Venezuelan Government To Launch International 9/11 Investigation

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | March 31 2006

Truth crusaders Walter and Rodriguez to appear on Hugo Chavez's weekly TV broadcast

Billionaire philanthropist Jimmy Walter and WTC survivor William Rodriguez this week embarked on a groundbreaking trip to Caracas Venezuela in which they met with with the President of the Assembly and will soon meet with Venezuelan President himself Hugo Chavez in anticipation of an official Venezuelan government investigation into 9/11.

Rodriguez was the last survivor pulled from the rubble of the north tower of the WTC, and was responsible for all stairwells within the tower. Rodriguez represented family members of 9/11 victims and testified to the 9/11 Commission that bombs were in the north tower but his statements were completely omitted from the official record.

Jimmy Walter has been at the forefront of a world tour to raise awareness about 9/11 and has still yet to receive any response to his million dollar challenge in which he offers a $1 million reward for proof that the trade towers' steel structure was broken apart without explosives.

Rodriguez said that he was told an FBI agent had asked the hotel him and Walter were staying in turn over a list of names of residents. Upon hearing this, the National Assembly provided armed military protection for the entirety of the trip. In addition, Walters said that CIA agents were seen surveilling the beach on which he and Rodriguez had handed out free DVD's a day earlier.

The US government attempted to sabotage the trip by putting Rodriguez, who has been decorated at the White House itself, and Walter on a no fly list.

Rodriguez (pictured above) and Walter are educating top Venezuelan officials on the evidence that 9/11 was a self-inflicted wound carried out by the military-industrial complex. They have also appeared on every Venezuelan television and radio station both private and state owned and have given huge presentations to major universities.

Upon visiting, Rodriguez said that the President of the Assembly, Nicolas Maduro's home was brimming with books, videos and documents about the 9/11 cover-up. Maduro, Venezuela's top legislator, intoned that he was ready to create an international investigative committee, looking into the "international crime scene" that is 9/11 and that this would be structured via Hugo Chavez's government.

Rodriguez and Walter are also set to appear on Hugo Chavez's weekly broadcast 'Alo Presidente' - which is often subsequently the source of major international headlines. If there is no coverage of this event then we know for sure that a blackout order is in place.

Rodriguez and Walter offered their full support for Charlie Sheen's recent public stance on 9/11 and were heartened by his efforts. The potential of a government level inquiry endorsed by Hugo Chavez dovetails with Sheen's call for an independent investigation to be carried out by political foreign nationals.

Though the establishment media will no doubt seek to demonize Chavez as a militant with an axe to grind, this is an exciting development and the next step on the road to a genuine investigation that will seek to uncover the truth rather than hide skeletons and whitewash as was witnessed with the staged Kean committee.

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Click here to listen to Rodriguez and Walter's interview on The Alex Jones Show. Please support our massive bandwidth costs by subscribing to Prison Planet.tv.
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A case for tailoring - and slowing - free trade in poor nations

by Robert B. Reich The New York Times
Fair Trade For All How Trade Can Promote Development By Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton 315 pages. $30; £15.99. Oxford University Press.

It is not exactly a new debate. On my bookshelf sits "Which? Protection or Free Trade," edited by H. W. Furber and published in Boston in 1888. That was some 70 years after the British economist David Ricardo first suggested that the gains from trade exceed the losses regardless of whether trading partners are more or less economically advanced, as each nation shifts to where it has a comparative advantage. Most economists and policy makers now accept Ricardo's argument, although the popular debate over the merits of free trade continues.

The new and more interesting debate is about how the benefits of trade should be shared. During the 1990s, the so-called Washington consensus of officials from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United States Treasury Department thought the best way to spur growth in developing nations was for them to quickly lower their trade barriers and deregulate their markets. But that prescription has not worked especially well, even though it still shapes American trade policy. Apart from China and India, the gap between rich and poor nations has continued to widen. More than two billion people worldwide live on the equivalent of less than a dollar a day. Trade talks initiated in Doha, Qatar, in 2001, were intended to redress the balance but have gone nowhere. The last major international meeting, in 2003 in Cancún, Mexico, ended in failure and recrimination, and there has been little progress since. The world's poorer nations think the richer ones are still offering a lousy deal.

In their provocative book, "Fair Trade for All," Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia, and Andrew Charlton, a research officer at the London School of Economics, argue that the poorer nations are right. A better deal would be for them to move toward free trade gradually, each according to its own particular circumstances. The authors urge richer nations to help poorer ones prepare themselves for trade, while dismantling their own trade barriers, which prevent developing nations from selling them many goods and services. Stiglitz is worth listening to. A winner of the Nobel in economic science in 2001 for his pioneering work in the economics of information, he was a member and then chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1997 (during which time, in the interest of full disclosure, we frequently attended the same White House meetings), thereafter becoming chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank. In other words, Stiglitz was in Washington when the Washington consensus was formed. He was a dissenter, however, and in recent years has been an outspoken critic of Washington's trade and global investment policies.

Stiglitz and Charlton show that standard economic assumptions are wrong when it comes to many developing economies. When markets in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere are opened, people often can't move easily to new industries where the nation has a comparative advantage.

Transportation systems that might get them there are often primitive, housing is inadequate and job training is scarce. They are vulnerable in the meantime because safety nets are weak or nonexistent. Most people lack access to credit or insurance because financial institutions are frail, so they are unable to start their own businesses or otherwise take advantage of new opportunities that trade might bring. Many poor countries are already plagued by high unemployment, and job losses in the newly traded sector might just add to it.

Hence, the authors argue, the pace at which poorer nations open their markets to trade should coincide with the development of new institutions - roads, schools, banks and the like - that make such transitions easier and generate real opportunities. Since many poor nations cannot afford the investments required to build these institutions, rich nations have a responsibility to help.

Without these other institutions in place, the authors say, trade by itself can do more harm than good. They point out that inequality increased after trade was liberalized in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Uruguay. Ten years after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, Mexico's real wages are lower than they were before, and both inequality and poverty have grown. Many of the manufacturing jobs that came to Mexico in the wake of Nafta have since been lost to China, partly because China invested heavily in education and infrastructure while Mexico, lacking tariff revenues, could not afford to do so.

According to Stiglitz and Charlton, every developing country that has succeeded in achieving rapid growth has protected its market to some extent until it was ready to dismantle trade barriers.

Moreover, they warn, one size does not fit all. Richer nations should not force all poorer nations to abide by the same market-opening rules and timetables. Poorer nations have different needs. They are at different stages of economic development (subsistence agriculture in much of Africa and parts of Asia, export-oriented agriculture in Latin America and other parts of Asia, early-stage industrialization elsewhere). They have different political and institutional capacities.

Richer nations should also help developing nations get a fair share of the benefits of trade, Stiglitz and Charlton write, by reforming themselves. They should no longer protect their own textile producers, subsidize their farmers, shield their maritime and construction industries, or impose fines on poor nations for allegedly "dumping" exports at below-market rates. More broadly, the authors suggest, all nations that have joined the World Trade Organization should make a commitment to giving complete free-market access to all developing countries poorer and smaller than themselves.

Surprisingly, though Stiglitz has spent some years in Washington, he does not answer the obvious next question: How can this commendable agenda be sold to richer nations? Their political leaders are in a bind since so many of their own citizens are also losing jobs and experiencing declining incomes and, rightly or wrongly, blaming globalization for their plight. This is one of the major reasons the antiglobalization movement is as strong in the developed world as in the developing.

While Stiglitz and Charlton nobly assert that trade agreements should be viewed as presumptively unfair if they bestow disproportionate benefits on richer nations, they fail to acknowledge that within richer nations free trade is already disproportionately benefiting the best educated and best connected. The wealthy are growing much wealthier while the middle class is being squeezed. In fact, the adjustment mechanisms the authors find lacking in most developing economies - good public schools, modern infrastructure and adequate social safety nets - are coming to be less and less available even in the United States. Free trade surely generates the gains Ricardo claimed for it. But until those gains are more widely shared - within richer countries as well as between richer and poorer - we can kiss any further round of trade liberalization goodbye.

Robert B. Reich is a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former U.S. secretary of labor. He is the author, most recently, of "Reason."

Fair Trade For All How Trade Can Promote Development By Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton 315 pages. $30; £15.99. Oxford University Press.

It is not exactly a new debate. On my bookshelf sits "Which? Protection or Free Trade," edited by H. W. Furber and published in Boston in 1888. That was some 70 years after the British economist David Ricardo first suggested that the gains from trade exceed the losses regardless of whether trading partners are more or less economically advanced, as each nation shifts to where it has a comparative advantage. Most economists and policy makers now accept Ricardo's argument, although the popular debate over the merits of free trade continues.

The new and more interesting debate is about how the benefits of trade should be shared. During the 1990s, the so-called Washington consensus of officials from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United States Treasury Department thought the best way to spur growth in developing nations was for them to quickly lower their trade barriers and deregulate their markets. But that prescription has not worked especially well, even though it still shapes American trade policy. Apart from China and India, the gap between rich and poor nations has continued to widen. More than two billion people worldwide live on the equivalent of less than a dollar a day. Trade talks initiated in Doha, Qatar, in 2001, were intended to redress the balance but have gone nowhere. The last major international meeting, in 2003 in Cancún, Mexico, ended in failure and recrimination, and there has been little progress since. The world's poorer nations think the richer ones are still offering a lousy deal.

In their provocative book, "Fair Trade for All," Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia, and Andrew Charlton, a research officer at the London School of Economics, argue that the poorer nations are right. A better deal would be for them to move toward free trade gradually, each according to its own particular circumstances. The authors urge richer nations to help poorer ones prepare themselves for trade, while dismantling their own trade barriers, which prevent developing nations from selling them many goods and services. Stiglitz is worth listening to. A winner of the Nobel in economic science in 2001 for his pioneering work in the economics of information, he was a member and then chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1997 (during which time, in the interest of full disclosure, we frequently attended the same White House meetings), thereafter becoming chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank. In other words, Stiglitz was in Washington when the Washington consensus was formed. He was a dissenter, however, and in recent years has been an outspoken critic of Washington's trade and global investment policies.

Stiglitz and Charlton show that standard economic assumptions are wrong when it comes to many developing economies. When markets in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere are opened, people often can't move easily to new industries where the nation has a comparative advantage.

Transportation systems that might get them there are often primitive, housing is inadequate and job training is scarce. They are vulnerable in the meantime because safety nets are weak or nonexistent. Most people lack access to credit or insurance because financial institutions are frail, so they are unable to start their own businesses or otherwise take advantage of new opportunities that trade might bring. Many poor countries are already plagued by high unemployment, and job losses in the newly traded sector might just add to it.

Hence, the authors argue, the pace at which poorer nations open their markets to trade should coincide with the development of new institutions - roads, schools, banks and the like - that make such transitions easier and generate real opportunities. Since many poor nations cannot afford the investments required to build these institutions, rich nations have a responsibility to help.

Without these other institutions in place, the authors say, trade by itself can do more harm than good. They point out that inequality increased after trade was liberalized in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Uruguay. Ten years after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, Mexico's real wages are lower than they were before, and both inequality and poverty have grown. Many of the manufacturing jobs that came to Mexico in the wake of Nafta have since been lost to China, partly because China invested heavily in education and infrastructure while Mexico, lacking tariff revenues, could not afford to do so.

According to Stiglitz and Charlton, every developing country that has succeeded in achieving rapid growth has protected its market to some extent until it was ready to dismantle trade barriers.

Moreover, they warn, one size does not fit all. Richer nations should not force all poorer nations to abide by the same market-opening rules and timetables. Poorer nations have different needs. They are at different stages of economic development (subsistence agriculture in much of Africa and parts of Asia, export-oriented agriculture in Latin America and other parts of Asia, early-stage industrialization elsewhere). They have different political and institutional capacities.

Richer nations should also help developing nations get a fair share of the benefits of trade, Stiglitz and Charlton write, by reforming themselves. They should no longer protect their own textile producers, subsidize their farmers, shield their maritime and construction industries, or impose fines on poor nations for allegedly "dumping" exports at below-market rates. More broadly, the authors suggest, all nations that have joined the World Trade Organization should make a commitment to giving complete free-market access to all developing countries poorer and smaller than themselves.

Surprisingly, though Stiglitz has spent some years in Washington, he does not answer the obvious next question: How can this commendable agenda be sold to richer nations? Their political leaders are in a bind since so many of their own citizens are also losing jobs and experiencing declining incomes and, rightly or wrongly, blaming globalization for their plight. This is one of the major reasons the antiglobalization movement is as strong in the developed world as in the developing.

While Stiglitz and Charlton nobly assert that trade agreements should be viewed as presumptively unfair if they bestow disproportionate benefits on richer nations, they fail to acknowledge that within richer nations free trade is already disproportionately benefiting the best educated and best connected. The wealthy are growing much wealthier while the middle class is being squeezed. In fact, the adjustment mechanisms the authors find lacking in most developing economies - good public schools, modern infrastructure and adequate social safety nets - are coming to be less and less available even in the United States. Free trade surely generates the gains Ricardo claimed for it. But until those gains are more widely shared - within richer countries as well as between richer and poorer - we can kiss any further round of trade liberalization goodbye.

Robert B. Reich is a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former U.S. secretary of labor. He is the author, most recently, of "Reason."

Fair Trade For All How Trade Can Promote Development By Joseph E. Stiglitz and Andrew Charlton 315 pages. $30; £15.99. Oxford University Press.

It is not exactly a new debate. On my bookshelf sits "Which? Protection or Free Trade," edited by H. W. Furber and published in Boston in 1888. That was some 70 years after the British economist David Ricardo first suggested that the gains from trade exceed the losses regardless of whether trading partners are more or less economically advanced, as each nation shifts to where it has a comparative advantage. Most economists and policy makers now accept Ricardo's argument, although the popular debate over the merits of free trade continues.

The new and more interesting debate is about how the benefits of trade should be shared. During the 1990s, the so-called Washington consensus of officials from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and United States Treasury Department thought the best way to spur growth in developing nations was for them to quickly lower their trade barriers and deregulate their markets. But that prescription has not worked especially well, even though it still shapes American trade policy. Apart from China and India, the gap between rich and poor nations has continued to widen. More than two billion people worldwide live on the equivalent of less than a dollar a day. Trade talks initiated in Doha, Qatar, in 2001, were intended to redress the balance but have gone nowhere. The last major international meeting, in 2003 in Cancún, Mexico, ended in failure and recrimination, and there has been little progress since. The world's poorer nations think the richer ones are still offering a lousy deal.

In their provocative book, "Fair Trade for All," Joseph E. Stiglitz, a professor of economics at Columbia, and Andrew Charlton, a research officer at the London School of Economics, argue that the poorer nations are right. A better deal would be for them to move toward free trade gradually, each according to its own particular circumstances. The authors urge richer nations to help poorer ones prepare themselves for trade, while dismantling their own trade barriers, which prevent developing nations from selling them many goods and services. Stiglitz is worth listening to. A winner of the Nobel in economic science in 2001 for his pioneering work in the economics of information, he was a member and then chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1997 (during which time, in the interest of full disclosure, we frequently attended the same White House meetings), thereafter becoming chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank. In other words, Stiglitz was in Washington when the Washington consensus was formed. He was a dissenter, however, and in recent years has been an outspoken critic of Washington's trade and global investment policies.

Stiglitz and Charlton show that standard economic assumptions are wrong when it comes to many developing economies. When markets in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere are opened, people often can't move easily to new industries where the nation has a comparative advantage.

Transportation systems that might get them there are often primitive, housing is inadequate and job training is scarce. They are vulnerable in the meantime because safety nets are weak or nonexistent. Most people lack access to credit or insurance because financial institutions are frail, so they are unable to start their own businesses or otherwise take advantage of new opportunities that trade might bring. Many poor countries are already plagued by high unemployment, and job losses in the newly traded sector might just add to it.

Hence, the authors argue, the pace at which poorer nations open their markets to trade should coincide with the development of new institutions - roads, schools, banks and the like - that make such transitions easier and generate real opportunities. Since many poor nations cannot afford the investments required to build these institutions, rich nations have a responsibility to help.

Without these other institutions in place, the authors say, trade by itself can do more harm than good. They point out that inequality increased after trade was liberalized in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Uruguay. Ten years after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect, Mexico's real wages are lower than they were before, and both inequality and poverty have grown. Many of the manufacturing jobs that came to Mexico in the wake of Nafta have since been lost to China, partly because China invested heavily in education and infrastructure while Mexico, lacking tariff revenues, could not afford to do so.

According to Stiglitz and Charlton, every developing country that has succeeded in achieving rapid growth has protected its market to some extent until it was ready to dismantle trade barriers.

Moreover, they warn, one size does not fit all. Richer nations should not force all poorer nations to abide by the same market-opening rules and timetables. Poorer nations have different needs. They are at different stages of economic development (subsistence agriculture in much of Africa and parts of Asia, export-oriented agriculture in Latin America and other parts of Asia, early-stage industrialization elsewhere). They have different political and institutional capacities.

Richer nations should also help developing nations get a fair share of the benefits of trade, Stiglitz and Charlton write, by reforming themselves. They should no longer protect their own textile producers, subsidize their farmers, shield their maritime and construction industries, or impose fines on poor nations for allegedly "dumping" exports at below-market rates. More broadly, the authors suggest, all nations that have joined the World Trade Organization should make a commitment to giving complete free-market access to all developing countries poorer and smaller than themselves.

Surprisingly, though Stiglitz has spent some years in Washington, he does not answer the obvious next question: How can this commendable agenda be sold to richer nations? Their political leaders are in a bind since so many of their own citizens are also losing jobs and experiencing declining incomes and, rightly or wrongly, blaming globalization for their plight. This is one of the major reasons the antiglobalization movement is as strong in the developed world as in the developing.

While Stiglitz and Charlton nobly assert that trade agreements should be viewed as presumptively unfair if they bestow disproportionate benefits on richer nations, they fail to acknowledge that within richer nations free trade is already disproportionately benefiting the best educated and best connected. The wealthy are growing much wealthier while the middle class is being squeezed. In fact, the adjustment mechanisms the authors find lacking in most developing economies - good public schools, modern infrastructure and adequate social safety nets - are coming to be less and less available even in the United States. Free trade surely generates the gains Ricardo claimed for it. But until those gains are more widely shared - within richer countries as well as between richer and poorer - we can kiss any further round of trade liberalization goodbye.
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Robert B. Reich is a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former U.S. secretary of labor. He is the author, most recently, of "Reason."

'Get off my crude-rich turf'

Caracas
Venezuela had a blunt message this week for Exxon Mobil Corp, one of the world's most powerful oil companies: get off my crude-rich turf.

Venezuela is tightening its squeeze on the oil industry, telling oil companies to give the state a greater share of profits - or get out.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez on Wednesday said Exxon Mobil was one of the companies that would "prefer to leave ... rather than adjust" to recent policy changes.

"We said we don't want them to be here then," Ramirez told the state TV broadcaster Venezolana de Television, adding if "we need them, we'll call them".

Exxon Mobil indicated on Thursday it had no plans to pull out.

"Exxon Mobil de Venezuela continues to have a long-term perspective of its activities in Venezuela," it said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

The flap helped push the price of oil above US$67 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Thursday as the market reacted to the latest sign of tighter state-control of energy around the globe.

Venezuela is taking on "Big Oil" at a time when rising oil prices, political instability in the Mideast and Nigeria and new buyers in Asia have put the world's fifth-largest oil exporter in a winning position.

After snubbing Exxon Mobil, Ramirez said Venezuela has other eager partners, including state companies from Russia, Iran, China, India, as well as traditional oil companies.

Speaking to supporters about the nation's oil industry on Thursday, President Hugo Chavez said his leftist government was "recovering sovereignty in the management of our oil business".

"If you don't like it, get out"

Without specifically referring to Exxon Mobil, Chavez added, "Whoever doesn't like this business, then go somewhere else. They didn't like it? Go somewhere else."

The new climate in the oil market has given Venezuela the flexibility to diversify "away from Western investors and incorporate state-owned companies from allied countries ... more willing to abide by new, tighter terms," said Patrick Esteruelas, analyst at the Washington-based Eurasia Group.

The government has increasingly sought projects with state-controlled oil companies in friendly countries. Last year, Venezuela granted exclusive licensing rights to certify and quantify reserves in blocks in the Orinoco tar belt to seven companies, including China's CNPC, India's ONGC and Iran's Petropars. The only western oil major included was Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF.

The trend is driven by Chavez's distaste for corporate multinationals, which he accuses of looting his country's oil wealth over the years. He enjoys strong support for his efforts to take more industry profits for use in social programmes for the nation's poor.

Since taking office in 1999, his government has passed legislation requiring a majority government stake in all oil production projects, hiked taxes and royalties on oil companies, and begun to collect millions of dollars (euros) in what it claims are unpaid taxes from them.

New guidelines

On Thursday, Congress approved new guidelines to turn 32 privately run oil fields over to state-controlled joint ventures.

Among the terms faced by companies like Royal Dutch Shell plc and France's Total SA: a minimum 60% stake for the state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) in each field, PDVSA controlling the boards of the new joint ventures and a jump in income tax rates from 34% to 50% and royalties from 16.6% to 33.3%. They will also see their potential drilling acreage slashed by almost two-thirds.

Experts say, however, that fears that Chavez, a close ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro, is seeking to drive out private investment are exaggerated because Venezuela needs the technological expertise of Western oil majors to develop its vast deposits in the Orinoco belt.

Few state oil companies have the expertise to upgrade the extra-heavy oil and tar-like bitumen found in the Orinoco into lighter, marketable oils.

Notably, Exxon Mobil continues to hold a 41.7% stake in the 120 000-barrel-day Cerro Negro heavy oil upgrading project in the Orinoco along with partners BP and PDVSA.

From Guatemala to Colombia

Mar 29
This article analyzes the role of militarization as a part of the control of territory, natural resources and people, and raises doubts about the so-called war on drug trafficking in mining districts. A comparison is drawn between Plan Colombia and the current situation in the gold mining region of San Marcos, Guatemala.

In San Marcos, the same region where the People of Sipakapa maintain their resistance to Canadian-US company Glamis Gold’s Marlin gold mine, the participation of United States military forces in searches for weapons and opium poppy crop fumigations has recently been announced as part of the Plan Maya Jaguar.

Just as terrorism apparently abounds around oil fields, it seems as though the worst hotbeds of drug trafficking are located where powerful mining interests are to be found. Whatever the pretext, the recent news from the highlands of San Marcos in Guatemala should be cause enough for reflection about what really lies behind militarization and the so-called regional integration initiatives, which amount to nothing more than the continuation of the historic process of exploitation and control in Mesoamerica: control of territory, control of resources and control of Peoples.

Marlin: UnderMining Indigenous Territory in San Marcos

In the highlands municipalities of San Miguel Ixtahuacán and Sipakapa, San Marcos, lies the infamous Marlin project, a gold mine that since late last year is being exploited by Montana Exploradora, S.A., a subsidiary of the Canadian-US transnational mining company Glamis Gold Ltd. Supported by the World Bank and the governments of Guatemala and Canada, business as usual continues despite the strong opposition at the national, regional and local levels, reaching its height with the People of Sipakapa’s overwhelming rejection of mining activities in their territory, expressed in a community consultation process that took place on June 18, 2005.

As is pointed out in a public declaration dated March 4 from Sipakapa that is being circulated and supported by numerous organizations (‘We Demand the Closure of the Marlin Mine’), "far from being an issue affecting solely the Mayan Sipakapense and Mam Peoples of San Marcos, the mine will affect the entire western highlands region of Guatemala because this area has been destined to become a mining district."

According to Ministry of Energy and Mines (MEM) facts compiled by Luis Solano and the Central American Inforpress Report, in the highlands of San Marcos alone there are currently 16 mining licenses (one for prospecting, 14 for exploration and one for exploitation), along with three more exploration licenses being processed. Eleven municipalities of San Marcos are directly affected, among them Tacaná, Ixchiguán and Tajumulco.

Chronicle of the Weapons Searches Foretold

On March 7th, the Siglo Veintiuno newspaper published an article (‘En marco de Plan Maya Jaguar, EEUU se involucra en allanamientos’) in which Minister of the Interior Carlos Vielmann announces the ‘support’ of Unites States military forces for the searches planned by various national governmental institutions for Tajumulco, San Marcos. The announced objectives of the actions were to disarm the population, eradicate opium poppy crops and resolve both the problem of drug traffic and the territorial conflict between Tajumulco and Ixchiguán.

According to reports, because of the opposition of the local population, the Guatemalan and US military forces could not enter Tajumulco and had to stay along the road outside of town, conducting useless weapons searches in passing vehicles. Despite this, it is still worthwhile to reflect upon the same issue addressed by a recent communiqué of the National Front in Defense of Public Services and Natural Resources (‘Más cara la cura que la enfermedad’): "First of all, even if foreign troops were not involved, it is quite frankly absurd to announce beforehand where searches are going to take place, because this alerts anyone with something to hide and allows them to hide it somewhere else."

It is also worth taking a look at the mention of the resolution of the decades old territorial conflict between Tajumulco and neighbouring municipality Ixchiguán as a goal of the military intervention. According to the same Siglo Veintiuno article, because of an eviction this past February in the village Once de Mayo, Ixchiguán, part of the ongoing land conflict, in the same village "a temporary substation was installed by joint forces (95 police and 50 soldiers), with orders to protect the people and keep watch over the conservation and safekeeping of any property that might be at risk."

Perhaps these were the same orders behind the brutal and deadly intervention of military and police forces in Nueva Linda? Will these forces protect the Sipakapense people and keep watch over the conservation and safekeeping of any property that might be at risk due to the mining company? Do they keep watch for all the indigenous Peoples and communities whose territories are at risk because of landowners and transnational companies?

The one thing that is certain is that in Guatemala joint forces have proven their commitment to guard property. This was made abundantly clear on January 11, 2005, when they murdered Raúl Castro Bocel, a local indigenous Kaqchikel inhabitant who had been participating in the protest in Los Encuentros, Sololá, blocking the transport of a cylinder destined for the Marlin mine. More than a thousand soldiers and hundreds of police agents guarded the cylinder, while in a press conference in the capital city, Guatemalan President Berger declared, "we have to protect the investors."

Glyphosate – ‘Use with Precaution’

Aside from the searches for weapons in Tajumulco, the past few months have also witnessed reports about the so-called US military ‘support’, both in terms of personnel and in terms of small aircraft and other equipment, for the fumigations of opium poppy crops in the highlands of San Marcos. Although the negative impacts of these fumigations on the environment, other crops and health have been documented again and again, reactions to the news have been very scarce.

On February 16th of this year, in El Periódico (‘Combatirán cultivos de amapola por la vía aérea en San Marcos’), journalist Luis Ángel Sas cited Minister of the Interior Carlos Vielmann regarding the imminent fumigations. Vielmann declared that they were just waiting for the arrival of the aircraft from the United States in order to start fumigating with Glyphosate some 200 hectares of land. He announced that the poppy crops were identified in the municipalities of Tajumulco and Tacaná during a low flight over the region the previous Friday. National Civil Police director Erwin Sperisen was quoted as warning that if vegetable or other subsistence crops "are found within the poppy plantations, then they will inevitably be affected."

In the same article, Gustavo Mendizábal, Norms and Regulations unit chief of the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock pointed out that the use of Glyphosate is permitted, but that "it is recommended that it be used with precaution. It is a chemical that acts upon contact and directly attacks broadleaf plants. It does not cause harm to people." To his credit, Sas also explained that in Colombia, where the same Glyphosate and the same type of aircraft are used to fumigate coca and poppy crops, there have been many denouncements of the impacts the fumigations cause in people, such as vomiting, head and stomach pains, diarrhea and possible long term effects such as cancer and deformities in newborns.

In fact, on June 13, 2003, the Superior Administrative Tribunal of Cundinamarca, the second highest court in Colombia, declared that the Glyphosate fumigations to eradicate coca and poppy crops violate collective rights to a healthy and ecologically balanced environment and to public security and health. Both the State Council and the Constitutional Court had already emitted sentences banning fumigations in indigenous territories and demanding the fulfillment of the Environmental Management Plan required by the Ministry of the Environment. These decisions set important precedents, officially recognizing the risks and impacts of Glyphosate fumigations on health, the environment and Peoples’ rights.

Nevertheless, on June 14, 2003, in an outright violation of the country’s own judicial system, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe announced that while he remains president, the fumigations will continue. On another occasion he added that whoever opposed the fumigations anywhere in the country would be considered a sympathizer of terrorism.

Of the few opinions that have been made public in Guatemala, it appears that even organizations that have not been afraid to criticize the government’s position on other issues such as mining have gone mute when it comes to the fumigations. Very few organizations have taken a stance and none have questioned the plans. Without denying the tremendous power and control that the drug trafficking cartels do command, nor the fact that it is probable that the government will accuse anyone who criticizes the fumigations with supporting drug trafficking, is it really possible that no one at all has doubts as to whether asking the United States military to come help dump a bunch of Glyphosate on communities’ crops, negatively affecting their environment and health, is really the best way to combat drug trafficking?

Earlier this year, on February 19th, the issue was taken back up in a Prensa Libre article (‘Tajumulco e Ixchiguán, en la mira’), announcing upcoming fumigations in the municipalities of Tajumulco and Ixchiguán. The news item appeared again on the front page of the same newspaper on March 2 (‘Trasiego de anfetaminas’), quoting, alongside declarations by the Minister of the Interior as to the urgent necessity of a grand scale antinarcotics operative in San Marcos, the director of the US State Department’s Americas Antinarcotics Program, Antonio Arias, about a recent report on the subject and his "fear" that drug trafficking "makes Guatemala’s borders vulnerable due to the traffic of chemical drugs." Although, according to media reports, the opium poppy plants are bought, transported out of the country and processed in laboratories in Mexico; thus, it is irresponsible to report about a fear of chemical drug traffic (drug trafficking) as a justification for the fumigation of poppy crops (production).

Plan Maya Jaguar – Fumigations, Weapons and Cyanide?

Both the searches in Tajumulco and the fumigations that have been announced for various municipalities of San Marcos form part of Plan Maya Jaguar, a program of joint operations of Guatemalan and US military forces supposedly with the objective of combating drug trafficking in Guatemala.

Established in Guatemala in 1998, Plan Maya Jaguar has been extended several times since the first joint operatives were carried out in the country. At the same time, the Southern Command has also carried out the short-term so-called "humanitarian" New Horizons (Nuevos Horizontes) program in Guatemala, a US military project that has been denounced in several Latin American countries as being an attempt to give the forces a pretty face, so that communities get used to the presence of foreign troops. In fact, that is how Victor Manuel Gutiérrez describes Plan Maya Jaguar in his article (‘Guatemala: Estados Unidos y nuestra política’), explaining that the Plan "makes this [military] occupation official and permits the displacement of foreign military and intelligence apparatus throughout our national territory with no control whatsoever."

On December 6, 2005, the National Congress passed a decree to extend Plan Maya Jaguar until 2008, following another extension years before that prolonged the Plan until 2005. Ever since Plan Maya Jaguar was initially established, it has been for all of Guatemala; however, all of the recent announcements about the Plan’s joint activities have been about operatives located specifically in the highlands of San Marcos.

In its communiqué, the National Front of Struggle in Defense of Public Services and Natural Resources asks about the geographic location of the military intervention: "Why do they come precisely to San Marcos, department in which the population of one of its municipalities, in an open and participatory consultation beautifully demonstrating their dignity, rejected mining exploration and exploitation? What will follow in this interventionist race? The destruction of opium laboratories in Río Hondo, Zacapa?"

Perhaps there will be a different pretext (maybe it is Osama’s hideout?) for Río Hondo, where last year the population, in another beautiful exercise in dignity, rejected a hydroelectric dam project in their territory, in a locally initiated municipal consultation. Whatever may happen in Río Hondo, it is no coincidence that the zone being militarized is precisely the region for which a mining district is planned.

As Inforpress summarizes in their prologue to Luis Solano’s recent book (‘Guatemala, petróleo y minería en las entrañas del poder’), "the extractive industries have been a target of military intelligence worldwide, since two of the most coveted prime materials – oil and gold – are key for the model of the international reproduction of capitalism." Furthermore, they note, "from the capital invested in these industries, there has been a flow of financing to sustain State terrorism."

Plan Colombia, Now Playing in a Community Near You

It is clear that the militarization of mining districts is not a phenomenon unique to San Marcos. In fact, this department is only starting to see the beginning of a pattern well-known in Izabal, there from the 1960s to the 80s the International Nickel Company (INCO, at that time with controlling interest in EXMIBAL), together with a series of repressive dictatorships, attempted to continue their mining business at all cost. However, although militarization accompanies mining all around the world, it is worth taking a closer look at the Colombian example for the parallels in the drug war pretext.

Aside from this tie, it is also worth noting that over the past couple of years there have been many signs of closer links between Mesoamerica and Colombia, now more than ever with the naming of Colombia as a country with ‘observer’ status in Plan Puebla Panama. Also, there are frequent joint military operations involving Colombia, the United States and Central American countries under the guise of joint ‘security’, including, of course, the combat of drug trafficking and terrorism. In fact, during the recent visit of Colombian President Uribe to Guatemala this past January, the two governments signed a Security Agreement and decided to create a binational commission to exchange information and coordinate actions within the framework of the global ‘struggle’ against drug trafficking.

According to a CERIGUA bulletin, during his visit in the country, Uribe declared that "in the event that Guatemala should negotiate its inclusion in ‘Plan Colombia’ of US assistance for the combat of drug trafficking and other security problems, the Guatemalan government authorities can count on the collaboration of Colombia."

"In military cooperation agreements such as Plan Colombia, they prioritize mining and oil exploitation zones for the so-called combat of drug trafficking," explained Colombian State mining company Workers’ Union (SINTRAMINERCOL) President Francisco Ramírez in a presentation to the Colombian organization CENSAT. "Plan Colombia supposedly combats drugs but really what it does is position military and paramilitary groups that will protect the oil and mining infrastructure of North American and European companies."

"One thing to highlight is that as part of Plan Colombia they said that three anti-narcotics bases would be constructed. The first is in the South of Bolivar, a so-called anti-narcotics base that protects an oil field belonging to the Bush family, the mine that small miners are disputing with AngloGold and Conquistador Gold Mines, and Oxy’s Caño Limón Coveñas oil pipeline. In the North of Santander and in Tolima [where the other two bases are located], it’s the same story."

In his book ‘The Profits of Extermination,’ Ramírez details some of the atrocious human rights violations in mining districts up until 2002, for example the 535 registered homicides and the more than 35 thousand people forcibly displaced by Colombian and US paramilitary operations in the South of Bolivar, home to one of the three bases built ‘to combat drug trafficking’. He points out that since the government of Alvaro Uribe came into power, an indigenous person is murdered every five days, mostly in areas of natural resource exploitation.

"In the mining districts, on average between 1995 and 2002, every year there have been 828 homicides, 142 forced disappearances, 117 wounded, 71 people tortured, 355 death threats and 150 arbitrary detentions. There have also been 433 massacres," continues Ramírez.

One War, Many Faces

Although these details from Colombia, where an open conflict has continued for decades, may seem to compare more to Guatemala during the 1980s than Guatemala today, the psychological and social effects of military intervention or even just a military presence in the current context cannot be easily discarded, nor can the efficiency of low-intensity war.

"They have programmed our death, studying us, studying when we have gold, when we have minerals, studying our psychology, how we will react," emphasized Doctor Juan Almendares of the Mother Earth Movement of Honduras during his presentation to the Resistance to Mining working group at the V Week for Biological and Cultural Diversity, a Mesoamerican event that took place in Colotenango, Huehuetenango, Guatemala, this past March 6-9.

In the past few weeks in Guatemala, there have been denouncements and worries in reaction to the news that came out in Inforpress’ Central American Report on March 3 (‘Empresas canadienses inician exploraciones de uranio’), regarding two mining exploration licenses granted by MEM on January 16th to Gold-Ore Resources, a Canadian transnational mining company that has been exploring in Central America for years. According to the syndicate formed by Gold-Ore along with Pathfinder Resources and Santoy Resources, two more Vancouver-based companies, they have been exploring for uranium in Central America since at least January 27, 2005, when a press release announcing the formation of the syndicate was released.

The precise location of their explorations were not known until February 16, 2006, when the syndicate announced in another press release that the companies were exploring for uranium in the municipality of Esquipulas, in the department of Chiquimula, where the two licenses now cover 32% (169 square kilometers) of municipal territory. According to the Inforpress article, Vice Minister of Energy and Mines Jorge García said "that he did not have knowledge of the uranium exploration projects, [although] when he saw a copy of the licenses, he expressed his preoccupation for the issue."

García is not the only one who should be worrying. According to the facts compiled by Luis Solano and Inforpress, the issue is not only uranium exploration in Esquipulas, but also the many mining exploration licenses granted in some ten departments of Guatemala for minerals including the platinum group and/or rare earth minerals. Several of these licenses are scattered over the highlands of San Marcos, including in the municipalities of Tacaná, Ixchiguán and Tajumulco.

"These companies research gold, but they also research strategic minerals. But they just don’t have any reason to tell us, until now that they have publicly announced it in Guatemala. From Chiapas to Costa Rica, we are countries with strategic resources," explains Doctor Almendares.

"We are important for war."

The Diabolical Trinity – CAFTA, PPP and Plan Maya Jaguar

Although it is clear that militarization and mining walk hand in hand, it is also worth mentioning what they have to do with other regional initiatives, such as the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and Plan Puebla Panama (PPP). Continuing to use mining as an example, one can see how the different aspects of regional integration complement each other as tools in a regional control strategy.

"Plan Maya Jaguar, together with Plan Puebla Panama and the Central American Free Trade Agreement, constitute a diabolical trinity," considers the National Front for Struggle in their communiqué. "The three together form an articulated malignant scheme: CAFTA in the economic aspect, the PPP in infrastructure and the Plan Maya Jaguar as the military component."

In reality, CAFTA does not only represent the economic component; more than that, it represents the international consensus of the neo-colonial powers, establishing both national and international policies and laws in favour of transnational corporations. Around the world, the Canadian and US governments and multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, together with the transnational companies themselves, have driven a series of mining legislation and policy reforms, defining the content in line with the neo-liberal model.

"The traffic of influences for the ratification of laws has been one of the most common forms of impunity of the transnationals involved," denounces Inforpress in its prologue to Luis Solano’s book.

Free Trade Agreements consolidate this impunity and guarantee, by way of the chapters dealing with the ‘rights’ of investments and the respective supernational tribunals, that there will be serious consequences if any government entity should attempt to change anything that might affect the investments. It is also interesting that while an international movement has been active in opposing the United States’ CAFTA, Canada – home to most of the world’s global mining companies – has been negotiating a Free Trade Agreement for years with four Central American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua.

In turn, Plan Puebla Panama is a set of regional initiatives for the construction and integration of the infrastructure needed by transnational corporations. The mining industry requires great quantities of water and energy and good highways that lead directly to good ports. All of these aspects are key components of the PPP, which integrates the infrastructure according to the logic of international trade, business and investment in a series of projects financed by International Finance Institutions. In the end, they are loans that will be paid by the future generations of Mesoamerica.

"The PPP is a strategic plan for the circulation and commerce of material goods, but also of resources (water, genes, etc.). And this always carries along with it a military strategy," explained Dr. Almendares in Colotenango. "The struggle against mining is within this framework of a military and geopolitical strategy."

Transnational corporations will gain nothing with all the laws, infrastructure, or even the control of territory and resources, if they do not also control the Peoples. Thus, using once again the example of Colombia, Francisco Ramírez describes militarization as the third phase, "to give a military response to whoever opposes mining exploitation."

In the case of the highlands of San Marcos, the conclusion here is that the objective of Plan Maya Jaguar is exactly that.

#####

Sandra Cuffe works with Rights Action (Derechos en Accion), an organization which carries out and supports community development, environment, emergency relief and human rights work in Honduras, Guatemala, Chiapas (Mexico), Haiti and elsewhere. For more information, to make tax-deductible donations or to get involved, contact Rights Action:
info@rightsaction.org, 416-654-2074, www.rightsaction.org Photo from Colombia.indymedia.org

Uruguay Repays IMF Debt Due in 2006

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay
Uruguay said Thursday it will repay $630 million to the International Monetary Fund ahead of schedule, clearing all its 2006 obligations to the agency in a sign of the country's improving economic health.

The South American nation, which still owes the IMF $1.6 billion in outstanding debt, is working to leave behind the deep economic crisis that began in 2001 as recession struck neighboring economic powers Argentina and Brazil.

The early payments will save Uruguay $8.4 million in interest, Economy Minister Danilo Astori told a news conference.

He was flanked by a top IMF official, Agustin Carstens, who lauded Uruguay's progress since the crisis, saying the country had embarked on a "successful" economic restructuring plan that was triggering robust growth for the third straight year.

Astori did not rule out other payments ahead of schedule to the IMF if economic conditions allow. Uruguay and the IMF reached a three-year lending accord in 2005 as part of ongoing plans to revitalize the country's economy.

Authorities are predicting Uruguay's gross domestic product will expand 5.7 percent in 2006, adding to the 6.6 percent growth in 2005 and a record 11.8 percent jump in GDP in 2004.

Meanwhile, Astori described the early repayment as part of efforts by economic planners to improve debt portfolios and save interest.

The move by Uruguay follows in the footsteps of Brazil and Argentina -- which undertook far more ambitious moves to shed their IMF obligations.

In December, Brazil paid off its total $15.5 billion debt, the largest payment ever made by a member country to the IMF.

In January, Argentine President Nestor Kirchner announced early and full repayment of $9.75 billion in debt to the IMF, calling it a step by Argentina to gain a measure of "financial independence" from international lenders.

Washington wary of Chavez's military deals

by Patrick Markey
CARACAS, Venezuela
Strengthening his military with helicopters, planes and rifles, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has Washington fretting over regional stability, but defense analysts dismiss U.S. concerns about a possible arms build-up.

The U.S. government, which portrays Chavez as a oil-wealthy tyrant bent on undermining democracy, is locked in a simmering dispute with the left-wing former soldier and has moved to block arms sales it believes will inflate his 80,000-strong military beyond its requirements.

But defense analysts say Venezuela needs to modernize its army and they doubt the hardware opposed by Washington has the offensive capability to tip the balance of power when Colombia, Brazil and Chile are more potent forces in the region.

"If any other country in Latin America were acquiring these weapons, the U.S. wouldn't say boo," said Tom Baranauskas, a defense analyst at U.S. consultancy Forecast International. "Because it's Venezuela, it has got caught up in politics."

The clash over weapons is one of the latest to roil relations between Washington and Chavez, who has been at odds with the U.S. government over his socialist revolution in the world's No. 5 oil exporter and his ties to Cuba and Iran.

His state coffers bulging because of high crude prices, Chavez has purchased 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles and at least 10 Russian MI-type helicopters. Caracas has pushed back delivery dates of the rifles, but the first three helicopters arrived last month.

Chavez has signed a $2 billion deal with Spain to buy 10 C-295 transport aircraft, two CN-235 maritime surveillance planes, four patrol boats and four Navy corvette warships. He also wants some Super Tucano light trainer aircraft from Brazil.

U.S. officials are holding up the Spanish and Brazilian aircraft deals because they involved U.S.-made technology and needed Washington's approval.

While some of Venezuela's wish list appears exaggerated, so far most purchases would replace aging equipment and could be used to fight drug trafficking from neighboring Colombia, military analysts said.

"The army expenditure is the most necessary," said Anna Gilmour, Americas Editor with Jane's Country Risk. "The previous FAL rifles were nearing obsolescence and so the 100,000 rifle purchase is less significant than it might seem."

Since he came to office seven years ago, Chavez has steadily steered Venezuela away from its traditional military reliance on the United States. He has suspended cooperation with the U.S. drug agents and training with U.S. military.

An avowed enemy of U.S. President George W. Bush, Chavez accuses Washington of plotting to invade or oust his government to gain control of Venezuela's oil reserves, a charge U.S. officials dismiss as populist rhetoric.

A concern for U.S. officials is that Chavez has ordered his military to train hundreds of thousands of reservists for a war of resistance against an invading force. Critics say the new force could be used to repress domestic opposition and they question how those recruits will be armed.

Venezuelan soldiers also have been sent to Cuba to train in civilian-military coordination.

Washington, which says Chavez may have sheltered Colombian Marxist FARC rebels, is concerned that AK-103 ammunition or weapons will fall into guerrilla hands. U.S. officials so far have provided no clear proof of the charges Chavez backs the FARC.

"What you have got are significant changes within the armed forces in terms of its weapons systems, in terms of its war-fighting doctrine, in how it understands the international environment in which the Venezuelan armed forces operate," a senior U.S. State Department official said.

"From our point of view this is worrisome and requires us to call a timeout as we try to figure out whether or not continued sales of U.S. weapons to Venezuela or U.S. components, is in our interests," the official said.

While Chavez has warned he could seek new fighter planes from China or Russia to replace U.S.-made F16 aircraft, so far Venezuela's purchases are limited to equipment analysts say poses little threat compared with the military capability of Brazil, Chile or Colombia.

"I don't think anyone believes Venezuela can launch an attack using transport planes," said Enrique Obando at the IDEPE security think tank in Lima. "Venezuela is buying light rifles, transport aircraft, helicopters. There is no real comparison."

Venezuela has the highest crude reserves in the world

A report published by The Wall Street Journal on its front page raised eyebrows on Wednesday for its claim that new technology has allowed multinational energy companies to reassess the amount of recoverable reserves in oil-rich countries.

According to staff reporter Russell Gold, deposits once dismissed as “unconventional” oil that could not be recovered economically are now, thanks to rising global oil prices and improved technology, being counted as recoverable reserves.

“That recalculation”, writes Gold, “has vaulted Venezuela and Canada to first and third in global reserves rankings, respectively, although Venezuela’s holdings in extra-heavy crude are a rough guess”.

The report asserts that Vene-zuela’s reserves in heavy and extra-heavy crude – 235 billion barrels approximately – are easier to be developed from a technical point of view than in other countries, due to their physical location.

A press release issued by Pe-tróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), the state-run oil company, indicated that these new findings ratify the importance of Vene-zuela as the country with the highest crude reserves worldwide. PDVSA has been working with 6 multinational companies on its Proyecto Magna Reserva, designed to assess and certify reserves at the Orinoco Tar Belt.

In an interview with The Daily Journal, Bob Tippee, Editor-in-Chief of The Oil and Gas Journal, said that for Venezuela to exploit these heavy reserves, it will have to invest a massive amount of money intro the country’s energy infrastructure, something Tippee sees as a looming problem.

Multinational British Petroleum’s 2004 Statistical Review for World Energy estimated Venezuela’s total reserves at 77,2 billion barrels, or 6.5% of the world total.

Venezuela disagrees with Colombia over free trade agreements with USA

Venezuelan Executive Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel has replied to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's "discrepancy" on free trade agreements with the USA.

The Colombian President argues that it was alright for Venezuela not to enter into a bilateral agreement because it has oil, whereas the Colombian economy needs the agreement with the USA.

* Rangel says Venezuela begs to differ and admits a " cordial discrepancy" with Colombia on the matter of individual free trade agreements.

Venezuela has been calling on individual Latin American countries not to sign in the name of continental integration, stating that the only beneficiaries are US multinationals.

The USA attempted to get a continental free trade agreement signed by 2005 but failed and instead embarked on individual treaties.

Chile was the first country that signed up. Peru is expected to sign on the dotted line shortly, followed by Ecuador despite widespread protests.

President Uribe insists that free trade agreements depend on the characteristics of each country's economy and Venezuela is different because it doesn't need treaties.

Rangel has rejected US President Bush's accusation that the Venezuelan government is lacking in respect towards the institutions and freedoms, quipping that Bush should be questioned, using his own parameters ... "take Guantanamo, tortures, permanent aggressions ... bad example."

Hey Man! There’s Only One Way to Learn the Truth. You Gotta Keep Trying

A Letter from Oaxaca, Mexico, By George Salzman

March 30, 2006

Friends,

Hey man! There’s only one way to learn the truth.

Keep an open mind (but as Betrand Russell said, not so open that your brains fall out), search for honest people who are well-informed, listen to (and/or read) what they think, and try to evaluate it critically. No one “knows it all”, but some people know an awful lot. Just do your best to understand, and keep at it. None of us is born stupid, but we’re all born ignorant. It’s an uphill struggle from then on — the struggle to become a fully human human being that starts at birth.

There’s a host of my “truth-teller heroes,” as I call them — Joe Bageant, Robert Fisk, Amy Goodman, Mark Bruzonsky, James Herod, William Blum, Judy Norsigian, Alberto Giordano, Howard Zinn, Walter Davis, Rigoberta Menchu, Bill Templer, Harold Pinter, John Pilger, Alan Nairn, Uri Avnery, Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt, George Wald, Subcomandante Marcos, Peter Kropotkin, Kurt Weill, Albert Einstein, John Perkins, Upton Sinclair, Anuradha Roy, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Immanuel Wallerstein, Ignacio Chapela — an incomplete list of course and in no particular order, just pulled together rummaging through my website and memory for a few minutes.

It’s so damn hard to know the truth because we’re inundated with the unending streams of lies that governments put out (if you know an exception, tell me) and the near-total control of media by corporate interests, which unendingly toot the ideology of big money and publish all the governments’ lies. That’s why truly authentic media are essential.

Now, when you find a “truth-teller hero” who fires up your blood and adrenaline with hope and enthusiasm, and does the same for many many people, there’s an unmatchable combination of qualities. Authentic journalist and guitarist Alberto M. Giordano is such a person. The Narco News website, which he founded and which first hit the internet newsstand on April 18, 2000, is everything a grassroots authentic news source ought to be. Of course I’m jealous of him. While I laboriously struggle to complete yet another ponderous essay, trying to size up what made Hitler and the Third Reich tick, there’s Al with his acquired gang of young (and some not so young) fired-up investigative reporters and joyous musicians shining the light of truth in the darkest corners of the U.S.-led so-called “drug war.” They’re covering the Zapatista’s “Other Campaign” and, over-extended, also reporting from many other parts of América Latina. A truly promethian effort for a not-very-large group of authentic journalists, dedicatedly not-for-sale. The truth never is.

So today, when I got the e-mail from Al saying they need bucks, I thought “Oh shit! Not again. I already sent in my $1,000 pledge for this year.” But, instead of hitting the delete key, I read on, and was inspired to send another kilobuck to help keep them on the road. What the hell. What can I do with the money after I die? Check out Al’s message, and then do what you can for the world your great-grandchildren will inherit, if there still is a biosphere then that humans can live in.

Make a donation online, via this website:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or send a check, made out to “The Fund for Authentic Journalism,” to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
P.O. Box 241
Natick, MA 01760 USA

-George Salzman

When Even Water is Not a Human Right

by John Ross
An Indian Peoples Have Even Fewer Rights Than the Rest of Us ...

Once upon a time, there was a little orphan girl ('huerfana') who had to walk over many mountains each day to fetch water ('itzu') because the water was very far away" Esperanza Garcia, a Purepecha Indian grandmother in the tiny Michoacan mountain town of Santa Cruz Tanaco tells the story that her mother told her. "One day, the huerfana made friends with a humming bird ("Tzintzun") and he led her to a secret spring right here in the forest. The women were so happy because now they didn't have to walk two mountains to fetch the water that they married the huerfana to the spring and when they plunged her in the water, a long serpent leaped up and that was the stream that brought the water to our town." Esperanza frowned at the dry littered streambed that runs by her house. "Now the stream is dead because they have cut down all the trees and again we have to walk for hours to bring water." Clear cuts in the Purepecha mountains have devastated forests and water sources.

Women in the third world walk an average of six kilometers each day to fetch water, according to U.S. environmental researcher Talli Newman. But Indian women are not just fetchers of water but its protectors. "Like the corn, we are born from the water" explains Maria de la Cruz, a Tzotzil Mayan mother and community leader from San Felipe Ecatepec just outside San Cristobal de las Casas in the highlands of Chiapas--the Mayans are the People of the Corn according to their sacred book, the Popul Vu.

De la Cruz lives a hundred meters from a Coca Cola bottler that extracts 1.7 million liters of water each year from the local aquifer, leaving 70% of the households in Ecatepec without running water. The bottler's yearly extractions are equivalent to what five indigenous villages in the highlands are allotted each year. "Yes, we are made from the water but I can't even bathe" De la Cruz laughs bitterly. Chiapas is home to Mexico's largest rivers yet 68% of its 1.3 million Indian people do not have potable water.

A quarter of all Mexico's water has its source on Indian lands yet many indigenous communities have no access to the precious fluid. The Mazahua women of Villa de Allende out in Mexico state are so exercised by these inequities that they have even formed an army--the Zapatista Army of Mazahua Women In Defense of The Water (unrelated to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.)

Mazahua land lines the banks of the Cutzamala river system, the main outside water source for Mexico City 100 miles east. 16,000 cubic liters a second rush by their lands and yet eight of their villages have no water lines, a demand for which the Mazahuas have sought redress since the 1980s when the Cutzamala system was inaugurated. Repeatedly rebuffed by water authorities, the Mazahuas have threatened to shut off the valves that speed water uphill to the Mexican capital. In response, the National Water Commission (CONAGUA) sent 500 state police to occupy their villages.

"They take our men by the hair," Comandanta Victoria Martinez of the Mazahua Army tells reporters, " but now they will have to confront the women."

This month (March), the Zapatista Army of Mazahua Women In Defense of The Water marched up to Mexico City to present their case to the World Water Forum convoked for that bone-dry megalopolis March 16th-22nd.

Mexico City was a pertinent place to hold the fourth World Water Forum (WWF), an every-three-years conclave organized by the World Water Council, the "non-government" creation of industrialists, big agriculture, and water profiteers who preach privatization and mercantilization of water.

Once set in the heart of a five lake system, the Aztec island of Tenochtitlan was a water wonderland, overflowing with canals, fountains, aqueducts, and floating farms ("chinampas.") But the European conquerors were horse people with little respect for a water-based culture so they cut down the trees on the surrounding hillsides and silted in the lakes.

Today, Tenochtitlan/Mexico City has dried up. What little remains in its aquifers is being pumped out at twice the rate that it can be replenished and the metropolitan area's 21.3 million residents receive just 184 liters per capita each year, one twenty fourth of the national average. Service is so poor in the ragged colonies at the edge of the city that cockroaches run out when the faucet is turned on. In other impoverished "colonias", the only available water source is cistern trucks ("pipas") sent by the political parties and the people are forced to sell their vote for a gulp of clean "agua."

Water is a class issue in Mexico as well as one of gender and race. While the luxuriant green golf course of the elites receive abundant daily waterings, the poor have a hard time just slaking their thirst.

Indeed, the sprinklers were on at the Banamex convention center in the ritzy Polanco district this March 16th when the WWF opened its doors to the public--Banamex, Mexico's oldest bank, is now wholly owned by Citigroup. Just to make the corporate tone perfectly patent, among the sponsors of this edition of the WWF was the Coca Cola Corporation of Atlanta, Georgia, which, according to the NGO War On Want, sucks up 282 billion liters of the world's public water each year.

Mexican president Vicente Fox, once the president of Coca Cola operations here and in Central America, opened the session by paying lip service to the Indian roots of water by quoting from the Popul Vuh and the poetry of Aztec king Nezahualcoytl. Fox was followed to the podium by CONAGUA director Cristobal Jaimes--before Fox appointed him to the CONAGUA job, Jaimes, the owner of Mexico's largest dairies and a major water bottler, was the nation's number one industrial consumer of water.

Moving the threads behind the scenes at the fourth World Water Forum was Aquafed, the lobbying front for world water privatizers, representing such conglomerates as the French Suez, Aguas de Barcelona, Biwater, and Thames River. Another powerful lobbyist running the show at the WWF was the Washington-based "public relations" hucksters Bursen & Marsteller, publicists for such bloody dictators as Haiti's Baby Doc, Guatemala's Rios Montt, and the killer Argentinean juntas. Bursen & Marsteller organized the accompanying exposition where space was available to water conservation groups for $600 a day. The Great Unwashed were invited to shell out $120 for each day's admission.

The Zapatista Army of Mazahua Women In Defense of the Water did not bother to pay an admission. Availing themselves of sympathetic souls in the NGO community, they stormed past the ticket takers and went looking for CONAGUA's Jaimes ("I cannot solve your problem" he had told them once before.) Repelled by security guards, the comandantas formed a picket line and began to shout "Queremos Agua!" ("We Want Water".) With their wooden rifles, sheathed machetes, long skirts, farmers' sombreros, and a look so stern that it could stop traffic, the women terrified the organizers. "This is what happens when we let them get away from their 'metates' (Indian corn grinders)" CONAGUA sub secretary Cesar Herrera sneered in earshot of a La Jornada reporter.

But for the most part, the defenders of public water stayed on the outside, gathering in marches (20,000 on the WWF opening day), alternative forums, and even a Latin American Water Tribunal. Indigenous peoples from the North and the South of the Americas came together to compare notes. Hopis from New Mexico brought a gourd of their sacred water. "Water is a gift from our mother earth. It does not belong to us" pronounced Josephine Mandanin, an Ojibwa water caretaker. Dine (Navajo) spokesperson Waleigh Jones of the Black Mountain Water Coalition told of how the Peabody Coal Company constructed a 200-mile pipeline that brings massive amounts of Indian water to its strip mine. As in Mazahua territory, 50% of those living along the pipeline have no access to drinking water.

With its giant river systems, Latin America is the world's most important water source but has the smallest per capita consumption on the planet, according to World Bank data presented at the WWF. The defense of water in the heart of the southern continent crystallized in Indian territory in 2000 when the majority Aymara and Quechua population of Cochabamba, Bolivia rose up against the transnational Bechtel Corporation which had taken over management of the local water system and raised rates 300%. Tens of thousands camped out in the plaza of that Indian city for a month until Bechtel finally packed it in. "The war in defense of our water showed us the power of those down below," recalled Oscar Oliviera, a director of the movement to defend Cochabamba's water who testified at the alternative tribunal.

But Oliviera warned that the privatizers of water now have their sights trained on another indigenous water source - Paraguay's Guarami basin, the earth's largest reserve of sweet water. Under the pretext of Bush's Terror War, U.S. troops have established a garrison strategically sited close by the Triple Frontier (Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina) near the spectacular Iguazu falls.

"We must be vigilant of those who would make water into a merchandise. Water is a fundamental human right," Oliviera emphasized.

The struggle to include water as a fundamental human right in the WWF's final statement was carried to the forum floor by Bolivia's water secretary (no other country has a secretary of water) Abel Mamani, a popular leader from the all-Aymara city of El Alto which has been locked in a titanic battle with the French conglom Suez, doing business in Bolivia as Aguas Ilumani, for years. Insisting that he would not sign the final declaration if water was not declared a universal human right, Mamani was joined by Venezuela, Cuba, and Uruguay (and to a lesser extent by Honduras, France, and Spain) but the revolt was quickly squelched. "The right of water is not relevant to this forum," the World Bank's Jamal Shagir told the press. Laic Fouchon, president of the World Water Council, labeled Mamani's remarks as "discourteous and disagreeable" because the Bolivian had pointed out that 2,000,000 babies die every ear from a lack of clean water.

According to the final declaration of the fourth World Water Forum, water is not a fundamental human right for the world's people in general and Indian people in particular. Although they are the source of so much of the Americas' water, indigenous peoples received no mention in the forum's final document.
*
John Ross is on deadline for "Making Another World Possible--Zapatista Chronicles 2000-2006" to be published this fall by Nation Books. He has no time to talk.

Coup veteran closes in on Peru's left flank

by Marina Jimenez
Populist Humala is poised to follow wave of socialist electoral wins in Latin America

His only political experience is a failed coup. He comes from a family that espouses an eccentric philosophy of remaking the government around descendants of the Incan Empire.

And yet Ollanta Humala, a radical populist, is rising in popularity, and is now the favoured candidate to become Peru's next president in the election on April 9.

If the retired army lieutenant-colonel wins, he would become at least the eighth Latin American leader to take office since 2000 from the left, including the leaders of Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador and Venezuela, with strong leftist contenders in Mexico's and Nicaragua's presidential races later this year.

Mr. Humala, 43, is riding a wave of regional discontent with the neo-liberal policies of privatization and free trade. While the Andean country of 27 million has experienced solid economic growth for five consecutive years -- 7 per cent last year -- the benefits have not filtered down to the poor majority living in the shantytowns and the highlands.

"Humala is saying 'we need a new model.' He is using the rhetoric of [Venezuelan President] Hugo Chavez and [Bolivian President] Evo Morales, though he has toned it down a bit," Max Cameron, a political scientist from the University of British Columbia, said in a phone interview from Peru. "Peruvian politics is a wonderful soap opera with lots of scandal and drama, and volume is always at maximum. It's rough and dirty."

Mr. Humala, whose background is mestizo, or mixed race, and who has distanced himself from his family's racist creed, is capitalizing on the country's disenchantment with the status quo. His closest rival is Lourdes Flores, a fiscally conservative, pro-business candidate who cannot shake her image as a member of the rich, Lima-based elite.

The latest opinion survey by pollster Apoyo shows Mr. Humala, of the Union for Peru (UPP), with 33 per cent of voter support, and Ms. Flores, 46, with the National Unity party (UN), with 27 per cent. Unless one candidate wins 50 per cent plus one vote, the election will go to a second round in May. Ms. Flores is favoured to win the second round, but with a third of voters still undecided and momentum building for Mr. Humala, there is a strong chance he could be the winner.

There are 20 presidential contenders and 3,000 congressional candidates for 120 seats in a country with a colourful history of political drama and deep social inequities: illiteracy remains at 35 per cent in remote Andean towns, and one in every two Peruvians has no access to proper medical care.

Alberto Fujimori, a political unknown, was elected president in 1990, defeating Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru's most celebrated writer, as the country struggled with hyperinflation and the havoc wreaked by the Shining Path, a Maoist insurgency.

When Mr. Fujimori fled the country 10 years later, he was discredited as an authoritarian ruler undone by a corruption scandal. He is currently in prison in Chile awaiting extradition, after he tried to return to Peru to run for re-election. Mr. Humala led a coup against Mr. Fujimori in 2000, and was briefly imprisoned.

No wonder a recent United Nations report found major disillusionment in Peru with the political system. Only 5 per cent of those surveyed felt democracy was working well, 73.2 favoured authoritarianism and 90.4 think politicians are to blame for the demise of democracy.

"There is a general sense that the legislature here is useless," Prof. Cameron said. "One congressman is a bigamist. Another used his position to put family members in prominent positions. And congress just voted for a pay raise and now make 18 times the average per capita income."

Mr. Humala's candidacy falls less into the market-friendly leftist camps of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and more closely resembles that of Mr. Chavez and Mr. Morales.

Venezuela's charismatic strongman is given to florid, four-hour speeches filled with anti-U.S. rhetoric, while Mr. Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, is leading a campaign to legalize coca plants.

Mr. Humala said he would suspend eradication of coca, the prime ingredient for cocaine, which Washington has spent millions of dollars trying to get rid of in the Andes. He suggested baking 27 million loaves of bread from coca leaves every day for school breakfasts.

Mr. Humala has also called for a renegotiation of oil and gas contracts with foreign investors, and promised to call a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, something Mr. Chavez also did. (The Venezuelan leader also led a failed coup before becoming president.)

Mr. Humala wants to raise taxes and redistribute income to the poor. Critics, however, say that will scare off foreign investment and that a more prudent strategy would be to trim the bloated bureaucracy and diversify the economy. About 90 per cent of Peru's budget goes to public-sector salaries and debt servicing.

Even as the region becomes a counterpoint to unpopular U.S.-backed policies, it is unclear how Mr. Humala would adapt if he actually held elected office. Some, though, are clearly worried.

In a recent warning, Mr. Vargas Llosa admonished Peruvians not to vote for Mr. Humala: "How is it possible that, after 10 shameful years of the dictatorship of Fujimori and [his now-imprisoned former spy chief Vladimiro] Montesinos, in which [the country] was looted and plundered in the most degrading manner, a third of the population wants to return to authoritarianism, to the systematic violation of human rights and a subjugated press?"

With reports from Reuters and Associated Press

Rich and poor

Peru's rich and varied heritage includes the ancient Incan capital of Cuzco and the lost city of Machu Picchu. Despite vast stores of copper, silver, lead, zinc, oil and gold, Peru's progress has been held back by corruption and the failure of successive governments to deal with social and economic inequality.

A small, white elite of Spanish descent controls most of the wealth and political power, while indigenous peoples are largely excluded from both and make up many of the millions of Peruvians who live in poverty.

z Population:28 million

z Average annual income: $2,801

z Population below poverty line: 54%

z Literacy rate: 87.7%

z Life expectancy: 69 years

z Ethnicity: American Indian 45%; mestizo (mixed American Indian and white) 37%; white 15%; black, Japanese, Chinese and other 3%

z Religions: Christian 83% (81% Roman Catholic); other or unspecified 17%

z Languages: Spanish, Quechua, Aymara

z Area: 1.28 million square kilometres (about equivalent to Manitoba and Saskatchewan combined)

SOURCE: BBC, CIA WORLD FACT BOOK