No. 856

*** Is Syria next? 
New Cheney Adviser Sets Syria In His Sights.

Otro General del Pentágono reitera no tener pruebas de supuesto apoyo de Venezuela al terrorismo Por: Venpres / RNV Publicado el Martes, 21/10/03 04:25pm				imprímelo mándaselo a tus panas

Econoticiasbolivia.com

La Paz, octubre 20, 2003.- El nuevo gobierno boliviano del presidente Carlos Mesa no se apartará ni un milímetro de la línea del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) y dará continuidad a las políticas económicas y fiscales emprendidas por su antecesor el ex presidente Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada. Es, todo un desafío para los trabajadores y sectores empobrecidos de la población.

El flamante ministro de Hacienda, Javier Cuevas, aseguró hoy que se dará estricto cumplimiento a los programas suscritos con el organismo internacional, a pesar que éstos habían sido severamente cuestionados por las organizaciones sociales y laborales al considerarlos como causantes del mayor agravamiento de la crisis económica, el aumento del desempleo y el crecimiento de la pobreza, factores que impulsaron la reciente rebelión popular en Bolivia.

"Los acuerdos con el FMI son una imposición que trae sangre y luto a Bolivia", dijo la Central Obrera Departamental de La Paz al recordar que la reducción del déficit fiscal exigida por el Fondo había originado en febrero del 2003 la muerte de 33 ciudadanos y más de un centenar de heridos, producto del "impuestazo" sobre los salarios que intentó imponer el gobierno de Sánchez de Lozada, urgido para aumentar las recaudaciones.

Estos acuerdos fueron, sin embargo, defendidos por el flamante gabinete de "tecnócratas neoliberales", posesionados este domingo por Mesa.

"Los programas son del gobierno de Bolivia, no son programas que imponen los organismos. Lo que si, cuando uno va a pedir plata tiene que cumplir ciertas condiciones", dijo Cuevas al justificar los acuerdos que la administración de Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada arribó con el FMI y que obligan al Estado boliviano a reducir el déficit fiscal y ampliar las recaudaciones con un control más severo sobre los impuestos que pagan los sectores de asalariados.

El flamante ministro, asesor económico por muchos años de la Confederación de Empresarios Privados de Bolivia, informó que "Bolivia cumplió con las metas establecidas en el acuerdo del programa Stand By en su segunda revisión habitual con el FMI".

"Las metas a septiembre se han cumplido y esperamos cumplir las de diciembre, el déficit fiscal es una variable importante y hay que ver su financiamiento", dijo al advertir que para cumplir la meta del 7 por ciento de déficit fiscal era importante mejorar las recaudaciones tributarias.

"Una parte importante de recaudación son los tributos. Para lo que resta del año esperemos que mejore la regularización tributaria (con severas sanciones sobre los asalariados) y la nacionalización de motorizados y así tener los recursos suficientes para llevar adelante la ejecución de gastos hasta fin de año", agregó.

El ministro aseguró que tratarían de reducir el gasto público con una política de austeridad, por lo que no habría recursos para atender nuevas demandas sociales planteadas por las organizaciones sociales y laborales que se movilizaron desde septiembre y que lograron echar del gobierno al ex presidente Sánchez de Lozada.

"Es necesario no crear expectativas en la población acerca de lo que podría ser el próximo presupuesto y el presupuesto regional", dijo Cuevas.

Las exigencias del FMI sobre las autoridades y la economía boliviana son tan excesivas que uno de los más importantes economistas norteamericanos con fuertes lazos con Bolivia, como Jeffrey Sachs, advirtió sobre nuevos y graves peligros si continuaba esta tendencia.

Las presiones del FMI y de Washington están originando graves conflictos sociales al empujar a los gobiernos del continente a ejecutar severas políticas de control del déficit fiscal, dijo hace poco.

Según consta en el "Memorándum Técnico de Entendimiento", suscrito entre las autoridades nacionales y el FMI, a mediados del 2003, el déficit fiscal debe estar bajo estricto control para evitar que desde enero del 2004 se eleve el precio de los carburantes, lo que empeoraría las condiciones de vida de la población y empujaría a la población a nuevos y graves enfrentamientos.

Dirigentes sindicales y empresariales ya habían advertido que esta presión del FMI puede generar, a principios del 2004, otros estallidos sociales de imprevisibles consecuencias.

Este panorama se agrava si se considera que entre los condicionamientos del FMI sobre el gobierno boliviano está la ejecución del proyecto de exportación de gas a Estados Unidos, en el entendido que esta obra generará ingresos fiscales adicionales. El proyecto, que originó la mayor sublevación civil con un saldo de más de 70 muertos y dos centenares de heridos, debería iniciarse en el 2004 y ser concluido en el 2007, según establece un compromiso suscrito con el FMI. En este tema, las autoridades han señalado, sin embargo, que el acuerdo era "preliminar" y no definitivo. La posición oficial ya ha sido presentada por el presidente Mesa y será un referéndum vinculante el que determine si este proyecto marcha o no, se aseguró en Palacio.

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Franz,

an article of interest to Venezuelans by Philip Agee.

Bill Lyne.

       

"Today I continue to believe that the agency's operations should be exposed in places like Venezuela, where it is doubtless working overtime to organize and support the forces bent on overthrowing the twice-elected President Hugo Chavez. His apparent crime is to develop programs that will finally bring the benefit of that country's fabulous oil wealth to the common people." 


Wednesday, October 15, 2003      
   
Published on Tuesday, October 14, 2003 by the Philadelphia Inquirer  
Depressing Ironies of CIA 'Outing'  
by Philip Agee 
  
The current brouhaha over the outing of an undercover CIA officer brings to mind vivid memories and comic ironies. The 1982 law that now threatens Karl Rove, or whoever it was who leaked the officer's name, is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act - and it was adopted to silence me. 

I was a CIA agent for 11 years in Latin America, but I quit in 1969 and wrote a book that told the true story of my life in the agency. 

In the 1970s, some colleagues and I followed up with a campaign of "guerrilla journalism" to expose the CIA's operations and personnel around the world because we thought we could combat the agency's role in support of so many murderous dictatorships at that time, including those in Vietnam, Greece, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a felony to expose a covert intelligence agent, was designed to stop us. 

Here's the first irony: It was President George H.W. Bush who fought to get that law passed as CIA director in 1976-1977 and later as vice president. 

To justify the law's restriction of amendment rights, Bush the elder and other CIA officials repeated the same lie many times over: That by publicly identifying Richard Welch, the CIA chief in Athens who was assassinated by terrorists in December 1975, I was responsible for his death. 

Bush repeated that lie long after Congress passed the law, during his term as president and even afterward. His wife, Barbara, also repeated it in her 1994 autobiography - and I sued her for libel. As part of the legal settlement, she sent me a letter of apology containing the admission that I had not identified Welch. 

In fact, I'd never met Welch, didn't know he was in Athens, and had never published his name or given it to anyone. 

But Bush's campaign in the 1970s was effective. While he was CIA director, the agency worked with friendly intelligence services in Europe to label me, at different times, a security threat, a defector and a Soviet or Cuban agent, and they succeeded in having me expelled from five NATO countries. 

Fast-forward to today. The son of George and Barbara is now a sitting American president with a harsh, neo-imperialist agenda, including waging war to ensure U.S. control of Middle East oil. 

In order to sell this war of choice as a war of necessity, the younger Bush concocts a pack of lies. But when former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV pokes a small hole in Bush's farrago of justifications, someone in the
White House outs Wilson's wife as a CIA officer in retaliation, a clear attempt to ruin her career. 

One has to wonder what Papa Bush thinks of this clear violation of his law in his own son's office. 

We were right in exposing the CIA in the 1970s because the agency was being used to impose a criminal U.S. policy. Today I continue to believe that the agency's operations should be exposed in places like Venezuela, where it is doubtless working overtime to organize and support the forces bent on overthrowing the twice-elected President Hugo Chavez. His apparent crime is to develop programs that will finally bring the benefit of that country's fabulous oil wealth to the common people. 

But instead of that appropriate kind of exposure, U.S. intelligence officers are being outed, and the law violated. It would be outrageous if it turned out that the outers are part of the Bush administration, and the
exposure part of a cheap political tactic to punish an enemy and maintain support for a dishonest and indefensible war. 

The ironies are depressing. 

Philip Agee, author of "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," wrote this piece for the Los Angeles Times. 

Copyright 1996-2003 Knight Ridder. 

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US general sorry for Islam remarks
by Odai Sirri
Sunday 19 October 2003 12:42 AM GMT

US military is a 'Christian army' says Lt Gen William Boykin

A senior Pentagon intelligence official who has called the US military a Christian army and drawn fire over remarks about Muslims has apologised for his comments - but refused to withdraw them.

Army Lieutenant General William Boykin, an evangelical Christian, has given numerous controversial speeches, but has been forced to apologise “to those who have been offended” by his statements.

Aljazeera
By Odai Sirri

You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B8A7432E-F762-4287-9DA4-30D354FC23B4.htm

Is Syria next? 
New Cheney Adviser Sets Syria In His Sights

A neo-conservative strategist who has long called for the United States and Israel to work together to "roll back" the Ba'ath-led government in Syria has been quietly appointed as a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

David Wurmser, who had been working for Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, joined Cheney's staff under its powerful national security director, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, in mid-September, according to Cheney's office.

The move is significant, not only because Cheney is seen increasingly as the dominant foreign-policy influence on President George W. Bush, but also because it adds to the notion that neo-conservatives remain a formidable force under Bush despite the sharp plunge in public confidence in Bush's handling of post-war Iraq resulting from the faulty assumptions propagated by the "neo-cons" before the war.

Given the recent intensification of tensions between Washington and Damascus – touched off by this month's U.S. veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution deploring an Israeli air attack on an alleged Palestinian camp outside Damascus – Wurmser's rise takes on added significance.

The move also follows House of Representatives' approval of a bill that would impose new economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria.

Wurmser's status as a favoured protege of arch-hawk and former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) also speaks loudly to Middle East specialists, who note Perle's long-time close association with Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld's chief deputy Paul Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz was the first senior administration official to suggest that Washington might take action against Syria amid reports last April that Damascus was sheltering senior Iraqi leaders and weapons of mass destruction in the wake of the U.S. invasion.

"There's got to be a change in Syria," Wolfowitz said, accusing the government of President Bashar Assad of "extreme ruthlessness." Rumsfeld subsequently accused Syria of permitting Islamic "jihadis" to infiltrate Iraq to fight U.S. troops.

Perle, who last week was in Israel to receive a special award from the "Jerusalem Summit," an international group of right wing Jews and Christian Zionists who describe themselves as defenders of "civilisation" against "Islamic fundamentalism," has made no secret of his own desire to confront Damascus.

In a series of interviews, Perle applauded Israel's attack on Syrian territory – the first since the 1967 war – in alleged retaliation for a Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel. "I am happy to see the message was delivered to Syria by the Israeli Air Force, and I hope it is the first of many such messages," he said.

Perle said he "hope(d)" the United States would itself take action against Damascus, particularly if it turned out that Syria was acting as a financial or recruiting base for the insurgency in Iraq.

"Syria is itself a terrorist organisation," he asserted, insisting that Washington would not find it difficult to send troops to Damascus despite its commitment in Iraq. "Syria is militarily very weak," added Perle.

Damascus has been in Wurmser's sights at least since he began working with Perle at AEI in the mid-1990s.

For the latter part of the decade, he wrote frequently to support a joint U.S.-Israeli effort to undermine then-President Hafez Assad in hopes of destroying Baathist rule and hastening the creation of a new order in the Levant to be dominated by "tribal, familial and clan unions under limited governments."

Indeed, it was precisely because of the strategic importance of the Levant that Wurmser advocated overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favour of an Iraqi National Congress (INC) closely tied to the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.

"Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically," he wrote in one 1996 paper for the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS).

Wurmser, whose Israeli-born spouse Meyrav Wurmser heads Middle East studies at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, was the main author of a 1996 report by a task force convened by the IASPS and headed by Perle, called the 'Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000'.

The paper, called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm', was directed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

It featured a series of recommendations designed to end the process of Israel trading "land for peace" by transforming the "balance of power" in the Middle East in favour of an axis consisting of Israel, Turkey and Jordan.

To do so, it called for ousting Saddam Hussein and installing a Hashemite leader in Baghdad. From that point, the strategy would be largely focused on Syria and, at the least, to reducing its influence in Lebanon.

Among other steps, the report called for Israeli sponsorship of attacks on Syrian territory by "Israeli proxy forces" based in Lebanon and "striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper."

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, even rolling back Syria," the report argued, to create a "natural axis" between Israel, Jordan, a Hashemite Iraq and Turkey that "would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula."

"For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which could threaten Syria's territorial integrity," it suggested.

A follow-up report by Wurmser titled 'Coping with Crumbling States', also favoured a substantial redrawing of the Middle East along tribal and familial lines in light of what he called an "emerging phenomenon – the crumbling of Arab secular-nationalist nations."

The penchant of Washington and the West in general for backing secular-nationalist states against the threat of militant Islamic fundamentalism was a strategic error, warned Wurmser in the second study, a conclusion he repeated in a 1999 book, Tyranny's Ally, which included a laudatory foreword by Perle and was published by AEI.

While the book focused on Iraq not Syria, it elaborated on Wurmser's previous arguments by attacking regional specialists in U.S. universities, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who, according to him, were too wedded to strong secular states in the Arab world as the preferred guarantors of regional stability.

"Our Middle East scholarly and policy elite are informed by bad ideas about the region that lead them to bad policies," he charged, echoing a position often taken by Perle.

In the book's acknowledgments, Wurmser praised those who most influenced his work, a veritable "who's who" of those neo-cons most closely tied to Israel's far right, including Perle himself, another AEI scholar, Michael Ledeen and Undersecretary of Defence for Policy and the man in charge of post-Iraq war planning, Douglas Feith.

He listed former CIA director James Woolsey, who has called the conflict in Syria the early stages of "World War IV," Harold Rhode, a Feith aide who has also called himself Wolfowitz's "Islamic Affairs adviser" and INC leader Ahmed Chalabi.

Wurmser also gave thanks to Irving Moskowitz, a major casino operator and long-time funder of Israel's settlement movement, whom he described as a "gentle man whose generous support of AEI allows me to be here." 1996 Report, "A Clean Break" and "Coping With Crumbling States."

(Inter Press Service)

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lobe102103b.html

China rejects US demands for currency float

By Nick Beams
21 October 2003

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China’s President Hu Jintao has ruled out floating his country’s currency, the yuan, or any immediate revaluation. In a meeting with US President Bush on the eve of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) meeting in Bangkok, Hu insisted that any rapid deregulation of the yuan, also known as the renminbi, would destabilise both China and the international economy.

China has come under intense pressure in recent weeks from the Bush administration, which has claimed that an undervalued yuan is contributing to the US balance of trade deficit and the loss of jobs in American-based factories. This pressure was intensified at the recent meeting of the Group of Seven finance ministers which called for currency values to be determined by “market forces”—a veiled criticism of the actions of both the Chinese and Japanese central banks, which have intervened heavily in currency markets to prevent their currencies rising against the US dollar.

But Hu did not leave Bush officials entirely empty-handed, agreeing to the setting up of an experts’ group to examine how quickly China could move toward the establishment of a floating currency.

Earlier he told a meeting of international business executives that “keeping the exchange rate of the renminbi stable serves China’s economic performance and conforms to the requirements of the economic development of the Asia-Pacific region and the whole world”.

The governor of the People’s Bank of China also rebuffed calls for a revaluation and rejected claims that China was responsible for the US trade deficit and the loss of jobs.

“The US trade deficit,” he told the official Xinhua news agency, “may be attributable to structural imbalances and fiscal deficits in the United States rather than the renminbi exchange rate. Some people even relate the loss of jobs in some developed countries to the renminbi exchange rate [but] in our view, each country has to face the issue of employment in its presidential election, and what we need to do is to identify first domestic causes for the job losses.”

The US calls for a yuan revaluation have come under fire from numbers of international economists who point out that US job losses are not caused by an undervalued Chinese currency and warn that such a move could have major consequences for the international financial system. One of the biggest fears is that a float would set off a series of collapses in the highly indebted Chinese banking system. Furthermore, it is estimated that not even a 30 percent revaluation of the yuan would assist US manufacturers, while adversely affecting US firms with large investments in China.

According to the vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia, Kenneth Courtis: “The idea of China revaluing its currency as a panacea to US trade problems is about as loony as the tariffs on steel last year.”

Courtis pointed out that some 60 percent of China’s exports are generated by joint-venture companies, many of them involving US corporations.

Morgan Stanley chief economist Stephen Roach has insisted that China is being made the scapegoat for problems which have their source in the US economy and the policies of the Bush administration, in particular the growth in the US budget deficit resulting from tax cuts.

The increasing protectionist calls emanating from US politicians—both Republican and Democrat—cite figures which show that China accounts for the largest portion of the US trade deficit, some $103 billion in 2002 and probably more than $120 billion in 2003.

But further calculations presented by Roach show that this increase in exports is the result of the inflows of foreign direct investment over the past decade and the outsourcing of manufacturing operations by major corporations, many of them based in the US. “[T]he Chinese factory sector,” he noted, “has become a critical ingredient in the global supply chain. Fully 65 percent of the tripling of Chinese exports over the past decade—from $121 billion in 1994 to $365 billion in mid-2003—is traceable to the outsourcing dynamic of Chinese subsidiaries of multinational corporations and joint ventures.”

The Chicago-based international economic analyst David Hale has repeated a warning made by others that US-China economic relations are being tied into the US political cycle. He told Asian officials and businessmen in Bangkok that “the situation in the US is extremely dangerous” with congressional Democrats and Republicans attacking China.

He said Bush was under pressure because of the “jobless recovery” under conditions where support for free trade within the Republican Party had collapsed. “Much will depend on what happens to US employment over the coming months. If we keep losing jobs, my great fear is that early next year, Karl Rove, the president’s political strategist, will say, ‘Mr President, it’s time for you to join the China bashers’.”

Hale warned that if that happened it could trigger a financial crisis as Asian funds, which have been financing the US balance of payments deficits and keeping interest rates low, were withdrawn. This would lead to a rise in interest rates, undermining US consumer spending and the housing market.

Hale’s remarks point to the fact that the international financial system is increasingly coming to resemble a house of cards. With slow or non-existent growth in Europe and Japan, the world economy as a whole has become ever more dependent on the US economy—it accounted for some 96 percent of the cumulative increase in world gross domestic product in the period 1995 to 2002. However, this growth has been financed by increasing debt, much of it financed by capital inflows from the rest of the world.

During the investment bubble-boom of the late 1990s, much of this investment was attracted by the greater profit opportunities and capital gains available in the US. But with the collapse of the bubble much of the capital inflow is now emanating from Asian central banks—China and Japan in particular—which are purchasing dollar assets in order to keep down the value of their currencies and maintain export levels.

This mechanism is inherently unstable—the world economy cannot be sustained indefinitely by US growth financed by increasing debt. Consequently, a sudden turn in the situation, resulting from either economic or political factors, such as “China bashing” in the US 2004 election campaign, could rapidly result in international financial turbulence leading to a recession in the global economy.

Colombian ELN guerrillas attack the followers of President Hugo Chavez Frias

South Florida Sun-Sentinel special correspondent Brian Ellsworth reports from Caracas that, like most murders in Venezuela, little is known about the case of Edgar Patino (27) ... a teacher and political activist shot and killed last month in the town of El Nula near the Colombian border.

An ardent supporter of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Patino had planned to attend a pro-Chavez rally the week he was killed ... authorities think assassins on motorcycles shot Patino over a dozen times in broad daylight, but everyone in the area insists they did not see or hear anything. Friends of Patino, who is the third pro-Chavez activist killed in the area this year, insist they know who is behind the murder, the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's second largest guerrilla group.

"The ELN is trying to attack the followers of President Chavez, they want to destroy our movement," says councilman Jose Alvarado, who belongs to a pro-Chavez party. "But this is not their country, they have to go back to where they came from."

The case of Patino represents an increasing convergence of the Colombian armed conflict with the Venezuelan political crisis in areas such as the southern Venezuelan state of Apure. Venezuelans in border states have for years complained about kidnappings and extortions by Colombian insurgents, but in the State of Apure, Colombian rebels now seem to be a part of the political landscape. Most Apure residents think that rebel groups are responsible for the deaths of leaders such as Patino and assure that Colombian guerrillas have infiltrated state authorities and cooperate with Venezuelan politicians. Others say that displaced Colombian right-wing paramilitaries are responsible for the violence. But the confusing patchwork of alliances between different groups has left few things clear apart from the continuing violence.

The State of Apure has always been considered Venezuela's Wild West, with wide open plains inhabited by cattle ranchers and small farmers. Apure was immortalized in the famous Venezuelan novel Dona Barbara about one rancher's struggle to bring order to a lawless no-man's-land. While Apure is no longer run by vigilantes as in the past, government authorities have always had a weak presence in the area.

Now, the spillover from the Colombian conflict has led to a string of arbitrary assassinations and complete silence on the part of witnesses too intimidated to speak out.

Violence has spiked in Apure since the Colombian government ended peace talks in 2002 with the FARC (the largest rebel group) leading to renewed fighting in the country's 40-year-old guerrilla war. This pushed FARC soldiers and paramilitaries into Venezuelan territory during a period of increasing polarization over the rule of Chavez that led to four national strikes and a failed coup d'etat in April 2002. Now, openly taking a side in the political controversy that is splitting Venezuela down the middle can be a dangerous affair in Apure.

The situation is further complicated by the presence of the Bolivarian Liberation Force (FBL) ... a homegrown Venezuelan guerrilla movement sympathetic to Chavez. Business leaders in Apure say the FBL began about two years ago, and has engaged in extortion and kidnappings in the area. However, the FBL has never made any public statements or taken responsibility for any bombings. Furthermore, it is not clear against whom the group would fight, since it supports the government.

The Colombian guerrillas have become a central part of Venezuela's national politics, with opposition leaders accusing Chavez of cooperating with the rebels. Chavez' sympathies with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his overtures to the revolutionary Latin American left have made him an easy target for those who accuse his government of supporting subversion.

Nonetheless, opposition leaders have been unable to produce any credible evidence linking Chavez to guerrillas.

Alarmists in Venezuela say the conflict over Chavez, combined with the spillover of Colombian violence, is leading Venezuela to civil war.  Nonetheless, the encroachment of Colombian rebel groups in Venezuela may lead to further degradation of law and order in places such as Apure.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/caribbean/sfl-hven21oct21,0,
2859682.story?coll=sfla-news-caribbean

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