Saturday, July 26, 2008

US elections - is real change coming?

Feature by Gary Younge, July/August 2008

Barack Obama has risen from idealistic Democratic outsider to become the first black US presidential candidate of a major party. Gary Younge explores the importance of the Obama phenomenon which has inspired millions, but also the limitations of his political agenda

There was something different about the Martin Luther King Day parade in Charleston this year. To the drumbeats of the marching bands from black schools and more sombre sounds of local black clergymen, came the spirited chants of representatives from local black churches and a throng of the overwhelmingly white coterie of Barack Obama volunteers: "Obama '08! We're ready. Why wait?" Among them was a young man who was "so depressed" after Obama's New Hampshire defeat that he had dropped everything he'd been doing in Guatemala and flown back to help out. There was also an elderly woman from Florida who had read his book Dreams From My Father two weeks earlier and was so inspired she felt she needed to do something.

From the pavement local African-Americans cheered their encouragement. Obama's victory in Iowa (one of the whitest states in the nation) a few weeks earlier had proved that a black presidential candidacy was no longer a pipe dream. Now a significant number of white people - most from out of town - had come to the parade calling for them to make common cause. Once in a while the volunteers went to the pavement, handing out leaflets, awkwardly offering up high fives and even hugging the locals.

It was hardly the Mississippi Freedom Summer. But it was something. A moment. A political moment that produced hopeful human engagement. Within half an hour it had evaporated. The parade was over. The white volunteers would not talk to me without approval from Obama HQ, even to explain their excitement. When authorisation came through for them to speak their minds, the guy from Guatemala gushed about the coming of a post-racial America. Meanwhile the black people went back to their homes in the poorest parts of town and waited for change.

It is easy to be cynical about the historical nature of Obama's presidential candidacy. In a nation that prides itself on social meritocracy and unrelenting progress - even as class mobility calcifies to a rate lower than Britain's - symbolic advances can be over-exaggerated. This is particularly true in American political culture where image so overwhelms reality that George Bush can be both a teetotal former alcoholic son of wealthy, powerful parents and yet be understood as the man-of-the-people candidate with whom voters would most like to have a drink.

Moreover, Obama's victory was neither as decisive nor as definitive as it is often portrayed. True, by March he had built an almost unassailable lead that only the unelected superdelegates could overturn, making the race his to lose. But that lead was as enduring as it was narrow and right to the end Hillary Clinton kept chipping away at it. In the end he won by just 0.4 percent of the popular vote and 7 percent of the delegates. Even with his victory all but assured Clinton still won six of the last ten states and territories to vote - hardly a huge vote of confidence from the Democratic base.

By winning seven of the whitest states in the country and nine of the blackest states he reset the mould for what a black politician can achieve in US politics on a national level. But the new mould is not quite the era of post-racial politics many claim. In the in between areas where black people have enough of a presence for race - and racism - to infect the local political culture but not enough of a presence to make a substantial voting bloc, he floundered. Clinton won eight of the ten states with black populations just below the national average. Those include the strategically important swing states for the presidential election of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Nevada.

Poverty

And while his viability may represent an electoral advance for African-Americans it tells us about as much about the social and economic situation of black Americans as the late Benazir Bhutto's election tells us about the status of women in Pakistan. Indeed Obama's candidacy is not consistent with the social rise of African-Americans but aberrant to it. According to a report by the Pew research centre in November last year black Americans are more dissatisfied with their progress than at any time in the past 20 years. Another Pew survey released at the same time shows that almost half (45 percent) of African-Americans born to middle-income parents in the wake of the civil rights era have descended into poverty or near poverty as adults.

"[Obama] is being consumed as the embodiment of colour blindness," Angela Davis, professor of history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told me last year. "It's the notion that we have moved beyond racism by not taking race into account. That's what makes him conceivable as a presidential candidate. He's become the model of diversity in this period... a model of diversity as the difference that makes no difference. The change that brings no change." Finally, he did not build a multi-racial coalition but a bi-racial one. Clinton's base has been erroneously portrayed as simply the white working class and older white women. But in California Latinos and Asian-Americans went much more heavily for Clinton than whites did and made her victory possible. The same was true with Latinos in Texas. Indeed the only state where Obama won the Latino vote was his home state of Illinois. And even then by just 1 percent.

So Obama's victory was narrow. The symbolism of his candidacy has been overstated along with his ability to transcend the racial and ethnic divide. But it was still a victory. His candidacy is still both historic and symbolic. And he did build a coalition across racial lines. These are no small feats. Indeed to dismiss these achievements arbitrarily would be no less of a mistake than to exaggerate them. For them to be meaningful they have to symbolise something substantial and occasionally that "something" can be quite profound. In Obama's case his ascent has been made possible by both the civil rights movement and its heirs, even as his agenda represents a paradigm shift from them.

In the past black political leadership was drawn primarily from religious institutions. During the latter half of the last century black leaders rose in politics primarily through religious institutions, which since slavery had been one of the few autonomous areas of black life. "The principal social institution within every black community was the church," wrote black academic and activist Manning Marable in Black Leadership. "As political leaders, the black clergy were usually the primary spokespersons for the entire black community, especially during periods of crisis. As the political system became more democratic and as more blacks were permitted to participate in voting, it was only a small shift from running a large church to running for public office." However problematic the role of the church had been, it was, nonetheless, organically connected to the black community.

But the victories of the civil rights movement enabled other advances for a generation of black leaders, of whom Obama is just the most prominent figure.

Their politics are different but their trajectories are the same. Like Obama, who went to Columbia and Harvard universities, they all have CVs to die for. Among them are the Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick (Harvard); the Newark mayor, Cory Booker (Yale); the Democratic Leadership Council chair and former Tennessee congressman, Harold Ford Jr (University of Pennsylvania); and the Maryland lieutenant governor, Anthony Brown (Harvard). Such résumés are not the rule, but nowadays they are by no means an exception.

In other words, in the past black leaders were produced by the black community. Today they are more likely to be presented to them. This, more than tortured explanations of ethnic authenticity, explains the initial ambivalence black voters had towards Obama. After eight years of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice they had no idea who he was and wanted to know where he was coming from and whom he planned to represent. "Are they black enough?" was often shorthand for a universal voter concern: "Will they represent my interests?" By the time the Obama volunteers were lightening up Martin Luther King Day in Charleston that hesitancy had evaporated. By the time Bill Clinton had finished disparaging in racially coded terms what had started as ambivalence, passed through race-pride, and turned into anti-racist defence that would secure the black vote for the rest of the primaries.

But this generation of black politicians also has access to one more resource that was barely available even 20 years ago - white votes.

In 1958, 53 percent of voters said they would not vote for a black candidate for president; in 1984 it was 16 percent; by 2003 it was 6 percent. Before 1958 pollsters never bothered even asking the question. This is one of the central facts reshaping opportunities for black politicians - white people have become a viable electoral constituency for black candidates that in turn have made them viable contenders outside the black community.

"The civil rights generation saw politics as the next step in the struggle for civil rights," explains Salim Muwakkil, senior editor of In These Times. "Their aim was to get their agenda taken up by whoever won. But this new generation do not conceive politics as the next step but just as what it is - politics. Their aim is to win." This is real progress. But it carries with it real challenges. To be successful this new generation has to nurture a different base and cohere a different coalition of interests than their predecessors did. This demands a different rhetorical and campaigning style and necessitated a shift in strategy. Herein lies the central generational tension between Obama and his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Wright's caustic remarks about US foreign policy and poisonous history are as common a feature as hot sauce around an African-American table, even though they were shocking to some whites. But in a previous generation Wright would not have been an embarrassment to the candidate. He would have been the candidate. And he wouldn't have had to have taken white sensitivities into consideration.

Obama knows this only too well. In The Audacity of Hope he recalls sitting in the Illinois Senate with a white Democratic legislator as they watched a black colleague (referred to as John Doe) deliver a speech on the racist implications of eliminating a certain programme. "You know what the problem is with John?" the white senator asked him. "Whenever I hear him, he makes me feel more white." Obama reflected. "In defence of my black colleague, I pointed out that it's not always easy for a black politician to gauge the right tone to take - too angry? Not angry enough? - when discussing the enormous hardships facing his or her constituents. Still, [his] comment was instructive. Rightly or wrongly, white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America."

Outed

Whether "white guilt" has ever truly been exercised, exorcised or even exhausted, and what good it ever did anyone even if it has, are moot points. The fact of the matter is that a black politician who wants white support must first "gauge the right tone". Part of that strategy has been for Obama to insist that he has transcended race. "There is not a black America or a white America; there is the United States of America," he told the Democratic convention of 2004 in his landmark speech that launched him to public prominence. In many ways his race has been his worst kept secret. One of his central tasks seems to be not to scare white people and so he has to find a way to make white people comfortable about voting for a black candidate without actually talking about it.

In all of this, beyond some civil rights references, race is virtually absent from his message but central to his meaning. He constantly and subtly evokes the historic nature of his candidacy. But in moments of acute racial tension - when police officers who pumped 50 bullets into an unarmed black New Yorker, or the excessive and discriminatory charges against six young black kids in Jena, Louisiana, alleged to have been involved in a schoolyard brawl - his responses are late and lukewarm. At a recent rally in Detroit Obama volunteers prevented Muslims in headscarves from sitting behind him. (The campaign later apologised.) On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King both McCain and Clinton made it to Memphis, but Obama stayed away. Such strategic absences have drawn stern criticism from many African-Americans.

But every now and then he is outed. The Reverend Wright controversy has so far been the most blatant example, where much of white America seemed distressed to discover that its new black friend himself has a black friend. More recently these "outings" have diverted to his wife Michelle. When Democrats called on Republicans to lay off Michelle Obama, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News ran a tagline stating: "Outraged Liberals: stop picking on Obama's baby mama." On the night Obama won the nomination he bumped his fists with Michelle - a regular, banal greeting among African-Americans and the young. Fox News termed it a "terrorist fist jab". Apparently there is a white and black America. They occupy different, if overlapping, cultural spaces. The segregation that divides them is not just physical but psychic. Before Obama can transcend race he will have to play his part in eliminating the racism that makes race possible as a concept.

But the symbolic nature of his candidacy goes beyond his melanin content. Running against Hillary Clinton and John McCain, he represents a generational break from the all-too familiar names that have dominated the American polity for the last two decades at a time when Americans are desperate for a change of course.

Just 15 percent believe the country is on the right track - around a third of the figure following the election of Bush in 2004. Meanwhile almost half believe the country's best days have been and gone. In the past 18 months almost every poll that has asked Americans about their country's direction has produced among the most pessimistic responses on record - a more extended period than anyone can remember since Watergate. And it's not difficult to see why. A consistent two thirds disapprove of how Bush is handling Iraq; consumer confidence is the lowest for decades and three quarters of people believe the economy is getting worse. Wages are stagnant; food and fuel prices are rocketing; and house prices are nosediving.

Change may be an Obama slogan. But it is also a deeply held desire for the overwhelming majority of Americans, who have seen a simultaneous and precipitous decline in their personal circumstances and global prestige over the past eight years.

Obama's candidacy offers no real solution to these problems. He is no radical. In terms of policy his agenda was no more progressive than Clinton's. When it comes to the urgent issues that the US must address, both at home and abroad, in order to establish both international and economic security his responses are inadequate, if not downright inept. The day after he clinched the nomination he went before the pro-Israeli lobby to declare himself a "true friend of Israel" and promise that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided". (Jerusalem is not in fact officially recognised as the capital of Israel. Only Israel claims it as such.)

His policies on both healthcare and the mortgage crisis were the least comprehensive of the main primary candidates. His advisory team is full of neoliberals and pro-Israelis. He has pledged to withdraw most of the troops from Iraq, but only when the conditions on the ground are right. That could mean anything, including nothing.

The fact that he would be a distinct improvement on McCain, an anti-choice advocate who has said he wouldn't care if the US troops stayed in Iraq for another thousand years, is undoubtedly true. In global terms there may be relatively little difference between Democrats and Republicans but the little difference that there is could make a lot of difference to a lot of people. After eight years of George Bush, however, this sets the bar woefully low.

So why the excitement?

Well, the potency of moments like those in Charleston on Martin Luther King Day - as fleeting and fatuous as they may seem - keep being replicated in their own way all across the country. Every time his multigenerational, racially mixed crowds get together, it seems like they are creating a new reality from whole cloth.

The potential lies not so much within Obama himself but his supporters. He has managed to rouse constituencies long believed to be either indifferent or inactive and energise a political culture that, notwithstanding the Democratic victory in the 2006 midterms, has been all but moribund since 2004 - particularly among the young and the black who increased their share of the Democratic primary electorate by 25 percent this year compared to 2004.

Electorally he could mount challenges in areas where Democrats have not been competitive for decades. These are early days yet. A McCain victory is perfectly possible. The ferocity of the Republican attack machine is known; the depths of racism and xenophobia in the US have yet to be fully tested. But so far polls have Obama defending all the states that Kerry won narrowly, taking many that Bush won narrowly and challenging hard in many that Republicans did not believe they ever would have to defend, like Virginia, North Carolina and even Mississippi. Those demographics that he did not win in his battle against Clinton now appear to be backing him. Depending on which polls you see he leads McCain among women by between 13 and 19 percent. Kerry won women by 3 percent. Among Latinos he beats McCain by 62 percent to 28 percent; Bush took 44 percent. When it comes down to it voters seem to hate war, unemployment, anti-abortion legislation and repossession more than they hate black people. Who knows how many fiery preachers, fist bumps and "baby mama" swipes could yet change that.

But for now voter registrar offices in largely black areas of Louisiana recently had to hire new staff and work 12-hour days following a voter registration drive by Democrats. Shortly before the primaries in Oregon he drew a crowd of 75,000. In South Carolina he polled more votes by himself than the entire Democratic field the year before. According to my aunt in Houston he transformed my cousin from a couch potato into a local precinct captain.

He has been described as running a grassroots movement. This is only half true. It is certainly grassroots. At web-driven meet-ups people get together, independent of the campaign. On Facebook his candidacy has a life of its own. One of the reasons he won every caucus state bar one - where people have to show up at a certain time to register their support in a process that can take hours - is because his supporters are far more dedicated and far better organised at a local level than Clinton's.

But it is not a movement. As of yet, it has no purpose or meaning beyond getting him elected. In its current form once he wins or loses it will cease to exist. It operates not from the bottom up but from the top down. The change he refers to is principally a change in leadership. The chant "Yes we can", in essence, means yes he can.

This could change. Obama has raised expectations way beyond anything he has actually promised. His candidacy has been made possible by the huge well of energy unleashed after the despondency of the Bush years; it has also acted as a vehicle for that energy which had nowhere else to go. The central issue is how that symbiotic relationship between his huge and hopeful base and his candidacy will develop over the coming months - whether and how a political base will emerge from this electoral moment. The ability and even desire of his supporters to carve out a role that is independent of the campaign will be limited during an election year - not least after two terms of Republican misrule when the prospect of a McCain victory is real. But that does not obviate the necessity that they do so if they want to see their expectations met.

Most left criticisms of Obama's policies are valid and necessary but on their own miss the point. Those who want him to adopt a more progressive agenda must first establish a progressive movement that he can turn to. That is by no means assured. But it is at least possible. And after the last few years that possibility alone represents a significant advance.

Warning that UK economy is heading into recession


From
July 27, 2008

THE economy is heading into recession and may face a slump on the scale of the early 1990s, according to Deloitte, one of Britain’s leading accountants. Another, KPMG, says more than half of businesses are planning job cuts.

Deloitte’s quarterly economic review examines the effect of the lower pound on industry and asks whether export-led growth will prevent a severe downturn. Roger Bootle, its economic adviser, believes it will not. He said: “While the sharp fall in the UK exchange rate seen since last summer should eventually lead to a period of better-balanced growth, like that enjoyed in the mid-1990s, it won’t prevent the credit crunch and a sharp retrenchment in corporate spending from sending the economy into recession.”

After figures on Friday showed that quarterly growth had fallen to 0.2% in the second quarter of this year, Deloitte says a “technical recession” of two or more consecutive quarters of falling gross domestic product is now all but guaranteed. “A full-blown slump like the early 1990s is not impossible if the labour market crumbles or interest rates end up rising rather than falling,” the report says.

It predicts that the Bank of England will be forced to cut interest rates to 3.5% next year, from 5% now, but even this will not be enough to bring about an early recovery.

KPMG’s quarterly national business confidence survey, meanwhile, shows that in the “dour” economic climate 53% of businesses intend to reduce headcount, against 29% three months ago. In all, 60% of companies intend to cut costs in response to the credit crunch.

“The clouds that were on the horizon in early spring are now right overhead, with businesses feeling the impact of this so-called ‘perfect storm’ of rising inflation, tightening credit conditions and plummeting consumer confidence,” said Malcolm Edge, head of markets at KPMG.


Ecuador assembly members celbrate winning the vote (24 July 2008)
Supporters of President Rafael Correa dominate the constituent assembly

A special constituent assembly in Ecuador has overwhelmingly approved a draft of a new constitution sought by the country's President, Rafael Correa.

Ninety-four of the 130 assembly members backed the text, which will be put to a national referendum on 28 September.

The left-wing leader says the reforms, which would allow him to stand again, will tackle political instability and make Ecuador a more just society.

But critics say they will focus more power in the president's hands.

Mr Correa, who made reforming the constitution a key part of his 2007 election campaign, enjoys widespread popular support in his country.

In April, nearly 80% of voters backed his call for an assembly that would bypass Congress and rewrite the constitution. In September, they gave 80 of the 130 seats to his Alianza Pais party.

The 444-article constitution will be the Andean nation's 20th if it is approved in the referendum later this year.

It would enable Mr Correa to run for two new, consecutive terms, and let him dissolve Congress within the first three years of its four-year term.

The document would also give the president functions currently performed by Ecuador's independent Central Bank.

The retreat from Moscow


Oil industry

Analysts suspect the days are numbered for BP's Russian venture

Headquarters of TNK-BP in Moscow

Headquarters of TNK-BP in Moscow Photograph: Misha Japaridze/AP

When Lord Browne signed up for BP's joint venture in Russia five years ago, it was supposed to herald a new era in business relations with the former Soviet empire. There were doubting voices about doing business with Moscow, but Browne was at the height of his power as one of Britain's most feted businessmen and he was prepared to risk it for a stake in Russia's vast reserves of oil and gas. He had clashed with one of his new oligarch partners, Mikhail Fridman, yet here he was calling him "my friend Michael".

The day after the humiliating departure of the TNK-BP boss Robert Dudley from Moscow, driven out by a campaign of harassment by state authorities apparently acting at the behest of BP's oligarch partners, those naysayers will be saying we told you so.

Browne is long gone and familiar problems of volatile partners and an unpredictable legal system appear to be sinking his dream of securing for BP a share in the profits from Siberia's riches. Such is the impact of the collapse of BP's relations with Russia that analysts last night warned that Britain's biggest company could even be vulnerable to a takeover.

Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst with the Oppenheimer & Co brokerage in New York, said that the company was being dragged down by its involvement in TNK-BP. It should sell its £10bn stake, he said, even though the venture this week reported $4.7bn (£2.3bn) profit in the first half.

"The sooner BP gets itself out of there the better. It is a headache they don't need. It's a bit like Manchester United losing Ronaldo. It would take time to recover - a blow but not fatal."

Gheit said the Russian debacle could make BP more vulnerable to a takeover, something that has been speculated about after the Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15 workers, Alaska pipeline ruptures and propane trading irregularities in America.

"ExxonMobil is the only one that could really pull it off but it is more logical for BP to do a merger of equals with Shell with Tony Hayward running both companies," Gheit added.

There was also speculation about what would happen to BP's stake in TNK-BP, which it owns equally with the oligarchs. Although Hayward has vowed to defend its stake, which accounts for 25% of BP's overall production, analysts at Dresdner in London said it was possible that a Russian state-owned entity such as Gazprom or Rosneft would end up taking control of TNK-BP, with BP left as a minority shareholder. "We do not believe BP will lose the value in TNK-BP without compensation," they said.

BP insisted yesterday that it had no plans to retreat from Moscow. Dudley had left for a "temporary" period and would continue to run the Siberian oil and gas joint venture from a foreign location it would not name.

Hayward said in a statement that it would use "all means at its disposal, both inside and outside of Russia, to defend its interests and rights", including bringing arbitration proceedings against the company's joint-venture partners AAR "to recover any and all losses suffered by BP as a result of their violations of the terms of our shareholder agreement".

The news prompted a big sell-off of shares in Russia yesterday as investor confidence slumped, though observers in Moscow suggested that BP bore some responsibility for its downfall in Russia. Analysts said that BP had comprehensively underestimated its Russian co-owners. The firm had wrongly assumed that the partners - led by Fridman - would be prepared to sell their stake to Gazprom.

According to Yulia Latynina, a commentator with the radio station Ekho Moskvy, one of the last independent media outlets in Russia, BP began secret negotiations with Gazprom believing that the Russian oligarchs would eventually sell to the state-owned firm.

This didn't happen. Instead the Russians began a "vicious and brutal" fight-back, Latynina said. The billionaires proved far more adept and resourceful at using Russian state agencies for their own ends than BP.

She added, though: "I don't think Bob Dudley was very successful at managing the company. He couldn't find a neutral language with shareholders.

"BP made several major mistakes. BP was conducting separate negotiations with Gazprom. The idea of these negotiations was that the Russian oligarchs were finished.

"The shareholders reacted in the most brutal manner. They effectively said: 'You can say fuck off to us. But we're the big guys around here.' It was a shoot-out. The other side shot better."

BP could not really complain about its harsh treatment in Russia, Latynina said - given that the rule of law had never really existed in the country, and didn't exist when BP went into business with AAR in 2003.

Asked whether the affair had damaged Russia's international credibility, she said: "I don't think this will spoil Russia's image. Russia can't spoil its image any more. After the death of [Alexander] Litvinenko this is peanuts."

Other commentators suggested that the change of leadership inside the Kremlin had played a role - allowing the Russian shareholders to exploit a vacuum at the heart of the state.

Dmitry Medvedev took over as president in May. Sources said that the shareholders were already deeply unhappy at this point - and had complained to Vladimir Putin that TNK-BP was paying too much tax. Astonishingly, Putin appears to have agreed. But with Putin ensconced as prime minister, Medvedev was unable to make a strategic decision on TNK-BP's future.

"The balance of forces within the leadership is already uncertain," said Andrei Ryabov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Centre in Moscow. "Nobody knows who is really in charge.

"Among the high-ranking bureaucrats and politicians nobody wants to take responsibility for a decision. Any mistake will really lead to radical change among the balance of forces."

Explainer: State intervention

Ordeal by torment

The embattled oil company's ordeal started in March when agents from the Federal Security Service (FSB) - Russia's post-Soviet intelligence agency - raided BP's office in the central Moscow district of Novy Arbat. They also searched TNK-BP's offices. The raid led to the arrest of a British educated TNK-BP employee, accused of industrial espionage. The employee was quietly released shortly afterwards. The FSB returned to BP in May. On June 10, tax officials spent five hours interrogating chief executive Robert Dudley (right) in connection with TNK's tax affairs. They claimed Dudley's grilling had nothing to do with his on-going dispute with TNK-BP's Russian shareholders. Prosecutors also launched an inquiry into BP's labour practices. Russia's federal migration service has also tormented the company. The migration service refused visas to 148 BP secondees from TNK-BP - who found themselves locked out of their office from March.

On Tuesday BP announced it was withdrawing them from Russia.

The service had promised to renew Dudley's visa. On Wednesday, however, its head hinted that Dudley would be forced to leave Russia next week because he no longer had a labour contract. On Thursday Dudley took the hint and left the country.

Houston, we have a problem: Nasa will struggle when shuttle retires, says boss

Speaking on agency's 50th birthday, head warns of tough times to come

The space shuttle Columbia lifts off for its penultimate light in March 2002 . From 2010 Nasa will be dependent on the Russians to get into space

The space shuttle Columbia lifts off for its penultimate light in March 2002 . From 2010 Nasa will be dependent on the Russians to get into space. Photograph: Karl Ronstrom/Reuters

Link to this audio

One might think Michael Griffin has much to celebrate. The agency he heads, Nasa, receives $17bn (£8.53bn) a year and is buoyed up by the kind of public support Americans normally reserve for celebrities and gods. He has presidential backing for the most ambitious plan to take humankind into the solar system. And next week he will lead commemorations for Nasa's 50th anniversary.

For some reason, though - perhaps it's the windowless room in the basement of the US embassy in London, or the entourage of identical suits looking on from the sidelines - Griffin, who was passing through London on the way to a heads of space agencies meeting in Paris, does not seem like a man about to crack open the party poppers.

Griffin, 58, once told reporters: "I don't do feelings. Think of me as Spock." It was a statement that reinforced his reputation, even among fellow scientists and engineers, for making decisions on the strength of the evidence before him. Since George W Bush appointed him in 2005, he maintains he has yet to face a single tough challenge. "It's just a job. You wake up in the morning and try to do what you need to do to move the ball down field."

But for all his logic, Griffin has wandered into some of the most incendiary controversies in the agency's history. Recent apologies include one to the spacefaring community for criticising what many view as the pinnacle of its achievement, the $100bn International Space Station; another went to Nasa's thousands of employees after he doubted, on a radio show, whether global warming was worth worrying about. He had already had a very public spat with his chief climate scientist, James Hansen, who complained of being censored by the agency's press office.

Griffin says he made a mistake airing his personal views on global warming, but refuses to comment on whether his opinions have changed, though he admits he still disagrees with some of what his chief climate scientist says. "[People] will have to wait until I'm not the head of Nasa to get my own views."

Griffin is happier talking about the trajectory of the agency over the past half century, how its role has changed, and where he sees its future. When Nasa was set up, it received a pile of money that allowed the agency to make giant leaps in technology. It developed two types of rocket simultaneously, the Saturn I and Saturn V, then there was the lunar lander, the Apollo capsule and three generations of spacesuit. The investment won the space race and bought America enduring leadership in the new realm of the heavens.

That's not to say grave mistakes were not made. In the vacuum that followed the Apollo programme, Griffin says America squandered a unique chance to push on to other planets. The error, he believes, was the Nixon administration's decision to focus on sending astronauts into orbit around the Earth.

"Working in low Earth orbit was not bad. Working exclusively in low Earth orbit was bad," he says. "I spent some time analysing what we could have done had we used the budgets we received to explore the capabilities inherent in the Apollo hardware after it was built. The short answer is we would have been on Mars 15 or 20 years ago, instead of circling endlessly in low Earth orbit."

Less guarded comments of a similar vein have previously landed Griffin in hot water. Endlessly circling the Earth today means being aboard the International Space Station. The 400 tonne behemoth, which will be about finished next year, has taken 20 years to design and build and many space officials around the world wince when Griffin appears to criticise its value.

Griffin's knack for blunt assessment is shored up by a genuine drive to put in place the building blocks for a truly space faring nation. He accepted the job, he says, mainly because the president and Congress committed Nasa to a bolder vision for astronauts in the aftermath of the Columbia shuttle disaster in 2003. If people were going to risk their lives, the thinking went, make sure it is something worth risking them for.

Griffin wants to see American astronauts back on the moon by 2020, though many in the industry say the agency is loathe to let 2019 - the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing - pass without fresh prints on the surface. Early work will focus on creating a permanent moon base. From there, Nasa will turn its sights on the incomparable task of a crewed mission to Mars.

For Griffin, this is the stuff of dreams. As early as 2004, he was advocating that astronauts should be sent to touch down on hurtling asteroids or visit waypoints out in space known as Lagrange points, where the gravity of the sun and Earth effectively cancel out rather than loop around the Earth.

But Griffin has a problem, and it is one he is vexed by. To fly people to the moon, Nasa must develop a new rocket. And to pay for it, the agency must cancel all future space shuttle flights. It means that from 2010, for around five years, the nation that beat the Soviet Union in the space race will not only be grounded, but will have to pay Russia for seats aboard Soyuz if it wants to visit the space station it bankrolled and built.

It is more than a matter of pride. Griffin likens the space station to a miniature Antarctic research base, which needs a regular supply of food and water, which suffers technical glitches, and needs to have its staff rotated on a regular basis for their sanity if nothing else. Both the US and Russian space agencies agree that at a minimum, it needs two independent supply chains - read rockets - to ensure the safety of the station and those on board. Nasa's push for the moon and Mars will leave just one. "Anyone who doesn't understand why that is a problem, from my perspective, just hasn't done enough real things in their life."

And then there is the election. The vision for moon and Mars is tightly associated with the Bush administration and while it has widespread support, the new president may well decide to tinker with it. The Republican candidate John McCain has emphasised the need to ensure taxpayers are getting good value from Nasa, leading some to fear a return to the moon will be viewed as an expensive re-run of project Apollo. The Democrat Barack Obama has stated that Nasa needs to be "redefined" and hopes to fund an $18bn education programme by delaying Nasa's moonshot for five years. All of this, says Griffin, should not shift Nasa's sights on the moon and Mars. "We're on the right path and it is of course fragile, but I think it's crucial we remain on it.

Griffin has urged British officials to reconsider their long-standing opposition to human space exploration. "I would like to have our oldest and closest ally with us as we return to the moon, he says.

In the future, Griffin wants to see the burden of space travel shared with private industry. In October, Richard Garriott, a US games developer and son of a Nasa astronaut, will become the sixth private space tourist to fly aboard the Russian Soyuz to the space station in a deal brokered by the California-based company, Space Adventures.

Does Griffin himself have plans to go into space? "If I could fit it in and somebody offered me the opportunity, sure. But there's a lot of things I don't have time to do and right now, and that's probably one of them."

Space quotes

"It is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind."
The US national aeronautics and space act of 1958

"God has no intention of setting a limit to the efforts of man to conquer space."
Pope Pius XII

"I looked and looked but I didn't see God."
Yuri Gagarin, first man in space

That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."
Neil A Armstrong, Commander of Apollo 11

"I did not see the Great Wall."
Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut


Un episodio hasta hoy desconocido de la guerra de Bush

por Ernesto Carmona*

El Plan Condor, un sistema para secuestrar, torturar y eliminar físicamente a cualquier persona por sus ideas o tendencias políticas, que funcionó en América Latina, sobre todo en época de las dictaduras de Pinochet en Chile y Videla en Argentina, bajo auspicio de los EEUU sigue vigente hoy bajo otra forma y modalidad. Estas redes mundiales de represión trabajan a escala internacional y son capaces de actuar y secuestrar a cualquier persona y violar cualquier soberanía, incluso bajo régimen democrático. Cuentan con la complicidad de ciertas esferas estatales en el país donde intervienen. El caso chileno.

En Chile están ocurriendo cosas tan extrañas como una fallida operación secreta de la CIA para secuestrar en Iquique a un ciudadano libanés supuestamente vinculado a Hezbollah. Esta historia, revelada por el diario de gobierno La Nación, no tuvo ninguna repercusión. Nadie preguntó quién autorizó esas operaciones extranjeras que suponen el ingreso de armas, equipos de espionaje y efectivos que en cualquier país ameritarían una autorización del Congreso Nacional.

La historia de espionaje CIA, relatada por Luis Narváez y Javier Rebolledo en el diario La Nación [1] del domingo 8 de junio, ocurrió en 2002, bajo el gobierno de Ricardo Lagos, pero salió a la luz en un informe reciente del departamento de Estado.

Bajo el título «El frustrado secuestro de la CIA», el diario asegura que en marzo pasado, un informe del Departamento de Estado norteamericano confirmó un episodio hasta hoy desconocido de la guerra de Bush contra el terrorismo islámico.

Con autorización oficial, la CIA practicó seguimientos, escuchas telefónicas y fotografías a árabes residentes en Iquique. Pero la colaboración se acabó cuando la agencia intentó plagiar a un ciudadano libanés vinculado a Hezbollah y la policía civil se negó a ser parte en el secuestro. Pareciera que la Agencia Nacional de Inteligencia de Chile (ANI) no enfrentó esta amenaza «terrorista», porque La Nación no le atribuye ningún protagonismo en esta intriga internacional, sino a una rama de la Policía de Investigaciones llamada Jefatura de Inteligencia Policial (Jipol).

¿Quién es el ciudadano libanés? El matutino asegura que le cambió la identidad para protegerlo, llamándolo «Arafat Ismail».
Se trataría de un comerciante que se instaló en la zona franca de Iquique después de la destrucción de las Torres Gemelas de Nueva York, el 11 de septiembre 2001. Sin embargo, pareciera que la presa de la CIA era Assad Ahmad Barakat, supuestamente vinculado a «Arafat Ismail».

Para la CIA, Barakat es la cara visible de los negocios de una supuesta red de Hezbollah en Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, zona franca enclavada en la Triple Frontera con Argentina y Brasil, paraíso del contrabando y la falsificación industrial de relojes Rolex, cámaras, perfumes y toda clase de productos de “marca”.

Según La Nación para «la Secretaría de Prevención del Terrorismo de Paraguay, Barakat es jefe militar de Hezbollah en la triple frontera. De acuerdo a los antecedentes que maneja investigaciones, ingresó a Chile el 25 de junio de 2001, momento en que realizó los trámites para concretar su solicitud de residencia, registrando como domicilio particular Avenida Arturo Prat número 2748, departamento 11, Iquique". El diario dice que es el mismo domicilio que después dio "Ismail».

La Nación aseguró que una «fresca mañana de marzo de 2002 un equipo de agentes encubiertos de la CIA en Iquique preparaba la que sería una de las acciones más audaces en la región». Añadió que «cinco personajes esperaban las órdenes del líder del grupo, una mujer robusta e impecablemente vestida, que se movilizaba en un vehículo con patente roja: era M. T. Para el común de la gente, ella sólo cumplía labores diplomáticas, pero en verdad era la jefa de la CIA en Chile».

Destino: Guantánamo

La Nación : «El plan que tenían los estadounidenses parecía simple. Harían todos los arreglos para que ingresara un avión de transporte indetectable a los radares. Aterrizaría a poca distancia de Iquique, en pleno desierto. Los policías chilenos debían cumplir con el trabajo operativo: apresar al libanés y transportarlo hasta el lugar. Ahí terminaba su labor. Si bien los estadounidenses no comentaron donde lo llevarían, señalaron que necesitaban urgentemente someterlo a un interrogatorio. Aunque nunca se conversó de manera explícita, los agentes de la policía civil sabían que su destino sería la cárcel de Guantánamo o algún centro clandestino. Lo que sí se encargaron de asegurar los integrantes de la CIA es que Chile no se vería involucrado, ni siquiera de forma indirecta, en la operación. Se informaría oficialmente que Ismail había sido apresado dentro de las fronteras de Estados Unidos. Como argumento a su favor, los estadounidenses contaban que cuando Arafat Ismail ingresó a Chile, entregó como domicilio privado el mismo departamento de calle Arturo Prat en que había fijado su residencia Barakat».

El «reportaje» se basa también en un informe publicado el 30 de marzo de 2007 por el Departamento de Estado «donde comunica detalladamente al Congreso de su país las actividades realizadas en todo el mundo a partir del 11/S de 2001, especialmente las de los últimos años». Según ese documento, "funcionarios (chilenos) monitorearon posibles vínculos entre extremistas de la Zona de Libre Comercio de Iquique (Zofri) y los del área de la Triple Frontera, cuando aumentan los lazos comerciales entre ambas áreas".

En lo medular, el diario destacó “la cooperación desde un comienzo con Estados Unidos una vez firmados los convenios sobre la lucha antiterrorista tras los ataques en Nueva York y Washington”. Y añadió que “en la práctica, esto derivó en un intercambio no sólo a nivel policial, sino en la creación de un sistema que facilitó la intervención, en toda Sudamérica, de los organismos de inteligencia de EEUU, especialmente de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia, (CIA)”.

Entrado marzo de 2002, “los funcionarios de la CIA eran cada vez más insistentes respecto a la necesidad de apresar a Arafat Ismail”, dijo La Nación. “Un testigo ocular de una tensa conversación entre la diplomática y uno de los jefes del grupo de policías chilenos aseguró a La Nación Domingo que "se hizo una petición explícita para que el equipo chileno apresara al libanés en el menor tiempo posible".

¿Policías «buenos»?

Pero también existirían policías «buenos», o por lo menos respetuosos del estado de derecho.
La Nación: «La presión que ejercieron los agentes de la CIA fue extremadamente fuerte. Al arduo trabajo de los seguimientos, escuchas telefónicas, fotografías y análisis a las empresas de los ciudadanos de origen libanés en Chile, ahora se sumaba la voluntad expresa de la inteligencia estadounidense de cometer una acción que, para los chilenos, era absolutamente ilegal y contraria al Estado de Derecho».

Según el diario, «los detectives se ciñeron la Constitución chilena y se excusaron señalando que no tenían una orden judicial ni razones concretas para sospechar que Ismail había cometido un ilícito en territorio nacional. La misma fuente, relató que ‘la funcionaria dijo que lo único que teníamos que hacer era agarrarlo y llevarlo para que ellos lo sacaran en un avión’. Los policías chilenos insistieron en que llevar a cabo esa acción importaba una abierta violación a los derechos de Ismail, lo que, según las mismas fuentes, a la larga resultó determinante para evitar el secuestro».

«No sólo era una acción ilegal y contraria al Estado de Derecho. Si hubiésemos colaborado, habríamos puesto al país en riesgo máximo de recibir una represalia de alguno de los movimientos islámicos fundamentalistas, como ha ocurrido en otros países", aseguró a La Nación “un alto jefe policial de la época».

El diario afirmó que “los antecedentes con que cuenta este medio indican que los funcionarios chilenos que se negaron a cumplir la misión especial de la CIA, dieron cuenta al director de la Jipol, Luis Henríquez”.

Epílogo y preguntas que nadie formula

El epílogo fue que “Arafat Ismail” abandonó Chile “por su cuenta” a mediados de 2002 y no fue a parar con sus huesos y en secreto a Guantánamo donde 270 seres humanos se pudren en una inhumana “prisión preventiva” acusados de “terrorismo”, muchos sin saber de qué se les acusa y la mayoría sin que se les hayan formulado cargos específicos, excepto 19 juicios militares sin ninguna garantía de equidad, todavía no iniciados y ahora en tela de juicio por una decisión de la Suprema Corte del 13 de junio permitiendo por tercera vez que los detenidos acudan a tribunales civiles federales donde el gobierno de Bush debe justificar sus acusaciones.

Las dos decisiones anteriores de la Corte no fueron tomadas en cuenta por el “estado de derecho” impuesto por la virtual dictadura de Bush. Y un segundo epílogo fue que en octubre 2002, M.T., la funcionaria de la embajada de EEUU en Chile y encargada de la CIA también abandonó el país”.

Pero más allá de la CIA haya terminado frustrada, quedan flotando muchas preguntas sin respuesta:

–¿Quién o quiénes autorizaron el ingreso de estos agentes al país?

–¿Cómo ingresaron los agentes de la CIA al país?

–¿Con qué documentos de identidad pasaron las fronteras y el control de la Policía Internacional?

–¿Con qué armamento e instrumentos tecnológicos de persecución y utilización policial ingresaron al país y cuánto dinero acreditaron para su estadía en Chile?

–Si ingresaron con documentación falsa, ¿fueron advertidos los policías que controlan el ingreso al país de cualquier ciudadano?

–¿Qué lección sacaron los detectives de Policía Internacional tras su experiencia con el ingreso de Alberto Fujimori a Santiago en 2005?

–¿Cuántos procedimientos de control policial se violaron con el ingreso de los agentes CIA?

–¿Quiénes elaboraron y archivaron las bitácoras de ingreso de los agentes de la CIA a Chile?

–¿Qué vehículos ingresaron al país?, ¿utilizaron placas diplomáticas para desplazarse en Chile?, ¿eran vehículos de la Embajada o vehículos arrendados a empresas chilenas colaboradoras de la CIA?

–¿En qué lugares y cuándo se alojaron los agentes durante su permanencia en Santiago, Iquique y otras ciudades del país?

–¿Cuáles fueron sus contactos con la ANI en Santiago, con los policías de Investigaciones y con funcionarios del Gobierno?

–¿Contaron con el apoyo logístico de otras embajadas, aparte de la de Estados Unidos?

–¿Qué han dicho sobre este tema los voceros del Gobierno, de la policía de Investigaciones, ministerio del Interior, Relaciones Exteriores?

Etcétera. Todas estas preguntas pueden originar a su vez otras interrogantes. Pero nadie las formula.

 Ernesto Carmona
Ernesto Carmona es consejero nacional del Colegio de Periodistas de Chile y secretario ejecutivo de la Comisión Investigadora de Atentados a Periodistas (Ciap) de la Federación Latinoamericana de Periodistas (Felap). Ernesto Carmona es miembro de la Red Voltaire y del movimiento Axis for Peace.


Reflections of Fidel


The Korean nation, with its unique culture different from its Chinese and Japanese neighbors, has existed for three thousand years. These characteristics are typical of societies in that Asian region, including those of China, Vietnam and others. There is nothing like it in Western cultures, some of which are less than 250 years old.

In the war of 1894, the Japanese had seized from China its control over the Korean dynasty and turned its territory into a Japanese colony. Protestantism was introduced in this country in the year 1892, following an agreement between the United States and the Korean authorities. On the other hand, Catholicism was introduced in the same century by missionaries. It is estimated that today in South Korea, around 25 percent of the population is Christian and a similar percentage is Buddhist. The philosophy of Confucius had a great influence on the spirit of Koreans who are not characterized by fanatical religious practices.

Two important figures outstand in that nation’s political life in the twentieth century: Syngman Rhee, born in March of 1875, and Kim Il Sung, born 37 years later in April of 1912. Both personalities, of different social background, confronted each other due to historical circumstances that had nothing to do with either of them.

The Christians opposed the Japanese colonial system. One of them was Syngman Rhee who was an actively practicing Protestant. Korea changed its status: Japan annexed its territory in 1910. Years later, in 1919, Rhee was appointed president of the provisional government in exile, headquartered in Shanghai, China. He never used weapons against the invaders. The League of Nations in Geneva paid no attention to him.

The Japanese Empire was brutally repressive with the Korean population. The patriots took up arms against the Japanese colonialist policy and succeeded in liberating a small area in the mountain region of the north at the end of the 1890’s.

Kin Il Sung, born in the vicinity of Pyongyang, at the age of 18 joined the Korean Communist guerrillas to fight the Japanese. In his active revolutionary life, he attained the position of political and military leader of the anti-Japanese combatants in North Korea, at the young age of 33.

During World War II, the United States decided the fate of Korea in the post-war period. It joined the conflict when it was attacked by one of its own, the Empire of the Rising Sun, whose tight feudal gates were opened by Commodore Perry in the first half of the 19th century, aiming his cannons at the strange Asian country that refused to trade with America.

The outstanding disciple later became a powerful rival, as I have already explained on another occasion. Decades later, Japan successively struck at China and Russia, additionally taking over Korea. Nevertheless it was a cunning ally for the victors of World War I, at the expense of China. It amassed forces and, transformed into the Asian version of fascist Nazism, attempted to occupy Chinese territory in 1937 and attacked the United States in December of 1941; it brought the war to Southeast Asia and Oceania.

The colonial domains of Great Britain, France, Holland and Portugal in the region were doomed and the United States emerged as the most powerful country in the world, matched only by the Soviet Union then destroyed by World War II and by the heavy material and human losses resulting from the Nazi strike. The Chinese Revolution was about to conclude in 1945 when the world massacre ceased. The united anti-Japanese combat was taking up its energy then. Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Gandhi, Sukarno and other leaders later carried on the fight against the restoration of the old world order which was already unsustainable.

Truman dropped the nuclear bomb on two civilian Japanese cities; this was a terribly destructive new weapon whose existence they had not reported to their Soviet ally, as explained, one which had been the major contributor to the destruction of fascism. Nothing justified the genocide committed, not even the fact that the tenacious Japanese resistance had taken the lives of almost 15 thousand American soldiers on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Japan was already defeated, and that weapon, had it been dropped on a military target, would have sooner or later had the same demoralizing effect on the Japanese military machine preventing more casualties among U.S. soldiers. It was an act of indescribable terror.

Soviet soldiers were advancing on Manchuria and North Korea, just as they had promised when fighting ceased in Europe. The allies had defined beforehand the point each army could reach. The dividing line would be in the middle of Korea, equidistant between the Yalu River and the southern end of the peninsula. The U.S. government negotiated with the Japanese the rules that would govern the surrendering of troops on their own territory. Japan would be occupied by the United States. In Korea, annexed to Japan, there would remain a large force of the powerful Japanese army. South of the 38th Parallel, the established dividing line, U.S. interests prevailed. Syngman Rhee, reincorporated to that part of the territory by the U.S. government, was the leader the Americans supported, with the open cooperation of the Japanese. This is how he won the hard-fought election of 1948. That year, the soldiers of the Soviet Army had pulled out of North Korea.

On June 25, 1950 war broke out in the country. It is still unclear who fired the first shot, whether it was the combatants in the North or the American soldiers on duty with soldiers recruited by Rhee. The argument does not make any sense if one analyzes it from the Korean angle. Kim Il Sung’s soldiers fought against the Japanese for the liberation of all Korea. His armies advanced irrepressibly up to the far reaches to the South where the Yankees were defending themselves with the massive back-up of their fighter planes. Seoul and other cities had been occupied. MacArthur, commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, decided to order a Marine landing at Incheon, at the rearguard of Northern forces which by now were in no condition to counterattack. Pyongyang fell in the hands of Yankee forces, preceded by devastating air strikes. That fostered the idea of the U.S. military command in the Pacific to occupy all of Korea, since the Peoples’ Liberation Army of China, lead by Mao Zedong had inflicted a resounding defeat on the pro-Yankee forces of Chiang Kai-shek, supplied and supported by the United States. The entire continental and maritime territory of that great country had been recovered, with the exception of Taipei and other small near-by islands where Kuomintang forces found refuge after being transported there by vessels of the Sixth Fleet.

The history of what happened then is well known today. It should not be forgotten that Boris Yeltsin handed over to Washington the Soviet Union archives, among other things.

What did the United States do when the practically inevitable conflict broke out under the premises created in Korea? It portrayed the northern part of that country as the aggressor. The Security Council of the recently created United Nations Organization, promoted by the victorious powers of W. W. II, passed a resolution that none of the five members could veto. Precisely in those months, the USSR had expressed its disagreement with the exclusion of China from the Security Council, where the U.S. was recognizing Chiang Kai-Shek, with less than 0.3 percent of national territory and less than 2 percent of the population, as a member of that Council and with a right to veto. Such arbitrariness led to the absence of the Russian delegate, with the result that the Council agreed to give the war the character of a UN military action against the alleged aggressor: the Peoples’ Republic of Korea. China, completely outside the conflict, which was affecting its unfinished fight for the total liberation of the country, saw the threat hovering directly against its own territory, this being unacceptable for its security. According to public information, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai was sent to Moscow to inform Stalin of China’s point of view about the inadmissibility of the presence of UN forces under U.S. command on the banks of the Yalu River which marks Korea's border with China, and to request Soviet cooperation. At the time there were no profound contradictions between the two Socialist giants.

It is affirmed that China’s response had been planned for the 13th of October and that Mao postponed it for the 19th, awaiting the Soviet reply. That was as long as he could put it off.

I intend to finish this reflection next Friday. It is a complex and laborious subject which requires special care and information as precise as possible. These are historical events that should be known and remembered.

Fidel Castro Ruz

July 22, 2008.

9:22 p.m.





Reflections by comrade Fidel


On October 19, 1950, more than 400 thousand voluntary Chinese combatants, on orders from Mao Zedong, crossed the Yalu and waylaid the US troops that were advancing towards the Chinese border. The US units, surprised by the vigorous response of the country they had underestimated, were forced to withdraw towards a region near the southern coast, pushed back by the joint action of the Chinese and North Korean forces. Stalin, who was immensely cautious, offered far less support than Mao had anticipated, though the MiG-15 aircrafts piloted by the Soviets, over a limited 42.5-miles front, proved valuable help during the initial stage of the conflict in protecting land forces during their intrepid advance. Pyongyang was again recovered and Seoul re-occupied once more, attempting to fight back the incessant onslaught of the US Air Force, the most powerful which has ever existed.

McArthur was anxious to attack China with nuclear weapons. He called for their use following the shameful defeat they had tasted. President Truman saw no other choice but to dismiss him from his command and appoint General Matthews Ridgeway head of US air, sea and land forces in the theatre of operations. Next to the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece, Canada, Turkey, Ethiopia, South Africa, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Colombia took part in the imperialist adventure. Colombia, then under the unitary government of conservative Laureano Gómez, who was responsible for the mass slaughter of peasants, was the only Latin American country involved. As we said, the Ethiopia of Haile Selassie, where slavery still existed, and a South Africa still under the domination of white racists, also took part in the invasion.

It had been scarcely five years since the world slaughter that began in September 1939 had come to an end, on August 1945. Following bloody combat in Korean territory, Parallel 38 once again became the border separating North and South. It is estimated that, in that war, about two million North Koreans, nearly half a million or one million Chinese and more than a million allied soldiers perished. Around 44 thousand US soldiers lost their lives. No few of them had been born in Puerto Rico or other Latin American countries, recruited to take part in a war they were driven to by their condition as poor immigrants.

Japan was to reap many benefits from the conflict. In a year’s time, industrial output grew by 50 % and, within two years, it again reached pre-war production levels. What didn't change, however, was how the acts of genocide perpetrated by China's imperial troops in Korea were perceived. The governments of Japan have paid tribute to the acts of genocide carried out by their soldiers, which, in China, had raped tens of thousands of women and brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people, as was explained in a reflection.

Hard-working and tenacious, the Japanese have transformed their country, bereft of oil and other important raw materials, into the second most powerful economy in the world.

Japan's GDP, measured in capitalist terms, though the data varies across different Western sources, is today over 4.5 billion dollars, and the country has over one billion dollars in hard currency reserves. This is twice China’s GDP, of 2.2 billion, even though China has 50% more hard currency reserves than Japan. The GDP of the United States, of 12.4 billion dollars, for a country with 34.6 times more territory and 2.3 times Japan’s population, is only three times that of Japan. Its government is today one of imperialism's main allies, at a time when it is threatened by economic recession and the sophisticated weapons of the superpower put at risk the entire human species.

These are historical lessons which cannot be forgotten.

The war, however, took a considerable toll on China. Truman instructed the 6th Fleet to prevent the landing of Chinese revolutionary forces that would achieve the complete emancipation of their country by reclaiming the 0.3 percent of their territory that had been occupied by the rest of the pro-Yankee forces of Chiang Kai-shek that had fled there.

Sino-Soviet relations were to deteriorate later, following the death of Stalin, on March 1953. The revolutionary movement splintered nearly everywhere. The dramatic call issued by Ho Chi Minh made evident the damage that had been done and imperialism, through its immense media apparatus, poked the fires of extremism among false revolutionary theoreticians, an area in which US intelligence agencies were to become experts.

Following the arbitrary division, North Korea had been dealt the most rugged part of the country. Each grain of food had to be reaped through sweat and sacrifice. Pyongyang, the capital, had been razed to the ground. Many, who had been wounded or mutilated during the war, were in need of medical attention. They were enduring a blockade and had no resources available. The Soviet Union and other countries of the socialist block were in the process of recovering from the war.

When I arrived at the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on March 7, 1986, nearly 33 years following the destruction caused by the war, it was still difficult to believe what had transpired there. That heroic people had constructed myriad things: large and small damns and canals to store water in, generate electricity, service cities and irrigate fields; Thermoelectric plants, large mechanical and other types of industries, many of them underground in the depths of the bedrock, all created through hard, methodical labor. Because of cooper and aluminum shortages, they had been forced to use iron to create electricity-guzzling transmission lines, iron which, in part, was produced from coal. The capital and other cities that had been devastated were reconstructed, inch by inch. I estimated that millions of new homes had been built in urban and rural areas and that tens of thousands of other kinds of facilities had been set up. Countless hours of work were contained in stone, concrete, steel, wood, synthetic products and machinery. The fields I had the opportunity to see, wherever I went, looked like gardens. Well-dressed, organized and enthusiastic people were everywhere, ready to greet visitors. The country deserved cooperation and peace.

There was no issue I didn't discuss with my illustrious host Kim Il Sung. I shall never forget this.

Korea was divided into two parts by an imaginary line. The South was to have a different experience. It was the more densely populated part and endured less destruction during the war. The presence of an enormous foreign military force required the supply of local manufactured and other products, from crafts to fresh fruits and vegetables, not to mention services. The military spending of the allies was huge. The same thing occurred when the United States decided to retain extensive military forces in the country indefinitely. During the Cold War, Western and Japanese transnationals invested considerable sums of money, siphoning out incalculable wealth from the sweat of South Koreans, a people who are as hard-working and industrious as their brothers in the North. The great markets of the world were open to their products. They were not blockaded. Today, the country has high levels of technology and productivity. It has suffered the economic crises of the West, following which many South Korean companies were bought over by transnationals. The austere nature of its people has allowed the State to accumulate significant reserves in hard currency. Today, it is enduring the United States' economic depression, particularly the high prices of oil and food, and the inflationary pressures from both.

South Korea's GDP –787.6 billion dollars– is almost equal to that of Brazil (796 billion) and Mexico (768 billion), countries with abundant hydrocarbon reserves and incomparably larger populations. Imperialism imposed its system upon these nations. Two fell behind; the other made much more progress.

There is hardly any emigration from South Korea to the West. There is emigration en masse from Mexico to what is currently US territory. From Brazil, South and Central America, people emigrate everywhere, in search of employment and lured by consumerist propaganda. Today, they pay them back with rigorous and contemptuous laws.

The position of principles on nuclear weapons supported by Cuba within the Non-Aligned Movement, ratified during the Summit Conference held in Havana in August 2006, is well known.

I met the current leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Kim Jong Il, when I arrived at the Pyongyang airport. He was standing discretely beside his father, to one side of the red carpet. Cuba maintains excellent relations with his government.

When the Soviet Union and the socialist block collapsed, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea lost important markets and sources of oil, raw materials and equipment. As in Cuba’s case, the consequences were severe. The progress that had been attained through great sacrifices was at risk. In spite of this, they showed themselves capable of constructing a nuclear weapon.

When the nuclear test was conducted around a year ago, we conveyed the government of North Korea our points of view on the damage this could cause poor Third World countries that were waging an unequal and difficult battle against imperialist designs, at a decisive moment for the world. It might not have been necessary. Kim Song Il, at that point, had already decided, beforehand, what he had to do, mindful of the geographic and strategic characteristics of the region.

We are pleased to see North Korea’s declaration on its intentions of suspending its nuclear weapons program. This has nothing to do with the crimes and the blackmail of Bush, who now touts the declaration as proof of the success of his policy of genocide. North Korea's gesture was not aimed at the government of the United States, before which it never budged an inch, but, rather, at China, a neighboring ally, whose security and development is vital for the two States.

Third World countries are interested in the friendship and cooperation between China and the two Koreas, whose union need not be from coast to coast, as was the case of Germany, today a US ally in NATO. Step by step, unhurriedly but indefatigably, as befits their culture and history, they shall continue to knit the bonds that will unite the two Koreas. With South Korea, we are developing more and more ties. With North Korea, these have always existed and we shall continue to strengthen them.

Fidel Castro Ruz

July 24, 2008

6:18 p.m.

The Two Koreas (Part 1)