Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Military Tribunal, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
—
New York City Rent Laws Set To Expire June 15, 2011
Rent and tenant protections for half of all New York City renter households plus thousands more are set to expire on June 15, 2011. These laws have been the foundation for affordable rental housing for middle-class and low-income New Yorkers. If the rent laws are not renewed, it could lead to unprecedented evictions and homelessness could spiral even further out of control. It’s explained in the above linked article by Patrick Markee Senior Policy Analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless, titled Tell Albany: Renew and Strengthen Rent Laws.
Patrick Markee:
- Two out of three households in New York City are renters. Half of all New York City renters are protected by rent and eviction protection laws that go back 60 years to the New Deal era.
- Right now the stakes are as high as they could be and the political environment is as bad as it can be.
- We have a governor who’s been strongly supported financially by the real estate industry.
- Fortunately we have a state assembly there that is strongly pro-tenant. Half of all New Yorkers are rent stabilized apartments which means rent increases are regulated each year.
- The fundamental protection for tenants is they can’t be evicted except for just cause.
- Those protections have been weakened by vacancy destabilization. Because of that we’ve lost 300 thousand rent stabilized apartments over the last decade and a half.
- Right now we have 39 thousand people including 16 thousand children bedding down in the municipal shelter system.
- Just this past month we’ve reached the highest census in the shelter system since the city has been keeping records. Forty percent more people are cycling through the shelter system than when (mayor) Bloomberg took office in 2002
- We’ve had a perfect storm, loss of affordable rental housing across the country, due to Bush Administration cut backs, at the same time, we get the economic recession, and unemployment, add on top of that the foreclosure crisis. 3 out of 4 homeless people are families with kids.
- New Yorkers have a state constitutional right to shelter.
- Contact Governor Cuomo, contact your state legislator.
Guest – Patrick Markee, Senior Policy Analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless and writer of many of the fine articles on the Coalition For the Homeless website.
———-
The Goldstone Report Now Belongs to the World
Lead author of The Goldstone Report, detailing the 2008-2009 Israeli assault on Gaza has changed his position on the issue of targeting civilians. In an editorial by the Washington Post, Judge Richard Goldstone said, “Civilians were not intentionally targeted [by Israel] as a matter of policy.” And then Israel has called on the United Nations to retract the report on Operation Cast Lead, the war that led to the death of about 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, and 13 Israelis. Earlier this year, Law and Disorder talked with co-editors of the book titled, The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
Phil Weiss:
- Our book came out 2 years after the Gaza conflict and people said why now, who cares about this? Now we see why.
- This statement by him (Judge Goldstone) was immediately seized upon as a disavowal of the report by many supporters of Israel.
- Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel immediately called on the UN to withdraw the report.
- The US State Department came out and said this just shows there were no war crimes committed during the Gaza conflict.
- What remains in the Goldstone Report? Geneva Convention: Principle of Distinction and Disproportional Attack
- Other important crimes noted in the report: using white phosphorus, targeting infrastructure, destroying a water treatment facility, destroying a flour mill, destroying food production.
- Even you have a military target, you have to attack that proportionately. One Israeli commander said, we don’t want a hair of our soldiers to fall here.
- This (Gaza) is the size of the Bronx and Queens put together
- The central case that Goldstone based his reconsideration was one of the most horrific cases during the war.
- That took place on January 4, 2009 in a village outside of Gaza City.
- The Israelis were trying to secure parts of Gaza City from the east. They seized this area as a strategic base. They had herded 120 members of an extended family into one house. They had forced them to stay there for a couple of days.
- In the midst of this operation, on that morning, helicopter gun ships came and shelled that house, killing 29 people. In the report Goldstone offered this as another case of targeting civilians.
- I would say “because” this report came out, Israel has produced evidence that the helicopter gunship guys misread drone images. Showing men carrying firewood back to this house as being men carrying rocket launchers.
- Goldstone is saying, I accept the Israeli version here, I think that it was out of negligence or a mistake.
- This reconsideration has got more attention than the whole report.
- This fall the UN General Assembly could vote to establish to make Palestine, a Palestinian state.
Guest – Philip Weiss, founder of the blog Mondoweiss, longtime journalist and regular contributor to the Nation and a fellow at the Nation Institute Philip is the author of two books a political novel, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, and American Taboo, an investigative account of a 1976 murder in the Peace Corps in the Kingdom of Tonga. Weiss is one of the editors of The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
——————————–
Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now
Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now is the title of Jim Cockcroft’s new book. It’s described as the perfect introductory text to the subject, providing readers the historic context within which the Mexican revolution occurred, how the process played out in the past ten decades and where it is today among Mexico’s workers. Jim examines the tensions between the rulers and the ruled inside the country while also exploring tensions with the United States. The prospect of Mexico’s disenfranchised rising up is kept alive and we discuss those possibilities with the author today. A historian and activist, Jim has written 45 books on Latin America. He’s a professor at the State University of New York and is a member of the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five.
Dr James D Cockcroft:
- You should understand Michael, that Mexico has had a long history of the US meddling in its internal affairs.
- Direct military intervention, direct military conquest of half the country.
- There’s a record of the US sponsoring torture and training torturers that goes all the back to the US torturers that goes all the way back to the US-Mexico War of 1846-48.
- What’s really involved is oil, water, natural resources, and cheap labor power.
- What does the US do about it? It first of all gets rid of the old government, the longest ruling single party in the history of human kind, the PRI in 2000 by supporting the more conservative option to that government.
- the PAN, the Party of National Action which has governed Mexico from 2000 to the present.
- A government by, of and for big business. US imperialism has a very direct goal to annex Mexico economically which is partially done already and if need be militarily occupy it.
- Propaganda: Mexico is a failed state and that there are these narco gangs cutting off people’s heads and killing civilians.
- It’s a state of failed law. It’s a very successful state as a puppet of US goals.
- The Narco gangs, some of them are actually integrated in the Mexican government.
- The vast majority of the 34 thousand killed, civilians mostly, in four years of this current illegitimate government. Feminicide and youthicide, to be female or young in Mexico is to be criminal.
- It’s a fake war (war on drugs) always has been for about 30 or 40 years.
- Follow the dollar. Where does the laundered money end up? In the hands of the 6th largest banks in America.
- The bailout of the banks is chicken feed compared to what’s really saving the banks, drug money.
- Obama was wrong in his State of the Union speech, the United States is only number one militarily.
- That’s why you have a return to dirty wars, militarization, military coups in Latin America.
- Mexican 1917 Constitution establishes that oil and other natural resources belong to the nation, not the private corporations. We have to take the banks out of the hands of the bankers, and take the factories out of the hands of the industrialists and let the people run them.
- The Mexico state is a fascist state in the broad sense of the word. The first thing a fascist does is crush labor.
- But labor is resisting and that’s what is so dynamic about Mexico today. The movement’s alive but it’s being repressed.
- I’m a member of 2 civil society international tribunals. Trade Union Freedom, the Conscience of the Movement of People.
- Mexico is the key to the future of Latin America.
Guest – Dr. James D. Cockcroft – A bilingual award-winning author of 45 books on Latin America, US hidden history, culture, migration, and human rights, (Ph.D., Stanford University) is Internet professor for the State University of New York. A bilingual poet, three-time Fulbright Scholar, and Honorary Editor of Latin American Perspectives, he serves on the Coordinadora Internacional de Redes en Defensa de la Humanidad, the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five, and civil society’s Benito Juárez Tribunal (vice-president, 2005) that judged U.S. terrorism against Cuba and International Tribunal of Trade Union Freedom (2009-10) that judged Mexico for its violations of labor and human rights. A Canadian immigrant, he is a member of the UNESCO-sponsored World Council of the José Martí World Solidarity Project, la Table de Concertation de Solidarité Québec-Cuba, la Société Bolivarienne du Québec, la Base de Paix Montréal, le Comité Fabio Di Celmo pour les 5, and the Canada-Cuba Literary Alliance.
—
Gaza In Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians, by Ilan Pappé
We listen to excerpts from a speech plus question and answers from acclaimed Israeli New Historian Ilan Pappe. Ilan Pappé surveys the fallout from Israel’s conduct in Gaza and places it in the context of Israel’s longstanding occupation of Palestine. Israel’s Operation Cast Lead thrust the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip into the center of the debate about the Israel/Palestine conflict.
Speaker – Ilan Pappé is professor of history at the University of Exeter in the UK, where he is also co-director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political studies, and director of the Palestine Studies Centre. He is author of the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld), A History of Modern Palestine (Cambridge), The Israel/Palestine Question (Routledge). Ilan is also a long-time political activist.
——————————–
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, Gaza, Human Rights, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
—
The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
It’s been more than 2 years since Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, a massive surprise air strike against the Gaza Strip. In its aftermath, researchers began to unearth and document evidence of war crimes, human rights violations. Among those investigations was the Goldstone Report officially titled the Report of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza. The report is based on a course of investigations that include 188 interviews, the review of 10 thousand pages of documents and the inspection of 1200 photographs. While most war crimes reports fade into the night, The Goldstone Report is kept alive in a recent book titled The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict.
The authors Lizzy Ratner, Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss have reprinted the central findings of the report and include 11 essays chronicling the report’s ongoing impact. The introduction is written by author Naomi Klein with a forward by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The Goldstone Report:
- LR: Operation Cast Lead: I remember thinking, can this just happen? Is there some kind of law that says this can’t happen? Judge Goldstone is South African, he was a member of the Constitutional Court in South Africa. He is seen as someone who really advanced international law.
- He’s a big Zionist. He’s a committed Zionist. In Israel, they loved him before this report.
- He was fast friends with the head of the Supreme Court in Israel.
- He goes to Gaza in 2009. It’s interesting he remark that thought that he would be kidnapped by Hamas. I think what happened, he went and he saw what life was like in Gaza, and had a bit of a conversion.
- This is not somebody you would expect to come out and issue a report like this.
- Our mission was there’s this report out there, it’s controversial, thunderous, it’s convulsive. Not many people have read it. Once we read it, it became clear, it’s contents were extraordinary.
- It lays out the events of Gaza in minute and devastating detail. We wanted to abridge the report and that really forms the core of the book.
- We have a series of 11 different essays. Each take for the Goldstone Report with a different perspective.
- PW: The first and last essays are from Gazans.
- It’s explained in very vivid terms what it’s like to be under assault, to see white phosphorous raining down on this strip, which is tiny, it’s the size of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket put together. 1.5 million people.
- Rogi’s thesis just itemizing this assault on Palestinian dignity, saying this is a basic human right, to live in dignity.
- Goldstone: Lack of discrimination between civilians and combatants. A deliberate attack on the civilian infrastructure on the means of life. Israel had several recourses before it launched an all out assault on civilian infrastructure.
- The Goldstone Report contradicts what Israel tends to say. One of things the report makes clear is there had been a cease fire for 6 months before the attack.
- United States – We’re not going to stop you Israel when you inflict collective punishment on 1.5 million people.
- This book really helps give a window into the current perception of the Israel, Palestinian conflict as a whole and how that perception is changing.
- AH: The anti-Goldstone report speeches were very uninformed. They treated him like a witch and ex-communicated him from the Jewish community. Goldstonereportbook.com
- The criminality, the complete selfishness, the utter indifference to other peoples lives.
- I realize how much I was made to hate Arab people and Palestinian people and to think that they were lesser.
- Everything you’ve heard was wrong about them.
- At the heart of it, the Goldstone Report tells the story of people who had to live through a horribly traumatic event. You won’t be able to dismiss 1300 people being killed as people that should have died.
- LR: Stop it Jewish people, you’re doing the wrong thing, you’re behaving in an immoral, unethical way and its wrong. Any human should be offended from what happens in Gaza and what still happens there.
Guests – Lizzy Ratner, Adam Horowitz and Philip Weiss
Lizzy Ratner a journalist here in New York City, her articles appear in many publications including The Nation and Alternet.
Adam Horowitz is an editor and journalist covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, he co-edits the blog Mondoweiss and is a founding member of Jews Against the Occupation.
Phil Weiss, founder of the blog Mondoweiss, is a longtime journalist and regular contributor to the Nation and a fellow at the Nation Institute He’s the author of two books a political novel, Cock-A-Doodle-Doo, and American Taboo, an investigative account of a 1976 murder in the Peace Corps in the Kingdom of Tonga.
———————————————————————-
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Habeas Corpus, Human Rights, Surveillance, Targeting Muslims, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
—-
Right-Wing Firms Train Public Servants on Terror Threats
There is a sprawling hidden world of counter-terrorism organizations growing beyond control in the United States. Twenty-four of them were created by the end of 2001, including the Office of Homeland Security and the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Task Force. The next year, 37 more were created to track weapons of mass destruction and collect threat tips. By 2009, nearly 260 organizations were created as 854 thousand civil servants, military personnel and private contractors with top-secret security clearances monitor national security concerns. However, according to a report from the Public Research Associates, those same concerns have bolstered a class of self-proclaimed terrorism experts who decry Islam as an evil religion of terrorists and routinely brand Muslims as primitive, vengeful, duplicitous, and belligerent people who oppress women and gays, and have values irreconcilable with “western Judeo-Christian civilization.”
In fact, when PRA discovered earlier this year that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) had contracted with Security Solutions International to conduct a training on radical Islam, they notified the Muslim American Society, ACLU, and our other advocacy partners, who used PRA’s research to compel the MBTA to cancel the agency’s training.
Chip Berlet :
- As part of the Homeland Security Initiatives and working with the FBI in other aspects of the national security apparatus, there was a need to train thousands as part of a local state and federal counter-terrorism “experts.”
- Some of these trainings are quite good. The problem is that there are a handful of groups that train hundreds and hundreds of local, state and federal counter-terrorism experts, with rhetoric that is basically Islamophobic.
- In the late 1970s there was an attempt to restrain this illegal surveillance. I’d have to say right now it’s worse.
- What used to be done illegally and covertly is now done ostensibly legally and openly and in fact proudly by both Democrats and Republicans who should be ashamed.
- The whole strategic suspicious reporting initiative which basically is a pipeline for unverified rumor and innuendo through local police departments up through a chain of information agencies to the federal government. We know in Europe this kind of reporting is unconstitutional and bad for society.
- Now, everyone that was considered illegal and unconstitutional for which there were Congressional hearings and reforms under Jimmy Carter, now we do it.
- In proper training that is actually looking for criminal activity, not people of color who wear garb that we’re scared of. What’s going on here is untrained, badly trained officers are reporting the names of people up into a huge infrastructure of information data storage, based on bias they’ve not been trained to resist or confront within themselves.
- We described this whole process as a platform for prejudice in a report by Tom Cincotta
- Tom has on his wall a wall chart of all the agencies of this information reporting system and it has 150 dots so inter-connected, no one can control this.
- I’m urging people to form broad coalitions across the political spectrum.
Guest – Chip Berlet, (senior analyst) is a veteran freelance writer and photographer who specializes in investigating right-wing social movements, apocalyptic scapegoating and conspiracism, and authoritarianism. A PRA staffer since 1982, he has written, edited and co-authored numerous articles on right-wing activity and government repression for publications as varied as the Boston Globe, the New York Times, The Progressive, The Nation, The Humanist, and the St. Louis Journalism Review.
—
Lawyers You’ll Like – Sally Frank
For our Lawyers You’ll Like series, we’re delighted to have with us attorney, activist and Drake University law professor Sally Frank. Sally specializes in family law and domestic violence. Her activism began when she was a student at Princeton University. She filed suit against the Cottage Club, the Ivy Club and the Tiger Inn because they refused to admit her as a member based on gender. 13 years later she won the case and the three eating clubs became coed. Now Sally Frank lectures on women in law and encourages law students to be activists.
Attorney Sally Frank:
- They (Princeton) had 13 eating clubs and 3 of them were all male.
- I sued three of the clubs and the University, it began when I was a 19 year old junior at Princeton in 1979.
- My problem with it was they were very important institutions on campus, they ratified discrimination. A couple of them were the most prestigious clubs, if the most prestigious people discriminated, that kinda made it ok and it radiated it back onto to the campus in other aspects of life.
- The question was whether they were public accommodations or not.
- When I was in 5th grade I watched Inherit The Wind five times.
- Seeing William Kunstler and the Chicago 8 and how he supported the protesters and the rights of the people, and how Clarence Darrow did, made me want to be a people’s lawyer. Clerk for Emily Goodman as first job out of law school. I learned so much from her, I learned how to make a record.
- The Joint Terrorism Task Force began to investigate the peace movement in Des Moines, Iowa.
- There was question that my email was being watched. They subpoenaed 4 peace activists to a grand jury. Drake University was subpoenaed for information on the National Lawyers Guild members.
- After I found out about the Drake subpoena, there was a gag order on the subpoena.
- Leading up to 2008 RNC in Minneapolis, FBI leaving cards with peace activists in Iowa. What was going on here was an intelligence gathering that we were able to stop.
- Do not talk to the FBI, NSA, ICE. It’s very hard for people who were brought up to be polite, not to answer a question.
- We lived in a condo on the 8th floor and Bush came to the senior citizens center next door. We unfurled a banner from the balcony, a half hour before Bush was expected and we got a knock on the door by the secret service.
- I checked with the ACLU and they couldn’t bust in. Exigent circumstances.
- Most of what I do are civil cases.
- There’s certainly more government resentment and government attitude.
Guest – Attorney Sally Frank, longtime activist and law professor at Drake University. As a lawyer and law professor, Sally Frank represents protesters, victims of discrimination and poor people in housing. In her teaching and practice, Sally has helped the disenfranchised in family law and domestic abuse cases. “This is the work of the public interest lawyer. We see the problems of the system and work with our clients and others to achieve justice for them and for society as a whole.”
————————————————
Civil Liberties, Criminalizing Dissent, FBI Intrusion, Gaza, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Prison Industry, Targeting Muslims, Torture, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
—–
Ohio Supermax: Hunger Strike In Long Term Solitary Confinement
In an Ohio Super Max prison, 4 prisoners facing execution are confined to permanent restrictive solitary confinement. They’re on a hunger strike, bringing attention to their requests to simply be placed on death row. What’s the difference? Death row isn’t as restrictive as permanent solitary confinement. Jules Lobel, Vice President of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Professor of Law at the University of Pittsburgh explains in detail the differences of regular prison, death row and solitary confinement conditions.
Jules is working to defend the prisoners, he says that long term, essentially permanent and very harsh solitary confinement is both cruel and unusual punishment that violates due process requirement of annual review. The state of Ohio has decided to keep these four in solitary confinement permanently. It’s not only in Ohio, permanent solitary confinement is becoming a problem nationally, particularly with people convicted of terrorism related offenses, including material aid to terrorism.
Jules Lobel:
Guest – Jules Lobel, through the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights, Jules has litigated important issues regarding the application of international law in the U.S. courts. In the late 1980’s, he advised the Nicaraguan government on the development of its first democratic constitution, and has also advised the Burundi government on constitutional law issues. Professor Lobel is editor of a text on civil rights litigation and of a collection of essays on the U.S. Constitution, A Less Than Perfect Union (Monthly Review Press, 1988). He is author of numerous articles on international law, foreign affairs, and the U.S. Constitution in publications including Yale Law Journal, Harvard International Law Journal, Cornell Law Review, and Virginia Law Review. He is a member of the American Society of International Law
——
Defending Grand Jury Protesters
As many listeners know, last September in a nationally coordinated raid, the FBI targeted anti-war and Palestinian solidarity activists, raided their homes and subpoenaed them to appear before a grand jury. The 13 people all of whom were critical of US foreign policy, later withdrew and asserted their right to remain silent. But in early December of 2010 subpoenas were reissued against 4 of those targeted in the raids. Three women in Minneapolis, Tracy Molm, Anh Pham, and Sara Martin were sent reactivated subpoenas by Fitzgerald’s office and new Grand Jury dates.
We’re joined by Chicago based journalist and activist Maureen Murphy who also received a new subpoena. Maureen is managing editor at the website Electronic Intifada, though the site is not being targeted in the FBI probe. In a statement, the Electronic Intifada said, quote, “Although The Electronic Intifada itself has not been a target, we consider the grand jury investigation and all of the subpoenas to be part of a broad attack on the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements and a threat to all of our rights.”
We are also joined by regular guest, attorney Michael Deutsch from the People’s Law Office and is working with the defense committee.
Maureen Murphy:
- I don’t know why its happening, we do know that no crime has been identified. There’s nothing written on my subpoena that I need to bring any documents.
- We believe that the government is subpoenaing us so that we come before a grand jury and name names, and tell them how we organize so they can further disrupt their movement. I’m one of 23 activists now who have gotten the knock at the door. My subpoena says nothing but show up, so I think this is really a fishing expedition.
- In one home they took everything with the word Palestine on it.
- The government has expended a lot of resources on an investigation of a group that has always worked pubicly to advocate for a more just US policy. I was visited by the FBI on December 21, 2010.
- A national committee that has formed around the raids and subpoenas is calling for a day of action January 25, in front of federal buildings and FBI headquarters.
- I’ve already stated that I’m not going to testify.
———
Michael Deutsch:
- In December the FBI went out with a stack of subpoenas, and wound up subpoenaing 9 additional people in the Chicago area which then makes 23.
- These people who are subpoenaed are all active in Palestinian support work. Arab American Action Network, Palestinian Support Group. This next wave of subpoenas are people who are they’re trying to gather information from.
- I’ve never in all my experience seen so many people subpoenaed to a grand jury.
- A lot of the Palestine support work has gone on in Chicago.
- Originally 14 people were subpoenaed and each one through their lawyer said they weren’t not going to voluntarily come in. Now they haven’t decided to enforce the subpoena, they said well get back to you when we decide what we’re going to do.
- There are 23 people lined up trying to figure out what the next step of the government is.
- These prosecutors don’t seem to know who they’re dealing with. They see the grand jury as a tool of oppression.
- I believe that the Israeli security apparatus is involved in supplying information to the US government.
- There’s no evidence here of any type of violence or weapons. We’re dealing with advocacy and associations.
- Despite Holder v the Humanitarian Law Project, we believe that it’s a total violation of the First Amendment.
- The underlying tenor is going after people because of their political ideology.
Guest – Maureen Murphy is a journalist and Palestine solidarity activist from Chicago. She spent a few years living and traveling throughout the Middle East, interning for the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq in the occupied West Bank in 2004-06 before she was denied entry and deported by the Israeli government. She also lived in Lebanon in 2007, learning about the human rights situation for Palestine refugees and the impact of U.S. foreign policy there.
Guest – Michael Deutsch, attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago.
CIA Sponsored Terror, Civil Liberties, Human Rights, Political Prisoner, Truth to Power, War Resister
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Updates:
- Much like the Russian Revolutionaries who opened the books on the Czars’ secret diplomacy and like the Pentagon papers on the Vietnam War, Wikileaks has done a great public service.
- US citizens now have access to the truth, that’s the basis of democracy.
- Julian Assange denied bail.
- Documents show utter duplicity of US government: Hypocritical and lying about fundamentals of democracy.
- Amazon / Paypal / Mastercard quit Wikileaks.
- Isolating, labeling, calling terrorists, but there’s a huge groundswell of support for Wikileaks.
- Wikileaks have struck a real blow against an imperial government.
—–
US Congress to Increase Aggression against Venezuela, ALBA Countries
Last week, members of the extreme Latin American right wing held a meeting in Washington with high-level representatives of the US Congress. The event is evidence of an escalation in US aggression toward the region, writes Eva Golinger in her article US Congress to Increase Aggression against Venezuela, ALBA Countries.
The countries in the region include Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua – all members of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and they were the topic of debates in the meetings that centered around 3 main questions. – and included “debates” centered around three primary questions:
- Are democracy and human rights in danger under the “21st Century Socialism” of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia?
- Does the ALBA Alliance of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua constitute a threat to US interests and inter-American security?
- Is current US policy toward the region equipped to respond to the erosion of democracy and the pernicious influence of such hostile actors as Iran, foreign and domestic terrorist groups, and narcotics traffickers?
US Congress members at the meeting include House Foreign Affairs Committees, including Elliot Engel, New York democrat and current chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere; Connie Mack, Florida republican and incoming chairman of the same committee; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and many more who met with the extreme Latin American right wing responsible for coup d’état’s terrorism and destabilzation.
Eva concludes in her article that this event is proof following the November 2 elections, that Washington’s policies toward Latin America will be more aggressive in the near future.
Eva Golinger:
- The meeting took place in the US Capitol Visiting Center on November 17th 2010, and it was titled Danger in the Andes: Threats to Democracy, Human Rights and Inter-American Security.
- The meeting counted on the participation of several figures, personalities in Latin America from the extreme right.
- There were some people from Bolivia who attempted to overthrow the Morales administration.
- One member participating in the meeting at the US Congress in November was involved with directly in an attempt to assassinate the president of Bolivia. Louis Nunez
- In Latin America there’s been a shift toward more progressive governments and policies, regional integration but at the same time an increased assault on Latin American stability and democracy coming from forces that either held power in prior years or want to take power in the region.
- We’ve seen five coups in the past ten years. Venezuela in 2002, Haiti in 2004, Bolivia in 2008, Honduras in 2009, and Ecuador this year.
- Two of those were successful, Haiti and Honduras. All right wing coups backed by the United States.
- The decision that they (Latin American right wing) came to at the meeting is that the US isn’t doing enough.
- The policy toward Cuba is equated directly with Venezuela, and the policy of Venezuela is going to Ecuador and Bolivia because they all form part of this regional block called ALBA.
- If we have people like Connie Mack running the Subcommittee on Foreign Relations on Latin America who declared in that conference in the Congress last month that with the new Republican majority they need to take action and confront Hugo Chavez head on.
- There are right wing governments in Latin America, we’ve got Peru, Columbia and Chile, but they also rejected the coup attempts.
- Honduras Wikileak memo: The document was an internal memo sent from a US ambassador to the US Secretary of State. It said that the coup that took place June 2009 against President Manuel Zelaya was completely illegal, had no constitutional foundation. It is completely the contrary position the US assumed publicly. The US State Department never declared formally the events as a coup d’état.
- The basis of my work is to use the US Freedom of Information Act to try to declassify US documents, not obtained illegally. One piece of evidence that was demonstrated irrefutably is the increase in funding coming out using US tax payer dollars to fund organizations and political groups in Latin America that are trying to destabilize democratically elected governments.
Guest – Eva Golinger – winner of the International Award for Journalism in Mexico (2009), named “La Novia de Venezuela” by President Hugo Chávez, is an Attorney and Writer from New York, living in Caracas, Venezuela since 2005 and author of the best-selling books, “The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela” “Bush vs. Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela” ,“The Empire’s Web: Encyclopedia of Interventionism and Subversion.” Since 2003, Eva, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and CUNY Law School in New York, has been investigating, analyzing and writing about US intervention in Venezuela using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain information about the US Government’s efforts to destabilize progressive movements in Latin America.
—————————-
