Geo Beach: A Swamp Yankee in the Last Frontier by Walter Brasch

I may have to turn on my dusty TV to catch some of this series, sounds fascinating, of course, I enjoy documentaries.  ~ Lo

by Walter Brasch
featured writer
Dandelion Salad
www.walterbrasch.com
Walter’s blog post

July 27, 2008

When Geo Beach looks you in the eye and says that “Tougher in Alaska,” his 13 week series on the History Channel, isn’t Reality TV, you believe him.

It might be the sincerity seen in his penetrating blue eyes.

It might also be that not many will challenge a bald-headed 6-foot-3, 225 pound man who looks like he could have been a pro football linebacker, but was really a firefighter/medic, logger, and commercial fisherman.

But, it’s probably because, above everything else, Geo Beach, an award-winning journalist, knows the media. And right now, he knows that his series definitely, absolutely, is not Reality TV.

“Reality TV isn’t real but something that a Hollywood producer has come up with to make money,” he says, with the raspy staccato voice of authority that perfectly depicts the life of a blue-collar journalist. To Geo Beach, what is called Reality TV is “really Orwellian doublespeak.”

“This,” he says about his own series with absolute honesty and conviction, “is non-fiction documentary journalism,” one that puts him into the story to experience the life of the people he reports about.

“Tougher in Alaska,” an in-depth look at a variety of people, was shot between April 2007 and March 2008.

Once called “Seward’s Folly”—Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the sale of Alaska from the Russians for $7.2 million in 1867—the 570,000 square mile arctic wilderness attracted thousands of prospectors, and led to the development of hundreds of settlements and the creation of cities, when large deposits of gold was discovered near Dawson City in the late 1890s. Appropriately, the first episode of “Tougher in Alaska” is one that looks at the life of the modern gold miners. With the price of gold going over $1,000 an ounce, “there’s been a new gold rush, a new chapter in Alaskan history,” says Beach. One of the purposes of the series, he points out, “is to show the links between the historical and the present, and look to the future as tied to the past.”

In the second episode, Beach went salmon fishing on Bristol Bay, one of several thousand fishermen awaiting the annual run of millions of sockeye salmon to their spawning grounds. In another episode, shot mostly in the summer months, Beach and his crew went into nearly inaccessible forests, steep valleys, and coastal mountains to work alongside loggers who had to build roads to get to the timberlands, and then use trucks, barges, and helicopters to remove the fallen trees, some more than 100 feet high.

In later episodes, Beach traveled with scientists who track glaciers, erosion, volcanoes and avalanches, worked in shipwreck salvage operations, and with postal carriers who could deliver mail only by using hovercrafts.

Unlike Reality TV, there aren’t thousands of people desperately trying to do anything to be on camera and become almost-famous. They aren’t willing to humiliate themselves by eating live bugs, swapping wives, exposing their weak vocals to snippy judges, jumping off buildings, or plotting intricate revenge schemes. To get Alaskans even to agree to be on television often took “a bit of an effort,” says Beach. He says the people “just did their jobs. They didn’t think anything they did was special or newsworthy; certainly not entertaining.”

Unlike Reality TV that depicts two-dimensional characters—“they can be fun if you’re reading Dickens or a comic book”—the people in “Tougher in Alaska” are real. “We wanted to communicate the humanity of the people of Alaska,” says Beach. Unlike the stereotypes the people in the “Lower 48” may have about Alaska, Beach was going to demythologize some things. “The weather is tough. The workers are tough,” he says, “but they’re not brainless animals.” The series shows toughness— and intelligence, humor and humanity. “My subjects don’t play to the cameras,” he says. “They do their jobs. We work with them. We get a story.” Beach says he wanted his audience to see an organic whole, “to look at the people and their families, their work, their struggles, their lives.” Because of the sparseness, Alaskans have learned they “just gotta do it, you gotta find it, make it, fix it by yourself,” he says.

Reality series often have crews of dozens, including chefs to cook for them. “The Tougher in Alaska” A-team crew was Beach, a director of photography (Dan Lyons), audio recordist (Joe Laney), and a field producer (Mike Rozett). All four carried cameras. “The real test,” says Beach, “is that the production company staff did real research and advance scouting work, so when we went into a location there was never a story that was forced.” The story, says Beach, “is the awesome nature of the subject, of every character, of Alaska itself and the challenges that Alaska produces. “The basic elements—Alaska and the workers—added up to a good enough story that we didn’t need to make up anything,” says Beach.

Working with the people of Alaska meant working in some of the harshest weather on earth. “It’s 50 below, and we’re driving up the Haul Road,” says Beach. “I’m in a big rig, pulling 36 inch diameter pipe, and the crew is out there filming. They’re not Hollywood boys. They’re workers, and every one of them worked as hard as I did.” It didn’t take long, says Beach, for the Alaskans to realize there wasn’t any difference between them and the story tellers. Against wind and temperatures that dropped to 20 below, Beach and his crew helped linemen restore electricity to Kasugluk, one of the most remote villages in the nation’s most remote state. With temperature in the 80s during July 2007, Beach worked with crews on the Alaska Highway near Kluane Lake, near where Army construction crews working from the north and south met to complete the original 1,400 mile highway in 1943. Like the workers, whether they were soldiers during World War II or public works employees in 2008, Beach helped dynamite rocks, drove bulldozers, graders, and dump trucks.

In the final episode, filmed over several months, with temperatures ranging from the mid-80s to 70 below, Beach and his crew worked with the Alaska State Troopers. They traveled in cars, snowmobiles, trucks, helicopters, fixed wing aircraft, inflatable fast boats, and 32-foot patrol boats. In June 2007, with temperatures hovering in the 40s, Beach and his crew, after extensive training, experienced arctic survival. “We were pushed off a boat, and had to swim to shore on an island and survive for two days,” says Beach, as matter-of-factly as if he were going for a dip in the spa swimming pool.

“Nothing was constructed for this show,” says Beach. “Nothing was set up; no one was paid to do anything. We don’t compress or extend time, or use trickery,” says Beach emphatically. Unlike the macho-hosts of similar reality series, Beach isn’t afraid to allow viewers to see him make mistakes, even get injured doing the job. “Selective editing could make me to be a ‘hero’,” says Beach, “but that would be Reality TV and not reality. It would also take away the humor, which is a crucial part of humanity.”

Airing about the same time as “Tougher in Alaska” is the Discovery Channel’s “The Alaska Experiment,” a seven episode series which the network describes as “Four groups of ordinary people attempt to live in the Alaskan wilderness for three months.” The media have already begun describing it as a “Survivors” knock-off. Beach doesn’t discount that show—“”history, Alaska is one big experiment—people coming here to make it,” he says. But, he contrasts “Tougher in Alaska” with “Man vs. Wild,” a Reality TV show that also airs on the Discovery Channel. Host Bear Gryllis, after appearing to be surviving harsh winters and desert summers, hypothermia and dehydration, actually “survived” in luxurious hotels when the day’s filming was over, according to the Times of London. Even some of the situations he faced while on camera were set-up and orchestrated for television.

Beach also swipes at “adventurers” who come to Alaska, lured by Reality TV series. “Alaskans will risk their lives to help others,” says Beach, “but it’s really stupid, and just plain impolite for people to come up here, not know what they’re getting into, and senselessly put others in a position to lose their own lives.” Some of the “adventurers” are journalists, looking for a “good story,” but not prepared for the genuine Alaska. “These are the Parachute Journalists,” says Beach, who points out, “They drop into an area, do a story, go home, and never understand the people of their circumstances.” Beach is unimpressed with national news coverage of issues, peoples, and cultures. “Igloos and Penguins” is his term, based upon an NBC-TV news show about the North Pole that included file footage of penguins, the closest of which, except for those in zoos, are about 12,000 miles to the south.

Geo Beach grew up in New England—“I’m a Swamp Yankee,” he says proudly. His mother became a counselor after graduating from Bennington College in 1953, a time when not many women went to college. His father graduated with honors from Western Reserve University (now Case-Western), and later completed a second bachelor’s degree in sacred theology from the Harvard Divinity School, and became an ordained Unitarian minister. He was a newspaper reporter (Boston Sunday Advertiser, Boston Record-American, Cleveland Press, Columbus Citizen-Journal), a radio news anchor (WEEI-AM, the CBS-owned station in Boston), and a syndicated columnist—“Saints and Sinners” was published by more than 200 newspapers over a 32 year period.

“I grew up in a house with a lot of books and discussions,” says Beach. Although encouraged to speak out, to challenge others and be challenged by them, he “had to show facts to back up his opinions,” something today’s media pundits and prognosticators often forget or deliberately sidestep.

Geo Beach’s own formal education stopped with graduation from the elite Phillips Exeter prep school in New Hampshire, where he was on the school newspaper and radio station, planning for a career in writing. He graduated early, and with honors, and accepted early admission to Brown, but never attended. “My brother and a hundred or so of my friends from Exeter were at Yale,” he says, “and that’s where I ended up.” But, because of Ivy League rules, he was forbidden to enroll at Yale for two years, so he became a “drop-in.” He became involved in theatre and writing, including regular publication in the Yale Daily News Magazine. After two years, he “just took off,” on a never-ending quest to experience lufe in order to find stories worth telling. His first stop was a year driving land rovers in the Sahara. “When I came back,” he recalls, “I was working enough on my writing that I just never enrolled.”

Over the next few years, he wrote poetry, fiction, newspaper and magazine articles—“anything and everything.” In his early-20s, he went to West Virginia, and began working on “Mountain Stage,” a new music show that would become the longest-running music show on public broadcast history. He later worked in Atlanta before exploring the Last Frontier.

In 1983, then in his mid-20s, he went to Alaska when a friend asked him to visit. “I was always attracted to the mountains,” he says, “and I missed the ocean when I was away from it too long.” But, when he got to Alaska, during the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, he found himself near Homer, at the southern end of Alaska Route 1. Around him were the Kenai Mountains. The Japanese currents that flow into Kachemak Bay give the area a warmth that is similar to that of New England. He had the water and mountains he so loved. “I thought I’d be up here a year,” he recalls, “but time spins around a little different at the top of the planet.”

During the past 25 years, Geo Beach, like his father became a columnist. The Alaska Press Club honored him as the state’s Best Columnist for his weekly “Top O’ the Planet” column in the Anchorage Daily News, the state’s largest newspaper. “It’s sorta on hiatus right now,” he says, noting the demands of his work on “Tougher in Alaska,” including a heavy demand to promote the series. But, he continues to write magazine articles and do the popular “Uncommontaries” for public radio, which earned him the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi medal from the Society of Professional Journalists. His commentaries have aired on National Public Radio’s “Living on Earth” and “All Things Considered,” and Public Radio International’s “Savvy Traveler” and “Marketplace.” He has also won an Atlantic Monthly poetry prize, top awards from the Pacific Northwest Press Association, and the Mencken Award for “independence of mind, fearlessness in reporting, excellence of style, and above all, intellectual liberty.”

But awards aren’t what drives him. “It’s journalism,” he says. “It’s telling the stories of people; it’s helping others see the world around them.”

Whatever Geo Beach’s next project is, readers, listeners, and viewers can be assured it’ll be real and, most assuredly, not Reality TV.

[“Tougher in Alaska” is seen 10 p.m., Thursdays, on the History Channel.]

[Dr. Walter M. Brasch is an award-winning social issues columnist, former newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, and professor of journalism at Bloomsburg University. He is president of the Pennsylvania Press Club, and former president of the Keystone state chapter of the Society of Professional Journalist. He is also the author of 17 books, including America' s Unpatriotic Acts: The Federal Giovernment's Violation of Constitutional and Civil Rights (January 2005) and Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush (November 2007), available through amazon.com and other bookstores. He frequently writes about the media, social and political issues. You may contact Brasch at brasch@bloomu.edu or through his website at: www.walterbrasch.com.]

Obama, The Prince Of Bait-And-Switch By John Pilger

Dandelion Salad

By John Pilger
24/07/08 “ICH”

John Pilger describes the denigration of the civilian casualties in colonial wars, and the anointing of Barack Obama, as he tours the battlefields, sounding more and more like George W. Bush.

On 12 July, The Times devoted two pages to Afghanistan. It was mostly a complaint about the heat. The reporter, Magnus Linklater, described in detail his discomfort and how he had needed to be sprayed with iced water. He also described the “high drama” and “meticulously practised routine” of evacuating another overheated journalist. For her US Marine rescuers, wrote Linklater, “saving a life took precedence over [their] security”. Alongside this was a report whose final paragraph offered the only mention that “47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday”.

Slaughters on this scale are common, and mostly unknown to the British public. I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children. A 500lb US Mk82 bomb was dropped on her mud, stone and straw house. There was no “enemy” nearby. I interviewed a headmaster whose house disappeared in a fireball caused by another “precision” bomb. Inside were nine people – his wife, his four sons, his brother and his wife, and his sister and her husband. Neither of these mass murders was news. As Harold Pinter wrote of such crimes: “Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”

A total of 64 civilians were bombed to death while The Times man was discomforted. Most were guests at the wedding party. Wedding parties are a “coalition” speciality. At least four of them have been obliterated – at Mazar and in Khost, Uruzgan and Nangarhar provinces. Many of the details, including the names of victims, have been compiled by a New Hampshire professor, Marc Herold, whose Afghan Victim Memorial Project is a meticulous work of journalism that shames those who are paid to keep the record straight and report almost everything about the Afghan War through the public relations facilities of the British and American military.

The US and its allies are dropping record numbers of bombs on Afghanistan. This is not news. In the first half of this year, 1,853 bombs were dropped: more than all the bombs of 2006 and most of 2007. “The most frequently used bombs,” the Air Force Times reports, “are the 500lb and 2,000lb satellite-guided…” Without this one-sided onslaught, the resurgence of the Taliban, it is clear, might not have happened. Even Hamid Karzai, America’s and Britain’s puppet, has said so. The presence and the aggression of foreigners have all but united a resistance that now includes former warlords once on the CIA’s payroll.

The scandal of this would be headline news, were it not for what George W Bush’s former spokesman Scott McClellan has called “complicit enablers” – journalists who serve as little more than official amplifiers. Having declared Afghanistan a “good war”, the complicit enablers are now anointing Barack Obama as he tours the bloodfests in Afghanistan and Iraq. What they never say is that Obama is a bomber.

In the New York Times on 14 July, in an article spun to appear as if he is ending the war in Iraq, Obama demanded more war in Afghanistan and, in effect, an invasion of Pakistan. He wants more combat troops, more helicopters, more bombs. Bush may be on his way out, but the Republicans have built an ideological machine that transcends the loss of electoral power – because their collaborators are, as the American writer Mike Whitney put it succinctly, “bait-and-switch” Democrats, of whom Obama is the prince.

Those who write of Obama that “when it comes to international affairs, he will be a huge improvement on Bush” demonstrate the same wilful naivety that backed the bait-and-switch of Bill Clinton – and Tony Blair. Of Blair, wrote the late Hugo Young in 1997, “ideology has surrendered entirely to ‘values’… there are no sacred cows [and] no fossilised limits to the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better Britain…”

Eleven years and five wars later, at least a million people lie dead. Barack Obama is the American Blair. That he is a smooth operator and a black man is irrelevant. He is of an enduring, rampant system whose drum majors and cheer squads never see, or want to see, the consequences of 500lb bombs dropped unerringly on mud, stone and straw houses.

First published in the New Statesman

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Obama-Barack

Latin America’s struggle for integration and independence

Dandelion Salad

Posted with permission by Green Left Weekly

by Federico Fuentes, Caracas
Green Left Weekly
26 July 2008

Commenting on how much the two had in common — same age, three children, similar music tastes — Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said to Mexican President Felipe Calderon on April 11 that “perhaps we represent the new generation of leaders in Latin America”.

He added, however, that one difference still remained: Calderon had still not become a socialist. “Being right wing is out of fashion in Latin America … Join us, you are always welcome.”

The election of Fernando Lugo as Paraguayan president seems to confirm the idea of a new fashion for presidents. The former priest joins the ranks of current Latin American presidents that includes two women (Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina and Michelle Bachelet in Chile), an indigenous person (Evo Morales in Bolivia), a former militant trade unionist (Lula de Silva in Brazil), a radically minded economist (Rafael Correa in Ecuador), a doctor (Tabare Vasquez in Uruguay), a former guerrilla fighter (Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua) and a former rebel soldier (Hugo Chavez in Venezuela).

“Each day the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean are electing presidents that — look like our peoples and, its not just that we look like them, we are the people, we come from the people!” Chavez stated on July 19 at a speech in Nicaragua to mark the anniversary of 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution that overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship.

He was standing next to Ortega — the first Central American president to join the craze — who was a central leader of the revolution, winning elections for president in 1984. Although the revolution was defeated by US-backed counter-revolutionary forces that carried out a violent campaign of terror, leading to a war-weary population electing a pro-US government in 1990, Ortega was re-elected president in 2006.

There is a good chance El Salvador could join the trend, with the left-wing Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front — which waged an armed struggle against the US-backed dictatorship during the ‘ ’80s — ahead in polls for elections early next year.

This phenomena of electing governments with progressive credentials of one sort or another, along with the rise of militant anti-neoliberal social movements throughout South America, has led many political commentators to talk about a rising “pink tide” — a general swing to the left.

Rejecting neoliberalism

But in order to understand the dynamics in Latin America today, it is necessary to go beyond broad sweeping statements, just as it is not enough to simply analyse these governments through the prism of national politics.

While intervention in Latin America from the US is increasing in different forms in a desperate attempt to retake the initiative in the region, the drive towards South American unity continues to push back imperialism.

This is occurring despite some US successes, and with tensions between competing tendencies among South American governments becoming increasingly visible.

There are two phenomena increasingly complicating the situation. One the one hand, a rise in conflict (such as between Colombia and Venezuela as well as within Bolivia). On the other, growing social polarisation (as seen in Argentina, Uruguay and Peru).

Since the late 1990s indigenous, peasant and worker-led social movements have succeeded in getting rid of an increasing number of corrupt, pro-US neoliberal regimes via the streets, turning the US’s traditional backyard into one big headache for Washington.

Leaving aside the ongoing example of revolutionary Cuba, at the turn of the century only the Chavez government could be pointed to in the region as willing to buck US-imposed dictates.

The deepening of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution over the next few years, where by the mass of the poor confronted and pushed back the capitalists’ offensive against the government, helped win Chavez the sympathy of millions across the region. This included the likes of the Mothers of the Disappeared in Argentina, who campaign for justice for victims of Argentina’s military dictatorship and who initially rejected Chavez because of his military background.

Five years after Chavez’s 1998 election, while governments had tumbled through popular insurrections in Ecuador and Argentina, only Lula in Brazil had joined Chavez as an ally at regional presidential summits.

A historic leader of the Workers’ Party, which during the ’90s had been a symbol of hope for much of the left in the region and internationally, by the time of Lula’s election many had become disillusioned with his increasingly right-wing trajectory — confirmed by his government’s policies since.

Brazilian social movements subsequently went into a period of decline.

A further five years on, the Latin American political map has radically changed, with old and new left and popular parties winning elections on the back of the massive discontent with polices that only enrich the mostly foreign multinational corporations and the traditional parties that implemented them.

To openly run on a platform of neoliberal policies, worse still on the ticket of a traditional party, meant humiliating defeat for presidential candidates in country after country.

In the 2005 Bolivian elections, for instance, all of the traditional parties either polled below 10% or did not present presidential candidates. Morales was elected Bolivia’s first ever indigenous president with a historic 53.7% of the vote.

Regional convergence, US decline

At the 2005 Summit of the Americas in Mar de Plata in Argentina, the US-pushed pro-corporate Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) was decisively defeated through a combination of mass opposition across the region and the refusal of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay to back down inside the meeting.

US President George Bush reportedly turned to his Argentinian counterpart at the summit’s end and said: “I am a bit surprised. Something happened here that I hadn’t envisaged.”

The arrival of new representatives within the different South American trading blocs — such as Market of the South (Mercosur) and the Community of Andean Nations (CAN) — began to impact on these institutions that had operated in a neoliberal framework.

In many cases, they have become arenas for regular denunciation of US hegemony and support for greater regional integration — although often without a lot to show in the way of concrete steps forward.

In May, the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) was formed involving 12 countries. As a bloc, it represents the fifth-largest GDP in the world (US$973.6 billion), is the biggest producer of food and has hydrocarbon reserves to last 100 years.

The formation of Unasur marks a continuation of the dynamic towards regional integration — representing in the political sphere what the defeat of the FTAA represented in the economic sphere.

Its importance is even more apparent when considered in the context of the counter-offensive launched by Washington since 2005. Using both the carrot and the stick, the US has been furiously working to turn back this tide, as evidenced by the continual “tours” by high level US government officials, including several by Bush.

This has included working to sign up countries to individual Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) to circumvent its defeat on a continental scale, offering large agribusiness big incentives through its diabolical plan of turning food into biofuels and intensifying its propaganda campaign against Chavez as the most radical and consistent South American leader pushing liberation from imperialism. The US have accused him of involvement in terrorism, narcotrafficking and the trafficking of children. Former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld even compared Chavez to Hitler.

The US scored some partial victories. Colombia and Peru’s decision to sign FTAs with the US resulted in Venezuela leaving CAN, while Brazil and Paraguay are yet to vote to accept Venezuela as full member of Mercosur.

Competing currents

However, the decision to form Unasur confirms that the underlying dynamic of convergence continues to gain ground. And yet, at the same time, tensions between the different tendencies demonstrate the real challenges in continuing to move forward.

The first thing to note is the right-wing, openly pro-US regimes that still remain — the Colombian government of Alvaro Uribe and Peruvian government of Alan Garcia. Both governments are part of Unasur, but do not hide their opposition to the process and continue to align themselves with Washington.

With the gravitational pull too strong for them to not jump on board, they continue to seek ways to undermine the proccess and do US imperialism’s dirty work.

Clear evidence of this was the inability to stage the meeting for the official founding of Unasur, scheduled to be held in Colombia last year. Venezuelan foreign minister Nicolas Maduro decried on January 19 that these delays “had to do with attempts to make sure that Unasur did not advance. These projects always face obstacles from those who do not believe in the union of South America because they continue to think that the future of the continent is being vassals to interests of North American power.”

With March 28-29 finally settled as the date for the official founding. it proved impossible to occur in the aftermath of Colombia’s illegal March 1 bombing on Ecuadorian soil.

The Bolivarian alternative

On the other extreme is the proposal for an anti-corporate integration project that places cooperation and human solidarity at its centre.

This is spearheaded by Venezuela and Cuba and takes embryonic form in the shape of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a trading bloc that groups together Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua. While Ecuador is yet to join, it falls within the same camp.

Dominica has also joined ALBA for its own reasons, but does not fall into the same anti-imperialist camp.

The economic motor of this unity process has been Venezuelan oil. Having wrested control of its oil industry, PDVSA, from pro-US elites, Venezuela has put the massive wealth it generates to attempting to tackle the needs of the poor — resulting in a significant reduction of poverty rates. The oil wealth has also funded productive projects, such as the construction of basic industry and infrastructure.

From a company with almost no presence in Latin America, PDVSA is helping drive important plans for regional energy integration. Chavez has proposed the creation of four regional oil companies to promote unity: Petrocaribe, Petroandina, Petrosur and Petroamerica as a unifying project within the framework of ALBA.

Through Petrocaribe, for instance, Venezuela provides discounted oil to 18 Caribbean and Central American nations, whereby those countries are only required to pay 40% of the price Venezuelan oil upfront, with 25 years to pay off the remainder as a low interest loan. As well as guaranteeing energy security to impoverished nations at a time of escalating fuel costs, Petrocaribe also promotes state-driven national development in the industry.

While different issues have impeded the full development of these projects, PDVSA has signed contracts directly with numerous countries in the region to build oil refineries, tankers, oil exploration and technical assistance. Such a policy has been aimed at industrialisation in order to break dependency on, and subordination to, the US.

This is combined, in alliance with Cuba, with regional health care and literacy programs.

Possibly the most important part of the struggle for integration by the anti-imperialist current has been the battle of ideas being waged. Representatives of this bloc have regularly denounced capitalism, with Chavez in particular opening up a continental discussion on socialism and Latin American unity.

This ideological battle has helped encourage the struggles of millions from below.

In all the regional institutions this bloc has constantly hammering home the need to create a real political union: a Confederation of Latin American States.

The Brazilian axis

It was, however, the third axis that was key to the formation of Unasur. Faced with resistance by Colombia to staging the meeting, Brazil offered to be the host nation.

Lula stated that Brazil “is the biggest economy, the most industrialised country with the biggest [GDP]. Therefore, we have to be conscious of the fact that the integration of South America depends on the actions of Brazil”.

Recalling that only days before he had met firstly with Chavez and Morales, and then Garcia and Uribe, he said, “on one hand we have a photo with presidents considered to be left, and on the other with presidents considered to be from the centre”.

“What is the role of Brazil? To be a kind of bridge, to make a connection between all the political currents of South America, because, given it is the biggest country, Brazil has to work towards creating a situation of political, economic, social and cultural equilibrium.”

The Lula government is the political representative of Brazil’s capitalist class, whose main interests lie in a process of integration for its own benefit. It wants to negotiate with the US, but from a better bargaining position.

Integration, for Brazil, is the development of a regional capitalist system, under the hegemony of the Brazilian bourgeoisie, that can become an important bloc in the world system. Brazil’s weight in the region leaves the capitalist governments of Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and others with no option but to follow its lead.

As a counterbalance, some have been working to sign up the other regional economic power, Mexico, into Mercosur.

While PDVSA promotes integration through dialogue and cooperation to build up other state oil companies to aid industrialisation, Brazil’s nominally state-controlled energy company Petrobras works to purchase other state companies or sign contracts favourable to itself to supply Brazil’s domestic industry.

While not a systematic challenge to imperialism, such as represented by ALBA, Brazil’s project collides with the needs of the US. While Chavez denounces imperialism and Lula seeks to negotiate a better deal for Brazilian capitalists within its framework, both have worked to block US plans in bodies like the World Trade Organization.

This is why Brazil was one of the first to propose a South America Defence Council, along with positioning itself as peacemaker in bellicose clashes in the region, such as through its leading role in the UN occupation mission in Haiti.

When asked about what possible role the US would play in such a body, Brazilian defence minister Nelson Jobim clarified that “we are under no obligation to ask permission from the US to do this. And they also have to understand our necessity to reach integration.”

While Venezuela supported this initiative as a counterweight to US military influence, Colombia announced at the Unasur meeting that it was not interested in joining and the proposal was dropped. Uribe has since stated his interest in the proposal.

Two new phenomena

Talk of a defence council also comes at a time when both the Argentine and Brazilian governments have expressed discontent with the reactivation by the US navy’s Fourth Fleet — dormant since the end of World War II — to patrol Latin America waters. Along with the increasingly aggressive policy of Colombia towards its neighbours — and the push by the US-backed right-wing opposition in Bolivia towards a violent confrontation — it forms part of a new regional phenomenon.

Beginning with Colombia’s massacre of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) fighters within in Ecuadorian territory, a series of incidents point towards attempts by Colombia, behind which stands the US, to find a way to provoke neighbouring countries.

Evidence that the US and its regional allies are seeking to provoke an armed conflict can be found in a series of recent incidents, including: Colombian soldiers illegally entering Venezuelan territory; the release of supposed documents linking the Venezuela and Ecuadorian governments to FARC “terrorism”; Colombia’s willingness to allow the construction of a US military base on the border with Venezuela; a new US base in Paraguay near the Bolivian border and reinforcement of other regional bases; a US military plane violating Venezuelan airspace; and the arrival of US troops in Peru.

Uribe has also held talks with the opposition governor of the Venezuelan border state of Zulia, expressing his desire to deepen relations between Colombia and the state.

At the same time, a wave of conflicts are sprouting as social polarisation increases. Ongoing strikes in Peru, growing unrest in Chile, worker mobilisations in Uruguay, rural strikes in Argentina and a multiplicity of social struggles in Brazil — while often confused expressions of social discontent — are likely to increasingly place these governments in difficult situations.

This is already the case in Argentina (under threat from the right) and Peru (from the left).

Social unrest is also affecting Mexico. Following the massive outpouring against the 2006 electoral fraud that robbed centre-left candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the presidency, the struggle is now focused on preventing the privatisation of the state oil company.

European Union

Into the mix, the European Union has been working hard to take ground lost by the US, offering alternative development programs and opportunities for further economic ties with Europe.

With the prices of natural resources skyrocketing, Latin America is becoming a crucial region. Unlike Washington, which attacks Venezuela and tries to pressure Brazil, the EU instead works behind the scenes to undermine Chavez while offering support to Brazil. Brazil and Argentina look to the EU as counterbalance to the US.

However, the recent approval by the EU of the racist anti-immigrant “return directive”, which could see undocumented immigrants jailed for 18 months before being deported, has been met with united opposition by all Latin American nations.

This is due to the huge number of Latin American families that depend on members working in Europe and sending money home. The law represents a serious threat to regional economies.

Bolivia and Venezuela have threatened to reply with a “return directive” on capital from EU countries that apply the law, as well as cutting off oil and gas exports.

All this helps explain the real significance of Unasur as well as the obstacles ahead.

Socialist strategy

One of US imperialism’s key objectives is to divide the pro-integration currents, along with arming its remaining allies, in order to regain lost ground. To impede this division is a crucial task for Latin American socialists.

This is something understood by Chavez, who seeks to utilise all openings towards integration, whatever the limitations, while simultaneously advocating and seeking ways to implement the Bolivarian revolution’s anti-imperialist program. Venezuela is both seeking to operate within institutions like Mercosur and construct ALBA with those countries that are willing.

For the regional capitalists, this convergence is necessary to put a brake on the uncontrolled voracity of imperialism, in a context of growing demands from ordinary people.

For socialists, opposition to US plans to divide the region is for completely different reasons. While institutions like Mercosur can be supported, it is not because they represent real alternatives to the FTAA but because they can act as transitional forms towards a real confederation of Latin American states — which would alter the relationship of forces away from imperialism, creating a stronger basis for social change.

With Mercosur hamstrung by disputes between its members, the creation of Unasur represents an advance as it moves the discussion to the South American-wide stage.

In the meantime, it is necessary to transform the mobilisation of workers, peasants, urban poor and other exploited and oppressed people — such as indigenous peoples — into powerful movements for real social change.

Fundamental to this is the construction of political instruments built out of these movements that aim to win power — which means not simply winning an election but organising the mass of the oppressed to govern.

The struggle to construct the mass-based United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), led by Chavez, is a powerful example of what is needed.

Importantly, the PSUV has already set out as an immediate challenge the promotion of other such parties in the region. To this end, it seeks to organise a meeting of regional left parties with the aim of constructing an international organisation of the Latin American and Caribbean left.

[Federico Fuentes is from the Caracas Green Left Weekly bureau and edits Bolivia Rising, http://boliviarising.blogspot.com.]

see

Riz Khan: Evo Morales vs US

Fuentes-Federico

Socialism

Screw The Climate! We Want Our Cheap Gas!

Dandelion Salad

By Dave Lindorff
07/25/08 “ICH”

We’re a Nation of Lemmings

Listening to the endless stream of cars passing my house every day, and knowing, from watching them from my mailbox, that they are almost all carrying just one person, either commuting to work or running some kind of errand, I know we are headed for disaster.

Two days ago, there was a report by Agence France Presse about the ongoing destruction of the world’s remaining wetlands (60 percent have already been destroyed by man over the past century), and how they contain within them an amount of stored carbon equal to all the carbon currently in the atmosphere. Global warming and property development are drying out those remaining wetlands, causing the release of that carbon, which will more than negate even the most radical efforts at reducing carbon emissions from power plants, factories and automobiles.

There are also credible, well-researched reports that even a few more degrees of temperature rise in the arctic regions of Siberia and northern North America will melt the permafrost and release as much 400 gigatons of methane gas trapped in frozen clathrates for millennia — the release of which would cause global temperatures to soar to levels not seen in 250 million years (methane is 20 times as potent a global warming gas as CO2). Vast regions of Siberia are already bubbling with releasing methane as the permafrost line moves north.

Now I grant that our corporate media, ever focused laser-like on important stories like Britney Spears’ return to the stage and on the latest gaffe of one or the other presidential candidate, have not been very interested in alerting the masses to these disasters now in progress that could end humanity’s run on the planet (along with exterminating most of the rest of the life on the planet too). But that said, at this point everyone has surely heard enough, and witnessed enough in person of the dramatic changes taking place in the earth’s climate, to know that something scary is going on.

And yet, people are not just going about their business as usual — they are actually, for the most part, complaining not about the lack of highly energy-efficient transportation, the lack of alternative and less energy-wasting public transit, and the lack of government funding for a crash program into researching carbon-free energy solutions, but rather about the high price for carbon fuels. People are clamoring for solutions to make gasoline cheaper!

Years ago, back in the 1970s during an Arab-led oil embargo, when gas prices soared, there were mass campaigns to organize car pools. No such campaigns are being organized today, and if any are they don’t get any media attention. Instead we read that geologists are saying that massive quantities of untapped oil reserves exist in the far north.

Now the last thing we should be wanting to do is take that nicely sequestered carbon out of the ground and burn it into CO2! But that’s what many Americans want done. Screw the climate! We want our cheap gas!

There are so many things we could be doing right now to reduce carbon emissions — as individuals and as a nation. Turning off air-conditioners would be one. Why should entire houses be cooled by central air? Cool one room and use it for the hottest part of the day if need be. Live downstairs during the hottest months and close off the upstairs when it gets too hot. Ditto in the winter. There’s no need to occupy and heat an entire house when it gets really cold. Most Americans’ homes are way too large anyhow, but if you need that much room, use it when it doesn’t require all that extra energy to heat and cool. (When I lived in Cambridge, England as a kid, we used to sleep in unheated bedrooms under cozy comforters, and then in the morning, I’d go down and light a fire in the living room where we’d be during the day. It would be cold as hell until the fire started, but not for long.) Share rides. Plan errands so that many things get taken care of on one outing, instead of in multiple run-outs. Use bicycles. I have yet to see, on my own bike rides in down or when driving anywhere, someone who is actually riding a bike on some errand-carrying a load in a basket or in a backpack. The only bikers I see are people dressed like Tour de France racers out for some exercise. What’s the matter with using bikes for a purpose, instead of the family car?

I’m not trying to criticize, or to say I’m more ecologically virtuous. I’m looking at this as an unprecedented disaster that is dooming my kids, or their future children, to a life of strife, misery and maybe even catastrophe. If I don’t take serious action — and I don’t just mean individual life changes, but political action — to try and save their world, I am guilty of a serious crime. And so are we all.

What the hell happened to any sense of shared responsibility, not just for society, but for our own offspring?

Most decent parents are ready to sacrifice in their lifestyles in order to send their kids to college, or to help them out financially when they are starting out as young adults. But for some strange reason nobody seems ready to sacrifice at all when it comes to rescuing their collective future. This makes no sense.

And yet, this is what our mass culture has done to us. As a nation, as a people, we cannot think beyond our own noses. We cannot even think about the need to act in our own and our children’s interest.

Seventeen years ago, I had occasion while living in Shanghai, China, to visit a rural area in Anhui Province that the year before had been devastated by a flood so huge that the entire region had been not just flooded, but put deep underwater. As I neared a county seat town that was my intended destination, the bus I was on passed a dike-building project. Thousands of peasants were laboring by hand, with shovels and wheelbarrows, to erect a 50-foot wall of earth to keep the river in its banks in the event of another such flood. I got off the bus and, with my travel companion, started walking towards the project. When we were spotted, thousands of those workers dropped their shovels and ran towards us. It was a terrifying moment to have so many people heading towards and surrounding us, but they were very friendly — just curious because none of them had ever met a westerner. We began talking with them, and learned that they were all peasants who had left their fields to build this colossal new Great Wall of dirt. They brought us to the worksite and showed us how they would bring their wheelbarrows to the base of the dike, and then attach a cable, which was connected to a winch operated by those ubiquitous one-cylinder, two-stroke kerosene tractors used across rural China. The winch would whip the barrow up the steep hillside, with a peasant running up behind keeping it upright. At the last minute, the peasant would flip the barrow, dumping the dirt and releasing the hook. Then he’d be off down the hill to collect more dirt.

What struck me, besides their ingenuity, was how all these thousands of people had left their own fields to labor for the collective good that year.

I tried at the time to contemplate my fellow Americans doing the same thing, and couldn’t for the life of me imagine it.

Now we’re in that moment. We know the flood is coming, but no one is willing to join the brigade to take preventive action.

No. Buying a Prius is not taking action. Neither is upgrading the insulation on your house or buying carbon offsets when you fly. We need, as a nation, to commit to seriously ending our addiction to fossil fuels, to rapacious development and the concomitant destruction of forests and wetlands. We need to end our nation’s imperialist policies and to instead devote the trillion dollars a year spent on war to saving the planet from ourselves.

A good start would be seeing that people “get it.” That would mean communities starting to organize around improving mass transit, arranging for carpooling, and demanding climate-saving action from our political leaders.

I’m not optimistic.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

see

Letter to the future president #147

US: White House suppressed climate change testimony

Debunking the Anti-Global Climate Change Myths

The Ashes Have Been Passed To A New Generation

What Time Is It? Industrial Civilization Is Coming To An End (video link)

Climate Chaos Is Inevitable. We Can Only Avert Oblivion

The Most IMPORTANT Video You’ll Ever See (videos; Parts 1-4)

The Most IMPORTANT Video You’ll Ever See (videos; Parts 5-8)

How It All Ends: Your Mission (global warming; must-see videos)

How It All Ends (Global Warming; must-see video; links)

Global Warming/Climate changes/Environment

Global Warming

Obama Dazzles Old Europe while McCain cries “No Mas”!

Dandelion Salad

By Mike Whitney
07/25/08 “ICH”

Barack Obama proved yesterday why November’s presidential election will end in a 50-state sweep. John McCain has no chance. It’s like George Bush climbing into the ring with Mike Tyson; one thundering left hook and the Crawford Caligula would be sprawled across the canvas in a pool of his own blood. “No mas”! The same fate awaits the crabby senator from Arizona. The polls are skewed to look like there’s a political horse-race going on. There isn’t. It’s a complete rout. There’s one well-toned thoroughbred striding from venue to venue electrifying the ever-increasing throngs, and one doddering, old mare limping towards the glue-factory. Someone should put a stop to it before McCain gets hurt.

Yesterday, at the Victory Column in Berlin’s Tiergarten, Obama extracted Old Glory from the burn-pile and gave Brand America a desperately needed shot of adrenaline. 200,000 ecstatic Germans jammed the streets in what turned out to be the political shindig of the year. Many of them were waving American flags and chanting, “Obama, Obama, Obama”. It was like Jack Kennedy had risen from his moldy sepulcher and made his way across the pond for one last rousing ovation. Obama has the very same affect on crowds. Its a gift and he knows how to use it to great advantage.

“People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment, this is our time,” Obama boomed. “I know my country has not perfected itself, we’ve made our share of mistakes and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions. But the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.”

What can we say about Obama’s oratory skills that hasn’t already been said? He is one of those unique characters who knows how to tap into the collective psyche and put them under his spell. He is the closest thing to a Pied Piper we’ve seen in the last half century. Whatever one thinks of his politics, his speeches are a welcome reprieve from the simian blabbering of President Dimwit.

“I speak to you not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen; a proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.” (Roaring applause)

JOHN McCAIN: Maverick or Freak?

Have you taken a look at the crowds at a McCain event, lately. Usually, there aren’t any. Typically, there are more journalists and cameramen then people; and even they look bored. It’s the truth. He generates no enthusiasm at all. None. He may be the most uninspiring, tedious, pure-vanilla candidate of all time; a complete dud. I challenge anyone to recite from memory anything John McCain has ever said in his 40 years in office. Time’s up! When McCain begins to talk, its a signal for women to pull out the nail-files and for men to figure out how they’re going to get out of cutting the lawn this week. Really. No one listens.

And the people that do manage to drag themselves to his speeches out of a sense of obligation are (you guessed it) scowling white guys with baseball caps pulled tightly over their ears or nearly-ambulatory Korea-era Vets who think the United Nations is a communist front-group that’s planning to air-drop blue-helmets into Duluth to take over the United States. Tin-foil hats anyone?

Popularity and charisma are greatly overrated, but how does one survive in politics with neither. That’s the question, and it may be the biggest mystery of McCain’s candidacy. He’s just not a likable guy. No one ever talks about hanging out and having a beer with John McCain, because they know that he might go “Jackie Chan” and start busting the place up. He’s nuts. And he’s utterly impossible to listen to. His high-pitched squeaky voice is about two octaves higher than a dog-whistle and twice as annoying. So how is he going to beat Obama. It’s a total mismatch.

McCain is the perfect candidate for a party that has completely collapsed. He’s like the “Jolly Roger” on the front of an iodine bottle; Brand X. In 2000, the Republican Party boasted it was the “party of ideas”. What ideas? The Republican Party has never had ideas because the corporate mandarins and blue-blooded kleptocrats that run the party are suspicious of ideas, ideology, doctrine, philosophy or anything else that veers from their primary objectives of crushing the poor, despoiling the environment, carpet-bombing brown people wherever they may be, and enriching themselves. That’s all they care about. The task of the right-wing think-tanks is to treat “war and tax cuts” like they’re ideas. They’re not. But war and tax cuts ARE the two foundation blocks of the Republican Party. There’s nothing else; there never has been. Don’t look for ideas; there aren’t any.

I have no dog in this fight. I’m not voting for Obama because I don’t think he’ll withdraw the troops from Iraq or Afghanistan, repeal the Military Commissions Act, restore habeas corpus, negotiate a fair settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, or hold Bush and his gangster buddies accountable for the crimes they’ve committed during their time in office. But, just because I’m not voting for Obama, doesn’t mean I’ve lost my marbles. I can still see the affect he has on people. He’s not a candidate; he’s a phenomenon. Obama is an explosive, vital, charismatic politician. When he speaks people feel better about themselves and their country. And, they’re more hopeful about the future, too. That’s what makes him unbeatable.

McCain, on the other hand, is the perfect embodiment of his party; a rusty, broken-down hulk that’s been stripped of its engine, its fenders and all its moving parts. Even the steering wheel is gone. It’s a dead-loss; nothing is salvageable.

McCain is in way over his head. This election is going to be a real embarrassment for him. It’s too bad. He should be back at the Phoenix Rest Home shooing kids off the front lawn instead of waiting for the ax to fall in November. It’s a rotten way to end a career.

see

Letter to the future president #147

Does a leopard change its spots? By William Bowles

Decoding Obama on Iraq by Anthony Arnove

Countdown: Obama’s Speech in Berlin + Obama + Campaign Gaffes

To John McCain: End All Torture

Countdown: A Matter of History + Media Bias + Down the Tubes

McCain To Counter Massive Obama Press Coverage By Announcing The End Of The World

While Obama’s Away, McCain Discovers The Internet, Fire & The Wheel

Obama’s posse headed for Middle East; McCain furious

McCain-John

Obama-Barack

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Standing up to police spying by Ben Dalbey

Dandelion Salad

by Ben Dalbey

http://socialistworker.org

July 25, 2008

Ben Dalbey reports on a meeting to protest Maryland’s police spying operation against the anti-death penalty and antiwar movements.

BALTIMORE–About 100 people gathered July 24 for a public forum and press conference in support of four activists named by the Maryland State Police in 43 pages of surveillance reports recently released to the ACLU.

The reports reveal a long-term, statewide spying operation conducted by the state police against the anti-death penalty and antiwar movements.

The forum, “We Will Not Be Silenced: Maryland Anti-Death Penalty Activists Speak Out!” was sponsored by the Baltimore chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Maryland Citizens Against State Executions. It took place just four days before a special commission appointed by Gov. Martin O’Malley is scheduled to hold the first in a series of public hearings on the state’s use of the death penalty.

Now, state and federal lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland and state Sen. Brian Frosh, the chair of the Judicial Proceedings Committee, are calling for hearings of another type–to investigate the state police and members of former Gov. Robert Ehrlich’s administration for spying on Marylanders who were doing nothing more than exercise their constitutional rights.

On July 17, the ACLU publicized the state police documents obtained through a lawsuit filed on behalf of Baltimore activist Max Obuszewski. As described by ACLU of Maryland staff attorney David Rocah, they are “the tip of the proverbial iceberg.”

The reports are comprised of page after page of detailed notes taken at organizing meetings, picket lines and educational forums, held in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Takoma Park; in Baltimore; and in Annapolis, outside the state capitol building. Some of the meetings took place inside the offices of the Quaker-affiliated American Friends Service Committee.

The police reports contain no mention of any illegal activity, yet the surveillance continued for months on end.

Terrence Sheridan, the current superintendent of the Maryland State Police, last week released a statement denying that the police ever engaged in unlawful surveillance and claiming his force “does not inappropriately curtail the expression or demonstration of the civil liberties of protestors or organizations acting lawfully.”

O’Malley said that his administration “does not and will not use public resources to target or monitor peaceful activities where Maryland citizens are exercising their First Amendment rights.”

However, neither the police nor O’Malley have said that the anti-death penalty and antiwar movements are no longer under state surveillance, and both have yet to commit to a full and public investigation, including the release of all documents and prosecution of all responsible parties.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

AT THE July 24 forum, Obuszewski, a member of the peace group Pledge of Resistance and the Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty; Baltimore Coalition member Dr. Terry Fitzgerald; Campaign to End the Death Penalty national board member Mike Stark; and activist and sportswriter Dave Zirin–all individually named in the police reports released so far–spoke out about their experiences, conveying their outrage and their commitment to see justice done.

The four were joined by John Duda of the Red Emma’s Collective, which runs a left-wing bookstore in Baltimore also mentioned in the police reports, the ACLU’s David Rocah, who said that his group is prepared to file legal actions on behalf of all organizations and individuals in Maryland who may be have been subject to surveillance, and Amy Fusting of Maryland Citizens Against State Executions.

Obuszewski, a well-known activist in Baltimore, described his years-long struggle to obtain the police records. Obuszewski said he believes he became a target of police surveillance because of his involvement in planning annual peaceful protests outside of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade in Maryland.

Obuszewki urged all those present to get involved, come to organizing meetings and join the struggle to change these policies and the priorities of a system that needs repression to survive.

Fitzgerald highlighted the hypocrisy inherent in a police agency spying on political activists in the name of protecting democracy.

The Baltimore Coalition Against the Death Penalty is “bringing life to democracy,” he said. “This is the heart of democracy: citizens coming together to challenge policies of the government and organizing fellow citizens to change those policies. These actions by the police state of Maryland are an attack on the fundamentals of democracy.”

Stark pointed out that during the same period the state police were spying on anti-death penalty activists, the state executed two men: Steven Oken and Wesley Baker.

He said that Ehrlich’s spokespeople at the time had “one thin argument left [in defense of the death penalty], which is that in Maryland, a majority of people support the death penalty. They are so frightened of what might happen if activists get out there and talk to people…to change public opinion…They were willing to use their ‘hit men.’ They were using it as a way of furthering their agenda, to prop up the death penalty.”

Zirin reiterated his commitment to continuing the struggle to abolish the death penalty in Maryland and encouraged local activists to not give in to a culture of paranoia as a result of the spying scandal.

“One of the aims of this kind of illegal state harassment is to divide us, to keep us separated and silenced,” he said. “That’s why it’s so important we are here together tonight–out of the chill, and into the warmth that comes with struggle and solidarity. That’s why it’s so important to not let them crawl inside our heads and make us jump at shadows. That’s why it’s so very important that we continue to foster an atmosphere that is not suspicious of new faces, voices and ideas.”

Zirin also described his view that the Maryland police spying is not–as some have said–a “misappropriation” of Homeland Security funding.

“We are victims of the Patriot Act and Homeland Security,” Zirin said. “But we are not the ones who have suffered the most. They are in Gitmo. They have been the victims of rendition. They are having their mosques and homes bugged. They are our Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters.

“The problem is not that DHS were surveilling the wrong people. It’s that they are surveilling anybody. This culture of fear that says some people should be watched is driven by the Islamophobia that grips our country–fed by the need of the Bush administration to create an enemy at home, even where none exists.”

Activists vowed to continue to the struggle for democracy and justice, with the Baltimore CEDP chapter holding an organizing meeting August 2 to plan future actions.

see

COINTELPRO Comes to My Town: My First-Hand Experience With Government Spies by Dave Zirin

Kucinich to Investigate Police Surveillance of Peace Groups

Domestic Spying

Police State

Which war crimes get prosecuted? by Paul D’Amato

Dandelion Salad

by Paul D’Amato

http://socialistworker.org

July 25, 2008

Paul D’Amato explains why some atrocities are decried, while others–especially when the perpetrators are the leaders of powerful governments–go unpunished.

TO GREAT fanfare in the Western media, the Serbian government recently arrested Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalist cause during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the early to mid-1990s, on war crimes charges.

Karadzic and Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic, who is still at large, have been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), located in the Hague, in connection with the siege of Sarajevo, during which up to 11,000 people were killed, and the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica.

That Karadzic is responsible for war crimes should not be in question. Under his political leadership, Serbian nationalists engaged in terrible atrocities–including the shelling of cities and towns, massacres of civilians, rapes and herding people into concentration camps–to drive people out and create an “ethnically pure” swath of Bosnia and the Krajina region of Croatia that they hoped to annex to Serbia.

But this fact alone does not close the case. As with all war crimes tribunals in history, there is selectiveness about what is considered a war crime and who ends up on the dock.

After the Second World War, some Nazis were put on trial in Nuremburg (though because of U.S. Cold War interests in establishing a strong German state and utilizing former Nazis as spies and scientists, the trials were wound up quickly). But as a court of the victors, no Americans were tried for the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or for the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden.

Throughout the Balkans conflict, Serbs were systematically demonized in the Western press, while atrocities and ethnic cleansing committed by Croats and Muslims were either omitted or played down.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

ON FIRST look, the ICTY offers an image of impartiality. In addition to indicting Slobodan Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic, it has also indicted Milan Babić, president of the Republika Srpska Krajina; Ramush Haradinaj, former prime minister of Kosovo (recently acquitted); Rasim Delić, who served as commander of the main staff of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina from June 1993 until the end of the Bosnian war; and Ante Gotovina, former general of the Croatian Army (currently on trial).

However, of the 161 individuals indicted by the ICTY, from common soldiers to generals, police commanders and political leaders, three-quarters are Serbs or Montenegrins. This is not surprising considering the court was established by the UN Security Council, under pressure from the U.S.–making it, again, a “court of the victors.”

While it is true that the conflict in the region developed out of the ambitions of Slobodan Milosevic for a greater Serbia, uniting the Serbs of Serbia with those living in Bosnia and Croatia, Croatia’s nationalists under Franjo Tudjman were no less ruthless in their efforts to create a “greater Croatia,” based on the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the Krajina and Serbs and Muslims from parts of Bosnia.

Croatian paramilitaries massacred hundreds of Muslim civilians in the town of Ahmici, to give just one example. After shelling the town to force townspeople to flee, Croatian forces sprayed them with machine gun fire across an open field through which the people were forced to run, a scenario similar to the atrocities committed by Serbian forces in many Bosnian villages during the war.

Indeed, as Bosnia came under attack from Serbian and Croatian paramilitaries, Muslim nationalists, with (eventually) military aid and air support from the U.S. and Europe, engaged in similar acts of ethnic cleansing as their Serbian and Croatian counterparts. Journalist Misha Glenny, in his excellent book The Fall of Yugoslavia, offers an example:

Wherever they could, the Muslims used the considerable sympathy which they enjoyed in the outside world as a cover to undertake military operations.

In December and early January [1993], they launched an intensive offensive from Srebrenica with the aim of regaining control of Bratunac, to the east on the river Drina. The Serbs were caught unawares by the attack, and the Muslims moved swiftly through Serbian villages, slaughtering a large number of civilians on the way. Because the atrocities were being perpetrated by the Muslims, they received relatively little attention in the world media.

They also provoked a fearsome counter-attack by the Serbs, who had soon driven the Muslims back to Srebrenica. Politicians and journalists were quick to condemn the Serbs for this operation, but they entirely neglected to point out that it had been provoked by the original Muslim offensive.

But what really throws the impartiality of the court into question is that no individuals–military or political leaders–from NATO countries that intervened in the war have been indicted. Yet there can be no doubt that the United States and NATO forces committed war crimes in the former Yugoslavia–first, in the Bosnian war, and later, in the air war against Serbia in 1999 during the conflict over Kosovo.

From the start, there was the complicity of the Western powers in creating the conditions that made war and ethnic cleansing inevitable. As Phil Gasper wrote:

In the end, Germany’s recognition of Croatia’s independence–without any guarantees of the Serb minority’s national rights in Croatia–made the outbreak of war and the disintegration of Yugoslavia inevitable. The same holds true for Bosnia. Germany and the U.S. recognized Bosnian independence even though the majority of Bosnian Serbs and Croats–about 51 percent of the republic–had rejected it. By doing so, they put their seal of approval on Bosnia’s descent into war.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -

THEN THERE is the direct complicity of the United States in the greatest single act of ethnic cleansing that took place during the war–Operation Storm in August 1995.

By 1993, the U.S. was finally able to strong-arm its reluctant European war partners into adopting a new policy (the old one being an arms embargo on Bosnia)–NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs, combined with arming the Bosnian Muslim army. The policy was called “lift and strike.”

Peter Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia, brokered a new alliance–after the two sides had been fighting for months in central Bosnia–between Croatia and the Bosnian Muslims.

To “level the playing field” further, a group of retired U.S. generals helped Croatia to devise a military plan, with U.S. and German military aid, to overrun the Serb-held Krajina region. A private U.S. mercenary company, Military Professional Resources Inc., provided training to the Croatian Army.

The August 4, 1995, Croatian offensive, dubbed “Operation Storm,” drove upwards of 200,000 Krajina Serbs from their homes. Human rights observers reported the burning of homes, looting and massacres of elderly Serbs too old to flee the region. Croatia was completely “cleansed” of its historic Serbian population, and in the following weeks, U.S. air support for Muslim and Croatian forces allowed them to seize 20 percent of Bosnia back from the Serbs.

According to Mark Danner, writing in the New York Review of Books:

During two weeks beginning at the end of August, NATO pilots flew 3,400 sorties, destroying Serb antiaircraft batteries, radar sites, ammunition depots, command bunkers, bridges. Meanwhile, the Croats and Bosnians pressed their combined attacks in northwest Bosnia, conquering town after town. Indeed, NATO planes had in effect become the Croatian and Bosnian air force, ensuring that they would succeed, in just over two weeks, in changing the balance of power in Bosnia.

Bill Clinton praised Operation Storm, saying that he was “hopeful Croatia’s offensive will turn out to be something that will give us an avenue to a quick diplomatic solution.” The three-pronged offensive–the Croat invasion of Krajina, a Muslim attack in central Bosnia and punishing air strikes–pushed all sides to the negotiating table in 1995 to sign the Dayton Accords.

Today, Ante Gotovina, the Croatian general who led Operation Storm, along with two other generals, is currently facing trial on war crimes charges associated with that operation. But Bill Clinton and the U.S. generals who helped plan it and gave the green light for it remain at large.

Finally, the 11-week NATO air assault on Serbia during the Kosovo war in 1999 is a war crime that the tribunal won’t touch.

The U.S. claimed that it went to war to help Kosovar Albanian refugees under attack by Serbian forces. However, the NATO bombing produced another several hundred thousand Kosovar refugees and later helped facilitate the cleansing of the Serb minority from Kosovo.

U.S. and NATO planes conducted several thousand sorties, destroying Serbia’s power grid, factories (372 industrial sites), railways, bridges, schools and hospitals. Between 1,200 and 1,500 Serb civilians and as many as 5,000 Serbian military personnel were killed. At one point, NATO planes destroyed a bridge filled with fleeing refugees, killing 87 people. After blowing up Belgrade’s TV station with a cruise missile, killing 16 people, NATO officials justified it by claiming that the station had been a source of “propaganda.”

Directing and encouraging ethnic cleansing, playing one nationality off of another, bombing civilian infrastructure and murdering civilians–these acts engaged in by the U.S. and its NATO allies took place under the pleasant halo of “humanitarian intervention.”

The perpetrators of these great “humanitarian” deeds will likely never see the inside of a jail cell or face criminal prosecution for their crimes against humanity without a massive alteration in the balance of forces in the world between the powerful and the dispossessed.