PULSE: How do you think September 11 affected political activism in this country?

KLEIN: I think the opposition to neo-liberalism is much, much stronger than it was in 1999. But I think activism in general, and in the United States in particular since September 11, has been very timid.

I think that there’s a climate of fear in the United States around being perceived as anti-government. There’s a fear of being in the streets. I saw this very clearly when I was in New York during the Republican convention. Certainly the opposition to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq and the sort of corporate takeover of politics was very, very clear; but in terms of the opposition, the way it was expressed was very timid and controlled. I think that’s a broader social issue that people in the U.S. really need to grapple with: what is the role of dissent in a democracy?

Weinglass contrasted the prosecution of the Cuban Five with the case of Orlando Bosch. Bosch was implicated in the deaths of 73 men, women and children when a bomb destroyed a Cubana Airlines passenger plane in 1976. Once described as “the most notorious terrorist in the hemisphere,” Bosch has friends close to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Despite a Justice Department recommendation that Bosch be denied residency, the Bush administration intervened on his behalf and today he walks the streets of Miami a free man.

Touching on the Bush administration’s general foreign policy and its “bizarre acceptance of the use of torture” in Afghanistan and Iraq, Weinglass said, “We are undergoing a crisis of illegality and lawlessness at the highest levels of government.”

And, overall Iraq has less electricity each day than a year ago. Oil production has slipped below 2004's disappointing levels and 60% of the people depend on food handouts.

Two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, much of Iraq's infrastructure remains impaired and insurgents are working to wreck the economy as fast as the U.S. and Iraqi governments can restore it.

The tattered and struggling country has become one of the world's poorest -- ranking at the level of Haiti and Senegal -- and economists see little hope for major improvements this year.

Yet some Iraqis say parts of their lives are improving. The country now boasts a freewheeling consumer economy flush with cell phones, Internet cafes and independent newspapers, along with plenty of high-paying government jobs.

12,000 to 20,000 guerrillas stage nearly 40 attacks a day, according to Pentagon figures, and do their best to tear down an economy that the U.S. and Iraqi governments are struggling to rebuild with $18.4 billion in U.S. taxpayer money.
Iraq Occupation Watch

If French voters reject the EU's first ever constitution on May 29, as recent polls suggest, it will largely be because the country's disgruntled electorate believes the charter will destroy Europe's beloved social model.

Rising unemployment, falling wages, Turkey's possible membership of the EU and the unpopularity of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin's center-right government all help explain why support for the "yes" camp has plummeted in recent weeks. But the one rallying cry that unites both right- and left-wing opponents of the constitution is "Yes to a Social Europe!"

This slogan means different things to different people.

"In some countries, social cohesion means having the trade unions on board, and sustainable development means having Greenpeace on board," quipped the European Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry Gunter Verheugen last week. "I tell people everywhere, 'You can have a strong economy without social cohesion. But you cannot have social cohesion -- whatever that is -- without a strong economy.'"

In France, a country wedded to short working hours, long holidays and high unemployment, such views are considered heretical. Given the choice between a strong economy and a generous welfare state backed up by first-class public services, most French would plump for the latter. Hence many voters' opposition to the EU constitution, which is perceived as being too "liberal," (in the classical sense), too free-trade oriented and too "Anglo-Saxon."

"Our ambition for a powerful and united Europe" will end up "drifting toward a large market open to all winds and politically diluted," wrote former prime minister and leading Socialist "non" campaigner Laurent Fabius last month. Fearing the constitution will put "an end to any social striving," Jacques Nikonoff, president of the influential pressure group Attac-France, says: "This crisis is the direct result of political choices made by EU governments and the European Commission, putting competitiveness and the market ahead of any other considerations, such as cooperation, solidarity and social justice."

He worked for the Venezuelan secret police for several years. Then, in 1976, he and Miami pediatrician Orlando Bosch were arrested following the midair bombing of a Cubana airliner that killed all 73 people aboard.

But in 1985, Posada escaped from prison. He turned up a year later in El Salvador, where he worked for an unauthorized Nicaraguan contra resupply network overseen by then-National Security Council staffer Oliver North.

In 1997, he first admitted and then denied masterminding the bombing attacks on several Havana hotels and restaurants that catered to foreign tourists, who provided needed currency to cash-strapped Cuba.

Three years later, Posada and three Miami exiles were arrested in Panama after Castro, visiting for a heads-of-state summit, alleged at a news conference that they were plotting to kill him. The four claimed they were trying to help a Cuban general defect.

The Cuban militant suspected of plotting to kill Fidel Castro plans to seek asylum in the United States in hopes of avoiding prosecution in Venezuela for allegedly blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976, according to a lawyer who will represent him.

Luis Posada Carriles, 77, whom Castro has described as ``the worst terrorist in the hemisphere,'' is also wanted by Cuba and could face execution if he were extradited there.

Benefiting from the murderous tolerance granted in the United States to the same individuals who were being fought against by the five anti-terrorist Cuban patriots still unjustly imprisoned by imperialist justice, Posada has illegally returned to US territory with no problem. CSC