Saul Landau2013-06-20T04:01:39-04:00Saul Landauhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=saul-landauCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Saul LandauGood old fashioned elbow grease.The U.S. Celebrates Yoani, But Does Not Hear Her Messagetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29480902013-03-25T09:04:12-04:002013-05-25T05:12:01-04:00Saul Landauhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/saul-landau/
Last week, Yoani, after visiting Brazil, Argentina and Mexico stopped in New York, Washington DC, and Miami. Her highlights came in the nation's capital, including a much publicized talk with Members of both Houses and White House staff. She had just come from presenting her case to Brazil's legislature, where she made three important points about U.S. relations to Cuba, points she repeated in Washington.
"My position is that the blockade should end," she said, "because its an interventionist stance, in which one country wants to change the internal situation of another' secondly. Because it hasn't worked. If the original idea was to create popular unrest so the people would take to the streets and change the totalitarian government, it has not worked; even as a pressure method it failed. It should end as quickly as possible because it's the reason given by the Cuban government to explain its economic failure." She had already registered her opposition to the US travel ban on its citizens traveling to Cuba. "If restrictions on coming to Cuba are lifted," she wrote to Congressman Howard Berman on November 19, 2009, "Americans would enjoy a right that has been infringed in recent years -- that of traveling freely to any latitude without penalty."
When asked about her position on the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba, Yoani responded that she thought the US should withdraw from the base because she was a "civilist, a person who respects the legal system, and I could not agree with occupying a space, which shows the occupier doesn't respect the law."
And, in Brazil, she also answered a question on the Cuban 5, "members of the Ministry of Interior now in US prisons. The US should free them because "the amount of money my country's government is spending in this world-wide campaign with plane trips around the world. Occupying space in the press and the hours wasted in schools talking about these five prisoners," she explained.
She also decried the lack of internet freedom in Cuba -- an exaggeration. She trivialized her explanations of desired policy changes.
Her dismissal of the task that involved the intelligence agents sent to south Florida in the early 1990s, typified her banalization of the world. The five and their extended network of agents had as an assignment the infiltration of violent Cuban exile groups who had bombed tourist spots in Havana. Their job was to help prevent more bombings. Cuban Intelligence re-circulated what their Florida agents learned to the FBI, who on one occasion used the agents' data to seize a boat docked on the Miami River filled with arms and explosives and destined for Cuba.
In 1998, the FBI arrested the Cuban spy ring members. They got charged with conspiracy to commit espionage, but not with espionage. Gerardo Hernandez, their coordinator, also got charged with conspiracy to commit murder, on the false assumption he had provided Havana with the flight schedules of Brothers to the Rescue planes that invaded Cuban airspace and got shot down, killing 2 pilots and 2 co-pilots. The government had no evidence to back up its charges. Indeed, Jose Basulto, leader of the Brothers group, had announced the flight schedules. But a Florida jury convicted Gerardo and the judge gave him two consecutive life sentences. The others also received long prison terms. As Cuba compared the five to the worst cases of political imprisonment, Yoani offered a banal pretext for freeing them.
Similarly, she reduced the political and moral significance Cuba's government attached to the issues of Guantanamo and the embargo.
The irony of Yoani, virtually crowned by anti-Castro forces, including the US media and Congress, as the virtual Queen of Dissidents is that she made the key points the Cuban government has been making for more than a decade. But no one seemed to hear them. Neither government officials nor the press corps acknowledged them. The media focused on occasional interruptions of her speeches by angry leftists instead of reporting the contents of her talks. When she arrived in Congress and at the White House she received celebrity status, meaning the Members and White House staff celebrated the visit of an important person, paying little attention to the coincidence of her points and those of the Cuban government.
Not one mainstream story caught the irony of having Cuba's leading dissident stating the very case the Cuban government has been presenting for years.
Yoani represents for the US media the technological age of communication, sending her weekly internet column, which she does from Cuban hotels for a small fee, and by flash drive from the U.S. Interest Section and from other embassies. She spins each column as an attack on the communist government for failing to provide more efficient welfare state services to her and her son.
The princess of technological communication made her triumphant debut. But apparently, no one in power or belonging to mainstream media cared about what she said. The Cuban government, however, should be proud of her, nevertheless. She made their case, in different language, to the U.S. Congress and White House and to the public. Alas, eyes saw, but ears closed.
Landau's FIDEL and WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP are available on dvd from cinemalibrestudio.com. Valdes is Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico.]]>When Will the Siege End?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28633042013-03-12T18:07:16-04:002013-05-12T05:12:01-04:00Saul Landauhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/saul-landau/
By mid 1960, the flow of U.S. tourists had slowed to a tiny trickle. The big hotels housed foreign supporters of the revolution and soon after honeymoon couples from the island itself.
Planes regularly flew from south Florida bases to drop bombs on island targets and Cubans joined the militia, wearing their well-laundered blue uniforms. Committee for the Defense of the Revolution met on almost every city block to try to keep their own turf secure from counterrevolutionary threats. President Eisenhower played a kind of tit for tat diplomacy with Fidel Castro, responding with punishment for every move Cuba made that lessened U.S. power and influence on the island. Cuba bought cheap Soviet oil; Ike ordered the US-owned refineries in Cuba not to refine Soviet oil. Fidel nationalized Esso, Texaco and Shell; Ike place an embargo on Cuba. Before all that, in March 1960, Ike had already ordered the CIA to plan the overthrow of the Cuban government. The Agency began to recruit Cuban exiles in Florida for an expedition that later bore the name of The Bay of Pigs fiasco, a 1,500 man force that invaded Cuba's south coast along three beaches in the Bay of Pigs. The fighting endured for 72 hours before the Cuban military claimed total victory over the CIA-backed exile invaders.
Now, the Socialist government of Cuba has converted the swampy area into a resort, with a hotel and restaurants for curious tourists and Cuban vacationers. A museum offers remnants and keys to understanding that historic encounter that left President Kennedy with much diplomatic egg on his young face.
Save for a few short periods, U.S. hostility has remained unrelenting toward its small defiant neighbor. But Cuba built a formidable health-care system, a prodigious educational machine that begins in infancy and continues through the PhD, for those qualified.
But Cubans feel starved for things, commodities they see actors wearing and using in movies shown on Cuban TV. Well-educated and trained Cubans don't see good jobs in their future when they graduate, as the island's economy doesn't generate a sufficient number of positions for the qualified people its schools produce. The lure of Miami, where hundreds of thousands of Cubans now live, remains strong. An engineer drives a cab or makes pizzas, a woman with a University of Havana PhD in literature now lives in San Francisco and works as a translator. "I have more personal freedom here. Nobody mixes in my personal life as they did in Cuba, but I don't want to get old and die in the United States. There's no warmth here."
On the same streets, I walk and chat with people and find enthusiasm for Raul Castro's reforms, allowing private business and freedom to travel. But Cubans want more things, more opportunities, not an easy task for a government running an island economy. Cuba has lots of qualified and highly trained workers, but no foreign investment to build the kinds of facilities that might employ them. So, as I walk along the ocean drive, El Malecon, I note hundreds of people idle during the middle of a workday. Some have ear phones plugged in, listening to music. Others have cell phones and snap shots of their girl or boy friends. Tourists, mostly Canadian and west European populate the streets and downtown cafes and bars. Some U.S. exchange students also appear, eager and energetic. So far, they've learned a lot about Cuba from "dating" and "hanging out" with their Cuban counterparts.
I get nostalgic for old times and youth. But when I see the old U.S. Embassy, not the U.S. Interest Section, I recall the nasty old days of violent counter revolution coming from Florida, the heroic deeds of Cuban guerrillas who had fought for the revolution and the good times of the old days.
Maybe, before I make another trip to the island, Secretary of State John Kerry will open discussions with Raul Castro for the purpose of restoring diplomatic and even commercial relations. What a change that will bring... I can imagine the Havana streets full of U.S. tourists and students
Saul Landau is filming with Jon Alpert a documentary on Cuba's campaign against homophobia. His FIDEL and WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP are available on DVD through cinema librestudio.com.]]>U.S.-Cuba Policy: A Boon for Cuban-American Entrepreneurstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25599652013-01-26T21:36:58-05:002013-03-28T05:12:01-04:00Saul Landauhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/saul-landau/
In 2001 President George W. Bush allowed for an exception permitting U.S. companies to sell agricultural products to Cuba for immediate payment, although imports from Cuba remained off limits. Other economic sectors received no benefits.
Cuban-Americans, particularly from south Florida, now export goods and remittances to relatives and friends while importing profits from sales made to fellow Cubans in Cuba, giving them an advantage denied to the rest of the country.
Washington pundits attribute superhuman strength to the anti-Castro lobby; thus no President would attempt to lift the trade and travel embargoes on the island. Yet Cuban-Americans trade with and travel to Cuba freely on a daily basis. The "embargo" applies to everyone except Cuban-Americans.
This growing international trade, disguised as sending goods to needy family members in Cuba, now includes filling the hulls on 10 or more daily charter flights from U.S. cities to Cuba. Cuban Americans send goods, often with "mules," to provide family members in Cuba, needing supplies for their businesses. The "mules" return with cash, derived from sales of these goods. Some of the new Cuban stores and restaurants supplied by Miami-based Cubans make substantial profits, some of which get spent in Cuba, and ends up in Cuba's central bank.
Miami, the United States' poorest large city, derives income because it provides jobs involved in buying and selling the goods sent to Cuba. Jobs also arise from routine tasks created around the daily charter flights to and from Cuba, and the fees collected from take offs and landings. Add to this, the work for accountants, bookkeepers and others.
Some unemployed Cuban-Americans get jobs as mules transporting the goods and money from one country to the other. Miami banks also benefit.
In Cuba, this trade also creates jobs and wealth. Mercedes runs a paladar [private restaurant] in Havana's Vedado neighborhood, "because we draw tourists who like good food, which I serve at my paladar."
Some paladar customers flew to Havana from Miami. These Cuban-Americans come to visit relatives and maybe check on their new investments in Havana family-run businesses. "Relatives in Florida supply me with food I can't get easily in Cuba," Mercedes said, "like some spices, and packaged goods. I send them money for these products. They make a profit, and so do I. The government makes money from taxes I pay, and jobs grow in Cuba's tourist industry."
U.S.-based charter flights have full hulls, even those with few passengers. One charter flight company manager told us: "Passengers don't matter that much. The hull is totally full."
Much of the Cuba trade flows through the Miami International Airport, meaning capital moves from the U.S. to Cuba; most of the luggage contents, however, remain in Cuba. The boon to Miami airport services means jobs, fees and taxes, which remain as capital in south Florida. The goods purchased in south Florida by Cubans (relatives, mules, etc) benefit local businesses.
This trade multiplies jobs throughout the area -- as well as it does for Cuba: In Miami sales emanate from stores and lead to jobs in transportation, parking, hotel facilities, restaurants, and luggage-handling. Count the businesses providing services to the people traveling to Cuba and sending goods there. Don't omit the expanded police force, and extra officials required in immigration, and customs; nor fail to consider jobs servicing air planes, and their jetways, and additional personnel needed for landings and take offs, and extra jobs in airport administration and maintenance created by expanded travel. Think of Miami's increased tax revenues.
South Florida represents a Cuban settler state within the United States. It counters its interests against those of the dominant society, with the society's ignorant acquiescence. The Miami-based Cuban-Americans and their Cuba-based families have used U.S.-Cuba policy, the embargo representing the power of the nation for their own self-interest, and in order to attain a comparative advantage vis a vis the rest of the American population.
Since 1960, commitment to overthrow of the Cuban government has functioned as U.S. foreign policy on Cuba, a policy now controlled informally by south Florida Cuban-Americans. The Cuban-American ethnic enclave assumed the political power needed to turn south Florida into an autonomous Cuban settler state inside U.S. boundaries, so that the embargo does not get applied to the Cuban-American enclave. The enclave barons use the embargo to secure, for themselves, a protection of the Cuba trade monopoly. This challenges stated U.S. national interests.
Camouflaged by ubiquitous anti-Castro rhetoric, the Cuban-American entrepreneurs have manufactured a lucrative business with the island, regulated by the very government they pretend to hate. The rightwing congressional representatives pretend to fight for every law to punish the "Castro regime" while in practice turn a dead eye to the growing trade that helps Florida's and Cuba's economy. Preserve the embargo, but make an exception for Cuban Americans.
By recognizing the facts about this trade, the White House might become inspired to lift the embargo -- a move to benefit all Americans. U.S. government revenue would grow from opening trade and travel with Cuba. In the process we might also regain a missing piece of U.S. sovereignty!
Landau, Professor Emeritus, California State University, Pomona, produced FIDEL and WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP, available on dvd.
Valdes is Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico.]]>Where's the Rage Over the Arbit Ragers?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18963382012-09-19T08:52:44-04:002012-11-19T05:12:02-05:00Saul Landauhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/saul-landau/Contains plot spoilers.
Since we will not learn in school the lessons about the 1% we ought to know, many of us rely on movies and TV, so that through images and sound we can form ideas of who the men were who screwed up our economy. In Arbitrage, we see how how Hollywood conceives of a cinematic grammar into which we can analyze the nature of the people who sparked the the financial crisis.
Nicholas Jarecki directed a film about a man who could model for the type of 1 percenter who helped destroy the U.S. economy. Robert Miller (Richard Gere) could have starred in Oliver Stone's Wall Street. This billionaire hedge fund executive made a bad investment in a tempting (huge profits promised) Russian copper mine and then had his accountant falsify his company's books to cover up the huge losses on his gamble. No big deal, he'll just sell the company, recoup the loss and even make a profit, so he can retire to enjoy his perfect life: a great wife (Susan Sarandon), two grown children and grandchildren, and a mistress he is in mad lust for, and elite recognition for his donation to charity. All he needs is to pass a phony audit, so he can sell the company he has just compromised. And he has arranged for that as well, as his daughter will later discover.
But shit happens. On route with his concubine to a romantic weekend in the mountains, his eyes close while driving the babe to their rendezvous. She dies. He decides to run away and, to do this, he involves a young black man (Nate Parker), who owes him for favors he did for his father, his former chauffeur, to drive him to safety. Enter the police. Will the young black man testify against him (the cops traced the phone call Miller made to him from a nearby gas station) and destroy Miller's image and his happy (on the surface) family? Will the cops -- trying to frame the young man as leverage to make him talk -- actually nail the criminal financier for manslaughter, not financial hanky panky?
The film moves effortlessly as a legal thriller and an allegory. It's not easy to keep viewers' attention when dealing with complicated financial dealings, but Jarecki succeeds in maintaining movement and suspense. Arbitrage tells the story, Hollywood style, of the moral Hell in which U.S. financial systems operate; also the context of the police drama where big bankers don't get arrested for monkeying with the system they rule: the nation's economy.
Arbitrage should enrage the viewer as it shows us the reality behind the patter about Wall Street and the constant news references to Dow Jones industrial averages. Behind this silly jargon, we see, lies a complex network of legally dubious activity and a complete absence of ethics. Miller, honored by the establishment for his charitable work, is a criminal with no conscience. He thinks only of himself while wearing the pretense of "community good guy" as his aura.
What arbitrage Miller did in the film resembles various bankers or investors who made bad decisions with other peoples' money and spurred the economic crisis. Miller's daughter (Brit Marling) who works in his office also gets involved as she inadvertently learns of his speculative malpractice, but she and his wife cover for him because money, as the film shows, can induce people to become moral schlemiels.
Miller's poise and confidence helps him maintain the façade of normalcy, while juggling his mistress, mega-deals and happy family.
But swelling his company becomes a hassle because he can't get a meeting with the prospective buyer. Indeed, his financial troubles and zest to meet with the buyer to close the deal lead him to break his promise to attend his mistress' art gallery opening. To assuage her fury, he proposes the romantic weekend that leads to the fatal accident.
Detective Bryer (Tim Roth), a pushy and disheveled New York cop solves the case -- in his head -- and to get Miller he tries to bully the young black man. Bryer closes in on the arbitrager, and the man supposedly wanting to buy Miller's company becomes elusive. The tension grows.
What emerges is a Hollywood portrait of the modern villain. Gere's character no longer resembles the one he played as the Pretty Woman millionaire. In Arbitrage, he portrays modern evil, a compelling looking man willing to do whatever it takes to help himself, in business and lust, but without social conscience or a sense of responsibility.
This facade of a philanthropic patriarch who philanders as naturally as he dines with his family, emerges on screen as a realistic portrait of a felon who could wreck the world economy and think only of saving himself as the world collapses around him. Realism, Hollywood style. Justice? Not in the Arbitrage script, nor in the vision of the U.S. economy or justice system. Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered fruitless raids on licensed marijuana distributors, unsuccessfully prosecuted former presidential candidate John Edwards for campaign funds-mistress problems, and former Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens for using steroids, but has indicted none of the criminal bankers who broke the system. Will a film about governmental cowardice toward Wall Street provoke the AG to arrest a real bad investment banker-arbitrager? Don't hold your breath!
Landau's WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP screens in Toronto on September 25 at 7pm, Room 224, Dalhousie Student Union Building 6136 University Avenue, in Halifax on September 25 at the University.]]>Washington and Damascustag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16211532012-06-23T13:15:41-04:002012-08-23T05:12:05-04:00Saul Landauhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/saul-landau/
Northern Iraqi Kurds share with Syrian Kurds the "statehood" ideal that has periodically shaken the region and provoked Turkey to use heavy military force.
Jordan and Israel watch uneasily as scores of armed rebel units do urban guerrilla warfare. Patrick Seale reports, "jihadis, armed Islamic extremists, have crossed into Syria from neighboring countries -- and also from Kuwait, Tunisia, Algeria and Pakistan. ... Rebel groups conduct ambushes, attack check-points, destroy public property, kill government troops -- about 250 were killed in ten days in late May and early June. They also kidnap, rape and slaughter pro-regime civilians," and easily sell the "Asad did it" line to U.S. media.
To stop the rebels from holding territory, Seale continues, Asad's forces have shelled neighborhoods "when rebels hole up in them." The rebels hope to provoke "Western military intervention... The rebels know they cannot defeat the Syrian army without outside help."
Indeed, Syrian violence has begun to loom like a potential, political cholera in the region, which anti-Asad promoters will not easily contain.
The United States continues to try to "knock off the rogues." Disobedient, undemocratic regimes like Syria and Iran -- not obedient Saudi Arabia and Yemen -- beget Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's and President Barack Obama's threats and feel the pain of their sanctions -- even though neither country has done anything to America. Indeed, over the past decade, Syria tortured "suspects" for Washington, and warned U.S. agencies of terrorist plots, which then were thwarted. President Asad has become a recipient of the "no good deed goes unpunished" law.
The White House responds to Syria's efforts with phrases resonating with war tones. But one active member of the U.S. armed forces attempts suicide almost twice a day, not an indicator of readiness to fight yet another Middle East war.
The Syrian uprising with clandestine funding from Saudi and Qatari royalties and anti-Asad Syrian millionaires abroad, and support from Washington and its allies, aims to weaken Syria, Iran's ally. The conflict, however, also raises a fear of yet another western venture into the Middle East -- with a possible wider clash as well.
In early June, Secretary Clinton accused Russia of supplying attack helicopters to Asad, an act that "prolongs the violence." Russia denied her charge, showing it had repaired older Syrian helicopters. (New York Times, June 14.) Russia then called on Clinton to stop Saudi and Qatari financing arms and mercenaries going into Syria.
Paying lip service to the U.N. plan forged by former Secretary General Kofi Annan, Clinton then told Russia to stay out of Syria -- some distant region, you know, like Cuba is to the United States.
Russian Foreign Miister Sergei Lavrov said Russia resisted western intervention "because we know Syria is a complicated multi-confessional state, and because we know that some of those calling for military intervention want to ruin this and turn Syria into a battleground for domination in the Islamic world." (AP Moscow, June 9, 2012)
"Butchers," shout U.S. politicians and media at Syria's rulers, accepting on faith reports from the Syrian opposition -- including al-Qaeda members -- that Asad's forces massacred civilians at Houla and al-Qubair. But who really did these ugly acts? The media have until recently accepted opposition claims uncritically.
Syria's 20.5 million are not governed by a nut like Qadaffi. Asad maintains strong support in Damascus and Aleppo, Syria's largest cities, as well as in Alawite areas. A February poll conducted by a Qatari agency, backed by anti-Asad money, concluded Asad's regime enjoyed 55 percent popular support -- not for its virtues, but because people worried a subsequent government would be worse.
Amidst U.S. and European recessions, why provoke tensions in Syria where western intervention could provoke a new Cold War? China and Russia, fearing a big-power conflict, have refused to abide the West's anti-Asad moves. Syria's conflict could also ignite a regional and religious war: Saudi Arabia and Qatar versus Iran; Sunnis versus Shias.
What should the West do to stop ongoing violence to civilians? The Independent's Mary Dejevsky called it "utterly disingenuous for the U.S. and Britain to call for action in Syria and blame Russia for being obstructive." Kofi Annan's U.N. plan to end violence between Asad's forces and opposition fighters, she observed, did not stop massacres. But who did the dirty deeds? Asad blames "terrorists;" his enemies blame Asad. ("The Euro crisis will look like a walk in the park if Syria explodes," June 8)
The Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung (FAZ), blamed anti-Asad Sunnis because the victims were almost all "from the Alawi and Shia minorities." The German newspaper said "perpetrators then filmed their victims and, in internet videos presented them as Sunni victims of the regime."
Landau's WILL THE REAL TERRORIST PLEASE STAND UP is available on dvd from cinemalibrestore.com. He's an Institute for Policy Studies Fellow.]]>The Right Path for Washington in Syriatag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.15940362012-06-13T14:12:45-04:002012-08-13T05:12:05-04:00Saul Landauhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/saul-landau/fired across the Turkish border on April 9, apparently killing either fleeing refugees or armed combatants. However, despite continued words of caution from the Pentagon and White House about getting into another messy Middle East war, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton pressed for more intervention.
The Syrian Accountability Act of 2003 began the formal U.S. attempt to bring down Assad, but Clinton, the imperial princess, now demands Syrian President Assad resign in favor of the Syrian National Council (SNC). This hastily formed group composed of exiled Syrian Muslim Brotherhood members, and other groupings, many in exile, would magically transform Syria via fair elections into a good democracy -- and sheep will fly.
Washington's "humanitarian" assistance fund for Syria escalated into "non-lethal" aid -- sophisticated satellite communications equipment, and night-vision goggles so "rebels" could "evade" Syrian government assaults. U.S. and Western media have underscored Assad's butchery, but offered little of substance on the opposition and its often savage behavior.
Just weeks after the first March 2011 protests -- Arab Springtime -- the media disregarded eyewitness evidence of armed groups shooting at and killing members of Syria's security forces as well as civilians. Reporter Pepe Escobar witnessed "the shooting deaths of nine Syrian soldiers in Banyas" as early as April 10, 2011 (Asia Times, April 6, 2012). By focusing only on Assad's violence, Western leaders could promote a lopsided view of the conflict. In recent weeks, however, the media could not ignore all "photos and video footage of armed men with heavy weapons proudly declaring their stripes -- some of them religious extremists advocating the killing of civilians based on sectarian differences."
Suicide bombings took place in Damascus and Aleppo, and al-Qaeda called its minions "to battle." The U.S. government ignored al-Qaeda's role and refers only to the "good" SNC, the majority who appear to ally themselves with Syria's Muslim Brotherhood. At a March meeting in Istanbul, sponsored by Turkey and Qatar, however, an unlikely source of dissent emerged. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said: "We reject any arming [of Syrian rebels] and the process to overthrow the [Assad] regime, because this will leave a greater crisis in the region."
Al-Maliki questioned the motives of Qatar and Saudi Arabia who "are calling for sending arms instead of working on putting out the fire." Iraq, he continued, opposed "arming" the Free Syrian Army and he feared, "those countries that are interfering in Syria's internal affairs will interfere in the internal affairs of any country." Maliki, who governs Iraq as a result of the U.S. invasion and devastation of that country, questioned equating a cause backed by Saudi funding with freedom. "What's wrong with the Free Syrian Army getting funding from Saudi Arabia? Or, when did Saudi Arabia ever support freedom?" he asked (Suadad al-Salhy, Reuters, April 1, 2012).
These remarks were not featured in headlined stories; nor did TV or radio news provide coverage of Maliki's statement. Until recently, we might have depended on Al Jazeera, whose Iraq war coverage won it praise from journalists. However, the network's Syria reports led some reporters to resign over the network's biased reporting. Hassan Shaaban, the Beirut bureau's managing director, resigned in March, "after leaked emails revealed his frustration over the channel's coverage."
Shaaban had filed a story showing armed men fighting with the Syrian army in Wadi Khalid. Al Jazeera dropped the story. Two other Al Jazeera staff quit for the same reasons. Al Akhbar claimed Qatar's foreign policy influenced the reporting on Syria. Al Jazeera maintains headquarters in Qatar and the royal family helped establish the network.
The question in Washington should be: will adding fuel to the violence make matters worse? Assad's forces have defeated -- with huge civilian casualties -- the formal rebel uprisings, but the SNC could sponsor a prolonged terrorist war, which would increase civilian casualties, and not succeed in removing Assad or his Party [the Baath Party] from power.
Logic and reason dictate that Obama should follow the Syrian majority. A February 2012 poll showed "55% of Syrians want Assad to stay," [NOT] motivated by fondness for his government, but "by fear of civil war." The poll also ascertained "that half the Syrians who accept him staying in power believe he must usher in free elections in the near future." (YouGov Siraj poll on Syria commissioned by The Doha Debates, funded by the Qatar Foundation, connected to the royal family. The family has taken a hawkish position on Syria. See Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, January 17)
These facts have not oozed into State Department consciousness, where the rush for U.S. entanglement appears contagious. Good sense should command Secretary Clinton to help save the process former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan set in motion for a negotiated cease fire. The opposition and the Assad side negated the April 10 deadline. This means Syrians will pay a higher human toll. The suffering is already immense.
On April 14, the UN Security Council backed a deployment of the first wave of U.N. military observers to monitor the tentative cease-fire between the Syrian government and opposition combatants. Before the arrangements become final, Washington should weigh in now with Russia, China and the western powers -- not Saudi Arabia and Qatar -- to pressure both sides to stop shooting and start serious talking.]]>Civil Rights Movement Reassembles to Ask: What's Next?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.5587352010-04-30T13:13:29-04:002011-05-25T16:20:27-04:00Saul Landauhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/saul-landau/
In the early Spring of 1960, I went with two other students from Madison, Wisconsin, to Montgomery, Alabama, to try to build a civil rights support network. We met with Reverend Ralph Abernathy in Montgomery and established links with his church; then to Birmingham and Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth.
As we descended the steps of his church an Alabama state policeman met us and told us to drive to the Mississippi border without stopping. He followed us, red light on top of his car blinking. As we entered Mississippi, a highway patrol car met us. That cop delivered similar orders and followed us to the Tennessee border. The white power felt uneasy.
Within a year, thousands of black and whites, mainly students began to participate in sit-ins. They staged pickets of Woolworth stores in the North to support integration of lunch counters in the South. What began as one "action" evolved into a nationwide movement. I sat in with thousands of others at San Francisco's Palace Hotel to force management to integrate staff, and at auto-row to insure the hiring of black salesmen. At Lucky Supermarkets integration activists filled shopping carts with groceries, placed them on the conveyer belt and left the store -- to force Lucky to hire people of color at check-out counters.
On April 17, 2010, some of those sit-in organizers heard Attorney General Eric Holder. "There is a direct line from that lunch counter to the Oval Office," he told the 1,500 people assembled to celebrate the 50th anniversary of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) at Shaw University in Raleigh North Carolina. "If not for SNCC," Holder said, "I would not be Attorney General. If not for SNCC, Barack Obama would not be President."
SNCC became a school for organizers. Mario Savio learned from Bob Moses at the Mississippi SNCC project and returned to Berkeley to become the spokesman for the Free Speech Movement. David Harris went from SNCC to non-violent anti-war protests.
A de-segregation movement aimed at public services and accommodations evolved into a dynamic social and political force. In 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party challenged the Jim Crow whites at the Democratic convention. They failed to get seated, but on March 15, 1965, following a police attack against non-violent integrationists preparing a march to Montgomery that killed Rev. James Reeb, a white northerner, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, "We shall overcome," to push passage of the Voting Rights Bill.
By 1965, SNCC organizers had registered tens of thousands of previously disenfranchised voters in several southern States where they faced murderous police and Klansmen. Klan members murdered Viola Liuzzo near Selma. Klanners and cops conspired to assassinate Michael Schwerener and Andrew Goodman and their black comrade, James Chaney.
SNCC countered murder with courage - and reason and justice. By the late 1960s, elected black officials, including sheriffs, had begun a decisive change in the racial makeup of the American political system and forced an end to southern segregation. In the late 1970s, even Jim Crow poster boy former Alabama Governor George Wallace apologized for his prior segregationist advocacy.
The Dixiecrats lost power over the Democratic Party. Some became Republicans, but could no longer say the "n" word in public.
Fifty years later, a zealot spat on former SNCC organizer and now Congressman John Lewis and called him "nigger" - for supporting health insurance reform.
Lewis responded with dignity as he had done before when faced with far worse challenges. He joined hundreds of SNCC veterans at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the sit-in idea originated. Raleigh's once segregated hotels, restaurants and bars were now integrated. Blacks sat front, back and middle on city buses.
The Civil Rights Movement unified millions of Americans behind one basic issue: getting the vote. They succeeded. What issue today could unify such a movement?
Harry Belafonte who played an important role in getting support for SNCC and throughout SNCC's history scolded some conference attendees for complacency. The audience cheered him.
SNCC addressed core racial issues, but not class issues that Dr. King had begun to tackle before his assassination. Belafonte reminded the audience of the immense job before them. The sons and daughters of SNCC veterans, plus young people organizing from around the country cheered him - before returning to Atlanta, Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago and other areas to continue the work of the 1960s' heroes.
Some spoke or listened at the meeting. Julian Bond, who served 20 years in the Georgia legislature, outlined the history of SNCC. Danny Glover preached action in outlining the contemporary. Bernice Reagon Johnson and the Freedom singers sang - half a century later - for freedom. The inspirational Rev. James Lawson agreed with Belafonte. SNCC did its parts in the 1960s, but the struggle is far from over.
]]>Honduras: Term Limits When Governments Benefit Peopletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2009:/theblog//3.2473232009-07-29T16:30:14-04:002011-05-25T13:45:21-04:00Saul Landauhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/saul-landau/
US Embassy there." -- Joke told by Chilean journalist to President Obama during President
Michelle Bachelet's White House visit.
In 1954, conservative Dwight Eisenhower authorized the CIA to overthrow Guatemala's government, modeled on a 1953 "regime change" in Iran. In 1964-65, liberal Lyndon Johnson authorized coup d'etats in Brazil and the Dominican Republic. Dominicans resisted; Johnson sent in troops.
In September 1970, conservative National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon disapproved of the government Chileans had elected. They decided to alter Chilean destiny by replacing Dr. Salvador Allende's democratic government with 17 years of military fascism, 1973-90.
In the post-Cold War world, such flummery became laughable. Washington thus faced an apparent dilemma: direct policy toward law and human rights or continue collaborating with military thugs. National security officials tried to finesse this impasse with a new blueprint, a façade that would perpetuate Latin American oligarchs and satisfy US corporations and banks linked to local elites.
In 2002, the first test came when US-backed military officers kidnapped Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But unforeseen opposition arose inside the Venezuelan military; masses of Venezuelans took to the streets. The coup failed.
Washington continued ranting against the "undemocratic" Chavez without mentioning his five successive victories -- since 1998 -- in internationally supervised elections. Chavez' government won because it directed its energy toward meeting basic needs, despite middle and upper class opposition.
In 2004, in test two, the State Department "to protect" Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, helped his kidnappers. Following the Venezuela model, the Haitian plotters fabricated a "resignation letter." It worked.
In June, the third coup test began. Military thugs kidnapped Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. Civilian plotters faked his letter of resignation. The Honduran Supreme Court provided legal cover by ordering Zelaya's arrest -- not kidnapping and deportation -- for violating the Constitution. A 2009 State Department Human Rights Report had characterized that Court as issuing "politicized rulings" and contributing "to corruption in public and private institutions."
All three 21st Century coups followed traditional US policy in Latin America. Oppose change that helps the poor. Presidential re-election becomes "constitutional" when aspiring Latin American candidates serve local ruling class and Washington interests as in Colombia and Costa Rica. Otherwise, they remain sacred, no matter what they actually say about democracy.
Mind-numbing discussions of "legally authorized behavior" have omitted reference to conditions in Honduras. A 2003 report showed the richest 10 percent still netted 50 times more than the poorest 10th. 86.3% of the Honduran rural population lived in poverty; 71.3% of urban dwellers qualified as poverty-stricken.
A 2006 United Nations Development Program described Honduras as "suffering from
profound social inequalities, with very high levels of poverty, and with an insufficient economic growth where the population had a relative dissatisfaction with the results of democracy." 15% of rural Hondurans have a 40 years or less life expectancy; 20.4% of the adults remain illiterate. The UNDP concluded that "the time for change is now."
Until Zelaya tried to incorporate democracy into the governing equation, Honduras' elite with US banking and corporate backing, exercised a seemingly perfect recipe: people vote but don't change anything. Congress and Courts belong to the rich and powerful who also control the military in cooperation with the Pentagon. Washington provided aid. The School of the Americas trained Honduran officers.
For Zelaya, the UNDP Report coincided with a brutal fact. Switzerland and Honduras each have 7 million people. Swiss yearly average income is $53 thousand; Hondurans $2K. When Zelaya began to act on his "obligation" to meet peoples' needs the rich in Tegucigalpa and some of the powerful of Washington reacted: a coup. This déjà vu experience to millions of Latin Americans changed, however, when the OAS voted to reject the "de facto" government. One hundred and ninety two countries also refused to recognize the "putschists."
Coup defenders like the Honduran Catholic and Protestant hierarchy and right wing anti-Castroites of Miami applauded the "rescue of Honduras from the claws of Chavism."
The polarized drama descended toward farce, however, when Costa Rican President Oscar Arias did not arrest the kidnappers, impound their military plane and demand the surrender of the illegitimate gang in Tegucigalpa. Instead, he allowed them to return. No high official or mainstream reporter has yet suggested Arias aided and abetted a kidnapping and coup even when Collaborator Arias became Mediator Arias.
Twenty years ago, Arias refused to allow US bases in Costa Rica for its illicit war against
Nicaragua. His one act of "disobedience" won him a Nobel Prize. Since then, he has shown loyalty to Washington's and Wall Street policies.
Arias followed US dictates by not befriending Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro or any serious "change" talker. Zelaya disobeyed. Washington, faced with a unanimous OAS, formally disapproved of the coup. But Secretary Clinton wouldn't call it a coup and proposed that Zelaya return with "reduced powers." She wanted a coalition government to further weaken him and no punishment for the coup-maker. This plan would also cost Zelaya control of the Honduran military.
Clinton's formula calls for early elections, a phenomenon US Presidents hail -- when they benefit US interests. Elected governments helping the poor and reducing US corporate interests beget US-backed coups. Washington insists they obey term limits and abide by their Constitution which State Department officials have apparently not read.