Racismo como strategia politica de destabilizacion social.
Parte 1
Parte 2
Friday, December 26, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
DynCorp: The Blackwater of Latin America.
U.S. Mercenaries in Colombia
by Ignacio Gómez
When the first details of the FARC guerrillas' attack at Miraflores in August 1998 emerged, the Colombian Armed Forces and government grew deeply concerned. They realized that the assault's principal target was a group of 20 to 30 U.S. veterans employed by the U.S. company DynCorp as pilots and ground crew for the aircraft at the San José del Guaviare anti-narcotics base. DynCorp's pilots were widely known to land at Miraflores for refueling, though, according to the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, the pilots were not authorized to set down in Miraflores and, at the time of the FARC attack, they had no reason to be there.
After the attack, a headcount back at the San José base raised fears that two U.S. pilots had gone missing. When the pair eventually turned up, it was confirmed that they had been out flying over the jungle in one of the five Vietnam-era OV-10 Broncos recently brought to Colombia by DynCorp. The use of the OV-10s has attracted criticism--even among U.S. observers--over their real efficacy in the aerial fumigation campaigns aimed at thwarting the cultivation of illicit crops in Colombia.
For its part, the U.S. State Department has been hesitant about the role of DynCorp's U.S. pilots and technicians in Colombia. Nevertheless, the company's $600 million contract has powerful supporters, among them the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Representative Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), a war veteran and member of the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association (see, The Propaganda of Benjamin Gilman).
DynCorp was formed at the behest of President Truman in 1946 for the purpose of putting surplus World War II equipment to use and providing jobs for ex-combatants. Today, the company is the foremost employer in the Washington D.C. area, the third largest employee-owned business in the United States, and a member of the Fortune 500. From its initial inception as California Eastern Airways, DynCorp has become a major player in aerospace research, including involvement in the development of U.S. missile programs, and in air services, such as in its prominent role at Fort Rucker, Virginia, the principal base for pilot training and maintenance of combat aircraft in the United States.
DynCorp's contract for the Andean drug war is but a tiny part of its operations, though the hardly miniscule sum of $600 million requires the active support of its associates (the majority of whom are Vietnam veterans) located in the most strategic positions of the government. Among its myriad current activities, DynCorp employs 50 to 80 retired U.S. soldiers in Colombia.
In July 1998, the mercenary industry's magazine, Soldier of Fortune, ran a cover feature on the DynCorp pilots, which, under the suggestive title "Pray and Spray," examined their work in the Guaviare region--work they perform knowing full well they constitute the FARC's primary military target. The article, much like the discourse of Rep. Gilman, repeatedly refers to the FARC as "narco-guerrillas."
Written by Soldier of Fortune chief foreign correspondent Steve Salisbury, the article covered Colombian soldiers' questions for the DynCorp teams and portrays the relationship between the 7th Anti-narcotic Company (of Guaviare) and the U.S. veterans who work in the region as a cordial one. Soldier of Fortune reported that only one Colombian knew how to fly the OV-10, which requires two crewmen, and that the number of DynCorp's U.S. participants fluctuated between 50 and 80 men. Between one third and one half of them were pilots, while the rest were mechanics, and over 30 were stationed in San José del Guaviare, rotating in and out for 15 day periods.
Soldier of Fortune also reported that DynCorp had planes at the Mariquita and Santa Marta anti-drug bases, and that on at least a few separate occasions its aircraft have flown to the Puerto Asís base in the Putumayo region of southern Colombia where much of the territory is controlled by the FARC.
Officially, Colombian police have claimed to appreciate DynCorp's services, but in private they have made their reservations about the U.S. mercenaries known to the State Department via the Bogotá embassy's Narcotics Affairs Section. According to a Colombian police officer speaking on condition of anonymity, the U.S. pilots fail to comply with even such basic norms of security as dispersing the aircraft at the base in order to limit potential damage in the event of a guerrilla attack. He goes on to claim that DynCorp's pilots fly when they feel like it, don't fill out flight logs, and fail to complete their pre-planned flight routes.
A Colombian soldier from one of the military's anti-drug patrols, who spoke only after removing his name from his uniform, complained that, "[The DynCorp pilots] fly in bermuda shorts, smoke wherever they want, and drink whiskey almost everyday." At the San José del Guaviare base, continued the soldier, the DynCorp men have a barracks with all the comforts--even satellite television. A Colombian national guardsman near the base complained that, "A Vietnam veteran does not subordinate himself to a Colombian police officer, and that's why there have been problems."
Through a contract with the U.S. State Department (the text of which was denied to the Washington Post for reasons of national security), DynCorp took charge of the supply and maintainence of the helicopters used for the interdiction of "drugs at their source" in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, and of the fixed-wing aircraft employed in aerial fumigation efforts aimed at illicit crop production in Colombia.
The initial batch of aircraft consisted of 11 Ayres Turbo-Thrushes, noted for their maneuverability and range. The Turbo-Thrush has armor that leaves only its nose exposed to ground fire, and a hit there, though highly unlikely, could down the plane. Because Turbo-Thrushes have to fly at an altitude of 300 feet during fumigation, where they are vulnerable from guerrilla fire, DynCorp's helicopters have to "secure the ground" before each mission.
In 1998, Rep. Gilman procured a shipment of Blackhawk attack helicopters that can hover and fire their machine guns as the airplanes spray. The Blackhawks have to be maintained and flown by DynCorp's pilots until they complete the training of Colombian counterparts. Gilman's foremost justification for the helicopters was the kidnapping of U.S. birdwatchers in Colombia. "The Colombian National Police need these high-capacity helicopters… in order to get out there with enough armed police to rescue our citizens," said the Congressman.
No other U.S. Congressman has visited Colombia more times than Gilman. And each time he visits, he sets aside time to talk with the U.S. pilots at the Guaviare base. He has repeatedly, and successfully, argued for the extension of DynCorp's contract and has been a prominent supporter of the Clinton Administration's $1.3 billion aid package that will provide 18 more Blackhawk helicopters, which implies increased revenues for DynCorp from maintenance of these new aircraft and training of the pilots.
U.S. Army Southern Command chief General Charles Wilhelm, cited by Rep. Gilman in Congress, stated that 90 percent of the operations of the Colombian Anti-narcotics Police involve helicopters, and that hostile fire had been received during 40 percent of the missions. According to the Colombian police, between January 1994 and November 1997, three police airplanes and five helicopters were shot down. Planes were hit on 67 occasions, and helicopters were struck 74 times, resulting in 44 deaths and 72 injuries to anti-drug police. Perhaps the most startling statistic is that there have been three DynCorp "civilian" casualties and the complete loss of two Turbo-Thrushes in incidents where the police have ruled out the guerrillas as suspects.
Nonetheless, DynCorp has been experimenting with five twin-motored OV-10 Broncos, which were used as reconnaissance planes in Vietnam and on occasion for the dropping of napalm. In contrast to napalm (the incendiary powder that destroyed whole villages in Vietnam and Cambodia), glyphosate--the chemical herbicide nicknamed "round-up" that's being used against coca and poppy crops--is liquid and evaporates quickly. This is why, given the high speeds the OV-10s fly and the low altitudes required for aerial fumigation, one must question the real reason behind the deployment of both the OV-10s and DynCorp's disobedient pilots.
Ignacio Gómez is an investigative reporter with the Bogotá daily, El Espectador. He is currently living in exile as a result of threats to his life. A different version of this article previously appeared in El Espectador. Translated from Spanish by Eric Fichtl.
This article originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).
(Source: http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia19.htm)
by Ignacio Gómez
When the first details of the FARC guerrillas' attack at Miraflores in August 1998 emerged, the Colombian Armed Forces and government grew deeply concerned. They realized that the assault's principal target was a group of 20 to 30 U.S. veterans employed by the U.S. company DynCorp as pilots and ground crew for the aircraft at the San José del Guaviare anti-narcotics base. DynCorp's pilots were widely known to land at Miraflores for refueling, though, according to the U.S. embassy in Bogotá, the pilots were not authorized to set down in Miraflores and, at the time of the FARC attack, they had no reason to be there.
After the attack, a headcount back at the San José base raised fears that two U.S. pilots had gone missing. When the pair eventually turned up, it was confirmed that they had been out flying over the jungle in one of the five Vietnam-era OV-10 Broncos recently brought to Colombia by DynCorp. The use of the OV-10s has attracted criticism--even among U.S. observers--over their real efficacy in the aerial fumigation campaigns aimed at thwarting the cultivation of illicit crops in Colombia.
For its part, the U.S. State Department has been hesitant about the role of DynCorp's U.S. pilots and technicians in Colombia. Nevertheless, the company's $600 million contract has powerful supporters, among them the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Representative Benjamin Gilman (R-NY), a war veteran and member of the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association (see, The Propaganda of Benjamin Gilman).
DynCorp was formed at the behest of President Truman in 1946 for the purpose of putting surplus World War II equipment to use and providing jobs for ex-combatants. Today, the company is the foremost employer in the Washington D.C. area, the third largest employee-owned business in the United States, and a member of the Fortune 500. From its initial inception as California Eastern Airways, DynCorp has become a major player in aerospace research, including involvement in the development of U.S. missile programs, and in air services, such as in its prominent role at Fort Rucker, Virginia, the principal base for pilot training and maintenance of combat aircraft in the United States.
DynCorp's contract for the Andean drug war is but a tiny part of its operations, though the hardly miniscule sum of $600 million requires the active support of its associates (the majority of whom are Vietnam veterans) located in the most strategic positions of the government. Among its myriad current activities, DynCorp employs 50 to 80 retired U.S. soldiers in Colombia.
In July 1998, the mercenary industry's magazine, Soldier of Fortune, ran a cover feature on the DynCorp pilots, which, under the suggestive title "Pray and Spray," examined their work in the Guaviare region--work they perform knowing full well they constitute the FARC's primary military target. The article, much like the discourse of Rep. Gilman, repeatedly refers to the FARC as "narco-guerrillas."
Written by Soldier of Fortune chief foreign correspondent Steve Salisbury, the article covered Colombian soldiers' questions for the DynCorp teams and portrays the relationship between the 7th Anti-narcotic Company (of Guaviare) and the U.S. veterans who work in the region as a cordial one. Soldier of Fortune reported that only one Colombian knew how to fly the OV-10, which requires two crewmen, and that the number of DynCorp's U.S. participants fluctuated between 50 and 80 men. Between one third and one half of them were pilots, while the rest were mechanics, and over 30 were stationed in San José del Guaviare, rotating in and out for 15 day periods.
Soldier of Fortune also reported that DynCorp had planes at the Mariquita and Santa Marta anti-drug bases, and that on at least a few separate occasions its aircraft have flown to the Puerto Asís base in the Putumayo region of southern Colombia where much of the territory is controlled by the FARC.
Officially, Colombian police have claimed to appreciate DynCorp's services, but in private they have made their reservations about the U.S. mercenaries known to the State Department via the Bogotá embassy's Narcotics Affairs Section. According to a Colombian police officer speaking on condition of anonymity, the U.S. pilots fail to comply with even such basic norms of security as dispersing the aircraft at the base in order to limit potential damage in the event of a guerrilla attack. He goes on to claim that DynCorp's pilots fly when they feel like it, don't fill out flight logs, and fail to complete their pre-planned flight routes.
A Colombian soldier from one of the military's anti-drug patrols, who spoke only after removing his name from his uniform, complained that, "[The DynCorp pilots] fly in bermuda shorts, smoke wherever they want, and drink whiskey almost everyday." At the San José del Guaviare base, continued the soldier, the DynCorp men have a barracks with all the comforts--even satellite television. A Colombian national guardsman near the base complained that, "A Vietnam veteran does not subordinate himself to a Colombian police officer, and that's why there have been problems."
Through a contract with the U.S. State Department (the text of which was denied to the Washington Post for reasons of national security), DynCorp took charge of the supply and maintainence of the helicopters used for the interdiction of "drugs at their source" in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia, and of the fixed-wing aircraft employed in aerial fumigation efforts aimed at illicit crop production in Colombia.
The initial batch of aircraft consisted of 11 Ayres Turbo-Thrushes, noted for their maneuverability and range. The Turbo-Thrush has armor that leaves only its nose exposed to ground fire, and a hit there, though highly unlikely, could down the plane. Because Turbo-Thrushes have to fly at an altitude of 300 feet during fumigation, where they are vulnerable from guerrilla fire, DynCorp's helicopters have to "secure the ground" before each mission.
In 1998, Rep. Gilman procured a shipment of Blackhawk attack helicopters that can hover and fire their machine guns as the airplanes spray. The Blackhawks have to be maintained and flown by DynCorp's pilots until they complete the training of Colombian counterparts. Gilman's foremost justification for the helicopters was the kidnapping of U.S. birdwatchers in Colombia. "The Colombian National Police need these high-capacity helicopters… in order to get out there with enough armed police to rescue our citizens," said the Congressman.
No other U.S. Congressman has visited Colombia more times than Gilman. And each time he visits, he sets aside time to talk with the U.S. pilots at the Guaviare base. He has repeatedly, and successfully, argued for the extension of DynCorp's contract and has been a prominent supporter of the Clinton Administration's $1.3 billion aid package that will provide 18 more Blackhawk helicopters, which implies increased revenues for DynCorp from maintenance of these new aircraft and training of the pilots.
U.S. Army Southern Command chief General Charles Wilhelm, cited by Rep. Gilman in Congress, stated that 90 percent of the operations of the Colombian Anti-narcotics Police involve helicopters, and that hostile fire had been received during 40 percent of the missions. According to the Colombian police, between January 1994 and November 1997, three police airplanes and five helicopters were shot down. Planes were hit on 67 occasions, and helicopters were struck 74 times, resulting in 44 deaths and 72 injuries to anti-drug police. Perhaps the most startling statistic is that there have been three DynCorp "civilian" casualties and the complete loss of two Turbo-Thrushes in incidents where the police have ruled out the guerrillas as suspects.
Nonetheless, DynCorp has been experimenting with five twin-motored OV-10 Broncos, which were used as reconnaissance planes in Vietnam and on occasion for the dropping of napalm. In contrast to napalm (the incendiary powder that destroyed whole villages in Vietnam and Cambodia), glyphosate--the chemical herbicide nicknamed "round-up" that's being used against coca and poppy crops--is liquid and evaporates quickly. This is why, given the high speeds the OV-10s fly and the low altitudes required for aerial fumigation, one must question the real reason behind the deployment of both the OV-10s and DynCorp's disobedient pilots.
Ignacio Gómez is an investigative reporter with the Bogotá daily, El Espectador. He is currently living in exile as a result of threats to his life. A different version of this article previously appeared in El Espectador. Translated from Spanish by Eric Fichtl.
This article originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).
(Source: http://www.colombiajournal.org/colombia19.htm)
Could Bush Be Prosecuted?
Bush Seeks Immunity for War Crimes !! Pardons Himself !!!
Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
By Jan Frel, AlterNet
Posted on July 10, 2006, Printed on December 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/
The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.
While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.
From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn recently described this as our "inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior."
Most Americans firmly believe there is nothing the United States or its political leadership could possibly do that could equate to the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. The Nazis are our "gold standard of evil," as author John Dolan once put it.
But the truth is that we can, and we have -- most recently and significantly in Iraq. Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.
Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."
Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:
"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."
It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law," and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003. Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive."
Writing for the United Kingdom's Guardian, shortly before the 2003 invasion, international law expert Mark Littman echoed Ferencz: "The threatened war against Iraq will be a breach of the United Nations Charter and hence of international law unless it is authorized by a new and unambiguous resolution of the Security Council. The Charter is clear. No such war is permitted unless it is in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council."
Challenges to the legality of this war can also be found at the ground level. First Lt. Ehren Watada, the first U.S. commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq, cites the rules of the U.N. Charter as a principle reason for his dissent.
Ferencz isn't using the invasion of Iraq as a convenient prop to exercise his longstanding American hatred: he has a decades-old paper trail of calls for every suspect of war crimes to be brought to international justice. When the United States captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003, Ferencz wrote that Hussein's offenses included "the supreme international crime of aggression, to a wide variety of crimes against humanity, and a long list of atrocities condemned by both international and national laws."
Ferencz isn't the first to make the suggestion that the United States has committed state-sponsored war crimes against another nation -- not only have leading war critics made this argument, but so had legal experts in the British government before the 2003 invasion. In a short essay in 2005, Ferencz lays out the inner deliberations of British and American officials as the preparations for the war were made:
U.K. military leaders had been calling for clear assurances that the war was legal under international law. They were very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government. Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff, was quoted as saying "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in The Hague."
Ferencz quotes the British deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry who, in the lead-up to the invasion, quit abruptly and wrote in her resignation letter: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution … [A]n unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."
While the United Kingdom is a signatory of the ICC, and therefore under jurisdiction of that court, the United States is not, thanks to a Republican majority in Congress that has "attacks on America's sovereignty" and "manipulation by the United Nations" in its pantheon of knee-jerk neuroses. Ferencz concedes that even though Britain and its leadership could be prosecuted, the international legal climate isn't at a place where justice is blind enough to try it -- or as Ferencz put it, humanity isn't yet "civilized enough to prevent this type of illegal behavior." And Ferencz said that while he believes the United States is guilty of war crimes, "the international community is not sufficiently organized to prosecute such a case. … There is no court at the moment that is competent to try that crime."
As Ferencz said, the world is still a long way away from establishing norms that put all nations under the rule of law, but the battle to do so is a worthy one: "There's no such thing as a war without atrocities, but war-making is the biggest atrocity of all."
The suggestion that the Bush administration's conduct in the "war on terror" amounts to a string of war crimes and human rights abuses is gaining credence in even the most ossified establishment circles of Washington. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in the recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling by the Supreme Court suggests that Bush's attempt to ignore the Geneva Conventions in his approved treatment of terror suspects may leave him open to prosecution for war crimes. As Sidney Blumenthal points out, the Court rejected Bush's attempt to ignore Common Article 3, which bans "cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
And since Congress enacted the Geneva Conventions, making them the law of the United States, any violations that Bush or any other American commits "are considered 'war crimes' punishable as federal offenses," as Justice Kennedy wrote.
George W. Bush in the dock facing a charge of war crimes? That's well beyond the scope of possibility … or is it?
Jan Frel is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/
Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?
By Jan Frel, AlterNet
Posted on July 10, 2006, Printed on December 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/
The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.
While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.
From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn recently described this as our "inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior."
Most Americans firmly believe there is nothing the United States or its political leadership could possibly do that could equate to the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. The Nazis are our "gold standard of evil," as author John Dolan once put it.
But the truth is that we can, and we have -- most recently and significantly in Iraq. Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.
Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."
Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:
"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."
It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law," and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003. Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive."
Writing for the United Kingdom's Guardian, shortly before the 2003 invasion, international law expert Mark Littman echoed Ferencz: "The threatened war against Iraq will be a breach of the United Nations Charter and hence of international law unless it is authorized by a new and unambiguous resolution of the Security Council. The Charter is clear. No such war is permitted unless it is in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council."
Challenges to the legality of this war can also be found at the ground level. First Lt. Ehren Watada, the first U.S. commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq, cites the rules of the U.N. Charter as a principle reason for his dissent.
Ferencz isn't using the invasion of Iraq as a convenient prop to exercise his longstanding American hatred: he has a decades-old paper trail of calls for every suspect of war crimes to be brought to international justice. When the United States captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003, Ferencz wrote that Hussein's offenses included "the supreme international crime of aggression, to a wide variety of crimes against humanity, and a long list of atrocities condemned by both international and national laws."
Ferencz isn't the first to make the suggestion that the United States has committed state-sponsored war crimes against another nation -- not only have leading war critics made this argument, but so had legal experts in the British government before the 2003 invasion. In a short essay in 2005, Ferencz lays out the inner deliberations of British and American officials as the preparations for the war were made:
U.K. military leaders had been calling for clear assurances that the war was legal under international law. They were very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government. Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff, was quoted as saying "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in The Hague."
Ferencz quotes the British deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry who, in the lead-up to the invasion, quit abruptly and wrote in her resignation letter: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution … [A]n unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."
While the United Kingdom is a signatory of the ICC, and therefore under jurisdiction of that court, the United States is not, thanks to a Republican majority in Congress that has "attacks on America's sovereignty" and "manipulation by the United Nations" in its pantheon of knee-jerk neuroses. Ferencz concedes that even though Britain and its leadership could be prosecuted, the international legal climate isn't at a place where justice is blind enough to try it -- or as Ferencz put it, humanity isn't yet "civilized enough to prevent this type of illegal behavior." And Ferencz said that while he believes the United States is guilty of war crimes, "the international community is not sufficiently organized to prosecute such a case. … There is no court at the moment that is competent to try that crime."
As Ferencz said, the world is still a long way away from establishing norms that put all nations under the rule of law, but the battle to do so is a worthy one: "There's no such thing as a war without atrocities, but war-making is the biggest atrocity of all."
The suggestion that the Bush administration's conduct in the "war on terror" amounts to a string of war crimes and human rights abuses is gaining credence in even the most ossified establishment circles of Washington. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in the recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling by the Supreme Court suggests that Bush's attempt to ignore the Geneva Conventions in his approved treatment of terror suspects may leave him open to prosecution for war crimes. As Sidney Blumenthal points out, the Court rejected Bush's attempt to ignore Common Article 3, which bans "cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
And since Congress enacted the Geneva Conventions, making them the law of the United States, any violations that Bush or any other American commits "are considered 'war crimes' punishable as federal offenses," as Justice Kennedy wrote.
George W. Bush in the dock facing a charge of war crimes? That's well beyond the scope of possibility … or is it?
Jan Frel is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/
Monday, December 8, 2008
Blackwater: Mercenaries of the U.S. government
Blackwater: Mercenaries Outnumber U.S. troops!
BBC NEWS
Outsourcing the war
By Neil Arun
BBC News Online
The murder of four Americans by a mob in the Iraqi town of Falluja has focused attention on the private security contractors operating in the country.
For the US press, this image bore grim echoes of an earlier mission gone wrong.
In 1993, an angry crowd paraded the battered remains of an American special-forces soldier through the streets of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
But in the 11 years since that US raid in Mogadishu ended in disaster, a telling difference has emerged - the men who died in Falluja this week were civilians, not soldiers.
They were the employees of Blackwater, one of many privately-owned firms taking over the conflict-zone security work that was once the preserve of soldiers.
Partner in war
What were they doing in Iraq?
Blackwater declined to be interviewed by BBC News Online, but a press release issued by the firm said it is "a US government subcontractor providing convoy security for food deliveries in the Falluja area".
Defence experts have described Blackwater as a formidable player in the field of private firms that serves America's security needs in the "war on terror".
Bodyguards trained by Blackwater protect the top US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.
In Afghanistan, the firm's employees have provided security to countless foreign civilians involved in the post-war reconstruction effort.
'Helicopter' tower
The firm's sprawling training facility has even been used by the US military and FBI, according to former soldier John Roos, who now edits the Armed Forces Journal.
It is this "state-of-the-art" complex in North Carolina that most impressed Mr Roos, whose publication rents the site for an annual gathering.
He told BBC News Online the ranch is a soldier's dream, catering for almost every type of combat situation.
"They outfit their people with the best weapons, the best equipment," he said, describing how no expense is spared in testing new technology - often to destruction.
He offered an example of how a contract to train US coast guards in the fight against drug-smuggling led to the construction of a special tower alongside a small lake.
In training, operatives would take up positions on the tower before taking aim at a moving target on the water.
The object of the exercise, according to Mr Roos, was to simulate a helicopter raid on a boat carrying narcotics.
Flying high
Blackwater's priority, he says, is to improve its logistics - in particular, the ability to deploy its personnel at speed, anywhere in the world.
It already has access to at least one helicopter and is "looking around for a fixed-wing airplane".
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper in March, Blackwater Security chief Gary Jackson spoke of how the firm "has grown 300% over each of the past three years".
He also confirmed that the firm had recently recruited scores of commandos from Chile for work in Iraq.
Short-term, high-risk
Typical recruits to firms like Blackwater are elite soldiers that have retired from military special-operations units.
The risks are high, but so are the salaries, drawing in men who have seen action in hotspots around the world.
The swelling ranks of private security staff in Iraq is said to total over 10,000 and includes Fijians, Nepalese Gurkhas, Englishmen, Americans, Serbs, Bosnians and of course, some Iraqis.
According to Mark Whyte, from UK-based company, Pilgrims Security, most of these men are not directly employed by the firms, but are rather hired as freelance "consultants".
The contracts are usually short-term and responsibility for any risks taken - and for paying taxes - rests with the individual.
Violence in the balance
According to Dr David Capitanchick, a UK-based expert, security firms are set to prosper in the current climate.
As far as governments are concerned, "mercenaries are low-risk" fighters, he said.
The public knows that, unlike regular soldiers, private guards are usually very highly paid. Faced with casualties such as the recent deaths in Falluja, said Dr Capitanchick, "people tend to say - well, that's the risk they take".
Thus as the perceived threat against foreigners working in conflict zones increases, the demand for private protection will remain healthy.
But, warns Mr Whyte, that logic too has its limits.
If the violence truly gets out of control, the foreign civilians involved in reconstruction will begin to pull out - and the client-base for the security firms could well dry up.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3591701.stm
Published: 2004/04/02 07:35:58 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
(Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3591701.stm)
BBC NEWS
Outsourcing the war
By Neil Arun
BBC News Online
The murder of four Americans by a mob in the Iraqi town of Falluja has focused attention on the private security contractors operating in the country.
For the US press, this image bore grim echoes of an earlier mission gone wrong.
In 1993, an angry crowd paraded the battered remains of an American special-forces soldier through the streets of the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
But in the 11 years since that US raid in Mogadishu ended in disaster, a telling difference has emerged - the men who died in Falluja this week were civilians, not soldiers.
They were the employees of Blackwater, one of many privately-owned firms taking over the conflict-zone security work that was once the preserve of soldiers.
Partner in war
What were they doing in Iraq?
Blackwater declined to be interviewed by BBC News Online, but a press release issued by the firm said it is "a US government subcontractor providing convoy security for food deliveries in the Falluja area".
Defence experts have described Blackwater as a formidable player in the field of private firms that serves America's security needs in the "war on terror".
Bodyguards trained by Blackwater protect the top US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer.
In Afghanistan, the firm's employees have provided security to countless foreign civilians involved in the post-war reconstruction effort.
'Helicopter' tower
The firm's sprawling training facility has even been used by the US military and FBI, according to former soldier John Roos, who now edits the Armed Forces Journal.
It is this "state-of-the-art" complex in North Carolina that most impressed Mr Roos, whose publication rents the site for an annual gathering.
He told BBC News Online the ranch is a soldier's dream, catering for almost every type of combat situation.
"They outfit their people with the best weapons, the best equipment," he said, describing how no expense is spared in testing new technology - often to destruction.
He offered an example of how a contract to train US coast guards in the fight against drug-smuggling led to the construction of a special tower alongside a small lake.
In training, operatives would take up positions on the tower before taking aim at a moving target on the water.
The object of the exercise, according to Mr Roos, was to simulate a helicopter raid on a boat carrying narcotics.
Flying high
Blackwater's priority, he says, is to improve its logistics - in particular, the ability to deploy its personnel at speed, anywhere in the world.
It already has access to at least one helicopter and is "looking around for a fixed-wing airplane".
In an interview with the Guardian newspaper in March, Blackwater Security chief Gary Jackson spoke of how the firm "has grown 300% over each of the past three years".
He also confirmed that the firm had recently recruited scores of commandos from Chile for work in Iraq.
Short-term, high-risk
Typical recruits to firms like Blackwater are elite soldiers that have retired from military special-operations units.
The risks are high, but so are the salaries, drawing in men who have seen action in hotspots around the world.
The swelling ranks of private security staff in Iraq is said to total over 10,000 and includes Fijians, Nepalese Gurkhas, Englishmen, Americans, Serbs, Bosnians and of course, some Iraqis.
According to Mark Whyte, from UK-based company, Pilgrims Security, most of these men are not directly employed by the firms, but are rather hired as freelance "consultants".
The contracts are usually short-term and responsibility for any risks taken - and for paying taxes - rests with the individual.
Violence in the balance
According to Dr David Capitanchick, a UK-based expert, security firms are set to prosper in the current climate.
As far as governments are concerned, "mercenaries are low-risk" fighters, he said.
The public knows that, unlike regular soldiers, private guards are usually very highly paid. Faced with casualties such as the recent deaths in Falluja, said Dr Capitanchick, "people tend to say - well, that's the risk they take".
Thus as the perceived threat against foreigners working in conflict zones increases, the demand for private protection will remain healthy.
But, warns Mr Whyte, that logic too has its limits.
If the violence truly gets out of control, the foreign civilians involved in reconstruction will begin to pull out - and the client-base for the security firms could well dry up.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3591701.stm
Published: 2004/04/02 07:35:58 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
(Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3591701.stm)
Friday, November 21, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Guevara’s image haunts the majestic night - by Walaa Hamed Abdelmajid Quisay (Qatar)
Guevara’s image haunts the majestic night
The lashes of my heart hit my flesh; the acid of my eyes burns my cheek
As I limp with all my pride for the darkened day damned light
The heroes fade into the day sky for freedom we seek
The bankers with damned cowardice they fight
His body hits the earth; his spirit vibrated my mind
Hey Che race the world in a motorcycle with intellect and beauty aligned
A nation grieves tonight for no patriotic pledge
Che, pal, your gone now with blood sad smudge
They only killed a man, a legend with sore heart of love
As the tears fall over his grave through it flies a white dove
Guevara is gone but the smoke of his cigar here still lingers
By a crippled sadness and the sweet soprano song of singers
A tormented soul of revolutionary eyes
The wind blows his hairs as a swift bird flies
A hero of all of the forsaken, neglected few
Imprisoned in slavery labor with no apparent clue
My soul is drugged with a numb moral
I hitchhiked only for the light he tried to shine for all
When you ramble through the land though it’s the same collage
Random pictures of poverty, sorrow, tears that are free of charge
Privatized crusaders with their holy wars
Salah Al dein fought too for liberty’s locked doors
Genetic greed and genocide’s seed on humans feed
Ernesto a like him fought and freedom was his plead
Authoritarian head of no rational understanding
Che he killed you with his bloody trigger demanding
We have blood in our eyes for you
And a terrible ache in our hearts that’s true
Although it exists though revolution differs
It’s gone to no man’s land along with poor drifters
As pure as those sweet piano tune
As romantic as lovers stare at the moon
As we let go a goodbye ballon
The little girl cries for your loss
While he who has his weapons toss
Now the wind blows as in the empty blinding light
That’s where Guevara’s image haunts the majestic night
Yet Che’s motorcycle is red liquid stained alone
It will be ridden past the free meadows very soon.
Friday, September 26, 2008
THE LEGACY OF GEORGE W. BUSH’S PRESIDENCY
Click on image to enlage... and see the madness for yourself.
The Country He Inherited, The Country He Leaves Behind
1 Bureau of Economic Analysis
2 Department of Treasury
3 Congressional Budget Office
4 Bureau of Labor Statistics
5 United States Census Bureau
6 United States Census Bureau
7 Kaiser Study of Employer Health Care Benefits
8 United States Census Bureau
9 Energy Information Administration
10 Higher Education Coordinating Board of Washington State
11 Bureau of Economic Analysis
12 Insurance Information Institute
13 United States Census Bureau
14 OANDA.com: The Currency Website
15 Speaker of the House Fact Sheet, 11/29/07
16 Energy Information Administration
17 Testimony of Andrew Kohut; President, Pew Research Center; 3/17/07
(source: http://gedblog.com/2008/01/23/george-w-bushs-legacy/ )
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Defeat for Bush in Latin America - Granma article (Havana. March 15, 2007)
THERE has been a generalized rejection throughout the world for the 2006 Annual Report on Human Rights, published in the first week of March by the U.S. State Department.
Described as unilateral, disrespectful and of an interfering content, its launch could not be more contradictory at this current time, when the policy and behavior of the United States is coming under harsh criticism for openly infringing those rights.
Also, the report could not come at a more inopportune time, given that it was published just a few days before President Bush’s announced tour of certain countries in Latin America that it holds to account within that document.
There was no need to wait for reactions against the report: the Brazilian Foreign Ministry confirmed that it did not recognize the legitimacy of reports drawn up unilaterally by counties using domestic and politically inspired criteria.
"Unilateral attitudes on and evaluations of such subjects are unacceptable, given that they militate against the principle of universality and not being selective in terms of human rights," was the Brazilian response.
For its part, a statement by Francisco Ramírez, Mexican minister for interior governorship, called for respect for that country. He informed the press that if the Mexican authorities decided to undertake a study of the human rights situation in the United States, "maybe it wouldn’t get off so lightly."
From Caracas, Germán Mundaraín, the Venezuelan people’s human rights ombudsman, said that the government of the United States is using human rights to "stigmatize those countries that disagree with its policies."
He stated that "the basic condition for speaking of human rights is having a commitment to peace," something far from Washington’s doing.
"The most warmongering government in the world lacks the moral basis for speaking about human rights. What is taking place in Afghanistan and Iraq is a shame on humanity and these are not examples that a civilized government should be demonstrating to us," he affirmed.
He commented that Washington’s document merits the credibility of "an encyclopedia written by Al Capone."
Speaking on behalf of the Bolivian government to the EFE news agency, Deputy Justice Minister Renato Pardo expressed his "astonishment and indignation" over the U.S. view that its justice system is corrupt and qualified the report as "thoughtless" and at a far remove from reality.
Contrary to the views expressed by other Latin American countries, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said that he was satisfied with what he called Washington’s acknowledgement, causing consternation in the minds of observers, given that the report, although stating that Colombia improved during 2006, notes that extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, military collaboration with illegal groups and impunity, amongst other crimes, continue in that nation.
The Chinese government rejected U.S. judgments on human rights in that nation, describing them as lacking foundation.
"We would like to advise the United States to concern itself more with its own human rights-related matters and stop interfering in the internal policies of other nations," announced Qin Gang, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry.
Media information has stated that China is to publish its own report on the human rights situation in the United States.
Harsh criticism also came from Russia in a savage attack on U.S. double standards. Konstatin Kosachev, president of the Committee in the Duma, underlined that, on the other hand, the report makes no reference to the mass violations of fundamental human rights on the part of the United States in the Guantánamo prison camp, the CIA secret jails in Europe, or through its occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Prior to and during Bush’s five-country visit to Latin America, thousands of people have demonstrated against the president’s presence and the disastrous policy of his government in the region.
In Guatemala, there were popular street protests over the treatment meted out to immigrants from that country in the northern nation, where they are mistreated and imprisoned.
In Sao Paulo, thousands of demonstrators protested over the U.S. warmongering policy and managed to paralyze the city center.
In Uruguay, workers’ organizations organized marches condemning the Free Trade Treaties and the neoliberal policy that prejudice the countries of Latin America.
In Mexico, young students came out onto the streets to protest at Bush’s visit.
A multitude of attacks took place in Bogotá, despite the large-scale military deployment to protect Bush.
It has once again been demonstrated that the U.S. attitude of blaming others for its own outrages and flagrant violation of human rights has had a boomerang effect and has merely reinforced the defense of sovereignty of the part of governments throughout the world, while increasing anti-imperialist sentiment in diverse social and political sectors.
(Source: http://granmai.cubasi.cu/ingles/2007/marzo/juev15/11informe-i.html)
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
The Speed of Dreams by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos (2004)
The Speed of DreamsPart One: Boots
Dawn does not make haste in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. As if it were in no hurry, it takes delight in each and every corner, like a patient and dedicated lover. The fog knows no bounds, with its long dress of cloud, and it manages to smother the most determined light. It lays siege to it, it surrounds it with its snow-white wall, encircles it in a diffuse loop. From the middle of the sky, the moon is making its retreat. A column of smoke mingles with the mist, slowly, with the same languor with which the cloud wraps the scattered huts under the wide skirts of her petticoat. Everyone is sleeping. Everyone except the shadow. Everyone is dreaming. Especially the shadow. As soon as it extends its hand, it catches a question.
What is the speed of dreams?
I don't know. Perhaps it's...But no, I don't know...
The truth is that was is known here is known collectively.
We know, for example, that we are at war. And I'm not referring just to the real zapatista war, the one which has not totally satisfied the bloodthirstiness of some media and of some intellectuals "of the left." The ones who are so given, the first to the numbers of deaths, injured and disappeared, and the latter to translating deaths into errors "for not having done what I told them."
It is not just that. I'm also speaking about what we call the "Fourth World War" which is being waged by neoliberalism and against humanity. The one which is talking place on all fronts and everywhere, including in the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. As well as in Palestine and in Iraq, in Chechnya and in the Balkans, in Sudan and in Afghanistan, with more or less regular armies. The one which fundamentalism of both camps is carrying to all corners of the planet. The one which, taking on non-military forms, is claiming victims in Latin America, in Social Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in Oceania, in the Near East, with financial bombs that are causing entire nation states and international bodies to disappear into little pieces.
This war which, according to us (and, I insist, tendentially), is attempting to destroy/depopulate lands, to rebuild/reorder local, regional and national maps, and to create, by blood and fire, a new world cartography. This one which is leaving its signature in its path: death.
Perhaps the question "What is the speed of dreams?" should be accompanied by the question "What is the speed of nightmares?"
Just a few weeks prior to the terrorist attacks of March 11, 2004 in Spain, a Mexican political journalist-analyst (one of those to whom they give a piece of candy and then they break into ridiculous praise) was lauding Jose Maria Aznar's vision "of the State."
The analyst said that Aznar, by accompanying the United States and Great Britain in the war against Iraq, had gained promising ground for the expansion of the Spanish economy, and the only cost he had to pay was the repudiation by a "small" part of the Spanish population, "the radicals who are never lacking, even in a society as buoyant as the Spanish one," said the "analyst". He went on, noting that the only thing the Spanish had to do was to wait for a while until the reconstruction business of Iraq got underway, and then yes, they would be getting boatloads of money. In short, a dream.
It didn't take long until reality demanded the real price for Aznar's "vision of the State." That morning of March 11 the fact that Iraq is not in Iraq came true. I mean Iraq is not only in Iraq, but in the entire world. In short, the Atocha station as a synonym for nightmare.
But before the nightmare was the dream, but it was the neoliberal dream. The war against Iraq had been set in motion a good deal prior to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in US lands.
In order to go back to that beginning, there is nothing like a photograph...
Flat, reddish ground. It looks to be hard. Perhaps clay or something similar. A boot. Alone, without its mate. Abandoned. Without a foot to wear it. Some scattered pieces of rubble. The boot, in fact, looks like one more piece of rubble. It's all that there is in the image, and so it's the bottom of the picture which clarifies what Iraq is about. The date? September, 2004.
One can't discern whether the boot is from someone who died, if it was abandoned in flight, or if it is just a discarded boot. Nor is it known if the boot belongs to a US or British soldier, or to a resistance fighter, to an Iraqi civilian or to a civilian from another country.
Nonetheless, in spite of the lack of more information, the image presents an idea of what Bush's "postwar" Iraq is: violence, death, destruction, desolation, confusion, chaos.
All of it a neoliberal program.
If the false arguments that the war against Iraq was a war "against terrorism" have collapsed, the real reasons are now emerging, more than a year after Hussein's statue was pulled down, aided by the tanks of the US war, and a euphoric Bush erected another one to himself declaring an end to the war (Apparently the Iraqi resistance didn't listen to Bush's message: the number of US and British soldiers killed and injured has only increased since "the war ended", and now added to that are the losses of civilians from various nations.)
Neo-conservative ideology in the United States has a dream: building a neoliberal "Disneyland." In place of a "village model", a reflection of the counterinsurgency manuals of the 60s, it has to do with building a "nation model." The land of ancient Babylon was then chosen.
The dream of building an "example" of what the world should be (always according to the neoliberals) was fueled by "(...) the most prized belief of the ideological architects of the war (against Iraq): that greed is good. Not just good for them and their friends, but good for humanity and certainly good for the Iraqis. Greed creates profits, which create growth, which creates jobs, products and services and anything else which anyone could possibly need or want.
"The role of a good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue bottomless greed, so that they can, in turn, satisfy the needs of society.
"The problem is that governments, even neo-conservative governments, rarely have the opportunity to prove that their sacred theory is correct: despite their enormous ideological efforts, even George Bush's Republicans are, in their own minds, eternally sabotaged by meddling Democrats, stubborn unions and alarmist environmentalists. Iraq was going to change all this. The theory was finally going to be put into practice someplace on Earth in its most perfect and uncompromising form.
"A country of 25 million inhabitants would not be rebuilt as it had been prior to the war: it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would appear a dazzling showroom for the laissez-faire politicians, an autopia like the world had never seen."
("Baghdad Year Zero. The Pillage of Iraq After a Neo-conservative Utopia", Naomi Klein in Harper's magazine, September 2004. Translation: Julio Fernandez Baralbar).
Instead of that, Iraq is indeed an example, but an example of what is waiting for the entire world if the neoliberals win the great war, the Fourth World War: unemployment of almost 70%, industry and commerce paralyzed, an exorbitant increase in foreign debt, anti-explosion walls everywhere, the exponential growth of fundamentalism, civil war...and the exporting of terrorism to the entire planet.
I'm not going to inundate you with something that appears in the news every day: military offensives by the coalition (in a war which has "already ended"), mobilization of the Iraqi resistance, attacks, attacks on military and civilian objectives, kidnappings, executions, new offenses by the coalition, new mobilization of the Iraqi resistance, etcetera. I'm sure you can find plenty of information in the press of the entire world. The best source in Spanish, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, which has among its analysts some of the most serious and best informed on the issue of Iraq.
The truth is we have already seen this video in other places...and we are continuing to see it: Chechnya, the Balkans, Palestine and Sudan are only examples of this war which destroys nations in order to try and "restructure" them into paradises...and they end up being turned into hells.
An abandoned boot on the ground in "liberated" Iraq sums up the new world order: the destruction of nations, the obliteration of any trace of humanity, reconstruction as the chaotic reordering of the ruins of a civilization.
There are, however, other boots, even if they are just a few...
Broken boots. Worn-out boots. Yes, Insurgenta Erika's boots are worn-out. The sole is detached from the right toe, making the boot look like an unsatisfied mouth. The toes aren't visible yet, and so Erika doesn't seem to have realized that her boots, especially the right one, are worn-out.
From the first days in the mountain, I made it my custom to look down.. Footwear is often one of the guerrillero's dreams/nightmares (others?: sugar, keeping your feet dry and other rather damp ones), since he devotes a good deal of his attention to it. Perhaps that's why one acquires that obsession of always looking at other people's feet.
Insurgenta Erika has come to advise me that they've now finished editing the story of The Magical Orange (Radio Insurgente's latest production which is about...well, better if you listen to it). I respond to her that her boot is worn-out. She lowers her gaze and tells me "you too." She salutes me and leaves.
Erika is going to change clothes because two teams of insurgentas are soon going to be playing football. One is called "8 de Marzo" and the other "The Princesses of the Selva." I don't know much about football, but my understanding is that the "princesses" play in a style rather far removed from the good manners of the corte real, and the "8 de Marzo" play as if it were the first of January uprising. In other words, a good number of them end up in the insurgent medical station. In fact, every time they're going to play, the medical people have the stretcher on one side of the field. "So we don't have to turn around," they say.
They tied. Or the insurgentas tied in football. They went to penalties, and they got to the formation time without breaking the tie. Insurgenta Erika came and told me this. Erika is the romance counselor to the insurgentas, but this time she didn't come to tell me that a compa~era's "heart was hurting" from lovesickness, but that the match was over now, and she was going to give a talk to the villages, more specifically, to the women of the villages. She was going as a civilian, or in civilian clothing. Well, that's what she said. Because I saw that she was wearing boots made in zapatista workshops, and they had "EZLN" embossed on one side.
"Hmm, if you're going to wear those boots, it would be better if you wore the complete uniform," I told her, trying to be sarcastic. Erika left. She returned shortly with her uniform on. "Where are you going?" I asked her. "To the village," she responded. "But whatever made you go in uniform?" I asked/scolded her. "Because that's what you told me," she said I said. Understanding that it's useless to try and explain the qualities of subtle irony, I just ordered: "No, put civilian clothes on, and take off those boots." She left. She returned shortly in civilian clothing...and barefoot. I sighed, what else could I do?
Don't believe Erika. My boot isn't worn out. The stitching is coming apart, which isn't the same. Besides, it's an eye that's split, and so the way the laces are intertwined looks like the political system under neoliberalism: it's a mess, and you don't know where the right is going or where the left is going. I was explaining this to Rolando when who should arrive but...
First-Generation To~ita, or To~ita I (she of the kiss denied because "it was too scratchy," she of the little broken cup, she of the stalk of maize fashioned into a doll) is 15 years old now. "Or she finished 14, but she turned 15 and now she's going on 16," her papa, who is one of the oldest zapatista responsables among us, tells me.
I concur, not confessing that I have never understood the higher mathematics which rule the calendars in the rebel zapatista communities (after trying to explain it to me, to no avail, Monarca resigned herself and just added: "I think it's because that's our way, which is just quite otherly").
The papa of To~ita I (or First-Generation To~ita) had come so I could see her, because it's been more than 10 years since I'd seen her for the last time. Ten years had not passed in vain, since To~ita I not only didn't deny me a kiss, but, without my saying anything, she gave me a hug and planted a kiss on the padded cheek of my ski-mask and turned all colors (To~ita I, not the ski-mask). I didn't say anything, but I thought "Hmm, I'm not doing well this year...and I haven't taken off my ski-mask even to bathe myself."
Then To~ita I took some boots out of her backpack and put them on. I was going to ask her why she was putting her boots on after walking barefoot for six hours from her village, but To~ita spoke first, asking me if she could go "there" - and she pointed to where there was a group of insurgentas. To~ita I knows what a kiss, even if it's on a ski-mask, can achieve, so she didn't wait for an answer and left.
While To~ita I was running over to see if they would let her play in the football match, her papa told me about their village (which I have always called, taking care that no one would hear me, "Stormy Peaks"). I had seen the scar left by a scratch on To~ita I's left arm, and I asked him about it.
To~ita I's papa told me that a young man from the village had wanted to take her to the latrine (Note: let me explain to the unlikely reader of these lines that in some villages the latrine fulfills not only its smelly hygienic functions, but it's often also the place for couples to meet. There are not a few marriages in the communities which have originated in the not at all romantic location of the latrine. End of Note). What happened was that To~ita I did not want to go to the latrine. "It wasn't her pleasure" her papa informed me. And then the boy tried to force her, and then, "since it wasn't her pleasure," - her papa repeated - they struggled. To~ita I managed to escape, but, as they then said, it was published and the matter reached the village assembly. To~ita I's papa told me that they had wanted to put her in jail. I interrupted: "But why, if they attacked her, and she even had a scratch on her arm?" "Ah, Sup, you should see how the young man ended up" - the papa told me - "He was left flat out unconscious. To~ita is, as they say, quite fierce."
To~ita I has, in addition to an attractive face, a sturdy figure or - how can I explain it to you? - well, in order for you to understand me, I'll just tell you that Rolando wanted her to play defense center on the zapatista football team.
"But the insurgentas' team is already complete," I said to Rolando. He just added: "Maybe it is for the insurgentas' team, I wanted her for the men's team." Just then the people from the medical unit were going by with two quite battered insurgentas. To~ita I was crying because it was her fault that her team had been given two penalties. I understood Rolando and turned around to her papa and asked him: "Has To~ita I said whether she wanted to be an insurgenta?"
To~ita I took her boots off and put them in her backpack. She left with her papa, walking barefoot.
It wasn't long before, accompanied by her mother,...Second-Generation To~ita, or To~ita II, showed up.
Elena is the name of To~ita II's, or Second Generation, mama. She is an insurgent medical lieutenant, and she has to her credit the fact that in January of 1994 she saved the lives of various insurgents and militants who were left wounded in the fighting in Ocosingo. In a more than modest field hospital, Elena operated on bullet wounds and extracted pieces of shrapnel from the bodies of zapatistas. "A compa died," she said when she made her report. She didn't mention the more than 30 combatants, who are now living and struggling in these lands, whom she saved.
To~ita II is three years old. "Or she's finished two and she's going on four?" I asked, anticipating Elena's explanation. She laughed. I mean Elena laughed. Because To~ita II was shrieking at a level worthy of a more serious cause. And it so happened that, putting on my most flirtatious face (number 7 of my exclusive "catalogue of seductive gazes"), I had asked her for a kiss. To~ita II didn't even say "too scratchy" (not even an improved version), she just started crying with such vehemence that she had a group of insurgentas at her side offering her caramels, a little purse with a rabbit face (although it looked to me as if it were a possum face - the purse, you understand) - and they were even singing the one about the chivito to her, a song that is an uncommon success among zapatista boys and girls.
"They don't love you," Major Irma told me, making matters worse. I answered: "Bah, she's crazy for me", and I acted as if my heart were not broken.
Leaving the shop, Rolando handed me one of those needles called "capoteras" and a roll of nylon thread.
In the hut of the EZLN Comandancia general now, I wonder...
I don't know what the speed of dreams is, nor do I know whether to mend my boots or my heart.
(To be continued...)
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Mexico, September of 2004, 20 and 10.
Marcos:The Speed of Dreams/Part 2
The Speed of Dreams Part Two: Shoes, Sneakers, Flip-Flops, Sandals and Heels
September is the ninth month of the year, and above it's as if the Moon has a tummy. She even blushes a bit when she lets herself fall over the west. The rain and the clouds almost make an appearance, but they grow lazy and remain behind the mountain, the one which rises to the east. Below, Tania Libertad is singing that song on the little tape player that goes "they're not going to stand in our way (...) we shall grow despite the autumn." Mixed up in the shadows, the shadow is writing a letter. After "Zapatista Army etcetera" and the date, September of 2004, can be read...
To: Pierluigi Sullo
Editorial Office of the Carta Weekly
Italy, European Continent, Planet Earth
Pedro Luis, brother:
Greetings from the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. I suppose you might think the "Pedro Luis" strange, but I have been influenced by the compas' "way" of "zapatizing" names, and so I'm using "Pedro Luis" for "Pierluigi."
Well, then, I received the letter you wrote and which you didn't send. I received the letter in the Carta (August 26 - September 1, 2004, Year VI, Number 31). Since my Italian doesn't extend even to the point of looking like the "Ita~ol" of the "turbineros and tubineras" (who have been working hard for years in order to bring light to La Realidad), I had to ask for someone to do me the favor of translating it. And they did it, but in a neo language that we call "Itazapa~ol" here, which, if my memory doesn't fail me, Vanessa inaugurated when, always disobedient, she remained for years, living in the zapatista reality. Things being as they were, I had to resort to some dictionaries they had sent us some time ago (I don't quite remember, I believe it was Mantovant or Alfio). In order to do that, first I had to look for the dictionaries and find them. They were, as was to be expected, leveling one of the legs of one of the tables of one of the Comandancia Generales of the one and only EZLN. It took me longer to intuit than to know what the letter in Carta said.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I managed to understand that the objective of your letter was to greet us...and to posit problems.
The epistolary genre is, in my humble opinion, one of the best means of debating (another, better yet, is political practice).
You didn't say so openly, but anyone could notice that your letter basically poses, now from rebel Italy, the same problem of the speed of dreams. And, even though you don't say so explicitly either, from the Italy which struggles, or dreams, you also answer "I don't know."
Well, I can answer the problems you're raising with the axiom of the ineffable and great (of ego) Don Durito of La Lacandona: "There's no problem so great it can't be mulled over."
Although it appears to me to be an excellent recipe (it has given me good results on more than one occasion), I sincerely believe that you are not searching for a solution, but rather for a discussion.
The what to do in Italy? is, in effect, a problem. And to my way of thinking it is part of the problem of what to do in the world?
Now our response, we, the zapatistas, is..."we don't know."
I know that you don't expect anything else of us, knowing us as well as you know us. However, from our land and our struggle, we can say the following:
First. In the Mexico of today, all politicians - even those who are leading in the opinion polls, in the front pages of the news stories or in the number of demonstrators, regardless of the color of the rhetoric they brandish or the sign of their party organization - can count on the sullen mistrust of us, the zapatistas, with our skepticism and incredulity. Based solely on their words, promises, intentions, figures, opinion studies, they will absolutely not receive anything good from us. Nothing, not even the benefit of the doubt. Like the chief of the Liberation Army of the South, General Emiliano Zapata in front of Francisco I. Madero, our hostility towards the politicians of the center will be an invariable rule: and, like Emiliano Zapata in front of the presidential chair, we shall continue turning our backs on the National Palace and on those who aspire to take that seat. And the same thing goes for the self-styled "Congress of the Union" and the circus Judicial Branch of the Federation.
Second. In the specific case of the official self-proclaimed leftist political parties in Mexico (and which, it should not be forgotten, are not the only political organizations of the left which exist in our country), we cannot stop laughing bitterly when their party officials, leaders, deputies, senators and little paid canaries throw Vicente Fox's failure to fulfill his campaign promise of resolving the Chiapas "problem" in 15 minutes in his face. We do not forget that those who are criticizing that were the same ones who voted for a law which, in addition to failing to act on a breach of elemental justice, was in fundamental contravention of the cries of the Indian peoples of Mexico and of millions of persons in our country and in other parts of the planet.
They are the same ones who are encouraging paramilitary groups to harass and attack the zapatista communities. They are the same ones who are striving to appear pleasant to a right (whether it's called the ecclesiastical or the business high hierarchy) which, it must be said, feels no attraction for them. They are the same ones who are carrying under their arms the economic and police plans which have been drawn up in the boardrooms of international greed.
Even with all of this, we cannot endorse, with our silence, the legal dirty business with which they are trying to prevent the person who heads the Mexico City government from running in 2006 for the Presidency of the country. It seems to us to be an illegitimate act, poorly wrapped up in legal fallacies, an attack against the right of Mexicans to decide if one or the other or no one shall govern them. The commission of a felony of that nature would mean, neither more nor less, than the invalidation of Article 39 of the Mexican Constitution, which establishes the right of Mexicans to decide their form of government. It would be, to put it in simple terms, a "soft" coup d'etat.
By pointing this out we are not putting ourselves on the side of a person or a government program. Even less does it translate into support for a party which is not only not of the left and is not progressive, but is not even republican. Quite simply we are putting ourselves on the side of the history of the struggle of our peoples.
Third. Elections pass, governments pass. The resistance remains as it is, one more alternative for humanity and against neoliberalism. Nothing more, but nothing less.
However, consistent with the aversion we profess for dogmas, we will always admit that we could be wrong, and it could be, in effect, as the fashionable hacks are now predicting, necessary, urgent, essential, to deliver ourselves up unconditionally into the arms of those who, from above, are promoting changes which can only be achieved from below.
We could be wrong. When we realize it because stupid reality gets in the way of our path, we will be the first to recognize that mistake in front of everyone, those who are with us and those who are opposed. It will be that way because we believe, among other things, that honesty in front of the mirror is necessary for all of those who, in word or in fact, are committed to the building of a new world.
In any event, we give life to our wise moves and to our mistakes. I sincerely believe that, ever since the dawn of the first of January of 1994, we have won the right to decide for ourselves our path, its rhythm, its speed, its accompaniment, continuous or sporadic.
We shall not cede that right. We are willing to die to defend it.
Fourth. We shall continue doing what we believe is our duty. And without regard to the "ratings" our actions receive, the space we occupy in the news, or the threats and prophecies which they are good enough - from both sides of the political spectrum - to prescribe for us every time we don't do what they want us to do or we don't say what they want us to say (something which happens all the time).
We will not join in the hysterical clamor of the political class, and of their fans in the "political analysis" columns. Those people who try to impose, always from above, an agenda which has nothing to do with what is happening below in our country, the implacable dismantling of the foundations of national sovereignty.
Nor will we flail about concerning the calendar, hastening 2006 and its uncertainty, its festival of vanities, its cynical squandering of resources and stupidity. Even less will our actions be guided by those who are demanding that we contribute the names of prisoners, disappeared and dead, while they contribute names to the nominating lists.
Fifth. This does not mean that we do not listen. We do, and we shall continue to do so. From all over the world we receive words of encouragement and of criticism, advice and warnings, support and condemnation. We listen to everything, and we keep it in the collective heart which we are. Anyone, anyplace in the world, can be certain that the zapatistas will listen to them.
But it is one thing to listen and another thing to obey.
We don't give a damn about the "polemics" as to whether the zapatistas are revolutionaries or reformers, "lights" or "heavies", nai:ve or malicious, good or bad, and, like the mosquitoes in the long nights of the Mexican Southeast, they are not what keeps us awake.
The transnationals do not govern in zapatista lands, nor does the IMF, nor the World Bank, nor imperialism, nor the empire, nor governments of any sign. Here the communities make the fundamental decisions. I don't know what that is called. We call it "zapatismo."
But ours is not a liberated territory, nor a utopian commune. Nor an experimental laboratory for nonsense or the paradise of an orphaned left.
This is a rebel territory, in resistance, invaded by tens of thousands of federal soldiers, police, intelligence services, spies from the various "developed" nations, counterintelligence officials and opportunists of all types. A territory composed of tens of thousands of Mexican indigenous, harassed, persecuted, attacked for refusing to stop being indigenous, Mexican and human beings, that is, citizens of the world.
Sixth. As far as the rest of the planet goes, our ignorance is encyclopedic (it would, in fact, take up more volumes than the complete works of the external and internal words of the neo-zapatistas which, incidentally, abound), and there is little or nothing we can say about political organizations of the left which are struggling, or say they are struggling, under other skies.
There, as everywhere, we prefer to look downwards, to movements and trends of resistance and the building of alternatives. We only turn our gaze upward if a hand from below points us there.
Seventh. We are trying, with our clumsiness and our wise actions, definitions or vagueness, just trying, but putting life into it, to build an alternative. Full of imperfections and always incomplete, but our alternative.
If we have arrived where we have arrived it has not, however, been just because of our abilities and decisions. It has been because of the support of men and women from throughout the world who have understood that in these lands there are not a bunch of needy people, eager for handouts and pity, but human beings, just like them, who are yearning and working for a better world, one where all worlds fit.
I believe that such an effort deserves the sympathy and support of every honest and noble person in the world.
And I believe, more times than not, that sympathy and that support finds its most fortunate version in the struggle they are undertaking or maintaining in their respective realities, whatever their culture, their language, their flag, their kind of footwear, shoes, sneakers, trainers, flip-flops, sandals or heels.
In this sense you are closer, in our geography, to the real zapatista communities than the distances noted on maps.
The Europe of below is thus closer: disobedient and self-managing Italy; the Greece which communicates with smoke signals; the France of the flip-flops and of those without papers and without homes, but with dignity; rebel and solidarity Spain; Euzkal Herria which resists and does not surrender; rebel Germany; committed Switzerland; compa~era Denmark; persistent Sweden; conscientious Norway; the Patria denied to the Kurds; the marginal Europe which the immigrants suffer ; the entire Europe of the young people who refuse to buy shares in the markets of cynicism...and the Mazahua Mexican indigenous women.
Rebellions and resistances which we feel are closer than the endless distances which separate us from the arrogant city of San Cristo'bal de Las Casas and from the political parties who talk with the left and act with the right.
Well, that's all for now, compa Pedro Luis. Believe me, I have no regrets about running a risk of "being judged as someone who's crazy, who doesn't see reality" through what I'm writing you. However it may be, the fundamental problem remains, to wit, that of determining the speed of dreams.
While it's being resolved, best wishes, and the next time you write, send, in addition to the letter in Carta, a translation, even if it's in "Ita~ol."
Vale, salud and may the clamor from above not prevent the murmur from below from being heard.
(To be continued...)
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
Originally published in Spanish by the EZLN
*******************************
Translated by irlandesa
(Source: http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/mexico/ezln/2004/marcos/SpeedDreams.html)
Friday, July 25, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Global poverty and global wealth
(Source: http://www.geezmagazine.org/affluence/think/9/global-poverty-and-global-wealth)
Global poverty and global wealth
by Pablo Leal
On September 19, 2006, the global civil society coalition, Social Watch, launched its annual Report “Impossible Architecture” in the city-state of Singapore . This report was launched in the same location and at the same time that the World Bank-IMF held their Board of Governors annual meeting. However, the conclusions of the Social Watch report were dramatically different from those being reached within the WB-IMF conference halls.
As was to be expected, the WB-IMF insisted that important headway was being made in the fight against poverty to such an extent that Paul Wolfowitz in his opening speech, entitled “The Path to Prosperity” declared that “history was being made in the fight against poverty”. In that very speech, and in reference to the wealth that was so evident in Singapore , and, in particular in the “splendid convention centre”, Wolfowitz commented the following:
“But the wealth we see around us today is an inspiring reminder that there is a road out of grinding poverty to prosperity.”
(The complete speech can be found at: http://web.worldbank.org)
The new WB anti-poverty rhetoric, speaks of “path to prosperity”, “the path out of poverty”, with repeated references to the global poor’s “road to opportunity”, all illustrating the “landmark commitments” being made towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals.
The path from poverty to prosperity, exemplified in Wolfowitz’s speech by Singapore ’s successful entry into capitalist modernity, is no more than a refried version of the modernization proposal made popular during the 1950s and 1960s. Progress is, specifically, the Western capitalist road to progress as it has been for centuries, only now with the indispensable neoliberal ingredients: private sector growth, access to commercial credit, good governance, and all the structural reforms which make possible the above.
These WB-IMF conclusions were openly defied by the Social Watch report, which explicitly and empirically demonstrates how wealth has systematically flowed from poor nations to rich since nations since 1991; and how the World Bank itself has been instrumental to this modern day sacking.
What this report unmasks is the internal machinery of what can be called an international tributary system, whereby the high living standards (read: mass consumption) of industrialized nations is subsidized by the very low (and lowering) living standards of underdeveloped nations.
Social Watch’s conclusions are by no means new. In fact, the 2004 UNCTAD Annual Report showed how a net transfer of financial capital takes place to the tune of f $200 billion USD a year from poor to rich nations.
All of this places the reaching of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) – the much touted acronym of development pundits everywhere – into perspective. Especially now that every nation, institution and NGO seems to be into the “poverty reduction” business.
Curiously, the reflections on poverty are rarely, if ever, related to the reflections on wealth. Yet wealth and poverty are intrinsically linked, as if they were two sides of the same coin. As Adam Smith, the father of capitalist economics himself stated Book V of his famous Wealth of Nations:
“Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred of the poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. [. . .] It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate [read, the police] that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labor of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security.”
This, according to Smith himself, is an inherent trait of capitalism. As the capitalist mode of production globalized so to did the tendency to globalize the “rich-poor” dichotomy, only at the level of nation states and entire regions, creating what we have come to know as the underdeveloped or “Third” world.
Thus, we come to understand how proposing to reduce global poverty without touching the structures of global wealth is quickly becomes a meaningless task. To pose one simple example, the United States of America , with approximately 5% of the world’s population consumes over 24% of its petroleum and coal based energy, energy which fuels their levels of production and consumption. How could the remaining 95% of the world aspire to imitating living standards of the “American Dream” under such conditions?
What also becomes readily evident from studies such as Social Watch’s is how there are global political, economic and cultural structures in place that insure that the global tributary system keeps on transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.
What the Social Watch report does not mention is how there are also military structures in place to safeguard the system from acts of defiance or resistance to this modern-day, post-colonial pillage. The bombing of Afghanistan , the invasion of Iraq , the assault on Lebanon , the militarization of the Andean region of South America through Plan Colombia , the militarization of the Triple frontier between Paraguay , Brazil and Argentina are all examples of this.
Global military spending in 2005 surpassed the highest point of military spending during all the years of the Cold War, reaching 1.2 trillion dollars.
The question that nags at the back of humanity’s consciousness is: Can we develop our way out of poverty? Personally, I believe that the answer is a resounding “no”. Poverty can only be abolished by way of transforming the very political, economic, cultural and military structures in place to perpetuate it.
The abolition of human misery will not result from acts of benevolence from wealthy, industrialized nations, but from organized social and popular struggle aimed at social transformation; it will result from human emancipation and not the reproduction of the Western model of “the good life”. The Millennium Development Goals will not reduce poverty in any foreseeable future, but perhaps the Millennium Liberation Goals might.
What follows are some pearls from the Social Watch Report 2006.
World Bank: Taking from the poor…
In every year since 1991, net transfers (disbursements minus repayments minus interest payments) to developing countries from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, the loan-making branch of the World Bank) have been negative. Since 2002 net disbursements have also become negative. In effect, taken as a whole, the IBRD is not making any contribution to development finance other than providing finance to service its outstanding claims. The situation is much the same for regional development banks. The problem here is that, for reasons related to conditionality and bureaucracy, countries which are eligible for IBRD loans are generally unwilling to borrow as long as they have access to private markets, even when this means paying higher rates. On the other hand, many poorer countries which need external financing are not eligible for IBRD loans.
Short of money… but keeping tanks filled of it
Due to the instability of world finances, developing countries have to keep huge reserves of unused money just to defend their currencies from speculation. To build up those reserves, poor countries are borrowing hard currency from the US at interest rates as high as 18%, and lending this back to the US (in the form of interest on US Treasury bonds) at 3%. Most countries invest their foreign-exchange reserves in relatively safe, short-term assets, such as US Treasury bills. The yields on such instruments are currently very low – well below the interest rates that developing countries pay on their debt.
Debt slavery
Low-income countries received grants of about USD 27 billion in 2003 and paid almost USD 35 billion as debt service. Sub-Saharan Africa has seen its debt stock rise by USD 220 billion despite having paid off USD 296 billion of the USD 320 billion it has borrowed since 1970.
In fact, since 1984, net transfers to developing countries through the debt channel (the net result of inflows as new borrowing and outflows in the form of debt service) have been negative in all but three years. So debt, instead of providing a source of funding for development, has become a major source of leakage of scarce resources from developing countries.
The hidden cost of unfair trade
Trade restrictions in rich countries cost developing countries around USD 100 billion a year. Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, loses some USD 2 billion a year, India and China in excess of USD 3 billion. These are only the immediate costs. The longer-term costs associated with lost opportunities for investment and the loss of economic dynamism are much greater.
Investment flows the other way around
Foreign direct investment (FDI) can contribute significantly to development and it is increasingly seen as the most important link in the development process by many policy makers. Since 1992 FDI has been the largest source of inflows into developing countries, but it has been highly concentrated within a small group of countries such as China , India , Brazil and Mexico . Countries in sub-Saharan Africa , the most in need of capital, get very little FDI. Moreover, increasing amounts of FDI are used for mergers and acquisitions where a foreign firm acquires an ongoing domestic operation, therefore not adding to productive capacity or bringing about technology transfer.
FDI inflows are accompanied by large outflows in the form of profit repatriation. In sub-Saharan Africa , for example, the average rate of return on FDI is between 24% and 30% and the inflow of funds through new FDI is currently exceeded or matched by an outflow of funds as profit remittances on existing FDI.
Global poverty and global wealth
by Pablo Leal
On September 19, 2006, the global civil society coalition, Social Watch, launched its annual Report “Impossible Architecture” in the city-state of Singapore . This report was launched in the same location and at the same time that the World Bank-IMF held their Board of Governors annual meeting. However, the conclusions of the Social Watch report were dramatically different from those being reached within the WB-IMF conference halls.
As was to be expected, the WB-IMF insisted that important headway was being made in the fight against poverty to such an extent that Paul Wolfowitz in his opening speech, entitled “The Path to Prosperity” declared that “history was being made in the fight against poverty”. In that very speech, and in reference to the wealth that was so evident in Singapore , and, in particular in the “splendid convention centre”, Wolfowitz commented the following:
“But the wealth we see around us today is an inspiring reminder that there is a road out of grinding poverty to prosperity.”
(The complete speech can be found at: http://web.worldbank.org)
The new WB anti-poverty rhetoric, speaks of “path to prosperity”, “the path out of poverty”, with repeated references to the global poor’s “road to opportunity”, all illustrating the “landmark commitments” being made towards reaching the Millennium Development Goals.
The path from poverty to prosperity, exemplified in Wolfowitz’s speech by Singapore ’s successful entry into capitalist modernity, is no more than a refried version of the modernization proposal made popular during the 1950s and 1960s. Progress is, specifically, the Western capitalist road to progress as it has been for centuries, only now with the indispensable neoliberal ingredients: private sector growth, access to commercial credit, good governance, and all the structural reforms which make possible the above.
These WB-IMF conclusions were openly defied by the Social Watch report, which explicitly and empirically demonstrates how wealth has systematically flowed from poor nations to rich since nations since 1991; and how the World Bank itself has been instrumental to this modern day sacking.
What this report unmasks is the internal machinery of what can be called an international tributary system, whereby the high living standards (read: mass consumption) of industrialized nations is subsidized by the very low (and lowering) living standards of underdeveloped nations.
Social Watch’s conclusions are by no means new. In fact, the 2004 UNCTAD Annual Report showed how a net transfer of financial capital takes place to the tune of f $200 billion USD a year from poor to rich nations.
All of this places the reaching of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) – the much touted acronym of development pundits everywhere – into perspective. Especially now that every nation, institution and NGO seems to be into the “poverty reduction” business.
Curiously, the reflections on poverty are rarely, if ever, related to the reflections on wealth. Yet wealth and poverty are intrinsically linked, as if they were two sides of the same coin. As Adam Smith, the father of capitalist economics himself stated Book V of his famous Wealth of Nations:
“Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality. For one very rich man, there must be at least five hundred of the poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. [. . .] It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate [read, the police] that the owner of that valuable property, which is acquired by the labor of many years, or perhaps of many successive generations, can sleep a single night in security.”
This, according to Smith himself, is an inherent trait of capitalism. As the capitalist mode of production globalized so to did the tendency to globalize the “rich-poor” dichotomy, only at the level of nation states and entire regions, creating what we have come to know as the underdeveloped or “Third” world.
Thus, we come to understand how proposing to reduce global poverty without touching the structures of global wealth is quickly becomes a meaningless task. To pose one simple example, the United States of America , with approximately 5% of the world’s population consumes over 24% of its petroleum and coal based energy, energy which fuels their levels of production and consumption. How could the remaining 95% of the world aspire to imitating living standards of the “American Dream” under such conditions?
What also becomes readily evident from studies such as Social Watch’s is how there are global political, economic and cultural structures in place that insure that the global tributary system keeps on transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.
What the Social Watch report does not mention is how there are also military structures in place to safeguard the system from acts of defiance or resistance to this modern-day, post-colonial pillage. The bombing of Afghanistan , the invasion of Iraq , the assault on Lebanon , the militarization of the Andean region of South America through Plan Colombia , the militarization of the Triple frontier between Paraguay , Brazil and Argentina are all examples of this.
Global military spending in 2005 surpassed the highest point of military spending during all the years of the Cold War, reaching 1.2 trillion dollars.
The question that nags at the back of humanity’s consciousness is: Can we develop our way out of poverty? Personally, I believe that the answer is a resounding “no”. Poverty can only be abolished by way of transforming the very political, economic, cultural and military structures in place to perpetuate it.
The abolition of human misery will not result from acts of benevolence from wealthy, industrialized nations, but from organized social and popular struggle aimed at social transformation; it will result from human emancipation and not the reproduction of the Western model of “the good life”. The Millennium Development Goals will not reduce poverty in any foreseeable future, but perhaps the Millennium Liberation Goals might.
What follows are some pearls from the Social Watch Report 2006.
World Bank: Taking from the poor…
In every year since 1991, net transfers (disbursements minus repayments minus interest payments) to developing countries from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, the loan-making branch of the World Bank) have been negative. Since 2002 net disbursements have also become negative. In effect, taken as a whole, the IBRD is not making any contribution to development finance other than providing finance to service its outstanding claims. The situation is much the same for regional development banks. The problem here is that, for reasons related to conditionality and bureaucracy, countries which are eligible for IBRD loans are generally unwilling to borrow as long as they have access to private markets, even when this means paying higher rates. On the other hand, many poorer countries which need external financing are not eligible for IBRD loans.
Short of money… but keeping tanks filled of it
Due to the instability of world finances, developing countries have to keep huge reserves of unused money just to defend their currencies from speculation. To build up those reserves, poor countries are borrowing hard currency from the US at interest rates as high as 18%, and lending this back to the US (in the form of interest on US Treasury bonds) at 3%. Most countries invest their foreign-exchange reserves in relatively safe, short-term assets, such as US Treasury bills. The yields on such instruments are currently very low – well below the interest rates that developing countries pay on their debt.
Debt slavery
Low-income countries received grants of about USD 27 billion in 2003 and paid almost USD 35 billion as debt service. Sub-Saharan Africa has seen its debt stock rise by USD 220 billion despite having paid off USD 296 billion of the USD 320 billion it has borrowed since 1970.
In fact, since 1984, net transfers to developing countries through the debt channel (the net result of inflows as new borrowing and outflows in the form of debt service) have been negative in all but three years. So debt, instead of providing a source of funding for development, has become a major source of leakage of scarce resources from developing countries.
The hidden cost of unfair trade
Trade restrictions in rich countries cost developing countries around USD 100 billion a year. Sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, loses some USD 2 billion a year, India and China in excess of USD 3 billion. These are only the immediate costs. The longer-term costs associated with lost opportunities for investment and the loss of economic dynamism are much greater.
Investment flows the other way around
Foreign direct investment (FDI) can contribute significantly to development and it is increasingly seen as the most important link in the development process by many policy makers. Since 1992 FDI has been the largest source of inflows into developing countries, but it has been highly concentrated within a small group of countries such as China , India , Brazil and Mexico . Countries in sub-Saharan Africa , the most in need of capital, get very little FDI. Moreover, increasing amounts of FDI are used for mergers and acquisitions where a foreign firm acquires an ongoing domestic operation, therefore not adding to productive capacity or bringing about technology transfer.
FDI inflows are accompanied by large outflows in the form of profit repatriation. In sub-Saharan Africa , for example, the average rate of return on FDI is between 24% and 30% and the inflow of funds through new FDI is currently exceeded or matched by an outflow of funds as profit remittances on existing FDI.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Robert Fisk on Racism in Canada
How racism has invaded Canada
What is the term 'brown-skinned' doing on the front page of a major Canadian daily?
By Robert Fisk - 10 June 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article754394.ece
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13575.htm
This has been a good week to be in Canada — or an awful week, depending on your point of view - to understand just how irretrievably biased and potentially racist the Canadian press has become. For, after the arrest of 17 Canadian Muslims on “terrorism” charges, the Toronto Globe and Mail and, to a slightly lesser extent, the National Post, have indulged in an orgy of finger-pointing that must reduce the chances of any fair trial and, at the same time, sow fear in the hearts of the country’s more than 700,000 Muslims. In fact, if I were a Canadian Muslim right now, I’d already be checking the airline timetables for a flight out of town. Or is that the purpose of this press campaign?
First, the charges. Even a lawyer for one of the accused has talked of a plot to storm the Parliament in Ottawa, hold MPs hostage and chop off the head of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Without challenging the “facts” or casting any doubt on their sources — primarily the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Canada’s leak-dripping Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) — reporters have told their readers that the 17 were variously planning to blow up Parliament, CSIS’s headquarters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and sundry other targets. Every veiled and chadored Muslim woman relative of the accused has been photographed and their pictures printed, often on front pages. “Home-grown terrorists” has become theme of the month — even though the “terrorists” have yet to stand trial.
They were in receipt of “fertilizers”, we were told, which could be turned into explosives. When it emerged that Canadian police officers had already switched the “fertilizers” for a less harmful substance, nobody followed up the implications of this apparent “sting”. A Buffalo radio station down in the US even announced that the accused had actually received “explosives”. Bingo: Guilty before trial.
Of course, the Muslim-bashers have laced this nonsense with the usual pious concern for the rights of the accused. “Before I go on, one disclaimer,” purred the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente. “Nothing has been proved and nobody should rush to judgment.” Which, needless to say, Wente then went on to do in the same paragraph. “The exposure of our very own home-grown terrorists, if that’s what the men aspired to be, was both predictably shocking and shockingly predictable.” And just in case we missed the point of this hypocrisy, Wente ended her column by announcing that “Canada is not exempt from home-grown terrorism”. Angry young men are the tinderbox and Islamism is the match.
The country will probably have better luck than most at “putting out the fire”, she adds. But who, I wonder, is really lighting the match? For a very unpleasant — albeit initially innocuous — phrase has now found its way into the papers. The accused 17 — and, indeed their families and sometimes the country’s entire Muslim community — are now referred to as “Canadian-born”. Well, yes, they are Canadian-born. But there’s a subtle difference between this and being described as a “Canadian” — as other citizens of this vast country are in every other context. And the implications are obvious; there are now two types of Canadian citizen: The Canadian-born variety (Muslims) and Canadians (the rest).
If this seems finicky, try the following sentence from the Globe and Mail’s front page on Tuesday, supposedly an eyewitness account of the police arrest operation: “Parked directly outside his ... office was a large, gray, cube-shaped truck and, on the ground nearby, he recognized one of the two brown-skinned young men who had taken possession of the next door rented unit...” Come again? Brown-skinned? What in God’s name is this outrageous piece of racism doing on the front page of a major Canadian daily? What is “brown-skinned” supposed to mean — if it is not just a revolting attempt to isolate Muslims as the “other” in Canada’s highly multicultural society? I notice, for example, that when the paper obsequiously refers to Toronto’s police chief and his reportedly brilliant cops, he is not referred to as “white-skinned” (which he most assuredly is). Amid this swamp, Canada’s journalists are managing to soften the realities of their country’s new military involvement in Afghanistan.
More than 2,000 troops are deployed around Kandahar in active military operations against Taleban insurgents. They are taking the place of US troops, who will be transferred to fight even more Muslims insurgents in Iraq.
Canada is thus now involved in the Afghan war — those who doubt this should note the country has already shelled out $1.8bn in “defense spending” in Afghanistan and only $500m in “additional expenditures”, including humanitarian assistance and democratic renewal (sic) — and, by extension, in Iraq. In other words, Canada has gone to war in the Middle East.
None of this, according to the Canadian foreign minister, could be the cause of Muslim anger at home, although Jack Hooper — the CSIS chief who has a lot to learn about the Middle East but talks far too much — said a few days ago that “we had a high threat profile (in Canada) before Afghanistan. In any event, the presence of Canadians and Canadian forces there has elevated that threat somewhat.” I read all this on a flight from Calgary to Ottawa this week, sitting just a row behind Tim Goddard, his wife Sally and daughter Victoria, who were chatting gently and smiling bravely to the crew and fellow passengers. In the cargo hold of our aircraft lay the coffin of Goddard’s other daughter, Nichola, the first Canadian woman soldier to be killed in action in Afghanistan.
The next day, he scattered sand on Nichola’s coffin at Canada’s national military cemetery. A heartrending photograph of him appeared in the Post — but buried away on Page 6. And on the front page? A picture of British policemen standing outside the Bradford home of a Muslim “who may have links to Canada”. Allegedly, of course.
What is the term 'brown-skinned' doing on the front page of a major Canadian daily?
By Robert Fisk - 10 June 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article754394.ece
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13575.htm
This has been a good week to be in Canada — or an awful week, depending on your point of view - to understand just how irretrievably biased and potentially racist the Canadian press has become. For, after the arrest of 17 Canadian Muslims on “terrorism” charges, the Toronto Globe and Mail and, to a slightly lesser extent, the National Post, have indulged in an orgy of finger-pointing that must reduce the chances of any fair trial and, at the same time, sow fear in the hearts of the country’s more than 700,000 Muslims. In fact, if I were a Canadian Muslim right now, I’d already be checking the airline timetables for a flight out of town. Or is that the purpose of this press campaign?
First, the charges. Even a lawyer for one of the accused has talked of a plot to storm the Parliament in Ottawa, hold MPs hostage and chop off the head of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Without challenging the “facts” or casting any doubt on their sources — primarily the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or Canada’s leak-dripping Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) — reporters have told their readers that the 17 were variously planning to blow up Parliament, CSIS’s headquarters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and sundry other targets. Every veiled and chadored Muslim woman relative of the accused has been photographed and their pictures printed, often on front pages. “Home-grown terrorists” has become theme of the month — even though the “terrorists” have yet to stand trial.
They were in receipt of “fertilizers”, we were told, which could be turned into explosives. When it emerged that Canadian police officers had already switched the “fertilizers” for a less harmful substance, nobody followed up the implications of this apparent “sting”. A Buffalo radio station down in the US even announced that the accused had actually received “explosives”. Bingo: Guilty before trial.
Of course, the Muslim-bashers have laced this nonsense with the usual pious concern for the rights of the accused. “Before I go on, one disclaimer,” purred the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente. “Nothing has been proved and nobody should rush to judgment.” Which, needless to say, Wente then went on to do in the same paragraph. “The exposure of our very own home-grown terrorists, if that’s what the men aspired to be, was both predictably shocking and shockingly predictable.” And just in case we missed the point of this hypocrisy, Wente ended her column by announcing that “Canada is not exempt from home-grown terrorism”. Angry young men are the tinderbox and Islamism is the match.
The country will probably have better luck than most at “putting out the fire”, she adds. But who, I wonder, is really lighting the match? For a very unpleasant — albeit initially innocuous — phrase has now found its way into the papers. The accused 17 — and, indeed their families and sometimes the country’s entire Muslim community — are now referred to as “Canadian-born”. Well, yes, they are Canadian-born. But there’s a subtle difference between this and being described as a “Canadian” — as other citizens of this vast country are in every other context. And the implications are obvious; there are now two types of Canadian citizen: The Canadian-born variety (Muslims) and Canadians (the rest).
If this seems finicky, try the following sentence from the Globe and Mail’s front page on Tuesday, supposedly an eyewitness account of the police arrest operation: “Parked directly outside his ... office was a large, gray, cube-shaped truck and, on the ground nearby, he recognized one of the two brown-skinned young men who had taken possession of the next door rented unit...” Come again? Brown-skinned? What in God’s name is this outrageous piece of racism doing on the front page of a major Canadian daily? What is “brown-skinned” supposed to mean — if it is not just a revolting attempt to isolate Muslims as the “other” in Canada’s highly multicultural society? I notice, for example, that when the paper obsequiously refers to Toronto’s police chief and his reportedly brilliant cops, he is not referred to as “white-skinned” (which he most assuredly is). Amid this swamp, Canada’s journalists are managing to soften the realities of their country’s new military involvement in Afghanistan.
More than 2,000 troops are deployed around Kandahar in active military operations against Taleban insurgents. They are taking the place of US troops, who will be transferred to fight even more Muslims insurgents in Iraq.
Canada is thus now involved in the Afghan war — those who doubt this should note the country has already shelled out $1.8bn in “defense spending” in Afghanistan and only $500m in “additional expenditures”, including humanitarian assistance and democratic renewal (sic) — and, by extension, in Iraq. In other words, Canada has gone to war in the Middle East.
None of this, according to the Canadian foreign minister, could be the cause of Muslim anger at home, although Jack Hooper — the CSIS chief who has a lot to learn about the Middle East but talks far too much — said a few days ago that “we had a high threat profile (in Canada) before Afghanistan. In any event, the presence of Canadians and Canadian forces there has elevated that threat somewhat.” I read all this on a flight from Calgary to Ottawa this week, sitting just a row behind Tim Goddard, his wife Sally and daughter Victoria, who were chatting gently and smiling bravely to the crew and fellow passengers. In the cargo hold of our aircraft lay the coffin of Goddard’s other daughter, Nichola, the first Canadian woman soldier to be killed in action in Afghanistan.
The next day, he scattered sand on Nichola’s coffin at Canada’s national military cemetery. A heartrending photograph of him appeared in the Post — but buried away on Page 6. And on the front page? A picture of British policemen standing outside the Bradford home of a Muslim “who may have links to Canada”. Allegedly, of course.
Friday, May 9, 2008
From Michael Moore's TV Nation: The Health Care Olympics
Before there was 'SiCKO' there was 'TV Nation.'
Check out The Health Care Olympics with color commentators Bob Costas and Ahmad Rashad as the U.S. competes with Canada and Cuba in the sport of health care.
Check out The Health Care Olympics with color commentators Bob Costas and Ahmad Rashad as the U.S. competes with Canada and Cuba in the sport of health care.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Bolivia tense as province votes on autonomy
Bolivia tense as province votes on autonomy
By McClatchy Newspapers and The Associated Press
(source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2004391156_bolivia04.html)
SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA, Bolivia — This divided country faces a constitutional crisis today when its richest and second-most-populous province votes whether to declare itself autonomous from President Evo Morales' national government, a referendum the president has called illegal.
If the referendum passes, as polls show it overwhelmingly will, leaders of Santa Cruz province say they'll elect a state legislature, organize local police and otherwise set up a government equivalent to that of a U.S. state.
Morales has called the referendum a move to split up this nation of 9.1 million and to thwart his government's efforts to rewrite Bolivia's constitution so that its indigenous majority wins more political power.
Bolivia has a centralized government, where police, taxation and other government functions are controlled by federal officials.
Morales, a leftist critic of U.S. policies in the region, has received the support of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua in the provincial-autonomy fight.
The Bolivian president also has accused the United States of backing the autonomy move, a charge U.S. officials have rejected.
Autonomy advocates, including Santa Cruz business leaders, denied that they wanted to secede and insisted that their goal is modernizing an overly centralized government.
Three other eastern Bolivian provinces, Beni, Pando and Tarija, also are planning to hold autonomy votes in coming weeks, and leaders in two others, Cochabamba and Chuquisaca, are also advocating autonomy. Only three provinces have resisted the idea.
Many white and mixed-race middle-class Bolivians here feel Morales, the nation's first Indian president, doesn't represent them.
"They accuse us of not wanting to be Bolivian," Gov. Ruben Costas growled during a rally last week. "The power belongs to the people, to the forgotten, to the provinces and to the states, where this new Bolivia is born."
Santa Cruz province, which sprawls over the country's eastern flatlands and produces natural gas, soybeans and other exports, is responsible for about 30 percent of Bolivia's gross domestic product while making up about a quarter of the country's population. The province's population is also less indigenous than that of the country's mountainous west.
Since Morales became the country's first indigenous president in 2006, Santa Cruz leaders have slammed government plans to redistribute farmland and seize more state control over natural gas and other industries.
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Morales counters that he needs a strong central government to spread Santa Cruz's wealth to the rest of South America's poorest country. Only by reversing the effects of centuries of racism, he argues, can Bolivia resolve a national identity crisis dating back to the Spanish conquest.
"We were, and continue to be, a profoundly colonial society, where our differences, our jobs, our opportunities are all a function of skin color," said Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera. "Undoing this requires making the problem visible. And sometimes we don't like to look at ourselves in the mirror."
For centuries, Bolivia enforced boundaries between indigenous, mestizo and white through strict laws and customs. Until a 1952 revolution, Indians couldn't even set foot in the plaza in front of the presidential palace Morales now occupies, let alone vote.
His landslide election in 2005 turned the old order on its head.
But Morales' civil-rights crusade came bundled with visions of class struggle and socialist reform — a hard sell for his whiter and wealthier opposition.
A 2001 census found that 62 percent of Bolivians older than 15 identify themselves as indigenous — but mestizo wasn't included as an option. Other polls have found most Bolivians acknowledge a mix of Indian and European heritage.
As Indians abandon the countryside for cities, they build new lives amid the same cheap Chinese electronics, fried-chicken stands and pirated U.S. movies as their mixed-blood neighbors. Some wear traditional bowler hats, others hoodie sweat shirts. Some switch back and forth.
Both Morales and autonomy advocates have called for calm today and canceled potentially incendiary actions by autonomy supporters and the president's indigenous activists. Last week, the government prohibited civilians from carrying arms, and Morales has pledged not to send troops to Santa Cruz to block the referendum vote.
On Wednesday, the Organization of American States sent Political Affairs Secretary Dante Caputo to Bolivia to initiate last-minute dialogue between the two sides, but he left with only pledges to keep the public peace. The OAS held its second meeting in less than a week on Friday to discuss the crisis in Bolivia.
At the heart of the conflict is a July 2006 referendum in which Bolivians nationwide rejected allowing provincial autonomies, while voters in the four provinces now pushing referendums approved the proposal.
Those provincial leaders have said that the vote lets them pursue their separate paths despite the national rejection, while federal officials insist that only a national approval allows for provincial autonomy.
Political scientist Fernando Mayorga said that despite the tensions, both sides would have to negotiate after the referendum because "they can't maintain this political tension for much longer."
The goal, Mayorga said, would be fitting regional autonomies into a draft constitution that Morales allies hurriedly approved in December, without the presence of most opposition representatives.
That constitution would allow Morales to be re-elected once, claim more state control over natural resources and grant autonomy to indigenous communities and cities, among other actions.
Morales' congressional allies had originally scheduled a national referendum, also for today, on the draft constitution, but canceled it after the country's top electoral court said the vote couldn't be adequately organized in time. The president's activist allies had surrounded the national legislature in February and blocked opposition legislators from voting on the referendum date.
The electoral court also has declared the Santa Cruz referendum illegal, saying only the national legislature could schedule such votes, and announced it won't certify today's results.
Video in Spanish regarding the possible role of the American ambassador in the Bolivian conflict.
Bolivia, Phillip Goldberg "Limpieza Etnica" Santa Cruz.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
New Reading List - Of Banned Books that is... :)
(Source: http://www.banned-books.com/bbauth.html)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
by Mark Twain
The word "nigger," which appears many times in the novel, was the cause for the removal of this classic from an eighth-grade reading list. In the 1950s, the NAACP objected to the book's perceived racist tone. In 1984, the book was removed from a public high school reading list in Waukegan, Illinois, because a black alderman found
the book's language offensive.
American Heritage Dictionary (1969)
In 1978, an Eldon, Missouri library banned the dictionary because it contained 39 "objectionable" words. And, in 1987, the Anchorage School Board banned the dictionary for similar reasons, i.e., having slang definitions for words such as "bed," "knocker," and "balls."
Andersonville (1955)
by MacKinlay Kantor
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1956, this story of a Confederate prison camp during the Civil War, was viciously attacked throughout the U.S. It was banned in Amarillo,
TX.
Annie on My Mind
The Olathe, Kansas school system ordered all copies of this book removed from high school library shelves. It is a story of two women who meet and fall in love and struggle with declaring their homosexuality to family and friends.
As I Lay Dying (1932)
by William Faulkner
In 1986, Graves County, Kentucky, the school board banned this book about a poor white family in the midst of crisis, from its high school English reading list because of 7 passages which made reference to God or abortion and used curse words such as "bastard," "goddam," and "son of a bitch." None of the board members had actually read the book.
Atkol Video Catalog
WIRED magazine (Feb. 1996) reported that AOL censored Atkol Video's catalog from its virtual shopping mall for carrying gay titles. AOL gave no censoring criteria when it "cut some titles and retained others."
Banned From Public Radio: Humor, Commentary and Smart Remarks Your Government DOESN'T
Want You To Hear (1991)
by Michael Graham
The title of this first book is literally true: he was banned from the South Carolina Educational Radio Network courtesy of those geniuses in our General Assembly for commentary which poked fun at their 1991 Ethics Act. Graham also has the distinction of being the only person officially fired from his job as communications director for SC Secretary of State Jim Miles by an act of those same courageous geniuses.
The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read (1995)
by Tim C. Leedom, Editor
The book traces astrological and mythical origins of modern day western religions. A Barnes & Noble bookstore in San Diego refused to stock this book because of its content.
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (1971)
by Mike Royko
A Ridgefield, CT school board in 1972 banned this book from the high school reading list, claiming it "dowgrades police departments."
Catch 22
by Joseph Heller
This book was banned and/or challenged more than once. It was banned in Srongsville, Ohio in 1972 and that decision was overturned in 1976. It was also challenged in Dallas, Texas (1974) and again in Snoqualmie, Washington (1979).
Catcher in the Rye (1951)
by J. D. Salinger
This is a perennial favorite of censors and has been banned in the U.S. and Australia. In 1960, a Tulsa, OK teacher was fired for putting the book on the 11th grade reading list. The teacher was reinstated, but the book was permanently removed from teaching programs. A Minnesota high school administration was attacked for allowing the book in the school library.
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974)
by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks
The CIA obtained a court injunction against this book's publication stating the author, a former CIA employee, violated his contract which states that he cannot write about the CIA without the agency's approval. First amendment activists opposed this ruling, "raising the question of whether a citizen can sign away his First Amendment rights." After prolonged litigation, the CIA succeeded in having 168 passages deleted.
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
Beauty's Punishment
Beauty's Release
by Anne Rice (under the pseudonym, A.N. Roquelaure, written in the early 1980s)
April 28, 1996, the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch reported that following a complaint from a patron in the Columbus Metropolitan Library removed the trilogy of Rice's Sleeping Beauty books and their audio tapes after determining the books were pornographic. These same books were also removed from the Lake Lanier Regional Library system in Gwinnett County, Georgia, in 1992.
Daddy's Roommate
by Michael Willhoite
A favorite of censors, this children's book about gay parenting was the subject of a challenge in the public library. In an all-too-familiar request, a parent complained about references to homosexuality in material for children. The library board voted to uphold basic library principles by retaining the book on its appropriate shelf in the children's section.
Deadly Deceits (My 25 Years in the CIA) (1983)
by Ralph McGheehee
The CIA delayed the publication of this book for three years, objecting to 397 passages, even though much of what the author wrote about was already public knowledge.
Decamerone
by Giovanni Boccacio (1313-1375)
In Cincinnati, an "expurgated" version of Boccacio's Decamerone is confiscated in 1922. In 1926, there is an import ban of the book by the Treasury Department. In 1927, U.S. Customs removes parts of text from the "Ashendene edition" and ships the mutilated copy back to me British publisher in London. In 1932, import ban lifted in Minnesota. In 1934, the New England Watch and Ward Society still bans the book. In 1954, it is still on the black lis tof the "National Organization of Decent Literature."
Dictionary of American Slang
by T.Y. Crowell, publisher
Max Rafferty, California superintendent of public instruction in 1963, and his supporters found over 150 "dirty" passages in the book.
Don't Call Me Brother
by Austin Miles
In 1992, former Christian fundamentalist minister, Austin Miles, was sued; charges were that his book, Don't Call Me Brother, was "...a vitriolic attack upon organized Christianity." The $4 million lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court also screamed "libel" and "slander." After a lengthy and costly process, the court ruled that the book was not defamatory.
1-The Drowning of Stephan Jones
by Bette Greene
2-The Education of Harriet Hatfield
by May Sarton
3-Maurice
by E. M. Forster
All three of these books, which treat homosexuality in various ways, were removed from a regional high school. The novels' purchase was financed by a grant that teacher Penny Culliton received and was approved by the school superintendent and principal. However, shortly after a local newspaper reported that Culliton was involved with a lesbian and gay support group for young people, the books were found unsuitable and were banned. Maurice and The Education of Harriet Hatfield were seized from the students while they were reading the novels in class. Personal attacks on the teacher and demands for her dismissal have been so vehement that her job is now in jeopardy.
Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
This book is about censorship and those who ban books for fear of creating too much individualism and independent thought. In late 1998, this book was removed from the required reading list of the West Marion High School in Foxworth, Mississippi. A parent complained of the use of the words "God damn" in the book. Subsequently, the superintendent instructed the the teacher to remove the book from the required reading list.
Families
by Meredith Tax
A young children's book that creatively describes different family structures, was finally removed by the Fairfax County school board. Meredith Tax's beloved book had been under attack for a long time, during which many individuals and organizations rose to its defense. What's more, Families was praised by the board's own review committees.
Flowers in the Attic
by V.C. Andrews
The county's board of education decided to remove all school curriculum materials and library books containing any and all "profanity" and "pornography," both concepts ill-defined. The tremendous public outcry made the board backtrack and resolve to review its selection policy. However, after this conciliatory decision, and while the review process still inches along, most of the books in Andrews's popular series Flowers in the Attic were removed from the high-school library for "pornographic" content.
Forever
by Judy Blume
Forever censored, this wildly popular teen novel was attacked once again for its frank treatment of adolescent sexuality and was removed from an eighth-grade optional reading list. In Rib Lake, Wisconsin, a school district principal had the book removed from the library after confiscating a copy from a student in the lunchroom, finding "graphic descriptions of sex acts."
Freedom and Order
by Henry Steele Commager
The U.S. Information Agency had this book banned from its overseas libraries because of its condemnation of American policies in Vietnam.
From Here to Eternity
by James Jones
This book was censored in 1951in Holyoke, Springfield, Massachusetts and in 1953 in Jersey City, New Jersey; blacklisted by National Organization of Decent Literature in 1954.
The Glass Teat (1970)
by Harlan Ellison
The Glass Teat is a collection of essays which appeared as columns in the Los Angeles Free Press and Rolling Stone during the 1960s. They were critical essay on the subject of television broadcasting; and essays critical of the president and vice-president. The publisher, Ace Pub. Corp. consequently recalled his book and had it removed from bookstores. Years later it was later re-released.
Grapes of Wrath (1939)
by John Steinbeck
Several months after the book's publication, a St. Louis, MO library ordered 3 copies to be burned for the vulgar words used by its characters. It was also banned in Kansas City and in Oklahoma.
Howl
by Allen Ginsberg
Officials of the Cold War era saw only willful destruction of American values in a poet's grief over suffocating 1950s convention.
The Joy of Sex (1972), More Joy of Sex (1975)
by Alex Comfort
Lexington police in 1978 confiscated these sex instruction books in accordance with a new county ordinance prohibiting the display of sexually-oriented publications in places frequented by minors.
The Last Mission (1979)
by Harry Mazer
Against the recommendation of school librarians, teachers, and administrators, the board of the Carroll Middle School removed this novel from the library for its scattered "bad words." The novel, which was named 1979's New York Times Best Book of the Year, is based on the author's experiences in the Air Force during World War II. Mazer said, "It's like a slap in the face of veterans. The book speaks about the sacrifices of the soldiers who fought in that war." Local residents and parents petitioned and protested as well. In a final decision, the board voted 6-1 to return the book.
The Last of the Wine
by Mary Renault
Fifth-century B.C. Athens is the setting of the historical novel that was challenged in a high school for references to homosexuality. Not only did the complainants and their supporters revile the book, which enlivened an honors history class, but they also attempted to humiliate the teacher by calling him a "sexual predator" and accusing him of trying to "recruit" children to homosexuality. The school board
supported the teacher and the novel.
Literature in Society
In an improbable complaint about this textbook, two eminent African-American authors were the main targets of censorship. An excerpt from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was deemed offensive for its use of the word "nigger," and the sexual slang in Nikki Giovanni's poetry was found unacceptable. School officials also found intolerable a reference to homosexuality elsewhere in the book and seized the ever-so-dangerous texts (that include Wordsworth and other immoralists) while 12th-grade students were reading them.
Lolita (1955)
by Vladimir Nabokov
Although it was published in Paris, it was soon (1956) to be banned there for being obscene. An Argentinian court banned the book in 1959 and again in 1962 ruling that the book "reflected moral disintegration and reviled humanity." In 1960, the New Zealand Supreme Court also banned the book. It was later freely published in France, England, and the U.S.
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
The Toronto School Board banned this classic from all its schools, claiming it was racist for use of the word "niggers." Even Golding's Nobel Prize in literature did not protect this author's book.
Lysistrata
by Aristophanes
U.S. import ban on Lysistrata was lifted in 1930.This Greek tragedy was written somewhere around 400 B.C.
Nothing New on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
Banned in Chicago and Boston, in Austria, and Czechoslovakia in 1929; in Germany in 1930; and in Italy in 1933. There was a public burning in Germany in 1933.
Pentagon Papers (1971)
Commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, this 3,000 page history of U.S. involvement in Indochina, was banned from publication by court order. The NY Times was printing portions of it when the order came down. Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the decision and Bantam proceeded to publish a paperback edition.
Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
by Philip Roth
Several libraries and librarians throughout the U.S. were harassed and threatened for carrying this book on their shelves.
Search for Truth in History
by David Irving
This video tape has already been banned in three countries.
Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie
The Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran put a price on the head of this author for writing this book which allegedly is critical of the Islam religion. Rushdie, as a result, went into hiding for an indefinite period of time, fearing for his life.
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
by William Steig
In 1977, the Illinois Police Association urged librarians to remove the book, which portrays its characters as animals, and presents the police as pigs. The American Library Association reported similar complaints in 11 other states.
The Valachi Papers (1968)
by Peter Maas
Asked by the Justice Dept. to edit the papers of Mafia leader Joseph Valachi, Maas was later sued by the Justice Dept. for trying to publish the memoirs. The reason they said was that the book would hamper law enforcement. The suit was settled and Putname published the book in 1968.
Things Your Father Never Taught You
by Robert Masullo
Production of this lighthearted look at male grooming was delayed by a born-again Christian art director who objected to a description of Japanese furniture arranging as "occultist."
Waco: The Davidian Massacre
by Carol Moore
This controversial book challenges the government's version of events at Waco. A public library refused to carry the book stating the reason was that the book was privately published.
Who Built America?
Apple Computer has distributed Who Built America?, an acclaimed history series created for CD-ROM, as part of a free software package for schools buying its computers. When it received protests about material relating to the history of birth control, abortion, and homosexuality, Apple asked Voyager to delete the offending material. Voyager refused, and Apple suspended distribution. Following many protest letters, Apple reversed its decision and resumed distribution.
Worlds In Collison
by Immanuel Velikovsky
In the 1950s, the scientific community tried to ban this controversial version of the origins of our solar system because it didn't comport with the "official" version of events. The publisher, MacMillan, was forced to give up publication of the book even though it was on the New York Bestsellers list at the time. If your are interested in this Velikovsky's Worlds In Collision and The Saturn Myth, see David Talbot's video documentary, Remembering the End of the World.
Women on Top
by Nancy Friday
Would-be censors got their way in their demands to remove this book from the Chestatee Public Library in Gainesville ( Hall County ), Georgia. Before a final vote was taken by the library board on the fate of Women on Top, the book was borrowed and "accidentally" destroyed. The board voted not to replace it.
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
by Mark Twain
The word "nigger," which appears many times in the novel, was the cause for the removal of this classic from an eighth-grade reading list. In the 1950s, the NAACP objected to the book's perceived racist tone. In 1984, the book was removed from a public high school reading list in Waukegan, Illinois, because a black alderman found
the book's language offensive.
American Heritage Dictionary (1969)
In 1978, an Eldon, Missouri library banned the dictionary because it contained 39 "objectionable" words. And, in 1987, the Anchorage School Board banned the dictionary for similar reasons, i.e., having slang definitions for words such as "bed," "knocker," and "balls."
Andersonville (1955)
by MacKinlay Kantor
Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1956, this story of a Confederate prison camp during the Civil War, was viciously attacked throughout the U.S. It was banned in Amarillo,
TX.
Annie on My Mind
The Olathe, Kansas school system ordered all copies of this book removed from high school library shelves. It is a story of two women who meet and fall in love and struggle with declaring their homosexuality to family and friends.
As I Lay Dying (1932)
by William Faulkner
In 1986, Graves County, Kentucky, the school board banned this book about a poor white family in the midst of crisis, from its high school English reading list because of 7 passages which made reference to God or abortion and used curse words such as "bastard," "goddam," and "son of a bitch." None of the board members had actually read the book.
Atkol Video Catalog
WIRED magazine (Feb. 1996) reported that AOL censored Atkol Video's catalog from its virtual shopping mall for carrying gay titles. AOL gave no censoring criteria when it "cut some titles and retained others."
Banned From Public Radio: Humor, Commentary and Smart Remarks Your Government DOESN'T
Want You To Hear (1991)
by Michael Graham
The title of this first book is literally true: he was banned from the South Carolina Educational Radio Network courtesy of those geniuses in our General Assembly for commentary which poked fun at their 1991 Ethics Act. Graham also has the distinction of being the only person officially fired from his job as communications director for SC Secretary of State Jim Miles by an act of those same courageous geniuses.
The Book Your Church Doesn't Want You To Read (1995)
by Tim C. Leedom, Editor
The book traces astrological and mythical origins of modern day western religions. A Barnes & Noble bookstore in San Diego refused to stock this book because of its content.
Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago (1971)
by Mike Royko
A Ridgefield, CT school board in 1972 banned this book from the high school reading list, claiming it "dowgrades police departments."
Catch 22
by Joseph Heller
This book was banned and/or challenged more than once. It was banned in Srongsville, Ohio in 1972 and that decision was overturned in 1976. It was also challenged in Dallas, Texas (1974) and again in Snoqualmie, Washington (1979).
Catcher in the Rye (1951)
by J. D. Salinger
This is a perennial favorite of censors and has been banned in the U.S. and Australia. In 1960, a Tulsa, OK teacher was fired for putting the book on the 11th grade reading list. The teacher was reinstated, but the book was permanently removed from teaching programs. A Minnesota high school administration was attacked for allowing the book in the school library.
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1974)
by Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks
The CIA obtained a court injunction against this book's publication stating the author, a former CIA employee, violated his contract which states that he cannot write about the CIA without the agency's approval. First amendment activists opposed this ruling, "raising the question of whether a citizen can sign away his First Amendment rights." After prolonged litigation, the CIA succeeded in having 168 passages deleted.
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty
Beauty's Punishment
Beauty's Release
by Anne Rice (under the pseudonym, A.N. Roquelaure, written in the early 1980s)
April 28, 1996, the Columbus, Ohio Dispatch reported that following a complaint from a patron in the Columbus Metropolitan Library removed the trilogy of Rice's Sleeping Beauty books and their audio tapes after determining the books were pornographic. These same books were also removed from the Lake Lanier Regional Library system in Gwinnett County, Georgia, in 1992.
Daddy's Roommate
by Michael Willhoite
A favorite of censors, this children's book about gay parenting was the subject of a challenge in the public library. In an all-too-familiar request, a parent complained about references to homosexuality in material for children. The library board voted to uphold basic library principles by retaining the book on its appropriate shelf in the children's section.
Deadly Deceits (My 25 Years in the CIA) (1983)
by Ralph McGheehee
The CIA delayed the publication of this book for three years, objecting to 397 passages, even though much of what the author wrote about was already public knowledge.
Decamerone
by Giovanni Boccacio (1313-1375)
In Cincinnati, an "expurgated" version of Boccacio's Decamerone is confiscated in 1922. In 1926, there is an import ban of the book by the Treasury Department. In 1927, U.S. Customs removes parts of text from the "Ashendene edition" and ships the mutilated copy back to me British publisher in London. In 1932, import ban lifted in Minnesota. In 1934, the New England Watch and Ward Society still bans the book. In 1954, it is still on the black lis tof the "National Organization of Decent Literature."
Dictionary of American Slang
by T.Y. Crowell, publisher
Max Rafferty, California superintendent of public instruction in 1963, and his supporters found over 150 "dirty" passages in the book.
Don't Call Me Brother
by Austin Miles
In 1992, former Christian fundamentalist minister, Austin Miles, was sued; charges were that his book, Don't Call Me Brother, was "...a vitriolic attack upon organized Christianity." The $4 million lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court also screamed "libel" and "slander." After a lengthy and costly process, the court ruled that the book was not defamatory.
1-The Drowning of Stephan Jones
by Bette Greene
2-The Education of Harriet Hatfield
by May Sarton
3-Maurice
by E. M. Forster
All three of these books, which treat homosexuality in various ways, were removed from a regional high school. The novels' purchase was financed by a grant that teacher Penny Culliton received and was approved by the school superintendent and principal. However, shortly after a local newspaper reported that Culliton was involved with a lesbian and gay support group for young people, the books were found unsuitable and were banned. Maurice and The Education of Harriet Hatfield were seized from the students while they were reading the novels in class. Personal attacks on the teacher and demands for her dismissal have been so vehement that her job is now in jeopardy.
Fahrenheit 451
by Ray Bradbury
This book is about censorship and those who ban books for fear of creating too much individualism and independent thought. In late 1998, this book was removed from the required reading list of the West Marion High School in Foxworth, Mississippi. A parent complained of the use of the words "God damn" in the book. Subsequently, the superintendent instructed the the teacher to remove the book from the required reading list.
Families
by Meredith Tax
A young children's book that creatively describes different family structures, was finally removed by the Fairfax County school board. Meredith Tax's beloved book had been under attack for a long time, during which many individuals and organizations rose to its defense. What's more, Families was praised by the board's own review committees.
Flowers in the Attic
by V.C. Andrews
The county's board of education decided to remove all school curriculum materials and library books containing any and all "profanity" and "pornography," both concepts ill-defined. The tremendous public outcry made the board backtrack and resolve to review its selection policy. However, after this conciliatory decision, and while the review process still inches along, most of the books in Andrews's popular series Flowers in the Attic were removed from the high-school library for "pornographic" content.
Forever
by Judy Blume
Forever censored, this wildly popular teen novel was attacked once again for its frank treatment of adolescent sexuality and was removed from an eighth-grade optional reading list. In Rib Lake, Wisconsin, a school district principal had the book removed from the library after confiscating a copy from a student in the lunchroom, finding "graphic descriptions of sex acts."
Freedom and Order
by Henry Steele Commager
The U.S. Information Agency had this book banned from its overseas libraries because of its condemnation of American policies in Vietnam.
From Here to Eternity
by James Jones
This book was censored in 1951in Holyoke, Springfield, Massachusetts and in 1953 in Jersey City, New Jersey; blacklisted by National Organization of Decent Literature in 1954.
The Glass Teat (1970)
by Harlan Ellison
The Glass Teat is a collection of essays which appeared as columns in the Los Angeles Free Press and Rolling Stone during the 1960s. They were critical essay on the subject of television broadcasting; and essays critical of the president and vice-president. The publisher, Ace Pub. Corp. consequently recalled his book and had it removed from bookstores. Years later it was later re-released.
Grapes of Wrath (1939)
by John Steinbeck
Several months after the book's publication, a St. Louis, MO library ordered 3 copies to be burned for the vulgar words used by its characters. It was also banned in Kansas City and in Oklahoma.
Howl
by Allen Ginsberg
Officials of the Cold War era saw only willful destruction of American values in a poet's grief over suffocating 1950s convention.
The Joy of Sex (1972), More Joy of Sex (1975)
by Alex Comfort
Lexington police in 1978 confiscated these sex instruction books in accordance with a new county ordinance prohibiting the display of sexually-oriented publications in places frequented by minors.
The Last Mission (1979)
by Harry Mazer
Against the recommendation of school librarians, teachers, and administrators, the board of the Carroll Middle School removed this novel from the library for its scattered "bad words." The novel, which was named 1979's New York Times Best Book of the Year, is based on the author's experiences in the Air Force during World War II. Mazer said, "It's like a slap in the face of veterans. The book speaks about the sacrifices of the soldiers who fought in that war." Local residents and parents petitioned and protested as well. In a final decision, the board voted 6-1 to return the book.
The Last of the Wine
by Mary Renault
Fifth-century B.C. Athens is the setting of the historical novel that was challenged in a high school for references to homosexuality. Not only did the complainants and their supporters revile the book, which enlivened an honors history class, but they also attempted to humiliate the teacher by calling him a "sexual predator" and accusing him of trying to "recruit" children to homosexuality. The school board
supported the teacher and the novel.
Literature in Society
In an improbable complaint about this textbook, two eminent African-American authors were the main targets of censorship. An excerpt from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was deemed offensive for its use of the word "nigger," and the sexual slang in Nikki Giovanni's poetry was found unacceptable. School officials also found intolerable a reference to homosexuality elsewhere in the book and seized the ever-so-dangerous texts (that include Wordsworth and other immoralists) while 12th-grade students were reading them.
Lolita (1955)
by Vladimir Nabokov
Although it was published in Paris, it was soon (1956) to be banned there for being obscene. An Argentinian court banned the book in 1959 and again in 1962 ruling that the book "reflected moral disintegration and reviled humanity." In 1960, the New Zealand Supreme Court also banned the book. It was later freely published in France, England, and the U.S.
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
The Toronto School Board banned this classic from all its schools, claiming it was racist for use of the word "niggers." Even Golding's Nobel Prize in literature did not protect this author's book.
Lysistrata
by Aristophanes
U.S. import ban on Lysistrata was lifted in 1930.This Greek tragedy was written somewhere around 400 B.C.
Nothing New on the Western Front
by Erich Maria Remarque
Banned in Chicago and Boston, in Austria, and Czechoslovakia in 1929; in Germany in 1930; and in Italy in 1933. There was a public burning in Germany in 1933.
Pentagon Papers (1971)
Commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, this 3,000 page history of U.S. involvement in Indochina, was banned from publication by court order. The NY Times was printing portions of it when the order came down. Later that year, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the decision and Bantam proceeded to publish a paperback edition.
Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
by Philip Roth
Several libraries and librarians throughout the U.S. were harassed and threatened for carrying this book on their shelves.
Search for Truth in History
by David Irving
This video tape has already been banned in three countries.
Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie
The Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran put a price on the head of this author for writing this book which allegedly is critical of the Islam religion. Rushdie, as a result, went into hiding for an indefinite period of time, fearing for his life.
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble
by William Steig
In 1977, the Illinois Police Association urged librarians to remove the book, which portrays its characters as animals, and presents the police as pigs. The American Library Association reported similar complaints in 11 other states.
The Valachi Papers (1968)
by Peter Maas
Asked by the Justice Dept. to edit the papers of Mafia leader Joseph Valachi, Maas was later sued by the Justice Dept. for trying to publish the memoirs. The reason they said was that the book would hamper law enforcement. The suit was settled and Putname published the book in 1968.
Things Your Father Never Taught You
by Robert Masullo
Production of this lighthearted look at male grooming was delayed by a born-again Christian art director who objected to a description of Japanese furniture arranging as "occultist."
Waco: The Davidian Massacre
by Carol Moore
This controversial book challenges the government's version of events at Waco. A public library refused to carry the book stating the reason was that the book was privately published.
Who Built America?
Apple Computer has distributed Who Built America?, an acclaimed history series created for CD-ROM, as part of a free software package for schools buying its computers. When it received protests about material relating to the history of birth control, abortion, and homosexuality, Apple asked Voyager to delete the offending material. Voyager refused, and Apple suspended distribution. Following many protest letters, Apple reversed its decision and resumed distribution.
Worlds In Collison
by Immanuel Velikovsky
In the 1950s, the scientific community tried to ban this controversial version of the origins of our solar system because it didn't comport with the "official" version of events. The publisher, MacMillan, was forced to give up publication of the book even though it was on the New York Bestsellers list at the time. If your are interested in this Velikovsky's Worlds In Collision and The Saturn Myth, see David Talbot's video documentary, Remembering the End of the World.
Women on Top
by Nancy Friday
Would-be censors got their way in their demands to remove this book from the Chestatee Public Library in Gainesville ( Hall County ), Georgia. Before a final vote was taken by the library board on the fate of Women on Top, the book was borrowed and "accidentally" destroyed. The board voted not to replace it.
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