<a href=www2.ocregister.com>Orange County register Saturday, April 12, 2003 From Register news services

He won't work in New York but did not resign. Diplomatic mission stays open.

UNITED NATIONS – Iraq's U.N. ambassador, Mohammed Al-Douri, said he was leaving the world body because he could no longer work in the United States while it was "destroying, ravaging and killing" his countrymen.

Al-Douri, the first Iraqi official to concede the defeat of President Saddam Hussein's government, planned to leave Friday for Paris, then Damascus, Syria, and eventually to Iraq, Arab diplomats said.

"I am leaving because I don't think I can work in a country that is invading Iraq, destroying, killing and demolishing whatever it wants," Al-Douri told Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television Friday.

With tears in his eyes, he added: "It is a country that occupies Iraq from the north to the south, from the east to the west. I don't think this occupying country will allow me enough freedom to work at the United Nations."

Arab diplomats said Al-Douri is not resigning and Iraq's U.N. mission will remain open. The third-ranking diplomat, Said Shihab Ahmad, will become the charge d'affaires, the diplomats said.

Despite three years of publicly defending Saddam's government, Al-Douri said he hopes Iraq is on the path to democracy "without any obstructions and restrictions."

"I would like to find our country free as America has promised," said Al-Douri, a Baghdad University law professor for 30 years and a diplomat for four.

Asked if he feared anything from U.S. authorities, he said: "Not at all. They've always treated me with dignity."

Confusion, denial and paranoia reigned in Iraqi consulates worldwide as diplomats awaited word of their uncertain future. They burned boxes of papers, shredded documents or watched television for any word of home or their new boss.

In Egypt, Iraqi Ambassador Mohsen Khalil approached at least two other embassies seeking asylum, officials said on condition of anonymity.

Muaead Hussain, the Iraqi charge d'affaires in Berlin, spoke through the locked iron gate of his embassy.

"I haven't had contact with Baghdad for two or three weeks," Hussain said. "I have no idea what's going on there."

Hussain insisted he still represents Saddam Hussein's government. Asked whether he might switch allegiance, he said: "Why not? I am serving my country."

In Tokyo, Iraqi diplomats hauled garbage bags stuffed with shredded documents from the embassy. Neighbors said the amount of trash was three times the usual level.

After seeing Saddam's statue tumbling in Baghdad on TV, Iraqi diplomats in Brazil carried box after box of papers outside and set them on fire, according to police.

An embassy official denied it. "It's all lies," Abdu Saif said. "We are only burning debris and recently cut tree branches."

Amid scenes of U.S. troops taking control of Baghdad, Iraq's ambassador in Venezuela, Taha Al-Abassi predicted continued resistance.

"The war does not end, resistance will continue ... I think it will be a long marathon war," he said.

In Vietnam, Ambassador Salah al-Mukhtar took up his post only three weeks ago and immediately warned that if he ran into U.S., British or Australian envoys, he would slap their faces. On Thursday, he said, "I will never shake hands with assassins - definitely. This is our homeland destroyed by British and Americans."

But First Secretary Talal Waleed at the embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, called Saddam's regime "the former government."

The Liberal Slant By: Daniel Patrick Welch - 04/12/03

Teach them a lesson they'll never forget. So goes the thinking in Texas-on-the-Potomac. And what a lesson it has been! They'll never mess with us again, nosirree Bob! As this childish thinking worms its way around the neocon braintrust, now giddy with "success" of their own definition (like toppling the Taliban?), it is instructive what lessons might be drawn by more rational--albeit scared to death--observers around the world. 

These are some of the conclusions I've drawn, doing my humble little part to follow Bush's sage advice. First, if you don't already have nukes, you'd better get some--and that right soon. Uncle Sam don't play. While you're in the catalog, get a whole bunch of night goggles, and tons more air support. Spend more on the military, and less on feeding, housing and educating your people, if you care about your own sovereignty. 

The picture of the American GI lounging in Hussein's chair, plastered on front pages everywhere, sent the disturbing signal: it's ours....it's ALL ours. I can't imagine that image spun quite the way it was intended around the globe--or maybe that's just the point: we're comin' to getcha! And another thing--don't bother trying to meet the Americans head on. Lesson number two is that, in asymmetrical warfare, guerrilla campaign is the only way to go--do anything, and I mean anything (see Lesson #1: Get Nukes) to keep the mighty invading army at bay. 

Lessons 3 through umpteen were learned before the war started, actually: international law doesn't apply to the U.S., The UN, EU, as well as various global aid organizations, conventions, and agreements are quaint relics of a bygone era. Oh, right--there is a caveat here: we can bring them back to life on call when it suits our purpose and we want to complain about other people's behavior. 

Although it may seem incongruous, I'll allow myself a Seinfeld moment here. What the hell, Americans watch 25 hours of TV a day anyway. I couldn't help thinking of the time Kramer was boasting about his karate prowess until he was forced to reveal that he was just beating up children. In an ominous twist, the kids ganged up and waited for him in the alley, where they beat the crap out of him. 

And what is all this focus on civilian dead? I mean it's horrific, of course--it's the whole ball of wax, really. But soldiers aren't people? When the tables are turned, the U.S. screams bloody murder if one of our boys is killed, TV up close and personals, etc. Enemy soldiers don't have mothers? They can be blithely incinerated from 40,000 feet by fuel-air bombs and other weapons more horrific than anything currently banned--international law, thankfully for the Americans, hasn't had time to catch up to the technology. 

I guess that undermining, bribing, and threatening pays off. Bush and Rumsfeld (dubbed Chemical Donald by a British columnist) even insist that we have the right to use nuclear weapons, or other gases only allowed for domestic crowd control. 

Only the Americans have the sovereign right, drunk with power and arrogance, to threaten to try the invaded in US courts for "war crimes." Bush and his corporate cronies are so busy trying to teach the world a lesson that they forgot the lessons they should have learned from history. For all the distorted comparisons to Hitler, they seem to have missed this gem from the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal: "War is essentially an evil thing... To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." 

There are other lessons, both foreign and domestic. Before the war came the bugging of UN personnel, some in their own houses. A sort of Watergate gone global--get the message yet? For icing, Americans exploited the fog of war to shoot up convoys of diplomats with whom they just happened to have beef, and killed a few journalists who gave them bad press--one of them on air! Now THAT sends a message! Coupled with the unabashed prostitution of embedded (or "in-bed-with") journalism, and we have a pretty good idea of which way we are supposed to go. 

But let's not forget the domestic lessons. The Bush Cartel is an equal opportunity terrorist. Cops in Oakland opened fire on protesters with "non-lethal" weapons (kind of like pushing someone gently down the stairs) in an incident oddly reminiscent of the San Francisco 1934 general strike--which also started on the docks. Radio hosts encourage violence against protesters, and some have obliged, plowing into one demonstration in a truck, calling in bomb or sniper threats. A high school principal pulled the plug on movies like "Bowling for Columbine" by that dangerous radical, Michael Moore. 

John Kerry was attacked for speaking out against Bush. One GOP hatchet man went so far as to suggest that Kerry had no right to call for "regime change" during wartime. Hmmmm..in civics class I was led to believe we had (technically) regime change every four years. And the Democrats, for crying out loud, who have enough trouble defining the word "opposition!" Forget Syria and Iran: if the milquetoast Kerry, who voted for the war, is fair game, who's next? 

But I suppose ol' George and his puppet masters might be touchy on the subject. Imagine if people learned the wrong lessons, and enforced regime change the way they do--or even ascended to power the way Bush did? Yikes! Iraqis, of course, don't speak out because they are afraid of the regime, and our freedom, by contrast, is the reason we should all just shut up (or else). Beam me up, Scottie! The whole project has the air of what Robert Parry has called Bush's Alderan, recalling the Star Wars plot line where a small rebel planet destroyed by the infamous Death Star to keep everyone else in line. 

Don't worry, we are told--it will all come into focus soon. Yeah, we know. 

But no matter how many staged footage of toppling statues, Iraqis are a proud people. And a gun-toting one. When the US military tries to disarm Iraqi civilians, we'll see... What is also waiting to come out is that this episode of Gilligan's Travels to Liliput hasn't been quite the romp we've been told, even in the last week. Then again, it is a fiction to think that the access will be freer under the watchful eye of the US military occupation. Government minders are no match for tanks shelling your hotel. 

And as far as lies go, you ain't seen nothin yet. Suicide bombers--the term itself a manipulative attempt at a subtle link with the events of Sept. 11--will be branded terrorists (or, even more incomprehensibly, 'cowards') by an occupation force and a press corps which refuses to admit it is there illegally. What a world turned on its head: how could there possibly be any illegitimate American targets where there is an occupying army? But of course, the invaded squirming under the tread of an Abrams tank don't have the right to resist. Further resistance will be dismissed as "getting in the way of rebuilding Iraq." They will not be heroic defenders of their country, but always foreign fighters, just as they were "outside agitators" according to COINTELPRO, and "agents provocateurs" at the Haymarket. Of course. In what conceivable universe could people actually want to repel foreign invaders? 

We will be treated to many more planted stories of 'potential' WMD's, the horrors of Saddam's regime, the noble cause of "Freeing" Iraq. And the horrific cost of this war and the sanctions which preceded it will be laid at Iraq's own door--with a docile press corps, the victor writes the history. 

This all relies, by the way, on keeping the American bubble inflated. The Stupidity Factor doesn't appear to be evaporating any time soon. Many Americans are perfectly happy to have a "president" who is no smarter than they are--it's not threatening unless you get on his bad side. Kind of like the old drunk on the corner stool in the bar. He tells some good jokes, but watch out when he's in a mood. Remember that egghead Carter? Yuck. I used to think that the monopoly corporations who funded Bush's rise to power had picked wrong--and it may still be shown that they overplayed their hand. But my cynicism and despair have deepened in the past few months. What a coup (pun intended) to have picked a true idiot, a mean, drunken frat boy who does what he's told and then some, sticking to it like a rabid pit bull. 

I can't help thinking that Randy Newman had the dark side of the American character pegged, and I keep running this old lyric through my head: Americans dream of Gypsies I have found/and Gypsy knives and Gypsy thighs that pound and pound and pound and pound/And African appendages that almost reach the ground/And little boys playing baseball in the rain/America, American, may God shed his grace on thee/You have whipped the Filipino, now you rule the Western Sea/America, America, step out into the light/You are the best dream that man has ever dreamed/and may all your Christmases be white. 

So, many of the people will eat it up. But the economy is in deep trouble and getting worse--the "what now" burp is already hitting the markets. And using the Conquering Hero spike to float their crazy economic agenda just won't work like they want it to. Even Democrats will put up some kind of a fight. 

Don't forget the Afghan "model," where Special Forces casualties are said to be "staggering." Sorry for all the quotes and parentheses, but the bogus language of this war makes it almost impossible to talk without footnotes. Let's not kid ourselves, no matter how many times we watch the bogus, staged, rehashed footage of statues toppling: this "war" (slaughter) isn't "over" (left the front page) any more than its Afghan counterpart, where 11 civilians were recently killed by "mistake" (murder-from-above by an arrogant superpower that would rather kill and ask questions later, earning it the enmity of all and the certain retaliation by virtually anybody). 

And I was only kidding before when I mentioned John Kerry. Of course we can't forget Syria and Iran, now in the sights of the voracious Democracy Installing Cabal (you do the letters). And then there's Colombia, Venezuela, Philippines, Syria, Iran, North Korea, Montezuma, the Shores of Tripoli.... 

But let's not forget the biggest lesson, looming in the shadows: the Kramer lesson (apologies to Michael Richards). The kids are waiting in the alley, George. They are learning different lessons from this war--and their numbers are growing.

Daniel Patrick Welch, a contributing writer for Liberal Slant, lives and writes in Salem, Massachusetts with his wife, Julia Nambalirwa-Lugudde. Together they run The Greenhouse School. www.volunteersolutions.org 

Find more articles by Daniel Patrick Welch in the Liberal Slant Archives

<a href=www.zwire.com>The New Britain Herald By BRIAN FRAGA, Staff Writer April 12, 2003

SOUTHINGTON -- The First Congregational Church in Southington will once again demonstrate its social conscience Palm Sunday as Pastor Gordon Ellis will give a sermon entitled "Jesus, Bullies, Justice and Fair Trade."

Ellis will speak out on the fair trade issue, which has become a focal point of social activists nationwide. These activists allege American corporate entities exploit foreign workers in the age of globalization by paying them sub-standard wages for desired commodities in the United States.

The targeted commodity Sunday will be coffee, with worshippers being served "fair trade coffee" after worship. The Church Council recently voted to exclusively use the politically-conscious java, which is often organically grown by coffee farmers paid a minimum wage by fair trade organizations.

The church has also asked all its members to drink fair trade coffee exclusively at home.

"It’s like drinking a cup of justice," Senior Minister Gordon Ellis said in a written statement. "To quote Erbin Crowell (a Lutheran social activist), ‘Communities of faith are looking for ways to do justice in our daily lives. One simple way to reach out to communities in need is with the cup of coffee that we hold in our hand.’"

Coffee is a major cash crop for farmers in such South American countries as Brazil, Columbia and Venezuela. Many of them were harmed economically as world coffee prices plummeted to a historic low of 45 cents-per-pound in 2001, down from a high of $1.40-per-pound in 1999.

According to Equal Exchange, a fair trade organization, the low price of coffee along with middlemen taking a large chunk of profits has led to the farmers’ communities and families being devastated. The fair trade organizations often subsidize the farmers with minimum wages to assist with living expenses.

To become fair trade certified, a coffee importer must meet stringent international criteria; paying a minimum price per pound of $1.26, providing credit to farmers to invest in equipment and providing technical assistance such as helping to transition to organic farming.

"When farmers can’t get a fair price for their coffee, it has a ripple in their communities, their country and even the world," said Crowell, an Equal Exchange member. "Without a stable income, they can’t afford to invest in their farms, they can’t pay for their children’s education, they can’t afford medicines and they can’t plan for the future."

The First Congregational Church has shown a distinct social conscience during this Lenten season. The church has held a weekly seminar series focusing on world issues such as the war on Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Ellis has participated in antiwar rallies himself.

Brian Fraga can be reached at bfraga@newbritainherald.com or by calling (860) 225-4601, ext. 225.

Venezuela - A Year Later Saturday, 12 April 2003, 9:26 pm Press Release: Scoop-Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Council on Hemispheric Affairs 1730 M Street NW, Suite 1010, Washington, D.C. 20036 11 April 2003

Some progress towards reconciliation

A year ago, Venezuela's democracy narrowly survived a major test as rightist sectors of the middle-class-led opposition joined with several ranking military officers to briefly overthrow President Chavez, taking advantage of an ongoing popular protest that was peacefully calling upon him to step down.

Even prior to last April's failed coup, Venezuela's opposition had a list of both valid grievances and skeptical critiques on Chavez's commitment to democracy. These included a concern over a set of government decrees issued by Chavez in November 2001, which his opponents insist undermined local authorities as well as the national assembly's jurisdiction over projects both small and large. These also allowed the president to appoint his political allies to senior posts at the national oil company, PDVSA, which could compromise that venerable institution's belief in a practicing meritocracy in its hiring practices.

The Ouster

At the time of the attempted coup, Chavez's narrow survival was mainly due to his close ties to loyalist factions of the military. Business-federation head Pedro Carmona, who comedically had himself sworn in as the country's new president, was unable to secure support from key seniorofficers and enlisted personnel at the air-force base at Maracay and at other garrison sites in the interior, which declared that they would not recognize the golpista's rump government. At that point, Chavez's supporters began marching downtown in defense of their revolution.

But ultimately, it was Venezuelans' residual high regard for non-violent solutions that allowed Chavez to return. Broad participation in the repeated protest marches that made up the opposition's core strategy preceding the coup indicated that while Chavez's rule had lost much of its popular support, Carmona did not have sufficient elite backing or support of the poor to neutralize pro-Chavez generals in the country's interior. This was the case even though Chavez was repeatedly being assailed by the media, particularly, the country's four major television stations, which specialized in anti-Chavez advocacy rather than providing a dispassionate, balanced assessment of a deteriorating political situation.

Since last April, the opposition has continued to plot to bring down Chavez by any means, most notably by the now ended two-month general strike that paralyzed the government's main source of income, the national oil industry. Venezuela's private media once again joined the effort by churning out grossly one-sided, anti-Chavez coverage, which included dozens of alternately clever and vicious articles aimed at discrediting him and demanding that the president step down.

The Confrontation

Once again, the opposition was inspired by a valid list of complaints against Chavez's Bolivarian revolution's traditional belief in plebiscitary democracy and its unique interpretation of the rule of law. In recent months, anti-Chavez forces have mobilized around such issues as the now reversed inflammatory militarization of the Caracas metropolitan police, edicts that could curb freedom of speech and the government's allegedly lax stance against Colombian rebels constructing staging sites on Venezuelan territory.

One very important development in recent months has been the emergence of a small bipartisan initiative, mainly located in the national legislature, aimed at reconciling the vast chasm separating the government and the non-government positions. Named the Boston Group (where they will be meeting next month), the initiative was launched with the help of three U.S. members of Congress who visited Venezuela last September. Composed of ten Venezuelan National Assembly members from each side, the group aims at modernizing Venezuela's parliamentary procedures and increasing the national assembly's role in the public policy process. With a constructive agenda in mind, Boston Group members have organized forums where opposition and government representatives can express their views on public policy, rather than blaming the other as the source of their nation's problems. At a meeting in Washington on April 7, group members Calixto Ortega and Pedro Diaz Blum described the recall referendum as the only solution in sight to break the stagnated political climate by means of an electoral solution.

The opposition has provided a distinct service to the nation in reminding the government that democratic legitimacy goes much further than merely respecting electoral results. But, with the decline in the effectiveness of the now disbanded general strike, even the most anti-government sector must realize that lasting changes in Venezuelan society should at least begin within an electoral solution and not by destroying thenational economy.

Presently, the anti-Chavez movement has been somewhat hobbled by an abiding hatred for Chavez, which appears to be its only unifying credo. As a result, schisms are breaking out as various likely opposition presidential candidates jockey for the possible race, if a proposed referendum on Chavez's rule in August actually materializes.

Possible Reconciliation

The tough task of establishing a referendum date on Chavez's recall still lies ahead. Yet it should be remembered: none of the admittedly frustrating negotiations on mending Venezuela's democratic procedures would have occurred if the Bush administration had been successful in backing Carmona's White House-approved script by lending support to the ouster of a constitutionally-elected president, which would have all but guaranteed bloody class-strife.

In that scenario, Venezuela's democracy would have been most likely engulfed in political violence, akin to that being witnessed in neighboring Colombia. While no one can deny that Venezuela's democracy still requires a defibrillator, the slow rehabilitation of the country's democratic institutions and the population's almost visceral respect for non-violent solutions to political differences, has at least given it an opportunity to confirm its heritage and move on. This is a lesson that hopefully Washington will also take to heart.

This analysis was prepared by Larry Birns, Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and Manuel Rueda, a Research Associate. Issued April 11, 2003.

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described on the Senate floor as being "one of the nation's most respected bodies of scholars and policy makers." For more information, please see our web page at www.coha.org; or contact our Washington offices by phone (202) 216-9261, fax (202) 223-6035, or email coha@coha.org.

202 216 9261 202 223 6035 coha@coha.org www.coha.org Council on Hemispheric Affairs Monitoring Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the Western Hemisphere Memorandum to the Press 03.14

Boston.com-Associated Press By Jorge Rueda, Associated Press, 4/12/2003

CARACAS -- A year after soldiers temporarily ousted President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelans find themselves steeped in economic crisis, bitterly divided, and with Chavez's hold on power stronger than ever.

''I know it's a contradiction, but the coup, and Chavez's return -- even if things are worse now -- renewed my faith that we can develop our democracy,'' said Jesus Mendoza, a 45-year-old businessman who says he is opposed to Chavez.

Most Latin American governments condemned the April 12-14, 2002, ouster of Chavez. The leftist former army paratrooper led a failed 1992 coup, was jailed for two years, and then was elected president in 1998 on a platform that criticized Venezuela's corrupt democratic system.

Chavez was arrested in the early hours of April 12 -- military commanders said he resigned -- after 19 people died the day before during an opposition march to the presidential palace. Videotape shows gunmen firing recklessly into the crowd. The march occurred after opposition labor and business leaders called a general strike to denounce what they called Chavez's Cuba-style economic policies. Both pro- and anti-Chavez supporters died that day. But under a Venezuelan justice system subject both to Chavez's influence and its own institutional corruption, no one has been convicted in the slayings.

An interim government led by Pedro Carmona, head of Venezuela's leading business chamber, dissolved Congress, the courts, and the constitution -- angering hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, who took to the streets to demand Chavez's return.

A loyalist army general sent his troops to a Caribbean island where Chavez was being held and brought him back to the presidential palace in triumph.

Once restored, a seemingly chastened Chavez called for reconciliation among Venezuelans. Soon, however, he saw conspiracies everywhere and moved to crush them. He purged the military of dissidents. He has repeatedly assailed the private sector, opposition political parties, the news media, labor unions, and the Catholic Church, repeatedly calling them ''terrorists.'' In November, his government agreed to talks with the opposition, mediated by the Organization of American States. In principle, the two sides have agreed that a popular referendum on Chavez's presidency may be held halfway into his current term, which ends in 2007. But no formal pacts have been reached, and no single opposition candidate has emerged.

In December and January, Chavez weathered a devastating two-month general strike, one called by business and labor to demand that he resign. The strike failed, though it briefly crippled Venezuela's crucial oil industry and left the economy in ruins.

Many analysts and citizens wearily cite Venezuela's paradox: a state of permanent conflict under Chavez that has rendered the nation virtually ungovernable and a lack of immediate alternatives to his populist, authoritarian tendencies.