Category: International
Attack of the Doomed
| March 5, 2015 | 7:43 pm | Analysis, International, political struggle, Russia, Ukraine | Comments closed

http://slavyangrad.org/2015/03/05/attack-of-the-doomed/#more-5046

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Original article: Colonel Cassad
Translated by Alya Bailey / Edited by @GBabeuf

I received some details about the battles at Shirokino from the First Slavyansk Brigade who had conducted combat operations there, repulsing enemy units during the “Turchinov offensive.” As expected, behind Turchinov’s noisy PR action there was another lot of dead men who paid with their lives for the informational phantoms. According to the Brigade, in these battles the enemy lost around 150 men killed and wounded (though it is not clear whether this number includes losses of the Sich Battalion or whether those should be considered separately). In fact, not for nothing do even fans of the junta call Turchinov “the bloody pastor.”

Attack of the Doomed

In spite of recurrent ceasefires the confrontation at Mariupol has been in the acute phase for a long time. One can even say more—the acute phase has become chronic. Despite the fact that the war is positional—mostly exchanging artillery strikes—from time to time the soldiers of the so-called territorial battalions conduct desperate attacks on the Militia’s positions at Novoazovsk. Doomed attacks.

The latest such attack by a fairly massive contingent was ventured only recently. The grouping, consisting mainly of soldiers of the Azov Battalion, reinorced by a small group of fighters from the Donbass Battalion and units of the Sich Battalion (formed in Kiev from local policemen and members of the Svoboda organisation) undertook an impetuous attack on several settlements near Mariupol and even managed, thanks to the element of surprise and the recklessness of the action, to push the fighters of the DPR MoD [Ministry of Defence -ed.] back to their reserve positions. But, caught up in martial excitement, the NatsGvardi decided not to consolidate the seized positions and began to plough into the Militia’s defences, heading for Novoazovsk. For which they paid. The Azov regiment lost about 150 men; the entire staff of the Sich Battalion was completely eliminated. The main losses were taken near the town of Shirokino, once a very popular and flourishing resort area, but now completely destroyed.

Trophy banners of Azov Battalion and insignia of the Black Corps of the Donbass punitive battalion. The Nazi flag is probably the one used as a backdrop during Azov’s New Year celebrations.

Some very surprising findings were collected on the battlefield after the rapid flight of the remnants of the Ukrainian strike group. Is it just me or are the group’s flags similar to those the SS battalions took into battle not long ago? And how does happy, fascism-conquering Europe look on their allies’ priorities? In the ’30s of the last century, European society also did not pay much attention to flags with swastikas atop the Reichstag. How that ended for Europe and for the entire world, we all remember. Is Europe again wilfully going to overlook a new surge of fascism on its territory? Or do they think they will be able to rein in the brown plague by directing it to Russia? A tragic delusion…

Response to: “Two different approaches in fighting Ebola”
| March 3, 2015 | 7:14 pm | Africa, Analysis, Cuba, Ebola, International, National, political struggle | Comments closed
By A. Shaw
For clarity, the two different approaches may be called the US imperialist approach and the Cuban proletarian approach.
Imperialist Approach in Fighting Ebola
The Obama regime, which sent about 2,800 military troops to West Africa in October, has announced an end to its Ebola relief mission. Most US soldiers have already returned. The troops did not treat a single patient, much less save a single life. Obama proclaimed the American response to the crisis ( a response which came after months of pleading by international relief groups)  “an example of American leadership.” The Obama regime lists among its accomplishments training 1,539 health care workers & support staff (presumably non-technical and cursory); creating 10 Ebola treatment units (which you could count on your fingers); and constructing a 25-bed medical unit (for a country [Liberia] that has had 10,000 cases of Ebola). Obama regime declares that “the United States has done more than any other country to help West Africa respond to the Ebola crisis.” The regime clearly helped facilitate the delivery of equipment and supplies, but its claims that the U.S. has done more than any other country are dubious. By the end of April, all but 100 U.S. troops will have left West Africa while other countries will extend the presence of their relief workers.
The U.S. response did involve several hundred millions of dollars, which is, indeed, more than most countries contributed. But U.S. personel played mostly a supporting role, collaborating with other actors in the tangential aspects of the crisis. U.S. government employees were not directly involved in treating any patients. Their role was rather to help other health workers and officials on the front lines who actually did. To say this supporting role of the Obama regime is an example of U.S. “leadership” is a vast embellishment.
So much for the imperialist approach to fighting Ebola.
Now, let’s look at the proletarian approach of the Cubans.
The other country who has taken a very public role in the Ebola crisis is Cuba. Unlike the U.S., Cuba sent nearly 500 professional healthcare workers – doctors and nurses – to treat African patients who had contracted Ebola. Before being deployed to West Africa, all the Cuban doctors and nurses completed an “intense training” of a minimum of two weeks, where they “prepared in the form of treating patients without exposing themselves to the deadly virus,” according to CNN. After Cuba announced its plan to mobilize what Cubans call the “army of white robes,” WHO Director-General Margaret Chan said that “human resources are clearly our most important need.” “Money and materials are important, but those two things alone cannot stop Ebola virus transmission,” she said. “We need most especially compassionate doctors and nurses” to work under “very demanding conditions.” The European Commission for humanitarian aid and crisis management last week also “recognized the role Cuba has played in fighting the Ebola epidemic.”
 MATT PEPPE , the author of this excellent article, reminds us not to forget that behind its humanitarian pretensions, the U.S. military is a worldwide instrument of aggression, oppression and exploitation.
“U.S. troops are used as props. What may sound like a massive effort is little more than propaganda. The idea is to associate troops with humanitarianism, rather than death, destruction and torture. In reality, one doctor can save more lives than hundreds of soldiers. A true humanitarian mission would be conducted by civilian agencies and professionals who are trained and experienced specifically in medicine, construction and administration, not by soldiers trained to kill and pacify war zones” Peppe says.
Syriza
| February 27, 2015 | 7:10 pm | Analysis, Communist Party Greece (KKE), Eurocommunism, Greece, International, Syriza | Comments closed

Revolução e Democracia

Blog sobre temas de Política, Economia e História.

terça-feira, 24 de fevereiro de 2015

Syriza: a salvação do capitalismo | Syriza: saving capitalism

O «terramoto» das eleições gregas

   

Segundo os media europeus, com a eleição do Syriza vinha aí um terramoto na Grécia e até mesmo na Europa. O Syriza foi sistematicamente chamado pelos jornais portugueses (e não só) como «extrema-esquerda». Não era só o espectro de ser de esquerda que se perfilava no horizonte; ainda para mais era «extrema»! Agora, sim, a troika e a «austeridade» iriam ser arrumadas para o caixote do lixo. Agora, sim, o Syriza iria mostrar como se arrancava um povo das fauces sugadoras da troika.

Tremenda ilusão. Em que muitos caíram. Excepto as Bolsas europeias que não se incomodaram nada com os planos gregos de «renegociação da dívida» do ministro das finanças Yanis Varoufakis (YV), e do seu plano de troca de dívida por dois tipos de títulos obrigacionistas ([1]): um deles, a pagar só quando a economia grega viesse a crescer; o outro, a pagar modicamente e perpetuamente.

As Bolsas – logo, o grande capital – não se incomodaram por duas boas razões: porque o Syriza não nacionalizou os bancos nem previa tal no seu programa; porque sabiam que por debaixo da capa de «extrema-esquerda» o Syriza era uma nova reincarnação social-democrata.

 

Derrota total no primeiro embate

   

Logo no primeiro embate com o Eurogrupo (EG) o Syriza mostrou a sua fibra. Derrota e recuo em toda a linha ([2-4]). A corrupta oligarquia grega (lá como cá ligada ao Império), tem vindo a mamar os resgates ao mesmo tempo que mantém o investimento no mínimo e descapitaliza a banca. Desde Dezembro de 2014 que 20 biliões de euros (mil milhões de euros) voaram dos bancos gregos para a Suíça e outras paragens. Com os cofres do Estado vazios, os pagamentos de funcionários públicos ameaçados, e sem controlar a banca, o Syriza foi forçado a pedir um novo empréstimo. Na primeira reunião com o EG na passada 6.ª feira, 20 de Fevereiro, YV pediu, para tal, a extensão por mais seis meses de um resgate anterior. Em troca dessa extensão Atenas comprometia-se a: manter um saldo orçamental positivo, mas abaixo da meta exigida pela troika; não tomar medidas unilaterais que impedissem o cumprimento de metas fiscais do EG (como, por exemplo, suspender privatizações); pedir a «renegociação da dívida» com vista ao crescimento económico; abandonar a proposta de perdão da dívida, com alargamento do prazo de pagamento e descida de taxas de juro.

Em suma, YV avançou com uma proposta que recuava das promessas do Syriza, designadamente no que se referia à suspensão das privatizações e à exigência de perdão parcial da dívida. Dívida essa que economistas destacados das mais diversas persuasões políticas (incluindo o keynesiano e prémio Nobel Paul Krugman) já disseram ser impagável. O que, aliás, é fácil de ver; não é preciso ter o prémio Nobel.

Para não alarmar os seus votantes, o Syriza afirmou a 20 de Fevereiro que a Grécia «deixou para trás a austeridade, o memorando e a troika» ([3]).

Pois apesar do recuo, a Alemanha – o pivot do Império na Europa, que mais tem lucrado com a UE e a zona euro ([5]) — não aceitou o plano YV. Nem a Alemanha nem… os seus lacaios neoliberais, com especial destaque para os ministros das finanças português e espanhol. O EG apenas concedeu mais quatro meses de resgate, com YV a comprometer-se com todas as exigências da troika (sob o eufemismo de «honrar as obrigações financeiras com os seus credores») incluindo «o firme compromisso com o processo de reformas estruturais»; isto é, de continuar a desmantelar os direitos dos trabalhadores e benefícios sociais. Afinal o Syriza não tinha deixado para trás a austeridade, o memorando e a troika. A derrota de YV foi tão monumental que W. Schäuble (ministro das finanças alemão) comentou sarcasticamente que agora se ia ver como é que o Syriza se ia explicar ao povo grego. O Governo grego, para não perder o apoio dos seus votantes, veio dizer a 23/2 que concorda com 70% (?) das medidas de resgate e que não iria mudar a lei laboral nem a lei sobre o crédito mal parado. Veio também anunciar aquelas medidas que os governos capitalistas também anunciam quando querem mostrar obra: melhorar a colecta de impostos e combater a corrupção. Detalhes sem importância que não escondem o essencial: a derrota imposta pelo grande capital, personificado na Alemanha. Uma Alemanha que também já disse ao Syriza que se recusava a discutir o assunto das reparações de guerra decorrentes da ocupação nazi e a devolução de empréstimos gregos à Alemanha depois da 2.ª guerra mundial.

A desilusão com o Syriza (para aqueles que alimentavam ilusões) é total. Um herói anti-fascista grego, Manolis Glezos de 92 anos, anunciou ontem o seu desvinculamento do Syriza, pedindo desculpa ao povo grego «por ter participado na ilusão» que levou o Syriza ao poder e apelou à acção «antes que seja tarde».

 

O sem-saída do reformismo

   

Varoufakis é a face exemplar de uma certa corrente hodierna de «esquerda» que chega a reclamar-se de marxista, quando não é mais do que defensora de um Marx inócuo, não revolucionário. Uma corrente positivista («não interessa a teoria, só interessam as observações subjectivamente percebidas»), social-democrata, defensora do capitalismo. Logo, por definição, não de esquerda.

Na Grécia, esta corrente chama-se Syriza. Em Espanha, chama-se Podemos. Em Portugal, chama-se Tempo de Avançar. A pobreza teórica reflecte-se no ecletismo de todas estas organizações: mantas de retalhos de diversas proveniências. O Syriza, por exemplo, é uma aliança de sociais-democratas, de socialistas democráticos, de eco-socialistas, de patriotas de esquerda, de feministas, de verdes de esquerda, de maoístas, de trotskistas, de eurocomunistas e de eurocépticos. O Tempo de Avançar é uma coligação do Livre, Renovadores Comunistas, Manifesto 3D, Fórum Manifesto, e Movimento Cidadania e Intervenção, onde pululam as mesmas «ideias».

Todas estas correntes são semeadoras de ilusões reformistas. O que são estas ilusões reformistas e porque razão não funcionam foram já por nós discutidas no artigo: A ilusão de uma saída reformista da crise. No fundo, o que está a acontecer com o Syriza é a confirmação do que já aí dizíamos.

Vale a pena analisar o discurso de YV. O que YV diz é também o que dizem muitos reformistas da nossa praça, incluindo a actual direcção do PCP. Isto é, o que diz YV tem claras repercussões na análise a que a esquerda deverá proceder em Portugal.

Varoufakis fez uma apresentação das suas ideias no 6.o Festival Subversivo de Zagreb, em 2013. O Festival Subversivo, de subversivo não tem muito. Na edição deste ano participarão Slavoj Žižek (eurocomunista de posições sociais-democratas), Alexis Tsipras (eurocomunista), Oliver Stone (budista, votante de Obama mas crítico da política estrangeira dos EUA) e David Harvey (crítico do neoliberalismo e divulgador de O Capital). Um Festival da esquerda… baixa. Daquela que não incomoda o capitalismo, antes pelo contrário. Serve para desviar possíveis aderentes daquela que incomoda.

A versão transcrita da apresentação de YV em Zagreb tem como título: «Confissões de um marxista irregular no meio de uma crise europeia repugnante» (Confessions of an erratic Marxist in the midst of a repugnant European crisis). Portanto, YV não é um marxista; é, sim, um marxista irregular, isto é, de vez em quando. YV coloca a questão sobre se a esquerda deve utilizar a crise para desmantelar uma UE baseada em políticas neoliberais, ou se deve aceitar que não está preparada para uma mudança radical e lutar por estabilizar o capitalismo europeu. Responde, dizendo que, por muito que repugne aos «radicais» (designação vaga que serve para tudo; até Hitler era um radical) o «dever histórico» da esquerda nesta conjuntura é estabilizar o capitalismo, «salvar o capitalismo europeu dele mesmo e dos inábeis gestores da inevitável crise da zona euro». Estão a ver? Os capitalistas não sabem ser capitalistas. É preciso salvá-los de si próprios, da sua incompetência como capitalistas. Para tal, existe a «esquerda», que por definição é anti-capitalista, mas cujo «dever histórico» nesta conjuntura é salvá-los! A «esquerda» que, como todos sabem, é competentemente capitalista.

Na sua argumentação YV cita Marx dizendo que certas coisas que Marx disse estão certas. O pior é a teoria que subjaz à análise marxista que, para YV, é demasiado determinista. YV gosta mais dos «espíritos animais» de Keynes e coisas do género. Sobre a leitura idiossincrática que YV faz de Marx ver Yanis Varoufakis: more erratic than Marxist.

Mas se YV não gosta da teoria de Marx, vejamos ao menos a sua prática. Logo que foi ministro, YV afirmou que a Grécia não sofreria um «acidente financeiro» nem seria forçada a deixar a zona euro (embora, segundo YV, não devesse ter entrado). Disse também que a Grécia não deixaria de pagar a dívida ao FMI e aos investidores privados. E que a economia de Grécia podia crescer suficientemente depressa para sair da dívida; crescimento a construir a nível europeu, devendo ser lançado sob hegemonia alemã um programa de reactivação de toda a economia europeia como o New Deal de Roosevelt e o plano Marshall dos anos cinquenta! Que sonhador, este reformista!

Quanto aos bancos gregos, YV não se mostrou muito preocupado, apesar dos biliões de euros que saíram do país e continuam a sair. YV afirmou ainda que o novo governo não alteraria as privatizações em curso e que a Grécia deveria manter-se um destino atractivo para o investimento estrangeiro. Sigamos a análise de [6]:

«Que tipo de programa é este? Na verdade é difícil dizê-lo. No que concerne à dívida, reflecte sem dúvida a realidade inescapável de que a dívida grega é impagável […] Tudo o mais parece sobretudo uma colecção de frases para a galeria, sem muita coerência, para ser suave. Que crescimento há que construir a nível pan-europeu? Como é isso de lançar um programa de investimentos em toda a Europa? Vai o governo grego convencer Merkel, Hollande e Rajoy, ou vai esperar que Podemos ganhe as eleições para ter um aliado? YV diz que os investimentos privados na Grécia se reactivarão logo que se alivie o peso da dívida. Ai, sim? Primeiro, há que ver se ocorre esse alívio mas, supondo que ocorre, por que artes mágicas vão reactivar-se esses investimentos? Será porque os salários gregos serão “atractivos” (ou seja, quanto mais baixos melhor) para os agora chamados investidores, aliás capitalistas de outros tempos? Vai o Syriza intentar o avanço nessa direcção? Irão os investimentos fluir para a Grécia porque o novo governo os brindará com segurança e garantia de que o capital será respeitado e não sofrerá beliscadura sob a forma de impostos, nacionalizações ou regulamentos? Mas, quem possui a dívida grega, não são precisamente esses capitalistas? Não lhes soará mal qualquer “quitação”, qualquer redução da dívida, que não seria outra coisa que a perda parcial ou total do seu capital?»

Sobre o desdém de YV pela teoria, diz o autor de [6] (ênfases nossos): «YV em Zagreb disse que em nenhuma das suas intervenções políticas ou económicas de anos recentes se guiou por modelos económicos que, a seu ver, são absolutamente irrelevantes para entender o capitalismo real que hoje existe. A frase tem que se lhe diga, porque se não se tem um modelo, é impossível fazer-se uma ideia de como se desenvolvem os fenómenos sobre os quais se quer actuar. Será possível navegar de Barcelona a Londres sem nenhum mapa que mostre os itinerários possíveis? Será possível entender um circuito electrónico com díodos, condensadores e transístores sem ter na mente esquemas de como funcionam essas coisas?»

De facto, não é possível ter uma prática consistentemente correcta sem uma teoria correcta. É certo que uma teoria correcta não é suficiente para uma prática correcta. (Podemos saber muito de díodos, condensadores e transístores e aqui e além cometer erros de compreensão do funcionamento de um circuito electrónico.) Mas uma teoria correcta é, contudo, uma condição necessária.

O autor de [6] conclui assim: «“O das barbas”, como Varoufakis chama às vezes a Marx, passou toda a sua vida investigando planos e esquemas teóricos […] para formar com eles um modelo geral da economia capitalista. O modelo geral está certamente incompleto, os esquemas não nos permitiram predizer, por exemplo, que os EUA se converteriam no principal país do sistema capitalista mundial na segunda metade do séc. XX, que revoluções anticapitalistas teriam lugar na Rússia e na China (e fracassariam) e que os computadores e a Internet mudariam por completo a aparência do mundo. Porém, os esquemas de Marx, abstractos em extremo como são, permitem entender porque razão o capitalismo é fonte continua de desigualdade social, porque razão está condenado a crises, uma e outra vez, e porque razão as tentativas bem ou mal intencionadas de regulá-lo ou “salvá-lo” só conduzem ao fracasso ou a converter a quem os protagonizam em parte desse grupo de gestores de alto gabarito que em Espanha são frequentemente chamados hoje de “a casta”. Eliminar o capitalismo é certamente difícil e muitos estarão de acordo com Varoufakis de que “a esquerda” não está preparada para isso. Mas afirmar que do que se trata hoje é precisamente de salvar o capitalismo, não é isso negar tudo o que de importante esteve alguma vez por trás dessa nebulosa ideia de “a esquerda”? […]»

Quanto a nós, desde o início do presente blog que temos defendido que Portugal tem de ser salvo da incivilização do capitalismo. E temos procurado fundamentar as medidas que se impõem numa alternativa de esquerda (ver artigos anteriores). Incluindo a nacionalização da banca, não contemplada pelo Syriza. Esta e outras medidas anticapitalistas, que implicam sair do euro e, possivelmente, da UE, impor-se-ão quando o povo compreender e se alçar na luta por uma solução de esquerda. Uma solução rumo ao socialismo. Naturalmente, com uma organização à altura da tarefa. «Atalhos» reformistas só adiarão ainda mais essa compreensão e disponibilidade para a luta.

 The Greek elections «earthquake»

   

The election of Syriza was, according to the European media, an earthquake for Greece and even for Europe. Syriza was systematically coined by the Portuguese (and others) newspapers as being from “extreme left-wing”. Thus, not only the specter of “left-wing” emerged in the horizon; it was furthermore an “extreme” specter. Now, at last, troika and “austerity” would be swept away to the dust bin. Now, at last, Syriza would show how to pull out a country from the sucking troika snouts.

Tremendous delusion. With many falling for it. Except the European stock-markets which didn’t bother at all with the Greek plans to “renegotiate the debt” of Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis (YV), and of his plan to swap debt by two types of bonds ([1]): one, to be paid when the Greek economy would grow; the other, to be paid perpetually in modest shares.

The stock markets – therefore, the big capital – didn’t bother for two good reasons: because Syriza neither nationalize the banks nor put forward that intent in its program; because they knew that under the “extreme left-wing” cloak Syriza was just a new reincarnation of social-democracy.

 

Total defeat at the first clash

   

In its first clash with the Eurogroup (EG) Syriza has showed its fiber. Pull back and defeat on the whole frontline ([2-4]). The corrupt Greek oligarchy (there as here attached to the Empire) has been sucking bailouts and at the same time keeping the investment to a minimum and decapitalizing the banks. Twenty billion euros have flown out of the Greek banks to Switzerland and other places, since December 2014. With empty State vaults, threatened payments to civil servants, and without any control on the banks, Syriza was forced to beg for a new loan. In its first meeting with the EG last Friday, February 20, YV asked, for that purpose, an extension of a previous bailout for a further six months time. In exchange, Athens proposed the following compromise: to maintain a positive budgetary balance, although below the target set by the troika; not undertaking measures that would impair the attainment of EG fiscal goals (e.g., suspension of privatizations); to apply for a “renegotiation of the debt” having in view the economic growth; to abandon the proposal of a debt write-off, and instead apply to a widening of the maturity time span and the lowering of the interest rate.

Briefly, Syriza put forward a proposal that stepped back on all Syriza promises, namely on the suspension of privatizations and the demand for a partial debt write-off. A debt that prominent economists of various political persuasions (including the Keynesian and Nobel prize Paul Krugman) have already told to be impossible to pay. An observation easy to arrive at; surely not demanding a Nobel prize.

In order not to alarm its voters, Syriza stated in February, 20, that Greece “had left behind the austerity, the memorandum and the troika” ([3]).

Well, notwithstanding the pull back, Germany – The Empire pivot in Europe, the country that has most profited with the EU and the Eurozone ([5]) – did not accept YV’s plan. Neither Germany nor… its neoliberal lackeys with special mention going to the Portuguese and Spanish Finance Ministers. The EG only granted a further four months of bailout, with YV yielding to all troika demands (under the euphemism of “to honor the financial commitments with its creditors”) including the “firm compromise with the process of structural reforms”; that is, to go on dismantling workers’ rights and social benefits. After all, Syriza had not left behind the austerity, the memorandum and the troika. The defeat of Syriza was as monumental as to trigger the sarcastic comment of W. Schäuble (German Finance Minister) that now one would see as how Syriza would explain to the Greek people what had happened. The Greek government caring not lose the support of its voters came out with a statement on February, 23, that it agreed with 70% (?) of the bailout measures and that it would not change labor and defaulting debt laws. It also announced such measures as capitalist governments use to announce when they want to show some work: to improve tax collecting and fight corruption. Unimportant details that do not hide the essential: the defeat imposed by the big capital, personified by Germany. Germany that also told Syriza that it refused to discuss the matter of war reparations related to the Nazi occupation and paying back Greek loans to Germany contracted after the Second World War.

The delusion with Syriza (for those who entertained illusions) is complete. A Greek antifascist hero, the 92-year old Manolis Glezos, announced yesterday that he severed ties with Syriza asking for forgiveness to the Greek people “for participating in the illusion” that propelled Syriza to the power, at the same time appealing to action “before it is too late”.

 

The reformist dead-end

   

Varoufakis is the exemplary face of a today’s specific “left-wing” current that claims to be Marxist when it is nothing else than a defender of a sanitized non-revolutionary Marx. A positivist current (“don’t bother with theory, only subjectively perceived observations are important), social-democrat, supportive of capitalism. Hence, a non-left current by definition.

This current is called Syriza in Greece. It is called Podemos in Spain. And in Portugal is called Tempo de Avançar. The theoretical poverty is reflected by the eclecticism of all these organizations: patchwork quilts of various sources. Syriza, for instance, is an alliance of social-democrats, democratic socialists, eco-socialists, left-wing patriots, feminists, left-wing greens, Maoists, Trotskyites, Eurocommunists and Eurosceptics. The Tempo de Avançar is a coalition of Free, Communist Renewal, Manifest 3D, Forum Manifest, Citizen and Intervention Movement, small parties where the same “ideas” swarm freely.

All these currents are spreaders of reformist delusions. What these delusions are and why they cannot work have been already discussed by us in the article “A ilusão de uma saída reformista da crise“. What is happening with Syriza is after all a confirmation of what we said in that article.

Varoufakis discourse is worth analyzing. What YV has to say is also what our home-made reformists have to say, including the present leadership of the PCP. Thus, what YV has to say has clear repercussions on the analysis that the Portuguese left must carry through.

Varoufakis made a presentation of his ideas at the 6th Subversive Festival of Zagreb in 2013. The Subversive Festival has not that much of subversive ness. This year’s edition counts among its participants Slavoj Žižek (Eurocommunist with social-democratic positions), Alexis Tsipras (Eurocommunist), Oliver Stone (Buddhist, a voter on Obama but critical of US foreign policy) and David Harvey (critic of neo-liberalism and divulger of Capital). A Festival of the Left… of the low kind. Of that kind that doesn’t bother capitalism — quite the opposite. It is of service to deviate possible adherents of the Left that truly bothers.

The written version of YV presentation at Zagreb is entitled “Confessions of an erratic Marxist in the midst of a repugnant European crisis”. Thus, YV is not a Marxist; he is an erratic Marxist, i. e., from time to time. YV raises the question of whether the Left must use the crisis to dismantle an EU based on neo-liberal policies, or instead accept that it is not ready for a radical change and struggle to stabilize the European capitalism. He answers by saying that though it is repugnant to “radicals” (vague designation suiting everything; even Hitler was a radical), the “historical duty” of the Left at the present particular juncture is to stabilize capitalism, “to save European capitalism from itself and from the inane handlers of the Eurozone’s inevitable crisis”. See? Capitalists do not know how to be capitalists. They have to be saved from themselves, from their incompetence as capitalists. For that purpose, there is the “Left”, which by definition is anticapitalist but whose “historical duty” at this particular juncture is to save them! The “Left” that as you all know is competently capitalist.

YV does quote Marx in his line of argument, admitting that some things that Marx said are correct. Unfortunately, for YV, the theory underlying Marx’s analyses is too much deterministic. Keynes’ “animal spirits” and that sort of things is more to the liking of YV. On YV idiosyncratic reading of Marx we recommend Yanis Varoufakis: more erratic than Marxist.

But if YV doesn’t like Marx’s theory, let us at least take a look of what sort his practice is. As soon he became Minister of Finance YV stated that Greece would not suffer a “financial accident” nor would be forced to leave the Eurozone (though, according to YV, it shouldn’t have entered either). He also said that Greece wouldn’t back from paying the debt to IMF and to private investors. And, furthermore, that Greek economy would be able to grow at a sufficiently high rate to escape from the debt burden. A growth rate to be handled at pan-European level, on the premise that a program for the reactivation of the whole European economy should be launched under German hegemony, such as Roosevelt’s New Deal or the Marshall Plan of the fifties! What a dreamer, this reformist!

In what concerns the Greek banks, YV didn’t show much preoccupation, though billions of euros have left the country and continue to flow away. YV also said that the new government would not change the running privatization process and that Greece should be kept as an attractive destination for direct foreign investment. Let us now follow the analysis of [6]:

“What sort of program is this one? Truly, it is difficult to say. In what concerns the debt, it reflects no doubt the inescapable reality that the Greek debt cannot be paid […] Everything else looks more as a collection of sentences for the gallery of populism, without much coherence, to put it leniently. What growth is there to be built at a pan-European level? What is that thing of launching an investment program for the whole Europe? Is the Greek government going to convince Merkel, Hollande and Rajoy, or is it going to wait that Podemos wins the elections in order to have an ally? YV says that private investments in Greece will be reactivated as soon as the debt burden is relieved. Really? First, the relief has to be seen, but supposing it does occur, which magic wand will reactivate the investments? Will that take place because Greek salaries will become “attractive” (i. e., the lower the better) for the newly-called investors, in fact the capitalists of other times? Is Syriza going to intent an advance on that direction? Will the investments flow to Greece because the new government will gift them with assurances and guaranties that capital will be respected and will not suffer any pinch on taxes, nationalizations and regulations? But those that own Greek debt aren’t they precisely those capitalists? Wouldn’t it sound weird to their ears any “discharge”, any debt relief, amounting to no other thing than the partial or total loss of their capital?”

On YV’s disdain for theory, says the author of [6] (our emphases): “YV told in Zagreb that in none of his political or economic interventions of recent years was he guided by economic models, which to his looking are absolutely irrelevant to understand the real capitalism that exists today. This assertion begs a remark, because if one does not have a model, one is denied the possibility of an idea on how phenomena unfold, in order to act upon. Is it possible to sail from Barcelona to London with no map showing the possible itineraries? Is it possible to understand an electronic circuit with diodes, capacitors and transistors without having in the mind models on how such things work?”

As a matter of fact, it is not possible to have a consistently correct practice without a correct theory. True, a correct theory is not sufficient to have a correct practice. (We may know a lot about diodes, capacitors and transistors and here and there fail on interpreting how an electronic circuit works.) But a correct theory is nevertheless a necessary condition.

The author of [6] concludes as follows: “”The bearded one” as Varoufakis sometimes calls Marx passed is whole life investigating plans and theoretical outlines […] to form with them a general model of the capitalist economy. The general model is surely incomplete, the outlines didn’t allow us to predict, e.g., that the US would become in the second half of the 20th century the main country of the world capitalist system, that anticapitalist revolutions would take place in Russia and China (and would fail), and that computers and Internet would completely change the appearance of the world. However, Marx’s theoretical outlines, abstract in extreme as they are, allow us to understand why capitalism is a continuous source of social inequality, why it is doomed to crises one time and another, and why the attempts to “save it” or adjust it, be they good or bad intended, can only lead to failure or to convert their protagonists in members of the high-level managers group often named in today’s Spain as the “casta”. Eliminating capitalism is certainly difficult and many will agree with Varoufakis that “the Left” is not prepared for it. But stating that the real issue today is precisely saving capitalism isn’t that denying everything of importance lying behind the cloudy idea of “the Left”? […]”

As to us, we have since the beginning of this blog defended that Portugal has to be saved from the uncivilization of capitalism. And we have attempted to provide sound justifications to the needed measures of a left alternative (see our previous articles). One of them being the nationalization of the banks, not contemplated by Syriza. This and other anticapitalist measures implying exiting the euro and, possibly, the EU, will impose by themselves when the people understand and rise in the struggle for a left solution. A solution on the way to socialism. Quite naturally, with an organization up to the task. Reformist “shortcuts” will only postpone further away that understanding and commitment to the struggle.

Referências/References

[1] JN 4/2/2015, Bolsas aprovam plano grego mas próximos dias são cruciais.

[2] JN 20/2/2015, Vão todos a jogo mas no fim quem ganha é a Alemanha.

[3] JN 21/2/2015, Grécia diz que «deixou para trás a austeridade, o memorando e a troika»

[4] JN 23/2/2015

[5] Eugénio Rosa, A União Europeia e o Euro Serviram para Enriquecer a Alemanha, 31 de Janeiro de 2015, http://www.eugeniorosa.com/Sites/eugeniorosa.com/Documentos/2015/4-2015-AlemanhaUE.pdf

[6] José A. Tapia, Salvar el capitalismo, o las confesiones del ministro de finanzas griego, Rebelión, 13/2/2015, http://rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=195383.

Netanyahu Lied to UN about Iranian Nuclear Program, Mossad Files Show
| February 26, 2015 | 9:25 pm | Analysis, International | Comments closed

  By Angelo | February 26, 2015 – 2:18 AM 
 http://nymetrocommunistparty.org/?p=859

 

*Special thanks to Martin J. Sawma for this special report

Leaked cables from Israel’s intelligence agency reveal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu misled the United Nations about Iran’s nuclear program.

[Link to the document further below—MJS]. SputnikNews.com, 23:20 23.02.2015 (updated 05:22 24.02.2015)

http://sputniknews.com/us/20150223/1018653276.html

In Sept. 2012, Benjamin Netanyahu stood before the UN General Assembly with a cartoonish diagram of a bomb and warned that Iran was about a year away from completing its “plans of building a nuclear weapon,” calling for action to halt the process and justifying Israel’s rights to act militarily if necessary. “By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move[d] on to the final stage,” Netanyahu told the UN. “From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”

But in Oct. 2012, Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad sent a top-secret cable to South Africa’s state security agency saying that the Islamic Republic was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons and doesn’t appear to be ready to enrich Uranium to the higher levels needed to the nuclear bomb,” according a secret cable obtained by Al Jazeera and shared with the Guardian. [Link to the document further below—MJS].

US intelligence found no evidence that Iran intended to use its nuclear infrastructure to build a bomb.

The report highlights the gulf between the alarmist tone in rhetoric taken by top Israeli politicians and the assessments of Israel’s military and intelligence apparatus, according to the Guardian.

The leaked documents also revealed details of operations against al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other terrorist organizations.

Among the information leaked is a CIA attempt to establish contact with Hamas, South Korean intelligence targeting the leader of Greenpeace, Barack Obama “threatening” the Palestinian president to withdraw a bid for recognition of Palestine at the UN, and South African intelligence spying on Russia over a controversial $100 million joint satellite deal, according to the Guardian.

It comes at a time when political tensions between the US and Israel are at a record high, and ahead of Netanyahu’s planned address to the US Congress on March 3 to speak against the nuclear compromise currently being negotiated between Tehran and world powers.

Mossad contradicted Netanyahu on Iran nuclear programme

Spy Cables reveal Mossad concluded that Iran was not producing nuclear weapons, after PM sounded alarm at UN in 2012.

Will Jordan, Rahul Radhakrishnan |

Al Jazeera, 23 Feb 2015 19:20 GMT

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/02/leaks-netanyahu-misled-iran-nuclear-programme-guardian-iran-nuclear-speech-2012-150218165622065.html Iran, Israel

Less than a month after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2012 warning to the UN General Assembly that Iran was 70 per cent of the way to completing its “plans to build a nuclear weapon”, Israel’s intelligence service believed that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons”.

A secret cable obtained by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit reveals that Mossad sent a top-secret cable to South Africa on October 22, 2012 that laid out a “bottom line” assessment of Iran’s nuclear work.

It appears to contradict the picture painted by Netanyahu of Tehran racing towards acquisition of a nuclear bomb.

Writing that Iran had not begun the work needed to build any kind of nuclear weapon, the Mossad cable said the Islamic Republic’s scientists are “working to close gaps in areas that appear legitimate such as enrichment reactors”.

Such activities, however, “will reduce the time required to produce weapons from the time the instruction is actually given”.

That view tracks with the 2012 US National Intelligence estimate, which found no evidence that Iran had thus far taken a decision to use its nuclear infrastructure to build a weapon, or that it had revived efforts to research warhead design that the US said had been shelved in 2003.

Netanyahu plans to address the US Congress on March 3 and warn against the nuclear compromise currently being negotiated between Tehran and world powers.

Media reports and public comments by senior current and former officials have frequently indicated dissent from within Israel’s security services over Netanyahu’s alarmist messaging on Iran.

However, the document leaked to Al Jazeera makes clear that the Mossad’s formal assessment of Iran’s nuclear capacity and intentions differs from the scenario outlined by the prime minister at the UN.

The cable was relayed to South Africa’s State Security Agency (SSA) shortly after the September 2012 address in which Netanyahu had displayed a cartoonish diagram of a bomb with a fuse, marked with a 70 percent line and another “red line” at 90 percent.

The markers represented progress milestones in Iran’s uranium enrichment work. He argued that medium-enriched uranium (which Iran had begun producing, saying it was needed to fuel a research reactor producing isotopes to fight cancer) took Iran 70 percent of the distance to enriching weapons-grade material.

The Israeli prime minister told the UN General Assembly that “by next spring, by most at next summer at current enrichment rates [Iran] will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage,” in which he said they would enrich uranium to weapons grade.

‘Not the right way’

Earlier in 2012, former Mossad chief Meir Dagan had hinted at a disagreement with Netanyahu. In an interview in March, he warned of overstating the danger of Iran’s nuclear activities and of putting Israel on a path to war with Iran.

The spy chief said it would be a “stupid idea” to attack Iran before other options were considered. “An attack on Iran before you are exploring all other approaches is not the right way,” Dagan had said.

His comments would likely have been informed by his former agency’s analysis reflected in the document obtained by Al Jazeera.

It reveals that In October 2012, Israel’s foreign intelligence service estimated that Iran had 100 kilograms of uranium enriched to a level of 20 percent.

Iran expanded that stockpile over the following year, but then agreed to neutralise or destroy that material under an agreement with the US, Britain, China, Russia, France and Germany – the so-called P5+1 group.

Reports of discord between Netanyahu and the Mossad over Iran surfaced again last month amid reports – later denied – that the Israeli intelligence service had warned Washington that new US sanctions would sabotage nuclear negotiations between Iran and world powers.

Iran and the P5+1 are currently pursuing a framework pact for a permanent deal by the end of March, and a full technical agreement by the end of June. Iran insists its nuclear work is entirely for peaceful purposes; the premise of the nuclear deal currently being negotiated is to strengthen verifiable safeguards against weaponisation of nuclear material.

Leaked cables show Netanyahu’s Iran bomb claim contradicted by Mossad

Gulf between Israeli secret service and PM revealed in documents shared with the Guardian along with other secrets including CIA bids to contact Hamas

Seumas Milne, Ewen MacAskill and Clayton Swisher

The Guardian, Monday 23 February 2015 13.06 EST

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/23/leaked-spy-cables-netanyahu-iran-bomb-mossad

Benjamin Netanyahu’s dramatic declaration to world leaders in 2012 that Iran was about a year away from making a nuclear bomb was contradicted by his own secret service, according to a top-secret Mossad document. [Link to the document further below—MJS].

It is part of a cache of hundreds of dossiers, files and cables from the world’s major intelligence services – one of the biggest spy leaks in recent times.

Brandishing a cartoon of a bomb with a red line to illustrate his point, the Israeli prime minister warned the UN in New York that Iran would be able to build nuclear weapons the following year and called for action to halt the process.

But in a secret report shared with South Africa a few weeks later, Israel’s intelligence agency concluded that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons”. The report highlights the gulf between the public claims and rhetoric of top Israeli politicians and the assessments of Israel’s military and intelligence establishment.

The disclosure comes as tensions between Israel and its staunchest ally, the US, have dramatically increased ahead of Netanyahu’s planned address to the US Congress on 3 March.

The White House fears the Israeli leader’s anticipated inflammatory rhetoric could damage sensitive negotiations between Tehran and the world’s six big powers over Iran’s nuclear programme. The deadline to agree on a framework is in late March, with the final settlement to come on 30 June. Netanyahu has vowed to block an agreement he claims would give Iran access to a nuclear weapons capability.

The US president, Barack Obama, will not meet Netanyahu during his visit, saying protocol precludes a meeting so close to next month’s general election in Israel.

The documents, almost all marked as confidential or top secret, span almost a decade of global intelligence traffic, from 2006 to December last year. It has been leaked to the al-Jazeera investigative unit and shared with the Guardian.

The papers include details of operations against al-Qaida, Islamic State and other terrorist organisations, but also the targeting of environmental activists.

The files reveal that:

  • The CIA attempted to establish contact with Hamas in spite of a US ban.
  • South Korean intelligence targeted the leader of Greenpeace.
  • Barack Obama “threatened” the Palestinian president to withdraw a bid for recognition of Palestine at the UN.
  • South African intelligence spied on Russia over a controversial $100m joint satellite deal.

The cache, which has been independently authenticated by the Guardian, mainly involves exchanges between South Africa’s intelligence agency and its counterparts around the world. It is not the entire volume of traffic but a selective leak.

One of the biggest hauls is from Mossad. But there are also documents from Russia’s FSB, which is responsible for counter-terrorism. Such leaks of Russian material are extremely rare.

Other spy agencies caught up in the trawl include those of the US, Britain, France, Jordan, the UAE, Oman and several African nations.

The scale of the leak, coming 20 months after US whistleblower Edward Snowden handed over tens of thousands of NSA and GCHQ documents to the Guardian, highlights the increasing inability of intelligence agencies to keep their secrets secure.

While the Snowden trove revealed the scale of technological surveillance, the latest spy cables deal with espionage at street level – known to the intelligence agencies as human intelligence, or “humint”. They include surveillance reports, inter-agency information trading, disinformation and backbiting, as well as evidence of infiltration, theft and blackmail.

The leaks show how Africa is becoming increasingly important for global espionage, with the US and other western states building up their presence on the continent and China expanding its economic influence. One serving intelligence officer told the Guardian: “South Africa is the El Dorado of espionage.”

Africa has also become caught up in the US, Israeli and British covert global campaigns to stem the spread of Iranian influence, tighten sanctions and block its nuclear programme.

The Mossad briefing about Iran’s nuclear programme in 2012 was in stark contrast to the alarmist tone set by Netanyahu, who has long presented the Iranian nuclear programme as an existential threat to Israel and a huge risk to world security. The Israeli prime minister told the UN: “By next spring, at most by next summer, at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move[d] on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”

He said his information was not based on secret information or military intelligence but International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports.

Behind the scenes, Mossad took a different view. In a report shared with South African spies on 22 October 2012 – but likely written earlier – it conceded that Iran was “working to close gaps in areas that appear legitimate, such as enrichment reactors, which will reduce the time required to produce weapons from the time the instruction is actually given”.

But the report also states that Iran “does not appear to be ready” to enrich uranium to the higher levels necessary for nuclear weapons. To build a bomb requires enrichment to 90%. Mossad estimated that Iran then had “about 100kg of material enriched to 20%” (which was later diluted or converted under the terms of the 2013 Geneva agreement). Iran has always said it is developing a nuclear programme for civilian energy purposes.

Last week, Netanyahu’s office repeated the claim that “Iran is closer than ever today to obtaining enriched material for a nuclear bomb” in a statement in response to an IAEA report.

A senior Israeli government official said there was no contradiction between Netanyahu’s statements on the Iranian nuclear threat and “the quotes in your story – allegedly from Israeli intelligence”. Both the prime minister and Mossad said Iran was enriching uranium in order to produce weapons, he added.

“Israel believes the proposed nuclear deal with Iran is a bad deal, for it enables the world’s foremost terror state to create capabilities to produce the elements necessary for a nuclear bomb,” he said.

However, Mossad had been at odds with Netanyahu on Iran before. The former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, who left office in December 2010, let it be known that he had opposed an order from Netanyahu to prepare a military attack on Iran.

Other members of Israel’s security establishment were riled by Netanyahu’s rhetoric on the Iranian nuclear threat and his advocacy of military confrontation. In April 2012, a former head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, accused Netanyahu of “messianic” political leadership for pressing for military action, saying he and the then defence minister, Ehud Barak, were misleading the public on the Iran issue. Benny Gantz, the Israeli military chief of staff, said decisions on tackling Iran “must be made carefully, out of historic responsibility but without hysteria”.

There were also suspicions in Washington that Netanyahu was seeking to bounce Obama into taking a more hawkish line on Iran.

A few days before Netanyahu’s speech to the UN, the then US defence secretary, Leon Panetta, accused the Israeli prime minister of trying to force the US into a corner. “The fact is … presidents of the United States, prime ministers of Israel or any other country … don’t have, you know, a bunch of little red lines that determine their decisions,” he said.

“What they have are facts that are presented to them about what a country is up to, and then they weigh what kind of action is needed in order to deal with that situation. I mean, that’s the real world. Red lines are kind of political arguments that are used to try to put people in a corner.”

Link to the leaked Mossad document contrary to Netanyahu’s lies about Iranian nuclear development:

http://static.guim.co.uk/ni/1424713149380/Mossad-On-Iran-Nuclear-Stat.pdf

US Aggression Against Venezuela
| February 26, 2015 | 7:48 pm | Analysis, International, National, political struggle, Venezuela | Comments closed

by EVA GOLINGER
Source:CounterPunch
Recently, several different spokespersons for the Obama administration have firmly claimed the United States government is not intervening in Venezuelan affairs. Department of State spokeswoman Jen Psaki went so far as to declare, “The allegations made by the Venezuelan government that the United States is involved in coup plotting and destabilization are baseless and false.” Psaki then reiterated a bizarrely erroneous statement she had made during a daily press briefing just a day before: “The United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means”.
Anyone with minimal knowlege of Latin America and world history knows Psaki’s claim is false, and calls into question the veracity of any of her prior statements. The U.S. government has backed, encouraged and supported coup d’etats in Latin America and around the world for over a century. Some of the more notorious ones that have been openly acknowledged by former U.S. presidents and high level officials include coup d’etats against Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1960, Joao Goulart of Brazil in 1964 and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. More recently, in the twenty-first century, the U.S. government openly supported the coups against President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 2002, Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti in 2004 and Jose Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in 2009. Ample evidence of CIA and other U.S. agency involvement in all of these unconstitutional overthrows of democratically-elected governments abounds. What all of the overthrown leaders had in common was their unwillingness to bow to U.S. interests.
Despite bogus U.S. government claims, after Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela by an overwhelming majority in 1998, and subsequently refused to take orders from Washington, he became a fast target of U.S. aggression. Though a U.S.-supported coup d’etat briefly overthrew Chavez in 2002, his subsequent rescue by millions of Venezuelans and loyal armed forces, and his return to power, only increased U.S. hostility towards the oil-rich nation. After Chavez’s death in 2013 from cancer, his democratically-elected successor, Nicolas Maduro, became the brunt of these attacks.
What follows is a brief summary and selection of U.S. aggression towards Venezuela that clearly shows a one-sided war. Venezuela has never threatened or taken any kind of action to harm the United States or its interests. Nonetheless, Venezuela, under both Chavez and Maduro – two presidents who have exerted Venezuela’s sovereignty and right to self-determination – has been the ongoing victim of continuous, hostile and increasingly unfriendly actions from Washington.
2002-2004
A coup d’etat against Chávez was carried out on April 11, 2002. Documents obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) evidence a clear role of the U.S. government in the coup, as well as financial and political support for those Venezuelans involved.[1]
A “lockout” and economic sabotage of Venezuela’s oil industry was imposed from December 2002 to February 2003. After the defeat of the coup against Chavez, the U.S. State Department issued a special fund via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to help the opposition continue efforts to overthrow Chavez. USAID set up an Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas, subcontracting U.S. defense contractor Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) to oversee Venezuela operations and distribute millions of dollars to anti-government groups. The result was the “national strike” launched in December 2002 that brought the oil industry to the ground and devastated the economy. It lasted 64 days and caused more than $20 billion in damages. Nonetheless, the efforts failed to destabilize the Chavez government.
The “guarimbas” of 2004: On February 27, 2004, extremist anti-government groups initiated violent protests in Caracas aimed at overthrowing Chavez. They lasted 4 days and caused multiple deaths. The leaders of these protests had received training from the U.S. Albert Einstein Institute (AEI), which specializes in regime change tactics and strategies.
The Recall Referendum of 2004: Both NED and USAID channeled millions of dollars into a campaign to recall President Chavez through a national recall referendum. With the funds, the group Sumate, led by multi-millionaire Maria Corina Machado, was formed to oversee the efforts. Chavez won the referendum in a landslide 60-40 victory.
2005
After the victory of President Chavez in the recall referendum of 2004, the US toughened its position towards Venezuela and increased its public hostility and aggression against the Venezuelan government. Here are a selection of statements made about Venezuela by U.S. officials:
January 2005: “Hugo Chavez is a negative force in the region.” -Condoleezza Rice.
March 2005: “Venezuela is one of the most unstable and dangerous ‘hot spots’ in Latin America.” -Porter Goss, ex-Director of the CIA.
“Venezuela is starting a dangerous arms race that threatens regional security.” -Donald Rumsfeld, ex-Secretary of Defense.
“I am concerned about Venezuela’s influence in the area of responsibility…SOUTHCOM supports the position of the Joint Chiefs to maintain ‘military to military’ contact with the Venezuelan military…we need an inter-agency focus to deal with Venezuela.” -General Bantz Craddock, ex-Commander of SOUTHCOM.
July 2005: “Cuba and Venezuela are promoting instability in Latin America…There is no doubt that President Chavez is funding radical forces in Bolivia.” -Rogelio Pardo-Maurer, Assistant Sub-Secretary of Defense for the Western Hemisphere.
“Venezuela and Cuba are promoting radicalism in the region…Venezuela is trying to undermine the democratic governments in the region to impede CAFTA.” -Donald Rumsfeld, ex-Secretary of Defense.
August 2005: “Venezuelan territory is a safe haven for Colombian terrorists.” -Tom Casey, State Department spokesman.
September 2005: “The problem of working with President Chavez is serious and continuous, as it is in other parts of the relationship.” -John Walters, Director of the National Policy Office for Drug Control.
November 2005: “The assault on democratic institutions in Venezuela continues and the system is in serious danger.” -Thomas Shannon, Sub-secretary of State.
2006
February 2006: “President Chavez continues to use his control to repress the opposition, reduce freedom of the press and restrict democracy….it’s a threat.” -John Negroponte, ex-Director of National Intelligence.
“We have Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of money from oil. He is a person who was elected legally, just like Adolf Hitler…” – Donald Rumsfeld, ex-Secretary of Defense.
March 2006: “In Venezuela, a demagogue full of oil money is undermining democracy and trying to destabilize the region.” -George W. Bush.
U.S. officials try to link Venezuela to Terrorism:
June 2006: “Venezuela’s cooperation in the international campaign against terrorism continues to be insignificant…It’s not clear to what point the Venezuelan government offered material support to Colombian terrorists.” – Annual Report on Terrorism, Department of State.
June 2006: The U.S. government through the Commerce Department and U.S. Treasury imposes sanctions against Venezuela for its alleged role in terrorism and prohibits the sale of military equipment to the country.
July 2006: “Venezuela, under President Hugo Chavez, has tolerated terrorists in its territory…” -Subcommittee on International Terrorism, House of Representatives.
U.S. increases its Military Presence in Latin America:
March-July 2006: The US military engages in four major exercises off the coast of Venezuela in the Caribbean Sea, with support from NATO, and based at the US air force base in Curaçao. A permanent military presence is established in the Dominican Republic and the bases in Curaçao and Aruba are reinforced.
The US Embassy in Caracas establishes the “American Corners” in 5 Venezuelan States (Lara, Monagas, Bolívar, Anzoátegui, Nueva Esparta), to act as centers of propaganda, subversion, espionage and infiltration.
U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield intensifies his public hostility towards the Venezuelan government, making frequent sarcastic and unfriendly comments in opposition-controlled media.
NED and USAID increase funding to anti-government groups in Venezuela.
2007
At the beginning of 2007, Venezuela is severely attacked in the international media & by U.S. government spokespersons for its decision to nationalize Cantv (the only national telephone company), the Electricity of Caracas and the Faja Orinoco oil fields.
In May 2007 the attack intensifies when the government decides not to renew the public broadcasting concession to popular opposition television station, RCTV.
A powerful international media campaign is initiated against Venezuela and President Chavez, referring to him as a dictator.
Private distributors and companies begin hoarding food and other essential consumer products in order to create shortages and panic amongst the population.
USAID, NED and the State Department via the Embassy in Caracas foment, fund and encourage the emergence of a right-wing youth movement and help to project its favorable image to the international community in order to distort the perception of President Chavez’s popularity amongst youth.
Groups such as Human Rights Watch, Inter-American Press Association and Reporters without Borders accuse Venezuela of violating human rights and freedom of expression.
September 2007: President George W. Bush classifies Venezuela as a nation “not cooperating” with the war against drug trafficking, for the third year in a row, imposing additional economic sanctions.
September 2007: Condoleezza Rice declares the U.S. is “concerned about the destructive populism” of Chavez.
2008
January 2008: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chief of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces meets with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, then Minister of Defense Juan Manuel Santos, U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield and the Commander General of the Colombian Armed Forces Freddy Padilla de Leon and declares during a press conference that he is “concerned about the arms purchases made by Chavez” and expresses that this could “destabilize the region.”
John Walters, the U.S. Anti-Drug Czar meets with Uribe in Colombia, together with 5 U.S. congresspersons and Ambassador Brownfield, and declares Venezuela a nation “complicit with drug trafficking” that presents “a threat to the US and the region”. He also expresses his wish that the Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Colombia be ratified by Congress soon.
Condoleezza Rice visits Colombia, together with Sub-Secretary of State Thomas Shannon and 10 congress members from the democratic party to push the FTA and back Colombia in its conflict with Venezuela.
President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address emphasizes the importance of the FTA with Colombia alerts to the threat of “populist” and “undemocratic” governments in the region.
February 2008: SOUTHCOM sends the Navy’s “4th fleet” to the Caribbean Sea (a group of war ships, submarines and aircraft carriers that haven’t been in those waters since the Cold War).
The Director of National Intelligence, General Mike McConnell, publishes the Annual Threat Report, which classifies Venezuela as the “principal threat against the US in the hemisphere”.
Exxon-Mobil tries to “freeze” $12 billion of Venezuelan assets in London, Holland and the Dutch Antilles.
A Report on Present Threats to National Security of the Defense Intelligence Agency classifies Venezuela as a “national security threat” to the U.S.
A Department of State report accuses Venezuela of being a country that permits “the transit of illegal drugs”, “money laundering” and being “complicit with drug trafficking.”
The U.S. Department of Treasury classifies three high level Venezuelan officials as “drug kingpins”, presenting no formal evidence. The head of Venezuela’s military intelligence, General Hugo Carvajal, the head of Venezuela’s civil intelligence force, General Henry Rangel Silva, and former Minister of Interior and Justice, Ramon Rodriguez Chacin are sanctioned by the U.S. government and placed on a terrorist list.
Rear Admiral Joseph Nimmich, Director of the US Joint Interagency Task Force, meets in Bogota with the Commander General of the Colombian Armed Forces.
March 2008: The Colombian army invades Ecuadorian territory and assassinates Raul Reyes and a dozen others, including 4 Mexicans, at a FARC camp in the jungle near the border.
General Jorge Naranjo, Commander of Colombia’s National Police, declares that laptop computers rescued from the scene of the bombing that killed Reyes and others evidence that President Chavez gave more than $300 million to the FARC along with a quantity of uranium and weapons. No other evidence is produced or shown to the public. Ecuador is also accused of supporting the FARC.
Venezuela mobilizes troops to the border with Colombia.
The US Navy sends the Aircraft Carrier “Harry Truman” to the Caribbean Sea to engage in military exercises to prevent potential terrorist attacks and eventual conflicts in the region.President Bush states the U.S. will defend Colombia against the “provocations” from Venezuela.
Uribe announces he will bring a claim before the International Criminal Court against President Chavez for “sponsoring genocide and terrorism”.
March: President Bush requests his team of lawyers and advisors review the possibility of placing Venezuela on the list of “STATE SPONSORS OF TERRORISM” together with Cuba, Iran, Syria and North Korea.
2009
May: A document from the U.S. Air Force shows the construction of a U.S. military base in Palanquero, Colombia, to combat the “anti-American” governments in the region. The Palanquero base is part of the 7 military bases that the U.S. planned to build in Colombia under an agreement with the Colombian government for a ten-year period.
2010
February: The U.S. Director of National Intelligence declares Venezuela the “anti-American leader” in the region in its annual report on worldwide threats.
February: The State Department authorizes more than $15 million via NED and USAID to anti-government groups in Venezuela.
June: A report from the FRIDE Institute in Spain, funded by NED, evidences that international agencies channel between $40-50 million a year to anti-government groups in Venezuela.
September: Washington ratifies sanctions against Venezuela for allegedly not cooperating with counter-narcotics efforts or the war on terror.
2011-2015
President Obama authorizes a special fund of $5 million in his annual budget to support anti-government groups in Venezuela. In 2015, Obama increases this amount to $5.5 million.
NED continues to fund anti-government groups in Venezuela with about $2 million annually.
Each year, the US government includes Venezuela on a list of countries that do not cooperate with counter-narcotics efforts or the war on terror. Also in its annual human rights report, the State Department classifies Venezuela as a “violator” of human rights.
Subsequent to President Chavez’s death from cancer on March 5, 2013, new elections are held and Nicolas Maduro wins the presidency. Opposition leaders hold violent demonstrations that result in the deaths of more than a dozen people.
In February 2014, the violent protests resume, led by Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, who openly call for the overthrow of President Maduro, and over 40 people are killed. Lopez turns himself in to authorities and faces charges for his role in the violence. The U.S. government calls for his immediate release.
In December 2014, President Obama imposed sanctions on more than 50 Venezuelan officials and their relatives, accusing them of violating human rights and engaging in corruption. No evidence has been presented to date to support these serious allegations. The Commerce Department also expanded sanctions against Venezuela, prohibiting the sale of “any products” that could be destined for “military use” due to alleged human rights violations committed by the Venezuelan Armed Forces.
January 2015: Vice President Joe Biden warns Caribbean countries that the government of President Nicolas Maduro will soon be “defeated” and therefore they should abandon their discounted oil program with Venezuela, PetroCaribe.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki condemns the alleged “criminalization of political dissent” in Venezuela.
February 2015: President Obama unveils his new National Security Strategy and names Venezuela as a threat and stresses support for Venezuelan “citizens” living in a country where “democracy is at risk.”
Anti-government leaders circulate a document for a “transitional government agreement” which warns President Maduro’s government is in its “final stage” and pledges to overhaul the entire government and socialist system in place, replacing it with a neoliberal, pro-business model. The document is signed by Maria Corina Machado, jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma, mayor of Metropolitan Caracas.
Days later, a coup plot against President Nicolas Maduro is thwarted and 10 active Venezuelan military officers are detained. Antonio Ledezma is arrested and charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government and the U.S. State Department issues a harsh condemnation of his detention, calling on regional governments to take action against the Maduro administration.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest denies any U.S. government role in the coup attempt against Maduro, calling such allegations “ludicrous”, but further reveals, “The Treasury Department and the State Department are considering tools that may be available that could better steer the Venezuelan government in the direction that we believe they should be headed”.
Eva Golinger is the author of The Chavez Code. She can be reached through her blog.
Notes.
[1] See The Chavez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela, Eva Golinger. Olive Branch Press 2006.
Picket tomorrow against Harper’s so-called anti-terror bill
| February 25, 2015 | 7:26 pm | Action, Communist Party Canada, Discrimination against communists, International, Party Voices, police terrorism, political struggle | Comments closed
Communist Party of Canada – Manitoba
387 Selkirk Ave. Winnipeg MB R2W 2M3
(204) 586-7824 – cpc-mb@changetheworldmb.ca


February 25, 2015

Picket tomorrow against Harper’s so-called anti-terror bill

A picket has been organized against the Conservative Party’s misnamed anti-terror bill:

Shelly Glover, MP’s office
Thursday, Feb. 26, 4:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
213 St. Mary’s Road (near Traverse)

All groups are welcome, including to speak and co-sponsor.

* * * * *
Harper’s legislation will enable the RCMP and CSIS to crack down on all resistance in Canada, against democratic and workers’ struggles.

There is no “balance” in the bill. It gives free reign to the government’s security apparatus at the same time it attacks Canadians’ rights and freedoms.

There is no evidence that the government needs to give such power to secret, actually political police. Historically, such legislation has always been used once passed:  to outlaw socialist parties (1918), crush the Winnipeg General Strike (1919), outlaw the Communist Party (1931, two years before Germany and Japan, and 1939), and imprison hundreds of innocent people during the FLQ crisis.

As found by the Royal Commission on Certain Activities of the RCMP (1977), even without such laws the police carried out serious criminal activities against progressive organizations, including the Communist Party, many of which remain unpublished and secret to this day.

So it can safely be said, the bill is unnecessary and is intended to create fear and conformity among Canadians with the Conservative Party’s definition of terrorism.

The Communist Party is wholly opposed to terrorism as a tactic in the mass struggles for democracy and socialism, but the Conservative government is using this bill to instill fear in the general public and to draw attention away from its own pro-terror policies such as bombing Yugoslavia and Libya, helping Ukraine’s pro-Nazi regime which is terrorizing its population and banning the Communist Party there, and deporting U.S. military veterans who are opposed to war crimes to serve lengthy sentences in U.S. military prisons – pursuing a pro-war crime agenda.

The Communist Party completely rejects the idea that this bill is needed to counter so-called “eco-terrorism” or the serious, false charge against Aboriginal rights activists that they are terrorists. The proven use of agents provocateurs in anti-globalization protests by police shows who are the real criminals.

The bill targets the resistance to corporate control of Canada.

The bill’s first target is the international unity of working people, Arab and non-Arab, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, Russian and non-Russian.

Who are the Conservative party’s targets-of-choice, the targets of RCMP wrongdoing, jailings and outright banning since the beginning of mercantile and settler colonialism, the Red River Resistance and the Winnipeg General Strike?

Politically, it is socialist parties, especially the Communist Party which supports the resistance against corporate influence and domination and works to build the international unity of working people and oppressed nations (outlawed 3 times).

In terms of the people’s resistance, it is the trade union movement and oppressed nations, Aboriginal peoples and Quebec’s movement for self-determination and equality.

The anti-terror legislation is certain to broaden the dirty tricks, secret police wrongdoing and repression.

That is why the Communist Party in Winnipeg will hold a picket to protest the new bill this week.

Everyone is invited to bring their signs and messages of resistance.

Vive la resistance,
Penner-Bethune Club, Communist Party of Canada

Information: Darrell Rankin (204) 792-3371

On the Situation in Greece
| February 24, 2015 | 8:00 pm | Analysis, Communist Party Greece (KKE), Economy, Greece, International, Labor, political struggle | Comments closed

 

http://mltoday.com/on-the-situation-in-greece?utm

February 17,  2015

Interview of Giorgos Marinos, member of the Political Bureau of the CP Greece (KKE), for the Brazilian magazine “Revista Opera.”

1 – How do you see the recent election of Syriza? Will they be able to solve Greece’s workers’ needs?

In our assessment, the replacement of the ND-PASOK government by the SYRIZA-ANEL one can not help satisfy the people’s needs today. And this is because the new government, like the previous one, despite its “leftwing” sloganeering operates within the same framework: the country’s participation in the EU and NATO, the implementation of the commitments to these imperialist unions, the recognition of the unbearable state debt that the people are not responsible for, the support for the profitability of the capitalist interests in the name of the “competitiveness of the national economy”.

So the new government’s program is simply seeking to manage the phenomena of extreme poverty, while at the same time the unbearable situation will continue for the majority of the people, as the causes of the people’s problems will remain in place. These causes are to be found in the very nature of capitalism.

2 – Has KKE offered Syriza an alliance? If so, which were the conditions for the agreement?

Life has demonstrated that crudely assembled coalitions of parties in the name of the left and intentions to better manage capitalism do not serve the workers. The experience in Greece and internationally, in our assessment, demonstrates that “centre-left”, “progressive”, “leftwing” governments in the framework of capitalism (e.g. in Italy, France, Cyprus, Brazil etc.) also took anti-people measures, were not able to avoid the consequences of the capitalist crisis and actively participated in imperialist wars. Such governments exacerbated the disillusionment amongst the workers, weakened the labour movement and in each case constituted a “bridge” to more rightwing policies.

Our party in a very timely manner had excluded the possibility of participating in or supporting a “leftwing” government of SYRIZA, which promises that there can be a pro-people management inside the framework of capitalism and the imperialist unions. On our part, we did not participate in the spreading of such illusions and place some “conditions” on SYRIZA, because it is obvious that we have a diametrically different approach: SYRIZA seeks the humanization of capitalism, the KKE seeks its overthrow and the construction of another society. However, we promoted our political proposal, which in brief provides for the following: unilateral cancellation of the debt, disengagement from the EU and NATO, socialization of the means of production, central planning of the economy, workers’-people’s power.

I should note that the KKE has its own view about what type of alliances the country needs. We have charted the line of forming the people’s alliance, comprised of social forces, the working class, the poor and medium sized farmers, the urban petty bourgeois strata, whose interests lie in coming into conflict with the monopolies and capitalism. This alliance, which today has taken its first steps, is struggling for every problem the people have, has an antimonopoly-anticapitalist direction and contributes to the concentration of forces in order to pave the way for the construction of the new socialist-communist society.

3 – Syriza has recently made an agreement with the right-wing party “Independent Greeks”. How do you see that? Was it necessary? Why?

It did not surprise us. Before the elections we had assessed that SYRIZA, if it did not achieve an absolute majority in the Parliament, would form a government with one of the parties that like SYRIZA want Greece to stay inside the EU and NATO. We are talking about the parties that consider that the people should pay for the unbearable debt for which they are not responsible and that support the capitalist path of development. Although there were other bourgeois parties, of various shades, that were eager to collaborate with SYRIZA in the government. SYRIZA chose cooperation with ANEL, a cooperation that had started some time ago.

4 – It seems that Syriza won’t fight EU and US sanctions against Russia. They’ve supported the extent of it last Thursday. What is KKE’s view on that matter?

The government’s stance on the issue of Ukraine, despite the blustering, lasted just 3 days . On the fourth day, the Greek government aligned with the EU and voted for the same sanctions against Russia that had been voted for by the previous ND-PASOK government, leaving the door open for other sanctions in the near future. We should note that it had criticized the stance of the previous government on this issue.

In our evaluation, the sanctions against Russia signify the escalation of the intervention of the EU and the USA in Ukraine, in the framework of their competition with Russia over the control of the markets and the region’s energy resources.

The trade war between the EU and Russia above all is harming the working class and popular strata, such as the small and medium farmers in Greece. This is a trade war that aims to benefit the interests of the monopolies.

The new decision of the EU, with the participation of the Greek left as well, confirms once again the reactionary imperialist character of the EU, which attacks the peoples of Europe and plays a leading role in imperialist plans in order to serve the interests of EU-based capital.

The KKE consistently argues that the Greek people must denounce the stance of the Greek government and demand that there should be no Greek participation in the EU and NATO plans.

5 – We’ve seen the growth of fascist and neonazi organizations throughout Europe. In Greece, there’s Golden Dawn. On last elections they’ve got aroung 6% of the votes. If Syriza fails to solve Greece’s problems, will Golden Dawn grow?

It is true that the criminal Nazi party Golden Dawn, which has murderous activity and was created by the mechanisms of the system, maintains a high percentage in elections, despite the losses it had in votes.

Particular responsibility for the electoral percentage of GD belongs both to the ND-PASOK government that fostered anti-communisms, the theory of the two extremes, the scape-goating of immigrants as well as to the blurred “anti-memorandum” line promoted by SYRIZA which exonerates the people’s real opponents, the capitalists. This specific criminal fascist organization developed on this ideological and political terrain.

The KKE remains the steadfast opponent of fascism, precisely because the KKE opposes capitalism as a whole, the system that creates fascism, nationalism and racism.

The frustration of the expectations which have been cultivated by social-democratic forces, like SYRIZA, can facilitate the activity of Golden Dawn amongst politically backward sections of the people. However, we assess that our people have the strength to reject and isolate the criminal Nazi activity and ideology of Golden Dawn. They possess the historical experience and memory from the 2ndWorld War, from the Anti-fascist Victory. It is a duty and a necessity, especially in the case of the youth and schools, for teachers and for artists and scientists in society more generally to expose, to fight against and to impede the poison of fascism-Nazism. The labour and people’s movement must strengthen its struggle against Nazism and its criminal activity, against the system and the interests that create and sustain such formations.

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