Report from Havana: Talking With the FARC-EP’s Peace Commission

By Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual
April 12, 2013

Guerrilla members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

If there has ever been any question that the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) is essentially a political organization — one that took up arms guided by apolitical vision and will abandon them when a new political strategy leads them to do so — that question may be forever laid to rest by the words and conduct of the FARC’s peace delegation that is now at work in Havana.

There, in the sunny island which was the theatre of a revolution that changed Latin America and the world, the FARC has assembled a sizable team of negotiators.  That group has been in conversation with representatives of the Colombian government since November of last year.  The 30-member body shows the depth of the organization and the quality — both in human and political terms — of the individuals who have decided to stake their lives on forging a democratic and just Colombia.

“The FARC has always wanted peace,” guerrilla leader Ricardo Téllez explained to us in the lobby of the Hotel Habana Libre.  ”Since our beginnings in the distant year 1964, we’ve maintained that we are revolutionaries who seek peace for the country in the least painful manner, which the Colombian state has often violently closed off.”

Téllez’s assertion that the FARC is an organization long committed to pursuing peace is backed up by the group’s repeated efforts to bring the Colombian state to the negotiating table: in 1982 under the government of Belisario Betancur; in 1992 with the dialogues in Caracas and Tlaxcala; most recently in Caguán with president Andrés Pastrana.

In none of these cases, Téllez explained, was there a genuine desire for peace in the government.  In the Caguán process of 1999-2002, the government in fact chose to dialogue because of its difficult military situation and because of the rising social protest in the country.  The establishment’s real aim was to rearm, as they did with the notorious Plan Colombia, paid for and organized by the U.S.

“Now in Havana we have come looking for that same peace,” Téllez continued, “not because the FARC is defeated, not because we have difficulties; rather our military apparatus has been updated . . . and we are accustomed to [a modern] kind of war.”  Téllez maintains that what is correct in a situation in which neither guerrillas nor government can defeat the will of the other is that both should sit down, as equals, and look for a political and dialogued solution to the conflict.

Comandante Andrés Paris, also part of the team, illustrated in a separate interview the complex, multilevel character of the negotiating table by referring to other, unseen “tables.”  Apart from the principal negotiating table, in which the government and the guerrillas dialogue, there is a “mediatic table.”

“Immediately, there was put in motion a powerful [mediatic] machine, both Colombian and international, in perfect coordination, and it started to reproduce the clichés and stereotypes that have always been used against us, the FARC.”  This mediatic table is generally controlled by powerful business groups and represents a serious obstacle to the interests of the Colombian people to have a peace, according to Paris.

A third “table” is the military pressure on the guerrillas, because of president Juan Manuel Santos’s decision to continue the war during the dialogues.  ”We responded to this presidential announcement by doing a ceasefire [to which the government did not correspond].  What the government is doing with the military actions is criminal and dangerous, because of the possibility that one of those actions will be used as a pretext to get up from the table [and break the negotiations].”

Despite the adversity presented by military and mediatic interferences, the FARC’s delegation is united in a dream of a Colombia with long-lasting peace.  It is common for the FARC’s negotiators to maintain that the concept of peace needs a “last name” — meaning it should be referred to with the complete phrase “peace with social justice,” because the roots of the conflict lie in the extreme social injustice in the country, represented for example by its GINI index of .89 in the rural areas.

Yet what one learns from the FARC’s delegation is not just numbers, examples, and arguments.  There is also a powerful human narrative of lives given over to (and in some cases shattered by) a total devotion to the cause of the oppressed.  Many FARC members were motivated to join the guerrilla army when close friends were assassinated by state or paramilitary forces.  Others joined on seeing the extreme poverty in the country and the closure of other political channels for change.

Among the latter one may count the internationalist Alexandra Nariño (Tanja Nijmeijer) of Dutch origin, who incorporated herself after a long process of conscientization that began with a university exchange program that first brought her to Colombia.  In explaining her motivation she refers to the experience of seeing entire families living in the street, indigents looking through her garbage, and also the state terrorism exercised in places where she lived and on university students.

“All of us fighting in the guerrilla have our dreams . . . we are not war machines.”  What dreams does Alexandra Nariño have for Colombia’s future?  ”A country where all Colombians can live in peace, but a peace with education, a peace with food and health care . . . a country with equal opportunities for everybody, in which there is real and ample participation in politics.”

Source

An interview with north Koreans while traveling in the DPRK

The following article below was originally published by Fight Back! News, the news wing of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization:

April 6, 2013

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following interview that longtime Chicago activist Stansfield Smith conducted with Koreans in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The introduction, questions and explanations in brackets are by Smith.

I am an anti-war and Latin America solidarity activist in Chicago. I recently returned from a late March trip to north Korea [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)], along with 45 others, through Koryo Tours. On that tour I had the opportunity to discuss with the Korean tour guides their views on the current situation. I only recall the DPRK view mentioned here once in the corporate media, when Dennis Rodman returned with a message from new President Kim Jong. The message to President Obama was, “I don’t want war, call me.” Nobel Peace Prize winning President Obama refused to accept it, evidently preferring an escalating threat of a regional nuclear war to talking. I asked my Korean tour guides to be interviewed so I could present their views to U.S. people.

Has the DPRK made proposals for peaceful national reunification?

Yes, now we have options: the historic option of a federal republic, and the recent option. In our history we proposed three principles for reunification: that the north and south unite the country independently of foreign forces, that we reunify peacefully, and that we work together over the years to create the unity of the whole nation.

Our historic option is a federal republic: a central government concerned only with national defense and diplomacy, and two local governments, north and south, handling all other issues.

But recently the situation on the peninsula is deteriorating. There are no signs of resolving the issue. If south Korean provocations continue, war will break out and we are prepared to fight. Because the situation has deteriorated, that is why we invalidated the 1953 ceasefire agreement. What we need is a permanent peace treaty, so there will be no more war danger.

Now there is no contact between north and south. Now there are no phone lines between north and south, there is no hotline.

Now the U.S. and south Korea plan is that the DPRK will collapse. The situation continues to deteriorate. They are playing a dangerous game.

Japan is also very hostile. The present government is very right wing. It is trying to build a strong military using ‘dangerous’ DPRK as a pretext to justify turning its self-defense force into a regular army. Not only the DPRK, but many Asian countries are concerned with this right-wing Japanese resurgence.

The American people should ask the U.S. government to change its hostile policy. Make America aware of the real situation in the Korean peninsula. Ask the American government to sign a peace treaty and push for diplomatic ties with the DPRK.

Why did the DPRK feel the need to develop a nuclear bomb?

Koreans had to deal with the reality of nuclear weapons twice before. Many thousands of Koreans were used as slave labor by the Japanese in World War II and many of these were forced labor workers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb.

Later, in the U.S. war in Korea, U.S. General MacArthur wanted to drop 50-70 atomic bombs along the China-Korea border to create a belt of land people cannot live on or cross.

Later in the Pueblo incident in 1968, when the DPRK captured a U.S. spy ship in our waters, President Johnson sent aircraft carriers with nuclear weapons to Korea. And in 1969 when the U.S. E-C spy plane was shot down over our territory, the U.S. again threatened us with a nuclear attack.

The “Team Spirit” U.S.-south Korea war exercises from the 1970s to the 1990s practiced with using nuclear bombs.

The DPRK joined the International Atomic Energy Agency and became a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty member in 1985. We wanted to develop cooperation in the field of nuclear energy. Our purpose for joining was to be safe from nuclear attack. But the threat has continued.

In 1994 with our agreement with the U.S., we froze our nuclear program. In exchange, President Clinton and the U.S. promised to supply us with a light water reactor. As we now know, Clinton only made those promises because the U.S. thought the DPRK would collapse, and so did not need to honor the agreement. We allowed nuclear inspections until 1999, to show that our nuclear power was only for peaceful purposes. The U.S. broke the agreement in 2002 under Bush and we resumed using our nuclear power plant.

The Yugoslav war showed us that we need to defend ourselves. We learned from the U.S. that the U.S. has no justice, no fairness. The U.S. respects only power. So the DPRK developed nuclear weapons to have power.

The DPRK needs to allocate resources to meet people’s needs but must spend money on nuclear weapons to protect and defend our country. We learned the lesson in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan: be strong.

The DPRK negotiated with the U.S., but the U.S. broke agreements and increased sanctions five times. When the DPRK would agree to some terms, the U.S. would raise the ante. The U.S. had said we cannot have nuclear power, because we could use it for bombs. We cannot have satellites because the missiles we send them into space with can be used as military missiles. These they these things can have dual purpose, one civilian, one military. They deny us food because they say it can be used to feed the military. If we kept going along with this, they would say we cannot have kitchen knives because we could use them for fighting.

There are slave states and noble states. Noble states develop their own technological infrastructure, GPS, weather reporting, etc., so need satellites. These days satellites are used for many things. If your country doesn’t have your own technology, you end up a slave state, dependent on other countries. Noble countries are in control of their own development and have a future.

Maybe without nuclear weapons we could already have been attacked by the U.S. in a war. Now our people can live more peacefully. The people of the DPRK are proud we have nuclear weapons; they are a guarantee of peace. Only we on our own can safeguard the peace.

The U.S. has over 1000 nuclear weapons in south Korea – nuclear artillery, nuclear missiles, nuclear bombs, nuclear landmines.

The DPRK has called for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, but this call has been ignored. Now that we saw no choice but to develop nuclear weapons to defend ourselves, we are sanctioned. This is a double standard insulting to our people.

What do the people of the DPRK think of the U.S./UN sanctions? How do these sanctions affect the people here?

We have been used to coping with U.S. sanctions since 1945. Our people think the sanctions are a clear example of a double standard and a misuse of the UN Security Council. There is no justification for them. Sanctions were applied because of our nuclear bomb tests and satellite launches.

Since World War II there have been 9000 missile/satellite launches. Four were by the DPRK. There have been 2000 nuclear tests, three by the DPRK. But the UN never made a resolution or imposed sanctions against any country for doing that, only the DPRK.

This is a double standard by the UN. It is a misuse of the UN Security Council by the U.S. Other countries are like U.S. puppets to go along with this.

The sanctions affect every household, every individual in the DPRK. There are power cuts, a heating and energy shortage, a food problem. Even you visiting tourists are affected by the sanctions, as you see with your hotels. [in Pyongyang water and lights were only on certain hours of the day; in other towns it was even less]. There is a lack of oil and spare parts for machinery.

The sanctions threaten any country that trades with the DPRK, so that they must choose who they want to trade with, the DPRK or other countries. Our trade now is really only with China.

How is the food situation now and what role is the U.S. playing?

The food situation is still not satisfactory, and we are still trying to cover our basic food needs with the help of food imports and foreign aid. Repeated U.S. sanctions have stopped food aid. The sanctions have made the food situation worse.

At present U.S. NGOs [non-governmental organizations] give only some, limited, token medical aid and no food aid. For a period of seven to eight years there was no food aid from the U.S. The U.S. sanctions are interfering with solving the food situation. It has cut its food aid and even interferes with other countries providing food aid.

What is the main emphasis in the DPRK’s economic plan now [for the last several years the country had a military first policy]?

The DPRK now emphasizes two points: agricultural production and light industry. Light industry is what you call textiles, food processing, toys, furniture, shoes and so on. We want to invest and develop more these two areas. We want to improve the living standard of people. We focus on these two even if the situation is dangerous. Even if war is coming, we will focus on agriculture and light industry until war starts. We must work harder on developing agriculture and light industry.

Now with the nuclear bomb, the DPRK is a little safer and can turn from self-defense spending to light industry and consumer goods investment. You saw in Pyongyang a big conference of 10,000 delegates from light industries all over the country. They are here to discuss and exchange ideas about how to improve light industry, what has worked in their factories, what has problems, and how to solve them.

How are relations with south Korea since the Sunshine Policy? [Started by south Korean President Kim Dae Jung and continued by President Roh Moo-hyun, from the years 1998-2008. In this period of less chilly relations between north and south, the heads of state of the two countries met in 2000 and again in 2007. The Kaesong Industrial Park in the DPRK was opened and several thousand south Korean tourists visited the north.]

Since 2008 south Korea has shown only confrontation. There has been no cooperation. South Korea has broken all agreements we have made during the Sunshine policy. There is no more cooperation, no tourism from the south, no engagement. Now relations are only negative, there are no positive signs. This is because of both U.S. pressure and a south Korean decision. South Korea President Lee Myung-bak is a right-wing businessman, who changed the situation, just like Bush reversed Clinton’s even moderate degree of cooperation.

The present South Korea president is Park Geun-hye, daughter of south Korean military dictator Park Chung-hee , who was an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army. Cooperation has changed to confrontation. South Korea thinks military pressure on the north, combined with sanctions, will make the DPRK collapse.

Fidel Castro’s Reflections: The duty to avoid a war in Korea

April 5, 2013

A few days ago I mentioned the great challenges humanity is currently facing. Intelligent life emerged on our planet approximately 200,000 years ago, although new discoveries demonstrate something else.

This is not to confuse intelligent life with the existence of life which, from its elemental forms in our solar system, emerged millions of years ago.

A virtually infinite number of life forms exist. In the sophisticated work of the world’s most eminent scientists the idea has already been conceived of reproducing the sounds which followed the Big Bang, the great explosion which took place more than 13.7 billion years ago.

This introduction would be too extensive if it was not to explain the gravity of an event as unbelievable and absurd as the situation created in the Korean Peninsula, within a geographic area containing close to five billion of the seven billion persons currently inhabiting the planet.

This is about one of the most serious dangers of nuclear war since the October Crisis around Cuba in 1962, 50 years ago.

In 1950, a war was unleashed there [the Korean Peninsula] which cost millions of lives. It came barely five years after two atomic bombs were exploded over the defenseless cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which, in a matter of seconds, killed and irradiated hundreds of thousands of people.

General Douglas MacArthur wanted to utilize atomic weapons against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Not even Harry Truman allowed that.

It has been affirmed that the People’s Republic of China lost one million valiant soldiers in order to prevent the installation of an enemy army on that country’s border with its homeland. For its part, the Soviet army provided weapons, air support, technological and economic aid.

I had the honor of meeting Kim Il Sung, a historic figure, notably courageous and revolutionary.

If war breaks out there, the peoples of both parts of the Peninsula will be terribly sacrificed, without benefit to all or either of them. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was always friendly with Cuba, as Cuba has always been and will continue to be with her.

Now that the country has demonstrated its technical and scientific achievements, we remind her of her duties to the countries which have been her great friends, and it would be unjust to forget that such a war would particularly affect more than 70% of the population of the planet.

If a conflict of that nature should break out there, the government of Barack Obama in his second mandate would be buried in a deluge of images which would present him as the most sinister character in the history of the United States. The duty of avoiding war is also his and that of the people of the United States.

Fidel Castro Ruz

April 4, 2013

11:12 p.m.

Source

DPRK’s “State of War” Declaration Is a Faulty Translation: Not an Official Policy Statement from Kim Jung Un

Ed. Note: Since re-publishing this article from Global Research, and after several back and forth conversations on Facebook regarding this particular translation, I’ve since been informed that the English translation may, in fact, be accurate and not manufactured. The source of this comes from someone who’s spent time in the DPRK and has traveled alongside that of The Pyongyang Project, participating in their programs. The source wishes to remain unnamed, but I can verify that he is very knowledgeable and well-studied in Korean language.

When asked if the picture’s (shown below) claim of the English translation being inaccurate was true, this is what the source had to say:

‘This is not correct. The statement read: “이 시각부터 북남관계는 전시상황에 들어가며 따라서 북남사이에서 제기되는 모든 문제들은 전시에 준하여 처리될것이다.” The translation provided on the English version of Rodong Sinmun is: “From this moment, the north-south relations will be put at the state of war and all the issues arising between the north and the south will be dealt with according to the wartime regulations.” This is an accurate translation. Moreover, the English title of the announcement is “North-South Relations Have Been Put at State of War: Special Statement of DPRK”. The only media outlet manufacturing these claims is Rodong Sinmun.’

Korean: http://www.rodong.rep.kp/InterKo/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2013-03-30-0065
English: http://www.rodong.rep.kp/InterEn/index.php?strPageID=SF01_02_01&newsID=2013-03-30-0013&chAction=S

China mobilizes military forces around Korean peninsula amid rising tensions

April 2, 2013

AFP Photo / China Photo

China has started mobilizing military forces around the Korean peninsula in response to rising tensions that follow recent threats by North Korea to launch missile attacks against its southern neighbor and the United States.

According to US officials, Pyongyang’s declaration of a ‘state of war’ against South Korea has led to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to increase its military presence on the border with the North. The officials say the process has been going on since mid-March, and includes troop movements and readying fighter jets. The PLA is now at ‘Level One’ readiness, its highest.

Chinese forces, including tanks and armored personnel carriers, have been spotted in the city of Ji’an and near the Yalu River, which splits China and North Korea. Other border regions were also reportedly being patrolled by planes.

China has also been conducting live-firing naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, scheduled to end on Monday. The move is widely viewed as open support for North Korea, which continues to show extreme opposition to the US-South Korean military drills that are to last until May.

The news comes as the US deployed its USS Fitzgerald destroyer off the coast of North Korea, adding to its Sunday deployment of F-22 fighter jets to take part in the drills with the friendly South, which has further served to heighten tensions on the peninsula.

Meanwhile, North Korea has been mobilizing its short and medium-range missile arsenal, according to analyses of satellite imagery. Officials say Pyongyang is set to test its new KN-08 medium-range mobile missile; they say preparations have been spotted in the past. Pyongyang claims that since March 26, its forces have been placed on their highest possible status of alert.

Although officials believe Pyongyang will not provoke Seoul during the war games, they also fear that a miscalculation by South Korea could lead to all-out war, following its promise of retaliation against the North, should it launch its missiles first.

South Korean anti-aircraft armoured vehicles move over a temporary bridge during a river-crossing military drill in Hwacheon near the border with North Korea on April 1, 2013 (AFP Photo / KIim Jae-Hwan)

North Korea and China have maintained a long-standing defense treaty under which Beijing is to come to Pyongyang’s aid in the event of an attack. The last time this was put into practice was during the Korean War, when tens of thousands of Chinese volunteer forces were deployed on the Korean Peninsula. The relationship between the two countries is often referred to as being “as close as lips and teeth” by Chinese military spokesmen.

Despite the heated tensions leading to an apparent disruption in trade and commerce between China and North Korea, the two are already making future plans to bolster their economic ties. March 27 saw the announcement of a new high-speed railway, as well as a special highway passenger line.

Still, many in Chinese circles have shown displeasure at Pyongyang’s seemingly aggressive relationship with Seoul and Washington. A Chinese official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, has testified that US presence in the region is a helpful restraint against an unpredictable Kim Jong-un, which many believe to be the real reason Beijing has not been strong in its criticism of the amassing of US forces in the region.

Furthermore, Chinese websites and blogs could sometimes be found openly bashing the North Korean leader for an apparent mishandling of the situation in the region, playing diplomatic games amid chronic food shortages in his country. An editor at the country’s Study Times newspaper was recently suspended for openly criticizing China for abandoning North Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un attending the plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang (AFP Photo / KCNA via KNS)

Expert opinion differs on what China’s exact position is in the unfolding regional crisis.

US officials claim the China’s main fear is a collapse of order in North Korea, which would lead to a large-scale refugee flow into China.

Another possible reason for China to worry is advanced by journalist James Corbett, host of the Corbett Report, who believes that foreign military presence in the region is just as unnerving to China as it is to Pyongyang. He discussed this in the light of the latest war drills.

“I think that this has the possibility of ratcheting things up to the point where tensions might actually spill over as a result of this, and we saw that recently with the deployment of B-2 nuclear armed bombers in South Korea which is not only, I think, worrying to Pyongyang, but also to China, to have nuclear bombers that close to the peninsula there, on China’s southern border. I think that China wouldn’t be pleased with that either, so this is quite an escalation that’s taking place.”

Others believe openly that the US strategy is geared not towards the destabilization of North Korea, but that of China. Li Jie, an expert with a Chinese navy research institution, has told Reuters that “the ultimate strategic aim is to contain and blockade China, to distract China’s attention and slow its development. What the US is most worried about is the further development of China’s economy and military strength.”

Retired Major General Luo Yuan, who is one of China’s foremost military authorities, believes, however that “once the joint US-South Korean exercises have finished and with birthday celebrations for (late founder of North Korea) Kim Il-sung imminent, the temperature will gradually cool and get back to the status quo of no war, no unification.”

While it has been urging calm and peace in the region, Beijing has been very obliging at the UN Security Council, when it helped push through the latest round of sanctions against North Korea in March, following its third nuclear test the previous month. Despite being Pyongyang’s greatest ally in the region, some experts believe this is a sign of Beijing’s growing impatience. American diplomat Christopher R. Hill, who helped under the Bush administration to negotiate a deal for the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear facilities (which didn’t last), says that the Chinese strategy is“not about the words, it is about the music.”

The resolution came hours after North Korea, angered at both the US-South Korean war games, and at the proposed UN plan, threatened pre-emptive nuclear action against the South and US military bases in the region.

This latest standoff between North and South Korea and the US is credited to have started on February 12, when Pyongyang supposedly performed its latest underground nuclear weapons test. Just this weekend, North Korea vowed to boost its nuclear arsenal, calling it a “treasure of a reunified country”which it would never trade for anything, even “billions of dollars” worth of aid.

Source

The Siege and Terrorism

By Stephen Gowans
March 18, 2013

In his 2011 book Crisis in Korea: America, China and the Risk of War, Tim Beal writes,

The Americans, and their friends and allies, tend to have a disengaged attitude toward sanctions—disengaged both ethically and in terms of causality. Sanctions are, after all, but the modern version of the age-old military tactic of the siege. The aim of the siege is to reduce the enemy to such a state of starvation and deprivation that they open the gates, perhaps killing their leaders in the process, and throw themselves on the mercy of the besiegers.”

Later, Beal adds, “There are strong parallels between sanctions/sieges and terrorism: both inflict pain on ordinary, vulnerable people in order to turn them against their leaders…”

While Beal writes in connection with North Korea, Washington’s use of the modern-day siege extends to other countries, as well. Like North Korea, Iran is despised by Washington for its insistence on using its labor, markets and natural resources, not for Wall Street’s profits, but for self-directed development. And like North Korea, Iran is menaced by a campaign of sanctions. These sanctions, too, aim, as terrorism does, to make ordinary people suffer so they’ll pressure their government to change its policies to accommodate the interests of the besieger/terrorist (in this case, to replace the current economically nationalist government with one that will open the Iranian economy to ownership by foreigners and create business conditions favorable to foreign investors reaping handsome returns, albeit under the guise of building “democracy” and relinquishing an independent nuclear energy industry.)

The accustomed practice in mainstream journalism is to gloss over the effects of sanctions on besieged countries, or to insist that they’re targeted at a country’s leadership and therefore do no harm to ordinary people.

But in a March 17 Washington Post article, reporters Joby Warrick and Anne Gearan acknowledge that the sanctions on Iran are aimed at hurting ordinary people.

Warrick and Gearan write,

Harsh economic sanctions have taken a serious toll on Iran’s economy, but U.S. and European officials acknowledge that the measures have not yet produced the kind of public unrest that could force Iranian leaders to change their nuclear policies.

Nine months after Iran was hit with the toughest restrictions in its history, the nation’s economy appears to have settled into a slow, downward glide, hemorrhaging jobs and hard currency but appearing to be in no immediate danger of collapse, Western diplomats and analysts say.

At the same time, the hardships have not triggered significant domestic protests or produced a single concession by Iran on its nuclear program.

They continue,

The impact has been hardest on the middle and working classes, which have seen savings evaporate and purchasing power dry up. Yet, in recent months, Iran’s fiscal crisis appears to have eased, and economists say neither complete collapse nor widespread rioting appears likely in the near term.

So, sanctions aren’t working because they haven’t inflicted enough suffering to engender widespread unrest and rioting.

If sanctions do produce their desired effect, and wide-spread rioting does break out, the public unrest most assuredly will not be blamed by Western reporters on the suffering produced by sanctions, but dishonestly on Tehran’s “economic mismanagement.” And aid will continue to flow to opposition forces in Iran, who will be presented as “thirsting for democracy” (rather than relief from the suffering inflicted by the United States and European Union) to help them topple their government (which is to say, open the gate to let the besiegers in.)

The Warrick and Gearan article’s emphasis on the sanctions’ failure to promote rioting, may signal that policy-makers are coming to the conclusion that Washington’s goals for Iran cannot be achieved by sanctions alone, and that military intervention is also required.

Military intervention, however, may not be an alternative to the siege, but its complement. US Air Force Lt. General Michael Short’s explanation of the objectives of the 1999 US-led NATO air war on the former Yugoslavia resonates with the aim of the besieger/terrorist. Explained Short,

“If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, ‘Hey, Slobo, what’s this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?’” (“What this war is really about,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), May 26, 1999.)

The modus operandi, then, of US foreign policy is to inflict pain on ordinary people who live in countries whose governments resist integration into the US-superintended system of global capitalist exploitation, in order to create public unrest that will either force the country’s leaders to change their policies, or step down and yield power to local representatives of global capitalist interests (deceptively labeled by Western state officials and establishment journalists as “pro-democracy” or “democratic” forces.)

The only thing “democratic” about US foreign policy is its insistence on democratizing suffering.

Source

Palestinians protest against Israel’s role in the attack against Syria

March 17, 2013

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM,(SANA) – The Palestinian Popular Committee for Defending Syria in occupied Palestine has organized an event in protest against the role of the Israeli entity in the attack against Syria and in supporting the terrorism which targets its resistant Arab people backed by the US and financed by the Gulf states.

The participants in the event, which took place at Kalandia Crossing to the south of Ramallah city in the West Bank, expressed solidarity with the Syrian people and army in the face of the Zionist-Imperialistic conspiracies.

They asserted that Syria will get out of the crisis stronger thanks to the unity of its people, the bravery of its army and the wisdom of its leadership.

They raised the Syrian and Palestinian flags, and they chanted slogans expressing the unity of the Arab struggle in the face of the Israeli occupation.

The Israeli soldiers tried to quell the participants as they fired tear gas and stun grenades at them injuring seven.

Palestinian Watan News Website quoted Coordinator of the Committee Sabrin Dyab as saying that what is taking place in Syria is an organized attack which aims at undermining the axis of resistance.

She affirmed that the terrorist groups backed by foreign parties are the ones who commit the crimes in Syria.

Source

Now Online: The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping (full volume)

The Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

Modern Day Contributions to Marxism-Leninism

RT Interviews President Lukashenko – ‘I have no resources to be a dictator’

The following interview below was originally published by Russia Today: 

March 18, 2013

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko

His reputation precedes him: The long-time Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko has been often referred to in the Western media as ‘Europe’s last dictator’. But he insists he doesn’t have the means to be one as RT sits down with the President.

“In order to be a dictator and dictate one’s will one has to have the resources: economic, social, military, population, and so on. But we have none. And I am being objective about it,” Belarusian president told RT’s Sofiko Shevardnadze.

The 58-year-old former head of a state-owned farm told RT he has no intention to hand over power to any of his sons. “I swore I would never delegate the reins of power to any of my relatives, loved ones or children. It’s out of the question,” Belarusian leader emphasized.  “Who wins a fair election will have the power. Like I did when I won the race as a candidate from the opposition,” he added.

The Belarus leadership has repeatedly been the target of fierce criticism from the EU over its crackdown on the opposition and lack of respect for democracy and human rights. Up to 250 Belarusian officials, including President Aleksandr Lukashenko, and 32 companies are currently subject to travel bans and asset freezes within the EU.more

For more on this as well as Lukashenko’s view on relations with Russia and international community, his presidency and successors, and the overwhelming economic crisis and Belarus’ fate read the full interview below.

Report: Russia’s Communist Party won 2011 polls

The following article below was originally published by the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI). The Prison Gates Are Open… would also recommend its readers in looking back at the article, “A Marxist-Leninist analysis on the Russian State Duma elections and the “Orange” opposition“, which went into both the 2011 elections and the counter-revolutionary “Orange” opposition that tried exploiting the conflicts surrounding said elections, in the attempts of overthrowing the bourgeois-nationalist United Russia party and installing a pro-Western puppet party as their replacement. 

March 14, 2013

The announcement of a report casting fresh doubt on the results of Russia’s 2011 parliamentary polls drew a dismissive response from the pro-Kremlin ruling party and the country’s top election official on Wednesday, while also causing a flurry of speculation about motives, as the study reportedly emerged from a think-tank headed by an official close to President Vladimir Putin.

“The officially announced results are unreliable. United Russia did not take first place,” Stepan Sulakshin, the author of the Moscow-based Governance and Problem Analysis Center’s report, told the RBK Daily newspaper in comments published late on Tuesday. “The Communist Party took first place.”

Sulakshin said the United Russia party had gained 20-25 percent of the vote at the 2011 State Duma polls, compared to the official figure of 49 percent, while the Communists had gained 25-30 percent, significantly more than the 19 percent announced by election officials.

Widespread allegations of vote fraud in favor of then Prime Minister Putin’s United Russia party at the December 4, 2011 parliamentary elections triggered the largest anti-government demonstrations since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Putin stepped down as head of United Russia last May, when he handed over stewardship of the party to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. But commentators suggest he remains closely linked in the eyes of the public to the party, which was successfully branded “the party of crooks and thieves” by opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny.

The head of Russia’s Central Elections Commission, Vladimir Churov – dubbed “the wizard” by opposition figures after the 2011 polls over allegations he had conjured up an unlikely victory for United Russia – also hit out at the report, suggesting its author seek psychiatric assistance. Churov, an unabashed Kremlin loyalist, has frequently said: “Churov’s first law is – Putin’s always right.”

Reaction from the Communist Party was surprisingly muted. There was no reaction from veteran party head, Gennady Zyuganov. Calls to the party’s press office went unanswered as of late Wednesday afternoon.

Vadim Solovyev, the Communist Party’s top lawyer, told journalists the party had also estimated it took around 30 percent of the vote at the 2011 polls. He said the party had not contested the results in court because it did not believe its appeal would get a fair hearing.

The Kremlin has not officially commented on the news of the report, but an administration source told RIA Novosti that anyone dissatisfied with the election results should file complaints with the courts, and “not write reports.”