The birth of a Latin American and Caribbean community: While in some respects this is indeed a positive move, that an attempt is being made to break from the hegemony of North America (Imperial USA and Canada) – the actual commitment to anti-imperialism amongst the nations are varied, with some (such as Colombia) are clearly allied with the US Empire. It remains to be seen if, through cultural and economic exchanges, North America influence can indeed be reduced, or if the US puppets in Latin America, and those still too timid to take an independent stand, will end up derailing this important process… Amongst Muslim majority countries there is also something called the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) that is supposed to take a common stand, but given the preponderance of US sponsored puppet regimes – this has got to be one of the most useless organizations that Muslims have come up with in the past few decades… The independent nations of Latin America (such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, and possibly Nicaragua) would do well to study the failures of “unity” organisations such as the OIC – and to not waste too much time trying to develop “unity” where there can be none… instead, work on strengthening existing South-South alliances, and develop cultural and economic exchange programs with independent nations such as Iran, to a lesser extent Syria, Palestine and Turkey (to name a handful).
partial translation: “Listen to this news, I could not believe this, but then I verified it! The New York Times says, the New York Times says a lot of lies, but I don’t think they lie about the internal politics, or the government of the US. Listen to this: The US forces said they suspended the evacuation of the victims of the earthquake in Haiti to the US, because of a dispute about who would pay for the treatment of… suspended… This is imperialism, this is Capitalism…each ill person who comes, an injured person, how much does this fracture cost? How much does this operation cost? A pregnant woman, how much does the cesarean cost? … This is Capitalism”
from the social and political history of Haiti,” Canadian Haiti Solidarity Activist Yves Engler said in an interview. “They repeatedly state that the government was completely unprepared to deal with the crisis. This is true. But they left out why.”
Why were 60 percent of the buildings in Port-au-Prince shoddily constructed and unsafe in normal circumstances, according to the city’s mayor? Why are there no building regulations in a city that sits on a fault line? Why has Port-au-Prince swelled from a small town of 50,000 in the 1950s to a population of 2 million desperately poor people today? Why was the state completely overwhelmed by the disaster?
To understand these facts, we have to look at a second fault line–U.S. imperial policy toward Haiti. The U.S. government, the UN, and other powers have aided the Haitian elite in subjecting the country to neoliberal economic plans that have impoverished the masses, deforested the land, wrecked the infrastructure and incapacitated the government.
The fault line of U.S. imperialism interacted with the geological one to turn the natural disaster into a social catastrophe.
During the Cold War, the U.S. supported the dictatorships of Papa Doc Duvalier and then Baby Doc Duvalier–which ruled the country from 1957 to 1986–as an anti-communist counter-weight to Castro’s Cuba nearby.
Under guidance from Washington, Baby Doc Duvalier opened the Haitian economy up to U.S. capital in the 1970s and 1980s. Floods of U.S. agricultural imports destroyed peasant agriculture. As a result, hundred of thousands of people flocked to the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince to labor for pitifully low wages in sweatshops located in U.S. export processing zones.
In Copenhagen, from the beginning, the cards were on the table for all to see. On the one hand, the cards of brutal meanness and stupidity of capitalism which did not budge in defence of its logic: the logic of capital, which leaves only death and destruction in its wake at an increasingly rapid pace.
On the other hand, the cards of the peoples demanding human dignity, the salvation of the planet and for a radical change, not of the climate, but of a world system that has brought us to the brink of unprecedented ecological and social catastrophe.
On one side, the victors of a mercantile and utilitarian civilisation, that is, the “civilised ones” who for a long time now have forgotten about human beings, and opted blindly for increasingly insatiable desires.
On the other hand, the “barbarians” who remain committed in believing and in fighting for radically changing the logic, that you can maximise human welfare, minimising environmental and ecological impacts. Those who sustain the impossibility of defending human rights, as raised by the comrade Evo Morales, if we don’t also defend the rights of Mother Earth, those who act with determination to leave a planet and future for our descendants.
Obama’s deceitful, demagogic and ambiguous remarks failed to involve a binding commitment and ignored the Kyoto Framework Convention. He then left the room shortly after listening to a few other speakers. Among those invited to take the floor were the highest industrialized nations, several emerging economies and some of the poorest countries in the world. The leaders and representatives of over 170 countries were only allowed to listen.
At the end of the speeches of the 16 chosen, Evo Morales, with the authority of his indigenous Aymara origin and his recent reelection with 65% of the vote as well as the support of two-thirds of the Bolivian House and Senate, requested the floor. The Danish president had no choice but to yield to the insistence of the other delegations.
When Evo had concluded his wise and deep observations, the Danish had to give the floor to Hugo Chavez. Both speeches will be registered by history as examples of short and timely remarks. Then, with their mission duly accomplished they both left for their respective countries. But when Obama disappeared, he had yet to fulfill his task in the host country.
The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias, manifested his rejection, this Sunday, of the kidnapping of the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, by that nation’s military, and said that North American imperialism and the extreme right are behind this act.
“It’s a brutal coup d’etat, one of many that happened over 10 years in Latin America. Behind these soldiers are the Honduran bourgeois, the rich who converted Honduras into a Banana Republic, into a political and military base for North American imperialism,” said the Venezuelan head of state.
In telephone contact with the television channel Telesur, President Chavez urged the North American president [Barack Obama] to declare his opinion on the subject and said he considers the abuse against Honduras as being against all the peoples of Latin America.
Chavez said that from different mechanisms of regional integration, the Latin American people have started to mobilize, and he indicated that this coup will be defeated in order to return dignity to [Honduras].
“We say to the coup plotters, we are standing up. Honduras is not alone,” Chavez said.
He also urged the Honduran soldiers who “acted in a cowardly way” to retake the constitutional thread and return the legally and democratically elected President [Zelaya] to his duties.
“Soldier, empty out your riffle against the oligarchy and not against the people,” he said, adding, “These solders are going to know what the people are when the people start to go out into the streets.”
The Venezuelan news report (video below – espanol) points out not only the victory of President Ahmadinejad, but also correctly discusses the class character of the vote, and the subsequent riots. The report also talks about the the psyop “color revolution” that is being promoted by the US regime affiliated “think tanks” under the guise of “democracy promotion” etc. See also Eva Golinger’s artice La “Revolución” Verde: El Guión se ha activado de nuevo: está vez en Irán.
“We call on the world to respect Iran because there are attempts to undermine the strength of the Iranian revolution,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said in his weekly radio and television address on Sunday.
“President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s triumph was a triumph all the way. They are trying to stain Ahmadinejad’s triumph and through that weaken the government and the Islamic revolution. I know they will not succeed,” Chavez said.
It should also be noted that President Ahmadinejad was strongly criticized by his opponents for building strong ties with the Latin – American pinkish red governments because, according to them, these countries were “far away.” This kind of thinking, of-course, was music to the ears of the imperialists, who have been irritated with Iran’s strong relationship over the past four years with Venezuela, and expanding relations with other countries in the region. Over the next few years, it would be important for the Ahmadinejad administration to not only continue building stronger ties, but to also begin student exchange programs, where younger Iranian Islamic revolutionaries can meet Bolivarian revolutionaries in Venezuela, and vice versa. This would be a far more productive form of people-people social/cultural exchange, than one involving US/Europe, and would aid in strengthening south-south solidarity.
“la tierra es por naturaleza propiedad de todos, el río por naturaleza es propiedad de todos, como el aire, nadie puede decir que este aire o río es mío, (…) Este pedazo de tierra es mía y puedo hacer lo que me da la gana aquí, no”
