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“What is Inexcusable is Venezuela’s Political Independence”

Young supporter of Venezuela's President Chavez stands at a square in San Salvador
An interview with John Pilger, conducted by Michael Albert.

Why would the U.S. want Venezuela’s government overthrown?

There are straightforward principles and dynamics at work here. Washington wants to get rid of the Venezuelan government because it is independent of U.S. designs for the region and because Venezuela has the greatest proven oil reserves in the world and uses its oil revenue to improve the quality of ordinary lives. Venezuela remains a source of inspiration for social reform in a continent ravaged by an historically rapacious U.S. An Oxfam report once famously described the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua as ‘the threat of a good example’. That has been true in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez won his first election. The ‘threat’ of Venezuela is greater, of course, because it is not tiny and weak; it is rich and influential and regarded as such by China. The remarkable change in fortunes for millions of people in Latin America is at the heart of U.S. hostility. The U.S. has been the undeclared enemy of social progress in Latin America for two centuries. It doesn’t matter who has been in the White House: Barack Obama or Teddy Roosevelt; the U.S. will not tolerate countries with governments and cultures that put the needs of their own people first and refuse to promote or succumb to U.S. demands and pressures. A reformist social democracy with a capitalist base – such as Venezuela – is not excused by the rulers of the world. What is inexcusable is Venezuela’s political independence; only complete deference is acceptable. The ‘survival’ of Chavista Venezuela is a testament to the support of ordinary Venezuelans for their elected government – that was clear to me when I was last there.  Venezuela’s weakness is that the political ‘opposition’ — those I would call the ‘East Caracas Mob’ – represent powerful interests who have been allowed to retain critical economic power. Only when that power is diminished will Venezuela shake off the constant menace of foreign-backed, often criminal subversion. No society should have to deal with that, year in, year out.

What methods has the U.S. already used and would you anticipate their using to unseat the Bolivarian Revolution?

There are the usual crop of quislings and spies; they come and go with their media theatre of fake revelations, but the principal enemy is the media. You may recall the Venezuelan admiral who was one of the coup-plotters against Chavez in 2002, boasting during his brief tenure in power, ‘Our secret weapon was the media’. The Venezuelan media, especially television, were active participants in that coup, lying that supporters of the government were firing into a crowd of protestors from a bridge. False images and headlines went around the world. The New York Times joined in, welcoming the overthrow of a democratic ‘anti-American’ government; it usually does. Something similar happened in Caracas last year when vicious right-wing mobs were lauded as ‘peaceful protestors’ who were being ‘repressed’. This was undoubtedly the start of a Washington-backed ‘colour revolution’ openly backed by the likes of the National Endowment for Democracy – a user-friendly CIA clone. It was uncannily like the coup that Washington successfully staged in Ukraine last year.  As in Kiev, in Venezuela the ‘peaceful protestors’ set fire to government buildings and deployed snipers and were lauded by western politicians and the western media. The strategy is almost certainly to push the Maduro government to the right and so alienate its popular base. Depicting the government as dictatorial and incompetent has long been an article of bad faith among journalists and broadcasters in Venezuela and in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe. One recent U.S. ‘story’ was that of a ‘U.S. scientist jailed for trying to help Venezuela build bombs’. The implication was that Venezuela was harbouring ‘nuclear terrorists’. In fact, the disgruntled nuclear physicist had no connection whatsoever with Venezuela.

All this is reminiscent of the unrelenting attacks on Chávez, each with that peculiar malice reserved for dissenters from the west’s ‘one true way’. In 2006, Britain’s Channel 4 News effectively accused the Venezuelan president of plotting to make nuclear weapons with Iran, an absurd fantasy. The Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, sneered at policies to eradicate poverty and presented Chávez as a sinister buffoon, while allowing Donald Rumsfeld, a war criminal, to liken Chavez to Hitler, unchallenged. The BBC is no different. Researchers at the University of the West of England in the UK studied the BBC’s systematic bias in reporting Venezuela over a ten-year period. They looked at 304 BBC reports and found that only three of these referred to any of the positive policies of the government. For the BBC, Venezuela’s democratic initiatives, human rights legislation, food programmes, healthcare initiatives and poverty reduction programmes did not exist. Mission Robinson, the greatest literacy programme in human history, received barely a passing mention. This virulent censorship by omission complements outright fabrications such as accusations that the Venezuelan government are a bunch of drug-dealers.  None of this is new; look at the way Cuba has been misrepresented – and assaulted – over the years. Reporters Without Borders has just issued its worldwide ranking of nations based on their claims to a free press. The US is ranked 49th, behind Malta, Niger, Burkino Faso and El Salvador.

Why might now be a prime time, internationally, for pushing toward a coup? If the primary problem is Venezuela being an example that could spread, is the emergence of a receptive audience for that example in Europe adding to the U.S. response?

It’s important to understand that Washington is ruled by true extremists, once known inside the Beltway as ‘the crazies’. This has been true since before 9/11. A few are outright fascists. Asserting U.S. dominance is their undisguised game and, as the events in Ukraine demonstrate, they are prepared to risk a nuclear war with Russia. These people should be the common enemy of all sane human beings. In Venezuela, they want a coup so that they can roll-back of some of the world’s most important social reforms – such as in Bolivia and Ecuador. They’ve already crushed the hopes of ordinary people in Honduras. The current conspiracy between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil is meant to achieve something more spectacular in Venezuela, and Russia.

What do you think the best approach might be to warding off U.S. machinations, and those of domestic Venezuelan elites as well, for the Bolivarians?

The majority people of Venezuela, and their government, need to tell the world the truth about the attacks on their country. There is a stirring across the world, and many people are listening. They don’t want perpetual instability, perpetual poverty, perpetual war, perpetual rule by the few. And they identify the principal enemy; look at the international polling surveys that ask which country presents the greatest danger to humanity. The majority of people overwhelmingly point to the U.S., and to its numerous campaigns of terror and subversion.

What do you think is the immediate responsibility of leftists outside Venezuela, and particularly in the U.S. 

That begs a question: who are these ‘leftists’? Are they the millions of liberal North Americans seduced by the specious rise of Obama and silenced by his criminalising of freedom of information and dissent? Are they those who believe what they are told by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC? It’s an important question. ‘Leftist’ has never been a more disputed and misappropriated term. My sense is that people who live on the edge and struggle against US-backed forces in Latin America understood the true meaning of the word, just as they identify a common enemy.  If we share their principles, and a modicum of their courage, we should take direct action in our own countries, starting, I would suggest, with the propagandists in the media. Yes, it’s our responsibility, and it has never been more urgent.

Source: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/What-is-Inexcusable-is-Venezuelas-Political-independence-20150216-0011.html

2015
02/24
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Harper exploiting Paris shootings to deepen surveillance state and justify war

big brother harp1

Canada’s Conservative government is set to introduce expanded powers for surveillance agencies, likely for the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

Speaking last week in Vancouver, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stated that the government is “looking at additional powers to make sure that our security agencies have the range of tools available,” apparently to address incidents like the shootings in Paris. However, judging by past policy patterns reaching the highest government levels, such new “powers” will likely be aimed at stifling and criminalizing voices of dissent, here are some reasons why.

Over recent years, the track record of Canada’s state surveillance agencies has been made clear through numerous access to information requests and public accounts, the record is that First Nations have been a prime target for government spying, whileenvironmentalist and social justice groups are also closely watched.

Throughout the Idle No More protests both CSIS and the RCMP, working in concert, monitored closely the community protests for treaty rights, actions that inspired manyIndigenous youth to vocalize publicly the apartheid realities facing First Nations people.

Conservative politicians refused to ever fully recognize the voices and demands of Indigenous people on the streets during Idle No More, like the Nishiyuu Walkers, instead turning shadowy government agents on the first peoples of these lands. By extension, all other major Canadian political parties, both the Liberals and the NDP, have failed to denounce clearly, the sustained spying by CSIS and the RCMP on First Nations communities.

Within the context of the “additional powers” that Harper is publicly indicating will be given to spy agencies in the coming period, the likely reality is that additional attention from CSIS will be focused on First Nations peoples protesting for human and land rights in Canada.

On CSEC, Canada’s digital surveillance agency, likely involved in the same type of mass data collection practiced by the National Security Agency (NSA) south of the border, something never publicly disputed by CSEC, the new “powers” that Harper is speaking about will also most likely involve CSEC, an organization with tight operational links to the NSA.

Details made public by American whistleblower Edward Snowden, indicate that Canada’s CSEC maintains a “close co-operative relationship” with the NSA, a working collaboration that involves CSEC offering “resources for advanced collection, processing and analysis.” To date the Canadian government and by extension CSEC, has never confirmed or denied any of these details, in state security terms we know very well what that means.

Today, in the wake of the shootings in Paris, the Conservative government in Ottawa is working to exploit the deaths and by extension the larger neo-colonial political crisis in France, to expand the role of state surveillance agencies, like CSIS and CSEC, that define contemporary neo-liberal authoritarianism, a political orientation that is firmly rooted and extends from the colonial era.

Instead of embarking on a real political discussion on the ways that contemporary western systems of power are central to creating the conditions for “terrorism,” Harper is simply expanding the surveillance practices of neo-colonialism and by extension justifying war.

Harper’s comments in Vancouver on the Paris shootings, intentionally exploit the violence with the aim of legitimizing Canada’s role in the bombing of Iraq. “And they have declared war on any country like ourselves that values freedom, openness and tolerance,” stated Harper, “and we may not like this and wish it would go away, but it is not going to go away and the reality is we are going to have to confront it.”

In real terms this is a call from Harper for prolonged Canadian participation in war, the sustained bombing of Iraq, a military campaign purportedly aiming to save the Iraqi people from the Islamic State (ISIS) group by bombing their cities and towns.

Bombing people to save them, that was an argument made by the U.S. government during the war in Vietnam and again with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, both interventions that clearly has lead to sustained violence and human suffering, remember the Mỹ Lai massacre. How are more western bombs going to liberate Iraq, or Syria, from ISIS?

Most certainly Canada’s moves to join the ‘war’ against ISIS will lead to significant profits for Canada’s ever growing military industrial complex, while simply leading to more death and destruction in Iraq. In reality the entire bombing campaign in Iraq is rooted in violent colonial logic, the very same framework that is fueling the type of violence seen this past week in Paris, the people carrying out the shootings in France spoke about the images of US torture at Abu Ghraib prison and also the Israeli military occupation of Palestine as reasons of the attacks.

Now clearly nothing justifies the killing of cartoonists, or civilians in a supermarket in Paris, but we can’t continue to ignore that western colonialism, past and present, is creating the context for such violent incidents to continue. In a cycle of violence, rooted in colonialism, those holding the monopoly of military power, the U.S., France and Canada, clearly have the greater ability and responsibility to stop the cycle and create real conditions for a just peace.

Instead of examining in truth the roots of the violence, Canada’s Conservative government is simply abusing the memories of all those who died in France, by using the shootings to justify the entrenchment of a surveillance state and to cheerlead neo-colonial military policies abroad.

By: Stefan Christoff is a writer, community organizer and musician living in Montreal who contributes to rabble.ca find Stefan @spirodon

Source: http://rabble.ca/news/2015/01/harper-exploiting-paris-shootings-to-deepen-surveillance-state-and-justify-war

2015
01/16
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Media obsesses over ‘free speech’ in Charlie Hebdo case while ignoring Israeli targeting of journalists

A Palestinian journalist inspects his work car in Gaza City

A Palestinian journalist inspects his work car in Gaza City

The story of the January 7 2015 storming of the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical French publication with a history of racist, anti-Muslim caricatures, has inundated the Western media. The attack, tragically leaving at least 12 dead, has been touted as a “free speech” issue by the first government in the world to ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations. (This framing has distorted the fact that it was torture at Abu Ghraib and the US war on Iraq that left 100,000s of civilians dead, not cartoons, that radicalized the impoverished shooters, sons of émigrés from Algeria, a country that was a French colony until the end of a bloody war of independence in 1962.)

The subsequent taking of hostages in a Parisian kosher supermarket by an acquaintance of the shooters was an even more despicable act, leading to the deaths of at least four. Both incidents are horrific tragedies, and deserve harsh condemnation.

Yet they have exponentially overshadowed equally tragic recent attacks on journalists. In its November 2012 attack on Gaza, “Operation Pillar of Defense,” the Israeli government admitted that it was targeting journalists. This trend was revisited only months ago in Israel’s summer 2014 assault, “Operation Protective Edge,” an incursion that left 2,310 dead—over 1,500 of whom were civilians, including at least 500 children—and 10,626 wounded.

While the Western media has scrupulously tracked the Charlie Hebdo attack and subsequent hostage crisis for the scantest of updates, and while the calamity dominates discussions on social media—and also while the Fourth Estate ceaselessly speaks of ISIS’ heinous killings of Western journalists—both the press and popular culture continue to ignore August 2014 UN documents that inculpate Israel for engaging in very similar acts of terror.

The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), a Geneva-based independent non-governmental organization aimed “at strengthening the legal protection and safety of journalists in zones of conflict and civil unrest or in dangerous missions,” carries special consultative UN status, conducting investigations on behalf of the body. In its 28 August report, “90 journalists killed so far in 2014: a new step is required by the UN in order to combat impunity,” it notes that:

Israel and the Occupied Territory of the State of Palestine: in the context of the operation “Protective Edge” launched by the Israeli forces on 8 July 2014 on the Gaza Strip, 15 journalists have been killed (some of them being purposely targeted), many others have been injured because of the shelling of their homes, 16 Palestinian journalists have lost their homes as a result of Israeli bombing and shelling, 8 media outlets have been destroyed, in addition the Israeli army deliberately disturbed the broadcasting of 7 radio and TV stations and websites (l), many journalists have been arrested by the Israeli forces.

(1) Al-Aqsa radio, Sawt Al-Quds radio, Sawat Al-Sha’eb, Filistin Il-Yom TV and website, Al-Ra’ei website

In a more detailed document from the day before, “15 journalists and media workers killed during operation “Protective Edge”: the responsible have to be held accountable,” the PEC and the UN indicate that the houses of 16 journalists that were destroyed in Israeli attacks were “often purposely targeted.”

The report also reveals that, of the eight Gaza media outlets Israel destroyed, five were deliberately bombed. Israeli forces shelled three headquarters of Al-Aqsa TV, where 325 employees worked, and “deliberately disturbed the broadcasting of 7 radio and TV stations and websites, and used these stations to broadcast inciting messages against the Palestinian resistance, as they did in their previous attacks on the Gaza Strip.”

Deliberate Attacks

The PEC states that the “Israeli violations against Palestinian journalists are the most dangerous, life threatening, and the most frequent” and flatly “denounces the harassment against journalists and media workers as well as the smear campaign of the Israeli diplomacy against foreign journalists falsely accused to work for Hamas that leads to a sneaky form of self-censorship.”

Most of the murdered journalists were in their twenties, with ages ranging from 21 to 59. All except for one, an Italian, were Palestinian. The majority worked for local Palestinian media networks, although two Associated Press reporters were killed, including the only foreign reporter killed. Some were wearing vests clearly marked “Press”; others were in media vehicles with “TV” plainly printed on the hood. In one case, a 21-year-old Palestinian photojournalist was taking pictures in the Al-Jineene neighborhood in Rafah when an Israeli drone shot him.

“The large number of targets and the way in which media organizations and journalists have been attacked by” Israeli forces, the UN statement reads, “suggest that a strategy has been finalized at the highest levels of the State of Israel. Targeting non-combatants is itself a war crime that, as such, must not enjoy impunity.”

The PEC concludes calling upon the UN to investigate “the violation of the fundamental freedoms and rights of journalists and media workers, with a particular attention on the violation of the rights of women journalists” and the UN Human Rights Council’s independent, international commission of inquiry “to investigate and identify those responsible for the crimes committed against media outlet, journalists and media workers.”

“Constant Pressures” on Journalists

In a footnote to its report, the PEC draws attention to a French-language Algerian Huffington Post article that went completely ignored by the Western media (all translations mine): “TVE [Spanish Television] Journalist Yolanda Alvarez Attacked by Israel, Spanish Journalists Protest.” The story notes that the “Spanish press is unanimous in supporting Yolanda Alvarez, TVE correspondent in Jerusalem, victim of virulent attacks by the Israeli embassy in Madrid.” It also states that Alvarez’ Twitter page was “full of tweets of support coming from journalists or associations of journalists that spoke of the intimidation and the threats from the Israeli embassy.”

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) divulged that, according “to the testimonies of other journalists and media, the Israeli embassy in Israel maintains an attitude of permanent intimidation of Spanish journalists.” RSF denounced the “constant pressures” Israel put on journalists, and asked that Israel stop using “its diplomats as agents of pressure and propaganda.”

US media networks also pressured their own journalists not to present Israel’s attack in a negative light. NBC went so far as to pull Ayman Mohyeldin from Gaza, a veteran reporter who garnered international praise as one of the only two foreign journalists who had been in Gaza during Israel’s 2008-2009 assault on Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, in which the close US ally barred journalists from entering Gaza as it, in the words of Human Rights Watch, “repeatedly exploded white phosphorus munitions in the air over populated areas, killing and injuring civilians, and damaging civilian structures, including a school, a market, a humanitarian aid warehouse and a hospital.”

Institute for Policy Studies analyst Phyllis Bennis pointed out the irony that, as Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza, NBC “pulled the reporter who has done more than any other to show the human costs of the conflict there.” Because of popular pressure, Mohyeldin was eventually reinstated, yet there were numerous other incidents of the same forms of censorship and pressure occurring.

A Bad Year for Journalists

In its 2014 census on jailed journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) revealed that 2014 was the second-worst year for jailed journalists in 24 years of data collection. Internationally, over 220 journalists are imprisoned, 60% of whom are held on anti-state charges of terrorism or subversion. This comes in a close second to 2012, in which 232 journalists were imprisoned—although the 2014 figure may actually be higher, as the report excludes journalists being detained by nonstate actors such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Violence against journalists, and particularly against journalists in the Middle East, is at record levels. 2014 was one of the most dangerous years for reporters in recent history, with at least 60 deaths, roughly half of which were in the Middle East—although CPJ estimates are conservative, so the actual figures are likely even higher. 2012 to 2014 constitutes the most dangerous period CPJ has on record.

CPJ deputy director Robert Mahoney warned that the “targeting of journalists has been increasing to alarming proportions,” expressing worries that journalists “are now losing the protected observer status that they had, and now they’ve become the story rather than being the witness to the story to some groups.”

Only some of the stories about these persecuted journalists are told, nonetheless. Much of the Western media is speaking of the Charlie Hebdo shooting as a “free speech” issue, yet simultaneously ignoring Israel’s persistent stifling of Palestinian journalists’ right to not just free speech, but to life.

Explicit violent repression of journalists is not new behavior for Israel. In 2008, Israeli forces killed 23-year-old cameraman Fadel Subhi Shana’a. In the same year, Israel arrested award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer and brutally tortured him—a common practice. In 2004, Israeli occupation forces killed 22-year-old journalist Mohammed Abu Halima.

There are countless more instances of such stories; there is a plethora of such tragedies. Yet these tragic stories are not told in the Western media. The countless nameless faces of the now forgotten Palestinian journalists are only nameless and forgotten because they were ignored.

By: 

– See more at: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/ignoring-targeting-journalists#sthash.0WciODan.lrwlf8pN.dpuf

Source: http://mondoweiss.net/2015/01/ignoring-targeting-journalists

2015
01/13
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Most White People in America Are Completely Oblivious Black people have to learn everything about white people just to stay alive. White people just don’t get that.

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I suppose there is no longer much point in debating the facts surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown. First, because Officer Darren Wilson has been cleared by a grand jury, and even the collective brilliance of a thousand bloggers pointing out the glaring inconsistencies in his version of events that August day won’t result in a different outcome. And second, because Wilson’s guilt or innocence was always somewhat secondary to the larger issue: namely, the issue of this gigantic national inkblot staring us in the face, and what we see when we look at it—and more to the point, why?

Because it is a kind of racial Rorschach (is it not?) into which each of these cases—not just Brown but all the others, from Trayvon Martin to Sean Bell to Patrick Dorismond to Aswan Watson and beyond—inevitably and without fail morph. That we see such different things when we look upon them must mean something. That so much of white America cannot see the shapes made out so clearly by most of black America cannot be a mere coincidence, nor is it likely an inherent defect in our vision. Rather, it is a socially-constructed astigmatism that blinds so many to the way in which black folks often experience law enforcement.

Not to overdo the medical metaphors, but as with those other cases noted above, so too in this one did a disturbing number of whites manifest something of a repetitive motion disorder—a reflex nearly as automatic as the one that leads so many police (or wanna-be police) to fire their weapons at black men in the first place. It is a reflex to rationalize the event, defend the shooter, trash the dead with blatantly racist rhetoric and imagery, and then deny that the incident or one’s own response to it had anything to do with race.

Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about sending around those phony pictures claimed to be of Mike Brown posing with a gun, or the one passed off as Darren Wilson in a hospital bed with his orbital socket blown out.

Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about how quickly those pictures were believed to be genuine by so many who distributed them on social media, even when they weren’t, and how difficult it is for some to discern the difference between one black man and another.

Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about how rapidly many bought the story that Wilson had been attacked and bloodied, even as video showed him calmly standing at the scene of the shooting without injury, and even as the preliminary report on the incident made no mention of any injuries to Officer Wilson, and even as Wilson apparently has a history of power-tripping belligerence towards those with whom he interacts, and a propensity to distort the details of those encounters as well.

Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about Cardinals fans taunting peaceful protesters who gathered outside a playoff game to raise the issue of Brown’s death, by calling them crackheads or telling them that it was only because of whites that blacks have any freedoms at all, or that they should “get jobs” or “pull up their pants,” or go back to Africa.

Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about sending money to Darren Wilson’s defense fund and then explaining one’s donation by saying what a service the officer had performed by removing a “savage” like Brown from the community, or by referring to Wilson’s actions as “animal control.”

Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial about reaction to evidence of weed in Brown’s lifeless body, as with Trayvon’s before him, even though whites use drugs at the same rate as blacks, but rarely have that fact offered up as a reason for why we might deserve to be shot by police.

Reflex: To deny that there was anything racial behind the belief that the head of the Missouri Highway Patrol, brought in to calm tensions in Ferguson, was throwing up gang signs on camera, when actually, it was a hand sign for the black fraternity of which that officer is a member; and to deny that there is anything racial about one’s stunning ignorance as to the difference between those two things.

Reflex: To deny that there’s anything at all racial about the way that even black victims of violence—like Brown, like Trayvon Martin, and dozens of others—are often spoken of more judgmentally than even the most horrific of white perpetrators, the latter of whom are regularly referred to as having been nice, and quiet, and smart, and hardly the type to kill a dozen people, or cut them into little pieces, or eat their flesh after storing it in the freezer for several weeks.

And most of all, the reflex to deny that there is anything racial about the lens through which we typically view law enforcement; to deny that being white has shaped our understanding of policing and their actions in places like Ferguson, even as being white has had everything to do with those matters. Racial identity shapes the way we are treated by cops, and as such, shapes the way we are likely to view them. As a general rule, nothing we do will get us shot by law enforcement: not walking around in a big box store with semi-automatic weapons (though standing in one with an air rifle gets you killed if you’re black); not assaulting two officers, even in the St. Louis area, a mere five days after Mike Brown was killed; not pointing a loaded weapon at three officers and demanding that they—the police—”drop their fucking guns;” not committing mass murder in a movie theatre before finally being taken alive; not proceeding in the wake of that event to walk around the same town in which it happened carrying a shotgun; and not killing a cop so as to spark a “revolution,” and then leading others on a two month chase through the woods before being arrested with only a few scratches.

To white America, in the main, police are the folks who help get our cats out of the tree, or who take us on ride-arounds to show us how gosh-darned exciting it is to be a cop. We experience police most often as helpful, as protectors of our lives and property. But that is not the black experience by and large; and black people know this, however much we don’t. The history of law enforcement in America, with regard to black folks, has been one of unremitting oppression. That is neither hyperbole nor opinion, but incontrovertible fact. From slave patrols to overseers to the Black Codes to lynching, it is a fact. From dozens of white-on-black riots that marked the first half of the twentieth century (in which cops participated actively) to Watts to Rodney King to Abner Louima to Amadou Diallo to the railroading of the Central Park 5, it is a fact. From the New Orleans Police Department’s killings of Adolph Archie to Henry Glover to the Danziger Bridge shootings there in the wake of Katrina to stop-and-frisk in places like New York, it’s a fact. And the fact that white people don’t know this history, have never been required to learn it, and can be considered even remotely informed citizens without knowing it, explains a lot about what’s wrong with America. Black people have to learn everything about white people just to stay alive. They especially and quite obviously have to know what scares us, what triggers the reptilian part of our brains and convinces us that they intend to do us harm. Meanwhile, we need know nothing whatsoever about them. We don’t have to know their history, their experiences, their hopes and dreams, or their fears. And we can go right on being oblivious to all that without consequence. It won’t be on the test, so to speak.

We can remain ignorant to the ubiquity of police misconduct, thinking it the paranoid fever dream of irrational “race-card” playing peoples of color, just like we did after the O.J. Simpson verdict. When most of black America responded to that verdict with cathartic relief—not because they necessarily thought Simpson innocent but because they felt there were enough questions raised about police in the case to sow reasonable doubt—most white folks concluded that black America had lost its collective mind. How could they possibly believe that the LAPD would plant evidence in an attempt to frame or sweeten the case against a criminal defendant? A few years later, had we been paying attention (but of course, we were not), we would have had our answer. It was then that the scandal in the city’s Ramparts division broke, implicating dozens of police in over a hundred cases of misconduct, including, in one incident, shooting a gang member at point blank range and then planting a weapon on him to make the incident appear as self-defense. So putting aside the guilt or innocence of O.J,, clearly it was not irrational for black Angelenos (and Americans) to give one the likes of Mark Fuhrman side-eye after his own racism was revealed in that case.

I think this, more than anything, is the source of our trouble when it comes to racial division in this country. The inability of white people to hear black reality—to not even know that there is one and that it differs from our own—makes it nearly impossible to move forward. But how can we expect black folks to trust law enforcement or to view it in the same heroic and selfless terms that so many of us apparently do? The law has been a weapon used against black bodies, not a shield intended to defend them, and for a very long time.

In his contribution to Jill Nelson’s 2000 anthology on police brutality, scholar Robin D.G Kelley reminds us of the bill of particulars.* As Kelley notes, in colonial Virginia, slave owners were allowed to beat, burn, and even mutilate slaves without fear of punishment; and throughout the colonial period, police not only looked the other way at the commission of brutality against black folks, but were actively engaged in the forcible suppression of slave uprisings and insurrections. Later, after abolition, law enforcement regularly and repeatedly released black prisoners into the hands of lynch mobs and stood by as their bodies were hanged from trees, burned with blowtorches, body parts amputated and given out as souvenirs. In city after city, north and south, police either stood by or actively participated in pogroms against African American communities: in Wilmington, North Carolina, Atlanta, New Orleans, New York City, Akron and Birmingham, just to name a few. In one particularly egregious anti-black rampage in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1917, police shot blacks dead in the street as part of an orgy of violence aimed at African Americans who had moved from the Deep South in search of jobs. One hundred and fifty were killed, including thirty-nine children whose skulls were crushed and whose bodies were thrown into bonfires set by white mobs. In the 1920s, it is estimated that half of all black people who were killed by whites, were killed by white police officers.

But Kelley continues: In 1943 white police in Detroit joined with others of their racial compatriots, attacking blacks who had dared to move into previously all-white public housing, killing seventeen. In the 1960s and early ’70s police killed over two dozen members of the Black Panther Party, including those like Mark Clark and Fred Hampton in Chicago, asleep in their beds at the time their apartment was raided. In 1985, Philadelphia law enforcement perpetrated an all-out assault on members of the MOVE organization, bombing their row houses from state police helicopters, killing eleven, including five children, destroying sixty-one homes and leaving hundreds homeless.

These are but a few of the stories one could tell, and which Kelley does in his extraordinary recitation of the history—and for most whites, we are without real knowledge of any of them. But they and others like them are incidents burned into the cell memory of black America. They haven’t the luxury of forgetting, even as we apparently cannot be bothered to remember, or to learn of these things in the first place. Bull Connor, Sheriff Jim Clark, Deputy Cecil Price: these are not far-away characters for most black folks. How could they be? After all, more than a few still carry the scars inflicted by men such as they. And while few of us would think to ridicule Jews for still harboring less than warm feelings for Germans some seventy years later—we would understand the lack of trust, the wariness, even the anger—we apparently find it hard to understand the same historically-embedded logic of black trepidation and contempt for law enforcement in this country. And this is so, even as black folks’ negative experiences with police have extended well beyond the time frame of Hitler’s twelve year Reich, and even as those experiences did not stop seventy years ago, or even seventy days ago, or seventy minutes.

Can we perhaps, just this once, admit our collective blind spot? Admit that there are things going on, and that have been going on a very long time, about which we know nothing? Might we suspend our disbelief, just long enough to gain some much needed insights about the society we share? One wonders what it will take for us to not merely listen but actually to hear the voices of black parents, fearful that the next time their child walks out the door may be the last, and all because someone—an officer or a self-appointed vigilante—sees them as dangerous, as disrespectful, as reaching for their gun? Might we be able to hear that without deftly pivoting to the much more comfortable (for us) topic of black crime or single-parent homes? Without deflecting the real and understandable fear of police abuse with lectures about the danger of having a victim mentality—especially ironic given that such lectures come from a people who apparently see ourselves as the always imminent victims of big black men?

Can we just put aside all we think we know about black communities (most of which could fit in a thimble, truth be told) and imagine what it must feel like to walk through life as the embodiment of other people’s fear, as a monster that haunts their dreams the way Freddie Kreuger does in the movies? To be the physical representation of what marks a neighborhood as bad, a school as bad, not because of anything you have actually done, but simply because of the color of your skin? Surely that is not an inconsequential weight to bear. To go through life, every day, having to think about how to behave so as not to scare white people, or so as not to trigger our contempt—thinking about how to dress, and how to walk and how to talk and how to respond to a cop (not because you’re wanting to be polite, but because you’d like to see your mother again)—is work; and it’s harder than any job that any white person has ever had in this country. To be seen as a font of cultural contagion is tantamount to being a modern day leper.

And then perhaps we might spend a few minutes considering what this does to the young black child, and how it differs from the way that white children grow up. Think about how you would respond to the world if that world told you every day and in a million ways before lunch how awful you were, how horrible your community was, and how pathological your family. Because that’s what we’re telling black folks on the daily. Every time police call the people they are sworn to protect animals, as at least one Ferguson officer was willing to do on camera—no doubt speaking for many more in the process—we tell them this. Every time we shrug at the way police routinely stop and frisk young black men, even though in almost all cases they are found to have done nothing wrong, we tell them this. Every time we turn away from the clear disparities in our nation’s schools, which relegate the black and brown to classrooms led by the least experienced teachers, and where they will be treated like inmates more than children hoping to learn, we tell them this. Every time Bill O’Reilly pontificates about “black culture” and every time Barack Obama tells black men—but only black men—to be better fathers, we tell them this: that they are uniquely flawed, uniquely pathological, a cancerous mass of moral decrepitude to be feared, scorned, surveilled, incarcerated and discarded. The constant drumbeat of negativity is so normalized by now that it forms the backdrop of every conversation about black people held in white spaces when black folks themselves are not around. It is like the way your knee jumps when the doctor taps it with that little hammer thing during a check-up: a reflex by now instinctual, automatic, unthinking.

And still we pretend that one can think these things—that vast numbers of us can—and yet be capable of treating black folks fairly in the workforce, housing market, schools or in the streets; that we can, on the one hand, view the larger black community as a chaotic maelstrom of iniquity, while still managing, on the other, to treat black loan applicants, job applicants, students or random strangers as mere individuals. That we can somehow thread the needle between our grand aspirations to equanimity as Americans and our deeply internalized biases regarding broad swaths of our nation’s people.

But we can’t; and it is in these moments—moments like those provided by events in Ferguson—that the limits of our commitment to that aspirational America are laid bare. It is in moments like these when the chasm between our respective understandings of the world—itself opened up by the equally cavernous differences in the way we’ve experienced it—seems almost impossible to bridge. But bridge them we must, before the strain of our repetitive motion disorder does permanent and untreatable damage to our collective national body.

Source: http://www.alternet.org/most-white-people-america-are-completely-oblivious?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

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Canada’s False Flag Terror: Fingerprints of U.S. Involvement

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The  “Terrorist” Events of Wednesday October 22nd in Ottawa and two days earlier in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu bear all the hallmarks of a coordinated cross-border one-two punch false flag operation.

The first, the left jab hit-and-run killing of a Canadian soldier, would be the psychological softening up for the follow-up right cross, the killing of another Canadian soldier in Ottawa. Together they dazed the public to an extent that even the ostentatiously-iconic murder at the National War Memorial alone might not have achieved.

The context was within the intensification of the so-called “global war on terror” and in concert with the pro-military Stephen Harper government’s deployment of warplanes supposedly fighting “the terrorists” of the suddenly-emerging “Islamic State.” The first bombing sorties of Canadian F-18s took place hours after the violent acts of supposed “homegrown” and “self-radicalized” supporters of “Islamic jihad.”

Domestically the second outrage occurred on the very day the government was to introduce legislation giving the RCMP, CSIS and CSEC [CSEC is changing its name (to CSE) so that it can continue to spy – and indeed do more spying abroad – but not have the word “Canada” associated with this spying. “Spy agency CSEC says goodbye to Canada” is the headline over an October 31st  Toronto Star story by Tonda MacCharles. ]

These coincidences of timing, I submit, are not coincidences at all but quite deliberately planned to maximize the intended impacts: greater public support for a new war in the Middle East, better chances for faster and less-questioned support in Parliament for the increased police and spy powers, and enhanced public approval ratings for the Harper government in the run-up to next year’s general election.

This article delves deeper into the timing including that the events happened, to the day, as military-intelligence “exercises” were taking place that precisely mirrored the “surprise” events. Other hallmarks include the prior involvement of government agents with both of the supposed jihadists, the fact that both were easy-to-manipulate “human wreckage” and the early “terrorism” branding led by the Prime Minister. Other hallmarks include the unfolding parade of memorable iconic elements and images, the “lone wolf” narratives, the dual role of the media in general to both to reinforce the official narrative and to fail to ask fundamental questions about it.

Ottawa shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, especially, is tied to the “war on terror.” At the highest level of visibility, he’s a pawn marketed for public consumption to reinforce “global jihad” rhetoric.

On a subterranean level are two sets of fingerprints. One set shows the involvement of both Canadian and U.S. spy agencies and possibly other of the so-called “Five Eyes” (the others being the UK, Australia and New Zealand), not to mention the grotesquely corrupt FBI, with its record of mounting scores of false flag ops, that will be referred to later.

The second set of prints shows the work of the agencies’ gatekeeper “assets” in the media, in this instance in the USA as well as in Canada. They manipulate “the news.”

Telltale hallmarks of false flag ops

1 The timing. The exquisite timing of the National War Memorial outrage on the very day new laws were to be introduced by the Harper regime giving expanded powers to spook agencies – as well as additional cover for their “informants” so deep as to be impenetrable – is one hallmark of a world-class false flag op.

Added police powers at all times in any country, when an atmosphere of hysteria has been generated, are railroaded into laws in a flash, historically speaking. The new or expanded laws take decades to undo or ratchet down, if they ever are.

As Prof. Graeme MacQueen, author of an insightful and detailed new book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy, (Clarity Press, Inc.,www.claritypress.com, writes, the timing of the 2001 “anthrax letter attacks” or the “anthrax attacks” was just as the USA Patriot Act “was being hurried through Congress.” The notorious bill, propagandistically entitled “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” Act, was signed into law October 26th, 2001, about three weeks after the first news of an “anthrax attack” broke. Bush followed up by giving his approval “to the first bulk domestic spying by the National Security Agency (NSA).” Such are the sea changes set into motion by perfectly-timed false flag ops. (Watch for an upcoming review of MacQueen’s book in Truth and Shadows.)

Interestingly MacQueen notes that

“gradually the hypothesis became widespread that the [anthrax] attacks were the second blow in a ‘one-two punch’ delivered by terrorists, the first blow having been the attacks of 9/11.”

Ottawa has gone the U.S. government one better by compressing the time between introduction of “anti-terror” legislation and a false flag “terror attack” to hours. Ottawa also subjected MPs and others on Parliament Hill to the sounds of gunfire amidst fearful uncertainty, in a fast-moving operation, again outdoing the Americans.

These events have also taken place during the lead-up to Remembrance Day.  Government TV ads are in heavy rotation featuring World War I and World War II footage in black and white and colour, as well as video clips of Canadian peacekeepers. They send us to http://www.veterans.gc.ca/iremember. Stirring and nostalgic, these ads cannot be divorced from consideration of the impact of the Ottawa events. The ads (and much else) knit together in the public consciousness.

My wife and I almost always attend the Remembrance Day ceremonies at Toronto’s Old City Hall.

(I posted a piece for this blog about the ceremonies in 2012 (http://truthandshadows.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/peacenik-reflects-on-remembrance-day/).

I tend to agree with predictions that turnout this year may exceed previous years. Remembrance Day speeches, as well as the whole setup of Remembrance Day ceremonies, tend to ennoble if not glorify war. This year the homilies are certain to make reference to the events in St-Jean-sur-Richeleau and Ottawa.

More than ever, this year the understandable sentiments of many will be channeled into reinforcing belief in the “reality” of the “war on terror.” Emotions will be manipulated into support for a militarized monopoly capitalist anti-life system of perpetual war and ever-increasing inequality.

Metrics are being reported that bear this out.  A front-page story in The Globe and Mailon November 7th reports “a steady stream of support for the military in the days leading up to Remembrance Day.”

Under the headline “Poppy sales a sign support for military surging after attacks,” Tristan Simpson reports. “Legion officials say those events have become emblematic of a renewed patriotism – and have sparked an increase in military support.”

2 Prior “involvement” of agents of the state

“Prior contact” with alleged terrorists is a virtually guaranteed hallmark of false flag ops.

Both Zehaf-Bibeau and hit-and-run killer Martin Couture-Rouleau were “known to authorities.” As the main front page headline of the Toronto Star had it of Couture-Rouleau on October 22nd: “RCMP had suspect on their radar for months.”

On page A4 on the next day in the same paper, an edition dominated by 17 pages of coverage out of Ottawa, is a half-page devoted to how much “a Canadian security source” knew about Zehaf-Bibeau’s past.

The usual phraseology is that agents of CSIS or the RCMP “had been in contact with” the criminals or “had (these individuals) under surveillance” or “had been monitoring their activities.”

Is it entirely coincidental that both “terrorists” – as Harper labeled both early and often – were Quebeckers? Quebeckers as a generality are cool to Harper and his “war on terror” rhetoric. But they might be expected to warm up to his “national security” agenda on the basis of fear — insofar as they buy the official narratives.

Canadian authorities, it was reported, asked the FBI to assist in the investigation of the “terrorist” events in Canada. The FBI’s record shows that the assistance would most likely be in sharing with their buddies north of the border in the finer points of how to mount a false flag op. Investigative reporter Trevor Aaronson’s book The Terror Factoryexposes the FBI’s inside role in creating “false flag terror.” He writes that as of 2011 the FBI was involved in more than 500 cases of “manufactured” terror.

References here can be found at : http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/0…ainst-america/

In a 2011 article in Mother Jones, Aaronson wrote:

Since 9/11, there have been hundreds of arrests of “terrorist suspects” and 158 prosecutions. Of all the reported “major terror plots,” only three can’t be directly tied to terror suspects who were directly recruited, trained and supplied by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Truth is, we also have questions about the other three.

In the case of the “anthrax attacks” the spider web of government agents and suspicious civilian players interacting with those initially put forward as anthrax terrorists and/or 9/11 “hijackers” was almost monolithic. Most were in Florida, within close geographic proximity. As MacQueen writes:

Academic researchers have largely tended to dismiss the Florida connections by accepting the FBI’s coincidence theory. … The question, however, is not whether actual hijackers were involved in sending out letters laden with anthrax spores: the question is whether fictions, verbal or enacted, were intentionally created to make this narrative seem credible. The [alleged hijackers] did not have anthrax, but the script portrayed them as likely to have it. [page 138]

The U.S. government repeatedly attempted to link the “anthrax attacks,” the “9/11 hijackers” and Iraq (remember Colin Powell’s now totally discredited dog-and-pony show at the UN?). But when those attempts fell apart, the domestic terror purveyors turned to Plan B, as MacQueen persuasively shows. Plan B was to finger a domestic “lone wolf,” scientist Bruce Ivins, who then became conveniently dead.

“The evidence suggests a grand plan, not an opportunistic foray,” writes MacQueen.

3 The chosen miscreants are “human wreckage”

It was Webster Tarpley, author of 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA who described the typical patsy recruited for manipulation by spy agencies as “human wreckage.”

It’s easy to understand how such individuals can easily be manipulated through bribes, other inducements, threats or psychological pressure up to and including sophisticated brain-washing techniques. These are known to have been developed by “spy” agencies over decades and in this country go back at least to the CIA’s self-admitted funding of “psychic driving” experiments under the Project MK-Ultra mind control program on unknowing civilians at McGill University from 1957 to 1964 under the direction of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron).

Frequently mentally-disturbed people have been in trouble with the law. This was true of Zehaf-Bibeau and Couture-Rouleau. Zehaf-Bibeau was desperate, on the edge, unpredictable, wanted to die. Spy agencies find such people easily. The “chosen ones” will have Arabic names and be converts to Islam. Or have Middle East connections. Many combinations fill the bill to help the label “suspected terrorist” stick.

Run-ins with the law render disturbed individuals additionally vulnerable. Police or “intelligence” agents can promise to use their influence to gain shorter sentences if they’ve been convicted, more leniency if they’ve already been sentenced. Or get them off altogether. Conversely agents can threaten to use their influence to make things much worse for these individuals. Those promising or threatening often are in a position to deliver.

In this connection, the lead article  in the Focus section of The Globe and Mail on October 25th by Doug Saunders actually describes, without his using the term, false flag ops by U.S. “authorities.”

It’s worth excerpting that section of his piece:

Authorities in the U.S. adopted the practice of catching lone-wolf figures in sting operations, in which they’d find disturbed young men online, provide them with prefabricated terror plots and (fake) weapons, and arrest them a moment before they were about to carry out their planned attack. This approach has been numerically successful – that is, it has intercepted a lot of putative terrorists – but many wonder if it’s simply making the problem worse, and turning police agencies into terrorism enablers.

“Often these are down-and-out losers in society who wouldn’t be able to pull off a decent attack on their own,” Dr. [Ramon] Spaaij, an Australian scholar with Victoria University and author ofUnderstanding Lone Wolf Terrorism, says, “but the undercover police provide the weapons and suggest the targets … what that does is it has sown a lot of bad blood in Muslim communities – we’re out there preying on vulnerable young people and turning them into terrorists.”

What Saunders, whose body of work I happen to greatly admire, fails to note is that these “sting” (e.g., false flag) operations generate thousands of fear-inducing headlines; this may be their main purpose. Readers, listeners and viewers are led to believe that police have caught “real terrorists.” These false flag ops contribute the bulk of the “proof” for the so-called “war on terror.” It’s a continuous psychological assault and distortion of reality through manufacture of “reality.” The impact goes ‘way beyond “sowing bad blood in Muslim communities.” It’s a main driver of the fictional “war on terror.”

Besides, “bad blood” in Muslim communities would be one of the goals of the authors of this continuous fakery. This “bad blood” would fulfill at least two functions. One is to keep many Muslims in docile fear mode in which they can be more easily controlled. Second is that less docile Muslims, especially young unstable men, will react with anger and possibly go off the deep end. Perfect.

This is the same entrapment technique used to create the “Toronto 18.” And this is the same modus operandi the police use when they enable or program or bribe or threaten their patsies to cause violence.

As University of Guelph professor Michael Keefer wrote:

The theatrical arrests of 18 (mostly young) Muslims in Toronto in the Summer of 2006 reinforced media-driven paranoia that homegrown terrorists were everywhere. The unraveling of the case two years later exposes to view yet again the sinister and disgraceful behavior of Canada’s security intelligence apparatus, which has formed a habit of confecting false accusations of terrorism against Canadian citizens. The threat to Canadian society is not a bunch of Muslim boys playing paintball, it’s an ideologically driven government willing to curtail our civil liberties.

4 The “lone wolf” or “lone gunman” narrative

Without doubt there are instances of demented individuals who perform outrages single handedly. The USA provides the most examples by far, with a plethora of berserk gunmen mowing down innocent citizens in malls, on college campuses and elsewhere.

In politically-charged false flag ops, by definition in virtually all cases agents in the shadows pull the levers to bring about the outrages. In the three highest profile assassinations of the last century and arguably most impactful historically, those of JFK, RFK and MLK, the establishment narrative has been that lone gunmen were responsible, in each case in the face of much evidence to the contrary. Lee Harvey Oswald was known to have worked for U.S. intelligence. He’s a classic “lone gunman” who wasn’t. Others include James Earl Ray, allegedly the killer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who wasn’t, as proven in a civil trial in Memphis in 1999. The half white half black jury returned a verdict that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was the victim of an assassination conspiracy involving the CIA and the U.S. Army and did not die at the hands of an unaided lone gunman.

In the case of Zehaf-Bibeau the likelihood of enablers is rendered very high because of many unanswered questions. Among them, how did a deranged misfit living in shelters obtain both a gun and a car needed for him to go on his rampage?

5 “Lone wolves” tend to become quickly deceased

From Lee Harvey (“I am just a patsy”) Oswald to Rolando Galman (who gunned down Benigno Aquino, Jr., former Philippine Senator, as he stepped off his plane, and then himself was gunned down) to the “Boston bomber” Tamerlan Tsarnaev, patsies or hired assassins tend to become deceased – quickly. Dead men tell no tales. Typically, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau and Martin Couture-Rouleau are no more.

In 2002 U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft named scientist Steven Hatfill a “person of interest” in connection with the “anthrax attacks” of a year before. As Graeme MacQueen writes: “The FBI concentrated on investigating him, publicly and aggressively. A year later Hatfill sued the Justice Department for libel and eventually he received $5.82 million in compensation…”

The FBI – presumably after a massive search for patsy material – decided in 2008 that the “anthrax killer” was Dr. Bruce Ivins, who had been working on an anthrax vaccine at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

“This time,” MacQueen writes, “the FBI faced no serious challenge from its chosen perpetrator because Ivins died shortly before he was to be charged with the crime. He was said to have committed suicide.” Tellingly, no autopsy was performed.

The death of an actual bona fide terrorist or, much more often the case, a recruited patsy (the classic being Oswald) obviates the possibility of a trial in a court of law (as distinguished from trial in the “court of public opinion”). Trial in a court of law carries with it the possibility of evidence emerging that could be damning to the state and the Crown’s case.

The bodies of killers, alleged killers or dead “terrorists” frequently are not dealt with appropriately. As Prof. John McMurtry of Guelph, author of The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure, wrote in an October 29th Global Research essay: Zehaf-Bibeau

“…went on a killing spree, with no known blood testing afterwards for the drugs he was evidently driven by, in the video record of his frenzied and super-charged behaviour, just as there was no known test of the body of crazed drive-over killer, Martin Couture-Rouleau. How extraordinary. How unspoken in the lavish profusion of other details… All such strange coincidences are part of the now familiar covert-state MO.”

The de facto executions of the killers or alleged killers are, however, less a necessity than a convenience to the national security state. This is because in those cases where the patsies, killers or alleged killers survive, their trials uniformly are fixed, as was the case with the “Toronto 18,” who rapidly became the Toronto nine, as charges were dropped against many of the teenaged “terror suspects.”

6 The branding

The St-Jean-sur-Richelieu events were instantly defined as “terrorism” by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the House of Commons and thereafter were widely so defined by the military, by “intelligence experts,” RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson and by many media players. (There are honourable exceptions to the general rush to judgment within the media. We identify some later.)

The “anthrax attacks,” MacQueen writes, “were the result of a [domestic] conspiracy meant to help redefine the enemy of the West, revising the global conflict framework from the Cold War to the Global War on Terror.”

The events in Ottawa were not meant to replace the global-conflict framework but rather to reinforce the new 2001 model: “Islam” as the permanent mortal enemy of “the West.”

The rhetoric, like ad copy, is part and parcel of the branding.

Buzzwords (“war on terror,”), code words (“national security”), snarl words (“terrorists,” “radical Islam,” “threats”) and purr words (“our allies,” “security”) as semanticist S. I. Hayakawa dubbed them, displace rational thought.

Equal in impact to that of language repetition, if not greater, were the iconic elements. The National War Memorial and Parliament are about as iconic as one can arrange in Canada. So to have the shooter start at one, then skedaddle over to the other on the same crazed mission is to do so on iconosteroids.

Add to that: two worthy soldiers representing Everyman, all Members of Parliament, the Prime Minister, a car-jacked driver, a hero in the person of the gun-toting Sergeant-at-Arms, the heart-wrenching footage of Corporal Cirillo’s five-year-old son wearing his father’s regimental hat, the corporal’s pet dogs, the grieving spouses and relatives and more.

It would be a mistake to overlook that the flesh and blood victims, Corporal Cirillo and Warrant Office Patrice Vincent, also were symbolic. They represent “Canada’s military,” “our men and women in uniform” who “serve our country” who “made the ultimate sacrifice.”

Many of the iconic themes of October 22nd were pre-echoed in the Toronto 18 trials, one of them being the alleged planning by the teen-aged patsies and dupes of “blowing up Parliament” and “beheading the prime minister.”

7 “Security exercises” and the false flag curiously overlap

A hallmark of false flag ops is that military, security, police or “intelligence” exercises precede or run simultaneously with a false flag operation. Run-throughs are necessary for all complex maneuvers. A drill also justifies assembling the human and other resources required.

Perhaps the most egregious exercise was the one admitted to be taking place at the time of the “London 7/7” tube “terror bombings” of July 7th, 2007. Peter Power, managing director of crisis management for the firm Visor Consultants, in a live interview on ITV News that was aired at 8:20 p.m. on the evening of the bombings, tells the host “…today we were running an exercise …. 1,000 people involved in the whole organization … and the most peculiar thing was that we based our scenario on simultaneous attacks on the underground and mainland station and so we had to suddenly switch an exercise from fictional to real.” Elsewhere he said the exercise specified the same stations that the “surprise bombers” targeted, which would qualify as one of the most far-fetched coincidences of all time.

On the day of 9/11 a minimum of five military drills were underway. One of them, Vigilant Guardian, involved the insertion of false radar blips onto radar screens in the Northeast Air Defense Sector, a fact that even made it into the fraudulent 9/11 Commission Report (although the others did not, which made the appearance of Vigilant Guardian a limited hangout).

All of which is relevant to what Mark Taliano wrote about the events in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa on the Global Research website on October 31st:

“The theory that U.S agencies were somehow implicated in the [Ottawa] tragedy is further reinforced by … Operation Determined Dragon, a joint Canada/U.S counter-terrorism drill…”

The first Canadian event, the fatal hit-and-run carried out by Couture-Rouleau, occurred on the first day of that drill, October 20th. From that day to 29th was the “execution phase” of a joint Canada-U.S.-NATO military-intelligence “linked exercise” named Determined Dragon 14 (in internal documents called “Ex DD 14”).

For details of Determined Dragon 14 one need look no further than the National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces website

http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/operations-exercises/ddragon.page:

“Ex DD 14 will primarily focus on the lateral interface between NORAD, United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and United States Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) specifically in cyber and space domains,” visitors to the site are informed.

Among the strategic objectives specified on the are to “enhance interagency partnerships” and to “institutionalize battle procedures with partners such as regional and component commanders, the Strategic Joint Staff, the Associate Deputy Minister (Policy), and the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command.” Another is to enhance “bilateral planning with USNORTHCOM and USSTRATCOM; and CJOC coordination with NORAD.

Under the heading “Linked Exercises” the Canadian site says that Ex DD 14 “is bound to other allied exercises by a common scenario and linked through multiple events:

  • Ex VIGILANT SHIELD, a NORAD-USNORTHCOM exercise focused on homeland defence and homeland security missions; and
  • Ex GLOBAL THUNDER, a USSTRATCOM-led exercise with the primary emphasis on exercising nuclear command and control capabilities.

It concludes that Ex DD 14 “offers an opportunity for regional joint task forces (RJTF) to leverage their own exercises.

For someone paying close attention to CBC-TV’s The National on October 25th, CBCsenior correspondent Adrienne Arsenault came close to giving away the game. Anchor Peter Mansbridge begins by saying there are “lots of questions” about the day’s events. After he hears the usual line from regularly seen Ray Boisvert, “ex-CSIS,” Mansbridge turns to Arsenault, “who’s been looking at this whole issue of radicalization for the past year or so” and asks her what she can say. Arsenault replies:

(http://www.globalresearch.ca/canadian-authorities-ran-war-game-drills-depicting-isis-attack-scenarios/5409707)

They [Canadian authorities] may have been surprised by the actual incidents but not by the concepts of them. Within the last month we know that the CSIS, the RCMP and the National Security Task Force engaged in, I suppose they, ran a scenario that’s akin to a war games exercise if you will where they actually imagined literally an attack in Quebec, followed by an attack in another city, followed by a tip that that “hey some guys, some foreign fighters are coming back from Syria.” So they were imagining a worst case scenario. We’re seeing elements of that happening right now. … [Canadian authorities] may talk today in terms of being surprised but we know that this precise scenario has been keeping them up at night for awhile.” [my emphasis]

Mansbridge shows no interest in this remarkable statement by his senior correspondent.

But truth activist Josh Blakeney of the University of Lehbridge  who also was one of the first out of the block in nailing these events as false flags, comments:

What an amazing coincidence that Canadian intelligence ran a drill envisioning an attack first in Quebec, then another city. What are the chances that these mock terror drills are just a coincidence? In nearly every instance of a major terrorist occurrence in the West, it has been revealed that intelligence services were conducting war games exercises mimicking the very events that later come to pass. And now we have confirmation that Canada’s intelligence services were doing the same thing.

All of which would seem to reflect adequate “information exchanges” with “our U.S. partner” and other “allies.” Yet Harper’s new “anti-terror” legislation will merge Canadian spooks and military even more into the global apparatus that can manufacture terror incidents pretty well anywhere any time.

8 Media manipulation on both sides of the border

On the crucial propaganda front the evidence is that “U.S. officials” initiated journalistic input, and government agents planted within the media on both sides of the border meddled with journalistic output.

Key mainstream media stories as well as tweets “disappeared.” Stories disappeared from Google. Both U.S. and Canadian mainstream reports were altered significantly. This could only be carried out by internal gatekeeper agents. Inputs and outputs left permanent fingerprints of the overt as well as behind-the-scenes manipulation.

Students of false flag operations have learned – just as regular detectives have learned in regard to standard non-political crimes – the first 24 or 48 hours provide critical evidence, before the criminals can begin covering their tracks.

Amy MacPherson of Free The Press Canada (https://www.facebook.com/FreeThePressCanada) hit the ground running in those first hours and days. On Tuesday, October 23rd she posted a lengthy piece, carried the next day on GlobalResearch containing damning evidence of rolling censorship on social media including Twitter and in mainstream media including the Toronto Star and the CBC.

Equally if not more damning are her frame grabs showing that U.S. news outlets were fed information by “U.S. officials” identifying Zehaf-Bibeau as the Ottawa shooter prematurely, before Canadian media were able to identify him.

With accompanying grabs, MacPherson writes: “While Canadian news personalities were at police gunpoint, American outlets like CBS News and the [always suspect]Associated Press had a full story to sell, complete with the dead shooter’s name.”

At 10:54 a.m. Eastern, when the National War Memorial crime scene was not yet secured, CBS News stated: “The gunmen [sic] has been identified by U.S. officials to CBS News as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Canadian national born in 1982.” MP Charlie Angus described gunshots around 10 a.m. American media had solved the murder 54 minutes later.

“By 4:58 p.m.” MacPherson notes, “the [CBS] story was edited to remove the shooter’s name, or any mention of the U.S. government’s knowledge.” She continues: “The only problem is no one could update the Google database quick enough with these changes, so the original information still appeared with general search results.

“The story was altered again in the evening, when the Canadian government allowed [her emphasis] the name of a shooter to be released and American media added law enforcement to their list of official sources.  They also added a middle name, Abdul, to emphasize the suspect’s Islamic ties with an accusation of terrorism.”

She asks:

“…how American intelligence knew the name of a ‘possible terrorist’ as the mayhem was still unfolding. How did Americans know when Canadians didn’t, and how was this information so widespread that American media and Google had access to distribute, but domestic reporters on the scene did not?

“Canadian parliamentary bureau chiefs didn’t possess the same information as their U.S. counterparts and faced the barrel of police guns as a press narrative was provided on their behalf by another country. If this is dubbed an act of terrorism that American sources had knowledge about to pre-report, then why weren’t steps taken to prevent the violence?”

Then there are the all-Canadian media anomalies. “The Toronto Star reported [that] multiple witnesses saw [Couture-Rouleau] with his hands in the air,” writes MacPherson, “when at least one police officer opened fire. They also say a knife was ‘lodged into the ground near where the incident occurred.’

“Well,” MacPherson continues, “that’s what the original story by Allan Woods, Bruce Campion-Smith, Joanna Smith, Tonda MacCharles and Les Whittington stated. A syndicated copy had to be located at the Cambridge Times, because a newer, edited version at the Toronto Star appeared dramatically altered by Tuesday.”

That article (changed without disclosure) claims Couture-Rouleau was an Islamic radical who emerged from the vehicle with a knife in his hands. No mention of eyewitnesses who saw his hands in the air and the knife lodged in the ground (an image seen later on CBC-TV news).

As MacPherson writes: “The article was more than edited and qualifies as being replaced entirely, having lost its tone, facts and spirit from the original published version.

If it weren’t for smaller papers carrying The Star’s original syndicated content, there would be little or no proof of the first comprehensive version, she adds.

9 Failure of media to ask fundamental questions

These include, first and foremost: “Is it possible that agents of the state had a hand in this outrage?” This question might not be as difficult to raise as one might imagine. Suppose it were handled this way:

“There’s a long and well-documented history of authorities staging iconic events aimed at stampeding their publics into supporting government initiatives, especially initiatives supporting existing or proposed wars. Examples include Colin Powell’s introduction at the United Nations of alleged compelling proof – subsequently proven false – that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. [pause] Can it be ruled out definitively that behind-the-scenes actors in government circles in Canada had no hand whatsoever in the events of October 22nd?”

Of course, for any media person to ask such a question would pre-suppose that those who reach the level of Parliamentary correspondent or, higher still, anchor of a national news program would have developed deep skepticism based on hard-won knowledge of the history of such operations.

It would further pre-suppose that, had they developed such a grasp of history, they would be promoted to those levels.

What can we say? We can say: “These things ain’t going to happen.”

Tihe “failure” to ask fundamentally important fully justified questions based on documented history known to many readers, listeners and viewers deserves extensive treatment in itself. The “failure” represents, from the point of view of a cover-up, success for the real perpetrators.

Such unasked questions are masked by the repetitive posing of essentially superficial questions and questions that beg answers. Press conferences are rife with the acceptance of the official line along with questions about minutiae within the line. One also hears a lot of really dumb and repetitive questions.

The graphically impressive front page of The Globe and Mail had it on October 23rd: “The murder of Corporal Nathan Cirillo, the storming of Parliament and the tough questions[my emphasis] arising from the chaos.”

The phrase “tough questions” in this context suggests – and their subsequent rollout reinforces – a central theme that buttresses the official line: that there have been “security lapses,” that these lapses are serious, that therefore “security agencies” need “more resources” to do their jobs “protecting our security” and “making us safe,” and so on and on.

Included among the questions most frequently trotted out by the media: “How can we strike a balance between “the need for greater security” on the one hand, and “the protection of privacy,” on the other.

This endlessly posed question has embedded within it several unexamined major premises, concealed significant historical facts and trends, as well as an ambiguity serving both concealments and that drives conclusions among readers, listeners and viewers that are ill-based, self-defeating and that inoculate those who are so manipulated against gaining greater understanding.

The premises include that privacy is ever and always a stand-alone good; that every person’s privacy is at risk equally with every other person’s; that privacy for each person or group means the same as for every other person or group; that in fact the two sides of the equation are security vs. privacy (as opposed, for instance, to security vs. freedom, although that equation – much more relevant – is raised fairly frequently) and that it is the good-faith activities of “security forces” that endanger “privacy.” Left out of the equation are the proven bad faith activities of “security forces.”

The concealments include that the threat to citizens can come from the good-faith actions of “security forces,” yes, but that in fact by a large preponderance come from rogue actions of “security forces” and “intelligence agencies,” both of which are virtually out-of-control now.

On protecting the identity of “intelligence sources

The historical record – not in the slightest acknowledged by the “security vs privacy” equation – shows conclusively that those most spied upon, whose personal security is threatened repeatedly, are those who question authority, those who are peaceful dissidents, those who seek and act for improvements to the status quo, specifically for more equality and justice, those who are left-of-centre up to and including revolutionaries. The danger posed to loss of privacy among those on the left is much greater than it is for those on the right or for those not politically involved at all, which is to say the vast majority of citizens. This historical record goes unaddressed in 99% or more of the discourse about the dangers of “loss of privacy.”

The large majority of people have little reason to fear the state, because they pose no perceived threat to the state. Accordingly, their need or wish to protect their privacy – for instance about their personal sex or financial lives – is of less interest to, is far less important to, the national security state than are the personal facts and political beliefs or acts of those on the left who pose a perceived threat to the status quo, however lawful or justified their words or actions may be.

Providing deeper, almost impenetrable, cover for informants, otherwise known colloquially as rats or ratfinks, is far from a pressing need for national security.

Rather, the history of informants shows that the majority, and in particular those who are chosen or come forward to “intelligence” agencies (or are assigned by these agencies), are owed much less protection from identity than they even now enjoy.

The case of RCMP informant Richard Young is just one that should give pause.

Young was recruited by the RCMP in British Columbia (he approached them) prior to 2007. He convinced them he had information on drug operations. An accomplished con man, he suckered the Mounties big time.

While they, through failure to carry out due diligence among other things, came under his spell he was taken under their witness protection program. Doing so is labour intensive and expensive. Under it, Young committed a murder, which is uncontested. The Mounties then did all in their considerable power to shield him from the consequences of that. This and more was documented by two CanWest reporters and then a Globe and Mail investigative team in 2007.

At the heart of the stupidity, naivete and wrong-doing by the RCMP was the continued insistence on protecting Young’s identity. Ultimately the Mounties’ failure and the harm done (wasted public money, a man getting away with murder under the protection of the RCMP, and the RCMP not properly held to account) were exposed by less than a handful of dedicated reporters.

A compelling but illegitimate reason for these agencies to seek total anonymity for their “informants” is that so many of these do not even qualify as such, but rather are individuals planted to manufacture false “intelligence” or carry out dirty tricks on targets chosen by these agencies. Documented history shows that typically the targets are law-abiding, well-informed, politically active (on the left) and even courageous citizens who nevertheless are considered “enemies of the state” by the security apparatus and its overlords.

Remember that the RCMP spied on Tommy Douglas to the extent that his dossier numbered 1,100 pages, only a few of which CSIS, which inherited the RCMP dossier, has released. The grounds for CSIS’s refusal are that it must protect the informants. This is the very group of unsavoury snitches that the Harper government wants to give deeper cover.

The otherwise much-touted need for transparency and accountability is not only forgotten within “terrorist threat” hysteria. It is turned on its head. It is claimed that transparency and accountability are threats to the public! And that anyone who suggests otherwise also is a threat. In a world of fear the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good.

The so-called “war on terror,” fed by the national security state to the public like slops to pigs, paves the way through regression to a world of “military tribunals” (an oxymoron), of Star Chambers, to a new Dark Ages.

Outcomes of this particular false flag op

√ It makes the task much harder for those warning the public of the dangers of the government’s legislation endowing intelligence agencies with greater powers, more resources, fewer restrictions and less transparency.

√ Providing the RCMP and other spy agencies with even more anonymity for informants is a particular danger, as noted at length above.

If the laws being pushed by Harper today go through, the RCMP, CSIS or CSEC in a similar case in the future would be even more enabled to waste the time of personnel and of other resources, and of taxpayer public money, for little or no gain in public safety or security.

√ Reduction of civil liberties:  easier detentions, extraditions

√ Increased invasion of privacy

√ Intimidation of legislative branch, as happened in spades in the USA in response to the “anthrax attacks.”

√ More pressure on the judiciary to bow to omnipresent low-level “terrorism” hysteria

√ Marginalizing of both the legislative and judicial branches

√ Increased integration of Canadian spy agencies with those

of “our” allies, so that the globalist integrated deception apparatus can operate even more freely and in ever more sophisticated ways.

√ Buttressing of the grand made-in-Washington pax Americana imperial design.

Honourable exceptions in the media

In fairness, quite a number of voices of reason, caution, skepticism and outright objection to the Harper government’s obvious exploitation of the events of the week of October 20th to forward its militaristic pro-American pro-Israeli agenda could be found. Unfortunately, as usual with false flags, these voices accepted the government’s version of what happened.

With this fundamental caveat in place, however, here are just a few individuals within the Canadian mainstream who made cogent arguments of dissent.

In the Toronto’s Star’s 17 pages of coverage on October 23rd Martin Regg Cohn cautioned:

“The risk is that we will overreact with security clampdowns and lockdowns that are difficult to roll back when the threat subsides. The greater risk is that we will hunker down with over-the-top security precautions that pose a more insidious menace to our open society.”

Tom Walkom pointed out the events were not unprecedented. In 1984 a disgruntled Canadian Forces corporal killed three and wounded 13 in Quebec’s national assembly. “We know,” Walkom continued, “that in a situation like this, facts are secondary,” and “at times like this, it is easy to lose all sense of proportion.” Haroon Siddiqui asked why, “if Martin Rouleau, a.k.a. Ahmad the Convert,” was in the crosshairs of CSIS and the RCMP for months, he was not being tailed.

“Smoking out such suspects and throwing the book at them requires good policing, not wars abroad or the whipping up of fears at home for partisan political purposes.”

On October 27th in The Globe and Mail Elizabeth Renzetti quoted extensively from James Risen’s new book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War. “The war in question is the war on terror, which Mr. Risen, a Pulitzer-Prize winning security reporter for The New York Times, says has been used as an excuse to conduct a largely secret campaign to undermine Americans’ civil rights, spy on their communications and line the pockets of security consultants. As one reviewer said, it reads like a thriller – except, unfortunately, it’s not fiction.”

She quotes Risen:

“Of all the abuses America has suffered at the hands of the government in its endless war on terror,” Mr. Risen writes, “possibly the worst has been the war on truth.”

On the same day in the Toronto Star Tim Harper wrote:

“Here’s a vote for the power of time and perspective.” “And here’s a vote of confidence in a Parliament that will not jump to conclusions in the heat of the moment and a government that will resist the temptation to use October’s events as an impetus to move into new, unneeded realms.”

“Before we move too far, time and perspective should force us to ask whether we were dealing with mental health issues last week rather than terrorism, even as the RCMP said Sunday it had ‘persuasive evidence’ that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau’s attack was driven by ideological and political motives.” “We must twin increased powers with increased oversight.”

On November 2nd, the Toronto Star published a long lead editorial headed “’Terrorism’ Debate: Get beyond the word.”

The second paragraph:

“Down one path is a U.S.-like response to the perceived, though unsubstantiated, threat of terror: increased police powers and indiscriminate state snooping, the chipping away of civil liberties. This the way of the government.”

Down the other “is a more considered, deliberate approach that takes the rule of law as primary…” The choice, the editorial continues “ought to be fertile ground for a pivotal public debate but so far that conversation has been eclipsed by a lexicographical matter: whether we can rightly call the attack on Ottawa ‘terrorism.’”

It concludes:

“As long as our leaders insist on reducing these complex issues to a binary debate over a slippery word, we cannot have the conversation we need nor choose the country we’ll become.”

Many writers of letters to the editors of these papers are in no mood to be panicked by inflated “terror” talk. “Denying [Zihaf-Bibeau and Couture-Rouleau] their passports had the equivalent effect of putting them in cages and poking at them with a sharp stick. They broke out and two soldiers are dead.” This was from a retired RCMP officer, in The Globe and Mail.

False flag events benefit the Canadian right

Some commentators to their credit have observed that these events as played are calculated to pay off domestically to increase the Harper government’s chances of re-election next year.

Harper now holds a couple of aces for a winning electoral hand. One is his rightwing anti-taxes stance tied to producing a federal money surplus whatever the cost to the environment, science, social services (including more help for the mentally ill) and more. Some of that surplus is already being earmarked in the highest-profile ways as bribes (with their own money) to Canadians with children.

Last week’s events now constitute another ace. “Family-friendly” leaders seen as standing tall against an external enemy almost always benefit electorally. But this second ace is a fixed card. In this game there are five aces: clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds and false flags.

Only when a politically relevant portion of Canada’s and the world’s people understand the dominant agenda-setting function of false flag operations can decent people the world over begin a successful effort to replace the vast global inequality-and-death structure with a life-sustaining and fair socio-economic structure.

As Prof. John McMurtry of Guelph put it on October 29th in an essay entitled “Canada: Decoding Harper’s Terror Game. Beneath the Masks and Diversions” published by Global Research:

“If the stratagem is not seen through, the second big boost to Harper will be to justify the despotic rule and quasi-police state he has built with ever more prisons amidst declining crime, ever more anti-terrorist rhetoric and legislation, ever more cuts to life support systems and protections (the very ones which would have prevented these murderous rampages), and ever more war-mongering and war-criminal behaviours abroad.

Adds McMurtry:

“Harper rule can only go further by such trances of normalized stupefaction now reinforced with Canadian blood.”

Barrie  Zwicker is a renowned Canadian journalist, best selling author and documentary producer.

Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/canadas-false-flag-terror-fingerprints-of-u-s-involvement/5412838

2014
11/09
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Israel has made 600,000 Palestinians homeless and is turning Gaza into a super-max prison

gaza_homeless_460

IT IS ASTONISHING that the reconstruction of Gaza, bombed into the Stone Age according to the explicit goals of an Israeli military doctrine known as “Dahiya”, has tentatively only just begun two months after the end of the fighting.

According to the United Nations, 100,000 homes have been destroyed or damaged, leaving 600,000 Palestinians – nearly one in three of Gaza’s population – homeless or in urgent need of humanitarian help.

Roads, schools and the electricity plant to power water and sewerage systems are in ruins. The cold and wet of winter are approaching. Aid agency Oxfam warns that at the current rate of progress it may take 50 years to rebuild Gaza.

Where else in the world apart from the Palestinian territories would the international community stand by idly as so many people suffer – and not from a random act of God but willed by fellow humans?

The reason for the hold-up is, as ever, Israel’s “security needs”. Gaza can be rebuilt but only to the precise specifications laid down by Israeli officials.

We have been here before. Twelve years ago, Israeli bulldozers rolled into Jenin camp in the West Bank in the midst of the second intifada. Israel had just lost its largest number of soldiers in a single battle as the army struggled through a warren of narrow alleys. In scenes that shocked the world, Israel turned hundreds of homes to rubble.

With residents living in tents, Israel insisted on the terms of Jenin camp’s rehabilitation. The alleys that assisted the Palestinian resistance in its ambushes had to go. In their place, streets were built wide enough for Israeli tanks to patrol.

In short, both the Palestinians’ humanitarian needs and their right in international law to resist their oppressor were sacrificed to satisfy Israel’s desire to make the enforcement of its occupation more efficient.

It is hard not to view the agreement reached in Cairo this month for Gaza’s reconstruction in similar terms.

Donors pledged $5.4 billion – though, based on past experience, much of it won’t materialise. In addition, half will be immediately redirected to the distant West Bank to pay off the Palestinian Authority’s mounting debts. No one in the international community appears to have suggested that Israel, which has asset-stripped both the West Bank and Gaza in different ways, foot the bill.

The Cairo agreement has been widely welcomed, though the terms on which Gaza will be rebuilt have been only vaguely publicised. Leaks from worried insiders, however, have fleshed out the details.

One Israeli analyst has compared the proposed solution to transforming a third-world prison into a modern US super-max incarceration facility. The more civilised exterior will simply obscure its real purpose: not to make life better for the Palestinian inmates, but to offer greater security to the Israeli guards.

Humanitarian concern is being harnessed to allow Israel to streamline an eight-year blockade that has barred many essential items, including those needed to rebuild Gaza after previous assaults.

The agreement passes nominal control over Gaza’s borders and the transfer of reconstruction materials to the PA and UN in order to bypass and weaken Hamas. But the overseers – and true decision-makers – will be Israel. For example, it will get a veto over who supplies the massive quantities of cement needed. That means much of the donors’ money will end up in the pockets of Israeli cement-makers and middlemen.

But the problem runs deeper than that. The system must satisfy Israel’s desire to know where every bag of cement or steel rod ends up, to prevent Hamas rebuilding its home-made rockets and network of tunnels.

The tunnels, and element of surprise they offered, were the reason Israel lost so many soldiers. Without them, Israel will have a freer hand next time it wants to “mow the grass”, as its commanders call Gaza’s repeated destruction.

Last week Israel’s defence minister Moshe Yaalon warned that rebuilding Gaza would be conditioned on Hamas’s good behaviour. Israel wanted to be sure “the funds and equipment are not used for terrorism, therefore we are closely monitoring all of the developments”.

The PA and UN will have to submit to a database reviewed by Israel the details of every home that needs rebuilding. Indications are that Israeli drones will watch every move on the ground.

Israel will be able to veto anyone it considers a militant – which means anyone with a connection to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Presumably, Israel hopes this will dissuade most Palestinians from associating with the resistance movements.

Further, it is hard not to assume that the supervision system will provide Israel with the GPS co-ordinates of every home in Gaza, and the details of every family, consolidating its control when it next decides to attack. And Israel can hold the whole process to ransom, pulling the plug at any moment.

Sadly, the UN – desperate to see relief for Gaza’s families – has agreed to conspire in this new version of the blockade, despite its violating international law and Palestinians’ rights.

Washington and its allies, it seems, are only too happy to see Hamas and Islamic Jihad deprived of the materials needed to resist Israel’s next onslaught.

The New York Times summed up the concern: “What is the point of raising and spending many millions of dollars … to rebuild the Gaza Strip just so it can be destroyed in the next war?”

For some donors exasperated by years of sinking money into a bottomless hole, upgrading Gaza to a super-max prison looks like a better return on their investment.

Source: http://stopwar.org.uk/news/600-000-palestinians-made-homeless-how-israel-is-turning-gaza-into-a-super-max-prison

2014
11/02
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The US is a Leading Terrorist State

usa-criminal-stateBy Noam Chomsky

“TeleSur” – An international poll found that the United States is ranked far in the lead as “the biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan, with no one else even close.

Imagine that the lead article in Pravda reported a study by the KGB that reviews major terrorist operations run by the Kremlin around the world, in an effort to determine the factors that led to their success or failure, finally concluding that unfortunately successes were rare so that some rethinking of policy is in order.  Suppose that the article went on to quote Putin as saying that he had asked the KGB to carry out such inquiries in order to find cases of “financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well.  And they couldn’t come up with much.” So he has some reluctance about continuing such efforts.

If, almost unimaginably, such an article were to appear, cries of outrage and indignation would rise to the heavens, and Russia would be bitterly condemned – or worse — not only for the vicious terrorist record openly acknowledged, but for the reaction among the leadership and the political class: no concern, except how well Russian state terrorism works and whether the practices can be improved.

It is indeed hard to imagine that such an article might appear, except for the fact that it just did – almost.

On October 14, the lead story in the New York Times reported a study by the CIA that reviews major terrorist operations run by the White House around the world, in an effort to determine the factors that led to their success or failure, finally concluding that unfortunately successes were rare so that some rethinking of policy is in order.  The article went on to quote Obama as saying that he had asked the CIA to carry out such inquiries in order to find cases of “financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn’t come up with much.” So he has some reluctance about continuing such efforts.

There were no cries of outrage, no indignation, nothing.

The conclusion seems quite clear.  In western political culture, it is taken to be entirely natural and appropriate that the Leader of the Free World should be a terrorist rogue state and should openly proclaim its eminence in such crimes.  And it is only natural and appropriate that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and liberal constitutional lawyer who holds the reins of power should be concerned only with how to carry out such actions more efficaciously.

A closer look establishes these conclusions quite firmly.

The article opens by citing US operations “from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba.” Let us add a little of what is omitted.

In Angola, the US joined South Africa in providing the crucial support for Jonas Savimbi’s terrorist UNITA army, and continued to do so after Savimbi had been roundly defeated in a carefully monitored free election and even after South Africa had withdrawn support from this “monster whose lust for power had brought appalling misery to his people,” in the words of British Ambassador to Angola Marrack Goulding, seconded by the CIA station chief in neighboring Kinshasa who warned that “it wasn’t a good idea” to support the monster “because of the extent of Savimbi’s crimes.  He was terribly brutal.”

Despite extensive and murderous US-backed terrorist operations in Angola, Cuban forces drove South African aggressors out of the country, compelled them to leave illegally occupied Namibia, and opened the way for the Angolan election in which, after his defeat, Savimbi “dismissed entirely the views of nearly 800 foreign elections observers here that the balloting…was generally free and fair” (New York Times), and continued the terrorist war with US support.

Cuban achievements in the liberation of Africa and ending of Apartheid were hailed by Nelson Mandela when he was finally released from prison.  Among his first acts was to declare that “During all my years in prison, Cuba was an inspiration and Fidel Castro a tower of strength… [Cuban victories] destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa … a turning point for the liberation of our continent — and of my people — from the scourge of apartheid. … What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?”

The terrorist commander Henry Kissinger, in contrast, was “apoplectic” over the insubordination of the “pipsqueak” Castro who should be “smash[ed],” as reported by William Leogrande and Peter Kornbluh in their book Back Channel to Cuba, relying on recently declassified documents.

Turning to Nicaragua, we need not tarry on Reagan’s terrorist war, which continued well after the International Court of Justice ordered Washington to cease its “illegal use of force” – that is, international terrorism — and pay substantial reparations, and after a resolution of the UN Security Council that called on all states (meaning the US) to observe international law – vetoed by Washington.

It should be acknowledged, however, that Reagan’s terrorist war against Nicaragua – extended by Bush I, the “statesman” Bush — was not as destructive as the state terrorism he backed enthusiastically in El Salvador and Guatemala.  Nicaragua had the advantage of having an army to confront the US-run terrorist forces, while in the neighboring states the terrorists assaulting the population were the security forces armed and trained by Washington.

In a few weeks we will be commemorating the Grand Finale of Washington’s terrorist wars in Latin America: the murder of six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, by an elite terrorist unit of the Salvadoran army, the Atlacatl Battalion, armed and trained by Washington, acting on the explicit orders of the High Command, and with a long record of massacres of the usual victims.

This shocking crime on November 16, 1989, at the Jesuit University in San Salvador was the coda to the enormous plague of terror that spread over the continent after John F. Kennedy changed the mission of the Latin American military from “hemispheric defense” – an outdated relic of World War II – to “internal security,” which means war against the domestic population.  The aftermath is described succinctly by Charles Maechling, who led US counterinsurgency and internal defense planning from 1961 to 1966.  He described Kennedy’s 1962 decision as a shift from toleration “of the rapacity and cruelty of the Latin American military” to “direct complicity” in their crimes, to US support for “the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads.”

All forgotten, not the “right kind of facts.”

In Cuba, Washington’s terror operations were launched in full fury by President Kennedy to punish Cubans for defeating the US-run Bay of Pigs invasion.  As described by historian Piero Gleijeses, JFK “asked his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to lead the top-level interagency group that oversaw Operation Mongoose, a program of paramilitary operations, economic warfare, and sabotage he launched in late 1961 to visit the ‘terrors of the earth’ on Fidel Castro and, more prosaically, to topple him.”

The phrase “terrors of the earth” is quoted from Kennedy associate and historian Arthur Schlesinger, in his quasi-official biography of Robert Kennedy, who was assigned responsibility for conducting the terrorist war.  RFK informed the CIA that the Cuban problem carries “[t]he top priority in the United States Government — all else is secondary — no time, no effort, or manpower is to be spared” in the effort to overthrow the Castro regime, and to bring “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba.

The terrorist war launched by the Kennedy brothers was no small affair.  It involved 400 Americans, 2,000 Cubans, a private navy of fast boats, and a $50 million annual budget, run in part by a Miami CIA station functioning in violation of the Neutrality Act and, presumably, the law banning CIA operations in the United States.  Operations included bombing of hotels and industrial installations, sinking of fishing boats, poisoning of crops and livestock, contamination of sugar exports, etc.  Some of these operations were not specifically authorized by the CIA but carried out by the terrorist forces it funded and supported, a distinction without a difference in the case of official enemies.

The Mongoose terrorist operations were run by General Edward Lansdale, who had ample experience in US-run terrorist operations in the Philippines and Vietnam.  His timetable for Operation Mongoose called for “open revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime” in October 1962, which, for “final success will require decisive U.S. military intervention” after terrorism and subversion had laid the basis.

October 1962 is, of course, a very significant moment in modern history.  It was in that month that Nikita Khrushchev sent missiles to Cuba, setting off the missile crisis that came ominously close to terminal nuclear war.  Scholarship now recognizes that Khrushchev was in part motivated by the huge US preponderance in force after Kennedy had responded to his calls for reduction in offensive weapons by radically increasing the US advantage, and in part by concern over a possible US invasion of Cuba.  Years later, Kennedy’s Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recognized that Cuba and Russia were justified in fearing an attack. “If I were in Cuban or Soviet shoes, I would have thought so, too,” McNamara observed at a major international conference on the missile crisis on the 40th anniversary.

The highly regarded policy analyst Raymond Garthoff, who had many years of direct experience in US intelligence, reports that in the weeks before the October crisis erupted, a Cuban terrorist group operating from Florida with US government authorization carried out “a daring speedboat strafing attack on a Cuban seaside hotel near Havana where Soviet military technicians were known to congregate, killing a score of Russians and Cubans.” And shortly after, he continues, the terrorist forces attacked British and Cuban cargo ships and again raided Cuba, among other actions that were stepped up in early October. At a tense moment of the still-unresolved missile crisis, on November 8, a terrorist team dispatched from the United States blew up a Cuban industrial facility after the Mongoose operations had been officially suspended. Fidel Castro alleged that 400 workers had been killed in this operation, guided by “photographs taken by spying planes.” Attempts to assassinate Castro and other terrorist attacks continued immediately after the crisis terminated, and were escalated again in later years.

There has been some notice of one rather minor part of the terror war, the many attempts to assassinate Castro, generally dismissed as childish CIA shenanigans.  Apart from that, none of what happened has elicited much interest or commentary.  The first serious English-language inquiry into the impact on Cubans was published in 2010 by Canadian researcher Keith Bolender, in his Voices From The Other Side: An Oral History Of Terrorism Against Cuba, a very valuable study largely ignored.

The three examples highlighted in the New York Times report of US terrorism are only the tip of the iceberg.  Nevertheless, it is useful to have this prominent acknowledgment of Washington’s dedication to murderous and destructive terror operations and of the insignificance of all of this to the political class, which accepts it as normal and proper that the US should be a terrorist superpower, immune to law and civilized norms.

Oddly, the world may not agree.  An international poll released a year ago by the Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup International Association (WIN/GIA) found that the United States is ranked far in the lead as “the biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan (doubtless inflated by the Indian vote), with no one else even close.

Fortunately, Americans were spared this insignificant information.

Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40026.htm

2014
10/22
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Rwanda’s Untold Story Documentary

Twenty years on from the Rwandan genocide, This World reveals evidence that challenges the accepted story of one of the most horrifying events of the late 20th century. The current president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, has long been portrayed as the man who brought an end to the killing and rescued his country from oblivion. Now there are increasing questions about the role of Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front forces in the dark days of 1994 and in the 20 years since.

The film investigates evidence of Kagame’s role in the shooting down of the presidential plane that sparked the killings in 1994 and questions his claims to have ended the genocide. It also examines claims of war crimes committed by Kagame’s forces and their allies in the wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo and allegations of human rights abuses in today’s Rwanda.

Former close associates from within Kagame’s inner circle and government speak out from hiding abroad. They present a very different portrait of a man who is often hailed as presiding over a model African state. Rwanda’s economic miracle and apparent ethnic harmony has led to the country being one of the biggest recipients of aid from the UK. Former prime minister Tony Blair is an unpaid adviser to Kagame, but some now question the closeness of Mr Blair and other western leaders to Rwanda’s president.

2014
10/22
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Bolivarian Education in Venezuela

By KEN JONES, July 26th 2013. http://venezuelanalysis.com/

 

I never heard the words “accountability”or“high stakes testing” once in a recent educator delegation to Venezuela. As a U.S. professor of teacher education, I seldom have discussions about education policies and realities in my own country without confronting these fraught concepts. But in the schools and educational systems of Venezuela? Not part of the discussion. 

The dialogue there is more about education as a human right and what the government is responsible to provide. It’s not about outcomes, as we might say, but more about access and opportunity. What our small group from the U.S. encountered was a wealth of testimonials, not testing. 

We also learned about some very concrete and positive results that have occurred since President Chavez began addressing the country’s widespread illiteracy and lack of access to schooling upon being elected to office in 1998. For example, by 2005, UNESCO declared that Venezuela had essentially eradicated illiteracy, with over 1.5 million people having newly learned to read and write, primarily through a Cuban-developed curriculum and pedagogical approach. The rate of secondary school enrollment rose from 53.6% in 2000 to 73.3% in 2011. Recently, UNESCO put Venezuela in 5th place in the world for the percentage of people enrolled in higher education – in second place in Latin America, behind Cuba. Public education in Venezuela is free for all, from pre-school through university, with free meals and transportation also provided. 

Chavez set into motion a new school system, called Bolivarian schools after the inspirational Latin American liberator Simón Bolivar for whom the country is now named – the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The educational aspect of Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution is part of the new socialist fabric being woven into the society, working in concert with other governmental initiatives that are fostering work cooperatives, free health care (again in cooperation with Cuba), and subsidized food. Together, these and other new governmental initiatives are designed to empower the until-now disenfranchised and impoverished majority of people in the country and to build a socialist future rather than a capitalist one. 

Our delegation visited a Bolivarian pre-school, elementary school, high school, vocational school, adult education program, university, music conservatory, and police academy. We also visited a women’s cooperative in a farm community, a cultural center in a barrio, and a government human rights agency. The common thread among all of these places and initiatives was a focus on building a new society through building new knowledge and skills, responsible citizenship, co-operativism, and contributing to and learning from the local community. We saw delight and accomplishment in the arts, project-oriented learning, and close attention being given to people’s well-being and the health of various eco-systems. 

There was an almost tangible feeling of hope and energy connected with these schools, a sense of not only working productively towards one’s own betterment, but also on behalf of something bigger than one’s self. There was also a keen and informed political consciousness about the country and world – people were eager to talk about the changes happening in their country. They talked about their democratic vision of a future for their country free from exploitation by transnational companies and our own imperialist nation. They spoke knowingly about their national history of dictatorship and extreme capitalism and cried heartfelt tears over the death of their beloved leader and teacher, Hugo Chavez. They knew that Chavez and the revolution they are still enacting have been demonized in their own corporate-controlled media and that of the U.S. and western world. They wanted us to know the truth on the ground there. 

We also met with a couple of university students who identified themselves as in the opposition to Chavez. They were not so positive about the changes, of course, calling into question the quality of the new educational missions and schools, and voicing concerns about the sustainability of these new programs that have been largely funded through oil revenues. They also expressed concerns about individual achievement, competitive advantage, and the disincentives and inequities built into what they saw as an educational system of “handouts.” Coming from the United States, this sounded very familiar to the members of our delegation and we could see the values of a capitalist worldview standing in stark contrast to those of a socialist one. An oversimplification maybe, but nonetheless apparent. 

Bolivarian schools are taking seriously the idea of educating all people and offer U.S. educators a view of how this can be done in a way that differs markedly from what passes for education reform in our country. This can be seen in a variety of the details and perspectives we observed and heard about as we went from place to place. 

Pre-schools are called Simoncitos, a reference to Simón Bolivar. According to government statistics, some 70% of Venezuelan children attend these free schools, where the government pays teachers’ salaries and local community councils (funded by the federal government) provide buildings and supplies. Parents often also come as volunteers, if they can. On our visit to a pre-school, we saw a group of 14 little ones with 3 adults. They told us their names, ages, favorite colors and animals, and danced the hokey-pokey with us. 

Elementary schools are now all-day schools (most in the past were run on two half-day schedules for two different student populations) that include free meals and health services, and extra-curricular activities. Existing school buildings are being refurbished and new buildings are rapidly being constructed. All students are provided with a laptop (although, we learned, there is still a great need for teacher professional development in how to use them effectively). Through student projects and adult education services, they are closely connected to the life of their surrounding communities. Our group of ten got to be guests of honor at an elementary school that was having an all-day graduation celebration that featured very skillful and beautiful student performances in dance and song, including traditional costumes and displays of original art. Graduating students came up to us and asked us to add our signatures to the t-shirts they were wearing – a custom akin to signing yearbooks in our country. 

The secondary school we visited was in a rural community, Monte Carmelo. It is newly housed in a building completed in 2010 – a gift from President Chavez, who was personally persuaded to do so by its charismatic principal, Gaudy Garcia. The school’s curriculum focuses on the study of the lives of people in the town through oral histories and also includes learning about natural ways of growing food, local traditions of crafts, sweets, and healers. Student projects this year are focused on the history of their own community, including the educational history. The projects are done in groups and must have social impact, not just be investigative. The student-chosen topics included agro-ecology, the women of the local women’s coop, plants that serve as bug repellants, worm cultures, and greenhouses. 

There is also a focus in this high school on seed collection and on the dishes made from the crops produced by these seeds. Gaudy spoke knowingly about the problems with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). In 2005, she did an inventory of local seeds and realized there were still many native seeds in her own local community and that they should collect and protect their seeds. “Monsanto has its hand everywhere,” she said. “We have to be careful they don’t take over our seeds, especially corn. We don’t want to have happen to us what happened to Mexico.” The school is creating a “reserve” or “reservoir” of seeds. Gaudy does not want to call it a “bank” of seeds. “We have to change our language from capitalism to socialism,” she said. 

Mision Robinson is the adult education program that has been so successful in eliminating illiteracy in Venezuela. Irlanda Espinoza, the regional director of this program in the town of Sanare, met with us. She spoke movingly about how this program was a response to the social debt to the poor that had accrued for many years prior to Chavez, when the prevailing belief was that not all people had a right to education. She added that they had also stopped providing an education for pregnant girls prior to the revolution, so now there was a debt owed to the children of these girls. 

Irlanda described the labor intensive efforts they use to try to include everyone in the literacy program. For example, the government sent her office education statistics culled from a recent census of people in the area who were enrolled inAmor Mayor, the mission for those over 60. Irlanda goes from house to house out in the country visiting those who said in the census that they do not know how to read and write, asking them if they want to learn. If not, they sign off that they do not want this service. The program is going for a 100% recruitment effort, which she believes is essential. “This is a way of making everyone an active citizen,” she says. “If you can’t read or write, you don’t know your rights and responsibilities and you really can’t serve on a community council.” She knows all about the liberationist educational philosophy of Paulo Freire. 

In the city of Barquisimeto, we visited El Sistema, the local branch of the national music conservatory for youth. El Sistema is a government sponsored classical music education program that reaches 350,000 youth in 125 orchestras. They report that about 70% of their participants come from lower income brackets. It began in 1975 and has become a world famous system and has been adopted around Latin America and Europe. Well-known director Gustavo Dudamel, currently serving as music director of both the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was trained at this Barquisimeto branch. El Sistema has special programs for children with disabilities, and has a White Hands Choir for deaf children. Last month, the founder of El Sistema, Jose Antonio Abreu, met with newly-elected President Maduro and got him to agree to expand this program to involve 1 million children learning to play musical instruments. 

With 2,000 students enrolled in its programs, the Barquisimeto school was a beehive of rehearsals on our Saturday visit. There was a group of twenty 4-year olds playing violins and cellos in an open courtyard, hallways full of individuals playing all varieties of instruments, small rooms full of section practices, and two full youth orchestras rehearsing – one full ensemble with conductors, and one chamber music orchestra with no conductor (“It makes them listen to each other,” said our guide). 

We were told that the pedagogical system used at the conservatory depends on co-operativism. “If you know a little bit, you teach a little bit,” was the saying they used. Our guide explained that music instruction provides a perfect balance of individual excellence and group cooperation – students of all ages play in an orchestra. “Music is a natural way to be in solidarity with each other,” he said. 

In Barquisimeto, we also visited a vocational school for students of ages 14-25 who had left the formal school system. We Americans were surprised to learn that this is part of a national network of such schools administered by the Catholic Church, but funded by the federal government. Short term and long term vocational courses are offered in areas such as electricity, plumbing, hair styling, cooking, and ceramics. There are 222 of these programs in the country, located in the poorest sectors, according to the government. Even more surprising to learn was that, despite the fact that these schools are paid for by the government, the Church takes a strong anti-Chavez stance, seeing the government as “Castro communism.” The teacher meeting with us said, “It’s something they get in their heads, but it’s not the reality. They see it as a right to get money from the federal government.” 

One of the most interesting parts of the Bolivarian school system is the new system of territorial universities. These new universities were begun by Chavez as an alternative to the traditional, so-called autonomous universities, which have primarily served the elites and still have the lion’s share of the government funding for higher education. Local community colleges are being converted to territorial universities with the intention that they will educate everyone and also contribute to the strategic projects of the nation. The university we visited in Barquisimeto has 12,500 students who are studying science & technology, ergonomics, library research, integral systems, public administration, applied computer sciences, food sovereignty, security, conservation, and other areas. As in the Bolivarian schools at lower levels, the curricula are focused on projects intended to contribute to the local communities. And unlike the traditional universities, studies are not housed in disciplinary departments, but are generated by the faculty and students in an integrated, multidisciplinary approach. Professors and instructors do not always hold traditional degrees. “It is important that popular wisdom be integrated with academic knowledge,” we were told. 

One unique area of study at this university is called Free Studies and includes studies in popular culture, social transformation, gender equality, and “good living.” The latter focus is developed collaboratively with students in order to construct what “our socialism has to do with our way of living with each other,” and draws heavily from indigenous thinking related to living in harmony with nature. 

Other universities are still in the process of being created, including a Worker’s University (where studies are conducted at the workplace and build on workers’ knowledge), an experimental art university, and an Indigenous University (located in a remote area near Angel’s Falls and designed by indigenous people). 

Perhaps the biggest challenge being addressed by the Venezuelan educational system is the problem of police corruption and violence. In this country, the armed forces are understood to be solidly on the side of the government and generally trusted by the people. Chavez was a military man and those in the military have historically come from the working and poor classes. And so they defend the Bolivarian revolution. The police, on the other hand, are not so trusted, having had a role in violence and corruption through the years, including collusion in the current prevalence of kidnapping and homicide in Caracas. 

In order to transform policing in the country, Chavez created a national police force and appointed Soraya El Achkar, a former Maryknoll lay volunteer and human rights activist, to be the head of a new police academy, the National Experimental Security University (UNES). We met with Soraya at the academy in Caracas, where the construction of new buildings was still in process. The site was, pre-Chavez, a much-hated prison. Soraya persuaded Chavez to make this the site of the academy, a place of hope arising from the ashes of despair. 

Founded in 2009 with the idea of transforming policing methods so that officers are attentive to human rights and work closely with communities, UNES now has nine sites throughout the country, and plans for seven more. At this time, Soraya reports, there are 25,000 students, and 4,000 staff (professors, administrators, workers). They teach police at all levels as well as district attorneys and prison guards. 

The approach to education used is a collective decision-making process about what should be in the curriculum, with police, teachers, and human rights groups working together. There are three axes in the curriculum, Soraya said: eco-socialism, human rights, and equality of gender. 

The curriculum itself revolves around four aspects of working with the community: youth; disarmament (what we would call gun control); culture, sports, music, and art; and living together (i.e., mediating difficulties). Community partnerships and coalitions are fostered and efforts made to help youth find jobs and productive activities. 

There are two cross-cutting themes through all the policing coursework:

·         The progressive and differential use of force, adjusting police response to the people and context involved. Violence is prohibited. The judicious and appropriate use of force is what is taught.

·        Community policing. Police are taught to develop working and collaborative relationships in the community and to looking for community solutions to crime. 

Soraya told us that Chavez was “big on education.” He would say, “We need to have more intelligence and less force.” Police reform, she said, “embodies the spirit of Chavez, the revolution, and human rights.” 

Her vision for the academy is that it will go from UNES (national academy) to ULES (a Latin American academy), to be the equivalent of Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine. Soraya also sees this work to be a counterweight to the U.S. School of the Americas (SOA) and to the U.S. International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA), both of which are known for training military and police in methods or repression and whose graduates have a reputation for torture, assassinations, and coups. Venezuela is now taking its turn as the leader of Mercosur and police education may be one of the emphases it brings to that group of nations. 

It was apparent to our delegation from this brief tour of Bolivarian education in Venezuela that what is meant by the term “education reform” in that country is virtually the opposite of what we call education reform in the United States. Here, that term has come to mean a centralized and standardized approach that works from a premise of blaming and disempowering public school teachers. It operates through a regimen of external testing and individualism, diminished public funding, and government-sponsored privatized decision-making. The rationale is to engender greater competitiveness on the world stage. The effect is exclusionary. It is a capitalist model, framed in terms of world domination. 

In Venezuela, by contrast, education reform means inspiring local and diverse approaches that work from the premise of empowering the people working in the schools. It operates through an ethic of internal responsibility and collectivism, increased public funding, and government-sponsored local decision-making. The rationale is to build greater cooperation at the community level. The effect is inclusionary. It is a socialist model, framed in terms of “good living.” 

One evening in Venezuela, as a few of us were discussing what we see as the tragic attacks on public education in the United States, one person asked where we could see hope. I answered, “In Venezuela.” 

Ken Jones is an associate professor of education at the University of Southern Maine. He can be contacted at jonesk@maine.edu

2013
07/28
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Thousands of anti-govt protesters teargassed by Peru police

Riot police blocked the passage of thousands of anti-government protesters marching on congress in Peru’s capital, Lima. Officers used tear gas and water cannon on activists who slammed government corruption and called on the president for change. Clashes broke out between police and the protesters as the crowd tried to push its way to congress. Hooded youths pelted riot officers with stones, while some protesters burnt and trampled a coffin-shaped box with President Ollanta Humala’s name on it.

Lima police Chief General Luis Praeli said 15 people were arrested during the unrest Protesters allege that President Humala has not implemented the changes he promised in the public sector two years after his election in 2011. “The citizens, trade unions, youth are expressing our opposition and our grievance against the policies of the government of Humala, a government that promised a series of changes, a series of reforms and all he has done in these two years of government is not fulfill them,” said protester Javier Torres.

The protest is the latest in a wave of anti-government demonstrations as discontent with Humala’s rule grows. His rating in popularity polls has slipped to 33 percent, the lowest since he assumed the presidency. Public discontent focuses on new legislation that seeks to reform government bureaucracy and universities. Civil workers are worried that the new laws will lead to massive cuts in the public sector.

‘Broken promises’

Professor Fernando Tuesta of the Peruvian Catholic University told RT’s Spanish channel, RT Actualidad, that President Humala had lost the support of the left without achieving the support of the right. “Humala has left himself dangerously isolated from the left,” said Tuesta, adding that the Ollanta promised “totally different policies” to the ones he has adopted for the last two years. Political analyst Yusef Fernandez stressed that Humala gained popular support with pledges of a political and economic policy based of the demands of the people, but never came good on his promises. He told RT Actualidad that the real winners under Humala’s rule had been foreign businesses investing in Peru.

2013
07/28
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