VERSE / Larry Piltz : From God’s Lips to Yours

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

“A Marriage Proposal.” Wood engraving by Barnard from an 1877 issue of The Illustrated London News / Old-Print.com.

From God’s Lips to Yours Happy New Year!

At the calendar’s turn past choice becomes clear
as our marriage strolls into its fourteenth year
that decision writ large wove a soft comfy throw
built a nimbly steered barge with its speed set at slow
with potential adversity more than offset
by inspired hilarities no doubt we’ll have met
two idiosyncrasies set into stone
two radio frequencies sharing a bone
with two sets of families times two sets of friends
the occasional frenzy the holiday binge
the surfacing urges the personal dirges
skirting disasters and nursing the singe

It’s someone to listen with two half-cocked ears
tears of anguish that glisten while craving some beers
the freedom of knowing our bread’s always buttered
the solace each night of our bed partner’s mutter
It’s old faithful the geyser of love and respect
with a pool of concern if one just might defect
It’s years of the same-old flow of life
that waters the hearts of each husband each wife
all deserve the chance of sharing this bliss
and to know it’s street-legal to publicly kiss
in a world whose bright days are meant for all
Now good luck with whom you entangle enthrall

Either way it’s expressive impulsive to care
a bit obsessive-compulsive this permanent share
a boon heart condition this terminal rendition
with pretenses that drop when you’re out of ammunition
My disarming life is a moveable truce
a surrender to hope a set table a deuce
All who want it should be so blessedly mixed
to grow to enjoy that they’re neutered and fixed
Though I joke and laugh I know that I’m blessed
as we learn and evolve and transform this fine mess
I wouldn’t trade even a moment since my wedding
not even the sorrows nor for the hair I’ve been shedding
and certainly not the devotion of wedlock
especially through times of marital gridlock
For what is one egg compared to a basket’s
Yes thank you I’m wedded till forced to my casket

Marriage is kindness stretched to infinity
with the marks to prove it just an amenity
no matter for whom you have an affinity
Your love is your personal God-given identity

Larry Piltz / The Rag Blog

Indian Cove
Austin, Texas
December 28, 2009

Dad and Jean in Omaha at the 2009 College World Series.

The Rag Blog

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UT-Austin’s Kuperman : Bomb Iran’s Nukes

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from Crusader Rabbit.

UT non-proliferation ‘expert’ calls for
Military strikes against Iran nuclear facilities

[Alan J. Kuperman is] ‘director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin,’ but his Christmas eve call to war relies on disinformation and contradiction, not on objective scholarly analysis.

By Paul Craig Roberts / December 30, 2009

On Christmas eve when Christians were celebrating the Prince of Peace, the New York Times delivered forth a call for war. “There’s only one way to stop Iran,” declared Alan J. Kuperman, and that is “military air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

Kuperman is described as the “director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin,” but his Christmas eve call to war relies on disinformation and contradiction, not on objective scholarly analysis.

For example, Kuperman contradicts the unanimous report of America’s 16 intelligence agencies, the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Russian intelligence with his claim that Iran has a nuclear weapon program. Astonishingly, it does not occur to Kuperman that readers might wonder how an academic bureaucrat in Austin, Texas, has better information than these authorities.

Kuperman is so determined to damn President Obama’s plan to have other countries enrich Iran’s uranium for Iran’s nuclear energy program and medical isotopes that Kuperman commits astounding blunders. After claiming that Iran has a “bomb program,” Kuperman claims that “Iran’s uranium contains impurities” and that Ahmadinejad’s threat “to enrich uranium domestically to the 20 percent level . . . is a bluff, because even if Iran could further enrich its impure uranium, it lacks the capacity to fabricate the uranium into fuel elements.”

What was the New York Times op ed editor thinking when he approved Kuperman’s article? Iran, Kuperman writes, needs “90 percent enriched uranium” to have weapons-grade material, but cannot reach 20 percent or even make fuel elements for its nuclear energy. So, how is Iran going to produce a bomb? Yet, Kuperman writes that “we have reached the point where air strikes are the only plausible option with any prospect of preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. The sooner the United States takes action, the better.”

It could not be made any clearer that, as with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a military attack on Iran has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction. An “Iranian nuke” is just another canard behind which hides an undeclared agenda.

One wonders about Kuperman’s non-proliferation credentials. How does a wanton military attack on a country encourage non-proliferation? Aren’t America’s bullying, threats and acts of war more likely to encourage countries to seek nuclear weapons?

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the United States has wars ongoing in Iraq where the ancient Chaldean Christian community was destroyed — not by Saddam Hussein but by the neoconservatives’ illegal invasion of Iraq — in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Sudan. The U.S. initiated a war, which it lost, between its puppet ruler in the former Soviet province of Georgia and Russia.

The U.S., the world’s greatest supporter of terrorism, is the main financier of terrorist groups that stage attacks within Iran, and U.S. money succeeded in financing protests against President Ahmadinejad’s reelection and in dividing the ruling Islamic clerics. It was American money, weapons, and diplomatic cover that enabled the Israeli war crimes against the Lebanese people during 2006 and against Palestinian civilians in Gaza during 2008-2009, crimes documented in the Goldstone Report.

Iran has never interfered in U.S. internal affairs, but the U.S. has a long record of interfering in Iranian affairs. In 1953 the U.S. overthrew Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammed Mosaddeq, and installed a puppet who tortured Iranians who desired political independence. Despite this and other American offenses against Iran, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly expressed Iran’s interest to be on friendly terms with the United States, only to be repeatedly rebuffed. The U.S. wants war with Iran in order to expand U.S. world hegemony.

One might expect a non-proliferation expert to take history into account, but Kuperman fails to do so. Kuperman also has nothing to say about Israel’s, India’s, and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Unlike Iran, none of these countries are signatories to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel, India, and Pakistan all developed their nuclear weapons in secret, and many experts believe Israel had American help, an act of treason. All three countries have been rewarded by Washington despite their perfidy.

Why is Kuperman concerned about Iran, which submits to the IAEA inspections, but is unconcerned with Israel, a country that has never permitted a single inspection? The answer is that the Israel Lobby, the U.S. military-security complex, and the “Christian” Zionists have succeeded in demonizing Iran.

Every real expert knows that an Iranian nuclear weapon would have no function other than deterring an attack on Iran. Ever since the U.S. lost its monopoly on nuclear weapons, after using them offensively and pointlessly against a defeated Japan, nuclear weapons have served no purpose other than deterrence.

The U.S. has no conflicting economic interests with Iran. Iran is simply a supplier of oil, an important one. A U.S. attack on Iran, such as the one advocated by Kuperman, would most likely shut down oil flows to the West through the Strait of Hormuz. This might benefit refiners, who sell gasoline to the West and could charge enormous prices, but no one else would benefit.

Adding to the war cry are congregations of fake Christians. A great number of them, organized by someone’s money under the banner, “Christian Leaders for a Nuclear-free Iran,” have written to Congress demanding sanctions against Iran that amount to an act of war. The roll call includes the “Christian” Zionist John Hagee, who, according to reports, denigrates Jesus Christ and preaches to his illiterate congregation that it is God’s will for Americans to fight and die for Israel, the oppressor of the Palestinian people.

Among the signatories of the “Christians” demanding an act of war against Iran, are Dr. Pat Robertson, president of Christian Broadcasting Network; Nixon-era criminal Chuck Colson; and Richard Land, president of Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Southern Baptist Convention. Obviously, for Southern Baptists, ethics means murdering Islamists, and religious liberty excludes everyone but “Christian” Zionists.

It is a simple matter for an educated person to make fools of these morons who profess to be Christians. However, these morons have vast constituencies numbering in the tens of millions of Americans. There are, in fact, more of them than there are intelligent, informed, moral, and real Christian Americans. The votes of the morons will prevail.

In the second decade of the 21st century, America’s Zionist wars against Islam will expand. America’s wars on behalf of Israel’s territorial expansion will complete the bankruptcy of America. The Treasury’s bonds to finance the U.S. government’s enormous deficits will lack for buyers. Therefore, the bonds will be monetized by the Federal Reserve.

The result will be rising rates of inflation. The inflation will destroy the dollar as world reserve currency, and the U.S. will no longer be able to pay for its imports. Shortages will appear, including food and gasoline, and “Superpower America” will find itself pressed to the wall as a Third World country unable to pay its debts.

America has been brought low, both morally and economically, by its obeisance to the Israel Lobby. Even Jimmy Carter, a former President of the United States and Governor of Georgia, recently had to apologize to the Israel Lobby for his honest criticisms of Israel’s inhumane treatment of the occupied Palestinians in order for his grandson to be able to run for a seat in the Georgia state senate. This should tell the macho super-power American tough guys who really runs “their” country.

[Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has held numerous academic appointments. He has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, was published by Random House in March, 2008.]

Source / OpEdNews

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FARC in Colombia : A History of Armed Resistance

Posted on December 30, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

“Por la nueva Colombia, la patria grande y socialismo.”(“For the new Colombia, the greater fatherland, and socialism.”) — FARC motto. Photo from HubPages.

Armed struggle for land reform and justice:
Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia

By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / December 30, 2009

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia — In May 2003 a leak from the Bush Treasury Department indicated that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) was about to add to its extensive narcotics traffickers list. This time it would add someone in Colombia.

OFAC would be using one of the enlightened Republican Congress’s new drug war laws, the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act. I was pretty sure who the new addition would be. The word “kingpin” was a dead giveaway.

It had to be the guy who had attained high office; whose brother had organized 20 or more death squads and maintained a couple of them out at the family hacienda; whose cousin in the Colombian Congress was the mouthpiece for those death squads as well as a close friend and promoter of various well known narcotrafficantes, including the legendary Pablo Escobar; someone whose own father was wanted by the Colombian police and the U.S. DEA for cocaine trafficking when he was killed in an abortive kidnap plot; and who himself was removed from his position as mayor of Medellín for having well-known ties to drug runners.

Who else could it be, but master criminal and El Presidente himself, Alvaro Uribe?

Imagine my surprise when it was announced the next day, that it was not Uribe after all, but the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — Peoples Army (FARC or FARC-EP) and 15 of their known or suspected leaders, even though I already knew they had to be a bad bunch of hombres. Five years before, in 1997, they were named a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. Department of State.

It couldn’t have been easy to make it to the top of two government lists at the same time (the terrorist list and the narcotrafficantes list) and be the defining designees of a whole new hyphenated word, “Narco-terrorist”! That should keep them from gaining credibility with anyone with media access in the U.S.! I started wondering who these FARC guys were. Somebody needed to check them out, find out where they came from, and why.

The roots of FARC-EP

The current civil war in Colombia has been characterized by gross human rights violations, increasing dramatically over the past two decades. International human rights organizations have repeatedly singled out right-wing paramilitary groups (paracos) as being the principal perpetrators of human rights abuses.

The paracos are intertwined with the Colombian Armed Forces as they wage war against, not only the guerrillas, but anyone suspected of being a guerrilla sympathizer: union members, peasant organizers, human rights workers, and religious activists. Some paracos leaders have extended the parameters of the war against the guerrillas and their suspected fellow travelers to include drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes, petty criminals, and the homeless, in an attempt to “cleanse” Colombian society. Social cleansing is different from ethnic cleansing only in the presumed reasoning, it has the same results.

Over the years, several Colombian presidents have attempted to address the social, political, and economic injustices that are the principal causes of the conflict. However, these efforts have been repeatedly thwarted by the U.S. and its war on drugs, and by the Colombian political, economic, military elite, who are desperately trying to preserve a “democracy” that has disenfranchised much of the population.

News accounts often label the conflict a “35-year-old civil war,” counting its origin from the official formation of several guerrilla groups in mid-1960. However, the roots of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the FARC, date back to peasant armed self-defense movements formed between 1948 and 1958.

The National Front

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Colombia’s Liberal and Conservative parties, whose influence reached from Bogotá to virtually every village in settled regions of the country, dominated politics. Ideological differences between these elites reverberated throughout society, often resulting in outbreaks of violence that repeatedly pitted loyal Liberal and Conservative factions, both peasant and elite, against each other.

In the late 1940s, dissident Liberal Jorge Eliécer Gaitán emerged from the Liberal and communist-led agrarian and labor reform movements as the leading presidential candidate. On April 9, 1948, Gaitán was assassinated on a Bogotá street. The killing triggered a popular uprising by the Liberal lower classes that resulted in massive destruction and looting in the capital. This uprising, known as the Bogotazo, was the opening act of a 10 year period in Colombian history recalled as La Violencia.

Liberal peasant uprisings occurred throughout the country, pitting rural Liberals and Conservatives against each other. Fearing a peasant-led social rebellion, the elite Liberal leadership supported repression used by the Conservative government to quell the uprisings and preserve the elite oligarchy. But after two high-ranking Liberals were assassinated in 1949, the Liberals boycotted the 1950 presidential election, won uncontested by Conservative Laureano Gomez.

Although rebellion had been effectively quelled in Bogotá, sporadic armed peasant uprisings continued in several rural departments. Gomez, who considered Liberal peasants kin to Communists, responded to these with violent repression. Many Liberal members of the national police force were dismissed and replaced with peasants from the Conservative Boyacá district of Chulavista. The chulavistas became infamous for their brutal tactics in repressing rebellious Liberals and communists.

In the early 1950s, the Gomez regime, supported by the Catholic Church, which had been left out of the various negotiations during the uprisings, and by the U.S., which viewed Communist support for peasants in a Cold War prospective, elevated expression to new heights. Chaotic violence pitted rural Liberals and Conservatives against each other, and resulted in battles between the oligarchy and land-starved peasants. Many large landowners abandoned their properties, fleeing to the relative safety of the cities.

In 1953, Gomez was overthrown by a military coup that brought General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla to power. Rojas Pinilla immediately dispatched the military to reclaim the property of the large landowners still in the cities. In response, armed peasant groups called for agrarian reform.

In June, 1953, in an attempt to end the violence, Rojas Pinilla issued an amnesty to all the armed peasants and responded to their call for agrarian reform by creating the Office of Rehabilitation and Relief. In reality, this office did little to address the agrarian problem, yet the Liberal and Conservative elite felt that Rojas Pinilla was using it to build popular support for himself. To quell their suspicions, in June 1954 Rojas Pinilla extended the amnesty to right wing thugs imprisoned for acts of terror on behalf of the ruling Conservative elite and the Gomez regime.

Many of the Gomezistas released from jail immediately began killing peasants, forcing those that had accepted amnesty to again take up arms. Rojas Pinilla responded in 1955 by launching a major military offensive against the rearmed peasants that became known as La Guerra Villarica. It was in the department of Tolima during this offensive that the armed self-defense movements that would later evolve into the FARC came into existence. The Conservative and Liberal elite blamed the renewal of La Violencia on Rojas Pinilla, and in 1957 organized a general strike and street protests in the capital that forced him to resign.


Following the ouster of Rojas Pinilla, the Conservative and Liberal elite agreed on a power-sharing agreement, the National Front. Beginning in 1958, the parties alternated four-year terms in the presidency (no need to rig elections), and distributed all public positions evenly between the two parties. The formation of the National Front brought an end to the 19th century aspect of La Violencia: conflict between factions of the ruling class. However, the new government still had to contend with armed peasants, whose demand for land reform was being denied.

A FARC is born

According to a 2000 book by Alfredo Molano, Violence and Land Colonization, Violence in Colombia: The Contemporary Crisis in Historical Perspective, many peasants, mostly Liberals and Communists, survived the military offensives of the 1950s by undertaking long marches, under the protection of armed self-defense groups, to the mostly uninhabited eastern departments of Meta and Caquetá.

They cleared and worked new lands in areas they declared “independent republics,” in an attempt to regain subsistence land and free themselves from a national government they distrusted due to “personal experience with social and economic partisanship and… the double value system upheld by the ruling classes.”

However, the colonists soon discovered they had not found the autonomy they so desperately sought. Large landowners, intent on increasing their own holdings, soon began laying claim to the newly cleared lands. Furthermore, the government had no intention of leaving the colonists alone.

“In defining these republics as gangs of communist bandits, the government had an excuse to launch military attacks against them, condemn them politically, and blockade them economically… The only possible outcome was war. One by one the republics fell to the army, and once they were under government control the land became concentrated in the hands of the large landowners,” Molano wrote.

The peasants, forced deeper into the jungle, realized their only chance of achieving social justice lay in their ability to wage war against the government on a national level. As a result, the armed self-defense movements dispersed units to various regions of the country to fight the army on several fronts simultaneously under a central command structure. On July 20, 1964, the various fronts of the armed self-defense movements issued their agrarian reform program. Two years later, they officially became known as the FARC.

Guerrilla groups begat guerrilla groups

In 1960, an independent political party, National Popular Alliance (ANAPO), formed by supporters of Rojas Pinilla was contending in congressional elections. ANAPO’s popularity increased steadily throughout the 1960’s as it appealed to many who had been left out of the National Front alliance. Rojas Pinilla ran as ANAPO’s candidate in the 1970 presidential election and, after holding an early lead, was narrowly defeated by National Front candidate Misael Pastrana Borrero. Many ANAPO supporters accused the government of manipulating the vote count, and in response to perceived electoral fraud; socialist members of ANAPO formed the M-19 guerrilla movement in 1972.


M-19 gained notoriety through a series of daring urban raids that included the occupation of the Dominican Embassy in Bogotá in 1980 and an ill-fated takeover of the Palace of Justice in 1985. The latter resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people, including 11 Supreme Court judges, in a two-day battle in which the army leveled the massive courthouse. In 1989, M-19 guerrillas decided to lay down their weapons in return for a full government pardon. The ex-guerrillas formed a political party, the Democratic Alliance M-19, to participate in the upcoming elections; however, right-wing death squads soon assassinated many of the party’s leaders, including presidential candidate and former M-19 commander Carlos Pizarro.

M-19 had been formed as a response to the National Front, which successfully reserved positions of power for members of the Conservative and Liberal elite. This “limited democracy” spawned other guerrilla movements in the 1960’s. Other factors also came into play.

The Cuban Revolution influenced many radicals in Latin America, as it did in the U.S., convincing them that Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s foco theory of armed insurrection was the revolutionary road to follow. The Colombian Communist Party’s support of resolutions passed by the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, calling for a peaceful road to revolution, led many young Colombians to split from the Party in order to follow the Cuban model.

The Ejército Popular de Liberacion (Popular Army of Liberation, EPL) was thus formed in the department of Antioquia in the mid-1960’s. Following the Soviet-Chinese split, the EPL espoused the Maoist theory of a “prolonged popular war.” But after 1980 it began to distance itself from the goal of prolonged war and in August 1990 many members laid down their arms in order to participate in the political process, while a small dissident faction continued to fight in northern Colombia.


In 1964, university students who had recently returned from Cuba formed Colombia’s second-largest guerrilla group, the Army for National Liberation (Ejército de Liberación Nacional, ELN), in the department of Santander. The ELN adhered strictly to Che’s principles of rural guerrilla warfare and, in contrast to the M-19 and EPL, has so far refused to lay down its arms and participate in the political process. Sociologist Eduardo Pizarro says that, “In recent years the ELN has focused its activities almost exclusively on efforts to disrupt and destroy the oil industry, attacking with great success the pipelines of the north.”

In fact, between 1986 and 1997 the ELN was responsible for 636 pipeline bombings that resulted in $1.5 billion in lost revenue for the state-owned oil company, the oddly named Ecopetrol. For many years, the FARC and EPL denounced the ELN for pursuing a strategy of economic sabotage that has failed to increase its popular support. However, by the end of the 1990s, the FARC was also targeting pipelines used by multinational corporations to transport oil from remote drilling fields to coastal ports.

The FARC is the only Colombian guerrilla group with peasant roots that pre-date both the National Front and the Cuban Revolution. In contrast, the ELN, EPL and M-19 were all movements led by urban intellectuals, typical of many Latin American guerrilla groups that evolved in the 1960s, Cuban-inspired armed reactions to domestic political, social and economic situation.

FARCing cocaine…

The 1974 presidential election brought an end to the National Front alliance as Liberal and Conservative candidates again ran against each other. Sixteen years of National Front rule had reduced the number of killings — in contrast with the 200,000 Colombians who died during La Violencia — but had failed to address the agrarian issue and a dramatic increase in poverty.

During the National Front years, the percentage of the nation’s work force living in absolute poverty more than doubled, from 25% to 50.7%. Figures were even worse for the rural labor force, where the rate of absolute poverty soared from 25.4% to 67.5%. It is no surprise that when the coca boom began in the late 1970s, the lure of drug profits brought a massive migration of urban jobless and landless peasants to the predominantly FARC-controlled colonized regions.

Initially, the FARC was concerned that the new mass migration would undermine the political and social status quo in areas it controlled. At the same time, its income, from war taxes imposed on the local population in return for maintaining social order, increased dramatically.

New revenue enabled the rebel group to vastly improve its military capabilities, modernizing its weapons and improving the guerrilla fighter’s standard of living. In addition, the FARC was able to offer social and economic services “in the areas of credit, education, health, justice, registry, public works, and ecological and cultural programs.”

During the early years of the coca boom, the guerrillas and the drug lords worked together. Guerrillas controlled many of the coca growing regions while the cartels managed much of the cocaine production and trafficking.

However, this informal alliance collapsed when the leaders of drug cartels in Medellín and Cali began investing their new found wealth in property, primarily large cattle ranches, placing themselves firmly in the ranks of the guerrillas’ traditional enemy. The new narco-landowners soon began organizing their own paramilitary armies in order to fight the guerrillas and those they saw as guerrilla sympathizers.

Until today…

For 50 years the FARC and its predecessors have claimed to be fighting for agrarian reform and social justice for Colombia’s peasant population. The FARC has evolved into a powerful military force of 15,000 to 20,000 fighters who now control approximately 40% of the country. A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report issued in November 1997 found that “the Colombian Armed Forces could be defeated within five years unless the country’s government regains political legitimacy and its armed forces are drastically restructured.”

U.S. President Bill Clinton’s bizarre Drug Czar, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, echoed these findings when he claimed that Colombian democracy is seriously threatened by the growing military strength of the guerrillas.

Such statements lead one to believe that McCaffrey’s concept of “democracy” involves social order being “maintained” under a military state of siege, impunity for paramilitary forces who regularly massacre the civilian population, political candidates in opposition to the Conservative and Liberal elite being routinely assassinated, a judicial system paralyzed by fear, rigged and stolen elections, and thousands of peasants whose only economic means of survival is illicit coca production.

Indeed, if the ruling political, economic and military elite, aided by the paracos, continue to stifle truly democratic reform, the demise of Colombian “democracy” may well be inevitable.

For its part, the U.S. appears intent on “Salvadorizing” the conflict. Colombia, as was the case with El Salvador in the 1980’s, is today the hemisphere’s leading recipient of U.S. military aid. And it appears that Washington, in its attempt to prevent a guerrilla victory, is once again intent on supporting a repressive military closely allied to right-wing death squads. Such a policy will inevitably result in the continued suffering of the Colombian people, who are routinely subject to massacres, torture, disappearance, kidnapping, and forced displacement.

Any possibility of achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict depends on the government’s ability to dismantle the paramilitary organizations and create a climate conducive to negotiations between the government and the guerrillas. Then, and only then, will it be possible to address the political, social, and economic causes of the conflict. So far the government has made little headway in eliminating the paracos.

The FARC is absolutely necessary to the survival of the large agrarian class of Colombia. Only land reform, justice, and true democracy will make it unnecessary; this is the only route to the elimination of FARC. Pointless and brutal alternatives, which will not result in the elimination of FARC-EP, is the way chosen by Hillary Clinton, Gates and Obama, sending more arms and U.S. troops, paid for with your money, to maintain civil war within Colombia and perhaps spread it to neighboring countries.

Note: Much research for this article came from various reports produced by the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA); my thanks to them for keeping track of all this stuff over these many years. — md

  • For Marion Delgado’s previous reports from Colombia on The Rag Blog, go here.

.The Rag Blog

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James Retherford : Sweeping Away the Snow

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Art by Mark Fiore. See link to animation below.

Citizens of the earth:
Best wishes in bad times

By James Retherford / The Rag Blog / December 29, 2009

Pardon me if I use this greeting to sweep away the usual seasonal accumulation of snow… and more. This is the time of year when we typically offer each other best wishes and hopes for peace and prosperity in the new year, and I wish each and every one of you all of these things and more.

But this year I also must consider how hollow these thoughts ring when so many of our fellow Americans are jobless and sinking into poverty — and, in too many cases, homelessness. As I think about this, I must, as a citizen of the Earth, also consider how the collapse of the American middle class is but a ripple compared to the economic tsunami unleashed by the worldwide Ponzi scheme hatched by the grifters on Wall Street.

Finally I think of young men and women, forced to choose between careers in legalized war (the military) and illegal wars (drug gangs) because of the wholesale export of American manufacturing jobs to cheap labor markets.

American soldiers are returning from endless deployments to the endless war physically broken and psychologically devastated — haunted by the growing awareness that they have participated not in a noble cause to keep America safe from terrorists or a grand religious crusade against the anti-Christ but rather that they themselves were unwitting pawns in a grand larceny and are nothing more than mercenary terrorists hired by American corporatists to steal the national wealth of Islamic peoples halfway around the world.

This is the season to stop and take stock of where we have been and what we must do. For me — and I strongly hope for you too — this is time to seriously consider what we ALL must do together in 2010 to FIGHT BACK! … to take our nation back from the criminals, the oily oligarchs, the fancy financiers, the war-mongers, the inside-traders, the political hacks, the brown shirts, and — did I mention? — the criminals.

‘Tis the season for giving, so let’s hand out some long prison sentences at hard labor to ALL of those who have been robbing us blind while pimping the Constitution.

Maybe after we give Guantanamo back to its rightful owners, the Cuban government would loan it back to us as a place to incarcerate the corporate crooks and their cronies.

Meanwhile please enjoy Mark Fiore’s seasonal reminder and “Ho! Ho! Whoa!” (Christmas may have passed, but the season of consumption is still with us.)

Oh, and have a happy new year. Please.

CLICK HERE FOR MARK FIORE ANIMATION.

The Rag Blog

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Health Care Reform : Our Christmas Eve Present

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer


Congress’ health care reform
Promises huge returns for all

‘Their principal job is to reinforce the great ideas of yesterday while suppressing the great ideas of tomorrow.’ — Deepak Chopra on skeptics.

By Janet Gilles / The Rag Blog / December 29, 2009

[The Rag Blog has run numerous articles critical of Congress’ attempt at health care reform. Contributor Janet Gilles has a very different perspective.]

Few politicians have dared to question the health care system itself in this country. Yet, there are 99,000 easily preventable deaths a year from infections acquired in the hospital, according to the Center for Disease Control. The passage of health reform, the Christmas Eve gift to the American public, promises huge returns for everyone, even those with excellent health insurance. Because what good is good insurance when more people die from infections acquired in the hospital than from breast cancer and AIDS combined??

In most states, hospitals are not required to report these rates of infections, which is how they get away with it. New regulations in the health bill which require reporting of hospital acquired infections, will almost entirely eliminate this deadly threat.Other examples of how cost controls are going to result in a betterSystem of health care abound.

For the last decade or two, the costs of health care have skyrocketed. The Mayo Clinic has led the way, and numerous commissions have made simple recommendations to change the rules of the game, by comparing treatments to determine which are most effective. Due to their great promise of cutting costs, most of these measures have made it into the current law now so close to our grasp.

What has been needed has been a restructuring of incentives, a consistent theme in Obama’s health care reform agenda, and we are that close. Because of the power of the right, the new bill does not cover everyone, but Paul Krugman says it best. “Guys, this is a major program to aid lower and lower-middle-income families. How is that not a big progressive victory?”

Jonathan Chait explains why this legislation is the greatest social achievement of our time. Our health care system has been focused on finding the most expensive remedies; this new legislation will require an apples to apples comparison of treatments and end up changing the nature of health care. Change we can depend on.

The Rag Blog

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Corruption in Panama : Former President on the Lam

Posted on December 29, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Panama’s ex-President Ernesto Pérez Balladares earlier this year. Panama’s ‘Toro’ is currently wanted by law enforcement, if not by Panama’s voters. Photo from telemetro.com.

Panama’s ‘Toro’ goes underground

Warrant issued for arrest of ex-President Ernesto Pérez Balladares for laundering money from gambling concession kickbacks…

By Eric Jackson / The Rag Blog / December 29, 2009

PANAMA CITY, Panama — On December 28 — ironically, the Day of the Holy Innocents, which is Panama’s functional equivalent of April Fools Day in the United States — prosecutors revealed that they had issued an order for police to arrest former President Ernesto “Toro” Pérez Balladares and bring him in for formal interrogation and possible preventive detention on charges that he laundered the proceeds of kickbacks he received from a gambling concession contract awarded by his administration. This was no joke.

The alleged crime is money laundering, arising from a 1997 no-bid gambling concession that the Pérez Balladares administration awarded to Lucky Games SA, a subsidiary of a mostly Spanish-owned investment group. It is alleged that a piece of that business went to a company controlled by Mr. Pérez Balladares, Shelf Holdings SA, and that from the concession’s inception up until the middle of this year Toro received a steady stream of payments from Lucky Games through Shelf Holdings.

The transactions allegedly took place through a complicated network of companies apparently controlled by or in the names of the former president’s close friends. Although a fairly damning paper trail has been published in some of the daily newspapers, Pérez Balladares denies that he has received anything from gambling concessions that his administration granted.

Rumors of the former president’s imminent arrest had been circulating for several days, and a few days before the arrest order was revealed a spokesperson said that he had left the country for Nicaragua on a personal visit. Pérez Balladares’s father was Nicaraguan, which could qualify him for Nicaraguan citizenship that could be an impediment to his extradition. But Migracion said that its records indicated that Toro was still in Panama.

On the afternoon of December 28 the National Police cordoned off part of the Panama Oeste residential area of Punta Barco, where the former president has his beach home. Meanwhile, Pérez Balladares’ lawyers went to court to file a motion to have the arrest warrant quashed. (In Panama, unlike most countries, the courts will entertain legal proceedings by a fugitive from justice and in political corruption cases this is the usual procedure.)

Having served as president from 1994 until 1999, Pérez Balladares was eligible to run for the presidency again in 1999 but after a humiliating loss in the intra-party delegate races for control of the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) he shelved his plans to run in the party’s presidential primary, which in the end was narrowly won by Balbina Herrera. The PRD was routed in this past May’s general elections by Ricardo Martinelli and has been embroiled in severe infighting since then.

One of Toro’s great political liabilities is that he conspicuously flaunts great wealth but has never given any credible explanation as to its source. Over the years he has filed a number of criminal defamation charges and civil lawsuits against people who have suggested where he got his money.

In some diplomatic circles it is said that the fortune dates back to the times when General Omar Torrijos was dictator and Toro was not only a high-ranking economic policy maker but also reputedly the man who for the most part handled the general’s personal finances. However, no diplomat will spell out any details of how the fortune was amassed or even state the theory about the time and circumstances of its origins to a journalist for attribution.

Pérez Balladares was president of Panama when Bill Clinton was president of the United States, and the Clinton administration did a number of things to enrich Toro’s family, for example by incarcerating hundreds of Cuban rafters on an old US military firing range here where there was no water and giving a member of Toro’s family the contract to supply bottled water.

However, during Clinton’s time the U.S. government sought an extension of its tenure at some of the military bases in the old Canal Zone, under the guise of a multinational anti-drug center. Toro’s diplomats negotiated such a deal, but the PRD delegation in the legislature refused to go along with it, and after that the U.S. government began to leak a series of allegations about corruption on Pérez Balladares’s part.

These included participation in a scheme to provide Panamanian visas and passports to Chinese citizens seeking to illegally enter the United States and a scheme with American accomplices to obtain kickbacks in a concession to privatize the maintenance of Panama’s buoys and lighthouses. In recent weeks there have been convictions of at least two of the U.S. citizens involved in the latter scheme in U.S. federal courts.

Shortly after Toro left office in 1999, the U.S. State Department canceled his visa. Stating that such information is confidential, the State Department has never openly publicized its reasons for taking the actions that it did. For years Pérez Balladares employed top Washington attorneys and lobbyists in fruitless attempts to get his U.S. visa back.

(The pattern of Washington playing along with corrupt Panamanian politicians up to the point that the latter can or will no longer deliver what the U.S. government wants, at which point the Americans turn on such officials, has a number of precedents in U.S.-Panamanian bilateral relations. The most infamous of these is the case of one Manuel Antonio Noriega.)

The prosecution of former President Pérez Balladares comes at a time when two former education ministers from the PRD administration of Martín Torrijos are in jail awaiting trial on charges of corruption in building maintenance contracts. The party is split between those who would allow prominent PRD members facing corruption charges to fend for themselves and those who would rally behind the accused, alleging a partisan-motivated political witch hunt.

A series of prosecutions that touches scandals from the Pérez Balladares and Torrijos administrations but ignores the many scandals of the Moscoso administration could give the PRD the political circumstances it would need to make its case to much of the public. Prosecution of Moscoso-era corruption, on the other hand, might drive the Panameñista Party away from its alliance with President Martinelli’s Cambio Democratico.

Martinelli, however, has a fairly effective dodge — it is the semi-autonomous Public Ministry, headed by Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez, that decides which cases get prosecuted and which do not. The president does not give orders to prosecutors and he can thus stand aside and tell anybody who asks that he’ll allow judicial processes to take their course without interference. This is what Martinelli is doing at the moment.

[Eric Jackson is editor of The Panama News.]

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Avatar : Contradictions of Cameron’s Animation Masterpiece

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer


The contradictions of capital-intensive history:
James Cameron’s animation masterpiece

The stunning experience of nature, culture, and politics does achieve an important spiritual reversal of the Cowboys and Indians plot.

By Greg Moses / The Rag Blog / December 28, 2009

“I’ll sell it to you for $12 what I paid,” she says to a man holding a pale sign that says “Needed, 1 ticket.” Cheery thankyous move the long line forward, one step closer to Avatar on the last day of this box-office- busting Christmas weekend.

Inside the IMAX theater, just before the house lights come down there will be two more tickets to exchange. Mother and son pay cash at the door to strangers and locate a small, impromptu space where they can sit together against the wall, giving the rest of us the chance to see what we look like with our 3-D glasses on.

The one and only preview belongs to the Disney-branded Tim Burton edition of Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp. Everything about it looks brilliant in IMAX 3-D. The Mad Hatter does not fail to chuckle. Imagine seeing all of us from his point of view, looking like a wall of human flies on flypaper, all bug-eyed.

As for the main feature, which opened Dec. 18, 2009 worldwide, it is true what the fan said who chased in vain after James Cameron’s grumpy autograph at LAX: “The plot is so simple a three-year-old could follow it.” Yes, okay, the formula of colonial imperialism is a cosmology that every preschooler can comprehend. It used to go by the name Cowboys and Indians.

Something about Cameron’s capital-intensive mythology is laudable for a Hollywood Blockbuster. The stunning experience of nature, culture, and politics does achieve an important spiritual reversal of the Cowboys and Indians plot. The audience is skillfully maneuvered into anti-imperialist sympathies so that we can tearfully commit to an improbable reversal of the kind of history that any three-year-old knows.

I came away thinking that I might like to try the Xbox version of the Avatar adventure, with opportunities to win battles of liberation using fantastic weapons upon exotic landscapes. Of course, I realized as I was pulling out my car key that a more effective spiritual reversal would have me renouncing all my capital-intensive desires and the battles they advance.

A truly improbable Avatar reversal would produce a global back-to-nature movement liberated from plastic 3-D glasses because something like “real nature” was being returned to its sacred center of attention. “I see you,” we would say to all living things. Cameron’s deeper vision suggests that all living things would be able to sigh a biologically verifiable response of collective awareness: “And I see you.”

At the high point of the plot’s arc, a masculine body of “skin” touches the feminine surface of a producer’s fantasy. In that very moment, the saturated hues of Avatar’s animation affirm what the plot renounces. Experience moves relentlessly toward the desire to be more immersed in the jungle of technology than we already are.

At any rate, the contradictions of the Hollywood Blockbuster are not proprietary to Cameron. They are the contradictions of capital-intensive history itself. With few exceptions here and there, audiences have not failed to purchase their Avatar tickets in advance.

[Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. He can be reached at gmosesx@gmail.com.]

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Carl Davidson : Obama, the Democrats, and the Months Ahead

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Carl Davidson. Photo by Thomas Good / Next Left Notes.

A report and perspective from the rust belt:
Obama, the Democrats and the months ahead

By Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog / December 28, 2009

Carl Davidson will be Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio, Tuesday, December 29, 2-3 p.m. on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin. Carl will reflect on Obama’s year and take a look at what’s ahead for the Left. For those outside the listening area, go here to stream the show.

BEAVER COUNTY, PA — I’ve been hearing from too many left activists who are simply fed up with the Democrats and want to leave the electoral arena — and just when the battles there are getting really interesting, even if we don’t have prospects of major victories. To my way of thinking, our present task is to deepen the divisions there, not walk away from them.

The sooner we stop thinking of the “Democratic Party” as if it were a single entity, the better off we will be. That’s why “Democrat control of Congress” is an illusion. The GOP Blue Dog faction in the Democratic Party combined with the regular GOP make it at least a draw. That’s why everything positive gets gutted and turned into its opposite.

The progressive majority’s forces are pretty much limited to the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus and the Latino Caucus, and not even all of them. We are a minority force in those upper spheres, not an emerging majority like we are at the base. We can grow to a larger minority in Congress, but to get a true majority, we’d likely have to split both major parties, and we are not close to having that strength yet.

Otherwise, we are mainly limited to passing things where there is a deep divide in finance capital and other big capital at the top, and where one side of it becomes an indirect ally. That may be shaping up on the Afghan war.

But small and medium-sized capital, as well as some larger sectors of productive capital, have yet to stand up to finance capital on HR 676 even though it’s in their interest to do so. We’ll just have to continue our “long march through the institutions” to get it. A carbon tax, immigration reform, and EFCA are going to be even more difficult.

At this point, we have two interconnected mass democratic tasks. Building the left-progressive pole inside and outside the Dems with groups like PDA and other independent forums, and dividing the GOP right to smash the Teabaggers and their allies. Neither is easy, but starting with a clear head helps a lot.

Here in Beaver County in western Pennsylvania we have about 200 or so PDA people and another few dozen Beaver County Peace Links activists. Almost all are blue collar workers or retirees. We, in this sense, are the active antiwar forces here, as well as the active left-progressive side of the spectrum among the unions and a few other groups.

There isn’t much else, save for the Tom Merton Center, the religious-liberal-green-anarchist bunch in nearby Pittburgh. Together with the unions, they pulled out 10,000 for the G20. We took part in it as best as we could. All told, about 6,000 of the 10,000 were from the wider Pittsburgh region and the nearby campuses. That’s our activist core viewed more widely.

Nonetheless a majority of our county, and certainly a majority of Dem voters, are critical of the wars — but they have yet to take any action other than voting. It’s our task to find the activities they will take up, like coming to a vigil or attending an antiwar educational, or even just honking their horns at our weekly vigils.

For the Healthcare not Warfare Afghan war protests here a few weeks ago, we got out about 60 people in the rain and cold. Not bad, considering. At least half those attending were wearing their union jackets. Besides us, the speakers were union folks and local Dem officials, plus Tim Carpenter from PDA. The speeches pushed and warned Obama, but didn’t attack him personally. They told him what he had to do in order to succeed.

If we didn’t take this approach, working with local Dems, I’d guess we could get out less than 10 people, if anyone bothered at all.

Our next project is to make use of Bob Greenwald’s Rethink Afghanistan from Brave New Films. One of our allies showed it last month at a college in the next county. Plus finding ways to work with the Steelworkers on their new collaborative with the Mondragon Coops.

If you think our strategy is reducible to “supporting Obama,” you don’t understand it. To be precise, our strategy here is to aim the main blow at low-road neoliberal finance capital and its right wing populist allies, allying with high road neoKeynesian initiatives at the top, while developing the left-center coalition among labor, minorities, women and youth at the base.

We do that in the form of expanding our PDA group; it’s platform is Out Now, HR 676, Green Jobs, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), Carbon Tax and Debt Relief. Within that, among the advanced, a few of us do revolutionary socialist education that targets neo-Keynesianism as well. We work with Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and that way we grow CCDS in size, too.

That’s the political and class substance of it. Where Obama stands, and where we stand in relation to him, depends on the ebb and flow. We oppose him where he’s wrong, support him where he’s right, and defend him versus the racist onslaughts of the right.

So yes, I’m suggesting that people elsewhere do likewise — although I’m well aware that conditions vary, and adjustments are required.

If one of the left antiwar coalitions thinks they can pull off a march on DC, we’ll probably rent a bus or two, fill them, and go to it. If we do, we’ll try to network horizontally with others like ourselves, perhaps even meet after the march for a confab of some sort.

But we are not interested in wasting energy or resources getting into national pissing matches and intrigues over slogans and speakers. We’ll simply bring the slogans that make sense to us. But in the end, the antiwar forces need to be reoriented and rebuilt at the base, in alliance with the growth in class struggle activity around the economy.

That’s what we’re doing, and have been doing for some time. Other approaches may point to the future as well, and I’m wide open to hearing about them.

Carl Davidson became widely known in the American left as a national officer of SDS (1966-68), as a writer and editor of the New Left newsweekly The Guardian, and as a leader of the anti-Vietnam war movement. In later years, he took up the study of the social impact of technology and the revolutions in communication and high-tech production. Together with Jerry Harris, he is the author of CyberRadicalism: A New Left for a Global Age.

Most recently Carl worked as webmaster for Progressives for Obama, an independent left-progressive voice in the campaign (now renamed as Progressive America Rising). He is also a leader in the U.S. socialist movement, serving as a national co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. A longtime resident of Chicago, he recently moved back to the Western Pennsylvania milltowns where he was born and his family resides.

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Deadly Environment : Latin American Anti-Mining Activists Murdered

Posted on December 27, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

A close up of murdered anti-mining activist Marcelo Rivera’s eyes on a mural painted in front of the cultural center that he founded in San Isidro, El Salvador. Photo by Dominque Jarry-Shore / The Dominion.

Grassroots movements met with deadly violence:
Mining faces challenges in Latin America

By Val Liveoak / The Rag Blog / December 27, 2009

See ‘Who Killed Marcelo Rivera? Prominent anti-mining activist murdered in El Salvador,’ by Dominique Jarry-Shore, and ‘Chiapas Anti-Mining Organizer Murdered,’ by Kristen Bricker, Below.

There are many grassroots struggles against corporate domination going on in the Empire that we hear little about. I would argue that the military coup in Honduras was triggered in large part by these issues, and I am aware of similar struggles in Mexico, Colombia, and Costa Rica, not to mention West Virginia, Canada and the American West. And now, with the article below, in El Salvador.

Mining companies are the epitome of an extractive industry; typically flaunting concerns about health, labor issues, and the environment, they focus on ripping out tons of earth to get ounces of ore, which is almost always exported outside of the region (and in many cases outside the country) in which it is produced.

And the profits also leave the area as fast as possible. In order to increase their profits, companies must pay the lowest possible wages for hard, dangerous and dirty work, and generally use poisonous chemicals on site, mostly failing to keep them from entering local water, and air. Then they leave behind an ugly and ravaged landscape that can never return to a condition that will even minimally support life without costly rehabilitation — which they never do voluntarily.

The growing world concern with environmental issues has little success when up against these multinational corporations. Not only is it hard to take on the powerful behemoths, but they do their work (their dirty work) in isolated areas, and often control access to their sites, preventing most people from seeing the ugliness, the near enslavement of the miners, and the effects of the poisons — many slow acting — that seep into the earth. Think black lung, mercury poisoning, massive fish kills, hundreds of acres of moonscapes where before there were verdant mountains.

And like other industries that would exploit and extract the most from “their” resources, they are always ready to persecute, threaten, or kill opponents, whether they are labor leaders, environmental activists, concerned local residents, or terminally ill employees.

While global warming was on most minds at the climate conference in Copenhagen, Ecuador offered an innovative way to confront both the local negative effects of the petroleum industry — an archetype of an extractive industry — and the long term effects to the earth and the atmosphere of the consumption of the product: they offered to leave newly found Amazonian petroleum in the ground in exchange for financial support for other types of investment in their country.

It is a shame that El Salvador’s celebrated FMLN President does not have such a — dare I say it — revolutionary offer to make. Instead, as we see from the article below, he will need to be pushed to provide even the simplest protection for Salvadorans who are struggling against a goliath of a company.

Please see the two stories about murdered mining activists in El Salvador and in Chiapas, Mexico, below.

[Texan Val Liveoak is a nonviolent activist currently dividing her time between El Salvador and San Antonio. She coordinates Peacebuilding en las Americas, the Latin American Initiative of Friends Peace Teams that also has programs in the African Great Lakes region and in Indonesia.]

Esaparición y asesinato del activista Marcelo Rivera

His relatives, friends, neighbors. His students from the school, attendees of his art workshops, colleagues of the association (ASIC). His comrades from the party, his partners in the anti-mining fight [in El Salvador]. Everyone. Perhaps even his murderers.

Almost always it is the family members and closest friends who say goodbye to a fallen one by crying profusely. It is rare at a funeral to see everyone in attendance crying. The burial of Gustavo Marcelo Rivera Moreno is one of those exceptional cases, hundreds of children, youth and elders, men and women, all crying together…

— The Media Coop

Who Killed Marcelo Rivera?
Prominent anti-mining activist murdered in El Salvador

By Dominique Jarry-Shore / December 16, 2009

SAN ISIDRO, El Salvador — Death and violence are an unfortunate part of everyday life in El Salvador. Local and national newspapers, with their graphic photos of bloodied corpses, track the daily tally of homicide and crime in a country that has one of the highest murder rates in the world. But even by those standards Marcelo Rivera’s torture and death were shocking.

During the evening of June 18, 2009, the community leader and anti-mining activist disappeared when he was lured away from a routine trip a few kilometers from his home in San Isidro. Twelve days later, his body was removed from an empty well 27 meters deep. His body had no hair or fingernails, his trachea had been broken and the thumb of his right hand was stuck in his mouth like a baby’s, tied in place with a piece of rope around his naked body. He had been beaten and his face was unrecognizable.

Rivera was a respected member of the community. He founded a cultural center popular with youth in San Isidro, and had been in charge of the finances of the local chapter of the FMLN, the country’s leftist and currently ruling political party. He had also campaigned vigorously against the El Dorado mining project in Cabanas, owned by Canadian company Pacific Rim Mining Corp.

Vancouver-based Pacific Rim is a publicly traded company that has subsidiaries in El Salvador and the U.S. The company is a junior exploration company that specializes in gold exploration. Pacific Rim has invested $80 million into the El Dorado project in about seven years. They claim to have invested several million dollars in social programs in Cabanas.

But the project has generated conflict in a region characterized by poverty and a dependence on remittances from family members in the U.S. Money provided by Pacific Rim for health and education is seen as a way of buying support from the people and tension is high between those for and against the mine.

The environmental effects of the mine, such as the contamination of soil and water sources like aquifers and wells, are a big worry among residents in Cabanas. Some community members have also complained about the displacement of communities to make room for the mine. On a social level, the arrival of Pacific Rim has generated conflict and violence in the area.

Apart from Rivera’s death, there have been two assassination attempts that seem to be related to anti-mining activism: In July, a priest who hosts a local radio show used as a platform for his anti-mining stance was run off the road. A few weeks later, the leader of a local community development association that is against the mine was shot eight times. Both men now have 24-hour police protection.

Rivera’s brother Miguel Rivera said his brother’s murder has caused fear among those opposed to the project. “People we work with who are against the mining project are afraid because someone has died,” he said. “They say, ‘I could be the second one. I could be next.’”

According to lawyer and activist Hector Berrios, Marcelo Rivera had already been the victim of death threats and at least one assassination attempt near his home in January 2009. “The question is,” Berrios said, “who benefited from Marcelo’s death?”

For his part, Pacific Rim CEO Tom Shrake said the company condemns violence and has spoken to employees to see if they know anything about the murder.

“They have assured us that they had absolutely nothing to do with it,” Shrake said in a telephone interview from his hotel in San Salvador.

“As far as they know—and I’ve heard this from the local police as well—his death had nothing to do with his mining activism. Now whether that’s true or not we’ll see. But we have no knowledge of it.”

That police theory — that Rivera’s death was related to a gang dispute after a night of drinking and not his anti-mining activity — didn’t make sense to Rivera’s family when they heard it. Rivera was not someone who associated with gang members and he didn’t drink alcohol.

“The police invented a scenario to be able to tell people something, because a lot of people were asking about Marcelo,” Miguel Rivera said. “The police theory was that he was killed the same day he disappeared, or early the next day.” But the doctors who examined Marcelo’s body told Miguel that his brother died about eight days after he disappeared.

That was just one of several inconsistencies in the case. Following a complaint they received from Marcelo’s family, El Salvador’s Public Attorney’s Office for the Defense of Human Rights found there had been negligence on the part of the police.

“We found some failures in terms of the lateness in mobilizing to do inspections in places where the body could be,” Gerardo Alegria, a lawyer for the Public Attorney for the Defense of Human Rights, said. “That includes where they found the body. The police had known for a few days already that the body was there.”

Alegria also said the police failed to gather information at the scene that would have helped solve the crime. His office is now keeping an eye on the investigation and Alegria said things have improved. Five adults and one minor have been arrested so far and are awaiting a hearing. But in this part of the world, there is a lot to be said about intellectual versus physical perpetrators of a crime, and questions remain about who was really behind the killing.

Meanwhile El Dorado has been at a standstill. The company stopped investing serious money into the mine about two years ago, when Tony Saca, president of El Salvador at the time, made public statements indicating Pacific Rim’s permits would not be honoured.

Pacific Rim has since filed for arbitration under the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), although Shrake said he is confident a settlement will be reached.

As for local opposition to the project, Shrake said that is something that was expected all along. “There’s just a huge international industry that opposes any extractive industry anywhere in the world at this point. So if you don’t expect opposition to any extractive project, you’re living in a closet,” he said.

“You will have people who are emotional about it and are in your face about it but you have to act like Mahatma Ghandi. You cannot react in any way, shape or form.”

Gold mining, a practice that relies on cyanide or mercury for extraction, has long come under fire from environmentalists because of its potential for contamination. Pacific Rim markets itself as an environmentally responsible company that has “raised the bar for environmental protection.”

According to Shrake, the El Dorado design will use two impermeable liners to prevent tailings from coming in contact with the ground. They’ll also use a process called INCO to destroy the cyanide used and they’ll build their own water reservoir instead of using groundwater, purifying the water before it goes back into the water system.

Environmentalist Luis Gonzalez works with the Salvadoran Ecological Unit (UNES) in San Salvador. “It’s a concept, but on an industrial level, green mining doesn’t exist,” he said. “By definition what you’re doing is extracting a non-renewable resource.”

Gonzalez said the INCO process recycles only part of the cyanide and the rest goes into the ground. “Exploration is like exploitation on a smaller scale,” he said, noting people in Cabanas reported their wells and watering holes dried up after exploration activity by Pacific Rim.

Shrake said that was one incident involving some shoddy work on the part of a contractor and that it won’t happen again.

“Once we realized what had happened, within a day we set up a series of tanks so that they’d have water while we corrected the problem… We went back to the drill holes and cemented them from bottom to top and plugged up this disruption to the fracture system and the water’s flowing again, and has been flowing since we made the correction.”

While the future of El Dorado remains unclear, Miguel Rivera has gone ahead and set up the Marcelo Rivera Justice and Freedom Committee. He is holding out hope that his brother’s murderer will be brought to justice.

“He was my brother. Ever since we were little we spent a lot of time together and shared ideas. When we started finding out more about the impacts of mining we started spreading information to people. Marcelo was the person who had a relationship with the community.”

[Dominique Jarry-Shore is a freelance journalist based in Chiapas, Mexico. She traveled to El Salvador with the help of a grant from the International Development Research Center in Ottawa.]

Source / The Dominion

Anti- mining activist was shot to death Dec. 27. Mariano Abarca. Photo from narocsphere.

And in Mexico:
Chiapas anti-mining organizer murdered

Mariano Abarca led a growing movement to kick Canadian mining companies out of Mexican communities

By Kristin Bricker / December 1, 2009

CHIAPAS, Mexico — Mariano Abarca Roblero, one of Mexico’s most prominent anti-mining organizers, was shot to death on the evening of November 27, 2009, in front of his house in Chicomuselo, Chiapas. He left behind a wife and four children. Another man was wounded in the shooting.

The incident came just days after Abarca filed charges against two Blackfire employees, Ciro Roblero Perez and Luis Antonio Flores Villatoro, for threatening to shoot him if he didn’t stop organizing against Canadian mining company Blackfire’s barium mine in Chicomuselo.

According to a formal complaint filed by a government employee who works in the Chicomuselo municipal building, Roblero Perez arrived at the municipal building to say that he had gone to look for Abarca to “fuck him up in a hail of bullets.” He also reportedly said that Abarca and other people were on a list of people Blackfire management wants to hurt. Blackfire public relations manager Luis Antonio Flores Villatoro was mentioned in the government employee’s complaint as one of the people responsible for the list.

Ejido authorities from the Nueva Morelia ejido in Chicomuselo county took the complaint seriously and helped Abarca launch an investigation. The day before the murder, Roblero Perez and Flores Villatoro were summoned to testify regarding the alleged death threats, but they failed to appear.

[An ejido is commonly-held land traditionally managed by assembly.]

A history of harassment

Even though local authorities acted to try to protect Abarca, the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA) blames the Chiapas state government for failing to protect the mining leader. On the contrary, the state government seems to have been complicit in Blackfire’s legal harassment of Abarca.

On August 17, 2009, unidentified armed men in unmarked cars kidnapped Abarca as he was leaving an elementary school in Chicomuselo. He had visited the school to request permission on behalf of his organization, REMA, to use the building for an anti-mining meeting scheduled for August 29-30.

The kidnappers turned out to be police. They had arrested Abarca on charges filed by Blackfire regarding a June-July 2009 highway blockade REMA set up to prevent the passage of Blackfire trucks. REMA was protesting the company’s failure to comply with promises it allegedly made regarding community development projects and environmental stewardship. According to community leaders, Blackfire’s open-pit barium mine uses too much of the area’s scarce water resources. They are concerned that the pollution could effect their crop cultivation in the near future.

Acting on Blackfire’s formal complaint, the state government charged Abarca with attacks against public roadways, criminal association, organized crime, and offenses against the peace. Theoretically, organized crime charges are reserved for drug, arms, and human traffickers, and other members of Mexico’s expansive mafia network. However, the Chiapas government has been known to accuse activists and community organizers of organized crime in order to take advantage of restricted due process rights for people accused of organized crime.

That is what happened in Abarca’s case. The organized crime charge allowed the Chiapas government to imprison him under the highly controversial and internationally criticized legal instrument of “arraigo” or pre-charge detention. Under arraigo, the government can arrest a suspect and isolate him or her for months while it pressures and sometimes tortures the person into confessing.

The state government detained Abarca for eight days before it ceded to international public pressure to release him. Abarca was released and the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. His lawyer, Miguel Angel de los Santos, criticized the Chiapas government for ceding to the mining company’s pressure to arrest Abarca. “There was no legal justification for his arrest and detention. Preliminary investigation began on June 12th, two days after the blockade, and was only just beginning to come together. The investigation had not advanced,” he told Proceso in August following Abarca’s release.

Structural adjustment strikes again

Social discontent regarding mines in Mexico has been steadily building over the past 10 years, beginning when the effects of a World Bank-mandated mining sector deregulation scheme were first felt. A confidential World Bank document entitled “Implementation Completion Report: Mexico Mining Sector Restructuring Project,” which Narco News makes available to the public, outlines exactly how a nine-year loan project drastically transformed Mexico’s mining sector.

The project, first proposed by the Word Bank in 1989 and quickly adopted by the Mexican government, aimed to deregulate the mining industry in Mexico. The Bank proposed the project because, as its Implementation Completion Report (ICR) explains,

Past lending of the Bank for mining in Mexico was oriented towards specific investment projects, with direct lines of credit to the sector… The lessons learned from those operations were that the continued development of the mining sector required increased access to land rights, reduced ownership limitations, revision of the tax legislation, a restructuring of existing institutional setups, as well as policies that stimulate private investment in mining by both domestic and foreign firms. The Bank Mining Sector Review identified an inadequate regulatory and institutional framework as the major constraint to increase private investment and further growth of the sector.

One of the Bank’s main goals for the project was to open up Mexico’s previously protected national mining industry to foreign companies; the Bank listed “open the sector to foreigners” as its first “strategy to restructure the sector.” It hoped to do so by privatizing state-owned mining companies, slashing taxes, awarding mineral and land rights to private companies, and facilitating foreign companies’ ownership of Mexican land in order to “contribute to the increased exploration and exploitation of the vast mining potential of the country, to take advantage of Mexico’s strategic location near the United States and Canada.”

The Bank proposed a set of changes to Mexican law in its Mining Sector Report, and the Mexican government — at that point still under one-party rule — rushed to implement them under a plan called the National Mining Modernization Program. In just four years (1990-1994), the legal framework for mining in Mexico underwent a radical change. Before the ink on the new laws was dry, the Bank began to dole out money to private mining companies to “help finance the surge in demand for investment funding that was expected to result from the improved policy and institutional setting for mining operations.”

The Bank was thrilled with the results of the National Mining Modernization Program and its subsequent loans. According to the Bank, over the course of the project, which ended in 1998, over 8.7 million hectares of land were released and 17,220 new mining concessions were granted.

As a result of the legal changes mandated by the loan, the time required for processing mining concessions went down from five years to five months, and the Mexican government’s backlog of about 14,000 concession requests that were pending since 1989 disappeared virtually overnight.

The Bank was so pleased with the results of the Mining Sector Restructuring Project that it wrote, “Future Bank participation in the sector does not seem justified anymore, in view that mining exploration/exploitation is now open to domestic and foreign investors.”

The Bank’s structural adjustment of Mexico’s mining sector has played a key role in the battle for “land and territory” (as the Zapatistas refer to it) in the country. Private ownership, increased economic pressure on small and subsistence farmers, and top-down “development” projects are acutely felt in mineral-rich communities.

According to Gustavo Castro Soto of the Chiapas-based non-profit Otros Mundos, “Beginning in 2000, almost 10% of the national territory has been ceded to transnational companies through mining concessions.” REMA notes that in Chiapas, 15.21% of the state’s total territory has been ceded through mining concessions. Many of those concessions don’t expire until the year 2050. If the social unrest that frequently follows mining concessions is any indicator, Mexicans are not willingly handing over their land to foreign mining companies.

Mining industry under fire

Mariono Abarca’s murder comes at a time that the mining industry in Mexico is feeling the heat from Mexico’s social movements. Inspired by the national movement of communities affected by hydroelectric dam projects, mining-affected communities are joining forces in a unified front against destructive mining practices.

In 2008, representatives from Chicomuselo travelled to the state of Jalisco to found REMA during the First Encounter of the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining. Representatives from mining-affected communities in eleven states and the Federal District participated in the historic event: Chihuahua, Sonora, Nayarit, Jalisco, Oaxaca, Chiapas, Guerrero, Mexico City, México State, San Luis Potosí, Coahuila, and Veracruz.

REMA agreed at that meeting to raise consciousness about the social and environmental effects of mining. It also pledged that member organizations would support each other in their struggles against destructive mines in their communities.

One of the most high-profile joint actions that REMA carried out was a protest encampment in front of the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City this past July. Abarca and representatives from other communities affected by Canadian mining companies participated in the encampment, which demanded the withdrawal of Metallic Resources/NewGold, a Canadian company, from Cerro de San Pedro, San Luis Potosi. At the protest, Abarca spoke about Canadian mining companies’ contamination of traditional water sources.

Following the protest, mining-affected communities won a temporary victory: just last month, a federal judge ordered that the Cerro de San Pedro mine be closed because the mining company had failed to comply with environmental stipulations. The closure comes after 10 years of struggle waged by a broad coalition of San Luis Potosi civil society organizations, which include organizations linked to Mexico’s center-left Democratic Revolution Party (PRD) and groups affiliated with the Zapatistas‘ Other Campaign. They opposed the gold mining project because, in addition to environmental concerns, the Cerro de San Pedro is an official historic monument. NewGold has promised to appeal the ruling.

In Chiapas, Abarca led a previously mentioned highway blockade that prevented Blackfire trucks from entering and leaving the Chicomuselo mine this past June and July. The community was protesting the company’s excessive use of scarce water supplies, its failure to follow through on commitments it reportedly made to the community, and its back-door maneuverings that allowed it to purchase 13.5 hectares of ejido land without the required approval of the ejido assembly. Blackfire claims it lost $120,000 pesos ($9,334 dollars) as a direct result of the blockade.

This past August, REMA held its Second Encounter of the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining in Chiapas. Guatemalan communities who are resisting mining projects traveled to Chiapas to participate and share their experienes. Abarca helped organize the Encounter, and as previously mentioned, it was during the Encounter’s organizing process that state police kidnapped Abarca and charged him with organized crime at Blackfire’s request.

A communique signed by 25 Mexican organizations from six states and Mexico City holds Blackfire’s owners responsible for Abarca’s shooting and any resulting violence in the region. They called for a protest encampment outside of the Canadian Embassy and the Ministry of Economy headquarters in Mexico City on December 3 in solidarity with the people of Chicomuselo.

Source / NarcoSphere

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Dark Ages Redux : Trickle Down Feudalism

Posted on December 27, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Doge Enrico Dandolo preaching the Crusade. Gustave Doré (1832-1883) / Wikimedia Commons.

The reincarnation of the Dark Ages:
White evangelicals are the new Crusaders

In place of mote-defended castles surrounded by thatched-roof shanties will be ‘gated communities’ (sporting high-tech surveillance to keep the homeless and servant class out)…

By Loren Adams / December 27, 2009

The king taxed the peasants to poverty while the royals were exempt from paying any. Reason? Unjust tax codes were a design of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich. That was the “targeted tax-cut” which invariably became law. “He who hath the gold maketh the rules.”

The Dark Ages were the birthplace of “Trickle-Down Economics.” The caste system was embraced, the church was simply a ruling arm of the monarch, and slavery was legitimatized by the religious righteous.

Republicans constantly decry labor’s “class warfare,” but this is the real war being waged across America. The cultural war is basically a derivative of class warfare — where the ruling class has employed white evangelicals to do their bidding: divide and conquer.

During the Dark Ages, wealth was exclusively inherited, not earned. The legal system was purchased like a commodity resulting in jury-less trials, military tribunals, pronouncements by a king acknowledged as sovereign and commissioned by God to rule as if the voice of Providence Himself, executive orders usurping representation, taxation without representation, etc.

Anyone disputing the monarch’s sovereignty was designated a traitor and summarily executed, tortured or banished to dungeon. These were the markings of the Dark Ages. Are they not similar to contemporary Republicanism so glaringly demonstrated during the Bush years?

America’s founders rejected the monarchical system where its legitimacy hinged on approval by the religious supremes. The “separation of church and state” concept of the new republic was established for that reason. Now we are sliding back into the realm where the head of state rides to power on a religious beast, where any successful candidate must be approved by the predominant religious system to win. Even our beloved Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign felt he must do pilgrimage to Saddleback Church and later pay homage to Pastor Rick Warren at Inaugural.

The Dark Ages were not only dark from plagues, they were darkened from ignorance, superstition and greed. The religious right denied the world was round; anyone disputing this “God-derived” doctrine was executed or imprisoned. Science was equated with Satanism. Thus, discovery, invention, innovation, and commercialism could not flourish, and the West plunged into poverty.

Does America not see the similarity? A religious system that wages war on science, denies climate change, rejects evolution, and edits Texas texts for school children to include praise for Limbaugh, Beck and Palin is a system geared toward destroying not only scientific and environmental thought, but the foundation of economy.

The religious system was USED to gain power for monarchs similar to the way current political operatives USE the religious to further their own aims. In the Middle Ages, the doctrine of the “divine right of kings” precluded civil liberties; the king/queen equaled “divinity.” Potentates (royals) were considered surrogates of God. Power was passed down from father to son — Dynasties divinely ordained by entitlement.

So, when we hear of world leaders or presidents bequeathed the title “Man of God,” watch out. It may not be long before civil liberties and human rights become casualties in the name of national unity and security — and with popular support — the masses duped by superstition. Remember the Bush theocratic dynasty.

History has witnessed its booms and busts (some massage as “cyclical market adjustments”). History repeats itself. We were at the core of an unparalleled economic boom at the close of the Clinton years — measured by purchases, low unemployment and budget surpluses. There were more jobs than people to fill them; illegals streamed across the border. Now we’re in a deep recession as a consequence of buying into Republican Dark-Age mentality.

What caused history’s busts? When capital is concentrated among the wealthiest, history warns of ominous collapse. The bubble bursts. It happened in 1837, 1857, 1884, 1893, 1907 and 1929. In all depressions there was glaring disparity of income: The poor — poorer, the rich — richer.

Prosperity is the result of healthy circulation of currency where the vast majority have robust purchasing power. When wealth fails to circulate but is dammed up by a concentration at the top, the economy falls and results in depression or severe recession. When the rich accumulate an overwhelming portion of the wealth, their house of cards comes tumbling down because there remain few to buy the goods sold by the wealthy to sustain the lifestyle.

Sure, other factors — such as over-speculation, Wall Street insider trading, anti-labor trade agreements, deregulation, and tax policies determined by greedy special interests — drive the economy into the ditch. But are not these all related? The world is loaded down with the cancers of Bernie Madoffs and Kenny Lays before downturn metastasizes itself into poverty, crime and collapse.

Consider this ominous fact: The average American’s income has remained flat since 1977 — 33 years ago, while the income of the richest 1% has more than tripled — 228% (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities). CEO (corporate executive officer) incomes rose 400% in the 1990s to $10.6 million annual income per capita, while take-home pay for the average American, the 80%, rose zero percent.

Real life experience bears it out. Most Americans don’t enjoy the purchasing power they once did when a one-income family could raise children, purchase a home, car, and college education for their kids. Now both parents work (if lucky enough to have a job) and still can’t keep up, resulting in less quality education, poor family relations, rising crime, and an eroding moral foundation.

Some in this country never learn from history. The greedy are blinded to the fact that refusing to care for others less fortunate ultimately leads to their own demise. The underlying truth may be that these tightfisted characters are not so much concerned about accumulating wealth as widening the gap. Yes, they delight in seeing the difference. Class consciousness means more to them than money in the bank. Thus, the motive defines the power struggle.

Thom Hartmann’s depiction of America’s economic and educational decline is accurate.

The political will of the radical right is more stubborn than ever. Not only do they want to defeat health care reform, they want to rid the country of any safety-net, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and any other “socialist” program. It’s all “socialism” or “communism” to them. . . “un-American.”

They hide their greed behind such noble causes as “individualism,” “patriotism,” “character and family values” and “national security,” but all the while their ultimate aim is the same. Proudly they wave the flag and claim to be the lead standard bearers for patriotism; all the while we recall they’re missing in action when it really counts; wealthy family ties shield them from risk. Only the rich initiate wars, mostly the poor fight them. The double standard of justice comes from obscene wealth. Principles can be compromised at a price. And so can religion, their primary weapon of choice.

In similar manner, they buy off religious organizations and congressmen, hire the best lobbyists, and manipulate enough voters through the religious system to change laws for their benefit. Their aim? To further concentrate the wealth and leave the rest of the country destitute if need be. Their “compassionate conservatism” is hypocrisy cloaked in a sound bite.

In future years it will be written that the real enemy of our times was not communism or socialism (as many Tea-Baggers scream), but rather the re-emergence of a form of feudalism in alliance with theocracy, or what The Family (“C-Street”) calls “Dominionism.” The Handmaid’s Tale was not too far off.

In place of mote-defended castles surrounded by thatched-roof shanties will be “gated communities” (sporting high-tech surveillance to keep the homeless and servant class out) surrounded by metal trailer shanties housing 21st Century serfs. Recall “Hoovervilles”? The new shanty-towns should be aptly named “Bushvilles.” We’ve come a long way in 1,200 years or so.

Source / TPJ Magazine

Thanks to Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

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Health Care Plan : No Cause for Celebration

Posted on December 27, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Drawing from West Midlands No! Campaign.

Health Care Reform:
Progressives must stand their ground

This bill is not universal, not equitable, not affordable. It will not end bankruptcies, and will not end deaths due to denials and delays in health care.

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / December 27, 2009

I have been reading Charles C. Mann’s excellent book 1491, New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus. Included is a half-joking quotation from the celebrated anthropologist Clifford Geertz:

All states can be parceled into four types: pluralist, in which the state is seen by its people as having a moral legitimacy; populist, in which the government is viewed as an expression of the peoples will; ‘great beast’, in which the rulers’ power depends on using force to keep the populace cowed; and ‘great fraud’ in which the elite uses smoke and mirrors to convince the people of its inherent authority.

It would appear that we in the current United States fit rather neatly into the fourth group. Example:

President Obama has been arguing vociferously that did he did not campaign on the public option as an alternative to health care dominated and controlled by the health insurance cartel. In my files I came upon a souvenir of that campaign, a 46 page booklet entitled “Keeping America’s Promise.” Three pages are devoted to Obama’s concept for health care; in the interest of brevity I quote only selected paragraphs.

Easy enrollment: The new PUBLIC PLAN will be simple to enroll in and provide ready access to coverage… Portability and Choice: Participants in the new PUBLIC PLAN and the National Health Insurance Exchange… will be able to move from job to job without changing or jeopardizing their health care coverage.

Does President Obama have so much on his plate that he has forgotten that he campaigned with the commitment to forcefully support a PUBLIC PLAN? Where does this omission lie in his failure to face down, or even negotiate with, such Senators as Lieberman and Nelson? Why the listless support for any progressive health care program? This is not the candidate that I, or many other progressives, voted for.

Last evening I watched my favorite opera, La Boheme, on PBS. Though not of the quality that I had seen at the Met or Opera Bastille it was well done with a first rate tenor, a pleasing soprano, and those haunting duets in the first and final acts. As I watched the failing health and finally the death of Mimi I was somehow struck that I was watching a study in health care for the poor and disadvantaged in the present day United States. Which brought me back to the problem at hand: the travesty, the fraud, that the Senate has passed in the guise of “health care for all.” Indeed something is amiss in our political process.

We should take note that, even though the health insurance cartel made such a show of opposing reform legislation, once the Senate bill passed, the following occurred: the stock of Coventry Health Care, Inc. rose 31.6%; CIGNA Corp rose 29.15; Aetna Inc. rose 27.1%; WellPoint, Inc. rose 26.6%; United Health Care Group Inc. rose 20.5%; and Humana rose 13.6%.

This bill is not universal, not equitable, not affordable. It will not end bankruptcies, and will not end deaths due to denials and delays in health care. And further, there is nothing in the legislation to bring the health insurance cartel under the anti-trust laws. Smoke and mirrors indeed!

When most people consider health care they think about physicians, nurses, adjunctive therapists — practitioners. Yet conspicuously absent in the past year’s discussion have been these very people. We hear from the politicians on CSPAN, and on the TV news shows we are inundated with the opinions of media consultants, of “experts” from the think tanks; however, rarely, very rarely, has the public had an opportunity to hear from a medical profession that has expressed 60% support for a public option.

Many, or most, physicians are tired of being vassals of the insurance cartel, and wish once again, as is still the case in most other free nations, to have the ability to make medical decisions based on medical findings and not to be subject to the profit-making needs of their insurance overlords.

The practice of medicine, from the standpoint of the patient and the physician, should not be dominated by politics, profit, or profit wrapped in the cloak of religion. Physicians for a National Health Program was founded some 25-30 years ago by a group of dedicated, idealistic physicians who realized that the machinations of the health insurance cartel would indeed turn medicine from a healing profession into a profit-making business for Wall Street.

PHNP, which now includes 17,000 members, has meticulously developed a health care plan that would include all citizens, reduce costs by 40%, and give choice to the patient and his or her doctor. The plan, in brief, would be administered by a public insurance entity, not the government. The public corporation would be overseen by a board of directors from the medical profession, academia, business, and labor, with hired managers.

There would be government oversight, not by politicians who would undoubtedly corrupt the workings, but by civil servants, as they are now incorporated in the congressional budget office. It would be treated as an independent organization, like the Federal Reserve Board or the U.S.Post Office. The structure would be apolitical as is PNHP.

Never in the extensive PNHP planning have I seen the word “abortion” mentioned. PNHP deals with health care and the practice of compassionate, caring medicine, not quasi-theological subjects. “Abortion” has been injected into the present debate by the insurance industry, playing to the “right to life movement,” as a political ploy.

On December 22, PNHP came down in opposition to the Senate Health Bill. The negatives of that bill include the individual mandate requiring that people buy private insurance policies, large government subsidies to private insurers, new restrictions on abortion, the unfair taxing of high-cost health plans, and cuts in $43 billion in Medicare payments to safety-net hospitals. Moreover, at least 23 million people will remain uninsured when the plan finally takes effect. Full details can be found here.

The American Nurses Association has also come out in opposition to the legislation. Thus, we have the corporations and their political prostitutes favoring legislation to increase the profits of the insurance industry, and the healing professions standing for the rights of the patient-physician relationship and decent affordable health care.

The apologists for the senate bill inveigh “that it is better than nothing” and that it can always “be corrected in the future.” The first statement is patently absurd, and the second unrealistic, for as sure as Obama has deserted his progressive and younger voter bases, the Democratic majorities in both House and Senate will be less than robust come 2010.

We hear that the legislation as passed provides the right to purchase insurance despite pre-existing conditions; however, few sources mention that the cost can be three times the rate otherwise. Few news outlets mention that older folks will pay much more for insurance than others. There is little mention of future cost control of the insurance premiums, largely because there has been no ongoing consideration of the continued exclusion of the insurance industry from the anti-trust laws. (Major league Baseball being the only other exemption.)

The other frightening situation is the “individual mandate” which forces everyone, under the penalty of law, to buy health insurance. Even many conservatives are rightfully disturbed by this interference with our civil liberties. Never in the history of the Republic have we been forced to buy from a public company under threat of punishment. There finally is the beginning of a debate about this problem, which we referenced some months ago in The Rag Blog.

We have a constitutional question which will ultimately end up in the courts. I would suggest reading a thoughtful discussion of the case law involved in this very important area, published in AfterDowningStreet.Org and also posted on The Rag Blog. The low cost commercial health insurance that we would be forced to buy could be loaded with co-pays and deductibles that could cost the insured $4000-5000 before the insurance becomes active.

The one encouraging feature of the Senate bill is the fact that it includes an amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders allotting $10 billion for establishment of community health centers, providing medical and dental care, and training primary health care physicians and nurses. It is noted that Senator Sanders is working with House Majority Whip James Clyburn to include $14 billion in the House version of the legislation.

Concurrently, in the House there is a move afoot once again to consider permitting the importation of prescription medications, a feature that was recently defeated in the Senate with the odd cooperation of several of our “progressive” senators. If these provisions become law many of our citizens will have the same access as our elected representatives, who have free government health care at the Office of The Attending Physician right under the Capitol dome. Here they get free health care from physicians, specialists, nurses, med-techs, pharmacists and others working as government employees.

As Jim Hightower points out,

The service is primo. Let’s say that one of the 39 Republican grumps gets gaseous or suffers a tongue cramp while giving a Senate speech denouncing socialism. He or she can scoot just a few yards away for socialized care at the OAP — no appointment necessary, no bothersome insurance forms to fill out, no co-pay, no waiting. Just care.

Perhaps even President Obama will set aside much of Rahm Emanuel’s advice and once again come on board as a friend of the young, the disadvantaged, and the unemployed, rather than being the cat’s paw of Wall Street and the corporations that dominate our society.

As I look around, it seems that things have changed little since Eugene V. Debs spoke in 1908:

Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life.

We were taught under the old ethic that man’s business is to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what happens to your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ‘Am I my brothers keeper?’ That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory in a civilized society.

Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. I am under moral obligation to him, that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.

We progressives must stand up and support the few dedicated, honorable senators, and we know who they are, who are a profile in courage and who fight like hell for the public good.

We must encourage the progressive caucus in the House of Representatives to stand their ground on funding of the health care bill by requiring the wealthy to pay their fair share rather than burdening the working man with further taxes. We must encourage the progressive caucus to stand firm for a public option and to demand that the health insurance industry be included under the anti-trust in order to prevent price fixing and excessive rate increases.

We become the Greeks at Marathon, the final defense of what is ethical and morally correct.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform. His writing appears regularly on The Rag Blog.]

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Obama’s First Year : A ‘B-Plus’? Get Real!

Posted on December 27, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Cartoon from Orange County Register.

A year at the helm:
Does Obama make the grade?

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / December 27, 2009

President Obama has been in office for nearly a year now. I had not thought about grading him on his performance in that first year until I heard on the news the other day that he had graded himself. It seems that he thinks he deserves a B+. That got me thinking — what grade do I think he’s earned?

Frankly, I don’t see that much has been accomplished. When I voted for him last November, I had swallowed the campaign promise of real “change.” I had visions of a Democratic presidency along the lines of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman or Lyndon Johnson — presidents who showed political courage and forever changed our country for the better.

Franklin Roosevelt took on the depression and created opportunities for common folks to work with organizations like the WPA and the CCC. He also passed social security to protect the elderly and keep them from living in abject poverty. Harry Truman was capable of making the hard decisions like whether to drop the A-bomb, and he also desegregated the Armed Forces by executive order.

Lyndon Johnson had a list of nation-changing accomplishments, including two major civil rights laws, the War on Poverty, creation of Head Start, and the creation of Medicare. There is still time left in his presidency for President Obama to join this pantheon of great Democrats, but his first year puts him only in the class of such mediocre to poor Democratic presidents as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

Let’s look first at what President Obama has failed to accomplish in his first year:

  • He has not overturned the Patriot Act. The American government is still trashing the Constitution by spying on its own citizens. There is no reason for this to be happening (and never was). And don’t tell me it’s needed to prevent attacks like 9/11. The Bush Administration knew of those impending attacks (without the Patriot Act), but just chose not to do anything about it. The FBI can do their job without the unconstitutional Patriot Act, and the CIA shouldn’t be messing with American citizens at all.

  • He has not overturned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He says he wants to do this, but so far has done nothing. Harry Truman knew Congress wouldn’t desegregate the Armed Forces, so he stepped up and did it on his own. Barack Obama could do away with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” the same way, but he doesn’t have the political courage that Truman had. President Obama wants Congress to cover his butt and take some of the heat.

  • After speaking against the two wars during his campaign, even to the point of castigating Clinton for voting “yes” on the Iraqi invasion, he has done absolutely nothing to stop the wars and withdraw American troops. In fact, he is in the process of escalating one of the two wars. It actually looks like he has decided to continue the Bush Doctrine in Iraq and Afghanistan (and that was not what he was elected to do).

  • He has not passed any regulations to rein in the abuses of Wall Street, the financial giants and other corporate entities (which nearly destroyed the American economy). New regulations are badly needed, because it has become obvious that greed prevents these entities from policing themselves, and the “free market” benefits only the rich. He has proposed a few changes which Congress will consider next year, but it is not nearly enough — just a little tinkering around the edges.

  • Outside of extending unemployment, he has done little to put Americans back to work. His famous “stimulus plan” was not nearly big enough (probably because he’s still paying for two wars) and was spread out over too long a period of time. It has had little or no actual effect.

  • He has done nothing to stop the off-shoring of American jobs. I wish I could say there was some pending legislation, or at least that some proposals were being discussed, but that’s just not true. The truth is that absolutely nothing has been done or proposed. President Obama has ignored the off-shoring of American jobs since becoming president.

  • The biggest change Obama promised was the reform of our badly broken health care system. Providing real health care reform was to be the centerpiece of his first term. So what has he done? Really nothing, except for a lot of talk about bi-partisanship. He has stayed completely out of it, and let Congress do it on its own. The House passed a barely decent bill and the Senate simply put a band-aid on the current system, and now Obama wants to jump in and push the Senate mess through. He still calls it real reform, but it is actually an abandonment of real reform and a sell-out to the insurance industry. Now it may be decades before anyone tries to pass real reform again.

  • He has done nothing to help fight poverty or racism.

  • He has done nothing to bring George Bush and Dick Cheney to trial for their many abuses of office.

    • Cartoon from TOONRefuge.

That list of inaction and failures is pretty impressive, but hasn’t he accomplished anything? Yes, he has done the following:

  • He did sign the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which will make it easier for women to sue when they are denied equal pay for performing the same job as a man. This was a good bill and needed to become law, but I think the Democratic Congress gets most of the credit for the law.

  • While little has been done to help the unemployed find work, Obama did bail out General Motors (which prevented thousands more from joining the ranks of the unemployed).

  • He has increased respect for America around the world and changed the way America deals with other countries. Of course, most of that was accomplished by just not being George Bush. It did get him a Nobel Peace Prize though.

  • He claims to have stopped the torturing of prisoners. I hope this is true, but there are accusations that two teens were recently tortured in Afghanistan by Special Forces troops.

  • He has successfully negotiated a new nuclear arms treaty with the Russians. This is a good thing and I don’t want to downplay its importance. He also killed the placing of missles (supposedly defensive) in Poland and the Czech Republic — another good thing.

  • He has stopped the persecution and prosecution of sick people who use medical marijuana according to their own state’s laws.

Considering all of the above, I cannot agree with the self-assessed B+. The grade I would give President Obama on his first year is a C-. I guess that’s better than the string of F’s earned by George Bush, but it’s not really anything to be proud of. He has not really shown any political courage, and seems to be happy with being a “caretaker” president who will make some small changes.

That’s very disappointing. I had much higher hopes. What do you think his grade should be?

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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