Folks on the political left mock The Wall Street Journal. True, the editorial pages contain some of the most scurrilous, ugly commentary imaginable. The papers editorial stance would win praise from Benito Mussolini, if not Josef Goebbels.
Yet the economic data, analysis, and reportage is unmatched by any other English language mainstream news source, including The Financial Times and The New York Times. A friend once offered the explanation that “the ruling class needs hard facts to make informed decisions while propaganda is left to The New York Times and the other mainstream news outlets”. Perhaps that is so, but I can attest that I’ve found no better source for pertinent economic information even under its ownership by Rupert Murdoch. Part of the answer lies in their staff of 700 researchers, reduced under Murdoch, but surprisingly unfettered by editorial imperatives. Of course a reader must dig through or behind many of the articles to grasp the meaning of the proffered analyses, but its there to be mined by the diligent Marxist.
A case in point is a recent article by Ellen E. Schultz carrying the title “Top Earners’ Pay Is Seen Eroding Social Security” published on July 21, 2009 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124813343694466841.html). This remarkable article is based upon a clever examination of Social Security data on payroll taxes. Generally, salary and wage data are not distinguished by class when collected by our capitalist-friendly government fact-collectors. Consequently, separating income by class becomes a somewhat speculative and contentious issue among commentators. But the Social Security Administration, in its wisdom, excuses the wealthy from paying SS taxes on income above a certain level, arguing that this would be an onerous burden on the high income class. WSJ researchers take this divide as a credible break between “executives and other highly compensated employees” and the rest of us. They then sort the SSA salary and wage data using this divide, an unspoken, but most suggestive cleavage between the working class and the ownership class. They draw the following conclusions:
● Over one-third of all wages go to the “executive and other highly paid employee” class – the top 6%. The other 94% of employees share the remaining two-thirds.
●The portion going to the top 6% grew from 28% in 2002 to 33% in 2007, a share increase of almost 18% in only 5 years!
●The pay of the top 6% increased by 78% over the past decade while the rest of us saw a pay increase of 61%.
● In the 5 years from 2002 to 2007 – “recovery” years of strong growth – the “executive and other highly compensated employee” class enjoyed a 48% gain while the working class employees’ wages grew by only 24%, half the growth of the wealthy.
●The data on the top 6% vastly underestimates the growth in income of the ownership class by excluding unvested employer contributions, unvested interest credited to deferred-pay accounts, unexercised stock options, unvested restricted stock, incentive stock options, “carried interest” income, income categorized as benefits, and undoubtedly many other actuarial categories of hidden income.
●Elimination of the SS tax ceiling would guarantee, by the most conservative actuarial projections, the Social Security trust funds’ solvency for the next 75 years.
After digesting the shock of the extreme inequality of wage differences, special note should be taken of the trends in inequality demonstrated by the SSA numbers. Inequality has actually accelerated over the last decade, with the widely hailed “recovery” from the dot-com recession generating an even greater disparity of wages. Note, also, that SSA data does not reflect the economic crisis of 2008/2009, though the previous trend would suggest strongly that an even greater increase in inequality is in store for the lower 94% of employees in any coming recovery.
The trajectory of the incomes tracked in The Wall Street Journal study demonstrates a decided and growing partition of the fruits of labor in favor of the ownership class and its minions. In Marxist terms, this indisputable fact signals a parallel increase in the rate of exploitation. For workers, the only remedy will be found in determined, class-conscious militancy. Based upon the accelerating rate of exploitation, one is forced to conclude that the leadership of organized labor has failed to abate this class offensive against labor. The approaches of the past will fall far short of what is needed to win social justice for working people.
Attention must be paid to The Journal’s final point about Social Security which suggests a simple, painless solution to the contrived, exaggerated crisis of Social Security: eliminate the cap on the Social Security tax. I am reminded every day – as I glance at an old button circulated by the inestimable, late labor activist, Fred Gaboury – of the demand for an elimination of the cut-off on the flat tax funding the Social Security trust fund. Fred’s button read: Scrap the Cap. When the button was produced the tax was voided for incomes above $72,600. Today that limit has reached $106,800. Years have passed and we still can’t generate the political will to take this small step for justice and fairness. Shame on our corporately-owned politicians…
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
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Thursday, July 23, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Clinton’s Ghost
The US was among the last industrialized nations to offer citizens a basic income guarantee – welfare – and among the first to dispose of it. When the Clinton administration succeeded in “ending welfare as we know it” in 1996, nearly 5 million families were receiving relief under the Aid to Dependent Children program. As of September 2008, welfare recipients were pared down to 1.6 million families under the Temporary Relief for Needy Families program created to replace welfare.
Historically, government stances toward the poor have been shaped by several approaches: neglect, punishment, charity, forced employment (public and private), the labor market, human rights and social duty, depending upon the class nature of government and the prevailing societal notion of the nature of poverty.
With the rise of capitalism, much attention was paid to the effects of poverty upon labor markets: the necessity of employment as opposed to idleness and self-worth defined by productive effort. For the capitalist system to advance, able-bodied persons were necessarily herded into the work force and away from independent, though perhaps sustainable activities. A new template was created: the citizen defined by his or her place in the work force.
As government became dominated by the capitalist class, the posture towards the poor took on a punitive face, branding those outside of the work force as lazy and undeserving of any compassion. Neglect and forced labor (vagrancy laws and the poor house) were prescribed for the able-bodied and charity for those unable to work. Both effectively deepened the work ethic and labor discipline among the population.
Socialists, on the other hand, advocated an income minimum for everyone as a human right or collective, social duty.
The mass misery of the Great Depression and the determined struggle of millions of working people forced a modest welfare program upon the capitalist class with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) – later, Aid to Families and Dependent Children (AFDC) – offered the poor a modest guaranteed income base, though allowing little more than a subsistence life. Nonetheless, this constituted the US welfare system until 1996.
Several factors contributed to the destruction of this system, including the active, often violent attack upon welfare rights organizations (they were largely destroyed by 1976) and the rise to dominance of the neo-liberal doctrines beginning in the late 1970’s and capped with the winning of political power by Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the US. The crude rhetoric of “welfare queens” and “welfare fraud” and the wide-spread racist edge was amplified with the public through media megaphones who dutifully restored the stigmas attached to the poor, stigmas that well serve capitalism.
When competition with the Socialist world receded after 1991, the US ruling class lost any incentive to present a human face to the rest of the world. Despite costing annually only $24 billion at its peak (roughly the program cost of 20 Stealth Bombers), welfare was doomed and President Clinton and Congress eagerly killed AFDC in 1996.
The TANF program, which replaced AFDC, limits income relief to a maximum totaling five years and gives the states a fixed amount to be mixed between job training and cash payments. Immigrants were largely excluded. Today, the average monthly cash payout to a family is an indecent $372.
When adopted, states scurried to force recipients into low-paying jobs while placing strict job-seeking requirements on assistance applicants. With a reasonably buoyant economy and an expanding low-wage service sector, supporters pronounced the changes a success.
But now, with jobs disappearing and unemployment exploding, the TANF program is failing to keep up with the needs of an increasing jobless work force. In June alone, 358,000 people exhausted unemployment benefits and essentially departed from the labor force. Public assistance is the only recourse for these people and millions like them.
According to The Wall Street Journal (6-22-09), 23 of the 30 largest states, accounting for 88% of the US population have seen increases in cases from a year ago. Unfortunately, observers have noted an ominous sign: welfare case increases frequently lag far behind the unemployment rate and the increases in food stamp usage. Many believe this lag reflects the draconian barriers placed in front of applicants, barriers designed to force job-seeking in a labor market where there are no jobs. For some it is a mystery: “…how can there be such a rapid increase in unemployment and long-term unemployment and not show up in the welfare [system]?” asks Mark H. Greenberg, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy (WSJ, 06-22-09). For others, it is an early sign of the collapse of Clinton’s final solution to welfare, a measure that will now leave an indelible stain on his accommodation of neo-liberalism.
Michigan is a case in point. With the dubious distinction of having the highest unemployment rate in the US (14.1 by the most conservative government tally), welfare caseloads were actually down 4.8% in April from a year earlier! Since food stamps are relatively easy to secure, recipients were up 13% in April, totaling 1.4 million people (There are only 70,000 families on welfare). But to receive assistance, an applicant must often look for work for a month before seeing a caseworker. The threshold for eligibility has remained the same for the last twenty years and benefits can only be received for two years in a lifetime. Should one qualify, the assistance is a mere $492 a month for a family of four. This forebodes a real human catastrophe in the not too distant future, a disaster only too avoidable.
The emerging welfare crisis shamefully has received little attention from the media (with the exception of The Wall Street Journal – giving credit where credit is due!) or politicians. At a time of escalating human suffering, it is outrageous that neglect and a medieval punitive posture continue to dominate the US approach to relief for the needy. Labor should be reminded that forcing the poor into competition for dwindling, low paying jobs only weakens the struggle for a fair days pay. We urgently need to raise the call for a minimum guaranteed income for all citizens including immigrants, along with a full employment bill similar to the Employment Act of 1946, but with a federal mandate to achieve a target, low rate of unemployment, a rate secured by federal hiring on socially useful public projects. If the money was there for bank bailouts, the money should be there for human needs.
Rapacious banks or human lives? The choice should be easy…
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Historically, government stances toward the poor have been shaped by several approaches: neglect, punishment, charity, forced employment (public and private), the labor market, human rights and social duty, depending upon the class nature of government and the prevailing societal notion of the nature of poverty.
With the rise of capitalism, much attention was paid to the effects of poverty upon labor markets: the necessity of employment as opposed to idleness and self-worth defined by productive effort. For the capitalist system to advance, able-bodied persons were necessarily herded into the work force and away from independent, though perhaps sustainable activities. A new template was created: the citizen defined by his or her place in the work force.
As government became dominated by the capitalist class, the posture towards the poor took on a punitive face, branding those outside of the work force as lazy and undeserving of any compassion. Neglect and forced labor (vagrancy laws and the poor house) were prescribed for the able-bodied and charity for those unable to work. Both effectively deepened the work ethic and labor discipline among the population.
Socialists, on the other hand, advocated an income minimum for everyone as a human right or collective, social duty.
The mass misery of the Great Depression and the determined struggle of millions of working people forced a modest welfare program upon the capitalist class with the passage of the Social Security Act of 1935. Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) – later, Aid to Families and Dependent Children (AFDC) – offered the poor a modest guaranteed income base, though allowing little more than a subsistence life. Nonetheless, this constituted the US welfare system until 1996.
Several factors contributed to the destruction of this system, including the active, often violent attack upon welfare rights organizations (they were largely destroyed by 1976) and the rise to dominance of the neo-liberal doctrines beginning in the late 1970’s and capped with the winning of political power by Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the US. The crude rhetoric of “welfare queens” and “welfare fraud” and the wide-spread racist edge was amplified with the public through media megaphones who dutifully restored the stigmas attached to the poor, stigmas that well serve capitalism.
When competition with the Socialist world receded after 1991, the US ruling class lost any incentive to present a human face to the rest of the world. Despite costing annually only $24 billion at its peak (roughly the program cost of 20 Stealth Bombers), welfare was doomed and President Clinton and Congress eagerly killed AFDC in 1996.
The TANF program, which replaced AFDC, limits income relief to a maximum totaling five years and gives the states a fixed amount to be mixed between job training and cash payments. Immigrants were largely excluded. Today, the average monthly cash payout to a family is an indecent $372.
When adopted, states scurried to force recipients into low-paying jobs while placing strict job-seeking requirements on assistance applicants. With a reasonably buoyant economy and an expanding low-wage service sector, supporters pronounced the changes a success.
But now, with jobs disappearing and unemployment exploding, the TANF program is failing to keep up with the needs of an increasing jobless work force. In June alone, 358,000 people exhausted unemployment benefits and essentially departed from the labor force. Public assistance is the only recourse for these people and millions like them.
According to The Wall Street Journal (6-22-09), 23 of the 30 largest states, accounting for 88% of the US population have seen increases in cases from a year ago. Unfortunately, observers have noted an ominous sign: welfare case increases frequently lag far behind the unemployment rate and the increases in food stamp usage. Many believe this lag reflects the draconian barriers placed in front of applicants, barriers designed to force job-seeking in a labor market where there are no jobs. For some it is a mystery: “…how can there be such a rapid increase in unemployment and long-term unemployment and not show up in the welfare [system]?” asks Mark H. Greenberg, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy (WSJ, 06-22-09). For others, it is an early sign of the collapse of Clinton’s final solution to welfare, a measure that will now leave an indelible stain on his accommodation of neo-liberalism.
Michigan is a case in point. With the dubious distinction of having the highest unemployment rate in the US (14.1 by the most conservative government tally), welfare caseloads were actually down 4.8% in April from a year earlier! Since food stamps are relatively easy to secure, recipients were up 13% in April, totaling 1.4 million people (There are only 70,000 families on welfare). But to receive assistance, an applicant must often look for work for a month before seeing a caseworker. The threshold for eligibility has remained the same for the last twenty years and benefits can only be received for two years in a lifetime. Should one qualify, the assistance is a mere $492 a month for a family of four. This forebodes a real human catastrophe in the not too distant future, a disaster only too avoidable.
The emerging welfare crisis shamefully has received little attention from the media (with the exception of The Wall Street Journal – giving credit where credit is due!) or politicians. At a time of escalating human suffering, it is outrageous that neglect and a medieval punitive posture continue to dominate the US approach to relief for the needy. Labor should be reminded that forcing the poor into competition for dwindling, low paying jobs only weakens the struggle for a fair days pay. We urgently need to raise the call for a minimum guaranteed income for all citizens including immigrants, along with a full employment bill similar to the Employment Act of 1946, but with a federal mandate to achieve a target, low rate of unemployment, a rate secured by federal hiring on socially useful public projects. If the money was there for bank bailouts, the money should be there for human needs.
Rapacious banks or human lives? The choice should be easy…
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
Sunday, June 28, 2009
A response to Looking Back...
In response to my post Looking Back..., Melinda wrote:
I hope this call for an independent progressive, better socialist organization will be followed by an analysis as to WHAT political elements of North America are capable of such an organization. I do not see any. But I am a foreigner and hope to be dead wrong about this.
Would anyone like to take a crack at this challenging question?
ZZ
I hope this call for an independent progressive, better socialist organization will be followed by an analysis as to WHAT political elements of North America are capable of such an organization. I do not see any. But I am a foreigner and hope to be dead wrong about this.
Would anyone like to take a crack at this challenging question?
ZZ
The Demise of an Old Friend
Friends tell me of the recent decision of the National Committee of the Communist Party USA to discontinue the print addition of the Party’s newspaper, The People’s Weekly World. The paper, the successor to The Daily World and People’s World, The Worker, and The Daily Worker, has been the public voice of the Communist Party since 1924. I remember well old timers – victimized by the extreme anti-Communist repression of the nineteen fifties – recalling how the paper was the only means for the CPUSA to reach outside of its own ranks during that raging tempest.
The legacy of The Daily Worker includes the treasured “Woody Sez” columns penned by Woody Guthrie and the sports reportage of the legendary Lester Rodney who did more to integrate professional sports than any of the self-congratulatory sports moguls celebrated by the media. The labor reporting was always unabashedly partisan and grounded in rank and file activism. On the cultural front, the paper’s writers often offered a contrarian view, welcome in times of conformity and timidity in the mainstream. Similarly, international reporting provided a refreshing departure from the big media’s subservient spin on the official US government line.
From the nineteen thirties, The Daily Worker and its off-spring were the public face of labor radicalism and socialist advocacy. Through the twists and turns of the US political landscape, the paper remained a place to find ideas that would be expressed no where else. Writers – from Theodore Dreiser to Herbert Aptheker – used the pages of the paper to express views denied in the capitalist media. For most of this period, the CP press was the leading “alternative” mouthpiece for socialism.
Through most of its life, Party leaders understood that the paper played a larger role than determined by paid subscriptions or financial health. It was conceived as an organizational instrument - a spark for activism – to be distributed at mill gates, shop floors, picket lines and mass meetings. Even during its hey-day in the thirties and forties, the Party paper exerted an influence far beyond its mail circulation. Stalwarts like the incomparable Jim Dolson delivered the paper through neighborhoods for decades, serving as a passionate missionary for the Party’s ideas.
In recent years, The People’s Weekly World has sadly followed a script issued by the Party’s leadership towards accommodation with both the Democratic Party leadership and the top rungs of the AFL-CIO hierarchy. For the most part, Marxist and class conscious commentary have given way to shallow, liberal writing and an obstinate, rigid defense of the most timid oppositional forces. More and more, one reads reprints from the liberal press in place of serious, challenging Marxist analysis. Stubbornly, the Party’s top leadership refuses to connect the decline of the paper’s following to the sapping of its traditional militancy.
I am told that the Party leadership has assured the members that the print edition will be replaced by a glitzy, state-of-the-art website that will be more in tune with twenty-first century fashion. But will it reach the millions of unemployed, the striking workers, the massed protesters? Will it demonstrate the passionate commitment of dedicated revolutionaries to the cause of those forgotten by the Democratic Party and left out of decisions taken by the far-removed leadership of organized labor? Will the internet or twitter speak to them or for them? Will it build a cadre of activists interacting with, conversing with, and leading working people?
What was once a powerful tool of agitation and education will become a small, soft-spoken voice in the vast universe of the internet. Where activists brought the Party’s views to the masses through distribution of the print addition, a Google search may now bring those views to the attention of the curious surfer wondering if the Communist Party is still around.
One can only hope that Party members will bring the leaders to their senses.
Zoltan Zigedy
The legacy of The Daily Worker includes the treasured “Woody Sez” columns penned by Woody Guthrie and the sports reportage of the legendary Lester Rodney who did more to integrate professional sports than any of the self-congratulatory sports moguls celebrated by the media. The labor reporting was always unabashedly partisan and grounded in rank and file activism. On the cultural front, the paper’s writers often offered a contrarian view, welcome in times of conformity and timidity in the mainstream. Similarly, international reporting provided a refreshing departure from the big media’s subservient spin on the official US government line.
From the nineteen thirties, The Daily Worker and its off-spring were the public face of labor radicalism and socialist advocacy. Through the twists and turns of the US political landscape, the paper remained a place to find ideas that would be expressed no where else. Writers – from Theodore Dreiser to Herbert Aptheker – used the pages of the paper to express views denied in the capitalist media. For most of this period, the CP press was the leading “alternative” mouthpiece for socialism.
Through most of its life, Party leaders understood that the paper played a larger role than determined by paid subscriptions or financial health. It was conceived as an organizational instrument - a spark for activism – to be distributed at mill gates, shop floors, picket lines and mass meetings. Even during its hey-day in the thirties and forties, the Party paper exerted an influence far beyond its mail circulation. Stalwarts like the incomparable Jim Dolson delivered the paper through neighborhoods for decades, serving as a passionate missionary for the Party’s ideas.
In recent years, The People’s Weekly World has sadly followed a script issued by the Party’s leadership towards accommodation with both the Democratic Party leadership and the top rungs of the AFL-CIO hierarchy. For the most part, Marxist and class conscious commentary have given way to shallow, liberal writing and an obstinate, rigid defense of the most timid oppositional forces. More and more, one reads reprints from the liberal press in place of serious, challenging Marxist analysis. Stubbornly, the Party’s top leadership refuses to connect the decline of the paper’s following to the sapping of its traditional militancy.
I am told that the Party leadership has assured the members that the print edition will be replaced by a glitzy, state-of-the-art website that will be more in tune with twenty-first century fashion. But will it reach the millions of unemployed, the striking workers, the massed protesters? Will it demonstrate the passionate commitment of dedicated revolutionaries to the cause of those forgotten by the Democratic Party and left out of decisions taken by the far-removed leadership of organized labor? Will the internet or twitter speak to them or for them? Will it build a cadre of activists interacting with, conversing with, and leading working people?
What was once a powerful tool of agitation and education will become a small, soft-spoken voice in the vast universe of the internet. Where activists brought the Party’s views to the masses through distribution of the print addition, a Google search may now bring those views to the attention of the curious surfer wondering if the Communist Party is still around.
One can only hope that Party members will bring the leaders to their senses.
Zoltan Zigedy
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Looking Back...
At the risk of alarming steady customers, inured to a weekly diet of apocalyptic pessimism, I must confess that I am becoming optimistic. This may seem in its way perverse. Just when a new President sends Congress a first message filled with perilous tidings at home and abroad, your Washington reporter suddenly begins to see hope ahead. I even feel a little embarrassed, like the prophet Jeremiah caught giving three lusty cheers... The appointments, the policy positions, have something in them for everyone.
Necessity may make his course tortuous but the direction is clearly towards peace. I feel that for the first time since Roosevelt we have a first-rater in the Presidency, a young man of energy, zest, and ability. It is a post in which any man of any quality must grow, but when a man starts out with the gifts [the President] so clearly has, we have the right to hope he will grow to greatness, and perform valiantly in the cause of mankind.
Are these the words of a Washington blogger caught up in the euphoria of the Obama Presidency? A national columnist?
No. The above was from a column written on February 6, 1961 by the doyen of progressive journalists, I.F. Stone. Stone - normally not given to effusive praise - was swept up into the magic of the Kennedy election, finding the all too familiar clarion call of hope, youth, and energy.
Nearly three years later, on December 9, 1963, following the Kennedy assassination, Stone wrote as follows:
...Kennedy, when the tinsel was stripped away, was a conventional leader, no more than an enlightened conservative, cautious as an old man for all his youth, with a basic distrust of the people and an astringent view of the evangelical as a tool of leadership.
I don't know that many will look back upon the Obama years with the same disappointment - history doesn't give us perfect parallels. But I do know that when an experienced, somewhat jaundiced progressive like Stone can be seduced by campaign rhetoric and blinded by the "tinsel" of the moment, the celebration of Obama's election may mark a similar moment of self-deception. It is a measure of Stone's integrity that he admitted it (see his In a Time of Torment).
Already there are healthy signs that many progressives have lost the blush of first love. The Nation has published several editorials both critical of and with disappointment in policy decisions and compromises taken by the Obama administration. Recently, the journal has offered a call to activism, departing from the misguided advice of not rocking Obama's boat.
Typical of jilted lovers, many will turn against Obama with a bitter sense of betrayal. This is both naive and misplaced. Like Kennedy, Obama is neither an agent for change nor a closet reactionary. Like Kennedy, Obama is the executive of a vast structure welded to interests that have little in common with the interests of the majority of US citizens. Admirers of Kennedy will recall the enormous forces arrayed against change in his time: the Joint Chiefs of Staff, defense contractors, the CIA, Southern politicians, etc. Detractors will, with equal passion, note how little he did to challenge these forces. Likewise, those still taken with Obama fever will point with disgust at the obstructionist Republicans, the "Blue Dog" Democrats, the "disruptive" left, and other evil forces, as though they are not always a part of the two-party carnival.
It is not Obama, but this corrupted, broken two-party system of governance that betrays our aspirations. It is not designed for change, but to smother it. Never in the history of this undemocratic "democracy" have the wants and needs of the citizens been so distant from the intent of its ruling elites. This reality cannot be laid at Obama's feet.
The only antidote to the rot of this system is political independence within, but especially outside of the existing two parties. There is simply no reason that activists engaged in Democratic Party circles cannot work outside - independently, uncompromisingly, and vigorously - on progressive, advanced issues with no concern for ruffled feathers. To fail to do so, betrays any commitment to real change.
But more importantly, a divorce from the Democratic Party is long overdue. Those who see the decadence of the Democratic Party - and I don't understand how anyone could miss it - need to find a new home in the anti-corporate third-party movement and the struggle for socialism.
For the immediate future, we need to press ahead - with a national rally for single payer, with picket lines around the headquarters of corporate and elected leaders who oppose EFCA, with a call for a thirty hour work week, with elimination of the social security tax cap, with anti-war, anti-imperialist actions, and a host of other urgent tasks. If Obama wants, he can come along...
Zoltan Zigedy
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Some Observations on the Hungarian Press
From Anonymous
Hi Zoltan, apart from this misspelling :) , your post is 100% correct. I can tell you about the Hungarian media, that usually serviently mirrors the international main stream. In this particular case it cannot go into "omission" mode, Rozsa is a well known person in Hungary. His family members (and the families of the other Hungarian guys involved in the plot) keep the thing alive.
That's why the Hungarian press reports are somehow weird (or plainly comical). Fact after fact emerges about this tiny mercenary ring. These facts paint a fairly coherent picture of a small paramilitary/terrorist group, just as you pointed out in your post.
The unfortunate Hungarian media has to report these facts. But they try their best to show the ring innocent (or unrelated to politics or whatever). The Bolivian police always looks unprofessional/agenda driven/ridiculus in the reports, not to mention Morales himself.
The net result is weird journalism. Or simply laughable if you are aware of the political bias that is behind.
Hi Zoltan, apart from this misspelling :) , your post is 100% correct. I can tell you about the Hungarian media, that usually serviently mirrors the international main stream. In this particular case it cannot go into "omission" mode, Rozsa is a well known person in Hungary. His family members (and the families of the other Hungarian guys involved in the plot) keep the thing alive.
That's why the Hungarian press reports are somehow weird (or plainly comical). Fact after fact emerges about this tiny mercenary ring. These facts paint a fairly coherent picture of a small paramilitary/terrorist group, just as you pointed out in your post.
The unfortunate Hungarian media has to report these facts. But they try their best to show the ring innocent (or unrelated to politics or whatever). The Bolivian police always looks unprofessional/agenda driven/ridiculus in the reports, not to mention Morales himself.
The net result is weird journalism. Or simply laughable if you are aware of the political bias that is behind.
More on the Plotters against Evo Morales
Many thanks to Diana who forwarded this article from Granma International. The article elaborates on the sponsors of the organization of assassins that The Wall Street Journal calls a "rag tag" group.
GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
Havana. May 15, 2009
Armando Valladares' CIA organization linked to plot against Evo Morales
Jean-Guy Allard
• THE Bolivian district attorney's office has identified Hugo Achá Melgar
who, according to the AFP news agency, is Bolivia's representative to the
U.S. Human Rights Foundation (HRF), as providing the bulk of the funds for
the terrorist gang foiled in Santa Cruz while plotting to assassinate
President Evo Morales.
The HRF is a New York-based nongovernmental organization known for its
activities of interference and CIA links. Its general secretary, Armando
Valladares is a terrorist of Cuban origin. District Attorney Marcelo Sosa,
who is leading the investigation in this case, identified Achá, alias
"Superman," along with Alejandro Melgar, "El Lucas," as being involved in
and funding the plot.
In a statement to a La Paz television station, Achá – currently in the
United States – rejected those charges but confessed that he had met with
the killers' leader, Hungarian-Bolivian Eduardo Rózsa-Flores, on "four or
five" occasions. The Rózsa-Flores terrorist group was dismantled in a
Bolivian police operation a few weeks ago. Three of the mercenaries, among
them the group's alleged leader, Eduardo Rózsa-Flores, died in a gun fight,
while two others were arrested and are currently being detained in La Paz.
The authorities subsequently captured two other conspirators, both members
of the fascist organization Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, which provided the
group with weapons.
A RECOUPED HUNGARIAN NEO-NAZI
Born in Bolivia, Eduardo Rózsa Flores, the Hungarian leader of the
conspiracy to assassinate Evo Morales, belonged to circles of the Hungarian
extreme right close to the Jobbik neo-Nazi party, which illegally maintains
a paramilitary organization, the Hungarian Guard.
According to the Hungarian Spectrum website, he joined the Croatian army in
the early 1990s, took part in various battles and was wounded three times.
Suspected of trafficking arms and drugs, he left Croatia and returned to
Hungary in 1994, where he collaborated with neo-Nazi groups.
Two of his accomplices also have biographies that end with their
participation in extreme-right circles: Árpád Magyarosi, killed in the
assault, and Elõd Tóásó, currently in detention, are both members of the
Székely Légió, a paramilitary organization that plans commando attacks on
Romania. Irishman Michael Martin Dwyer was a mercenary in the Balkans and
possibly met the leader of the group in Croatia.
In Bolivia, Rózsa was in contact with Jorge Mones Ruiz, head of UnoAmerica,
a fascist foundation linked to the CIA. According to EFE, one of the
detainees of the Santa Cruz conspiracy, Juan Carlos Gueder, has already
confessed to having met with Rózsa-Flores and accused Achá, whom, he said,
should also "take responsibility."
Achá's accomplice, Alejandro "Lucas" Melgar, is currently in Uruguay,
according to his family, to take part in a sport shooting tournament.
According to the district attorney's office, it was Melgar who contracted
the owner of the vehicle with which Rósza, in an earlier attempt, dynamited
the entrance to the house of Cardinal Julio Terrazas on April 14 in an act
of provocation.
Workers in the four luxury hotels where the mercenaries were staying and
employees of the Santa Cruz Telephone Cooperative are to be summoned by the
district attorney.
Yesterday a key witness appeared in the 8th Criminal Hearings Court. He
presented a video taped with a cellular telephone in which Rózsa-Flores
speaks of his plot to assassinate President Evo Morales.
"POET," "PARALYTIC" AND CIA AGENT
Arrested in Havana in late 1960 for placing explosives in public places on
CIA instructions, Armando Valladares won notoriety for his burlesque exit
from jail, requested from abroad, disguised as a "paralytic poet." An
informant for the Batista police, he later devoted himself to sabotage until
his detention.
The only book that Valladares "wrote" was ironically titled "Desde mi silla
de ruedas (From My Wheelchair)." It was actually written by his friend and
accomplice Carlos Alberto Montaner. [Note: Allard describes the titles as
"ironic" not just because it was written by someone else, but because
Vallardes was faking his paralysis -- as hidden Cuban tv cameras in his cell
had demonstrated. When confronted with videotapes of himself doing
calisthenic exercises in his cell and told he could be released, as the
French government had requested because of the campaign to "free the
paralyzed imprisoned poet", only if he got up and walked out of his cell,
onto and off of the plane that took him to France, he did so. Imagine the
embarrassment of the welcoming committee waiting for him at Orly Airport,
Paris with a wheelchair when he went bounding off the plane on his own two
feet. klw]
When he arrived in the United States, Vall adares made himself available to
the U.S. intelligence community with extreme servility, and was appointed
ambassador to Geneva by the ultra-right President Ronald Reagan.
Via his Human Rights Foundation, Valladares published a report on the human
rights situation in Bolivia last October, in which he condemned the
"political violence" in that country.
According to the Venezuelan lawyer and researcher Eva Golinger, author of La
Teleraña Imperial (The Imperial Web), the Human Rights Foundation was
created by Thor Halvorssen Mendoza in 2005 to attack and discredit the
Venezuelan, Bolivian and Ecuadorian governments. The son of one of
Venezuela's wealthiest families Halvorssen worked with the CIA in El
Salvador and Nicaragua.
On May 4, 2008, Valladares the CIA agent volunteered himself as an observer
for the illegal referendum in Santa Cruz on behalf of his organization.•
GRANMA INTERNATIONAL
Havana. May 15, 2009
Armando Valladares' CIA organization linked to plot against Evo Morales
Jean-Guy Allard
• THE Bolivian district attorney's office has identified Hugo Achá Melgar
who, according to the AFP news agency, is Bolivia's representative to the
U.S. Human Rights Foundation (HRF), as providing the bulk of the funds for
the terrorist gang foiled in Santa Cruz while plotting to assassinate
President Evo Morales.
The HRF is a New York-based nongovernmental organization known for its
activities of interference and CIA links. Its general secretary, Armando
Valladares is a terrorist of Cuban origin. District Attorney Marcelo Sosa,
who is leading the investigation in this case, identified Achá, alias
"Superman," along with Alejandro Melgar, "El Lucas," as being involved in
and funding the plot.
In a statement to a La Paz television station, Achá – currently in the
United States – rejected those charges but confessed that he had met with
the killers' leader, Hungarian-Bolivian Eduardo Rózsa-Flores, on "four or
five" occasions. The Rózsa-Flores terrorist group was dismantled in a
Bolivian police operation a few weeks ago. Three of the mercenaries, among
them the group's alleged leader, Eduardo Rózsa-Flores, died in a gun fight,
while two others were arrested and are currently being detained in La Paz.
The authorities subsequently captured two other conspirators, both members
of the fascist organization Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, which provided the
group with weapons.
A RECOUPED HUNGARIAN NEO-NAZI
Born in Bolivia, Eduardo Rózsa Flores, the Hungarian leader of the
conspiracy to assassinate Evo Morales, belonged to circles of the Hungarian
extreme right close to the Jobbik neo-Nazi party, which illegally maintains
a paramilitary organization, the Hungarian Guard.
According to the Hungarian Spectrum website, he joined the Croatian army in
the early 1990s, took part in various battles and was wounded three times.
Suspected of trafficking arms and drugs, he left Croatia and returned to
Hungary in 1994, where he collaborated with neo-Nazi groups.
Two of his accomplices also have biographies that end with their
participation in extreme-right circles: Árpád Magyarosi, killed in the
assault, and Elõd Tóásó, currently in detention, are both members of the
Székely Légió, a paramilitary organization that plans commando attacks on
Romania. Irishman Michael Martin Dwyer was a mercenary in the Balkans and
possibly met the leader of the group in Croatia.
In Bolivia, Rózsa was in contact with Jorge Mones Ruiz, head of UnoAmerica,
a fascist foundation linked to the CIA. According to EFE, one of the
detainees of the Santa Cruz conspiracy, Juan Carlos Gueder, has already
confessed to having met with Rózsa-Flores and accused Achá, whom, he said,
should also "take responsibility."
Achá's accomplice, Alejandro "Lucas" Melgar, is currently in Uruguay,
according to his family, to take part in a sport shooting tournament.
According to the district attorney's office, it was Melgar who contracted
the owner of the vehicle with which Rósza, in an earlier attempt, dynamited
the entrance to the house of Cardinal Julio Terrazas on April 14 in an act
of provocation.
Workers in the four luxury hotels where the mercenaries were staying and
employees of the Santa Cruz Telephone Cooperative are to be summoned by the
district attorney.
Yesterday a key witness appeared in the 8th Criminal Hearings Court. He
presented a video taped with a cellular telephone in which Rózsa-Flores
speaks of his plot to assassinate President Evo Morales.
"POET," "PARALYTIC" AND CIA AGENT
Arrested in Havana in late 1960 for placing explosives in public places on
CIA instructions, Armando Valladares won notoriety for his burlesque exit
from jail, requested from abroad, disguised as a "paralytic poet." An
informant for the Batista police, he later devoted himself to sabotage until
his detention.
The only book that Valladares "wrote" was ironically titled "Desde mi silla
de ruedas (From My Wheelchair)." It was actually written by his friend and
accomplice Carlos Alberto Montaner. [Note: Allard describes the titles as
"ironic" not just because it was written by someone else, but because
Vallardes was faking his paralysis -- as hidden Cuban tv cameras in his cell
had demonstrated. When confronted with videotapes of himself doing
calisthenic exercises in his cell and told he could be released, as the
French government had requested because of the campaign to "free the
paralyzed imprisoned poet", only if he got up and walked out of his cell,
onto and off of the plane that took him to France, he did so. Imagine the
embarrassment of the welcoming committee waiting for him at Orly Airport,
Paris with a wheelchair when he went bounding off the plane on his own two
feet. klw]
When he arrived in the United States, Vall adares made himself available to
the U.S. intelligence community with extreme servility, and was appointed
ambassador to Geneva by the ultra-right President Ronald Reagan.
Via his Human Rights Foundation, Valladares published a report on the human
rights situation in Bolivia last October, in which he condemned the
"political violence" in that country.
According to the Venezuelan lawyer and researcher Eva Golinger, author of La
Teleraña Imperial (The Imperial Web), the Human Rights Foundation was
created by Thor Halvorssen Mendoza in 2005 to attack and discredit the
Venezuelan, Bolivian and Ecuadorian governments. The son of one of
Venezuela's wealthiest families Halvorssen worked with the CIA in El
Salvador and Nicaragua.
On May 4, 2008, Valladares the CIA agent volunteered himself as an observer
for the illegal referendum in Santa Cruz on behalf of his organization.•
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