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November 5, 2003
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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November
5, 2003
Centaurs from Dusk
to Dawn
Remilitarization
and the Guatemalan Elections
By SIMON HELWEG-LARSEN
These final months of 2003 carry a mood of both
hope and fear in Guatemala. A profound remilitarization, building
even since the inauguration of a post-war environment in 1996,
has been both accentuated and accelerated on the path towards
the November 9 elections.
Writing in 1999, Susanne Jonas labeled
the peace-resisting elements of Guatemalan society "centaurs."
The optimism of immediate post-war Guatemala had given way to
widespread disillusionment by that time, and the centaurs of
the economic elite and the military had been successful in hijacking
implementation of the peace accords. Still, the doves opposing
the centaurs had not given in. "The dinosaur is still there,"
wrote Jonas, "but it is not alone."
The dinosaur may not have been alone,
but the encroaching projects of the peace resisters have come
to define the new Guatemala. Remilitarization has been realized
through the return of the military to politics, through the legalization
of impunity, and through the reorganization of paramilitaries
and clandestine security bodies.
Being the critical moment in the reinsertion
of the military, the upcoming elections have opened a new space
for hope unseen since the time of the peace accords. What is
at stake is the management of this violent society on the verge,
but fear of what could happen has given rise to organization
and optimism.
The clash of ideologies is symbolically
demonstrated in the showdown of two leaders from the 1980s: 1982-1983
dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt seeks the presidency
through the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), while Rodrigo
Asturias, aka guerrilla commander Gaspar Ilom, is running for
the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG). Both the
right and left are divided; the right over how best to achieve
remilitarization, the left over how to oppose it. Guatemalan
society, however, is organizing against the return of Ríos
Montt, either through support for Oscar Berger and the economic
elite, or for the center-left Alvaro Colom and his center-right
National Unity for Hope (UNE).
Still, the future of the military in
Guatemala is undeniably on the agenda of all candidates. Many
members of the armed forces have entered politics, representing
the interests and investments of the officers. In this election,
each of the dozens of parties is running ex-military officers
for at least one position; for their part, the left-wing Alliance
for a New Nation (ANN) and the URNG have ex-guerrillas for candidates.
The style of politico-military organization
has changed since the 1980s, however. In their heyday, the (mainly)
unified military presented a much more open and sinister project
of national control through democratic façade. In contrast,
this year's elections are characterized by a free-for-all, with
individuals and alliances reaching for their respective slice
of the Guatemalan pie.
Since 2000, Alfonso Portillo's FRG administration
has fought to enhance this contested atmosphere of military power.
On the one hand, legislation under the majority FRG Congress,
with General Ríos Montt as its president, has favored
impunity and military benefits. On the other, the FRG have promoted
the illicit activity of its power base.
In the 1980s, the military began investing
its "counterinsurgent" capital in legal activity such
as finance and industry, but also in the more suitable heavy-handed
organized crime. The expansion of the lucrative cocaine market
coincided with the times of unchecked military power, and today
many Guatemalan cartels remain in the control of generals and
colonels. In the United States, Guatemala earned the status
of noncooperation in the war on drugs under the FRG, and some
FRG officials have been banned from entering the US for their
involvement in narcotics trafficking.
In addition, violence in Guatemala has
recently reassumed the dark form of the 1980s. Organized clandestine
security bodies have resurfaced, most visibly in a wave of targeted
political assassinations and in violent riots supporting Ríos
Montt.
The environment of support for organized
crime and political violence, coupled with complete disinterest
in social investment, has allowed gang violence and common crime
to flourish. By October 3, 2,832 Guatemalans had been murdered
in 2003, including over 100 young women whose bodies appeared
with signs of torture and rape. Kidnappings increased dramatically,
from 35 in 2001, to 111 in 2002, to 250 in the first nine months
of 2003. All told, this has been the most violent year since
the end of the civil war.
The military-the actual armed, uniformed
troops-has been reinserted in Guatemalan society. Far from the
limited role envisioned under the peace accords, the armed forces
are once again involved in police activity, patrolling areas
of heavy crime and heading up major operations. Another line
was crossed this April, when the military violently displaced
the peasant community of El Maguey in order to gain access to
their land.
In addition, the increased political
and armed activity of the military has inspired the reorganization
of dismantled groups. Members of the government-created paramilitary
Civilian Self-Defense Patrols (PAC) reorganized in 2003, demanding
government compensation for their services during the war. The
PAC were officially eliminated under the peace accords, but have
resurfaced as an organized, violent, and successful entity.
Roadblocks, mob violence, and even the recent kidnapping of four
journalists have led to the approval and initiation of a $310
million (US) compensation program.
This multi-faceted violence has culminated
on the eve of the elections. The FRG attack and intimidate for
votes, clandestine groups murder opposition candidates, and the
ex-PAC kidnap journalists to pressure for compensation. But
through this cloud of violence shines the fact that many of the
aspects of remilitarization are merely proposals, and the violence
surrounding them only points to their contested, rather than
consolidated, nature. The ex-PAC only recently began organizing,
clandestine groups resurfaced in the context of the elections,
FRG violence is largely a ploy for continued power, and the precedent
of military withdrawal has already been established under the
peace accords. The rejection of Ríos Montt and the FRG
could avoid proper solidification of these emerging trends.
Thus, in spite of living in the worst
environment since the end of the armed conflict, Guatemala is
experiencing its second period of hope. Grassroots organizing
and unity have been strengthened under these conditions, and
voter turnout is expected to reach new heights. The Guatemalan
centaurs are soon to have their future decided, the beginning
of their dusk or dawn.
Simon Helweg-Larsen writes frequently from Guatemala, where he works
with human rights organizations. He can be reached at: simonhelweglarsen@yahoo.ca
Weekend
Edition Features for Oct. 25 / 26, 2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce
Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler
/ Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets'
Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
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