Vindicar la obra de Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) como una escritura moral ha sido uno de esos ejercicios con los que una parte de la crítica literaria, acaso la más ávida de iconos destellantes, ha oscurecido (o banalizado) uno de los esfuerzos más dedicados a encontrar ese complejo y refractario lugar desde donde la literatura deviene aplicación (o la posibilidad de la aplicación) de una crítica a toda forma de moral. Hay quienes, por ejemplo, encuentran en esa obra, o al menos en los textos que Bolaño dedica a pormenorizar los embalajes de las prácticas más emblemáticas del poder actual, un intento por diseccionar o viviseccionar el lugar del mal absoluto en los tiempos que corren. Más allá de que esa visión supone de antemano, en quienes la afirman, que sabrían cómo y dónde operaría el bien absoluto, nada más alejado del entramado sobre el que Bolaño desplegó deliberada y muy laboriosamente el intrincado laberinto de los órdenes que significan a su literatura. Al respecto, el mismo Bolaño escribió alguna vez (en Un narrador en la intimidad) un breve excurso: La cocina literaria, me digo a veces, es una cuestión de gusto, es decir, es un campo en donde la memoria y la ética (o la moral, si se me permite esta palabra) juegan un juego cuyas reglas desconozco. El talento y la excelencia contemplan, absortas, el juego, pero no participan. La audacia y el valor sí participan, pero sólo en momentos puntuales, lo que equivale a decir que no participan en exceso. El sufrimiento participa, el dolor participa, la muerte participa, pero a condición de que jueguen riéndose. Digamos, como un detalle inexcusable de cortesía.
La risa de Bolaño es tal vez su mayor legado. Esa meticulosa ironía con la que destroza página tras página toda ontología del poder, todo fin trazado a lo largo de los relatos que imaginan al deseo, y a su consumación, como una afirmación interminable del control. El control sobre el cuerpo, sobre la mente, sobre el deseo mismo... del otro. Al final de ese viaje en el que sólo queda no un cuerpo, sino un maniquí; no una mente sino un depósito de la inconexión; no un deseo sino una alucinación.
La escritura de Bolaño no nos remite, como la del modernismo, a esa fantástica heterotopía de la perpetua incompletud; ni a los exóticos paisajes que nos deparó la singularidad de las narrativas del boom; nos remite a ese estado de excepción en el que la vida no tiene ni siquiera tiempo para pensar en su sentido: en el que la trama de lo que somos es sólo flujo, flujo incodificable, ingobernable, que escapa a la posibilidad de ser axiomatizado o vertido en un orden definido. El flujo de la violencia, el flujo de la ciudad, el flujo apodáctico de la política, el flujo del nómada.
Es una de esas escrituras que nunca sabremos porqué es tan eficiente, tan eficaz, tan terráquea, tan hábil para enunciar lo que evade aparentemente cualquier estrategia de enunciación.
Nació en Chile, creció en México y escribió la mayor parte de sus libros en España, pero su patria son los que han sido alcanzados o arrastrados por la descodificación, que ni siquiera representan un número en la estadística, por el pudor del exceso estadístico; aquellos que deben incluso pedir prestado un rostro o cuyo rostro aparecerá tan sólo como epitafio para documentar su anonimato. El orden más natural de lo que fue el siglo XX: el cuerpo mudo, blanco del consumo, del artificio, de la manía de la sobrerrepresentación.
Pero lo más ingenuo sería pensar que la imaginación de Bolaño se centra en esa labor de revelación de lo inefable de la normalidad, de lo grotesco del consenso. Por el contrario, es la labor de quien logró encontrar la poesía en el lugar más inhóspito e inimaginable del ser: ahí donde vivir no significa más que sobrevivir, donde el presente y el futuro colapsan en un tiempo estriado, corrugado por el afán de destrabar el colapso mismo.
La juez primera de distrito del centro auxiliar de la primera región, en una sentencia que no tiene fecha, resolvió negar el amparo que el Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas había promovido contra el decreto presidencial de fecha 11 de octubre del año en curso mediante el cual se ordenó la liquidación de Luz y Fuerza del Centro (LFC) y el consecuente despido de la totalidad de los trabajadores.
Obviamente, dicho decreto es violatorio de muchas cosas, entre otras, la fración I del artículo 89 constitucional que faculta al titular del Poder Ejecutivo a promulgar y ejecutar las leyes que expida el Congreso de la Unión, proveyendo en la esfera administrativa a su exacta observancia.
En el caso, no había una ley proveniente del Congreso de la Unión que hubiese ordenado la liquidación de la empresa LFC, lo que implica que el Presidente de la República se transformó, por propia iniciativa (aunque le echa la culpa a la Secretaría de Hacienda y Crédito Público) en legislador, violando así de manera notable el principio constitucional de la división de poderes.
La sentencia, en lo fundamental, distribuye en tres temas su decisión. La primera la hace consistir en la improcedencia de la demanda de amparo. La segunda, en la procedencia. La tercera, en la valoración que hace de la actuación del Poder Ejecutivo en la que llega a la curiosa conclusión de que no solamente está facultado para reglamentar las leyes del Congreso sino que también se le debe reconocer una facultad habilitante derivada del artículo 16 de la Ley Federal de Entidades Paraestatales (de más que dudosa constitucionalidad) para poner remedio a las deficiencias de las entidades paraestatales con la facultad, inclusive, de liquidarlas.
Entre los motivos de improcedencia se dice que los trabajadores, en lo personal, no acreditaron su condición, por lo que no se les debe reconocer interés jurídico en el amparo, afirmando que no se ofrecieron pruebas de su condición de trabajadores. Con ello la sentencia pone de manifiesto que no tomó en consideración las pruebas ofrecidas por los terceros perjudicados, olvidando que obra en el expediente la copia certificada de las actuaciones ante la Junta Federal de Conciliación y Arbitraje promovidas por el Servicio de Administración y Enajenación de Bienes, donde se lista a la totalidad de los trabajadores de LFC. La juez invoca una copia simple de esa demanda que se acompañó a la demanda de amparo pero se le olvidó tomar en cuenta la copia certificada de esas actuaciones que exhibió el sindicato quejoso.
Lo esencial de la falta de fundamentación de la sentencia lo constituye el hecho de que ignora el contenido de la fracción I del artículo 89 constitucional que fija las facultades del Poder Ejecutivo, e inventa una facultad habilitante que no está prevista en la Constitución. Porque el Ejecutivo puede hacer lo que la Constitución le permite pero no otras cosas que no estén previstas en la propia Constitución, de acuerdo con el principio de derecho de que las autoridades no pueden hacer sino lo que les está permitido y evidentemente que no hay ninguna disposición constitucional que otorgue al Ejecutivo facultades que no están previstas.
Dice la sentencia que la situación económica de LFC es muy grave y que ello justifica la decisión del Ejecutivo de liquidarla. Pero esa decisión no puede ser tomada por el Ejecutivo porque no hay norma constitucional que se lo permita. Afortunadamente la sentencia reconoce la personalidad y el interés jurídico del sindicato, y con ello desvirtúa una de las causas de improcedencia invocadas por las autoridades responsables. Pero con ello desvirtúa su conclusión de que los trabajadores no tienen interés en el juicio ya que el sindicato es, precisamente, un representante de todos los trabajadores, como bien lo indica el artículo 375 de la Ley Federal del Trabajo.
No deja de ser contradictorio que la sentencia reconozca la presencia del sindicato, necesariamente formado por trabajadores, y desconozca que los trabajadores lo son efectivamente de LFC. Caben todos los malos pensamientos a propósito del origen de esta sentencia, cuya extensión pone en duda que haya sido dictada por el propio juzgado, sin olvidar que no tiene en cuenta para nada los alegatos amplísimos presentados por el sindicato un día antes. Da la impresión de que ya había sido redactada desde antes de la audiencia constitucional en la que se presentaron esos alegatos, ignorados en la sentencia. Ahora le tocará el turno a un tribunal colegiado del primer circuito en materia de trabajo de conocer el recurso de revisión. Es difícil desconocer la autonomía de esos organismos. Pero la presencia de la Presidencia de la República como parte muy interesada deja abierto un mundo de dudas.
Las amenazas contra su lugar de trabajo empezaron hace mucho tiempo, desde que denunciaron la pretensión del presidente municipal de Apizaco, Tlaxcala, de construir una zona de tolerancia para el trabajo sexual. Se opusieron al lenocinio, discriminación y delincuencia organizada que representa la propuesta gubernamental. Y, por lo mismo, desde el pasado 25 de noviembre las castigaron cerrándoles su lugar de trabajo, un espacio en construcción para ejercer su trabajo en forma digna, un lugar para organizarse y luchar contra la violencia de la que suelen ser víctimas las trabajadoras sexuales en este municipio que es cuna y nido de explotadores de mujeres.
En su casa de trabajo, un lugar en que no se admite a los lenones, a menores de edad, ni el consumo de drogas, irrumpieron policías municipales y estatales con una orden de clausura. Elvira Madrid Romero, presidenta de la Brigada Callejera de Apoyo a la Mujer Elisa Martínez, organización civil dedicada a la defensa de los derechos civiles de las personas que se dedican al sexo comercial, señaló que este operativo se explica porque las mujeres que ahí trabajan “son un mal ejemplo para las demás trabajadoras sexuales de Tlaxcala, ya que ellas no necesitan de un protector patriarcal, llámese padrote o presidente municipal, para ganarse la vida dignamente en el talón”.
Este pequeño y combativo grupo de mujeres ha denunciado la operación de bandas de explotadores, se ha negado a pagar las cuotas de extorsión que les exigen funcionarios públicos municipales, ha denunciado a las bandas de trata de personas que operan en Apizaco y se ha opuesto firmemente a la zona de tolerancia, que representaría un gran negocio para los gobiernos local y estatal. En el lugar de trabajo que ahora defienden recibieron al subcomandante Marcos durante su recorrido por esta ciudad en 2006. Son, pues, mujeres de lucha.
Las mujeres de Apizaco pertenecen al Colectivo en Pro de sus Derechos del Consejo Nacional Urbano y Campesino (CNUC). No están solas y ya se preparan una serie de movilizaciones encaminadas a exigir que se quiten los sellos de clausura de su casa. Por lo pronto, el 17 de noviembre se convoca a un plantón frente a la representación de Tlaxcala en el Distrito Federal, y acciones simultáneas en otras ciudades como Orizaba, Veracruz, y Guadalajara, Jalisco, en protesta por el trato discriminatorio del que han sido objeto.
Son nuevamente Cande, Alejandra, Lizbet, Leticia, Alexa, Karla, Sarahí y muchas más las que solicitan solidaridad y acompañamiento. Son parte de la otra campaña y, por lo mismo, no están solas.
Durante la tarde-noche del domingo pasado, en el pequeño departamento de la colonia Del Valle donde vive con su esposa y su hijo de dos años, Andrés Manuel López Obrador escribió la cuarta y última parte de su relato, Un viaje al corazón del México Profundo, en el que narra su visita a los 418 municipios de usos y costumbres de Oaxaca, por los que transitó, de julio a noviembre, hablando con todos los grupos indígenas de aquella entidad, luego de haber recorrido, de enero de 2007 a marzo de 2009, los 2 mil y pico de municipios de régimen de partido que hay en el país, en todos los cuales organizó comités ciudadanos del gobierno legítimo, que a la fecha cuentan con 2 millones 400 mil afiliados.
Una vez concluida su labor literaria, el lunes estuvo en Guadalajara para evaluar el desarrollo de esos comités en Jalisco; el martes aterrizó en Monclova, donde tomó nota de cómo va el movimiento en el norte de Coahuila; horas después bajó por carretera a Monterrey, donde presidió una reunión similar en un jardín al pie del Cerro de la Silla. El miércoles llegó temprano a Ciudad Victoria, por la tarde a San Luis Potosí y por la noche a Querétaro. El jueves se trasladó a Pachuca y a lo largo del día habló por teléfono con cada uno de los diputados del extinto Frente Amplio Progresista (ahora se llama Diálogo para la Reconstrucción de México) que en la Asamblea Legislativa del Distrito Federal (ALDF) no querían votar por Clara Brugada para jefa delegacional de Iztapalapa. Y los convenció.
Ayer a mediodía, a pesar de los petulantes y ridículos vaticinios de los levantacejas, que ya festejaban la supuesta imposición de un jefe delegacional de Marcelo Ebrard y el distanciamiento entre éste y López Obrador, Clara Brugada quedó al frente de la demarcación más populosa y conflictiva de la ciudad de México, al ser ratificada en la ALDF con 46 votos a favor, tres abstenciones y la oposición de la minoría panista que dirige Mariana Gómez del Campo, prima de Margarita Zavala de Calderón, hasta hace poco amiga de la presidenta del Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación, María del Carmen Alanís, o simplemente Maca, quien ya rompió con la pandilla de Los Pinos para echarse en brazos de Manlio Fabio Beltrones.
Es tan grande y cínica la deshonestidad intelectual de los manipuladores de la opinión pública, mercenarios del micrófono y de la pluma, que a lo largo del conflicto de Iztapalapa borraron de la memoria colectiva el hecho cierto e irrefutable de que todo el problema empezó cuando Maca y los magistrados del TEPJF le arrebataron a Brugada, de manera fraudulenta y extemporánea, la candidatura del PRD al cargo de jefa delegacional. Para los merolicos de la mentira, el autor único y exclusivo del sainete fue el loco de López Obrador, por proponer que la gente tachara la boleta electoral por el abanderado del PT, para que éste, después de triunfar, dimitiera en favor de Clara.
De eso ya no se acuerdan aquellos que convirtieron a Juanito en ídolo de quienes se traicionan a sí mismos con tal de obtener dinero y privilegios ilimitados. Pero mientras ellos continuaban escribiendo las páginas más sucias del periodismo mexicano, Maca y los magistrados volvieron a hacer otra de las suyas, al anular esta semana las elecciones constitucionales del municipio de Villa Juárez, en Coahuila, donde el candidato del PRD ganó con 700 de los mil votos que fueron depositados en las urnas. ¿La causa que, según los magistrados, ameritó la nulificación del proceso? Agárrense: descubrieron que un representante del Partido Verde Ecologista en una casilla era empleado del ayuntamiento. Y por eso, en vez de eliminar los votos de esa casilla, echaron a la basura los de todas. ¿Para qué? Obviamente para favorecer al PRI y a los amigos de Manlio Fabio.
Tras la ardua victoria del movimiento de López Obrador en Iztapalapa, el pueblo combativo que apoya a Brugada comenzará a beneficiarse de los programas sociales que crearán empleos de corto plazo para atenuar la desocupación; becas para las personas mayores a partir de los 65 años de edad; orquestas juveniles para evitar la drogadicción y la delincuencia; asambleas para decidir en forma comunitaria la aplicación de los recursos públicos, entre muchos planes y proyectos más, como el de salud barrial, que ofrecerá los servicios gratuitos de un médico y de un dentista en cada colonia.
Enfermos de desvergüenza, los levantacejas repiten a diario que el botín de Iztapalapa es un presupuesto de casi 4 mil millones de pesos anuales que ansía López Obrador. Falso: en 2009 fue de 3 mil millones, de los cuales la mitad se destinó a pagar sueldos de la burocracia local y el resto a obras de bacheo, alumbrado público y drenaje. Para 2010, debido a los recortes que el PRI, el PAN y los chuchos aprobaron en la Cámara de Diputados, Ebrard le recortará al gobierno popular de Brugada 400 millones de pesos, de modo que ella en realidad administrará 2 millones 600 mil pesos. ¿Cómo sacará adelante sus proyectos? Primero que todo, con austeridad, al reducir ella misma su salario 50 por ciento e invitando a sus colaboradores a hacer lo propio.
Clara Brugada tiene ante sí incontables problemas, que se multiplicarán en la medida en que le pongan zancadillas para descarrilarla quienes, desde el PRD y el GDF, saben que si sale airosa de la prueba inaugurará una nueva forma de hacer política social en la capital del país, más allá de las frívolas pistas de hielo, los arbolotes que rompen récords Guinnes y otras tonterías similares. Con la victoria de Iztapalapa, la resistencia civil pacífica culmina un año terrible y espantoso con un saldo doblemente favorable: el movimiento que nació en 2004 al calor de la lucha contra el desafuero sigue en pie y al alza, mientras tirios y troyanos saben y reconocen que López Obrador es la única opción verdadera para cambiar sin violencia el destino del país y poner fin a la dictadura de la oligarquía sin llenaderas, la alta burocracia sin escrúpulos, los levantacejas inverecundos y los clérigos medievales aliados a los fundamentalistas de PRI, PAN y PRD que persiguen, incluso con cárcel, el placer sexual de las mujeres mediante la penalización del aborto, como bien lo expuso Humberto Musacchio antenoche, en la librería Gandhi, durante la presentación de Tabaco, exageraciones y mentiras, el deslumbrante alegato de Octavio Rodríguez Araujo contra la Organización Mundial de la Salud y sus políticas sobre el consumo de nicotina.
Mientras tanto, mañana, a lo largo de todo el día, numerosas organizaciones sociales y gremiales acompañarán a los 20 mil trabajadores que aún pertenecen al Sindicato Mexicano de Electricistas, a soplar las 95 velitas del pastel de cumpleaños de la agrupación obrera más antigua del país (fundada el 14 de diciembre de 1914). La fiesta no estará exenta de tristeza, después del fallo de la juez federal que ayer le negó al SME el amparo definitivo contra el decreto que extinguió ilegalmente a Luz y Fuerza del Centro.
La semana entrante, los electricistas llevarán a cabo su último acto público de 2009 y se irán de vacaciones, para reanudar en enero las movilizaciones populares en demanda de que la Comisión Federal de Electricidad los contrate como patrón sustituto, con las mismas prestaciones que lograron como SME y con la personalidad jurídica que aún posee su sindicato. Si en la guerra civil española los anarquistas catalanes combatían sujetos a un estricto horario laboral, nada de raro tendrá que los electricistas se tomen unas merecidas semanas de reposo para contrarrestar los efectos de tanto desgaste físico. También, en este sentido, pronto habrá que emularlos...
Empleo el título de un célebre ensayo de Daniel Cosío Villegas publicado en 1947 para esta reflexión. Decía que las metas de la Revolución se habían agotado y que el término mismo carecía ya de sentido. Señalaba la pérdida de una “carta de navegación” y de “autoridad moral y política de los gobernantes”.
Aunque describía la situación sin piedad, veía un “rayo de esperanza en la reafirmación de los principios y la renovación de los hombres”. Observaba un decaimiento recuperable mediante objetivos remozados y procedimientos convincentes. Proponía un aire nuevo para el régimen, ya que consideraba a la derecha absolutamente incompetente para gobernar.
El debate contemporáneo sólo entre los conservadores halla un propósito de continuidad con reparaciones. De manera semejante al análisis sobre la crisis global: quienes la consideran exclusivamente “financiera” se aferran al pasado, quienes la llaman “económica” se ubican en el centro y quien la estima “sistémica” es la izquierda.
Entre los diputados apenas se plantea el esquema de un acuerdo hacendario y fiscal y comienza a discutirse una reforma de las prácticas del Congreso. Se espera que el Ejecutivo envíe las iniciativas correspondientes a su anuncio de reformas políticas, aunque sean manifiestas la anemia y la intención tramposa de las propuestas.
Nos aprestamos a otro ciclo de parches, incapaces de conformar una arquitectura política diferente, ensayar un nuevo rumbo económico o sellar un ineludible pacto social. A pesar de la catástrofe, la clase dirigente patina en la arena de las pequeñas ganancias. Un bizantinismo inmune al diluvio. Voces más sensatas llaman a la refundación de la República y se extienden los llamados abiertos a la insurgencia. El conjunto no hace coherencia y quien debiera ejercer la convocatoria al diálogo se jacta de encontrarse en el “timón a pesar de la tormenta”, sin percatarse que el barco ya encalló y sólo sigue aferrado al ancla.
Entre tanta estrechez y desmesura he hallado un diagnóstico revelador de Guillermo Hurtado. El filósofo dice: “la crisis se debe a que hemos perdido el sentido de nuestra existencia colectiva”. No tenemos “cohesión, dirección ni confianza”. “Hemos “olvidado qué valorar” y por tanto extraviado “nuestra razón de ser”. La explicación es transparente: “México tuvo una visión de su historia, basada en un amplio horizonte de memorias y expectativas”. Esa visión despareció y hoy no hay lugar ni para el “preterismo” ni el “futurismo”, sólo para un desesperante “presentismo”. En víspera del Bicentenario, carecemos de un discurso nacional “homogéneo, congruente y motivador”. Afirma que la “fractura de nuestra historicidad” nos atrapa en una vivencia “asfixiante y confusa” y que la sociedad mexicana está “desintegrada, desorientada y desalentada”, ya que el tejido colectivo ha sido “desgarrado por la frustración y la violencia”. No abriga confianza en las instituciones surgidas de una “democracia electorera”, que sólo producen una “cacofonía de propuestas desconectadas”.
A diferencia de Cosío, no cree en la regeneración del sistema ni que alcanzaremos la democracia desde las “estructuras inoperantes que precisamente debemos transformar”. Afirma con Caso que necesitamos “alas y más alas”. “Volar alto para salir del fango”. Rechaza la violencia y aboga por una “nueva concordia”.
Sostiene que la tarea es urgente pero apuesta centralmente a la “educación cívica y moral de los mexicanos”. Nos deja el reto de combinar el corto con el largo plazo y confiar el salto histórico a una sociedad desmembrada. ¿Cómo hallar un “sentido colectivo” donde no existe y cómo revolucionar instituciones que se resisten al cambio?
Estas interrogantes definen el inmenso vacío de las próximas celebraciones marcadas por la orfandad, en las que algo habrá de ocurrir al margen de nuestras predicciones.
Diputado federal (PT)
Boom in US security companies training war zone clients
An international training center in Virginia provides the skills necessary to survive in countries where pavement is a luxury and roadside bombs are nothing rare.
If you happen to be travelling to a war zone it is best to be prepared. “Ready for anything” is the motto of a training camp in America which teaches strategies for survival.
“Our typical clients are people who either work, live, or both in hostile parts of the world. Our clients range from Federal Government employees, DOD military, to corporate people who need the training. They come here to learn one thing. They come here to learn how to survive in a high risk environment,” the training center's operations manager Robert Middaugh says.
The center’s students figure out how to spot the enemy first and then outmaneuver their aggressor: whether using a car or a pistol.
“You have got to identify that it is a threat. We always teach to shoot high chest,” firearms instructor Timothy Peck says.
Meanwhile, driving instructor Robbie McGinnis trains his students how to act when ambushed.
“We are driving down a road and all of a sudden you see this type of situation, the car blocking your way. And maybe you see a person coming over to the car with a gun. You’re under attack. So you need to move the vehicle, right? Can I hit this vehicle and move it out of my way?” McGinnis asks before demonstrating how exactly one can achieve this.
You never know when you might find yourself in the most hostile environments, so the training center’s driving course might help you to survive in the most dangerous and unpredictable situations and the riskiest conditions that are found mostly in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Obviously when the Iraq war started, that changed a lot of things for the world. So we not only saw an increase in business, but also the whole industry saw an increase in business. That could happen with Afghanistan,” Robert Middaugh predicts right ahead of the deployment of 30,000 more US troops in Afghanistan.
“The one thing that we want them to remember when they leave is – no matter what you do – move, do something,” Middaugh concludes.
Boom in US security companies training war zone clients
Blackwater operating at CIA Pakistan base, ex-official says
• Contractor said to be helping to load missiles • US denies controversial company is in country
The US contractor Blackwater is operating in Pakistan at a secret CIA airfield used for launching drone attacks, according to a former US official, despite repeated government denials that the company is in the country.
The official, who had direct knowledge of the operation, said that employees with Blackwater, now renamed Xe Services, patrol the area round the Shamsi airbase in Baluchistan province.
Members of the Islamic party Jamaat-i-Islami protest against the US in Lahore. Blackwater has become a focus of anti-US sentiment. Photograph: Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images
He also confirmed that Blackwater employees help to load laser-guided Hellfire missiles on to CIA-operated drones that target al-Qaida members suspected of hiding in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border regions, confirming information that surfaced in the US media in the summer.
The secretive base at Shamsi is a key element in the CIA co-ordinated missile strikes that have hit more than 40 targets in the past year. Officials in Washington said that a drone attack on Wednesday killed a senior al-Qaida figure. The officials declined to name the individual, other than to say it was not Osama bin Laden. It is the first time in almost a year that the US has claimed to have successfully targeted a senior al-Qaida figure.
The controversy over Blackwater stems mainly from its work in Iraq and Afghanistan that raised questions about the US use of private contractors in war zones. Several cases against the company are pending in US courts over violent incidents, including a 2007 Baghdad shooting spree.
The New York Times reported today that links between Blackwater and the CIA in Iraq and Afghanistan have been closer than has yet been disclosed, with Blackwater staff participating in clandestine CIA raids against suspected insurgents.
The US and Pakistan governments, as well as Xe, deny the company operates in Pakistan.
Blackwater is a particularly emotive issue in Pakistan, where the company's name, along with the drone strikes, have become lightning rods for anti-American sentiment. Television stations have run images of alleged "Blackwater houses" in Islamabad, while some newspapers regularly run stories accusing US officials and respected journalists of being Blackwater operatives.
US diplomats say the stories are mostly incorrect, and the Pakistani media has confused American contractors from other companies and aid workers with Blackwater employees. Pakistan's interior minister, Rehman Malik, offered to resign if Blackwater was proved to be in Pakistan.
But there is growing evidence to suggest that Blackwater is working in Pakistan. A serving US official said that Blackwater had a contract to manage the construction of a training facility for the paramilitary Frontier Corps, just outside Peshawar, this year. But most of the work on the project, the official said, was done by Pakistani sub-contractors.
Blackwater rebranded itself Xe after the shooting in a Baghdad square that left 17 Iraqis dead. The CIA director Leon Panetta earlier this year ordered that many contracts with Blackwater be terminated. A Congressional committee is investigating links between Blackwater and the intelligence services. Xe, in a statement, denied that Blackwater was ever under contract to participate in covert raids with the CIA or special forces in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.
In a separate development, five young Americans detained in Pakistan over alleged terrorist links will probably be deported, Javed Islam, a police chief, said. They had not been charged.
The US authorities have not yet said what action, if any, they will take when the five return. The five, aged between 19 and 25, are alleged to have made contact with militant groups. News of their arrest has renewed US fears on homegrown terrorists. The five all attended a mosque in Alexandria, Virginia, run by the Islamic Circle of North America.
Tony Blair admits: I would have invaded Iraq anyway
Tony Blair has said he would have invaded Iraq even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction and would have found a way to justify the war to parliament and the public.
The former prime minister made the confession during an interview with Fern Britton, to be broadcast on Sunday on BBC1, in which he said he would still have thought it right to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
Tony Blair told Fern Britton, in an interview to be broadcast on BBC1, that he would have found a way to justify the Iraq invasion. Photograph: BBC
"If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?" Blair was asked. He replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove him [Saddam Hussein]".
Significantly, Blair added: "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat." He continued: "I can't really think we'd be better with him and his two sons in charge, but it's incredibly difficult. That's why I sympathise with the people who were against it [the war] for perfectly good reasons and are against it now, but for me, in the end I had to take the decision."
He explained it was "the notion of him as a threat to the region" because Saddam Hussein had used chemical weapons against his own people.
"This was obviously the thing that was uppermost in my mind. The threat to the region. Also the fact of how that region was going to change and how in the end it was going to evolve as a region and whilst he was there, I thought and actually still think, it would have been very difficult to have changed it in the right way."
Though Blair has always argued that Iraq would be better off without Saddam Hussein, to parliament and the public, he always justified military action on the grounds that the Iraqi dictator was in breach of UN-backed demands that he abandon his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme.
It is possible that Blair has shifted his ground in anticipation of his appearance early next year before the Chilcot inquiry. The inquiry has heard that Blair made clear to President George Bush at a meeting in Texas 11 months before the Iraq invasion that he would be prepared to join the US in toppling Saddam.
Blair was "absolutely prepared to say he was willing to contemplate regime change if [UN-backed measures] did not work", Sir David Manning, Blair's former foreign policy adviser, told the inquiry. If it proved impossible to pursue the UN route, then Blair would be "willing to use force", Manning emphasised.
The Chilcot inquiry has seen a number of previously leaked Whitehall documents which suggest Blair was in favour of regime change although he was warned by Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, in July 2002, eight months before the invasion, that "the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action".
Manning told Blair in March that year that he had underlined Britain's position to Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser.
"I said you [Blair] would not budge in your support for regime change, but you had to manage a press, a parliament, and a public opinion which is very different than anything in the States," Manning wrote, according to a leaked Whitehall document. A Cabinet Office document also seen by the Chilcot inquiry, dated July 2002, stated: "When the prime minister discussed Iraq with President Bush at Crawford [his Texas ranch] in April, he said that the UK would support military action to bring about regime change provided that certain conditions were met: efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion ..."
Now Blair appears to be openly admitting that evidence of WMD – the purpose behind the now discredited weapons dossier he ordered to be published with the help of MI6 and Whitehall's joint intelligence committee – was not needed to invade Iraq, and he could have found other arguments to justify it.
Blair did say in a speech to Labour party conference in 2004, over a year after the invasion: "I can apologise for the information [about WMDs] that turned out to be wrong, but I can't, sincerely at least, apologise for removing Saddam.
"The world is a better place with Saddam in prison not in power."
Blair told the former This Morning presenter how his religious beliefs helped him in the invasion's immediate aftermath.
"When it comes to a decision like that, I think it is important that you take that decision as it were on the basis of what is right, because that is the only way to do it," he said.
"I think sometimes people think my religious faith played a direct part in some of these decisions. It really didn't. It gives you strength if you come to a decision, to hold to that decision. That's how it supports your character in a situation of difficulty."
Most "really hard" decisions involved a "downside and an upside either way", he added.
Sir John Sawers, Blair's former chief foreign policy adviser and now head of MI6, told the Chilcot inquiry on Thursday that Iraq was one of several countries where Britain would have liked regime change. Discussions took place on "political" actions to undermine Saddam, including indicting him for war crimes, Sawers said. There was no talk in 2001 in Whitehall of military action, he added.
"There are a lot of countries ... where we would like to see a change of regime. That doesn't mean one pursues active policies in that direction."
Hundreds of people were arrested in Copenhagen today after sporadic street violence broke out during a major protest march as UN climate change talks reached their halfway point.
The demonstration, organised to urge conference delegates to work out a binding deal to tackle climate change, was largely peaceful but was marred when a group of protesters threw bricks at police.
Climate activists and campaigners at a protest rally in Copenhagen. Photograph: Christian Charisius/Reuters
As many as 700 people are thought to have been arrested amid clashes with riot police as the authorities used "kettling" tactics to contain marchers.
Organisers estimated that up to 100,000 protesters, including some dressed as penguins and polar bears and carrying signs saying "Save the Humans", joined the march across the city to the conference centre where negotiators and ministers are meeting.
A British demonstrator, Georgy Forshall, told the Observer: "Two of my friends are in there. The police said demonstrators had been throwing stones, but my friends were in a cow costume, they wouldn't have been able, physically, to throw stones."
The Danish police, who put the number of those taking part in the march at 30,000, said two Britons involved in the protest had been deported.
Police spokesman Henrik Moeller Jakobsen said the arrests were made because of stone-throwing. "The activists also wear masks on their faces and this is illegal under Danish law," he said.
The UN-sponsored summit is meanwhile entering its final phase with more than 100 world leaders, including Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, arriving to hammer out a deal.
So far the conference has been characterised by posturing and recriminations but gained some focus on Friday with the release of a document outlining ambitious greenhouse gas reductions over the next 40 years.
Industrialised nations will shoulder most of the burden of emission cuts in the near term, it is proposed. Collectively, they will reduce their output of greenhouse gases by between 25% and 45% by 2020 compared with 1990 levels. During that time, major developing countries would reduce theirs by between 15% and 30%. Together, all countries would cut emissions between 50% and 95% by 2050.
However, the text fails to indicate how much money rich countries would give poor ones to cope with global warming, a major bone of contention. The European Union has pledged to provide $3.6bn a year over the next three years to help poorer countries adapt to the impact of climate change: from coping with flood and drought to avoiding deforestation. This figure was dismissed as inadequate by delegates from small island states and the nations from the least developed countries bloc.
Island states – such as the Maldives, the Seychelles and Tuvalu – are the most vulnerable to sea-level rises, a consequence of melting ice caps, and are particularly concerned about the need for firm, predictable funding to help them adapt. They want any final treaty agreed at Copenhagen to set a target year, within the next decade, when emissions peak and then begin to fall. This concept is absent from the draft.
Saudis at COP15: 'Climategate' shakes trust in scientists, independent inquiry needed
Election result intensifies Romania’s domestic crisis
President Traian Basescu and the opposition parties in Romania are currently engaged in a bitter conflict following the razor-thin victory for the former in the second round of the presidential elections December 6. The power struggle will only intensify the country’s two-month-long cabinet crisis.
The conservative Basescu won a surprising 50.33 percent of the vote, while his social democratic rival Mircea Geoana followed narrowly behind with 49.66 percent (5,275,808 votes to 5,205,760). All the opinion polls had predicted a victory for Geoana, after Crin Antonescu of the National Liberal Party (PNL), a candidate in the first round of the presidential elections, threw his support to Geoana. Geoana is appealing the result to the election authorities and the Supreme Constitutional Court and demanding a recount.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) declared that, as far as its initial reports indicated, the election met democratic standards. However, according to representatives of Geoana’s Social Democratic Party (PSD), more than 130,000 ballots had been disqualified. The difference between the two candidates was approximately 70,000 votes.
The Romanian interior ministry announced that 200 irregularities had been reported in the course of the balloting and that two individuals had been arrested on suspicion of buying votes. Cristian Parvulescu, from the Pro-Democracy Association, expressed his conviction that vote-buying in the election was a widespread phenomenon. Numerous cases of electoral fraud—allegedly by all camps—came to light following the first round of the presidential election held November 22.
The current dispute has dispelled the hopes of Romanian and international financial circles that an end to the country’s internal political crisis is in sight. The prolonged crisis continues to place at risk a loan promised the impoverished country by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Romania has been without an effective government since the removal of the regime led by the Democratic Liberal Prime Minister Emil Boc following a vote of no confidence in mid-October. In the wake of the Boc government’s resignation, the country’s parliament and president were unable to agree on a successor administration. Then, at the beginning of November, a loan of €20 billion pledged by the IMF in March was suspended until a viable new government could be assembled. Romania desperately needs the IMF funds to cover its budget deficit.
Vivien Ashton, an adviser to the Bucharest stock exchange, expressed her concerns to the Associated Press about the negative impact of the crisis on investors: “In the eyes of advanced European democracies, vote rigging is the ultimate form of corruption because it indicates that the leadership is corrupt from top to bottom. It reinforces foreign views that the big business barons have absolute control of the Romanian political system and take no regard of what way the economy is heading. That is bad for business growth; no one wants to invest in such a climate.”
Prior to the elections the PSD and the neo-liberal PNL had forged an alliance proposing the mayor of Sibiu, Klaus Johannis, as new head of government. The proposal was vetoed by Basescu, who put forward his own candidate, who, in turn, was rejected by parliament.
Johannis belongs to a small party of the German minority in Romania and is little known to the public at large. Contrary to most Romanian politicians, however, Johannis has a reputation for being relatively honest. The PSD and PNL had reached an agreement whereby Johannis would remain in office only a few months so the government could implement unpopular austerity measures demanded by the IMF. Amongst the planned measures are wage cuts, tax increases and radical budget cuts.
In any event a government led or tolerated by Basescu would take a similar path. The Boc regime has already slashed the salaries of public service workers by over 20 percent and carried out a series of other antisocial policies.
Romania has experienced a 9 percent decline in economic output this year alone. Its ongoing and all-sided crisis, characterized by growing unemployment, declining wages, a lack of any social welfare protection, and a venal political elite thoroughly remote from the needs of the population, is a formula for violent social conflict in the months to come.
The US think tank Stratfor recently expressed its own fears in this regard. “Increased unrest is highly probable. The recession, combined with a high degree of economic uncertainty, will motivate many to take to the streets,” Stratfor commented.
Prior to the recent election, President Basescu and those around him had already been busy channeling social discontent along reactionary lines, calling on right-wing youth, for example, to demonstrate against the PSD and its allegedly “communist” policies.
Several hundred extreme right-wingers intervened during an election meeting held by Geoana in the town of Timisoara. The mob carried Romanian flags, chanted neo-fascist slogans, and tore up PSD election posters. A crowd of 500 ultra-right demonstrators also assembled in the Romanian capital of Bucharest, carrying banners that read “No more Communism” and “Long live Romania.”
These protests were stirred up by elements close to the government. Both presidential adviser Sebastian Lazaroiu and the designate education secretary Daniel Funeriu attended the Bucharest demonstration.
With Basescu at odds with the country’s bourgeois parties, he is increasingly turning towards openly fascistic organizations. His candidacy in the presidential election was supported by both the New Generation Party (PNG) and the Great Romania Party (PRM) led by Vadim Tudor. The PNG recently called for the setting up of ghettos for homosexuals and the anti-Semitic PRM demands that Romania annex parts of Moldava, Bulgaria and Ukraine.
The mobilization of such lumpen social elements is not new in Eastern Europe. In 2006 the conservative opposition in Hungary organized anti-government demonstrations in which ultra-right layers played a leading role. Also, in neighboring Moldava, neo fascist, pro-Western forces organized protests last spring against the country’s nominal “Communist Party” government.
Philippine president declares martial law in Maguindanao province
In a move that marks the further erosion of democratic rights in the Philippines, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo imposed martial law from December 4 over most of the province of Maguindanao on the southern island of Mindanao.
Arroyo cynically used the massacre of 57 people, including 31 journalists and media workers, on November 23 to justify her declaration. The armed forces have taken control of the province and dispatched heavily armed soldiers backed by armoured vehicles and war planes to hunt down members of the Ampatuan family and their private army that allegedly perpetrated the brutal murders.
On November 23, family members of Esmail Mangudadatu, a political rival of the Ampatuans, accompanied by lawyers and journalists, were travelling in a convoy to file his election papers for the post of Maguindanao governor. They were stopped outside Ampatuan town by dozens of gunmen, who forced to them to drive to a remote location off the highway then murdered them all and buried the bodies in pre-prepared graves. The victims were shot and hacked to death. Some of the women were raped and mutilated.
The massacre provoked widespread outrage in the Philippines and internationally, not least because the powerful Ampatuan family was allied to President Arroyo and had assisted her in winning her widely disputed victory in the 2004 elections. Allegations of election rigging and corruption in Maguindanao province were rife, reinforced by the fact that in a number of towns her opponent received no votes at all.
Arroyo immediately sought to distance herself from the massacre by expelling Ampatuan family members from her party, Lakas-Kampi. By declaring martial law and ordering a crackdown on the Ampatuan clan, that message has been further reinforced. While Arroyo is constitutionally barred from running from another term in the May 2010 elections, she is seeking a congressional seat and the Lakas-Kampi presidential candidate is polling behind his rivals at this stage.
So far about 150 people have been arrested in connection with the massacre. Local mayor Andal Ampatuan Jnr, who allegedly organised and was present at the killings, has been detained and charged with 25 counts of murder. His father, Maguindanao Governor Andal Ampatuan Snr, and his brother, Zaldy Ampatuan, the governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, have been removed from their posts and charged with rebellion. Family compounds have been raided for arms.
The army has called on an estimated 2,400 armed gunmen connected to the Ampatuan clan still at large in 16 of Maguindanao’s townships to surrender. Last Sunday, police commandos clashed briefly with armed Ampatuan loyalists in the township of Datu Unsay before armoured personnel carriers were sent in. On Tuesday, the air force flew two OV-10 bombers over the province in what a military spokesman described as “a persuasion flight”. The entire local police force has been replaced due to concerns about its allegiance to the Ampatuans.
The military has encouraged the growth of large private armies in Mindanao as a means of countering a long-running insurgency by Islamic separatists, particularly since Arroyo took power in 2001. The strategy of backing local warlords parallels that used in Iraq and Afghanistan by the US military, which also maintains a quasi-permanent presence of between 300 to 500 Special Forces troops in southern Mindanao under the guise of training the Philippine military in counterinsurgency. In 2006, Arroyo legimitised these private armies as Civilian Volunteer Organisations, operating in support of the security forces.
Andal Ampatuan Snr, who has been Maguindanao governor since 1998, has used his militia to transform much of the province into a family fiefdom ruled by fear and payoffs. Most of the main towns are run by mayors and deputy mayors who are either family members or close allies. The Ampatuan clan controls the finances of the mainly rural province—the country’s third poorest—with most of the revenue coming from a share in national taxes. The alliance with Arroyo guaranteed the family’s local power in return for delivering the province’s votes to her party.
The declaration of martial law for the first time since the fall of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 has far broader ramifications than the crushing of a local warlord and has already provoked considerable opposition. Under the revised 1987 constitution, martial law can be invoked only to deal with a rebellion or a foreign invasion and can be extended beyond 60 days only with congressional approval. Martial law suspends civil rights, including habeas corpus, thus allowing for arbitrary detention with charge.
Arroyo absurdly claimed that martial law is necessary to put down “a public uprising” in Maguindanao—that is, by a “rebellion” by a loyal political ally who has worked hand-in-hand with the armed forces. The constitutionality of Arroyo’s declaration of martial law was challenged in the Supreme Court on Monday, but the judges ruled against granting a temporary restraining order. Critics have pointed out that charging Andal Ampatuan Snr and other family members with rebellion might turn out to be a blessing in disguise: the charge is notoriously difficult to prove and, as a political crime, might clear the way for pardons.
The martial law declaration is currently being discussed in a joint session of Congress, which met on Wednesday and Thursday and is due to vote next Tuesday. Under the constitution, the session is able to question key officials for up to 20 hours but no debate is allowed and discussion on any challenge to the declaration is strictly limited. While a majority of senators oppose the imposition of martial law, Arroyo’s supporters control the House. The joint session is expected to approve the measure.
The declaration of martial law sets a dangerous precedent. Arroyo has already declared that she will maintain military rule over Maguindanao province for as long as necessary to deal with the so-called uprising. If the November 23 massacre can be leveraged into a “rebellion” then a range of pretexts can be manufactured to justify military rule in other areas.
From the outset of her presidency, Arroyo has rested heavily on the military. She came to power in 2001 in what amounted to a constitutional coup against the elected president Joseph Estrada. After a lengthy political crisis involving corruption allegations against Estrada, a “Peoples Power” movement was engineered with the assistance of various Stalinist and “left” groupings. With the backing of the military, sections of big business and the Supreme Court, Arroyo, then the vice-president, was installed as Estrada’s replacement.
Arroyo won the 2004 presidential election, but the result was widely disputed. She barely survived a concerted attempt to have her impeached in 2005 over corruption allegations involving her husband and evidence that she had attempted to directly influence the 2004 election. Her support plummetted after tapes emerged of a purported conversation with a senior election official about rigging the result.
According to recent polls, Arroyo is the most unpopular president in Philippine history. Her administration has driven through pro-market measures that have only deepened the divide between rich and poor. Her presidency is also notorious for the hundreds of political murders of journalists, leftists and non-government organisation activists that are widely believed to have been carried out by the military.
Campaigning for the elections next May has already begun. The Maguindanao massacre is a clear warning that political violence will be extensive as the rival families that control the country’s economic and political life seek to shore up their positions, amid a worsening economic crisis. Such conditions may well provide the pretext for Arroyo to extend martial law and exploit it for her own political purposes.
More fundamentally, the declaration of military rule is a sharp warning of the type of measures that will be used after the election to deal with any opposition, particularly from the working class, to the deepening attacks on living standards and democratic rights.
President Obama and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo Talk to the Press
President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize speech has been hailed virtually unanimously across the entire spectrum of the American political establishment.
Bristling with imperialist arrogance, Obama’s speech amounted to a full-throated defense of US aggression and a brief for the unlimited use of military violence to recolonize large parts of the world. Delivered by a president who only a week before had announced an escalation of the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan that will lead to the deaths of many thousands, the speech essentially asserted the right of the United States to invade any country in the world.
“The instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace,” Obama insisted. The US, he said, has the right to "act unilaterally if necessary" and to launch wars whose purpose "extends beyond self-defense or the defense of one nation against an aggressor." This was a reassertion of the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemptive war, which is a violation of international law.
Obama referred to the historical concept of “just war,” which maintains that wars must be waged only in self-defense, must employ proportional force and do so in a manner that avoids civilian casualties. He then said it was necessary to “think in new ways” about these notions, implying that such quaint ideas had to be rejected and the world had to accept the right of the US and other imperialist powers to inflict death and destruction on targeted populations as they saw fit.
Obama was not just defending the ongoing wars in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. As in his December 1 West Point speech, he made clear that these are only the first of many future wars. Speaking in Oslo, he singled out as potential targets a series of countries, including Iran, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Congo, Zimbabwe and Myanmar.
In an implicit threat to rival powers, Obama made a point of referring to the US as "the world's sole military superpower.”
The White House clearly decided to use Obama’s Nobel acceptance speech as an opportunity to stage an international defense of American militarism and imperialist war. It was confident that the different factions of the US political and media establishment could be brought on board behind a policy—dubbed by media commentators the “Obama Doctrine”—that both reiterates and extends that elaborated by the Bush administration.
On the right, the speech won the support of the former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, House Minority Leader John Boehner, Karl Rove and Sarah Palin, among others. One Republican strategist, Bradley Blakeman, remarked, "The irony is that George W. Bush could have delivered the very same speech. It was truly an American president's message to the world."
The Wall Street Journal wrote that the speech put paid any notion that Obama would give a "wooly-headed address about peace in our time." Instead, Obama "stated clearly that sometimes war is necessary…”
“Congratulations, Mr. President," wrote the organ of the Republican right.
The New York Times, the voice of American liberalism, said the speech was "appropriately humble" as well as "somber and soaring," It drew particular attention to Obama's defense of the war in Afghanistan as "morally just and strategically necessary."
Hastening to align itself with the imperialist establishment and declare its support for the speech was the Nation magazine, the main organ of what passes for “left” liberalism. John Nichols, one of the magazine’s principal commentators, in a blog entry published almost immediately after the speech and featured as the lead item on the magazine’s web site, wrote that it was "an exceptionally well-reasoned and appropriately humble address."
Nichols gushed, "The president's frankness about the controversies and concerns regarding the award of a Peace Prize to a man who just last week ordered 30,000 US new troops into the Afghanistan quagmire, and the humility he displayed…offered a glimpse of Obama at his best."
"As such," he continued, "the speech was important and, dare we say, hopeful."
In an interview on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” news program, the Nation’seditor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, praised the speech’s supposed "humility and grace." The host of the show, evidently expecting more criticism, noted that vanden Heuvel "seemed to be resolving the conflict between the wartime president…and the speech about peace rather easily…”
Vanden Heuvel responded with blather about the "complexity" of American life. It was a "complex speech," she said, and she was "interested in its complexity."
Contrary to vanden Heuvel, there was nothing “humble” or “graceful” about Obama’s speech. Nor was it complex. It was an open brief for unrestrained aggression and colonial oppression.
There should be no confusion as to the position of the Nation and the privileged upper-middle-class layers for which the magazine speaks, including former radicals and one-time critics of US imperialism. They have moved squarely into the camp of American imperialism. They support Obama’s wars in Central Asia and Iraq and, more generally, the efforts of the United States to assert global hegemony.
In the run-up to the 2008 elections, the Nation was among the most enthusiastic supporters of the Obama campaign, presenting his victory as the first stage in a radical reform and revitalization of American democracy. It vouched for Obama’s supposedly antiwar credentials.
One year later, the candidate of “change” and “hope” presides over a right-wing administration that is expanding US military aggression while it bails out Wall Street and attacks the jobs and living standards of the working class.
The unmasking of Obama before the entire world has not in any way lessened the support he receives from the Nation. On the contrary, the coming to power of an African-American president has served as the vehicle for American liberalism, including its supposedly “left” wing, which long ago abandoned any serious reform agenda and rejected class as the basic category of social life in favor of race, gender and other categories of identity politics, to lurch further to the right.
It has provided the means by which the Nation has completed its passage into the camp of American imperialism and political reaction.
Remarking on Obama’s speech, Walter Russell Mead, the Henry Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, remarked, “If Bush had said these things the world would be filled with violent denunciations. When Obama says them, people purr.”
The “purring” of the Nation comes at a time of growing popular opposition to the Obama administration and its policies. In his speech, Obama himself made reference to the fact that his expansion of war is deeply unpopular, noting the “disconnect between the efforts of those who serve and the ambivalence of the population.” He made clear, however, that this “disconnect” will have absolutely no effect on the policy of his government.
What will happen as the “disconnect” turns into anger and opposition? How will the Nation respond? Its greatest concern is the growth of a political movement that breaks free of the Democratic Party. While it responds now with lies and political hucksterism, under different conditions the Nation will support repression—the purring kitten will turn out to have sharp claws.
The evolution of the Nation underscores the fact that a genuine movement against imperialist war must develop in opposition to the defenders of the Obama administration, the Democratic Party and American capitalism.
As the economic crisis intensifies and aggressive war expands, the working class will emerge as the leading political force in the opposition to war and imperialism. The critical task is the construction of a political leadership based on the understanding that imperialist war is rooted in the capitalist system, and that the fight against war must be an international struggle linked to the socialist reorganization of society.
Como ya informó Pravda el 7 de diciembre tampoco salió elegido presidente en segunda votación M.Lupu, candidato de la gobernante alianza “Por la integración europea”. De acuerdo con la Constitución, debería disolverse el parlamente y convocarse elecciones anticipadas. Sin embargo los comunistas, que se encuentran ahora en la oposición parlamentaria, no están de acuerdo con la interpretación de la correspondiente norma constitucional que hacen los gobernantes liberales de derecha.
La derecha considera que las elecciones deben celebrarse no antes del otoño del año que viene, cuando haya pasado un año desde que se celebraran las últimas elecciones parlamentarias. Para ello basan su argumentación en el artículo 85 de la Constitución, donde se dice, que a lo largo de un año, el parlamento solo puede disolverse una vez. Aseguran que cabe entender el año, como el periodo de tiempo transcurrido desde la última disolución del parlamento. Los comunistas por su parte, consideran que el texto constitucional se refiere al año en curso del calendario, que comienza el 1 de enero: En su opinión, las elecciones anticipadas al parlamento, pueden ser convocadas en cualquier fecha partir del 1 de enero de 2010. Y no contemplan otorgar a la alianza de gobierno ni un día extra.
Los comunistas están decididos a dirigirse al Tribunal Constitucional de la república para impugnar la pretensión del gobierno de demorar la convocatoria de las elecciones anticipadas.
Al mismo tiempo, los liberales de derecha se están esforzando al máximo, para que no convocar ningún tipo de elecciones anticipadas. Con este fin, se ha creado una comisión constitucional, que buscará introducir modificaciones en la Constitución, para que las elección de presidente se pueda hacer mediante sufragio universal. El líder de la derecha Mihai Guimpu, actual presidente del Congreso, ha llegado a declarar que no permitirá ningún tipo de elecciones anticipadas. Los comunistas lo consideran inaceptable, pues sería una violación flagrante de la constitución. Anuncian que se dirigirán a los líderes de los partidos que integran la alianza, exigiéndoles que aclaren su posición personal, con respecto a las declaraciones anticonstitucionales y al actitud de Ghimpu.
“Lo único que puede hacer este -en gran medida – ilegítimo parlamento, es aprobar los presupuestos y el seguro médico obligatorio para el 2010. Después lo único que cabe es disolver inmediatamente la cámara; la cuenta atrás para la disolución empezó el 7 de diciembre”- declaró V.Mishin, uno de los líderes del Partido de los Comunistas de la República de Moldavia, y jurista de profesión.
También expuso la postura oficial del partido, que pretende no solo dirimir las iniciativas de la alianza en el Constitucional, sino invocar la intervención de institutos independientes de derecho, y la valoración internacional de la burda violación de la Constitución por el órgano legislativo supremo de Moldavia, en manos de la derecha.
Lev Leonov es corresponsal de Pravda en Chisinau, Moldavia.
Recordemos que la derecha está en el poder porque en 2009 a los comunistas que entonces tenían la mayoría parlamentaria les faltó un voto para que su candidata obtuviera los 61 votos necesarios en el parlamento. Como manda la Constitución hubo que convocar nuevamente elecciones para el 29 de julio donde el PC pese a seguir siendo con diferencia la fuerza más votada, perdió la mayoría al unirse todos los partidos de oposición. Actualmente la derecha gobernante (integrada por 4 partidos) tiene 53 diputados y los comunistas 48. El presidente en funciones es el presidente de la cámara, Guimpu, ultrarreaccionario “pitiyanqui” y agente de Bucarest.
Muchos analistas confiaban en que este 7 de diciembre los comunistas “entrarían en razón” y en aras de la gobernabilidad y la estabilidad, al menos algunos romperían la disciplina y votarían a su ex correligionario y chaquetero Lupu, que hace un año era uno de los aspirantes a ocupar la presidencia como candidato de los comunistas, y ocupaba la presidencia del parlamento. Pero por lo visto de poco ha servido la ronda de visitas por las embajadas de algunos países de la UE, por la de EEUU y la de Rusia, que ha tenido que hacer el ex presidente y líder de los comunistas moldavos Vladimir Voronin. El intento de compra de voluntades ha fracasado y los comunistas han devuelto el golpe a sus adversarios políticos.
