» Latin America

US – Washington DC: Bipartisan Support For More Militarization Of Border

admin — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:05:40 +0000

More agents and drones for the border. You know what we say: they didn’t cross the border, the border crossed them!! Boycott Arizona!!

Obama signs $600M border security bill into law

Now 2 More Notorious Predator Drones Will Patrol The Border Along With An Additional 1,000 Agents

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gcleiR1IASV53QPzaSsB8LhaCjgwD9HIQBJG2

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1223789920100812

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Friday signed a bill directing $600 million more to securing the U.S.-Mexico border…

The new law will pay for the hiring of 1,000 more Border Patrol agents to be deployed at critical areas, as well as more Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. It provides for new communications equipment and greater use of unmanned surveillance drones…

Latin America – Costa Rica: Why Are Marines In Costa Rica?

admin — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 18:14:57 +0000

“Just like the establishment of the Obama-Uribe treaty whereby Colombia initially ceded the use of seven military bases to the United States, in this case, the U.S. military personnel will enjoy complete immunity from Costa Rican justice…”

Why are Marines Disembarking in Costa Rica?

Costa Rica: Outpost For American Imperialism

http://www.tni.org/article/why-are-marines-disembarking-costa-rica

Atilio Boron

América Latina en Movimiento (ALAI)

July 2010

The recent decision in Costa Rica to allow a massive build-up of US military presence has less to do with drug trafficking than US imperial strategy.

With votes secured from the official National Liberation Party (PLN), the Libertarian Movement, and Justo Orozco, the evangelical congressman from the Costa Rican Renovation party, on July 1st, the Costa Rican Congress authorized the entry into that country of 46 warships from the U.S. Navy, 200 helicopters and combat aircraft and 7,000 Marines.

While the various published stories do not allow a clear view of the decision’s origins, the limited evidence available seems to indicate that it was Washington who asked for the presence of the troops. The extremely telling silence of the U.S. press on the subject and the absence of any kind of explicit reference to this authorization in the daily press bulletins of the State and Defense Departments feeds the suspicion that it was the White House that took the initiative that was favorably received by the Costa Rican Congress, and demanded the greatest discretion.

What was communicated to the Central American country was that the ruling situation in Mexico had forced the drug cartels to modify their traditional routes for approaching and entering the United States and that the deployment of a strong military force on the Central American isthmus was necessary to thwart this; a sine qua non condition for waging an effective battle against drug trafficking. As might have been expected, the government of President Laura Chinchilla – tightly linked over the years with USAID, no less – lent her entire support and that of her congressmen in obedient response to Washington’s request.

Nobody should be surprised when Washington resorts to the drug trafficking pretext, since it’s what Washington commonly uses when others are lacking, such as an earthquake in oh, say, Haiti – to justify the intrusion of U.S. military personnel in the countries of Our America.

Nevertheless, what works against the credibility of this argument is the fact that the countries where there is a strong U.S. military presence are precisely those that stand out for their increased production and commercialization of drugs. As shown in “The Dark Side of Empire. The Violation of Human Rights by the United States,” the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime – an unimpeachable source – has proven with abundant statistics that since U.S. troops were installed in Afghanistan, huge advances have been made in the production and exportation of opium as well as the fabrication of heroin, while in Colombia, the U.S. presence has not prevented (quite to the contrary) the registration of a notable expansion in the area destined to the cultivation of coca.

All this should not cause any surprise whatsoever, for a variety of reasons. One of them is that the country that assumes the right to fight drug trafficking worldwide shows an incapacity as amazing as it is suspicious to do the same within its borders, from dismantling the networks that link narco-mafias with authorities, police and local and federal judges who facilitate the drug business, to implementing a minimally meaningful campaign to contain addiction and treat addicts.1

It’s not that surprising, actually, since drug trafficking moves at least $400 billion dollars annually, that are later conveniently “laundered” in the numerous tax havens that the main capitalist countries (starting with the United States and Europe) have established far and wide throughout the globe in order to be re-introduced later on into the official banking system and in this way, strengthen the business of financial capital.

For another thing, the weakness and inconsistency of this pretext – that of the “fight against drug trafficking,” becomes even more obvious when it is learned that the United States is the number one worldwide producer of marijuana, something that according to a study from the Drug Science Foundation, reaches a sum of more than $35 billion dollars in that country, a figure that surpasses the combined value of wheat and corn production.2

Third, and finally, control and administration of the drug trafficking business as a means to sustain imperialist domination in the Empire’s provincial reaches cannot be underestimated. Wasn’t it Great Britain who re-introduced opium in China (a drug that had been prohibited by the Emperor Yongzheng due to the damage it had caused his people) the massive consumption of which allowed the British to balance their trade deficits with China? In order to push this addiction among the Chinese the British and the Portuguese waged two wars; one from 1839 to 1842, and another from 1856 to 1860, the result of which were the establishment of two beachheads for the organization of opium trafficking throughout China: one in Hong Kong, under British control, and the other in Macao, dominated by the Portuguese.

Why should we think that the United States, the putative offspring of the British Empire, would be motivated by any different interests when it pays lip service to the war on drugs? Isn’t it perhaps useful to U.S. interests to have a Latin America characterized by a proliferation of “failed states,” – eaten away by the corruption generated by drug trafficking and the consequences that ensue: social disintegration, mafias, paramilitaries, etc. – that for this very reason are incapable of offering the least resistance to imperial designs?

The permission granted by the Costa Rican Congress lasts for six months, starting on July 1st of this year. Nevertheless, this concession, that came about in the context of the Mérida Initiative (which includes Mexico and Central America) is a project that has goals but no deadlines, for which reason the probability is practically zero that the U.S. troops will leave Costa Rica at the end of this year and return to their home bases.

Furthermore, international experience shows that in Europe as well as Japan, the U.S. troops stationed there after the Second World War for just a few years, later extended through the pretext of the Cold War, managed to prolong their stay in those locations for 65 years without their chief officers showing the least sign of boredom or desire to return home.

In Okinawa, the widespread rejection of the local population against the Yankee occupants – who, sheltered by immunity were murdering, raping and robbing to their hearts content – was insufficient to force the dismantling of the U.S. base there. Incidentally, this highlights the courage and effectiveness of President Rafael Correa’s government that did manage to achieve the ouster of U.S. troops from the Manta airbase. And in case a popular outcry should arise over just this one occurrence in Costa Rica, a few criminal operations of the type that the CIA knows very well how to carry out should be enough for an instant reversal, above all with a government such as that of Laura Chinchilla, eager to prove its unconditional submission to imperial dictates.

Just like the establishment of the Obama-Uribe treaty whereby Colombia initially ceded the use of seven military bases to the United States, in this case, the U.S. military personnel will enjoy complete immunity from Costa Rican justice, and its members will be able to enter and leave Costa Rica entirely at will, and move through the entire country dressed in their uniforms, carrying their combat gear and weapons. With this decision Costa Rican sovereignty is not only humiliated but reaches ridiculous limits for a country that in 1948 abolished its armed forces and, thanks in large measure to this, was able to develop an advanced social policy in the depressing context of the Central American region, precisely because the oligarch’s gendarme had been disarmed.

As far as arms go, the congressional authorization allows the entry of Coast Guard and smaller vessels, but also others such as the latest generation of aircraft carriers like Makin Island, launched in August of 2006 and with the capacity to house 102 officers and 1,449 Marines, transport 42 CH-46 helicopters, five AV-8B Harrier aircraft and six Blackhawk helicopters. Apart from this, the legislation that passed extends permission for ships such as USS Freedom, launched in 2008, with anti-submarine capacity and the ability to move in shallow waters. The permission also extends to other boats, like catamarans, a hospital ship and various vehicles known for their amphibian capacity to move on land as well as sea. Weapons and gear that basically, have little or nothing to do with drug trafficking, even in the unlikely case that this were the real desire of the Marines. It’s quite obvious that they have another objective.

This U.S. government initiative must be situated in the context of the growing militarization U.S. foreign policy, whose most important expressions in the Latin American framework have been, until now, the reactivation of the Fourth Fleet, the signing of the Obama-Uribe treaty, the de facto military occupation of Haiti, the construction of a wall of shame between Mexico and the United States, the coup d’etat in Honduras and the later legitimization of the electoral fraud that elevated Porfirio Lobo to the presidency, the concession of new military bases by the reactionary government of Panama, to which is now added the disembarkation of Marines in Costa Rica. Of course, all these moves are articulated within the maintenance of the blockade and hounding of the Cuban Revolution, and the ongoing harassment of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. On an international level, the disembarkation of U.S. Marines in Costa Rica should be interpreted within the framework of an imminent war against Iran and the grotesque provocation against North Korea, the serious consequences of which have been warned about for some time by Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz in his Reflections.

Therefore, the Empire is advancing in its militarization of the region and in preparation for a military adventure of global proportions. If the aggression against Iran finally comes to pass, as predicted in recent days, the extremely serious international situation that will result will push the United States to try to guarantee, at all costs, seamless and absolute control over what its geopolitical strategists call the Great American Island, an enormous continent that extends from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, as separated from the Eurasian landmass as it is from Africa and which, according to them, plays a fundamental role in U.S. national security.

That is the fundamental reason for the preventive exorbitant militarization of U.S. foreign policy. It’s ridiculous to try to convince our people that the twenty-odd military bases established in Central and South America and the Caribbean, to which we now add the disembarkation in Costa Rica and the activation of the Fourth Fleet, has drug trafficking as its objective. As experience teaches us, drug trafficking cannot be fought with military strategy but with social policy. And the United States does not apply it within its borders nor permit it to be applied outside, thanks to the enormous influence that the IMF and World Bank have over vulnerable and indebted countries.

The experience in Colombia and now in Mexico (with more than 26,000 dead since President Felipe Calderón declared his “war on drug trafficking” in December, 2006!) is a testament to the fact that the solution to the problem does not rest with Marines, aircraft carriers, submarines and gunship helicopters, but with the creation of a just and fair society, something that is incompatible with the logic of capitalism and repugnant to the fundamental interests of the Empire.

In summary: the disembarkation of the Marines in Costa Rica has as its objective the reinforcement of U.S. domination in the region, the toppling by a variety of methods of those governments considered to be “enemies” (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador), weakening still more the vacillating and ambivalent “center-left” governments and reinforcing the rightwing that has made a resurgence along the Pacific Coast (Chile, Peru, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Mexico). It is a rearrangement of the Empire’s “back yard” in order to have free hands and a secured rearguard while the arrogant Empire wages war in other latitudes. (Translation: Machetera)

July 16, 2010

[1] Atilio A. Boron and Andrea Vlahusic, The Dark Side of Empire; the Violation of Human Rights by the United States (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Luxemburg, 2009), pg. 73.

[2] Ibid, The Dark Side of Empire, p. 72.

http://alainet.org/active/39632

Atilio Boron

Atilio Boron is Director of the Latin American Programme of Distance Education in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a collaborator of TNI’s New Politics project. He is also ex-Secretary General of CLACSO – an academic umbrella body for Latin America.

The recent decision in Costa Rica to allow a massive build-up of US military presence has less to do with drug trafficking than US imperial strategy.

Cuba: Statement From Assembly Of People’s Power On Racist Arizona Law

admin — Sat, 22 May 2010 11:20:06 +0000

Statement from the International Relations Committee of the National Assembly of People’s Power of the Republic of Cuba

Che Guevara and Juan Almeida, 2 leaders of the Cuban Revolution.

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/international-i/20may-Statement.html

ON April 23, Jan Brewer, governor of the state of Arizona, United States, publicly announced Law SB1070.
This law, of a profoundly racist and xenophobic nature, allows the police to use racial profiling to detain any person if they have “reasonable suspicion” that the person concerned is an illegal, thus criminalizing undocumented immigrants and creating an atmosphere of generalized persecution of all immigrants who, in the near future, will be constantly subjected to arbitrary detention, searches and humiliation, including deportation to their countries of origin. This is occurring in a state in which one third of the population is made up of Latino immigrants and in which 300,000-plus undocumented workers, in the main Mexicans, have taken on the hardest jobs in long and interminable days of agricultural harvests in return for miserable wages.
From the moment at which this legislation started being drafted, broad sectors within the United States have been exposing its selective and discriminatory nature.
Last May Day, more than 70 U.S. cities were the scenario of mass demonstrations by immigrants, workers, students and human rights defenders who, under the slogan “We are all Arizona” demanded a general migration reform and the annulment of that monstrous legislation imposed on Arizona.
Bearing in mind the implications of this law for millions of human beings from our region who are obliged to travel to the United States in search of better living conditions for themselves and their families, and given the definite possibility of similar legislation propagating like a plague in U.S. territory, the International Relations Commission of the National Assembly of People’s Power of Cuba proclaims its solidarity with those who are confronting this brutal violation of their human rights.
We feel bound to draw attention to the fact that, while walls are being constructed and laws like this being passed in an attempt to close the door on immigrants to territory stolen by force from the noble Mexican people, the Cuban Adjustment Act, a constant incitement to disorderly emigration and desertion by any means possible and which has cost the lives of hundreds of our people over many years, remains in full force.

Havana, May 19, 2010

Translated by Granma International

The Big Lies Against Cuba

admin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 06:45:33 +0000

The Big Lies Against Cuba
Opinion and Analysis
March 2010

Despite President Obama‟s declaration of his administration‟s desire to “seek a
new beginning with Cuba”, and to “learn from history, not be trapped by it” in April of
last year, Cuba has remained under attack by the U.S.

In January, new US air security policies included Cuba on a list of countries
whose air passengers would get extra security screening as they enter US territory.
And Cuba remains on the State Department‟s list of „state sponsors of terrorism‟,
notwithstanding the lack of any evidence of Cuban involvement in acts of terrorism.
Cuba has vigorously protested all of these unconscionable attacks.

In fact, Cuba‟s policies of internationalism have arguably been the most
politically advanced in the world. From the direct military intervention to help in the
defeat of Apartheid in southern Africa in 1988 (Cuito Cuanavale, Angola) to direct
medical aide and solidarity with Haiti (before the earthquake). Since the earthquake,
western media has been suspiciously silent on the exceptional role Cuba has played in
support of Haiti with more than 900 health care providers on the ground, the largest and
most organized contingent on the island.

Yet, one of the most disturbing new attacks against Cuba occurred late last year
when a host of prominent African Americans signed on to a so-called “…Declaration of
African American Support for the Civil Rights Struggle in Cuba”.
This misguided “declaration” accuses the Cuban State of racism. It cites the
imprisonment of a Dr. Darsi Ferrer, an active critic of the Cuban government, as an
example of racism in Cuba.

Dr. Ferrer was reportedly accused of attempting to establish a private medical
clinic outside of Cuba‟s world-renowned medical system, by receiving illegally obtained
construction materials. Whatever the case, Dr. Ferrer‟s situation should immediately
bring to mind the 50 year history of attempts by the US to subvert the Cuban Revolution
through internal dissent and direct attack harkening back to the Bay of Pigs invasion
and so on.

Certainly the struggle against racism anywhere in the world is of paramount
importance to all of humanity. But can this attack against Cuba under the guise of
fighting racism really be justified? We think not.
Many African Americans may not know about some of the unique features of
Cuban history even though African Americans and Cubans have a deeply rooted history
of solidarity with each other.

For example, during Cuba‟s first War for Independence from Spain in 1868,
plantation and slave owner Carlos Manual de Cespedes freed and armed the slaves on
his plantation and called on them to join the struggle for Cuba‟s independence. The
Afro-Cuban General Antoneo Maceo emerged as one of Cuba‟s most renowned
revolutionary leaders of all time. As a result of this struggle, slavery was abolished in
Cuba by 1886.

What a contrast to US history where the maintenance of slavery was a pre-
condition of unity between the colonies in the American fight for independence from
Britain. Although more than 5,000 Blacks fought in the American Revolution, legalized
slavery continued for nearly another 100 years.

And the US has historically played a role in maintaining racism in Cuba. The US
intervention and occupation of Cuba starting in 1898 during Cuba‟s second War for
Independence (1895) and where more than half the fighters were Black, re-established
institutional racism in Cuba. Under the intermittent US occupations there, Afro-Cubans
and women, as well as the poor, were barred from voting, holding elective office,
owning businesses, land, and etc. Sound familiar?

Most Cuban historians and scholars agree that the Cuban Socialist Revolution in
1959 abolished legalized institutional racism in Cuba. Cuba‟s revolutionary constitution
outlawed racial discrimination while open and public debate and education since the
revolution have tackled Cuba‟s history as an Afro-Cuban nation. However, the legacy
of 500 years of slavery, racism, and all forms of discrimination is difficult to completely
eradicate in just 50 years, especially while also under the US led attacks and blockade
against Cuba.

Even so, the conditions of all Cubans have improved under the covenant of the
socialist revolution in Cuba which has provided free education, free health care, land
for poor farmers, reduced cost rent and utilities, the elimination of unemployment, and
so on.

Racism, institutionalized or otherwise has not been abolished any place in the
world. Yet Cuba, in our view, remains a hopeful beacon in the western hemisphere that
humane societies can be constructed that provide the basis for the elimination of all
forms of discrimination, exploitation, and oppression.

Ashaki Binta
For the “Cuban Working Group”
Black Left Unity Network
You may contact the working group at: cubaworkinggroup@gmail.com
And documents from the Cuba Working Group may be viewed at:
www.blackeducator.org/cubasolidarity.htm

Cuba Working Group
A Committee of the
Black Left Unity Network
Contact: cubaworkinggroup@gmail.com
View our documents at: www.blackeducator.org/cubasolidarity.htm
Press Release
Contact:
Ashaki Binta, Co-Convener 203-379-7711
March 1, 2010

National: The Black Left Unity Network (BLUN) announces the formation of it’s Cuba
Working Group (CWG) today. The CWG is a national network of activists and organ-
izers who are concerned about the ongoing attacks against the nation of Cuba despite
President Obama’s proclamations of improving relations with the Cuban state in the
Spring of 2009.

Most CWG members have traveled to Cuba and/or have been active in Cuban
Solidarity work for many years and are familiar with the difficult challenges faced by
the island over the last 50 years.

One of the latest attacks against Cuba was generated in the Black community
late last year when a prominent group of African Americans signed on to a declaration
originated by anti-Cuban activists in Latin America who accused the Cuban state of
racism.

Signers of the accusatory declaration include preeminent figures such as Dr.
Julianne Malveaux, Dr. Ron Walters, actress Ruby Dee, film maker Melvin Van
Peebles, Dr. Kathleen Neal Cleaver, and Dr. Cornel West among many others.
A list of 60 notable African Americans signed on to the document.

“Our consideration is that the accusation of racism against Cuba is disingenu-
ous and is in fact intended to weaken solidarity between the African American commu-
nity and Cuba which has historically been very strong.,” said Alberto Jones, a member
of the CWG and a native Cuban residing in Miami.

“A further consequence of this attack would then be to increase the unjustified
pressure on the Cuban state to abandon its socialist character and eliminate the cru-
cial gains of the 1959 Cuban Revolution in providing education, healthcare, affordable
housing, and a healthy cultural life for the Cuban people,” the group said.

According to the CWG, the US government’s historic blockade and ongoing
programs to foment internal dissent within Cuba contribute significantly to weakening
the island nation’s ability to improve and advance the political, social, economic, and
cultural gains of the revolution including the elimination of all forms of inequality and
lingering remnants of slavery.

Despite this, says the CWG, Cuba has abolished institutional racism and has
considerably improved the lives of all it’s citizens since the revolution including nearly
eliminating illiteracy and vastly improving infant mortality rates to levels lower than
those in the US, especially among African Americans. The Cuban nation has officially
acknowledged that more than 60 percent of its citizens are of African descent.

“We believe that those who are concerned about racism in Cuba should be in-
creasing pressure on the US government to end the blockade and other illegitimate
attacks against that country, rather than signing on to specious accusations that do
nothing to help the people of Cuba,” the group said.

The Black Left Unity Network (BLUN) was formed in May of 2008 to strengthen
and revitalize the Black Freedom Movement in the United States. The BLUN Cuba
Working Group was instituted in January this year to help educate the African Ameri-
can community about the importance of Revolutionary Cuba in the international fight
against all forms of discrimination, exploitation, and oppression and about Cuba’s
historic solidarity with the struggle for freedom of the African American people.

US – California: Justice Department seeks police reform in Inglewood

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:40:19 +0000

5 our of 11 of the people shot between ‘03-’05 were unarmed, so its no surprise the Justice Department has found flaws in the way things are handled in Inglewood! The Justice Department is now proposing reforms that are intended to minimize police brutality and police shootings. But although we support these efforts, we at Malcolm-Che do not have a reformist perspective; that is to say that we do not see a package of reforms leading us ultimately to a society that will not contain many egregious police brutality cases. That is because capitalism itself, the system in American society, is a system where there are those who have and those who have not. The interests between these classes are irreconcilable, and any force aimed at mediating the tensions between these classes is doomed to failure in their job.

This article is a must read!!!

Justice Department seeks police reform in Inglewood

Protest In Inglewood, CA. 5 out of 11 people shot by Inglewood PD have been unarmed.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-inglewood11-2010jan11,0,4430016.story?track=rss

The U.S. Department of Justice has found significant flaws in the way Inglewood police oversee use-of-force incidents and investigate complaints against officers and has proposed a host of reforms to help ease fear and distrust among city residents.

As part of a comprehensive review of the department, which is ongoing, Justice Department officials found that Inglewood’s policies on the use of force are poorly written and legally inadequate despite recent reform efforts. In a letter sent to the city’s mayor in December, federal officials called for numerous changes in the way the department trains and investigates its officers.

The Justice Department launched its civil rights probe after a series of officer-involved shootings in 2008 sparked outrage in the city and prompted calls for reform. Federal officials told the city they are continuing with their probe and plan close scrutiny of specific incidents.

A Times investigation, published more than two months before the federal inquiry began, found that Inglewood officers repeatedly resorted to physical or deadly force against unarmed suspects. The Times also raised questions about how the department investigated its officers’ use of force.

In the 33-page letter to the city’s mayor, the Justice Department acknowledged that the department had begun revising its policies but said some of those proposed reforms didn’t go far enough.

Among the Justice Department’s conclusions:

* Inglewood police routinely assigned certain types of excessive force investigations to supervisors who either wrote the initial incident report or approved it, creating “an apparent conflict of interest.”

* The agency’s rules on using deadly force are vague and inconsistent with U.S. Supreme Court guidelines. “The majority of the [department's] policies and procedures are outdated,” federal officials said.

* The department provides its officers with “little direction” on when to use electric Taser weapons. The city should prohibit officers from using Tasers on suspects who are restrained.

* The Police Department should create an early warning system to better track excessive force complaints and other conduct. Such a system would help alert supervisors to problem officers.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), who was among several politicians who called for an outside investigation in the wake of the shootings, said after reviewing the Justice Department’s letter that some of Inglewood’s policies were “unacceptable.” Waters said she would urge the Police Department to “quickly comply” with the recommendations and would inquire into a possible federal consent decree to oversee the department.

“The number of deaths at the hands of police officers has been alarming,” she said. “These deaths are the result of the failed policy.”

Geoffrey Alpert, an expert on use of deadly force by police, said the Justice Department’s findings suggest that Inglewood’s problems were systemic rather than a question of individual officers making poor decisions.

“If the rules are wrong, it opens officers up to doing the wrong thing,” said Alpert, a professor at the University of South Carolina who has helped police agencies draft policies.

The department has also come under fire for adopting what some critics consider a bunker mentality in dealing with officer-involved shootings. Some members of the city’s Citizen Police Oversight Commission have complained in the past that they were shut out of investigations into police misconduct. The city also has refused to release a report by an independent consultant hired to evaluate the series of shootings and the department’s use of force.

Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks declined Friday to discuss the specifics of the Justice Department’s findings, saying she was still reviewing them.

“We’re evaluating policies,” she said. “We’re doing everything that we need to make sure the community can maintain its trust.”

Inglewood Councilman Daniel Tabor said the city was preparing a response “explaining what’s already been done, correcting some of the interpretations of what we currently do and providing some additional information.”

Justice Department spokesman Alejandro Miyar said the ongoing “pattern and practice” investigation is a civil matter focused on systemic issues but could lead to criminal investigations if violations are found. He said the Inglewood police have been “fully cooperative and responsive.” Federal authorities also have the option to bring lawsuits to pressure local authorities into reforming operations.

The Times’ investigation found that five of the 11 people shot and killed by Inglewood police between 2003 and 2008 were unarmed. Among the dead was Jule Dexter, who had been stopped for drinking in public in June 2005.

Officer Jose Estrada fired four shots into Dexter’s back and head as, witnesses said, he reached to pull up his baggy pants, which were slipping. Estrada later said he feared Dexter was reaching for a weapon, but none was recovered.

After he was suspended for 16 days, Estrada challenged his discipline in court, complaining that the department’s deadly force policy was confusing.

In August 2009, Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe ruled that there was not enough evidence to support Estrada’s claim that the policy was vague and ambiguous.

But Justice Department officials found that parts of the policy were vague and inconsistent with U.S. constitutional standards.

The city’s general use of force rules fail to provide officers with clear guidance and give them too much discretion in determining what force to employ, officials wrote. Even a revised policy the agency is considering would fail to meet legal standards, according to the Justice Department.

In their letter dated Dec. 28, federal officials also faulted the department for not offering enough direction or training for officers in dealing with suspects who are mentally ill or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Dexter was both schizophrenic and under the influence of cocaine the day of his death, records show.

The Justice Department also found fault in another area highlighted by The Times, the use of Tasers that deliver high-voltage shocks to suspects.

The newspaper found that officers used Tasers on suspects who posed a questionable threat or who were handcuffed.

Justice Department officials wrote that Inglewood gave its officers little direction in “how and when the Taser should be used.” The Justice Department advised the city to prohibit the use of the weapons on restrained suspects and recommended that it track officers’ use of Tasers.

The Justice Department was also critical of the department’s complaint process, which it said could deter citizens from filing complaints. Officials recommended improvements in community outreach, saying that interviews with residents and others “revealed allegations of distrust and fear” of the police force.

US – Washingtong DC: Protest US Recognition of Honduras Elections

admin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:28:52 +0000

The November 29th Elections in Honduras are a total fraud of democracy. Held under a coup government – regardless of if Micheletti stands down for a few days during the election – these elections will only cement the right wing’s hold of Honduras if they are legitamized.

The United States’ government has a sordid history of anti-democratic and anti-socialist military and political involvement in Latin America. The Obama administration’s continued support of the elections in Honduras are a continuation of the coup-supporting politics that has always been common of every administration.

The National Resistance Front in Honduras has called for a boycott of the elections, and this Front (which is composed of Zelaya liberals, union organizations, campesino organizations and others) can – in my view – accurately be said to represent the broadest layers of the masses and workers at this point. The National Resistance Front has called on everyone both inside Honduras and out to reject any recognition of these elections as legitimate. We agree, and cannot support this election process whatsoever, as the right wing desperately tries to maintain its dwindling foothold in Latin America and the hemisphere.

The call for a constituent assembly has been raised by the Front as the only way to set up fair elections. Elections, as the prime institution of so-called “democracy” in capitalist society, need to be recognized as legitimate or the system falls apart and is revealed more starkly as it truly is: dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.

The issue at hand is the legitamacy of these elections, will the right wing win the day and rewrite history so that it was the right-wing heroes who stopped the renegade Chavista President Zelaya from ruining the country and had free and democratic elections… Or will the left win the day and forever let the world know that it was a coup d’etat when paramilitaries ran up in the presidential palace in the middle of the night and kidnapped the president.

How will these deep division in Honduras be settled? Can they be settled? A constituent assembly could also be manipulated by the right-wing, there is an entire struggle before the constituent assembly is even formed about how it will be formed. Will the consituent assembly be just another organization of bourgeois capitalist power and machinations, or will it be one where the Honduran masses have a strong and undismissable voice.

All of the questions in Honduras these days would obviously lead to more favorable conclusions if the masses stay mobilized and organized to the highest degree possible. When the facade of rotten capitalist democracy falls away, who could blame the Hondurans from stepping away from it?! Today more than ever they must be supported in their struggle however far they may take it.

The organic leaders of these movements are people that have survived in a society that has always been dominated by the right-wing. They are seasoned veterans whatever their age. The capitalists of the world would love to keep Honduran labor at rock-bottom prices, and they don’t care if even their own institution of bourgeois democracy gets in the way. Go and search on the internet about investment opportunities in Honduras, see for yourself what they offer to be its greatest selling point. Hence they will not hesitate to aid and abett a coup, an assassination, an imprisonment, whatever it is.

The Honduran people have stood up and said enough is enough, they snatched the President in his sleep and put him on a plane to Costa Rica in the middle of the night. Its ridiculous, its surreal, its 2009! But when we see that capitalism itselt is not going to fundementally change, that it will remain opposed to a system of governance that truly represents the majority of society, then it isn’t so unbelievable that this can happen these days.

Please support the Honduras resistance to the coup d’etat as much as you can. You can hold educational forums and events where you can show video of the protests and have speakers talk about the struggle and history. You can go to any protests and demonstations that are held. You can hold fundraisers for Honduran Human Rights organizations. There are many different ways you can help out, hopefully you will.

Mexico – Guard arrested for torture in Tijuana prison riots

admin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:05:50 +0000

We first covered this story here. This riot was caused by the prison guards beating a youth to death, the prisoners rose up to defend their rights. Make sure to check out the link to our previous piece on this here because the pictures are amazing.

Guard arrested for torture in Tijuana prison riots

“We want better treatment by the authorities” one banner read. “The guards are assassins” said another

(AP) – 1 day ago

TIJUANA, Mexico — Mexican police caught a prison official who spent a year on the run from charges of killing a 19-year-old inmate, whose beating death sparked riots that left nearly two dozen dead, including two American prisoners.

Marco Antonio Ibarra, the chief guard at Tijuana’s La Mesa State Penitentiary, was arrested in the northern city of Culiacan, where he was born and had been hiding for a year, said Martha Almaza, deputy attorney general for Baja California state.

Ibarra was brought to Tijuana on Friday and paraded before reporters. Authorities did not say when he was arrested.

Almaza said Ibarra ordered guards to take 10 prisoners into a storage room and beat them. She said Ibarra was trying to find out who owned drugs, cell phones and other prohibited items that had been discovered in one of the cells.

The abuse, which resulted in the young prisoner’s death, provoked two uprisings over three days in September 2008. At least 23 inmates were killed, including two of the 200 Americans held at the prison at the time.

Ibarra faces homicide and torture charges. Another guard charged in the case is still at large.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gYJaGbKevcTElz6D4FPZIQlamrogD9BQFD300

Latin America – Peru: Nine policemen die in bloody clashes with Amazon Indians

admin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:42:51 +0000

Nine policemen die in bloody clashes with Amazon Indians

Police open fire on Amazon Indians blocking the road in Bagua Grande in Peru's northern province of Utcubamba on Friday.

http://www.gulfnews.com/world/Peru/10320624.html

Lima: President Alan Garcia laboured on Saturday to contain Peru’s worst political violence in years, as nine more police officers were killed in a bloody standoff with Amazon Indians fighting his efforts to exploit oil and gas on their native lands.

The new deaths brought to 22 the number of police killed – seven with spears – since security forces moved early Friday to break up a roadblock manned by 5,000 protesters.

Protest leaders said at least 30 Indians, including three children, died in the clashes. Authorities said they could confirm only nine civilian deaths, but cabinet chief Yehude Simon told reporters that 155 people had been injured, about a third of them with bullet wounds.

He announced a 3pm-6am curfew in the affected region and said authorities had made 72 arrests.

“The government was required to take these measures, not only for the president of the republic but for all 28 million Peruvians,” Simon said of breaking up the protests, which blocked the flow of oil and gas out of the Amazon and prevented food and supplies from coming in.

“We’ve all been affected one way or another by the protest& when they take over highways and strategic points that can affect the national economy,” Simon said.

The political violence is the Andean country’s worst since the Shining Path insurgency was quelled more than a decade ago, and it bodes ill for Garcia’s ambitious plans to boost Peru’s oil and gas output.

It began early on Friday when security forces moved to break up a roadblock protesters mounted in early April. About 1,000 protesters seized police during the melee, taking more than three dozen hostage, officials said.

Twenty-two officers were rescued in Saturday’s storming of Station No 6 at state-owned Petroperu in Imacita, in the jungle state of Amazonas, Defence Minister Antero Florez told the Radioprogramas radio network. He said seven officers were missing.

New Details On Chiquita’s Support For Right Wing Colombian Paramilitaries

admin — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:15:27 +0000

Terry Collingsworth said the SLC’s findings are consistent with his theory that Chiquita “began supporting the AUC to clear the FARC out of that region.” For more info check this out.

New report peels back layers on how, why Chiquita paid extortions to Colombian terrorists

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30430167/

The first demand was for $10,000.

It was delivered in the late 1980s to the manager of a Colombian banana farm at Chiquita Brands International Inc. It came from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Marxist rebels who implied Chiquita employees would be kidnapped if the money wasn’t paid.

“Everyone understood this was clearly extortion money,” said Robert Kistinger, then in charge of Latin American operations for Chiquita. “We had an ongoing situation where people were being killed.”

And so begins a tale that ends badly for Chiquita.

In March 2007, the Cincinnati banana company stunned investors, employees and the local business community by admitting it made regular payments to Colombian paramilitary groups for 15 years, ending in 2004. It said it had no choice – the lives of its employees were at risk.

Chiquita pled guilty to a felony charge of engaging in transactions with terrorists. It has paid $10 million toward a $25 million fine and faces 10 federal suits seeking billions in damages. Nine have been consolidated before U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra in South Florida.

That’s where you’ll find Kistinger’s account of that $10,000 demand.

It’s part of a recently filed 269-page report by a “special litigation committee” of Chiquita’s board of directors. The SLC is a legal strategy, often used to defend shareholder complaints. The report was filed with a motion to dismiss shareholder litigation. In a separate motion, Chiquita asked Marra to toss out six tort actions that argue Chiquita should be held liable to the families of people killed by the guerrilla groups it funded.

“Chiquita’s board and management, faced with an untenable situation, struggled to act in the best interests of the company and to do the right thing,” said the report’s concluding paragraph. “Pursuing litigation will only prolong the company’s entanglement in matters that have absorbed, distracted and damaged it for close to six years.”

Legal strategy aside, the SLC report offers an inside look at Chiquita’s turbulent history in Colombia. For the first time, it identifies executives who initiated payments, those who tracked them and those who ultimately halted the practice in 2004. And it sheds light on why the payments continued even after prosecutors warned they were illegal.

“We read it with interest,” said Steven Steingard, whose Philadelphia law firm, Kohn Swift & Graf, represents the widows of five American missionaries kidnapped and murdered by the FARC in 1993 and ’94.

“I’m not aware of a case where an American company has laid out in such detail those kinds of things,” he said. “It’s a remarkable listing of …the conduct that went on for years and years that nobody knew about.”

Deadly bus attack

Chiquita’s special litigation committee is a panel of independent Chiquita directors, all of whom joined after the firm exited Colombia and stopped making payments. Those directors, Howard Barker, William Camp and Clare Hasler, spent nine months investigating how officers and directors managed the payments and disclosed them to federal prosecutors and investors. The SLC had its own law firm, hired its own investigators. They interviewed more than 50 witnesses and reviewed 750,000 pages of documents. They provided extensive context on the political climate in Colombia, where leftist revolutionaries made a practice of menacing and extracting payments from land owners and multinationals. Chiquita was both.

“The SLC believes that the total amount of the guerrilla payments ranged from $100,000 to $200,000 per year,” the report said.

Initially, the money went to left-wing groups, known as FARC and ELN. Violence was pervasive in Colombia. The SLC details many acts against the company, including a 1995 incident in which a bus carrying employees was attacked and 25 people killed.

“Several witnesses believed that the FARC targeted the bus,” the report stated. “The massacre had a major impact on personnel both in Colombia and Cincinnati in reinforcing the reality of the threat of violence.”

Starting in 1997, Chiquita paid a right-wing group known as the AUC, a sworn enemy to the FARC. It was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department, making payments to it a violation of U.S. law. The SLC affirmed what Chiquita has said for years: No company official knew of the designation until 2003. Within two months of its discovery, the company reported its violations to the Justice Department.

More than a dozen knew

The SLC identified more than a dozen employees and board members who knew about the payments prior to the company’s discovery of the terrorist designation. They included former CEOs Keith Lindner, Steven Warshaw and Cyrus Freidheim, and company attorneys Charles Morgan, Robert Olson and Gregory Thomas. As early as 1995, the company had tracking mechanisms to monitor what it then called “sensitive” payments. In 1994, it produced the first in a series of legal opinions that concluded the payments complied with Colombian law.

From 1998 to 2001, the company “disclosed a large quantity of information” about guerrilla payments to investigators from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department, the SLC revealed.

“Despite these broad disclosures, no one from the government ever suggested that the payments violated any provision of U.S. law,” the report stated.

The SEC probe led to a $100,000 settlement in which Chiquita admitted an employee paid a $30,000 bribe to a port official in Uraba and that it violated accounting provisions in how it recorded the payment. The settlement was finalized in 2001, weeks after the AUC was listed as a terrorist organization.

Payments to the AUC continued for 28 months after the initial listing. They continued for nearly a year after Chiquita discovered the designation in 2003. The SLC report indicates that’s partly because company officials feared the consequences of halting payments and partly because they misjudged the response they would ultimately receive from prosecutors.

Condoning the payments?

The report devotes 40 pages to its four years of negotiations with the Justice Department. One recurring theme in those pages is a communications gap on the crucial question of whether payments could continue while prosecutors reviewed facts in the case.

Those problems started with an April 24, 2003, meeting in Washington, D.C. It was arranged by Chiquita director Roderick Hills, a former SEC chairman. Participants included Olson, Hills, outside counsel Laurence Urgenson and Michael Chertoff, former secretary of Homeland Security who was then the head of Justice’s criminal division.

“The meeting at DOJ – and the interpretation of its meaning by Hills, Olson and Urgenson – had an enormous influence on the company’s actions in the months that followed and ultimately became a source of fierce controversy between DOJ and the company,” said the report.

Chertoff told Chiquita the payments were illegal. But he agreed to consider “the foreign policy implications” of a withdrawal and acknowledged the issue was “complicated.” Within a month of that nuanced response, Chiquita resumed payments to the AUC, according to the report.

Hills told the SLC that it was “inconceivable that DOJ did not understand that payments would have to continue” and Olson “believed the government was, in effect, condoning the payments” while other government agencies reviewed the matter.

In September 2003, the SLC reports that federal prosecutor Michael Taxay “specifically declined” to tell Chiquita that the payments had to stop. But Taxay’s boss at the time claims that isn’t true.

“They were certainly told,” said Roscoe Howard Jr., now a partner with the Troutman Sanders firm in D.C. “I know they were told because I directed that they be told.”

Taxay couldn’t be reached for comment.

Howard said Chiquita sought meetings with higher-ranking Justice Department officials when it didn’t get the answers it wanted from prosecutors. But he doesn’t think that approach influenced the outcome of the case.

“I’m sure Chiquita wanted to approach this as a policy issue,” he said. “I was treating it like a regular crime.”

‘Necessary to protect lives’

According to the SLC, Chiquita was encouraged by the early response from Justice Department officials. But a December 2003 meeting “went badly … and strained the company’s relationship” with prosecutors.

In the following two months, Chiquita agreed to sell its Colombian subsidiary, hired CEO Fernando Aguirre and made its last payment to the AUC. Prosecutors intensified efforts in early 2004, but the case appeared headed for settlement by the end of that year. In September 2005, a new prosecutor took charge, turning the case in a “more aggressive direction,” according to the report.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Malis hauled directors before a grand jury in 2005 and told Chiquita “directors … on the board while the payments were ongoing” could face charges. He pushed for the firm to expand its privilege waiver so prosecutors could examine letters and e-mails between Chiquita and its law firm, Kirkland & Ellis.

Chiquita’s potential fine was later reduced from $79 million to $25 million, but the government wouldn’t budge on the request that executives not be prosecuted.

Chertoff declined to comment. Malis could not be reached for comment.

The impact of the SLC report will depend on what lawyers make of it. Brigham Young University law professor Gordon Smith said it should help Chiquita dispose of the four shareholder cases pending against it.

“Courts are reluctant to … overturn the findings of an SLC that’s deemed to be independent, fully informed and acting in good faith,” Smith said.

But two plaintiff attorneys pursuing lawsuits on behalf of victims of paramilitary violence say the report will help their case. Terry Collingsworth said the SLC’s findings are consistent with his theory that Chiquita “began supporting the AUC to clear the FARC out of that region.” The Washington lawyer’s human rights group has filed suits on behalf of several hundred victims of Colombian paramilitary violence.

“It was a partnership,” he said. “I’ve talked to the commander and sub-commander … of AUC units in Colombia. They got calls all the time from managers of the banana plantations to handle various security matters.”

The SLC invited plaintiff lawyers to share information on the company’s activities in Colombia. As of February, those lawyers had not provided the SLC with “any factual information,” the SLC report indicated.

“There is no evidence, documentary or testimonial, that any Chiquita personnel believed the payments were made for the purpose of supporting either right-wing or left-wing groups,” said Chiquita spokesman Ed Loyd. “The SLC’s factual findings bear out what the company has said all along. The payments were necessary to protect the lives of our employees.”

Apart from liability issues, some argue the SLC report points to a need for legislation to clarify the responsibilities of U.S. companies doing business abroad. Arvind Ganesan, director of the business and human rights program at Human Rights Watch in New York, said Chiquita executives spent years researching the legality of the payments.

That decision would have been simple “if there were a law that said, ‘You cannot supply material support to a known human-rights abuser,’” said Ganesan. “Maybe the real lesson is, this should have been illegal in the first place.”

Terms set for Colombia Farc talks

admin — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:14:13 +0000

This is a bad sign for the peace process in Colombia. The FARC relented on their major condition for peace talks – the demilitarized zone – and now Uribe is saying that isn’t good enough?! The bottom line is that Uribe doesn’t want peace, then people might look at the narco-terrorist administration he runs.

Terms set for Colombia Farc talks

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7975879.stm

Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe has said he is ready to hold peace talks with Colombia’s Farc rebels, but that strict conditions would have to be met.

He called for “a halt to all criminal activities” and a verifiable ceasefire.

“We believe in peace, but we won’t allow new tricks,” he said, reiterating his resolve to fight the Farc.

On Sunday, the rebel group dropped its demand for a demilitarised area to be set up as a precondition for talks on a swap of rebel hostages for prisoners.

Farc has launched a new offensive, including a campaign of bomb attacks in cities, since suffering a series of defeats in 2008 – though it has recently suggested it may be willing to pursue “political alternatives”.

The government, meanwhile, has been pursuing a strategy of pressuring individual rebel units into abandoning the 45-year civil conflict rather than engaging in high-level talks with the leadership.

Now Mr Uribe has said he is willing to talk, but on tough conditions.

“Peace has its demands. The moment a new process begins there must be a clear sign, a halt to all criminal activities by the groups who want to engage in the process, with verification,” he said.

‘Democratic values’

Without the verification, he said, “we risk talking peace in a language that obfuscates terrorism”.

He reiterated his government’s resolve to fight terrorism “in an all-out effort and in full respect of democratic values”.

Mr Uribe has repeatedly been accused of ignoring human rights in his determination to crush the rebels.

The Farc, meanwhile, has relaxed its insistence on securing an extensive demilitarised zone in Colombia’s south-west as a precondition for talks over exchanging 22 prominent hostages for hundreds of jailed rebels.

There were several failed attempts at peace negotiations with Mr Uribe’s predecessor, Andres Pastrana, but since Mr Uribe came to power in 2002 such initiatives have been largely abandoned.