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Articles : InternationalThe Rebel Communiqué
We do our best to capture all the main headlines, but often important stories fall through the cracks of both mainstream and independent media. This is an attempt to give a few of those stories the coverage they deserve. A wide range of topics are touched upon in the communiqué, from revolutionary to stories that give us the sense of destitution.
Families Pay as U.S. Agents Fire Tear Gas Into Mexico: Border Patrol agents are firing tear gas and powerful pepper-spray weapons across the border into Mexico to repel what the agency says are an increasing number of attacks by assailants hurling stones, bottles and bricks. The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that innocent families are being caught in the cross-fire. United States officials say the new tactics may spare lives. In March, an agent shot and killed a 20-year-old Mexican man whose arm was cocked; that fatality occurred in Calexico, Calif., where attacks with stones have soared. And two years ago, an agent fatally shot a stone thrower at the San Diego-Tijuana border. Mexico’s acting consul general in San Diego, Ricardo Pineda Albarrán, has insisted that United States authorities stop firing onto Mexican soil. Mr. Pineda met with Border Patrol officials last month after the agency fired tear gas into Mexico. The agency defended that action, saying agents were being hit with a hail of ball bearings from slingshots in Mexico. (San Diego Tribune)
Some Chavez Allies Slow to Shed luxuries: Hugo Chavez constantly urges his supporters to reject “savage capitalism,” but allies of Venezuela’s president have been slow to embrace his socialist values — and some are struggling to explain their consumption of luxury goods. Information Minister Willian Lara often wears Tommy Hilfiger jackets, although they are red — the color of Chavez’s ruling party. And Luis Acosta, the pro-Chavez governor of Carabobo state, argued last year that authorities can purchase expensive cars without sacrificing their revolutionary ideals. Such statements — and shows of opulence among some of Chavez’s closest allies — prompted the socialist president to later reprimand supporters for failing to shed their materialist ways. Threatening to impose new taxes on luxury goods in October, Chavez said: “What kind of revolution is this? The Whisky Revolution? The Hummer Revolution? No, this is a real revolution!” (AP)
Once Volatile, Crossing Is Opening With a Whisper: As of 12:01 a.m. on Friday, the border between Poland and Germany, one of the most violently contested frontiers on earth, is being thrown open. Yet, for the most part, the barriers are coming down more with a whimper than a bang. The Poland-Germany border has been violently contested for centuries. Along the 280-odd miles of the border — from the German town of Zittau in the south, where the German and Polish dividing line ends at the border of the Czech Republic, to the Polish port city of Szczecin in the north — what is most striking is the relative indifference to the change. For centuries, Poland was Europe’s marching ground — when it was not dismembered and wiped off the map by some combination of Germany, Austria and Russia. The kingdom of Poland battled the Teutonic Knights as far back as the Middle Ages, and Hitler’s blitzkrieg in September 1939 lives on in the minds of the elderly and the imaginations of the young. (NY Times)
GAO:Sanctions Against Cuba Are Excessive: The year-long GAO study looked at the effects of restrictions the administration imposed on travel and trade with Cuba in 2004, tightening already stringent sanctions imposed in the early 1960s. The new measures included elimination of small “personal use” allowances for Cuban products and reduced the amount of money Cuban Americans could send to relatives on the island as well as the permitted frequency of their visits there. A ban on spending any money in Cuba effectively prohibits Americans without Cuban family members from traveling there. Cuba is one of five countries the United States designates as state sponsors of terrorism, the report noted that no U.S. license is required for travel to Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria, and there are no restrictions on personal remittances of funds to those countries.
Bush Deflects Questions on C.I.A. Tapes: The president, fencing good-naturedly with reporters at a White House news conference, parried a question that suggested there was ambiguity in his earlier statements that he had no recollection about the existence or destruction of the tapes. President Bush deflected questions on Thursday about the destruction of C.I.A. interrogation tapes, saying that he will withhold comment until investigations into the affair are complete. The recently disclosed destruction by the C.I.A. of the interrogation videotapes is the latest controversy over the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policies. Critics of the administration, including Democrats who control both Houses of Congress, have wondered aloud whether the destruction of the tapes indicated that the C.I.A. had something to hide. (NY Times)
CIA Drug Planes Caught in Mexican Stand-Off: CIA-connected Gulfstream business jet which was carrying more than 4 tons of cocaine as well as an yet-unspecified amount of heroin, in the jungle outside of Merida in Mexico’s Yucatan on September 24th of this year. Last week the Director of Civil Aviation in the Yucatan, Jose Luis Soladana Ortiz, was assassinated on his way to work. The murders and multi-ton drug busts are part of a continuing “Mexican stand-off” between rival Mexican drug cartels allied with dueling factions contesting across Mexico’s unsettled political landscape, a contest which has resulted in more than 1500 murders already this year. The two CIA-connected airplanes—the recent Gulfstream business jet (N987SA) and a DC9 airliner (N900SA) eighteen months ago—which sallied forth from St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport only to be busted in the Yucatan carrying multi-ton loads of cocaine, may owe their ignominious fates to being caught in the middle of the jungle. (MadCow)
Bolivia’s Leader Says States’ Dispute Can Be Resolved: At 6 a.m. in this city 11,900 feet above sea level, the corridors of the presidential palace are bitingly cold. Aides huddle in overcoats near space heaters. Soldiers clasping rifles with bayonets stand guard with chattering teeth. This is when President Evo Morales starts his days, which have become filled with tension recently as the eastern region of this country — the hot lowlands — puts in motion a process to seek far greater autonomy from his government. Yet just days after putting the armed forces on alert, Mr. Morales said in an interview on Wednesday that he believed it was possible to negotiate a solution to the impasse that would preclude using troops or declaring a state of emergency. (NY Times)
Slave Labour That Shames America: Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom. When they found sanctuary one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wrists swollen. The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but mistreated and forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had to pay for sub-standard food. If they took a shower with a garden hose or bucket, it cost them $5. Their story of slavery and abuse in the fruit fields of sub-tropical Florida threatens to lift the lid on some appalling human rights abuses in America today. (Truthout)
Statement Hints at Castro’s Retirement: Fidel Castro indicated Monday in a statement read on state television that he was willing to hand over the reins of Cuba’s government to a younger generation of leaders. But his statement remained silent on whether he was speaking hypothetically or had a transition plan in mind. Despite much excitement this week over one ambiguous sentence in a letter about global warming in which Castro indicated he will not hold back Cuba’s younger leadership, Castro already has settled into a kind of reflective semiretirement. Island life has hardly changed under his brother, and the elder Castro has retained a vibrant role in Cuban politics, penning several essays a week and showing up sporadically in official photographs and prerecorded messages. (AP)
Mexico Remembers 1997 Indian Massacre: It’s been nearly a decade since pro-government villagers armed with guns and machetes slaughtered 45 men, women and children in the neighboring hamlet of Acteal — a massacre that remains emblematic of Mexico’s human rights failures. At the time — Dec. 22, 1997 — Chiapas was the battleground where Zapatista rebels were trying to build support for their armed insurrection against the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which had ruled Mexico for seven decades. The army and the ruling party’s local governor were determined to hold them back. Authorities said the killings were motivated by a land dispute between residents of the two Tzotzil Indian communities. Victims’ families say the killings were motivated by politics, with state officials providing weapons and paramilitary training for the more conservative village in a bid to crush the Zapatistas. (AP)
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For more exposure to reality, check out GNN’s other weekly roundups. Mwm’s If you knew…, ShiftShaper’s Labor News Roundups, and Mercenary’s East is East.
Posted by Dilated_Rebel
Born and raised very humbly in a “small town” in southern California, I was a product of different worlds. Literally, part of my family descends from Mexico the rest from Portugal and Uruguay. This mixture had kept me from supporting any racist psyche found prevalent...
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About the spending habits of Chavistas. The problem with the so-called Fancy Clothes and Fancy Cars occurs when they’re assembled for 12 cents an hour or even 22 cents an hour — which is what I think the Hondos (Hondurans) get for assembling cars. NAFTA gave the original 22/hr job to Mexicans for 66 cents an hour but I think CAFTA has since moved the workload on.
Plus the Hummers are hands down symbols of Fascism. A total di kh ad car squared.
I personally don’t feel that socialism needs to dispense with “luxuries” like a good looking fashion item. What we want to dispense with is genocide and slavery. Every chance we get to make that a little clearer is a chance we should grab with gusto. Por favor.
Micro, as always words of wisdom.
It just looks bad for them bourgiouse.
If the shoe was handmade in Germany by a master craftsman who got a descent day’s wages in a healthy work environment and you had to pay 1,000 USD for that shoe – that’s better than paying 200 USD for a shoe that was assembled in an Indonesian Labor camp.
You shouldn’t have to pay that much though, for a good shoe, handmade by a master craftsman in Germany or Spain — or anywhere else, for that matter. The price points aren’t the hold up — it’s the profit margins carinos. Really. I promise you.
In the Socialist Worker’s Paradise, we want to be proud of what we make. And we want people to get pleasure from the fruits of our labor. And we want to get up every morning knowing that a brilliant idea — for making what we make better than ever — might make our day brighter and more exciting.
That’s the Worker’s Paradise, carinos, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
Needless to say, if you go through a lot of trouble to acquire an item that wasn’t made in a slave labor camp, you don’t want it to look like it might have been made in a slave labor camp.
“better than paying 200 USD for a shoe that was assembled in an Indonesian Labor camp”
Word. but paying that high a price would lead to most of the public incapable of attaining them. which is worse. you the middle ground, where the shoe can be manufactured at good paying conditions, and still be under 75$? sure the companies would have to take a profit-cut and this they would fight guns and ammuntion, but the fucking crazy thing is they’d still be making profit!!!
I laugh at some of my friends who buy them “Jordans” or “Timberlands” boots or even those who buy their ostrich/gator boots and belts. What exactly are they buying? Quality items? Made in China?
Their buying status symbols, something that tells them apart from the normal eveyday proletarian. And in Venevuela example, it’s not that bad yet. You know like buying a Rolex, while people cant afford to buy bread. I have a problem with the whole marie antoinnette position. we all know how that ended.
The Revolution needs a Fashion System to guide people into the new consciousness. If you are out there and you aren’t sure what you wanna do with your life, think about it. This ain’t no old fashioned endeavor.
In the Socialist Worker’s Paradise, we want to be proud of what we make. And we want people to get pleasure from the fruits of our labor. And we want to get up every morning knowing that a brilliant idea — for making what we make better than ever — might make our day brighter and more exciting.
amen.
The Revolution needs a Fashion System
Ive though of this, you know good clothes made by people like you. Kind of a new-wave hippy thing. the problem being i have problems with hippies. they’re a bit too moderate nowadays.
The let them eat cake position? You’re calling my position a let them eat cake position?
I’m saying the problem is the slave labor, not the price you pay. In Latin America there is good potential for making a good cost effective shoe in an industrial landscape that isn’t abusive, and get an affordable shoe for das tots. We’re not going to get there if we strap ourselves down with some idea that the shoes have to be affordable for people making 10 cents an hour or less.
I like the idea that, in the interim, people who can pay 100 bucks for a shoe could subsidize the cost of an underpaid worker’s shoe.
And would subsidize that shoe. Willingly. With pleasure.
I’m pretty sure it could be a mission critical part of the ad campaign.
Even Tony Blair would want to be seen in a pair. WTH.
Not sure who “people like you” are. I sort of feel like the new fashion system should have a global flavor. I’d like to see Iran, for instance, infuse the global fashion system with traditionally Persian designs. And new spins on it. Same goes for traditional Incan design.
It’s too bad that the Chinese are making boring design free crap to feed genocidal profit margins — they have also an incredible indigenous design culture — as do the Japanese and the Koreans and the Vietnamese etc etc etc . . .
God forbid that I should forget the Mayans. Don’t forget : we’re not forgetting. All you Aztecs, Toltecs and Mixtecs etc out there. Don’t forget. Everybody should be planning to get on board.
President Bush deflected questions on Thursday about the destruction of C.I.A. interrogation tapes, saying that he will withhold comment until investigations into the affair are complete.
Right. Just like he made sure that those in his administration who were responsible for leaking Valerie Plame’s name/info were punished after a full investigation.
Maybe even better he could order it investigated like they investigated who was responsible for producing the false documents about Bush’s national guard service, and giving them to CBS. False documents which slandered the President during his re-election campaign.
I guess promising investigations on things or forgetting to order investigations into things isn’t really necessary when you already know the nuances and few actual facts there are regarding the stories you make up to bullshit as many people as you can….
or when you are a . . . .
DICK tater
The let them eat cake position? You’re calling my position a let them eat cake position?
No I wasnt. I was saying that luxuries inevtiably lead to the marie antoinnette syndrome. would never riducule you micro, were cool like that.
Don’t forget. Everybody should be planning to get on board
Hey if you ever go to certain parts of certain countries, Personally Ive only seen it in southern mexico and guatemala, the indignenous people there sell beautifully colored pants and xuipils hats, all kinds of blankets, its really expensive tho. Making one mans pant could take one person sewing all day, about 2 months to complete. they have their own way of sewing too, ill get some pics next time i see it.
we’ll be introducing production efficiencies and economies of scale . . .
:-)
I’ll go ahead and look forward to the pics. It’s virtually imPOSsible to get a decent pair of pants around here (I’ve been buying the same pair for about 10 years now. Just one, always the same one, over and over again, day after day — we got nada competition around here.)
Naomi Wolf on What Is Probably in the Missing Torture Tapes
by Naomi Wolf
In short? “The Directives to Torture come from the Top”