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Today's
Stories
January 24/5, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
The Fog of Cop Out: McNamara 10, Morris
0
January
23, 2004
Yonathan Shapira
An Israeli Pilot Speaks Out
Standard
Schaefer
Italian Philosopher Giorgio Agamben
Protests US Travel Policy
Josh
Frank
In Defense of Polluters: Howard Dean's
Vermont
William
A. Cook
Rule by the Corrupt and the Capricious
January
22, 2004
Sam
Smith
Howards End?
Patricia
Koyce Wanniski
Lost in Space
Alexander
Lukin
Putin and the Clans
Katherine
van Wormer
Dry Drunk Confirmed: O'Neill's Revelations
and Bush's Mind
Forrest
Hylton
The Prisoner, the President and the Mafia
January
21, 2004
Mazin
Qumsiyeh
Spring in Palestine
Ron
Jacobs
Drive, He Said
Dave Lindorff
Iraq Election Blowback
January 20, 2004
Stan
Goff
State of the Union, MLK and 30 mm DU: Another
Embittered Rant by a Former Soldier
Dave Louthan
Inside the Mad Cow Plant: a Worker Speaks
Out
Cockburn
/ St. Clair
Havoc in the Cornfields
January 19, 2004
Justin E. H. Smith
Inside
America's Prisons: From Corrections to Retribution
Richard W. Behan
The GOP, Inc.
Ray McGovern
Bush's
State of the Union: Humility or More Hyperbole?
Werther
SOTUS:
the Stalin Moment of America's Nomenklatura
Phillip Cryan
Media Collusion in Colombia's War
Lee Sustar
A New Strategy to Reverse Labor's Decline?
Arthur Versluis
Great Lakes as Commodity: Privatizing Water
Uri Avnery
Anti--Semitism:
a Practical Manual
Steve Perry
Fresh Crack from Hawkeye State
January 17 / 18, 2004
Fadi Kiblawi and Will
Youmans
The
Use and Abuse of MLK Jr by Israel's Apologists
Joshua Muldavin
and Joseph Nevins
Blaming the Symptoms
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bad Days at Indian Point: Inside America's Most Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Brian Cloughley
Iron Hammers in Iraq
Saul Landau
Fog of War: Vietnam and Iraq
M. Shahid Alam
Lerner, Said and the Palestinians
Richard Manning
Food Poisoning as Background Noise
Marjorie Cohn
The Guantanamo Concentration Camp
Mike Whitney
Scalia and Opus Dei: Radicals on the Court
Sadik Kassim
Meet Our New Saddam: Islam Karimov
Carol Norris
Arnold
and Bush's Numbers Don't Add Up
Joe Quandt
Suicide
Bombers: The Clash of Absurdities
David Krieger
Imagining MLK Jr at 75
Bruce Jackson
Making War, Making Movies
Ron Jacobs
Revolution in the Air: a review
Richard Edmondson
Rupert Murdoch and My Sister
Richard Forno
Apologizing for Preemption: Evil, Perle and Frum
Poets' Basement
Holt, Mickey Z, Albert & Guthrie
January 16, 2004
Kathy Kelly
A
Visit to Umm Qasr Prison
William S. Lind
More
Thoughts on 4th Generation Warfare
Gillian Russom
So.
Cal Grocery Strikers Speak Out: "We Need Action!"
Ari Shavit
Survival
of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris
Adi Ophir
Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion: a Response to Benny Morris
Dave Lindorff
The General's Henchman: Michael Moore Smears Kucinich
Steve Perry
Iowa Death Trip 2
January 15, 2004
Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity
Memo
to the President: Your State of the Union Address
John Chuckman
Dry
Hole in the Oval Office: President from Podunk Drilling, Inc
Chris Floyd
Mind Over Matter
Gil--Scott Heron
Whitey on the Moon
Gary Leupp
The
Silk Road: Random Thoughts on the Bam Earthquake and Satan
January 14, 2004
Greg Moses
Happy
Birthday, Dr. King: To Write Off the South is to Surrender to Bigots
Kurt Nimmo
Bush and the Supremes: Amputating the Bill of Rights
Dave Lindorff
Preview of Iowa? Pennsylvania Straw Poll Spells Trouble for Traditional
Dems (and Dean)
Jason Leopold
O'Neill Claims Backed by Rumsfeld / Wolfowitz War Letters to Clinton
Alexander Cockburn
Bush,
Oil and Iraq: Some Truth at Last
January 13, 2004
William S. Lind
How
2004 Looks from Potsdam
M. Junaid Alam
Do Iraqis Have a Right to Resist?
Mickey Z
Snipers:
No Nuts in Iraq
Adolfo Gilly
Chonchocoro:
The Prisoner and the Presidents
Steve Perry
You Love God, Right?
January 12, 2004
Ben Tripp
No
Stan for the Kurds
Norman Solomon
The
Dixie Trap: Democrats and the South
Mike Whitney
O'Neill's Revenge
Jason Leopold
From the Very First Instant It Was About Iraq
Uri Avnery
Syria's
Peace Proposal
January 10 / 11, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Bush
as Hitler? Let's Be Fair
Susan Davis
Dangerous Books
Diane Christian
On Lying and Colin Powell
Lisa Viscidi
Exhumations: Unearthing Guatemala's Macabre Past
Daniel Estulin
Destroying History in Iraq
Saul Landau
Homeland Anxiety
Elaine Cassel
Who's Winning the War on Civil Liberties?
Bruce Jackson
Making the Shit List
Christopher Brauchli
Baptizing Hitler's Ghost
Francis A. Boyle
The Deep Scars of War
Lee Ballinger
Cold Sweat: Sweatshops and the Music Industry
Patrick W. Gavin
Hillary's Slur: Mrs. Lott?
Ramzy Baroud
What Invaders Have in Common
Michael Schwartz
Inside the California Grocery Strike
Gary Johnson
An Interview with Former Heavyweight Champ Greg Page
Dave Zirin
An Interview with Marvin Miller on Unions and Baseball
Mark Hand
A Review of Resistance: My Life for Lebanon
Poets' Basement
Thomas, Daley, Curtis, Guthrie and Albert
January 9, 2004
David Lindorff
The
Misers of War: Troop Strength and Chintzy Bonuses
Kurt Nimmo
Saddam's Defense: Summon Bush Sr. to the Stand
Mike Whitney
Orange Jumpsuits for the Bush Clan?: The Carnegie Report on Iraq's Non--existent
WMDs
Deb Reich
Palestinians and Israelis: This War is Unwinnable
David Vest
Disabled
Vets Fire Back at Rumsfeld
January 8, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israeli
Refuseniks Sentenced to Jail
Lenni Brenner
Dr.
Dean and the Godhead
Ray McGovern
Bush: Driving Without Breaks
Mark Scaramella
Inside
the DA's Office: Lies, Errors and Tedium
Yves Engler
Bush's Mexican Gambit
James Hollander
Journalists
Under Fire: the Death of José Couso in Baghdad
January 7, 2004
Democracy Now!
Uncharitable
Care: How Hospitals are Gouging and Even Arresting the Uninsured
Greg Weiher
The
Bush Administration's Ongoing Intelligence Problem
Ben Tripp
The Word of the Year, 2003
Dave Lindorff
Dean and His Democratic Detractors
Michael Leon
The NYT Does Chomsky
Bob Boldt
God Talk
Ramon Ryan
Small
Victories and Long Struggles: the 10th Anniversary of the Zapatista
Uprising
January 6, 2004
Dave Lindorff
RNC
Plays the Hitler Card: MoveOn Shouldn't Apologize for Those Ads
Ron Jacobs
Drugs
in Uniform: Hashish and the War on Terrorism
Josh Frank
Coffee and State Authority in Colombia
Doug Giebel
Permanent Bases: Leave Iraq? Hell No, We Won't Go
John Chuckman
Sick Puppies: David Frum's New Neo--Con Manifesto
Rannie Amiri
The Politics of the Iranian Earthquake
John L. Hess
A
Record to Dissent From
Thacher Schmid
A Cheesehead's Musings on the Sunday NYT
David Price
"Like
Slaves": Anthropological Thoughts on Occupation
January 5, 2004
Al Krebs
How
Now Mad Cow!
Kathy Kelly
Squatting
in Baghdad's Bomb Craters
Jordy Cummings
The Dialectic of the Kristol Family: Putting the Neo in the Cons
Fran Shor
Mad Human Disease: Chewing the Fat Down on the Farm
Fidel Castro
"We Shall Overcome": On the 45th Anniversary of the Cuban
Revolution
Gary Leupp
North
Korea for Dummies
January 3 / 4, 2004
Brian Cloughley
Never
Mind the WMDs, Just Look at History
Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan
The Wrong War at the Wrong Time
William Cook
Failing to Respond to 9/11
Glen Martin
Jesus
vs. the Beast of the Apocalypse
Robert Fisk
Iraqi Humor Amid the Carnage
Ilan Pappe
The Geneva Bubble
Walter Davis
Robert Jay Lifton, or Nostalgia
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft vs. the Left
Mike Whitney
The Padilla Case
Steven Sherman
On Wallerstein's The Decline of American Power
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Taiwan Hypocrisy
William Blum
Codework Orange!
Mitchel Cohen
Learning from Che Guevara
Seth Sandronsky
Mad Cow and Main Street USA
Bruce Jackson
Conversations with Leslie Fiedler
Standard Schaefer
Poet Carl Rakosi Turns 100
Ron Jacobs
Sir Mick
Adam Engel
Hall of Hoaxes
Poets' Basement
Jones, Albert & Curtis
January 2, 2004
Stan Cox
Red
Alert 2016
Dave Lindorff
Beef, the Meat of Republicans
Jackie Corr
Rule and Ruin: Wall Street and Montana
Norman Solomon
George Will's Ethics: None of Our Business?
David Vest
As the Top Wobbleth
January 1, 2004
Randall Robinson
Honor
Haiti, Honor Ourselves
David Krieger
Looking
Back on 2003
Robert Fisk
War Takes an Inhuman Twist: Roadkill Bombs
Stan Goff
War,
Race and Elections
Hammond Guthrie
2003 Almaniac
Website of the Day
Embody Bags
December 31, 2003
Ray McGovern
Don't
Be Fooled Again: This Isn't an Independent Investigation
Kurt Nimmo
Manufacturing Hysteria
Robert Fisk
The Occupation is Damned
Mike Whitney
Mad Cows and Downer George
Alexander Cockburn
A Great Year Ebbed, Another Ahead
December 30, 2003
Michael Neumann
Criticism
of Israel is Not Anti--Semitism
Annie Higgins
When
They Bombed the Hometown of the Virgin Mary
Alan Farago
Bush Bros. Wrecking Co.: Time Runs Out for the Everglades
Dan Bacher
Creatures from the Blacklight Lagoon: From Glofish to Frankenfish
Jeffrey St. Clair
Hard
Time on the Killing Floor: Inside Big Meat
Willie Nelson
Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?
December 29, 2003
Mark Hand
The
Washington Post in the Dock?
David Lindorff
The
Bush Election Strategy
Phillip Cryan
Interested Blindness: Media Omissions in Colombia's War
Richard Trainor
Catellus Development: the Next Octopus?
Uri Avnery
Israel's
Conscientious Objectors
December 27 / 28, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
A
Journey Into Rupert Murdoch's Soul
Kathy Kelly
Christmas Day in Baghdad: A Better World
Saul Landau
Iraq
at the End of the Year
Dave Zirin
A Linebacker for Peace & Justice: an Interview with David Meggysey
Robert Fisk
Iraq
Through the American Looking Glass
Scott Burchill
The Bad Guys We Once Thought Good: Where Are They Now?
Chris Floyd
Bush's Iraq Plan is Right on Course: Saddam 2.0
Brian J. Foley
Don't Tread on Me: Act Now to Save the Constitution
Seth Sandronsky
Feedlot Sweatshops: Mad Cows and the Market
Susan Davis
Lord
of the (Cash Register) Rings
Ron Jacobs
Cratched Does California
Adam Engel
Crumblecake and Fish
Norman Solomon
The Unpardonable Lenny Bruce
Poets' Basement
Cullen and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Activism Through Music
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
|
Weekend
Edition
January 24 / 5, 2004
Enter Berger
Signs
of Hope in Guatemala
By SIMON HELWEG-LARSEN
Public
optimism is usually best held at bay during the early period of a new
presidency, as sweet words and empty promises flow quickly to assure
and distract the constituency. In the seven days that Oscar Berger has
held the Guatemalan presidency, however, his outline for the next four
years in Guatemala have been impressive, taking what appear to be genuine
steps towards demilitarization and renewed respect for the social sector.
Berger’s most significant action since taking office on January
14, 2004 has been his position on the military. The new president has
proposed to reduce the armed forces by 10,000 soldiers, nearly one-third
of the current 31,000, and to combine the air force and navy under one
central command center. Berger has also announced that he will cut military
spending to Q1.268 billion ($158.5 million), limiting the budget of
the armed forces to 0.66% of the GDP as called for under the peace accords.
(1) Additionally, Berger has offered to modify the Escuela Politecnica
military training institution to allow for public attendance. (2)
Berger has also reached out to the Guatemalan social sector in an attempt
to repair damage done over the last four years by the Guatemalan Republican
Front (FRG). Most symbolically, Berger offered a government position
to Rigoberta Menchu, the Nobel Peace Prize winning indigenous activist
who fled the country for Mexico after receiving multiple death threats
in 2001. Menchu accepted the role of “goodwill ambassador to the
peace accords,” and will be in charge of monitoring government
progress on the accords. (3)
The office of the Guatemalan Human Rights Ombudsman (PDH) has also been
offered a helping hand after enduring FRG persecution. The PDH was threatened
and attacked for their criticism of heavy-handed FRG tactics in the
2003 election campaign, and FRG officials were linked to the vandalization
of the PDH headquarters in September. Now the annual budget, which has
been fixed at Q40 million ($5 million) for eight years, may be increased
to as much as Q106 million ($13.25 million). (4)
The conservative Berger is even taking steps towards budget reform to
support increased social spending. The new president has announced a
plan to renegotiate the foreign debt, transferring payments to a Citibank
loan and freeing an additional Q3 billion ($375 million) per year to
invest in health, education and security. (5) Berger also expressed
the desire to restart the largely ignored Fiscal Pact, an agreement
on the financial management of the country drawn up between the government,
the business sector, and grassroots social organizations in 2000. (6)
The past week has also seen advances in three major cases against FRG
human rights abuses. On January 18, Elvia Domitila Morales de López
and Vilma Vidalina Orellana Ruano were arrested for a October 2003 attack
on Rigoberta Menchu inside the building of the Constitutional Court.
A third person, Carlos Humberto Rivas García, fled his pending
arrest. (7)
On
January 19, four people linked to government security agencies were
identified as having violently attacked a journalist and his family
in June 2003. (8) And a court case opened against General Rios Montt
on January 20, the first since he l! ost his diplomatic immunity on
January 14. The General is accused of the murder of a journalist, due
to the his role in orchestrating the July 2003 “Black Thursday”
riots in which the reporter was killed. (9)
Such a series of positive actions on the part of the Guatemalan government
is unheard of in recent years, comparable only to the announcement of
the democratic transition in 1985 and the signing of the peace accords
in 1996. But, as in these other examples, the benevolence of the government
is far outweighed by the personal opportunism of the elite which it
represents.
The Guatemalan military and economic elite have been locked in a power
struggle since even before the democratic transition of 1985. While
the economic elite prevailed during the 1980s and 1990s, largely by
strengthening themselves through the neoliberal economic transition,
the military regained the presidency through Alfonso Portillo and the
FRG in 1999. During their four years in power the FRG successfully attacked
the economic elite, forcing open monopolies in order to invest savings
left over from the period of military dictatorships. The FRG regularly
used a strong hand across the country, and the deterioration of social
investmen! t and respect for human rights in Guatemala helped Oscar
Berger triumph over the FRG and Rios Montt’s presidential bid.
The oligarchy has returned to the presidency with Oscar Berger, and
the president’s early dedication to demilitarization and the social
sector should not distract from the right-wing reality of his power
base. The main function of the current government will be to repair
of the financially-damaged oligarchy, along side implementing the CAFTA,
FTAA and PPP free trade agreements, regardless of their impact on the
Guatemalan poor. As with the previous oligarchical administration (Alvaro
Arzu, 1996-1999), support for the peace accords may be limited to adhering
to financial reforms, the legacy of IMF inclusion in the negotiation
process.
But it would be unfair to say that Berger’s contributions to Guatemala
will be concentrated entirely among the very rich. In contrast to the
FRG, who would benefit from military participation in an increasingly
violent post-conflict society, Berger and the economic elite can only
advance through a peaceful and stable Guatemala capable of attracting
foreign investment. As such, the oligarchy has often supported the grassroots
political and social sectors since the end of the armed conflict, most
obviously through their alliance against Jorge Serrano’s 1993
self-coup.
Real progress such as land reform, a more even distribution of wealth,
or full compliance with the peace accords should not be expected. But
there is no doubt that Berger means to create an improved climate, and
through four years of peaceful governance the historically excluded
Guatemalans, the Maya, the campesinos, women, the landless, war victims
and returned refugees, can push slowly on to make a better Guatemala
as they have for decades, step by painful step.
Simon
Helweg-Larsen is a human rights worker and author living in
Central America. He can be reached at simonhelweglarsen@yahoo.ca
References
(1)
“Gasto militar sera reducido, dice Otto Perez.” Prensa Libre,
January 19, 2004.
(2)
“Oscar Berger pide austeridad.” Prensa Libre, January 21,
2004.
(3)
“Nobel Laureate to Join Guatemala Gov’t.” Associated
Press, January 17, 2004.
(4)
“Ofrece mejorar fondos a PDH.” Prensa Libre, January 20,
2004.
(5)
“Oscar Berger busca renegociar la deuda externa.” Prensa
Libre, January 14, 2004.
(6)
“Oscar Berger pide austeridad.” Prensa Libre, January 21,
2004.
(7) “Capturan a agresoras de Rigoberta Menchu.” Prensa Libre,
January 19, 2004.
(8)
“Identificados agresores de José Rubén Zamora.”
Prensa Libre, January 20, 2004.
(9)
“Piden captura de Ríos Montt por muerte de periodista.”
Prensa Libre, January 21, 2004.
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