Eric Holder, Clinton, Wright's BL "church" and the pardons of the PR Marxist terror group FALN

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
PROFILE: ERIC HOLDER

(note that this is just an excerpt on one issue. The linked piece addresses all of Holder's record)

Holder was also intimately involved in President Clinton's August 11, 1999 pardon of 16 members of the FALN, acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation—a violent terrorist organization (as designated by the FBI) that was active in the U.S. from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s.

The FALN was a Marxist-Leninist group whose overriding mission was to secure Puerto Rico's political independence from the United States. Toward that end, between 1974 and 1983 the group detonated nearly 130 bombs in such strategically selected places as military and government buildings, financial institutions, and corporate headquarters located mainly in Chicago, New York, and Washington DC. These bombings were carried out as acts of protest against America's political, military, financial, and corporate presence in Puerto Rico. All told, FALN bombs killed six people—including the Chilean ambassador to the United States—and wounded at least 80 others.

On April 4, 1980, eleven FALN members were arrested in Evanston, Illinois. More of their comrades would also be apprehended in Chicago in the early 1980s. All were charged with seditious conspiracy, but they refused to participate in their own trial proceedings—claiming defiantly that the U.S. government was an illegitimate entity and thus had no moral authority by which to sit in judgment of them. All the defendants were found guilty and were sentenced to federal prison terms ranging from 35 to 105 years.

On November 9, 1993, a self-identified "human rights" organization named Ofensiva '92 filed a petition for executive clemency on behalf of 18 members of the FALN and another violent organization seeking Puerto Rican independence, Los Macheteros ("The Machete-Wielders"). According to a December 12, 1999 report issued by the House Committee on Government Reform, the prisoners themselves "refused to take part in any process that would legitimize the government's actions against them, therefore they refused to file their own petitions."

This presented a problem because the Department of Justice (DOJ) traditionally stipulates that clemency will be considered only if a prisoner first files a petition on his or her own behalf, an act which the Department views as a sign of contrition. Nonetheless DOJ made an exception in this case and accepted Ofensiva '92's petition, a document which cast the FALN prisoners as blameless freedom fighters analogous to those Americans who had fought in the Revolutionary War against Britain.

Among the notables who joined Ofensiva '92's clemency crusade were Cardinal John O'Connor, Coretta Scott King, Jimmy Carter, and the National Lawyers Guild. Perhaps the most passionate support came from Democrat Representatives Luis Gutierrez (IL), Jose Serrano (NY), and Nydia Velazquez (NY), each of whom echoed Ofensiva '92's claim that the FALN members were "political prisoners" who deserved to be released.

The attorneys and advocates who were fighting for the freedom of the FALN prisoners first met with the Justice Department's Pardon Attorney on July 19, 1994. In October 1996 they met with Jack Quinn, Counsel to the President. They were unsuccessful, however, in their efforts to convey the legitimacy of their cause to the Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPA), which in 1996 contacted the Justice Department and recommended against clemency; that recommendation, in turn, was forwarded to the White House.

But the matter was not over; OPA continued to meet with groups and individuals lobbying for clemency on behalf of the FALN terrorists. Then in 1997, Eric Holder -- who was President Clinton's new Deputy Attorney General (in the Justice Department headed by Janet Reno) -- became involved in the case.

In this role, Holder was responsible for overseeing clemency investigations and determining which of those requests were ultimately worthy of President Clinton's attention. As evidenced by a September 1997 memorandum from the Pardon Attorney, the Justice Department was, at this point, receiving numerous inquiries about the FALN and Macheteros—from the White House and from supporters of the prisoners. The aforementioned House Committee on Government Reform report stated: "Throughout the closing months of 1997 it appears that Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder was active in the issue. The privilege log reflects at least two notes regarding his questions on the clemency or his thoughts on the matter."

On November 5, 1997, Holder met with Representatives Gutierrez, Serrano, and Velazquez to discuss the clemency issue. He advised the legislators that they might greatly increase the likelihood of a presidential pardon if they could convince the prisoners to write letters testifying as to the personal remorse they felt for their past actions. But no such letters would be produced for five months, during which time the clemency issue remained on hold. Meanwhile, in a January 6, 1998 letter a senior Justice Department official expressly referred to the FALN members as "terrorists."

Then on April 8, 1998, Holder again met with FALN supporters. This time, they finally delivered statements from the prisoners as Holder had advised in November. But all the statements were identical—indicating that not one of the prisoners had made an effort to craft his own personal expression of repentance.

Undeterred, Holder then raised the question of whether the prisoners might at least agree to renounce future violence in exchange for clemency. One of the prisoners' backers, Reverend Paul Sherry, made it clear that they surely "would not change their beliefs"—presumably about the issue of Puerto Rican independence—but was vague as to whether they were apt to eschew violence altogether.

Over the next few weeks, Holder and the Justice Department continued to meet with numerous advocates of clemency and to review pertinent materials which the latter brought forth on behalf of the prisoners. Holder clearly was the point man for these clemency negotiations. As Brian Brian Blomquist wrote in the New York Post, "A list of FALN documents withheld from Congress shows that many memos on the FALN clemency decision went directly to Holder, while [Janet] Reno's role was minimal." Similarly, New York Daily News reporter Edward Lewine wrote that Holder was "the Justice Department official most involved with this issue."

Throughout the clemency review process, neither Holder nor anyone else in the Justice Department contacted any of the people who had been victimized (or whose loved ones had been victimized) by the FALN. Most were never aware that clemency for the terrorists was even being contemplated. And those few who were aware of the possibility were rebuffed in their efforts to participate in the review process.

On May 19, 1998, the Pardon Attorney sent Eric Holder a 48-page draft memorandum "concerning clemency for Puerto Rican Nationalist prisoners." Seven weeks later, on July 8, Holder sent President Clinton a "memorandum regarding clemency matter." Indeed the Deputy Attorney General was methodically spearheading the march toward clemency -- despite the fact that the sentencing judges, the U.S. Attorneys, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the FBI were unanimous in their opposition to pardoning the individuals in question.

In late July 1999 an attorney from Holder's office spoke to White House Counsel Charles Ruff regarding the clemency matter. On August 9, 1999, Holder's office and OPA held one final meeting to hammer out the details, and two days later the President made his announcement: clemency was granted to sixteen terrorists, most of whom had served only a fraction of their prison terms. Of the sixteen, twelve accepted the offer and were freed, two refused it, and two others, who already were out of prison, never responded.

Congress, for its part, was not pleased—condemning the clemencies by votes of 95-2 in the Senate and 311-41 in the House.

In the aftermath of August 11, 1999, a report by the Justice Department stated that the FALN posed an "ongoing threat" to national security. And in late October 1999 the Senate Judiciary Committee released a report from Attorney General Janet Reno stating that the FALN members' "impending release from prison" would "increase the present threat" of terrorism.

In an October 20th Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and again with reporters the following day, Eric Holder denied that Reno was referring to the same FALN terrorists whose pardons he had worked so long and hard to secure. Yet when Holder was asked to identify whom Reno was in fact talking about, he responded as follows:

"I don't know, no, I don't know that. We might be able to get you some more information on that, but, I mean, you know, there were certain people who are due to be released, or who were at least eligible for parole, had a release date in the next, as I said, three, four years. I don't know exactly who they were. Maybe—we might be able to get you that information."

"The 16 [FALN] terrorists appear to be most unlikely candidates. They did not personally request clemency. They did not admit to wrongdoing and they had not renounced violence before such a renunciation had been made a quid pro quo for their release. They expressed no contrition for their crimes, and were at times openly belligerent about their actions…. Notwithstanding the fact that the 16 did not express enough personal interest in the clemency process to file their own applications, the White House appeared eager to assist throughout the process. Meetings were held with supporters, and some senior staff [i.e., Holder] even suggested ways to improve the likelihood of the President granting the clemency. Overall, the White House appears to have exercised more initiative than the terrorists themselves."

From the website of UCC (United Church of Christ)
('Reverend' Wright's Black Liberation 'church')
March 17, 2008:
"Over the weekend members of our church and others have been subjected to the relentless airing of two or three brief video clips of sermons by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ for thirty-six years and, for over half of those years, pastor of Senator Barack Obama and his family. These video clips, and news stories about them, have been served up with frenzied and heated commentary by media personalities expressing shock that such language and sentiments could be uttered from the pulpit."
http://www.ucc.org/news/responding-to-wright.html
__________________________________________________

From UCCTuths.com:
"No issue has bothered me more than the UCC's relationship with convicted [FALN] Puerto Rican terrorists that are responsible for over 150 bombings in the U.S. during the 70's and 80's. There is no moral or theological reason for defending members of this group who have killed and injured dozens of people. What is further shocking and completely contradictory to any of our beliefs is that there is no record (in the nearly 30 years that the UCC has been advocating for these terrorists) that our denomination ever reached out to the victims of FALN violence."
http://www.ucctruths.com/terrorist.html
__________________________________________________

From the American Spectator:
"Does the name Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional -- Armed Forces of National Liberation -- ring a bell? You may remember this charming group by its initials, FALN. A so-called revolutionary group determined to bring about Puerto Rican independence through violence. As reminded in a detailed February 12, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal by Debra Burlingame, it was FALN that was responsible for a New Year's Eve, 1982 bombing at One Police Plaza in New York. The explosion ripped the lower leg off of Police Officer Rocco Pascarella. ...

April 1998: [Janet] Reno's deputy attorney general Eric Holder meets with Paul Sherry, who is advocating clemency for FALN members. One wonders whether any responsibility for the loss of Officer Rocco Pascarella's leg, the blinding of Detective Senft's one eye, the shattering of his facial bones and the fracturing of his hip, as well as the complete blinding of Detective Pastorella and the loss of all the fingers of his right hand, was discussed. ...

Paul Sherry is actually the Reverend Paul Sherry, who, at the time he was meeting with the Deputy Attorney General of the United States to request clemency for the perpetrators of such horrific acts, was, I am sorry to say, the president of the United Church of Christ -- the denomination that Senator Obama and I share.

Reverend Sherry's request -- and he certainly was not alone -- was granted. As Ms. Burlingame and many others, notably the website UCC Truths, have noted, on August 11, 1999 clemency was indeed offered by President Clinton to the FALN terrorists. Twelve accepted in less than a month, and over the objections of then-Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, the terrorists were granted their freedom."
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12909
__________________________________________________

"Between 1974 and 1985 the FALN (Puerto Rican Armed Forces of National Liberation) organized 120 terrorist bombings in the United States. Many Americans were killed in those bombings, and many more were crippled. In 1983, another Puerto Rican terrorist group known as the Macheteros, attacked and robbed a Wells Fargo armored car in Connecticut. The Macheteros intended to use the money to finance a terrorist campaign against the United States. Working under the cover of Puerto Rican nationalism and claiming to act on behalf of the 'oppressed people of Puerto Rico,' the FALN and the Macheteros are nothing but Communist revolutionaries. Both groups were organized by Fidel Castro's secret police. The ultimate goal of the FALN and the Macheteros is the creation of an independent Marxist-Leninist dictatorship on the island of Puerto Rico."
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=19760
__________________________________________________

The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine
Monday , May 5, 2008
FoxNews/Hannity's America
[special Friday night edition--original airdate May 2, 2008]

(some key excerpts)

["(Jose) Diaz-Balart is the son of Rafael Diaz-Balart y Guitierrez (a former Cuban politician). He has three bothers, Rafael Diaz-Balart (a banker), Mario Diaz-Balart (a US Congressman) and Lincoln Diaz-Balart (also a US Congressman). His aunt, Mirta Diaz-Balart, was Fidel Castro's first wife."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Diaz-Balart]

JOSE DIAZ-BALART, TELEMUNDO NETWORK: "Liberation theology in Nicaragua in the mid-1980's was a pro-Sandinista, pro-Marxist, anti-U.S., anti-Catholic Church movement. That's it. No ifs, ands, or buts. His church apparently supported, in the mid-'80s in Nicaragua, groups that supported the Sandinista dictatorships and that were opposed to the Contras whose reason for being was calling for elections. That's all I know. I was there.

I saw the churches in Nicaragua that he spoke of, and the churches were churches that talked about the need for violent revolution and I remember clearly one of the major churches in Managua where the Jesus Christ on the altar was not Jesus Christ, he was a Sandinista soldier, and the priests talked about the corruption of the West, talked about the need for revolution everywhere, and talked about 'the evil empire' which was the United States of America."

REV. BOB SCHENCK, NATIONAL CLERGY COUNCIL: "it's based in Marxism. At the core of his [Wright's] theology is really an anti-Christian understanding of God, and as part of a long history of individuals who actually advocate using violence in overthrowing those they perceive to be oppressing them, even acts of murder have been defended by followers of liberation theology. That's very, very dangerous."

SCHENCK: "I was actually the only person escorted to Dr. Wright. He asked to see me, and I simply welcomed him to Washington, and then I said Dr. Wright, I want to bring you a warning: your embrace of Marxist liberation theology. It is contrary to the Gospel, and you need, sir, to abandon it. And at that he dropped the handshake and made it clear that he was not in the mood to dialogue on that point."

Source: The Real Story Behind Rev. Wright's Controversial Black Liberation Theology Doctrine:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
__________________________________________________

Excerpt from The American Thinker
Article: Obama, Black Liberation Theology, and Karl Marx
May 28, 2008

Just one nugget from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Instruction on Certain Aspects of the ‘Theology of Liberation': "...it would be illusory and dangerous to ignore the intimate bond which radically unites them (liberation theologies), and to accept elements of the marxist analysis without recognizing its connections with the (Marxist) ideology, or to enter into the practice of the class-struggle and of its marxist interpretation while failing to see the kind of totalitarian society to which this process slowly leads."
- (Author: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect, now Pope Benedict XVI; written in 1984)

Understanding that black liberation theology is Marxism dressed up to look like Christianity helps explain why there is no conflict between Cone's "Christianity" and Farrakhan's "Nation of Islam." They are two prophets in the same philosophical (Marxist) pod, merely using different religions as backdrops for their black-power aims.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/obama_black_liberation_theolog.html
__________________________________________________

Obama's Church: Gospel of Hate
Kathy Shaidle, FrontPageMag.com
Monday, April 07, 2008

In March of 2007, FOX News host Sean Hannity had engaged Obama’s pastor in a heated interview about his Church’s teachings. For many viewers, the ensuing shouting match was their first exposure to "Black Liberation Theology"...

Like the pro-communist Liberation Theology that swept Central America in the 1980s and was repeatedly condemned by Pope John Paul II, Black Liberation Theology combines warmed-over 1960s vintage Marxism with carefully distorted biblical passages. However, in contrast to traditional Marxism, it emphasizes race rather than class. The Christian notion of "salvation" in the afterlife is superseded by "liberation" on earth, courtesy of the establishment of a socialist utopia.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30CD9E14-B0C9-4F8C-A0A6-A896F0F44F02
__________________________________________________

Catholics for Marx
By Fr. Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, June 03, 2004

In the days when the Superpowers were locked in a Cold War, Latin America seethed with revolution, and millions lived behind an iron curtain, a group of theologians concocted a novel idea within the history of Christianity. They proposed to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying violent revolution to overthrow the economics of capitalism.

The Gospels were re-rendered not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=460782B7-35CC-4C9E-A2C5-93832067C7CD
__________________________________________________

From "45 Communist Goals":
#27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion.
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
__________________________________________________

From the New York Times, April 28, 2008
Reverend Wright at the National Press Club
"In the late 1960s, when Dr. James Cone's powerful books burst onto the scene, the term 'black liberation theology' began to be used. I do not in any way disagree with Dr. Cone, nor do I in any way diminish the inimitable and incomparable contributions that he has made and that he continues to make to the field of theology. Jim, incidentally, is a personal friend of mine."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/28/us/politics/28text-wright.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=sloginL
__________________________________________________

From Jeff Head's website...
One notable quote from [James] Cone describing his Black Liberation Theology is as follows:

"Black theology refuses to accept a God who is not identified totally with the goals of the black community. If God is not for us and against white people, then he is a murderer, and we had better kill him. The task of black theology is to kill Gods who do not belong to the black community ... Black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy. What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love." - "Divine Racism: The Unacknowledged Threshold Issue for Black Theology", in African-American Religious Thought: An Anthology, by William R Jones, ed Cornel West and Eddie Glaube (Westminster John Knox Press).
http://www.jeffhead.com/blacklibtheology.htm

African American Religious Thought: An Anthology (Paperback)
by Cornel West (Editor), Eddie S. Glaude Jr. (Editor)
http://www.amazon.com/African-American-Religious-Thought-Anthology/dp/0664224598
__________________________________________________

HANNITY: But Reverend Jeremiah Wright is not backing down and has not for years and in his strong stance on the teaching of black liberation theology is nothing new. He had the same things to say last spring when he appeared on "Hannity & Colmes:"

WRIGHT: If you're not going to talk about theology in context, if you're not going to talk about liberation theology that came out of the '60s, systematized black liberation theology that started with Jim Cone in 1968 and the writings of Cone and the writings of Dwight Hopkins and the writings of womynist theologians and Asian theologians and Hispanic theologians, then you can't talk about the black value system.

HANNITY: But I'm a — reverend

WRIGHT: Do you know liberation theology, sir?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,354158,00.html
__________________________________________________

"Their founding document [the Weather Underground's] called for the establishment of a "white fighting force" to be allied with the "Black Liberation Movement" and other "anti-colonial" movements[1] to achieve "the destruction of US imperialism and the achievement of a classless world: world communism."..."-Berger, Dan (2006). Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity. AK Press, 95.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_Underground#cite_ref-Berger_0-0

Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (Paperback) by Dan Berger
http://www.amazon.com/Outlaws-America-Underground-Politics-Solidarity/dp/1904859410
__________________________________________________

From the New York Times, August 24, 2003

"they [the Weather Underground] employed revolutionary jargon, advocated armed struggle and black liberation and began bombing buildings, taking responsibility for at least 20 attacks. Estimates of their number ranged at times from several dozen to several hundred."

Article: Quieter Lives for 60's Militants, but Intensity of Beliefs Hasn't Faded
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E4DE1539F937A1575BC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
__________________________________________________

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
"FBI files from 1976, recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm the connections between Weatherman, Havana, and Moscow. Weatherman leaders like Mark Rudd traveled illegally to Havana in 1968 to engage in terrorist training. There, camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine were educating Westerners both in Marxist philosophy and urban warfare."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808

Thanks for that!

Check this out...

"In April 1985 [Leon] Panetta joined with 13 of his leftist congressional colleagues — including Ron Dellums, Don Edwards, George Miller, Christopher Dodd, and Les Aspin — in sponsoring a 20th anniversary fund-raising gala for the pro-Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), which had been described by Brian Crozier, director of the London Institute for the Study of Conflict, as the "perfect intellectual front for Soviet activities which would be resisted if they were to originate openly from the KGB." The IPS was originally funded with millions of dollars from the Faberge perfume magnate and Communist Party member Samuel Rubin and his wife."

"Readers who recall the movement to impeach Bill Clinton remember that one of the charges raised by Clinton's critics was the conflict of interest created when individuals connected with the Chinese Overseas Shipping Company (COSCO) — such as John Huang, Charles Trie, and James and Mochtar Riady — helped funnel contributions to the Clinton reelection campaign. Afterwards, the Clinton administration lobbied for granting COSCO a 10-year lease on the former Long Beach Naval Shipyard in California.

During a March 1997 edition of CNBC's Equal Time program, California Republican State Senator Dick Mountjoy noted that COSCO-linked arms dealer Wang Jun had been granted personal access to President Clinton, and that Wang's business associates had smuggled illegal assault weapons into California for delivery to street gangs by making use of a ship owned and operated by COSCO.

Mountjoy then stated:

The next thing you know, (then-Chief of Staff) Leon Panetta is down here negotiating that port for the Chinese.

There is much more to the COSCO-Long Beach connection than we have room for here, but a good summary of the threat the arrangement made to U.S. security may be found in an item inserted into the Congressional Record by Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon on May 20, 1997.

Even the most unbiased of observers may legitimately ask: Why on Earth is an individual who helped negotiate the turnover of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard to the communist Chinese, thereby creating the threat to U.S. national security described in the Washington Times article by Rowan Scarborough and inserted into the Congressional Record by Rep. Solomon, being considered for a top position at one of our nation's most critical intelligence agencies?"

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/election/655

__________________________________________

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: Institute For Policy Studies (IPS)

IPS’s [Institute For Policy Studies] Washington, DC headquarters quickly became a resource center for national reporters and a place for KGB agents from the nearby Soviet embassy to convene and strategize. Cora Weiss headed one of the IPS's most successful forays -- into Riverside Church in Manhattan. She was invited there in 1978 by the Reverend William Sloane Coffin to run the church's Disarmament Program, which sought to consolidate Soviet nuclear superiority in Europe -- in the name of "peace." In 1982 Weiss helped organize the largest pro-disarmament demonstration ever held. Staged in New York City, the rally was attended by a coalition of communist organizations. During her decade-long tenure at Riverside, which became home to the National Council of Churches, Weiss regularly received Russian KGB agents, Sandinista friends, and Cuban intelligence agents. Weiss became infamous for her role in the psychological warfare conducted against U.S. prisoners of war held in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" during the Vietnam War.

The Liberation News Service, which is a news source for hundreds of "alternative" publications nationwide (with antiwar, Marxist-oriented perspectives), was founded in 1967 with IPS assistance."

[lots more at link...]

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6991

_________________________________________________________

This is from the Marxist think tank Institute For Policy Studies itself
(Hillary mentioned the 2009 Summit of the Americas during today's hearing):

Obama’s Agenda for Change and the 2009 Summit of the Americas

excerpt:

'Yes We Can' — Change for the Americas Coming from Below

Hemispheric resistance to the first attempt by the U.S. to force the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) on every nation on this continent led to its eventual defeat at the IV Summit of the Americas, held in Argentina in 2005. The organizers of the April 2009 V Summit of the Americas had hoped to focus on a social agenda of providing a decent living for all those who call the “Americas” their home. The emergence of the PPA, or Bush’s Plan B for the FTAA, represents a threat to the urgent need of having all nations in the hemisphere focus on tackling the disparities that make the region the most unequeal in the world.

According to Obama, “what's good for the people of the Americas is good for the United States.” Among the specific proposals Obama has made (political freedom and democracy; freedom from fear and security; freedom from want and opportunity) in the “New Partnership for the Americas” document, he says that “it’s time for a new alliance of the Americas” that leaves behind “eight years of failed policies” and “top down reforms”, and puts forward instead an “agenda that advances democracy, security, and opportunity from the bottom up”. For Obama to make good on his vision for a new "partnership" in the Americas, the divisive Bush PPA initiative must be laid to rest well before the April V Summit of the Americas gets underway.

The 2009 IV Peoples’ Summit in Trinidad and Tobago

On April 17-19, 2009, the IV Peoples Summit will be taking place in Port of Spain, Trinidad (while heads of state are simultaneously meeting at the V Summit of the Americas).The message of a "change agenda" for the hemisphere will be brought to the island nation by social movements coming from all points in between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego. A key focus for discussions during the People’s Summit will be the economic meltdown hitting the capitalist system, and the opening that this provides for the implementation of a peoples’ agenda promoting sustainable development, social justice, equity, and peaceful coexistence.[ie, communism/socialism -etl]

In conjunction with the Hemispheric Social Alliance, social movements present in Trinidad and Tobago will be providing a "change agenda" that, in large measure, will likely be echoed by representatives from many of the newly elected governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. The V Summit of the Americas will be an ideal setting for Obama to signal a new respectful and consultative role for the US in the Americas as well. Will Obama avail himself of the opportunity to take this courageous step forward? Ojalá!

http://www.ips-dc.org/articles/933

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.