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DominicaPress ReleasesUncategorizedVenezuela
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Latin America and the U.S. Presidential Campaign: Nikolas Kosloff on John McCain

In the event that John McCain is elected president, the stage soon could be set for a confrontation with the present Dominica leadership if it continues to follow an independent road regarding its relation with Hugo Chávez’ Venezuela, the vehicle for this could be his ties to a relatively obscure body based in Washington. The Arizona Senator has chaired the International Republican Institute (IRI) since 1993. Ostensibly a non-partisan, democracy-building outfit, in reality the IRI serves as an instrument to advance and promote a far right Republican foreign policy agenda. More a cloak-and-dagger operation than a conventional research group, IRI has aligned itself with some of the most antidemocratic movements in the Third World.

In Haiti, IRI aggressively funded anti-Aristide groups and in Venezuela, IRI generously financed anti-Chávez civil society operations. When Venezuelan opposition politicians, union and
community leaders went to Washington on a private mission to meet with U.S. officials just a month before the April 2002 coup, IRI picked up the bill. The IRI also helped to fund the country’s notoriously corrupt Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (which played a major role in the anti-Chávez destabilization campaign leading up to the coup). IRI also arranged for Súmate, whose director just happened to be at the presidential palace in Caracas with the other backers of the coup, where she decided to sign her name to a document identifying her presence with the other golpistas.

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Paradise at Risk: Environmental and Nuclear Issues Bedevil the Caribbean

• The Caribbean Coral Reef is slowly disappearing, a sign that nature is losing its war against development

• A nuclear powered smelter is being planned in Suriname, as vessels carrying nuclear waste ply the Caribbean

• A “minor” spill in December 2007 in a Jamaican resort—did the guests notice the black gunk in the water?

• The Hemisphere reaffirms its intention to remain a nuclear weapons free-zone, but what about civilian nuclear power?

• What does the OAS Assistant Secretary General Albert Ramdin, who hails from Suriname, think of his country’s proposed nuclear energy source?

Tourists from across the globe seek out the Caribbean islands, attracted by sunlit beaches and deluxe hotels. At the same time, recent developments brought about by civilian nuclear use has put the Caribbean’s fragile natural environment at significant risk. Suriname’s decision to build a nuclear powered bauxite refining plant is just the latest in a string of possible environmental threats now in the making in the region. In addition, proposals to widen the Panama Canal will have no small impact on the size and type of the next generation of vessels which will be transiting the Caribbean en route to the Central American isthmus, along with ships carrying nuclear waste and other hazardous materials. If allowed to occur, at some point, one-in-a-million nuclear “episodes” could bring about an environmental catastrophe. The ongoing loss of Caribbean coral reefs serves as example that, in spite of a few isolated initiatives and the odd alarm, safeguarding the environment is far from being a high-priority matter for major Caribbean area decision makers.

Local politics and self-serving economic-based decisions hostile to the Caribbean region’s fragile ecosystem must be guarded against, while a high degree of careful planning and responsible and effective oversight will be needed to determine that the emergence of a “nuclear Caribbean” era not inevitably end in tragedy.

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CubaDominican RepublicPress ReleasesUncategorizedVenezuela
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Dominica: The Caribbean’s Next “Terror Island”?

In 1983, while aboard a New York subway, I noticed someone reading that day’s issue of the New York Post. The front page headline screamed, “YANKS INVADE TERROR ISLAND.” It was early on in the Reagan administration and the U.S. had just militarily intervened in the Caribbean nation of Grenada, ending the island’s short-lived socialist experiment. The landing was based on the pretext that the Reagan administration had suspected that the new commercial airport—which Cuban laborers were aiding Grenada to construct on the island—actually would be used to transport Cuban troops to fight alongside African revolutionaries. Today, another Caribbean nation, Dominica, has been forging links with leftist Cuba and Venezuela. Authorities on that small Caribbean island had better watch out, or they may be presiding over this generation’s “Terror Island,” but this time the name of the island is Dominica.

A tiny nation of 133 square miles whose population could barely fill the Rose Bowl, Grenada had posed no strategic threat to the U.S. But Maurice Bishop of the leftist New Jewel Movement, which had ruled Grenada since 1979, had become positively irksome to Washington. Inspired at least as much by Bob Marley as by Karl Marx, Bishop, a young LSE graduate and an island intellectual and visionary, had embarked on an ambitious social and economic program aimed at diversifying agriculture, developing cooperatives, and creating an agro-industrial base that was leading to a reduction in food imports. Bishop also established a free health service and secondary education system, resulting in a markedly higher literacy rate on the island.

The Reagan administration sought to halt the New Jewel Movement in its tracks: economic assistance through the World Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank was mysteriously blocked, aid from the International Monetary Fund was restricted, and any participation in the Caribbean Basin Initiative was dismissed out of hand. Reagan even refused to meet with Bishop when the Grenadian Prime Minister visited Washington in June, 1983. According to the Washington Post, the CIA had been engaged all along in a campaign to destabilize Grenada both politically and economically.

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Macedonia: Reaching Out to Win Latin American Hearts and Minds

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On the eve of the explosive consequences of Kosovo’s independence, an artificial “dispute,” created by Greece seventeen years ago over the name and identity of the Republic of Macedonia, threatens to further destabilize the Balkans, with possibly uncontrolled consequences for regional peace. Incredibly, far off Latin America may help diffuse this situation and offer a solution.

Greece falsely accuses Macedonia that the latter is engaged in irredentism and hostile propaganda — not to mention Greece’s preposterous claim that Macedonia does not have the right to its own name and to its historical, ethnic, and religious identity. Demonstrably, Greece’s moves are suspect: Macedonia historically and culturally did transcend the country’s current borders. In 1912-13, through two brutal regional wars, Macedonia was forcefully partitioned among Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. The Macedonians were subject to qualified genocide and many were driven from their land.

It is this reality that Greece tirelessly tries to cover up. Human Rights Watch, among other credible organizations, has documented the existence of on-going discrimination against the remaining Macedonians in Greece. In fact, until recently, Greece had legal provisions preventing exiled Macedonians from entering Greece in order to claim title of their family property. This context should help explain the “name dispute,” the endless Greek misinformation campaigns, the hostile posturing, and attempts to censor and trivialize Macedonian claims, but now via more refined methods involving international mechanisms, in the hope of gaining legitimacy via international sanctions of Macedonia.

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