Another World Is Possible

The Fifth Annual World Social Forum (WSF) held in Porto Alegre, Brazil from January 26-31 garnered almost no media coverage in the United States. Timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the WSF drew 155,000 activists from 135 countries, who assembled to challenge Bush's agenda.

The weeklong happening, called "Another World Is Possible," kicked off with a "march for peace." An estimated 200,000 people, many with turbans or indigenous clothing, carried bright flags and marched to the beat of omnipresent drums. Several bore posters with pictures of Bush ("The World's No. 1 Terrorist"). The mood was festive but purposeful as old and young, black, brown, yellow and white, prepared to strategize about how to create a just and peaceful world.

One of the most compelling speakers at the WSF was John Perkins, a former CIA operative and self-described economic hit man for U.S. imperialism. It was Perkins' job to meet with a leader of a targeted country and encourage him to accept a large loan for a project that both the CIA and the leader knew the country could not afford. The money would go to a bank in the United States and U.S. corporations would get the contract to do the job. The country was then beholden to the United States, manipulated to support U.S. policy and make its natural resources available to U.S. corporations. This is the model of "neo-liberalism."

Where a head of state refused to accept the CIA's offer, Perkins would remind him that several leaders had been assassinated or become the victims of a coup and removed from office (e.g., Chile, Haiti). In such a situation, the CIA would back opposition movements within the target country, support corrupt military leaders, or undermine the country's economy. The CIA often sent in "jackals," or "hit men," who plied their trade when other methods failed. Omar Torrijos, former president of Panama, was one victim of these jackals.

When both the economic hit men and the jackals were unsuccessful in bringing the country under U.S. domination, the tactic of last resort was war. This is what happened in Iraq after the U.S. was unable to convince Saddam to support its policies.

Notwithstanding Bush's rhetoric about creating democracies throughout the world, the United States has tried mightily to facilitate the overthrow of twice democratically-elected Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. But it has thus far failed. (See my editorial, Chavez Victory: Defeat for Bush Policy). There was talk last week at the WSF that the U.S. is attempting to get Colombia to invade Venezuela, but Chavez and other Latin American leaders are trying to defuse the situation. Likewise, Dick Cheney lobbed out the possibility that Israel might attack Iran (thereby using Israel as a U.S. surrogate to enable the installation of an Iranian government more receptive to U.S. policies).

Hugo Chavez, who also spoke at the WSF, received a hero's welcome. He highlighted the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a proposal made by Venezuela as an alternative to the Free Trade of the Americas. The ALBA emphasizes social and cultural exchanges over profit-based economic deals. Chavez noted, "We can't wait for a sustained economic growth of 10 years in order to start reducing poverty through the trickledown effect, as the neoliberal economic theories propose."

Chavez criticized Condoleezza Rice's recent assertion that Chavez was "a negative force in the region." He said relations between the U.S. and Venezuela will remain unhealthy as long as the United States continues its policy of aggression. "The most negative force in the world today is the government of the United States," Chavez said.

Significantly, Chavez maintained, "We must start talking again about equality. The U.S. government talks about freedom and liberty, but never about equality." Indeed, Bush told the Congressional Black Caucus a few days ago that he was "unfamiliar" with the Voting Rights Act.

Walden Bello, executive director of Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines, analyzed the role that cultural oppression played in the U.S. presidential election. Bello said that although neo-liberalism and militarism are significant problems, "the cultural dimension is what led the Bush administration to victory by drawing its support largely based on white people in the U.S." He noted, "The Bush administration in fact appeals to traditional forms of cultural oppression through traditional forms of cultural ethnocentrism and of traditional and old forms of racism." The people who voted for Bush, according to Bello, "were voting against blacks, they were voting against immigrants, the feminist movement, foreign imports and foreign ideas that are not American."

The American Association of Jurists (AAJ), in association with the Latin American Association of Labor Lawyers, sponsored three days of panel discussions on Law, Public Order and Social Integration at the WSF. As the U.S. representative to the AAJ, I gave a presentation on Human Rights and the New World Order, in which I noted that Bush told his advisors on the evening of September 11, 2001, that the terrorist attacks provided a "great opportunity" for the United States. Likewise, when the tsunami devastated Asia, Condoleezza Rice used almost the same words. She said the tsunami was a "wonderful opportunity" for the U.S. I presented an analysis of how the neoconservatives have hijacked United States foreign policy and the resulting decimation of human rights, including the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.

Another speaker at the AAJ conference was Arnel Medina Cuenca, president of the National Union of Cuban Jurists. Discussing the U.S. policy of neo-liberalism, he said, "Matan a los pobres pero no a la pobresa" ("They kill the poor but not the poverty.")

The AAJ passed a resolution in support of the five Cuban political prisoners incarcerated in New York for what was, in effect, their anti-terrorist actions against terrorists in the U.S. who sought to overthrow the Cuban government. Another AAJ resolution calls for the return of Vieques, a United States military installation on the land of the U.S. colony Puerto Rico. The resolution also calls on the U.S. government to finance the decontamination of Vieques, which has been poisoned by depleted uranium and heavy metals from U.S. weapons testing and military training exercises. As a result the people of Vieques have the highest incidence of cancer in Puerto Rico.

Programs at the WSF advocated sustainable development, cancellation of Third World debt, an end to corporate abuse, struggle against United States imperialism, and termination of the occupation of Iraq.

In Bush's State of the Union address this evening, we can expect to hear more rhetoric about "freedom," "liberty" and "spreading democracy throughout the world." For most of the people of the world, however, Bush's words signal the spread of neo-liberalism, aggression and regime change, to their detriment. The World Social Forum is one small step toward uniting progressives from around the world to defy Bush's agenda which threatens us all.

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Chavez Victory: Defeat for Bush Policy

The Bush administration is gritting its collective teeth at the outcome of Sunday’s recall election in Venezuela, which overwhelmingly affirmed President Hugo Chavez’s tenure. If President Jimmy Carter had not lent his enormous credibility to the election results, Bush and his minions would surely be crying foul in unison with the opposition.

Chavez was popularly elected by his countrymen and women in 1998 and 2000. Yet in spite of Bush’s claims to support democracy around the world, his administration has given succor those trying to overthrow Chavez’s government before, during and since the aborted coup in April 2002.

Officials at the Organization of American States affirmed that the Bush administration had sanctioned the coup. Bush’s then-Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Otto Reich, met with leaders of the coup for months before it was executed. Elliot Abrams, one of the neoconservative policymakers in Bush’s inner circle, approved the coup, according to the London Observer. And John Negroponte, now our ambassador to Iraq, was in on it, too.

Reich, Abrams and Negroponte comprised the troika that administered the “Reagan doctrine” in the 1980s, which supported vicious dictatorships in Central America, including those in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

As documented in the film, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” Chavez was forcibly removed from the presidential palace on April 11, 2002 by forces acting on behalf of Venezuela’s propertied class. Pedro Carmona, head of Venezuela’s confederation of business and industry, declared himself president. Within hours, Carmona purported to repeal laws enacted under Chavez that the executives of foreign oil companies opposed.

Forty-eight hours later, after thousands of workers and peasants stormed the palace demanding Chavez’s return to power, the military did an about-face and brought him back. The filmmakers, fortuitously present at the scene, were caught inside the palace and filmed the class struggle that played out with Chavez’s ouster and reinstatement.

Former U.S. Navy intelligence officer Wayne Madsen told the Guardian that our navy helped with communications jamming support to the Venezuelan military during the would-be coup. An American plane was present on the island to which Chavez was whisked away. The Bush administration provided financial backing to key participants in the coup attempt, which resulted in the deaths of 19 people.

Chavez incurred the wrath of Team Bush by championing the interests of the working class over the oil-igarchy in Venezuela. The fifth largest oil supplier in the world, Venezuela is a key provider of U.S. petroleum. By using oil profits to help his people instead of the multinational corporations, Chavez created an alternative model to Bush-backed neoliberal globalization.

Hugo Chavez’s plan of Bolivarianism – named after Simon Bolivar, father of Venezuelan independence – focused on a redistribution of the massive wealth generated by his country’s rich oil profits. He passed a law that doubled royalty taxes paid by ExxonMobil and other oil companies on new finds.

Chavez enacted the Ley De Tierras, which provided for unused land to be given to the landless; he instituted free health care and public education to all; he backed a new Constitution that enshrines rights for women and indigenous peoples; and he lowered the inflation rate.

Unlike the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government, which shut down Al Jazeera for its broadcasts critical of the occupation, Chavez never shut down or censored private media controlled by tycoons trying to unseat him in the months leading up to Sunday’s election.

Nearly 95 percent of the electorate voted in the election, the largest percentage Jimmy Carter has ever seen. Carter and the Organization of American States have independently verified the validity of Sunday’s election results, and have even supported an audit, which Carter calls “infallible,” according to The New York Times. Nevertheless, the opposition refuses to sanction the results of the election or the audit.

Opposition exit polls, which Carter has dismissed as inaccurate and “deliberately distributed … in order to build up, not only the expectation of victory, but also to influence the people still standing in line,” were funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.

NED, a U.S. government organization purporting to promote democracy, was set up in the early 1980s by Reagan to counter negative revelations about the CIA’s covert operations in the late 1970s. NED successfully manipulated the Nicaraguan elections in 1990 and worked with right-wing groups in the late 1990s to oust Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Just last February, the Bush administration engineered a coup d’etat in Haiti, as I described in my editorial, Coup d’Etat – This Time in Haiti. The U.S. Marines put democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on a plane out of Haiti after officials from the United States threatened him into signing a purported resignation letter. Aristide, like Chavez, fell out of favor with Bush by resisting neoliberalism.

Hugo Chavez is, according to The Wall Street Journal, “Washington’s biggest Latin American headache after the old standby, Cuba.” Indeed, Venezuela is Cuba’s top trading partner, selling it discounted oil, while Cuba has sent thousands of doctors, teachers and engineers to work in Venezuela.

Speaking of Cuba, NED donated a quarter-million dollars in the early 1990s to the Cuban-American National Fund, the terrorist anti-Castro group in Miami. CANF financed Luis Posada Carriles, notorious for his involvement in the blowing up of a Cuba airplane in 1976, which killed 73 people.

Chavez, now trying to reunify his country in the wake of a contentious election, says: “Violence can only be ended if actions are taken so that all human beings have access to the fundamental human rights, including education, housing, work and health.” In a déjà vu from a hot-button issue facing us in the United States, Chavez told journalist Greg Palast: “Our upper classes don’t even like paying taxes. That’s one reason they hate me. We said, ‘You must pay your taxes.’”

Critical of the Bush administration’s covert activity against him and Fidel Castro, Chavez maintains: “They are also manipulating the U.S. people because there is a dictatorship in the United States.”

One would hope our election results in November are as reliable as Venezuela’s. If Bush is elected, we can expect him to go after Chavez again, and Castro as well. This would likely destabilize Latin America in much the same way Bush has destabilized the Middle East with his war on Iraq.

Leaders of countries throughout Latin America congratulated Hugo Chavez on his victory Sunday. Yet the Bush government, although grudgingly accepting the results, did not hail the exercise of democracy in Venezuela.

Bush’s agenda was roundly defeated with Chavez’s triumph. Chavez has opposed U.S. policy in Latin America, including military aid to Colombia and efforts to spread free trade agreements throughout the region. Voters who supported him understood that a vote to recall Hugo Chavez would be a vote for U.S. imperialism.

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