Bogeyman - The Corporate Media Buries Hugo

Death of a Bogeyman - The Corporate Media Buries Hugo Chavez

by David Edwards - Media Lens

Following the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez on March 5, the BBC reported from the funeral:

'More than 30 world leaders attended the ceremony, including Cuban President Raul Castro, Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.

'A message was read out from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.'

A rogues' gallery of the West's 'bad guys', in other words. To the side of the main article, the BBC quietly noted that, in fact, 'Most Latin American and Caribbean Presidents' attended the funeral, not just the Bond villains.

Following the same theme, a BBC article appeared beneath a grim photo montage of Osama bin Laden, Chávez, Kim Jong-il, Muammar Gaddafi, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein. The report asked: 'Is the era of the anti-American bogeymen at an end?'

Like many independent nationalists, Chávez was not 'anti-American', although he was anti-empire. US foreign policy, on the other hand, was certainly anti-Chávez, 'variously portrayed as a six-times elected champion of the people or a constitution-fiddling demagogue', the BBC piece noted.

Similar 'balance' was offered by the Guardian's Rory Carroll, lead author of the newspaper's Venezuelan coverage between 2006-2012:

'To the millions who revered him – a third of the country, according to some polls – a messiah has fallen, and their grief will be visceral. To the millions who detested him as a thug and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance.'

Fair comment, one might think, until we try to imagine a UK journalist writing anything comparable to the second sentence in response to the death of a US president or UK prime minister.

And yet, unlike so many US and UK leaders of recent times, Chávez did not invade nations, overthrow governments, commit mass murder, mass torture, or mass starvation through sanctions. Indeed, in his years as president from 1999-2013 he was not credibly accused of a single political murder.

If it is to be considered fair, condemnation of Chávez should be proportionate to the extent of his alleged crimes and consistent with the level of condemnation directed at US-UK leaders' far worse crimes. If Chávez gets much more for doing far less, we are in the realm of propaganda, not journalism.

To be consistent, then, a senior Guardian journalist should respond to the death of George H.W. or George W. Bush, for example, with something along these lines:

'To the tens or hundreds of millions who detested him as a mass murdering and torturing thug, war criminal and charlatan, it will be occasion to bid, vocally or discreetly, good riddance.'

Fairness also requires that reporters take account of the fact that recent US presidents and UK prime ministers have not had to govern small countries in the face of political, military and economic attacks - including guerrilla warfare, outright invasion, economic strangulation and terrorism - launched, over decades, by a global superpower.

In 1928, Venezuela was the world's leading oil exporter. To achieve its goal of 'economic hegemony in Venezuela', Stephen Rabe noted, the US 'actively supported the vicious and venal regime of Juan Vincente Gómez'. (Rabe, The Road To Opec, University of Texas Press, 1982)

Noam Chomsky supplied further background:

'From World War II, in Venezuela the US followed the standard policy of taking total control of the military "to expand U.S. political and military influence in the Western Hemisphere and perhaps help keep the U.S. arms industry vigorous"...

'The Kennedy Administration increased its assistance to the Venezuelan security forces for "internal security and counterinsurgency operations against the political left"...' (Chomsky, Year 501, Verso, 1993, pp.170-171)

In 1991, Chomsky described the Latin American political context out of which Chávez emerged:

'... any popular effort to overthrow the brutal tyrannies of the oligarchy and the military is met with murderous force, supported or directly organized by the ruler of the hemisphere. Ten years ago, there were signs of hope for an end to the dark ages of terror and misery, with the rise of self-help groups, unions, peasant associations, Christian base communities, and other popular organizations that might have led the way to democracy and social reform. This prospect elicited a stern response by the United States and its clients, generally supported by its European allies, with a campaign of slaughter, torture, and general barbarism that left societies "affected by terror and panic," "collective intimidation and generalized fear" and "internalized acceptance of the terror," in the words of a Church-based Salvadoran human rights organization. Early efforts in Nicaragua to direct resources to the poor majority impelled Washington to economic and ideological warfare, and outright terror, to punish these transgressions by destroying the economy and social life.'

In the Independent, Owen Jones provided a rare, honest glimpse of Venezuelan politics in 1989:

'With gas subsidies removed, petrol prices soared, and impoverished Venezuelans took to the streets. Soldiers mowed protesters down with gunfire. Up to 3,000 died, a horrifying death toll up there with the Tiananmen Square massacre - in a country with a population 43 times smaller.

'It was his abortive coup attempt against Pérez's murderous, rampantly corrupt government in 1992 that launched Chávez to prominence.'

These historical facts are filtered out of corporate media both designed and evolved to sell the state-corporate system as fundamentally benign. Because there is minimal popular awareness of the United States' ruthless subjugation of Latin America, Chávez's involvement in a failed coup can be portrayed as an outrage by Western journalists, as if the attempt had been made under contemporary European political conditions. Owen's is the only example we could find of a UK press article containing the words 'Chávez', 'Pérez' and 'massacre'.

In a BBC video report, 'Life of people's hero and villain,' James Robbins commented over footage showing two injured women and one blood-soaked man all in civilian clothes:

'This is how Hugo Chávez originally burst onto the world stage. In 1992, as an army colonel, he led a military coup, trying and failing to grab power after decades of more or less corrupt rule in Venezuela.'

In total, 14 soldiers were killed and 80 civilians injured. For the BBC, then, the significant violence began with Chávez and his coup - no mention was made of the earlier government massacre of 3,000 people described by Jones.
Fixing The Scales

Guardian assistant editor, Martin Kettle, wrote: 'it is a mistake to concentrate on Chávez's strutting and narcissistic populism to the exclusion of all the other aspects of his presidency. And it is even wrong to judge him solely as an abuser of human rights, a hoarder of power, an intimidator of opponents and a rejecter of international covenants and critics'.

Again, imagine the Guardian using comparable language to condemn abuses of human rights, intimidation of opponents and rejection of international covenants by Reagan, Bush, Blair, Obama or Cameron the day after their death.

Kettle's reference to 'Chávez's strutting and narcissistic populism' contrasts starkly with American economist Mark Weisbrot's observation that 'once [Chávez] got control of the oil industry, his government reduced poverty by half and extreme poverty by 70 per cent.

'Millions of people also got access to health care for the first time, and access to education also increased sharply, with college enrolment doubling and free tuition for many. Eligibility for public pensions tripled.

'He kept his campaign promise to share the country's oil wealth with Venezuela's majority, and that will be part of his legacy.'

Compare, also, statistical analysis of Chávez's performance supplied by the Centre For Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), co-directed by Weisbrot, with the BBC version of events.

The BBC graph, 'Chavez's Venezuela – the key figures,' shows a damning, steep rise in the 'Poverty headcount' of 'People living on 2% a day' between 2001-2003. It also depicts a steep fall in oil production from 2000-2003. CEPR, by contrast, observes:

'From 1999-2003, the government did not control the state oil company; in fact, it was controlled by his opponents, who used it to try to overthrow the government, including the devastating oil strike of 2002-2003. For that reason, a better measure of economic growth under the Chávez government would start after it got control over the state oil company, and therefore the economy.'

CEPR shows poverty and extreme poverty dropping sharply after 2003.

Returning to Kettle's analysis in the Guardian, we can locate a deeper bias in his evaluation of Chávez's record:

'The reality is that Chávez's career is not so easily weighed. How does one balance the championing of the poor or the regional inspiration against the persecution of journalism and the judiciary or the embrace of Iranian theocrats and Bashar al-Assad?'

As discussed, even before considering the credibility of the specific claims, we simply must add to Chávez's side of the scales the reality of a region 'where any popular effort to overthrow the brutal tyrannies of the oligarchy and the military is met with murderous force, supported or directly organized by the ruler of the hemisphere'.

About this, Kettle had nothing to say, beyond dismissing the issue out of hand:

'He [Chávez] once claimed that the lesson he drew from Allende's Chile was the need to defend the socialist revolution with arms. In fact this was typical bravado. The real lesson was to win and hold a majority. Allende won one election with 36% support and died from bullet wounds as his palace was stormed by the armed forces.'

The annihilation of inconvenient history allowed Kettle to use Allende as an example for his argument, when in fact it strongly supports Chávez's case. On October 16, 1970, a secret cable from CIA headquarters to the CIA station chief in Santiago, Chile, read:

'It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup... prior to October 24. But efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [U.S. government] and American hand be well hidden.'

The US finally succeeded in overthrowing Allende in 1973. The US instigated a similar attempt to remove Chávez in 2002.

Kettle's claim that Chávez persecuted journalism is simply false. In fact, '94 per cent of the TV that is seen by Venezuelans is not pro-government'. Five of seven major national newspapers support the opposition – only one is sympathetic to the government.

In 2007, Western media made much of the fact that the Venezuelan government had refused to renew the broadcasting license of the RCTV station. The Los Angeles Times reported that RCTV had initially focused on providing entertainment:

'But after Chávez was elected president in 1998, RCTV shifted to another endeavour: ousting a democratically elected leader from office.' (Bart Jones, 'Hugo Chávez versus RCTV - Venezuela's oldest private TV network played a major role in a failed 2002 coup,' Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2007)

The US-backed attempt came in 2002. On April 13, 2002, RCTV's Marcel Granier and other media moguls met in the Miraflores palace to offer their support to the country's new dictator, Pedro Carmona, who immediately demolished Venezuela's democratic institutions - eliminating the Supreme Court, the National Assembly and the Constitution. RCTV news director Andres Izarra later testified at National Assembly hearings on the coup attempt that he had received clear orders from superiors at the station:

'Zero pro-Chávez, nothing related to Chávez or his supporters... The idea was to create a climate of transition and to start to promote the dawn of a new country.' (Bart Jones. For details, see our media alert)

The 'response of the markets' to the coup, 'approached euphoria', OECD economist Javier Santiso reported. The Caracas stock exchange registered huge gains, collapsing when Chávez was returned to power. In an unprecedented move, the International Monetary Fund 'had also provided immediate offers of aid to the coup regime', Chomsky notes. (Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects, Hamish Hamilton, 2010, p.113 and p.79)

End Of An Illusion - Divisive, Egotistical, Controversial

The Guardian's obituary commented:

'The debate continued as to whether Chávez could fairly be described as a dictator, but a democrat he most certainly was not. A hero to many, especially among the poor, for his populist social programmes, he assiduously fomented class hatred and used his control of the judiciary to persecute and jail his political opponents, many of whom were forced into exile.

'Internationally, Chávez posed as an anti-imperialist and lavished aid on ideological allies. Venezuela would, he claimed, play a vital role in saving the planet from the evils of capitalism. In a notorious speech to the UN general assembly in 2006, he called US president George W Bush "the devil", claiming the podium still smelled of sulphur. It went down well in some quarters, but economic failure at home and the cosy relations he had enjoyed with dictators such as Robert Mugabe and Muammar Gaddafi would ultimately limit his appeal, even on the international left.'

Compare the tone and content with the Guardian's obituary of Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz from 2011:

'People who knew Sultan praised his "strategic vision, the capacity to think big", in particular after the 1973/74 oil price rises. Nevertheless, he had his critics. One analyst said that he presided over "the most colossal amount of money, in proportion to the size of a country's economy, ever poured down the barrel of a gun".'

And:

'Sultan had a reputation for a fierce temper but his habit of working deep into the night won him the nickname of "bulbul" – nightingale. He was both a conservative and political moderate. "Sultan," wrote Holden, "whose vigour on the couch [he had 32 children by 10 wives] was a cause for even more concern and respect, had proved a stern, tough and headstrong character."'

'The kingdom', it seems, 'is ruled by a frail gerontocracy.' No mention, here, of the fact that a democrat the Crown Prince most certainly was not.

Apparently without irony, the BBC's John Sweeney commented of Venezuela:

'The country should be a Saudi Arabia by the sea; instead the oil money has been pissed away by foolish adventurism and unchecked corruption.'

In the Guardian, Simon Tisdall wrote under the cheerful title: 'Death of Hugo Chávez brings chance of fresh start for US and Latin America.'

Tisdall lamented 'Washington's historical neglect of Latin America' - again, apparently with a straight face.

The Independent reported, 'The death of one of Latin America's most egotistical, bombastic and polarising leaders.'

Was Chávez more 'egotistical' and 'polarising' than Bush, Blair, Obama, Cameron? Are they ever described this way in news reports?

The BBC wrote of 'Venezuela's charismatic and controversial president.'

Although Bush, Blair, Cameron and co are no strangers to controversy, it is impossible to imagine the BBC writing of 'America's controversial president, Barack Obama.'

For the Telegraph, Chávez was 'one of the region's most popular, yet divisive leaders'. For the Guardian, 'the much-loved, but also divisive, leader'. For the Independent's David Usborne, he was 'divisive in his political life'. An Independent editorial observed as 'one of the world's more colourful, charismatic and divisive political leaders passes into history'.

The editorial's title read: 'Hugo Chávez - an era of grand political illusion comes to an end.' This of a leader who had reduced poverty by half, having sparked a regional move towards greater independence from the ruthless superpower to the North. The editorial continued:

'Mr Chávez was no run-of-the-mill dictator. His offences were far from the excesses of a Colonel Gaddafi, say. What he was, more than anything, was an illusionist – a showman who used his prodigious powers of persuasion to present a corrupt autocracy fuelled by petrodollars as a socialist utopia in the making. The show now over, he leaves a hollowed-out country crippled by poverty, violence and crime. So much for the revolution.'

For the oligarch-owned Independent, then, Chávez – who won 15 democratic elections, including four presidential elections - was a dictator.

For The Economist, Chávez was 'as reckless with his health as with his country's economy and its democracy... A majority of Venezuelans may eventually come to see that Mr Chávez squandered an extraordinary opportunity for his country.'

Perhaps the millions of people mourning his death will one day see the sense coming out of London and Washington.

It is instructive to compare the opening and closing sections of the BBC's obituaries on Chávez and Ronald Reagan.

The BBC's piece on Chávez began:

'A tough and charismatic leader, Hugo Chávez divided opinion both at home and abroad.

'To his many supporters he was the reforming president whose idiosyncratic brand of socialism defeated the political elite and gave hope to the poorest Venezuelans.

'His strident criticism of the United States won him many friends among the "pink tide" of political leaders in Latin America and he effectively used his country's vast oil reserves to boost Venezuela's international clout.

'But to his political opponents he was the worst type of autocrat, intent on building a one-party state and ruthlessly clamping down on any who opposed him.'

The obituary of Ronald Reagan began:

'Ronald Reagan, who has died aged 93, became the 40th president of the United States in 1980 at the age of 69, the oldest man elected to the office.

'During his eight years in the White House he left his mark on the lives of millions of Americans, and his presidency came to define an era.

'His origins were humble...'

The Chávez piece concluded:

'It was like talking to two contrary men, Garcia Marquez wrote.

'"One to whom inveterate luck has granted the chance to save his country. The other, an illusionist, who could go down in history as just another despot."'

The Reagan piece concluded:

'More of a figurehead than a strong leader with a grasp for detail, he was, nevertheless, the best communicator the White House had ever had and, for a while, made America feel good about itself again.

'Five years after leaving office he wrote an open letter to the American people. In it, he said: "I have recently been told I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease... I now begin a journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life."'

The bias is remarkable even before we consider the issue of crimes against humanity. Reagan's eight years in office (1981-89) resulted in a vast bloodbath as Washington funnelled money, weapons and other supplies to client dictators and right wing death squads across Central America. The death toll was horrific: more than 70,000 political killings in El Salvador, more than 100,000 in Guatemala, and 30,000 killed in the US Contra war waged against Nicaragua. Journalist Allan Nairn described it as: 'One of the most intensive campaigns of mass murder in recent history.' (Nairn, Democracy Now, June 8, 2004)

Analyst Chalmers Johnson wrote that 'the Reagan years [were] the worst decade for Central America since the Spanish conquest'. (Quoted, Milan Rai, War Plan Iraq, Verso, 2002, p.29. See our alerts: 'Reagan: Visions of the Damned,' Part 1 and Part 2)

Conclusion – The 'Dangerous' Leaders?

What lies behind the Western media's obsession with Chávez? Why the extreme hostility and bias? A clue was provided by the Guardian when it observed that Venezuela is sitting on 'The world's biggest oil reserves'.

In discussing Chávez, Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, summed up the reality:

'He applied the huge increase in revenues to massively successful poverty alleviation via social programmes, housing and education.

'The western states of course do everything to stop developing countries doing this, on behalf of the multinationals who control the politicians. They threaten (and I am an eye-witness) aid cancellation, disinvestment and trade sanctions. They work to make you a political pariah (just watch the media on Chávez today). They secretly sponsor, bankroll and train your opponents. The death of such "dangerous" leaders is a good outcome for them, as in Allende or Lumumba.

'Chávez faced them down. There are millions of people in Venezuela whose hard lives are a bit better and have hope for the future because of Chávez. There are billionaires in London and New York who have a few hundred million less each because of Chávez. Nobody can deny the truth of both those statements.'

One of the great tasks of our time is to appreciate how these undeniable realities distort coverage right across the supposed corporate media 'spectrum'. Our ability to understand and respond to this problem is vital for the future, not just of Venezuela, but of all of us.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to the following journalists:

Martin Kettle at the Guardian
Email: martin.kettle@guardian.co.uk
Twitter: @martinkettle

Simon Tisdall at the Guardian
Email: simon.tisdall@guardian.co.uk

Steve Herrmann, editor of BBC News Online
Email: steve.herrmann@bbc.co.uk
Twitter: @BBCSteveH

Contact Media Lens: editor@medialens.org

Dissing the Dead: Canada on Chavez

Relentless disrespect to Venezuela and its departed president on CBC 

by Roger Annis | Rabble.ca

Just when you thought CBC's disrespectful and biased reporting of Venezuela on the occasion of the death on March 5 of President Hugo Chavez couldn’t get worse, it did.

All week on CBC Radio One, the network has been promoting a story on its Saturday morning newsmagazine Day Six arguing that Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution he led has fraudulently appropriated the political legacy of Simon Bolivar, the legendary leader of the anti-colonial struggle in Latin America of the late 1700s and early 1880s.

The source of the network's claim is a resident of France claiming to be a descendant of the Bolivar family. His name is Thor Halversson. He runs something called the 'Human Rights Foundation,' with an office in New York City and whose chairman is the Russian Garry Kasparov, the renowned former world chess champion and a political figure in Russia for many years now.

Day Six host Brent Bambury began his story by explaining that President Chavez's body will be embalmed and displayed "like Lenin's and Mao Tse Tung's." He went on to assert that the president claimed to have an "almost mystical" relation to the country's founding father, Bolivar.

Bambury pushes the theme of "mysticism" and Simon Bolivar with his first guest, journalist and author John Lee Anderson. The latter provides a brief and not uninformed commentary. It's not clear if he is aware of Day Six's apparent agenda.

The host concludes the short interview by asking if President Chavez went "too far" in the symbolism of Bolivar and was becoming "disconnected from reality." He presses Anderson to agree that Chavez will be revered by future generations of Venezuelans as a "saint."

Bambury then talks to Halversson, who says Simon Bolivar's -- "his ancestor's" -- legacy has been co-opted by President Chavez and the government and political movement he led. His description of present-day Venezuela is something out of cuckoo-land. He says that "most Venezuelans live on less than $1 per day" (making it a country poorer than Haiti!)

Venezuela's military, says Halversson, is "in the control of drug kingpins." President Chavez leaves the country in "a crisis of incalculable proportions."

It turns out that the "serious" side of the broadcast is almost as crazy. Bambury refers listeners to John Lee Anderson's latest New Yorker article, appearing in the January 28, 2013 print issue. Anderson writes in it, "After decades of neglect, poverty, corruption, and social upheaval, Caracas has deteriorated beyond all measure."

Anderson's 13-page article is titled, "Slumlord: What has Hugo Chávez wrought in Venezuela?" About half of it is about the "Tower of David" office complex begun during one of the corrupt, pro-imperialist governments preceding the successive presidencies of President Chavez beginning in 1998. The article seizes upon the fact the complex has been left uncompleted under Chavez and has become the home of a squatter community.

Day Six neglects to inform its followers that the Anderson article received a sharp rebuke from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Jim Naureckas of FAIR penned a rejoinder to Anderson on Jan. 25, 2013 in which he says that the Anderson story, "reads almost like a parody of corporate media coverage of an official enemy state."

Naureckas headlined his rejoinder, "Why Do Poor People Living in an Abandoned Skyscraper So Outrage the New Yorker?" (presumably referring to the magazine and not to Anderson).

"Weirdly, Anderson seems to feel genuine moral outrage at the fact that people have turned a useless ruin into a home."

"You'd be shocked to learn after reading the New Yorker piece that Venezuelans have done quite well economically under Chavez's administration, with per capita income rising 58 per cent since 1999. And as average income has risen, Venezuelan wealth has become markedly more equally distributed (Extra!, 12/12), so the gains for the poor have been even greater." (FAIR Blog, 12/13/12)

To make this bizarre story just a little more bizarre, although the Day Six website and the broadcast refer listeners to the Anderson article, it sits behind a New Yorker paywall and cannot be freely read.

Now, you would think researchers and editors at the CBC would pay attention to material published on FAIR and, in the interest of "fairness", if not good journalism, inform its listeners and readers of what it has to say. Why would it even broadcast such a poppycock story in the first place?

Alas, it turns out this story was de rigeur on CBC Radio this past week. As It Happens' story on March 5 consisted of an interview with a Venzuelan right-winger railing against what his country has become. The Current assembled a panel on March 6 of which two of three were right wingers and little time was available for the third panelist. Its website page on the story features a photo of a bald Hugo Chavez while he was undergoing treatment for cancer and introduced its story with this zinger: "In a country dominated by a cult of personality where information is not free…"

As It Happens made up for its misstep two days later with an interview with Tariq Ali. But host Carol Off couldn't resist arguing with him, saying Chavez "repressed his opposition and put people in jail without trials…" and suggesting he squandered the country's oil revenues by failing to build "infrastructure." Off gratuitously acknowledged the gains in social standing of the majority of Venezuela’s population but lamented that he did not do more "for those who didn't support him."

People who are concerned about political, economic and social conditions in post-earthquake Haiti will easily recognize in this Venezuela comic opera the same CBC misinformation network that has abandoned any consistent and in-depth coverage of that country (the occasional foray by As It Happens notwithstanding).



Roger Annis is a retired aerospace worker in Vancouver. He is a contributor to rabble.ca and maintains a blog focusing on news from Haiti.

Photo: Caridad

A Budget Alternative for Canada

CCPA releases Alternative Federal Budget 2013

National Office | Update: Projects & Initiatives - Alternative Federal Budget
March 11, 2013

Today, the CCPA releases the Alternative Federal Budget 2013: Doing Better Together. This year's AFB shows how growth-killing austerity can be replaced by a plan that strengthens the economy, leads to a better quality of life for all Canadians, and eliminates the deficit by 2016.

This year's Alternative Federal Budget:
reduces poverty and inequality by investing in child care, pharmacare, affordable housing, income supports, and post-secondary education, tackles the ongoing crisis for First Nations housing, drinking water, education, implements a long term, transparent and public plan for investments in infrastructure, creates 300,000 jobs, lowering the unemployment rate to 6% by 2014, and introduces a new top personal income tax bracket, closes the biggest tax loopholes, and introduces a withholding tax on tax havens.

The full budget document, a budget-in-brief, and infographics are available in both English and French.

For more, visit www.policyalternatives.ca/afb2013.

Obama as Evil Emperor

Obama's Evil Empire

by Sean Fenley

A thrilling scene took place recently with the United States Senate, playing host as its backdrop. Reichsmarchall Brennan Barack Obama’s kill-list aficionado, had to overcome a Mr. Smith-style filibuster. He had to do this in order to get the Attorney General to rescind his fatuous explanation, for why American citizens could be killed on US soil — with a predator drone. Only it wasn’t led by Jimmy Stewart this time around, but instead by the shifty junior Kentucky Senator Dr. Rand Paul. This particular fight of evil battling versus itself must go down in the history books — as one of the most classic examples of it — perhaps of all time. By this I am not referring to the good fight on the drones, for which Senator Paul deserves some plaudits/commendation, but the entire corpus/portfolio of work, as well as belief system of the junior Kentucky Senator.

Dr. Rand Paul is a man who had endorsed the rapacious asset stripper of the unholy, bestial, base and degenerate Bain Capital. The governor and asset stripper who stood against, so many of the views of Rand Paul’s father, such that one could easily fill an encyclopedia with. And so therefore I place this particular Dr. Paul as a neo-”libertarian”, because with a taste of power — which corrupts absolutely — he seems to have little of the principle that his father consistently, and perpetually had. (Though his father did at one point in his career throw the 9/11 Truth movement under the bus, a movement that he had ever so disingenuously ostensibly taken up the banner for, and wooed.) Whatever one thinks of some of the imbecilic, cretinous and/or nonsensical views and opinions, on many positions that Rand Paul’s father held; at least the father committed few, if any, of these egregious power-grabbing sins of the ravenously and fiendishly ambitious, and; moreover, deeply contumacious and froward son.

Nevertheless, the Mr. Smith-style filibuster was, anyway, as aforementioned a case of evil fighting against itself. It juxtaposed, the Wall Street Democrat/mascot Obama, versus the neo-libertarian of ideologue of the John Galt school. Does anyone anywhere (except those brain-dead, wantonly ignorant, tuned into to Faux News and such), any longer have any doubt as to what exists, at present, as the evil empire of this world? Do the last remaining folks who see Amerika as some kind of beacon, need it spelled out for them, a map, and/or a decoder ring too? Obama is a corporatist, what’s not on the page of the Constitution he extemporizes in his day to day activities/routines in furtherance of his abominable ends! And he can lead the so-called GWOT (Global War on Terrorism) with the most wretched of them, but when it comes to fighting the American plutocracy, and the radical austerity program of America’s far unhinged Reich-wing his entreaties are: absolutely feckless, weak and; for certainty, profoundly unsound too.

Obama is currently using another one of Paul Ryan’s deranged federal budget extrapolations, as something that he can “play off of” so to speak — or use as a foil — in order to make savage; pleasing to American barbarous uber-elites like Peter G. Petersen; and unneeded “entitlement” cuts. And so therefore maybe then he will go down as a pragmatist, and a “guy who can get things done” (in the duly, rightly, and properly recorded history books). Never mind that they might be ignoble and wholly repugnant things, apparently, just that he got them done, though. In my opinion Obama plans to meet the lunatic Ryan halfway. That way he won’t gouge the working and middle classes, as bad as a Tea Party Republican such as Paul Ryan shamelessly would! Nevertheless, Obama deserves shame for these utterly vulgar, iniquitous, and contemptible acts that he is plotting withal!

For shame Obama! I never bought your phony hope and change Madison Avenue construction, but; undoubtedly, you’ll be twisting the knife on so many who did! They believed your Pepsi Cola act and marketing campaign, notwithstanding, that you had much — if not mainly — duplicity planned for them after all! Instead, of socking it to Wall Street, and incarcerating those who perpetrated the crimes of the crash of 2008, you’ve largely left them off the hook, and are now coming for the common folks! With fangs gnashing, and finding a backbone where nay there has ever been one before!

The fact that Obama seems to relish a (sic) grand bargain on these hard-earned “entitlements” that so many do (or will) rely upon, is — there’s just no other way to put it — absolutely nuts. But as I’ve said Obama may be thinking of his place in history, rather than prioritizing any other scheme (or ruse), and this may be the driver for his unquestionably low-minded, Machiavellian current pursuits, and deeply inauspicious ends. The kill granny/cat food policies cannot be used self-interestedly, to create a legacy for the cruel-minded, prestige seeking, as well as vainglorious Obama! The 99% must come together again to fight these immoral, impertinent, wrongheaded and moreover wholly unethical aims!

Just as it took an unlikely hero to stop Obama’s rapacious advance in killing Americans (on US soil) with drones, there can also be heroes to emerge to confront Obama’s voracious pickaxing/whittling away at the veritably indispensable social safety net! Which is already one of the most tightfisted, miserly, and Lilliputian of them all in the Western world! And so thusly, it cannot be whittled away/pickaxed any more! Particularly, in advancement of President Obama’s myopic, short-sighted and self-aggrandizing disreputable goals! A backstab that he finds imperative in order to secure himself a place in the protruding, and commonly recollected contrivances of the preeminent historical tomes. Though, probably even by the hagiographers, who love nothing more than to be obsequious to, and to sniff the potentate’s throne; Obama should know it will only be for infamy, and for evil that he will ultimately go down! And so therefore his current praxis/strategy is without question; undeniably, one that must be fully, utterly, and entirely rebuked/curtailed.

 

 

Sean Fenley is an independent progressive, who would like to see some sanity brought to the creation and implementation of current and future, US military, economic, foreign and domestic policies. He has been published by a number of websites, and publications throughout the alternative media.

 

Castro: "We Have Lost Our Best Friend"

We have lost our best friend

by Fidel Castro Ruz - Reflections

THE best friend the Cuban people have had throughout their history died on the afternoon of March 5. A call via satellite communicated the bitter news. The significance of the phrase used was unmistakable.

Although we were aware of the critical state of his health, the news hit us hard. I recalled the times he joked with me, saying that when both of us had concluded our revolutionary task, he would invite me to walk by the Arauca river in Venezuelan territory, which made him remember the rest that he never had.

The honor befell us to have shared with the Bolivarian leader the same ideas of social justice and support for the exploited. The poor are the poor in any part of the world.

"Let Venezuela give me a way of serving her: she has in me a son," proclaimed National Hero José Martí, the leader of our independence, a traveler who, without cleansing himself of the dust of the journey, asked for the location of the statue of Bolívar.

Martí knew the beast because he lived in its entrails. Is it possible to ignore the profound words he voiced in an inconclusive letter to his friend Manuel Mercado the day before he died in battle? "…I am in daily danger of giving my life for my country and duty – for I understand that duty and have the intention of carrying it out – the duty of preventing the United States from extending through the Antilles as Cuba gains its independence, and from falling, with that additional strength, upon our lands of America. All that I have done thus far, and will do, is for this purpose. I have had to work silently and somewhat indirectly because, there are certain things which, in order to attain them, have to remain concealed…."

At that time, 66 years had passed since the Liberator Simón Bolívar wrote, "…the United States would seem to be destined by fate to plague the Americas with miseries in the name of freedom."

On January 23, 1959, 22 days after the revolutionary triumph in Cuba, I visited Venezuela to thank its people and the government which assumed power after the Pérez Jiménez dictatorship, for the dispatch of 150 rifles at the end of 1958. I said at that time:

"…Venezuela is the homeland of the Liberator, where the idea of the union of the peoples of America was conceived. Therefore, Venezuela must be the country to lead the union of the peoples of America; as Cubans, we support our brothers and sisters in Venezuela.

"I have spoken of these ideas not because I am moved by any kind of personal ambition, or even the ambition of glory, because, at the end of the day, ambitions of glory remain a vanity, and as Martí said, ‘All the glory of the world fits into a kernel of corn.’

"And so, upon coming here to talk in this way to the people of Venezuela, I do so thinking honorably and deeply, that if we want to save America, if we want to save the freedom of each one of our societies that, at the end of the day, are part of one great society, which is the society of Latin America; if it is that we want to save the revolution of Cuba, the revolution of Venezuela and the revolution of all the countries on our continent, we have to come closer to each other and we have to solidly support each other, because alone and divided, we will fail."

That is what I said on that day and today, 54 years later, I endorse it!

I must only include on that list the other nations of the world which, for more than half a century, have been victims of exploitation and plunder. That was the struggle of Hugo Chávez.

Not even he himself suspected how great he was.

¡Hasta la victoria siempre, unforgettable friend!



Fidel Castro Ruz
March 11, 2013

EU's Hypocrisy on Occupation Outrages

Funding and Denouncing Israeli Occupation: Hypocritical EU Must Make a Stand

by Ramzy Baroud - PalestineChronicle.com

More bad news emerged from Israel in recent weeks. Indeed, good news is seldom associated with Israel and its military occupation and institutionalized discrimination and mistreatment of Palestinians. But now even those international organizations that are often supportive of Israel's militancy seem to be joining the consensus that Tel Aviv is on an irrevocably perilous course.

Few international law experts would defend Israel's fervent settlement-building on occupied Palestinian land. Yet the Western powers, led by the United States, have brought little pressure to bear on Israel to cease its illegal activities.

In fact, without US and European funding it would have been nearly impossible for Israel to build settlements and transfer over half a million Israelis over the years to live on stolen Palestinian land, in violation of numerous international laws including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Worse still, trade with European and other countries sustained these illegal settlements, allowing them to flourish at the expense of Palestinians who have suffered massive ethnic cleansing campaigns since 1967. But at last EU diplomats in east Jerusalem and the West Bank are speaking out in unequivocal terms.

In a report released at the end of last month, the diplomats declared that "settlement construction remains the biggest single threat to the two-state solution. It is systematic, deliberate and provocative."

The report called on EU states "not to support … research, education and technological co-operation" with settlements and to "discourage" investing in Israeli companies that operate in the occupied territories.

Expectedly, the report is non-binding. And even if such recommendations are considered, Israel and its EU friends and lobbyists are likely to find loopholes that would deprive any EU action of substance and vigor.

Without civil society action focused on turning up the heat on European governments, especially die-hard supporters of Israel such as the British government, business with Israel is most likely to carry on as usual.

Not only is Israel flouting international law but the supposed guardians of international law are the very ones that are empowering Israel in carrying out its illegal acts, disempowering and bankrupting Palestinians.

Last January an Oxfam report said that the Palestinian economy, which is currently in utter disarray, could generate urgently needed income - $1.5 billion to be exact - if Israel eased its restrictions in the Jordan Valley alone. But without suitable access to their own land and to water sources, Palestinians in the valley continue to struggle while the settlers are thriving.

Although the US government is well known to have done everything in its power to defend Israel at any cost and ensure Israel's superiority and military edge over all of its neighbors, the EU has falsely acquired a more balanced reputation. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In a recent report the Palestinian rights group al-Haq emphasized that trading in produce grown in settlements had "directly contributed to the growth and viability of settlements by providing an essential source of revenue that allows them to thrive."

The reported value of total EU trade with illegal Israeli settlements amounts to approximately $300 million a year. This may appear small compared with the $39bn of total trade between the EU and Israel reported in 2011, for example, but it does mean that "the EU has some room for leverage given it is Israel's largest trade partner, and it receives some 20 per cent of total Israeli exports," as pointed out by Dalia Hatuqa writing for al-Monitor.

The fact is that Europe is ultimately taking part in the subjugation of the Palestinians by funding Israel's illegal occupation and its massively growing settler population. And no amount of diplomatic "recommendations" or newspeak can alter that fact.

But settlement growth cannot be considered in a vacuum. It makes no sense to talk about boycotting settlements while supporting the main organs that ordered or sanctioned the illegal settlements in the first place.

So differentiating between products made in Israel or those made in the settlements is absurd at best.

The settlers are not self-sustaining autonomous outposts. They are considered part and parcel of the so-called Israel proper. In the eyes of the Israeli government there is little distinction between settlers from Ma'ale Adumim or residents of Tel Aviv.

Yigal Palmore of the Israeli Foreign Ministry responded to the EU report in withering terms.

"A diplomat's mission is to build bridges and bring people together, not to foster confrontation. The EU consuls have clearly failed in their mission," he said.

Nothing is random in Israeli planning. As is already the case in various parts of the occupied territories, Palestinians are becoming an unwanted presence on their own land.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's has decided to develop more settlements in an area known as E1, which is set to cut off east Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.

There is unlikely to be a turning back from the construction plans, which include the building of 3,000 settler homes in the land corridor near Jerusalem.

Israel is unrelenting and seems to have no regard for international law. It is emboldened in its actions by the weakness of its neighbors, the unhindered backing of its friends, and the gutlessness of its critics, who all too often are consumed in intellectual tussles over the boundaries of language and proper ways to frame the discourse.

None of this wrangling is of any concern to Israel, which is merely winning time to achieve its own harrowingly ugly version of apartheid.

For those who still feel uneasy with this provocative term, consider the latest Israeli transport ministry's initiative. It has designated bus line No 210, which shuttles cheap Palestinian laborers to and from the West Bank, to be "Palestinian only."

Of course this is not an isolated policy but a continuation of a dreadful track record.

Bad news from Israel is likely to continue.

Almost every day there is a new disturbing development in Israeli practices against Palestinians. All too often this is merely met with feeble international criticism without any substantial action.

Civil society organizations and groups must tell their governments that enough is enough. While Israel should be held responsible for its own behavior, the EU and other countries should not finance the occupation while decrying the settlements. This hypocrisy can no longer be tolerated.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press).

Nature Lost: Man's Final Conquest

The Conquest of Nature - And What We’ve Lost

by Lewis H. Lapham - TomDispatch

[This essay will appear in "Animals," the Spring 2013 issue of Lapham's Quarterly. This slightly adapted version is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine.]

London housewife Barbara Carter won a “grant a wish” charity contest, and said she wanted to kiss and cuddle a lion. Wednesday night she was in a hospital in shock and with throat wounds. Mrs. Carter, forty-six, was taken to the lions’ compound of the Safari Park at Bewdley Wednesday. As she bent forward to stroke the lioness, Suki, it pounced and dragged her to the ground. Wardens later said, “We seem to have made a bad error of judgment.”

-- British news bulletin, 1976

Having once made a similar error of judgment with an Australian koala, I know it to be the one the textbooks define as the failure to grasp the distinction between an animal as an agent of nature and an animal as a symbol of culture. The koala was supposed to be affectionate, comforting, and cute. Of this I was certain because it was the creature of my own invention that for two weeks in the spring of 1959 I’d been presenting to readers of the San Francisco Examiner prior to its release by the Australian government into the custody of the Fleishacker Zoo.

The Examiner was a Hearst newspaper, the features editor not a man to ignore a chance for sure-fire sentiment, my task that of the reporter assigned to provide the advance billing. Knowing little or nothing about animals other than what I’d read in children’s books or seen in Walt Disney cartoons, I cribbed from the Encyclopedia Britannica (Phascolarctos cinereus, ash-colored fur, nocturnal, fond of eucalyptus leaves), but for the most part I relied on A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, the tales of Brer Rabbit, and archival images of President Teddy Roosevelt, the namesake for whom the teddy bear had been created and stuffed, in 1903 by a toy manufacturer in Brooklyn.

Tomgram: Lewis Lapham, Going the Way of the Great Auk

If you walk through the painting collection of a great museum like the Metropolitan in New York City, heading from the twentieth century into the past, one thing may strike you sooner or later: animals and birds, domestic and wild, appear ever more frequently on canvas. This, no doubt, reflects how much closer to nature and a wilder world we all once were. In this sense, my 1950s childhood in a great modern city was typical of how unnatural we had become. I was an only child and the closest I got to the animal kingdom was my dog. Jeff was the name I gave him, perhaps out of a desire for a younger brother, and I treated him accordingly. (Yes, I do now regret repeatedly tying his ears atop his head.)

Otherwise, I visited zoos, and that was about the only way I saw wild animals (regularly dozing in their cages), unless you count pigeons and rats. It’s not that you can’t find the wild in an urban setting, but who was looking then? Not me. Not until I was 12 and visited a friend who had a house in “the country” -- a somewhat suburbanized part of nearby Connecticut. There, while walking along a road, I saw a flash of red that stunned me. As it happened -- and how rare must this have been then -- my friend’s parents had a bird book and flipping through the pages I was amazed to discover that I had seen a male cardinal. I mean, who knew?

Cardinals are a common enough bird, quite visible in New York City’s parks if you wanted to look for them, but until then I hadn’t. I went back to school the next week and for Mrs. Casey’s class I wrote a little paper about that bird. Somewhere in the distant reaches of my closet, I still have it. Yes, I know now that a scarlet tanager makes a cardinal look almost colorless, but somehow that one flash of unexpected brilliance changed my relationship to the natural world. Jump a few years ahead and my best friend and I were sneaking out to Central Park on weekend days, especially in spring migration season. (The flyway goes over the city and if you’re there at just the right moment, exhausted, hungry birds drop like so many jewels into that park.) Members of the Audubon Society (who were indeed little old people in tennis sneakers back then, as I am now) would show us wonders: orchard orioles, black-throated blue warblers, red-eyed vireos, egrets, and night herons. Again, who knew?

This was, mind you, the single most secretive part of my childhood. Admit, in 1960, that you spent time looking at birds and you had just ensured yourself of being summarily drummed out of the corps of boys. So I kept it to myself, but I’ve never stopped looking. That one cardinal, that one glance, opened an urban wildness to me. New York City has undergone some rewilding in recent decades, but one day in this world of ours, those massive migrations, which still populate Central Park in the spring, may grow ever sparser. North American bird populations are significantly in decline, thanks to loss of habitat and also, it seems, climate change.

In his usual fabulous way, Lewis Lapham takes up his own -- and our -- already semi-extinct relations with the animal world and the threat of far larger kinds of extinction to come in his introduction to “Animals,” the spring issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, which, four times a year, brilliantly unites some of the most provocative and original voices in history around a single topic. (You can subscribe to it by clicking here.) TomDispatch thanks the editors of that journal for allowing us to offer an exclusive look at his piece, slightly adapted for this site. Tom

 

 The Conquest of Nature - And What We’ve Lost

by Lewis H. Lapham

Stouthearted, benevolent, and wise, the koala incoming from the Antipodes was the little friend of all the world, and on the day of its arrival at the airport, I was carrying roses wrapped in a cone of newsprint. The features editor had learned his trade in Hollywood in the 1940s, and he had in mind a camera shot of my enfolding a teddy bear in a warm and welcoming embrace. “Lost child found in the wilderness,” he had said. “Lassie comes home.” The koala didn’t follow script. Annoyed by the flashbulbs, clawing furiously at my head and shoulders, it bloodied my shirt and tie, shredded the roses, urinated on my suit and shoes.

The unpleasantness didn’t make the paper. The photograph was taken before the trouble began, and so the next morning in print, there we were, the koala and I, man and beast glad to see one another, the San Francisco Examiner’s very own Christopher Robin framed in the glow of an A-list fairy tale with Brer Rabbit, Teddy Roosevelt, and Winnie-the-Pooh, all for one and one for all as once had been our common lot in Eden.

The Pantomime of Brutes

Rumors and reports of human relations with animals are the world’s oldest news stories, headlined in the stars of the zodiac, posted on the walls of prehistoric caves, inscribed in the languages of Egyptian myth, Greek philosophy, Hindu religion, Christian art, our own DNA. Belonging within the circle of humankind’s intimate acquaintance until somewhere toward the end of the nineteenth century, animals appeared as both agents of nature and symbols of culture. Constant albeit speechless companions, they supplied energies fit to be harnessed or roasted, but they also were believed to possess qualities inherent in human beings, subject to the close observation of the ways in which man and beast both resembled and differed from one another.

Unable to deliver lectures, the lion and the elephant taught by example; so did the turtle, the wolf, and the ant. Aesop’s Fables, composed in the sixth century BC, accorded with the further researches of Aristotle, who, about 200 years later, in his History of Animals, set up the epistemological framework that for the next two millennia incorporated the presence of animals in the center ring of what became known as Western civilization:

“Just as we pointed out resemblances in the physical organs, so in a number of animals we observe gentleness or fierceness, mildness or cross temper, courage or timidity, fear or confidence, high spirits or low cunning... Other qualities in man are represented by analogous and not identical qualities; for instance, just as in man we find knowledge, wisdom, and sagacity, so in certain animals there exists some other natural potentiality akin to these.”

Other peoples in other parts of the world developed different sets of relations with animals worshipped as gods, but in the European theaters of operation, they served as teachers of both natural and political science. The more that was learned about their “analogous and not identical qualities,” the more fabulous they became. Virgil’s keeping of bees on his country estate in 30 BC led him in book four of the Georgics to admire their work ethic -- “At dawn they pour forth from the gates -- no loitering”; to applaud their sense of a public and common good -- “they share the housing of their city,/passing their lives under exalted laws”; to approve of their chastity -- “They forebear to indulge/in copulation or to enervate/their bodies in Venus’ ways.”

The studies of Pliny the Elder in the first century demonstrated to his satisfaction that so exceptional were the wonders of the animal kingdom that man by comparison “is the only animal that knows nothing and can learn nothing without being taught. He can neither speak, nor walk, nor eat, nor do anything without the prompting of nature, but only weep.”

To the scientific way of looking at animals adapted by the Greco-Roman poets and philosophers, medieval Christianity added the dimension of science fiction -- any and all agents of nature not to be trusted until or unless they had been baptized in the font of a symbol or herded into the cage of an allegory. In the illuminated pages of tenth-century bibles and the rose windows of Gothic cathedrals, the bee became a sign of hope, the crow and the goat both references to Satan, the fly indicative of lust, the lamb and the dove variant embodiments of Christ. Instead of remarking upon the extraordinary talents of certain animals, the holy fathers produced mythical beings, among them the dragon (huge, batwinged, fire breathing, barbed tail) and the unicorn (white body, blue eyes, the single horn on its forehead colored red at the tip).

The resurrection of classical antiquity in fifteenth-century Italy restored the emphasis on the observable correlation between man and beast. The anatomical drawings in Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks (of horses, swans, human cadavers) are works of art of a match with The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. He saw human beings as organisms among other organisms participant in the great chain of being, the various life forms merging into one another in their various compounds of air, earth, fire, and water. Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s 1566 portrait of a man’s head anticipates the conclusion reached in 1605 by the English bishop Joseph Hall: “Mankind, therefore, hath within itself his goats, chameleons, salamanders, camels, wolves, dogs, swine, moles, and whatever sorts of beasts: there are but a few men amongst men.”

The eighteenth-century naturalists shared with Virgil the looking to the animal kingdom for signs of good government. The Count of Buffon, keeper of the royal botanical garden for King Louis XV, recognized in 1767 the beaver as a master architect capable of building important dams, but he was even more impressed by the engineering of the beaver’s civil society, by “some particular method of understanding one another, and of acting in concert… However numerous the republic of beavers may be, peace and good order are uniformly maintained in it.”

Buffon was accustomed, as were Virgil and Leonardo, not only to the company of horses and bees but also to the sight and sound of ducks, cows, chickens, pigs, turtles, goats, rabbits, hawks. They supplied the bacon, the soup, and the eggs, but they also invited the question asked by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1836: “Who can guess… how much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?”

How the Animal World Lost Its License to Teach

Not much if the brutes are nowhere to be found. Over the course of the last two centuries, animals have become all but invisible in the American scheme of things, drummed out of the society of their myth-making companions, gone from the rural as well as the urban landscape. John James Audubon in 1813 on the shore of the Ohio River marveled at the slaughter of many thousands of wild pigeons by men amassed in the hundreds, armed with guns, torches, and iron poles. In 1880, on a Sioux reservation in the Dakota Territory, Luther Standing Bear could not eat of “the vile-smelling cattle” substituted for “our own wild buffalo” that the white people had been killing “as fast as possible.”

And as observers, they were not alone. Many others have noted the departure of animals from our human world and culture. Between 150,000 and 200,000 horses could, for example, be found in the streets of New York City in 1900, requiring the daily collection of five million pounds of manure. By 1912, their function as a means of transport had been outsourced to the automobile.

As with the carriage and dray horses, so also with the majority of mankind’s farmyard associates and nonhuman acquaintances. Out of sight and out of mind, the chicken, the pig, and the cow lost their licenses to teach. The modern industrial society emerging into the twentieth century transformed them into products and commodities, swept up in the tide of economic and scientific progress otherwise known as the conquest of nature.

Animals acquired the identities issued to them by man, became labels marketed by a frozen-food or meat-packing company, retaining only those portions of their value that fit the formula of research tool or cultural symbol -- circus or zoo exhibit, corporate logo or Hollywood cartoon, active ingredient in farm-fresh salmon or genetically modified beef.

It was 10 years after my meeting with the Australian koala that I was first introduced to an animal in a state of nature -- a gray langur (Semnopithecus entellus, golden fur, black face, fond of fruit and flowers). It was about two feet tall, very quick on its feet, one of 60 or 70 monkeys of various species wandering around the ashram of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the shore of the Ganges River, 128 miles north of New Delhi.

The Maharishi at the time (February 1968) was at the high-water mark of his fame as a guru, his science of Transcendental Meditation having captured the celebrity markets in Los Angeles, New York, and London, and that winter he was teaching the lesson of the yellow marigold to a select company of disciples, among them the four Beatles, who had made the journey from the decadent, materialist West in search of enlightened well-being in the spiritual East. The ashram was set in a forest of teak and sheesham trees at the base of the Himalayan escarpment, and again on assignment from the American press, I’d been advised by the editor of the Saturday Evening Post to listen for the voice of the cosmos under the roof of the world.

During my nearly three weeks on the ashram I learned nothing about the Beatles that wasn’t known to their fans, from the Maharishi little more than the fact that at the fifth level of realization, “Everything becomes hilarious.” But from the monkey I learned that it was somebody else -- not a pet or a little friend to all the world, not an allegory, a movie actor, or a laboratory experiment. Two days after my arrival I noticed it standing in a tree opposite the door to the small outbuilding (one room, whitewashed stone, no window) in which I’d been granted accommodation near the ashram’s lower gate. Another two days, and it was always there whenever I was coming or going, and it occurred to me that it was I who was being observed by the monkey, not the monkey who was being observed by me.

On the morning of the fifth day, I presented it with a slice of bread, late in the afternoon with half an orange. It accepted both offerings as a matter of course; no sign of acknowledgment, much less of appreciation or affection. My sense of its attitude was that I’d been slow to pick up on the custom of the country, and later that same evening one of the Maharishi’s principal subordinates, a saffron-robed monk by the name of Raghvendra, validated my impression as not wrong. In India, he said, the gray langur was sacred. Properly known as the Hanuman langur -- Hanuman being the name of the Hindu monkey god of healing and worship -- it was revered for its willingness to accompany sadhus on pilgrimages, and therefore enjoyed almost as many privileges as the cow, free to ransack food stalls, at liberty to plunder grain shops.

For whatever reason, its motives presumably mixed, the monkey for the next 10 days, attentively on post at the height of my right knee, accompanied me on the path to pure consciousness, a path on which I was careful to scatter crumbs of stale chocolate and shards of dry cheese. If I was listening to the Maharishi discuss Vishnu in the meeting hall, the monkey would be comfortably settled on the corrugated-tin roof; when meals were served on the terrace, where the disciples received their daily ration of rice, tea, and tasteless boiled vegetables, the monkey perched in the vine-trellised arbor behind the refectory table, on watch for the chance that I might send in its direction an overcooked carrot or a destabilized turnip.

When for the last time I walked out in the morning from the stone outbuilding at the bamboo gate, on the way to the ferry across the Ganges, the monkey wasn’t standing in its nearby tree. Possibly it understood that my time was up, that it had done all that could be done with a pilgrim who was slow to catch the drift and didn’t know the language. On the other hand, probably it didn’t. What was certain was that it didn’t care. It had moved on, gone somewhere else, grown bored by the sound of a voice clearly not the voice of the cosmos.

A Dearth of Animals, a Plague of Pets

The Renaissance scholar and essayist Michel de Montaigne toyed with a similar line of thought in 1576 by asking himself, “When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime for her more than she is to me?” The question placed Montaigne’s customary pillow of doubt under the biblical teaching that man had been made in God’s image, and thereby granted “dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and for every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

The claim to the throne of the universe on the part of what Montaigne called “the most vulnerable and frail of all creatures,” he regarded as vainglorious impudence, man dressing himself up in the robe of divinity, separating himself from “the horde of other creatures,” distributing to them “such portions of faculties and powers as he sees fit.” Amused by the presumption, Montaigne took the trouble to ask follow-up questions:

“How does he [man] know, by the force of his intelligence, the secret internal stirrings of animals? By what comparison between them and us does he infer the stupidity that he attributes to them?... It is a matter of guesswork whose fault it is that we do not understand one another; for we do not understand them any more than they do us. By this same reasoning they may consider us beasts, as we consider them.”

The American writer Henry Beston revisited the questions while walking on a beach at Cape Cod in the 1920s, watching constellations of shorebirds form and reform in “instant and synchronous obedience” to some sort of mysterious command. Astonished by the spiraling flight of what he likened to “living stars,” Beston understood that nonhuman creatures eluded the definitions made for them by man, that they could not be classified as mechanisms programmed by the master software designer in the sky to hop, growl, swim, glide, roar, nest, crawl, peep, mate.

“We need,” said Beston, “another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals... We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err... They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves within the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

At the turn of the twenty-first century, what remains of the once-upon-a-time fellowship incorporating man and beast has for the most part been reduced to the care and keeping of pets. Possibly to compensate for the rapid and permanent disappearance of global wilderness species, the numbers of pets in the United States have outpaced the entire human population south of the Potomac and west of the Mississippi -- 70 million dogs, 75 million cats, 5 million horses, God alone knows how many boxed reptiles and caged birds. That animals are still looked to for some form of instruction, believed to possess “analogous qualities” recognized by Aristotle as being “akin to sagacity,” is a proposition sustained by the large demand for documentaries exploring the jungles of Africa and by the fact that the Internet postings of unscripted cat videos draw bigger crowds than do the expensive mechanical dolls posed in the ritualized stagings of the Super Bowl.

For 2,500 years it has been known to the students of nature that the more one learns about animals, the more wonderful they become. The observation stands confirmed by the instruments of both science and art, but the animals are most instructively perceived when they are seen, as they were by Beston from the beach on Cape Cod, as other nations complete in themselves, “gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear.”

The environmental casualty reports filed from the four corners of the earth over the last two hundred years don’t leave much ground for argument on Montaigne’s question as to who is the beast and who is the man. Whether attempted by men armed with test tubes or bulldozers, the conquest of nature is a fool’s errand. However it so happens that the beasts manage to live not only at ease within the great chain of being but also in concert with the tides and the season and the presence of death, it is the great lesson they teach to humanity. Either we learn it, or we go the way of the great auk.

Lewis H. Lapham is editor of Lapham’s Quarterly, and a TomDispatch regular. Formerly editor of Harper’s Magazine, he is the author of numerous books, including Money and Class in America, Theater of War, Gag Rule, and, most recently, Pretensions to Empire. The New York Times has likened him to H.L. Mencken; Vanity Fair has suggested a strong resemblance to Mark Twain; and Tom Wolfe has compared him to Montaigne. This essay, slightly adapted for TomDispatch, introduces "Animals," the Winter 2013 issue of Lapham’s Quarterly, soon to be released at that website.

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Copyright 2013 Lewis Lapham

URGENT: BC Liberal Government's Proposed Forest Giveaway Bill Expected THIS WEEK - as soon as TOMORROW (March 12)!

Please FORWARD far and wide!

URGENT: BC Liberal Government's Proposed Forest Giveaway Bill Expected THIS WEEK - as soon as TOMORROW (March 12)!

SEND a MESSAGE RIGHT NOW to BC's politicians to rescind their TFL expansion bill at: www.BCForestMovement.com

Already over 2600 people have sent messages to BC's politicians - get your friends and family to do the same!

As soon as tomorrow, the BC Liberal government is expected to introduce a proposed new law, Bill 8 (Section 24), to expand Tree Farm Licences (TFL's) to give major companies exclusive logging rights over vast areas of public forest lands - to the detriment of conservation, communities, and First Nations.

The proposed bill could go through its critical 2nd reading THIS WEEK and as soon as TOMORROW.

Across BC, our old-growth forests and forestry jobs are endangered. PLEASE COME this Sat., Mar. 16 to our "PRE-ELECTION RALLY for ANCIENT FORESTS and BC FORESTRY JOBS" in Victoria to send the strongest message to BC's politicians - and recruit as many friends and family to attend! (11:30am Centennial Square, 12:00 noon Legislature, Victoria - see www.BCForestMovement.com for details) We have a first rate line-up of speakers.

Almost 1000 people are now pre-confirmed to attend Saturday's rally! Do so on our website at www.BCForestMovement.com or through Facebook at: www.facebook.com/events/576873939007340/

See more information on the BC Liberal government's proposed forest giveaway at:
http://www.ancientforestalliance.org/news-item.php?ID=585

THANK YOU for taking 1 minute of your time to speak up in defense of BC's ancient forests and sustainable forestry jobs!

- Ken Wu, TJ Watt, Joan Varley, Hannah Carpendale, Amanda Evans, Noah Schillo, Elissa Crouse
Ancient Forest Alliance

If the CIA Didn't Kill Chavez, They Weren't Doing Their Job

The Anti-Empire Report #114

by William Blum – Published March 11th, 2013

Hugo Chávez

I once wrote about Chilean president Salvador Allende:

Washington knows no heresy in the Third World but genuine independence. In the case of Salvador Allende independence came clothed in an especially provocative costume – a Marxist constitutionally elected who continued to honor the constitution. This would not do. It shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower is built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists” can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population. There could be only one thing worse than a Marxist in power – an elected Marxist in power.

There was no one in the entire universe that those who own and run “United States, Inc.” wanted to see dead more than Hugo Chávez. He was worse than Allende. Worse than Fidel Castro. Worse than any world leader not in the American camp because he spoke out in the most forceful terms about US imperialism and its cruelty. Repeatedly. Constantly. Saying things that heads of state are not supposed to say. At the United Nations, on a shockingly personal level about George W. Bush. All over Latin America, as he organized the region into anti-US-Empire blocs.

Long-term readers of this report know that I’m not much of a knee-reflex conspiracy theorist. But when someone like Chávez dies at the young age of 58 I have to wonder about the circumstances. Unremitting cancer, intractable respiratory infections, massive heart attack, one after the other … It is well known that during the Cold War, the CIA worked diligently to develop substances that could kill without leaving a trace. I would like to see the Venezuelan government pursue every avenue of investigation in having an autopsy performed.

Back in December 2011, Chávez, already under treatment for cancer, wondered out loud: “Would it be so strange that they’ve invented the technology to spread cancer and we won’t know about it for 50 years?” The Venezuelan president was speaking one day after Argentina’s leftist president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, announced she had been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. This was after three other prominent leftist Latin America leaders had been diagnosed with cancer: Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff; Paraguay’s Fernando Lugo; and the former Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

“Evo take care of yourself. Correa, be careful. We just don’t know,” Chávez said, referring to Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, both leading leftists.

Chávez said he had received words of warning from Fidel Castro, himself the target of hundreds of failed and often bizarre CIA assassination plots. “Fidel always told me: ‘Chávez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat … a little needle and they inject you with I don’t know what.” 1

When Vice President Nicolas Maduro suggested possible American involvement in Chávez’s death, the US State Department called the allegation absurd. 2

Several progressive US organizations have filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA, asking for “any information regarding or plans to poison or otherwise assassinate the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who has just died.”

I personally believe that Hugo Chávez was murdered by the United States. If his illness and death were NOT induced, the CIA – which has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders, many successfully 3 – was not doing its job.

When Fidel Castro became ill several years ago, the American mainstream media was unrelenting in its conjecture about whether the Cuban socialist system could survive his death. The same speculation exists now in regard to Venezuela. The Yankee mind can’t believe that large masses of people can turn away from capitalism when shown a good alternative. It could only be the result of a dictator manipulating the public; all resting on one man whose death would mark finis to the process.
It’s the end of the world … again

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recent convention in Washington produced the usual Doomsday talk concerning Iran’s imminent possession of nuclear weapons and with calls to bomb that country before they nuked Israel and/or the United States. So once again I have to remind everyone that these people – Israeli and American officials – are not really worried about an Iranian attack. Here are some of their many prior statements:

In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion “Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel.” She “also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.” 4

2009: “A senior Israeli official in Washington”, reported the Washington Post (March 5), asserted that “Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.”

In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, “believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.”

January 2012: US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.” 5

Later that month we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that “three leading Israeli security experts – the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz – all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel.”

Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:

Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

Barak: People ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case.

In an April 20, 2012 CNN interview Barak repeated this sentiment: “It’s true that probably [Iranian leader] Khamenei has not given orders to start building a [nuclear] weapon.” 6

And on several other occasions, Barak has stated: “Iran does not constitute an existential threat against Israel.” 7

Lastly, we have the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in a January 2012 report to Congress: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.” … There are “certain things [the Iranians] have not done” that would be necessary to build a warhead. 8

So why, then, do Israeli and American leaders, at most other times, maintain the Doomsday rhetoric? Partly for AIPAC to continue getting large donations. For Israel to get massive amounts of US aid. For Israeli leaders to win elections. To protect Israel’s treasured status as the Middle East’s sole nuclear power.

Listen to Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at America’s most prominent neo-con think tank, American Enterprise Institute:

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.” … And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem. 9

Osama bin Laden, Bradley Manning, & William Blum

Bradley Manning has the charge of “Aiding the enemy” hanging over his head. This could lead to a sentence of life in prison. As far as can be deduced, the government believes that the documents and videos that Manning gave to Wikileaks, which Wikileaks then widely distributed to international media, aided the enemy because it put US foreign policy in a very bad light.

Manning’s attorneys have asked the prosecution more than once for specific examples of how “the enemy” (whoever that may refer to in a world full of people bitterly angry at the United States because of any of many terrible acts carried out by the US government) has been “aided” by the Wikileaks disclosures. Just how has the enemy made use of the released material to harm the United States? The government has not provided any such examples, probably because what really bothers Washington officials is the embarrassment they have experienced before the world resulting from the documents and videos; which indeed are highly embarrassing even to genuine war criminals; filled with violations of international law, atrocities, multiple lies to everyone, revelations of gross hypocrisy, and much more.

So our splendid officials are considering putting Bradley Manning in prison forever simply because they’re embarrassed. Hard to find much fault with that.

But now the prosecutors have announced that a Navy Seal involved in the killing of Osama bin Laden is going to testify at the court martial that bin Laden possessed articles about the Wikileaks documents that Manning leaked. Well, there must be a hundred million other people in the world who have similar material on their computers. The question remains: What use did the enemy make of that?

The Iraqi government made use of the material, inducing them to refuse immunity to US troops for crimes committed in Iraq, such as the cold-blooded murders revealed by the Wilileaks videos; this in turn led the US to announce that it was ending its military engagement in Iraq. However, Manning was indicted in May 2010, well before the Iraqi decision to end the immunity.

In January, 2006 bin Laden, in an audio tape, declared: “If Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book ‘Rogue State’ [by William Blum], which states in its introduction … ” He then went on to quote the opening of a paragraph I wrote (which appears actually in the Foreword of the British edition only, that was later translated to Arabic), which in full reads:

“If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize – very publicly and very sincerely – to all the widows and the orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America’s global interventions – including the awful bombings – have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but – oddly enough – a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least 90% and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than enough money. Do you know what one year of the US military budget is equal to? One year. It’s equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.

“That’s what I’d do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I’d be assassinated.”

Thus, Osama bin Laden was clearly making use of what I wrote, and the whole world heard it. And I was thus clearly “aiding the enemy”. But I was not prosecuted.

The United States would like to prove a direct use and benefit by “the enemy” of the material released by Wikileaks; but so far it appears that only possession might be proven. In my case the use, and presumed propaganda benefit, were demonstrated. The fact that I wrote the material, as opposed to “stealing” it, is irrelevant to the issue of aiding the enemy. I knew, or should have known, that my criticisms of US foreign policy could be used by the foes of those policies. Indeed, that’s why I write what I do. To provide ammunition to anti-war and other activists.
The Department of Justice and socialism

For many years when I’ve been asked to explain just what I mean by “socialism” I’ve usually replied simply: “Putting people before profits”. There are a thousand-and-one details that would have to be considered in a transformation from a capitalist society to a socialist society, but rather than going into all that it’s much simpler to leave it with just that motto, which expresses the essence of my socialist society. In any event, in that glorious future world things will evolve in ways that could not be wholly predicted. The structure could take any one of many forms, but the essence must remain the same if it’s going to be called socialist.

Thus was I both surprised and amused in reading a news article about the current trial in New Orleans which is attempting to determine, amongst other things, the extent of blame of various companies, particularly BP, involved in the 2010 historic accident which took the lives of 11 workers and dumped an estimated 172 million gallons of crude oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The US Justice Department attorney declared in his opening statement: “The evidence will show that BP put profits before people, profits before safety and profits before the environment.” 10

Well, imagine that. The Justice Department certainly captured the essence of corporate behavior. The attorney chose such words because he knew that the sentiments expressed would appeal to the average American sitting on a jury. The members of the jury would understand that BP had blatantly ignored and violated certain cherished ideals like people, safety and the environment. Prosecuting the corporation would sound fair and just to them.

Yet, when someone like me expresses such sentiments – and I have used the exact same words on occasion – I run the risk of being written off as an “extremist”, a “radical”, and other bad-for-you labels; not long ago it was “commie”.

The irony runs even deeper. If a corporation flagrantly ignores putting profits before everything else, stockholders can sue the executives.
This just in! The real reason the Pope resigned!

He’s losing his mind.

In January, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta met with Pope Benedict XVI to receive his blessing. Afterward, Panetta said the pontiff told him, “Thank you for helping to keep the world safe.” 11
The precious art of assassinating legally

Obama hopeium addicts can soon be expected to call for support of the president’s increasing use of drones for assassination on the ground of their being good for the environment. My White House agent informs me that Obama is going to announce that all American drones will soon be composed 85% of recyclable material and will be solar-powered. And each drone missile will have the following painted on its side: “He was a bad guy. Just take our word for it!”
19


Notes
The Guardian (London), December 29, 2011 ↩
Huffington Post, March 7, 2013 ↩
http://killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm ↩
Haaretz.com (Israel), October 25, 2007; print edition October 26 ↩
“Face the Nation”, CBS, January 8, 2012 ↩
Washington Post, August 1, 2012 ↩
Iran Media Fact Check, “Does Israel Consider Iran an ‘Existential Threat’?” ↩
The Guardian (London), January 31, 2012 ↩
Political Correction, “American Enterprise Institute Admits The Problem With Iran Is Not That It Would Use Nukes” ↩
Associated Press, February 26, 2013 ↩
Washington Post, January 17, 2013 ↩

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.


← Issue #113

What for Haiti and PetroCaribe Now that Hugo's Gone?

Chavez's Legacy in Haiti and Latin America

by Kim Ives & Dan Coughlin

Tens of thousands of Haitians spontaneously poured into the streets of Port-au-Prince on the morning of Mar. 12, 2007. President Hugo Chavez had just arrived in Haiti, all but unannounced, and a multitude, shrieking and singing with glee, joined him in jogging alongside the motorcade of Haiti’s then President René Préval on its way to the National Palace (later destroyed in the 2010 earthquake).

There, Chavez announced that Venezuela would help Haiti by building power stations, expanding electricity networks, improving airports, supplying garbage trucks, and supporting widely-deployed Cuban medical teams. But the centerpiece of the gifts Chavez brought Haiti was 14,000 barrels of oil a day, a Godsend in a country that has been plagued by blackouts and power shortages for decades.

The oil was part of a PetroCaribe deal which Venezuela had signed with Haiti a year before. Haiti had only to pay 60% for the oil it received, while the remaining 40% could be paid over the course of 25 years at 1% interest. Under similar PetroCaribe deals, Venezuela now provides more than 250,000 barrels a day at sharply discounted prices to 17 Central American and Caribbean countries, including Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.

The cost of the program is estimated at some $5 billion annually. But the benefits to, and gratitude from, PetroCaribe recipients are huge, particularly during the on-going global economic crisis. In short, Caracas is underwriting the stability and energy security of most economies in the Caribbean and Central America, at the same time challenging, for the first time in over a century, U.S. hegemony in its own "backyard."

Washington’s alarm over and hostility to PetroCaribe is layed bare in secret diplomatic cables obtained by the media organization WikiLeaks. Then U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson rebuked Préval for "giving Chavez a platform to spout anti-American slogans" during his 2007 visit, said one cable cited in a June 2011 article which debuted a WikiLeaks-based series produced by Haïti Liberté in conjunction with The Nation.

Reviewing all 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables which were later released, one realizes that Sanderson wasn’t the only U.S. diplomat wringing her hands about PetroCaribe.

"It is remarkable that in this current contest we are being outspent by two impoverished countries: Cuba and Venezuela," noted U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay Frank Baxter in a 2007 cable released by Wikileaks. "We offer a small Fulbright program; they offer a thousand medical scholarships. We offer a half dozen brief IV programs to ‘future leaders’; they offer thousands of eye operations to poor people. We offer complex free trade agreements someday; they offer oil at favorable rates today. Perhaps we should not be surprised that Chavez is winning friends and influencing people at our expense."

We can now expect Washington’s "contest" with Venezuela to escalate dramatically as it attempts to take advantage of the Bolivarian regime’s vulnerability during the transition of power. Already Vice President Nicolas Maduro, whom Chavez asked Venezuelans to make his successor, has sounded the alarm.

"We have no doubt that commander Chavez was attacked with this illness," Maduro said on Mar. 5, repeating a suspicion voiced by Chavez himself that Washington was somehow responsible for the fatal cancer he contracted. "The old enemies of our fatherland looked for a way to harm his health."

Maduro also announced on national television on Mar. 5 "that a U.S. Embassy attache was being expelled for meeting with military officers and planning to destabilize the country," the AP reported. A U.S. Air Force attaché was also expelled.

In short, just as the imperative to secure oil has driven the U.S. to multiple wars, coups, and intrigues in the Mideast over the past 60 years, it is now driving the U.S. toward a major new confrontation in Latin America. With Chavez’s death, Washington sees a long awaited opportunity to roll back the Bolivarian Revolution and programs like PetroCaribe.

In recent years, Chavez has led Venezuela to nationalize dozens of foreign-owned undertakings, including oil projects run by Exxon Mobil, Texaco Chevron, and other large North American corporations. The future of the hydrocarbon resources in Venezuela’s Maracaibo Basin and Orinoco Belt, recently recognized as the world’s largest, will soon reveal itself to be the central economic and political issue, and hottest flashpoint, in the hemisphere.

In the case of Haiti, Hugo Chavez often said that PetroCaribe and other aid was given "to repay the historic debt that Venezuela owes the Haitian people." Haiti was the first nation of Latin America, gaining its independence in 1804. In the 19th century’s first example of international solidarity, Haitian revolutionary leaders like Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Pétion provided Francisco de Miranda and Simon Bolivar, South America’s "Great Liberator," with guns, ships, and printing presses to carry out the anti-colonial struggle on the continent.

And this was the dream that inspired Hugo Chavez: a modern Bolivarian revolution sweeping South America, spreading independence from Washington and growing "21st century socialism." PetroCaribe was Chavez’s flagship in that "contest," as Ambassador Baxter called it.

Ironically, it was former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide who first foiled U.S. election engineering in Latin America in December 1990, but his electoral victory was cut short by a September 1991 coup. Hugo Chavez was the next Latin American leader to successfully carry out a political revolution at the polls in 1998. His people defeated the U.S.-backed coup that tried to unseat him in April 2002. Due to his strategic acumen, his popular support, and the goodwill created with PetroCaribe, Chavez’s prestige grew in Venezuela and around the world during his 14 years in power up until his death today, which will bring a huge tide of mourning across Latin America.

The eulogies will be many, but former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who personally knew and worked with Chavez, made a prescient observation in January that stands out: 

"In my opinion, history will judge the contributions of Hugo Chavez to Latin America as greater than those of Bolivar."

Hugo Chavez Presente!

LONG LIVE HUGO CHAVEZ!

by Betty Krawczyk - Betty's Early Edition

Hugo Chavez is dead. Long live Hugo Chavez! May his policies that have lifted millions of Venezuelans out of poverty prevail into the future. And let’s take a moment to contrast Hugo Chavez’s regard for his people with that of our own Prime Minister. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a Prime Minister who actually loved the people of Canada, who worried about our welfare, especially the poor, the working poor, the children of the poor, the increasing poor as well as the business and middle class of Canada, as Chavez loved his people?

But the message Stephen Harper sent to a grieving Venezuela along with many other South American peoples was a short, curt, unbelievably arrogant slap in the face. Harper’s message in part read:

“At this key juncture, I hope the people of Venezuela can now build for themselves a better, brighter future based on the principals of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights.”

In the first place, this message is hypocritical beyond belief. Hugo Chavez was elected with a 54 per cent majority in a democratic election. And Chavez used the country’s oil money to lift millions of his people out of dire poverty. Harper is striving to push as many of us in Canada into poverty as quickly as he can. In spite of everything the US and global finance did to crush him, Chavez stuck to his mandate to improve the lives of his people, from the bottom economic tier up, and to inspire all people to work to improve themselves. Who and what does Harper inspire? The answer is so discouraging it makes one feel sick.

Aside from rancid hypocrisy, Harper’s message carried clues to what he sees ahead for us. Just more of the same. Harper is not urging us on to more workers’ councils and the creation of democratic community learning centers as Chavez did, but the opposite. Harper is taking away our rights, along with First Nation’s rights, to be stewards of the lands and water of Canada. He is doing all he can to crowd our overflowing jails with asinine pot charges against young people while cutting to the bone the people programs that help, protect, and prepare for the future. Worker’s tax money that used to go into building a caring, modern, just nation has taken a sharp turn to the right that simply makes the rich richer while our life sustaining infrastructures crumble.

When I first came to Canada in 1966 I was thrilled to be in a county that recognized and practiced all of the concepts that Stephen Harper, in his message to the Venezuela people tries to pretend we Canadians still have…freedom, democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights. But now? For us? Not so much. But where did all these concepts and programs to improve ordinary people’s lives go if they were still here when I immigrated in 1966?

They didn’t go anywhere until 1974. That was the year then Prime Minister Elliot Trudeau and Paul Martin made the decision to stop borrowing money from the Bank of Canada at no interest for public works and started borrowing from private banks at compound interest. This set the stage for Canada’s thirty- nine year slide from a diverse, strong, just, sovereign country into one of an internationalism so pervasive Canadians and First Nations can no longer independently manage our own soil and waters, much less the resources contained within. And jobs?

Our job market has been internationalized, too. Manufacturing has largely been gutted out of Canada. Oil and the search for oil and gas will be about all we have to depend on for big money makers, but even these are rife with problems such as First Nations claims, environmental protests and falling market demand. But how did we lose control over work? Over our environment? Why did worker’s wages start going down as banks profits soared? How did we as a people start getting poorer as private bank profits soared? Did our deteriorating social and economic health of Canada have everything to do with the decision of Pierre Trudeau and Paul Martin to start borrowing needed public money from private banks? And if so, did Pierre Trudeau and Paul Martin deliberately conspire to try to drag Canada down into the dust bin of failed states?

Yes and no. I don’t think either Pierre Trudeau or Paul Martin had at the time any particular desire to see Canada go down the tube. They were just privileged men, conceited in their supposed intellectual superiority, and dedicated first, to their own class. So they listened to other privileged men (private bankers) who had an idea about of how to siphon huge chunks of money out of public tax dollars.

Tax dollars, of course, pay for public programs and public debt. At the time, the government was borrowing what money it needed from the Bank of Canada. The Bank of Canada is our bank, the Canadian people’s bank. The Constitution says so. And it specifically mandates that our bank is there for us, for our government to borrow what it needs to run the government, and at no interest.

Well, the private banks prevailed. They persuaded Trudeau and Paul Martin to borrow the money that the government needed from them instead of from the Bank of Canada. And the private banks not only charge interest, they charge compound interest. This practice doubles and triples the amount of money to be paid back from the government (us) to the private banks. And this is how our national debt has become so large. Two thirds of the money Canadians pay on the National Debt each year is interest on interest (compound interest).

If we just remember that the government is us, and we are different from the politicians we elect. Some of the politicians we elect will be okay, some will be terrible, but they are not the government. We are the government. We have the Canadian Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Criminal Code. We also have Case Law (the history of Canadian judge’s decisions concerning specific cases that went to trial) First Nations legal agreements and we have the Bank of Canada. All of these together constitute a major component, but of course not all, of the tools of government. Our tools.

It has only been 39 years since Trudeau and Paul Martin changed the banking rules. These rules aren’t written in any stone that I know of. But even if some vague documents are unearthed detailing the supposed reasons for plunging Canadians into massive debt somewhere, they wouldn’t stand up to the Canadian Constitution. The Bank of Canada provisions are written in stone. The rules and rights of the people to the Bank of Canada are anchored in the Constitution. Can we go somewhere with this?

Stephen Harper knows he isn’t loved much by Canadians. He doesn’t care, because in spite of his cruelties (or perhaps because of them) he thinks he is right with God and the Rapture is approaching. How did we get a crazy man for Prime minister?

Oh, for a sane, earnest man like Hugo Chavez, one who united people, fought injustice and believed profoundly in sharing. Hugo Chavez was a comfort to me as are many others who are on the world stage including Vandana Shiva, Mohamed Nasheed (The Island President) Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman (Democracy now) and the entire government of Iceland. But I will deeply miss you, Hugo.


©2013 Betty K | Blog: http://bettysearlyedition.blogspot.com
Books: www.schiverrhodespublishing.com

Remembering Roosevelt's New Deal

80th Anniversary of Roosevelt and The New Deal

by TRNN

80th Anniversary of Roosevelt and The New Deal Jennifer Taub and John Weeks discuss President Roosevelt's policy of saving the economy from the ground up

 

Watch full multipart Undoing the New Deal