El Congreso peruano decidió ayer suspender durante 90 días la entrada en vigor del decreto 1.090
Gara
Los indígenas no darán marcha atrás hasta que el Gobierno de Alan García atienda sus demandas y derogue las leyes que permiten a las multinacionales explotar los recursos de la Amazonia, que representa un 60% del territorio peruano. Para hoy han convocado una marcha nacional, a la que se han sumado movimientos indígenas de Perú y países vecinos. El Congreso suspendió por 90 días el decreto 1.090, lo que no satisfizo a los indígenas.
Los indígenas dejaron claro que mantendrán las movilizaciones hasta que el Gobierno de Alan García no derogue el paquete de siete leyes, entre ellas la Ley Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre, que da amplios poderes a las multinacionales para explotar los recursos de la amazonia peruana.
«No nos moveremos hasta que el Gobierno eche para atrás las leyes que afectan a nuestro territorio», declaró a AFP Hernán Kariaja, un apu (jefe) de la etnia candoshi.
Desde abril, las comunidades indígenas mantienen bloqueados media docena de puntos -una carretera, un puerto fluvial y un pequeño aeródromo entre otros- de la Amazonia, que representa el 60% del país. Aunque no es nada espectacular, ha tenido un gran impacto.
Isabel Ortiz, líder de la etnia shabi, explicó que numerosos empresarios procedentes de Lima han llegado en los últimos tiempos a la región para supervisar los terrenos y hacer firmar ppapeles a los indígenas «que no saben ni leer ni escribir. Les obligan a poner sus huellas dactilares y luego los expulsan».
«Estamos cansados. No daremos marcha atrás porque se trata de nuestras tierras», exclamó.
El Congreso peruano decidió ayer suspender durante 90 días la entrada en vigor del decreto 1.090. Esta medida no satisface a los indígenas que llevan reclamando desde mayo que se derogue definitivamente.
«No se ha derogado, es una confusión. Lo que han hecho es una suspensión de los decretos, que es justamente lo que no querían los nativos», destacó la corresponsal de Telesur en Lima, Verónica Insausti, en la página web de la emisora latinoamericana.
«Lo que ha hecho el partido del APRA [la formación del presidente Alan García] ha sido suspender los decretos, mas no derogarlos», insistió Insausti.
La oposición peruana destacó que este decreto supone un ataque a la soberanía nacional, puesto que están vinculados al Tratado de Libre Comercio (TLC) suscrito con EEUU.
A lo largo de la semana, el Gobierno de Alan García ha recibido una larga lista de críticas de muy diversos organismos. La última la de la Comisión Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH) que, tras condenar «enérgicamente» lo ocurrido, le recordó al Estado que «la criminalización de la legítima movilización y protesta social, sea a través de la represión directa a los manifestantes o de la investigación y proceso penal, es incompatible con una sociedad democrática». Le instó además a «esclarecer judicialmente estos hechos de violencia y reparar sus consecuencias»
El mandatario peruano, sin embargo, salió en defensa de la actuación del Gobierno y de la Fiscalía que, a su juicio, ha hecho bien en denunciar a los líderes indígenas de las protestas porque «no se puede instigar y engañar diciendo que los nativos van a perder sus tierras».
La Cancillería, mientras, resaltó «la gran tradición de promoción y protección de los derechos» de Perú.
Alegó, asimismo, la existencia de «versiones tergiversadas que han circulado y desinforman completamente».
La Conaie califica de «deplorable» la situación en la Amazonia
La Confederación de Nacionalidades Indígenas de Ecuador (Conaie) condenó «la violencia de Estado en Perú contra los hermanos indígenas» e hizo un llamamiento a la comunidad internacional a sancionar a «los responsables». Asimismo, calificó de «deplorable la situación de los derechos humanos» en la Amazonia peruana. El dirigente de los Territorios de la Conaie, Luis Yampis, resaltó que las acciones de los indígenas fueron pacíficas y criticó la falta de diálogo por parte del Gobierno. Denunció que en la Amazonia «se estaría impidiendo el derecho a la libre circulación, a las actividades cotidianas de pesca, siembra y recolección».
«Detrás de estos hechos están las pretensiones de abrir un camino de impunidad y depredación, beneficiando a empresas diversas como Perenco y Oxy, que fueron expulsadas de Ecuador», subrayó. Tras la rueda de prensa, integrantes de la Conaie, acompañados por medio centenar de personas, realizaron un plante ante la embajada de Perú en Quito. En las pancartas se podían leer lemas como «No somos criminales... Defendemos la vida y la naturaleza».
Share This
Tecpatl
Our Word is Our Weapon, if you have anything you would like us to publish please send us an email @ maiz_centeotl_chicomecoatl@riseup.net
Subscribe To Maiz Today!!!!
Posts
All Comments
6/11/09
The Latest Torture Cover-Up Scam
Hot Air Versus Hard Facts
By JAMES BOVARD
CounterPunch
The Obama administration appears increasingly devoted to covering up the worst crimes of the Bush era. CIA chief Leon Panetta formally objected to federal judge Alvin Hellerstein, who was considering releasing detailed information on 92 videotaped CIA torture sessions of detainees.
Panetta asserted that releasing the written information “could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security by informing our enemies of what we knew about them, and when, and in some instances, how we obtained the intelligence we possessed.”
Panetta sounds like the only person on Earth who is not aware that the U.S. government has already effectively admitted that it used torture on detainees to squeeze out confessions, true, false, or whatever.
The CIA chief told the judge that the “disclosure of explicit details of specific interrogations” would provide al-Qaeda “with propaganda it could use to recruit and raise funds.” Panetta described the information at issue as “ready-made ammunition.”
And who manufactured this ammunition? The CIA and Bush administration officials who ginned up legal opinions authorizing war crimes. But according to Panetta, the CIA would be the victim. Panetta warned that disclosing the documents would “constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” of the CIA employees involved in the “extreme interrogation” process.
Apparently, people who inflict torture under U.S government orders are entitled to their good name, regardless of how many innocent people they kill. It is ironic to see such solicitude for the rights of individuals who may have violated the Geneva Convention. Perhaps privacy rights are the only rights that government respects any more. But the only people who are entitled to privacy are those who followed orders and committed horrendous crimes.
Panetta also asserted that his request to suppress all the evidence was “in no way driven by a desire to prevent embarrassment for the U.S. government or the CIA, or to suppress evidence of any unlawful conduct.”
Panetta neglected to add that he would sell the judge the Brooklyn Bridge for only $29.95.
The Obama administration’s objections to letting Americans learn the truth about CIA abuses is only the latest chapter in a cover-up that has lasted most of this new century.
In 2003, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information on the U.S. treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. The Bush administration, scorning federal law, largely rebuffed the request. On September 15, 2004, Judge Hellerstein condemned the feds: “If the documents are more of an embarrassment than a secret, the public should know of our government’s treatment of individuals captured and held abroad.” The judge was outraged at the Bush administration’s bogus invocation of “national security” to deny providing information. Hellerstein gave the feds a 30-day deadline to provide the information.
But the feds effectively ignored Hellerstein’s deadline — as they did most of the other judicial deadlines that have arisen from the torture scandal. If all the photos and all the memos had been revealed in October 2004, voters might have denied Bush’s quest for a second term.
The latest stonewalling is especially appalling because it comes from a president who promised transparency and openness when he took office earlier this year. Instead, the Obama team is crafting a rule that might justify covering up any government atrocity.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s national security program, observed that the Obama administration’s position is the same as asserting that “the greater the abuse, the more important it is that it should remain secret.”
The torture scandal sheds far more light onto the soul of American politics than the rhetoric of any politician. In a speech six weeks ago at CIA headquarters, Obama declared: “What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it’s hard.”
This is the same “invoke American values” defense that President George W. Bush used in 2004 and 2005 after the torture scandal first erupted. It is deluging people with national flattery as a substitute for ceasing national disgraces. But hot air is no substitute for hard facts.
James Bovard serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation and is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, Terrorism and Tyranny, and other books.
By JAMES BOVARD
CounterPunch
The Obama administration appears increasingly devoted to covering up the worst crimes of the Bush era. CIA chief Leon Panetta formally objected to federal judge Alvin Hellerstein, who was considering releasing detailed information on 92 videotaped CIA torture sessions of detainees.
Panetta asserted that releasing the written information “could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security by informing our enemies of what we knew about them, and when, and in some instances, how we obtained the intelligence we possessed.”
Panetta sounds like the only person on Earth who is not aware that the U.S. government has already effectively admitted that it used torture on detainees to squeeze out confessions, true, false, or whatever.
The CIA chief told the judge that the “disclosure of explicit details of specific interrogations” would provide al-Qaeda “with propaganda it could use to recruit and raise funds.” Panetta described the information at issue as “ready-made ammunition.”
And who manufactured this ammunition? The CIA and Bush administration officials who ginned up legal opinions authorizing war crimes. But according to Panetta, the CIA would be the victim. Panetta warned that disclosing the documents would “constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” of the CIA employees involved in the “extreme interrogation” process.
Apparently, people who inflict torture under U.S government orders are entitled to their good name, regardless of how many innocent people they kill. It is ironic to see such solicitude for the rights of individuals who may have violated the Geneva Convention. Perhaps privacy rights are the only rights that government respects any more. But the only people who are entitled to privacy are those who followed orders and committed horrendous crimes.
Panetta also asserted that his request to suppress all the evidence was “in no way driven by a desire to prevent embarrassment for the U.S. government or the CIA, or to suppress evidence of any unlawful conduct.”
Panetta neglected to add that he would sell the judge the Brooklyn Bridge for only $29.95.
The Obama administration’s objections to letting Americans learn the truth about CIA abuses is only the latest chapter in a cover-up that has lasted most of this new century.
In 2003, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request for information on the U.S. treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. The Bush administration, scorning federal law, largely rebuffed the request. On September 15, 2004, Judge Hellerstein condemned the feds: “If the documents are more of an embarrassment than a secret, the public should know of our government’s treatment of individuals captured and held abroad.” The judge was outraged at the Bush administration’s bogus invocation of “national security” to deny providing information. Hellerstein gave the feds a 30-day deadline to provide the information.
But the feds effectively ignored Hellerstein’s deadline — as they did most of the other judicial deadlines that have arisen from the torture scandal. If all the photos and all the memos had been revealed in October 2004, voters might have denied Bush’s quest for a second term.
The latest stonewalling is especially appalling because it comes from a president who promised transparency and openness when he took office earlier this year. Instead, the Obama team is crafting a rule that might justify covering up any government atrocity.
Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s national security program, observed that the Obama administration’s position is the same as asserting that “the greater the abuse, the more important it is that it should remain secret.”
The torture scandal sheds far more light onto the soul of American politics than the rhetoric of any politician. In a speech six weeks ago at CIA headquarters, Obama declared: “What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it’s hard.”
This is the same “invoke American values” defense that President George W. Bush used in 2004 and 2005 after the torture scandal first erupted. It is deluging people with national flattery as a substitute for ceasing national disgraces. But hot air is no substitute for hard facts.
James Bovard serves as a policy advisor for The Future of Freedom Foundation and is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, Terrorism and Tyranny, and other books.
6/10/09
Cumbre Indígena, el neoliberalismo en el banquillo
Manuel Robles Sosa
Prensa Latina
Un nítido contenido antineoliberal tuvo la IV Cumbre Continental de Pueblos y Nacionalidades Indígenas del Abya Yala (antiguo nombre de América), celebrada en la ciudad peruana de Puno, a orillas del lago Titicaca, del 27 al 31 de mayo, la que además avanzó hacia formas más desarrolladas de organización.
La cita, que congregó a más de seis mil delegados de 22 países latinoamericanos, así como delegados e invitados de Canadá, Estados Unidos, África y otros países, recogió ese contenido en su declaración final, aprobada por aclamación como síntesis de las deliberaciones.
Un mensaje del presidente de Bolivia, el indígena Evo Morales, ayudó decisivamente a marcar la tónica del encuentro, al llamar a la lucha por la segunda y definitiva independencia y luchar contra el capitalismo, el neoliberalismo y los tratados de libre comercio.
Esa lucha, explicó el texto de Morales leído por la dirigente campesina Leonilda Zurita, es consustancial a la defensa de los valores y los intereses de los pueblos originarios, así como a sus concepciones de convivencia respetuosa con la naturaleza y apego vital a la tierra.
La declaración final señaló la "profunda crisis de la civilización occidental capitalista", de carácter ambiental, energética, cultural, de exclusión social, y alimentaria, como expresión del fracaso del eurocentrismo.
Tal crisis, para la Cumbre, evidencia además que ha fracasado la modernidad colonialista nacida desde el etnocidio –conquista europea de América- y que lleva a la humanidad entera al sacrificio.
Como respuesta, los indígenas plantearon "ofrecer una alternativa de vida frente a la civilización de la muerte, recogiendo nuestras raíces para proyectarnos al futuro, con nuestros principios y prácticas de equilibrio entre los hombres, mujeres, Madre Tierra, espiritualidades, culturas y pueblos, que denominamos Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien".
Desde esa óptica, la declaración final propugna defender la soberanía alimentaria, priorizando los cultivos nativos, el consumo interno y las economías comunitarias, además de construir Estados Plurinacionales Comunitarios, basados en el autogobierno, la libre determinación de los pueblos y la reconstitución de los territorios y naciones originarias.
Tras los ejemplos de cambios por la vía de asambleas constituyentes que han dado Bolivia, Ecuador y Venezuela, la Cumbre planteó asimismo luchar por nuevas constituciones en aquellos países que aún no reconocen la plurinacionalidad, para todos los excluidos, en un diálogo intercultural, respetuoso y horizontal, que supere verticalismos e invisibilizaciones.
Sobre el derecho al territorio, la cita rechazó "todas las formas de parcelación, privatización, concesión, depredación y contaminación por parte de las industrias extractivas". Exigió igualmente que los pueblos indígenas sean consultados previamente, sobre todo proyecto económico que los pueda afectar, y las políticas y leyes de desarrollo.
También acordó impulsar un Tribunal Internacional de Justicia Climática, de carácter moral que juzgue a las empresas transnacionales, las cuales depredan el ambiente, y a los gobiernos cómplices, y posteriormente la Corte Internacional sobre Delitos Ambientales.
Otro acuerdo de la Cumbre establece la creación de una Coordinadora del Abya Yala que vigile a la Organización de Estados Americanos y a las Naciones Unidas, para superar su subordinación al poder imperial y, de no lograrlo, construir la Organización de Naciones Unidas del Abya Yala y del Mundo.
Los delegados rechazaron por otra parte la criminalización de las protestas sociales, la militarización, las bases extranjeras, los desplazamientos forzados y los genocidios.
Más adelante anuncia juicios internacionales contra los gobiernos de Colombia, Perú y Chile, por el genocidio de los pueblos indígenas colombianos, por dictar normas privatizadoras anticonstitucionales y por reprimir a los originarios mapuche, respectivamente.
El encuentro de solidarizó con la actual lucha de los indígenas amazónicos peruanos contra decretos gubernamentales inconsultos que, según los originarios, atentan contra la soberanía nacional y los derechos indígenas, y forman parte de las obligaciones del tratado de libre comercio (TLC) con Estados Unidos.
Rechazó los Tratados de Libre Comercio de Estados Unidos, Europa, Canadá y otros países, por ser "nuevos candados de sometimiento y saqueo de la Madre Tierra", y acusó a la Unión Europea y los gobiernos de Colombia y Perú de pretender destruir la Comunidad Andina de Naciones, por negociar por su cuenta TLCs con el bloque europeo, rechazados por Bolivia y Ecuador.
SOLIDARIDAD CON CUBA
En el plano internacional, la declaración final de la Cumbre planteó su respaldo a la lucha de los pueblos del mundo contra los poderes imperiales, mencionando en especial la demanda del cese del bloqueo de Estados Unidos contra Cuba.
También anunció movilizaciones en defensa del proceso de cambio iniciado en Bolivia, y "rechazar los intentos golpistas, separatistas, racistas y magnicidas de la oligarquía y el imperio norteamericano" contra ese proceso y contra el gobierno del presidente Evo Morales.
Condenó igualmente el asilo o refugio concedido por el gobierno peruano a tres ex ministros bolivianos acusados de genocidio y resolvió celebrar la V Cumbre en Bolivia, en 2011.
Además, exigió el retiro de Israel de los territorios palestinos y demandó respeto a los derechos colectivos de los pueblos Masai, Mohawk, Shoshoni, Same, Kurdo, Catalán y Vasco, entre otros.
Manuel Robles Sosa. Corresponsal de Prensa Latina en Perú.
Prensa Latina
Un nítido contenido antineoliberal tuvo la IV Cumbre Continental de Pueblos y Nacionalidades Indígenas del Abya Yala (antiguo nombre de América), celebrada en la ciudad peruana de Puno, a orillas del lago Titicaca, del 27 al 31 de mayo, la que además avanzó hacia formas más desarrolladas de organización.
La cita, que congregó a más de seis mil delegados de 22 países latinoamericanos, así como delegados e invitados de Canadá, Estados Unidos, África y otros países, recogió ese contenido en su declaración final, aprobada por aclamación como síntesis de las deliberaciones.
Un mensaje del presidente de Bolivia, el indígena Evo Morales, ayudó decisivamente a marcar la tónica del encuentro, al llamar a la lucha por la segunda y definitiva independencia y luchar contra el capitalismo, el neoliberalismo y los tratados de libre comercio.
Esa lucha, explicó el texto de Morales leído por la dirigente campesina Leonilda Zurita, es consustancial a la defensa de los valores y los intereses de los pueblos originarios, así como a sus concepciones de convivencia respetuosa con la naturaleza y apego vital a la tierra.
La declaración final señaló la "profunda crisis de la civilización occidental capitalista", de carácter ambiental, energética, cultural, de exclusión social, y alimentaria, como expresión del fracaso del eurocentrismo.
Tal crisis, para la Cumbre, evidencia además que ha fracasado la modernidad colonialista nacida desde el etnocidio –conquista europea de América- y que lleva a la humanidad entera al sacrificio.
Como respuesta, los indígenas plantearon "ofrecer una alternativa de vida frente a la civilización de la muerte, recogiendo nuestras raíces para proyectarnos al futuro, con nuestros principios y prácticas de equilibrio entre los hombres, mujeres, Madre Tierra, espiritualidades, culturas y pueblos, que denominamos Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien".
Desde esa óptica, la declaración final propugna defender la soberanía alimentaria, priorizando los cultivos nativos, el consumo interno y las economías comunitarias, además de construir Estados Plurinacionales Comunitarios, basados en el autogobierno, la libre determinación de los pueblos y la reconstitución de los territorios y naciones originarias.
Tras los ejemplos de cambios por la vía de asambleas constituyentes que han dado Bolivia, Ecuador y Venezuela, la Cumbre planteó asimismo luchar por nuevas constituciones en aquellos países que aún no reconocen la plurinacionalidad, para todos los excluidos, en un diálogo intercultural, respetuoso y horizontal, que supere verticalismos e invisibilizaciones.
Sobre el derecho al territorio, la cita rechazó "todas las formas de parcelación, privatización, concesión, depredación y contaminación por parte de las industrias extractivas". Exigió igualmente que los pueblos indígenas sean consultados previamente, sobre todo proyecto económico que los pueda afectar, y las políticas y leyes de desarrollo.
También acordó impulsar un Tribunal Internacional de Justicia Climática, de carácter moral que juzgue a las empresas transnacionales, las cuales depredan el ambiente, y a los gobiernos cómplices, y posteriormente la Corte Internacional sobre Delitos Ambientales.
Otro acuerdo de la Cumbre establece la creación de una Coordinadora del Abya Yala que vigile a la Organización de Estados Americanos y a las Naciones Unidas, para superar su subordinación al poder imperial y, de no lograrlo, construir la Organización de Naciones Unidas del Abya Yala y del Mundo.
Los delegados rechazaron por otra parte la criminalización de las protestas sociales, la militarización, las bases extranjeras, los desplazamientos forzados y los genocidios.
Más adelante anuncia juicios internacionales contra los gobiernos de Colombia, Perú y Chile, por el genocidio de los pueblos indígenas colombianos, por dictar normas privatizadoras anticonstitucionales y por reprimir a los originarios mapuche, respectivamente.
El encuentro de solidarizó con la actual lucha de los indígenas amazónicos peruanos contra decretos gubernamentales inconsultos que, según los originarios, atentan contra la soberanía nacional y los derechos indígenas, y forman parte de las obligaciones del tratado de libre comercio (TLC) con Estados Unidos.
Rechazó los Tratados de Libre Comercio de Estados Unidos, Europa, Canadá y otros países, por ser "nuevos candados de sometimiento y saqueo de la Madre Tierra", y acusó a la Unión Europea y los gobiernos de Colombia y Perú de pretender destruir la Comunidad Andina de Naciones, por negociar por su cuenta TLCs con el bloque europeo, rechazados por Bolivia y Ecuador.
SOLIDARIDAD CON CUBA
En el plano internacional, la declaración final de la Cumbre planteó su respaldo a la lucha de los pueblos del mundo contra los poderes imperiales, mencionando en especial la demanda del cese del bloqueo de Estados Unidos contra Cuba.
También anunció movilizaciones en defensa del proceso de cambio iniciado en Bolivia, y "rechazar los intentos golpistas, separatistas, racistas y magnicidas de la oligarquía y el imperio norteamericano" contra ese proceso y contra el gobierno del presidente Evo Morales.
Condenó igualmente el asilo o refugio concedido por el gobierno peruano a tres ex ministros bolivianos acusados de genocidio y resolvió celebrar la V Cumbre en Bolivia, en 2011.
Además, exigió el retiro de Israel de los territorios palestinos y demandó respeto a los derechos colectivos de los pueblos Masai, Mohawk, Shoshoni, Same, Kurdo, Catalán y Vasco, entre otros.
Manuel Robles Sosa. Corresponsal de Prensa Latina en Perú.
Where the Victim is the Guilty Party
12 Arabs Indicted Over Jewish Gunman's Death
By JONATHAN COOK
www.counterpunch.com
The decision to prosecute 12 Israeli Arabs over what the local media have described as the “lynching” of an Israeli soldier on a bus shortly after he shot dead the driver and three passengers has been greeted with outrage from the country’s Arab minority.
The inhabitants of Shefa’amr, one of the largest Arab towns in the Galilee region and the location of the attack, are expected to stage a one-day strike today in protest against the indictments. Seven of the 12 face charges of attempted murder.
Jafar Farah, the head of Mossawa, an Arab political lobbying group, said the indictments, which follow a series of about-turns by state prosecutors, reflected “the current harsher political climate” for the Arab minority, one-fifth of the country’s population.
A right-wing government, established this year, includes the party of Avigdor Lieberman, which is openly hostile to Arabs.
Anger at the indictments has been compounded by a decision taken by the prosecution service a few days earlier to formally close an investigation into possible assistance the soldier, Eden Natan Zada, received from Jewish extremist groups.
Nakad Nakad, a member of a Shefa’amr public committee set up after Zada’s attack, said that the prosecution had “decided in this case that the victim is the guilty party”.
Zada, who was 19, carried out his attack in Aug 2005 in what was widely seen as an attempt to foil the government’s withdrawal of settlers from Gaza, which was due to take place days later. Zada was a member of Tapuah, an extremist religious settlement in the West Bank.
He took a bus into Shefa’amr with his army-issued M-16 rifle and a backpack stuffed with ammunition. According to witnesses, when the bus stopped, he shot the driver and sprayed the rest of the bus with bullets, killing three passengers and wounding 22.
Zada was overpowered after a female passenger grabbed the gun while he was trying to reload.
Police arrived a short time later and handcuffed Zada as residents surrounded the bus. According to police testimony, a tense stand-off developed before a group stormed the bus and beat Zada to death.
The incident was politically charged from its first moments.
Initial reports on Israeli TV showed a caption under Zada’s picture of “God bless his soul” -- usually reserved for Jewish victims of Palestinian terror attacks.
Zada’s two dozen victims, all Arabs, as well as their families, were denied state compensation after a ministerial panel ruled that a serving soldier could not be regarded as a terrorist.
Israel’s Arab minority were further angered by police inquiries that concentrated almost exclusively on the circumstances of Zada’s death.
Maher Talhami, a lawyer for three of the suspects in Shefa’amr, said police had recommended that parallel investigations into Zada’s connections to Kach, a group officially banned but openly espoused by extremist settlers, be closed after only four months.
Kach demands the violent expulsion of all Arabs from both Israel and the occupied territories.
“The authorities want Zada to be seen as a lone madman but the research we’ve conducted suggests he was part of a larger Jewish terror organisation that operates freely even though it’s outside the law. It appears the attack was organised and planned.”
Another lawyer, familiar with the case who wished not to be identified, said: “Politics is playing a much larger part in the indictments than legal issues.” She said the conduct of the prosecution in the case had been highly unusual and inconsistent.
It took 10 months to charge the first suspects, who were placed under house arrest. A year later, after seeing secret police evidence, a judge ruled that the suspects were unlikely ever to be indicted and lifted the restrictions on them.
Their bail money was returned in April 2008, under protest from the police. Two months later, the prosecution did a U-turn and announced that all 12 would be charged with violent assault.
On Sunday more severe charges of attempted murder were imposed on seven of them, with the rest accused of assaulting police officers. A conviction for attempted murder carries a maximum 20-year jail term.
Mr Talhami said that although he did not condone people taking the law into their hands, it was important to note that official Israeli policy was to show no mercy to those committing terrorist attacks.
“Arab and Jewish citizens watch the same Israeli TV and we see the state regularly honouring Jewish civilians and police for killing terrorists without compunction, even when they are ‘confirming the kill’ of someone who is already injured and posing no threat.”
He referred specifically to the case of an injured Palestinian who was shot dead by an Israeli policeman in Dimona in February last year as he lay bleeding on the ground after a suicide attack went wrong. “There was not even an investigation in that case, let alone an outcry,” he said.
Several analysts have also noted that the faith of Israel’s Arab population in the justice system has been severely eroded, particularly by the failure to prosecute any of the Israeli policemen who shot dead 13 unarmed Arab citizens during demonstrations in October 2000.
Arab legislators in the Knesset from all parties denounced the indictments. Jamal Zahalka of the Tajamu party said: “We demanded, and we are continuing to demand, an objective commission of inquiry to reveal who was behind Zada, who helped him and who authorised his pogrom in Shefa’amr.”
Zada’s choice of a Druze neighbourhood in Shefa’amr to stage his attack suggested an unfamiliarity with the geography of the town and its politics.
Shefa’amr’s population is mixed between Muslims, Christians and Druze, with the latter community serving in the army and considered “loyal” by most Israeli Jews.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
By JONATHAN COOK
www.counterpunch.com
The decision to prosecute 12 Israeli Arabs over what the local media have described as the “lynching” of an Israeli soldier on a bus shortly after he shot dead the driver and three passengers has been greeted with outrage from the country’s Arab minority.
The inhabitants of Shefa’amr, one of the largest Arab towns in the Galilee region and the location of the attack, are expected to stage a one-day strike today in protest against the indictments. Seven of the 12 face charges of attempted murder.
Jafar Farah, the head of Mossawa, an Arab political lobbying group, said the indictments, which follow a series of about-turns by state prosecutors, reflected “the current harsher political climate” for the Arab minority, one-fifth of the country’s population.
A right-wing government, established this year, includes the party of Avigdor Lieberman, which is openly hostile to Arabs.
Anger at the indictments has been compounded by a decision taken by the prosecution service a few days earlier to formally close an investigation into possible assistance the soldier, Eden Natan Zada, received from Jewish extremist groups.
Nakad Nakad, a member of a Shefa’amr public committee set up after Zada’s attack, said that the prosecution had “decided in this case that the victim is the guilty party”.
Zada, who was 19, carried out his attack in Aug 2005 in what was widely seen as an attempt to foil the government’s withdrawal of settlers from Gaza, which was due to take place days later. Zada was a member of Tapuah, an extremist religious settlement in the West Bank.
He took a bus into Shefa’amr with his army-issued M-16 rifle and a backpack stuffed with ammunition. According to witnesses, when the bus stopped, he shot the driver and sprayed the rest of the bus with bullets, killing three passengers and wounding 22.
Zada was overpowered after a female passenger grabbed the gun while he was trying to reload.
Police arrived a short time later and handcuffed Zada as residents surrounded the bus. According to police testimony, a tense stand-off developed before a group stormed the bus and beat Zada to death.
The incident was politically charged from its first moments.
Initial reports on Israeli TV showed a caption under Zada’s picture of “God bless his soul” -- usually reserved for Jewish victims of Palestinian terror attacks.
Zada’s two dozen victims, all Arabs, as well as their families, were denied state compensation after a ministerial panel ruled that a serving soldier could not be regarded as a terrorist.
Israel’s Arab minority were further angered by police inquiries that concentrated almost exclusively on the circumstances of Zada’s death.
Maher Talhami, a lawyer for three of the suspects in Shefa’amr, said police had recommended that parallel investigations into Zada’s connections to Kach, a group officially banned but openly espoused by extremist settlers, be closed after only four months.
Kach demands the violent expulsion of all Arabs from both Israel and the occupied territories.
“The authorities want Zada to be seen as a lone madman but the research we’ve conducted suggests he was part of a larger Jewish terror organisation that operates freely even though it’s outside the law. It appears the attack was organised and planned.”
Another lawyer, familiar with the case who wished not to be identified, said: “Politics is playing a much larger part in the indictments than legal issues.” She said the conduct of the prosecution in the case had been highly unusual and inconsistent.
It took 10 months to charge the first suspects, who were placed under house arrest. A year later, after seeing secret police evidence, a judge ruled that the suspects were unlikely ever to be indicted and lifted the restrictions on them.
Their bail money was returned in April 2008, under protest from the police. Two months later, the prosecution did a U-turn and announced that all 12 would be charged with violent assault.
On Sunday more severe charges of attempted murder were imposed on seven of them, with the rest accused of assaulting police officers. A conviction for attempted murder carries a maximum 20-year jail term.
Mr Talhami said that although he did not condone people taking the law into their hands, it was important to note that official Israeli policy was to show no mercy to those committing terrorist attacks.
“Arab and Jewish citizens watch the same Israeli TV and we see the state regularly honouring Jewish civilians and police for killing terrorists without compunction, even when they are ‘confirming the kill’ of someone who is already injured and posing no threat.”
He referred specifically to the case of an injured Palestinian who was shot dead by an Israeli policeman in Dimona in February last year as he lay bleeding on the ground after a suicide attack went wrong. “There was not even an investigation in that case, let alone an outcry,” he said.
Several analysts have also noted that the faith of Israel’s Arab population in the justice system has been severely eroded, particularly by the failure to prosecute any of the Israeli policemen who shot dead 13 unarmed Arab citizens during demonstrations in October 2000.
Arab legislators in the Knesset from all parties denounced the indictments. Jamal Zahalka of the Tajamu party said: “We demanded, and we are continuing to demand, an objective commission of inquiry to reveal who was behind Zada, who helped him and who authorised his pogrom in Shefa’amr.”
Zada’s choice of a Druze neighbourhood in Shefa’amr to stage his attack suggested an unfamiliarity with the geography of the town and its politics.
Shefa’amr’s population is mixed between Muslims, Christians and Druze, with the latter community serving in the army and considered “loyal” by most Israeli Jews.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
La ONU reafirma el derecho de los pueblos indígenas sobre sus territorios
Agencias
El Foro Permanente para Asuntos Indígenas de la ONU concluyó el viernes su octavo período de sesiones con una reafirmación de los derechos de los pueblos autóctonos a ser consultados sobre cualquier proyecto de explotación que afecte a sus territorios.
Los más de 2.000 representantes de pueblos y comunidades indígenas que asistieron a las dos semanas de sesiones respaldaron la declaración final.
Los más de 2.000 representantes de pueblos y comunidades indígenas que asistieron a las dos semanas de sesiones respaldaron la declaración final, en la que se recomienda la adopción de medidas para protegerlos de quienes se quieren aprovechar de sus recursos.
“Se debe obtener el consentimiento libre, previo e informado de los pueblos indígenas antes de iniciar inversiones en proyectos que afecten sus tierras, territorios y recursos”, afirma el preámbulo del documento.
En el mismo se recomienda a los Gobiernos que hagan cumplir a las compañías trasnacionales las legislaciones nacionales e internacionales relevantes a estos casos, así como la Declaración Universal de los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas, adoptada en 2007 por la Asamblea General de la ONU.
En ese sentido, se insta a los países que han otorgado licencias, permisos o concesiones a trasnacionales, sin el correspondiente beneplácito de las poblaciones indígenas, a renegociar los contratos de explotación y satisfacer las demandas de las comunidades afectadas.
El documento también reconoce que hay una mayor voluntad por parte de algunas empresas extractoras a consultar a los pueblos indígenas, al tiempo que celebra las acciones de algunos Gobiernos para desarrollar fuentes de energía alternativas y proteger el medio ambiente.
En particular cita el proyecto Yasuni-ITT del Gobierno ecuatoriano, que propone dejar bajo tierra 960 millones de barriles de crudo pesado de ese yacimiento ubicado en la región amazónica, a cambio de una compensación internacional por los ingresos que el Estado dejará de percibir.
“Hay un gran sentimiento de preocupación entre los pueblos indígenas del mundo en cuanto a la falta de consultas por parte de los Estados en esta materia”, dijo a Efe la vicepresidenta del Foro Indígena, la boliviana Elisa Canqui Mollo.
La activista recordó que los Estados, pese a que la declaración de los derechos indígenas no es vinculante, tienen la obligación moral de hacer cumplir ese instrumento, que fue respaldado por prácticamente todos los 192 países miembros de Naciones Unidas.
En ese sentido, habló de la disputa que mantienen las comunidades indígenas de la región amazónica de Perú contra la política de explotación de recursos naturales del Gobierno del país.
Los indígenas piden la derogación de varios decretos, entre ellos el de la ley Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre, declarado esta semana inconstitucional por la Comisión Constitucional del Congreso, por considerar que atentan contra su derecho a decidir sobre sus territorios y alientan a la deforestación de la Amazonía.
Canqui Mollo dejó claro que la declaración aprobada por el Foro Indígena de la ONU no hace una referencia explícita a ningún país, al tiempo que resaltó que casos como el de la región amazónica peruana se producen en otras naciones.
El Foro Permanente para Asuntos Indígenas de la ONU concluyó el viernes su octavo período de sesiones con una reafirmación de los derechos de los pueblos autóctonos a ser consultados sobre cualquier proyecto de explotación que afecte a sus territorios.
Los más de 2.000 representantes de pueblos y comunidades indígenas que asistieron a las dos semanas de sesiones respaldaron la declaración final.
Los más de 2.000 representantes de pueblos y comunidades indígenas que asistieron a las dos semanas de sesiones respaldaron la declaración final, en la que se recomienda la adopción de medidas para protegerlos de quienes se quieren aprovechar de sus recursos.
“Se debe obtener el consentimiento libre, previo e informado de los pueblos indígenas antes de iniciar inversiones en proyectos que afecten sus tierras, territorios y recursos”, afirma el preámbulo del documento.
En el mismo se recomienda a los Gobiernos que hagan cumplir a las compañías trasnacionales las legislaciones nacionales e internacionales relevantes a estos casos, así como la Declaración Universal de los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas, adoptada en 2007 por la Asamblea General de la ONU.
En ese sentido, se insta a los países que han otorgado licencias, permisos o concesiones a trasnacionales, sin el correspondiente beneplácito de las poblaciones indígenas, a renegociar los contratos de explotación y satisfacer las demandas de las comunidades afectadas.
El documento también reconoce que hay una mayor voluntad por parte de algunas empresas extractoras a consultar a los pueblos indígenas, al tiempo que celebra las acciones de algunos Gobiernos para desarrollar fuentes de energía alternativas y proteger el medio ambiente.
En particular cita el proyecto Yasuni-ITT del Gobierno ecuatoriano, que propone dejar bajo tierra 960 millones de barriles de crudo pesado de ese yacimiento ubicado en la región amazónica, a cambio de una compensación internacional por los ingresos que el Estado dejará de percibir.
“Hay un gran sentimiento de preocupación entre los pueblos indígenas del mundo en cuanto a la falta de consultas por parte de los Estados en esta materia”, dijo a Efe la vicepresidenta del Foro Indígena, la boliviana Elisa Canqui Mollo.
La activista recordó que los Estados, pese a que la declaración de los derechos indígenas no es vinculante, tienen la obligación moral de hacer cumplir ese instrumento, que fue respaldado por prácticamente todos los 192 países miembros de Naciones Unidas.
En ese sentido, habló de la disputa que mantienen las comunidades indígenas de la región amazónica de Perú contra la política de explotación de recursos naturales del Gobierno del país.
Los indígenas piden la derogación de varios decretos, entre ellos el de la ley Forestal y de Fauna Silvestre, declarado esta semana inconstitucional por la Comisión Constitucional del Congreso, por considerar que atentan contra su derecho a decidir sobre sus territorios y alientan a la deforestación de la Amazonía.
Canqui Mollo dejó claro que la declaración aprobada por el Foro Indígena de la ONU no hace una referencia explícita a ningún país, al tiempo que resaltó que casos como el de la región amazónica peruana se producen en otras naciones.
Why Is the American Coal Foundation Setting the Curriculum at Elementary Schools?
By Kari Lydersen, In These Times
http://www.alternet.org/story/140523/
An elementary school curriculum designed by the American Coal Foundation suggests that students learn about the costs and benefits of coal mining by using toothpicks and paper clips to "mine" chocolate chips out of cookies. They also go about "reclaiming" the "land" damaged in the process by tracing the cookies’ outline on graph paper. Costs are to be calculated by the amount of time spent per chip and the expanse of graph paper that needs to be reclaimed.
One of the discussion questions to follow the lesson is: "What do you think are some of the costs associated with mining coal?"
In poet and organizer Mark Nowak’s new book Coal Mountain Elementary, this question is placed on an otherwise blank page. On the adjacent page is a photo from Sago, W. Va., of a sign, in bedraggled removable plastic letters and missing an "i": "Pray for our mining families."
On Jan. 2, 2006, an explosion in the Sago mine trapped 13 miners for two days; only one made it out alive. The rescue efforts and release of information to the public were botched and/or intentionally manipulated by the company. The night of Jan. 3, families were given false hope by erroneous media reports that 12 miners were miraculously still alive. Investigations in the wake of the disaster revealed a long history of safety violations and apparent misconduct by mine owner International Coal Group.
"It was devastation heaped upon devastation, tragedy piled upon tragedy," says Nowak, who got the idea for the book while doing workshops with Sago residents about six weeks after the disaster.
Coal Mountain Elementary is an artful, stark and slightly surreal weave of several narratives that portray the human toll of coal mining on families and communities and the way the industry is embedded in our global society, in part through highly strategic efforts like the American Coal Foundation’s curriculum.
The book is a collage of excerpts from the curriculum, testimony from the Sago disaster, news reports of mining disasters in China, and desolate yet eerily beautiful photos of Sago and of Chinese miners and mines. (The breathtaking Chinese photos are by photojournalist Ian Teh.)
The stranger-than-fiction curriculum prods students to write inspiring stories about mining company towns and teaches how to make "coal flowers" -- lumps of coal adorned with paper and fabric held together by congealing ammonia, salt and "laundry bluing," which the curriculum helpfully advises can be purchased through women’s magazines.
Nowak sees the book as his contribution to the growing debate over -- and opposition to -- coal’s role as a primary global energy source. Without preaching or delving into the environmental effects that are documented elsewhere, Coal Mountain Elementary shows the inherent danger and violence of the industry, and it quietly celebrates the strength and resilience of miners and their families.
"There probably isn’t another occupation where so many people die at work every day," notes Nowak, whose blog logs mine accidents around the world. "It’s not a thought most people have when they get in their car to go to work: Will I come home at night? But around the world, not just in China but Zimbabwe, Ukraine, South Africa, it’s a daily occurrence."
In April, a play based on the book was performed in Pittsburgh and West Virginia. At one performance, Nowak met relatives of a miner killed in Sago who had brought photos of the memorial service. In a region where coal companies still hold an economic and psychological grip over many communities, Nowak said the play was well received, and he hopes it opened some eyes to the global and multi-layered nature of the coal industry. In China, an average nine miners died each day last year, with cover-ups by local bureaucrats common, and family members and journalists bribed or intimidated into staying silent.
"Every time you go to the Family Dollar or Wal-Mart, probably 70 percent of the stuff there was made in China," Nowak says. "A lot of people know about the terrible working conditions, but most people are so removed from the fact that those plants are powered through electricity from coal. We are ourselves attached to each and every one of these (mining) disasters through the clothes we wear, the things we purchase."
Explicitly in the curriculum and implicitly in the testimony and news reports included in the book are cost-benefit analyses. One page quotes the curriculum "assessment" of the cookie mining: "What costs or possibilities for profit were not included in this exercise?" The facing page quotes a Sago rescuer who, shaking the dead miners, says he tries "to holler at them, tell them to wake up." He remembers they had taken the time to lay out a curtain on the floor of what became their death chamber.
"You know, coal miners don’t just sit on the mine floor, they always lay something out. And that’s one of the things that stuck in my mind is, they had done that."
Kari Lydersen, a regular contributor to AlterNet, also writes for the Washington Post and is an instructor for the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in Chicago.
© 2009 In These Times All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140523/
http://www.alternet.org/story/140523/
An elementary school curriculum designed by the American Coal Foundation suggests that students learn about the costs and benefits of coal mining by using toothpicks and paper clips to "mine" chocolate chips out of cookies. They also go about "reclaiming" the "land" damaged in the process by tracing the cookies’ outline on graph paper. Costs are to be calculated by the amount of time spent per chip and the expanse of graph paper that needs to be reclaimed.
One of the discussion questions to follow the lesson is: "What do you think are some of the costs associated with mining coal?"
In poet and organizer Mark Nowak’s new book Coal Mountain Elementary, this question is placed on an otherwise blank page. On the adjacent page is a photo from Sago, W. Va., of a sign, in bedraggled removable plastic letters and missing an "i": "Pray for our mining families."
On Jan. 2, 2006, an explosion in the Sago mine trapped 13 miners for two days; only one made it out alive. The rescue efforts and release of information to the public were botched and/or intentionally manipulated by the company. The night of Jan. 3, families were given false hope by erroneous media reports that 12 miners were miraculously still alive. Investigations in the wake of the disaster revealed a long history of safety violations and apparent misconduct by mine owner International Coal Group.
"It was devastation heaped upon devastation, tragedy piled upon tragedy," says Nowak, who got the idea for the book while doing workshops with Sago residents about six weeks after the disaster.
Coal Mountain Elementary is an artful, stark and slightly surreal weave of several narratives that portray the human toll of coal mining on families and communities and the way the industry is embedded in our global society, in part through highly strategic efforts like the American Coal Foundation’s curriculum.
The book is a collage of excerpts from the curriculum, testimony from the Sago disaster, news reports of mining disasters in China, and desolate yet eerily beautiful photos of Sago and of Chinese miners and mines. (The breathtaking Chinese photos are by photojournalist Ian Teh.)
The stranger-than-fiction curriculum prods students to write inspiring stories about mining company towns and teaches how to make "coal flowers" -- lumps of coal adorned with paper and fabric held together by congealing ammonia, salt and "laundry bluing," which the curriculum helpfully advises can be purchased through women’s magazines.
Nowak sees the book as his contribution to the growing debate over -- and opposition to -- coal’s role as a primary global energy source. Without preaching or delving into the environmental effects that are documented elsewhere, Coal Mountain Elementary shows the inherent danger and violence of the industry, and it quietly celebrates the strength and resilience of miners and their families.
"There probably isn’t another occupation where so many people die at work every day," notes Nowak, whose blog logs mine accidents around the world. "It’s not a thought most people have when they get in their car to go to work: Will I come home at night? But around the world, not just in China but Zimbabwe, Ukraine, South Africa, it’s a daily occurrence."
In April, a play based on the book was performed in Pittsburgh and West Virginia. At one performance, Nowak met relatives of a miner killed in Sago who had brought photos of the memorial service. In a region where coal companies still hold an economic and psychological grip over many communities, Nowak said the play was well received, and he hopes it opened some eyes to the global and multi-layered nature of the coal industry. In China, an average nine miners died each day last year, with cover-ups by local bureaucrats common, and family members and journalists bribed or intimidated into staying silent.
"Every time you go to the Family Dollar or Wal-Mart, probably 70 percent of the stuff there was made in China," Nowak says. "A lot of people know about the terrible working conditions, but most people are so removed from the fact that those plants are powered through electricity from coal. We are ourselves attached to each and every one of these (mining) disasters through the clothes we wear, the things we purchase."
Explicitly in the curriculum and implicitly in the testimony and news reports included in the book are cost-benefit analyses. One page quotes the curriculum "assessment" of the cookie mining: "What costs or possibilities for profit were not included in this exercise?" The facing page quotes a Sago rescuer who, shaking the dead miners, says he tries "to holler at them, tell them to wake up." He remembers they had taken the time to lay out a curtain on the floor of what became their death chamber.
"You know, coal miners don’t just sit on the mine floor, they always lay something out. And that’s one of the things that stuck in my mind is, they had done that."
Kari Lydersen, a regular contributor to AlterNet, also writes for the Washington Post and is an instructor for the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in Chicago.
© 2009 In These Times All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140523/
Las mujeres ganan compromiso y protagonismo en la actividad comunitaria
Humberto Márquez
IPS
En Venezuela "hay un enamoramiento de la mujer con la actividad comunitaria, de mayor compromiso y protagonismo, y por eso en las asambleas hay una gran participación femenina", dijo a IPS Alba Rojas, portavoz en un consejo comunal de Tacagua, en la vía de la capital al vecino litoral caribeño.
"Más de 60 por ciento de los consejos comunales son dirigidos por mujeres", explicó a IPS María León, titular del recién creado Ministerio de la Mujer y la Igualdad de Género. "Ya no estamos más confinadas a las tareas domésticas, ganamos el derecho a participar y hablar en la tribuna, como en la Revolución Francesa", añadió.
En Venezuela se han constituido más de 10.000 consejos comunales, con hasta 200 familias cada uno, según cifras ofrecidas por diversas autoridades. Muchas comunidades también organizan "mesas técnicas" de agua, salud, energía o comunicaciones, según los requerimientos de cada vecindario.
El peso de la mujer se potencia porque "aquí no se hace nada que no sea aprobado por los ciudadanos en asamblea. Es parte de la transformación que impulsamos, que la gente se apropie de sus proyectos, de sus procesos", comentó Rojas.
El consejo opera en una pequeña sede, a la vez oficina, biblioteca, sala de reuniones y aula de computación, en una de las tantas viviendas informalmente construidas en el sector Tacagua, una amalgama de barriadas marginales cruzadas por calles desordenadas y empinadas sobre las ásperas colinas que por 20 kilómetros bajan desde Caracas hasta el mar Caribe.
En el sector viven 6.000 personas y lo marca la quebrada Tacagua, un río de aguas servidas a cielo abierto, que desciende desde otras barriadas del oeste caraqueño. Lo domina una colina donde se hacen terrazas y galpones para albergar la primera comuna del área metropolitana, Gual y España, apellidos de dos precursores de la independencia de los españoles.
Rojas anima una "mesa técnica de telecomunicaciones", que gestiona con la corporación estatal de telefonía básica la instalación del servicio en toda Tacagua. Los consejos manejan pequeños expendios de alimentos y escuelas. En total, el gobierno dice haber entregado a proyectos comunales unos 3.000 millones de dólares en tres años.
Los cinco consejos que componen la pionera comuna Gual y España proyectan "una cría de gallinas y conejos, y su sala de matanza, siembras de tomates y pimentones, y una bloquera (alfarería)", dijo Rojas, "porque queremos que las comunidades sean productivas por sí mismas y no dependan de ninguna institución".
"Avanzamos por ensayo y error, y tenemos nuestros 'atajaperros' (encontronazos) con la burocracia, porque la comunidad va más rápido que las instituciones", sentenció.
En Venezuela, con una población en torno a 28 millones de personas, algo más de la mitad mujeres, éstas han asumido tradicionalmente la tarea de hacer más habitables los cinturones de barrios marginales que circundan Caracas y otras ciudades, mediante diferentes formas de organización, cuya nueva expresión son los consejos comunales.
MÁS CARGOS Y MÁS MUJERES
Las instituciones aumentaron en Venezuela con la Constitución de 1999, que reemplazó la de 1961 y sumó dos poderes a los tres tradicionales del Estado: Ejecutivo, Legislativo, Judicial, Electoral y Moral, subdividido éste en la Fiscalía General, la Contraloría y la Defensoría del Pueblo.
A la cabeza de cinco de esas siete instituciones se encuentran mujeres, que presiden la unicameral Asamblea Nacional (dominada por el oficialismo tras el retiro de la oposición en los comicios de 2005), el Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, el Consejo Nacional Electoral, la Defensoría del Pueblo y la Fiscalía General.
En la Asamblea hay 128 hombres y 29 mujeres (17 por ciento), aunque varias ocuparon el escaño como suplentes de varones que fueron a otros destinos. El Poder Electoral estableció desde 2005 una paridad total de género en candidaturas a cuerpos deliberantes, pero los varones han ocupado las posiciones con mayor opción de victoria.
También son mujeres un tercio de quienes integran los 24 parlamentos regionales, 60 de las 335 alcaldías, cinco de los 22 ministerios y tres de las 24 gobernaciones de estados, según cifras del Ministerio de la Mujer. Con excepción de las alcaldesas, las cifras son parecidas a las anteriores a 1999.
"En los últimos 10 años hemos tenido un avance inimaginable para cerrar la brecha histórica entre la acción constructora de las mujeres y su papel en la toma de decisiones políticas, sociales y económicas, no sólo en los altos poderes públicos, sino en el poder popular", aseveró la ministra León.
Flor Ríos, de la Comisión de Familia, Mujer y Juventud de la Asamblea, observó a IPS que "aunque la mujer ocupa ahora bastantes cargos y encabeza poderes públicos, todavía está lejos de la paridad y de posiciones relevantes para la administración de fondos y conducción ejecutiva del país".
"Puede haber progresos en organizaciones de base, como consejos comunales, que se benefician del interés y la capacidad de la mujer para participar en la búsqueda de solución a los problemas", dijo a IPS María Guzmán, de la no gubernamental Fundación para los Derechos de la Mujer Latinoamericana.
"Pero la representación en altos cargos no es sinónimo de empoderamiento de género", puntualizó.
CONTRADICCIÓN EN LOS DISCURSOS
"Yo me declaro feminista. ¡Que vivan las mujeres! Como decía Simón Bolívar, la mujer no es igual al hombre, sino que nos supera", repite con frecuencia el presidente Hugo Chávez.
Este mes invitó "a todos los hombres de este país, a que nos declaremos feministas", pues "no habrá liberación de los pueblos sin liberación de la mujer".
Horas después, Chávez descalificó a Cecilia García Arocha, primera mujer elegida rectora de la Universidad Central, la principal del país, por haber criticado al Ministerio de Educación Superior durante una marcha universitaria contra recortes presupuestarios.
"No sé cómo una señora tan irresponsable y embustera es rectora de una universidad", dijo Chávez, en la más reciente frase con la que, según adversarios y organizaciones de mujeres, exhibe el machismo, paternalismo o militarismo que signaría su gobierno.
Analistas y medios críticos recuerdan que el mandatario expone un discurso que contradice sus otras expresiones a favor de las causas de la mujer y la equidad de género, en su presencia ante los micrófonos, a través de los cuales ha hablado más de 3.000 horas.
Por ejemplo, cuando estaba casado con Marisabel Rodríguez, su segunda esposa, le anunció públicamente que "esta noche te doy lo tuyo". Otra vez dijo que la ex secretaria de Estado (canciller) de Estados Unidos, Condoleezza Rice, requeriría que "le hagan el favor" y ofreció a un alcalde para ello, al argumentar sus discrepancias con Washington.
En otra ocasión anunció que vencería a los opositores en una elección y con ellos "jugaremos al rojo", un soez juego de palabras que evoca la sodomía y es propio de bares para varones.
"El discurso de cualquier líder político, sea de la oposición o del oficialismo, debe tener elementos modélicos. Las formas importan mucho, y más en una sociedad con índices de maltrato doméstico y violencia tan altos y una discriminación de género importante", dijo a IPS Liliana Ortega, de la coalición de organizaciones humanitarias Foro por la Vida.
Hace cinco años eran mujeres el uno por ciento de las víctimas de homicidios y en 2008 fueron seis por ciento, precisó Ortega. "En la TV estatal se burlan de la orientación sexual de la gente, y en sus programas de opinión, las mujeres de oposición a veces son tildadas de amantes o mantenidas de fulano o zutano", deploró.
"Así se reafirman modelos indeseables en una sociedad moderna", afirmó.
Además, opinó Ortega, las mujeres que encabezan actualmente poderes públicos "no han sido contradictoras o independientes sino seguidoras de decisiones del Ejecutivo".
Guzmán abundó que "la mujer es afectada por la división política del país en dos pedazos, y por el discurso oficial, que agregó al machismo y paternalismo del que progresivamente nos alejábamos, el componente del militarismo y el uso de imágenes confrontacionales como guerra, batalla, enemigo, escuadras y cañones".
Pero León sostuvo que "por encima de cualesquiera circunstancias, la revolución que lidera el presidente Chávez ha sido la más esperanzadora en la historia venezolana. Hemos logrado cambios institucionales, como tener un Banco de la Mujer, y las políticas públicas hacia la mujer tienen, por primera vez, una fuerte interlocución en las bases".
IPS
En Venezuela "hay un enamoramiento de la mujer con la actividad comunitaria, de mayor compromiso y protagonismo, y por eso en las asambleas hay una gran participación femenina", dijo a IPS Alba Rojas, portavoz en un consejo comunal de Tacagua, en la vía de la capital al vecino litoral caribeño.
"Más de 60 por ciento de los consejos comunales son dirigidos por mujeres", explicó a IPS María León, titular del recién creado Ministerio de la Mujer y la Igualdad de Género. "Ya no estamos más confinadas a las tareas domésticas, ganamos el derecho a participar y hablar en la tribuna, como en la Revolución Francesa", añadió.
En Venezuela se han constituido más de 10.000 consejos comunales, con hasta 200 familias cada uno, según cifras ofrecidas por diversas autoridades. Muchas comunidades también organizan "mesas técnicas" de agua, salud, energía o comunicaciones, según los requerimientos de cada vecindario.
El peso de la mujer se potencia porque "aquí no se hace nada que no sea aprobado por los ciudadanos en asamblea. Es parte de la transformación que impulsamos, que la gente se apropie de sus proyectos, de sus procesos", comentó Rojas.
El consejo opera en una pequeña sede, a la vez oficina, biblioteca, sala de reuniones y aula de computación, en una de las tantas viviendas informalmente construidas en el sector Tacagua, una amalgama de barriadas marginales cruzadas por calles desordenadas y empinadas sobre las ásperas colinas que por 20 kilómetros bajan desde Caracas hasta el mar Caribe.
En el sector viven 6.000 personas y lo marca la quebrada Tacagua, un río de aguas servidas a cielo abierto, que desciende desde otras barriadas del oeste caraqueño. Lo domina una colina donde se hacen terrazas y galpones para albergar la primera comuna del área metropolitana, Gual y España, apellidos de dos precursores de la independencia de los españoles.
Rojas anima una "mesa técnica de telecomunicaciones", que gestiona con la corporación estatal de telefonía básica la instalación del servicio en toda Tacagua. Los consejos manejan pequeños expendios de alimentos y escuelas. En total, el gobierno dice haber entregado a proyectos comunales unos 3.000 millones de dólares en tres años.
Los cinco consejos que componen la pionera comuna Gual y España proyectan "una cría de gallinas y conejos, y su sala de matanza, siembras de tomates y pimentones, y una bloquera (alfarería)", dijo Rojas, "porque queremos que las comunidades sean productivas por sí mismas y no dependan de ninguna institución".
"Avanzamos por ensayo y error, y tenemos nuestros 'atajaperros' (encontronazos) con la burocracia, porque la comunidad va más rápido que las instituciones", sentenció.
En Venezuela, con una población en torno a 28 millones de personas, algo más de la mitad mujeres, éstas han asumido tradicionalmente la tarea de hacer más habitables los cinturones de barrios marginales que circundan Caracas y otras ciudades, mediante diferentes formas de organización, cuya nueva expresión son los consejos comunales.
MÁS CARGOS Y MÁS MUJERES
Las instituciones aumentaron en Venezuela con la Constitución de 1999, que reemplazó la de 1961 y sumó dos poderes a los tres tradicionales del Estado: Ejecutivo, Legislativo, Judicial, Electoral y Moral, subdividido éste en la Fiscalía General, la Contraloría y la Defensoría del Pueblo.
A la cabeza de cinco de esas siete instituciones se encuentran mujeres, que presiden la unicameral Asamblea Nacional (dominada por el oficialismo tras el retiro de la oposición en los comicios de 2005), el Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, el Consejo Nacional Electoral, la Defensoría del Pueblo y la Fiscalía General.
En la Asamblea hay 128 hombres y 29 mujeres (17 por ciento), aunque varias ocuparon el escaño como suplentes de varones que fueron a otros destinos. El Poder Electoral estableció desde 2005 una paridad total de género en candidaturas a cuerpos deliberantes, pero los varones han ocupado las posiciones con mayor opción de victoria.
También son mujeres un tercio de quienes integran los 24 parlamentos regionales, 60 de las 335 alcaldías, cinco de los 22 ministerios y tres de las 24 gobernaciones de estados, según cifras del Ministerio de la Mujer. Con excepción de las alcaldesas, las cifras son parecidas a las anteriores a 1999.
"En los últimos 10 años hemos tenido un avance inimaginable para cerrar la brecha histórica entre la acción constructora de las mujeres y su papel en la toma de decisiones políticas, sociales y económicas, no sólo en los altos poderes públicos, sino en el poder popular", aseveró la ministra León.
Flor Ríos, de la Comisión de Familia, Mujer y Juventud de la Asamblea, observó a IPS que "aunque la mujer ocupa ahora bastantes cargos y encabeza poderes públicos, todavía está lejos de la paridad y de posiciones relevantes para la administración de fondos y conducción ejecutiva del país".
"Puede haber progresos en organizaciones de base, como consejos comunales, que se benefician del interés y la capacidad de la mujer para participar en la búsqueda de solución a los problemas", dijo a IPS María Guzmán, de la no gubernamental Fundación para los Derechos de la Mujer Latinoamericana.
"Pero la representación en altos cargos no es sinónimo de empoderamiento de género", puntualizó.
CONTRADICCIÓN EN LOS DISCURSOS
"Yo me declaro feminista. ¡Que vivan las mujeres! Como decía Simón Bolívar, la mujer no es igual al hombre, sino que nos supera", repite con frecuencia el presidente Hugo Chávez.
Este mes invitó "a todos los hombres de este país, a que nos declaremos feministas", pues "no habrá liberación de los pueblos sin liberación de la mujer".
Horas después, Chávez descalificó a Cecilia García Arocha, primera mujer elegida rectora de la Universidad Central, la principal del país, por haber criticado al Ministerio de Educación Superior durante una marcha universitaria contra recortes presupuestarios.
"No sé cómo una señora tan irresponsable y embustera es rectora de una universidad", dijo Chávez, en la más reciente frase con la que, según adversarios y organizaciones de mujeres, exhibe el machismo, paternalismo o militarismo que signaría su gobierno.
Analistas y medios críticos recuerdan que el mandatario expone un discurso que contradice sus otras expresiones a favor de las causas de la mujer y la equidad de género, en su presencia ante los micrófonos, a través de los cuales ha hablado más de 3.000 horas.
Por ejemplo, cuando estaba casado con Marisabel Rodríguez, su segunda esposa, le anunció públicamente que "esta noche te doy lo tuyo". Otra vez dijo que la ex secretaria de Estado (canciller) de Estados Unidos, Condoleezza Rice, requeriría que "le hagan el favor" y ofreció a un alcalde para ello, al argumentar sus discrepancias con Washington.
En otra ocasión anunció que vencería a los opositores en una elección y con ellos "jugaremos al rojo", un soez juego de palabras que evoca la sodomía y es propio de bares para varones.
"El discurso de cualquier líder político, sea de la oposición o del oficialismo, debe tener elementos modélicos. Las formas importan mucho, y más en una sociedad con índices de maltrato doméstico y violencia tan altos y una discriminación de género importante", dijo a IPS Liliana Ortega, de la coalición de organizaciones humanitarias Foro por la Vida.
Hace cinco años eran mujeres el uno por ciento de las víctimas de homicidios y en 2008 fueron seis por ciento, precisó Ortega. "En la TV estatal se burlan de la orientación sexual de la gente, y en sus programas de opinión, las mujeres de oposición a veces son tildadas de amantes o mantenidas de fulano o zutano", deploró.
"Así se reafirman modelos indeseables en una sociedad moderna", afirmó.
Además, opinó Ortega, las mujeres que encabezan actualmente poderes públicos "no han sido contradictoras o independientes sino seguidoras de decisiones del Ejecutivo".
Guzmán abundó que "la mujer es afectada por la división política del país en dos pedazos, y por el discurso oficial, que agregó al machismo y paternalismo del que progresivamente nos alejábamos, el componente del militarismo y el uso de imágenes confrontacionales como guerra, batalla, enemigo, escuadras y cañones".
Pero León sostuvo que "por encima de cualesquiera circunstancias, la revolución que lidera el presidente Chávez ha sido la más esperanzadora en la historia venezolana. Hemos logrado cambios institucionales, como tener un Banco de la Mujer, y las políticas públicas hacia la mujer tienen, por primera vez, una fuerte interlocución en las bases".
Drinking the Kool-Aid of Corporate America
The Dairy Oligarchy
By JIM GOODMAN
Dairy farmers are in deep trouble. Milk prices have fallen by half since last year, dropping to a 30-year low. Consumption has fallen in light of the slowing world economy and now there is a huge milk surplus, or so the “experts” tell us.
It's a nice theory, surplus equals low prices, easy to explain and easily accepted by farmers. Farmers want an explanation, they listen to the dairy ”experts”, they drink the kool-aid.
Farm prices, like the rest of the world economy, crashed because of a globalized, unregulated free market system, not because of surplus product. According to New York dairy farmer/market analyst John Bunting “dairy markets are run by an oligarchy-- a few elite players-- with little or no government oversight”. The parallels between the current dairy price crash and the Wall Street financial crash are pointedly exact.
Both crashes were engineered by the same sort of folks, those who promised us they had the Midas Touch but were instead, Bulls in the China Shop.
Just as Wall Street investment bankers took advantage of the removal of regulatory safeguards put in place by the government after the 1930's depression, so did the “elite players” of the dairy industry take advantage when the US Congress scraped parity dairy pricing in 1981.
Until 1981 as Bunting shows, farm and consumer milk prices were perfectly correlated. Since 1981 (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) inflation adjusted farm prices have steadily fallen while consumer prices have steadily risen.
Increased 2009 first quarter earnings of Kraft Foods (up 29%) and Dean Foods (up 39%) came, according to The Milkweed, “from dairy farmers' grief”.
If US dairy farmers are overproducing, why are imports of dairy product constantly rising? The National Milk Producers Federation notes “In the past 10 years alone, the value of dairy imports sold in the U.S. has expanded from $800 million, to nearly $3 billion”.
Why have cheese imports increased in the first quarter of 2009 over 2008? Or as Bunting notes, how can free falling milk prices be justified by the following data?
Nearly as much nonfat dry milk was exported in December 2008 as was exported in December 2007.
December 2008 imports of milk protein concentrates were massive.
Imports of casein, another dairy derived protein, also increased in December 2008.
“Butter and other milkfats” imports increased nearly 60% in December 2008 compared with December 2007.
Cheese imports for December 2008 increased 15% over December 2007.
Commercial disappearance of dairy products increased in December 2008 and for the 2008 year increased 2.6% according to USDA data.
Just as US corporations shipped jobs to low wage workers overseas, Kraft and Dean Foods welcome the products of lower wage overseas farmers. Just as low priced foreign textiles, electronics and auto parts put US workers out of their jobs, so are foreign farm imports putting US farmers out of business.
Clearly, supply and demand does not control farm prices, nor do low priced imports mean lower consumer prices. Just as in the financial sector or the manufacturing sector, prosperity is intentionally funneled to the top at the misery and expense of the workers and taxpayers.
Government regulation on behalf of the worker and consumer appears to be non-existent. Yet we continue to listen to the economists, the corporate oligarchs and Congress who keep telling us prosperity is just around the corner, globalization and the free market will deliver us all.
More kool-aid anyone?
Jim Goodman is a dairy farmer and activist from Wonewoc, WI and a WK Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow.
By JIM GOODMAN
Dairy farmers are in deep trouble. Milk prices have fallen by half since last year, dropping to a 30-year low. Consumption has fallen in light of the slowing world economy and now there is a huge milk surplus, or so the “experts” tell us.
It's a nice theory, surplus equals low prices, easy to explain and easily accepted by farmers. Farmers want an explanation, they listen to the dairy ”experts”, they drink the kool-aid.
Farm prices, like the rest of the world economy, crashed because of a globalized, unregulated free market system, not because of surplus product. According to New York dairy farmer/market analyst John Bunting “dairy markets are run by an oligarchy-- a few elite players-- with little or no government oversight”. The parallels between the current dairy price crash and the Wall Street financial crash are pointedly exact.
Both crashes were engineered by the same sort of folks, those who promised us they had the Midas Touch but were instead, Bulls in the China Shop.
Just as Wall Street investment bankers took advantage of the removal of regulatory safeguards put in place by the government after the 1930's depression, so did the “elite players” of the dairy industry take advantage when the US Congress scraped parity dairy pricing in 1981.
Until 1981 as Bunting shows, farm and consumer milk prices were perfectly correlated. Since 1981 (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) inflation adjusted farm prices have steadily fallen while consumer prices have steadily risen.
Increased 2009 first quarter earnings of Kraft Foods (up 29%) and Dean Foods (up 39%) came, according to The Milkweed, “from dairy farmers' grief”.
If US dairy farmers are overproducing, why are imports of dairy product constantly rising? The National Milk Producers Federation notes “In the past 10 years alone, the value of dairy imports sold in the U.S. has expanded from $800 million, to nearly $3 billion”.
Why have cheese imports increased in the first quarter of 2009 over 2008? Or as Bunting notes, how can free falling milk prices be justified by the following data?
Nearly as much nonfat dry milk was exported in December 2008 as was exported in December 2007.
December 2008 imports of milk protein concentrates were massive.
Imports of casein, another dairy derived protein, also increased in December 2008.
“Butter and other milkfats” imports increased nearly 60% in December 2008 compared with December 2007.
Cheese imports for December 2008 increased 15% over December 2007.
Commercial disappearance of dairy products increased in December 2008 and for the 2008 year increased 2.6% according to USDA data.
Just as US corporations shipped jobs to low wage workers overseas, Kraft and Dean Foods welcome the products of lower wage overseas farmers. Just as low priced foreign textiles, electronics and auto parts put US workers out of their jobs, so are foreign farm imports putting US farmers out of business.
Clearly, supply and demand does not control farm prices, nor do low priced imports mean lower consumer prices. Just as in the financial sector or the manufacturing sector, prosperity is intentionally funneled to the top at the misery and expense of the workers and taxpayers.
Government regulation on behalf of the worker and consumer appears to be non-existent. Yet we continue to listen to the economists, the corporate oligarchs and Congress who keep telling us prosperity is just around the corner, globalization and the free market will deliver us all.
More kool-aid anyone?
Jim Goodman is a dairy farmer and activist from Wonewoc, WI and a WK Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow.
La Cumbre de Puno sienta las bases para la creación de unas Naciones Unidas Indígenas
La IV Cumbre de Indígenas de las Américas se cerró ayer con la intención de aumentar la fuerza política de las poblaciones originarias
Gara
La cuarta edición de la Cumbre de las Comunidades Indígenas de América, que se ha desarrollado en la localidad peruana de Puno, finalizó ayer con una propuesta de creación de una Unión Mundial de Naciones Indígenas, una especie de Naciones Unidas de pueblos originarios.
La IV Cumbre de Indígenas de las Américas se cerró ayer con un acuerdo para crear una Unión Mundial de Naciones Indígenas que canalice esfuerzos y aumente la fuerza política que los nativos han adquirido en los últimos años.
El creciente poder político de los indígenas, pero igualmente la necesidad de unir criterios para proponer modelos alternativos de desarrollo y no quedarse sólo en críticas, están en la base de esta idea, todavía embrionaria, que ha planeado a lo largo de tres días de una reunión en la que participaron 5.000 delegados.
En una declaración leída este domingo se señala «la necesidad de continuar la lucha indígena mediante su unión internacional». En ese contexto du- rante la cumbre se hicieron los primeros enlaces con la Conferencia de las Naciones sin Estado de Europa (CONSEU), que reúne a minorías étnicas europeas, a fin de establecer a futuro una «alianza estratégica».
Miguel Palacín, coordinador general de la cumbre, señaló que «la unión de los pueblos indígenas a nivel mundial es un paso natural que debe darse», aunque en esta cita no se estableció la vía concreta de cómo avanzar hacia allí.
En las sesiones los delegados fustigaron al modelo neoliberal capitalista, al que culparon de la expoliación de los recursos naturales en los territorios indígenas, aunque hay diferencias sobre cómo tratar el problema.
Sobre cómo afrontar a las transnacionales surgieron voces que iban desde su expulsión, por el saqueo provocado en las comunidades indígenas, hasta la necesidad de llegar al diálogo y negociaciones para permitirles una actividad equilibrada que no perjudique el modo de vida indígena ni el medio ambiente.
Gara
La cuarta edición de la Cumbre de las Comunidades Indígenas de América, que se ha desarrollado en la localidad peruana de Puno, finalizó ayer con una propuesta de creación de una Unión Mundial de Naciones Indígenas, una especie de Naciones Unidas de pueblos originarios.
La IV Cumbre de Indígenas de las Américas se cerró ayer con un acuerdo para crear una Unión Mundial de Naciones Indígenas que canalice esfuerzos y aumente la fuerza política que los nativos han adquirido en los últimos años.
El creciente poder político de los indígenas, pero igualmente la necesidad de unir criterios para proponer modelos alternativos de desarrollo y no quedarse sólo en críticas, están en la base de esta idea, todavía embrionaria, que ha planeado a lo largo de tres días de una reunión en la que participaron 5.000 delegados.
En una declaración leída este domingo se señala «la necesidad de continuar la lucha indígena mediante su unión internacional». En ese contexto du- rante la cumbre se hicieron los primeros enlaces con la Conferencia de las Naciones sin Estado de Europa (CONSEU), que reúne a minorías étnicas europeas, a fin de establecer a futuro una «alianza estratégica».
Miguel Palacín, coordinador general de la cumbre, señaló que «la unión de los pueblos indígenas a nivel mundial es un paso natural que debe darse», aunque en esta cita no se estableció la vía concreta de cómo avanzar hacia allí.
En las sesiones los delegados fustigaron al modelo neoliberal capitalista, al que culparon de la expoliación de los recursos naturales en los territorios indígenas, aunque hay diferencias sobre cómo tratar el problema.
Sobre cómo afrontar a las transnacionales surgieron voces que iban desde su expulsión, por el saqueo provocado en las comunidades indígenas, hasta la necesidad de llegar al diálogo y negociaciones para permitirles una actividad equilibrada que no perjudique el modo de vida indígena ni el medio ambiente.
6/9/09
Politics as Drugs / Drugs as Politics
As Mexican Election Looms, Calederon Presses Drug War on Opposition Strongholds
By JOHN ROSS
CounterPunch
Despite a raging war against homegrown drug cartels, politics may well be Mexico's most dangerous drug. Addicted to authority, Mexican politicos crave more and more power and are disposed to obtain same by any means necessary. Conversely, the powerless, who are legion, crave drugs to assuage their condition.
In three years of Felipe Calderon's questionable presidency, both drug use and the powerlessness of the poor have skyrocketed. Meanwhile, Calderon's self-inflicted war on drugs that has taken 10,000 lives since his dubious 2006 election has itself become an instrument of political power.
Witness events in Michoacan last week. On May 26th, heavily armed and masked federal police kicked down the great doors of the Government Palace in the capital city of Morelia, taking 19 state officials prisoner. Among those arrested was Citlali Fernandez, a special adviser to Governor Leonel Godoy. Fernandez is alleged to have a "sentimental" attachment to a drug lord nicknamed "El Tio" ("The Uncle") - Dionicio Loya is accused of being a spokesperson for the peculiar local cartel "La Familia Michoacana." In addition, federal police raided city halls across this central pacific state, carrying off 10 mayors.
President Calderon is himself a native of Michoacan, even once running unsuccessfully for governor on the right-wing PAN party ticket.
The current governor Lionel Godoy is a veteran leader of the left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and one-time party president. Godoy at first loudly protested the detentions but has since lapsed into a cautious silence.
Long-time observers of Michoacan politics who habitually gather each day under the porticos of the state capital's central plaza a block from the government palace speculate that Calderon's police threatened the governor with arrest if he did not desist in protesting the detentions - Godoy's kid brother, a candidate for municipal president of Lazaro Cardenas, a bustling port city, was reportedly recently questioned by security forces.
The unprecedented raids, which strained the delicate federal-state balance as defined by the Mexican Constitution, came one month before critical mid-term elections in which 500 seats in the lower house are up for grabs. The mid-terms, which will determine who is in the driver's seat for the 2012 presidential run, are, in effect, a referendum on Calderon's inept governance, and are the first federal elections since he flimflammed the 2006 vote from leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), a fraud protested by millions.
Under Calderon's unsteady hand, Mexico has fallen into ruins. Despite dubbing himself the "President of Employment", unemployment numbers are at a 13-year high - more than 2,000,000 jobs will have been lost by the end of 2009 at the current rate of attrition and the economy is headed for -7% negative "growth". Oil prices continue to stagnate after a $100 a barrel tumble earlier this year and exports are plummeting - the shutdown of the transnational automobile industry that accounts for a fifth of all exports to the U.S. portends fresh disaster.
Moreover, moneys sent home by Mexican workers in El Norte have been cut 20% and the recent swine flu panic combined with bloodcurdling drug violence has crushed the tourist industry, Mexico's third source of dollars.
Calderon's war on seven drug cartels which was declared just days after his chaotic December 2006 inauguration in a effort to flout his uncertain authority, has turned into a gory fracaso - Amnesty International's 2008 annual human rights report unveiled just last week in London decries violations of individual guarantees by Mexican police and military that have resulted in a score of executions of innocents and generated over a thousand formal complaints to the government's own National Human Rights Commission (CNDH).
The Amnesty report underscores the impunity of the military - soldiers who have been implicated in extra-judicial killings and kidnappings are judged by an internal military justice system with no civilian oversight. As the AI investigation points out, the press has become a target of choice for both the drug gangs and the security forces - two reporters in drug-saturated Durango and Coahuila states have been murdered by unknowns in the past month.
Despite wounded denials, there is little doubt that Calderon's assault on Michoacan officials obeys the electoral calendar. Of the ten mayors arrested, six represented the once-ruling PRI that Calderon's PAN considers its chief rival on July 5th, and three were members of the badly-split PRD. The use of the drug war as an electoral tool in Michoacan follows on the heels of similar machinations in Zacatecas, a northern state also ruled by the PRD where Governor Amalia Garcia is reportedly under investigation after 53 alleged narcos were broken out of a local penitentiary last month (April) by an armed commando thought to be associated with the Zetas, once enforcers for the Gulf Cartel but now working for themselves.
In addition, Zacatecas senator Ricardo Monreal, himself a former PRD governor and a supporter of Lopez Obrador, has been forced to take a leave of absence from the legislature after a brother was accused of stashing 14 tons of marijuana in a chile drying shed on his property in Fresnillo.
Calderon's hard hand against presumed left-wing narco-politicos in Michoacan and Zacatecas contrasts markedly with the kid-gloves handling of Morelos governor Marco Antonio Adame, a PANista - Adame's Secretary of Public Security is currently being held for colluding with the Sinaloa-based Beltran Leyva Cartel. When federal police laid siege to the home of the gang's supposed leader in Morelos a mere block and a half from the Cuernavaca Palace of Government where Adame dispatches, the governor was conveniently out of town. The last four governors of this tiny enclave just south of Mexico City have been accused of ties to the narcos.
The 29 Michoacan officials hauled in by Calderon's drug cops are now cooling their heels in a Mexico City lockdown where they have declared themselves on hunger strike - hundreds of relatives and supporters have traveled from Michoacan to protest their incarcerations. Prosecutors indicate the accused will undergo 40 days of interrogation and will not be considered for release until after the July 5th election.
All are fingered for aiding and abetting the very sui generis Michoacan cartel known as La Familia, which stands accused of dumping five severed heads on an Uruapan dance floor on the eve of Calderon's 2006 election and the terrorist bombing of Independence eve celebrations last September 15th in Morelia over which Godoy presided - nine citizens were killed. La Familia claims the bombing was the work of their rivals, the Zetas. Despite their violent track record, La Familia proclaims in Internet press bulletins and "narco-mantas" (banners draped from pedestrian overpasses in Michoacan cities) that it supports "family values."
La Familia is said to run dozens of speed labs in the scorched southern hills of Tierra Caliente in addition to marijuana production in that bioregion. The Family is reputedly at war with the Zetas for control of Lazaro Cardenas, the Pacific coast container port through which Colombian cocaine is purported to flow like the mighty Amazon.
The wags gathered over café under the porticos in Morelia concur that the current brouhaha is indeed a family affair: La Familia Michoacana vs. the Familia Calderon - the president's sister is the boss of the state PAN and has aspirations to succeed Godoy as governor.
The July 5th vote taking is the first federal balloting since the fraud-tarred debacle of 2006 and comes at a point when high dudgeon at the political parties is peaking. With the PAN held responsible for wrecking the economy and steeping the nation in blood, and both the PRD, torn between Lopez Obrador and the devious faction known as Los Chuchus that controls the party machine, and the PRI in maximum disarray, as few as 30% of the electorate out of 77 million registered Mexicans are expected to show up at the polls July 5th.
The PRI, which ran the lives of Mexicans from the cradle to the grave for seven decades before being ousted by the right-wingers, has been ripped asunder of late by the revelations of former president Miguel De la Madrid, a party elder, who, during a radio interview with crusading newswoman Carmen Aristegui, broke with his party's sacrosanct code of Omerta, and admitted that his successor, the much-reviled Carlos Salinas de Gortari, had close ties to the narcos and fleeced the nation's treasury before leaving office. PRI bigwigs immediately rushed to De la Madrid's Mexico City home to paper over the scandal, issuing a bulletin explaining that the former president was in frail health and did not know what he was saying.
Other troubled players on the mid-term dance card are the so-called Mexican Environmental Green Party which is campaigning for a return of the death penalty, two tiny AMLO-associated parties that have long been the personal property of their leaders, and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) which wants to legalize drugs as a way of combating the drug war travesty.
Although absenteeism is a way of protesting the veniality of the Mexican political class and the parties it runs, some are plotting more active resistance, including marches to the polling stations and disruption of the voting process. The actions, spread spontaneously on blogs and the Internet by disaffected voters, include writing in joke candidates (Kurt Cobain and Heath Leger are suggested by one San Luis Potosi-based blogger who argues that the criteria for write-in candidates should be that they are dead.) Mexicans have a penchant for writing in tongue-in-cheek candidates when they are disaffected with those proposed by the political parties - the beloved comedian Cantinflas is said to have won the presidency in 1954 and Batman is always a popular nominee.
Activist-writers such as Jose Luis Crespo, the author of a detailed study of the 2006 fraud, and National University law professor John Ackerman suggest that voters make their disaffection patent. Some advocate scrawling slogans on their ballots like "Coruptos!" ("Corrupt Ones!") or "Que Se Vayan Todos!" ("That They Should All Be Kicked Out!), first sounded in the Argentinazo of 2002 when that South American nation had six presidents in three weeks.
Others, like the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), avowed enemies of the electoral process, have been monumentally silent for many months about the upcoming elections. It should be noted that 2010 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, an uprising that began after a fraud-marred election amidst widespread disparagement of the political class. Imbued with a sense of historical destiny, the Zapatistas have a fondness for such historical moments.
John Ross's "Iraqigirl - Diary of An Iraqi Teenager" (Haymarket) will be in the bookstores this June and his "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City" will be published by Nation Books this fall. If you have further information write johnross@igc.org or visit www.johnross-rebeljournamist.com
By JOHN ROSS
CounterPunch
Despite a raging war against homegrown drug cartels, politics may well be Mexico's most dangerous drug. Addicted to authority, Mexican politicos crave more and more power and are disposed to obtain same by any means necessary. Conversely, the powerless, who are legion, crave drugs to assuage their condition.
In three years of Felipe Calderon's questionable presidency, both drug use and the powerlessness of the poor have skyrocketed. Meanwhile, Calderon's self-inflicted war on drugs that has taken 10,000 lives since his dubious 2006 election has itself become an instrument of political power.
Witness events in Michoacan last week. On May 26th, heavily armed and masked federal police kicked down the great doors of the Government Palace in the capital city of Morelia, taking 19 state officials prisoner. Among those arrested was Citlali Fernandez, a special adviser to Governor Leonel Godoy. Fernandez is alleged to have a "sentimental" attachment to a drug lord nicknamed "El Tio" ("The Uncle") - Dionicio Loya is accused of being a spokesperson for the peculiar local cartel "La Familia Michoacana." In addition, federal police raided city halls across this central pacific state, carrying off 10 mayors.
President Calderon is himself a native of Michoacan, even once running unsuccessfully for governor on the right-wing PAN party ticket.
The current governor Lionel Godoy is a veteran leader of the left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) and one-time party president. Godoy at first loudly protested the detentions but has since lapsed into a cautious silence.
Long-time observers of Michoacan politics who habitually gather each day under the porticos of the state capital's central plaza a block from the government palace speculate that Calderon's police threatened the governor with arrest if he did not desist in protesting the detentions - Godoy's kid brother, a candidate for municipal president of Lazaro Cardenas, a bustling port city, was reportedly recently questioned by security forces.
The unprecedented raids, which strained the delicate federal-state balance as defined by the Mexican Constitution, came one month before critical mid-term elections in which 500 seats in the lower house are up for grabs. The mid-terms, which will determine who is in the driver's seat for the 2012 presidential run, are, in effect, a referendum on Calderon's inept governance, and are the first federal elections since he flimflammed the 2006 vote from leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), a fraud protested by millions.
Under Calderon's unsteady hand, Mexico has fallen into ruins. Despite dubbing himself the "President of Employment", unemployment numbers are at a 13-year high - more than 2,000,000 jobs will have been lost by the end of 2009 at the current rate of attrition and the economy is headed for -7% negative "growth". Oil prices continue to stagnate after a $100 a barrel tumble earlier this year and exports are plummeting - the shutdown of the transnational automobile industry that accounts for a fifth of all exports to the U.S. portends fresh disaster.
Moreover, moneys sent home by Mexican workers in El Norte have been cut 20% and the recent swine flu panic combined with bloodcurdling drug violence has crushed the tourist industry, Mexico's third source of dollars.
Calderon's war on seven drug cartels which was declared just days after his chaotic December 2006 inauguration in a effort to flout his uncertain authority, has turned into a gory fracaso - Amnesty International's 2008 annual human rights report unveiled just last week in London decries violations of individual guarantees by Mexican police and military that have resulted in a score of executions of innocents and generated over a thousand formal complaints to the government's own National Human Rights Commission (CNDH).
The Amnesty report underscores the impunity of the military - soldiers who have been implicated in extra-judicial killings and kidnappings are judged by an internal military justice system with no civilian oversight. As the AI investigation points out, the press has become a target of choice for both the drug gangs and the security forces - two reporters in drug-saturated Durango and Coahuila states have been murdered by unknowns in the past month.
Despite wounded denials, there is little doubt that Calderon's assault on Michoacan officials obeys the electoral calendar. Of the ten mayors arrested, six represented the once-ruling PRI that Calderon's PAN considers its chief rival on July 5th, and three were members of the badly-split PRD. The use of the drug war as an electoral tool in Michoacan follows on the heels of similar machinations in Zacatecas, a northern state also ruled by the PRD where Governor Amalia Garcia is reportedly under investigation after 53 alleged narcos were broken out of a local penitentiary last month (April) by an armed commando thought to be associated with the Zetas, once enforcers for the Gulf Cartel but now working for themselves.
In addition, Zacatecas senator Ricardo Monreal, himself a former PRD governor and a supporter of Lopez Obrador, has been forced to take a leave of absence from the legislature after a brother was accused of stashing 14 tons of marijuana in a chile drying shed on his property in Fresnillo.
Calderon's hard hand against presumed left-wing narco-politicos in Michoacan and Zacatecas contrasts markedly with the kid-gloves handling of Morelos governor Marco Antonio Adame, a PANista - Adame's Secretary of Public Security is currently being held for colluding with the Sinaloa-based Beltran Leyva Cartel. When federal police laid siege to the home of the gang's supposed leader in Morelos a mere block and a half from the Cuernavaca Palace of Government where Adame dispatches, the governor was conveniently out of town. The last four governors of this tiny enclave just south of Mexico City have been accused of ties to the narcos.
The 29 Michoacan officials hauled in by Calderon's drug cops are now cooling their heels in a Mexico City lockdown where they have declared themselves on hunger strike - hundreds of relatives and supporters have traveled from Michoacan to protest their incarcerations. Prosecutors indicate the accused will undergo 40 days of interrogation and will not be considered for release until after the July 5th election.
All are fingered for aiding and abetting the very sui generis Michoacan cartel known as La Familia, which stands accused of dumping five severed heads on an Uruapan dance floor on the eve of Calderon's 2006 election and the terrorist bombing of Independence eve celebrations last September 15th in Morelia over which Godoy presided - nine citizens were killed. La Familia claims the bombing was the work of their rivals, the Zetas. Despite their violent track record, La Familia proclaims in Internet press bulletins and "narco-mantas" (banners draped from pedestrian overpasses in Michoacan cities) that it supports "family values."
La Familia is said to run dozens of speed labs in the scorched southern hills of Tierra Caliente in addition to marijuana production in that bioregion. The Family is reputedly at war with the Zetas for control of Lazaro Cardenas, the Pacific coast container port through which Colombian cocaine is purported to flow like the mighty Amazon.
The wags gathered over café under the porticos in Morelia concur that the current brouhaha is indeed a family affair: La Familia Michoacana vs. the Familia Calderon - the president's sister is the boss of the state PAN and has aspirations to succeed Godoy as governor.
The July 5th vote taking is the first federal balloting since the fraud-tarred debacle of 2006 and comes at a point when high dudgeon at the political parties is peaking. With the PAN held responsible for wrecking the economy and steeping the nation in blood, and both the PRD, torn between Lopez Obrador and the devious faction known as Los Chuchus that controls the party machine, and the PRI in maximum disarray, as few as 30% of the electorate out of 77 million registered Mexicans are expected to show up at the polls July 5th.
The PRI, which ran the lives of Mexicans from the cradle to the grave for seven decades before being ousted by the right-wingers, has been ripped asunder of late by the revelations of former president Miguel De la Madrid, a party elder, who, during a radio interview with crusading newswoman Carmen Aristegui, broke with his party's sacrosanct code of Omerta, and admitted that his successor, the much-reviled Carlos Salinas de Gortari, had close ties to the narcos and fleeced the nation's treasury before leaving office. PRI bigwigs immediately rushed to De la Madrid's Mexico City home to paper over the scandal, issuing a bulletin explaining that the former president was in frail health and did not know what he was saying.
Other troubled players on the mid-term dance card are the so-called Mexican Environmental Green Party which is campaigning for a return of the death penalty, two tiny AMLO-associated parties that have long been the personal property of their leaders, and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) which wants to legalize drugs as a way of combating the drug war travesty.
Although absenteeism is a way of protesting the veniality of the Mexican political class and the parties it runs, some are plotting more active resistance, including marches to the polling stations and disruption of the voting process. The actions, spread spontaneously on blogs and the Internet by disaffected voters, include writing in joke candidates (Kurt Cobain and Heath Leger are suggested by one San Luis Potosi-based blogger who argues that the criteria for write-in candidates should be that they are dead.) Mexicans have a penchant for writing in tongue-in-cheek candidates when they are disaffected with those proposed by the political parties - the beloved comedian Cantinflas is said to have won the presidency in 1954 and Batman is always a popular nominee.
Activist-writers such as Jose Luis Crespo, the author of a detailed study of the 2006 fraud, and National University law professor John Ackerman suggest that voters make their disaffection patent. Some advocate scrawling slogans on their ballots like "Coruptos!" ("Corrupt Ones!") or "Que Se Vayan Todos!" ("That They Should All Be Kicked Out!), first sounded in the Argentinazo of 2002 when that South American nation had six presidents in three weeks.
Others, like the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), avowed enemies of the electoral process, have been monumentally silent for many months about the upcoming elections. It should be noted that 2010 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, an uprising that began after a fraud-marred election amidst widespread disparagement of the political class. Imbued with a sense of historical destiny, the Zapatistas have a fondness for such historical moments.
John Ross's "Iraqigirl - Diary of An Iraqi Teenager" (Haymarket) will be in the bookstores this June and his "El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City" will be published by Nation Books this fall. If you have further information write johnross@igc.org or visit www.johnross-rebeljournamist.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Armas
