Findcate

At Assitej, the 16th World Congress and Performing Arts Festival for Young People taking place in Adelaide, visiting companies include the Makhampon Theatre Group from Thailand, which is happy to hear itself described as a form of family, community, university and even food centre. They are performing a Buddhist tale about perseverance. Australian group Zeal Theatre, is collaborating with the South African performers Ellis and Bheki to create a comic show about nationalism and sport.

From Israel, “this crazy country”, as director Norman Issa calls it, comes the Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa, which, as its name suggests, is determined to defy that country’s political divide.

“We’re not the Christian-Jewish theatre company, or the Muslim-Jewish,” Issa says. “We deal in languages, not religions. We’re a very new idea and the only theatre working like this in Israel, and while we don’t have many sponsors, and are very small, people love this place. We have many friends.”

Issa’s Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa has brought a two-hander called Ach Ach Boom Traach to Adelaide for the Assitej festival. He co-wrote the hour-long piece with Yoav Barlev and both men perform in it. The fact that he is Jewish and Barlev a Muslim, Issa says, is not the issue (although that’s one of the first things he says about the play). The issue is how any two people, whose languages distance them from each other, can find common ground.

The production is pitched at children as young as three, but it’s also suitable for people in their late teens, the top-end of the age spectrum covered in Assitej’s broad program. Issa reckons it’s for everyone. “This play is very simple, and very difficult,” he says. “Everyone finds their own level within this play.”

Its premise is that the two actors represent brothers who play together, quarrel, then make up, and quarrel again. “The balance of power swings back and forth.”

As their history unfolds in scenes spoken in what sounds to the audience like jibberish (Issa says it’s the “language of Jesus”, Aramaic), one thing remains constant: a prettily coloured box that dangles enticingly above their heads. This appears to be the prize they constantly fight over, as their bitter feuding becomes ever more violent and hurtful. Finally, when they have “settled down to an uneasy truce, the box opens up by itself”. Ach Ach Boom Traach poses the question to the audience: “What are the brothers fighting for?”

Issa is unapologetic when he calls his theatre political, even though he has his critics because of that. “Most people here (in Israel) don’t like political stories, they look, maybe make a noise about the political situation, and then nothing happens. Most people here, they look, and do nothing.”

That’s why he believes children are the hope for the future and theatre for children is his way of turning this hope into action.

“I love children,” he says. “If we can change children, maybe we can reach out for peace. These children in the Jewish community, many years on they will become soldiers and maybe they will be different people because of what they’ve seen. I believe in that. This is my fighting, here in this crazy country.”

The company is in its 12th year, and Ach Ach Boom Traach has been in development for several years, already touring to a long list of countries, including Uzbekistan, Armenia, South Korea and Japan. “It’s very interesting,” Issa says, “that children all over the world react at the same moments during the play. It’s amazing. The inner child is a child wherever you go.”

The key to touching that inner child is to make the experience live, and Issa is animated in his denunciation of the kind of education children are receiving by way of television.

“It has to be live,” he says. “The theatre is life itself, and you can smell it, the actors, the props. It’s not in a box, in your salon (lounge room). In the theatre, the magic is that you see the story happening now, right before you, not edited so you only see the best takes.”

He describes what happens to people who lose touch with the theatre, those who sit in front of the TV screen with a beer and a sandwich as a process of “becoming heavy”, physically and mentally. Issa’s Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa uses a minimalist set, lots of brightly coloured props, and the energies of its two actors to capture the attention and imagination of its audiences.

According to a growing number of specialists in theatre for children, there is no reason to draw the line there: performances can be directed effectively to babes in arms.

In the Assitej festival, the highly respected Adelaide company, Windmill, has two shows, Cat and Green Sheep, both directed by Cate Fowler, which are pitched to audience members as young as one, but according to Suzanne Oster, theatre can be effective for even younger babies.

Oster is the artistic director of Unga Klara, a division within the Stockholm City Theatre created in 1975 to cater for children and young people. She is attending the Assitej congress, with the support of PlayWriting Australia, to talk about just how young an audience theatre can, and should, target.

The ideal audience, she says, is, in fact, a baby: “Present. Here and now. Not concerned with what it’s having for dinner, doing tomorrow or said yesterday. Free from conventions. Hasn’t read the reviews. Receptive without bias or prejudice.”

Oster’s showcase production, which is not part of the festival but which she will be discussing with delegates at the congress, is Babydrama, designed to present to children as young as six months.

It tells the story of the journey from conception to birth, through to the moment of “meeting their parents and their own will”.

“As far as we know,” Oster says, “text-based performances of this calibre have not been done for such young audiences,” although a Norwegian project has been evaluating the success of dance, mime and puppet theatre for babies from birth to three years old.

That evaluation was so positive, Oster says, there is now a project called Glitterbird, involving the collaboration of several European countries, developing theatre for the newly born. “The more elaborate the productions were, the more alert, concentrated and carefree the child seemed to be.”

Unga Klara works with test audiences, and documents the reactions on film, in order to build knowledge about what works best.

“The fact that one cannot speak,” Oster says, “does not mean that one cannot understand what is said. Experience has shown that the capacity for understanding and assessing situations is present at a very early age. Creating full-scale theatre to the youngest children with all our know-how and passion is a cultural policy statement.

Tags: adelaide, age spectrum, assitej, audience members, australian group, balance of power, brother, buddhist, cate, common ground, europe, Food, food centre, hander, hebrew, issa, jaffa, jewish theatre, nationalism, perseverance, power swings, premise, rbi, religions, target, theatre group, world congress, zeal

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by Tom Engelhardt

(Tom Dispatch)

Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has

been unraveling? And here’s the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent

information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe,

despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages

and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the

success of the President’s surge strategy, Americans sense this

perfectly well. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 56% of Americans say the United States should withdraw its military forces to avoid further casualties and this has, as the Post

notes, been a majority position since January 2007, the month that the

surge was first announced. Imagine what might happen if the American

public knew more about the actual state of affairs in Iraq — and of

thinking in Washington. So, here, in an attempt to unravel the

situation in ever-unraveling Iraq are twelve answers to questions which

should be asked far more often in this country:

1. Yes, the war has morphed into the U.S. military’s worst Iraq nightmare:

Few now remember, but before George W. Bush launched the invasion of

Iraq in March 2003, top administration and Pentagon officials had a

single overriding nightmare — not chemical, but urban, warfare. Saddam

Hussein, they feared, would lure American forces into Fortress Baghdad, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld labeled it. There, they would find themselves fighting block by block, especially in the warren of streets that make up the Iraqi capital’s poorest districts.

When American forces actually entered Baghdad in early April 2003,

however, even Saddam’s vaunted Republican Guard units had put away

their weapons and gone home. It took five years but, as of now,

American troops are indeed fighting in the warren of streets in Sadr

City, the Shiite slum of two and a half million in eastern Baghdad

largely controlled by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia. The U.S.

military, in fact, recently experienced its worst week

of 2008 in terms of casualties, mainly in and around Baghdad. So,

mission accomplished — the worst fear of 2003 has now been realized.

2. No, there was never an exit strategy from Iraq because the Bush administration never intended to leave — and still doesn’t:

Critics of the war have regularly gone after the Bush administration

for its lack of planning, including its lack of an exit strategy. In

this, they miss the point. The Bush administration arrived in Iraq with

four mega-bases on the drawing boards.

These were meant to undergird a future American garrisoning of that

country and were to house at least 30,000 American troops, as well as

U.S. air power, for the indefinite future. The term used for such

places wasn’t permanent base, but the more charming and euphemistic

enduring camp. (In fact, as we learned recently,

the Bush administration refuses to define any American base on foreign

soil anywhere on the planet, including ones in Japan for over 60 years,

as permanent.) Those four monster bases in Iraq (and many others) were soon being built at the cost of multibillions and are, even today, being significantly upgraded.

In October 2007, for instance, National Public Radio’s defense

correspondent Guy Raz visited Balad Air Base, north of Baghdad, which

houses about 40,000 American troops, contractors, and Defense

Department civilian employees, and described

it as one giant construction project, with new roads, sidewalks, and

structures going up across this 16-square-mile fortress in the center

of Iraq, all with an eye toward the next few decades.

These mega-bases, like Camp Cupcake

(al-Asad Air Base), nicknamed for its amenities, are small town-sized

with massive facilities, including PXs, fast-food outlets, and the

latest in communications. They have largely been ignored by the

American media and so have played no part in the debate about Iraq in

this country, but they are the most striking on-the-ground evidence of

the plans of an administration that simply never expected to leave. To

this day, despite the endless talk about drawdowns and withdrawals,

that hasn’t changed. In fact, the latest news about secret negotiations

for a future Status of Forces Agreement on the American presence in

that country indicates that U.S. officials are calling for an

open-ended military presence and no limits on numbers of U.S. forces,

the weapons they are able to deploy, their legal status or powers over

Iraqi citizens, going far beyond long-term U.S. security agreements

with other countries.

3. Yes, the United States is still occupying Iraq (just not particularly effectively): In June 2004,

the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), then ruling the country,

officially turned over sovereignty to an Iraqi government largely

housed in the American-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad and the

occupation officially ended. However, the day before the head of the

CPA, L. Paul Bremer III, slipped out of the country without fanfare, he signed, among other degrees, Order 17,

which became (and, remarkably enough, remains) the law of the land. It

is still a document worth reading as it essentially granted to all

occupying forces and allied private companies what, in the era of

colonialism, used to be called extraterritoriality — the freedom not

to be in any way subject to Iraqi law or jurisdiction, ever. And so the

occupation ended without ever actually ending. With 160,000 troops

still in Iraq, not to speak of an unknown number of hired guns and

private security contractors, the U.S. continues to occupy the country,

whatever the legalities might be (including a UN mandate and the claim

that we are part of a coalition). The only catch is this: As of now,

the U.S. is simply the most technologically sophisticated and

potentially destructive of Iraq’s proliferating militias — and outside

the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, it is capable of controlling only

the ground that its troops actually occupy at any moment.

4. Yes, the war was about oil: Oil was hardly mentioned in the

mainstream media or by the administration before the invasion was

launched. The President, when he spoke of Iraq’s vast petroleum reserves at all, piously referred to them as the sacred patrimony

of the people of Iraq. But an administration of former energy execs –

with a National Security Advisor who once sat on the board of Chevron

and had a double-hulled oil tanker, the Condoleezza Rice, named after her (until she took office), and a Vice President who was especially aware

of the globe’s potentially limited energy supplies — certainly had oil

reserves and energy flows on the brain. They knew, in Deputy Secretary

of Defense Paul Wolfowitz’s apt phrase, that Iraq was afloat on a sea of oil and that it sat strategically in the midst of the oil heartlands of the planet.

It wasn’t a mistake that, in 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney’s

semi-secret Energy Task Force set itself the task of opening up the

energy sectors of various Middle Eastern countries to foreign

investment; or that it scrutinized

a detailed map of Iraq’s oil fields, together with the (non-American)

oil companies scheduled to develop them; or that, according to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, the National Security Council directed

its staff to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it

considered the ‘melding’ of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy:

‘the review of operational policies towards rogue states,’ such as

Iraq, and ‘actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and

gas fields’; or that the only American troops ordered to guard

buildings in Iraq, after Baghdad fell, were sent to the Oil Ministry

(and the Interior Ministry, which housed Saddam Hussein’s dreaded

secret police); or that the first reconstruction contract was issued

to Cheney’s former firm, Halliburton, for emergency repairs to those

patrimonial oil fields. Once in charge in Baghdad, as sociologist

Michael Schwartz has made clear,

the administration immediately began guiding recalcitrant Iraqis toward

denationalizing and opening up their oil industry, as well as bringing

in the big boys.

Though rampant insecurity has kept the Western oil giants on the

sidelines, the American-shaped Iraqi oil law quickly became a

benchmark of progress in Washington and remains a constant source

of prodding and advice from American officials in Baghdad. Former

Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan put the oil matter simply and

straightforwardly in his memoir in 2007: I am saddened, he wrote,

that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone

knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil. In other words, in a

variation on the old Bill Clinton campaign mantra: It’s the oil,

stupid. Greenspan was, unsurprisingly, roundly assaulted

for the obvious naivet?of his statement, from which, when it proved

inconvenient, he quickly retreated. But if this administration hadn’t

had oil on the brain in 2002-2003, given the importance of Iraq’s

reserves, Congress should have impeached the President and Vice

President for that.

5. No, our new embassy in Baghdad is not an embassy: When,

for more than three-quarters of a billion dollars, you construct a

complex — regularly described as Vatican-sized — of at least 20

blast-resistant buildings on 104 acres of prime Baghdadi real estate,

with fortified working space and a staff of at least 1,000 (plus

several thousand guards, cooks, and general factotums), when you deeply

embunker it, equip it with its own electricity and water systems, its

own anti-missile defense system, its own PX, and its own indoor and

outdoor basketball courts, volleyball court, and indoor Olympic-size

swimming pool, among other things, you haven’t built an embassy at

all. What you’ve constructed in the heart of the heart of another

country is more than a citadel,

even if it falls short of a city-state. It is, at a minimum, a monument

to Bush administration dreams of domination in Iraq and in what its

adherents once liked to call the Greater Middle East.

Just about ready to open, after the normal construction mishaps

in Iraq, it will constitute the living definition of diplomatic

overkill. It will, according to a Senate estimate, now cost Americans $1.2 billion

a year just to be represented in Iraq. The embassy is, in fact, the

largest headquarters on the planet for the running of an occupation.

Functionally, it is also another well-fortified enduring camp with the

amenities of home. Tell that to the Shiite militiamen now mortaring the Green Zone as if it were?enemy-occupied territory.

6. No, the Iraqi government is not a government: The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has next to no presence

in Iraq beyond the Green Zone; it delivers next to no services; it has

next to no ability to spend its own oil money, reconstruct the country,

or do much of anything else, and it most certainly does not hold a

monopoly on the instruments of violence. It has no control over the

provinces of northern Iraq which operate as a near-independent Kurdish

state. Non-Kurdish Iraqi troops are not even allowed on its territory.

Maliki’s government cannot control the largely Sunni provinces of the

country, where its officials are regularly termed the Iranians (a

reference to the heavily Shiite government’s closeness to neighboring

Iran) and are considered the equivalent of representatives of a foreign

occupying power; and it does not control the Shiite south, where power

is fragmented among the militias of ISCI (the Badr Organization),

Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, and the armed adherents of the Fadila

Party, a Sadrist offshoot, among others.

In Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai has been derisively nicknamed

the mayor of Kabul for his government’s lack of control over much

territory outside the national capital. It would be a step forward for

Maliki if he were nicknamed the mayor of Baghdad. Right now, his

troops, heavily backed by American forces, are fighting for some modest

control over Shiite cities (or parts of cities) from Basra to Baghdad.

7. No, the surge is not over: Two weeks ago, amid much hoopla,

General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker spent two days

before Congress discussing the President’s surge strategy in Iraq and

whether it has been a success. But that surge — the ground one in

which an extra 30,000-plus American troops were siphoned into Baghdad

and, to a lesser extent, adjoining provinces — was by then already so

over. In fact, all but about 10,000 of those troops will be home by the

end of July, not because the President has had any urge for a drawdown,

but, as Fred Kaplan of Slate wrote recently,

because of simple math. The five extra combat brigades, which were

deployed to Iraq with the surge, each have 15-month tours of duty; the

15 months will be up in July?and the U.S. Army and Marines have no combat brigades ready to replace them.

On the other hand, in all those days of yak, neither the general with so much more martial bling on his chest than any victorious World War II commander, nor the white-haired ambassador uttered a word about the surge that is ongoing — the air surge that began

in mid-2007 and has yet to end. Explain it as you will, but, with rare

exceptions, American reporters in Iraq generally don’t look up or more

of them would have noticed that the extra air units surged into that

country and the region in the last year are now being brought to bear over Iraq’s cities. Today, as fighting goes on in Sadr City, American helicopters and Hellfire-missile armed Predator drones

reportedly circle overhead almost constantly and air strikes of various

kinds on city neighborhoods are on the rise. Yet the air surge in Iraq

remains unacknowledged here and so is not a subject for discussion,

debate, or consideration when it comes to our future in Iraq.

8. No, the Iraqi army will never stand up: It can’t. It’s not

a national army. It’s not that Iraqis can’t fight — or fight bravely.

Ask the Sunni insurgents. Ask the Mahdi Army militia of Muqtada

al-Sadr. It’s not that Iraqis are incapable of functioning in a

national army. In the bitter Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, Iraqi Shiite as

well as Sunni conscripts, led by a largely Sunni officer corps, fought

Iranian troops fiercely in battle after pitched battle. But from Fallujah in 2004 to today,

Iraqi army (and police) units, wheeled into battle (often at the behest

of the Americans), have regularly broken and run, or abandoned their

posts, or gone over to the other side, or, at the very least, fought

poorly. In the recent offensive launched by the Maliki government in

Basra, military and police units up against a single resistant militia,

the Mahdi Army, deserted in sizeable numbers, while other units, when

not backed by the Americans, gave poor showings. At least 1,300 troops

and police (including 37 senior police officers) were recently fired

by Maliki for dereliction of duty, while two top commanders were removed as well.

Though American training began in 2004 and, by 2005, the President was

regularly talking about us standing down as soon as the Iraqi Army

stood up, as Charles Hanley of the Associated Press points out,

Year by year, the goal of deploying a capable, free-standing Iraqi

army has seemed to always slip further into the future. He adds, In

the latest shift, the Pentagon’s new quarterly status report quietly

drops any prediction of when local units will take over security

responsibility for Iraq. Last year’s reports had forecast a transition

in 2008. According to Hanley, the chief American trainer of Iraqi

forces, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, now estimates that the military will not

be able to guard the country’s borders effectively until 2018.

No wonder. The Iraqi military is not in any real sense a national

military at all. Its troops generally lack heavy weaponry, and it has

neither a real air force nor a real navy.

Its command structures are integrated into the command structure of the

U.S. military, while the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy are the real

Iraqi air force and navy. It is reliant on the U.S. military for much

of its logistics and resupply, even after an investment of $22 billion

by the American taxpayer. It represents a non-government, is riddled

with recruits from Shiite militias (especially the Badr brigades), and

is riven about who its enemy is (or enemies are) and why. It cannot be

a national army because it has, in essence, nothing to stand up for.

You can count on one thing, as long as we are training and advising

the Iraqi military, however many years down the line, you will read

comments like this one

from an American platoon sergeant, after an Iraqi front-line unit

abandoned its positions in the ongoing battle for control of parts of

Sadr City: It bugs the hell out of me. We don’t see any progress being

made at all. We hear these guys in firefights. We know if we are not up

there helping these guys out we are making very little progress.

9. No, the U.S. military does not stand between Iraq and fragmentation:

The U.S. invasion and the Bush administration’s initial occupation

policies decisively smashed Iraq’s fragile national sense of self.

Since then, the Bush administration, a motor for chaos and

fragmentation, has destroyed the national (if dictatorial) government,

allowed the capital and much of the country (as well as its true patrimony of ancient historical objects and sites) to be looted, disbanded the Iraqi military, and deconstructed

the national economy. Ever since, whatever the administration rhetoric,

the U.S. has only presided over the further fragmentation of the

country. Its military, in fact, employs a specific policy of urban

fragmentation in which it regularly builds

enormous concrete walls around neighborhoods, supposedly for security

and reconstruction, that actually cut them off from their social and

economic surroundings. And, of course, Iraq has in these years been

fragmented in other staggering ways with an estimated four-plus million Iraqis driven into exile abroad or turned into internal refugees.

According to Pepe Escobar of the Asia Times,

there are now at least 28 different militias in the country. The longer

the U.S. remains even somewhat in control, the greater the possibility

of further fragmentation. Initially, the fragmentation was sectarian –

into Kurdish, Sunni, and Shia regions, but each of those regions has

its own potentially hostile parts and so its points of future conflict

and further fragmentation. If the U.S. military spent the early years

of its occupation fighting a Sunni insurgency in the name of a largely

Shiite (and Kurdish) government, it is now fighting a Shiite militia,

while paying and arming former Sunni insurgents, relabeled Sons of

Iraq. Iran is also clearly sending arms into a country that is, in any

case, awash in weaponry. Without a real national government, Iraq has

descended into a welter of militia-controlled neighborhoods, city

states, and provincial or regional semi-governments. Despite all the

talk of American-supported reconciliation, Juan Cole described the present situation well at his Informed Comment

blog: Maybe the US in Iraq is not the little boy with his finger in

the dike. Maybe we are workers with jackhammers instructed to make the

hole in the dike much more huge.

10. No, the U.S. military does not stand between Iraq and civil war:

As with fragmentation, the U.S. military’s presence has, in fact, been

a motor for civil war in that country. The invasion and subsequent

chaos, as well as punitive acts against the Sunni minority, allowed

Sunni extremists, some of whom took the name al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,

to establish themselves as a force in the country for the first time.

Later, U.S. military operations in both Sunni and Shiite areas

regularly repressed local militias — almost the only forces capable of

bringing some semblance of security to urban neighborhoods — opening

the way for the most extreme members of the other community (Sunni

suicide or car bombers and Shiite death squads) to attack. It’s worth

remembering that it was in the surge months

of 2007, when all those extra American troops hit Baghdad

neighborhoods, that many of the city’s mixed or Sunni neighborhoods

were most definitively cleansed by death squads, producing a 75-80% Shiite capital. Iraq is now embroiled in what Juan Cole has termed three civil wars,

two of which (in the south and the north) are largely beyond the reach

of limited American ground forces and all of which could become far

worse. The still low-level struggle between Kurds and Arabs (with the

Turks hovering nearby) for the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in the north may

be the true explosion point to come. The U.S. military sits

precariously atop this mess, at best putting off to the future aspects

of the present civil-war landscape, but more likely intensifying it.

11. No, al-Qaeda will not control Iraq if we leave (and neither will Iran):

The latest figures tell the story. Of 658 suicide bombings globally in

2007 (more than double those of any year in the last quarter century),

542, according to the Washington Post’s

Robin Wright, took place in occupied Iraq or Afghanistan, mainly Iraq.

In other words, the American occupation of that land has been a motor

for acts of terrorism (as occupations will be). There was no al-Qaeda

in Mesopotamia before the invasion and Iraq was no Afghanistan. The

occupation under whatever name will continue to create terrorists, no

matter how many times the administration claims that al-Qaeda is on

the run. With the departure of U.S. troops, it’s clear that homegrown

Sunni extremists (and the small number of foreign jihadis who

work with them), already a minority of a minority, will more than meet

their match in facing the Sunni mainstream. The Sunni Awakening

Movement came into existence, in part, to deal with such

self-destructive extremism (and its fantasies of a Taliban-style

society) before the Americans even noticed that it was happening. When

the Americans leave, al-Qaeda (and whatever other groups the Bush

administration subsumes under that catch-all title) will undoubtedly

lose much of their raison d’阾re or simply be crushed.

As for Iran, the moment the Bush administration finally agreed to a

popular democratic vote in occupied Iraq, it ensured one thing — that

the Shiite majority would take control, which in practice meant

religio-political parties that, throughout the Saddam Hussein years,

had generally been close to, or in exile in, Iran. Everything the Bush

administration has done since has only ensured the growth of Iranian

influence among Shiite groups. This is surely meant by the Iranians as,

in part, a threat/trump card, should the Bush administration launch an

attack on that country. After all, crucial U.S. resupply lines from

Kuwait run through areas near Iran and would assumedly be relatively

easy to disrupt.

Without the U.S. military in Iraq, there can be no question that the

Iranians would have real influence over the Shiite (and probably

Kurdish) parts of the country. But that influence would have its

distinct limits. If Iran overplayed its hand even in a rump Shiite

Iraq, it would soon enough find itself facing some version of the

situation that now confronts the Americans. As Robert Dreyfuss wrote in the Nation

recently, [D]espite Iran’s enormous influence in Iraq, most Iraqis –

even most Iraqi Shiites — are not pro-Iran. On the contrary,

underneath the ruling alliance in Baghdad, there is a fierce

undercurrent of Arab nationalism in Iraq that opposes both the U.S.

occupation and Iran’s support for religious parties in Iraq. The

al-Qaedan and Iranian threats are, at one and the same time, bogeymen

used by the Bush administration to scare Americans who might favor

withdrawal and, paradoxically, realities that a continued military

presence only encourages.

12. Yes, some Americans were right about Iraq from the beginning (and not the pundits either): One of the strangest aspects of the recent fifth anniversary (as of every other anniversary) of the invasion of Iraq was the newspaper print space

reserved for those Bush administration officials and other war

supporters who were dead wrong in 2002-2003 on an endless host of

Iraq-related topics. Many of them were given ample opportunity to offer

their views on past failures, the success of the surge, future

withdrawals or drawdowns, and the responsibilities of a future U.S.

president in Iraq.

Noticeably missing were representatives of the group of Americans who

happened to have been right from the get-go. In our country, of course,

it often doesn’t pay to be right. (It’s seen as a sign of weakness or

plain dumb luck.) I’m speaking, in this case, of the millions of people

who poured into the streets to demonstrate against the coming invasion

with an efflorescence

of placards that said things too simpleminded (as endless pundits

assured American news readers at the time) to take seriously — like

No Blood for Oil, Don’t Trade Lives for Oil, or How did USA’s oil

get under Iraq’s sand? At the time, it seemed clear to most reporters,

commentators, and op-ed writers that these sign-carriers represented a

crew of well-meaning know-nothings and the fact that their collective

fears proved all too prescient still can’t save them from that

conclusion. So, in their very rightness, they were largely forgotten.

Now, as has been true for some time, a majority of Americans, another obvious bunch of know-nothings, are deluded enough to favor bringing all U.S. troops out of Iraq at a reasonable pace and relatively soon. (More than 60% of them also believe

that the conflict is not integral to the success of U.S.

anti-terrorism efforts.) If, on the other hand, a poll were taken of

pundits and the inside-the-Beltway intelligentsia (not to speak of the

officials of the Bush administration), the number of them who would

want a total withdrawal from Iraq (or even see that as a reasonable

goal) would undoubtedly descend near the vanishing point. When it comes

to American imperial interests, most of them know better, just as so

many of them did before the war began. Even advisors to candidates who

theoretically want out of Iraq are hinting that a full-scale withdrawal is hardly the proper way to go.

So let me ask you a question (and you answer it): Given all of the

above, given the record thus far, who is likely to be right?

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute’s Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture

(University of Massachusetts Press), has been updated in a newly issued

edition that deals with victory culture’s crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.

[Tomdispatch recommendations: For another numbered piece on Iraq, check out Gary Kamiya's eminently sane reprise of the Ten Commandments as applied to the launching of the 2003 invasion -- to be found at Salon.com. (Commandment I, Thou shalt not launch preventive wars?quot;; Commandment VI: Do not allow neoconservatives anywhere near Middle East policy?Special Bill Kristol Sub-commandment VI a:

Stop giving these buffoons prestigious jobs on newspaper-of-record

Op-Ed pages, top magazines and television shows. They have been

completely and consistently wrong about everything. Must we continue to

be subjected to their pontifications?). Also let me offer a

Tomdispatch bow of thanks to Cursor.org's daily Media Patrol column.

Someone at that site with a keen eye for the less noticed but

newsworthy pieces of any day (and an always splendid set of links)

makes my life so much easier, when gathering material for essays like

this one.]

Copyright 2008 Tom Engelhardt

Tags: bush administration, cate, commentator, decades, fanfare, Food, helicopter, invasion of iraq, job, nationalism, pace, ups

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We have xenophobia in terms of Asian immigration concerns and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters%26#39; opposition to the free trade agreement with China. We have nationalism in the politicking against foreign investment in so-called strategic assets.
The line that takes the cake in that area is Prime Minister Helen Clark on the subject of the Canadian bid for a minority stake in Auckland airport.
%26quot;I%26#39;m an Aucklander,%26quot; Miss Clark declared. %26quot;I%26#39;ve got no personal enthusiasm for seeing that hugely important piece of infrastructure go from New Zealand.%26quot;
In that one sentence Miss Clark managed to conjure up for her constituency the image of Auckland airport somehow being dismantled in the middle of the night and spirited away overseas, lost for Auckland and for travelling Kiwis.
In terms of dog whistle politics that was as good as Mr Peters%26#39; opposition to the China free trade agreement and his party%26#39;s concerns on Asian immigration.
Auckland airport was sold in 1998. The Canadian offer was for a minority stake and even smaller voting powers. It was not the sale of a state asset, just a change in composition of the shareholders.
As a result of government interference, 28,000 Mum and Dad investors have now seen the value of their shares plummet when they could have realised a windfall at a time of general malaise on the rest of the sharemarket.
The Overseas Investment Office gave the tick of approval to the Canadian bid, but that did not worry the two Cabinet ministers charged with making the final decision.
Right on cue they rejected the bid on the eve of the Labour Party%26#39;s election-year congress, leaving Miss Clark to trumpet the decision to the faithful.
Asset sales would be a defining difference between Labour and National, Miss Clark declared, raising the spectre of brave Labour patriots clutching the family silver and fending off National Party brigands wanting to steal it.
National is on a hiding to nothing on this. Party leader John Key was bound to oppose Labour%26#39;s veto of the Canadian bid after it had been ticked by the OIO. And he was bound to take issue with Finance Minister Michael Cullen changing the tax rules mid process in a bid to stymie the bid. That sends banana republic messages to investors.
Labour will blur the principles involved in the airport stance in an attempt to show that National is soft on selling state assets.
Similarly, Labour%26#39;s plans to buy back the railways and Cook Strait ferries from Toll NZ, carefully timed for election year, will give further opportunities. The ramifications of this will have to be questioned by the Opposition, both in Parliament and on the hustings.
Agreeing to the buy-back will leave National accused of %26quot;me too%26quot; politics; opposing it will lead to charges of being unpatriotic.
Mr Key is aware of the dangers lurking in this most emotive of all policy areas. He has moved to clarify and simplify some of the overly-complicated asset sales policies which National fielded at the last election in a bid to balance caucus factions at the time.
He spelled the policy out on TVNZ%26#39;s Agenda programme at the weekend, saying there would be no asset sales %26ndash; %26quot;either partially or fully%26quot; %26ndash; in National%26#39;s first term in office.
If a change was envisaged National would seek a mandate from the electorate.
Mr Key said asset sales were not needed and the previous policy of selling a quarter share in SOE Solid Energy, for example, would be distracting when a new Government would have more urgent priorities.
Mind you, volatile though the asset sales issue is, economic concerns are likely to be a defining factor in November: high interest rates, tight credit, depreciating house values, more finance companies joining the 17 which have already gone to the wall, petrol at $2 a litre, escalating food bills.
Bill Clinton%26#39;s political strategist James Carville was no Samuel Johnson, but he coined the famous 1992 slogan to keep the troops %26quot;on message%26quot; about the central theme of the campaign.
The cryptic but pertinent sign over his desk at headquarters in Little Rock read: %26quot;It%26#39;s the economy, stupid.%26quot;

Tags: cate, Food, nationalism, zeal

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by Dr. Frederic Clairmont

(Global Research)

The victory of the

Revolution is a rampart that ensures that never again will Cuba become

the most sordid brothel our planet has ever known linked to a criminal

gambling and drug infested inferno of the colonial occupiers. Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara, 1 May 1959.

Invariably, after every

speaking engagement on Latin America. the question was raised about

Cuba fate after the exit of the Comandante from the political stage.

The question was not malicious although among my listeners there were

those who believed , or prayed for, that the departure of Fidel

Alejandro Castro Rua, born (1926) in the former province of Oriente on

his father farm (Manacas) ,marks the terminal point of the socialist

revolution. Throughout the ages and by the very nature of our existence

it is part of our normal being to ask that basic question: from whence

have we come and whither are we are going? There are many that have

personalized one of the most momentous historical metamorphoses of all

times.

Fidel Castro and the Revolution

that he incubated and flung into battle with such resounding surprises

and successes for more than a half a century cannot be abstracted from

the role of the masses as the energizing dynamic of change.

The personalization of leaders

as the drive wheel of change is erroneous as it assumes that the makers

of history are exclusively the leaders of social and political

movements. Such a muddled perception is the incarnation of the

Fuhrerprinzip of Nazism that sweeps aside the seminal role of ordinary

peoples that battle to defend the Revolution and build on it. It

deliberately eviscerates the world of labour: workers, farmers,

professionals, the men and women that comprise the armed forces. In

short, it ignores the creators of wealth as the engine of change.

History is about numbers and

very big numbers that dramatically erupt onto the political stage at

certain nodal points in response to the contradictions of our time

stemming from irrepressible convulsions . The revolutionary that is

Fidel Castro is thus inseparable from the masses that catapulted him

into the fires of national struggle from the Moncada Barracks to the

liberation of Havana, in much the same way as Gandhi and Mandela in

their freedom struggles; and no less so Lenin and the October

Revolution.

Thomas Carlyle enriched our understanding of this duality when he wrote in his classic depiction of the French Revolution:

Hunger and nakedness and

nightmare oppression lying heavy on twenty-five million: this, not the

wounded vanities or contradicted philosophies of philosophical

advocates, rich shopkeepers, rural nobles, was the prime mover in the

French Revolution; as the like will be in all such revolutions, in all

countries.

The penetrating insight of Marx

with its sublime message of hope and struggle as humanity faces up to

the exigencies of smashing the inherited mould of capitalism, a system

of class power, privilege, profit and exploitation, illumines the

compulsive sweep of revolutionary change.

History does nothing; it

possesses no immense wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, real

living man who does everything, who grapples with everything and who

fights.

As a teacher and writer (and

Spanish speaker) I tracked the Revolution trajectory spanning more

than half a century. I was never a member of any political body nor was

I ever enamored by the phony cult of objectivity. In those decades, I

talked to its peoples from all walks of life. I met its leadership. I

participated in its seminars and conferences. It was in those years of

agony and ecstasy that I witnessed the unending twists and turns of its

ascendancy. In those years, I also encountered the hate-filled é–™igré–Ÿ,

who had chosen the path of counter-revolution, dishonor and mendacity,

ensconced in Miami and elsewhere.

To grasp the nature of the

transition ?and that is the crucial word of this lecture - that has

reshaped the nation psyche it is well to recall that the Revolution

was generated as a reaction against the exploitation and sheer cruelty

perpetrated by the US occupation and its domesticated political

Quislings that reigned through the instrumentalities of unadulterated

state terrorism since the consummation of the conquest in 1898. Listen

well to the Comandante words framed on the eve of the freedom upsurge

. Its relevance to the new transition is all too obvious.

Some have insisted that the

only way out for Cuba was to guarantee private investments. That , we

are told, would solve the whole problem. But foreign capitalists had

these guarantees in Cuba for fifty years , and similar guarantees in

practically every other country of the American continent. Did these

guarantees solve the pressing problems confronting its peoples? Did

they solve the problem of mass unemployment, education, public health?

Indeed, what did they solve in all these fifty years? Joblessness

straddling more than one third of the labour force, poverty, hunger and

chronic malnutrition?quot;

I recall on one of our walks on

the Malecon with my friend the late Renato Constantino, a celebrated

Philipino resistance fighter, philosopher and writer pointing his hand

to the waters of the bay in the direction of Florida and saying: Over

there, just a couple of kilometers away. I believe it around 90 kms.

There is the super-colonial Goliath , that has flung everything against

this bastion of a socialist David and what we抳e seen is that the power

of the imperio has been clubbed. Why? You know the answer. What

Voltaire said about God applies no less so to Cuba: If Cuba did not

exist we would have had to invent it. What Renato was saying was that

the White Man world of the imperio cannot coexist with Cuba; and hence, in their view, it must be destroyed. It is toxic and contagious.

Its sheer capacity to survive

and strike back owed nothing to a world of miracles and Shamans. What

Bush, his acolytes and predecessors mean by transition is something

quite different from the meaning emblazoned in the theory and praxis of

the Revolution? It reminds me of the words of Ho Chi Minh formulated

after the breakdown of the Fountainbleau negotiations in 1946. Words

have different meaning for different people. If you spit in the face of

the colonialists they will always call it rain.

We cannot speak of the

multi-faceted transitions in Cuba without studying the grim transition

of imperialism. They are inter-related. American capitalism has leapt

into the big transition, that of recession, galloping fast towards the

Big Depression. The credit seizures and foreclosures are gobbling up

jobs and earnings at an alarming tempo. Panic stricken stock markets

are plummeting with many major financial institutions going bust. The

industrial capacity of US capitalism has withered. What remains of its

colossal industrial heritage, a legacy mainly of the decades 1865-1914,

is being swiftly offshored. Detroit, the once proud citadel of

industrial might is now a wasteland. Its financial structures are

wobbly, shackled with uncontrollable debt: household, corporate and

government that continues to burgeon exponentially. Americans and

foreigners have lost confidence in the greenback that is swiftly

ceasing to be a store of value.

Iran’s president Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad hammered the point when he said: the dollar is nothing but

a worthless piece of paper. A contention that few will contest. Its

claim to be the world reserve currency is a fairy tale. Credit flows

are drying up . Banks are dumping their assets into collapsing markets.

Defaults and bankruptcies are soaring. In sum, US financial capitalism

is in the throes of an implosion. Uncle Sam is an enfeebled mendicant

living off borrowed time and borrowed money. But not for long can this

game continue.

The empire has over 700

military overseas bases in over 130 countries but its effective power

is shrinking day by day. This then is the big contrast with Cuba

transition. Its growth in real terms has steadily topped 6%over the

last six years. The brutalizing years of the Special Period have

largely been vanquished. The economic and spiritual revolutions in Cuba

are nothing short of mind-boggling that bear no comparison with any

Latin American countries. Let there be no illusion. Cuba is a Third

World nation. It still is a poor country. The wages of its labour force

are still abysmally low. The exploitation of man by man has vanished.

Of pivotal importance, however, is that it has now achieved full

employment, a reality once regarded as the unattainable Nirvana.

Illiteracy, malnutrition and mendicancy have ceased to exist. Its life

expectancy is almost on a par with Japan and Sweden, as against 56 in

Batista neo-colony. Its infant mortality rate is on a par with Canada

and has already outstripped that of the United States. These are the

transitions that the media masters of the corporate gulag chose to

eliminate from their specious references on transitions.

I well remember the

Revolution formative years when the white-skinned medical personnel

bolted the country boasting that medicine is dead and the only thing

that will take its place is Voodoo. In their imbecilic gasp of triumph

they had forgotten to say that their political cronies had plundered

the nation Treasury and dispatched its pickings to the land of the

ex-colonial master. Cuba now has around 90,000 students spanning the

entire range of medical care. This nation which, according to its

unbending liquidators, has abolished æ…¼uman rights?has set its goal of

becoming the paramount medical science citadel in the world.

There are now over 12,000 students in ELAM: La Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina,

one of the world top educational establishments. Over the next decade

it will be graduating with Venezuela more than 100,000 Latin American

and Caribbean doctors within the integration framework of ALBA:

Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. Together with Venezuela,

Operation Miracle was launched designed to restore vision to no fewer

than 6 million in all of Latin America and the Caribbean.

These astounding numbers would

have been inconceivable without a socialist order and the discipline

and sacrifices that moved in tandem with it. Tens of thousands of Cuban

medical and non-medical personnel are working in 27 countries under

difficult physical conditions. In his visit to Cuba in 2007, in which

he decorated the 140 medical personnel, General Pervez Musharaf ( a

fervent ally of the empire) was not indulging in hyperbole when he

noted:

Yours was one of the greatest

acts of solidarity that humanity has ever known. We thank President

Castro and the Cuban people. You came thousands of miles away, in the

depth of one of the most severest winters, to heal and save the lives

of thousands of our people stricken by that appalling natural disaster.

You even brought your own medical equipment and medicines. There is not

a single village in our country that has not heard of your heroic deeds

and sacrifices. These awards are a modest token to express our

gratitude. You gave everything but took nothing in exchange except our

love. The word thanks , you will understand, is too small a tribute to

convey the immensity of our debt and feeling towards you.

The systematic state terrorist

onslaughts against Cuba pre-date 1962 that marked the start of the

official embargo that has endured with no respite for almost half a

century .Attempts to quarantine Cuba have failed. Year after year in

the UN General Assembly just two countries, the United States ( plus

its two Pacific island protectorates) and Israel voted for the

embargo perpetuation. Its cumulative cost according to foreign

minister Roque approaches $100bn. And yet, notwithstanding the

permanent war including several aborted attempts at assassination of

the president, Cuba has lurched forward prodigiously , not only in its

dispensation of education and medical aid to countries on many

continents, but as a fraternal catalyst in the liberation struggle. No

country in the world has given as much to Africa as Cuba has done and

continues to do. A gift sealed with the blood of its peoples.

Nelson Mandela touched on one

of the energizing roles of Cuba when he spelt out in his homage to the

Comandante during his visit to South Africa following the liquidation

of the Apartheid regime.

We and all the peoples of the

Free World are honored to have you here. And by the Free World we refer

to the peoples whose blood has been shed profusely to liquidate

imperialism. Consider South Africa as your land. We shall not forget

the decisive role you played militarily in destroying the South African

army. You came thousands of miles to participate in the freedom

struggle with us. You fought nobly, unstintingly and shed your blood to

ensure our freedom. Without you our freedom would not have been

consummated.

Obviously such views were in

contrast to the architects of Cuba annihilation. These avalanches of

death-dealing hatred had nothing to do with the familiar claptrap that

the island of socialism had repudiated all the vestiges of human rights

and democracy. The heights of vulgarity scaled by the practitioners of

exterminism were exhibited by General Alexander Haig, one of

President Reagan henchmen, when he fulminated in a meeting of the

National Security Council : You just give me the word and I抣l turn

that fucking little island into a parking lot. If this is not an

exhortation to the Holocaust then words have no meaning. The mass

exterminism propounded by Haig was not galvanized because of the

apprehensions of the upshot of another Bay of Pigs.

It was because even at that

time Cuba had made yet another dramatic transition: it had become

militarily invulnerable. This was matched by the decline of the imperio

and its military over-reach that exposed its soft underbelly. To this

was added an event of the greatest importance , the alliance with

Venezuela concretized in the words of Chavez:

An attack against Cuba will be

countered by an immediate cut-off of oil. More important is that it

will lead to a flow of blood including the blood of Bolivarian patriots

since revolutionary Cuba and Venezuela are blended in the war against

imperialism. It will be an horrendous war if the imbeciles that rule

the imperio are so dumb as to unleash it. And I need hardly say that it

will be a devastating counterpunch that overspills the confines of

Cuba. For the first time in the history of the Americas a black man

was calling the shots.

In yet another of his

preachments on Cuba transition, Bush excoriated Barack Obama for

declaring that if he elected he would talk to everyone. In a regime

in which the very mention of dialogue is anathema Bush flatly

pontificated that there can be no dialogue with the Castro tyrant that

has brought nothing but disaster and poverty to his people and

eliminating all traces of human dignity and freedom. This is quite a

mouthful from a man that continues to prattle endlessly about human

dignity when in his own backyard the American prison population stands

at 2.3 million with no signs of tapering off. According to the Pew

Report it now has 750 prisoners per 100,000 as against 79 per 100,000

in Switzerland. One in 15 African Americans are behind bars, as against

I in 75 for Hispanics and 1 in 106 for whites.

Is Bush oblivious to the crimes

against humanity in the war that he has waged against Iraq in which

more than one million Iraqis have been killed and wounded? In addition,

their factories, farms, homes and infrastructure have been smashed. The

cost of that war has moved from billions to trillions of dollars seen

from the American side of the balance sheet. The numbers are misleading

in that they do not include the costs to the people of Iraq. Indeed,

the policies of US exterminism was neatly encapsulated in the pithy

comment of the British dramatist and Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter

You either do as I say or I抣l kick your ass in. Because of its

refusal to have its ass kicked in Cuba has been condemned to the

chopping block. To be sure there are no presidents since 1945 that are

not indictable on war crimes charges.

Bush launched one more of his

transitions when his administration created a Cuba Transition

Coordinator bossed by Cleb McCarry, former ambassador to Afghanistan.

On 10 July 2006, a report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free

Cuba demanded immediate action to ensure the failure of the Castro

regime succession strategy.

There was nothing new in this

verbose report. It was framed as an ultimatum that bluntly stated that

the land and industrial and financial sectors must be denationalized.

The Roman Church and its prerogatives must be fully restored including

its extensive land holdings and the end of the separation of Church and

State.. It was a blueprint for the return of the neo-colonial

occupation from 1898-1959. Noteworthy is that its goals could be

succinctly summarized in an utterance made more than 50 years ago by an

American oilman at the peak of the oil bonanza in Venezuela.

Here in Venezuela you have the

right to do what you like with your capital. This right is dearer to me

than all the political rights in the world.

The Economist, that

militant mouthpiece of Big Capital (it owned by the Pearson Trust)

hollers for US intervention to halt the nationalist and socialist

offensives gathering speed in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

To put it bluntly , Latin America needs more Lula da Silvas [and his

version of neo-liberalism] and fewer Chavez and Morales. This is

where the United States could help. The imperial masters , however,do

not require such morsels of advice because it is central to the applied

logic of state terrorism.

As we have seen, institutional

changes have been a permanent trait of the Revolution and the current

debates and their implementation do not mark a qualitative change in

their direction. It is but yet another phase of the greatest importance

given the immense strides and complexity of the national economy. Cuba

today is a power house of modern science and technology embracing

bio-technology, electronics, engineering, information technology, the

chemical and petrochemical industries, mining, the iron and steel

industry, etc. To that inventory we should simply say that Cuba stands

at the summit of world educational attainment.

The debate on the new

transition In Cuba has reached a frenzied pace and straddles the

problem of optimizing capital and labour resources. No holes are barred

in these debates on the extent of administrative incompetence and

corruption, and the theft of national assets. The current projects call

for a massive overhaul of the bureaucracy whose swollen numbers are a

deterrent to the nation productive advance.

These changes now underway

demand a decentralization of economic decision making slated to boost

productivity. The changes will require an overhaul of wholesale and

retail price structures, wage payments and incentive payments,

subsidies and the prevailing rationing system The latter was never

designed to be a permanent fixture of a socialist order. These changes

call for, as President Raul Castro stated in his 26 July 2007 policy

statement, for the elimination of a host of prohibitions and red tape.

Illustrative is the case of the dairy industry and specifically milk

distribution. There are no overall directives engulfing the entire

economy. Experimentation is proceeding on a piecemeal basis in various

municipalities and then gradually extended. In the case of milk

distribution this has resulted in savings of over $40 million and in

addition huge savings in fuel costs.

This is how Fidel puts it in his Reflections

of 16 January. We do not intend to give anything to those who could be

producing but do not produce, or who produce very little. We shall

reward the merits of those who work with their hands and their minds.

The question is obviously open: to what extent will these transitions,

that cut deeply into the flesh of Cuba socialism, engender enhanced

inequalities in a society whose egalitarianism is legendary.? Our query

will soon be answered by unfolding events.

There are well-intentioned

critics who propagate that Cuba should embrace the free market magic

and its propertied social relations from whence it follows that the

Chinese model is appropriate. One recalls Deng Xiaoping epic

outburst. To be rich is glorious Deng ideas and their

reverberations have been discussed in depth for several years in Cuba.

But let us be realistic. What is Deng rallying cry other than a

resounding clamour for the restoration of capitalism? A visit to

China cities and countryside and the monstrous inequalities between

them and within them is amply confirmatory of the workings of the

system. Its millionaires have become billionaires. China and Cuba

belong to two opposed universes. China level of inequality, measured

by the Gini coefficient, is similar to that of American capitalism.

The capitalist reality of the

islands of Hong Kong and Macao owned and dominated politically by a

cabal of at most a dozen mega capitalist families that are entrenched

through marriage, extended family connections and their daily economic

wheelings and dealings would suggest that the Cuban leadership and its

people will not be following this road. Thus the relevance of the

Chinese capitalist model to Cuba smacks of total irrealism.

Our lectures on transitions

both within imperialism and Cuba are taking place not in an abstract

world but in a world where capitalism - and American capitalism in

particular ?is traversing one of the most cataclysmic

upheavals since the Great Depression of the l930s. The resultant of

this tragedy is beyond the scope of these lectures.

But what I believe will be the

most important conditioner of the future direction of socialism in Cuba

are the ethical foundations on which it reposes. This is enshrined in

what I conceive to be one of the most penetrating manifestos in Cuban

history. It is the definition of the Revolution so masterly articulated

on 1 May 2000 by the Comandante that merits quotation at length.

The

Revolution is the sense of the historic moment; it is to change all

that must changed; it is equality and freedom in their plenitude; it

means that we must be treated, and to treat others, as human beings; it

is to emancipate ourselves by our own powers; it is to challenge the

powerful dominant forces within the nation and abroad; it is to defend

our values at whatever price and sacrifice; it is modesty,

disinterestedness , altruism, solidarity and heroism; it means not

having recourse to lies or thrashing ethical principles; it is the deep

conviction that there is no force in the world capable of crushing the

power of truth and ideas. Revolution is unity; it is independence; it

is to fight for the materialization of our dreams for Cuba and the

world; it is the foundation of our patriotism, our socialism and our

internationalism.Frederic

F. Clairmont is a prominent Canadian academic whofor many years was a

permanent senior economics affairs officer at the United Nations

Economics Commission for Africa and the United Nations Conference for

Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He taught at the University of

Kings College and Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. His classic work

is The Rise and Fall of Economic Liberalism and his latest book is:

Cuba and Venezuela: The Nemeses of Imperialism published by Citizens

International in Penang, Malaysia. He is a a frequent contributor to

Le Monde Diplomatique and The Economic and Political Weekly.

Tags: barack obama, boss, cate, decades, hero, job, l word, liar, nationalism, pace, signs, stint, ups

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by Jonathan Cook(Global Research)NAZARETH. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world most intractable, much the same can be said of the parallel debate about whether its resolution can best be achieved by a single state embracing the two peoples living there or by a division of the land into two separate states, one for Jews and the other for Palestinans.The central argument of the two-staters is that the one-state idea is impractical and therefore worthless of consideration. Their rallying cry is that it is at least possible to imagine a consensus emerging behind two states, whereas Israelis will never accept a single state. The one-state crowd are painted as inveterate dreamers and time-wasters.That is the argument advanced by Israel only serious peace group, Gush Shalom. Here is the view of the group indefatiguable leader, Uri Avnery: 揂fter 120 years of conflict, after a fifth generation was born into this conflict on both sides, to move from total war to total peace in a Single Joint State, with a total renunciation of national independence? This is total illusion.Given Avnery high-profile opposition to a single state, many in the international solidarity groups adopt the same position. They have been joined by an influential American intellectual, the philosopher Michael Neumann, who wrote the no-holds-barred book The Case against Israel. He appears to be waging a campaign to discredit the one-state idea too.Recently in defence of two states, he wrote: hat Israel would concede a single state is laughable. ?There is no chance at all [Israelis] will accept a single state that gives the Palestinians anything remotely like their rights.Unlike the one-state solution, according to Neumann and Avnery, the means to realising two states are within our grasp: the removal of the half a million Jewish settlers living in the occupied Palestinian territories.Both believe that, were Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 borders, it would be possible to create two real states. 揂 two-state solution will, indeed, leave Palestinians with a sovereign state, because that what a two-state solution means,?argues Neumann. 揑t doesn mean one state and another non-state, and no Palestinian proponent of a two-state solution will settle for less than sovereignty.There is something surprisingly naive about arguing that, just because something is called a two-state solution, it will necessarily result in two sovereign states. What are the mimimum requirements for a state to qualify as sovereign, and who decides? True, the various two-state solutions proposed by Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and George Bush, and supported by most of the international community, would fail according to the two-staters?chief criterion: these divisions are not premised on the removal of all the settlers.But an alternative two-state solution requiring Israel withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders might still not concede, for example, a Palestinian army ?equipped and trained by Iran? ?to guard the borders of the West Bank and Gaza. Would that count? And how likely do the campaigners for two real states think it that Israel and the US would grant that kind of sovereignty to a Palestine state?Importantly, Neumann and Avnery remind us that those with power are the ones who dictate solutions. In which case we can be sure that, when the time is right, Israel and its sponsor, the United States, will impose their own version of the two-state solution and that it will be far from the genuine article advocated by the two-state camp.But let us return to the main argument: that the creation of two states is inherently more achievable and practical than the establishment of a single state. Strangely, however, from all the available evidence, this is not how it looks to Israel current leaders.Prime minister Ehud Olmert, for example, has expressed in several speeches the fear that, should the Palestinian population under Israeli rule — both in the occupied territories and inside Israel proper — reach the point where it outnumbers the Jewish population, as demographers expect in the next few years, Israel will be compared to apartheid South Africa. In his words, Israel is facing an imminent and powerful truggle for one-man-one-vote?along the lines of the anti-apartheid movement.According to Olmert, without evasive action, political logic is drifting inexorably towards the creation of one state in Israel and Palestine. This was his sentiment as he addressed delegates to the recent Herzliya conference:揙nce we were afraid of the possibility that the reality in Israel would force a bi-national state on us. In 1948, the obstinate policy of all the Arabs, the anti-Israel fanaticism and our strength and the leadership of David Ben-Gurion saved us from such a state. For 60 years, we fought with unparalleled courage in order to avoid living in a reality of bi-nationalism, and in order to ensure that Israel exists as a Jewish and democratic state with a solid Jewish majority. We must act to this end and understand that such a [bi-national] reality is being created, and in a very short while it will be beyond our control.Olmert energies are therefore consumed with finding an alternative political programme that can be sold to the rest of the world. That is the reason he, and Sharon before him, began talking about a Palestinian state. Strangely, however, neither took up the offer of the ideal two-state solution — the kind Avnery and Neumann want — made in 2002. Then Saudi Arabia and the rest Arab world promised Israel peace in return for its withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders. They repeated their offer last year. Israel has steadfastly ignored them.Instead an alternative version of two states — the bogus two-state solution — has become the default position of Israeli politics. It requires only that Israel and the Palestinians appear to divide the land, while in truth the occupation continues and Jewish sovereignty over all of historic Palestine is not only maintained but rubber-stamped by the international community. In other words, the Gazafication of the West Bank.When Olmert warns that without two states 揑srael is finished? he is thinking primarily about how to stop the emergence of a single state. So, if the real two-state camp is to be believed, Olmert is a dreamer too, because he fears that a one-state solution is not only achievable but dangerously close at hand. Sharon, it seems, suffered from the same delusion, given that demography was the main impulse for his disengaging from Gaza.Or maybe both of them understood rather better than Neumann and Avnery what is meant by a Jewish state, and what political conditions are incompatible with it.In fact, the division of the land demanded by the real two-staters, however equitable, would be the very moment when the struggle for Israel to remain a Jewish state would enter its most critical and difficult phase. Which is precisely why Israel has blocked any meaningful division of the land so far and will continue to do so.In the unimaginable event that the Israel were to divide the land, a Jewish state would not be able to live with the consequences of such a division for long. Eventually, the maintenance of an ethnic Israeli state would (and will) prove unsustainable: environmentally, demographically and ultimately physically. Division of the land simply 揻ast-forwards?the self-destructiveness inherent in a Jewish state.Let us examine just a few of the consequences for the Jewish state of a genuine two-state solution.First, Israel inside its recognised, shrunken borders would face an immediate and very serious water shortage. That is because, in returning the West Bank to the Palestinians, Israel would lose control of the large mountain acquifers that currently supply most of its water, not only to Israel proper but also to the Jewish settlers living illegally in the occupied territories. Israel would no longer be able to steal the water, but would be expected to negotiate for it on the open market.Given the politics of water in the Middle East that would be no simple matter. However impoverished the new sovereign Palestinian state was, it would lose all legitimacy in the eyes of its own population were it to sell more than a trickle of water to the Israelis.We can understand why by examining the current water situation. At the moment Israel drains off almost all of the water provided by the rivers and acquifers inside Israel and in the occupied territories for use by its own population, allowing each Palestinian far less than the minimum amount he or she requires each day, according to the World Health Organisation.In a stark warning last month, Israel Water Authority reported that overdrilling has polluted with sea water most of the supply from the coastal acquifer — that is the main fresh water source inside Israel recognised borders.Were Palestinians to be allowed a proper water ration from their own mountain acquifer, as well as to build a modern economy, there would not be enough left over to satisfy Israel first-world thirst. And that is before we consider the extra demand on water resources from all those Palestinians who choose to realise their right to return, not to their homes in Israel, but to the new sovereign Palestinian state.In addition, for reasons that we will come to, the sovereign Jewish state would have every reason to continue its Judaisation policies, trying to attact as many Jews from the rest of the world as possible, thereby further straining the region water resources.The environmental unsustainability of both states seeking to absorb large populations would inevitably result in a regional water crisis. In addition, should Israeli Jews, sensing water shortages, start to leave in significant numbers, Israel would have an even more pressing reason to locate water, by fair means or foul.It can be expected that in a short time Israel, with the fourth most powerful army in the world, would seek to manufacture reasons for war against its weaker neighbours, particularly the Palestinians but possibly also Lebanon, in a bid to steal their water.Water shortages would, of course, be a problem facing a single state too. But, at least in one state there would be mechanisms in place to reduce such tensions, to manage population growth and economic development, and to divide water resources equitably.Second, with the labour-intensive occupation at an end, much of the Jewish state huge citizen army would become surplus to defence requirements. In addition to the massive social and economic disruptions, the dismantling of the country military complex would fundamentally change Israel role in the region, damage its relationship with the only global superpower and sever its financial ties to Diaspora Jews.Israel would no longer have the laboratories of the occupied territories for testing its military hardware, its battlefield strategies and its booming surveillance and crowd control industries. If Israel chose to fight the Palestinians, it would have to do so in a proper war, even if one between very unequal sides. Doutbless the Palestinians, like Hizbullah, would quickly find regional sponsors to arm and train their army or militias.The experience and reputation Israel has acquired — at least among the US military — in running an occupation and devising new and supposedly sophisticated ways to control the 揂rab mind?would rapidly be lost, and with it Israel usefulness to the US in managing its own long-term occupation of Iraq.Also, Israel vital strategic alliance with the US in dividing the Arab world, over the issue of the occupation and by signing peace treaties with some states and living in a state of permanent war with others, would start to unravel.With the waning of Israel special relationship with Washington and the influence of its lobby groups, as well as the loss of billions of dollars in annual subsidies, the Jewish Diaspora would begin to lose interest in Israel. Its money and power ebbing away, Israel might eventually slip into Middle Eastern anonymity, another Jordan. In such circumstances it would rapidly see a large exodus of privileged Ashkenazi Jews, many of whom hold second passports.Third, the Jewish state would not be as Jewish as some might think: currently one in five Israelis is not Jewish but Palestinian. Although in order to realise a real two-state vision all the Jewish settlers would probably need to leave the occupied territories and return to Israel, what would be done with the Palestinians with Israeli citizenship?These Palestinians have been citizens for six decades and live legally on land that has belonged to their families for many generations. They are also growing in number at a rate faster than the Jewish population, the reason they are popularly referred to in Israel as a emographic timebomb?Were these 1.3 million citizens to be removed from Israel by force under a two-state arrangement, it would be a violation of international law by a democratic state on a scale unprecedented in the modern era, and an act of ethnic cleansing even larger than the 1948 war that established Israel. The question would be: why even bother advocating two states if it has to be achieved on such appalling terms?Assuming instead that the new Jewish state is supposed to maintain, as Israel currently does, the pretence of being democratic, these citizens would be entitled to continue living on their land and exercising their rights. Inside a Jewish state that had offically ended its conflict with the Palestinians, demands would grow from Palestinian citizens for equal rights and an end to their second-class status.Most importantly, they would insist on two rights that challenge the very basis of a Jewish state. They would expect the right, backed by international law, to be able to marry Palestinians from outside Israel and bring them to live with them. And they would want a Right of Return for their exiled relatives on a similar basis to the Law of Return for Jews.Israel Jewishness would be at stake, even more so than it is today from its Palestinian minority. It can be assumed that Israel leaders would react with great ferocity to protect the state Jewishness. Eventually Israel democratic pretensions would have to be jettisoned and the full-scale ethnic cleansing of Palestinian citizens implemented.Still, do these arguments against the genuine two-state arrangement win the day for the one-state solution? Would Israel leaders not put up an equally vicious fight to protect their ethnic privileges by preventing, as they are doing now, the emergence of a single state?Yes, they would and they will. But that misses my point. As long as Israel is an ethnic state, it will be forced to deepen the occupation and intensify its ethnic cleansing policies to prevent the emergence of genuine Palestinian political influence — for the reasons I cite above and for many others I don. In truth, both a one-state and a genuine two-state arrangement are impossible given Israel determination to remain a Jewish state.The obstacle to a solution, then, is not about dividing the land but about Zionism itself, the ideology of ethnic supremacism that is the current orthodoxy in Israel. As long as Israel is a Zionist state, its leaders will allow neither one state nor two real states.The solution, therefore, reduces to the question of how to defeat Zionism. It just so happens that the best way this can be achieved is by confronting the illusions of the two-state dreamers and explaining why Israel is in permanent bad faith about seeking peace.In other words, if we stopped distracting ourselves with the Holy Grail of the two-state solution, we might channel our energies into something more useful: discrediting Israel as a Jewish state, and the ideology of Zionism that upholds it. Eventually the respectable fa鏰de of Zionism might crumble.Without Zionism, the obstacle to creating either one or two states will finally be removed. And if that is the case, then why not also campaign for the solution that will best bring justice to both Israelis and Palestinians?–Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His new book, ?span style=”border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204);” id=”lw_1205345757_76″ class=”yshortcuts”>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East?is published by Pluto Press. His website is www.jkcook.net

Tags: cate, decades, journalist, nationalism, premise, ups

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by Stephen LendmanCall it another salvo in Bush v. Chavez with Ecuador’s Raphael Correa as a secondary target and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe as a proxy aggressor. The Ecuadorean incursion was no ordinary cross-border raid. It was a made in Washington affair that escalates a nine year attempt to remove the Venezuelan leader and return oligarchs in the country to power. It also threatens two regional leaders who know what they’re up against in Uribe and Washington, friendly handshakes in the Dominican Republic notwithstanding. The situation is far from settled, and here’s how events unfolded so far:– on March 1, the Colombian military illegally entered Ecuadorean air space and invaded on the ground; the target was a FARC-EP rebel camp; US intelligence was key by identifying the precise location to bomb through satellite telephone tracking; Colombian Radio Cadena Nacional (RCN) reported it heard a FARC-EP leader - Chavez conversation three days before the raid; Colombian Noticias Uno TV said foreign spy planes photographed FARC-EP’s precise location for the country’s military to use in the raid; — it’s also known that US Special Forces train Colombian counterinsurgents, accompany them on missions, and likely participated (covertly) in the March 1 operation; — Colombian (and likely US) forces attacked and slaughtered over 20 people in total, including 16 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FACR-EP) members while they slept;– among the dead was FARC-EP’s second-in-command, Raul Reyes; he was FARC-EP’s public voice, its key peace negotiator since the 1990s, and the lead figure in the Chavez-arranged hostage releases; that and his prominence made him a target so his death may disrupt the process and current efforts toward resolving a 40 year conflict equitably; Washington wants it halted, so does Uribe, and that’s where things now stand;– Hugo Chavez and other Latin American leaders were united in condemning the hostile act; the 35-member Organization of American States, however, was tepid in its formal March 5 response; Correa called it welcome but inadequate and insists on a formal condemnation; Chavez was even more forceful saying: We demand condemnation of the Colombian government for this aberrant act, he called it a war crime (and blamed the crisis on the US) empire and its lackeys;– ahead of the March 7 Dominican Republic XX Rio Group Summit of Latin American leaders, foreign ministers from Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Peru issued a statement demanding respect for their national sovereignty; Chavez called the meeting positive and advocated cooling tensions; he supported Ecuador and said: We don’t want war; — Chavez, Correa and Uribe exchanged cool handshakes and pro forma conciliatory statements at the Summit; for what it’s worth, Uribe issued a formal apology to the Ecuadorean government and its people; call it disingenuous diplomacy; it settles nothing in spite of how the media played it or that Venezuela and Colombia restored diplomatic ties; for his part, Correa said it will be difficult to recover trust and reestablishing normal relations will take a little time;– one example of media coverage came from correspondent Simon Romero of The New York Times; he’s always disingenuous and never neutral; he reported handshakes and warm embraces….ended the dispute as though nothing ever happened and it’s again business as usual; in fact, nothing is settled; the incident still simmers, it’s just a matter of time before the next one erupts, and Chavez, Correa and other regional leaders know it; so does Washington that plans them;– earlier, Chavez also called Colombia the Israel of Latin America saying both countries claimed a supposed right to defense, to bomb and invade neighbors on orders from Washington;– Uribe confirmed it by saying he refused to rule out future military incursions into Ecuador or Venezuela, so expect more provocations ahead with full Washington backing; — at the same time, huge crowds of Colombians at home and abroad marched for peace and against terrorist acts; they denounced violence on both sides and want it ended, but a new disturbing report came out:– the Colombia weekly Semana wrote that ex-Israeli military men are fighting guerrilla organizations (meaning the FARC-EP and ELN), and Defense Minister Juan Santos confirmed that A group of former Israeli military officials (including three senior generals, a lower ranking officer and three translators) is counseling the military’s top brass on intelligence issues; in addition, FARC-EP claims that Israeli commandos were engaged against them along with US and British forces.The hostile words followed with Ecuadorean officials citing irrefutable evidence that Uribe’s attack was premeditated and his worst ever aggression against their country. Correa expressed outrage and sees no negotiated settlement because there is nothing to negotiate. In Brazil for a meeting with Lula da Silva, he said Ecuador is prepared to go up to the ultimate consequences (over this even though) nobody wants war. But we won’t fool ourselves. The war was started by Colombia. We were bombed.Correa and Chavez both deployed troops to their borders, and each country went further. Ecuador severed diplomatic ties with its neighbor, and Correa called Uribe Washington’s unconditional puppet for his blatant act of aggression. Chavez also expelled Colombia’s ambassador, and called the strike a cowardly murder, all of it coldly calculated and planned in Washington. He also warned Colombia against similar Venezuelan incursions that he would interpret as a cause for war.Uribe, in turn, defiantly shot back that Colombia will charge Chavez in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for materially aiding the FARC-EP by sponsor(ing) and funding genocidal groups. Colombia’s Radio Caracol then reported Uribe intends to revise or examine his charges with no further details given. And on the same day Vice-President Francisco Santos Calderon provocatively indicated that relations with Correa may be recovered, but it will be very difficult to reach a diplomatic solution with Chavez. He and Uribe have long been antagonists and have been at odds for months over Chavez’s hostage mediating success that embarrassed the Colombian president and Washington in the process. Colombian officials heightened tensions further through misstatements. First, they claimed bombings occurred on their own territory. Then they changed the story saying: Colombia has not violated any sovereignty, (we) only acted in accordance with the principle of legitimate defense, and responded to fire from inside Ecuador. Both statements were untrue and Chavez reacted. He accused Uribe of lying and called him a criminal saying: Not only is he a liar, a mafia boss, a paramilitary who leads a narco-government (that’s) a lackey of the United States (but he also) leads a band of criminals from his palace. The war of words continues with Washington’s OAS ambassador, Robert Manzanares, accusing FARC-EP of undertak(ing) repeated incursions and infringements of national sovereignty (against Colombia’s) neighbors. Defense Secretary Robert Gates applauded Uribe’s action, and when asked if US intelligence supported it said: Well, I would just say that we are very supportive.George Bush joined in, and jumped to his ally’s defense. Well he should as Washington provides Colombia with over $600 million a year and all for one purpose - to support repression and the interests of capital at the expense of beneficial social change. On March 4, Bush phoned Uribe with assurances America fully supports Colombia’s democracy (and) firmly opposes any acts of aggression that could destabilize the region. He also called sending Venezuelan troops to the border provocative maneuvers. In addition, he used the crisis to push Congress to approve a trade deal that’s been stalled over issues of Uribe’s paramilitary links and the country’s human rights record. Bush did what he always does. He cited national security and said ratification is a way to counter leaders like Chavez who destabilize the region. If we fail to approve this agreement, we will let down our close ally, we will damage our credibility (and) will embolden the demagogues in our hemisphere.Consider comments as well from US presidential candidates. On March 3, Barack Obama said: The Colombian people have suffered for more than four decades at the hands of a brutal terrorist insurgency, and the Colombian government has every right to defend itself against the…FARC.Hillary Clinton was even more hostile stating: Hugo Chavez’s order yesterday to send ten battalions to the Colombian border is unwarranted and dangerous. (Colombia) has every right to defend itself against drug trafficking terrorist organizations that have kidnapped innocent civilians, including American citizens. By praising and supporting the (FARC-EP), Chavez is openly siding with terrorists that threaten Colombian democracy and the peace and security in the region. (Chavez) must call a halt to this provocative action. As president, I will….press Chavez to change course.Then there’s John McCain who even scares some in the Pentagon and is virulently hostile to Chavez. He calls him a wacko and two-bit-dictator and advocates his ouster in the name of democracy and freedom throughout the hemisphere. As president, he’d be the most likely to provoke a confrontation because he’s ideologically committed to militarism to confront a range of security challenges….in a dangerous world. One writer calls him an authoritarian maverick and a man to fear as president. Another describes his McCainiac mentality, his notion of occupying Iraq for 100 years or as long as it takes, and his belief that militarism, nationalism and honor are their own rewards. Still another expects a McCain administration to confront Venezuela and Cuba by allying with regional rightest forces for regime change in both countries. Add Ecuador as well and a determination to declare mission accomplished before his tenure ends if he’s elected.Disturbing evidence of his belligerence is in his October 2001 commentary titled: No Substitute for Victory - War is hell. Let’s get on with it. In it, he calls war miserable business (but let’s) get on with the business of killing our enemies as quickly….and as ruthlessly as we must….(post-9/11) we have only one primary occupation, and that is to vanquish international terrorism. Not reduce it. Not change its operations. Not temporarily subdue it. But vanquish it….We did not cause this war (but) we must destroy the people who (did). Is this a man to trust as president who considers anyone unresponsive to US interests a terrorist and state enemy to be destroyed?Democrats are no better, so expect the worst under a new president next year. The war on terror will continue, and Uribe will get full funding and support for internal repression and Washington-ordered regional aggression. By that standard, Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro have every right to invade Florida to capture two resident terrorists for bona fide crimes against their countries - Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch. Posada is a former CIA operative who terror-bombed and killed 73 people in 1976 on Cubana flight 455 that Bosch likely masterminded. Yet South Florida’s Cuban-American community and the Bush administration protect them as an expression of their judicial double standard.Heated Rhetoric and Provocative ChargesFurther heightening tensions, Colombia’s vice-president, Francisco Santos Calderon, made an outlandish claim. With no verifiable evidence, even some in the intelligence community are dubious - that invading forces found provocative material on three recovered laptops that supposedly show:– Venezuela provided $300 million in aid to the FARC-EP;– Chavez and Correa have links to the rebel group; — Chavez is trying to undermine, isolate and discredit Uribe and wants to cleanse FARC-EP of its (undeserved) pariah status; and most outrageous of all that– FARC-EP acquired 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of uranium for a radioactive dirty bomb it wishes to sell for profit.Former State Department arms smuggling expert, James Lewis, discounts the story. He said: In a lot of cases involving uranium deals, somebody’s usually getting snookered (and the 50 kilos) quantity sounds really suspicious because US intelligence would likely spot anyone securing an amount that large.Chavez as well denounced the claim and called the documents lies and fabrications. He also closed Venezuela’s 1300 mile long Colombian border, and at an extraordinary Organization of American States (OAS) session, his representative, Jorge Valero, said: The Colombian government has lied blatantly. All (its) accusations….against Venezuela and Ecuador are false, totally false. Retired Venezuelan general, Alberto Muller Rojas, went further. He denounced Colombia’s evidence as an exercise in falsification (and stated that) the only foreign government that finances the conflict in Colombia is the United States, it’s done it with billions for years, and in the same way it destabilizes regions throughout the world.Corporate Media ResponsesA March 5 Washington Post editorial supported Colombia’s aggression, but that’s typical for its one-sided type journalism. The commentary said: Colombia’s armed forces struck a bold blow against the….FARC, a group specializing in drug trafficking, abductions and massacres of civilians that (the US has) designated a terrorist organization….it showed how Colombia’s democratic government may be finally gaining the upper hand over (these) murderous gangs.Now (Hugo Chavez) has been revealed as an explicit supporter and possible financier of the FARC. (He) made a show of ordering Venezuelan troops to the border (and) goaded his client (Correa) into mimicking his reaction. (They) both may have something to hide (about) financial links with the terrorists (and) backing an armed (terrorist) movement against the democratically elected government of their neighbor. No wonder (Uribe acted); he knows (Chavez and Correa) provid(e) a haven for the terrorists.The New York Times’ Simon Romero’s comments were more measured in an article titled: Colombia is Flashpoint in Chavez Fued with US, but his message was much as it always is - one-sidedly supporting Washington and its allies and hostile to Hugo Chavez. In this instance, it’s his ties to the FARC-EP and supplying it with millions of dollars in aid. In an editorial, The Times went further. It accused Chavez of meddling and manipulation (and trying to) revive his own flagging political fortunes by getting involved. It added Mr. Chavez should just keep quiet. The more he meddles, the easier it is to believe that the charges against him are true.Then there’s the Wall Street Journal that’s even further hard right since Rupert Murdoch bought it. It’s March 4 editorial was titled Chavez’s War Drums with a sub-headline stating A laptop spills some of his secrets. The commentary noted Colombia’s….major antiterror victory and Chavez….threatening war….But the real news (was in) a laptop belonging to (Paul Reyes) that reveals some of Mr. Chavez’s secrets.Columbia’s military (entered Ecuador) for legitimate reasons of self-defense….the Venezuelan bully….ordered 10 battalions and tanks to the Colombian border, and warned of war if the Colombian army staged a similar raid inside Venezuela….The war bluster is phony because Mr. Chavez is already waging his own guerrilla campaign against Colombia (by) support(ing) the FARC. The recovered computer contains evidence supporting the claim that the FARC is working with Mr. Chavez (and) showed that Venezuela may have paid $300 million (for the) FARC’s recent release of six civilian hostages. Documents also show(ed) that the FARC was seeking to buy 50 kilos of uranium (and sold) 700 kilograms of cocaine valued at $1.5 million. The military found a thank you note from Mr. Chavez to FARC for some $150,000 that the rebels had sent him when he was in prison for his attempted (1992) coup d’etat. This type agitprop never lets up, so expect continued anti-Chavez rhetoric ahead as the dominant media plays up every chance they get to demonize him and support Bush’s hostile regime change agenda.Some Background on the Diplomatic CrisisVenezuelan-American lawyer and activist Eva Golinger writes on how Washington relentlessly targets Chavez. In November 2006, she explained what’s just as true today - that the Bush administration goes at him by three different fronts of attack.– the financial front by funding opposition groups to obtain control in all different parts of the country, including the electoral process;– the diplomatic front by accusing Chavez of destabilizing the region; also by diplomatic terrorism, including sanctions for made-up things like non-existent drugs trafficking or not cooperating against it or the war on terrorism; and– the military front with a large US presence in the region, major support for Uribe, and use of Colombian paramilitaries (and) intervention of US Special Forces; the paramilitaries are the ‘actors’….they’re….sent….to try to assassinate Chavez (but) command-and-control is directed and controlled by the US Special Forces; the paramilitaries and Colombian army do the dirty work while the US is building up a secret (military) base near Venezuela’s border; in addition, there were attempts to push the FARC into Venezuela to provide an excuse for Colombian troops to enter the country (and) make (the) border a combat zone. At the time Golinger wrote, she said there were more than 3000 paramilitaries in the Caracas area alone. That number or more are still likely there and elsewhere in the country, and in Ecuador as well.Colombian-Directed Hostility Toward ChavezSince his 2002 election, Uribe has been hostile to Chavez, and Colombian paramilitaries continue committing border-area terrorist attacks and within Venezuela as well. Uribe is Washington’s key Latin American ally, he’s liberally funded for his role, and his background makes him ideal - his h