By Maryam Namazie
October 14, 2008
The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain's first international conference on Political Islam, Sharia Law and Civil Society held at Conway Hall on October 10 was a resounding success. Nearly 300 people came together to discuss issues ranging from apostasy, the freedom to criticise and renounce religion, Sharia law and civil society and creationism, faith schools and religious education. Held on the International Day against the Death Penalty, the conference was a stark reminder of the many killed or facing execution for apostasy in countries ruled by Islamic laws.
You can see film footage and photos of the conference on the CEMB's website.
The conference was opened by Fariborz Pooya (head of Iranian Secular Society), the conference's Master of Ceremonies. After a welcome from Giles Enders on behalf of Conway Hall and Zia Zaffar on behalf of CEMB's Executive Committee, the audience watched a clip from Patty Debonitas' film ‘Breaking the taboo.' Maryam Namazie, the CEMB's spokesperson, then gave an opening address, saying that the political Islamic movement used rights and anti-racist language for western consumption so that it could go about its business as usual. She said: ‘While Islamic organisations here talk in PR speak, they, their courts, their schools, their leaders are nothing but extensions of Islamic states.' She went on to say ‘In the end, political Islam matters to people because it affects their lives, their rights, their freedoms. And that's why only a movement that puts people first can mobilise the force needed to stop it.'
This was followed by Plenary 1 entitled ‘Apostasy laws and the Freedom to Renounce and Criticise Religion' chaired by Caspar Melville, editor of the New Humanist. Panellists were Mina Ahadi (head of the Council of ex-Muslims of Germany); AC Grayling (philosopher and author), Ehsan Jami (former head of the Council of Ex-Muslims of the Netherlands), Fariborz Pooya, Hanne Stinson (Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association) and Ibn Warraq (author). The panellists called for the immediate release of all those imprisoned for 'apostasy'; an abolition of the death penalty; and a cancellation of laws wherever they exist that punish the right and freedom to renounce or criticise Islam.
After lunch, comedian Nick Doody entertained the crowd with a routine critical of religion. This was followed by Plenary 2 entitled ‘Sharia Law and Citizenship Rights'. It was chaired by Andrew Copson (Director of Education and Public Affairs of the British Humanist Association); panellists were Mahin Alipour (head of the Scandinavian Councils of Ex-Muslims), Roy Brown (International Humanist and Ethical Union's Representative at the UN Human Rights Council), Johann Hari (journalist), Maryam Namazie and Ibn Warraq. The audience overwhelmingly supported the following resolution at the end of the plenary: The conference calls on the UK and European governments to bring an end to the use and implementation of Sharia law, which is discriminatory against women and children in particular, and to guarantee unconditional equal citizenship rights for all.
The audience then watched a remake of the right wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders' film entitled Fitna Remade by Reza Moradi.
After a break, Richard Dawkins (scientist, author) provided his criticism of Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation for which his site has been banned in Turkey, which was followed by questions and answers from the audience.
This was followed by Plenary 3 entitled ‘Creationism, Religious Education and Faith Schools,' which was chaired by Keith Porteous Wood (Executive Director of the National Secular Society). Panellists were Richard Dawkins, Terry Sanderson (President of the NSS), Joan Smith (journalist and activist), Bahram Soroush (Labour Solidarity Committee Public Relations Officer), and Hamid Taqvaee (leader of the Worker-communist Party of Iran). The audience showed their unequivocal opposition to faith schools here. Maryam Namazie closed the conference by calling on the participants to mobilise around March 8 - International Women's Day – to step up opposition against Sharia law and political Islam. As she had said earlier: ‘In the end, political Islam matters to people because it affects their lives, their rights, their freedoms. And that's why only a movement that puts people first can mobilise the force needed to stop political Islam. And it must – it will – be stopped.'
Throughout the day, various CEMB representatives spoke with the media, including the BBC, Al Arabiya TV, Italian state TV, The Wall Street Journal, CNS News, The Guardian, etc.
For more information, please contact Maryam Namazie.
Maryam Namazie's Blog
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008
The Magical Realism Of Gabriel García Márquez: One Hundred Years Of Solitude
“A trickle of blood came out under the door, crossed the living room, went out into the street, continued on in a straight line across the uneven terraces, went down steps and climbed over curbs, passed along the Street of the Turks, turned a corner to the right and another to the left, made a right angle at the Buendía house, went in under the closed door, crossed through the parlor, hugging the walls so as not to stain the rugs, went on to the other living room, made a wide curve to avoid the dining-room table, went along the porch with the begonias, and passed without being seen under Amaranta's chair as she gave an arithmetic lesson to Aureliano José, and went through the pantry and came out in the kitchen, where Úrsula was getting ready to crack thirty-six eggs to make bread.
"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.”
RENEGADE EYE
"Holy Mother of God!" Úrsula shouted.”
RENEGADE EYE
Blogrolling Hacked
The website Blogrolling.com was hacked on October 08th, with people finding the homepage with Islamist messages (see picture). Blogrolling is a site that supplies script for saving links, alphabetizing them, and getting notice of updates.
Yesterday it looked like Blogrolling was back up. Instead every link led to a certain Laura's blog, which is down now.
This is the second time Blogrolling was hacked.
For now all my blog links are gone. I used the updated blog feature often to visit and encourage blogs, that don't update often.
RENEGADE EYE
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Afghanistan: The Unwinnable War
By Alan Woods
Tuesday, 07 October 2008
We can't defeat the Taliban, says the outgoing commander of British forces in Afghanistan. In a statement published in yesterday’s The Times (October 6, 2008), Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, said that in his opinion, a military victory over the Taliban was “neither feasible nor supportable”. Carleton-Smith says he believes the Taliban will never be defeated.
The Brigadier speaks from experience. The 16 Air Assault Brigade, which will hand over to 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines this month, has suffered severe casualties after six months of hard fighting. Their commander has drawn the most pessimistic conclusions from his experience. He no longer talks of victory. “What we need is sufficient troops to contain the insurgency to a level where it is not a strategic threat to the longevity of the elected Government,” he says.
What do these words mean? They mean that after seven years of bloody fighting, the Coalition troops are further away from victory than ever, and that the puppet government of Karzai is under constant threat from the insurgency. Although the brigadier said that his troops had “taken the sting out of the Taliban” during clashes in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, this had been at a heavy cost. His brigade suffered 32 killed and 170 injured during its six-month tour of duty. The 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment alone lost 11 soldiers, most of them killed by roadside bombs or other explosive devices.
This is forcing both military commanders and politicians to revise their opinions of the situation in Afghanistan. Their conclusions completely confirm what the Marxists wrote seven years ago.
When the US-led Coalition army went into Afghanistan, we predicted that their initial success would eventually turn into its opposite. We wrote at the time:
“The swiftness of the collapse of the Taliban's defence, and the ease with which the Northern Alliance entered Kabul, has led many to conclude that the war is over and that the Taliban are finished. This is a serious misreading of the situation. […]
“The main war aims of the USA have not been achieved. Bin Laden is still at liberty. The al Qaeda organization, despite the losses it has undoubtedly suffered, is still intact. Nor is the Taliban destroyed. On the contrary.
“It is true that the fall of Kabul presents the Americans potentially with a more favourable logistical context for pursuing their military operation. It has made the logistics of supplying and maintaining the military campaign far easier. However, the essential problem remains: in order to realize its objective, the US and its allies must send troops into the Pushtoon areas. This cannot be achieved painlessly. The enemy has been driven from the cities but not destroyed. The Taliban, having withdrawn from the cities, will regroup in the mountains and villages of the Pushtoon heartland.”
And we concluded:
“The Taliban have lost their grip on power, but not their potential for making war. They are very used to fighting a guerrilla war in the mountains. They did it before and can do it again. In the north, they were fighting in alien and hostile territory. But in the villages and mountains of the Pushtoon area, they are in their own homeland. The prospect opens up of a protracted guerrilla campaign which can go on for years. The first part of the allied war campaign was the easy bit. The second part will not be so easy. British and American troops will have to go into the Pushtoon areas on search and destroy missions, where they will be sitting targets for the guerrillas. Casualties will be inevitable. At a certain stage this will have an effect on public opinion in Britain and America.
“The Americans had hoped to be able to carry out a quick, surgical strike against bin Laden, relying mainly on air power. Instead, the conflict is becoming ever more complicated and difficult, and the prospect of an end is postponed almost indefinitely. They will have to keep troops stationed not only in Afghanistan but in Pakistan and other countries in order to prop them up. […]
“This is a far worse and more dangerous position than the one in which the Americans found themselves on September 11. Washington will now be compelled to underwrite the bankrupt and unstable regime in Pakistan, as well as all the other "friendly" states in the region, which are being destabilized by its actions. If the aim of this exercise was to combat terrorism, they will find they have achieved the opposite. Before these events, the imperialists could afford to maintain a relatively safe distance from the convulsions and wars of this part of the world, but now they are completely entangled in it. By their actions since September 11, the USA and Britain has got themselves dragged into a quagmire, from which it will be difficult to extricate themselves.”
This was written on November 15, 2001 (Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul: Is the war over?). Seven years later there is no need to change a single word of what we wrote then.
The ablest representatives of the bourgeoisie usually come to the same conclusions as the Marxists. Seven years later the brigadier’s grim prognosis proves what we said long ago to be true. It follows a leaked cable by François Fitou, the deputy French Ambassador in Kabul, claiming that Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador, had told him the strategy for Afghanistan was “doomed to failure”.
In the cable, Mr Fitou told President Sarkozy that Sir Sherard believed “the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption and the [Karzai] Government has lost all trust”. He said Sir Sherard had told him Britain had no alternative but to support the US, “but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one. The American strategy is doomed to fail.”
For his part, Brigadier Carleton-Smith admitted that it had been “a turbulent summer”. He claimed that the Taliban were “riven with deep fissures and fractures”, but then quickly added: “However, the Taliban, tactically, is reasonably resilient, certainly quite dangerous and seems relatively impervious to losses. Its potency is as a force for influence.” The brigadier said that in the areas where the Government had no control, the Afghan population was “vulnerable to a shifting coalition of Taliban, mad mullahs and marauding militias”. In other areas, however, progress was being made and children were going back to school. “We are trying to deliver sufficient security for a degree of normalization,” he said.
The Economist recently wrote:
“The British army, leading the NATO effort in Helmand, has lost 115 soldiers there since 2006, compared with perhaps 5,000 dead Taliban. Yet Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, a senior Taliban spokesman, is relentlessly upbeat: ‘We struggle for almighty Allah and we are sure we are winning.’ The outgoing British commander, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, credits the Taliban with being ‘still tactically quite resilient and certainly quite dangerous’. But he says the British are ‘minimising the objective damage’ they are able to inflict.
“Given the military stalemate, the British strategy now focuses on developing Afghan forces and government structures with a view to an eventual political solution. Brigadier Carleton-Smith estimates Britain can start withdrawing troops in three to five years. But Afghan political maturity could take ‘decades or generations’.”
In the past year the Taliban have lost territory, notably the towns of Garmser and Musa Qala, the only two places in Afghanistan where they defended fixed positions. But these victories of the Coalition forces are more apparent than real. The Taliban have merely abandoned their attempt to defend fixed positions, where they are weak, in order to step up guerrilla tactics, where they are strong.
The Taliban have plenty of arms and money, thanks to their accommodation with drug-farmers and smugglers. This autumn Taliban commanders have promised to defend the poppy fields in the previously pro-government districts of Nad Ali and Marja. The Koran’s prohibition of drug use takes second place to the need to win the hearts and minds of Afghan farmers and hard cash for guns! They indignantly deny that they receive drug money. However, the Taliban accepts zakat (alms) from the local poppy-farmers, which is much the same thing. With this money they can buy large quantities of arms and ammunition from corrupt Afghan police and soldiers, and there is a never-ending flow of volunteers from Pakistan. This means that the war can go on indefinitely. The conclusion is clear. The Coalition forces cannot win this war.
Sooner or later the American and British will be compelled to leave Afghanistan, following in the ignominious footsteps of every other foreign army that tried to subdue this turbulent country, from Alexander the Great onwards. In order to do this, they will have to try to create some kind of state. And, as Engels explained long ago, the state is essentially groups of armed men.
Brigadier Carleton-Smith said that there had been a government vacuum for 30 years, and even now the central Government in Kabul did not view Helmand as a key province. He said that in some areas the Afghan people were now beginning to shift their allegiance towards traditional power structures “rather than the shadowy and illegal structures” of the Taliban and the warlords. He said that more foreign trainers were needed to help to build up the competence of the Afghan National Army. He kindly suggested that the Americans would provide them.
However, the chances of creating anything like a stable central government in Kabul are not great. The mood in Kabul has been a gloomy one of late. There is no sign that NATO forces are any closer to winning the war against the Taliban. On the other hand, there is equally little sign that the Taliban are winning the war in Helmand either. This is a strong argument in favour of reaching a deal.
The British have a long and bitter experience of wars in Afghanistan. They suffered the humiliation of seeing a British army cut to bits by Afghan tribesmen. In the end, the British Empire was compelled to pay bribes to the tribal chiefs to keep the North West Frontier quiet. Now history is repeating itself. The Brigadier indicated that the only way forward was to find a political solution that would include the Taliban. Let us recall that a few months ago two foreign diplomats (one of them was British) were expelled from Afghanistan for allegedly negotiating with the Taliban. We have no doubt whatsoever that such negotiations are secretly going on all the time.
President Karzai does not like this. He sees it (quite correctly) as a threat to his position. Nevertheless, under pressure from his foreign “allies” his government has launched a “reconciliation programme”. But he has a small problem: the hard core of Taliban commanders are implacably opposed to any compromise. Efforts are therefore being focused on the so-called “tier-two” and “tier-three” Taliban, who are perceived to be less ideologically intransigent. The Coalition calculates that sufficiently large amounts of dollars will weigh more heavily with some of the chiefs than verses from the Koran.
In the end the Coalition forces will be compelled to abandon the attempt to occupy Afghanistan. They will leave behind them a trail of death and destruction and a legacy of hatred and bitterness that will last for decades. We do not know which of the rival gangs will dominate the next government in Kabul. What we do know is that, as always, the heaviest price will be paid by the ordinary people, the workers and peasants, the poor, the old, the sick, the women and children.
The terrible fate of the people of Afghanistan is yet another of the innumerable crimes of US imperialism and its allies. The infamous “war on terror”, far from achieving its objectives, has had the opposite result. By its actions the imperialists have provided a powerful impetus to terrorism. They have poured fuel on the flames of fanaticism and thus acted as the main recruiting sergeant for al Qaeda and the Taliban. They have completely wrecked Afghanistan and in the process they have destabilized Pakistan. In the immortal and often quoted words of the Roman historian Tacitus: “And when they have created a wilderness, they call it Peace.”
London, 7 October 2008
Other News October 09, 2008: Blogrolling has been hacked and is down now. Stay tuned. All my blog links are there.
RENEGADE EYE
Tuesday, 07 October 2008
We can't defeat the Taliban, says the outgoing commander of British forces in Afghanistan. In a statement published in yesterday’s The Times (October 6, 2008), Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, the commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, said that in his opinion, a military victory over the Taliban was “neither feasible nor supportable”. Carleton-Smith says he believes the Taliban will never be defeated.
The Brigadier speaks from experience. The 16 Air Assault Brigade, which will hand over to 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines this month, has suffered severe casualties after six months of hard fighting. Their commander has drawn the most pessimistic conclusions from his experience. He no longer talks of victory. “What we need is sufficient troops to contain the insurgency to a level where it is not a strategic threat to the longevity of the elected Government,” he says.
What do these words mean? They mean that after seven years of bloody fighting, the Coalition troops are further away from victory than ever, and that the puppet government of Karzai is under constant threat from the insurgency. Although the brigadier said that his troops had “taken the sting out of the Taliban” during clashes in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, this had been at a heavy cost. His brigade suffered 32 killed and 170 injured during its six-month tour of duty. The 2nd Battalion the Parachute Regiment alone lost 11 soldiers, most of them killed by roadside bombs or other explosive devices.
This is forcing both military commanders and politicians to revise their opinions of the situation in Afghanistan. Their conclusions completely confirm what the Marxists wrote seven years ago.
What We Said
When the US-led Coalition army went into Afghanistan, we predicted that their initial success would eventually turn into its opposite. We wrote at the time:
“The swiftness of the collapse of the Taliban's defence, and the ease with which the Northern Alliance entered Kabul, has led many to conclude that the war is over and that the Taliban are finished. This is a serious misreading of the situation. […]
“The main war aims of the USA have not been achieved. Bin Laden is still at liberty. The al Qaeda organization, despite the losses it has undoubtedly suffered, is still intact. Nor is the Taliban destroyed. On the contrary.
“It is true that the fall of Kabul presents the Americans potentially with a more favourable logistical context for pursuing their military operation. It has made the logistics of supplying and maintaining the military campaign far easier. However, the essential problem remains: in order to realize its objective, the US and its allies must send troops into the Pushtoon areas. This cannot be achieved painlessly. The enemy has been driven from the cities but not destroyed. The Taliban, having withdrawn from the cities, will regroup in the mountains and villages of the Pushtoon heartland.”
And we concluded:
“The Taliban have lost their grip on power, but not their potential for making war. They are very used to fighting a guerrilla war in the mountains. They did it before and can do it again. In the north, they were fighting in alien and hostile territory. But in the villages and mountains of the Pushtoon area, they are in their own homeland. The prospect opens up of a protracted guerrilla campaign which can go on for years. The first part of the allied war campaign was the easy bit. The second part will not be so easy. British and American troops will have to go into the Pushtoon areas on search and destroy missions, where they will be sitting targets for the guerrillas. Casualties will be inevitable. At a certain stage this will have an effect on public opinion in Britain and America.
“The Americans had hoped to be able to carry out a quick, surgical strike against bin Laden, relying mainly on air power. Instead, the conflict is becoming ever more complicated and difficult, and the prospect of an end is postponed almost indefinitely. They will have to keep troops stationed not only in Afghanistan but in Pakistan and other countries in order to prop them up. […]
“This is a far worse and more dangerous position than the one in which the Americans found themselves on September 11. Washington will now be compelled to underwrite the bankrupt and unstable regime in Pakistan, as well as all the other "friendly" states in the region, which are being destabilized by its actions. If the aim of this exercise was to combat terrorism, they will find they have achieved the opposite. Before these events, the imperialists could afford to maintain a relatively safe distance from the convulsions and wars of this part of the world, but now they are completely entangled in it. By their actions since September 11, the USA and Britain has got themselves dragged into a quagmire, from which it will be difficult to extricate themselves.”
This was written on November 15, 2001 (Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul: Is the war over?). Seven years later there is no need to change a single word of what we wrote then.
Grim Prognosis
The ablest representatives of the bourgeoisie usually come to the same conclusions as the Marxists. Seven years later the brigadier’s grim prognosis proves what we said long ago to be true. It follows a leaked cable by François Fitou, the deputy French Ambassador in Kabul, claiming that Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador, had told him the strategy for Afghanistan was “doomed to failure”.
In the cable, Mr Fitou told President Sarkozy that Sir Sherard believed “the security situation is getting worse, so is corruption and the [Karzai] Government has lost all trust”. He said Sir Sherard had told him Britain had no alternative but to support the US, “but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one. The American strategy is doomed to fail.”
For his part, Brigadier Carleton-Smith admitted that it had been “a turbulent summer”. He claimed that the Taliban were “riven with deep fissures and fractures”, but then quickly added: “However, the Taliban, tactically, is reasonably resilient, certainly quite dangerous and seems relatively impervious to losses. Its potency is as a force for influence.” The brigadier said that in the areas where the Government had no control, the Afghan population was “vulnerable to a shifting coalition of Taliban, mad mullahs and marauding militias”. In other areas, however, progress was being made and children were going back to school. “We are trying to deliver sufficient security for a degree of normalization,” he said.
A War That Cannot Be Won
The Economist recently wrote:
“The British army, leading the NATO effort in Helmand, has lost 115 soldiers there since 2006, compared with perhaps 5,000 dead Taliban. Yet Qari Yusuf Ahmadi, a senior Taliban spokesman, is relentlessly upbeat: ‘We struggle for almighty Allah and we are sure we are winning.’ The outgoing British commander, Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, credits the Taliban with being ‘still tactically quite resilient and certainly quite dangerous’. But he says the British are ‘minimising the objective damage’ they are able to inflict.
“Given the military stalemate, the British strategy now focuses on developing Afghan forces and government structures with a view to an eventual political solution. Brigadier Carleton-Smith estimates Britain can start withdrawing troops in three to five years. But Afghan political maturity could take ‘decades or generations’.”
In the past year the Taliban have lost territory, notably the towns of Garmser and Musa Qala, the only two places in Afghanistan where they defended fixed positions. But these victories of the Coalition forces are more apparent than real. The Taliban have merely abandoned their attempt to defend fixed positions, where they are weak, in order to step up guerrilla tactics, where they are strong.
The Taliban have plenty of arms and money, thanks to their accommodation with drug-farmers and smugglers. This autumn Taliban commanders have promised to defend the poppy fields in the previously pro-government districts of Nad Ali and Marja. The Koran’s prohibition of drug use takes second place to the need to win the hearts and minds of Afghan farmers and hard cash for guns! They indignantly deny that they receive drug money. However, the Taliban accepts zakat (alms) from the local poppy-farmers, which is much the same thing. With this money they can buy large quantities of arms and ammunition from corrupt Afghan police and soldiers, and there is a never-ending flow of volunteers from Pakistan. This means that the war can go on indefinitely. The conclusion is clear. The Coalition forces cannot win this war.
The Problem of the State
Sooner or later the American and British will be compelled to leave Afghanistan, following in the ignominious footsteps of every other foreign army that tried to subdue this turbulent country, from Alexander the Great onwards. In order to do this, they will have to try to create some kind of state. And, as Engels explained long ago, the state is essentially groups of armed men.
Brigadier Carleton-Smith said that there had been a government vacuum for 30 years, and even now the central Government in Kabul did not view Helmand as a key province. He said that in some areas the Afghan people were now beginning to shift their allegiance towards traditional power structures “rather than the shadowy and illegal structures” of the Taliban and the warlords. He said that more foreign trainers were needed to help to build up the competence of the Afghan National Army. He kindly suggested that the Americans would provide them.
However, the chances of creating anything like a stable central government in Kabul are not great. The mood in Kabul has been a gloomy one of late. There is no sign that NATO forces are any closer to winning the war against the Taliban. On the other hand, there is equally little sign that the Taliban are winning the war in Helmand either. This is a strong argument in favour of reaching a deal.
The British have a long and bitter experience of wars in Afghanistan. They suffered the humiliation of seeing a British army cut to bits by Afghan tribesmen. In the end, the British Empire was compelled to pay bribes to the tribal chiefs to keep the North West Frontier quiet. Now history is repeating itself. The Brigadier indicated that the only way forward was to find a political solution that would include the Taliban. Let us recall that a few months ago two foreign diplomats (one of them was British) were expelled from Afghanistan for allegedly negotiating with the Taliban. We have no doubt whatsoever that such negotiations are secretly going on all the time.
President Karzai does not like this. He sees it (quite correctly) as a threat to his position. Nevertheless, under pressure from his foreign “allies” his government has launched a “reconciliation programme”. But he has a small problem: the hard core of Taliban commanders are implacably opposed to any compromise. Efforts are therefore being focused on the so-called “tier-two” and “tier-three” Taliban, who are perceived to be less ideologically intransigent. The Coalition calculates that sufficiently large amounts of dollars will weigh more heavily with some of the chiefs than verses from the Koran.
In the end the Coalition forces will be compelled to abandon the attempt to occupy Afghanistan. They will leave behind them a trail of death and destruction and a legacy of hatred and bitterness that will last for decades. We do not know which of the rival gangs will dominate the next government in Kabul. What we do know is that, as always, the heaviest price will be paid by the ordinary people, the workers and peasants, the poor, the old, the sick, the women and children.
The terrible fate of the people of Afghanistan is yet another of the innumerable crimes of US imperialism and its allies. The infamous “war on terror”, far from achieving its objectives, has had the opposite result. By its actions the imperialists have provided a powerful impetus to terrorism. They have poured fuel on the flames of fanaticism and thus acted as the main recruiting sergeant for al Qaeda and the Taliban. They have completely wrecked Afghanistan and in the process they have destabilized Pakistan. In the immortal and often quoted words of the Roman historian Tacitus: “And when they have created a wilderness, they call it Peace.”
London, 7 October 2008
Other News October 09, 2008: Blogrolling has been hacked and is down now. Stay tuned. All my blog links are there.
RENEGADE EYE
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Who is Bill Ayers?
By Louis Proyect
April 18, 2008
If you listen to rightwing talk radio, you’ve probably heard Bill Ayers’s name before. WABC AM, a prime outlet for Limbaugh and company, has been burning up the dial recently over this ex-Weatherman who is supposedly in bed with Barack Obama. The Ayers quote that they keep using over and over again comes from a September 11, 2001 NY Times profile that begins:
“I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. “I feel we didn’t do enough.”
They keep harping on the September 11 date as if Ayers was in cahoots with Mohammad Atta. Any fool would know that the first newspaper reports on September 11 appeared the day after. It was just a coincidence that Ayers’s profile appeared the same day as the 9/11 attacks. They also make a big thing about Ayers stating that “we didn’t do enough”, when in fact he was almost certainly referring to their failure to end the war.
Ayers tries to explain what he really meant on his blog:
Regrets. I’m often quoted saying that I have “no regrets.” This is not true. For anyone paying attention-and I try to stay wide-awake to the world around me all/ways-life brings misgivings, doubts, uncertainty, loss, regret. I’m sometimes asked if I regret anything I did to oppose the war in Viet Nam, and I say “no, I don’t regret anything I did to try to stop the slaughter of millions of human beings by my own government.” Sometimes I add, “I don’t think I did enough.” This is then elided: he has no regrets for setting bombs and thinks there should be more bombings.
Obama told the idiot George Stephanopolous that he was only 8 years old when the Weathermen were setting off bombs. For the benefit of many of my readers, who were not even a gleam in their father’s eye back in the early 70s, a word or two of introduction is in order.
The Weathermen started out as a faction of SDS. At the 1969 convention, there was a 3 way split. The “Worker-Student Alliance” (WSA) was led by the Maoist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and basically promoted a kind of “serve the people” missionary-like strategy which involved students getting jobs in factories and preaching to the workers. The WSA was opposed by the Revolutionary Youth Movement, which was divided into RYM1 and RYM2. RYM1 was led by Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn and other SDS leaders who had become deeply frustrated by the inability of the student movement to end the war.
After RYM1 morphed into the Weathermen, the 200 or so members adopted a neo-Narodnik strategy and went underground. Unlike the original Narodniks, the Weathermen never assassinated government officials. They only set off bombs at government buildings. When they weren’t setting off bombs, they were imbibing huge amounts of psychedelic drugs and having orgies. Generally speaking, the Weathermen not only reflected the excesses of the 1960s but strove to embody them.
Like the WSA, RYM2 adopted Maoist politics, but supported Black and Latino nationalism, which PLP regarded as “dividing the working class” in the style of the CPUSA–a party that its leaders had emerged from in the 1950s. RYM2 was a genuine “New Left” tendency as opposed to PLP/WSA’s ambitions to resurrect “Third Period” Stalinism.
RYM2 eventually spawned a number of “Marxist-Leninist” formations whose history was documented by Max Elbaum in “Revolution in the Air“. All of the groups that originated in RYM2 are now defunct, except for the Revolutionary Communist Party, a sect-cult around Bob Avakian who was a RYM2 leader.
While everybody should repudiate the “violence baiting” of Barack Obama, there is a separate question of more direct concern to the radical movement and that involves the legacy of the Weathermen. It would be a big mistake to romanticize them since their politics did a lot to undermine the radical movement in the 1970s. The capitalist class can always replace the bricks that a Weathermen bomb destroyed, but it had a much harder job dislodging radical ideas from a student or young worker. By making an amalgam between the radical movement and the Weathermen, it sought to drive a wedge between us and ordinary American workers who had the social power to end the war and the capitalist system itself eventually.
In today’s Counterpunch, there’s an article by Dave Lindorff that gets the Weathermen wrong. He writes:
While many in the anti-war movement condemned the actions of the Weather Underground, I would argue that they, like the militant Black Panthers, performed an invaluable role by sending a loud, clear message to the nation’s ruling elite that if they continued the war, things would get worse at home.
Their actions made the peaceful mass protests against the Indochina War far more potent, because they forced the ruling elite in the US to have to ponder what would happen if those masses turned to the same kind of violent measures against them.
There is no evidence that the “ruling elite” feared the spread of Weathermen tactics. They knew that the frustrated young radicals had almost no support on the college campuses or high schools. Furthermore, people who demonstrated against the war were not likely to risk prison sentences. Indeed, examination of the historical record will show that the SDS’ers who became Weathermen had turned their back on antiwar organizing by 1967 at least. It was their retreat from mass demonstrations in fact that prepared the way for Narodnik tactics. Political isolation from the mass movement almost guarantees that you will be looking for short-cuts, like setting off bombs.
The late Fred Halstead, who led the SWP’s antiwar activity, once characterized the Weathermen as young people who never lost their ties to the bourgeoisie no matter how outrageous they behaved. If you think of them as children throwing a tantrum, it makes perfect sense. Instead of holding their breath until they turn blue, they set off bombs instead. If daddy didn’t stop bombing the Vietnamese, they’d drive him nuts. That was the real logic of Weathermen bomb-throwing, not socialist revolution.
If your goal is to pressure daddy into changing his ways, then it is likely that you will think up ways to persuade him that you are a good boy or girl when tantrums don’t work. Becoming a good boy or girl in the U.S. of course means becoming a pillar of your community and becoming active in the Democratic Party. Despite Ayers’s claims on his blog that he still “against imperialism”, he has found a home in the party that is totally committed to ruling the world on behalf of American corporations.
The NY Times reported that in 1995 State Senator Alice Palmer “introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.” In other words, Ayers and Dohrn were involved with the Democratic Party at a fairly high level. Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago, served as an adviser to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, the son of the former Mayor who unleashed the cops on peaceful demonstrators in 1968.
Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician, told the NY Times about his initial encounter with Obama at Ayers and Dohrn’s home:
“When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn,” Warren [Maria Warren, another liberal] wrote on her blog in 2005. “They were launching him - introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.”
Warren’s blog entry apparently was what led to rightwing efforts to link Obama to the notorious “bomb thrower” when in fact Warren considered Obama and the former Weathermen as too tame by even her own liberal standards. Such is the grotesque character of American politics that an utterly conventional tête-à-tête among utterly conventional middle-class liberals can become transformed into the second coming of the Smolny Institute.
Louis Proyect
RENEGADE EYE
April 18, 2008
If you listen to rightwing talk radio, you’ve probably heard Bill Ayers’s name before. WABC AM, a prime outlet for Limbaugh and company, has been burning up the dial recently over this ex-Weatherman who is supposedly in bed with Barack Obama. The Ayers quote that they keep using over and over again comes from a September 11, 2001 NY Times profile that begins:
“I don’t regret setting bombs,” Bill Ayers said. “I feel we didn’t do enough.”
They keep harping on the September 11 date as if Ayers was in cahoots with Mohammad Atta. Any fool would know that the first newspaper reports on September 11 appeared the day after. It was just a coincidence that Ayers’s profile appeared the same day as the 9/11 attacks. They also make a big thing about Ayers stating that “we didn’t do enough”, when in fact he was almost certainly referring to their failure to end the war.
Ayers tries to explain what he really meant on his blog:
Regrets. I’m often quoted saying that I have “no regrets.” This is not true. For anyone paying attention-and I try to stay wide-awake to the world around me all/ways-life brings misgivings, doubts, uncertainty, loss, regret. I’m sometimes asked if I regret anything I did to oppose the war in Viet Nam, and I say “no, I don’t regret anything I did to try to stop the slaughter of millions of human beings by my own government.” Sometimes I add, “I don’t think I did enough.” This is then elided: he has no regrets for setting bombs and thinks there should be more bombings.
Obama told the idiot George Stephanopolous that he was only 8 years old when the Weathermen were setting off bombs. For the benefit of many of my readers, who were not even a gleam in their father’s eye back in the early 70s, a word or two of introduction is in order.
The Weathermen started out as a faction of SDS. At the 1969 convention, there was a 3 way split. The “Worker-Student Alliance” (WSA) was led by the Maoist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and basically promoted a kind of “serve the people” missionary-like strategy which involved students getting jobs in factories and preaching to the workers. The WSA was opposed by the Revolutionary Youth Movement, which was divided into RYM1 and RYM2. RYM1 was led by Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn and other SDS leaders who had become deeply frustrated by the inability of the student movement to end the war.
After RYM1 morphed into the Weathermen, the 200 or so members adopted a neo-Narodnik strategy and went underground. Unlike the original Narodniks, the Weathermen never assassinated government officials. They only set off bombs at government buildings. When they weren’t setting off bombs, they were imbibing huge amounts of psychedelic drugs and having orgies. Generally speaking, the Weathermen not only reflected the excesses of the 1960s but strove to embody them.
Like the WSA, RYM2 adopted Maoist politics, but supported Black and Latino nationalism, which PLP regarded as “dividing the working class” in the style of the CPUSA–a party that its leaders had emerged from in the 1950s. RYM2 was a genuine “New Left” tendency as opposed to PLP/WSA’s ambitions to resurrect “Third Period” Stalinism.
RYM2 eventually spawned a number of “Marxist-Leninist” formations whose history was documented by Max Elbaum in “Revolution in the Air“. All of the groups that originated in RYM2 are now defunct, except for the Revolutionary Communist Party, a sect-cult around Bob Avakian who was a RYM2 leader.
While everybody should repudiate the “violence baiting” of Barack Obama, there is a separate question of more direct concern to the radical movement and that involves the legacy of the Weathermen. It would be a big mistake to romanticize them since their politics did a lot to undermine the radical movement in the 1970s. The capitalist class can always replace the bricks that a Weathermen bomb destroyed, but it had a much harder job dislodging radical ideas from a student or young worker. By making an amalgam between the radical movement and the Weathermen, it sought to drive a wedge between us and ordinary American workers who had the social power to end the war and the capitalist system itself eventually.
In today’s Counterpunch, there’s an article by Dave Lindorff that gets the Weathermen wrong. He writes:
While many in the anti-war movement condemned the actions of the Weather Underground, I would argue that they, like the militant Black Panthers, performed an invaluable role by sending a loud, clear message to the nation’s ruling elite that if they continued the war, things would get worse at home.
Their actions made the peaceful mass protests against the Indochina War far more potent, because they forced the ruling elite in the US to have to ponder what would happen if those masses turned to the same kind of violent measures against them.
There is no evidence that the “ruling elite” feared the spread of Weathermen tactics. They knew that the frustrated young radicals had almost no support on the college campuses or high schools. Furthermore, people who demonstrated against the war were not likely to risk prison sentences. Indeed, examination of the historical record will show that the SDS’ers who became Weathermen had turned their back on antiwar organizing by 1967 at least. It was their retreat from mass demonstrations in fact that prepared the way for Narodnik tactics. Political isolation from the mass movement almost guarantees that you will be looking for short-cuts, like setting off bombs.
The late Fred Halstead, who led the SWP’s antiwar activity, once characterized the Weathermen as young people who never lost their ties to the bourgeoisie no matter how outrageous they behaved. If you think of them as children throwing a tantrum, it makes perfect sense. Instead of holding their breath until they turn blue, they set off bombs instead. If daddy didn’t stop bombing the Vietnamese, they’d drive him nuts. That was the real logic of Weathermen bomb-throwing, not socialist revolution.
If your goal is to pressure daddy into changing his ways, then it is likely that you will think up ways to persuade him that you are a good boy or girl when tantrums don’t work. Becoming a good boy or girl in the U.S. of course means becoming a pillar of your community and becoming active in the Democratic Party. Despite Ayers’s claims on his blog that he still “against imperialism”, he has found a home in the party that is totally committed to ruling the world on behalf of American corporations.
The NY Times reported that in 1995 State Senator Alice Palmer “introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to a few of the district’s influential liberals at the home of two well known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.” In other words, Ayers and Dohrn were involved with the Democratic Party at a fairly high level. Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago, served as an adviser to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, the son of the former Mayor who unleashed the cops on peaceful demonstrators in 1968.
Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician, told the NY Times about his initial encounter with Obama at Ayers and Dohrn’s home:
“When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn,” Warren [Maria Warren, another liberal] wrote on her blog in 2005. “They were launching him - introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.”
Warren’s blog entry apparently was what led to rightwing efforts to link Obama to the notorious “bomb thrower” when in fact Warren considered Obama and the former Weathermen as too tame by even her own liberal standards. Such is the grotesque character of American politics that an utterly conventional tête-à-tête among utterly conventional middle-class liberals can become transformed into the second coming of the Smolny Institute.
Louis Proyect
RENEGADE EYE
Saturday, October 04, 2008
Healthcare in China - A Victim of Capitalist Restoration
By Vincent Wallace
Thursday, 02 October 2008
Universally accessible, socialized medial care is normally viewed as one of the first measures which socialists try to achieve for the benefit of the people. In many countries today, even in the United States of America many still go without healthcare, or become indebted for life because of illness. Not only does socialized medical care save lives, but it is a basic necessity for creating social and economic equality.
One of the first steps of the Chinese revolution, right from 1949, was to establish a medical system that could reach people throughout the country and be accessible to all. The early steps taken during the Maoist era, while not without mistakes, was a testament to what can be achieved during a revolution in a short period of time and with very little resources. Unfortunately, due to the market orientated policies taken up by the Chinese Communist Party leadership from Deng Xiaoping onwards, the Chinese health service has suffered severely and what was once a great success story has become one of the most unequal health care systems in the world.
During the 1950s, a great effort was made in order to expand healthcare to rural peasants, and far reaching areas which previously had no access to medical personnel. The so called barefoot doctors' initiative is still cited by international medical professionals as being a great success in increasing the health and life expectancy of China's large and dispersed population. From a life expectancy of 32 years in 1950, it had already reached 69 by 1985. Funding for medical treatment was carried out in part through a kind of grass roots insurance system administered through local communes while investment in the healthcare system itself was carried out by the government and state owned enterprises.
The system was not of the highest quality, and was not without its problems, but it allowed the vast majority of the people in China, 80-90% of the population, access to healthcare. Unfortunately, due to the absence of workers' democracy (the dictatorship of the proletariat, as opposed to the dictatorship of the bureaucracy over the proletariat), and the complete domination of the bureaucracy, instead of being expanded and advanced, this system was torn out by its roots, in particular in the latter half of the 1980s with the dismantling of the commune system.
Today we find a very different situation in Chinese health care, more resembling that of a laissez faire model than one of a so called socialist nation. As of 2007, total GDP spent on healthcare was 5.55%. While the health expenditure share of GDP on average across OECD countries remained unchanged in 2006 compared with 2005, at 8.9%. Therefore spending on healthcare in China, as a percentage of GDP, is below the average for the main advanced capitalist countries. More appalling is the fact that even though the government of China now has much more revenue then it did in the past, its share in total health care spending has gone from 36% in 1980 to 17% in 2004. There has been talk recently about increasing the level of funding by the government, but it is always accompanied together with the appeal that it is not the government's responsibility to assure healthcare to all, but the responsibility of individuals. Again, from 1980 to 2004, the percentage of healthcare costs paid by families rose from 21.6% to 53.6%. The government has recently started to discuss changing laws in order to encourage private health insurance, something which is not widely available as yet.
Health coverage is provided through a state health plan to employees of the state owned companies, bureaucrats, and officials. This same programme also partially covers the health expenses of family members. However, this programme only encompasses a small and decreasing part of the population. In 2003, 45% of residents in urban and 80% in rural areas were not covered by any government health plan. Without government or even private sector insurance, these workers and peasants must borrow money from relatives and pay their life savings to doctors that they do not even know if they can trust. In 2005, the government created a basic insurance programme for people living in rural areas, but the coverage, which covers 70-80% for small health issues, which can be dealt with in small clinics, rapidly decreases to 30% for seeing specialists or having to go to city hospitals.
The health service is severely under-regulated. Since hospitals get almost all their funding from the fees which patients pay, there is a built-in incentive for corruption and abuse. There are many complaints about doctors overcharging, performing unnecessary procedures, and prescribing unneeded medications, all to make more money and keep patients coming back. Some of these cases have even led to protests by the communities affected. The government's response so far has been to punish individuals found guilty of such acts instead of trying to deal with the underlying problem which flows from the system that allows these kinds of things to go on in the first place.
Many workers and peasants, including their entire families, go broke in order to pay hospital bills for family members when they become seriously ill. It has become such a problem that some cases have even surfaced of elderly people in rural areas being caught trying to be cremated alive in order to save their families' money. What is the government's proposed solution to this crisis in healthcare? Even more privatisation!
The government now is acknowledging the problem of healthcare, if for no other reason than it is a looming black cloud over their so-called "harmonious [often omitted] socialist society". In 2006, a case of a toddler dying for lack of money caused thousands in southwest Sichuan province to ransack the hospital and battle with police. Hu Jintao, who has been playing the card of social reform in order to avoid social upheaval has been promising to heal the gaping social wounds, but has provided only children's band-aids as a solution! The 2005 insurance plan for covering peasants is completely inadequate for dealing with any serious medical conditions which involve the big expenses anyhow. The government has been licensing private insurance and seems content to go with the market road and let them sort it all out, while the workers and peasants pay more and more on health expenses every year. Since it is the only option for most people not working in state enterprises, private health insurance is growing rapidly.
It is obvious that these are not the policies of a "socialist government", which must as a precondition put the interests of workers and peasants at the forefront of decisions. Most Chinese workers understand what has taken place in the country, that the "capitalist-roaders" have taken over and the economy and society is now oriented along capitalist lines. Hu Jintao, though surely talking more left-wing than his predecessors, has provided no fundamental change for the status of working people in China. Labour conditions are just as bad; abuse by foreign and national companies alike continues the same. The new rich continue to increase their wealth and the workers and poor struggle on through enormous inflation in food prices and basic goods.
Chinese Marxists must again pick up the struggle for socialism, learning from the mistakes of the past in order to build a genuine workers' democracy where industry is state owned, but managed by the workers, not by corrupt bureaucrats. A real socialist government, which Marx and Lenin envisaged, would be one where the workers actually have power by managing their own workplaces, the right to elect and recall all representatives, and where no official or bureaucrat earns more than the average worker. Using the massive wealth and technology China has accumulated, the workers could transform the country in a matter of years. Universal healthcare for all would easily become a reality once the colossal forces of production and human labour power that China possesses are directed for the social good instead of the enrichment of a few bureaucrats and national and international capitalists.
RENEGADE EYE
Thursday, 02 October 2008
Universally accessible, socialized medial care is normally viewed as one of the first measures which socialists try to achieve for the benefit of the people. In many countries today, even in the United States of America many still go without healthcare, or become indebted for life because of illness. Not only does socialized medical care save lives, but it is a basic necessity for creating social and economic equality.
One of the first steps of the Chinese revolution, right from 1949, was to establish a medical system that could reach people throughout the country and be accessible to all. The early steps taken during the Maoist era, while not without mistakes, was a testament to what can be achieved during a revolution in a short period of time and with very little resources. Unfortunately, due to the market orientated policies taken up by the Chinese Communist Party leadership from Deng Xiaoping onwards, the Chinese health service has suffered severely and what was once a great success story has become one of the most unequal health care systems in the world.
During the 1950s, a great effort was made in order to expand healthcare to rural peasants, and far reaching areas which previously had no access to medical personnel. The so called barefoot doctors' initiative is still cited by international medical professionals as being a great success in increasing the health and life expectancy of China's large and dispersed population. From a life expectancy of 32 years in 1950, it had already reached 69 by 1985. Funding for medical treatment was carried out in part through a kind of grass roots insurance system administered through local communes while investment in the healthcare system itself was carried out by the government and state owned enterprises.
The system was not of the highest quality, and was not without its problems, but it allowed the vast majority of the people in China, 80-90% of the population, access to healthcare. Unfortunately, due to the absence of workers' democracy (the dictatorship of the proletariat, as opposed to the dictatorship of the bureaucracy over the proletariat), and the complete domination of the bureaucracy, instead of being expanded and advanced, this system was torn out by its roots, in particular in the latter half of the 1980s with the dismantling of the commune system.
Today we find a very different situation in Chinese health care, more resembling that of a laissez faire model than one of a so called socialist nation. As of 2007, total GDP spent on healthcare was 5.55%. While the health expenditure share of GDP on average across OECD countries remained unchanged in 2006 compared with 2005, at 8.9%. Therefore spending on healthcare in China, as a percentage of GDP, is below the average for the main advanced capitalist countries. More appalling is the fact that even though the government of China now has much more revenue then it did in the past, its share in total health care spending has gone from 36% in 1980 to 17% in 2004. There has been talk recently about increasing the level of funding by the government, but it is always accompanied together with the appeal that it is not the government's responsibility to assure healthcare to all, but the responsibility of individuals. Again, from 1980 to 2004, the percentage of healthcare costs paid by families rose from 21.6% to 53.6%. The government has recently started to discuss changing laws in order to encourage private health insurance, something which is not widely available as yet.
Health coverage is provided through a state health plan to employees of the state owned companies, bureaucrats, and officials. This same programme also partially covers the health expenses of family members. However, this programme only encompasses a small and decreasing part of the population. In 2003, 45% of residents in urban and 80% in rural areas were not covered by any government health plan. Without government or even private sector insurance, these workers and peasants must borrow money from relatives and pay their life savings to doctors that they do not even know if they can trust. In 2005, the government created a basic insurance programme for people living in rural areas, but the coverage, which covers 70-80% for small health issues, which can be dealt with in small clinics, rapidly decreases to 30% for seeing specialists or having to go to city hospitals.
The health service is severely under-regulated. Since hospitals get almost all their funding from the fees which patients pay, there is a built-in incentive for corruption and abuse. There are many complaints about doctors overcharging, performing unnecessary procedures, and prescribing unneeded medications, all to make more money and keep patients coming back. Some of these cases have even led to protests by the communities affected. The government's response so far has been to punish individuals found guilty of such acts instead of trying to deal with the underlying problem which flows from the system that allows these kinds of things to go on in the first place.
Many workers and peasants, including their entire families, go broke in order to pay hospital bills for family members when they become seriously ill. It has become such a problem that some cases have even surfaced of elderly people in rural areas being caught trying to be cremated alive in order to save their families' money. What is the government's proposed solution to this crisis in healthcare? Even more privatisation!
The government now is acknowledging the problem of healthcare, if for no other reason than it is a looming black cloud over their so-called "harmonious [often omitted] socialist society". In 2006, a case of a toddler dying for lack of money caused thousands in southwest Sichuan province to ransack the hospital and battle with police. Hu Jintao, who has been playing the card of social reform in order to avoid social upheaval has been promising to heal the gaping social wounds, but has provided only children's band-aids as a solution! The 2005 insurance plan for covering peasants is completely inadequate for dealing with any serious medical conditions which involve the big expenses anyhow. The government has been licensing private insurance and seems content to go with the market road and let them sort it all out, while the workers and peasants pay more and more on health expenses every year. Since it is the only option for most people not working in state enterprises, private health insurance is growing rapidly.
It is obvious that these are not the policies of a "socialist government", which must as a precondition put the interests of workers and peasants at the forefront of decisions. Most Chinese workers understand what has taken place in the country, that the "capitalist-roaders" have taken over and the economy and society is now oriented along capitalist lines. Hu Jintao, though surely talking more left-wing than his predecessors, has provided no fundamental change for the status of working people in China. Labour conditions are just as bad; abuse by foreign and national companies alike continues the same. The new rich continue to increase their wealth and the workers and poor struggle on through enormous inflation in food prices and basic goods.
Chinese Marxists must again pick up the struggle for socialism, learning from the mistakes of the past in order to build a genuine workers' democracy where industry is state owned, but managed by the workers, not by corrupt bureaucrats. A real socialist government, which Marx and Lenin envisaged, would be one where the workers actually have power by managing their own workplaces, the right to elect and recall all representatives, and where no official or bureaucrat earns more than the average worker. Using the massive wealth and technology China has accumulated, the workers could transform the country in a matter of years. Universal healthcare for all would easily become a reality once the colossal forces of production and human labour power that China possesses are directed for the social good instead of the enrichment of a few bureaucrats and national and international capitalists.
RENEGADE EYE
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Stratfor: Al Qaeda and the Tale of Two Battlespaces
Al Qaeda is talked about in a metaphysical manner. Stratfor presents an assessment that can be used, no matter what your viewpoint, to atleast talk on the subject, with reality.
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
October 01, 2008
Over the last year or so, a lot of debate has arisen over the physical strength of al Qaeda. Some experts and government officials believe that the al Qaeda organization is now stronger than at any time since the 9/11 attacks, while others believe the core organization has lost much of its leadership and operational capability over the past seven years. The wide disparity between these two assessments may appear somewhat confusing, but a significant amount of the difference between the two can be found in the fundamental way in which al Qaeda is defined as an entity.
Many analysts supportive of the view that al Qaeda has strengthened tend to lump the entire jihadist world into one monolithic, hierarchical organization. Others, like Stratfor, who claim al Qaeda’s abilities have been degraded over the years, define the group as a small vanguard organization and only one piece of the larger jihadist pie. From Stratfor’s point of view, al Qaeda has evolved into three different — and distinct — entities. These different faces of al Qaeda include:
The core vanguard group: Often referred to by Stratfor as the al Qaeda core, al Qaeda prime or the al Qaeda apex leadership, this group is composed of Osama bin Laden and his close trusted associates. These are highly skilled, professional practitioners of propaganda, militant training and terrorism operations. This is the group behind the 9/11 attacks.
Al Qaeda franchises: These include such groups as al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Although professing allegiance to bin Laden, they are independent militant groups that remain separate from the core and, as we saw in the 2005 letter from al Qaeda core leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, there can be a great deal of tension and disagreement between them and the al Qaeda core. These regional franchises vary in size, level of professionalism and operational capability.
The broader grassroots jihadist movement: This group includes individuals and small cells inspired by al Qaeda but who, in most cases, have no contact with the core leadership.
We believe, as we did last summer, that the core al Qaeda group has weakened and no longer poses the strategic threat to the U.S. homeland that it did prior to 9/11. However, this does not mean it is incapable of re-emerging under less pressured circumstances.
On the franchise level, some groups — such as AQIM, the Yemen franchises and the franchises in Pakistan and Afghanistan — have gained momentum over the past few years. Others — such as those in Iraq, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the Sinai Peninsula and Morocco — have lost steam. In our estimation, this ebb and flow has resulted in a constant threat on the franchise level, though the severity has migrated geographically as groups wax and wane in specific regions. The franchises have done little to expand their operations outside of their regions of interest and to conduct attacks against the “far enemy” — that is, attacks in the United States or Europe.
At the grassroots level, homegrown jihadists have posed a fairly consistent, though lower-level, threat. In the past, we have said that these jihadists think globally, but act locally. While there are far more grassroots jihadists than there are militants in the al Qaeda franchises and vastly more than in the small al Qaeda core, the grassroots jihadists tend to be highly motivated, but poorly equipped to conduct sophisticated terror attacks.
We believe that any realistic analysis of al Qaeda’s strength must assess more than a basic head count of militants willing and able to conduct attacks. As we have noted previously, there are two battlespaces in the war against jihadism: the physical and the ideological. Although the campaign against al Qaeda has caused the core group to become essentially marginalized in the physical battlespace, the core has undertaken great effort to remain engaged in the ideological battlespace.
In many ways, the ideological battlespace is more important than the physical battlespace in the war against jihadism, and in the jihadists’ war against the rest of the world. It is far easier to kill people than it is to kill ideologies. We have recently seen this in the resurgence of Bolivarian Revolution ideology in South America, despite the fact that Simon Bolivar, Karl Marx and Ernesto “Che” Guevara are long dead and buried. Ideology is the decisive factor that allows jihadists to recruit new fighters and gather funding for militant and propaganda operations. As long as the jihadists can recruit new militants, they can compensate for the losses they suffer on the physical battlefield. When they lose that ability, their struggle dies on the vine. Because of this, al Qaeda fears fatwas more than weapons. Weapons can kill people — but fatwas can kill the ideology that motivates people to fight and finance.
We are not the only ones who believe the ideological battlespace is critical. A video released earlier this month by al Qaeda mouthpiece As-Sahab entitled “The Word is the Word of Swords,” one of al Qaeda’s leading religious authorities, Abu Yahya al-Libi emphasized this point from within the network.
In the video, al-Libi said the jihadist battle “is not waged solely at the military and economic level, but is waged first and foremost at the level of doctrine.” He also said that his followers are in a war against an enemy that “targets all strongholds of Islam and invades the minds and ideas in the same way it invades lands and dares to destroy beliefs and meddle with the sacred things in the same way it dares to spill blood.”
Interestingly, although the video recording is dedicated to detailing the preparations for the attack on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, the bulk of the 64-minute video addresses the ideological war against al Qaeda and how “true Islam” has been undermined by leaders such as King Abdullah and the Saudi religious establishment.
In an ironic twist, the progress of the combatants is easier to assess in the ideological rather than physical battlespace — largely because most militants plotting terror attacks attempt to stay invisible until they launch their operations, while the ideological battle is for the most part conducted in plain sight.
One such visible indication on the ideological battlefield was a book written by al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, which was released in March. The book — known as “The Exoneration” — is a long response to a book written by Sayyed Imam al-Sharif. Also known as Dr. Fadl, al-Sharif is an imprisoned Egyptian radical and a founder (with al-Zawahiri) of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
Published in 2007, al-Sharif’s book, “Rationalizing Jihadist Action in Egypt and the World,” provides theological arguments that counter many of the core jihadist teachings. Included among those teachings is the concept of takfir, or the practice of declaring a Muslim to be an unbeliever in order to justify an attack against him. Al-Sharif also spoke out against killing non-Muslims in Muslim countries and attacking members of other Muslim sects.
Al-Sharif was a significant player in the development of the jihadist theology that shaped the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and eventually, through al-Zawahiri and other EIJ members who became influential members of al Qaeda, al-Sharif’s concepts became instrumental in shaping the ideology of jihadism as promulgated by al Qaeda. One of his books, “The Essentials of Making Ready for Jihad,” was reportedly required reading for all new jihadist recruits at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The renunciation of jihadist ideology by such a pivotal figure was a significant threat — one serious enough to spur al-Zawahiri’s refutation.
The Saudi ulema or Muslim scholars and former jihadist ideologues are not the only people assailing the ideology of jihadism. Of course, Western figures, such as Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders have been highly critical of jihadism. But these outsiders have little ability to sway Muslim opinion on the street — a critical objective in fighting the ideological battle. In recent years, however, we have seen more Muslim figures speak out against jihadism, which they believe is a perversion of Islam. However, criticism is not without danger. Figures such as Egyptian political analyst Diaa Rashwan have been threatened with death because of their criticism of al Qaeda and jihadist ideology.
In addition to the previously discussed video, As-Sahab has released two other lengthy videos this month. The first, to commemorate the 9/11 anniversary, was called “The Harvest of Seven Years of Crusades.” The second, called “True Imam,” was released Sept. 29. Essentially, it was a tirade against the government of Pakistan and a tribute to Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was killed in the July 2007 storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad by the Pakistani military.
Sometimes, things that emerge in the ideological battlespace can provide indications of important developments in the physical battlespace.
For example, one of the As-Sahab videos featured clips of Mustafa abu al-Yazid (aka Sheikh Said al-Masri). An Egyptian al Qaeda military commander, al-Yazid had reportedly been killed in an Aug. 8 operation in Bajaur. But since al-Yazid makes reference in the video to the Aug. 18 resignation of former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, he obviously was not killed 10 days earlier.
Two others noticeably absent from these three videos were Osama bin Laden and Adam Gadahn. Bin Laden, who has not been heard from since a May 18 audio message, is once again rumored to be dead. Gadahn may also be dead, according to rumors that he was killed in a January airstrike in Pakistan’s North Waziristan agency in which senior al Qaeda military commander Abu Laith al-Libi was killed. Gadahn, who has appeared in several al Qaeda video messages since emerging on the scene in 2004, has been conspicuously absent from the organization’s propaganda since the January strike.
Typically, al Qaeda has been fairly forthcoming in “declaring the martyrdom” of fallen commanders like al-Libi. The death of a central figure such as bin Laden, however, could be seen as severely detrimental to the jihadist world’s morale. Therefore, the group could be motivated to conceal his death. If bin Laden is still alive, however, we anticipate a message from him by the U.S. presidential elections Nov. 4, given his appearance before the 2004 presidential elections.
It would be somewhat out of character, however, for al Qaeda to avoid publicizing the death of a lesser figure such as Gadahn. With all the rumors circulating about jihadists seeking to use European-looking operatives in attacks against the West, one wonders if the silence regarding the American-born jihadist’s fate is designed to keep U.S. authorities in suspense — or if it is a real indication that Gadahn is alive and has left his post in the ideological battlespace in order to go operational on the physical battlefield.
Of course, the fate of these individuals, even a central figure such as bin Laden, is not nearly as important as the fate of the ideology. And we will continue to focus on the ideological battlefield for significant developments there.
One place that needs to be watched carefully is Pakistan, where events like the Red Mosque operation and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto have potentially sown the seeds for a ripe ideological harvest for both sides. It will be important to watch and see if the Marriott bombing will, as some claimed, prove to be a watershed event that marks a change in public opinion capable of rallying popular support against the jihadist ideology in Pakistan.
RENEGADE EYE
By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart
October 01, 2008
Over the last year or so, a lot of debate has arisen over the physical strength of al Qaeda. Some experts and government officials believe that the al Qaeda organization is now stronger than at any time since the 9/11 attacks, while others believe the core organization has lost much of its leadership and operational capability over the past seven years. The wide disparity between these two assessments may appear somewhat confusing, but a significant amount of the difference between the two can be found in the fundamental way in which al Qaeda is defined as an entity.
Many analysts supportive of the view that al Qaeda has strengthened tend to lump the entire jihadist world into one monolithic, hierarchical organization. Others, like Stratfor, who claim al Qaeda’s abilities have been degraded over the years, define the group as a small vanguard organization and only one piece of the larger jihadist pie. From Stratfor’s point of view, al Qaeda has evolved into three different — and distinct — entities. These different faces of al Qaeda include:
The core vanguard group: Often referred to by Stratfor as the al Qaeda core, al Qaeda prime or the al Qaeda apex leadership, this group is composed of Osama bin Laden and his close trusted associates. These are highly skilled, professional practitioners of propaganda, militant training and terrorism operations. This is the group behind the 9/11 attacks.
Al Qaeda franchises: These include such groups as al Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Although professing allegiance to bin Laden, they are independent militant groups that remain separate from the core and, as we saw in the 2005 letter from al Qaeda core leader Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, there can be a great deal of tension and disagreement between them and the al Qaeda core. These regional franchises vary in size, level of professionalism and operational capability.
The broader grassroots jihadist movement: This group includes individuals and small cells inspired by al Qaeda but who, in most cases, have no contact with the core leadership.
Stratfor’s Current Assessment of al Qaeda
We believe, as we did last summer, that the core al Qaeda group has weakened and no longer poses the strategic threat to the U.S. homeland that it did prior to 9/11. However, this does not mean it is incapable of re-emerging under less pressured circumstances.
On the franchise level, some groups — such as AQIM, the Yemen franchises and the franchises in Pakistan and Afghanistan — have gained momentum over the past few years. Others — such as those in Iraq, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the Sinai Peninsula and Morocco — have lost steam. In our estimation, this ebb and flow has resulted in a constant threat on the franchise level, though the severity has migrated geographically as groups wax and wane in specific regions. The franchises have done little to expand their operations outside of their regions of interest and to conduct attacks against the “far enemy” — that is, attacks in the United States or Europe.
At the grassroots level, homegrown jihadists have posed a fairly consistent, though lower-level, threat. In the past, we have said that these jihadists think globally, but act locally. While there are far more grassroots jihadists than there are militants in the al Qaeda franchises and vastly more than in the small al Qaeda core, the grassroots jihadists tend to be highly motivated, but poorly equipped to conduct sophisticated terror attacks.
Beyond the Physical Battlefield
We believe that any realistic analysis of al Qaeda’s strength must assess more than a basic head count of militants willing and able to conduct attacks. As we have noted previously, there are two battlespaces in the war against jihadism: the physical and the ideological. Although the campaign against al Qaeda has caused the core group to become essentially marginalized in the physical battlespace, the core has undertaken great effort to remain engaged in the ideological battlespace.
In many ways, the ideological battlespace is more important than the physical battlespace in the war against jihadism, and in the jihadists’ war against the rest of the world. It is far easier to kill people than it is to kill ideologies. We have recently seen this in the resurgence of Bolivarian Revolution ideology in South America, despite the fact that Simon Bolivar, Karl Marx and Ernesto “Che” Guevara are long dead and buried. Ideology is the decisive factor that allows jihadists to recruit new fighters and gather funding for militant and propaganda operations. As long as the jihadists can recruit new militants, they can compensate for the losses they suffer on the physical battlefield. When they lose that ability, their struggle dies on the vine. Because of this, al Qaeda fears fatwas more than weapons. Weapons can kill people — but fatwas can kill the ideology that motivates people to fight and finance.
We are not the only ones who believe the ideological battlespace is critical. A video released earlier this month by al Qaeda mouthpiece As-Sahab entitled “The Word is the Word of Swords,” one of al Qaeda’s leading religious authorities, Abu Yahya al-Libi emphasized this point from within the network.
In the video, al-Libi said the jihadist battle “is not waged solely at the military and economic level, but is waged first and foremost at the level of doctrine.” He also said that his followers are in a war against an enemy that “targets all strongholds of Islam and invades the minds and ideas in the same way it invades lands and dares to destroy beliefs and meddle with the sacred things in the same way it dares to spill blood.”
Interestingly, although the video recording is dedicated to detailing the preparations for the attack on the Danish Embassy in Islamabad, the bulk of the 64-minute video addresses the ideological war against al Qaeda and how “true Islam” has been undermined by leaders such as King Abdullah and the Saudi religious establishment.
In an ironic twist, the progress of the combatants is easier to assess in the ideological rather than physical battlespace — largely because most militants plotting terror attacks attempt to stay invisible until they launch their operations, while the ideological battle is for the most part conducted in plain sight.
One such visible indication on the ideological battlefield was a book written by al Qaeda’s number two man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, which was released in March. The book — known as “The Exoneration” — is a long response to a book written by Sayyed Imam al-Sharif. Also known as Dr. Fadl, al-Sharif is an imprisoned Egyptian radical and a founder (with al-Zawahiri) of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
Published in 2007, al-Sharif’s book, “Rationalizing Jihadist Action in Egypt and the World,” provides theological arguments that counter many of the core jihadist teachings. Included among those teachings is the concept of takfir, or the practice of declaring a Muslim to be an unbeliever in order to justify an attack against him. Al-Sharif also spoke out against killing non-Muslims in Muslim countries and attacking members of other Muslim sects.
Al-Sharif was a significant player in the development of the jihadist theology that shaped the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) and eventually, through al-Zawahiri and other EIJ members who became influential members of al Qaeda, al-Sharif’s concepts became instrumental in shaping the ideology of jihadism as promulgated by al Qaeda. One of his books, “The Essentials of Making Ready for Jihad,” was reportedly required reading for all new jihadist recruits at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The renunciation of jihadist ideology by such a pivotal figure was a significant threat — one serious enough to spur al-Zawahiri’s refutation.
The Saudi ulema or Muslim scholars and former jihadist ideologues are not the only people assailing the ideology of jihadism. Of course, Western figures, such as Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders have been highly critical of jihadism. But these outsiders have little ability to sway Muslim opinion on the street — a critical objective in fighting the ideological battle. In recent years, however, we have seen more Muslim figures speak out against jihadism, which they believe is a perversion of Islam. However, criticism is not without danger. Figures such as Egyptian political analyst Diaa Rashwan have been threatened with death because of their criticism of al Qaeda and jihadist ideology.
In addition to the previously discussed video, As-Sahab has released two other lengthy videos this month. The first, to commemorate the 9/11 anniversary, was called “The Harvest of Seven Years of Crusades.” The second, called “True Imam,” was released Sept. 29. Essentially, it was a tirade against the government of Pakistan and a tribute to Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was killed in the July 2007 storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad by the Pakistani military.
Overlap
Sometimes, things that emerge in the ideological battlespace can provide indications of important developments in the physical battlespace.
For example, one of the As-Sahab videos featured clips of Mustafa abu al-Yazid (aka Sheikh Said al-Masri). An Egyptian al Qaeda military commander, al-Yazid had reportedly been killed in an Aug. 8 operation in Bajaur. But since al-Yazid makes reference in the video to the Aug. 18 resignation of former Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, he obviously was not killed 10 days earlier.
Two others noticeably absent from these three videos were Osama bin Laden and Adam Gadahn. Bin Laden, who has not been heard from since a May 18 audio message, is once again rumored to be dead. Gadahn may also be dead, according to rumors that he was killed in a January airstrike in Pakistan’s North Waziristan agency in which senior al Qaeda military commander Abu Laith al-Libi was killed. Gadahn, who has appeared in several al Qaeda video messages since emerging on the scene in 2004, has been conspicuously absent from the organization’s propaganda since the January strike.
Typically, al Qaeda has been fairly forthcoming in “declaring the martyrdom” of fallen commanders like al-Libi. The death of a central figure such as bin Laden, however, could be seen as severely detrimental to the jihadist world’s morale. Therefore, the group could be motivated to conceal his death. If bin Laden is still alive, however, we anticipate a message from him by the U.S. presidential elections Nov. 4, given his appearance before the 2004 presidential elections.
It would be somewhat out of character, however, for al Qaeda to avoid publicizing the death of a lesser figure such as Gadahn. With all the rumors circulating about jihadists seeking to use European-looking operatives in attacks against the West, one wonders if the silence regarding the American-born jihadist’s fate is designed to keep U.S. authorities in suspense — or if it is a real indication that Gadahn is alive and has left his post in the ideological battlespace in order to go operational on the physical battlefield.
Of course, the fate of these individuals, even a central figure such as bin Laden, is not nearly as important as the fate of the ideology. And we will continue to focus on the ideological battlefield for significant developments there.
One place that needs to be watched carefully is Pakistan, where events like the Red Mosque operation and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto have potentially sown the seeds for a ripe ideological harvest for both sides. It will be important to watch and see if the Marriott bombing will, as some claimed, prove to be a watershed event that marks a change in public opinion capable of rallying popular support against the jihadist ideology in Pakistan.
RENEGADE EYE
Monday, September 29, 2008
Bill Maher's Religulous **1/2 (2008)
Bill Maher's Religulous is directed by Larry Charles who directed "Borat." In terms of filmmaking and aesthetics, it's just fine. It's fast paced, funny and informative. Bill travels the world, talking to various religious representatives, about the contradictions, and unprovable aspects of their religion, in a humorous style. The subjects seem unclear as to what Maher's agenda is, and react to him at times as if they are being hijacked by Michael Moore. They were not told Bill Maher would be interviewing and what they would be talking about. They were not allowed inside The Vatican or anywhere in Salt Lake City.
We see the gamut of religulous; a rabbi who calls for the abolition of Israel, Muslims in a gay bar, an inventor of items to make observing the Jewish sabbath easier, a leader of a marajuana based religion (Raëlian Movement), truck driving ministry etc.
I didn't like it as much as others will. I'm a political person, who takes analysis seriously. Maher is saying religion is the main cause of tragic world events. He points to Bush's God wants everyone to have freedom to Ahmadinejad's anti-Israel statements. When Bush invaded Iraq or whatever statements come out of Iran, it's realpolitik that rules. The problem is capitalism and nationalism. I outgrew Christopher Hitchens.
In addition Bill Maher portrayed himself as agnostic, someone with no answers. It's disappointing he didn't have the nerve to say atheist.
Religulous Official Site
Renegade Eye
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Damien Hirst Struck Gold on Black Monday
By Joan Collins
Telegraph.Co.UK
09/21/2008
I couldn't help but appreciate the irony in the contrast between last week's "Black Monday" and the massive amount of money collected by Damien Hirst in his historic solo auction at Sotheby's.
On the very same day that one of the most venerable banks of America went bankrupt, axing thousands of workers in London (and God knows how many more in NY) and causing a tsunami-like wave of shock across the financial markets, a gaggle of oligarchs and billionaires shelled out over £70 million in one night.
Not that I begrudge Damien's fees (by the end of the two-day auction he had made £111 million), nor do I disagree that investing in his work is a wise move - much better to buy a derivation of Bacon than a derivative from Merrill Lynch.
Percy and I attended the glittering party at the auction house and oohed and aahed at his work, which was impressive and witty. When we saw Damien he was extremely friendly - lots of hugs and kisses - but, again, this was before the sale so I'm sure he was doing a lot of it, lest someone turn out to be a potential buyer.
He was certainly putting himself on a limb as the first artist (Picasso aside) to gamble all or nothing by selling his work without the help of a dealer.
It was crowded not only with attractive people but with an astonishing display of art. I don't think it matters one jot that Damien employs a staff of 120 to create his works - so did many of the greats, and the staggering originality and beauty is all
My particular favourite, although often derided as commercial, was his butterfly series, particularly the impressively realistic replica of the Rose Window made entirely of butterfly wings.
But it's his more controversial and satirical pieces that distinguish Damien. His "Golden Calf" and "Diamond Skull" are essentially condemnations of how overheated and mad the art market can be. Yet seeing the "Golden Calf" I marvelled about how truly beautiful a work it is, regardless of whether it has made its point convincingly, and it sold at £10.3 million.
With world markets in crisis, house prices will plummet further and even more billions will be wiped off the pensions and savings of those who can least afford it. Yet fat cats like Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman who earned more than $20 million plus bonuses last year, presumably can afford to be careless with other people's money.
Last Monday proves to me that in mega-rich circles, the credit crunch amounts to a slight hiccup, while the majority of people are left gasping for breath.
Even though governments and institutions keep trying to reassure us that they are looking out for our best interests, the fact is that you can only depend on yourself.
My parents taught me always to pay cash, never get into debt and never speculate - really the only financial knowledge I possess - but it's stood me in pretty good stead.
RENEGADE EYE
Friday, September 19, 2008
Is Barack Obama an Alternative for US Workers?
By Shane Jones
Friday, 19 September 2008
After years of Bush’s open-ended war on working people at home and abroad, many on the “left” are desperate for an alternative. For many, that alternative is Barack Obama, a Democratic Senator from Illinois. Obama, who is very careful with his words and actions, has done a good job so far of portraying himself as a “sensible progressive”. However, far from being a “progressive” alternative, Obama is at his core a typical representative of the bosses’ political parties. Despite presenting himself as a candidate of “change”, Obama is a defender of capitalism and imperialism, and hence of exploitation and oppression. On all fundamentals, he is far closer to Bush than he is to being a genuine alternative for working people.
Far from seeking the end of class exploitation, Obama is a true believer in the capitalist system. Along with the likes of Joe Lieberman, a political and financial supporter of Obama whom Barack considers to be his “mentor”, he makes it clear that the Democratic Party is a party of the bosses: “The last I checked John Kerry believes in the superiority of the U.S. military, Hillary Clinton believes in the virtues of capitalism…”
Obama even criticizes the Democratic party from the right: “…Democrats are confused. There are those who still champion the old-time religion, defending every New-Deal and Great-Society program from Republican encroachment, achieving ratings of 100 percent from liberal interest groups. But these efforts seem exhausted, a constant game of defense bereft of energy and new ideas needed to address the changing circumstances of globalization or a stubbornly isolated inner city.”
Obama, who earned just under $1million last year, is a supporter of the Hamilton Project, a group founded by Robert Rubin, former Secretary of the Treasury and current chair of Citigroup (the world’s largest company, with total assets of $2.02 trillion). As a Senator, Obama opposed a bill that would place a 30 percent interest rate cap on credit cards, which would help relieve high interest payments for many U.S. working families. Yet he voted for a “tort reform” bill that rolls back workers’ ability to seek redress and compensation if they are wronged by their employer.
On the question of health care, Obama is opposed to national single-payer health care, on the grounds that it would leave workers in the private health care industry, such as Kaiser and BlueCross BlueShield, unemployed! This is a smoke screen of the worst kind. He is attempting to appear pro-worker, while he is really defending the interests of big business against working people. Instead, he is in favor of “voluntary solutions” as opposed to “government mandates”. Yet as every worker knows, the bosses never “volunteer” to give us raises or benefits. The super-profitable health care industry is not going to sacrifice its profits. Obama is merely evading the question. He might as well state the truth: he is not for any fundamental change.
Like all good big business politicians, when the capitalists come with money and gifts, Obama becomes their political guardian angel. For example, he is a loyal defender of the leading U.S. nuclear power company Exelon, which has given more than $74,000 to his campaign. Exelon is the parent company of ComEd, the energy company currently price gouging Illinois consumers. Agro-capitalists Archer Daniels Midland have reportedly lent him the use of private jets for his campaigns. A few months after entering the Senate, Obama bought more than $50,000 worth of stock in AVI BioPharma, a pharmaceutical company that would have benefited from legislation that he backed. George Soros, the prominent billionaire and master of capital speculation, supports Obama, although he said he would support Hillary Clinton, if she won the Democratic nomination. In either case, he feels confident that his billions of dollars will be safe.
It is on his “opposition” to the war that Obama has garnered much support, and understandably so, as the war is every day seen by more and more U.S. workers as a complete disaster. Many are seeking a real political opposition against the war, but what exactly does Obama mean when he “speaks out against the war”? Far from opposing the war on the basis that it is a war on workers and the poor at home and abroad, he would have preferred that the war had been better presented and more carefully planned. He is in favor of U.S. imperialism winning, but adds a pinch of semi-populist rhetoric, as many Democratic politicians have been doing as of late. He was simply quicker to jump on the bandwagon.
Obama is in fact a vigorous supporter of the wider “war on terror”. As he stated in a so-called anti-war speech in October 2002: “You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.” Obama voted to re-authorize the USA PATRIOT Act, which has been heavily criticized by civil rights layers as curtailing civil liberties. He opposed moves to censure Bush for illegal wiretapping, and voted to approve Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State.
Obama has called for a “phased withdrawal” of U.S. troops and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Iraq’s neighbors, Syria and Iran. In other words, he understands that the best U.S. imperialism can do is soften the blow of a defeat; outright victory is now an impossibility. Like other slightly more far-sighted leaders of the ruling class, he approaches this from the perspective of preserving the cohesion and readiness of the military – so it can be used in other imperialist adventures such as Afghanistan and beyond. Far from calling for an immediate withdrawal of occupying forces in Iraq, Obama has the perspective of further interventions in the region, with one possible scenario involving U.S. forces remaining in an occupied Iraq for an “extended period of time”, acting as a launching pad. This would call for “a reduced but active U.S. military presence” that “protects logistical supply points” and “American enclaves like the Green Zone,” which would send “a clear message to hostile countries Iran and Syria that we plan to remain a key player in the region.” U.S. troops “remaining in Iraq” will “act as rapid reaction forces to respond to emergencies and to go after terrorists.” Above all, Obama wants a “pragmatic solution to the real war we’re facing in Iraq,” and to “defeat the insurgency.” These, of course, are mutually exclusive aims. The insurgency is the popular uprising of an occupied people. The only solution is the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. and “coalition” troops from Iraq.
In March, Obama called Iran’s government “a threat to all of us ... [The U.S.] should take no option, including military action, off the table.” He added that the U.S.’ “primary means” of relating to Iran should be “sustained and aggressive diplomacy combined with tough sanctions.”
In short, Obama is trying to be everything to everyone, both for the continuation of the war for one sector of the ruling class, and posturing against the war for another sector, all while demagogically trying to win votes from genuinely anti-war working people.
Obama, who could well be the first black U.S. president, has attempted to make benign the malignancy that is racism in the United States. American capitalism relies heavily on the oppression of minorities as a means of exploiting and dividing the working class. But Obama believes that “cultural issues” are at the core of black poverty – an argument also embraced by many right-wing racists. Even a cursory look at the history of oppression that black workers and communities have been faced with shows that this has little to do with “cultural issues”, but rather, has everything to do with the social structure of U.S. capitalism.
Are police brutality, the de-funding of inner city schools, and the gutting of public housing a “cultural issue”? Should the brutal repression and liquidation of an entire generation of black leadership, including MLK Jr. and Malcolm X, be considered a “cultural issue”? Is the fact that one in three black men in their twenties are in prison, out on bail, on probation, court supervision, community service, or parole a “cultural issue”? And yet Obama sees the discrepancy between blacks and whites in the U.S. as a question of personal drive or the lack thereof. He has claimed that blacks can’t progress, “If we don’t start instilling in our young children that there is nothing to be ashamed about in educational achievement. I don’t know who told them that reading and writing and conjugating your verbs was something ‘white.’ ”
Certainly, there are those who are critical of Obama due to the color of his skin. We soundly reject this racist point of view. Black workers in the U.S., along with their class sisters and brothers of all races and ethnicities, run the world’s most advanced economy every day. There is no reason why black men or women cannot not play a leading role in the political shaping of society. However, for Marxists, it is a question of which class interests someone defends. It must be made clear that anyone who wants to seriously tackle racism must be prepared to tackle capitalism. As a representative of the capitalist class, Obama is neither willing nor able to tackle either.
When it comes to immigration, Obama has sought to lump immigrant workers with terrorists in the drive to militarize the border. Obama took an active role in the Senate’s drive for further border security linked to new immigration laws. Beginning in 2005, he co-sponsored the “Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act” introduced by Sen. John McCain. He also supported the “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act” sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter, which did not pass the House. In 2006, Obama supported another related bill, the $7 billion dollar “Secure Fence Act”, which authorized the construction of 700 miles of fences, walls and other security measures to be built up along the U.S.-Mexico border. President Bush signed it into law in October 2006, calling it, “an important step toward immigration reform.” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, whose appointment Obama approved, said the bill would “make substantial progress towards preventing terrorists and others from exploiting our borders,” directly implying immigrants and terrorists are one and the same.
He is also a strong supporter of “guest worker programs” and gave glowing praise to the May 18th proposal in the Senate that includes provisions to detain up to 27,500 immigrants per day, to hire 18,000 new border guards, and to construct an additional 370 miles of border walls.
Bush and his circle are certainly an extremely hawkish section of the ruling class, with plans for imperialist conquest based on their specific economic interests: oil and other energy holdings, armaments, construction, and other contract companies that benefit from military interventions, such as Halliburton. But the distinction between Bush and Obama is not principled. Obama, along with the more far-sighted strategists of the ruling class, seek only to curtail the excesses of the Bush clique, which are a threat to the stability of U.S. capitalism as a whole. In this sense, Barrack Obama actually more faithfully represents the interests of the capitalist class at this point in history than Bush. So is Obama really an alternative for working people? The facts speak for themselves.
RENEGADE EYE
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Stratfor: The Russian Resurgence and the New-Old Front
Stratfor is an intelligence group, made up of people formerly from government intelligence, who still have contacts. This piece is interesting, because it identifies the motivations of all the players, particularly in the Americas, and their relationship with Russia. I didn't know before reading this, why US imperialism, continues with the "War On Drugs." I have disagreements with this post in details as Chavez's relation to FARC, and not mentioning Colombia in this analysis. The writer is not Marxist, and this isn't a Marxist analysis. That is not Stratfor's job. Still this is a valuable analysis.
By Peter ZeihanK
September 15, 2008
Russia is attempting to reforge its Cold War-era influence in its near abroad. This is not simply an issue of nostalgia, but a perfectly logical and predictable reaction to the Russian environment. Russia lacks easily definable, easily defendable borders. There is no redoubt to which the Russians can withdraw, and the only security they know comes from establishing buffers — buffers which tend to be lost in times of crisis. The alternative is for Russia to simply trust other states to leave it alone. Considering Russia’s history of occupations, from the Mongol horde to Napoleonic France to Hitler’s Germany, it is not difficult to surmise why the Russians tend to choose a more activist set of policies.
As such, the country tends to expand and contract like a beating heart — gobbling up nearby territories in times of strength, and then contracting and losing those territories in times of weakness. Rather than what Westerners think of as a traditional nation-state, Russia has always been a multiethnic empire, heavily stocked with non-Russian (and even non-Orthodox) minorities. Keeping those minorities from damaging central control requires a strong internal security and intelligence arm, and hence we get the Cheka, the KGB, and now the FSB.
Combine a security policy thoroughly wedded to expansion with an internal stabilization policy that institutionalizes terror, and it is understandable why most of Russia’s neighbors do not like Moscow very much. A fair portion of Western history revolves around the formation and shifting of coalitions to manage Russian insecurities.
In the American case specifically, the issue is one of continental control. The United States is the only country in the world that effectively controls an entire continent. Mexico and Canada have been sufficiently intimidated so that they can operate independently only in a very limited sense. (Technically, Australia controls a continent, but with the some 85 percent of its territory unusable, it is more accurate in geopolitical terms to think of it as a small archipelago with some very long bridges.) This grants the United States not only a potentially massive internal market, but also the ability to project power without the fear of facing rearguard security threats. U.S. forces can be focused almost entirely on offensive operations, whereas potential competitors in Eurasia must constantly be on their guard about the neighbors.
The only thing that could threaten U.S. security would be the rise of a Eurasian continental hegemon. For the past 60 years, Russia (or the Soviet Union) has been the only entity that has had a chance of achieving that, largely due to its geographic reach. U.S. strategy for coping with this is simple: containment, or the creation of a network of allies to hedge in Russian political, economic and military expansion. NATO is the most obvious manifestation of this policy imperative, while the Sino-Soviet split is the most dramatic one.
Containment requires that United States counter Russian expansionism at every turn, crafting a new coalition wherever Russia attempts to break out of the strategic ring, and if necessary committing direct U.S. forces to the effort. The Korean and Vietnam wars — both traumatic periods in American history — were manifestations of this effort, as were the Berlin airlift and the backing of Islamist militants in Afghanistan (who incidentally went on to form al Qaeda).
The Georgian war in August was simply the first effort by a resurging Russia to pulse out, expand its security buffer and, ideally, in the Kremlin’s plans, break out of the post-Cold War noose that other powers have tied. The Americans (and others) will react as they did during the Cold War: by building coalitions to constrain Russian expansion. In Europe, the challenges will be to keep the Germans on board and to keep NATO cohesive. In the Caucasus, the United States will need to deftly manage its Turkish alliance and find a means of engaging Iran. In China and Japan, economic conflicts will undoubtedly take a backseat to security cooperation.
Russia and the United States will struggle in all of these areas, consisting as they do the Russian borderlands. Most of the locations will feel familiar, as Russia’s near abroad has been Russia’s near abroad for nearly 300 years. Those locations — the Baltics, Austria, Ukraine, Serbia, Turkey, Central Asia and Mongolia — that defined Russia’s conflicts in times gone by will surface again. Such is the tapestry of history: the major powers seeking advantage in the same places over and over again.
But not all of those fronts are in Eurasia. So long as U.S. power projection puts the Russians on the defensive, it is only a matter of time before something along the cordon cracks and the Russians are either fighting a land war or facing a local insurrection. Russia must keep U.S. efforts dispersed and captured by events as far away from the Russian periphery as possible — preferably where Russian strengths can exploit American weakness.
So where is that?
Geography dictates that U.S. strength involves coalition building based on mutual interest and long-range force projection, and internal U.S. harmony is such that America’s intelligence and security agencies have no need to shine. Unlike Russia, the United States does not have large, unruly, resentful, conquered populations to keep in line. In contrast, recall that the multiethnic nature of the Russian state requires a powerful security and intelligence apparatus. No place better reflects Russia’s intelligence strengths and America’s intelligence weakness than Latin America.
The United States faces no traditional security threats in its backyard. South America is in essence a hollow continent, populated only on the edges and thus lacking a deep enough hinterland to ever coalesce into a single hegemonic power. Central America and southern Mexico are similarly fractured, primarily due to rugged terrain. Northern Mexico (like Canada) is too economically dependent upon the United States to seriously consider anything more vibrant than ideological hostility toward Washington. Faced with this kind of local competition, the United States simply does not worry too much about the rest of the Western Hemisphere — except when someone comes to visit.
Stretching back to the time of the Monroe Doctrine, Washington’s Latin American policy has been very simple. The United States does not feel threatened by any local power, but it feels inordinately threatened by any Eastern Hemispheric power that could ally with a local entity. Latin American entities cannot greatly harm American interests themselves, but they can be used as fulcrums by hostile states further abroad to strike at the core of the United States’ power: its undisputed command of North America.
It is a fairly straightforward exercise to predict where Russian activity will reach its deepest. One only needs to revisit Cold War history. Future Russian efforts can be broken down into three broad categories: naval interdiction, drug facilitation and direct territorial challenge.
Naval Interdiction
Naval interdiction represents the longest sustained fear of American policymakers. Among the earliest U.S. foreign efforts after securing the mainland was asserting control over the various waterways used for approaching North America. Key in this American geopolitical imperative is the neutralization of Cuba. All the naval power-projection capabilities in the world mean very little if Cuba is both hostile and serving as a basing ground for an extra-hemispheric power.
The U.S. Gulf Coast is not only the heart of the country’s energy industry, but the body of water that allows the United States to function as a unified polity and economy. The Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi river basins all drain to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The economic strength of these basins depends upon access to oceanic shipping. A hostile power in Cuba could fairly easily seal both the Straits of Florida and the Yucatan Channel, reducing the Gulf of Mexico to little more than a lake.
Building on the idea of naval interdiction, there is another key asset the Soviets targeted at which the Russians are sure to attempt a reprise: the Panama Canal. For both economic and military reasons, it is enormously convenient to not have to sail around the Americas, especially because U.S. economic and military power is based on maritime power and access. In the Cold War, the Soviets established friendly relations with Nicaragua and arranged for a favorable political evolution on the Caribbean island of Grenada. Like Cuba, these two locations are of dubious importance by themselves. But take them together — and add in a Soviet air base at each location as well as in Cuba — and there is a triangle of Soviet airpower that can threaten access to the Panama Canal.
Drug Facilitation
The next stage — drug facilitation — is somewhat trickier. South America is a wide and varying land with very little to offer Russian interests. Most of the states are commodity providers, much like the Soviet Union was and Russia is today, so they are seen as economic competitors. Politically, they are useful as anti-American bastions, so the Kremlin encourages such behavior whenever possible. But even if every country in South America were run by anti-American governments, it would not overly concern Washington; these states, alone or en masse, lack the ability to threaten American interests … in all ways but one.
The drug trade undermines American society from within, generating massive costs for social stability, law enforcement, the health system and trade. During the Cold War, the Soviets dabbled with narcotics producers and smugglers, from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to the highland coca farmers of Bolivia. It is not so much that the Soviets encouraged the drug trade directly, but that they encouraged any group they saw as ideologically useful.
Stratfor expects future Russian involvement in such activities to eclipse those of the past. After the Soviet fall, many FSB agents were forced to find new means to financially support themselves. (Remember it was not until 1999 that Vladimir Putin took over the Russian government and began treating Russian intelligence like a bona fide state asset again.) The Soviet fall led many FSB agents, who already possessed more than a passing familiarity with things such as smuggling and organized crime, directly into the heart of such activities. Most of those agents are — formally or not — back in the service of the Russian government, now with a decade of gritty experience on the less savory side of intelligence under their belts. And they now have a deeply personal financial interest in the outcome of future operations.
Drug groups do not need cash from the Russians, but they do need weaponry and a touch of training — needs which dovetail perfectly with the Russians’ strengths. Obviously, Russian state involvement in such areas will be far from overt; it just does not do to ship weapons to the FARC or to one side of the brewing Bolivian civil war with CNN watching. But this is a challenge the Russians are good at meeting. One of Russia’s current deputy prime ministers, Igor Sechin, was the USSR’s point man for weapons smuggling to much of Latin America and the Middle East. This really is old hat for them.
U.S. Stability
Finally, there is the issue of direct threats to U.S. stability, and this point rests solely on Mexico. With more than 100 million people, a growing economy and Atlantic and Pacific ports, Mexico is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that could theoretically (which is hardly to say inevitably) threaten U.S. dominance in North America. During the Cold War, Russian intelligence gave Mexico more than its share of jolts in efforts to cause chronic problems for the United States. In fact, the Mexico City KGB station was, and remains today, the biggest in the world. The Mexico City riots of 1968 were in part Soviet-inspired, and while ultimately unsuccessful at overthrowing the Mexican government, they remain a testament to the reach of Soviet intelligence. The security problems that would be created by the presence of a hostile state the size of Mexico on the southern U.S. border are as obvious as they would be dangerous.
As with involvement in drug activities, which incidentally are likely to overlap in Mexico, Stratfor expects Russia to be particularly active in destabilizing Mexico in the years ahead. But while an anti-American state is still a Russian goal, it is not their only option. The Mexican drug cartels have reached such strength that the Mexican government’s control over large portions of the country is an open question. Failure of the Mexican state is something that must be considered even before the Russians get involved. And simply doing with the Mexican cartels what the Soviets once did with anti-American militant groups the world over could suffice to tip the balance.
In many regards, Mexico as a failed state would be a worse result for Washington than a hostile united Mexico. A hostile Mexico could be intimidated, sanctioned or even invaded, effectively browbeaten into submission. But a failed Mexico would not restrict the drug trade at all. The border would be chaos, and the implications of that go well beyond drugs. One of the United States’ largest trading partners could well devolve into a seething anarchy that could not help but leak into the U.S. proper.
Whether Mexico becomes staunchly anti-American or devolves into the violent chaos of a failed state does not matter much to the Russians. Either one would threaten the United States with a staggering problem that no amount of resources could quickly or easily fix. And the Russians right now are shopping around for staggering problems with which to threaten the United States.
In terms of cost-benefit analysis, all of these options are no-brainers. Threatening naval interdiction simply requires a few jets. Encouraging the drug trade can be done with a few weapons shipments. Destabilizing a country just requires some creativity. However, countering such activities requires a massive outlay of intelligence and military assets — often into areas that are politically and militarily hostile, if not outright inaccessible. In many ways, this is containment in reverse.
In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega has proven so enthusiastic in his nostalgia for Cold War alignments that Nicaragua has already recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two territories in the former Soviet state (and U.S. ally) of Georgia that Russia went to war to protect. That makes Nicaragua the only country in the world other than Russia to recognize the breakaway regions. Moscow is quite obviously pleased — and was undoubtedly working the system behind the scenes.
In Bolivia, President Evo Morales is attempting to rewrite the laws that govern his country’s wealth distribution in favor of his poor supporters in the indigenous highlands. Now, a belt of conflict separates those highlands, which are roughly centered at the pro-Morales city of Cochabamba, from the wealthier, more Europeanized lowlands. A civil war is brewing — a conflict that is just screaming for outside interference, as similar fights did during the Cold War. It is likely only a matter of time before the headlines become splattered with pictures of Kalashnikov-wielding Cochabambinos decrying American imperialism.
Yet while the winds of history are blowing in the same old channels, there certainly are variations on the theme. The Mexican cartels, for one, were radically weaker beasts the last time around, and their current strength and disruptive capabilities present the Russians with new options.
So does Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a man so anti-American he seems to be even a few steps ahead of Kremlin propagandists. In recent days, Chavez has already hosted long-range Russian strategic bombers and evicted the U.S. ambassador. A glance at a map indicates that Venezuela is a far superior basing point than Grenada for threatening the Panama Canal. Additionally, Chavez’s Venezuela has already indicated both its willingness to get militarily involved in the Bolivian conflict and its willingness to act as a weapons smuggler via links to the FARC — and that without any heretofore detected Russian involvement. The opportunities for smuggling networks — both old and new — using Venezuela as a base are robust.
Not all changes since the Cold War are good for Russia, however. Cuba is not as blindly pro-Russian as it once was. While Russian hurricane aid to Cuba is a bid to reopen old doors, the Cubans are noticeably hesitant. Between the ailing of Fidel Castro and the presence of the world’s largest market within spitting distance, the emerging Cuban regime is not going to reflexively side with the Russians for peanuts. In Soviet times, Cuba traded massive Soviet subsidies in exchange for its allegiance. A few planeloads of hurricane aid simply won’t pay the bills in Havana, and it is still unclear how much money the Russians are willing to come up with.
There is also the question of Brazil. Long gone is the dysfunctional state; Brazil is now an emerging industrial powerhouse with an energy company, Petroleo Brasileiro, of skill levels that outshine anything the Russians have yet conquered in that sphere. While Brazilian rhetoric has always claimed that Brazil was just about to come of age, it now happens to be true. A rising Brazil is feeling its strength and tentatively pushing its influence into the border states of Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, as well as into regional rivals Venezuela and Argentina. Russian intervention tends to appeal to those who do not feel they have meaningful control over their own neighborhoods. Brazil no longer fits into that category, and it will not appreciate Russia’s mucking around in its neighborhood.
A few weeks ago, Stratfor published a piece detailing how U.S. involvement in the Iraq war was winding to a close. We received many comments from readers applauding our optimism. We are afraid that we were misinterpreted. “New” does not mean “bright” or “better,” but simply different. And the dawning struggle in Latin America is an example of the sort of “different” that the United States can look forward to in the years ahead. Buckle up.
RENEGADE EYE
By Peter ZeihanK
September 15, 2008
Russia is attempting to reforge its Cold War-era influence in its near abroad. This is not simply an issue of nostalgia, but a perfectly logical and predictable reaction to the Russian environment. Russia lacks easily definable, easily defendable borders. There is no redoubt to which the Russians can withdraw, and the only security they know comes from establishing buffers — buffers which tend to be lost in times of crisis. The alternative is for Russia to simply trust other states to leave it alone. Considering Russia’s history of occupations, from the Mongol horde to Napoleonic France to Hitler’s Germany, it is not difficult to surmise why the Russians tend to choose a more activist set of policies.
As such, the country tends to expand and contract like a beating heart — gobbling up nearby territories in times of strength, and then contracting and losing those territories in times of weakness. Rather than what Westerners think of as a traditional nation-state, Russia has always been a multiethnic empire, heavily stocked with non-Russian (and even non-Orthodox) minorities. Keeping those minorities from damaging central control requires a strong internal security and intelligence arm, and hence we get the Cheka, the KGB, and now the FSB.
Nature of the Budding Conflict
Combine a security policy thoroughly wedded to expansion with an internal stabilization policy that institutionalizes terror, and it is understandable why most of Russia’s neighbors do not like Moscow very much. A fair portion of Western history revolves around the formation and shifting of coalitions to manage Russian insecurities.
In the American case specifically, the issue is one of continental control. The United States is the only country in the world that effectively controls an entire continent. Mexico and Canada have been sufficiently intimidated so that they can operate independently only in a very limited sense. (Technically, Australia controls a continent, but with the some 85 percent of its territory unusable, it is more accurate in geopolitical terms to think of it as a small archipelago with some very long bridges.) This grants the United States not only a potentially massive internal market, but also the ability to project power without the fear of facing rearguard security threats. U.S. forces can be focused almost entirely on offensive operations, whereas potential competitors in Eurasia must constantly be on their guard about the neighbors.
The only thing that could threaten U.S. security would be the rise of a Eurasian continental hegemon. For the past 60 years, Russia (or the Soviet Union) has been the only entity that has had a chance of achieving that, largely due to its geographic reach. U.S. strategy for coping with this is simple: containment, or the creation of a network of allies to hedge in Russian political, economic and military expansion. NATO is the most obvious manifestation of this policy imperative, while the Sino-Soviet split is the most dramatic one.
Containment requires that United States counter Russian expansionism at every turn, crafting a new coalition wherever Russia attempts to break out of the strategic ring, and if necessary committing direct U.S. forces to the effort. The Korean and Vietnam wars — both traumatic periods in American history — were manifestations of this effort, as were the Berlin airlift and the backing of Islamist militants in Afghanistan (who incidentally went on to form al Qaeda).
The Georgian war in August was simply the first effort by a resurging Russia to pulse out, expand its security buffer and, ideally, in the Kremlin’s plans, break out of the post-Cold War noose that other powers have tied. The Americans (and others) will react as they did during the Cold War: by building coalitions to constrain Russian expansion. In Europe, the challenges will be to keep the Germans on board and to keep NATO cohesive. In the Caucasus, the United States will need to deftly manage its Turkish alliance and find a means of engaging Iran. In China and Japan, economic conflicts will undoubtedly take a backseat to security cooperation.
Russia and the United States will struggle in all of these areas, consisting as they do the Russian borderlands. Most of the locations will feel familiar, as Russia’s near abroad has been Russia’s near abroad for nearly 300 years. Those locations — the Baltics, Austria, Ukraine, Serbia, Turkey, Central Asia and Mongolia — that defined Russia’s conflicts in times gone by will surface again. Such is the tapestry of history: the major powers seeking advantage in the same places over and over again.
The New Old-Front
But not all of those fronts are in Eurasia. So long as U.S. power projection puts the Russians on the defensive, it is only a matter of time before something along the cordon cracks and the Russians are either fighting a land war or facing a local insurrection. Russia must keep U.S. efforts dispersed and captured by events as far away from the Russian periphery as possible — preferably where Russian strengths can exploit American weakness.
So where is that?
Geography dictates that U.S. strength involves coalition building based on mutual interest and long-range force projection, and internal U.S. harmony is such that America’s intelligence and security agencies have no need to shine. Unlike Russia, the United States does not have large, unruly, resentful, conquered populations to keep in line. In contrast, recall that the multiethnic nature of the Russian state requires a powerful security and intelligence apparatus. No place better reflects Russia’s intelligence strengths and America’s intelligence weakness than Latin America.
The United States faces no traditional security threats in its backyard. South America is in essence a hollow continent, populated only on the edges and thus lacking a deep enough hinterland to ever coalesce into a single hegemonic power. Central America and southern Mexico are similarly fractured, primarily due to rugged terrain. Northern Mexico (like Canada) is too economically dependent upon the United States to seriously consider anything more vibrant than ideological hostility toward Washington. Faced with this kind of local competition, the United States simply does not worry too much about the rest of the Western Hemisphere — except when someone comes to visit.
Stretching back to the time of the Monroe Doctrine, Washington’s Latin American policy has been very simple. The United States does not feel threatened by any local power, but it feels inordinately threatened by any Eastern Hemispheric power that could ally with a local entity. Latin American entities cannot greatly harm American interests themselves, but they can be used as fulcrums by hostile states further abroad to strike at the core of the United States’ power: its undisputed command of North America.
It is a fairly straightforward exercise to predict where Russian activity will reach its deepest. One only needs to revisit Cold War history. Future Russian efforts can be broken down into three broad categories: naval interdiction, drug facilitation and direct territorial challenge.
Naval Interdiction
Naval interdiction represents the longest sustained fear of American policymakers. Among the earliest U.S. foreign efforts after securing the mainland was asserting control over the various waterways used for approaching North America. Key in this American geopolitical imperative is the neutralization of Cuba. All the naval power-projection capabilities in the world mean very little if Cuba is both hostile and serving as a basing ground for an extra-hemispheric power.
The U.S. Gulf Coast is not only the heart of the country’s energy industry, but the body of water that allows the United States to function as a unified polity and economy. The Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi river basins all drain to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. The economic strength of these basins depends upon access to oceanic shipping. A hostile power in Cuba could fairly easily seal both the Straits of Florida and the Yucatan Channel, reducing the Gulf of Mexico to little more than a lake.
Building on the idea of naval interdiction, there is another key asset the Soviets targeted at which the Russians are sure to attempt a reprise: the Panama Canal. For both economic and military reasons, it is enormously convenient to not have to sail around the Americas, especially because U.S. economic and military power is based on maritime power and access. In the Cold War, the Soviets established friendly relations with Nicaragua and arranged for a favorable political evolution on the Caribbean island of Grenada. Like Cuba, these two locations are of dubious importance by themselves. But take them together — and add in a Soviet air base at each location as well as in Cuba — and there is a triangle of Soviet airpower that can threaten access to the Panama Canal.
Drug Facilitation
The next stage — drug facilitation — is somewhat trickier. South America is a wide and varying land with very little to offer Russian interests. Most of the states are commodity providers, much like the Soviet Union was and Russia is today, so they are seen as economic competitors. Politically, they are useful as anti-American bastions, so the Kremlin encourages such behavior whenever possible. But even if every country in South America were run by anti-American governments, it would not overly concern Washington; these states, alone or en masse, lack the ability to threaten American interests … in all ways but one.
The drug trade undermines American society from within, generating massive costs for social stability, law enforcement, the health system and trade. During the Cold War, the Soviets dabbled with narcotics producers and smugglers, from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to the highland coca farmers of Bolivia. It is not so much that the Soviets encouraged the drug trade directly, but that they encouraged any group they saw as ideologically useful.
Stratfor expects future Russian involvement in such activities to eclipse those of the past. After the Soviet fall, many FSB agents were forced to find new means to financially support themselves. (Remember it was not until 1999 that Vladimir Putin took over the Russian government and began treating Russian intelligence like a bona fide state asset again.) The Soviet fall led many FSB agents, who already possessed more than a passing familiarity with things such as smuggling and organized crime, directly into the heart of such activities. Most of those agents are — formally or not — back in the service of the Russian government, now with a decade of gritty experience on the less savory side of intelligence under their belts. And they now have a deeply personal financial interest in the outcome of future operations.
Drug groups do not need cash from the Russians, but they do need weaponry and a touch of training — needs which dovetail perfectly with the Russians’ strengths. Obviously, Russian state involvement in such areas will be far from overt; it just does not do to ship weapons to the FARC or to one side of the brewing Bolivian civil war with CNN watching. But this is a challenge the Russians are good at meeting. One of Russia’s current deputy prime ministers, Igor Sechin, was the USSR’s point man for weapons smuggling to much of Latin America and the Middle East. This really is old hat for them.
U.S. Stability
Finally, there is the issue of direct threats to U.S. stability, and this point rests solely on Mexico. With more than 100 million people, a growing economy and Atlantic and Pacific ports, Mexico is the only country in the Western Hemisphere that could theoretically (which is hardly to say inevitably) threaten U.S. dominance in North America. During the Cold War, Russian intelligence gave Mexico more than its share of jolts in efforts to cause chronic problems for the United States. In fact, the Mexico City KGB station was, and remains today, the biggest in the world. The Mexico City riots of 1968 were in part Soviet-inspired, and while ultimately unsuccessful at overthrowing the Mexican government, they remain a testament to the reach of Soviet intelligence. The security problems that would be created by the presence of a hostile state the size of Mexico on the southern U.S. border are as obvious as they would be dangerous.
As with involvement in drug activities, which incidentally are likely to overlap in Mexico, Stratfor expects Russia to be particularly active in destabilizing Mexico in the years ahead. But while an anti-American state is still a Russian goal, it is not their only option. The Mexican drug cartels have reached such strength that the Mexican government’s control over large portions of the country is an open question. Failure of the Mexican state is something that must be considered even before the Russians get involved. And simply doing with the Mexican cartels what the Soviets once did with anti-American militant groups the world over could suffice to tip the balance.
In many regards, Mexico as a failed state would be a worse result for Washington than a hostile united Mexico. A hostile Mexico could be intimidated, sanctioned or even invaded, effectively browbeaten into submission. But a failed Mexico would not restrict the drug trade at all. The border would be chaos, and the implications of that go well beyond drugs. One of the United States’ largest trading partners could well devolve into a seething anarchy that could not help but leak into the U.S. proper.
Whether Mexico becomes staunchly anti-American or devolves into the violent chaos of a failed state does not matter much to the Russians. Either one would threaten the United States with a staggering problem that no amount of resources could quickly or easily fix. And the Russians right now are shopping around for staggering problems with which to threaten the United States.
In terms of cost-benefit analysis, all of these options are no-brainers. Threatening naval interdiction simply requires a few jets. Encouraging the drug trade can be done with a few weapons shipments. Destabilizing a country just requires some creativity. However, countering such activities requires a massive outlay of intelligence and military assets — often into areas that are politically and militarily hostile, if not outright inaccessible. In many ways, this is containment in reverse.
Old Opportunities, New Twists
In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega has proven so enthusiastic in his nostalgia for Cold War alignments that Nicaragua has already recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the two territories in the former Soviet state (and U.S. ally) of Georgia that Russia went to war to protect. That makes Nicaragua the only country in the world other than Russia to recognize the breakaway regions. Moscow is quite obviously pleased — and was undoubtedly working the system behind the scenes.
In Bolivia, President Evo Morales is attempting to rewrite the laws that govern his country’s wealth distribution in favor of his poor supporters in the indigenous highlands. Now, a belt of conflict separates those highlands, which are roughly centered at the pro-Morales city of Cochabamba, from the wealthier, more Europeanized lowlands. A civil war is brewing — a conflict that is just screaming for outside interference, as similar fights did during the Cold War. It is likely only a matter of time before the headlines become splattered with pictures of Kalashnikov-wielding Cochabambinos decrying American imperialism.
Yet while the winds of history are blowing in the same old channels, there certainly are variations on the theme. The Mexican cartels, for one, were radically weaker beasts the last time around, and their current strength and disruptive capabilities present the Russians with new options.
So does Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a man so anti-American he seems to be even a few steps ahead of Kremlin propagandists. In recent days, Chavez has already hosted long-range Russian strategic bombers and evicted the U.S. ambassador. A glance at a map indicates that Venezuela is a far superior basing point than Grenada for threatening the Panama Canal. Additionally, Chavez’s Venezuela has already indicated both its willingness to get militarily involved in the Bolivian conflict and its willingness to act as a weapons smuggler via links to the FARC — and that without any heretofore detected Russian involvement. The opportunities for smuggling networks — both old and new — using Venezuela as a base are robust.
Not all changes since the Cold War are good for Russia, however. Cuba is not as blindly pro-Russian as it once was. While Russian hurricane aid to Cuba is a bid to reopen old doors, the Cubans are noticeably hesitant. Between the ailing of Fidel Castro and the presence of the world’s largest market within spitting distance, the emerging Cuban regime is not going to reflexively side with the Russians for peanuts. In Soviet times, Cuba traded massive Soviet subsidies in exchange for its allegiance. A few planeloads of hurricane aid simply won’t pay the bills in Havana, and it is still unclear how much money the Russians are willing to come up with.
There is also the question of Brazil. Long gone is the dysfunctional state; Brazil is now an emerging industrial powerhouse with an energy company, Petroleo Brasileiro, of skill levels that outshine anything the Russians have yet conquered in that sphere. While Brazilian rhetoric has always claimed that Brazil was just about to come of age, it now happens to be true. A rising Brazil is feeling its strength and tentatively pushing its influence into the border states of Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, as well as into regional rivals Venezuela and Argentina. Russian intervention tends to appeal to those who do not feel they have meaningful control over their own neighborhoods. Brazil no longer fits into that category, and it will not appreciate Russia’s mucking around in its neighborhood.
A few weeks ago, Stratfor published a piece detailing how U.S. involvement in the Iraq war was winding to a close. We received many comments from readers applauding our optimism. We are afraid that we were misinterpreted. “New” does not mean “bright” or “better,” but simply different. And the dawning struggle in Latin America is an example of the sort of “different” that the United States can look forward to in the years ahead. Buckle up.
RENEGADE EYE
Monday, September 15, 2008
Peasants Massacred in Pando – Bolivian Government Declares State of Emergency
By Jorge Martin
Monday, 15 September 2008
On Friday, September 12, we reported on the attack on pro-MAS peasants in the department of Pando, in the East of Bolivia. We said at the time that 9 people had been killed by the hired thugs of the opposition regional prefect (governor), Leopoldo Fernández. But only later was the full scale of the massacre revealed, with the death toll currently at 30, and many more still missing.
On Thursday, September 11, some 1,000 peasants from the rural communities of Puerto Rico, Madre de Diós and El Palmar, were marching on Cobija, the capital of Pando. They were going to take part in a mass meeting of peasants to oppose the fascist violence orchestrated by the reactionary governor. Gangs of heavily armed employees of the prefect's office had been taking over government buildings and the airport, creating a climate of terror in the streets of Cobija, as part of a general offensive of the oligarchy which Evo Morales correctly described as a "civic business coup".
Employees of the Departmental Roads Service, which in the last few months have been trained and armed and become a de facto paramilitary group, tried to stop them, but without success. They then set up a more effective road block near the city of Porvenir: a 10 metre-wide, 2 metre-deep trench to prevent anybody from getting through.
As the peasants arrived, armed men were already waiting for them and, coming out of tipper trucks (volquetas) of the Servicio de Caminos (Road Service) of the Department, opened fire on the peasants. "Suddenly we heard gun fire and some people fell, wounded. Men, women and children, we all ran to save our lives, but many were killed and wounded, and some were taken by force and then tortured", said Roberto Tito, an eyewitness.
"They killed us like pigs, with machine guns, rifles, hand guns. The peasants were only carrying sticks and slingshots, we did not have guns. After the first shots, some ran to the Tahuamanu river, but they followed them and shot at them". This, according to Shirley Segovia, a peasant leader in Porvenir (reports from Bolpress)
One hundred people had to cross the border into Brazil, fearing for their lives. Eyewitness reports say that some of the hired thugs were Brazilians from across the border. Some of those who were assassinated had been executed with a single shot in the back. Relatives and comrades who tried to retrieve the bodies were also shot at, some of them were captured and tortured. The same treatment applied to those who were visiting the wounded in the local hospitals.
The violence continued throughout Thursday and into Friday. The hired thugs of the departmental prefect Leopoldo Fernández continued killing unarmed peasants, singling out leading activists. The prefect's version of events is that there was an armed clashed between two groups of armed people. This is completely ludicrous if one takes into account that 95% of those who died or were injured were part of the peasant march or other peasants.
Karina Escalante Guerra, a local teacher from the Filadelfia rural council, expressed the anger which most Bolivian workers and peasants must have felt last week: "We appeal to the government to act; we have been threatened, they say they are coming to burn down the town hall, they want to get the mayor, I do not know know what the government is doing, why are they not sending the Armed Forces? ... We are those who have given him [Evo Morales] the strongest support in the recall referendum, now he has to show that he is on our side, otherwise we will have to rise up against the government, because up until now we have shown that we are fighting for the change that he is promoting, but not so that our people get killed", she said in a phone interview to Red Erbol.
The situation was such that even the government representative in Pando, Nancy Texeira, was in tears as she criticised the government and demanded immediate action to save the people who were being killed.
Finally, at 7pm on Friday, the Evo Morales government stepped in, declared a state of emergency in Pando and sent the army to retake control of the airport in Cobija.
But even then, the first reaction of the prefect was to defy the state of emergency and curfew. Groups of right wing thugs assaulted two firearms shops to further arm themselves. In the clashes between the army and the right wing for the control of the airport, two people were killed, a civilian and a 17 year-old conscript.
By Saturday night, the Army had still not taken control of the airport, and the minister of the presidency Juan Ramón Quintana, arrived with more troops. Only on Sunday, September 14, did the army manage to take back the airport and start moving into the city of Cobija itself. According to reports from the government and the peasant organisations, some of the hired guns involved in the massacre then fled to Brazil.
A number of demonstrations called by the prefect and the "civic committee" took place on the same day, in defiance of the curfew, under the cynical slogan of "peace".
The military and other government officials have not yet reached the area of the massacre to fully ascertain the extent of it, so the number of dead could increase even further. While the army was fighting for the control of the airport, the threat of burning down the humble wooden house which serves as town hall in Filadelfia was carried out by right wing gangs.
None of this had to happen. For three days, from Tuesday, September 8 to Thursday, September 11, the oligarchy launched an offensive aimed at overthrowing the Morales government. They violently and illegally took over government buildings in the departments where they control the prefects, they closed down media outlets that did not follow their political line, they defied the power of the national government, attacked the offices of peasant organisations, threatened and fire-bombed workers' leaders, took over airports, gas fields and pipelines etc.
In some cases, workers and peasants resisted. The fascist gangs were prevented from entering Plan 3000, the heavily populated working class and poor neighbourhood in Santa Cruz. Road blockades were set up in San Julián, also in the departnment of Santa Cruz. In Tarija, the peasants managed to fight back and expel the fascist gangs which had taken over the local market.
But the government still did not take action. Soldiers and police were under strict orders not to open fire and not to fight back. As a result, they were overrun by small groups of well-organised and well-equipped fascists. The government ministers denounced that what was going on was a "civic business coup" and appealed for the law to be respected. But these were just words. The State Prosecutor, Uribe, replied that he was being called to act as both the police and the army at the same time, that this was not his job, and that he was "washing his hands" of any responsibility.
When the people of San Julian wanted to march to Santa Cruz to put an end to fascist attacks and help their brothers and sisters in Plan 3000, they were advised not to do so by local MAS leaders. The argument was that "we should not fall for provocations ... We must prevent clashes that lead to people being killed which can then be used by the opposition".
It took the massacre of Porvenir to push the government to take action.
Was it a surprise that the prefect of Pando acted in the way he did? It was not. Leonel Fernández was a functionary in two dictatorial governments in the 1980s. He is a well-connected representative of the local oligarchy in Pando which has ruled this sparsely populated department in an almost feudal way for many decades.
He represents the interests of landowners, timer industry and ranch owners, and is linked to the narco-traffic that takes place over the border with Brazil. In 2006, the then government minister Alicia Muñoz, already warned that the prefect was arming and training paramilitary groups through the Servicio de Caminos (the Departmental Road Service). Last year he had the house of a regional senator who had voted in favour of land reform burned down.
And then, on August 10th, in the recall referendum, Evo Morales won in Pando with 52% of the vote. This, Fernández could not tolerate. The provinces where these peasants were coming from were those which voted massive for Evo. Fernández feared losing his seat as prefect, which he used to dominate the department for the oligarchy.
So why didn't the army act sooner? A big public polemic has opened in Bolivia and in Venezuela over this matter. On Sunday, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez accused the Bolivian Army High Command of declaring themselves "on strike" during those days, and specifically mentioned Bolivian commander in chief general Trigo, as having been responsible for this. "I know that this general, and other generals are conducting a kind of ‘strike'. They have allowed the fascists, paramilitaries, to massacre the people of Bolivia". Some well-informed Argentinean journalists have reported that the Army High Command met with Evo Morales last week and told him that if he wanted to Army to stop the fascist gangs they wanted a written and signed order allowing them to use force.
Chávez had already warned the Bolivian military that if there was a coup, or Evo Morales was killed, he would intervene to support any armed movement of the people in Bolivia. Trigo replied that Bolivia was a sovereign country and rejected "any foreign intervention". On Sunday, Chávez insisted that, if there was a coup in Bolivia, he would not remain with his "arms folded" and while conceding that Trigo was correct in rejecting foreign intervention, challenged him to make a public statement against the meddling of the U.S. in the internal affairs of Boliva.
Chávez was even more specific in his accusations against general Trigo when he said that he had information that, "instead of implementing the presidential decree of state of emergency, he ordered the troops to remain in their barracks and abandon the airport" in Cobija. This, if true, might explain why it took the army nearly 24 hours to retake the airport and why the Minister of the Presidency had to go personally to supervise the operation.
Despite the reassurances of the Defence Minister that the Army remains united and loyal to the government, everything points in the opposite direction. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Last week, we saw the oligarchy launch an attempt to overthrow the government. That attempt has failed, for now. They did not manage to take power and were starting to provoke a massive response on behalf of the workers and peasants. They have therefore now taken half a step back. In Santa Cruz, the leader of the civic committee, Marinkovic, declared an end to road blockades, but insisted they would keep all public buildings they had taken by force.
On Friday, a meeting took place between the government and the governor of Tarija, Cossio, representing the prefects of the Eastern departments. Why would the government want to talk with the leaders of a movement which they have themselves described as a "coup"? A follow up meeting took place on Monday, at the end of which Cossio said that "we have set 80% of the basis for meaningful agreement".
Meanwhile, Evo Morales and other government ministers insisted that there had to be punishment for Pando prefect Fernández and that he was not a legitimate party to negotiations. However, the other prefects have come out in defence of Fernández. And how is he different from Ruben Costas, the prefect of Santa Cruz, who is responsible for the organisation of the violent assaults on public buildings over the last few days, and who earlier in August called for a military coup?
Today, a meeting of the UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) has been called in Chile, and amongst those attending will be Evo Morales, Argentinean president Kirchner, Brazilian president Lula and Venezuelan president Chávez. The likely outcome of this meeting will be a statement in defence of Bolivia's national unity and sovereignty, the repudiation of all illegal and violent acts and ... the need for a negotiated solution to the conflict.
Whatever the immediate outcome of the present episode of this confrontation in Bolivia, it is clear that the interests of the oligarchy and those of the Bolivian workers and peasants cannot be reconciled. If Evo Morales pushes ahead with the referendum for the new political constitution (which includes agrarian reform), then sooner or later, the oligarchy will attempt another coup.
On the other hand, the mass organisations of workers and peasants are also under intense pressure to take action. Fidel Surco, president of the National Coordination of Organisations for Change (CONALCAM) announced that "if the prefects do not give up the buildings they have taken, we are going to take over their land". The powerful Miners' Federation (FSTMB) declared a state of emergency of all their members, and announced mobilisations. "We are not going to allow another massacre", they said. The COB national meeting on Friday announced nation-wide mobilisations for tomorrow, Tuesday and raised the idea of a national march on Santa Cruz by "workers, peasants and the poor people in general".
This conflict can only be settled in one of two ways: either the oligarchy, with the help of U.S. imperialism is victorious and Bolivia sees another bloody military dictatorship, or the workers and peasants finally complete the revolution by expropriating the oligarchy's political and economic power.
On Saturday night, Evo Morales, addressing a gathering of workers and peasants in Cochabamba, declared that this was a struggle for national liberation and national unity and that the process of change "will not be reversed". It is time to draw the necessary conclusions from these correct words. There will inevitably be a new offensive of the ruling class. But the people must not be caught unaware; the slogans of the day are: the formation of action committees (Popular Assemblies, cabildos abiertos, etc.) and the arming of the people.
RENEGADE EYE
Monday, 15 September 2008
On Friday, September 12, we reported on the attack on pro-MAS peasants in the department of Pando, in the East of Bolivia. We said at the time that 9 people had been killed by the hired thugs of the opposition regional prefect (governor), Leopoldo Fernández. But only later was the full scale of the massacre revealed, with the death toll currently at 30, and many more still missing.
On Thursday, September 11, some 1,000 peasants from the rural communities of Puerto Rico, Madre de Diós and El Palmar, were marching on Cobija, the capital of Pando. They were going to take part in a mass meeting of peasants to oppose the fascist violence orchestrated by the reactionary governor. Gangs of heavily armed employees of the prefect's office had been taking over government buildings and the airport, creating a climate of terror in the streets of Cobija, as part of a general offensive of the oligarchy which Evo Morales correctly described as a "civic business coup".
Employees of the Departmental Roads Service, which in the last few months have been trained and armed and become a de facto paramilitary group, tried to stop them, but without success. They then set up a more effective road block near the city of Porvenir: a 10 metre-wide, 2 metre-deep trench to prevent anybody from getting through.
As the peasants arrived, armed men were already waiting for them and, coming out of tipper trucks (volquetas) of the Servicio de Caminos (Road Service) of the Department, opened fire on the peasants. "Suddenly we heard gun fire and some people fell, wounded. Men, women and children, we all ran to save our lives, but many were killed and wounded, and some were taken by force and then tortured", said Roberto Tito, an eyewitness.
"They killed us like pigs, with machine guns, rifles, hand guns. The peasants were only carrying sticks and slingshots, we did not have guns. After the first shots, some ran to the Tahuamanu river, but they followed them and shot at them". This, according to Shirley Segovia, a peasant leader in Porvenir (reports from Bolpress)
One hundred people had to cross the border into Brazil, fearing for their lives. Eyewitness reports say that some of the hired thugs were Brazilians from across the border. Some of those who were assassinated had been executed with a single shot in the back. Relatives and comrades who tried to retrieve the bodies were also shot at, some of them were captured and tortured. The same treatment applied to those who were visiting the wounded in the local hospitals.
The violence continued throughout Thursday and into Friday. The hired thugs of the departmental prefect Leopoldo Fernández continued killing unarmed peasants, singling out leading activists. The prefect's version of events is that there was an armed clashed between two groups of armed people. This is completely ludicrous if one takes into account that 95% of those who died or were injured were part of the peasant march or other peasants.
Karina Escalante Guerra, a local teacher from the Filadelfia rural council, expressed the anger which most Bolivian workers and peasants must have felt last week: "We appeal to the government to act; we have been threatened, they say they are coming to burn down the town hall, they want to get the mayor, I do not know know what the government is doing, why are they not sending the Armed Forces? ... We are those who have given him [Evo Morales] the strongest support in the recall referendum, now he has to show that he is on our side, otherwise we will have to rise up against the government, because up until now we have shown that we are fighting for the change that he is promoting, but not so that our people get killed", she said in a phone interview to Red Erbol.
The situation was such that even the government representative in Pando, Nancy Texeira, was in tears as she criticised the government and demanded immediate action to save the people who were being killed.
Finally, at 7pm on Friday, the Evo Morales government stepped in, declared a state of emergency in Pando and sent the army to retake control of the airport in Cobija.
But even then, the first reaction of the prefect was to defy the state of emergency and curfew. Groups of right wing thugs assaulted two firearms shops to further arm themselves. In the clashes between the army and the right wing for the control of the airport, two people were killed, a civilian and a 17 year-old conscript.
By Saturday night, the Army had still not taken control of the airport, and the minister of the presidency Juan Ramón Quintana, arrived with more troops. Only on Sunday, September 14, did the army manage to take back the airport and start moving into the city of Cobija itself. According to reports from the government and the peasant organisations, some of the hired guns involved in the massacre then fled to Brazil.
A number of demonstrations called by the prefect and the "civic committee" took place on the same day, in defiance of the curfew, under the cynical slogan of "peace".
The military and other government officials have not yet reached the area of the massacre to fully ascertain the extent of it, so the number of dead could increase even further. While the army was fighting for the control of the airport, the threat of burning down the humble wooden house which serves as town hall in Filadelfia was carried out by right wing gangs.
Army Inaction?
None of this had to happen. For three days, from Tuesday, September 8 to Thursday, September 11, the oligarchy launched an offensive aimed at overthrowing the Morales government. They violently and illegally took over government buildings in the departments where they control the prefects, they closed down media outlets that did not follow their political line, they defied the power of the national government, attacked the offices of peasant organisations, threatened and fire-bombed workers' leaders, took over airports, gas fields and pipelines etc.
In some cases, workers and peasants resisted. The fascist gangs were prevented from entering Plan 3000, the heavily populated working class and poor neighbourhood in Santa Cruz. Road blockades were set up in San Julián, also in the departnment of Santa Cruz. In Tarija, the peasants managed to fight back and expel the fascist gangs which had taken over the local market.
But the government still did not take action. Soldiers and police were under strict orders not to open fire and not to fight back. As a result, they were overrun by small groups of well-organised and well-equipped fascists. The government ministers denounced that what was going on was a "civic business coup" and appealed for the law to be respected. But these were just words. The State Prosecutor, Uribe, replied that he was being called to act as both the police and the army at the same time, that this was not his job, and that he was "washing his hands" of any responsibility.
When the people of San Julian wanted to march to Santa Cruz to put an end to fascist attacks and help their brothers and sisters in Plan 3000, they were advised not to do so by local MAS leaders. The argument was that "we should not fall for provocations ... We must prevent clashes that lead to people being killed which can then be used by the opposition".
It took the massacre of Porvenir to push the government to take action.
Was it a surprise that the prefect of Pando acted in the way he did? It was not. Leonel Fernández was a functionary in two dictatorial governments in the 1980s. He is a well-connected representative of the local oligarchy in Pando which has ruled this sparsely populated department in an almost feudal way for many decades.
He represents the interests of landowners, timer industry and ranch owners, and is linked to the narco-traffic that takes place over the border with Brazil. In 2006, the then government minister Alicia Muñoz, already warned that the prefect was arming and training paramilitary groups through the Servicio de Caminos (the Departmental Road Service). Last year he had the house of a regional senator who had voted in favour of land reform burned down.
And then, on August 10th, in the recall referendum, Evo Morales won in Pando with 52% of the vote. This, Fernández could not tolerate. The provinces where these peasants were coming from were those which voted massive for Evo. Fernández feared losing his seat as prefect, which he used to dominate the department for the oligarchy.
So why didn't the army act sooner? A big public polemic has opened in Bolivia and in Venezuela over this matter. On Sunday, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez accused the Bolivian Army High Command of declaring themselves "on strike" during those days, and specifically mentioned Bolivian commander in chief general Trigo, as having been responsible for this. "I know that this general, and other generals are conducting a kind of ‘strike'. They have allowed the fascists, paramilitaries, to massacre the people of Bolivia". Some well-informed Argentinean journalists have reported that the Army High Command met with Evo Morales last week and told him that if he wanted to Army to stop the fascist gangs they wanted a written and signed order allowing them to use force.
Chávez had already warned the Bolivian military that if there was a coup, or Evo Morales was killed, he would intervene to support any armed movement of the people in Bolivia. Trigo replied that Bolivia was a sovereign country and rejected "any foreign intervention". On Sunday, Chávez insisted that, if there was a coup in Bolivia, he would not remain with his "arms folded" and while conceding that Trigo was correct in rejecting foreign intervention, challenged him to make a public statement against the meddling of the U.S. in the internal affairs of Boliva.
Chávez was even more specific in his accusations against general Trigo when he said that he had information that, "instead of implementing the presidential decree of state of emergency, he ordered the troops to remain in their barracks and abandon the airport" in Cobija. This, if true, might explain why it took the army nearly 24 hours to retake the airport and why the Minister of the Presidency had to go personally to supervise the operation.
Despite the reassurances of the Defence Minister that the Army remains united and loyal to the government, everything points in the opposite direction. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
More Negotiations?
Last week, we saw the oligarchy launch an attempt to overthrow the government. That attempt has failed, for now. They did not manage to take power and were starting to provoke a massive response on behalf of the workers and peasants. They have therefore now taken half a step back. In Santa Cruz, the leader of the civic committee, Marinkovic, declared an end to road blockades, but insisted they would keep all public buildings they had taken by force.
On Friday, a meeting took place between the government and the governor of Tarija, Cossio, representing the prefects of the Eastern departments. Why would the government want to talk with the leaders of a movement which they have themselves described as a "coup"? A follow up meeting took place on Monday, at the end of which Cossio said that "we have set 80% of the basis for meaningful agreement".
Meanwhile, Evo Morales and other government ministers insisted that there had to be punishment for Pando prefect Fernández and that he was not a legitimate party to negotiations. However, the other prefects have come out in defence of Fernández. And how is he different from Ruben Costas, the prefect of Santa Cruz, who is responsible for the organisation of the violent assaults on public buildings over the last few days, and who earlier in August called for a military coup?
Today, a meeting of the UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) has been called in Chile, and amongst those attending will be Evo Morales, Argentinean president Kirchner, Brazilian president Lula and Venezuelan president Chávez. The likely outcome of this meeting will be a statement in defence of Bolivia's national unity and sovereignty, the repudiation of all illegal and violent acts and ... the need for a negotiated solution to the conflict.
Whatever the immediate outcome of the present episode of this confrontation in Bolivia, it is clear that the interests of the oligarchy and those of the Bolivian workers and peasants cannot be reconciled. If Evo Morales pushes ahead with the referendum for the new political constitution (which includes agrarian reform), then sooner or later, the oligarchy will attempt another coup.
On the other hand, the mass organisations of workers and peasants are also under intense pressure to take action. Fidel Surco, president of the National Coordination of Organisations for Change (CONALCAM) announced that "if the prefects do not give up the buildings they have taken, we are going to take over their land". The powerful Miners' Federation (FSTMB) declared a state of emergency of all their members, and announced mobilisations. "We are not going to allow another massacre", they said. The COB national meeting on Friday announced nation-wide mobilisations for tomorrow, Tuesday and raised the idea of a national march on Santa Cruz by "workers, peasants and the poor people in general".
This conflict can only be settled in one of two ways: either the oligarchy, with the help of U.S. imperialism is victorious and Bolivia sees another bloody military dictatorship, or the workers and peasants finally complete the revolution by expropriating the oligarchy's political and economic power.
On Saturday night, Evo Morales, addressing a gathering of workers and peasants in Cochabamba, declared that this was a struggle for national liberation and national unity and that the process of change "will not be reversed". It is time to draw the necessary conclusions from these correct words. There will inevitably be a new offensive of the ruling class. But the people must not be caught unaware; the slogans of the day are: the formation of action committees (Popular Assemblies, cabildos abiertos, etc.) and the arming of the people.
RENEGADE EYE
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