June 2009
Vol 9, No. 6
WILL CHINA SAVE THE WORLD FROM DEPRESSION? By Walden Bello
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ill China be the growth pole that will snatch the world from the jaws of depression?
There are grounds for skepticism. For one, even when export demand was high, 75 per cent of China’s industries were already plagued with overcapacity. Before the crisis, for instance, it was projected that by 2010, the automobile industry’s installed capacity could turn out 100 per cent more vehicles than could be absorbed by a growing market. In the last few years, overcapacity problems have resulted in the halving of the annual profit growth rate for all major enterprises.
This is a question that has become a favourite topic as the heroic American middle class consumer, weighed down by massive debt, ceases to be the key stimulus for global production. Despite the fact that the China’s GDP annual growth rate fell to 6.1 per cent in the first quarter - the lowest in almost a decade - optimists see “shoots of recovery” in a 30 per cent surge in urban fixed-asset investment and a jump in industrial output in March. These indicators are proof, some say that China’s stimulus program of $586 billion - which, in relation to GDP, is much larger proportionally than the Obama administration’s $787 billion package — is working. China’s Countryside: a Launching Pad for Recovery? With China’s export-oriented urban coastal areas suffering from the collapse
of global demand, many inside and outside China are pinning their hopes for global recovery on the Chinese countryside. A significant portion of Beijing’s stimulus package is destined for infrastructure and social spending in the rural areas. 20 billion yuan ($3 billion) worth of subsidies is being allocated to help rural residents buy televisions, refrigerators, and other electrical appliances. The big question is, will this strategy of propping up rural demand to serve as an alternative to export demand as an engine for the country’s massive industrial machine work?
The greater problem with the strategy of making rural demand a substitute for export markets is that even if another hundred billion dollars were thrown in, it is unlikely that the stimulus package will significantly counteract the depressive impacts of a 25-year policy of sacrificing the countryside for export-oriented urban-based industrial growth. This will have enormous implications for the future of the world economy. Subordinating Agriculture to Industry Ironically, China’s ascent during the last thirty years began with the rural reforms Turn to next page
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POLITICAL POLARIZATION..... Wrong
CALM VOICE, BIG STICK
means lead to wrong ends. The imbroglio in Perak illustrates this. Because acquiring power through the back door is unethical, it was bound to create a crisis sooner or later .....................................................P.3
By Uri Avnery.............................................. page 5
THE OBAMA ADMINSTRATION AND THE MUSLIM WORLD: SOME REFLECTIONS By Abdullah Al-Ahsan ................................. page 7
ARTICLES
TRANSFORMING A NATION: THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION
PAKISTAN WAR FUELS INTERNATIONAL TENSIONS
THE DAY OF THE DEAD
By Peter Symonds ...................................... page 4
By Cindy Sheehan. ..................................... page 11
By Chandra Muzaffar .................................. page 9
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continued from page 1 initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978. The peasants wanted an end to the Mao-era communes, and Deng and his reformers obliged them by introducing the household-contract responsibility system. Under this scheme, each household was given a piece of land to farm. Of what it produced, the household was allowed to retain what was left over after selling to the state a fixed proportion at a state-determined price, or by simply paying a tax in cash. The rest it could consume or sell on the market. There is consensus among China specialists that these were the halcyon years of the peasantry, when rural income grew by over 15 per cent a year on the average, and rural poverty declined from 33 per cent to 11 per cent of the population. This golden age of the peasantry came to an end, however, and the cause was the adoption of a strategy of coastbased, export-oriented industrialization premised on rapid integration into the global capitalist economy. This strategy, which was launched at the 12th National Party Congress, in 1984, was essentially one that built the urban industrial economy on the shoulders of peasants, as rural specialists Chen Guidi and Wu Chantao put it. Primitive capital accumulation was achieved mainly by policies that cut heavily into the peasant surplus. The consequences of this urban-oriented industrial development strategy were stark. Peasant income, which had grown by 15.2 percent a year from 1978 to 1984, dropped to 2.8 percent a year from 1986 to 1991. Some recovery occurred in the early 1990s, but stagnation of rural income marked the latter part of the decade. In contrast, urban income, already higher than that of peasants in the mid- ‘80s, was, on average, six times the income of peasants by 2000. The stagnation of rural income was caused by policies promoting rising costs of industrial inputs into agriculture, falling prices for agricultural products, and increased taxes, all of which operated to transfer income from the countryside to the city. But the main mechanism for the extraction of surplus from the peasantry was taxation. Taxes on 149 agricultural products were levied on the peasants by central state agencies by
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1991, but this proved to be but part of a much bigger bite, as the lower levels of government began to levy their own taxes, fees, and charges. Currently, the various tiers of rural government impose a total of 269 types of tax, along with all sorts of often arbitrarily imposed administrative charges. Taxes and fees are not supposed to exceed 5 percent of a farmer’s income, but the actual amount is often much greater; some Ministry of Agriculture surveys have reported that the peasant tax burden is 15 percent - three times the official national limit. Expanded taxation would perhaps have been bearable had peasants experienced returns such as improved public health and education and more agricultural infrastructure. In the absence of such tangible benefits, the peasants saw their incomes as subsidizing what Chen and Wu describe as the monstrous growth of the bureaucracy and the metastasizing number of officials who seemed to have no other function than to extract more and more from them. Aside from being subjected to higher input prices, lower prices for their goods, and more intensive taxation, peasants have borne the brunt of the urbanindustrial focus of economic strategy in other ways. According to one report, 40 million peasants have been forced off their land to make way for roads, airports, dams, factories, and other public and private investments, with an additional two million to be displaced each year. Other researchers cite a much higher figure of 70 million households, meaning that, calculating 4.5 persons per household, by 2004, as many as 315 million people may have been displaced by land grabs. The Impact of Trade Liberalization But the impact of all these forces may yet be dwarfed by that of China’s commitment to eliminate agricultural quotas and reduce tariffs, made when it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The cost of admission for China is proving to be huge and disproportionate. The government slashed the average agricultural tariff from 54 percent to 15.3 percent, compared with the world average of 62 percent, prompting the commerce
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minister to boast (or complain): Not a single member in the WTO history has made such a huge cut [in tariffs] in such a short period of time.” The WTO deal reflects China’s current priorities. If the government has chosen to put at risk large sections of its agriculture, such as soybeans and cotton, this is because the party wants to open up or keep open global markets for its industrial exports. The social consequences of this trade-off are still to be fully felt, but the immediate effects were alarming. In 2004, after years of being a net food exporter, China registered a deficit in its agricultural trade. Cotton imports had skyrocketed from 11,300 tons in 2001 to 1.98 million tons in 2004, a 175-fold increase. Chinese sugarcane, soybean, and most of all, cotton farmers were devastated. In 2005, according to Oxfam Hong Kong, imports of cheap U.S. cotton resulted in a loss of $208 million in income for Chinese peasants, along with 720,000 jobs. Trade liberalization is also likely to have contributed to the dramatic slowdown in poverty reduction in the period between 2000 and 2004. Loosening the Property Regime In the past few years, the priority placed on a capitalist transformation of the countryside to support export-oriented industrialization has moved the party to promote not only agricultural trade liberalization but a loosening of a semisocialist property regime that favored peasants and small farmers. The process has involved easing public controls over land in order to move toward a fullfledged private property regime. The idea is to allow the sale of land rights (the creation of a land market) so that the most efficient producers can expand their holdings. In the euphemistic words of a U.S. Department of Agriculture publication, China is strengthening farmers’ rights - although stopping short of allowing full ownership of land - so farmers can rent land, consolidate their holdings, and achieve efficiencies in size and scale.” The liberalization of land rights included the passage of the Agricultural Lease Law in 2003, which curtailed the village authorities’ ability to reallocate land and gave farmers the right to inherit and sell continued next page
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continued from page 2 leaseholds for arable land for thirty years. With the buying and selling of rights to use land, private property in land was essentially re-established in China. In talking about “family farms” and “largescale farmers,” the Chinese Communist Party was, in fact, endorsing a capitalist development path to supplant one that had been based on small-scale peasant agriculture. As one partisan of the new policy argued, “The reform would create both an economy of scale -raising efficiency and lowering agricultural production costs - but also resolve the problem of idle land left by migrants to the cities”. Despite the assurance by the party that it was institutionalizing the peasants’ rights to land, many feared that the new policy would legalize the process of illegal land grabbing that had been occurring on a wide scale. This would, they warned, create a few landlords and many landless farmers who will have no means of living. Given the turbulent transformation of the countryside by the full-scale unleashing of capitalist relations of production in other countries, these fears were not misplaced.
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In sum, simply allocating money to boost rural demand is unlikely to counteract the massive weight of the economic and social structures created by policies that subordinated the development of the countryside to export-oriented industrialization. These policies have contributed to greater inequality between urban and rural incomes and stalled the reduction of poverty in the rural areas. To enable the rural areas of China to serve as the launching pad for national and global recovery would entail a fundamental policy shift, and the government would have to go against the interests, both local and foreign, that have congealed around the strategy of foreign-capital-dependent, exportoriented industrialization. Beijing has talked a lot about a “New Deal”for the countryside over the last few years, but there are few signs that it has the political will to adopt policies that would translate its rhetoric into reality. 19 May 2009 Walden Bello is a member of the Philippine House of Representatives, president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, and senior
analyst of the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South. The issues touched on in this commentary are discussed in greater depth in the author’s book The Food Wars, published by Verso, available by July 2009. References: Ho Fung Hung, “Rise of China and the Global Overaccumulation Crisis,”Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 15, No. 8 (May 2008). Chen Guidi and Wu Chantao, Will the Boat Sink the Water? (New York: Public Affairs, 2006). C. Fred Bergsten, Bates Gill, Nicholas Lardy, and Derek Mitchell, China: the Balance Sheet (New York: Public Affairs, 2006). Bryan Lohmar and Fred Gale, “Who Will China Feed?”Amber Waves, June 2008, http:// www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/June08/ Features/ChinaFeed.htm. Lu Zixiu, an expert on rural affairs, quoted in Antonaneta Bezlova, “Flirting with Land Tenure Reforms,”Inter-Press Service, October 13, 2008. “China Liberalizes Farmers’Land Use Right to Boost Rural Development,”Xinhua, October 19, 2008; http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/ 2008-10/19/content_10218172.htm. Source: http://focusweb.org/will-china-savethe-world-from-depression.html?Itemid=1 This article appeared originally in Foreign Policy in Focus, May 19, 2009
STATEMENT POLITICAL POLARIZATION Wrong means lead to wrong ends. The imbroglio in Perak illustrates this. Because acquiring power through the back door is unethical, it was bound to create a crisis sooner or later. Defections within our legislatures, whatever the motive, is one of the less savoury aspects of Malaysian politics. Since 1961 when defections brought down a democratically elected government in Trengganu, there have been various other episodes which reveal that ugly side of our face. Legislators have been locked in and locked out; enticed and abducted; bribed and bullied, in the power game. It is because this type of politics sullies the image of the nation in the eyes of both citizens and non-citizens that we should go all out to curb its practice. One of the measures that has been proposed is a law to check defections. There are a number of countries which have
introduced anti-defection legislation such as India, South Africa and the Fijis. However, more than legislation, it is the good example of leaders in both government and opposition, the determination of civil society actors to adhere to the principle of integrity, and continuous, systematic public education that will help isolate and marginalise unscrupulous political practices. Unfortunately, this will not happen as long as a significant segment of our society adopts a biased, one- sided attitude towards issues of ethics and integrity in politics and public life. Thus, defections are alright as long as they benefit one’s side. It is not just politicians who are guilty of such blatant biases. Civil society groups, professional bodies and individuals who project themselves as the conscience of the nation were either silent or supportive of the Machiavellian manoeuvres of a Pakatan Rakyat(PR)
leader to engineer the fall of the Barisan Nasional government at the federal level last year through massive defections to the PR Opposition. And yet they were livid with rage when the BN succeeded in enticing PR Assembly members in Perak to cross over to the BN and oust PR from office. Double standards and selective condemnation pervade public life. The lack of accountability on the part of the group that one supports is downplayed or even ignored altogether. When one’s opponent exhibits the same trait in a similar situation, it becomes a major moral issue. If one’s own side resorts to violence, it is forgiven. If the other side retaliates, it is denounced as “barbarism”. It is the same mentality that hails a judicial decision in favour of one’s group “as a great judgment” reflecting “the continued next page
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continued from page 3 independence of the judiciary” and the next day assails another decision by some other judicial panel which may not be in its interest as proof that the Judiciary is subservient to the Executive. People with such biases forget that the worth and value of a judgment is not whether it benefits a particular party or not. What really matters is whether the judgment inclines towards truth and justice. It appears that a lot of educated
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Malaysians are no longer capable of evaluating important political issues in a just and fair manner. Their political biases have become so pronounced that anything that party X does is good and everything that party Y does is bad. To a large extent this bias is reflected in their support for, and opposition to, the BN and PR.
undermines the ethical fabric of the nation.
Polarization in attitudes and positions centering around party politics on such a vast scale is a new phenomenon in Malaysian society. It subordinates truth and justice to partisan politics and
Dr. Chandra Muzaffar. President, International Movement for a Just World (JUST), 13 May 2009.
Perhaps one of the ways of narrowing the chasm that divides our people today is a unifying vision that transcends political party loyalties.
ARTICLES PAKISTAN WAR FUELS INTERNATIONAL TENSIONS By Peter Symonds Comments by China’s ambassador in Islamabad last Thursday (7 May 2009) highlight the reckless character of the Obama administration’s escalating intervention in Pakistan. By pressuring Islamabad to wage an all-out military offensive against Islamic insurgents in the Swat Valley and neighbouring districts, Washington is not only destabilising Pakistan but raising tensions in a highly volatile area. Speaking to Pakistani business leaders, Chinese ambassador Luo Zhaohui pointedly voiced concern about the growth of “outside influence” in the region. He singled out the US in particular, saying that China was worried about US policies and the presence of a large number of foreign troops in neighbouring Afghanistan. While reiterating China’s support for “the fight against terror,” Luo declared that US strategies needed some “corrective measures”. He added, “These are issues of serious concern for China.” Luo’s unusually blunt remarks came just one day after US President Obama spoke to his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao. While a number of issues were discussed, the escalating war in Pakistan was clearly high on the agenda. This first publicised phone call between the two men came as Obama met with the Afghan and Pakistani presidents over US strategy in the two countries. While Hu reportedly offered his cooperation, Luo’s comments express China’s underlying fears over growing US
influence in South Asia. Last week’s tripartite summit in Washington signalled a major upsurge in military violence in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Under intense pressure from the US, the Pakistani army has launched a large-scale offensive against militants in the Swat Valley in which hundreds have already died and hundreds of thousands of civilians have been forced to flee. The summit, however, involved more than discussions on military cooperation, outlining comprehensive plans for the closer economic and strategic integration of the two countries into an American sphere of influence. China, which has longstanding ties with Pakistan, is obviously disturbed by these developments. As Ambassador Luo told his business audience, more than 60 Chinese companies are involved in 122 projects in Pakistan. He noted the “close liaison” with Pakistan over the security of over 10,000 Chinese engineers and technical experts in the country. In fact, Beijing has previously insisted on reprisals over the abduction and killing of Chinese citizens by Pakistani militants as well as military action against Islamic Uighur separatists from western China taking refuge in Pakistan. More fundamentally, Beijing regards Islamabad as a crucial partner in its own regional strategy. China devoted considerable resources to building up Pakistan as a counterweight to India after the 1962 Sino-Indian border war. Pakistan
is the largest purchaser of Chinese arms and, according to the Pentagon, accounted for 36 percent of China’s military exports between 2003 and 2007. Chinese technical assistance was critical to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs. In return, China received the green light to build a major naval/commercial port facility at Gwadar, a coastal town in Baluchistan. The port is the linchpin of Beijing’s “string of pearls” strategy to establish access for its expanding navy to a series of ports along key sea routes across the Indian Ocean—above all, to protect oil and gas supplies from the Middle East and Africa. For its part, the US, which regards China as a rising economic and strategic rival, is determined to maintain its military, including naval, predominance. US-China tensions over Pakistan only highlight the deeply destabilising role of Washington’s aggressive intervention, firstly in subjugating Afghanistan, and now in seeking to bring Pakistan more directly under its sway. The escalating conflict in Pakistan is a direct product of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, which the Bush administration forced Pakistan to support under the threat of becoming a military target itself. Widespread opposition inside Pakistan and Afghanistan to US actions has fuelled a growing insurgency that threatens not only the US occupation of continued next page
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continued from page 4 Afghanistan, but a full-scale civil war in Pakistan. US imperialism, under the Obama administration, is determined to exploit the very disasters it has created in order to advance its strategic interests throughout the broader region, especially in energy-rich Central Asia. By doing so, Washington is fundamentally altering the precarious strategic balance and threatening to draw the other major powers into the vortex. China is not alone in its fear of US designs in Central Asia and the presence of large numbers of foreign troops in Afghanistan. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the US has been seeking to establish military alliances and economic ties with the newly established Central Asian Republics. Washington exploited its invasion of Afghanistan to establish military bases in Central Asia for the first time. Afghanistan and Pakistan also provided a potential alternate pipeline route to extract energy riches from the region. In response, China and Russia, which both regard the region as their backyard, came together in the Shanghai
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Cooperation Group to counter expanding American influence. Neighbouring India is also watching events in Pakistan with trepidation. While quietly applauding Washington’s
pressure on Islamabad to wage war against “terrorism”, New Delhi is concerned that Pakistan’s closer incorporation under the American umbrella may lead to the downgrading of the US-Indian strategic partnership, which only developed in the late 1990s. The weakening of rival Pakistan, against which India has fought three wars, is no doubt welcomed in New Delhi. But its replacement by a US client state, or worse its collapse into chaos, would only confront the Indian establishment with new uncertainties.
The entire region remains a potential powder keg. The Cold War certainties that divided the world between the Soviet and Western blocs have been replaced by new tensions and rivalries. Tentative steps by India and Pakistan to resolve their longstanding disputes, especially over Kashmir, have all but stalled. Efforts by China and India to improve relations have moved slowly. Each continues to eye the other with suspicion and to intrigue at each other’s expense in Nepal, Sri Lanka and Burma. The most explosive ingredient in this volatile mixture is the attempt by US imperialism to use its military superiority to offset its long-term economic decline. Far from easing tensions, the installation of the Obama administration marked an aggressive new turn in the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan aimed at advancing US ambitions. Last week’s comments by China’s ambassador are another sign that Washington’s moves will not go unopposed. 11 May 2009
Source: http://wsws.org/articles/2009/ may2009/pers-m11.shtml
CALM VOICE, BIG STICK By Uri Avnery Barack Obama is often compared to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but it is from the book of another Roosevelt that he has taken a leaf: President Theodore Roosevelt, who, 108 years ago, advised his successors: “Speak softly and carry a big stick!”. This week, the whole world saw how this is done. Obama sat in the Oval Office side by side with Binyamin Netanyahu and spoke to the journalists. He was earnest, but relaxed. The body language spoke clearly: while Netanyahu leaned forward assiduously, like a traveling salesman peddling his merchandise, Obama leaned back, tranquil and self-assured. He spoke softly, very softly. But leaning against the wall behind him, hidden by the flag, was a very big stick indeed. The world wanted, of course, to know what went on between the two when they met alone.
Coming home, Netanyahu strenuously tried to present the meeting as a great success. But after the spotlights turned off and the red carpet rolled up, we can examine what we have really seen and heard. Among his great achievements, Netanyahu emphasized the Iranian issue. “We have reached complete agreement”, he proudly announced time and again. Agreement on what? On the need to prevent Iran from getting a “military nuclear capability”. Just a moment. What is that we hear, military? Where did this word creep up from? Until now, all Israeli governments have insisted that Iran must be prevented from acquiring any nuclear capability at all. The new formula means that the Netanyahu government now accepts Iran having a “non-military” - which is never
very far from a “military” - nuclear capability. This is not Netanyahu’s only defeat on the Iranian issue. Before his trip, he demanded that Obama give Iran just three months, “until October”, and that after this “all the options would be on the table”. An ultimatum that included a military threat. Nothing of this remains. Obama said that he would conduct a dialogue with Iran until the end of the year, and that he would then assess what had been achieved and consider what to do next. If he came to the conclusion that there had been no progress, he would take further steps, including the imposition of more stringent sanctions. The military option has disappeared. True, before the meeting Obama told a newspaper that “all the options are on the table”, but the fact that he did not repeat this in Netanyahu’s continued next page
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presence speaks volumes. No doubt Netanyahu asked for permission to attack Iran, or - at the very least - to threaten such an attack. The answer was a flat No. Obama is resolved to prevent an Israeli attack. He has warned the Israeli government unequivocally. Just to make sure that the message has been properly absorbed, he sent the CIA chief to Israel to deliver the message personally to every Israeli leader. The Israeli plan for a military attack on Iran has been taken off the table - if it was ever lying there. Netanyahu wanted to connect Iran with the Palestinian issue, in a negative way: as long as the Iranian danger exists, the Palestinian matter cannot be dealt with. Obama has turned the formula upside down and made a positive connection: progress on the Palestinian issue is a precondition to progress on the Iranian one. That makes sense: the unsolved conflict is fuelling Iran, provides it with a reason to menace Israel and weakens the opposition of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to Iran’s ambitions. Obama’s main message concerned one issue that returned to center stage this week: settlements. This word almost disappeared during the reign of Bush the Younger. True, all US administrations have opposed the enlargement of the settlements, but since the failed attempt by James Baker, the Secretary of State of Bush the Elder, to impose sanctions on Israel, no one has dared to do anything about them. In Washington they mumbled, on the ground they built. In Jerusalem they dissimulated, and on the ground they built. As a senior Palestinian put it: “We are negotiating about dividing the pizza, and in the meantime Israel is eating it”.” It has to be repeated again and again: the settlements are a disaster for the Palestinians, a disaster for peace and a double and triple disaster for Israel. First, because their main aim is to make the establishment of a Palestinian state impossible, and thus prevent peace
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forever. Second, because they suck the marrow out of the Israeli economy and swallow resources that should be used to help the poor. Third: because the settlements undermine the rule of law in Israel, they spread the cancer of fascism and push the whole political system to the right. Therefore Obama is right when he puts the settlement issue ahead of everything else, even ahead of the peace negotiations. A total cessation of building in the settlements comes before anything else. When a body is bleeding, the flow has to be stopped before the disease can be treated. Otherwise the patient will die of loss of blood and there won’t be anybody left to treat. This is precisely the aim of Netanyahu.
A R T I C L E S and manned it with soldiers disguised as settlers, so it can be demolished every time there is pressure from America. Afterwards the soldiers build it up again, ready for use the next time pressure is exerted.) Refusal to freeze the settlements means refusal to accept the two-state solution. Instead, Netanyahu juggled with empty slogans. He spoke about “two peoples living together in peace”, but refused to speak about a Palestinian state. One of his aides called the demand for two states a “childish game”. But this is not a childish game at all. It has already been proven that negotiations, the aim of which has not been defined in advance, do not lead anywhere. The Oslo agreement collapsed for precisely this reason. Netanyahu hopes that the next round of negotiations will also founder because of this. He has not presented a plan of his own. Not because he has no plan, but because he knows that nobody would accept it.
This is why Netanyahu has refused to accede to the request. Otherwise his coalition would have fallen apart and he would be compelled to resign or set up an alternative coalition with Kadima. The hapless Tzipi Livni, who has not found a role in opposition, would probably jump at the opportunity. Netanyahu will try to use Barak against Barack. With the help of Ehud Barak he is putting on a performance of “demolishing outposts”, in order to divert attention from the ongoing building in the settlements. We shall see whether this ploy succeeds and whether the settlers’ leadership will play their part in this charade. The day after Netanyahu’s return, Barak demolished for the seventh time (!) Maoz Esther, an outpost consisting of seven wooden huts. Within hours, the settlers returned to the place. (The Israeli army has built an entire Arab village in the Negev for training purposes. Somebody joked this week that the army has also built this outpost
Netanyahu’s plan is: total Israeli control over all the country between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Unlimited Jewish settlement everywhere. Limited self-government for a number of Palestinian enclaves with a dense Palestinian population, which will be surrounded by settlements. All of Jerusalem to remain part of Israel. Not a single Palestinian refugee to return to the territory of Israel This merchandise will find no buyers in the whole wide world. So Netanyahu, a professional salesman, tries to wrap it in an attractive package. For example: the Palestinians will “govern themselves”. Where exactly? Where will the borders run? He has already pronounced that the Palestinians cannot have control over “their airspace or their border crossings”. A state without a military and without control over its airspace and border crossings that looks suspiciously like the Bantustans of the late racist apartheid regime in South Africa. I would not be surprised if at some point in the future Netanyahu starts to call continued next page
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continued from page 6 these native reservations “a Palestinian state”. In the meanwhile he tries to gain time and postpone the negotiations as long as possible. He demands that the Palestinians recognize Israel as “the state of the Jewish people”, expecting and hoping that they will reject this with both hands. And indeed, accepting it would mean giving up in advance their main card - the refugee issue - and also sticking a knife in the back of the 1.5 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. Netanyahu is ready to accept Obama’s proposal to involve the Arab and other Muslim states in the peace process - an idea that has always been rigorously rejected by all Israel governments. But that is just one more of the rabbits that he will pull out of his hat from time to time in order to delay everything. Before dozens of Arab and perhaps more than fifty Muslim states decide whether to join the process, months, perhaps years, will pass. And in the meantime, Netanyahu demands from them an advance payment in the form of normalization - which means that the entire Arab and Muslim world would give up their only card without getting anything in return. Pure baksheesh.
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That is Netanyahu’s working plan. Does Obama have a peace plan of his own? If one puts all his statements of the last few days together, it seems that he has. When he speaks about “two states for two peoples”, he practically accepts the peace plan that has by now become a world-wide consensus: as the “parameters” put forward by Bill Clinton in his last days in office, as the core of the Saudi peace proposal and as the peace plans of the Israeli peace movement (the draft peace agreement of Gush Shalom, the Geneva initiative, the Ayalon-Nusseibeh statement and more.) In short: a sovereign and viable State of Palestine side by side with Israel, the pre1967 borders with minor and agreed exchanges of territory, the dismantling of all the settlements that will not be joined to Israel in the territory exchanges, East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine and West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a mutually acceptable solution to the refugee problem, a safe passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, mutual security arrangements. In the meantime, throughout the world there is a growing consensus that the
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A R T I C L E S only way to get the wheels of peace moving again is for Obama to publish his peace plan and call upon both sides to accept it. If need be, in popular referendums. He could do this in the speech he is due to deliver in two weeks time in Cairo, during his first presidential trip to the Middle East. Not by accident, he will not come to Israel during this trip, something that is almost unprecedented for a US president. To do this, he must be ready to take on the powerful Israeli lobby. It seems that he is ready for that. The last president who dared to do this was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who compelled Israel to give back the Sinai straight after the 1956 war. “Ike” was so popular that he was not afraid of the lobby. Obama is no less popular, and perhaps he will dare, too. As “Teddy” Roosevelt indicated: when you have a big stick, you don’t have to wave it. You can afford to speak softly. I hope Obama will indeed speak softly but clearly and unambiguously. 23 May 2009 Uri Avnery is a stalwart human rights activist in Israel. Source: www.avnery-news.co.il/english/
MUSLIM WORLD:
SOME REFLECTIONS By Abdullah Al-Ahsan Among the many problems that the Obama Administration has inherited from the Bush Administration is the vexatious question of US relations with the Muslim world. The issue was so central that the new President had to touch on the subject while describing the general orientation of his Administration during his inaugural address. On top of the appointment of a very senior politician as his Secretary of State, the President has appointed two senior envoys to deal with two major Muslim world related issues. Although the Palestinian crisis is undoubtedly the main predicament in US-Muslim world relations, the Afghan issue seems to occupy an important place. The US is increasingly encountering more resistance and has decided to send more troops to the
region. The US Administration has entangled Pakistan into the conflict and has appointed a senior diplomat to handle the situation. In this essay, we shall concentrate on the situation in Afghanistan. However, the general problem of the Muslim world relates to the idea of a clash of civilizations, and the Obama Administration inherited the clash of civilizations scenario in the context of the Muslim world. Obama’s selection of Turkey as the first Muslim country to visit was an excellent one. This is not only because of Turkey’s geo-political importance – situated as it is on the common meeting ground of Islamic, Orthodox and Western civilizations, but also because it was the last major Muslim power in history. Turkey has the
experience of dealing with many nationalities and ethnicities. President Obama’s statement that there was no enmity between Islam and the US delivered from the Turkish parliament was a very appropriate declaration. For Muslims, both in the US and the rest of the world, it was a much admired act of reconciliation. However, the new announcement that the president would make his policy speech on the relationship between US and the Muslim world from Cairo, Egypt has not gone down well in the Muslim world. This is because although Egypt also played a somewhat important role in Muslim history, it is not a respectable entity in the Muslim world today. Egypt lost its credibility continued next page
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continued from page 7 in the eyes of most Muslims when in 1978 it defied Arab and Muslim opinion and established diplomatic relations with Israel. Egypt was immediately expelled from both the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC). Although Egypt was accepted back in the Arab and Muslim blocs within a few years, in the process the two Muslim inter-governmental organizations lost their legitimacy in the eyes of common Muslims. More recently, Egypt’s behavior toward the people of Gaza has angered many Muslims all over the world. Therefore, any attempt by the Obama Administration to legitimize Egypt in Muslim political affairs will only harm the reconciliation process.
The conflict in Afghanistan seems to have become a major challenge for the Obama Administration. The Administration has drafted Pakistan and has committed more troops in Afghanistan. Drafting Pakistan into the conflict was perhaps necessary because of geographical and historical ties between the two entities. However, as soon as the US appointed a senior diplomat to Pakistan, the Administration came under pressure from Pakistan’s neighbor and traditional adversary – India— and pro-Indian lobby groups in Washington to drop the Kashmir conflict1 from the list of assignments for the new envoy. By acceding to their demand, the Obama Administration was conceding defeat , for the question of Kashmir is a matter of selfdetermination. This raises a most challenging question: What does the US stand for? Hasn’t it declared a commitment to introduce democracy in the Muslim world? What is democracy? Doesn’t democracy mean a human being’s right to choose? If democracy means the right of selfdetermination, why are the people of Kashmir denied that right? The Obama Administration must be prepared to respond to these questions, for militants never forget to raise them. There can’t be any military solution to the current Afghan-Pakistan crisis. The history of the region provides a lot of evidence in support of this assertion. Yet it seems that the Administration is pursuing the military option. It is quite possible that Pakistani
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armed forces would capture the whole tribal belt between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but one must realize that the real battle may begin only after such a military victory. And the conflict will not remain within the boundaries of Afghanistan and Pakistan; it will spill over to neighboring countries and beyond. One will always be able to find evidence of corruption and oppression (zulm) to engage in a liberation struggle (jihad) against new administrations in the region. One may argue that democratically elected governments would be able to
control any such uprising in the name of nationalism or religion, but in our opinion, one must examine how democratic these governments are. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, where elections have been conducted during the past year, the parties that lobbied in Washington have been elected and have formed government. But do these “elected governments” really represent the people? One must examine this thoroughly. The cultivation of democracy must be genuine. In other words, militants must be engaged in debate and discussion. One must keep militants; be they Taliban or al-Qaeda. The militants will not be able to legitimize their activities on the basis of Islamic sources in public. It appears that some Christian evangelists with the NATO and US troops have made it easier for the militants to draw fresh recruits to their cause. According to some reports these evangelists are circulating Bibles translated into Pashtu and Dari languages among the Afghan people, thus providing the militants with ammunition. Also corruption and nepotism among Afghan politicians are so rampant that one doesn’t even need to substantiate such claims. Is the Obama Administration ready for all
A R T I C L E S these challenges? One corollary of this problem is the role of the international press and think-tanks that focus on the region. Many of the news agencies and think-tanks seem to have been infiltrated by mercenary writers. Policy-makers must be careful about reports from the field. It is alleged in the media for instance that the militants are better equipped than the Pakistan armed forces. If this is true, how did the militants acquire their arms? It is an indication of the failure of official spy-agencies. Apparently hundreds of NGOs are working in the area. Are they all committed to bringing peace to the region? Policy-makers should be alert to, and aware of, realities on the ground. The Obama Administration should also consider replacing NATO troops in Afghanistan with OIC troops. Moderate Muslim countries such as Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh etc may be able to do a better job than the NATO troops. The OIC currently doesn’t have a military mandate. But creating one should not be difficult, if the US gives the green light. In fact, empowering the OIC in this manner would convey the impression that the OIC is part of the solution when it comes to conflicts involving Muslims. There should also be more investment in education. This can be done by opening schools throughout the region. Also there is a need to create an unbiased media. Public debates should be encouraged on subjects such as Islam and democracy. Most importantly, cultivate transparency in government policies and encourage public debate on government policies. Cultivate the culture of “do what you say” or “walk the talk.” This is in accordance with both Qur’anic guidance as well as modern democratic principles. 1 June 2009 Dr. Abdullah Al-Ahsan is JUST VicePresident and Professor of History at the International Islamic University, Malaysia. (Footnotes) 1
Palestine and Kashmir are two questions which have remained unresolved at the UN ever since the international body was founded following WWII.
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TRANSFORMING A NATION: BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION IN VENEZUELA By Chandra Muzaffar
Venezuela is in the throes of change. President Hugo Chavez Frias is determined to transform a society of extreme inequalities into an egalitarian nation where justice reigns supreme. He has christened his mission to transform Venezuela ‘The Bolivarian Revolution’, after the nineteenth century South American revolutionary, Simon Bolivar, who sought to liberate the continent from colonial rule. The ideological thrust of Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution is socialism, more precisely, twenty-first century socialism. The Revolution began in 1998, the year Chavez came to power through the ballot-box.
Economic and Social Changes It is irrefutably true that in the last eleven years Venezuela has witnessed tremendous change. In 1998, 48.1 percent of the population in the world’s fifth biggest exporter of oil lived below the poverty-line. Today, the figure is 33.1 percent. Unemployment has been reduced to 6.3 percent which, according to Venezuela’s National Institute of Statistics, is the lowest in the country’s history. Inflation which in the early nineties averaged 59.4 percent now stands at 19.6 percent. The minimum wage of 286 US dollars a month is one of the highest in the continent. In the last 5 years, Venezuela has also recorded the highest growth rate in South and Central America —a GDP of 11.8 percent. It has also succeeded under Chavez to free itself from debt to both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. At the same time, Venezuela’s infant
mortality rate which was 21.4 out of 1,000 children in 1998 has now been reduced to 13.8 out of 1000. In 1997-8, a little more than 6 million children were in school. In 2006-7, the total number of school going children had reached more than 11.8 million. The student enrolment in colleges and universities in 1998 was about 668,000 ; in 2008, it had exceeded 1.7 million. Democracy What is impressive about Venezuela’s socio-economic progress in the last eleven years is that it has been achieved within a democratic environment. Chavez’s policies have been under constant scrutiny by large segments of a media that is often hostile to the man. Since 1998, elections and referenda held at least a dozen times have provided the people with the opportunity to evaluate the Administration. A strong political opposition, an independent National Assembly and an autonomous judiciary have further reinforced the democratic sinews of Venezuelan society. Indeed, there are observers who argue that democracy itself has been abused by Chavez’s adversaries. Some of them own and control influential outlets within the private media which are unrelenting in their attempts to undermine the Chavez leadership. A lot of the NGOs are also aligned to his adversaries. I was surprised to learn that even the universities — a majority of them— display varying degrees of antipathy towards the President. For many of them, the primary reason for their opposition is their fear that Chavez’s pro-poor policies would be antithetical to their interests. Their sole aim is to protect their power, wealth and privilege at all costs. A substantial portion of these anti-Chavez forces are linked in one way or another to the Washington elite and allied groups who also view him as a threat to their hegemonic power. Popular Support This explains why both domestic and
foreign forces colluded to overthrow Chavez in April 2002. They failed because the people, especially the poor, rallied around their President and restored him to power. Never before in history have ordinary unarmed people played such a decisive role in defeating a coup. Since 2002, Chavez’s authority and influence have grown significantly. In a 2008 referendum that sought to remove restrictions on the tenure of the presidency, he obtained a clear-cut endorsement from the people. Chavez and his ruling party are now engaged in a massive exercise to mould popular consciousness on behalf of the Bolivarian Revolution and its ideals of justice, equality and human dignity. The university that I spoke at — the Universidad Nacional Experimental Politecnica de la Fuerza Armada (UNEFA)— in Caracas on 25 March 2009 is one of the few institutions of higher learning that is actively involved in propagating the ideals of the Bolivarian Revolution. The theme of my hour-long lecture was “ A Spiritual-Moral Response to an Empire in Crisis.” The depth and maturity of the questions and comments from the audience — more than 500 postgraduate students and academics— impressed me. UNEFA was gracious enough to confer the title of “ Honorary Professor” on me. Regional Initiatives From our reflections so far on Chavez’s Bolivarian mission, it is obvious that he is faced with huge obstacles. And yet he perseveres. His tenacity is also reflected in his regional and international policies. It was Chavez, together with the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, who initiated the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) in 2004. Apart from Cuba and Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and the Commonwealth of Dominica have now joined ALBA. ALBA seeks to develop regional cooperation on a different basis, with the emphasis upon the people’s real needs and aspirations. Thus, Cuba sends thousands of doctors and teachers to continued next page
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continued from page 9 Venezuela which is trying so hard to improve its primary health care system and to expand educational opportunities while Cuba receives in exchange from Venezuela oil at a preferential price to enhance its economic development. ALBA has also formulated a treaty on food security which will encourage greater food production among ALBA members. Another important ALBA project is the ALBA Bank which will try to ensure that the huge capital generated by countries in the region is retained within the region, and channeled to finance grassroots programmes that will bring direct, tangible benefits to the poor. Even before ALBA was launched, a regional television network was established. Telesur, based in Venezuela, has become the favourite channel for millions in South and Central America. Opposing Neo-Liberal Capitalism and Hegemony If Telesur and other regional initiatives have struck root, it is partly because the political mood in much of the region has changed dramatically in the last five to seven years. A number of governments – Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay, and to a lesser degree, Chile and Argentina – are all opposed to ‘The Washington Consensus’ also known as Neo-liberal Capitalism which had wrought so much havoc upon their economies from the eighties onwards. The chasm separating an opulent elite and the disenfranchised masses in most countries in South and Central America – which had all paid obeisance to neoliberal capitalism – had become so obscene that the ruling classes had very little credibility left. The people wanted alternatives that would ensure justice for the majority and at the same time safeguard national sovereignty and independence. For a lot of them, the only example of a nation in their region that had succeeded in defending its sovereignty against attacks from the greatest hegemonic power on earth was Cuba. Hugo Chavez in particular sought inspiration from the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro. In a number of speeches, he has acknowledged the intellectual and moral debt that he owes Fidel.
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It is because of Chavez’s determination to stand up to Washington helmed hegemony that he has also forged warm ties with countries like Iran. Their cooperation and collaboration began in OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) and has deepened in recent years. Washington’s targeting of both countries has in fact brought them closer together. Trade and investment between Venezuela and Iran has blossomed. They even operate a joint bank to facilitate bilateral activities. More than bilateral relations, what really impacted upon the people of Iran and indeed, Muslims everywhere, was the courage that Chavez exhibited when he cut off diplomatic ties with Israel at the height of Israel’s brutal assault upon the defenceless people of Gaza at the end of December 2008 and the beginning of January 2009. Instantaneously he became a hero in Muslim eyes. They did not hesitate to compare him to their own gutless leaders who were ever ready to toady to Israeli and Western governments in the midst of the Gaza assault. With Chavez and Gaza as the backdrop, I alluded to the importance of courage in the struggle against global hegemony in my second talk in Venezuela to the Institute de Altos Estudies Diplomaticos ( Institute of Diplomacy) on 26 March. The talk entitled “ The Role of the Global South in Overcoming Global Hegemony” was attended by officials of the Ministry of External Relations and a handful of academics. The last two days of my 5 day trip to Venezuela were spent acquainting myself with some of the country’s cultural and developmental projects. The trip (my wife had accompanied me) was at the invitation of Venezuela’s Ministry of External Relations. We were in Bogota, Colombia before that to participate in an international meeting on resistance to empire (see ‘The Bogota Declaration’, JUST Commentary Vol. 9, No. 4, April 2009). Conclusion There is no doubt at all that Venezuela under Hugo Chavez has taken huge strides in redressing the injustices of the past. No other President has done as much in mobilizing and directing the
A R T I C L E S nation’s massive oil wealth for the benefit of the poor and powerless masses. By the same token, Chavez is the first Venezuelan president to fight US hegemony over his country and the region with such courage, energy and dedication. Through concrete, tangible measures, he has forged a formidable alliance against US hegemony which has the potential of changing not just regional politics but also the present pattern of international relations. But Chavez knows more than anyone else that both in the domestic arena and at the regional and international level, the forces that are arraigned against him are as determined as ever to weaken his base and to topple him. After 11 years in power, he is still not out of the woods. The evil plotters are waiting in the wings. Chavez is faced with other less serious challenges as well. On the domestic front, he is very conscious of the fact that corruption, the lack of social discipline and bureaucratic incompetence may derail some of his lofty plans for the people. Attempts to check these ills have yet to yield results. These ills are related in a sense to a larger question. Since Chavez’s socialism accepts private enterprise, how will it balance the relationship between the public and private sectors? Will it strike a happy equilibrium which harnesses the strengths of each sector while minimizing the weaknesses of both? It is still not clear how the Venezuelan government will achieve this much needed equilibrium. Will it be easier to achieve this equilibrium if one’s commitment is to certain universal spiritual and moral values rather than to an ideology or dogma such as socialism? In other words, values such as honesty and trustworthiness or a sense of responsibility should be held in esteem for what they are, regardless of whether they emanate from a public official or a private entrepreneur. Can we expect such an approach from a leadership which worships a particular ideology? Isn’t a critical, evaluative attitude towards socialism itself — given its successes and failures over so many decades— a pre-requisite for the triumph of Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution?
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THE DAY OF THE DEAD By Cindy Sheehan I was on an airplane flying to Orange County from Sacramento to attend the al-Awda Conference, which is a Palestinian Right’s Conference (al-Awda translates to “The Returning”), when the pilot’s voice filled the cabin to make an announcement that I think went unnoticed by most of my fellow passengers, but I heard it. As the plane was on the approach to John Wayne airport, the Captain came on the intercom to remind us all to “remember our brave troops who have died for our freedom.” Even in this post 9-11 paranoid paradigm, if I wasn’t belted in for landing, I would have popped out of my seat at 13D and charged up to the cockpit to let the pilot know that my son was killed in Iraq and not one person anywhere in this world is one iota more free because he is dead. As a matter of fact, the people of Iraq, the foreign country thousands of miles away where my oldest child’s brains, blood and life seeped into the soil, are not freer, unless one counts being liberated from life, liberty and property being free. If you consider torture and indefinite detention freedom, then the pilot may have been right, but then again, even if you do consider those crimes freedom, it does not make it so. Here in America we are definitely not freer because my son died, as a matter of fact, our nation can spy on us and our communications without a warrant or just cause, and we can’t even bring a 3.6 ounce bottle of hand cream into an airport, or walk through a metal detector with our shoes on. Even if we do want to exercise our Bill of Rights, we are shoved into pre-designated “free speech” zones (NewSpeak for; STFU, unless you are well out of the way of what you want to protest and shoved into pens like cattle being led to slaughter), and oftentimes brutally treated if we decide we are entitled to “free speech” on every inch of American soil. If you watch any one of the cable news networks this weekend between doing holiday weekend things, you will be subjected to images of row upon row of white headstones of dead US military lined up in perfect formation in the
afterlife as they were in life. Patriotic music will swell and we will be reminded in script font to “Remember our heroes,” or some such BS as that. Before Casey was killed, a message like that would barely register in my consciousness as I rushed around preparing for Casey’s birthday bar-beque that became a family tradition since he was born on Memorial Day in 1979. If I had a vision of how Memorial Day and Casey’s birthday would change for my family, I would have fled these violent shores to protect what was mine, not this murderous country’s. Be my guest; look at those headstones with pride or indifference. I look at them now with horror, regret, pain and a longing for justice. I can guarantee what you won’t see this holiday weekend are images of the over one million Iraqi dead. Say we assign, in an arbitrary way for purely illustrative purposes, an average height of five feet for every person killed in Iraq and then line those people up from head to toe. That gruesome line would stretch from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon... 950 driving miles up Interstate 5. If we count the Iraqis who have been forced to flee, we would have to go back and forth between Los Angeles and Portland another four times. There are obscene amounts of people who have been slaughtered for the US Profit Driven Military Empire who do not count here in America on any day. People in Vietnam are still dying from the toxins dumped on their country by the US, not to mention the millions who died during that war. Let the carnage escalate in Afghanistan while we protect our personal images by turning a blind eye to Obama’s war crimes. Are you going to feel a lump of pride in your bosom when the coffins start to be photographed at Dover for this imperial crime of aggression? Will you look at those flagdraped boxes of the lifeless body of some mother’s child and think: “Now, I am free.” Is it better to be dead when Obama is president? A tough, but real, aspect of this all to consider is, how many of the soldiers buried in coffins in military cemeteries
killed or tortured innocent people as paid goons for the Empire? To me, it is deeply and profoundly sad on so many levels. If I have any consolation through all of this, I learned that my son bravely refused to go on the mission that killed him, but he was literally dragged into the vehicle and was dead minutes later - before he was forced to do something that was against his nature and nurture. Casey will always be my hero, but he was a victim of US Imperialism and his death should bring shame, not pride, as it did not bring freedom to anyone. I will, of course, mourn his senseless death on Memorial Day as I do every day. However, we do not need another day here in America to glorify war that enables the Military Industrial Complex to commit its crimes under the black cloak of “Patriotism.” From Palestine to Africa to South America, our quest for global economic domination kills, sickens, maims or oppresses people on a daily basis, and about 25,000 children per day die of starvation. I am not okay with these facts and I am not proud of my country. I will spend my reflective time on Memorial Day to mourn not only the deaths of so many people all over the world due to war, but mourn the fact that they are the unseen and uncared for victims of US Empire.
25 May 2009 Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Bush’s war of terror on 04/04/04. She is the co-founder and president of Gold Star Families for Peace and the Camp Casey Peace Institute. She is the author of three books; the most recent is “Peace Mom: A Mother’s Journey Through Heartache to Activism.” Following an unsuccessful challenge to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sheehan launched a radio show on 960AM in the San Fransisco Bay Area that can also be heard on Soapbox.com.
Source: 052509A
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