Peace and Justice Post

Movements in Flux and Center-Left Governments in Power

Information Clearing House

By James Petras

In contrast to North America and Europe, in Latin America political regimes, social movements and ideologies are in constant flux. Within a period of a few years, the political pendulum can swing from a seemingly radical leftist wave, to center-left and even rightwing ascendancy[1]. Likewise major social movements emerge, expand from local or regional power bases to significant actors on the national political scene, play a major role in dispatching right-wing regimes, support and even enter governmental coalitions and then decline, especially if they fail to achieve any of the minimum demands of their supporters.[2]

Despite this complex mosaic of relatively abrupt changes and shifts in political power, social configurations and ideological direction, many North American, European and Latin American writers, commentators, intellectuals and journalists are prone to sweeping generalizations covering the entire region and broad time spans, reflecting in many cases, limited experiences and time periods, which have largely become out of date.[3] In most cases, these generalizations are poorly documented, impressionistic and lacking any empirical, historical or analytical depth.

In recent years, roughly from the beginning of the 21^st century to the end of 2007 (and continuing) some of the most lauded intellectuals of North America continued to describe Latin America as a hothouse for radical change, the home of the world’s most dynamic social movements, and undergoing leftist-led social transformation.[4] Several immediate and transparent objections arise.

In the first place “Latin America” as a whole did not experience radical social movements over the period in question. In fact after 2003, in most countries where significant social movements existed, there was a sharp decline in movement activity, membership and social power. A cursory view of Argentina’s unemployed workers movement and factory occupations confirms this observation, as does the experience in Ecuador with CONAIE (the Indian movement).[5]

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The Observer,
Sunday February 17 2008

Peter Beaumont

Who lives there now?

The population of just under two million is split between an Albanian majority who call the country Kosova and a Serb minority who regard is as part of Serbia and call it Kosovo. Before the war of 1998-1999 it was Serbia’s southern province, and remains culturally important for Serbs. Some 120,000 ethnic Serbs live in Kosovo, many next to the border with Serbia. Half of that number live under Nato protection in scattered enclaves south of the Ibar river.

What was the war about?

A rising Albanian independence movement collided with strong Serbian nationalistic sentiment over Kosovo. When a peaceful Albanian independence movement got nowhere, the Kosovo Liberation Army emerged. Attacks and Serb police reprisals followed, until the international community became involved. A 78-day bombing campaign by Nato led to an escalation of Serb-on-Albanian violence, but attacks on Belgrade forced it to back down.

Continued . . .

Amnesty International, Feb. 14, 2008

© Stop the Wall Campaign”>

Israeli army demolishes homes and animal pens of Palestinian families in Hadidiya, 6 February 2008

© Stop the Wall Campaign

© Stop the Wall Campaign”>

Israeli army demolishes homes and animal pens of Palestinian families in Hadidiya, 6 February 2008.

© Stop the Wall Campaign

Every single home in the West Bank villages of Humsa and Hadidiya is slated for destruction. The Israeli army has declared most of the Jordan Valley, where the villages are situated, as a “closed military area” from which the local Palestinian population is barred.

The local Palestinian population – which has been there since long before Israeli forces occupied the area four decades ago – is being put under increasing pressure to leave the area. On the morning of 6 February, Israeli army bulldozers destroyed the homes and livelihoods of four Palestinian families in Hadidiya, in the Jordan Valley area of the occupied West Bank.

More than 30 people and their animals were left without shelter. The families of Mohammed Ali Sheikh Bani Odeh, Ali Sheikh Musleh Bani Odeh, Omar ‘Arif Mohammad Bisharat and Mohammed Sahad Bani Odeh included some 20 children.

Continued . . .

Photos provided by the U.S. Air Force

Inside the U.S. Air Force’s Combined Air & Space Operations Center in the Middle East.

Inside a secret high-tech control center the U.S. Air Force targets enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But can they bomb them legally, and without killing innocents? A Salon exclusive.

By Mark Benjamin | Salon.com, Feb. 15, 2008

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION, THE MIDDLE EAST — The cavernous control room used by the U.S. Air Force to manage the air wars in Iraq and Afghanistan looks exactly how you’d expect it to look in a Hollywood movie. The lights are low. Around 50 camouflage-clad men and women lean forward in their chairs, staring intently at rows of computer screens glowing with multicolored graphs and fluctuating displays. They sometimes glance up from the banks of computer monitors to gaze at a sweeping panel of large television screens mounted on the front wall. Two massive, side-by-side screens in the center display digital maps of Iraq and Afghanistan. Swarms of U.S. aircraft above the war zones are represented by green labels that move about each map, gravitating toward wherever U.S. troops are fighting on the ground, in case they need backup.

To the left and right of those large maps are four smaller screens. Each is about 5 feet wide, displaying remarkably clear live footage from cameras mounted on the Air Force’s un-manned Predator drones that buzz incessantly above Iraq and Afghanistan. The Predator drones, however, are not filming a raging firefight, or a bridge about to be strafed from the air.

They are stalking prey.

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8 Palestinians killed and 60 wounded in an Israeli air strike

Palestinian Information Center

February 15, 2008 AL-BREIJ, (PIC)– The Israeli occupation has committed a new massacre in the Gaza Strip on Friday evening when US-supplied F-16’s bombed the house of Ayman al-Fayed, a commander in the Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad in the Breij refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. The attack resulted in the total destruction of the house of al-Fayed as well as neighbouring houses in this crowded area of the Breij refugee camp. The PIC correspondent was informed that commander Ayman al-Fayed (42 years) was martyred in the attack along with his wife Marwah Azzam, and their two children Ayoub and Basma. Medical sources also informed our correspondent that the Aqsa Martyrs Hospital could not receive all the wounded and many of them had to be taken to Nasr and Shifa hospitals. Dr. Muaweyah Hasaneen, the general director of emergency department at the Palestinian ministry of health stated that eight Palestinians were killed and 60 were wounded in the attack, at least 10 of them in a critical condition. The sound of the huge explosion was heard many miles away and smoke was seen rising from the scene of the attack. This attack brought back to memory a similar attack when Israeli occupation airforce bombed a block of flats to kill Sheikh Salah Shehada, the general commander of the Qassam Brigades, five years ago killing 15 Palestinians many of them children. Local residents expressed anger at the massacre and called on the armed wings of Palestinian factions to retaliate.

Khaleej Times, Feb. 16, 2008

(AP)

GAZA CITY — The eight-month closure of Gaza has created “grim and miserable” conditions that deprive Gazans of their basic dignity, the UN’s top humanitarian affairs official said during a visit, urging that the territory’s borders be reopened.

Later Friday, a mysterious explosion brought down the three-story house of a senior Islamic Jihad activist in a Gaza refugee camp, killing him, his wife, a daughter and three neighbours. Medics said at least 40 people were wounded in the blast, 12 of them critically.

Hamas police said the cause was not clear, while Islamic Jihad blamed an Israeli airstrike. The Israeli military denied it carried out an airstrike in the Bureij camp.

The UN official, Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes, toured Gaza’s largest hospital, speaking with dialysis patients and inspecting the neonatal unit, and then visited an industrial zone that once employed 1,800 Palestinians but has been idled by the border closure.

Israel and Egypt severely restricted access to Gaza after the Islamic militants seized the territory by force in June. Since then, only a few dozen trucks carrying food, medicine and other basics have been permitted into Gaza every day, while most exports are banned. The closure has driven up poverty and unemployment, and the UN says some 80 percent of Gaza’s 1.4 million people now get some food aid.

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Herald Sun, Australia, Feb. 15, 2008

Article from: AFP, Feb. 14, 2008

CUBA has demanded the US return Guantanamo Bay to the island nation and denounced the “war on terror” prison, where six detainees could face the death penalty.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque claimed today that suspects held in the US naval base in the southeastern tip of Cuba have been subjected to torture and face unfair legal treatment.

Cuba rejects “the violation of human rights, unjust incarceration of prisoners held there without charges, and their appearance in courts without guarantees and in which they are convicted in advance,” he told reporters.

He did not directly refer to the case of six detainees facing charges that carry the death penalty.

“We demand again the closure of the indecent Guantanamo prison, the return of the territory illegally occupied to our fatherland,” Perez Roque said.

The United States, which has occupied Guantanamo for more than 100 years, signed in 1934 a lease agreement with the Cuban government that could not be altered without agreement by both countries.

Since 1960, a year after it came to power, Fidel Castro’s communist government has refused the annual lease payment of 5000 dollars from the United States.

The US Defence Department announced Monday that military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against six Al-Qaeda detainees on murder and conspiracy charges in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

The Palestine Chronicle, Feb. 11, 2008

By Ron Forthofer

The U.S. corporate mainstream media have done a terrible job covering the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, a catastrophe created by Israeli assassinations, raids and blockade.

Here are a few statements that demonstrate the deliberate creation of the crisis and how dire this situation is. In February 2006 former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s adviser Dov Weissglas shockingly admitted the goal for the 1.5 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as: “We have to make them much thinner, but not enough to die.”

In October 2006 John Dugard, a South African law professor and the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, stated that Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison for Palestinians where life is “intolerable, appalling, tragic” and appears to have thrown away the key.

Earlier this year Dugard called the Israeli government’s actions “serious war crimes” for which its political and military officials should be prosecuted and punished.

In a June 23, 2007 article, Ilan Pappe, a Jewish professor and one of the leading historians of the Middle East, described the situation as genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

These statements were before Israel totally sealed Gaza on Jan. 18, 2008. After this hermetic closure, Karen Koning AbuZayd, Commissioner General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, stated: “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and-some would say-encouragement of the international community.”

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[Does not Musharraf thinks himself to be more important than Pakistan or the people of Pakistan??]

David Edwards and Nick Juliano | The Raw Story, February 14, 2008

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made clear that he does not respect western human right standards and would not make a priority of upholding them.

“Pakistan is more important than human rights,” Musharraf said recently during a global economic forum in Sweden. “Human rights serves Pakistan; Pakistan does not serve Human rights.”

A video of Musharraf’s comments was released by Human Rights Watch. He is answering a question from a HRW representative who is questioning widespread reports of human rights abuses in Pakistan.

Musharraf accuses his questioner of trying to impose a “Western Human rights considerations and standards” on Pakistan and seems to argue his country would be thrown into turmoil if it upheld such standards.

“[Human rights] functions in accordance with our environment,” he said. “Now if somebody, whether he’s anybody, is trying to create such anarchy that maybe Pakistan’s integrity is at stake maybe our economy … will collapse. I don’t consider any human rights in such situations. We will deal with it, whatever it costs because Pakistan is more important than human rights.

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Fernand Braudel Center, Binghamton University

Immanuel Wallerstein | Commentary No. 227, Feb. 15, 2008

Except for a hardy band of neo-con optimists and the official apologists of the Bush regime, almost everyone is agreed today that the United States has gotten itself into a nasty, self-wounding mess in Iraq where it is fighting a drawn-out guerrilla war it cannot win. At the same time, a very large number of the critics of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, both in the United States and in Europe, repeatedly say that nonetheless the United States cannot just “walk away.” What not walking away means is not very clear, but it seems to mean maintaining U.S. troops and bases in Iraq for a considerable length of time while the United States tries, vainly, to enable the Iraqi government under its tutelage to assert some kind of reasonable control over its territory and restore a modicum of peaceful life to its citizens.

Let us explore why it is said that the United States cannot just “walk away.” There is a long list of supposed consequences that all seem plausible on the surface. One is that it would result in unconstrained civil war in Iraq. This may be true, although many Iraqis feel that they are already living in precisely such a civil war, even with U.S. troops on the scene.

Continued . . .