PopDem

Boliva and Venezuela kick out US Ambassadors

2008-09-12T21:37:00.002+01:00

Some interesting articles today..the LA Times article on the kicking out of the US Ambassadors in Venezuela and Bolivia provided little context. So here is more story behind what happened in Bolivia. Also Chavez gave this speech.

One Year Since the Disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine

2008-08-12T07:48:00.000+01:00

I just received this in an email.

------

Open letter to Haitian authorities, on the occasion of the first anniversary
disappearance of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen Officials.

A year ago to date, on August 12, 2007, my husband, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine,
returning from an out-of-city stay, hurryingly left his place of residence to go to an
appointment scheduled by phone by individuals who likely meant to entrap him. It was the
last time, up to now while I am writing to you, that he was seen by the members of his
family. It was also the beginning of a crescendo agony for his Loved Ones as well as for
his friends and allies.

August 12, 2007-August 12, 2008.

Twelve long months have gone by since this disappearance was reported to all
concerned constituencies of the country: Presidency, Ministry of Economy, Parliament,
Ministry of Justice, National Police of Haiti, UN, OEA, etc.
To this day, the Pierre-Antoine family has noted with disappointment -- but without
surprise-- the apparent lack -- short of saying the total absence -- of results following
actions and investigations with which the authorities should proceed.

Today, my stance is the one of a traumatized spouse, of a shocked and powerless head
of household mother, who remains helplessly silent when facing the questions that the two
sons of Lovinsky ask on a daily basis about what actually happened to their beloved
father.

No information was given on the progress of the investigation and I come to the
point of wondering if there really is a genuine intent to reach concrete and official
conclusions.

A year after this event, the Haitian authorities, as well as the public opinion seem
to have forgotten this citizen whose disappearance, as human being, should mobilize our
minds. The worst is the mental, mortal agony endured by the members of his family; it is
also the outrage generated by the perversity of his abductors and the flagrant
indifference of his closest assistants.

There is no doubt that such an active and vibrant citizen as Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine
does not disappear, does not evaporate in thin air without leaving any trace. In fact,
the traces and indicators, left during and after his abduction were not judiciously
followed or explored enough in order to reach concrete results.

I want proof of the fingerprints found in the vehicle used by Lovinsky, the
sensational and revealing declarations made to the press by an influential member of the
political party of which Lovinsky is a member.

Personally, I had, in a not so distant past, related to the police that, in a spur
of hope, I had dialed Lovinsky's cell phone number, and I was appalled to talk with a
correspondent who calmly answered, without seeming concerned that he held in his hand a
personal object that belonged to a mysteriously disappeared person, which should bear
weight of proof, would justice prevail in this country.

When thinking about the disappearance of Lovinsky, the members of his family and
myself come to the conviction that if his physical body escapes our view, he remains
alive in our hearts and souls, as a remarkable husband, a father concerned about the
education and future of his children and a wise mentor for his entourage.

Of course, one may not adhere to his ideological convictions and political
practices, but one cannot fail to admire his activism, his seriousness, his respect for
Words of Honor, his team spirit and especially his love for Haiti. We are lacking words
and images to describe Lovingky's incomparable and magnificent qualities.
We keep the very best memories of him in our hearts.

Embracing the shoulders of my two sons who mourn the disappearance of their beloved
dad and await his probable return, I have not other choice than to rely on the conscience
of all concerned authorities to shed light around his disappearance.

In fact, it is time to break down this atmosphere of suspense and of uncertainty; it
is about time to break the silence observed around this matter, a silence converted into
a tacit plot, woven to maintain secrecy on the intellectual authors of this hateful act.

Once again, I appeal to the conscience of each and everyone of you to let the truth
emerge and put an end to this unspeakable tragedy, for Lovinsky as well as for the
members of his family. I also appeal to the conscience of the members of the new
government, so that they may re-launch the file of Lovinsky and let the truth shine.

In conclusion, I join my boys to express my gratitude and my thanks to the true
friends and supporters of Lovinsky, to all those who offered their moral support, to all
those who made incommensurable sacrifices to express their disapproval of this act, on
the streets of various cities of Haiti, United States and other countries, as well as in
front of various Haitian diplomatic outlets abroad, to all those who wrote articles on
this matter through audio, written, televised media and through the Internet and at last,
to all those who, in a way or another, showed their empathy around this sad and painful
circumstance.

May they rest assured that beyond all abominations, the family of Lovinsky
Pierre-Antoine remains stronger than ever. Sustained by Hope!

Monday, August 11, 2008

Michèle Pierre- Antoine
Wife of Lovinsky

An Interview with Nader

2008-06-14T16:24:00.001+01:00

Anti-Hunger Protests Rock Haiti

2008-04-23T17:37:00.002+01:00

Demonstrations that started in Le Cayes on Thursday, April 3rd, against soaring food prices spread across Haiti to Petit-Goagve, Gonaïves, Aquin and, by April 7, to the capital, Port-au-Prince. Anger over rising prices has been building for many months with basic food stuffs increasingly out of reach for the poor. Tires were set ablaze in the streets and thrown together to form barricades that paralyzed traffic for days.

Read the entire article by Nazaire and myself here at Upside Down World.

This photo above is by Nazaire St. Fort.

protests going on..

2008-03-10T00:33:00.005Z

Robinson has an excellent new photo piece here from Colombia.

I contributed to this recent piece by my friend Nazaire St. Fort at the Inter Press Service (IPS). He documented student led protests to counter the decline of Haiti's rural economy. Also Nazaire has more photos up here on HaitiAnalysis.

And lastly Haiti Liberte has an interesting piece here on the march in Port-au-Prince to mark the fourth anniversary of the 2004 coup d'etat in haiti.

Transnational Institute on Bolivia

2008-02-05T01:16:00.001Z

Here is an excellent piece from June 2007 that I just now got around to reading.

Cartogram

2008-01-10T08:18:00.000Z

A cartogram of military spending. The U.S. spent $353 billion on arms in 2002, out of a world total of $789 billion.

Jean-Juste is ½ free

2007-11-28T00:30:00.000Z

Wadner snapped this photo of Father Gerard Jean-Juste at his recent hearing in front of a Haitian court. Jean-Juste was held as a political prisoner by the former interim government in Haiti and has recently been undergoing medical care in south florida. Pooja Bhatia, Esq, a lawyer and Harvard Law School Satter Human Rights Fellow, has an excellent piece here. Liz Pierre Pierre, a close friend of the former Minister of Justice Bernard Gousse under the unelected Boniface / Latorture government, is the presiding judge with
her assistant judge and the Commissaire of the Government (Government Prosecutor) in the Court d’Appel. When Judge Liz Pierre Pierre brought up one of the two bogus charges against Jean-Juste (that have never been presented with any evidence), he responded, "My Bible and my rosary are my guns." Both in the courtroom and outside crowds gathered to cheer the persecuted priest.

Who Is The Biggest Vulture In The Room?

2007-11-19T17:21:00.000Z

As investigative reporter Greg Palast (Project Censored #10 for this year) showed in his two-part series for the BBC, vulture funds and the inability of poor governments to properly fund social programs for their citizenry are inextricably linked.

Vulture funds, as Meirion Jones observes, are defined by the IMF as companies which buy up the "debt of poor nations cheaply when it is about to be written off and then sue for the full value of the debt plus interest - which might be ten times what they paid for it". But similar types of predatory practices are not favored only by private companies such as Debt Advisory International (DAI), they have been utilized by the IFIs themselves - the IDB, IMF and World Bank - to destabilize out of power poor governments that engage in economically sovereign policies.

In the case of Haiti we can trace a murky history of IFIs slowing and speeding up financial aid, often dependent on the willingness of the government in place to engage in neo-liberal reforms. Between 2001 and 2004 the government of Haiti was virtually cut off from all of the donor money that the country had depended upon in the preceding years, around what should have been at least half (possibly more) of the Haitian government's national budget for that period.

Following the foreign donor backed 2004 overthrow of Haiti's constitutionally elected government, the floodgates of aid opened. As a Bush Administration backed interim government immediately instituted steps towards privatization, with mass civil sector layoffs and the creation of the donor backed Cadre de Cooperation Interimaire (CCI), hundreds of millions in donor aid came into the country to hold up the unelected regime. If aid had never been cut off in the first place, forcing the Haitian government into a slow paralysis for vultures to feed upon, then the country would undoubtedly be in a much better place today.

Fung on Empowered Participation and his Democracy Cube

2007-11-16T18:08:00.000Z

Today I sat through a fascinating talk by Harvard Professor of Public Policy Archon Fung, the author of Empowered Participation: Reinventing Urban Democracy and co-author of Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance.

Participatory or popular forms of democracy are normally approached from an ideal conception. Fung argues for a "different conception of democracy" using what he calls a pragmatic approach to look at alternative grassroots forms of democracy. In his new research he has studied alternative forms of governance in Chicago, India, Brazil and in smaller towns in the United States. Through his pragmatic approach of studying what are essentially localized and thriving models of participatory democracy he constructs a "democracy cube," what he describes as a "menu of institutional alternatives for the power sharing of governance."

Fung sees his approach as providing a different sort of conception of democracy, what he calls deliberative democracy, but what it seems to do is provide a palatable and provable approach for models of participatory democracy on the micro-scale.

One example he discusses and has studied, co-governed community-policing in poor neighborhoods in Chicago, provides a real institutional alternative and policy proposal. From this example, and his look at other alternative governance strategies, he argues for the following: a model of inclusion, more equal consideration of interests, effective consideration of interests, equal and effective opportunity of participation, constructive conflict management and lastly some sort of constraining principle that would allow things to get done and not take for ever. One question I was thinking though; are these micro structures he discuses, while allowing for more-accountablity and social justice, also focused on shifting around limited resources within marginalized communities without building deeper changes within the macro system that they exist? Would they be cut off at some point if they became threatening to elites?

He promotes what he sees as the most scientific approach, a sort of pragmatism, with which he constructs his model by looking at real examples of micro grassroots democracy. That is what I find interesting. It is refreshing as well to see workable models for real policy proposals from political theorists working on grassroots democracy. His work clearly focuses on the micro and on urban communities that have been open and supportive to these types of alternative structures. This also opens it up to some criticism.

His examples are clearly inspiring but there is also a problem of "looking at the world through rose-colored glasses". For example, how would one deal with the issue of hegemony, especially in its blocking a deepening of democracy in most areas, with Fung's model? And also in regards to macro level issues, one participant at the talk mentioned how could this model be used for large campaigns and bringing about big change? And what of the issue of hegemony, class and the conflict over civil society, or what Cox and Gramsci would see as a conflict between hegemonic civil society elites and an emancipatory-counterhegemonic civil society? I see democracy, popular and participatory democracy, as being necessarily a much more conflictual and polarizing process.

Žižek on Resistance

2007-11-13T00:40:00.000Z

An interesting new piece by Slovenian political philosopher and sociologist Slavoj Žižek is published in the London Review of Books.

Singing For The Poor: The Arcade Fire and Partners In Health in Haiti

2007-11-01T22:43:00.001Z

I have a new piece up on the Inter Press Service. Some photos should be up soon on HaitiAnalysis.

Oh, The Money To Be Made in Crushing Bolivian Democracy...

2007-10-20T01:16:00.000+01:00

Here come the vultures! Eva Golinger has an excellent piece on the role of USAID-OTI in destabilizing the elected government of Evo Morales in Bolivia. USAID has been working on this campaign for some time now. A Washington DC based company, Chemonics, has cut the deal of a century with USAID, landing a contract worth $120 million per year until 2011! Take that Indigenous Democracy!! We'll get you in the end!!

>>>You can also make a sure bet that the OTI~~, or should I say the CIA,~~ is backing these protests in Bolivia's eastern city of Santa Cruz.

>>>In Bolivia, as in many countries, airport taxes are supposed to be handled through the federal government. But the managers of the Viru Viru international airport in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, connected tightly with the local political elites who form the main base of the USAID-OTI anti-government opposition in Bolivia, have been circumventing tax laws and refusing to hand over the taxes to the Bolivian federal authorities. Apparently the management put about $250,000 toward some mysterious honorarium administrative council! Imagine that!

>>>The managers of the Viru Viru international airport in Santa Cruz have been charging between $1,000 and $2,000 to every plane wanting to takeoff. So American Airlines of course begin canceling flights out of precaution; playing perfectly into the strategy (surprise, surprise) of portraying a weak unstable government and the national economy as a risky investment (economic destabilization anyone?).

>>>This past Thursday the Bolivian government stepped in to clean up the situation and put the airport under new management. Now of course the USAID-backed-elites have discovered the newest pretext of "repression" and under the snapping lens' of foreign reporters, who undoubtedly just happened to be on hand, the democratic warriors rushed the airport seizing it back for the ~~elites~~ little people and.. oh yes democracy!

>>>Maybe Evo should just do it, declare US Ambassador Philip Goldberg persona non grata.

>>>"Goni" Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, former-Bolivian President now wanted in his home country for crimes against humanity, is laughing it all up in DC from his spot in the ~~propaganda matrix~~ Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), a "respected" think tank well loved and financed by the good folks at the world bank, USAID and all the rest. The IAD loves to lecture poor people in the south on how they should run their democracy. If only they would just listen!

>>>In semi-but-not-really-related news Stephen Johnson, formerly of the Heritage Foundation, has been appointed deputy secretary for the Department of Defense in the Western Hemisphere.

We Miss You Lovinsky!

2007-10-10T12:24:00.000+01:00

Haitian Human Rights leader Pierre-Antoine Lovinsky has gone missing now for nearly two months and is believed kidnapped. All of my thoughts right now are with his wife and children. We all miss you Lovinsky! Here is a photo I snapped of him with demonstrators in front of the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, D.C. back in July 2005.

Economic Justice for Haiti

2007-10-03T18:57:00.000+01:00

I will have published a rather long blog entry on the Jubilee USA blog for October 4th. They have titled the piece, "Haiti: Digging Through A History of Economic Violence." It is timed with the last day of Jubilee USA's fast as well as their long campaign to get Haiti's debt dropped.

Oaxaca, Not Washington

2007-10-02T22:09:00.000+01:00

>>>Kristen Bricker has written up an excellent review looking at the issue of direct democracy in Nancy Davies' new book The People Decide: Oaxaca's Popular Assembly.

>>>Meanwhile Al Giordano has tackled Clinton Inc™ for the vast empire of donor connections that it has leveraged in its corpo-democracy race for Washington's seat of power. And check out youtube to see Hillary Clinton confronted for signing on to another, yes another congressional bill giving Bush more war leverage, this time for a supposed already-planned-out bombing campaign on Iran.

Why Did The 'Denim Revolution' Fail In Belarus?

2007-10-01T10:07:00.000+01:00

The British Helsinki Human Rights Group (BHHRG) has released a fascinating and detailed report on the 2006 elections in Belarus and why the USAID-EU sponsored 'denim revolution' did not occur as planned.

Grandin on 'Galbraithiano' and Chavez's Economic Inspiration

2007-09-30T17:45:00.000+01:00

NYU Professor Greg Grandin (& co-founder of Venezuela Analysis) has an excellent new piece in The Nation that looks at the deceased economist John Kenneth Galbraith (worked on the New Deal under FDR) and whose work has provided one of the key inspirations for Chavez and the other emerging PopDem governments in Latin America. There is also a website dedicated to Galbraith's work and memory here.

The Constituent Assembly: Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador

2007-09-30T13:08:00.000+01:00

In recent years a popular-based apparatus of governance, named the Constituent Assembly, has taken shape in Venezuela, in Bolivia and soon in Ecuador. In Bolivia it has faced the most opposition by the countries USAID-NED-CIDA-EU-united elite civil society and parties. Here is a brief overview of how the Constituent Assemblies are playing out:

-In Ecuador voters will elect a 130-member body from 3,200 candidates this Sunday. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa is depending on the constitutional assembly to push for the reforms that are needed to shift Ecuador's government away from the model of corrupt-elite democracy to a more popular based model that could back partial nationalizations as well as numerous programs aimed at the countries poor majority. In April 2007 eighty two percent of the population voted in favor of forming the assembly. Ecuador's President has said that they are in favor of "non-renewable resources to be owned by the state or by public enterprises" and has advocated the seizure of the Occidental oil fields in Ecuador because of their breaking their contract with Ecuador on fifty-two different occasions. Referring to Occidental, Correa said "
they believe we are still a colony". He argues, like Morales and Chavez, that for far to long too much of the profits from his nations oil fields have gone to foreign corporations when the majority of his country lives in such deep poverty.

-In Venezuela the constituent assembly has pushed through some of the most democratic and poor-based reforms in the western hemisphere to date, a process made easier due in large part to the opposition boycotting of recent elections. This has some similarity with what occurred in Haiti 2000-2004 when foreign aid agencies actually suggested to elite political parties/civil societies that since they could not win (as 70 percent of the people were behind Aristide/Lavalas), then they should instead boycott in order to discredit the entire process. In Haiti the strategy worked for the elites because of the governments huge dependence on foreign aid (and legitimacy provided by foreign 'experts' who can hold up the aid). The Aristide government lost somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of its national budget immediately upon entering office- this was all money the Haitian government had long depended on (i.e. road construction, healthcare, aids programs). But in Venezuela the USAID-elite plan has really backfired. The Chavista program remains uber popular and flush with petro-dollars, not to say there is no room for criticism. The PopDem manifests itself in the votes and popular organizing/pressure from the social movements and poor, so in that respect we should move on to Bolivia, probably the most grassroots and democratic example of them all:

-In Bolivia the MAS movement and President Morales' government have partially succeeded with the Constituent Assembly model, although according to the Democracy Center "the Assembly has been suspended since early September, when violent protests over a proposal to move the seat of the executive and legislative branches from La Paz to Sucre ground its sessions to a halt." This last Thursday members of the assembly agreed to get back into session but it is unlikely that the problems will cease. According to numerous press reports, the Bolivian government is complaining about USAID programs that have been working heavily to derail the constituent assembly and other Bolivian government measures; all the while keeping reportedly 70% of their budget undisclosed. Here is a result graph of the constituent assembly vote from Bolivia:

Nicaragua Mobilized

2007-09-30T02:03:00.000+01:00

Here is a great video montage of poor Nicaraguans celebrating the Sandinista electoral victory earlier this year. Put together by a Nicaraguan-American that was in Nicaragua during the election.

Evo on US-Democracy: "If It’s Rigged, then Something Needs to Be Done to Change That”

2007-09-29T14:29:00.000+01:00

Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, is a welcome guest on the Daily Show. A must see. Evo, you have been so great for your country, but why are you blocking any debate on MINUSTAH (according to ex- minister Andrés Soliz Rada)?

The Shock Doctrine

2007-09-26T18:06:00.000+01:00

Naomi Klein's excellent new book is getting a number of positive reviews, from surprising places. Always one to think up original analogies to describe practices of corpo-globalization she makes a fascinating comparison between neoliberal/conservative free market economic policy to shock therapy administered by psychiatrists. Two Thumbs up and a skittlebrau from PopDem.

NED Publishes 2007 Grants and Experts Go Wild for US-Corpo-Democracy

2007-09-16T13:05:00.000+01:00

The NED has published
its new 'best of' 2007 list of groups or programs that it is financing across the western hemisphere.

The most fascinating thing with the NED is how they are able to employee the language of popular and participatory democracy - when the model they are based on, US Democracy, is just the opposite.
In regards to Venezuela, American-Venezuelan attorney Eva Golinger writes, "many groups now being funded appear to be trying to "break" into the Chávez camp to counteract or sabotage social programs or advances, such as the community councils (NED proposes "citizen councils"), and to impose the US-NED view of "democracy"."

So here we are: the 2002 coup did not work, USAID-NED-STATE have not been able to successfully undermine Chavez in the polls, obviously they have been unable to murder him, and he remains hugely popular- all this while the Venezuelan media (in the hands of a few wealthy buisnessmen) remains %90 against the elected government.

So, the NED realizes they need to deepen their strategy, infiltrate "left talking, right walking" groups into the chavista cohort.

In countries such as Bolivia and Haiti the NED has become an expert at such strategies, sponsoring "grassroots organizations" and backing "particpatory local initiatives". In Haiti alone the NED are backing a number of both new and old faces, such as the Centre de Formation Citoyenne et d'Appui au Développement (Center for Citizen Training and Development Support) (CEFCAD), Comite d'Initiatives de la 3eme section du Limbé (Initiative Committee of the Third Section of Limbé), Coordination Nationale des Organisations de Base (National Coordination for Grassroots Organizations) (CONOB), Fondation Espoir (Hope Foundation),Grand Front National des Etudiants Haïtiens (National Grand Front of Haitian Students) GRAFNEH), and the Rassemblement National des Citoyens Organisés pour le Développement d'Haïti (National Assembly of Citizens Organized for the Development of Haiti) (RANCODHA).

US-Democracy advocate Dr Thomas Carothers should be able to aptly explain all of this during his ~~coaching~~ moderating of an
upcoming talk with IRI Prez Lorne W. Craner and NDI Prez Kenneth Wollack.

Oh..and how can we forget the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) published a ~~wacky and misleading~~ expert report on Haiti. Narco News could just not help themselves with this one. The Sun Sentinel did much better.

AUMOHD Human Rights Reports

2007-09-05T13:03:00.000+01:00

AUMOHD has posted a new report looking at ex-military led violence in the Central Plateau: Mirebalais-Lascaobas-Belladère.

As readers may know, AUMOHD has also (along with the Grand Ravine Community Human Rights Council - CHRC-GR) been highly active in one of the most impoverished areas in Port-au-Prince, Gran Ravine and Martissant. Their reports have constantly pointed to the driving force of violence being a group known as Lame Ti Manchet. Even some other groups less active in the area have begun acknowledging Lame Ti Manchets involvement. Not to worry though, Michael Deibert still believes his ~~blame-it-all-on-Aristide~~ carefully crafted article is the true and "definitive" source on violence in these communities. He actually wrote recently that to the best of his knowledge his article is "the only authoritative English-language reporting on the conflict there." He must have never taken the time to read the translated
reports of actual Haitian human rights workers that are in the communities daily. Earlier this year an organizer of HURAH gave him an ear full.

USA Talks

2007-09-01T13:00:00.000+01:00

Listen to WBAI's Haiti: The Struggle Continues for updates on Lovinsky and ongoing discussion on Haiti. I was just on WBAI and will be speaking again tomorrow (September 2nd) at 6:30 (east coast time) on 94.7 SCA Radyo Pa Nou; listen live to Popular Dialogue. And on Tuesday, September 4th listen to KPFK's Sonali Kolhatkar's show, in the studio. Most of the discussion will be centered around privatization and human rights in Haiti.