Haiti advancing towards stability but much more needs to be done - UN

Haiti has “a remarkable opportunity” to overcome decades of misrule and neglect, but major hurdles remain and the international community must step up its support to ensure the Caribbean country can consolidate its gains, the United Nations Special Envoy and former United States president Bill Clinton said today.

The Military Budget, Healthcare Reform and Corporate Media

The Military Budget, Healthcare Reform and Corporate Media

By Solomon Comissiong

As the summer comes to a close the battle over healthcare reform rages on. And as each week passes by US healthcare reform becomes more and more watered down. It is hard to believe that this “public debate” has moved from open dialogues about a single payer healthcare system to something now called a “public option”.

Only a fool would compare a genuine single payer healthcare system to this half-assed “public option” that the white house and their gutless democratic cronies are now pushing. It is clear that the Obama administration and the band of capitulating democrats are either fools or they take the general pro-single payer public for fools.

It is probably a bit of both. The public option pales in comparison to the true “everybody in and nobody out” single payer system that even the vacillating president supported back in 2003 when he was a state senator. However, the deeper then state senator Obama delved into mainstream politics the deeper he willingly became influenced by corporate money.

President Obama received tens of millions of dollars for his corporate presidential campaign from the mighty, and immoral, healthcare industry. Obama’s strong corporate ties are a major reason why he has made an about face regarding single payer healthcare despite the fact that a single payer system is not only feasible and needed, it is also sensible.

Universal single payer healthcare in a country like the US makes perfect sense; however the route the healthcare debate has gone does not. I frequently have to pinch myself to make sure I am not stuck in some runaway bad dream filled with intellectually dishonest people who are unaware that Medicare and Medicaid are in fact government run each time they make fragile claims that government run healthcare has no place in America.

I then have to slap myself to make sure that I am not eternally trapped in a nightmare where the country that I reside spends more than 600 billion dollars a year on the military yet claim they cannot finance a single player healthcare system.

Unfortunately I have yet to wake up from this nightmare called capitalistic American greed. It is a nightmare that consumes the lives of at least 22,000 people a year who die from a lack of healthcare.

It is a nightmare in which at least 46 million people try to subsist without any healthcare whatsoever. This nightmare continues, unfettered, all the while every other industrialized country in the world has some sort of healthcare based social contract for its citizens. This nightmare turns out to be a horrible reality firmly built on the foundation of runaway capitalism.

It is runaway unfettered capitalism that makes so many “profits before people” nightmares such a reality, each and everyday. It is sadly interesting to observe some of the obvious questions that the corporate media consistently fail to raise to their masses of programmed viewers. Countless on-air hours are spent arguing where the money will come from to finance a vastly needed single payer system without ever a peep about military expenditure. The corporate media has perfected the “skill” of not raising important questions, and facts.

Raising critical questions would enable the average viewer to discursively deconstruct myriad issues. The corporate media’s perfection of this “skill” is not by chance, it is by design. This is why the overwhelming majority of “experts” they parade on their “news” programs are lock and step with their agenda. They know very well what to say and what not to say. They know not to raise any question or subject that might be too “controversial.

These days what is considered controversial is often what is truthful. In essence, these corporate media puppets know not to bite the hand that feeds them. In the same manner by which the mainstream media seldom raises the tough questions neither do their hired guns (guests). This is why those who ritualistically rely on the corporate mainstream media, for their news and information, will never understand critical issues in the world today.

For instance, most Americans will never know the truth or the history behind the Middle East conflict. The corporate media ostensibly loves to marginalize, demonize, and denigrate the Palestinians, their plight, and their struggle for self-determination. And because of this sad fact most Americans will continue to be complicit with their government annually sending billions of dollars of military aid to Israel. This military aid will continue to be used to repress and destroy Palestinian lives. One cannot claim to be a mediator, as the US disingenuously does, all the while militarily arming one side and ignoring the other. It is, in essence, the foreign policy double standard that the US has built a long history upon.

However, why would anyone expect most Americans to complain about the billions of dollars in military aid that their country spends arming Israel, as well as many other countries, when they do not complain about the hundreds of billions of dollars the US annually spends superfluously arming itself? Most Americans have carefully been programmed not to think critically or discursively when it comes to how their government spends, or does not spend, its taxpayers’ dollars.

This programming has started at a very early age and has continued throughout their lifetime. Some core American ideals are firmly mounted upon militarism and unfettered capitalism. These things are virtually everywhere in American society; they are even woven into the fabric of mainstream schooling. They are more than just simply acceptable; they are as American as apple pie. This is a fundamental reason why it is easier to spot the Loc Ness Monster than a corporate media special on “excessive military spending”.

Those stories are antithetical to the aims of the American corporate media machine. Corporate media prospers on its viewers/listeners/readers ignorance of critical issues, especially when those issues deal with the inextricable connection between the corporation and the state. It would clearly be counterintuitive for the corporate media to blow the “whistle” on itself. However until they are exposed for what they are; Americans will continue to be purposefully left in the dark regarding a wide rage of critical issues.

These issues will continue to exclude America’s addictive habit to military expenditure. It is trivial to focus any healthcare debate centered on the US not having enough money to sufficiently finance a single payer healthcare system if there is no serious examination regarding the amount of money America spends on its bloated imperialist military. The US spends more than 600 billion dollars a year on things like its more than 700 military bases worldwide.

This budget does not even include the maintenance of nuclear weaponry. That is hidden in the Department of Energy’s budget. That 600 billion dollar plus budget does, however, include the imperialist military expansion in Africa, otherwise known as Africom (Africa Command). That 600 billion dollars does not necessarily include the tens of billions of dollars of supplemental funding that goes towards the wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If you go to the White House Office of Management and Budget (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb) they will tell you that they are using some of that money to draw down troops in Iraq “responsibly”. I wonder if the fact that the US has built a well over 600 million dollar embassy in Iraq with an over one billion dollar a year operational cost, means that the US has no plans of permanently occupying Iraq?
(http://www. thinkprogress.org/2007/05/29/photos-embassy-iraq)

If that is the case that also must mean that the U.S. plans to build a 700 million embassy in Pakistan, must also mean the same.
(http://www.mcclatchydc.com/255/story/68952.html)

If these American imperialist plans seem like a distraction from the money that could be clearly spent on universal single payer healthcare, they are. It is a waste of money that will likely disrupt more lives and communities than it will save. US military spending has to be significantly reduced if there is anyway valuable lifesaving social programs, like universal healthcare, can be established. It is, by far, one of the most logical ways to find the money to fund such a program.

Don’t expect the white supremacist and right wing Fox News to raise these questions. And don’t expect the military contractor GE (who also owns NBC and MSNBC) to challenge the government on this matter. We have to do that job. We have to continue to create a critical mass that continually pressures the hell out of this government to do what is in the best interest of masses. Left to their own “faculties” the US government will continue down the same socially destructive path they have built a legacy on.

We have to strategically organize, as well as utilize our social networks to spread critical information, far and wide, one community at a time. Until then we, and countless others, will continue our restless slumber in this nightmare. As Dr. Martin Luther King said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author, public speaker and the host of the Your World News radio program (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Your-World-News). He may be reached at: sunderland77@hotmail.com.

World is over-armed and peace is under-funded, Ban tells civil society forum

Noting that global military spending is now well over $1 trillion and rising every day, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today once again called for ridding the world of nuclear weapons, exhorting civil society groups in particular to continue to speak out against the scourge.

UNESCO head speaks out against killing of journalist in El Salvador

The head of the United Nations agency tasked with upholding press freedom today condemned the killing of a Franco-Spanish journalist and documentary film-maker in El Salvador.

UN backs Kenyan appeal for $81 million to restore critical forest area

Kenya launched an appeal for $81 million to fund efforts halting the degradation of its Mau Forests Complex, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced today.

Somalia Faces Worsening Humanitarian Crisis Due to War Financed by theU.S.

Somalia Facing Worsening Humanitarian Crisis Due to War Financed by the U.S.

1.5 million displaced while half of the population is in need of assistance

by Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

Since 2007 the east African nation of Somalia has been severely affected as a result of U.S. foreign policy in the region. The U.S.-backed Transitional Federal Government (TFG) has utilized the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) troops stationed in the capital of Mogadishu, to hold on to power amid the continuing attacks by two organizations, al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam who are seeking to seize power in this Horn of Africa nation.

Recent reports issued by the aid organization Oxfam and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees indicate that as a result of the fighting and the drought that has struck Somalia and the entire East Africa region, growing numbers of people, mainly women and children, are direct need of shelter, food, water and medicines.

With specific reference to Somalia, it is estimated that at least 1.5 million people have been displaced inside the country as well as hundreds of thousands who fled to neighboring Kenya and Ethiopia. The AMISOM forces, numbered at approximately 5,000, only control areas in the capital of Mogadishu. The AMISOM troops are from Uganda and Burundi. Other African states have largely refused to dispatch their soldiers to defend the U.S.-backed TFG. In a recent budget proposal, the Obama administration had pledged $67 million to support the TFG and AMISOM troops in Somalia.

Drought Impacts the Somali Economy

With the lack of rain and the failure of crops, the livestock of the population has been loss in large numbers. Livestock production is the mainstay of the economic life of many people within the central and southern regions of the country.

The Interior Minister of the U.S.-backed TFG, Sheikh Abdulkadir Ali Omar, recently explained to the United Nations Inter-regional Information Network that “I have been in touch with people throughout the regions and the reports we are getting is that the drought is widespread and the situation of the people is very grave, with water shortages the biggest problem for both animals and people,” Omar said on 3 September.

“Livestock are dying in their thousands, with families losing everything. On the outskirts of most small towns from Gedo [southwest] to Galkayo [northeast], you will now find nomadic families in flimsy shelters looking for help,” the Interior Minister stated. (IRIN, September 7)

Omar told IRIN that the situation was beyond the ability of the TFG to resolve. He said that the government was appealing to the international community for assistance.
“This is bigger than anything we have seen in a long time. I hope our partners will do their utmost to mitigate the suffering of the people.”

In a self-declared state of Galmudug in central Somalia, President Ahmed Ali Hilowle, told IRIN by telephone from Gakkayo that “Even camels are dying. It is a disaster.

Hilowle went to say that “We had two years of dismal rains and the people are on the verge of dying.” This area of Somalia must have barkads (water catchments) for water “and almost all are dry. We are now trucking water sometimes over 100km,” he said that one water tanker, with 200 drums, costs US$200. “Few, if any, can afford that.”

Control of Resources and Waterways at Root of Conflict

The U.S. and other western countries are in and around Somalia in order to both control the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean as well as claim concessions for oil exploration and exploitation. A recent controversy has been generated over a 15-page “Memorandum of Understanding” supposedly written by the United Nations Secretary-General’s special representative to Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, which would give drilling rights for oil off the continental shelf of Somalia, extending the rights for 200 miles, to the U.S.-backed government in Kenya.

Gerald Lemelle, executive director of Africa Action in Washington, D.C., spoke to the desire of western countries to maintain their control over resources despite the demise of direct colonialism. “Nations such as Norway had to figure out a way to maintain control over African resources, so they use Security Council resolutions, and African proxies such as Kenya (reportedly Norway paid $200m to Kenya for the MOA),” he said. “At the heart of Western intervention in Somalia, which has been a geo-political football, is the battle for its oil,” Mr. Lemelle said. (Final Call, September

Human rights activists Sadia Aden and Prof. Abdi Ismail Samitar, a Somali advocate at the University of Minnesota, have stated that western states are engaged in the country in order to control its resources. Aden told the Final Call that the navies that patrol the waters off Somalia ostensibly to fight piracy, are only there to exploit the country’s oil and natural gas reserves.

“Somalis know that these navies did not come to hunt and prosecute pirates but to divide the Somali seas, and to protect their interests as they hope to divide up our resources—not just in the ocean, but also on land,” Ms. Aden added.

In a Los Angeles Times article published in January 1993, during the U.S. military occupation of Somalia, the potential oil reserves in Somalia were said to be at the root cause of the presence of the troops. “That land, in the opinion of geologists and industry sources, could yield significant amounts of oil and natural gas if the U.S.-led military mission can restore peace to the impoverished East African nation.

“According to documents obtained by The Times, nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia’s pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into chaos in January, 1991. Industry sources said the companies holding the rights to the most promising concessions are hoping that the Bush Administration’s decision to send U.S. troops to safeguard aid shipments to Somalia will also help protect their multimillion-dollar investments there.” (Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1993)

If it was true in 1993, it is even more true in 2009. U.S. imperialism and its allies are scrambling for resources in order maintain its dominant economic and political status in the world. This interests in the resources of Somalia and the Horn of Africa however has not translated into any effective assistance program in dealing with the grave humanitarian crisis caused by the fighting and the drought.

Somalis must unite and fight for the genuine independence and sovereignty of their country. People inside the U.S. must not be tricked into believing that the Pentagon and State Department’s involvment in Somalia is designed to fight terrorism and bring stability to the country and region.

Anti-imperialists and anti-war forces must support the Somali people in their struggle for genuine liberation and economic development.

Michigan Governor Reveals Budget Cutback Proposals

September 9, 2009

Michigan budget battle brought out into the open

Governor, GOP, House Dems set to tangle

BY CHRIS CHRISTOFF
FREE PRESS LANSING BUREAU CHIEF

LANSING — Gov. Jennifer Granholm has taken heat for keeping secret her plans to avoid a projected $2.8-billion deficit in the state budget.

Tuesday, she tipped her hand and showed how far apart she is from Senate Republicans in a budget deal.

Granholm’s proposal would raise $685 million in new revenue and cut $572 million in spending. She would use $973 million in federal stimulus money to partially plug the budget hole, and carry $482 million of the federal money to the spending year that begins Oct. 1, 2010.

Her plan also would phase out an unpopular business tax surcharge over 3 years.

Senate Republicans in June pushed their budget-cutting plan through the Senate — past protesting Democrats — without new taxes and with $1.2 billion in spending cuts ($300 million of the cuts ordered by Granholm this fiscal year and carried over into next).

The big tax hits proposed by Granholm: $89 million from tickets for concerts and professional and college sporting events (from a 6% ticket tax); $21 million from vending machine sales; $55 million by freezing personal exemptions on income taxes, and $83 million by reducing the state earned-income tax credit for low-income families.

The higher tax on non-cigarette tobacco would generate $45 million more. Numerous business tax exemptions would be repealed.

Hardest hit by Granholm’s cuts: $150 million from the Department of Community Health, $100 million from the Department of Human Services and $74 million from revenue sharing — half the cut to communities that Senate Republicans proposed.

The ticket tax proposal got a lukewarm response from fans attending Tuesday night’s Britney Spears concert at the Palace of Auburn Hills.

“If they put an extra tax on concert tickets, I don’t know if I go to any anymore,” said Emmily Johnson, 25, of Troy.

Patrick Keller, 26, said while he’s not crazy about the proposal, “I guess I’d rather not have a tax on gas, or something I buy all the time.”

If the release of Granholm’s plan didn’t improve chances for a budget deal by the Oct. 1 deadline, at least it made the battle more public.

Granholm, Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop of Rochester and House Democrats agreed not to publicly disclose details of their budget negotiations, although Republicans have called on Granholm and Democrats to reveal their proposals.

“This is a step forward for the people of Michigan to know what the governor is proposing,” said Matt Marsden, spokesman for Bishop.

Marsden then drove a wedge into the discussion, saying Granholm’s plan for tax hikes is bad medicine.

“We increased taxes in 2007. Clearly things did not improve,” Marsden said.

In a statement, House Speaker Andy Dillon of Redford Township took a hard swipe at Granholm’s release of the proposal.

“The governor should know that showboating a proposal that has no chance of passing is not a way to solve the state’s fiscal crisis,” he said “All parties need to put theatrics and demands aside and get back to the hard work of negotiating a budget solution.”

The $150-million cut in the Department of Community Health would come largely by reducing Medicaid payments to doctors and hospitals, Emerson said.

Of the $685 million in new revenue, $546 million would go to the general fund, and $139 million to the School Aid Fund, which provides most of the money for public schools.

Granholm’s plan also includes revenue increases for the 2010-11 spending year. She and lawmakers are wrangling over a 2-year budget plan, instead of the usual 1-year budget.

Granholm said the Senate cuts would result in cuts to police and fire departments.

“The Senate cuts are dangerous to Michigan,” Granholm said. “The Senate has proposed eliminating the Michigan Promise scholarship. I think that’s dangerous to Michigan’s future.”

Granholm would not trim the $4,000 college scholarship paid to most successful students.

Contact CHRIS CHRISTOFF: 517-372-8660 or cchristoff@freepress.com. Staff writer Brian McCollum contributed to this report.

Additional Facts:

What the dueling budgets propose

Senate Republican plan

-Cut $1.2 billion from state general fund and schools, including:
$110-million per-pupil reduction to schools.

-$165-million cut in revenue sharing to cities.
-$140-million elimination of Michigan Promise scholarships.

Granholm plan:

-Raise $685 million in new revenue, including:
-6% sales tax on tickets to concerts, pro and college sporting events ($87 million).
-25-cent per pack increase in cigarette tax ($54 million).
-6% sales tax on vending machine sales ($29 million).
-6% tax on service contracts ($28 million).
-1-cent tax per bottle of water sold in Michigan ($18 million).

Cut $572 million, including:

-$150 million from Department of Community Health.
-$74 million from revenue sharing.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Granholm budget proposal: Cut $2B, hike taxes $1B

Plan draws opposition as state faces Oct. 1 deadline to balance budget

Mark Hornbeck / Detroit News Lansing Bureau

East Lansing — Bottled water, tickets to live events and pop out of a vending machine would be taxed and smokers would pay more under a budget plan Gov. Jennifer Granholm released for the first time Tuesday.

The plan calls for nearly $2.2 billion in budget cuts, $1.09 billion in tax hikes and tax credit reductions and about $2 billion in federal stimulus money spending in the next two years.

But fellow Democrat and House Speaker Andy Dillon, in a rare public clash with the governor, called the plan “showboating” and “theatrics” and said it has “no chance of passing.”

Granholm’s plan is one of the proposals offered in budget talks. She and legislative leaders will work behind closed doors to strike a deal before the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1.

Under her plan, Granholm would cut government spending by 12 percent and reduce business tax loopholes — including controversial film credits — by a similar proportion.

As previously reported, the governor would raise the cigarette tax by a quarter to $2.25 a pack; assess the 6 percent sales tax on tickets to live entertainment, vending machine sales and service contracts such as landscaping; and slap a 1 percent tax on bottled water.

In exchange, she proposes phasing out the 22 percent Michigan Business Tax surcharge over three years, beginning in 2011. Revenue sharing that local governments use to fund police and fire protection and other services would lose $74 million.

Also, $22 million would be squeezed out of the governor’s pet 21st Century Jobs Fund used to attract business, and $12 million would be trimmed from a pot used for road improvements to support economic development, state budget officials said.

The governor does not propose any reduction in the $4,000 Promise Grants for students who complete statewide high school exams and go on to college.

The document does not detail how the tax hikes and spending cuts would affect individuals, but a 1 percent tax on a $1.50 bottle of water would be a penny and a half; a 6 percent levy on a $50 Red Wings ticket would amount to $3.

In the school aid fund, the governor is proposing $290 million in cuts each year, according to state Budget Director Bob Emerson. Divided by the state’s 1.6 million students, that amounts to $181 per pupil in each of the two budget years. The state would use $800 million in federal recovery cash for school aid, budget officials said.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, has called for the governor to reveal her budget-balancing plan for weeks. She said this proposal has been on the table in talks with legislative leaders since Aug. 6.

“We have a lot of cuts, some loophole closings and some reforms that will not result in savings for this year,” Granholm said after a grand opening ceremony for an IBM applications center at Michigan State University.

Granholm and legislative leaders are working against an Oct. 1 deadline to balance a budget that is $2.8 billion out of whack. Leaders are looking at a similar hole in 2011.

Matt Marsden, spokesman for Bishop, said the budget balancing can begin in earnest.

“We were asking her to come out from behind closed doors. If she’s finally done that, great,” Marsden said.

Granholm said the House was preparing to pass budget bills starting today. But Dillon said that’s news to him. “The governor should know that showboating a proposal that has no chance of passing is not a way to solve the state’s fiscal crisis,” he said. “All parties need to … get back to the hard work of negotiating a budget solution.”

The Senate has passed $1.2 billion in budget cuts, including elimination of the Promise Grants and reductions to many human services programs.

The spending reductions laid out in Granholm’s document add up to $464 million in the budget year starting Oct. 1 and $518 million in the following fiscal year. But Emerson said these cuts are in addition to the $500 million in cuts the governor proposed in her budget plan in February. The spending reductions would be carried over to 2011.

Her plan calls for $684.8 million in tax credit reductions and tax increases in the budget year that starts Oct. 1 and $662.9 million in the 2011 budget year.

She would cut the film credit by 12 percent, or $7.8 million in 2010 and $19.8 million in 2011. Filmmakers qualify for a 42 percent tax credit, and the 12 percent cut would bring that to 37 percent. Other tax credits would be reduced by $130 million in 2010 and $156 million in 2011.

Her plan calls for a liquor license fee increase, a fee for allowing bars to stay open extended hours, a doubled tax on tobacco products other than cigarettes and a freeze in the amount of personal exemptions from the state income tax. The exemption, indexed to inflation, is $3,600.

mhornbeck@detnews.com (313) 222-2470

Israel’s approval of more settlements sparks Ban’s deep concern

The Israeli Government’s recent approval of additional settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territory has sparked Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s deep concern, with the United Nations chief reiterating his call for an end to all settlement activity.

Israeli settlements expansion and prospects for peace

The Israeli government under Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has approved the construction of 400 new housing units in Jewish settlements on the West Bank, a move sure to inflame both Palestinian residents and Western critics of the Israeli policy. This decision may set the tone for Arab-Israeli relations for the near future.

Israeli settlement on West Bank - surrounded by anti-terrorism barrier

The Israeli decision to continue the expansion of settlements comes after numerous attempts by the Obama Administration to curb such activity in the hopes of re-starting the stalled Middle East peace process. Despite these requests, Netanyahu is more concerned with garnering support of the more conservative elements of his governing coalition than appeasing an American administration that many Israelis perceive as pro-Arab at best and anti-Israeli at worst.

There is some justification for that perception on the part of the Israelis. Israeli media constantly report on President Obama’s overtures to Iran and Syria, regarded by Israeli officials as their two major threats, some even calling Iranian aspirations to acquire a nuclear weapon an “existential” threat to the state of Israel. While American envoys are in Syria trying to improve relations with Bashar al-Asad, Israelis believe their interests are being sacrificed. Syria, even after Obama’s overtures, remains firmly in the Iranian camp.

Israeli settlement separated from Arab village by anti-terrorism barrier

As might be expected, Israeli settlements on the West Bank are a major issue with the Palestinians who live there, as well as other Arabs who are using the Israeli policy as a reason to not enter into any discussions with the Israelis on a variety of topics. It would seem that halting the expansion of settlements would be an easy way to improve relations with the Palestinians and the Arab countries.

Given the Israeli assessment that the current American administration’s stance toward Israel is neutral at best and hostile at worst, it makes sense (to them) that Israel would attempt to expand its presence on the West Bank before it is either reined in by a change in American foreign policy or international pressure too great to resist. Once Israel legally expands its settlements, they become de facto Israeli territory, a part of Israel. In the future, these settlements will be assimilated and defended as part of the Jewish state.

Why do the Israelis - or perhaps more accurately, the government of Binyamin Netanyahu - feel a need to expand their presence on the West Bank? A look at the history of Israeli withdrawal from areas it has taken by force of arms might provide an answer.

Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000. Soon afterwards, Hizballah fortified the area and began launching attacks into northern Israel. A border incident in 2006 led to a month-long Hizballah-Israel conflict. That conflict resulted in Israel’s decimation of Hizballah, but popular opinion in both Lebanon and Israel gave the edge to Hizballah for standing up to the Israelis. By 2009, despite United Nations resolutions to the contrary, Hizballah had been fully re-armed by Syria and Iran.

Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Hamas and Islamic Jihad immediately began launching homemade and imported rockets into Israel - and still does. Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006 - in 2007 they expelled any remaining Fatah members from the Strip in a bloody conflict. By the end of 2008, Hamas had acquired longer range rockets, now reaching as far as Ashdod, halfway to Tel Aviv. This set up the confrontation that resulted in the Israeli invasion of Gaza in late 2008 and 2009. That conflict has yet to be resolved.

Given these experiences, Israel is wary of a withdrawal from the Golan Heights, a plateau overlooking northern Israel, realizing that such a commitment is a requirement for peace with Syria. It was from positions on the heights that Syrian artillery batteries shelled cities in the Hula Valley, including Qiryat Shimona, Tiberias and Metulla.

Israel has occupied the area since seizing them during the 1967 Six Day War. Although military technology has largely negated the geography of the Golan - Syria has missiles that can reach almost any part of Israel from launch positions well north of Damascus - Israelis still are uncomfortable with the thought of Syrians again on the bluffs overlooking their cities. Possibly more importantly, Israel is reluctant to turn over to Syria control of the headwaters of the Jordan River - one of its primary water sources, a key factor in its economy and survival - to the Syrians.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with the author

From my own interactions with the Israelis (certainly not a scientific poll), it appears they are almost evenly split on returning occupied lands in return for peace. I have sensed a slight decrease, however, in the number of Israelis willing to give up occupied territory since the conflict with Hizballah in 2006 and the operation in Gaza earlier this year.

Netanyahu has said that he will not support of return of the Golan Heights to Syria. That has effectively halted the Syrian track of the Middle East peace process. Expanding settlements in the West Bank has effectively halted talks with the Palestinian Authority about any “two-state” solution.

West Bank anti-terrorism barrier separating Arabs and Israelis

What’s the answer then? Netanyahu once told me about the “no-solution” solution - he is willing to live with the situation as it is. Israel maintains administrative control of the occupied Golan Heights, protecting the headwaters of the Jordan and the cities of northern Israel, and continues to farm the fertile plateau. It also continues to develop its existing settlements on the West Bank inside the anti-terrorism barrier. As long as the two are kept apart, there is greatly decreased violence.

For now, that’s solution enough for many Israelis.

The Untold Story of the Cuban Five

The Untold Story of the Cuban Five

Forbidden Heroes

By Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly of People’s Power

“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”
Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

REMEMBER Elian?

The case of Elian González, a six year-old boy forcefully retained by his unknown great-uncles against the will of his father and in clear defiance of U.S. law and decency was widely reported by media around the world. Miami, the place of the kidnapping, became a kind of secessionist city in North America when the Mayor, the chief of police, the politicians, every newspaper and local radio and TV broadcasters, together with religious and business institutions, joined with some of the most notorious terrorist and violent groups in opposing the courts’ and government’s orders to free the boy.

It was necessary for a Special Forces team sent from Washington DC to launch a surreptitious and swift operation to occupy several houses, disarm the heavily armed individuals hidden there and in the neighborhood to save the child and restore law.

Everybody followed that story. Day in and day out.

But practically nobody knew that, at the very same time, in exactly the same place–Miami–five other young Cubans were arbitrarily deprived of their freedom and subjected to a gross miscarriage of justice.

Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González were detained in the early hours of Saturday September 12th, 1998, and locked for the next 17 months in punishment cells, in solitary confinement. The main accusation against them–as recognized by the prosecutors and the judge from their indictment to the last day of the trial–was that they had peacefully, with no weapons, penetrated ant-Cuban terrorist groups with a view of reporting back to Cuba about their criminal plans.

Was it conceivable to have a fair trial in Miami for any Cuban revolutionary facing such an accusation? Could that happen while the kidnapping of Elian was going on with its surrounding atmosphere of violence, hatred and fear?

According to the prosecution it was perfectly possible. In their words Miami was “a very large, diverse, heterogeneous community” capable of handling any sensitive issue, even those involving the Cuban Revolution. The prosecutors repeated that line when rejecting the more than ten motions presented by the defense lawyers requesting a change of venue before the start of the trial.

The same government that was obligated to deal with Miami as a sort of rebel city and to secretly send there its forces to restore legality, lied repeatedly about the venue issue, denying the defendants a right so cherished by Americans, and refused to move the proceedings to the neighboring city of Fort Lauderdale, half an hour away from Miami.

Ironically, a few years later, in 2002, when the government was the object of a civilian complaint of an administrative nature, of far lesser significance–later resolved by an out of Court settlement–and only indirectly related to the Elian case, they asked for a change of venue to Fort Lauderdale, affirming that “anything related to Cuba” was impossible to get a fair trial in Miami. (Ramírez vs. Ashcroft, 01-4835 Civ-Huck, June 25, 2002)

Such a flagrant contradiction, a clear proof of prosecutorial misconduct, of real prevarication, was one of the main factors leading to the unanimous decision of the Court of Appeals panel, in 2005, to vacate the convictions of the Five and order a new trial. (Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, No. 01-17176, 03-11087).

That historic decision was later reversed by the majority of the entire Court under pressure from Attorney General Alberto González in an action that went contrary to the normal US legal practice. Mr. González’s successful move, a manifestation of his peculiar legal philosophy, foreclosed the possibility of a just resolution of this case in a manner that would have honored the United States.

The panel decision, an exceptionally sound and solid 93 pages document, including irrefutable facts about the half century old terrorist war against Cuba, remains an outstanding moment in the best American tradition and will continue to be a text to be analyzed with respect by scholars and law school students.

But that’s another chapter in the long saga of the Cuban Five.

Elián González now is about to finish high school and continues to attract the attention of foreign media and visitors who keep going to Cardenas, the beautiful town where he lives. When traveling towards Elian’s home they will be surprised by billboards demanding freedom for five youngsters they never heard off before.

In Leonard Weinglass’s words:

“The trial was kept secret by the American media. It is inconceivable that the longest trial in the United States at the time it was taking place was only covered by the local Miami press, particularly where generals and an admiral as well as a White House advisor were all called to testify for the defense. Where was the American media for six months? Not only was this the longest trial, but it was the one case involving mayor issues of foreign policy and international terrorism. The question should be directed to the American media, with continues to refuse to cover a case with such gross violations of fundamental rights, and even violations of human rights of prisoner”. (Response by Leonard Weinglass in the forum organized by www.antiterroristas.cu on September 12, 2003).

Elian was saved because Americans knew about his case and got involved and made justice prevail. The Five are still incarcerated – it will be 11 years next September – victims of a terrible injustice, because Americans are not permitted to know.

The Five are being cruelly punished because they fought against terrorism. They are heroes. But forbidden heroes.

Justice in Wonderland

“Sentence first-verdict afterwards”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Having been defeated on the issue of venue the outcome of the Cuban Five’s trial was predetermined. It will go strictly in accordance with the Queen’s prophecy.

The American media played a very important two-pronged role. Outside Miami it was, and it continues to be, how Attorney Leonard Weinglass so aptly described contrasting sharply with their role within Dade County, both offering an impressive show of discipline.

The local media not only intensively covered the case, but intervened actively in it, as if they were part of the prosecution. The Five were condemned by the media even before they were indicted.

Very early in the morning on Saturday September 12th 1998, each media outlet in Miami was talking breathlessly about the capture of some “terrible” Cuban agents “bent to destroy the United States” (the phrase that prosecutors love so much and will repeat time and again during the entire process). “Spies among us” was the headline that morning. At the same time, by the way, the Miami FBI chief was meeting with Lincoln Díaz-Balart and Ileana Ross Lehtinen, representatives of the old Batista gang in federal Congress.

An unprecedented propaganda campaign was launched against five individuals who could not defend themselves, due to the fact that they were completely isolated from the outside world, day and night, for a year and a half, in what is accurately described in prison jargon as the “hole”.

A media circus has surrounded the Five since they were detained all the way until now. But only in Miami. Elsewhere in the United States the ordeal of the Five has only gotten silence. The rest of the country does not know much about this case and is kept in the dark, as if everybody accepted that Miami–that “very diverse, extremely heterogeneous community” as described by the D.A.–belongs to another planet.

That might have been a reasonable proposition, if it were not for some rather embarrassing facts recently discovered. Some of the media people involved in the Miami campaign–”journalists” and others–were paid by the US government, were in its payroll as employees of the radio and TV anti-Cuban propaganda machine that has cost many hundreds of millions of US tax payer’s dollars.

Without knowing it, Americans were forced to be very generous, indeed. There is a long list of “journalists” from Miami who covered the entire trial of the Five and, at the same time, were receiving juicy federal checks (for more on the “work” of these journalist see: http://www.freethefive.org).

The Court of Appeals decision in 2005 provides also a good summary of the propaganda campaign before and during the trial. That was one of the reasons leading the panel “to vacate the convictions and order a new trial”. Miami was not a place to have even the appearance of justice. As the judges said “the evidence submitted in support of the motions for change of venue was massive”. (Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, No. 01-17176, 03-11087)

Let’s clarify something. Here we are not talking about journalists in the sense Americans outside Miami may be thinking of. We are referring to Miami “journalists,” something quite different.

Their role was not to report the news, but to create a climate guaranteeing conviction. They even called for public demonstrations outside the office of the defense counsel and harassed prospective jurors during the pretrial phase. The Court itself expressed concern about the “tremendous amount of requests for the voir questions in advance of them being asked, apparently destined to inform their listeners, including members of the venire, of the questions prior to the time they are posed to them by the Court”.

We are talking about a bunch of individuals who harassed the jurors, following them, with cameras, through the streets, filming their car licenses and showing them on TV, tracking them inside the Court building, down to the jury room’s door, during the entire seven months trial proceedings, all the way to the last day.

Judge Leonard more than once protested and begged the government to stop such a deplorable masquerade. She did that at the very beginning of the trial, on several occasions thereafter and until the very end. To no avail. (Official transcripts of the trial, pp. 22, 23, 111, 112, 625, 14644-14646).

The government was not interested in having a fair trial. During the jury selection process, the prosecution was very keen to exclude the majority of African American prospective jurors. It also excluded the three individuals who didn’t manifest strong anti-Castro sentiments.

By that time Elian González has been rescued but he was very much in the minds of the jurors. As one of them said during voir dire: “I would be concerned about the reaction that might take place … I don’t want rioting and stuff like that to happen like what happened in the Elian case”. Or in the words of another: “I would be a nervous wreck if you wanted to know the truth … I would have actual fear for my own safety if I didn’t come back with a verdict that was in agreement with the Cuban community”.

In that ambience of fear began the longest trial to date in American history. And the one that the big media “chose” to ignore.

The Face of Impunity

As they recognized during voir dire, the kidnapping of Elian González and its consequences for the community was very much in the minds of those chosen to be jurors at the trial of the Cuban Five a few months after the six-year-old boy was rescued by the federals.

Like everybody else they had followed the events related to Elian which saturated the news. The faces of the kidnappers, their promoters and supporters, as well as others involved in the scandal had become quite familiar to the jury members. The faces, and two features of the Elian drama: its unique nature and its direct connection with the trial of the five Cubans.

First, the perplexing behavior of every Miami public official, from its Federal Congress members, the mayor and the city commissioners, to firefighters and members of the police force, who openly refused to obey the law and did nothing to put an end to the most publicized case of child abuse ever to occur. And, secondly, but no less incredibly, that nothing happened to a group of individuals who had so clearly violated the law with the abduction of a child and the violence and disturbances that they created all over the city when he was rescued by the federal government. Nobody was prosecuted, arrested, or fined. No local authority was dismissed, replaced or asked to resign. The Elian case demonstrated how anti-Castro impunity reigns in Miami.

When the jurors first took their seats in the Court room to do their citizens’ duty they were probably taken by surprise. There, live, were the “Miami celebrities” that they were so used to seeing, day and night, on local TV. And they were together, sometimes smiling and embracing each other, like old pals. The kidnappers and the “law enforcement” guys hand and glove with the prosecutors (those valiant people who never showed up when a little boy was being molested in front of the media).

The jurors spent seven months in that room looking at, and being watched by the same people so familiar to them who now were on the witness stand, in the public area or at the news corner, the same people there frequently going to find in the parking lot, at the building entrance, in the corridors. Some of them now and then proudly displaying the attire used for their last military incursion to Cuba.

The jurors heard them explaining in detail their criminal exploits and saying time and again that they were not talking about the past. It was a strange parade of individuals to appear in a court of law, acknowledging their violent acts against Cuba planned, prepared and launched from their own neighborhood.

There, making speeches, demanding the worst punishment, slandering and threatening the defense lawyers.

The judge did what she could to try to preserve calm and dignity. She certainly ordered the jury, many times, not to consider certain inappropriate remarks but, in doing so, could not erase their prejudicial and fearsome effects from the jurors’ minds.

The consequences were obvious. The Court of Appeal panel’s decision stated it in clear terms: “The evidence at trial disclosed the clandestine activities not only of the defendants, but also of the various Cuba exile groups and their military camps that continue to operate in the Miami area. The perception that these groups could inflict harm on jurors who rendered a verdict unfavorable to their views was palpable”. (Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeal, No. 01-17176, 03-11087)

But there was more. After hearing and seeing the abundant evidence of terrorist acts that the defendants had tried to avert, the government succeeded in defending the terrorists by having the Court inexplicably agree to remove from the jury the right to exonerate the Five on the basis of legal necessity, which was the foundation of their defense.

The heart of the matter, in this case, was the need for Cuba to protect its people from the criminal attempts of terrorists who enjoy total impunity in U.S. territory. The law in the United States is clear: if persons act to prevent a greater harm, even if they violate the law in the process, they will be excused from any criminality because society recognizes the necessity – even the benefit – of taking such action.

The United States, the only world superpower, has interpreted that universal principle to take war to distant lands in the name of fighting terrorism. But at the same time it refused to recognize it in the case of five unarmed, peaceful, non-violent persons who, on behalf of a small country, without causing harm to anybody, tried to avert the illegal acts of criminals who have found shelter and support in the United States.

The U.S. government, through the Miami prosecutors, went even further, to the last mile, to help those terrorists. They did it very openly, in writing and with passionate speeches that, curiously, were not considered newsworthy.

That was happening in 2001. While the Southern Florida prosecutors and the local FBI were so caught up in harshly punishing the Cuban Five and protecting “their” terrorists, the criminals preparing the 9/11 attack had been training, unmolested, in Miami for quite some time. They must have had a weighty reason for preferring that location. (Taken from Counterpunch) •