One of the key planks of Obama’s foreign policies is his commitment to “soft power,” such as foreign economic aid, to expand American influence. Last year, he pledged to double U.S. foreign aid by 2012 and increase “both the numbers and capabilities of our diplomats, development experts, and other civilians who can work alongside our military.” Advising him on these issues is John Brennan, a thirty-year veteran of the CIA who once ran the National Counterterrorism Center. Brennan, like many of his former colleagues in the CIA, believes that military power must be augmented by intelligence, diplomacy, and foreign aid, and in a recent interview with a Washington newsletter argued that “there needs to be much more attention paid to those upstream factors and conditions that spawn terrorists” (Brennan is now the CEO of the Analysis Corporation, the same company that, ironically, employed the contract employee who illegally accessed Obama’s passport data at the State Department earlier this year).
In some areas, Obama’s national security policies might be closer to McCain’s. He has said he would act unilaterally to take out “high-value terrorist targets” in Pakistan if Pervez Musharraf failed to take action himself. Like McCain, he has also criticized Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas.

And on trade and economic policy, Obama has two sides as well. He has approached Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who has critiqued corporate globalization and has estimated the cost of the Iraq War at $3 trillion, as a possible White House adviser. (Stiglitz returned the favor by declaring his support for Obama and calling the candidate’s economic ideas “brilliant.”)

On the other hand, he is also advised by Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist who reportedly told Canadian officials that Obama’s critique of NAFTA was “political positioning” and would not become official policy in an Obama White House. Although Goolsbee denied the reports, in an April interview with U.S. News & World Report, he downplayed Obama’s opposition to free trade agreements, saying that “as long as I have known Senator Obama, he has believed that you can’t build a moat around the country, and that trade overall has been good for the economy—but that there have been a lot of people left out.” That’s certainly not the denunciation of free trade deals that many trade unionists are looking for.

One person to watch is Richard Holbrooke. Bill Clinton’s U.N. ambassador, Holbrooke saddled up with Hillary. But ever since he left the Carter Administration, he has been widely viewed within the Democratic Party as a Secretary of State in-waiting, and he himself has strenuously campaigned for the job. If he is elected in November, President Obama would come under enormous pressure from both the Clinton camp and his Democratic supporters—including John Kerry, who relied on Holbrooke during the 2004 campaign—to make him Secretary of State.

Holbrooke, however, carries a lot of baggage—some of it pretty unsightly. He was a State Department official in Vietnam during the 1960s, and under President Carter served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. During those years, he helped provide key assistance to U.S.-backed dictators in South Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia. His constant refrain was the preservation of U.S. national security interests in the region. After Park Chung Hee, the South Korean dictator, was shot to death in 1979 after eighteen years of increasingly brutal rule, for example, Holbrooke exploded in anger when Christian dissidents protested the continuation of martial law. Their actions, he complained in declassified documents I obtained in 1996, were making it difficult for the United States to avoid “another Iran” in that country.

And like Brzezinski, Holbrooke lent enormous assistance to Suharto’s military to put down the Timorese resistance. Among the weapons systems sold to Suharto with U.S. support were A-10 Broncos that were used to strafe Timorese villages. “If you look at the statistics, from 1976 to 1978 we massively increased our assistance that made the occupation and quelling of the rebellion possible,” Edmund McWilliams, a longtime U.S. diplomat who served in Indonesia during the Clinton Administration, told me. “To my mind, that was when the great bloodletting took place, and it was all done during the watch of Richard Holbrooke and Jimmy Carter, the human rights President.”

Holbrooke also was hawkish on Iraq and has had harsh words for Iran, comparing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler.

Many liberals, including those in the Obama camp, seem to believe that Holbrooke has changed his spots and would make an excellent choice as America’s top diplomat. Last February, Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and a former Obama adviser, spoke at a foreign policy forum in Reno, Nevada. I was in the audience, and asked her if Holbrooke would have a place in an Obama Administration.

Power, who won a Pulitzer for her book on genocide, was still working as Obama’s top foreign policy adviser at that point. She replied that, in her opinion, Holbrooke “had evolved” from the 1970s, and regretted some of his actions during that period, particularly in the Philippines, where he backed Ferdinand Marcos (she didn’t mention Korea or Indonesia). Despite his position as a senior adviser to Clinton, Power added, Holbrooke would be welcome in an Obama cabinet. “We won’t exclude people working for Hillary Clinton,” she said. “Ours will be a broad tent.”

While Obama would be the first community organizer in American history to become President and promises to bring a dramatic new face to the global scene, we may end up with a lot of old faces.

Tim Shorrock has been covering U.S. foreign policy for more than twenty-five years. His book on the outsourcing of U.S. intelligence operations, “Spies for Hire,” was published in May by Simon & Schuster.. http://www.progressive.org/mag/shorrock070...

Total Recall in Bolivia: Divided Nation Faces Historic Vote
Benjamin Dangl

In early July in Sicaya, Cochabamba, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced that if he wins the August 10 recall vote on his presidency, "I'll have two and half years left." But if he loses the vote, "I'll have to go back to the Chapare" to farm coca again. Though the recall vote is likely to favor Morales, it's unclear if it will resolve many of the divided nation's conflicts.

This upcoming recall vote on the president, vice president and eight of nine departmental governors is to take place at a time of historic change for the country. Half way through a five year term in office, Morales is applying social programs aimed at fighting poverty and inequality, and developing positive relationships with Latin America's leftist leaders. At the same time, a series of regional disputes in Bolivia over departmental autonomy, the new constitution and wealth from the partially-nationalized gas industry continue to put the country's stability at risk.

Since May 4, autonomy referendums have been approved by voters in the departments of Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni, Pando and Chuquisaca. These votes were organized by the country's right wing politicians and business elite to perpetuate neoliberal policies, resist the redistribution of land and natural gas wealth, and weaken the Morales government. Though the right points to these victories at the ballot box as proof of their mandate, the referendums are not legally recognized by the Bolivian Electoral Court, the Organization of American States, the European Union, President Morales or other major leaders throughout the region.

In addition, all of the referendums were marked by high levels of voter intimidation and abstention – Morales urged his supporters to abstain from voting. In Pando, for example, the combined number of "no" votes and abstentions was 16,303, while the "yes" votes totaled only 12,671. In other departments, Morales supporters were kidnapped, tortured and beaten by right wing thugs in an attempt to suppress the anti-autonomy vote.

In spite of the questionable legitimacy of these referendums, the votes illustrate the growing polarization in the country. In another setback to the Morales administration, opposition prefect Savina Cuéllar, was elected in Chuquisaca on June 29. She was running against MAS candidate Walter Valda in a vote that took place in tandem with a successful autonomy referendum. However, the opposition's apparent momentum is likely to be put in check by the August 10 recall vote.

In an attempt to break up a political impasse in December 2007, and in response to demands from the opposition, Morales proposed the recall bill which was passed on May 8, 2008 by the opposition-controlled Senate. The recall bill states that if the president, vice president and governors do not receive both a higher percentage of votes, and actual number of votes, in the recall referendum than what they received in the 2005 election, they will lose their position. Therefore, it's possible to win the necessary percentage of votes, but lose the necessary number of votes, thus losing the recall vote. If Morales and vice president Alvaro Garcia Linera lose, they have to hold new elections within 90-120 days, in which they themselves are likely to be strong candidates. If the governors lose, they are to be replaced by an interim governor of Morales' choosing until the next election. The recall vote on the governors will take place in eight out of the nine provinces; Chuquisaca won't participate as Cuéllar was just recently elected governor there.

The results of the recall vote could vary widely. Polls indicate that Morales and Linera will win; they will likely be bolstered by new voters in rural areas voting for the first time after a massive voter registration drive led by the government. Morales is also likely to benefit from the fact that many voters and social organizations, in spite of any criticisms they have of his administration, will likely back him in a vote in which the alternative is essentially the right wing. As an analysis article on the Bolivian news publication BolPress explained, "arious popular organizations have initiated a campaign to ratify Morales and kick out the oppositional governors, not because they consider that the actual leader is managing the government well, it's because the oligarchy's return to power would imply an end to the possibility of transformation within the socio-economic structures of the country."

CONTINUE READING:
http://boliviarising.blogspot.com/2008/07/...

http://snipurl.com/35og5

Diana Barahona is in Cuba and has written articles in addition to this one. The URL at the bottom will take you to her "Reporter's Notebook"

Lazaro Barredo
Posted by Diana Barahona - July 23, 2008 at 8:46 pm

La Habana 19 de Julio 2008

The offices of Granma, are neither large nor elegant. They have the Spartan look one expects of the “Official Organ of the Communist Party of Cuba.” Granma is the least pretentious national daily in a world full of pretentious newspapers. On Friday it devoted one of its sixteen pages to Fidel’s reflection and another to the text of decree No. 259, signed by President Raúl Castro, dealing with the distribution of unused land for agricultural production. This may not seem like big news, but with the new prioritization of food security and incentives offered, many ordinary people are interested in taking up farming.

The paper’s editor-in-chief, Lázaro Barredo, is also a member of the National Assembly. His office has a brightly colored painting of Che Guevara, and a poster-sized reproduction of a letter Fidel wrote to his comrade-in-arms Celia Sánchez in 1958. The letter’s content reflects Barredo’s interest in Cuba’s security in the face of U.S. aggression: “Upon seeing the rockets they fired at Mario’s house, I have sworn to myself that the Americans are gong to pay dearly for what they are doing. When this war ends, for me a much longer and greater war will begin: the war that I am going to wage against them. I realize that that is going to be my true destiny.”

Barredo had written an editorial celebrating the death of Jesse Helms (R-NC), in which he said that the senator “felt a profound hatred for the Cuban Revolution <…> and supported all the actions undertaken by the U.S. administration to overthrow it and assassinate Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro.” When we met, he asked if we were familiar with the events leading up to the passage of the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which tightened the economic blockade against Cuba.

At the time Barredo was vice president of international relations in the National Assembly. What eventually became Helms-Burton began to wind its way through Congress in the beginning of 1995, pushed by the usual suspects from South Florida. According to Barredo, Clinton didn’t want the law to pass because it sanctioned European governments and transnational corporations doing business in Cuba.

Because of this reluctance, Miami extremists saw the need to create an international incident to force passage of the law and formed Brothers to the Rescue, headed by José Basulto.

Basulto claimed in an interview on Miami channel 41 ten years later – Dec. 6, 2005 -- that he had received his training in terrorism from the CIA. He was recruited for Operation 40, a CIA death squad organized to follow up the Bay of Pigs invasion with political assassinations, and in the same program admitted to firing a 22 mm gun at a Havana hotel on Aug. 24, 1962 – an attempt on Castro’s life.

Brothers to the Rescue proceeded to violate Cuban airspace 25 times with small planes. These were not isolated incidents; the 1990s were a decade of renewed aggression against Cuba with a total of 108 terrorist acts, including 16 attempts on Fidel’s life and eight attempts to assassinate other Cuban leaders, according to undercover agent Percy Alvarado Godoy, who infiltrated the Cuban American National Foundation. In particular, on July 13, 1995, Brothers to the Rescue attempted to penetrate Cuban waters with a flotilla of 11 boats, six planes and two helicopters. One of the planes dropped pamphlets over Havana. Basulto’s associate, Arnaldo Iglesias, testified in the trial of the five Cuban heroes that in1995 he and Basulto had experimented with throwing home-made bombs from an airplane in the area of Opa-locka Airport in Miami.

In January 1996 Barredo was meeting with Rep. Bill Richardson, and at the same time Ricardo Alarcón was meeting with two other U.S. representatives. Alarcón instructed him to bring Richardson to Alarcón’s meeting, and they all sat down to express the great concern of the Cuban government over the repeated violations of Cuban territory. Cuba communicated these concerns to the Clinton administration many times, but all he did was to revoke the group’s pilot’s licenses, Barredo said.

February 24, 1996 was a carnival day, with crowds of people out at the Malecón. When the Cuban defense forces learned that three planes had left Miami and were headed for Cuba, the pilots were warned that they had violated Cuban airspace and ordered to return. The Cuban government has a recording of the entire communication and according to Barredo, one hears the voice of Basulto “laughing nervously” and ordering the other two planes to continue towards Havana while he and Iglesias turned around and headed back to Miami. The two planes were shot down by Cuban MIGs, setting off a crisis during which Clinton rejected a proposal to fire missiles at different targets in Cuba.

Clinton signed the Helms-Burton Act soon after with even stronger provisions. According to Barredo it principally codified the blockade, so that no president would be able modify it without going to Congress. Clinton also expropriated frozen Cuban assets and began to budget money for anti-Castro groups. Those trade restrictions and millions of dollars for the civil society mafia continue to this day.

End

Diana Barahona recently earned a BA in journalism from CSULB, where she was disruptive, disrespectful and had an agenda, according the chair of the journalism school. She is now studying sociology at CSUF.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/...


* Diana Barahona's Reporter's Notebook

Haitian paramilitary leader Emmanuel Constant convicted of fraud
By SCOTT SHIFREL
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, July 25th 2008, 2:15 PM

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2...

A former paramilitary leader convicted of human rights abuses in Haiti was
convicted Friday of mortgage fraud in Brooklyn.

Emmanuel (Toto) Constant, 51, faces 5-to-15 years in prison in New York before
being sent back to Haiti to serve a life sentence.

"He came here and lived a whole new life but it was just as fraudulent as the
one he lived in Haiti," Deputy Attorney General Thomas Schellhammer said after
a Constant was convicted of six counts of grand larceny and mortgage fraud.

Justice Abraham Gerges will decide if Constant's Haiti conviction should be
considered when he is sentenced for using straw buyers in three Brooklyn
property sales.

The one-time head of the paramilitary group known as FRAPH who was convicted
and sentenced in absentia in Haiti in 2000, emigrated to the U.S. in the 1990s
and went to real estate school.
Constant was arrested with 40 others in a mortgage scam in 2006, but a plea
deal was nixed once his human rights abuses became public.

Many prosecution witnesses in the three-week-long trial - investors,
appraisers, title company employees, brokers and loan officials - were involved
in the mortgage scam.

"For a long time banks have looked the other way," Schellhammer said. "Anyone
who picked up the newspaper in the last year can see what has happened to the
industry because of this."

Constant has insisted that others broke the law - much as he has insisted
others did the killings in Haiti - and believes he should have been allowed to
take the plea deal, his lawyer said.
"The trial proved there is rampant fraud in the mortgage industry," defense
lawyer Samuel Karliner said. "His role was minor."

Human rights observers applauded the jury's quick verdict and said Constant
should be sent back to Haiti.

Today's conviction showed Constant to be the crook that he is," Jennie Green of
the Center for Constitutional Rights. "His victims hope that he will soon be
brought to justice for his crimes in Haiti that included the murder and rape
and torture of thousands more."

********************************************************

Iachr Denounces Haiti For Political Persecution Of Yvon Neptune
July 25, 2008 By Joe Emersberger
Source: Haitianalysis.com
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18256


The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) has made public a 60-
page denunciation of the political persecution that Yvon Neptune, a
former Prime Minister of Haiti, has endured at the hands of the
Haitian government for the past four years. "From the beginning, the
State failed its obligation to protect Mr. Neptune's right to be heard
by a court competent to hear the charges against him, as well as to an
effective recourse," the IACHR ruled. It concluded that Haiti HAS
violated 11 different provisions of the American Convention on Human
Rights by imprisoning Neptune and keeping the case hanging over his
head two years after his release from prison. Whether such high
profile and detailed criticism (first made public in June) will
finally end Yvon Neptune's legal battles remains to be seen.

The IACHR's binding decision was that the Haitian government must
immediately serve an appeals court order that would help end Neptune's
four year legal nightmare, but six weeks after the IACHR ruling, the
order remains unserved. The IACHR also gave Haiti a year to pay
$95,000 USD in costs and damages to Neptune, and two years to
drastically improve prison conditions in Haiti. The Haitian
government's silence and inaction has prompted Neptune to cautiously
speak out about his precarious legal situation.

Yvon Neptune served as Prime Minister of Haiti from 2002-2004 in the
democratically elected government of former President Jean Bertrand
Aristide. After Haiti's February 29, 2004 coup d'état, the unelected
Interim Government of Haiti (IGH), backed by the UN Security Council,
assumed power for two years and imprisoned hundreds of political
opponents, especially officials and supporters of the Famni Lavalas
(FL) party founded by Aristide. It also stacked the judiciary and
police with its loyalists.

Neptune's plight began on June 27, 2004, when he turned himself in to
the police after hearing on the radio that an arrest warrant had been
issued against him. He was accused of participating in the "La Scierie
Massacre," an alleged attack by Lavalas supporters in the La Scierie
neighborhood of St.Marc. Two years after the arrest, the Haitian
Appeals Court prosecutor conceded that there was no credible evidence
of Neptune's involvement. Nevertheless, Neptune would spend 25 months
in prison, including nearly a year in the National Penitentiary which
is notorious for its appalling conditions. The case against Neptune
collapsed further when subsequent investigations, including one by the
United Nations, concluded that the "La Scierie Massacre" was in fact a
battle between two armed groups, with casualties on both sides.

In July of 2006, two months after a democratically elected government
finally took over from the IGH, Yvon Neptune was granted provisional
release for health reasons. The presidential election of 2006 was won
by Rene Preval in a stunning rebuke to those who backed the coup of
2004, including the UN Security Council. Like Neptune, Preval was a
former Prime Minister under Aristide. Repression against Lavalas eased
after the election, but the impact of the IGH continues to make itself
felt.

The charges against Yvon Neptune remain in force to this day because
the Preval administration has refused to serve a Haitian appeals court
order that finally dismissed the case in April of 2007. The Preval
government told the IACHR that it does not have the power to serve the
appeals court order (without clearly specifying who did have the
power). The IACHR dismissed the government's argument out of hand.
"Officials serve appeals court orders every day." explained Brian
Concannon, Yvon Neptune's lawyer before the IACHR, "The government
could easily do that tomorrow."

While Yvon Neptune continues to be hounded for his noninvolvement in a
debunked "massacre", he is better off than his codefendant, Ronald
Dauphin, who is still in prison after four years, with no trial
scheduled.

Father Gerard Jean-Juste, another prominent Lavalas activist who
became a political prisoner under the IGH, did not have charges
against him dropped until June, more than two years after Preval's
election.

Why have Lavalas activists been persecuted years after an election
that should have put an end to their troubles? A compelling
explanation was offered by US journalist and filmmaker Kevin Pina who
lived and worked in Haiti for years:

"After initially boycotting the elections, Lavalas finally supports
Preval's candidacy in 2006 with clearly stated objectives in mind.
First and foremost was to stop the relentless political repression and
persecution they suffered after Aristide was ousted in February of
2004. Secondly, they wanted to free all of the Lavalas political
prisoners..., lastly but equally important, was their call for the
return of Aristide from exile. None of these demands have been fully
realized because Preval was eventually saddled with what the UN and
the international community tout as a 'coalition government'. This
concept of 'coalition' forced Preval to abandon the demands of his
electorate...."

Under pressure from the US and its allies, Preval's government
appointments included prominent supporters of the coup and the IGH -
people like Raymond Joseph, who remained Haiti's ambassador to the US,
Maggy Durce, Minister of Commerce, and Marie-Laurence Jocelyne
Lassegue, Women's Condition Ministry.

There were also major problems with the elections that were finally
held in 2006. Aside from the widespread repression of Lavalas
supporters and leaders, compelling evidence of fraud intended to block
Preval's victory emerged during the presidential election. A shortage
of voting centers, especially in Lavalas strongholds, also imposed
major sacrifices on Haiti's poorest voters. At the presidential level
these barriers were overcome by Preval's name recognition and the
sheer determination of his supporters - who staged massive protests
when evidence of fraud surfaced. However, at the legislative level the
repressive tactics of the IGH deprived Preval of significant
parliamentary support. In fact, Preval was forced to mount a
remarkably low key campaign in order to avoid violence against his
supporters - something lesser known candidates could not afford to do.

Brian Concannon has argued "IGH holdovers in the executive branch may
be less important than the ones in the judiciary." His point is
underscored by the fact that Judge Cluny Pierre Jules, who played
major role in the persecution of Yvon Neptune, is an IGH appointee who
remains on the bench, as does Judge Peres-Paul, responsible for the
imprisonment of Father Gerard Jean-Juste.

Aside from IGH appointed judges, the vehemently anti-Lavalas Haitian
human rights group, the National Network for the Defense of Human
Right (RNDDH), relentlessly pursued Yvon Neptune. Led by Pierre
Esperance, RNDDH has received over a hundred thousand dollars from the
Canadian government since 2004 while it was still known as the
National Coalition for Haitian Rights (NCHR). The funding requests to
Ottawa explicitly budgeted for the prosecution of Yvon Neptune and his
codefendants. During an earlier period NCHR was funded by the US
government through its New York office. In March of 2004, the IGH
formally agreed to arrest anyone that Pierre Esperance's group
denounced as a criminal. The warrant issued against Yvon Neptune
listed all the allegations that RNDDH made against him. RNDDH not only
opposed Yvon Neptune's provisional release in 2006, it even objected
to special medical provisions which were made for him while he was
incarcerated. RNDDH did not reply to a request made by HaitiAnalysis
for a comment on the IACHR ruling. However, an RNDDH representative
was quoted in the July 11 issue of The Nouvelliste, a Haitian
Newspaper, stressing that the IACHR did not rule on the truth or
falsehood of the allegations made against Yvon Neptune. However, RNDDH
have never produced a formal report substantiating its allegations
against Neptune and others, or even a list of the names of the alleged
victims in St. Marc, despite requests made the head of the UN Human
Rights Commission in Haiti.

By telephone, Yvon Neptune told HaitiAnalysis that he found the IACHR
ruling "encouraging" but that he "would not venture to guess" why the
Preval administration has still not served the court order dismissing
the case. Neptune recalled a "strange" and "misinformed" public
statement that Preval made in September of 2007 in which the President
claimed that the Haitian Senate would fulfill its responsibilities
over the case. Neptune explained that under the Haitian constitution
the Chamber of Deputies must first decide if allegations against a
high public official are serious enough to warrant referral to the
Senate which then functions as a special court to try the case. If the
Preval Administration finally serves the appeals court order
dismissing the case against Neptune then the State Prosecutor or any
of the plaintiffs could possibly choose to appeal to Haiti's Supreme
Court. They would have five days to do so or the case would be closed
for good.

Asked if a shift in Preval's loyalties has taken place since the
election of 2006, Neptune acknowledged that "many facts raise serious
questions" about Preval's commitment to the people who elected him.
However, Neptune hastened to add that he cannot answer those "serious
questions" with any degree of confidence. Neptune stressed that he has
been very isolated from public life even after his release from prison
and that he can only use media reports to judge Preval's actions. Is
the lingering repression against Lavalas leaders aimed at keeping
Aristide out of Haiti? Neptune's answer is that there are certainly
people "within the machinery of government" who would resort to that.

Brian Concannon believes that Haiti is slowly rebuilding but that the
damage done by the IGH to the judiciary and police will take five to
ten years to repair. Asked if the IACHR's decision will finally prompt
the dismissal of the case against Yvon Neptune, Concannon replied "I
would be surprised if the government does not at least serve the order
soon. Then again, I am surprised they didn't do it 15 months ago."



_

will pursue a course with Venezuela and Chavez that is much different from Bush administration. When it comes to foreign policy what Obama and McCain may think about particular issues is pretty irrelevant. The days of a president determining foreign policy are long over. Foreign policy is determined by big oil, defense manufacturers, and Wall Street.. This is why I agree with Chavez' statement below where he says that Obama represents the empire.

Obama is rumored to have as many as 300 foreign policy advisors -- many left over from a Clinton administration that was a foreign policy disaster. Obama is being managed very carefully and you can expect his anti-Chavez rhetoric to go into high gear.



From Venezuelanalysis:

Chavez Responds to Obama

Earlier in the week, in an interview with the Spanish news agency EFE, Barak Obama said that he believed Venezuela "is a destructive force in the region" because of its alleged support for the Colombian guerilla group, the FARC, its "anti-democratic practices," and its "incendiary rhetoric" against the U.S. Despite this, said Obama, he would still support a dialogue with the Venezuelan government.

Chavez responded angrily to Obama's comments, someone who he previously seemed to believe would take a different line with regard to Venezuela, saying that Obama is "dynamiting" any possible dialogue between Venezuela, Cuba, and the rest of Latin America.

"The gentleman said he would review U.S. policy towards Latin America, but applying a policy of a carrot and stick. Well, gentleman, go study what is happening in Latin America because, if he hasn't understood that, what there is, is a revolution unleashed," said Chavez during a gathering with members of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

" said that Chavez is a destroyer, something like that, of South America, but the destroyer is the empire, which he too represents," added Chavez.

Chavez then went on to say that no one should "have illusions" should Obama win the U.S. presidential elections because he will represent the empire, no matter how much he tries to present himself as an agent of change.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3657h

The U.S. Battles the Left in Central America: Will the Magic Laptop Tip the Scales?

This week, the LA Times is running a series of debates on US-Venezuela-Latin American relations between Andres Martinez, senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and Angelo Rivero Santos, the deputy chief of mission of the Venezuelan Embassy in the US. According to the article, the first debate, "Which way, Latin America?" was originally based on the question "Are Central American nations moving toward neo-liberal free markets or a 21st century form of Bolivarian socialism?" but the Times was forced to change the title because Martinez may know less about Central America than Paris Hilton. Instead of answering the original question, Martinez decided to go with Venezuela sucks and Brazil & Chile rule.

One of Martinez's few mentions of Central America refers to the "conservative pro-American like in Colombia, Mexico and much of Central America." Huh? Which Central America is he talking about? Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Belize all have leftist to centrist governments. Most have good relations with the US, but also pursue independent policies. In fact, all of the above mentioned countries except Costa Rica are members of Venezuela's Petrocaribe initiative, which provides low-cost oil to the Caribbean and Central America. According to Reuters, Chavez set up Petrocaribe "in 2005 to bolster his regional influence", because of course, Venezuela has no possible interest in helping prevent its smaller neighbors' economies from collapsing. And sorry Mr. Martinez, but Costa Rica is now also going to join the diabolical scheme (Cuba, the D.R., Jamaica and other smaller island nations are also members).

CONTINUE ARTICLE:
http://www.borev.net/2008/07/the_us_battle...

Obits for opposites PDF Print E-mail

By Saul Landau Read Spanish Version

In 1977, James Abourezk (D-SD) had just returned from Cuba. He and his fellow South Dakota Solon, George McGovern, had sought to use basketball diplomacy. The University of South Dakota's team played Cuba's national team. President Carter had supported the effort since it coincided with his own initiative to gradually restore relations with Cuba. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) tried to stop this process.

On the Senate floor, beside the presiding officer's desk, Abourezk beseeched Helms to lighten up. "You ought go and see for yourself what's going on down there," Abourezk said.

"You oughta go to Chile and see what's going on down there," Helms replied. His reference reminded Abourezk of a conversation he'd had recently with Helms' soul mate, Senator James Eastland (R-MS).

"I told Pinochet he oughta hang all the Communists and put the socialists in jail," Eastland smirked. "And Pinochet told me 'that's exactly what I'm doing.'"

"Helms was a mean son of a bitch," Abourezk offered as his obituary comment. "The Senate was a lot more collegial before he arrived."

Helms was the quintessential Cold War, bible-thumping Senator and his conversation with Abourezk was so Twentieth Century. In case anyone failed to grasp his sentiment on Cuba, in the mid 1990s Helms sponsored the Helms-Burton Bill tightening and codifying the embargo. "Let me be clear," Helms pronounced. "Whether Castro leaves Cuba in a vertical or horizontal position is up to him and the Cuban people. But he must -- and will -- leave Cuba."

Helms assumed horizontal posture before Castro, who remains in Cuba. But Helms' decades of public and private utterances did demonstrate George Carlin's insight: "Bullshit is the glue that binds this nation."

Carlin (71) and Helms (86) -- polar opposites of U.S. culture -- died within weeks of each other. Carlin taught critical thinking through stand-up comedy. Helms represented unquestioned authority -- of the past. Lest anyone think Helms was always dour and serious about his love for all things reactionary, those who knew him told stories of his inventive sense of humor. This included the "good old boys" sense of humor.

In 1993, shortly after he made an impassioned speech about the virtues of flying the Confederate flag, Helms shared the Senate elevator with then Senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) and his buddy and still Senator, Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah).

"Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry," he chortled to the ever agreeable -- to reaction -- Hatch. "I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries." He then sang it. Moseley Braun retorted, "Just the sound of you singing is enough to make me cry." (Time, 8/16/93)

Helms built his right wing reputation on combining hatred for communism with contempt for integration. In 1983, Helms attacked the bill establishing Martin Luther King Day. King, he charged, had close communist advisers (he actually named two of them) and he was well known for his promiscuity.

The die hard Dixiecrats understood Helms' illusions and had not forgotten that twenty years before during the early civil rights protests, Helms, then a radio and TV commentator, had declared that "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights." (WRAL-TV commentary, 1963)

Helms' combined his pet hates into another "joke," by referring to the reputedly liberal University of North Carolina (UNC) as the "University of Negroes and Communists." (Charleston Gazette, 9/15/95)

He included the Hispanic population in his colored-based aesthetics. "All Latins are volatile people," Helms declared on a less than totally friendly visit to Mexico in 1986. "Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction."

Helms combined acidity for people of less than white hue and those of the liberal persuasion with a sense of nostalgia for the banalities of his youth. In a 1956 newspaper column he wrote: "I shall always remember the shady streets, the quiet Sundays, the cotton wagons, the Fourth of July parades, the New Year's Eve firecrackers. I shall never forget the stream of school kids marching uptown to place flowers on the Courthouse Square monument on Confederate Memorial Day."

Helms, a close ally of right wing Christian preachers, accused gays and lesbians for causing "the proliferation of AIDS." He sneered that "there's nothing gay about them." In 1993, Clinton appointed Roberta Achtenberg Assistant Secretary for Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Helms called her unqualified and tried to block her confirmation "because she's a damn lesbian."

Why did he get so vitriolic? Was Helms, like so many of his political ilk, really a closet queen? In 1974, a Helms staffer ushered me past some blue haired ladies into a room full of aides, a couple of them straight and others down-right flamers. Imagine my surprise when Helms claimed that the "New York Times and The Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian."

As part of his anti-gay, anti-black and all other colors, anti-liberal and pro gun credo, Helms also belonged to the "Proud to be an American" club, the association of people whose bumpers bear the sticker: "Proud To Be an American."

I never shared that sentiment; nor pride in being Jewish or coming from New York. George Carlin analyzed such statements of pride as bullshit. "Pride should be reserved for your achievements, not accidents of birth like being American or Irish or Italian."

God Bless America, repeated Helms and thousands of other politicians. "Is that a request, a demand a suggestion," asked Carlin? "Imagine, God singles out one country for his blessings because -- well you go figure."

Carlin mocked the religious pap that Helms and the vast Christian fundamentalist right wing accept as God given. "Religion even requires people to swear on the Bible when they testify in court," explained Carlin. "Why should swearing to God on the Bible mean you're telling the truth? As kids, every time we wanted to disguise a whopping lie, we'd say 'I swear on the Bible' or I swear on my mother's tits.' Swearing on the Bible never induced a cop to tell the truth on the witness stand. They lie routinely when they take the stand just to insure a conviction. The Bible is America's favorite theatrical prop."

Indeed, Carlin questioned everything, analyzed words, and splintered customs with knife-like logic. "You go to a baseball, football or basketball game and they begin with the Star Spangled banner. And all the men -- not the women -- have to remove their hats. What's the relationship between a hat and patriotism? Why not take off your pants to show you love this country?"

Helms would have thrown Carlin in jail for using "dirty words." How can a word be dirty, asked the late Lenny Bruce? "You take a word and rub dirt on it?" Carlin enjoyed playing with words and phrases that you can't say on television. "You can prick your finger, but your can't finger your…"

For Helms, such language insulted God. For Carlin, "using God is the last refuge of a man who has no argument. If God was looking out for us he would make sure all of us had food and houses. As a kid I was taught that disobeying God would mean I'd burn in the hottest of Hell, endure the most horrible pain. God routinely punished us by causing tornadoes, hurricanes and such. He gave the disobedient cancer and other hideous ailments. But don't worry. God loves you."

And for the gun and God loving, Carlin's question had particular significance. "If God was looking out for you would He have given you a gun to kill your girl friend?"

I know Carlin isn't in Heaven looking down and smiling at those who remember him fondly. If there was such a place "up there," he would have better things to do. Unfortunately, Jesse probably isn't "down there" either.

But imagine the Devil giving the important Jesse three choices. One option he offers would be to join Reagan swimming in boiling water, but not able to reach the shore. Helms refuses. Next, he sees Nixon breaking an interminable pile of rocks. Nope!

For his third option, the Devil opens a door and Helms sees Clinton seated, facing him with Monica on her knees in front of the former President and -- well, doing her thing. The pious Helms grimaces, but finally chooses this as the least horrible option. The Devil then says: "Okay, Monica, you can go now."

Saul Landau once wrote plays for the San Francisco Mime Troupe.

http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?optio...

http://snipurl.com/307rm