Bunuel's "Los Olvidados"

		Showtimes: 1:30, 3:30, 5:30, 7:30, 9:30
This masterpiece of 1950 is a brutally candid tale of Mexican street life, laced with Buñuel’s surrealistic touches. Unforgettable.” – David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor “A great, great movie... a masterpiece of social surrealism. Strong enough to make a hardened Communist cry or drive a (true) Christian to despair. Once seen this movie can never be forgotten. The new 35mm print is the best I’ve ever seen.” – J. Hoberman, Village Voice. Click here to read entire review. “A MASTERWORK!” – PAULINE KAEL “Sharp, swift and lethally compact, LOS OLVIDADOS is a celluloid switchblade swiped at the jugular of city living. After more than half a century, Buñuel’s exposé of "the young and the damned" (as the movie was hyperbolically retitled in English) remains as star and savage a movie as they come. A ferocious masterpiece... one bold image after another. There isn’t a single good shot in LOS OLVIDADOS. They're all perfect.” – Nathan Lee, New York Sun “Buñuel dabbled in many genres through his career, but in this 1950 masterpiece, a stark portrait of juvenile slum-dwellers in Mexico City, he mastered them all at once. One of the most powerful and unclassifiable films ever made.” --New York Magazine “Searingly brutal... an excoriating indictment of poverty, LOS OLVIDADOS is no mere social-message movie; Buñuel’s surrealist flourishes transform the squalid into the oneiric through feverish, gorgeously shot nightmares.” – Melissa Anderson, Time Out New York “Los Olvidados is an impassioned cry about the social deprivation suffered by urban youth. Buñuel’s slum story was not only tougher than the nearly similar one Vittorio De Sica told in Shoe-Shine, but the addition of Surrealist tropes (such as the dream sequences that imbued political reality with the otherworldly) made his social tragedy differently disturbing.... It was the beginning of Buñuel’s great Mexican period-his best.” – Armond White, NY Press. Click here to read the entire review

(1950) Literally, The Forgotten. After a stint in the reformatory, teenage delinquent Jaibo (former chorus boy Roberto Cobo, later one of Mexico’s leading screen actors) returns to the streets of Mexico City to head up a loose-knit gang of urchins, including bumpkin “Ojitos” (Little Eyes) and wanting-to-be-good Pedro. Picking up again where they left off, the gang beats up beggars, snatches purses and loafs around, with Jaibo itching to settle the score against the squealer who sent him away. Shot in only 18 days, this no-compromise report from the slums was Spanish refugee Buñuel’s first return to iconoclastic form since L’Age d’or and Land without Bread two decades earlier (in the interim he’d directed only a few for-hire Mexican movies). Denounced in Mexico when it first opened — both by an elite embarrassed by its depiction of the country’s urban underclass and by reformers who balked at its surrealist touches (most famously in Pedro’s hallucinatory vision of his mother lurching toward him in slo-mo dangling a raw piece of meat: “perhaps the greatest of all movie dream sequences” – Pauline Kael) — Olvidados was yanked from Mexican screens in less than a week. But after a rapturous reception at Cannes, where it won the Best Director prize, and huge commercial success in both the U.S. (under the lurid title The Young and the Damned) and Europe, it was rereleased in Mexico to grudging critical acclaim, and ended up sweeping eleven of the country’s Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Screenplay and Cinematography (by the great Gabriel Figueroa, who also shot films for John Ford and John Huston). Now acknowledged as one of the greatest Mexican films ever made (#2 in a 1994 critics survey), Los Olvidados catapulted Buñuel into the pantheon of international directors. Its influence can be felt in everything from Truffaut’s The 400 Blows to Fernando Meirelles’s recent City of God. Following the film, we will be showing the alternate “happy” ending, which the producer had shot in an attempt to soften the blow. “Transcends documentary — it’s real life, only more so.” – Dave Kehr. Approx. 85 minutes.

Venezuela In US Crosshairs

Brazil

Guantanamo, Cuba

By PAISLEY DODDS, Associated Press Writer

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account.

AP Photo http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.y... && (http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.y... ~~ "http") -- AP Photo Slideshow: Guantanamo Naval Base

Plan Colombia -­ beach head of the USA Empire in South America

VHeadline commentarist Carlos Herrera writes: The Granda affair and the resulting freezing of economic relations between Colombia and Venezuela ... two countries with the same historical roots ... has once again drawn attention to Plan Colombia as a strategy of US neoliberal expansionism in the Andean region.

There is a web site of the Colombian government where the official name of Plan Colombia is “Investment Fund for Peace” and contains three main strategies:

Social and Economic Recuperation

Defeat of the Armed Conflict

Anti-narcotics Strategy”

The information available is incomplete and superficial and it was in this way that Plan Colombia was “sold” to the Colombians.

For example, in the section dealing with “Social and Economic Recuperation”, the only information available is:

This is a strategy to mitigate the economic crisis which is currently affecting the country. To this end, “Tools of Equality” have been designed which are “shock” methods which Colombians of low resources can count on.

In the section “Defeating the Armed Conflict” and the “Antinarcotics Strategy,” there is no mention anywhere of US intervention or military forces on Colombian territory. Nowadays, there are “military advisers” in Colombia ... as there were in Vietnam at the beginning of the 1960s ... backed up by Special Forces and some regular troops. This amounts to the voluntary surrender of Colombian sovereignty by the Narino Palace in Bogota.

“To control Venezuela, it in necessary to intervene militarily in Colombia”
(P. Coverdell, US conservative senator and proponent of Plan Colombia, April 2000)

In our opinion, the long term objective of Plan Colombia in the Andean region is to take over the oil and gas reserves located along the “Bolivarian energy arc,” which extends from Trinidad, passing through Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador to Bolivia. The most important reserves are on Venezuelan territory and represent a secure source of energy in the empire’s “back yard”, and now even more so after the disaster of the military adventure in Iraq. Venezuela is the third global objective of international oil capital: our non conventional reserves in the Orinoco Belt are comparable to the proven reserves of conventional crude in Saudi Arabia (270 billion barrels). These are the reserves of the future.

Taking into account the recent military adventures of the US in Afghanistan with the aim of building a gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea to a loading terminal in Pakistan, and in Iraq to ensure “cheap oil”, one can assume with a great deal of certainty that Venezuela will be the next objective. In a geopolitical context, our best option for the future is a Latin American Energy Alliance using Petrosur or PetroAmerica, as a bulwark against the US hemispheric energy alliance.

Today, as during the struggle for independence, the Bolivarian nations must vindicate their common destiny and their sovereignty over their energy resources. The US empire wants to turn Colombia into another Israel, which is a mechanism to convert the Bolivarian countries into another Palestine.

The creation of the South American Community of Nations (CSN) in Cusco on December 8 last year threatens the hegemonic pretensions of the US in the region and for this reason the US has not wasted even a minute in fabricating a “crisis” between Venezuela and Colombia using the Granda affair as a detonator.

• In this way, the military application of Plan Colombia is being accelerated against Venezuela and at the same time could weaken the cohesion of the CSN.

In spite of US efforts to bring about the fall of President Chavez in April 2002 in a coup d’etat, and by means of the bosses’ lock out and oil industry sabotage in December of the same year, the options left open to the US are the application of Plan Colombia and/or the assassination of the President himself.

Both options could trigger an armed conflict in Venezuela. Events are very fluid and we will have to wait for the unfolding of the next chapter in this geopolitical struggle, which will give a respite to the Venezuelan people and their government to defend themselves against the next aggression coming from the empire using the puppets installed in the Narino Palace.

Presidential elections are due to be held in Venezuela in December 2006, and in our opinion, the US will need to find a “solution to the Venezuelan problem” between today and the elections, since they know that it is imposible to defeat Chavez democratically.

These are the implications of Plan Colombia for the Venezuelan people but for our Colombian brothers, they are even more serious, as explained later on. What is happening in Colombia will inevitably come to Venezuela, if the US succeeds in applying Plan Colombia in its totality, without mentioning the “theft” of the sovereign oil reserves from the homeland of Simon Bolivar.

With the purpose of explaining in more depth the objectives of Plan Colombia to VHeadline readers, we are publishing an analysis from January 31, 2001 by Luis Alberto Matta Aldana, activist and defender of Human Rights and Investigator of rural problems and the Agarain Question in Colombia.

We recommend to our readers that they compare this analysis with the proposals contained in the oficial web site of Plan Colombia and for those familiar with the Venezuelan process to note that what was happening in Colombia, even in 2001 when the following article was written, is diametrically opposed to the policies of the Bolivarian government in terms of food, territorial and economic sovereignty.

This is the unacceptable price the Colombian population is paying thanks to the predatory neoliberal policies, first implemented by the Pastrana administration and now continued by Uribe Velez.

Carlos Herrera
Carlos.Herrera@VHeadline.com

PLAN COLOMBIA - FROM VIETNAM TO AMAZONIA
January 31, 2001

• Alternative forum against globalization and neoliberalism, “the other Davos”

Plan Colombia: Neoliberal challenge for Latin America

Luis Alberto Matta Aldana

Plan Colombia is the most complete and genuine manifestation of contemporary capitalism. It is a neoliberal program combining political, military and economic intervention, but which is skillfully presented as a humanitarian plan to defend democracy and save the world from the menace of drug running.

It is this perverse logic upon which it attempts to validate itself, hiding and deceiving everyone in its bellicose and financial intentions, with North Americans entangled with their cohorts of the Colombian oligarchy. The sectors in power who are closely linked to capital in both countries, are betting on the political and military defeat of the opposition of the Colombian people, and are in particular trying to crush the guerrilla insurgents.

The objective of the US with Plan Colombia is to intervene in the internal social and political conflict in Colombia, to impose and favor the interests of important oil and coal transnationals, to promote the privatization of the main state industries, especially in the health, education and communications sectors, to protect private land owners in the livestock and agro-industrial sector, and above all, to take control of the enormous natural riches of Amazonia, without any real resistance.

In addition, the political and military interventionism in Colombia is aimed at subjugating the peoples of Latin America. The US is seeking a geostrategic repositioning of itself in the region, after the popular discontent triggered by the neoliberal policies applied in Ecuador, Peru, Brazil and Panama. At the same time, the US is looking on with obvious distaste at the political and social changes taking place in Venezuela, a process which the Colombian elites tendentiously accuse of being ideologically and politically linked to the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia)

Plan Colombia represents a serious threat for the common peoples’ struggles in Latin America. A few days ago, Horacio Serpa, a noted and corrupt Colombian politician (ex presidential candidate) proposed in a meeting with US diplomats and military personnel, that Plan Colombia should be extended to the whole Andean region and Amazonia.

Attitudes such as this one cannot be ignored. Our country, Colombia, is involved in a huge arms race without precedents in the region. Currently (2001) there are at least 400 “US advisers” permanently on Colombian territory, and it is an open secret that dozens of them are mercenaries, trained in similar conflicts in Africa, the Persian Gulf and the Balkans

Nevertheless, this new style of US intervention does not initially contemplate the direct disembarkation of troops. Instead, the army and the Colombian police are being rapidly transformed into a powerful war machine.

80% of the first part of the US “aid” (around US$1.3 billion) is represented in sophisticated radars, spy planes, 30 Black Hawk military helicopters and 75 Artillery Hueys UH1H, the training and financing of 5 new battalions with up to 52,000 professional soldiers which will complement the 150,000 already in existence, resulting in a total of 320,00 persons linked to military, intelligence and security operations.

This is not a game. Latin America must take this very seriously. The US is reconstructing a cold war scenario in which Colombia could become the beach head for a future US invasion of Venezuela.

In Amazonia, particularly in the area between Ecuador and Colombia, there is great concern due to the environmental impact caused by the indiscriminate use of phosphates and the spores contained in the chemical Fusarium Oxisporum against coca plantations. There is a clear understanding in the communities that this will be devastating aggression for the rain forest, which will have even graver consequences for this reserve which belongs to the whole of humanity.

• It is difficult to believe that the US will leave Amazonia once having established itself there. Its natural riches and the nearby oil reserves are an attractive magnet for international capital.

In general, for neighboring governments, Plan Colombia will generate more violence due to technological changes in the conflict, a massive US presence in the region, will cause thousands of refugees, and probably the coca plantations will extend further into Amazonia itself.

The traps contained in Plan Colombia

1. Fighting drug running:

Drug running is a by product of contemporary capitalism. The millions of dollars produced by the drug business are the plasma necessary to offset the anemia in a system based on speculation, and thus it is necessary to maintain the circulation of the enormous capital flows which give it life.

The concern of the US regarding drug running is simply hypocritical. On the one hand, they are looking for synthetic substitutes for various hallucinogenics and drugs to have a tighter control over the business. On the other hand, they allow “tax havens” to exist so that they can keep the huge capital flows produced by the narco dollars.

There is no “Plan United States” to disarticulate the financial structures needed to be left intact and which deal with the commercialization of the drugs, and whose managers are in the heart of the big cities, often linked to the international banking system. Even less mention is made of the 20 million addicts and street junkies, whose existence is detailed in the US’s own data.

The factories providing chemical supplies and additives necessary to make cocaine and heroin are generally North American and there have been no sanctions issued in this respect. The modern day US, with its enormous marihuana plantations in Virginia and California, is the world’s leading producer of this plant, and marihuana is ranked third in agricultural production after corn and wheat. It looks as though, providing this production does not lead to capital flight, it is not a great concern for the US government.

It can be seen that by presenting themselves to the world as enemies of drug running, the US has just created a paradox. If this is the aim of Plan Colombia, then it is just a trap, which is basically covering up US interests to consolidate the hegemonic accumulation of financial and transnational capital. In this way, the US uses this strategy to throw up a smokescreen on reality to justify its true intentions; it is not at all strange that in this bellicose plan, the CIA has classified the FARC-EP as a terrorist and narco-guerrilla group.

It is a tendentious argument by the US to claim that this large part of the Colombian peasant farmers’ movement, which has taken up arms against the injustice of capitalism, belongs to and depends on a phenomenon that corresponds to the forms of capital accumulation and speculation peculiar to drug running.

Reality has demonstrated that the US-Colombian status quo is worried by the popular support for the guerrilla and its significant political and military strength. They fear that its continuing development will lead to the organization of social movements in Colombia, which will then become an example to be followed by other opposition groups in Latin America and the world.

It is this situation which has compelled the Colombian oligarchy and the North Americans to recognize and be concerned mainly for the armed facet of the social and political conflict. Just as the current process of dialogue and negotiations between the insurgents and the Colombian government is a triumph for the popular and social movements fighting for peace, and which have also had a dynamic effect of the FARC-EP and the ELN with their proposals. Plan Colombia constitutes the most obvious threat to peace, not only to Colombia, but in the region as a whole.

2. Defense of democracy:

Plan Colombia is a life raft for the rotten Colombian institutions. It is the means by which the collapse of a traditionally corrupt and deeply criminal establishment, trapped in a profound economic and political crisis, can be avoided. It is prudent to remember that US support, above all in military terms, has traditionally favored governments with common policies and interests, and generally this “aid” has been received by those regimes consciously committed to the violation of human rights.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that the main beneficiary of such “aid” and military training by the US in the western hemisphere, is Colombia. This is precisely why the security forces, the police, the military and the establishment in general has built up the most alarming record of human rights violations in the west.

The stability of the genocidal Colombian regime has been maintained by generalized repression and political crimes. Justice, the backbone of a democracy, boasts a 97% impunity rate in Colombia, that is to say that it does not exist. Poverty is spreading like a cancer to the point that of an approximately 40 million population, 25 million are poor, with 10 million living in abject poverty. Corruption reaches all levels of the State and will turn out to be an unsustainable factor.

Colombia has two million internal refugees and an all but exterminated political opposition party (1). Such is the drama that it should be remembered that half of trade unionists murdered in the world are Colombians. According to official data, 20% of the economically active population is out of work and at least 40% depend on the informal economy which does not offer any sort of social guarantees.

This is a country which has a deficit of 10,000 health professionals and 7,000 teachers. Despite these facts, every year the number of teachers is reduced and hospitals are closed due to lack of resources. Meanwhile, the government has the luxury of contracting 52,000 military specialists to wage a mercenary war against its own people, obviously with all the social and wage guarantees, at the cost of thousands of public employees and workers dismissed.

Only a politically oligarchic regime, betraying its own homeland as is the present Colombian government, can guarantee the strategic interests of the US and the neoliberal exploitation embodied in transnational capital. In spite of all this, the government is using the incredible argument of “defending democracy and regional stability” to justify US interventionism. President Pastrana has invited European and neighboring governments to support Colombian democracy, as if this really existed.

On this pretext, the administration of President Pastrana has given the control of the national economy to the IMF and the Internacional Banks. He has ceded internal political control to the determination of the US State Department, while security aspects are grossly manipulated by the Strategic Southern Command, the CIA and the DEA. In its most crystal clear expression, Plan Colombia is apt for this time of neoliberalism and globalization, where national sovereignty takes second place, while the right to self-determination and the dignity of the Colombian people is simply ignored.

3. Social development components:

The US intends to mitigate the consequences of the war by means of the social elements contained Plan Colombia, which amount to 20% of the total plan. The idea is that the social and economic life of the country continues on its merry path in the midst of the devastating consequences of the conflict. That is, privatizations will be intensified and in general the neoliberal rhythm of the economy will be maintained.

The intensification of the war has already been foreseen (this is how the macabre execution of farm workers is defined, killed by the paramilitary strategy implemented by the State) and will generate more than 400,000 new refugees. The relocation of these people has been cynically budgeted as a palliative for the thousands of people kicked off the land, victims of the “integral strategy” of bombings, fumigation and massacres. It goes without saying that 70% of these aid resources will be administered by NGO’s. (Last year, 2000, more than 1,000 new NGO’s have been registered, most of which are attributable to representatives of “civil society”).

In large cities a fall in the consumption of rice, manioc, platains and potatoes etc., which are the basic elements of the Colombian diet, has not been forecast. While the Colombian countryside goes up in flames, 7.5 million tonnes of food is being imported, and North American cereals are being purchased. By means of a clear antiagrarian legislation and an antipatriotic policy of imports, what remains of Colombia’s impoverished peasant farmer economy is being wiped out. The tragedy, desolation and poverty in our peasant workers ranks, seems as if it happening on a far off planet.

It is a question of generating a climate of national skepticism and indifference towards the reality of our countryside. The agrarian question and the rural areas in general have taken on a special importance now that Plan Colombia is underway. This military, political and social program is a replay of the secular aggression suffered for more than a century by the Colombian peasantry. Without any doubt, the process of agrarian counter reforms will be pushed forward. Idle lands will increase and the neoliberal policies aimed at agro-industrial development, genetically modified crops, the use of certified seeds, are all measures which will destroy the peasant farmer economy and the ability of the country to feed itself.

Let us not forget that Colombia is one of the places in the world with the greatest concentration of land in the hands of a few owners. 1.5% of land owners are proprietors of 80% of the total area that can be used for growing food. Idle lands have been the structural support of the anti-democratic system which controls the destiny of Colombia.

The Colombian oligarchy wants to assume social, ideological and political control over the peasant farmers. In fact, the US sees the peasantry as potential allies of the insurgents, since the FARC-EP has historically been part of rural areas and most of its soldiers are peasants who have taken up arms.

Plan Colombia’s strategy is designed to weaken the organizational capacity and mobilization of the trade unionists and workers, and particularly the peasant movement. Since most of the base of the guerrilla insurgents is to be found in the countryside, it is precisely there where the terrible slaughter of rural workers takes place, carried out by the paramilitary death squads.

The favorable attitude shown by a considerable part of the Colombian parliament towards the paramilitaries is not even thinly disguised, as in the case of the cattle ranchers and agricultural associations. The repeated opinions by the Attorney General and the Procurator General calling for the political recognition of this network of assassins cannot be ignored either, as well as similar opinions expressed by the Church Hierarchy led by Bishop Gutierrez Pabon of Chinquinquira, political leaders led by Álvaro Uribe Velez, ex generals such as Harold Bedoya and Rito Alejo del Rio, all of whom together with others are clamoring in favor of an all out war.

It is important to emphasize that the AUC (United Self-defenders of Colombia -- a name given to the paramilitary networks) are led by self-confessed drug traffickers. These have been strategically aligned with the CIA and DEA when their services are required, such as when a group calling itself PEPES was created, linked to the Cali cartel and the DEA, and executed the drug trafficker Pablo Escobar Gaviria. This contributed decisively to the breaking up of the powerful Medellin cartel, according to declarations a few days later by a band of paid assassins called “La Terraza” in an extensive document published in Semana, a magazine with a wide circulation in Colombia.

The Colombian peasantry, as the rest of the popular movements, will respond well to the new challenge which has been thrown at them, but needs not to be isolated, it needs a voice, helping hands and the support of all those whose dream is to construct a new democracy and a more just world.

The anti-agrarian policies that are dominating the present neoliberal period have undermined the possibility of reaching self-sufficiency in food production in southern countries, provoking as a result, the destruction of industrial sectors that process the produce from the land. The monopolies and oligopolies have proposed planting genetically modified crops to control food production throughout the world, converting this strategic matter into a mechanism of neocolonial domination. This is one of the traps hidden in Plan Colombia, which we were obliged to reveal.

In addition, it is a trap to place coca and poppy (amapola) plantations on the same level (they have arbitrarily labeled “illicit”) as drug trafficking. Coca and poppy plantations had always formed part of subsistence crops incorporated into the rural economy.

The peasant workers were launched into this new reality by social and economic circumstances which were imposed upon them. As a result, it is not correct to label them illicit crops. In the conception of the peasantry, coca and poppy crops still continue to be a fruit of the earth. Among other reasons, they are the only possible crops that can be grown in the geographic conditions where many peasant farmer families live.

In general, coca plantations are a form of subsistence used by the peasant farmers so that they do not have to abandon the rural environment. For this reason, it is important to separate the two realities. Drug running and planting. The first is a by product of capitalism and the second is a product of the injustices of capitalism when idle lands, violence and antiagrarian policies come together to oppress the peasantry.

4. Plan Colombia and the peace process:

The high dignitaries of the US and Colombia have emphasized their commitment to peace. And this is certain, but it is a distant peace from the one needed by Colombia. The obsession of the Colombian ruling classes for peace is aimed at obliging the guerrilla insurgents to sign an agreement whose main component is the surrendering of arms, the demobilization and the reinsertion of the guerrillas into the traditional institutional scheme of things, offering in exchange numerous prebends and electoral posts, and financing of aid projects via the NGO’s, such as happened in the past with the M-19, the EPL and the CRS (a minority grouping of the ELN).

One cannot fall into the trap that is part of a supposed humanitarian intervention to attain peace. Plan Colombia means a peace which is like the one in a cemetery. This proposal is gaining followers in the NGO’s who have made the mistake of accepting the social and military aspects contained in Plan Colombia. The social part of the Plan, supposedly linked to peace, is just a carrot of aid and assistance to keep consciences clear, after the final application of the war mongering garrote called neoliberalism..

To conclude, I would like to reiterate that Plan Colombia is the launching pad for Yankee intervention in Latin America. It is an affront to the people of this continent based on the new model of US economic, political and military intervention into what they consider to be their backyard.

There is a stiff test to come in which our people will have to increase their dignity and valor to face up to the coming difficult stage of struggle and resistance. It our responsibility to change the course of history which they want to impose on us. The social and popular struggle will play an important part in what is also an expression of the guerrilla struggle as well. This has become a symbol of hope for the struggle being carried out by people against the savage nature of predatory capitalism.

The international rejection of the Plan against Colombia should in itself become a unifying component in the political struggle which the oppressed and exploited are waging against the hegemonic, military globalization of transnational capital, both from the US and Europe. This is the framework for these efforts to build a lasting peace in the world.

Democracy and human rights are incompatible with the colonialism which is subjugating and restricting the sovereignty and independency of nations.

• To defeat this situation of lack of dignity, social misery and political and economic dictatorship, it is necessary to go from simple proposals to concrete resistance.

If we are in favor of democracy and human rights, then we need to have a moral and ethical obligation: to fight without yielding to the system that is denying us these rights.

Cuba

American Experience Fidel Castro Thirteen/WNET New York January 31, 2005 9:00pm Check out the Web site!
"One night we started talking about the future - I turned to Fidel and said, 'Guajiro, what do you want?' And he said, 'I want glory and fame.'" Alfredo "Chino" Esquivel, Castro's classmate at the University of Havana In the United States, Latin America, Europe and in far corners of the globe, people from all walks of life either despise Fidel Castro as a ruthless dictator or lionize him as a champion of social justice. Nearly five decades after he assumed power, he remains a living legend, a touchstone for revolutionaries the world over and a symbol of resistance to American dominance. AMERICAN EXPERIENCE "Fidel Castro," airing on PBS Monday, January 31, 2005, is a new documentary about the controversial, charismatic dictator who has confounded American presidents from Eisenhower to Bush while surviving a CIA-backed invasion, countless assassination plots, an economic embargo - even the collapse of his benefactor, the Soviet Union. For the leader of a small Caribbean nation, Castro's impact on the latter half of the 20th century has been inordinate. Castro sent his soldiers to the farthest reaches of the world and roused his people to accomplish heroic feats, in the name of justice and the promise of a brilliant future. But he also drove two million Cubans into exile and silenced those who dared challenge his rule. "To make this film," says producer/director/writer Adrianna Bosch, "I had to reach deeper into my heart than I ever have before to attempt to answer the questions, Why Fidel Castro? And what really happened in Cuba under him?" "Adriana Bosch brings to this documentary a rare combination of 20 years of filmmaking experience, personal interest and academic training," says Mark Samels, executive producer of AMERICAN EXPERIENCE. "She is an accomplished documentarian; a native of Cuba, where she remained for a decade after the revolution; and her doctoral dissertation dealt with Cuban involvement in the Sandinista revolution. She is uniquely suited to make this film." To craft this documentary, Bosch and her production team interviewed exiles and defectors, foreign policy experts, journalists, scholars, former members of Castro's government - even his daughter, Alina Fernandez, and former brother-in-law, Rafael Diaz-Balart. The first-hand accounts of people who lived through the revolution - either participating in it, battling against it or fleeing from it - are interwoven with the observations of Cuba experts, including Harvard University's Jorge Dominguez; Norberto Fuentes, a writer once close to Castro and now living in exile; Washington University's William LeoGrande; and Marifeli Perez-Stable, a professor at Florida International University. Despite repeated attempts, the producers were unable to gain entrance to Cuba. The observations and experiences of these and other witnesses come to life against a backdrop of vivid and revealing images: -Castro's mother, Lina, and Las Manacas, the Castro family's sprawling sugar plantation, shortly after it was seized by the revolutionary government; -Castro's first interview on American television, only five months after arriving in legendary Sierra Maestra mountain terrain; -Scenes of the early days of the revolution seen through the lens of Soviet filmmakers; and -Documents and photographs smuggled out of Cuban prisons, many seen here for the first time. Unflinching in its approach, AMERICAN EXPERIENCE "Fidel Castro" does not shy away from controversy, while acknowledging both Castro's accomplishments and his failures. "Castro has managed to remain in power longer than almost any other leader in the last 100 or 200 years," comments Brian Latell, who spent 25 years studying him for the CIA. "It's a remarkable tenure - a testament to his political skills, to his ability to play as a grand master at chess, always two, three moves ahead." "There is a great chasm between the promise of the revolution and its results," notes Alcibiades Hidalgo, Raul Castro's former chief of staff, who defected in the mid-1990s. "Cuba is, pure and simple, a dictatorship each day more devoid of the attributes that once made it attractive." "Ultimately, the film is a cautionary tale," says Bosch. "It is the tragic story of a nation who saw a messiah in just a man."

Not Just Our Soldiers, But The Rest Of Us

Shame on all of us!

American media’s biggest concern seems to be the damage to our image, and not the injuries perpetrated says Ben Tanosborn.

My timing to conduct a survey among expatriates on their current political feelings proved to be disastrous in these past few days. The outrage dealing with the topical abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers had our expatriates all over the world running for cover… in disgust and also shame.

When confronted with the issue, Bush said to be “deeply disgusted” stating that any soldier “found to be at fault” would be punished… and underlining that the treatment of these Iraqi prisoners does not reflect the nature of American people.

Yep! Same old fable… Americans are 99.99% pure of heart, and we shouldn’t be surprised when a few spoil things for the lot. We spin defeat into victory, and criminality into virtue. The Bush administration has achieved mastery on this subject…now preparing to take it to a doctoral dissertation.

Bush stressed that the investigation into the soldiers’ “alleged” abuse was moving ahead. Come on! It has been eight weeks since it was announced that six members of an Army Reserve military police unit assigned to Abu Ghraib (a prison west of Baghdad) faced charges of assault, cruelty, indecent acts and maltreatment of detainees. Justice could have been rendered in two to three weeks… but it was not. If the pictures had not found their way to the media, little or nothing would have been done. Now that the world is sitting in the front row, we have no choice but to offer a play with an adequate performance… perhaps giving greater punishment to these hyenas than the slap on the wrist they would otherwise have had.

Any defense, or excuse, for such behavior based on the high pressure environment in Iraq has no merit. Zero! The mixture and multiplicity of duties in a guerrilla or asymmetrical war, combat operations, occupation, liberation and peacekeeping or constabulary details do not afford an excuse to behave in a perverse fashion. You are either a decent human being or you are not.

Americans are no better or worse than any other people in the world. Our society is a mixed bag of good and bad, just like citizens in other societies. There is a factor, however, that sets us apart from most other nations, and it’s our tolerance for violence… something evidenced by our love for firearms under false “constitutional” pretenses. And prejudice, perhaps due to our diversity.

Our military, whether regulars or reserves, represent to a great extent a cross-section of our society, and are likely to behave in both acceptable and unacceptable ways. To have a set of policies and procedures, a code of conduct, be it of universal military behavior, or specific to a locale, would certainly help… but would not solve the problem. Soldiers who act as criminals must be treated as criminals, written code or not. Soldiers who exhibit prejudicial tendencies should not be allowed a home in the military; not stateside, much less overseas.

Unless our soldiers concede, not condescend, to the fact that they are no better than other human beings, no matter how different or poor they are, they will be seen as inhumane and despotic. Not just our soldiers, but the rest of us.

In Korea we called the natives “gooks;” “slopes and gooks” in Vietnam; “ragheads” during the Gulf War; and now, we call Iraqis, “hadjis.” Some claim that the latter is not a pejorative name since it means “one who has made the obligatory trip to Mecca.” That is, of course, nonsense since the name is being used with disrespect, regardless of its meaning.

What an opportunity Bush had to show humanity by apologizing! Instead, the Bush administration accuses Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, which had properly called this abuse unethical and inhuman, of deliberately broadcasting “inciteful” material.

Meantime, American media’s biggest concern seems to be the damage to our image, and not the injuries perpetrated. Isn’t there any shame or dignity left?

Shame on Bush! Shame on all of us!

© 2004 Ben Tanosborn

Free the Five

Evil Empire: IMF and the World Bank

'Confessions of an Economic Hit Man' by Jude Wanniski by Jude Wanniski          Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers, Clients From: Jude Wanniski Re: A Book About the Evil Empire If you happened to glance at the NYTimes Book Review today, you might have noticed a book on the best-seller list for the first time, in ninth place. The blurb tells us: “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins. (Barrett-Koehler, $14.97.) A former employee of an international consulting firm denounces the American global empire and its ‘corporatocracy.’” What’s this all about? The book was published last fall, but only now shows up as a best-seller? It only recently was brought to my attention by a website fan who knows I’ve long argued that the International Monetary Fund and its sister organization, the World Bank, constitute an “Evil Empire.” The two “international financial institutions” (IFI’s) were founded in 1945 during the genesis of the United Nations as “do-good” enterprises. The IMF would assist countries trying to keep their currencies tied to the dollar under the terms of the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The World Bank would lend money at low interest rates gathered from the rich countries to help poor countries get off their backs. Over the years, the process has been corrupted, with both the IMF and World Bank becoming controlled by the multinational corporations and their banks. When President Nixon went off the gold standard in 1971, the IMF’s reason for existence evaporated, because Bretton Woods and the fixed dollar went up in smoke. Now the problem for the big banks like Chase Manhattan, Citicorp and the Bank of America became two-fold: 1) As surplus dollars accumulated in their reserves and there were no credit-worthy Americans wanting to borrow, the banks had to think of ways to lend the money abroad or it would sit in their vaults earning zip, which means it really is losing money as the paper dollar – freed from its gold anchor – was inflating and losing purchasing power. Citigroup’s Walter Wriston (who died last week) came up with the idea that the surplus should be loaned to poor countries, even though they had no collateral, because governments had to pay off their hard-currency loans or lose their international credit ratings. 2) If the countries that borrowed from Chase or Citicorp could not pay back interest or principle and did not worry about stiffing the private bankers, they would have to swallow the non-performing loans. The solution was to have the IMF, looking for something to justify its existence, step in to collect the debt. All it had to do was persuade the U.S. Congress to ante up billion or two of taxpayer dollars to fill their coffers (and “replenish” them from time to time). They could then go to the deadbeat country and say, “We will give you this money so you can pay Chase and Citicorp what you owe them, but you will have to raise taxes on your own people and devalue your currency as the conditions for the loan! What we have in this book from Mr. Perkins is an account of a foot soldier in these operations of the Evil Empire. I’ll get his book and check it out, but from what I can gather about it on the Internet he is well within the ballpark of what has been going on. Are bankers evil by nature? Of course not. But as bankers they follow the money, not giving a second thought to the conditions in which they leave their debtors. The first priority of any institution is self-preservation, and for the big banks, that means getting paid back on their loans. Is this any way to run the world? No. It is a dreadful way to operate, and it would end if our government returned to a dollar/gold system and abided by it. If not, I’m afraid nothing Mr. Perkins writes or that I write will change a thing. The folks who control the money control our government and that’s that. It is interesting that Perkins does identify the Bechtel Corporation and Halliburton as agents in this quiet conspiracy to make sure the good old USA flourishes, even though it means the relentless impoverishment of the poorest countries of the world. Here is an interview that Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now" had with Perkins on November 9 last year. Remember his perspective is not from the highest level, but note he mentions George Shultz as an agent of the Evil Empire, which Shultz has been for decades. It was Shultz who, with Walter Wriston and Milton Friedman, persuaded Nixon to float the dollar and blow up the Bretton Woods monetary system. Shultz, now an octagenarian, is still a power in the Establishment, a key player at the Bechtel Corporation and a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, a member of the Perle Cabal. Of course, the three men – thought it was the right thing to do at the time, but in retrospect it wasn’t. Tuesday, November 9th, 2004 Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions We speak with John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies. John Perkins describes himself as a former economic hit man – a highly paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. 20 years ago Perkins began writing a book with the working title, Conscience of an Economic Hit Men. Perkins writes, "The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits – Jaime Rolds, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Rolds and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in. John Perkins goes on to write: "I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop." But now Perkins has finally published his story. The book is titled Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. John Perkins joins us now in our Firehouse studios. AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins joins us now in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now! JOHN PERKINS: Thank you, Amy. It's great to be here. AMY GOODMAN: Its good to have you with us. Okay, explain this term, economic hit man, e.h.m., as you call it. JOHN PERKINS: Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring – to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful. We’ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that. AMY GOODMAN: How did you become one? Who did you work for? JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations. The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950's, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew of government of Iran, a democratically elected government, Mossadegh’s government who was Time's magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed – well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn't have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government. AMY GOODMAN: Okay. Explain the company you worked for. JOHN PERKINS: Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan – let's say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador – and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure – a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, Look, you're not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil. And today we're going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It's an empire. There's no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It's been extremely successful. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. You say because of bribes and other reason you didn't write this book for a long time. What do you mean? Who tried to bribe you, or who – what are the bribes you accepted? JOHN PERKINS: Well, I accepted a half a million dollar bribe in the nineties not to write the book. AMY GOODMAN: From? JOHN PERKINS: From a major construction engineering company. AMY GOODMAN: Which one? JOHN PERKINS: Legally speaking, it wasn't – Stoner-Webster. Legally speaking it wasn't a bribe, it was – I was being paid as a consultant. This is all very legal. But I essentially did nothing. It was a very understood, as I explained in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, that it was – I was – it was understood when I accepted this money as a consultant to them I wouldn't have to do much work, but I mustn't write any books about the subject, which they were aware that I was in the process of writing this book, which at the time I called “Conscience of an Economic Hit Man.” And I have to tell you, Amy, that, you know, its an extraordinary story from the standpoint of – It's almost James Bondish, truly, and I mean – AMY GOODMAN: Well that's certainly how the book reads. JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, and it was, you know? And when the National Security Agency recruited me, they put me through a day of lie detector tests. They found out all my weaknesses and immediately seduced me. They used the strongest drugs in our culture, sex, power and money, to win me over. I come from a very old New England family, Calvinist, steeped in amazingly strong moral values. I think I, you know, I’m a good person overall, and I think my story really shows how this system and these powerful drugs of sex, money and power can seduce people, because I certainly was seduced. And if I hadn't lived this life as an economic hit man, I think I'd have a hard time believing that anybody does these things. And that's why I wrote the book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in this nation understood what our foreign policy is really about, what foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money goes, I know we will demand change. AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins. In your book, you talk about how you helped to implement a secret scheme that funneled billions of dollars of Saudi Arabian petrol dollars back into the U.S. economy, and that further cemented the intimate relationship between the House of Saud and successive U.S. administrations. Explain. JOHN PERKINS: Yes, it was a fascinating time. I remember well, you're probably too young to remember, but I remember well in the early seventies how OPEC exercised this power it had, and cut back on oil supplies. We had cars lined up at gas stations. The country was afraid that it was facing another 1929-type of crash depression; and this was unacceptable. So, they – the Treasury Department hired me and a few other economic hit men. We went to Saudi Arabia. We – AMY GOODMAN: You're actually called economic hit men – e.h.m.s? JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, it was a tongue-in-cheek term that we called ourselves. Officially, I was a chief economist. We called ourselves e.h.m.'s. It was tongue-in-cheek. It was like, nobody will believe us if we say this, you know? And, so, we went to Saudi Arabia in the early seventies. We knew Saudi Arabia was the key to dropping our dependency, or to controlling the situation. And we worked out this deal whereby the Royal House of Saud agreed to send most of their petro-dollars back to the United States and invest them in U.S. government securities. The Treasury Department would use the interest from these securities to hire U.S. companies to build Saudi Arabia new cities, new infrastructure which we’ve done. And the House of Saud would agree to maintain the price of oil within acceptable limits to us, which they’ve done all of these years, and we would agree to keep the House of Saud in power as long as they did this, which we’ve done, which is one of the reasons we went to war with Iraq in the first place. And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals. Jackals are C.I.A.-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn't work, they perform assassinations. Or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren't able to get through to Saddam Hussein. He had – His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq. AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how Torrijos died? JOHN PERKINS: Omar Torrijos, the President of Panama. Omar Torrijos had signed the Canal Treaty with Carter much – and, you know, it passed our congress by only one vote. It was a highly contended issue. And Torrijos then also went ahead and negotiated with the Japanese to build a sea-level canal. The Japanese wanted to finance and construct a sea-level canal in Panama. Torrijos talked to them about this which very much upset Bechtel Corporation, whose president was George Schultz and senior council was Casper Weinberger. When Carter was thrown out (and that’s an interesting story how that actually happened), when he lost the election, and Reagan came in and Schultz came in as Secretary of State from Bechtel, and Weinberger came from Bechtel to be Secretary of Defense, they were extremely angry at Torrijos – tried to get him to renegotiate the Canal Treaty and not to talk to the Japanese. He adamantly refused. He was a very principled man. He had his problem, but he was a very principled man. He was an amazing man, Torrijos. And so, he died in a fiery airplane crash, which was connected to a tape recorder with explosives in it, which – I was there. I had been working with him. I knew that we economic hit men had failed. I knew the jackals were closing in on him, and the next thing, his plane exploded with a tape recorder with a bomb in it. There's no question in my mind that it was C.I.A. sanctioned, and most – many Latin American investigators have come to the same conclusion. Of course, we never heard about that in our country. AMY GOODMAN: So, where – when did your change your heart happen? JOHN PERKINS: I felt guilty throughout the whole time, but I was seduced. The power of these drugs, sex, power, and money, was extremely strong for me. And, of course, I was doing things I was being patted on the back for. I was chief economist. I was doing things that Robert McNamara liked and so on. AMY GOODMAN: How closely did you work with the World Bank? JOHN PERKINS: Very, very closely with the World Bank. The World Bank provides most of the money that’s used by economic hit men, it and the I.M.F. But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing. And the only way that we're going to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we’ve put into place to create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do that. I believe the World Bank and other institutions can be turned around and do what they were originally intended to do, which is help reconstruct devastated parts of the world. Help – genuinely help poor people. There are twenty-four thousand people starving to death every day. We can change that. AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, I want to thank you very much for being with us. John Perkins' book is called, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. January 25, 2005 Jude Wanniski [send him mail] runs the financial/political advisory service Wanniski.com. (If you subscribe, and check LewRockwell.com in the referring website pull-down, LRC gets 10%.) Copyright © 2005 Jude Wanniski

Manta, Ecuador

Ecuador: What's the deal at Manta?

The United States said it would restrict its activities at Manta to anti-drug efforts--so why is it messing with migrants and more?

By Michael Flynn
January/February 2005  pp. 23-29 (vol. 61, no. 01) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

ocated in a rundown barrio in the Ecuadorian port city of Manta, the Santa Margarita daycare center is indistinguishable from the other unpainted cement block buildings that surround it. Its roof is composed of the ubiquitous rusting zinc sheets that serve as shelter for most Latin Americans, it has bare cement floors, and its rooms are overcrowded with undernourished children.

But on this sweltering summer day, the children at Santa Margarita have something to celebrate. They are receiving handouts--in the form of used clothing and miscellaneous school supplies--from U.S. military personnel based at a nearby "Forward Operating Location" (FOL), one of three located in Latin America that are meant to replace the Howard Air Force Base in Panama, which was shuttered in 1999. (The other two FOLs are in El Salvador and the Dutch Antilles--Aruba-Curaçao.)

As the small caravan of cars from the base pulls up to the school, several children scamper out the front door, teachers rush to corral the kids, and neighbors look on with curiosity as tall, fair-skinned airmen--dressed in civvies for the occasion--emerge carrying cardboard boxes filled with goodies.

"We are always looking for ways to help out," says Lt. Matthew Mountcastle, a public affairs officer at Manta who served as my chaperon during a tour of the base early last year. As part of the tour, Mountcastle invited me to accompany the few base personnel going on the school trip, which happened to coincide with my visit. He says that arriving flight crews often "stow away" a few extra pieces of clothing in their luggage to give to the children. "This is an extra mission we have at the FOL--to help the poor children here and to reach out to the community."

Not everyone in Manta, however, sees the charity--or the base--as benign. "Remember how Columbus gave glass beads to the Indians?" asks Miguel Moran, a local labor attorney who heads an anti-base group called Movimiento Tohalli. "They just want to placate us. But we don't want them here."

Listening to Moran's invective, one would think Che Guevara had just been killed in Bolivia or that Augusto Pinochet was busy rounding up leftists in Chile. "All of Ecuador is being used as a base for U.S. military operations in Latin America," says Moran. He claims Manta is part of a broader U.S. imperialist strategy aimed at exploiting the continent's natural resources, suppressing popular movements, and ultimately invading neighboring Colombia.

Moran is not alone. Observers from Latin America to Europe regard the base as an integral part of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Colombia--and potentially as a staging ground for direct American involvement in the conflict there. Ecuadorians worry that the U.S. presence here could ultimately pull their country into such a conflict, or possibly make Ecuador a target of Colombian guerrilla or paramilitary groups.

The base is also at the center of a growing controversy regarding U.S. efforts to block mass emigration from Ecuador, which during the last five years has seen several million of its citizens leave for Europe or North America. Furor over U.S. interdiction efforts in the region erupted in early October when the U.S.S. Curts--a guided missile frigate armed with anti-submarine warfare systems, torpedoes, and twin 76-millimeter cannons--intercepted an Ecuadorian fishing vessel carrying some 80 migrants 240 miles northeast of the Galapagos Islands. When the migrants arrived in Manta, they immediately denounced the abuses they had suffered at the hands of U.S. sailors who, they said, had mistreated several detainees in an effort to identify the crew. One of the detainees told reporters that sailors had beaten a polio victim with an iron bar "because he didn't get up fast enough." The migrants also claimed that the navy frigate sank the fishing vessel.

Responding to the allegations, Glenn Warren, U.S. embassy spokesperson, said, "This is the first time that we have had a problem of this kind. We respect human rights and we have a humanitarian policy that has saved thousands of lives which were in danger on the high seas."

The incident came on the heels of a highly publicized report released last July by the Quito-based Latin American Association for Human Rights (ALDHU) accusing U.S. Navy ships based at Manta of having sunk eight Ecuadorian fishing boats in the country's territorial waters since 2001. (Ecuador defines its territory as extending 200 nautical miles from its coast, as opposed to the 12 nautical miles established by the Law of the Seas.) Five of the boats, according to ALDHU, were carrying undocumented migrants, all of whom were detained and repatriated. Crews on the other boats were simply fishing.

Although U.S. officials have denied sinking or interdicting vessels in Ecuadorian waters, Ecuador's government has been unable to diffuse the controversy. A coalition of social and labor organizations has called for the termination of the U.S. lease in Manta on the grounds that the United States has violated both the terms of the agreement and Ecuadorian law. The coalition also lodged complaints with the Organization of American States and the United Nations, and has asked the U.S. Congress to solicit a report on U.S. interdiction practices in the region from the Government Accountability Office.

Mission creep

The Manta FOL is located at Ecuador's Eloy Alfaro Air Force Base, which until 1999 was a partially dilapidated facility hugging the coastline just north of the city. According to a 1999 pre-arrival assessment completed by U.S. Southern Command, the airfield's runway was so decrepit that military aircraft were unable to use it. "Tennis-ball-size bits of concrete [are] lying about in places," the assessment stated, and "an eroded ditch over 3-feet deep runs just along the runway edge." Cats and dogs routinely roamed the airfield, base water was contaminated, lighting inefficient, power erratic and rationed during dry seasons, and fire-fighting capabilities nonexistent.

Today, after pumping $80 million in construction costs into the base, U.S. officials boast that "the runway is one of the best in Latin America."

And that is just one of the many perks of the U.S. presence here, says Lt. Col. Mario Garcia, the U.S. second in command at the time of my visit. Other perks include a new four-lane road connecting the base to the port, a new hangar, a set of state-of-the-art emergency vehicles and fire engines manned by DynCorp employees (who joked with me about "all the work" they had to do, which in 2003 included attending to some two dozen minor emergencies), and a set of dormitory-style buildings used to house base personnel (typically numbering from 100 to 300) and offices.

"When we leave here," says Garcia, "all of this will be left for the Ecuadorians."

Despite the perks, the Manta base was the subject of dispute even before it was established. When Ecuador's then-President Jamil Mahuad announced in early 1999 that he would allow the base, religious and indigenous groups, human rights organizations, opposition politicians, and a small but vocal minority of Manta's citizens reacted angrily, arguing that the base would be "an enormous affront to our freedom, our autonomy, and, above all, our sovereignty," as an influential Ecuadorian bishop said at the time.

In early 2000, just a few months after a 10-year lease agreement was finalized, Mahuad was overthrown in a military coup, which further fueled the dispute over the base. Base opponents have argued that because neither Mahuad--nor his successors--ever put the agreement to a vote in Congress, it is unconstitutional.

More important to critics have been the often contradictory views about the purpose of the base expressed by U.S. officials, as well as its perceived mission creep. According to the lease agreement, U.S. activities at the base are to be limited to counter-narcotics surveillance flights (the agreements for the other two Latin American FOLs contain similar limitations). Human rights groups in Ecuador and elsewhere, however, have repeatedly charged that the surveillance planes based at the FOLs--which in Ecuador typically include three or four navy P-3s or air force C-130s--have been involved in everything from immigration interdiction to the coup d'état against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002.

Summarizing these concerns, the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute, which has paid close attention to the FOLs in part because of the base in Aruba-Curaçao, concluded in a 2003 report: "It is very likely that the agencies that use the FOLs [including Customs, the Coast Guard, the navy, and the air force] have other priorities besides combating drugs. . . . Counterinsurgency efforts in Colombia, control of arms trafficking in the region, control of migration, and possible support for the coup in Venezuela are indications of other uses of the FOLs that are not laid down in the agreements. Nor should the possible implications be underestimated of military protection--whether official or contracted--for the petroleum interests of transnational companies operating in the region."

U.S. officials have seemed indifferent to public sentiment in Ecuador. Asked by the daily El Universo if the base might prompt attacks by Colombian guerillas, former U.S. Amb. Gwen Clare quipped in mid-2000: "You'd have to ask them."

The Pentagon's decision to give DynCorp--a company that many Latin Americans closely associate with U.S. activities in Colombia--the contract to administer the base reinforced fears that the United States had more than drug interdiction in mind when it set up shop in Manta. After the contract was finalized in early 2002, public outcry helped spur the Ecuadorian Congress to request the minister of defense to testify on the matter.

Although Ecuadorian officials have repeatedly insisted that DynCorp is involved in only non-military activities, the company's presence is a touchy issue. In November 2003, Ecuador's air force announced that it was suspending a contract with DynCorp because of the company's reputation, which according to El Universo included allegations of people-smuggling, narco-trafficking, and child prostitution.

As Gustavo Larrea, an ALDHU director, summed up: "Here we have a company of mercenaries that has been accused of human rights abuses across the globe operating an illegal American base on Ecuadorian territory."

At the same time that base officials like Lieutenant Colonel Garcia insist that the FOL is being used exclusively for "ocean air surveillance for counter-narcotics," other U.S. officials have been pressing Ecuador to allow expanded use of the base, especially since September 11, 2001.

In early 2002, Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage claimed that Al Qaeda cells were operating near Ecuador's borders with Peru and Colombia: "We have got in the tri-border area a bit of a problem with Al Qaeda itself and some Hezbollah elements," he told a House Foreign Operations Subcommittee. "We do need cooperation."

Ecuador has balked at any suggestion that the Manta base be used for U.S. anti-terror activities, angering some U.S. congressmen, including Alabama Republican Sonny Callahan, who argued that aid to Ecuador should be cut off unless Ecuador changes its position. The United States spent millions on the Manta base, said Callahan, "And yet they're telling us they're not going to allow us to use it for anything that has to do with Operation Enduring Freedom."

In early 2003, Gen. James Hill, head of U.S. Southern Command, announced that the United States was attempting to negotiate an agreement to allow U.S. warships to remain in Ecuadorian waters to detain and board suspicious vessels. Although such an agreement would conflict with the Manta lease agreement--which expressly prohibits the United States from undertaking interdiction activity in Ecuadorian territory--Hill argued that it was "vital to hemispheric security." It was a familiar theme for Hill, who previously had argued that "narcoterrorism" was not just a U.S. problem, but one shared by all the countries of the region.

Hill's announcement, which came on the heels of his visit to military installations on the Ecuador-Colombia border, prompted public outcry. Said one Ecuadorian writer: "The U.S. invasion of Iraq and the pressure on Ecuador to sign the interdiction agreement form part of a policy aimed at consolidating a unipolar world with one hegemonic superpower."

Although no new agreement has been reached, many observers are convinced that the United States continues to put pressure on Ecuador to allow for expanded use of the base.

In its report on the FOLs, the Transnational Institute points to a number of U.S. policy documents and military studies that outline the potential U.S. long-term strategy. One study, published by the Naval War College in 1998, argued that despite the increasing importance of South American petroleum, U.S. forward basing to protect this "vital interest" was "woefully lacking." According to the study, "Laying the political groundwork and obtaining initial approval [for forward bases] is the first half of the process. . . . In times of crisis, the armed forces can further improve possibilities for access by helping to 'sell' the idea of a threat in the host nation."

Virtual frontier

In the main office building of the Manta FOL, just down the hall from the reinforced door guarding the entrance to the super-secret Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility ("None of us really know what goes on inside there," quipped my Manta tour guide, Lieutenant Mountcastle), is the office of Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), the Department of Homeland Security agency "responsible for identifying and shutting down vulnerabilities in the nation's border, economic, transportation, and infrastructure security."

When I queried a U.S. immigration official in Quito, who would only speak to me on background, why ICE was active in Manta, he said he was unaware of the agency's office there and suggested it could simply be a result of the confusion surrounding the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, where he said "all the roles have not been defined yet."

Confusion or not, ICE plays a key role supporting--when not fighting turf wars with--the U.S. Border Patrol in detaining undocumented migrants in the United States. The agency's presence at Manta would seem to lend credence to Ecuadorian concerns regarding the base--that it is playing a role in aiding the interdiction of migrant-smuggling vessels leaving Ecuadorian shores.

Ecuador, where nearly everyone has a neighbor or relative living abroad and whose second source of hard currency is remittances, takes immigration issues and other countries' efforts to block access for its citizens very seriously. Not surprisingly, since the Manta FOL was established, Ecuadorian newspapers have run countless stories on U.S. interdiction practices and alleged collaboration between surveillance planes and warships operating out of Manta.

U.S. officials are quick to deny any connection. In mid-2000, just a few months after the Manta FOL went operational, then-Ambassador Clare was put on the defensive when a navy boat steamed into port carrying 190 detained migrants. After a former defense minister denounced the action, arguing that Ecuador should present a complaint to the United Nations on the grounds that the United States was violating the country's maritime rights, Clare told journalists: "All of sudden there is this debate over whether we use Manta to interdict immigrants. This has nothing to do with the base. Our forces aren't going to spend so much money just to find a few boats carrying some poor victims of coyotes."

Pinning down exactly what role the base is playing in interdiction is exceedingly difficult, in part because no one--not even the "host nation riders," as U.S. officials term the Ecuadorian officers who fly on board the surveillance flights leaving Manta--is privy to the intelligence gathered by the planes or the eventual use of the information. As the Washington Office on Latin America stated in a 2002 report on Manta: "It would be impossible for the Ecuadorian military to monitor the kind of surveillance being done by U.S. planes on their reconnaissance flights and therefore almost impossible to enforce strict adherence to the terms of the [lease agreement]."

What is clear is that since the base was set up, a constant stream of U.S. warships and Coast Guard vessels have gone through the port, typically staying for just a few days before moving on. Local newspapers keep a running tally of which boats are present at any given time. The United States justifies the boats' presence by arguing that they support the work of the air base, transporting materiel and personnel. 

Critics also point to the growing number of interdictions since the FOL was set up as proof of its involvement in migration control. According to U.S. Coast Guard statistics, the number of Ecuadorians interdicted yearly rose from zero in 1998 to nearly 1,300 in 2000.

FOL officials, however, are tight-lipped when it comes to discussing the activities of the boats. When I asked Lieutenant Colonel Garcia about the Daiki Maru, a fishing vessel seriously damaged during a U.S. Navy and Coast Guard operation in early 2002, he said that he had "never heard of it." The air base and the port, he said, having nothing to do with each other.

The Daiki Maru case is the most notorious of a growing list of alleged interdictions in Ecuadorian waters. Over a period of several months, the boat was boarded and seized by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard three times while trolling coastal areas. In their search for drugs, Coast Guard officers allegedly drilled holes in the boat's hull and spoiled the fish that were stored there. After inspecting the boat, Ecuadorian judicial officials estimated that total damages to the captain's business totaled more than $2 million. The boat's owner has filed a case in a federal court in Florida, which also has a case pending regarding the alleged sinking of another Ecuadorian fishing vessel by the U.S. Navy.

A sign of increasing sensitivity to the interdiction issue has been the enormous uproar the ALDHU report about the alleged boat sinkings has caused in Ecuador, as well as the contradictory explanations offered by government officials.

In late June, two weeks after ALDHU announced its findings, U.S. Amb. Kristie Kenney issued a press release explaining that boats too crippled to return to port can present serious dangers to other vessels navigating international sea lanes. "It is standard international practice to eliminate the dangers by sinking the boats," the statement said.

At about the same time, Vice-Adm. Victor Hugo Rosero, head of Ecuador's navy, announced that the armed forces "had no evidence of the sinkings," saying that in any case Ecuador does not have the resources to control all the activities in its waters. Two weeks later, however, when Rosero presented to Ecuador's Congress a report from a special commission created by the navy to investigate ALDHU's charges, the report confirmed several of the sinkings. The report, based in part on information turned over to Ecuador by the U.S. embassy, concluded that "10 boats were intercepted by the U.S. Navy, of which seven were towed to port and three were sunk." Only one of the sinkings occurred in Ecuadorian waters; nine of the boats carried undocumented migrants.

In mid-August, with the public debate over the sinkings still heated, President Lucio Gutierrez--a strong proponent of the base--announced that Rosero was being promoted to head of joint command. Although the move was explained as simply an institutional decision, some pundits saw a darker, more conspiratorial motive. Mauricio Gandara, a former Ecuadorian ambassador to Britain, told El Universo: "This demonstrates that both Gutierrez and the ex-commander of the navy [Rosero] have turned over defense of Ecuador's sea to the United States, which will use a secret interdiction agreement to interdict Ecuadorian boats in national and international waters."

The 'Quito Doctrine'

The Pentagon is clearly worried about a deepening quagmire in Iraq. Nearly two years after the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, the presence of U.S. forces does not appear to be moving Iraq toward a stable, civic society. A frustrated Pentagon is exploring new strategies.

Newsweek magazine reported last week that Pentagon insiders are touting a plan code-named the "Salvador Option." The plan refers to the secret support of the Reagan administration in the 1980s for hit squads in El Salvador that targeted rebel militia and their civilian sympathizers. Many Pentagon conservatives credit these so-called "death squads" with turning the tide against a strong revolutionary movement in El Salvador.

I worked in human rights in Central America for nearly 12 years. My tenure began in the early 1980s when I launched and then ran a non-governmental group concerned with economic and community development.

Death squads roamed freely in El Salvador and Guatemala at the time. In these two countries alone, they assassinated or "disappeared" more than 150,000 civilians. They targeted anyone - church pastors, literacy teachers, community development workers - who appeared to support social reform.

My organization arranged for volunteers from the United States to live with civilians threatened by the death squads. Our effort was successful because the death squads were made up largely of members of the military or police working clandestinely. They realized that brazenly killing civilians through official channels would threaten U.S. aid. More risky still would be the murder of U.S. citizens - the temporary cessation of U.S. military aid to El Salvador after the rape and murder of four U.S. religious women in 1980 proved that point.

All the same, I witnessed countless cases of military abuse. The security units regularly justified the murder of civilian suspects as a necessary defense in the fight against "terrorists." The military acted as judge, jury, and executioner. The police worked hand in hand with the military. The police investigated community leaders working for social change during the day, and would turn that information over to the army hit squads who made the civilians "disappear" in the middle of the night.

How chilling that the Pentagon is seriously considering a plan to take us back to those dark days. According to Newsweek, "the Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support, and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria...."

The Pentagon's affinity for a "Salvadoran Option" in Iraq appears consistent with its broader shift to promote a strong state security apparatus internationally in the fight against terrorism. In a summit of Latin American defense ministers held in Quito, Ecuador, in late 2004, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld unveiled his campaign to reverse nearly two decades of military reform in Latin America. Though the summit went largely unreported in the U.S. media, we may look back at it in years to come as a significant watershed for American foreign policy.

Central to Rumsfeld's Quito doctrine is the re-integration of the military and police, reversing a major reform objective in the hemisphere during the last two decades. Both U.S. and Latin American human rights agencies deem that separation of powers necessary to bring military activity under civilian accountability.

During the drafting of the final summit statement, the Canadian delegation tried to salvage the gains for civilian freedoms once absent in the region's former security states. Backed by Brazil and Chile, the Canadian defense ministry introduced language that would reaffirm a commitment to international human rights and civil protections. The Pentagon team, however, successfully blocked this corrective from being added to the summit's final documents.

The nostalgia for the military strongmen of Latin America appears to be growing in Washington. Is it merely coincidence that President Bush appointed Elliot Abrams in mid-2003 to be his senior advisor on the Middle East? Abrams was a key player in the crafting of Reagan's "Salvador Option" in Central America. When confronted in the mid-'80s with a United Nations report that the vast majority of "atrocities in El Salvador's civil war were committed by Reagan-assisted death squads," Abrams energetically defended U.S. foreign policy: "The administration's record on El Salvador is one of fabulous achievements." Abrams soon thereafter was convicted of lying to Congress about the Iran-Contra affair, only to be pardoned five years later by President George H.W. Bush.

The invasion of Iraq was sold to the American public as a necessary means to arrest the spread of terrorism. We were told that Saddam Hussein could no longer be allowed to deploy security forces to terrorize the Iraqi people and eliminate movements for democratic reform. Yet here we are today, two years later, and the United States is on the verge of initiating its own death squads. I wonder at what point over the past two years we gave up on the "Democracy Option" in Iraq?

Condi and Cuba

Venezuela

By Patrick Markey

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - The U.S. government must respect Venezuela's sovereignty and stop meddling if it wants to improve ties with its fourth-largest oil supplier, Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez said on Wednesday.

Rodriguez was responding to comments by Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice who on Tuesday at her Senate confirmation hearing criticized President Hugo Chavez for what she called his autocratic measures at home and his negative influence in the region.

The exchange is the latest between the Bush administration and Chavez, a left-wing former army officer and fierce critic of the United States whose close ties to Cuban leader Fidel Castro have irritated Washington.

"We can not tolerate that they try to put on pressure and try to provoke problems within the country," Rodriguez told reporters. "The North American people can be sure Venezuela wants better relations ... but for this to happen there must be respect for our sovereignty."

The minister's response was more low-key than previous broadsides between Caracas and Washington before Chavez won an August referendum. Since then, the two countries have appeared to try to set aside antagonistic rhetoric and have pledged to work to improve relations.

Chavez, who was first elected in 1998, often accuses the United States of financing opponents seeking to overthrow him and says his "Bolivarian" revolution provides a regional alternative to U.S market-orientated policies.

In a typical fiery speech Wednesday, the president did not directly respond to Rice's comments but once again charged that Washington had conceived and backed a short-lived 2002 coup that briefly toppled him.

"In Washington, they export everything, including coups," he said. The United States has denied this.

Opponents say Chavez's social reforms to fight poverty are a smokescreen hiding an increasingly undemocratic regime. Conflict over his rule, including the brief coup and an oil strike, battered the world's No. 5 petroleum exporter for three years.

"What is it they don't like about President Chavez?...We invite Ms Rice to visit the poor barrios of Venezuela... to see the answers we bring to the needy masses," Rodriguez said.

Three U.S. senators visiting Caracas last week urged Washington to build on its energy ties with Venezuela and seek better cooperation with Chavez to fight terrorism and drug-trafficking.



© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.

Haiti

Courageous Haitian women bring civil suit for torture

Haitian Death Squad Leader, Toto Constant, to be brought to justice for his campaign of rape and murder

By Center for Justice & Accountability 

01/18/05 "Information Clearing House" -- Emmanuel “Toto” Constant was served with a lawsuit today that accuses him of responsibility for torture, crimes against humanity and the systematic use of violence against women, including rape, for the purpose of terrorizing the Haitian population during that country’s brutal military regime in the early 1990s. 

Despite being the outspoken leader of the paramilitary death squad known as FRAPH (Revolutionary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti), Toto Constant has lived and worked openly in Queens, New York, for the last ten years. The U.S. government tried to deport Constant in 1995, but suspended its efforts and released him from detention after he threatened on the 60 Minutes news program to expose information about the CIA’s role in the formation of FRAPH. 

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York by the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA), based in San Francisco, on behalf of several women who survived savage gang rapes and other forms of extreme violence, including attempted murder. The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), based in New York, is serving as local counsel. 

Following a violent military coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991, the Haitian Armed Forces trained and armed members of FRAPH to maintain control over Haiti’s poor masses. After democracy was returned to Haiti in October 1994, the government of President Aristide issued a warrant for Constant’s arrest. He fled and came to the United States. 

All three plaintiffs in this case are women who were targeted by Constant and FRAPH as part of a systematic campaign of violence against women. Two of the women were gang raped repeatedly by FRAPH members in front of their families. One of the plaintiffs became pregnant and bore a child as a result of the rape she suffered. FRAPH operatives attacked the third plaintiff, leaving her for dead. Due to the fear of reprisals, the plaintiffs in this case have filed their claims anonymously. 

The lawsuit is especially timely because Haiti is again suffering from the massive, sytematic human rights violations committed during the 1991-94 military dictatorship. Many of Constant’s former subordinates in FRAPH are again wielding considerable power. They have embarked on a campaign of abuses, including widespread rape, since President Aristide was forced from office in February, 2004. Among the leaders of this renewed violence are FRAPH’s former second-in-command, Jodel Chamblain, and local chief Jean Pierre 
(alias Jean Tatoune), both convicted murderers. In addition, three members of the military government’s High Command who were deported from the U.S. for their involvement in human rights violations – General Jean-Claude Duperval, Lieutenant Colonel Hébert Valmond, and Colonel Carl Dorelien – were freed from prison and have not been re-arrested. CJA brought a case against Dorelien before he was deported and obtained a court order preventing him from receiving nearly $1 million he won from the Florida State Lottery. 

The types of attacks suffered by the plaintiffs in this case – the gang rape of women by paramilitaries as a form of punishment for the women’s political beliefs – have been occurring in alarming numbers in recent months. One of the plaintiffs in the suit against Constant, speaking on behalf of all of the plaintiffs, said: “We hope that the suit will deter at least some of the violence, by sending a message that anyone who commits atrocities will no longer be able to visit or live in the U.S. with impunity.” 

CJA’s Executive Director Sandra Coliver stated: “Toto Constant’s comfortable lifestyle in Queens has enraged and offended the Haitian community in this country as well as human rights activists around the globe. We are honored to represent these courageous women who are taking great risks by coming forward. They brought this lawsuit in the name of the hundreds of women who cannot speak out because of the violence that reigns today in Haiti.” 

Commonly referred to as “The Devil,” Toto Constant has been the target of several community protests in Queens. In November 2000, he was convicted in absentia in Haiti for his role in the notorious “Raboteau Massacre” of April 1994. Until now, no court in the U.S. or Haiti has forced him to face trial in person for the human rights abuses he committed against the people of Haiti. No one from the ranks of FRAPH or the Haitian Armed Forces has been held accountable for the hundreds of politically motivated rapes that were committed and continue to be committed against the women of Haiti. 

CJA, based in San Francisco, has obtained favorable verdicts in similar cases involving human rights abusers from Bosnia, El Salvador and Chile who had come to live in the U.S. The Center for Constitutional Rights has brought human rights cases against individuals and corporations responsible for human rights violations since 1980, when CCR filed the groundbreaking case which allowed those who have suffered human rights abuses to bring their claims in U.S. courts. 

Jennie Green, CCR Senior Attorney, commented: “The U.S. government claims to be fighting a war on terrorism, all the while allowing a man who terrorized people in Haiti to prosper in our midst. Documents released by the U.S. government show FRAPH’s role in human rights violations. Constant as its leader must be held accountable.” 

For additional information about the case, please see CJA’s website: http://www.cja.org/. For more information on the current human rights situation in Haiti please contact the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti at info@ijdh.org or visit http://www.ijdh.org/.

T h e C e n t e r f o r J u s t i c e & A c c o u n t a bi l i t y

“Bringing human rights abusers to justice. Representing torture
survivors in U.S. courts.”

For Immediate Release 

January 14, 2005 

Contacts:
Center for Justice & Accountability (San Francisco, CA):
Moira Feeney, Attorney, (415) 544-0444 x302, mfeeney@cja.org

Matt Eisenbrandt, Litigation Director, (415) 544-0444 x304,
meisenbrandt@cja.org

Center for Constitutional Rights (New York, NY)
Jennie Green, Senior Attorney, (212) 614-6431, jgreen@ccr-ny.org

The Caribbean

Argentina

Haiti

Editor's Note: Murders of Haitian street children, which had declined after child-welfare campaigns waged by former president Jean Bertrand Aristide, have skyrocketed, according to human rights workers in Haiti.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti--When I arrived in Haiti in 1995 to help establish a children's radio station, one of the first people I met was a street child, Papouche. He was up in my arms in moments, chatting away in a language I did not yet understand. Later, I learned he was describing his life during the 1991-94 coup. Papouche had managed to escape the rampant attacks on homeless kids that were common then -- and which became rare after a 1994 U.S. invasion restored Jean Bertrand Aristide to power.

But since Aristide's ouster 10 months ago, attacks and killings of street children are back -- in record numbers, according to local human rights workers.

In the early 1990s, Papouche, like many of the estimated 200,000 other street children in and around Port-au-Prince, had slept in the national cemetery among looted graves and the freshly dumped bodies of tortured pro-democracy activists. He competed with other boys for car-washing work on busy downtown streets.

Papouche was beaten by storeowners or their private henchmen and almost killed by members of the military, who thought he watched too closely as they dumped the bodies of their victims in a ravine next to the cemetery.

When an outreach team from Lafanmi Selavi -- a center for street children founded by President Aristide when he was a parish priest -- came to Chans Mas, Papouche was quick to jump in the back of their truck. I met him shortly after he came to the center. Over the next few years he excelled in school, studied photography and painted murals.

Although he wasn't yet 10 years old, Papouche became an advocate for children's rights, occasionally speaking alongside President Aristide and co-hosting a radio show on Radyo Timoun (Children's Radio).

Aristide was the first Haitian leader to initiate the prosecution of adults who mistreat children. He created laws protecting children who worked in sweatshops. From the national palace, often in collaboration with youth like Papouche, Aristide said that children, even street kids, were worthy of respect.

This movement transformed Haitians' attitudes toward children in general, and toward child domestic servants (called restaveks) and street kids in particular. It became unpopular to disrespect or mistreat youth. Random killings and beatings of street kids by storeowners, their lackeys and police dropped dramatically.

Today Papouche is 19 years old, set to graduate from high school and looking toward university. But he still knows many street children.

"These new ones are only 7 or 8 years old," Papouche told me recently. "They grew up under Aristide and don't know what it was like for us. But, Papouche says, "they will now."

According to child welfare workers, the rate of targeted beatings and killings of street children in Haiti has risen some 500 percent since the Feb. 29 ouster of Aristide.

A report released by Amnesty International in November cites the case of a 13-year-old in Martissant, who was kidnapped by police and handcuffed, blindfolded and beaten because they believed he knew the hiding places of armed groups said to be Aristide supporters.

Michael Brewer, a registered nurse from Texas, knows firsthand how street children are being newly targeted. He directs both Haiti Street Kids Inc, which provides medical care, food and support to homeless kids, and Port-au-Prince's Family Circle Boys Home, which provides full-time care for two dozen formerly homeless children.

"Nothing is ever reported, investigated or even mentioned if it is a street kid that has been murdered...When the body becomes too unpleasant for the residents or vendors in the area, it is usually dumped or set on fire with kerosene. The names of those who are killed are often never known," says Brewer, who regularly checks the morgue and other known dumping sites for bodies.

"We almost always find bodies of street kids between the ages of about 8 and 16, especially now," Brewer says.

Brewer describes carloads of men who are members of the disbanded and now illegally reformed military, who patrol Port-au-Prince and kill street children "for sport."

"These men prowl the streets ... with high-powered military assault rifles, shotguns and 9mm pistols, wearing all-black uniforms with black ski masks over their heads," Brewer says. "They justify the murders of these boys by saying that they are cleaning the streets."

Brewer says he has personally corroborated many accounts of street children who witnessed murders. He describes one incident on Nov. 11 in Plais Bois, a park where many homeless boys sleep, in which a carload of men attacked three children ages seven, 12 and 15.

"The boys were first beaten severely. Black bags were then put over their heads and tied around their necks, and then they were shot and killed." Witnesses say that the bodies were taken away in a car trunk.

Children's advocates agree that the murders are committed by police, members of the death squads and the former military, as well as by the hired guns of the wealthy elites.

"I only saw three murdered (homeless) children between 1995 and the beginning of 2004," says one missionary who works with homeless children and asked that her name not be used. "Since Feb. 29, I have seen or heard of over 150 murders of street children and have personally witnessed the attacks on more than a dozen occasions."

From his home in the Plais Bois Park, 10-year-old TiLulou points at bloodstains on the concrete ground. "That's where my cousin was killed," he says. "The men in masks killed him. They have no heart for the street children and they want us to die."

I ask TiLulou if he is afraid to sleep at the park where so many of his friends have been killed. "No, I am tired, too tired to be afraid. I am too tired to cry. I just want a place to sleep and food in my stomach," he says.

PNS contributor Lyn Duff (lynduff@aol.com) is a writer currently based in Port-au-Prince. In 1995 she traveled to Haiti to help establish that country's first children's radio station.

 

Archbishop Isaias Duarte

2 Men Ruled Guilty of Murdering Archbishop
 
From Times Wire Reports

A judge found two men guilty of murdering a Roman Catholic archbishop, though the magistrate said the motive for the assassination and who ordered it remained a mystery. Alexander de Jesus Zapata and John Fredy Jimenez were convicted in the 2002 shooting of Isaias Duarte, archbishop of Cali.

Judge Ruben Dario Plaza said Zapata, who fired the shots, was given a 36-year sentence, and Jimenez, who helped in the planning, was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Duarte was a vocal critic of Marxist rebels and drug traffickers.

If you want other stories on this topic, search the Archives at latimes.com/archives.

NarcoRepublic Violation of Venezuelan Sovereignty

Rodrigo Granda

The Rodrigo Granda Affair

The Kidnapping of a Revolutionary

By JAMES PETRAS

A major political row is raging in the mass media of Colombia and Venezuela, left-wing websites and elsewhere over the kidnapping of FARC leader Rodrigo Granda. Each day brings more pronouncements and revelations from ministers, military and police officials, as well as Congress-people and leaders of social movements. Intellectuals have written and signed petitions, some seeing the kidnapping as a CIA plot to destabilize Chavez, others looking at the emerging facts and finding a complex picture of Colombian strategic moves and Venezuelan internal security lapses.

On December 13, 2004, Rodrigo Granda, the principle international spokesperson for the most powerful revolutionary guerrilla group in Latin America, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was kidnapped in broad daylight , 4pm, in the center of Caracas. His kidnappers subsequently turned him over to Colombian authorities who falsely claimed he was captured in Colombia. For almost two weeks, the Venezuelan authorities, including the Ministers of Defense, Interior and Foreign Relations were practically mute, even as leading Colombian journalists and Venezuelan activists protested the kidnapping of the prominent revolutionary. Following local and international appeals from writers, journalists, intellectuals and activists, many of whom had attended the same international conferences in Venezuela as Granda, the Minister of Interior, Jessie Chacon, called a press conference and announced an investigation into the presumed kidnapping of Granda. Two weeks is a long time, by any standard, to begin an investigation of one of Latin America's most important revolutionary leaders, especially in a country which claims to be pursuing an revolutionary course.

The kidnapping of Granda and the response to that act raises a number of fundamental issues for revolutionaries, progressives and democrats throughout the world. First and foremost is the question of who was responsible, materially and intellectually for the deed and what was its purpose. Equally important is the question of what rights do revolutionary spokespeople have in the contemporary world. Thirdly, what was the response to the kidnapping from the left, self-described supporters of the Chavista revolution especially from US, European and Latin American intellectuals. Fourthly how should intellectuals express solidarity with progressive or revolutionary movements and regimes? Should they cover up internal differences, shortcomings and even egregious mistakes within the movements and regimes or should they provide constructive but pointed criticism which will help the revolutionary process to continue.

What was the purpose of the kidnapping and incarceration of the FARC leader? The perpetrators of the crime, the Uribe regime in Colombia, has long claimed its central goal is to capture, kill or jail the leaders and militants of the FARC and destroy the popularly based rural guerrilla army. This has been the regime's highest political and economic priority, as it has been the top US priority in its Latin American strategy. The purpose in kidnapping Grando was to weaken the FARC's capacity to interact with governments, movements, political parties and to present its views on a negotiated settlement of the 40 year-old civil war. In capturing Granda the Uribe regime hoped through pressures, torture and interrogation to break Granda and secure information in the location of the FARC leaders and their internal movements.

To claim, as did many writers who signed a letter directed "To International Public Opinion", that Granda's kidnapping was intended "to create difficulties between both countries (Venezuela and Colombia) and to weaken the Bolivarian movementto lessen President Chavez ' international prestige by creating doubts about a possible Venezuelan involvement in the kidnapping" has no substance and goes contrary to the most elementary facts about the kidnapping. The purpose of the Uribe government was not to create difficulties for Venezuela's government but to smash the FARC. The signatories make no mention whatsoever of the clear and direct purpose and efforts of those who directed and paid for the operation. Secondly, the Colombian and Venezuelan Ministers of Defense signed a major bilateral military cooperation agreement several days after the kidnapping, in which intelligence operations are to be shared as well as joint training operations. Clearly neither the Venezuelan nor Colombian Defense Ministers were affected by the kidnapping. Furthermore, shortly before the kidnapping, the Foreign Ministers of Venezuela and Colombia signed off on a series of economic, trade and oil pipeline agreements which, we are told by the Venezuelan Vice President Jose Rangel, will not be affected in anyway by the kidnapping.

Subsequent investigations by the Venezuelan Ministry of Interior in fact have proved that indeed five medium ranked officers of the Venezuelan National Guard and three officials from the Criminal Investigation Division are also under arrest for their involvement in the kidnapping of Granda.

The signatories' wrong-headed attempt to bolster Chavez' prestige by denying any Venezuelan complicity has been demonstrated as patently false by the very Venezuelan ministries involved in the investigation. The failure and /or unwillingness of these overseas "Friends of Venezuela" to see that the Venezuelan State contains officials who are willing to collaborate with the Colombian regime is part of a deeper and continuing problem of the Left: their tendency to give a blank check to any progressive regime, to overlook important divisions within the regime and to understand that among the military and civilian officials there are some who value close cooperation with the Uribe regime over and above respect for the rights of a revolutionary not to be deported (or kidnapped) to a bloody paramilitary state where there are no judicial protections.

In the initial phase of the official Venezuelan investigation, the Minister of Interior Chacon and the Minister of Defense emphasized that Granda was "illegally" in the country, that he had "false papers" and that "he was not officially invited to the international conferences". Instead of viewing the Colombian revolutionary as a victim of a heinous crime (a victim of international class warfare as we would have said in the old days), he was criminalized on the basis of immigration technicalities, which any low-level immigration functionary would appreciate. What was the purpose of distracting attention from a major political crime ­ kidnapping ­ to the trivial matter of an outdated visa? Was there an intention to say that he should have been expelled to Colombia and the Colombian kidnappers just went about it in the wrong way? Wasn't Venezuela's prestige tarnished more by its belated investigation and subsequent questioning of Granda's right to participate in an International Conference in Defense of Humanity than by a forthright denunciation of the Uribe regime's violation of its sovereignty and the complicity of some of its police and military officials? Worse, are not the signatories of a statement exonerating Venezuelan accomplices weakening the security of the Chavez regime? Does one defend a revolution by denying its internal weaknesses and enemies? After what happened in the past, especially with the former socialist countries, do we have to repeat the same errors, charging critics of sectors of the Chavez regime with preparing "the ground for armed US intervention" in order to silence them?

US armed intervention is a real possibility any place in the world, but it will not happen because a few Venezuelan police and National Guard officers are exposed as kidnappers in the pay of the Colombian state. It is now public knowledge in all the major Colombian media (Tiempo) that the Venezuelan officials received $1.5 million dollars for kidnapping and turning over Granda. Whether the kidnappers were also on the payroll of the CIA is not known, but their interrogations and admissions reveal no such connection. They had dollar signs, not stars and stripes, in their eyes. The real threat to Venezuelan security and to the Chavez regime, is from Venezuela's new defense agreements with Colombia ­ where we can be absolutely certain the US Special Forces, CIA and DIA working with the Colombian military will make every effort to recruit officials, gain intelligence and foment anti-Chavez sentiment among the less committed Defense officials.

Over the past 40 plus years I have attended hundreds of international meeting and have been involved with scores of left movements throughout the five continents. Revolutionaries pursued by dictators and repressive regimes have participated, entering host countries without visas, with false passports and occasionally with their papers in order. The Colombian revolutionaries, specifically the FARC and more directly Rodrigo Granda, have spoken at public forums throughout Europe and Latin America. Granda was barred from speaking at the World Social Forum (WSF) in 2001 because the FARC is engaged in violent struggles but the French Socialists with a centur of involvement in colonial wars were welcomed ­ but that is the cant we expect from NGOs. The fact of the matter is that even under the bourgeois neo-liberal regimes of Europe and Latin America, officials recognized tacitly or overtly the presence of revolutionaries, including the FARC. There was none of this rather unseemly, hasty review of invitation lists by the organizers of the international conferences, disqualifying and dissociating from a kidnapping revolutionary leader. That is certainly not an expression of international solidarity. Better for the health and future of a Venezuelan revolution to state clearly and forthrightly the obvious - that Granda was there and he had a right to be there where we could discuss and debate our principles, our differences, just as other bourgeois leaders and regimes have done at other times and in other countries.

President Chavez has decided to take a personal hand in the matter. Uribe has stated that he financed the kidnapping of Granda in Venezuela. Chavez has always said that Venezuela's national sovereignty will be defended whatever the costs in diplomatic, economic or military terms.

The Granda affair is not simply a provocation by the US and Colombia which may undermine bilateral relations, but a reflection of the internal division between the millions who wand to deepen the social transformation and those officials who want to reconcile with the US, Colombia and local elites.

As a afterthought in this regard, when Chavez declared a radical agrarian reform three years ago, not a single private latifundio was expropriated ­ the 100,000 land reform beneficiaries received only public land and then without adequate credit or technical assistance due to bureaucratic incompetence or political sabotage. In December 2004, Chavez renewed his call to the Governors and landless farmers to radicalize the land reform process. The governors responded by interviewing several landowners to study whether their land is productive or idle. In the meantime, thousands of landless squatters have been taking Chavez at his word and improvising their own land distribution program despite the violence of the unpunished private militias who are defending the latifundistas. Western intellectuals, indeed anyone who has doubts that the national revolution is turning social , had best pay more attention to the emerging internal class struggles than to signing such ill-informed petitions.

I call upon all people of good will to join in condemning the Uribe regime for the kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda and express our support for him as a political prisoner of conscience.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in brazil and argentina and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu

Venezuela y Colombia

Did Colombia Kidnap Guerrilla Leader in Venezuela to Please US?
 
by Humberto Márquez

 
CARACAS (IPS) - Some analysts say Colombia ordered the kidnapping of guerrilla leader Rodrigo Granda in the Venezuelan capital last month to prove to the United States that it is cooperating in the anti-terrorism "crusade," although the cost has been a serious rupture in Colombian-Venezuelan relations.

On Friday, leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced a freeze on all cooperation with Colombia and the withdrawal of his country's ambassador from Bogotá.

He said that he would discuss the case with other governments, and that the measures adopted would only be revoked if Colombia publicly apologizes for the kidnapping.

Carlos Romero, an expert on Venezuelan-Colombian relations, told IPS, "The Colombian government had known for a long time that Granda was in Venezuela, and was aware of the kind of life he was leading. They didn't just happen to find him as the result of an investigation. They had his location pinpointed, and when they decided the time was right, they had him picked up."

Granda was second in command in the so-called "foreign ministry" of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's main leftist rebel group. He was kidnapped in downtown Caracas last Dec. 13, with the support of members of the Venezuelan armed forces and police, and spirited across the border into Colombia, where he was turned over to the police.

At the time of the kidnapping, the Colombian government repeatedly claimed that Granda had been captured in Colombian territory.

Now Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos and Defense Minister Jorge Uribe have admitted that their government paid informers and kidnappers to seize Granda in Caracas. The total payoff was around one and a half million dollars, according to Venezuelan investigations.

Eight members of the Venezuelan armed forces, including a number of officers, have been arrested and detained in connection with the case. The suspected participation of active-duty and former Venezuelan police officers is also being investigated, as is the allegation that the operation in Caracas was directed by a Colombian police chief.

Simón Trinidad (whose real name is Ricardo Palmera), the man in charge of the FARC's financial affairs, was captured in Ecuador last year and extradited to the United States in late December.

Also last year, Colombia's second largest leftist rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), reported that one of its leaders had been kidnapped in the city of Maracaibo, in western Venezuela.

For two years, Granda had been living with his wife Yamileth Restrepo in a two-story house with a large backyard and swimming pool in a residential neighborhood 1500 meters above sea level in El Consejo, located an hour and a half by car from Caracas.

"Under these circumstances, it is very hard to believe that his presence wasn't known to the Colombian and Venezuelan authorities," said Romero.

"It is especially unlikely given what has been reported about Granda, namely that he met with the leaders of different countries of the region and is even said to have taken the director of the New York Stock Exchange to the FARC's stronghold in Colombia," he added.

According to Alberto Müller, a retired general from the Venezuelan army, the operation that landed Granda in a Colombian prison "could have been executed by the Colombian army or police in direct compliance with guidelines from the United States."

Müller told IPS that the United States implements a strategy of "exploiting the internal or external disputes of other countries to pursue its own goals. Washington wants to weaken the Venezuelan government," he added.

In his annual address to the nation on Friday, Chávez said, "I do not believe that the president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, was aware of this operation, which flagrantly violated Venezuelan sovereignty, and I invite his government to publicly make amends."

Chávez ordered the withdrawal of the Venezuelan ambassador to Colombia, Carlos Santiago, and announced that full diplomatic relations would not be resumed until the Colombian government had public apologized for this violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and for the payment of bribes to members of the Venezuelan military.

All ongoing cooperation projects, such as the construction of a bi-national gas pipeline, were to be immediately suspended, Chávez announced, adding that he is discussing the matter with other governments, due to the seriousness of Colombia's actions in using bribery to incite members of the Venezuelan armed forces to commit a crime.

Romero questioned why Colombia had suddenly decided to break with the status quo that allowed someone like Granda to "participate in the kind of ambiguity so typical of the conflict in that country, with armed clashes on the one hand and guerrilla leaders meeting abroad with foreign politicians on the other."

One possible explanation, said Romero, a graduate school professor at a number of Venezuelan universities, is the entry into force of "Plan Patriot," a Colombian military offensive aimed at penetrating territory under FARC control, and largely viewed as the military phase of Plan Colombia, a U.S.-financed anti-drug and counterinsurgency strategy.

This frontal attack on the rebel forces is supposedly based on "the premise that all guerrilla groups are terrorist groups, and we are in the midst of a global war on terrorism," he added.

Upon admitting that the Colombian government had paid a reward for the capture of Granda, Defense Minister Uribe said that "Colombia will do whatever it has to do, without violating international agreements and international law, to ensure that the leaders of these groups are safely put away."

For his part, Santos said that "bounty hunters will be warmly welcomed in Colombia. We hope they all come to help capture these bandits. There's plenty of money, and it's here waiting for them."

Santos maintained that this is a "legitimate method, used in the United States, for example, which is offering a juicy sum for the capture of Osama bin Laden," leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Romero noted that Uribe and other Colombian politicians "are toeing the line of the hawks in the U.S. government, like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and acting as if Washington had told them, ‘Hunt down the political leaders of the guerrilla forces and send them here to us."

According to an editorial in the Colombian Communist Party weekly Voz, "the Colombian government's doctrine, which is as dangerous as it is unacceptable, is that the guerrillas must be persecuted through all possible methods, even illegal ones."

"There was a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty. The Colombian defense minister has assumed responsibility for bribery, and therefore has participated in the kidnapping of a citizen in another country, which is akin to applying the law of the jungle in the Andean region," Venezuelan Vice President José Vicente Rangel.

"With this action, Plan Colombia is being extended to the whole Andean region," said Rangel, adding that "my objection to the kidnapping of Granda is the same as that made in the Southern Cone to Operation Condor," a covert military intelligence-sharing strategy followed by South American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s.

Romero believes that the Venezuelan president's reaction has been particularly forceful because "Colombia's actions not only throw a wrench into bilateral relations, but also implicate the armed forces, where Chávez hails from, and could be interpreted as meaning that the president is not in full control of his security and defense forces."

General Jorge García Carneiro, the minister of defense, read a statement on Friday in which he condemned the behavior of the Venezuelan military forces involved in the operation.

Chávez announced that they would be punished "with the full weight of the law, because they have disgraced the uniform of the army of Simón Bolívar," the founding father of Venezuelan independence.

(Inter Press Service)
 

Jose Padilla

Haiti

The Dictatorship of Debt

The World Bank and Haiti

By YVES ENGLER

Last Thursday the World Bank announced it would release $73 million in cash to Haiti's government of Gerard Latortue that was installed by foreign powers after elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide was forced from office. For Haiti to get the World Bank cash it had to pay $52 million in outstanding arrears. Canada helped out by giving the regime a $12.7 million grant.

What's going on?

The Canadian government, like the US and the European Union, stopped providing aid to the Haitian government after accusations that the May 2000 elections were unfair. The basis for this claim was that in 10 multi-candidate contests where Lavalas gained a plurality rather than a majority of votes, according to the constitution they should have faced a second round election. Instead Lavalas' "plurality winners" simply took their seats.

Objections were raised even though the same method was used in previous elections and it was public knowledge prior to the vote that this would happen again. So, while more than 3500 other positions were judged to have been filled fairly in the same election, the Organization of American States and the US claimed electoral fraud. The opposition used this claim to justify their boycott of presidential elections later that year and to say Aristide's victory was tainted, even though no one claimed the opposition had any chance of beating the popular former priest. The "tainted" election became the excuse to divert aid money from the government to opposition "civil society" groups.

Now, however, the Canadian government has no problem giving money to a Haitian regime without the remotest pretense of democratic legitimacy.

The World Bank money now going to Haiti is mostly loans. Haitians will have to repay it even though Haitians didn't choose Latortue " the US, France and Canada did. Similarly, of the $1.2 billion in "aid" for Haiti announced at a Washington donors, conference in July, more than half is loans, which Haitians must repay.

While it's unclear how exactly all of the money on offer will be spent we do know that a number of North American companies have their eyes on the prize, so to speak. Montreal -based SNC Lavalin already has some contracts lined up. Most countries stipulate that the majority of their "aid" must be spent on domestic contractors. So Haitians will have to repay money sent to foreign companies.

A country as poor as Haiti--where there are no public schools, only intermittent electricity and little health infrastructure--should not be sending $40 million to the World Bank headquarters in Washington. But then again in 1825 Haiti never should have had to pay France $21 billion (in 2004 dollars) to compensate French slave-holders for their loss of property (now free Haitians). This debt, paid under threat of invasion and exclusion from international commerce, took Haiti 120 years to repay.

According to the Haiti Support Group, "Haiti's debt to international financial institutions and foreign governments has grown from US$302 million in 1980 to US$1.134 billion today. About 40% of this debt stems from loans to the brutal Duvalier (Papa and Baby Doc) dictators who invested precious little of it in the country. This is known as odious debt, because it was used to oppress the people, and, according to international law, this debt need not be repaid."

As the 20th century began, foreign powers, especially Germany, France and the US, repeatedly sent gunboats into Haitian waters. The most common reason for the incursions was to press Haiti to pay debts it was unable to afford. In one instance, US marines secretly entered Port-au-Prince and took the national treasure. The 1915 US invasion/occupation of Haiti was partly about forcing the country to repay its debt.

While it would be a stretch to claim that the recent invasion of Haiti occurred simply to force the country to repay its debt, it isn't a total coincidence that Haiti, like the other "failed states" Yugoslavia and Iraq, has massive "obligations" to foreign bankers.

"Failed state" may in fact be a euphemism for a country's failure to subject itself above all else to the rights of international creditors. After all, gunboat diplomacy to enforce these rights has a long, inglorious history.

Yves Engler is author of the forthcoming book playing Left Wing: From Hockey to Politics: the making of a student activist. He's traveled extensively in Venezuela. He can be reached at: yvesengler@hotmail.com

For those interested in organizing or taking part in demonstrations (planned for Saturday February 26th) in Canada or throughout the world commemorating the one year anniversary of the overthrow of Haiti's constitutional order get in touch with Anthony at afenton@riseup.net

For those interested in bringing Haitian speakers to Canada or the northeast of the US get in touch with yves at (514) 807 9037 or yvesengler@hotmail.com

Anyone planning on attending the World Social Forum who might be interested in outreaching with our Brazilian, Argentinean and Chilean comrades please get in touch with yves.

Bush's Latino Butt-Wipe

Gonzales' Unbelievable Argument

    B y Alan Berlow
    S alon.com

    T hursday 14 January 2005

The attorney general nominee claims he and then Texas Gov. Bush held "rolling" discussions before executions were approved. He's almost certainly not telling the truth.

    I n seven hours of testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Alberto Gonzales demonstrated astute powers of evasion, obfuscation and equivocation when it came to the Bush administration's torture policy, leading one Democratic senator, Joseph Biden of Delaware, to ever so gently suggest that the attorney general nominee might be less than totally forthcoming. "So we're looking for candor, ol' buddy. We're looking for you when we ask you questions to give us an answer, which you haven't done yet. I love you, but you're not very candid so far."

    I n the end, few senators wanted to sully the Gonzales love-in just because the sworn testimony of the soon-to-be rubber-stamped head of the nation's chief law enforcement agency was not entirely responsive. But if Gonzales was lacking in candor on the subject of torture, the main thrust of the hearing, he almost certainly crossed the line from half-truth to untruth when it came to a discussion of his role in the execution of 57 Texas death row inmates.

    I n response to questions from Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold and Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, Gonzales repeatedly stated that each of the so-called execution memos he wrote for then Texas Gov. George W. Bush was nothing more than a "summary" of what he suggested had been an elaborate, ongoing review process for each and every execution Bush approved. "It was not unusual - in fact, it was quite common that I would have numerous discussions with the governor well in advance of a scheduled execution," Gonzales told Feingold. "There would be a rolling series of discussions in connection with every execution."

    T his explanation of how executions were reviewed is essential to Gonzales' defense of his record because the documentary evidence is so damning. What it shows is that the only reports Bush reviewed were Gonzales' three-to-seven-page summaries, which not only were heavily biased against clemency but repeatedly failed to make any mention of the most powerful claims on a defendant's behalf, including plausible claims of innocence. Rather than writing a balanced summation of arguments for and against commutation, Gonzales' work product was frequently little more than a brief for execution.

    B ecause the written summaries were so thoroughly unprofessional, Gonzales no doubt felt he had to downplay their significance in his Senate testimony. He did this by suggesting that the summaries were invariably preceded by a real meat-and-potatoes review - in-depth, scrupulous and balanced discussions of the evidence. Yet senators never asked Gonzales to substantiate this claim, which is unfortunate because Gonzales would have been hard-pressed to do so.

    I n fact, in virtually all 57 cases for which Gonzales and his staff prepared written execution summaries (Bush signed off on 152 executions in all), there is no record of any additional work having been done for the governor.

    G onzales wants senators and the rest of us to believe that in the 57 cases he chaperoned to the executioner, the most important and substantive work was done in ad hoc conversations, with no scheduled meetings and with nothing beyond his brief and one-sided memoranda committed to paper.

    B ut when did all these conversations about executions take place? Bush's appointment logs typically show one, and only one, 30-minute meeting per execution. And that meeting almost always took place on the day of the execution itself, leaving Gonzales little time to explore any issues or questions about an impending execution Bush might have raised. It was at those meetings that Gonzales presented his appallingly incomplete summaries of the cases.

    G onzales told Feingold that if he "expressed concerns or questions" about an execution, "the governor would direct me to go back and find out and to be absolutely sure." Yet in not one instance did Gonzales actually write a memo or report for the governor following up, elaborating on or clarifying these life-or-death questions that both he and the governor claimed to take so seriously. Indeed, Gonzales wants senators to believe that these purported discussions, of which there is no record, were so thorough that by the time execution day rolled around and he presented his truncated written summary to Bush, there was no need to include in that document the most salient facts about a case - hence the persistent omissions.

    I n his testimony, Gonzales could barely recall details of the notorious Carl Johnson sleeping-lawyer case or the Henry Lee Lucas serial murderer case, one of the most infamous death penalty matters to come before Bush, and one of only two Bush writes about in his autobiography. Yet Gonzales wants us to believe that he was able to keep the critical facts and details of the 57 cases he handled clear in his own mind and convey the crucial arguments in each to Bush without committing a single word - beyond the eleventh-hour summaries - to paper.

    T he written record on executions under Bush is both vast and meticulously cataloged by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, and it suggests just how implausible this claim really is. Records provided by the archives make it shockingly clear that in not one case did Gonzales send Bush a clemency petition, the one document that would have laid out the most forceful argument on behalf of an individual condemned to death. We also know from the archives' own review of the files left behind by Gonzales and his staff that for nearly every inmate executed under Bush, there was voluminous correspondence that never made it to Bush's desk - correspondence from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, district attorneys, local law enforcement officials, inmates, attorneys for the condemned, and family and friends of victims. "The letters are generally addressed to either the Governor or his General Counsel," a report prepared by the archives state, noting that "while many of the letters are directed to the Governor, they are stamped as received at the General Counsel's office and there is no indication that the Governor reviewed them" (emphasis added).

    T he archives leave no doubt whatsoever that Gonzales could have provided Bush far more detailed information about each of these executions, but instead chose not to. In the end, Bush made his decisions on each of these life-or-death cases by relying almost entirely on the summaries Gonzales himself now dismisses, acknowledging that they were, at best, incomplete. "What the Governor did review are the execution summaries prepared by the General Counsel," the archives state in an analysis accompanying its "Inventory of the General Counsel's Execution Files." The archives found no other documents that had been reviewed by Bush.

    A stonishingly, the archives also make clear that far more complete execution summaries than those prepared by Gonzales were in his possession but were never presented to Bush. These confidential summaries, which have not been made public, were prepared by the Board of Pardons and Paroles or the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. "There is a difference between the execution summaries prepared by the governor's general counsel [Gonzales] and those done by or for the BPP," the archivist states. "The summaries by the BPP contain more information about the crime, the criminal history and the defendant's prison record than do those prepared by the governor's general counsel. Additionally, execution summaries prepared by TDCJ or BPP often contain attachments, including correspondence between the BPP and inmates with victims and inmates' families, correspondence to the BPP from its legal counsel, recommendations from trial officials, medical and psychological reports, and criminal histories."

    T hese more complete summaries, the archives report, were sent to the governor's office along with affidavits, court records and clemency petitions - none of which Gonzales saw fit to submit to Bush, in all likelihood because Gonzales knew his boss would not be interested in them and had no desire to commute the sentences of anyone on death row.

    D uring the period that Gonzales was handling clemency matters for Bush, there were sometimes as many as two executions per week, as many as eight in a single month. And Bush's top legal advisor would have us believe that the way he and Bush kept track of these executions and ensured that no innocent person died - and that all of the condemned had had a full and fair review in the courts - was through a series of informal discussions. That's just not believable.

Iraq and the El Salvador 'Option'

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay

The Salvador Option

Within the Pentagon, the tactic is named "The Salvador option" after the strategy that was secretly employed by Ronald Reagan's administration to combat the guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. The U.S.-backed death squads hunted down and assassinated rebel leaders and their supporters.

The current US ambassador in Iraq is John Negroponte. As ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in coordinating US covert aid to the Contras who targeted civilians in Nicaragua and shoring up a CIA-backed death squad in Honduras.

The Newsweek report says the Iraqi squads would most likely be made up of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen and could even operate across the Syrian border. It is also still unclear whether Pentagon or the CIA would take responsibility for the squads.

We are joined right now by journalist and activist Allan Nairn. In 1984, his article in The Progressive Magazine entitled "Behind the Death Squads" [Download pdf] exposed the CIA"s backing of El Salvador death squads and led to an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

• Allan Nairn, investigative journalist and activist. To read Allan's reports, go to: newsc.blogspot.com.

ALLAN NAIRN: Thanks.

AMY GOODMAN: It's good to have you with us. Can you talk about what this Salvador option means, hearing about the Newsweek report that they might employ it in Iraq?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Newsweek said that -- they described the Salvador option as the targeting of combatants and their sympathizers, and the key word is sympathizers. In El Salvador and not just Salvador, but about three dozen other countries, the U.S. government, in an integrated effort involving the C.I.A., the Pentagon, and the State Department, backed the creation of military units that targeted civilian activists. In Salvador, I interviewed many of the officers involved in running these squads. For example, General “Chele” Medrano, who was on the C.I.A. payroll, described how they picked their targets. He said, they targeted people who speak, and these are his words: “…against yankee imperialism, against the oligarchy, against military men. These people are traitors to the country. What can the troops do, when they found them this he kill them.” Actually, they didn't always kill them. Often, they brought them to the headquarters of the treasury police, the national guard, the army and they tortured for them days. One former member of the Salvadoran treasury police, Rene Hurtado, described a course that was given at army general staff headquarters where American officers gave instruction in techniques including electroshock torture. Hurtado himself said he conducted such torture. He said, these are his words: “You put wires on the prisoner’s vital parts. You place the wires between the prisoner’s teeth, on the penis, on the vagina. The prisoners feel it more so the feet are in the water, and they are seated on iron so the blow is stronger… When it's over, you just throw him in the alleys with a sign saying, Mano Blanco, ESA (Secret Anticommunist Army), or Maximiliano Hernandez Brigade.” These are the names of the Salvadora death squads. I was given a chance to see the archives of the Salvadoran National Police, the intelligence archives and you could see they have filed marked, union, student, religious. They showed me a card file, which included surveillance reports on activists who had traveled to other countries. These surveillance reports were given to them, according to the captain who was giving me this tour, by the C.I.A. The whole filing system was set up for them by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Medrano was at one point brought to the oval office in the White House, and presented a silver medal by president Lyndon Johnson for an - he showed me the medal, inscribed on the medal - for exceptionally meritorious service. This program actually began not just under Reagan, but during the John F. Kennedy administration. It encompassed all of Latin America or all of the dictatorships of Latin America that were being backed the by the U.S. in the Central American region, it included Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras. A special teletype system, which at that time was the top technology, was set up for exchanging information among the intelligence services of the various participant countries, where information would be passed back and forth about, for example, labor leaders who would travel from one country to another for conferences, and then on their return, they would be picked up, tortured and assassinated. Something on the order of 75,000 Salvadoran civilians were killed by the Salvadoran military, most of them during the 1970's. And the majority of these were targeted by these death squad type forces. So one point is, these were not combatants who were being killed. These were not armed guerrillas. They were sometimes engaged by the Salvadoran military in combat, but the death squad operations, which the Pentagon according to Newsweek is now talking about using for Iraq, these went after civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Allan Nairn. You talk about General Medrano, who is known as the father of these death squads, trained by the United States in El Salvador. Again, this 20 years ago. And I'm looking at a full-page ad that The Progressive took out in the Washington Post, “Behind the Death Squads,” an exclusive report on the U.S. role in Salvador's official terror. Can you talk about the effect of this, and how this information was made known?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, based on some of those interviews that I just described and also U.S. internal documents I did that article for The Progressive. They published, I think it was May of 1984 and it was almost completely ignored by the corporate press. There was no notice whatsoever. So then The Progressive went out and raised money from various donors, and they were able to buy a full-page ad in the Washington Post where they reprinted about a third of the article. This got some attention in Washington. The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee then asked me to come in, and meet with them. So I did in a closed session and was questioned by dozens of the Intelligence Committee staff for about three or four hours about what the U.S. had done to back and create the Salvadoran death squads. Now this was a bit curious since they were the ones, who had security clearance, who had access to the C.I.A. and Pentagon files. They were the ones who worked with them, indeed funded them, but they were asking me, I think in part maybe to try to find out how much I knew. What I knew is what I printed in the magazine, but I was trying to spur them to investigate. And they did. They then launched an investigation where they say they examined more than a million internal documents. They produced a 400 page report, which was heavily classified. They told me that only two copies of the report were produced, one was in a sealed room that only -- kept on Capitol Hill, which only the Senators on the committee could read, and another at the C.I.A. headquarters. A public report was released, which said nothing. Some of the Senators told me that the classified - they told me a little bit about the classified report. They said they had verified that in fact, yes, the U.S. had set up these death squads in Salvador and also that U.S. personnel had sometimes been on the premises during torture sessions and had supplied questions for the prisoners being tortured.

AMY GOODMAN: So, this was back in 1984 and 1985 when this was coming back -- coming out. Did it surprise you that the Pentagon is actually calling this proposal, according to Newsweek, to train -- it's not clear if it's C.I.A.-backed, Pentagon-backed assassination and kidnapping squads in El Salvador, that they're calling it the Salvador option. Have they ever acknowledged it publicly?

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, it sounds … No, they never acknowledged it publicly. That Senate report was classified. But now it sounds like in an offhand way, it's almost -- it sounds as if they're almost talking about it even in a -- almost a joking way, oh yeah, we'll do to them what they did to Salvador. It's an astonishing admission, but I think now that this is on the record, immediately, the Senate Intelligence Committee should release their classified report of 1984, and there should be a demand that the Pentagon and the C.I.A. release all internal documents they have about the Salvador option, and similar activities in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Salvador, also - there are dozens of other countries in the world where this has happened. Recently, we had the revelations about General Pinochet and his bank account, the Riggs Bank in Washington. He was paid millions by the U.S. as a very similar intelligence exchange system and assassination system was being set up the southern cone countries. This admission should be pursued, and the U.S. officials who participated in creating units that killed civilians should be prosecuted for murder. We have to enforce the murder laws.

AMY GOODMAN: The nuns, the American nuns it is referred to in the Newsweek piece, that were killed in El Salvador, Allan. Can you give some background as we -- as the Pentagon apparently weighs this option of the Salvador option in Iraq?

ALLAN NAIRN: They were killed by the Salvadoran National Guard. They were pulled from their vehicle, raped, shot, dumped into a ditch, and this was a typical Salvadoran death squad operation. This one got a lot of the attention in the press in the U.S., because victims were American. Although at the time, U.S. officials actually tried to excuse it, Alexander Haig, I believe it was Alexander Haig spoke publicly about there being an exchange of gunfire, which implied these were pistol packing nuns who had to be brought down in combat by the Salvadoran forces. Jean Kirkpatrick actually said, well, these were not real nuns, her suggestion being that they were activists and this somehow -- she seemed to be suggesting this somehow legitimized their targeting. That was in fact the principle behind these death squad operations.

AMY GOODMAN: And then the Jesuits who were killed in El Salvador, not to mention the archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romereo.

ALLAN NAIRN: Archbishop Romero was killed as part of the -- according to later investigations, he was killed by an offshoot of the operation of Roberto D’Aubuisson who ran the ARENA party, which was one of the death squad operations or one of the smaller one, actually. The larger came from the regular Salvadoran armed forces and police. He also had U.S. backing. In fact, D’Aubuisson launched his career as a major figure in Salvador by going on TV and making a speech. He had a video role as he spoke with an illustrated death list of union people and religious figures and others who he said should be killed as traitors to the country. And the data for the list were supplied to him by American intelligence, again according to the officers there I interviewed.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, one link between Salvador 20 years ago and today in Iraq is the former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, John Negroponte, who is the current ambassador to Iraq. And I also want to get to Aceh and talk about the latest that's happening there, but in just a minute, if you could sum up that link.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Negroponte was one of the people who ran the Contra operation, the central -- the invasion against Nicaragua, which the world court later ruled to be an act of aggression by the Contras, which were created and funded by the U.S. government. He also oversaw the back -- the military backing for Battalion 316, which was a Honduran military death squad that specialized in torture and assassination.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what it means that he is in charge of Iraq right now. Do you think he has a part of designing this “Salvador option?”

ALLAN NAIRN: Maybe not. They probably have other people who are specialists in that. He's probably handling the economic side of it, but if there are political apologies to be done, Negroponte may handle it. The thing is that these programs, which backed the killing of foreign civilians, it's a regular part of U.S. policy. It's ingrained in U.S. policy in dozens upon dozens of countries. In Indonesia for example, which we are going to talk about in a minute, where the tsunami hit, the Kopassus, the Red Berets, which there specialize in torture and assassination, they have been trained by U.S. Green Berets in things like urban warfare. This is a longstanding policy, and it's nothing new.

No, we do NOT support torture!

Unfinished Business: Confirming Bush's appointee is unthinkable

Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D., Executive Director, American Center for International Law writes: Readers might recall that US White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote an infamous "torture memo," dated January 25, 2002, in which he erroneously advised President Bush that he could:

(1) use his "commander-in-chief authority" to override the "quaint and obsolete" Geneva Conventions, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the US War Crimes Act, during his so-called "War on Terror"; and

(2) authorize the use of interrogation methods which are tantamount to torture on prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay and other US military prisons.

Mr. Gonzales' legal opinion was meritless but highly consequential, for it ultimately lead to the US military's scandalous use of torture tactics on war prisoners and detainees -- including at least 40 who were tortured to death -- at Abu Ghraib and other prisons. Now the entire world regards Alberto Gonzales as complicit in these war crimes.

Mr. Bush is currently attempting to "define failure up" by elevating torture's advocate, Alberto Gonzales, to the nation's top law-enforcement position -- or, as one professor of international law put it, "War Criminal For Attorney General?" [1]

Now the moment of truth has arrived.

On Thursday, 1-6-05, the Senate Judiciary Committee will commence its hearing to determine whether Mr. Gonzales should be confirmed as our next Attorney General. [2]

What are Mr. Gonzales' chances for confirmation? Back in November of 2004, it looked like he might be confirmed without serious Democratic opposition. [3]

However, new questions about the torture memos threaten Gonzales' nomination. [4] Moreover, media pundits are correctly opining that "backing Gonzales is backing torture." [5] Furthermore, journalists are reporting that the USA has continued its use of torture, the Bushites' vaguely-worded 12-30-04 disavowal notwithstanding. [6]

And four professional groups -- including more than 500 religious leaders, prominent attorneys and legal scholars, generals, and military lawyers -- have released open letters in opposition to the appointment of Alberto Gonzales. [7]

However, Mr. Bush and his Republican leaders are exerting enormous political pressure to confirm Gonzales. Therefore, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) -- who is presiding over this Judiciary Committee hearing -- almost certainly will ramrod the Gonzales confirmation through unless the Democrats present steadfast opposition. Which raises this question: "Is there bipartisan Congressional support FOR torture?"

The Democratic answer should be: "No, we do NOT support torture!"

And there are signs that the Committee's ranking Democrat, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, is willing to lead his colleagues in vigorous opposition to Gonzales. [8] To do so effectively, he will need a groundswell of public support for his position -- including yours, starting today!

The Bottom Line: Time Is Of The Essence!

Realistically, the outcome of the Gonzales hearings will hinge upon the amount of pressure that we, the people, are personally willing to exert on the Judiciary Committee by telephoning, faxing, and e-mailing its members today:

A. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) at phone number 202-224-4242 and e-mail address Senator_Leahy@leahy.senate.gov

B. Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) at phone number 202-224-4254 and fax number 202-228-1229.

C. The other Democratic and Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee. [9]

Of course, you should cogently and concisely urge these Senators to "steadfastly OPPOSE the appointment of Alberto Gonzales as our next Attorney General!" [10]

Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D.
EvPeters8@aol.com
Executive Director
American Center for International Law (ACIL) 

ENDNOTES

[1] UIUC Law Prof. Francis Boyle's 11-18-04 CP essay, "The Dems Are Caving On Gonzales: War Criminal For Attorney General?"

[2] Read the Senate Judiciary Committee's announcement of the Gonzales hearing.

[3] For five good reasons why Mr. Gonzales shouldn't be our next AG, see Evan Augustine Peterson III's 11-30-04 NFNZ essay, "Why The USA Must Reject Bush's Evil 'Marquis De Sade' Appointee For Attorney General."

[4] 1-5-05 CHB article, "Questions About Torture Memos Threaten Gonzales' Nomination."

[5] Robert Scheer's 1-5-05 CD/LAT essay, "Backing Gonzales Is Backing Torture."

Also see Jamie Mayerfield and Darius Rejali's 12-17-04 CD/ST essay, "Nation Doesn't Need An AG Who Cleared Way For Torture."

[6] Helen Thomas' 12-28-04 CD essay, "The Buck Never Stops At The Top."  Also see the 1-3-05 TP action site, "Nothing Quaint About It" to download the DOJ's eleventh-hour backpedaling via its 12-30-04 disavowal of the "Torture Memos."

[7] A. Religious Leaders. Read "The Question Of Torture: An Open Letter To Alberto Gonzales," a 12-23-04 ICH article.  B. Lawyers. Download the 1-4-05 "Lawyers' Statement On The Nomination Of Alberto Gonzales" (it's underneath the 1-4-05 AFJ article, "Gonzales Report And Lawyers' Letter Raise Concerns")  C. Generals. Download their "Open Letter To The Senate Judiciary Committee On The Appointment Of Alberto Gonzales" (you'll find the click-on link in the 1-4-05 TP action site, "Not So Obsolete") D. Military Lawyers. Neil Lewis' NYT 12-16-04 article, "Ex-Military Lawyers Object To Bush Cabinet Nominee."

[8] See the last section in James Rowley's 1-3-04 Bloomberg.net article, "Former Military Leaders Challenge Gonzales Nomination."

[9] You can find the Senate Judiciary Committee's membership.

[10] If the American people do nothing, we'll have the postmodern equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition's Torquemada as our next Attorney General -- someone who approves of torture and lifetime detentions without due process, as per this 1-2-05 CD/Reuters article, "US Said To Mull Lifetime Terror-Suspect Detentions."

Read these and imagine what measures an AG Gonzales would implement domestically to "protect our nation" after another major terrorist attack:

A. 1-2-05 CD/LAT article, "Plan To Keep Detainees In Jail For Life Criticized By Senators."

B. Mike Whitney's 1-4-05 CP essay, "Injustice As State Policy: The Guantanamo Gulag."

C. Elaine Cassell's 1-4-05 CP essay, "They Say They Can Lock You Up For Life Without A Trial: Charged With No Crime, Implicated In No Wrongdoing."

Out Now!

The Enabler

Gary Webb

Haiti

This article originally appeared on the web site of the Haiti Action Committee. Because of the current reign of terror in Haiti, the journalists of the Haiti Information Project must remain anonymous. Port au Prince, Haiti – While so many of us take for granted that our votes will be counted in our own countries, Haitians continue to struggle against the “turn the page” crowd that would forget their choice in the last presidential elections. A majority of Haiti’s people voted Jean-Bertrand Aristide president in 2000 and expected him to serve out a five-year term in office. Those hopes were dashed when Aristide was ousted in a coup on February 29, 2004.  A majority of Haiti’s poor earnestly believe the coup was organized and led by the US, France and Canada. This perception continues to haunt the current US-installed government, the US State Department and a United Nations peacekeeping mission who all claim in turn to be re-establishing democracy in Haiti. Residents in the poor neighborhoods of the capital, like the roiling slum of Bel Air, oppose the goals of what they have come to call the “Koalisyon lanmo” or the “Coalition of the Killing” (an evident play on the words of Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing” in Iraq).  “They are the ones who taught us our vote counts and we will never forget.” December 31st in Bel Air began in a small dusty room off the street of Delmas 2. Combatants, the name for the most strident backers fighting for the return of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, patrolled the area as others painted signs demanding his return with slogans recognizing the rights of the poor. This is clearly ground zero for the movement in this country that considers itself honoring the votes cast by the majority of Haiti’s poor that led to Aristide’s election as president in November 2000. At 10:am the crowd began assembling for another day of resistance that has been unrelenting in Bel Air since the forced ouster of Aristide on February 29th. Despite the previous slaughter of their numbers by US Marines and the Haitian police, the citizens of Bel Air showed the courage of their convictions by taking to the streets yet again. A spokesman for the demonstrators stated, “Since the Haitian police [backed by the UN], attacked our peaceful demonstration on September 30, we have said no. Even though they call us bandits on the radio we understand the campaign of social exclusion and that they want to hide the fact that 70% of the population are calling for Aristide’s return. Today they talk about reconciliation yet more than 3000 within Lavalas have been murdered, they reward the former military that are responsible with large checks and they give them jobs in the police. They imprisoned our leaders or forced them into exile. Our children have no schools, We have no decent housing and we have no way of securing a life for the majority of the poor who elected Aristide president. They do not represent us. They will never represent us as long as this injustice continues. We would rather die with dignity than in our current misery without justice. This is the only honor as citizens of a free and independent Haiti we have left to us. To die for our independence and what we believe in. “The constitution must be respected. We played the game fair and voted for our president. Aristide must be returned or the UN and the US must kill us all. We will never betray the democratic principal they [the International Community] taught us is supreme in the land. One man equals one vote and we elected Aristide as the president of Haiti. They are the ones who taught us our vote counts and we will never forget.” The Haiti Information Project (HIP) is a non-profit alternative news service providing coverage and analysis of breaking developments in Haiti.

Cuba

This article originally appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, and was republished in Portside. "I feel as if I'm standing on the backs of all my ancestors. This is a huge opportunity for me," Teresa Glover, a 27-year-old medical student, told me during a recent visit to her medical school. "Nobody in my family has ever had the chance to be a doctor." Glover's mother is a teacher, and her father a dispatcher for the New York subway system. Her background is a mix of African American, Barbadian, and Cherokee. She graduated from the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. "I wanted to be a doctor, but I wasn't sure how to get into medicine. I had decent grades, but I didn't have any money, and even applying to medical school cost a lot." This young woman from the Bronx may be helping to rectify the long-standing problem of insufficient diversity in the medical profession in the United States. Twenty-five percent of the U.S. population is black, Hispanic, or Native American, whereas only 6.1 percent of the nation's physicians come from these backgrounds. Students from these minority groups simply don't get into medical school as often as their majority peers, which results in a scarcity of minority physicians. This inequity translates into suffering and death, as documented by the Institute of Medicine. Poorer health outcomes in minority populations have been linked to lack of access to care, lower rates of therapeutic procedures, and language barriers. Since physicians from minority groups practice disproportionately in minority communities, they are an important part of the solution to the health-disparities quandary. In her third year, Glover is negotiating the classic passage from the laboratory to the clinic. But her school isn't in the United States. She is enrolled at the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM, which is its Spanish acronym) in Havana – a school sponsored by the Cuban government and dedicated to training doctors to treat the poor of the Western hemisphere and Africa. Twenty-seven countries and 60 ethnic groups are represented among ELAM's 8000 students. Glover's mother heard about ELAM from her congressman, Representative José Serrano (D-NY). "Mom calls me. 'I have news. There's a chance for you to go to medical school.' She waits for it to sink in. 'You'd get a full scholarship.' She waits again. 'But it's in Cuba.' That didn't faze me a bit. What an opportunity!" The genesis of Glover's opportunity dates to June 2000, when a group from the Congressional Black Caucus visited Cuban president Fidel Castro. Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) described huge areas in his district where there were no doctors, and Castro responded with an offer of full scholarships for U.S. citizens to study at ELAM. Later that year, Castro spoke at the Riverside Church in New York, reiterating the offer and committing 500 slots to U.S. students who would pledge to practice in poor U.S. communities. That day, 26-year-old Eduardo Medina was at his parents' house in New York, listening to Castro's speech on the radio. "Castro announces that Cuba has started a new medical school and has invited students from all over Latin America to come, train, and return to treat the poor in their countries. Then he starts quoting figures about poor communities in the U.S. 'We'll be more than happy to educate American medical students,' he says, 'if they'll commit to going home to take care of the poor.' The place went nuts. I'm standing in my basement saying, 'Yes! Yes! Yes!'" Medina was raised in Brooklyn and Queens, the child of a Colombian father and a mother of Puerto Rican, Jewish, and Irish descent – both public-school teachers who pushed their children to work hard in school. "When I was little, they sent me to a summer enrichment program in Manhattan," recalls Medina. "I would travel on the subway every day with this huge book bag. I was young and it was hot. But I was excited." The work paid off, and Medina won partial scholarships to a boarding school and to Wesleyan University. "There weren't many students of color at either private school, particularly in the sciences," he says. "Culturally, economically, ideologically, it was a real culture clash for me, but the education was good." Medina was found to have diabetes when he was 12 years old and spent a week in the hospital. "When I saw what the doctors could do for me, I knew I wanted to be a doctor. In college, I spent a year in Ecuador, and I knew I wanted to practice community medicine." But medicine wasn't going to come easily. Medina had a mediocre grade or two in science courses, a middling score on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), and $45,000 in student debts. He worked as a research assistant to buy himself time to retake the MCAT and organize his medical-school campaign. After hearing Castro, Medina applied to ELAM and happily grabbed the chance to attend. "I didn't know if I'd get into U.S. schools, and if I did, I had no idea how I was going to pay." There are 88 U.S. students at ELAM, 85 percent of them members of minority groups and 73 percent of them women. Recruitment and screening are handled by the Interreligous Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), a New York-based interfaith organization. Applicants are required to have a high-school diploma and at least two years of premedical courses, to be from poor communities, and to make a commitment to return to those communities. Students who don't speak Spanish start early with intensive language instruction. Glover and Medina get home about once a year. They report that living conditions are spare and English textbooks hard to come by, but they are well taken care of and the education is rigorous. The Bush administration's restrictions on travel to Cuba have been a thorn in the side of the program from the beginning. Since the Cuban government pays the students' room, board, tuition, and a stipend, the ban was not initially applied to them. But the administration's further attempts this summer to curtail Cuban travel threatened the students and sent their families scrambling for political help. Representatives Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) led a campaign of protest, and 27 members of Congress signed a letter to Secretary of State Colin Powell asking that the ELAM students be exempted from the ban. In August, the administration relented and granted the students permission to remain in Cuba. The Cuban health care system in which these students are working is exceptional for a poor country and represents an important political accomplishment of the Castro government. Since 1959, Cuba has invested heavily in health care and now has twice as many physicians per capita as the United States and health indicators on a par with those in the most developed nations – despite the U.S. embargo that severely reduces the availability of medications and medical technology. This success clearly plays well at home and has enabled Cuba to send physicians abroad to Cold War hot spots such as Nicaragua and Angola. Yet Cuba has also sent thousands of physicians to work in some of the world's poorest countries. Since 1998, 7150 Cuban doctors have worked in 27 countries - on a proportional basis this is the equivalent of the United States sending 175,000 physicians abroad. In the same spirit, ELAM trains young people from these countries and sends them home to practice medicine. Although these programs make political points for Cuba, they also represent an extraordinary humanitarian contribution to the world's poor populations. The U.S. students face a hurdle that their classmates in Cuba do not. To obtain residency positions in the United States and uphold their side of the deal with Castro, U.S. students will have to pass two steps of the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) and the new Clinical Skills Assessment test. The first large group of ELAM students will take Step 1 later this year, and the results will be critical to the future of the program. The ELAM invitation is not limited to minority students, although the emphasis on coming from and returning to poor communities has naturally selected students of color. Physicians from minority groups accounted for only 3 percent of U.S. doctors during the middle years of the 20th century. After the civil-rights movement, the number of minority medical students increased steadily, rising to 11.6 percent of medical school graduates in 1998. Schools used scholarship money, academic enrichment programs, and special admissions criteria to increase minority enrollment. In recent years, such initiatives have flagged – victims of court decisions opposing affirmative action, continued escalation of medical-school tuition, and a supply of minority students that, in the judgment of some medical educators, is tapped out. Today, roughly 11 percent of graduating medical students are members of minority groups. Glover, Medina, and their schoolmates have gotten into and mastered strong academic programs despite their disadvantaged backgrounds. However, half of all applicants to U.S. medical schools are rejected. By the unforgiving standards of the application process, a C in a science class or a so-so MCAT score dooms an applicant. Castro has removed the financial barriers and bet on motivation to overcome any educational liabilities that students bring with them to ELAM. Which brings us back to Castro's gambit. Why is he reaching out to U.S. students? What an irony that poor Cuba is training doctors for rich America, engaging in affirmative action on our behalf, and – while blockaded by U.S. ships and sanctions – spending its meager treasure to improve the health of U.S. citizens. Whether one considers this a cunning move by one of history's great chess players or an extraordinary gesture of civic generosity - or a bit of both - it should encourage us to reexamine our stalled efforts to achieve greater racial and ethnic parity in American medicine. If Castro can find diamonds in our rough, we can too.

Whines Like A Child If Anyone Disagrees

On December 26, 2004, an earthquake in Indonesia spawned a tsunami that swept across the Indian Ocean. The tsunami didn’t stop until it reached the coast of East Africa, 3,000 miles away. The first reports indicated a terrible toll of 12,000 killed by waves that may have reached heights of twenty feet. Each day the casualty count grew until it reached six figures. It then became clear that estimates in the range of 100,000 were also wrong. In Indonesia, towns with 15,000 inhabitants have disappeared from the map. The horror played out on television screens and in newspapers around the world. The American media did not disappoint. They quickly transitioned from giving us just the facts to reporting the news as they always do, with bias, sensationalism and sentimentality, all with the intent of keeping the status quo intact. It is indeed tragic that tourists lost their lives, or that a European mother could not hold on to both her children in the raging water and had to choose which one she would save. Yet stories such as those were played out thousands of times in all of the devastated countries. It is undisputable that dark skinned Sri Lankans also tried in vain to save their children and had to make the same terrible choice. Unfortunately they don’t fit the sentimental tale as well as northern Europeans, the blondest and bluest eyed of all. It may even be the case that officials sanctioned the supremacy of white skin and the money that comes with it over the effort to save lives. The Thai government has been accused of not announcing tsunami warnings for fear of disrupting the tourism industry. If the allegations are correct, they caused the deaths of many of the tourists they were trying to placate. As for the United States of America, a natural disaster in the Indian Ocean became yet another occasion to show contempt and indifference to the rest of the world. If there are any heroes in this story one has to be Jan Egeland. Egeland is Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Aid and Emergency Relief for the United Nations. On December 27th he criticized the wealthy nations of the world for being “stingy” with foreign aid. Despite howls of protest from thin skinned Americans, it is true that the United States initially offered only $15 million dollars, the same amount offered by tiny Denmark. George W. Bush was on vacation in Crawford, Texas, perfecting the cowboy image that the rest of the earth despises but that so many Americans love. The Connecticut born preppy was “clearing brush.” We were all assured that he remained in touch with the aides he depends on for information. Lest anyone forget, he has bragged about not reading the newspaper. It is clear from even White House accounts that the man who can get anyone on earth to take his phone call did absolutely nothing to get information about this disaster until December 29th. Until that day Bush had only sent condolence letters to other heads of state. He continued to clear brush until Mr. Egeland’s remarks were highly publicized. When Bush finally spoke his comments were utterly worthless. "Well, I felt like the person who made that statement was very misguided and ill-informed. We're a very generous, kindhearted nation, and, you know, what you're beginning to see is a typical response from America." Bush was correct about one thing. The response was all too typical. First the U.S. thinks it is the sum of all wisdom, goodness and kindness and then whines like a child if anyone disagrees with the loving self assessment. Overnight $15 million turned into $35 million and by the end of the week became $350 million. As always money comes with strings attached. Victims whose families were swept out to sea will now be subjected to visits from Colin Powell and Jeb Bush. Haven’t they suffered enough? Millions of Americans recently voted to keep a willfully ignorant man in office. Obviously it is because they too are ignorant and happy to be so. The press bears some responsibility for all of this bliss. One brilliant reporter could only bring herself to ask a State Department official about the war on terror. “Is there any anti-terrorism component to this?  Is the administration concerned about – that the terrorists might take advantage of the situation?” Enough about you, let’s talk about me. It must also be pointed out that Egeland decline to mention any country by name when he made his now famous “stingy” remark. He wasn’t even referring to this particular disaster, but to overall decreases in foreign aid contributions from rich nations. (Click here for a video of Egeland’s actual statement.) Why are we so stingy really? The foreign assistance of many countries now is 0.1 or 0.2 percent of gross national income. I think that is really stingy. I don’t think that is very generous. Right on cue the media swung into action. They declined to tell us what we needed to know and only reported what would get under our skins and make for a sensational headline. An already clueless public is constantly misled by so-called journalists who see themselves only as agents of the powerful and rabble rousers for the mob. Perhaps Indonesians, Thais, Sri Lankans, Indians and Somalis are better off without the U.S. Americans are unprepared to work with anyone else in the world, European or Asian. We see what happened when America tried to be helpful in Iraq, and helpful in Central America, and helpful in Haiti. If all these examples of helpfulness are any indication, maybe the people who survived the tsunami are better off if the very generous U.S. just leaves them alone. Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in   Ms. Kimberley is a freelance writer living in New York City.

Peace Action

This is the face that launched a thousand episodes of torture.
=http://demaction.org/dia/orga... src="http://demaction.org/dia/organizations/Pea ceact/images/gonzales.gif"Promoted

While it's unknown exactly how many people have been tortured in Bush's gulags in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, it has undoubtedly numbered in the thousands.1 And while Lindy England's grinning countenance has been the face most closely associated with US torture, the face of the person who provided the legal rationale for Bush's torture policy is that of Alberto Gonzales, White House Counsel. 2

=http://demaction.org/dia/orga... src="http://demaction.org/dia/organizations/Pea ceact/images/England.gif"Punished

As England and other soldiers are being punished for the Abu Ghraib scandal, Bush has rewarded the torture policy's architect by nominating him to be Attorney General. We cannot allow the true face of US torture to be promoted to Attorney General.

It's important that you contact your Senators today.

Our template helps you write the letter and then it delivers them for you.

Do your part to stop the Gonzales nomination !

P.S.--Much is made of Gonzales' humble beginnings by his supporters. However, humble beginnings have never excused ends-justify-the-means politics that have resulted in torture and death. Please support Peace Action's campaign to Stop Gonzales and Stop Torture.

=http://www.democracyinaction....;url_num=4&url=http://www.peace-action.org/ href="http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=5040820&url_n um=4&url=http://www.peace-action.org/" target=new_win=http://demaction.org/dia/orga... height=53 alt=logo.gif hspace=0 src="http://demaction.org/dia/organizations/Pea ceact/images/logo.gif" width=252 align=bottom border=0

Notes:

1. "The CIA's Disappeared," The Washington Post Tuesday, October 26, 2004; Page A24

2. "Gonzales' Nomination Concerns Ex-Officers," The Guardian, January 4, 2005

Chile

Court backs Pinochet murder trial

Pinochet was president of Chile from 1973 to 1990 Chile's Supreme Court has ruled the country's former President Augusto Pinochet is fit to stand trial on murder and kidnapping charges. It upheld a lower court move to throw out a defence motion arguing Gen Pinochet, 89, was not mentally able to defend himself. The ruling brings the former military ruler one step closer to trial. However, Gen Pinochet's defence team will still have other opportunities to block the proposed trial. PINOCHET TRIAL TIMELINE October 1998: Police in UK arrest Pinochet on Spanish warrant; long legal battle over fitness for trial March 2000: Deemed unfit for trial, returns home. Days later effort begins to try him in Chile August 2000: Supreme Court strips his immunity. Later declared fit to stand trial July 2001: Charges suspended and later dropped on grounds of health May 2004: Court strips Pinochet of immunity from prosecution over fresh charges Dec 2004: Chilean judge indicts Pinochet Timeline: Pinochet case The court's split decision - by three votes against two - is seen as a major blow against Gen Pinochet, the BBC's Clinton Porteous in the Chilean capital, Santiago, says. The initial challenge by the general's defence team was widely seen as one of the best chances of halting the case, our correspondent says. Tuesday's ruling - which was delayed by almost two weeks - sparked mayhem in the courtroom as relatives of victims started celebrating. "We are happy, the entire world is happy," Lorena Pizarro, president of an association of relatives of dissidents who perished during Gen Pinochet's rule, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency. "Pinochet cannot continue to live in impunity," Ms Pizarro said. Gen Pinochet has never been put on trial for human rights violations under his 1973-90 rule, despite several high-profile cases against him. The matter will now be delivered back to investigating judge Juan Guzman. There was no immediate reaction from Gen Pinochet's lawyers. Operation Condor Last month, Mr Guzman declared Gen Pinochet mentally fit to stand trial, ordering his house detention. Relatives of dead dissidents cheered the court's ruling The former president was also charged over the killing of one Chilean national and the disappearance of nine others during Operation Condor. This was a joint campaign by South American military governments in the 1970s to hunt down left-wing opponents. Lawyers for Gen Pinochet say the legal process could kill him. Gen Pinochet was released from hospital shortly before Christmas after military doctors said he suffered a stroke.

AG=AB

Gonzales and the Horse He Rode In On

  By Steve Weissman
  t r u t h o u t | Perspective

  Tuesday 04 January 2005

"Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms."
-- U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Legal Counsel
30 December 2004

"For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession ..."
-- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, signed and ratified by the United States

  When Alberto Gonzales assured Mr. Bush that presidential war powers trumped anti-torture laws and treaties, the White House lawyer was doing what too many of his profession do. Like an ENRON tax lawyer or Mafia consigliere, he was helping his client commit crimes.

  Big crimes. War crimes. Not Private Lyndie England having a good time forcing naked Iraqi captives with sacks of over their heads to masturbate at Abu Ghraib, though Gonzales's words certainly led to the subsequent scandal. His sin was far more substantial. As Counsel to the President, he enabled and encouraged the systematic use of torture, duly authorized by the Commander-in-Chief.

  Rule of law? Due process? Fair trials? The presumption of innocence? Don't be silly. In the new post-9/11 paradigm propounded by Gonzales, these hard-won victories of the past sound as "quaint" as the Geneva Conventions with their old-fashioned idea that Prisoners of War need reveal only their name, rank, and serial number.

  Former Attorneys General like Eliot Richardson, who resigned during Watergate, would have highlighted the limits prescribed by American and international law. Attorney Gonzales elaborated legal language to dodge those limits. His job, as he saw it, was essentially political - to give Mr. Bush cosmetic cover to do exactly what he wanted.

  Other political lawyers - the ones we call judges and Justices - might or might not subsequently tell the President that he'd overstepped the line. But Gonzales knew they would not even consider the issue until long after Mr. Bush had done most of the damage he intended. And, when finally in court, the President's lawyers would have his legal defense in hand, ready to show that he tried to remain within the law as it was explained to him.

  Gonzales was performing a legal burlesque, much as he will on Wednesday, when the Senate Judiciary Committee examines whether he is suited to become Attorney General. Will the Senators applaud the charade? Or will a few brave souls among them stand up and say what, on the face of it, seems hard to deny - that Mr. Gonzales has shamed his country, his profession, and himself.

  For a people who talk so much about "moral values," it seems bizarre even to consider a conspirator in war crimes to be our top legal officer. But after four years of pious John Ashcroft, I suppose we need a new low.

  Adding to this shameful mockery, the Department of Justice has just issued a new memo on torture, dated December 30, 2004, and signed by the Acting Assistant Attorney General, Daniel Levin. Senators, beware! The new memo does not challenge Mr. Gonzales's earlier advice that presidents have the power to reject the Geneva Conventions in dealing with "unlawful enemy combatants."

  The administration uses the term to describe enemy fighters who - like al-Qaeda terrorists - belong to no regular national army. Mr. Bush could as easily apply the designation to terrorists, insurgents, rebels, and resistors fighting American occupation, whether in Iraq or any other country he chooses to "liberate."

  Mr. Levin's memo does make marginal changes, but none that will stop most C.I.A. and military interrogators from continuing to do what they've been doing in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo, and at scores of secret American detention centers all over the world.

  Earlier, Mr. Gonzales and the Bush Administration had defined torture as inflicting excruciating pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." This gave a bogus legality to the C.I.A. and military as they inflicted on their captives a whole range of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.

  In Levin's new definition, the word torture now encompasses lesser degrees of physical pain, as well as mental pain and suffering. But the T-word still seems purposely to exclude such primarily psychological techniques as making prisoners remain for hours in uncomfortable positions, assaulting them with loud music or repetitive sounds, prolonged sensory deprivation, denial of food and sleep, forced enemas, and leaving captives shackled for long periods in their own excrement.

  These are some of the Stress and Duress techniques that insiders like to call Torture-Lite. As a now declassified C.I.A. manual explains, the goal is not to inflict pain, excruciating or otherwise, but "to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist."

  More obvious brutality often stiffens resistance by creating a battle of wills between torturer and victim. Stress and Duress sets the conflict within the captive's own body and mind, eating away at his or her adult personality and creating a child-like state of dependence.

  Arguably, this does more lasting psychological damage to victims and causes them far greater mental suffering. In any case, competent international authorities like the Red Cross consider many Stress and Duress techniques a form of both physical and psychological torture. The new U.S. definition - like the old - does not, leaving the C.I.A. and military free to continue using them.

  Senators, the ball is now in your court. Please do not let Mr. Gonzales fool you - or the American people - into believing that torture has stopped or that the U.S. has returned to the Geneva Conventions. We've had enough lies. It's time to clean out the stables.

Cuba

Cuba resumes diplomatic contacts with eight EU countries

The Cuban government announced itwasrenewingdiplomatic contacts with eight European Union countries that have stopped inviting dissidents to official embassy functions.

"Cuba has taken the decision to re-establish official contacts with the ambassadors of France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Austria, Greece, Portugal and Sweden," Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque told a press conference.

The EU froze relations with the communist government in June 2003 following a crackdown on opposition to President Fidel Castro. Seventy-five dissidents were rounded up and jailed for terms of between six and 28 years.

Three Cubans found guilty of trying to hijack a plane to the United States were executed.

Fourteen dissident have been freed again in a move seen partly as a gesture to win over EU nations. The minister said an EU committee on relations with Latin America decided in December to end invitations to dissidents that Roque called "mercenaries paid and directed by the United States."

Cuba responded to the EU freeze by banning EU ambassadors from any contact with Cuban officials.

Spain took the lead in seeking better relations and Cuba and it was taken off the Cuban blacklist on November 25. Five days later leading Cuban dissident, Raul Rivero, was freed and five others soon followed.

Fourteen among the 75 have now been freed again in what was seen partly as a gesture by Cuba to win over the European Union.

The EU committee decided that member nations should "intensify contacts with dissidents" but modify invitations to official events at European embassies.

Until June, neither dissidents nor Cuban officials will be invited to embassy celebrations.

The measures will be studied again when EU foreign ministers meet on January 30, according to EU officials.

The Cuban foreign minister highlighted that the normalisation only affected part of the EU's 25 members.

There is still strong opposition from the Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic to ending the "freeze" on relations. One western diplomat said Cuba would be at the centre of an intense debate at the January 30 meeting.

Peru

AUSTIN, Texas, December 30 (Compass) -- A civilian court in Lima, Peru, has upheld the conviction of a evangelical Christian whose sentence on terrorism charges almost 12 years ago was overturned in 2003. On December 27, a three-judge panel found former textile worker Walter Cubas, 41, guilty of “illicit terrorist association” and sentenced him to 16 years in prison for allegedly painting “Yankees, go home from the Middle East” on a wall. Charges that Cubas had taken part in a riot and that he was in possession of homemade explosives and a stolen pistol were dropped. Defense attorney Wuille Ruiz said he believes the judges ruled against Cubas because they did not want to be perceived as being “soft” on terrorists. “I continue to believe that Walter is innocent,” Ruiz said. Despite receiving a 16-year sentence, Cubas is eligible to apply for early release in January 2005.

Haiti

A Troubled Haiti Struggles to Gain Its Political Balance

ORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Jacques Rafael stood in front of the Moderne Store in downtown Port-au-Prince where his boss, a 52-year-old woman, was recently shot to death by members of the gangs who control this city's slums.

"They say the former government was no good," he said, referring to the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, overthrown in February. "But when Aristide was here, we could stay open until 10 p.m. Now we can't even stay open until 4 in the afternoon."

Around the corner, at the nearby school, Lycée Pétion, the students were headed home at 9 a.m. The police recently wounded three students there during a shootout with gang members, and the fearful teachers had stayed home, as they do many days now.

"We're the ones paying for what is going on," said Franzo Caryce, 19. "We expected more from Latortue."

Nine months after taking office, the interim government of Prime Minister Gérard Latortue is besieged by mounting criticism from every sector of society. Recent street fighting, some of it involving gangs that supported Mr. Aristide, has claimed an estimated 200 lives and left much of Port-au-Prince's business district deserted. Many business owners are in hiding after a wave of kidnappings, and rebels control large swaths of the country.

"Latortue is not serious about the security situation," said a member of a government panel who insisted on anonymity. "The civil wars in Somalia and Lebanon started like this and that's where we are heading."

Many politicians and experts said in recent interviews that the election scheduled for next November to restore democracy here was in danger of being compromised or canceled.

"Latortue may or may not survive as prime minister - that's almost beside the point," said Henry Carey, a professor and Haiti scholar at the University of Georgia. "He shows no credible signs of holding elections. He doesn't have an election commission that is working."

Outside the country, there is also growing alarm. "Haiti is on the verge of becoming a permanently failed state hemorrhaging instability throughout the Caribbean in the form of refugees, violence and drugs," said a report in November from the International Crisis Group.

Two recent studies prepared by experts on Haiti for the United States Southern Command of the United States Army refer to "the now-discredited Latortue government" and recommend consideration of a plan to turn the country into an international protectorate, an idea openly debated in the Haitian media.

Mr. Latortue did not appear for an interview scheduled by his staff, and his spokesman, Mike Joseph, would not answer questions.

The few defenders of Mr. Latortue, a former United Nations bureaucrat and television talk show host, say he has been hamstrung by a lack of money - little of the $1.4 billion promised by donors has been delivered. They say his reputation has been unfairly tainted by his dependency on United Nations peacekeepers regarded as too passive.

"They are here on vacation" is the phrase uttered again and again by Haitians when speaking of the 7,000-member force.

The United Nations force worked at half-strength for nearly five months after its arrival and has been reluctant to act against armed groups. "I command a peacekeeping force, not an occupation force," said Gen. Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, head of the Brazilian contingent, in response to calls by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other international leaders to act more aggressively. "We are not there to carry out violence."

United Nations officials say they are here to support Haitian police efforts at disarmament. Experts estimate that Haiti needs 100,000 police officers, though. The current force numbers about 3,000, many of whom have little training and equipment.

In the town of Mirebalais, Haitian radio reported recently that rebel forces disarmed the Haitian police.

As Mr. Powell visited the presidential palace in November, the United Nations peacekeepers and the Haitian police failed to secure the adjacent neighborhood of Bel Air, a stronghold of the pro-Aristide gangs. Daylong skirmishes broke out after gunfire erupted. Three civilians were killed and a dozen wounded in what has become a routine day of violence in the Haitian capital.

While the pro-Aristide gangs have garnered attention lately with their random killings, Mr. Latortue is perhaps under greater pressure from rebel forces made up largely of former members of the Haitian Army.

Disbanded in 1994 by Mr. Aristide, who was then the president, the former soldiers re-emerged and were instrumental in driving him from power this past February. They are demanding reinstatement and 10 years' worth of back pay.

Mr. Latortue referred to them as "freedom fighters" last spring in a speech that infuriated Haitians still loyal to Mr. Aristide. But the rebels now have turned on him.

Remissainthe Ravix, a rotund army corporal turned sword-carrying commandant, has denounced Mr. Latortue as a traitor on radio and television. "It is not us who are illegal, it is the government of Latortue that is illegal," he said last week.

Mr. Latortue, who has a penchant for establishing commissions, has appointed two commissions to study the question of how to deal with the rebel soldiers. One commission was disbanded in December. The second never met, members said.

Mr. Latortue has said that his interim government did not have a mandate to resolve the question of the disbanded Haitian Army, which in its previous incarnation was linked to human rights abuses and coups. The government elected in 2005 will deal with the issue, he has said.

The rebels have greatly increased their power recently, rearming and recruiting hundreds of new fighters. They now exert significant control over several ports and provinces as well as eight urban centers. A United Nations official and a high-ranking government official here said that the ports were used to bring in guns and to finance the rebel expansion through smuggling.

Mr. Latortue recently angered Haiti's most powerful business leaders - many of them instrumental in overthrowing Mr. Aristide while Mr. Latortue was living in Florida, - by telling them that they had no business meddling in politics.

In what is seen as a typical misstep, Mr. Latortue's security forces arrested the Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste, a prominent human rights leader and Aristide supporter. He was held without charges for six weeks and then released. His popularity increased, and though he has not confirmed that he will run, he is now considered a front-runner in this year's presidential elections.

Some university students held a rally to call for Mr. Latortue's removal and to honor Weber Adrien, an advocate for change who was pulled from his home and killed by Aristide partisans who also mutilated his body. Many students were veterans of the student movement that helped to overthrow Mr. Aristide; they have now shifted their ire to Mr. Latortue.

They milled about listening to speakers and looking at crude posters with pictures of Mr. Adrien smiling into the camera. Others showed his burned body on the ground, the severed head placed carefully back in position.

"Latortue is doing a terrible job," said Josué Mentien, a protest leader. "If he does not change, we'll force him out, the same as Aristide."

Jean Fanor, a tall, bespectacled history student, disagreed. "The students are really divided right now," he said. "If the violence continues, the anti-Latortue group will grow. But the answer is not to keep pushing leaders out of power. The answer is for real change to come. That is what we are waiting for."

Asylum Seeker's Death Sparks Outrage

Haitian community says the case of a pastor who died in immigration officials' custody, his medicines confiscated, is emblematic.
 
By John-Thor Dahlburg, Times Staff Writer

MIAMI — When the Rev. Joseph Dantica flew here from Haiti, his family said, he was seeking a momentary respite from the strife and violence convulsing his native land. Instead, the 81-year-old Baptist clergyman died in federal custody, separated from his family and medicine that he was carrying to treat his ailments.

The death of the pastor, who was detained at Miami International Airport after requesting temporary asylum, has provoked lasting anger and outrage that have rippled far beyond the Haitian American community. Dantica was a longtime spiritual leader and frequent visitor to the United States who had a valid entry visa and family members in this country.
 
"To let this man who came with such hopes die is really, really, really aggravating to the community. It has been the subject of questions, expressions of anger, disappointment and helplessness," said Marleine Bastien, founder and executive director of Haitian Women of Miami Inc., an advocacy group.

Dantica died in a Miami hospital Nov. 3 while in Department of Homeland Security custody. The pathos of a frail and aged man dying apart from his family, plus the fact that his niece, Edwidge Danticat, is a prominent Haitian American author, have kept this case in the spotlight.

"The way my uncle was treated was so emblematic of the way Haitian asylum seekers are treated here. Their stories are not believed, they are immediately detained, sometimes for years, and the majority are deported," Danticat said. (Her family name is spelled differently, she explained, because of an error made on her father's birth certificate.)

Danticat, 35, is the author of the novel "Breath, Eyes, Memory" that was a selection in Oprah Winfrey's book club. She is calling for an investigation by U.S. authorities into the death of the man who reared her in Haiti for eight years until she could join her parents in Brooklyn, where her immigrant father worked as a taxi driver. The writer has the support of Walter Mosley, author of the "Easy Rawlins" novels based in postwar Los Angeles, and film producer and director Jonathan Demme.

Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, a Miami Democrat, has also asked the Bush administration to look into the circumstances surrounding the pastor's death and bring criminal charges if warranted. If Dantica had kept quiet and not told immigration officials that he might overstay his visa, Meek noted, he could have entered this country freely, then registered an asylum claim by telephone at his leisure.

Instead, "he wanted to be truthful with us, and his truthfulness became his demise," the congressman said. In general, Meek said, "Haitians are treated unlike any other nationality that comes through Miami International Airport, in my opinion. They are at the bottom of the pole."

To date, the response from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division has been a four-paragraph statement reporting that an autopsy showed Dantica's death was caused by pancreatitis, a "preexisting and fatal condition."

There is "no connection" between the rapid deterioration in Dantica's health and his detention after he arrived Oct. 29 in Miami, the statement said. Spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez in Customs Enforcement's Miami office declined to elaborate on Dantica's case, but said it was wrong to maintain that Haitians seeking to enter the United States were treated more harshly than people from other countries.

"Our enforcement operations do not target one particular race, nationality or ethnicity over any other," Gonzalez said. "The laws are applied evenly across the board."

Dantica was pastor of the Church of the Redeemer in the lawless Bel-Air district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. Dantica fled to the United States with his 55-year-old son, Maxo, after the church was pillaged and their lives threatened by an armed gang.

On Oct. 24, the church had been used by U.N. peacekeepers and Haitian police who engaged in a running gun battle with gang members in the streets outside. Survivors reportedly told Dantica that 15 gang members had been killed, and threatened to behead him if he didn't hand over money to bury them. The minister and his son went into hiding, then departed for Miami.

Dantica, who spoke through a voice box after surgical removal of his larynx, suffered from high blood pressure and an inflamed prostate. When detained along with his son by U.S. officials, the minister was carrying prescription and herbal remedies. The drugs were confiscated, said Danticat, who spoke by phone with her uncle after he was taken to the Krome Detention Center west of Miami.

While awaiting an immigration hearing there, her uncle began vomiting and passed out, she said. He was taken to a hospital where family members were not permitted to see him and died the next day.

"I think there is a strong connection with the way he was treated and the fact he died," his niece said. "They took his medicine and when he was in crisis, they didn't attend to him."

Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said that because of Dantica's age and valid visa, U.S. officials had the option of quickly releasing him into the custody of family members. Instead, she said in an op ed piece published last month by the Miami Herald, they accused the minister of faking his illness, and he died alone, chained to a hospital bed.

"At every turn, Haitians are discriminated against," Little said in an interview. In a report soon to be made public, her Miami-based group will allege that in some parts of South Florida, Haitians seem to have been "disproportionately targeted" in sweeps for illegal immigrants conducted as part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's "Operation End Game."

Haitians illegally in the country, who may number 100,000, also have not been granted "temporary protected status," despite the widespread disorder in their homeland after the February departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and despite the destruction caused in the autumn by Hurricane Jeanne, which killed 3,000 people.

In April 2003, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said U.S. diplomats had noticed an increase in Pakistanis, Palestinians and other third-country nationals using Haiti as a staging area to enter this country. Little said that claim was groundless and had been used to justify a crackdown on Haitians who want to immigrate.

Danticat, a naturalized citizen who lives in Miami, said her uncle had been bewildered and ashamed to find himself behind bars. She said she hoped that an investigation into his death would lead to more humane treatment for asylum applicants.

"They could have let us see him; they could have let Maxo see him," she said. "But they let him die alone. It's shameful."

The day after his father's death, Maxo Dantica was released by U.S. officials and told that he could remain in this country for at least a year.

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