CJA MOVES: To Drag Police Service To Court

Acting Insp. Gen. of Ghana Police Mohamed Alhassan

The Committee for Joint Action (CJA) has taken its first steps to challenge the ban imposed on demonstrations by the Ghana Police Service in court.

 

Sources close to the CJA said the organization decided at its meeting last Sunday to engage Opoku and Associates, a firm of legal practitioners to file a suit in court.

The CJA will be asking for declaration that the ban on demonstrations throughout the country by the police is unconstitutional and has no effect.

In a statement issued last month, the CJA said the police has no authority to ban demonstrations and threatened to drag the Ghana Police Service to court.

It said it would resist the temptation to return the country to the days of the “Culture of Silence”.

So far the Police has not reacted to the threat of the CJA.

Dr Yao Graham of the Third World Network has also condemned the police for banning demonstrations in the country.

Delivering the Key-Note address at the “Freedom Centre Anniversary Lectures” Dr Graham said progressives forces need to work on making the public order law consistent with the tenets of the 1992 constitution.

Yao Graham spoke on the “Left in contemporary Ghanaian Politics”.

 

AFAG has also loudly condemned the police ban.

Editorial

OF RELIGION, SUPERSTITION AND SCIENCE

Throughout history, the progress of society has been driven by science – that is discovery and knowledge of the laws and principles that govern the development of nature, matter and society - and technology i.e. the conscious and systematic application of knowledge of such laws and principles to the fashioning of tools, machines and procedures to address the challenges of life, survival and to address man’s needs. Human societies down the ages have applied science and technology in the hunter and gatherer stage of development to track and hunt animals for food and clothing, to domesticate animals then crops and then settled agriculture. 

Knowledge of nature and matter enabled the development of irrigation systems that allowed settlements at considerable distances from perennial sources of water, increased man’s ability to feed, clothe, house, transport himself, to communicate and to fight disease.

On this basis the recent news reports regarding the flood of elite Ghanaians and other nationals – worshippers and sightseers - to seek the ministrations and distribution of ‘Anointed Water’ by the visiting Nigerian Pastor T.B. Joshua, marked by traffic jams lasting for much of the working day, and one stampede and deaths – reflect social retrogression of Ghanaian society and a cause for sober introspection by us, and our leaders at all levels.

Rather than seeking knowledge and applying same to address our growing list of national and local challenges, our elites are instead increasingly focused on superstition and nostrums that have no basis in science and knowledge. 

Increasingly on our television screens and in film, over the radio and in print we are witnessing an increasing turn to, a fixation and reliance on superstition and supernatural interventions to address our problems, be they lack of income or child or the difficulties of business. 

Taking a cue from our leaders, our youth then engage in ‘Sakawa’, and various unscientific shortcuts and get-rich-quick devices. In one sentence Ghanaian society is retrogressing! 

It is time to state firmly that the problems of Ghanaian society – and for that matter any other society can only be solved through the development of knowledge – our own and that of others - and its deliberate, conscious application under purposive leadership; and in the context of solidarity and our collective well-being. No more, no less. 

ATTACK ON OUR HERITAGE MUST STOP – CPP

Samia Yaba Nkrumah, National Chairperson, CPP

The Convention People’s Party is outraged by the lack of political will to ensure that the exploitation of our mineral resources benefits the citizens of Ghana, and the failure to protect our   environment and our heritage for sustainable development not only in the Ellembelle District of the Nzema area but also throughout the country. The current tension between community groups and a mining firm called Adamus Resources is something the Party views as an attack on our heritage.

Nkroful, the birth place of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s Founder and First President is part of our national heritage and government has the responsibility to protect and preserve the historical heritage of Nkroful and the Nzema people.

The CPP position is that under no circumstance should Nkroful be obliteratedin a private quest to exploit the mineral resources of the area. It is the party’s view that with the right investment and the tourism potential of the area, the nation and the local people will benefit far more than mining with its negative impact on the environment and our heritage can deliver. 

We wish to indicate an unflinching support to community dwellers in Teleku Bokazo and Nkroful, the youth group – ‘Youth and Concern’, who have demonstrated their unwavering fight against the attempt by Adamus Resources to virtually obliterate Nkoful.

Despite the claims about resettlement and monetary compensation by Adamus to some members of the two close communities, the Party strongly opposes attempts at ignoring the development of the human and material capacity of the state to own and manage the mineral resources in the Nzema area for the full benefit of the Ghanaian people.

The Party wishes to publicly bring to the attention of the Government that Article (2) and (4)of the Minerals & Mining Act, 2006 (Act 703) must necessarily be invoked immediately for the state to compulsory acquire all of Nkroful Land  as a first step towards designating Nkroful as a national heritage site.

The CPP wishes to draw the attention of Government and state institutions to Adamus’ threat to our heritage and pleads that Government reconsiders operational expansion of Adamus Resources as it will lead to the destruction of the historical town of Nkroful.

The unrest between the community in Nkroful and Adamus Resources highlights the crucial challenge we face as a nation in controlling and managing our natural resources for the benefit of our communities.

 Nii Armah Akomfrah               

CPP Director of Communication

So So Talk and No Action

 By Bobby Udoh

When we think about the Nigerian situation, the song by Femi Kuti “So So Talk and No Action” comes to mind. This is a country where much talk is done by her citizens but little or no action is taken.

Our Government at all levels make promises upon promises but little or no action is taken. Is it only government? No, we the people can complain all day and night about the sad situation in our country and yet, we will do nothing about it.

It is said that at any gathering of Nigerians at home or aboard, the sorry state of our nation will dominate the discussions and each person will participate passionately in the discussion.

The objective of this article is not to talk about what is common and clear to us all but to recommend what we must do to move from talk to action. But before that, we must understand why we Nigerians are so angry and talk or complain so much as a result. Without our proper assessment of this, we wouldn’t come to terms with the need to move to the place of action.

So, why do we talk so much about our problem?

Life is difficult & unpredictable: Most citizens go through several difficulties on daily basis in their attempt to live and provide for their loved ones. To add to the difficulties is the unpredictability of our society. All manner of problems can arise without any warning because of our high level of instability in our politics and economy.

Avoidable deaths and accidents: A simple trip to the office can end in an avoidable accident that will cost the death of the driver & passengers or deform them for life. Most times, the accident is caused by poor roads, lack of proper road signage & lighting, poor emergency services, lack of proper hospitals and of course, bad driving. Every day, we hear of petrol tankers that fell and kills people in their tens.

Visible Sign of Looting without Repercussions: Nothing hurts Nigerians like reading in the papers details of how people in position of authority (government or private sector) loot our commonwealth with such impunity. Worse off, they get away with no punishment and in the few cases where they were punishment, it was more like a slap on their wrist.

Our future is unsecured: For young and old adults, the uncertainty of our future and that of our children is so depressing. We worry about our pensions in old age, the education of our children, the home we will retire to, the weight of our extended family challenges on us, the future of our businesses, workplace and investments into property, business and the financial market, etc.

Much potential but little wealth: Everytime we think of the abundant natural resources we have and the can-do spirit in many of our citizens, we get pained about our continuous underdevelopment.

Of course, there are several other reasons why we get angry and talk so much & so passionately about our problem. But it is hoped that the listing of some of the points above will propel us to say enough is enough. But beyond saying enough is enough, we must move further to say we will no longer be victims but solvers of the problems. This really is the only way forward.

But what is the mindset required to enable move forward and solve many of our problems?

I believe many Nigerians know our problems and to various degrees, they know the power to change things belong to the people (you and I). So, the problem and the initiate responsibility are acknowledged. I believe what is lacking to translate anger & complains into positive action is the sacrifice mindset.

Why the Sacrifice Mindset?

Commitment: The change needed within us, our families and our communities requires total commitment, and it can’t happen unless we are ready to make sacrifices. It is a deep commitment that will lead to the dedication of time & resources to the solution on the short, medium and long term.

The commitment to study what solution we can generate and implement; to put into practice new values and our well defined actions; and to teach others about change through our words and mainly by what we model, is all gained through a sacrificial mindset.

Lifestyle: Without a radical change in our lifestyle, we wouldn’t have the ability to sustain our commitment. A sacrifice mindset will enable us to give up most of our comforts, our personal goals & glories, some key friendship and family, some possessions, etc., to give us room to focus on delivering the change we seek.

This mindset produces citizens who have simplified their lives in order to ensure that life most precious gift – Time, is preserved for only those things that deliver change. Such citizens are said to be radical in their thoughts, words and actions. But through this lifestyle, they have gained long term approach to issues and a life dedicated to serving others in order for future generations to have a better society than the current one.

Interestingly, there are some citizens who are passionate about change and are taking some positive actions but give up after facing hostility. It is obvious that they are yet to attain the sacrifice mindset because the only thing that will stop citizens with this mindset is death or the attainment of the goal.

No opposition man made or otherwise would withstand the work of a Nigerian with total commitment and a transformed & simplified lifestyle.

We all complain so much because we desire change but to build the developed Nigeria of our dreams, we must recognise that it is a long and hard process with very strong opposition. But with the sacrifice mindset, we will attain our objective through much work and less talk.

The question each of us must then ask ourselves is, considering all our problems, am I willing to pay the price to build a developed Nigeria?

If yes is your answer, join us at the Nation-building Regional Series beginning with the South West Regional Symposium on 29^th & 30^th May 2013, Welcome Centre Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos. This is an event raising and equipping nation-builders, and providing a community & working groups for these builders. To register or find out about your regional event, visit www.thecascadeinitiative.org

Bobby Udoh is a Nation-building Advocate, Blogger, Trainer and Founder of The Cascade Initiative. This organisation organises the Nation-building Community through Events (Regional, National & Diaspora) where nation-builders are raised, equipped and sent out. For more details, visit - www.thecascadeinitiative.org

Moscow

Vladimir Putin, President of Russia

By Milton Bearden

The arrest of the American diplomat, Ryan Fogle, in Moscow late Monday, May 13, was a journey to an earlier era, a throwback to a quarter century ago when these Cold War cloak and dagger spy games were painfully regular, as the United States and the Soviet Union played out the final act of a long and deadly contest. About the only difference in the handling of the ambush of Fogle by the Russian security service was that the photographic record of his arrest was in sharp, digital color, rather than grainy black and white. It was a textbook takedown. We see Fogle on the ground, arms behind him; then later in FSB headquarters being photographed with all the spy gear he was carrying. The "competent organs" are clearly protecting the motherland.

The reaction back in the United States was immediate. The "CIA has slipped into rank amateurism," observed any number of commentators. "How could he have been carrying all that spy paraphernalia," others clucked. The chatty "Dear Friend" letter he had in his possession could not have been real, spy buffs declared.
Not so fast. 

I have no direct knowledge of what happened in Moscow on Monday night, but as both deputy and then chief of the CIA's Soviet East European Division (SE Division) during the late 1980s, I've seen all this before, again and again. Whatever did happen to Fogle is immaterial to this narrative, which is an informed tale on how these things actually played out in the 1980s, a tale that shows how little has actually changed. Vladimir Putin's Russia and his security services have not buried the past. They may be called the FSB now, but the little red KGB identity books are still tucked in the bottom drawers, ready to go back to the hardknuckle games of the past. The Fogle affair is a small, fleeting win, a single blue chip on the Russian side of the table, not much more. That the FSB seemed shocked, shocked that spying is going on in Moscow, belies their full court spying press across the United States.  And the "Moscow Rules" may still apply.

Let's go back, for a moment, to June 13, 1985, when it was all Moscow Rules, all the time. I was just rotating from East Africa to Langley to take the deputy job in SE Division, that awful summer when so many of our Moscow agents were compromised and our officers ambushed trying to meet them.

CIA officer Paul Stombaugh sat alone on a bench in the dark, trash-strewn courtyard of a concrete apartment block in the Moscow suburbs. He had stopped his final counter-surveillance detection run a few hundred yards short of the site where he would meet with Adolf Tolkachev, the CIA's most prized agent in Moscow.  From January 1979 until this night, Tolkachev, an electronics design engineer, had provided the Americans with just about everything they wanted to know about Soviet research and development for its advanced fighter aircraft avionics systems. Tolkachev's intel had allowed the United States to design its aircraft electronic systems to defeat the Soviet devices. What the CIA did not know that sultry June evening, was that Adolph Tolkachev had been betrayed and compromised, first by CIA turncoat, Edward Lee Howard, and then by Aldrich Ames. Stombaugh was walking into an ambush.

Stombaugh , a former FBI officer in his 30s, who was code-named "Narciss"-- the handsome one, by the KGB -- had spent hours on checking and rechecking to make sure he wasn't be tailed. He was convinced he was black -- in the spy parlance, surveillance-free. He had come to the quiet, residential street some 20 minutes early, had made one quick pass. Everything looked normal, and as he was instructed to do so in the casing report, he left the area to check his materials and equipment and prepare himself for the intense meeting, just minutes away. The only thing that seemed unusual was a large trailer parked about 50 yards from the meeting point, its hitch propped up on cinder blocks.

He checked his miniature tape recorder -- all meetings with Tolkachev were recorded -- and his materials. In one large, double-lined, plastic shopping bag, Stombaugh carried 125,000 rubles in small notes, equivalent to almost $150,000. The bag also contained five subminiature cameras concealed in key chain fobs. A second shopping bag was packed with American medicine and eyeglasses for Tolkachev and his wife, English-language study tapes for their son, books with concealed messages, "intelligence reporting requirements" -- Soviet secrets the CIA wanted Tolkachev to try to steal --  and communications plans, printed on water-soluble paper for added security. Everything he carried was compromising -- fatally so for the man he was to meet. He glanced at this watch and decided it was time to move.

Stombaugh took in the street scene with a sweep of his eyes as he rounded the corner of  the apartment block.  Fifteen yards ahead and on his left, an attractive young woman with dyed red hair was waving her hands in animated conversation in a telephone booth that had been marked as a "taxi phone" on the diagram of the meeting site. Tolkachev's car, with its familiar registration number, was parked on the far side of the street -- the reassuring "safe, ready to meet" signal he was looking for.

 

Stombaugh began to walk briskly, running over in his mind the actions he had planned for the next few moments when Tolkachev would step out of the shadows, give the verbal recognition code, and then walk with him into the recesses of the nearby woods.  There, he would take Tolkachev's used cameras, still sealed with their microfilm inside, stash them in his jacket, and hand over the two shopping bags. If both men sensed it was safe, there might be some time for the small talk that had always been so reassuring to Tolkachev during these dangerous meetings over the years.

 

As he passed the phone booth, the world exploded. At least five men burst from the cover of trees and brush. Two grabbed his Stombaugh's arms from behind as two others snatched the heavy shopping bags from his grip. A fifth man forced his head down. He heard the tailgate of the parked trailer slam to the ground. The night air filled with voices of men who had been hiding inside, waiting for the trap to be sprung.

Stombaugh was taken to the infamous KGB headquarters in Dzerzhinsky Square, where his spy materials were laid out, photographed, and where he was subjected to a pro forma tirade by the chief of the KGB's American Department of the 2nd Chief Directorate. Stombaugh had his diplomatic identity card on him -- standard operating procedure -- and within a few hours he was set free and ordered out of the country.

Aside from the switch to color photography, there isn't much difference between Monday's arrest in Moscow, and Stombaugh's arrest in 1985. A successful intelligence operation can be a thing of beauty, the elegant result of serious training, planning, and execution. A compromised intelligence operation, on the other hand, in every respect looks like a bungling pratfall, a clumsy, amateurish misadventure that begs critical review. In my 30 years in the CIA, I had the full mix -- the elegant successes and a share of sad failures. It's part of the territory. 

Every item a Moscow CIA officer carried to a clandestine meeting was necessary and thoroughly examined. Tolkachev had been told repeatedly that the money and the other things he demanded would immediately compromise him if anyone were to take note, but he was steadfast. Those things were part of the deal. And we bent over backwards for him: he was a completely vetted CIA asset, a man who had done so much damage to the Soviet Union that there was no question of his bonafides.

But even the best spies can be sloppy. When Tolkachev first attempted to volunteer his services to the CIA, his recklessness was harrowing -- dropping notes in cars with American diplomatic plates, or making entirely random approaches to American diplomats or, in one case, an Italian employee of the embassy in Moscow, to pass his letters.

The CIA was finally able to reach out directly to him by getting an officer, surveillance-free, to locate a phone booth near Tolkachev's apartment and call him at home. The call instructed him, that very moment, to go to the phone booth on the street and pick up a dirty glove he would find lying on the ground a few feet away. Then the CIA officer left the scene. Inside the glove were secret writing materials, a lengthy "Dear Friend" letter (not at all unlike the one Fogle was said to have been carrying) telling him how to prepare his answers to a list of scientific questions, and an accommodation address for him to mail his cover letter (with secret writing on the back) to Germany.  He followed the instructions, and for the next six years became one of the most productive CIA agents of the Cold War.  KGB counterintelligence never caught on to him until he was betrayed by the spies working in our own house. Adolf Tolkachev was tried and sentenced to the "exceptional measure of punishment." He was executed in October 1986.

I can't tell you what happened to Fogle in Moscow last Monday, I can't explain how he got sloppy or if he made mistakes at all. But I haven't seen much that makes me think much has changed from the way we, and the Russians, play the game. I for one, would be inclined defer judgment for the time being.

9/11: Tel Aviv-based outside job

 By Gordon Duff

Former presidential candidate Ron Paul has come under a vicious smear attack for his formation of an institute dedicated to cleansing America of foreign control, ending the power of the Federal Reserve and stopping the deluge of false flag terrorism that has been unleashed on America.

Paul’s organization has drawn upon the few public figures in America that have stood against the “Zionist machine.” It hasn’t taken long for the first attacks.

It began today, in the Daily Beast, an online version of Newsweek, owned by Jane Harman, long a Mossad asset. In 2011, Harman resigned from congress in disgrace after years of allegation against her for espionage on behalf of Israel. From Wikipedia: 

“In October 2006, Time magazine, quoting anonymous sources, asserted that an FBI and US Department of Justice investigation of Harman was underway. The magazine alleged that Harman had agreed to lobby the Department of Justice to reduce espionage charges against Steve J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, two officials at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In exchange, Time said there was a quid pro quo in which AIPAC would lobby then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to appoint Harman as chair of the House Intelligence Committee if the Democrats captured the House after the 2006 elections. Harman, the FBI, the Justice Department and Pelosi’s office have all denied knowledge of or involvement with any investigation.”

Harman’s organization was chosen to smear Paul and the Ron Paul institute is easy to understand. Paul “played nice” during his failed attempt at the presidency, keeping silent about his views on Israeli influence and, especially, on 9/11. 

Back in 2010, the extremely popular television host, Judge Napolitano, on the Murdoch-owned Fox network, exposed 9/11 as a false flag conspiracy. Not only is Napolitano highly respected but was, at the time, employed by the most pro-Israeli news organization in America, a nation where news organizations fall over themselves to “kiss Israel’s behind.” 

Soon after shows exposing 9/11, Napolitano was taken off the air and put on “consultant” status. Since that time, there has been no reporting of 9/11 allowed in the United States other than smears against any that speak out, including family members of the victims who have, for years, petitioned every court and bought billboards along America’s highways demanding a real investigation. 

The Mossad/Harman attack on Ron Paul, published today in the Daily Beast, is typical of Zionist/ADL/AIPAC/SPLC smear campaigns against any “America first” group. From today’s article by Israeli “smear-master,” James Kirchick of the Mossad based news outlet, Haaretz:

“…the list of Paul Institute board members are the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Most prominent among them is Judge Andrew Napolitano, a legal analyst for Fox News who has said that “It’s hard for me to believe that [7 World Trade Center] came down by itself” and that the 9/11 attacks “couldn’t possibly have been done the way the government told us.”

He is joined by Eric Margolis, who, despite an apparent lack of a Ph.D. or appointment at an institution of higher learning, is listed as a member of the organization’s “academic board.” Margolis says “conclusive proof still lacks” connecting Osama bin Laden to the 9/11 attacks and has speculated that the events could have been “a plot by America’s far right or by Israel or a giant cover-up.” 

Southwestern Law School professor Butler Shaffer, in an article for Rockwell’s site titled, “9/11 Was a Conspiracy,” asks, “In light of the lies, forgeries, cover-ups, and other deceptions leading to a ‘war’ in Iraq, how can any intellectually honest person categorically deny the possibility of the involvement of American political interests in 9/11?”

Also on Paul’s board are prominent former government officials who claim that American Jews constitute a “fifth column” aimed at subverting American foreign policy in the interests of Israel. Michael Scheuer, a former CIA intelligence officer, has used this precise phrase, alleging that a long list of individuals, organizations, and publications are “intent on involving 300 million Americans in other people’s religious wars.”

Kirchick calls Ron Paul, who polled as an easy winner were he to have secured nomination during the last election, as an “anti-Semite” along with those with him. A key issue is the continued use of smear tactics against any who push for a legitimate investigation into 9/11 as “Jew haters.”

It doesn’t take a genius to see the solid link between the smear tactics used and clear complicity in 9/11 by the Mossad. Were there no other evidence, and there is vast other evidence, the vicious and hateful reaction of Zionists and their Neocon underlings is more than adequate proof, not just that 9/11 is an “inside job” but a Tel Aviv-based “outside job” as well.

With the current divisions in America, the aftermath of the Sandy Hook and Boston Marathon incidents, both broadly accepted, even by the US military as “false flag” terrorism, the return of Ron Paul and his “populist” platform which had excited millions of Americans sick of Washington’s “business as usual” corruption, has threatened Israeli control over America. 

Thus, “Israel Firsters” like Harmon, are receiving “marching orders” to destroy Paul and any that side with him, even to the point of labeling political independents and reform minded groups as terrorist organizations.

 

In fact, those lists have long been prepared by the ADL and SPLC and have been distributed among American security agencies and the “secret police.”

Calling the amalgamation of “alphabet soup” agencies, DHS, FBI, DEA, CIA, DIA, SEC, DVA, NRO, NSA, ICE, ATF and so many others anything but “secret police” is a waste of time. 

The story behind Jane Harman, one of the agent provocateurs of the Israel lobby, goes much further than simply protecting Israeli spies. 

From Wikipedia, clear accusations of involvement in espionage:

“In April 2009, CQ Politics, also quoting anonymous sources, said Harman had been captured on a National Security Agency wiretap prior to the 2006 elections, telling an “Israeli agent” that she would “waddle into” lobbying the Department of Justice on the AIPAC case. Harman ended the phone call, according to CQ, by saying, “This conversation doesn’t exist.” 

According to CQ, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales pressed Central Intelligence Agency Director Porter Goss to drop the agency’s investigation of Harman because he wanted Harman’s support during the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy about to break in the New York Times. Harman called the New York Times and urged them not to publish details on the program. Gonzales and Goss declined to comment.”

With Americans pushed to the breaking point, threats of gun confiscation and an acceptance that all or part of their own government is willing to sacrifice American lives in staged terror incidents, Ron Paul’s message, one he failed to convey during the election, may well be a powerful uniting force to move America onto an independent path. 

The first stage, the smear campaign has started. The next step, millions of dollars, drug money, casino “skim” or Koch brothers’ oil speculation profiteering cash, money to buy off those around Paul, can be expected.

If that fails, other methods will be used, just as they were against Senator Paul Wellstone and his family.

Ron Paul and those of his institute, some with considerable experience in national security, are probably already aware. 

In the last fifty years, no prominent American has stood up against Israel without dying in a plane wreck, mysterious car crash, committing suicide, often by shooting themselves several times at up to 20 feet away or ending up in prison. 

US spy agencies threaten Latin America

Julian Assange Wikileaks Founder

The founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks says the US spy agencies pose a threat to the sovereignty of Latin American nations as the countries depend on US-based telecommunication technologies. 

Julian Assange said speaking via videoconference at Uruguay’s University of the Republic that Latin America’s reliance on hardware and traffic handling by Washington was a source of vulnerability to monitoring by US spy agencies including the CIA, the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI, Russia Today reported on Friday. 

“The penetration of the internet in all facets of society, substituting traditional mail and telephone and even physical interaction between individuals has placed in the hands of the US information provided by telecoms for the majority of humanity,” Assange said.

The WikiLeaks founder referred to the rising popularity of social networking and products offered by companies such as Google, saying that Latin American countries unknowingly upload profiles of their citizens in computer systems within enormous servers in the US state of California. The profiles are controlled by Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others.

“These are directly or indirectly controlled by mechanisms, both legal or otherwise, via intelligence services of the United States and peripheral organizations.” 

The remarks come a few days after the Associated Press said the US Justice Department had secretly gained access to two months of telephone records of its reporters and editors.

Assange added that the US government had “not demonstrated scruples in following its own laws in intercepting these [phone] lines to spy even on its own citizens.” 

He further said that there “did not exist” laws in the United States to prevent it from “spying on citizens of foreign countries.” 

The records obtained by the Justice Department comprised outgoing calls for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, for general AP office numbers in New York, Washington, and Hartford, Connecticut, and for AP’s main number in the House of Representatives press gallery.

Drone Warfare is Neither Cheap, Nor Surgical, Nor Decisive

A Drone

Today’s unmanned aerial vehicles, most famously Predator and Reaper drones, have been celebrated as the culmination of the longtime dreams of airpower enthusiasts, offering the possibility of victory through quick, clean, and selective destruction.  Those drones, so the (very old) story goes, assure the U.S. military of command of the high ground, and so provide the royal road to a speedy and decisive triumph over helpless enemies below.

Fantasies about the certain success of air power in transforming, even ending, war as we know it arose with the plane itself.  But when it comes to killing people from the skies, again and again air power has proven neither cheap nor surgical nor decisive nor in itself triumphant.  Seductive and tenacious as the dreams of air supremacy continue to be, much as they automatically attach themselves to the latest machine to take to the skies, air power has not fundamentally softened the brutal face of war, nor has it made war less dirty or chaotic.

Indeed, by emboldening politicians to seek seemingly low-cost, Olympian solutions to complex human problems -- like Zeus hurling thunderbolts from the sky to skewer puny mortals -- it has fostered fantasies of illimitable power emboldened by contempt for human life.  However, just like Zeus’s obdurate and rebellious subjects, the mortals on the receiving end of death from on high have shown surprising strength in frustrating the designs of the air power gods, whether past or present. Yet the Olympian fantasy persists, a fact that requires explanation.

The Rise of Air Power

It did not take long after the Wright Brothers first put a machine in the air for a few exhilarating moments above the sandy beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in December of 1903, for the militaries of industrialized countries to express interest in buying and testing airplanes.  Previously balloons had been used for reconnaissance, as in the Napoleonic wars and the U.S. Civil War, and so initially fledgling air branches focused on surveillance and intelligence-gathering.  As early as 1911, however, Italian aircraft began dropping small bombs from open-air cockpits on the enemy -- we might today call them “insurgents” -- in Libya.

World War I encouraged the development of specialized aircraft, most famously the dancing bi- and tri-winged fighter planes of the dashing “knights of the air,” as well as the more ponderous, but for the future far more important, bombers.   By the close of World War I in 1918, each side had developed multi-engine bombers like the German Gotha, which superseded the more vulnerable zeppelins.  Their mission was to fly over the trenches where the opposing armies were stalemated and take the war to the enemy’s homeland, striking fear in his heart and compelling him to surrender.  Fortunately for civilians a century ago, those bombers were too few in number, and their payloads too limited, to inflict widespread destruction, although German air attacks on England in 1917 did spread confusion and, in a few cases, panic.

Pondering the hecatombs of dead from trench warfare, air power enthusiasts of the 1920s and 1930s not surprisingly argued strongly, and sometimes insubordinately, for the decisive importance of bombing campaigns launched by independent air forces.  A leading enthusiast was Italy’s Giulio Douhet.  In his 1921 work Il dominio dell’aria (Command of the Air), he argued that in future wars strategic bombing attacks by heavily armed “battle-planes” (bombers) would produce rapid and decisive victories.  Driven by a fascist-inspired logic of victory through preemptive attack, Douhet called for all-out air strikes to destroy the enemy’s air force and its bases, followed by hammer blows against industry and civilians using high-explosive, incendiary, and poison-gas bombs.  Such blows, he predicted, would produce psychological uproar and social chaos (“shock and awe,” in modern parlance), fatally weakening the enemy’s will to resist.

As treacherous and immoral as his ideas may sound, Douhet’s intent was to shorten wars and lessen casualties -- at least for his side.  Better to subdue the enemy by pressing hard on select pressure points (even if the “pressing” was via high explosives and poison gas, and the “points” included concentrations of innocent civilians), rather than forcing your own army to bog down in bloody, protracted land wars.

That air power was inherently offensive and uniquely efficacious in winning cheap victories was a conclusion that found a receptive audience in Great Britain and the United States.  In England, Hugh Trenchard, founding father of the Royal Air Force (RAF), embraced strategic bombing as the most direct way to degrade the enemy’s will; he boldly asserted that “the moral effect of bombing stands undoubtedly to the material effect in a proportion of twenty to one.”

Even bolder was his American counterpart, William “Billy” Mitchell, famously court-martialed and romanticized as a “martyr” to air power.  (In his honor, cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy still eat in Mitchell Hall.)  At the Air Corps Tactical School in the 1930s, U.S. airmen refined Mitchell’s tenets, developing a “vital centers” theory of bombing -- the idea that one could compel an enemy to surrender by identifying and destroying his vulnerable economic nodes.  It therefore came as no accident that the U.S. entered World War II with the world’s best heavy bomber, the B-17 Flying Fortress, and a fervid belief that “precision bombing” would be the most direct path to victory.

World War II and After: Dehousing, Scorching, Boiling, and Baking the Enemy

In World War II, “strategic” air forces that focused on winning the war by heavy bombing reached young adulthood, with all the swagger associated with that stage of maturity.  The moral outrage of Western democracies that accompanied the German bombing of civilian populations in Guernica, Spain, in 1937 or Rotterdam in 1940 was quickly forgotten once the Allies sought to open a “second front” against Hitler through the air.  Four-engine strategic bombers like the B-17 and the British Lancaster flew for thousands of miles carrying bomb loads measured in tons.  From 1942 to 1945 they rained two million tons of ordnance on Axis targets in Europe, but accuracy in bombing remained elusive.

While the U.S. attempted and failed at precision daylight bombing against Germany’s “vital centers,” Britain’s RAF Bomber Command began employing what was bloodlessly termed “area bombing” at night in a “dehousing” campaign led by Arthur “Bomber” Harris.  What became an American/British combined bomber offensive killed 600,000 German civilians, including 120,000 children, reducing cities like Cologne (1942), Hamburg (1943), Berlin (1944-45), and Dresden (1945) to rubble.

Yet, contrary to the dreams of air power advocates, Germany’s will to resist remained unbroken.  The vaunted second front of aerial battle became yet another bloody attritional brawl, with hundreds of thousands of civilians joining scores of thousands of aircrews in death.

Similarly mauled but unbroken by bombing was Japan, despite an air campaign of relentless intensity that killed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.  Planned and directed by Major General Curtis LeMay, new B-29 bombers loaded with incendiaries struck Tokyo, a city made largely of wood, in March 1945, creating a firestorm that in his words “scorched and boiled and baked [the Japanese] to death.”  As many as 100,000 Japanese died in this attack.

Subsequently, 60 more cities were firebombed until the apotheosis of destruction came that August as atomic bombs incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing another 200,000 people.  It quickly became an article of faith among American air power enthusiasts that these bombs had driven Japan to surrender; together with this, the “decisive” air campaign against Germany became reason enough to justify an independent U.S. Air Force, which was created by the National Security Act of 1947.

In the total war against Nazi and Japanese terror, moral concerns, when expressed, came privately.  General Ira Eaker worried that future generations might condemn the Allied bombing campaign against Germany for its targeting of “the man in the street.”  Even LeMay, not known for introspective doubts, worried in 1945 that he and his team would likely be tried as war criminals if the U.S. failed to defeat Japan.  (So Robert McNamara, then an Army Air Force officer working for LeMay, recalled in the documentary The Fog of War.)

But moral qualms were put aside in the post-war glow of victory and as the fear rose of future battles with communism.  The Korean War (1950-1953) may have ushered in the jet age, as symbolized by the dogfights of American Sabre Jets and Soviet MiGs over the Yalu River, but it also witnessed the devastation by bombing of North Korea, even as the enemy took cover underground and refused to do what air power strategists had always assumed they would: give up.

Still, for the U.S. Air Force, the real action of that era lay largely in the realm of dystopian fantasies as it created the Strategic Air Command (SAC), which coordinated two legs of the nuclear triad, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles in silos and nuclear-armed long-range bombers. (The third was nuclear-missile-armed submarines.)  SAC kept some of those bombers carrying thermonuclear weapons in the air 24/7 as a “deterrent” to a Soviet nuclear first strike (and as a constant first strike threat of our own).  “Thinking about the unthinkable” -- that is, nuclear Armageddon -- became all the rage, with “massive retaliation” serving as the byword for air power enthusiasts.  In this way, dreams of clean victories morphed into nightmares of global thermonuclear annihilation, leaving the 1930s air power ideal of “clean” and “surgical” strikes in the dust -- for the time being.

Reaping What We Sow

Despite an unimaginably powerful nuclear deterrent that essentially couldn’t be used, the U.S. Air Force had to relearn the hard way that there remained limits to the efficacy of air power, especially when applied to low-intensity, counterinsurgency wars.  As in Korea in the 1950s, air power in the 1960s and 1970s failed to provide the winning edge in the Vietnam War, even as it spread wanton destruction throughout the Vietnamese countryside.  But it was the arrival of “smart” bombs near that war’s end that marked the revival of the fantasies of air power enthusiasts about “precision bombing” as the path to future victory.

By the 1990s, laser- and GPS-guided bombs (known collectively as PGMs, forprecision guided munitions) were relegating unguided, “dumb” bombs largely to the past.  Yet like their predecessors, PGMs proved no panacea.  In the opening stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, for example, 50 precision “decapitation strikes” targeting dictator Saddam Hussein’s top leadership failed to hit any of their intended targets, while causing “dozens” of civilian deaths.  That same year, air power’s inability to produce decisive results on the ground after Iraq’s descent into chaos, insurrection, and civil war served as a reminder that the vaunted success of the U.S. air campaign in the First Gulf War (1991) was a fluke, not a flowering of air power’s maturity.  (Saddam Hussein made his traditionally organized military, defenseless against air power, occupy static positions after his invasion of Kuwait.)

The recent marriage of PGMs to drones, hailed as the newest “perfect weapon” in the air arsenal, has once again led to the usual fantasies about the arrival -- finally, almost 100 years late -- of clean, precise, and decisive war.  Using drones, a military need not risk even a pilot’s life in its attacks.  Yet the nature of war -- its horrors, its unpredictability, its tendency to outlive its original causes -- remains fundamentally unaltered by “precision” drone strikes.  War’s inherent fog and friction persist.  In the case of drones, that fog is often generated by faulty intelligence, the friction by malfunctioning weaponry orinnocent civilians appearing just as the Hellfire missiles are unleashed.  Rather than clean wars of decision, drone strikes decide nothing.  Instead, they produce their share of “collateral damage” that only spawns new enemies seeking revenge.

The fantasy of air war as a realm of technical decision, as an exercise in decisively finding, fixing, and dispatching the enemy, appeals to a country like the United States that idolizes technology as a way to quick fixes.  As a result, it’s hardly surprising that two administrations in Washington have ever more zealously pursued drone wars and aerial global assassination campaigns, already killing 4,700 “terrorists” and bystanders. And this has been just part of our Nobel Peace Prize-winning president’s campaign of 20,000 air strikes(only 10% of which were drone strikes) in his first term of office.  Yet despite -- or perhaps because of -- these attacks, our global war against al-Qaeda, its affiliates, and other groups like the Taliban appears no closer to ending.

And that is, in part, because the dream of air power remains just that: a fantasy, a capricious and destructive will-o’-the-wisp.  It’s a fantasy because it denies agency to enemies (and others) who invariably find ways to react, adapt, and strike back.  It’s a fantasy because, however much such attacks seem both alluringly low-risk and high-reward to the U.S. military, they become a rallying cause for those on the other end of the bombs and missiles.

A much-quoted line from the movie Apocalypse Now captured the insanity of the American air war in Vietnam.  “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,”says an Air Cav commander played by Robert Duvall.  “Smelled like... victory.”  Updated for drone warfare, this line might read: “I love the sound of drones in the morning.  Sounds like... victory.”  But will we say the same when armed drones are hovering, not only above our enemies’ heads but above ours, too, in fortress America, enforcing security and conformity while smiting citizens judged to be rebellious?

Something tells me this is not the dream that airpower enthusiasts had in mind.

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Building Socialism in Latin America

Late President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela

 By Jorge Capelan and Toni Solo

For the imperial propaganda machine, leftist Latin American governments and political leaders are either too leftist, not really leftist, or blind fanatics, as well as being shrewdly machiavellian, capitalists in red clothing, enemies of the market and scores of other contradictory pairs of things all at once.

This is so because the purpose of propaganda is to render unusable the intellectual capacity of the target population to understand reality.  By promoting mistrust, anxiety and confusion among those sections of the public in the imperialist countries that might oppose the designs of their rulers, the war planners seek to neutralize any effective solidarity efforts.

Sadly, most European and North American progressive and radical movements and intellectuals have problems coming to terms with this, no matter what their experience, reputation or insights into what the Empire routinely does to humanity.

Without direct involvement in them, virtually none of those intellectuals can offer a true and fair view of Latin America’s various revolutionary processes. They may offer plausible theories and schemas, but the nitty gritty of achieving power and effecting radical change will always elude them. Examples of this fact abound.

Depending entirely on academics like Noam Chomsky, or James Petras, for example, for a grasp of events in Latin America is a mistake. Those writers theoretical preconceptions tend to fall apart when applied to specific realities. One need not follow the anti-Stalinism of the historian E.P.Thompson into its ultimate social-democrat cul-de-sac to acknowledge the central argument of “The Poverty of Theory” against idealist theory.

The article “Pink Tide in Latin America: An Alliance Between Local Capital and Socialism” by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya published on May 3 by Global Research is an example of this sad truth. In the final paragraphs of his article, a series of reflections on the future developments in the region after Chavez’ death, the author writes:

“It can be argued that the political current in Latin America is mostly a question of financial and economic independence, rather than a socialist project challenging the capitalist world-system.”

Without developing further this thesis, Nazemroaya’s piece actually is an exercise in inconsequential and superficial dissection of the progressive/radical governments in the region, with the purpose of questioning the anti-capitalist character of the process of integration taking place in Latin America. Since Nazemroaya’s analysis spreads many biases and mistaken views that are functional to the imperial propaganda efforts against those governments, we will deal with it in this article, but first let us address the core thesis the author put forward in his piece without thoroughly grounding it.

Indeed, there is a (conflictive) synergy between (some) Capitalist and anti-capitalist interests behind the movement for Latin American unity and independence. There is a huge amount of money in the hands of the Latin American oligarchies which, under the right circumstances, might be interested in investing in the regional market rather than, say, in the Swiss banking system or in regional tax havens. The emergence of China as a major lender and investor in the region, the stagnation of the US and European economies and the massive development projects carried out thanks to the initiative of governments which Nazemroaya designates under the derogatory term “Pink Tide”, explain some of the central drives behind this process. But does this mean that what is going on in Latin America today is not the emergence of “a socialist project challenging the capitalist world-system”?

Whoever doesn’t see the anti-capitalist value of ending the hegemony of Western imperialism once and for all and of building a multi-polar world order should start writing science-fiction novels instead of feigning engagement in actual anti-capitalist struggle. It’s really puzzling that a  Research Associate of the  Centre for Research on Globalization has problems grasping this point. However, there is much more to the anti-capitalist ambitions of the Latin American integrationist efforts than the multi-polar dimension alone.

In Latin America, it is impossible to engage in the construction of socialist and anti-capitalist alternatives without at the same time struggling to integrate the region politically, economically and even culturally. “I desire to see America fashioned into the greatest nation in the world, greatest not so much by virtue of her area and wealth as by her freedom and glory” (1). That is the legacy of Bolivar, as was the legacy of Martí, of Sandino, Mariátegui, Gaitán, Che, Fidel Castro and many other Latin American revolutionaries since Independence. This is so because the colonial and imperial powers needed to split the region up into small countries in order to exploit its resources and labor. This is not something Chavez made up, it is an old insight down here.

At the core of the Latin American process of independent integration is the Bolivarian Alliance, ALBA, which comprises 8 full members with a total population of 70 or 80 million (some 15% of the region’s population) plus an ever-growing list of countries participating as guest members and observers.

ALBA’s economic relationships are not based on profit but on solidarity and complementarity among its members. Nor is it an alliance of convenience, but a project aimed at consolidating a higher political unit beyond Capitalism. It is not based on Venezuelan charity either, but on the use of common resources as a lever enabling its member countries to leave Capitalism behind.

Through ALBA and schemes such as PETROCARIBE (18 member countries), Venezuelan oil imports are re-invested by non oil-producing countries in social and economic programs financed by almost interest-free long-term loans. Thus, agricultural countries such as Nicaragua widen their list of trade partners, but most importantly, they develop and diversify their economies, becoming less dependent on the export of agricultural products.

Exchanges at all levels between Venezuela, Cuba and the rest of the ALBA member countries aim at sharing experiences on all fields. For example, Nicaraguan rural workers travel to Venezuela to share their experiences of cooperative organization in order to help Venezuela increase its food production. Cuban personnel from many different fields, specially health care and education, play a very important role in many social programs, but they also share their experience and know-how while at the same time gathering many experiences from their colleagues in the other member countries. 

ALBA members have started using their own  national currencies instead of the US dollar to trade with each other through a financial arrangement called SUCRE, the Unified System of Regional Compensation. This scheme helps protect the ALBA’s economies from the financial collapse of Capitalism.

From the examples above, it is foolish to deny the anticapitalist dynamics of ALBA. Even more foolish would be to deny ALBA’s influence on the rest of Latin America.

ALBA was founded in 2004 after an agreement between Venezuela and Cuba. The following year, in 2005, the US plan to build a “free trade” zone in the Americas, the FTAA, was buried at the Summit of The Americas in Mar del Plata, Argentina, when most Latin American governments refused to hail Bush’s offer of “open up your customs or else…” Without the joint leadership of Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Lula da Silva and late Argentinean president Néstor Kirchner, this strategic defeat of imperialism in Latin America would not have been possible.

With the establishment, on February 23rd, 2010, of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, CELAC, the 33 countries in the region, for the first time in history, created an organization outside the control of the United States and Canada. Without the role played by Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua, CELAC’s profile would not be as integral as it is today. Actually, Venezuela’s contribution was crucial, not only because of the strategic dimension of the Bolivarian revolution, but also because of its intelligent handling of the most reactionary sectors of the Colombian oligarchy represented by Alvaro Uribe.

It is quite clear that some Capitalist interests see important opportunities in all these developments, but they are not politically organized. The Latin American right is dominated by highly aggressive, reactionary pro-imperialist political parties, right-wing networks and corporate media. On a daily bases, these groups conspire and carry out disinformation campaigns against almost all governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially those with progressive and radical inclinations.

In his article, Nazemroaya questions these government’s leftist and anti-capitalist credentials. Although he warns against “oversimplification and romanticization”, and although he tries to define what he understands as “left”, Nazemroaya confuses the concepts and decontextualizes the facts, ending up with a list of more or less flattering aspects which he then uses to build up a negative portrait of the developments in Latin America.

Let us start with the concepts. Correctly, Nazemroaya defines “left” and “right” as political positions within a given context, but he then almost immediately abandons all interest in understanding the multiplicity of the contexts that compose the reality of the region to focus on the fact that there is “a Plethora of ‘Lefts’ in Latin America”, an “eclectic bunch” as the author’s derogatory style defines them.

Nazemroaya goes even further and states that “Latin American left-wing governments do not strictly operate to the ‘left’”: So, according to his actual view, there is a “real left” (a context-independent Left he feels he is entitled to define as such) and some kind of “fake left” (another context-independent left he thinks one is entitled to denounce as false). As “proof” of his assertion, the author refers to an alleged “debate over whether the Cuban socialist project is genuinely reforming or if it will eventually follow the paths of capitalist restoration like China and Vietnam”.

A debate where? In some cafe in Toronto? That is not a serious argument, for two reasons. Firstly, the existence of debates about the future course of a revolution are no proof of the actual orientation of that revolution. Secondly, Nazemroaya passes as received truths his opinions on socialism in China and Vietnam without feeling it necessary to go into any further details.

Actually, as true as the fact that there are many “lefts” in Latin America, is the fact that there is a vast experience of collective discussions among those “lefts”. An example of this is the Forum of Sao Paulo, which since 1990 has gathered more than 90 political organizations from almost all countries, including Puerto Rico. Most  countries are represented by several political parties, and in cases such as Argentina and Uruguay, by 12 or 13 organizations.

For over 20 years, those organizations, ranging from the Chilean Socialist Party to the Cuban Communist Party, from various Peronist parties in Argentina to Peruvian nationalists, just to mention a few examples, have been able to carry out many debates and achieve consensus around key issues such as the struggle to end the US genocidal blockade of Cuba, the support to the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and ALBA as well as the project of continental integration.

The huge continental wave of solidarity with the Bolivarian revolution after Hugo Chavez’ death, especially in face of the fascist violence unleashed by Capriles Radonski’s thugs, is another case in point in relation to the capacity of this variegated array of “leftist” movements to very quickly set aside their differences for a common cause. Without the existence of similar mechanisms and processes, it would have been impossible, in recent months, to mobilize a movement capable of denouncing the Cuban CIA agent Yoani Sanches World Tour. In capital after capital where the CIA blogger attempted to smear Cuba, she was received by large groups of activists that on several occasions managed to force her to desist from her activities.

Another case in point, The existence of the Network of Intellectuals in Defence of Humanity, composed of hundreds, if not thousands, of intellectuals from all over the world and from a broad ideological spectrum, routinely organizing campaigns in defence of Cuba, Venezuela and ALBA, as well as against  imperialist putschist moves in countries such as Honduras, Ecuador or Paraguay. Without denying the differences between various political movements, it is necessary to stress that there exists an ever-growing common understanding of the problems and challenges ahead.

Nazemroaya warns against easy generalizations but goes on to make sweeping generalizations such as the following:

“Latin America’s comprador elites are the local representatives of the foreign corporations, governments, and interests that have exploited Latin America for centuries. These comprador elites can frankly be described as either the ‘House Negros’ or racist upper class that have historically ruled Latin America and managed its wealth and resources for the changing centres of power in other parts of the world that have controlled the area. Today, the regional comprador elites are mostly aligned with the United States and prefer Miami or New York City to Caracas or Quito”.

One first commentary about this description is obvious: If the Latin American “comprador elites are mostly aligned with the US and prefer Miami or New York to Caracas or Quito”, how can they actually be a driving force behind a process of regional integration that is not to the liking of the US, NATO and Europe? Are they really a driving force behind this process as Nazemroaya implies?

This is the kind of sweeping, oversimplifying generalization that makes it impossible to understand the contexts and the particular traits of the various countries in the region. This in turn explains why there are so many “lefts” which, incidentally, show a startling capacity to cooperate with each other and to reach a common consensus around key issues. Also, such oversimplifying generalizations make it impossible to understand the complexities of the international relations among the region’s countries, for example, in the case of the relations between Colombia and Venezuela and the Peace Process taking place between FARC-EP and Santos.

The 33 nations that compose Latin America and the Caribbean show a common situation of dependence on imperialism, but they also show startling differences. Countries like Chile, Argentina or Uruguay have very strong European cultural influence, while other countries, such as Bolivia or Guatemala have big indigenous majorities. Some oligarchies are richer than others, some of them have had more freedom than others to carry out policies of import substitution.

Some countries, such as Honduras and Paraguay, have been ruthlessly subjected to a state of utmost political underdevelopment for decades by repressive dictatorships, while others, such as Ecuador or Uruguay, have enjoyed relatively long periods of successful reformism. Although Latin America is the world’s most unequal region, not all countries and societies are equally poor and not all of them are equally underdeveloped. Different forms of dependent economic insertion in the World Market, different political cultures, different social realities explain the differences among the political subjects.

Are “Latin America’s comprador elites … the local representatives of the foreign corporations, governments, and interests that have exploited Latin America for centuries” as Nazemroaya puts it? They are many other things besides that. They are mediators between the Western multinational interests and the local markets, but in many cases, they are players on their own right as well. Think about the example of Mexican Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man. Think about the financial Colombian capitalists represented by Santos or even sectors of the Brazilian oligarchy. 

They fear Socialism and most progressive politics, but they also fear the prospects of a sociopolitical meltdown that would make their profits vanish into thin air. In many cases, they have to reluctantly accept many of the progressives’ and radicals’ policies, even if their newspapers routinely pour bile on those governments.

Lacking a better political reference frame, Nazemroaya lays hand on James Petras’ typology on the Latin American left – one the weakest intellectual products of the US-American sociologist. With this typology, an otherwise sharp analyst such as Petras cannot resist the Western temptation of handing out small stars of revolutionary approval to movements he fancies more than others, irrespective of the concrete circumstances of their struggles. 

Incapable of understanding many of the true challenges of social transformation in the real world and the actual limits of political power, Petras projects his romanticized revolutionary ideals on various movements and subjects. When those movements in real life do not behave according to Petras’ wishes, they are either ditched or condescendingly tapped on the back with some scornful comment on having “sold out”. Apparently unable to understand the value of nation-building for the materialization of any sort of socialist project, he rejects movements such as Peronismo, irrespective of how stubbornly the working-class masses support them.

Petras’ schematic division between “radical left”, “pragmatic left”, “pragmatic neo-liberals” and “doctrinaire neo-liberal regimes” is seriously flawed when confronted with reality. If FARC were in the same situation as PSUV in Venezuela, it would certainly act along much the same lines. In fact, it supports the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and shares its inspirational force, namely, the heritage of Simon Bolivar.

In Brazil, the Landless Workers’ Movement gives critical support to the Worker’s Party (PT). While it rightly criticizes the agribusiness-oriented development strategy of Lula’s and Dilma Roussef’s party, the Landless Workers’ Movement also understands the various constraints the PT government faces being dependent on alliances with other political forces, in an inmense country where the oligarchy retains considerable power at all levels. They are also well aware of what it would mean were the neo-liberal right to return to political power in Brazil.

In Argentina, to call Cristina Fernández a “pragmatic neo-liberal” is an outright insult, not to mention an irresponsible lack of solidarity with a progressive government subject every day to the most vicious destabilizing campaigns from the oligarchy. No neo-liberal regime increases minimum wages, raises pensions, improves education or fights poverty. Nor does any neo-liberal regime say “Good-bye” to IMF the way Argentina has done.

The same goes for Mauricio Funes’ government in El Salvador, where the FMLN is on its way to win the coming elections with a candidate of its own. Incapable of identifying processes and accumulation of forces, dogmatic analysts such as Petras/Nazemroaya see only traitors, sell-outs and capitalists everywhere. The superficiality of Petras’ analysis becomes sheer bad faith when it comes to certain countries he simply doesn’t mention such as Nicaragua, where cooperatives account for about 40% of the country’s GDP and about 70% of the work force.

Back in mid-2008, a group of leading left-wing Western intellectuals, most prominently Noam Chomsky, wrote a letter supporting a hunger strike held by ex-FSLN leader Dora Maria Tellez in Nicaragua. Tellez was protesting the elimination of her MRS political alliance from the municipal elections in November of that year for having failed to comply with the electoral law. So Noam Chomsky and the other well-respected intellectuals concerned demonstrated the loyalty and solidarity of their intellectual-managerial class and spoke out on her behalf.

In fact, as it transpired, the MRS immediately entered into an electoral alliance with the Nicaragua’s corrupt extreme right-wing PLC party. They campaigned in particular in support of reactionary banker, Eduardo Montealegre who to this day uses his parliamentary immunity to avoid indictment for multi-million dollar banking fraud. Clearly, the MRS suckered Noam Chomsky and his fellow intellectuals into misguidedly supporting her 2008 charade, because those intellectuals had no idea of the political realities in Nicaragua. Anyone who doubts MRS’ allegiance to the US Embassy in Managua, should read some of the diplomatic cables recently released by WikiLeaks on the subject.

That particular case only highlights the pitfalls of depending on the neat schemes of the managerial class who dominate intellectual production in North America and Europe. So when Nazemroaya cites James Petras as his theoretical reference point in his recent  article on Latin America, one needs to apply extreme skepticism to his arguments so as to try and discern the reality. Among the typical omissions of James Petras and his colleagues, Nicaragua understandably looms large by its absence.

They see that a given country still is in the grip of IMF loans, but they are incapable of seeing that the country is becoming less dependent on such loans. They see that a given country is depending on agro-exports, but they don’t see how that country is diversifying its economy and becoming less dependent on those exports. They see capitalists and State-Capitalism and cry “Neoliberalism! Extractivism!” without even proposing a workable alternative that might to develop a country’s productive forces. Or else when they actually see those alternatives being implemented by those governments, they shout “It is not enough!”.

To revolutions applies an old Latin American saying: “It is easy to look at the lady from afar, but quite a different story to go ahead and talk to her”.

A superficial and disrespectful treatment of developments in Latin America poses two sets of problems. The first one is that it makes practical solidarity more difficult, especially now, when Washington is engaging in a fascist continental crusade against Latin America. The second set of problems has to do with the crucial importance of the Latin American experience for any new projects beyond Capitalism anywhere else in the world.