Palash Biswas
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=6iH77Fj6qCA
IPL is on with new schedule; no reduction in matches
The cloud of uncertainty over the high-profile Indian Premier
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Alliance with Congress 'broken', declares SP
Angry with the Congress for unilaterally announcing 24 candidates
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'Pak adept at playing games with others'Karnataka CM has no time for PC, he cancels visitGandhi items: No Govt, I bid on my own, says MallyaCricket, players are safe in India: Chidambaram 
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Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) joins NDA
The BJP and the AGP on Thursday announced their seat sharing tie-up in Assam in a move that is expected to present the ruling Congress government with a stiff challenge in the approaching Lok Sabha elections.
Speaking at a joint press conference here, senior BJP leader L K Advani said,"This alliance confirms bipolarity in polity and stops fragmentation of Indian politics." Apart from suggesting that the coming polls would be a NDA versus UPA affair, he hoped that of 24 seats in the northeast, the BJP and its allies would pick the most... Read More
http://www.lkadvani.in/eng/?gclid=CNaM5P62jpkCFQMaewod01JdbA
From Jail to Freedom Park: Revisiting an excruciating and exhilarating experience in my life
March 2nd, 2009
I have been traveling constantly these days. Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh; 15 February), Madanapally (Andhra Pradesh; 27 February) and Bidar (Karnataka; 28 February) were, respectively, the places where I addressed my 31th, 32st and 33rd Vijay Sankalp Rallies. My party asked me to tour the entire country as a part of its mass contact programme, prior to the formal election campaign, and organized my first Vijay Sankalp Rally in Jabalpur in February 2008. These rallies have taken me to practically every part of the country, from Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh to Calicut (Kozhikode) in Kerala, and from Dumka in Jharkhand to Vashim in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra.
In the last week alone, I have traveled to Gandhinagar in Gujarat, which is my own Lok Sabha constituency; to Mumbai, where my party workers donated to me a purse of Rs. 11.11 crore, collected from nearly 50,000 donors, towards the election fund; to Bangalore, where I addressed an anti-terrorism rally of over one lakh students, and to Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh where I participated in a large rally organized by the Scheduled Castes Morcha of the BJP.
Although every event gave me deep satisfaction, there was one that brought alive many precious and deeply cherished memories associated with a defining period not only in my personal life but also in the life of India. It was when I was invited by the Government of Karnataka to inaugurate the Freedom Park in Bangalore on 27th February. This is where Click to Read More
VAVUNIYA
IS FULL OF
SINHALA NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMPS
SET UP BY MAHINDARAJAPAKSE AND HIS GANGSTERS
============ ======
A letter from a Sinhala Priest who visited the Vavuniya camp
Monday, March 2, 2009 5:25 PM
This is an experience of a Priest from South (a Sinhala priest)
This give you the real situation of camps in Vavuniya for the Vanni people. Not for free circulation but for useful action as free circulation will hamper the good work that priests and nuns do to our people.
My dear Friends,
Here is what I experienced during my short stay at Vavuniya. There are things that I can't write.
The situation is very very critical.Hope to go there again soon
This is a brief account of what I experienced during my short visit to Vavuniya from the 24th to 26 of February. I had the opportunity see the camps where IDPs are kept and meet some persons and go to the Vavuniya hospital with some priests who are also displaced and have come from Vanni area.
More than 30000 displaced persons who had come from Vanni are given temporary shelter in govt. schools and other buildings.. According to priests and nuns who were permitted to enter these places, (now some are given special pass to visit these camps) the members of the families are dispersed among the camps and reunion of them is not allowed at the moment. There are elderly and pregnant mothers, mothers with newly born babies who should be given special care, attention and place which Fathers and sisters are ready to provide but waiting for a positive response from the authorities which they say has to be given from the ministry of defense in Colombo .
As buildings are not sufficient to provide accommodations to such a big number, some temporary tents have been built in play grounds in the scorching sun where no one can stay during the day. In some cases there are two or three families in one tent. The govt. through all media constantly announces that every thing is ready and asks the people caught up in Vanni to come to Vavuniya promising them all facility and security there.
But it is very clear that govt. is not ready at all to accommodate if those people come to Vavuniya as they are unable to provide basic facilities to those who have already come. Except the places, every other basic need such as food, water, sanitary, clothes, medicine are provided by the NGOs. Still they are ready to provide whatever they can but due to very strict restrictions imposed by the govt. they are unable to do so.
These cannot be called as camps for displaced people rather prisons or still concentration camps heavily guarded by armed soldiers and covered with barb wires. We were not allowed to enter any of these camps. While we were standing in front of one of the camps on the main road, behind barb wires which were removed when UN officer John Holmesvisited the camps and returned to the same places immediately after he left Vavuniya, a soldier came and made a sign with his hand to a lady (mother) standing beside us to move away from that place.
As she began to move slowly soldier yelled at her saying “Don’t you understand Sinhala- Sinhala therenne nadda?” Then he pointing his finger to us and asked the officer at the gate in signs what’s to be done with us.
Then he approached me and asked whether I know Sinhala thinking that I am a Tamil priest. As I replied, yes, he asked whether there is any relation of mine in the camp. I told him I am going from camp to camp to find out whether my family members and relations are in the camps. But how could I find when as you don’t allow us to go in and still you chase away us not allowing us to stay out side far away from the camp. Then he politely said “what can we do father, we are carrying out the orders coming from the top.”
Later somebody sarcastically said these are orders from Rajapaksa family and which is also the truth. One of the priests told me that his parents are in a camp but he is not allowed to visit them. As we also moved away from that place, we approached that lady and asked whether she has anybody in the camp.
This was her reply:
“I came to Vavuniya some months ago and husband was in Vanni. Now he has come from that side and is in this camp. First day I saw him, spoke to him staying out side but he did not understand what I said. I found that he can’t hear and he is deaf. He was not so before, now he is unable to hear due to shelling and bombing while he was in Vanni.
Today I came to show him some photographs of our grand children who live abroad. (She showed us some photos of the children). But I don’t see him or unable to contact him. Soldiers chase me away” she told in tears and with utter helplessness.
Even the worst criminals have the right to see and speak to their family members and friends. If then why these innocent helpless people are not allowed to see their loved ones and detained them behind barb wires as criminals?
Isn’t it a grave violation of their basic human rights?
Isn’t it because that for them every Tamil is a terrorist or suspected be so?
Is it difficult to understand that they are being treated so inhumanly for the mere fact that they were born as Tamils in this country?
Here are some painful and agonizing experiences revealed by some injured persons whom I met in the hospital
A 23 years old young girl
We all were in the bunker without food for the whole day and came out to eat something. Then suddenly shells fell and we all got injured. I am without a leg and a hand. Brother and sister were also injured and they are too in the hospital. Father’s whereabouts are not known.
20 years old seriously injured young girl:
While I was bathing shells fell around our place. One of the brothers and I were critically injured. Another brother and a sister are in Vanni and do not know what has happened to them. My father died some time ago. Her mother is there to look after her. She has got 3s for A/L and now worried about her studies.
26 years graduate, a voluntary teacher:
We were all in the bunker whole night and came out in the morning to go to the announced safe zone. Then suddenly shells fell on us. Now the mother is with me. We do not know where my father, brother and sister are.
This is what I heard from a nun:
There is a boy who has lost his both hands in Mannar hospital. He got through his O/L with 10 As. Parents are there to look after him. But now army wants to send away the parents. Then who will be there to help this helpless boy who is still under treatments..
I met a young pregnant mother on the corridor sitting with her 6 year old daughter. She has lost toes of her one leg and three fingers in one hand. Daughter had wounds all over her body. Husband and the other two children are in Vanni. She is worried that if they are sent to the camp, how she can manage with her small daughter as she is unable to attend to her own work.
Priests and nuns are ready to take those pregnant mothers and mothers with new born babies as they need special care and attention but the authorities have not given a positive response yet.
This is another experience of a priest:
I met a small boy and a girl in the hospital. They are from the parish where I was, before I came to Vavuniya. The boy requested an apple and the girl some grapes. So I came out and went in with apple and grapes for those children. I was stopped at the gate by a policeman and asked to hand over my N.I.card and then to go in. I refused to hand over but showed it to him. So he could see that I am from Jaffna and shouted at me asking why you are here. In return I asked him from where are you. I told him I am a Sri Lankan and I have the right to be any where in this country. He continued to shout at me. So I asked him not to shout and if you don’t allow I will go back without giving these apple and grapes to those two kids. I told him please remember if you and your children face such calamity and if there is nobody to help you how would be your position. He stopped shouting and I came back with grapes and apple.
He further continued to say with much sadness and pain, when I see the children here in the church I remember children in Vanni where I was working. Immediately after mass they all come running to hold my hands and then to say that I touched father’s hands first. I do not know where those children are now. What crime these children have committed to be abandoned and treated in such a brutal and inhuman way. When we see the tragedy of the children can any one say a word in favour of this brutal war?
Can we who live in the South especially as church leaders be indifferent and keep silent before this genocide?
This is again an experience of a nun:
A child who is with the mother in the camp came running to see his father outside the gate who came to see them. The mother wanted to give him to the father over the gate to be kissed. But a soldier chased him away. Seen this heart breaking incident Sister approached that soldier and asked if it is your child what would you do? Then he immediately called the father and allowed him to kiss the son.
How can we who have not experienced the gravity of this brutal war at all, who have not travelled at least to Mannar and Vavuniya, who have not met and spoken to victims of this stupid war, justify and make statements in favour of it.? How can we be indifferent and take it so lightly or remain completely unaware of this human disaster?
From all these, are we not indirectly saying to the war mongers that we are not against war, we are with you, we believe what you say and not interested in what the Tamils say and finish the so called humanitarian war (annihilation) you have waged against them?
Here is a horrendous experience of a young person whom I met. I will not write down everything I heard as I still want to see these people alive.
So many dead bodies of young boys and girls were brought under the tag “terrorists killed in battle” In the post mortem it revealed that all the girls were raped. There were clear signs to prove who they were but buried as terrorists. Though I have no right to ask any question I just inquired that person what have you got to say. With full of tears in eyes replied “We may not born as Tamils in this world again, especially as Tamil women.”
There is so much to be written and that is again the agony and the tears of our Tamil brothers and sisters who cry for life and freedom which is their RIGHT.
Right to live in their own homes and land as true citizens in this country with human dignity.
Is it not the state terror of the successive Sinhala rulers treated the Tamils so brutally and suppressed their just demands?
At least now stop our petty arguments to show that we are neutral or do not take a side which reveals our hypocrisy. We believe in a God who takes the side of the oppressed. Hence we have a moral right to take the side of the oppressed Tamils.
The need of the hour is our SYMPATHY AND CONCERN
QUOTE
“The cost of freedom is always high, but our people always paid it. One path we shall never choose, is the path of surrender, or submission.”
John F Kennedy (35th US President)
THE END
DID YOU WATCH THE BBC INTERVIEW - (THE HARD TALK)
WITH SL HUMAN RIGHTS MINISTER MAHINDA SAMARASIGHE. ......... ......today
Interviewed by Stephen Sakur
Israel Rights groups says army holding a Palestinian family hostage every night
Machsom Watch, an Israeli Human Rights Group, reported that Israel soldiers have been attacking the home of a Palestinian family in a village near the southern West Bank city of Hebron, every night over the past week and a half.
http://www.imemc. org/article/ 59128
Palestinian Resistance
Islamic Jihad: the ongoing Israeli attacks will not be ignored
Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, vowed on Wednesday to respond to the Israeli raid north of Gaza which killed one of its militants and injured another.
http://english. ramattan. net/newsdetails. aspx?news_ id=39976
Armed wing of Hamas says ready to resist 'any Israeli aggression'
Gaza ? Ma?an ? The Hamas-affiliated Al-Qassam Brigades said on Tuesday that Israel?s repeated threats to attack Gaza "confirm their loss" in the recent assault there. In a statement sent to Ma?an, Al-Qassam spokesperson Abu Ubaidah said that Israel?s failure to achieve its aims has been "shown to the world" and that Israel wants to justify its losses by making new threats. He insisted that "resistance forces" will remain ready "to stand against any aggression. " The Hamas spokesperson also addressed Israel, saying, "Performing another attack against Gaza will record another failure in your collapsed history. " [end]
http://www.maannews .net/en/index. php?opr=ShowDeta ils&ID=36211
The Lancet: The wounds of Gaza are deep
Dr Ghassan describes it as multi-layered. Are we talking about the Khan Younis massacre of 5,000 in 1956 or the execution of 35,000 prisoners of war by Israel in 1967? Yet more wounds of the First Intifada, when civil disobedience by an occupied people against the occupiers resulted in massive wounded and hundreds dead? We also cannot discount the 5,420 wounded in southern Gaza alone since 2000. Hence what we are referring to below are only that of the invasion as of 27 December 2008.
http://pulsemedia. org/2009/ 01/30/the- wounds-of- gaza-2009/
Twenty-thousand Jerusalem homes under threat
Thirty-four more families received notifications to evacuate their homes in southern Silwan. The Al Abasiya area to the south of Al Aqsa Mosque was raided by dozens of Israeli soldiers, police and municipal workers. According to the notices, demolition is slated to take place within 10 days.
http://english. pnn.ps/index. php?option= com_content&task=view&id=4905&Itemid=1
Iran holds own global summit to aid Gaza
TEHRAN - Iran on Wednesday is to begin a two-day international conference to help rebuild the Gaza Strip and support the Palestinians, just days after a global donors meeting in Egypt. The summit in Tehran is attended by by officials from neighbouring countries. "The conference will discuss the issue of aiding Palestinians and also find a solution to the Zionist regime?s adventures against Palestinians, " Ali Larijani, speaker of Iran?s parliament, told FARS news agency. He said Iran?s solution to the Israel-Palestinian issue, which is based on a "democratic principle", has already been outlined by Iran?s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei has called for the return of all Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel followed by a referendum on the future of the territory. Tehran, a supporter of a democratic one-state solution, is firmly opposed to a two-state solution to solve the Israel-Palestinian issue.
http://www.middle- east-online. com/english/ ?id=30759
Solidarity, Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment
March 30th: Global Day of Solidarity with Palestine?A New Stage in the BDS Campaign
One of the many BDS Israel campaign posters. This year, March 30th has been declared as an international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people. Throughout the world, demonstrations, conferences, marches and other initiatives will unite solidarity groups and political movements in joint actions to remind the world that, despite the smokescreen named the peace process, the Palestinian people are still under colonial occupation and oppression. March 30th was declared international mobilization day for the rights of the Palestinian people at the World Social Forum, held last month in Brazil, and the commitment of the global social movement to make it a demonstration of strength is undeniable.
http://www.alternat ivenews.org/ content/view/ 1615/236/
A worldwide appeal by concerned Jewish men and women
Jewish Voice for a Just Peace (JVJP)- Press Release - Appeal to the Israeli government: We the undersigned Jews want the Israeli occupation, settlements and blockade of Palestinian territories to come to an end. We call for humane living conditions and security for all the people in Israel and Palestine.
http://www.kibush. co.il/show_ file.asp? num=32288
U.S. Military Aid to Israel
In these days of economic crisis, budget overruns, earmarks, and multi-billion dollar bailouts, when Americans are being forced to tighten their own belts, one of the most automatic earmarks?a bailout by any measure?goes to a foreign government but is little understood by most Americans. U.S. military aid to Israel is doled out in annual increments of billions of dollars but remains virtually unchallenged while other fiscal outlays are drastically cut.
http://www.counterp unch.com/ christison030520 09.html
Clinton visit: In a West Bank café, Palestinians ask how much will change
Patrons at 'Stars and Bucks' critique her statements. 'We already know the quotes by heart,' one says. Ramallah, West Bank - If there is any place in this de facto capital of the West Bank where all things American are welcomed, it's here at Stars and Bucks ? an unabashed Starbucks knockoff complete with green-and-white logo, cozy couches, and myriad mochas and lattes.
http://www.csmonito r.com/2009/ 0305/p05s01- wome.html
Chasing dreams of future peace
A journey to Ramallah from Jerusalem tells you a lot about the state of peace and war between Israel and the Palestinians. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton does not get the delays at checkpoints that most people face. But if she looked out of the window of her armour-plated SUV she would have seen some of the ways this place is changing, and why that undercuts the policy that she is here to promote.
http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/middle_ east/7924609. stm
Was Hamas the work of the Israeli Mossad?
The accusation that the Palestinian movement Hamas was the brainchild of Israeli intelligence has become so commonplace it often requires no substantiation. The claim is hogwash, of course, and sullies the history of a popular movement that has given many occupied Palestinians a sense of empowerment and self-respect.
http://www.atimes. com/atimes/ Middle_East/ KC06Ak02. html
Iqbal Tamimi - Palestinian Women are Israel's Demographic Nightmare
No condolences to apartheid Israel?.yes, it has killed 1,300 Palestinians in Gaza because its fears are of a demographic nature, its army never cared what age or gender it killed, Israel?s machine was harvesting Palestinians of all ages and sizes?young and old, disabled and healthy, pregnant women and young girls, the ones resisting the occupation and the ones who are still too young to understand such expressions?.. Israel?s nightmare is of a demographic scale, it is frightened to be outnumbered?so the answer was to starve people to death, stop them from receiving medication so that they would die of ?natural causes? then bar the media from investigating that and then knit a freshly made lie to suit its new tailored fib. Israel?s actions mean there was a terrorist in every cradle, there were tunnels turning bread to arms.
http://palestinethi nktank.com/ 2009/03/05/ iqbal-tamimi- palestinian- women-are- israels-demograp hic-nightmare/
Indigenous People Rising
Historic Changes Across Latin America
By JAMES COCKCROFT
http://counterpunch.com/cockcroft11282008.html
Palestinians set up protest camp against demolition of their homes in Jerusalem
Palestinians from Ras Khamis neighborhood, near Jerusalem?s old city, set up a protest camp near their homes in protest against Israel?s decision to demolish their neighborhood. The Israeli municipality says that there are 55 homes in the Palestinian Ras Khamis neighborhood that are built without the required permissions. Hatem Abdel al-Qader, the Palestinian Prime Minister?s advisor for Jerusalem affairs, stated that lawyers managed to stop the demolition until March 10th, by court order.
http://imemc. org/article/ 59111
Homeless Gazans protest at UN
Gaza ? Ma?an ? Palestinians made homeless by the recent Israeli assault on Gaza held a protest on Wednesday outside the headquarters of the UN?s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. The protesters are saying that they still have not received any aid from the UN since their houses were destroyed in December and January. Israel completely destroyed at least 2,000 Palestinian homes and left as a many as 12,000 damaged during its three-week offensive on Gaza. 46,000 people were displaced, according to the United Nations.
http://www.maannews .net/en/index. php?opr=ShowDeta ils&ID=36229
Indigenous peoples in Indo-Afro-Latin America, especially Bolivia and Ecuador, are rising up to take control of their own lives and act in solidarity with others to save the planet. They are calling for new, yet ancient, practices of plurinational, participatory, and intercultural democracy. They champion ecologically sustainable development; community-based autonomies; and solidarity with other peoples locally, regionally, and internationally – what they describe as "unity in diversity." Their values are often different than those of the United States or Europe. One indigenous leader has stated: "We give what money we have not to banks to collect interest but to others – and their gratitude is the interest we receive."
Fifty-five million indigenous persons, or 400 indigenous peoples, inhabit Indo-Afro-Latin America. Most reside in Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. They reject the Europe-imposed term "Indians." They call themselves "the native peoples" ("Ios pueblos originarios" in Spanish). They constitute 67 percent of Bolivia's population. In Ecuador they are 40 percent, mainly in the cold highland Sierra and sweltering Amazonian tropics. They often ally with Afro-Ecuadorians along the Pacific coast, who account for 10 percent of the populace.
Spokespersons for the native peoples realize that the differences between their cosmic visions and those of Europe and the United States are part of an ongoing set of class and ideological conflicts that must be resolved if world peace and ecological balance are to be achieved. They recognize too that they must overcome divisions in their own ranks and that their struggles necessitate solidarity with other oppressed peoples around the globe. They link up internationally, as in the case of the worldwide 87-nation "Via Campesina" so important in the World Social Forums of this century. Sensitive to the world ecological crisis, the native peoples' movements conducted the 2008 First Interregional Summit of the Amazon, the region known as "the lungs of the planet."
In Bolivia and Ecuador, the native peoples and their supporters are re-founding the State, "democratizing democracy," and introducing juridical pluralism. They are playing a prominent role in popular campaigns against neo-liberal capitalist globalization and US-European interventionism. Recognized and honored in UN and ILO declarations on indigenous rights, they emphasize human and planetary rights, including the rights of Nature ("Pachamama," or "Mother Nature," literally "Mother Universe").
The CIA has often characterized the social movements of the native peoples as a major challenge to US hegemony. Territories they occupy contain 80 percent of Latin America's biodiversity, several important watersheds, and such valuable resources as petroleum.
Bolivia and Ecuador, historically wracked by poverty, military coups, and massacres of native peoples, peasants, students, and workers, exemplify many challenges. Both countries remain two of the poorest in the world and have experienced recent cholera epidemics. The average income of a Bolivian peasant is $50 a year. That is one reason why peasants, whenever possible, base their lives on the indigenous legacy of terraced irrigation works and the "ayllu," or commune. Many try to emigrate. One of every four Bolivians works outside the nation. Their remittances account for 10 percent of Bolivia's GDP (Gross Domestic Product).
Brazilian economic interests account for 20 percent of Bolivia's GDP. Bolivia's profitable energy and mining sectors sell gas to fuel 70 percent of the industry of São Paulo, Brazil, South America's largest city. Control of Bolivia's principal agricultural export, soybeans, is 35 percent Brazilian. Some of Brazil's farmers, together with a hundred Bolivian families, control five-sixths of Bolivia's farmlands.
Ecuador remains the largest banana producer in the world but now gets more money from oil, forestry products, and the remittances of its emigrants (more than 3 million persons, out of a population of 14 million). Ecuador is a significant source of petroleum. It has abundant cedar, ceibo, and mahogany, and several 250-year-old trees. It is the world's largest producer of Balsa wood. In 2003, forestry interests from Colombia provoked genocide against the already reduced, small, nomadic Tagaeri and Taromenari native peoples.
Bolivia's President Evo Morales, an Aymara elected in 2005 with a majority of votes in the initial round, an unprecedented event for Bolivia's multi-party system, has often pointed out that "The fight of our people is an historic struggle against empire." Native peoples throughout the Americas tend to see empire as an uninterrupted process of 516 years of genocidal subjection in the face of their proud resistance. They understand well the continuity of colonialism/imperialism: the routine use of kidnappings, disappearances, torture, and male violence against women; ecological destruction; and the creation and perpetuation of an un-payable external debt for economic blackmail.
Bolivian filmmaker Jorge Sanjinés once called Bolivia's indigenous peasants and miners "the clandestine nation." Now they and other peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean are changing history. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa, a US-trained economist elected in a runoff in 2006, has declared: "We are living not in an epoch of changes, but in a change of epochs."
Recently, Bolivia and Ecuador, like Venezuela, have experienced democratic elections, even popular referenda and, in the cases of Bolivia and Venezuela, recall votes. Their presidents have won these elections by impressive majorities. On behalf of the oppressed they have been implementing policies against neo-liberal capitalism's practices of "free trade," deregulation, and privatization. In various ways, they have advocated "a new socialism for the 21st century." Evo Morales evokes an Aymara-type "communitarian socialism based on reciprocity and solidarity."
In an address at the United Nations in September 2008, Evo, as he is popularly known, proposed "Ten Commandments" to save the planet, life and humanity:
Put an end to the capitalist system
Renounce wars (Evo says "I don't believe there can be peace under capitalism")
Create a world without imperialism or colonialism
Honor the right to water
Develop clean energies
Respect Nature (Pachamama)
Recognize basic services as human rights
Combat inequalities
Promote diversity of cultures and economies
Seek "Vivir bien" -- living well (what is known in Ecuador as "sumak kawsay," living fully), instead of living better at the expense of others
Evo pointed out that Bolivia's recently drafted constitution "is to support a new pact with all humanity and Pachamama, from the heart of the Andes, from the South, for all the world."
Revolutionary Processes Rooted in Indigenous and Social Movements
Revolutionary processes in Bolivia and Ecuador are rooted in the social movements of native peoples and others. In Bolivia, mass mobilizations against the privatization of water in 2000 and 2004 succeeded against the powerful US-based transnational corporation Bechtel. Similar mobilizations for nationalizing gas in 2003 toppled the government of President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, known as "el gringo" because of his speaking English better than Spanish. Sánchez de Lozada's regime was responsible for the massacre of more than 60 citizens in El Alto, a new Andean city of more than a million poor people above La Paz, the world's highest capital.
One of President Evo Morales' first acts after taking office in 2006 was to nationalize oil and the production of gas. With proceeds from the nationalizations, he created a "dignity pension" for people over 60 years of age and a "family income supplement" to help keep children in school. He extended credit with zero percent interest to farmers of corn, wheat, rice and other basics. Under Morales, Bolivia has eliminated its fiscal debt, repaid half its foreign debt, and quadrupled employment in the mining and metallurgical sectors. Its GDP has almost doubled in three years, while its foreign reserves have almost quintupled to over $8 billion. Cuban teams of teachers and medical personnel have helped reduce illiteracy by 80 percent and extend free health care to half the populace. Cuba's "Miracle Mission" has conducted free eye operations to restore the full vision of nearly 300,000 Bolivians.
Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linares often reassures foreign capitalists and says Bolivia's economy will be "Andean/Amazonian capitalism," featuring strong support for small and medium enterprises, including cooperatives and handicrafts. Despite these reassurances, the US Government has sought to undermine Bolivian democracy the way it so often has done in the past. It has lifted its restrictions on the CIA's use of assassination against foreign leaders. Both Evo Morales and Ecuador's Correa have denounced assassination plots on their lives.
Upon assuming the presidency, Evo ordered the CIA desk in the presidential palace removed. Later, in the face of US pressures on behalf of Bechtel and other transnational corporations, he pulled Bolivia out of the World Bank's Disputes Resolution Court. During 2008, department-level Bolivian officials expelled various personnel of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which had established an "Office of Transition Initiatives" to fund the rightist opposition. Evo discovered that US Ambassador Philip Goldberg was promoting and financing extreme rightist leaders in the gas-rich eastern breakaway departments who, in the name of departmental autonomy, in effect separatism, were ordering massacres of native peoples and occupying federal offices. This was a thinly veiled attempt at a "civil" coup d'état, a coup in quest of military support.
Ambassador Golberg had served earlier in countries undergoing violent breakups, such as the former Yugoslavia. He served as ambassador to Kosovo, where the United States tolerated or supported paramilitary massacres of Serbs and other ethnic minorities. His superior is John Negroponte, Deputy Secretary of State and chief State Department official for Latin America. Negroponte is the former 1980s'ambassador to Honduras who oversaw the "contra" war against the democratically elected Sandinista government. He and the State Department's embassy staffs help coordinate US efforts to undermine or topple today's socialist oriented governments and social movements, like those in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
Goldberg's Embassy began enlisting Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright Scholars to "spy" on Cubans and Venezuelans in Bolivia. It also worked with a special intelligence unit of the Bolivian police. Goldberg was photographed meeting with coup-plotting leaders and a known Colombian paramilitary figure. In September 2008, at the height of the unsuccessful "civil" coup attempt, Evo expelled Goldberg. The United States responded by sending home the Bolivian ambassador.
Meeting in Chile in September, the newly created Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) unanimously condemned the ongoing attempted coup and its massacres. UNASUR unconditionally supported Evo's democratic government and sent observers to government-proposed negotiations in which the opposition finally agreed to participate. When the negotiations later failed because of right-wing intransigence despite major concessions by Evo, the UNASUR observers again condemned the right for its anti-democratic and criminal conduct.
Meanwhile, a UNASUR investigating team of experts confirmed details of a September 11, 2008 massacre of peaceful protesters, mostly native peoples, in Pando Department, when 18 people were gunned down, 60 were wounded, and more than 100 persons "disappeared." The rightist governor said to be responsible for the massacre, Leopoldo Fernández, an ally of the 1970s' dictator Hugo Banzer, fled toward Brazil but was captured by the military and jailed.
On November 1, 2008, Bolivia's government suspended indefinitely the operations of the US Drug Enforcement Agency because of the DEA's financing fascistic opposition forces behind the coup attempt and "criminal groups" plotting to kill government authorities. President Evo Morales offered evidence of this and other DEA crimes, such as its involvement in narco-trafficking and its investigations ordered in 2003 of leftist leaders, including Evo himself. He said that Bolivia would continue to protect small-scale growers of coca to maintain the cultural use of the product by native peoples and would play a key role in a new unified South American effort against narco-trafficking to be backed by regional funding. Washington countered by suspending long-term trade preferences with Bolivia.
In Ecuador, occupations of government buildings and general strikes became an annual affair in the 1990s. Mass movements of the underclasses, students, workers, and native peoples began to link up. The native peoples launched five uprisings. From 1995 to 2005 the popular movements toppled seven presidents. In January 2000, the native peoples took over Ecuador's parliament and actually "governed" the nation for 24 hours! The old State -- led by a comprador bourgeoisie in the coastal region of Guayaquil, landed oligarchs there and in the Sierra, military officers and paramilitaries, and an ultra-reactionary Catholic Church -- began to totter.
President Rafael Correa of Ecuador initially tried to reassure Washington. He maintained the US dollar as the nation's currency. He simultaneously challenged the US Government by declaring he might not recognize the legality of Ecuador's foreign debt. He expelled the World Bank's permanent representative and said that in 2009 he would not renew the lease for the US military base in Manta.
Then, on March 1, 2008, the United States and Colombia mounted a military bombardment and invasion of Ecuador that used the Manta base and killed at least 24 people, including Raúl Reyes, a guerrilla commander of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), who at the time was meeting with Mexican university students in the northern Ecuadorian jungle. Afterwards, Correa denounced US control of high officials of Ecuador's security and intelligence forces and dismissed leaders in the Armed Forces, Police, and his own Minister of Defense. The Organization of American States (OAS) showed its independence from traditional US control when it voted to denounce the military attack on Ecuador.
In November 2008, President Correa, contrary to economic integration plans already underway in South America, went along with the European Union's call for bilateral trade negotiations. Colombia and Peru, but not Bolivia, already had agreed to accept bilateral negotiations. The Ecuadorian government also announced a partial privatization of the Nappo River. It planned to allow state development of mining in Yasuni Park, declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 1989. But at the same time, Correa accepted the report of an independent international commission of inquiry into Ecuador's foreign debt from 1976 to 2006. The report found that many loan agreements involved corruption, illegalities, and "looting"; violated national sovereignty; contributed to greater poverty and inequality; and were "odious" because of their often being contracted in years of military dictatorships. Correa announced that the "illegitimate, corrupt, and illegal debt" would likely not be paid.
Meanwhile, Latin America's indigenous and social movements called for "the recognition of the historical, social and environmental debt" that most of the "creditor" nations had incurred "during five centuries of the colonization of Abya Yala." ("Abya Yala" means "Continent of Life" in the language of the Kuna peoples of Panama and Colombia.)
Re-founding the State, New Constitutions
Throughout Indo-Afro-Latin America vigorous movements to "democratize democracy" have taken root. The social movements that put an end to the worse period of US-supported "dirty wars" and toppled the military dictatorships of the 1964-1984 period did not settle for the limited democracies that replaced them. People had fought and died for human rights and not the amnesties that were granted the dictators and their henchmen as a condition for allowing the new "democracies." To walk down the street and suddenly see one's torturer coming out of the corner store was one more form of torture.
Moreover, the newly introduced "representative democracies" typically served the interests of big money and economic neo-liberalism rather than those of the general populace.
As poverty spread, movements sparked by native peoples and other groups, especially women and youth, mobilized against the IMF and its defenders in the newly elected parliaments and presidencies. For many, to "democratize democracy" meant to introduce economic democracy and not just limited political democracy. People began demanding constituent assemblies. The elections of Morales and Correa paved the way for a re-founding of the State and an official rejection of neo-liberalism.
In elections for Bolivia's constituent assembly the only requirement was that 30 percent of the delegates had to be women. Candidates from Evo Morales' MAS (Movement to Socialism) won 137 of the 255 seats; 64 of the MAS delegates were women. Delegates finalized the new constitution of 411 articles in December 2007, only after being forced to move the location of the assembly's meetings because of right-wing violence and sabotage of the process. This violence was part of the "civil" coup attempt that actually commenced the day Evo was elected president.
Ecuador's voters elected their constituent assembly in September 2007. It included 80 members of Congress from Correa's heterogeneous political coalition "Alianza País," 40 from the conservative opposition, 10 from small leftist parties, and 5 from theCONAIE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, founded in 1986). Other organizations, such as the CONFENIAE (Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon) and the FENOCIN (National Federation of Peasants, Native Peoples, and Blacks), pressured the assembly to make constitutional changes in defense of their interests. On September 28, 2008, voters approved the 444-article Constitution by a 65 percent "Yes" vote. Concluded President Correa: "Neo-liberalism has been crushed and put in the dustbin of history."
Both nations' new constitutions distinguish between the old representative democracy and a new participatory and communitarian one. They call for plural nationhood; genuine interculturalism (instead of cosmetic multiculturalism); recognition of differences among cultures; and "unity in diversity." As a result, the native peoples' communities have constitutional rights to local self-governance and their own juridical procedures based on indigenous customs and traditions. Bolivia's Constitution calls for juridical pluralism within a proposed "Plurinational Constitutional Court of Justice."
Only when there is plural nationhood can there be real interculturalism. Plural nationhood entails re-founding the State. In the eyes of the native peoples, the old State was a colonial one, formed of select individuals. It championed individual freedoms solely for the elites. In no way did it represent collective societies like those of the Quechua, Aymara, Guaraní, Shuar, Siona and other native peoples. The new State is to be an independent, unitary, plurinational one that celebrates human diversity and true democracy. In indigenous terms, exit colonialism and enter all humanity.
Bolivia's proposed new constitution contains the following provisions, presented here in a synthesized form and in no particular order:
A unitary, plurinational, communitarian and democratic State.
All 36 peoples to have equal rights and regional autonomies, that is, a democratic decentralization of power.
Nationalization of natural resources and State control over forests and biodiversity.
Three forms of economic ownership: public, private, and communitarian -- in effect, a mixed economy compatible with the Vice President's vision of an Andean/Amazonian capitalism.
State involvement in strategic sectors of the economy, and foreign private investment to be subordinated to national development plans.
Agrarian reform with expropriation of huge landed estates (latifundia).
Re-election and removal of any elected official by popular mandate -- already implemented on August 10, 2008, when the opposition's demand for a referendum was granted and 67 percent of the votes favored keeping Evo Morales as president; Evo's supporters also won several governorships while increasing their vote percentage in the few departments they lost to the rightist opposition.
Election of the judiciary; recognition of communitarian and ancestral forms of conflict resolution.
A plurinational Parliament with only one chamber (in effect, the elimination of the structurally elitist Senate).
Free and equal health care and education; end of illiteracy.
Sucre to replace La Paz as the capital (a concession to the rightist opposition).
A ban on discrimination based on sex, color, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, culture, nationality, religion, ideology, disability, pregnancy.
Prohibition of foreign military bases.
Potable drinking water as a human right.
Most observers expect that Bolivian voters will approve the constitution in the referendum scheduled for January 25, 2009. The articles on land ownership will be submitted separately at the same time.
Ecuador's Constitution contains the following provisions, also presented in a synthesized form and in no particular order:
State to tighten control of strategic industries, such as oil, mining, and telecommunications, and to protect biodiversity.
State to reduce monopolies.
Some of foreign debt to be declared illegitimate.
Agrarian reform; end of latifundia; prohibition of genetically modified seeds.
Free health care; free education for all through college; State-assisted housing programs.
A lay State; civil marriage for gay partners (measures opposed by one of the continent's most reactionary Catholic Churches)
Women's rights, including valuation for work in the home.
Free responsibility over one's own sexuality and life; recognition of diverse types of family; yet, the right to life from the moment of conception (feminist activists generally welcomed their gains and said the clause on life at conception could be eliminated through future popular mobilizations).
Equal rights for the disabled.
Universal social security; pensions for stay-at-home mothers and informal sector workers.
Presidential control over Central Bank; less autonomy for the Armed Forces.
Consecration of Nature's collective rights.
Potable drinking water as a human right; prohibition of privatization of water.
Food sovereignty and the right to have secure food sources.
Right to have access to the mass media and to establish community media.
Prohibition of foreign military bases.
A solidarity-based and sustainable economic system; a "private, social and solidarity" economy, in effect a mixed economy.
Integration into the rest of Latin America, especially via UNASUR
Prohibition of State taking over private debts, in effect no bank bailouts
Balanced living (sumak kawsay)
There are, to be sure, ambiguities and contradictions in both nations' new constitutions. Ecuador's, for example, includes loopholes for big capital and latifundistas, such as Article 323, a prohibition against all forms of confiscation. In Bolivia, some have criticized an overemphasis on local indigenous autonomies with inadequate attention given to the 70 percent of the population that is urban or to the important role women play in the creation and defense of "informal" economies key to human survival and advancement.
Also, one area of great concern to native peoples in Ecuador is the clause calling for their "previous informed consultation" on mining, oil, or other economic rights granted outsiders in territories where they reside. Consultation with native peoples does not mean their "consent." There have already occurred killings and repression of protests against foreign petroleum firms. President Correa has gone so far as to characterize some of the protesters as "terrorists." The UN and ILO declarations on indigenous peoples' rights are generally interpreted as calling for "previous consent." "Petroleum is the blood of the Earth," goes a saying of the U'wa people resisting foreign oil interests in Colombia, "if you suck the blood you kill us."
Clearly, new laws do not necessarily translate into new realities. The movements that gave birth to the new constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador will have to be maintained and strengthened if the articles on environment, plurinationalism, and social rights are to be fulfilled or expanded in practice.
Right-wing Opposition in Historical Context
A long time ago, a Mayan said:
They destroyed our crops
They cut our branches
They burned our tree trunks
But they could not kill our roots.
In 1781, Tupak Katari, the leader of a widespread and nearly successful revolt by South America's native peoples against Spanish colonialism, was captured and tortured. His body was torn apart, literally "quartered." Before his death, he proudly announced to his captors: "I will return and I will be millions."
Evo Morales, a strong advocate for world peace and non-violence, has said the right-wing opposition is attempting to "quarter" Bolivia but will not succeed. In a sense, Tupak Katari has returned and is millions. The Bolivian rightists, relatively strong in four departments rich in commerce, narco-trafficking, agriculture, gas, and other natural resources but unable to win national elections, seek to create a secessionist State centered around the economically powerful city of Santa Cruz. This would leave the rest of Bolivia impoverished.
Just as in Bolivia, there are anti-democracy rightists in Ecuador and Venezuela with links to US governmental agencies and paramilitary elements in Colombia. They too seek to topple the new democratically elected revolutionary governments by splitting off the richest areas into separate, new States: the industrial, oil, agricultural, and commercial region of Guayaquil in southwestern Ecuador and the oil-rich Zulia in northeastern Venezuela.
Bolivians have a long history of popular resistance to right-wing elements that have governed the nation on behalf of domestic and foreign elites. They have learned from their earlier struggles. In 1952 they achieved the continent's first revolution since the Mexican Revolution of 1917. They introduced a short-lived agrarian reform and nationalization of tin mines, the main industry at the time. Many miners were Marxists. In 1946 the Miners' Congress passed the "Pulacayo Thesis," a program echoing the ideas of Bolshevik revolutionary thinker and military commander Leon Trotsky. This program called for workers' control of the means of production, a genuine democracy, and internationalization of the revolutionary struggle. Armed miners turned the tide in 1952 just when it looked like the rightist military might crush the democratic revolutionary forces in a bloodbath.
However, the United States gradually reversed Bolivia's 1952 Revolution by training the Armed Forces and sending in economic advisers favorable to free-market capitalism and foreign capital. By 1964, the Revolution was not only reversed. It was being replaced by a series of military dictatorships and occasional civilian governments that carried out several massacres of workers, peasants, and students, in a "dirty war." Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie, later extradited to France and convicted in 1987 of mass murder, helped set up Bolivian concentration camps. Poverty increased. Because of silicosis, overwork, and the decline of the mining sector, the lifespan of the average miner today is just 35 years.
A guerrilla struggle led by Ernesto "Che" Guevara in southeastern Bolivia failed when US-trained Bolivian Army forces captured Che on October 8, 1967, and, on US orders, killed him the next day. Crosses labeled "Saint Che" began appearing in several rural locations.
In 1971 a Peoples' Assembly backed by the military government of General Juan José Torres approved a worker-peasant alliance and a program for socialism. Torres was overthrown by General Banzer, leading to a savage seven-year wave of repression known as "the Banzerato," a prosperous period for Bolivia's elites and foreign capital. The boom city of Santa Cruz began concentrating most of the nation's wealth.
Popular protests by the poor majority and by the small economically squeezed middle classes continued. By 1980, strikes, revolts, and massacres reached another severe stage. The so-called "Cocaine Coup" of that year established a particularly brutal and corrupt dictatorship that lasted more than two years. In 1985, Harvard-educated economist Jeffrey Sachs introduced a "shock therapy" neo-liberal treatment of the economy that laid off thousands of miners, who had to migrate with their families to the countryside or cities to try to find work to survive. In the early 1990s, Sachs introduced the same economic approach in the former Soviet Union. In both cases the results were disastrous for the majority of the peoples.
During and after Sachs' "shock therapy," Bolivia's resistance movements reached new levels of community-based organization. People perfected roadblocks and other acts of civil disobedience. Women's committees, a traditional institution among miners, began running urban slums. A street vendors' union grew each year to its present size of 800,000 members. Bolivia's citizens conducted huge marches "For Life and Peace," "For Life and Bread," and for "People before Profits."
Native peoples completed an historic 33-day "March for Territory and Dignity" (1990). A movement by coca growers led by Evo Morales gained strength and called itself the Movement to Socialism. Workers, steet vendors, ex-miners, desperate peasants, and heads of households in El Alto and other urban slums organized neighborhood defense-and-struggle committees. Women and youth played pivotal roles. Most of the time Bolivia was under a state of siege, with all opposition repressed. Nonetheless, the social movements kept reappearing and gaining strength, toppling government after government until Evo's election in 2005.
Prefect Ruben Costas in Santa Cruz and several ex-Nazis and large landholders began to organize their ¨civil" coup. They referred to Evo with racist epitaphs and claimed no "Indian monkey" could possibly govern the nation. They sent fascist goon squads to attack, beat up, and kill native peoples. They took over national offices, including airports, making it impossible for the nation's president to fly to important areas.
Several of the fascistic right-wing leaders of the opposition movement are anti-communist fanatics whose pro-Nazi families came to Bolivia from Eastern Europe after World War II, often protected or encouraged by the US government, as in the case of Klaus Barbie. One current leader, Branco Marinkovic, a Croatian-Bolivian, is widely believed to be in the pay of the man in the government of "el gringo" who ordered the El Alto massacre of 2003 and later fled to the United States with "el gringo" and other top government officials.
Over the years, the fascist leaders of the four breakaway departments routinely have hired Brazilian gunmen, some of whom joined Bolivian and Peruvian gunmen in the Pando massacre of September 11, 2008.
Pando is the department that gave refuge to the murderers of Chico Mendes, the world-renowned trade-union and environmentalist leader of Brazilian rubber tappers assassinated in 1988. Ever since then, these assassins and their henchmen have been operating on behalf of Pando's elites to help maintain labor discipline and political loyalty, but with decreasing success.
Even though momentarily defeated in their attempt to topple Bolivian democracy, right-wingers of all varieties have not stopped their pressures on Evo. The social movements and native peoples continue to mobilize in defense of Evo´s government.
In the middle of October 2008, some 50,000 to 200,000 people conducted an 8-day, 150-kilometer march that was joined on its last day by Evo himself. The marchers surrounded the national Congress in La Paz to demand approval of a future referendum on the new constitution. They succeeded in winning the required two-thirds majority of votes and then celebrated in the streets.
However, prior to the successful vote, centrist and rightist political parties in Congress modified more than 100 articles. Details of the changes are rather complex, but it is clear that greater though not complete autonomy is to be granted the breakaway departments. Also, Evo will not be allowed to run for re-election after the December 6, 2009 presidential and congressional elections. His potential years in the presidency thus would have to end in 2014.
In both Bolivia and Ecuador, as in Venezuela, the rightist opposition is increasingly divided. For example, Bolivia's PODEMOS (Social Democratic Power in Spanish), the largest opposition group, now has at least four squabbling factions.
But the opposition is not just from the right. While leftists generally support Evo and Correa, even if critically at times, there are a few who feel that both nations' presidents are moving too slowly and with too many compromises. Some even see the emergence of "a new neo-liberalism with a human face." Also, there are people inside the governments of both nations who act as cliques that tend to undermine democratic processes and thus serve the rightist opposition's claims that the presidents are "dictators."
Cooptation and clientelism are occurring, more so in Ecuador than in Bolivia, but the social movements continue demanding genuine democracy and a new type of socialism that meets all human needs in harmony with ¨Pachamama.¨ The chances of either a civilian or a military coup seem slimmer each day but can never be ruled out. Both nations´ Armed Forces have sworn to uphold the constitutional processes underway. The Bolivian and Ecuadorian peoples are on the alert against possible traitorous officers or soldiers.
Decline of US Hegemony
Events in Bolivia and Ecuador reflect a growing defiance of the "big brother to the North." Latin American nations are integrating into a larger "gran patria" independent of the United States, an idea originally advocated by "the Liberator" Simón Bolívar in the Wars of Independence against Spain when he attempted to unify the region against future US hegemony. Bolívar was unsuccessful, in part because of US opposition. He concluded in 1829: "The United States appear to be destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty."
In addition to UNASUR, several new institutions have been created in this recent integrative process. Among them are the following:
Rio Group (created in 1986 by members of the Contadora Group active in seeking peace in Central America, today an organization of almost all Latin American and Caribbean states whose most recent new member is Cuba)
TeleSUR (a continent-wide television news and entertainment channel countering the slant and distortions of CNN and most US mass media)
RadioSUR
PetroSUR and PetroCARIBE (for energy integration with discount prices on Venezuelan oil, gas, and know-how)
Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas -- ALBA, a socially responsible instead of profit-guided alternative to the now defeated US initiative Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA)
MERCOSUR – Common Market of the South, an earlier alternative to the FTAA
Community of Andean Nations and Caricom (two more regional trade blocs)
Latin American Court of Justice
Banco del Sur (Bank of the South, a response to US-dominated, neo-liberal financial institutions like the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank).
Parliamentary Confederation of the Americas (a South American Parliament is to be built in San Benito, Bolivia)
Security Council of South America (a military alliance of 12 nations excluding the United States)
There are also plans for a single unified currency possibly to be called "pacha" and a Monetary Fund of the South (Fondo Monetario del Sur) as an alternative to the US dollar and the IMF (International Monetary Fund). There is talk of an economic Stabilization Fund as well.
In the past, the US Government and Latin American oligarchies would not have tolerated this for a second. They would have mounted bloody military coups and new dictatorships in the name of defending democracy. But those days of US hegemony are long gone. Spain's capitalists now have more investments in the region than those of their US counterparts. The United States and the OAS have been largely absent from all major decisions about conflicts; new coalitions like UNASUR and the Rio Group make those decisions, without a single dissenting vote so far. Even the influential US policy-creating Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), in its May 2008 report, says the Monroe Doctrine is dead and should not be resurrected. Significantly, Washington has accepted the 12-nation Security Council of South America.
US military and diplomatic failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, together with the global financial crisis triggered by US bank failures in 2007-2008, have extended the United States' loss of hegemony worldwide. The Euro and other currencies have long since weakened the dominance of the US dollar. The gigantic US economy has become dependent on investments and loans from China, Japan, the European Union, and sundry oil kingdoms. According to CNN reports, the two-trillion-dollar US bank rescue plan may cost each US citizen $40,000 by 2010. The three-decade economic reign of neo-liberalism is spiraling rapidly downward into the abyss of human suffering it has helped generate. Multiple Poles of Power and the rise of new economic and geopolitical alliances are replacing the 18-year-long dominance of a sole Super Power.
Conclusion
It is evident that Bolivia and Ecuador, like so many Latin American countries, are undergoing historic changes in the correlation of social and class forces and in relations with the United States. Only the rightists and the US Government oppose these two new popular and vigorous democracies. Others are trying to learn from them.
In July 2008, the 8,000-mile "Longest Walk 2 All Life is Sacred – Save Mother Earth" reached Washington, D.C. One of its leaders, Dennis Banks, cofounder of the American Indian Movement (AIM), summed up its goal as one of "environmental protection, an end to global warming, the protection of Indigenous cultural survival, and the empowerment of Native youth." Most of the marchers expressed solidarity with Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.
US policy on Latin America in 2008, however, continued down the anti-democratic path. The Pentagon sent the modernized Fourth Fleet to police the oceans and waterways of the region. More military bases were constructed in Colombia, bordering Ecuador and Venezuela. US support for the mega-project IIRSA (South American Regional Integration of the Infrastructure in Spanish) increased. It is a multi-billion dollar transcontinental transport and commercial development plan that will violate several indigenous territories. Despite widespread bank failures and skyrocketing unemployment rates at home and abroad, US aid programs continued to give short shrift to meeting human needs and instead contributed to the military repression of social and indigenous movements or renewed attempts at "civil" coups.
The world faces a profound ecological crisis. World hunger is rapidly increasing. In a relatively short time there will not be sufficient potable drinking water, food, or petroleum to maintain current standards of living even in the most industrialized nations.
Neo-liberal capitalism faces both deepening economic crisis and loss of credibility on a world scale. The indigenous and popular movements of Bolivia and Ecuador, on the other hand, have achieved significant advances and now have a chance to push for even greater gains in the re-founding of their States and the introduction of new programs in defense of the environment and the peoples of the world.
In November 2008, some 400 academics of the prestigious Latin American Studies Association sent a letter to president-elect Barack Obama in which they expressed their hope that his presidency would convert the United States into "an ally instead of an adversary of the positive changes taking place in the Hemisphere." It remains to be seen if Obama will maintain old policies; make mere cosmetic changes; or create new policies in the interests of all the peoples of Latin America – and the United States.
James Cockcroft can be reached at: jcockcro@yahoo.com
In 2007, the UN passed its Declaration of Rights of Indigenous Peoples, with only four "No" votes (United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). It echoed and expanded the International Labor Organization's Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples that entered into force in 1991.Award-winning Canadian novelist Thomas King, son of a Cherokee father and Greek mother, has pointed out that "Mother Earth" is a potent concept for native peoples, but it has been abused to the point where it sometimes has no more power or import "than the word freedom tumbling out of George W. Bush's mouth." King then cites Mohawk writer Beth Brant: "We do not worship nature. We are part of it." See Thomas King, The Truth about Stories (Toronto: House of Anansi Press Inc., 2003), p. 114.
From books of Chilam Balam (The book of books), documents written in Yucatec Maya with Spanish characters during the 17th and 18th centuries.
A fine tribute to human goodness
By Linda S. Heard
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Mar 4, 2009, 00:50
The caravan of 300 kind hearts that set out on Feb. 14 from London to
Gaza, under the auspices of the Viva Palestina organization, is nearing
the Libyan/Egyptian border. And the great news is Egypt has agreed to
open its Rafah border long enough to let their 100 aid-bearing vehicles,
including fire engines, ambulances, trucks, vans and a boat, through.
This is more than just an aid convoy. As the participants of several
ethnicities and faiths admit, UNRWA and other NGOs are far more
effective distributors of essentials urgently needed by the 1.5 million
residents of the Gaza Strip still subsisting under the shameful 14-month
long Israeli siege. The message due to be delivered by these 300
extraordinary "ordinary people" is all important: "We truly
care and we've driven across continents to prove it." For the
rest of us it surely signifies the goodness of human nature and the
strength of people power, which if correctly channeled, can move
mountains.
Their belief in the seemingly impossible has already wrought a miracle.
Their sincerity has melted the hearts of Moroccan and Algerian
politicians who agreed to open their common frontier closed since 1994,
something the then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice strove to
achieve and failed. Their commitment to people less fortunate has been
exemplary. How many of us would dig into our own pockets and persuade
our families, friends and complete strangers to do the same so that we
could take off in the middle of winter on a mission with an unknown
duration unsure of the welcome we would receive en route? These
individuals had no idea where they would sleep or shower or how they
would get back home once they had donated their vehicles. Most had never
undertaken such a journey before and they hadn't a clue what to
expect. Thankfully, however, their faith has been rewarded.
A few days ago, I telephoned the award-winning journalist and television
chat-show host Yvonne Ridley, who, along with a team from Press TV, has
traveled with the convoy since Day One. As she was driving through the
snow-capped mountains of eastern Algeria, she described the experience,
thus far, as "absolutely amazing" and told me that everywhere
they journeyed they were greeted by smiling well-wishers carrying
goodwill letters addressed to the people of Gaza. They have also been
overwhelmed with gifts of money, bottled water and food, she told me.
Some people's generosity has been incredible.
In France, a boxer purchased a brand new van to replace one that had
broken down and insured it as well. In Morocco, a private individual
erected a marquee and prepared a feast for all, consisting of 22 lambs.
And after refueling in Algeria, they were astonished to discover that an
Algerian businessman had picked up the entire fuel tab; no small sum.
The governments of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia have been wonderful.
They have allowed the convoy to travel unimpeded and offered assistance.
But they have ensured it was kept well away from the main population
centers out of reluctance to whip up public emotion, which is already
high following Israel's slaughter of 1,400 Palestinians, a terrible
toll that includes 600 women and children.
However, Libya has spared no efforts to roll out the red carpet.
According to Farid Arada writing on the Viva Palestina website, "The
hospitality of the Libyan people, government and the Qaddafi Foundation
has left the convoy members in tears."
Apparently, the Qaddafi Foundation has "ensured the smooth and safe
passage of the convoy through Libya by providing everything the convoy
needs from free fuel to accommodation, repairs, etc."
Moreover, 60 Libyan vehicles loaded with humanitarian supplies have
joined it with another 240 expected. Indeed, the Libyan daily Libya
Al-Youm quoted one of the convoy members as saying, "This is the
best welcome we received. What is different this time is that the
authorities did not try to stop the people mingling and getting close to
us. Nothing was orchestrated; it was all natural and spontaneous."
This all-British effort, however, has not been supported by the British
government that has sent its own convoy -- British ships to assist
Israel in maintaining its lockdown of Gaza. Moreover, UK authorities
arrested nine members of the convoy before they could even turn on their
engines as terrorist suspects merely because they were carrying large
sums in cash. Well, of course they were. They had been collecting
donations for the journey. They were eventually released and they rushed
to catch up with their friends.
The government-owned BBC has been similarly unhelpful. After refusing to
air a charitable appeal on behalf of charities, such as the Red Cross
and Save the Children, related to Gaza, it has declined to cover the
convoy's progress. One frustrated Irish participant told how he had
approached the BBC several times to interview him only to be told
"no way." In the end, he had to resort to stealth. He managed to
persuade program executives to give him airtime on an entirely different
subject. But when he injected Gaza into the conversation, he says he was
promptly cut off. Sad isn't it?
This endeavor makes British people proud and represents tens of
thousands of donations from every corner of the country, yet British
people have to tune into Press TV -- the only network traveling with the
convoy -- for news.
Now all eyes are on Egypt. I am positive that they will get a rousing
welcome from warm-hearted Egyptians, whose hospitality is second to
none. That's provided they are given access. Whatever happens, the
most important thing is that they get to meet the people for whom this
journey was made and to whom it is dedicated -- the people of Gaza.
God bless them and God bless all those who battled against vehicle
breakdowns, lack of sleep, discomfort and biting cold nights to deliver
their message of love face to face.
"We're like one big family," Yvonne Ridley said. "We
love one another, we fight and we complain. Everyone will emerge
stronger and more capable from this. One young man told me `I think
we need the people of Gaza more than they need us.'" Surely, the
moral of this good news story is that all of us, regardless of
nationality, race or religion, need each other.
Linda S. Heard is a British specialist writer on Middle East affairs.
She welcomes feedback and can be contacted by email at
heardonthegrapevines@yahoo.co.uk.
===
Day 19 - A Night Under The Desert Stars..
Wednesday 4th March
It was an experience they will never forget. Spending a night under the
desert moonlight, ' I loved it' one of the drivers said. Even for the
novice campers, it was a unique insight into the beauty of the desert in
the middle of nowhere. I have personally experienced a night under the
desert stars myself in the Sahara Desert last year whilst on holiday in
Morocco, and it truly is an amazing experience!
The first group were about 30KM from Amsa'ad border crossing point
at midday today which is about 2k from the border. The second contingent
is not far away.
They will all gather there until tomorrow morning when they are expected
to start crossing into Egypt.
Depending on arrangements on the Egyptian side and on the processing
time from both the Libyans and the Egyptians border control, they should
start the final leg of their epic journey tomorrow.
According to an Email translated from Arabic (translated by Farid
Arada), sent by the deputy convoy leader, it is likely that the convoy
will take the following route:
SALUM
SIDI KRIR
INTERNATIONAL HIGHWAY
DUMYAT PROVINCE
ALSALAM BRIDGE
AL-ARICH
RAFAH.
The convoy should reach GAZA on Saturday or Sunday depending on
breakdowns and refuelling times.
Will keep you updated..........
Prior knowledge of 9/11 attacks overheard in Hebrew
December 1, 2006 -- In October 2000, approximately 11 months prior to September 11, 2001, a former Israeli Defense Force member and veteran of the Yom Kippur War (1973) was collecting English Ivy cuttings at the Gomel Chesed Cemetery located at McCellen and 245 Mount Olive Ave. in Newark, NJ. The Gomel Chesed Cemetery is a ‘Jewish’ cemetery.
While he was scouting the cemetery for ivy cuttings, he overheard what he believed to be a conversation spoken in Hebrew, which drew his attention. Curious, he walked toward the voices until he was close enough to accurately hear the conversation and confirm that it was indeed being spoken in Hebrew. He found himself along a heavily vegetated fence line that sat on top of an eight-foot high retaining wall, which concealed his presence from the men engaged in the conversation. The two men he saw and overheard were casually leaning against the retaining wall beneath him.
As he watched and listened, a third man arrived to the meeting in a Lincoln Town Car. He emerged from the rear seat of the car while the driver and another passenger remained in the car. The two men leaning against the wall, upon seeing the arrival of the third man, changed their relaxed posture into that of attentiveness, signifying respect and the importance or ranking of the person that had just arrived. It was clear that the two men were waiting and expecting the arrival of the third, indicating that the meeting was pre-arranged.
What the observer of these happenings heard beneath him after the normal niceties were exchanged between the three men alarmed him. The man who arrived in the Town Car said, “The Americans will learn what it is to live with terrorists after the planes hit the twins in September.” One of the men that had been leaning against the retaining wall expressed concerns regarding whether the upcoming presidential election (November 2000) between Bush / Cheney and Gore / Lieberman could impact the plans. The man that arrived in the Town Car pacified the doubts by saying, “Don’t worry, we have people in high places and no matter who gets elected, they will take care of everything.”
Is this Muckraker Report source that has requested that I not use his name in this article, credible? Initially, I had my doubts. However, after listening to his account of what he attempted to do with the information he had obtained in the Gomel Chesed Cemetery, coupled with the plethora of independent media accounts of a vivid Israeli connection to 9/11, I decided that I should avoid contempt prior to investigation, and check out this story.
The source informed me that he wrestled with what to do with the information he stumbled upon while searching for English Ivy. Truthfully, he fears for his life. Having served in the IDF and possessing a firm understanding of how the Israeli government and the Mossad really operates, his fears are justifiable and prudent rather than the result of skittish paranoia.
According to his account, on February 9, 2001, approximately 8 months prior to the airplanes being flown into the twins, he sent an e-mail to then Attorney General Ashcroft informing the Attorney General that he had important terrorism-related information. The U.S. Department of Justice did not directly respond to the source. It forwarded the e-mail to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Shortly thereafter, on March 28, 2001, the source received a letter from Arthur Radford Baker (FBI) informing him that if he had information to share, he should contact the FBI Newark Division. The source contacted the FBI Newark Division and was told that two agents would be in contact with him, but no FBI agents came at that time.
The source continued to call the FBI Newark Division in attempt to pass his information onto the agency. He wanted to do this in person to ensure that it wasn’t carelessly discarded or dismissed. He also sought a guarantee of protection by the FBI. As September 2001 drew closer, he grew more impatient. He began to act with a sense of urgency because in his words, “Time was running out!”
As he was getting nowhere with the FBI Newark Division, the source decided to write a letter to Arthur Radford Baker on May 21, 2001, the person that sent the letter advising him that he should contact the FBI Newark Division. In this letter, the source reiterated that he had important information to share with the government, but would need a guarantee of protection by the FBI before he could disclose all that he knew.
On the day that the source received a response letter from Arthur Radford Baker, June 26, 2001, now less than 3 months prior to the 9/11 attacks, two FBI agents finally paid a visit. They were Agent Robin Gritz and Agent Andrew Stengel. The agents were shown the second letter received that day from Arthur Radford Baker by the source. The letter informed the source that the FBI would not be able to do anything on his behalf.
Without the guarantee of protection, the source was unwilling to disclose the complete details of what he heard at the Gomel Chesed Cemetery in October 2000. However the two agents, Gritz and Stengel, spent 2-3 hours attempting to draw the information out of the source. What he did tell Gritz and Stengel is that there would be an attack in New York City and airplanes would be used. He emphasized once again that he could not provide greater detail without a guarantee of protection.
The source has spoken favorably to the Muckraker Report regarding Agent Gritz and Agent Stengel. They must have been in a difficult situation. It is assumed that they wanted the information the source had, yet were confronted by a letter from the upper echelon of the FBI command structure that indicated that the FBI was not willing to provide protection for the source, regardless of the information he provided. All they could offer was to “see what they could do”. However, given the seriousness and scope of the intelligence the source maintained, he could not risk revealing the information on the flimsy non-committal being offered to him by two FBI special agents, particularly in light of the fact that he had just received a letter from FBI Headquarters telling him that the FBI was unwilling to do anything on his behalf. Even though Gritz and Stengel told the source that they would see what they could do for him, the source has never heard from either of them again.
I contacted the FBI Newark Division on Wednesday, November 22, 2006 to confirm whether Agent Gritz and Agent Stengel met with the source on or about June 26, 2001. I was directed to the FBI Newark Division Legal Unit where I spoke with a woman who identified herself as Amy. She suggested that I put my request in writing and fax it to her, which I did that same day.
On Friday, November 24, 2006 I received a phone call from Amy confirming receipt of my written request. She informed me that she would be out of the office the following week, and that somebody else from the Newark Division Legal Unit would handle my request.
On Tuesday, November 28, 2006 I received a phone call from Kathy at the FBI National Press Office. She informed me that the Legal Unit decided that I needed to file a Freedom of Information Act request.
On Wednesday, November 29, 2006 I contacted Agent Robin (Gritz) Laird. Since her meeting with the source on June 26, 2001, Agent Gritz has been promoted to a supervisor position within a counter terrorism unit at FBI headquarters. Once I had Agent Gritz on the phone, I introduced myself and immediately explained that I was attempting to confirm a meeting that herself and Agent Stengel allegedly had with the source on June 26, 2001. Agent Gritz was already aware of my inquiries. She indicated that she understood that the Press Office was handling my request. I told her that I decided to call her directly and emphasized that I only wish to confirm the meeting. Gritz said, “I’m not allowed to discuss this with you. I would get in trouble.”
The Muckraker Report has received copies of the contact cards that Agent Gritz and Stengel left with the source on June 26, 2001. Both cards have old phone numbers crossed out and new phone numbers handwritten on them. Clearly, the handwriting would be that of the agents.
I also have copies of the letters received by the source from Arthur Radford Baker.
The copies of the letters, the business cards, the way my initial request quickly reached FBI Headquarters, and the fact that Agent Gritz was obviously informed of my inquires and told that she was not to discuss anything with me, is sufficient evidence that there is yet another effort to cover up any information that strays from the “official” 9/11 story, especially any information that further exposes an Israeli connection to September 11th.
In addition to overhearing in Hebrew, the statements, “The Americans will learn what it is to live with terrorists after the planes hit the twins in September”, and “Don’t worry, we have people in high places and no matter who gets elected, they will take care of everything”, the source also reports that he overheard one of the three men in the Gomel Chesed Cemetery say, “The Arabs are so stupid. They don’t even imagine that we are using them.” This comment should not be overlooked.
For the reader that is unfamiliar with the under reported stories of an Israeli connection to September 11, 2001, it is important to do your own research. There is plenty to read and learn. However, as with any other news story that has been purposely censored, you will have to collect the pieces of the puzzle in individual news reports and piece them together to finally see the big picture. Be forewarned, the picture is not pretty.
Here are some search topics to consider.
Israel: Complete 9/11 Timeline
9/11 Investigative Journalist Harassed and Beaten at his Home by Undercover Cops
Odigo says workers were warned of attacks
The Israeli Spy Ring
The Israeli Spy Ring Scandal
Israeli 9/11 Crook Flees with $57 Million to Israel
Pre-9/11 Put Options on Companies Hurt by Attack Indicates Foreknowledge
Dov Zakheim and the 9/11 Conspiracy
Urban Moving Systems and Detained Israelis
These suggested research links are a great place to start. If you study them, and follow the links imbedded in the content, in addition to further research, you will begin to have a better understanding of the absolute death grip Israeli influence has on the United States. You’ll also discover that this influence is not sentimental but rather criminal and treasonous to the fullest extent. I recommend that you print the content within these links as soon as possible so that you have a hard copy for future reference.
Of all the stories about an Israeli connection to 9/11, the Muckraker Report believes that the story of the Urban Moving Systems and the five Israelis detained on 9/11 is related to what was overheard at the Gomel Chesed Cemetery in October 2000.
As reported by Scott Da Vault for What Really Happened, ‘an employee of Urban Moving Systems, who would not give his name, said the majority of his co-workers were Israelis and were joking on the day of the attacks. (September 11, 2001) The employee said, ‘I was in tears, and these guys (Israelis) were joking, and that bothered me.’ These guys (Israelis) were like, “Now America knows what we go through.”
In October 2000, at the Gomel Chesed Cemetery, a former IDF member and veteran of the Yom Kippur War overheard, in Hebrew:
“The Americans will learn what it is to live with terrorists after the planes hit the twins in September.”
In closing, here are some additional quotes to consider carefully.
I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing – although that was part of it – by a sovereign government…It will become public at some point when it’s turned over to the archives, but that’s 20 or 30 years from now.”
--Senator Graham (FL) as quoted in Senator: At Least One Foreign Country Assisted the 9/11 Terrorists
"While I agree with you, if I say anything about US geopolitical interests with Israel, I might as well clean off my desk."
-- Unnamed reporter as quoted in American Media Censorship and Israel
"Investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying ... is considered career suicide."
-- Carl Cameron, as quoted in The Spies Who Came In From The Art Sale
"Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."
-- US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring and its connections to 9-11.
http://www.iht. com/articles/ 2009/03/05/ opinion/edmoon. php
No crime more brutal
By Ban Ki Moon
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Seldom have I been as shocked and saddened than by what I saw recently in the eastern Congo. There, I met a young woman - a girl, really, just 18 years old. She told me this story.
One day, toward the end of last year while working with other women in a field near her village of Nyamilima, in North Kivu, armed men appeared. They were soldiers, in uniform, who began shooting. The girl tried to flee but was caught by four men. Thus she became a victim of that most brutal of crimes. A group of women found her, near-dead, and took her to a local clinic.
I met her in a hospital in Goma, the provincial capital of the eastern Congo. As a result of the violence against her, she had developed fistula - a rupture of the walls of the vagina, bladder and rectum that renders victims incontinent and prone to infection and disease. It is a traumatic injury of a sort rarely seen in the developed world, except in association with the most difficult childbirths. But in Congo, where rape has become a weapon of war, it is almost commonplace.
Her doctors at the hospital, HEAL Africa, see such cases every day. On the Saturday that I visited, 10 surgeries for fistula were scheduled. Last year, the clinic provided medical treatment to roughly 4,800 victims of sexual violence, nearly half of them children. The numbers are even higher at the PANZI Hospital in South Kivu, according its director, Denis Mukwege, whom I met recently in New York.
The young woman I met was among the luckier ones, if that word can be used to describe such grim circumstances. Surgeons can repair her wounds. But can they heal her soul? She suffers not only from physical injury. She also bears the curse of stigma. She has been ostracized from her village and family, all in the name of a false sense of shame. She faces a very difficult future entirely alone.
Words failed me, hearing of these terrible tragedies. But if it was hard to express the full dimension of my feelings, and I had no such trouble giving voice to my anger. I raised the issue, very strongly, with President Joseph Kabila when we met earlier that morning. I told him that the chief weapon in combating sexual violence is the political will of a leader.
After my visit to HEAL Africa, I also spoke forcefully to the commander of the Congolese forces in the eastern Congo, telling him all that I had heard. I said the same to the governor, the deputy governor, the chief of police and the head of the provincial parliament, as well as other local authorities. I spoke about it again the next day, in Kigali, with Rwandan President Paul Kagame, whose army has just completed a joint military operation with Congo against rebel militias operating in the region.
In short, I spoke about it to everyone I met - and I will keep doing so. Sexual violence against women is a crime against humanity. It violates everything the United Nations stands for. Its consequences go beyond the visible and immediate. Death, injury, medical costs and lost employment are but the tip of an iceberg. The impact on women and girls, their families, their communities and their societies in terms of shattered lives and livelihoods is beyond calculation.
It is sometimes said that women are weavers and men, too often, are warriors. Women bear and care for our children. In much of the world they plant the crops that feed us. They weave the fabric of our societies. Violence against women is thus an attack on all of us, on the very foundation of civilization.
Far too often these crimes go unpunished. Perpetrators walk free. UN peacekeepers in the country performed heroically in protecting civilians during the recent fighting, to the maximum of our capabilities. Of course, they themselves must be above reproach. We, too, have had cases of violence against women within our ranks, in Congo and elsewhere. In each instance we held those responsible to account.
I left Goma encouraged. The situation on the ground is improving. Earlier this year, one large rebel group agreed to disband and has begun to integrate into the national army. The government's joint military operation with Rwanda, completed during my visit, has succeeded in driving another major rebel group away from civilian centers. Our task is to help consolidate these gains. If the fighting in eastern Congo stops, or significantly diminishes, the country's roughly 1.3 million refugees can return home in security and, with UN assistance, begin to rebuild their lives. Acts of violence such as those committed against so many women will become less frequent. Perhaps one day they will end altogether.
This must be our goal. It is fitting that this Sunday, March 8, marks International Women's Day. It is an occasion to speak out, loudly.
Violence against women cannot be tolerated, in any form, in any circumstance, by any political leader or any government. The time to change is now. Let our voices be heard.
Ban Ki Moon is the secretary general of the United Nations.
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