The Rag Blog

Originally published in Spanish on Rebelión

“Interview with Professor Agustín Velloso in the 11th Week of the Popular School José Luis García Rúa: The outcomes of fundamentalism,” – Gijón, Spain, from 2 to 10 February 2007

Civil war or coup d’état in Palestine?

Agustín Velloso interviewed by Rebelión; Translated by the author and revised by James Hollander

Is there a civil war going on in Palestine?

No, but this question and an affirmative answer is what pro-Israeli media are spreading all over the world. Hence, the average news consumer knows nothing of the reality of this “civil war.”

But aren’t we seeing the Palestinians are killing each other in the streets of Gaza?

What we are seeing is that since Hamas won the last legislative elections of January 2006, which were monitored by thousands of foreign observers, Jimmy Carter amongst them, the Western powers have made all kinds of political and economic manoeuvres to oust the winner with the help of the losers, Abu Mazen and his Fatah party.

However, the situation different than in Iraq. There are no Western armies in Gaza, so isn’t it just an internal Palestinian affair?

It is not an internal affair. Palestine is just another piece on the big Middle East chessboard, where the international community is moving pieces to further its own interests, namely: the control of oil and the support of its ally, Israel. The Western powers support Fatah because they say it represents the “moderate” Palestinians and are torpedoing the Hamas government because its programme runs counter to the agenda of Zionism and imperialism. Once Hamas obtained a majority of the seats in Parliament, the leaders of the powerful – Bush, Rice, Blair, Olmert, Solana and others – switched to plan B: oust Hamas from the government no matter what the price. This price would be paid by ordinary Palestinians, in any case.

What role is the international community playing in the fighting?

This fighting is the last move in the chess game. Previously, the West –the supposed democratic guardians of international law- invaded countries, flattened entire cities, bombed families at weddings and on the beach, and forced Arab and Muslim prisoners onto secret flights around the globe to torture them at will and put them in cages like animals.

What moves are you talking about?

They have totally isolated the legitimate Palestinian government, while Israel has declared its members a “legitimate” target for its death squads, kidnapping several of them as well as many members of the Parliament.

MOSCOW (AP) – Russia’s top military officer said the United States is expanding its economic, political and military presence in Russia’s traditional zones of influence and described that as the top national security threat, the latest signal of a growing chill in relations.

Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, chief of the military’s General Staff, said Russia now faces even greater military threats than during the Cold War and the nation needs a new military doctrine to respond to these challenges, according to a speech posted on the Defense Ministry’s Web site Friday.

“Russia’s cooperation with the West on the basis of forming common or close strategic interests hasn’t helped its military security,” Baluyevsky said in the speech, delivered at a recent security conference in Moscow. “Moreover, the situation in many regions of the world which are vitally important for Russia and near its borders has sometimes become more difficult.”

Russian-U.S. ties have worsened steadily over disagreements on Iraq and other global crises, and U.S. concerns about an increasingly authoritarian streak in Russia’s domestic policy and strong-arming of ex-Soviet neighbors.

Baluyevsky referred to what he called “the U.S. military leadership’s course aimed at maintaining its global leadership and expanding its economic, political and military presence in Russia’s traditional zones of influence” as a top threat for Russia’s national security.

Unless he had a dentist’s appointment late this afternoon, it would be hard for Douglas J Feith to have had a worse Friday. Already, one of the first neoconservative officials to have been jettisoned in the second Bush administration, the former undersecretary of defense for policy – the number three position in the Pentagon – just had his legacy torn apart by an official investigation by the Defense Department’s inspector general. The long-awaited report, released Friday morning, found that a unit set up in Feith’s bureau known as the Office of Special Plans engaged in “inappropriate” intelligence work on the case for war with Iraq.

The Office of Special Plans (OSP) is a murky thing, and, in Washington as well as on the internet, it’s taken on a life of its own. Feith has been right to complain that entire conspiracy theories have sprung up around it – like, according to some perfervid views, the claim that the OSP’s work was an effort to invade Iraq on behalf of Israel. The inspector general’s office didn’t dignify that with a response, but it did confirm, in broad outline, much of what has appeared in investigative reports: that Feith’s office “developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community, to senior decision-makers.”

These alternative assessments, developed in late 2001 and 2002, went far beyond the available evidence to assert a connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Feith’s office further suggested that the intelligence community – which, by and large, didn’t put much stock in the idea of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida – was hopelessly myopic. And that, in turn, served an important bureaucratic purpose: crowding out competitors. For instance, Feith’s intelligence analysts presented a briefing on their exaggerated findings to then CIA director George Tenet in August of 2002, in order to delay a CIA assessment on the issue that they considered insufficiently hawkish. Tenet later told a Senate panel that he “didn’t see anything that broke any new ground for me” in Feith’s briefing. But the next month, the OSP analysts took their findings to the White House, and included in their briefing a section that contended there were “Fundamental Problems With How (the Intelligence Community) Is Assessing Information.” The OSP’s analysis was established as the one worth trusting.

On Newsweek’s website you can flip through a short PDF slideshow of a presentation produced by the Pentagon in 2002. The presentation purports to show that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were working together and had been for years. Not only was this a presentation of intelligence at odds with what the legitimate intelligence community was saying, but the first slide in the presentation provides reasons why the intelligence community had it wrong. This hardly looks like the product of an office doing only policy work, rather than intelligence.

But Senator Jay Rockefeller, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a statement: “The IG has concluded that this office was engaged in intelligence activities. The Senate Intelligence Committee was never informed of these activities. Whether these actions were authorized or not, it appears that they were not in compliance with the law. In the coming days, I will carefully review all aspects of the report and will consult with Vice Chairman Bond to determine whether any additional action by the Senate Intelligence Committee is warranted.”

According to numerous reports, the law Rockefeller has in mind is the National Security Act of 1947, which appears to make it illegal to engage in intelligence activities of the sort engaged in by the Pentagon, without notifying Congress.

BLITZER: Did you and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Cheney and Scooter Libby and the president make a mistake?

FEITH: Well, I mean, in the — lots of mistakes were made and lots of right things were done.

BLITZER: In your analysis?

FEITH: The issue here was not that we did an analysis. The issue was we criticized the CIA’s analysis.
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Feith’s “Office of Special Plans” did not just critique Central Intelligence Agency conclusions. It requisitioned raw intelligence and cherry-picked it for the conclusions Feith was seeking. And, the group itself was not neutral analysts but was rather drawn from the Neoconservative network close to Israel’s Likud Party:

Jim Lobe wrote, “The heads of NESA and OSP were Deputy Undersecretary William Luti and Abram Shulsky, respectively. Other appointees who worked with them in both offices included Michael Rubin, a Middle East specialist previously with the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); David Schenker, previously with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Michael Makovsky; an expert on neo-con icon Winston Churchill and the younger brother of David Makovsky, a senior WINEP fellow and former executive editor of pro-Likud ‘Jerusalem Post’; and Chris Lehman, the brother of the John Lehman, a prominent neo-conservative who served as secretary of the navy under Ronald Reagan, according to Kwiatkowski.”

Feith decries the “filter” the CIA had put on its intelligence on Iraq. Mr. Feith, that is called “intelligence analysis.” Raw, undigested tips are not intelligence and they can be extremely unreliable if not weighted properly. It then funneled those conclusions to Cheney’s office directly, by-passing real intelligence agencies. Its members also quite illegally briefed high ranking administration officials on the intelligence. See my earlier remarks on all this.

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BLITZER: But right now.

FEITH: Hang on a second.

BLITZER: Are you ready to acknowledge there were no WMDs …

FEITH: You’re not letting me explain the essence of the problem.

BLITZER: I will let you explain but quickly. Are you ready to acknowledge there was no WMD, are you ready to acknowledge that there was no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda?

FEITH: We did not find WMD stockpiles. We found WMD programs. And the Duelfer report as I’m sure you know, was very clear on what we found in the WMD area, although we did not find the stock piles. We found that he had the facilities, he had the personnel, the intention. So there was a WMD threat but it wasn’t the way the CIA described it.

In fact, the Duelfer report found no sign of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or any active capacity to produce any of them:
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“In his final word, the CIA’s top weapons inspector in Iraq said Monday that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction has “gone as far as feasible” and has found nothing, closing an investigation into the purported programs of Saddam Hussein that were used to justify the 2003 invasion. “After more than 18 months, the WMD investigation and debriefing of the WMD-related detainees has been exhausted,” wrote Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraq Survey Group, in an addendum to the final report he issued last fall.”

BLITZER: There wasn’t the stockpiles. What about on the al Qaeda connection?

FEITH: On the al Qaeda connection, George Tenet on October 7th, 2002 wrote an unclassified letter to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee laying out the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

BLITZER: So you believed there was a connection?

FEITH: I believed George Tenet.

Oh, now he has blind faith in the CIA? I thought it was completely unreliable because of its “filters” and had to be contradicted by Abram Shulsky?

BLITZER: But now you know that was now false.

FEITH: I never heard it was false.

Abu Zubayda was debriefed to this effect in 2002, and Khalid Shaikh Muhammad confirmed it on his capture in spring of 2003. Feith as the number 3 man in the Pentagon cannot have been unaware of what they were telling interrogators. He is therefore lying. James Risen wrote in summer 2003,
===
“Al-Qaeda did not work with Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime, two of the terrorist network’s senior leaders have told the CIA, intelligence officials say.

Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda planner and recruiter who was captured in March 2002, told interrogators last year that such co-operation had been discussed among the group’s leaders, but was rejected by Osama bin Laden.

The al-Qaeda chief had vetoed the idea because he did not want to be beholden to Saddam, Zubaydah said.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Qaeda’s chief of operations who was captured in Pakistan on March 1, has also said in a debriefing that the group did not work with Saddam.

The Bush Administration has not made these statements public, although it has frequently highlighted intelligence reports supporting its claims of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda as it made its case for war.”

===

BLITZER: You believe Saddam was working with al Qaeda?

FEITH: I believe that what George Tenet published in October of 2002 was the best information on the subject. And as far as I know, that is largely — I mean, there may be — look, I’ve not been in the government the last year and a half.

Caracas, feb 08, ABN (Tessa Marsman)- At times it is complicated to figure out how they really want to design socialism in Venezuela. What really is socialism of the XXI century? One thing is sure the socialism of the Bolivarian Revolution does not resemble the reformist European socialism from the previous century «that continues to find a way to justify and include capitalism», says the influential Venezuelan opinion leader, Haiman el Troudi, in an interview with the Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias.

«Neither do we want a scientific socialism like they applied in east Europe in the twentieth century», explains El Troudi. «A Socialism of centralized planning in which things operate directed from above».

Socialism of the XXI century is directed from below. It is not the state that will be omnipresent in planning everything that happens in the Venezuelan society. People participate in adapting their own concrete local plan, the same way as we have seen with the formation of the community councils.

The Venezuelan Community Councils are neighbourhood watches with the power and the means to resolve local problems varying from broken sewer systems till replacement of a polluting factory. These are problems that up till now were hardly resolved by local corrupt governments in the many poor neighbourhoods of the country.

The decisiveness of these community councils will be implemented soon with the new Enabling Law that gives Chávez the power to pass decrees without deliberation them in the parliament.

The law is part of the «Five Motors» aimed at driving Venezuela towards what Chávez has termed «Socialism of the 21st Century» were first announced in early January during the swearing-in of Chávez’s new cabinet. The first motor is the «enabling» law, the second is around constitutional reform, the third, «morals and enlightenment», activated yesterday, involves a change in the educational system, while the fourth motor, «the new geometry of power» deals with the reconfiguration of state power, and the fifth motor relates to the explosion of communal power in the Communal Councils.

For Hugo Chavez, large, industrial mega projects could turn into a political mine field. The contradiction between Chavez’s rhetoric stressing social equality, on the one hand, and environmental abuses on the other, was driven home to me over this past summer when I attended the first ever environmental conference of Lake Maracaibo. The event was held in the city of Maracaibo itself, the capital of Zulia state, and organized by the government’s Institute for the Conservation of Lake Maracaibo (known by the Spanish acronym ICLAM).

Somewhat oddly, outside of the dining hall where conference participants ate lunch mining companies had set up promotional booths. Walking through an adjacent hallway, scantily clad women working for mining and oil companies plied me with glossy pamphlets and even candy. Later during the conference itself, one panelist, a representative from the local development agency Corpozulia, gave a rosy presentation about new port and infrastructure projects planned for the state of Zulia.

Later, I went back to the luxurious Hotel Kristoff where the government had put me up for the duration of my stay. One morning, sitting at a table overlooking the hotel pool, I was joined by Jorge Hinestroza, a sociologist at the University of Zulia and former General Coordinator of the Federation of Zulia Ecologists.

Sierra of Perija: Area of Conflict

Hinestroza spoke to me of destructive coal mining in the Sierra of Perija, a mountain range which marks a section of the border between Venezuela and Colombia. The area, which is home to large coal deposits, has suffered severe deforestation.

Industrial coal production, Hinestroza explained, had damaged Indian lands. He complained that America Port, a new project proposed by Corpozulia, would prove “catastrophic for mangrove vegetation in the area.” The project, he continued, was linked to coal exploitation. What’s more, Corpozulia itself owned the mining concessions.

According to reports, the Añú community, comprised of 3,000 people living around the Lake Sinamaica region in Zulia, is concerned about the devastation that would result from the construction of a deep-water port in the area, for exporting coal.

If Chavez does not attend to rising calls for greater environmental controls, he will lose support amongst one of his most loyal constituencies, the indigenous population. Already, industrial mega projects have led to angry protest and undermined public confidence in the regime. For Chavez, it is surely one of the thorniest problems that his government must confront.

Launching Raids into Indian Country

Though Indians inhabiting the Sierra of Perija have had to confront extensive coal mining in the Chavez era, it’s not as if indigenous peoples living in the area are strangers to conflict. In the first half of the twentieth century, Motilon Indians [also known as the Bari], which included several indigenous groups inhabiting the area of Perijá, confronted British and American oil prospectors.

In 2001, I was living in Maracaibo doing research for my dissertation dealing with the environmental history of oil development in Lake Maracaibo. Working in the historical archive, I was struck by historical accounts of oil prospectors headed to Indian country.

In 1914, for example, one oil expedition marched into the jungle accompanied by a large company of 50 peons. In seeking to penetrate Motilon Indian country, oil prospectors were aided by the Venezuelan government. As one oil pioneer put it, “we had for arms 12 Mauser military rifles from the government. Every man had either a revolver or a rifle.”

Oil prospectors on one expedition discovered a Motilon house, but were forced to make a harrowing escape in canoes along river rapids when Indians appeared. The oil men shot back, hitting at least twelve men.

One oilman commented: “I do not like the idea of destroying a whole community of men, women and children. But this would be the only thing to do unless peace is made … If oil is found up the Lora [River], peaceful relations with the Indians would be worth several hundred thousand dollars to the company.”

“It Would Be Convenient to Suppress Them with Gas or Grenades”

Eventually, oil infrastructure in Indian country proceeded. Indians had to contend not only with armed prospectors but also growing contamination from open earth oil sumps and dwindling hunting grounds.

For the growing American community in Maracaibo, the Motilones were a nuisance. One English language paper, the Tropical Sun, remarked, “It would be convenient to suppress the Motilon Indians by attacking them with asphyxiating gas or explosive grenades.”

There are no documented cases of large scale artillery attacks on the Motilon Indians. However, Father Cesareo de Armellada, a Capuchin priest who later played a pivotal role in contacting groups of Motilones, claimed that

“It was said by some sotto voce and others even admitted publicly that in the Colombian region [of Perija] the national army organized raids under the slogan of: there is no other way. And it is also said that in the same region the Motilones were bombed by airplanes. The same thing has been repeated to me by many people living within the Venezuelan region of Perija and Colon.”

Diplomatic relations between Mexico and Venezuela seem to have become a sort of sequel to the famous Mexican film “Dos tipos de cuidado” (Two Dangerous Fellows) [*]. President Felipe Calderón even went so far as to imitate one of the most memorable moments in the film, the scene where Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete engage in an intense singing duel. Just last Friday, taking on the role of Jorge Negrete, the man from Michoacan dedicated a verse to Hugo Chávez: “We know not here such braggarts, but if needs be, a mighty will can fill our hearts.”

The Mexican leader seems to be obsessed with the president of Venezuela. Time and again he has tried to portray him as some new empire of evil. During the election campaign last year, he sought to undermine his opponent Andrés Manuel López Obrador by comparing him to Chávez. He once again lashed out at the Venezuelan without mentioning him by name early this year in El Salvador. During his recent trip to Europe, he went all out against Chávez.

Sources say that the Mexican’s aim is to spark a debate of ideas on the merits of free trade and the dangers of populism and state control. But it is striking how little substance can be found in Calderón’s attacks on the process of change in Venezuela. He does rely, however, on the dense cloud of lies and half-truths that’s been floating around about that country and distorting reality rather than explaining it.

Is it true that the Venezuelan economy is going off the rails and that is president is driving to country into hideous poverty? No, it isn’t. In opposition to the Washington Consensus, the Bolivarian Revolution has set in motion a series of highly successful policies. Oil revenue has been channelled into programs for education, health, subsidized food, diversification of industry and job creation. According to Joseph Stiglitz, Chávez “seems to have had success bringing health and education to the neighbourhoods of Caracas, where people had previously seen little benefit from the country’s rich petroleum resources.” (translated from Spanish).

The results are plain to see. The minimum wage in Venezuela is now $220 (along with benefits like a 3-month bonus) when just a few years ago it was barely $100. It is one of the highest in Latin America, and well above that received by Mexican workers: $137.

Venezuela can boast of the highest economic growth rate in South American in the last three years, nearly double the regional average. In 2004, the GDP grew by 17.3%. A year later, it grew by 9.3% and in 2006 by 10.3%. Projections for 2007 suggest it could grow by another 6%. This economic boom has gone hand-in-hand with high rates of employment, a significant recovery of real wages and a 17% increase in consumption.

If we measure Venezuela’s progress according to the UN’s Human Development Index, we’ll find that the country went from 75th place in 2005 to 72nd a year later. Life expectancy is now 73 years, and adult literacy is now an impressive 93%. Infant mortality has dropped to 16 for every thousand births. The poverty level fell from 55.1% in 2003 to 33.9% by the first quarter of 2006.

It’s strange to be vindicated by Grover Norquist, a neocon flunky connected to the American Enterprise Institute, where Bush gets his criminal “minds,” and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In regard to the Iraq invasion and occupation, Norquist declares: “Everything the advocates of war said would happen hasn’t happened. And all the things the critics said would happen have happened.”

Please excuse my fat head. Instead, let us consider other, more portentous items of interest the “conservative” Norquist has said as of late. Bush’s neocons, or rather the neocons that run Bush, are “effectively saying, ‘Invade Iran. Then everyone will see how smart we are.’ But after you’ve lost x number of times at the roulette wheel, do you double-down?”

I’m not sure what sort of game Norquist is playing here, as he can’t be that stupid. Invasions and mass murder campaigns have nothing to do with a roulette wheel, or “winning” what a fence post understands cannot be won. Instead, it has everything to do with killing Arabs and Muslim, wrecking their countries, breaking said countries up into chunks for later micromanagement, as people set against each other along ethnic and religious lines cannot possibly hope to come together and defeat the invader. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who now warns us of the calamity to come in Iran, said it best: “the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”