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I promised that I would be the happiest man in the world to be wrong and, unfortunately, my happiness didn’t last.

The Football World Cup is still being contested and there are still six more days to go before the final match.

What a great opportunity will the Yankee imperialism and the fascist State of Israel possibly miss to keep the minds of the overwhelming majority of the people on Earth off their fundamental problems!

Who knows about the imperialists’ sinister plans towards Iran and their gross pretexts to attack it?

At the same time, I wonder, what are the Israeli warships doing, for the first time, in the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and Iran’s maritime areas?

Is it possible to think that the Yankee nuclear aircraft-carriers and the Israeli’s warships will leave the area, with the tail between the legs, when the demands contained in Resolution 1929 of June 9, 2010, approved by the UN Security Council are met, that is, the one authorizing the inspection of Iranian ships and aircraft in the territory of any State that, this time, allows the inspection of ships in the open sea?

The Resolution also establishes that the Iranian ships will not be inspected if Iran does not consent. In this case, the refusal would be analyzed.

An additional element is the possibility of confiscating what has been inspected; if confirmation is obtained that it infringes the provisions of the Resolution.

A disarmed Iran was the victim of that cruel war with Iraq where large groups of Guardians of the Revolution cleaned up the mine fields walking on them.

That is not the case today. As I said in previous Reflections, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was chief of the Revolutionary Guardians in the west of Iran that shouldered the main weight of that war.

Several years later, an emboldened Iraqi government sent most of the Republican Guard to the Arab Emirate of Kuwait and annexed that oil-rich territory, which became an easy prey.

The Iraqi government had sustained a good friendship with Cuba, which from the days when it was not at war with anyone had rendered it important health services. Our country tried to persuade it to leave Kuwait and put an end to the war it had provoked based on misperceptions.

Today, it is known that a mediocre Yankee ambassador, who had excellent relations with the Iraqi government, induced it to make that mistake.

Bush senior attacked his old friend leading a powerful coalition with a strong composition of Arab-Moslem-Sunni countries which supply oil to most of the rich industrial nations. That coalition advanced from the south of Iraq to prevent the withdrawal of the Republican Guard, which escaped to the Iraqi capital thanks to the restraint of the US Marine Corps and Armed Forces –commanded by Colin Powell, a prestigious general and later Secretary of State under George W. Bush.

Purely out of revenge, the retiring force became the target of rockets contaminated with downgraded uranium tested for the first time to determine the damage they could cause in the opposing troops.

The Moslem Shiite Iran that they are threatening now with their ground, sea and air forces is nothing like the Republican Guard they attacked with impunity in Iraq.

The empire is about to make an irreparable mistake and nothing can stop it. It walks inexorably towards a sinister fate.

The only thing sure now is that the Football World Cup had its quarterfinals. Thus, the fans of that sport could enjoy the exciting matches where we saw incredible things happen. It is said that the Netherlands team had not lost a World Cup match on a Friday, in 36 years. Only computers could make it possible to register such an event.

The fact is that Brazil did not make it to the semifinals of this Cup.

An arbiter left Brazil out of the competition. At least, that was the impression of an excellent commentator of the Cuban television who repeated it tirelessly. Later, the FIFA would say that the arbiter’s decision was correct.

Afterwards, at a decisive moment, with more than half the second time still to play, the same arbiter left Brazil with only 10 players in the field.

Yesterday, Argentina was eliminated. In the first minutes of the match, the German team, through its midfield player Muller, took by surprise the unsuspecting Argentinean defenders and the goalkeeper, and scored one goal.

After a while, the Argentinean forward players tried to score and failed no less than ten shots –compared to one from the German team.

The German team, on the other hand, scored three more goals, that even German Chancellor Angela Merkel applauded passionately.

Again, one of the favorite teams lost, leaving over 90% of football fans in Cuba perplexed.

The overwhelming majority of fans of that sport do not even know in what continent Uruguay is located.  Final matches between European countries will the most colorless and anti historic since that sport was born.

On the other hand, the international developments that have taken place had nothing to do with a game of chance but rather with the basic logic guiding the destiny of the empire.

A number of news came to light on July 1, 2 and 3. They are all connected to one event: on July 2, the big powers with a right of veto in the UN Security Council, plus Germany, urged the Iranian government to “promptly respond” the invitation to return to the negotiations on its nuclear program.

The previous day, President Barack Obama had signed a law expanding the current measures against Iran’s energy and banking sectors and penalizing the companies that do business with government of Teheran. The result: a rigorous blockade and the suffocation of Iran.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that his country will resume the talks by the end of August and emphasized that countries like Brazil and Turkey should be involved. These are the only Security Council members that opposed the sanctions of June 9.

A senior European Union official disdainfully remarked that neither Brazil nor Turkey would be invited to take part in the talks.

Nothing else is needed to draw the relevant conclusions.

None of the two sides will yield; one, prevented by the pride of the powerful, and the other because it has the capacity and the will to fight oppression, as we have seen so many times before in the history of mankind.

The people of Iran, a nation with ancient cultural traditions, will undoubtedly defend itself from the aggressors. It’s had to understand that Obama may seriously believe that it would yield to his demands.

The president of Iran and its religious leaders will resist, drawing inspiration from the Islamic Revolution headed by Ruhollah Khomeini, the creator of the Guardians of Revolution, the modern Armed Forces and the new State of Iran.

The poor peoples of the world, which cannot be blamed for the terrible mess created by imperialism, located as they are in this hemisphere south of the United States, and others in the west, center and south of Africa, as well as others on the planet who might be left untouched by the nuclear war, are left with the only option of coping with the consequences of the catastrophic nuclear war that will break out very soon.

Unfortunately, there is nothing for me to rectify. I take full responsibility with what I wrote in my latest Reflections.

Fidel Castro Ruz

July 4, 2010

5:36 PM

AUG 23 — My late parents were both teachers. My father was the headmaster of a school in Perak for 26 years.

My mum and family moved to Penang when I was five years old and she taught in a Penang school until her retirement. My dad continued to head the school in Perak and he had an Austin car he drove back home every weekend to be with us.

We moved to Penang mainly because my parents thought the children — there were three of us , I am the youngest — would get a better education and hence better job prospects later on.

I can still remember in the 60s, when I was in a primary school, there would be a few students of my mother’s – supposedly the weaker ones who could not understand her lessons well – coming to our house in the afternoon and my mother would give them extra lessons to make sure they understood what she had taught in school, free of charge.

That was the dedication of the teachers then… they treated the students as part of their own responsibilities, and many teachers did give extra lessons voluntarily without thinking of monetary rewards. For that, sometimes they would be rewarded with gifts like durians, chickens, etc brought to the house by the students’ parents.

Such was the respect the teaching profession commanded then. Teachers, though not rich, were well-respected members of the community. This respect , however, was earned because of their selfless dedication to their profession. Teaching, my parents used to tell me, is not for everyone, but only for those who treat the profession as a calling, not a career.

My dad , a university graduate from China,  was also well-schooled in the Confucianist tradition. One of the things he told us children was the Confucian teaching that “within the Four Seas, everyone else is a brother”.  We were told to treat everyone equal, respect other people’s culture and religions.

The teaching profession is one of the noblest professions. Students entering schools are like white sheets of papers. Whether these papers turn out to be important documents, or textbooks, or comic books, or waste paper, or become totally black and dirty, depends a lot on the teachers. Teachers are said to be the engineers of our souls; they mould our thinking, they determine to a large extent what we would eventually turn out to be.

In the old days, even though there were a few teachers who smoked or gambled or were racists in their thinking, they would never exhibit this bad behaviour in front of their students. Even though they were black and dirty, they would still try to keep the white sheets as clean as possible, and try not to rub their dirt onto their students.

Teachers nowadays are very different from those four or five decades ago. There are still many dedicated ones who regard teaching as a calling, but many others have become very materialistic and treat teaching as just another job.

Many despite being trained in teachers’ colleges, have not understood the meaning of teaching, and they have no qualms passing their own dirt to their students, thereby making the white sheets black and dirty like they themselves.

To them, teaching is just another job, and they could not care less how their students turn out, as long as they get their salary, which is now many times better than their counterparts’ many decades ago.

The recent incident in which a principal made racist comments about her students  shows the ugly side of some of these people, who have no qualms at all hurting and insulting these young minds.

While a true human being should always practise the axiom “respect your own elders and also the elders of others; love your own children and extend the same love to the children of others”, this group of racist teachers not only would not love the young children of other people, they would even go all out to hurt their feelings.

They try not only to rub their own dirt onto these white sheets, but also create holes to render such sheets into rubbish. By doing so, they have not only disgraced themselves, but the schools and the whole education system as well.

While there are many calls asking that stern action be taken against this principal, and I think the calls are justified, we should go one step further and ask ourselves why are there such teachers in our schools.

The answer is simple. It is the system.  The whole system is wrong. The system influences the minds of these teachers. The system in turn is moulded by the policies.  The policies are wrong. The policies that have been in place for more than half century have resulted in a milieu in which everything is defined and determined by the colour of our skin. These policies have also divided the country; divided the people.  These policies have also resulted in mediocrity and loss of excellence in almost everything we do.

Without the majority race recognising this and taking steps to correct these policies, the country will go further down the path of polarisation.  But to change the views and thinking of the majority race, political will power must be there. So far, it is lacking. The present PM may have realised this, but even if his mind is willing, he may not have the clout to realise his ideas of a fairer society.

August 23, 2010

Widening income inequality is a major obstacle to the unity and solidarity that 1Malaysia envisions.

Since Merdeka(Independence) in 1957, the top 20% of income earners in Malaysia have benefited much more from economic growth than the bottom 40%. It is significant that the report of the National Economic Advisory Council (NEAC) on the New Economic Model (NEM) admits that, “ The bottom 40% of households have experienced the slowest growth of average income, earning less than RM 1,500 per month in 2008.” The wage trend in Malaysia recorded only an annual 2.6% growth during the past 10 years, compared to the escalating cost of living during the same period. It explains why almost 34% of about 1.3 million workers earn less than RM700 a month, below the poverty line of RM 720 per month— a point emphasised by the Minister of Human Resources, Datuk Dr. S. Subramaniam, recently.

It is not difficult to fathom why workers earn so little and why income disparities are so glaring. The huge influx of unskilled, lowly paid foreign labour into the country since the late eighties has played a big part in depressing wage levels at one end of the spectrum. At the same time, the liberalisation of the financial sector and the privatisation of public enterprises in Malaysia as in so many other countries have led to the elevation of incomes at the other end of the spectrum, thus contributing to widening inequalities.

The government is attempting to respond to the challenge by reducing our dependence upon foreign workers and by improving wage levels and working conditions in certain sectors of the economy. It plans to increase the percentage of the bottom 40% households with SPM qualification and above, from 30% in 2009 to 45% in 2015. Both government and private companies are expected to help workers garner new skills that will enable them to earn better incomes.

While there is a degree of support for these measures, many private employers, it appears, are against one of the fundamental demands of workers unions for ameliorating the plight of the poor— namely, a basic minimum wage for all workers. 90% of countries have laws that provide for a minimum wage in one form or another. In most cases, various criteria are taken into account, including the needs of the workers and their families, the prevailing economic situation, and the social environment.

Many economists and sociologists today feel that the term “minimum wage” itself, which is the product of an earlier era, should be replaced with the term “ living income” and linked to the dignity of the human being. A living income is a minimum level of income by which all human beings can provide for themselves and their dependents the five basic

material human needs— food, housing, clothing, health care and education. These needs are vital for protecting human dignity.

It is because governments, the owners of capital, and other powerful elements in the upper strata of society have failed to protect the dignity of the masses that there is growing alienation and discontent in many parts of the world. China is an example of a country whose phenomenal growth rates since the early nineties have benefited a minority, rather than the majority, which is why social unrest is on the rise, as the respected Chinese Academy of Social Sciences acknowledges. Similarly, India’s much lauded economic success has not transformed the lives of its teeming millions. A recent United Nations study has shown that one-third of the world’s poor live in conditions of utter destitution in that country. It is one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the Naxalite rebellion in various districts in India. Even the “red shirt” protest movement in Thailand that galvanised a huge segment of the rural poor has been described by some analysts as an expression of the anger and disillusionment of the marginalised.

The bottom 40% in Malaysian society is nowhere as desperate as the poor of China or India or Thailand. Nonetheless, there is alienation. Some of this alienation manifested itself through the ballot-box in the March 2008 General Election. The tremendous increase in crime rates, and numerous cases of social delinquency that surfaced between 2006 and 2008 may also have been the consequences of alienation and marginalisation. It is also quite possible that a segment of those at the bottom of the heap— especially the youths—feel marginalised by a society which they perceive panders more to the glitz and glitter of the elite than to their yearning for recognition and respect. How the alienation of the poor and those who are struggling to make ends meet will express itself in the next few years, no one knows.

This is why it is imperative that the government continues to address the challenge of low incomes and widening inequalities in society. It should not be distracted by a small group motivated by self-interest and blinded by a myopic notion of “market forces determining wages.” If 1Malaysia is premised upon inclusiveness, it must not only ensure a living income for the bottom 40% but also reduce the yawning economic and social disparities that are an affront to human dignity.

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

On 26 July, WikiLeaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. WikiLeaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing for both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times are a fraction.

There is understandably hysteria on high, with demands that the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is “hunted down” and “rendered.” In Washington, I interviewed a senior Defense Department official and asked, “Can you give a guarantee that the editors of WikiLeaks and the editor in chief, who is not American, will not be subjected to the kind of manhunt that we read about in the media?” He replied, “It’s not my position to give guarantees on anything.” He referred me to the “ongoing criminal investigation” of a US soldier, Bradley Manning, an alleged whistleblower. In a nation that claims its constitution protects truth-tellers, the Obama administration is pursuing and prosecuting more whistleblowers than any of its modern predecessors. A Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to “fatally marginalize” WikiLeaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate journalists ever ready to play their part.

On 31 July, the American celebrity reporter Christiane Amanpour interviewed Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the ABC network. She invited Gates to describe to her viewers his “anger” at WikiLeaks. She echoed the Pentagon line that “this leak has blood on its hands,” thereby cueing Gates to find WikiLeaks “guilty” of “moral culpability.” Such hypocrisy coming from a regime drenched in the blood of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq – as its own files make clear – is apparently not for journalistic enquiry. This is hardly surprising now that a new and fearless form of public accountability, which WikiLeaks represents, threatens not only the war-makers but their apologists.

Their current propaganda is that WikiLeaks is “irresponsible.” Earlier this year, before it released the cockpit video of an American Apache gunship killing 19 civilians in Iraq, including journalists and children, WikiLeaks sent people to Baghdad to find the families of the victims in order to prepare them. Prior to the release of last month’s Afghan War Logs, WikiLeaks wrote to the White House asking that it identify names that might draw reprisals. There was no reply. More than 15,000 files were withheld and these, says Assange, will not be released until they have been scrutinized “line by line” so that names of those at risk can be deleted.

The pressure on Assange himself seems unrelenting. In his homeland, Australia, the shadow foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has said that if her right-wing coalition wins the general election on 21 August, “appropriate action” will be taken “if an Australian citizen has deliberately undertaken an activity that could put at risk the lives of Australian forces in Afghanistan or undermine our operations in any way.” The Australian role in Afghanistan, effectively mercenary in the service of Washington, has produced two striking results: the massacre of five children in a village in Oruzgan province and the overwhelming disapproval of the majority of Australians.

Last May, following the release of the Apache footage, Assange had his Australian passport temporarily confiscated when he returned home. The Labor government in Canberra denies it has received requests from Washington to detain him and spy on the WikiLeaks network. The Cameron government also denies this. They would, wouldn’t they? Assange, who came to London last month to work on exposing the war logs, has had to leave Britain hastily for, as he puts it, “safer climes.”

On 16 August, the Guardian, citing Daniel Ellsberg, described the great Israeli whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu as “the pre-eminent hero of the nuclear age.” Vanunu, who alerted the world to Israel’s secret nuclear weapons, was kidnapped by the Israelis and incarcerated for 18 years after he was left unprotected by the London Sunday Times, which had published the documents he supplied. In 1983, another heroic whistleblower, Sarah Tisdall, a Foreign Office clerical officer, sent documents to the Guardian that disclosed how the Thatcher government planned to spin the arrival of American cruise missiles in Britain. The Guardian complied with a court order to hand over the documents, and Tisdall went to prison.

In one sense, the WikiLeaks revelations shame the dominant section of journalism devoted merely to taking down what cynical and malign power tells it. This is state stenography, not journalism. Look on the WikiLeaks site and read a Ministry of Defense document that describes the “threat” of real journalism. And so it should be a threat. Having published skillfully the WikiLeaks expose of a fraudulent war, the Guardian should now give its most powerful and unreserved editorial support to the protection of Julian Assange and his colleagues, whose truth-telling is as important as any in my lifetime.

I like Julian Assange’s dust-dry wit. When I asked him if it was more difficult to publish secret information in Britain, he replied, “When we look at Official Secrets Act labeled documents we see that they state it is offence to retain the information and an offence to destroy the information. So the only possible outcome we have is to publish the information.”

By John Pilger

19 August, 2010

Johnpilger.com

US policy toward Venezuela has taken many tactical turns, but the objective has been the same: to oust President Chavez, reverse the nationalization of big businesses, abolish the mass community and worker based councils and revert the country into a client-state.

US policy toward Venezuela has taken many tactical turns, but the objective has been the same: to oust President Chavez, reverse the nationalization of big businesses, abolish the mass community and worker based councils and revert the country into a client-state.

Washington funded and politically backed a military coup in 2002, a bosses’ lockout in 2002-03, a referendum and numerous media, political and NGO efforts to undermine the regime. Up to now all of the White House efforts have been a failure – Chavez has repeatedly won free elections, retained the loyalty of the military and the backing of the vast majority of the urban and rural poor, the bulk of the working class and the public sector middle class.

Washington has not given up nor reconciled itself to coming to terms with the elected government of President Chavez. Instead with each defeat of its internal collaborators, the White House has increasingly turned toward an ‘outsider’ strategy, building up a powerful ‘cordon militaire’, surrounding Venezuela with a large-scale military presence spanning Central America, northern South America and the Caribbean. The Obama White House backed a military coup in Honduras, ousting the democratically elected government of President Zelaya (in June 2009), a Chavez ally, and replacing it with a puppet regime supportive of Washington’s anti-Chavez military policies. The Pentagon secured seven military bases in eastern Colombia (in 2009) facing the Venezuelan frontier, thanks to its client ruler, Alvaro Uribe, the notorious narco-paramilitary President. In mid 2010 Washington secured an unprecedented agreement with the approval of right wing President Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica, to station 7000 US combat troops, over 200 helicopters, and dozens of ships pointing toward Venezuela, under the pretext of pursuing narco-traffickers. Currently the US is negotiating with the rightist regime of President Ricardo Martinelli of Panama, the possibility of re-establishing a military base in the former Canal Zone. Together with the Fourth Fleet patrolling off shore, 20,000 troops in Haiti, and an airbase in Aruba, Washington has encircled Venezuela from the West and North, establishing jumping off positions for a direct intervention if the favorable internal circumstances arise.

The White House’s militarization of its policy toward Latin America, and Venezuela in particular, is part of its global policy of armed confrontation and interventions. Most notably the Obama regime has widened the scope and extent of operations of clandestine death squads now operating in 70 countries on four continents, increased the US combat presence in Afghanistan by over 30,000 troops plus over 100,000 contract mercenaries operating cross border into Pakistan and Iran, and provided material and logistical assistance to Iranian armed terrorists. Obama has escalated provocative military exercises off the coast of North Korea and in the China Sea, evoking protests from Beijing. Equally revealing, the Obama regime has increased the military budget to over a trillion dollars, despite the economic crises, the monstrous deficit and the calls for austerity cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

In other words, Washington’s military posture toward Latin America and especially toward the democratic socialist government of President Chavez is part and parcel of a general military response to any country or movements which refuse to submit to US domination. The question arises – why does the White House rely on the military option? Why militarize foreign policy to gain favorable outcomes in the face of decided opposition? The answer, in part, is that the US has lost most of the economic leverage, which it previously exercised, to secure the ousting or submission of adversary governments. Most Asian and Latin American economies have secured a degree of autonomy. Others do not depend on US-influenced international financial organizations (the IMF, World Bank); they secure commercial loans. Most have diversified their trading and investment partners and deepened regional ties. In some countries, such as Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Peru, China has replaced the US as their principal trading partner. Most countries no longer look to US “aid” to stimulate growth, they seek joint ventures with multi-national corporations, frequently based outside of North America. To the extent that economic arm twisting is no longer an effective tool to secure compliance, Washington has resorted more and more to the military option. To the extent that the US financial elite have hollowed out the US industrial sector, Washington has been unable to rebuild its international economic levers.

Major diplomatic failures, resulting from its incapacity to adapt to basic shifts in global power, have also prompted Washington to shift from political negotiations and compromise toward military intervention and confrontation. US policymakers are still frozen in the time warp of the 1980’s and 1990’s, the heyday of client rulers and economic plunder, when Washington secured global support, privatized enterprises, exploited public debt financings and was relatively unchallenged in the world market. By the end of the1990’s, the rise of Asian capitalism, mass anti-neo-liberal uprisings, the ascendancy of center-left regimes in Latin America, the repeated financial crises and stock market crashes in the US and the EU and the increase in commodity prices led to a realignment of global power. Washington’s efforts to pursue policies attuned to the previous decades conflicted with the new realities of diversified markets, newly emerging powers and relatively independent political regimes linked to new mass constituencies.

Washington’s diplomatic proposals to isolate Cuba and Venezuela were rejected by all of the Latin American countries. The effort to revive free trade agreements, which privileged US exporters and protected uncompetitive producers, were rejected. Unwilling to recognize the limits of imperial diplomatic power and moderate its proposals, the Obama regime turned increasingly toward the military option.

Washington’s struggle to re-assert imperial power, via interventionary politics fared no better than its diplomatic initiatives. The US-backed coups in Venezuela (2002) and Bolivia (2008) were defeated by mass popular mobilizations and the loyalty of the military to the incumbent regimes. Likewise in Argentina, Ecuador and Brazil, post-neo-liberal regimes, backed by industrial, mining and agro-export elites and popular classes were able to beat back traditional pro-US neo-liberal elites rooted in the politics of the 1990’s and earlier. The politics of destabilization failed to dislodge the new governments’ pursuing relatively independent foreign policies and refusing to return to the old order of US supremacy.

Where Washington has regained political terrain with the election of rightist political regimes – it has been through its ability to exploit the ‘exhaustion’ of center-left politics (Chile), political fraud and militarization (Honduras and Mexico), decline of the national popular left (Costa Rica, Panama and Peru) and the consolidation of a highly militarized police state (Colombia). These electoral victories, especially in Colombia, have convinced Washington that the military option, combined with deep intervention and exploitation of open electoral processes, is the way to reverse the left turn in Latin America – especially in Venezuela.

US Policy to Venezuela: Combining Military and Electoral Tactics

US efforts to overthrow President Chavez’s democratic government borrow many of the tactics applied against previous democratic adversaries. These include border incursions by Colombian paramilitary and military forces similar to cross border attacks by the US sponsored “contras” against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua during the 1980’s. The attempt to encircle and isolate Venezuela is similar to Washington’s policy over the past half century against Cuba. The funneling of funds to opposition groups, parties, media and NGO’s via US agencies and “dummy” foundations is a repeat of the tactics applied to destabilize the democratic government of Salvador Allende of Chile 1970-73, Evo Morales in Bolivia 2006-2010 and numerous other governments in the region.

Washington’s multiple track policy, in its current phase, is directed at escalating a war of nerves, by constantly raising security threats. The military provocations, in part, are a ‘testing’ of Venezuela’s security preparations, probing for weaknesses in its ground, air and maritime defenses. These provocations also are part of a strategy of attrition, to force the Chavez government to put its defense forces on “alert” and mobilize the population and then to temporarily reduce the pressure until the next provocation. The purpose is to discredit the government’s constant reference to threats, in order to weaken vigilance and when circumstances allow making an opportune strike.

Washington’s external military build-up is designed to intimidate Caribbean and Central American countries who may be looking toward closer economic relations with Venezuela. The show of force is also designed to encourage the internal opposition toward more aggressive actions. At the same time the confrontational posture is directed at the “weak links” or “moderate” sectors of the Chavista government who are nervous and anxious for “reconciliation” even at the price of unprincipled concessions to the opposition and the new Colombia regime of President Santos. The increasing military presence is designed to slow the internal radicalization process and to preclude Venezuela’s growing ties with Middle Eastern and other regimes, adverse to US hegemony. Washington is betting that a military build-up and psychological warfare linking Venezuela with revolutionary insurgents like the Colombian guerrilla will result in Chavez’s allies and friends in Latin America putting distance toward him. Equally important Washington’s unsubstantiated accusations that Venezuela is harboring FARC guerilla encampments, is meant to pressure Chavez to lessen his support to all social movements in the region, including the landless Rural Workers of Brazil as well as non- violent human rights groups and trade unions in Colombia. Washington wants a military “polarization”: US or Chavez. It rejects the political polarization existing today which pits Washington against MERCOSUR, the organization of economic integration involving Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay with Venezuela in line for membership or ALBA (economic integration involving Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and several Caribbean states.

The FARC Factor

Obama and now ex-President Uribe accused Venezuela of offering sanctuary for Colombian guerillas (FARC and ELN). In reality this is a ploy to pressure President Chavez to denounce or at a minimum demand that the FARC give up their armed struggle on terms dictated by the US and Colombian regime.

Contrary to President Uribe and the State Department’s boasts that the FARC is a declining, isolated and defeated fragment of the past, as a result of their successful counter-insurgency campaigns, a recent detailed field study by a Colombian researcher La guerra contra las FARC y la guerra de las FARC demonstrates that in the last 2 years the guerrillas have consolidated their influence over one-third of the country, and that the regime in Bogota controls only half the country. After suffering major defeats in 2008, the FARC and ELN have steadily advanced throughout 2009-2010 inflicting over 1300 military casualties last year and probably near double this year. (La Jornada 8/6/2010). The resurgence and advance of the FARC has crucial importance as far as Washington’s military campaign again Venezuela. It also affects the position of its “strategic ally” – Santos regime. First it demonstrates that despite $6 billion plus in US military aid to Colombia, its counter-insurgency campaign to “exterminate” the FARC has failed. Secondly, the FARC’s offensive opens a “second front” in Colombia, weakening any effort to launch an invasion of Venezuela using Colombia as a “springboard”. Thirdly, faced with a growing internal class war, the new President Santos is more likely to seek to lessen tensions with Venezuela, hoping to relocate troops from the frontier of its neighbor toward the growing guerilla insurgency. In a sense, despite Chavez misgivings about the guerrillas and outspoken calls for ending the guerrilla struggle, the resurgence of the armed movements are likely a prime factor in lessening the prospects of a US directed intervention.

Conclusion

Washington’s multi-track policy directed at destabilizing the Venezuelan government has by and large been counter-productive, suffering major failures and few successes.

The hardline toward Venezuela has failed to “line up” any support in the major countries of Latin America, with the exception of Colombia. It has isolated Washington not Caracas. The military threats may have radicalized the socio-economic measures adopted by Chavez not moderated them. The threats and accusations emanating from Colombia have strengthened internal cohesion in Venezuela, except among the hard-core opposition groups. They have also led to Venezuela’s upgrading its intelligence, police and military operations. The Colombian provocations have led to a break in relations and an 80% decline in the multi-billion dollar cross border trade, bankrupting numerous Colombian firms, as Venezuela substitutes Brazilian and Argentine industrial and agrarian imports. The effects of the policies of tension and the “war of attrition” are hard to measure, especially in terms of their impact on the forthcoming crucial legislative elections on September 26, 2010. No doubt, Venezuela’s failure to regulate and control the multi-million flow of US funds to its Venezuelan collaborators has made a significant impact on their organizational capability. No doubt the economic downturn has had some effect in limiting public spending on new social programs. Likewise, the incompetence and corruption of several top Chavista officials, especially in public food distribution, housing and public safety will have an electoral impact.

It is likely that these “internal” factors are much more influential in shaping the alignment of Venezuela’s electoral outcome, than the aggressive confrontational politics adopted by Washington. Nevertheless, if the pro-US opposition substantially increases its legislative presence in the September 26 elections – beyond one-third of the Congress people – they will attempt to block social changes and economic stimulus policies. The US will intensify its efforts to pressure Venezuela to divert resources to security issues in order to undermine social-economic expenditures which sustain the support of the lower 60% of the Venezuelan population.

Up to now, White House policy based on greater militarization and virtually no new economic initiatives has been a failure. It has encouraged the larger Latin American countries to increase regional integration, as witnessed by new custom and tariff agreements taken at the MERCOSUR meeting in early August of this year. It has not led to any diminuation of hostilities between the US and the ALBA countries. It has not increased US influence. Instead Latin America has moved toward a new regional political organization UNASUR (which excludes the US), downgrading the Organization of American States which the US uses to push its agenda. Ironically, the only bright lights, favoring US influence, comes from internal, electoral processes. Rightist candidate Jose Serra is running a strong race in the upcoming Brazilian Presidential elections. In Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia the pro-US right is regrouping and hoping to return to power.

What Washington fails to understand is that across the political spectrum from the left to the center-right, political leaders are appalled and opposed to the US push and promotion of the military option as the centerpiece of policy. Practically all political leaders have unpleasant memories of exile and persecution from the previous cycle of US backed military regimes. The self-proclaimed extra-territorial reach of the US military, operating out of its seven bases in Colombia, has widened the breach between the centrist and center-left democratic regimes and the Obama White House. In other words, Latin America perceives US military aggression toward Venezuela as a “first step” southward toward their countries. That, and the drive for greater political independence and more diversified markets, have weakened Washington’s diplomatic and political attempts to isolate Venezuela.

Colombia’s new President Santos, made out of the same rightist mold as his predecessor Alvaro Uribe, faces a difficult choice – continuing as an instrument of US military confrontation and destabilization of Venezuela at the cost of several billion dollars in trade losses and isolation from the rest of Latin America or lessening border tensions and incursions, dropping the provocative rhetoric and normalizing relations with Venezuela. If the latter takes place, the US will lose its last best instrument for its external strategy of “tensions” and psych warfare. Washington will be left with two options: a unilateral direct military intervention or funding of political warfare through its domestic collaborators.

In the meantime President Chavez and his supporters would do well to concentrate on pulling the economy out of recession, tackling state corruption and monumental inefficiency and empowering the community and factory-based councils to play a greater role in everything from increasing productivity to public safety. Ultimately Venezuela’s long term security from the long and pervasive reach of the US Empire depends on the strength of the organized mass organizations sustaining the Chavez government.

By James Petras

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 Books). His latest book is The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu.

The Obama administration is pressing Britain, Germany, Australia, and other allied Western governments to consider opening criminal investigations of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and to severely limit his nomadic travels across international borders, American officials say.

Officials tell The Daily Beast that the U.S. effort reflects a growing belief that WikiLeaks and organizations like it threaten grave damage to American national security, as well as a growing suspicion in Washington that Assange has damaged his own standing with foreign governments and organizations that might otherwise be sympathetic to his anti-censorship cause.

American officials confirmed last month that the Justice Department was weighing a range of criminal charges against Assange and others as a result of the massive leaking of classified U.S. military reports from the war in Afghanistan, including potential violations of the Espionage Act by Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst in Iraq accused of providing the documents to WikiLeaks

Now, the officials say, they want other foreign governments to consider the same sorts of criminal charges.

“It’s not just our troops that are put in jeopardy by this leaking,” said an American diplomatic official who is involved in responding to the aftermath of the release of more than 70,000 Afghanistan war logs—and WikiLeaks’ threat to reveal 15,000 more of the classified reports.

“It’s U.K. troops, it’s German troops, it’s Australian troops—all of the NATO troops and foreign forces working together in Afghanistan,” he said. Their governments, he said, should follow the lead of the Justice Department and “review whether the actions of WikiLeaks could constitute crimes under their own national-security laws.”

Last month, a prominent pro-military group in Australia suggested that Assange may have violated Australian law through the release of the Afghan war logs, given the threat the leak may have posed to the lives of Australian troops serving in the NATO-led force.

The Obama administration was heartened by the call this week by Amnesty International and four other human-rights groups for WikiLeaks to be far more careful in editing classified material from the war in Afghanistan to be sure that its public release does not endanger innocent Afghans who may be identified in the documents.

The initial document dump by WikiLeaks last month is reported to have disclosed the names of hundreds of Afghan civilians who have cooperated with NATO forces; the Taliban has threatened to hunt down the civilians named in the documents, a threat that human-rights organizations say WikiLeaks should take seriously.

“It’s amazing how Assange has overplayed his hand,” a Defense Department official marveled. “Now, he’s alienating the sort of people who you’d normally think would be his biggest supporters.”

The joint letter by the five groups, first revealed by The Wall Street Journal, was met by a tart response from Assange, who communicates with the outside world largely through the social-networking Internet tool Twitter.

He appeared to suggest that news organizations and human-rights groups, notably Amnesty International, should help him underwrite his cost of the editing and release of more of the Afghan war documents—but that they were instead refusing to provide assistance.

“Pentagon wants to bankrupt us by refusing to assist review,” he tweeted on Monday, referring to the effort by WikiLeaks to convince the Defense Department to join in reviewing the additional 15,000 documents to remove the names of Afghan civilians and others who might be placed in danger by its release. “Media won’t take responsibility. Amnesty won’t. What to do?”

In a separate posting on Twitter, Assange estimated the cost of the “harm minimization review”—a reference, apparently, to the effort to edit the 15,000 documents to remove informants’ names—at $700,000. It was not clear how he arrived at that figure.

The Australian-born Assange travels constantly and is said to have no real home, living instead in the homes of friends and supporters around the world.

He was reported as recently as last week to be in the U.K., although he has spent significant time this year in Australia, Iceland, and the U.S. He has said he is postponing future travel to the U.S. because of fear that he faces legal sanctions here.

Through diplomatic and military channels, the Obama administration is hoping to convince Britain, Germany, and Australia, among other allied governments that Assange should not be welcome on their shores, either, given the danger that his group poses to their troops stationed in Afghanistan, American officials say.

They say severe limitations on Assange’s travels might serve as a useful warning to his followers that their own freedom is now at risk. A prominent American volunteer for WikiLeaks reported last month that he was subjected to hours of questioning and had his laptop and cellphones seized by American border agents on returning to the U.S. from Europe late last month.

An American military official tells The Daily Beast that Washington may also want to closely review its relations with Iceland in the wake of the release of the Afghan war logs.

Assange and his followers have been successful in pressing the government of Iceland, in the wake of the collapse of the country’s banking system, to reinvent itself as a haven for free speech, creating a potential home for WikiLeaks and other organizations that may violate the laws of the U.S. and other nations through the release of classified documents.

By Philip Shenon

Philip Shenon, a former investigative reporter at The New York Times, is the author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation.

When many acts of terror by people like Pragya Singh Thakur and Dayanand Pandey etc. are coming to fore the word ‘Hindu terrorism’ is being used by many for such acts of terror. The investigations have shown that these groups, inspired by the ideology of Hindu Rashtra; Hindutva, Sangh Parivar, may have been involved in Malegaon blasts, Mecca Masjid, Ajmer, Goa and even Samjhauta express blast. One recalls that immediately after the blasts many Muslim youth were arrested on the ground that they have been part of the conspiracy. The victims were mostly Muslim in these blasts. The blasts were planned to at times when maximum congregation of people is there, around the time of Namaz etc. The voice of human rights activists that the reckless arrest of innocent Muslim youth must be stopped and real culprits caught hold of, took a long time for being heard as the bias of investigation authorities was too gross to look the other way around.

The tide turned with the Malegaon blast investigation when Hemant Karkare could lay his hands on impeccable evidence of involvement of Sadhvi Pragya and Company. Incidentally Hemant Karkare was called Deshdrohi and anti-National by Hindutva leaders. He also got killed on the fateful night of attack on Mumbai on 26/11 2008. The organizations like those associated with Bajrang Dal, Abhinav Bharat and Sanatan Sanstha have been accused of being involved with these acts of terror. At the same time the followers of Hindutva politics are stating that these acts of terror can not be linked to Hinduism as terrorism is the monopoly only of Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). According to some commentators these latter religions are associated with religious terrorism, while there is no history of Hindu terror.

As such the common factor of Abrahamic religions is that they derive their lineage from Abraham; believe in single God and single ‘book’. In Abrahamic religions there is a prophet who has brought the message of the almighty God to the human society. In contrast Hinduism does not have such a prophet as it went on evolving over a period of time and adding different traditions under its umbrella, Vedic, post-Vedic, medieval and many contemporary ones. In Hinduism the concept of supernatural power is very diverse, from Animism, to polytheism, Monotheism to even atheism, all can come under the spectrum of Hinduism. This also enables the interpreters to take liberty and present their version as ‘the Hinduism’. In the complex phenomenon of religion there are religious books, religious institutions and religious practices, which need not be precisely the same.

Religions have to be interpreted in the context of social situation of the time. There is mention of peace and harmony in most of the religions while one can also pick up the aspects related to violence from their scriptures. This aspect of violence again depends on interpretation. Same text is interpreted in different ways by different commentators. The isolated examples of violence in Abrahamic religions don’t make them preachers of violence and terror, as terror and violence both are the products of social situations, not religious doctrines. Many a times the rulers; kings, cutting across different religions, have used the cover of religion to expand their kingdoms, Crusade; Jihad and Dharmyudh. Surely the wars unleashed by kings cannot be called as religious acts or conforming to religions teachings in any way.

As such while on one hand Hinduism will talk of Vasudhaiv Kutumbkan, (Whole World is a single family) on the other there is an in built structural violence in the form of caste system, from Vedas to Manusmriti. Many a Hindu Holy Seers defend caste system even today. In Mahabharata Lord Krishna exhorts the hero, Arjuna, to take up arms, commit violence, to do the ‘religious duty’; to fulfil khstriya dharma (religiously ordained duty of a warrior) In Ramayana Lord Ram kills Shambuk to save Hindu religion. Pushyamitra Shung also did the massacre of Buddhists for saving Hinduism. Khap Panchayats today are giving death fatwas for young couples, in the name of religious-caste traditions. Girls are beaten up in Mangalore pub again in the name of Hindu traditions. The mass violence directed against minorities is instigated ‘to save’ the religious communities, to save Hindu religion.

The practices of many followers of most of the religions need not be exactly in accordance with the scriptures. In the same religion we have people like Hitler and Nelson Mandela. In the same religion we have people like Mahatma Gandhi and Nathuram Godse. In the same religion we have Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan and Osama bin Laden. To think that any violence is due to religion is a totally misplaced understanding of the religion and society.

Unfortunately in contemporary times US designs for controlling the oil wealth has resulted in a politics which has resorted to the cover of religion. It was in the US brainstorming centers that the core words of Islam, Kafir and Jihad were given deliberate twist to train the Al Qaeda for US goal of getting Russian army defeated in Afghanistan. US media also coined and popularized the word, ‘Islamic terrorism’ and it has become a part of the social thinking. To associate religion and terror is surely one of the biggest crimes against humanity. It is due to the popularization of the word ‘Islamic Terrorism’ that people started thinking of violence with religious prefix. So naturally when one after the other terrorist group, belonging to Hindu religion and inspired by the politics of ‘Hindu nation’ came to surface especially after the Malegaon blast, some journalists and others started using the word Hindu terrorism, and this also caught on.

This word is as much wrong as the word Islamic terrorism or Christian terrorism. Christianity also talks of peace and the word Islam stands for achieving peace by submission to Allah. One can say that life of Gandhi has been the epitome of practiced Hindu values. On the other hand people like Godse or Osama bin laden have political goals and they have been presenting these political goals in the language of religion. In the face of Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit, Swami Dayanand Pandey and company, all those inspired by the agenda of Hindu Rashtra, the temptation to call this terrorism as ‘Hindu terrorism’ has to be resisted. Religion needs to be de-linked form politics and terrorism; both.

By Ram Puniyani

In September 2006, the world experienced a paradigm shift when a strong lobbying effort by grassroots organizations effectively derailed an initiative: A move that was tantamount to a declaration of war on Iran.

U.S.: Iran Resolution Shelved in Rare Defeat for Israel Lobby

In a significant and highly unusual defeat for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has decided to shelve a long-pending, albeit non-binding, resolution that called for President George W. Bush to launch what critics called a blockade against Iran.

But an unexpectedly strong lobbying effort by a number of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American, peace, and church groups effectively derailed the initiative.

The decision by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, to shelve HR 362 marked an unusual defeat for AIPAC, according to its critics who charged that the resolution was designed to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration or any successor administration to take military action against Iran.

A nuclear confrontation with Iran was avoided in 2006 because a small number of people with the power of community were enough to convince our Government not to take the world to the point of no return.

Our un-elected officials got the message, that the perils of a nuclear confrontation with Iran could mean the end of life for everyone here on earth. Congress refused to go along with the Bush Administration’s plans for military action against Iran.

Just two years later, the power of community stopped congress from attacking Iran.

Iran 2010

If you aren’t up to speed about the most dangerous move towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis, visit the critically acclaimed Global Research website founded by Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Chossudovsky writes:

The US and its allies are preparing to launch a nuclear war directed against Iran with devastating consequences and this military adventure in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity.

The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of World Peace. “Making the World safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.

Iran, a country with a non-existent nuclear weapons capability and an air force that belongs in a museum, is not a threat to either nuclear power with a presence in the Middle East, the United States or Israel. [1]

The community of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American, peace, and church groups have proven over and over, when we cooperate with each other we can make a difference.

The Powers That Be (TPTB) knew the day would come when the people would realize the power they have when they work together for their own survival.

Be it growing our own food in cooperation with our neighbors or lobbying the U.S. government with the truth about Iran, it only takes a small number of us to make a difference. [2]

Normally I don’t recommend those “take action” campaigns, the ones that tell us, “it’s not too late, click-here to importune our “elected” representatives with emails and faxes.” But in this case our emails and faxes attest to our power…of community. [3]

Start by contacting the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and demand she honor the commitment made by President Obama during the 2007 Democratic debate when he said that he would, “As president, be willing to meet without preconditions with Iran’s leaders, and that the notion of not talking to one’s foes was ridiculous.” [4]

“In nuclear war all men are cremated equal” Dexter Gordon

We can do this, we did it in 2006, 2008 and we can do it in 2010.

Katherine Smith, PhD mandrell2010@gmail.com

Footnotes:

[1] Israel has enough plutonium to make up to 200 nuclear weapons. Who’s Telling the Truth About Iran’s Nuclear Program? by Muhammad Sahimi

[2] [Excerpt From Grandmother Scores Huge Victory over Monsanto]

And the question that scares Monsanto to death:

Why don’t I and all of my neighbors just grow our own food…on one square foot of land?

The conversation at Starbucks is no longer about which stocks or houses are going up (or down) but which vegetables sprout the fastest and how many crops can one get in before winter. Now when someone mentions planting a bush permanently they are not talking about how to bury our last president but the best way to plant super bush beans in the spring.

Quit worrying about HR 875, going to jail or getting fined $1 million for growing your own food; that has to be disinformation.

Even if there were enough food police there aren’t enough judges and prosecutors to enforce such a ridiculous law.

What the Monsanto lobby is really afraid of is that one day we will wake up and realize if we work together as a community and cooperate with each other then they will have no power over us.

[3] Those “take action”- campaigns that appeal to our selfish and divisive nature don’t work. These are going around the internet:

Subject: Sign the letter to Google. Tell them to stop being evil and protect the free and open Internet.

Subject: Hi — this is Jason Rosenbaum, a new campaigner at the PCCC. I’ve got some urgent news. Can you sign our promise to oppose cuts in Social Security and then ask your representatives to sign on as well?

All they accomplish is to reinforce our feelings of helpless and isolation. They create negative energy, consider a typical rant:

“These people have been robbing us for years. I don’t for the life of me know why we keep sending the same people that keep doing the same things over and over again. We need to empty Washington! Send them home in wholesale fashion. Take the profit out, of public service and put the public service, back in!”

[4] Mr. Obama first made waves with his views on Iran policy in 2007, when he said during a Democratic debate that he would, as president, be willing to meet without preconditions with Iran’s leaders, and that the notion of not talking to one’s foes was “ridiculous.”

Since becoming president, Mr. Obama has pursued diplomacy, but his stance has become steadily more confrontational. Iran’s Nuclear Program, The New York Times

By Katherine Smith

The sanctions imposed recently aganst Iran by the United Nations, and later separately by the US Congress, have one thing in common. Both were driven by the US at the instigation of Israel.

But they are also, I believe, generally misunderstood. Sanctions are normally intended to alter the behavior of the country being sanctioned — to punish it for what it is doing, to keep it from continuing practices or policies others find objectionable, or both.

And overtly, that is the function of these sanctions. But that is not their actual purpose.

Now, I do not know whether Iran’s government has a hidden military agenda to its nuclear program. Given Israel’s own nuclear capabilities, and the very different fates of Iraq (which had no nuclear weapons) and North Korea (which did), any sensible country anywhere on Israel’s enemies list — which is by extension today America’s target list — would acquire a deliverable nuclear capability by any means whatsoever as soon as possible.

But the reality is to see sanctions against Iran in the same light as inspections for the non-existent WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq in 2002-2003. In those days, the US and its close partners kept insisting that Iraq had WMDs when none of the inspectors on the ground, including the US representatives, found or believed it had.

Yet the claims persisted, and the purpose was to condition the US public for a war that need never have happened, except for Israel and its partisans in the US. And they succeeded. Americans generally believed the false claims, generally supported the war against Iraq, and whatever disenchantment occurred took place only because the war and the subsequent occupation did not proceed as smoothly as its architects had intended.

This is the pattern being repeated against Iran. The real purpose of sanctions is not to affect the policies of the Iranian government, because nothing it does will affect the sanctions. It is to prepare the US public for an attack against Iran, almost certainly in conjunction with Israel, to destroy Israel’s last remaining competitor in the region and to provide a cover for Israel’s expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, into Jordan and the Sinai respectively.

So it would be unwise either to disregard sanctions or to try to accommodate them. The only sensible response, I believe, in Iran and its friends is to put in place something that the US would not dare to attack. That inevitably means something with or from China or India, especially the former, no matter what the cost — because anything expended to preclude a US-Israeli strike would be far cheaper than enduring that strike and its aftermath, even if the region then exploded in America’s face. Watching an enemy suffer is fine, but not at that price.

By Dr. Alan Sabrosky

Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan) is a ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College. He can be contacted at docbrosk@comcast.net