It’s now fully 3 days since Katrina passed New Orleans, the city is now in a shambles, and now mainstream news, including BBC, presents the tired "it bleeds, it leads" philosophy in yellow journalism as they pretend to care about the tragedy facing the mostly poor, mostly black population of New Orleans. In the reporting, images are repeated of desperate black citizens taking necessities from stores and being castigated by the media as looters, while white citizens doing the same thing are represented as "just doing what they need to survive". Meanwhile, the latest tragedy of the Iraq quagmire goes unnoticed and unreported in all but the most raking of muckraking media (see counterpunch, 8/31). Meanwhile, capitalism presents itself in all its glory, as reports of retailers charging as much as 6 dollars a gallon pour in from all over the region, and the Bush Administration removes pollution requirements from gasoline producers (catalytic converters be damned!). But to get a real picture of the surreal nature of the current predicament, it's important to step back a bit, to the 1950's, and the US government's assassination of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, at the behest of the United Fruit Company.
Authors Kinzer and Schlesinger produced one the seminal documentary materials on the removal of the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala by the CIA and the Dulles Brothers, the CIA's second successful coup, after the 1953 ouster of Muhammad Mossadegh in Iran (Also detailed by Kinzer in All the Shaw's Men). The CIA created a secret army of right-wing Guatemalan expats to remove Arbenz, who, in his naivete, was asking for support from the OAS and the US government right until the end, when it became clear that it was the US that was responsible for the invasion and coup. What was more important than democracy, you might ask? It was bananas. More precisely, the government of Arbenz prioritized the well-being of the Guatemalan people over the massive profits of the United Fruit Company, so had the gall to charge the UFC taxes based on the true value of their land. Arbenz was nothing if not reasonable, so he also offered to buy the land from the UFC for the value that the UFC declared their lands to be worth to the Guatemalan tax collectors. It is important to note that the UFC was the single largest land owner in Guatemala, and that they owned more than 50 percent of the arable land in Guatemala in the 1950's.
This scenario should sound familiar, indeed, the 9/11 for Chile revolves around the US-sponsored coup that placed the murderous Pinochet in power for 32 years (so far), at the expense of the democractically elected government of Salvador Allende. Allende too shared the mistaken ideology that Chile's resources belonged to Chileans, as opposed to the more realistic view taken by ITT and the Anaconda Copper Company, whose ideology more matches current US policy regarding petroleum, namely, "What's our oil doing under their sand?". One can see this philosophy in excruciating detail by picking up a copy of "The Prize," a history of petroleum, made into a hit PBS documentary series.
Of course, I'm being a bit fatuous, as the list of US-sponsored coups would fill tomes, in fact, William Blum has documented just such a list in his text, Killing Hope. My hope, in raising these two egregious examples of coups in place of diplomacy, was to give context to the recent hubbub raised by US Televangelist Pat Robertson in his advocation of the assassination of democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. If we examine the three regimes, and their untimely demises, we can see several similarities, what is interesting are the differences. Chávez is no Arbenz, and he's no Allende. This is no critique, merely a statement of fact. While President Arbenz was a product of the Guatemalan military, as is President Chávez, Arbenz was the executive for a Central American nation completely impoverished by the predatory behaviour of the UFC and other multinationals. While bananas were obviously enough justification to destroy a sovereign democratic government, Oil is a completely different story. Indeed, Oil is one of the world's most important strategic commodities, and there is currently a US invasion and occupation of a formerly sovereign middle-eastern nation at least partially at the behest of US Oil companies. Oil is power, and Venezuela has a great deal of both. This may account for the fact that Chávez is openly hostile to US foreign policy, and yet retains his position at the helm of the Bolivarian Nation State.
Chávez also lacks a common characteristic of Arbenz and Allende, that being Naïvete. On the event of one of the world's most short-lived coups in 2002, there were no calls to the US embassy begging relief from the government that is the source of anti-democratic activity in the Americas. Indeed, President Chávez's response to Pat Robertson was to wag his finger accusingly at Robertson and the US President, claiming that any harm to his well being would be on their consciences, and that the world would know who to blame for Chávez's death. So, in the face of oil prices breaking 70 dollars per barrel, the US is posturing about the removal of Chávez over false allegations of non-cooperation with the US drug program.
So where does Iraq fit in to this equation? Chávez has always been a vocal critic of the illegal US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Meanwhile, the active army was insufficient to handle the throngs of welcoming Iraqis, thrilled at the prospect of handing over their sovereignty to the US, and had to bring National Guard and Armed Forces Reserve troops to Iraq, ostensibly to cart the tons of WMD material that the invading forces found. Now back to reality, as active forces, reserve troops, and national guards members are killing and being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, thousands of miles from home, for a war based on lies and fabrications (as a footnote, it didn't take the invasion and occupation to prove the lie to US "intelligence", as millions of people worldwide opposed the invasion long before it started, unfortunately, there are few elected representatives that can make the same claim.)
So, as we return to late 2005, we find that the Bush Administration is directly and indirectly responsible for the catastrophe in New Orleans, Southern Alabama and Mississippi. Firstly, evidence is mounting that the hobgoblin of the Oil industry, Global Warming, is responsible for the ever-stronger Hurricane seasons in the gulf region. I point my finger at the Bush Administration, flunkies of the Petroleum Industry, that continue to deny the Global Warming phenomenon, indeed even attacking limits on greenhouse gasses for refiners as we speak. The administration is also in the process of removing Clean Air provisions for power plants around the country, flipping the proverbial bird to the long dead Kyoto Accords. Could a more proactive position on Global Warming have averted Katrina? Perhaps not, but by continuing emissions at the current rate, and even increasing emissions, we certainly have a greater possibility of future Hurricanes that threaten the caribbean. A more direct condemnation of the Bush Administration can be made about its willingness and desire to redirect funds from the levee reconstruction efforts to the debacle in Iraq, and the removal of National Guard troops from Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi to fight in a doomed and misguided imperial adventure in Iraq. So as water flows into the historic streets of New Orleans, money flows to Halliburton and other military contractors in Iraq.
Capitalism vs CastroCommunism in the good ole US of A
So petroleum producers and free-trade economists in the US are cheering in their boardrooms at the prospects of disaster-related GNP increases. Local retailers are boosting gas prices through the roof at the prospect of a gasoline shortage. Here is capitalism in motion. A disaster? Short supply? Screw the people, and watch the line on the graph climb. Meanwhile, a government that has been openly threatened by the United States responds in a very different manner. Much in the spirit of the Bolivarian revolution, President Chávez has offered support in the form of gasoline and material aid to the poor communities of New Orleans, and has offered to order Citgo, the US affiliate of PDVSA, to chop prices on gasoline to help the poor weather the aftermath of Katrina. Additionally, the Venezuelan government has made the "Simon Bolivar Humanitarian Task Force" available to the United States to assist in the cleanup effort.
(See Aporrea article).
http://aporrea.org/dameverbo.php?docid=65310
My deepest sympathies to the people of the American South, to the Families of Soldiers, and to the people of Iraq.
Quite a turn of events, and it's a return to the Surreal. Again.
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