Explosive charge blows up in US's face

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - When the United States military command accused the Iranian Quds Force in January of providing the armor-piercing EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) that were killing US troops, it knew that Iraqi machine shops had been producing their own EFPs for years, a review of the historical record of evidence on EFPs in Iraq shows.

The record also shows that the US command had considerable evidence that the Mahdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had received the technology and the training on how to use it from Hezbollah, rather than Iran.

The command, operating under close White House supervision, chose to deny these facts in making the dramatic accusation that became the main rationale for the present aggressive US stance toward Iran. Although the George W Bush administration initially limited the accusation to the Quds Force, it has recently begun to assert that top officials of the Iranian regime are responsible for arms that are killing US troops.

British and US officials observed from the beginning that the EFPs being used in Iraq closely resembled the ones used by Hezbollah against Israeli forces in southern Lebanon, both in their design and the techniques for using them.

Hezbollah was known as the world's most knowledgeable specialists in EFP manufacture and use, having perfected this during the 1990s in the military struggle with Israeli forces in Lebanon. It was widely recognized that it was Hezbollah that had passed on the expertise to Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups after the second Intifada began in 2000.

US intelligence also knew that Hezbollah was conducting the training of Mahdi Army militants on EFPs. In August 2005, Newsday published a report from correspondent Mohammed Bazzi that Shi'ite fighters had begun in early 2005 to copy Hezbollah techniques for building the bombs, as well as for carrying out roadside ambushes, citing both Iraqi and Lebanese officials.

In late November 2006, a senior intelligence official told both CNN and the New York Times that Hezbollah troops had trained as many as 2,000 Mahdi Army fighters in Lebanon.

The fact that the Mahdi Army's major military connection has always been with Hezbollah rather than Iran would also explain the presence in Iraq of the PRG-29, a shoulder-fired anti-armor weapon. Although US military briefers identified it last February as being Iranian-made, the RPG-29 is not manufactured by Iran but by the Russian Federation.

According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, RPG-29s were imported from Russia by Syria, then passed on to Hezbollah, which used them with devastating effectiveness against Israeli forces in the 2006 war. According to a June 2004 report on the well-informed military website Strategypage.com, RPG-29s were already turning up in Iraq, "apparently smuggled across the Syrian border".

The earliest EFPs appearing in Iraq in 2004 were so professionally made that they were probably constructed by Hezbollah specialists, according to a detailed account by British expert Michael Knights in Jane's Intelligence Review last year.

By late 2005, however, the British command had already found clear evidence that the Iraqi Shi'ites themselves were manufacturing their own EFPs. British Army Major General J B Dutton told reporters in November 2005 that the bombs were of varying degrees of sophistication.

Some of the EFPs required a "reasonably sophisticated factory", he said, while others required only a simple workshop, which he observed, could only mean that some of them were being made inside Iraq.

After British convoys in Maysan province were attacked by a series of EFP bombings in late May 2006, Knights recounts, British forces discovered a factory making them in Majar al-Kabir north of Basra in June.

In addition, the US military also had its own forensic evidence by the autumn of 2006 that EFPs used against its vehicles had been manufactured in Iraq, according to Knights. He cites photographic evidence of EFP strikes on US armored vehicles that "typically shows a mixture of clean penetrations from fully-formed EFP and spattering ..." That pattern reflected the fact that the locally made EFPs were imperfect, some of them forming the required shape to penetrate but some of them failing to do so.

Then US troops began finding EFP factories. Journalist Andrew Cockburn reported in the Los Angeles Times in mid-February that US troops had raided a Baghdad machine shop in November 2006 and discovered "a pile of copper discs, five inches in diameter, stamped out as part of what was clearly an ongoing order".

In a report on February 23, NBC Baghdad correspondent Jane Arraf quoted "senior military officials" as saying that US forces had "been finding an increasing number of the advanced roadside bombs being not just assembled but manufactured in machine shops here".

Nevertheless, the Bush administration decided to put the blame for the EFPs squarely on the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, after Bush agreed in autumn 2006 to target the Quds Force within Iran to make Iranian leaders feel vulnerable to US power. The allegedly exclusive Iranian manufacture of EFPs was the administration's only argument for holding the Quds Force responsible for their use against US forces.

At the February 11 military briefing presenting the case for this claim, one of the US military officials declared, "The explosive charges used by Iranian agents in Iraq need a special manufacturing process, which is available only in Iran." The briefer insisted that there was no evidence that they were being made in Iraq.

That lynchpin of the administration's EFP narrative began to break down almost immediately, however. On February 23, NBC's Arraf confronted Lieutenant General Ray Odierno, who had been out in front in January promoting the new Iranian EFP line, with the information she had obtained from other senior military officials that an increasing number of machine shops manufacturing EFPs had been discovered by US troops.

Odierno began to walk the Iranian EFP story back. He said the EFPs had "started to come from Iran", but he admitted "some of the technologies" were "probably being constructed here".

The following day, US troops found yet another EFP factory near Baqubah, with copper discs that appeared to be made with a high degree of precision, but which could not be said with any certainty to have originated in Iran.

The explosive expert who claimed at the February briefing that EFPs could only be made in Iran was then made available to the New York Times to explain away the new find. Major Marty Weber now backed down from his earlier statement and admitted that there were "copy cat" EFPs being machined in Iraq that looked identical to those allegedly made in Iran to the untrained eye.

Weber insisted that such Iraqi-made EFPs had slight imperfections which made them "much less likely to pierce armor". But NBC's Arraf had reported the previous week that a senor military official had confirmed to her that the EFPs made in Iraqi shops were indeed quite able to penetrate US armor. The impact of those weapons "isn't as clean", the official said, but they are "almost as effective" as the best-made EFPs.

The idea that only Iranian EFPs penetrate armor would be a surprise to Israeli intelligence, which has reported that EFPs manufactured by Hamas guerrillas in their own machine shops during 2006 had penetrated eight inches of Israeli steel armor in four separate incidents in September and November, according to the Intelligence and Terrorism Center in Tel Aviv.

The Arraf story was ignored by the news media, and the Bush administration has continued to assert the Iranian EFP charge as though it had never been questioned.

It soon became such an accepted part of the media narrative on Iran and Iraq that the only issue about which reporters bother to ask questions is whether the top leaders of the Iranian government have approved the alleged Quds Force operation.

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in June 2005.

(Inter Press Service)

Biofuels 'crime against humanity'

By Grant Ferrett
BBC News

A United Nations expert has condemned the growing use of crops to produce biofuels as a replacement for petrol as a crime against humanity.

The UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said he feared biofuels would bring more hunger.

The growth in the production of biofuels has helped to push the price of some crops to record levels.

Mr Ziegler's remarks, made at the UN headquarters in New York, are clearly designed to grab attention.

He complained of an ill-conceived dash to convert foodstuffs such as maize and sugar into fuel, which created a recipe for disaster.

Food price rises

It was, he said, a crime against humanity to divert arable land to the production of crops which are then burned for fuel.

He called for a five-year ban on the practice.

Within that time, according to Mr Ziegler, technological advances would enable the use of agricultural waste, such as corn cobs and banana leaves, rather than crops themselves to produce fuel.

The growth in the production of biofuels has been driven, in part, by the desire to find less environmentally-damaging alternatives to oil.
The United States is also keen to reduce its reliance on oil imported from politically unstable regions.

But the trend has contributed to a sharp rise in food prices as farmers, particularly in the US, switch production from wheat and soya to corn, which is then turned into ethanol.

Mr Ziegler is not alone in warning of the problem.

The IMF last week voiced concern that the increasing global reliance on grain as a source of fuel could have serious implications for the world's poor.

Holocaust survivor versus holocaust industry

jews sans frontieres
AN ANTI-ZIONIST BLOG - BROWSING THE MEDIA

Here's an email I got from an angry person I know to be a Jewish holocaust survivor and a supporter of the Palestinian cause. It came after I posted something on the Finkelstein at Oxford (or not) business. I'm posting it as I found it except for personal bits which I've deleted.

This hysteria about Finkelstein's "anti Zionism" is totally misplaced and a con, because what originally infuriated the powers that be was Finkelstein's taking on the Zionists' updated raison d'etre, it's biggest political asset, the Holocaust, by attacking the huge industry that their existence has created, but from which others benefit.

Even as recently as a few weeks ago, Gideon Taylor of the Claims Conference admonished Holocaust survivors testifying before a US committee on poverty among survivors for "washing dirty linen in public". And I heard that when that didn't deter them, he got really nasty. So one can imagine the rage - and panic - when the son of Holocaust survivors wrote a book accusing them of misappropriation of funds that were meant for the very people whom they use as a moral shield.

He not only wrote the book with support from respected Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, but he dared, had the chutzpah, the audacity, the Un- Americanism, to have the book translated into German, where it flew off the shelves and opened many an eye.

Not that it stopped them from continuing to milk that cash cow, and recent events - in Israel - would have totally vindicated Norman Finkelstein in public, were it not for the hysteria of media starved Martha's Vineyard Zionist zealots like Dershowitz and Foxman.

Even ignoring Israel Singer's forced resignation from both World Jewish Congress and the Claims Conference under a cloud of money in a Swiss bank account, there has been news of major mismanagement of Holocaust survivors's funds - or of outright theft. Such news is mostly buried or treaded on softly by the Jewish media, ignored by blogs, and taboo for those, who, like Pavlovian dogs, know by now what to expect if they touch this topic with anything but kid gloves.

Just a few weeks - when, and only because, Holocaust survivors were protesting against their poverty in the streets of Jerusalem wearing yellow stars, Israeli Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik made this statement: "The State of Israel demanded the reparation money that was transferred from Germany , but wasn't wise enough to channel the funds correctly for the benefit of those who needed and deserved it," Itzik said at the discussion. The subject of refunding this money never came up. Gone is gone. The Israeli government promised to rectify the situation, and.... it went right back to the source. On Sept. 19th, HaAretz published an article entitled "Israel asks Germany to fund Holocaust survivors' stipends"

In April, Abraham Hirchson, Israel's finance minister, who created the March of the Living, which had received many millions of dollars from the Claims Conference, was caught up in a scandal when a friend of his and Singer's was discovered to have earned $700,000 from this project, and he couldn't remember what it was for. Hirschson was in deeper trouble in Israel, he" resigned in disgrace after a series of scandals that included allegations that he took funds from the Claims Conference and March of the Living. Some of this money was allegedly used to fund the Likud Party." Last week the Jerusalem Post reported that Hirchson and 10 others are being indicted for embezzling millions.

And this was one of the headlines on the front page of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency's web news today, October 25, 2007: " An Israeli lawyer was convicted of bilking Holocaust survivors out of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of reparations."

All this is just the tip of the iceberg, which we now know can melt very rapidly. Those persons who launched and continue the witch hunt of Norman Finkelsein - which began in the year 2000 and continues - use lies, fear and intimidation, in order to suppress the truth, some out of a totally perverted sense of loyalty. To whom? To what? To the Holocaust survivors who live under the poverty line everywhere in the world? Hardly. To the Israeli right wing that is on a campaign to free Yitzchak Rabin's murderer? To those who oppress the Palestinians and steal the land and their dignity?

Not in MY name.

Not in your name? But you're a holocaust survivor and a Jew. Everything zionists do is in our name and for our benefit.

Why Is the CIA Suppressing JFK Files?

By Lisa Pease
October 23, 2007

Editor’s Note: The CIA continues to resist the release of documents pertaining to a CIA officer who oversaw an anti-Castro Cuban group that had curious dealings with Lee Harvey Oswald in the run-up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

In this guest essay, historian Lisa Pease comments on how the CIA still is subverting the intent of the JFK Records Act:

The CIA is withholding key documents in the JFK assassination case.

As Jefferson Morley reports in the Huffington Post:

"Lawyers for the Central Intelligence Agency faced pointed questions in a federal court hearing Monday morning about the agency's efforts to block disclosure of long-secret records about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

Morley filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA for failing to disclose records about a CIA officer named George Joannides. Joannides was responsible for running the DRE, an anti-Castro CIA front group that had extensive interactions with Lee Harvey Oswald in the months leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy.

The CIA has consistently refused to release Joannides' records, even though they are mandated to by the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Act.

What's at stake here matters greatly to all historians. If the government can simply choose which records to release, and which to withhold, they can pervert and deliberately misshape history to serve their purposes.

In this particular case, the CIA appears hellbent on ondoing the will of the people. The JFK Act came into being due to an enormous outcry from the public when they learned, at the end of Oliver Stone's film JFK, that many records relating to the assassination were still classified.

Congress passed what became known as "The JFK Act," which mandated the creation of a board to declassify records and, if necessary, seek out new and pertinent records and make them public.

The Board, officially named the Assassination Records and Review Board, put Joannides on the JFK assassination story map when it declassified five personnel reports of his in 1998. In addition, researchers learned that it was Joannides who had helped shut down an early investigation of the CIA's possible involvement in the assassination.

Joannides was responsible for kicking out two staffers of the House Select Committee on Assassinations who had been set up with full access at CIA to CIA records pertaining to that time period. When the records they dug up got more interesting in terms of suggesting possible CIA involvement in a plot to kill Kennedy, Joannides had the two staffers removed from their temporary office at CIA headquarters.

Morley discusses why Joannides records are of interest:

"Oswald approached the DRE's delegation in New Orleans and offered to train guerrillas to fight the Castro government. He was rebuffed. When DRE members saw Oswald handing out pro-Castro leaflets a few days later an altercation ensued that ended with the arrest of all the participants.

"A week after that, the DRE's spokesman in New Orleans debated the Cuba issue with Oswald on a radio program. After these encounters, the DRE issued a press release calling for a congressional investigation of the pro-Castro activities of the then-obscure Oswald.

"The CIA was passing money to the DRE leaders at the time, according to an agency memo dated April 1963, found in the JFK Library in Boston. The document shows that the Agency gave the Miami-based group $250,000 a year -- the equivalent of about $1.5 million annually in 2007 dollars.

"The secret CIA files on Joannides may shed new light on what, if anything, Joannides and other CIA officers in anti-Castro operations knew about Oswald's activities and contacts before Kennedy was killed."

Morley has spent several years now trying to obtain these records, and his frustration is palpable. But his frustration should be ours, as it's our history that is being hidden from us.

If the CIA was involved in the Kennedy assassination, wouldn't that change entirely our understanding of events from that time forth, and wouldn't that call into question much of the reporting on the case, and the credibility of the media from that time forward?

And aren't laws meant to be upheld? As Morley writes:

"In my admittedly subjective view, the JFK Records Act is being slowly repealed by CIA fiat. In defiance of the law and common sense, the Agency continues to spend taxpayers' money for the suppression of history around JFK's assassination. In the post-9/11 era, you would think U.S. intelligence budget could be better spent."

Several former members of the ARRB, including its chairman, filed affidavits in support of Morley's request. Even anti-conspiracy authors Gerald Posner and Vincent Bugliosi have sided with the law, calling for the documents to be released.

If our government can simply choose which laws to support and which to break, is it really our government anymore?


Lisa Pease is a historian who has studied the JFK assassination for many years. [Her article first appeared in Progressive Historians.]

“Crisis in the Americas” – A Page Out of Washington’s Propaganda Playbook on Venezuela

Author:
Michael Fox – Venezuelanalysis.com

What does the founder of the U.S. House of Representatives Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the son of an advisor and close friend of Cuba's former Dictator Fulgencio Batista, and the great-grandson of the legendary Baseball Hall of Famer, Connie Mack, all have in common?[1] [1]

They are all Florida residents, staunch Republicans, anti-Castro Cuban activists, government officials, and they all participated in the newly-released scandalous half-hour American Security Council Foundation "documentary," which spins lies and unsubstantiated claims to paint Venezuela's democratically-elected President Hugo Chavez as a maniacal dictator attempting to take over the Western Hemisphere.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and Florida Congressmen Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Connie Mack will be presenting their documentary, entitled "Crisis in the Americas: A Documentary on Dictator Hugo Chavez", at Miami's Doral Park Country Club, this morning.

The only person missing from the trio is Otto Reich, who is prominently interviewed in the film. Reich, an anti-Castro Cuban-born former US intelligence officer, played an active role in the Iran-Contra scandal and the 2002 coup d'etat against Chavez. He also is the former director of the covert Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean (OPD), which among other things waged a propaganda campaign on the American people in support of Reagan Administration interests in Central America in the 1980s. Now, with "Crisis in the Americas," it appears that Reich and the American Security Council Foundation are playing their old propaganda cards; this time with the focus on Venezuela.

The Office of Public Diplomacy

In 1983, the Reagan government founded the OPD with Reich at its helm. According to Greg Grandin in his recent book Empire's Workshop, the OPD was "officially charged with implementing a ‘new, nontraditional' approach to ‘defining the terms of the public discussion on Central American policy.'" Staffed by psychological warfare operatives from the CIA and the U.S. Army, the new office created a propaganda machine of unsubstantiated lies and misrepresentations, which it disseminated to the American people by covertly placing news in the US media.[2] [2]

According to a 1988 Propaganda Review article by Peter Kornbluh, Reich and his staff disseminated countless documents and pamphlets "to hundreds of civic groups, rotary clubs, and university audiences, [which] were invariably filled with innuendo, rhetoric, and misinformation, meant to cast the [Nicaraguan] Sandinistas in the worst possible light and the contras in the best."

"In its effort to manipulate the media and the public mindset, OPD employed a tactic the CIA frequently uses in foreign countries planting articles and stories in the press under the names of third parties. Known in the intelligence community as "white propaganda," these activities were conducted inside the United States with the full knowledge of the White House."[3] [3]

According to a "confidential" March 13, 1985 memorandum, OPD Deputy Director Jonathan Miller explained that stories were placed at NBC, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, USA Today and countless more outlets.[4] [4]

Additionally, the OPD coordinated with PR firms to help Administration Officials frame their debate. As Grandin points out, one 1985 PR "action plan" encouraged the use of simple loaded phrases to paint the Nicaraguan Sandinistas as "evil," Soviet "puppets," "racist and repress human rights," and "involved in US drug problems," the "military buildup," "the drug connection," "human rights violations," and the "communist connection."[5] [5]

The office also attempted to shift the debate from communism to terrorism, accusing the Sandinistas of having terrorist ties with the Middle East, or of "anti-Semitism."

Grandin writes:

"By flooding the media with questionable facts and allegations, the OPD forced Reagan's opponents to dissipate their energies disproving allegations rather than making their own positive case for nonintervention."[6] [6]

The office was widely criticized after its involvement in the Iran-Contra Scandal, and Congress ordered that it be shut down by for engaging in a "prohibited convert propaganda operation." Nevertheless, as the New York Times reported at the end of 1987, "State Department officials say they will simply reorganize the office, distributing its functions to other parts of the department."[7] [7]

Reich continued with the State Department through the 1980s, coincidentally as Ambassador to Venezuela, and was brought back in George W. Bush's first term as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and a subsequent nomination as Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere in 2002, where it appears he played a fairly substantial role in assistance to Pedro Carmona Estanga and other leaders of the short-lived 2002 coup d'etat against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.[8] [8]

The official Office of Public Diplomacy may have been closed nearly twenty years ago, and Reich may no longer be with the White House, but he still knows how to play his cards, and he pulls out all of the stops in "Crisis in the Americas."

Nearly all of the PR catch phrases and allegations used by the OPD against the Sandinistas on the American people are once again employed against Venezuela in the documentary. It is not the first time. Countless unsubstantiated reports against Venezuela have riddled the Internet and the mainstream press since President Chavez came in to office in 1998.[9] [9] This is, however, the first time all of these claims have been formulated in to a concise half-hour documentary, which goes so far as to call for US military intervention in Venezuela to liquidate the Chavez "threat."

"Crisis in the Americas"[10] [10]

The movie, like a page straight out of the OPD, attempts to link Chavez to terrorism, drug-trafficking, violence, despotism, Cuban communism, stolen elections, the axis of evil, and "radical Islam" with quick sound-bites, Orwellian double-speak, and an association of non-related, but negative images and themes. Of course, there is no hard evidence.

It opens with the voice of US President George W. Bush,

"My fellow citizens, Americans have known surprise attacks, but never before on thousands of citizens... We are a country awakened to danger, and called to defend freedom."

Laid on top of the audio are images from 9-11, and footage from fighting in the middle east, as if attempting to make the subconscious connection from the first moment that somehow Venezuela is supporting terrorists, or perhaps had something to do with the 9-11 attacks.

Bush continues, "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,"

The screen zooms in on a map of Venezuela.

Representative Connie Mack speaking before Congress,

"Hugo Chavez is an enemy of Freedom that threatens the balance of power in the hemisphere... Hugo Chavez is a threat, we must take him seriously and we must act now..."

Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, speaking one of the first blatant lies,

"Chavez is a dictator and thus not a legitimate leader."

The movie continues with suspenseful music, and footage of police, violence, and demonstrations from the 2002 coup d'état, that make it appear as though Venezuela is living in a state of repression and protest. The documentary makes tragically unsubstantiated claims on how "unemployment and poverty have increased" under Chavez; how Venezuela is a "Cuban colony"; how Chavez wants to "attack the United States"; how Chavez is a "a member of the axis-of-evil... that wants to bring [the US] to our knees"; how he is a "terrorist collaborator," a "subnormal psychopath"; how Chavez is ‘collaborating with the enemy- radical Islam"; how he is "motivated by envy and resentment", is racist and machista, "anti-Semitic", and "anti-Jew."

To make the terrorist link, the movie goes so far as to claim that Venezuela has issued passports for 300 radical Islamist terrorists and that Hezbollah is operating a division out of Venezuela.

To make the drug connection, it claims that he is building his own "paramilitary" group; providing support to the Colombian guerrilla, FARC; and a random reference that he may "wind up being the largest drug kingpin in Latin America."

It follows the connections to Russia, and points to a massive military buildup, which is completely unsubstantiated considering that even under the most extreme estimates, Venezuela's 2007 defense budget is less than 1% of that of the Pentagon.[11] [11]

It claims China wants to "substitute the United States as the primary power in the western hemisphere," and calls Venezuela's relationship to the Asian country, "extremely dangerous."

In an attempt to de-legitimize Chavez's presidency, it goes so far as to resurrect a completely discredited claim that Chavez stole the Venezuelan 2004 Recall Referendum- a point that even most members of the Venezuelan opposition no longer believe. The movie claims that in the lead-up to the Referendum, "all the exit polls, [were] unanimously 59-60% anti-Chavez." The claim is an outright and proven lie. The only poll that showed Chavez behind in the 2004 election was the one conducted by the US-based, Penn, Schoen and Berland, which was being carried out on behalf of the opposition organization, Sumate.[12] [12]

During a ghastly lament for the loss of a potential US invasion opportunity, the movie even gets in a jab at Former US President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center, along with the OAS certified the 2004 Referendum as legitimate,

"For the Carter Center to certify the phony elections that Chavez used to keep himself in power... that completely undermined any effort we could have made at a time to try and restore a real democratic system in Venezuela, and we didn't stand by the Venezuelan opposition. We have to stop letting the Jimmy Carters of the world dictate the agendas of the United States in the Western Hemisphere."

The documentary then calls the US to action:

Connie Mack:

"It is very important that the US act now... instead of waiting until he is able to build up either forces or friends."

Bill McCollum:

"Whether or not we remove his presence politically, or isolate him, remains to be seen, but if he continues to grow as a threat... then at some point we have to take real action to stop him. Is that military action? I hope not, but if that's what it takes to do it, then I think ultimately that's what we're going to have to do."

The video ends with a quote from Connie Mack which, as if out of a PR textbook perfectly frames the last words of debate for the United States,

"To me this whole debate is simple, Chavez wants policies of destruction and despair, and we want policies of hope and opportunity, he wants to limit policies of hope and opportunity for the people of Latin America."

While the entire structure may appear to have been taken directly from the OPD file, Reich shouldn't be given all of the credit. "Crisis in the Americas" is far from the first such propaganda-style video that the four-decade-old American Security Council Foundation (formerly the American Security Council- ASC) has produced.

American Security Council Foundation (ASCF)

Since its support of McCarthyism in the 1950s, the organization, which has close ties to the US military industrial complex, the Republican party, and US intelligence personnel, has spent millions of dollars and produced countless videos and books attempting to promote its vision of the communist threat and the need for increased US military expenditure. In 1980, ASC produced the similarly named "Attack on the Americas!" in which it called for a stronger stance against the spread of communism in the Hemisphere.[13] [13]

According to a 1981 NACLA review, which called the documentary "biased and distorted,"

"‘Attack on the Americas' argues for U.S. support to unpopular military dictatorships in El Salvador, Guatemala, and elsewhere in the Americas. It claims, despite widespread findings to the contrary by international organizations, church groups, and the U.S. government, that these governments have not violated human rights. The film concludes with a plea for increased military strength in order to protect the United States' geopolitical and economic interests in Central America and the Caribbean."

In the same NACLA article, Phillip Wheaton, then director of the Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean (EPICA) points out:

"The film has a double message or argument ... [first] a rhetorical, redbaiting warning against the steadily growing and intentional strategy of the Soviet Union to take over the Caribbean basin and to march inexorably northward through Central America, country by country, until they are at our border. Thus the Americas are 'under siege' and through Cuban intervention, the Soviets intend to 'slash' the Americas in half. The second message is an attack on the Carter administration's human rights philosophy as naive."[14] [14]

With a little rearranging, the substitution of Venezuela for the Soviet Union, and the focus on South rather than Central America, nearly the same quote could be said about ACSF's latest film, "Crisis in the Americas," even down to the attack on Jimmy Carter. Once again, unsubstantiated claims are refurbished with the goal of persuading public opinion.

History often repeats itself and ACSF and Reich know the propaganda playbook by heart. The question is if the American people will take steps to call them on it, or if they will continue to be duped by their PR spin and "manufactured consent" that not only brought us Central America in the 1980s, but the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, potentially now, Iran, and perhaps one day, Venezuela.


[1] [15] Oscar Corral, "New Díaz-Balart in Congress adds to family's growing political dynasty", The Miami Herald, Miami, Florida: January 6, 2003 (http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y03/jan03/06e5.htm [16])

[2] [17] Greg Grandin, Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of New Imperialism, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006, p. 124-136

[3] [18] Peter Kornbluh, "Reagan's Propaganda Ministry", Propaganda Review, San Francisco: Number 2, Summer 1988

[4] [19] Johnathan S. Miller, Declassified Memorandum, OPD: Washington DC, March 13, 1985 (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/ [20])

[5] [21] Grandin (2006)

[6] [22] Grandin (2006)

[7] [23] "WASHINGTON TALK: BRIEFING; Shut and Open", New York Times, New York: December 30, 1987 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5DC143AF933A05751C1A961948260 [24])

[8] [25] Thomas Blanton, "Public Diplomacy and Covert Propoganda: The Declassified Record of Otto Juan Reich", National Security Archives, Washington DC: March 2, 2001 http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/ [26] and Ed Vulliamy, "Venezuela coup linked to Bush team", The Guardian, New York: April 21, 2002 (http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,688071,00.html [27])

[9] [28] Michael Fox, "A U.S. Intelligence Hoax on Venezuela?", Venezuelanalysis, Caracas, Venezuela: April 19, 2006 (http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1705 [29])

[10] [30] "Crisis in the Americas" (http://www.ascfusa.org/dvd/index.html [31]) (Link to short preview on the ASCF website) and: http://www.borev.net/2007/10/hey_look_what_i_did.html [32] (full video with subtitled commentary from BoRev.net editor)

[11] [33] Approximately $4.2 Billion (Venezuela) vs $439.3 Billion (United States) Simon Romero, "Venezuela Spending on Arms Soars to World's Top Ranks" New York Times, Caracas, Venezuela: February 25, 2007 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/world/americas/25venez.html?ex=1330059600&en=25be50a9a3dfea93&ei=5088 [34]) (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2006/d20060206slides.pdf page 19 [35])

[12] [36] Chris Carlson, "Coup D'etat in Venezuela: Made in the USA", ZNet, Merida, Venezuela: November 24, 2006 http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=11471 [37]

[13] [38] American Security Council Foundation Website (http://www.ascfusa.org/ [39]) and International Relations Center Group Watch: American Security Council (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/asc.php [40])

[14] [41] Ruth McDonough Fitzpatrick, "Attack on the Americas!

Counterrevolution", NACLA's Report on the Americas: March-April 1981

http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC26folder/AttackonAmericas.html [42]



Source URL: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771
Links:
[1] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn1
[2] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn2
[3] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn3
[4] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn4
[5] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn5
[6] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn6
[7] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn7
[8] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn8
[9] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn9
[10] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn10
[11] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn11
[12] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn12
[13] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn13
[14] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftn14
[15] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref1
[16] http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y03/jan03/06e5.htm
[17] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref2
[18] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref3
[19] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref4
[20] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/
[21] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref5
[22] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref6
[23] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref7
[24] http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE5DC143AF933A05751C1A961948260
[25] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref8
[26] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/
[27] http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,688071,00.html
[28] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref9
[29] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1705
[30] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref10
[31] http://www.ascfusa.org/dvd/index.html
[32] http://www.borev.net/2007/10/hey_look_what_i_did.html
[33] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref11
[34] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/world/americas/25venez.html?ex=1330059600&en=25be50a9a3dfea93&ei=5088
[35] http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2006/d20060206slides.pdf page 19
[36] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref12
[37] http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=11471
[38] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref13
[39] http://www.ascfusa.org/
[40] http://rightweb.irc-online.org/groupwatch/asc.php
[41] http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2771#_ftnref14
[42] http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC26folder/AttackonAmericas.html

Venezuela’s Debt to Cuba

Author:
Salim Lamrani

The Venezuelan oligarchy vehemently criticizes President Chávez for providing fuel assistance to the government in Havana. It is true that Cuba receives 98 thousand barrels of petroleum daily at preferential prices. Nevertheless the Caribbean nation is not the only nation benefiting from favorable agreements. The majority of the countries in that region including Haiti, Jamaica and Nicaragua also enjoy this political solidarity. London as well as various United States cities are also recipients of Venezuela’s generosity without it stirring up such controversy. (1).

Chávez personally responded to these attacks during his television program “Aló, Presidente” on September 30, 2007. According to him, the debt that Venezuelans have incurred with Cuba is much greater than the fuel assistance provided to the island. “Those who [...] accuse me of giving away fuel to Cuba [are] foolish. If the account were tallied, bolívar for bolívar, cent for cent ...” the president recalled that 30 thousand Cuban doctors have been working in the country on a free and volunteer basis for more than five years. He confirmed that Cuban professionals have saved more lives in those five years than Venezuelan doctors have throughout the entire medical history of Venezuela. “This has no price,” he emphasized. “What is worth more in objective value, the barrels of oil that we sell to Cuba or this?” he asked (2).

Currently around 9 million people have benefited from medical attention provided by the Cuban doctors, who have performed more then 60 million consultations throughout the country. The health mission “Barrio Adentro” (Inside the Barrio) has ensured that all Venezuelans have free and universal access to medical services. The establishment of preventative medicine saved the lives of 1,153 children in 2007, according to the Ministry of Health. (3)

Thanks to the presence of the Cuban doctors and the political will of Chávez six new hospitals are being built in the states of Barinas, Mérida, Guárico, Miranda, Apure and in the capital. Barrio Adentro has entered its fourth phase. The government plans to invest a sum of 800 million Euros (2,500 million Bolívares) in the Public Health System. (4)

Chávez also announced a 60% salary increase for Venezuelan doctors who work for the state beginning November 1, 2007. “I know that doctors’ salaries were falling behind. [...]. It’s justice for those who work for Venezuelans’ health,” he declared. (5) He also emphasized that this economic effort is made possible by the raising oil prices. (6) Of course, the Colegio de Médicos de Venezuela (medical College of Venezuela) expressed satisfaction. (7) The minimum salary for a new doctor starting out in the public system will now be 822 Euros per month which is an extremely high salary for a Third World country. (8) Professors have not been left out. The Ministry of Public Education also decided to raise its salaries by 40% effective November 1, 2007. (9)

In contrast, President Bush, under the pretext of fiscal restraint, vetoed legislation passed by the Congress that would have provided access to medical attention for poor children, while spending billions of dollars on the illegitimate and murderous occupation of Iraq. The societal views of Chávez and Bush are mirror opposites: the well-being of the neediest on one side and the profits of multinationals on the other. (10)

In order to combat excessive alcohol and tobacco consumption and to thus reduce related public health problems, the Venezuelan government decided to raise the tax on liquor by 50% and on cigarettes by 70%. “Our country has one of the highest rates of whiskey consumption,” he lamented. Sales of beer on the street will be prohibited from now on. This arsenal of measures forms part of the preventative policy promoted by the government to improve the health of Venezuelans. (11)

Cuba and Venezuela have once again strengthened regional integration by signing 14 new cooperative economic agreements on October 15, 2007. (12) Provoking the ire of the Venezuelan opposition, during his speech Hugo Chávez reiterated his admiration for Cuba: “Fidel is a father for our people. Cuba is an example for our revolution. Venezuela loves Cuba. Our people love the Cuban people and are very grateful to them.” (13) Later, addressing his detractors, he asked: “how much would we have to pay any other country to provide 30 thousand doctors, nurses, ophthalmologists and dentists, 24 hours a day, dispersed throughout the entire the territory [...]? Can someone tell me that?” (14)

The integration between Cuba and Venezuela is a model that should be followed on the rest of the continent. It is the only way to protect against the threats of Washington, achieve real independence and improve the people’s standard of living.

Salim Lamrani is a French professor, writer and journalist who specializes on U.S.-Cuba relations. He has published the books Washington contre Cuba (Pantin: Le Temps des Cerises, 2005), Cuba face à l’Empire (Genève: Timeli, 2006) and Fidel Castro, Cuba et les États-Unis (Pantin: Le Temps des Cerises, 2006).

Translated by Dawn Gable. Dawn Gable is a freelance translator, writer and member of the Venezuela Solidarity Network and the Santa Cruz Cuba Study Group. She is also co-founder of Bridges Not Walls: Uniting America one word at a time.

Notes

(1) Mauricio Vicent, «El presidente de Venezuela alude en Cuba a una confederación entre los dos países», El País, October 16, 2007.

(2) Associated Press, «Chávez asegura que Venezuela tiene deuda con Cuba», October 1, 2007.

(3) Ibid.

(4) Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, «Arrancó Barrio Adentro IV con la construcción de 6 hospitales especializados», September 30, 2007.

(5) Associated Press, «Chávez anuncia incremento salarial a médicos en Venezuela», October 8, 2007.

(6) Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, «Chávez anunció incremento salarial de 60% para médicos», October 8, 2007.

(7) Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, «Colegio Médico del Distrito Metropolitano conforme con aumento de 60%», October 9, 2007.

(8) Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, «Médicos satisfechos con aumento de sueldo del 60%», October 9, 2007.

(9) Associated Press, «Chávez anuncia incremento salarial a maestros en Venezuela», October 5, 2007.

(10) David Stout, «Bush Defends Veto of Health Care Bill», The New York Times, October 15, 2007.

(11) Christopher Toothaker, «Chávez la emprende contra la bebida y el consumismo», Associated Press, October 9, 2007.

(12) Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, «Venezuela y Cuba suscriben 14 nuevos acuerdos de integración», October 15, 2007.

(13) Granma, «Estamos en las mejores condiciones Cuba y Venezuela para avanzar en un proceso unitario. Discurso de Hugo Chávez Frías, Presidente de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, en el acto de firma de acuerdos entre Venezuela y Cuba, efectuado en el Palacio de las Convenciones, el 15 de octubre de 2007, “Año 49 de la Revolución”», October 16, 2007.

(14) Associated Press, «Chávez asegura que Venezuela tiene deuda con Cuba», op. cit.

The Bank of the South: An Alternative to IMF and World Bank Dominance

Author:
Stephen Lendman

In July, 2004, the IMF and World Bank commemorated the 60th anniversary of their founding at Bretton Woods, NH to provide a financial framework of assistance for the postwar world after the expected defeat of Germany and Japan. With breathtaking hypocrisy, an October, 2004 Development Committee Communique stated: "As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Bretton Woods Institutions....we recommit ourselves to supporting efforts by developing countries to pursue sustainable growth, sound macroeconomic policies, debt sustainability, open trade, job creation, poverty reduction and good governance." Phew.

In fact, for 63 hellish years, both these institutions achieved mirror opposite results on everything the above comment states. From inception, their mission was to integrate developing nations into the Global North-dominated world economy and use debt repayment as the way to transfer wealth from poor countries to powerful bankers in rich ones.

The scheme is called debt slavery because new loans are needed to service old ones, indebtedness rises, and borrowing terms stipulate harsh one-way "structural adjustment" provisions that include:

• privatizations of state enterprises;
• government deregulation;
• deep cuts in social spending;
• wage freezes or cuts;
• unrestricted free market access for foreign corporations;
• corporate-friendly tax cuts;
• crackdowns on trade unionists; and
• savage repression for non-believers under a system incompatible with social democracy.

Everywhere the scheme is the same: huge public wealth transfers to elitist private hands, exploding public debt, an ever-widening disparity between the super-rich and desperate poor, and an aggressive nationalism to justify huge spending on security for aggressive surveillance, mass incarceration plus repression and torture for social control.

An Alternative to Debt Slavery - The Bank of the South

Last December, Hugo Chavez announced his idea for a Banco del Sur, or Bank of the South, as part of his crusade against the institutions of international capital he calls "tools of Washington." The bank will be officially launched at a presidential November 3 summit in Caracas, where it is to be headquartered, with seven founding member-states - Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Ecuador.

On October 12, Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe announced his nation agreed to become the eighth member but said "The decision is not a rejection to the World Bank or Inter-American Development Bank, but a sign of solidarity and fraternity towards the South American community." At this time, only four South American states aren't included - Chile, Peru, Guyana and Surinam, but Chile seems likely to come aboard following Colombia's lead, and the others may decide to join them.

Finance ministers from the founding countries met in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil October 8 to finalize the Bank's Founding Document. Many key operating issues have yet to be resolved, but unofficial information was that each nation will commit 10% of its international reserves and have equal oversight over the new institution. In a concluding news conference, Brazilian finance minister Guido Mantega stated: the participating countries "have been able to overcome all obstacles that were in the way of an understanding around the formation of the Bank of the South. We can now say that the (bank) is close to becoming a reality" even though Brazil (Latin America's largest economy) hasn't yet formalized its entry.

Venezuelan finance minister Rodrigo Cabezas explained the bank will help develop the region by offering South Americans more credits. It's being "created to build a new architecture that assumes an improved relationship of the bank and its capacity to offer credits for its people." It also aims to increase liquidity and revive socioeconomic development and infrastructure investments in participating countries and keep them outside the restrictive control of the IMF and World Bank that are fast losing influence and being phased out of the region.

In 2005, 80% of IMF's $81 billion loan portfolio was to Latin America. Today, it's 1% with nearly all its $17 billion in outstanding loans to Turkey and Pakistan. The World Bank is also being rejected. Venezuela had already paid off its IMF and World Bank debt ahead of schedule when Hugo Chavez symbolically announced on April 30: "We will no longer have to go to Washington nor to the IMF nor to the World Bank, not to anyone." Ecuador's Rafael Correa is following suit. He cleared his country's IMF debt, suspended World Bank loans, accused the WB of trying to extort money from him when he was economy and finance minister in 2005, and last April declared the Bank's country representative persona non grata in an extraordinary diplomatic slap in the face.

The Banco del Sur will replace these repressive institutions with $7 billion in startup capital when it begins operating in 2008. It will be under "a new financial architecture" for regional investment with the finance ministers of each member nation sitting on the bank's administrative council with equal authority over its operations as things now stand. Venezuelan Finance Minister Rodrigo Cabezas stressed the bank's Latin roots, saying: "The idea is to rely on a development agency for us, led by us" to finance public and private development and regional integration projects. He added: "There will not be credit subjected to economic policies. There will not be credit that produces a calamity for our people and as a result, it will not be a tool of domination" like the international lending agencies.

Hugo Chavez's vision is to liberate the region's countries from IMF, World Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank (IBD) control that condemn millions to poverty through their lending practices. Helped by windfall oil profits, his government is already doing it with an unprecedented commitment to provide financial aid and below-market priced oil to regional and other countries. So far this year, it's on the order of around $9 billion, and, unlike the Washington-controlled kind, it comes at low cost and with good will, a cooperative spirit and few if any strings.

Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz recognizes Chavez's efforts and stated his support for the Banco del Sur on an October 10 visit to Caracas. He said "One of the advantages of having a Bank of the South is that it would reflect the perspectives of those in the South (while in contrast IMF and World Bank conditions) hinder (regional) development effectiveness."

Stiglitz met with Hugo Chavez on his visit and praised his redistributive social policies. He also criticized Washington Consensus neoliberal practices that exploit the region's people, "undermin(e)....Andean cooperation, and it is part of the American strategy of divide and conquer, a strategy trying to get as much of the benefits for American companies" at the expense of the region and its people.

Venezuela's acting ambassador to the Permanent Mission to the UN, Aura Mahuampi Rodriguez de Ortiz, warned the world body about Latin American debt during her participation in the General Debate on Macroeconomic Policies in October. She stressed: "The persistence of the foreign debt of the developing countries affects negatively on its process of development. It is not worthy to direct resources for the development of poor countries if such resources end up directed to the payment of the foreign debt" instead of going to economic development internally. She also spoke of the new Bank of the South, how it will help strengthen regional integration and also fairly distribute investments and finance projects to reduce poverty and social exclusion.

A less publicized Bank of ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) will also begin operating by year end under "a new regional financial architecture under principles that create a new form of channeling financial resources" to its four country alliance - Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

Chavez first proposed ALBA as an alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in 2001 with Venezuela, Cuba, and Bolivia its original members in December, 2004. Nicaragua then joined the alliance in January, 2007 under its newly elected president, Daniel Ortega, who signed on as his first act in office. ALBA's goal is ambitious. It is the comprehensive integration of the region and development of the "social state" for all its people. It is boldly based on member states' complementarity, not competition; solidarity, not domination; cooperation, not exploitation; and respect for each participating nation's sovereign right to be free from the grip of other countries and corporate giants.

In April, the 5th ALBA summit was held in Caracas to discuss ways to improve the alliance. Initiatives covered included a Permanent (coordinating) Secretariat and a plan to create 12 public companies to be co-managed by ALBA member states. Its goal is to strengthen key economic sectors in areas of energy, agriculture, telecommunications, infrastructure, industrial supplies and cement production. ALBA country foreign ministers then agreed in June to create a development Bank of ALBA to help finance these ventures with low-cost credit. It will complement the Banco del Sur and also be headquartered in Caracas.

Uncertain Future Prospects

Socially responsible regional banks, like those discussed above, will challenge the dominant institutions of finance capital if they fulfill their promise. But therein lies the problem. These new institutions aren't panaceas and they may end up letting capital interests exploit them for their own advantage. In addition, financial autonomy alone won't free the region from Washington's grip without greater change. What's needed are sweeping nationalizations of basic industries, an end to one-way WTO-style trade deals, socially redistributing national resources, developing local economies, achieving land and housing reform, plus a sweeping commitment to social equity and a resolve to end a 25 year neoliberal nightmare. From 1960 to 1980, the region's per capita income growth was 82%. From 1980 to 2000, however, it was 9%, and from 2000 to 2005 only 4%. For the region, it meant sweeping poverty, inequality and the most extreme disparity between the super-rich and desperate poor in the world.

Change is needed, and Venezuela under Hugo Chavez has done most in the region to achieve it. Finance Minister Rodrigo Cabezas just presented his government's 2008 budget to the National Assembly that allocates 46% of it to social spending. It devotes special attention to health and education but also to subsidized and free food, land reform, housing, micro credit, job training, cooperatives and more as Chavez continues to use his nation's resources to address the needs of his people. Since he took office, social spending per person is up more than threefold and in 2006 was 20.9% of GDP.

Chavez now has an ally in Ecuador under Rafael Correa, whose early efforts are promising. Hopefully, they'll continue under a new constitution to be drafted in the next six months and then put to a national referendum next year. Other Bank of the South founding countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia, however, claim to be center-left but, in fact, embrace 1990s neoliberalism, and financial autonomy won't change that. The Bank of the South will only work if it fulfills a mandate to prioritize local needs and development, not corporate ones. That's a tall order, and achieving it won't be easy with its dominant member, Brazil under Lula, closely tied to Washington and in its grip.

Nonetheless, small signs of change are emerging, the Bank of the South may be one of them, and a new generation of leftist leaders may in the end break Washington's weakening (but still strong) hold on the region. That's the hope, and every step forward means more power to the people and another possible world.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information Hour on TheMicroEffect.com Mondays at noon US central time.

Declaración final Encuentro indígena mundial: Mandato de los Pueblos y Naciones Indígenas Originarios a los Estados del Mundo

Chimoré, Cochabamba - Bolivia, 12 de octubre del 2007

Desde el corazón de América del Sur a los 12 días del mes de octubre de 2007, los delegados y delegadas de los pueblos y naciones indígenas originarias del mundo, reunidos en el Encuentro Mundial: “Por la Victoria Histórica de los Pueblos Indígenas del Mundo”, para celebrar la aprobación de la Declaración de las Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas, expresamos nuestra palabra:

Que a 515 años de opresión y dominación, aquí estamos, no han podido eliminarnos. Hemos enfrentado y resistido a las políticas de etnocidio, genocidio, colonización, destrucción y saqueo. La imposición de sistemas económicos como el capitalismo, caracterizado por el intervencionismo, las guerras y los desastres socio-ambientales, sistema que continúa amenazando nuestros modos de vida como pueblos.

Que como consecuencia de la política neoliberal de dominación de la naturaleza, de la búsqueda de ganancia fácil de la concentración del capital en pocas manos y la irracional explotación de los recursos naturales, nuestra Madre Tierra está herida de muerte, mientras los pueblos indígenas seguimos siendo desalojados de nuestros territorios. El planeta se está recalentando. Estamos viviendo un cambio climático sin precedentes, donde los desastres socioambientales son cada vez más fuertes y más frecuentes, donde todos sin excepción somos afectados y afectadas.

Que nos asecha una gran crisis energética, donde la Era del Petróleo está por concluir, sin que hayamos encontrado una energía alternativa limpia que la pueda sustituir en las cantidades necesarias para mantener a esa civilización occidental que nos ha hecho totalmente dependiente de los hidrocarburos.

Que esta situación pueda ser una amenaza que nos dejará expuestos al peligro que las políticas neoliberales e imperialistas desaten guerras por las últimas gotas del llamado oro negro y el oro azul, pero también pueda darnos la oportunidad de hacer de este nuevo milenio un milenio de la vida, un milenio del equilibrio y la complementariedad, sin tener que abusar de energías que destruyen a la Madre Tierra.

Que tanto los recursos naturales como las tierras y territorios que habitamos son nuestros por historia, por nacimiento, por derecho y por siempre, por lo que la libre determinación sobre éstos es fundamental para poder mantener nuestra vida, ciencias, sabidurías, espiritualidad, organización, medicinas y soberanía alimentaría.

Que empieza una nueva era impulsada por los pueblos indígenas origina¬rios, dando luz a los tiempos de cambio, a los tiempos de Pachakuti, en tiempos de la culminación del Quinto Sol.

Que saludamos la aprobación de la Declaración de las Naciones Unidas sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas, que es esencial para su supervivencia y bienestar de los mas de 370 millones de indígenas, en alrededor de 70 países del mundo. Luego de más de veinte años de lucha, da respuesta a nuestra demanda histórica de libre determinación de los pueblos y el reconocimiento de los mismos y los derechos colectivos.

La Declaración aprobada contiene un conjunto de principios y normas que reconocen y establecen en el régimen normativo internacional, los derechos fundamentales de los Pueblos Indígenas, los cuales que deben ser la base de la nueva relación entre los Pueblos Indígenas, los Estados, las sociedades y cooperación en todo el mundo. Por lo tanto, además de otros instrumentos jurídicos relativos a los derechos humanos ya existentes, la Declaración, es la nueva base normativa y práctica para garantizar y proteger los derechos indígenas en diversos ámbitos y niveles.

Exhortamos a los países miembros de las Naciones Unidas y alentamos a los pueblos indígenas que den cumplimiento y práctica a este importante instrumento de significación histórica. Censuramos a los gobiernos que votaron en contra de la Declaración sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas, y condenamos la doble moral.

Que nos comprometemos a respaldar el histórico esfuerzo liderado por el hermano Evo Morales, Presidente de los Pueblos Indígenas de Abya Yala, en la construcción de un nuevo Estado plurinacional. Ante cualquier amenaza interna o externa, estaremos vigilantes de lo que suceda en Bolivia y pedimos a los pueblos del planeta brinden su apoyo y solidaridad a este proceso, que debe servir de ejemplo para que los Pueblos, Naciones y Estados del mundo continuemos por esta misma senda.

Por tanto, los Pueblos y Naciones Indígenas del mundo exigimos a los Estados cumplir los siguientes mandatos:

1. Construir un mundo basado en la Cultura de la Vida, en la identidad, filosofía, cosmovisión y espiritualidad milenaria de los pueblos indígenas originarios, aplicando los conocimientos y saberes ancestrales, consolidando procesos de intercambio y hermandad entre las naciones y respetando la autodeterminación.

2. Asumir decisiones nacionales e internacionales para salvar a la Madre Naturaleza de los desastres que está provocando el capitalismo en su decadencia, que se manifiesta en el calentamiento global y la crisis ecológica; reafirmando que la cultura indígena originaria es la única alternativa para salvar nuestro planeta tierra.

3. Sustituir los actuales modelos de desarrollo basados en el capitalismo, en la mercancía, en la explotación irracional de la humanidad y los recursos naturales, en el derroche de energía y en el consumismo, por modelos que coloquen a la vida, a la complementariedad, a la reciprocidad, al respeto de la diversidad cultural y el uso sustentable de los recursos naturales como las principales prioridades.

4. Aplicar políticas nacionales sobre Soberanía Alimentaria como base principal de la Soberanía Nacional, en la cual la comunidad garantiza tanto el respeto a su propia cultura como espacios y modos propios de producción, distribución y consumo en equilibrio con la naturaleza de alimentos sanos y limpios de contaminación para toda la población, eliminando el hambre, porque la alimentación es un derecho para la vida.

5. Repudiar los planes y proyectos de la generación de energía como el biocombustible, que destruyen y niegan el alimento a los pueblos. Asimismo condenamos la utilización de semillas transgénicas porque acaba con nuestras semillas milenarias y nos obliga a depender de la agroindustria.

6. Valorar y revalorizar el papel de la mujer indígena originaria como vanguardia de las luchas emancipatorias de nuestros pueblos bajo principios de dualidad, igualdad y equidad de la relación hombre mujer.

7. Asumir la Cultura de la Paz y la Vida como guía para resolver los problemas y conflictos del mundo, renunciando a la carrera armamentista, e iniciar el desarme para garantizar la preservación de la vida del planeta.

8. Asumir transformaciones legales justas necesarias para construir sistemas y medios de comunicación e información que estén basados en nuestra cosmovisión, espiritualidad y filosofía comunal, en la sabiduría de nuestros antepasados. Garantizar el reconocimiento al derecho a la comunicación e información de los pueblos indígenas.

9. Garantizar el respeto y derecho a la vida, a la salud y la educación intercultural bilingüe, construyendo políticas en beneficio de los pueblos y naciones indígenas originarias.

10. Declarar como derechos humanos el agua, por ser un elemento vital y un bien social de la humanidad, que no debe ser objeto de lucro. Asimismo, impulsar el uso de energías alternativas que no amenacen la vida del planeta, garantizando de esta manera el acceso a todos los servicios básicos.

11. Resolver de manera corresponsable las causas de la migración entre países, asumiendo políticas de libre circulación de personas para garantizar un mundo sin fronteras donde no exista discriminación, marginación y exclusión.

12. Descolonizar las Naciones Unidas, y trasladar su sede a un territorio que dignifique y exprese las justas aspiraciones de los Pueblos, Naciones y Estados del mundo.

13. No criminalizar las luchas de los pueblos indígenas, ni satanizar o acusarnos de terroristas, cuando los pueblos reclamamos nuestros derechos y planteamientos de cómo salvar la vida y la humanidad.

14. Liberar de manera inmediata a líderes y lideresas indígenas encarcelados en las diferentes partes del mundo; principalmente a Leonard Peltier en Estados Unidos.

La lucha no se detiene, se acabó el resistir por resistir, llegó nuestro tiempo. Proclamamos el 12 de octubre “día de inicio de nuestras luchas para salvar a la Madre Naturaleza”.

Desde nuestras familias, hogares, comunidades, pueblos, estando o no estando en el gobierno de nuestros países, nosotros mismos decidimos y encaminamos nuestros destinos, nosotros mismos asumimos la voluntad y responsabilidad del Vivir Bien que nos han legado nuestros ancestros, para irradiar desde lo más sencillo y simple a lo más grande y complejo, para construir de manera horizontal y entre todas, todos y el todo, la cultura de la paciencia, la cultura del diálogo y fundamentalmente la Cultura de la Vida.

Por los muertos, héroes y mártires que abonaron nuestras vidas, por sus utopías y anhelos, fortalezcamos nuestra identidad, nuestros procesos organizativos y nuestras luchas hasta lograr construir la unidad de los pueblos del mundo y volver al equilibrio, salvando a la vida, a la humanidad y el planeta tierra.

Ratificamos nuestro apoyo al hermano Evo Morales para Premio Nobel de la Paz, por su permanente e incondicional entrega de servicio al bien por la humanidad, los pueblos, el planeta y la paz mundial.

----------

Más información sobre el Encuentro, incluyendo las conclusiones de las mesas de trabajo, en:

http://www.movimientos.org/12octubre/

*************************************
Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales
http://movimientos.org/

“Amerika Über Alles” — Our Nazi Nation by Captain Eric H. May

The United States has become the Nazi Germany of the 21st Century (and the second half of the 20th Century as well)

Peter Guenther’s Prologue

The most persuasive anti-Nazi I ever knew was my mentor, Dr. Peter W. Guenther, who believed that Nazism was monstrous at every level. As a professor of humanities, he thought it was both inhumane and inhuman. As a professor of art history he thought its aesthetics were artless histrionics. He readily granted that his intellectual opinions were molded by his personal experiences. As a German veteran of World War II, he regretted the loss of his youth, the waste of his friends’ lives and the devastation that they had inflicted on others. He held Hitler accountable for all of this — after all, it was Hitler who had drafted them into the war. He had served from 1939 to 1945, from Poland to Norway to France to Russia. He once quipped that before every one of their invasions their leaders said they were fighting for national defense, but after the shooting started every soldier on every side believed that he was fighting for his own self-defense.

By the time of the Iraq war he was retired from academe, and I was writing military analysis for media. As US forces began storming up the Euphrates Valley in the spring of 2003, hell-bent on Baghdad, we began to discuss the limited American mobilized manpower and materiel, and the overall limitations of blitz tactics. Guided by his insights, I published a then-radical op-ed in the Houston Chronicle that predicted a quicksand war in Iraq, and maybe a world war as a result of it.

As the easy war promised us by the Bush administration wore on into the summer of 2003, Dr. Guenther and I began to note that there were more similarities between Post-9/11 America and Third Reich Germany than just over-reliance on Blitzkrieg tactics. We finally determined that the two nations were following parallel political courses. Most disturbing for my mentor, who had become a patriotic American citizen after World War II, was the painful conclusion that our American president, with his global war for a New American Century, was just another German fuhrer, with a world war for a Thousand Year Reich. “This is a bad copy of a bad original,” he said.

“Drang Nach Ost” — The Eastern Offensive

George W. Bush came into office with a secret war plan and no excuse to implement it — just as Hitler had come into office in 1933 with the same predicament. Both of them wanted the prize of Middle Eastern oil. In Hitler’s case that meant going through “Judeo-Bolshevik” Russia on the way, while in Bush’s case that meant going through “Islamo-Fascist” Iraq. In Hitler’s case the guiding document was Mein Kampf, while in Bush’s case there were two. A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm was presented to the Israeli government in 1996 by American neocons Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and David Wurmser, among others. Restructuring America’s Defenses was presented to the American government in 2000. Its arguments mirrored the Israeli document, and had been drawn up by the neocons as well. In 2001 Feith, Perle and Wurmser became key Bush administration members.

Neither Hitler’s nor Bush’s plans for world dominance could have been pursued without some good luck, though. Both leaders entered office with over half their nations opposing them, and an avid opposition that wanted to pull them down. Hitler’s good luck came with the Reichstag fire, blamed on Jewish Communists, which mobilized his fatherland to rally behind him. Bush’s good luck happened on 9/11, blamed on Muslim Fundamentalists, which mobilized his homeland to rally behind him.

In both cases, their followers smiled at their good luck, and began their new order of things. Hitler quickly instituted an Enabling Act for the protection of the German people, slated for expiration in five years, which was quietly continued. Bush quickly instituted a Patriot Act for the protection of the American people, slated for expiration in five years, which was quietly continued. Hitler created the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) to further protect the German people, while Bush created the Homeland Security Agency (Homeseca) to do the same for the American people.

“Führer Prinzip” — The Unitary Executive

Both leaders were believers in the authoritarian concept. A few weeks before assuming office, Bush said outright that he thought dictatorship would be a fine form of government, if he could be the dictator. They both believed that power should come from above and obedience should come from below, and they offered protection in exchange for loyalty. Thus no one was surprised when Hermann Goering made a fortune helping to run Germany, just as no one was surprised when Irving “Scooter” Libby received a pardon for his pro-Bush political crimes in America.

Both leaders supplemented their new security police and security acts with concentration camps such as Dachau and Gitmo, initially designed for only a small percentage of national enemies. Both dispensed with international rules and regulations in their treatment of enemies in those installations, and applied a wide variety of innovative persuasive techniques to extract information and obtain confessions. The lessons learned in these proto-type camps proved to be invaluable in later establishments such as Auschwitz and Abu Ghraib.

Both leaders relied on agreeable legislatures. In Germany the Reichstag cheered enthusiastically as it endorsed the increase in police powers, the reduction in civil rights and the national march to world war. In America Congress did the same things, but in more subdued fashion, even with a show of dissent. In Germany, Hitler declared a dictatorship under Article 48, provided by the old Weimar Constitution for the event of a national emergency. In America Bush recently created National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD 51), thereby legalizing a dictatorship in the event of a national emergency.

“Gott Mit Uns” — God’s on Our Side

Neither Hitler nor Bush could have effected their radical plans without a party full of functionaries and a compliant national media, of course. Hitler relied on his “Nazi” party, a word derived from the name of his National Socialist organization. He had a brilliant individual named Joseph Goebbels to control the Reich Propaganda Ministry and rally the public behind Nazi policies. Bush relied on his “Nozi” party, a word derived from “Zionism,” with the first four letters Z-i-o-n remixed into N-o-z-i. He had a brilliant cartel of Zionists to control the American Mainstream Media and rally the public behind Nozi policies.

The greatest accomplishment of both the Nazi and Nozi parties was convincing themselves and their citizens that they were not conspirators of any sort, but rather the victims of an international conspiracy. The Nazi party never tired of saying that Judeo-Communism was the hidden enemy, against which all the powers of a determined fatherland had to be directed, and that they were the targets of anti-German propaganda. The Nozi party never tires of saying that Islamo-Fascism is the hidden enemy, against which all the powers of a determined homeland have to be directed, and that they are the targets of anti-Semitic propaganda.

The rest of the world didn’t buy the pro-war propaganda from Germany’s Nazis three generations ago, and they don’t buy it from America’s Nozis three generations later. The way the rest of the world sees it, what we have been taught to call the axis of evil is not so dangerous to the world as the axis of America and Israel. They see American naval forces massing in the name of national defense against Iran, and they remember Iraq. They see Israeli air forces attacking Syria, and they remember Lebanon. The rest of the world knows who we have become, even if we don’t.

Peter Guenther’s Epilogue: He died in 2005, and was followed by his wife Andrea six months later. They had been married for 58 years, and had been American citizens for more than 50. For more about my friendship with them, refer to the first and fourth volumes of my 2003 Iraq war correspondence here.

Captain May is a former Army military intelligence and public affairs officer, as well as a former NBC editorial writer. His political and military analyses have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Houston Chronicle and Military Intelligence Magazine. Read other articles by Captain Eric, or visit Captain Eric's website.



"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow

"In order to live better sometimes you have to exploit, steal, discriminate, and plunder, but to live the good life is to live communally"

Central speech by the President of the Republic of Bolivia, Evo Morales Ayma, at the 62nd Session of the United Nations (UN), addressing the environment. United Nations, 26 September, 2007

I would like to take this opportunity to express my extreme satisfaction over the election of the new General Secretary of the United Nations who will be leading this international organization for the good of humanity, and above all for the good of the abandoned and dispossessed.

That is why I wish to briefly comment about my country. For the first time in Bolivia’s history the most abandoned sectors, the most despised, scorned, and vilified in Bolivian history, the indigenous people, have assumed leadership of the country in order to transform our beloved Bolivia.

Political changes, economic changes and a commitment to recreate our country. We seek unity, respect for our diversity, and respect for our identity so that together we can solve our economic and social problems.

In this short time I have found that it will be difficult and we will have to struggle for equality and justice for all those living in the country.

But at the same time when the popular movement, the indigenous movement, intellectuals, even businessmen and professionals commit themselves with a great deal of effort to the earth and to their people, one is encouraged to continue working and transforming, democratically and peacefully to guarantee a cultural revolution in my country.

But recovering our natural resources has been the most important step. It pains me to say that in my country during the neo-liberal governments, natural resources and state companies were privatized. Under the pretext of capitalization they de-capitalized the country. They claimed that privatization was the solution for unemployment and corruption, but instead we have seen unemployment and corruption increase.

Just a few years ago Bolivia was considered the world’s champion of corruption, and now I am very pleased that international organizations have noted that corruption in Bolivia has dropped significantly. We would like to eradicate it.

I want you all to know that in 2005, before I became president of the Republic and the hydrocarbons, petroleum, and natural gas were in the hands of trans-nationals, Bolivia only received $300 million from hydrocarbons.

After modifying the hydrocarbon law, after recovering and nationalizing this extremely important natural resource, Bolivia received more than $2,000 million this year.

Therefore I would like to say from experience, to all presidents or nations where the natural resources have been privatized, it is important to recover these natural resources with the support of the people, for the benefit of the people and the nation.

I understand perfectly that the companies have the right to recover their investments and they have the right to profit. But not so much like before which amounted to the outright plunder of our natural resources.

What is most important about this short period is that we have begun to de-colonize Bolivia internally and externally. I say internally because in the past masters ruled our country. If we review our history we find that viceroy masters, religious groups, and the oligarchy have ruled. The people have never had any power.

Now we are establishing the people’s power, so that sovereignty belongs to the people instead of to a group of families and so that the people have the right to decide their own destiny. That is the best democracy we can implement.

It is not just a matter of simply opting for certain policies. When I say that we have begun to de-colonize externally I am not only talking about being subjugated to landlords o bosses in my country. I want you all to know right now that no ambassadors will change our ministers or name ministers in my country.

Regrettably in the past, the U.S. ambassadors changed and named our ministers. That is over. That is why we have begun to de-colonize our country.

In the past the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund imposed policies. That has also ended. I remember perfectly and I want you all to know a little bit of my country’s history.

In 2003, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund told the president of that time that either a spike in gas prices or a high tax had to be imposed in order to avoid a fiscal deficit. The government chose the tax. They taxed workers wages and in two days there were more than 15 Bolivians dead from internal clashes.

I want to inform you all that Bolivia enjoyed a fiscal surplus this year without taxes and without gasoline price spikes thanks to the recovery of our hydrocarbons, which are so important to my country. I want you all to know that we have already begun the external de-colonization.

Because we are interested in how to better gather the proposals and initiatives of our people, of organized people. These social forces, be they civic or labor, especially those with serious economic problems, they have the wisdom to propose initiatives and solutions from their communities, from their trade unions. That is my experience.

So I think it is important to develop the power of the people, thus giving social forces the power to make the decisions. I, as president, only rule in compliance with the people. In this way we will be able to solve our problems.

Yesterday, over the past few days and hours I have heard some very encouraging speeches, but also others that really disappointed me. For example global warming and climate change were addressed. I feel that many of our countries are victims of these phenomenon.

I still cannot understand why there are so many lives lost in floods, invasions, or wars. So many lives lost to hunger. I feel that there are economic models that cannot solve the problems of humanity. After having heard many of the statements made here and the experiences expressed by other presidents, I am even more convinced that the concentration of capital in a few hands is not the solution for humanity. Models that accumulate wealth in a few hands are not the solution for humankind, for life, and even less for the poor that inhabit this planet earth.

Global warming and melting icecaps were addressed but without mention of their cause. I am convinced that the cause is what is wrongly termed globalization, or selective globalization, a globalization that does not respect plurality or differences.

When talking about globalization we must first globalize the human being. Well, I don’t know how you all managed to make it to New York, United States, but my delegation had difficulties getting visas. Our parliamentarians, our congresspersons could not obtain visas to come to the U.S.

When I arrived here, my ministers, indigenous brothers, were held up in the airport and subjected to hours and hours of processing. Some from other countries arrived here only to be threatened by the head of the house, President Bush. If it is like that, if it is going to continue to be like that, I think we presidents, we nations, should think about changing the headquarters of the United Nations. I personally do not agree with being subjected to such investigations when coming here.

I feel that it is also time to de-colonize the United Nations. We should all be respected whether we are small or large, with problems or without.

The speeches I heard about polar melting did not reflect on the cause of this melting, this global warming. It is capitalism and the exaggerated and unlimited industrialization of some countries that generates these problems on the continent and around the globe.

But when we align ourselves with social movements in order to protest, to condemn these unsustainable policies, these economic models that do not solve our economic problems, then comes the interventions, military bases, and wars, the demonizing and accusations of terrorism, as if the people have no right to appeal for their needs, to claim their rights and to demand new approaches to rescuing life and humankind.

Therefore I believe it is important that we as presidents, as nations, as delegates sincerely speak the truth about these economic problems that are being faced not only by Bolivia, America, or South America. But when democratic changes take place in South America, liberating democracies not democracies subjugated to the empire, we hear more accusations and distortions, charges of cruelty and of dictators like those I heard President Bush directing towards the president and commander Cuba yesterday.

A salute to all revolutionaries. Especially to President Fidel for whom I have much respect, because Fidel has also sent troops to many countries. But these troops save lives, unlike those deployed by the U.S. president to take lives.

Therefore here, as presidents we should think of life, of humanity, about how to save the planet earth. The issue of global climate change is an ongoing debate.

Esteemed members, I am convinced that is not possible for basic services to continue being in the hands of private business. Fortunately, thanks to the foreign ministers of the Americas, water has been recognized as a human right. If water is a human right then it's now important that it become a public service and not a private business.

Is vital now, right here, to recognize energy as a human right also. Hopefully we can all agree that energy is a human right; and if it is a human right it should never be controlled by private business. Instead it must be a public service in order to meet the needs of the people.

I cannot understand their pretext of hegemony or the accumulation of capital in a few hands, which will only continue harming humanity, affecting the poor, marginalizing the needy.

I believe that that we are talking in order to change these economic policies that have caused and go on causing so much damage. These economic policies have caused genocide; and the genocide continues. I cannot understand why there are still countries involved in an arms race, I don’t agree with war. We are exploring how a large social, political movement, via a new constitution, can reject war.

I'm convinced that war is the industry of death, thus the arms race is just another industry that complements the industry and death. In this new millennium, how can countries and presidents still go on dealing with the interventions, arrogance, and authoritarianism of some countries towards other countries, without even considering humanity.

Esteemed presidents, I believe, that together we can work toward rescuing planet earth, which is the most important issue at the moment if we want to save life and humanity.

But yesterday I heard some speeches about Biofuel. I tried to understand what biofuel, or agrofuel is. I don't understand how we can give up our food to automobiles; I can't understand how the land can be given over to heaps of metal.

I think that food should be for human beings, the land for life. Because we lack gasoline, because we lack diesel we're going to divert land and food to automobiles?

For this reason I said two days ago that if we are really interested in life we would abandon luxury. It's imperative to abandon luxury. We cannot continue accumulating garbage, we cannot continue thinking only about a few families instead of thinking about humanity. I think that we have profound differences if we talk about these issues of life, especially the lives of our national majorities.

I wish to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank you all for your support, with the exception of four governments, their presidents and their delegates, in approving the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the world. I'm very satisfied. The people of America have waited more than 500 years for their rights to be recognized. We are the culture of patience.

And I want to make clear that just because we have a declaration now doesn’t mean that the indigenous movement is going to become vengeful towards other sectors. The indigenous people do not have a vengeful character. The indigenous people are a culture of dialogue and we are fundamentally a culture of life.

I ask the United Nations to convene a world indigenous forum soon so that we can share our experiences. In Bolivia we are gathering and drawing from our experiences with a program called the good life. In order to live better sometimes you have to exploit, to live better sometimes you have to steal, to live better sometimes you have to discriminate, to live better sometimes you have to plunder, but to live the good life is to live communally, to live collectively.

And not only among human beings, but also to live the good life in harmony with mother earth. The earth for the indigenous movement is sacred; mother earth is our life. The Pachamama, as we say in our language, cannot be converted into merchandise. If we're talking about and protesting against global warming, well, first we must understand what mother earth is. If the earth gives us life we are obligated to change our policies and to also recognize the indigenous movement.

We have lived collectively, communally; those with experience are here debating. We argue for collectivity, communitarianism and against capitalism. Let us draw from those experiences in order to defend life and rescue humankind.

I also want to quickly take this moment to say that this new millennium must be the millennium of life, the millennium of equality, of justice that respects our identity and is committed to human dignity.

Therefore we're talking about changing the economic models that harm humanity. But if we want to change things from here, we must first change ourselves. We mustn’t be egoistic, individualistic, greedy, ambitious, or sectarian. We mustn’t place the interests of a few families above those of the great family of planet earth.

So, we're talking here about first changing ourselves as presidents, as representatives of our respective nations in order to change economic models and seek equality and justice.

And I tell you that in these past 20 months as president working with the people, listening to their needs, I have found that there are still some groups that don’t want to lose their privileges, ill-gotten privileges. Above all they are accustom to the State doing business for the benefit of just a few families instead of for the [Bolivian] family.

I learned in these 20 months as president how beautiful it is to work for the homeland and not for money, how wonderful it is to work for these abandoned people, and how much better it has been to work together with some people who are economically well off but who also love their homeland and are committed to solidarity.

I would like to mention, you all know that we have a historical problem with the sister Republic of Chile: the issue of the ocean. I want to say that so far we have felt a real sense of amity, people to people amity, government to government amity, president to president amity, under the diplomacy of the people.

And we want to pledge to resolve the historic issue but within the framework of complementarity. Because neighboring countries, Latin American countries, countries of the world need to complement one another if we want to solve the problems of our people and the problems of our nations.

The concept of complimentarity is so important and we continue working towards this for humankind. In closing I'd like to say (...sometimes the red light makes one nervous, but never mind...) I would like to say that these kinds of participatory event where we all learn and continue learning, are the best universities available. But we must speak with clarity, with sincerity and not falsify the truth by only speaking of the effects and not the causes or of humanity’s problems.

In this case I wish to tell you all that I believe it is vital to change those economic models and eradicate capitalism.

Thank you very much.

Translated from ABI by Dawn Gable


Posted by Bolivia Rising on Thursday, October 04, 2007


"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano

New revelations in Israeli attack on American spy ship USS Liberty

The Strike on USS Liberty

New revelations in attack on American spy ship

Veterans, documents suggest U.S., Israel didn't tell full story of deadly '67 incident

By John Crewdson


Bryce Lockwood, Marine staff sergeant, Russian-language expert, recipient of the Silver Star for heroism, ordained Baptist minister, is shouting into the phone.

"I'm angry! I'm seething with anger! Forty years, and I'm seething with anger!"

Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.

For Lockwood and many other survivors, the anger is mixed with incredulity: that Israel would attack an important ally, then attribute the attack to a case of mistaken identity by Israeli pilots who had confused the U.S. Navy's most distinctive ship with an Egyptian horse-cavalry transport that was half its size and had a dissimilar profile. And they're also incredulous that, for years, their own government would reject their calls for a thorough investigation.

"They tried to lie their way out of it!" Lockwood shouts. "I don't believe that for a minute! You just don't shoot at a ship at sea without identifying it, making sure of your target!"

Four decades later, many of the more than two dozen Liberty survivors located and interviewed by the Tribune cannot talk about the attack without shouting or weeping.

Their anger has been stoked by the declassification of government documents and the recollections of former military personnel, including some quoted in this article for the first time, which strengthen doubts about the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots -- communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.

The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.

In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country's chief U.S. electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had "become the center of considerable controversy and debate." It was not the agency's intention, it said, "to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material," available athttp://www.nsa.gov/liberty .

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, called the attack on the Liberty "a tragic and terrible accident, a case of mistaken identity, for which Israel has officially apologized." Israel also paid reparations of $6.7 million to the injured survivors and the families of those killed in the attack, and another $6 million for the loss of the Liberty itself.

But for those who lost their sons and husbands, neither the Israelis' apology nor the passing of time has lessened their grief.

One is Pat Blue, who still remembers having her lunch in Washington's Farragut Square park on "a beautiful June afternoon" when she was a 22-year-old secretary for a law firm.

Blue heard somebody's portable radio saying a U.S. Navy ship had been torpedoed in the eastern Mediterranean. A few weeks before, Blue's husband of two years, an Arab-language expert with the NSA, had been hurriedly dispatched overseas.

As she listened to the news report, "it just all came together." Soon afterward, the NSA confirmed that Allen Blue was among the missing.

"I never felt young again," she said.

Aircraft on the horizon

Beginning before dawn on June 8, Israeli aircraft regularly appeared on the horizon and circled the Liberty.

The Israeli Air Force had gained control of the skies on the first day of the war by destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground. America was Israel's ally, and the Israelis knew the Americans were there. The ship's mission was to monitor the communications of Israel's Arab enemies and their Soviet advisers, but not Israeli communications. The Liberty felt safe.

Then the jets started shooting at the officers and enlisted men stretched out on the deck for a lunch-hour sun bath. Theodore Arfsten, a quartermaster, remembered watching a Jewish officer cry when he saw the blue Star of David on the planes' fuselages. At first, crew members below decks had no idea whose planes were shooting at their ship.

Thirty-four died that day, including Blue, the only civilian casualty. An additional 171 were wounded in the air and sea assault by Israel, which was about to celebrate an overwhelming victory over the combined armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and several other Arab states.

For most of those who survived the attack, the Six-Day War has become the defining moment of their lives.

Some mustered out of the Navy as soon as their enlistments were up. Others stayed in long enough to retire. Several went on to successful business careers. One became a Secret Service agent, another a Baltimore policeman.

Several are being treated with therapy and drugs for what has since been recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder. One has undergone more than 30 major operations. Another suffers seizures caused by a piece of shrapnel still lodged in his brain.

After Bryce Lockwood left the Marines, he worked construction, then tried selling insurance. "I'd get a job and get fired," he said. "I had a hell of a time getting my feet on the ground."

With his linguistic background, Lockwood could have had a career with the NSA, the CIA, or the FBI. But he was too angry at the U.S. government to work for it. "Don't talk to me about government!" he shouts.

U.S. Navy jets were called back

An Israeli military court of inquiry later acknowledged that their naval headquarters knew at least three hours before the attack that the odd-looking ship 13 miles off the Sinai Peninsula, sprouting more than 40 antennas capable of receiving every kind of radio transmission, was "an electromagnetic audio-surveillance ship of the U.S. Navy," a floating electronic vacuum cleaner.

The Israeli inquiry later concluded that that information had simply gotten lost, never passed along to the ground controllers who directed the air attack nor to the crews of the three Israeli torpedo boats who picked up where the air force left off, strafing the Liberty's decks with their machine guns and launching a torpedo that blew a 39-foot hole in its starboard side.

To a man, the survivors interviewed by the Tribune rejected Israel's explanation.

Nor, the survivors said, did they understand why the American 6th Fleet, which included the aircraft carriers America and Saratoga, patrolling 400 miles west of the Liberty, launched and then recalled at least two squadrons of Navy fighter-bombers that might have arrived in time to prevent the torpedo attack -- and save 26 American lives.

J.Q. "Tony" Hart, then a chief petty officer assigned to a U.S. Navy relay station in Morocco that handled communications between Washington and the 6th Fleet, remembered listening as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, in Washington, ordered Rear Adm. Lawrence Geis, commander of the America's carrier battle group, to bring the jets home.

When Geis protested that the Liberty was under attack and needed help, Hart said, McNamara retorted that "President [Lyndon] Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors."

McNamara, who is now 91, told the Tribune he has "absolutely no recollection of what I did that day," except that "I have a memory that I didn't know at the time what was going on."

The Johnson administration did not publicly dispute Israel's claim that the attack had been nothing more than a disastrous mistake. But internal White House documents obtained from the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library show that the Israelis' explanation of how the mistake had occurred was not believed.

Except for McNamara, most senior administration officials from Secretary of State Dean Rusk on down privately agreed with Johnson's intelligence adviser, Clark Clifford, who was quoted in minutes of a National Security Council staff meeting as saying it was "inconceivable" that the attack had been a case of mistaken identity.

The attack "couldn't be anything else but deliberate," the NSA's director, Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter, later told Congress.

"I don't think you'll find many people at NSA who believe it was accidental," Benson Buffham, a former deputy NSA director, said in an interview.

"I just always assumed that the Israeli pilots knew what they were doing," said Harold Saunders, then a member of the National Security Council staff and later assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs.

"So for me, the question really is who issued the order to do that and why? That's the really interesting thing."

The answer, if there is one, will probably never be known. Gen. Moshe Dayan, then the country's minister of defense; Levi Eshkol, the Israeli prime minister; and Golda Meir, his successor, are all dead.

Many of those who believe the Liberty was purposely attacked have suggested that the Israelis feared the ship might intercept communications revealing its plans to widen the war, which the U.S. opposed. But no one has ever produced any solid evidence to support that theory, and the Israelis dismiss it. The NSA's deputy director, Louis Tordella, speculated in a recently declassified memo that the attack "might have been ordered by some senior commander on the Sinai Peninsula who wrongly suspected that the LIBERTY was monitoring his activities."

Was the U.S. flag visible?

Though the attack on the Liberty has faded from public memory, Michael Oren, a historian and senior fellow at The Shalem Center in Jerusalem, conceded that "the case of the assault on the Liberty has never been closed."

If anything, Oren said, "the accusations leveled against Israel have grown sharper with time." Oren said in an interview that he believed a formal investigation by the U.S., even 40 years later, would be useful if only because it would finally establish Israel's innocence.

Questions about what happened to the Liberty have been kept alive by survivors' groups and their Web sites, a half-dozen books, magazine articles and television documentaries, scholarly papers published in academic journals, and Internet chat groups where amateur sleuths debate arcane points of photo interpretation and torpedo running depth.

Meantime, the Liberty's survivors and their supporters, including a distinguished constellation of retired admirals and generals, have persisted in asking Congress for a full-scale formal investigation.

"We deserve to have the truth," Pat Blue said.

For all its apparent complexity, the attack on the Liberty can be reduced to a single question: Was the ship flying the American flag at the time of the attack, and was that flag visible from the air?

The survivors interviewed by the Tribune uniformly agree that the Liberty was flying the Stars and Stripes before, during and after the attack, except for a brief period in which one flag that had been shot down was replaced with another, larger flag -- the ship's "holiday colors" -- that measured 13 feet long.

Concludes one of the declassified NSA documents: "Every official interview of numerous Liberty crewmen gave consistent evidence that indeed the Liberty was flying an American flag -- and, further, the weather conditions were ideal to ensure its easy observance and identification."

The Israeli court of inquiry that examined the attack, and absolved the Israeli military of criminal culpability, came to precisely the opposite conclusion.

"Throughout the contact," it declared, "no American or any other flag appeared on the ship."

The attack, the court said, had been prompted by a report, which later proved erroneous, that a ship was shelling Israeli-held positions in the Sinai Peninsula. The Liberty had no guns capable of shelling the shore, but the court concluded that the U.S. ship had been mistakenly identified as the source of the shelling.

Yiftah Spector, the first Israeli pilot to attack the ship, told the Jerusalem Post in 2003 that when he first spotted the Liberty, "I circled it twice and it did not fire on me. My assumption was that it was likely to open fire at me and nevertheless I slowed down and I looked and there was positively no flag."

But the Liberty crewmen interviewed by the Tribune said the Israeli jets simply appeared and began shooting. They also said the Liberty did not open fire on the planes because it was armed only with four .50-caliber machine guns intended to repel boarders.

"I can't identify it, but in any case it's a military ship," Spector radioed his ground controller, according to a transcript of the Israeli air-to-ground communications published by the Jerusalem Post in 2004.

That transcript, made by a Post reporter who was allowed to listen to what the Israeli Air Force said were tapes of the attacking pilots' communications, contained only two references to "American" or "Americans," one at the beginning and the other at the end of the attack.

The first reference occurred at 1:54 p.m. local time, two minutes before the Israeli jets began their first strafing run.

In the Post transcript, a weapons system officer on the ground suddenly blurted out, "What is this? Americans?"

"Where are Americans?" replied one of the air controllers.

The question went unanswered, and it was not asked again.

Twenty minutes later, after the Liberty had been hit repeatedly by machine guns, 30 mm cannon and napalm from the Israelis' French-built Mirage and Mystere fighter-bombers, the controller directing the attack asked his chief in Tel Aviv to which country the target vessel belonged.

"Apparently American," the chief controller replied.

Fourteen minutes later the Liberty was struck amidships by a torpedo from an Israeli boat, killing 26 of the 100 or so NSA technicians and specialists in Russian and Arabic who were working in restricted compartments below the ship's waterline.

Analyst: Israelis wanted it sunk

The transcript published by the Jerusalem Post bore scant resemblance to the one that in 1967 rolled off the teletype machine behind the sealed vault door at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha, where Steve Forslund worked as an intelligence analyst for the 544th Air Reconnaissance Technical Wing, then the highest-level strategic planning office in the Air Force.

"The ground control station stated that the target was American and for the aircraft to confirm it," Forslund recalled. "The aircraft did confirm the identity of the target as American, by the American flag.

"The ground control station ordered the aircraft to attack and sink the target and ensure they left no survivors."

Forslund said he clearly recalled "the obvious frustration of the controller over the inability of the pilots to sink the target quickly and completely."

"He kept insisting the mission had to sink the target, and was frustrated with the pilots' responses that it didn't sink."

Nor, Forslund said, was he the only member of his unit to have read the transcripts. "Everybody saw these," said Forslund, now retired after 26 years in the military.

Forslund's recollections are supported by those of two other Air Force intelligence specialists, working in widely separate locations, who say they also saw the transcripts of the attacking Israeli pilots' communications.

One is James Gotcher, now an attorney in California, who was then serving with the Air Force Security Service's 6924th Security Squadron, an adjunct of the NSA, at Son Tra, Vietnam.

"It was clear that the Israeli aircraft were being vectored directly at USS Liberty," Gotcher recalled in an e-mail. "Later, around the time Liberty got off a distress call, the controllers seemed to panic and urged the aircraft to 'complete the job' and get out of there."

Six thousand miles from Omaha, on the Mediterranean island of Crete, Air Force Capt. Richard Block was commanding an intelligence wing of more than 100 analysts and cryptologists monitoring Middle Eastern communications.

The transcripts Block remembered seeing "were teletypes, way beyond Top Secret. Some of the pilots did not want to attack," Block said. "The pilots said, 'This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?'

"And ground control came back and said, 'Yes, follow orders.'"

Gotcher and Forslund agreed with Block that the Jerusalem Post transcript was not at all like what they remember reading.

"There is simply no way that [the Post transcript is] the same as what I saw," Gotcher said. "More to the point, for anyone familiar with air-to-ground [communications] procedures, that simply isn't the way pilots and controllers communicate."

Block, now a child protection caseworker in Florida, observed that "the fact that the Israeli pilots clearly identified the ship as American and asked for further instructions from ground control appears to be a missing part of that Jerusalem Post article."

Arieh O'Sullivan, the Post reporter who made the newspaper's transcript, said the Israeli Air Force tapes he listened to contained blank spaces. He said he assumed those blank spaces occurred while Israeli pilots were conducting their strafing runs and had nothing to communicate.

'But sir, it's an American ship!'

Forslund, Gotcher and Block are not alone in claiming to have read transcripts of the attack that they said left no doubt the Israelis knew they were attempting to sink a U.S. Navy ship.

Many ears were tuned to the battles being fought in and around the Sinai during the Six-Day War, including those belonging to other Arab nations with a keen interest in the outcome.

"I had a Libyan naval captain who was listening in that day," said a retired CIA officer, who spoke on condition that he not be named discussing a clandestine informant.

"He thought history would change its course," the CIA officer recalled. "Israel attacking the U.S. He was certain, listening in to the Israeli and American comms [communications], that it was deliberate."

The late Dwight Porter, the American ambassador to Lebanon during the Six-Day War, told friends and family members that he had been shown English-language transcripts of Israeli pilots talking to their controllers.

A close friend, William Chandler, the former head of the Trans-Arabian Pipe Line Co., said Porter recalled one of the pilots protesting, "But sir, it's an American ship -- I can see the flag!' To which the ground control responded, 'Never mind; hit it!'"

Porter, who asked that his recollections not be made public while he was alive because they involved classified information, also discussed the transcripts during a lunch in 2000 at the Cosmos Club in Washington with another retired American diplomat, Andrew Kilgore, the former U.S. ambassador to Qatar.

Kilgore recalled Porter saying that he "saw the telex, read it, and passed it right back" to the embassy official who had shown it to him. He quoted Porter as recalling that the transcript showed "Israel was attacking, and they know it's an American ship."

Haviland Smith, a young CIA officer stationed in Beirut during the Six-Day War, said that although he never saw the transcript, he had "heard on a number of occasions exactly the story that you just told me about what that transcript contained."

He had later been told, Smith recalled, "that ultimately all of the transcripts were deep-sixed. I was told that they were deep-sixed because the administration did not wish to embarrass the Israelis."

Perhaps the most persuasive suggestion that such transcripts existed comes from the Israelis themselves, in a pair of diplomatic cables sent by the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Avraham Harman, to Foreign Minister Abba Eban in Tel Aviv.

Five days after the Liberty attack, Harman cabled Eban that a source the Israelis code-named "Hamlet" was reporting that the Americans had "clear proof that from a certain stage the pilot discovered the identity of the ship and continued the attack anyway."

Harman repeated the warning three days later, advising Eban, who is now dead, that the White House was "very angry," and that "the reason for this is that the Americans probably have findings showing that our pilots indeed knew that the ship was American."

According to a memoir by then-CIA director Richard Helms, President Johnson's personal anger was manifest when he discovered the story of the Liberty attack on an inside page of the next day's New York Times. Johnson barked that "it should have been on the front page!"

Israeli historian Tom Segev, who mentioned the cables in his recent book "1967," said other cables showed that Harman's source for the second cable was Arthur Goldberg, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The cables, which have been declassified by the Israelis, were obtained from the Israeli State Archive and translated from Hebrew by the Tribune.

Oliver Kirby, the NSA's deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, confirmed the existence of NSA transcripts.

Asked whether he had personally read such transcripts, Kirby replied, "I sure did. I certainly did."

"They said, 'We've got him in the zero,'" Kirby recalled, "whatever that meant -- I guess the sights or something. And then one of them said, 'Can you see the flag?' They said 'Yes, it's U.S, it's U.S.' They said it several times, so there wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind that they knew it."

Kirby, now 86 and retired in Texas, said the transcripts were "something that's bothered me all my life. I'm willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that we knew they knew."

One set of transcripts apparently survived in the archives of the U.S. Army's intelligence school, then located at Ft. Holabird in Maryland.

W. Patrick Lang, a retired Army colonel who spent eight years as chief of Middle East intelligence for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said the transcripts were used as "course material" in an advanced class for intelligence officers on the clandestine interception of voice transmissions.

"The flight leader spoke to his base to report that he had the ship in view, that it was the same ship that he had been briefed on and that it was clearly marked with the U.S. flag," Lang recalled in an e-mail.

"The flight commander was reluctant," Lang said in a subsequent interview. "That was very clear. He didn't want to do this. He asked them a couple of times, 'Do you really want me to do this?' I've remembered it ever since. It was very striking. I've been harboring this memory for all these years."

Key NSA tapes said missing

Asked whether the NSA had in fact intercepted the communications of the Israeli pilots who were attacking the Liberty, Kirby, the retired senior NSA official, replied, "We sure did."

On its Web site, the NSA has posted three recordings of Israeli communications made on June 8, 1967. But none of the recordings is of the attack itself.

Indeed, the declassified documents state that no recordings of the "actual attack" exist, raising questions about the source of the transcripts recalled by Forslund, Gotcher, Block, Porter, Lang and Kirby.

The three recordings reflect what the NSA describes as "the aftermath" of the attack -- Israeli communications with two Israeli helicopters dispatched to rescue any survivors who may have jumped into the water.

Two of the recordings were made by Michael Prostinak, a Hebrew linguist aboard a U.S. Navy EC-121, a lumbering propeller-driven aircraft specially equipped to gather electronic intelligence.

But Prostinak said he was certain that more than three recordings were made that day.

"I can tell you there were more tapes than just the three on the Internet," he said. "No doubt in my mind, more than three tapes."

At least one of the missing tapes, Prostinak said, captured Israeli communications "in which people were not just tranquil or taking care of business as normal. We knew that something was being attacked," Prostinak said. "Everyone we were listening to was excited. You know, it was an actual attack. And during the attack was when mention of the American flag was made."

Prostinak acknowledged that his Hebrew was not good enough to understand every word being said, but that after the mention of the American flag "the attack did continue. We copied [recorded] it until we got completely out of range. We got a great deal of it."

Charles Tiffany, the plane's navigator, remembers hearing Prostinak on the plane's intercom system, shouting, "I got something crazy on UHF," the radio frequency band used by the Israeli Air Force.

"I'll never forget it to this day," said Tiffany, now a retired Florida lawyer. He also remembers hearing the plane's pilot ordering the NSA linguists to "start taping everything."

Prostinak said he and the others aboard the plane had been unaware of the Liberty's presence 15,000 feet below, but had concluded that the Israelis' target must be an American ship. "We knew that something was being attacked," Prostinak said.

After listening to the three recordings released by the NSA, Prostinak said it was clear from the sequence in which they were numbered that at least two tapes that had once existed were not there.

One tape, designated A1104/A-02, begins at 2:29 p.m. local time, just after the Liberty was hit by the torpedo. Prostinak said there was a preceding tape, A1104/A-01.

That tape likely would have recorded much of the attack, which began with the air assault at 1:56 p.m. Prostinak said a second tape, which preceded one beginning at 3:07 p.m., made by another linguist aboard the same plane, also appeared to be missing.

As soon as the EC-121 landed at its base in Athens, Prostinak said, all the tapes were rushed to an NSA facility at the Athens airport where Hebrew translators were standing by.

"We told them what we had, and they immediately took the tapes and went to work," recalled Prostinak, who after leaving the Navy became chief of police and then town administrator for the village of Lake Waccamaw, N.C.

Another linguist aboard the EC-121, who spoke on condition that he not be named, said he believed there had been as many as "five or six" tapes recording the attack on the Liberty or its aftermath.

Andrea Martino, the NSA's senior media adviser, did not respond to a question about the apparent conflict between the agency's assertion that there were no recordings of the Israeli attack and the recollections of those interviewed for this article.

U.S. inquiry widely criticized

Rather than investigating how and why a U.S. Navy vessel had been attacked by an ally, the Navy seemed interested in asking as few questions as possible and answering them in record time.

Even while the Liberty was still limping toward a dry dock in Malta, the Navy convened a formal Court of Inquiry. Adm. John McCain Jr., the commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe and father of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), chose Adm. Isaac Kidd Jr. to preside.

The court's charge was narrow: to determine whether any shortcomings on the part of the Liberty's crew had contributed to the injuries and deaths that resulted from the attack. McCain gave Kidd's investigators a week to complete the job.

"That was a shock," recalled retired Navy Capt. Ward Boston, the inquiry's counsel, who said he and Kidd had estimated that a thorough inquiry would take six months.

"Everyone was kind of stunned that it was handled so quickly and without much hullabaloo," said G. Patrick March, then a member of McCain's staff in London.

Largely because of time constraints, Boston said, the investigators were unable to question many of the survivors, or to visit Israel and interview any Israelis involved in the attack.

Rear Adm. Merlin Staring, the Navy's former judge advocate general, was asked to assess the American inquiry's report before it was sent to Washington. But Staring said it was taken from him when he began to question some aspects of the report. He describes it now as "a hasty, superficial, incomplete and totally inadequate inquiry."

Staring, who is among those calling for a full congressional investigation on behalf of the Liberty's survivors, observed in an interview that the inquiry report contained several "findings of fact" unsupported by testimony or evidence.

One such finding ignored the testimony of several inquiry witnesses that the American flag was flying during the attack, and held that the "available evidence combines to indicate the attack on LIBERTY on 8 June was in fact a case of mistaken identity."

There are also apparent omissions in the inquiry's report. It does not include, for example, the testimony of a young lieutenant, Lloyd Painter, who was serving as officer of the deck when the attack began. Painter said he testified that an Israeli torpedo boat "methodically machine-gunned one of our life rafts" that had been put over the side by crewmen preparing to abandon ship.

Painter, who spent 32 years as a Secret Service agent after leaving the Navy, charged that his testimony about the life rafts was purposely omitted.

Ward Boston recalled that, after McCain's one-week deadline expired, Kidd took the record compiled by the inquiry "and flew back to Washington, and I went back to Naples," the headquarters of the 6th Fleet.

"Two weeks later, he comes back to Naples and calls me from his office," Boston recalled in an interview. "In that deep voice, he said, 'Ward, they aren't interested in the facts. It's a political issue and we have to put a lid on it. We've been ordered to shut up.'

"It's time for the truth to come out," declared Boston, who is now 84. "There have been so many cover-ups."

"Someday the truth of this will come out," said Dennis Eikleberry, a NSA technician aboard the Liberty. "Someday it will, but we'll all be gone."

James Ennes, now 74, who was officer of the deck just before the attack began, and later spent two months in a body cast, is one of the more vocal survivors. Like the others, Ennes is tired of waiting.

"We want both sides to stop lying," he said.

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"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell