Posted on 06/10/2005 11:13:53 AM PDT by robowombat
The South America-Arab Summit by Heitor De Paola on may, 13, 2005
Brief: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an irate critic of the U.S., in addressing the gathering, called for the creation of an Arab-Latin American Front to "challenge the Empire".
© 2005 MidiaSemMascara.org
It would not be democratic if we attempted,
in a plural document such as this Declaration,
to conceptualize democracy the way we understand
it without considering other cultures’ meanings of the term
President Lula da Silva
A Threat to Democracies and to the Fight against Terrorism
This week Brazilian Capital was the stage for an unprecedented summit between Arab and South American states. Seven of 22 Arab heads of state and eight of the 12 South American leaders attended the meeting. The most prominent absentees were Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria. The summit has ended with confused definitions of terrorism, with expressions of support for the Palestinians, backing for the right of people of any Country to fight against "foreign occupation," - a clear reference to the Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon's HizbAllah - and even more disturbing concepts of democracy, as the above declaration of Brazilian President. Also, Brazilian’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, declared that “the declaration on terrorism is open to many interpretations”.
Both are relativistic definitions that imply that Western concept of democracy is not an absolute and even that there are “good” as well as “bad” terrorism. As always happens with relativistic concepts, who defines what is good or evil? Probably bad terrorism is anything that targets many of the signers of the Declaration, as the defense measures of the State of Israel, and “good” terrorism is the practiced by them against the Western world. In a declaration released at the end of the meeting, participants called for Israel to withdraw from "occupied territories" and dismantle Jewish settlements, including those in East Jerusalem - a longstanding non-negotiable issue for Israeli governments, and criticized U.S. sanctions against the rogue dictatorship of Syria. Terrorism is a criminal act and if it is “open to many interpretations” it ceases to be a crime at all! We can infer that this is exactly meaning of Amorim’s speech: to decriminalize terrorism, in total agreement with Venezuelan Chavez about the Colombia’s FARCs narco-terrorists as “freedom fighters”.
Who defines what is a democratic government? Again if any Country has the right to define it according to their rulers it turns into an empty and meaningless concept, as happened in last Century’s communists “popular democratic Republics”, and even now it could be applied to the “electoral” process in Cuba and many Arab and African dictatorships.
It has been repeated time and again, before and after de meeting, that Brazilian’s interests were to establish closer commercial ties with the oil producers and rich Countries of Middle East in order to improve commercial profits. In my opinion, if the reason to these relativistic concepts is “business is business”, they are immoral and contrary to any acceptable ethical system. But there are reasons to believe that commercial was not the real motivation for the summit.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, an irate critic of the U.S., in addressing the gathering, called for the creation of an Arab-Latin American Front to "challenge the Empire", according to Venezuelan media reports. Both regions had been the victims of imperialist aggression because of their oil wealth, he argued. The Venezuelan leader also was quoted as saying after a plenary session that although the summit was not intended as an anti-U.S. gathering, "deep inside, the summit was about the U.S., because when we talk about forming a pluralistic world, it collides with the U.S. plans to establish a unipolar world.” The Brazilian government, agreeing to his second best ally – the first is Castro - declined to accept the U.S. request to send an observer to the proceedings.
Something that went unmentioned was that in the last Monday 9 Brazilian Foreign Minister delayed for one hour Chavez arrival at the Presidential House of Granja do Torto to an announced dinner with Lula and the Argentina’s President Kirchner. The delay was necessary because the latter made it clear that he doesn’t want to participate of the secret Brasilia-Caracas-Buenos Aires axis – that more secretly involves Havana too – that his intelligence services detected. To Kirchner this is a dangerous and lunatic anti-American adventure and wanted to express his concerns to Lula in a meeting between them alone.
Many analysts wonder that the open summit served the real purpose of establishing an international support to Chavez in his struggle against America, and a Caracas-Brasilia- Buenos Aires axis as a substitute to Tito-Sukarno covenant that originated the Non-Aligned Countries Movement of the 60’s. However, I think that it is not Chavez who needs such support, but Castro. Castro needs desperately any support to remain in power until his death and to guarantee his crown prince Raul to succeed him in that devastated island. It is not to be forgotten that the Non-Aligned Movement included Cuba as one of the most prominent members – Cuba sponsored Trilateral Conference and OLAS (Organization of Latin American Solidarity). And I believe the same is happening now! Both Jose Dirceu and the shadowy presidential foreign affairs advisory to Lula, Marco Aurelio Garcia travel a lot among the three Countries since Lula was elected.
Kirchner is no fool and he has other critic problems as a Jew in a Country in which terrorist bombings targeted the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in the 1990s. Already the Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a letter to Brazil's foreign minister "the ambiguity of the language gives the opportunity for these terrorist organizations to claim that the South American community has endorsed their actions."
This oil and money support to Castro involves three areas: communications, energy and military cooperation. One the Chavez's current initiatives is the formation of what is being promoted as Latin America's answer to the Arabic Al-Jazeera television channel, based on Castro’s experience of lying media. Chavez, who frequently accuses international news broadcasters of bias, is providing most of the funding for the new Spanish-language channel, TELESUR, which is due to begin transmitting in two months' time. In a near future it will be a bilingual broadcasting – Spanish and Portuguese! It wouldn’t be a surprise to many Brazilian observes if the most powerful Brazilian TV Network, Rede Glodo, should be involved in this project.
The military cooperation is mostly to face Colombian Army struggle against narco-terrorist FARC supported openly by Chavez and not so openly by Lula, who, nevertheless, agree with Chavez in his assessment of FARC as freedom fighters and that what is going on in Colombia between them and the official Colombian Army is no more than a two legitimated sides of an internal conflict. Of course, the target is again US and its Plano Colombia in a joint operation with Colombia’s President Uribe. American attempts to invade Brazilian Amazonia are common news from leftist and nationalistic organizations in the Internet with abundant delusional material denouncing American Military Bases circling our Amazonia territory.
Lastly, it must be stressed that some of the countries attending the summit are leading players in the world of oil and energy: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Algeria, Egypt, Qatar, Libya, Oman, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Ecuador and Argentina. According to Al-Jazeera correspondent, Adam Porter, these Countries currently pump among them around 27.26 million barrels per day (mbpd) of the world's demand of 84 mbpd or around 32.5% of total production. Venezuelan PDEVESA and Brazilian PETROBRAS, both state owned oil companies, already have joint projects in Cuba and it is to be expected at least a joint venture – if not a total fusion – in an international oil company named PETROSUR. The idea of integrating Argentina in such project seems more difficult now.
According to Porter China has also figured prominently in South American oil infrastructure. It recently signed deals to build refinery projects in Venezuela and has made some possible exploration deals as well.
Is it not a perfect anti-American, anti-Western, anti-democratic and anti-capitalistic axis?
Heitor De Paola , Médico Psiquiatra e Psicanalista no Rio de Janeiro. Membro da International Psychoanalytical Association e Clinical Consultant, Boyer House Foundation, Berkeley, Califórnia, e Delegado Internacional no Brasil do Drug Watch International. Possui trabalhos publicados no Brasil e exterior.
I can't decide which is more worthless ... an agreement with a communist or an agreement with an Arab Muslim.
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