"Iraq Elections and the Liberal Elites:

A Response to Noam Chomsky"

Ghali Hassan, Countercurrents

In a recent opinion piece, Noam Chomsky writes, "In Iraq, the January elections were successful and praiseworthy. However, the main success is being reported only marginally: The United States was compelled to allow them to take place. That is a real triumph, not of the bomb-throwers, but of non-violent resistance by the people, secular as well as Islamist, for whom Grand Ayatollah Al Sistani is a symbol" (Khaleej Times Online, 4 March 2005). Mr. Chomsky is either completely out of touch with reality in Iraq, or simply ignorant of the legitimate rights of the Iraqi people to self-determination.

Chilean Communist Gladys Marín, 1941-2005

London Times

GLADYS MARÍN was sometimes known as Chile’s “La Pasionaria”. Like the redoubtable Spanish communist leader Dolores Ibárruri, she was an impassioned and indefatigable campaigner for the causes she believed in.

A supporter of Salvador Allende’s left-wing Government, she became a leader of the long resistance to the military dictatorship that followed his violent overthrow in September 1973, and felt the impact of General Augusto Pinochet’s iron fist in her personal life: her husband, Jorge Muñoz, another communist leader, “disappeared” in 1976 and has not been heard of since.

Guenter Reimann, 1904–2005

Casting A Critical Eye on Capitalism

Michael Hrebeniak, London Guardian

Guenter Reimann, who has died aged 100, was a pioneer of global financial analysis and founder of the prestigious newsletter International Reports On Finance And Currency, which provided an independent voice in the field after the second world war.

Reimann was born Hans Steinicke into a bourgeois German-Jewish family in Angermuende, north-east of Berlin. As a schoolboy, he joined the Communist party, then a vigorous force in German national politics. He was instinctively drawn to the leftist intelligentsia of inter-war Berlin, and regular nights in the company of Ernst Thaelmann, Anna Seghers and Walter Ulbricht at the Romanische Cafe followed. At 17, under the pen-name Guenter Reimann, he was appointed economics editor of the communist newspaper, Rote Fahne.

US Attack Against Italians in Baghdad Was Deliberate, Companion Says

Agence France Press

Rome — Pressure has increased on the United States to explain its troops firing on a convoy carrying freed Italian hostage Giuliana Sgrena, that wounded her and left one of her rescuers dead.

The companion of freed Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena on Saturday leveled serious accusations at US troops who fired at her convoy as it was nearing Baghdad airport, saying the shooting had been deliberate.

"The Americans and Italians knew about (her) car coming," Pier Scolari said on leaving Rome's Celio military hospital where Sgrena is to undergo surgery following her return home.

"They were 700 meters (yards) from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints."

The shooting late Friday was witnessed by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office which was on the phone with one of the secret service agents, said Scolari. "Then the US military silenced the cellphones," he charged.

"Giuliana had information, and the US military did not want her to survive," he added.

The U.S. and Europe: Quasi-Allies
Immanuel Wallerstein

George W. Bush, having failed to intimidate Europe in his first term of
office, has decided to try another tactic. First, Condoleeza Rice, then
Donald Rumsfeld, then Bush himself traveled to Europe on a charm offensive.
They all said essentially the same three things. Let's forget our quarrels
over Iraq; the U.S. considers Europe its allies; and let's discuss what the
U.S. wants now and what we can do together. But they all added a fourth
thing: The U.S. will still do what it wants, if the Europeans won't go
along. In a press conference in Europe, Bush said about the debate with
Europeans concerning Iran: "The notion that the United States is getting
ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. Having said that, all options
are on the table."

The Nuclear Club Expands
By Immanuel Wallerstein

North Korea has now said officially that it already has nuclear weapons, and is not at all interested
in discussing giving them up. Iran still claims it
doesn't intend to make nuclear weapons. However it also says it will not
discuss abandoning the progress it has made in developing nuclear enrichment
facilities (which means of course that it could easily produce nuclear
weapons when it wished to do so). And what does the United States say? The
United States doesn't know what to say and is floundering. Henry Kissinger
is sputtering, in print and on television. Condoleeza Rice is calling Iran a
totalitarian state and telling the Europeans that they have to tell Iran
clearly and loudly that, if Iran persists in its nuclear enrichment program,
there will be U.N. sanctions (and the Europeans are telling her that such
statements by her, made publicly or even privately, are distinctly
counterproductive).

nolympics writes:

"Mara Salvatrucha, Social War and the Decline of the Revolutionary Movements in Central America"

Ramor Ryan

Once this was a place of great hope. During the late 1980’s, the Sandinistas were consolidating the revolution in Nicaragua, the FMLN were on the brink of overthrowing the government in El Salvador and the radical movements in Guatemala and Honduras were gaining ground. Today it is a region convulsed by massive delinquency and chronic state corruption whose economies are surviving tenuously on remittance money sent by migrants. The defeat of the revolutionary movements has ushered in an era of social disintegration resulting in a veritable neo-liberal dystopia.

Chicken Bus Diaries

People in Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have always had travel like this. 100 people crush into generic American school buses. The old school buses earn the chicken moniker because of the propensity of people to bring their livestock onboard. Sometimes the animals are tied up in boxes on the roof. In other Latin American countries the passengers cram on the roof too, but not here in Central America. The way the drivers swing the buses around the mountain curves would pitch anything off the roof that was not tied down. But the bus service is cheap and abundant, catering for the poorest passenger, and it must be said they are painted in the most exquisite manner — each bus a blaze of color and a work of art.

Artist's Attorney Seeks Dismissal of Case

Carolyn Thompson, Associated Press

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The attorney for an artist accused of illegally obtaining bacteria for his artwork is asking a judge to throw the case out, saying authorities have sought to portray his client as a bioterrorist.

Attorney Paul Cambria, in court filings, argues the government has not established that University at Buffalo professor Steven Kurtz committed any crime.

The lawyer also challenges two search warrants used by the FBI to seize computer and laboratory equipment, and argues Kurtz was pressured into submitting to additional searches while in shock over the sudden death of his wife.

Lawyer Lynne Stewart Convicted of Helping Terrorists

Larry Neumeister, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A veteran civil rights lawyer was convicted Thursday of crossing the line by smuggling messages of violence from one of her jailed clients — a radical Egyptian sheik — to his terrorist disciples on the outside.

The jury has been deliberating off-and-on over the past month in the case of Lynne Stewart, 65, a firebrand, left-wing activist known for representing radicals and revolutionaries in her 30 years on the New York legal scene. The jury deliberated 13 days in all.

Stewart faces up to 20 years in prison on charges that included conspiracy, giving material support to terrorists and defrauding the U.S. government.

Applications to Military Academies Down Substantially

Yoshie Furuhashi

Will the United States military eventually face a shortage of lieutenants?

Cadets don't have to study the opinion polls to know they're heading off to an unpopular war. Applications to the military academies are down substantially. At West Point, applications hit a post-9/11 high of 12,383 for the school year that began 2003. The 10,412 applications for the coming school year represent a 16 percent drop in two years. The Naval Academy is down 2,852 applicants, a 20 percent drop in just a year, and the Air Force Academy is down 3,054 applicants from 2004, a 24 percent drop.