June 2008

Preparing the Battlefield
Posted: Monday, June 30, 2008

¤ Zimbabwe Watch

¤ African leaders restrained in criticizing Mugabe

¤ Tsvangirai's tactics criticised by party insiders
There is growing dissatisfaction in the ranks of Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) over an apparent lack of a strategy by the party leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, for confronting the Mugabe regime.
Senior party officials have said Mr Tsvangirai's leadership flaws and "tactical miscalculations" are in danger of giving Robert Mugabe a lifeline and prolonging the crisis. Senior MDC officials expressed disquiet over his persistent failure to offer a clear direction.

¤ Congress Rushes to Encourage Iran Attack
On October 11, 2002, the Senate passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution. It did so influenced by what anyone paying attention now knows was a campaign of fear-mongering lies organized by the neocons surrounding Vice President Cheney.

¤ I'm Off To Iran Before Israel Bombs It
BY the time you read this, I will be in Iran. I've never been there before, never met an Iranian leader - I don't even like the present Iranian leadership - so remember all that, because it might become important.
I'm determined to do my bit for the anti-war effort. We need another war like Gordon Brown needs another by-election.
But the Sunday papers were again full of Israeli war games and threats as speculation mounts of a massive bombardment of yet another Muslim country.

¤ US 'escalates covert Iran missions'
¤ Preparing the Battlefield

¤ And Then There Was One
"Axis of evil" was a term coined by United States President George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address on January 29, 2002 in order to describe governments that he accused of helping terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction. Bush named Iraq, Iran, and North Korea in his speech.
Of course, they weren't an axis, that is they weren't an alliance, at all; in fact two of them, Iraq and Iran, had fought a bloody war with the United States supporting Iraq.
Anyhow, it looks like the "axis" is down to one.

¤ Oil Giants Get Ready to Return to Iraq
Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire, and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be....the bottom line. It is about oil.

¤ The Human Right to Eat
¤ Sex Work is Different from Sex Slavery, aver Carnal Toilers
¤ Gas Up While It's a Bargain

¤ The Illusion of Saving Nations From Themselves

¤ The Good News in Iraq
On March 19, 2003, as his shock-and-awe campaign against Iraq was being launched, George W. Bush addressed the nation. "My fellow citizens," he began, "at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger." We were entering Iraq, he insisted, "with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people."

¤ This Recession, It's Just Beginning
¤ America Is the Rogue Nation
¤ IMF Finally Knocks on Uncle Sam's Door
¤ US' Violation of Human Rights in Afghanistan

Myths of 'humanitarian' imperialism
Posted: Sunday, June 29, 2008

By Stephen Gowans
June 29, 2008
gowans.wordpress.com

Timothy Garton Ash, a columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian, has called on "people outside Zimbabwe" to "help the majority inside Zimbabwe have its democratic will recognized" by doing seven things, the first of which is to press their governments for stronger sanctions on Zimbabwe. Ash's column is titled, "We don't need guns to help the people pitch Mugabe from his perch."

Ash's argument, a call for "liberal" or "humanitarian" imperialism, is based on a false premise. It is also morally repugnant.

False premise: The idea that a majority in Zimbabwe is awaiting the help of Westerners is at odds with reality. If you check, you'll discover that the governing Zanu-PF party won the popular vote in the March 29 elections, but owing to Zimbabwe's first past the post system, won fewer seats than the MDC did. It would be more accurate to say that somewhat less than 50 percent of Zimbabweans would welcome the MDC coming to power, and fewer than that, I suspect, would welcome further misery from a stepped up Western intervention.

Morally repugnant: Ash's argument amounts to this: Imperialism is fine, just so long as it isn't pursued by military means. Lay aside his eagerness to outrage the sovereignty of Zimbabwe, but not, say, Ethiopia, whose brutal Meles' regime steals elections, locks up the opposition, and has invaded and occupied Somalia, on behalf of London and Washington. People ought to ask themselves why they've heard so much about Zimbabwe, but not Ethiopia.

Non-military interventions can be just as harmful, if not more so, than military ones. The international sanctions regime imposed on Iraq led to the excess deaths of more than a million people, deaths caused by Western countries whose governments lied their only concern was freeing Iraqis from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein, and then freed numberless Iraqis from life (and, if Washington and London get their way, from the benefits of their oil wealth.) Sanctions were denounced as sanctions of mass destruction, as devastating as campaigns of carpet bombing. No one should delude themselves into thinking that non-military interventions are free from grim humanitarian consequences.

Ash's appeal for intervention, then, is based on three myths: (1) that a majority of Zimbabweans are opposed to the Mugabe government and would welcome Western intervention; (2) imperialism without guns is better than imperialism with guns; (3) Western intervention in Zimbabwe (which has already happened on a massive scale through funding of the opposition by Western governments and corporate foundations, and though financial isolation of the country) is motivated by humanitarian, not, imperialist goals (otherwise, why no indignant calls for intervention in Ethiopia – or in Egypt, where the president has hung on to power for as long as Mugabe has, but acts to promote British and US foreign policy goals?)

While it's bad enough that the heirs of British colonialism press for neo-colonial interventions, it's even worse when they wrap up their arguments in a tissue of myths.

Charge Bush With Murder
Posted: Friday, June 27, 2008

¤ Zimbabwe Watch

¤ Americans Do Not Want Change

¤ Charge Bush With Murder
George W. Bush could be indicted at the state level for murder with malice aforethought, that according to internationally recognized legal expert Francis A. Boyle of the School of Law at the University of Illinois.
According to Boyle, President Bush deceived US soldiers about the reason for sending them to Iraq. Thus, he argues, the 4100 US soldiers who have died in Iraq thus far were murdered. Professor Boyle sees a variety of cases that could be brought and he believes it would take just one indictment and the whole house of cards would fall.

¤ Deal Allows U.S. To Attack Any Country From Iraq
A Sunni legislator said on Monday that the security agreement to be signed between Baghdad and Washington would allow the latter to attack any country from Iraqi territories.
"The Iraqi-U.S. agreement contains several items that impinge upon the sovereignty of Iraq, including the right of the U.S. forces in Iraq to attack any nation and raid any Iraqi house and arrest people without prior permission from the Iraqi government," Khalaf al-Alyan, a member of parliament from the Iraqi Accordance Front (IAF), told Aswat al-Iraq – Voices of Iraq – (VOI).

¤ The Coming Catastrophe?
¤ Israel Prodding U.S. To Attack Iran
¤ Native Americans demand billions from US in land profits suit

¤ Britain's War in the Cause of Fear and Ignorance
The British lawyer Gareth Pierce, celebrated for her defense of miscarriage of justice victims, wrote recently: "Over the years of the conflict, every lawless action on the part of the British state provoked a similar reaction: internment, 'shoot to kill', the use of torture, brutally obtained false confessions and fabricated evidence. This was registered by the community most affected, but the British public, in whose name the actions were taken, remained ignorant." Referring to the conflict in Northern Ireland, she was drawing a comparison with "our new suspect community," people of Muslim faith, against whom a vicious, sectarian and mostly unreported war is well under way.

¤ Elections, Capitalism, And Democracy
¤ Private Jets Targeted as Symbols of Inequality
¤ Five Stealth Pentagon Contractors Reaping Billions of Tax Dollars
¤ $2 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan questioned
¤ US Mayors Step Into Iran Fray Calling for Diplomacy, Not War
¤ They've Got the World by the Belly
¤ How Psychologists Have Abetted the CIA
¤ Oil rises to $142 for the first time
¤ Defending the President as Tyrant

¤ Just Do It, George
In March, after U.S. President George W. Bush got an earful about problems and progress in Afghanistan, he said: "I must say, I'm a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger."
Well, we've got some jobs lined up for George when he leaves office in January. Heck, he'll only be 62 years old, and with all that mountain-biking I'm sure that even a dummy like him he can handle the easy jobs we've found for him. His reservations shouldn't matter, if he's honest about it (I know).

¤ Britain's War in the Cause of Fear and Ignorance

Violence in Zimbabwe and the MDC and its Social Imperialist Supporters
Posted: Friday, June 27, 2008

By Stephen Gowans
June 27, 2008
gowans.wordpress.com

It was MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai who said to Mugabe, "If you don't want to go peacefully, we will remove you violently." [1]

It was MDC faction leader Arthur Mutambara who said he was "going to remove Robert Mugabe, I promise you, with every tool at my disposal" and that "We're not going to rule out or in anything – the sky's the limit." [2]

It was secretary general of Tsvangirai's MDC faction, Tendai Biti, who warned of Kenya-style post electoral violence if Mugabe won. [3]

It was opposition principal Pius Ncube, then Archbishop of Bulawayo, who said he was "ready to lead the people, guns blazing," to oust the Mugabe government. [4]

It was the Zimbabwe Resistance Movement that promised to take up arms against the Zanu-PF government if "the poodles who run the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission," failed to declare Tsvangirai the victor of the presidential run-off election. [5]

In light of this, is it any surprise that Zanu-PF supporters are "outraged that the Security Council that never saw the need to convene and discuss Kenya when more than 2,000 people were hacked to death over two months, at times in front of Western cameras, saw it fit to meet and discuss Zimbabwe on the back of" claims by the opposition that it was being repressed by a campaign of violence? [6]

The Social Imperialist Project

With Western media coverage on Zimbabwe monopolized by the views of the neo-liberal MDC, the US and British governments, and "independent" election monitors and human rights groups funded by the US Congress and State Department, the British government's Westminster Foundation for Democracy, George Soros' Open Society Institute, and the CIA- and Council on Foreign Relations-linked Freedom House, one might think it would be possible to find a measure of relief from the blanket uniformity of ruling class dominated opinion on a socialist web site. Just a tiny break.

Instead, the Socialist Project [7] served up an article on Zimbabwe, "Death Spiral in Zimbabwe: Mediation, Violence and the GNU", by Grace Kwinjeh, a founding member of Zimbabwe's neo-liberal MDC party and member of its executive committee. [8] The article, not surprisingly, re-iterates a view that is friendly to the party the author is a principal member of.

Kwinjeh has a habit of disguising her background, one that's hardly irrelevant to the subject she's writing on, by presenting herself as simply an independent journalist living in South Africa – kind of like John McCain submitting analyses on Obama's politics while calling himself an independent journalist living in Arizona. Kwinjeh, a regular on the US propaganda arm Voice of America' Studio 7, traveled to Washington not too long ago on George Soros's tab to testify to the regime changers in Washington. She is neither independent, particularly interested in national self-determination, nor an opponent of neo-liberalism. [9]

One might expect the Socialist Project to offer a view from the other side, especially given its professed support for "the national self-determination of the many peoples of the world" and ostensibly implacable opposition to neo-liberalism.

Unlike Kwinjeh, I am sympathetic to Zimbabwe's project of national self-determination, I am implacably opposed to neo-liberalism, and while many of my articles have been published in Zimbabwe's state-owned newspaper, The Herald, (none of which I submitted or was paid for) I have no membership in any political party in Zimbabwe, disguised or otherwise, much less a relationship as a founding member.

ISO's Latest Silliness

Here's what wrong with the MDC, according to the Zimbabwe section of the International Socialist Organization: "The increasing domination of the party leadership by capitalist and Western elites and the marginalization of workers and radicals...will lead to its likely pursuing a neoliberal capitalist agenda if it assumes power to the detriment of the working people." [10]

Funny that it has taken this long for the ISO to figure this out. Here's then MDC spokesman Eddie Cross, formerly vice-chairman of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, in advance of 2000 elections – eight years ago!

"We are going to fast track privatization. All 50 government parastatals will be privatized within a two-year time-frame, but we are going to go beyond that. We are going to privatize many of the functions of government. We are going to privatize the central statistical office. We are going to privatize virtually the entire school delivery system. And you know, we have looked at the numbers and we think we can get government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years." [11]

Moreover, the principal role in the formation of the party played by the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose patrons are former British foreign secretaries Douglas Hurd, Geoffrey Howe, Malcolm Rifkind and whose chair is Lord Renwick of Clifton, should have provided more than an inkling of what was ahead.

So now that the ISO has belatedly figured out that the MDC is dominated by "capitalist and Western elites" and will likely pursue "a neoliberal capitalist agenda," what does it recommend radicals and working people in Zimbabwe do?

Unconditionally support Tsvangirai. Yes, that's right. "The ISO...has now modified its position to call for unconditional but fraternally critical support to Tsvangirai." [12]

A Canadian connection: Roger Annis and John Riddel are part of a Canadian organization called Socialist Voice, whose web site links to The International Journal of Socialist Renewal, the journal in which ISO-Zimbabwe's latest silliness appeared. A few years ago Annis and Riddel made essentially the same analysis, but in connection with Canada's New Democratic Party. After taking the NDP to task for acting "as a faithful defender of the capitalist order," whose parliamentary program hews "close to the Liberal model" and whose leader "opposes or at best abstains from ... mass struggles" – closing with "they are committed defenders of capitalist rule" – the two recommended that "socialists...give critical support to the NDP." [13]

Do these guys go to the same confidence trickster school?

Morgan Tsvangirai and the New Humanitarianism

During the run-up to the predatory NATO war on Yugoslavia, groups of people who came to be known pejoratively as "cruise missile leftists" and the "new humanitarians" sought to provide a new legal basis for Western imperialism by arguing that ideas of state sovereignty were no longer valid, and that the West should be free to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries on humanitarian grounds. The elevation of the Rwandan civil war to the status of a genocide helped, for calls for interventions in numerous places could be justified by the need to "to prevent another Rwanda."

In an article published in the British newspaper The Guardian on June 25, Morgan Tsvangirai trotted out the same argument. "Our proposal," he wrote, "is one that aims to remove the often debilitating barriers of state-sovereignty" to open the door for "the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force."

So the military pursuit of imperialist goals has now become the moral rectitude of the West's military force.

Tsvangirai Speaks the Truth

In the same article, Tsvangirai opines: "The battle in Zimbabwe today is a battle between democracy and dictatorship, justice and injustice, right and wrong."

He's right. The battle in Zimbabwe today is between the democracy of popular land ownership and self-rule and the dictatorship of rule by outsiders working through proxies; between the justice of Zimbabweans reclaiming the land that was stolen from them and the injustice of sanctions; between the right of struggle for national independence and the wrong of neocolonial oppression.

NOTES:

1. BBC, September 30, 2000.
2. Times Online, March 5, 2006.
3. Herald (Zimbabwe), March 27, 2008.
4. Sunday Times (UK), July 1, 2007.
5. The Zimbabwe Times, May 31, 2008.
6. Herald (Zimbabwe) June 25, 2008.
7. http://socialistproject.ca/
8. http://socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet116.html
9. You can learn more about Kwinjeh here http://gowans.wordpress.com and here http://gowans.wordpress.com
10. http://links.org.au/node/489
11. John Wright, "Victims of the West," Morning Star (UK), December 18, 2007.
12. http://links.org.au/node/489
13. http://gowans.blogspot.com

Voting begins in Zimbabwe
Posted: Friday, June 27, 2008

by Floyd Nkomo
June 27, 2008

VOTING has started in Zimbabwe in a presidential run-off election despite the withdrawal of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change party's leader Morgan Tsvangirai and calls to postpone the election which the ruling party defied.

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who officially withdrew from the run-off on Tuesday citing mounting violence and intimidation and called on MDC supporters not to vote.

Reports from Harare, the capital say voting began shortly after 0500 GMT and turnout was low at many polling stations. Polling is scheduled to end at 1700 GMT.

The Associated Press reported that in the capital's high-density Mbare suburb, lines built up at polling stations as voters arrived in groups.

The news agency quoted a voter, Livingstone Gwaze, who said he had voted for President Mugabe as saying: "Things will get better. There is darkness before light," he said.

Approximately 5.9 million Zimbabweans are entitled to cast their ballots, overseen by African but not Western monitors.
Full Article : talkzimbabwe.com

Tsvangirai pull-out was ill-informed and untimely - Moyo
Posted: Thursday, June 26, 2008

By Dyke Sithole
Thu, 26 Jun 2008

INDEPENDENT House of Assembly Member of Parliament elect for Tsholotsho North constituency and former Minister of Information, Professor Jonathan Moyo said the decision by Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai to pull out of tomorrow's presidential run-off election is ill informed and untimely.

Addressing the Bulawayo Press Club, Moyo said the reasons Tsvangirai cited for the withdrawal was not justified.

"Tsvangirai said the reason for his withdrawal was that the violence in Zimbabwe today is the worst since 1980 which is not true.

"We all know that about 20 000 people died during the Gukurahundi era in 1985, but elections were still held in July 1985. Morgan is saying 86 people have been killed in the violence during the build-up to the presidential run-off," said Moyo.

Moyo said there is no legal basis for Tsvangirai to withdraw from the race and the election will go on as announced by the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC).

He said Tsvangirai had not consolidated his near-win of March 29, but instead wasted time globe-trotting appealing to world leaders instead of campaigning for the second round.

On the other hand, Zanu PF regrouped and agreed to bury its differences while they concentrated on campaigning for President Mugabe in the run-off elections.

Moyo said after winning the run-off tomorrow Mugabe would form a Government of National Unity which will include opposition members and was not likely to include Tsvangirai in his cabinet.
Full Article : talkzimbabwe.com

Zimbabwe at War
Posted: Wednesday, June 25, 2008

By Stephen Gowans
June 25, 2008
gowans.wordpress.com

This is a war between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries; between nationalists and quislings; between Zimbabwean patriots and the US and Britain.

Should an election be carried out when a country is under sanctions and it has been made clear to the electorate that the sanctions will be lifted only if the opposition party is elected? Should a political party which is the creation of, and is funded by, hostile foreign forces, and whose program is to unlatch the door from within to provide free entry to foreign powers to establish a neo-colonial rule, be allowed to freely operate? Should the leaders of an opposition movement that takes money from hostile foreign powers and who have made plain their intention to unseat the government by any means available, be charged with treason? These are the questions that now face (have long faced) the embattled government of Zimbabwe, and which it has answered in its own way, and which other governments, at other times, have answered in theirs.

The American revolutionaries, Thomas Jefferson among them, answered similar questions through harsh repression of the monarchists who threatened to reverse the gains of the American Revolution. There were 600,000 to 700,000 Tories, loyal to the king and hostile to the revolutionaries, who stood as a threat to the revolution. To neutralize the threat, the new government denied the Tories any platform from which to organize a counter-revolution. They were forbidden to own a press, to teach, to mount a pulpit. The professions were closed to them. They were denied the right to vote and hold political office. The property of wealthy Tories was confiscated. Many loyalists were beaten, others jailed without trial. Some were summarily executed. And 100,000 were driven into exile. Hundreds of thousands of people were denied advocacy rights, rights to property, and suffrage rights, in order to enlarge the liberties of a larger number of people who had been oppressed. [1]

Zimbabwe, too, is a revolutionary society. Through armed struggle, Zimbabweans, like Americans before them, had thrown off the yoke of British colonialism. Rhodesian apartheid was smashed. Patterns of land ownership were democratized. Over 300,000 previously landless families were given land once owned by a mere 4,000 farmers, mainly of British stock, mostly descendents of settlers who had taken the land by force. In other African countries, land reform has been promised, but little has been achieved. In Namibia, the government began expropriating a handful of white owned farms in 2004 under pressure from landless peasants, but progress has been glacially slow. In South Africa, blacks own just four percent of the farmland. The ANC government promised that almost one-third of arable land would be redistributed by 2000, but the target has been pushed back to 2015, and no one believes it will be reached. The problem is, African countries, impoverished by colonialism, and held down by neo-colonialism, haven't the money to buy the land needed for redistribution. And the European countries that once colonized Africa, are unwilling to help out, except on terms that will see democratization of land ownership pushed off into a misty future, and only on terms that will guarantee the continued domination of Africa by the West. Britain promised to fund Zimbabwe's land redistribution program, if liberation fighters laid down their arms and accepted a political settlement. Britain, under Tony Blair, reneged, finding excuses to wriggle out of commitments made by the Thatcher government. And so Zimbabwe's government acted to reverse the legacy of colonialism, expropriating land without compensation (but for improvements made by the former owner.) Compensation, Zimbabwe's government declared with unassailable justification, would have to be paid by Britain.

In recent years, the government has taken steps to democratize the country further. Legislation has been formulated to mandate that majority ownership of the country's mines and enterprises be placed in the hands of the indigenous black majority. The goal is to have Zimbabweans achieve real independence, not simply the independence of having their own flag, but of owning their land and resources. As a Canadian prime minister once said of his own country, once you lose control of the economic levers, you lose sovereignty. Zimbabwe isn't trying to hang onto control of its economic levers, but to gain control of them for the first time. Jabulani Sibanda, the leader of the association of former guerrillas who fought for the country's liberation, explains:

"Our country was taken away in 1890. We fought a protracted struggle to recover it and the process is still on. We gained political independence in 1980, got our land after 2000, but we have not yet reclaimed our minerals and natural resources. The fight for freedom is still on until everything is recovered for the people." [2]

The revolutionary government's program has met with fierce opposition - from the tiny elite of land owners who had monopolized the country's best land; from former colonial oppressor Britain, whose capitalists largely controlled the economy; from the United States, whose demand that it be granted an open door everywhere has been defied by Zimbabwe's tariff restrictions, investment performance requirements, government ownership of business enterprises and economic indigenization policies; and from countries that don't want Zimbabwe's land democratization serving as an inspiration to oppressed indigenous peoples under their control. The tiny former land-owning elite wants its former privileges restored; British capital wants its investments in Zimbabwe protected; US capital wants Zimbabwe's doors flung open to investment and exports; and Germany seeks to torpedo Zimbabwe's land reforms to guard against inspiring "other states in Southern Africa, including Namibia, where the heirs of German colonialists would be affected." [3]

The Mugabe government's rejecting the IMF's program of neo-liberal restructuring in the late 1990s, after complying initially and discovering the economy was being ruined; its dispatch of troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo to help the young government of Laurent Kabila defend itself against a US and British-backed invasion by Uganda and Rwanda; and its refusal to safeguard property rights in its pursuit of land democratization and economic independence, have made it anathema to the former Rhodesian agrarian elite, and in the West, to the corporate lawyers, investment bankers and hereditary capitalist families who dominate the foreign policies of the US, Britain and their allies. Mugabe's status as persona non grata in the West (and anti-imperialist hero in Africa) can be understood in an anecdote. When Mugabe became prime minister in 1980, former leader of the Rhodesian state, Ian Smith, offered to help the tyro leader. "Mugabe was delighted to accept his help and the two men worked happily together for some time, until one day Mugabe announced plans for sweeping nationalization." From that point forward, Smith never talked to Mugabe. [4]

Overthrowing the Revolution

The British, the US and the former Rhodesians have used two instruments to try to overthrow Zimbabwe's revolution: The opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, and civil society. The MDC was founded in September 1999 in response to Harare announcing it would expropriate Rhodesian farms for redistribution to landless black families. The party was initially bankrolled by the British government's Westminster Foundation for Democracy and other European governments, including Germany, through the Social Democratic Party's Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Ebert having been the party leader who conspired with German police officials to have Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht murdered, to smother an emerging socialist revolution in Germany in 1918.) Party leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been elevated from his position as secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions to champion the West's counter-revolutionary agenda within Zimbabwe, acknowledged in February 2002 that the MDC was financed by European governments and corporations, which funneled money through British political consultants, BSMG. [5] Today, the government of Zimbabwe charges NGOs with acting as conduits through which Western governments pass money to the opposition party.

The MDC's orientation is decidedly toward people and forces of European origin. British journalist Peta Thornycroft, hardly a Mugabe supporter, lamented in an interview on Western government-sponsored short wave radio SW Africa that:

'When the MDC started in 2000, what a pity that they were addressing people in Sandton, mostly white people in Sandton north of Johannesburg instead of being in Dar es Salaam or Ghana or Abuja. They failed to make contact with Africa for so long. They were in London, we've just seen it again, Morgan Tsvangirai's just been in America. Why isn't he in Cairo? Maybe he needs financial support and he can't get it outside of America or the UK and the same would go for (leader of an alternative MDC faction, Arthur) Mutambara. They have not done enough in Africa. [6]

A look at the MDC's program quickly reveals why the party's leaders spend most of their time traipsing to Western capitals calling for sanctions and gathering advice on how to overthrow the Mugabe government. First, the MDC is opposed to Zimbabwe's land democratization program. Defeating the government's plans to expropriate the land of the former Rhodesian elite was one of the main impetuses for the party's formation. Right through to the 2002 election campaign the party insisted on returning farms to the expropriated Rhodesian settlers. [7]

The MDC and Land Reform

These days Tsvangirai equivocates on land reform, recognizing that speaking too openly about reversing the land democratization program, or taxing black Zimbabweans to compensate expropriated Rhodesian settlers for land the Rhodesians and other British settlers took by force, is detrimental to his party's success. But there's no mistaking that the land redistribution program's life would be cut short by a MDC victory. "The government of Zimbabwe," wrote Tsvangirai, in a March 23, 2008 Wall Street Journal editorial, "must be committed to protecting persons and property rights." This means "compensation for those who lost their possessions in an unjust way," i.e., compensation for the expropriated Rhodesians. Zimbabwe's program of expropriating land without compensation, he concluded, is just not on: it "scares away investors, domestic and international." [8] This is the same reasoning the main backer of Tsvangirai's party, the British government, used to justify backing out of its commitment to fund land redistribution. The British government was reneging on its earlier promise, said then secretary of state for international development Claire Short in a letter to Zimbabwe's minister of agriculture and lands, Kumbirai Kangai, because of the damage Zimbabwe's fast-track land reform proposals would do to investor confidence. Lurking none too deftly behind Tsvangirai's and London's solicitude over impaired investor confidence are the interests of foreign investors themselves. The Mugabe government's program is to wrest control of the country's land, resources and economy from the hands of foreign investors and Rhodesian settlers; the program of the MDC and its backers is to put it back. That's no surprise, considering the MDC was founded by Europe, backed by the Rhodesians, and bankrolled by capitalist governments and enterprises that have an interest in protecting their existing investments in the country and opening up opportunities for new ones.

Civil Society

There is a countless number of Western NGOs that either operate in Zimbabwe or operate outside the country with a focus on Zimbabwe. While the Western media invariably refer to them as independent, they are anything but. Almost all are funded by Western governments, wealthy individuals, and corporations. Some NGOs say that while they take money from Western sources, they're not influenced by them. This is probably true, to a point. Funders don't dangle funding as a bribe, so much as select organizations that can be counted on to behave in useful ways of their own volition. Of course, it may be true that some organizations recognize that handsome grants are available for organizations with certain orientations, and adapt accordingly. But for the most part, civil society groups that advance the overseas agendas of Western governments and corporations, whether they know it or not, and not necessarily in a direct fashion, find that funding finds them.

Western governments fund dozens of NGOs to discredit the government in Harare, alienate it of popular support, and mobilize mass resistance under the guise of promoting democracy and human rights. Their real purpose is to bring down the government and its nationalist policies. The idea that Britain, which, as colonial oppressor, denied blacks suffrage and dispossessed them of their land, is promoting rights and democracy in Zimbabwe is laughable. The same can be said of Canada. The Canadian government doles out grants to NGOs through an organization called Rights and Democracy. Rights and Democracy is currently funding the anti-Zanu-PF Media Institute of Southern Africa, along with the US government and a CIA-linked right wing US think tank. While sanctimoniously parading about on the world stage as a champion of rights and democracy, Canada denied its own aboriginal people suffrage up to 1960. For a century, it enforced an assimilation policy that tore 150,000 aboriginal children from their homes and placed them in residential schools where their language and culture were banned. Canadian citizens like to think their own country is a model of moral rectitude, but are blind to the country's deplorable record in the treatment of its own aboriginal people; it's denial of the liberty and property rights of Canadian citizens of Japanese heritage during WWII; and in recent years, its complicity in overthrowing the Haitian government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and participation in the occupation of Afghanistan. As for the United States, its violations of the rights of people throughout the world have become so frequent and far-reaching that only the deaf, dumb or insane would believe the US government has the slightest interest in promoting democracy and human rights anywhere.

Consider, then, the record of the West's self-proclaimed promoters of democracy and human rights against this: the reason there's universal suffrage in Zimbabwe and equality rights for blacks, is because the same forces (that are being routinely decried by Western governments and their NGO extensions) fought for, bled for, and died for the principle of universal suffrage. "We taught them the principle of one man, one vote which did not exist" under the British, Zimbabwe's president points out. "Democracy," he adds, "also means self-rule, not rule by outsiders." [9]

Regime Change Agenda

The charge that the West is supporting civil society groups in Zimbabwe to bring down the government isn't paranoid speculation or the demagogic raving of a government trying to cling to power by mobilizing anti-imperialist sentiment. It's a matter of public record. The US government has admitted that "it wants to see President Robert Mugabe removed from power and that it is working with the Zimbabwean opposition...trade unions, pro-democracy groups and human rights organizations...to bring about a change of administration." [10] Additionally, in an April 5, 2007 report, the US Department of State revealed that it had:

-- "Sponsored public events that presented economic and social analyses discrediting the government's excuse for its failed policies" (i.e, absolving US and EU sanctions for undermining the country's economy);

-- "Sponsored...and supported...several township newspapers" and worked to expand the listener base of Voice of America's Studio 7 radio station. (The State Department had been distributing short-wave radios to Zimbabweans to facilitate the project of Zimbabwean public opinion being shaped from abroad by Washington's propagandists).

Last year, the US State Department set aside US$30 million for these activities. [11] Earlier this year, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the UK had increased its funding for civil society organizations operating in Zimbabwe from US$5 million to US$6.5 million. [12] Dozens of other governments, corporations and capitalist foundations shower civil society groups with money, training and support to set up and run "independent" media to attack the government, "independent" election monitoring groups to discredit the outcome of elections Zanu-PF wins, and underground groups which seek to make the country ungovernable through civil disobedience campaigns. One such group is Zvakwana, "an underground movement that aims to resist - and eventually undermine" the Zanu-PF government. "With a second, closely related group called Sokwanele, Zvakwana's members specialize in anonymous acts of civil disobedience." [13] Both groups, along with Zubr in Belarus and Ukraine's Pora, whose names, in English, mean 'enough', "take their inspiration from Otpor, the movement that played a major role in ousting Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia." [14] One Sokwanele member is "a white conservative businessman expressing a passion for freedom, tradition, polite manners and the British royals," [15] hardly a black-clad anarchist motivated by a philosophical opposition to "authoritarian rule," but revealing of what lies beneath the thin veneer of radicalism that characterizes so many civil society opposition groups in Zimbabwe. In the aforementioned April 5, 2007 US State Department report, Washington revealed that it had "supported workshops to develop youth leadership skills necessary to confront social injustice through non-violent strategies," the kinds of skills members of Zvakwana and Sokwanele are equipped with to destabilize Zimbabwe.

In addition to funding received from the US and Britain, Zimbabwe's civil society groups also receive money from the German, Australian and Canadian governments, the Ford Foundation, Freedom House, the Albert Einstein Institution, the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, Liberal International, the Mott Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers, South African Breweries, and billionaire financier George Soros' Open Society Institute. All of these funding sources, including the governments, are dominated by Western capitalist ruling classes. It would be truly naïve to believe, for example, that the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict and Freedom House, both headed by Peter Ackerman, member of the US ruling class Council on Foreign Relations, a New York investment banker and former right hand man to Michael Milken of junk bond fame, is lavishing money and training on civil society groups in Zimbabwe out of humanitarian concern. According to Noam Chomksy and Edward Herman, Freedom House has ties to the CIA, "and has long served as a virtual propaganda arm of the (US) government and international right wing." [16]

Political lucre doesn't come from Western sources alone. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation awards a prize yearly for "achievement in African leadership" to a sub-Saharan African leader who has left office in the previous three years. The prize is worth $500,000 per year for the first 10 years and $200,000 per year thereafter - in other words, cash for life. Ibrahim, a Sudanese billionaire who founded Celtel International, a cellphone service that operates in 15 African countries, established the award to "encourage African leaders to govern well," something, apparently, Ibrahim believes African leaders don't do now and need to be encouraged to do. What Ibrahim means by govern well is clear in who was selected as the first (and so far only) winner: Mozambique's former president Joaquim Chissano. He received the prize for overseeing Mozambique's "transition from Marxism to a free market economy." [17] While there may seem to be nothing particularly amiss in this, imagine billionaire speculator George Soros establishing a foundation to bribe US and British politicians with cash for life to "govern well." It wouldn't elude many of us that Soros' definition of "govern well" would almost certainly align to a tee with his own interests, and that any politician eager to live a comfortable life after politics would be keen to keep Soros' interests in mind. Under these conditions there would be no question of democracy prevailing; we would be living in a plutocracy, in which those with great wealth could dangle the carrot of a cash award for life to get their way. As it happens, this kind of thing is happening now in Western democracies (that is, plutocracies.) Handsomely paid positions as corporate lobbyists, corporate executives and members of corporate boards await Western politicians who play their cards right. There are Mo Ibrahims all over, who go by the names Ford, GM, Exxon, General Electric, Lockheed-Martin, Microsoft, IBM and so on.

Threat to US Foreign policy

Why does the government of the US consider Zimbabwe to pose "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States"? The answer says as much about the foreign policy of the United States as it does about Zimbabwe. The goal of US foreign policy is to provide profit-making opportunities to US investors and corporations. This is accomplished by pressuring, cajoling, bribing, blackmailing, threatening, subverting, destabilizing and where possible, using violence, to get foreign countries to lower or remove tariff barriers, lift restrictions on foreign investment, deny preferential treatment to domestic investors, allow repatriation of profits, and provide the US military access to the country. The right of the US military to operate on foreign soil is necessary to provide Washington with local muscle to protect US investments, ensure unimpeded access to strategic raw materials (oil, importantly), and to keep doors open to continued US economic penetration. It is also necessary to have forward operating bases from which to threaten countries whose governments aren't open to US exports and investments.

The Zanu-PF government's policies have run afoul of US foreign policy goals in a number of ways. In 1998, "Zimbabwe - along with Angola and Namibia - was mandated by the (Southern African Development Community, a regional grouping of countries) to intervene in Congo to save a fellow SADC member country from an invasion by Uganda and Rwanda," which were acting as proxies of the United States and Britain. [18] Both countries wanted to bring down the young government of Laurent Kabila, fearing Kabila was turning into another Patrice Lumumba, the nationalist Congolese leader whose assassination the CIA had arranged in the 1960s. Zimbabwe's intervention, as part of the SADC contingent, foiled the Anglo-American's plans, and earned Mugabe the enmity of ruling circles in the West.

The Zanu-PF government's record with the IMF also threatened US foreign policy goals. From 1991 to 1995, Mugabe's government implemented a program of structural adjustment prescribed by the IMF as a condition of receiving balance of payment support and the restructuring of its international loans. The program required the government to cut its spending deeply, fire tens of thousands of civil servants, and slash social programs. Zimbabwe's efforts to nurture infant industries were to be abandoned. Instead, the country's doors were to be opened to foreign investment. Harare would radically reduce taxes and forbear from any measure designed to give domestic investors a leg up on foreign competitors. The US, Germany, Japan and South Korea had become capitalist powerhouses by adopting the protectionist and import substitution policies the IMF was forbidding. The effect of the IMF program was devastating. Manufacturing employment tumbled nine percent between 1991 and 1996, while wages dropped 26 percent. Public sector employment plunged 23 percent and public sector wages plummeted 40 percent. [19] In contrast to the frequent news stories today on Zimbabwe's fragile economy, attributed disingenuously to "Mugabe's disastrous land policies", the Western press barely noticed the devastation the IMF's disastrous economic policies brought to Zimbabwe in the 1990s. By 1996, the Mugabe government was starting to back away from the IMF prescriptions. By 1998, it was in open revolt, imposing new tariffs to protect infant industries and providing incentives to black Zimbabwean investors as part of an affirmative action program to encourage African ownership of the economy. These policies were diametrically opposed, not only to the IMF's program of structural adjustment, but to the goals of US foreign policy. By 1999, the break was complete. The IMF refused to extend loans to Zimbabwe. By February, 2001, Zimbabwe was in arrears to the Bretton Woods institution. Ten months later, the US introduced the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery, a dagger through the heart of Zimbabwe's economy. "Zimbabwe," says Mugabe, "is not a friend of the IMF and is unlikely to be its friend in the future." [20]

Zanu-PF's willingness to ignore the hallowed status of private property by expropriating the land of the former Rhodesians to democratize the country's pattern of land ownership also ran afoul of US foreign policy goals. Because US foreign policy seeks to protect US ownership abroad, any program that promotes expropriation as a means of advancing democratic goals must be considered hostile. Kenyan author Mukoma Wa Nguyi invites us to think of Zimbabwe "as Africa's Cuba. Like Cuba, Zimbabwe is not a... military threat to the US and Britain. Like Cuba, in Latin America, Zimbabwe's crime is leading by example to show that land can be redistributed - an independence with content. If Zimbabwe succeeds, it becomes an example to African people that indeed freedom and independence can have the content of national liberation. Like Cuba, Zimbabwe is to be isolated, and if possible, a new government that is friendly to the agenda of the West is to be installed." [21]

The Comprador Party

If Zanu-PF is willing to offend Western corporate and Rhodesian settler interests to advance the welfare of the majority of Zimbabweans, the MDC is its perfect foil. Rather than offending Western interests, the MDC seeks to accommodate them, treating the interests of foreign investors and imperialist governments as synonymous with those of the Zimbabwean majority. A MDC government would never tolerate the pursuit in Zimbabwe of the protectionist and nationalist economic programs the US used to build its own industry. The MDC's goals, in the words of its leader, are to "encourage foreign investment" and "bring (Zimbabwe's) abundant farmland back into health." [22] "It is up to each of us," Tsvangirai told a gathering of newly elected MDC parliamentarians, "to say Zimbabwe is open for business." [23]

Encouraging foreign investment means going along with Western demands for neo-liberal restructuring. "The key to turning around Zimbabwe's economy...is the political will needed to implement the market reforms, the IMF and others, including the United States, have been recommending for the past few years," lectured the former US ambassador to Zimbabwe, Christopher Dell. This means "a free-market economy and security of property to investment and economic growth." [24]

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown has developed an economic program for Zimbabwe to be rolled out if Western regime change efforts succeed. Brown says his recovery package will include measures to:

(1) help Zimbabwe restart and stabilize its economy;
(2) restructure and reduce its debt;
(3) support fair land reform. [25]

What Brown is really saying is that:

(1) Sanctions will be lifted, and the resultant economic recovery will be attributed to the MDC's neo-liberal policies.
(2) Zimbabwe will resume the structural adjustment program Mugabe's government rejected in the late 90s.
(3) Either land reform will be reversed or black Zimbabweans will be forced to compensate white farmers whose land was expropriated.

The reality that Brown has developed an economic program for Zimbabwe speaks volumes about who will be in charge if the MDC comes to power – not Zimbabweans, not the MDC, and not Tsvangirai, but London and Washington.

Not surprisingly, MDC economic policy is perfectly simpatico with the prescriptions of its masters. Eddie Cross, formerly vice-chairman of the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, who became a MDC spokesman, explained the party's economic plans for Zimbabwe, in advance of 2000 elections.

"We are going to fast track privatization. All 50 government parastatals will be privatized within a two-year time-frame, but we are going to go beyond that. We are going to privatize many of the functions of government. We are going to privatize the central statistical office. We are going to privatize virtually the entire school delivery system. And you know, we have looked at the numbers and we think we can get government employment down from about 300,000 at the present time to about 75,000 in five years." [26]

Of course, the intended beneficiaries of such a program aren't Zimbabweans, but foreign investors.

The MDC's role as agent of Western influence in Zimbabwe doesn't stop at promoting economic policies that cater to foreign investors. The MDC has also been active in turning the screws on Zimbabwe to undermine the economy and create disaffection and misery in order to alienate Zanu-PF of its popular support. Arguing that foreign firms are propping up the government, the MDC has actively discouraged investment. For example, Tsvangirai tried to discourage a deal between Chinese investors and the South African company Implats, that would see a US$100 million platinum refinery set up in Zimbabwe, warning that a MDC government might not honor the deal. [27] The MDC leader, true to form, was following in the footsteps of his political masters in Washington. The United States has pressed China and other countries to refrain from investing in Zimbabwe "at a time when the international community (is) trying to isolate the African state." [28] Washington complains that "China's growing political and commercial influence in resource-rich African nations" [29] is sabotaging its efforts to ruin Zimbabwe's economy. More damning is the MDC's participation in the drafting of the principal piece of US legislation aimed at torpedoing the Zimbabwean economy: The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act. Passed in 2001, the act instructs "the United States executive director to each international financial institution to oppose and vote against-

(1) any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or

(2) any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution." [30]

The effect of the act is to cut off all development assistance to Zimbabwe, disable lines of credit, and prevent the World Bank and International Monetary Fund from providing development assistance and balance of payment support. [31] Any African country subjected to this punishment would very soon find itself in straitened circumstances. When the legislation was ratified, US president George W. Bush said, "I hope the provisions of this important legislation will support the people of Zimbabwe in their struggle to effect peaceful democratic change, achieve economic growth, and restore the rule of law." [32] Since effecting peaceful democratic change means, in Washington's parlance, ousting the Zanu-PF government, and since restoring the rule of law equates, in Washingtonian terms, to forbidding the expropriation of white farm land without compensation, what Bush was really saying was that he hoped the legislation would help overthrow the government and put an end to fast-track land reform. The legislation "was co-drafted by one of the opposition MDC's white parliamentarians in Zimbabwe, which was then introduced as a Bill in the US Congress on 8 March 2001 by the Republican senator, William Frist. The Bill was co-sponsored by the Republican rightwing senator, Jesse Helms, and the Democratic senators Hillary Clinton, Joseph Biden and Russell Feingold." Helms, a notorious racist, had a penchant for legislation aimed at undermining countries seeking to achieve substantive democracy. "He co-authored the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, which tightened the blockade on Cuba." [33]

The Distorting Lens of the Western Media

Western reporting on Zimbabwe occurs within a framework of implicit assumptions. The assumptions act as a lens through which facts are organized, understood and distorted. Columnist and associate editor for the British newspaper The Guardian, Seamus Milne, points out that British journalists see Zimbabwe through a lens that casts the president as a barbarous despot. "The British media," he writes, "have long since largely abandoned any attempt at impartiality in its reporting of Zimbabwe, the common assumption being that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime." [34] If you began with these assumptions, ordinary events are interpreted within the framework the assumptions define. An egregious example is offered in how a perfectly legitimate exercise was construed and presented by Western reporters as a diabolical exercise. Zanu-PF held campaign workshops to explain what the government had achieved since independence and what it was doing to address the country's economic crisis. The intention, according to Zimbabwe's Information and Publicity Minister Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, was to "educate the people on the illegal sanctions as some of them were duped to vote for the MDC in the March elections." [35] But that's not how the British newspaper, The Independent, saw it. "The Zimbabwean army and police," its reporter wrote, "have been accused of setting up torture camps and organizing 're-education meetings' involving unspeakable cruelty where voters are beaten and mutilated in the hope of achieving victory for President Robert Mugabe in the second round of the presidential election." [36] Begin with the assumption that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime and campaign workshops become re-education meetings and torture camps. Note that The Independent's reporter relied on an accusation, not on corroborated facts, and that the identity of the accuser was never revealed. The story has absolutely no evidentiary value, but considerable propaganda value. The chances of many people reading the story with a skeptical eye and picking out its weaknesses are slim. What's more likely to happen is that readers will regard the accusation as plausible because it fits with the preconceived model of Mugabe as a murderous dictator and his government as uniquely wicked. How do we know the accuser wasn't a fellow journalist repeating gossip overheard on the street, or at MDC headquarters? How do we know the accusation wasn't made by the US ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGee, or any one of scores of representatives of Western-funded NGOs, whose role is to discredit the Zimbabwe government? McGee is a veritable treasure trove of half-truths, innuendo, and misinformation. And yet the Western media, particularly those based in the US, have a habit of treating McGee as an impeccable source, seemingly blind to the reality that the US government is hostile to Zimbabwe's land democratization and economic indigenization programs, that it has an interest in spinning news to discredit Harare, and that its officials have an extensive track record in lying to justify the plunder of other people's countries. To paraphrase Caesar Zvayi, if George Bush can lie hundreds of times about Iraq, what's to stop him (or McGee or the NGOs on the US payroll) from lying about Zimbabwe? That the Western media pass on accusations made by interested parties without so much as revealing the interest can either be regarded as shocking naiveté or a sign of the propaganda role Western media play on behalf of the corporate class that owns them. If the US and British governments and Western media are against the democratization and economic indigenization programs of Zanu-PF, it's because they're dominated by a capitalist ruling class whose interests are against those of the Zimbabwean majority.

It is typical of Western reporting to attribute the actions of the Zanu-PF government to the personal characteristics of its leader: his alleged hunger for power for power's-sake; demagogy; incompetence in matters related to economic management; and brutality. The government's actions, by contrast, are never attributed to the circumstances, the conditions in which the government is forced to maneuver, or to the demands of survival in the face of the West's predatory pressures. This isn't unique to Zimbabwe; every leader the West wants to overthrow is vilified as a "strongman," "dictator," "thug," "war criminal," "murderer," or "warlord" and sometimes all of these things. All of the leader's actions are to be understood as originating in the leader's deeply flawed character. If Iran is building a uranium enrichment capability, it's not because it seeks an independent source of fuel for a budding civilian nuclear energy program, but because the country's president is to be understood as a raving anti-Semite who seeks to acquire nuclear weapons to carry out Hitler's final solution by wiping Israel off the face of the map. The same reduction of international affairs to a moral struggle between the West and what always turns out to be a nationalist, socialist or communist country headed by a leader whose actions are invariably traced by Western reporters to the leader's evil psychology applies equally to Zimbabwe. If the Mugabe government has banned political rallies, it is not because the rallies have been used by the opposition as an occasion to firebomb police stations, but because the president has an unquenchable thirst for power and will brook no opposition. If opposition activists have been arrested, it's not because they've committed crimes, but because the leader is repressive and dictatorial. If Morgan Tsvangirai is beaten by police, it's not because he tried to break through police lines, but because the leader is a brutal dictator and ordered Tsvangirai's beating because that's what brutal dictators do. If an opposition leader is arrested and charged with treason, it's not because there is evidence of treason, but because the president is gagging the opposition to cling to power because it is in the nature of dictators to do so. If the economy falls into crisis, it's not because the West has cut off the country's access to credit, but because of the leader's incompetence. If agricultural production drops, it's not due to the drought, electricity shortages and rising fuel costs that have bedeviled other countries in the region, but because the leader is too stupid to recognize his land reform policies are disastrous.

A New York Times story published three days before the March 29 elections shows how Western governments and mass media cooperate with civil society agents on the ground to shape public opinion. The aim of the March 26, 2008 article, titled "Hope and Fear for Zimbabwe Vote," was to discredit the elections that Zanu-PF seemed at the time likely to win.

Harare had barred election monitors from the US and EU, but allowed observers from Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, South Africa and the SADC to monitor the vote. The Western media pointed to the decision to bar Western observers as indirect evidence of vote rigging. After all, if Zimbabwe had nothing to hide, why wouldn't it admit observers from Europe and the US? At the same time, Western reporters suggested that Zimbabwe was only allowing observers from friendly countries because they could be counted on to bless the election results. By the same logic, one would have expected that a negative evaluation from observers representing unfriendly countries would be just as automatic and foreordained, especially considering the official policy of the US and EU is to replace the current government with one friendly to Western business interests. Indeed, it is this fear that had led Harare to ban Western monitors.

With Western observers unable to monitor the elections directly, governments in North America and Europe found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. How could they declare the vote fraudulent, if they hadn't observed it? To get around this difficulty, the US, Britain and other Western countries provided grants to Zimbabweans on the ground to monitor the vote. These Zimbabweans, part of civil society, declared themselves to be independent "non-governmental" observers, and prepared to render a foreordained verdict that the election was rigged. Cooperating in the deception, the Western media amplified their voices as "independent" experts on the ground. The US Congress's National Endowment for Democracy – an organization that does overtly what the CIA used to do covertly – provided grants to the Zimbabwe Election Support Network "to train and organize 240 long-term elections observers throughout Zimbabwe." The NED is also connected to the Media Monitoring Project through the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, which it funds, and the Media Institute of Southern Africa, which is funded by Britain's NED equivalent, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and Canada's Rights and Democracy. The Media Monitoring Project calls itself independent, but is connected to the US and British governments, and to billionaire speculator George Soros' Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa.

When the New York Times needed Zimbabweans to comment on the upcoming election, its reporters turned to representatives of these two NGOs. Noel Kututwa, the chairman of the Zimbabwe Election Support Network, told the newspaper that his group would be using "sampling techniques to assess the accuracy of the results announced nationally." Yet, Mr. Kututwa also told the newspaper that, "We will not have a free and fair election." If Kututwa had already decided the election would be unfair and coerced, why was he bothering to assess its accuracy? Andrew Moyse, a regular commentator on Studio 7, an anti-Mugabe radio station sponsored by the US government's propaganda arm, Voice of America, was quoted in the same article. "Even if Mugabe only gets one vote," Mr. Moyse opined, "the tabulated results are in the box and he has won."

Moyse, on top of acting as a US mouthpiece on Voice of America, heads up the Media Monitoring Project. While part of the NGO election observer team the US and EU were relying on to ostensibly assess the fairness of the vote, he had already decided the vote was rigged. Kutatwa and Moyse were the only experts the New York Times cited in its story on the upcoming elections. Yet both represented NGOs funded by hostile governments whose official policy is to replace Robert Mugabe and his government's land reform and economic indigenization policies. Both presented themselves as independent, though they could hardly be independent of their sources of foreign government and foundation funding. Both declared in advance of the election that the vote would be coerced and unfair and that the tabulated results were already in the box. Their foreordained conclusions - which turned out to be wildly inaccurate – happened to be the same conclusions their sponsors in the US and Britain were looking for, to obtain the consent of a confused public to intervene vigorously in Zimbabwe's affairs. This is emblematic of the symbiotic collaboration of media, Western governments, and NGOs on the ground. Western governments, corporations and wealthy individuals fund NGOs to discredit the Zanu-PF government, and the Western media present the same NGOs as independent actors, and provide them a platform to present their views. Meanwhile, the Western media marginalize the Zanu-PF government and its supporters on the ground, denying them a platform to present their side. To publics in the West, the only story heard is the story told by the MDC and its civil society allies, who reinforce, as a matter of strategy, the view that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime. The MDC, civil society, the Western media, the British and US governments, and imperialist think tanks and foundations, are all interlocked. All of these sources, then, tell the same story.

Safeguarding the Revolution

After the revolutionary war, would the Americans who led and carried out the revolution have allowed loyalists to band together to seek public office in elections with a program of restoring the monarchy? We've already seen that the answer is no. When the Nazis were ousted in Germany, was the Nazi party allowed to reconstitute itself to seek the return of the Third Reich through electoral means? No. Countries that have gone through revolutionary change are careful, if the revolution is to survive, to deny those who have been overthrown an opportunity to recover their privileged positions. That often means denying former exploiters and their partisans opportunities to band together to contest elections, or constitutionally prescribing a desired form of government and prohibiting a return to the old. The US revolutionaries did both; they repressed the loyalists and declared a republic, which, as a corollary, forbade a return to monarchy. Even if every American voter decided that George Bush should become king, the US constitution forbids it, no matter what the majority wants. The gun (that is, the violence employed by the American revolutionaries to free themselves from the oppression of the British crown) is more powerful than the pen (Americans can't vote the monarchy back in.)

In Zimbabwe, the former colonial oppressor, Britain, has been working with its allies to restore its former privileges through civil society and the MDC. Britain doesn't seek a return to an overt colonialism, complete with a British viceroy and British troops garrisoned throughout the country, but to a neo-colonialism, in which the local government acts in the place of a viceroy, safeguarding and nurturing British investments and looking after Western interests under the rubric of managing the economy soundly. Britain, then, wants the MDC, for the MDC is British rule by proxy. Many Zimbabweans, however, are vehemently opposed to selling out their revolution to a party that was founded and is financed by a country to which they were once enslaved.

Western media propaganda presents Zimbabwe as a pyramidal society, in which an elite at the apex, comprising Mugabe, his ministers and the heads of the security services, brutally rule over the vast majority of Zimbabweans at the base who long for the MDC to deliver them from a dictatorship. A fairer description is that Zimbabwe is a society in which both sides command considerable popular support, but where Zanu-PF has an edge. This may sound incredible to anyone looking at Zimbabwe through the distorting lens of the Western media, but let Munyaradzi Gwisai, leader of the International Socialist Organization in Zimbabwe, a fierce opponent of the Mugabe government, set matters straight.

"There is no doubt about it - the regime is rooted among the population with a solid social base. Despite the catastrophic economic collapse, Zanu-PF still won more popular votes in parliament than the MDC in the March 29 parliamentary elections. Mugabe might have lost on the streets, but if you count the actual votes, his party won more than the MDC in elections to the House of Assembly and Senate. Zanu-PF won an absolute majority of votes in five of the country's 10 provinces, plus a simple majority in another province. By contrast, the MDC won two provinces with an absolute majority and two with a simple majority. But because we use first past the post, not proportional representation, Zanu-PF's votes were not translated into a majority in parliament. It was only Mugabe himself, in the presidential election, who did worse in terms of the popular vote." [37]

Those in the thrall of Western propaganda will dismiss strong support for Zanu-PF in the March 29 elections as a consequence of electoral fraud, not genuine popular backing. But it would be a very inept government that rigged the election and lost control of the assembly and had to face a run-off in the presidential race. No, Mugabe's support runs deep.

"According to a poll of 1,200 Zimbabweans published in August (2004) by South African and American researchers, the level of public trust in Mr. Mugabe's leadership" more than doubled from 1999, "to 46 percent - even as the economy" was severely weakened by Western sanctions. [38] Significantly, it was over this period that the government launched its fast track land reform program. Notwithstanding Western news reports that Mugabe's supporters are limited to his "cronies", Zimbabweans participated in a million man and woman march last December, where marchers "proclaimed that Washington, Downing Street and Wall Street (had) no right to remove Mugabe." [39]

Elsewhere in Africa, Zimbabwe's president is enormously popular. As recently as August 2004, Mugabe was voted at number three in the New Africa magazine's poll of 100 Greatest Africans, behind Nelson Mandela and Kwame Nkrumah. [40] The Los Angeles Times, no fan of the Zimbabwean president, acknowledges that "Mugabe is so popular on the continent...that he is feted and cheered wherever he goes." [41] That was evident last summer when, much to the chagrin of Western reporters, who had been assuring their readers that Mugabe was being called to a meeting of SADC to be dressed down, that "Mr. Mugabe arrived at the meeting to a fusillade of cheers and applause from attendees that...overwhelmed the polite welcomes of the other heads of states." [42] A European Union-African Union summit planned for 2003 was aborted after African leaders refused to show up in solidarity with a Mugabe who had been banned by the Europeans for promoting the interests of Zimbabweans, not Europeans. The summit went ahead in 2007, but only after African leaders threatened once again to boycott the meeting if Mugabe was barred. With China doing deals with African countries, the Europeans were reluctant to sacrifice trade and investment opportunities, and laid aside their misgivings about attending a meeting at which Mugabe would be present. That is, all except British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He stayed home in protest. German leader Angela Merkel did attend, but thought it necessary to scold Mugabe to distance herself from him. Senegal's president Abdoulaye Wade sprang to Mugabe's defense, dismissing Merkel's vituperative comments as untrue and accusing the German leader of being misinformed. [43]

Opposition's Failed Attempts at Insurrection

Mugabe's popularity, and that of the movement for Zimbabwean empowerment he leads, explains Zanu-PF's strong showing in elections and why the opposition's numerous efforts at seizing power by general strike and insurrection have failed. Civil society organizations and MDC leaders have called for insurrectionary activity many times. In 2000, Morgan Tsvangirai called on Mugabe to step down peacefully or face violence. "If you don't want to go peacefully," the new opposition leader warned, "we will remove you violently." [44] Arthur Mutambara, a robotics professor and former consultant with McKinsey & Company and leader of an alternative wing of the MDC, declared in 2006 that he was "going to remove Robert Mugabe, I promise you, with every tool at my disposal." Asked to clarify what he meant, he replied, "We're not going to rule out or in anything - the sky's the limit." [45] Three days before the March 29 elections, Tendai Biti, secretary general of Tsvangirai's MDC faction, warned of Kenya-style post electoral violence if Mugabe won. [46] In the US, where United States Code, Section 2385, "prohibits anyone from advocating abetting, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States by force or violence," opposition leaders like Tsvangirai, Mutambara and Biti would be charged with treason (Biti has been.)

Leaders of civil society organizations which receive Western funding have been no less diffident about threatening to overthrow the government violently. Last summer, the then Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, said he thought it was "justified for Britain to raid Zimbabwe and remove Mugabe. We should do it ourselves but there's too much fear. I'm ready to lead the people, guns blazing, but the people are not ready." [47] Ncube complained bitterly that Zimbabweans were cowards, unwilling to take up arms against the government. This was a strange complaint to make against a people who waged a guerilla war for over a decade to achieve independence. Zimbabweans' unwillingness to follow Ncube, guns blazing, had nothing to do with cowardice, and everything to do with the absence of popular support for Ncube's position.

Recently, the International Socialist Organization, one of the founding members of the MDC along with the British government, argued in its newspaper that "the crisis was not going to be resolved through elections, but through mass action." ISO - Zimbabwe leader Munyaradzi Gwisai "said that the way forward for the Movement for Democratic Change and civil society was to create a united front and mobilize against the regime." [48] The ISO makes the curious argument that Zimbabweans should take to the streets to bring the MDC to power, recognizing the MDC to be a comprador party (one the ISO helped found). A comprador party, in the febrile reasoning of the ISO, is preferable to Zanu-PF. Gwisai's offices were visited by the police, touching off howls of outrage over Mugabe's "repressions" from the ISO's Trotskyite brethren around the world. Followers of Trotsky are forever siding with reactionaries against revolutionaries, the revolutionaries invariably failing to live up to a Trotskyite ideal. If they can't have their ideal, they'll settle for imperialism. While Gwisai wasn't arrested, Wellington Chibebe, general secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, was. He too had urged Zimbabweans to take to the streets to bring down the government.

Some opponents of Mugabe's government go further. An organization called the Zimbabwe Resistance Movement promises to take up arms against the Zanu-PF government if "the poodles who run the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission," fail to declare Tsvangirai the victor of the presidential run-off election. [49] The Western media have been silent on this form of oppositional intimidation and threats of violence.

The opposition has also tried other means to clear the way for its rise to power. In April, 2007 it called a general strike, as part of the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. The strike fizzled, accomplishing nothing more than showing the opposition's program of seizing power extra-constitutionally had no popular support. The campaign "was a joint effort of the opposition, church groups and civil society... As a body...it (did) not...have widespread grassroots support," reported the Toronto newspaper, The Globe and Mail. [50] While depicted in the Western media as a peaceful campaign of prayer meetings, the campaign was predicated on violence. MDC activists carried out a series of fire bombings of buses and police stations, events the Western press was slow to acknowledge. A May 2 2007 Human Rights Watch report finally acknowledged that there had been a series of gasoline bombings, but questioned whether the MDC was really responsible. By this point, as far as Western publics knew, peaceful protests had been brutally suppressed by a uniquely wicked government. To keep matters under control, the government banned political gatherings. The opposition defied the ban, calling their rallies "prayer meetings." It was a result of this defiance that Arthur Mutambara was arrested, and Morgan Tsvangirai roughed up by police when he tried to force his way through police lines to demand Mutambara's release. The MDC took full advantage of the event to play up to the Western media, claiming Tsvangirai had been beaten up as part of a program of political repression, rather than as a response to his tussling with the police. As the Cuban ambassador to Zimbabwe explained, "What happened in Zimbabwe of course is similar to what groups based in Florida have done in Cuba. They put many bombs in some hotels in Cuba. They were trying to...generate political instability in Cuba, so I see the same pattern in Zimbabwe." [51]

Making the Economy Scream

While quislings work from within the country to make it ungovernable, pressure is applied from without. Western governments say they've imposed only targeted sanctions aimed at key members of the government, nothing to undermine the economy and hurt ordinary Zimbabweans, but as we've already seen, the US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act has far-reaching economic implications. On top of this, other, informal, sanctions do their part to make the economy scream. As Robert Mugabe explains:

The British and their allies "influence other countries to cut their economic ties with us...the soft loans, grants and investments that were coming our way, started decreasing and in some cases practically petering out. Then the signals to the rest of the world that Zimbabwe is under sanctions, that rings bells and countries that would want to invest in Zimbabwe are being very cautious. And we are being dragged through the mud every day on CNN, BBC, Sky News, and they are saying to these potential investors 'your investments will not be safe in Zimbabwe, the British farmers have lost their land, and your investments will go the same way.'" [52]

In March 2002, Canada withdrew all direct funding to the government of Zimbabwe. [53] In 2005, the IT department at Zimbabwe's Africa University discovered that Microsoft had been instructed by the US Treasury Department to refrain from doing business with the university. [54] Western companies refuse to supply spare parts to Zimbabwe's national railway company, even though there are no official trade sanctions in place. [55] Britain and its allies are now planning to escalate the pressure. Plans have been made to press South Africa to cut off electricity to Zimbabwe if the MDC doesn't come to power. Pressure will also be applied on countries surrounding Zimbabwe to mount an economic blockade. [56] The point of sanctions is to starve the people of Zimbabwe into revolting against the government to clear the way for the rise of the MDC and control, by proxy, from London and Washington. Apply enough pressure and eventually the people will cry uncle (or so goes the theory.) You can't say Zanu-PF wasn't forewarned. Stanley Mudenge, the former foreign minister of Zimbabwe, said Robin Cook, then British foreign secretary, once pulled him aside at a meeting and said: "Stan, you must get rid of Bob (Mugabe)...If you don't get rid of Bob, what will hit you will make your people stone you in the streets." [57]

Harare's Options

Those who condemn the actions of the Zanu-PF government in defending their revolution have an obligation to say what they would do. Usually, they skirt the issue, saying there is no revolution, or that there was one once, but that it was long ago corrupted by cronyism. Their simple answer is to dump Mugabe, and start over again - a course of action that would inevitably see a return to the neo-liberal restructuring of the 1990s, a dismantling of land reforms, and a neo-colonial tyranny. Not surprisingly, people who make this argument find favor with imperialist governments and ruling class foundations and are often rewarded by them for appearing to be radical while actually serving imperialist goals.

Throughout history, reformers and revolutionaries have been accused of being self-aggrandizing demagogues manipulating their followers with populist rhetoric to cling to power to enjoy its many perks. [58] But as one writer in the British anti-imperialist journal Lalkar pointed out, "The government of Zimbabwe could very easily abandon its militant policies aimed at protecting Zimbabwe's independence and building its collective wealth - no doubt its ministers would be rewarded amply by the likes of the World Bank and the IMF." [59] If Mugabe is really using all means at his disposable to hang on to power simply to enjoy its perks, he has chosen the least certain and most difficult way of going about it. Lay this argument aside as the specious drivel of those who want to bury their heads in the sand to avoid confronting tough questions. What would you do in these circumstances?

In retaliation for democratizing patterns of land ownership, distributing land previously owned by 4,000 farmers, mainly of British stock, to 300,000 previously landless families, Britain has "mobilized her friends and allies in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand to impose illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe. They have cut off all development assistance, disabled lines of credit, prevented the Bretton Woods institutions from providing financial assistance, and ordered private companies in the United States not to do business with Zimbabwe." [60] They have done this to cripple Zimbabwe's economy to alienate the revolutionary government of its popular support. For years, they have done this. Soni Rajan, employed by the British government to investigate land reform in Zimbabwe, told author Heidi Holland:

"It was absolutely clear...that Labour's strategy was to accelerate Mugabe's unpopularity by failing to provide him with funding for land redistribution. They thought if they didn't give him the money for land reform, his people in the rural areas would start to turn against him. That was their position; they want him out and they were going to do whatever they could to hasten his demise." [61]

The main political opposition party, the MDC, is the creation of the Rhodesian Commercial Farmers' Union, the British government and the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose patrons are former British foreign secretaries Douglas Hurd, Geoffrey Howe, Malcolm Rifkind and whose chair is Lord Renwick of Clifton, who has collected a string of board memberships in southern African corporations. The party's funding comes from European governments and corporations, and its raison d'etre is to reverse every measure the Zanu-PF government has taken to invest Zimbabwean independence with real meaning. Civil society organizations are funded by governments whose official policy is one of regime change in Zimbabwe. The US, Britain and the Netherlands finance pirate radio stations and newspapers, which the Western media disingenuously call "independent", to poison public opinion against the Mugabe government and its land democratization and economic indigenization programs. It's impossible to hold free and fair elections, because the interference by Western powers is massive, a point acknowledge by Mugabe opponent Munyaradzi Gwisai. [62]

Guns Trump "Xs"

Zimbabweans who fought for the country's independence and democratization of land ownership are not prepared to give up the gains of their revolution simply because a majority of Zimbabweans marked an "X" for a party of quislings. There are two reasons for their steadfastness in defense of their revolution: First, Americans can't vote the monarchy back in, or return, through the ballot box, to the status quo ante of British colonial domination. The US revolutionaries recognized that some gains are senior to others, freedom from foreign domination being one of them. Americans would never allow a majority vote to place the country once again under British rule. Nor will Zimbabwe's patriots allow the same to happen to their country. Second, no election in Zimbabwe can be free and fair, so long as the country is under sanctions and the main opposition party and civil society organizations are agents of hostile foreign governments. The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Justice has called on the government "to consider the possibility of declaring a state of emergency," pointing out correctly that "Zimbabwe is at war with foreign elements using local puppets." [63] Western governments would do - and have done - no less under similar circumstances. Patriots writing to the state-owned newspaper, The Herald, urge the government to take a stronger line. "The electoral environment is heavily tilted in favour of the (MDC) because of the economic sanctions," wrote one Herald reader. "If it was up to me there should be no elections until the sanctions are scrapped. If we don't defend our independence and sovereignty, then we are doomed to become hewers of wood and drawers of water. I stand ready to take up arms to defend my sovereignty if need be." [64] The heads of the police and army have let it be known that they won't "salute sell-outs and agents of the West" [65] - and nor should they. And veterans of the war for national liberation have told Mugabe that they can never accept that their country, won through the barrel of the gun, should be taken merely by an 'X' made by a ballpoint pen." [66] Mugabe recounted that the war veterans had told him "if this country goes back into white hands just because we have used a pen, we will return to the bush to fight." The former guerilla leader added, "I'm even prepared to join the fight. We can't allow the British to dominate us through their puppets." [67] Zimbabwe, as patriots have said many times, will never be a colony again. Even if it means returning to arms.

NOTES:

1. Herbert Aptheker, "The Nature of Democracy, Freedom and Revolution," International Publishers, New York, 2001.
2. Herald (Zimbabwe) April 2, 2008.
3. "No Better Opportunity," German Foreign Policy.Com, March 26, 2007. www.german-foreign-policy.com/en/fulltext/56059
4. Times (London), November 25, 2007.
5. Rob Gowland, "Zimbabwe: The struggle for land, the struggle for independence," Communist Party of Australia. www.cpa.org.au/booklets/zimbabwe.pdf
6. Herald (Zimbabwe) May 29, 2008.
7. Guardian (UK), March 3, 2008.
8. Wall Street Journal, quoted in Herald (Zimbabwe) March 23, 2008.
9. Talkzimbabwe.com, June 19, 2008.
10. Guardian (UK), August 22, 2002.
11. Herald (Zimbabwe) May 29, 2008.
12. Herald (Zimbabwe), February 22, 2008.
13. New York Times, March 27, 2005.
14. Ibid.
15. Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2005.
16. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman, "Manufacturing Consent," Pantheon Books, 1988, p. 28.
17. The Independent (UK), October 22, 2007; New York Times, October 23, 3007.
18. New African, June 2008.
19. Antonia Juhasz, "The Tragic Tale of the IMF in Zimbabwe," Daily Mirror of Zimbabwe, March 7, 2004.
20. Herald (Zimbabwe) September 13, 2005.
21. Herald (Zimbabwe) August 12, 2005.
22. Morgan Tsvangirai, "Zimbabwe's Razor Edge," Guardian (UK) April 7, 2008.
23. Globe and Mail (Toronto), May 31, 2008.
24. Response to Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Monetary Policy Statement," Ambassador Christopher Dell, February 7, 2007.
25. The Independent (UK), September 20, 2007.
26. John Wright, "Victims of the West," Morning Star (UK), December 18, 2007.
27. Herald (Zimbabwe), July 6, 2005.
28. AFP, July 29, 2005.
29 Ibid.
30. US Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001.
31. Herald (Zimbabwe) June 4, 2008.
32. "President Signs Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, December 21, 2001. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/200111221-15.html
33. www.pslweb.org, October 17, 2006.
34. Guardian (UK), April 17, 2008. Milne is also clear on who's responsible for the conflict in Zimbabwe. In an April 17, 2008 column in The Guardian, he wrote, "Britain refused to act against a white racist coup, triggering a bloody 15-year liberation war, and then imposed racial parliamentary quotas and a 10-year moratorium on land reform at independence. The subsequent failure by Britain and the US to finance land buyouts as expected, along with the impact of IMF programs, laid the ground for the current impasse."
35. Herald (Zimbabwe), June 11, 2008.
36. The Independent (UK), June 9, 2008.
37. Weekly Worker, 726, June 19, 2008 www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/726/forced.html.
38. New York Times, December 24, 2004.
39. Workers World (US), December 12, 2007.
40. Proletarian (UK) April-May 2007.
41. Los Angeles Times, December 15, 2007.
42. New York Times, August 17, 2007.
43. New York Times, December 9, 2007.
44. BBC, September 30, 2000.
45. Times Online, March 5, 2006.
46. Herald (Zimbabwe), March 27, 2008.
47. Sunday Times (UK), July 1, 2007.
48. Weekly Worker, 726, June 19, 2008 www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/726/forced.html
49. The Zimbabwe Times, May 31, 2008.
50. Globe and Mail (Toronto) March 22, 2007.
51. Herald (Zimbabwe) April 15, 2007.
52. New African, May 2008.
53. Herald (Zimbabwe), October 18, 2007.
54. Herald (Zimbabwe), January 28, 2008.
55. Herald (Zimbabwe), January 11, 2008.
56. Guardian (UK), June 16, 2008.
57. New African, May 2008.
58. See, for example, Michael Parenti, "The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History Ancient Rome," The New Press, 2003.
59. Lalkar, May-June, 2008. www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/may2008/zim.php
60. Address of Robert Mugabe to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization, June 3, 2008.
61. New African, May 2008.
62. Weekly Worker, 726, June 19, 2008 www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/726/forced.html
63. TalkZimbabwe.com, May 15, 2008.
64. Letter to the Herald (Zimbabwe), May 6, 2008.
65. Guardian (UK), March 15, 2008.
66. Herald (Zimbabwe), June 20, 2008.
67. The Independent (UK), June 14, 2008.

Reproduced from:
http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/zimbabwe-at-war/

Zimbabwe: UN blocks British, US attempts to halt run-off
Posted: Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Herald Reporters
June 25, 2008
The Herald

THE United Nations yesterday blocked attempts by Britain, the United States and France to declare MDC-T leader Morgan Tsvangirai as the President of Zimbabwe on the basis of the results of the March 29 harmonised elections.

This came as South Africa's ruling ANC party rejected foreign intervention in Zimbabwe, especially from erstwhile colonisers.

Britain, the current president of the Security Council, tried to use Belgium to halt Friday's presidential run-off election and illegally install Tsvangirai as president, but South Africa's Ambassador to the UN, Mr Dumisani Khumalo, blocked these attempts.

Associated Press reported that the US and France also tried to include in the Security Council statement language asserting that Tsvangirai should be considered the legitimate president of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe's permanent representative to the UN Ambassador Boniface Chidyausiku said submissions by South Africa and Zimbabwe convinced the 15-member Security Council that it would be legally improper to halt the run-off and install Tsvangirai.

The original draft compiled by the British had claimed that the elections would not be free and fair, but the Security Council eventually issued a watered down non-binding statement condemning political violence.

"We would like to pay tribute to Ambassador Khumalo for the sterling work he did. It is a big victory for us.

"Britain, through Belgium, which is not a member of the Security Council, tried to get the UN to impose Tsvangirai as president in contravention of the country's Constitution and electoral laws.

"But South Africa made it clear that this would not be acceptable and we also made submissions indicating that it would be improper to subvert the law like that," Ambassador Chidyausiku said.

He said last week, Belgium -- apparently acting on orders from Britain -- had asked for a Security Council brief on what was going on in Zimbabwe.

The strategy was to use this as an excuse to criticise the electoral process, negate the need for a run-off and then recognise Tsvangirai as president on the basis of the March 29 poll results.

"The draft that we saw on Friday was mild. It was something that we could have lived with. But over the weekend Tsvangirai said he didn't want to participate in the run-off anymore and this gave Britain, through Belgium, ammunition to attack Zimbabwe," Ambassador Chidyausiku said.

On Monday morning, he said the draft was suddenly harder and bent on preventing a run-off as if they were aware Tsvangirai would lose the election.

"They were happy to go with the results of the March 29 poll when the law is clear that there should be a run-off.

"We, too, respect the results of the harmonised elections and that is why we agree that there should be a run-off. For anyone to prevent a run-off is to prevent the free expression of the will of the people as provided for by the law," he said.

Ambassador Chidyausiku said Britain and its allies tried to argue that a cancellation of the run-off would be necessitated by the prevalence of State-contrived violence.

However, Zimbabwe's mission to the UN presented the Security Council with statistics indicating that the opposition was mostly behind the political violence in the country.

"The figures we have show that 400 MDC-T supporters have been arrested for political violence compared to 160 Zanu-PF supporters.

"We also demonstrated that there have been numerous cases of MDC-T supporters going around dressed in Zanu-PF regalia and beating up people.

"This is an outdated strategy used by the Selous Scouts during the liberation struggle and with the predominance of Selous Scouts in the MDC-T it is obvious what is going on.

"We managed to get them to recognise these realities and they failed in their bid to install Tsvangirai."

He said the people of Zimbabwe would determine the future of Zimbabwe.

Ambassador Chidyausiku also said that it was imperative for Sadc to remain united under the Lusaka Summit resolution to respect South African President Thabo Mbeki's mediation role.

"Sadc gave President Mbeki the mandate to mediate in Zimbabwe and that should be respected. That is a mandate that came out of a summit and no pronunciations by any individual outside of a summit should nullify this reality.

"Lusaka stands," he said.

The ANC, South Africa's ruling party, rejected any outside diplomatic intervention in the Zimbabwean matter yesterday arguing that "any attempts by outside players to impose regime change will merely deepen" the problems in Zimbabwe.

Although it said it was concerned with the situation in Zimbabwe, the ANC evoked Zimbabwe's colonial history and insisted that outsiders had no role to play in ending its current problems.

"It has always been and continues to be the view of our movement that the challenges facing Zimbabwe can only be solved by the Zimbabweans themselves," the statement said. "Nothing that has happened in the recent months has persuaded us to revise that view."

In what seemed a clear rebuke to the efforts of Western nations to take an aggressive stance against the Zimbabwean Government, the ANC included a lengthy criticism of the "arbitrary, capricious power" exerted by Africa's former colonial masters and cited the subsequent struggle by African nations to grant new-found freedoms and rights.

"No colonial power in Africa, least of all Britain in its colony of 'Rhodesia' ever demonstrated any respect for these principles," the ANC said, referring to Zimbabwe before its independence.

These Wars Are About Oil, Not Democracy
Posted: Monday, June 23, 2008

¤ These Wars Are About Oil, Not Democracy
The ugly truth behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally has emerged.
Four major western oil companies, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Total are about to sign U.S.-brokered no-bid contracts to begin exploiting Iraq’s oil fields. Saddam Hussein had kicked these firms out three decades ago when he nationalized Iraq’s oil industry. The U.S.-installed Baghdad regime is welcoming them back.
Iraq is getting back the same oil companies that used to exploit it when it was a British colony.
As former fed chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted, the Iraq war was all about oil. The invasion was about SUV’s, not democracy.

¤ The Ugly Side of Disaster
Disasters bring out the best and worst in people.
On the one hand, millions of folks respond to the suffering of their fellow human beings with compassion, concern, and even significant financial assistance when needed. Be it a hurricane, an earthquake, tornadoes or the recent massive flooding in the Midwestern United States, the hearts, minds, and often wallets of large numbers of the nation's people are with those in need.
And on the other hand, there's Rush Limbaugh, who has decided to use the flooding in Iowa not to demonstrate compassion, but as an opportunity to make derogatory statements about poor black folks: specifically those caught by the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina in 2005.

¤ Call for Change Ignored, Levees Remain Patchy

¤ How Should the Middle East Invest Its Oil Profits?
¤ The Haditha Travesty, Take Two
¤ Every Move You Make
¤ Chavez threatens Europe oil ban
¤ Russia confirms intention to complete Iranian electro-nuclear project

¤ The Great Mirage
¤ How Cuba fought for Africa’s freedom
¤ US making false accusations: Syrian paper

¤ Mugabe calls Britain and US liars: state media
President Robert Mugabe has accused Britain, the United States and their allies of lying to the world to justify intervention in Zimbabwe, state media reported Tuesday.
"Britain and her allies are telling a lot of lies about Zimbabwe, saying a lot of people are dying. These are all lies because they want to build a situation to justify their intervention in Zimbabwe," the state-run Herald newspaper reported Mugabe as saying.

¤ Vietnam's hard economic lesson for China
¤ If the Opposite of Pro Is Con, Then the Opposite of Progress Is ...
¤ No Blood for... er... um...
¤ Network Anchor Stands Against ‘Unfair’ Campaign Spending
¤ Occupations Abroad Always Lead to the Erosion of Liberties at Home

¤ George Carlin Mourned as a Counterculture Hero
¤ The "F" Word and the White Press
¤ Prez Sez: "I'm Addicted; Bigger Syringe, Please!"

¤ Russia's Lavrov warns against attack on Iran

Tsvangirai seeks refuge in Dutch embassy
Posted: Monday, June 23, 2008

ZIMBABWE opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has sought overnight refuge at the Dutch embassy in Harare as unconfirmed news filtered in that he was backtracking on his earlier decision not to contest the run-off presidential election on Friday (June 27).

Tsvangirai is still believed to be at the embassy in a move viewed by senior government officials as unnecessary and intended to attract attention from international media and the West.

"The man's cry-baby tactics have now become ridiculous. Who is after Tsvangirai? Everyone is busy preparing for the run-off election and he is busy trying to convince his international backers that he is in some danger," said a Zanu PF official.
Full Article...

Also Read:

'Mwanawasa dividing SADC'
THE Southern African Development Community (Sadc) chairman and President of Zambia is unilaterally putting pressure on the Zimbabwe government to call off the run-off election scheduled for Friday saying the conditions on the ground are not yet conducive for a free and fair election.

Govt urges Tsvangirai to contest election
THE Zimbabwean government on Monday urged opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai not to withdraw from the country's presidential run-off election saying it would be regrettable if he did so.

Worried over Robert Mugabe vs. the Western World's Press?
SHOULD you be worrying about 84 year old Robert Gabriel Mugabe, duly elected President of the Republic of Zimbabwe returning Zimbabwe land to Zimbabweans in national security mode? Should the world be worrying about a US, EU, Britain backed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-T) run-off election to un-declare its government's Declaration of Independence and to abolish its Constitution and return illegally seized land to white farmers?

Zimbabwe and the perception of ruin
Posted: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

By Reason Wafawarova
June 19, 2008
The Herald

THE current economic crisis and political instability bedevilling Zimbabwe continues to be portrayed as a direct sequel of the political shortcomings of one man, President Robert Mugabe, and we are all meant to solemnly believe that the mere removal of this one man will mean that Zimbabweans will live happily forever after.

The political complexity that has been created by Western interests in the affairs of Zimbabwe will continue to be relegated to obscurity by those who have chosen to bestow upon themselves the honour of apostleship to the now hysterical doctrine of regime change.

To many this political interest has been misconstrued as something emanating from the land reclamation era that started in 2000. In fact, the land reclamation programme only exacerbated the ruinous effect of the neo-colonialism resolve to maintain imperial supremacy over former colonies, in this case over Zimbabwe.

Las Casas, a 16th century Spanish writer, left in his will a telling statement about the long-term effect of colonial ruin – an effect that he reckoned would undoubtedly provoke divine powers to anger.

Said Casas: "I believe that because of these impious, criminal and ignominious deeds perpetrated so unjustly, tyrannically and barbarously, God will vent upon Spain His wrath and His fury, for nearly all of Spain has shared in the bloody wealth usurped at the cost of so much ruin and slaughter."

Casas was obviously condemning the very uncivilised conquest of Latin America by Spain – a conquest that was a result of six small but powerful European countries terrorising the rest of the world in the name of Western civilisation.

Britain decided to bloat its ego by calling themselves Great Britain despite their tiny geographical territorial space. They called themselves "great" because they had developed themselves into champions of expansionism.

Cecil John Rhodes was the British queen's foot soldier to Southern Africa and for his legacy he decided to name Zimbabwe after his own name, calling it Rhodesia. Rhodes and his British South African Company reduced Africans to a labour resource in their mining and farming enterprises that Britain saw as a legitimate expansion of its economy. Africa, just like Latin America and Asia, fought colonialism from a political front and this is what we have called the "fall of colonial empires". Colonial empires might have fallen politically but the reality facing the developing world today is that the West has not lost much of its usurped colonial wealth and they will do all in their power to make sure that this does not happen.

For Lancaster in 1979, it was not too much for Zimbabwean nationalists to ask to have our little region back as long as what they were asking for was limited to political power.

Now that the political power has been used to venture into the economic territory of imperial Britain, for better or for worse, we do see an ominous backlash where Britain is teaming up with her Western allies against Zimbabwe all in the in the name of an altruistic international community. The West and altruism have now become a contradiction in terms.

The weapon used to destroy the threatening political power in Zimbabwe has been the criminal sanctions against the masses of Zimbabwe, never mind the spurious argument that these sanctions are "targeted" at Government officials. This line of argument has just become a nauseating joke that annoys even the most avowed right-wingers.

It is obviously not enough for Britain and her allies to merely destroy the political power that has shaken the economic interest of the West in Zimbabwe. They inevitably need to fill up the gap. What is needed is to create a replacement political power centre that falls under the control of the imperial authority.

The legitimacy of this kind of political power centre cannot be seen to be founded in economic principles, just like liberation movements were largely pushed to be founded in ideologies that were free of economic influence.

Most of the liberation movements entered independence agreements that merely brokered an assurance that the new political leadership would not only co-exist with capitalist business owners but would actually ensure an employee-employer relationship between indigenous peoples and their former colonisers.

Many countries, Zimbabwe included; were applauded for "employment creation" initiatives that were in essence an abuse of cheap labour for maximised profiteering by Western multinational companies.

To make sure that the political leadership followed this route the West employed the tactic of foreign aid – ostensibly meant for "development enhancement" programmes. To this end, it was made to look perfectly normal for developing countries to rely on aid for rural development while they continued to top the global export indexes for their minerals and other raw resources.

Secondly, African politicians were tactically rewarded for compliance to this subtle campaign for economic supremacy. Such rewards would and still do come through such awards as Nobel Peace prize, honourary degrees, knighthood awards or foundation scholarships.

Those who have not lived up to the imperial expectations of the awarding authorities have in the past been demonised frantically and we have now seen a new trend of the "revoking" of these awards.

Those who have enjoyed the dishonour of being shining lights in looking after imperial wealth do not only continue to have more awards thrust upon them but also continue to receive wide-ranging media coverage as beacons of "democracy and human rights".

We have just seen a list of African personalities appearing on a list of signatures to a document that purports to be calling for "free and fair" electoral process ahead of the Zimbabwe June 27 election. Desmond Tutu of South Africa will never miss duty on such an assignment and at the rate John Sentamu of Uganda is going, he stands a fantastic chance of landing the Noble Peace prize right in the footsteps of the clearly obnoxious little bishop from down south.

The opposition MDC is meant to be a political replacement to Zanu-PF and not to be an alternative government for the people of Zimbabwe. An MDC-led government is meant to excel in proving to the world that African political power can only work in partnership with Western economic power.

The MDC wants to form the next government whose mandate would be to impress what they keep calling "the international community" – a euphemism for Western powers.

George W. Bush has just publicly said to Gordon Brown "We will help you get a free and fair election in Zimbabwe." Why does Brown need a free and fair election in Zimbabwe, or more precisely why does he need an election of whatever form in Zimbabwe? He is not even elected himself.

Britain, Australia and the US have all vowed to take Zimbabwe to the UN Security Council "should Mugabe emerge the winner" in the coming election. Effectively it now stands as a fact that a Morgan Tsvangirai loss is, by definition a result of an unfair and unfree election.

To the West this is a one-way election whose result is now cast in stone. Sadc and all observers are meant to descend on Zimbabwe and monitor a Morgan Tsvangirai win or they risk being labelled biased and less robust in the fight for democracy.

It is by design that the West staunchly supports the MDC's purported fight for democracy and human rights. That is the credo and platform upon which client regimes are founded these days. There is no client regime that preaches economic empowerment for indigenous people. They all preach freedom of speech, jobs, food and a whole spectrum of shiny packages of limitless freedoms and liberties.

To make the crusade for freedom legitimate Zimbabwe is unreservedly portrayed as a lawless country where the Government is killing its own people. MDC political activists can be as provocative as they wish because any arrest will, by assumption, be viewed as a violation of basic human rights. All that is happening in Zimbabwe right now is just a cycle of colonial ruin and what the MDC is seeking is not a "new Zimbabwe" but a restoration of Rhodesia.

Rhodesia was founded on Britain's impious, criminal and ignominious murders of 1890 and the MDC's "new Zimbabwe" is to be founded on the ruinous, profane and despicable sanctions that have been unleashed on the generality of Zimbabweans.

We were subjected to servitude by the power of gunpowder in 1890 and we are being forced into subordination by the ruthless power of economic sanctions in 2008.

Some among us collaborated with the enemy in 1890 and some among us are collaborating with the enemy today. The British interests over Zimbabwe have not changed. Zimbabwe must help make the small island of Britain stand as "Great Britain" by allowing British imperial authority to preside over the economic affairs of Zimbabwe.

What has changed is the warfare. Gone are the days of military conquest. Gone are the days of crude power politics. Now is the time for economic strangulation. Now is the time for stage-managed crusades for "democracy and human rights".

Britain wants its citizenry to continue to share the bloody wealth of Zimbabwe usurped at the cost of so much ruin and slaughter as we saw through the many lives that were massacred during the First and Second Chimurenga and the many more lives that have been claimed by the ruinous effect of the illegal sanctions currently imposed on Zimbabwe by Western allies. This cycle of colonial ruin cannot be allowed to continue. The economic war in Zimbabwe must be viewed for what it is. It is a blatantly ruthless war that cannot be wished away by the citing of a clique of corrupt officials and claiming that their moral shortcomings are the cause of the people's suffering.

They did it to Maurice Bishop of Grenada in 1979, they did it to the Sandinistas of Nicaragua again from 1979, they did it to Salvador Allende's Chile in 1973, they did it to Pathet Lao of Laos in 1958, they did it to the Vietnamese nationalist movement from 1961 to the mid-seventies and they are trying to do it to Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe in 2008.

Those who cannot see this second phase of colonisation, which is packaged in client regimes for what it is are either clearly ignorant of the history of Western powers or simply romanticised by the glitters of Western supremacy.

In the past we were mesmerised by the supremacy of Western firepower and romanticised by the glitters of Western civilisation and we helped them accumulate our wealth with our tacit approval. Now we are being made to fight each other over idealistic limitless freedoms and liberties, while the West lines up lapdog politicians to maintain and exercise power over us so as to ensure that they enjoy control of our economic system.

It is rather a shame that we lost limbs and lives to free ourselves from political domination, but we cannot afford a night on an empty stomach to free ourselves from economic domination.

It is no wonder that those of us who survived the liberation war have a resolve that simply says Zimbabwe is not going anywhere.

Colonial ruin has revisited us and we need to accept the reality of the economic war in which we all find ourselves today. It is a war that cannot be fought by votes.

Votes are a peaceful expression of opinion and yet our peace has been taken away by the economic onslaught brought upon the country by the imperial gangsters. We did not vote from 1965 to 1980 because this was no time for votes but for waging a victory-oriented war that would bring us a peaceful environment where the vote would be our voice.

Is a vote that surrenders to sanctions something we should call the voice of a sovereign people? Can voting in of lackeys be called the genuine voice of a sovereign people?

Is it sensible when some among us say let people vote in imperialism if that is what they want? And how democratic is it to say the MDC-T has a right to come for political competition in the company of former oppressors? It is incumbent upon each Zimbabwean to reflect on where we have come from and help build Zimbabwe in a manner that leaves imperialists where they belong, and that is as far away from our resources as possible.

Zimbabwe we are one in our heritage and together we will overcome.

wafawarova@yahoo.co.uk
or
reason@rwafawarova.com

No apologies from arrogant USA
Posted: Wednesday, June 18, 2008

¤ On Iraq, Iran and Norman Finkelstein
¤ The Racial Politics of Symbols

¤ Of Whales and Worms
For the well-meaning people who are feeling this way, I have this question: How can the same Democratic Party, and the same specific individuals, who have co-operated in, permitted and/or legalized the Bush regime's atrocities – including torture and war crimes – now tell us that the candidate that they endorse is the solution to the horrid things that this system and these individuals have themselves facilitated and colluded in?

¤ Obama and the Fall Into Tyranny
Obama told the Lobby that in order to protect Israel he would use all the powers of the presidency to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. As in the case of Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," the conclusion whether or not Iran is making a nuclear weapon will be determined by propaganda and not by fact. Therefore, there is no difference between Bush, McCain, Obama, and the Lobby with regard to the Middle East.

¤ How Many Innocent People Are Going Out of Their Minds Today?
¤ Understanding 'Media Bias'
¤ The Weapon of Rape
¤ Journalism's Tim Russert Problem

¤ Finally, the U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News
It's just a $5,812,353 contract — chump change for the Pentagon — and not even one of those notorious "no-bid" contracts either. Ninety-eight bids were solicited by the Army Corps of Engineers and 12 were received before the contract was awarded this May 28th to Wintara, Inc. of Fort Washington, Maryland, for "replacement facilities for Forward Operating Base Speicher, Iraq." According to a Department of Defense press release, the work on those "facilities" to be replaced at the base near Saddam Hussein's hometown, Tikrit, is expected to be completed by January 31, 2009, a mere 11 days after a new president enters the Oval Office. It is but one modest reminder that, when the next administration hits Washington, American bases in Iraq, large and small, will still be undergoing the sort of repair and upgrading that has been ongoing for years.

¤ Blackwater's Bright Future
¤ Protest Group Calls Bush Invitation An Outrage
¤ 42 Days? Try 18 Months

¤ A Line Not To Be Crossed
The killing of 11 Pakistani soldiers by U.S. air and artillery strikes last week shows just how quickly the American-led war in Afghanistan is spreading into neighbouring Pakistan.
Pakistan's military branded the air attack "unprovoked and cowardly." There was outrage across Pakistan. However, the unstable government in Islamabad, which depends on large infusions of U.S. aid, later softened its protests.
The U.S., which used a B-1 heavy bomber and F-15 strike aircraft in the attacks, called its action, "self-defence."

¤ The Revolt of the Liberated
¤ Terrorism: We wildly overestimate the risk of being a victim, says author

¤ The Irish Vote "No" on Lisbon
"One of two things will now occur. Either the Irish government will resubmit the treaty for a new vote, working harder to explain its meaning or secure a few changes, as they did in 2002 after incurring a loss in the case of an earlier EU treaty in 2001. Or the EU bureaucracy will take a lesson from the defeat, go back to the drawing boards, and present voters with a clearer voter-friendly document, and try again."

¤ The Irish People have spoken.

¤ Iraq: World Governments Misleading and Failing Iraqi Refugees
The international community is evading its responsibility towards refugees from Iraq by promoting a false picture of the security situation in Iraq when the country is neither safe nor suitable for return, Amnesty International said today.
In its new report, Rhetoric and reality: the Iraqi refugee crisis, which is based on recent research and interviews with Iraqi refugees, the organization said that the world's richest states are failing to provide the necessary assistance to Iraqi refugees, most of whom are plunged in despair and hurtling towards destitution.

¤ The Biggest Election Story Not on Your TV
¤ No Good, Shiftless, Lazy...
¤ Car bomb kills at least 51 near Baghdad market
¤ Man orders pet python to attack police officers
¤ Study: Chimps calm each other with hugs, kisses
¤ High Water Everywhere: Court Ruling Won't Stem the Terror War Flood
¤ U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases
¤ Addressing America's "Deeper Malignancies"
¤ No apologies from arrogant USA
¤ Tim Russert, Dick Cheney, and 9/11
¤ Israeli airstrikes kill six in Gaza Strip
¤ Gordon Brown delivers on Iran for George Bush

Transparency International's wall of silence
Posted: Sunday, June 15, 2008

by Calvin Tucker
June 12th 2008

What would you call an organisation that when caught making false allegations, refuses to answer legitimate questions or hold an investigation?

Answer: Transparency International!

The facts are straightforward. Last April, TI published a report about the global oil industry which ranked oil companies according to whether they were of high, medium or low transparency. Venezuela 's state-owned oil company, PDVSA, was given the lowest possible ranking on the basis that it did not produce properly audited accounts and was withholding basic financial information about revenues, taxes and royalties.

The Chavez government says that it spends the proceeds of its oil industry on providing a free health and education system, and on raising the living standards of the working class and poor. The opposition counters that Chavez is mismanaging PDVSA and cooking the books in order to cover up inefficiency and corruption.

Unsurprisingly, TI's report was seized upon by the opposition as evidence in support of their claims. PDVSA was a "company of low transparency", and although TI did not directly suggest that PDVSA was corrupt, they do say that companies that withhold basic information from the public "leave the door open to corruption".

But TI's report was wrong. Not just any old wrong. But completely, utterly, glaringly wrong. All the information that TI claimed PDVSA was refusing to disclose was freely available in their Report and Accounts and published on their website and in the press.
Full Article : 21stcenturysocialism.com

Why the Oil Price Is High
Posted: Saturday, June 14, 2008

¤ The Iran Trap
The failure by Barack Obama to chart another course in the Middle East, to defy the Israel lobby and to denounce the Bush administration's inexorable march toward a conflict with Iran is a failure to challenge the collective insanity that has gripped the political leadership in the United States and Israel.
Obama, in a miscalculation that will have grave consequences, has given his blessing to the widening circle of violence and abuse of the Palestinians by Israel and, most dangerously, to those in the Bush White House and Jerusalem now plotting a war against Iran. He illustrates how the lust for power is morally corrosive. And while he may win the White House, by the time he takes power he will be trapped in George Bush's alternative reality.

¤ Blame Rising Oil Prices on Bush
Wow, a lot of people must have bought Hummers last week. How else to explain the spike in oil prices? No, I'm not being silly: They are, and by they I mean the gaggle of media pundits and other administration apologists--abetted by some green zealots--who want to explain our energy crisis by reference to profligate consumers.

¤ Newsflash! George "I'm never wrong" Bush has REGRETS

¤ Bush's exit helps U.S. image abroad, survey shows
here is good news and bad news for President George W. Bush as he pursues his valedictory tour of Europe this week, according to a new worldwide study by the Pew Global Attitudes Project.
On the one hand, the image of the United States has improved slightly in many countries over the past year. On the other, the new optimism appears to be driven largely by the fact that Bush will soon be leaving office.

¤ Iranian leader calls Bush a 'wicked man'

¤ Why the Oil Price Is High
How to explain the oil price? Why is it so high? Are we running out? Are supplies disrupted, or is the high price a reflection of oil company greed or OPEC greed. Are Chavez and the Saudis conspiring against us?
In my opinion, the two biggest factors in oil's high price are the weakness in the US dollar's exchange value and the liquidity that the Federal Reserve is pumping out.
The dollar is weak because of large trade and budget deficits, the closing of which is beyond American political will. As abuse wears out the US dollar's reserve currency role, sellers demand more dollars as a hedge against its declining exchange value and ultimate loss of reserve currency status.

¤ Our Government's Dirty Little Secrets.
¤ Dennis Kucinich Vows to Continue Impeachment Effort Against Bush

¤ The Rising of Latin America
The Genesis of 'The War On Democracy'
They moved through the dust of a snow-capped wilderness, along roads that were ribbons of red mud, and they lived in shanties that defied gravity. "We are invisible," said one man; another used the term abandonados; an indigenous woman in Bolivia unforgettably described her poverty as a commodity for the rich.

¤ Obama And McCain: Two Sides Of The Same Coin
¤ Indian oil firms to invest $3 bn in Iran
¤ Israel to build 1,300 homes for colonists

¤ Ireland rejects Lisbon Treaty

¤ Who Will Be The Next US President? AIPAC Decides Video

¤ BBC Uncovers Lost Iraq Billions
¤ Iraq - What Happened To The $23Billion?

¤ Price Of Oil Will Double
The chief executive of the world's largest energy company has issued the most dire warning yet about the soaring the price of oil, predicting that it will hit $250 per barrel "in the foreseeable future".
The forecast from Alexey Miller, the head of the Kremlin-owned gas giant Gazprom, would herald the arrival of £2-per-litre petrol and send shockwaves through the economy. His comments were the most stark to be expressed by an industry executive and come just days after the oil price registered its largest-ever single-day spike, hitting $139.12 per barrel last week amid fears that the world's faltering supply will be unable to keep up with demand.

¤ Leaders With No Conscience

¤ Report: Israel killed 635 Palestinians in Gaza in one year

¤ Pakistan attacks 'cowardly' US raid

¤ Zimbabwe: Politics and Food Aid
There is no evidence that the government of Zimbabwe is using food "as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election" or that it is deliberately denying "hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans" food aid, as Human Rights Watch and The New York Times allege.
In fact, a careful reading of what both sources claim, points to a deliberate and knowing attempt to palter with the truth, reflecting and reinforcing a narrative that holds Africa, and particularly Zimbabwe, to be marked by suffering people, corrupt and monstrous governments, and endless chaos.

¤ Biti faces treason charges
¤ Zimbabwe: How soon we forget
¤ 'China will not meddle in Zimbabwe's affairs'

¤ Desperate Brown scrapes through
¤ Brown triumphs on terror – but then he is stopped in his tracks
¤ Cost of raid on polygamist camp tops $14 million
¤ Cuba scraps limits on wages
¤ Our ‘Cheap Oil Fiesta' Is Over
¤ When Will the People Fight Back?

¤ How Europe Underdevelops Africa
In even the most exploitative African sites of repression and capital accumulation, sometimes corporations take a hit, and victims sometimes unite on continental lines instead of being divided-and-conquered. Turns in the class struggle might have surprised Walter Rodney, the political economist whose 1972 classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa provided detailed critiques of corporate looting.
In early June, the British-Dutch firm Shell Oil - one of Rodney's targets - was instructed to depart from the Ogoniland region within the Niger Delta, where in 1995 Shell officials were responsible for the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa by Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. After decades of abuse, women protesters, local NGOs and the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gave Shell the shove. France's Total appears next in line, in part because of additional pressure from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

¤ R. Kelly Is Acquitted in Child Pornography Case
¤ Iowa's capital swamped by Midwestern floodwaters

Zimbabwe: Politics and Food Aid
Posted: Thursday, June 12, 2008

By Stephen Gowans
June 04, 2008

There is no evidence that the government of Zimbabwe is using food "as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election" or that it is deliberately denying "hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans" food aid, as Human Rights Watch and The New York Times allege.

In fact, a careful reading of what both sources claim, points to a deliberate and knowing attempt to palter with the truth, reflecting and reinforcing a narrative that holds Africa, and particularly Zimbabwe, to be marked by suffering people, corrupt and monstrous governments, and endless chaos.

The New York Times began a June 4 article on Zimbabwe by announcing that "hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans – orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out - have lost access to food and other basic humanitarian assistance."

It's true that Zimbabweans have lost access to food delivered by Western NGOs, but not food aid altogether, and only for the duration of the presidential run-off election campaign. In the interim, the government has made arrangements to take on the job of distributing food aid to those in need. No government-engineered famine is imminent, notwithstanding what The New York Times says.

Harare has ordered NGOs to temporarily scale back or cease operations, accusing them of illegally channeling funding to the opposition MDC party and in March's elections of "going around threatening villagers in rural areas that the donations they were handing them would be the last if they voted for Zanu-PF and President Mugabe." [1] It is out of a desire to eclipse Western interference in the election that the Zimbabwe government has taken this step.

Are the government's accusations credible?

For the last seven years, the US and its allies have cut off all development assistance to Zimbabwe, disabled all lines of credit, stopped the World Bank and International Monetary Fund from providing financial assistance, and have pressured private companies from doing business with the country. The result has been "a form of collective punishment designed to destabilize the country and shake the population's faith" in the government. [2] Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans – orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out - have suffered. And to hide their hand in creating the misery, the US and Britain and their allies have blamed it all on Harare's land reform policies, an inversion of the causal chain. It was not Harare's land reform policies that created the disaster, but the West's meting out collective punishment in response to the land reform policies that undermined Zimbabwe's economy and created widespread suffering.

It is hardly outside the realm of high probability, then, that Western governments that continue to use sanctions "to weaken the economy of the country, to get the people of Zimbabwe so poor and hungry they can change their voting behavior," [3] would also use food aid directly as a political weapon to shape the outcome of the upcoming election through their influence over NGOs operating in the country. After all, creating hunger in Zimbabwe is exactly what Western governments have been doing for the last seven years, indirectly, through the use of sanctions.

But Human Rights Watch and The New York Times say nothing about Western sanctions and instead accuse the Mugabe government of making Zimbabweans miserable, and further, of deliberately inducing hunger. Human Rights Watch researcher for Africa, Tiseke Kasambala, accuses Harare of taking a decision "to let people go hungry," citing it as "yet another attempt to use food as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election." [4] Kasambala conjures the impression that (a) the government is deliberately inducing hunger and (b) that this will somehow help Mugabe's chances of winning the presidential election run-off poll. But while the HRW researcher says the government is letting people go hungry, he also complains that it is picking up the slack, delivering food aid in place of the NGOs. The government, he says, should not be distributing food but should "let independent aid agencies feed people." [5]

Harare, then, stands accused of two opposing crimes: of letting people go hungry, and of delivering food aid (in place of NGOs) and thereby saving people from hunger. Kasambala's "you're guilty no matter what you do" approach reveals that what's really at issue isn't whether people will go hungry (and they won't, though Harare's accusers play politics by carefully couching their comments to make it seem a government-engineered famine is imminent); the real issue is who controls the food aid. The problem from Kasambala's and New York Times reporter Celia Dugger's point of view, is that it isn't Western-funded NGOs that will be doling out relief for the duration of the election campaign. Dugger acknowledges that the government has bought 600,000 tons of corn to distribute to the hungry, but warns Harare could (not will, but could) use food "as an inducement to win support." [6] Of course, she offers not a whit of evidence that it is doing so or will do so. On the other side, there is good reason to believe that if Western governments are consistent, they'll use their funding arrangements with NGOs to extend their policy of bribing the people to vote for their candidate - this time with threats of food aid deliveries stopping if the wrong candidate is elected.

Kasambala, representing a rights organization that is dominated by the US foreign policy establishment, and can therefore hardly be expected to be politically neutral where Zimbabwe is concerned, goes further by predicting Harare will withhold food aid as "a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of (the) election." [7] In a milieu in which the "media have long since largely abandoned any attempt at impartiality in its reporting of Zimbabwe, the common assumption being that Mugabe is a murderous dictator at the head of a uniquely wicked regime," [8] Kasambala's dark prediction has a ring of plausibility to it, but if you examine his accusation critically, it falls apart.

How, one might ask, could a government induce hunger and expect to win support, when a hungry electorate would be far more likely to vote against, not for, whoever caused the hunger? Indeed, the aim of sanctions is to create enough misery to force the voters to cry uncle by voting Mugabe out of office. It would surely be a government of fools that would add to the misery already created by sanctions by deliberately engineering more misery. This would serve the aims of the regime changers in the West, not Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party. According to Kasambala's logic, if John McCain wants to win support, he should announce that, if elected, he will restore the draft and hike taxes sharply across-the-board.

Western media and organizations allied with US and British imperial goals are trying to create the impression that the government of Robert Mugabe is deliberately inducing hunger and using food aid to shape the outcome of the presidential run-off election, that is, when they're not accusing him of planning to rig the election. One wonders why Mugabe would tamper with the election results if he is using food as a political weapon, and vice-a-versa. Apparently, the aim of the demonization campaign is to hurl as many accusations at Mugabe as possible, in hopes that some or all of them will stick, even if they're mutually contradictory.

It is Western countries that have created hunger through a program of sanctions that has sabotaged the Zimbabwean economy and led to widespread misery and need for food aid. Mugabe's government has temporarily suspended the operations of NGOs, not to seize control of the delivery of food aid for political gain, but to block Western governments from operating remotely through NGOs to channel funding to the campaign of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and to use food as a political weapon. If you read the Western press uncritically and absorb Human Rights Watch's analyses without a healthy dose of skepticism, it doesn't seem that way, but as Malcolm X once said, "If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." [9]

NOTES:

1. Herald (Zimbabwe) May 29, 2008; June 4, 2008.
2. CPGB-ML Statement, "Hands off Zimbabwe," May 12, 2008.
3. Peter Mavunga, Herald (Zimbabwe) May 3, 2008.
4. Guardian (UK), June 4, 2008.
5. Ibid.
6. New York Times, June 4, 2008.
7. Guardian (UK), June 4, 2008.
8. Seamus Milne, Guardian (UK), April 17, 2008.
9. New African, June 2008.

Reproduced from:
http://gowans.wordpress.com/2008/06/04
/zimbabwe-politics-and-food-aid/

Zimbabwe: How soon we forget
Posted: Tuesday, June 10, 2008

By Stella Orakwue
June 10, 2008
The Herald

IT is a pity that the people who voted against President Robert Mugabe have no ability to remember the servitude they existed in prior to the last 28 years.

They did it for the money. What is the price of the loyalty? It is a heavy price to pay when "your" people are prepared to buy and sell you for Western money. Western money could not, and cannot, buy President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. But clearly, as the number of people who voted against him in the presidential election show, people of Zimbabwe, in Zimbabwe, are prepared to sell him to the West in return for money.

Land, property, money, buying and selling. The ownership of land, the ownership of property. Property and the European. Robert Mugabe knew, and knows, about what property means.

Other people's land. Land belonging to people with black skin. He knows what that means.

Property and the European are interchangeable, indistinguishable, inseparable. The one goes with the other. One without the other is untenable. The two together provide an almost visible exhibition of an orgasmic sensation-taking place.

But together the European and other people's land, particularly land belonging to black people, and we have climax, multiple orgasmic sensation.

Are the people of Zimbabwe prepared to return to servicing the orgasmic needs of the European desire for property, money, ownership and control of the people's land?

Whether that control and ownership is direct or indirect? Are Zimbabweans prepared, willing, and ready to be servicing foreign nations, foreign international bodies, foreign leaders, and foreign "global community"?

And what is the price of service to your own nation and your own continent, Africa? Robert Mugabe, fighter, liberator, leader, man, has paid heavy price upon heavy price. But he will stand fast because men like "Mugabe" come back once a century. Men who bring true transformational change to the lives of their people. It is a pity that "the people" in whose lives this fundamental change has been wrought have such short memories. It is a pity but it is irrelevant that they have no ability to remember the servitude they existed in prior to the last 28 years.

It is irrelevant because of all Africans, living and not yet born, for millennia to come, the actions of Robert Mugabe in returning land, African land, to the rightful ownership of African people, will live on inside all Africans. He will be the psyche of all Africans for all time. And there is nothing that anybody, particularly any foreign body or power can do about that. For they are not God, and it is God who gave us "Mugabe" to lead his people and to show African people the way. Viva Mugabe, viva!

But watch the European cocks crowing! They think their hour is nigh. These Zimbabwean elections aren't "fixed" or "rigged" when they think that their man, the "democratic opposer", has won. Only election wins they don't like are unstomachable.

They did it for the money, for the "help" they think will come. The white "helpers" with their dome-shaped bags laden with helping money. Money that is not available to men that they do not like. Friendly white money that will take the burden of the land off their black backs and hand it back to the white man. For is it not the land the white man's rightful burden? So you Zimbabwean friends white help, lie back, relax, let the white help show you how to do it. That's what friendly white money is for – loosening your control of things. Sit, take the load of the land off your back. Other people want to run your country.

Those people of Zimbabwe who want the democratic opposer, let us see how long it will last. Zimbabweans who want to put their lives in other people's monied hands – let us see how long you remain pleased with the results that await you. Perhaps you do prefer to reap where you do not sow. After all, the Europeans bringing friendly White Money say that those nice, poor blacks that they want to help, well, they don't know how to sow and grow anything on land because they are black and blacks have never been farmers, and they are helpless and they need help. White help.

You can shout at me, "What do I know about poverty and going without food and having no money?" and I will laugh in your face. Do you think that I don't know about poverty, about being poor, because I "live in the West"? I know about poverty. Poverty has been my closest friend for many years. There have been times when I have asked myself whether it is worse to have no food in a place where there is no food – and therefore you all go hungry – or to have no food in a place where food is aplenty but you have no money to buy food – and therefore you go hungry. You see, you can go hungry in the West, too. I know what it is like to count every single penny in my buttered old purse – not to save up for a car or a television, but to buy a loaf of bread, because that is all I have to eat.

It teaches me yet another thing about myself that I didn't know that I was capable of: Money could never, ever buy me. I have seen, and I see, that I would rather starve than bow down to anything that I did not believe in. I would rather starve than sell my fundamental principles. Yes, you cannot eat principles, but without them you don't deserve to eat. Without them you are better off dead.

Look at the Westerners circling like sharks! They flocked from their watching hotels around the globe. They came to bury Robert Mugabe, but he won't go without a fight. What an alarm this poses – what, a black man fighting instead of fleeing or cowering before the white man and his henchmen and women! Let them dig a hole in the ground, fill it with money, and bury themselves in it.

Do you think that if "Mugabe" had got the money, the financial credits, the financial buttresses that Zimbabwe needed, that Zimbabwe's economic situation would not be utterly different, and that "the people" would not have given him the vast majority he deserved? "The people" of the "democratic opposer" know that it is the presence of "Mugabe" that is preventing the West from giving them friendly White money. Money meant for them that that they are not getting because he is there. Sad. Very sad. Sad to see what people will do for money and how flexible their principles can be!

Is it too hard without the white man? Without the Westerner in charge of your resources, in charge of your money, looking after you behind the scenes? Would "the people" rather have the Westerner in charge of their land? Do "the people" actually want "their own" land, if the white man and his Friendly Money are not going to be looking after them?

How much money was taken out of the country by Friendly White Employers with their vast land holdings? How beneficial was that for Zimbabweans? The Friendly White Employers slept in lavish houses and mansions with all unnecessary necessities, all the finest purchasable amenities that money from land could buy; while their "loved" farm workers enjoyed a mattress on an earth floor in their basic dwellings fit for basic lives, and all the rudimentary things that just a teeny-weeny bit of money could buy.

How much money will pour in, Zimbabweans, if you sell out the man who gave you back your land? Will you luxuriate in money like you would in a vast deep bath, water swirling all around you? How long will the taps stay on? The white man's Friendly Money is running on empty. But don't tell "the people" – let them find out the easy way.

What is the rate of return on betrayal? What is the rate of return on a lack of fortitude, a lack of desire for self-being? What is the rate of return on flexible principles? Do you think that the West will ever forgive that land that his kith and kin once held was returned to its rightful owners, back into the hands of black people? It is untenable for them. It is not something that they can deal with, because it has never happened to them before. Their urge is to get it back, buy it back, lease it back, rent it back – do anything but have it back in their hands one way or the other. They need to be back in charge. In control, holding the land and its money again, and the "democratic opposer" and his supporters will help them. Do you think that there is some kind of mysterious white magic to running an economy? That only white people with their white money can do it? How shameful that after only one generation "the people" of Zimbabwe are already going down this road. What was it for, President Mugabe, I ask you?

I say this to myself: God provides, then it is up to each of us to decide what to do with his provisions. God provides, we decide. The Lord has given us that ability. And we do not bow down to people who behave, who conduct themselves, as if they are gods walking upon this earth: Do as they say or else die. Away with them! Your life is in your own hands.

Friendly White Money is nothing but a short-term pay off, a lease on comfort. It is here today, gone tomorrow. But in a worse economic state.

And then you will be back to where you were before but without your dignity, without your strength, without your pride. Back to dependence instead of independence. Back to tilling the soil for others instead of for yourselves. Back to waiting for what the white man wants to do with you, instead of what you want to do for yourselves. Back to no land.

The time you should have spent "suffering" – how does it compare to the war year? But learning about yourselves, your skills, your capacities, you spent in what passed for a "comfortable" life of dependency on the white man and his Friendly post-Mugabe Money. – New African Magazine.

The West's Weapon of Self-Delusion
Posted: Monday, June 9, 2008

¤ John McCain and Latin America

¤ The High Cost of a Single War-Like Remark
One remark by a minor Israeli cabinet officer hinting at a possible US or Israeli attack on Iran has sent oil prices up by a record $11/barrel to a record $139 per barrel Friday. That should tell us what would happen if the Bush administration were crazy enough to attack Iran, or to let its vassal state of Israel do it.
Most analysts say an actual attack on Iran would send oil almost immediately to past $300 per barrel—a level that would strangle economies worldwide and send the world into an economic collapse not since the Smoot-Hawley Tariffs kicked off the Great Depression.
The repercussions of that would be staggering.

¤ The West’s Weapon of Self-Delusion

¤ Why Obama Won
Barack Obama has won the race for the Democratic nomination for president against Hillary Clinton on the issues. Sort of.
This is not what the pundits will tell you, who would rather focus upon the most superficial and trivial aspects of the two final candidates’ style, personality, associates, personal history, and campaign organization and strategy, not to mention race and gender.
This is not what many on the left will say either, in recognition of how little differences there were between the two candidates’ stated positions on most policies.

¤ Guevara Children Denounce Che Branding

¤ Your Brain on $4 a Gallon Gas
Bumper-to-bumper gridlock didn’t do it. Nowhere-to-park didn’t do it. Taxes on city driving didn’t do it. But $4 a gallon gas is finally driving people to not drive anymore say news reports.
So many car commuters conceded to buses or trains in March and April, Denver saw an eight percent rise in public transit riders, south Florida, 20 percent and Charlotte, NC an amazing 34 percent.
In Chicago you can own a car, unlike New York City, but don’t have to, like Los Angeles, and so thousands of workers in the downtown Loop have traditionally looked at the car/train choice as a toss-up.

¤ Voices from his White Working Class Family
¤ Bolivia protest targets US embassy
¤ Israeli officials: We will invade Gaza before truce deal takes effect

¤ WORDS OF CONFUSION
Language dates back thousands of years. Once humankind began to talk and write, language progressed and communication became more precise. However, current statements and writing have halted the advancement of precision and are beginning to drag the English language back to a communication form that is not readily understandable.
In the past two days, just by reading newspapers or online news, I have seen some of the most ridiculous items in print. Some are outright hilarious because of the mis-use of the English language, while others are blatant lies that no one challenges.

¤ Silence of the media
All of us; including all the Iraqis are witnessing a terrible secrecy and silence of the media of what is happening in Iraq now…I must say that some aspects have improved and I must say that the militia's grip had loosened a bit but the real situation on the ground is far from what is said, I don't want to put it in a form of a conspiracy theory, but at the beginning we lost the credibility and the honesty of the western media then we lost the credibility of the Arab media and now we are losing the Iraqi media's credibility…there might be thousands of reasons behind this and I tend to believe that targeting journalists are one of the main reasons followed by the pressure of the governments on the media.

¤ Obama Capitulates – to the Israel lobby
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's visit to the U.S. is part of a concerted effort, by the Israeli government and its American lobbyists, to convince U.S. lawmakers – and, most of all, President George W. Bush – that the time to attack Iran is now. The Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot reports that Olmert will tell Bush "time is running out" on diplomacy and that he'd better launch an attack.

¤ Legislating Tyranny
The George W. Bush administration responded to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon with an assault on U.S. civil liberty that Bush justified in the name of the “war on terror.” The government assured us that the draconian measures apply only to “terrorists.” The word terrorist, however, was not defined. The government claimed the discretionary power to decide who is a terrorist without having to present evidence or charges in a court of law.

¤ Pressure from oil prices spreads
¤ Tsvangirai was never arrested - Zim police

¤ President Mugabe defends land policy
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe on Tuesday defended the government’s land policy in a speech at a United Nations conference on the global food crisis, saying he is undoing a legacy left by Zimbabwe's former colonial masters.
He said Zimbabwe had "democratised land ownership" over the past decade and Zimbabweans were now the "proud owners" of land previously owned by a few thousand white farmers.

Oil: Manipulation, Speculation and Profiteering
Posted: Friday, June 6, 2008

¤ U. S. Extorts Iraq to Approve Military Deal
The US is holding hostage some $50 billion of Iraq's money in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to pressure the Iraqi government into signing an agreement seen by many Iraqis as prolonging the US occupation indefinitely.

¤ Why Obama Won

¤ Name That Terrorist
It was only slightly amusing recently when one of the television news networks did a short segment on Nelson Mandela visiting George W. Bush in the White House. The newsperson describing the meeting happened to mention that Mandela was on America’s terrorist watch list. There was no explanation of how this heroic figure from South Africa was able to fly to Washington, D.C. in order to meet with our President. Normally, being on the terrorist watch list would prevent anyone from boarding a passenger plane, to say nothing of being barred from entering the White House. That actually happened to Senator Ted Kennedy a couple of years ago—he was barred from flying from Boston back to his work in Washington, D.C.

¤ Cheney Enrages Iraqis Over Security Deal

¤ Manipulation, Speculation and Profiteering
Last week came the news that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating potential manipulation of the oil trading market.
That's a good thing, though the CFTC is not exactly the most aggressive regulator around. (Says Judy Dugan of Consumer Watchdog: "On its face, the investigation smacks of the fox investigating a hen shortage in the chicken coop.")

¤ Consumer anger as oil prices soar
¤ Americans $1.7 trillion poorer
¤ Oil's biggest day yet drags down stocks
¤ Second bus blast rocks Sri Lanka
¤ Of Whiners and Poor Losers

¤ Police Brutality and Cover-Up
The savage beating of three suspects by Philadelphia police recently that captured news headlines internationally exposed big problems within the scandal plagued department involving core functions of cops.
The beating incident forced Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey to institute new procedures for retraining all police officers on permissible use of force.
Ramsey, in an unprecedented move for a Philadelphia Police Commissioner, quickly disciplined officers involved in that 5/5/08 beating, including firing four officers who Ramsey determined engaged in impermissible brutality.

¤ Chronology of a Lie
In his Antiwar.com columns investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter has been doing a masterful job of exposing Dick Cheney’s relentless campaign to vilify Iran, build a case for an attack, bomb the country and produce regime change before the administration’s term ends. The campaign as many have noted parallels in several ways the propaganda blitz that preceded the War in Iraq. Cheney and his neocons cabal seek to skew the reports of mainstream intelligence agencies to confirm their allegations (in this case, the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program as an immanent threat to Israel and the U.S., Iranian Quds Force training of Iraqi "insurgents" in Iranian camps, Iranian provision of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) to these "insurgents," Iranian contacts with al-Qaeda, etc.).

¤ An Interview with Ilan Pappé and Noam Chomsky
¤ Hillary's Wreckage

¤ Bush's Secret Deal Would Ensure Permanent U.S. Occupation of Iraq
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to this reporter, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq.
Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which U.S. troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the U.S.
President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated.

¤ Recession Grips the Jobs Market
¤ U.S. sidesteps questions on Israeli threat against Iran
¤ Rate of Violence Skyrocketing in Afghanistan
¤ 'Genocide by design?' Bush Administration Plans to 'Stay' in Iraq for the Oil
¤ Revealed: Secret Plan To keep Iraq Under US Control
¤ Chavez Revamps His Intelligence Services: The Corporate Media React
¤ Hillary Learned Nothing From Iraq
¤ Israel Flag On Lapel, He Hails Jerusalem
¤ Will Obama Stand Up to the War Party?

¤ Senate report says Bush misused Iraq intelligence
United States President George Bush and his top policymakers exaggerated Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism and ignored doubts among intelligence agencies about Iraq's arms programnes as they made their case for war, a Senate committee reported on Thursday.
The Senate intelligence committee said in a study that major Bush administration statements that Iraq had a partnership with al-Qaeda and provided it with weapons training were unsupported by intelligence, and sometimes contradicted it.

¤ Your Brain on $4 a Gallon Gas

Chavez Revamps His Intelligence Services: The Corporate Media React
Posted: Friday, June 6, 2008

by Stephen Lendman
June 6th 2008

Reports keep surfacing about new threats against Hugo Chavez. Given past ones, they can't be taken lightly. Chavez is alerted and reacts accordingly. Case in point: revamping Venezuela's decades old intelligence services. It's long overdue and urgently needed given the Bush administration's tenure winding down and its determination in its remaining months to end the Bolivarian project and crush its participatory democracy.

CIA, NED, IRI, USAID and other US elements infest the country and are more active than ever. Subversion is their strategy, and it shows up everywhere. Violence is being encouraged. Opposition groups are recruited and funded. So are members of Venezuela's military. Student groups as well and anti-Chavista candidates for November's mayoral and gubernatorial elections.

The dominant media are on board in Venezuela and America. They assail Chavez relentlessly and are on the warpath again after his May 28 announced intelligence services changes. The Interior and Justice Ministries will oversee a new General Intelligence Office and Counterintelligence Office in place of the current Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (DISIP). Similar military intelligence and counterintelligence components will replace the Military Intelligence Division (DIM) and will be under the Defense Ministry. Why was it done and why now? To counter stepped up US espionage and destabilization efforts when it's most needed.

New tools will be used and current personnel retrained and vetted for their Bolivarian commitment. DISIP and DIM are outdated. They've been around since 1969 to serve the "capitalist vision" of that era. Ever since, they've been "notoriously repressive" and closely aligned with the CIA. Therein lies the problem. Chavez intends to fix it. The dominant media reacted. They're hostile to change and showed it their reports.

The New York Times' Simon Romero has trouble with his facts. He headlined "Chavez Decree Tightens Hold on Intelligence." He referred to the new Law on Intelligence and Counterintelligence that passed by presidential decree under the legislatively-granted enabling law. He failed to explain that the 1969 law passed the same way, and that Venezuela's Constitution then and now permit it.

Instead, he noted a "fierce backlash here from (mostly unnamed) human rights groups and 'legal scholars' who say the measures will force citizens to inform on one another to avoid prison terms....The new law requires (them) to....assist the agencies, secret police or community activist groups loyal to Mr. Chavez. Refusal can result in prison terms of two to four years (and up to) six years for government employees."

Once again, Romero falls short on credibility. Hyperbole substitutes for truth as in all his reports. No country more respects human rights than Venezuela, and Chavez is committed to them. To the rule of law as well and social justice. The country's Constitution mandates it, and government officials are bound by it. Appointed officials with other aims have no place in it. They need to be exposed and replaced but need fear no recrimination unless they violate the law.

The new one won't create "a society of informers" as one of Romero's sources stated. Nor will it imprison Venezuelan citizens or let Chavez "assert greater control over public institutions in the face of political challenges following a 'stinging' defeat in December('s) constitutional (referendum) that would have expanded his powers."

It will insure greater "national security" and protect against "imperialist attacks" as Chavez explained. It's to preserve Bolivarianism against persistent attempts to destroy it. It's to serve all Venezuelans, advance a new 21st century vision, and put people ahead of privilege. It's to counter Bush administration efforts to restore neoliberalism, return the old order, and destroy social justice in the region's most model democracy.

Without explaining Venezuelan law or its legislative process, Romero states that the "law (was drafted and passed) behind closed doors, without exposing it to....public debate (and that) contributed to the public uproar and suspicion." His "public," of course, are elitists. They target Chavez for removal, denounce all his beneficial changes, and falsely accuse him of governing dictatorially.

"They" claim "justice officials, including judges, are required to actively collaborate with the intelligence services rather than serve as a check on them." According to Americas director for Human Rights Watch (HRW), Jose Miguel Vivanco: "This is a government that simply doesn't believe in the separation of powers....(It requires) the country's judges (to) serve as spies for the government." Vivanco knows better and damages HRW's credibility with comments like these. Romero uses them with relish to aid the imperial project.

Venezuela's internal threat is unmentioned. Rogue elements infest the government and military. They oppose democracy and social justice. Washington supports them. They must be found and removed. Venezuelans demand it. Better intelligence will help. Romero won't report it. Instead, he inverts truth and sides with forces trying to destabilize and undermine a government of, by and for the people.

He quotes "a prominent legal scholar" (in fact, right wing lawyer Rocio San Miguel) saying "This is the most scandalous effort to intimidate the population in the 10 years this government has been in power. Under the new law (information I have) could be considered a threat to national security and I could be sent immediately to jail." Indeed she could if she violates the law or tries to subvert the government. Otherwise, she's entitled to all benefits and protections Venezuelan law affords everyone. No comment from Romero.

AP echoed The New Times in its headlined May 31 report: "Venezuelan intelligence law draws protests, seen as potential tool against dissent." Again, it's false and misleading and part of the imperial plot against Chavez. AP unfairly equates the new law to the USA Patriot Act, when, in fact, it's totally dissimilar. The US law violates constitutional civil liberties. Venezuela's respects them, but it's easy for protesters to claim otherwise.

Justice Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin explained the difference. US law spies on Americans and denies them legal protection. Venezuela's law enlists responsible citizen participation in preserving their government. They have a stake in "state security and resolving crimes. If (they) witness (wrongdoing and) hide it, then (they) are an accomplice to that crime." It doesn't require people to spy. It wants them to cooperate and be engaged in preserving Bolivarianism and to report threats against it. It's to make them responsible citizens united for their common self-interest.

That's not how BBC sees it as part of its anti-Chavez agenda. Its June 3 online report highlighted: "Venezuela 'spy' law draws protest....among groups who say it threatens civil liberties." One of them is HRW's Vivanco again voicing the same false and misleading statements about "judges serving as spies." Another source, with a clear anti-Chavez agenda, says the "law may be used as a weapon to silence and intimidate the opposition."

In fact, Chavez champions free expression in all forms unlike in America post-9/11. Repressive laws and presidential executive orders stifle it. Activists are targeted, harassed and imprisoned. Illegal spying is institutionalized. So are repression, torture and disdain for the rule of law. Where are BBC, AP, The New York Times and other dominant media voices? Why aren't they exposing police state justice? Instead they denounce democracy, ally with despotism, and acknowledge no hint of hypocrisy.

Chavez is mirror opposite his media critics and counters them correctly. He calls the USA Patriot Act "dictatorial law." In contrast, the new Venezuelan one upholds freedom, seeks to preserve it, and is within "a framework of great respect for human rights." It will combat US subversion that dominant media sources ignore. They blame victims instead and are willing co-conspirators against Venezuela's model democracy. Their latest efforts show why Chavez needs all the defense he can marshal against them, and for all the right reasons.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9118

McClellan and the 'Enablers'
Posted: Tuesday, June 3, 2008

¤ War Criminals Must Fear Punishment.
I realise now that I didn't have a hope. I had almost reached the stage when two of the biggest gorillas I have ever seen swept me up and carried me out of the tent. It was humiliating, but it could have been worse. The guard on the other side of the stage, half hidden in the curtains, had spent the lecture touching something under his left armpit. Perhaps he had bubos.
I had no intention of arresting John Bolton, the former under-secretary of state at the US state department, when I arrived at the Hay festival. But during a panel discussion about the Iraq war, I remarked that the greatest crime of the 21st century had become so normalised that one of its authors was due to visit the festival to promote his book. I proposed that someone should attempt a citizens' arrest, in the hope of instilling a fear of punishment among those who plan illegal wars. After the session I realised that I couldn't call on other people to do something I wasn't prepared to do myself.

¤ Presidential Bloodlust
Here's a memory for you. I was probably five or six and sitting with my father in a movie house off New York's Times Square — one of the slightly seedy theaters of that dawn of the 1950s moment that tended to show double or triple feature B-westerns or war movies. We were catching some old oater which, as I recall, began with a stagecoach careening dramatically down the main street of a cow town. A wounded man is slumped in the driver's seat, the horses running wild. Suddenly — perhaps from the town's newspaper office — a cowboy dressed in white and in a white Stetson rushes out, leaps on the team of horses, stops the stagecoach, and says to the driver: "Sam, Sam, who dun it to ya?" (or the equivalent). At just that moment, the camera catches a man, dressed all in black in a black hat — and undoubtedly mustachioed — skulking into the saloon.

¤ McClellan's Missile: Media Crimes As War Crimes
Duh. The Bush Administration deployed a dishonest but very effective propaganda campaign to sell the Iraq War to the American people on virtually every media outfit. Their "Culture of Deception" is now acknowledged.
How do we know? Scotty McClellan told us so. It's all in the former Press Secretary's new book. And, happily, it's all over the news.
It's easy to put McClellan down. On the right he's a traitor. The President dismissed him as "sad." Karl Rove compared him to a left-wing blogger. Most of the real left-wing bloggers were equally contemptuous suggesting he's just trying to sell books, some asking: Why did he wait so long? Wasn't he part of the plot? Is this just the pot calling the kettle black?

¤ So Al-Qa'ida's Defeated, Eh? Go Tell it to the Marines
So al-Qa'ida is "almost defeated", is it? Major gains against al-Qa'ida. Essentially defeated. "On balance, we are doing pretty well," the CIA's boss, Michael Hayden, tells The Washington Post. "Near strategic defeat of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qa'ida in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qa'ida globally - and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' - as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam." Well, you could have fooled me.

¤ Biofuel Land Demand Puts Peasants at Risk: Report

¤ McClellan and the 'Enablers'
For all the press attention swirling around Scott McClellan's explosive tell-all, there's a brewing back story that's making Katie Couric and Charles Gibson squirm. And they're not alone.
Few were surprised that McClellan's book exposed a Bush administration "political propaganda campaign" that mislead the American public about the war in Iraq. Some question the former press secretary's loyalty and timing, but no one — with the obvious exception of the White House and its apologists — questions the factual basis of his claim.

¤ McClellan and His Media Collaborators
No sooner had Bush's ex-press secretary (now author) Scott McClellan accused President Bush and his former collaborators of misleading our country into Iraq than the squeals of protest turned into a mighty roar.
I'm not talking about the vitriol directed at him by former White House colleagues like Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer. I'm talking about McClellan's other war collaborators: the movers and shakers in corporate media. The people McClellan refers to in his book as "deferential, complicit enablers" of Bush administration war propaganda.

¤ Missing Money In Iraq

¤ Thanks, Scott, but We Knew It Already
Why is it that former members of the Bush administration would rather be considered stupid than evil by the time they get around to writing self-serving memoirs about their White House years?
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is the latest ex-Bush partisan to admit the obvious — that much that came out of the White House in the run-up to the Iraq war was lies, damned lies and propaganda. He, of course, didn't know it at the time.

¤ Why Hillary Won Puerto Rico
¤ Obama's Latino Problem Getting Worse

¤ How McClellan Prettifies Bush
Former Bush spokesperson Scott McClellan's accomplishing several things with his "blockbuster" book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. He's making a lot of easy money, as befits an opportunist of flexible morality who admittedly stuck with the Bush administration even as its amorality and penchant for lying to the American people became clearly apparent to him.

¤ Bush, Rice and McClellan
¤ West Coast Winter Soldier: "Enough Is Enough, It's Time to Get Out"
¤ Tutu's Trip to Gaza Censored by the US Media
¤ Bullying Powers Are Crippling: President
¤ US Paying Allies to Fight War in Iraq
¤ U.S. Economy: The Worst is Yet to Come

¤ The Great Oil Swindle
The Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating trading in oil futures to determine whether the surge in prices to record levels is the result of manipulation or fraud. They might want to take a look at wheat, rice and corn futures while they're at it. The whole thing is a hoax cooked up by the investment banks and hedge funds who are trying to dig their way out of the trillion dollar mortgage-backed securities (MBS) mess that they created by turning garbage loans into securities. That scam blew up in their face last August and left them scrounging for handouts from the Federal Reserve. Now the billions of dollars they're getting from the Fed is being diverted into commodities which is destabilizing the world economy; driving gas prices to the moon and triggering food riots across the planet.

¤ Evening At The White House Press Secretary Improv
He'll be here all week, folks. Or as long as the fall out from Scott McClellan's book continues to provide material for Bush apologists explaining why McClellan may not be a liar, but he has broken the press secretary comedy code.
He told the truth. Finally.
And with truth-speak comes an end to a fine standup career. Anyone who says that truth is funnier that fiction, probably has never seen a good comic or isn't familiar with what it takes to be a side-splitting White House press secretary.

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