By Joshua Kors, The Nation
Posted on September 4, 2008, Printed on September 4, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/97284/
Sgt. Juan Jimenez had one of the most dangerous jobs in Iraq, ushering top Administration officials through the war-torn streets of Baghdad. He returned home with two Purple Hearts and shrapnel lodged in his right arm. Today he is gravely ill.
What Jimenez didn't realize is that before he could receive benefits for his wounds, he'd have to prove that those wounds came from war. Three and a half years later, the sergeant is still making his case. The Department of Veterans Affairs isn't convinced. And it won't give him his benefits until it is.
The VA requires all veterans to prove their wounds are "service-connected" before it writes them a check. Jimenez thought that hurdle was merely a formality. The Army sergeant had been struck by two roadside bombs. The first sliced into his arms; six months later, a second bomb sprayed scrap metal into his face, knocking him unconscious and leaving him brain damaged. He began having seizures and suffering from memory loss. The blast left a persistent ringing in his right ear. The stress sparked nightmares, flashbacks and acid-reflux disease.
"I'm a different person now," Jimenez says glumly. "I come home; I lock myself in my room. I don't really talk to anyone. I used to be fun." Now, he says, he can't even have a bowl of cereal. It gives him heartburn for days. "That second bomb, it killed me -- it just left my body." Sick, suicidal, the sergeant sought help from the VA.
The VA's diagnosis: too much caffeine. "They said I was drinking too much Red Bull. That's what was causing my problems."
Jimenez got mad. At that point, he did something few veterans even consider: he sued the VA. The sergeant is a member of Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), one of the most prominent veterans' groups in the country. In July 2007, executive director Paul Sullivan filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Jimenez and the thousands of veterans in his organization who were wounded in Iraq and, he says, were rebuffed by the VA when they sought disability and medical benefits.
"The VA needs more than a few minor changes at the margins. It needs a massive overhaul," says Sullivan. His organization's lawsuit asked Judge Samuel Conti to do exactly that: radically restructure the VA and the way it processes veterans' claims. The VA moved immediately to get the case dismissed, asserting that Sullivan's organization didn't represent the nation's wounded vets and had no standing to demand an overhaul of a $94 billion government organization.
Judge Conti disagreed. The 86-year-old World War II veteran scheduled the trial for the end of April, and he demanded VA's top officials appear and take the stand. Over seven days VCS's lawyers would press them to explain internal e-mails and studies, statistics and videos, all suggesting that high-ranking officials purposely deceived Congress and the public, twisted data to cloak the VA's poor care of the ill and injured, and fired a prominent doctor who decided to expose the problems.
The Firing of Dr. Murphy
April 24, the fourth day of the VA trial. A crowd of wounded veterans sit in the San Francisco Federal Courthouse in stunned silence. On the courtroom's TV screen, a woman is explaining how her career fell to pieces. There is an unmistakable look of defeat on her face. As she pushes forward in her testimony, she slumps a bit in her white-striped pantsuit, and her voice begins to crack.
Dr. Frances Murphy had been one of the VA's shining stars. In 2004 she helped draft the Mental Health Strategic Plan, a blueprint for overhauling the VA. The plan called for 265 changes to the organization, among them: installing a tracking system to stay in touch with suicidal veterans, creating rehabilitation programs that involve veterans' families and streamlining the benefits process to resolve wounded veterans' immediate needs.
The plan was hailed by military leaders and veterans' groups. VA officials extolled it to reporters and members of Congress, citing it as proof of the organization's rapid transformation.
There was just one problem: the VA had done little to put the plan into practice. A recent Inspector General report found that 70 percent of VA facilities don't have a system to track suicidal veterans. Only a handful of VA hospitals have rehab programs that include families. And soldiers injured today face a benefits waiting list more than 650,000 veterans long.
Dr. Murphy knew it. She decided to speak out. And she had the perfect platform to do so: on March 29, 2006, almost two years after the plan's release, a group of prominent mental health organizations asked the doctor to address them in Washington. Following her speech, she would be given the Leadership in Government Award before an audience of high-profile figures: Senator Ted Kennedy, Surgeon General Richard Carmona, 60 Minutes's Mike Wallace and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
Dr. Murphy was blunt. Right now, she said, wounded veterans must climb over "a number of barriers" to receive their benefits. "It can be very confusing for veterans and family members to understand the services available to them and to navigate the systems." The VA promises veterans high-quality care. But "the promise of our state-of-the-art programs and scientific research is a hollow one if veterans who are struggling with the aftermath of severe trauma do not have equitable and timely access to quality mental healthcare near their homes. In some communities, VA clinics do not provide mental health or substance abuse care -- or waiting lists render that care virtually inaccessible."
Dr. Murphy's portrait of the VA was dramatically darker than the official version put forward by the organization's other top officials. As recently as March 2007, as waiting lists surged, Dr. Michael Kussman, head of the VA's health department, stepped before a Congressional committee and said, "We are ideally poised to be able to take care of the patients as they transition out" of the Army.
Dr. Kussman's comments meshed well with the warmer depiction of the VA put forward by Dr. Ira Katz. Katz, the VA's head of mental health, has become a key spokesman for the organization in recent years, underlining its success with the wounded and suicidal. With an MD and a PhD, soft speech and a gentle lisp, Katz has the credentials and the demeanor to paint a convincing image of a thriving VA.
In July 2007, after The Nation revealed that military doctors were purposely misdiagnosing soldiers wounded in Iraq as being mentally ill, the VA tapped Dr. Katz to appear before the House VA Committee and explain. The doctor had assuring words for the disgruntled legislators. "We have seen the press reports about that happening and are very concerned about those tragedies," he said. Dr. Katz said VA officials felt a "paternal" devotion to veterans' care and were committed to improving "the quality of care as well as access to care."
In November Dr. Katz was on camera again, this time on CBS News. Reporter Armen Keteyian had produced a groundbreaking report on veteran suicides. His five-month investigation found that in 2005 alone, more than 6,250 soldiers had committed suicide -- 120 deaths each week, eighteen suicides every day. Again, Dr. Katz was reassuring. "We are determined to decrease veteran suicides," he told Keteyian. But "there is no epidemic of suicide in the VA."
Keteyian's report sparked a second Congressional hearing. There Representative Steve Buyer, a Republican from Indiana, pressed Dr. Katz to explain his views. Dr. Katz used the opportunity to publicly attack CBS's suicide figures. "Their number is not, in fact, an accurate reflection of the [suicide] rate," he told the committee.
Privately, however, the doctor's views were very different. In an internal e-mail written days after his testimony, Dr. Katz embraced CBS's findings as a flat fact. "There are about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million veterans," he told Dr. Kussman. "[This] is supported by the CBS numbers."
Three months later Dr. Katz returned to his computer, this time to express dire concerns about the growing number of veteran suicides. "Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our facilities," he told his department's chief of media relations. It was information Dr. Katz did not want the public to see. He began the e-mail by writing, "Shh!" and concluded it by asking, "Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?"
It was information the doctor didn't want Keteyian to find either. Dr. Katz titled his e-mail: "Not for the CBS News Interview Request."
Dr. Murphy was intent on taking a different path. Speaking to the mental health leaders gathered in Washington at the 2006 conference, she concluded her comments by highlighting the danger of creating ambitious plans, then failing to enact them. "Government likes to begin things, to declare grand new programs and causes," she told the audience. "But good beginnings are not the measure of success, in government or any other pursuit. What matters in the end is completion. Performance. Results. Not just making promises."
Days later Dr. Murphy was fired. A few weeks after that, the VA brought in a new official to be the public face of the organization: Dr. Ira Katz.
In the San Francisco courtroom, on the TV screen, Dr. Murphy's eyes are near tears. "[I was] very surprised," she says. She asked her boss to explain the VA's decision. He "chose not to answer that question." Dr. Murphy approached Dr. Kussman about other VA positions that had become available. "[Kussman] said he'd be happy to give me an early retirement."
'Jail or the Military'
You might think that when soldiers return wounded from Iraq, it is assumed that they were wounded in Iraq. Not so. Under current VA policy, all soldiers have to prove that their wounds are the result of military service, even if they come home missing a leg or, like Sergeant Jimenez, with an arm heavy with shrapnel. Those who fail to make a convincing case cannot collect disability benefits.
To begin, veterans are asked to gather proof that they were wounded. The injured come to the VA carrying Purple Hearts and combat medals, folders thick with medical evaluations created in Iraq following their injuries. They are asked to provide the date and time they were wounded, to describe the circumstances surrounding the mortar or rocket blast. Veterans are often asked to contact those who witnessed the attack, to gather "buddy statements" that confirm the veracity of their stories.
"The system really pisses me off," says Bob Handy, chair of Veterans United for Truth. "These soldiers are seriously injured and emotionally traumatized, and when they get home, they make them jump through hoops to get their benefits." Handy's organization joined VCS in its lawsuit against the VA. He says he's especially disturbed by cases like Sergeant Jimenez's. "When you go into the VA with two Purple Hearts and X-rays show that you have shrapnel in your body, and you still can't get your benefits, that's punishing someone who's done a tremendous amount for this country."
VA spokeswoman Kerri Childress says the proof system is not meant as a swipe at soldiers. She says it's a standard mechanism to protect the VA from phony disability claims. "Veterans are human," says Childress. "Some are in desperate situations. Some have the choice of going to jail or the military. So a portion of them would commit fraud." If soldiers were no longer required to prove they are wounded, "it would be a travesty for veterans -- an assault to the pride of honest soldiers when other vets scammed the system."
Eliminating the proof requirement would open the VA's checkbook to fraudulent claims, says Childress, which is why granting claims without investigation would be "an abdication of our responsibility to the taxpayer."
The wounded veterans who gathered at the San Francisco trial say they are sensitive to the VA's economic concerns. Still, Childress's words leave them cold. For many, her fraud explanation sounds like an echo of Col. Steven Knorr. Knorr, former chief of the Department of Behavioral Health at Evans Army Hospital, at Fort Carson, Colorado, gained notoriety last year when NPR's Daniel Zwerdling broadcast a memo Knorr had written. The memo, which Knorr posted on his office bulletin board, warned doctors not to take soldiers' descriptions of their ailments at face value. "We're not naïve, and shouldn't automatically believe everything Soldiers tell us," the colonel wrote.
Military leaders assured the public that Knorr's admonition did not reflect the military's views on treating physically or psychologically wounded soldiers, including those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As the commander of Fort Carson, Gen. Robert Mixon, told Zwerdling, "We expect leaders to support soldiers' getting care and treatment without bias. And if we see evidence of bias, we will take disciplinary action against the leaders." But Knorr was never disciplined. And as the San Francisco trial revealed, the fraud concerns present in Knorr's and Childress's statements fit squarely with VA policy. A baffled crowd of veterans watched as their lawyer read from Chapter Fourteen of the VA's official training guide. The guide urges doctors to track down documents from veterans' schoolteachers and families, people who knew them before they say they were traumatized. That "before and after" comparison is critical, says the guide, since the doctor may wonder "about the degree of distortion or fabrication in the interview. The clinical picture of PTSD is relatively easy to fabricate."
None of these issues were on Sergeant Jimenez's radar when he entered the West Los Angeles VA in 2005 seeking treatment and benefits. Jimenez carried proof of his Purple Hearts as well as medical documents inked in Iraq following the two roadside bomb blasts. Eventually he was checked into the facility for an overnight exam so VA doctors could monitor the seizures and sleep apnea that began after the blow to his head. There, with the clinicians watching, Jimenez had an epileptic attack.
His doctor put him on a powerful anticonvulsant, Gabapentin. The medication would mix with other VA-prescribed drugs: Prozac for depression, Prazosin for nightmares and Bupropion to help the sergeant sleep. Jimenez was hesitant to take so much medication. Still, he says, he was relieved the VA had finally recognized the effects of his traumatic brain injury.
His relief was short-lived. Five months after he filed for disability, Jimenez received a letter from the VA. The ratings officer handling his case said there wasn't sufficient evidence to prove that Jimenez had a seizure disorder. The rater further expressed doubt as to whether the sergeant had suffered a head wound at all while serving in Iraq, noting that reports of his traumatic brain injury were "based on an oral history." He suggested that Jimenez's health problems may be the result of a car accident twenty-one years ago in which he bumped his head on the steering wheel.
Jimenez's claim was denied and so was his request for disability pay.
"I couldn't believe it," he says. "The VA is saying I don't have seizures. But they watched me have a seizure. And they're giving me medication for it. It doesn't make sense." The VA also turned down his claim for chronic headaches. "Everything the VA doctors said I had, the VA rater turned around and said I didn't have."
Jimenez appealed. His appeal is pending.
Paul Sullivan, director of VCS, says all veterans face an uphill battle when seeking disability benefits. The reason, he says, is that there's a "power disparity between the VA and the veterans who are seeking benefits from the VA."
Veterans are not allowed to meet with the ratings officer who decides their case. In fact, the VA guarantees all its raters complete anonymity; veterans are never told who is judging their claim. Without a face-to-face visit or telephone conversation, raters make their decisions based solely on military documents and medical records.
Legally, raters are required to accept doctors' diagnoses. But in practice, some don't. As Jimenez learned, some raters substitute their own medical judgment, though they have no medical accreditation.
That fact haunted Jimenez, especially after his seizure and headache claims were rejected. The sergeant wonders whether his rater would have changed his mind and accepted his doctor's diagnosis if only he had seen the scars on Jimenez's face and talked with him for a minute or two about what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night, petrified and wet with your own urine.
Many veterans say their greatest frustration is much simpler: they would like to pay a lawyer to make their case for them. Current VA regulations bar them from doing that. The prohibition on hiring a lawyer traces its roots to the 1860s, before the modern VA was established. The Lincoln Administration was concerned that lawyers would charge vulnerable Civil War veterans exorbitant fees for filing their disability papers. To stave off the lawyers, the government barred soldiers from paying them more than $10, effectively eliminating them from the process.
Today, says Childress, the VA's reasoning is slightly different. The ban is meant to level the playing field for impoverished soldiers. "Allowing veterans to have lawyers would be unfair to the vets without money," she says. Wealthy veterans would have high-priced lawyers and could potentially collect more benefits. "We care about indigent veterans, so we decided to keep the regulation in place."
The result is that all veterans have to fill out the twenty-six-page disability application on their own. The application is loaded with charts and legal jargon, requests for dates when the veteran was injured, the locations where he was treated, his family and employment history, questions about his pension and readjustment pay, and inquiries as to aggregate value of the veteran's spouse's mutual funds, along with her Social Security number, the name of her previous husband and the location of their wedding. There's also a large space for an essay on the veteran's military and medical history.
James Terry, chair of the VA's Board of Appeals, says the application isn't terribly complicated. "I have a PhD," he says, "but even if I only had a third-grade education, I think I could fill out the form."
But Sullivan says the application has proved a significant obstacle for many members of his organization, especially those who are brain damaged due to combat or haven't had a good night's sleep in months due to PTSD. "What's happening is that many veterans are saying, 'Aw, forget it' and not filing a claim," says Sullivan. "That really concerns us because these are the guys who need the benefits the most."
Human Time Versus VA Time
April 28, the fifth day of the VA trial. On the stand this morning is Michael Walcoff, one of the VA's top officials. He is facing sharp questions about how long it takes to get benefits to wounded veterans. Walcoff begins his two days of testimony with calm, confident words, but as the questions grow more pointed, the deputy under secretary starts to stammer and stumble.
Walcoff is having a particularly tough time defending a key VA statistic: that when a wounded veteran applies for benefits, it takes the VA an average of six months to process the claim. That figure has made many veterans' leaders angry. Bob Handy of Veterans United for Truth says the VA should be ashamed of making wounded veterans wait six months to find out whether or not they'll receive disability benefits. But the VA sees the statistic a bit differently. The organization has been aggressively promoting the six-month figure as a sign of progress, an improvement from 2001, when veterans faced a wait of seven and a half months.
In February 2006, Daniel Cooper, then head of the VA's benefits department, told the House VA Committee about the organization's six-month processing time. Two years later, VA officials returned to Capitol Hill with the same statistic. Patrick Dunne, the acting under secretary for benefits, told the Senate VA Committee, "In Fiscal Year 2007 our average processing time was 183 days," or 6.02 months.
To Elinor Roberts, the number sounded wrong. Roberts is a director at Swords to Plowshares, a nonprofit organization that guides low-income veterans through the VA process. "I've been working with veterans for fifteen years, and I'll tell you, six months to process a claim -- that would be warp speed." Roberts says the majority of the veterans she has worked with have waited "significantly longer." Like many others at the trial, she wanted to know how the VA calculated that figure.
From the witness stand, Walcoff explains. The VA does take an average of six months to complete a claim. But it depends on what you consider a "claim." By "claim," the VA is referring to both disability claims and pension claims, which take significantly less time. Internal VA documents show that some pension actions can be completed in less than an hour. Those rapid resolutions provide a counterbalance to more complicated claims, like a PTSD disability claim. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office shows that PTSD claims often take longer than one year.
Walcoff admits that including pension claims in the mix does lower the overall "claims average," but he says combining the two is not meant to deceive. It is simply that the VA has never isolated one set of claims. "We've always lumped them together," he says.
Completing a claim in six months also depends on what the word "complete" means. For thousands of veterans, filing a claim and receiving the VA's response is just the first step in a much longer journey toward collecting their benefits. That group includes veterans who decide to appeal the VA's decision. Like Sergeant Jimenez, they are upset that the VA rejected their claim or that the organization labeled their injury as a minor health issue and gave them a low disability rating. Ratings, from 0 to 100 percent disabled, dictate how large veterans' disability checks are and whether they are eligible for a lifetime of VA medical care.
In 2007, more than 32,000 veterans appealed the VA's initial decision. Those soldiers waited an average of three and a half years for their appeals to be processed, in addition to the six-month wait for the initial decision.
Asked to explain the three-and-a-half-year delay, Walcoff seems at a loss. He notes that appeals cases can be complex and that the VA has placed a greater focus on handling initial claims. "I wish I could say to you that that fully explains why it takes [so long], but I can't," he says. "This is an area that we have got to do better on."
When a veteran's claim is denied, the VA appeals board has the ability to reverse the decision. It also has the power to boost a veteran's disability rating. At other times the appeals board takes a third route: if the board sees an error in the paperwork, it can send the veteran's case back to the local VA that decided it the first time and demand that the local office do its work again. Returning the veteran's case to the local VA gets the claim fresh consideration. But it also means that essentially the veteran is back at square one. For wounded veterans in immediate need of benefits, having to pass through the entire system again can be a great strain.
This strain, however, doesn't appear in the VA's statistics. That's because, in calculating its decision time, the VA counts only a veteran's first pass through the system. Sullivan says some of the vets in his organization were rushed through the initial decision process in about three months. Then after their cases were returned to the local VA, it took about nine months to decide their claims the second time. A case like that, notes Sullivan, leaves the veteran waiting twelve months for benefits, but it lowers the VA's six-month average, since the organization counts only that first three-month pass through the system.
As Walcoff's testimony continues, his voice softens. He says he's aware of how long it takes to process a case. "These are not numbers that I'm particularly proud of," he says. Still, he insists the VA is taking action to speed the process. With a surge of excitement in his voice, Walcoff begins to describe a new VA program: Benefits Delivery at Discharge.
The BDD program allows wounded soldiers to submit their disability claims to the VA before they are officially discharged from the Army. Under BDD, soldiers can submit their claims six months before they leave the Armed Forces. "The idea here is that when a veteran knows that he is going to be getting out of the service and knows that he is going to be applying for benefits, why not take the application for benefits from him while he's still in the service, with the idea that when he becomes a veteran, we'll be able to pay him quicker," says Walcoff. "This is a program that we very much encourage."
The VA has been expanding the program at lightning speed. In 2007 more than 28,300 soldiers applied for benefits through BDD. This year the VA is on track to collect more than 43,000 claims through the program. It has been a boon for soldiers seeking rapid benefits.
It has also become a way for the VA to further skew its discharge figures. Under cross-examination, Walcoff admits that when the VA calculates the time it takes to process a claim, it treats BDD soldiers a bit differently. Normally the organization starts its clock when it receives a claim. With BDD soldiers, says Walcoff, the VA starts the clock when the soldier is discharged. When a soldier submits a claim six months before he leaves the Army and the VA takes six months and a day to process his claim, VA officials record the processing time as one day.
Why does the VA do this? "It was an oversight," Walcoff tells the veterans' attorney. "I mean, there was nothing intentionally that we were trying to hide." The deputy under secretary looks the lawyer in the eyes. "When you brought it up," he says, "that's the first time I thought of it."
Walcoff's testimony ends with a gruesome coda. He acknowledges that while a veteran's claim is pending, there is a way he can bring his case to a close: he can kill himself. For VA statistical purposes, a death is recorded as a "resolved" claim. Death "is a form of resolution," says Walcoff, but "it's certainly not the form that we want to see." When veterans die early in the claims process, their cases provide the VA with especially deceptive figures.
When veterans wait four or five months for disability benefits, then take their own life, family and friends often point to the VA for failing to provide care. But on paper, cases like that improve the VA's image. They are claims "resolved" in less than six months, further lowering the VA's average processing time.
After Walcoff is dismissed, the court takes a recess. Veterans spill into the hallway, shaking their heads and joking with one another about the VA's "six-month" processing time. "It just goes to show," says one veteran, "there's a real difference between human time and VA time."
'The Next Group of Guys'
July 4. Sergeant Jimenez wakes up and checks his e-mail. There is a message waiting for him from Paul Sullivan. Judge Conti's decision has come in. The news isn't good.
In his ruling, Conti calls the VA's current performance "troubling." He says the "Plaintiffs have demonstrated that their members have suffered injuries in fact. As testified to at trial, their members have faced significant delays in receiving disability benefits and medical care from the VA." Given the "dire consequences many of these veterans face without timely receipt of benefits or prompt treatment for medical conditions ... these injuries are anything but conjectural or hypothetical."
And yet, writes Conti, there is little he can do. While the structural changes suggested by Sullivan's organization "would likely result in the amelioration of the injuries," he is in no position to force those changes upon the VA. "The remedies sought by the Plaintiffs ... would call for a complete overhaul of the VA system, something clearly outside of this Court's jurisdiction."
The ruling angered Jimenez. "I don't understand it," he says. "If he recognizes the problem, he should do something about it."
Sullivan and his lawyers have appealed. Their case is pending before the Ninth Circuit. In the meantime, Sullivan has been working to raise awareness of the case, reaching out to other veterans' leaders and to members of Congress.
"I was disappointed at the outcome of the lawsuit," says Representative Bob Filner, chair of the House VA Committee. The Democrat from San Diego followed the case closely. He says the suit was "a creative way to bring attention to the fact that the VA is not doing its job. Constitutionally the judge is probably right: overhauling the VA is the executive branch's and Congress's job. But we haven't been doing it."
Filner says that had Judge Conti sided with the veterans, "it would have given us a lot of leverage" to make changes to the VA. As it is, "we're going to keep plugging along and doing what we can."
Jimenez, meanwhile, is working to get his life in order. His marriage collapsed when he returned from Iraq, under the weight of his sickness and suicidal depression. The 39-year-old is still adjusting to life on his own, in Yucaipa, California, an hour and a half from his four young children. He is also still clashing with the VA. Recently he had an appointment with his VA psychiatrist. When he arrived at the Loma Linda facility, he was turned away and told the doctor would not be coming in that day.
The sergeant has convinced the VA of some of his injuries. He is now receiving benefits for sleep apnea, chronic dyspepsia, PTSD and tinnitus. But the organization still believes his seizures and brain injury are unrelated -- and insists caffeine is a key culprit in his ills.
That kind of logic, says Jimenez, reminds him why the Conti ruling is such a disappointment. "I wanted the system to get fixed," he says, "not for me or other soldiers in the lawsuit but for the next group of guys, so when they come back from Iraq, they won't be overlooked."
Joshua Kors is an award-winning reporter based in New York.
© 2008 The Nation All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/97284/
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9/3/08
Amazon deforestation increases by 69% in last 12 months
The Associated Press
Amazon deforestation jumped 69 per cent in the past 12 months — the first such increase in three years — as rising demand for soy and cattle pushes farmers and ranchers to raze trees, officials said Saturday.
Some 8,147 square kilometers of forest were destroyed between August 2007 and August 2008 — a 69 per cent increase over the 4,820 square kilometers felled in the previous 12 months, according to the National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, which monitors destruction of the Amazon.
"We're not content," Brazil's environment minister, Carlos Minc, said.
"Deforestation has to fall more, and the conditions for sustainable development have to improve."
Brazil's government has increased cash payments to fight illegal Amazon logging this year, and it eliminated government bank loans to farmers who illegally clear forest to plant crops.
The country lost 2.7 per cent of its Amazon rain forest in 2007, or 11,000 square kilometers. Environmental officials fear even more land will be razed this year, but they have not forecast how much.
Minc says monthly deforestation rates have slowed since May, but environmental groups say seasonal shifts in tree cutting make the annual number a more accurate gauge.
Most deforestation happens in March and April, the start of Brazil's dry season, and routinely tapers off in May, June and July. Last month, 323 square kilometers of trees were felled, 61 per cent less than the area razed in June.
Environmentalists also argue that INPE's deforestation report wasn't designed to give accurate monthly figures but to alert and direct the government to deforestation hot spots in time to save the land.
The Amazon region covers about 4.1 million square kilometres of Brazil, nearly 60 per cent of the country. About 20 per cent of that land has already been deforested.
Amazon deforestation jumped 69 per cent in the past 12 months — the first such increase in three years — as rising demand for soy and cattle pushes farmers and ranchers to raze trees, officials said Saturday.
Some 8,147 square kilometers of forest were destroyed between August 2007 and August 2008 — a 69 per cent increase over the 4,820 square kilometers felled in the previous 12 months, according to the National Institute for Space Research, or INPE, which monitors destruction of the Amazon.
"We're not content," Brazil's environment minister, Carlos Minc, said.
"Deforestation has to fall more, and the conditions for sustainable development have to improve."
Brazil's government has increased cash payments to fight illegal Amazon logging this year, and it eliminated government bank loans to farmers who illegally clear forest to plant crops.
The country lost 2.7 per cent of its Amazon rain forest in 2007, or 11,000 square kilometers. Environmental officials fear even more land will be razed this year, but they have not forecast how much.
Minc says monthly deforestation rates have slowed since May, but environmental groups say seasonal shifts in tree cutting make the annual number a more accurate gauge.
Most deforestation happens in March and April, the start of Brazil's dry season, and routinely tapers off in May, June and July. Last month, 323 square kilometers of trees were felled, 61 per cent less than the area razed in June.
Environmentalists also argue that INPE's deforestation report wasn't designed to give accurate monthly figures but to alert and direct the government to deforestation hot spots in time to save the land.
The Amazon region covers about 4.1 million square kilometres of Brazil, nearly 60 per cent of the country. About 20 per cent of that land has already been deforested.
Ignacio del Valle un ejemplo para el pueblo mexicano
Andrés Avila Armella
Rebelión
La prensa mexicana e internacional nunca se ocupó de saber quién era Ignacio del Valle, cuando menos no antes del decreto expropiatorio que perjudicara al pueblo de San Salvador Atenco en favor del proyecto aeroportuario dirigido por el gran capital imperialista, no le importaba mencionarlo porque se trataba de un simple campesino, el cual, al igual que otros millones de mexicanos subsisten a duras penas con lo que la tierra y el trabajo da para mantener a sus familias. No era un personaje atractivo para ninguna revista, para ninguna editorial periodística, para ninguna foto, por qué habría de importarles a los neoliberales el pensar y el vivir de una familia campesina, por qué si a final de cuentas en su mente sólo ocupan un lugar a manera de números.
Seguramente cuando se hizo el cálculo para la construcción del aeropuerto, aquellos campesinos sólo aparecían como una simple cuenta para indemnizarse con la cantidad de 7 pesos el metro cuadrado; ni siquiera fueron vistos como importantes a manera de obstáculo, simplemente no eran nadie para ellos.
Pero Ignacio del Valle y su familia ya existían para el valiente pueblo de Atenco, reconocidos por sus convicciones, por su trabajo, por su honradez, porque a lo largo de su vida, y a través de la relación cotidiana con sus vecinos se sabía que eran personas honorables. Ésta condición la reafirmó al ser un protagonista destacado en la lucha por la defensa de la tierra, porque en lugar de tomar la posición cómoda de una imagen pública, Nacho del Valle decidió encabezar a su pueblo luchando con él codo a codo, sin ninguna pretensión de grandeza, siempre era el primero, quien marchaba hasta el frente con su machete sabiendo que el primer golpe de un granadero se lo llevaría él.
Digno sucesor de Emiliano Zapata, Ignacio del Valle se ganó la confianza de su pueblo gracias a su determinación, porque todos sabían que no importando lo que tuvieran en frente, siempre habría un hombre que estaría dispuesto a poner su vida y su integridad física de por medio, que no habría campesino luchando sólo porque a su lado siempre estaría don Nacho.
Por eso es que su figura ha resultado tan emblemática, porque representa en su persona la esencia misma de la resistencia popular, la realidad de la contradicción entre los intereses del capital y los del pueblo. Porque demostraba que el pueblo tiene hombres íntegros y absolutamente capaces de defenderse con los medios que tengan a su alcance, porque demuestra que el avance del capitalismo neoliberal en México no podrá avanzar más si no es sobre los restos de hombres como él.
El Estado mexicano se cubría de miedo cuando lo oía y lo veía, no podía ser como otros personajes insertados en la política institucional que por más que hablen se sabe que tienen precio, que siempre habrá un puesto, una dieta o una tentación que los haga tambalearse y dar pasos hacia atrás. Para la burguesía y sus cuidadores, Ignacio del Valle es como una fiera a la cual no se le puede domesticar, con la que no se puede tranzar, a la que no se le puede persuadir de que abandone su causa y de la espalda a sus compañeros que junto a él han librado otras batallas.
Representa la posibilidad de que esos hombres cabales y reconocidos por sus pueblos se radicalicen, que no sólo piensen en sí mismos o en sus luchas locales, sino que están dispuestos a escalar, a llevar su lucha más allá de sus propios terrenos, a arriesgarse peleando junto a otros que no conocen pero que saben de su misma condición de clase. ¿Cómo podía el Estado mexicano tolerar que un simple campesino que ayer sólo defendía sus tierras, hoy decidiera sumarse a una gran lucha nacional en contra del capitalismo? Tolerarlo sería admitir que el pueblo en general está al borde del descubrimiento de su condición de clase, que el pueblo está por identificar a su enemigo y decidirse a combatirlo.
Ignacio del Valle, su familia y su pueblo representan el peor de los temores de un Estado que pretende garantizar al gran capital que ésta es tierra fértil para sus proyectos. Representa la posibilidad de que en cada pueblo, por desapercibido que parezca, surjan hombres y mujeres decididos a pelear hasta el último momento antes que permitir al capitalismo arrasar con su dignidad.
Un hombre como Ignacio del Valle no puede permanecer impune- Exclamaban con lamentación los locutores de los medios electrónicos de comunicación, mientras éste era apresado y conducido al penal de exterminio de “El Altiplano”, - su libertad es un atentado al estado de derecho- continuaban diciendo para pedir su reclusión.
El ejemplo que el Estado mexicano dio a nuestro pueblo el 3 y 4 de mayo del 2006 resulta muy significativo, ha sido la muestra, reafirmada ese mismo año en Oaxaca, de que se piensa castigar con la mayor dureza a aquellos elementos del pueblo que carezcan de miedo a la hora de enfrentarse con sus fuerzas policíacas y militares, y sobre todo si demuestran el coraje e incorruptibilidad que han caracterizado a del Valle. Pero la cosa no ha quedado ahí, no conformes con intoxicar el pueblo de San Salvador Atenco con gases tóxicos, de allanar casas, violar mujeres, torturar a los detenidos, asesinar a un joven de 14 años y otro de 20, han decidido reiterar contundentemente que no se trató de un error. Ignacio del Valle fue condenado junto con Felipe Álvarez y Héctor Galindo a 67 años de prisión, y la semana pasada han tenido el descaro de sentenciarlos a 31 años más.
Éstas penas son históricas, no las alcanzan ni los más temibles narcotraficantes ni secuestradores, no las alcanzan los asesinos ni los violadores, son penas muy superiores, por ejemplo a las que el régimen de Porfirio Díaz dictó a los huelguistas rebeldes de Cananea que fueron sentenciados a 15 años de prisión.
La situación es alarmante y aterradoramente representativa, en efecto no se trata de un error sino de una política de Estado que claramente apunta a imponer, a como de lugar, los proyectos encomendados desde el imperialismo norteamericano, quien ve con beneplácito todos estos sucesos y confía que a través del terror se puede consolidar un gobierno dócil y afín a sus intereses, tal como lo tuvieron con las dictaduras militares en el cono sur y lo tienen en el régimen narco-paramilitar de Álvaro Uribe Vélez en Colombia.
Lo peor para ellos es que así como no contaban con Ignacio del Valle, por ahora no cuentan con todos y cada uno de los mexicanos que permanecen ocultos en su parcela o en su centro de trabajo, pero que son hombres y mujeres decididas, dispuestos a salvar sus derechos y su dignidad, es decir, no cuentan con que el pueblo mexicano tiene entre sus filas a miles como Ignacio del Valle y que tarde o temprano los van a conocer. Para todos ellos la sentencia está dictada, si se atreven a luchar serán condenados a morir en una cárcel de máxima seguridad y serán difamados públicamente en todos los medios masivos de comunicación.
Lo que no podrán impedir tampoco, será que cada vez más, Ignacio del Valle se convierta en un referente de lucha para el pueblo mexicano, que cada vez sean más quienes sigan su ejemplo y además de luchar por sus reivindicaciones, luchen también por liberarlo, porque así corresponde, porque hasta el último momento Ignacio del Valle peleó defendiendo a los campesinos y arriesgándose con ellos, porque él es uno de ellos.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Maestro en Estudios Latinoamericanos por la UNAM. Militante del Comité de Lucha por el Movimiento de Emancipación Nacional (COLMENA). andresavilaarmella@yahoo.com.mx
Rebelión
La prensa mexicana e internacional nunca se ocupó de saber quién era Ignacio del Valle, cuando menos no antes del decreto expropiatorio que perjudicara al pueblo de San Salvador Atenco en favor del proyecto aeroportuario dirigido por el gran capital imperialista, no le importaba mencionarlo porque se trataba de un simple campesino, el cual, al igual que otros millones de mexicanos subsisten a duras penas con lo que la tierra y el trabajo da para mantener a sus familias. No era un personaje atractivo para ninguna revista, para ninguna editorial periodística, para ninguna foto, por qué habría de importarles a los neoliberales el pensar y el vivir de una familia campesina, por qué si a final de cuentas en su mente sólo ocupan un lugar a manera de números.
Seguramente cuando se hizo el cálculo para la construcción del aeropuerto, aquellos campesinos sólo aparecían como una simple cuenta para indemnizarse con la cantidad de 7 pesos el metro cuadrado; ni siquiera fueron vistos como importantes a manera de obstáculo, simplemente no eran nadie para ellos.
Pero Ignacio del Valle y su familia ya existían para el valiente pueblo de Atenco, reconocidos por sus convicciones, por su trabajo, por su honradez, porque a lo largo de su vida, y a través de la relación cotidiana con sus vecinos se sabía que eran personas honorables. Ésta condición la reafirmó al ser un protagonista destacado en la lucha por la defensa de la tierra, porque en lugar de tomar la posición cómoda de una imagen pública, Nacho del Valle decidió encabezar a su pueblo luchando con él codo a codo, sin ninguna pretensión de grandeza, siempre era el primero, quien marchaba hasta el frente con su machete sabiendo que el primer golpe de un granadero se lo llevaría él.
Digno sucesor de Emiliano Zapata, Ignacio del Valle se ganó la confianza de su pueblo gracias a su determinación, porque todos sabían que no importando lo que tuvieran en frente, siempre habría un hombre que estaría dispuesto a poner su vida y su integridad física de por medio, que no habría campesino luchando sólo porque a su lado siempre estaría don Nacho.
Por eso es que su figura ha resultado tan emblemática, porque representa en su persona la esencia misma de la resistencia popular, la realidad de la contradicción entre los intereses del capital y los del pueblo. Porque demostraba que el pueblo tiene hombres íntegros y absolutamente capaces de defenderse con los medios que tengan a su alcance, porque demuestra que el avance del capitalismo neoliberal en México no podrá avanzar más si no es sobre los restos de hombres como él.
El Estado mexicano se cubría de miedo cuando lo oía y lo veía, no podía ser como otros personajes insertados en la política institucional que por más que hablen se sabe que tienen precio, que siempre habrá un puesto, una dieta o una tentación que los haga tambalearse y dar pasos hacia atrás. Para la burguesía y sus cuidadores, Ignacio del Valle es como una fiera a la cual no se le puede domesticar, con la que no se puede tranzar, a la que no se le puede persuadir de que abandone su causa y de la espalda a sus compañeros que junto a él han librado otras batallas.
Representa la posibilidad de que esos hombres cabales y reconocidos por sus pueblos se radicalicen, que no sólo piensen en sí mismos o en sus luchas locales, sino que están dispuestos a escalar, a llevar su lucha más allá de sus propios terrenos, a arriesgarse peleando junto a otros que no conocen pero que saben de su misma condición de clase. ¿Cómo podía el Estado mexicano tolerar que un simple campesino que ayer sólo defendía sus tierras, hoy decidiera sumarse a una gran lucha nacional en contra del capitalismo? Tolerarlo sería admitir que el pueblo en general está al borde del descubrimiento de su condición de clase, que el pueblo está por identificar a su enemigo y decidirse a combatirlo.
Ignacio del Valle, su familia y su pueblo representan el peor de los temores de un Estado que pretende garantizar al gran capital que ésta es tierra fértil para sus proyectos. Representa la posibilidad de que en cada pueblo, por desapercibido que parezca, surjan hombres y mujeres decididos a pelear hasta el último momento antes que permitir al capitalismo arrasar con su dignidad.
Un hombre como Ignacio del Valle no puede permanecer impune- Exclamaban con lamentación los locutores de los medios electrónicos de comunicación, mientras éste era apresado y conducido al penal de exterminio de “El Altiplano”, - su libertad es un atentado al estado de derecho- continuaban diciendo para pedir su reclusión.
El ejemplo que el Estado mexicano dio a nuestro pueblo el 3 y 4 de mayo del 2006 resulta muy significativo, ha sido la muestra, reafirmada ese mismo año en Oaxaca, de que se piensa castigar con la mayor dureza a aquellos elementos del pueblo que carezcan de miedo a la hora de enfrentarse con sus fuerzas policíacas y militares, y sobre todo si demuestran el coraje e incorruptibilidad que han caracterizado a del Valle. Pero la cosa no ha quedado ahí, no conformes con intoxicar el pueblo de San Salvador Atenco con gases tóxicos, de allanar casas, violar mujeres, torturar a los detenidos, asesinar a un joven de 14 años y otro de 20, han decidido reiterar contundentemente que no se trató de un error. Ignacio del Valle fue condenado junto con Felipe Álvarez y Héctor Galindo a 67 años de prisión, y la semana pasada han tenido el descaro de sentenciarlos a 31 años más.
Éstas penas son históricas, no las alcanzan ni los más temibles narcotraficantes ni secuestradores, no las alcanzan los asesinos ni los violadores, son penas muy superiores, por ejemplo a las que el régimen de Porfirio Díaz dictó a los huelguistas rebeldes de Cananea que fueron sentenciados a 15 años de prisión.
La situación es alarmante y aterradoramente representativa, en efecto no se trata de un error sino de una política de Estado que claramente apunta a imponer, a como de lugar, los proyectos encomendados desde el imperialismo norteamericano, quien ve con beneplácito todos estos sucesos y confía que a través del terror se puede consolidar un gobierno dócil y afín a sus intereses, tal como lo tuvieron con las dictaduras militares en el cono sur y lo tienen en el régimen narco-paramilitar de Álvaro Uribe Vélez en Colombia.
Lo peor para ellos es que así como no contaban con Ignacio del Valle, por ahora no cuentan con todos y cada uno de los mexicanos que permanecen ocultos en su parcela o en su centro de trabajo, pero que son hombres y mujeres decididas, dispuestos a salvar sus derechos y su dignidad, es decir, no cuentan con que el pueblo mexicano tiene entre sus filas a miles como Ignacio del Valle y que tarde o temprano los van a conocer. Para todos ellos la sentencia está dictada, si se atreven a luchar serán condenados a morir en una cárcel de máxima seguridad y serán difamados públicamente en todos los medios masivos de comunicación.
Lo que no podrán impedir tampoco, será que cada vez más, Ignacio del Valle se convierta en un referente de lucha para el pueblo mexicano, que cada vez sean más quienes sigan su ejemplo y además de luchar por sus reivindicaciones, luchen también por liberarlo, porque así corresponde, porque hasta el último momento Ignacio del Valle peleó defendiendo a los campesinos y arriesgándose con ellos, porque él es uno de ellos.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Maestro en Estudios Latinoamericanos por la UNAM. Militante del Comité de Lucha por el Movimiento de Emancipación Nacional (COLMENA). andresavilaarmella@yahoo.com.mx
Reservation ban of water for migrants is reported
By Brady McCombs
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A Tohono O'odham tribe member who has been putting water in remote desert areas for the past seven years for the benefit of illegal immigrants says he has been told to stop.
The order was given Saturday morning while Mike Wilson was southwest of Sells on the reservation showing 11 non-tribal guests one of the four water stations he operates, Wilson said.
A Tohono O'odham police officer approached Wilson and said the district chairwoman, Veronica Harvey, had instructed her to tell Wilson to take down the water station and escort his guests off the reservation, Wilson said. He didn't take down the two 55-gallon water barrels but left with his guests, he said.
Tohono O'odham Chairman Ned Norris Jr. confirmed Tuesday that Baboquivari District leaders asked Wilson and his guests to leave, but he said he has no knowledge of the request to remove the water station.
Phone calls to Harvey requesting comment were not returned.
The tribe has a standing decision not to allow humanitarian groups to place water on the reservation. Norris, who became chairman after that decision was made, has said the decision falls to the reservation's 11 districts because it's a matter of local concern. He said the same thing about the reported decision to ask Wilson and his guests to leave on Saturday.
"The tribal constitution authorizes each district to govern themselves on issues of local concern," Norris said. "This, in their view, is an issue of local concern."
Wilson gave the following account of Saturday's events:
Early that morning, Wilson and the group were at one of his water stations east of the village of Topawa on Federal Route 10, commonly known as Fresnal Canyon Road. He was talking about the history of his work in maintaining the water stations to eight seminary students from Denver, their professor and two retired Tucson pastors, the Rev. John Fife and the Rev. Gene Lefebvre.
A tribal police officer drove up to the group and told Wilson that she had received a complaint about non-tribal members being in the Baboquivari District. She told him that the Baboquivari District is a restricted district, which means O'odham are required to notify the board and get permission before bringing in any non-tribal guests, the officer said.
Wilson said he had never heard of the rule.
Fife said the officer told them she needed to check on the matter with the district and waited for 15 to 20 minutes before delivering the order to remove the station and to leave. She told the group that the seminary students were banned for life, Fife said.
After Wilson refused to take down the water station, the officer told Wilson that the district would do it. But as of Sunday, all the water stations were still up, Wilson said.
He said he believes he upset Harvey by bringing out such a large group of visitors.
The seminary students and their professor had been in Southern Arizona for about a week studying border issues, Fife said. They went with Wilson to learn more about the illegal-immigrant deaths on the reservation, he said.
Fife, the retired pastor of Southside Presbyterian Church and a leader in the old Sanctuary Movement, doesn't understand why the Baboquivari District kicked the group off or why it asked Wilson to remove the water station.
Fife has spent time on the reservation in his many years involved with border issues, including an internship on the Tohono O'odham Reservation in 1963.
Wilson's four water stations are in the Baboquivari Valley, which is the deadliest corridor for illegal immigrants in the United States.
The corridor had claimed the lives of 229 border crossers from the beginning of fiscal 2000 through November 2007 — more than three times the average number of deaths in other segments of the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, according to the Arizona Daily Star's analysis of 1,156 deaths recorded by the federal agency. Most immigrants died from the heat.
Seventy bodies of illegal immigrants were recovered on the Tohono O'odham Reservation in 2007, and 83 were found from Jan. 1 through June 12 of this year, the latest numbers available.
Wilson has experienced problems with his lifesaving efforts in the past.
From 2001 through 2003, the water jugs he placed in the desert were slashed by vandals on a continuous basis, he said. In September 2003, nearly a quarter of the 4,000 gallon jugs of water were slashed in one rash of vandalism.
Around 2003, he switched from water jugs to 55-gallon water barrels. In 2006, all eight barrels at the four stations were stolen.
"I'm upset that the Tohono O'odham Nation would continue in this — what I consider a crime against humanity," Wilson said. "That they would take down my water stations."
● Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com.
All content copyright © 1999-2008 AzStarNet, Arizona Daily Star and its wire services and suppliers and may not be republished without permission. All rights reserved. Any copying, redistribution, or retransmission of any of the contents of this service without the expressed written consent of Arizona Daily Star or AzStarNet is prohibited.
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A Tohono O'odham tribe member who has been putting water in remote desert areas for the past seven years for the benefit of illegal immigrants says he has been told to stop.
The order was given Saturday morning while Mike Wilson was southwest of Sells on the reservation showing 11 non-tribal guests one of the four water stations he operates, Wilson said.
A Tohono O'odham police officer approached Wilson and said the district chairwoman, Veronica Harvey, had instructed her to tell Wilson to take down the water station and escort his guests off the reservation, Wilson said. He didn't take down the two 55-gallon water barrels but left with his guests, he said.
Tohono O'odham Chairman Ned Norris Jr. confirmed Tuesday that Baboquivari District leaders asked Wilson and his guests to leave, but he said he has no knowledge of the request to remove the water station.
Phone calls to Harvey requesting comment were not returned.
The tribe has a standing decision not to allow humanitarian groups to place water on the reservation. Norris, who became chairman after that decision was made, has said the decision falls to the reservation's 11 districts because it's a matter of local concern. He said the same thing about the reported decision to ask Wilson and his guests to leave on Saturday.
"The tribal constitution authorizes each district to govern themselves on issues of local concern," Norris said. "This, in their view, is an issue of local concern."
Wilson gave the following account of Saturday's events:
Early that morning, Wilson and the group were at one of his water stations east of the village of Topawa on Federal Route 10, commonly known as Fresnal Canyon Road. He was talking about the history of his work in maintaining the water stations to eight seminary students from Denver, their professor and two retired Tucson pastors, the Rev. John Fife and the Rev. Gene Lefebvre.
A tribal police officer drove up to the group and told Wilson that she had received a complaint about non-tribal members being in the Baboquivari District. She told him that the Baboquivari District is a restricted district, which means O'odham are required to notify the board and get permission before bringing in any non-tribal guests, the officer said.
Wilson said he had never heard of the rule.
Fife said the officer told them she needed to check on the matter with the district and waited for 15 to 20 minutes before delivering the order to remove the station and to leave. She told the group that the seminary students were banned for life, Fife said.
After Wilson refused to take down the water station, the officer told Wilson that the district would do it. But as of Sunday, all the water stations were still up, Wilson said.
He said he believes he upset Harvey by bringing out such a large group of visitors.
The seminary students and their professor had been in Southern Arizona for about a week studying border issues, Fife said. They went with Wilson to learn more about the illegal-immigrant deaths on the reservation, he said.
Fife, the retired pastor of Southside Presbyterian Church and a leader in the old Sanctuary Movement, doesn't understand why the Baboquivari District kicked the group off or why it asked Wilson to remove the water station.
Fife has spent time on the reservation in his many years involved with border issues, including an internship on the Tohono O'odham Reservation in 1963.
Wilson's four water stations are in the Baboquivari Valley, which is the deadliest corridor for illegal immigrants in the United States.
The corridor had claimed the lives of 229 border crossers from the beginning of fiscal 2000 through November 2007 — more than three times the average number of deaths in other segments of the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, according to the Arizona Daily Star's analysis of 1,156 deaths recorded by the federal agency. Most immigrants died from the heat.
Seventy bodies of illegal immigrants were recovered on the Tohono O'odham Reservation in 2007, and 83 were found from Jan. 1 through June 12 of this year, the latest numbers available.
Wilson has experienced problems with his lifesaving efforts in the past.
From 2001 through 2003, the water jugs he placed in the desert were slashed by vandals on a continuous basis, he said. In September 2003, nearly a quarter of the 4,000 gallon jugs of water were slashed in one rash of vandalism.
Around 2003, he switched from water jugs to 55-gallon water barrels. In 2006, all eight barrels at the four stations were stolen.
"I'm upset that the Tohono O'odham Nation would continue in this — what I consider a crime against humanity," Wilson said. "That they would take down my water stations."
● Contact reporter Brady McCombs at 573-4213 or bmccombs@azstarnet.com.
All content copyright © 1999-2008 AzStarNet, Arizona Daily Star and its wire services and suppliers and may not be republished without permission. All rights reserved. Any copying, redistribution, or retransmission of any of the contents of this service without the expressed written consent of Arizona Daily Star or AzStarNet is prohibited.
9/2/08
Denuncian organizaciones e intelectuales pasividad del Tribunal Superior de Justicia del DF
Juicios interminables, nueva forma de inhibir la libertad de expresión en México: Intelectuales
Desde Abajo
Bajo el título de “Juicios interminables se convierten en la nueva forma de inhibir la libertad de expresión en México”, quienes signan esta carta señalaron que bajo la pasividad judicial que raya en negligencia, se tramita el juicio que lleva cuatro años en primera instancia.
48 organizaciones de la sociedad civil y 107 personas destacadas del periodismo, académicos y de la ciudadanía dirigieron una misiva a Miguel Ángel Robles Villegas, Juez Vigésimo Noveno de lo Civil Del Distrito Federal, donde denuncian pasividad con la que actúa el Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Distrito Federal, alentando al diputado federal hidalguense, Gerardo Sosa Castelán, en su demanda a Alfredo Rivera Flores y a Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa por daño moral por la publicación del Libro: La Sosa Nostra: Gobierno y Porrismo coludidos en Hidalgo, que documenta la historia porril de la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (UAEH).
Bajo el título de “Juicios interminables se convierten en la nueva forma de inhibir la libertad de expresión en México”, quienes signan esta carta señalaron que bajo la pasividad judicial que raya en negligencia, se tramita el juicio que lleva cuatro años en primera instancia.
Ya que el juicio se inició en agosto de 2004, en los jugados de lo civil del D. F., a la fecha no ha concluido la primera instancia por las siguientes razones:
“Se llevó más de dos años emplazar a los demandados; Se han desechado sin razón, pruebas fundamentales para la defensa; Se han aceptado pruebas absurdas de la parte actora, como periciales en psicología a cargo de los demandados, que no tienen relevancia alguna en juicios de esta naturaleza; Se ha recurrido a otros absurdos procesales como haber acusado a la abogada defensora de falsificar su propia firma; Se han planteado más de 29 apelaciones, lo que ha paralizado el juicio”.
Denunciaron que “el político y diputado federal Gerardo Sosa Castelán abusa de su derecho con sustento en legislación deficiente y en la pasividad del Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Distrito Federal”, por lo que los firmantes de la misiva “manifestamos nuestra solidaridad con los demandados y nos mantendremos vigilantes de la actuación de las autoridades judiciales”.
Entra las organizaciones firmantes destacan la Academia Mexicana de Derechos Humanos, Alianza Cívica, A. C, AMARC-México, la Cátedra UNESCO de Derechos Humanos de la UNAM, Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir, CENCOS, el Consejo Ciudadano del Premio Nacional de Periodismo, la Fundación Manuel Buendía A.C, así como FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación, etcétera.
Resaltan algunas de las personas que se suman a esta denuncia como lo es Hilda Aburto Muñoz, Sergio Aguayo, Luisa Alba Lois, Sergio Arau, Carmen Aristegui Flores, Javier Bernal Vences, Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, Federico Campbell, Miguel Concha Malo, José Antonio Crespo Enrique Galván Ochoa, Ernestina Godoy Ramos Clara Jusidman, Lucía Lagunes Huerta, Gilberto López y Rivas, Sanjuana Martínez y Carlos Monsiváis y más, que por economía de la presente nota no fueron incluidos, pero destacan la misma importancia.
http://www.desdeabajo.org.mx/wordpress/?p=1349
Desde Abajo
Bajo el título de “Juicios interminables se convierten en la nueva forma de inhibir la libertad de expresión en México”, quienes signan esta carta señalaron que bajo la pasividad judicial que raya en negligencia, se tramita el juicio que lleva cuatro años en primera instancia.
48 organizaciones de la sociedad civil y 107 personas destacadas del periodismo, académicos y de la ciudadanía dirigieron una misiva a Miguel Ángel Robles Villegas, Juez Vigésimo Noveno de lo Civil Del Distrito Federal, donde denuncian pasividad con la que actúa el Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Distrito Federal, alentando al diputado federal hidalguense, Gerardo Sosa Castelán, en su demanda a Alfredo Rivera Flores y a Miguel Ángel Granados Chapa por daño moral por la publicación del Libro: La Sosa Nostra: Gobierno y Porrismo coludidos en Hidalgo, que documenta la historia porril de la Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (UAEH).
Bajo el título de “Juicios interminables se convierten en la nueva forma de inhibir la libertad de expresión en México”, quienes signan esta carta señalaron que bajo la pasividad judicial que raya en negligencia, se tramita el juicio que lleva cuatro años en primera instancia.
Ya que el juicio se inició en agosto de 2004, en los jugados de lo civil del D. F., a la fecha no ha concluido la primera instancia por las siguientes razones:
“Se llevó más de dos años emplazar a los demandados; Se han desechado sin razón, pruebas fundamentales para la defensa; Se han aceptado pruebas absurdas de la parte actora, como periciales en psicología a cargo de los demandados, que no tienen relevancia alguna en juicios de esta naturaleza; Se ha recurrido a otros absurdos procesales como haber acusado a la abogada defensora de falsificar su propia firma; Se han planteado más de 29 apelaciones, lo que ha paralizado el juicio”.
Denunciaron que “el político y diputado federal Gerardo Sosa Castelán abusa de su derecho con sustento en legislación deficiente y en la pasividad del Tribunal Superior de Justicia del Distrito Federal”, por lo que los firmantes de la misiva “manifestamos nuestra solidaridad con los demandados y nos mantendremos vigilantes de la actuación de las autoridades judiciales”.
Entra las organizaciones firmantes destacan la Academia Mexicana de Derechos Humanos, Alianza Cívica, A. C, AMARC-México, la Cátedra UNESCO de Derechos Humanos de la UNAM, Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir, CENCOS, el Consejo Ciudadano del Premio Nacional de Periodismo, la Fundación Manuel Buendía A.C, así como FUNDAR, Centro de Análisis e Investigación, etcétera.
Resaltan algunas de las personas que se suman a esta denuncia como lo es Hilda Aburto Muñoz, Sergio Aguayo, Luisa Alba Lois, Sergio Arau, Carmen Aristegui Flores, Javier Bernal Vences, Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, Federico Campbell, Miguel Concha Malo, José Antonio Crespo Enrique Galván Ochoa, Ernestina Godoy Ramos Clara Jusidman, Lucía Lagunes Huerta, Gilberto López y Rivas, Sanjuana Martínez y Carlos Monsiváis y más, que por economía de la presente nota no fueron incluidos, pero destacan la misma importancia.
http://www.desdeabajo.org.mx/wordpress/?p=1349
There Is an Alternative to Corporate Rule
By Mark Engler, Nation Books
Posted on September 1, 2008, Printed on September 2, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/96806/
Editor's Note: This article is adapted from Mark Engler's new book How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008).
One of the remarkable features of modern political life is how consistently global elites deny that viable alternatives to the current global order exist, even as the terrain of international politics rapidly shifts. The "imperial globalists" that rose to power in the Bush years contend that without U.S. military strength decisively projected abroad, the forces of evil will sweep the globe. Meanwhile, "corporate globalists" of Wall Street persist in their belief that, in the post-Cold War world, we have no choice but to embrace the continual advance of the "free" market.
Neither idea is credible. The disastrous war in Iraq has firmly contradicted the neocons' argument that preemptive war can create security. Meanwhile, mainstream pundits continue to proclaim neoliberalism -- the radical free market doctrine that has defined the "Washington Consensus" in international economics in recent decades -- to be inevitable and irreplaceable. Yet as that ideology falls into disrepute across the globe, their contention is revealed as ever more deeply disingenuous. Today, there exist scores of books and hundreds of reports that offer new directions for the global order -- plus innumerable initiatives at local, national, and international levels to create political and economic systems that uphold human rights and defend the environment.
In truth, a lack of viable ideas is hardly the problem for those who reject both corporate and imperial models of globalization. Whether they are part of boisterous national uprisings or quiet, persistent community efforts to fuel a truly democratic globalization -- a globalization from below -- members of grassroots networks are now engaged in a debate about the proper balance of vision, program, political strategy, and tactics needed to move forward.
Changes in the Global Justice Movement
Part of what has fueled public confusion about alternatives was specific to the political moment when globalization protests captured the attention of the mainstream media. During the period around the year 2000, global justice organizing was being covered only in contexts where participants were providing a voice of opposition -- at the summit meetings of institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF). These events became flash points of resistance for a reason: the summit meetings were remarkably effective at drawing together a tremendously diverse body of global citizen activists.
Yet the globalization scene began to shift early in the Bush years, with the attacks of 9/11 playing an important role in the change. Just as abruptly as the major news outlets had announced the arrival of a "new" global movement after the Seattle protests against the WTO, challenges to the Washington Consensus became virtually invisible to their reporters once again after 9/11. This only partially reflected what was happening on the ground. In the months following the attacks, some protests -- notably a major mobilization against World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington, DC -- were cancelled as the world rose to express sympathy for the victims. However, the Bush administration's reckless response wiped out global good will and ultimately widened the scope of protests.
As strategies to impose elite visions of globalization continued, global justice protests throughout the world resumed. Many people, particularly in Southern countries, combined outrage at U.S. militarism with a repudiation of corporate globalization. When Bush traveled abroad, he was met with huge protests, many of which raised economic issues as well as anti-war concerns. Yet media outlets mostly reported these demonstrations as incoherent anti-American riots when they covered them at all. Beltway pundits rushed to declare the global justice movement dead. Leading the pack was Edward Gresser of the Progressive Policy Institute, the think-tank of the pro-"free trade" Democratic Leadership Council, who pronounced the movement "destined for irrelevance" in a realigned world.
Millions of people had reason to protest. These activists were about to redraw the political map of Latin America, preside over the collapse of neoliberalism's legitimacy, lead a worldwide rebellion against preemptive war, and push issues of economic justice to ever more prominent places in the global development debate. Their efforts for a democratic globalization, they would assert, were very much alive.
The View From Porto Alegre
As it turned out, a most visible manifestation of the next stage of global justice movement would come from a modest city of 1.5 million people deep in the south of Brazil, a place whose name has become synonymous with the pursuit of a more just and democratic global order. Today, mention of Porto Alegre, the original home of the World Social Forum, should be sufficient to forever put to rest the knee-jerk contention that there is no alternative to dominant visions of globalization.
Even as progressives within the U.S. turned to resisting Bush administration policies of preemptive war and its reactionary assaults on Constitutional rights, international movements have not waited for regime change in the U.S. to further the decline of the Washington Consensus. Massive crowds have joined Americans in rallying against the war in Iraq, as on February 15, 2003, when upwards of ten million people in over 500 cities took to the streets, constituting the largest coordinated global day of action in history. But, at the same time, local communities have waged battles to reverse privatization of public utilities and transnational campaigns have fought for reforms like debt cancellation. In countries throughout Latin America, they have successfully overthrown neoliberal governments, elected leaders who oppose the Washington Consensus, and they have pressured those officials to enact social policies that serve working people.
Reflecting this sustained torrent of global activity, the World Social Forum has grown and matured. While the first global forum in 2001 hosted 12,000 participants, subsequent events have grown larger and larger, drawing crowds of up to 150,000 people. In addition to returning to Porto Alegre for three additional years after the initial summit, the global event has also convened in Mumbai, India and Nairobi, Kenya, with smaller forums taking place at the regional level. At World Social Forum, community leaders, nonprofit representatives, scholars, organizers, and progressive lawmakers have presented, debated, and refined ideas that collectively represent as comprehensive a set of policies for the global economy as any wonky campaign office could ever hope to devise. These spaces have served as physical embodiments of the proposals for a democratic globalization.
Groups meeting in tents designated for discussion of energy and the environment have strategized about ways to break our dependence on the oil economy. They have proposed investment in mass public transportation, high mileage standards for cars, and shifting government subsidies for hydrocarbon exploitation to alternative energy. Other environmentalists have worked to promote an international carbon tax to penalize polluters -- something undoubtedly in the public interest, especially given mounting evidence about the perils of global warming. All these represent perfectly viable public policies, but have been vehemently opposed by the oil industry.
In other tents, family farmers and food safety advocates from throughout the world have gathered to promote models for redistributive land reform. Even the international financial institutions acknowledge that land reform would be beneficial for the poor, but it has been pushed off the political map by national elites and agribusiness conglomerates. Other advocates explained how current government subsidies for exports and for pesticides boost large-scale "mono-cropping" over organic agriculture; in response, they argued for a shift in public funds to support sustainable farming. Indigenous communities further asserted their right to self-determination, particularly with regard to maintaining traditional systems of land ownership and food production.
Tents holding discussions on the need to curb corporate power have advanced a slate of innovative proposals. These include public financing of elections to end what U.S. Senator Russ Feingold has called "a system of legalized bribery and legalized extortion." They include laws that allow victims of corporate abuses in the developing world to sue in U.S. or European courts. And they include detailed proposals for strengthening anti-trust law in order to break up business monopolies -- among them the massive media empires that do much to set the limits of public debate.
A group called ATTAC, one of the organizations that founded the World Social Forum, has set up tents promoting campaigning for the Tobin Tax. First proposed by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin in the 1970s, the initiative would impose a low percentage tax on the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of international financial transactions that take place each day. This would provide a disincentive for short-term gambling on currencies, and it would encourage longer-term and more productive investment. Moreover, even a miniscule levy could create an annual fund of upwards of $100 billion that could be used to stop the spread of disease and alleviate global poverty.
Warehouse workspaces hosting labor organizations have offered myriad methods for protecting workers' rights and ending sweatshop conditions. Over seventy cities and localities in the United States have passed Living Wage laws since the early 1990s. These go beyond paltry minimum wage requirements and mandate that businesses pay employees at least enough to keep their families out of poverty. At the social forums, U.S. advocates discussed how to spread these campaigns. Meanwhile, representatives from the estimated 180 worker-run factories that formed after capital fled Argentina's collapsing neoliberal economy in 2001 spoke about their experiences in self-management. And groups like the Women's International Coalition for Economic Justice have stressed that U.N.-backed summits and other international efforts to advance women's rights must not be subordinated to multilateral trade agreements.
Finally, workshops organized by representatives from the fair trade movement profiled endeavors to build direct ties between producers in the global South and Northern consumers. The fair trade model aims to eliminate exploitative middlemen, ensure that workers get a living wage for their labor, and give local collectives a greater say in the determining the conditions under which international economic exchanges take place. Like organic food, fair trade remains a niche market, and it cannot substitute for wider structural changes in global economy. But it provides both a living alternative to exploitative trade and a hopeful model for future change.
Even this wide range of activity hardly constitutes an exhaustive survey. Unlike the corporate and imperial models, a globalization from below does not take the form of one-size-fits-all prescription for the global economy. With regard to alternative policies, the model of participatory democracy produces, in the words of another slogan, "One No, Many Yeses." It generates a strong challenge to structures of neoliberalism and empire, but allows for a wider sense of what might replace them.
Contrary to individual manifestos that presume that a lack of ideas is the problem for progressives, the advocates at Porto Alegre have presented an agenda for change rooted in local struggles and campaigns that have long been underway. Excellent volumes such as Alternatives to Economic Globalization, a book compiled by the San Francisco-based International Forum on Globalization, have profiled other aspects of this agenda. The Human Development Reports produced annually by the United Nations Development Program have backed many of these same initiatives. A number of progressive proposals have even been introduced as legislation in the U.S. Congress in such measures as the recent TRADE Act, advanced by fair trade advocates this summer. Needless to say, the elite beneficiaries of corporate and imperial rule, still steadfast in their contention that no alternatives exist, would prefer that the public not take notice of any of these developments.
Just Saying No, or First Do No Harm
The ideas, experiences, and proposals of the World Social Forum provide a trove of information for all those who want to construct a new agenda for the global economy. At the same time, as long as democratic movements do not have the power to overrule political and economic elites, there exists an important case for just saying "no" -- for first insisting that those now in power stop doing harm.
When Wall Street neoliberals and Washington militarists ask, "What is the alternative?" they base the question on faulty assumptions. Their question serves to naturalize very radical agendas of empire and corporate rule, suggesting that these are normal and acceptable states of affairs. They are not. In a situation where power is grossly imbalanced, where crimes are being perpetuated in the name of democracy, and where ever larger sections of public life are being handed over to the market, saying "no" to these radical agendas can be a perfectly worthy task in itself.
In an important respect, the alternative to invading Iraq is not invading Iraq. The alternative to NAFTA is no NAFTA. The neocons' invasion of Iraq has cost thousands of American lives, taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, produced some two million refugees, and is set to squander over a trillion dollars of public funds. It has generated heightened regional tensions, greater instability, and more terrorism. Given the disastrous history of U.S. interventions -- not just in Iraq, but also, to mention some particularly ignoble examples of the past 60 years, in Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Iran, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua -- calling for a moratorium on such military actions, official and covert, is a first step in stemming the damage of imperial globalization.
The agenda of corporate globalization, which unfortunately thrived during the Clinton presidency and is still popular within the right wing of the Democratic Party, is subtler. But this, too, has relied on forceful maneuvering to come into existence. Neoliberalism involves aggressively opening markets, clearing the way for a previously unheard of level of speculative capital transfer, and dictating the restructuring of local economies. None of these things occur naturally, and they deserve opposition. A moratorium on harmful "free trade" deals and on further expansion of the WTO, especially into areas beyond the traditional realm of trade, is a vital immediate demand.
Simply refusing each of the mandates of the Washington Consensus -- or at least rejecting the idea that they should be imposed world as a one-size-fits-all uniform for development -- would itself allow for a substantial restructuring of globalization politics. The true utopians in the global economy are people who embraced the market fundamentalist fantasy that unchecked capital would serve the common good. Refuting this idea can be fairly straightforward.
Neoliberal corporate globalization prescribes the elimination of tariffs and other protections for local enterprises. An alternative would be to allow poorer countries to keep these intact, reviving what is known in trade agreements as "special and differential treatment." This model would give developing countries more flexibility in choosing to nurture infant industries and to protect agricultural commodities that are important to traditional cultures and to the security of their food supply. When the Washington Consensus demands the privatization of public industry and the division of the commons into private property, an alternative is to keep these things in the hands of the public, defending the provision of public goods as a way of ensuring economic human rights -- including guaranteed public access to water, electricity, and health care. If it calls for cuts in social services, an alternative is to reject the cuts, maintaining or bolstering these services and instead pushing for a redistributive tax system that makes the wealthy pay their fair share.
When Washington mandates a more "flexible" labor market -- one without unions or worker protections -- an alternative is to defend living wages, collective bargaining, and the right to associate. And when IMF bailouts for wealthy investors create a situation in which, to paraphrase author Eduardo Galeano, "risk is socialized while profit is privatized," an alternative is simply to end these bailouts, making speculators bear the cost of their gambles.
The demand to reverse neoliberal structural adjustment policies proposes a fundamentally different relationship between wealthy nations and the global South than currently exists. It would grant countries the freedom to determine their own economic policies, priorities for government spending, and rules for controlling foreign investment. Instead of imposing a single hegemonic model on the entire world, this new relationship would allow for broader diversity and experimentation in international development. While this does not by itself constitute a vision for ensuring human rights or protecting the environment, it nevertheless represents an important strategic gain. It alone would likely bring change of great enough magnitude to make the politics of the global economy look virtually unrecognizable to those who have grown accustomed to Washington-dictated corporate globalization.
Those who reject corporate and imperial models of globalization have a wealth of ideas at their disposal, a healthy internal debate to refine their strategies, and a vibrant, growing international network of citizens that see their efforts as part an interconnected whole. They also have very powerful enemies. Fortunately, as we enter the post-Bush era, the international community has voiced a firm rejection of unilateralism and preemptive war. Likewise, ever-larger swaths of the globe view the neoliberal doctrine of corporate expansion as a failed and discredited vision. This creates unique opportunities for citizens to fight to bring a democratic globalization into existence. More exciting still is that many people are already doing so, and, on key issues like debt relief and across entire regions like the Latin America, they are winning. The punditry is increasingly taking notice. For there is nothing so dangerous to those who insist that the world must remain as it is as the simple, stubbornly defiant doctrine of hope.
Mark Engler is a commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus. He can be reached via DemocracyUprising.com.
© 2008 Nation Books All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/96806/
Posted on September 1, 2008, Printed on September 2, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/96806/
Editor's Note: This article is adapted from Mark Engler's new book How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008).
One of the remarkable features of modern political life is how consistently global elites deny that viable alternatives to the current global order exist, even as the terrain of international politics rapidly shifts. The "imperial globalists" that rose to power in the Bush years contend that without U.S. military strength decisively projected abroad, the forces of evil will sweep the globe. Meanwhile, "corporate globalists" of Wall Street persist in their belief that, in the post-Cold War world, we have no choice but to embrace the continual advance of the "free" market.
Neither idea is credible. The disastrous war in Iraq has firmly contradicted the neocons' argument that preemptive war can create security. Meanwhile, mainstream pundits continue to proclaim neoliberalism -- the radical free market doctrine that has defined the "Washington Consensus" in international economics in recent decades -- to be inevitable and irreplaceable. Yet as that ideology falls into disrepute across the globe, their contention is revealed as ever more deeply disingenuous. Today, there exist scores of books and hundreds of reports that offer new directions for the global order -- plus innumerable initiatives at local, national, and international levels to create political and economic systems that uphold human rights and defend the environment.
In truth, a lack of viable ideas is hardly the problem for those who reject both corporate and imperial models of globalization. Whether they are part of boisterous national uprisings or quiet, persistent community efforts to fuel a truly democratic globalization -- a globalization from below -- members of grassroots networks are now engaged in a debate about the proper balance of vision, program, political strategy, and tactics needed to move forward.
Changes in the Global Justice Movement
Part of what has fueled public confusion about alternatives was specific to the political moment when globalization protests captured the attention of the mainstream media. During the period around the year 2000, global justice organizing was being covered only in contexts where participants were providing a voice of opposition -- at the summit meetings of institutions like the World Trade Organization (WTO), World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF). These events became flash points of resistance for a reason: the summit meetings were remarkably effective at drawing together a tremendously diverse body of global citizen activists.
Yet the globalization scene began to shift early in the Bush years, with the attacks of 9/11 playing an important role in the change. Just as abruptly as the major news outlets had announced the arrival of a "new" global movement after the Seattle protests against the WTO, challenges to the Washington Consensus became virtually invisible to their reporters once again after 9/11. This only partially reflected what was happening on the ground. In the months following the attacks, some protests -- notably a major mobilization against World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington, DC -- were cancelled as the world rose to express sympathy for the victims. However, the Bush administration's reckless response wiped out global good will and ultimately widened the scope of protests.
As strategies to impose elite visions of globalization continued, global justice protests throughout the world resumed. Many people, particularly in Southern countries, combined outrage at U.S. militarism with a repudiation of corporate globalization. When Bush traveled abroad, he was met with huge protests, many of which raised economic issues as well as anti-war concerns. Yet media outlets mostly reported these demonstrations as incoherent anti-American riots when they covered them at all. Beltway pundits rushed to declare the global justice movement dead. Leading the pack was Edward Gresser of the Progressive Policy Institute, the think-tank of the pro-"free trade" Democratic Leadership Council, who pronounced the movement "destined for irrelevance" in a realigned world.
Millions of people had reason to protest. These activists were about to redraw the political map of Latin America, preside over the collapse of neoliberalism's legitimacy, lead a worldwide rebellion against preemptive war, and push issues of economic justice to ever more prominent places in the global development debate. Their efforts for a democratic globalization, they would assert, were very much alive.
The View From Porto Alegre
As it turned out, a most visible manifestation of the next stage of global justice movement would come from a modest city of 1.5 million people deep in the south of Brazil, a place whose name has become synonymous with the pursuit of a more just and democratic global order. Today, mention of Porto Alegre, the original home of the World Social Forum, should be sufficient to forever put to rest the knee-jerk contention that there is no alternative to dominant visions of globalization.
Even as progressives within the U.S. turned to resisting Bush administration policies of preemptive war and its reactionary assaults on Constitutional rights, international movements have not waited for regime change in the U.S. to further the decline of the Washington Consensus. Massive crowds have joined Americans in rallying against the war in Iraq, as on February 15, 2003, when upwards of ten million people in over 500 cities took to the streets, constituting the largest coordinated global day of action in history. But, at the same time, local communities have waged battles to reverse privatization of public utilities and transnational campaigns have fought for reforms like debt cancellation. In countries throughout Latin America, they have successfully overthrown neoliberal governments, elected leaders who oppose the Washington Consensus, and they have pressured those officials to enact social policies that serve working people.
Reflecting this sustained torrent of global activity, the World Social Forum has grown and matured. While the first global forum in 2001 hosted 12,000 participants, subsequent events have grown larger and larger, drawing crowds of up to 150,000 people. In addition to returning to Porto Alegre for three additional years after the initial summit, the global event has also convened in Mumbai, India and Nairobi, Kenya, with smaller forums taking place at the regional level. At World Social Forum, community leaders, nonprofit representatives, scholars, organizers, and progressive lawmakers have presented, debated, and refined ideas that collectively represent as comprehensive a set of policies for the global economy as any wonky campaign office could ever hope to devise. These spaces have served as physical embodiments of the proposals for a democratic globalization.
Groups meeting in tents designated for discussion of energy and the environment have strategized about ways to break our dependence on the oil economy. They have proposed investment in mass public transportation, high mileage standards for cars, and shifting government subsidies for hydrocarbon exploitation to alternative energy. Other environmentalists have worked to promote an international carbon tax to penalize polluters -- something undoubtedly in the public interest, especially given mounting evidence about the perils of global warming. All these represent perfectly viable public policies, but have been vehemently opposed by the oil industry.
In other tents, family farmers and food safety advocates from throughout the world have gathered to promote models for redistributive land reform. Even the international financial institutions acknowledge that land reform would be beneficial for the poor, but it has been pushed off the political map by national elites and agribusiness conglomerates. Other advocates explained how current government subsidies for exports and for pesticides boost large-scale "mono-cropping" over organic agriculture; in response, they argued for a shift in public funds to support sustainable farming. Indigenous communities further asserted their right to self-determination, particularly with regard to maintaining traditional systems of land ownership and food production.
Tents holding discussions on the need to curb corporate power have advanced a slate of innovative proposals. These include public financing of elections to end what U.S. Senator Russ Feingold has called "a system of legalized bribery and legalized extortion." They include laws that allow victims of corporate abuses in the developing world to sue in U.S. or European courts. And they include detailed proposals for strengthening anti-trust law in order to break up business monopolies -- among them the massive media empires that do much to set the limits of public debate.
A group called ATTAC, one of the organizations that founded the World Social Forum, has set up tents promoting campaigning for the Tobin Tax. First proposed by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin in the 1970s, the initiative would impose a low percentage tax on the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of international financial transactions that take place each day. This would provide a disincentive for short-term gambling on currencies, and it would encourage longer-term and more productive investment. Moreover, even a miniscule levy could create an annual fund of upwards of $100 billion that could be used to stop the spread of disease and alleviate global poverty.
Warehouse workspaces hosting labor organizations have offered myriad methods for protecting workers' rights and ending sweatshop conditions. Over seventy cities and localities in the United States have passed Living Wage laws since the early 1990s. These go beyond paltry minimum wage requirements and mandate that businesses pay employees at least enough to keep their families out of poverty. At the social forums, U.S. advocates discussed how to spread these campaigns. Meanwhile, representatives from the estimated 180 worker-run factories that formed after capital fled Argentina's collapsing neoliberal economy in 2001 spoke about their experiences in self-management. And groups like the Women's International Coalition for Economic Justice have stressed that U.N.-backed summits and other international efforts to advance women's rights must not be subordinated to multilateral trade agreements.
Finally, workshops organized by representatives from the fair trade movement profiled endeavors to build direct ties between producers in the global South and Northern consumers. The fair trade model aims to eliminate exploitative middlemen, ensure that workers get a living wage for their labor, and give local collectives a greater say in the determining the conditions under which international economic exchanges take place. Like organic food, fair trade remains a niche market, and it cannot substitute for wider structural changes in global economy. But it provides both a living alternative to exploitative trade and a hopeful model for future change.
Even this wide range of activity hardly constitutes an exhaustive survey. Unlike the corporate and imperial models, a globalization from below does not take the form of one-size-fits-all prescription for the global economy. With regard to alternative policies, the model of participatory democracy produces, in the words of another slogan, "One No, Many Yeses." It generates a strong challenge to structures of neoliberalism and empire, but allows for a wider sense of what might replace them.
Contrary to individual manifestos that presume that a lack of ideas is the problem for progressives, the advocates at Porto Alegre have presented an agenda for change rooted in local struggles and campaigns that have long been underway. Excellent volumes such as Alternatives to Economic Globalization, a book compiled by the San Francisco-based International Forum on Globalization, have profiled other aspects of this agenda. The Human Development Reports produced annually by the United Nations Development Program have backed many of these same initiatives. A number of progressive proposals have even been introduced as legislation in the U.S. Congress in such measures as the recent TRADE Act, advanced by fair trade advocates this summer. Needless to say, the elite beneficiaries of corporate and imperial rule, still steadfast in their contention that no alternatives exist, would prefer that the public not take notice of any of these developments.
Just Saying No, or First Do No Harm
The ideas, experiences, and proposals of the World Social Forum provide a trove of information for all those who want to construct a new agenda for the global economy. At the same time, as long as democratic movements do not have the power to overrule political and economic elites, there exists an important case for just saying "no" -- for first insisting that those now in power stop doing harm.
When Wall Street neoliberals and Washington militarists ask, "What is the alternative?" they base the question on faulty assumptions. Their question serves to naturalize very radical agendas of empire and corporate rule, suggesting that these are normal and acceptable states of affairs. They are not. In a situation where power is grossly imbalanced, where crimes are being perpetuated in the name of democracy, and where ever larger sections of public life are being handed over to the market, saying "no" to these radical agendas can be a perfectly worthy task in itself.
In an important respect, the alternative to invading Iraq is not invading Iraq. The alternative to NAFTA is no NAFTA. The neocons' invasion of Iraq has cost thousands of American lives, taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, produced some two million refugees, and is set to squander over a trillion dollars of public funds. It has generated heightened regional tensions, greater instability, and more terrorism. Given the disastrous history of U.S. interventions -- not just in Iraq, but also, to mention some particularly ignoble examples of the past 60 years, in Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador, Iran, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua -- calling for a moratorium on such military actions, official and covert, is a first step in stemming the damage of imperial globalization.
The agenda of corporate globalization, which unfortunately thrived during the Clinton presidency and is still popular within the right wing of the Democratic Party, is subtler. But this, too, has relied on forceful maneuvering to come into existence. Neoliberalism involves aggressively opening markets, clearing the way for a previously unheard of level of speculative capital transfer, and dictating the restructuring of local economies. None of these things occur naturally, and they deserve opposition. A moratorium on harmful "free trade" deals and on further expansion of the WTO, especially into areas beyond the traditional realm of trade, is a vital immediate demand.
Simply refusing each of the mandates of the Washington Consensus -- or at least rejecting the idea that they should be imposed world as a one-size-fits-all uniform for development -- would itself allow for a substantial restructuring of globalization politics. The true utopians in the global economy are people who embraced the market fundamentalist fantasy that unchecked capital would serve the common good. Refuting this idea can be fairly straightforward.
Neoliberal corporate globalization prescribes the elimination of tariffs and other protections for local enterprises. An alternative would be to allow poorer countries to keep these intact, reviving what is known in trade agreements as "special and differential treatment." This model would give developing countries more flexibility in choosing to nurture infant industries and to protect agricultural commodities that are important to traditional cultures and to the security of their food supply. When the Washington Consensus demands the privatization of public industry and the division of the commons into private property, an alternative is to keep these things in the hands of the public, defending the provision of public goods as a way of ensuring economic human rights -- including guaranteed public access to water, electricity, and health care. If it calls for cuts in social services, an alternative is to reject the cuts, maintaining or bolstering these services and instead pushing for a redistributive tax system that makes the wealthy pay their fair share.
When Washington mandates a more "flexible" labor market -- one without unions or worker protections -- an alternative is to defend living wages, collective bargaining, and the right to associate. And when IMF bailouts for wealthy investors create a situation in which, to paraphrase author Eduardo Galeano, "risk is socialized while profit is privatized," an alternative is simply to end these bailouts, making speculators bear the cost of their gambles.
The demand to reverse neoliberal structural adjustment policies proposes a fundamentally different relationship between wealthy nations and the global South than currently exists. It would grant countries the freedom to determine their own economic policies, priorities for government spending, and rules for controlling foreign investment. Instead of imposing a single hegemonic model on the entire world, this new relationship would allow for broader diversity and experimentation in international development. While this does not by itself constitute a vision for ensuring human rights or protecting the environment, it nevertheless represents an important strategic gain. It alone would likely bring change of great enough magnitude to make the politics of the global economy look virtually unrecognizable to those who have grown accustomed to Washington-dictated corporate globalization.
Those who reject corporate and imperial models of globalization have a wealth of ideas at their disposal, a healthy internal debate to refine their strategies, and a vibrant, growing international network of citizens that see their efforts as part an interconnected whole. They also have very powerful enemies. Fortunately, as we enter the post-Bush era, the international community has voiced a firm rejection of unilateralism and preemptive war. Likewise, ever-larger swaths of the globe view the neoliberal doctrine of corporate expansion as a failed and discredited vision. This creates unique opportunities for citizens to fight to bring a democratic globalization into existence. More exciting still is that many people are already doing so, and, on key issues like debt relief and across entire regions like the Latin America, they are winning. The punditry is increasingly taking notice. For there is nothing so dangerous to those who insist that the world must remain as it is as the simple, stubbornly defiant doctrine of hope.
Mark Engler is a commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus. He can be reached via DemocracyUprising.com.
© 2008 Nation Books All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/96806/
Snatch-and-Grab Economy
The Kidnapping Boom in Mexico
By JOHN ROSS
www.counterpunch.org
Mexico City.
The armor-plated limousines, Hummers, and SUVs with conspicuously tinted windows sped into the Zocalo through the tight security cordon of thousands of police and members of the presidential military guard that ringed the great plaza. One by one, the dignitaries disembarked and were escorted by heavily armed phalanxes of personal "guaruras" or bodyguards into the bunker-like National Palace for the emergency meeting of the National Public Security Council. Despite the heavy security presence, the ambiance outside the National Public Security Summit reeked of public insecurity. 5000 victims, including many hundreds of security agents, have been slain since Felipe Calderon assumed the presidency in much-questioned 2006 elections and declared war on "organized crime." Countless numbers of citizens have been kidnapped.
Indeed, it was one more kidnapping that had goosed Calderon into summoning the titans of commerce, industry, and governance to the National Palace for the August 21 National Public Security Summit. This past June 4, uniformed Federal Investigation Agents (AFI, a bad knock-off the U.S. FBI) stopped a chauffeured BMW driving 14-year-old Fernando Marti, the son of a sporting goods tycoon, to classes at the toney British-American School. Marti's captors, who may or may not have been real AFI agents, forced the boy, his chauffer, and his bodyguard into a second car, and drove off, destination unknown.
A call that evening to young Marti's father Alejandro communicated that his son could be redeemed by paying a 5,000,000-peso ransom. Marti was advised not to inform the police. Already suspicious that the police were involved in the kidnapping, the tycoon hired a private mediator to deal with what appeared to be a vicious gang known as the "Flower Syndicate", so named because they always leave a flower in the mouth of their victims. A drop was arranged and the pesos zipped into a gym bag and placed in the rear seat of a parked car as the kidnappers had instructed.
But Fernando was not returned and the kidnappers were not heard from again. On July 31, the boy's decomposing body was found in the trunk of a parked car in the upscale Coyoacan neighborhood, not far from the pay-off site.
As is so often the case in high profile kidnappings, according to Mexico City district attorney Miguel Angel Mancera it now looks like the snatch was an inside job, prepared by the Marti family's own bodyguards.
Leery of the police, Alejandro Marti was persuaded to tell his story on primetime TV news broadcasts instead of contacting the authorities. The results were predictable: when spectacular crime has befallen the rich and famous in this crime-ridden megalopolis, Televisa and its junior partner TV Azteca, the nation's two-headed electronic media monopoly, direct their fire at the capital's left-wing government, in this case Mexico City's mayor Marcelo Ebrard, for failing to safeguard the upper crust.
The war drums pounded. Calderon publicly embraced Alejandro Marti, a heavy contributor to his 2006 election campaign, and convoked the National Public Safety Council emergency summit, urging Ebrard to attend.
The Mayor, who is convinced that Calderon stole the 2006 election from his predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), has refused to recognize the right-wing Calderon and has strenuously avoided any official contact with him. But as the electronic lynch mob cranked up the barrage of recriminations, Ebrard risked breaking with AMLO and agreed to attend the August 23 security summit. Few political observers, including those affiliated with his own left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) seemed bothered that the kidnapping and murder of a young boy had been utilized to blackmail the Mayor into de facto recognition of Calderon. "They've kidnapped their consciences," AMLO supporter Berta Robledo insists.
The Grand Accord rolled out by Calderon at the summit listed 75 pledges to battle organized crime. The death penalty for kidnappers who kill their victims as proposed by the so-called Mexican Green Environmental Party was not among them (Mexico has no death penalty) but life imprisonment without possibility of release was. The laundry list also included such short-ended measures as a national identity card with biometric data (to be available in three years), a national registry of cellular phones (kidnappers use cell phones to intimidate the families of their victims), a mandatory sixth grade education for police, and prayers from the nation's pulpits for victory in Calderon's war against crime.
The National Accord for Public Safety was signed under blazing television lights by President Calderon, his security cabinet, the Secretaries of the Interior and Public Safety, the Military, the political parties, the princes of industry and commerce, media moguls, corrupt labor bosses (Elva Esther Gordillo of the National Teachers Union, Carlos Romero Deschamps, boss of the Oil Workers), the Catholic hierarchy, the Greek Orthodox bishop, representatives of the Jewish and Mormon faiths, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and various Evangelical "sects" (dixit the RC Church.)
Marcelo Ebrard signed on too, along with 31 governors - a cast of characters that featured Oaxaca's Ulysis Ruiz (accused of the murder of 26 activists during the 2006 civil rebellion in his state), Mario Marin of Puebla (accused of kidnapping journalist Lydia Cacho at the behest of a political crony), and Mexico state's Enrique Pena Nieto (responsible for the 2006 police riot at San Salvador Atenco that left two dead.)
Despite the many criminals in the National Public Security Summit audience, no one spoke out in favor of organized crime.
By a stroke of political synchronicity, the signing of the public security accord occurred at the same hour as social activist Ignacio Del Valle was being sentenced to 45 years imprisonment in nearby Texcoco, for "kidnapping" - the 45 years were tacked on to a 67 year sentence that Nacho Del Valle is currently serving in Mexico's maximum lock-up for the same "kidnapping."
Just what did this "kidnapping" consist of? In April 2006, Nacho and the other leaders of the Popular Front to Defend the Land (FPDT) sat down with Mexico state school officials to negotiate changes in the education system on the ejido of San Salvador Atenco, a poor farming community out on the dried bed of Lake Texcoco that former president Vicente Fox once tried to expropriate for a multi-billion dollar airport, before he was foiled by the courts and the campesinos' militancy.
When the school officials tried to cut the meeting short, Nacho locked the door and forced them to negotiate. Federal and state authorities charge that this constituted "kidnapping."
Speaking outside the Molino del Rey courtroom where Nacho Del Valle had just been doomed to more than a hundred years in prison, his wife Teresa declared that her husband wasn't the kidnapper. "They are the kidnappers. They have kidnapped Nacho!" "No," corrected Nacho's lawyer Barbara Zamora, "they have kidnapped justice."
One month after the purported "kidnapping" of the state officials, 3000 federal and state police smashed into Atenco, took over 200 prisoners including Del Valle, killed two young men, sexually assaulted 23 women, and deported five foreign human rights observers. The May 3 and 4 2006 repression in Atenco has been decried by human rights groups ranging from Amnesty International to the United Nations. Only one police officer has ever been indicted for sexual abuse, not considered a grave crime, and was long ago released on bail.
The assault on Atenco was prepared and orchestrated by Eduardo Medina Mora, then Secretary of Public Security, and now Calderon's Attorney General who designed the National Public Safety Accord signed at the August 23 summit.
There are several variants of kidnapping in contemporary Mexico: the normal commercial kidnapping in which the rich are snatched and held until a ransom is paid, often after dispatch of an ear or a finger of the victim through the mail; the "express" kidnapping where the victim in grabbed from a car or a taxi or an ATM machine and his or her cell phone used to call home and demand immediate payment while the victim is driven around - because these are quick in-and-out jobs and kidnappers are less selective, often putting the snatch on the middle class rather than the super rich, the ransoms are considerably lower; and "levantones" (literally "pick-ups") in which the kidnap victim is never again seen alive although body parts or a severed head may later be recovered, usually with a mordant note attached - "levantones" are very popular with the drug cartels as retribution for real or imagined slights by rival drug gangs or the authorities.
Other styles of kidnapping include police kidnappings in which police officers, often from anti-kidnapping squads, utilize their expertise to snatch well-heeled victims. Also in the repertoire: political kidnappings, such as the Popular Revolutionary Army's (EPR) 1994 taking of millionaire banker Alfredo Harp Helu, a close friend and business partner of Alejandro Marti's, that reportedly yielded a record $14,000,000 USD ransom, and the Mexican government's kidnapping of EPR militants Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Cruz Sanchez in May 2007 - kidnappings by government agents are usually catalogued as "forced disappearances."
Then there are metaphorical kidnappings: when senators from the leftist Broad Progressive Front or FAP seized the tribune in the Mexican congress last April to prevent fast-track passage of a petroleum privatization measure, Televisa and Calderon's PAN Party accused them of "kidnapping" the legislative process. Similarly, Lopez Obrador's supporters accuse Calderon and his associates of "kidnapping" the presidency.
Kidnapping is essentially a crime of class. No one kidnaps the poor. Although the kidnappers themselves are not necessarily poor, their victims are invariably rich and like Alejandro Marti have ample access to the media to drum up sympathy. A silent march to protest Fernando's kidnap-murder, endorsed by Calderon's party and ballyhooed nightly by Televisa and TV Azteca, is expected to drawn tens of thousands in Mexico City August 30.
In an economy that has gone pancake flat, there's no doubt that kidnapping is a growth industry. Not only are the kidnappers making out like bandits but the crime itself has generated corollary industries such as private mediators to circumvent the not-to-be trusted police.
No one is quite certain just how many kidnappings take place in Mexico these days. The Attorney General's office counted 785 kidnappings throughout the country in 2007 and clocked 314 more in the first six months of 2008. But Enrique Mendieta, an ex-investigator with the attorney general's office who in 1997 collared the nation's most notorious kidnapper Daniel Arizmendi AKA "The Earchopper", and was contracted by Marti to negotiate with his son's captors, maintains that reported kidnappings are only half the story.
Since Mendieta retired from the Attorney General's office, he has continued to make a good living from kidnapping. Several years ago, he served as technical advisor for Hollywood director Tony Scott's Mexico City kidnap melodrama "Man On Fire" starring Denzell Washington.
Although Mendieta flopped badly in young Marti's case, he is confident that his business will flourish so long as the current wave of kidnappings continues. Interviewed by Proceso magazine in his offices facing Mexico's World Trade Center, the mediator refused to divulge what Alejandro Marti had paid him for his failed efforts to win release of his son.
Other commercial ventures kick-started by the kidnapping industry include special high premium insurance for potential kidnap victims; private security specialists like Kroll Associates who will bullet proof luxury automobiles; and high tech firms that will implant cyber chips in children and loved ones so that they can be located by satellite should they be kidnapped. The opportunities seem endless.
Kidnapping, as writer Arturo Cano who covers the kidnapping beat for the left daily La Jornada, reflects, is nothing less than "the bastard child of savage capitalism."
John Ross's web site johnross-rebeljournalist.com is up and running if not yet a fait a compli. Ross is in Mexico City in the heat of writing the monstrously entitled "EL MONSTRUO - TALES OF DREAD AND REDEMPTION FROM THE MOST MONSTROUS MEGALOPOLIS ON THE PLANET EARTH." If you have further info, please write johnross@igc.org
By JOHN ROSS
www.counterpunch.org
Mexico City.
The armor-plated limousines, Hummers, and SUVs with conspicuously tinted windows sped into the Zocalo through the tight security cordon of thousands of police and members of the presidential military guard that ringed the great plaza. One by one, the dignitaries disembarked and were escorted by heavily armed phalanxes of personal "guaruras" or bodyguards into the bunker-like National Palace for the emergency meeting of the National Public Security Council. Despite the heavy security presence, the ambiance outside the National Public Security Summit reeked of public insecurity. 5000 victims, including many hundreds of security agents, have been slain since Felipe Calderon assumed the presidency in much-questioned 2006 elections and declared war on "organized crime." Countless numbers of citizens have been kidnapped.
Indeed, it was one more kidnapping that had goosed Calderon into summoning the titans of commerce, industry, and governance to the National Palace for the August 21 National Public Security Summit. This past June 4, uniformed Federal Investigation Agents (AFI, a bad knock-off the U.S. FBI) stopped a chauffeured BMW driving 14-year-old Fernando Marti, the son of a sporting goods tycoon, to classes at the toney British-American School. Marti's captors, who may or may not have been real AFI agents, forced the boy, his chauffer, and his bodyguard into a second car, and drove off, destination unknown.
A call that evening to young Marti's father Alejandro communicated that his son could be redeemed by paying a 5,000,000-peso ransom. Marti was advised not to inform the police. Already suspicious that the police were involved in the kidnapping, the tycoon hired a private mediator to deal with what appeared to be a vicious gang known as the "Flower Syndicate", so named because they always leave a flower in the mouth of their victims. A drop was arranged and the pesos zipped into a gym bag and placed in the rear seat of a parked car as the kidnappers had instructed.
But Fernando was not returned and the kidnappers were not heard from again. On July 31, the boy's decomposing body was found in the trunk of a parked car in the upscale Coyoacan neighborhood, not far from the pay-off site.
As is so often the case in high profile kidnappings, according to Mexico City district attorney Miguel Angel Mancera it now looks like the snatch was an inside job, prepared by the Marti family's own bodyguards.
Leery of the police, Alejandro Marti was persuaded to tell his story on primetime TV news broadcasts instead of contacting the authorities. The results were predictable: when spectacular crime has befallen the rich and famous in this crime-ridden megalopolis, Televisa and its junior partner TV Azteca, the nation's two-headed electronic media monopoly, direct their fire at the capital's left-wing government, in this case Mexico City's mayor Marcelo Ebrard, for failing to safeguard the upper crust.
The war drums pounded. Calderon publicly embraced Alejandro Marti, a heavy contributor to his 2006 election campaign, and convoked the National Public Safety Council emergency summit, urging Ebrard to attend.
The Mayor, who is convinced that Calderon stole the 2006 election from his predecessor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), has refused to recognize the right-wing Calderon and has strenuously avoided any official contact with him. But as the electronic lynch mob cranked up the barrage of recriminations, Ebrard risked breaking with AMLO and agreed to attend the August 23 security summit. Few political observers, including those affiliated with his own left-center Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) seemed bothered that the kidnapping and murder of a young boy had been utilized to blackmail the Mayor into de facto recognition of Calderon. "They've kidnapped their consciences," AMLO supporter Berta Robledo insists.
The Grand Accord rolled out by Calderon at the summit listed 75 pledges to battle organized crime. The death penalty for kidnappers who kill their victims as proposed by the so-called Mexican Green Environmental Party was not among them (Mexico has no death penalty) but life imprisonment without possibility of release was. The laundry list also included such short-ended measures as a national identity card with biometric data (to be available in three years), a national registry of cellular phones (kidnappers use cell phones to intimidate the families of their victims), a mandatory sixth grade education for police, and prayers from the nation's pulpits for victory in Calderon's war against crime.
The National Accord for Public Safety was signed under blazing television lights by President Calderon, his security cabinet, the Secretaries of the Interior and Public Safety, the Military, the political parties, the princes of industry and commerce, media moguls, corrupt labor bosses (Elva Esther Gordillo of the National Teachers Union, Carlos Romero Deschamps, boss of the Oil Workers), the Catholic hierarchy, the Greek Orthodox bishop, representatives of the Jewish and Mormon faiths, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists and various Evangelical "sects" (dixit the RC Church.)
Marcelo Ebrard signed on too, along with 31 governors - a cast of characters that featured Oaxaca's Ulysis Ruiz (accused of the murder of 26 activists during the 2006 civil rebellion in his state), Mario Marin of Puebla (accused of kidnapping journalist Lydia Cacho at the behest of a political crony), and Mexico state's Enrique Pena Nieto (responsible for the 2006 police riot at San Salvador Atenco that left two dead.)
Despite the many criminals in the National Public Security Summit audience, no one spoke out in favor of organized crime.
By a stroke of political synchronicity, the signing of the public security accord occurred at the same hour as social activist Ignacio Del Valle was being sentenced to 45 years imprisonment in nearby Texcoco, for "kidnapping" - the 45 years were tacked on to a 67 year sentence that Nacho Del Valle is currently serving in Mexico's maximum lock-up for the same "kidnapping."
Just what did this "kidnapping" consist of? In April 2006, Nacho and the other leaders of the Popular Front to Defend the Land (FPDT) sat down with Mexico state school officials to negotiate changes in the education system on the ejido of San Salvador Atenco, a poor farming community out on the dried bed of Lake Texcoco that former president Vicente Fox once tried to expropriate for a multi-billion dollar airport, before he was foiled by the courts and the campesinos' militancy.
When the school officials tried to cut the meeting short, Nacho locked the door and forced them to negotiate. Federal and state authorities charge that this constituted "kidnapping."
Speaking outside the Molino del Rey courtroom where Nacho Del Valle had just been doomed to more than a hundred years in prison, his wife Teresa declared that her husband wasn't the kidnapper. "They are the kidnappers. They have kidnapped Nacho!" "No," corrected Nacho's lawyer Barbara Zamora, "they have kidnapped justice."
One month after the purported "kidnapping" of the state officials, 3000 federal and state police smashed into Atenco, took over 200 prisoners including Del Valle, killed two young men, sexually assaulted 23 women, and deported five foreign human rights observers. The May 3 and 4 2006 repression in Atenco has been decried by human rights groups ranging from Amnesty International to the United Nations. Only one police officer has ever been indicted for sexual abuse, not considered a grave crime, and was long ago released on bail.
The assault on Atenco was prepared and orchestrated by Eduardo Medina Mora, then Secretary of Public Security, and now Calderon's Attorney General who designed the National Public Safety Accord signed at the August 23 summit.
There are several variants of kidnapping in contemporary Mexico: the normal commercial kidnapping in which the rich are snatched and held until a ransom is paid, often after dispatch of an ear or a finger of the victim through the mail; the "express" kidnapping where the victim in grabbed from a car or a taxi or an ATM machine and his or her cell phone used to call home and demand immediate payment while the victim is driven around - because these are quick in-and-out jobs and kidnappers are less selective, often putting the snatch on the middle class rather than the super rich, the ransoms are considerably lower; and "levantones" (literally "pick-ups") in which the kidnap victim is never again seen alive although body parts or a severed head may later be recovered, usually with a mordant note attached - "levantones" are very popular with the drug cartels as retribution for real or imagined slights by rival drug gangs or the authorities.
Other styles of kidnapping include police kidnappings in which police officers, often from anti-kidnapping squads, utilize their expertise to snatch well-heeled victims. Also in the repertoire: political kidnappings, such as the Popular Revolutionary Army's (EPR) 1994 taking of millionaire banker Alfredo Harp Helu, a close friend and business partner of Alejandro Marti's, that reportedly yielded a record $14,000,000 USD ransom, and the Mexican government's kidnapping of EPR militants Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Cruz Sanchez in May 2007 - kidnappings by government agents are usually catalogued as "forced disappearances."
Then there are metaphorical kidnappings: when senators from the leftist Broad Progressive Front or FAP seized the tribune in the Mexican congress last April to prevent fast-track passage of a petroleum privatization measure, Televisa and Calderon's PAN Party accused them of "kidnapping" the legislative process. Similarly, Lopez Obrador's supporters accuse Calderon and his associates of "kidnapping" the presidency.
Kidnapping is essentially a crime of class. No one kidnaps the poor. Although the kidnappers themselves are not necessarily poor, their victims are invariably rich and like Alejandro Marti have ample access to the media to drum up sympathy. A silent march to protest Fernando's kidnap-murder, endorsed by Calderon's party and ballyhooed nightly by Televisa and TV Azteca, is expected to drawn tens of thousands in Mexico City August 30.
In an economy that has gone pancake flat, there's no doubt that kidnapping is a growth industry. Not only are the kidnappers making out like bandits but the crime itself has generated corollary industries such as private mediators to circumvent the not-to-be trusted police.
No one is quite certain just how many kidnappings take place in Mexico these days. The Attorney General's office counted 785 kidnappings throughout the country in 2007 and clocked 314 more in the first six months of 2008. But Enrique Mendieta, an ex-investigator with the attorney general's office who in 1997 collared the nation's most notorious kidnapper Daniel Arizmendi AKA "The Earchopper", and was contracted by Marti to negotiate with his son's captors, maintains that reported kidnappings are only half the story.
Since Mendieta retired from the Attorney General's office, he has continued to make a good living from kidnapping. Several years ago, he served as technical advisor for Hollywood director Tony Scott's Mexico City kidnap melodrama "Man On Fire" starring Denzell Washington.
Although Mendieta flopped badly in young Marti's case, he is confident that his business will flourish so long as the current wave of kidnappings continues. Interviewed by Proceso magazine in his offices facing Mexico's World Trade Center, the mediator refused to divulge what Alejandro Marti had paid him for his failed efforts to win release of his son.
Other commercial ventures kick-started by the kidnapping industry include special high premium insurance for potential kidnap victims; private security specialists like Kroll Associates who will bullet proof luxury automobiles; and high tech firms that will implant cyber chips in children and loved ones so that they can be located by satellite should they be kidnapped. The opportunities seem endless.
Kidnapping, as writer Arturo Cano who covers the kidnapping beat for the left daily La Jornada, reflects, is nothing less than "the bastard child of savage capitalism."
John Ross's web site johnross-rebeljournalist.com is up and running if not yet a fait a compli. Ross is in Mexico City in the heat of writing the monstrously entitled "EL MONSTRUO - TALES OF DREAD AND REDEMPTION FROM THE MOST MONSTROUS MEGALOPOLIS ON THE PLANET EARTH." If you have further info, please write johnross@igc.org
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