Ricardo Haussmann – a reliable commentator for the Guardian on Venezuela?
By Dr Francisco Dominguez | Venezuela Solidarity Campaign | March 3, 2013
Last Monday the Guardian Comment is Free website carried a piece by Ricardo Haussmann on Venezuela entitled The legacy of Hugo Chávez: Low growth, high inflation, intimidation.
The piece painted a doomsday scenario for modern day Venezuela, arguing that “Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez is a master at holding onto power, but it has cost his country and people dearly.”
Ironically this came out just days before the Venezuelan economy was announced to have grown 5.6% in 2012 on the back of a huge housing stimulus.
Worse still, the piece appeared just a couple of days before the anniversary of the ‘Caracazo’ of 1989. The Caracazo is the day when the Venezuelan people rose up against a package of cuts forced on them. Over two thousand people were then brutally executed by state security forces in what has been termed Venezuela’s worst human rights disaster in history. In stark contrast, precisely on February 27 (2013), Venezuela was elected by about three quarters of the governments represented in the UN to become permanent member of the United Nations Human rights Council for three years.
What is the link between this and Ricardo Haussmann?
In 1989, he was an economic advisors to the soon-to-be-disgraced president Carlos Andres Perez who carried out the cuts and subsequent Caracazo violence.
As this academic paper points out:
“Pérez appointed to his economic cabinet a team of radically pro-market technocrats largely recruited from the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración (IESA). These ministers–among whom were Miguel Rodríguez, Moisés Naím, Ricardo Haussmann, Gerver Torres, and Julián Villalba–became known as the “IESA Boys,” by analogy to the “Chicago Boys” of Pinochet’s Chile. This team designed the shock “paquete” that Pérez promised in his inaugural address in February 1989 and put into effect two weeks later”.
After that, from 1992 to 1993, Haussmann served as Minister of Planning in Venezuela and as a member of the Board of the Central Bank of Venezuela also under Carlos Andres Perez. Clearly the ‘Caracazo’ was not severe enough to break his link with President Perez.
Around the same time, Haussmann was Chair of the IMF-World Bank Development Committee. Judging by the nature and tone of his attack on the current Venezuelan government, one may have expected this to have been the dawn of some golden IMF-sponsored growth across Latin America.
Yet as economist Mark Weisbrot has pointed out, this period marked the worst economic performance of the Continent in a century. Only with the recent leftward shift (in many ways led by Venezuela) was there a much needed combination of economic growth and social justice.
Rejected by the Carter Centre
Haussmann later based himself in the US at Harvard, but came to prominence again following the 2004 recall referendum against Hugo Chavez, when he published a paper claiming that “statistically” the outcome could have been the result of fraud. At the time, the Wall Street Journal was amongst those who recycled the claim. The well respected Carter Centre debunked the myth and the politically motivated claims of fraud by stating clearly that “the results were accurate”.
Haussmann’s and Venezuela’s new right
In the run up to last October’s election, won by Hugo Chavez in a landslide victory, it was Haussmann (acting as an advisor to the defeated right-wing candidate Henrique Capriles) who claimed the right-wing opposition would have 200,000 people at polling stations and could then announce their own results before the official ones.
Luckily this plan – which was seen by many as the start of a worrying destabilisation aimed at getting the legitimate results not recognised internationally – failed to pick up momentum due to the scale of Hugo Chavez’s victory, with Capriles himself recognising the results. But this was not before the Spanish newspaper ABC had published a fake exit poll claiming Hugo Chavez had lost.
Surely his role as an advisor to the right-wing political candidate should have featured in the Guardian piece. This would better explain the reasons for the content of the piece.
Likewise sections of the British media have also recently quoted Diego Arria (who denies the 2002 coup in Venezuela was even a coup!) and the 2002 coup-supporting, hard right-wing MP (and friend of George W.Bush) María Corina Machado. Both are prominent signatories to a recent public petition calling on the Venezuelan military to overturn the country’s elected government.
Of course, people are entitled to express their views on Venezuela. But it’s clear that the Venezuelan people have time and again rejected the views pushed by Haussmann and the other members of the Venezuelan right recently attracting such interest in certain quarters of the British media.
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Mother of Bilin protestor killed by Israel files court petition
Ma’an – March 4, 2013
BETHLEHEM – The mother of Bassem Abu Rahmah, who was killed in 2009 during a non-violent protest in Bilin, filed a petition to Israel’s High Court on Sunday to demand justice for the death of her son, B’Tselem said.
The petition was filed jointly with Bilin village council, B’Tselem and Yesh Din, and demands that Israeli Military Advocate General, Major-General Danny Efroni, be ordered to reach a decision in the case and prosecute the soldier and all those bearing command responsibility for the killing of her son.
Bassam Abu Rahman, 30, was killed in 2009 after being shot in the chest with a tear-gas canister during a demonstration against Israel’s separation wall.
Three video segments filmed during the protest prove that Abu Rahmah did not act violently and did not endanger the soldiers in any way, B’Tselem said.
The petition includes opinions from experts who reviewed the videos, stating that the grenade was aimed directly at Abu Rahmah.
Other soldiers in the same video can be seen firing tear-gas canisters directly at protestors in the presence of senior officers and in complete contravention of the open-fire regulations, B’Tselem said.
Despite these findings, the former Military Advocate General initially refused to open an investigation, only changing his mind after a threat to petition Israel’s High Court with expert opinion documenting the “unequivocal conclusion that the firing was aimed directly at Abu Rahmah.”
“The failure to reach a decision is dangerous and conveys the message to IDF and Border Guard personnel engaged in dispersing demonstrations that even if they shoot and kill demonstrators, they will not bear criminal liability,” B’Tselem said.
“Such a message reflects contempt for the lives of Palestinian civilians.”
The death of Bassam Abu Rahmah was featured in the highly praised Palestinian documentary “5 Broken Cameras.”
The film is based on five years of amateur camera work by journalist Emad Burnat as he documented weekly protests against land seizures by Israeli forces and settlers in the village of Bilin.
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AIPAC aims to play ‘major strategic ally’ card to save aid for Israel from US cuts?
RT | March 03, 2013
US aid to Israel may be saved from sequestration and moved into Pentagon budget. That might be the result if the Israeli lobby in Washington gets its way and the American people aren’t paying attention, political analyst Robert Naiman told RT.
The annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is reportedly focused on the congressional designation of Israel as a “major strategic ally” of the US, a unique status that would be enjoyed only by the Jewish state. The move is seen as facilitating Israel’s military action against Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, which also appears on the conference agenda.
But according to the policy director at Just Foreign Policy Robert Naiman, the pro-Israel conference is focusing on Iran so as not to draw attention to the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict – as well as protecting US funding of Israel from budget cuts.
RT: The US has been Israel’s faithful ally since the foundation of the state. Why does it need to become official, why the formalization?
RN: Well, according to lobbyists associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, it has to do with the coming threat of budget cuts. Under this sequester… there’re supposed to be across-the-board cuts to the US budget. So that should mean that the US aid to Israel, which is substantial, billions of dollars a year, should also be cut – but the Israel lobby doesn’t want the aid to Israel to be cut. So their long game is that with this designation of ‘major strategic ally’ they would move things that are currently paid out of the US aid to Israel into the base Pentagon budget. They’ll argue, ‘well, this is about the national security needs…’
So their goal here is to exempt aid to Israel from the so-called across-the-board cuts. But of course they don’t want to announce that on the marquee, because Americans are going to be told: ‘oh, now we have to cut Head Start early childhood education because of the sequester cuts, but meanwhile aid to Israel is going to be protected.’ That’s going to make a lot of people in the United States very angry.
RT: It’s clear how Israel would benefit from this. But the US rubber-stamping the status of Israel as its ‘major strategic ally’ – how do they benefit from it?
RN: Well, they don’t – it has nothing to do with the benefit to the US. This is about what you can get away with if you’re lobbyist in Washington and the American people aren’t paying attention. If AIPAC and members of Congress are in a closed room, they’re going to agree on one thing. If the American people don’t find that out, it’s not reported in the press. This isn’t in the New York Times, it’s not in the Washington Post. It’s in the insider press that covers the stuff, Jewish telegraphic agency, for example, that covers AIPAC. So outside the people who follow such news, this is not in the mainstream American media yet.
RT: The conference will focus mainly on Iran, which is seen as the emerging threat. But the conflict with the Palestinians is very real and has been for decades. Why isn’t solving that on the agenda?
RN: Well, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee doesn’t want to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they’re completely content with the status quo. They want Israel to retain control of the West Bank, they want Israeli settlements in the West Bank to expand, so they’re completely happy with that. In fact, these are the people that do a lot to drive the focus on Iran, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Israeli government, which are like two twin brothers. This focus now actually helps them change the channel from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They don’t want anybody to think about or talk about… three million Palestinians who don’t get to vote for the government that rules their lives, while their neighbors can stir in the Israeli Knesset.
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Israel segregates West Bank bus line
Al-Akhbar | March 3, 2013
Israel on Monday will begin segregating certain buses in the occupied West Bank to appease Jewish settlers who say they are afraid of sharing a ride with Palestinians, Israeli media reported.
Buses operated by the Afikim bus company that transport passengers from the Eyal checkpoint into central Israel will now have separate lines for settlers and Palestinians.
Unnamed sources from Israel’s transportation ministry told Ynet that the project was developed to calm the nerves of settlers who say that Arabs pose a security threat.
But officially, the ministry has billed the controversial move as a plan to “improve services.”
“The new lines are not separate lines for Palestinians but rather two designated lines meant to improve the services offered to Palestinian workers who enter Israel through Eyal Crossing,” Ynet quoted a ministry statement as saying.
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Jewish Voice for Weizmann
By Gilad Atzmon | March 3, 2013
I just came across a JVP press release (Jewish Voice for Peace) reporting a massive advertising campaign to counter the AIPAC Annual Conference in Washington. Apparently, from today 100 billboards will be stationed in DC Metro bearing a simple but important message.
“AIPAC Does Not Speak for Me”.
AIPAC is certainly a danger to world peace and yes, it is a positive development that a Jewish organization should confront its impact on American foreign policy.
But still, JVP’s tactics are problematic. If anything, they reveal the deep confusion inherent in Jewish politics in general, and Jewish progressive thinking in particular.
On the one hand, JVP’s campaign is simple and transparent: it states “AIPAC does not speak for me. Most Jewish Americans are pro-peace. AIPAC is not.” But on the other hand, JVP falls short in offering any universal or ethical solution to the conflict in the Middle East.
“According to a recent poll by pollster Jim Gerstein” reads the JVP’s press release, “82% of Jewish Americans support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
So, if I understand it correctly, 82% of Jewish Americans support a solution that dismisses the most essential and elementary Palestinian right to return to their land, in effect supporting the existence of a Jewish State in historic Palestine, at the expense of the Palestinians and their rights. In other words, the so-called ‘good peace-seeking Jews’ ,who are the vast majority of Jewish Americans (according to JVP), support an utterly non-ethical solution.
But the reference to Gerstein’s statistics is even more embarrassing. Are we interested in what the Dutch think about the solution of the conflict in Ireland? Do we care if Indians approve the Italian recent polls? No, we don’t but, for some reason, we are desperate to find out what ‘Jewish Americans’ think of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. The reason for this is obvious – Israel defines itself as the Jewish State and many Jewish Americans see Israel as their homeland and obviously, they care about their homeland and its politics. In that respect, Zionism should be seen as a success story – a trap into which JVP is foolish enough to fall. By referring to Gerstein’s statistics, JVP actually confirms that Jews are bonded spiritually and politically with their Jewish state and so are subject to an intense conflict of identity.
Chaim Weizmann, the legendary Zionist and the first Israeli President, somehow knew of all those JVPs to come. Already in the early days of Zionism, he observed the Jewish political inclination towards marginalism; he wrote “there are no English, French, German or American Jews, but only Jews living in England, France, Germany or America.” Whether Weizmann was correct or not is open to discussion, but clearly, JVP accepts Weizmann’s observation. JVP refers to the American Jews as ‘Jewish Americans’. It regards Jewishness as a primary political quality and it refers to Jews as a distinctive marginal ethno-centric group.
Interestingly, the ‘anti’ Zionist JVP is actually the embodiment of Weizmann’s Zionist wet dream. It may not agree with AIPAC on some side issues to do with settlements, occupation and Israeli policies, but it agrees on the fundamentals – “there are no American Jews, but only Jews living in America.” And as if this is not enough, JVP, like AIPAC supports the existence of a Jews only State in Palestine.
I guess that from Weizmann’s perspective JVP is Zionist to the bone. It openly promotes the two state solution because, like AIPAC, it is primarily concerned with Jewish tribal interests rather than human rights, ethics, or universal thinking.
JVP, like any other Jews-only ‘progressive’ organisation, may speak universal but it still thinks tribal.
Argentine president defends AMIA deal with Iran
Tehran Times | March 3, 2013
TEHRAN – Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has defended an agreement between Iran and Argentina to set up an international “truth commission” to investigate the bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 85 people, the Buenos Aires Herald reported on Friday.
Fernandez has said, “My commitment with this case is to know the truth, not only what happened abroad but what happened here too. I want to know who were the ones to cover up, to hide evidence; I deserve to know it as an Argentinean and the victims and their families deserve it too.”
According to the report, she has also condemned the “complicity” of Jewish community leaders in the AMIA attack.
Argentina’s Congress approved an agreement with Iran to probe the AMIA bombing on Thursday.
The two governments signed a memorandum of understanding in January on how to deal with the attack in which Argentine court authorities have accused a number of Iranians of involvement. Iran has denied any link to the bombing.
The pact signed with Tehran has been criticized by Israel and Jewish groups, who fear it could end up weakening the case against Iran. They also see it as a diplomatic victory for Iran.
The agreement stipulates that a commission – made up of five foreign legal experts – will outline plans for Argentine judicial officials to travel to Tehran to question Iranians accused of having links to the attack.
Commission members will analyze the documents presented by both nations’ judicial authorities and “issue a report containing recommendations on how to proceed with the case” according to the memorandum.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez had previously said it could shed new light on the case after years of deadlock.
Fernandez has close ties with other Latin American leaders who are on good terms with Tehran, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
Her supporters have hailed the memorandum of understanding as a historic opportunity.
Argentina’s Senate also approved the agreement last week.
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NYPD lied under oath to prosecute Occupy activist
RT | March 02, 2013
An Occupy Wall Street activist was acquitted of assaulting a police officer and other charges on Thursday after jurors were presented with video evidence that directly contradicted the NYPD’s story.
Michael Premo was found innocent of all charges this week in regards to a case that stems from a December 17, 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstration in Lower Manhattan. For over a year, prosecutors working on behalf of the New York Police Department have insisted that Premo, a known artist and activist, tackled an NYPD officer during a protest and in doing so inflicted enough damage to break a bone.
During court proceedings this week, Premo’s attorney presented a video that showed officers charging into the defendant unprovoked. The Village Voice reports that jurors deliberated for several hours on Thursday and then elected to find Premo not guilty on all counts, which included a felony charge of assaulting an officer of the law.
Since his arrest, supporters of Premo have insisted on his innocence. “They’re trying to make something out of nothing and they’re trying to charge him with something that didn’t actually occur,” colleague Rachel Falcone told Free Speech Radio News this week.
After being arrested, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office presented Premo with a deal that would have let him off the hook by pleading guilty to lesser charges. Maintaining his innocence, however, he was determined to fight the case in court.
Premo was “facing serious charges and potential substantial jail sentence, even though he never should have been arrested at all,” his supporters claimed in a post published on The Laundromat Project website.
Nick Pinto of the Village Voice says he was nearby during the December 2011 rally and recalls watching Premo’s arrest from a distance. In his report from court this week, Pinto explains how the details provided by the NYPD in this trial have been fabricated to such a degree that the allegations presented by the cops turned out to be literally the opposite of what occurred.
“Premo charged the police like a linebacker, taking out a lieutenant and resisting arrest so forcefully that he fractured an officer’s bone. That’s the story prosecutors told in Premo’s trial, and it’s the general story his arresting officer testified to under oath as well,” Pinto writes. He adds that attorneys for the defendant underwent a lengthy search to try and find video that verified their own account yjpihj, and found one in the hands of Democracy Now. “Far from showing Premo tackling a police officer,” writes Pinto, that video “shows cops tackling him as he attempted to get back on his feet.”
The footage obtained from Democracy Now also showed that an NYPD officer was filming the arrest as well, but prosecutors told Premo’s attorney that no such footage existed.
“There is no justice in the American justice system, but you can sometimes find it in a jury,” Premo tweeted after he was acquitted this week.
In an interview given to NBC in 2012, Premo identified himself as a spokesperson for the Occupy Wall Street movement. He has also led an initiative in the New York area that has provided relief to those that endured last year’s Superstorm Sandy and has also advocated for fair housing.
“The biggest thing for me coming out of this,” he told the Voice, “is not being discouraged by the attempts of New York City to quell dissent and prevent us from expressing our constitutional rights.”
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Truth Telling, Whistle Blowing and the American Way
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 15, 2016
The Kevin Barrett-Chomsky dispute in historical perspective – 3rd part of the series “9/11 and the Zionist Question”
Over decades Chomsky has moved towards the center of formidable networks of academic associations, publishing enterprises, activist groups, speakers forums and New Media operations. The fact that the senior professor is so well wired into such an effective communication grid of activist interaction has hugely amplified his voice and his influence.
Chomsky’s ideas have been broadcast to the far corners of the world in every conceivable format. His work is translated into many languages as the MIT professor goes from honor to honor, distinction to distinction, all the while seeming to combat the expansionary impulses emanating from some of the world’s leading centers of power including those in Israel. The phenomenal success of Chomsky’s career would seem to prove and illustrate that there is still some substance in the conception of America as the land of the free, home of the brave. … continue
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