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April 2, 2002
Robert Fisk
Farce and Terror
in Ramallah
Steve
Perry
Let's
Roll! ®:
The Marketing of Lisa Beamer
April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament: a Call to Action
Bahour / Dahan
Bloodshed in Palestine:
A Way Out
Molly
Secours
Tennessee's
Kangaroo Court
Phyllis Pollack
The Making of Exile
on Main Street
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's
Top 10 CDs
Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law
March 31, 2002
Jordan
Flaherty
Last
Night the Israeli
Military Tried to Kill Me
Kristen Schurr
Live from Bethlehem
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War
March 24/30, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The Year
of the Yellow Notepad:
Plagiarism and History
Rep. Ron Paul
Slavery and the Draft
Fidel
Castro
A
Better World is Possible
Edward Said
What Price Oslo?
José
Saramago
Justice
and Democracy Denied
Azmi Bishara
Talking to Tanks
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Clearcutting
Montana
Alexander Cockburn
50 Years of James Bond
Wilhelm
Reich
Gethsemane
Claud Cockburn
The Horror of It All
Dave Marsh
What's
Playing at My Houe
David Vest
Remembering Tammy Wynette
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Waylon
Jennings:
an Honest Outlaw
March 23, 2002
Mokhiber/Weissman
A
Corporate Lawyer
Speaks Out
Saeed Vaseghi
The US and Iran's Quest
for Democracy
Brian
J. Foley
Does
Pedophilia Scandal Spell an Opportunity for Catholics?
Sheperd Bliss
American Soul and Empire
James
Packard Winkler
Occupation
and Terror:
Politics from a Gun Barrel
M. Shahid Alam
A New International Division
of Labor
T.W. Croft
Enron's
Attack on Our
Economic Security
March 22, 2002
Robert Jensen
Corporate Power is a
Threat to Democracy
Tommy
Ates
The
Future of Black Academia
Rep. Ron Paul
Why are We in Ukraine?
March 21, 2002
McQuinn,
Munson, & Wheeler
Stars
and Stripes:
Killing for the Flag?
John Chuckman
How Change is Wrought
David
Vest
Hail
to the Chaff
March 20, 2002
Kay Lee
Censorship at Angelfire
Robert
Jensen
The
Politics of Pain
and Pleasure
Sheperd Bliss
Notes from Hawai'i:
Trouble in Paradise
Rick Giambetti
Prozac
and Suicide:
an Interview with
Dr. David Healy
Philip Farruggio
Bullies
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
The Madness of Occupation
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The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
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Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
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April 2, 2002
American
Diplomacy In Action
Bullying Brazil
By Norman Madarasz
The latest expression of unilateral discord by
the United States against an independent international agency
has put the United Nation's Organization for the Prohibition
of Chemical Weapons in the line of fire. In a move unprecedented
even for the US's frequent pressuring of the UN, the State department
has called for the resignation of the current head of the OPCW,
director-general, Jose Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat. Bustani
has headed the Organization since first being elected its director-general
in 1997.
On March 20, the WASHINGTON POST featured
an Associated Press report on the conflict penned by Adalid
Cabrera Lemuz. In the report, State Department spokesman Richard
Boucher was said to have accused Bustani with a line of irregularities,
the most serious of which include "financial mismanagement,
demoralization of the technical secretariat staff and what many
believe are ill-considered initiatives." Yet neither Boucher
nor any other senior Washington or New York official provided
further explanation or examples of the problems cited.
The Brazilian foreign ministry disputed
Boucher's charge, emphasizing that the federal government in
Brasilia, "considers that Bustani has conducted himself
with a sense of responsibility and correctness." American
pressure on Bustani led to an executive committee no-confidence
vote held in The Hague (where the Organization sits) on Friday,
March22. Bustani survived the vote by a narrow margin.
These are the basic players in this affair.
Against a background of diplomatic discretion and downplay,
the consistently objective American press has not hesitated,
once again, to establish the norms by which interpreting this
discord is to proceed.
To get a better idea of what's at stake
it might be interesting to start by examining the OPCW's mandate
itself. Created in 1997 from a treaty banning chemical weapons,
the OPCW is the offspring of the various UN missions to Iraq
to control what, the US has claimed, is Sadam Hussein's manufacturing
of "weapons of mass destruction". 145 nations are
part of the Organization, which operates on an annual budget
of about $60 million a year. The Associated Press writer deems
it important to point out that the US foots about 22 percent
of that bill, though this year it is behind in paying its dues
by 50%. We should keep both of these figures in mind to understand
how funding for the US means controlling.
Wednesday's report included Boucher's
denial on the US demand being related in any way to the organization's
conclusions on Iraq's weapons-making capacity. On Friday March
22, however, another Associated Press writer, reporting from
The Hague, cites an unnamed "senior U.S. official"
who claims that Bustani had sided with severe criticism of U.S.
arms export policy, though he declined to be more specific.
This is the same unnamed source who revealed and commented on
the defeat of the US led no-confidence vote. In a typically
Orwellian interpretation, the official claims that the executive
committee of the OPCW voted "overwhelmingly" against
the Brazilian director-general, even though almost as many countries
abstained than voted.
Based on such an assessment, it's obvious
that the most recent American elections would have had a significantly
different outcome. In fact, the final tally had 17 nations
being in favor of the no confidence motion, 5 against, and 18
abstaining. In light of the arithmetic, instead of the heuristics,
it's clear why Mr. Bustani has refused to step down.
It was only a year ago that Bustani was
elected for a second term as director-general of OPCW with the
unanimous vote of the 145 member-nations. In an interview published
in the JORNAL DO BRASIL on March 25, 2002 (<www.jb.com.br>),
Bustani lists the US as the only nation complaining about his
mandate. He goes on to argue that other states, such as Japan
and Germany, have voted along with the US primarily for fear
of seeing the OPCW dissolve under American pressure.
Part of Bustani's mission had been to
rally 58 outstanding states to join the OPCW. The skill with
which he did so managed to raise membership to 145 nations.
This led directly to his reelection, though the vote took place
during the waning days of Clinton's presidency. With W. Bush's
arrival in the Oval Office, Mr. Bustani observed a sharp change
in cooperation form the American government regarding the mandate
of the OPCW.
The initiative to have Bustani sacked
was reportedly launched by John Bolton, Sub-secretary of State
for Arms Control and one of the loudest voices for the go-it-alone
attitude of much of the Bush Administration's international
accords. The discord may have two possible motives.
The first may simply involve frustration
by American arms manufacturers with restrictions placed on future
chemical weapons production and sales by the US through the
OPCW's regulations. With Bush's men openly speaking of using
small nuclear bombs to attack countries of the "axis of
evil", a ban on chemical weapons in the eyes of US military
and trade planners probably looks like child's play.
More sinister is the prospect of what
now seems to be a clear preparation for an attack on Iraq, only
temporarily relieved by the Arab League's opposition voiced
during its assembly in Beirut last weekend. Crown Prince Abdullah
of Saudi Arabia has been noteworthy in leading the Arab nations
to disagree with an attack on Iraq. France has voiced its opposition
on the front of the European Union, and a growing cacophony
is resonating from Blair's backbenchers in Westminster. In face
of this resistance, President Bush may need some type of official
evidence to warrant his move. Bustani has suggested that the
cooperation the OPCW received from the Iraqi government in 1999
regarding the Organization's activities has offended the Bush
Administration. Though Iraq has not joined OPCW, Bustani was
able to send a team there to conduct inspections at a time
when the American and British led UNSCOM finally failed. Bustani
emphasized to the JORNAL DO BRASIL that "this is what the
US clearly didn't like".
Faced with these diplomatic strong-arm
tactics, the federal government in Brasilia has remained open
to discussion and collaboration regarding Mr. Bustani's future.
Nonetheless, Bustani has emphasized that the OPCW is an independent,
international body. He may have received Brasilia's support,
but he remains an international diplomat, as independent as
his executive colleagues. In Brasilia during the week of 25
March for a Latin American and Caribbean Civil Defense congress
on Chemical Weapons, he furthermore claimed to have no further
links to the Brazilian embassy in Washington D.C.
Brasilia has been playing a conciliatory
card with respect to the US. With its victory in breaking patents
on drugs used to treat AIDS-related illnesses, yet faced with
the damaging consequences of the recent tax levy on steel imports,
Brazil has no stake in seeking direct confrontation with the
Bush Administration. Fresh from its victory over Canadian accusations
of subsidizing Embraer Enterprises, Brasilia has even been reticent
to have recourse to the WTO, to the criticism of its business
groups.
The tension grows nonetheless. Bush's
recent visit to Lima on a Latin American trek merely echoed
the declaration made by the American Trade Representative, Robert
B. Zoellick in Brasilia two weeks ago. As Clinton's idea of
a free-trade zone of the Americas is put on the burner, Bush's
men are discussing with nations piecemeal, stringing together
free trade agreements when and where they can. They are doing
so by sidestepping as much as possible the already existing
MERCOSUR, the free-trade zone of South America, which includes
Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay, but is dominated by Brazil,
the world's 11th economic power. To be sure, Brasilia sees the
FTAA as anathema to its economic and political sovereignty.
Showing his true colors in Lima, President Bush suggested that
it was up to Latin American countries to help Argentina's dramatic
economic collapse--something which Brazil and its neighbors
have long been doing without the President's dictates.
As an additional feature of the American
desire for seeing the move toward open markets continue in Latin
America, the fight against corruption has now seemingly become
the leading buzzword. To be sure, it's also a euphemism for
the tired expression of the 'war on drugs', while also being
a safeguard against the rise of populist, indeed popular, revolt
in countries like Argentina. The Cheshire cat's cynical grin
refuses to be erased as we recall how the American Government
and Big Business supported the very actors they now point to
as causes of corruption--while keeping them nameless as a matter
of course.
That this drawing of the Bush doctrine
hardly taints the surface of the string of WASHINGTON POST/Associated
Press reports may not be surprising. One cannot fail to notice,
however, what helps to give context to American claims. First
there's Marcela Sanchez's ideological slide amidst the veneer
of objective reporting. She describes President Toledo's struggle
with Peruvian State institutions and coffers, rendered virtually
disable by former President Fugimori, now wanted on a Peruvian
extradition order from Japan, which has rejected it. (Adding
insult to injury, Japan has also allowed Mr. Fugimori to publish
his self-justifying memoirs.) This turbulence leads Sanchez
to read the US President's lips: "Bush can issue one other
warning to current and future regional leaders: Don't be tempted
by populist measures unable to deliver the long-term benefits
of <U.S.-inspired> democratic and free-market models."
In light of the US levy on steel imports, such a determined
assertion triggers an unusual reaction in the reader's conception
of truth, to say the least.
All of this comes together to focus on
the recent American concern with--alleged--Latin American corruption.
Undoubtedly made sensitive by the recent Enron and Andersen
scandals, mismanagement seems to be party to business gone wrong
when it is not mixed up in drugs and other illegal exports.
Which is why the timing of a WASHINGTON POST article on the
Dengue Fever epidemic that has stunned Rio de Janeiro truly
raises eyebrows. Dengue Fever has been creating havoc in Brazil
with its worst epidemic ever. But it has been well over a month
that CNN carried the first alarming report, while the POST failed
to mention that the epidemic has seemed to ebb. Apart from the
general feeling that Rio de Janeiro may not be among your best
vacation choices right now, one word jumps out of the article,
seemingly tying together the OPCW pieces of Tuesday and Friday:
mismanagement. State and Federal mismanagement and wrangling
in Brazil may be some of the tangible roots to the Dengue crisis.
Nonetheless, few journalists have mentioned the ever-increasing
role played by densely packed urban agglomerations on the onslaught
of potent viruses, not to mention bug resistance to pesticide
as additional causes. Human error has to be calculated here
on an exponential and chaotic scale, rather than merely on
the simple arithmetic of budget allocations.
From the sound of things, mismanagement
is what ends up spreading its substance as the real Brazilian
epidemic. But freedom of the press and critical journalistic
coverage of international business practices in the fully corporate-owned
US news media are among the givens that--if only in history,
or better yet fiction--parents tell their children about when
citing the marvels found in the land of the free. In a corporate
controlled press, articles end up referring less to the facts
described than cross-referring to the tacit stakes involved
in exposing some facts to the detriment of others. Director-general
Jose Bustani has survived the US-led assault, but where the
OPCW goes next is anyone's guess.
Canadian philosopher Norman Madarasz
has edited and translated Alain
Badiou's Manifesto for Philosophy, available at SUNY
Press. He lives in Rio de Janeiro and can be contacted at n--madarasz@hotmail.com.
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