The Rag Blog

The following essay is adapted from Norman Solomon’s new book, Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State:

09/12/07 “Common Dreams” — — When Martin Luther King Jr. publicly referred to “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government,” he had no way of knowing that his description would ring so true 40 years later. As the autumn of 2007 begins, the reality of Uncle Sam as an unhinged mega-killer haunts a large minority of Americans. Many who can remember the horrific era of the Vietnam War are nearly incredulous that we could now be living in a time of similarly deranged official policy.

Despite all the differences, the deep parallels between the two war efforts inform us that the basic madness of entrenched power in our midst is not about miscalculations or bad management or quagmires. The continuity tells us much more than we would probably like to know about the obstacles to decency that confront us every day.

The incredulity and numbing, the frequent bobbing-and-weaving of our own consciousness, the hollow comforts of passivity, insulate us from hard truths and harsher realities than we might ever have expected to need to confront — about our country and about ourselves.

Of all the words spewed from the Pet Crock hearings with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, maybe none were more revealing than Petraeus’s bid for a modicum of sympathy for his burdens as a commander. “This is going on three years for me, on top of a year deployment to Bosnia as well,” he said at the Senate hearing, “so my family also knows something about sacrifice.”

There’s sacrifice and sacrifice.

“It is as bad as it seems,” longtime activist Dave Dellinger told a gathering of protesters outside the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach as it prepared to re-nominate a war-criminal president. “We must achieve a breakthrough in understanding reality.”

I listened, agreeing. But it was, and is, easier said. How do we truly grasp what’s being done in our names, with our tax dollars — and, most of all, with our inordinate self-restraint that tolerates what should be intolerable?

“The following 13 principles emerged from several years’ work with social change leaders in the “Leading with Spirit” program. We offer these not as definitive truths, but rather as key learnings and guidelines that, taken together, comprise a useful framework for “spiritual activists.”

1. Transformation of motivation from anger/fear/despair to compassion/love/ purpose. This is a vital challenge for today’s social change movement. This is not to deny the noble emotion of appropriate anger or outrage in the face of social injustice. Rather, this entails a crucial shift from fighting against evil to working for love, and the long-term results are very different, even if the outer activities appear virtually identical. Action follows Being, as the Sufi saying goes. Thus “a positive future cannot emerge from the mind of anger and despair” (Dalai Lama).

2. Non-attachment to outcome. This is difficult to put into practice, yet to the extent that we are attached to the results of our work, we rise and fall with our successes and failures-a sure path to burnout. Hold a clear intention, and let go of the outcome-recognizing that a larger wisdom is always operating. As Gandhi said, “the victory is in the doing,” not the results. Also, remain flexible in the face of changing circumstances: “Planning is invaluable, but plans are useless.”(Churchill)

3. Integrity is your protection. If your work has integrity, this will tend to protect you from negative energy and circumstances. You can often sidestep negative energy from others by becoming “transparent” to it, allowing it to pass through you with no adverse effect upon you. This is a consciousness practice that might be called “psychic aikido.”

4. Integrity in means and ends. Integrity in means cultivates integrity in the fruit of one’s work. A noble goal cannot be achieved utilizing ignoble means.

5. Don’t demonize your adversaries. It makes them more defensive and less receptive to your views. People respond to arrogance with their own arrogance, creating rigid polarization. Be a perpetual learner, and constantly challenge your own views.

6. You are unique. Find and fulfill your true calling. “It is better to tread your own path, however humbly, than that of another, however successfully.

7. Love thy enemy. Or at least, have compassion for them. This is a vital challenge for our times. This does not mean indulging falsehood or corruption. It means moving from “us/them” thinking to “we” consciousness, from separation to cooperation, recognizing that we human beings are ultimately far more alike than we are different.
This is challenging in situations with people whose views are radically opposed to yours. Be hard on the issues, soft on the people.

8. Your work is for the world, not for you. In doing service work, you are working for others. The full harvest of your work may not take place in your lifetime, yet your efforts now are making possible a better life for future generations. Let your fulfillment come in gratitude for being called to do this work, and from doing it with as much compassion, authenticity, fortitude, and forgiveness as you can muster.

9. Selfless service is a myth. In serving others, we serve our true selves. “It is in giving that we receive.” We are sustained by those we serve, just as we are blessed when we forgive others. As Gandhi says, the practice of satyagraha (“clinging to truth”) confers a “matchless and universal power” upon those who practice it. Service
work is enlightened self-interest, because it cultivates an expanded sense of self that includes all others.

10. Do not insulate yourself from the pain of the world. Shielding yourself from heartbreak prevents transformation. Let your heart break open, and learn to move in the world with a broken heart. As Gibran says, “Your pain is the medicine by which the physician within heals thyself.” When we open ourselves to the pain of the world, we become the medicine that heals the world. This is what Gandhi understood so deeply in his principles of ahimsa and satyagraha. A broken heart becomes an open heart, and genuine transformation begins.

11. What you attend to, you become. Your essence is pliable, and ultimately you become that which you most deeply focus your attention upon. You reap what you sow, so choose your actions carefully. If you constantly engage in battles, you become embattled yourself. If you constantly give love, you become love itself.

12. Rely on faith, and let go of having to figure it all out. There are larger `divine’ forces at work that we can trust completely without knowing their precise workings or agendas. Faith means trusting the unknown, and offering yourself as a vehicle for the intrinsic benevolence of the cosmos. “The first step to wisdom is
silence. The second is listening.” If you genuinely ask inwardly and listen for guidance, and then follow it carefully-you are working in accord with these larger forces, and you become the instrument for their music.

13. Love creates the form. Not the other way around. The heart crosses the abyss that the mind creates, and operates at depths unknown to the mind. Don’t get trapped by “pessimism concerning human nature that is not balanced by an optimism concerning divine nature, or you will overlook the cure of grace.” (Martin Luther King) Let
your heart’s love infuse your work and you cannot fail, though your dreams may manifest in ways different from what you imagine.

By the Satyana Institute (http://www.satyana.org/principles.html).

Text of a presentation for the Latin American Studies Association Conference to be held September 5-8 in Montreal, Canada.

Over the course of more than 10,000 years, the rich biodiversity of the Andes-Amazon region has created a culture that is closely interlocked with Pachamama (Mother Nature). This culture is marked by deep knowledge of nature and is highly agricultural. Ours is one of the seven zones of the world to have originated agriculture. It has yielded the greatest variety of domesticated species.

This has given rise to a cosmic vision different from the Western outlook that views the creator as a superior immaterial spirit who created man in his image and likeness and created nature to serve him. For the indigenous cosmic vision, humanity is a daughter of and part of Mother Earth. We must live in her bosom in harmony with her. Each hill or peak, each river, each vegetable or animal species has a spirit.

Indigenous, collectivist mentality is strong enough to have endured solidly through 500 years of invasion and the dictatorship of individualism.

The Quechua and Aymara name for the campesino community is ayllu. It is bound by strong ties, many expressed in work (ayni, mink’a, faena) [1] and in all aspects of life. The community is not restricted to persons. It entails a close communal relationship with cultivated species, with medicinal species, with animals and plants that tell cultivators about seasonal variations [2], and, more broadly, with all animal and vegetable species, with rain, and with the land.

The development of agriculture and tending of livestock, which in other latitudes led to slavery and feudalism, led in Abya Yala (the Americas) to new forms of collectivism. In the Andes zone it led to a state that extended over the territories of six present-day countries – Tawantinsuyo (called “empire” by the invaders out of the same ignorance that led them to call the llama “big sheep.”)

It’s true that the new forms of collectivism gave rise to privileged castes and wars of conquest. But in no part of the continent was production based on slave labor or the feudal system.

– For more than 10,000 years our culture domesticated 182 plant species, including around 3,500 potato varieties.
– Our people know 4,500 medicinal plants.
– Tawantinsuyos planned agriculture based on a system of watersheds and micro watersheds or basins.
– They built long aqueducts, taking care to avoid land erosion.
– Terracing was practiced on the slopes and “waru-waru” [3] in the altiplano (highlands) [4].

– Special technologies were used from zone to zone.

Across the entire Tawantinsuyo territory they created storage buildings (qolqa) to supply food to the population whenever some climatic shift undermined agriculture.

Although there were privileged castes, hunger and misery did not exist. Orphans, persons with disabilities, and the elderly were cared for by the community.

The invasion

The backbone of this social organization, of the agricultural infrastructure and food reserves, was crushed by the invasion.

Europe was then passing from feudalism to capitalism. The invasion was a capitalist action. They came looking for spices, believing they had reached India. They found none, but did find gold and silver.

Mining had existed as a marginal activity, but it now became the center of the economy. To exploit the mines they used a system worse than slavery. The slave owner is concerned about the health of his slave just as he’s interested in the health of his donkey. The mine owner in Peru received annually a certain quantity of indigenous people in order to “indoctrinate” them. Regardless of how many of them died, the next year he would receive the same number. Hence, youth and adults were sent into the mines and never left until they died. Because of this, young indigenous people committed suicide and mothers killed their children to free them from torment. This practice diminished following the Tupac Amaru rebellion.

Agricultural work took place through a feudal system. The Europeans took the best lands from the community and converted them into latifundios (huge estates or latifundia). Community inhabitants became serfs on their own lands. They had to work freely for the feudal lord in exchange for permission to cultivate a small plot for their own needs.

For many reasons a huge decline in agriculture took place:

– Canals, terracing, and waru-warus were destroyed because of ignorance and lack of care.

– Until this day no planning in terms of watersheds and micro watersheds has been carried out. Chaos took hold and persists.

– With the importation of foreign domestic animals to the zone, the environment deteriorated. The auquenidos (camelid) [5] cut pasture grass with their teeth, but cows, horses, and sheep uproot it.

The invaders vented their superstitions on our crops. Our agricultural mentality didn’t suit their cultured ways. So the “exterminators of idolaters” went after plants like the papa, also known as Santa Padre (Holy Father). They renamed it patata, the word used in Spain. This passed into English and other languages as “potato.” They also damned kiwicha or amaranto (amaranth).The coca plant, which the famous doctor Hipólito Unanue called the “supertonic of the vegetable kingdom,” is to this day the target of superstition and excessively harmful prejudice in “refined” circles.

The invaders pillaged the food stockpiles located across the territory to cope with times of hunger brought on by climatic irregularities.

Taking their behavior as a whole, we find that European imposition of hunger and misery — their cultural contribution — was even more deadly than their massacres and the smallpox they spread among us.

Rebellions and republic

From the beginning, our people rebelled against the invaders. Numerous insurrections took place, beginning with Tupac Amaru II’s rebellion. It spread all the way to Bolivia and lasted even after his cruel torture and assassination.

Later the so-called Revolución de la Independencía took place. It did not signify any noticeable change for the indigenous population.

The generals of “independence” were awarded “haciendas” (the new name for the feudal latifundia), “Indians” and all.

The hacienda system consisted basically of the free labor of the colono (serf) for the hacienda. There were other aspects to this serfdom.

The colono had to turn over some of his animals that grazed on natural pastures to the master. He made long treks with pack mules burdened with hacienda produce. They lasted days and he had to sleep out in the open. The owner mistreated him physically and morally. He could jail him and rape the women. The serf’s children did not go to school either because they had to work, or there were no schools, or the master forbade it.

Our land struggle in the 1960s

The hacienda feudal system lasted until the second half of the last century.

The spread of capitalism to the countryside weakened it in many ways:

– New large-scale mining absorbed labor from the haciendas.
– New mechanized latifundia expelled the serfs and employed an agricultural proletariat.
– New high-priced crops required more labor time, pressing the hacienda owner to demand more work from his serfs and to expel them in order to take over their plots. The serfs, on the other hand, needed more time for their own labors and resisted the theft of their plots.

We organized ourselves to struggle against the new outrages. Given the intransigence of the landlords, the struggle became a fight for possession of the land.

Our defensive action not only set us against the landlords but also against the government which defended the feudal system.

In over 100 haciendas we refused to work for the landlords. But we continued to work our own plots. This was in practice an agrarian reform. The government repressed us with arms and we defended ourselves with arms. The military government of the day crushed the armed self-defense; but it took note that it would be impossible to re-implant feudal serfdom. It opted to pass an agrarian reform law — only in this zone — legalizing campesino possession of the land. But indigenous campesinos in other zones of the country rebelled and took over haciendas. This was violently repressed, but could not be effectively contained. Hence, a subsequent reformist military government felt obliged to decree an agrarian reform at the national level.

In this way, we took advantage of capitalism’s weakening of the feudal system to take over the land. In this same epoch the Brazilian campesino movement was shattered. Capitalism triumphed there. Its victims are now struggling courageously in the “Landless Workers’ Movement.”

For this reason Peru is, with the likely exception of Cuba, the country of the continent with the greatest proportion of landowners, either of communal or private plots.

Some campesinos from the epoch of struggle for the land feel the qualitative change. “Now we are free,” they say. They consider that breaking down feudal servitude also broke them free from the yoke that had gripped them.

Following the rupture they worked for education, building schools and paying men and women teachers. Later they fought to get the state to pay them. They built health centres and fought to get the state to pay for health services.

They got the vote and elected their own mayors. They fought against mining pollution. They struggled to assume in a collective manner police and judicial functions, to replace corrupt cops and judges. They fought against corrupt authorities of any stripe — and for many other things.

They feel that breaking from feudal servitude freed them to spread wings and carry the struggle forward.

Current struggles

Most current struggles of indigenous campesinos are against the killing of Pachamama, Mother Earth; against depredations by the large companies, mainly mining, but also petroleum and gas. Previous Peruvian governments were servants of feudal lords; today they serve the great multinationals. They act against the Peruvian people and against nature.

Living conditions are another cause of struggle. There is more and more unemployment, and the standard of living is falling. In the countryside this is due to excessively low prices for farm products. This is linked to the struggle against the Free Trade Agreement with the United States that will demolish our agriculture for the benefit of large, subsidized imperial firms.

The indigenous movement, together with the rest of the Peruvian population, is fighting against corruption and to get their own representatives into local governments. People often suffer betrayals because there is no system for authentic democratic control.

Our allies

The indigenous movement is not alone. Although it is the most vigorous and persevering, it is not unique. The rest of the people are struggling together with us.

Intellectuals called indigenistas, whether indigenous or not, merit special mention. Ever since the oppression of the original peoples of our continent began there have been individuals who have struggled against it and to defend our culture.

The work of Father Bartolomé de las Casas is known.

In Peru there were notable political figures like González Prada and Mariátegui. Writers like Clorinda Matto, Ciro Alegría, José María Arguedas. Painters like José Sabogal. Musicians like Alomía Robles, Baltasar Zegarra, Roberto Ojeda, Leandro Alviña, and so on.

The meaning of our struggle

We are defending our culture in its diverse aspects: our cosmic vision, social organization, our rituals and agricultural know-how, medicine, music, language, and many others.

We do not claim that our culture is superior to others. We are struggling to stop it from being considered inferior.

We want to be respected as equals.

We have been educated to harmonize equality and diversity. Peru is a mega-diverse country, both geographically and demographically. We have 82% of the world’s 103 natural life zones. Our inhabitants speak 45 different languages. The great Inca Sun God celebration was not exclusive. It had a procession of different peoples with diverse gods. The notion of “one God” did not exist. We are for the equality of the diverse; we are against homogenization (igualitarismo).

On the one hand we respect diverse individualities and particularities. On the other, we oppose individualism. Ours is a culture of solidarity.

We don’t seek a return to the past. We know we must make the best in general of advances in human culture.

That does not contradict our resolve to go back to our own roots. Our past will be vividly present in our future.

We love and care for Pachamama. We fervently yearn to return to basing our economy on our rich biodiversity, through agriculture and natural medicine, along with any modern advances that do no harm.

We don’t want our social system to be based on the deep-seated, antisocial individualism that the invaders brought here. We intend to recover and strengthen at all levels the vigorous, collectivist solidarity and fraternity of the ayllu, making use, as well, of universal knowledge that is not harmful.

As a member of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission’s 2007 delegation, I spent a week interviewing parents, leaders of women’s groups, and government officials about the killing of young women in Guatemala. We wanted to know why the number of murdered women in Guatemala has more than doubled since 2000.

We also wanted to know why less than 20 of the more than 3,000 cases of murdered women have been resolved by the justice system.

Shortly after college, I moved to Guatemala City and worked there as a teacher for two years, from 2004 to 2006. I learned to teach drama, learned to dance salsa, and also learned, fairly quickly, that most of the friends I would have in Guatemala would be males. I rarely saw women my age out at night, and many of the young female teachers at my school were prohibited by their families from leaving home after dark. I bemoaned what I attributed to a macho culture and conservative family values and made friends instead with women from outside Guatemala and with Guatemalan men. Only this summer did I begin to fully understand why women in Guatemala do not come out at night.

Women – mostly between the ages of 13 and 30 – are being raped, tortured, mutilated, murdered, and left often in very public places. These brutal murders, and the failure of the state to address even one percent of them in meaningful ways, have left women rightfully terrified, wary of making themselves vulnerable by leaving home at night.

As a delegation of nine Americans from all over the United States, we extended solidarity to parents of victims and to groups working for women’s rights in Guatemala. In our meetings, we also asked why the murders of women have increased so dramatically in recent years, why the government has done so little to address the problem, and what role we might play in changing the tide of violence. Because so few of the murders have been investigated, very little specific information exists about why women are killed and who is responsible for their suffering and deaths. There were no simple answers to our questions. But by speaking with people whose daily lives are deeply affected by violence against women in Guatemala, we were able to better understand the broad causes of femicide and we found ways to contribute to the work of effecting positive change.

The Rise of Feminism in a Macho Culture

“This is a country where patriarchy dominates on an institutional and familial level.” – Dora Bagley of the Presidential Secretariat on Women (SEPREM) [1]

As more and more Guatemalan women seek to attend school and enter the workforce, they risk confrontations with a male-dominated society that often employs violence to force women back into limited roles within the home. The emergence of feminism has been made both painful and slow by machismo, an ancient force whose heavy boots we heard marching through stories of both domestic and political violence against women.

At the Coordinating Group of Traditional Midwives of the State of Quetzaltenango (CODECOT), a midwives’ association in Quetzaltenango, Maria Cecilia Escobar explained that many women face resistance from their husbands even to enter into the traditional field of midwifery.[2] According to Escobar, wives are beaten for attempting to leave the home to attend the workshops given by CODECOT. As Sandi Mendoza of the Association for Community Development of Panabaj (ADECCAP), a Mayan association in Panabaj, said, “The majority of men won’t let their wives participate in workshops where they would learn about their rights. They’re afraid that their wives will learn how to support themselves and won’t need their men anymore.”[3]

Women who speak out against this deeply entrenched sexism face even greater threats to their security. Many of the women’s groups we met with reported that they have been followed, threatened, or even attacked. Sandra Moran, director of Sector de Mujeres (Women’s Sector) in Guatemala City, recounted several recent attacks on her organization’s office. She said the intruders broke in, ransacked the office, stole files, and left behind threatening notes and a trail of blood. She called the break-ins “very symbolic” of the fierce resistance to women’s empowerment and said she thought her group was being targeted because “We have been very present denouncing femicide in the streets. But we’re going to continue with this work because it’s so important.”

Norma Cruz, director of Fundación Sobrevivientes [Foundation Survivors], a center for survivors of domestic and sexual violence, recounted a recent trip to the department of Chiquimula to investigate the brutal rape, burning, and murder of an eight year old girl with Downs Syndrome. Knowing they could be targeted because of their mission to investigate and denounce the violence, she and her colleagues armed themselves with firearms. “We know this is a contradiction,” said Cruz. “We do not support violence. But we’re not going to allow one more woman to die.”

Most women, however, are not able to protect themselves in the way Cruz has from politically motivated and gender-based violence. Maria Cristina Gómez, a women’s rights activist with the organization Ixqik Women’s Association, worked to stop violence against women and increase women’s political participation in the department of Petén in northern Guatemala. On June 3, Gómez, her son, and her daughter, also a women’s rights activist, were gunned down in Petén. Gómez and her son were killed in the attack, and her daughter was seriously injured. Not long afterward, other members of the staff of Ixqik received phonecalls threatening that they would meet the same fate if they continued the work of defending and promoting women’s rights in the area.[4]

The violent clash between rising “feminismo” and ancient “machismo” has only been heightened by a recent period of increased poverty. As in the United States, increased poverty in Guatemala is tied to increased violence, and according to official statistics, extreme poverty in Guatemala rose from 16% in 2000 to 21% in 2004. As times get tougher, men must get tougher too. Lacking employment, young men seek security in the violent brotherhood of gangs or in the lucrative world of narco-trafficking. Admittance into these clubs, however, is typically dependent on a man’s ability to prove that he is macho, and the fierce machismo of organized crime sustains itself in part through violence against women. Vengeance is enacted or territory is marked by murdering the women (girlfriends, sisters, mothers) associated with rivals. Exacerbating the gang violence is a Washington policy (begun in 1996) to immediately deport gang members in the US to their country of origin. Young men who fled Guatemala’s civil war during the eighties are now being repatriated in growing numbers. They return to their homeland as violent criminals, often without any remaining family ties in Guatemala and without much possibility of gaining legal employment.

Extreme poverty also forces women onto dangerous paths. While competition for scarce resources can drive men into violent illegal organizations, extreme poverty in rural areas compels many young women to migrate to Guatemala City in search of jobs. Women as young as fourteen or fifteen arrive in the city with plans to earn the money they will need to survive on their own and help support relatives at home. Severed from a protective network of families and small communities, young women are made vulnerable in an increasingly violent urban setting.

A History of Violence and Impunity

“Historically, since the conquest, women have been attacked and abused. What has prevailed is impunity in the violation of the human rights of women.”
– Giovana Lemus of the Guatemalan Women’s Group (GGM) [5]

While the rise of extreme poverty, gang violence, and feminism do put women at significantly greater risk, these recent factors, also at work in neighboring countries, do not explain the unparalleled surge of femicide that is unique to Guatemala. In addition to entrenched and violently enforced sexism, Guatemalans live with a culture of violence born out of a 36 year long civil war. It is this long history of violence and impunity that distinguishes Guatemala as the most dangerous place for women in Latin America.

After Guatemala’s civil war claimed an estimated 300,000 lives, most Guatemalans were ready to embrace the peace promised by the 1996 Peace Accords. Although military activity was initially curtailed, however, the Guatemalan people have experienced little respite from the constant violence. “We are culturally conditioned to violence,” said Juan Pablo Arce Gordillo, Human Rights Advisor for the Ministry of the Interior.

Maggie, a lawyer with Nuevos Horizontes [New Horizons], a women’s shelter in Quetzaltenango, explained that this cultural conditioning affects women in violent households: “The problem is that most women are victims of violence and don’t recognize it. We tell them, ‘Listen, you’re in a situation of violence.’ And they say, ‘No, I’m not. This is normal.’”

Not only was Guatemala’s civil war one of the longest and bloodiest in Latin America, but it was also a particularly ruthless war for unarmed female civilians. Although women made up only a very small part of armed forces on either the government or the guerilla’s side, an estimated 25 percent of the deaths were women. Many of these killings took place when entire communities were systematically massacred in a state-sanctioned campaign aimed at undermining the rural base of guerilla forces. During these attacks, the rape and torture of unarmed women by the military was not uncommon.

Now, more than ten years after the signing of the Peace Accords, the pattern of killings is disturbingly similar. In a gruesome show of power, the murderers consistently sexually assault, torture, disfigure, and dismember female victims before abandoning them in ditches, trash cans, or garbage bags. These women suffer distinctly more brutal and sadistic ends than the many men who are murdered in Guatemala every day. Rosa Franco, whose 15-year old daughter, María Isabel, was raped, beaten, tortured, bound with barbed wire, and killed, said, “What’s happening today is the same as what happened during the war.”

The similarities between the killings during the war and more recent murders of women have led many women’s groups to suspect that the perpetrators may be the same as well. And their suspicions are made more plausible by another common factor: impunity. Ninety-eight percent of human rights abuses committed during the war remain unprosecuted, and 99 percent of femicide cases since 2000 remain unprosecuted. Many of the men responsible for atrocities during the war have integrated themselves into high levels of the government, and many of the men trained to kill unarmed civilians are now leading narcotrafficking cartels, clandestine “security” groups, or police forces.

According to Congresswoman Nineth Montenegro, “Organized crime has grown like never before, and it’s permitted in the Public Prosecutor’s Office and in the police. The police themselves are involved [in the killings of women].” And because these powerful criminal groups have strong links to the government, bribes or threats buy easy access to “a weak justice system that doesn’t care about the deaths of women.”

Edda Gaviola, executive director of the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH), a renowned human rights legal group, also linked impunity in Guatemala with powerful forces of organized crime.[6] She pointed to the continued existence of illegal clandestine “security” groups that are tied both to the state and to narcotraffickers. According to Gaviola, these clandestine groups, reportedly headed by former military officers, are implicated in the extrajudicial killings of poor urban youth – both men and women – assumed to delinquents, as well as killings related to narcotrafficking and organized crime.

Gaviola also confirmed that corruption and organized crime extend into the police and could be a major contributor to the deaths of women in Guatemala. CALDH’s research shows that areas with high levels of femicide correspond with areas with high levels of police corruption and crime.

The cycle of violence and impunity is perpetuated even at the highest levels of government. Nowhere is this more glaringly apparent than in the discourse surrounding the September 9 elections in Guatemala. The propaganda of over twenty political parties plasters walls, dangles from trees, and competes for space on roadside rocks. And because the biggest concern of most Guatemalans is the escalating violence, the central promise of nearly every candidate is increased security. For one leading presidential candidate, Otto Perez Molina, this means implementing a policy called “mano dura” (tough hand) which can include anything from the militarization of the police to social cleansing in urban areas. However, Molina himself is a known killer. As a former general, present in Quiché during the massacres of the eighties, he is an embodiment of Guatemala’s continuing impunity. Nevertheless, many Guatemalans prefer the strong arm tactics of a dictator to the unpredictable violence of the streets. For this reason, some human rights groups suspect that the candidates themselves are behind a sharp increase in violence in the months leading up to the election.

09/10/07 “Toronto Sun” — – We all know what “deja vu” is. But I recently read of a condition psychiatrists call “jamais vu.” That’s where one sees something very familiar, but cannot identify it.

Both the White House and U.S. military seemed gripped by jamais vu.

Many of the same mistakes made in the Vietnam War are being repeated in Iraq and Afghanistan, but neither the White House, Pentagon, nor U.S. field commanders seem to recognize or understand them.

This week, Gen. David Petreaus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, will issue a report on the “progress” his troops are making in Iraq in the face of serious problems, and hint at future troop reductions.

The report will speak of important security successes in Baghdad and Anbar province. Gen. Petreaus is a very smart, highly respected commander, but one suspects his report will unfortunately be the latest example of jamais vu syndrome.

U.S. commanders in Iraq, like their Canadian counterparts in Afghanistan, keep proudly reporting how their men have occupied villages or towns, killed scores of “suspected terrorists” (usually thanks to air attack), and forced the enemy to flee.

They do not seem to understand they are fighting a fluid guerrilla war in which territory and body counts mean little.

GUERILLA WAR

Mao Zedong perfectly described the principles of such guerilla war: “When the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when he retreats, pursue.”

The “successes” being reported from Iraq and Afghanistan are illusory.

We heard exactly the same story during the Vietnam War, when U.S. military spokesmen trumpeted daily glowing reports about enemy body counts, strategic hamlets created, Viet Cong tunnels blown up, hearts and minds won over, and smiling children waving little American flags.

While the U.S. was “winning” all these little daily battles, Communists were winning the war.

Institutional memory rarely exceeds 10 years.

Most of Vietnam’s bitter lessons, paid for by the blood of 58,000 Americans, have been totally forgotten by the White House and Pentagon.

But don’t blame the soldiers. Once again, U.S. fighting men in Iraq and Canadians in Afghanistan have been sent into no-win wars by their poorly informed, badly advised civilian masters, and ordered to keep coming up with rosy progress reports.

I have covered numerous guerilla wars in my time and have never seen Western powers win a single one. Yet we keep forgetting this hard lesson.

We have also forgotten the great Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s warning after Korea, “never fight a land war in Asia.”

AVOIDING BLAME

Bush appears determined to keep the war going until his term expires to avoid blame for defeat in Iraq.

Congress is trying to lay all the blame on Bush, get him to admit defeat, and evade its own shameful role in authorizing the trumped-up Iraq War.

But Congress is in a jam. If U.S. troops do withdraw, Iraq may fall into even worse chaos than it now suffers — which a Democratic president will inherit.

In an election year, Republicans will blast Democrats as “defeatists” for “cutting and running” and “losing Iraq.”

That’s why worried leading Democrats are now backing off calls for total withdrawal and mumbling about partial pullbacks and “training Iraqi forces.”

Meanwhile, the administration refuses to admit Iraq has no real government or army, and is an anarchic stew of competing Shia militias, tribal chiefs, death squads, 22 Sunni resistance groups, and breakaway Kurds. Iran is becoming the real power in Iraq.

Polls show 80% of Iraqis want U.S. forces out. The U.S. occupation is largely responsible for unleashing Shia ethnic cleansing that has created four million Iraqi refugees.

History does not repeat itself, but men’s mistakes and follies do.

09/10/07 “ICH’ — — The US economy continues its slow death before our eyes, but economists, policymakers, and most of the public are blind to the tottering fabled land of opportunity.

In August jobs in goods-producing industries declined by 64,000. The US economy lost 4,000 jobs overall. The private sector created a mere 24,000 jobs, all of which could be attributed to the 24,100 new jobs for waitresses and bartenders, and the government sector lost 28,000 jobs.

In the 21st century the US economy has ceased to create jobs in export industries and in industries that compete with imports. US job growth has been confined to domestic services, principally to food services and drinking places (waitresses and bartenders), private education and health services (ambulatory health care and hospital orderlies), and construction (which now has tanked). The lack of job growth in higher productivity, higher paid occupations associated with the American middle and upper middle classes will eventually kill the US consumer market.

The unemployment rate held steady, but that is because 340,000 Americans unable to find jobs dropped out of the labor force in August. The US measures unemployment only among the active work force, which includes those seeking jobs. Those who are discouraged and have given up are not counted as unemployed.

With goods producing industries in long term decline as more and more production of US firms is moved offshore, the engineering professions are in decline. Managerial jobs are primarily confined to retail trade and financial services.

Franchises and chains have curtailed opportunities for independent family businesses, and the US government’s open borders policy denies unskilled jobs to the displaced members of the middle class.

When US companies offshore their production for US markets, the consequences for the US economy are highly detrimental. One consequence is that foreign labor is substituted for US labor, resulting in a shriveling of career opportunities and income growth in the US. Another is that US Gross Domestic Product is turned into imports. By turning US brand names into imports, offshoring has a double whammy on the US trade deficit. Simultaneously, imports rise by the amount of offshored production, and the supply of exportable manufactured goods declines by the same amount.

The US now has a trade deficit with every part of the world. In 2006 (the latest annual data), the US had a trade deficit totaling $838,271,000,000.

The US trade deficit with Europe was $142,538,000,000. With Canada the deficit was $75,085,000,000. With Latin America it was $112,579,000,000 (of which $67,303,000,000 was with Mexico). The deficit with Asia and Pacific was $409,765,000,000 (of which $233,087,000,000 was with China and $90,966,000,000 was with Japan). With the Middle East the deficit was $36,112,000,000, and with Africa the US trade deficit was $62,192,000,000.

Public worry for three decades about the US oil deficit has created a false impression among Americans that a self-sufficient America is impaired only by dependence on Middle East oil. The fact of the matter is that the total US deficit with OPEC, an organization that includes as many countries outside the Middle East as within it, is $106,260,000,000, or about one-eighth of the annual US trade deficit.

Moreover, the US gets most of its oil from outside the Middle East, and the US trade deficit reflects this fact. The US deficit with Nigeria, Mexico, and Venezuela is 3.3 times larger than the US trade deficit with the Middle East despite the fact that the US sells more to Venezuela and 18 times more to Mexico than it does to Saudi Arabia.

What is striking about US dependency on imports is that it is practically across the board. Americans are dependent on imports of foreign foods, feeds, and beverages in the amount of $8,975,000,000.

Americans are dependent on imports of foreign Industrial supplies and materials in the amount of $326,459,000,000–more than three times US dependency on OPEC.

Americans can no longer provide their own transportation. They are dependent on imports of automotive vehicles, parts, and engines in the amount of $149,499,000,000, or 1.5 times greater than the US dependency on OPEC.

In addition to the automobile dependency, Americans are 3.4 times more dependent on imports of manufactured consumer durable and nondurable goods than they are on OPEC. Americans no longer can produce their own clothes, shoes, or household appliances and have a trade deficit in consumer manufactured goods in the amount of $336,118,000,000.

The US “superpower” even has a deficit in capital goods, including machinery, electric generating machinery, machine tools, computers, and telecommunications equipment.

What does it mean that the US has a $800 billion trade deficit?

It means that Americans are consuming $800 billion more than they are producing.

How do Americans pay for it?

They pay for it by giving up ownership of existing assets–stocks, bonds, companies, real estate, commodities. America used to be a creditor nation. Now America is a debtor nation. Foreigners own $2.5 trillion more of American assets than Americans own of foreign assets. When foreigners acquire ownership of US assets, they also acquire ownership of the future income streams that the assets produce. More income shifts away from Americans.

How long can Americans consume more than they can produce?

American over-consumption can continue for as long as Americans can find ways to go deeper in personal debt in order to finance their consumption and for as long as the US dollar can remain the world reserve currency.

The 21st century has brought Americans (with the exception of CEOs, hedge fund managers and investment bankers) no growth in real median household income. Americans have increased their consumption by dropping their saving rate to the depression level of 1933 when there was massive unemployment and by spending their home equity and running up credit card bills. The ability of a population, severely impacted by the loss of good jobs to foreigners as a result of offshoring and H-1B work visas and by the bursting of the housing bubble, to continue to accumulate more personal debt is limited to say the least.

Foreigners accept US dollars in exchange for their real goods and services, because dollars can be used to settle every country’s international accounts. By running a trade deficit, the US insures the financing of its government budget deficit as the surplus dollars in foreign hands are invested in US Treasuries and other dollar-denominated assets.

The ability of the US dollar to retain its reserve currency status is eroding due to the continuous increases in US budget and trade deficits. Today the world is literally flooded with dollars. In attempts to reduce the rate at which they are accumulating dollars, foreign governments and investors are diversifying into other traded currencies. As a result, the dollar prices of the Euro, UK pound, Canadian dollar, Thai baht, and other currencies have been bid up. In the 21st century, the US dollar has declined about 33 percent against other currencies. The US dollar remains the reserve currency primarily due to habit and the lack of a clear alternative.

The data used in this article is freely available. It can be found at two official US government sites: here and here.

The jobs data and the absence of growth in real income for most of the population are inconsistent with reports of US GDP and productivity growth. Economists take for granted that the work force is paid in keeping with its productivity. A rise in productivity thus translates into a rise in real incomes of workers. Yet, we have had years of reported strong productivity growth but stagnant or declining household incomes. And somehow the GDP is rising, but not the incomes of the work force.

Something is wrong here. Either the data indicating productivity and GDP growth are wrong or Karl Marx was right that capitalism works to concentrate income in the hands of the few capitalists. A case can be made for both explanations.

Recently an economist, Susan Houseman, discovered that the reliability of some US economics statistics has been impaired by offshoring. Houseman found that cost reductions achieved by US firms shifting production offshore are being miscounted as GDP growth in the US and that productivity gains achieved by US firms when they move design, research, and development offshore are showing up as increases in US productivity. Obviously, production and productivity that occur abroad are not part of the US domestic economy.

Houseman’s discovery rated a Business Week cover story last June 18, but her important discovery seems already to have gone down the memory hole. The economics profession has over-committed itself to the “benefits” of offshoring, globalism, and the non-existent “New Economy.” Houseman’s discovery is too much of a threat to economists’ human capital, corporate research grants, and free market ideology.

The media has likewise let the story go, because in the 1990s the Clinton administration and Congress overturned US policy in favor of a diverse and independent media and permitted a few mega-corporations to concentrate in their hands the ownership of the US media, which reports in keeping with corporate and government interests.

The case for Marx is that offshoring has boosted corporate earnings by lowering labor costs, thereby concentrating income growth in the hands of the owners and managers of capital. According to Forbes magazine, the top 20 earners among private equity and hedge fund managers are earning average yearly compensation of $657,500,000, with four actually earning more than $1 billion annually. The otherwise excessive $36,400,000 average annual pay of the 20 top earners among CEOs of publicly-held companies looks paltry by comparison. The careers and financial prospects of many Americans were destroyed to achieve these lofty earnings for the few.

Hubris prevents realization that Americans are losing their economic future along with their civil liberties and are on the verge of enserfment.

SEPTEMBER 8 — Alex Bainbridge, chairing the Stop Bush/Make Howard History anti-APEC rally told the gathered crowd that there were 10,000 people gathered at Sydney’s Town Hall. A contingent of hundreds of high school students arrived at Town Hall, chanting “Troops out now!”, while a contingent of hundreds of trade unionists arrived chanting “The workers united will never be defeated!”

Despite provocative policing, and the presence of a tiny group of masked neo-Nazis led by retired Macquarie University academic Andrew Fraser, the rally was peaceful. Police behaviour included confiscating polls off banners, despite the fact that this was outside the “declared zone” where the APEC laws would have allowed them to do this; driving the Public Order and Riot Squad vehicles, including the new $600,000 water cannon, sirens blaring, past the Town Hall at 8.45am while rally organisers were setting up; and sealing the exits to Hyde Park after protesters had marched there.

However, protesters followed the calls of rally organisers not to be provoked and there were only a handful of arrests: mostly of neo-Nazis but also including two protesters for taking their clothes off.

Other protesters were arrested after the rally, including two activists on the list of “excluded persons” (despite their not being in the zone they were excluded from) who were briefly detained before being released without charge.

A welcome to country was given by Jenny Munroe, who linked PM John Howard’s recent military/police intervention into Northern Territory indigenous communities with his nuclear diplomacy at the APEC summit. She pointed out that the latter would not only mean more uranium mining on aboriginal land, but would encourage plans for nuclear waste dumps in indigenous communities.

She also spoke about the situation in Palm Island, where the police officer who beat Mulrunji to death in 2004 walked free while Lex Wotton has been jailed for protesting against the murder. “The legal system needs to be thrown out, we need to start working on a new one”, she said.

Greens Senator Kerry Nettle also spoke about Howard’s APEC uranium deals, as well as pointing out that Howard, US President George Bush and NSW Premier Morris Iemma were “in bed with the coal industry”. She called for renewable energy as genuine solution to climate change rather than the APEC leaders preferred phantom solutions: “clean” coal and “safe” nuclear energy.

She condemned the anti-worker agenda of APEC and called for the scrapping of all of Howard’s Work Choices, as opposed to scrapping just bits of it as ALP “ooopsition” leader Kevin Rudd was proposing.

The march was led by the Maritime Union of Australia and the Fire Brigade Employees Union (FBEU). The MUA’s Warren Smith told the rally that the walls surrounding the APEC meeting zone did not symbolise keeping protesters out but that capitalism was in jail, saying that whenever one of the organisations of global capitalism, such as the G8, the G20, the International Monetary Fund or the World Trade Organisation, met, they had to do so behind walls to hide from protests. He said that APEC means war, driving down wages, nuclear power and the profits of big corporations. “We say no!”, he said.

Emphasising the importance of peaceful protest, he congratulated the rally for having the organisation and discipline needed to “throw Howard into the dustbin of history”. He said that the time of neoliberalism and war was up because “the people are here!”

The FBEU’s Simon Flynn linked the struggles of workers, Indigenous people, environmentalists and anti-war activists saying it was “time to unite in a new movement”. He said that the discussions of the 21 leaders at APEC had nothing to do with democracy: “This is democracy!” he said, referring to the assembled crowd. Condemning Howard for the war in Iraq and for Work Choices he said that the ALP was equivocating. Reminding protesters of the ALP’s origins as a party to represent workers’ unions he said “now is not the time for the tail to wag the dog”.

Other speakers included US Iraq war veteran Matt Howard, Keysar Trad from the Islamic Friendship Association and Pip Hinman from the Stop the War Coalition, and a statement was read from Melbourne trade unionist Omar Merhi.

There was a very diverse attendance. Theresa Suddaby came from Bulla Burra in the Blue Mountains, and told Green Left Weekly: “I’m here protesting for the right to protest.” Peter McGregor, who came to town on the “Stop Bush Express” from Newcastle, explained to GLW why he was protesting: “Whenever war criminals such as George Bush and John Howard appear in public, it’s important people come out also in public, to protest them.”

“They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military.”

This particular spine-chiller comes from Alexis Debat, excitingly identified as “director of terrorism and national security” at the Nixon Center. According to Debat, the big takeout is what the U.S. Air Force has in store, as opposed to mere “pinprick strikes” against the infamous nuclear facilities.

Predicting imminent war on Iran has been one of the top two items in Cassandra’s repertoire for a couple of years now, rivaled only by global warming as a sure-fire way to sell newspapers and boost website hits.

Debat was re-roasting that well-scorched chestnut, the “Shock and Awe” strategy, whereby-back in March of 2003-the U.S. Air Force proposed to reduce Iraq’s entire military to smoldering ruins. In the event, “Shock and Awe” was a resounding failure, like all such pledges by Air Force commanders to destroy the enemy’s military since the birth of aerial bombardments nearly a century ago. Such failures have never stopped the US Air Force from trying once again, and there are no doubt vivid attack plans now circulating the government.

Will it come to pass? In his memoirs, I Claud (which I’m happy to say CounterPunch Books/AK Press will be republishing next spring,) my father offers a useful recipe on this matter of prediction.

One morning, as we at length relaxed at breakfast by a brazier on the terrace of the Café du Dôme, he [Robert Dell, the diplomatic correspondent of the Manchester Guardian] said to me: “Do you want to get what used to be called a ‘scoop’ for your horrid little paper every day?” (The “horrid little paper” was, of course, the Daily Worker, whose diplomatic correspondent I then was.)

“That would be nice.”

“Well then, all you have to do is to read all the continental papers available every morning, take lunch with one or more of Europe’s leading politicians or diplomats, make up your mind what is the vilest action that, in the circumstances, the French, British, Italian or German government could undertake, and then, in the leisure of the afternoon, sit down at your typewriter and write a dispatch announcing that that is just what they are going to do. You can’t miss. Your news will be denied two hours after it is published and confirmed after twenty four.”

So, whether in 24 hours or 24 days or at some point before the end of his term, we should predict Bush will send the bombers on their way to Teheran to destroy the usual targets–power stations and kindred civilian infrastructure, hospitals, maybe a few bomb shelters crammed with women and children.

But will it really come to pass?

Despite the unending stream of stories across the months announcing that an attack on Iran is on the way, I’ve had my doubts. Amid the housing slump here, with the possibility of an inflationary surge as the credit balloon threatens to explode, would the US government really want to see the price of gas at the pump go over $5? What would Hugo Chavez do? Even a hiccup in flows from Venezuela would paralyze refineries here, specifically designed for Venezuelan crude. China has a big stake in Iran. It’s also Uncle Sam’s banker. The Chinese don’t have to destroy the dollar, merely squeeze its windpipe, or revalue their currency enough to double retail prices in Wal-Mart. The Republicans and the presidential candidates wouldn’t want that on the edge of an election year.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff know the Iraq War has almost broken the US Army. Wouldn’t they adamantly oppose the notion of an attack on Iran, which would see Shiite resistance groups in Iraq cut US supply convoys from Kuwait bringing fuel and water to the big US bases? Wouldn’t Shiite forces as a whole finally commence a campaign of eviction of the American occupier? Wouldn’t this puncture the fantasy that General Petraeus’ “surge” is working?

The other side of the ledger isn’t hard to fill in either. The oil companies like a crisis that sends up the price of their commodity. The Chinese are a prudent lot and don’t want to rock the world economy. Politically, both they and Russia would like to see the US compound the disaster in Iraq and get into a long-term mess in Iran. Israel wants an attack on Iran, and the Israel lobby calls the shots in US foreign policy. What Israel wants, Israel gets. The US peace movement is in disarray, and sizable chunks of it would be delighted to see bombs shower down on the woman-hating ayatollahs and Ahmadinejad, the holocaust denier.

Amid the disaster of their Middle Eastern strategy Bush and his advisors may hype themselves into one last desperate throw, emboldened by the fact that the selling of the surge has been a success even though all the Democrats need to do is cite the UN, which says the number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has gone from 50,000 to 60,000 a month. Or quote Associated Press which counted 1,809 Iraqi civilians killed in August, compared with 1,760 in July. The Sunni split in Anbar province is not one likely to be replicated in Baghdad or elsewhere and anyway had nothing to do with the hike in US troop levels. Bush didn’t dare go to Baghdad.

Weigh it all up, and you’d be foolish to bet that an attack on Iran won’t happen. I knew Noam Chomsky used to be dubious about the likelihood of a U.S. attack and emailed him last week to ask if he is still of that opinion. Here’s his answer.

Yes, I was quite sceptical. Less so over the years. They’re desperate. Everything they touch is in ruins. They’re even in danger of losing control over Middle Eastern oil — to China, the topic that’s rarely discussed but is on every planner or corporation exec’s mind, if they’re sane. Iran already has observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — from which the US was pointedly excluded. Chinese trade with Saudi Arabia, even military sales, is growing fast. With the Bush administration in danger of losing Shiite Iraq, where most of the oil is (and most Saudi oil in regions with a harshly oppressed Shiite population), they may be in real trouble.

Under these circumstances, they’re unpredictable. They might go for broke, and hope they can salvage something from the wreckage. If they do bomb, I suspect it will be accompanied by a ground assault in Khuzestan, near the Gulf, where the oil is (and an Arab population — there already is an Ahwazi liberation front, probably organized by the CIA, which the US can “defend” from the evil Persians), and then they can bomb the rest of the country to rubble. And show who’s boss.