Israel To Expel Africans

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nyetanyahu

The Israeli regime has decided to send thousands of African migrants to an undisclosed country in an attempt to stem the influx of migrants.

According to a court document made public on Monday, an Israeli lawyer said that a deal was reached with an unidentified country to absorb the migrants. The lawyer stated that the absorption of the migrants would be “gradual.”

Tally Kritzman-Amir, an immigration law expert at the Academic Center for Law and Business in Tel Aviv, said, "It is possible to transfer the migrants to a third country," adding, "but the primary responsibility to the rights of the refugees still lies with Israel."

Later on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, "We have stopped the infiltration phenomenon into Israel. Last month only two infiltrators entered Israel, compared to more than 2,000 a year ago. Now we are focused on the infiltrators leaving."

Over the past eight years, some 60,000 African migrants, mostly from Eritrea or Sudan, have entered Israel via Egypt.

Israel has built a fence along the border with Egypt to prevent the influx of migrants. Last year, it offered cash to the migrants to leave voluntarily.

Editorial

 20 YEARS OF THE INSIGHT

On September 3, 1993 Mr Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, the current National Chairman of “the New Patriotic Party (NPP) launched the weekly insight” 

Professor Kwame Karikari, then the Director of the Institute of Communication studies, University of Ghana chaired the event, attended by many political figures especially left-wing activists.

 The launching of “The Insight at the time was considered by many as a reckless adventure. The new newspaper had no office. It did not have even a computer or a table. Its bank account was empty. All it had  at the time were credit facilities and a gift of six realms of newsprint from Nana Kofi Coomson, then the Editor of “The Chronicle”.

We recall that soon after the official launch, one of the friends of the newspaper walked up to the Editor and asked “how are you going to come out next week?

What “The Insight” did not have in resources, was made up by the raw enthusiasm of the progressive militant youth who were determined to struggle against all odds for social justice and democracy for all.

These young men included Yaw and Eric Nsarkoh, Comrade Kpani,  Ekow Yeboah, Azumah Besore, Ablor  Sowah  and others.

 There were other volunteers who joined the crusade or reckless adventure because of their fate in the future. These included David Ato Kwamina Pratt, Ken Klevor and Abraham Ussher.

Of course, the financial contribution of Marian Baaba Pratt was invaluable in the early days of struggle and pain.

The Insight has survived 20 grueling years and had even become a respected daily newspaper.

 As we celebrate 20 years of success, we open our pages to our readers and even those who hate our guts to tell us where we have gone wrong.

 We will also republished some of the features and news stories carried in the early days of “The Insight”.

Please let us celebrate 20 years of existence together.

Rawlings Condemns Israel

 

Former President J. J Rawlings

Ghana’s former President, Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings has at a conference of former Heads of State in Bahrain called on Israel to restrain itself in its involvement in the conflict in Syria.

President Rawlings also called on the rest of the international community to reinvigorate the option of political solution of the Syria conflict and condemn Israel’s recent air raids on Syria.

The former President was making an intervention during the 31st meeting of the Inter Action Council held in Manama, Bahrain from May 9 to 11.

The Inter Action Council is an independent organisation of former heads of state, which aims at fostering international cooperation and action in three priority areas of peace and security, world economic revitalisation and universal ethical standards.

The conference which was held under the auspices of First Deputy Prime Minister of Bahrain and Crown Prince, Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa brought together eighteen former heads of state from across the globe including three from Africa.

Former President Rawlings said he was disappointed that only China and Russia had reproached Israel over her unilateral actions in Syria and called on the United States to take a stronger view of the situation in the Middle East and seek equity for all parties.

“The dynamics are such that the time has come to reinvigorate a political solution and the United States should seize the high moral ground if she wants to be a global policeman especially in the Israeli – Palestinian issue.

“Today we live with the injustice in the Middle East as if it were the natural course of life.

America needs help on the Israel - Palestinian issue. If we do not right the injustice the injustice perpetuates itself,” President Rawlings said.

The conference discussed among other issues, the Present State of the World, The Water Energy Nexus, Bridging the Religious Divide and Nuclear Non-Proliferation.

Experts who contributed to the topics included Yikiya Amano, Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Nobuyasu Abe, Director of the Center for the Promotion of Disarmament and non-proliferation at the Japan Institute for International Affairs, Rabi Mohtar, Executive Director of Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute and Rebecca Johnson, Executive Director of the Acronym Institute for Disarmament.

A communiqué issued at the end of the meeting called on states to adhere to international law as provided for in the United Nations Charter, UN resolutions, treaties and conventions and rules emanating from international courts.

The communiqué also expressed deep concern about the Israeli air strikes in Syria and called on all concerned sides to exercise maximum calm and restraint with a sense of responsibility to avoid an escalation of the conflict.

Russia and United States were encouraged in their efforts to convene an international conference aimed at ending the civil war in Syria while a call went to Iran to fully implement its Safeguards agreement and its other obligations and to engage with the IAEA to achieve concrete results on all outstanding issues.

Former world leaders who attended the conference included Jean Chretien, former Prime Minister of Canada, Andreas van Agt, former Prime Minister of The Netherlands, Bertie Ahern, former Prime Minister of Ireland, James Bolger, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Franz Vranisky, former Chancellor of Austria, Benjamin Mkapa, former President of Tanzania, Oscar Arias former President of Costa Rica, Andreas Pastrana, former President of Colombia and Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, former Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Others are, Yasuo Fukuda, former Prime Minister of Japan, Abdel Salam Majali, former Prime Minister of Jordan, James Mitchell, former Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Olusegun Obasanjo former President of Nigeria, Constantinos Simitis, former Prime Minister of Greece, George Vassiliou, for President of Cyprus and Vaira Vike-Freiberga, former President of Latvia.

How Far Is the United States of Africa?

By Motsoko Pheko

How is it that 50 years on, the OAU/AU has failed in the main objective for which it was founded? Because the United States of Africa cannot be brought about by leaders who are not Pan-Africanists

The 50th anniversary of the African Union, the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), is upon the African people this 25th May 2013. Both Organisations were formed with the main objective of ultimately bringing about the United States of Africa.
Why was there to be a United States of Africa? Let me remind by quoting three African leaders on this important subject of deep concern to Pan-Africanists. Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana wrote, 'If we [Africa's people], are to remain free, if we are to enjoy the full benefit of Africa's resources, we must be united to plan for our total defence and the full exploitation of our material and human means in the full interest of all our people. To go it alone will limit our horizons, curtail our expectations and threaten our liberty.'

In the southern tip of Africa, Prof. Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, that most feared leader by the apartheid colonialist regime in South Africa who was imprisoned on Robben Island without even a mock trial and under a special law, called 'Sobukwe Clause', made to silence him for his Pan-Africanist outlook in politics, until he died, said in April 1959:

'We regard it as the sacred duty of every African state to strive ceaselessly and energetically for the creation of a United States of Africa from Cape to Cairo and Madagascar to Morocco. The days of small independent countries are gone. Today we have, on one hand, great powerful countries of the world. America and Russia cover huge tracts of land territorially and number millions of people. On the other hand [European] small weak independent countries are beginning to form military and economic federations hence NATO and the European Economic Common Market.'

This Pan Africanist visionary concluded, 'For the lasting peace of Africa and the solution of economic, social and political problems of the continent, there must be a democratic principle. This means that foreign domination under whatever disguise must be destroyed.'
How justified are the above statements by Nkrumah and Sobukwe today? In July 2OO8, Pope Benedict XVI spoke the truth that has been hidden in Western countries from the world for centuries. The Pope said, 'Our Western way of life has stripped Africa's people of their riches and continues to strip them.'

Corroborating this fact, a member of the Scottish Parliament, Mark Ballad, declared, 'Our relation with Africa is an exploitative one. The West no longer needs standing armies to strip Africa of its resources, because it can do it more effectively with multi-national companies.'
After his initial doubts about the absolute importance of a United States of Africa, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, first President of Tanzania proclaimed, 'There is no time to waste. We must either unite now or perish. Political independence is only a prelude to a new and more involved struggle for the right to conduct our economic and social affairs, to construct our economic and social affairs, unhampered by crushing humiliating control and interference.'
Informed institutions and learned people outside Africa affirm that the economic power of Africa depends on a United States of Africa. According to the 2006 World Bank Data, if Africa was then a single country, it would have had a total gross income of $978 billion.

In his book, Africa Rising Prof. Vijay Mahajan, former dean of the Indian School of Business at the University of Texas in America has written that the figure of $978 billion for Africa would have placed Africa ahead of India as a total market. He points out that a United States of Africa would show up as the tenth top economy in the world. Only the economies of America, Japan, Germany, Britain, China, France, Italy, Spain and Canada would top Africa. A United States of Africa economy would top that of India which was $906.5 billion in 2006, that of Brazil which was $892.28 billion, Republic of Korea which was $856.6 billion, Russian Federation which was $822.4 billion and Mexico which was $820.3 billion.

This is not surprising to those who are knowledgeable about the enormous riches of Africa which, as Pope Benedict XVI and other justice-loving people have observed, do not benefit Africans at present. Indeed, it was not a joke when Nkrumah told the founders of the OAU that long time ago that, 'We are today the richest of the continents and yet the poorest of continents. But in unity, our continent could begin to smile in a new era of prosperity and power.'

The West has fed Africa with the myth and poison of 'Aid.' African leaders have developed a sickening dependency syndrome on this 'Aid.' This 'Aid' comes from people who are getting their own riches from Africa. This so-called 'Aid' to Africa is in fact a form of the disease called AIDS. It is indeed, the economic Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome inflicted on Africa under the cover of curing its African people of it. This incurable disease is sinking Africa deeper and deeper into foreign debts that compromise African governments and force them to focus on 'Aid' from their former colonial masters who underdeveloped Africa through slavery and colonialism in the first instance.

Africans must not present themselves, to the West in particular, as if they are bankrupt debtors with nothing to put on the international table. The West could not have produced its nuclear weapons without Africa's uranium. Their cars would run dry without oil from Africa. All their industries would grind to a halt without Africa. It is Africa's exploited raw materials by them, especially minerals, that give these supposed 'Aid givers' their riches and their Western 'first world economy.'

Hear this directly from the horse's mouth. It is just one example from one of the African countries. Not long ago, an American Senator Jesse Helms reminded his people: 'South Africa is the source of over 80 percent of American mineral supply and 86 percent of Platinum resources....South Africa has 96 percent of the world's chrome reserves. As you know, there is no substitute for chrome in our military and industrial manufacturing. Without South African chrome, no engines for modern jet aircraft, cruise missiles or armaments could be built. The United States would be grounded. Our military would be unarmed. Without South African chrome, surgical equipment and utensils could not be produced. Our hospitals and doctors would be helpless.'

Africa has subsidised the economies of Western Europe and America for centuries through its riches and labour at gunpoint. Even in their war against Adolf Hitler, Africa's riches were simply seized and used in the interest of Europe. The Colonial Secretary of the Belgian government in exile, Godding boasting about this, said 'During the war, the Congo was able to finance all the expenditure of the Belgian government in exile in London, including the diplomatic service as well as the cost of armed forces in Europe and America...the Belgian gold reserve could be left intact.'

It is this kind of criminal exploitation and looting of African resources by imperialists that Pan-Africanist leaders such as Nkrumah, Lumumba and Sobukwe wanted destroyed. It is dehumanising Africans. No single African country can stop this vile system of economic exploitation of Africa alone. All African countries must stand up together and destroy it. It affects them all. Africa is a house with 54 rooms in it.

When one room catches fire, other rooms are endangered. The problem of Mali, the problem of Somalia, the problem of DRC, the problem of Central African Republic - the problem of any African country is the problem of Africa. It is the problem of brothers and sisters. It is the problem of the African family. You can't ignore it without being the next to be injured in imperialist agendas such as 'regime change,' withdrawal of Western 'Aid' or imposition of economic sanctions.

The truth is that when Africans were enslaved or colonised or discriminated against because of their black colour, the perpetrators of these barbaric acts never cared whether you were Congolese, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Azanian, Malawian, Zimbabwean, Motswana, South African or Swazi; they just inflicted their atrocities, whether in Jamaica or America. To not act Pan-Africanly is African suicide.

Why is the African Union failing on the main objective for which it was founded? The United States of Africa cannot be brought about by leaders who are not Pan-Africanists. The propeller of the United States of Africa is Pan-Africanism. The United States of Africa was a Pan-African vision. This vision began many years ago, but was formalised in 1900 in the Diaspora through Pan-Africanists such as Henry Williams Sylvester.

It is Pan-Africanism that from its 5th Pan African Congress in 1945, intensified Africa's independence movement that destroyed classical colonialism in Africa. It is this Pan-Africanism that must now destroy neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism. The essence of neo-colonialism is that the state which is subordinated to a foreign imperialist power has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. But in reality its economy and foreign policy are controlled by foreign powers. The value of such a state lies in being used to create new economic, social and cultural conditions for its former colonial master. Genuine national independence is more than just flying a country's flag, having a parliament and a president.

How many such states are members of the African Union? How did some member states of the African Union vote in the Security Council in 2011 for a Resolution that led to the death of Muammar Gaddafi? Libya is today the most bombed African country by NATO and America in their bid to access and control Libyan oil wealth for their own countries.
Of course, leaders who are rulers of South Africa long denounced Africanism and Pan-Africanism as 'anti-white' and 'racist.' This was in 1955 when white neo-liberals of the pseudo-communist brand imposed on the ANC what they called the 'Freedom Charter.' This programme cheated the dispossessed Africans on the return of their land. Today, South Africa is a 'two nations' syndrome, one extremely rich and white minority and the other extremely poor and 80 percent African majority.

With regard to the African Union, there are many people who now perceive South Africa as 'a sub-imperialist' agent serving the interests of former colonial countries than those of Africa. Statements by its president such as a 'decisive intervention' and a 'standby force,' on the continent do not allay fears that this is not the American 'Africom' under cover to protect the continued Western looting of African raw materials, especially minerals.

This does great harm to the African Union and will hinder its mission to bring about a United States of Africa. The African Union should not have members that hunt with the hunters, but run with the rabbit and making sure that the rabbit is not caught. There has been too much suffering by Africans for their leaders to be untrustworthy in serving African interests truthfully. In South Africa, there are still colonial and apartheid public holidays. But May 25 - Africa Liberation Day, for which the whole Continent sweated blood, there is no room. It is not a statutory public day here. Time does not allow me to continue.

Let me close by reminding all Sons and Daughters of Africa, on this 50th anniversary of the African Union, the words of that shining star of Pan-Africanism, Kwame Nkrumah. A day before the 25th May 1963, he addressed African Heads of State and Government on the formation of the OAU, the predecessor of African Union.

He declared, 'No sporadic act or pious resolutions can resolve our present problems....As a continent we have emerged into independence in a difficult age with imperialism grown stronger, more ruthless and experienced, and more dangerous in its international associations. Our economic advancement demands the end of colonial and neo-colonial domination of Africa.'

Dr. Motsoko Pheko is author of The Hidden Side Of South African Politics, Towards Africa's Authentic Liberation and Land Is Money And Power. He is a former Member of the South African Parliament as well as former Representative of the victims of apartheid and colonialism at the United Nations in New York and at the Un Commission on Human Rights in Geneva.

Erdogan’s anti-Syria plot back fires

By Finian Cunningham

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lives in a world of foreign intrigue and mischief making. Now his penchant for dark forces seems to be rebounding on his government - with a vengeance.

Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), accused of increasingly authoritarian tendency, are being challenged by nearly a week of widespread public protests across Turkey, which has even unnerved Washington and sent tourists and foreign investors fleeing.

The protests, which began peacefully in Istanbul last Friday, have now spread to the country’s capital, Ankara, and dozens of other cities and towns in almost every province.

The prime minister’s typically intransigent attitude and the excessive police violence towards the demonstrators have galvanized the general public further into demanding his resignation.

What began as a peaceful sit-in against the government’s plan to turn an iconic public park in Istanbul into a shopping mall has escalated into a host of underlying grievances against Erdogan and his AKP administration.

Chief among the grievances is the way Erdogan has turned his country into a launch pad for NATO’s covert war for regime change in Turkey’s southern neighbor, Syria.

Since March 2011, NATO member Turkey has acted as a conduit for weapons and mercenaries to infiltrate and destabilize Syria with a campaign of terror carried out by extremist Sunni and Wahhabi militia.

Erdogan’s Turkey, along with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan, has acted as an attack dog for the senior NATO players of Washington, London and Paris, to wreck Syrian society and force the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad.

It is part of a rolling plan of regime change by NATO across the oil- and gas-rich Middle East in which the Arab regimes of the Persian Gulf and Erdogan’s AKP government are serving as battering rams. The ultimate target is Syria’s main regional ally, Iran.

This criminal covert war of aggression, which has resulted in as many as 80,000 Syrian deaths, has been conducted under the cynical guise of “supporting a pro-democracy uprising.”

Never mind that the foreign backers of “democracy” include some of the most dictatorial regimes on earth, the other awkward fact is that the so-called “rebels” on the ground are largely foreign mercenaries who have negligible support among the Syrian people.

Yet when Assad has repeatedly pointed out - with cogent evidence - the nature of the foreign conspiracy afflicting his country, he has been denounced as an irrational liar.

One of his main detractors has been his erstwhile “friend” - Turkey’s Recep Erdogan. The Turk leader has condemned Assad as “a butcher” and is leading the NATO chorus for the Syrian president to abandon his sovereign office - without any regard for the democratic wishes of the Syrian people.

The irony is that now Turkey is being assailed by massive, genuine public protests demanding democratic accountability on a range of issues, Erdogan turns around and excoriates his own people as being the agents of “foreign governments”.

Thousands of Turks have been injured and arrested over the past five days by riot police sparing no heavy-handed tactics to crackdown on peaceful demonstrators. Two youths have been killed so far, the latest in the southern city of Antakya from gunshot wounds that witnesses claim were fired by Turk security forces. At least two protesters have lost their eyes from police firing tear-gas canisters at point-blank range.

Media reports put the number of separate protests at over 230 in 67 cities across Turkey, including the major ones of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana.

Among the estimated hundreds of thousands of people getting out on the streets are secularists, Islamists, professionals, businessmen, workers, unemployed, environmentalists and human rights activists. Trade unions have now called for general strikes this week in support of the protests; and universities have postponed final examinations in a move seen as encouraging students to attend the anti-government rallies without compromising their graduation plans.

In the midst of this nationwide chaos and dissent, Erdogan has decided to fly to Morocco for a four-day official visit, dismissing the demonstrations, on his departure, as being all “a foreign plot”.

"Our intelligence work is ongoing," Erdogan said with sinister tones. "It is not possible to reveal their names. We shall be discussing these with them and will be following up, in fact we will also settle accounts with them."

That sounds like the ravings of a paranoid leader who is living in a parallel universe “detached from reality” - as he so often derided Syria’s Bashar al-Assad for.

The difference is that Assad is firmly attached in the reality of his country and people being subjected to a criminal foreign conspiracy of mass murder and sabotage - a conspiracy that Erdogan has played a leading role in fomenting and fuelling over the past two years.

The criminal intrigues that Erdogan has embroiled his country in against Syria have come back to haunt the Turk population.

Not only are they horrified by the violence that Erdogan has helped to unleash against Syrian civilians, including the use of chemical weapons by the NATO-backed al-Qaeda terrorists, but these same mercenaries are bringing that wanton terror back into Turkish communities.

In the past week, Turk media reported the arrest of several members of the Al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra front who were armed with chemical weapons materials. It was reported that the terror group was on its way to carry out an atrocity in the southern Turkey city of Adana.

The presumed purpose of that bomb plot was to create a “false flag” event that would be blamed on Syrian government forces, thereby giving NATO a pretext to mount a direct military intervention in Syria. That intervention was top of Erdogan’s agenda when he visited US President Barack Obama in Washington last month.

The same murderous ploy was used on 11 May - five days before Erdogan’s trip to Washington - when two car bombs exploded in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli in southern Hatay Province, which killed more than 50 people, mostly Turkish citizens. Reliable reports say that massacre was the work of al Nusra and that Turk military intelligence may have colluded with the killers. Predictably, Erdogan blamed the Reyhanli atrocity on Syria, without a shred of evidence.

But the Turk prime minister’s intrigues are wearing transparently thin. An increasing number of Turkish people know that the suffering in Syria and Turkey is a result of his egotistical machinations for aggrandizing regional power at the behest of his NATO masters.

Maybe Erdogan was calculating that by bending over backwards to please NATO in its regional regime-change strategy, he would secure for himself world stature and a long-sought-after place for his country as a member of the European Union.

But with the scenes of public disorder and vicious repression now erupting across Turkey, Erdogan’s calculations and best-laid plans would seem to be finally biting the dust.

Statement from Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Mr Bruno Rodriguez, Cuba Foreign Minister

On May 30, the U.S. State Department repeated its unwonted accusation that Cuba is "a state sponsor of international terrorism."

Once again, this shameful decision has been taken deliberately with no truthful basis, ignoring the wide consensus and explicit demand from many sectors of U.S. society and the international community for an end to this injustice.

The sole objective of this discredited anti-Cuba exercise is to try and justify the maintenance of the blockade, a failed policy condemned worldwide. It is also an attempt to please a steadily decreasing anti-Cuba group desperately propping up a policy which no longer has any basis and is not even in the national interest of the United States, the majority of its population and of Cuban émigrés resident in the country.

The United States government insists on maintaining this arbitrary and unilateral designation, in spite of the total collapse of the ridiculous accusations and feeble arguments which it has traditionally utilized in recent years as an excuse for it, such as the presence in Cuba of fugitives from U.S. justice, none of whom in fact have been accused of terrorism. It also alleges that Cuba has taken in Basque members of ETA, ignoring the fact that this was in response to a request from the governments involved. It also notes that members of the Colombian guerrilla movement are living in the country, an absurd accusation given that, since 2011, Cuba has been a sponsor of the peace process in Colombia.

Cuban territory has never been and never will be utilized to harbor terrorists of any origin, nor for the organization, financing or perpetration of acts of terrorism against any country in the world, including the United States. The Cuban government unequivocally rejects and condemns any act of terrorism, anywhere, under any circumstances and whatever the alleged motivation might be.

On the contrary, the United States government employs state terrorism as a weapon against countries which defy its interests, provoking deaths in civilian populations. It has used drone aircraft to perpetrate extra-judicial executions of alleged terrorists, including U.S. citizens, resulting in the death of hundreds of innocent civilians.

Historically, the United States has been the refuge of self-confessed terrorists and murderers of Cuban origin and, to this day, is harboring Luis Posada Carriles, the mastermind of the first act of terrorism perpetrated on civil aviation in the Western Hemisphere, which provoked an explosion aboard a Cubana de Aviación aircraft off the coast of Barbados on October 6, 1976, and the death of its 73 passengers, including the national youth fencing team. While Posada is living in freedom and tranquility in Miami, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero y Fernando González remain unjustly incarcerated for fighting against terrorism in the United States, accused of crimes they did not commit.

For years, Cuba has suffered the consequences of acts of terrorism organized, financed and perpetrated from U.S. territory, with 3,478 persons killed and 2,099 left with disabilities. The Cuban government does not afford the government of the United States the least moral authority to judge it.

In 2002, the government of Cuba proposed to its U.S. counterpart the adoption of a bilateral agreement to confront terrorism, an offer which it reiterated in 2012, without having received any response.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly rejects the utilization for political ends of an issue as sensitive as international terrorism, and demands an end to this shameful designation, an offense to the Cuban people, the only objective of which is to attempt to justify the anachronistic and cruel blockade of Cuba, and which is to the discredit of the United States government itself.
Havana, May 30, 2013

Henrique Capriles: Provoking destabilization

Henrique Capriles

By Laura Bécquer Paseiro

After failing in his attempt to provoke internal chaos in Venezuela, defeated right-wing presidential candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski has turned his attention to the international arena. With a well devised and advised strategy, aided by the United States, he has undertaken a campaign beyond Venezuelan borders to delegitimize the legitimate government which won the last elections.

His method is a simple one. It is to destabilize national institutions and discredit the principal leaders of the Bolivarian process, in particular President Nicolás Maduro, with the backing of individuals such as Otto Reich and Roger Noriega.
His anything but innocent visit to Bogotá has provoked a storm which is threatening the positive climate of relations between Colombia and Venezuela, two nations with historical, economic and social ties.

Capriles stated that he began his tour to denounce the "fraudulent" popular will expressed at the April 14 elections. He went further than that, advising that he is still to meet with various other Latin American governments. "Colombia will not be the first nor last stop on this visit."

He packed his bags leaving aside accusations of his lack of governorship in the state of Miranda. Legislative Council President Aurora Morales stated May 30 that ignoring his responsibilities as governor "is placing Capriles beyond the Constitution," and recalled that the Miranda government lodged an appeal before the Supreme Court of Justice some weeks ago for clarification of the situation.

This tour of Capriles, one of the April 2002 coup leaders, is also threatening to affect the peace talks underway in Havana between the Juan Manuel Santos government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Army of the People (FARC-EP), in which Venezuela is participating as an observer. In this way he is playing along with the Colombian paramilitary ultra –right which previously supported him and is prepared to do anything to avert an end to the conflict in that country, which has become a lucrative business
As part of the strategy, the corporate press is using these distractions to conceal other news. 

Little has been said of the visit by three Bolivarian government ministers to Bogotá to promote economic links, and far less of recent Colombian-Venezuelan cooperation in combating narcotics, with the extradition from Venezuela of three notorious drug traffickers.

Capriles and his allies have little concern about methods and far less for their consequences.

The affection I have received is incredible-René

Rene Gonzalez

By Hugo García

In the Cuban Aviation Club’s International Parachuting Center here, Hero of the Republic René González presented a Cuban flag to the men’s and women’s national parachute teams which will represent the country in the Latin American Championship of the sport, to be held in Brazil.

He enjoyed the day in the company of his wife Olga Salanueva and new grandson Ignacio René, conversing amicably with those in attendance, taking photos with everyone and recalling the numerous times he had flown over Varadero, carrying parachutists up into the sky to jump. He also spoke with Juventud Rebelde.

What would the U.S. people and government gain, from an ethical and judicial point of view, if the Five were freed?

Freedom for the Five, beyond even the judicial aspect, could be a first step toward resolving problems between the United States and Cuba. The U.S. people have nothing to gain in this dispute, although it’s not a priority for them. When they give their opinion, they indicate that they are a little tired of the Cold War continuing to operate against a country which represents no danger to them.

Latin America is also demanding that the U.S. government change its policy toward Cuba and its continuance will have negative repercussions in relations between the United States and Latin America.

I think they need to sit down with Cuba and, obviously, the case of the Five would be a first order of business.

René acknowledged that the Cuban population has emphatically demonstrated its concern about the case of the Five, saying, "The affection I have received on the streets of Havana is incredible, but we must take the story everywhere, so that it spreads to the United States. The fundamental goal must be getting to U.S. society, so that the people finally become aware of a case which was concealed, from which they were excluded."

"We continue to be the same," René affirmed and emphasized that he is proud to have been part of Cuban aerial sports, "I always loved it and I always will for the rest of my life, just as I love Cuba and the Revolution we are constructing, the society we have yet to build."

While conversing with athletes and workers, René insisted that his four brothers in U.S. prisons, suffering the hatred of the most powerful country in the world, must be brought home.

"Wherever we go, we must be the standard bearers of our brothers’ cause, because they want to let Gerardo die of old age in prison, this is the goal of the U.S. government, that he die and that only his remains, perhaps, return to Cuba. We cannot rest, because we need these men in Cuba."

 

Spies Like Them

James B. Comey

By David Gomez

With the announcement that James B. Comey will be nominated by President Barack Obama to replace Robert W. Mueller III as the director of the FBI, a modern era will soon come to an end. Mueller has served longer (12 years) as FBI director than anyone since J. Edgar Hoover.

He is the first person to complete a full term as director since Hoover's tumultuous and controversial 48-year reign, and the imposition of a 10-year term limit by Congress in 1976. While the public and the press generally laud Mueller for his achievements at the FBI, his own agency has a more conflicted view. 

Mueller was appointed by President George W. Bush to replace Louis Freeh just days before 9/11, and was a bit like a raw recruit the first time he witnessed combat in the stressful period that followed the attack. He was little heard or seen in the field as he allowed Deputy Director Tom Pickard to lead the daily all-office conference calls and manage the initial stages of the TRADEBOM and PENTBOM cases, as the investigations into the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks were known. Mueller soon found his voice, however, and set about ensuring that the FBI was protected from the wolves that were circling the bureau, sniffing the blood of blame and recrimination for the 2,977 innocent victims. The wolves were bent on dismantling and destroying the organization that allowed 19 Saudi terrorists to live among us for so long, essentially unnoticed. The FBI was described as having precipitated an intelligence failure of epic proportions. 

Mueller eventually prevailed over his detractors, and he satisfied the FBI's numerous 9/11 critics by creating the National Security Branch, an Intelligence Division, a Cyber Division, and reprogramming thousands of FBI agents from criminal work into counterterrorism and intelligence analysis. He personally initiated one of those grand paradigm shifts in government that academics and historians build careers around analyzing and evaluating. There is no doubt that Director Mueller is held in the highest esteem by local law enforcement, Congress, and the general public; he will go down in history as one of the FBI's greatest directors. 

Within the FBI, however, there are at least two divergent views of Mueller's legacy. The first is that Mueller saved the FBI from being broken up into its component parts amid the 9/11 Commission's call to create a new domestic intelligence agency to address counterterrorism. For that political feat he is a hero to a great many current and former agents -- certainly to the more than 50 percent of FBI agents who have joined the bureau since 2001, many specifically to fight terrorism. Most of them have spent their entire careers working counterterrorism or intelligence matters, however, and they have no experience with the criminal investigative organization that was the pre-9/11 FBI. Theirs is a world of terrorism leads, assessments, preliminary investigations, national security letters, FISA intercepts, and the occasional undercover operation targeting a self-directed domestic terrorist.

Much like the way the FBI shifted in the 1940s from fighting bank robbery and gangster crime to fighting Nazis and catching Communist spies during the Cold War, the modern FBI became all counterterrorism, all intelligence, all the time, after the 9/11 attacks. Mueller effectively transformed the FBI into the intelligence agency that his critics always wanted it to be.

To effect this great change, Mueller mandated that the FBI would leave no counterterrorism leads unaddressed, at a time when the amount of unaddressed work in FBI files was a standard by which field office manpower needs were documented. At the direction of President Bush, Mueller ordered this focus on prevention -- at the expense, if need be, of prosecution. He shifted the internal and external legacy of the FBI agent from that of a hard-nosed, cigar-smoking, tough-guy criminal investigator, to one of desk-bound, egghead intelligence collector, perusing open and classified sources for leads and tips -- an FBI agent whose job it was to collate and analyze information about terrorism, not just to investigate federal crimes. 

But there is another view of Mueller's legacy. The shift to an intelligence agency was dramatic and disheartening to those who had joined the bureau under other former directors, particularly Louis Freeh, to investigate gangs, organized crime, and international cartels -- and actually put people in jail. It was now clear to them that being part of an intelligence agency was not the same as being a member of the world's premier law enforcement agency. 

Many senior agents view the changes with a jaundiced eye. In a nutshell, here's what a lot of current agents think: The focus on intelligence for intelligence's sake has been detrimental to the FBI, particularly within the criminal program. You can gather all the intelligence you want and "know your domain," but if you don't have the agents to act on the intelligence, or don't want to act on criminal intelligence, it's useless. Many outside the FBI do not understand that, unlike within the national security and intelligence communities, there is no system to easily disseminate criminal intelligence to other law enforcement agencies. So criminal evidence is often collected, reported, analyzed, and then filed away. 

Senior agents complain about the increase in the administrative burden that accompanied the shift to intelligence gathering: Intelligence reporting requirements often take away from the time necessary to build a case for prosecution. Instead, agents now spend their valuable investigative time entering evidence into computer systems, making their own copies, logging vehicle mileage, running records checks, and in general doing their own administrative support with no clerical assistance. "Support" positions have given way to intelligence analysis positions to track an al Qaeda threat that President Obama says is severely diminished and may no longer exist domestically. As one senior agent said to me, "If they want to pay a 20-year agent with an advanced degree and national criminal expertise to move file boxes and make copies of case files, who am I to complain?" All of this, however, makes the FBI far less efficient. 

Others noted the shift away from the law enforcement model to a corporate model. Internal FBI directives now come out as corporate policy. Outsiders like McKinsey Consulting and its 23-year-old Harvard MBAs were brought in to tell senior FBI agents how to transform themselves and work more efficiently. Learning Lean Six Sigma and earning your business black belt became more important than catching bad guys. The FBI's own Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide and other policy implementation guides (PIGs) have become overly burdensome to follow and impossible to commit to memory. For example, the PIG regarding the use of bureau vehicles is over 40 pages long, when all it really needs to say is, "Bureau vehicles are for official use only." 

In addition to the corporate transition, current street agents complain that the shift to intelligence work has made senior FBI officials perceive the bureau's analytical model as superior to the investigative model. Analysts are given more respect, particularly at FBI headquarters, where the influx of senior staff from within the U.S. intelligence community are given deference over those who carry guns, take risks (both with their lives and liability), are injured on duty, and ultimately collect the intelligence that the analysts regurgitate into reports for field agents. These are the views of the agents in the streets and are based on conversations with them about the direction of the FBI. 

As I write these words, I can already hear the disagreement from my colleagues and friends within the intelligence community, who will argue that my comments re-enforce the need for a separate agency to conduct domestic intelligence collection. But my argument is not about the need for analysts, but rather about how they are used in the bureau to the detriment of investigators, particularly within the criminal programs. When you try and create an animal by committee, you end up with a camel. That is what the FBI has become under Mueller ... a law-enforcement camel. 

Currently, the FBI's top investigative priorities, in order, are:

1. Protect the United States from terrorist attacks;
2. Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage;
3. Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes;
4. Combat public corruption at all levels;
5. Protect civil rights;
6. Combat transnational/national criminal organizations and enterprises;
7. Combat major white-collar crime;
8. Combat significant violent crime.

As you can see from this list, combating major white-collar and significant violent crime is now the FBI's lowest investigative priority. 

In my personal opinion, one of Mueller's major failings during his 12-year tenure has been ignoring the threat to national security that systemic mortgage fraud by banking insiders posed to the United States. The FBI basically ignored systemic financial institution fraud of major proportions. While many threats are often bandied about as a danger to national security, the near collapse of the housing industry through sub-prime lending and the securitization of mortgages almost resulted in a total failure of the banking industry. Without the intervention by Congress and the bailout of numerous banks "too big to fail," the United States -- and possibly the world -- would have experienced catastrophic consequences. 

According to a report by the Seattle Post Intelligencer in 2007, this occured because the FBI "dramatically cut its number of white-collar crime investigations, including mortgage fraud, after shifting about 2,400 agents from traditional crime-fighting squads to counterterrorism units in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks." The Post Intelligencer further reported that "the FBI was aware for years of 'pervasive and growing' fraud in the mortgage industry that eventually contributed to America's financial meltdown, but it did not take definitive action to stop it." The Bush administration later rejected FBI pleas for more agents to investigate mortgage fraud. "We have to prevent another 9/11-type surprise attack," agents were told by Bureau officials. Transfers to counterterrorism prevented the FBI from understanding how bad mortgages were packaged into bad securities, creating a widespread impact that weakened the greater economy. 

What then occurred was that FBI staffing issues after 9/11 led to white-collar criminals escaping prosecution and punishment in financial institution fraud cases involving billions of dollars. For example, the collapse of Washington Mutual Bank, which was the largest savings and loan institution in the United States until its collapse in 2008, due to horribly flawed sub-prime lending practices, resulted in no one in bank executive management (who had pledged to make WaMu "the Walmart of banking") going to jail. Not one! 

FBI officials knew what was going on because they had good criminal intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, on the corrupt attorneys and appraisers, and on the insider schemes. But no action was taken on the intelligence. Had the violators been terrorists whose crime resulted in deaths of innocent civilians -- instead of homes lost to foreclosure while the corporations reaped billions of dollars in profits -- the FBI would have been excoriated. But it was alleged that when Mueller was briefed on mortgage fraud, "his eyes would glaze over. It was not something that he would consider a high priority. It was not on his radar screen," according to a retired FBI official cited in the press. 

It wasn't just the FBI's white-collar crime program that lacked the resources and political will to do its job. Organized crime, complex international drug investigations, and domestic police cooperation suffered as well. There were simply not enough experienced agents working criminal cases nor enough federal prosecutors to prosecute the complex cases that could result from criminal investigations. As former FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, speaking as the source Deep Throat, allegedly told Watergate reporter Bob Woodward in a basement parking garage, "You got to follow the money." Unfortunately, today, according to current and past FBI agents, there are few people left with the expertise to follow the money.

The next director of the bureau will face significant criminal investigative and counterterrorism challenges. James Comey, like the previous two FBI directors, was a career federal prosecutor and an attorney at the Department of Justice for the majority of his career. This experience will serve him well, but only if he embraces a new paradigm that takes a hard look at the functionality of the counterterrorism and intelligence programs vis-a-vis the criminal programs and does not succumb to political pressure to only commit resources to what is politically expedient. 

Among the current and former agents with whom I have spoken, Comey is highly regarded for his stand, along with Mueller, against then White House aides Andrew H. Card and Alberto R. Gonzales during their attempt to get ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens then being conducted by the National Security Agency. Integrity goes a long way with rank-and-file FBI agents, as do the stones to stand up to your boss and tell him he is wrong. The threat to resign was real and would have had tremendous political impact had both Comey and Mueller left in protest of that policy. It is my personal hope that the president chose Comey based on a belief that a willingness to stand on principle is the single most important characteristic that an FBI director can have. 

Will Comey continue to maintain that political independence, or will he succumb and follow Mueller's policies regarding the prioritization of national security programs within the FBI over the needs of the criminal branches, particularly as the war in Afghanistan ends, and the president proclaims al Qaeda defeated? Does Comey represent a new hope or a continuation of the status quo? Only time will tell.
 

How Democratic Is Turkey?

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan

By Steven A. Cook, Michael Koplow

It seems strange that the biggest challenge to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's authority during more than a decade in power would begin as a small environmental rally, but as thousands of Turks pour into the streets in cities across Turkey, it is clear that something much larger than the destruction of trees in Istanbul's Gezi Park -- an underwhelming patch of green space close to Taksim Square -- is driving the unrest. 

The Gezi protests, which have been marked by incredible scenes of demonstrators shouting for Erdogan and the government to resign as Turkish police respond with tear gas and truncheons, are the culmination of growing popular discontent over the recent direction of Turkish politics. The actual issue at hand is the tearing down of a park that is not more than six square blocks so that the government can replace it with a shopping mall but the whole affair represents the way in which the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has slowly strangled all opposition while making sure to remain within democratic lines. Turkey under the AKP has become the textbook case of a hollow democracy. 

The ferocity of the protests and police response in Istanbul's Gezi Park is no doubt a surprise to many in Washington. Turkey, that "excellent model" or "model partner," is also, as many put it, "more democratic than it was a decade ago." There is a certain amount of truth to these assertions, though the latter, which is repeated ad nauseum, misrepresents the complex and often contradictory political processes underway in Turkey. Under the AKP and the charismatic Erdogan, unprecedented numbers of Turks have become politically mobilized and prosperous -- the Turkish economy tripled in size from 2002 to 2011, and 87 percent of Turks voted in the most recent parliamentary elections, compared with 79 percent in the 2002 election that brought the AKP to power. Yet this mobilization has not come with a concomitant ability to contest politics. In fact, the opposite is the case, paving the way for the AKP to cement its hold on power and turn Turkey into a single-party state. The irony is that the AKP was building an illiberal system just as Washington was holding up Turkey as a model for the post-uprising states of the Arab world. 

Shortly after the AKP came to power in 2002, a debate got under way in the United States and Europe about whether Turkey was "leaving the West." Much of this was the result of the polite Islamophobia prevalent in the immediate post-9/11 era. It was also not true. From the start, Turkey's new reformist-minded Islamists did everything they could to dispel the notion that by dint of their election, Turkey was turning its back on its decade of cooperation and integration with the West. Ankara re-affirmed Turkey's commitment to NATO and crucially undertook wide-ranging political reforms that did away with many of the authoritarian legacies of the past, such as placing the military under civilian control and reforming the judicial system. 

The new political, cultural, and economic openness helped Erdogan ride a coalition of pious Muslims, Kurds, cosmopolitan elites, big business, and average Turks to re-election with 47 percent of the popular vote in the summer of 2007, the first time any party had gotten more than 45 percent of the vote since 1983. This was unprecedented in Turkish politics. Yet Erdogan was not done. In 2011, the prime minister reinforced his political mystique with 49.95 percent of the popular vote. 

Turkey, it seemed, had arrived. By 2012, Erdogan presided over the 17th-largest economy in the world, had become an influential actor in the Middle East, and the Turkish prime minister was a trusted interlocutor with none other than the president of the United States.  Yet even as the AKP was winning elections at home and plaudits from abroad, an authoritarian turn was underway. In 2007, the party seized upon a plot in which elements of Turkey's so-called deep state -- military officers, intelligence operatives, and criminal underworld -- sought to overthrow the government and used it to silence its critics. Since then, Turkey has become a country where journalists are routinely jailed on questionable grounds, the machinery of the state has been used against private business concerns because their owners disagree with the government, and freedom of expression in all its forms is under pressure. 

Spokesmen and apologists for the AKP offer a variety of explanations for these deficiencies, from "it's the law" and the "context is missing," to "it's purely fabricated." These excuses falter under scrutiny and reveal the AKP's simplistic view of democracy.  They also look and sound much like the self-serving justifications that deposed Arab potentates once used to narrow the political field and institutionalize the power of their parties and families. Yet somehow, Washington's foreign-policy elite saw Turkey as a "model" or the appropriate partner to forge a soft-landing in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and elsewhere. 

In the midst of the endless volley of teargas against protesters in Taksim, one of the prime ministers advisors plaintively asked, "How can a government that received almost 50 percent of the vote be authoritarian?" This perfectly captures the more recent dynamic of Erdogan's Turkey, where the government uses its growing margins of victory in elections to justify all sorts of actions that run up against large reservoirs of opposition.

The most obvious way this pattern has manifested itself is in the debate over the new Turkish constitution, which Erdogan had been determined to use as a vehicle to institute a presidential system in which he would serve as Turkey's first newly empowered president. When the opposition parties voiced their fervent opposition to such a plan and the constitutional commission deadlocked in late 2012 -- missing its deadline of the end of the year to submit its recommendations -- Erdogan threatened to disregard the commission entirely and ram through his own constitutional plan. He floated the idea again in early April 2013, but softened his position as it became clear that there is significant opposition to his presidential vision even within the AKP. 

Turkey's new alcohol law, which among other things sets restrictions on alcohol sales after 10 p.m., curtails advertising, and bans new liquor licenses from establishments near mosques and schools, is another example of the AKP's majoritarian turn. Despite vociferous opposition, the law was written, debated, and passed in just two weeks, and Erdogan's response to the law's critics has been to assert that they should just drink at home. 

Similarly, the AKP is undertaking massive construction projects in Istanbul, including the renovation of Taksim Square, the building of a new airport, and the construction of a third bridge over the Bosphorus, all of which are controversial and opposed by widespread coalitions of diverse interests. Yet in every case, the government has run roughshod over the projects' opponents in a dismissive manner, asserting that anyone who does not like what is taking place should remember how popular the AKP has been when elections roll around. In a typical attempt to use the AKP's vote margins as a cudgel, Erdogan on Saturday warned the CHP -- Turkey's main opposition party -- "if you gather 100,000 people, I can gather a million." 

Turkey's anti-democratic turn has all taken place without much notice from the outside world. It was not just coercive measures -- arrests, investigations, tax fines, and imprisonments -- that Washington willfully overlooked in favor of a sunnier narrative about the "Turkish miracle." Perhaps it is not as clear, but over the last decade the AKP has built an informal, powerful, coalition of party-affiliated businessmen and media outlets whose livelihoods depend on the political order that Erdogan is constructing. Those who resist do so at their own risk. 

All this is why the current tumult over the "redevelopment" of Gezi Park runs deeper than merely the bulldozing of green space. It represents outrage over crony capitalism, arrogance of power, and the opacity of the AKP machine. In the media, Erdogan has encouraged changes in ownership or intimidated others to ensure positive coverage -- or, in the case of the Gezi Park protests, no coverage. 

In what was a surreal scene - but sadly one that was altogether unsurprising to close observers of Turkey -- CNN International on Friday was covering the protests live in Taksim while at the very same time CNN Turk, the network's Turkish-language affiliate, was running a cooking show as the historic heart of Turkey's largest city was in enormous upheaval. This dynamic of Turkish press censorship and intimidation, in which media outlets critical of the government are targeted for reprisal, has resulted in the dismissal of talented journalists like Amberin Zaman, Hasan Cemal, and Ahmet Altan for criticizing the government or defying its dictates. This type of implicit government intimidation is unreasonable in an allegedly democratic or democratizing society. 

Under these circumstances, Turkish politics is not necessarily more open than it was a decade ago, when the AKP was pursuing democratic reforms in order to meet the European Union's requirements for membership negotiations. It is just closed in an entirely different way. Turkey has essentially become a one-party state. In this the AKP has received help from Turkey's insipid opposition, which wallows in Turkey's lost insularity and mourns the passing of the hard-line Kemalist elite that had no particular commitment to democracy. 

Successful democracies provide their citizens with ways in which to express their desires and frustrations beyond periodic elections, and Turkey has failed spectacularly in this regard.
The combination of a feckless opposition and the AKP's heavyhanded tactics have finally come to a head. This episode will not bring down the government, but it will reset Turkish politics in a new direction; the question is whether the AKP will learn some important lessons from the people amassing in the streets or continue to double down on the theory that elections confer upon the government the right to do anything it pleases. 

It is not just the AKP that needs to reassess its policies, but Washington as well. Perhaps the Obama administration does not care about Turkey's reversion or has  deemed it better to counsel, cajole, and encourage Erdogan privately and through quiet acts of defiance like extending the term of Amb. Francis Ricciardone, who has gotten under the government's skin over press freedom, for another year. 

This long game has not worked. It is time the White House realized that Erdogan's rhetoric on democracy has far outstripped reality. Turkey has less to offer the Arab world than the Obama administration appears to think, and rather than just urging Arab governments to pay attention to the demands of their citizens, Washington might want to urge its friends in Ankara to do the same as well. The AKP and Prime Minister Erdogan might have been elected with an increasing share of the popular vote over the last decade, but the government's actions increasingly make it seem as if Turkish democracy does not extend farther than the voting booth.