Monday, October 27, 2003

Bolivia & Cuba QUOTE OF THE DAY "You are murdering the young men. . . . You, The hyena with polished face & bow tie, In the office of a billion dollar, Corporation devoted to service; The vulture dripping with carrion, Carefully & carelessly robed in imported tweeds, Lecturing on the Age of Abundance; The jackal in the double-breasted gabardine, Barking by remote control, In the United Nations... The Superego in a thousand uniforms, You, the finger man of the behemoth, The murderer of the young men..." - - Excerpt from Kenneth Rexroth's 20-minute poem "Thou Shalt Not Kill"         (with a free-jazz accompaniment), a memorial poem for Dylan Thomas http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/writers/rexroth.html KNOW YOUR HISTORY - OCTOBER 1659 --William Robinson & Marmaduke Steven, 2 Quakers who came to "The New World" from England in 1656 to escape religious persecution, are executed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for their religious beliefs. They violated a Massachusetts General Court law banning Quakers from the colony "under the pain of death." The Religious Society of Friends, whose members are commonly known as Quakers, was a Christian movement founded by George Fox in England during the early 1650s. Quakers opposed central church authority, preferring to seek spiritual insight & consensus through egalitarian Quaker meetings. They also advocated sexual equality, & were some of the most outspoken opponents of slavery in early America. Hanged from an elm tree on Boston Common, the first Quakers were executed in America. RHINO HERE: We begin the week looking South to Cuba (Today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE by Noam Chomsky)... ... and Bolivia. Jim Schultz, former consumer lobbyist & currently Executive Director of The Democracy Center has written a first hand account of historical events going on in Bolivia which are posted below. Schultz's book, The Democracy Owners Manual, a Practical Guide to Changing the World, was written to assist advocates--neophyte and seasoned, figure out whom to try and influence, how to muster resources and create allies. For more on The Democracy Center: http://www.democracyctr.org/aboutus/index.htm More on Jim Schultz in a The Sacramento News & Review article http://www.newsreview.com/issues/sacto/2002-06-20/news3.asp IN BOLIVIA, A PRESIDENT IS FORCED TO LEAVE Dear Readers, This morning Bolivia is in the news all over the world. The people have booted out their President and a new one has come to power. Events like this do not happen very often in the world and this is the first time I have witnessed a head of state being fired since the U.S. did it to Richard Nixon. I was a high school student in Nixon's California hometown and it made me very happy. Yesterday I was witness again to spectacle of a reluctant President boarding a plane and heading off into the sunset as a people cheered his leaving. It was a remarkable day in Bolivia. Below is my account. If you are interested in what history looks like on the ground, read on. Jim Shultz, The Democracy Center IN BOLIVIA, A PRESIDENT IS FORCED TO LEAVE Friday, October 17 - Midnight At midday no one knew how Friday would turnout here. The whole nation tried to decipher the mysterious and cryptic messages coming out of the Presidential Palace. Was President Gonzalo Sànchez de Lozada going to resign. Was he going to declare a formal state of martial law and send out even more tanks and troops in his desperate attempt to keep hold on power? No one new. Everyone speculated. What was clear was that whatever was going to happen it was gong to happen soon. On Thursday the US Embassy in Bolivia issued an announcement, the first like it that anyone could remember, suggesting that all American citizens leave the country. I vowed that we would never leave without our dogs Simone and Little Bear. None of the Americans I knew were taking the suggestion seriously anyway. At around three I walked into the city center, through streets lined with burning tires, acrid smoke, a scattering of people, no cars and, surprisingly, no rifle-wielding police. No police can be a good sign or a really bad one - a storm gathering just out of sight. THE HUNGER STRIKE I went to Iglesia San Francisco (the Church of St. Francis) to visit friends who were part of a much-publicized hunger strike demanding that the President, Gonzalo Sànchez de Lozada (Goni for short), resign...    MORE AT: http://www.democracyctr.org/newsletter/vol51.htm 7:39:18 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - Cuba in the Cross-Hairs RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE Cuba in the Cross-Hairs: A Near Half-Century of Terror by Noam Chomsky, Published by TomDispatch.com on Friday, October 24, 2003   Now that the Bush administration, pursuing its "war against terrorism," has once again elevated Cuba into America's cross-hairs as a newly anointed member of the Axis of Evil, it seems like a good moment to consider the question of terrorism and Cuba. Noam Chomsky takes up this matter in his new book, ' Hegemony or Survival, America's Quest for Global Dominance ', and a long, chilling excerpt from that book is included below (with his kind permission). No one has written more powerfully or consistently on the subject of state violence and state terror or reminded us more powerfully or consistently that "terror" isn't primarily what small stateless bands of fanatics deliver to large and powerful states. History is, in a sense, a history of state terror and the United States has been a practitioner of the form, in the case of Cuba, as Chomsky shows, with unrelenting perseverance and relish for nearly half a century. -- Tom Engelhardt The Batista dictatorship was overthrown in January 1959 by Castro's guerrilla forces. In March, the National Security Council (NSC) considered means to institute regime change. In May, the CIA began to arm guerrillas inside Cuba. "During the Winter of 1959-1960, there was a significant increase in CIA-supervised bombing and incendiary raids piloted by exiled Cubans" based in the US. We need not tarry on what the US or its clients would do under such circumstances. Cuba, however, did not respond with violent actions within the United States for revenge or deterrence. Rather, it followed the procedure required by international law. In July 1960, Cuba called on the UN for help, providing the Security Council with records of some twenty bombings, including names of pilots, plane registration numbers, unexploded bombs, and other specific details, alleging considerable damage and casualties and calling for resolution of the conflict through diplomatic channels. US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge responded by giving his "assurance [that] the United States has no aggressive purpose against Cuba." Four months before, in March 1960, his government had made a formal decision in secret to overthrow the Castro government, and preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion were well advanced. Washington was concerned that Cubans might try to defend themselves... MORE AT: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1024-06.htm "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. Tell a friend about Rhino's Blog 6:08:05 AM    comment

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