Today's Stories

May 24, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Death-Wish Hillary Primes Manchurian Candidate

May 23, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
War Abroad, Poverty at Home

Alan Farago
The Radical Extremists of the Building Industry

Conn Hallinan
Ballots and Bullets: From Beirut to Bolivia

Mark Engler
The World After Bush

George Wuerthner
Cars and Cows: Living Large in America

Kamran Matin
The Kurds and American Neo-Imperialism

Sandy Boyer /
Shaun Harkin
The Long Incarceration of Pol Brennan

Robert Weitzel
A "Holey" Instrument of Peace in Iraq

Cindy Sheehan
An Uphill Battle

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Futile Constitutional Amendment

Website of the Day
A Message from the Moral Compass of the McCain Campaign

May 22, 2008

Vijay Prashad
Racist Grammar

Joanne Mariner
A Military Commissions Cheat Sheet

Sharon Smith
60 Years of Apartheid

Jeff Birkenstein
Disaster Redux: Some Early Thoughts on the Earthquake in China

Brendan McQuade
From Obama to the PRTs in Iraq

Peter Morici
The Sorry State of the Banking Industry

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Restoration Boulevard

Dave Zirin
What I Want to Ask Mary Tillman

Ron Jacobs
CPR for the Antiwar Movement

Stephen Lendman
Immoral Hazard

Website of the Day
Hagee: God Sent Hitler to Drive the Jews to Israel

May 21, 2008

Jeffrey St. Clair
The Gothic Politics of Hillary Clinton

Nikolas Kozloff
U.S. Military Bases in South America

Alan Farago
Miami, Cuba and the Presidential Campaign

Dave Lindorff
Big John and the Scary, Scary Iran Threat

David Model
Genocide in Iraq?

Eric Walberg
Afghanistan: Who is the Enemy?

Franklin Lamb
Lebanon Gets a President

Kenneth Couesbouc
Tax Against Tyranny

Website of the Day
Child Labor and War-Affected Children: a Photo Essay

May 20, 2008

Ralph Nader
A Trip Inside Google

Uri Avnery
With Friends Like These

Patrick Irelan
The Empire and the Fleet

Ray McGovern
Come Out, Admiral Fallon, Wherever You Are

David Macaray
The UAW Strike Against American Axle

Chris Genovali
Big Oil on the Water: Skating Around the Tanker Issue

Ibrahim Fawal
Birmingham, Israel and the Nakba

Christopher Ketcham
Let Us Now Praise Famous Suicides

Andy Worthington
Guantánamo Trial Delayed

Martha Rosenberg
Merck is a Repeat Offender

Website of the Day
Defend the Students Who Pied Tom Friedman

May 19, 2008

Saul Landau
Cuba Will Live

Paul Craig Roberts
The Metamorphosis of the Conservative Movement

Brian McKenna
Brotherly Love in Philly's Badlands

Patrick Cockburn
City of the Dead: Mosul on Lockdown

B. R. Gowani
The Central Problem Pakistan Needs to Tackle

Dr. Trudy Bond
Psychologists and Torture: If Not Now, When?

Cindy Sheehan
Whose War is It?

John Mohawk
The Warriors Who Turned to Peace

Remi Kanazi
When Free Speech Doesn't Come for Free

Robert Day
I Get a Horse

Website of the Day
Evolve or Die

May 17 / 18, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
The View from the Crusaders' Castle

Tim Wise
Testosterone is Not to Blame: Why Sexism isn't the Reason for Hillary's Loss

Andy Worthington
Gitmo Trials: Betrayal, Backsliding and Boycotts

Robert Fantina
The Double-Talk Express Derails

Karim Makdisi
In the Wake of the Doha Truce

Harry Browne
Only Ireland Can Vote on EU's Future

John Ross
Suicide by Taco? The Demise of Mexico's PRD

Dave Lindorff
Fear at the Pump

Robert Weissman
Pharmaceutical Payola

Laray Polk
Bush Family Appeasement

David Yearsley
Puritans in Seattle

Ron Jacobs
Riot Squads, Privatization and the National Front

Paul Quinnett
My Last Flight

Sam Bahour
Refugees are the Key

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Poverty Wages

Dr. Susan Block
The Groom May Kiss the Groom

Kim Nicolini
Paranoid Park: Inside the Fractured Landscape of Male Adolescence

Jeremy Scahill
John Cusack's War

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Dominguez, Gerard and Davies

May 16, 2008

Stephen Soldz
Involuntary Drugging of Detainees

Jonathan Cook
Police Attack Al-Nakba March

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies of Aggression

Christopher Brauchli
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Pharmacy

James L. Secor
Olympic Torch China: the View from Shaoxing

Franklin Lamb
Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

Linn Washington, Jr.
The Price of Protecting Racist Cops

Dave Lindorff
What West Virginia Means

May 15, 2008

Stan Cox
Big Brother Close Up

Jeff Halper
Rethinking Israel After 60 Years

Greg Moses
Living for the Children of Palestine

John Ross
Why Mexican Justice is a Euphemism

Ron Jacobs
Go to Work, Go to Jail

Binoy Kampmark
Indian Jailbirds: the Case of Binayak Sen

Eve Spangler
We Should Not Celebrate Dispossession

Martha Rosenberg
Meat Wars with South Korea

Website of the Day
Idaho Wolf Killers

May 14, 2008

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
Oil Wars

Reza Fiyouzat
Torture, a Bully's Creed

Felice Pace
California Water Politics: Of Dams and Water Buffaloes

Hamdan A. Yousuf / Dania S. Ahmed
A Generation Defined by War

Robert Weitzel
Hillary's "Final Solution" to the Persian Problem

Ralph Nader
You're Either with the American People or the Big Auto Bosses

Dave Lindorff
Hillary, McCain and the Stupid Vote

Missy Comley Beattie
White Heaven: Hillary's W. Virginia Idyll

Neve Gordon
Israel as a Site of Struggle

Dr. Susan Block
A Washington Witch Hanging

Website of the Day
Hillary's Downfall

May 13, 2008

David Rosen
Sexual Terrorism: the Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Alan Farago
Nuclear Florida: Beachfront Reactors in an Age of Rising Sea Levels?

Saul Landau
The Crisis at Home

Saree Makdisi
Forget the Two-State Solution

Paul Craig Roberts
How Empires Fall

Andy Worthington
Gitmo's Suicide Bomber

Brother Bede Vincent
The Problem with Rev. Wright--There are Too Few Like Him

Linda Mamoun
Marketing Ethnic Cleansing

David Macaray
The Myth That Won't Die

Website of the Day
Burning the Future: Coal in America

May 12, 2008

St. Clair / Frank
The Pentagon's Toxic Legacy

Ziga Vodovnik
Rebels Against Tyranny: an Interview with Howard Zinn on Anarchism

Gary Leupp
Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Frankln Lamb
Choufeit's Bloody Pentacost

Suzanne Baroud
The Ambition of Hillary Clinton

Martha Rosenberg
Farmer Ernie's Chamber of Horrors

Dave Zirin
The Boss's Boycott

Carl Finamore
I Ain't Gonna Work No More

Peter Morici
Recession Watch

Richard Rhames
The Third Way to Nowhere

Website of the Day
The Untold Story of Black New Orleans

May 10 / 11, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 Casualties a Year

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah Eases Up and Beirut Opens Its Shutters

Ciara Gilmartin
A Surge in Iraqi Detainees

Diane Farsetta
Inside a Nuclear Industry Soirée

Kent Paterson
Mother's Day in Ciudad Juarez

Alan Farago
The Social Engineers

Rannie Amiri
Beirut on the Brink

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia, Morales and the Red Ponchos

Robert Fantina
The Lexicon Legacy of George W. Bush

Nikolas Kozloff
El Salvador 2009: Another Feather in the Cap of Chavez?

George Ciccariello-Maher
The Yumare Massacre, 22 Years On

David Yearsley
Bacharach at 80

Ron Jacobs
Rosa Luxemburg's Shock Doctrine

John Holt
Can Yellowstone Survive?

David Michael Green
It's So Over

Ben Terrall
Dealing Sleep

Kim Nicolini
The Best Film of the Bush Era?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Booked Up

Poets' Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Frisella, Gladstone-Gelman

May 9, 2008

Franklin Lamb
A Wild Day in Beirut

Andy Worthington
The Afghans of Gitmo

Benjamin Dangl
Polarizing Bolivia

Mark A. Huddle
Remembering Mildred Loving, an Unsung Hero of the Civil Rights Movement

David Macaray
Hollywood Gives SAG the Brush Off

Dave Lindorff
Team Clinton: Going Down Ugly

C.G. Estabrook
The Way We Live Now

Matt Kosko
McCain, Clinton, Obama and the Wages of Lesser-Evilism

Robert Weissman
Big Business is not the Solution to Global Poverty

Michael Dickinson
Jailing the Joint

Website of the Day
The Role of Third Parties in the U.S.A.

May 8, 2008

Sharon Smith
Rockefeller Family Fables

Saul Landau
The NATO Axiom

Laura Carlsen
A Primer on Plan Mexico

Binoy Kampmark
Food Riots are Coming to the U.S.

Kenneth Couesbouc
China's Paper Feet

Liaquat Ali Khan
Pakistan's Constitutional Shenanigans

Franklin Lamb
Blindsided, Hezbollah Mulls Its Response

Sen. Russ Feingold
Government in Secret

George Wuerthner
The Problems with Conservation Easements

Richard W. Behan
A Brief Exposé of a Fraudulent War

Adam Federman
Marching for Sean Bell

Website of the Day
State of the Air

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World War II to the Present

U.S. Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan Waters

By NIKOLAS KOZLOFF

With U.S. saber rattling towards Venezuela now at its height, the Pentagon has decided to reactivate the Navy’s fourth fleet in the Caribbean, Central and South America. 

It’s a bold move, and has already stirred controversy within the wider region. 

The fleet, which will start patrolling in July, will be based at the Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville, Florida and will answer to the U.S. Southern Command in Miami.  Rear Admiral Joseph Keran, current commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command, will oversee operations.  About 11 vessels are currently under the Southern Command, a number that could increase in future.  The Navy plans to assign a nuclear-powered air craft carrier, USS George Washington, to the force.

It’s difficult to see how the revival of the Fourth Fleet is warranted at the present time.  The move has only served to further antagonize Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, already rattled by a U.S. navy plane’s violation of Venezuelan airspace over the weekend.  In the long-term, the Pentagon’s saber rattling may encourage South American militaries to assert great independence from Washington, a trend which is already well under way as I discuss in my new book, Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan).

Reacting angrily to the Navy’s announcement, Chávez said: ``They don't scare us in the least.''  Chávez remarked that ``along with Brazil we're studying the creation of a South American Defense Council'' which would defend South America from foreign intervention. “If a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) exists,” the Venezuelan leader postulated, “why can’t a SATO exist, a South Atlantic Treaty Organization?"

Though the resuscitation of the Fourth Fleet has led many to believe that the U.S. is pursuing a course of gunboat diplomacy in the region, there was a time when the force arguably served a real need.  What is the history of the Fourth Fleet in Venezuelan waters?

Venezuela in World War II

On the eve of the Second World War, Venezuela was the world’s leading oil exporter and during the conflict the oil rich Maracaibo fields, located in the westernmost Venezuelan state of Zulia, were considered a crucial resource for both the axis and allied powers. 

British and American oil subsidiaries of Royal Dutch Shell, Standard Oil and Gulf had in fact long operated in the Maracaibo Basin prior to the outbreak of European hostilities.  Transportation of crude from Jersey Standard’s producing fields in Lake Maracaibo region was carried out through use of specially constructed shallow draft tankers.  A refinery owned by Royal Dutch Shell located on the island of Aruba, which processed Maracaibo crude, was strategically important as it supplied products not only to Britain but also to France. 

In 1940, Britain received fully 40 percent of her total oil imports from Venezuela, and during the first years of the war that total jumped to as high as 80 percent.  Venezuelan oil also represented a vital commodity for the Nazis and the ability of the German state to wage war in Europe.  As late as 1938, oil produced from Aruba, Curacao and Venezuela accounted for 44 percent of German oil imports.  Germany did not buy oil directly from Venezuela but from U.S. and British-Dutch oil companies which shipped Venezuelan crude to refineries in Aruba and Curacao and then sold the final product in Europe.  Venezuelan-German trade remained at normal levels but ended abruptly in September 1939 with the beginning of the British naval blockade of Germany.

By 1940, with Britain increasingly isolated as the result of German attack and prior to the entrance of the U.S. into the war, Venezuelan sentiment was bitterly anti-German.  Meanwhile Venezuela moved into the U.S. orbit and became a chief recipient of American economic aid.  U.S. military officials preferred that Venezuela publicly stay neutral in an effort to preempt any German moves to shell Venezuela’s coast. 

Venezuelan neutrality however was a mere legal fiction: in reality, the South American nation had granted U.S. ships and airplanes special access to ports and airstrips.  Two days after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Venezuela declared its solidarity with the United States and on December 31, 1941 the Andean nation severed relations with the Axis powers. 

Operation “Roll of Drums”

It wasn’t long before the Venezuelan government’s decision to sell oil to the allies resulted in Nazi counter measures.  On December 12, 1941 Hitler met with his naval advisers and approved PAUKENSCHLAG or “ROLL OF DRUMS” a U-boat operation in Western Atlantic/Caribbean waters.  In February, 1942 German submarines plied the Caribbean, sinking 25 tankers in one month. 

The Nazis were chiefly concerned with the Dutch islands of Curacao and Aruba, Dutch colonies where U.S. forces had set up defensive fortifications in order to protect refineries processing Venezuelan crude from Maracaibo (with an estimated crude capacity of 480,000 barrels a day, the Aruba refinery, owned by Standard Oil of New Jersey, and the Curacao refinery, owned by Royal Dutch Shell, outranked Abadan in Iran with 250,000 barrels; the Baku complex in the U.S.S.R. with about 230,000 barrels; and the largest plants in the United States at Baytown, Port Arthur, Bayonne, Baton Rouge, and Whiting with over 100,000 barrels each).

On 15 February 1942, a convoy of oil tankers and ships left the Maracaibo Bar.  The first ships in line were the ‘Monagas,’ of the Mene Grande Oil Company, followed by the ‘Tia Juana’ and ‘Pedernales’ both belonging to the Lago Petroleum Corporation.  These tankers were followed by the ‘Rafaela’ belonging to Shell, and the ‘San Nicolas’and ‘Orangestad,’ belonging to Lago Oil and Transport Co, based in Aruba.  A number of other tankers joined the column. 

German U-Boat Attack and Creation of the U.S. Fourth Fleet

Suddenly a German U-boat torpedoed the ‘Monagas’ which sank immediately.  The tankers ‘Tia Juana,’ ‘Pedernales,’ ‘Rafaela,’ ‘San Nicolas,’ and ‘Orangestad’ were also hit and sustained casualties.  On the same day, the oil refinery on Aruba was attacked by German submarine shellfire.  The political fallout from the attack was predictable: soon, angry street protesters hit the streets of Caracas, denouncing German aggression. 

In response to stepped up German escalation in the Caribbean, the U.S. Navy created the Fourth Fleet to hunt submarines in the South Atlantic.  The U.S. moves came none too soon: as the naval war raged in the Caribbean, Venezuela suffered tremendous economic losses.  As a result of the lost tankers, production in the Lake Maracaibo Basin had to be cut back by nearly 100,000 tons of crude daily.  By July 1942 the situation was still dire, with tankers operating at only one-third their average capacity of 30,000 barrels. 

German attacks on the Aruba refinery marked the beginning of the Battle of the Caribbean.  It wasn’t until August, 1943 that the Fourth Fleet was able to turn the tables on the submarine menace in Venezuelan waters.  In 1950, with German U-boats now long gone, the U.S. Navy disbanded the fleet.

Reviving the Fourth Fleet

The Navy claims that it needs to resuscitate the Fourth Fleet now to combat terrorism, to keep the economic sea lanes of communication free and open, to counter illicit trafficking and to provide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.

However, the move comes at a particularly sensitive moment within the region.  U.S. ally Colombia launched a deadly raid across the Ecuadoran border in March, killing 16 members of the FARC guerilla insurgency including the organization’s number two, Raúl Reyes.  Last weekend, Chávez accused Colombia of launching a cross-border incursion, while the Pentagon routinely lambastes Venezuela for its arms buildup including acquisition of high performance fighter aircraft, attack helicopters and diesel submarines.

Unlike the Second World War, when many South Americans welcomed the Fourth Fleet in Caribbean waters, some view the current U.S. naval presence as a veiled threat directed at the region’s new Pink Tide countries.  In an interview with Cuban television, Bolivian President Evo Morales remarked that the U.S. naval force constituted "the Fourth Fleet of intervention."

Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro has asked why the U.S. has sought to revive the Fourth Fleet at this precise moment.  Writing in the Cuban newspaper Granma, Castro suggested that the move constituted a return to U.S. gunboat diplomacy.  Castro, whose island nation confronted a U.S. naval blockade during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, remarked "The aircraft carriers and nuclear bombs that threaten our countries are used to sow terror and death, but not to combat terrorism and illegal activities.”

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave-Macmillan)

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