Today's Stories

April 24-26, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

April 23, 2009

Eamonn Fingleton
How the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times Buried the Madoff Scandal for at Least Four Years

Ray McGovern
Obama Plays Hamlet on Torture

Michael Ratner
The Torture Commission Trap

Alan Farago
The Quicksand Economy

Rob Larson
Business Gets Carded

Nadia Hijab
The Real Heroes of Durban

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Deconstructing the Taliban

Dave Lindorff
Are Members of Congress Being Blackmailed?

Helen Redmond
Selling Out Single-Payer: the "Public Option" Con

Niranjan Ramakrishnan The Financial Experts: Malgudi on the Mississippi?

Adam Federman
The Battle Over New York's Marcellus Shale

Website of the Day
An Interactive Map of Vanishing Employment Across the Country

April 22, 2009

Chris Floyd
The Fatal Thread: Torture, War and the Imperial Project

Joanne Mariner
Torture Evidence and Terror Blacklists

Vijay Prashad
Obama's Afghan Plan: Fracturing the Antiwar Movement

Gareth Porter
U.S. Lacks Capacity to Win Over Afghans

Dean Baker
The Tyranny of Bad Economics

Peter Morici
Housing Sales and Fixing the Economy

Winslow T. Wheeler
Eliminating Bad Pentagon Habits

Barucha Calamity Peller
The Battle to Take Back the New School

Harvey Wasserman
Chernobyl Could Happen Here

Aisha Brown /
Dedrick Muhammad
White Privilege in the Americas

Teo Ballvé
Obama's Feel Good Meeting with Colombia's Uribe

Website of the Day
Ahmedinejad's Durban Speech: What He Actually Said

April 21, 2009

Randy Rowland
Lindy Blake's Great Escape

Dave Lindorff
Jay Bybee's Conspiracy to Torture

Fidel Castro
The Secret Summit

George McGovern
Pull Out of Iraq This Year

Greg Moses
The Unemployment Channel

Benjamin Dangl
Argentina Remembers

Sonia Nettnin
Saving Lives in Gaza

Frank Barat
The Death of Bassem: a Shooting at the Wall in Bil'n

Binoy Kampmark
Legal Purgatory and John Demjanjuk

John V. Walsh
Code Red for Single Payer

David Macaray
SAG Should be Praised, Not Assailed

Website of the Day
Bonus Man: For Executive Assholes Everywhere

April 20, 2009

Mike Whitney
Housing Bust Comes Roaring Back, Worse Than Ever

Andrea Peacock
Histrionics and Legalisms in Missoula

Henry A. Giroux
Ten Years After Columbine: the Tragedy of Youth Deepens

Liaquat Ali Khan
Drone Attacks on Pakistan's Indigenous Tribes

Fred Gardner
Obama's DoJ Backs Prosecution of Medical Marijuana Providers

Stephen Soldz
Obama, Blair, Panetta and the Torture Memos: Praising Moral Cowards, Ignoring Real Heroes

Nadia Hijab
Obama's Multi-Polar Middle East

Dave Lindorff
The Meeting in Trinidad

P. Sainath
India's Press Nixes "R" Word

Nelson P Valdés
A Modest (Transition) Proposal to Obama

Mark Engler
American Empire Foreclosed?

Belén Fernández
The FARC Can't Dance

Website of the Day
Dear Mr. Buffett...

April 17-19, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Thin Ice From Here to the Horizon

Saul Landau
Infiltrating Alpha 66: a Conversation with Gerardo Hernandez, Leader of the Cuba Five

Franklin Lamb
Persia Rising

Ralph Nader
The Greedsters Are Back!

Fred Gardner
Obama's Chimerical Marijuana Policy: a Guide for the Perplexed

Dean Baker
A Win-Win Solution: Tax the Rich!

Rannie Amiri
The Curious Case of Benjamin Netanyahu

George Wuerthner
The War on Predators

Dave Lindorff
No Amnesty for Torturers

David Swanson
Personal Torture Laws

Jim Goodman
The Control of Food

Kathy Sanborn
Economic Fallout Hits Families Hard

Don Monkerud
Economic Recovery for Whom?

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
The People's Money

David Michael Green
Home of the Barricaded, Land of the 'Fraid

Nelson P Valdés
The OAS Charter, Cuba and the United States

Manuel Gomez
From the Bay of Pigs to Trinadad and Tobago

Dr. Susan Block
On Sex Addiction: the Deadliest Sin?

Ramzy Baroud
Non-Violence in Palestine?

Christopher Brauchli
Banning Barbie

Stephen Martin
Statelessness: the Final Frontier

Ron Jacobs
Tearing the Whole Building Down: the Dead in Greensboro

David Yearsley
Monkey Music

Lorenzo Wolff
A Song for the End of the World

Poets' Basement
Moser, McTeer and Buknatski

Website of the Weekend
New England Journal of Medicine Report on Civilian Deaths in Iraq

April 16, 2009

Mike Whitney
A Bulletin From the Captain of the Titantic

Russell Mokhiber
The Top 10 Enemies of Single-Payer

Ronald Teska
From Iraq to Appalachia

Gareth Porter
Predator Blowback

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
Thinking Like an Afghan

Benjamin Dangl
Latin America Changes

Kevin Pina
Haiti: Obama's First Foreign Policy Disaster?

Robert Bryce
Another Ethanol Producer Goes Bust

George Wuerthner
See the Forest: the Value of Dead Trees

Paul Garon, David Roediger and Kate Khatib The Surreal Life of Franklin Rosemont

Website of the Day
Socialism and the Facebook Generation

April 15, 2009

Kathleen and Bill Christison
Solving Palestine While Israel Destroys It

Ray McGovern
W, the Torture Decider

Robert Sandels
Is There a Latin American Policy?

Heather Williams /
Paul Baker
Carbon Cap and Trade: How Wall Street will Game the Regs and Trash the Planet

Jack Willoughby
The Lessons of the S & L Crisis

David Swanson
Habeas at Bagram?

Paul Craig Roberts
94 Years of Serfdom

Sara Mann
Norman Rockwell and the Perils of Nostalgia

Kenneth Couesbouc
John Maynard's Martingale: How Keynes Got Rich

Binoy Kampmark
Tax Haven Hypocrisies

Kekuni Blaisdell, Lynette Hi'llani Cruz, George Kahumoku Flores, et al.: An Urgent Letter to Obama on the Rights of Native Hawaiians

Website of the Day
Taxa: the Paintings of Isabella Kirkland

April 14, 2009

Conn Hallinan
The Afghan Rubik's Cube

Mike Whitney
Why is Goldman Sachs So Scared of Mike Morgan?

Peter Morici
Taxing Grandma to Subsidize Goldman Sachs

Greg Moses
Economic Curveballs: the Laffer Posse

Fidel Castro
Obama's Cuba Policy: Not a Word About the Blockade

Robert Weissman
No Blank Check for the IMF

Rebecca Macaux /
Philip Primeau
Somali Piracy and American Foreign Policy

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero
The Dubious Revoution: Biofuels, the Next Generation

Dave Lindorff
Snatch-and-Jail Justice: the Ugly War on Immigrants

Walter Brasch
The Resurrection of Intolerance

Benjamin Day
Why Has the Press Failed Us in Reporting on Health Care Reform?

Website of the Day
The Appraisal Bubble

April 13, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi Militia Fear Reprisals After US Exit

Uri Avnery
Our Dissonance

Jeremy Scahill
A Test Case for Habeas Corpus: Will Obama Prosecute the Somali Pirate in a US Court?

Martha Rosenberg
Suicide Syndrome: Are VA Protocols Behind Iraq Vet Suicides?

Karl Grossman
A Radioactive Extension for Aging Nuclear Plants

Nadia Hijab
Still Waiting: Obama and American Muslims

Sam Smith
America's Cultural Bear Market

James McEnteer
Peru's Shining Example

Sean McMahon
Globalizing Politicide: Israel's Strikes on Sudan

Namihei Odaira
Makota's "Campaign Against Poverty"

John V. Walsh
Bossnapping

Website of the Day
Declining IRS Audits for Big Financial Houses

April 10 / 12, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Resurrection and Revenge

Chris Floyd
Hope Abandoned: Obama Protects CIA Torture Memos

Mike Whitney
"Liquidate the Banks; Fire the Executives!" Warren's Devastating Report to Congress

Saul Landau
How the Media Bought the Surge

M. Reza Pirbhai
Obama's Afghanistan Plan and India-Pakistan Relations

Franklin Spinney
The Art of the Scam: Wall Street and the Pentagon

Rannie Amiri
Iran's Elections: Why Arab Leaders Want Ahmadinejad to Win

William Blum
The Ideology of Barack Obama

Matt Vidal
Why Card Check Would Help the Economy

Jeff Howison
Death of the Square Deal

Jeff Leys
Resisting the Af-Pak War: the Creech Air Base Arrests

Dave Lindorff
America's Imperial Wars: Why We Need to See the Horrors

Ramzy Baroud
Israel Investigated: But Will It Repent?

Missy Beattie
The Grateful Dead, Wounded and Displaced

Fred Gardner
Fakes Left, Goes Right: Obama's Crossover Dribble on Marijuana Policy

Harvey Wasserman Another $50 Billion for Rust Bucket Nukes?

Suzan Mazur
A Revolution in Biology: an Interview with Nobel Laureate Paul Nurse

Bernard Umbrecht
German Capitalists Take Fire

David Macaray
A Word Clooney, Hanks and Baldwin Should Learn: Solidarity

Janet Kauffman
How to Starve (or Feed) a River

Ron Jacobs
Daring to Struggle, Failing to Win

Norman Solomon
Getting a Death Grip on Memory

Michael Winship
Let the Railsplitter Awake!

Richard Rhames
Empire, Ennui and Extra Cheese

Wanda Fucha
Brother, Can You Spare a Million Bucks?

David Yearsley
My Journey to the Heart of Rahman

Lorenzo Wolff
Getting Beyond the Black-and-White: Jason Isbell's Challenging New Album

Ben Sonnenberg
Rossellini's Louis XIV: "Neither the Sun Nor Death Can be Gazed Upon Fixedly"

Jeffrey St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller

Poets' Basement
Corseri and Corzett

Website of the Weekend
The Palestine Chronicle Needs Your Help!

April 9, 2009

Mike Whitney
The Decade of Darkness

Patrick Cockburn
What It Would Take to Mend Fences with Islam

Stephen Soldz
Caught on Tape: Diagnostic Abuse of Veterans

P. Sainath
The Rise of the Shoe-cide Bomber

Ellen Cantarow
Israel's Master Plan for Transfer

Gareth Porter /
Jim Lobe
Obama and Israel's Threat to Strike Iran

Jeremy Scahill
How Many Democrats Will Stand Up Against Obama's Bloated Military Budget?

Jerry Kroth
Saving GM From Bankruptcy--With the Stroke of a Pen

Binoy Kampmark
Fujimori Convicted: A Measure of Justice in Latin America

Fidel Castro
My Meeting with the Black Caucus

Website of the Day
Bird Song Radio

April 8, 2009

John Prados
The Af-Pak Paradox

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
Changing the Rules of the Blame Game

Winslow T. Wheeler
The Tooth Fairy and the Defense Budget

Russell Mokhiber
PBS Lashes Back

Kathy Sanborn
Depression Fury

Rev. William E. Alberts
If the Shoe Fits: Bush and Al-Zaidi

James McEnteer Rashomon and the Binghamton Shooter: the Rush to Interpret Jiverly Wong's "Statement"

Nadia Hijab
Olmert's Nightmare

Adam Turl
Card Check on the Ropes

Kevin Zeese
Escaping the Drug War Quagmire

Website of the Day
Walk Score Your Neighborhood

April 7, 2009

David Price
Counterinsurgency's Free Ride

Uri Avnery
Who's the Boss?

Chris Floyd
Talking Peace in Prague, Dropping Bombs in Pakistan

Winslow T. Wheeler Defense Cuts: Gates and the System

Marjorie Cohn
Prosecuting the Bush Torture Team: Spain Leads the Way

Dean Baker
Hands Off Social Security

Diana Johnstone
NATO, Strasbourg and the Black Block

Dave Lindorff
Politicizing Accounting

Martha Rosenberg
Life on HBO's Factory Hog Farm

Evelyn Pringle
Motherhood and the Psycho-Pharmaceutical Complex

Website of the Day
Gaza: Closed Zone

April 6, 2009

Michael Hudson
The IMF Rules the World

Andy Worthington Bagram: Guantánamo's Dark Mirror

Ray McGovern
Profiles in Cowardice: Eric Holder and Colin Powell

Deepak Tripathi
The Pakistan Enigma

Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Financial Rescue Plan: a Glide-Path to Destitution

Norman Solomon
Meet the New Escalators: the Democrats and the Afghan War

Jonathan Cook
Israel Railways Accused of Racism in Firing of Arab Workers

Judith Bello
Justice for the Developmentally Disabled

Deena Metzger Blackwater in Liberia

Dr. M. Kamiar
"There's No 'Eye' in Iran:" Obama's Pronunciation Problem

Website of the Day
Prison Talk

April 3-5, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
From Twin Towers to Twin Camelots

Kathy Kelly /
Brian Terrall
Getting a Closer Look at the Killer Drones

Sue Sturgis
Fooling with Disaster? Startling Revelations About Three Mile Island Raise New Doubts Over Nuclear Plant Safety

Peter Morici
Girding for a Depression

Kathy Sanborn
Homeless in Tent City, USA

Andy Worthington
Britain's Guantánamo: Fact or Fiction?

Rob Larson
Subprime Supreme Court: The Roberts Court Has Become a Powerful New Tool for Business

Saul Landau
Biden and Nixon: a Tale of Two Latin American Experiences

Steve Early
An Evening with Andy Stern

John Goekler
Was Gaza Israel's Waterloo?

Rannie Amiri
Arab League Reconciliation Summit a Bust

Dave Lindorff
Hooray for Juries! A Courtroom Victory for Ward Churchill and Academic Free Speech

Lee Ballinger
Sound Garden: Tom Morello at the Grammy Museum

Ron Jacobs
Artifacts for Survival

David Macaray
AIG Plays the Sympathy Card

John Wight
G20: Capital's New World Symphony

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Race in the Obama Era

Mychal Bell
Surviving Jena Six

Missy Beattie
Hoop Hopes, War and Peace

Reza Fiyouzat
The Iran/US Rapproachment Dance

Michael Boldin
The War on Drugs is a War on You

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Batting 50-50

Charles R. Larson
Too Much Stuff

Susie Day
Bernie Breakout Shocker!!

Stephen Martin
Gordon Brown's Chicken Run at the G20

Kim Nicolini
"Last House on the Left:" Vigilantes of the Bourgeoisie

David Yearsley
Homage to Moog and Mallards

Phyllis Pollack
An Interview with Legendary Rock Producer Chris Kimsey on Working with the Stones, Ronnie Wood, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Tosh and Saint Jude

Poets' Basement
Foley, Valentine and Kozak

Website of the Day
The Corner Store

April 2, 2009

Robert Weissman
What If Obama Had Treated Detroit Like Wall Street?

Eric Toussaint /
Damien Millet
A G20 Meeting for Naught

George Bisharat
Israel's Impunity Must End

Russell Mokhiber
Something is Rotten at PBS

Franklin Lamb
Has Washington Lost Lebanon?

Gareth Porter
Settling Scores in Iraq: Maliki Draws US Troops into Crackdown on Sunni Rivals

David Macaray
Obama and the Ruling Class: "Only the Little People Pay Taxes"

Chris Genovali
B.C.'s Bloody Grizzly Hunt

Sam Smith
The Politics of Adulation

Suzan Mazur
Is Neo-Darwinism Dead?

Website of the Day
Fighting for Change in St. Louis

April 1, 2009

Chris Floyd
Surging Further Into the Afghan Abyss

Stanley Heller
Israeli War Crimes: Thank God, It Was Only Rumors

Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Jane Slaughter Obama's Perilous Plan for Detroit: Restructure the Big 3, But Not With Bankruptcy

Jonathan Cook
The Slow Demise of Ehud Olmert

Eric Walberg
EU in Tatters: Only the Protesters Have Any Vision

Richard Morse
Why Haiti Can't Forget Its Past

Don Fitz
Guess Who Came to Dinner with a Match? Green Mayoral Candidate's Van Firebombed in St. Louis

Laray Polk
Texas and Evolution

Belén Fernández
12 Años de Soledad?

Harvey Wasserman
Cracking the Media Silence on Three Mile Island

Website of the Day
Pentagon Fraud Investigations Fell, While Contracts Soared

March 31, 2009

Uri Avnery
The Deception Tango

Peter Lee
Ghosts in the Machine: the World's Hottest Cyberwar Battlefield

Nicholas Dearden
A New Global Debt Crisis

Dave Lindorff
The Obama Betrayal

Joanne Mariner
"We'll Make You See Death"

Ron Jacobs
Obama's Pakistan Gambit

Wiliam S. Lind
Another Lost War

David Michael Green
Who Says the GOP Doesn't Have a Plan?

Benjamin Dangl
Beyond Elections in the Americas

Johnny Barber
Meditation in Orange

Dedrick Muhammad
Economic Inequality: the Foundation of the Racial Divide

Website of the Day
How the Obama Dems Took Over the Peace Movement

March 30, 2009

Michael Hudson
Financing the Empire: Do US Face G20 Mutiny?

Patrick Cockburn
What Next in Afghanistan?

Henry A. Giroux
Hard Lessons

Mike Whitney
Where's Eliot Spitzer Now That We Need Him?

Ralph Nader
Where's All the Money Coming From?

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's War on the (Upper) Middle Class

Jeremy Scahill
The Logistical Nightmare in Iraq

Robert Bryce
The Cellulosic Ethanol Delusion

Jonathan Cook
Remembering Land Day in Palestine

Ray McGovern
Obama Bombs

Website of the Day
Hersh: Syria Calling

April 24-26, 2009

Losing the Lagoons

The Fight to Save Mexico's Mangroves

By KENT PETERSON

Standing in front of the Vicente Guerrero Elementary School as the children played, Obdulia Balderas recalls when she came to Zihuatanejo in the state of Guerrero more than 40 years ago. A young schoolteacher from the Guerrero town of Taxco, Balderas was haunted by the violence against dissident students and youth by Mexican security forces, who slaughtered hundreds in what has become known as the Tlatleloco Massacre.

Figuring that the quiet port of Zihuatanejo was a safer place and only a stone's throw from Acapulco, Balderas accepted a job as a third-grade teacher. She was surprised to discover that it took hours to reach the little Pacific bay on a winding, dusty dirt road.

Next to the school was a mangrove estuary where the children hauled out a hidden wooden raft and splashed and fished in the water during recess. Fresh water percolated in from a pristine arroyo that entered the bay.

That was in 1968. A few years later the administration of President Luis Echeverria expropriated communally-owned lands for a new tourist development, offering local landowners a small cut of the sales proceeds.

"It hit us like a big drinking binge," Balderas says. "We didn't realize what we were losing. They gave the (landowners) a little bit of money ... everyone felt like they were rich. Some bought a car, others got drunk. But they didn't realize what they were losing."

Today, little remains of Balderas' memories of Zihuatanejo. The mangroves have been torn out, the estuary drained, and the clean water replaced with a stream of water-born contaminants that enter the bay from a cement-lined canal. On the other side of Zihuatanejo's main beach, the dirty wastewater defiles the vestiges of a mangrove ecosystem that stretches to Las Salinas Lagoon. A man was recently charged for cutting down more than five acres of threatened mangrove trees at another local beach, Playa Larga.

Zihuatanejo was an appropriate place for the most recent meeting of the International Mangrove Network (IMN)-Mexico, a section of a network that draws together defenders of mangroves from across the globe. Characterized by lazy waters and droopy trees, mangroves constitute "the first scale of life," says Marco Antonio Rodriguez of Marea Azul, a non-governmental environmental group based in the Mexican state of Campeche on the Gulf of Mexico.

Situated on the coasts of Latin America and much of the tropical world, mangrove estuaries are places where the hum of insects, the splash of fish, the flutter of birds, and the prowl of crocodiles can sometimes still convey a timeless natural world in an age where time is money and space a commodity. Tropical mangroves function to capture carbon, incubate numerous aquatic species, prevent coastal erosion, serve as windbreaks to storms, shelter migratory birds from the north, and nourish coastal communities and cultures, say Rodriguez and other members of the IMN-Mexico.

Threats to Mangrove Ecosystems

In today's Mexico, mangrove ecosystems are under growing pressure. Statistics compiled by Greenpeace Mexico and the federal Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources report that mangrove habitat in the country's coastal zones fell from 1,041,267 hectares in 1976 to 683,881 in 2007. If present trends continue, Greenpeace Mexico warns, the country will lose an additional 40-50% of its existing mangrove cover by 2025.

The Mexican mangrove story is one that is repeated across the world. A 2001 report from the World Rainforest Movement noted that half the planet's mangroves vanished during the latter part of the 20th century.

Alejandro Olivera, ocean and coastal campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Mexico, says mangroves contain important economic value for fishing and coastal economies. A study done in the Gulf of California by Mexico's National Fisheries Service, Olivera says, reported that each hectare (2.6 acres) of mangroves generates $37,500 in economic value.

For the members of the Barra de Santa Ana Cooperative in the Mexican Pacific state of Michoacan, mangroves sustained the shrimp harvest in the past and could embrace an eco-tourism project in the future. Co-op members plan to build cabins and take tourists on boat excursions to view crocodiles and other wildlife.

"We've created the ecotourism project to satisfy the necessities of our families," says co-op Secretary Hector Madrigal. "We're only lacking the authorization of the appropriate authorities."

Madrigal and friends maintain a mangrove nursery, planting 5,000 new trees last year. A similar mangrove reforestation effort is underway in the Tres Palos Lagoon near Acapulco, with the support of the city government and local fishermen.

Tourist development, the construction of residential subdivisions in urban centers like Acapulco, new ports on the Pacific Coast, Pemex facilities in the Gulf of Mexico, and contamination of estuaries from heavy metals, pesticides, and other chemicals all pose serious threats to Mexico's mangroves.

Despite opposition from tourism developers, a tough new law protecting mangroves was approved by the Mexican Congress in 2007. Two years later, pressures to develop coastal tourism and trade, especially in tough economic times, are encouraging efforts to gut the law. According to Greenpeace's Olivera, two initiatives in the Mexican Congress could elevate development over environmental protection. "We're worried," Olivera acknowledges. Activists are campaigning to make sure the 2007 law stays intact.

The "Climate Change President" and Destruction of the Mangroves

While President Felipe Calderon and members of his administration make speeches about Mexico being a world leader in reducing greenhouse gases and blunting climate change, environmentalists warn that pro-development policies will destroy an essential ecosystem that guards against the effects of climate change as well as climate change itself.

Mangroves could become a tragic casualty of the rush to trade in the country's coasts for dollars. Calderon recently inaugurated the Pacific Coast Planned Integral Center (CIP) in Sinaloa. Located in the middle of an extensive mangrove forest, the new tourism project is envisioned to be twice the size of Cancun and attract 3 million tourists annually according to Miguel Gomez Font, director of Mexico's National Tourism Promotion Fund. Gomez claims the project will grow a city of 500,000 people and create 150,000 jobs.

In a February speech inaugurating the project in Escuinapa, Sinaloa, President Calderon pledged the mega-project will respect the environment. But Gabriel Martinez Campos, president of the Colima-based environmental organization Bios Iguana, criticizes President Calderon for unveiling the CIP without first having a required environmental impact assessment.

"With this decision, the government of Felipe Calderon creates a legal uncertainty and allows investors who want to become established in the country an open door to come in without any administrative or legal pressure," Martinez says. "We are now in a situation where ecocide is an action of the state, and there is going to be impunity in the environmental arena."

Earlier this year, Bios Iguana co-filed a complaint with the Montreal-based North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC) over another project—the massive expansion of the Pacific port of Manzanillo. Manzanillo is a key link in China-North America trade where plans are underway to construct a liquefied natural gas (LGN) re-gasification terminal operated by the Federal Electricity Commission as well as a second LNG facility run by the Ciudad Juarez-based Zeta Gas Company.

The complaint contends the development will jeopardize the Cuyutlan Lagoon, one of the richest mangrove habitats of Mexico's Pacific Coast, as well as jeopardize the safety of nearby residents. Approved by the national environmental ministry, the local municipal development plan facilitates port and terminal construction—all in violation of Mexican environmental law, the complaint alleges.

Conflicts of Interests

CEC Executive Director Adrian Vasquez recused himself from involvement in the Manzanillo complaint. Vasquez's Mexican citizenship as well as his former service as a Mexican government official drove the decision. A chemist by trade who graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso, Dr. Vasquez previously worked in neighboring Ciudad Juarez and the state of Chihuahua both as an environmental regulatory official and as a consultant to private industry. Zeta Gas is one of the most ubiquitous and influential firms in northern Mexico. Dr. Vazquez also recused himself from participating in another CEC case filed by Chihuahua activists opposed to the planting of genetically-modified corn.

Both the Manzanillo and Chihuahua cases are currently under review in the CEC.

Set up as the environmental side commission of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the CEC does not have the authority to order changes in the Manzanillo project. After reviewing the complaint, the CEC could decide to investigate and deliver statement of facts to Mexican environmental authorities, who would then have the discretion to alter the project or not.

Environment Secretary Juan Rafael Elvira Quezada has called preserving mangroves a "priority task for the current administration," but members of IMN-Mexico contend the federal agency lacks the needed resources and political muscle to be effective.

"On the one hand they have humanistic principles and principles of being Mexican nationalists," says Marco Antonio Rodriguez. "On the other hand, they have interests they cannot overcome."

Perhaps an emblematic case in point involves the former chief of environmental office for the state of Guerrero, Leonel Lozano. Lozano was fired from his post last February after running afoul of tourism developers. The showdown erupted after Lozano filed three legal complaints against the planned Bungalows Playa Azul tourist development near Acapulco.

In response, lawyers for the development pursued a formal complaint against Lozano, alleging he trespassed on private property and exceeded his authority as a government official. Subsequently, the internal affairs division of Mexico's federal government determined Lozano should be sacked from his job.

Insisting he was within legal limits, Lozano says he ran across violations during one of his routine inspections of the Guerrero countryside. Lozano maintains Bungalows Playa Azul had encroached upon the prohibited federal zone near the beach, partially filling a lagoon with construction material and erecting buildings in a "high risk" area for natural disasters where a lagoon meets the Pacific Ocean.

According to the Acapulco daily El Sur, the Federal Attorney General for Environmental Protection shut down the Bungalows Play Azul site shortly after Lozano's firing because the development was found to have exceeded its environmental permit.

Lozano's firing hit the national press, got attention in the Mexican Congress, and provoked outrage among Guerrero environmentalists, including members of the IMN-Mexico. Although a 2008 article in an Acapulco magazine promoting Bungalows Playa Azul bore the logo of the Guerrero state government, Governor Zeferino Torreblanca later publicly disassociated his administration from the project.

A full plate on their table, members and supporters of IMN-Mexico from 47 organizations, the Guerrero state government, and Zihuatanejo municipal governments concluded a meeting in the Pacific town last month. More than 100 people heard research presentations, networked with fellow environmentalists, and issued a statement, "The Zihuatanejo Declaration."

Besides redoubling their commitment to protecting mangrove zones, the signers of the declaration opposed the proposed La Parota Dam near Acapulco, expressed solidarity with Mexican environmentalists facing state repression, and called for public clarification of the Lozano firing.

Signatories of the Zihuatanejo Declaration included the Zihuatanejo Network of Environmental Organizations, Oaxaca Coastal Wetlands Network, Greenpeace Mexico, Bios Iguana, Marea Azul, and SOS Bahia, among many others. The statement addressed Latin American and international issues, including a controversial petrochemical project slated for Venezuela's Paraguana Peninsula, which has been proposed as a biosphere reserve in the United Nations.

While expressing solidarity with environmental policies of the Venezuelan government, the Zihuatanejo Declaration conveyed concern about a massive development project intended with support from China and Iran.

The Zihuatanejo event was originally planned as a Latin American gathering but was stymied by Mexican immigration authorities, according to Colima mangrove defender Esperanza Salazar. Although conference planners submitted paperwork months in advance in order to obtain visas for a delegate from El Salvador and one from Colombia, Salazar insists, immigration officials finally refused to issue the necessary travel permits. The conference co-organizer blames current Mexican policies that cast suspicion on certain foreign nationals who might attempt to remain in Mexico or try to cross the border into the United States.

"This is very grave for the people," Salazar says, "because it's part of the struggle, and if we aren't together, we can't struggle together."

For Marco Antonio Rodriguez, preserving mangrove ecosystems is an especially urgent task in a world besieged by twin economic and climate crises. Delving into past history as a guide to the future, Rodriguez reaffirmed the sentiments that first brought pro-mangrove activists from Mexico, Ecuador, and Honduras together back in 1995.

"We determined that the only solution was for the people to come together, to form bonds of sisterhood, and to make demands and engage in forms of struggle that permit (people) to conserve the natural resources which sustain their lives and economies," Rodriguez says.

Kent Paterson is a freelance journalist who covers the southwestern United States, Mexico, and Latin America, and an analyst for the Americas Program at www.americaspolicy.org.

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Humanitarian Imperialism
By Jean Bricmont