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AMLO'S ADELITAS SAVE THE DAY

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 05:08:00 +0000

AMLO'S ADELITAS SAVE THE DAY

FROM: JOHN ROSS
011-5255-5518-1213 X102
johnross@igc.org
Blindman's Buff #208

AMLO'S "ADELITAS" SHUT DOWN MEXICO'S CONGRESS TO PREVENT SNEAK PRIVATIZATION OF
OIL

MEXICO CITY (April 22nd) - "The Adelitas have arrived/To defend our oil/Whoever
wants to give it to the foreigners/ Will get the shit kicked out of him!"
yodeled the brigades of women pouring onto the esplanade of the Mexican senate
to protest a petroleum privatization measure President Felipe Calderon insists
is not a petroleum privatization measure and which he sent onto the Senate for
fast-track ratification at the tag end of the winter-spring session this April.

Inside the small, ornate Senate, leftist legislators aligned in the Broad
Progressive Front (FAP), some dressed in white oil workers overalls and hard
hats, were camped out under pup tents arranged around the podium for the eighth
straight ni ght, paralyzing legislative activities and demanding an ample
national debate on Calderon's not-so-veiled plans to open up the nationalized
petroleum corporation PEMEX to transnational investment.

The hullabaloo, which has been brewing for months, exploded when rumors
circulated that Calderon's right-wing PAN party and allies in the once-ruling
(71 years) PRI had cooked up a secret vote approving the privatization measure -
such covert maneuvering is called an "albazo" or "madruguete" here, a pre-dawn
ruse to approve legislation in the dark when there is significant opposition,
often behind locked doors and military and police barricades. Seizing the
podiums in both houses of congress and the timely arrival of the Adelitas
prevented a madruguete and derailed Calderon's plans to fast-track the
privatization of PEMEX.

Under the President's "energy reform" package, building and operating refineries
and pipelines will be opene d up to the private sector - 37 out of PEMEX's 41
divisions would be subject to partial privatization. One example: a modified
form of "risk" contract, which relegates a percentage of the petroleum brought
in to the private driller, and which is outlawed under Article 27 of the Mexican
Constitution, would become the law of the land.

In an analysis anti-privatizers label "catastrophic" which Calderon sent on to
congress to back up his initiative, the President pinned salvation of PEMEX on
deep water ("aguas profundas") drilling in the Gulf of Mexico that would
necessitate the "association" of private capital.

Mexico's petroleum industry was expropriated from an array of oil companies
known collectively as the "Seven Sisters" in March 1938 by then-President Lazaro
Cardenas, an act that remains a paragon of revolutionary nationalism throughout
Latin America. But down the decades, PEMEX has subcontracted out important
parts of its structure - the Exploration or PEP division in particular - to
transnational drillers and service corporations like Halliburton, now its number
one subcontractor, that suck billions of dollar in profits from Mexican oil each
year.

The appearance of the Adelitas and their male counterparts ("Los Adelitos") is
the latest gamble by the left populist leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO)
who many Mexicans feel was defrauded out of the presidency by Calderon in
tainted 2006 elections, to monkey wrench the right-wing government's plans to
return PEMEX to the contemporary version of the Seven Sisters. The PAN was
indeed founded in 1939 to oppose Cardenas's nationalization of the oil industry.

Organized by neighborhoods and by workplaces, the Adelita brigades are the
lineal descendents of the groups of anguished AMLO supporters who came together
after the stolen 2006 election in a seven-week sit-in that shut down the
capi tal's main thoroughfares. At last count (Friday April 14th), there were 41
registered brigades - 28 Adelitas and 13 Adelitos, about 50,000 citizens in all.
Operating in shifts, 13,000 "brigadistas" have been encamped off and on for a
week in front of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.

The brigades are named after significant political events - "18th of March",
marking the day Cardenas expropriated the oil - or to honor social activists
such as Jesus Piedra, the long-disappeared son of left senator Rosario Ibarra,
and Arturo Gamiz, a 1960s guerrilla fighter. Women warriors like Leona Vicaria
and Benita Galeana are similarly remembered. One brigade of Adelitas tag
themselves "Enaguas Profundas" or "Deep Petticoats" - Calderon wants to drill in
deep water or "aguas profundas."

The creation of so large a citizens' army pledged to carry out civil
disobedience to prevent the passage of legislation it thinks detrimental to the republic is unprecedented in Mexico's political history. As thousands sat down
in the street to block the automobiles of PAN and PRI senators from entering the
precinct last Thursday, AMLO, who often cites Dr. King and Gandhi as role
models, urged non-violence: "not one window broken, not one stone thrown."

"Tienen miedo porque no tenemos miedo!" the Adelitas sang back in a call and
response that is always a feature of Lopez Obrador's mobilizations, "They are
frightened because we are not afraid."

Similar brigades, led by women, have invaded local congresses outside of Mexico
City and one band of activists closed Acapulco's busy airport last week.
Shutting down Mexico City's Benito Juarez International Airport is the Adelitas'
ultimate threat.

The Adelitas, like most of the weapons in AMLO's arsenal, are drawn from
Mexico's revolutionary history. Las Adelitas were "soldaderas" or women
soldiers who fought shoulder t o shoulder with the men in Pancho Villa's
"Division del Norte" (Northern Division) during the 1910-1919 revolution. With
their long skirts, broad sombreros, bandoleers strung across their chests, and
toting .22 carbines, the Adelitas were emblematic of the many courageous women
who participated in that epic struggle. The first Adelita is thought to have
been Adelita Velarde, a nurse from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua.

Like "La Cucaracha", another popular anthem of Pancho Villa's irregulars, "La
Adelita" is now a mainstay of Mexican folk music. The song tells of "Adelita"
who fell in love with the "Sargente" (Sergeant) and went to fight with him on
the frontlines against the "Federales" (government troops.) In the final verse,
the Sargente swears that if Adelita should leave him, he will come for her in a
"war ship" or "military train" - which may be prophetic of the Adelitas' pursuit
of Calderon and his oil privatization scheme.
AMLO's crusade has not been confined to one house of congress. On April 8th
when the President sprung his initiative on the legislature, FAP members stormed
the tribune in the Chamber of Deputies (Mexico's version of the U.S. House of
Representatives)
while lawmakers were preparing to grant Calderon permission to travel to New
Orleans for the April 21st-22nd summit of the ASPAN (The North American Security
and Prosperity Agreement) - Mexican presidents must solicit congress for
permission to travel.

ASPAN is a corollary of NAFTA that projects North American security and energy
integration and Calderon was eager to attend the summit with the
re-privatization of Mexican oil in hand.

Suddenly, the FAPOs unfurled a 60-foot banner that announced Congress had been
closed ("Clausurado") and cast it over the entire presidium, trapping president
Ruth Zavaleta, who occupies Nancy Pelosi's position in the Mexican house, in its
folds. Struggling to free herself of the fabric, Zavaleta reappeared with her
gavel in hand but the ensuing chaos prevented her from calling for a vote on the
President's travel arrangements.

Eight days later, the tribune was still draped in the banner and FAP deputies
had chained shut the doors of the chamber and moved the desks of the PAN
legislators to the podium to barricade themselves from attempts to take it back.
Zavaleta, a member of AMLO's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) but not
friendly to Lopez Obrador, has called for the use of "public force" (police,
military) to remove the rebel lawmakers.

Thrust back into the national spotlight by the battle to head off privatization,
Lopez Obrador is the target of extravagant vitriol delivered by the nation's
electronic and print media reminiscent of the public lynching he was subject to
during the tumultuous 2006 presidential campaign. TV tyrant Televisa's coverage of the takeover of congress (a "kidnapping") was so venomous that thousands of
Adelitas, wearing bandaleros and wielding facsimile .22s, descended on the
conglomerate's Mexico City headquarters, provoking one prominent PAN politico to
label them "paramilitaries."

In violation of constitutional amendments banning "black" political hit pieces,
a PAN front group "Better Society, Better Government", is running primetime
Televisa spots comparing Lopez Obrador to Hitler, Mussolini, and Pinochet. PAN
party president German Martinez accuses Lopez Obrador of "hiding under the
skirts of women" and the Empresorial
Coordinating Council, the nation's most elite business federation, takes out
full-page ads blasting the AMLOs for staging a coup d'etat ("golpe de estado.")

Despite the anti-AMLO media blitz - or perhaps because of it - Lopez Obrador
remains the only figure on the Mexican political stage who is able to convoke
tens of tho usands of supporters, often with virtually no notice. Three times
since March 18th when he kicked off this crusade, AMLO has filled the great
Zocalo plaza, the heart of Mexico's body politic. What makes the turnouts even
more impressive is the fact that Lopez Obrador has built this massive movement
while his Party of the Democratic Revolution has been reducing itself to rubble.

In-fighting since a corrupted March 16th party presidential election has divided
the PRD down the middle - the party is roughly split between an activist wing
headed by Lopez Obrador and his candidate Alejandro Encinas, and party
bureaucrats who see the PRD as an instrument for political and personal
advancement and seek to demobilize the Adelitas.

The "Chuchus" or "New Left" eschew AMLO's rallies and sit-ins and instead
conduct their own private hunger strikes to protest privatization. The Chuchus
(many of their leaders are named Jesus) portray themsel ves as the "reasonable"
left and are only too willing to "dialogue" with Calderon, a president Lopez
Obrador resolutely refuses to recognize.

Whoever wins, the tussle over the bones of the PRD may be a moot one - after two
years of campaigning down at the grassroots, Lopez Obrador's base has grown
wider than that of the party.

Although Calderon's scam to fast track privatization through congress was
blunted by the Adelitas and the FAPs, the PAN and the PRI - the latter a
repository of seven decades of dirty tricks - still have plenty of room in which
to connive. Now the PRI, seconded by Calderon's right-wing minions, proposes an
uninterrupted 50 day "national" debate to be restricted to the two houses of
congress with a congressional vote by mid-summer. Calderon's initiative can
only pass if at least half of the PRI's 120-vote delegation goes along with the
game.

Even if the privatization measure eventually passes, the legislation is bound to
wind up in the Mexican Supreme Court the moment it clears congress. Ironically,
the Supreme Court was the instrument by which Cardenas nationalized the oil
industry in the first place.

Meanwhile, Lopez Obrador's people are clamoring for a very different kind of
debate, one that would unfold over the next four months - 120 days - and be
conducted inside and outside congress in every state and municipality in the
country with the prospect of a national referendum in the fall to decide the
issue - one poll has 62% of those questioned opposed to the privatization of
Mexico's oil. Such grassroots decision-making would be a revolutionary strophe
here in the land of the "albazo" and the "madruguete."

Out on the esplanade of the Senate, the Adelitas were shaking their boodies to
"La Cumbia del Petrolio." There were enough pink "gorras" (baseball caps), pink
hankies, and pink parasols that read "Defend Our Oil" to make Code Pink blush.
Brigadista Berta Robledo, a nurse about to retire from the National Pediatric
Hospital, hugged a blade of shade under the punishing mid-day sun.

"Are you tired, companeras?" the companera with the bullhorn asked and Berta
came to her feet with a loud "No!" "Sure the sun is hot but so what?" she
responded to a gringo reporter's stupid question, "the sun can't stop us, the
rain can't stop us, the cold can't stop us and you know why? Because we are
right! We are fighting for our oil and for our country. This is the
resistance. We don't get tired."

John Ross is at home in the belly of the Monstruo writing a book about the belly
of the Monstruo. If you have further information write johnross@igc.org

Puerto Rican Nationalist Tied To San Juan Attacks

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:48:00 +0000

courant.com/news/local/hc-ctfargo0415.artapr15,0,5521230.story

Puerto Rican Nationalist Tied To San Juan Attacks

By EDMUND H. MAHONY

Courant Staff Writer

April 15, 2008

Federal prosecutors tried to link Puerto Rican nationalist Avelino Gonzalez Claudio to two rocket attacks in San Juan as they began an effort Monday to have him jailed as a threat and a flight risk while he awaits trial on charges of robbing $7 million from an armored car depot in West Hartford in 1983.

The hearing began late Monday in U.S. District Court in Hartford and was scheduled to resume today. Prosecutors, who opened the contentious hearing, said they will make additional arguments today, and Gonzalez's defense team is awaiting their chance to rebut the government claims.

Prosecutors said that Gonzalez is a leader of the violent Puerto Rico pro-independence group Los Macheteros and that he played a key role in approving the group's robbery of the Wells Fargo terminal — then the largest cash robbery in U.S. history.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Henry K. Kopel said Monday that the FBI found Gonzalez's fingerprint in a mobile home used to move $2 million of the money and Victor M. Gerena, Los Machetero's inside man, to Mexico.

Gonzalez was indicted on charges related to the robbery in 1985, but disappeared until his arrest on Feb. 7. He is believed to have lived in Puerto Rico under assumed names and, at least part of the time, taught a computer course at a private school.

Prosecutors are arguing that Gonzalez should be jailed while awaiting trial because he is likely to flee and because he has a violent history that makes him a threat to public safety. Although Gonzalez had no chance to offer rebuttal arguments during Monday's truncated hearing, his chief defense lawyer, James W. Bergenn, repeatedly tried to pick apart the government's evidence — much of it from the early 1980s.

Kopel said the FBI in Puerto Rico found fingerprints matching those of Gonzalez on the arm rest of a Chevrolet parked near the site of a rocket attack on the FBI offices in the Hato Rey district of San Juan on Oct. 30, 1983. Kopel said the Chevrolet was one of two suspicious cars reported by witnesses not far from the scene of the attack.

But under combined questioning by Bergenn and U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Smith, Kopel conceded he could not conclusively tie Gonzalez's fingerprints to the attack. Kopel did say that witnesses reported seeing a suspicious character wiping fingerprints from the outside of one of the cars before fleeing.

"Maybe that person fired the rocket," Bergenn said.

Kopel also tied Gonzalez to a second rocket attack on the federal courthouse and U.S. post office building in old San Juan in 1985. He said that time, Gonzalez's fingerprints were found on part of the weapon left behind at the scene of the launch.

Contact Edmund H. Mahony at emahony@courant.com.

No Bail For Accused Wells Fargo Robber

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:17:00 +0000

courant.com/news/custom/topnews/hcu-wellsfargo0415,0,6304474.story

No Bail For Accused Wells Fargo Robber

By EDMUND H. MAHONY

Courant Staff Writer

1:56 PM EDT, April 15, 2008

Gonzalez, 65, is one of 19 members of the militant pro-independence group Los Macheteros indicted for planning and carrying out the $7 million robbery on Sept. 12, 1983. At the time, it was the largest cash robbery in U.S. history. Records seized in the case show that Los Macheteros planned to use the money to finance a revolutionary war against the United States.

Gonzalez disappeared in 1985 after his indictment in the case but before authorities could arrest him. He remained a fugitive until his capture by the FBI on Feb. 7 in the Puerto Rican north coast town of Manati, where he lived with his wife.

Prosecutors said during Gonzalez's two-day detention hearing in U.S. District Court that he lived in Puerto Rico under the name Jose Ortega Morales.

Other court records show that, during several of his years as a fugitive, Gonzalez worked as an instructor at a private computer institute in Puerto Rico. As part of his work, Gonzalez instructed federal court employees in Puerto Rico on computer use, according to a friend and fellow Machetero member.

After his apprehension, Gonzalez was transferred to Connecticut to stand trial on 15 charges associated with the robbery. He pleaded not guilty to all charges on Feb. 15.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Smith agreed with prosecution arguments Tuesday and concluded that no bail terms could be created that would guarantee Gonzalez's appearance at a trial. His lawyer, James Bergenn, said earlier that Gonzalez's family members and a close friend had agreed to post $500,000 in equity from their homes. In addition, Bergenn said Gonzalez would agree to house arrest, electronic monitoring and daily reporting to court supervisors.

"These charges just by themselves are incredibly serious," Smith told Gonzalez. "They are aggravated bank robbery charges, the largest bank robbery in U.S. history. Frankly, I'm not inclined to release you. The fact that you managed to escape the charges for 23 years does not give you a free pass."

Gonzalez's wife wept at the decision and was comforted by his three sons, all of whom had flown from Puerto Rico to Hartford for the hearing.

"We are sad he didn't get out," said one of the sons, Oscar Gonzalez Pedrosa, a child pyschiatrist. "We thought the defense lawyer made a very good case."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Henry Kopel had argued for Gonzalez's detention on two grounds -- flight risk and dangerousness. Kopel said the FBI had tied Gonzalez to two Machetero Rocket attacks on federal buildings in Puerto Rico and found bomb making and military manuals in his home.

Smith said their was enough evidence to detain Gonzalez as a flight risk. He said he did not need to consider evidence that he might pose a threat to the public if released.

Los Macheteros is a clandestine group which has taken credit for several robberies and violent attacks on U.S. targets in Puerto Rico. The Wells Fargo robbery, in which more than $7 million was stolen, was the most dramatic.

The group, in which Gonzalez held a senior position, recruited a young man from Hartford, Victor M. Gerena, to obtain a position with Wells Fargo and act as an inside man. At the close of business on Sept. 12, 1983, Gerena -- at gun point -- disarmed two co-workers, tied them up, and attempted to render them unconscious by injecting them with a still-unknown substance.

Gerena then stuffed a rented automobile with all the cash it could hold, summoned at least one Machetero who was waiting outside the Wells Fargo terminal and disappeared. Kopel said Tuesday Gerena is till believed to be hiding in Cuba.

According to FBI sources, Cuban intelligence officers provided training and financial support to Los macheteros, which is Spanish for machete-wielders or cane cutters. The former Cuban government of Fidel Castro helped smuggle the Wells Fargo money into Mexico. Cuba is believed to have kept about half the money.

With Gonzalez's arrest, only one other Wells Fargo suspect remains at large, his brother Norberto Gonzalez Claudio. Kopel said Norberto Gonzalez is believed to be hiding in Puerto Rico. A third fugitive, Machetero founder Filiberto Ojeda Rios, died in a shoot-out with FBI agents in the remote, southwest corner of the island in September 2005.

No Bail For Accused Wells Fargo Robber

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:17:00 +0000

courant.com/news/custom/topnews/hcu-wellsfargo0415,0,6304474.story

Courant.com

No Bail For Accused Wells Fargo Robber

By EDMUND H. MAHONY

Courant Staff Writer

1:56 PM EDT, April 15, 2008

A federal magistrate ruled Tuesday that Avelino Gonzalez Claudio, a militant Puerto Rican nationalist charged in the 1983 robbery of a West Hartford armored car depot, is a flight risk and should be imprisoned without bail while awaiting trial.

Gonzalez, 65, is one of 19 members of the militant pro-independence group Los Macheteros indicted for planning and carrying out the $7 million robbery on Sept. 12, 1983. At the time, it was the largest cash robbery in U.S. history. Records seized in the case show that Los Macheteros planned to use the money to finance a revolutionary war against the United States.

Gonzalez disappeared in 1985 after his indictment in the case but before authorities could arrest him. He remained a fugitive until his capture by the FBI on Feb. 7 in the Puerto Rican north coast town of Manati, where he lived with his wife.

Prosecutors said during Gonzalez's two-day detention hearing in U.S. District Court that he lived in Puerto Rico under the name Jose Ortega Morales.

Other court records show that, during several of his years as a fugitive, Gonzalez worked as an instructor at a private computer institute in Puerto Rico. As part of his work, Gonzalez instructed federal court employees in Puerto Rico on computer use, according to a friend and fellow Machetero member.

After his apprehension, Gonzalez was transferred to Connecticut to stand trial on 15 charges associated with the robbery. He pleaded not guilty to all charges on Feb. 15.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Smith agreed with prosecution arguments Tuesday and concluded that no bail terms could be created that would guarantee Gonzalez's appearance at a trial. His lawyer, James Bergenn, said earlier that Gonzalez's family members and a close friend had agreed to post $500,000 in equity from their homes. In addition, Bergenn said Gonzalez would agree to house arrest, electronic monitoring and daily reporting to court supervisors.

"These charges just by themselves are incredibly serious," Smith told Gonzalez. "They are aggravated bank robbery charges, the largest bank robbery in U.S. history. Frankly, I'm not inclined to release you. The fact that you managed to escape the charges for 23 years does not give you a free pass."

Gonzalez's wife wept at the decision and was comforted by his three sons, all of whom had flown from Puerto Rico to Hartford for the hearing.

"We are sad he didn't get out," said one of the sons, Oscar Gonzalez Pedrosa, a child pyschiatrist. "We thought the defense lawyer made a very good case."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Henry Kopel had argued for Gonzalez's detention on two grounds -- flight risk and dangerousness. Kopel said the FBI had tied Gonzalez to two Machetero Rocket attacks on federal buildings in Puerto Rico and found bomb making and military manuals in his home.

Smith said their was enough evidence to detain Gonzalez as a flight risk. He said he did not need to consider evidence that he might pose a threat to the public if released.

Los Macheteros is a clandestine group which has taken credit for several robberies and violent attacks on U.S. targets in Puerto Rico. The Wells Fargo robbery, in which more than $7 million was stolen, was the most dramatic.

The group, in which Gonzalez held a senior position, recruited a young man from Hartford, Victor M. Gerena, to obtain a position with Wells Fargo and act as an inside man. At the close of business on Sept. 12, 1983, Gerena -- at gun point -- disarmed two co-workers, tied them up, and attempted to render them unconscious by injecting them with a still-unknown substance.

Gerena then stuffed a rented automobile with all the cash it could hold, summoned at least one Machetero who was waiting outside the Wells Fargo terminal and disappeared. Kopel said Tuesday Gerena is till believed to be hiding in Cuba.

According to FBI sources, Cuban intelligence officers provided training and financial support to Los macheteros, which is Spanish for machete-wielders or cane cutters. The former Cuban government of Fidel Castro helped smuggle the Wells Fargo money into Mexico. Cuba is believed to have kept about half the money.

With Gonzalez's arrest, only one other Wells Fargo suspect remains at large, his brother Norberto Gonzalez Claudio. Kopel said Norberto Gonzalez is believed to be hiding in Puerto Rico. A third fugitive, Machetero founder Filiberto Ojeda Rios, died in a shoot-out with FBI agents in the remote, southwest corner of the island in September 2005.

No Bail For Accused Wells Fargo Robber

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 04:17:00 +0000

courant.com/news/custom/topnews/hcu-wellsfargo0415,0,6304474.story

Courant.com

No Bail For Accused Wells Fargo Robber

By EDMUND H. MAHONY

Courant Staff Writer

1:56 PM EDT, April 15, 2008

Venezuela accuses U.S. oil company of "judicial terrorism"

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:37:00 +0000

Venezuela accuses U.S. oil company of "judicial terrorism"

www.chinaview.cn 2008-02-15 12:51:55

CARACAS, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Venezuelan government Thursday accused the U.S. oil company Exxon Mobil of carrying out "judicial terrorism" against the sovereign interests of the South American nation, which has decided to nationalize its oil industry.

Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez, also president of Venezuela's state oil company PDVSA, said a court decision ordering the freezing of 12 billion U.S. dollars of PDVSA assets is "judicial terrorism."

Ramirez made the remarks in a speech to Congress, referring to Exxon's judicial demand against PDVSA that began last week in the U.S., British and Dutch courts.

The U.S. Exxon Mobil Corp. is demanding more than 10 times the compensation for its losses after Venezuela nationalized one of its oil ventures, Ramirez said.

Exxon Mobil's loss "wouldn't even reach 10 percent" of the 12 billion U.S. dollars in assets the company has sought to freeze in court, Ramirez said.

"They ask for too high an amount for their compensation," he added.

Venezuela announced Tuesday that the PDVSA has stopped oil sales to Exxon Mobil in retaliation for its securing court orders for the asset freezing.

The U.S. government Wednesday voiced support for the company's compensation bid. "We fully support the efforts of Exxon Mobil to get a just and fair compensation package for their assets according to the standards of international law," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.

Another U.S. oil company, Conoco Phillips, opted for arbitrage without "using terrorist justice," Ramirez said.

"Conoco has asked for and maintained a level of communication that allows a friendly solution to our dispute," Ramirez said. "We are on the way to reaching an agreement."

Last year, Venezuela singled out Conoco Phillips for not cooperating with the state takeover that pushed the company out of two heavy crude upgrading projects, leading it to take an asset write-down of 4.5 billion dollars.

Exxon is interested in causing an alarming situation rather than securing compensation payment for not participating in the Orinoco Oil Strip project after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez nationalized the country's oil industry.

The Orinoco Oil Strip's nationalization, which began on May 1, 2007, ended Exxon's participation as a main associate of PDVSA and British Petroleum for extracting and producing 120,000 barrels of heavy crude oil per day.

Editor: Bi Mingxin

US diplomat faces spying charges in Bolivia

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 19:36:00 +0000

US diplomat faces spying charges in Bolivia

The Associated Press

Friday, February 15, 2008

LA PAZ, Bolivia: Criminal charges of espionage have been filed against a U.S. Embassy official accused of asking an American student and Peace Corps volunteers to keep tabs on Venezuela and Cuban workers in the country.

Vice Minister of Government Ruben Gamarra, who filed the charges this week, said Thursday that Bolivia may ask the U.S. to provide a statement from the embassy security official, Vincent Cooper.

Also on Thursday, the Bolivian Senate said it will form a committee to investigate the charges against Cooper.

The charges carry a sentence of 30 years in prison without parole. It was unclear Thursday whether diplomatic immunity would protect him under Bolivian and international law.

In a Wednesday meeting, U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg and Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca agreed that Cooper would not return to Bolivia.

Fulbright scholar Alex van Schaick told The Associated Press last week that during a one-on-one security briefing in November, Cooper asked him to pass along information on Venezuelan and Cuban workers he encountered in the country.

Four months earlier, according to embassy officials, Cooper mistakenly gave a group of newly arrived Peace Corps volunteers a security briefing meant only for embassy staff, asking them only to report "suspicious activities."

President Evo Morales on Thursday praised van Schaick for coming forward despite the risk to his reputation.

"I salute this American for denouncing the spying (his government) does," the president said.

The embassy case has fed an ongoing spying controversy in Bolivia.

Last month, materials anonymously leaked to various media appeared to show police spying on prominent, anti-Morales politicians.

Morales, in turn, shut down a U.S.-backed police intelligence unit he accused of operating outside Bolivian government control.

The senate commission intends to investigate all aspects of the controversy. But government officials complained Thursday that the opposition-controlled senate had improperly wrapped the Cooper investigation into the politically charged police spying cases.

RIGHTS-LATIN AMERICA: ‘Operation Condor’ Was No Mystery to Washington

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:36:00 +0000

From the old counter insurgency campaigns of the 70s:

RIGHTS-LATIN AMERICA: ‘Operation Condor’ Was No Mystery to Washington
By Ángel Páez

Credit:Courtesy of La República

Harry W. Shlaudeman

LIMA, Jan 12 (IPS) - The intelligence services of Peru and Argentina kept Washington informed in real time about a 1980 joint clandestine operation in which four alleged members of Argentina’s Montoneros guerrilla movement were "disappeared," according to documents declassified in the United States.

The incident forms part of the case opened in December by Italian Judge Luisianna Figliola, who issued arrest warrants for those responsible for this and other actions carried out in the framework of Operation Condor, a coordinated plan among the military governments that ruled Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay in the 1970s and 1980s, aimed at tracking down, capturing, torturing and eliminating left-wing opponents.

Townsend B. Friedman, political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, revealed in a secret Aug. 19, 1980 memo to Claus Ruser, the ambassador’s number two man, details about the operation involving the supposed Montoneros in Lima, and the fatal outcome.

In that memo, which has now been declassified thanks to the efforts of the National Security Archive, an independent Washington-based non-governmental research institute, Friedman told his superior that an Argentine intelligence official had provided them with details of the Lima operation on Jun. 16, 1980.

The date is key: the joint action by the Batallón 601, a special Argentine army intelligence unit, and Peru’s Army Intelligence Service (SIE) was recorded four days earlier, and the purported Montoneros were turned over by Peruvian agents on Jun. 17 to Bolivian military personnel, in the presence of agents from Argentina.

The documents show that the U.S. government was fully aware of what was happening, at the time it was occurring, and that it knew ahead of time that the alleged Montoneros would be killed.

"A member of an Argentine intelligence service who has been quite reliable in these matters told the (U.S.) Embassy that the four individuals were apprehended in Peru, that they were still being held there but that they would be expelled to Bolivia from where they would be handed over to Argentina; once in Argentina they would be interrogated and then disappeared," Friedman reported to Ruser.

The capture in Lima and forced disappearance of Noemí Gianetti de Molfino, a member of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo Argentine human rights group, María Inés Raverta and Julio César Ramírez was planned by Batallón 601 after the seizure in Argentina of Federico Frías, who was going to take part in Lima in a meeting with high-level members of the Montoneros, the armed branch of the leftist wing of Argentina’s Peronist party.

After he was brutally tortured, Frías was taken by his captors to Peru, where he had agreed to tell them the names and addresses of supposed guerrillas, according to the testimony of a former Peruvian agent who took part in the operation, which appears in the book "Muerte en el Pentagonito" (Death in the Little Pentagon: The Secret Killing Fields of the Peruvian Army) by journalist Ricardo Uceda.

According to the declassified Aug. 19, 1980 memo, the U.S. ambassador to Argentina at the time, Harry W. Shlaudeman, spoke of the case of the supposed "Montoneros" with General Pedro Richter, at the time prime minister, minister of war and commander of the Peruvian army.

"Peruvian Prime Minister Richter Prada told Ambassador Shlaudeman in July (1980, a month after the kidnappings) that the Argentines had been expelled to Bolivia and that he believed the Bolivians had probably handed them over to the Argentines," Friedman told Ruser.

"In addition, (Richter) revealed to Ambassador Shlaudeman that he had been in personal touch with Argentine Army Commander (Leopoldo Fortunato) Galtieri on the matter.

"Galtieri had informed Richter that there could be ‘an interesting development’ in the case early the week of July 14. Richter suggested to Ambassador Shlaudeman that Galtieri’s comment might foreshadow a live appearance of the three Montoneros who the Peruvians claimed they handed over to the Bolivians," the memo adds.

The "interesting development" came to light on Jul. 21, 1980, when the murdered body of Gianetti de Molfino, one of the women kidnapped in Lima, was found in a hotel in Madrid. Nothing was ever heard of again about Raverta, Ramírez or Frías. The general, who is now dead, became the head of Argentina’s military junta in November of the following year.

Shlaudeman had close ties with the Peruvian dictatorship of General Francisco Morales Bermúdez (1975-1980), as confirmed by the declassified documents. When the alleged Montoneros were abducted in Lima, he was already in Buenos Aires.

The path followed by Shlaudeman’s career is particularly interesting. He was U.S. State Department Deputy Chief of Mission in Chile from 1969 to 1973, during which time the coup d’etat that overthrew socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973), ushering in a 17-year dictatorship, was being planned.

He then served as State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs, from 1973 to 1975, under President Richard Nixon; in 1977 he was appointed ambassador to Peru; and in 1980 he became ambassador to Argentina, a post he held until 1983, when democracy was restored in that country.

In 1992, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from George Bush, the current U.S. president’s father.

The June 1980 operation in Lima was neither the first nor the only one carried out as the result of coordination between the de facto military regimes of Peru and Argentina -- something that Shlaudeman was clearly aware of.

According to another declassified secret document, dated Jul. 11, 1977, Shlaudeman reported the Apr. 12, 1977 kidnapping of Argentine citizen Carlos Alberto Maguid, who had been granted political asylum in Peru, to then U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Shlaudeman told Vance that a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) official, Lone Hogel, had informed him that Maguid had been seized by members of the Peruvian military in coordination with agents from Argentina.

The Peruvian government, "in the persons of the minister of the Interior (General Luis Cisneros Vizquerra) and the son of president Morales Bermúdez, has denied that any agency of the (government) was responsible for his disappearance," Shlaudeman wrote, before stating that Hogel had accurate information on the case.

"Hogel said that it was her personal opinion, based on anonymous but apparently well-documented letters, that Maguid was arrested by the Servicio de Inteligencia Nacional (SIN)," perhaps at the urging of the Argentine government, and that he was being held somewhere in Peru, Shlaudeman wrote to Vance.

The cases of Maguid, as well as those of Gianetti de Molfino, Raverta, Ramírez and Frías, were not isolated ones, but formed part of a coordinated strategy by the military intelligence services of the South American dictatorships. This is made clear by a joint Jun. 25, 1980 report by the U.S. embassies in Argentina and Peru, drafted a week after the kidnapping of Gianetti de Molfino and the others in Lima.

"This incident is not unique. In recent years there have been several similar cases that attest to a high degree of cooperation among the intelligence and security agencies of the southern South American countries and to their tendency to resort to illegal means in treating suspected subversives," says the document.

Nevertheless, U.S. authorities continue to deny that they were aware of the coordinated criminal activities committed under Operation Condor.

In 2005, J. Patrice McSherry, a political science professor at Long Island University in New York, published a revealing document in her book "Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America".

The document was a declassified memo by James Blystone, a former regional security officer (RSO) in the U.S. embassy in Argentina, in which he reported to his superiors that an Argentine intelligence source had informed him of the kidnapping of four "Montoneros" in Lima, and had told him that they would be "disappeared."

"Clearly, the RSO (Blystone) had been briefed on a top-secret Condor operation involving the intelligence services of three separate countries (Argentina, Bolivia and Peru); he was accepted as a trusted member of Condor's inner circle," wrote McSherry.

Blystone wasted no time responding. In January 2006, he published his version of the events in the "Foreign Service Journal", in an article titled "The Domino Effect of Improper Declassification".

"During the time that I was in Argentina (1978-1980)…I stumbled onto the fact that the Argentine security services were carrying out some operations in neighbouring countries. But I do not recall ever hearing the term ‘Operation Condor’ used, either there (Buenos Aires) or in Santiago, by any of my contacts or embassy colleagues," the former foreign service officer wrote.

But Blystone could have asked Shlaudeman, who was perfectly well informed of Operation Condor, as shown, for example, by an Aug. 30, 1976 report he sent from Chile to then secretary of state Henry Kissinger on the characteristics and scope of the coordination between intelligence and security agencies in the Southern Cone region.

There is also the Oct. 8, 1976 declassified briefing from Shlaudeman to Kissinger in which he reports on a meeting with Colonel Manuel Contreras, the powerful chief of the now dissolved National Directorate of Intelligence (DINA) -- the Chilean dictatorship’s secret police -- and the true head of Operation Condor.

"As expected, Contreras denied that Operation Condor has any other purpose than the exchange of intelligence," says the cable.

But the U.S. government knew that Contreras was lying. "Operation Condor" had already taken off on its death flight. (END/2008)

President of MEChA club at Palomar College deported

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:27:00 +0000

President of MEChA club at Palomar College deported

By Linda Lou
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

5:48 p.m. January 16, 2008

NORTH COUNTY– The president of the MEChA club at Palomar College has been deported to Mexico, immigration officials said Wednesday. Paola Oropeza, 22, was arrested Jan. 8 by a
fugitive operations team with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Lauren Mack, a
spokeswoman for the department in San Diego.

Oropeza had been ordered to leave the country by an immigration judge, but failed to comply with that order, Mack said. At the time of her arrest, Oropeza was in the country illegally and was taken to Tijuana, Mack said.

Oropeza did not have a criminal record, Mack said, but could not provide details about her
immigration background. Oropeza was arrested along with three other people who are believed to be her family members, Mack said. One is still in deportation proceedings.

When reached on a cell phone Wednesday, Oropeza declined to comment. She said her attorney has advised her not to talk to the media.

MEChA, or Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, is a Latino student group with chapters
in high schools and colleges. It focuses on empowerment through education as well as
political, cultural and social awareness.

A staff assistant in Palomar College's student affairs office who works with student clubs said
Oropeza was president in 2007 and remained in that role this year. She said MEChA is fairly
active on campus, especially in the fall. The group holds a cultural event on campus each
winter called a “Night of Culture” and collects toys for the needy through the event.

Linda Lou: (760) 737-7574;
linda.lou@uniontrib.com

Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20080116-1748-bn16mecha.html

México: The NAFTA, crude oil and something else

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:13:00 +0000

PROGRESO WEEKLY
January 17-23, 2008

México: The NAFTA, crude oil and something else

“Without corn there is no homeland, neither without bean.” And without petroleum?

By Eduardo Dimas

Ordinarily, little is said in the international media about the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the United States, Canada and Mexico, which became effective Jan. 1, 1994.

Recently, more has been printed about the ASPNA (Alliance for the Security and Prosperity of North America), a monstrosity intended to strengthen the neoliberal model and U.S. domination over the other two partners.

The enactment of the NAFTA coincided with the uprising of the Zapatistas in Chiapas and a major crisis in the Mexican economy, which provoked an urgent intervention by the government of William Clinton, which provided a loan of more than $14 billion so Mexico could get out of its mess.

The consequences of that economic disaster ("the tequila effect") lasted for a long time. Today, 14 years and a few days later, very few people remember those events. The Zapatistas make the headlines once in a while.

Now, the NAFTA has again attracted the attention of the media, as one of the clauses of the treaty takes effect in Mexico. That clause frees from import tariffs several agricultural products from the United States and Mexico, among them corn and beans, two of the main products of Mexican agriculture.

The media attention is directed not so much at the activation of that clause but at the protests it has raised among peasant organizations and agrarian labor unions, which see competition from U.S. and Canadian products as a serious threat to their economies.

To them, it is impossible to compete, because of the differences in technical development and because U.S. agricultural products are subsidized.

In 2006 alone, the U.S. government distributed $18 billion among U.S. farmers.

According to leaders of peasant organizations, since the NAFTA was signed, two million jobs have been lost in Mexican farms, the prices of farm products fell between 40 percent and 70 percent, and Mexico's alimentary dependence on the United States rose by 40 percent in 2006.

So far, the mobilization of farmers throughout Mexico to demand a renegotiation of the NAFTA, including a demonstration in the capital and a human wall in the city of Juárez, on the border with the U.S., have been unsuccessful.

Through its Secretary of Agriculture, the Mexican government has said that the NAFTA has brought more benefits than ills, and that Mexican production and the agricultural industry are doing well. Many analysts and observers counter that that assertion is either wrong or does not match reality.

According to some critics of the Mexican governments (from Salinas de Gortari to this date), it was no coincidence that the signing of the NAFTA was preceded by an amendment to Article 27 of the Constitution, which forbade the sale of the "ejidos," or communal lands.

Those critics say that the objective of Salinas de Gortari, Zedillo, Fox and now Felipe Calderón was -- and is -- to remove the largest possible number of people from the countryside, thus permitting the food transnational corporations to assume control of the Mexican agricultural industry.

Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but if we analyze how the big U.S. food producers and marketers today control the distribution of food in Mexico, it might be true. Only one of those companies is Mexican-owned.

In an article published in the daily La Jornada, titled "Agriculture and free trade: a fallacy," journalist Luis Hernández Serrano points out that "According to information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agricultural food trade balance between Mexico and the United States clearly represents a deficit for our country. It has been so ever since the start of the NAFTA. Until October 2007, Mexican imports totaled more than $10.487 billion, while exports barely added up to $8.479 billion.

"The same has happened since 1994. National purchases of food products to our neighbor totaled about $10.881 billion in 2006 and sales rose to $9.39 billion. In 2005, we imported $9.429 billion and exported $8.33 billion."

Hernández Serrano adds that what somewhat saves Mexico's food trade balance with the United States is the sale of beer, which in 2006 amounted to $1.3 billion. One might inquire if beer production remains in Mexican hands or if it went to foreign hands, like almost all other industries.

Even before the clause on the most sensitive farm products went into effect, the NAFTA had caused the ruination of 40 percent of Mexican farmers, several million people and a massive exodus from the countryside to the cities. Not to mention an increase in the number of people who want to enter the U.S. illegally.

According to some Mexican media, beginning in 1994, the Mexican authorities permitted the importation of corn and beans from the United States and Canada without charging tariffs, thus violating the rules established in the NAFTA itself. The same happened with rice, cotton and milk, products that Mexico used to export.

So, it is difficult to think that the current Mexican government will renegotiate the NAFTA with the United States and Canada. Rather, it may do everything possible to comply with the accord, no matter what the consequences.

The small and midsize farmer (with less than 100 hectares of land) is sentenced to ruination, because he cannot compete with U.S. farmers, particularly with the big producers and marketers of food, who are investing large sums of money in the Mexican agriculture.

Another issue at hand is the complaint by Mexican farmers about the use of genetically modified seeds, to the detriment of the homegrown seeds, which are beginning to disappear. To utilize those seeds means to depend, from now on, on companies like Monsanto, Cargill, Bayer or BASF, because the resulting product is a hybrid seed, that is, it cannot be planted again.

If you think of a policy designed so that the big transnational corporations may control Mexican agriculture, in collusion with the Mexican oligarchy, you will not be far from the truth. The NAFTA is the best expression of neoliberalism; the ASPNA is its purest application.

"The fields can take no more," says one of the slogans of the peasant protests. The next most used is "without corn, there is no country; without beans, the same." The slogans are accurate. But, what about without crude oil?

For years now, Mexican personalities from all political parties have been denouncing the systematic policy of the government to privatize Petróleos Mexicanos (PEMEX), an endeavor prohibited by the Constitution and something that no government has convinced the Congress to amend.

Nevertheless, the different governments have created the conditions for such a privatization in a not-too-distant future. For example, little by little, they have postponed the necessary repairs and expansions of the industries that carry out the extraction, transportation and refinement of crude oil and natural gas.

They have also plunged PEMEX into debt, with the objective of eventually provoking the "necessary" intervetion of private enterprises. Last year, PEMEX's debt amounted to $107 billion. A paradoxical fact about that policy of privatization is that PEMEX contributes more than 50 percent of the state budget.

On Jan. 9, the Coordinating Commission for the Defense of Petroleum (CCDP) called for a national movement to denounce the delivery of Mexican crude to the foreign transnational corporations, even when the Constitution forbids it.

The reason for the call was the enactment of a contract given to Energy Maintenance to provide security to more than half of PEMEX's oil pipeline. According to the CCDP, the transaction initiated the transfer of PEMEX's strategic zones to private companies -- a concession that violates the Mexican Constitution.

The CCDP also pointed out that, for the past 25 years, the neoliberal governments have been looking for a pretext to privatize crude oil and electricity and that now they are drafting laws to permit a greater private participation in that industry.

The most significant aspect of the complaint is that PEMEX's leadership has kept secret its links to five foreign oil companies. PEMEX directors even made a commitment to those foreign firms not to report those links to the Federal Institute of Access to Information.

According to the CCDP, PEMEX signed the accords and agreed to pay a fine if it broke its pact of silence with Royal Dutch Shell (Anglo-Dutch), Chevron (U.S.), Nexen (Canada) and Statoil (Norway).

I think you will agree with me that PEMEX"s privatization is closer at hand than most people think, unless the Mexican people and progressive organizations form a common front to prevent that event.

The tendency of some sectors of the oligarchy and bourgeoisie to sell their country away is surprising. But let's not forget what happened in Argentina during the military dictatorship and later, during the 10 years of Carlos Menem's administration. They simply sold everything to foreign companies.

Sometimes we forget that neoliberalism is not only an economic model. It is also an ideology that places the free market, business, above any other consideration, be it nationalist or patriotic.

If the alimentary transnationals manage to control the Mexican agriculture and oil is privatized, how much economic and political independence would Mexico retain? It would become practically annexed to the United States, but with a dividing wall that would prevent Mexicans from crossing the border.

The people of Juárez do not deserve that fate.

Institutionalized Spying on Americans

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:30:00 +0000

Institutionalized Spying on Americans - by Stephen Lendman

This article reviews two police state tools (among many in use) in America. One is new, undiscussed and largely unknown to the public. The other was covered in a December article by this writer called Police State America. Here it's updated with new information.\

The National Applications Office (NAO)

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established a new domestic spying operation in 2007 called the National Applications Office (NOA) and described it as "the executive agent to facilitate the use of intelligence community technological assets for civil, homeland security and law enforcement purposes within the United States." The office was to begin operating last fall to "build on the long-standing workof the Civil Applications Committee (CAC), which was created in 1974 to facilitate the use of the capabilities of the intelligence community for civil, non-defense uses in the United States."\
\
With or without congressional authorization or oversight, the executive branch is in charge and will let NAO use state-of-the-art technology, including military satellite imagery, to spy on Americans without their knowledge. Implementation is delayed, however, after Committee on Homeland Security Chairman, Bennie Thompson, and other committee members raised questions of "very serious privacy and civil liberties concerns." In response, DHS agreed to delay operating (officially) until all matters are addressed and resolved. \
\
Given its track record post-9/11, expect little more than pro forma posturing before Congress signs off on what Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies, calls "Big Brother in the Sky" and a "police state" in the offing.\
\
DHS supplies this background information on NAO. Post-9/11, the Director of National Intelligence appointed an Independent Study Group (ISG) in May, 2005 to "review the current operation and future role of the (1974) Civil Applications Committee and study the current state of Intelligence Community support to homeland security and law enforcement entities." \
\
In September 2005, the Committee produced a "Blue Ribbon Study," now declassified. Its nine members were headed by and included three Booz Allen Hamilton officials because of the company's expertise in spying and intelligence gathering. Its other members have similar experience. They all have a vested interest in domestic spying because the business potential is huge for defense related industries and consultants. \
\
ISG members included:\
\
Keith Hall, Chairman\
Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton\
\
Edward G. Anderson\
LTG US Army (Ret)\
Principal, Booz Allen Hamilton\
\
Thomas W. Conroy\
Vice President\
National Security Programs\
Northrop Grumman/TASC\
\
Patrick M. Hughes\
LTG US Army (Ret)\
Vice President, Homeland Security\
L-3 Communications\
\
Kevin O'Connell\
Director of Defense Group Incorporated (DGI)\
Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis (CIRA)\
\
CIRA is a think tank that calls itself "the premier open source and cultural intelligence exploitation cell for the US intelligence community." Its business is revolutionizing intelligence analysis.\
\
Jeff Baxter\
Independent Defense Consultant with DOD and industry ties\
\
Dr. Paul Gilman\
Director\
Oak Ridge Center for Advanced Studies\
Oak Ridge National Laboratory\
US Department of Energy\
\
Kemp Lear\
Associate\
Booz Allen Hamilton, and\
\
Joseph D. Whitley, Esq\
Alston & Bird LLP, Government Investigations and Compliance Group, former Acting Associate Attorney General in GHW Bush administration, and former General Counsel for DHS under GW Bush\
\
The ISG's report produced 11 significant findings and 27 recommendations based on its conclusion that there's "an urgent need for action because opportunities to better protect the nation are being missed." It "concluded a new management and process model (is) needed to effectively employ IC (Intelligence Community) capabilities for domestic uses."\
\
In March 2006, DHS unveiled the new agency to implement ISG's recommendations called the National Applications Office. In May, 2007, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Michael McConnell, named DHS as its executive agent and functional manager. At least in principle according to DHS, Congress agreed with this approach and to provide funding for it, beginning in the fall of 2007. \
\
The public knew nothing about this until a feature August 15, 2007 Wall Street Journal story broke the news. It was headlined "US to Expand Use of Spy Satellites." It noted that for the first time the nation's top intelligence official (DNI's McConnell) "greatly expanded the range of federal and local (civilian law enforcement agencies that) can get access to" military spy satellite collected information. Until now, civilian use was restricted to agencies like NASA and the US Geological Survey, and only for scientific and environmental study.\
\
The Journal explained that key objectives under new guidelines will be:\
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-- border security, \
\
-- securing critical infrastructure and helping emergency responders after natural disasters, \
\
-- working with criminal and civil federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, and \
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-- unmentioned by the Journal, the ability to spy on anyone, anywhere, anytime domestically for any reason - an unprecedented act using state-of-the-art technology enabling real-time, high-resolution images and data from space. \
\
NAO will also oversee classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and other US agencies involved in dealing with all aspects of national security, including "terrorism."\
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NSA was established in 1952, is super-secret, and for many years was never revealed to exist. Today, its capabilities are awesome and worrisome. It eavesdrops globally, mines a vast amount of data, and does it through a network of spy satellites, listening posts, and surveillance planes to monitor virtually all electronic communications from landline and cell phones, telegrams, emails, faxes, radio and television, data bases of all kinds and the internet. \
\
NGA is new and began operating in 2003. It lets military and intelligence analysts monitor virtually anything or anyone from state-of-the-art spy satellites. Both NSA and NGA coordinate jointly with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) that designs, builds and operates military spy satellites. It also analyzes military and CIA-collected aircraft and satellite reconnaissance information. \
\
Combined with warrantless wiretapping, pervasive spying of all kinds, the abandonment of the law and checks and balances, intense secrecy, and an array of repressive post-9/11 legislation, Executive Orders and National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directives, NAO is another national security police state tool any despot would love. It's now established and may be operating without congressional approval.

Using spy satellites domestically "is largely uncharted territory," as the Wall Street Journal noted. Even its architects admit there's no clarity on this, and the ISG's report stated "There is little if any policy, guidance or procedures regarding the collection, exploitation and dissemination of domestic MASINT (Measurement and Signatures Intelligence)."

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is the main DOD spy agency. It manages MASINT that's ultra-secret and sophisticated. It uses state-of-the-art radar, lasers, infrared sensors, electromagnetic data and other technologies that can detect chemicals, electro-magnetic activity, whether a nuclear power plant produces plutonium, and the type vehicle from its exhaust. It can also see under bridges, through clouds, forest canopies and even concrete to create images and collect data. In addition, it can detect people, activity and weapons that satellites and photo-reconnaissance aircraft miss, so it's an invaluable spy tool but highly intrusive and up to now only for military and foreign intelligence work.

Further, military spy satellites are state-of-the-art and superior to civilian ones. They record in color as well as black and white, use different parts of the light spectrum to track human activities and ground movements and can detect chemical weapons traces and people-generated heat in buildings.

This much we know about them. Their full potential is top secret and available only to the military and intelligence community. The Journal quoted an alarmed Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Project on Freedom, Security and Technology, that advocates for digital age privacy rights saying: "Not only is the surveillance they are contemplating intrusive and omnipresent, it's also invisible. And that's what makes this so dangerous."

Anyone for any reason may be watched at all times (through walls) with no way to know it, but a June 2001 (before 9/11) Supreme Court decision offers hope. In Kyllo v. United States, the Court ruled for petitioner 5 to 4 (with Scalia and Thomas in the majority). It voided a conviction based on police use of thermal imaging to detect heat in his triplex to determine if an illegal drug was being grown, in this case marijuana.

The Court held: "Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a Fourth Amendment 'search," and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant....To withdraw protection of this minimum expectation would be to permit police technology to erode the privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment" protecting against "unreasonable searches and seizures."

In 1981, Ronald Reagan seemed to agree in Executive Order 12333 on United States Intelligence Activities. It bars the intelligence community from most forms of home eavesdropping while providing wide latitude to all government agencies to "provide the President and the National Security Council with the necessary information (needed to) conduct....foreign, defense and economic policy (and protect US) national interests from foreign security threats. (Collecting this information is to be done, however,) consistent with the Constitution and applicable law...."

That was then, and this is now. It's hard imagining congressional concern or DHS meaning that NAO will "prioritize the protection of privacy and civil liberties" and citing the Reagan Executive Order and the 1974 Privacy Act. That law mandates that no government agency "shall disclose any record (or) system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains." The Privacy act requires the US government to maintain an administrative and physical security system to prevent the unauthorized release of personal records.

Post-9/11, the Patriot Act ended that protection, so DHS is shameless saying NAO must comply with civil liberties and privacy laws and be subject to "oversight by the DHS Inspector General, Chief Privacy Officer, and the Officer for Civil Rights and Liberties" plus additional oversight. No longer post-9/11 when the national security state got repressive new tools to erode the constitution, ignore democratic principles, and give the President unrestricted powers in the name of national security. NAO is the latest one watching us as our "Big Brother in the Sky." Orwell would be proud.

Real ID Act Update - Another Intrusive Police State Tool

The Read ID Act of 2005 required states to meet federal ID standards by May, 2008. That's now changed because 29 states passed or introduced laws that refuse to comply. They call the Act costly to administer, a bureaucratic nightmare, and New Hampshire said it's "repugnant" and violates the state and US Constitutions.

The federal law mandates that every US citizen and legal resident have a national ID card that in most cases is a driver's license meeting federal standards. It requires it to contain an individual's personal information and makes one mandatory to open a bank account, board an airplane, be able to vote, get a job, enter a federal building, or conduct virtually all essential business requiring identification.

States balked, and that doomed the original version. On January 11, changes were unveiled when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued binding new rules. Under them, states have until 2011 to comply (instead of 2008), until 2014 to issue "tamper-proof licenses" to drivers born after 1964, and until 2017 for those born before this date. DHS said the original law would cost states $14 billion. The new regulations with an extended phase-in cuts the amount to around $3.9 billion or $8 per license.

These numbers may be bogus, however, the true costs may be far higher, and that's why the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) is lobbying for Real ID's passage. Its members include high-tech card makers like Digimarc and Northrup Grumman and data brokers like Choicepoint and LexisNexis that profit by selling personal information to advertisers and the government.

Under new DHS rules, licenses must include a digital photo taken at the beginning of the application process and a filament or other security device to prevent counterfeiting. They must also have three layers of security that states can select from a DHS menu. In addition, states must begin checking license applicants' Social Security and immigration status over the next year.

As of now, a controversial radio frequency identification (RFID) technology microchip isn't required. It may come later, however, and here's the problem. It'll let cardholder movements and activities be tracked everywhere, at all times - in other words, a police state dream along with other pervasive spying tools.

Even worse would be mandating human RFID chip implants. It's not planned so far (but not ruled out), and three states (California, Wisconsin and North Dakota) preemptively banned the practice without recipients' consent.

Think it can't happen? Consider a January 13 article in the London Independent headlined "Prisoners 'to be chipped like dogs.' " The article states that civil rights groups and probation officers are furious that "hi-tech 'satellite'.... machine-readable (microchip) tagging (is) planned (for thousands of offenders) to create more space in jails." Unlike ankle bracelets now sometimes used, tiny RFID chips would be surgically implanted for monitoring the way they're currently used for dogs, cats, cattle and luggage. They're more reliable, it's believed, as current devices can be tampered with or removed.

Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), was quoted saying: "We have looked at....the practicalities and the ethics (and we concluded) its time has come." The UK currently has the largest prison population per capita in western Europe. It sounds like authorities plan to expand it using fewer cells. It also sounds like a scheme to tag everyone after testing them first on prisoners. And consider the possibilities. RFID technology is advancing, and one company plans deeper implants that can vibrate, emit electroshocks, broadcast a message to the implantee, and/or be a hidden microphone to transmit conversations. It's not science fiction, and what's planned for the UK will likely come to America. In fact, it's already here.

In 2004, the FDA approved a grain-of-rice sized, antenna-containing VeriChip for human implantation that allows vital information to be read when a person's body is scanned. The company states on its web site that it's "the world's first and only patented, FDA-cleared, human-implantable RFID microchip....with skin-sensing capabilities." Reportedly, about 2000 test subjects now have them, but it may signal mandatory implantation ahead. Consider for whom for starters - prisoners, military personnel and possibly anyone seeking employment. After them, maybe everyone in a brave new global surveillance world.

It gets worse. Katherine Albrecht authored a report called "Microchip-Cancer Report - Microchip-Induced Tumors in Laboratory Rodents and Dogs: A Review of the Literature 1990-2006." After reading it, Dr. Robert Benezra, Director Cancer Biology, Genetics Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center said: "There's no way in the world, having read this information, that I would have one of those chips implanted in my skin, or in one of my family members. Given the preliminary animal data, it looks to me that there's definitely cause for concern."

Albrecht's report evaluated 11 previously published toxicology and pathology studies. In six of them, up to 10.2% of rats and mice developed malignant tumors (typically sarcomas) where microchips were implanted. Two others reported the same findings for dogs. These tumors spread fast and "often led to the death of the afflicted animals. In many cases, the tumors metastasized and spread to other parts of the animals. The implants were unequivocally identified as the cause of the cancers."

Report reviews, conclusions and recommendations were to immediately stop further human implantations, inform people with them of the dangers, offer a microchip removal procedure, and reverse all animal microchipping mandates.

Debate Ahead on New DHS ID Rules

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said new ID rules require states to verify each cardholder's personal information (including a person's legal status in the country) by matching it against federal Social Security and passport databases and/or comparable state ones.

States have time to adjust, but Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy wasted no time saying he'll recommend legislation to ban Real ID drivers' license provisions because "so many Americans oppose" them. They're intrusive, burdensome, and federal databases are full of false or out-of-date information that's hard to disprove, but unless it is Americans will be denied their legal right to a driver's license.

The ACLU also strongly opposes Real ID because it violates privacy, lets government agencies share data, and its "tortured remains" represent an "utterly unworkable" system that will "irreparably damage the fabric of American life." An ACLU January 11 press release further states that DHS "dumped the problems of the statute on future presidents like a rotting corpse left on (its) steps (and) whoever is president in 2018." Congress must "recognize the situation and take action." The Real ID Act and new DHS rules must be "repealed and replaced with a clean, simple, and vigorous new driver's license security law that does not create a national ID" or violate Americans' privacy.

Futuristic Hi-Tech Profiling

On January 14, Computerworld online revealed more cause for concern in an article called "Big Brother Really is Watching." It's about DHS "bankrolling futuristic profiling technology...." for its Project Hostile Intent. It, in turn, is part of a broader initiative called the Future Attribute Screening Technologies Mobile Module. It's to be a self-contained, automated screening system that's portable and easy to implement, and DHS hopes to test it at airports in 2010 and deploy it (if it works) by 2012 at airports, border checkpoints, other points of entry and other security-related areas.

Here's the problem. If developed (reliable or not), these devices will use video, audio, laser and infrared sensors to feed real-time data into a computer using "specially developed algorithms" to identify "suspicious people." It would work (in theory) by interpreting gestures, facial expressions and speech variations as well as measure body temperature, heart and respiration rate, blood pressure, skin moisture, and other physiological characteristics.

The idea would be detect deception and identify suspicious people for aggressive interrogation, searches and even arrest. But consider what's coming. If developed, the technology may be used anywhere by government or the private sector for airport or other checkpoint security, buildings, job interviews, employee screening, buying insurance or conducting any other type essential business.

Aside from Fourth Amendment issues, here's the problem according to Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at security consultant BT Counterpane: "It's a good idea fraught with difficulties....don't hold your breath" it will work, and a better idea is to focus on detecting suspicious objects. Schneier further compares the technology to lie detectors that rely on "fake technology" and only work in films. They're used because people want them although it's acknowledged, even when well-administered, their median accuracy percentage is 50% at best.

This technology is worse, it may never be reliable, but may be deployed anyway in the age of "terror." Something to consider next time we blink going through airport security, and ACLU Technology and Liberty Project director Barry Steinhardt states the concern: "We are not going to catch any terrorists (with it), but a lot of innocent people, especially racial and ethnic minorities, are going to be trapped in a web of suspicion." Even so, DHS spent billions on this and other screening tools post-9/11. Expect lots more ahead, and here's the bottom line:

As things now stand, Washington, post-9/11, suspended constitutional protections in the name of national security and suppressed our civil liberties for our own good. This article reviewed their newest tools and wonders what's next. This writer called it Police State America in December that won't change with a new White House occupant in 2009 unless organized resistance stops it. Complacency is unthinkable, and unless we act, we'll deserve Aleksandr Herzen's curse of another era - to be the "disease," not the "doctors."

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

San Diego Minutemen Adopt a Freeway

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 20:32:00 +0000

Fwd: Re: San Diego Minutemen Adopt a Freeway

San Diego Minutemen adopt a freeway

Email Picture

Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times

Opponents of the adoption say Caltrans ignored its own rule barring groups that advocate discrimination.

Caltrans grants a stretch of I-5 that includes a border patrol checkpoint to the foes of illegal immigration, a move some critics call "unfortunate."

By Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 12, 2008

SAN DIEGO -- The Knights of Columbus have adopted a highway. So have the Japanese American Citizens League, biker groups, Indian casinos and the International House of Pancakes.

Now add the San Diego Minutemen.

Caltrans has granted an Adopt-A-Highway stretch of Interstate 5 to the ardent foes of illegal immigration -- and not just any stretch. The two miles of freeway the Minutemen will be charged with beautifying include the U.S. Border Patrol Checkpoint near San Clemente.

"How great is that," Jeff Schwilk, the group's founder, told his members in an e-mail.

Critics disagreed, saying the California Department of Transportation ignored its own rule that bars groups that advocate violence or discrimination from participating in the program.

"The Adopt-A-Highway program was designed to allow organizations to show pride in the state of California . . . and it is unfortunate that the Minutemen, whose approach . . . includes advocating violence, have been allowed by Caltrans into the program," said Tina Malka, associate director of the San Diego branch of the Anti-Defamation League.

Schwilk denied Friday that his group advocates violence and said no member has ever been arrested for immigrant-related violence.

Caltrans spokesman Edward Cartagena said the Minutemen got the stretch of I-5 purely by chance. The group submitted its application in November, he added, and it was reviewed and found to comply with the rule. According to the agency's website, it bars "entities that advocate violence, violation of the law, or discrimination based upon race, religion, color, national origin, ancestry" and other factors.

"The Department will not discriminate against groups that otherwise meet the program criteria based on the fact that some members of the public might disagree with the particular group's agenda or reputation," Caltrans said in a prepared statement.

The group's two signs -- one on each side of the freeway -- went up in late December. Members have been given a safety course on how to clean the freeway. Their first cleanup day is set for next Saturday.

Schwilk said Caltrans rules bar demonstrations, and he and his crew would just be beautifying the roadway. "We'll be out there in dorky-looking vests, hard hats and goggles, picking up trash," he said. "We're a community activist group, so why wouldn't we take other steps to help our communities?"

Enrique Morones, president of the Border Angels, a San Diego-based immigrant rights group, questioned the Minutemen's motives and called Schwilk's move a publicity ploy.

"They're desperate to get attention, even if it means sweeping the freeway," he said.

The San Diego Minutemen operate mostly in north San Diego County, where members often demonstrate at day labor sites and trade accusations of violent behavior with anti-immigrant groups. Schwilk says the group has 600 members. Others say membership has dwindled to no more than 30.

A former Marine, Schwilk says on his website that he worked alongside hardworking Mexicans in a carwash for more than three years in the 1980s and that his best friend in school was half Mexican.

Andy Ramirez, chairman of Friends of the Border Patrol, congratulated Schwilk on his great freeway location. It's entirely fitting, he said, that a group like his that supports the border patrol's mission be given the area near the checkpoint.

In fact, he said, "The irony is killing me. . . . Why didn't I think of that?"

richard.marosi@latimes.com

Director de FBI niega que supo sobre las citaciones de los Macheteros

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 03:07:00 +0000

SAN JUAN/corresponsal EDLP — El congresista José Serrano (D-NY) expresó ayer su preocupación por lo que esté pasando en el Buró Federal de Investigaciones luego que el director de esa agencia, Robert Mueller, dijera que “no sabía” sobre las citaciones a tres independentistas boricuas de Nueva York para una supuesta pesquisa sobre los Macheteros.

“Como que hay dos FBI, uno en los cincuenta estados y otro en Puerto Rico, que hace lo que quiere”, comentó Serrano, quien indicó que está consciente de que Mueller pudo no haberle dicho todo lo que sabía en la conversación telefónica que sostuvieron el martes en la noche.

Serrano agregó que “si es cierto (lo que Mueller le dijo), ahora lo sabe” y puntualizó que le hizo saber al jefe del FBI que en su opinión “esto es más de lo mismo” en referencia a “los sesenta años de abusos” de esa agencia en Puerto Rico. Esa historia está documentada en los dos millones de folios que se están desclasificando desde el año 2000, precisamente por su gestión desde el Congreso.

El informe de Serrano sobre la conversación con Mueller resulta insólito debido a que se supone que el FBI lleva a cabo una investigación sobre terrorismo doméstico contra el Ejército Popular Boricua-Macheteros y que, como parte de esa pesquisa, al menos un agente de San Juan viajó a Nueva York y participó junto con agentes de esa otra oficina en las gestiones para emplazar a los tres independentistas. Además, a éstos se les mostró una veintena de fotografías de individuos sobre los cuales se les pidió información.

Sobre ese particular, también Serrano cuestionó la acción del FBI y comentó que le hizo saber a Mueller que le parecía “un abuso” porque conoce a los citados y que todo aparenta que “se están empezando a ver de nuevo” las persecuciones contra los independentistas.

Los nuevos emplazamientos, para el día 11 de los corrientes, han provocado una fuerte reacción en el movimiento independentista, que ha convocado manifestaciones para mañana y el viernes en San Juan, Nueva York, Chicago, Cleveland, Filadelfia, Orlando, Los Ángeles y San Francisco.
Serrano comentó que es de la opinión que el FBI no sólo está dispuesto a perseguir a los independentistas sino a los también a los anexionistas. Sobre el caso de Puerto Rico en el Congreso, dijo que “cada vez que los federales dan la impresión” negativa sobre los puertorriqueños “eso no ayuda a la causa de la independencia y tampoco ayuda a la causa estadista”. Explicó que eso puede provocar la preocupación de que no conviene un Puerto Rico independiente hostil a EEUU.

MEXICO: Army, Paramilitary Build-Up in Zapatista Stronghold

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 21:26:00 +0000

MEXICO: Army, Paramilitary Build-Up in Zapatista Stronghold
By Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Jan 10 (IPS) - The Zapatista guerrillas and their supporters in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas are experiencing the worst onslaught by state forces in the last 10 years, although most people are unaware of the fact, according to reports from a research centre working in the area.

On Monday, in the area under Zapatista influence, "we rescued a wounded Indian grassroots supporter of the guerrillas who had been shot by paramilitaries. The situation is serious," Ernesto Ledesma, head of the Chiapas-based non-governmental Centre for Political Analysis and Social and Economic Research (CAPISE), told IPS.

According to CAPISE, which has had brigades out for the past five years, monitoring military movements in areas held by the barely-armed Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), in recent weeks there has been an increased presence of uniformed soldiers who are acting in concert with paramilitary groups.

Also, agrarian reform institutions have initiated an "irregular" distribution of land that had been occupied by indigenous people when the EZLN rose up in arms for two weeks in January 1994, according to CAPISE.

Title deeds to about 250,000 hectares are being distributed, but Zapatista sympathisers are being excluded, Ledesma said.

"Around 30 Zapatista communities are under enormous pressure from the military, the paramilitaries and the authorities, with the intention, we presume, to undermine the strength of the EZLN. This has not happened since 1998," said the head of CAPISE.

The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Centre has also been reporting, for months now, that the situation in Zapatista areas is serious, because of the increasing presence of the army and of indigenous groups opposed to the guerrillas.

An anonymous source in the government of conservative President Felipe Calderón told IPS that the reports from Chiapas came as a complete surprise, and stated that the executive branch has no harassment strategy towards the EZLN, who have not fired a single shot since the second week of 1994.

The authorities in Chiapas, headed by Governor Juan Sabines of the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), have not reported any changes in the situation in the area, while lawmakers and social activists have lost interest in the once-famous guerrilla group.

Ledesma said that on Monday he travelled through jungle and valley areas in Chiapas, and with the help of several companions rescued a wounded indigenous man who had been shot and pursued by groups that he identified as paramilitaries, in a conflict over land.

"A deliberate concerted action between paramilitaries (who are also indigenous people) and the police, army and authorities is taking place here, the purpose of which is to attack the Zapatistas," Ledesma said.

One of the first actions undertaken by former president Vicente Fox (2002-2006) was to order the withdrawal of the army from the guerrilla-held areas and their surroundings, but human rights organisations say that this was merely a strategic relocation of troops.

Since 2001, when a convoy of EZLN delegates entered Mexico City to the cheers of hundreds of thousands of people, to call for approval of a law on indigenous culture and rights, the guerrillas have gradually faded from the political scene and their leader, ‘Subcomandante Marcos", has distanced himself from the left and the intellectuals who supported him.

In 2006 and 2007, beginning in parallel with the election campaign which brought Calderón to power on Dec. 1, 2006, Marcos travelled the country unarmed, with government permission, leading "The Other Campaign", an attempt to rally non-electoral political actors and press for the drafting of a new constitution.

But most Mexican saw and heard nothing of his cross-country travels.

Before the end of 2007, Marcos announced that he was returning to his stronghold in Chiapas and that he would neither emerge nor speak again until a future unspecified date. He warned, however, that the EZLN would retaliate if attacked.

Fourteen years ago, thousands of Mexicans mobilised against the army attacks on the EZLN, which led to a law declaring a ceasefire.

But now it appears that no one is prepared to react to the information that an onslaught against the rebel group is in progress.

"The situation in Chiapas is serious and violence is on the rise. The public should know this," Ledesma said.

Earlier reports by the Fox administration, confirmed by several researchers, indicate that the EZLN is in administrative and political control of 15 percent of Chiapas, the country’s poorest state, which has a total area of 75,634 square kilometres.

In that area, where government social programmes are inoperative, there are about 100,000 mainly indigenous people, who live in dire poverty, as do most of Mexico’s roughly 10 million Indians.

About 5,000 poorly armed men constitute the military forces of the EZLN. But Zapatistas have forsworn all offensive action.

CAPISE says that indigenous self-rule in the Zapatista area is a reality, and that their own health, education and development programmes are in place. But these achievements are increasingly threatened by the military and paramilitary presence and by pressure from indigenous campesino groups opposed to the guerrillas. (END/2008)

Chiapas: Zapatistas host Women's Encuentro —amid ongoing violence

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 21:24:00 +0000

Chiapas: Zapatistas host Women's Encuentro —amid ongoing violence

Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Sat, 01/05/2008 - 03:30.

Zapatista women at La Garrucha

To celebrate the 14th anniversary of their New Years Day uprising, Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) hosted a Women's Encuentro ("encounter" or "meeting") at the jungle settlement of La Garrucha, Chiapas state. Officially dubbed the "Encuentro of the Indigenous Zapatista Women with the Women of the World," the meeting brought together women from throughout Mexico and several other countries around the globe. In a case of self-conscious role reversal, men at the gathering were confined to cooking and cleaning, while women did all the talking. Accounts and images are online at Chiapas IMC.

Meanwhile, Hermann Bellinghausen reports for La Jornada Jan. 2 on further attacks against Zapatista support bases by followers of the ironically-named Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (OPDDIC), which the EZLN charges is a paramilitary group. On Dec. 29, Zapatista supporter Pablo Silvano Jiménez was shot and wounded by an OPDDIC gunman apparently backed up by Chaipas state police officers in the community of Betel Yochiv, near the settlement of Agua Clara. On Dec. 27, Zapatista supporter Julio Hernández Gómez was attacked with machetes by OPDDIC militants at Cascadas de Agua Azul.

See our last posts on Mexico and the struggle in Chiapas.

Women’s rights, sexual and reproductive health and….revolution?

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:21:00 +0000

Women’s rights, sexual and reproductive health and….revolution?

Since 1994, the Zapatista's have placed women's rights and participation at the centre of their social and health agenda, including the promotion of sexual and reproductive rights. Today the Zapatistas run a health system autonomous from the Mexican government that includes community educators, trained midwives, community clinics and an autonomous hospital. This transformation is promoting women's sexual and reproductive health and rights.

(Tamil Kendall
http://chiapas.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=153291)

La Garrucha, Chiapas
December 28, 2007

Mexico’s indigenous people suffer serious disadvantages related to sexual and reproductive health. Most Mexican women in urban areas now have access to modern family planning methods and reasonable hospital care in case of emergencies related to labor and birth. But rural women, and particularly rural indigenous women, lack access to these services to ensure their reproductive and sexual choice and rights. These gaps in services are on of the main reasons that Mexico may not achieve the Millennium Development Goal for reducing deaths associated with labor and birth (maternal mortality).

In indigenous communities, poverty, limited health services, long-distances to hospitals, and in some cases, the lack of value given to women’s health, contribute to these needless deaths. International experts agree that ensuring women’s rights and full participation are cornerstones for improving sexual and reproductive health and promoting human development. The Mexican government has affirmed its commitment to these goals through various international conventions, including the International Conference on Population and Development (1994) and the Millennium Development Goals (2000).

Independent of the Mexican government, Zapatista women and their communities are seeking to improve sexual and reproductive rights on the foundation of women’s rights and participation. Not very long ago, the situation for these rural indigenous women from Chiapas was grim. Adriana, an unmarried Zapastista woman says: “In the past we were only good to look after the family and the house and they sold us like animals.” On the coffee plantations, women suffered sexual harassment from the landowners, and if the women or their parents resisted, they were rounded up and punished and the women were raped. Women weren’t allowed to choose their own husbands. If they were lucky, their father chose their husband. If they were unlucky, a suitor asked the landowner for the woman’s hand. In this case, many of the women had to have sex with the boss until he tired of her and passed her on to the spouse.

Today, Adriana says: “Our parents have started to learn that we have the same rights as men.”
Commander Rosalinda of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) states that before the establishment of the autonomous communities: “Only men had rights, even our parents said that women weren’t worth anything. Our rights were crushed. If we participated in meetings, the men made fun of us. We weren’t allowed to go out in the street. We only worked in the house and taking care of the animals. Our grandmothers worked in the corn field (milpa) and then came home to work and wash the clothes, while the men had time to go out and have fun.” She goes on to say that: “Part of the collective work after the uprising was to help women see that they have rights, the same as the men.” These changes are having an impact in women’s lives, and promoting community respect for their sexual and reproductive rights.
Grandmother Elisa says that today: “Our daughters marry as they wish, they are not forced.

The go where their destiny and their luck leads them. Now we know our rights as women, to go where we want and to work, not only the men.” Mireilla, a young married Zapatista says: “I married after ’94 [the armed uprising] and no one made me marry. I chose my husband. We also give freedom to our children because children also have rights, just like adults”.

Rosaura, a Zapatista community health promoter says that before the 1994 uprising women’s health wasn’t a priority for the government or for the community: “Sometimes the men didn’t worry about our health, they just waited to see if we would get better.” Medical attention in their communities was very limited and many women died during or after labor and birth, or because of sexually transmitted infections. Transporting women to hospitals in obstetric emergencies was and continues to be a problem because of lack of roads and limited radio communication. Traditional midwives lacked training and materials, such as gloves.

Today the Zapatistas run a health system autonomous from the Mexican government that includes community educators, trained midwives, community clinics and an autonomous hospital. Sexual and reproductive health is a priority supported through ongoing community based education on sexually transmitted infections, diagnosis for the human papiloma virus and cervical cancer, family planning, and preventative health care before, during and after pregnancy and birth. However, there are ongoing economic and human challenges: they lack sufficient specially trained personnel, medical equipment and essential medicines. And what about condom use in Zapatista communities? Rosaura says “Yes, they are recognized and some men and women use them, but it is the decision of each individual.”

Armed uprising may not be the path to ensuring women’s rights for all communities, but it is clear that since 1994 the Zapatistas have made considerable gains in transforming an extremely macho indigenous culture into one where women participate fully and their rights, including their sexual and reproductive rights, are promoted.

cenutrio

Report to be released today on ICE raids' impact on kids

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:53:00 +0000

By Harold Reutter
harold.reutter@theindependent.com

The National Council of La Raza and the Urban Institute are scheduled to release a report today about how Grand Island children and families were impacted by last December's ICE raid on the local Swift plant.

The report will be released during a presentation to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

In addition to studying the impact on children and families in Grand Island, the report also looked at the effects on children and families following an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid on the Swift & Co. plant in Greeley, Colo., and on the Michael Bianco Inc. plant in New Bedford, Mass.

According to the Boston Globe, the Michael Bianco plant is a leather goods operation. It's also a military contractor that makes backpacks and survival vests.

Grand Island Superintendent Steve Joel, although not involved in the creation of the report, has been invited to be one of the panelists when the report is presented to the National Press Club.

The report had two main researchers from the Urban Institute, which describes itself as a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization. It says it "investigates the social, economic and governance problems confronting the nation and evaluates the public and private means to alleviate them."

The Urban Institute was commissioned to complete the report by the National Council of La Raza.

The Independent has received an advance copy of the 99-page report and will post excerpts after the embargo has ended at 10 a.m. today.

Marie Watteau, associate director of the Office of Public Information for the National Council of La Raza, said the report deals with current immigration law, which is an enforcement-only policy of deportation when it comes to illegal immigrants.

Watteau said La Raza may favor what some people have called comprehensive immigration reform, but the report makes no recommendations on changing current immigration law.

Instead, it focuses on the impact on children and families when ICE takes work-site enforcement actions in various communities, Watteau said.

That is reflected in the report's title: "Paying the Price: The Impact of Immigration Raids on America's Children."

Freed FARC rebel in Venezuela for hostage talks

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:51:00 +0000

A Colombian guerrilla freed to broker a deal over hostages has travelled to Venezuela to help set up talks with President Hugo Chavez, who is seeking to end a deadlock over negotiations, the government has said.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe in June released from prison Rodrigo Granda, known as the "foreign minister" of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in a gesture to advance talks.

The recent involvement of Chavez raised hopes the leftist may secure a deal to free hostages, including French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans held by the FARC for more than four years in secret jungle camps.

"Rodrigo Granda was authorized ... to seek peace efforts and to move between Havana and Caracas, and he has travelled to Venezuela to serve as a bridge of communication," Colombia's peace commissioner, Luis Carlos Restrepo, told local radio.

Granda travelled to Cuba after his release in Colombia.

The announcement came after a left-wing Colombian senator, who is acting as a facilitator in talks, also said efforts to broker initial negotiations between Chavez and the FARC leadership had advanced, but without giving details.

Chavez, a self-styled socialist revolutionary, has said he plans to meet with a representative of the Marxist FARC leadership in Venezuela in an effort to end a stalemate over hostages. Granda is acting as a mediator for possible talks.

Negotiations are stalled over FARC demands Uribe pull troops back from an area the size of New York City and that two guerrilla commanders in US prisons are freed and included in the deal to exchange key hostages for jailed FARC fighters.

Uribe, popular for his hardline stance, has rejected a demilitarized zone under FARC conditions saying that would allow the guerrillas to regroup in an area strategic for arms and cocaine trafficking from the south of the country.

Uribe has employed billions of dollars in US aid to send troops to drive the FARC back into the jungles, but Latin America's longest-running insurgency is still fighting in remote areas, often financed by funds from the cocaine trade.

Venezuela to Give 14.2 Million for Emergency in Nicaragua

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:50:00 +0000

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.

Managua, Oct 30 (Prensa Latina) The Venezuelan government will give 14.2 million dollars to help to fix the damages caused by the recent meteorological phenomena in Nicaragua, as told by President Daniel Ortega.

The Nicaraguan leader made the announcement during his intervention in the plenary of the National Assembly Tuesday to request a budget reform that allows to assign more funds to repair roads damaged by the rains.

Venezuela already approved a help to Nicaragua for 14.2 million dollars to face this emergency, Ortega expressed and said that the good news was told to him on the phone by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro.

The funds, he added, will be used to guarantee roofs of zinc to 10,000 houses and to buy foods and other materials for those affected by the rains of the last weeks.

Ortega also confirmed that a ship with Venezuelan fuel will arrive in Puerto Cabezas, in the Caribbean north shore of Nicaragua in the next days to supply that area which was desolated by Hurricane Felix on September 4.

The remnant of the help that Caracas will give Nicaragua was determined by a technical mission of the South American country that arrived in Managua on October 19 to evaluate the damages caused by the rains in the area of the Pacific.

The Venezuelan cooperation is coming in the right moment; Ortega assured, in allusion to the emergency that Nicaragua lives as a result of Felix's impact in the Atlantic, the floods in the Pacific and of a leptospirosis sprout in the west.

According to calculations, the three phenomena almost caused in total 250 dead people, more than 215,000 damaged and material damages for about 400 million dollars.

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PL-49

Driver licenses for undocumented: Clinton stumbles

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:48:00 +0000

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton at the presidential candidates debate in Philadelphia. Photo by Stan Honda//AFP/Getty Images)

By Mark Silva

A potentially dangerous new story-line could be developing in the campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York for the White House: Multiple-choice answers to the same difficult question.

Clinton already suffers from a certain “if I had known then what I know now'' syndrome over the war in Iraq – she voted along with an overwhelming majority of senators to authorize military force in Iraq, but now says she opposes the war. She promises to end it, if elected president, but will not commit to when all the U.S. troops deployed there will come home.

Clinton also has voted for a resolution on Iran supported by an overwhelming majority of senators which critics call a predicate to war, but she maintains that she is in no “rush to war'' in Iran. And last night, during a Democratic debate, she refused to pledge that Iran will not acquire nuclear weapons during her presidency – her leading rivals also demurred.

But it was a question about driver's licenses for “undocumented workers'' – the politically neutral terminology for “illegal aliens'' which she prefers – that created the most trouble for Clinton during last night's two-hour debate of the Democrats staged in Philadelphia. Her leading rivals pounced on Clinton for her conflicting answers – she supports New York's plan but says it's not the best idea -- and the GOP is pouncing today.

Clinton complained that she is a victim of the “gotcha'' on this controveral question. She may well be right – her rivals seized on a rare debate flub for the candidate who has proven toughest in Democratic encounters. And the GOP today is calling it “Hillary's Debate Dodgeball.''

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer has proposed giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, NBC moderator Tim Russert reminded Clinton. “You told the Nashua, N.H., editorial board it makes a lot of sense,'' he said. “Why does it make a lot of sense to give an illegal immigrant a driver's license? ''

“ Well, what Gov. Spitzer is trying to do is fill the vacuum left by the failure of this administration to bring about comprehensive immigration reform,'' she said. “We know in New York we have several million at any one time who are in New York illegally. They are undocumented workers.

“They are driving on our roads,'' she said. “The possibility of them having an accident that harms themselves or others is just a matter of the odds. It's probability. So what Gov. Spitzer is trying to do is to fill the vacuum.

“ I believe we need to get back to comprehensive immigration reform because no state, no matter how well-intentioned, can fill this gap,'' Clinton continued. “There needs to be federal action on immigration reform. ''

“Does anyone here believe an illegal immigrant should not have a driver's license?'' Russert asked the other six Democrats assembled on stage.

“ This is a privilege,'' Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) said. “And look, I'm as forthright and progressive on immigration policy as anyone here, but we're dealing with a serious problem here. We need to have people come forward. The idea that we're going to extend this privilege here of a driver's license, I think, is troublesome. And I think the American people are reacting to it. ''

Clinton attempted to clarify her own response: “I just want to add, I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Gov. Spitzer is trying to do it. And we have failed....

“Wait a minute,'' Dodd interrupted. “No, no, no. You said yes, you thought it made sense to do it.

“No, I didn't, Chris,'' Clinton said. “But the point is, what are we going to do with all these illegal immigrants who are (driving )?''

“Well, that's a legitimate issue,'' Dodd said. “But driver's license goes too far, in my view. ''

“ Well, you may say that,'' Clinton said, “but what is the identification if somebody runs into you today who is an undocumented worker?'

“What Gov. Spitzer has agreed to do is to have three different licenses, one that provides identification for actually going onto airplanes and other kinds of security issues, another which is an ordinary driver's license, and then a special card that identifies the people who would be on the road,'' the senator from New York said.

“ That's a bureaucratic nightmare,'' the senator from Connecticut said.

“Sen. Clinton,'' Russert interjected, “I just want to make sure what I heard. Do you, the New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, support the New York governor's plan to give illegal immigrants a driver's license? You told the Nashua, New Hampshire, paper it made a lot of sense. .. Do you support his plan?''

“You know, Tim, his is where everybody plays gotcha,'' she said. “It makes a lot of sense. What is the governor supposed to do? He is dealing with a serious problem. We have failed, and George Bush has failed.

“ Do I think this is the best thing for any governor to do?'' Clinton continued. “No. But do I understand the sense of real desperation, trying to get a handle on this? Remember, in New York we want to know who's in New York. We want people to come out of the shadows. He's making an honest effort to do it. We should have passed immigration reform. ''

Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina seized the opening in Clinton's defenses.

“ I want to add something that Chris Dodd just said a minute ago, because I don't want it to go unnoticed,'' Edwards said. “Unless I missed something, Sen. Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes just a few minutes ago, and I think this is a real issue for the country.

“I mean, America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them,'' Edwards said. “Because what we've had for seven years is double-talk from Bush and from Cheney, and I think America deserves us to be straight.''

And Obama's head-nodding caught the moderator's attention.

“ Well, I was confused on Sen. Clinton's answer,'' Obama said. “I can't tell whether she was for it or against it, and I do think that is important.

“You know, one of the things that we have to do in this country is to be honest about the challenges that we face,'' Obama said. “Immigration is a difficult issue. But part of leadership is not just looking backwards and seeing what's popular, or trying to gauge popular sentiment. It's about setting a direction for the country, and that's what I intend to do as president.''

How about the issue, then. Is Obama “for or against it?''

“I think that it is a -- the right idea,'' Obama said of the New York governor's plan. “And I disagree with Chris, because there is a public safety concern. We can make sure that drivers who are illegal come out of the shadows, that they can be tracked, that they are properly trained, and that will make our roads safer. That doesn't negate the need for us to reform illegal immigration.''

Posted by Mark Silva on October 31, 2007 10:53 AM | Permalink

Large Ancient Settlement Unearthed in Puerto Rico

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:46:00 +0000

Kelly Hearn
for National Geographic News

October 29, 2007

Bodies, structures, and rock art thought to belong to an indigenous pre-Columbian culture have been unearthed at an ancient settlement in Puerto Rico, officials recently announced.

Archaeologists say the complex—which dates from A.D. 600 to 1500—could be the most significant of its kind in the Caribbean.

"This is a very well preserved site," said Aida Belén Rivera-Ruiz, director of Puerto Rico's State Office of Historic Preservation.

"The site seems to show two occupations: a pre-Taino and a Taino settlement."

The Taino are thought to be a subgroup of the Arawak Indians who migrated to the Caribbean from Mexico or South America hundreds of years ago, experts say.

(Related news: "Jade Axes Proof of Vast Ancient Caribbean Network, Experts Say" [June 12, 2006].)

They were among the first tribes to encounter Europeans.

Huge Plaza

The ancient Taino settlement was discovered in southern Puerto Rico (see map).

Archaeologists have known since 1985 that the area contained indigenous artifacts.

But the scope of the site became clear only recently, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction on a new dam meant to protect the region from flooding.

Perhaps the most significant find is a large plaza covering an area of about 130 by 160 feet (40 by 50 meters).

Rivera-Ruiz said the plaza appears to be a batey, a rectangular area around which the Taino built their settlements.

The plaza, which contains stones etched with ancient petroglyphs, might have been a court used for ceremonial rituals or ball games.

"If this information is confirmed, this would be the largest known indigenous batey in the Caribbean," Rivera-Ruiz said.

Roberto Mucaro Borrero, a representative of the United Confederation of Taino People, agreed.

The site "could be the largest ancient Taino cultural area found not only in Puerto Rico but throughout the Caribbean," Borrero said.

And petroglyphs of a masculine figure with frog legs could prove especially important in understanding the culture's roots, he added.

"They could reveal evidence of direct links between the Taino and the Mayan peoples," he said, although other experts strongly refute that the two cultures are related.

Storm of Controversy

Confusion and criticisms are already swirling amidst excitement over the findings.

Initial reports about bodies found in several graves at the site suggest that the people were buried in unique positions.

The bodies were "buried facedown with the legs bent at the knees—a style never seen before in the region," the Associated Press reported.

But Miguel Rodriguez, a member of the Puerto Rican government's archaeological council, said the burial positioning isn't unheard of in the area.

Kit Wesler, a Taino expert at Murray State University in Kentucky, also said that the "facedown position is unusual but probably not unprecedented."

Rivera-Ruiz of the state preservation office stressed that any claims about the uniqueness of the burial arrangements must await a full excavation and studies of any funerary objects.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-based New South Associates—a private archaeology company contracted by the Corps of Engineers to salvage the site—is at the center of controversy over their excavation methods.

According to AP, the company had initially been using a bulldozer that caused damage to centuries-old bones.

Members of the Taino who visited the dig on Saturday "witnessed damage to the site, particularly to some human remains and stones" that was apparently caused by a backhoe, Taino representative Borrero said.

Rodriguez was adamant that the company should be pulled off the project.

"This is a textbook case of what they shouldn't do," he said. "They are using mostly diggers and bulldozers and they must stop."

Rodriguez also accused the company of violating Puerto Rican law by failing to register artifacts it had taken off the island.

"They haven't told us anything about the materials, so they are not following the rules," he said.

An official from New South Associates said the Corps did not permit them to answer press inquiries.

But Rivera-Ruiz, of Puerto Rico's historic conservation office, defended the Corps and its contractor.

"The contractor was originally hired by the Corps of Engineers to conduct a salvage data recovery operation on a site that was essentially doomed," she said via email.

"Once preservation became an option, the scope and invasive nature of the project was shifted in favor of the more low-key, less intrusive hand excavation of already exposed features."

About 80 percent of the site will be left intact, Rivera-Ruiz added, allowing for the long-term preservation of most of the site.

She added that Puerto Rico's State Historic Preservation Office has overseen the company's operation, and the parties are complying with the law.

And Corps spokesperson David McCullough told National Geographic News via email that his agency stands behind New South Associates and is reworking its plans based on the new findings.

"When the Corps recognized the extreme significance of this site," he said, "we redesigned the parts of the dam project that would create the greatest adverse effect to the site."

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Glare of Fires Pulls Migrants From Shadows

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 05:41:00 +0000

By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and WILL CARLESS

Published: October 27, 2007

SAN DIEGO, Oct. 26 — Out of the burning brush, from behind canyon rocks, several immigrants bolted toward a group of firefighters, chased not by the border police but by the onrush of flames from one of the biggest wildfires this week.

Skip to next paragraph

Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Waiting for work in Rancho Peñasquitos, a part of San Diego affected by the fires.

Multimedia

Interactive Map

The Extent of the Fires

Despite Progress, California Fires Still Pose Threat (October 27, 2007)

News Analysis: A Firestorm, a Deluge and a Sharp Political Dig (October 27, 2007)

Fake News Briefing by FEMA Draws Official Rebukes (October 27, 2007)

Their appearance startled the firefighters, who let them into their vehicles. But with the discovery of four charred bodies in an area of heavy illegal immigration, concern is growing that others may not have survived.

“Their hands were burned, and they were clearly tired and grateful,” Capt. Mike Parkes of the State Department of Forestry and Fire Protection reported on what his firefighting team saw.

Immigrants from south of the border, many illegal, provide the backbone of menial labor in San Diego, picking fruit, cleaning hotel rooms, sweeping walks and mowing lawns.

The wildfires, one of the biggest disasters to strike the county, exposed their often-invisible existence in ways that were sometimes deadly.

The four bodies were found in a burned area in southeastern San Diego County, a region known for intense illegal immigration. It is near Tecate, where a chain securing an evacuated border crossing was cut and people were seen flowing into the United States until the Border Patrol arrived, said Michael J. Fisher, the chief patrol agent in San Diego.

As firefighting continued on Friday, makeshift camps for immigrants in the northern part of the county stood largely abandoned. Some immigrants were said to be hiding in even more remote terrain. Others sought help from churches.

“I was pretty scared. We had to leave in the middle of the night, and we went to the church,” said Juan Santiago, a immigrant worker in the Rancho Peñasquitos neighborhood, just south of the hard-hit Rancho Bernardo area.

Terri Trujillo, who helps the immigrants, checked on those in the canyons, urging them to leave, too, when she left her house in Rancho Peñasquitos ahead of the fires.

Ms. Trujillo and others who help the immigrants said they saw several out in the fields as the fires approached and ash fell on them. She said many were afraid to lose their jobs.

“There were Mercedeses and Jaguars pulling out, people evacuating, and the migrants were still working,” said Enrique Morones, who takes food and blankets to the immigrants’ camps. “It’s outrageous.”

Some of the illegal workers who sought help from the authorities were arrested and deported. Opponents of illegal immigration, including civilian border watch groups, seized on news that immigrants had been detained at the Qualcomm Stadium evacuation center as evidence of trouble that illegal immigrants cause.

The Border Patrol also arrested scores of illegal immigrants made visible by the fires. Agent Fisher of the Border Patrol said 100 had been arrested since the fires started Sunday.

He said that the agency never abandoned enforcing the border and that agents helped with removals and rescues. Fire blocked some access points to border areas, but Agent Fisher said, “We were very conscious in making sure our border security mission was met.”

Some people have speculated, including on the Web, that immigrants might have set some of the fires, as has occurred with campfires lighted in fields.

The authorities have not given any causes linked to immigration.

Two men, one in San Diego County and the other in Los Angeles, who were arrested on arson charges, accused of setting small fires this week, are believed to be deportable, a federal immigration official said.

The San Diego police detained people suspected of stealing at Qualcomm Stadium. Six were handed over to the immigration authorities when it became apparent that they might be in the United States illegally.

The Border Patrol said the six, and at the group’s request, an American juvenile with them, were returned to Mexico.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it had received reports that people had been denied help at shelters because they lacked proper identification. Officials have been checking identification to prevent people not affected by the fires from taking advantage of the free food, clothes and other services.

The concerns of the rights group drew a rebuke from Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a Republican who represents areas along the border.

“People are dying because we can’t control our border,” Mr. Bilbray said. “That’s what they should be screaming about. Anyone who knows the land and the illegal activity in that rugged terrain knows there was no way we would avoid deaths in this.”

Wayne A. Cornelius, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who studies border questions, said that if the past was a guide there would be more friction over the fires and their effects on illegal immigrants.

“San Diego likes its illegal migrants as invisible as possible,” Mr. Cornelius said. “So whenever something happens that calls attention to their presence, it is fodder for the local anti-immigration forces.”

In one sign of cooperation, a Mexican firefighting team from Baja California helped American firefighters with a major blaze along the border early in the week.

For the immigrants, the fires may have dried up some work. But some speculate on strong work prospects like cleanups. By early afternoon near a heavily damaged neighborhood in the Rancho Bernardo area, four men stood on a corner, waiting for work offers.

“It is a shame what happened,” said a man who gave just his first name, Miguelito. “But we think there will be jobs to clean or build.”

Dan Frosch contributed reporting from Denver, and Carolyn Marshall from San Francisco.

Archaeologists in Puerto Rico surprised by discovery of Indian artifacts

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 05:05:00 +0000

The Associated Press

Saturday, October 27, 2007

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: U.S. and Puerto Rican archaeologists say they have uncovered what they believe to be one of the most important pre-Columbian sites found in the Caribbean, containing stones etched with ancient petroglyphs and graves that reveal unusual burial methods.

The stones at the site in southern Puerto Rico form a large plaza measuring some 130 feet by 160 feet (40 meters by 50 meters) that could have been used for ball games or ceremonial rites, said Aida Belen Rivera, director of the Puerto Rican Historic Conservation office.

The petroglyphs include the carving of a human figure with masculine features and frog legs. Archaeologists believe the site might belong to the Taino and pre-Taino cultures that inhabited the island before European colonization.

The plaza could contain other artifacts dating from 600 A.D. to 1500 A.D., said Rivera, whose office is receiving general reports about the findings.

"I have visited many sites and have never seen a plaza of that magnitude and of those dimensions and with such elaborate petroglyphs," said Miguel Rodriguez, member of the government's archaeological council and director of a graduate school in Puerto Rico that specializes in history and humanities. He is not involved in the project.

Archaeologists also uncovered several graves where bodies were interred face-down with the legs bent backward at the knees — a type of burial believed to be new to the region.

The site was discovered while land was being cleared for construction of a dam to control flooding in the area. Experts have called for a halt to the excavation, saying the team's use of heavy machinery has exposed the stones and possibly destroyed important evidence.

Jose Oliver, a Latin American Archaeology lecturer at University College London, called the discovery one that archaeologists come across every 50 or 100 years — if they are lucky.

"I'm convinced that a competent investigation of that site will offer us a rare perspective of our Pre-Columbian and Pre-Colonial history," Oliver, who has overseen several high-profile digs in the U.S. Caribbean territory, said by e-mail.

But he warned that the company in charge of the site is not equipped to handle such a massive and complex job.

The lead investigator for Georgia-based New South Associates, the archaeological and historical consulting firm leading the excavation, said a backhoe that scrapes inches (centimeters) at a time did break some bones, but that the same would have occurred through manual excavation.

The company switched to slower and more detailed excavation methods about two weeks ago, after the site's significance became clear and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it would preserve the site, investigator Chris Espenshade said.

Experts have suspected since 1985 that the area might yield indigenous artifacts because of its proximity to other archaeological sites.

The Tainos were a subgroup of the Arawakan Indians, native to the Caribbean islands. They migrated to the Caribbean from Mexico's Yucatan centuries before European colonizers arrived.

Four years after Columbus landed in Hispaniola in 1495, one-third of the 300,000 original Indian population was killed or exported. Half a century later, the Tainos there became extinct.

Puerto Rican Leader Backs Cuba

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 05:04:00 +0000

Quito , Oct 27 (Prensa Latina) Puerto Ricans are with Cuba and, as fighters for the independence of our territory, we defend self-determination and sovereignty of that country, Rafael Cancel Miranda stated in this capital Saturday.

Special guest to the Fifth Continental Meeting of Solidarity with the Cuban people, Cancel Miranda talked Prensa Latina of his love for Cuba, saying that he is "a light in Latin America."

"From my land, controlled by the US government, I am ready to fight Cuba , as I have done for the independence of my country," stated the leader, who served 25 years imprisonment in United States for his independentist struggle.

Cancel Miranda was one of the activists that, along with Lolita Lebron and Andres Figueroa, attacked the US Congress in 1954, to demand the end of that northern country's intervention in Puerto Rico.

Expressing his solidarity with five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters unfairly imprisoned by the empire, Cancel Miranda recalled that he and other independentists were also sentenced in manipulated trials full of irregularities.

In addition of Cancel Miranda, nearly 20 Puerto Ricans and representatives from Venezuela, Uruguay, Argentina , Chile, Peru, Brazil , Colombia, Nicaragua and Mexico , among others, are attending the event.

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PL-18

Ecuador wants military base in Miami

noreply@blogger.com (Mariposa) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 04:02:00 +0000

http://uk.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUKADD25267520071022

Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:38pm BST

By Phil Stewart

NAPLES (Reuters) - Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa said Washington
must let him open a military base in Miami if the United States wants to
keep using an air base on Ecuador's Pacific coast.

Correa has refused to renew Washington's lease on the Manta air base, set to
expire in 2009. U.S. officials say it is vital for counter-narcotics
surveillance operations on Pacific drug-running routes.

"We'll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami
-- an Ecuadorean base," Correa said in an interview during a trip to Italy.

"If there's no problem having foreign soldiers on a country's soil, surely
they'll let us have an Ecuadorean base in the United States."

The U.S. embassy to Ecuador says on its Web site that anti-narcotics flights
from Manta gathered information behind more than 60 percent of illegal drug
seizures on the high seas of the Eastern Pacific last year.

It offers a fact-sheet on the base at:
http://ecuador.usembassy.gov/topics_of_interest/manta-fol.html

Correa, a popular leftist economist, had promised to cut off his arm before
extending the lease that ends in 2009 and has called U.S. President George
W. Bush a "dimwit".

But Correa, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, told Reuters he
believed relations with the United States were "excellent" despite the base
closing.

He rejected the idea that the episode reflected on U.S. ties at all.

"This is the only North American military base in South America," he said.

"So, then the other South American countries don't have good relations with
the United States because they don't have military bases? That doesn't make
any sense."