Wakievelli's Ponderings

Final Post

2006-11-26T20:28:00.000-08:00

I’ve found this semester an interesting one, especially given that throughout my studies I have often relied, implicitly or explicitly, on a rights discourse that I had never really analyzed. I found it useful to look at the problematic nature of rights, especially in terms of the tension between the universal nature of rights documents and the realities of social and political diversity. Obviously there is a problem when one tries to apply a universalistic moral doctrine in a culturally and politically specific context. Also, it was interesting to note that the language of rights becomes politicized by both sides, as exhibited in the Lexicon of terror. The piece portrayed the tension in a rights discourse that tries to nail into place a fluid and dynamic language, as terrorists and terrorized alike attempted to conquer the vocabulary of rights for their own purposes.

However, I remain skeptical that the tensions we have found in rights discourse should lead us to discard that discourse as a whole. I think that a decision like that would be the result of Manichean thinking that fails to take into account of the complexities of our reality. The fact that a concept’s meaning is contested does not make that concept irrelevant. If it did, thousands of supreme court justices all over the world would find themselves out of work. There is obviously a use in having general principles that we adhere to whose meanings are broad enough that in order to ascertain them involves constant contestation. The fact that throughout history there have been many different definitions and ideas of what constitutes justice has not led us to abandon the term. Likewise with rights.

Similarly, after taking this course I am even moiré convinced that our post-modernity induced fear of universality should not have us finding solace in an equally damaging extreme relativism. If the universality of rights is a fiction, it was a fiction that was knowingly created for useful purposes. Our species needs moral standards that it can adhere to beyond the statutes and treaties of states. Rights exist beyond United Nations treaties. They exist in the consciousness of a large and diverse cross-section of humanity. Because of this, a rights discourse that applies beyond the confines of any one state, or any one culture, is useful as it gives people a moral and philosophical justification for action that can be appealed beyond the authority of states and organizations. The fact that they are politicized does not necessarily make them without use. Virtually ALL of our useful terms are politicized. Language is politicized. That just seems kind of obvious to me.

Anyway, this class has certainly forced me to go back and look the problematique of rights discourse in a new light. Having done that, I would suggest to anyone who sees the problems that Jon has pointed out, but still want to hold onto rights as something valuable, that they look at the classical utilitarian view of rights. Shortly after Locke and Rousseau were writing about the universal nature of human rights, Bentham and Mill were pointing out the same problems that we have looked at in class. In their view, natural rights were a fallacy. One could only have rights in a social context, and we had rights not because they were handed to us by nature, but because society agreed that they would be good and useful things for us to have. I see no reason why we couldn’t continue to use rights in this context. Global society needs rights, not because of some ill defined celestial laws, but because they serve some very concrete and useful purpose.

Anyway, that’s what I think.

Bob

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Admission of guilt in Mexico

2006-11-23T15:00:00.000-08:00

Well, it finally happened.

At the end of his term, 6 years after elected office, Fox’s government has finnaly (and quietly) published a report that indicts the Mexican government for 20 years of human rights violations. An aritlce in today’s New York Times staes that the “800-page report is the first acceptance of responsibility by the government for what is known here as the “dirty war,” in which the police and the army are believed to have executed more than 700 people without trial, in many cases after torture”.

The report admits ( the first such admittal by the Mexican government) that between 1960 through the early 80’s, the government used torture, summary execution, and the razing of vllages as a matter of policy to deal with everyone from protesting students (hubndreds of unarmed student protesters were killed by security forces in a protest in Mexico City in 1968 – well, I think it was 68) to guerrilla sympathetic villagers (the Mexican government launched a brutal counterinsurgency against EPR insurgencies in the state of Guerrero – nice enoug place actually).

The admission of guilt by the Mexican government could be seen as a major step towards democracy. However, one hsouldn’t get too optimistic. After all, all the offences illustrated in the report were commited by the PRI – the report was issued by Fox’s PAN. How difficult can it be to issue damaging reports about your political rivals? Not only this, but even though Fox promised to issue this report in 2000, it took him 6 years to sum up the huevos to actually do it, and he still waited until his time end was just around the corner. This sounds like the actions of a man who met stiff and serious resistance from his own government when he tried to unearth abuses that in some cases were more than 40 years old (on the other hand, we still don’t know who killed john kennedy, though I’m pretty sure teddy’s assassin will go by the name of a Mr. Jack Daniels).

And finally, where’s the admition of massacres in Chiapas, or the big oversized novelty cheque that the PRI gave to the brutal Paz y Justicia militia? Guess that report comes out for 2050.

Love

Bob J. Neubauer

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Who's to Blame in the Ixil Triangle?

2006-11-22T18:23:00.000-08:00

In unfinished conquest, Perera lists off an almost endless list of crimes and tragedies. In attempting to make sense of them, he runs into what seems a inescapable dilemma: to whom do we assign blame? All crimes need criminals.

As he conducts interview after interview, he gets many answers. Asking military men, he finds the usual set of culprits. The guerrillas provoked the conflict. Moscow and Cuba are responsible for these atrocities. Reagan himself seems to praise the army, pinpointing the blame, no doubt, on the godless communists. Asking refugees, the line gets blurred. None love the army, but many are disenchanted with the guerrillas, who are accused of treating campesinos as more and more dispensable as time passes.

Though no guerrillas are interviewed (at least, not in the sections we read) we are left to assume that they would finger the army, the ladino elite, and possibly even foreign buyers of Guatemalas cash crops.

Interestingly enough, Perera finishes off the chapter “The War Goes On” with the statement: “the guerrilla army of the poor… must bear responsibility for jeopordizing the lives of thousands of native Guatamalans who believed their impossible promises of a swift victory over their oppressors and redress of their centuries-old grievances”.

I take issue with this. It places a moral obligation of the oppressed not to challenge their oppressors unless a swift and painless victory is assured, which would seem to rule out all revolutionary action from the slave revolt of Spartacus to the American civil rights movement. Sometimes long odds pay off. Sometimes they don’t. The moral burden should not be on those who object to their own oppression.

Now, there are several ways in which the EGP could be considered guilty of those army abuses. One is that they themselves committed abuses (which I do not doubt for a minute). Another is that they hid in Ixil territory without the consent of the people there, bringing volence down upon people whose only crime was living in an area that the guerrillas decided to hide.

But this does not seem to be the case in the Ixil triangle. Numerous accounts in the book indicate that a large majority of the population actively supported, endorsed, and even aided the guerrillas. They did this because they wanted a way out of a brutally oppressive social system. To act as though they were naively “duped” by the cycnical guerrillas is condescending and racist. These people had agency, and they exercised it as they thought best. To blame the EPB for the deaths of people that willingly aided them seems to me unfair. The fault should lie with the oppressors, not the oppressed.

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The Right To Be Informed: The media and the 2002 coup in venezuela - Bobby Joe Neubauer

2006-11-20T18:16:00.000-08:00

In April, 2002, the world witnessed an attempted coup d’etat against President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Amongst the usual suspects of disgruntled military factions and business elites, Venezuela’s private media emerged among the coup’s leading planners and executioners. An analysis of the media’s role in the coup problematizes mainstream, state-centric rights theory that too frequently portrays rights violations as a Manichean struggle between state or armed non-state actors as rights violators and “civil society” as rights champions and vicitms. The actions of the bulk of the private media, by facilitating the violation of democratic and human rights (while simultaneously making strategic use of rights discourse), illustrate how unarmed, “civil society” actors can easily form a class of “rights violators”, even while they are hailed as guarantors of rights. The experience of Venezuela indicates that in a world of mass telecommunication coupled with a concentration of media ownership, the right of access to accurate information can actually be subverted by a media ostensibly committed to the rights of free speech.

I have chosen four sources that give some preliminary background on Venezuelan political history and explain in some media culpability in the coup, even while pointing out the flaws in mainstream rights discourse. One such source is the 2003 Annual Country Report published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). RSF is an international advocacy group that monitors “press freedom” in countries around the world. The 2003 report laments that the “the polarisation of Venezuelan society” which lead to the coup took such a “heavy toll in attacks against the press”.[i] It describes in detail the numerous attacks on members of the press, both pro-and anti-government, noting that one journalist was killed and over 50 more were physically attacked during the unrest of 2002.[ii] They also heavily criticise Chavez for infringing upon “press freedom’ by forcing the private media to broadcast his speeches, and by ordering private broadcasts shut down on April 11, 2002.[iii] While admitting that the national private media engaged in a serious breach of “professional ethics” by seeming to actively participate in the coup, only Chavez’ government is described as infringing on democratic rights by attempting to regulate or shut down the broadcasts of an openly hostile private media.[iv] The report is useful not only because of its detailed account of media involvement n the events of 2002, but it also serves as an excellent example of the failings of mainstream rights discourse.

Another source is Omar Encarnacion’s “Venezeula’s Civil Society Coup”, published in the World Policy Journal in 2002. Encarnacion points out the failings of the contemporary wisdom that a “strong and invigorated civil society is an unmitigated blessing for democracy” and by extension human rights.[v] He uses the case of Venezuela to make the case that civil society “only serve[s] as an effective foundation for democracy where there are credible functioning state institutions”.[vi] He sees media (as well as union and church) involvement in the coup as the outcome of 40 years of political “decay” and extreme wealth polarization in Venezuela.[vii] The article provides a decent overview of Venezuelan political history and puts the actions of the Chavez administration in historical context. It also describes how media served to undermine democracy by actively participating in the coup. However, while Encarnacion condemns media involvement in the coup, he implicitly justifies it as a response to the authoritarian rule of President Chavez. In doing so, he reinforces a dominant discoursethat positions the state as the inevitable violator of rights, and the actions of a loosely defined “civil society” (including media) as the unfortunate but inevitable reaction against the state-sanctioned abuse of political and civil rights, providing us with a relatively sanitised account of media involvement in the attempted coup.

A third source is Jon Beasley-Murray’s “The Coup Will Be Televised” and “The Revolution will not be Televised”, two eyewitness accounts of Caracas during the coup. Beasley-Murray explains how support for “Chavez’ once overwhelmingly popular regime [had] been in steady decline, in part as a result of a relentless assault by both the press and the television networks”[viii], and in part due to his increasing authoritarianism and alienation from his political base.[ix] He argues that the real motivation behind the coup lied in the fight over PDVSA, the state owned oil company that controlled the nation’s vast oil wealth.[x] He also emphasises the battle for political control that was waged by both sides through the communications media. He then claims that the counter-coup that reinstalled Chavez was representative of a new politics of “the multitude” that supported Chavez due to its frustration with traditional Latin American political structures.[xi] Beasley-Murray’s account gives us a detailed description of media behaviour during the coup without lionising or glorifying President Chavez. However, he goes on to suggest that Chavez’ attempt to use television to reconstruct a “broken contract” between people and nation failed when the medium “rebelled against him”, the medium of television being “unsuited to such simple narratives”.[xii] This explanation that shifts focus onto the character of television itself, and not to a discernable class of social actors that dominated it, does not seem wholly convincing.

The final source utilized in this essay is “The Revolution will not be Televised”, a documentary film by directors Kim Bartley and Donnacha O Briain that was co-funded by the Irish Film Board and the BBC. Bartley and O Briain’s crew arrived in Caracas seven months before the April Coup in order to peel away the “layers of myth and rumour that surrounded” Hugo Chavez’ presidency.[xiii] In doing so, they are fortunate enough to capture key moments of the coup on camera, such as the shooting of protesters outside the Presidential Palace. Contrasting their footage with the footage presented by the private television stations, they construct a picture of the media as a powerful, socially regressive political actor that, desperate to reverse the egalitarian policies of President Chavez, actively partakes in the planning and execution of the coup. The film suffers from a disappointingly uncritical admiration of Chavez that at times reduces its credibility. Still, the film’s remarkable “inside account” of the coup and it’s wealth of footage (both their own and that used by the private media) helps to cut through the accepted wisdom regarding a free press and human rights, resituating the large media companies of Venezuela as rights abusers, instead of rights victims.

For decades, Venezuela had long been ruled by two elitist political parties that squandered the nation’s vast oil wealth for their own benefit while the majority of the country lived below the poverty line.[xiv] This changed in 1998 when Hugo Chavez campaigned for the presidency on a platform of radical wealth redistribution, winning by the largest margin in the nation’s history.[xv] The following year, Chavez’ government ratified a new national constitution that was overwhelmingly approved by national referendum. Encarnacion notes that the constitution “increased the role of the state in the economy [and] reinforced presidential power at the expense” of the senate, now abolished, and the traditional parties that dominated the judiciary and the national assembly[xvi]. He initiated a program of sweeping land reform and used Venezuela’s oil wealth to pay for bold new social programs, a move that angered those in the middle and upper classes many of whom, according to O Briain and Bartley, “still wielded considerable economic power”.[xvii] His detractors began to protest what they saw as Chavez’ goal of turning Venezuela into an authoritarian socialist state though he maintained a solid base of support amongst the nation’s poor.[xviii] In 2002 Chavez, in an attempt to consolidate his hold on the nation’s oil wealth, fired several members of the board of directors of PVSDA, the nation’s state oil company, replacing them with men loyal to him.[xix] In response, the conservative National Chamber of Commerce (Fedecameras) and CTV, Venezuela’s largest union, called a general strike and announced that the opposition would hold a massive rally on April 11^th, 2002 to demand Chavez’ resignation.[xx] The stage had been set for a coup, a coup in which Venezuela’s media oligarchy would play a pivotal role.

The bulk of Venezuela’s private media, the bulk of whose ownership was extremely concentrated and dominated by a small commercial elite[xxi], had long adopted a policy of unvarying criticism of President Chavez [xxii] (with the noticeable exception of the local press and radio).[xxiii] O Briain and Bartley’s film illustrated how the private television stations berated Chavez’ policies on a daily basis, going so far as to describe him as being mentally ill, a Hitler-inspired fascist, and a subordinate of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, helping to cultivate an atmosphere of anti-Chavez hysteria.[xxiv] Against an overwhelmingly hostile media, Chavez’ only effective tool for public communication was Channel 8, the state owned network with a rather limited share of the national audience.[xxv] In response to these media attacks, Chavez would force the private stations to broadcast his speeches, or “chains”, over their networks,[xxvi] prompting even harsher criticism from the private stations.[xxvii] After Chavez announced his plans for the PSVDA shake up the media stepped up the information war, broadcasting frequent advertisements for the April 10^th protest, urging Venezuelans to demonstrate and for Chavez to resign the Presidency.[xxviii]

The media’s involvement in the coup went far beyond a simple smear campaign. The day before the march was to take place, several owners of the major news outlets took part in a closed door meeting with Pedro Carmona, head of Fedecameras and one of the coup’s top organizers (Carmonas would assume the presidency during Chavez’ temporary ouster).[xxix] On the same day, the major networks broadcasted a televised message of an official from the military high command, urging President Chavez to step down and hinting at the possibility of a coup if he refused.[xxx] It was later revealed on television that this message was filmed in the house of a journalist from Venevision (one of the country’s largest networks) and was broadcasted as a ploy designed to force Chavez (who had planned a trip out of the country) to remain in the country for the 11^th, so that the coup could take place as planned.[xxxi]

On April 11^th, the anti-government rally marched past their stated destination towards a counter-protest staged by Chavez supporters outside the Presidential Palace, a move that Beasley-Murray argues was almost certainly designed to provoke a conflict,[xxxii] thereby creating an opportunity the coup leaders could use to move against Chavez. In an attempt to block what was slowly being understood as the initial stages in an organized coup, Chavez ordered the private television stations to go off the air, arguing that they were irresponsibly broadcasting inaccurate and misleading information in an attempt to bring down the government.[xxxiii] Upon reaching the Palace, unknown snipers opened fire on protesters from their positions on the rooftops of nearby buildings, killing at least 13 civilians, many of them Chavez supporters.[xxxiv] At this point, as O Briain and Bartley note, “some of the Chavez supporters began to shoot back in the direction [of] the sniper fire”.[xxxv] Luis Alfonso Fernández of Venevisión captured footage of the Chavez supporters on an overpass, defending themselves from sniper fire.[xxxvi] While the unedited footage made it undeniably clear that the Chavistas were defending themselves from the rooftop snipers, and that the anti-Chavez marchers had been nowhere near the overpass, the footage was manipulated to make it appear that “the Chavistas were assassinating innocent marchers”, editing out the numerous and clear indications that the Chavistas were under heavy fire.[xxxvii] The private media began broadcasting, en masse, the falsified footage “over and over and over again” while calling on the army to overthrow President Chavez for his orchestration of the “massacre”.[xxxviii] In stunning example of political choreography, the military high command promptly withdrew support for Chavez, citing the falsified footage as justification.[xxxix]

Shortly after this, a unit of the anti-Chavez Caracas police raided and shut down government owned Channel 8, the only Chavez-friendly television station.[xl] The military high command then took Chavez into custody at 1:30am, though he refused to resign.[xli] Pedro Carmona immediately assumed the presidency , forming a “transitional government” composed of ultra-conservatives and members of the business community[xlii], and the government proceeded to dissolve the national assembly and the supreme court, while dismissing the attorney general, head of the central bank, the ombudsman and the national electoral board.[xliii]

The next day, in an obvious attempt at sabotaging any public resistance to the coup, the same media outlets that had given “wall-to-wall” coverage of anti-Chavez protesters initiated what one of the local, pro-Chavez newspapers described as “a diabolical blackout that left most of Venezuela misinformed about what was happening to the country”.[xliv]The large media outlets pointedly ignored stories about firefights in the city center and military uprisings all over the country.[xlv] Though international networks were broadcasting easily accessible footage of police shooting into crowds of pro-Chavez protesters,[xlvi] and though the President’s supporters had begun protesting in the streets, the private TV stations responded by broadcasting “soap opera and cartoons”.[xlvii] By April 14^th, word of mouth had slowly spread the news that Chavez had not resigned but was in fact being held captive by the army, and in response tens of thousands of his supporters gathered in front of the Presidential Palace demanding his release.[xlviii] Yet no news at all was broadcast on April 14 by the private media channels, and most newspapers simply did not publish.[xlix] Andres Izarra of RCTV noted that the media blackout was official policy, and that journalists “were told [by station management that] no pro-Chávez material was to be screened … even if we had it available, and even if we had information on unrest and protests in support of the president” (Izarra resigned in protest).[l]

However, Chavez’ supporters were able to organize a counter attack. The palace guard, emboldened by crowds of Chavez supporters, succeeded in retaking the palace[li] and one by one sections of the military, believing that Carmona had gone too far in abolishing the nation’s democratic institutions the previous day, began withdrawing support for Carmona’s government.[lii] Though the the private media still denied anything of import was happening in Caracas, Chavez’ cabinet returned to the newly retaken palace to dismiss the “transitional” government, and Chavez, soon released by the military, returned to the palace shortly after 2 am on April 14^th.[liii] The coup was over.

However, the implications of the media behaviour during the coup are profound, and extending far beyond the coup itself. Through a shockingly unified policy of misinformation, active participation in the planning and execution of the coup, and self-imposed censorship, and the active cover up of mass murder (the sniper shootings), the private media was complicit in the murder of civilians and was actively working to overthrow democratic institutions. By any reasonable analyses, this should be understood as an infringement on the rights of the Venezuelan people.

Yet the mainstream discourse presents the private media as rights victims, not abusers. RSF’s annual report stated that “the three days that this coup attempt lasted…were the darkest of the year for press freedom”, citing Chavez’ order to cut off private broadcasts on April 11th.[liv] That the same press conspired to undermine the democratic freedoms of Venezuelans is apparently of little consequence. Such statements echo the position of members of the transitional government, one of which proclaimed during the coup attempt that Chavez should be tried for violations of human rights as well as freedom of expression.[lv] Even Encarnacion states that media action against Chavez should be understood as a reaction to the President’s contempt for free speech and democratic principles, though he makes the concession that the private media’s contempt for democracy proved to be “as callous” as Chavez.[lvi] There is no doubt that Chavez, in attempting to censor the private press, acted against democratic principals, as consistent with his at times authoritarian leanings. However, it is unclear how his behaviour was even comparable, let alone equal to, that of a media complicit in the murder of civilians that actively participated in a conspiracy to dissolve the nation’s democratic. The common thread in these accounts appears to be that as a member of “civil society”, the media is implicitly a champion and guarantor of rights. This should be viewed as the result of a discourse that inevitably positions the private press as the eternal victim of state sponsored rights abuses, as opposed to potential abusers themselves.

Interestingly, RSF states that its mandate is to guarantee society’s “right to be informed” by fighting for a free press.[lvii] This is unsurprising. International and national rights documents as well as traditional rights theory make frequent reference to the right to free speech and a free press, and implicit in this has always been the assumption that through these rights society’s “right to be informed” would be protected. This rationale has long been central to the criticism of totalitarian states, who by severely limiting or outright banning the free press, are (rightly) criticised for acting against the rights of its citizens. These criticisms touch upon the obvious; the right to accurate information about the world is fundamental to a society’s ability to govern itself. A people systematically deprived of such information will have a diminished capacity to maintain their own autonomy, which undermines its ability to protect a variety of social, human, and political rights.

However, as shown by the case of Venezuela, free speech and freedom of the press may be necessary to ensure a society’s right to be informed, but it is by no means sufficient. In Venezuela, private media ownership was concentrated into four national channels, all connected to the traditional ruling elite that had united against Chavez.[lviii] In comparison to these national media outfits, the small local media and the state run Channel 8, both of whom supported Chavez, were able to reach only a fraction of the national audience of that of the Chavez-hostile press.[lix] Hence, it was a relatively simple thing for a ‘media elite’ to exercise oligopalistic control over information in a strategic attempt to subvert democracy.

In this context, Murray-Beasley’s comments that the medium of television was simply unsuited to the simplified narrative Chavez tried to construct lose their poignancy. After all, numerous studies have illustrated that when media ownership is highly concentrated, television proves to be an excellent medium for simple, Manichean narratives that serve the interests of powerful economic and political actors. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent[lx] and the ongoing work of the American watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting[lxi] are just two sources that immediately come to mind, but there are of course others. Any casual viewer of CNN or Fox News knows that recent wars would not be nearly so easy to sell to the American public were this not so. Marshall Mcluhan now classic statement that “the medium is the message” may be of less value here than the simpler, but still convincing, adage: “money talks”. It is actors, not mediums, which possess agency. The actions of the private media during the coup clearly bore the evidence of strategic coordination, not only amongst themselves but with the army and commercial elite. In cases such as this, the intrinsic aspects of the medium may be of secondary importance to the political interests of those that have access to it.

The implications are clear. The right to a free press is only meaningful when media ownership is sufficiently broad and diverse to guarantee that a handful of actors cannot subvert the “freedom of the press” for it’s own purposes. If media ownership is consolidated by an ideologically and politically united elite, “freedom of the press” may actually subvert a society’s “right to be informed”, and with it the democratic and human rights that depend on that right. In terms of their effects on meaningful political participation, there is little difference between a state controlled media monopoly and a corporate media oligarchy, except that the latter is bestowed with legitimacy and lionised by a rights discourse of the kind utilised by RSF, Omar Encarnacion and others.

[i] “Venezuela: 2003 Annual Report”. Reporters Without Borders For Press Freedom.

2003. http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=6230 (Accessed Nov. 12, 2006).

[ii] “Venezuela 2003”.

[iii] “Venezuela 2003”

[iv] “Venezuela 2003”

[v] Encarnacion, O. “Venezuela’s Civil Society Coup” World Policy Journal. Summer, 2002. pg. 38.

[vi] Encarnacion, O. pg. 38.

[vii] Encarnacion, O. pg. 39.

[viii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised” Coup Against Chavez in Venezuela.

Greory Wilpert, ed. Caracas: Fundacion Venezolana para la Justicia Global, 2003. pg. 41.

[ix] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised” pg. 45.

[x] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised” pg. 42.

[xi] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Coup Against Chavez in Venezuela. Greory Wilpert, ed. (Caracas: Fundacion Venezolana para la Justicia Global, 2003). Pg. 85.

[xii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Pg. 86.

[xiii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain (Directors). The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. (Film) 2003. (Time: 4:15).

[xiv] Encarnacion, O. pg. 41.

[xv] Encarnacion, O. pg. 41.

[xvi] Encarnacion, O. pg. 43.

[xvii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 10:58.

[xviii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 9:00.

[xix] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised”. Pg. 43.

[xx] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised” pg. 43.

[xxi] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 13:00.

[xxii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 13:00

[xxiii] “Venezuela 2003”.

[xxiv] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 13:45.

[xxv] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 13:40.

[xxvi] “Venezuela 2003”.

[xxvii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised” pg. 41.

[xxviii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 25:30

[xxix] Encarnacion, O. pg. 42.

[xxx] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 38:00.

[xxxi] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 43:02.

[xxxii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised”. Pg. 48.

[xxxiii] Encarnacion, O. pg. 44.

[xxxiv] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 32:00

[xxxv] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 32:15.

[xxxvi] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 32:43.

[xxxvii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 32:50

[xxxviii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 32:55.

[xxxix] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised”. Pg. 44.

[xl] “Venezuela 2003”.

[xli] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 38:00.

[xlii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised”. Pg. 44.

[xliii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 45:45.

[xliv] Encarnacion, O. pg. 46.

[xlv] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Pg. 78.

[xlvi] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Pg. 81.

[xlvii] Encarnacion, O. pg. 46.

[xlviii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 45:00

[xlix] Encarnacion, O.pg. 47.

[l] “Venezuela 2003”.

[li] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 55:04.

[lii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Pg. 78.

[liii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 62:02.

[liv] “Venezuela 2003”.

[lv] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Pg. 44:40.

[lvi] Encarnacion, O. pg. 43.

[lvii] “About Us” Reporters Without Borders For Press Freedom. http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=280

[lviii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 15:00.

[lix] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 15:05.

[lx] Chomsky, N. and E. Herman. Manufacturing Consent: the political economy of the mass

media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

[lxi] “Fairness And Accuracy In Reporting: Homepage” http://www.fair.org/index.php

(Accessed: Nov 18, 2006).

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Hubris of intervention in Guatemala

2006-11-05T14:22:00.000-08:00

There was something I found both fascinating and disturbing about this week’s reading. There was something about the hubris of intervention in Guatemala that was particularly humbling, and yet all too familiar given the recent shenanigans of the Bush administration.

Eisenhower and his crew could see only one objective – the removal of Arbenz and the protection of United Fruit, which was important at least in the symbolic sense that it provided a stern warning to other countries in the region not to experiment with national sovereignty at the expense of American regional hegemony.

However, Chapter 15 (The Aftermath) the situation quickly sprialled out of control, leading Guatamala down a path towards civil war and the creation of a security state. The CIA could simply not see further than Arbenz’ downfall and Armas’ rise. They could not understand that Arbenz rise was merely the effect of a growing tension between sectors of Guatemalan society and the growing demand for redistribution of wealth. By removing a popularly elected leader and putting in it’s place a unrepresentative junta, America quickly lost control of the situation – leading to a constant succession of coups, short lived junta’s and escalating counterinsurgency wars.There was simply no understanding that removing a leader like Arbenz would in no way remove the social pressures and tensions that had brought a man like him (by all means uncharismatic and unremarkable in himself) to power. By disrupting the process of democratization and redistribution of wealth and power, the US had unwittingly unleashed a chain of events that soon seemed beyond their control, though they attempted, rather unsuccessfully, to contain it. What shocks me is that only 50 years later the US has committed the same era, albeit in another region and for oil instead of bananas.

last301

Of Evo and Ice Tea (for Christine)

2006-11-01T19:17:00.000-08:00

An article in the Globe today announced that Bolivia’s Evo Morales is backing off in his plan to naitonalise thew nation’s vast mineral wealth. Morale’s states that his country simply does not have the funds to operate the industry without foreign investment, and will be forced, at least in the short term, to continue to allow international (sorry guys, it really is the most appropriate word) capital to exploit the mineral resources of the country. This is no small development; mineral exports in Bolvia topped $530 million dollars last year. That’s enough money for the Sultan of Brunei to buy 33 birthday concert performances from Michael Jackson, or to buy 530 million Arizona ice teas form the dollar store down from my house.

Hmmm……

Maybe I’ll go with the tea.

Anyway, what’s interesting here is the clear picture we get of the global political economy as a complex power matrix that limits the abilities of countries to provide their citizens with economic, human, and social rights. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not speaking for the Comintern, and you won’t catch me handing out pamphlets with the UBC Trotskyists outside the student union builing (or the Spartacists for that matter, how did those guys manage ruin both my favourite historical figure AND Kubrick movie?). What I’m saying is that I don’t believe that a centrally planned economy, free from the fetters of foreign capitol, is necessary to safeguard a people’s rights (I would say Stalin pretty much proved that one wrong).

However, a country like Bolivia is extremely wealthy in natural resources, and yet a depressingly large proportion of its population have little education, access to medicines, economic and political autonomy, etc. And yet hundreds of millions of dollars leave the country every year. A quick read through Galleano’s Open Veins shows how money that could be used to promote this type of social welfare are funnelled into the developed world while a small fraction of it goes to placate a domestic elite. I think Bolivia is a good example of this, and in order for Bolivia to garantuee basic rights to its people it needs to exercise greater control over how it’s resources are used, or at least demand a greater cut from multinationals. However, the realities of the global political economy mean that those who have all the capitol, have all the leverage. And those that have all the leverage, get all the Arizona ice tea.

Or thirty-three Michael Jackson concerts.

If that's what you really want.

Love

Bob J. Neubauer

last301

Argentina and Orwell

2006-10-30T17:32:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed “Lexicon of Terror” very much, not only because of the relevance of the use of language as a political tool. The concept of spinning and twisting the meaning of words, the astuteness with which the junta launched their war through public relations campaigns as much as physical terror, could be pulled straight from the pages of terror. Describing tyranny as the savior of democracy, executions as pitched battles, and torturers as priests and babies is a classic case of newspeak, the linguistic gymnastics upon which rested doublethink, foundation of the Party.

Orwell’s incite is given very little literary credit past high school lit classes. Complaints frequently made are that his prose is dry, his characters secondary to his motives, and that his plots a mere vehicle for communication of his political ideas. To which I usually respond: are you some kind of idiot? Ever hear of Voltaire? Or Jonathan Swift? Cause these critiques could easily be applied to the most celebrated figures of European literature. Whatever, no accounting for taste.

I digress.

The point being is that Orwell’s critique of language comes through strong in readings like Lexicon – because the manipulation of language continues to be one of the most potent tools of political control.

Today is no exception. Since Sept 11, the international community has witnessed the birth of a whole new Lexicon. Illegally held Prisoners are “enemy combatants”. Terrorism is “shock and awe”. Drug cartels are “narco terrorists”. And all those states that selfishly demand autonomy are “rogues”.

These techniques are not beholden to neo-fascist dictatorships or communist totalitarians. The poignancy of Orwell’s critique was that it applied to the banal exercise of modern power. The left and the right. Dictatorships and polyarchies. The tyranny of language is prevalent, always.

last301

Oaxacan Protests

2006-10-30T16:48:00.000-08:00

Well, it finally happened. The barbarians have been at the gates for months, and they finally bit the bullet and got on with it.

Two days ago, the Mexican federal government sent in federal police and the army to quell the protests turned insurgency in Oaxaca. After months of stalling on the issue, the ruling PAN has finally been forced into action. And big surprise that it took the death of an American to prompt this decisive move.

Until now, the PAN has done nothing to quell the growing insurgency, and for very good reasons. The protesters have been demanding the resignation Oaxacan “boss hog” Governer Ulises Ruiz – patriarch of the PRI dominated state wide political machine that stole him the election two years ago and for months has carried out a campaign of repression against those Oaxacans who dare fight for their democratic rights. Allowing the once (federally) hegemonic PRI to shoot down teachers and protesters in the streets was good politics for the PAN, who’s electoral bones were made as the first democratic government after 70 years of PRI rule. By allowing the PRI to carry out violent repression against protesters in order to cement their state-wide political supremacy, the PAN was handing out the PRI just enough rope to hang themselves. But all of that changed when Bradley Roland Will, a journalist form New York, was shot dead during clashes between protesters and state police. It was this, after months of violence, prompted the PAN to act, sending in thousands of federal police and army units to quell the violence.

What does this mean for civil rights in Mexico? It depends on exactly what the mandate is of those federal police. It has been obvious that some intervention was necessary to diffuse the crises. And truthfully, I believe it is entirely possible to take action that was consistent in the promotion of rights in Oaxaca. An equitable solution might be for the feds to demand the resignation of Ruiz and a state-wide investigation of his stolen election in return for an immediate end to the teachers strike (and an immediate return to negotiations) and the demobilization of the protesters/insurgents.

However, this may be wishful thinking. Any “solution” that begins with the overwhelming use of force against protesters, but leaves the repressive state forces intact and Ruiz in office should be viewed as a tacit alliance, albeit a regional one, with the PRI. It would mean that despite their rhetoric of democracy, the PAN are willing to give the PRI a free hand in it’s repression of the Oaxacan people so long as they maintain order and stability (which should be read as, so long as Washington does not complain). The irony is that eyewitnesses are already pointing the finger at local police as the potential assassins of Mr. Will, and yet it seems likely that not they, but the protesters will be the first to get shut down. Kinda like the “windmill” manoever, in which one swings their arms rapidly while walking towards a stationary target, only to chastise the victim for failing to avoid one’s flailing fists of fury.

Love

Bob J. Neubauer

last301

Echoes from the past in Argentina

2006-10-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

I found a rather depressing article on the murder of a vital witness in the trial of the Argentinean police investigator, Miguel Etchecolatz. Julio Jogre Lopez was one of thew most important witnesses in the trial of Miguel Etchecolatz's, who “ran clandestine detention centers in the province of Buenos Aires during the military dictatorship”. Etchecolatz was tried for crimes against humanity, genocide, and the murder and torture of political dissidents in the torture centres that he personally oversaw. The article notes that the “trial was one of the first to take place since an amnesty law was overturned in 2005” that revoked legal protection for those responsible for the worst of the repression during junta rule.

The testimony of Lopez, who himself was tortured by Etchecolatz, was vital to the torturers’ eventual sentence of life imprisonment, the first time any Argentinean was convicted for crimes against humanity under the junta. However, Lopez disappeared “just hours before he was slated to give his final testimony”, and is now presumed to have been murdered.

What is interesting about this case is that it perfectly illustrates the Catch 22 of life in post-Junta Argentina. Just because the government is nominally democratic, does not mean that the old social actors that flourished under the dictatorship have in some way disappeared. The article points out that “human rights groups are pointing to provincial police” as the most likely suspects in the murder of Lopez, and note that his disappearance is part of a “recent wave of threats against torture survivors who are testifying in trials against former members of the dictatorship”. In other words, members of the security forces are still alive in kicking; The police, military, and other elements of the armed fascist right did not benevolently give up their positions, armaments, and credentials once democratic rule returned to Argentina, and “police officers that served under the dictatorship still form part of security forces” in modern Argentina. Indeed, it would be an impossible task to disband the entire security apparatus of the Argentinian state after the return to democracy. It would have been a recipe for civil war.

The murder of Lopez puts this problem in sharp relief. Those committed to democracy and human rights may have control over the courts, the legislature, and the presidency. But the military and the police still have practical control over the apparatuses of coercion. A bullet is worth a thousand injunctions.

last301

Sadism and Science

2006-10-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

I found it interesting that O’donnel tied the brutality and excesses of repression under the junta in

Argentina

to the process of modernity. As John pointed out in our last class, many point to the prominence of modernity as an explanation of the mechanized brutality of the Argentinian junta. He notes that it is “the professionalisaiton of the amred forces” that leads the military to “see itself as the only secotr that has been able to provide a solution to [the nation’s] problems”. It is an interesting idea that as civil society, government, and the economic engines oif developing countries stumble in their pursuit of Western rationalistic institutional consolidation, it is the military, now having fully internalized the rationalistic and modernist ideal through it’s own process of professionalisation, that takes it upon itself to manage the modernizing “project” of the nation. One could liken this to the fascist experience in Europe, or the Communist experience in either

Russ

China

. In all of these cases, a “modern”, “professional” organization, namely the Party, attempts to account for the failing of the social structures in which it is situated by forcing upon the nation a rationalistic, “scientific” management style meant to drag the archaic instutions of the nation into the modern era.

Mussolini made his bones by running the trains on time. Hitler by ending internal political and economic chaos with a totalizing, rationalistic management – society as machine. Stalin produced the 5 year plan and both China and Russia forceably transformed a rural society based on small peasant agriculture into raitonalised, “modern” collectives and cooperatives that would produce growth through mechanized, scientific agriculture.

What is interesting in this argument is the implication that the instruments of terror in these societies and the modern “project” are mutually constituted. In the excerpts from Nunca Mas, the descriptions of torture iullustrate to what extent the abuses were both producers and products of the rational, scientific ideology of modernity. Sadism becomes science, and transcends emotion motiviation. The military uses pseudo-scientific jargon in it’s interrogation that the accused cannot decipher. A doctor is on hand to direct the interrogators – torture is science. Moreover, the electric prod is called a “scalpel”. Note two things here. Firstly, a scalpel implies precision, professionalisation – this is not the work of emotionally charged sadists but rather cool-headed, trainded professionals carrying out their task. Secondly, all of the torture that involves electrocution involves high technology – specialized, scientific instruments rationally designed for a specific task.

It does, however, provide me with releif that nothing like this could happen in 2006. I mean, at least we learned our lesson right?

War is Peace.

Freedom is strength.

Ignorance is slavery.

Sadism is science.

Love

Bob J. Neubauer

last301

House of Cards

2006-10-16T14:05:00.000-07:00

In rights discourses, the emphasis placed on certain types of rights at the expense of others may make all the difference between an actor being a rights protector and a rights abuser. In turn, the decisions as to which rights are prioritized by certain actors do not exist in a vacuum. Rather they are influenced by the political and ideological preferences of actors as well as the dominant discourses through which they are constituted. Freedom Houses’ 2006 annual country report on Venezuela illustrates this well. The NGO’s report, which emphasizes the continuous erosion of rights and freedoms in Venezuela, prioritises certain types of negative political rights that cast Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in a negative light, while ignoring positive social and economic rights that would, if included in a rights analyses, portray him more positively. The effect is a utilization of rights discourses that internalises the interests of American policy objectives, an process that itself takes place though an internalization of dominant North American discourses and ideologies. In short, a discourse on rights becomes, whether consciously or unconsciously, a political tool as much as it is a humanitarian issue.

In the report Freedom House operationalizes the concepts of freedom and rights by giving absolute primacy to negative political rights at the expense of all other conceptions of rights. For instance, they note that Chavez has “strengthened the presidency, introducing a unicameral National Assembly” designed to maximize his political control (“Venezuela: 2006”, 2006). They focus on the use of state patronage to gain political support, as “once-dominant parties have seen their bases erode as Chavez uses state resources to ensure loyalty” (“Venezuela: 2006”,2006). They warn that his national Assembly has granted him “fast-track” powers designed to maximize the law making power of the executive, while he has also increased his party’s control over members of the Supreme Court (“Venezuela: 2006”,2006). They similarly blast Chavez’ “stranglehold on the economy” noting that Chavez has failed to “free” his country from “excessive bureaucratic regulations” that harm the private sector (“Venezuela: 2006”,2006). While many, if not all, of these observations are important and troublesome for those concerned about the state of rights in Venezuela, it is important that all of these observations focus on political and economic negative rights (that is, freedom from government interference) that portray Chavez in a bad light.. While an important part of any definition of rights, the obsession with this aspect of the concept completely ignores other rights that, if considered, would likely balance out Freedom House’s negative interpretation of the state of rights in Venezuela.

While such special attention is made to Chavez’ policies which Freedom House states impinge upon rights and freedoms, virtually no attention is paid to the programs of the Chavez government that could be seen as improving other types of rights. For instance, the Chavez government has used the profits from Venezuela’s sizeable oil wealth to invest in a variety of social programs. Among these are programs designed to provide poor Venezuelan citizens with education and medical service, both of which have traditionally been out of the reach of Venezuela’s poor majority (“Alternatives”, 2006). Both universal education and medical care are both guaranteed rights under the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (“United Nations”,1990, pg. 202). Hence one would expect programs designed to guarantee these rights to the majority of the population for the first time in Venezuelan history to at least figure in an independent assessment of the country’s recent rights record. However, while paragraphs are used to describe the variety of political rights violations under Chavez, Freedom house only says of these programs that “while fending off his opponents with legal maneuvers and intimidation tactics, Chavez introduced bold program of government social service initiatives, including urban health care and literacy programs, many with direct support from the Cuban government” (“Venezuela: 2006”,2006). Not only are these programs virtually ignored in the rights assessment, they are tied (by placing them in the same sentence) to government “intimidation” and Cuban (and therefore dictatorial) influence. Hence, instead of figuring positively in Venezuela’s rights assessment, the attempt is made to portray the exact opposite.

Similarly, Freedom House notes that “in 2005, the expropriation of large, idle landholdings and industrial installations was accompanied by the creation of tens of thousands of rural and urban cooperatives, many of which received government seed money” (“Venezuela: 2006”,2006). Venezuela is a land of massive polarization of wealth, with a small percentage of the country controlling a disproportionate amount of the wealth and industry of the nation (“Venezuela ratifies”, BBC News, 2004). In this context, any attempt to guarantee social and economic rights to it’s citizens would likely involve some kind of wealth and land redistribution of the kind described by Freedom House. An argument could be made that programs such as these help to guarantee a kinds of rights for the first time in Venezuelan history, for instance, the right to fair employment, also guaranteed by the United Nations (“United Nations, 1990, pg. 202). However, Freedom House uses these programs as evidence that “protection of private property”, a negative right, “is also weak” (“Venezuela: 2006”,2006). Once again we see that providing positive rights for Venezuelans – access to healthcare, education, employment, etc - do not even figure in the analyses of the report. A focus on these rights would necessitate portraying Chavez in a positive light, or at least tempering their criticism. Instead, by focusing on only certain types of rights while ignoring others, Freedom House is able to confidently and unequivocally say that rights and freedoms have decreased in Chavez’ Venezuela.

Of course, the operationalisation of rights and freedoms in the Freedom House study is one that internalizes the objectives and values of U.S. foreign policy in the region. The U.S. government has made no secret of it’s active displeasure with Chavez, and Chavez has vocally returned the favor in a variety of national, regional, and international forums(Hakim, 2006, pp. 44-48). By supporting naitonalisation of key industries, obstructing attempts at hemisphere wide free trade, actively pursuing closer relations with China, discouraging American investment, and allying itself with Cuba, Chavez has become public enemy number one for the U.S. in Latin America (Hakim, 2006, pp. 44-48). In a more general sense, any leader advocating a regional socialist revolution would be more than likely to offend American officials, at least in an ideological sense. And Freedom House has crafted a report that seems to take the debate on rights in Venezuala form a deicedly pro-American perspective. The very first sentence of the report notes that “President Hugo Chavez continued promoting his anti-U.S., anti-free trade, policies while stressing his close ties to Cuba and left-wing groups” (“Venezuela: 2006”,2006). In a report ostensibly concerned with rights, it is Chavez’ anti-U.S., anti-trade, and pro-Cuba policies take center stage from the very first sentence. Meanwhile, Chavez is criticized for putting restrictions on domestic groups that take money from the U.S. government funded National Endowment for Democracy, though Freedom House repeatedly looks disdainfully on parallel cooperation between Venezuelan civil society and the Cuban government(“Venezuela: 2006”,2006). Meanwhile, other features of the report blast Chavez for keeping up barriers to foreign investment, a frequent complaint made by the American government against socialist leaders (“Venezuela: 2006”,2006).

That the operationalisation and application of the concepts of rights and freedoms results in such a pro-American/anti-Chavez bias does not require any conspiratorial collusion between Freedom House and the U.S. government. Freedom House is a prominent, mainstream American NGO. As a collection of American educated mainstream academics, it is perfectly reasonable that they have internalized some of the dominant ideologies and discourses of their nation. One of these is the belief that political rights and free-market economics are essential components of human freedom, and that positive rights indicators (education, health care, employment opportunities, economic equality, etc) are either secondary in importance or, worse, are socialistic and therefore antithetical to freedom and rights. Indeed Freedom House’s website notes that its central mission is to “promote human rights, democracy, [and] market economics”, as though the first and second phenomenon were structurally linked with the third (italics added) (“About us”, 2006). Another dominant discourse in American academia is that America’s global leadership is an essential catalyst for democratization and institutionalization of human rights. Once an organization assumes this to be true, there will be a tendency to assume that any country that vocally and openly opposes the interests of the United States is, by definition, anti-freedom. The Freedom house website illustrates that they have internalized this assumption as well, stating that their “diverse Board of Trustees is united in the view that American leadership in international affairs is essential to the cause of human rights and freedom” (“About us”, 2006). Once this is assumed, it is perfectly logical that Freedom House would look at Chavez, an open opponent of American foreign policy, as inherently opposed to Freedom. His failings in the political sphere (troubling to be sure) are focused on and amplified, while his strengths in providing rights such as access to education and healthcare are ignored. It is a simple case of the dangers of deductive reasoning- starting with an assumed premise and then unconsciously (or consciously) selecting the facts to suit that premise.

Regardless of the methods used to internalize American interests, what is important to remember is that rights discourses, while ostensibly humanitarian, have the tendency to become easily politicized. In a world in which a nation’s legitimacy is more and more frequently measured by it’s adherence to rights, nations and organizations will define rights in ways that validate their own ideological, political, and commercial interests. A mainstream American NGO can be expected, to at least a certain degree, to internalize mainstream American values. The political and ideological preferences of certain actors are more than likely to reproduce themselves in the rights discourse they utilize. Which rights are important (and which are not), which actors are rights abusers (and which are rights protectors), and other important decisions and assumptions are inevitably affected by these factors.

Works Cited

“About Us” Freedom House website. Freedom House inc. Accesed: Oct. 12, 2006.

http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=2

“Alternatives to Corporate Globalisation: Venezuela’s ALBA”. Global Exchange:

San Fransico. 2006. Accessed Oct. 12, 2006. http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/venezuela/VZneoliberalismALBA.pdf

Hakim, Peter. Is Washington Losing Latin America? Foreign Affairs.

Volume 85. No. 1. Janurary/February 2006. PP. 39-53.

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” Directors: Kim Bartley & Donnacha O Briain.

Film. Irish Film Board, 2003.

“The United nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” The Human Rights Reader.

Revised Edition. Ed. Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin. New York: Meridian, 1990. 203-204.

“Venezeula: 2006 Country Report”. Freedom House, Inc. 2006.

Date Accessed: Oct, 8, 2006. http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&country=7088&year=2006&view=mof

“Venezuela ratifies Chavez victory” BBC News. August, 27, 2004.

Accessed: April 25, 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3605772.stm

last301

Bolivar

2006-10-15T22:05:00.000-07:00

While reading Bolivar's angostura address, I was amazed by how much the patterns of thinking laid out by the famous revolutionary were in sync with Laitn America's history of coup's, juntas, and the political elite's fear of the political participation of the masses. Bolivar calls for a hereditary senate, a near dictatorial executive, and a sharp curtailment of the political particpation of the populace through the legislature. He fears thast the people, not government, will usher in tyranny if not checked. He claims that colonailsim has made the public incanpable of governing itself. He believes in curnign the right of the judiciary. And he is more concerned with protecting the autonomy of the exective than either of the other two branches of governmnet as well as the people themsleves.

In this document can be found the basis for the Latin American political elite's fear of democracy. You get the direct impression that Bolivar's fight for independence had as much to do with securing the rights of an indigenous elite as much as the well being of the people. The arguments he uses asem almost identical to that of evbery military junta to take power in Latin America in the last 100 years (though obviously communism also became an oft cited justification). This reading was so dissalusiong for me because Bolivar had always been descirbed to me as this great liberator that fought on behalf of the people - yet he clearly fears the power of the people while dismissing their ability to govern themselves. It was a little bit like reading that Jefferson was a slave owner or that Jebediah Springfield was actually a cowardly pirate. Am i being to naive or idealistic?

last301

Chomsky and Venezuela

2006-10-13T10:54:00.000-07:00

On the 30th anniverary of the CIA sponsored bombing of a Cuban airliner Noam Chomsky took part in a forum to discuss US involvement in governmnet subverison and covert ops in Latin America. His response was reprinted on Z-Net. Asked about possible US intervention in Venezual and Bolivia, Chomsky had some things to say that I found quite interesting. Discussing the US sponsoered coup attempt against Chavez several years ago, chomsky noted that

"in almost all of Latin America, there was a very angry reaction. They take democracy there more seriously then we do here."

"[Here] we are voluntary North Koreans, when the dear leader says it, it’s true."
Turnout in both U.S. and Canada very low.

I found this to be a very inteesting comment. It really hit home to me somehting that I think we all realise instintivel. Namely, people tned to charish their rights in places where they are regularily infringed, while in countries thast ostensibly cherish those rights, those rights are taken for granted or even ignored.

Case in point. I saw Haitian activist Patrick Elie speak on the Canaidan role in the Haitian coup that overthrew Aristide and intiated a new reign of terror in hait, in which thousands have been killed. Elie had been at the anti war protest the day before, anjd he said somehting remarkeable,. he said while it was nice to see 5 thousand citizens marhing in the streets of Vancouver, 5 thousand Haitians marching in the sreets of Cite de Soleil is so common it wouldn't even make the news. In Haiti, where rights abuses have been frequent and severe, people are willing to risk violent suppression to fihgt for their democracy.

Here David Emerson basically steals (or at least, borrowed without permission) an entire riding (my riding), and Canadians make barely as peep about democratic subversion in their own country (though it is fashionable to protest our foreign policy in Afghanistan and Haiti). The romans had an old saying, which paraphrased said basically that yopu could make a populaiton do anyhting you want so long as you provided them with enough bread and circuses. As long as we eat well and freqeuntly, and watdch Canadian idol (or in my case, Battlestar Gallactica), we are unlikley to fight for our rights, especially when we are told time and again how well they are respected and gaurded.

last301

Ideology: Europe's Most Popular Export

2006-10-01T20:31:00.000-07:00

I was fascinated by Galleano's portrayal of Marx in Faces and Masks. Most interestingly, Galleano notes that in 1848 Marx "did not disagree when Engels applauded the invasion of Mexico by the United States, believing that this would turn Mexican campesinos into proletarians and bring the bishops and feudal lords down form their pedestal"

What is so fascinating about this passage is that it clearly outlines what Galleano frequently alludes to in the rest of his work; throughout it’s history Latin American intellectuals have consistently imported fashionable ideas form Europe and the United States, attempting to apply these imported ideas out of their cultural and historical context. For Marx, Mexican campesinos are backwards and primitive – they have not yet made their inevitable leap to industrialization that is the only possible outcome of Marx’s dialectical materialism. Likewise, Mexico’s Liberals

“believe in salvation by education, although the few schools are all in the cities, because liberals, after all, get along better with muses than Indians…and they dream about magical rails, smoke of locomotives, smoking chimneys, ideas and people and capitol that will bring progress form Europe”.

Once again, a prominent latin American intellectual tradition, liberalism, is actually an importation out of sync with the reality of local culture. What is so interesting about these observations is that this “intellectual dependency” mirrors the material economic depency that forms the basis of the analyses of Galleano and other latin American dependency theorists. This is doubly intriguing when we realise that Dependency Theory itself takes much of its analyses form a “Latin Americanized” Marxism, and is itself a bit of a foreign importation? Does that limit it’s relevance to Latin America? Is it as out of sync with Latin American reality as the liberal’s delirious visions of smokestacks and railroads?

To bring this back to rights, this makes me wonder to what extent rights discourse itself, based as it is on a profoundly European tradition of thought, an ill-suited foreign importation. Does it’s reliance on the primacy of the Europe style nation state, European social contract theory, and the deification of the individual make it a poor fit in a continental context? Does the continent need a “indigenous” rights discourse?

Love

Bob J. Neubauer

last301

President Evil

2006-09-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

Neo-liberal and conservative criticism of the left freqeuntly rests with the latter's love affair with big governmnet. Well, prepare for the capitalist fat cats to tip their velvet top hats and polish their monicles in smug staisfaction: turns out it was Earth all along.

In rigid conformity with the big governmnet stereotype, Mexican President Correct Lopez Manuel Obrador and his PRD party have decided to form a Parallel Governmnet with himself as Mexico's "legitimate President". Talk about redundancy! A recent article by Laura Carlsen of Foreign Policy In Focus explains that:

"On September 16, over one million people raised their hands in a vote to recognize center-left leader Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as the "legitimate president" of Mexico. Gathered in Mexico City's historic center, the delegates to the National Democratic Convention (NDC) agreed to inaugurate their president on November 20-ten days before the inauguration of the officially recognized candidate, Felipe Calderon. This act of civil resistance ushered in a new stage in an electoral conflict that has developed into an all-out battle for the country's future".

Whoa. Looks like the Mexican state is melting down quicker than a creamy pot of cheddar fondue. Ya Pasta!

A week or so ago, someone's blog interpreted the unorthodox measures takenby Obrador supporters as a possible case of an excess of rights. After all, if the election of Calderon was offically sanctioned by the federal Electoral Instutitute, as it was, then Mexicans should have no right to questions the validity of an election if by doing so they may be sowing the seeds of civil unrest.

I take issue with this analyses. I wold say that if the civil unrest in Mexico stems form anything, it is a traditional disregard for rights, be they political, economic, or human. It's not that it isn't possible for an excess of rights to lead to chaos (hate speech, for instance?), much in the same way it is possible to put too much cocoa in a delicous Mole Poblano ( a savory, yet subtley sweet sauce used to cook Chicken and or Pork). However, the Mole Poblano of Mexican democracy has long been bitter and grainy, suffering from a lack of it's most precious ingredient, the choclatey cocoa of human and civil rights.

I am so hungry.

The civil unrest that continues to grow in Mexico City can be seen as a direct result of a traditional disregard by the state for democratic rights. Until 2000, the federal govenrmet had been ruled by a one party dictatorship for 70 years. In 1988 in particular, the vote strealing that cost Obrador's party the federal election was so blatant and obvious that it has made many Mexicans suspicious of their basic democ ratic insttituions. Vote stealing, clientelism, and hegemonic local party machines continue to distort regional elections (in Oaxaca for instance,. where a PRI strongman stole the 2004 state eleciton). In this context, the irregulairties of this election, with it's missing ballots, mysterious computer glithes, and blatant pro-establishment rulings of the PRI/PAN dominated Federal Electoral Institute, are bound to cause a crises of legitimacy in terms of Mexican govenrmnetal insituions. 70 years of misrule means that any close election is bound to be contested by the losing side, regarldess of which party wins.

This leads me to one conclusion: in order for the instituions of government to function, they need legitimacy. In the discourse of the modern naiton state, the litmus test for institutional legitimacy will be a state's adherence to the political and human rights from which it rhetorically derives its mandate.

Love

Bob J Neubauer

last301

Rousseau and Property rights

2006-09-23T17:06:00.000-07:00

Reading through Rouseau's Social Contract, it struck me how far reaching and radical some of the implications of his work must have been when it was first written. As a "free thinking" and "progressive" university student, I have long been accustomed to towing the academic line and assuming that all the writing that formed the basis of Western Liberalism, written as it was by wealthy white men comofrtable positioned in empire buidling states, must be in some way an individualistic smokecreen for a tyrannical order. Well, that's what they told me at the Comintern anyway.

Surprisingly, it seemed that much of what Rousseau had to say about the legitimacy of property could actually be construed as being quite critical of modern capitititalism and neo-liberal globalism. In fact, the implications on some occassions seem quite soicalistic, and also quite relevant to the Latin American conquest. He asserts the "right of the first occupier, [is] more real than the right of the strongest". And while critics may point out that he makes this right contingent to the existence of property (whcih for Rousseau can be held communally, in ocmmon), he also states that "a man must occupy only the amount he needs for his subsistence". This is very similar to Marx's maxim: each according to their means, each according to their needs". According to Rousseau, large mulitnationals that buy up huge areas of a country's resources, like United Fruit in Guatamala, should have no legally recognized proprty rights. It seems that the legal cvalidity of the property rights for mabny large corporations would be nullified acording to THE Social Contract. For instance, he states that:

"How can a man or a people seize an immense territory and keep it from the rest of the world except by a punishable usurpation, since all others are being robbed, by such an act, of the place of habitation and the means of subsistence which nature gave them in common? When Nunez Balboa, standing on the sea-shore, took possession of the South Seas and the whole of South America in the name of the crown of Castile, was that enough to dispossess all their actual inhabitants, and to shut out from them all the princes of the world? On such a showing, these ceremonies are idly multiplied, and the Catholic King need only take possession all at once, from his apartment, of the whole universe, merely making a subsequent reservation about what was already in the possession of other princes."

It seems ironic that thinkers like Rousseau, who are often quoted in support of conservative claims to the inaliebnable rigth to private property, have freqeuently had their texts hijacked to support social systems that they never would have supported. Cleary to Rousseau, the right of people to individual property was heavily constrained by the need to maiantain social and economic equality, which is really not somehting I thought i was going to find when I started to read it.

What a pleasant surprise.

last301

More Than Mole: Civil Rights in Oaxaca

2006-09-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

I found an excellent article on the human rights situation in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, which gives an excellent account of the recent resistance to human rights violations by the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations. The Front is a political coalition of teachers, migrant workers, and indigenous activists campaigning for their rights in both Mexico and the United States. The article explains the rationale and motives of the BFIO campaign to demand reforms form their state and national governments that have long ignored the rights of Mexico's large indigenous population. The campign has recently culminated in the largest protests in Oaxaca's history, protests that have been met with brutal state violence.

Many of these rights infringements stem from economic policy which systematically subjects the indigenous people of rural mexico to an exploitative national/international division of labour. In recent years, much of this has taken the form of neo-liberal economic reform that has infringed upon the human rights of Oaxacans in a variety of ways. The article explains how

"for more than two decades, under pressure from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund,and conditions placed on U.S. bank loans and bailouts, the government has ... [cut] expenditures intended to raise rural incomes. Prices have risen dramatically since the government cut subsidies for necessities like gasoline, electricity, bus fares, tortillas, and milk. aditional agricultural aid to large".

At the same time, provisons under NAFTA undercut Mexican consitutional protection for rural collecitve landholdings, or "ejidos". By purpousely destroying the economic base of rural poor to free up land for foreign agri-business, the state has decimated the autonony and economic power of the rural Indegenous population, effectivley instigating "the reconcentration of land ownership and rural wealth". These neo-liberal adjustment policies curb access to basic social goods like health care and education while locking indigegeous people into a segregated binational economy, thereby depriving them of economic security and autonomy. In short, they are exploited hardcore.

Attempts by Oaxacans to end, or at least moderate the excesses, of this exploitative system have been met with a diverse array of repressive measures by the state governnment. This has included supression of the free press, including the goverment seisure of Noticias, a Oaxacan newspaper that was critical of the government's policies.

In recent months, frustration over the results of contested elections at both the state and Federal level (both of which have been charged with massive electoral fraud, albeit by different parties on the federal and state level), repeated human rights violations (including assasination of PRD and BFIO activists), and neo-liberal economic policies have manifested in the form of massive protests in Oaxaca's capital (also named Oaxaca, a remarkeable coincidence).

These protests have been met with violent state repression by the PRI controlled state governmet, which itself owes it's mandate to widespread electoral fraud in the 2004 election. The violence has been immense, with assasination of opposition leaders, the indiscriminate shooting of unarmed protestors by govenment controlled paramilitaries, the "disapearing" of movement leaders, the mass arrests of political prisoners held secretely without charge, and other gross rights vilations. In response, a coalition of unions, opposition politicians, teachers, acitvists, campesinos, and others have called for the immediate resignation of the governor, and and fear exists that escilation of violence is turning a series of strikes and dmeonstrationsd into a full fledged uprising.

Interestingly enough, the article focuses on the efforts of the BFIO, an organization that campaigns for the rights of the rural poor of southern Mexico both in their naitve country, as well as on behalf of migfrant workers in the united states.

I find the notion of transnational civil society a fascinating aspect of the changing global human rights movement. International rights documents derive their legal authority from, negotiate between, and are signed by state parties. Therefore they inevitably privaledge the rights of states and inevitably give the interests of states primacy over the individuals that live within their borders (just look at all the national security clauses in all the international agreements we read for class). Because of this, there is something innovative about the attmept to bypass the status-quo by directly lobbying governemnts through transnational cicivl society. This innovative approahc was used by groups around the world to protest the Mexican government's violent reppression of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. The internaitonal pressure applied by global civil society is widely credited with moderating the mexican government's repressive policies. It appears that the BFIO, and organizations like it, wish to apply the same logic to the sitation in Oaxaca. It remains to be seen whether or not this strategy will be effective, and wether or not transnational civil society can truly prompt the state to live up to it's obligations to protect the rights of its citizens. Could a stagnant and state-dominated rights dscourse become supplanted, or at least rejuvinated, by a rights disocurse stemming not form gov't representatives, but a globalized citizenry?

Love

Bob J Neubauer

last301

The Age of (Dance Dance) Democratic Revolution

2006-09-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

So, one of the things I thought were the most interesting about reading all of these historical rights documents was looking at the different places that rights were derived form at different times. Today it is hard for us to divorce modern rights discourse from a humanist faith and respect for the individual. However, the first writings on rights in the west were concerned with very different subjects.

For instance, the Magna Charta is entirely preoccupied wioth preserving the rights of the nobility vis a vis the King. The English bill of rights on the other hand, is mostly interested in preserving the rights of parliament. For instance, the very first grievance listed against King James is that he nullified laws without the consent of parliament. The grievances that don’t have to do with injury to parliament have to do with persecution of Catholics. In the United States Declaration of Independence, grievances are once again listed as a series of acts by the king that overstepped their bounds against the local governments of the colonies.

I guess what I’m getting at is that contrary to being responses to a growing respect for the individual, the first rights documents seem to be responses to shifting power dynamics among the groups that dominate a society. It seems like these documents come as a realignment of what Gramsci would call a “hegemonic bloc”

So – as the king’s power slips relative to feudal lords, feudal lords force him to sign the Magna Charta, establishing them as near equals of the monarchy. As Parliament (hardly a friend to the average joe shmoe english in the 1600’s) solidifies it’s power at the expense of King James, and King James oversteps the boundaries of this new balance of power, they sign a Bill of Rights to garnatuee the hegemony of parilamnet. Similarily with protestants ascendant in England, they assert a new protestant-run social order against catholics through the Bill of Rights. Ansd finally the Declaration of Independence pits a newly ascendant ruling colonial class, represented by the founding fatherts, against an ailing monarchy.

What I’m getting at is that these documents appear to be signed on behalf of social groups, institutions, and classes, not individuals per se. Also, these groups tend to be ones that are GAINING social power – the documents are not designed to protect the weak, but the newly strengthened. So perhaps these older rights documents can be seen as attempts to reify a new social order and with it a new balance of power in society. They may be considered the function of shifting power dynamics among rival social groups.

Gibberish? Probably

Love

Bob J Neubauer

last301

Burning Ballots in Mexico - LAST

2006-09-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

Aight- no more jokes. No Funny Business. Time to turn this party out.

While PRD supporters continue to protest what they cclaim was an elceiton won by fraud, Federal Electoral Institute of Mexico declared that in accordance with a law passed in 1992, all ballots form Mexico’s recenty highly disputed election are to be BURNED.

(check it here on the globe and mail)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060913.wmexicoelec0913/BNStory/Science/

Yes that’s right – burned…with fire. Apparently BOTH candidates, both the ostensible winner, the PAN’s Calderon, and the PRD’s Lopez Manuel Obrador are decrying the decision.

So what does this latest attempt at bamboozlefication tell us about the state of human rights in the country that brought us Cliff diving, government funded militias (Paz y Justicia in Chiapas), and of course, Cheech Marin?

Well, a quick look at this last election tells us that things may not have changed as much as we would like since the PAN replaced the PRI in 2000, ending over 70 years of one-party rule. The recent election was won by Calderon by less than 0.6% amongst charges form the left of electoral malfeasance. Amongst the claims is that the vote counting software used this time around was actually designed by Calderon’s brother in law. During the election, several vote counting computers proceeded to go offline mysteriously for several minutes. Can you say HACKED? Where’s Mathew Lillard and Angelina Jolie when you need them?

In the face of this (and other claims) of vote stealing, the FEI was forced to do a recount of the votes, or at least put on a convincing enough looking front for the foreign press. They proceeded to do a partial recount, only recounting votes in a handful of districts known to be PAN strongholds. In other words, in responding to claims that the PAN stole electoral votes, the FEI (no friend to Obrador and his leftist PRD party) responded by recounting a few votes in areas in which the PAN would have no reason to steal votes. It would be like investigating reports of democrat vote stealing in an American election by recounting the votes in Greenwich Village. Smoke and mirrors, bells and whistles. Clearly the FEI had no interest in living up to its mandate.

As far as claims that the 1990 election law demands that these contested ballots be burned, the law itself is a sham to anyone with any historical memory. The 1990 was written in response to the controversy over the 1988 election, when ballot boxes stuffed with phony pro-PRI ballots as well as “disappeared” PRD votes turned up after the campaign, confirming that the 88 election had been stolen from form the PRD by the still hegemonic PRI. In the national scandal that followed, the law was obviously passed to ensure that never again could a stolen Mexican election be contested. In other words, a law written to ensure the smooth functioning of a stolen election is being propped up ensure…. The smooth functioning of a stolen election!

Now before you get your boxer briefs in a twist let me just say that I do not doubt that the PRD also got its hands dirty in the election. The reality of electoral politics in Mexico is that vote stealing and electoral malfeasance is such a fundamental part of the process there (how do you think the PRI remained in power for 70 years?) that any election decided by such a slim margin is bound to be contested by the loser. Vote stealing is likely done by the rank and file of all parties, in different ridings, to different degrees according to the local party machinery dominant in the area. The paradox being that in any close election, both sides probably can dredge up legitimate grievances against the other party, meaning that a crises of confidence in a close Mexican election is inevitable. And it’s not like the ex-PRI members of the PRD are strangers to dirty tricks.

However, it should be noted that the mainstream northern press (in this case the Globe and Mail) is willing to take both the 1990 law, and the legitimacy of the FEI, at face value, without any exploration of historical and institutional context. But when even a hint of malfeasance arises from a Venezualean election takes place, our media cannot wait to pounce on real and imagined irregularities. Ensuring democracy in Latin America is a priority, but only so long as the results of elections favour business as usual.

But it’s like the old saying – you can ride this crazy train all the way to the station, but eventually someone’s gonna check your ticket.

Bob J. Neubauer

last301

Greetings Earthlings

2006-09-16T16:42:00.000-07:00

Relax. This is just a test.