Sugar industry threatens to sabotage
World Health Organization
go to article

Anthrax, chemicals, and nerve gas: who is lying?
go to article

Mexicans condemn ‘imperialist war’ on Iraq
go to article

Outdated values keep rural African women landless
go to article

Australia refugee protest camp raided by police
go to article

Israeli army kills AP cameraman, pushes into West Bank
go to article

Chávez supporters flood Venezuela streets
go to article

WORLD BRIEFS
go to BRIEFS

back to top

Sugar industry threatens to sabotage
World Health Organization

By Sarah Boseley

Apr. 21— The sugar industry in the US is threatening to bring the World Health Organization (WHO) to its knees by demanding that Congress end its funding unless the WHO scraps guidelines on healthy eating, due to be published on Wednesday.

The threat is being described by the WHO insiders as tantamount to blackmail and worse than any pressure exerted by the tobacco lobby.

In a letter to Gro Harlem Brundtland, the WHO’s director general, the Sugar Association says it will “exercise every avenue available to expose the dubious nature” of the WHO’s report on diet and nutrition, including challenging its $406 million funding from the US.

The industry is furious at the guidelines, which say that sugar should account for no more than 10 percent of a healthy diet. It claims that the review by international experts which decided on the 10 percent limit is scientifically flawed, insisting that other evidence indicates that a quarter of our food and drink intake can safely consist of sugar.

“Taxpayers’ dollars should not be used to support misguided, non-science-based reports which do not add to the health and well-being of Americans, much less the rest of the world,” says the letter. “If necessary we will promote and encourage new laws which require future WHO funding to be provided only if the Organization accepts that all reports must be supported by the preponderance of science.”

The association, together with six other big food industry groups, has also written to the US health secretary, Tommy Thompson, asking him to use his influence to get the WHO report withdrawn. The coalition includes the US Council for International Business, comprising more than 300 companies, including Coca-Cola and Pepsico.

The sugar lobby’s strong-arm tactics are nothing new, according to Professor Phillip James, the British chairman of the International Obesity Taskforce who wrote the WHO’s previous report on diet and nutrition in 1990. The day after his expert committee had decided on a 10 percent limit, the World Sugar Organization “went into overdrive,” he said. “Forty ambassadors wrote to the WHO insisting our report should be removed, on the grounds that it would do irreparable damage to countries in the developing world.”

James was called in by the American embassy in Geneva “to explain to them why they were suddenly getting an enormous amount of pressure from the state department to have our report retracted.” The sugar industry, he discovered, had hired one of Washington’s top lobbying companies.

The sugar lobby was unsuccessful that time, but now, he says, “we are getting a replay, but much more powerfully based, because the food industry seems to have a much greater influence on the Bush government.”

Since his 1990 report, the International Life Sciences Institute, founded by Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, General Foods, Kraft, and Procter and Gamble, has also gained accreditation to the WHO and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization

At one point, says Prof. James, “I was asked not to send any more emails about any of the dietary aspects of health that related to sugar. I was told that within 24 hours of my sending a note, the food industry would be telephoning and arranging dinners.”

Aubrey Sheiham, professor of dental public health at University College, London, Medical School, said he also encountered the strength of the sugar lobby when he was one of the experts involved in putting together an EC guideline called Eurodiet.

“I wrote the sugar part of that,” Sheiham said. “When we met in Crete [in June 2000], the sugar people said if the 10 percent [limit] was in, the whole report would be blocked. I remember we went into a huddle with various people and some of the diplomats, and we were meeting in people’s bedrooms and saying, how can we work around this?”

In the end, he said, they worked out that a recommendation that nobody should eat sugar more than four times a day was equivalent to a 10 percent limit. But he considered the committee had been bullied.

The Sugar Association objects to the new report having been published in a draft on the WHO’s website for consultation purposes, without what it considers “a broad external peer-review process.” It wants a full economic analysis of the impact of the recommendations on all 192 member countries. In the letter to Brundtland, it demands that Wednesday’s joint launch with the Food and Agriculture Organization be cancelled.

The report, Diet, Nutrition, and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases, has already been heavily criticized by the soft drinks industry, whose members sell virtually everywhere in the world, including developing countries where malnutrition is beginning to coexist with the obesity common in affluent countries.

The industry does not accept the WHO report’s conclusion that sweetened soft drinks contribute to the obesity pandemic. The Washington-based National Soft Drink Association said the report’s “recommendation on added sugars is too restrictive.” The association backs a 25 percent limit.

The WHO strongly rejects the sugar lobby’s criticisms. An official said a team of 30 independent experts had considered the scientific evidence and its conclusions were in line with the findings of 23 national reports which have, on average, set targets of 10 percent for added sugars.

In the letter to Thompson, the sugar lobby relies heavily on a recent report from the Institute of Medicine for its claim that a 25 percent sugar intake is acceptable.

However, last week, Harvey Fineberg, president of the institute, wrote to Thompson to warn that the report was being misinterpreted. He says it does not make a recommendation on sugar intake.

Source: Guardian (UK)

back to top

Anthrax, chemicals, and nerve gas: who is lying?
Growing evidence of deception by Washington

By Andrew Gumbel

Los Angeles, California, Apr. 20— If US and British forces are scratching their heads at their inability to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, perhaps they should talk to Scott Ritter, the United Nations (UN) weapons inspector who famously quit in 1998, after seven years on the job, and has been a controversial figure ever since.

For months, Ritter has said Iraq’s capability of producing or deploying chemical or biological weapons was 90-95 percent destroyed on his watch and was very unlikely to have been built up again under international sanctions and the constant surveillance of spy satellites and US and British war planes.

Iraq’s nuclear program was dismantled at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, he said, and factories to produce chemical or biological agents deactivated shortly thereafter. Any leftover nerve agents would only have a shelf life of five years and would probably be useless by now. The anthrax and botulism toxin that Iraq produced was never weaponized and, although it was put into warheads at one point, was no more than harmless sludge that “could only kill you if it landed on your head.”

This is the same Scott Ritter who, when he first made these assertions last autumn, was vilified in the US media as “misguided,” “disloyal,” not to be taken seriously, and “an apologist for and a defender of Saddam Hussein.” One cable news host, [New York City Guardian Angels vigilante group founder] Curtis Sliwa said on air he was a “sock puppet” who “ought to turn in his passport for an Iraqi one.”

Perhaps it’s time to give Ritter another chance. It may, in fact, be time to reassess who exactly has been the deceiver and who the dupe in this whole affair. What Ritter and others now allege, with increasing confidence, is a pattern of false information emanating from both Washington and London since last September — lies and distortions that launched a major war and are only now beginning to be widely exposed.

Exhibit number one is a speech Vice President Dick Cheney gave to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last summer.

“The Iraqi regime has, in fact, been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents.” Cheney said. “And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago.”

Ritter says this is pure fiction.

Cheney attributed his information to high-level defectors, including Saddam’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamal. Supposedly, Kamal led UN inspectors in 1995 to a chicken farm stuffed with secret documents on ongoing weapons programs. Actually, according to Ritter, Hussein Kamal told US intelligence that the weapons had been destroyed, and the chicken farm documents subsequently examined by UN inspectors corroborated that.

Exhibit number two is the briefing paper issued by the British government on Sept. 24, which first alleged the purchase of uranium for nuclear weapons use from Niger. The documents indicating this purchase have now been exposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency as glaringly obvious fakes.

The timing of the nuclear allegation was crucial in persuading the US Congress to grant President Bush full war powers against Iraq a few weeks later. Several angry congressmen who voted in favor now want to know how and why they were misled.

“This is a breach of the highest order, and the American people are entitled to know how it happened,” Henry Waxman of California wrote to the President last month.

“I believed that you had access to reliable intelligence information that merited deference... The two most obvious explanations — knowing deception or unfathomable incompetence — both have immediate and serious implications.”

Exhibit number three is the list of dangerous substances that President Bush and Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, said the Iraqis had not accounted for. Another distortion, according to Ritter. The 15,000 liters of anthrax on the list, for example, was a hypothetical projection of future production at a biological plant that was closed down long ago.

Ritter has not, of course, been vindicated quite yet. US intelligence may really know something, and significant hidden caches of weapons could still materialize. But the pattern of deception and unsubstantiated allegation is unmistakable, even as the political embarrassment for the Bush administration deepens.

Source: Independent (UK)

back to top

Mexicans condemn ‘imperialist war’ on Iraq

By Liz Allen

Acapulco, Mexico, Apr. 15 (AGR)— The United States’ war on Iraq has been sharply criticized in Mexico by the media, government representatives, and its citizens. Images in the press from the frontlines show injured, sick, dead, or crying Iraqi men, women, and children; bombed out Iraqi cities; and American and British soldiers pointing guns at unarmed refugees and prisoners of war. The primary focus has been the suffering of the people of Iraq. Prime-time basic cable television has even featured anti-war commercials. Mexico’s president Vicente Fox has refused to endorse the actions of the United States and Great Britain against Iraq.

“The United States: Systematic Lies,” an editorial in the newspaper La Jornada, published in Mexico City, the country’s capital, said the US press has traded their “professional responsibilities of disseminating information, and what they have accepted, in exchange, is being reduced to spokespersons for the diffusion of official propaganda,” (Apr. 4, 2003). The editorial points out that at the inception of Bush’s “international war on terrorism” in 2001, Washington announced that part of the campaign would be disinformation—obscuring actual events and fabricating lies. Also on the editorial page that day was a letter to the editor labeling the United States’ actions neo-liberalist and calling for the US to be held accountable for crimes against humanity.

The need for the United States to be held culpable for the suffering inflicted on the men, women, and children of Iraq was a primary focus of a national demonstration and march to “Stop the War” held in Mexico City on Saturday, Apr. 12. An announcement of the demonstration put out by its organizers, Jornada Nacional and Mundial de Acción por Paz, stated that the people of Mexico are against the war on Iraq because it is an attack on a “weak people and it represents a grave danger to global stability. The world economy may be affected if the conflict is prolonged,” and the new norm of countries dealing with each other may become the use of extreme force and intimidation against opinions of the rest of the international community.

At the time of the demonstration, Baghdad had been announced as captured; however, the protest continued, calling for justice for the victims of the United States’ attack. Sol de Acapulco correspondent Tonantzin Yei Beltrán reported, “The march this Saturday was a civic festival, unlike other demonstrations where the demands are for government appeals from the heads of society that profit from the starvation of more destitute peoples.”

Forty thousand people attended the event, denouncing the genocide of Iraqi citizens and urging that the United States be held accountable. Also, according to Beltrán, marchers wore white chains on their chests to symbolize harmony and peace and chanted: “No to war! Yes to peace!”

The same day in Acapulco, a rally was sponsored by the Partido Revolutionaries Democratico (PRD), the leftist political party. Held in the city’s Zocalo (main plaza) more than 200 people stood and listened to the speeches, letters, and poetry of speakers from the legislature, local schools, and other places throughout the community. Professor Carlos Nino Barreto of the Autonomous University of Guerrero read a letter addressed to president Bush asking him how can he sleep at night without nightmares from the horrors he has committed. Barreto stated, ”The only door left open is desperation; after people have suffered such an unjust and brutal attack, suicide bombings become the only recourse and the leaders of the world have themselves to blame.”

Guerrero state representative Adela Román Ocampo also spoke at the protest. In an interview after the rally, she questioned, “Where are the bombs that they were looking for?” She said she believed that “Norteamericanos” are divided over the war, which can partly be attributed to the demonization of Saddam Hussein, which is comparable to the way Fidel Castro was demonized to turn public opinion against Cuba. She also questioned how any country had the right to invade towns and territories like imperialists.

Masas magazine publisher, Luis Fontova Roman, stated at the rally that the situation in the United States is currently very repressed in terms of freedom of information and speech. He said he believed that the current situation is part of a Jewish conspiracy to control the world, a point emphasized by a student in a Ché Guevara beret who asked, “Why does the US always defend Israel against the Arabs?” However, in a Masas article entitled, “With Cynicism, Brutality, and Blood, the Imperialist Yankee Wants to Dominate the World,” Roman compared Bush to Adolph Hitler “with his strive for world domination; however, in spite of his gigantic propaganda and war, this has been won by his criminal attitude which rejects the whole planet without half distinction between religion or ideology.”

After the rally, local vendor Salvador Haherrera Caluvo stated: “We all need to be united for peace. All humanity are brothers.”

back to top

Outdated values keep rural African women landless

By Adel Arab

Dakar, Senegal, Apr. 15 (IPS)— Despite the important role they play in agriculture and food production, rural African women can neither buy land nor inherit it because of ancient traditions perpetuated by men.

According to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), rural women produce 80 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s food crops like maize, millet, and rice. They also produce 90 percent of secondary crops such as legumes, which are important sources of high-quality nutrition.

Khady Sow from Kaymor, a village 30 kilometers from Senegal’s capital, Dakar, says woman’s role is to carry out the wishes of the man. “This state of affair has affected land ownership,” she says. “Women face a lot of problems in getting land, even if it could be a source of income for them.”

Problems of land ownership exist virtually in every country on the continent. According to Ali Abdoulaye of Vie, a non-governmental organization (NGO), just being a woman is a problem in rural Songhai-Zarma in Niger.

Abdoulaye says, according to traditions widely accepted in that region, women are “by nature fragile, delicate, unsuited to rough work or hardships. They also do not possess the physical strength to stand up to adversity. Because of this, women cannot champion the cause of the society or the family, and, for this reason, land ownership or preservation can hardly be left to women in the society.”

In Senegal, the constitution approved in Jan. 2001 guarantees both men and women equal rights in the possession of property. Similar laws exist in other African countries, but the level of awareness of these laws is low in rural areas due to lack of education, high illiteracy rates, and the burden of tradition.

“Women don’t know what the laws are at the national level,” said Ndeye Soukey Gueye, the director of the Credit for Women of Senegal at a workshop on “Rural Women and Land” held at Thies, 70 kilometers from Dakar, recently.

Despite the problems they face, rural women are not discouraged. One who did succeed in asserting ownership over land is Therese Mbaye, 40, from the village of Fandieng, near Thies. After a long battle with one of her brothers, she became the owner of a two-hectare farm. “What I managed to do was a real accomplishment because in my village, women never inherit land,” she said, smiling.

Still Mbaye occasionally runs into problems that a man never would. “Since I only have one farm, I have to diversify my crops. Every time I ask some farmers if I can rent a farm from them, they categorically refuse, either because they don’t trust me, or because they’re afraid or even jealous,” she said. “As women, we don’t have access to good land or credit.”

Nevertheless, Mbaye is respected in her village. “I’m not only building a future for my children, but I’m also fighting the rural exodus. If I didn’t have this piece of land, my children would have been forced to look for work in the city,” she said. “Before I get old or leave this world, I’m going to divide my land equitably between my sons and daughters.”

Eliane Najvos of DIMITRA Project, which works closely with Enda Third World, says rights groups “are trying to make the contributions of rural women more visible, and make political decision-makers aware of their concerns.”

“Women need a place in the sphere of decision-making. Out of 32 rural council officials, only three are women, in Senegal,” says Tine Ndoye, president of the National Network of Rural Women of Senegal. “Women should become more knowledgeable about land ownership issues so they can communicate better with politicians and decision-makers.”

But Mariam Sow of Enda Third World says “it’s the decision-makers who need to come down to earth to understand the problems facing women.”

“The comprehensive approach we’ve opted for, uniting men and women around land issue, has begun to yield fruits,” especially in the Niayes region, 40 kilometers from Dakar, where women are beginning to inherit land according to Islamic law.

“Women’s landowning strategies should be just one part of a more comprehensive plan to modernize the countryside and improve living conditions in Niayes,” suggests Jacques Faye, a sociologist, who is based in Dakar.

back to top

Australia refugee protest camp raided by police

Compiled by Kendra Sarvadi

Apr. 21— A protest camp close to a refugee detention center was raided by armed police on Sunday, Apr. 20 after a weekend of demonstrations at the site in South Australia.

About 1,000 demonstrators converged on the camp outside Port Augusta on Friday and Saturday to protest against Australia’s mandatory detention of refugees and the atrocities they say are taking place at the center.

Green party national spokesperson for refugees Pamela Curr slammed the conditions at Baxter, claiming “not even the highest security prison in Australia has electric fencing.” She hoped the weekend’s protest would bring attention to the plight of refugees.

“A lot of us have done some soul searching about coming here because there were reprisals from Woomera for three weeks after,” she said. “But we have asked them [the detainees] if they want us to come and they answered ‘yes, if you do not come nobody will know we are here or know our story’,” said Curr.

The Baxter detention center currently houses 299 asylum seekers, including 32 women and 42 children.

Sunday’s raid is thought to have been sparked by a protester pointing a camera tripod at the police helicopter which had circled over the site for three days. Witnesses reported that a squad of between seven and fifteen police carrying machine guns drove into the protest camp just before midday yesterday while the majority of demonstrators were nearly two miles away outside Baxter’s gates.

Police were convinced someone had been aiming a rifle at their helicopter. Protesters say the armed squad only left the camp after one demonstrator had shown them all of his belongings at gunpoint.

The protest camp was set up on Apr. 18, the first day of the demonstrations. Participants converged on Gladstone Square park in the heart of Port Augusta midmorning, and moved later in the day to the western roadblock, about 3km from the detention center gates. Police formed a human fence across the roadway. Tempers flared as protesters were informed placards, flagpoles, and banners would be banned.

The protesters were eventually allowed to set up camp 200m from the western roadblock and had confiscated items returned. Protesters and their belongings were searched at police roadblocks established two kilometers from the center, on the outskirts of Port Augusta in South Australia’s north. Police also banned balloons, kites, and tennis balls at the protests.

People came from New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, and other areas. Eight people were reported arrested throughout the course of the weekend.

The weekend’s protests were held on the first anniversary of the Easter protests at the Woomera detention camp last year.

At its peak, Woomera held more than 1,400 asylum seekers awaiting processing by the authorities. The camp, which opened in 1999, attracted particular attention last year, when human rights activists helped about 50 detainees escape from the center.

More than 150 asylum seekers also went on hunger strike, and a handful sewed their lips together in protest against the conditions and length of their detention.

Woomera camp was finally closed last Thursday, Apr. 17, and Baxter has been carefully designed to minimize the possibility of breakouts.

Sources: BBC, Guardian (UK), Melbourne Indymedia, Oread Daily

back to top

Israeli army kills AP cameraman,
pushes into West Bank

Compiled by Nicholas Holt

Apr. 23 (AGR)— Israeli troops killed five Palestinians and wounded at least 40 others when a force of 35 tanks, armored personnel carriers, bulldozers and four-wheel-drives thrust into the Rafah refugee camp on April 20.

Five helicopter gunships circled overhead, flashing spotlights on to the Yibna neighborhood, known as an Islamic militants’ stronghold. It was believed to be the biggest raid in the Gaza Strip since the Intifada broke out two and a half years ago. Those killed were a 14-year-old boy, a policeman and three fighters in their 20s.

Dr. Ali Mousa, the director of the local hospital, said the Israelis barred ambulances and medical teams from entering the camp while the fighting was going on. He stated that some of the dead might have been saved if they had been treated sooner. The hospital operated on 12 of the wounded. Mousa said two of them remained in a critical condition into the night.

A sniper shot dead a 19 year-old Israeli army cameraman, who was filming a pitched battle that erupted when Palestinian fighters hit back with anti-tank missiles, automatic weapons, and explosives.

Witnesses said army bulldozers arrived later at the homes of two Islamic militants and began demolishing one of them after calling on residents to clear out.

More than 15,000 mourners waving rifles and Palestinian flags crowded the streets of Rafah to bury the dead.

The raid, which began shortly after 1pm on Saturday and continued until 4am Sunday morning, signals a challenge to London and Washington, which have been attempting to reduce Israeli military activity in the occupied territories.

After the troops withdrew, Hamas retaliated by firing three al-Kassam rockets into the Israeli border town of Sderot. One set a four-storey building on fire and injured a female civilian.

The densely populated Rafah refugee camp, close to the Israeli-Egyptian border, is home to about 60,000 people.

Tension has increased in the area since the Israeli army began building a security fence to protect its forces.

During this process, Israeli troops have demolished houses which they say were used as firing positions by Palestinian fighters.

This has left many civilians homeless and apparently increased the determination of militant groups to strike at the Israeli army.

Israeli forces also shot dead a Palestinian gunman in a gun battle as he tried to infiltrate a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank near the Palestinian town of Jenin, military sources said. Two soldiers and a security guard were wounded.

The day before, an Israeli soldier shot and killed a cameraman for Associated Press Television News today in the West Bank city of Nablus, Palestinian witnesses said. The Israeli Army said the soldier fired after Palestinians shot at a stalled tank.

Dozens of Israeli soldiers raided Nablus’s historic old city, or Casbah, encountering scores of Palestinian youths who began throwing stones.

The cameraman, Nazeh Darwazeh, 45, was hit by a bullet above the right eye while filming in an alleyway with a group of Palestinian cameramen and photographers.

When Israeli troops responded by firing rifles, the youths ran for cover in the alleys and narrow side streets. Videotape taken by Reuters shows a soldier kneeling beside the tank and pointing a rifle down the alley where the journalists were wearing fluorescent green bulletproof vests that read, “Press.” A moment later, Darwazeh was hit.

He was the fourth journalist killed in the West Bank in just over a year. All have been hit by Israeli fire, witnesses have said. More than 40 journalists have been wounded, most by the Israeli Army, since the second Intifada began in September 2000.

At least 17 Palestinians were wounded in the clash, according to Palestinian hospital officials.

In the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Ramallah several thousand Palestinians rallied to protest against Darwazeh’s killing.

Many carried Darwazeh’s picture, wore black scarves over their mouths to symbolize censorship and chanted “Justice and truth!”

The Foreign Press Association demanded a “full and swift investigation.” It complained that no one had been brought to book for the previous three incidents.

In a separate clash Sunday near the West Bank town of Qalqilya, Israeli troops shot and killed Abderrahman Abed, aged 15, who witnesses said was with a group throwing stones and firebombs at troops.

The violence came amid arguments between newly-appointed Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat over the formation of a new cabinet — a row which threatens to delay plans to publish Washington’s so-called roadmap for peace.

Palestinian prime minister-designate Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) stormed out of a meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and the PLO central committee in Ramallah Saturday night after Arafat blocked his choice for a key portfolio.

Abu Mazen also threatened to quit, political sources told Reuters.

Palestinian sources expressed pessimism about the chances of Abu Mazen and Arafat reaching an agreement on the makeup of the new cabinet. Palestinian officials tried to convince Abu Mazen, who returned home after leaving the meeting, to attend a central committee meeting at a later date. It was not clear whether Abu Mazen has agreed to the suggestion.

Senior United States sources have relayed messages to Abu Mazen in recent days, urging him to stand up to Arafat’s pressure on appointments in the Palestinian cabinet.

According to reports received in Jerusalem, the US administration strongly supports Abu Mazen due to his political stance and his intention to take action to end the Intifada, but the administration has reservations as to his ability to contend with Arafat.

The United States and its partners — the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia — intend to present the new peace plan formally when a new Palestinian government is established.

In another development, four Israeli border guard police officers have been arrested on suspicion of beating to death a 17-year-old Palestinian in the West Bank town of Hebron in December.

The four are suspected of seizing Imran Abu Ramdiya from his home, killing him with blows to the head, and dumping his body in an industrial park.

The suspects apparently decided to carry out the assault after one of their commanders was killed by Palestinians several days earlier, said Jacob Galanti, a spokesman for Israel’s Justice Ministry, which arrested the men.

Since the Intifada erupted at least 2,003 Palestinians and 732 Israelis have been killed.

Sources: Associated Press, BBC, Guardian, Ha’aretz, Independent (UK), New York Times, Reuters

backt to top

Chávez supporters flood Venezuela streets
General has ‘proof’ Washington was behind failed coup

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Caracas, Venezuela, Apr. 22 (AGR)— Representatives from across the spectrum of the Latin American left were swallowed up in a crowd of raised fists as they gathered in Venezuela to mark the one-year anniversary of President Hugo Chávez’s return to power after being overthrown by a short-lived coup.

A “red sea” of tens of thousands of “Chavistas,” who wore their trademark red berets, formed on the central Bolívar Avenue in Caracas to cheer on their leader and president, who on Apr. 13, 2002, was returned to power by his civilian and military supporters after a failed 48-hour coup attempt.

“The time has come for a new continental wave of independence. We have no alternative but to unite in struggle. This is the globalization of the revolution,” Chávez told the crowd.

He asserted that the coup against him on Apr. 11, 2002, “had and continues to bear the stamp of imperialism. It was cooked up outside the borders of Venezuela.”

On Apr. 20, a senior Venezuelan army general announced that the Venezuelan government has proof the United States was involved in the defeated coup against Chávez.

Army Gen. Melvin Lopez, secretary of Venezuela’s National Defense Council, said Tuesday “proof exists” the Bush administration was involved in the mid-April putsch. He declined to give further details. “We have the evidence,” Lopez said during an interview broadcast by Venezuela’s state-run television channel.

Lopez said three US military helicopters were on Venezuelan territory during the coup.

A spokesman from the Pentagon declined comment on the allegation Tuesday night.

Following his return, Chávez had said “worrying details” had emerged suggesting a foreign country might have been involved in his temporary overthrow.

Chávez said a coastal radar installation had tracked a foreign military ship and helicopter operating over Venezuelan waters a day after his ouster. Chávez did not say which country had sent the ship and helicopter but governing party legislators have accused the United States of helping execute the coup.

The US administration has repeatedly denied it was involved in the coup but acknowledged having held conversations with Venezuelan opposition leaders and military officers prior to the overthrow attempt against Chávez.

At the time, in contrast to most Latin American governments, the United States immediately publicly celebrated the coup, initially blaming Chávez for his own overthrow. It later joined members of the Organization of American States in condemning the coup as unconstitutional.

Chávez, who was reelected in 2000 to a six-year term, slammed the “reactionary oligarchy” of Venezuela that preceded him in power, the “savage neoliberalism” of the Free Trade Area of the Americas — “which we cannot join according to the mandate of our Constitution” — and the International Monetary Fund, to which he declared “Venezuela is not for sale.”

Amidst the waving Venezuelan flags above the crowd this week were some Cuban flags, and several posters of South American independence hero Simón Bolívar were accompanied by portraits of Cuban-Argentine guerrilla Ernesto “Che” Guevara, emblem of the Latin American left.

Alongside Chávez at the rally were personalities from the region’s leftist movement, including Cuban Vice-President Carlos Lage, former Nicaraguan president and Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega (1984-1990), and El Salvador’s Schafik Handal, leader of the guerrilla movement-turned political party Farabundo Martí National Liberation movement (FMLN).

Also present were Evo Morales, Bolivian indigenous and coca-farmer leader; Ecuador’s Blanca Chascoso, of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities; Chilean communist leader Gladys Marín; Colombia’s Gloria Gaitán, daughter of assassinated politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán; and Argentine activist Hebe de Bonafini, of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.

The street rally marked the end of a series of seminars that drew other figures from the left and the international movement to create alternatives to the existing globalization model, among them former French socialist minister Jean-Pierre Chévénement, Spanish Euro-parliamentarian Pedro Marset, and US activist Margaret Prescott, of Global Women Strike.

Cuban Vice-President Lage said in his speech, “There are sectors [of the opposition] that are afraid that the Venezuelan revolution is going to be ‘Cubanized’. They can relax. The real danger is that the Cuban revolution will ‘Venezuelanize’.”

“The United Nations is in its death throes since the ‘yanquis’ [United States] launched the invasion of Iraq, ignoring its allies Germany and France, ignoring China and Russia, and, above all, world public opinion,” said Nicaragua’s former president Ortega.

Le Monde Diplomatique editor Ignacio Ramonet said the war in Iraq was “an ideological war to demonstrate the imperial power of the United States, a sort of militarized arm of globalization,” made even more offensive by its control over Iraq’s oil wells.

“Bush’s political difficulties are going to start in Iraq, due to the chaotic spectacle and the disorder he has caused,” said former French minister Chévénement.

“All of our solidarity is with the suffering people of Iraq, with the children, men and women, innocent victims of the bombings,” stated Chávez.

Sources: Canadian Press, Inter Press Service

back to top