By William Fisher
Amidst charges that President Bush and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) are inflating the number of criminal prosecutions for terrorism, five cases shed light on the administration’s mixed record of convictions during 2005.
In a Florida case, officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) falsified documents in an effort to cover repeated missteps and then retaliated against an agent who first complained about the problems.
After being held for more than three years in U.S. military custody, Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago and labeled an "enemy combatant" by the Bush administration, was charged conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals and providing “material support” to terrorists – but not with the charges he had been originally accused of: plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the United States and to blow up apartment buildings using natural gas lines.
The case against the so-called "Detroit sleeper cell" – once hailed as a significant Justice Department triumph in the “Global War on Terror”-- was dismissed after a jury convicted two men of supporting terrorism. Now a federal grand jury in Detroit is investigating whether the lead prosecutor, Richard Convertino, should be indicted for hiding exculpatory evidence from the defense, including altering dates on three FBI forms using correction fluid to conceal an apparent violation of federal wiretap law.
Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 24, a U.S. citizen held in a Saudi Arabian jail for 20 months allegedly at the behest of the U.S., was convicted in Virginia of conspiracy to assassinate the president, conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy and contributing services to al-Qaida. He faces up to life in prison. Abu Ali claimed that he was tortured into a false confession by Saudi authorities, but the jury rejected that charge.
A former Florida professor, Sami Al-Arian, 47, accused of helping to lead a terrorist group that has carried out suicide bombings against Israel, was acquitted on nearly half the charges against him and the jury deadlocked on the rest including charges he aided terrorists. The case was seen as one of the biggest courtroom tests yet of the Patriot Act's expanded search-and-surveillance powers.
These cases provide context for assertions by President Bush, his Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, and many other senior administration officials, that "federal terrorism investigations have resulted in charges against more than 400 suspects, and more than half of those charged have been convicted."
But, according to an analysis of the DOJ’s own records by the Washington Post, the numbers are misleading. The paper claimed that 39 people -- not 200, as officials have implied – have been convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security”.
“Most of the others were convicted of relatively minor crimes such as making false statements and violating immigration law -- and had nothing to do with terrorism”, the analysis shows. “For the entire list, the median sentence was just 11 months.”
Said The Post, “Taken as a whole, the data indicate that the government's effort to identify terrorists in the United States has been less successful than authorities have often suggested. The statistics provide little support for the contention that
authorities have discovered and prosecuted hundreds of terrorists here. Except for a small number of well-known cases -- such as truck driver Lyman Faris, who sought to take down the Brooklyn Bridge -- few of those arrested appear to have been involved in active plots inside the United States.”
It added, “Among all the people charged as a result of terrorism probes in the three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The Post found no demonstrated connection to terrorism or terrorist groups for 180 of them”.
Bush Administration officials have not denied the accuracy of The Post’s analysis.
The DOJ’s campaign to round up and detain alleged terrorists began under then Attorney General John Ashcroft almost immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. During that period, large numbers of people -- primarily Arabs and other Muslims as well as South Asians – were arrested by the DOJ and held without charges or lawyers in jails run by immigration agencies.
No one caught up in this dragnet was ever accused of any terror-related crime. Some were released, often after being held incommunicado for months. Some claimed to have been beaten or otherwise mistreated. Most were deported for immigration violations – not a criminal offense under U.S. law.
David Cole, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and author of "Enemy Aliens," asserts that the "centerpiece of the domestic war on terrorism has been preventive detention."
"In the first seven weeks after Sept. 11, the DOJ admitted to detaining nearly 1,200 men as suspected terrorists, nearly all foreign nationals," he said.
"It subsequently adopted two anti-terrorism immigration initiatives that were aimed at men from Arab and Muslim countries on the theory that they were more likely to be terrorists. Those programs led to the detention of nearly 4,000 more people. Yet of these, not one stands convicted of any terrorist offense. The administration's record is zero for 5,000."
In a number of cases since then, the DOJ has conducted numerous high-profile press conferences accusing people of terror-related offenses, only to be prevented from bringing these charges in court because torture had been used to extract confessions from the targets. Evidence obtained through torture is not admissible as evidence in a U.S. court. The Padilla case is an example.
The DOJ has also used the “material witness” charge to keep people in custody. For example, Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer, was held for two weeks on suspicion of being a participant in the Madrid train bombing. He was released after the FBI acknowledged it was wrong when it identified a fingerprint on a backpack found in near the crime scene as Mayfield’s. He is suing the Justice Department.
Whistleblowers and people who claim to be have been victims of “extreme rendition” – being forcibly taken by U.S. authorities to be detained by countries known to inflict torture on prisoners – have been prevented from bringing their cases to U.S. courts through a variety of legal maneuvers by the DOJ.
For example, the Bush Administration has successfully invoked the “State Secrets” defense to head off suits against the government, claiming that U.S. national security would be compromised if plaintiffs’ evidence were to be made public in court.
The best known of these cases involved Sibel Edmonds, an FBI contract linguist, who was fired after she accused the Bureau of criminal activities committed by government officials and employees, and prevented from suing through invocation of the “State Secrets” defense by the Government.
The Government’s prosecution of suspected terrorists has also yielded some quirky results. Perhaps the quirkiest is the case of Dr. Steve Kurtz, an art professor at the University of Buffalo in New York State. After finding laboratory equipment and a vial of bacteria in his home, government officials including New York Governor George Pataki denounced Kurtz as a bio-terrorist. As the case folded, it was revealed that Kurtz was using the equipment for an art installation. He was charged not with a terror-related crime but with mail fraud for ordering the bacteria from a fellow professor, who was also charged. Public health authorities in Buffalo determined that the bacteria were harmless. The case is still pending.
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Monday, December 05, 2005
THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF FAKE NEWS
By William Fisher
Congressional leaders who have often touted Iraq’s new ‘free press’ as a sign of progress in that troubled country were angered by the Pentagon’s admission last week that it has been planting and paying for Iraqi newspapers to publish ‘good news stories’ written by the military and ‘placed’ in Iraqi media by a Washington-based public relations firm.
In a briefing for the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican John Warner of Virginia, the military acknowledged that news articles written by American troops had been placed as paid advertisements in the Iraqi news media and not always properly identified.
Warner told reporters after receiving a briefing from officials at the Pentagon that senior commanders in Iraq were trying to get to the bottom of a program that apparently also paid monthly stipends to friendly Iraqi journalists.
Mr. Warner said there had been no indications yet that the paid propaganda
had been false. But he said that disclosures that an American company, under
contract to the Pentagon, was making secret payments to plant articles with
positive messages about the United States military mission could undermine
the Bush administration's goals in Iraq and jeopardize Iraq's developing
democratic institutions. "I remain gravely concerned about the situation,"
he said.
He said he had been told that the articles or advertisements were intended to
counter disinformation in the Iraqi news media that was hurting the American
military's efforts to stabilize the country.
The story of the Pentagon’s latest PR efforts was revealed last week by the Los Angeles Times. It said that many of the articles were presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.
The Times reported that while the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year, the newspaper wrote.
The articles are received from the military and translated into Arabic and then placed with Iraqi media, both print and broadcast, by the Lincoln Group, a Washington D.C.-based public relations firm which is under contract to the Pentagon. Lincoln’s website boasts of its extensive network of relationships with Iraqi journalists.
The Lincoln Group defended its practices, saying it had been trying to counter insurgent propaganda with accounts of heroism by allied forces. "Lincoln Group has consistently worked with the Iraqi media to promote truthful reporting across Iraq," Laurie Adler, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Administration and Congressional officials have often emphasized the importance the U.S. places on development of a Western-style free media. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein.
The hundreds of newspapers, television stations and other "free media" offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public to debate the issues of their burgeoning democracy, Rumsfeld said.
The administration isn't alone in pointing to the "free" media as evidence of things going well in Iraq. In a November 10 speech, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona touted Iraq's "truly free press".
But Congressional Democrats said the Lincoln Group’s activities were the latest
example of questionable public relations practices by the administration. In an
earlier case, payments were made to columnists, among them conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, who secretly received $240,000 for promoting “No Child Left Behind”, the administration's education initiative.
"From Armstrong Williams to fake TV news, we know this White House has tried
multiple times to buy the news at home," Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the
Democratic leader, said. "Now, we need to find out if they've exported this practice to the Middle East."
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, called on the acting Pentagon inspector general to investigate the Lincoln Group's activities to see if they amounted to an illegal covert operation.
“The Pentagon's devious scheme to place favorable propaganda in Iraqi newspapers speaks volumes about the president's credibility gap," Kennedy said. "If Americans were truly welcomed in Iraq as liberators, we wouldn't have to doctor the news for the Iraqi people."
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT) recently returned from a trip to Iraq and wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal in which he pointed to Iraq's "independent television stations and newspapers" as evidence of the "remarkable changes" there.
“I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.”
In coordination with President Bush’s speech last week at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, the administration published a "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq". Among its claims: "A professional and informative Iraqi news media has taken root…More than 100 newspapers freely discuss political events every day in Iraq.”
A military spokesman in Iraq said contractors like the Lincoln Group had been used to market the articles to reduce the risk to Iraqi publishers, who might be attacked if they were seen as being closely linked to the military.
Larry Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said General Vines and his staff in
Iraq insisted that their activities with Lincoln had been "in accordance with all policies and guidelines."
But Martin Kaplan, Associate Dean at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and director if its Norman Lear Center, told me, “Anyone who recalls the good-news propaganda than ran in the state-run communist press even as the Soviet Union was collapsing will find what the Bush Administration is doing in Iraq creepy. It sends a deeply troubling message about what they think democracy is. But given their demonization of dissent in the United States, it sadly comes as no surprise.”
And National Security Advisor Steven Hadley said on Sunday that if the payola allegations are found to be true, it was bad policy and should be discontinued.
Iraqi journalists and their representative organizations have also objected to the practice.
This is not the first time the Pentagon’s PR efforts have come under scrutiny.
In 2004, the agency found itself engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad.
The issue was whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. One of the problems with such programs is that in a world wired by satellite television and the Internet, American news outlets could easily repeat misleading information.
Earlier, Secretary Rumsfeld, under intense criticism, closed the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence, a short-lived operation to provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion.
Now, critics say, some of the proposals of that discredited office are quietly being resurrected elsewhere in the military and in the Pentagon.
.
Congressional leaders who have often touted Iraq’s new ‘free press’ as a sign of progress in that troubled country were angered by the Pentagon’s admission last week that it has been planting and paying for Iraqi newspapers to publish ‘good news stories’ written by the military and ‘placed’ in Iraqi media by a Washington-based public relations firm.
In a briefing for the powerful chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican John Warner of Virginia, the military acknowledged that news articles written by American troops had been placed as paid advertisements in the Iraqi news media and not always properly identified.
Warner told reporters after receiving a briefing from officials at the Pentagon that senior commanders in Iraq were trying to get to the bottom of a program that apparently also paid monthly stipends to friendly Iraqi journalists.
Mr. Warner said there had been no indications yet that the paid propaganda
had been false. But he said that disclosures that an American company, under
contract to the Pentagon, was making secret payments to plant articles with
positive messages about the United States military mission could undermine
the Bush administration's goals in Iraq and jeopardize Iraq's developing
democratic institutions. "I remain gravely concerned about the situation,"
he said.
He said he had been told that the articles or advertisements were intended to
counter disinformation in the Iraqi news media that was hurting the American
military's efforts to stabilize the country.
The story of the Pentagon’s latest PR efforts was revealed last week by the Los Angeles Times. It said that many of the articles were presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.
The Times reported that while the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year, the newspaper wrote.
The articles are received from the military and translated into Arabic and then placed with Iraqi media, both print and broadcast, by the Lincoln Group, a Washington D.C.-based public relations firm which is under contract to the Pentagon. Lincoln’s website boasts of its extensive network of relationships with Iraqi journalists.
The Lincoln Group defended its practices, saying it had been trying to counter insurgent propaganda with accounts of heroism by allied forces. "Lincoln Group has consistently worked with the Iraqi media to promote truthful reporting across Iraq," Laurie Adler, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement.
Administration and Congressional officials have often emphasized the importance the U.S. places on development of a Western-style free media. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein.
The hundreds of newspapers, television stations and other "free media" offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public to debate the issues of their burgeoning democracy, Rumsfeld said.
The administration isn't alone in pointing to the "free" media as evidence of things going well in Iraq. In a November 10 speech, Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona touted Iraq's "truly free press".
But Congressional Democrats said the Lincoln Group’s activities were the latest
example of questionable public relations practices by the administration. In an
earlier case, payments were made to columnists, among them conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, who secretly received $240,000 for promoting “No Child Left Behind”, the administration's education initiative.
"From Armstrong Williams to fake TV news, we know this White House has tried
multiple times to buy the news at home," Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the
Democratic leader, said. "Now, we need to find out if they've exported this practice to the Middle East."
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, called on the acting Pentagon inspector general to investigate the Lincoln Group's activities to see if they amounted to an illegal covert operation.
“The Pentagon's devious scheme to place favorable propaganda in Iraqi newspapers speaks volumes about the president's credibility gap," Kennedy said. "If Americans were truly welcomed in Iraq as liberators, we wouldn't have to doctor the news for the Iraqi people."
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-CT) recently returned from a trip to Iraq and wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal in which he pointed to Iraq's "independent television stations and newspapers" as evidence of the "remarkable changes" there.
“I have just returned from my fourth trip to Iraq in the past 17 months and can report real progress there. Last week, I was thrilled to see a vigorous political campaign, and a large number of independent television stations and newspapers covering it.”
In coordination with President Bush’s speech last week at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, the administration published a "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq". Among its claims: "A professional and informative Iraqi news media has taken root…More than 100 newspapers freely discuss political events every day in Iraq.”
A military spokesman in Iraq said contractors like the Lincoln Group had been used to market the articles to reduce the risk to Iraqi publishers, who might be attacked if they were seen as being closely linked to the military.
Larry Di Rita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said General Vines and his staff in
Iraq insisted that their activities with Lincoln had been "in accordance with all policies and guidelines."
But Martin Kaplan, Associate Dean at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California and director if its Norman Lear Center, told me, “Anyone who recalls the good-news propaganda than ran in the state-run communist press even as the Soviet Union was collapsing will find what the Bush Administration is doing in Iraq creepy. It sends a deeply troubling message about what they think democracy is. But given their demonization of dissent in the United States, it sadly comes as no surprise.”
And National Security Advisor Steven Hadley said on Sunday that if the payola allegations are found to be true, it was bad policy and should be discontinued.
Iraqi journalists and their representative organizations have also objected to the practice.
This is not the first time the Pentagon’s PR efforts have come under scrutiny.
In 2004, the agency found itself engaged in bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad.
The issue was whether the Pentagon and military should undertake an official program that uses disinformation to shape perceptions abroad. One of the problems with such programs is that in a world wired by satellite television and the Internet, American news outlets could easily repeat misleading information.
Earlier, Secretary Rumsfeld, under intense criticism, closed the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence, a short-lived operation to provide news items, possibly including false ones, to foreign journalists in an effort to influence overseas opinion.
Now, critics say, some of the proposals of that discredited office are quietly being resurrected elsewhere in the military and in the Pentagon.
.
KATRINA RED TAPE
By William Fisher
Three months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast, Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans faced a ‘town hall’ meeting of several hundred displaced constituents – but had few answers to questioners seething with anger, frustration, confusion and hopelessness.
The questioners, evacuees who were approximately 75 per cent African-Americans, had been urged by Nagin to return to New Orleans from distant but temporary locations where they were trying to put their shattered lives back together. They had been promised trailers, electricity, running water, and help finding jobs.
But the stories they told Nagin and his top lieutenants revealed that they were deeply mired in government red tape, misinformation, no information and an apparent lack of interest. Their seething disapproval of every level of government was palpable.
Many told stories of spending days on the phone trying to reach relief local, state and federal agencies, often only to find that their phone numbers “were no longer in service”.
Others were told to go to centers set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), only to find that many of these centers had closed.
One woman, who had traveled to New Orleans from Atlanta, told of being approved for – but yet receiving -- a reconstruction loan from the Small Business Administration and, a day later, being notified by FEMA that she was no longer entitled to food stamps or to her temporary housing stipend.
Another told the mayor she had been making her mortgage payments regularly despite being unable to live in her ruined home, to which the mayor replied, “I understand most local lenders have declared a moratorium on timely payments.”
An elderly woman was trying to reclaim the body of her husband, who died in the flood, but was refused by the central morgue because DNA testing had not begun because the contract with the laboratory has not yet been finalized.
A man who owns a tree care business complained that contractors had been brought in from other states to do the work he had been carrying out for the city for the past 20 years. He said he had never heard from FEMA, despite its pledge to favor local firms.
Several speakers told the mayor they had been advised that their temporary housing was to be discontinued, and that they had 48 hours to find other places to stay.
Others complained that after being urged to return, there were no schools for their children to attend.
Still others told of having to sleep in their trucks or on a floor, living out of a car and waiting for the help that was promised but has not yet arrived.
Said one woman whose import business was wiped out by the storm, along with her home in New Orleans East: "You come to these FEMA centers, you sit all day, You get no answers to your questions. They're evasive. You're constantly 'pending.' What are you going to be doing, 'pending' for the rest of your life? I've lost everything."
With no place to live in New Orleans, many spoke of frequent long drives to obtain help from FEMA. Agency officials, backed by armed guards, refused to allow a reporter into the agency’s giant interviewing room, where long tables lined with seated aid seekers had been set up.
Mayor Nagin listened intently to every questioner. He answered some in vague generalities. He referred others to his staff and promised that they would quickly take the appropriate action to bring them relief. He is currently conducting other ‘town hall’ meetings in other cities where displaced New Orleanians are now living, and continues to urge them to return.
Many of the citizens attending the New Orleans town hall meeting were residents of the lower 9th ward, the poorest part of the city, and the hardest hit by the hurricane.
Meanwhile, Katrina has been gradually but steadily disappearing from prominent coverage in newspapers and on television. With President Bush no longer visiting the stricken areas, the media has apparently moved on.
In an interview, Rev. Tim Simpson of the Christian Alliance said, “With all of the coverage that this disaster received and with it having damaged the Bush administration's credibility so severely, it is amazing that these people have been so quickly forgotten by our government and that the administration has so blithely moved on to other things like immigration reform, as if the Gulf Coast was even stable, much less repaired.”
He added, “What this problem needs is some sustained attention by the executive branch. The President needs to pay more attention to the Gulf and less to giving his second term an ‘extreme makeover’. If people thought he was doing something to make the lives of average Americans better in the first place, he probably wouldn't need an extreme makeover!”
There are also indications that a proposed congressional investigation into government responses to the disaster could itself become bogged down in jurisdictional wrangles and partisan infighting.
From the very beginning of the post-Katrina disaster, Louisiana’s Democratic Senator Mary Landreau has adopted an aggressive posture in urging congress to appropriate massive sums for relief and reconstruction. But her in-your-face style has reportedly alienated some of her colleagues.
In contrast, Senators from Mississippi – parts of which were also devastated by the hurricane -- have been working more quietly behind the scenes to steer resources to their constituents.
But some Louisiana officials suggest that party politics is playing a role in the provision of resources. They point out that their state has a Democratic Governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and that New Orleans is a Democratic stronghold. Mississippi is heavily Republican. Its governor, Haley Barbour, is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and has close ties to the Bush Administration.
Documentation released yesterday by Governor Blanco reveals the total chaos that existed between local, state and federal authorities in the days before, during and after the hurricane hit. They suggest that federal authorities were trying to shift the blame toward the Governor while, in fact, no one was in charge.
A FEMA spokesman said last week that the agency was working as fast as it could to aid the thousands still destitute from the storm.
"I don't know if you understand the magnitude of this disaster," said the
spokesman, James McIntyre. "Almost 1.5 million people have registered for
assistance, and we're working to help them all."
Mr. McIntyre continued: "We're working as fast as we possibly can to meet their
needs, and help them receive assistance for damages from these disasters."
Another FEMA official, the manager of an assistance center in New Orleans’ Lower Garden District, said the mental anguish of many of his clients was now
palpable.
"As people come in, they become desperate," said the official. "They're coming back, thinking they can live in their dwelling. And then all of a sudden, there's nothing."
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita left more than 281,000 Louisiana residents -- 14 percent of the workers in the state – jobless. That created as massive run of unemployment filings that threatens to bankrupt the state's unemployment trust fund.
In the first seven weeks after Katrina struck, Louisiana residents filed 281,745 hurricane-related claims for unemployment benefits, more than the 193,000 claims filed in all of 2004, according to figures released by the state Department of Labor. The number of filings is 13 times what is normal for a seven-week period.
Three months after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast, Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans faced a ‘town hall’ meeting of several hundred displaced constituents – but had few answers to questioners seething with anger, frustration, confusion and hopelessness.
The questioners, evacuees who were approximately 75 per cent African-Americans, had been urged by Nagin to return to New Orleans from distant but temporary locations where they were trying to put their shattered lives back together. They had been promised trailers, electricity, running water, and help finding jobs.
But the stories they told Nagin and his top lieutenants revealed that they were deeply mired in government red tape, misinformation, no information and an apparent lack of interest. Their seething disapproval of every level of government was palpable.
Many told stories of spending days on the phone trying to reach relief local, state and federal agencies, often only to find that their phone numbers “were no longer in service”.
Others were told to go to centers set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), only to find that many of these centers had closed.
One woman, who had traveled to New Orleans from Atlanta, told of being approved for – but yet receiving -- a reconstruction loan from the Small Business Administration and, a day later, being notified by FEMA that she was no longer entitled to food stamps or to her temporary housing stipend.
Another told the mayor she had been making her mortgage payments regularly despite being unable to live in her ruined home, to which the mayor replied, “I understand most local lenders have declared a moratorium on timely payments.”
An elderly woman was trying to reclaim the body of her husband, who died in the flood, but was refused by the central morgue because DNA testing had not begun because the contract with the laboratory has not yet been finalized.
A man who owns a tree care business complained that contractors had been brought in from other states to do the work he had been carrying out for the city for the past 20 years. He said he had never heard from FEMA, despite its pledge to favor local firms.
Several speakers told the mayor they had been advised that their temporary housing was to be discontinued, and that they had 48 hours to find other places to stay.
Others complained that after being urged to return, there were no schools for their children to attend.
Still others told of having to sleep in their trucks or on a floor, living out of a car and waiting for the help that was promised but has not yet arrived.
Said one woman whose import business was wiped out by the storm, along with her home in New Orleans East: "You come to these FEMA centers, you sit all day, You get no answers to your questions. They're evasive. You're constantly 'pending.' What are you going to be doing, 'pending' for the rest of your life? I've lost everything."
With no place to live in New Orleans, many spoke of frequent long drives to obtain help from FEMA. Agency officials, backed by armed guards, refused to allow a reporter into the agency’s giant interviewing room, where long tables lined with seated aid seekers had been set up.
Mayor Nagin listened intently to every questioner. He answered some in vague generalities. He referred others to his staff and promised that they would quickly take the appropriate action to bring them relief. He is currently conducting other ‘town hall’ meetings in other cities where displaced New Orleanians are now living, and continues to urge them to return.
Many of the citizens attending the New Orleans town hall meeting were residents of the lower 9th ward, the poorest part of the city, and the hardest hit by the hurricane.
Meanwhile, Katrina has been gradually but steadily disappearing from prominent coverage in newspapers and on television. With President Bush no longer visiting the stricken areas, the media has apparently moved on.
In an interview, Rev. Tim Simpson of the Christian Alliance said, “With all of the coverage that this disaster received and with it having damaged the Bush administration's credibility so severely, it is amazing that these people have been so quickly forgotten by our government and that the administration has so blithely moved on to other things like immigration reform, as if the Gulf Coast was even stable, much less repaired.”
He added, “What this problem needs is some sustained attention by the executive branch. The President needs to pay more attention to the Gulf and less to giving his second term an ‘extreme makeover’. If people thought he was doing something to make the lives of average Americans better in the first place, he probably wouldn't need an extreme makeover!”
There are also indications that a proposed congressional investigation into government responses to the disaster could itself become bogged down in jurisdictional wrangles and partisan infighting.
From the very beginning of the post-Katrina disaster, Louisiana’s Democratic Senator Mary Landreau has adopted an aggressive posture in urging congress to appropriate massive sums for relief and reconstruction. But her in-your-face style has reportedly alienated some of her colleagues.
In contrast, Senators from Mississippi – parts of which were also devastated by the hurricane -- have been working more quietly behind the scenes to steer resources to their constituents.
But some Louisiana officials suggest that party politics is playing a role in the provision of resources. They point out that their state has a Democratic Governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and that New Orleans is a Democratic stronghold. Mississippi is heavily Republican. Its governor, Haley Barbour, is a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and has close ties to the Bush Administration.
Documentation released yesterday by Governor Blanco reveals the total chaos that existed between local, state and federal authorities in the days before, during and after the hurricane hit. They suggest that federal authorities were trying to shift the blame toward the Governor while, in fact, no one was in charge.
A FEMA spokesman said last week that the agency was working as fast as it could to aid the thousands still destitute from the storm.
"I don't know if you understand the magnitude of this disaster," said the
spokesman, James McIntyre. "Almost 1.5 million people have registered for
assistance, and we're working to help them all."
Mr. McIntyre continued: "We're working as fast as we possibly can to meet their
needs, and help them receive assistance for damages from these disasters."
Another FEMA official, the manager of an assistance center in New Orleans’ Lower Garden District, said the mental anguish of many of his clients was now
palpable.
"As people come in, they become desperate," said the official. "They're coming back, thinking they can live in their dwelling. And then all of a sudden, there's nothing."
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita left more than 281,000 Louisiana residents -- 14 percent of the workers in the state – jobless. That created as massive run of unemployment filings that threatens to bankrupt the state's unemployment trust fund.
In the first seven weeks after Katrina struck, Louisiana residents filed 281,745 hurricane-related claims for unemployment benefits, more than the 193,000 claims filed in all of 2004, according to figures released by the state Department of Labor. The number of filings is 13 times what is normal for a seven-week period.
THE PRICE OF PAYOLA NEWS
By William Fisher
Why are we Americans so outraged by the news that money can buy favorable press coverage?
Surely it’s not that many of us haven’t known for years that journalists in poor countries (and a few rich ones as well) are often venal.
I remember sitting with a journalist in El Salvador 20 years ago. He was interviewing me about an export promotion program I was managing for the US aid agency. I answered his questions and gave him lots of documents describing the program and explaining why it was important to his country. He thanked me, but on his way out, he turned and said, ”You know, my newspaper doesn’t pay very well. If I could have a small fee, I could write a longer story and it would probably appear on the front page.”
Twenty years later I heard just about the same story from a journalist in Cairo, who came to talk with me about a globalization program I was involved in. She called it ‘bakshish’ – a tip, an expression of my appreciation.
Needless to say, the aid agency didn’t pay – and the stories got published anyway.
No, what outrages many of us is not that corruption is rampant in most of the
so-called ‘developing nations’. Corruption is a way of life in poor countries, and is certainly not limited to the press (try getting through Customs sometime).
There are three other good reasons why this latest episode ought to make us angry.
First, as far as we know, the journalists didn’t ask for money – the Pentagon offered it. And it did so as part of an organized and well-funded program, complete with its own contractor.
Second, it did so in secret. Absent the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story, chances are that none of us would ever have known that bribing journalists for ‘good news’ coverage of the Iraq War was yet another example of our tax dollars at work. But then transparency has been poison to the Bush Administration.
Worst of all, the Defense Department’s payola scheme was being carried out at the same time the State Department’s exchange program was working to teach foreign journalists about the role and responsibility of a free press.
Why is this the worst aspect of this situation? Because it adds to the widespread perception of U.S. hypocrisy – at a time when we are spending millions trying to ‘win hearts and minds’ around the world.
The task that President Bush gave his longtime confidante Karen Hughes – now Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy – was arguably an impossible job in the first place. How does even the most competent diplomat go about convincing the world that Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, were aberrations, for which people were held accountable and sent to jail? How can Karen Hughes persuade anyone that America is a fair and compassionate society based on the rule of law when evidence keeps piling up that justice is meted out to everyone except the policy-makers who are actually responsible?
Now, the Pentagon has hammered another nail into the coffin of Public Diplomacy. That should make us all angry.
And, speaking of accountability, the Defense Department’s press payola program was the idea of a real person. And that idea was reviewed and approved by other real people.
Who are they and when will they be fired?
Appearing on a Sunday talk show, National Security Advisor Steven Hadley joined Iraqi journalists in the view that, if the DOD investigation supports the allegations, the Pentagon’s latest caper was bad policy and should be stopped.
But based on past performance, we’ll never know who was responsible for this brainstorm, and no one will ever be held accountable.
Not long ago, the media uncovered another neat little DOD program known as “Total Information Awareness”. The program was an advanced form of "data-mining," that would have effectively provided government officials immediate access to our personal information such as all of our communications (phone calls, emails and web searches), financial records, purchases, prescriptions, school records, medical records and travel history. Under this program, our entire lives would be catalogued and available to government officials. In the ensuing furor, the program was shut down. But nobody was reprimanded, much less fired.
This was no aberration; it has been a consistent pattern in the Bush Administration.
No doubt the DOD’s media payola program will soon be quietly shut down. But, we – the folks who financed it – have a right to know whose brilliant idea this was in the first place.
Why are we Americans so outraged by the news that money can buy favorable press coverage?
Surely it’s not that many of us haven’t known for years that journalists in poor countries (and a few rich ones as well) are often venal.
I remember sitting with a journalist in El Salvador 20 years ago. He was interviewing me about an export promotion program I was managing for the US aid agency. I answered his questions and gave him lots of documents describing the program and explaining why it was important to his country. He thanked me, but on his way out, he turned and said, ”You know, my newspaper doesn’t pay very well. If I could have a small fee, I could write a longer story and it would probably appear on the front page.”
Twenty years later I heard just about the same story from a journalist in Cairo, who came to talk with me about a globalization program I was involved in. She called it ‘bakshish’ – a tip, an expression of my appreciation.
Needless to say, the aid agency didn’t pay – and the stories got published anyway.
No, what outrages many of us is not that corruption is rampant in most of the
so-called ‘developing nations’. Corruption is a way of life in poor countries, and is certainly not limited to the press (try getting through Customs sometime).
There are three other good reasons why this latest episode ought to make us angry.
First, as far as we know, the journalists didn’t ask for money – the Pentagon offered it. And it did so as part of an organized and well-funded program, complete with its own contractor.
Second, it did so in secret. Absent the Los Angeles Times, which broke the story, chances are that none of us would ever have known that bribing journalists for ‘good news’ coverage of the Iraq War was yet another example of our tax dollars at work. But then transparency has been poison to the Bush Administration.
Worst of all, the Defense Department’s payola scheme was being carried out at the same time the State Department’s exchange program was working to teach foreign journalists about the role and responsibility of a free press.
Why is this the worst aspect of this situation? Because it adds to the widespread perception of U.S. hypocrisy – at a time when we are spending millions trying to ‘win hearts and minds’ around the world.
The task that President Bush gave his longtime confidante Karen Hughes – now Undersecretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy – was arguably an impossible job in the first place. How does even the most competent diplomat go about convincing the world that Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, were aberrations, for which people were held accountable and sent to jail? How can Karen Hughes persuade anyone that America is a fair and compassionate society based on the rule of law when evidence keeps piling up that justice is meted out to everyone except the policy-makers who are actually responsible?
Now, the Pentagon has hammered another nail into the coffin of Public Diplomacy. That should make us all angry.
And, speaking of accountability, the Defense Department’s press payola program was the idea of a real person. And that idea was reviewed and approved by other real people.
Who are they and when will they be fired?
Appearing on a Sunday talk show, National Security Advisor Steven Hadley joined Iraqi journalists in the view that, if the DOD investigation supports the allegations, the Pentagon’s latest caper was bad policy and should be stopped.
But based on past performance, we’ll never know who was responsible for this brainstorm, and no one will ever be held accountable.
Not long ago, the media uncovered another neat little DOD program known as “Total Information Awareness”. The program was an advanced form of "data-mining," that would have effectively provided government officials immediate access to our personal information such as all of our communications (phone calls, emails and web searches), financial records, purchases, prescriptions, school records, medical records and travel history. Under this program, our entire lives would be catalogued and available to government officials. In the ensuing furor, the program was shut down. But nobody was reprimanded, much less fired.
This was no aberration; it has been a consistent pattern in the Bush Administration.
No doubt the DOD’s media payola program will soon be quietly shut down. But, we – the folks who financed it – have a right to know whose brilliant idea this was in the first place.
Remembering Eleanor and the Human Rights Declaration
By William Fisher
Since Eleanor Roosevelt presented the International Declaration of Human Rights to the United Nations for ratification 37 years ago next week, the world has witnessed – and often ignored -- some of the most egregious rights violations in modern history.
Racial segregation and injustice toward people of color in the United States, Australia and the apartheid regime of South Africa. The Gulags of Russia.
Chemical warfare in Vietnam. Attempted genocide in Rwanda, by Idi Amin in Uganda, Pol Pot's "killing fields" in Cambodia, Sudan’s campaign against the people of Darfur, and the attempted genocide of Kurds in Iraq. Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and militia violence in Timor. Child labor. Gender discrimination. Denial of universal suffrage. Increasingly repressive governments from the Middle East and North Africa to Latin America to Asia restricting rights of press freedom and peaceful assembly. Failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Gross violations of the Geneva Conventions by the American military and ‘rendition’ of ‘ghost prisoners’ by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to countries known to torture prisoners. Widespread religious and economic discrimination.
The U.N. has also come under fierce criticism regarding its Human Rights Committee, whose members have often included countries known to be gross violators of basic rights.
But when Mrs. Roosevelt, wife of the then-American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, presented the draft Declaration to the U.N. membership, she said it “is based upon the spiritual fact that man must have freedom in which to develop his full stature and through common effort to raise the level of human dignity. We have much to do to fully achieve and to assure the rights set forth in this declaration. But having them put before us with the moral backing of 58 nations will be a great step forward.”
The non-binding Declaration of 1948 identified many rights: life, liberty and security of person, freedom from slavery and servitude, freedom from torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, equality before the law, not being subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile, freedom of movement and residence, the right to marriage and to found a family, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, peaceful assembly and association, work, health and education.
But, since its signing, an estimated 60 million people have died or been maimed by war and human rights abuses. And the number of victims continues to climb.
Some human rights observers examine this record and conclude that the United Nations is a toothless tiger, incapable – or unwilling – to move from rhetoric to action.
Others see the glass as half full and claim the historic declaration has made a major contribution toward focusing the world’s attention on the preservation of human rights, despite the failings of so many nations.
Among them is Dr. Omid Safi of Colgate University. He told IPS that the Declaration “has had a major worldwide impact on conversations about human rights. One of the best indications of the impact it has had on Muslims is the involvement of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi, who has worked extensively on harmonizing Islam and international human rights discourse.”
Rev. Tim Simpson of the Christian Alliance agrees. He told IPS, “The declaration is an important symbol. In itself it has not ameliorated human rights around the world, but it has given every member of the family of nations a standard by which to judge their own society's efforts. First World democracies could say to the developing world, ‘This is the direction in which you should strive to take your politics’, while Third World countries could remind the West whenever it strayed, ‘Don't forget the values that made your nations great’. Clearly, there is still much to do in the world to better human rights, but we have moved a great deal since the middle of the last century and the Declaration is part of the reason for that change.”
Also seeing the half-full glass is Chip Pitts, President of the Board of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), immediate past Chair of Amnesty International USA, and a professor of international human rights at the Stanford Law School. He told IPS, “The Declaration gave human rights traction; what we now need is action… A new global scrutiny exists as a result of modern communications, 24-hour media, and the explosion of nongovernmental organizations and global and regional enforcement mechanisms” since 1948.
He adds: “The Declaration worked incredibly well to establish and proliferate standards…The Declaration also offered an integrated view of civil and political rights, on one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights, on the other. That integrated view was challenged during the Cold War, when the U.S. supported the former rights and the Soviet Union supported only the latter. Space for a newly integrated view opened up briefly during the 90s, but has been closed again just when it is most needed -- during this new century, when the cracks and fissures from globalization are newly apparent.”
But Dr. Jack N. Behrman, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina who served as an official in the Kennedy Administration, takes a far less optimistic view.
He told IPS, “If human rights include non-discrimination and human dignity, it is not possible to have any measure of whether they are better now than before. Exposure of each is still not at all full, and what we do read and hear in the media does not give encouragement that we have improved. In fact, the U.S. practice of torture displays the opposite.”
Behrman says “One reason for not extending human rights is the continuing view that ‘I and My People’ deserve more than others do, and if they get it my way, they should be pushed down or aside. A second is fear -- of others and loss of ‘my’ position and prestige.
IPS asked commentators for this article to identify the major problems facing the U.N. and what the body could do to overcome them.
BORDC’s Pitts notes that “The international legal mechanisms remain weak -- e.g. the state-to-state complaint mechanisms of the UN treaty bodies, and the limited rights of individual petition operating there and in the regional human rights bodies (e.g. the Inter-American and European procedures). And these limited mechanisms have been weakened by powerful nations lately, especially the United States. For the United States to actively encourage so many nations to undermine fundamental human rights by adopting principles like those at the heart of its own ‘Patriot Act’ -- e.g. by condoning arbitrary and secret detention, disappearances, discrimination, reversal of the presumption of innocence and the right to fair trials, of the right to confront your accusers and the evidence against you, of the right to be free from cruel and inhuman treatment -- is a tragic setback to global peace, prosperity, and true security.”
His recommendation: “We need to move from standard setting to enforcement and implementation via application to non-state actors (e.g. corporations, al Qaeda) as well as states, and on the basis of a newly integrated vision of a world in which all human rights are respected and protected; but this is difficult without leadership of the sort that resulted in the Declaration, and political will to overcome narrow interests and recognize the immense practical importance of human rights.”
Dr. Safi thinks “more work can and should be done” in “working with religious reformers who want to find a religious voice for engaging universal human rights discourse, establishing international organizations for the monitoring and when necessary persecution of crimes against humanity, and considering issues such as poverty as central to help translate human rights discourse into a meaningful reality for the lives of the one billion human beings who live on a dollar a day, and for whom human rights discourse sounds like an elitist concern without a meaningful impact on their lives.”
But, according to Dr. Behrman: “The U.N. cannot possibly do enough, for it is composed of countries that do not ‘buy into’ the Declaration even if they have signed it. The basic obstacle to doing more is the attitude of individuals, ethnic groups, communities, and nations that supports separation instead of a willingness to embrace humanity. The Declaration itself cannot work at all; it depends on each country's implementation. And I have not read in the media that any country has shown the way in protecting human rights, particularly of minorities and immigrants.”
Professor Abdullahi An-Na'im of the Emory School of Law in Atlanta, voices a similar view. He told IPS, "Upholding and protecting human rights is the responsibility of every government, state, and their citizens, and not of the UN as an abstract entity. The UN is what its member states make of it, or fail to make of it. Every decision to act or fail to act, allocation of resources, and follow through, etc. is taken by government delegates."
He continued: "Human rights are always violated or protected on the ground, in real time and space, which is always within the jurisdiction of a state, not the UN as such. A violation can only happen when some human being does or fails to do something to another human being. That can only be done by the citizens of one state or another, and also within the territory of a state. The protection of human rights will not improve until we all accept our responsibility for this, and stop blaming the UN for our failures."
Since Eleanor Roosevelt presented the International Declaration of Human Rights to the United Nations for ratification 37 years ago next week, the world has witnessed – and often ignored -- some of the most egregious rights violations in modern history.
Racial segregation and injustice toward people of color in the United States, Australia and the apartheid regime of South Africa. The Gulags of Russia.
Chemical warfare in Vietnam. Attempted genocide in Rwanda, by Idi Amin in Uganda, Pol Pot's "killing fields" in Cambodia, Sudan’s campaign against the people of Darfur, and the attempted genocide of Kurds in Iraq. Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and militia violence in Timor. Child labor. Gender discrimination. Denial of universal suffrage. Increasingly repressive governments from the Middle East and North Africa to Latin America to Asia restricting rights of press freedom and peaceful assembly. Failure to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Gross violations of the Geneva Conventions by the American military and ‘rendition’ of ‘ghost prisoners’ by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to countries known to torture prisoners. Widespread religious and economic discrimination.
The U.N. has also come under fierce criticism regarding its Human Rights Committee, whose members have often included countries known to be gross violators of basic rights.
But when Mrs. Roosevelt, wife of the then-American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, presented the draft Declaration to the U.N. membership, she said it “is based upon the spiritual fact that man must have freedom in which to develop his full stature and through common effort to raise the level of human dignity. We have much to do to fully achieve and to assure the rights set forth in this declaration. But having them put before us with the moral backing of 58 nations will be a great step forward.”
The non-binding Declaration of 1948 identified many rights: life, liberty and security of person, freedom from slavery and servitude, freedom from torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, equality before the law, not being subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile, freedom of movement and residence, the right to marriage and to found a family, freedom of thought, conscience and religion, peaceful assembly and association, work, health and education.
But, since its signing, an estimated 60 million people have died or been maimed by war and human rights abuses. And the number of victims continues to climb.
Some human rights observers examine this record and conclude that the United Nations is a toothless tiger, incapable – or unwilling – to move from rhetoric to action.
Others see the glass as half full and claim the historic declaration has made a major contribution toward focusing the world’s attention on the preservation of human rights, despite the failings of so many nations.
Among them is Dr. Omid Safi of Colgate University. He told IPS that the Declaration “has had a major worldwide impact on conversations about human rights. One of the best indications of the impact it has had on Muslims is the involvement of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Ebadi, who has worked extensively on harmonizing Islam and international human rights discourse.”
Rev. Tim Simpson of the Christian Alliance agrees. He told IPS, “The declaration is an important symbol. In itself it has not ameliorated human rights around the world, but it has given every member of the family of nations a standard by which to judge their own society's efforts. First World democracies could say to the developing world, ‘This is the direction in which you should strive to take your politics’, while Third World countries could remind the West whenever it strayed, ‘Don't forget the values that made your nations great’. Clearly, there is still much to do in the world to better human rights, but we have moved a great deal since the middle of the last century and the Declaration is part of the reason for that change.”
Also seeing the half-full glass is Chip Pitts, President of the Board of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), immediate past Chair of Amnesty International USA, and a professor of international human rights at the Stanford Law School. He told IPS, “The Declaration gave human rights traction; what we now need is action… A new global scrutiny exists as a result of modern communications, 24-hour media, and the explosion of nongovernmental organizations and global and regional enforcement mechanisms” since 1948.
He adds: “The Declaration worked incredibly well to establish and proliferate standards…The Declaration also offered an integrated view of civil and political rights, on one hand, and economic, social, and cultural rights, on the other. That integrated view was challenged during the Cold War, when the U.S. supported the former rights and the Soviet Union supported only the latter. Space for a newly integrated view opened up briefly during the 90s, but has been closed again just when it is most needed -- during this new century, when the cracks and fissures from globalization are newly apparent.”
But Dr. Jack N. Behrman, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina who served as an official in the Kennedy Administration, takes a far less optimistic view.
He told IPS, “If human rights include non-discrimination and human dignity, it is not possible to have any measure of whether they are better now than before. Exposure of each is still not at all full, and what we do read and hear in the media does not give encouragement that we have improved. In fact, the U.S. practice of torture displays the opposite.”
Behrman says “One reason for not extending human rights is the continuing view that ‘I and My People’ deserve more than others do, and if they get it my way, they should be pushed down or aside. A second is fear -- of others and loss of ‘my’ position and prestige.
IPS asked commentators for this article to identify the major problems facing the U.N. and what the body could do to overcome them.
BORDC’s Pitts notes that “The international legal mechanisms remain weak -- e.g. the state-to-state complaint mechanisms of the UN treaty bodies, and the limited rights of individual petition operating there and in the regional human rights bodies (e.g. the Inter-American and European procedures). And these limited mechanisms have been weakened by powerful nations lately, especially the United States. For the United States to actively encourage so many nations to undermine fundamental human rights by adopting principles like those at the heart of its own ‘Patriot Act’ -- e.g. by condoning arbitrary and secret detention, disappearances, discrimination, reversal of the presumption of innocence and the right to fair trials, of the right to confront your accusers and the evidence against you, of the right to be free from cruel and inhuman treatment -- is a tragic setback to global peace, prosperity, and true security.”
His recommendation: “We need to move from standard setting to enforcement and implementation via application to non-state actors (e.g. corporations, al Qaeda) as well as states, and on the basis of a newly integrated vision of a world in which all human rights are respected and protected; but this is difficult without leadership of the sort that resulted in the Declaration, and political will to overcome narrow interests and recognize the immense practical importance of human rights.”
Dr. Safi thinks “more work can and should be done” in “working with religious reformers who want to find a religious voice for engaging universal human rights discourse, establishing international organizations for the monitoring and when necessary persecution of crimes against humanity, and considering issues such as poverty as central to help translate human rights discourse into a meaningful reality for the lives of the one billion human beings who live on a dollar a day, and for whom human rights discourse sounds like an elitist concern without a meaningful impact on their lives.”
But, according to Dr. Behrman: “The U.N. cannot possibly do enough, for it is composed of countries that do not ‘buy into’ the Declaration even if they have signed it. The basic obstacle to doing more is the attitude of individuals, ethnic groups, communities, and nations that supports separation instead of a willingness to embrace humanity. The Declaration itself cannot work at all; it depends on each country's implementation. And I have not read in the media that any country has shown the way in protecting human rights, particularly of minorities and immigrants.”
Professor Abdullahi An-Na'im of the Emory School of Law in Atlanta, voices a similar view. He told IPS, "Upholding and protecting human rights is the responsibility of every government, state, and their citizens, and not of the UN as an abstract entity. The UN is what its member states make of it, or fail to make of it. Every decision to act or fail to act, allocation of resources, and follow through, etc. is taken by government delegates."
He continued: "Human rights are always violated or protected on the ground, in real time and space, which is always within the jurisdiction of a state, not the UN as such. A violation can only happen when some human being does or fails to do something to another human being. That can only be done by the citizens of one state or another, and also within the territory of a state. The protection of human rights will not improve until we all accept our responsibility for this, and stop blaming the UN for our failures."
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
FORUM FOR THE (DISTANT) FUTURE
By William Fisher
A key pillar of the much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative of President George W. Bush has collapsed – brought down by Egypt’s insistence that Arab governments should have more control over grants from a new fund designed to help indigenous pro-democracy organizations.
At an international conference attended by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and designed to strengthen local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society in the Middle East, Egyptian officials pressed for language stipulating that only organizations legally registered with their governments were covered by the new fund, known as the Foundation for the Future.
Egypt’s law governing NGOs places numerous restrictions on these organizations.
The U.S. characterized the Egyptian position as inappropriate. "In our view and in the view of other delegations, this would have circumscribed NGO activity," said a senior U.S. official, who briefed reporters traveling with Rice.
The U.S. delegation expressed disappointment with Egypt, which has been a major American ally on key issues, including the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Bush administration's international fight against terrorism. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit reportedly left before the conference ended
The foundation has commitments of over $50 million to help
nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions and professional associations foster freedom and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. The United States has pledged $35 million.
Saudi Arabia and Oman initially supported the Egyptian position, but ultimately all the governments except Egypt agreed to remove language that would have given them control over foreign resources going to groups in their countries.
Several Arab delegates reportedly saw the language of the U.S. draft as another indication that the Bush Administration was attempting to impose democracy “from the outside”. Several delegations said that Arabs want more say in crafting criteria for change.
Egypt is the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid, after Israel; it receives roughly $2 billion in U.S. military and economic assistance annually. Since it made peace with Israel more than 25 years ago, it has received tens of billions of dollars from the U.S. It is home to more than half the Arab world's population.
The conference, known as the Forum for the Future, was held in Bahrain and brought together dozens of nations -- including 22 Arab countries and members of the G-8 industrialized countries.
The Forum is a joint U.S.-European initiative launched at the 2004 G-8 summit hosted by President Bush at Sea Island, Georgia. It is a key part of the
Bush Aministration’s Broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Initiative. The first Forum for the Future conference was held last year in Morocco.
Because of the Egyptian action, this year’s Forum ended without an official communiqué. Its planned final declaration would have committed MENA countries to "expand democratic practices, to enlarge participation in
political and public life, to foster the roles of civil society, including NGOs,
and to widen women's participation in the political, economic, social, cultural
and education fields and to reinforce their rights and status in society while
understanding that each country is unique."
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian democracy activist who attended the conference, was quoted by The Washington Post as charging that the government of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was holding the region "hostage to its despotism. By so doing," he said, "they leave the field clear for the theocrats . . .The theocrats still have the mosque," a reference to the fact that Egypt's proposed restriction would have limited funds available to secular democracy activists and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs.
Ibrahim directs a research and advocacy institute in Cairo that monitors elections, conducts voter education projects, and at times criticizes the Egyptian government. In the summer of 2000, he and 27 of his colleagues were arrested and tried before a state security court on several charges allegedly connected to their work. All 28 defendants were found guilty on some of these charges and several were sent to jail. Ibrahim was sentenced to a seven-year term. His conviction was overturned by the Egyptian Supreme Court and he was ultimately acquitted of all charges in a second trial and released in 2003.
Ibrahim heads the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies and is a professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo.
Dr. Omid Safi of Colgate University believes that "The failure of the Forum for the Future yet again brings to light the failure of the Bush administration to grasp that the majority of people in the Middle East will continue to judge U.S. actions not by fancy rhetoric and multi-million-dollar initiatives, but rather by the changing of our foreign policy to one that abides by international human rights agreements and empowers self-determination."
Chili Mallet, a prominent Lebanese law professor and currently a candidate for president of that country, takes a perhaps more fundamental view. Mallet, who played a key role in organizing MENA civil society groups to make their needs known to the G-8, said, “It is disappointing to see declarations going nowhere, when there was so much investment and work with civil society leaders in the countries involved. This only underlines what we described in New York in 2004, and in Rabat earlier this year, that only leaders that resemble the better side of society should be at the helm. This what we call the democratic imperative. The rest, including funding of groups, is secondary and trivial.”
Egypt’s Mubarak – the longest-serving leader in his country’s history – was elected in September to his fifth six-year term as president in the first election in which opposition candidates were allowed to compete. The Constitutional amendment allowing the more open polling was hailed by the Bush Administration as an important step in Egypt’s journey to democracy, but was widely criticized for placing improper restrictions on opposition freedom to field candidates. Mubarak won 88.6% of the votes cast.
But one authoritative observer, Prof. Ed Herman of the University of Pennsylvania, takes a decidedly skeptical and somewhat sinister view of the Forum and similar efforts to introduce democracy by strengthening local civil society.
“I’m afraid I can’t sympathize with what would appear to be the ‘democratic’ position on this, even while I think Mubarak’s and his allies’ behavior is outrageous. I wouldn’t let (George) Soros or The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) into my country if I was head of state as they are agents of an agenda that goes far beyond ‘democracy’, and amounts to a form of subversion.”
George Soros is a Hungarian-born American billionaire whose foundations have funded numerous pro-democracy programs in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere, as well as a not-for-profit group known as MoveOn.org, which was a major player in support of Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 election.
The National Endowment for Democracy is a U.S. Government-chartered private corporation whose programs are designed to assist pro-democracy forces in developing countries. Its funding comes largely from the U.S. Government.
Herman’s point of view: “Instead of CIA intervention sub rosa, we now use open methods of intervention aiming toward the same ends: the establishment of an amenable regime that will open its doors to foreign investment and align with the West. This is not giving people freedom or free choice, even though it may use that nominal language and even some degree of real choice in special circumstances. This program is not used in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Indonesia, but is pushed aggressively in places like Yugoslavia and Venezuela, and not for reasons that have anything to do with democracy in a positive sense.”
He adds: “The definition of an indigenous NGO is a bit tricky, as quite a few of them in contested terrain came into existence with external inspiration and money; and even apart from this it is dangerous to allow foreign resources to influence domestic choices. I can imagine a market savvy indigenous thinking—gee, if I do X I’ll be able to get big bucks from abroad.”
He asks: “Why can’t (Middle East governments and their NGOs) simply be allowed to work things out for themselves? Rotten governments very often are thrown out by their own people, and sometimes foreign intervention helps them preserve their power as they can appeal to national pride. If I had to choose between total non-intervention and real world intervention such as we see emanating from the US and Britain, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose non-intervention. Don’t we have enough of our own problems to keep our hands away from those of distant countries?”
Certainly, the U.S. and other G-8 countries have more than enough problems to deal with. And there is no doubt that all money comes with some strings attached, however subtle they may be. On the other hand, the problems facing civil society organizations under authoritarian governments are simply overwhelming. With state control of media, they have no voice. With restrictions on the contributions they can accept, they have few resources. With state security police watching their every move, they cannot expand their memberships.
We are not talking here about the G-8 invading these countries. We are not talking about the CIA infiltrating NGOs’ memberships. We are talking about modest financial support to strengthen civil society.
It seems to me that the over-arching question is that if wealthy democracies fail to reach out to help struggling reform movements in poorer countries, then who will?
In my view, nobody is not an option.
A key pillar of the much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative of President George W. Bush has collapsed – brought down by Egypt’s insistence that Arab governments should have more control over grants from a new fund designed to help indigenous pro-democracy organizations.
At an international conference attended by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and designed to strengthen local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society in the Middle East, Egyptian officials pressed for language stipulating that only organizations legally registered with their governments were covered by the new fund, known as the Foundation for the Future.
Egypt’s law governing NGOs places numerous restrictions on these organizations.
The U.S. characterized the Egyptian position as inappropriate. "In our view and in the view of other delegations, this would have circumscribed NGO activity," said a senior U.S. official, who briefed reporters traveling with Rice.
The U.S. delegation expressed disappointment with Egypt, which has been a major American ally on key issues, including the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Bush administration's international fight against terrorism. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit reportedly left before the conference ended
The foundation has commitments of over $50 million to help
nongovernmental organizations, academic institutions and professional associations foster freedom and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa. The United States has pledged $35 million.
Saudi Arabia and Oman initially supported the Egyptian position, but ultimately all the governments except Egypt agreed to remove language that would have given them control over foreign resources going to groups in their countries.
Several Arab delegates reportedly saw the language of the U.S. draft as another indication that the Bush Administration was attempting to impose democracy “from the outside”. Several delegations said that Arabs want more say in crafting criteria for change.
Egypt is the second-largest recipient of U.S. aid, after Israel; it receives roughly $2 billion in U.S. military and economic assistance annually. Since it made peace with Israel more than 25 years ago, it has received tens of billions of dollars from the U.S. It is home to more than half the Arab world's population.
The conference, known as the Forum for the Future, was held in Bahrain and brought together dozens of nations -- including 22 Arab countries and members of the G-8 industrialized countries.
The Forum is a joint U.S.-European initiative launched at the 2004 G-8 summit hosted by President Bush at Sea Island, Georgia. It is a key part of the
Bush Aministration’s Broader Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Initiative. The first Forum for the Future conference was held last year in Morocco.
Because of the Egyptian action, this year’s Forum ended without an official communiqué. Its planned final declaration would have committed MENA countries to "expand democratic practices, to enlarge participation in
political and public life, to foster the roles of civil society, including NGOs,
and to widen women's participation in the political, economic, social, cultural
and education fields and to reinforce their rights and status in society while
understanding that each country is unique."
Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian democracy activist who attended the conference, was quoted by The Washington Post as charging that the government of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was holding the region "hostage to its despotism. By so doing," he said, "they leave the field clear for the theocrats . . .The theocrats still have the mosque," a reference to the fact that Egypt's proposed restriction would have limited funds available to secular democracy activists and nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs.
Ibrahim directs a research and advocacy institute in Cairo that monitors elections, conducts voter education projects, and at times criticizes the Egyptian government. In the summer of 2000, he and 27 of his colleagues were arrested and tried before a state security court on several charges allegedly connected to their work. All 28 defendants were found guilty on some of these charges and several were sent to jail. Ibrahim was sentenced to a seven-year term. His conviction was overturned by the Egyptian Supreme Court and he was ultimately acquitted of all charges in a second trial and released in 2003.
Ibrahim heads the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies and is a professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo.
Dr. Omid Safi of Colgate University believes that "The failure of the Forum for the Future yet again brings to light the failure of the Bush administration to grasp that the majority of people in the Middle East will continue to judge U.S. actions not by fancy rhetoric and multi-million-dollar initiatives, but rather by the changing of our foreign policy to one that abides by international human rights agreements and empowers self-determination."
Chili Mallet, a prominent Lebanese law professor and currently a candidate for president of that country, takes a perhaps more fundamental view. Mallet, who played a key role in organizing MENA civil society groups to make their needs known to the G-8, said, “It is disappointing to see declarations going nowhere, when there was so much investment and work with civil society leaders in the countries involved. This only underlines what we described in New York in 2004, and in Rabat earlier this year, that only leaders that resemble the better side of society should be at the helm. This what we call the democratic imperative. The rest, including funding of groups, is secondary and trivial.”
Egypt’s Mubarak – the longest-serving leader in his country’s history – was elected in September to his fifth six-year term as president in the first election in which opposition candidates were allowed to compete. The Constitutional amendment allowing the more open polling was hailed by the Bush Administration as an important step in Egypt’s journey to democracy, but was widely criticized for placing improper restrictions on opposition freedom to field candidates. Mubarak won 88.6% of the votes cast.
But one authoritative observer, Prof. Ed Herman of the University of Pennsylvania, takes a decidedly skeptical and somewhat sinister view of the Forum and similar efforts to introduce democracy by strengthening local civil society.
“I’m afraid I can’t sympathize with what would appear to be the ‘democratic’ position on this, even while I think Mubarak’s and his allies’ behavior is outrageous. I wouldn’t let (George) Soros or The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) into my country if I was head of state as they are agents of an agenda that goes far beyond ‘democracy’, and amounts to a form of subversion.”
George Soros is a Hungarian-born American billionaire whose foundations have funded numerous pro-democracy programs in Central and Eastern Europe and elsewhere, as well as a not-for-profit group known as MoveOn.org, which was a major player in support of Presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 election.
The National Endowment for Democracy is a U.S. Government-chartered private corporation whose programs are designed to assist pro-democracy forces in developing countries. Its funding comes largely from the U.S. Government.
Herman’s point of view: “Instead of CIA intervention sub rosa, we now use open methods of intervention aiming toward the same ends: the establishment of an amenable regime that will open its doors to foreign investment and align with the West. This is not giving people freedom or free choice, even though it may use that nominal language and even some degree of real choice in special circumstances. This program is not used in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia or Indonesia, but is pushed aggressively in places like Yugoslavia and Venezuela, and not for reasons that have anything to do with democracy in a positive sense.”
He adds: “The definition of an indigenous NGO is a bit tricky, as quite a few of them in contested terrain came into existence with external inspiration and money; and even apart from this it is dangerous to allow foreign resources to influence domestic choices. I can imagine a market savvy indigenous thinking—gee, if I do X I’ll be able to get big bucks from abroad.”
He asks: “Why can’t (Middle East governments and their NGOs) simply be allowed to work things out for themselves? Rotten governments very often are thrown out by their own people, and sometimes foreign intervention helps them preserve their power as they can appeal to national pride. If I had to choose between total non-intervention and real world intervention such as we see emanating from the US and Britain, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose non-intervention. Don’t we have enough of our own problems to keep our hands away from those of distant countries?”
Certainly, the U.S. and other G-8 countries have more than enough problems to deal with. And there is no doubt that all money comes with some strings attached, however subtle they may be. On the other hand, the problems facing civil society organizations under authoritarian governments are simply overwhelming. With state control of media, they have no voice. With restrictions on the contributions they can accept, they have few resources. With state security police watching their every move, they cannot expand their memberships.
We are not talking here about the G-8 invading these countries. We are not talking about the CIA infiltrating NGOs’ memberships. We are talking about modest financial support to strengthen civil society.
It seems to me that the over-arching question is that if wealthy democracies fail to reach out to help struggling reform movements in poorer countries, then who will?
In my view, nobody is not an option.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
America's Corporatocracy Says "No MAS"
by Jason Miller
While he may be dead in the corporal sense, the spirit of Simon Bolivar continues to wage the struggle for freedom from oppression. Hugo Chavez is perhaps the most familiar incarnation of Bolivar's élan vital as he defies the neocolonial policies of the United States, a nation which has supplanted the European colonial empires as looters of Latin American bounty. Bolivar's spiritual essence also burns brightly in Evo Morales, another leader of the poor and oppressed in Latin America. Barring a CIA-orchestrated assasination or sabotage of the election process, in December Morales will be the next democratically-elected president of Bolivia. And deservedly so.
The only thing they have to fear is fear itself....or is there something more?
As they have with Chavez, the United States government and its lapdogs in the mainstream media have vilified Morales. Morales and Chavez are both portrayed as "threats" to the United States and have been characterized as "enemies". It is mind-boggling that the leaders of the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of humanity can view these men or their tiny nations (neither of which have the military might to overpower the state of Rhode Island) as legitimate threats. Is the US power elite suffering from delusional paranoia? Actually, their fears are well-founded, but one needs to analyze the situation a bit more closely to discern the root cause of their trepidations.
The "Least of my Brethren"
Hugo Chavez has publicly castigated the United States (and Bush II in particular) on several occasions. Drawing calls for his assasination from "respected US Christian leader" Pat Robertson, Chavez has clearly stated his intention to use his vast petroleum resources as a geopolitical weapon against the United States. He drew thunderous applause at the UN for his speech in which he maligned the United States government and its policies. As the democratically-elected president of Venezuela, a member of the indigenous population, a survivor of a US-sponsored coup in 2002, and the winner of a recall referendum in 2004, Chavez has utilized his nation's rich oil reserves to wage a war on poverty. He has used oil revenues to provide schools, medical care, and basic necessities at subsidized prices to the 80% of Venezuelans who live below the poverty line. He has also instituted land reforms to provide impoverished farmers an opportunity at ownership.
Aligning himself closely with Fidel Castro, a man who has been a thorn in the collective sides of the United States ruling elite for years, Chavez has drawn further ire from US leaders. Since 1959, Castro has bedeviled the US government as the Cuban leader who deposed Fulgencio Batista, a ruthless dictator whom the US government supported. While ruling Cuba, Batista widened the wealth gap to a chasm (sound familiar?) and dispatched his death squads, which captured, tortured, and murdered thousands of "Leftists". Castro is certainly no saint, but Cuba was not exactly a paradise under America's proxy either.
Trading oil for the use of many of Cuba's superbly-trained physicians, Chavez has parlayed his relationship with Castro to an advantage for the poor of his nation. Ironically, the infinitely benevolent and wise leaders of the United States rejected offers of help from both Chavez and Castro during Hurricane Katrina. While the Bush regime spurned overtures of help from our "enemies", over a thousand Americans died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a result of criminal neglect and incompetence on the part of a US government now geared almost solely to represent and sustain the interests of the wealthy, corporations and the military industrial complex.
Chavez is not alone as the revolution gains momentum
Meanwhile, in Bolivia, a man named Evo Morales represents another incarnation of the spirit of Simon Bolivar as he fights to squelch US imperial interests in his nation. Standing on the brink of winning the presidency in the elections scheduled for December of 2005, Morales represents the next link in the chain of fierce Latin American resistance to US exploitation of their people and resources.
Juan Evo Morales Ayma was born in 1959 in Orinco to a family of indigenous Quechuans, but moved to Chapare province in the 1980's to cultivate coca leaf. Growing coca leaf is a practice dating back to the Incan Empire. While the Indigenous people of Bolivia, who comprise over 50% of the population, chew coca leaves to ease hunger and make folk medicines, coca leaf is also the primary ingredient in cocaine. As part of its "War on Drugs", the United States began a program in the 1990's to eradicate coca production. In 1998, Plan Dignity, a barbaric and violent US-sponsored effort, resulted in the elimination of nearly 80% of coca production and left the campesinos in Bolivia with no economically viable alternative crops to cultivate. Supplied and supported by the United States, the Expeditionary Task Force, a paramilitary unit which the locals called "America's Mercenaries", reportedly engaged in violence and murder. Just imagine if Canada financed paramilitary forces in the United States which wiped out 80% of the production of Sudafed and Iodine because they are used in the manufacture of crystal meth. How long would Americans stand for that?
In response to the intrusive, oppressive policies of the United States and its puppet Bolivian president, Hugo Banzer, Evo Morales emerged as a leader of the Cocaleros, an opposition movement comprised primarily of coca growers. His support in Chapare and Carrasco de Cochabamba was strong enough that he was elected to the national Congress in Bolivia in 1997 by the widest margin amongst the 68 Congresspeople who won in that election.
In the words of Morales:
'There is a unanimous defence of coca because the coca leaf is becoming the banner for national unity, a symbol of national unity in defence of our dignity. Since coca is a victim of the United States, as coca growers we are also victims of the United States, but then we rise up to question these policies to eradicate coca.
'Now is the moment to see the defence of coca as the defence of all natural resources, just like hydrocarbon, oil, gas; and this consciousness is growing. That is why it is an issue of national unity.'
As a leader with widespread popular support, and a powerful force within the Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, Morales began to broaden his agenda beyond that of supporting the cultivation of coca. Like Chavez in Venezuela, Morales has emerged as a champion of the poor and oppressed, and by default, a fierce opponent of the blatantly corrupt plutocracy in Washington DC.
The (Corporate) "American Way"
In early 2000, Morales began intense efforts to stymie the imperial policies of the United States, which enable multinational corporations to engage in obscene exploitation of other nations. Demonstrating the depths of the cruelty of the "free market", neoliberal economic policies which the corporatocracy of the United States imposes on other nations, a large multi-national corporation called Aguas de Tanari was on the verge of purchasing the water works in Cochabamba, a Morales strong-hold. Under their business plan, 65% of the locals would not have been able to afford drinking water. Supporting Aguas de Tanari's dreams of imposing nightmares on the people, local laws were passed which criminalized catching and using rain water. Morales and his allies led powerful protests, which included road-blocks, and eventually crushed the despicable effort to inflict misery and suffering to generate profit.
Down, but definitely not out
In early 2002, the Bolivian government issued Supreme Decree 26415, which essentially prohibited the sale of coca-leaf. Riots broke out in Sacaba, which was home to a legal coca market. Four campesinos and three Bolivian soldiers were killed. Pressure from the US embassy led to the removal of Morales from his Congressional seat for his involvement in so called "terrorism" in Sacaba. His removal was later determined to be unconstitutional.
The next round of elections in Bolivia in June of 2002 whisked Morales back into office. In pre-election polling, MAS barely registered with a paltry 4%. However, thanks to powerful opposition to US presence and influence in their nation, 20.94% of Bolivians supported MAS in the election. MAS came in only slightly behind the winning party. Unfortunately for the Bolivian people, they traded one proponent of US policies for another. Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada replaced Jorge Quiroga.
Leave our hydrocarbons alone!
Lozada's allegiance to US interests eventually cost him his presidency. Bolivia possesses vast natural gas reserves, which until the Bolivian Gas War in 2003, were exploited by multi-nationals through neoliberal policies instituted by the United States. In October of 2003, the Bolivian military killed nearly one hundred members of the poor and working class who participated in strikes and created road blocks in opposition to the theft of their nation's precious resources. Lozada resigned and fled the country, leaving his vice-president, Carlos Mesa, to rule Bolivia.
More protests against Bolivian government-enabled exploitation of the nation's hydrocarbon resources erupted in mid-2005. Morales was instrumental in the protests and in the subsequent ouster of Mesa as president. Attacking from yet another angle, Morales (and his increasingly powerful MAS party) also called for the indictments of Mesa, Quiroga, and Lozada for their complicity in partnering with multi-national corporations in plundering Bolivian oil and natural gas (without the approval of the Bolivian Congress).
Take another moment to empathize here
Envision LUKoil of Russia seizing control of the oil industry in Alaska. In return for paying small royalties and minimal taxes, LUKoil gets to pump, keep, and sell as much American oil as it chooses. LUKoil profits handsomely while consuming our resources with minimal return to the United States. Somehow, I do not think that would fly with the American public. Yet our government enables powerful corporations to treat Bolivians in this manner. Maybe that is why they are called free market policies. Hypocrisy be thy name.
As Morales gears up for the impending presidential election in December, his commitment to economic justice and human rights in the face of the oppressive, malevolent agenda of the United States government and its proxies in Bolivia remains clear and strong.
Summarizing his position succinctly, Morales stated,
"The worst enemy of humanity is capitalism. That is what provokes uprisings like our own, a rebellion against a system, against a neoliberal model, which is the representation of a savage capitalism. If the entire world doesn't acknowledge this reality, that the national states are not providing even minimally for health, education and nourishment, then each day the most fundamental human rights are being violated."
To what conclusion do the facts lead?
After careful consideration of the facts, it becomes quite clear why the corporate interests and incredibly wealthy hijackers of our constitutional republic in the United States are so desperate to convince their "electorate" that men like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are our "enemies". These men do pose a grave threat. If they maintain their hold on power and continue to advance the Bolivarian Revolution throughout Central and South America, powerful corporations will lose their capacity to commit legal larceny by plundering resources (a practice which leaves much of the Latin American population living in abject poverty). Morales is undermining the charade our government calls the "War on Drugs", which is simply another means of employing military intervention in the region and supporting ruthless leaders who implement policies favorable to the interests of the wealthy elite of the United States.
Yes, Morales is a dangerous man indeed. Like Chavez, he is rising like an ominous storm on the horizon, poised to strike powerful bolts of lightening through the fat wallets of the proponents of neoliberal economic policies (which are modern means of non-violent colonization). The Bush regime has legitimate reasons for fearing these men. They are imminent threats to the health of US cash cows throughout the Latin American region.
Based on the fact that the US government and media are defining Morales and Chavez as our "enemies" because they champion human rights and economic equality for their people in the face of American neocolonialism, I conclude that the Bush regime and many members of our Fourth Estate are morally bankrupt. What is even more distressing about their persistent efforts to convince Americans that Morales and Chavez are Antichrists is the fact that those who stand to "suffer" from this Bolivarian "diabolical scheme" to end US economic exploitation and oppression in Latin America represent a small fraction of the US population.
Who will "feel the pain" if multi-nationals can no longer steal from Latin Americans?
Members of the Bush regime....do you really care?
The 1% of Americans who own 33% of the wealth....yawn
Executives and major share-holders of large corporations.....oh, the pain, the pain
Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez are friends to the majority of Americans, and to most of humanity. Each step of success for the Bolivarian Revolution will be a step in the evolution of humanity toward the fulfillment of the teachings and dreams of Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and other great spiritual leaders throughout human history. Progress for the Bolivarians means regression for the cancer on humanity referred to as neoliberalism, or more appropriately, economic imperial conquest.
So the next time Fox or CNN portrays Morales and Chavez as enemies of the United States, remember that sometimes rooting for the "bad guys" can be a good thing.
While he may be dead in the corporal sense, the spirit of Simon Bolivar continues to wage the struggle for freedom from oppression. Hugo Chavez is perhaps the most familiar incarnation of Bolivar's élan vital as he defies the neocolonial policies of the United States, a nation which has supplanted the European colonial empires as looters of Latin American bounty. Bolivar's spiritual essence also burns brightly in Evo Morales, another leader of the poor and oppressed in Latin America. Barring a CIA-orchestrated assasination or sabotage of the election process, in December Morales will be the next democratically-elected president of Bolivia. And deservedly so.
The only thing they have to fear is fear itself....or is there something more?
As they have with Chavez, the United States government and its lapdogs in the mainstream media have vilified Morales. Morales and Chavez are both portrayed as "threats" to the United States and have been characterized as "enemies". It is mind-boggling that the leaders of the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of humanity can view these men or their tiny nations (neither of which have the military might to overpower the state of Rhode Island) as legitimate threats. Is the US power elite suffering from delusional paranoia? Actually, their fears are well-founded, but one needs to analyze the situation a bit more closely to discern the root cause of their trepidations.
The "Least of my Brethren"
Hugo Chavez has publicly castigated the United States (and Bush II in particular) on several occasions. Drawing calls for his assasination from "respected US Christian leader" Pat Robertson, Chavez has clearly stated his intention to use his vast petroleum resources as a geopolitical weapon against the United States. He drew thunderous applause at the UN for his speech in which he maligned the United States government and its policies. As the democratically-elected president of Venezuela, a member of the indigenous population, a survivor of a US-sponsored coup in 2002, and the winner of a recall referendum in 2004, Chavez has utilized his nation's rich oil reserves to wage a war on poverty. He has used oil revenues to provide schools, medical care, and basic necessities at subsidized prices to the 80% of Venezuelans who live below the poverty line. He has also instituted land reforms to provide impoverished farmers an opportunity at ownership.
Aligning himself closely with Fidel Castro, a man who has been a thorn in the collective sides of the United States ruling elite for years, Chavez has drawn further ire from US leaders. Since 1959, Castro has bedeviled the US government as the Cuban leader who deposed Fulgencio Batista, a ruthless dictator whom the US government supported. While ruling Cuba, Batista widened the wealth gap to a chasm (sound familiar?) and dispatched his death squads, which captured, tortured, and murdered thousands of "Leftists". Castro is certainly no saint, but Cuba was not exactly a paradise under America's proxy either.
Trading oil for the use of many of Cuba's superbly-trained physicians, Chavez has parlayed his relationship with Castro to an advantage for the poor of his nation. Ironically, the infinitely benevolent and wise leaders of the United States rejected offers of help from both Chavez and Castro during Hurricane Katrina. While the Bush regime spurned overtures of help from our "enemies", over a thousand Americans died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a result of criminal neglect and incompetence on the part of a US government now geared almost solely to represent and sustain the interests of the wealthy, corporations and the military industrial complex.
Chavez is not alone as the revolution gains momentum
Meanwhile, in Bolivia, a man named Evo Morales represents another incarnation of the spirit of Simon Bolivar as he fights to squelch US imperial interests in his nation. Standing on the brink of winning the presidency in the elections scheduled for December of 2005, Morales represents the next link in the chain of fierce Latin American resistance to US exploitation of their people and resources.
Juan Evo Morales Ayma was born in 1959 in Orinco to a family of indigenous Quechuans, but moved to Chapare province in the 1980's to cultivate coca leaf. Growing coca leaf is a practice dating back to the Incan Empire. While the Indigenous people of Bolivia, who comprise over 50% of the population, chew coca leaves to ease hunger and make folk medicines, coca leaf is also the primary ingredient in cocaine. As part of its "War on Drugs", the United States began a program in the 1990's to eradicate coca production. In 1998, Plan Dignity, a barbaric and violent US-sponsored effort, resulted in the elimination of nearly 80% of coca production and left the campesinos in Bolivia with no economically viable alternative crops to cultivate. Supplied and supported by the United States, the Expeditionary Task Force, a paramilitary unit which the locals called "America's Mercenaries", reportedly engaged in violence and murder. Just imagine if Canada financed paramilitary forces in the United States which wiped out 80% of the production of Sudafed and Iodine because they are used in the manufacture of crystal meth. How long would Americans stand for that?
In response to the intrusive, oppressive policies of the United States and its puppet Bolivian president, Hugo Banzer, Evo Morales emerged as a leader of the Cocaleros, an opposition movement comprised primarily of coca growers. His support in Chapare and Carrasco de Cochabamba was strong enough that he was elected to the national Congress in Bolivia in 1997 by the widest margin amongst the 68 Congresspeople who won in that election.
In the words of Morales:
'There is a unanimous defence of coca because the coca leaf is becoming the banner for national unity, a symbol of national unity in defence of our dignity. Since coca is a victim of the United States, as coca growers we are also victims of the United States, but then we rise up to question these policies to eradicate coca.
'Now is the moment to see the defence of coca as the defence of all natural resources, just like hydrocarbon, oil, gas; and this consciousness is growing. That is why it is an issue of national unity.'
As a leader with widespread popular support, and a powerful force within the Movement to Socialism (MAS) party, Morales began to broaden his agenda beyond that of supporting the cultivation of coca. Like Chavez in Venezuela, Morales has emerged as a champion of the poor and oppressed, and by default, a fierce opponent of the blatantly corrupt plutocracy in Washington DC.
The (Corporate) "American Way"
In early 2000, Morales began intense efforts to stymie the imperial policies of the United States, which enable multinational corporations to engage in obscene exploitation of other nations. Demonstrating the depths of the cruelty of the "free market", neoliberal economic policies which the corporatocracy of the United States imposes on other nations, a large multi-national corporation called Aguas de Tanari was on the verge of purchasing the water works in Cochabamba, a Morales strong-hold. Under their business plan, 65% of the locals would not have been able to afford drinking water. Supporting Aguas de Tanari's dreams of imposing nightmares on the people, local laws were passed which criminalized catching and using rain water. Morales and his allies led powerful protests, which included road-blocks, and eventually crushed the despicable effort to inflict misery and suffering to generate profit.
Down, but definitely not out
In early 2002, the Bolivian government issued Supreme Decree 26415, which essentially prohibited the sale of coca-leaf. Riots broke out in Sacaba, which was home to a legal coca market. Four campesinos and three Bolivian soldiers were killed. Pressure from the US embassy led to the removal of Morales from his Congressional seat for his involvement in so called "terrorism" in Sacaba. His removal was later determined to be unconstitutional.
The next round of elections in Bolivia in June of 2002 whisked Morales back into office. In pre-election polling, MAS barely registered with a paltry 4%. However, thanks to powerful opposition to US presence and influence in their nation, 20.94% of Bolivians supported MAS in the election. MAS came in only slightly behind the winning party. Unfortunately for the Bolivian people, they traded one proponent of US policies for another. Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada replaced Jorge Quiroga.
Leave our hydrocarbons alone!
Lozada's allegiance to US interests eventually cost him his presidency. Bolivia possesses vast natural gas reserves, which until the Bolivian Gas War in 2003, were exploited by multi-nationals through neoliberal policies instituted by the United States. In October of 2003, the Bolivian military killed nearly one hundred members of the poor and working class who participated in strikes and created road blocks in opposition to the theft of their nation's precious resources. Lozada resigned and fled the country, leaving his vice-president, Carlos Mesa, to rule Bolivia.
More protests against Bolivian government-enabled exploitation of the nation's hydrocarbon resources erupted in mid-2005. Morales was instrumental in the protests and in the subsequent ouster of Mesa as president. Attacking from yet another angle, Morales (and his increasingly powerful MAS party) also called for the indictments of Mesa, Quiroga, and Lozada for their complicity in partnering with multi-national corporations in plundering Bolivian oil and natural gas (without the approval of the Bolivian Congress).
Take another moment to empathize here
Envision LUKoil of Russia seizing control of the oil industry in Alaska. In return for paying small royalties and minimal taxes, LUKoil gets to pump, keep, and sell as much American oil as it chooses. LUKoil profits handsomely while consuming our resources with minimal return to the United States. Somehow, I do not think that would fly with the American public. Yet our government enables powerful corporations to treat Bolivians in this manner. Maybe that is why they are called free market policies. Hypocrisy be thy name.
As Morales gears up for the impending presidential election in December, his commitment to economic justice and human rights in the face of the oppressive, malevolent agenda of the United States government and its proxies in Bolivia remains clear and strong.
Summarizing his position succinctly, Morales stated,
"The worst enemy of humanity is capitalism. That is what provokes uprisings like our own, a rebellion against a system, against a neoliberal model, which is the representation of a savage capitalism. If the entire world doesn't acknowledge this reality, that the national states are not providing even minimally for health, education and nourishment, then each day the most fundamental human rights are being violated."
To what conclusion do the facts lead?
After careful consideration of the facts, it becomes quite clear why the corporate interests and incredibly wealthy hijackers of our constitutional republic in the United States are so desperate to convince their "electorate" that men like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are our "enemies". These men do pose a grave threat. If they maintain their hold on power and continue to advance the Bolivarian Revolution throughout Central and South America, powerful corporations will lose their capacity to commit legal larceny by plundering resources (a practice which leaves much of the Latin American population living in abject poverty). Morales is undermining the charade our government calls the "War on Drugs", which is simply another means of employing military intervention in the region and supporting ruthless leaders who implement policies favorable to the interests of the wealthy elite of the United States.
Yes, Morales is a dangerous man indeed. Like Chavez, he is rising like an ominous storm on the horizon, poised to strike powerful bolts of lightening through the fat wallets of the proponents of neoliberal economic policies (which are modern means of non-violent colonization). The Bush regime has legitimate reasons for fearing these men. They are imminent threats to the health of US cash cows throughout the Latin American region.
Based on the fact that the US government and media are defining Morales and Chavez as our "enemies" because they champion human rights and economic equality for their people in the face of American neocolonialism, I conclude that the Bush regime and many members of our Fourth Estate are morally bankrupt. What is even more distressing about their persistent efforts to convince Americans that Morales and Chavez are Antichrists is the fact that those who stand to "suffer" from this Bolivarian "diabolical scheme" to end US economic exploitation and oppression in Latin America represent a small fraction of the US population.
Who will "feel the pain" if multi-nationals can no longer steal from Latin Americans?
Members of the Bush regime....do you really care?
The 1% of Americans who own 33% of the wealth....yawn
Executives and major share-holders of large corporations.....oh, the pain, the pain
Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez are friends to the majority of Americans, and to most of humanity. Each step of success for the Bolivarian Revolution will be a step in the evolution of humanity toward the fulfillment of the teachings and dreams of Christ, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and other great spiritual leaders throughout human history. Progress for the Bolivarians means regression for the cancer on humanity referred to as neoliberalism, or more appropriately, economic imperial conquest.
So the next time Fox or CNN portrays Morales and Chavez as enemies of the United States, remember that sometimes rooting for the "bad guys" can be a good thing.
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