Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalEl Libertario: Beware Venezuela’s False ‘Anarchists’
El Libertario: Beware Venezuela’s False ‘Anarchists’
Written by George Ciccariello-Maher
Sunday, 30 March 2014 14:51
Not everyone who calls themselves anarchists are worthy of the name. Before expressing our solidarity, we should be clear who it is we are supporting.
Source: ROAR Magazine
When it comes to the Venezuelan protests of recent weeks and months, misinformation reigns supreme. Just as liberals and progressives have been misled by desperate hashtags like #SOSVenezuela and simplistic comparisons to Occupy, so too has the radical left been tempted by the some self-described Venezuelan anarchists, and El Libertario in particular.
This is not a critique of anarchism in general or even of all Venezuelan anarchists (I will discuss others below). I have always been very close to the anarchist milieu and, while frustrated by certain anarchist blindspots, I am influenced by anarchism as a doctrine of revolutionary struggle that understands the inherent contradictions of the state. The liberal, middle-class anarchism of El Libertario, however, represents not the fulfillment but the betrayal of this revolutionary anarchist vision. Condescending toward the poor and utterly absent from concrete struggles, it has instead allied itself—as it does today—with reactionary elite movements.
In a recent piece published in English both by Libcom.org and ROAR Magazine, El Libertario figurehead Rafael Uzcátegui (not to be confused with the former guerrilla of the same name), put forth a highly misleading but also revealing account of the recent protests to provide an “anarchist perspective” for the “poorly informed.” Unfortunately, the piece leaves us even more poorly informed than before, and lacks any anarchist perspective whatsoever. (While this is not the time to fully dissect Uzcátegui’s book, translated into English as Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle, let’s just say that—as the title suggests—it’s more Debord than Magón or Bakunin.)
What is misleading is that Uzcátegui repeats mainstream misrepresentations of how the protests started, claiming police repression when the police only acted in response to a February 6th attack on the governor of Táchira’s house. He uncritically reports arrests and torture allegations, despite the fact that most of these were never actually reported to the competent agencies, and some are under investigation. While rightly mentioning the role of intelligence officials in deaths of both protesters and Chavistas on February 12th, he fails to mention that the officers responsible were promptly arrested and charged (the number of officials arrested for excessive force has now reached 17).
More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/4770-el-libertario-beware-venezuelas-false-anarchists
US Continues Ransoming Development Aid, Now Using CAFTA to Threaten Social Programs
US Continues Ransoming Development Aid, Now Using CAFTA to Threaten Social Programs
Written by CISPES
Tuesday, 22 April 2014 22:46
The US’s ransoming of development aid has entered a new phase in El Salvador. Not content with the passage of the controversial Public-Private Partnership (P3) Law, nor with its modification by way of various reforms, the US government has now unleashed a new series of conditions it claims necessary for the disbursement of nearly $300 million in Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) development funding. This time, it’s the groundbreaking social programs and reforms initiated by the nation’s first progressive government in the crosshairs.
On Tuesday, April 8, John Barrett, economic advisor at the US Embassy in San Salvador, revealed “concerns” the US Trade Representative has about El Salvador’s compliance with the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), referring specifically to the FMLN-Funes administration’s family farming program, which provides domestic, non-genetically modified (GMO) seeds to small scale farmers to promote local production and food sovereignty. In fact, the US government’s concerns go beyond just subsidized sustainable agriculture. The US Trade Representative’s 2014 report on El Salvador also includes anxieties about the National Healthcare Reform’s measure to allow the Ministry of Health to purchase pharmaceuticals without an open bidding process (allowing them to buy cheaper medicines from Venezuela and Cuba) and the 2012 Medications Law, which regulates El Salvador’s notoriously extortionate medicine prices. In effect, the US government is holding the MCC funds hostage in order to advocate for the interests of Monsanto and Big Pharma at the expense of the vast majority of the Salvadoran people.
El Salvador has already met the conditions established by the MCC board required to qualify for the funding. Nevertheless, the US continues to surprise the country with ever-more conditions. The US’s unending demands on El Salvador’s policy makers exposes the MCC funds as a mere mechanism for the imposition of US commercial interests. With a new FMLN administration poised to assume power on June 1st, the United States appears intent on undermining further attempts to build sustainable, equitable, alternative development initiatives and rolling back existing ones. The invocation of CAFTA against the pioneering actions of the country’s first FMLN government lays bare a struggle between two opposing models of governance, one that protects the interests of a small, corporate elite, and one that serves the popular majority.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/4812-us-continues-ransoming-development-aid-now-using-cafta-to-threaten-social-programs
Agrarian Uprising Against Free Trade and 'Government Lies' Sweeps Colombia
Agrarian Uprising Against Free Trade and 'Government Lies' Sweeps Colombia
By Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams
Wednesday, Apr 30, 2014
Second agrarian uprising in less than a year met with tanks, soldiers, and riot police
Agrarian strikes, protests, and road blockades are sweeping Colombia this week as peasants voice outrage at the "free trade" policies, backed by the Colombian government, that they say are exacerbating the country's crisis of rural poverty.
"The countryside has been abandoned by the state in favor of big companies," Jimmy Torres of Conciencia Campesina in Cajamarca told The Guardian. "That's why we block the roads and protest."
The second major mobilization of its kind in less than a year, the strike launched Monday and has so far been met with government tanks, troops, and riot police, The Guardian reports. Human rights organizations estimate that 200 participants have been "illegally arrested," Neil Martin of the Colombia-based labor solidarity organization Paso International told Common Dreams.
The strikes and protests are organized by dignity movements for potato, rice, and coffee growers and other rural workers, said Martin. Peasants have levied a range of demands for greater social protections and relief from debt, mining projects, and "free trade" agreements that have bankrupted and displaced Colombia's peasants, workers, indigenous, and Afro-Colombian communities.
The "U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement," passed by U.S. Congress in 2011, slashed tariffs on U.S. exports to the country while prohibiting protections for Colombian farmers, forcing peasants and farmers to compete with an influx of subsidized U.S. products.
More:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_66577.shtml
Profile Information
Member since: 2002Number of posts: 160,527
