He also was asked whether the U.S. government should have concerns about Venezuelan immigrants and whether they might act upon declarations or pronouncements from that country's embassy or consulate.
I think Hugo Chavez has an army of immigrants in California that have contributed to the immigration protests and this is the information for which the US is looking.
-Am
SoCal professor says anti-terror detectives questioned him
By JEREMIAH MARQUEZ Associated Press March 10, 2006
LOS ANGELES - A professor of Latin American history on Friday accused federal authorities of intruding on academic freedom after anti-terrorism investigators questioned him about possible ties to the Venezuelan government.
Pomona College professor Miguel Tinker Salas said two Los Angeles County sheriff's detectives working for a federal task force interviewed him at his office Tuesday and asked whether he had contact with Venezuelan Embassy officials or immigrants in the United States.
Salas is a native of Venezuela, a nation with strained relations with the United States.Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez often calls President Bush a terrorist and the White House claims Chavez has eroded democracy. Last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told U.S. lawmakers that the Venezuelan government posed "one of the biggest problems" in the region and that its ties to Cuba were "particularly dangerous" to democracy in Latin America. Venezuela also has found its closest Middle Eastern ally in Iran.
Chavez insists his government is democratic and accuses Washington of conspiring against him. He says the United States was behind a short-lived 2002 coup, an allegation that U.S. officials reject.
Tinker Salas said the detectives told him he was not the subject of an investigation and led him to believe they were questioning other scholars. However, he was unaware of other California academics who'd been interviewed by government officials.
"They said they we're also going to interview other people and academics to develop a profile of the community," said Tinker Salas, a Latin American history and Chicano studies scholar who specializes in Venezuelan affairs. The FBI declined to say whether the interview was part of a broader effort to gain information from Venezuelans living in the United States. The bureau said it routinely conducts interviews, but being questioned doesn't mean someone is accused of wrongdoing.
"The purpose of the interview was to seek information," the bureau said in a statement. "There was no intent on the part of the FBI ... to place the professor, his students or Pomona College in an uncomfortable situation." According to Tinker Salas, one of the sheriff's detectives identified himself as a member of the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes officials from local, state and federal agencies.
Tinker Salas said the detectives' line of questioning focused on publicly available information such as where he went to school and whether there was a Venezuelan consulate in Los Angeles. He also was asked whether the U.S. government should have concerns about Venezuelan immigrants and whether they might act upon declarations or pronouncements from that country's embassy or consulate.
Tinker Salas argued that such interviews could cast a pall on scholarly work.
Officials at the college, located about 40 miles east of Los Angeles in Claremont, were consulting attorneys about "the most effective way to register a strong official protest," the school's president, David Oxtoby, wrote in a letter Thursday to students and faculty.
The Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C., issued a statement Friday calling the interview "a desperate attempt to link Venezuela to terrorism" and pressing the U.S. to explain the incident and its policy toward Venezuela
Connection between demonstrations in France and US
French trade unions are behind the enormous demonstrations in France. Certainly at the very least some of the trade unions behind the demonstrations in France were represented at the World Social Forum.
Many trade unionists took part in the second World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January-February 2002 as an alternative to the World Economic Forum. French trade unions were widely represented and we review their involvement in this initiative.
There is also a connection between the World Social Forum and the demonstrations seen in California. #msg-10433548
If these associations are accurate and they seem to be, we will begin to witness the most massive demonstrations ever seen on the face of the earth.
The World Social Forum, if all of this is true, seems capable of dwarfing previous anti-war demonstrations in our recent past.
-Am
French trade unions and the World Social Forum Many trade unionists took part in the second World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January-February 2002 as an alternative to the World Economic Forum. French trade unions were widely represented and we review their involvement in this initiative.
The second World Social Forum meeting was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil from 31 January to 5 February 2002. The Forum, which was founded by the Brazilian Business Leaders' Association for Citizenship (Associação Brasileira de Empresários pela Cidadania, CIVES) and the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions and for Assistance to Citizens (ATTAC), had held its initial conference in Porto Alegre on 25-30 January 2001. From the outset, the Forum positioned itself as a citizens' movement to set out alternatives to the 'inhumane neo-liberal order, personified by the World Economic Forum in Davos' (in the words of the final declaration of the Parliamentary World Forum held at Porto Alegre in January 2001).
PARIS (AP) - Police said at least 1 million people _ organizers said 3 million _ poured into the streets across France on Tuesday in the latest protests against the government's new jobs law.
It was the second time in a week that unions and student groups had succeeded in mobilizing such numbers. The largest march, in Paris, drew at least 80,000 people, while 935,000 marched in other parts of the country, police said. Organizers put the figure in the capital at 700,000 _ and 3 million nationwide.
The nationwide strike shut down the Eiffel Tower and snarled air and rail travel over a jobs measure that has riven the country and put the government in crisis mode.
Protesters have mounted ever-larger demonstrations for two months against the law, which would make it easier to fire young workers. But President Jacques Chirac signed it anyway Sunday, saying it will help France keep pace with the global economy.
He offered modifications, but students and unions rejected them, saying they want the law withdrawn, not softened.
"What Chirac has done is not enough," said Rebecca Konforti, 18, who was among a group of students who jammed tables against the door of their high school in southern Paris to block entry. "They're not really concessions. He just did it to calm the students."
Police actively looked to thwart troublemakers. At Paris' Saint-Lazare station, riot officers with weapons and a police dog pulled over train travelers disembarking from the suburbs, searching their bags and checking identities.
Tourists, meanwhile, stood bewildered before closed gates at the Eiffel Tower. Parisian commuters flattened themselves onto limited subway trains. Garbage bins in some Paris neighborhoods stood overflowing and uncollected by striking sanitation workers.
Irish budget airline Ryanair canceled all its flights in and out of France.
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin devised the disputed "first job contract" as a bid to boost the economy and stem chronic youth unemployment. He maintains it would encourage hiring by allowing employers to fire workers under 26 during their first two years on a job without giving a reason.
The measure is meant to cut a 22 percent unemployment rate among youths that reaches 50 percent in some poor, heavily immigrant neighborhoods. Villepin has cited the national statistics agency as saying it would create up to 80,000 new jobs at zero cost to the state.
Critics say it threatens France's hallmark labor protections, and the crisis has severely damaged Villepin's political reputation.
Chirac stepped in Friday to order two major modifications _ reducing a trial period of two years to one year and forcing employers to explain any firings _ in hopes of defusing the crisis. In so doing, he dealt a blow to Villepin, his one-time top aide and apparent choice as successor next year.
In an apparent first in France, Chirac signed the original measure into law this weekend, as promised, but also effectively suspended it with an order that it not be applied. The 73-year-old president's legal sleight of hand kept the law alive while a new version is in the works.
Now that the law has been signed, protesters have less maneuvering room. The government appeared to be hoping that protests would die down after Tuesday's big event and was looking to possible talks between more moderate unions and lawmakers led by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy.
Sarkozy, a leading presidential hopeful, is the only senior government official unscathed by the crisis.
The head of the governing UMP party's bloc in parliament, Bernard Accoyer, told reporters he had invited labor leaders to talks.
Two labor leaders _ CFDT union chief Francois Chereque and CGT union chief Bernard Thibault _ suggested they would attend. But both said they hoped the law eventually would be rejected.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
This looks to be the movement behind many of the demonstrations we are seeing throughout the world.
After decades of harsh neoliberal economic policy, the tide finally seems to be turning and the activists, advocacy groups and academics who descended on Caracas in January expected to be a part of the vibrant debates and discussions that are animating these turns in the Americas. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=10047
Pls see: Connection between demonstrations in France and US #msg-10515954 Connection between Chavez and US immigration protests #msg-10433548
-Am
World Social Forum concludes in southern Pakistan (DPA)
29 March 2006
KARACHI - The World Social Forum (WSF) concluded in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi Wednesday, after six days of debate on issues such as the adverse effects of globalization on the developing world.
“The WSF has been a big success, bigger than what we had all expected,” Geoff Brown, a British Socialist Workers’ Party leader told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, as delegates listened to music of Palestine and watched Pakistani folk dances that marked the end of the forum.
Brown said the forum debated issues of social justice, solidarity with resistance movements all over the world including the Jammu and Kashmir in South Asia, the struggle against illiteracy, and ways to defeat dictatorship and promote democracy in the developing world.
Over 20,000 delegates from some 58 countries from south and South-East Asia, China, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas attended the six-day forum, which had begun last Friday with a call to “rethink and recreate” globalization for benefit of people in developing world, particularly those in South Asia.
The forum was founded in 2001 by community organizers, trade unionists, youth groups and academics as an alternative to the establishment World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
This year, for the first time, three World Social Forums were held. Caracas, Venezuela and Bamako, Mali hosted two of them in January, and Karachi followed this month after the deadly October earthquake in Pakistan caused a postponement.
Brown noted the presence of delegates from Palestine and the disputed Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir, and expressed hope that the forum would boost to resistance movements all over the world.
Another human-rights activist from Nepal, Raj Kumar Trikhatri ,said the Karachi forum enabled delegates from across the world to debate a comprehensive strategy on countering globalization and increasing poverty, absence of education and health-care facilities in developing world.
“We are going back to our country fully satisfied and with a confidence that the WSF will continuing mounting pressure on the imperialistic approach and policies of the developed world, which is patronizing an inequitable process of globalization,” Trikhatri said.
Nirmala Despande, seasoned politician and member of India’s Rajya Sabha, or Senate, said the WSF slogan “another world is possible” brings hopes for a “bright future” of a “vibrant” developing world.
“Now we should think of raising another slogan: victory to whole world for peace and justice,” Deshpande said.
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