The U.S. and its Unruly Latin American 'Backyard' by Dr. Éric Toussaint

U.S. aggressiveness towards the Venezuelan, Bolivian, and Ecuadorian governments has increased in response to diminishing U.S. influence over the Latin American and Caribbean area, which Washington has been blaming on Hugo Chávez in particular (and also on Cuba, but Cuba is a much older story).

Several examples illustrate the United States’ waning control

During the negotiations that followed Colombia’s attack on Ecuador on 1 March 2008,[1] instead of appealing to the Organization of American States (OAS) of which the United States is a member and which is headquartered in Washington, the Latin American presidents held a meeting in Santo Domingo, within the framework of the Rio Group,[2] without inviting their great neighbour from the North, and clearly laid the blame on Colombia, a U.S. ally. In 2008, Honduras -- traditionally and wholly subordinated to U.S. policy-- joined Petrocaribe, which was created on the initiative of Venezuela to provide oil to the non-exporting countries in the region at a lower price than that practised on the world market. Honduras also joined the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), another initiative for regional integration launched by Venezuela and Cuba. In December 2008, another important summit took place bringing together most of the Latin American presidents in Salvador de Bahía, with the noteworthy presence of the Cuban Head of State, Raúl Castro, next to whom was seated the Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, who until recently had adopted a hostile attitude towards Cuba, to keep in line with the directives from Washington. A few months later, the OAS decided, in spite of U.S. opposition, to reintegrate Cuba, which had been excluded in 1964. In 2009, Ecuador also joined ALBA, and terminated the U.S. army’s lease of the Manta air base.

Washington has systematically attempted to thwart the shift towards the left

As the following examples illustrate, since the beginning of the 2000s Washington has systematically attempted to thwart the shift towards the left made by the peoples of Latin America: supporting the coup d'Etat against Chávez in April 2002, offering massive financial support to the anti-Chávez opposition movement, supporting the Venezuelan bosses’ strike from December 2002 to January 2003, the active intervention of the U.S. ambassador in Bolivia to prevent the election of Evo Morales, the World Bank's remote control intervention in Ecuador in 2005 to obtain the resignation of Rafael Correa, who was then the Minister of Economy and Finance, the organization of joint military operations in the Southern Cone,[3] the resurrection of the Fourth Fleet,[4] and a very significant increase in military aid to its Colombian ally, which serves as a bridgehead in the Andean region. In addition, to overcome the failure of the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) in November 2005, Washington has been negotiating and/or signing as many bilateral free trade agreements as possible (with Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Colombia, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica).

Coup d'Etat in Honduras

U.S. aggressiveness towards what it sees as a dangerous “Chavist contagion” in Latin America went up another notch in June-July 2009 with the mi

litary coup d'Etat in Honduras, which overthrew the liberal president Manuel Zelaya just as he was calling for a referendum on the election of a constituent assembly by universal suffrage. The Pentagon had resented this shift to the left by a president it thought would behave obediently because Honduras is one of its subordinate countries in the region. If a constituent assembly had been elected by universal suffrage, it would have inevitably had to rule on the demand for agrarian reform, which would have called into question the enormous privileges of the major landowners and foreign agri-business transnationals present in the country. It is mainly for this reason that the local capitalist class, a significant number of whom come from the agrarian sector, supported the coup. It is also important to take account of the fact that this capitalist class is a class of compradors who are completely turned towards import-export business and dependent on good relations with the United States. This explains why it supported the signing of a free trade agreement with Washington and was opposed to ALBA. Zelaya’s order for an increase in the minimum wage is also one of the factors that pushed the bosses to plot his overthrow.[5] In addition, we know that Zelaya intended to ask Washington to leave the Soto Cano air base located less than 65 miles from the capital so that it could be converted into a civilian airport. Even imagining – which is highly improbable – that the Honduran generals acted on their own initiative in collaboration with the local capitalist class, it is inconceivable that Roberto Micheletti, the puppet president designated by the military and by corporate and liberal party leaders, could have stayed in power if the U.S. government had vigorously opposed it. The U.S. has been training Honduran generals for decades, and has an important military base in Soto Cano (with 500 American soldiers stationed there on a permanent basis); moreover, as Hillary Clinton admitted after the coup, the U.S. has massively funded the opposition to President Zelaya.[6] In addition, U.S. transnational companies, particularly in the agri-business sector, are well-established in this country, which they consider to be a banana republic.

The seven U.S. military bases in Colombia

In order to further increase the threat against Venezuela and Ecuador, Washington got President Álvaro Uribe to announce in July 2009 that seven Colombian bases would be handed over to the American army, thereby enabling their fighter aircraft to reach all regions of the South American continent (except Cape Horn).

[7] It is no coincidence that only a short time separated the military coup in Honduras and the Colombian President’s announcement: Washington was clearly indicating that it wanted to immediately halt the extension of ALBA and nip this 21st century socialism in the bud. It would be irresponsible to underestimate Washington’s capacity to do damage, or the continuity characterizing U.S. foreign policy in spite of the election of Barack Obama and a softer rhetoric. While President Manuel Zelaya, who returned to his country secretly on 21 September 2009, was taking refuge in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa and the putschists were violently repressing demonstrations by partisans of the constitutional President, closing down opposition media, and on September 27 declaring a 45-day state of siege, all that Lewis Amselem, n°2 representative of Washington at the OAS, had to say was: “Zelaya’s return is irresponsible and foolish.” Meanwhile, for several days Hillary Clinton failed to condemn the extended curfew imposed by Micheletti to prevent people from gathering in front of the Brazilian embassy. The agreement reached on 30 October under the auspices of Washington between representatives of Manuel Zelaya and those of Roberto Micheletti expressly stipulated that the parties undertake not to call either directly or indirectly for the convocation of a constituent assembly or for any consultation of the people (point 2 of the agreement). In addition, it did not explicitly allow for the return of Manuel Zelaya to the presidency of Honduras in order to finish his term (which is due to end in January 2010). Roberto Micheletti and his partisans then decided not to restore the presidency to Zelaya, who then appealed to the population not to participate in the general elections called for 28 November 2009. The main left-wing candidate for the presidency, Carlos Reyes, together with a hundred or so candidates from different parties (including a sector of the liberal party), withdrew his candidature. On 10 November 2009, an embarrassed Washington announced at a meeting of the OAS that it would recognize the results of the elections of 29 November 2009. On the eve of the elections, human rights organizations had recorded the assassination of more than twenty political opposition activists since the coup d’Etat, 211 people injured during the repression, close to 2,000 cases of illegal detention, two attempted kidnappings and 114 political prisoners accused of sedition. Media opposing the coup were either shut down or harassed. The UN, the OAS, the European Union, UNASUR, the member countries of the Rio Group and ALBA had decided not to send observers. Estimates of the number of citizens who did not vote vary, depending on the source. According to the pro-putschist electoral Supreme Tribunal, the percentage of non-voters was 39%, while several independent organizations advance figures between 53% and 78%. In spite of this, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly considered these illegal and fraudulent elections “a necessary and important step forward.”[8] Washington recognized the election to the presidency of Porfirio Lobo of the National Party, a hardline representative of the property barons and the political right who organized the coup d’Etat. The U.S. Ambassador in Tegucigalpa declared that the elections were “a great celebration of democracy” and said the U.S. would work with Porfirio Lobo, whose nickname is Pepe. “Pepe Lobo is a man of great political experience”, Ambassador Llorens told HRN radio. “I wish him luck, and the United States will work with him for the good of both our countries. [...] Our relations will be very strong.” While the Honduran parliament decided on 2 December 2009 not to restore President Zelaya to office up to the end of his term on 27 January 2010, Washington continues to support the process put in motion by the putschist government.[9] This creates an extremely serious precedent because Washington has repeatedly stated that the ousting of Zelaya definitely constituted a coup d’Etat.[10] Supporting an electoral process stemming from a coup d’Etat and working to promote international recognition of both the authorities that perpetrated the coup and those benefiting from it gives clear encouragement to putschist aspirants who choose to rally to the Washington camp. This clearly applies to a large number of right-wing people in Paraguay.

Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo could be overthrown

In December 2009 the liberal senator Alfredo Luís Jaeggli, chair of the domestic commission and of the budget commission, called President Fernando Lugo to be overthrown, whom he charged with wishing to enforce the Chavist model of 21st century socialism, like Manuel Zelaya. Alfredo Jaeggli, whose party belongs to the current government and represents its main 'support' in parliament, claims that the coup in Honduras was not really a coup. He sees the overthrow of Manuel Zelaya, and what has been done by the de facto regime since, as perfectly legal.[11] He would like the Paraguayan parliament to initiate a political trial against Fernando Lugo, so as to remove him from his function and replace him with the Republic's Vice-president, namely the right-wing liberal Federico Franco. Senator Jaeggli's complaint has nothing to do with Lugo's moral behaviour, his attack is focused on his political options. He complains that he does not follow the lead of countries that carried out a successful economic reform, such as Chile under Pinochet and Argentina under Carlos Menem.[12] Clearly, Honduras can easily become a dangerous precedent as it opens the door to military coups condoned by some state institutions, such as the parliament or the Supreme Court.

Conclusion

In the light of this experience, we can see that the Obama administration is in no hurry to break with the methods used by its predecessors: witness the massive funding of different opposition movements within the context of its policy to “strengthen democracy”,[13] the launching of media campaigns to discredit governments that do not share its political agenda (Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Manuel Zelaya’s Honduras and so on), maintaining the blockade of Cuba, the support for separatist movements in Bolivia (the media luna and the regional capital, Santa Cruz), in Ecuador (the city of Guayaquil and its province), and in Venezuela (the petroleum state of Zulia, the capital of which is Maracaïbo),

[14] the support for military attacks, like the one perpetrated by Colombia in Ecuador in March 2008, as well as actions by Colombian or other paramilitary forces in Venezuela.

The recent dispatch of 10,000 soldiers to Haiti in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake, as well as the potential support for a constitutional coup d’Etat planned by some sectors of the Paraguayan right to overthrow President Fernando Lugo in 2010, are among other threats posed by the U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean that should be paid attention to in the coming weeks.

Eric Toussaint, president of CADTM Belgium (Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, www.cadtm.org ). He is the author of Bank of the South. An Alternative to the IMF-World Bank, VAK, Mumbai, India, 2007; The World Bank, A Critical Primer, Pluto Press, Between The Lines, David Philip, London-Toronto-Cape Town 2008; Your Money or Your Life, The Tyranny of Global Finance, Haymarket, Chicago, 2005.

Translated by Charles La Via and Judith Harris

Notes

[1] The Colombian army bombed and captured FARC rebels in a guerrilla camp in Ecuadorian territory, killing some twenty people, including civilians. It is important to know that although the Colombian army is extremely strong, it has very little presence on the Colombian-Ecuadorian border, a fact that has allowed FARC guerrillas to set up camps there, including one in which Raúl Reyes, one of its main leaders in charge of international relations, was present at the time. Ecuador has regularly criticized Colombia for not providing adequate border control between these two countries.

[2] Created in 1986, the Rio Group comprises 19 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean: Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, plus, on a rotating basis, one representative of the Caribbean Community (Caricom).

[3] Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile

[4] A structure created in 1943 to protect ships in the South Atlantic, and abolished in 1950. It officially resumed operations on 1 July 2008.

[5] For an in-depth description of the sectors that backed the coup d’Etat, read Decio Machado’s study (in Spanish), which provides a list of the companies and their CEOs that encouraged or actively supported the putschists: “Quiénes apoyan al gobierno ilegítimo de Roberto Micheletti”, http://www.cadtm.org/Quienes-apoyan-al-gobierno

[6] Washington had paved the way for a putsch by massively financing the various opposition movements in the context of its policy to “strengthen democracy”. A month before the coup, different organizations, business groups, political parties, high officials of the Catholic church and private media, all opposed to Manuel Zelaya’s policies, grouped together in the coalition called “Democratic Civil Union of Honduras” in order to “reflect on how to put an end to it”. (www.lefigaro.fr/international/2009/07/07/01003-20090707ARTFIG00310-zelaya-toujours-banni-du-honduras-.php).

The majority of these groups received over US$ 50 million annually from USAID (the US Agency for International Development) and from NED (the National Endowment for Democracy) to “promote democracy” in Honduras. Read “Washington behind the Honduras coup: Here is the evidence”, by Eva Golinger, http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14390

[7] Eva Golinger on the website www.centrodealerta.org published two original documents produced by the U.S. Air Force regarding the agreements on the 7 bases concerned. The first document dates from May 2009 (i.e. before the agreement was publicly announced) and stresses the vital importance of one of the 7 bases, observing that it will, among other things, make possible the “full spectrum operations in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability are under constant threat from narcotics-funded terrorist insurgencies, anti-U.S. governments, endemic poverty and recurring natural disasters.” (http://www.centrodealerta.org/documentos_desclasificados/original_in_english_air_for.pdf). Eva Golinger adds the following comment: “It’s not difficult to imagine which governments in South America are considered by Washington to be ‘anti-U.S. governments’. The constant agressive declarations and statements emitted by the State and Defense Departments and the U.S. Congress against Venezuela and Bolivia, and even to some extent Ecuador, are evidence that the ALBA nations are the ones perceived by Washington as a ‘constant threat’. To classify a country as ‘anti-U.S.’ is to consider it an enemy of the United States. In this context, it’s obvious that the military agreement with Colombia is a reaction to a region the U.S. now considers full of ‘enemies’.” (“Official U.S. Air Force Document Reveals the True Intentions Behind the U.S.-Colombia Military Agreement” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15951).

[8] Quoted by AFP on 30 November 2009: “a necessary and important step forward” http://www.easybourse.com/bourse/actualite/honduran-elections-necessary-and-important-step-767041

[9] The right-wing Latin American governments who are allies of Washington (Colombia, Peru, Panama and Costa Rica) do likewise.

[10] See also the press conference given by Arturo Valenzuela, n°2 of the State Department for the Western Hemisphere, on 30 November 2009: “…the election is a significant step in Honduras’s return to the democratic and constitutional order after the 28 June coup…” “ … these elections are not elections that were planned by a de facto government at the last minute in order to whitewash their actions.” “We recognize that there are results in Honduras for this election. That’s quite clear. We recognize those results, and we commend Mr. Lobo for having won these elections.”

Arturo Valenzuela nevertheless sounded clearly embarassed when he declared in the same press conference: “The issue is whether the legitimate president of Honduras, who was overthrown in a coup d’Etat, will be returned to office by the congress on December 2^nd, as per the San Jose-Tegucigalpa Accord. That was the accord that both sides signed at that time.” http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/rm/2009/132777.htm The fact is that 3 days later, the Honduran parliament voted by an overwhelming majority against Zelaya’s return to office, which did not deter Washington from continuing to support the de facto authorities.

[11] On 17 December 2009 Alfredo Luís Jaeggli said on the Argentinian public radio: “The Honduran president, assuming the presidency with a liberal model, thereafter betrayed this model and replaced it with the Socialism of the twenty-first century. What happened in Honduras (Jaeggli clearly refers to the 28 June 2009 coup), excuse me, for me it is completely legal. ” An audio version of the interview can be accessed at http://www.radionacional.com.ar/audios/el-senador-del-partido-liberal-habla-sobre-fernando-lugo-y-los-presuntos-planes-de-derrocamiento-en-paraguay.html

[12]"Paraguay is the only country along with Haiti and Cuba that did not reform in order to modernize. You had your modernization; you know well with the Menem government, what I mean. Brazil also had it, as well as Uruguay, Bolivia, too, but unfortunately they had an involution. Paraguay does not, it is still as if in the 50s ..." "In Chile, (...) do you believe that the socialists in Chile are those who made the economy grow? They have not changed anything, not even the Chilean labour code. The Chilean labour code is still the code implemented by Pinochet!"

[13] Eva Golinger explained : “(...) Obama called for an additional $320 million in “democracy promotion” funds for the 2010 budget just for use in Latin America. This is a substantially higher sum than the quantity requested and used in Latin America for “democracy promotion” by the Bush administration in its 8 years of government combined”! http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14390

[14] Because of the failure of the mobilizations in the media luna in Bolivia at the end of 2008 and of the right in Guayaquil, Ecuador, led by the city’s mayor Jaime Nebot in September 2008, Washington has put its support on hold but may reactivate it if the context requires and allows it. The same may be said for the right in the state of Zulia in Venezuela.

Armitage Part III: A Neocon for All Seasons?

Our first post on the American Turkish Council’s new chairman, Richard Armitage, focused on his early years and his involvement with Southeast Asia’s Golden Triangle. Our second post focused on Armitage’s history in Washington and his involvement with the Iran-Contra Affair. This post will focus on Armitage’s role as the Deputy Secretary of State for the second Bush administration and the 11 September attacks.

In 1999 Richard Armitage joined an “advisory team” put together by Condoleezza Rice for the George W. Bush presidential campaign. Other members of this “advisory team” included Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Zoellick, and Donald Rumsfeld all of whom, along with Armitage, were signatories to the 1998 PNAC letter to President Clinton that advocated regime change in Iraq through the bogus “Weapons of Mass Destruction” argument. It should have been no surprise, therefore, to see where these “advisors” were to lead as soon as they were appointed to key positions in the Bush administration in early 2001.

Armitage was appointed as the number 2 man at the State Department but not without protest from a certain former Republican congressman:

“General Colin Powell has named Richard Armitage to the key position as his deputy secretary of state.

“Mr. Armitage served in the Pentagon back in the 1980s and, in the process, caused so many problems that by 1989 he twice had to withdraw his name from consideration for high-ranking positions in the first Bush administration.

“Simply stated, the U.S. Senate would not confirm him for any job.

“The FBI agent in charge of compiling the ‘file’ on Armitage said at the time, ‘The Armitage file is the thickest file ever for any nominee for any position.’”

“Now, 12 years later, the new Bush administration is again trying to ram Armitage through the confirmation process. Powell wants him because ‘Rich Armitage is my best friend in the world.’”

Both Armitage and Powell had served in Vietnam and it’s worth remembering that prior to his performance at the UN National Security Council in early 2003, Colin Powell was best known for helping to cover up the My Lai Massacre.

Armitage was confirmed by the Senate as the Deputy Secretary of State in late March, 2001, in plenty of time to implement the plan for regime change in Iraq that he had supported in 1998 and which PNAC had argued for in September, 2000:

“Further, the process of [US military] transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

The “new Pearl Harbor” that was so desired by Armitage and the rest of the PNAC crowd occured on 11 September, 2001. Immediately after 11 September, Armitage threatened to “bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age”:

“During last week’s US media blitz to promote his new book, Musharraf claimed soon after 9/11, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage warned Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, head of ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, the US would ‘bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age’ if it did not immediately turn against its Afghan ally, Taliban, and allow the US to use military bases in Pakistan to invade Afghanistan.

[ . . . ]

“I’ve heard various versions of Armitage’s exact words. But I know whatever he said put the fear of god into Pakistan’s military leadership.

“ISI sources say the Bush Administration threatened to bomb faithful old ally Pakistan, cut off its oil, collapse its banking system, and call in its loans. More frightening, Washington also threatened to ‘unleash’ India against Pakistan, either allowing India to conquer the Pakistani-held portion of disputed Kashmir, or give Delhi a green light to invade all of Pakistan, possibly with American assistance.”

Such language by Armitage would be consistent with other ultimatums issued by the US government, such as this gem by a Bush administration State Department negotiator to the Taliban in August, 2001, more than a month before the “new Pearl Harbor”:

“At the final meeting with the Taliban, on Aug. 2, 2001, State Department negotiator Christine Rocca, clarified the options: ‘Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold [for 'secure access to the Caspian Basin for American companies'], or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.’ With the futility of negotiations apparent, “President Bush promptly informed Pakistan and India the U.S. would launch a military mission into Afghanistan before the end of October.”

“This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.”

Almost a year later, Armitage was sent by the Bush administration to deliver, perhaps, the same message to the Pakistanis:

“Bush has stopped short of publicly admonishing Pakistan, Washington’s key ally in the war on terror, but he’s dispatching burly Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage to Islamabad next week, and his mission will be to deliver a heavy, private bruising. ‘If anyone can threaten to crack Musharraf in half, it’s Armitage,’ says one State Department source.”

“Bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age”? “Crack Musharraf in half”? It should be no surprise that Armitage was tasked with delivering these messages. He was sent by the Reagan administration to deliver a similar message to Manuel Noriega a year before the US invasion of Panama:

“The Reagan Administration sent a high-ranking Pentagon official on a secret mission to Panama last week to press its strongman, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, to step down and allow free elections in the country, State Department and congressional sources said Thursday.

“The emissary, Richard L. Armitage, assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, held what one U.S. official called ‘a lengthy session’ with Noriega early last week to urge him to withdraw from politics.

“Armitage was picked to deliver the Administration’s strongest direct message to date to Noriega because the Panamanian strongman is a ‘military man’ and Washington wanted “the most effective interlocutor possible,” the official said.”

Having arrived in the US a week before 11 September “on a regular visit of consultations”, the ISI’s General Mahmoud Ahmed met with State Department officials, including Armitage, on 12 and 13 September:

“The press reports confirm that Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad had two meetings with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, respectively on the 12th and 13th. After September 11, he also met Senator Joseph Biden, chairman of the powerful Committee on Foreign Relations of the Senate.

“Confirmed by several press reports, however, he also had ‘a regular visit of consultations’ with US officials during the week prior to September 11, –i.e. meetings with his US counterparts at the CIA and the Pentagon.

“What was the nature of these routine ‘consultations’? Were they in any way related to the subsequent ‘post-September 11 consultations’ pertaining to Pakistan’s decision to cooperate with Washington, held behind closed doors at the State Department on September 12 and 13? Was the planning of war being discussed between Pakistani and US officials?”

The article continues:

“The meeting behind closed doors at the State Department on September 13 between Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad was shrouded in secrecy. Remember President Bush was not even involved in these crucial negotiations:

“‘Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage handed over [to ISI chief Mahmoud Ahmad] a list of specific steps Washington wanted Pakistan to take’. ‘After a telephone conversation between [Secretary of State Colin] Powell and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Pakistan had promised to cooperate.’ President George W. Bush later confirmed (also on the morning of September 13th) that the Pakistan government had accepted “to cooperate and to participate as we hunt down those people who committed this unbelievable, despicable act on America’.

[ . . . ]

“Armitage was one of the main architects behind US covert support to the Mujahedin and the ‘militant Islamic base’, both during the Afghan-Soviet war as well as in its aftermath. US covert support was financed by the Golden Crescent drug trade.”

We know that Armitage was no stranger to the Golden Crescent drug trade.

General Mahmoud Ahmed met with someone else in those days immediately following 11 September, and that “someone else” worked directly under Richard Armitage. That “someone else” was none other than Marc Grossman:

“ISI Chief Lt-Gen Mahmood’s week-long presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council. [ . . . ] But the most important meeting was with Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. US sources would not furnish any details beyond saying that the two discussed ‘matters of mutual interests.’”

Or, as Sibel Edmonds stated back in 2005:

“Although Grossman ‘has not been as high profile in the press’ FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds cryptically told me the other day, ‘don’t overlook him – he is very important.’”

Chris Deliso elaborates further:

“Marc Grossman has served in a number of interesting countries and positions over the past 29 years. From 1976-1983, at a pivotal point in the Cold War, he was employed at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan – America’s key regional ally, through which millions of dollars in weapons and other “aid” were delivered by Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service to the mujahedin following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

[ . . . ]

“Grossman’s professional ties with Pakistan apparently long outlived his nine-year tenure there. The Guardian, among others, mentioned the fact that in the days immediately preceding Sept. 11, 2001, Pakistani ISI chief Gen. Mahmoud Ahmed – financier of 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta – paid a visit to senior administration officials, including Grossman, then undersecretary of state for political affairs.”

As The Times reported in January, 2008 (although not mentioning Grossman by name), Grossman was so deeply involved in the sale of nuclear secrets to Pakistan that he was under FBI surveillance. Since Grossman was directly responsible to Armitage, what did Armitage know about Grossman’s dirty dealings?

That question does not stretch the imagination because Armitage became involved in another event that Grossman was also involved with–Plamegate and the exposure of CIA front company Brewster Jennings, and those events will be included in our next post.

The Drone Surge Today, Tomorrow, and 2047

Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Forty-Year Drone War

There’s something viral about the wondrous new weaponry an industrial war system churns out. In World War I, for instance, when that system was first gearing up to plan and produce new weapons by the generation, such creations -- poison gas, the early airplane, the tank -- barely hit the battlefield before the enemy had developed countermeasures and was cranking up his own production line to create something similar. And this process has never stopped.

The wonder weapon of our present moment is the missile-armed unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, now doing our dirty work, an endless series of targeted assassinations, in the Afghan-Pakistani borderlands. Such weapons always come with wondrous claims. Here’s a typical one from a recent Wall Street Journal editorial: “Never before in the history of air warfare have we been able to distinguish as well between combatants and civilians as we can with drones.” When it comes to war, beware of any sentence that begins “never before,” and the claims of future breakthroughs or victories that go with them.

It’s easy, of course, for the editorial writers of the Journal to pen such confident sentiments thousands of miles from the war zone. They would undoubtedly feel quite differently if their hometowns and neighborhoods were the targets of such “precise” weaponry, which has nonetheless managed to kill hundreds of civilians.

Drones, of course, do just what they were meant to do, as surely as did poison gas, the airplane, and the tank early in the last century: they kill. That’s indisputable, but the promised “breakthroughs,” whether aimed at destroying enemy fortifications, enemy networks, or the enemy’s will, seldom follow so reliably. And yet once the wonder fades and the overwrought claims with it, the wonder weapons remain in our world -- and (here’s the viral part) they begin to spread.

There is no evidence that the drones are breaking the back of either the Taliban (Afghan or Pakistani) or al-Qaeda in our distant wars, but plenty of evidence that they are helping to destabilize Pakistan and create intense anti-American feelings there. Now, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates indicated on arriving in Pakistan last week, we are thinking of giving the Pakistanis their own unarmed surveillance drones, while from Iran to China, Israel to Russia, powers everywhere are rushing to enter the age of 24/7 robotic assassination along with, or just behind, us. You might think that this would give the Pentagon pause, but a prospective arms race just gets the blood there boiling, and when it comes to Terminator-style war, as Nick Turse indicates below, the U.S. Air Force has plans. Boy, does it ever! Tom

The Drone Surge
Today, Tomorrow, and 2047
By Nick Turse

One moment there was the hum of a motor in the sky above. The next, on a recent morning in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, a missile blasted a home, killing 13 people. Days later, the same increasingly familiar mechanical whine preceded a two-missile salvo that slammed into a compound in Degan village in the tribal North Waziristan district of Pakistan, killing three.

What were once unacknowledged, relatively infrequent targeted killings of suspected militants or terrorists in the Bush years have become commonplace under the Obama administration. And since a devastating December 30th suicide attack by a Jordanian double agent on a CIA forward operating base in Afghanistan, unmanned aerial drones have been hunting humans in the Af-Pak war zone at a record pace. In Pakistan, an “unprecedented number” of strikes -- which have killed armed guerrillas and civilians alike -- have led to more fear, anger, and outrage in the tribal areas, as the CIA, with help from the U.S. Air Force, wages the most public “secret” war of modern times.

In neighboring Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft, for years in short supply and tasked primarily with surveillance missions, have increasingly been used to assassinate suspected militants as part of an aerial surge that has significantly outpaced the highly publicized “surge” of ground forces now underway. And yet, unprecedented as it may be in size and scope, the present ramping up of the drone war is only the opening salvo in a planned 40-year Pentagon surge to create fleets of ultra-advanced, heavily-armed, increasingly autonomous, all-seeing, hypersonic unmanned aerial systems (UAS).

Today’s Surge

Drones are the hot weapons of the moment and the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review -- a soon-to-be-released four-year outline of Department of Defense strategies, capabilities, and priorities to fight current wars and counter future threats -- is already known to reflect this focus. As the Washington Post recently reported, “The pilotless drones used for surveillance and attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a priority, with the goals of speeding up the purchase of new Reaper drones and expanding Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013.”

The MQ-1 Predator -- first used in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s -- and its newer, larger, and more deadly cousin, the MQ-9 Reaper, are now firing missiles and dropping bombs at an unprecedented pace. In 2008, there were reportedly between 27 and 36 U.S. drone attacks as part of the CIA’s covert war in Pakistan. In 2009, there were 45 to 53 such strikes. In the first 18 days of January 2010, there had already been 11 of them.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force has instituted a much publicized decrease in piloted air strikes to cut down on civilian casualties as part of Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy. At the same time, however, UAS attacks have increased to record levels.

The Air Force has created an interconnected global command-and-control system to carry out its robot war in Afghanistan (and as Noah Shachtman of Wired’s Danger Room blog has reported, to assist the CIA in its drone strikes in Pakistan as well). Evidence of this can be found at high-tech U.S. bases around the world where drone pilots and other personnel control the planes themselves and the data streaming back from them. These sites include a converted medical warehouse at Al-Udeid Air Base, a billion-dollar facility in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar where the Air Force secretly oversees its on-going drone wars; Kandahar and Jalalabad Air Fields in Afghanistan, where the drones are physically based; the global operations center at Nevada’s Creech Air Base, where the Air Force’s “pilots” fly drones by remote control from thousands of miles away; and -- perhaps most importantly -- at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a 12-square-mile facility in Dayton, Ohio, named after the two local brothers who invented powered flight in 1903. This is where the bills for the current drone surge -- as well as limited numbers of strikes in Yemen and Somalia -- come due and are, quite literally, paid.

In the waning days of December 2009, in fact, the Pentagon cut two sizeable checks to ensure that unmanned operations involving the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper will continue full-speed ahead in 2010. The 703rd Aeronautical Systems Squadron based at Wright-Patterson signed a $38 million contract with defense giant Raytheon for logistics support for the targeting systems of both drones. At the same time, the squadron inked a deal worth $266 million with mega-defense contractor General Atomics, which makes the Predator and Reaper drones, to provide management services, logistics support, repairs, software maintenance, and other functions for both drone programs. Both deals essentially ensure that, in the years ahead, the stunning increase in drone operations will continue.

These contracts, however, are only initial down payments on an enduring drone surge designed to carry U.S. unmanned aerial operations forward, ultimately for decades.

Drone Surge: The Longer View

Back in 2004, the Air Force could put a total of only five drone combat air patrols (CAPs) -- each consisting of four air vehicles -- in the skies over American war zones at any one time. By 2009, that number was 38, a 660% increase according to the Air Force. Similarly, between 2001 and 2008, hours of surveillance coverage for U.S. Central Command, encompassing both the Iraqi and Afghan war zones, as well as Pakistan and Yemen, showed a massive spike of 1,431%.

In the meantime, flight hours have gone through the roof. In 2004, for example, Reapers, just beginning to soar, flew 71 hours in total, according to Air Force documents; in 2006, that number had risen to 3,123 hours; and last year, 25,391 hours. This year, the Air Force projects that the combined flight hours of all its drones -- Predators, Reapers, and unarmed RQ-4 Global Hawks -- will exceed 250,000 hours, about the total number of hours flown by all Air Force drones from 1995-2007. In 2011, the 300,000 hour-a-year barrier is expected to be crossed for the first time, and after that the sky’s the limit.

More flight time will, undoubtedly, mean more killing. According to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the Washington-based think tank the New America Foundation, in the Bush years, from 2006 into 2009, there were 41 drone strikes in Pakistan which killed 454 militants and civilians. Last year, under the Obama administration, there were 42 strikes that left 453 people dead. A recent report by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based independent research organization that tracks security issues, claimed an even larger number, 667 people -- most of them civilians -- killed by U.S. drone strikes last year.

While assisting the CIA’s drone operations in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, the Air Force has been increasing its own unmanned aerial hunter-killer missions. In 2007 and 2008, for example, Air Force Predators and Reapers fired missiles during 244 missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, while all the U.S. armed services have pursued unmanned aerial warfare, the Air Force has outpaced each of them.

From 2001, when armed drone operations began, until the spring of 2009, the Air Force fired 703 Hellfire missiles and dropped 132 GBU-12s (500-pound laser-guided bombs) in combat operations. The Army, by comparison, launched just two Hellfire missiles and two smaller GBU-44 Viper Strike munitions in the same time period. The disparity should only grow, since the Army’s drones remain predominantly small surveillance aircraft, while in 2009 the Air Force shifted all outstanding orders for the medium-sized Predator to the even more formidable Reaper, which is not only twice as fast but has 600% more payload capacity, meaning more space for bombs and missiles.

In addition, the more heavily-armed Reapers, which can now loiter over an area for 10 to 14 hours without refueling, will be able to spot and track ever more targets via an increasingly sophisticated video monitoring system. According to Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, the first three “Gorgon Stare pods” -- new wide-area sensors that provide surveillance capabilities over large swathes of territory -- will be installed on Reapers operating in Afghanistan this spring.

A technology not available for the older Predator, Gorgon Stare will allow 10 operators to view 10 video feeds from a single drone at the same time. Back at a distant base, a “pilot” will stare at a tiled screen with a composite picture of the streaming battlefield video, even as field commanders analyze a portion of the digital picture, panning, zooming, and tilting the image to meet their needs.

A more advanced set of “pods,” scheduled to be deployed for the first time this fall, will allow 30 operators to view 30 video images simultaneously. In other words, via video feeds from a single Reaper drone, operators could theoretically track 30 different people heading in 30 directions from a single Afghan compound. The generation of sensors expected to come online in late 2011 promises 65 such feeds, according to Air Force documents, a more than 6,000% increase in effectiveness over the Predator’s video system. The Air Force is, however, already overwhelmed just by drone video currently being sent back from the war zones and, in the years ahead, risks “drowning in data,” according to Deptula.

The 40-Year Plan

When it comes to the drone surge, the years 2011-2013 are just the near horizon. While, like the Army, the Navy is working on its own future drone warfare capacity -- in the air as well as on and even under the water -- the Air Force is involved in striking levels of futuristic planning for robotic war. It envisions a future previously imagined only in sci-fi movies like the Terminator series.

As a start, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the Pentagon’s blue skies research outfit, is already looking into radically improving on Gorgon Stare with an “Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance-Infrared (ARGUS-IR) System.” In the obtuse language of military research and development, it will, according to DARPA, provide a “real-time, high-resolution, wide area video persistent surveillance capability that allows joint forces to keep critical areas of interest under constant surveillance with a high degree of target location accuracy” via as many as “130 ‘Predator-like’ steerable video streams to enable real-time tracking and monitoring and enhanced situational awareness during evening hours.”

In translation, that means the Air Force will quite literally be flooded with video information from future battlefields; and every “advance” of this sort means bulking up the global network of facilities, systems, and personnel capable of receiving, monitoring, and interpreting the data streaming in from distant digital eyes. All of it, of course, is specifically geared toward “target location,” that is, pin-pointing people on one side of the world so that Americans on the other side can watch, track, and in many cases, kill them.

In addition to enhanced sensors and systems like ARGUS-IR, the Air Force has a long-term vision for drone warfare that is barely beginning to be realized. Predators and Reapers have already been joined in Afghanistan by a newer, formerly secret drone, a “low observable unmanned aircraft system” first spotted in 2007 and dubbed the “Beast of Kandahar” before observers were sure what it actually was. It is now known to be a Lockheed Martin-manufactured unmanned aerial vehicle, the RQ-170 -- a drone which the Air Force blandly notes was designed to “directly support combatant commander needs for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to locate targets.” According to military sources, the sleek, stealthy surveillance craft has been designated to replace the antique Lockheed U-2 spy plane, which has been in use since the 1950s.

In the coming years, the RQ-170 is slated to be joined in the skies of America’s “next wars” by a fleet of drones with ever newer, more sophisticated capabilities and destructive powers. Looking into the post-2011 future, Deptula sees the most essential need, according to an Aviation Week report, as “long-range [reconnaissance and] precision strike” -- that is, more eyes in far off skies and more lethality. He added, “We cannot move into a future without a platform that allows [us] to project power long distances and to meet advanced threats in a fashion that gives us an advantage that no other nation has.”

This means bigger, badder, faster drones -- armed to the teeth -- with sensor systems to monitor wide swathes of territory and the ability to loiter overhead for days on end waiting for human targets to appear and, in due course, be vaporized by high-powered munitions. It’s a future built upon advanced technologies designed to make targeted killings -- remote-controlled assassinations -- ever more effortless.

Over the horizon and deep into what was, until recently, only a silver-screen fantasy, the Air Force envisions a wide array of unmanned aircraft, from tiny insect-like robots to enormous “tanker size” pilotless planes. Each will be slated to take over specific war-making functions (or so Air Force dreamers imagine). Those nano-sized drones, for instance, are set to specialize in indoor reconnaissance -- they’re small enough to fly through windows or down ventilation shafts -- and carry out lethal attacks, undertake computer-disabling cyber-attacks, and swarm, as would a group of angry bees, of their own volition. Slightly larger micro-sized Small Tactical Unmanned Aircraft Systems (STUAS) are supposed to act as “transformers” -- altering their form to allow for flying, crawling and non-visual sensing capabilities. They might fill sentry, counter-drone, surveillance, and lethal attack roles.

Additionally, the Air Force envisions small and medium “fighter sized” drones with lethal combat capabilities that would put the current UAS air fleet to shame. Today’s medium-sized Reapers are set to be replaced by next generation MQ-Ma drones that will be “networked, capable of partial autonomy, all-weather and modular with capabilities supporting electronic warfare (EW), CAS [close air support], strike and multi-INT [multiple intelligence] ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] missions’ platform.”

The language may not be elegant, much less comprehensible, but if these future fighter aircraft actually come online they will not only send today’s remaining Top Gun pilots to the showers, but may even sideline tomorrow’s drone human operators, who, if all goes as planned, will have ever fewer duties. Unlike today’s drones which must take off and land with human guidance, the MQ-Ma’s will be automated and drone operators will simply be there to monitor the aircraft.

Next up will be the MQ-Mb, theoretically capable of taking over even more roles once assigned to traditional fighter-bombers and spy planes, including the suppression of enemy air defenses, bombing and strafing of ground targets, and surveillance missions. These will also be designed to fly more autonomously and be better linked-in to other drone “platforms” for cooperative missions involving many aircraft under the command of a single “pilot.” Imagine, for instance, one operator overseeing a single command drone that holds sway over a small squadron of autonomous drones carrying out a coordinated air attack on clusters of people in some far off land, incinerating them in small groups across a village, town or city.

Finally, perhaps 30 to 40 years from now, the MQ-Mc drone would incorporate all of the advances of the MQ-M line, while being capable of everything from dog-fighting to missile defense. With such new technology will, of course, come new policies and new doctrines. In the years ahead, the Air Force intends to make drone-related policy decisions on everything from treaty obligations to automatic target engagement -- robotic killing without a human in the loop. The latter extremely controversial development is already envisioned as a possible post-2025 reality.

2047: What’s Old is New Again

The year 2047 is the target date for the Air Force’s Holy Grail, the capstone for its long-term plan to turn the skies over to war-fighting drones. In 2047, the Air Force intends to rule the skies with MQ-Mc drones and “special” super-fast, hypersonic drones for which neither viable technology nor any enemies with any comparable programs or capabilities yet exist. Despite this, the Air Force is intent on making these super-fast hunter-killer systems a reality by 2047. “Propulsion technology and materials that can withstand the extreme heat will likely take 20 years to develop. This technology will be the next generation air game-changer. Therefore the prioritization of the funding for the specific technology development should not wait until the emergence of a critical COCOM [combatant command] need,” says the Air Force’s 2009-2047 UAS “Flight Plan.”

If anything close to the Air Force’s dreams comes to fruition, the “game” will indeed be radically changed. By 2047, there’s no telling how many drones will be circling over how many heads in how many places across the planet. There’s no telling how many millions or billions of flight hours will have been flown, or how many people, in how many countries will have been killed by remote-controlled, bomb-dropping, missile-firing, judge-jury-and-executioner drone systems.

There’s only one given. If the U.S. still exists in its present form, is still solvent, and still has a functioning Pentagon of the present sort, a new plan will already be well underway to create the war-making technologies of 2087. By then, in ever more places, people will be living with the sort of drone war that now worries only those in places like Degan village. Ever more people will know that unmanned aerial systems packed with missiles and bombs are loitering in their skies. By then, there undoubtedly won’t even be that lawnmower-engine sound indicating that a missile may soon plow into your neighbor’s home.

For the Air Force, such a prospect is the stuff of dreams, a bright future for unmanned, hypersonic lethality; for the rest of the planet, it's a potential nightmare from which there may be no waking.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, In These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. Turse is currently a fellow at New York University's Center for the United States and the Cold War. He is the author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books). His website is NickTurse.com.

Copyright 2010 Nick Turse

'Christian' Crusaders and Failures of Intelligence in the US Military By Eileen Fleming

Thirty years ago, Glyn Bindon, the founder of Trijicon, a Michigan Defense contractor, instituted the practice of stamping references to New Testament Bible verses on combat rifle sights manufactured for the U.S. military. Trijicon has now released a statement that they will quit their three decades of practice and also provide the armed forces modification kits to remove the Scripture citations from the 300,000 telescoping sights already in use by the Marines, Army and which are being used to train Afghanistan troops. Beyond the charges of breaking the American government rule that bars proselytizing by American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, this ABC video clip exposes a thriving Crusader mentality in the US Military and a gross failure of intelligence by Christian’s regarding their own faith. In the video, US Chaplain Hensley, informs the troops, “Special Forces hunt men. We do the same thing as Christians. We hunt people to get them into the kingdom; that’s our business.” The Chaplain is a heretic, for “How can you kill people, when it is written in God’s commandment: ‘Thou shalt not murder’?” – Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You. Tolstoy understood that commandment meant that all governments who wage war are directly affronting the Christian principles that should guide all life, and shouldn’t being pro-life really be about honoring the sacredness of every life that already is? Standard issue to U.S. special operations forces is the Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight, which is marked “JN8:12” a reference to John 8:12: When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” The Trijicon Reflex sight is stamped with “2COR4:6” For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. An army spokesman admitted on January 21, 2010, that the service was unaware of the coded biblical references until a few days ago, and so, our troops are also in the dark because of failures of intelligence in the Military establishment as well as due to heretical Christianity. Christ was born, lived and died a nonviolent Palestinian Jew, who taught his follower’s to put down the sword, to forgive, pray and love one’s enemies; and not to shoot, bomb, torture or kill any! Jesus envisioned a society based on love and tolerance, which is completely incompatible with war and all violence. When Jesus was mocked, whipped and nailed to a cross he remained NONVIOLENT to prove the only way to over throw the status quo of violent retaliation and eye-for-an-eye mentality. Clement, Tertillian, Polycarp and every other early Church Father taught that violence was a contradiction of what Christ was about. The first and greatest heresy in the Christian faith occurred when Augustine penned the “Just War Theory” which united church with state and “our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.”-Dorothy Day Within one hundred years after Emperor Constantine decreed Christianity the religion of the state, soldiers were required to be baptized; but it was not required for them to understand what the faith was all about. “The Crusade for a Christian Military: Jesus Killed Mohammed” by Jeff Sharlet in HARPER’S May 2009 edition illuminated how the entrenchment of Christian fundamentalism in the USA military began during the Cold War, accelerated during the Vietnam era and which has wrecked havoc on the very soul of our nation in the 21st century. Fundamentalist [referred to as evangelical by Sharlet] Chaplains began to join the military in droves as they aligned themselves with the Industrial Military Complex in opposition with Catholics and mainline moderate Protestant denominations such as Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians who were of one voice speaking out against American terrorism in Vietnam and for following in the ways of the nonviolent Jesus. “Starting in 1987, Protestant denominations were lumped together simply as “Protestant”; moreover, the Pentagon began accrediting hundreds of evangelical and Pentecostal “endorsing agencies,” allowing graduates of fundamentalist Bible colleges—which often train clergy to view those from other faiths as enemies of Christ—to fill up nearly the entire allotment for Protestant chaplains. Today, more than two thirds of the military’s 2,900 active-duty chaplains are affiliated with evangelical or Pentecostal denominations.” [1] “For decades, the military built a sense of solidarity out of a singular purpose, the Cold War struggle between free markets and state-planned economies—the shining city on a hill versus the evil empire…meshed neatly with ideologies [that connected] nationalism and fundamentalism…Communism…the dark alternative should we fail to unite. Fundamentalism thrived…a neat, black-and-white [theology and] a foreign policy. The end of the Cold War deprived militant evangelicals of that clarity [and] the emergence of “radical Islam” [became] the object of a new Cold War.” [Ibid] The roots of American evangelism sprang from the original altar call for Christians to stand up against slavery and what has been passing for Christianity today is the antithesis of what Jesus was all about. “Everyone but Christians understands that Jesus was nonviolent.” -Gandhi One of the greatest Christian spiritual leaders of all time, Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who listened to Bob Dylan LP’s in his hermitage in Kentucky during the ’60’s and was the first religious voice to rise up and speak out against the Vietnam War warned, “The duty of the Christian at this time is to do the one task God has imposed upon us in this world today. The task is to work for the total abolition of war. There can be no question that unless war is abolished; the world will remain constantly in a state of madness…The church [meaning all Christians] must lead the way on the road to the abolition of war…Peace is to be preached and nonviolence is to be explained and practiced.” The spiritual darkness of Christian fundamentalism is also rampant in the USA Air Force Academy in Colorado which enabled the likes of Walid Shoebat, author of “Why We Want to Kill You” to speak to the troops in his role as a former fundamentalist Islamic supposed terrorist who converted to fundamentalist Christianity. Shoebat is one of the infamous darlings of fear filled Christians and Jews [Read More: The Walid Shoebat Show and "America is Beautiful, but she has an ugly side." - Neil Young http://wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=814&Itemid=197] of the cult spewed by the likes of John Hagee and the idiot wind blown by FOX’s Hannity & Colmes, Bill O’Reilly and Neil Cavuto who have all hosted Shoebat. At the US Air Force Academy on Feb. 6, 2008, Shoebat was the headline act at their annual political forum. Walid Shoebat, has built a lucrative speaking career by manipulating the fears and whipping up hatred between Jews and Muslims. Shoebat insists that Israel should “wake up and smell the Hummus. We must return to the status quo – the occupation…Israel should stand strong and fight – dismantle Hamas and take away all the weapons, the way it used to be. The introduction of weapons into Palestinian society by Israel [under the Oslo accords, Israel gave assault rifles to Arafat’s ‘police force’ –ed.] was a disaster and they must be confiscated.” [2] Israel originally supported Hamas to be a wedge between Fatah when Arafat became too popular with the Palestinian people. Shoebat feels very strongly that the ongoing war against Israel has nothing to do with an Arab desire for a Palestinian state, “Never in history was there a Palestinian state, we never wanted a Palestinian state – even today the Palestinians do not want a Palestinian state…They want the destruction of the Jews, period. It’s a religious holy war.”[IBID] During his time at the Air Force Academy, Jeff Sharlet encountered fervent fundamentalist militant American soldiers who were ignorant of their very own faith, for the Christian “manifesto is the Sermon on the Mount, which means that we will try to be peacemakers.” -Dorothy Day There are currently thirty-five wars being fought in the world and the USA is connected to every one of them. Over forty-thousand people die every day of starvation and three billion humans endure dire destitution. Unmanned drones under the Obama Administration have murdered hundreds of children and America warehouses over twenty-five thousand nuclear weapons; and yet, many deluded Christians believe the US is a Christian nation! We the people of the world inhabit a world darkened by bureaucratic systematic institutionalized structures of violence that kill human beings through war, poverty and all the consequences of destruction and despair that flow from corporate greed, violence and fundamentalist religiosity. Nonviolence is at the core of every religion and Jesus promised it is the peacemakers who are the daughters and sons of God. Jesus denounced injustice, turned over the tables of the bankers in the Temple, was arrested, jailed, tortured and brutally executed, but remained nonviolent, compassionate and forgiving to all. Jesus called us to love our neighbors- meaning everyone on the planet, to be compassionate and seek justice for the disenfranchised, to forgive our enemies and to put down the sword! His death on the cross was in vain if those who claim to follow him do not have eyes to see and ears to hear that his message was that we are to end the cycle of violence for God created, loves and is within all beings and all of creation. It is a lack of imagination that accepts a future of endless war. It is fear of the other that fuels fundamentalism. The brand of Christianity being espoused in many US pulpits and in the military is a fear-filled ideology that supports empire in this world which has nothing to do with what Jesus stood and died for: nonviolence, love, forgiveness and compassion- not just towards those who think and look like you, but to your ‘enemies’ too! The militarization of Christianity defies that “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment.” 1 John 4:16, 18 The militarization of Christianity as professed by anti-Christ’s [against the teachings of Christ] from the pulpits of the likes of Pat Robertson and John Hagee and in the fictional “Left Behind” series of profane theology expose the spirit of the anti-Christ: fear of the other that drives one to violence. The militarization of Christianity thrives on fear of the other but Jesus said: “FEAR NOT! You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The militarization of Christianity leaves behind all the non-negotiable’s for those who claim to be a Christian; which is you must forgive, bless and love your enemies; not shoot, bomb, torture, starve or occupy them! The problem is not with Christianity but that too few have done it the way Jesus taught and modeled: to always work for PEACEFUL resolutions, even to the point of returning violence with compassion and forgiveness, as Jesus did when nailed to a cross and he prayed: “Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing.” Christians are called to prayerfully use the gift of discernment and to test all things according to the teachings of Jesus. An authentic follower of Jesus- and perhaps any with a conscience- will choose equality, fraternity, community and nonviolent creative resistance to the evil that is violence as well as comprehend that evil as well as good cut through every human heart. It is willful ignorance, apathy, arrogance and misinformation that are holding back the transformation of hearts and minds to see that war is the ultimate form of terrorism and violence the supreme expression of the spirit of the anti-Christ. “The first casualties of the military’s fundamentalist front are not the Iraqis and Afghans on the wrong side of an American F-16. They’re the spiritual warriors themselves.” [3] Christ laid down in the Sermon on the Mount principles by which to guide lives and he warned that, “Whoever hears these sayings of mine, and put them into practice, I will liken him to a wise man, who built his house upon a rock; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded upon a rock. And everyone that hears these sayings, and does not put them into practice, shall be likened to a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell, and great was its fall.” (Matt. 7:24-27) St. Paul warned all followers of Christ to never judge the non-believer, for it is none of your business. But, when it comes to the believer, you must provoke one another onto good works. The militarization of Christianity and all terrorism committed in the name of God must be challenged in a world desperate for Christians who actually follow what Jesus was all about. 1. Jeff Sharlet, HARPER’S, May 2009 pages 31-43. 2. http://as-clips.blogspot.com/2007/09/shoebat-from-plo-terrorist-to-lover-of.html 3. Sharlet, HARPER’S. Other Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/21/trijicon-will-remove-secr_n_432349.html

Reflections of Fidel: We are sending doctors, not soldiers

Reflections of Fidel
We are sending doctors, not soldiers

IN my "Reflection" of January 14, two days after the disaster in Haiti that destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: "In the field of healthcare and other areas, Cuba – despite being a poor and blockaded country – has been cooperating with the Haitian people for many years. Around 400 doctors and healthcare experts are offering their services free of charge to the Haitian people. Our doctors are working every day in 227 of the country’s 337 communes. On the other hand, at least 400 young Haitians have trained as doctors in our homeland. They will now be working with the reinforcement brigade which traveled there yesterday to save lives in this critical situation. Thus, without any special effort being made, up to 1,000 doctors and healthcare experts can be mobilized, almost all of whom are already there and willing to cooperate with any other state that wishes to save the lives of the Haitian people and rehabilitate the injured."

"The head of our medical brigade reported: "The situation is difficult, but we have already started saving lives."

Hour after hour, day and night, Cuban healthcare professionals began working nonstop in the few facilities left standing, in tents, parks or other open spaces, given that the population feared further aftershocks.

The situation was far more serious than was originally thought. Tens of thousands of injured people were clamoring for help on the streets of Port-au-Prince, and an incalculable number of people lay, dead or alive, beneath the rubble of clay and adobe with which the homes of the vast majority of the population were constructed. Even the most solid buildings collapsed. It was also necessary to locate the Haitian doctors who had graduated from the Latin American School of Medicine in the midst of destroyed neighborhoods, many of whom were affected, either directly or indirectly, by the tragedy.

United Nations officials were trapped inside their buildings and dozens of lives were lost, including those of several high-ranking officials of MINUSTAH– a United Nations contingent – and the fate of hundreds of other members of its personnel was unknown.

Haiti’s presidential palace collapsed. Many public buildings, including several hospitals, were left in ruins.

The disaster has shocked the world. People have been able to follow the situation via footage broadcast by the principal international TV channels. Governments from around the world announced the dispatch of rescue teams, food, medicines, equipment and other resources.

In accordance with the position publicly stated by Cuba, medical personnel from other nations – including Spain, Mexico and Colombia, among others – worked very hard alongside our doctors in facilities that they themselves had improvised. Organizations such as the PAHO, friendly countries such as Venezuela, and other nations supplied medicines and other resources. A total absence of egotism and chauvinism characterized the impeccable behavior of the Cuban professionals and their leaders.

As it has done in similar situations – like when Hurricane Katrina caused massive devastation in the city of New Orleans and placed the lives of thousands of U.S. citizens in danger – Cuba offered to send a full medical brigade to cooperate with the people of the United States, a country that, as is well-known, possesses vast resources but, at that moment, needed doctors trained and equipped to save lives. Because of its geographical location, the 1,000-plus doctors from the "Henry Reeve" Brigade were mobilized, with the necessary medicines and equipment, to leave at once for that U.S. city. It never crossed our minds that the president of that nation would reject the offer and allow a number of Americans who could have been saved to lose their lives. The error of that government was perhaps its inability to understand that the people of Cuba do not see the U.S. people as an enemy; nor do they blame them for the aggression our homeland has suffered.

Neither was that government capable of understanding that our country does not need to beg favors or pardons from those who, for half a century, have tried in vain to bring us to our knees.

Likewise in the case of Haiti, our country immediately responded to applications from the United States authorities to fly over eastern Cuba and other facilities that they needed to provide assistance as swiftly as possible to U.S. and Haitian citizens affected by the earthquake.

These practices have characterized the ethical conduct of our people and, together with their equanimity and determination, have been the constant features of our foreign policy. All those who have been our adversaries in the international arena know that only too well.

Cuba will firmly defend the opinion that the tragedy that has taken place in Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, represents a challenge for the richest and most powerful countries in the international community.

Haiti is a net product of the colonial, capitalist and imperialist system imposed on the world. Both slavery in Haiti and its subsequent poverty were imposed from abroad. The terrible earthquake came in the wake of the Copenhagen Summit, where the most elemental rights of the 192 member states of the United Nations were trampled over.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, a competition is underway in Haiti for the precipitate and illegal adoption of boys and girls, which has obliged UNICEF to adopt preventative measures against the uprooting of a large number of children, thus depriving close relatives of such rights.

The number of fatalities is already in excess of 100,000. An elevated number of citizens have lost arms or legs, or have suffered fractures that will require rehabilitation for tem to work or manage their lives independently.

Around 80% of the country will have to be rebuilt and a sufficiently-developed economy needs to be created in order to satisfy needs according to its productive capacity. The reconstruction of Europe or Japan on the basis of their productive capacity and the technical level of their populations, was a relatively simple task in comparison to the efforts that will have to be made in Haiti. There, as well as a large part of Africa and other areas of the Third World, it is essential to create the conditions for sustainable development. In only 40 years’ time, humanity will be comprised of more than nine billion inhabitants and will have to confront the challenge of climate change, which scientists accept as an inevitable reality.

In the midst of the Haitian tragedy, without anyone knowing how and why, thousands of U.S. marines, 82nd Airborne Division troops and other military forces have occupied Haitian territory. Worse still, neither the United Nations nor the U.S. government has offered any explanation to the world regarding this deployment of forces.

Various governments have complained that their aircraft have not been able to land and deliver the human and technical resources that have been sent to Haiti.

For their part, a number of countries are announcing the additional dispatch of soldiers and military equipment. From my point of view, such actions would contribute to creating chaos and complicating international cooperation, which, in itself, is complex. It is vital to seriously discuss this issue and entrust the UN with the leading role that corresponds to it in this delicate matter.

Our country is fulfilling a strictly humanitarian mission. To the extent of its possibilities, it will contribute the human and material resources at its disposal. The will of our people, proud their doctors and cooperative workers on vital services, is great and will rise to the occasion.

Any significant cooperation offered to our country will not be rejected, but its acceptance will be entirely subordinated to the importance and significance of the assistance required of the human resources of our homeland.

It is only fair to confirm that, to date, our modest aircraft and the important human resources that Cuba has placed at the disposal of the Haitian people have arrived at their destination without any difficulty whatsoever.

We are sending doctors, not soldiers!

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 23, 2010
5:30 p.m.

'The bloody Israeli Holocaust against the people of Gaza'

Famous American Jewish scholar and specialist on the Middle East, Norman Finkelstein, says Israel committed massive atrocities in Gaza during the three-week war against Hamas militants.