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Honduras: Now Open for Political Murder

By NICK ALEXANDROV | CounterPunch | October 9, 2012

Last Wednesday’s presidential debate, and the flurry of fact-checking that followed, helped sustain the illusion that Republicans and Democrats are bitter rivals.  Reporters and analysts obsessed over the accuracy of each candidate’s claims, ignoring the two parties’ broadly similar goals, which mainstream political scientists now take for granted.  “Government”—both parties are implicated—“has had a huge hand in nurturing America’s winner-take-all economy,” Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson write in Winner-Take-All Politics, their study of the massive transfer of wealth to the richest Americans since the 1970s.  George Farah’s research has shown how cross-party collaboration extends from economic issues to the debate’s structure.  The Commission on Presidential Debates, a private corporation both parties created, ensures independent candidates will be excluded, and more generally that the events will remain the sterile, predictable spectacles familiar to viewers.

No doubt the foreign policy debate in a few weeks will offer much of the same.  In the real world, meanwhile, Obama embraced and extended Bush’s foreign policy, as the case of Honduras illustrates especially well.  After the Honduran military staged a coup against democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya on June 28, 2009, Obama and Secretary of State Clinton backed the ensuing fraudulent elections the Organization of American States and European Union refused to observe.  Porfirio Lobo won the phony contest, and now holds power.  “The conclusion from the Honduras episode,” British scholar Julia Brixton wrote in Latin American Perspectives, “was that the Obama administration had as weak a commitment to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as the preceding U.S. presidency.”

The coup’s plotters, it should be emphasized, knew exactly what they were doing.  Colonel Bayardo Inestroza, a military lawyer who advised them on legal issues, was very open about it, informing the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro, “We committed a crime, but we had to do it.”  U.S. officials seem to have taken slightly longer to recognize the obvious, but Wikileaks documents indicate that, by late July, they understood that what had transpired was “an illegal and unconstitutional coup.”  Obama’s legal training, cosmopolitan background and cabinet stuffed with intellectuals were all irrelevant in this situation, like so many others.  A different set of factors drives U.S. foreign policy, which is precisely why, to cite just one example, Matt Bai’s analysis of “Obama’s Enthusiasm Gap” is featured prominently on the New York Times homepage as I write, below the Ralph Lauren ads and feature about a Pennsylvanian high school’s underdog football team.  In determining what’s “fit to print,” triviality seems to be one of the crucial considerations.

A more serious analysis of Obama might start, for example, by observing that his “enthusiasm gap” failed to materialize as he drafted lists of people to murder.  It also was mysteriously absent when he stood firmly behind the Honduran coup’s leaders, two of whom graduated from the School of the Americas (SOA) at Fort Benning, Georgia.  Renamed the Western Hemisphere for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001, the name-change was, predictably, just a rebranding.  Nico Udu-Gama, one of the leading activists working to close the institution, emphasized recently on Al Jazeera that the school’s graduates have continued to violate human rights over the past decade.  This is the main reason why Udu-Gama and others organize for School of the Americas Watch, and currently are gearing up for its annual demonstrations at Fort Benning the weekend of November 16-18.

Returning to Honduras, we see that conditions there are beginning to call to mind those of, say, El Salvador in the ’80s—good news, perhaps, for aspiring financial executives eager to launch the next Bain Capital.  But as the business climate improves, everyday life for Hondurans working to secure basic rights has become nightmarish.  Dina Meza’s case is just one example.  A journalist and founder of the Committee of Families of Detainees and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), Meza received two text messages from the Comando Álvarez Martinez (CAM) last February.  The group, named for an SOA graduate, threatened her: “We are going to burn your ‘pipa’ (vagina) with caustic lime until you scream and then the whole squad will have fun.”  The follow-up warning told her she would “end up dead like the Aguán people,” referring to the poor campesinos that are being slaughtered on land owned mainly by Miguel Facussé, one of the richest Hondurans.

Conflicts over land, to be sure, are nothing new in Central America.  The most recent government-led assault on Honduran farmworker rights can be traced back to the 1992 Law of Agricultural Modernization.  International finance lobbied aggressively for that decision, which reversed the limited land reform implemented in the preceding decades, and drove the desperately poor into city slums or out of the country, inspiring those who remained to form self-defense organizations.  The Unified Campesino Movement of Aguán (MUCA) is one of these groups.  With the help of Antonio Trejo Cabrera, a human rights lawyer, the campesinos recently won back legal rights to several plantations.  On September 23, Trejo took some time off to celebrate a friend’s wedding at a church in Tegucigalpa.  During the event he received a call, and stepped outside to take it.  The gunmen were waiting for him.  They shot him several times, and he died soon after arriving at the hospital.  “Since they couldn’t beat him in the courts,” Vitalino Alvarez, a spokesman for Bajo Aguán’s peasants, explained, “they killed him.”  They killed Eduardo Diaz Madariaga, a human rights lawyer, the following day, presumably for similar reasons.

It is in these conditions that Honduras has been opened for business.  The American economist Paul Romer proposed recently that several neoliberal “charter cities”—complete with their own police, laws, and government—be built there, and an NPR reporter recently reviewed this idea enthusiastically in a piece for the New York Times.  But despite much misleading discussion of what is considered Romer’s bold entrepreneurial vision, his plan is directly in line with longstanding US goals for the region, as the constitutional chamber of Honduras’ Supreme Court explained recently.  Voting 4-to-1 that the charter cities are unconstitutional, the judges concluded that Romer’s plan “implies transferring national territory, which is expressly prohibited in the constitution;” worth recalling is that Zelaya was thrown out for allegedly violating the same document.  But this fact and others are considered beyond debate this election season, an indication of how much change we can expect, regardless of November’s winner.

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October 9, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Honduras: Supreme Court Blocks “Model Cities”—for Now

Weekly News Update on the Americas | October 7, 2012

A five-member panel of Honduras’ Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) ruled in a 4-1 decision on Oct. 3 that legislation creating Special Development Regions (RED), autonomous regions also known as “Model Cities,” is unconstitutional. The only opposing vote came from Justice Oscar Fernando Chinchilla, who failed to recuse himself despite an apparent conflict of interest: he is a close friend of National Congress president Juan Orlando Hernández, a promoter of the project, and has visited Korean economic development zones in Southeast Asia with Hernández. Because the decision was not unanimous, the full court of 15 justices must make the final determination. Chief Justice Jorge Rivera Avilés has set Oct. 17 as the date for the session.

The “Model Cities” project has sparked dozens of legal challenges [see Update #1145]. Although much of the opposition comes from the left, the plan is unpopular across the political spectrum. In September Human Rights Commissioner Ramón Custodio, a conservative, announced his opposition to the project, which proponents claim will spur economic development. “[If] you want to have a developed country, it should be the whole country, not privileged zones,” he wrote in a communiqué, adding that “the national territory can’t be divided because that would be finishing off the country and putting an end to the nation.”

Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa said on Oct. 6 that he would push ahead with the project. “[I]f Honduran society today is afraid to make the leap, we’ve talked with the Supreme Court of Justice about sitting down to dialogue and about what changes would have to be made for [the RED] to be compliant with the law.” (Honduras Culture and Politics 10/3/12; El Heraldo (Tegucigalpa) 10/5/12; La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 10/6/12)

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October 9, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Digging a hole? 12,000 S. African striking miners sacked ‘in absentia’

RT | October 5, 2012

Up to 12,000 employees of Anglo American Platinum received messages Friday saying they were fired. The mining powerhouse dismissed the workers after a three-week strike. The labor stand-off has already taken 48 lives across South Africa since August.

­The news was broken to the employees via SMS and emails.

Commenting on the move, Amplats declared miners had failed to appear before disciplinary hearings “and have therefore been dismissed in their absence.” The miners had been warned that would happen if they failed to turn up, the company said.

The world’s largest platinum producer says its lost over $80 million in revenues since a major strike gripped their mines in mid-September, involving at least 20,000 miners.

“Despite the company’s repeated calls for employees to return to work, we have continued to experience attendance levels of less than 20 percent,” the firm said in a statement quoted by Agence France Presse.

Strike leader Gaddafi Mdoda was one of the those fired on Friday. He says that even if Amplats no longer employs them, this is no reason to end the struggle. The mineworkers are demanding 12,500 rand (about $1,500) in take-home salary, their current wages are reported to be around $500.

Amplats says they still continue “exploring the possibility of bringing forward wage negotiations within our current agreements”.

The sackings came hours before another striking miner was mortally wounded in clashes with police, bringing the total number of protesters killed since strikes began in August, to 48. Police would not confirm the cause of death, but protesters say he was shot with a rubber bullet.

The strikes peaked at over 75,000 participants, or 15 percent of workforce in the mining sector. Clashes with police often turned violent, involving tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon. In a single day thirty-four strikers were killed by police at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine, on August 16.

Despite the growing tensions, negotiations with mine owners don’t appear to be yielding any substantial results. A rare breakthrough was reached at the Lonmin platinum mines, where the worst violence broke out, with salaries being boosted 22 per cent. But on Thursday, South Africa’s Chamber of Mines, the main industry body, said wage talks will not be based on that precedent. This may force coal miners to join platinum, gold, iron ore and diamond miners in further work stoppages.

October 5, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

SOPA Is Dead, Says MPAA’s Chris Dodd, But What Comes Next?

By Parker Higgins and Trevor Timm | EFF | October 4, 2012

Earlier this week, Chris Dodd, a 30-year veteran of the Senate and now chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), spoke in San Francisco at an event aimed at addressing “the shared future of the content and technology industries.” It’s a testament to the continuing impact of January’s blackout protests against Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that Dodd should frame the discussion this way, and his conciliatory words during the talk struck a refreshing tone. But given that less than a year ago he was the nation’s leading advocate for a bill that would have censored large parts of the Internet, there’s still a long way to go.

Dodd made many positive comments during his speech, voicing strong support for freedom of speech online and calling on the content industry to move away from criminal actions against file-sharers. He also conceded that SOPA and PIPA are “dead,” and when pressed by EFF in discussion afterwards, he was emphatic that his organization no longer wanted to pursue legislation as the solution to the problems purportedly facing the content industry.

But let’s not forget that he serves as the chairman and CEO of one of the most influential lobbying groups in Washington, and that the actions of the industry have yet to back up his rhetoric. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite is true.

After all, his words stand at odds with a statement in April that he was “confident” negotiations on SOPA 2.0 were taking place, and the MPAA is again distributing talking points to members of Congress touting copyright maximalism. We also know SOPA’s author Lamar Smith tried to re-introduce components of that bill again in July. And even now, the content industry’s “six strikes” agreement with ISPs is moving forward, and US Trade Representatives are secretly negotiation dangerous new copyright rules into international agreements like the Transpacific Partnership Agreement (TPP).

Dodd’s statements, such as “I would do anything and everything I could to protect the vitality of the internet,” stand in stark contrast to the content industry’s advocacy for the due-process-free domain name seizures conducted by Homeland Security during the past two years. Websites accused of copyright infringement on flimsy evidence were censored for a more than a year before the Justice Department abandoned the cases with no explanation. The Justice Department’s prosecution of Megaupload, a case now falling apart, also led to many innocent people losing property they stored online.

Unfortunately, Dodd’s most impassioned advocacy for the First Amendment came not when sticking up for the Internet, but when defending his job lobbying. The man who once pledged he would not become a lobbyist when he left the Senate, said freedom of speech is “critically important” because it allows lobbyists — now “experts” in his view — to inform legislators about the issues. But when members of the public speak out in one of the largest grassroots efforts in US history, Dodd and the MPAA derided it as a “stunt” and a “gimmick” and accused companies that participated in the protest of an “abuse of power.”

But more broadly, Dodd’s speech indicated that the MPAA and other content groups still remain fiercely opposed to evidence-based policy-making, in legislation and other areas. Even as Dodd pulled the heartstrings with stirring words about the middle-class jobs that the entertainment industry creates, he continued to cite bogus stats about the industry. Repeatedly he referred to the 2.1 million such jobs, despite the fact that the Congressional Research Service has pegged the number at around 374,000 — an order of magnitude off. Blatantly bogus numbers like these have become a hallmark of the content industry efforts to pervert the copyright system, so much so that the Government Accountability Office recommended other government bodies should stop citing MPAA-backed studies.

Dodd’s speech echoed the recent messages from other content industry representatives: the content and the tech industries have to work together, not as adversaries, to make “an Internet that works for everyone.” Here again, the disregard for ordinary users makes a nice commitment ring hollow. For one thing, the content industry missed plenty of opportunities before introducing SOPA and PIPA to get input from Internet users and the tech industry. They even refused to show up at the negotiating table when the tech industry was willing to work with them. But more fundamentally, Hollywood’s new rhetoric reframes “innovation” as “innovation by permission” — and the public is worse off for it.

The fundamental goals of copyright are sound: it’s a good thing when policy promotes the progress of science and the useful arts. But by continuing to reject evidence about how copyright works, by relegating freedom of speech to economic concerns, and by leaving the public out of the discussion, Dodd and the MPAA are working against those noble goals.

October 5, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Venezuelan Elections: a Choice and Not an Echo

By James Petras :: 10.04.2012

Introduction

On October 7th, Venezuelan voters will decide whether to support incumbent President Hugo Chavez or opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. The voters will choose between two polar opposite programs and social systems:

Chavez calls for the expansion of public ownership of the means of production and consumption, an increase in social spending for welfare programs, greater popular participation in local decision-making, an independent foreign policy based on greater Latin American integration, increases in progressive taxation, the defense of free public health and educational programs and the defense of public ownership of oil production. In contrast Capriles Radonski represents the parties and elite who support the privatization of public enterprises, oppose the existing public health and educational and social welfare programs and favor neo-liberal policies designed to subsidize and expand the role and control of foreign and local private capital. While Capriles Radonski claims to be in favor of what he dubs “the Brazilian model” of “free markets and social welfare”, his political and social backers, in the past and present, are strong advocates of free trade agreements with the US, restrictions on social spending and regressive taxation. Unlike the US, the Venezuelan voters have a choice and not an echo: two candidates representing distinct social classes, with divergent socio-political visions and international alignments. Chavez stands with Latin America, opposes US imperial intervention everywhere, is a staunch defender of self-determination and supporter of Latin American integration. Capriles Radonski is in favor of free trade agreements with the US, opposes regional integration, supports US intervention in the Middle East and is a diehard supporter of Israel. In the run-up to the elections, as was predictable the entire US mass media has been saturated with anti-Chavez and pro-Capriles propaganda, predicting a ‘victory’ or at least a close outcome for Washington’s protégé.

The media and pundit predictions and propaganda are based entirely on selective citation of dubious polls and campaign commentaries; and worst of all there is a total lack of any serious discussion of the historical legacy and structural features that form the essential framework for this historic election.

Historical Legacy

For nearly a quarter of a century prior to Chavez election in 1998, Venezuela’s economy and society was in a tailspin, rife with corruption, record inflation, declining growth, rising debt, crime, poverty and unemployment.

Mass protests in the late 1980’s early 1990’s led to the massacre of thousands of slum dwellers, a failed coup and mass disillusion with the dual bi-party political system. The petrol industry was privatized; oil wealth nurtured a business elite which shopped on ‘Fifth Avenue, invested in Miami condos, patronized private clinics for face-lifts and breast jobs, and sent their children to private elite schools to ensure inter-generational continuity of power and privilege. Venezuela was a bastion of US power projections toward the Caribbean, Central and South America. Venezuela was socially polarized but political power was monopolized by two or three parties who competed for the support of competing factions of the ruling elite and the US Embassy.

Economic pillage, social regression, political authoritarianism and corruption led to an electoral victory for Hugo Chavez in 1998 and a gradual change in public policy toward greater political accountability and institutional reforms which signaled a turn toward greater social equity.

The failed US backed military-business coup of April 2002 and the defeat of the oil executive lockout of December 2002 – February 2003 marked a decisive turning point in Venezuelan political and social history: the violent assault mobilized and radicalized millions of pro-democracy working class and slum dwellers, who in turn pressured Chavez “to turn left”. The defeat of the US-capitalist coup and lockout was the first of several popular victories which opened the door to vast social programs covering the housing, health, educational and food needs of millions of Venezuelans. The US and the Venezuelan elite suffered significant losses of strategic personnel in the military, trade union bureaucracy and oil industry as a result of their involvement in the illegal power grab.

Capriles was an active leader in the coup, heading a gang of thugs which assaulted the Cuban embassy, and an active collaborator in the petrol lockout which temporarily paralyzed the entire economy.

The coup and lockout were followed by a US funded referendum which attempted to impeach Chavez and was soundly trounced. The failures of the right strengthened the socialist tendencies in the government, weakened the elite opposition and sent the US in a mission to Colombia, ruled by narco-terrorist President Uribe, in search of a military ally to destabilize and overthrow the regime from outside. Border tensions increased, US bases multiplied to seven, and Colombian death squads crossed the border. But the entire Latin and Central American and Caribbean regions lined up against a US backed invasion out of principle, or because of fear of armed conflicts spilling beyond their borders.

This historical legacy of elite authoritarianism and Chavez successes is deeply embedded in the minds and consciousness of all Venezuelans preparing to vote in the election of October 7th. The legacy of profound elite hostility to democratic outcomes favoring popular majorities and mass defense of the ‘Socialist president’ is expressed in the profound political polarization of the electorate and the intense mutual dislike or ‘class hatred’ which percolates under the cover of the electoral campaign. For the masses the elections are about past abuses and contemporary advances, upward social mobility and material improvements in living standards; for the upper and affluent middle class there is intense resentment about a relative loss of power, privilege, prestige and private preferences. The right-wing elite’s relative losses have fueled a resentment with dangerous overtones for democracy in case of lost elections and revanchist policies if they win the elections.

Institutional Configuration

The right-wing elite may not control the government but they certainly are not without a strong institutional base of power. Eighty percent of the banking and finance sector is in private hands, as are most of the services manufacturing and a substantial proportion of retail and wholesale trade. Within the public bureaucracy, the National Guard and military the opposition has at least a minority actively or passively supportive of the rightwing political groups. The principle business, financial and landowners associations are the social nuclei of the right. The right-wing controls approximately one third of the mayors and governors and over forty percent of the national legislators. Major U.S. and EU petroleum multi-nationals have a substantial minority share in the oil sector.

The right-wing still monopolizes the print media and has a majority TV and radio audience despite government inroads. The government has gained influence via the nationalization of banks – a 20% share of that sector, a share of the mining and metal industry and a few food processing plants and a substantial base in agriculture via the agrarian reform beneficiaries.

The government has gained major influence among the public sector employees and workers in the oil industry, social services and the welfare and housing sector. The military and police appear to be strongly supportive and constitutionalist. The government has established mass media outlets and promoted a host of community based radio stations.

The majority of the trade unions and peasant associations back the government. But the real strength of the government is found in the quasi-institutional community based organizations rooted in the vast urban settlements linked to the ‘social missions’.

In terms of money power, the government draws on substantial oil earnings to finance popular long term and short term social impact programs, effectively countering the patronage programs of the private sector and the overt and clandestine “grass roots” funding by US foundations, NGOs and “aid” agencies. In other words despite suffering major political defeats and past decades of misrule and corruption, the right-wing retains powerful institutional bases to contest the powerful socio-economic advances of the Chavez government and to mount an aggressive electoral campaign.

Social Dynamics and the Presidential Campaign

The key to the success of the Chavez re-election is to keep the focus on socio-economic issues: the universal health and education programs, the vast public housing program underway, the state subsidized supermarkets, the improved public transport in densely populated areas. The sharper the national social polarization between the business elite and the masses, the less likely the right-wing can play on popular disaffection with corrupt and ineffective local officials. The greater the degree of social solidarity of wage, salaried and informal workers the less likely that the right can appeal to the status aspirations of the upwardly mobile workers and employees who have risen to middle class life styles, ironically during the Chavez induced prosperity.

The Chavez campaign plays to the promise of continued social prosperity, greater and continuing social mobility and opportunity, an appeal to a greater sense of social equality and fairness; and it has a bed rock 40% of the electorate ready to go to the barricades for the President. Capriles appeals to several contradictory groups: a solid core of 20% of the electorate, made up of the business, banking and especially agrarian elite and their employees, managers, and professionals who long for a return to the neo-liberal past, to a time when police, army and intelligence agencies kept the poor confined to their slums and the petrol treasury flowed into their coffers. The second group which Capriles appeals to are the professionals and the small business people who are fearful of the expansion of the public domain and the ‘socialist ideology’ and yet who have prospered via easy credits, increased clientele and public spending. The sons and daughters of affluent sectors of this class provide the “activists” who see in the downfall of the Chavez government an opportunity to regain power and prestige that they pretend to have had before the ‘revolt of the masses’. Capriles’ past open embrace of neo-liberalism and the military coup of 2002 and his close ties to the business elite, Washington and his right-wing counterparts in Colombia and Argentina assures the enraged middle class that his promise to retain Chavez social missions is pure electoral demagoguery for tactical electoral purposes.

The third group which Capriles does not have, but is vital if he is to make a respectable showing, is among the small towns, provincial lower middle class and urban poor. Here Capriles presents himself as a “progressive” supporter of Chavez social missions in order to attack the local administrators and officials for their inefficiencies and malfeasance and the lack of public security – Capriles, hyper-activity, his populist demagogy and his effort to exploit local discontent is effective in securing some lower class votes; but his upper class links and long history of aggressive support for right-wing authoritarianism has undermined any mass defection to his side.

Chavez on the other hand is highlighting his social accomplishments, a spectacular decade of high growth, the decline of inequalities (Venezuela has the lowest rate of inequalities in Latin America) and the high rates of popular satisfaction with governance. Chavez funding for social impact programs benefits from a year-long economic recovery from the world recession (5% growth for 2012), triple digit oil prices and a generally favorable regional political environment including a vast improvement in Colombian-Venezuelan relations.

The Correlation of Forces: International, Regional, National and Local

The Chavez government has benefited enormously from very favorable world prices for its main export-petroleum; it has also increased its revenues through timely expropriations and increases in royalty and tax payments, as well as new investment agreements from new foreign investors in the face of opposition from some US multinational corporations.

Washington, deeply involved in conflicts in oil rich Muslim countries, is in no position to organize any boycott against Venezuela one of its principle and reliable petrol providers; its last big effort at “regime change” in 2002-03, during the “lockout” by senior executives of the Venezuelan oil company backfired –it resulted in the firing of almost all US ‘assets’ and the radicalization of nationalist oil policy.

US efforts to ‘isolate’ the Chavez regime internationally have failed; Russia and China have increased their trade and investment, as have a dozen other European, Middle Eastern and Asian countries. The EU recession and the slowdown of the US and world economy has not been conducive to fostering any sympathy for any restrictions in economic ties with Venezuela.

Most significantly the rise of center-left regimes in Latin America, the Caribbean and Central America, has favored increasing diplomatic and economic ties with Venezuela and greater Latin American integration. In contrast Obama’s backing for the Honduran and Paraguayan coups and Washington-centered free trade agreements and neo-liberal policies have gone out of favor. In brief, the international and regional correlation of forces has been highly favorable to the Chavez government, while Washington’s dominant influence has waned.

One of the last Latin American bastions of US efforts to destabilize Chavez, Colombia, has sharply shifted policy toward Venezuela. With the change in regime from Uribe to Santos, Colombia has reached multi-billion dollar trade and investment agreements and joint diplomatic and military agreements with Venezuela, signaling a kind of ‘peaceful coexistence’. Despite a recent free trade agreement and the continuance of US military bases, Colombia has, at least in this conjuncture, ruled out joint participation in any US sponsored military or political intervention or destabilization campaign.

US political leverage in Venezuela is largely dependent on channeling financial resources and advisors toward its electoral clients. Given the decline in external regional allies, and given its loss of key assets in the Venezuelan military and among Colombian para-military forces, Washington has turned to its electoral clients. Via heavy financial flows it has successfully imposed the unification of all the disparate opposition groups, fashioned an ideology of moderate ‘centrist’ reform to camouflage the far right, neo-liberal ideology of the Capriles leadership and contracted hundreds of community agitators and ‘grass roots’ organizers to exploit the substantial gap between Chavez’s programatic promises and the incompetent and inefficient implementation of those policies by local officials.

The strategic weakness of the Chavez government is local, the incapacity of officials to keep the lights on and the water running. At the international, regional and national level the correlation of forces favors Chavez. Washington and Capriles try to compensate for Chavez regional strength by attacking his regional aid programs, claiming he is diverting resources abroad instead of tending to problems at home. Chavez has allocated enormous resources to social expenditures and infrastructure – the problem is not diversion abroad, it is mismanagement by local Chavista officials, many offspring of past clientele parties and personalities. The issue of rising crime and poor law enforcement would certainly cost Chavez more than a few lost votes if the same high crime rates were not also present in the state of Miranda where candidate Capriles has governed for the past four years

Electoral Outcome

Despite massive gains for the lower classes and solid support among the poor, the emerging middle class product of Chavez era prosperity, has rising expectations of greater consumption and less crime and insecurity; they look to distance themselves from the poor and to approach the affluent; their eyes look upward and not downward. The momentum of a dozen years in power is slowing, but mass fears of a neo-liberal reversion limits the possible electorate that Capriles can attract. Despite crime and official inefficiencies and corruption, the Chavez era has been a period extremely favorable for the lower class and sectors of business, commerce and finance. This year -2012- is no exception. According to the UN, Venezuela’s 5% growth rate exceeds that of Argentina (2%) Brazil (1.5%) and Mexico (4%). Private consumption has been the main driver of growth thanks to the growth of labor markets, increased credit and public investment. The vast majority of Venezuelans, including sectors of business will not vote against an incumbent government generating one of the fastest economic recoveries in the Hemisphere. Capriles’ radical rightist past and present covert agenda could provoke class conflict, political instability, economic decline and an unfavorable climate for international investors.

Washington is probably not in favor of a post-election coup or destabilization campaign if Capriles loses by a significant margin. The popularity of Chavez, the social welfare legislation and material gains and the dynamic growth this year ensures him of a victory margin of 10%. Chavez will receive 55% of the votes against Capriles 45%. Washington and their rightist clients are planning to consolidate their organization and prepare for the congressional elections in December. The idea is a “march through the institutions” to paralyze executive initiatives and frustrate Chavez’s efforts to move ahead with a socialized economy. The Achilles heel of the Chavez government is precisely at the local and state level: a high priority should be the replacement of incompetent and corrupt officials with efficient and democratically controlled local leaders who can implement Chavez’s immensely popular programs. And Chavez must devote greater attention to local politics and administration to match his foreign policy successes: the fact that the Right can turn out a half a million demonstraters in Caracas is not based on its ideological appeal to a ruinous, coup driven past, but in its success in exploiting chronic local grievances which have not been addressed – crime, corruption, blackouts and water shortages .

What is at stake in the October 2012 election is not only the welfare of the Venezuelan people but the future of Latin America’s integration and independence, and the prosperity of millions dependent on Venezuelan aid and solidarity.

A Chavez victory will provide a platform for rectification of a basically progressive social agenda and the continuation of an anti-imperialist foreign policy. A defeat will provide Obama or Romney with a trampoline to re-launch the reactionary neo-liberal and militarist policies of the pre-Chavez era – the infamous Clinton decade (of the 1990’s) of pillage, plunder, privatization and poverty.

October 4, 2012 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Argentina becomes main supplier of soy and soy-oil to Iran in third quarter

MercoPress | October 2, 2012

Iran made major imports of Argentine soy-oil and soybeans between July and September as Iranian buyers found methods of making payments in the face of western sanctions, Hamburg-based oilseeds analysts Oil World said on Tuesday.

Iran imported 202.000 tons of soy-oil in July-Sept. 2012, up from only 160,000 in April-June this year, a figure depressed as sanctions hit shipments, Oil World estimates.

Of the July-Sept. total, 129.000 tons is believed to have been imported from Argentina, 59.000 tons from Brazil and 14.000 tons from Paraguay, Oil World said.

Western sanctions imposed on Iran because of its disputed nuclear program do not include food shipments, but sanctions make it intensely difficult for importers to obtain letters of credit or conduct international transfers of funds through banks.

Iran has been able to make large wheat purchases in past weeks despite sanctions, Reuters reported on Thursday. Iran has also stepped up soybean imports in recent months, Oil World said.

“Iran will import roughly 160.000 tons of soybeans in June/Sept. 2012, the bulk of it from Argentina”, it said. “This volume compares to only 68.000 tons imported in Jan/May 2012 before importers found ways to purchase large volumes despite the sanctions.”

Iran has also made heavy sunflower oil purchases, raising July-Sept. 2012 sun-oil imports to 154.000 tons from only 75.000 tons in April-June 2012, Oil World estimates.

Ukraine supplied 140.000 tons of the July-Sept. sun-oil imports, Argentina 10.000 tons with the rest mainly coming from Russia, Oil World said.

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October 3, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Collaboration Loans

By Rami Zurayk | Al Akhbar | September 30, 2012

A while ago, caricatures began to appear on the internet showing the Egyptian president, Mohammed Mursi, prostrating before the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The artists were inspired by his request for a $4.8 billion loan to revive the Egyptian economy, which has been in recession since the beginning of the revolution. More recently, the media has been discussing “news” of an offer by the European Union of a $1.29 billion loan, if Egypt secures the IMF loan.

These loans are usually conditional and are intrinsically tied to a series of economic policies, such as lifting state subsidies on some basic commodities and liberating the markets. In the past, implementing these policies has led to the outbreak of popular protests in Egypt as well as in other poor countries. This is why some activists in the field of social justice call the IMF the poverty, deprivation and debt makers, keeping Third World countries under the hegemony of rich countries.

The loans also come with political conditions to do with the government’s position on “Israel” and good neighborliness. Observers in the field of development are wondering whether Egypt under the Muslim Brotherhood will take the same economic path as Hosni Mubarak’s regime despite their talk of social justice and combating poverty in the latest elections.

Resorting to conditional loans may be dictated by the reality of the Egyptian economy in a world which is suffering from consecutive financial crises. It may even be marketed as political realism. But some are wondering about the limits of this realism, particularly when the Egyptian prime minister, Hisham Qandil, announced that Egypt will not cease economic and industrial cooperation with “Israel,” in reference to the qualifying industrial zones that make Israeli-Egyptian products in every corner of Egypt.

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September 30, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Egypt officially rejects proposals for free trade zone with Gaza

MEMO | September 28, 2012

Official Palestinian sources have confirmed that Egypt has formally rejected proposals for the establishment of a free trade zone on its border with the Gaza Strip as a means of solving Gaza’s economic problems. The sources state that during Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s visit to Cairo last week, he was informed by the Egyptian authorities that their decision was based on the fact that such a move would isolate the Gaza Strip from the rest of the Palestinian territories as an independent entity.

The sources also pointed to Egyptian fears that a Gaza Strip made economically independent through the establishment of a free trade zone with Egypt would be exploited by Israel. It would be forcibly annexed to Egypt as a means of solving the demographic problem in the sector, at Egypt’s expense. Gaza would then be used to accommodate Palestinians returning from abroad, such as Palestinians fleeing the Syrian conflict and those returning from Lebanon.

September 29, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Afghanistan: U.S. out, China surges in

By Barry Lando | September 27, 2012

There’s got to be some symbolism—if not irony–in the fact that just as the last of the 33,000 troops surged by Obama two years ago supposedly to pacify Afghanistan pulled out, the highest ranking Chinese official to visit Afghanistan in almost half a century pulled in—arriving in Kabul for a secret round of meetings with top Afghan officials.

Question: How will China deal with the country that proved such an expensive and bloody disaster for both the U.S., its NATO allies–and the U.S.S.R before them?

In a brief visit, unreported until he had left Kabul,  Zhou Younkang, China’s chief of domestic security, met with Afghani leaders, including President Hamid Karzai. They talked about drugs, international crime, terrorism, and developing Afghanistan’s huge natural resources—just as visiting Americans have done for years.

The result, a cluster of agreements, among them an announcement that 300 Afghan police officers will be sent to China for training over the next four years.

Which is another irony of sorts—coming at the same time as news that the U.S. and its allies have been obliged to scale back joint operations with the Afghan military and police, because they can no longer trust the men they’ve trained. American troops in the field with their Afghan allies now keep weapons ready and wear body armor even when they’re eating goat meat and yoghurt.

So far this year 51 American and NATO troops have been gunned down by Afghan military or police:  a startling 20% of all NATO casualties this year.

The off-the-wall video from California ridiculing the prophet Mohammed has only further fueled anti-American hatred.

As the New York Times quoted one 20 year old Afghan soldier, NATO casualties could even be higher.

“We would have killed many of them already,” he said, “but our commanders are cowards and don’t let us.”

There are still some 68,000 American troops based in Afghanistan, but the plans are for them all to be out by the end of 2014. Which means that China will be confronting serious security problems of its own in Afghanistan. They already have direct investments of more than $200 million in copper mining and oil exploration, and have promised to build a major railroad east to Pakistan or north to Turkestan.

But they could pour in billions more if Afghanistan were a secure, well-ordered country, free from the Taliban, free from kleptocratic war lords and venal government bureaucrats, patrolled by well-trained Afghan soldiers and police:  in other words, exactly the kind of country the U.S. would like to have left behind—and didn’t.

Instead, of course, despite America’s huge sacrifice in men and treasure –more than half a trillion dollars since 2001–things haven’t worked out that way.  [For a dramatic, running count of the enormous hemorrhage that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still represent to the U.S. economy check out costofwar.com.]

Meanwhile, corruption is rampant, and it’s by no means certain that Afghanistan has—or ever will have–a national army and police force worthy of the name.

The U.S. Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, peered into the Pentagon’ s 1.1 billion dollars fuel program to supply the Afghan Army, and concluded that there was no way to be ascertain how much if any of that fuel is really being used by Afghan security forces for their missions. There was also no way to know how much was stolen, lost or diverted to the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Almost half a billion dollars worth of receipts detailing with fuel payments over the past four years have been shredded.

With the Americans heading for the exits, the challenge facing the Chinese—and anyone else, like India–interested in investing in the country–is how to navigate this imbroglio.

Indeed, the Chinese have apparently already run into problems in Afghanistan. Work at the Mes Aynak copper mine in Logar Province is already behind schedule, and no work has begun on the promised Chinese-built railroad yet. Various impediments have turned up, like recalcitrant bureaucrats, tensions provoked by the need to displace local populations, the discovery of Buddhist ruins, as well as ramshackle Soviet-era mines that first had to be cleared.

And then there’s the rival, rapacious warlords, who see the country’s resources as a way of fueling their own ambitions—like General Abdul Rashid Dotsum, who the government has accused of attempting to extort illegal payoffs from the Chinese oil company.

However, in their dealings throughout the developing world, from despots to democracies, the Chinese have shown themselves adept at navigating such quagmires. There’s no talk from Beijing of Chinese “exceptionalism”. They’ve been taking on the world as it is—not as someone in a Chinese think tank would want to remake it.

They’ve generally turned a blind eye to considerations of human rights, opted to pay off or work with the powers that be, and used offers of huge new infrastructure projects as bait, steadily increasing their share of the globe’s resources.

Many potential investors still shy away from Afghanistan. They have no idea what lies on the other side of the political abyss after 2014 when the U.S. completes its withdrawal.

China is also wary, but they’re also seriously planning their Afghan strategy for the post-American future.

As Wang Lian, a professor with the School of International Studies at the Paking University in Beijing, put it,  ”Almost every great power in history, when they were rising, was deeply involved in Afghanistan, and China will not be an exception.”

Unmentioned, of course, was what an unmitigated disaster that involvement turned out to be for the USSR, the US–and Afghanistan.

We’ll see how China fares.

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September 28, 2012 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Nicaragua approves LatAm oil refinery project

The first of three phases of a mega project to build Central America’s largest oil refinery is well underway in Nicaragua. The $6 billion plus initiative was given the rubber stamp last week when it was authorized by the National Assembly.

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September 25, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

US, biggest warmonger in the world

By Dave Lindorff | Press TV | September 23, 2012

There is a massive deception campaign in the US and in its global propaganda, which seeks to portray the United States as a poor set-upon nation that would like world peace, but just has to keep a military stationed around the globe to “police” all the world’s “trouble spots.”

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

That truth is that the US is the biggest warmonger the world has ever known.

Let’s start with its budget. The US, in fiscal year 2012, budgeted a total of $673 billion for the military, plus another $166 billion for military activities of other government departments, such as the nuclear weapons program, much of which is handled by the Department of Energy, or the Veterans Program, which pays for the care and benefits of former military personnel. There’s also roughly another $440 billion in interest paid on the debt from prior wars and military expenditures. All together, that comes to $1.3 trillion, which represents close to 50% of the general budget of the United States — the highest percentage of a government budget devoted to the military of any modern nation in the world — and perhaps of any government of any nation in world history.

That spending also represents the world’s biggest percentage of national gross domestic product (GDP), a measure of all economic activity in a nation, devoted to the military. Looking at the other countries with big militaries — China, Russia, Britain and France, not only does one not even come close in terms of the percent of GDP spent on its military, but taken together, all of their military expenditures combined total less than half what the US spends by itself.

Since the late 1960s, the US government has engaged in a sleight-of-hand to hide the scale of its military spending from the American people. It has done this by adding to the federal budget the amount of money spent on Social Security and Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled. This is not a correct accounting however, because both of those programs are actually funded by a separate payroll tax paid by employees and employers which are accounted for as trust funds with the money actually allocated to the accounts of the individual citizens who receive or will receive benefits from the programs. Using that fraud, the government and the politicians are able to claim that the US “only” spends 24% of the budget on military. Even that would be far above what is spent by any other nation in the world, but it is actually only half of what the US really spends as a share of its general budget.

One reason the US military budget is so huge is that the US operates some 900 bases abroad, in what amounts to a program of global empire. It is estimated that the cost of keeping those bases operating is about $250 billion. Empire costs a lot more than that though. There’s also the cost of operating a global fleet of ships, including incredibly costly aircraft carrier battle groups. That cost, surely in excess of $100 billion when the cost of the ships is factored in, doesn’t get broken out by the Pentagon.

Then, there is another way the US is the world’s biggest warmonger. This is in its role as the world’s biggest arms merchant. In 2011, the US sold more than $66 billion in arms to the rest of the world, often, as in the case of India and Pakistan, or India and China, or Israel and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, selling weapons to countries that are mutually hostile to each other or even, as in the case of India and Pakistan, in a state of active conflict along their border. That $66 billion — an all-time record for the US — was an astonishing and depressing 78% of the global arms market for the year. Russia was the second biggest arms dealer, selling only a paltry $4.8 billion in weapons to the rest of the world.

None of these weapons the US is selling makes either the US or the world any safer.

Indeed, two of the biggest recipients of US military “aid” and weapons sales are Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Saudi regime last year purchased $30 billion in arms from the US. Meanwhile the US has been providing Israel with $3 billion in outright military aid each year for years. Israel also buys billions of dollars in weapons from the US each year. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship and a promoter of instability within Syria, while it also props up dictatorships in countries like Yemen and Bahrain. In other countries, like Israel or Colombia, US aid encourages military actions which could lead to conflicts that would inevitably draw the US in as a participant.

The truth is that none of America’s military spending makes the US safer.

One doesn’t see fanatics traveling to Brazil or China or New Zealand to blow things up. One reason is almost certainly that those countries aren’t stationing their troops within other countries’ borders, and aren’t selling weapons to countries that threaten their neighbors.

The US government tells Americans that all that money they are spending on the military is designed to “protect” them from harm. In fact, the evidence over the years is that it is making Americans more vulnerable and less safe. Not only that, but the wars that the US has started over the years — in Indochina, in Iraq, in Afghanistan and elsewhere — have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of young Americans (and of course to the deaths of millions of people in those countries, most of them civilians).

The truth is that a country that spends half of every tax dollar collected from its citizens on its military cannot hope to prosper. As President Dwight Eisenhower, a former top general in the US military who led US forces in World War II, once famously stated in a 1953 address to a group of newspaper editors:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Most of the rest of the world isn’t fooled by American government accounting tricks. Being at the barrel end of the gun, people of other countries know how US military spending is a primary cause of war and terror in the world. But we Americans ourselves need to wake up to the massive damage that our military-obsessed political system is doing to our country, lest it ultimately destroys us. There is a clear reason that social programs in the US are threatened, that the economy is in a prolonged depression, that our education system is collapsing, and that our standing in the world has plummeted. It is our militarism, and the incredible amount of the national wealth that is being spent on it.

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September 23, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Top Chinese security official makes surprise visit to Afghanistan


Zhou Yongkang (2nd L), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, is welcomed by Afghan Commerce and Industry Minister Anwar Ul-haq Ahady upon his arrival in Kabul for an official goodwill visit on Sept. 22, 2012. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

Xinhua | September 22, 2012

KABUL – A top Chinese security official on Saturday made a surprise visit to Afghanistan, the first one by a Chinese leader in nearly half a century.

Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, arrived at Kabul airport late in the afternoon.

The four-hour visit had not been announced by Beijing due to security concerns. It followed a two-day trip of Zhou to Singapore, where he met Singaporean leaders on bilateral ties.

Zhou, who is in charge of security and justice affairs, had planned to go to Turkmenistan.

It marked the first time in 46 years that a Chinese leader set his foot on the soil of Afghanistan, a war-torn country neighboring China.

The last visit was made by late Chinese leader Liu Shaoqi in 1966 when he was the President of China.

During the past half century, Afghanistan was afflicted with series of military coups and two major wars commenced by the former Soviet Union and the United States respectively.

The country is still the front line in the U.S.-led war against terrorism and undergoing daily bombing and bleeding.

In Kabul, Zhou held a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“It is in line with the fundamental interests of the two peoples for China and Afghanistan to strengthen a strategic and cooperative partnership, which is also conducive to regional peace, stability and development,” Zhou was quoted as saying in a written statement released by the Chinese delegation upon his arrival.

Zhou said the Chinese government fully respects the right of the Afghan people to choose their own path of development and will actively participate in Afghanistan’s reconstruction.

China and Afghanistan established diplomatic relations in 1955.

The two countries decided in June to upgrade their ties to the level of a strategic and cooperative partnership at a meeting between Chinese President Hu Jintao and Karzai in Beijing, marking a new step for the development of bilateral relations.

September 23, 2012 Posted by | Economics | Leave a comment

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