WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!
FOR BOLSHEVISM
FOR BOLSHEVISM
INSIDE THE COMMUNIST AND WORKERS' MOVEMENT
No 10 (55) OCTOBER 2007
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CONTENTS
1 .WITH A UNITIED PROLETARIAN FRONT – AGAINST THE COMMON ENEMY
2. ANTI-NATO DEMONSTRATIONS IN UKRAINE
3. REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF THE UNANIMOUS OPINION
4. EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE SECOND COMMANDANT OF THE COLOMBIAN GUERRILLA TO CLARÍN
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WITH A UNITIED PROLETARIAN FRONT – AGAINST THE COMMON ENEMY
Recently, a letter was sent into the editorial board of “Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda” by V.I. Romanov from the editorial board of the newspaper, “Golos Stalingrada” (Voice of Stalingrad). Romanov expresses concern over the fact that some of our comrades are blaming Zionism for nearly all of our troubles and that even Y.M. Sverdlov has been classed as a Zionist. And further on, Romanov asks that we reply to the article by O. Naayan entitled “Where are the Bolsheviks going?” published in “Golos Stalingrad” No 1 (46) 2007. The fact Y.M. Sverdlov was not a Zionist is understood by everyone who studies the history of our Leninist party. And it goes without saying that one cannot agree with the opinion of individual comrades who accuse Sverdlov of being a Trotskyite and Zionist just because he was a Jew. We all know the attitude of V.I.Lenin and J.V. Stalin towards Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov as an outstanding activist of our Bolshevik party. They spoke extremely highly of Sverdlov.
But coming out against anti-Semitism, we, Bolsheviks must not fall into the other extreme and ignore the danger of Zionism as the shock detachment of world capitalism, of Jewish fascism.
The article of O. Naayan is directed namely at the concealed danger of Zionism for the international working class in modern conditions and written “by order of the Stalingrad organisation of the AUCPB”. The given postscript signifies only one thing – this is not Naayan’s personal opinion but the opinion of the entire party organisation, or the opinion of only Naayan and V. Romanov whose opinions they try to give out as the opinions of the entire party organisation.
In his article, comrade Naayan analyses V. Drozhinin’s article “The special characteristics of the opposition inside the CPSU (b): history and modernity” published in “Serp I Molot” No1, 2007 and accuses the author of the article in the Krasnoyarsk Bolshevik newspaper of being anti-Semitic, which the epigraph to the article of comrade Naayan bears witness: “Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the working people as a false pathway swerving them off the correct path and leading them into a jungle. Therefore the communists, as consistent internationalists cannot but be irreconcilable and sworn enemies of anti-Semitism” (J.V. Stalin), and the entire content of the article “Where are the Bolsheviks going?” The fact that in Drozhinin’s article there are separate mistakes and inaccuracies is beyond doubt. But the given article by Naayan is directed not towards correcting these mistakes and inaccuracies. On the contrary, under the guise of the struggle against mistakes and inaccuracies, it is directed against our party itself, this is firstly and, secondly, it tries to conceal from the working people the fact that in modern conditions, it is namely Zionism that comes out as the shock detachment (forward unit) of imperialism and primarily American imperialism fighting for world domination.
In connection with this we need to take into consideration several moments in this article.
1. The reasons for the defeat of socialism. O. Naayan writes: “Instead of working out the objectives, class and primarily internal causes of the defeat of socialism, comrade Drozhinin continues to lump all the blame on foreign enemies and the betrayal by Gorbachev and Yeltsin”. And further on comrade Naayan advises him to study party documents and firstly, the “Report by the CC AUCPB to the II Congress of our party”. I want to note that the II congress of our party focused on mainly the internal causes of the destruction of the USSR, at the anti-Stalinism of the Khrushchevite leadership starting from the XX Congress of the CPSU. But the II Congress practically did not examine the external reasons for the defeat of socialism in our country.
2) About the external causes of the defeat of socialism in our country, comrade N.A. Andreeva spoke about in her report at the constituent Congress of the AUCPB: “Indeed, the plans for the liquidation of the world’s first workers’ and peasants’ state after 1917 have never been taken off the tables of the heads of governments, military and intelligence agencies of the “civilized countries” not even for one day. Today, before our very own eyes they are successfully implementing their plans”. You will find this in the party Programme adopted at the founding Congress and also in the new edition of the party Programme.
At the IV Congress of the party, General Secretary of the CC AUCPB, comrade N.A. Andreeva in detail explained the internal as well as external reasons for the defeat of socialism. In particular N.A. Andreeva characterized the perestroika in the following way: “We, Bolsheviks define perestroika in the USSR as a clear well-coordinated and well-planned campaign for the destruction of the world’s leading socialist power, as an act of social-revenge of imperialism for its past defeats in the struggle against socialism, against the USSR”. And further on she says: “peaceful coexistence is only a form of class struggle on the international arena…, the international working class will always oppose world capital in the face of their own state and political structures”.
3) O. Naayan negates the existence of the Directive of A. Dulles – the programme on the destruction of the Soviet Union. With this, he refers to the fact that the main thesis of the directive was published in the novel by Anatoly Ivanov “Vechny Zov”. This novel was written in 1963 –1975 and captures the period from the start of the 20th century and until the mid 1970-s (the pre-revolutionary years, the revolution and civil war, Great Fatherland War, post-war years). In Part 5 of the book, the directive of A. Dulles is printed in artistic from, in the form of a dialogue of the former gendarme of the Tsarist Okhranka (Secret police under Tsarism) and the present day commander in chief of the SS, A. Lakhanovsky with another negative character of the novel, the dialogue having taken place in 1943 when the fascists had suffered defeat at Kurskaya Duga. Considering the directive by A. Dulles was published in 1945, and the novel written in the 60-s to the first half of the 1970-s, it follows that A.Ivanov knew about the existence of such a directive and believed it to be his duty to warn the party and people about the impending danger to us. It is obvious that in direct form, in the form of a directive, nobody would have allowed him to publish the given document, and I. Ivanov turns to artistic form. But having become editor of “Molodaya Gvardiya”, in the years of Gorbachev’s perestroika, he had the possibility to publish this directive in direct form. It is another thing the fact that the processes of destroying the Soviet Union gained an irreversible character. Besides, the publication of this directive in artistic form in a novel speaks about the fact that the Brezhnev-Khrushchevite leadership had known about the existence of such a directive, but took no measures towards neutralizing this programme of destruction of our country. And the fact that the destruction of the USSR occurred exactly according to the plans of the Dulles directive, we can see all of this in practice around us. Moreover, the stupefying of the people continues, and primarily young people: the anti-Stalin hysteria continues along with a constant anti-Leninist, anti-communist ideological campaign, and we in Ukraine in addition have the widely propagated subject of the “famine” (golodomor), the Banderites in Kiev have already opened up a “Museum of Soviet Occupation”
4) In the pre-war years, our party and J.V. Stalin talked about fascism as the shock detachment of imperialism, as the biggest danger threatening the cause of peace and socialism. However Stalin knew very well that the fascists had armed Anglo-American-French imperialism, which had aimed to taunt the fascists to attack the east.
In the post-war years after the defeat of fascism, US imperialism entered the front stage, which during the war years became extremely wealthy (US profits during the war stood at approximately 400 billion dollars, gained from direct participation in the war), and its shock detachment – Zionism as a different form of fascism. And now we, Bolsheviks cannot in any way at all disregard this shock detachment of imperialism.
5) Another moment is examined in this article. O. Naayan refers to N. Andreeva, V. Klyushin and materials of the II Party congress. But what about after the II Congress, did the Party stop working afterwards or what…?
And O. Naayan ends his article with the conclusion: “The AUCPB today is like a knight at a crossroads. Whether it goes straight ahead along the Leninist – Stalinist path or turn off onto the slippery path of leftist or rightist opportunism and nationalism depends on us with you comrades. Judging by the presence of points of view similar to those of comrade Drozhinin, the question on the direction of the party is the order of the day”.
And it is the because of this “conclusion” that the entire article was written by the comrades in Stalingrad.
For us Bolsheviks, there is no question of non -clarity in nationalism, including Jewish nationalism. Our task – is to carry on the struggle on two fronts: against Zionism as the shock detachment of imperialism, as the modern-day form of fascism and against anti-Semitism which is the reverse side of the same coin since, standing on the anti-Semitic position we will, whether we want to or not, push away working people of Jewish nationality from the common proletarian struggle, and push them into the camp of Zionism. What has to be done in modern conditions, on what most important questions we Bolsheviks have to work on, have been in detail revealed in the Political Report of the General Secretary of the CC AUCPB, Comrade N.A. Andreeva at the IV Party Congress.
And our party is not standing at any crossroads whatsoever. For us, this question has always been clear.
It is “unclear” only to V. Romanov and O. Naayan.
The aim of the publication of the article as I spoke about earlier – is to hide from the working masses the fact that Zionism is the shock detachment of modern-day imperialism struggling for world domination. In this struggle, Zionism is ready to slaughter their own fellow-tribesmen like during the Second World War, when 6 million Jews were killed, and nowadays Zionist propaganda at full volume shouts about the Holocaust as if besides Jews, there were no other victims of fascism (including the German people themselves who became the victims of the fanatical plans of the fuehrer, who put 10 million people on the alter of war). The Soviet people became the biggest victims having paid with 20 million lives for the defeat of fascism.
The aim of our party is the mobilization of the working class, of all working people for the preparation and carrying out of a socialist revolution directed at the revival of Soviet power and socialism, at the rebirth of our great Soviet Motherland - the USSR. And in this revolutionary struggle the working people of all nationalities of the multinational Soviet Union – Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Jews, Kazakhs, the working people of Moldova, the republics of the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Baltic states will come out as a united front. They will come out as a united proletarian front against their common enemy – capital and its shock detachment Zionism and US imperialism.
A. MAEVSKY
Secretary of the CC AUCPB
(Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda No 7(124)
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Anti-NATO Demonstrations in Ukraine
Dear comrades:
We are sending you information about the anti-NATO demonstrations that took place in Odessa in July of this year, plus our newspapers, and photographs which shows graphically the activities of the All Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in Ukraine. The activities of the AUCPB are spread all across former Soviet Union in defence of our Motherland the USSR and our platform is based on the woks of Lenin and Stalin.
With our very great respect for the work of NSC and of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People.
A. MAEVSKY
Secretary CC AUCPB
Below we publish a shortened version of the Leaflet by the AUCPB that was distributed in thousands at the demonstrations.
NO JOINING NATO BY UKRAINE!
NO PARTICIPATION IN NATO’S MILITARY EXERCISES!
President Yushenko of Ukraine is pushing his policy for Ukraine joining NATO and publicizing NATO’s policy ads that of peace and democracy in the whole world.
Let us not forget that NATO was established already in 1949, the beginning of the Cold War against the USSR by US imperialism Into NATO there joined 16 capitalist-imperialist countries, headed by the US and the already made plans of these countries was to attack and demolish the USSR and Socialism, and also to do away with the other Socialist countries in Central Europe.
Let us also not forget that US imperialism was already planning its world domination in 1945 when, at the end of WWII it bombed in barbaric fashion Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where scores of thousands of Japanese people perished. To this day, people are dying from that radiation poisoning. After that it was genocide in Korea, Vietnam, Laos and other countries.
Only in 1953 the US had to leave Korea because of their defeat, but, to this day, it has thousands of US troops there with aggressive intentions against North Korea.
After the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, the abolishing of the Warsaw Pact, US imperialism started its march to the East (as Hitler did before). There followed the bloody terror in Yugoslavia, then Afghanistan and now Iraq. On top of this there is constant attacks, covert and overt against Cuba, North Korea and now attempt to install ballistic missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, aimed if course against former USSR.
With the American aim of surrounding Russia, it was the turn of getting Ukraine to be the lap-dog of NATO and through foreign imperialist supported “orange revolution”, the present Yushenko Government is pushing for Ukraine to join NATO. To push this Washington Agenda, President Yushenko dissolved the Ukrainian Parliament, hoping to get a pro-NATO majority at the next election.
The people of Ukraine say:
NO UKRAINE JOINING NATO!
DOWN WITH THIS BANDERA-FASCIST REGIME!
YES TO JOINING RUSSIA, BYELORUSSIA, UKRAINE AND KAZAKHSTAN INTO ONE UNION!
WE SHALL GIVE REBIRTH TO OUR MOTHERLAND – THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS!
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REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
THE UNANIMOUS OPINION
At the 6th Hemispheric Meeting in Havana, when the discussion turned to the subject of production of biofuels from foodstuffs, which are constantly getting more expensive, the huge majority voiced their opposition with indignation. But it was undeniable that some individuals with prestige, authority and good faith had been won over by the idea that the planet's biomass would suffice for both things in a relatively short time, mindless of the urgency to produce the foods, which are already scarce enough, that would be used as raw material for ethanol and agridiesel.
On the other hand, when the debate on the Free Trade Agreements with the United States began, several dozen people took part and all of them unanimously condemned both the bilateral and multilateral forms of such agreements with the imperialist power.
Taking into account the need for space, I shall return to the method of summarizing in order to present three eloquent speeches made by Latin American personalities who expressed extremely interesting concepts with great clarity and distinctiveness. As in all the summaries in previous reflections, the authors’ exact manner of presentation is respected.
ALBERTO ARROYO (Mexico, Red mexicana de Acción contra el Libre Comercio- Mexican Action Network against Free Trade).
I would like to share with you the new plans of the empire and attempt to alert the rest of the continent about something new which is on the upswing or that is coming forward as a new strategy for a new phase of the United States’ offensive. NAFTA or the FTA of North America was merely the first step of something that it wants for the entire continent.
The new attempt does not seem to take into account the defeat in the implementation of the FTAA, which even in it’s Plan “B” recognizes that it cannot implement what it calls the comprehensive FTAA simultaneously in all the countries of the continent; it will try proceeding, piece by piece, negotiating bilateral Free Trade Agreements.
It succeeded in signing with Central America, but Costa Rica has not ratified it. In the case of the Andean nations, it has not even succeeded in sitting down at the bargaining table with all the countries, but only with two of them; and with these two it has not been able to conclude negotiations.
What is so new about the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America)? I see three fundamental issues:
First: To strengthen military and security structures in order to confront the resistance of the peoples is precisely its reaction to the triumph of the movement that is jeopardizing its plans.
It is not a question of simply stationing military bases in danger zones or in areas with a high level of strategic natural resources, but trying to establish a close coordination, with plans concerted with the countries, in order to improve the security structures which are a way of confronting the social movements as if they were criminals.
This is the first novel aspect.
The second element, which also seems new to me: the principal actors in this entire neoliberal scheme were always directly the transnationals. The governments, particularly the United States government, were the spokesmen, the ones who formally carried out the negotiations, but really the interests that they were defending were directly those of the corporations. They were the great actors hidden behind the FTA and the FTAA project.
The novelty of the new SPP scheme is that these actors come out of the blue, take the foreground and the relationship is inverted: the corporate groups directly talking amongst themselves, in the presence of the governments that will then attempt to translate their agreements into policies, rule changes, changes of laws, etc. It was not enough for them now to privatize the public corporations; they are privatizing policy per se. The businessmen had never directly defined economic policy.
The SPP starts in a meeting, let’s say it’s called, “A meeting for the prosperity of North America”; they were tri-national meetings of businessmen.
Among the operative agreements being taken up by the SPP, one is the creation of tri-national committees by sectors, --what they call “captains of industry”-- so that these define a strategic development plan of the sector in the North American region. In other words, Ford is multiplied or divided into three parts: that is, the Ford Corporation in the United States, the subsidiary of Ford in Mexico and the subsidiary of Ford in Canada decide the strategy for the auto industry sector in North America. It’s the Ford Motor Company speaking to a mirror, with its own employees, with the directors of auto companies in Canada and in Mexico, to agree on a strategic plan that they will present to their governments which will translate and implement them into concrete economic policies.
There is a scheme to incorporate the security element; second point, to directly privatize the negotiations; and the third new aspect of this structure is perhaps, remembering a saying of our classic grandparents, that phrase of Engels where he was explaining that when the people are ready to take power through the mechanisms of formal democracy, like the zero on a thermometer or the 100, the rules of the game change: water will either freeze or boil, and even though we are speaking about bourgeois democracies, they will be first ones to break the rules.
The Free Trade Agreements have to go through congresses, and the fact is that it is getting more difficult to have them ratified by congresses, including the Congress of the empire, the United States Congress.
They are saying that this is not an international treaty therefore it doesn’t have to get approved by the congresses. But, as it does touch on issues that disrupt the legal framework in our countries, they will present in bit by bit; they will decide on a modification to legislation in a minute, and another one in the next minute; executive decrees to be implemented, changes in operative regulations, rules for standard functioning, but never the whole package.
Even though they were negotiated behind our backs and behind the backs of all peoples in general, sooner or later the Free Trade Agreements will be translated into a written text that will go to the congresses and then we will know what it was that they agreed to. They would like us never to know what was agreed to, they will only let us see fragments of the strategy, because it is never going to get translated into a complete text.
I shall close with a story so that we can realize the degree of sophistication, with regards to security, that these agreements and operative mechanisms of integration of security apparatuses have reached.
A short while ago, a plane took off from Toronto with tourists headed for a vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. While the plane was on the runway, the passenger list was examined again more carefully, and they discovered that there was someone there from Bush’s list of terrorists.
As soon as the plane entered American air space –when you fly out of Toronto, American air space begins after you pass the Great Lakes and, in a jet, this takes a few minutes– two F-16s showed up flying alongside. They led the plane out of American air space and escorted it to Mexican territory where they forced it to land in the military section of the airport; then, they arrested this man and sent his family back.
You can imagine the impression those 200 poor tourists on the plane had, seeing the two armed F-16s flying alongside and rerouting the plane.
Later, it turned out that he was not the terrorist that they thought, and they said to him: “Sorry, you can carry on with your vacation now, and make sure you call your family to come and join you.”
JORGE CORONADO (Costa Rica, Continental Social Alliance)
The struggle against free trade in the region has various features. One of the most devastating projects that have been proposed for the infrastructure, for the appropriation of our biodiversity, is the Puebla-Panama Plan, a strategy that not only appropriates our resources, but comes out of a military strategy of the empire covering the territory from the south of Mexico right up to Colombia, passing through Central America.
In the struggle against hydroelectric dams which uproot and take by force the indigenous and peasant lands there have been cases where, using military repression, they have uprooted various native and peasant communities in the region.
We have the component of the struggle against the mining industry. Canadian, European and American transnationals have been pursuing this appropriation strategy.
We have been confronting the privatization of public services: electrical energy, water, telecommunications; the struggle in the peasant sector to defend seeds, against the patenting of living beings and against the loss of sovereignty to the transgenics.
We have been struggling against labor flexibility, one of the focuses oriented to the sector and, obviously, against the entire picture of dismantlement of our small scale peasant production.
Also, the struggle against the subject of intellectual property, which removes the use of generic medicines from our security, these being the main distribution focus which our social security institutes have in the region .
A central factor in this struggle against free trade has been against the Free Trade Agreements and, particularly, against the Free Trade Agreements with the United States, passed in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, through blood, sweat and tears. And this is not just a rhetorical expression.
In Guatemala, comrades in the struggle have been murdered while they have gone head to head against the treaty approvals. This struggle has allowed us to ensure a coordinating and mobilizing force for the greatest unity of the people’s movement in the region.
In the case of the Honduran Parliament, the deputies walked out, breaking the minimum framework of institutional legality.
We have stated that, within the heart of the people’s movement, this has not signified defeat. We have lost a battle, but it has allowed us to take a qualitative leap forward in terms of organization, unity and experience in the struggle against free trade.
The Popular Social Movement and the people of Costa Rica, which have prevented Costa Rica’s approval of the FTA up until the present, forging unity with various academic, political and even business sectors to create a great national front of diverse and heterogeneous struggle, till now have succeeded in stopping the Costa Rican government, the right-wing neoliberals, and so they have not been able to approve the FTA. Today the possibility of a referendum in Costa Rica to decide the fate of the FTA is being proposed.
We are on the threshold of a fundamental stage in Costa Rica in terms of being able to prevent the advance of the neoliberal agenda; a defeat of this treaty would symbolically mean that we keep on adding up victories, like detaining and bringing FTA to a standstill.
Today we need solidarity in the popular movement, and we request it of the social and popular organizations which come to Costa Rica as international observers. The right-wing is preparing to encourage, if possible, a fraud that will guarantee it a win in the fight that is already lost, and having international observers from the popular movement will be an important contribution to active militant solidarity with our struggle.
Today, after a year, the FTA has not brought any more jobs, any more investments, or better conditions for the trade balance to any country in Central America. Today, in the entire region, we proclaim the slogan of agrarian reform, sovereignty and food security, as a central focus for our eminently agricultural nations.
Today, not just the United States but also Europe would like to appropriate one of the richest areas in biodiversity and natural resources. Today, more than ever, the coordinating focus of our different movements in the Central American region is to confront free trade in its multiple manifestations; hopefully this meeting will help give us coordinating elements, focuses for struggle and joint action that will allow us in this entire hemisphere to advance as one popular force.
We shall not rest in our efforts of organization and struggle until we reach the goal of a new world.
JAIME ESTAY (Chile, coordinator of REDEM - network of world economy studies - and, now professor at the University of Puebla in Mexico.
This crisis, in short, has to do with a manifest non-compliance with the promises that accompanied a group of reforms that began to be applied in Latin America in the 1980's.
Under the banner of free trade, we were told that we were going to achieve growth of our economies, that we were going to achieve diminished levels of inequality in our countries, along with diminished distances between our countries and the advanced world and, in brief, that we were going to achieve a move towards development in leaps and bounds. In some countries there was even talk about making those leaps and bounds into the First World.
In the matter of new integration or this open regionalism which took off more than 15 years ago, what was proposed was Latin American integration, or what we call Integration of Latin America, at the service of an opening-up process. A whole debate was set up about how we had to integrate in order to open up, an integration that would not be the old-style protectionist integration, but an integration that would bring us better conditions to include ourselves in this global economy, in these markets which, supposedly, since they operated in a free manner, would produce the best possible results for our countries.
This relationship between integration and opening-up, that idea whose supreme objective of integration had to be the opening up of our countries, took place in effect; our countries effectively opened up and effectively and unfortunately the central theme of Latin American integration consisted in putting it at the service of this opening up.
Some officials were talking about what was called “the pragmatic phase of integration”. We move forward as we are able; that more or less became the slogan. If what we need is to trade more, let us concentrate on trading more; if what we want is to sign a bunch of little agreements among countries, bilateral agreements or agreements between three or four countries, let us go in that direction, and at some point we shall be able to call this Latin American Integration.
The balance is clearly negative. I think that there is recognition, greater on various levels now, that what we have been calling the Integration of Latin America is not integration, it is trade; and it is not Latin American but a tangle of signed agreements between different countries of the region, none of which has lead to a process possessing an effectively Latin American character. The opening-up, at whose service it is supposed that integration must be placed, has not produced any of the results that were announced in terms of economic growth, lessening of inequalities and achieving the sorely desired development that they said was supposed to be coming to us.
What we should point out is that we are witnessing an extreme deterioration of a style of integration that very clearly knew why, how and for whom integration was taking place.
In short, what I am talking about is an integration which was conceived on the foundations of neoliberalism, which has failed, both in terms of its own objectives and in terms of the objectives that we all have a right to demand and to expect in a genuine integration process.
The new Latin American integration was firmly supported by the policies and proposals coming from Washington. To a great extent, those American proposals have become something that will end up devouring its own offspring. Just the act of signing Free Trade Agreements has brought both the Andean community and the Central American Common Market to a crisis point.
An important part of the current crisis in Latin American integration has to do with the advance of the United States hemispheric project, not via the FTAA which managed to be stopped, but via the signing of different free trade treaties.
We can see the appearance of alternatives more clearly in the current panorama of integration. In many ways, ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) is based on principles that are radically different from those belonging to that integration process which is in crisis.
There are many functions left to define and many boundaries to be traced: the meaning of such concepts as “free trade”, “national development”, “market freedom”, “food security and sovereignty”, etc. What we are able to state is that we are witnessing, on the hemispheric and Latin American scene, a growing insurgency regarding the predominance of neoliberalism.
This is where the opinions expressed by these three personalities end, summing up the opinions of many of the participants in the debate about Free Trade Treaties. These are very solid points of view derived from a bitter reality and they have enriched my ideas.
I recommend my readers to pay attention to the complexities of human activity. It’s the only way to see much further.
Space has run out. Today I should not add one more single word.
Fidel Castro Ruz
May 16, 2007.
(6:12 p.m.)
(www.revolucia.ru)
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31 August 2007
Exclusive interview with the second commandant of the Colombian guerrilla to Clarín
Por: Pablo Biffi / Colombian southern jungles. Especial envoy Clarin 26 de agosto
Commander" Raul Reyes is the number two of the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the FARC) and one of the seven members of the Secretariat of the High Command, lead by the mythical Manuel Marulanda Vélez, Sureshot, who has been for almost 60 years in clandestiny. Created in 1964, the FARC define themselves as Marxists Leninists and "Peasants and Bolivarians". In an exclusive interview with Clarín on a transitory camp mounted for the encounter with this newspaper in the southern jungles of Colombia, Reyes welcomed the contribution of the Venezuelan Hugo Chávez for an exchange of about 50 hostages - among them the ex- candidate Ingrid Betancourt- for 400 imprisoned guerrillas. But he clarified that they do not accept to hand over their prisoners in Venezuela, as proposed the Bolivarian leader who will meet with his colleague Alvaro Uribe this Friday in Bogotá. "He is making his contribution and we thank him for it. We think that it is a beginning, is new impulse, new oxygen that can be given to the subject of the humanitarian exchange. But we continue maintaining that the exchange, as being a problem derived from the internal conflict, must be solved in Colombia. We are not going to hand over prisoners in Venezuela ", he said.
With 30 years in the organization - the group counts with around 17,000 people in arms -, a past with ties to the Communist Party and as councilman of a town in Caquetá, Reyes has three children of a marriage in the civil life - when he was Luis Edgar Devia Silva- and he says to be "near 60 years of age". For the guerrilla leader, Ingrid Betancourt is not in a "kidnapped" character since February of 2002, but as a "political prisoner, for being part of a regime that we fight against". Throughout a day, Clarín shared with Reyes an extensive dialogue in which he denied the ties of the FARC with the drug trafficking and rejected them to be a terrorist organization.
- Why a humanitarian agreement to release hostages is so difficult that some have already been prisoners for 10 years?
It is that this government does not have the least intention to reach an agreement. The FARC have been insisting for more than 5 years to obtain the agreement, an exchange between about 50 hostages and 400 guerrilla prisoners. And we need to remember that in the peace dialogues with the government of Andrés Pastrana we unilaterally released more than 300 soldiers and members of the police. And we only obtained the liberation of 14 guerrillas who were ill. The rest of the hostages remained in our control in order to look for a humanitarian agreement.
- Why do you insist on the military clearing of two municipalities of 800 kilometres square, Florida and Pradera, for the exchange?
When this government assumed office in 2002 we proposed them to clear two municipalities in Caquetá, which were San Vicente of Caguán and Cartagena of Chairá. But Uribe said that we had proposed those sites because the FARC felt militarily harassed and wanted to recover ground. We said then: well, let them be other (municipalities) so that the government does not think that we want to take advantage.
- But can the exchange be done by any other way?
No, it is not possible to do it by any other way because the FARC does not have the least confidence in Uribe’s representatives, because it is an illegitimate, narco-paramilitary government, a government that does not have an interest different than war. As well, we think that it is not much to demilitarize two municipalities for 45 days for an agreement of such significance.
- But the government insists that they will not demilitarize and the FARC, that without demilitarization there is no exchange. How does one get out of that trap?
We think that we get out of this with national and international pressure, to sensitize Uribe for him to understand that the only way to reach the agreement is demilitarizing the municipalities. Uribe is not the one who has made the proposal, it is the FARC that did. It is for that reason that we have very highly valued the role that France, Switzerland and Spain have played and play in the search for the agreement. But Uribe’s policy is that of the rescue by force, without concerning him what happens to the prisoners, since what he wants is to show results in the execution of the Plan Patriota and Plan Colombia financed by the United States, and to demonstrate that he is defeating the FARC.
- It does not seem to you that this is a game of force between the government and the FARC using the hostages?
What happens is that in Colombia there is an internal conflict, a confrontation of more than 43 years just with the FARC, where the State has wanted to do away with the guerrilla. Each president used amounts of men and resources in trying to eliminate the FARC. They did not achieve it. We have grown and today we have presence in all the country. This causes the governing class to worry.
- I Insist. Is it not a game of force with the hostages in the middle?
It is that the government wants to make the country and the world think that he is defeating us and that he will make us negotiate under pressure. We are strong and we do not negotiate under pressure.
- A few months ago the government released a hundred guerrillas and with the help of the French president the "chancellor" of the FARC Rodrigo Granda was freed. A reciprocal gesture of FARC was expected such as leaving Ingrid Betancourt free, but there was nothing.
This was a unilateral action of the government within the framework of a mediatic campaign to cover the scandal of the "para-politics" that complicates things for the government, and not the product of a negotiation. And as far as the liberation of Granda, we thanked for the gesture of President Nicolas Sarkozy. But there was either a commitment of the FARC with Sarkozy for Granda to be released.
- But would it not have been important to release Ingrid or Clara Rojas and her son of three years that was born in captivity?
The problem of the humanitarian agreement derives from the Colombian internal conflict and any agreement must be done in Colombia. Any intervention in favor of the exchange is beneficial. But who decide are the government of Bogotá and the FARC.
- Chávez offered his country and a cleared zone for the exchange. Would the FARC accept to do the exchange in Venezuela?
I want to thank President Chávez through Clarín for that gesture, for that generosity, for that sense of solidarity with Colombia, and with the relatives of the prisoners, and the FARC. But it is necessary to remember here that President Chávez makes this offer after Senator Piedad Córdoba, of the Liberal Party and opposed to Uribe, requested Chávez to contribute with the agreement. And he is making his contribution that we think is a beginning, a new impulse that can be given to this subject of the humanitarian exchange. But we continue maintaining that, as being a problem derived from the internal conflict, the exchange must be solved in Colombia.
- Then the FARC rejects to hand over hostages in Venezuela?
Yes, what we continue soliciting is the demilitarization of Pradera and Florida and we would ask President Chávez that, given his political weight, contributes to achieve that clearing that leads the parts to seat at a table and to reach the agreement to end the captivity of the prisoners.
- Are you going to negotiate in Venezuela?
Yes, we do not have problems in engaging in a dialog anywhere, but the prisoners hand over must be in Colombia.
- Is it not a demential act to have people retained during as much time as Betancourt, who has been for more than 5 years in the hands of the FARC?
For us in no case there is kidnapping, because what occurs is the result of a confrontation of the people in arms, the revolutionary guerrillas in Colombia, and a State that has a ramification in the three powers, Executive, Judicial and Legislative. The soldiers in our control are war prisoners and the rest are political prisoners. Ingrid Betancourt is in the group that we denominate "exchangeable", a candidate to the presidency and before a senator, but of the system that we fight against. For that reason she is not a kidnapped person.
- And in the case of the three Americans who you have since February of 2003?
They are North American agents. The FARC did not go to capture them in Washington, New York, Texas or Boston, but it took them prisoners in Colombian territory when they were engaged in espionage in our country.
- The government and the United States say that they were civil contractors...
That is the great lie. They were agents who were engaged in espionage in Colombia, violating our sovereignty, violating our independence. In spite of it, we included them within the exchangeable ones and we aspire to release them once the comrades Simón Trinidad and Sonia, prisoners in the United States and all the men and woman guerrillas who we have in the jails of Colombia are released.
- Why do you take business people as hostages?
No. Which business people?
- There are no business people?
Not that I know. And if there is any it is because they have not paid the tax of our Law 02, a tax that the FARC collects from the business people, who are the same who finance the war against the Colombian people. There are many who pay that tax with no need to take them prisoners and others that do not pay it. And as they do not pay it then we take them prisoners. Those are not included within the package of exchangeable because once they pay the debt with the organization they are freed.
- How much do they have to pay?
Ten per cent of the profits they obtain each year.
- You spoke of Simón Trinidad and Sonia, prisoners in the U.S.A. Do you think it is possible a negotiation with Washington to exchange them for the three Americans?
It would be necessary to see in what terms, but we would not have problems, so long as it is done through the Colombian government. Really, Uribe is not more than their employee and he does what they command him to do.
- is it that not a myth?
No, that is real.
- How does it manifest itself?
The North American themselves recognize it. It is a reality that expresses itself as to where they know perfectly well who Uribe is and nevertheless they support him knowing of his quite dark
paramilitary and narco-trafficker past. They support him in spite of knowing the fraud that he has always done, the buying of votes, in spite of knowing who were in the lists with him and where their votes come from. And they stand with him in spite of the daily lies he tells them with supposed triumphs he does not have. They have given him much money for Plan Colombia, and he has not been able to show them the results that he committed to give them. He offered to do away very quickly with the FARC in his first government and he also committed to rescuing his prisoners with no need for the agreement. He did not achieve either.
- It was never clear how the 11 deputies in control of the FARC died on June 18. What really happened?
We said that an unidentified force caused the death of the deputies. Until today we have not been able to identify what happened.
Why?
Because in the region where the 11 deputies were there is ongoing confrontation, because there are all type of forces such as the official army, the police, the paramilitary at the service of the State, bands of delinquents armed by the narco-traffickers. For that reason the FARC did not want to venture into making any force responsible of that lamentable event.
- The government says that you killed them?
That is not true. That is part of the media campaign.
- But is there no responsibility on the part of the FARC? Because you have the responsibility for the life of the hostages.
Sure, there were faults in the security. There were faults of our people, who had the responsibility to take care of the prisoners.
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No 10 (55) OCTOBER 2007
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CONTENTS
1 .WITH A UNITIED PROLETARIAN FRONT – AGAINST THE COMMON ENEMY
2. ANTI-NATO DEMONSTRATIONS IN UKRAINE
3. REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF THE UNANIMOUS OPINION
4. EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE SECOND COMMANDANT OF THE COLOMBIAN GUERRILLA TO CLARÍN
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WITH A UNITIED PROLETARIAN FRONT – AGAINST THE COMMON ENEMY
Recently, a letter was sent into the editorial board of “Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda” by V.I. Romanov from the editorial board of the newspaper, “Golos Stalingrada” (Voice of Stalingrad). Romanov expresses concern over the fact that some of our comrades are blaming Zionism for nearly all of our troubles and that even Y.M. Sverdlov has been classed as a Zionist. And further on, Romanov asks that we reply to the article by O. Naayan entitled “Where are the Bolsheviks going?” published in “Golos Stalingrad” No 1 (46) 2007. The fact Y.M. Sverdlov was not a Zionist is understood by everyone who studies the history of our Leninist party. And it goes without saying that one cannot agree with the opinion of individual comrades who accuse Sverdlov of being a Trotskyite and Zionist just because he was a Jew. We all know the attitude of V.I.Lenin and J.V. Stalin towards Yakov Mikhailovich Sverdlov as an outstanding activist of our Bolshevik party. They spoke extremely highly of Sverdlov.
But coming out against anti-Semitism, we, Bolsheviks must not fall into the other extreme and ignore the danger of Zionism as the shock detachment of world capitalism, of Jewish fascism.
The article of O. Naayan is directed namely at the concealed danger of Zionism for the international working class in modern conditions and written “by order of the Stalingrad organisation of the AUCPB”. The given postscript signifies only one thing – this is not Naayan’s personal opinion but the opinion of the entire party organisation, or the opinion of only Naayan and V. Romanov whose opinions they try to give out as the opinions of the entire party organisation.
In his article, comrade Naayan analyses V. Drozhinin’s article “The special characteristics of the opposition inside the CPSU (b): history and modernity” published in “Serp I Molot” No1, 2007 and accuses the author of the article in the Krasnoyarsk Bolshevik newspaper of being anti-Semitic, which the epigraph to the article of comrade Naayan bears witness: “Anti-Semitism is dangerous for the working people as a false pathway swerving them off the correct path and leading them into a jungle. Therefore the communists, as consistent internationalists cannot but be irreconcilable and sworn enemies of anti-Semitism” (J.V. Stalin), and the entire content of the article “Where are the Bolsheviks going?” The fact that in Drozhinin’s article there are separate mistakes and inaccuracies is beyond doubt. But the given article by Naayan is directed not towards correcting these mistakes and inaccuracies. On the contrary, under the guise of the struggle against mistakes and inaccuracies, it is directed against our party itself, this is firstly and, secondly, it tries to conceal from the working people the fact that in modern conditions, it is namely Zionism that comes out as the shock detachment (forward unit) of imperialism and primarily American imperialism fighting for world domination.
In connection with this we need to take into consideration several moments in this article.
1. The reasons for the defeat of socialism. O. Naayan writes: “Instead of working out the objectives, class and primarily internal causes of the defeat of socialism, comrade Drozhinin continues to lump all the blame on foreign enemies and the betrayal by Gorbachev and Yeltsin”. And further on comrade Naayan advises him to study party documents and firstly, the “Report by the CC AUCPB to the II Congress of our party”. I want to note that the II congress of our party focused on mainly the internal causes of the destruction of the USSR, at the anti-Stalinism of the Khrushchevite leadership starting from the XX Congress of the CPSU. But the II Congress practically did not examine the external reasons for the defeat of socialism in our country.
2) About the external causes of the defeat of socialism in our country, comrade N.A. Andreeva spoke about in her report at the constituent Congress of the AUCPB: “Indeed, the plans for the liquidation of the world’s first workers’ and peasants’ state after 1917 have never been taken off the tables of the heads of governments, military and intelligence agencies of the “civilized countries” not even for one day. Today, before our very own eyes they are successfully implementing their plans”. You will find this in the party Programme adopted at the founding Congress and also in the new edition of the party Programme.
At the IV Congress of the party, General Secretary of the CC AUCPB, comrade N.A. Andreeva in detail explained the internal as well as external reasons for the defeat of socialism. In particular N.A. Andreeva characterized the perestroika in the following way: “We, Bolsheviks define perestroika in the USSR as a clear well-coordinated and well-planned campaign for the destruction of the world’s leading socialist power, as an act of social-revenge of imperialism for its past defeats in the struggle against socialism, against the USSR”. And further on she says: “peaceful coexistence is only a form of class struggle on the international arena…, the international working class will always oppose world capital in the face of their own state and political structures”.
3) O. Naayan negates the existence of the Directive of A. Dulles – the programme on the destruction of the Soviet Union. With this, he refers to the fact that the main thesis of the directive was published in the novel by Anatoly Ivanov “Vechny Zov”. This novel was written in 1963 –1975 and captures the period from the start of the 20th century and until the mid 1970-s (the pre-revolutionary years, the revolution and civil war, Great Fatherland War, post-war years). In Part 5 of the book, the directive of A. Dulles is printed in artistic from, in the form of a dialogue of the former gendarme of the Tsarist Okhranka (Secret police under Tsarism) and the present day commander in chief of the SS, A. Lakhanovsky with another negative character of the novel, the dialogue having taken place in 1943 when the fascists had suffered defeat at Kurskaya Duga. Considering the directive by A. Dulles was published in 1945, and the novel written in the 60-s to the first half of the 1970-s, it follows that A.Ivanov knew about the existence of such a directive and believed it to be his duty to warn the party and people about the impending danger to us. It is obvious that in direct form, in the form of a directive, nobody would have allowed him to publish the given document, and I. Ivanov turns to artistic form. But having become editor of “Molodaya Gvardiya”, in the years of Gorbachev’s perestroika, he had the possibility to publish this directive in direct form. It is another thing the fact that the processes of destroying the Soviet Union gained an irreversible character. Besides, the publication of this directive in artistic form in a novel speaks about the fact that the Brezhnev-Khrushchevite leadership had known about the existence of such a directive, but took no measures towards neutralizing this programme of destruction of our country. And the fact that the destruction of the USSR occurred exactly according to the plans of the Dulles directive, we can see all of this in practice around us. Moreover, the stupefying of the people continues, and primarily young people: the anti-Stalin hysteria continues along with a constant anti-Leninist, anti-communist ideological campaign, and we in Ukraine in addition have the widely propagated subject of the “famine” (golodomor), the Banderites in Kiev have already opened up a “Museum of Soviet Occupation”
4) In the pre-war years, our party and J.V. Stalin talked about fascism as the shock detachment of imperialism, as the biggest danger threatening the cause of peace and socialism. However Stalin knew very well that the fascists had armed Anglo-American-French imperialism, which had aimed to taunt the fascists to attack the east.
In the post-war years after the defeat of fascism, US imperialism entered the front stage, which during the war years became extremely wealthy (US profits during the war stood at approximately 400 billion dollars, gained from direct participation in the war), and its shock detachment – Zionism as a different form of fascism. And now we, Bolsheviks cannot in any way at all disregard this shock detachment of imperialism.
5) Another moment is examined in this article. O. Naayan refers to N. Andreeva, V. Klyushin and materials of the II Party congress. But what about after the II Congress, did the Party stop working afterwards or what…?
And O. Naayan ends his article with the conclusion: “The AUCPB today is like a knight at a crossroads. Whether it goes straight ahead along the Leninist – Stalinist path or turn off onto the slippery path of leftist or rightist opportunism and nationalism depends on us with you comrades. Judging by the presence of points of view similar to those of comrade Drozhinin, the question on the direction of the party is the order of the day”.
And it is the because of this “conclusion” that the entire article was written by the comrades in Stalingrad.
For us Bolsheviks, there is no question of non -clarity in nationalism, including Jewish nationalism. Our task – is to carry on the struggle on two fronts: against Zionism as the shock detachment of imperialism, as the modern-day form of fascism and against anti-Semitism which is the reverse side of the same coin since, standing on the anti-Semitic position we will, whether we want to or not, push away working people of Jewish nationality from the common proletarian struggle, and push them into the camp of Zionism. What has to be done in modern conditions, on what most important questions we Bolsheviks have to work on, have been in detail revealed in the Political Report of the General Secretary of the CC AUCPB, Comrade N.A. Andreeva at the IV Party Congress.
And our party is not standing at any crossroads whatsoever. For us, this question has always been clear.
It is “unclear” only to V. Romanov and O. Naayan.
The aim of the publication of the article as I spoke about earlier – is to hide from the working masses the fact that Zionism is the shock detachment of modern-day imperialism struggling for world domination. In this struggle, Zionism is ready to slaughter their own fellow-tribesmen like during the Second World War, when 6 million Jews were killed, and nowadays Zionist propaganda at full volume shouts about the Holocaust as if besides Jews, there were no other victims of fascism (including the German people themselves who became the victims of the fanatical plans of the fuehrer, who put 10 million people on the alter of war). The Soviet people became the biggest victims having paid with 20 million lives for the defeat of fascism.
The aim of our party is the mobilization of the working class, of all working people for the preparation and carrying out of a socialist revolution directed at the revival of Soviet power and socialism, at the rebirth of our great Soviet Motherland - the USSR. And in this revolutionary struggle the working people of all nationalities of the multinational Soviet Union – Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Jews, Kazakhs, the working people of Moldova, the republics of the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Baltic states will come out as a united front. They will come out as a united proletarian front against their common enemy – capital and its shock detachment Zionism and US imperialism.
A. MAEVSKY
Secretary of the CC AUCPB
(Raboche-Krestyanskaya Pravda No 7(124)
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Anti-NATO Demonstrations in Ukraine
Dear comrades:
We are sending you information about the anti-NATO demonstrations that took place in Odessa in July of this year, plus our newspapers, and photographs which shows graphically the activities of the All Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in Ukraine. The activities of the AUCPB are spread all across former Soviet Union in defence of our Motherland the USSR and our platform is based on the woks of Lenin and Stalin.
With our very great respect for the work of NSC and of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People.
A. MAEVSKY
Secretary CC AUCPB
Below we publish a shortened version of the Leaflet by the AUCPB that was distributed in thousands at the demonstrations.
NO JOINING NATO BY UKRAINE!
NO PARTICIPATION IN NATO’S MILITARY EXERCISES!
President Yushenko of Ukraine is pushing his policy for Ukraine joining NATO and publicizing NATO’s policy ads that of peace and democracy in the whole world.
Let us not forget that NATO was established already in 1949, the beginning of the Cold War against the USSR by US imperialism Into NATO there joined 16 capitalist-imperialist countries, headed by the US and the already made plans of these countries was to attack and demolish the USSR and Socialism, and also to do away with the other Socialist countries in Central Europe.
Let us also not forget that US imperialism was already planning its world domination in 1945 when, at the end of WWII it bombed in barbaric fashion Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where scores of thousands of Japanese people perished. To this day, people are dying from that radiation poisoning. After that it was genocide in Korea, Vietnam, Laos and other countries.
Only in 1953 the US had to leave Korea because of their defeat, but, to this day, it has thousands of US troops there with aggressive intentions against North Korea.
After the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, the abolishing of the Warsaw Pact, US imperialism started its march to the East (as Hitler did before). There followed the bloody terror in Yugoslavia, then Afghanistan and now Iraq. On top of this there is constant attacks, covert and overt against Cuba, North Korea and now attempt to install ballistic missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, aimed if course against former USSR.
With the American aim of surrounding Russia, it was the turn of getting Ukraine to be the lap-dog of NATO and through foreign imperialist supported “orange revolution”, the present Yushenko Government is pushing for Ukraine to join NATO. To push this Washington Agenda, President Yushenko dissolved the Ukrainian Parliament, hoping to get a pro-NATO majority at the next election.
The people of Ukraine say:
NO UKRAINE JOINING NATO!
DOWN WITH THIS BANDERA-FASCIST REGIME!
YES TO JOINING RUSSIA, BYELORUSSIA, UKRAINE AND KAZAKHSTAN INTO ONE UNION!
WE SHALL GIVE REBIRTH TO OUR MOTHERLAND – THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS!
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REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
THE UNANIMOUS OPINION
At the 6th Hemispheric Meeting in Havana, when the discussion turned to the subject of production of biofuels from foodstuffs, which are constantly getting more expensive, the huge majority voiced their opposition with indignation. But it was undeniable that some individuals with prestige, authority and good faith had been won over by the idea that the planet's biomass would suffice for both things in a relatively short time, mindless of the urgency to produce the foods, which are already scarce enough, that would be used as raw material for ethanol and agridiesel.
On the other hand, when the debate on the Free Trade Agreements with the United States began, several dozen people took part and all of them unanimously condemned both the bilateral and multilateral forms of such agreements with the imperialist power.
Taking into account the need for space, I shall return to the method of summarizing in order to present three eloquent speeches made by Latin American personalities who expressed extremely interesting concepts with great clarity and distinctiveness. As in all the summaries in previous reflections, the authors’ exact manner of presentation is respected.
ALBERTO ARROYO (Mexico, Red mexicana de Acción contra el Libre Comercio- Mexican Action Network against Free Trade).
I would like to share with you the new plans of the empire and attempt to alert the rest of the continent about something new which is on the upswing or that is coming forward as a new strategy for a new phase of the United States’ offensive. NAFTA or the FTA of North America was merely the first step of something that it wants for the entire continent.
The new attempt does not seem to take into account the defeat in the implementation of the FTAA, which even in it’s Plan “B” recognizes that it cannot implement what it calls the comprehensive FTAA simultaneously in all the countries of the continent; it will try proceeding, piece by piece, negotiating bilateral Free Trade Agreements.
It succeeded in signing with Central America, but Costa Rica has not ratified it. In the case of the Andean nations, it has not even succeeded in sitting down at the bargaining table with all the countries, but only with two of them; and with these two it has not been able to conclude negotiations.
What is so new about the SPP (Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America)? I see three fundamental issues:
First: To strengthen military and security structures in order to confront the resistance of the peoples is precisely its reaction to the triumph of the movement that is jeopardizing its plans.
It is not a question of simply stationing military bases in danger zones or in areas with a high level of strategic natural resources, but trying to establish a close coordination, with plans concerted with the countries, in order to improve the security structures which are a way of confronting the social movements as if they were criminals.
This is the first novel aspect.
The second element, which also seems new to me: the principal actors in this entire neoliberal scheme were always directly the transnationals. The governments, particularly the United States government, were the spokesmen, the ones who formally carried out the negotiations, but really the interests that they were defending were directly those of the corporations. They were the great actors hidden behind the FTA and the FTAA project.
The novelty of the new SPP scheme is that these actors come out of the blue, take the foreground and the relationship is inverted: the corporate groups directly talking amongst themselves, in the presence of the governments that will then attempt to translate their agreements into policies, rule changes, changes of laws, etc. It was not enough for them now to privatize the public corporations; they are privatizing policy per se. The businessmen had never directly defined economic policy.
The SPP starts in a meeting, let’s say it’s called, “A meeting for the prosperity of North America”; they were tri-national meetings of businessmen.
Among the operative agreements being taken up by the SPP, one is the creation of tri-national committees by sectors, --what they call “captains of industry”-- so that these define a strategic development plan of the sector in the North American region. In other words, Ford is multiplied or divided into three parts: that is, the Ford Corporation in the United States, the subsidiary of Ford in Mexico and the subsidiary of Ford in Canada decide the strategy for the auto industry sector in North America. It’s the Ford Motor Company speaking to a mirror, with its own employees, with the directors of auto companies in Canada and in Mexico, to agree on a strategic plan that they will present to their governments which will translate and implement them into concrete economic policies.
There is a scheme to incorporate the security element; second point, to directly privatize the negotiations; and the third new aspect of this structure is perhaps, remembering a saying of our classic grandparents, that phrase of Engels where he was explaining that when the people are ready to take power through the mechanisms of formal democracy, like the zero on a thermometer or the 100, the rules of the game change: water will either freeze or boil, and even though we are speaking about bourgeois democracies, they will be first ones to break the rules.
The Free Trade Agreements have to go through congresses, and the fact is that it is getting more difficult to have them ratified by congresses, including the Congress of the empire, the United States Congress.
They are saying that this is not an international treaty therefore it doesn’t have to get approved by the congresses. But, as it does touch on issues that disrupt the legal framework in our countries, they will present in bit by bit; they will decide on a modification to legislation in a minute, and another one in the next minute; executive decrees to be implemented, changes in operative regulations, rules for standard functioning, but never the whole package.
Even though they were negotiated behind our backs and behind the backs of all peoples in general, sooner or later the Free Trade Agreements will be translated into a written text that will go to the congresses and then we will know what it was that they agreed to. They would like us never to know what was agreed to, they will only let us see fragments of the strategy, because it is never going to get translated into a complete text.
I shall close with a story so that we can realize the degree of sophistication, with regards to security, that these agreements and operative mechanisms of integration of security apparatuses have reached.
A short while ago, a plane took off from Toronto with tourists headed for a vacation in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. While the plane was on the runway, the passenger list was examined again more carefully, and they discovered that there was someone there from Bush’s list of terrorists.
As soon as the plane entered American air space –when you fly out of Toronto, American air space begins after you pass the Great Lakes and, in a jet, this takes a few minutes– two F-16s showed up flying alongside. They led the plane out of American air space and escorted it to Mexican territory where they forced it to land in the military section of the airport; then, they arrested this man and sent his family back.
You can imagine the impression those 200 poor tourists on the plane had, seeing the two armed F-16s flying alongside and rerouting the plane.
Later, it turned out that he was not the terrorist that they thought, and they said to him: “Sorry, you can carry on with your vacation now, and make sure you call your family to come and join you.”
JORGE CORONADO (Costa Rica, Continental Social Alliance)
The struggle against free trade in the region has various features. One of the most devastating projects that have been proposed for the infrastructure, for the appropriation of our biodiversity, is the Puebla-Panama Plan, a strategy that not only appropriates our resources, but comes out of a military strategy of the empire covering the territory from the south of Mexico right up to Colombia, passing through Central America.
In the struggle against hydroelectric dams which uproot and take by force the indigenous and peasant lands there have been cases where, using military repression, they have uprooted various native and peasant communities in the region.
We have the component of the struggle against the mining industry. Canadian, European and American transnationals have been pursuing this appropriation strategy.
We have been confronting the privatization of public services: electrical energy, water, telecommunications; the struggle in the peasant sector to defend seeds, against the patenting of living beings and against the loss of sovereignty to the transgenics.
We have been struggling against labor flexibility, one of the focuses oriented to the sector and, obviously, against the entire picture of dismantlement of our small scale peasant production.
Also, the struggle against the subject of intellectual property, which removes the use of generic medicines from our security, these being the main distribution focus which our social security institutes have in the region .
A central factor in this struggle against free trade has been against the Free Trade Agreements and, particularly, against the Free Trade Agreements with the United States, passed in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, through blood, sweat and tears. And this is not just a rhetorical expression.
In Guatemala, comrades in the struggle have been murdered while they have gone head to head against the treaty approvals. This struggle has allowed us to ensure a coordinating and mobilizing force for the greatest unity of the people’s movement in the region.
In the case of the Honduran Parliament, the deputies walked out, breaking the minimum framework of institutional legality.
We have stated that, within the heart of the people’s movement, this has not signified defeat. We have lost a battle, but it has allowed us to take a qualitative leap forward in terms of organization, unity and experience in the struggle against free trade.
The Popular Social Movement and the people of Costa Rica, which have prevented Costa Rica’s approval of the FTA up until the present, forging unity with various academic, political and even business sectors to create a great national front of diverse and heterogeneous struggle, till now have succeeded in stopping the Costa Rican government, the right-wing neoliberals, and so they have not been able to approve the FTA. Today the possibility of a referendum in Costa Rica to decide the fate of the FTA is being proposed.
We are on the threshold of a fundamental stage in Costa Rica in terms of being able to prevent the advance of the neoliberal agenda; a defeat of this treaty would symbolically mean that we keep on adding up victories, like detaining and bringing FTA to a standstill.
Today we need solidarity in the popular movement, and we request it of the social and popular organizations which come to Costa Rica as international observers. The right-wing is preparing to encourage, if possible, a fraud that will guarantee it a win in the fight that is already lost, and having international observers from the popular movement will be an important contribution to active militant solidarity with our struggle.
Today, after a year, the FTA has not brought any more jobs, any more investments, or better conditions for the trade balance to any country in Central America. Today, in the entire region, we proclaim the slogan of agrarian reform, sovereignty and food security, as a central focus for our eminently agricultural nations.
Today, not just the United States but also Europe would like to appropriate one of the richest areas in biodiversity and natural resources. Today, more than ever, the coordinating focus of our different movements in the Central American region is to confront free trade in its multiple manifestations; hopefully this meeting will help give us coordinating elements, focuses for struggle and joint action that will allow us in this entire hemisphere to advance as one popular force.
We shall not rest in our efforts of organization and struggle until we reach the goal of a new world.
JAIME ESTAY (Chile, coordinator of REDEM - network of world economy studies - and, now professor at the University of Puebla in Mexico.
This crisis, in short, has to do with a manifest non-compliance with the promises that accompanied a group of reforms that began to be applied in Latin America in the 1980's.
Under the banner of free trade, we were told that we were going to achieve growth of our economies, that we were going to achieve diminished levels of inequality in our countries, along with diminished distances between our countries and the advanced world and, in brief, that we were going to achieve a move towards development in leaps and bounds. In some countries there was even talk about making those leaps and bounds into the First World.
In the matter of new integration or this open regionalism which took off more than 15 years ago, what was proposed was Latin American integration, or what we call Integration of Latin America, at the service of an opening-up process. A whole debate was set up about how we had to integrate in order to open up, an integration that would not be the old-style protectionist integration, but an integration that would bring us better conditions to include ourselves in this global economy, in these markets which, supposedly, since they operated in a free manner, would produce the best possible results for our countries.
This relationship between integration and opening-up, that idea whose supreme objective of integration had to be the opening up of our countries, took place in effect; our countries effectively opened up and effectively and unfortunately the central theme of Latin American integration consisted in putting it at the service of this opening up.
Some officials were talking about what was called “the pragmatic phase of integration”. We move forward as we are able; that more or less became the slogan. If what we need is to trade more, let us concentrate on trading more; if what we want is to sign a bunch of little agreements among countries, bilateral agreements or agreements between three or four countries, let us go in that direction, and at some point we shall be able to call this Latin American Integration.
The balance is clearly negative. I think that there is recognition, greater on various levels now, that what we have been calling the Integration of Latin America is not integration, it is trade; and it is not Latin American but a tangle of signed agreements between different countries of the region, none of which has lead to a process possessing an effectively Latin American character. The opening-up, at whose service it is supposed that integration must be placed, has not produced any of the results that were announced in terms of economic growth, lessening of inequalities and achieving the sorely desired development that they said was supposed to be coming to us.
What we should point out is that we are witnessing an extreme deterioration of a style of integration that very clearly knew why, how and for whom integration was taking place.
In short, what I am talking about is an integration which was conceived on the foundations of neoliberalism, which has failed, both in terms of its own objectives and in terms of the objectives that we all have a right to demand and to expect in a genuine integration process.
The new Latin American integration was firmly supported by the policies and proposals coming from Washington. To a great extent, those American proposals have become something that will end up devouring its own offspring. Just the act of signing Free Trade Agreements has brought both the Andean community and the Central American Common Market to a crisis point.
An important part of the current crisis in Latin American integration has to do with the advance of the United States hemispheric project, not via the FTAA which managed to be stopped, but via the signing of different free trade treaties.
We can see the appearance of alternatives more clearly in the current panorama of integration. In many ways, ALBA (the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) is based on principles that are radically different from those belonging to that integration process which is in crisis.
There are many functions left to define and many boundaries to be traced: the meaning of such concepts as “free trade”, “national development”, “market freedom”, “food security and sovereignty”, etc. What we are able to state is that we are witnessing, on the hemispheric and Latin American scene, a growing insurgency regarding the predominance of neoliberalism.
This is where the opinions expressed by these three personalities end, summing up the opinions of many of the participants in the debate about Free Trade Treaties. These are very solid points of view derived from a bitter reality and they have enriched my ideas.
I recommend my readers to pay attention to the complexities of human activity. It’s the only way to see much further.
Space has run out. Today I should not add one more single word.
Fidel Castro Ruz
May 16, 2007.
(6:12 p.m.)
(www.revolucia.ru)
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31 August 2007
Exclusive interview with the second commandant of the Colombian guerrilla to Clarín
Por: Pablo Biffi / Colombian southern jungles. Especial envoy Clarin 26 de agosto
Commander" Raul Reyes is the number two of the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the FARC) and one of the seven members of the Secretariat of the High Command, lead by the mythical Manuel Marulanda Vélez, Sureshot, who has been for almost 60 years in clandestiny. Created in 1964, the FARC define themselves as Marxists Leninists and "Peasants and Bolivarians". In an exclusive interview with Clarín on a transitory camp mounted for the encounter with this newspaper in the southern jungles of Colombia, Reyes welcomed the contribution of the Venezuelan Hugo Chávez for an exchange of about 50 hostages - among them the ex- candidate Ingrid Betancourt- for 400 imprisoned guerrillas. But he clarified that they do not accept to hand over their prisoners in Venezuela, as proposed the Bolivarian leader who will meet with his colleague Alvaro Uribe this Friday in Bogotá. "He is making his contribution and we thank him for it. We think that it is a beginning, is new impulse, new oxygen that can be given to the subject of the humanitarian exchange. But we continue maintaining that the exchange, as being a problem derived from the internal conflict, must be solved in Colombia. We are not going to hand over prisoners in Venezuela ", he said.
With 30 years in the organization - the group counts with around 17,000 people in arms -, a past with ties to the Communist Party and as councilman of a town in Caquetá, Reyes has three children of a marriage in the civil life - when he was Luis Edgar Devia Silva- and he says to be "near 60 years of age". For the guerrilla leader, Ingrid Betancourt is not in a "kidnapped" character since February of 2002, but as a "political prisoner, for being part of a regime that we fight against". Throughout a day, Clarín shared with Reyes an extensive dialogue in which he denied the ties of the FARC with the drug trafficking and rejected them to be a terrorist organization.
- Why a humanitarian agreement to release hostages is so difficult that some have already been prisoners for 10 years?
It is that this government does not have the least intention to reach an agreement. The FARC have been insisting for more than 5 years to obtain the agreement, an exchange between about 50 hostages and 400 guerrilla prisoners. And we need to remember that in the peace dialogues with the government of Andrés Pastrana we unilaterally released more than 300 soldiers and members of the police. And we only obtained the liberation of 14 guerrillas who were ill. The rest of the hostages remained in our control in order to look for a humanitarian agreement.
- Why do you insist on the military clearing of two municipalities of 800 kilometres square, Florida and Pradera, for the exchange?
When this government assumed office in 2002 we proposed them to clear two municipalities in Caquetá, which were San Vicente of Caguán and Cartagena of Chairá. But Uribe said that we had proposed those sites because the FARC felt militarily harassed and wanted to recover ground. We said then: well, let them be other (municipalities) so that the government does not think that we want to take advantage.
- But can the exchange be done by any other way?
No, it is not possible to do it by any other way because the FARC does not have the least confidence in Uribe’s representatives, because it is an illegitimate, narco-paramilitary government, a government that does not have an interest different than war. As well, we think that it is not much to demilitarize two municipalities for 45 days for an agreement of such significance.
- But the government insists that they will not demilitarize and the FARC, that without demilitarization there is no exchange. How does one get out of that trap?
We think that we get out of this with national and international pressure, to sensitize Uribe for him to understand that the only way to reach the agreement is demilitarizing the municipalities. Uribe is not the one who has made the proposal, it is the FARC that did. It is for that reason that we have very highly valued the role that France, Switzerland and Spain have played and play in the search for the agreement. But Uribe’s policy is that of the rescue by force, without concerning him what happens to the prisoners, since what he wants is to show results in the execution of the Plan Patriota and Plan Colombia financed by the United States, and to demonstrate that he is defeating the FARC.
- It does not seem to you that this is a game of force between the government and the FARC using the hostages?
What happens is that in Colombia there is an internal conflict, a confrontation of more than 43 years just with the FARC, where the State has wanted to do away with the guerrilla. Each president used amounts of men and resources in trying to eliminate the FARC. They did not achieve it. We have grown and today we have presence in all the country. This causes the governing class to worry.
- I Insist. Is it not a game of force with the hostages in the middle?
It is that the government wants to make the country and the world think that he is defeating us and that he will make us negotiate under pressure. We are strong and we do not negotiate under pressure.
- A few months ago the government released a hundred guerrillas and with the help of the French president the "chancellor" of the FARC Rodrigo Granda was freed. A reciprocal gesture of FARC was expected such as leaving Ingrid Betancourt free, but there was nothing.
This was a unilateral action of the government within the framework of a mediatic campaign to cover the scandal of the "para-politics" that complicates things for the government, and not the product of a negotiation. And as far as the liberation of Granda, we thanked for the gesture of President Nicolas Sarkozy. But there was either a commitment of the FARC with Sarkozy for Granda to be released.
- But would it not have been important to release Ingrid or Clara Rojas and her son of three years that was born in captivity?
The problem of the humanitarian agreement derives from the Colombian internal conflict and any agreement must be done in Colombia. Any intervention in favor of the exchange is beneficial. But who decide are the government of Bogotá and the FARC.
- Chávez offered his country and a cleared zone for the exchange. Would the FARC accept to do the exchange in Venezuela?
I want to thank President Chávez through Clarín for that gesture, for that generosity, for that sense of solidarity with Colombia, and with the relatives of the prisoners, and the FARC. But it is necessary to remember here that President Chávez makes this offer after Senator Piedad Córdoba, of the Liberal Party and opposed to Uribe, requested Chávez to contribute with the agreement. And he is making his contribution that we think is a beginning, a new impulse that can be given to this subject of the humanitarian exchange. But we continue maintaining that, as being a problem derived from the internal conflict, the exchange must be solved in Colombia.
- Then the FARC rejects to hand over hostages in Venezuela?
Yes, what we continue soliciting is the demilitarization of Pradera and Florida and we would ask President Chávez that, given his political weight, contributes to achieve that clearing that leads the parts to seat at a table and to reach the agreement to end the captivity of the prisoners.
- Are you going to negotiate in Venezuela?
Yes, we do not have problems in engaging in a dialog anywhere, but the prisoners hand over must be in Colombia.
- Is it not a demential act to have people retained during as much time as Betancourt, who has been for more than 5 years in the hands of the FARC?
For us in no case there is kidnapping, because what occurs is the result of a confrontation of the people in arms, the revolutionary guerrillas in Colombia, and a State that has a ramification in the three powers, Executive, Judicial and Legislative. The soldiers in our control are war prisoners and the rest are political prisoners. Ingrid Betancourt is in the group that we denominate "exchangeable", a candidate to the presidency and before a senator, but of the system that we fight against. For that reason she is not a kidnapped person.
- And in the case of the three Americans who you have since February of 2003?
They are North American agents. The FARC did not go to capture them in Washington, New York, Texas or Boston, but it took them prisoners in Colombian territory when they were engaged in espionage in our country.
- The government and the United States say that they were civil contractors...
That is the great lie. They were agents who were engaged in espionage in Colombia, violating our sovereignty, violating our independence. In spite of it, we included them within the exchangeable ones and we aspire to release them once the comrades Simón Trinidad and Sonia, prisoners in the United States and all the men and woman guerrillas who we have in the jails of Colombia are released.
- Why do you take business people as hostages?
No. Which business people?
- There are no business people?
Not that I know. And if there is any it is because they have not paid the tax of our Law 02, a tax that the FARC collects from the business people, who are the same who finance the war against the Colombian people. There are many who pay that tax with no need to take them prisoners and others that do not pay it. And as they do not pay it then we take them prisoners. Those are not included within the package of exchangeable because once they pay the debt with the organization they are freed.
- How much do they have to pay?
Ten per cent of the profits they obtain each year.
- You spoke of Simón Trinidad and Sonia, prisoners in the U.S.A. Do you think it is possible a negotiation with Washington to exchange them for the three Americans?
It would be necessary to see in what terms, but we would not have problems, so long as it is done through the Colombian government. Really, Uribe is not more than their employee and he does what they command him to do.
- is it that not a myth?
No, that is real.
- How does it manifest itself?
The North American themselves recognize it. It is a reality that expresses itself as to where they know perfectly well who Uribe is and nevertheless they support him knowing of his quite dark
paramilitary and narco-trafficker past. They support him in spite of knowing the fraud that he has always done, the buying of votes, in spite of knowing who were in the lists with him and where their votes come from. And they stand with him in spite of the daily lies he tells them with supposed triumphs he does not have. They have given him much money for Plan Colombia, and he has not been able to show them the results that he committed to give them. He offered to do away very quickly with the FARC in his first government and he also committed to rescuing his prisoners with no need for the agreement. He did not achieve either.
- It was never clear how the 11 deputies in control of the FARC died on June 18. What really happened?
We said that an unidentified force caused the death of the deputies. Until today we have not been able to identify what happened.
Why?
Because in the region where the 11 deputies were there is ongoing confrontation, because there are all type of forces such as the official army, the police, the paramilitary at the service of the State, bands of delinquents armed by the narco-traffickers. For that reason the FARC did not want to venture into making any force responsible of that lamentable event.
- The government says that you killed them?
That is not true. That is part of the media campaign.
- But is there no responsibility on the part of the FARC? Because you have the responsibility for the life of the hostages.
Sure, there were faults in the security. There were faults of our people, who had the responsibility to take care of the prisoners.
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