Comment on:Hendricks: Manhandled by Russell Means

12-31-07 @8:50 AM/PST
Gracias EBryan ~ Let us not go afar from the original subject bro'.

Original Subject Line:

Re: EBryant> Re: [zapatista email group] Lakota "secession" - hype?

Here is a Link from Companero Agent Smiley>

http://eeng.net/CS/blogs/smileycoyote/archive/2007/12/26/1235.aspx

[AUDIO] Interview with Canupa Gluha Mani - Lakota Freedom Delegation

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In regards to Russell Means, we should look at the overall contribution of a comrade before we condemn anyone. If you have not, read his autobiography Where White Men Fear to Tread.

Means should definately see himself as being 'in recovery' from his past and his own chemical addiction issues. Review the A.A. 12-Steps. In fact we will find as we evolve that many of our weaknesses, in relation to building up an aggressive vanguard liberation movement inside the United States involves us working on our own character defects, our own personal shortcomings, in essence, our own demons.

Thus, Means still has his own demons to wrestle with and for those who are 'in the know' there have always been internal sabotage in relation to AIM, in relation to the Free Peltier Movement, the demise of the Black Panther Party and let us not forget the FBI role of COINTELPRO!

Nevertheless, let us work on our own personal flaws, unite together based upon our common survival needs with a humane rights agenda, learn from our many misktaes and with a global overview see the big picture at all times.

Venceremos Unidos! We Will Win United, Not Divided!

Peta-de-Aztlan, Sacra, Califas, Aztlan

Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

Cell: 916/968-1023

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E Bryant Holman <bryanth@presidiotex.com> wrote:

This article is from Indian Country Today, who bill themselves as "The Nation's Leading American Indian News Service".

You can find it online at
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096414103

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Hendricks: Manhandled by Russell Means
Posted: November 30, 2006
by: Steve Hendricks

I was manhandled by Russell Means on Pine Ridge. It wasn't much of a manhandling, but it was symptomatic of the fate of the American Indian Movement, a fate that hangs uneasily over Indian country even today, and so merits a few words.

It happened on Halloween, at Oglala Lakota College, where I was speaking about my new book, ''The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country.'' During the question-and-answer session, Means, the potent AIM leader who in the 1970s was admired throughout Indian America, took exception to several of my findings. It was a vintage Means performance: bellicose, self-aggrandizing, belittling, oblivious to any interpretation of facts save his own. After the Q and A, Means continued his critique (much of it unprintable) from about three inches off me. As his threats and insults reached a peak, he grabbed my shoulder with one meaty hand and knocked my glasses off with the other. I declined to take his bait - he clearly hoped to provoke a fistfight - and the host got him away from me and out the door before he could escalate matters.

What had so angered Means? Many things, but two of the findings that most riled him have also stirred passions across Indian country (both for and against me) and deserve discussion.

One of my findings was that during AIM's 71-day takeover of Wounded Knee in 1973, AIMers killed a black activist. The man's name was Ray Robinson, and his widow and children grieve him still. Over the decades, rumors of Robinson's killing surfaced fitfully, only to be denied by AIMers who were in a position to know better. Their denials crumbled a couple of years ago when credible witnesses stepped forward to say that Robinson was shot, killed, and presumably buried inside Wounded Knee.

It is not clear which senior AIMers covered up Robinson's killing. Nor is it clear whether Robinson was shot deliberately because he was suspected of being an FBI spy or accidentally as a result of an argument or an itchy trigger finger. But it is certain that an AIMer killed Robinson inside the village. Means, of course, knows that the killing will stain AIM's legacy, and he is not eager to have his place in history demoted. He may also fear that the killing will undo a lucrative option that a film producer has paid him to make an HBO movie, based on his memoir, about the siege of Wounded Knee.

To other AIMers, Robinson's killing is disturbing because it will give the FBI more firepower to justify its subversion of AIM. AIM had long made the case - correctly - that the vast majority of its adherents were law-abiding and that the FBI had sent spies and provocateurs into their ranks in gross violation of laws against domestic spying. No doubt supporters of the FBI will now argue that the violence-ridden AIM deserved to be infiltrated.

But the truth is less flattering to the FBI, as I discuss in ''The Unquiet Grave.'' For it was the FBI's sabotage of AIM that provoked many of AIM's violent deeds, perhaps including Robinson's killing. Those deeds in turn led to AIM's implosion, as the FBI intended.

A second matter in my book that stirred Means's (and others') passion is my discussion of whether David Hill, a mid-tier AIM leader, was an FBI mole. Hill has long been accused of being a spy - perhaps entirely unfairly. I don't conclude one way or the other in ''The Unquiet Grave,'' and it was a hard decision even to raise the matter: I'm not eager to play the FBI's paranoia-provoking ''Guess who's the spy?'' game.

But what makes Hill's case deserving of public discussion is that two people who may have known whether he was a fed have recently said or strongly suggested that he was. They are Norman Zigrossi, a senior FBI agent who oversaw informers in AIM, and Thelma Rios, Hill's ex-wife. Their statements do not prove Hill was a fed. Indeed, Rios later recanted her claim (though unconvincingly, to my mind). And perhaps Zigrossi is still playing FBI mind games. But their statements do make nearly certain that either Hill was an informer or the FBI was (perhaps still is) trying to make him look like one.

Either possibility is important because Hill was involved in life-and-death matters in the Indian rights saga. He was, for example, among the AIMers who were on the run after the fatal shootout with FBI agents at Oglala, S.D., in 1975. Those AIMers were eventually betrayed by one or more informers, and Leonard Peltier was railroaded to prison in consequence. Hill also allegedly took part in talks about whether Anna Mae Aquash was an FBI spy - talks that led to the murder of the innocent Aquash and, as my book shows, to an FBI coverup of the murder.

The U.S. government may owe Hill an apology for setting him up. Or it may owe AIM an apology for setting the group up. But in either case, it owes all Indians an apology for spreading a paranoia that crippled the 20th century's foremost movement for Native rights. This was a grave evil, never admitted, much less repented for.

AIM, too, could stand to apologize. The group fell victim to the FBI's attack partly because of its own deep, avoidable and damning flaws. One flaw was thuggishness, as Means' harassment of me illustrated. During much of its short life, AIM turned to guns and fists to solve problems that gun-and-fist
means couldn't solve. When this inclination to violence was stirred up by the FBI, it led to the murders of Aquash and Robinson and, ultimately, the loss of AIM's soul.

The thuggishness was compounded by AIM's refusal to examine its own failings, a refusal, as I discovered on my recent book tour, that AIM's aging leaders maintain even today. Most of them find it far easier to kill the messenger, or at least knock his glasses off, than to ask whether his message holds lessons. Small wonder that thousands of Indians who entrusted AIM with their hopes for a better life now feel almost as bitterly about AIM as they do about the federal government that destroyed it.

Steve Hendricks is the author of ''The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country,'' which Publishers Weekly recent named one the 100 best books of 2006.
His Web site is SteveHendricks.org. ._,_.___

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Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/

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Immigrant Crackdown Falls Short: from Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/24/AR2007122402025.html?hpid=moreheadlines

Immigrant Crackdown Falls Short
Despite Tough Rhetoric, Few Employers of Illegal Workers Face Criminal Charges

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 25, 2007; A03

In its announced clampdown on companies that hire illegal workers, the federal government has arrested nearly four times as many people in the past year as it did two years ago, but only a tiny fraction of those arrests involved criminal charges against those who hired the workers, according to a year-end tally prepared by the Department of Homeland Security.

Fewer than 100 owners, supervisors or hiring officials were arrested in fiscal 2007, compared with nearly 4,900 arrests that involved illegal workers, providers of fake documents and others, the figures show. Immigration experts say the data illustrate the Bush administration's limited success at delivering on its rhetoric about stopping illegal hiring by corporate employers.

"I know what it takes to get a criminal case," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a former state prosecutor and member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. ". . . Why is it that hundreds of bar owners can be sanctioned in Missouri every year for letting somebody with a fake ID have a beer, but we can't manage to sanction hundreds of employers for letting people use fake identities to obtain a job?"

Democratic political consultants have advised the party's lawmakers -- who already are on the defensive about immigration policy -- that the Bush administration's failure to more aggressively target powerful corporations may be a vulnerability for Republican candidates who are seeking to make immigration a campaign issue.

Bush administration officials have promised to strike at the "magnet" of jobs luring illegal immigrants into the country, a goal supported by experts across the political spectrum. "The days of treating employers who violate these laws by giving them the equivalent of a corporate parking ticket -- those days are gone. It's now felonies, jail time, fines and forfeitures," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said at a Nov. 6 news conference.

In a year-end review this month, Chertoff added that the enforcement crackdown will "make a down payment on credibility with the American people." He said Americans' "profound public skepticism" about government efforts to control illegal immigration helped kill a broad, White House-backed overhaul in the Senate this summer.

But even though DHS has ratcheted up its enforcement effort, this year's 92 criminal arrests of employers still amount to a drop in the bucket of a national economy that includes 6 million companies that employ more than 7 million unauthorized workers, several analysts said. Only 17 firms faced criminal fines or other forfeitures this year.

In one case, Richard M. Rosenbaum, the former president of Rosenbaum-Cunningham International, a nationwide cleaning contractor based in Florida, pleaded guilty in October to harboring illegal immigrants and conspiracy to defraud the government, agreeing to pay more than $17 million in restitution and forfeitures.

For decades, political opposition by the businesses that rely on such workers and by the communities where they are employed has helped water down the laws and other tools needed for a more sustained, less scattershot effort.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) "has gotten the message that employer enforcement is essential. . . . Nonetheless, the numbers show the chronic failure of employer enforcement under current laws," said Doris Meissner, commissioner of the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service from 1993 through 2000 and now a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, which studies migration patterns.

"The whole point of employer sanctions is to punish those who provide jobs -- the primary incentive -- to illegal workers. That goal continues to be largely unmet," Meissner said.

Late in the Clinton administration and early in the current administration, the number of illegal immigrants arrested in work-site cases fell -- from 2,849 in 1999 to a low of 445 in 2003 -- although there has since been a rebound. The number of criminal cases brought against employers during that period fell from 182 to four.

ICE reported that the 92 criminal arrests made in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 included 59 owners and 33 corporate officials, human resources workers, crew chiefs and others in the "supervisory chain."

Of the remaining 771 criminal arrests, nearly 90 percent involved workers and other people accused of identity theft or document fraud, money laundering, providing transportation or documentation to illegal workers, or other crimes. Criminal fines and other penalties grew from $600,000 in 2003 to more than $30 million in 2007, but they were dominated by a few large payments, including Rosenbaum's.

ICE Director Julie Myers, who served as chief of staff to Chertoff when he led the Justice Department's criminal division from 2001 to 2003, wrote in response to McCaskill's criticism that it takes time to build criminal cases, and that DHS's tougher criminal enforcement approach is "fundamentally different" from the weak administrative fines and pinprick raids that resulted from a congressional backlash against actions against corporations in the late 1990s.

In an interview, agency spokesman Brandon Alvarez-Montgomery said ICE focuses on "egregious" violators whose business models rely on hiring illegal immigrants, especially those whose practices may promote fraud or border breaches.

McCaskill called such arguments an excuse for not punishing big-money business and farm interests that want cheap labor, effectively penalizing law-abiding business owners and exploiting illegal immigrant workers. "The reality simply doesn't match their rhetoric," said McCaskill, who began pressing ICE to release the employer statistics in September.

In a bluntly worded memo last week, a consortium known as Democracy Corps, organized by Democratic Party consultants Stan Greenberg, Al Quinlan and James Carville, warned Democratic incumbents, candidates in House and Senate battleground districts, and presidential hopefuls that they "ignore the [immigration] issue at their peril."

"If leaders do not show their own frustration with the problem, they will not be heard on this issue -- and many others," they wrote. "There is particular appeal for cracking down on unscrupulous corporations that exploit illegal and legal workers. Voters are eager to believe that companies' preferences for cheap labor are a source of the problem."

The Bush administration has said it is trying to improve its Internet-based E-Verify program, through which less than 1 percent of U.S. employers now voluntarily check new hires' Social Security numbers. It is also fighting major business, farm and labor groups in federal court to use Social Security data generated when suspect numbers are submitted to the government as a sweeping nationwide enforcement tool.

A federal judge blocked the program from going forward in October, but the government is appealing. The administration is also attempting to modify its plan to mail "no-match" letters to 140,000 employers to meet conditions set by the judge.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks to restrict immigration and has opposed the Bush administration's proposals for giving legal status to some illegal immigrants, said the importance of a sustained crackdown involving both raids and the "no-match" program "is to change businesses' expectations, in order to change their behavior."

"Past enforcement actions have been regarded by business correctly as a passing thing. . . . They need to believe it's not just going to go away in a couple of months," Krikorian said. Illegal immigrant labor laws should be enforced as rigorously as child labor laws, he said.

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Comment: Amerika still does not get it as it is blinded by its racist nationalism. There is no is still no humane immigration legislation being proposed that is sane, realistic and compassionate. In fact, the U.S.A. government and its leadres are utterly insane in its cruel and brutal governmental policy in relation to immigrants and in denial of key aspects of connected reality in relation to the millions of so-called illegal immigrants already inside the continental United States. ~Peta

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Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/

http://www.networkaztlan.com/
C/S

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Read: Plan Mexico Unveiled

Lunes~ Diciembre 3, 2007 ~ Greetings All My Gente ~

I for one appreciate the Latin America Working Group. We need a lot more writers and reporters expressing their opinions and sharing their analyses in these troubled times about complex conditions in Mexico and Latin America in general. The great giant herd rarely speaks when being slaughtered.

I believe we have a sacred responsibility to write, to express, to share our thoughts with each other ~ even if they may seem off the wall ~ so long as they are done with a true humane sincereity to help build bridges of understanding between us all. No one man, group or organization has a monopoly on the truth of the times.

We should not forget that Mexico is still a neo-colony of the U.S. Empire, not an independent nation. In fact, directly or indirectly, the U.S. Empire hovers over all nations and, directly or indirectly, controls and/or has great influence over all so-called national economies. Naturally I suspect the rich and powerful drug cartels are working with large globalwide corporate powers to keep the drug traffic moving. After all, it is thedemand by the American people that keeps it going.

What dynamics or geometry of power has really fundamentally changed in the last fifty years?!? The U.S. Empire still rules supreme over the roost!

It is corporate capitalism that must be confronted and transformed. The oppressed peoples must be liberated from their old oppressors and rid themselves of submissive servant mentalities bowing to the masters of corporate capital.

"In order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of their oppression, not as a closed world from which there is not exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform. This perception is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for liberation; it must become the motivating force for liberating action." ~Don Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Opressed.

Keep up the good work! Venceremos! ~Peta-de-Aztlan~
Sacramento, California. AmeriKa
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

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Latin America Working Group <lawg@lawg.org> wrote:

Plan Mexico Unveiled Dear Border Advocates, Following months of rumors and media speculation on both sides of the border, President Bush announced in late October that he would be sending a sizeable counternarcotics and organized crime aid package to Congress. The package's stated intention is to combat the escalating violence associated with drug trafficking and organized crime with $500 million in aid to Mexico and $50 million to Central America. Popularly dubbed "Plan Mexico", this proposed plan piqued our attention as LAWG, along with countless grassroots activists, have long expressed strong concerns regarding past U.S. counternarcotics aid efforts that have compromised human rights, such as Plan Colombia. Plan Mexico (also known as the Merida Initiative) was developed behind closed doors so many specifics remain unclear. However, we wanted to send you this (below) article that we have written for an upcoming edition of LAWG's publication, "The Advocate". The article outlines what we know about the package as well as our initial concerns regarding the human rights implications of the plan. Although there is currently no specific point of action, we invite you to share our concern as we monitor the issue. As details are released in the coming weeks and months we will post updates and send action alerts as needed. With your help we can work to promote programs that strengthen rule of law and protect human rights. Best, Jenny & Ellen Latin America Working Group www.lawg.org LAWG Advocate: Plan Mexico Unveiled President Bush announced in a October 22nd press conference he was sending to Congress a counternarcotics and organized crime aid package that would include $50 million for Central America and $500 million for Mexico the first year. The plan refers to a total of $1.4 billion for Mexico over the course of the next three years. Officially titled the "Merida Initiative"â€"but with the Mexico portion already popularly dubbed "Plan Mexico" â€" this funding request forms a part of a controversial $46 billion supplemental budget request by the President primarily intended for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Congress will likely not consider this supplemental bill before the new year. Due to the extremely troubling precedent set by past U.S. counternarcotics programs, especially Plan Colombia, this aid package raises some red flags for us. Although specifics have been difficult to pin down, a State Department fact sheet details that helicopters, surveillance aircraft, inspection equipment, and communications technologies are included in the proposed aid to Mexico. According to a document obtained by the Washington Post and described in an October 27th article, the White House breakdown lists "counternarcotics, counterterrorism, and border security" as the largest segment of the package, accounting for $306.6 million. A positive part of the package, from our perspective, is its substantial funding to strengthen justice institutions in Mexico and to fund youth gang prevention activities in Central America. Human rights advocates have raised concerns regarding Mexican President Felipe Calderón's strategies for addressing drug trafficking and related violence, especially his extensive use of the military in counternarcotics efforts. Favoring a mano dura (strong arm) approach, President Calderón responded to the dramatic outbreak of drug-related violence by deploying 10,000 military and federal officers to Baja California and his home state of Michoacán within weeks of taking office. At the current time, there are over 20,000 troops engaged in joint counternarcotics efforts with police in areas hard hit by drug-related violence throughout Mexico. This funding could encourage further expansion of the military into inappropriate policing roles. The human rights implications of deploying soldiers to combat domestic drug cartels was highlighted by a September 2007 report issued by Mexico's National Human Rights Commission. This report cited cases of numerous human rights abuses perpetrated by the military in the course of counterdrug operations, including rape, torture, murder and robbery, including the June, 2007 incident in Sinaloa in which soldiers opened fire on a pick-up truck after it failed to stop at a checkpoint, killing three women and two children. Soldiers are not trained for domestic law enforcement and should not take over policing roles, even in cases where, as in Mexico, police are tainted by corruptionâ€"instead, this highlights the need for serious police reform and oversight. The continuing impunity surrounding the excessive use of force and human rights violations committed by federal, state and municipal authorities against those engaged in social protest in Oaxaca, San Salvador de Atenco and elsewhere underscores the critical need for substantial police reform and increased accountability. At the same time, there is a serious problem of drug-related violence in Mexico that the Mexican government must address and that human rights advocates cannot ignore. As noted in a January 22, 2007 Christian Science Monitor article, drug trafficking related homicides in Mexico have more than doubled in the past 5 years, increasing from 1,000 in 2001 to 2,100 in 2006. Therefore, it is important to distinguish in this package the counterdrug programs that might be effective and do not raise human rights objections, from those that we believe will have a negative impact on human rights. Members of Congress from both sides of the border have rightfully stated their unease over the secretive nature in which the Calderón and Bush administrations negotiated this package. The somewhat chilly reception that the Merida Initiative has met in the U.S. Congress could be heard at a recent hearing where Representative Delahunt (D-MA) suggested that the secretive negotiations "could delay the passage of this proposal." Other representatives asked if tackling drug-trafficking in Mexico would merely result in the cartels shifting trafficking routes to the Caribbean or elsewhere. Representatives questioned the utility of this funding without increased efforts to curb drug consumption in the United States. Western Hemisphere subcommittee chair, Representative Engel (D-NY), noted that "the defeat of Mexican cartels will not end drug use in the U.S." In the coming weeks, advocates in the United States, Mexico and Central America will press for concrete details so as to evaluate the human rights implications of the proposed plan. As we have in Colombia, we will call for strategies that strengthen rule of law, protect human rights, and oppose the use of the military for law enforcement. Moreover, we will encourage attention to the "balloon effect" of U.S. counterdrug policy, in which cracking down on one geographic area just sends the problem of drug production and drug trafficking to another area, with all the violence and human suffering that follows. We will reiterate the need to expand drug treatment and prevention programs both abroad and at homeâ€"the most effective and humane counterdrug strategy.

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Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/

http://www.networkaztlan.com/
C/S

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Solidarity of Cuban journalists with Rebelión

http://mwcnews.net/content/view/18498&Itemid=1

Solidarity of Cuban journalists with Rebelión

Pascual Serrano was also told to shut-up!
By Tubal Paez

Inspired by the anti-neoliberal movement and bolstered by the new information and communication technologies, a strong popular dissidence is growing in the battle for ideas around the globe; all in opposition to the existing media totalitarianism that silences or distorts reality.

In thousands of digital publications and Web sites, sincere and honest people by the legion, be them journalists, translators, investigators, academics and specialists in many disciplines, give the Web a humane supportive touch, one both hopeful and combative.

This global network allows for opinions to circulate, news and commentary that the so-called traditional media exclude as a rule. It should then come as no surprise that the prevailing and unilateral thinking be unmercifully discharged against these discrepant stands. Repressive actions may be taken that can range from a legal demand, or the denial of licenses, or economic hardship via confiscation of funds and equipment, to physical aggression and even murder.

One of these alternative sites (alterative as well) of great popularity is www.rebelion.org, a not-for-profit medium that pays nothing to its collaborators and which gives the news a different treatment in order to unveil those interests that economic and political power in the capitalist world might wish hidden in order to maintain their privileges and status.

These days, there is a major scandal making the rounds. It has to do with a repressive action pertaining to copyright issues, and brought about by the Spanish daily, El País, a corporate entity, against www.rebelion.org and its director, journalist Pascual Serrano, a Spanish national, demanding that they shut up or pay. The reason behind it centers in the fact that in the last few years their denunciations have been uncovering the dirty play of the great European press – particularly the one in Spain – surrounding important international happenings, and more specifically in Latin America where there is an ongoing process of change to benefit those in disfavor until now, and to stop the looting of the national wealth.

An article by Serrano showing conclusive data supporting an open anti-Chávez conspiracy by the Spanish daily spilled the cup, and the firm instructed its attorneys to take action. Even if the demand is ridiculous, it doesn't mean that we don't consider it important. Such demand operates under neoliberal logic and the expansionist impunity which permeates in the audio-visual and print media.

As a reflection of that situation, owners of the European and world press intend to demand payment of news materials as intellectual property. There have been legal processes in that regard, such as the one dealing with the Google search engine in a Belgian tribunal. As the pot was being stirred it came to the surface a project of law in Europe with the intention of charging royalties for the publication of news. There is also concern in Spain for how far this new law could reach and add to the Law of Intellectual Property, with restrictions to the "right to footnote" and to the circulation of "writings on current events."

We should stay on guard to defend the voices of the small media which represent the interests of the excluded majorities, since legislation is being drafted quietly to bring about legal instruments which will favor the great media magnates who are intent in being paid for the publication of news considered to be exclusive and which could turn out to be the arrival of a hurricane, the landing of an asteroid or tomorrow morning's temperature.

www.Rebelion.org and Pascual Serrano are not just crumbs at the breakfast table of a frivolous international media mogul. For the money-owners, they are simply hindrances on the way to word-control anywhere, and also the payment for information on reality.

After all the screaming by the big Hispanic media as a result of the last Ibero-American Summit, and the rude manipulation of what was said by President Chávez in the debate, there was fear that certain truths would come to light, as it happened, in those surroundings where neoliberalism forced down the obstacles and provided a prescription to alleviate a capitalism in crisis and sink the region in poverty and hunger.

Let us not overlook that in Chile alone 90 radio stations are owned by the same daily, El País, a corporate entity known as Grupo PRISA that boasts it owns 1,235 radio stations, the majority in Latin America. In this part of the world, that corporation has experienced spectacular growth and tremendous profit. It also has operations in Mexico, Bolivia, Panama, Costa Rica and Colombia; it is in the latter country where Caracol Radio, according to promotional material from this multinational firm, is the "leading transmitter that continues increasing its audience growth and profitability."

The neoliberal tsunami in the press media took the last fig leaves covering the smut of the media that claim to be defenders of freedom of expression but in essence defend the economic and political interests of great capital. The deep changes in Latin America have forced confrontation of the two worlds, and let evidence demonstrate that certain champions of democracy and freedom are nothing more than strong censors or vulgar oppressors.

Grupo PRISA is a corporation and like any other it is considered to be a legal person, without body or soul but with the same rights as regular people, such as possession of property, the buying, selling and profiting on such property, and the total freedom of movement within the system. But as would be expected, it lacks values of its own that human beings have such as helping one's neighbor, solidarity and altruism. And it is ruled by the profit motive first and foremost and the law of the jungle; its survival and growth will depend on the annihilation of the weakest.

It becomes necessary to denounce the cynic contentions of the daily El País, a corporate entity, and to unveil its lies, even remember its prior stands, when in its pages it gave certain possibility to allow expressions from the left. But that would be asking for the moon. That daily is just following its mission of playing mind games with its readers as part of the strategy of the parent corporation that converts all the subsidiaries in moneymaking machines.

Because of that, its bank account contains among the different sources of profit, that which results from the white slave trade, the exploitation of women and prostitution in Spain since in the advertising pages of this daily El País, corporate entity, as in the other important Madrid newspapers, the sale of young women is advertised, as if they were autos, computers or Alicante nougat.

If WWW.Rebelion.org engaged in that type of mercantile promotions it would never have been the subject of pressure or legal ultimatums. Its only crime is to have divergent opinion. It makes no difference that such opinion may coincide with that of hundreds of millions of Cubans, Venezuelans, Bolivians, Nicaraguans, Ecuadorians or other Latin Americans; the important thing is to stay quiet, talk about something else or just keep the thoughts to oneself.

Professionals of the Cuban Press, answering the call of the Latin American Federation of Journalists, unite in solidarity with Pascual Serrano and the operating team at Rebelion.org, recognizing that there is extraordinary merit to that serious and rigorous space which spreads the news, and which has become of valuable support for an ever increasing group of readers and small media that lacks the technical, human and financial resources to ensure its own coverage of international news.

The legal action initiated by the daily El País, corporate entity, deserves the repudiation of honest journalists throughout the world.

NOTE: Tubal Paez is President of the Journalists' Union of Cuba.
(Article was translated from Spanish by MWC editor, Ben Tanosborn)

Ben Tanosborn an editor of MWC News, after completing graduate studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), set out for a career in international business that would take him to five continents, expose him to several cultures and make him realize the importance for any and all Americans to become goodwill ambassadors for the United States. Other articles by this author http://mwcnews.net/Ben-Tanosborn

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Come Together and Create!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka:Peta
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Email: sacranative@yahoo.com

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Humane-Rights-Agenda/

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NetworkAztlan_News/

http://www.networkaztlan.com/
C/S

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