Populist Deception Fooling Latin America’s Poor and USA’s Gullible ‘Intellectuals’
Some years back my pal Bill and I used to stop for a glass of wine at Pearl Alley after work. One night seated next to me was the editor of a local cartoon magazine specializing in anything anti-American or pop-revolutionary. The editor mentioned jokingly that things were getting so bad in the USA now that he was thinking of moving to Cuba. I replied that was fine but he better find another line of work because if he prints one issue there he could get life in prison.
The editor was stunned. He had no idea that such a thing was conceivable. In all his years of radical activism he had never had anyone tell him about political prisoners in Cuba. The editor just shook his head.
In subsequent issues of his magazine there was no change whatsoever. He wanted to believe in what he wanted to believe in. If the facts did not correlate in the preferred manner, he simply ignored them. That’s the problem with populism Latin America style. If the facts don’t fit, ignore them.
In 2006 Mexican presidential PRD party candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had what has to be one the biggest political meltdowns in modern history. Arrogant and presumptuous, Lopez Obrador in January 2006 made a string of very poor political decisions including telling then Mexican Presidente Vicente Fox to ’shut up’. Fortunately for Mexico, Lopez Obrador took his opponents, including the short statured PAN candidate Felipe Calderon, for granted.
In the first political debate Lopez Obrador was so confident he did not bother to show. The TV camera constantly showed pictures of his empty chair. Even in the last few weeks of the campaign Lopez Obrador told his faithful his polls showed him winning by 10 points. So confident of victory he shunned the smaller political parties as beneath his dignity; any one whose support would have given him the election.
As a post mortem many analysts now believe that Lopez Obrador suffers from a psychological disorder known commonly as the Messiah Complex. The same has been said for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba. And Evo Morales of Bolivia and Daniel Ortega of Nicaraugua. Are we beginning to see a pattern here? However, in all fairness the same has been said of George Bush so one really must get above the polemics and go into the towns and villages to see for ourselves.
Many of my Maya Mexican neighbors voted for Lopez Obrador in the past election. They felt that if elected he would bring them everything he promised. With such high expectations they feel victimized by the promises of every political party. To a great extent that has been their history.
In my Maya village we are free and can do pretty much as we like as long as we behave ourselves or don’t cause problemas. Not so with some of our Mayan brothers and sisters in Chiapas.
In rural Chiapas, many Maya villages are controlled by the Zapatistas, the most famous being Comandante Marcos aka Comandante Cero. What I found most interesting about the Zapatista communities I saw were the number of child beggars. I was stunned as I had not seen such extreme poverty since I was in Africa many years ago. In my Maya village in Quintana Roo we have no child beggars. Or any beggars.
The Zapatistas somehow can afford to have the latest in machine guns but not enough to prevent their malnourished, swollen bellied children from begging. Several weeks after visiting these rural communities in Chiapas I heard Comandante Cero Marcos speak at the central park in Puebla.
Marcos railed on capitalism and how the Mayan brother’s cause is so much better now that the Zapatistas have the guns and control. I was impressed by Marcos’ eloquence and chic designer revolutionary clothes. But regardless of Marcos’ smooth words or Union Square duds our fellow Maya brothers and sisters in Chiapas are still starving.
Marcos and the failed Zapatista revolution are the story in a nutshell. No matter where in populist Latin America one goes the results are the same. When Hugo Chavez speaks of cutting the Venezuela worker’s day to six hours like the Europeans’ the workers cheer and sing revolutionary songs. But there simply isn’t enough oil in Venezuela to support everyone. But as a Chavista, I sure want to believe there is.
I found it somewhat ironic this week that Lopez Obrador’s followers, after one of his speeches in the Zocalo of Mexico City, stormed the cathedral and shut down Mass. God forbid. The Messiah Man versus Jesus. The truly scary thing was the Messiah Man lost the 2006 Mexican election by a hair. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened. You have to admit Andres Manuel has a lot of you know whats to invade the Catholic Church.
My neighbors and I could have been drafted into the Mexican Revolutionary Army. Maybe sent to Costa Rica or Chile to foment revolution. At my age I wouldn’t be much use except translating, folding bandages, drinking beer and singing Revolutionary songs. Maybe I would have gotten a Che beret and a Marcos pipe. Maybe they would have appointed me ambassador to Texas and I could go up and hobnob with the bourgeoisie in Austin and San Antonio… raise some revolutionary cash for new guns…that sort of thing.
I would rant on the evils of capitalism like Comrade Marcos and how it’s actually better for our revolutionary children to beg than to poison their minds with Mickey Mouse and online porno and eat nutritiously. Make no mistake about it; those swollen bellies are the direct result of imperialist capitalism, but on the plus side you have to admit they do win bigger tips from the tourists.
However, admittedly there is one very personal problem I would have. That ski mask bit is way too much in the hothouse jungle…
Jack D. Deal lives in the Quintana Roo jungle and the California suburbs. He can be contacted at jddeal@jddeal.com Related articles can be found at http://www.jddeal.com and http://www.freeandinquiringmind.typepad.com
Tony Blair and the Seduction of Global Power
Although Tony Blair came to power as leader of a Labour government, his premiership has not followed the customary Labour Party policy of pacifism and anti-war sentiment. Neither has there been hostility towards US foreign policy.
Mr Blair reportedly stated that we might be a lucky generation that will never have to send people to war. In reality, he has engaged in more military campaigns than any British Prime Minister in living memory.
He had a clear admiration for Margaret Thatcher and her handing of the Falklands War. When he entered office in 1997, he even contacted Mrs Thatcher on matters of government, even though she left office 7 years previously in 1990.
His first taste of the thrill of war came in 1999 when the UK participated in the NATO led aerial bombing of Yugoslavia with the aim of persuading Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw his troops from Kosovo. Among all the NATO leaders, it was Blair who sought to demonise Milosevic and make comparisons with the ethnic cleansing policies of Serbia and the Nazi Holocaust. This was in sharp contrast to the view of many Serbs who regarded Milosevic as a simple patriot who was attempting to safeguard the position of Serbs in Kosovo.
The bombing campaign was a success and Milosevic fell from power. Despite the peace keeping operations of NATO and British forces in Kosovo, the aftermath of the war saw serious atrocities carried out by the Kosovan Liberation Army against ethnic Serbs. Mr Blair had by this time moved on to other foreign adventures.
An important lesson which Mr Blair learnt from the Kosovo campaign was that it is unwise to hand over his enemies to the War Crimes Tribunal of the Hague. Mr Milosevic unfortunately died during the trial and Tony Blair was robbed of the publicity success which would have followed the inevitable guilty verdict.
Britain sent troops to Sierra Leone in mid 2000, ostensibly to evacuate British nationals at risk during a rebel uprising. It soon became clear that Mr Blair had a long term plan to support the democratically elected government of the diamond rich country. This plan suffered a setback when a small contingent of UK forces were captured by a rebel faction called the West Side Boys in September 2000. Mr Blair stated that wherever British soldiers are held against their will anywhere in the world, it is something the government takes very seriously. After several perfunctory diplomatic exchanges, Mr Blair authorised a rescue mission. Only one British paratrooper was killed during the successful raid.
During a visit to Sierra Leone, Mr Blair was hailed as the saviour of the country and applauded wherever he went. Television footage clearly showed Mr Blair’s enjoyment of the mass adulation. This evidently whetted his appetite for further overseas adventures.
The applause of adoring crowds in Sierra Leone was soon overtaken by the trauma of the terrorist attack on the USA in September 2001. Mr Blair enthusiastically committed British troops to the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the removal of the Taliban from Afghanistan. Inconveniently, Mr Bin Laden remains at large and the Taliban have regrouped and re-entered Afghanistan after both Messrs Blair and Bush had declared the campaign a success.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the US and UK led coalition has finally discredited Tony Blair’s credentials as a war leader and has sealed his fate as a politician with international ambitions which proved disastrous, both to his own country and to the world at large.
As he was cheated of a judicial verdict in the matter of Slobodan Milosevic, Mr Blair did not wish to repeat his misfortune, and agreed with the US that the captured Saddam Hussein be handed over to the embryonic civil authorities in Iraq. The execution of Saddam was a badly administered event which was made worse by the fact that Mr Blair was holidaying in Florida with a pop star at the time.
Mr Blair’s announcement of a reduction of British troop numbers in Iraq during February 2007, signals the commencement of a hasty exit strategy. As usual, the release of this negative news was massaged and presented as a redeployment of resources to Afghanistan where British troops are having some success against the Taliban. The reality is that Mr Blair and the UK electorate have wearied of the war in Iraq.
As the Blair era is coming to an end, it is opportune to explore his desire for glory on the world stage. In the heady days of 1997, both Tony Blair and his Foreign Secretary Robin Cook talked of an ethical foreign policy. This is a curious claim in that it presupposes that foreign policy could be customarily lacking in ethical principles.
The driving force for Tony Blair has apparently been his personal Christian convictions, although he is reluctant to speak openly on this issue. This is perplexing as his friend Sir Cliff Richard unashamedly bears public witness to his Christian faith, and the friends undoubtedly discuss this when Mr Blair enjoys Sir Cliff’s hospitality at his Caribbean mansion. There are reports that he takes medieval Christian texts to read on holiday. What has perhaps persuaded Mr Blair to remain a closet Christian is the fact that the BBC has refused to play some of Sir Cliff’s records. As Mr Blair wishes to epitomise cool and secular Britannia, he must live in fear of being portrayed as a Christian fanatic by the media.
In the case of Iraq, not only has Mr Blair precipitated a disastrous war but his justification for war was based on flawed and false arguments. No evidence has been found of weapons of mass destruction nor of the presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq. For many commentators, these mistakes should have prompted Mr Blair to resign. If one recalls the prelude to the Falklands war, the Defence Secretary John Nott offered his resignation over a relatively minor matter.
The Iranian seizure of British sailors in March 2007 clearly demonstrates how Mr Blair has mishandled Iraq. He has repeatedly stated that he will not support any US action against Iran. This has been noted by the Iranian authorities who have now exploited this perceived weakness, and will use it to maximum effect. Mr Blair’s strong words about the capture and detention of British troops in Sierra Leone have been conveniently forgotten.
The enduring question concerning the Blair era will be that of how he managed to remain as leader of the British Labour Party, that bastion of pacifism, in the light of his belligerent and calamitous foreign policy adventures.
Leslie Hardy is the UK Chairman of Wellington Estates Ltd, a North Cyprus property development company. Read the full text of this article at http://www.wellestates.com
Biological and Chemical Weapons In An Age of Terror
A history of terrorism requires a very specific definition to avoid a never-ending summary of every violent act ever recorded. The brief, objective definition proposed by Dr. Boaz Ganor, an Israeli political scientist and deputy dean of the Lauder School of Government and Diplomacy at the Interdiciplinary Center Herzliya, works well for this purpose:terrorism is the intentional use of, or threat to use violence against civilians or against civilian targets, in order to attain politician aims.
This avoids subjective interpretation based on the perpetrator’s motivations, tactics, and civilian versus military status. When we discuss terrorism in the 21st century, however, we must include weapons of mass destruction, and broaden the defintion slightly to include indiscriminate targets, since many of the weapons and tactics of modern terrorism are capable of killing huge numbers of people at once.
Additionally, some forms of modern terror, such as cyberterrorism, do not fall neatly under the rubric of “violence”, at least in their initial employment, although in this increasingly computerized world, viruses and database intrusions could ultimately lead to deaths.
How real are the threats of WMD terrorism? What new or highly mutated forms of terrorist activities might lie ahead? And more to the point, how can countries hope to counter such violence, when one of the key components of “successful” terrorism is the element of suprise?
If you have ever seen photos of ordinary household germs and dust mites under an electron microscope, magnify your visceral and immediate recoil by ten-fold and you have a fair idea of how most people think about biological weapons.
Terrorism feeds on fear, and one thing people fear is fighting something likely invisible, insidious, and irreversible. Certain chemicals (and radioactive fallout) meet this description as well, but many do not. Biological pathogens, however, seem especially frightening to people perhaps because they seem, to the lay person, the easiest to disseminate and, unlike with other weapons, can be passed from one person to the next, expanding an attack well beyond the original point of deployment, using such contagious diseases as small pox, ebola, AIDS, or plauge.
Adding to this is the reality that the first responders are not members of law enforcement or the military, but members of the public health sytem: doctors, EMTS, firefighters, and other civilians.
Consider some staggering facts. According to a report issued by the World Health Organization in 1999, “Over the next hour alone, 1,500 people will die from an infectious disease- over half of them are children under five. Of the rest, most will be working-age adults-many of them breadwinners and parents.
Both are vital age groups that countries can ill afford to lose.” That adds up to 13.1 million people a year. Perhaps more frightening still, just six infections diseases account for more than 90 percent of those deaths: pneumonia, tuberculosis, diarrheal diseases, malaria, measles, and HIV/AIDS. (WHO,p.2,1999)
Improper use of antibiotics, as well as increased virulence and human tolerance due to the natural mutation process, have led to highly resilient strains of pneumonia, tuberculosis, cholera and malaria.
Considering that accidental and naturally occurring outbreaks can cost so many millions of lives, it’s not difficult to imagine the effect deliberately mutated and weaponized strains of biological pathogens would have around the world.
Armies and individuals have employed biological weapons throughout recorded history. Many of the earliest recorded instances involve poisoning food and water supplies. During the BC 6th century, Assyrians poisoned enemey wells with rye ergot, a fungal parasite that causes hallucinations and brain damage. Solon of Athens poisoned Krissa’s water supplied with hellebore, a narcotic that can also cause heart attacks. Ancient armies routinely infected tossed rotting animals into the enemies; water supply; in the 12th century Barborassa used the bodies of his own dead soldiers.
Contaminating food and water supplies is not the only-time honored form of bioterrorism. Spreading infection and disease using conventional weapons and everyday objects has a long history as well. As far back as BC 400, archers poisoned their arrows by dipping them into decomposing bodies or in blood mixed with feces. During the Second Macedonian War, in a crude but effective precursor to missiles with biological warheads, Hannibal won the naval battle of Eurymedon by launching pots of venomous snakes onto the decks of the Pregamon ships.
In 1346, when many of the Tatar soldiers attacking the Crimean port of Kaffa were dying of bubonic plauge, their leader, DeMussis, capulated the diseased corpses into the city. When the infected Geonese defenders fled, precipitating the Black Plauge epidemics that killed enemies with wine mixed with blood of lepers.
Two hundred years later another Spaniard, Franciso Pizarro, tried to speed along his invasion of South America by distributing clothing infected with smallpox. British forces tried the same tactic in the French and Indian War.
In the early part of the Civil War, a Confederate surgeon tried to infect the Union army with clothes carrying yellow fever, while his compatriots were tossing dead animals into wells as they retreated. At this time, the U.S. Government, concerned that its Union soldiers were far less experienced in military matters thatn were their Confederate counterparts, paid German lawyer Franz Lieber to prepare a code laying out the accepted principles of warfare.
The articles in the resulting document,”Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field,” became part of General Order No. 100, issued April 24, 1863. One key article read as follows: “The use of poison in any manner, be it to poison wells, or food, or arms, is wholly excluded from modern warfare. He that uses it puts himself out of the pale of law and usages of war.”
Other countries were at work drafting similar codes. The nations participating in a conference in Brussels in August 1874 issued a declaration banning specific weapons, including poison. A 1907 addition prohibited the “employment of projectiles containing asphyxiating or deleterious gases.” These same prohibitions were upheld by later declarations, including the “Protocol for the Prohibion of the Use in Ware of Asphyxating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods fo Warfare”- the Geneva Protocol, signed June 19, 1925-which stated that “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices, has been justly condemned by the general opinion of the civilized world.”
Countries that ratified the protocol before WWII were Iran, Iraq, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The U.S. did not sign until 1975. The protocol was further strengthened in 1972 with the Biological Weapons Convention, but efforts to make it legally binding failed in 2001 when President George W. Bush refused to sign.
One business-oriented publication that often supported the president’s policies had this reaction: “Alongside Mr. Bush’s refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty, and his moves to scrap the ABM(anti-ballistic missile) treaty, this was more than an undiplomatic blunder. It seems to represent a dangerously ideological aversion to any sort of binding arms control.”
These noble agreements, however, failed to prohibit governments from continuing to research, develop, store, transport, or produce biological weapons, and implied that all that was truly outlawed was being the first to use them in a particular conflict. The result is that countries around the globe still have active biological and chemical stockpiles or, as in the case of the United States, maintain active facilities engaged in defense research.
Dr.Leon Newton is the author of the book, Terrorism 101: A Library Reference and Selected Annotated Bibliography. He teach Terrorism and International Affairs. http://www.outskirtspress.com/terrorism101
Theories of Ethnic and Sectarian Violence
The United Nations has accepted the fact the world is a more dangerous place during the past Cold War. The proliferation of nuclear materials,and biological, and chemical weapons in the hands of antagonistic groups seeking self-determination could be dangerous for the international community goal of world peace and security.
There are other problems resulting from sectarian violence, such as a breakdown of the rule of law,thus weakening the nation-state. Sectarian leaders use exploiting and manipulating claims of ethnicity, inflaming the conflict and bolster national pride.
Sectarian conflict are directly correlated to refugees, economic decline due to the war torn cities, and the militarization of the armed parties to the conflict.
The Civil society institutions break down, resulting in psychological, social problems for the population, and the destruction of the infrastructure and environmental problems place the population health at risk.
Scholars and policy makers, calling themselves ethno- political specialists, have placed sectarian and ethnicity within a political context for analysis. When studying conflict theories there are three categories: behavior, stuctural and gentics.
Konrad Lorenz, believed that humans differ from the lower animals in their fighting habits primarily because humans have no natural weapons and have to use their superior intelligence to create destruction weapons.
The behaviorist believe that the root cause of conflict lies in human nature and human behavior.
Sigmund Freud, thought that conflict was inherent in man`s nature.
Charles Darwin, was a pessimist and he asserted that man`s destuctive hereditary traits were fixed.
Thomas Hobbes, in his political writings conflict is problematic for society because it is a jungle. Humankind is in a perpetual power struggle that lead men to war with every other man. The life of solitary, poor, nasty , brutish and short.
Henry Kissinger, argued that conflict is part of the international system and can only be met with countervailing power when challenged.
John Calvin,`s theology preached that conflict is inherent in man because of the original sin. According to Calvin, man was cast out of the Garden of Eden because sin was in conflict with God`s rule.
Another group of conflict theorists focus their study on markets and and less on inequalities in the market place.
Charles Cozic, says there are two reason why dominant culture groups react violently. One of the primary reasons is because the belief other groups are not deserving. The secondary reason is due to the build up of alliances through institutional structures by the dominant group to protect their interst.
John Burton, asserts that social identity theory helps us to understand the behavior of those whose identity is perceived to be threatened and whose behavior might otherwise seem irrational.
In conclusion, conflict theory try to help us understand human behavior and man aggressive tendencies.
Professor Leon Newton is an author, and columnist. He is the author of the book, Terrorism 101: A Library Reference and Selected Bibliography. http://www.outskirtspress.com/terrorism101