Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 25,
2005
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
How
the Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
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Small Destructions Add Up
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Impeach
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|
January 25, 2005
The Granda Kidnapping Explodes
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
By
JAMES PETRAS
A major diplomatic and political conflict
has exploded between Colombia and Venezuela after the revelation
of a Colombian government covert operation in Venezuela, involving
the recruitment of Venezuelan military and security officers
in the kidnapping of a Colombian leftist leader. Following an
investigation by the Venezuelan Ministry of Interior and reports
and testimony from journalists and other knowledgeable political
observers it was determined that the highest echelons of the
Colombian government, including President Uribe, planned and
executed this onslaught on Venezuelan sovereignty.
Once direct Colombian involvement
was established, the Venezuelan government demanded a public
apology from the Colombian government while seeking a diplomatic
solution by blaming Colombian Presidential advisers. The Colombian
regime took the offensive, launching an aggressive defense of
its involvement in the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and,
beyond that, seeking to establish in advance, under the rationale
of "national security" the legitimacy of future acts
of aggression. As a result President Chavez has recalled the
Venezuelan Ambassador from Bogota, suspended all state-to-state
commercial and political agreements pending an official state
apology. In response the US Government gave unconditional support
to Colombian violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and urged the
Uribe regime to push the conflict further. What began as a diplomatic
conflict over a specific incident has turned into a major, defining
crises in US and Latin American political relations with potentially
explosive military, economic and political consequences for the
entire region.
In justifying the kidnapping
of Rodrigo Granda, the Colombian leftist leader, the Uribe regime
has promulgated a new foreign policy doctrine which echoes that
of the Bush Administration: the right of unilateral intervention
in any country in which the Colombian government perceives or
claims is harboring or providing refuge to political adversaries
(which the regime labels as "terrorists") which might
threaten the security of the state. The Uribe doctrine of unilateral
intervention echoes the preventive war speech, enunciated in
late 2001 by President Bush. Clearly Uribe's action and pronouncement
is profoundly influenced by the dominance that Washington exercises
over the Uribe regime's policies through its extended $3 billion
dollar military aid program and deep penetration of the entire
political-defense apparatus.
Uribe's offensive military doctrine involves several major policy
propositions:
1.) The right to violate any
country's sovereignty, including the use of force and violence,
directly or in cooperation with local mercenaries.
2.) The right to recruit and
subvert military and security officials to serve the interests
of the Colombian state.
3.) The right to allocate funds
to bounty hunters or "third parties" to engage in illegal
violent acts within a target country.
4.) The assertion of the supremacy
of Colombian laws, decrees and policies over and against the
sovereign laws of the intervened country.
The Uribe doctrine clearly
echoes Washington's global pronouncements. While the immediate
point of aggression involves Colombia's relations to Venezuela,
the Uribe doctrine lays the basis for unilateral military intervention
anywhere in the hemisphere. Uribe's doctrine is a threat to
sovereignty of any country in the hemisphere: its intervention
in Venezuela and the justification provides a precedent for future
aggression.
Colombia's adoption and implementation
of the extraterritorial policy as part of its strategy of unilateral
intervention is not coincidental, as the Colombian security forces
have been trained and advised by US and Israeli secret agencies.
More directly, through its $3 billion dollar military aid program
Washington is in a command-and-control position within all sectors
of the Colombian state and thus able to determine the security
doctrine of the Uribe regime. More important Uribe has been
a long-time, large-scale practitioner of death squad politics
prior to his ascendancy to the Presidency and prior to receiving
large scale US aid. By borrowing the Bush Doctrine from his
patron-state, Uribe has internationalized the terror practices
which he has pursued for the past 20 years within Colombia.
Prior to the recent spate of
high profile trans-border kidnapping (Trinidad in Ecuador, Granda
in Venezuela), the Uribe regime has engaged in frequent interventions,
kidnapping and assassinating popular leaders and soldiers from
bordering countries, and providing material and political support
to would-be 'golpistas', especially in Venezuela. Dozens of
Colombian refugees fleeing marauding death squads have been pursued
into Venezuela and killed or kidnapped over the past three years
by Colombian paramilitary and security forces. Six Venezuelan
soldiers were killed by Colombian security forces in an "unexplained"
incident. More recently, in 2004, over 130 Colombian paramilitary
forces and other irregulars were infiltrated into Venezuela to
engage in terrorist violence to trigger action by Venezuelan-US
coup-makers. Shortly thereafter Colombian security forces and
the US CIA intervened in Ecuador to kidnap a former peace negotiator
of the FARC, Colombia's major guerrilla group.
What is new and more ominous
is that the Uribe regime's de facto policy of extra-territoriality
has been converted into a de jure strategic doctrine of unilateral
military intervention. Colombia no longer pretends to be engaged
in a "covert" selective policy of violating other countries
sovereignty but has publicly declared the supremacy of its laws
and the right to apply them anywhere in the world where it unilaterally
declares its case for national security. Colombia's gross violations
of Venezuelan and Ecuadorian sovereignty is a policy clearly
endorsed and dictated at the highest levels of the Colombian
state exclusively the prerogative of President Uribe
and endorsed at the highest level of the US government by its
principal diplomatic spokesperson in Colombia, Ambassador Woods
("We endorse Uribe's action 100%"). The 'Granda incident'
is not simply an isolated diplomatic incident which can be resolved
through good faith bilateral negotiations. The kidnapping is
part of a larger strategy involving preparations ideological,
political and military for a large-scale, political-military
confrontation with Venezuela.
The enunciation and practice
of the Uribe Doctrine has several purposes. One is in line
with US and Colombian elite policy: To overthrow the Chavez
regime. Chavez opposes the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as
well as its plans to invade Iran. In Latin America, Chavez opposes
the US-dominated Free Trade of the Americas Pact. Secondly the
Uribe doctrine seeks to destroy Cuban-Venezuelan trade ties,
in order to undermine the Cuban revolutionary government. Thirdly
the Uribe doctrine is aimed at maintaining Venezuela as an exclusive
oil exporter to the US at a time when the Chavez government
has signed trade agreements to diversify its oil markets to China
and elsewhere. Fourthly, and most probably most important from
the strict perspective of the Uribe regime's survival, the Colombian
government is profoundly disturbed by the positive social impact
which the Chavez welfare policies have on the majority of Colombians
living in poverty, especially his newly announced agrarian reform,
and his defense of national public enterprises (especially the
state petroleum company) within the framework of free and democratic
institutions. Uribe's austerity policies, his military and paramilitary
forces displacement of three million peasants, his promotion
of greater and greater concentration of wealth and the slashing
of social services, and worse, the systematic long-term large-scale
violations of human and democratic rights stand in polar opposition
to Venezuela under President Chavez which provides a viable,
accessible and visible alternative easily understood by vast
numbers of Colombians who migrate to Venezuela. By intervening
in Venezuela, by supporting US and its local coup-makers, Uribe
hopes to undercut the political appeal of revolutionary politics,
whether it takes the form of electoral, guerrilla and /or social
movements.
The most immediate purpose
of the Uribe doctrine is to defeat the 20,000 person guerrilla
armies which control or influence half of Colombia's territory.
The purpose of the recent interventions is to pressure neighboring
governments to ally themselves with the Colombian death-squads
in a regional campaign to resolve the Colombian elites internal
problems i.e. the decimation of the opposition to US regional
domination. The bombastic "anti-terror" international
propaganda campaign of the Uribe regime is an admission of the
failure of its internal counter-insurgency campaign. Uribe's
accusations that the Venezuelan State is "protecting"
or "providing sanctuary to terrorists" is patently
false. Uribe provides no systematic evidence. The real purpose
is to blackmail the Venezuelan state or its most malleable
sectors into abdicating their role as a neutral peace mediators
and submitting to the dictates of the Colombian-US security apparatus.
The Uribe regime has been widely
recognized as one of the worst practitioners of state terrorism
in the world.
Tens of thousands of peasants,
social and human rights activists, trade unionists and journalists
have been murdered by the security forces the military
directly, or via the state financed paramilitary groups. Every
day of every year, scores of peasants and critics of the regime
are slaughtered. State terror is the defining characteristic
of the Uribe regime and its US military advisory and military
mission.
Uribe who sends 130 paramilitary
forces to terrorize Venezuela, supports a failed violent coup
and then provides asylum and material support to the exiled senior
members of the coup and who blatantly bribes Venezuelan soldiers
to betray their country to perpetuate a kidnapping, accuses Chavez
of harboring terrorists and calls for an "international
conference" on "terrorism". Uribe's purpose
in calling for a regional conference is not to discuss the state
terrorism which is endemic to and embedded in his regime (with
US backing), but to justify the Uribe doctrine of unilateral
intervention and to mobilize other regional US clients in support
of its internal war and to pressure the Chavez regime to subordinate
itself to Colombia's security doctrine.
Chavez has recognized the growing
security threat posed by the kidnapping and has terminated state-to-state
economic and military projects and recalled his ambassador from
Bogotá. He has proposed to Uribe a bi-lateral meeting
of heads of state to resolve differences with regard to the kidnapping
and related incidents. But no amount of diplomatic maneuvering
on the part of Venezuela's foreign ministry nor aggressive propaganda
campaign by the Colombian security state can obviate the fact
that the Colombian state is bent on a course of direct military
confrontation with Venezuela.
Implication of Uribe Doctrine
The political and military
implications of the Uribe Doctrine are an extreme departure from
the recognized norms of international law and closely approximate
the belligerent practices of imperial satraps. If all countries
were the apply the Uribe Doctrine we would face a world of constant
wars, conquests and prolonged liberation struggles throughout
Latin America.
Explicit in the Uribe Doctrine's
claim to militarily intervene across national borders is a state
of permanent belligerency. This policy means that every Latin
American country must limit its sovereignty according to the
Colombian definitions of "national security". This
is clearly unacceptable to any independent country, like Venezuela,
though the Gutierrez regime in Ecuador has accepted the role
of a "second level client" , of the Uribe regime which
in turn is a client of the US.
Equally serious, the Uribe
Doctrine rejects recognized frontiers, meaning that it arrogates
to itself the right to cross national boundaries at will without
consulting the countries whose borders it violates. It is a
short step from not recognizing borders and national boundaries
to annexing adjacent regions for "security" or economic
reasons. Colombia has in the recent past (1992) nearly provoked
a major war by sending its warships into Venezuelan waters.
Uribe's notion of an international ideological war without frontiers
is an exact replica of the Bush imperial project, translated
into the Andean region. Clearly Uribe aspires to play a sub-imperial
role in the Northern region of South America under US tutelage.
The Uribe Doctrine stands as
a stark rejection of all United Nation's principles and in violation
of international law-which, however, has already been weakened
by the acquiescence of most of the major Latin American countries
in the US-led invasion of Haiti, the kidnapping of its elected
leader (President Bertrand Aristide) and the presence of Latin
American colonial occupation forces on the island.
The Colombian threat to Venezuela's
sovereignty has been taken by Venezuela's rightwing opposition
as a welcome intervention. This was manifest in the Congressional
debates following the kidnapping of Granda when opposition members
of congress condemned the Venezuelan government's defense of
national sovereignty and justified Uribe's intervention in Venezuela.
Washington has provided more
military aid to Colombia than all the rest of Latin America combined,
and only second to Israel in the world. The US strategy revolves
around defeating the guerrilla movement as a first step toward
consolidating power in the Andean region and the upper Amazon
basin. Once secured this region would become a springboard toward
invading and taking over Venezuela and its oil fields. The US,
through Uribe, has tripled the size of the Colombian armed forces
over the past few years to over 267,000 troops. It has vastly
increased its aerial firepower (combat helicopters and fighter
planes) and provided the most advanced technological weaponry
to detect and track guerrilla movements. Yet the strategy, while
massacring thousands of peasant sympathizers and displacing millions
of others, has failed to gain any strategic military advantage
over the guerrillas. As long as the Colombian regime is tied
down by the guerrilla resistance, it can only play a limited
role in any military invasion of Venezuela. For Uribe to engage
in a US-sponsored invasion of Venezuela is a very risky proposition,
opening a large swathe of territory for a guerrilla offensive
The kidnapping of Granda is
only the "dress rehearsal" of a larger project of escalating
provocations to test the loyalty, discipline and effectiveness
of the Venezuelan security system. Washington is probing to
see how far it can push Venezuela in surrendering its sovereignty
and control over its borders.
Uribe and Washington's effort
to drive a wedge between the popular resistance in Colombia and
the Chavez government by using the "terrorist issue"
as a political club has, in part, backfired , arousing a potent
undercurrent of nationalist sentiment in Venezuela, while seriously
jeopardizing important sectors of the Colombian economy, including
elite classes which normally back Uribe.
Washington and Uribe's proposal
for an international conference to discuss the issue of terror
is based on their knowledge that most of the Latin American regimes
today are eager to serve US interests. During the previous period
of sustained economic and political warfare against the elected
Chavez government by the authoritarian right, Brazil's Celso
Amorin organized a group of countries calling themselves "The
Friends of Venezuela" made up of hostile neo-liberal Ibero-Americans
leaders, including ex-Presidents Aznar of Spain and Bush of
the US (who both supported the failed military coup), Fox of
Mexico and Lagos of Chile (notorious free marketers) and, of
course, Brazil which gave equal political standing to the Venezuelan
rightwing opposition as to the elected government. Chavez rightly
rejected the mediation of such "friends".
Today Lula offers his services
once again to "mediate" between an international aggressor
and a sovereign country. Except for Cuba, not a single Latin
American client regime has condemned Uribe's aggression or, worse,
spoken out clearly in opposition to his doctrine of extra-territoriality.
President Chavez is clearly aware of the pitfalls of meeting
in an "international summit" dominated by hostile neo-liberal,
pro-empire regimes that have already accepted and submitted to
the Bush-Uribe anti-terrorist doctrine.
Chavez is absolutely correct
to counterpoise the notion of a bilateral forum in which the
focus is on Colombia's intervention, where the issues of Uribe's
policy of state terrorism could become part of the public debate
on "terrorism". Of course, Washington will "advise"
Uribe to refuse. Chavez could then advise his foreign minister
to take the matter to the UN General Assembly as a matter of
urgent importance of peace, security and national sovereignty.
Chavez has already retaliated to continued US overt aggression
by signing oil export and investment agreements with China, Russia,
Latin America and Europe. Shutting off imports of Colombian
agricultural imports could stimulate a more intensified effort
to promote local agricultural production, push for a more expeditious
agrarian reform and greater public investment in local food production.
The kidnapping of Granda and
the subverting of a few Venezuelan officials can serve as a wake-up
call for the Venezuelan leadership to the real threats to national
sovereignty which emanate from the US-backed Uribe doctrine.
The threat is real, it is systemic and it is immediate. President
Uribe has the backing of an imperial power but Chavez has the
backing of the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans and the fact
that they will be willing to fight to defend their land, their
government and their right to live as a sovereign people. The
question of Venezuelan sovereignty is now not simply a question
of diplomatic maneuvers but of organizing the mass of the Venezuelans
into becoming a military deterrent to any armed aggression.
James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at
Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in
the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless
in brazil and argentina and is co-author of Globalization
Unmasked (Zed). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu
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