A Muralha Egípcia

Lejeune Mirhan *

Na minha coluna de final de ano, quando fiz o balanço de 2009 e as perspectivas de 2010, já havia mencionado esse assunto, polêmico de toda forma. Nenhum grande jornal no Brasil o fez até agora. Como recebo artigos de várias partes do mundo e com base em pesquisas, vi que a gravidade do assunto vai ganhando maiores espaços na mídia internacional. Por isso, na primeira coluna do ano, trato do tema.

Cidade de Rafah, fronteira de Gaza com o Egito que vive apinhada de gente

Muralhas não funcionam

Esse subtítulo é de importante artigo comparativo do maior jornalista que cobre Oriente Médio da atualidade, Robert Fisk (1) onde ele compara a muralha que vem sendo construída pelo Egito na fronteira com a Faixa de Gaza, na Palestina e uma situação parecida ocorrida em sua terra, na Inglaterra e na Irlanda, no conflito entre católicos e protestantes. E estou plenamente de acordo com ele. Muralhas que separam, que segregam povos e pessoas não funcionam e nunca funcionaram. O que me estranha é que continuam a ser construídas.

Muralhas existem desde a antiguidade. A mais famosa de todas, a da China, tem sua construção iniciada 221 antes de Cristo, ou seja, há quase 2,3 mil anos. De lá para cá tivemos muitos muros e muralhas, famosas também. A de Berlim, que caiu em novembro de 1989, mas temos também o projeto de Muro Americano, que separa vários estados americanos do México e o mais vergonhoso de todos, o Muro de Israel, que divide inclusive aldeias palestinas, segrega pessoas e corta fornecimento de água potável aos palestinos. Esse Muro já foi condenado por cortes internacionais, que ordenaram a interrupção de sua construção. Mas quem disse que Israel obedece a algum organismo internacional?

Como diz Fisk, o que vemos hoje na Palestina talvez seja a última guerra colonial em curso na história da humanidade. E tal guerra é travada com o apoio integral dos EUA, país que combateu o colonialismo inglês de armas nas mãos no século XVIII e já foi tida como uma nação anticolonial. E tal colonização baseia-se em premissas sionistas falsas, mentirosas, sendo que as duas mais famosas são “uma terra sem povo, para um povo sem terra” e “israelenses farão florescer o deserto” e outras falácias.

O bombardeio da Faixa de Gaza perpetrada pela força aérea de Israel entre dezembro de 2008 e janeiro de 2009, completado um ano no último dia 27 passado, foi feito além da conivência dos EUA, com o beneplácito do Egito, nação árabe hoje completamente subjugada pelos Estados Unidos.

Só temos quatro locais para ingressarmos nesse pequeno território, do tamanho da cidade do Rio de Janeiro. Três são controlados por Israel (dois por terra e um pelo mar mediterrâneo). Ocorre que a quarta localidade (entrada leste) para essa estreita faixa de terra onde moram 1,5 milhão de palestinos (uma das mais altas densidade populacional do mundo), vem pela região chamada de Rafah, cidade fronteiriça egípcia. Durante os bombardeios do ano passado, esta localidade permaneceu fechada, como tem ficado fechado, regra geral toda a fronteira egípcia com Gaza. Isso asfixia o que o mundo tem chamado de a maior prisão a ceu aberto do mundo. Dezenas de caminhões com alimentos e ajuda humanitária vindos de todos os países deveriam entrar diariamente no território, que não tem autonomia para quase nada e onde um em cada dois adultos encontram-se desempregados.

Essa muralha, vem sendo chamada de Muralha da Morte pelos palestinos. Sua construção esta sendo feita por centenas de operários egípcios, mas supervisionados diretamente pelo Corpo de Engenheiros do Exército dos Estados Unidos. As reações vêm aumentando, tanto no Egito, como em vários países e na comunidade internacional que vem levantando suas vozes contra esse cerco aos palestinos. Até em Israel vem sendo realizados protestos contra essa construção.

Mas o pior é que o projeto da Muralha é construí-la em aço muito grosso, resistente a projéteis e mísseis Qassams, usados pelos palestinos e que além de alta (uns seis metros), adentra ao subsolo outros seis metros ou ainda mais, para bloquear os túneis e as passagens subterrâneas construídas clandestinamente para o contrabando de alimentos (estima-se que existam 1,5 mil desses pequenos túneis). Israel bombardeou vários deles, mas eles continuam a existir e acabam sendo uma das poucas possibilidades da Faixa receber ajuda externa. Como os produtos – alimentos e medicamentos – entram de forma clandestina, como se fossem contrabando, eles acabam sendo muito caros, dificultando ainda mais a já sofrida vida dos palestinos. A destruição desses túneis prejudicará inclusive a economia egípcio, onde diversos negociantes dependem desse comércio.

O projeto original da Muralha Egípcia prevê o bombeamento de água para dentro desses túneis. Mas, o que é pior, essa água seria bombeada de forma envenenada. Especialistas asseguram que isso prejudicaria os palestinos ainda mais, mas prejudicaria vastas regiões da própria fronteira egípcia, impedindo a agricultura local próxima á Muralha.

Todos os pedidos de organizações humanitárias para ingressar pelo Egito de grandes comboios de caminhões lotados de alimentos e medicamentos – o maior deles, vindo da Europa com 70 caminhões trucados – vêm tendo sistematicamente seus vistos de entrada negados pelo governo egípcio, presidido por Hosni Mubarak.

É preciso registrar – e a maioria das pessoas no mundo não sabem – é que Israel vem bloqueando as três passagens para Gaza há muito tempo. Ingressam apenas e tão somente remédios essenciais e alimentos básicos. Até o simples macarrão, esta vetado da lista pelo fato que o governo de Israel considera esse alimento como não sendo essencial.

Por que o Egito vem se comportando assim?

O Egito tem seis mil anos de história. Dizem que ali surgiu a primeira civilização humana mais organizada e a primeira sociedade dividida em classes sociais, a escravista. Quando Napoleão conquistou esse país, a partir da campanha de maio de 1798, quando chega próximo às pirâmides pronuncia a famosa frase: “do alto dessas pirâmides, quatro mil anos de história vos contemplam”, em discurso aos seus soldados, para falar de respeito ao país conquistado. Errou nas contas. São mais de seis mil anos.

O Egito é o maior e mais populoso país árabe. Foi lá que, em 1954, sob o comando de jovens oficiais sob liderança de Gamal Abdel Nasser, foi criado o pan-arabismo e o nacionalismo árabe mais radicalizado (muito em baixo na atualidade). Alguns chegam a falar em “socialismo árabe”, sob influência da URSS. O Egito sempre quis a liderança do mundo árabe. E na época de Nasser praticamente a conquistou, com amplitude, com alianças e com unidade com os países vizinhos. Infelizmente, com sua morte em 1970, as coisas mudaram de rumo, quando assumiu Anuar Sadat. Também quis o Egito ser porta voz dos palestinos. Ajudou a fundar a OLP para tentar controlá-la, mas Arafat nunca aceitou essa situação. Mubarak assume com a morte de Sadat em 1981, Mubarak assume e esta até hoje (note-se a “democracia egípcia: em 56 anos o país teve três presidentes, ou seja, uma média de 18 anos por presidente...).

O que todos se perguntam hoje é o seguinte: porque o Egito impõe esse imenso sacrifício a 1,5 milhão de palestinos e faz o jogo político e militar de Israel? Algumas respostas, algumas pistas podemos explorar e quero enumerar algumas, a partir de excelente artigo, como sempre, do combativo ativista e pacifista israelense, o escritor Ury Avnery (2).

O mais sionista, reacionário e direitista que já conhecemos e estudamos chamava-se Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940). Mais até do que Herzl e Gurion. Ele foi o que primeiro defendeu uma “Muralha de Ferro” (Iron Wall). Suas ideias, consideradas extremadas até por algumas correntes sionistas, que o viam com reservas, não prosperaram (3). Como diz Avnery, ninguém imaginaria que construir um muro contra palestinos fosse implementado 86 anos depois da sua proposta original, por um “líder” árabe, no caso Hosni Mubarak. É irônico, se não for trágico.

Pelo menos três razões podem ser arroladas para tentarmos explicar o comportamento equivocado – de nosso humilde ponto de vista – para que compreendamos os reais motivos que levaram um árabe praticamente romper com a luta histórica dos palestinos e fazer o completo jogo político de Israel neste momento.

1. Descolamento dos palestinos – É uma quase unanimidade entre as lideranças palestinas mais radicalizadas, que Mubarak descolou-se da luta palestina. E o faz para manter distância em particular do grupo palestino Hamas, que tem fortes e históricos vínculos com a Fraternidade Muçulmana, maior agrupamento de oposição no Egito e maior força política hoje no parlamento e na sociedade, mas que, ainda assim, não tem mais que 20% nas “eleições” gerais do país (sempre uma farsa geral, fraudadas, pois o presidente é sempre “reeleito” com 98% dos votos, como se isso fosse possível). Isso faz com que o Egito vá ficando, a cada dia, mais isolado no mundo árabe e mesmo na comunidade internacional;

2. Apoio dos Estado Unidos – Não é só Israel que recebe bilhões de dólares todos os anos do tesouro dos Estados Unidos a fundo perdido (sem qualquer contrapartida de prestação de contas). O Egito recebe todos os anos algo como dois bilhões de dólares. Para uma economia quebrada, desaquecida (sem controle populacional, a explosão demográfica é elevada e não há empregos para todos), esses recursos pesam no orçamento do país. Assim, além do alinhamento ideológico, que Mubarak tem com os EUA (e com Israel, por ter assinado a paz em separado com esse país em 1979 nos famosos acordos de Camp David que renderam o prêmio Nobel para Anuar El Sadat e Menachem Béguin, sob os auspícios de Carter, que veio a ganhar o prêmio apenas muitos anos depois desse episódio). A situação econômica do Egito é muito ruim e isso faz com que aumente a sua dependência e vinculação política e ideológica dos Estados Unidos;

3. Os eixos do Oriente Médio – Mubarak faz uma análise geopolítica da região e das forças que estão em jogo. Deixar livre essa passagem da imensa fronteira egípcia seria acabar por fortalecer o que se chama de Eixo Damasco-Gaza (Síria e Hamas) e ainda Teerã-Hizbollah-Beirute (Irã e os xiitas libaneses), em detrimento do eixo que Mubarak se alinha que é formado por Cairo-Riad-Amã-Ramallah (Egito, Jordânia, Arábia Saudita e Fatah). Nem que para isso tenha que impor imenso sacrifício aos palestinos – como vem fazendo, impedindo entrada da carregamentos até das Nações Unidas – Mubarak aposta no enfraquecimento do grupo Hamas, no seu isolamento e, no limite, que a própria população palestina se levante contra suas lideranças nessa faixa territorial. Errará, como Israel errou, nessa estratégia, pois o Hamas, mesmo tendo sido bombardeado 22 dias seguidos ano passado, não se enfraqueceu, ao contrário, acabou se fortalecendo.

Esperemos que esse Muro e outras muralhas existentes que separam, segregam, dividem, sejam, de uma vez por todas, demolidas, destruídas e derrubadas. É nosso desejo nesta primeira coluna do ano de 2010.

Aproveito para desejar aos meus leitores que tenham um grande ano de muitas lutas e sucessos, pessoais e os coletivos de que nosso sofrido povo brasileiro e palestino, tanto precisam.

(1) A matéria pode ser lida em http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fiskrsquos-world-walls-never-work-in-the-middle-east-or-in-ireland-1855417.html

(2) A matéria pode ser lida em http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1262516758/

(3) Veja no original em inglês o artigo em http://www.marxists.de/middleast/ironwall/ironwall.htm

1 comentários

* Presidente do Sindicato dos Sociólogos do Estado de São Paulo, escritor, arabista e professor. Membro da Academia de Altos Estudos Ibero-Árabe de Lisboa e da International Sociological Association.

* Opiniões aqui expressas não refletem necessáriamente as opiniões do site.

The Contradictions of Cuban Blogger and CIA Asset, Yoani Sanchez

by Salim Lamrani

On November 7, 2009, the Western media devoted ample space to the Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez. The news from Havana about the dispute between the dissident and Cuban authorities circled the world and overshadowed the rest of the news.¹

Sanchez recounted her mishap in detail on her blog and in the press. In doing so, she declared that she had been detained together with three friends by "three burly strangers" during an "afternoon full of blows, shouting and insults."²

She later explained her story, which resembles a real ordeal:

The 'aggressors' themselves called for a police car that took my other two companions away [. . .] I refused to get in the shiny Geely and [. . .] received a barrage of blows, shoves, they carried me with my head down and tried to shove me into the car. I held onto the door, blows on the knuckles, I managed to grab a piece of paper that one of them had in his pocket and I stuck it in my mouth. Another flurry of punches so that I would give the document back to them.

Orlando was already inside, immobilized by a karate hold that kept his head glued to the floor. One of them put his knee in my chest and the other, from the front seat, hit me in the kidneys and punched me in the head so that I would open my mouth and spit out the paper. For a moment I felt as though I would never get out of that car. 'This is it, Yoani,' 'The clowning around is over,' said the one seated in front who was pulling my hair. In the back seat a rare spectacle ensued: my legs in the air, my face reddening from the pressure and my body in pain, while Orlando was pinned by a professional thug on the other side. I just managed to grab his testicles, through his pants, in an act of desperation. I sunk in my fingernails, imagining that he was going to continue to smash my chest until the very last breath. 'Kill me already,' I yelled, with my last remaining breath, and the one in the front seat told the younger one, 'Let her breathe.'

I was listening to Orlando panting and the blows continued to rain down upon us, I considered opening the door and jumping out, but there was no handle to open from the inside. We were at their mercy and hearing the voice of Orlando gave me encouragement. Later he told me that it was the same for him with my choking words . . . which told him, 'Yoani is still alive'. They left us in pain on a street in Timba, a woman approached, 'What's happened?' . . . 'A kidnapping', I managed to say. We cried in each other's arms in the middle of the sidewalk, I was thinking about Teo, for God's sake how will I explain all these bruises to him. How am I going to tell him that he lives in a country where this happens, how am I going to look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her views into kilobytes, has been brutalized on a public street. How will I describe for him the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their evident pleasure as they beat us, lifting my skirt and dragging me half naked to the car?³

The United States -- where 34-year-old Cuban citizen Yosvanis Valle had been executed 48 hours earlier, bringing the number of executions in 2009 to 42⁴ -- declared its "deep concern", through State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. "We continue to be concerned about the personal health and access to medical care of Yoani Sanchez."⁵

Contradictions

Yoani Sanchez's words are terrifying and immediately arouse the reader's sympathy and compassion towards the victim. Nevertheless, it is essential to point out some contradictions that cast a shadow over the credibility of this tale.

The first surprise for journalists as expressed by the BBC's Havana correspondent Fernando Ravsberg: Despite the "blows and shoving," the "blows to the knuckles," the new "flurry of punches," the "knee in [her] chest," the "blows to the kidneys and [. . .] the head," "hair" pulled, the "face reddened by the pressure and body aching," the "blows [that] continued to rain down" and "all these bruises" that the Cuban blogger described,⁶ Ravsberg noted that Sanchez "has no bruises, marks or scars."⁷ Images from the U.S. channel CNN, which also interviewed the blogger, confirmed the words of the British journalist. In addition, the CNN correspondent took oratorical precautions and emphasized Sanchez's "apparent" suffering (using a crutch to move around).⁸ According to Agence France Presse, which related the story with caution, clarifying that this is Sanchez's version, and using the title "Cuba: the Blogger Yoani Sanchez Says She Was Beaten and Briefly Detained," the blogger "was not injured."⁹

Questioned about this by the BBC, Yoani Sanchez tried to explain this contradiction. According to her, the marks and bruises on her face and body really existed, but had disappeared. "Throughout the whole weekend I had a swollen cheekbone and eyebrow." All the marks had disappeared by Monday morning with the arrival of the first foreign journalist. However, bruises and "several marks" remained, she said, but . . . "particularly on the buttocks, unfortunately I cannot show them," she explained.¹⁰

Sanchez did not specify the reasons why she did not photograph the bruises and marks right after the incident, when they were visible, which would have provided irrefutable evidence of police violence against her. With regard to the hair pulled out, which is not visible at all in the photos and videos, her explanation is simple: "I lost a lot of hair but with this thick head of hair you can't tell."¹¹

In her blog and in a radio interview, Sanchez spoke of "the worst sort of Sicilian gang-style kidnapping," giving the impression that she was detained for several hours.¹² But in her interview with the BBC, when the journalist insisted and asked for clarification, the blogger confessed that in fact the incident lasted in all "25 minutes." Furthermore, Sanchez asserts that the detention occurred "in broad daylight, in front of a bus stop full of people." Nevertheless, the Western press failed to find a single witness, not even anonymous, to confirm the words of the blogger and thereby certify the veracity of her statements.¹³ Similarly, none of the people accompanying Yoani Sanchez were willing to respond to requests for interviews with the Western media, directing them to the blogger in charge of speaking on behalf of all of them.

Beyond all this, it seems surprising and illogical that the authorities in Havana would have decided to publicly mistreat such a media-savvy dissident as Yoani Sanchez, knowing for absolute certainty that such an act would unleash an immediate international scandal. A priori, there are other much more efficient and discreet ways to intimidate opponents.

Finally, Sanchez sinks into new contradictions when she tries to clarify some vague areas of her testimony. Thus, she explained that her resistance was due to the fact that the plain-clothed agents "did not show anything identifying them as authorities, I would have acted differently had they been in uniform. I asked them to get a police officer, they called and a police car arrived that took the other two girls and left me and Orlando in the hands of these others."¹⁴ However, in her blog, she says the police arrived at the beginning of the situation, but that would not have prevented her from resisting what seems more and more to be an identity check carried out by plainclothes police officers rather than a public lynching.

In short, there is no evidence corroborating the words of Yoani Sanchez, no other available testimony, not even of the people who accompanied her. Therefore we have to rely only on the blogger's version, which is full of contradictions. Given these factors, it is impossible not to doubt the statements of the famous Cuban blogger.

It is necessary to make a comparison. The Western press granted, in just 72 hours, more space to Yoani Sanchez and her incident with the authorities than to all the crimes committed (more than a hundred murders, a similar number of cases of disappearances, and countless acts of torture and violence) by the military dictatorship led by the coup leader Roberto Micheletti since June 27, 2009. Decidedly, Sanchez is not a simple critical blogger as she pretends.

The Yoani Sanchez Phenomenon

Yoani Maria Sanchez Cordero is a "Habanera" born in 1975, apparently having graduated in Philology in the year 2000, according to her blog. There remains doubt about this fact in that during her stay in Switzerland two years later, when she enrolled with the consular authorities, she declared a "pre-university" level education, as shown by the records of the consulate of the Republic of Cuba in Bern.¹⁵ So, after working in the field of publishing and giving courses in Spanish to tourists, she decided to leave her homeland with her son. On August 26, 2002, after marrying a German named Karl G., she emigrated to Switzerland with a "foreign trip permit" valid for eleven months, in the face of the "disenchantment and economic suffocation" that prevailed in Cuba.¹⁶

Interestingly, we learn that after fleeing "an immense prison with ideological walls,"¹⁷ to use the words she uses to refer to the country of her birth, she decided two years later during the summer 2004 to leave the Swiss paradise, one of the richest nations on earth, to return to the "leaky boat on the verge of sinking" as she metaphorically describes the island.¹⁸ Faced with this new contradiction, Sanchez explains that she chose to return home -- where the "cries of the despot" reign¹⁹ and where "beings from the shadows, like vampires, feed on our human happiness and inoculate us with fear by means of blows, threats, blackmail"²⁰ -- "for family reasons and against the advice of acquaintances and friends."²¹

When reading Yoani Sanchez's blog, where the Cuban reality is described in such an apocalyptic and tragic manner, one gets the impression that purgatory is, by comparison, a seaside resort and that only the sweltering heat of the antechamber of hell can provide an idea as to the daily life of Cubans. No positive aspect of Cuban society is portrayed. Only aberrations, injustices, contradictions, and difficulties are presented. Consequently, the reader struggles to understand how a young Cuban woman decided to leave wealthy Switzerland to return to live in what she likens to Dante's inferno where "pockets were emptying, frustrations growing, and fear proliferating."²² In her blog, the comments of her foreign supporters abound in respect to this: "I do not understand your return. Why didn't you give your son a better future?" and "Dear friend, I would like to know why you decided to return to Cuba."²³

By contrast, some of her compatriots who live abroad, disappointed by the western lifestyle, have also expressed their desire to return to live in Cuba: "I will return." "I have lived in Miami for 7 years [. . .] and sometimes I question whether the physical exile has been was worth it." "I need my people [. . .] Someday I will return home with my German husband, another fool who wants to apply for residency there." "Why did you go back? . . . Loneliness, nostalgia, longing? [Then, referring to the western world] Strange faces, people sad and fed-up with the rest of mankind without knowing why, equally corrupt politicians and many gray days? No need to explain anything. As of 14 years ago there are no suns on my map of time." "I again sent [the information] to my dad who lives outside of Cuba, and who has plans to return."²⁴

One of two possibilities -- either Yoani was not in her right mind in deciding to leave the Pearl of Europe and return to Cuba, or life on the island is not as dramatic as the picture she paints.

In a posting on her blog in July 2007, Yoani recounted in detail the story of her return to Cuba. "Three years ago [. . .] in Zurich [. . .] I decided to go home and remain in my country", she said, emphasizing that it was "a simple story of an immigrant's return to her homeland." "We bought round trip tickets" for Cuba. So Sanchez decided to stay in her country and not return to Switzerland. "My friends thought I was joking, my mother refused to accept that her daughter no longer lived in the Switzerland of chocolate and milk." On August 12, 2004, Sanchez showed up at the provincial immigration office in Havana to explain her case. "What a tremendous shock when they said to me, go to the end of the line of 'the returnees' [. . .] That is how I encountered all of a sudden other "crazies" like me, each with their own horrifying story of return."²⁵

Indeed, Sanchez's case is far from being an isolated case, as illustrated by this story and the comments left on her blog. More and more Cubans who chose to emigrate, after facing many difficulties in adapting and discovering that the western "El Dorado" does not glitter as much as they had imagined and that the privileges they had enjoyed at home do not exist anywhere else, decide to return to live in Cuba.

However, Yoani Sanchez fails to give the real reasons that led her to return to Cuba, beyond the "family reasons" that she evoked (reasons that her mother apparently did not share, given her surprise). The Cuban authorities granted her favorable treatment on humanitarian grounds, allowing her to recover her permanent resident status in Cuba, even though she had been out of the country for more than 11 months.

In reality, the stay in Switzerland was far from as idyllic as she had anticipated. Sanchez discovered a western lifestyle completely different from what she was used to in Cuba, where, despite the daily difficulties and vicissitudes, all citizens have a relatively balanced diet despite the ration card and the hardships, access to free health care and education, free culture and entertainment, a house and an atmosphere of safety (the island's crime rate is very low). Cuba is perhaps the only country in the world where you can live without working (which is not always something positive). In Switzerland, Sanchez had enormous difficulties finding work and living decently and so, in desperation, decided to return home and explain the reasons why to the authorities. According to them, Sanchez had begged, crying to the immigration services to be granted an exceptional waiver "to revoke her immigration status," and they granted it.²⁶

Yoani Sanchez has decided to carefully conceal this fact.

"Cyber-dissidence"

In April 2007, Yoani Sanchez decided to join the world of the Cuban opposition and founded her blog, Generation Y. Forgetting the magnanimity of the authorities towards her when she returned to Cuba in 2004, she thus became a staunch critic of the government in Havana. Her criticisms are harsh, unnuanced, one-sided. She presents an apocalyptic view of the Cuban reality and accuses the authorities of being responsible for all its ills. She never evokes, not even for an instant, the unique geopolitical circumstances in which Cuba has found itself since 1959. There are hundreds of blogs in Cuba. A number of them complain incisively aberrations in Cuban society. But their approach is much more nuanced and the information less partisan. Nevertheless the Western media has chosen the black-and-white blog of Sanchez.²⁷

According to this blogger, in Cuba, "the process, the system, the expectations, the illusions have shipwrecked. A complete shipwreck," before concluding with this lapidary metaphor: "The ship has sunk." To her, it is clear that Cuba must change course and change governments: it is necessary to "change the helmsman and the entire crew"²⁸ in order to develop "sui generis capitalism."²⁹

Sanchez is an astute person who has understood perfectly well that she could prosper quickly with this type of discourse so valued by the Western press. She has worked out a tacit agreement with the communications and information transnationals. For the Western media to grant one the status of "independent blogger," and to enjoy some media space, it is essential to speak out against the system and the government and to demand radical change, more specifically the return to private enterprise capitalism, and not to content oneself with just denouncing some aberrations in the system.

How can the assertion of collusion between Sanchez and the media powers be corroborated? In light of the facts. Just a few weeks after the birth of her blog, the Western press launched an extraordinary campaign to promote it, presenting her as the blogger who has dared to challenge the regime and restrictions on freedom of expression. Once again, the Western media are not afraid of their own contradictions. On the one hand, they continue to repeat that it is absolutely impossible for any Cuban to undertake a heterodox discourse on the island and that making any criticism about the government or even straying from the official line is prohibited under penalty of prison. On the other hand, they praise the ingenuity of Yoani Sanchez whose main activity is to harshly criticize government policy with a freedom of tone that would be the envy of opponents throughout the world, without the authorities harassing her.³⁰

Thus, after barely a year of existence, while there are dozens of blogs older and no less interesting than Sanchez's, the Cuban blogger won the Ortega y Gasset Prize for Journalism, worth 15,000 euros, on April 4, 2008, awarded by the Spanish daily El Pais. Customarily, this award is given to prestigious journalists or writers who have long literary careers. This is the first time a person with the profile of Sanchez has received it.³¹ Likewise, the Cuban blogger was chosen among the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine (2008), in company with George W. Bush, Hu Jintao, and the Dalai Lama.³² Her blog was included in the list of 25 best blogs in the world by CNN and Time magazine (2008) and also won the Spanish Bitacoras.com prize as well as The Bob's (2008).³³ On 30 November 2008, the Spanish daily El Pais included her in its list of the 100 most influential Latin American personalities of the year (a list which features neither Fidel Castro nor Raúl Castro).³⁴ Foreign Policy magazine went further in December 2008, by including her among the 10 leading scholars of the year.³⁵ The Mexican magazine Gato Pardo did the same in 2008.³⁶ The prestigious Columbia University of the U.S. awarded her the Maria Moors Cabot Prize.³⁷ And the list is long.³⁸

However, Yoani Sanchez candidly acknowledges: "Time magazine has put me together with ninety-nine famous people in its list of influential people of 2008. Me, who has never stepped onto a stage or a podium, and whose own neighbors do not know if 'Yoani' is written with an "h" in the middle or an 's' at the end. (. . .) Now I have just enough vanity to imagine that the others on the list may be wondering, who is this unknown Cuban blogger on the list with us?"³⁹ Unwittingly, Sanchez created a giant contradiction for Time magazine: How can a blogger unknown to her own neighbors be included among the 100 most influential people in the world? Here, it is undeniable that the U.S. magazine employed political and ideological criteria in including Sanchez, which casts a shadow over the credibility of the classification. This applies to the other awards as well.

The Living Conditions of Yoani Sanchez

The umpteenth contradiction. The Western press, in recounting the words of Sanchez, never stops repeating that Cubans have no internet access, without an explanation as to how this blogger can write daily at her blog from Cuba. Great was the surprise of the 200 international journalists accredited to the International Tourism Fair in Cuba when, on Wednesday, May 6, 2009, they spotted Yoani Sanchez calmly installed in the foyer of the most luxurious tourist establishment on the island, the Hotel Nacional, accessing the Internet, when the price of the connection is prohibitive even for a foreign tourist.⁴⁰

Two questions inevitably arise: How can Yoani Sanchez connect to the Internet in Cuba when the Western press keeps repeating that there is not access to it? Where does the money come from that allows her to live a lifestyle that no other Cuban can afford, when officially she has no other source of income?

In 2009, the U.S. Treasury Department ordered the closure of more than eighty websites related to Cuba that promoted trade and thus violated U.S. legislation on economic sanctions. Interestingly, Yoani Sanchez's site was not closed even though it proposes the purchase of her book in Italian, in fact, through Paypal, a system that no Cubans living in Cuba can use because of the economic sanctions (which prohibit, among other things, electronic commerce). Similarly, Sanchez has a copyright for her blog © 2009 Generation Y - All Rights Reserved. No other Cuban blogger can do so under the laws of the embargo. What explains this unique situation?⁴¹

Other questions also require answers. Who is behind Sanchez's desdecuba.net website whose server is hosted in Germany by the company Cronos AG Regensburg (which also hosts far-right websites) and is registered under the name Josef Biechele? It was also discovered that Sanchez registered her domain name via the U.S. company GoDaddy, whose main characteristic is anonymity. The Pentagon also uses it to register sites with all the necessary discretion. How can Yoani Sanchez, a Cuban blogger living in Cuba, register her site with a U.S. company when the economic sanctions legislation formally prohibits it?⁴²

Moreover, Yoani Sanchez's site Generation Y is extremely sophisticated, with portals to Facebook and Twitter. It also receives 14 million visits per month and is the only one available in no less than 18 languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese, Lithuanian, Czech, Bulgarian, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, Korean, Greek). No other site in the world, including those of major international institutions such as the UN, World Bank, IMF, OECD, and the European Union, has as many language versions available. Not even the U.S. State Department web site or the CIA has such a variety.⁴³

Another surprising detail. The site hosting the blog of Sanchez has a bandwidth 60 times higher than Cuba has for all its Internet users! Other questions inevitably arise about it: Who manages these pages in 18 languages? Who pays the administrators? How much? Who pays for the translators who work daily on Sanchez's site? How much? Furthermore, the management of a flow of more than 14 million visitors monthly is extremely expensive. Who pays for that?⁴⁴

Yoani Sanchez has a perfect right to speak freely and issue virulent criticisms of the authorities in Havana -- she does not hesitate to do so -- about the difficult daily realities of Cuba. She cannot be nor should she be criticized for that. Instead, she commits a serious intellectual imposture when she presents herself as a mere blogger, saying that her sole purpose is to honestly perform her duty as a citizen.

Her meticulous viciousness in systematically obscuring reality, evoking only the negative aspects, de-contextualizing the problems, methodically ignoring the geopolitical environment in which Cuba finds itself, particularly in its relationship with the U.S. and the relentless imposition of economic sanctions which affect every Cuban's life, resorting to lies as was easily verified in the case of the alleged "aggression," all tend to discredit her. Her role first and foremost is to woo a certain audience resolutely opposed to the Cuban revolutionary process and to faithfully misrepresent the Cuban reality in its complexity.

Another unique fact: U.S. president Barack Obama responded to an interview with Yoani Sanchez. So as the U.S. sinks deeper and deeper into an unprecedented economic crisis, as the battle over healthcare reform becomes increasingly difficult, as Afghan and Iraq issues continue to heat up, in spite of the highly charged agenda of the presidency, with the extremely sensitive subject of the seven U.S. military bases installed in Colombia having raised continental disapproval, with a coup in Honduras in which Washington is seriously implicated, and with hundreds of requests from around the world for media interviews pending, Barack Obama put all that aside to answer questions from this Cuban blogger.⁴⁵

In the interview, Sanchez at no time asked for an end to the economic sanctions which affect all sectors of Cuban society starting with the most vulnerable (women, children, and elderly), which represent the main obstacle to development of the country, and which are rejected by the vast majority of the international community (187 countries in the UN vote in October 2009) because of their anachronistic, cruel, and ineffective nature. On the contrary, she takes up exactly the rhetoric of Washington: "The political propaganda tells us that we live in a besieged city, a David versus Goliath and the 'voracious enemy' that is about to pounce on us." The economic sanctions, which she describes as mere "trade restrictions" are "so clumsy and outdated"⁴⁶ not because they have dramatic consequences for the Cuban population, but because they are "used as justification both for the setbacks in productivity and to repress those who think differently."⁴⁷ These are exactly the same arguments raised by the U.S. representative to the United Nations in October 2009 to justify the continued state of siege that Washington has imposed on Cuba since 1960, without explaining why 187 countries in the world have been willing to participate each of the last 18 years in what she calls "political propaganda."⁴⁸

In light of these factors, it is impossible that Yoani Sanchez is a simple blogger denouncing the difficulties of a system. Powerful interests are hiding behind the smokescreen that is Generation Y, which represents a formidable weapon in the media war that the United States wages against Cuba. Yoani Sanchez has clearly understood that obedience to the powerful is rewarded handsomely (over $ 100,000 in total).⁴⁹ She has chosen to join the business of dissent and live the good days in Cuba.

Notes

1 Andrea Rodríguez, "Cuban Blogger Says She Is Briefly Detained," Associated Press, 7 November 2009.

2 Yoani Sánchez, "Secuestro estilo camorra," Generación Y , 8 November 2009. Accessed on 15 November 2009.

3 Ibid.

4 Agence France Presse, "Texas Executes Cuban-born Gang Member," 11 November 2009.

5 "Cuba: les USA indignés par les mauvais traitements infligés à des blogueurs," Le Monde, 10 November 2009.

6 Sánchez, "Secuestro estilo camorra," op. cit.

7 Fernando Ravsberg, "Ataque a bloguera cubana, ¿cambio de política," BBC Mundo, 9 November 20009.

8 CNN, "Yoani Sánchez golpeada en La Habana," 9 November 2009. Accessed on 15 November 2009.

9 Agence France Presse, "Cuba: la blogueuse Yoani Sanchez dit avoir été frappée et brièvement détenue," 7 November 2009.

10 Ravsberg, "Ataque a bloguera cubana, ¿cambio de política," op. cit.

11 Ibid.

12 Yoani Sánchez, "Secuestro estilo camorra," op. cit.; YouTube, "Entrevista a Yoani Sánchez tras la golpiza que recibió por parte del Gobierno Cubano," 9 November 2009. Accessed on 15 November 2009.

13 Ravsberg, «Ataque a bloguera cubana, ¿cambio de política», op. cit.

14 Ibid.

15 Correspondence with His Excellency Mr. Isaac Roberto Torres Barrios, Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba in Bern, November 17, 2009.

16 Yoaní Sánchez, "Mi perfil," Generación Y.

17 France 24, "Ce pays est une immense prison avec des murs idéologiques," 22 October 2009.

18 Yoaní Sánchez, "Siete preguntas," Generación Y, 18 November 2009.

19 Yoaní Sánchez, "Final de partida," Generación Y, 2 November 2009.

20 Yoaní Sánchez, "Seres de la sombra," Generación Y, 12 November 2009.

21 Sánchez, "Mi perfil," Generación Y, op. cit.

22 Yoaní Sánchez, "La improbable entrevista de Gianni Miná," Generación Y, 9 May 2009.

23 Yoaní Sánchez, "Vine y me quedé," Generación Y, 14 August 2007.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 Correspondence with His Excellency Mr. Orlando Requeijo, Ambassador of the Republic of Cuba in Paris, November 18, 2009.

27 "Yoani Sánchez: Hemos naufragado; hace rato que estamos bajo el agua," Libertad Digital, 12 November 2009.

28 Ibid.

29 Mauricio Vicent, "Los cambios llegarán a Cuba, pero no a través del guión del Gobierno," El País, 7 May 2008.

30 Sánchez, Generación Y.

31 El País, "EL PAÍS convoca los Premios Ortega y Gasset de periodismo 2009," 12 January 2009.

32 Time, "The 2008 Time 100," 2008. Accessed on 25 November 2009.

33 Yoani Sánchez, "Premios," Generación Y.

34 Miriam Leiva, "La Generación Y cubana," El País, 30 November 2008.

35 Sánchez, "Premios," op. cit.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 El País, "Una de las voces críticas del régimen cubano, mejor blog del año," 28 November 2008.

39 Yoani Sánchez, "¿Qué hago yo ahí?" Generación Y, 3 May 2008.

40 Guillermo Nova, "Bloguera cubana Yoani Sánchez descubierta escribiendo sus artículos desde el wi-fi de hoteles," Rebelión, 11 May 2009.

41 Norelys Morales Aguilera, "Si los blogs son terapéuticos ¿Quién paga la terapia de Yoani Sánchez?" La República, 13 August 2009.

42 Ibid.

43 Sánchez, Generación Y.

44 Morales, "Si los blogs son terapéuticos ¿Quién paga la terapia de Yoani Sánchez?" op. cit.

45 Yoani Sánchez, "Respuesta de Barack Obama a Yoani Sánchez," Generación Y, 20 November 2009.

46 Sánchez, "Siete preguntas," op. cit.

47 Yoani Sánchez, "Made in USA," Generación Y, 18 November 2009.

48 Sánchez, "Siete preguntas," op. cit.

49 Sánchez, "Premios," op. cit.

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Salim Lamrani is a professor at Paris Descartes University and Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée University and journalist specializing in relations between Cuba and the US. He has just published Cuba: Ce que les médias ne vous diront jamais [Cuba: What the Media Will Never Tell You] (Paris: Editions Estrella, 2009). Contact: <lamranisalim@yahoo.fr>. En español: "Las contradicciones de la bloguera cubana Yoani Sánchez." Translation by David Brookbank.

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URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/lamrani111209.html

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Cuba. Again. Still. Forever.

More than 50 years now it is. The propaganda and hypocrisy of the American mainstream media seems endless and unwavering. They can not accept the fact that Cuban leaders are humane or rational. Here's the Washington Post of December 13 writing about an American arrested in Cuba:

"The Cuban government has arrested an American citizen working on contract for the U.S. Agency for International Development who was distributing cellphones and laptop computers to Cuban activists. ... Under Cuban law ... a Cuban citizen or a foreign visitor can be arrested for nearly anything under the claim of 'dangerousness'."

That sounds just awful, doesn't it? Imagine being subject to arrest for whatever someone may choose to label "dangerousness". But the exact same thing has happened repeatedly in the United States since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. We don't use the word "dangerousness". We speak of "national security". Or, more recently, "terrorism". Or "providing material support to terrorism".

The arrested American works for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), a US government contractor that provides services to the State Department, the Pentagon and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2008, DAI was funded by the US Congress to "promote transition to democracy" in Cuba. Yes, Oh Happy Day!, we're bringing democracy to Cuba just as we're bringing it to Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, DAI was contracted by USAID to work in Venezuela and proceeded to fund the same groups that a few months earlier had worked to stage a coup — temporarily successful — against President Hugo Chávez. DAI performed other subversive work in Venezuela and has also been active in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other hotspots. "Subversive" is what Washington would label an organization like DAI if they behaved in the same way in the United States in behalf of a foreign government.⁶

The American mainstream media never makes its readers aware of the following (so I do so repeatedly): The United States is to the Cuban government like al-Qaeda is to the government in Washington, only much more powerful and much closer. Since the Cuban revolution, the United States and anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have inflicted upon Cuba greater damage and greater loss of life than what happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Cuban dissidents typically have had very close, indeed intimate, political and financial connections to American government agents. Would the US government ignore a group of Americans receiving funds or communication equipment from al-Qaeda and/or engaging in repeated meetings with known leaders of that organization? In the past few years, the American government has arrested a great many people in the US and abroad solely on the basis of alleged ties to al-Qaeda, with a lot less evidence to go by than Cuba has had with its dissidents' ties to the United States, evidence usually gathered by Cuban double agents. Virtually all of Cuba's "political prisoners" are such dissidents.

The Washington Post story continued:

"The Cuban government granted ordinary citizens the right to buy cellphones just last year." Period.

What does one make of such a statement without further information? How could the Cuban government have been so insensitive to people's needs for so many years? Well, that must be just the way a "totalitarian" state behaves. But the fact is that because of the disintegration of the Soviet bloc, with a major loss to Cuba of its foreign trade, combined with the relentless US economic aggression, the Caribbean island was hit by a great energy shortage beginning in the 1990s, which caused repeated blackouts. Cuban authorities had no choice but to limit the sale of energy-hogging electrical devices such as cell phones; but once the country returned to energy sufficiency the restrictions were revoked.

"Cubans who want to log on [to the Internet] often have to give their names to the government."

What does that mean? Americans, thank God, can log onto the Internet without giving their names to the government. Their Internet Service Provider does it for them, furnishing their names to the government, along with their emails, when requested.

"Access to some Web sites is restricted."

Which ones? Why? More importantly, what information might a Cuban discover on the Internet that the government would not want him to know about? I can't imagine. Cubans are in constant touch with relatives in the US, by mail and in person. They get US television programs from Miami. International conferences on all manner of political, economic and social subjects are held regularly in Cuba. What does the American media think is the great secret being kept from the Cuban people by the nasty commie government?

"Cuba has a nascent blogging community, led by the popular commentator Yoani Sánchez, who often writes about how she and her husband are followed and harassed by government agents because of her Web posts. Sánchez has repeatedly applied for permission to leave the country to accept journalism awards, so far unsuccessfully."

According to a well-documented account⁷, Sánchez's tale of government abuse appears rather exaggerated. Moreover, she moved to Switzerland in 2002, lived there for two years, and then voluntarily returned to Cuba. On the other hand, in January 2006 I was invited to attend a book fair in Cuba, where one of my books, newly translated into Spanish, was being presented. However, the government of the United States would not give me permission to go. My application to travel to Cuba had also been rejected in 1998 by the Clinton administration.

"'Counterrevolutionary activities', which include mild protests and critical writings, carry the risk of censure or arrest. Anti-government graffiti and speech are considered serious crimes."

Raise your hand if you or someone you know of was ever arrested in the United States for taking part in a protest. And substitute "pro al-Qaeda" for "counterrevolutionary" and for "anti-government" and think of the thousands imprisoned the past eight years by the United States all over the world for ... for what? In most cases there's no clear answer. Or the answer is clear: (a) being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or (b) being turned in to collect a bounty offered by the United States, or (c) thought crimes. And whatever the reason for the imprisonment, they were likely tortured. Even the most fanatical anti-Castroites don't accuse Cuba of that. In the period of the Cuban revolution, since 1959, Cuba has had one of the very best records on human rights in the hemisphere. See my essay: "The United States, Cuba and this thing called Democracy".⁸

There's no case of anyone arrested in Cuba that compares in injustice and cruelty to the arrest in 1998 by the United States government of those who came to be known as the "Cuban Five", sentenced in Florida to exceedingly long prison terms for trying to stem terrorist acts against Cuba emanating from the US.⁹ It would be lovely if the Cuban government could trade their DAI prisoner for the five. Cuba, on several occasions, has proposed to Washington the exchange of a number of what the US regards as "political prisoners" in Cuba for the five Cubans held in the United States. So far the United States has not agreed to do so.

6. For more details on DAI, see Eva Golinger, "The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela" (2006) and her website, posting for December 31, 2009 ^↩
7. Salim Lamrani, professor at Paris Descartes University, "The Contradictions of Cuban Blogger Yoani Sanchez", Monthly Review magazine, November 12, 2009 ^↩
8. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/democ.htm ^↩
9. http://killinghope.org/bblum6/polpris.htm ^↩

–

Mothers, don't let your children grow up to be Nobel Peace Prize winners

In November I wrote:

Question: How many countries do you have to be at war with to be disqualified from receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?

Answer: Five. Barack Obama has waged war against only Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. He's holding off on Iran until he actually gets the prize.

Well, on December 10 the president clutched the prize in his blood-stained hands. But then the Nobel Laureate surprised us. On December 17 the United States fired cruise missiles at people in ... not Iran, but Yemen, all "terrorists" of course, who were, needless to say, planning "an imminent attack against a U.S. asset".² A week later the United States carried out another attack against "senior al-Qaeda operatives" in Yemen.³

Reports are that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Norway is now in conference to determine whether to raise the maximum number of wars allowed to ten. Given the committee's ignoble history, I imagine that Obama is taking part in the discussion. As is Henry Kissinger.

The targets of these attacks in Yemen reportedly include fighters coming from Afghanistan and Iraq, confirmation of the warnings long given — even by the CIA and the Pentagon — that those US interventions were creating new anti-American terrorists. (That's anti-American foreign policy, not necessarily anything else American.) How long before the United States will be waging war in some other god-forsaken land against anti-American terrorists whose numbers include fighters from Yemen? Or Pakistan? Or Somalia? Or Palestine?

Our blessed country is currently involved in so many bloody imperial adventures around the world that one needs a scorecard to keep up. Rick Rozoff of StopNATO has provided this for us in some detail.⁴

For this entire century, almost all these anti-American terrorists have been typically referred to as "al-Qaeda", as if you have to be a member of something called al-Qaeda to resent bombs falling on your house or wedding party; as if there's a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American terrorism while being a member of al-Qaeda and people retaliating against American terrorism while NOT being a member of al-Qaeda. However, there is not necessarily even such an animal as a "member of al-Qaeda", albeit there now exists "al-Qaeda in Iraq" and "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula". Anti-American terrorists do know how to choose a name that attracts attention in the world media, that appears formidable, that scares Americans. Governments have learned to label their insurgents "al-Qaeda" to start the military aid flowing from Washington, just like they yelled "communist" during the Cold War. And from the perspective of those conducting the War on Terror, the bigger and more threatening the enemy, the better — more funding, greater prestige, enhanced career advancement. Just like with the creation of something called The International Communist Conspiracy.

It's not just the American bombings, invasions and occupations that spur the terrorists on, but the American torture. Here's Bowe Robert Bergdahl, US soldier captured in Afghanistan, speaking on a video made by his Taliban captors: He said he had been well-treated, contrasting his fate to that of prisoners held in US military prisons, such as the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "I bear witness I was continuously treated as a human being, with dignity, and I had nobody deprive me of my clothes and take pictures of me naked. I had no dogs barking at me or biting me as my country has done to their Muslim prisoners in the jails that I have mentioned."⁵

Of course the Taliban provided the script, but what was the script based on? What inspired them to use such words and images, to make such references?

Notes

1. 
   
2. ABC News, December 17, 2009; Washington Post, December 19, 2009 ^↩
3. Washington Post, December 25, 2009 ^↩
4. Stop NATO, "2010: U.S. To Wage War Throughout The World", December 30, 2009. To get on the StopNATO mailing list write to r_rozoff@yahoo.com. To see back issues: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/^↩
5. Reuters, December 25, 2009 ^↩

Lincoln Gordon, architect of 1964 Brazilian Coup died (may he rot in hell)

The American elite

Lincoln Gordon died a few weeks ago at the age of 96. He had graduated summa cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19, received a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, published his first book at 22, with dozens more to follow on government, economics, and foreign policy in Europe and Latin America. He joined the Harvard faculty at 23. Dr. Gordon was an executive on the War Production Board during World War II, a top administrator of Marshall Plan programs in postwar Europe, ambassador to Brazil, held other high positions at the State Department and the White House, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, economist at the Brookings Institution, president of Johns Hopkins University. President Lyndon B. Johnson praised Gordon's diplomatic service as "a rare combination of experience, idealism and practical judgment".

You get the picture? Boy wonder, intellectual shining light, distinguished leader of men, outstanding American patriot.

Abraham Lincoln Gordon was also Washington's on-site, and very active, director in Brazil of the military coup in 1964 which overthrew the moderately leftist government of João Goulart and condemned the people of Brazil to more than 20 years of an unspeakably brutal dictatorship. Human-rights campaigners have long maintained that Brazil's military regime originated the idea of the desaparecidos, "the disappeared", and exported torture methods across Latin America. In 2007, the Brazilian government published a 500-page book, "The Right to Memory and the Truth", which outlines the systematic torture, rape and disappearance of nearly 500 left-wing activists, and includes photos of corpses and torture victims. Currently, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is proposing a commission to investigate allegations of torture by the military during the 1964-1985 dictatorship. (When will the United States create a commission to investigate its own torture?)

In a cable to Washington after the coup, Gordon stated — in a remark that might have had difficulty getting past the lips of even John Foster Dulles — that without the coup there could have been a "total loss to the West of all South American Republics". (It was actually the beginning of a series of fascistic anti-communist coups that trapped the southern half of South America in a decades-long nightmare, culminating in "Operation Condor", in which the various dictatorships, aided by the CIA, cooperated in hunting down and killing leftists.)

Gordon later testified at a congressional hearing and while denying completely any connection to the coup in Brazil he stated that the coup was "the single most decisive victory of freedom in the mid-twentieth century."

Listen to a phone conversation between President Johnson and Thomas Mann, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, April 3, 1964, two days after the coup:

MANN: I hope you're as happy about Brazil as I am.

LBJ: I am.

MANN: I think that's the most important thing that's happened in the hemisphere in three years.

LBJ: I hope they give us some credit instead of hell.¹

So the next time you're faced with a boy wonder from Harvard, try to keep your adulation in check no matter what office the man attains, even — oh, just choosing a position at random — the presidency of the United States. Keep your eyes focused not on these "liberal" ... "best and brightest" who come and go, but on US foreign policy which remains the same decade after decade. There are dozens of Brazils and Lincoln Gordons in America's past. In its present. In its future. They're the diplomatic equivalent of the guys who ran Enron, AIG and Goldman Sachs.

Of course, not all of our foreign policy officials are like that. Some are worse.

And remember the words of convicted spy Alger Hiss: Prison was "a good corrective to three years at Harvard."

Notes

1. Michael Beschloss, Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-1964 (New York, 1997), p.306. All other sources for this section on Gordon can be found in: Washington Post, December 22, 2009, obituary; The Guardian (London), August 31, 2007; William Blum, "Killing Hope", chapter 27 ^↩

Blocking Freedom Marcher/Viva Palestina Aid to Gaza

Blocking Freedom Marcher/Viva Palestina Aid to Gaza - by Stephen Lendman

Since Israel isolated Gaza under siege in mid-2007, it's blocked essential humanitarian aid from entering, including:

-- on December 1, 2008, when its warships stopped a Libyan cargo vessel several kilometers from Gaza, ordering it back to El-Arish, Egypt or be attacked; it was carrying 1,200 tons of rice, 750 tons of milk, 500 tons of oil, 500 tons of flour, and 100 tons of medicines;

-- on December 15, 2008 when the Spirit of Humanity carrying five tons of aid and 21 passengers, including three volunteer surgeons, was intercepted at sea, 100 miles from Gaza, and warned to turn back to Larnaca, Cyprus or be assaulted; and

-- on June 30, 2009, the Free Gaza Movement's Spirit of Humanity was intercepted and boarded 23 miles off Gaza's coast; its aid cargo and 21 human rights activists were seized, including Nobel laureate Mairead Maguire and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney; they were threatened and forcibly taken to Israel's southern port of Ashdod, held incommunicado under horrific conditions one passenger described as a "horror movie....in a warehouse, where we slept on a cockroach-infested cement floor as armed soldiers" stood guard; all their personal possessions were confiscated, and a day later two of them were taken to Ashdod's central bus station with no money or belongings; the others were arrested and treated like criminals.

Cynthia McKinney described her ordeal as prisoner number 88794 at Ramle prison, known as one of Israel's harshest - a former British police station, overcrowded, "stinking," many inside with no bed, everyone confined to tiny areas, some in isolation with no sunlight, and a series of dungeons six feet long, three feet wide, and six feet high that are dark, filthy, unbearable to be in, and those inside are stripped naked, beaten, unable to shower, given a thin coverall, and allowed to use the toilet once a day only.

McKinney had a suitcase with crayons for children. Others had medical and building supplies. Authorities tried to get her to confess to a crime. She refused so was treated harshly. She called Ramle:

"incredibly black: populated mostly by Ethiopians who also had a dream," were en route to Israel for it, yet were denied and then imprisoned. She and 14 others were held in a 7 by 7 meter cell in Israel's summer heat, searched twice daily, but said it's nothing to how Palestinians are treated.

One of the passengers, Ramzi Kysia, told the Israeli news service, Ynet.org:

"We'll be back again and again....the Israeli regime should be careful, because we're coming. We won't stop until this blockade is broken forever and Gaza residents have access to the rest of the world." She also said the group's attorney will demand that Israel return its vessel.

Gaza Freedom Marchers' (GFM) Mission of Mercy

In late December, around 1,400 activists from about 43 countries gathered in Cairo, Egypt, preparing to travel to Gaza with humanitarian aid as a show of solidarity with its 1.5 million people needing all they can get - "put(ting) forth a global call to Israel to Lift the Siege of Gaza!"

Seven months in the planning, the group included doctors, lawyers, diplomats, students, artists, rabbis, priests, imams, and others, young and old, men and women, united to end the blockade, free the Gazan people, end their suffering, and highlight Israel's outrageous crimes of war, against humanity, and brutalizing oppression that continues daily against civilian "protected people" under international law.

The march was under the auspices of the International Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza, formed after Operation Cast Lead, representing a "diverse coalition that represents all faiths (and no faith) and is focused on human rights in conformance with international law."

On arrival in Egypt, they were harshly treated and prevented from entering Gaza, save for a token 24 hours offered 100 only that the group summarily rejected as outrageous and unacceptable. Some dozens, in fact, went, as explained below.

On December 27, 30 freedom marchers were held under house arrest at their hotel in El-Arish, and another eight at the bus station to prevent them from traveling to Gaza. At the same time, security police broke up a Kasr al Nil Bridge commemoration on the anniversary of Israel's attack, disrupting a peaceful protest against it.

Others marked the occasion in Cairo by floating 1,400 candles on the Nile, remembering the number of Gazans killed in cold blood.

On December 28, a group of French activists from the solidarity group EuroPalestine took over the boulevard outside their Cairo Embassy, occupied the street with tents for four hours, blocked traffic, demanded buses to Gaza, and forced the French ambassador to negotiate on their behalf, or at least go through the motions as nothing he did helped.

They were confronted by dozens of armored police vehicles, hundreds of riot cops, water cannons ready if they resisted orders to disperse. They negotiated with the police, said they intended to stay, demanded buses to Gaza, and asked others to join them in peaceful solidarity.

Others staged a sit-in outside Cairo's UN building demanding the world body intervene on their behalf. They, too, were met by security forces while some of them negotiated with UN representatives asking for safe entry to Gaza for all 1,400 marchers. They were rejected even though the UN agreed to try to arrange a meeting with the Foreign Ministry's chief of staff to deliver their request to President Mubarak, Egypt's reigning despot since 1981, in league with Washington and Israel, and fully supportive of the siege, so expecting him to help is futile.

Most protestors dispersed at the end of the day, promising to return, while Holocaust survivor, Hedy Epstein, age 85, began a hunger strike (with dozen or more others) to protest, drinking only water and orange juice for energy. Concerned about her health, she ended it on New Year's eve, but vowed to continue her efforts to end the criminal siege.

On December 29, Egyptian security forces detained about 25 American citizens inside the US Embassy and another seven or eight outside the compound. They were seeking help to enter Gaza, but were met almost immediately in response, and according to Gael Murphy, one of the organizers, this action "suggests the American Embassy is responsible." Indeed so, as one word from inside and it would end, or perhaps never happen in the first place.

America, Israel, and Egypt, of course, are complicit in isolating Gaza. Washington and Tel Aviv jointly planned Operation Cast Lead and all other IDF conflicts, and the world community turns a blind eye to daily attacks, land seizures, torture, killings, targeted assassinations, and decades of these and other Israeli crimes and oppression against millions of Palestinian civilians.

After three days of vigils, protests, and determination to persist, the March Coordinating Committee and other contingents "flatly reject(ed) Egypt's (token) offer" to let 100 enter Gaza for 24 hours. All or no one they said as one step toward liberating 1.5 million Gazans. In fact, about 85 activists went, including Palestinians who had never seen family members there and wanted a chance.

On December 31, the entire group defied police blockades and unfurled banners calling on supporters to join with them in solidarity. Some got past barricades and marched to Tahreer Square in downtown Cairo. Courageous Egyptians joined them to denounce their government's role, risking severe measures freely used against anyone defying government orders.

Police separated them from the marchers, then assaulted them. One of them, Desiree Fairooz said:

"I was lifted by the Egyptian police forces and literally tossed over the fence."

More measures likely followed, unreported away from the demonstration, perhaps including arrests and brutal treatment in detention, common measures by Egyptian security forces, including torture.

On January 1, marchers protested in front of the Israeli consulate, and were quickly confronted again, but demonstrated again the next day. Reports were that Egyptian plainclothes police were involved, used violence, and injured seven or more protestors. Mick Napier, head of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign said:

"The police used excessive force, and at one stage several female protestors were punched and kicked. A couple had their hijabs ripped away from the head. Many of us were taken aback by the naked (police) aggression as this was a nonviolent protest."

Marchers were also "dragged, pulled, and manhandled" according to Code Pink's Medea Benjamin. Surprisingly, no one was arrested, but they were fenced into a pen and held for two days, surrounded by baton-wielding riot police, forced sleep on the sidewalk, and most were denied food or toilet access. About 50 US citizens were roughed up and held briefly in detention.

On January 3, organizers reported a French citizen's death from security force sustained injuries. Marie Renee died in a Cairo hospital. She was one of 300 members of a French delegation.

The same day, Al-Jazeera reported that hundreds of Israelis and Arab activists protested against the siege in central Tel Aviv chanting "Freedom and Justice in Gaza." They demanded an end to the blockade, calling it a "war crime," according to the AFP new agency.

Besides wanting access to Gaza and the siege ended, marchers want to stop Egypt (with US Army Corps of Engineers help and congressional funding) from building a 9 - 10 km long iron wall across its Gaza border, extending up to 30 meters below ground to prevent essential goods from the Strip through hundreds of tunnels.

Washington, Israel and Egypt call it "smuggling." Gazans say it's a vital lifeline bringing in food, medicines, fuel, and other essentials in whatever amounts possible, way short of what's needed, but important nonetheless.

Gaza Freedom Marchers persist and on January 1 issued their Cairo Declaration saying:

"We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state:

In view of:

-- Israel's ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza;

-- the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and settlements;

-- the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza;

-- the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006;

-- the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago;

-- the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel;

-- and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;

-- all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel;

-- in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to behave with impunity;

-- and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007)

We reaffirm our commitment to:

Palestinian Self-Determination
Ending the Occupation
Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine
The Full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees

We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law.

To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass, democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS.

Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose:

1. An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by Palestinian and South African trade unionist and civil society activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public internationally;

2. Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010;

3. A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products, involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors;

4. Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott;

5. Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries;

6. Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli government war criminals; coordination of Citizen's Arrest Bureaux to identify, campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations;

7. Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (FNF).

We appeal to organisations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign it and work with us to make it a reality."

Before heading home, Freedom Marchers formed a five member working committee to implement specific measures outlined above, including a BDS speaking tour and efforts to have Israeli war criminals prosecuted.

They were prevented from entering Gaza, but highlighted the complicity of Israel, America and Egypt in stopping them, aroused greater world outrage, and enlisted more support as a result - including in America despite a mostly dominant media blackout on their mission.

Finally on January 3, one marcher, Emily Ratner, delivered this message:

"May we leave Cairo with more hope than when we arrived that the siege will end and Gaza and all of Palestine will be free."

May Israel, Washington and Egypt know that committed activists and growing millions worldwide won't relent until the siege and occupation ends and those responsible are held fully accountable.

Viva Palestina's Commitment to Break the Gaza Siege

In an emergency year end appeal, the registered UK charity announced that on December 6, its third aid convoy left London, traveling almost 3,000 miles through nine countries, gaining support to bring vital relief to Gaza and end the siege.

On Christmas eve, over 500 people from 20 countries in 250 vehicles, loaded with humanitarian aid, were stranded in Aqaba, Jordan when they were refused permission to take the short route to Egypt.

Forced to turn around, they headed back to Syria to travel a longer one to get there. Because of the added cost, they appealed for help to charter ferries and a plane to complete their mission. World Bulletin.net reported that a Gulf businessman paid for a Turkish cargo ship to transport them, named Ulosoy 6, after which they prepared to leave.

On January 3, Al-Jazeera reported that the convoy left Latakia, Syria with 210 lorries of medicines and other supplies, sailing for the Egyptian port of El Arish on the Mediterranean where they were expected to arrive the next day.

British MP George Galloway and Kevin Ovenden lead it, had appealed to Egypt for Gaza access through the Red Sea Nuweiba port, but were denied. Cairo ordered the alternate, much longer route, risking Israeli interception, and no assurance of Gaza entry on arrival regardless of promises made.

On January 4, AP reported that the "convoy will be allowed to enter the Gaza Strip after organizers struck a deal with Egyptian authorities over its transit route."

On January 4, they arrived at El Arish, cleared customs, expect to enter Gaza as soon as possible, are just 100 miles away, and "198 vehicles" are coming with aid that includes specialized medical equipment and the vehicles themselves. Those let in will stay and are vitally needed.

Convoy organizer, Kevin Ovenden, expressed optimism saying:

"We now have every right to expect unhindered and safe passage into Gaza, but we call on all our friends internationally to stand ready to raise their voices if we face further unjustified delay."

On January 3, Al-Zajeera reported that Egypt will temporarily open the Rafah crossing from January 3 - 6, something sporadically done before, only to be shut again on short or no notice.

Whether all, or even any, aid gets in unknown as earlier promises have been broken, and Israel keeps Gaza isolated under siege with Cairo a complicit ally.

Events are fast-moving and fluid. On January 5, aid members reported that Egyptian authorities seized 157 passports, including from convoy leaders George Galloway and Kevin Ovenden. They'd been stamped on arrival, then got an exit stamp, meaning they'd have to leave the country. Word was that these members alone would gain Gaza entry, not another 400 flying into Al Arish late Monday. After "noisy protests," passports were later returned with exit stamps removed, so temporarily the issue was resolved.

However, members report that the "situation is changing by the hour," yet everyone remains hopeful. Spokeswoman Alice Howard said the "convoy expects to enter the Gaza Strip via the Rafah crossing from Egypt at 2pm local time on Tuesday." In 2009, Galloway lead two successful missions. He hopes to make this one his third with much more aid if successful.

On January 5, a late report from Al Arish casts doubt saying:

"Our situation is now at a crisis point! Riot has broken out in the port of Al Arish. This late afternoon we were negotiating with a senior official from Cairo who left negotiations some two hours ago and did not return." It was about securing safe passage to Gaza with needed aid.

Afterward, "Egyptian authorities called over 2,000 riot police who then moved towards our camp at the port. We have now blocked the entrance (and) now faced with (them) and water cannons and are determined to defend our vehicles and aid."

"The Egyptian authorities have by their stubbornness and hostility....brought us to a crisis point."

Early AM January 6, it's reported that hundreds of members broke down the gate at the Al Arish port in protest. George Galloway scuffled with Egyptian police, and 55 activists were injured when police used water cannons, tear gas and batons to beat people who objected to Cairo's obstructionism.

Authorities told Galloway and other convoy leaders that dozens of aid vehicles would be sent to the Israeli checkpoint, not Rafah that Egypt controls. Of course, nothing entering Israel reaches Gaza, so this idea was rejected. Hence the scuffle, standoff, and unsuccessful resolution as of early AM US Central time, January 6.

As a result, Viva Palestina calls on friends and supporters to protest by any means possible and demand that the entire convoy be granted free access to Gaza. The situation remains fluid, so new developments are likely after this article is published. Follow them at vivapalestina.org and web sites reporting their progress, or lack of it.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to the Lendman News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://republicbroadcasting.org/Lendman

Minot/Barksdale Nuclear Bent Spear Incident-Part II

Last month I posted part 1 of my piece on Minot/Barksdale here. In it, I reviewed the incident and the Defense Science Board’s final report on the incident in question. When the story broke, there were reports and writings all over the blogosphere connecting it with possible strikes against Iran, possible diversion for false-flag attacks here at home and even Chinese electronic tampering through backdoor access to Chinese-made semiconductors allegedly used in Air Force electronics. In this piece, I will examine some of these allegations as well as some of the deaths of Air Force personnel in an attempt to determine any relationship to the above incident.

As stated in Part 1, over 36 hours on August 29-30, 2007, two pylons of 6 AGM-129 cruise missiles one package containing inert payloads, the other 6 active nuclear warheads, were removed from the 5^th Bomb Wing secure ordnance storage at Minot AFB, mounted on a B-52H bomber like the one pictured above carrying identical pylon payloads and flown 1100 miles to Barksdale AFB where they were discovered by ground crews after sitting, unguarded on the tarmac for 11 hours. The resulting Nuclear Security Alert and it’s aftermath investigations led to a wholesale review of Air Force Nuclear Weapons Handling procedures and precipitated an unprecedented wave of disciplinary actions across the ranks, up to and including the resignations of the Air Force Chief of Staff Michael Moseley and Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne. Although the weapons never left overall Air Force custody, they passed through five separate chain-of-custody handoffs requiring visual inspections on two bases until being discovered by the unloading crew at Barksdale.

The DSB final report found the following:

1. Over time, nuclear weapons movement procedures for bomber weapons have been compromised for expedient work processes. This evolution occurred without adequate review and approval above the Wing level.

2. There was confusion over applicability of nuclear weapons handling procedures for nuclear weapons systems that do not contain nuclear weapons.

3. The practice of storing nuclear munitions in the same facility with nuclear-test, nuclear-training and nuclear-inert devices led to confusion and unnecessary access to nuclear weapons.

4. The various levels of inspection activities failed to detect these changes in process which compromised established procedure. The Nuclear Operational Readiness Inspection process required only limited mission performance, sometimes generating as few as one aircraft being subjected to inspection.

This combined with the increased tempo of conventional bombing operations led to an overall erosion of standards within the nuclear weapons mission. In other words, it was a FUBAR SNAFU of the highest order. For me, the one glaring omission not addressed was how nuclear warheads, by all informed accounts, easily identifiable and rigorously alarmed to prevent improper movement, could have been removed from Secure Ordnance Storage in the first place without setting off alarms as soon as they crossed the threshold.

Others have asked this question and posited possible answers such as Dave Lindorff here, Wayne Madsen here and Larry Franklin here. All speculated that this was a case of an alternate command structure outside of the Presidential Command Authority staging weapons for use against Iran. Madsen went so far as to tie this incident to the Operation Orchard Strike by Israel against a suspected Syrian/North Korean nuclear site. Walter Pincus at the Washington Post generally echoed the DSB’s report here. So let’s take a look at the possible scenarios as outlined above.

Staging for an Iran Attack

Lindorff, Madsen and Franklin all posited a possible covert attack on Iran, Madsen wrote it was to coincide with the Israeli strike on Syria. To accomplish this, a separate chain of command was allegedly set up through the VP’s office and key elements in the Air Force command structure outside of the Presidential Command Authority. The problem with such a scenario is that the authentication procedures for nuclear launch in the PCA would be impossible to duplicate without detection. While there is a remote possibility that such a regime might work to move nuclear weapons, authorizing launch would be an entirely different matter. Also recognize that many of our nuclear weapons storage and Nuclear power plant facilities are secured with alarm and monitoring systems provided by Magal Security Systems, an Israeli government controlled security company. If the fix was in, this company or whichever one was tasked to build the Minot Security system would have to be involved as well. Such a situation would not reflect well on that firm’s reputation for infrastructure security. Also, since Barksdale AFB was home to the 2^nd Bomber Wing flying identical aircraft and having an identical weapons inventory, including AGM-129s, it would be much easier to stage such a scenario at Barksdale with fewer personnel involved. In any case, Gates’ housecleaning of the Air Force subsequent to this incident would seem to have removed many of the alleged links in this “alternate Chain-of-Command”.

False-Flag Attack/Missing Nuclear Weapon

The initial report published by Military Times stated that 5 operational nuclear weapons were found at Barksdale. This was later revised to 6 after the source location of the weapons was determined. Many posit that one of the warheads was removed somewhere in transit. The problem with this scenario is that every report I’ve read about this incident states that the AGM-129s were always prepackaged on pylons of 6 weapons each and only the warheads themselves were removed and replaced with dummies prior to tactical ferry. Once the pylons were moved from secure storage, they were mounted on the bomber as a whole unit rather than as individual weapons. Additionally, one commenter on Johnson’s article at TPM with experience in AF nuclear weapons storage pointed out that Barksdale’s 2^nd Bomber Wing is actually twice the size as the 5^th Wing at Minot, with twice the weapons storage area making it a better storage site for decommissioning.

Unexplained Personnel Deaths

Five Air Force Personnel died in the months surrounding this incident. Of these, only Airman 1st Class Todd Blue was even peripherally related to the incident. He died on Sept. 10, 2007. Blue served in the 5^th Security Forces Squadron at Minot. This unit is tasked with security for all weapons storage facilities of the 5^th Bomb Wing. What is unclear is whether Blue was on duty on the day of the incident in question. He did NOT have any responsibility for any weapons movements scheduling or operations and his role would have been to guard the facility and any approved nuclear warhead movements outside the storage area.

Air Force Captain John Frueh was found dead on Sept. 8, 2007 near Badger Peak in Washington State, just across the border from Portland, Ore. Where he had traveled to attend a friend’s wedding. Frueh, a major-selectee was attached to the USAF Special Operations Command, part of the JSOC unit headquartered at McDill AFB, Fla. Despite these facts, no connection was ever found between Frueh and the Minot/Barksdale Incident.

Senior Airman Clint Huff and his wife, Linda, were killed in a motorcycle accident near Shreveport, La. On Sept. 15, 2007. Huff, attached to the 26^th Operational Weather Squadron at Barksdale, also has no known connection to the Minot/Barksdale incident.

1^st Lieutenant Weston Kissel of the 23^rd Bomber Squadron of the 5^th Bomb Wing was killed in a solo motorcycle accident while on leave in Tennessee on July 17, 2007. While Kissel was a B-52 pilot, his death a month before the incident would leave him with no connection to it.

Senior Airman Adam Barrs, of the 5^th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, was killed in a single-car auto accident on July, 5 2007, as a passenger. The car was driven by Airman 1^st Class Stephen Garrett. There is speculation that Barr’s specialty, communications and navigations systems could be relevant to the incident but his death over the July 4^th holidays both predates the incident and had no direct link to it.

Additionally, the Military Times published a story stating 237 nuclear handling deficiencies in the Air Combat Command in total just since 2001. This report would also buttress the DSB’s conclusion of an overall erosion of nuclear handling procedures. Strangely enough, the actual Bent Spear incident is not included in that list. Scott Vest, a former USAF Captain and Munitions Specialist with the 5^th Bomb Wing at Minot also has an interesting article on the subject here that also buttresses the DSB report.

As for the Chinese semiconductor hack story, I only found one website postulating the theory. That I would have to dismiss out of hand due to the fact that semiconductor suppliers don’t have any knowledge of the use their products have after they are sold.

In conclusion, despite all the dire warnings and postulations, I see nothing here that would indicate anything other than the DSB’s findings of an erosion of the nuclear mission due to increased conventional operations, downgrading of the nuclear mission and personnel & budgetary cutbacks that were warned about to the Air Combat Command as far back as 1992. The scope of SecDef Gates’ housecleaning and the fact that resignations and disciplinary actions went all the way to the top of the Air Force command structure are consistent with both the gravity of the incident and the desire by the DOD to put their nuclear house in order.

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