Our Empire, Documents. Part 6.
DOMINICA
He called for land reform, low-rent housing, modest nationalization of business, foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about the thing called civil liberties: communists, or those labelled as such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law. A number of American officials and congressmen expressed their discomfort with Bosch's plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that "creeping socialism" is made of In several quarters of the US press Bosch was red~baited. In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing. (The most recent demonstration of this was in Ecuador in January 2000, where a military coup was rescinded almost immediately after a few calls from t Washington officials.) Nineteen months later, April 1965, a widespread popular revolt broke out, which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent in 23,000 troops to help crush it. c p 147.
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
FRANCE
1947 to 1951, France Corsican and Mafia criminal syndicates in Marseilles, Sicily and Corsica—benefiting from CIA arms, money and psychological warfare—suppressed strikes and wrestled control of labour unions from the Communist Party. In return, the CIA smoothed the way for the gangsters to be left unmolested, and unindicted, and to re-establish the; heroin racket that had been restrained during the war—the famous "French Connection" that was to dominate the drug trade for more than two decades and was responsible for most of the heroin entering the United States. 218
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
France, 1947: Communist Party members had fought in the wartime resistance, unlike many other French who had collaborated with the Germans. After the war the Communists followed the legal path to form strong labour unions and vie for political office. But the United States was determined to deny them their place at the table, particularly since some unions were taking steps to impede the flow of arms to French forces seeking to reconquer their former colony of Vietnam with US aid. The US funnelled very large amounts of money to the Socialist Party, the Communists' chief rival; sent in American Federation of Labor (AFL) experts to subvert the CP's union dominance and import scabs from Italy; supplied arms and money to Corsican gangs to break up Communist strikes, burn down party offices and beat up and murder party members and strikers; sent in a psychological warfare team to complement all of these actions and used the threat of a cut off of food aid and other aid...all to seriously undermine Communist Party support and prestige. It worked. 127
At the same time, Washington was forcing the French government to dismiss its Communist ministers in order to receive American economic aid. 127
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
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GHANA
Ghana, 1966…When Kwame Nkrumah tried to lessen his country's dependence on the West by strengthening economic and military ties to the Soviet Union, China and East Germany, he effectively sealed his fate. A CIA-backed military coup sent the African leader into exile, from which he never returned. A CIA document, declassified in 1977, revealed that the Agency was in close contact with the military plotters and had been reporting to Washington. 14
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
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GREECE
Clinton's visit to Greece in November 1999 brought out large and' fiery anti-American demonstrations, protesting the recent American bombing of Yugoslavia and the indispensable US support for the torturers par excellence of the 1967-74 Greek junta.234
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
Greece, 1967-74. A military coup took place in April 1967, just two days before the campaign for national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou back as prime minister. The coup had been a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, the CIA and the American military stationed in Greece, and was followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings and killings, the victims totalling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save the nation from a "communist takeover". Torture, inflicted in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States, became routine. 143.
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
Greece, 1947-49 The United States intervened in a civil war, taking the side of the neo' fascists against the Greek left, who had fought the Nazis courageously. The neo-fascists won and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a suitably repressive internal security agency. For the next 15 years, Greece was looked upon much as a piece of real estate to be developed according to Washington's needs. 127
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
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GRENADA
Grenada, 1979 - 83. How impoverished, small, weak or far away must a country be before it is not a threat to the US government? In a 1979 coup, Maurice Bishop and his followers had taken power in this island country of 110 thousand, and though their actual policies were not as revolutionary as Castro's, Washington was again driven by its fear of "another Cuba", particularly when public appearances by the Grenadian leaders in other countries of the region met with great enthusiasm. Reagan administration destabilization tactics against the Bishop govemment began soon after the coup, featuring outrageous disinformation and deception. Finally came the invasion in October 1983, which put into power individuals more beholden to US foreign policy objectives. The US suffered 135 killed or wounded; there were also some 400 Grenadian casualties, and 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers. The invasion was attended by yet more transparent lies, created by Washington to justify its gross violations of international law. (c152?)
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
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GUATEMALA
Between 1950 and 1976, 3,213 Guatemalan students were trained under the U.S. military assistance programme. Between 1961 and 1973 Guatemala received 4.85 million dollars in U.S. assistance to its police force. Between 1950 and 1976 Guatemala received a total of 74.6 million dollars in U.S. military assistance. Between 1970 and 1975 161 Guatemalan military personnel received training at the U.S. Army School of the Americas, Panama Canal Zone. Between 1973 and 1976 the U.S. supplied 1,120 revolvers, 640 carbines and 160,000 cartridges to the Guatemalan National Police.
Source: Michael T. Klare, Supplying Repression: Support for Authoritarian Regimes Abroad, Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, 1977.
"…Guatemala in 1954, when the CIA launched a coup to overthrow the elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Gusman who was attempting to nationalise areas of unused land held by the United Fruit company."
R. Biel, The New Imperialism, Zed., 2000. Between pp. 64-66.
"In Guatemala 100,000 died at the hands of the re0ressive system installed by the CIA in 1954…
F. Castro, On Grenada, Monthly Review, Jan., 1984, pp 11-29
UN statistics showed that 98% of Guatemala’s cultivated land wa owned by 143 individuals and corporations, in a population of 3.5 million.
Arevalo and Arbenz did try to change these conditions. In 1952 they proclaimed Decree 900, a land reform which called for the expropriation and redistribution of uncultivated land above a basic acreage. 82 But United Fruit owned most of the land, and United Fruit obviously didn’t want to be expropriated. When Arbenz actually took away the land – the unexploited, uncultivated land -- and distributed i6t to 180,000 peasants, the US immediately condemned it as communistic, and convened the CAS in Caracas to make that condemnation official. It then found ac right wing Colonel, Castillo Armas a graduate of US command School at Fort Leavenworth, fed him arms, trained him, gave him planes, even piloted some of the planes and finally through him brought down Arbenz. One American company, United Fruit, controls over 50% of the foreign earnings, and thus of the whole economic structure, of six Latin American counties.
J. Gerasis, "Imperialism and Revolution in Latin America", in R. D. Laing and Cooper, The Dialectics of Liberation. 81, 82-83.
On March 10, 1999, in a talk delivered in Guatemala City, President Clinton said that US support for repressive forces in Guatemala "was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake." But the word 'sorry" did not cross the president's lips, nor did the word apologize", nor the word "compensation". Forty years of unholy cruelty to a people for which the United States was pre-eminently responsible was not worth a right word or a penny. 233.
Guatemala, 1953-199Os A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of military-government death squads, torture disappearances, mass executions and unimaginable cruelty, totalling more than 200,000 victims—indisputably one of the most inhumane chapters of the 20th century… 12
References; May 23, 1997 release by the CIA of 1,400 pages of classified documents concerning the 1954 coup in Guatemala.
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
From the 1960s through the 1980s, Guatemalan security forces, notably the Army unit called G-2, routinely tortured "subversives". One method was electric shock to the genital area, using military field telephones hooked up to small generators, equipment and instructions for use supplied by Uncle Sam. The US and its clients in various countries were becoming rather adept at this technique. The CIA advised, armed and equipped the G-2, which maintained a web of torture centers, whose methods reportedly included chopping off limbs and singeing flesh, in addition to electric shocks. The Army unit even had its own crematorium, presumably to dispose of any incriminating evidence. The CIA thoroughly infiltrated the G-2…
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000, p. 53
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HAITI
The US supported the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, then opposed the reformist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Meanwhile; the CIA was working intimately with death squads, torturers and drug traffrickers. ((Clinton supported Aristride’s return, but delayed it for two years.)) Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after obliging the priest to guarantee that he would not help the poor at the expense of the rich, literally; and that he would stick closely to free~market economics. This meant that Haiti would continue to be the assembly plant of the Western Hemisphere, with its workers receiving starvation wages, literally… 156
Haiti, 1959:The US military mission, in Haiti to train the troops of noted dictator Francois Duvalier, used its air, sea and ground power to smash an attempt to overthrow Duvalier by a small group of Haitians, aided by some Cubans and other Latin Americans. 132.
Numerous Haitian human-rights violators have resided in the United States in recent years, unmolested by the authorities. Their hands and souls are bloody from carrying out the repression of the Duvalier dynasty, or the overthrow of the democratically elected Father Jean Bertrand Aristide in 1991, or the return to repression after the coup…81 General Prosper Avril, another Haitian dictator, responsible for the torture of opposition activists, whom he then displayed, bloodied, on television. Forced out by angry mobs in 1990, he was flown to Florida by the US government, where he might have lived happily ever after except that some of his former torture victims brought suit against him. 82During the period of Aristide's exile, 1991-94, Colonel Carl Dorelien oversaw a 7,000-man force whose well-documented campaign of butchery included murder, rape, kidnapping and torture, leading to the deaths of some 5,000 Haitian civilians. The good colonel has found a home in Florida as well. We also have leading Haitian death-squad leader Emmanuel Constant, former head of FRAPH, the paramilitary group of thugs which spread deep fear amongst the Haitian people with its regular murders, torture, public beatings, arson raids on poor neighbourhoods and mutilation by machete in the aftermath of the coup against Aristide. He was on the CIA payroll in Haiti and now lives in New York…
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
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HONDURAS
During the 1980s, the CIA gave indispensable support to the infamous Battalion 316, which kidnapped, tortured and killed hundreds of citizens, using shock and suffocation devices for interrogation, amongst other techniques. The CIA supplied torture equipment, torture manuals, and in both Honduras and the US taught battalion members methods of psychological and physical torture. On at least one occasion, a CIA officer took part in interrogating a torture victim. The Agency also funded Argentine counter~insurgency experts to provide further training for the Hondurans. At the time, Argentina was famous for its "Dirty War," an appalling record of torture, baby kidnappings and disappearances. Argentine and CIA instructors worked side by side training Battalion. US support for the battalion continued even after its director, Gen. Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, told the US ambassador that he intended to use the Argentine methods of eliminating subversives. In 1983, the Reagan administration awarded Alvarez the Legion of Merit "for encouraging the success of democratic processes in Honduras." At the same time, the administration was misleading Congress and the American public by denying or minimizing the battalion's atrocities.
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000, p. 55.
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IDONESIA
The U.S. action to overthrow Sukarno in 1958 -- really, bald-faced aggression—attracted little public attention in the U.S. Although similar to the Bay of Pigs invasion, and far grander in scale, it was so far away that most Americans aren't even aware of the disaster. But L. Fletcher Prouty, the liaison officer between the CIA and the air force, and a long time military intelligence official with experience in Asia, has written a detailed account. 279
The CIA trained large numbers of Indonesian dissidents and mercenaries at bases in the Philippines, and returned them to Sumatra, where they recruited other rebels. 279
Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force, from a base in Taiwan, supplied a fleet -
of old B-26 bombers, refitted with a new machine gun package that greatly
enhanced their firepower. 279
Kwitney, J., Endless Enemies, 1986.
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IRAN.
(Kwitney provides a good account of the Iranian coup; 160-3. mostly not copied into these documents.)
With far greater efficiency and effect than the Soviets have so far shown in Afghanistan, the U.S. violently repressed Iranian independence for twenty-six years. Every Iranian was aware of it. Yet despite the copious and unmistakable evidence, most Americans still have little conception of what happened. In other words, the CIA director and the secretary of state at the time of the Mossadegh coup were, in private life, well-paid lawyers for the major oil companies. 163. SAVAK, the torture-happy Iranian security organization that kept the shah in power over the next twenty-six years. In his memoirs, Kerrnit Roosevelt acknowledged that SAVAK was organized and trained by the CIA and Mossad—the Israeli intelligence service.
J. Kwitney, Endless Enemies, Penguin, 1986.
In1975, ..(Iran)… along with the United States, abandoned the Kurds to a terrible fate. At a crucial point, the Kurds were begging Kissinger for help, but he completely ignored their pleas. Kurd forces were decimated; several hundred of their leaders were executed. 145.
Iran, 1953; Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint US-British operation. Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority of parliament, but he had made the fateful mistake o spearheading the movement to nationalize a British-owned oil company, the sole oil company operating in Iran. The coup restored the Shah to absolute power, initiating a period of 25 years of repression and torture, while the oil industry was restored to foreign ownership, with the US and Britain each getting 40 percent. 128
The notorious Iranian security service, SAVAK, which employed torture routinely, was created under the guidance of the CIA and Israel in the 1950s. According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, Jesse J. Leaf, SAVAK was-instructed in torture techniques by the Agency. After the 1979 revolution, the Iranians found CIA film made for SAVAK on how to torture women…
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000, 51
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IRAQ.
The one constant is that the US must end up in control of Iraq. Saddam Hussein was authorized to suppress, brutally, a 1991 uprising that might have overthrown him because "the best of all worlds" for Washington would be "an iron-fisted Iraqi junta without Saddam Hussein" (by then an embarrassment), which would rule the country with an "iron fist" as Saddam had done with US support and approval (NYT chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman). The uprising would have left the country in the hands of Iraqis who might not have subordinated themselves sufficiently to Washington. The murderous sanctions regime of the following years devastated the society, strengthened the tyrant, and compelled the population to rely for survival on his (highly efficient) system for distributing basic goods. The sanctions thus undercut the possibility of the kind of popular revolt that had overthrown an impressive series of other monsters who had been strongly supported by the current incumbents in Washington up to the very end of their bloody rule: Marcos, Duvalier, eausescu, Mobutu, Suharto, and a long list of others, some of them easily as tyrannical and barbaric as Saddam.
Had it not been for the sanctions, Saddam probably would have gone the same way, as has been pointed out for years by the Westerners who know Iraq best, Denis Halliday and Hans van Sponeck (though one has to go to Canada, England, or elsewhere to find their writings). But overthrow of the regime from within would not be acceptable either, because it would leave Iraqis in charge.
"Noam Chomsky Interviewed",by Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert; April 13, 2003.
US supply of arms to Iraq.
October 1983. The Reagan Administration begins secretly allowing Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt to transfer United States weapons, including Howitzers, Huey helicopters, and bombs to Iraq. These shipments violated the Arms Export Control Act. (16)
November 1983. George Schultz, the Secretary of State, is given intelligence reports showing that Iraqi troops are daily using chemical weapons against the Iranians. (1)
December 20 1983. Donald Rumsfeld, then a civilian and now Defense Secretary, meets with Saddam Hussein to assure him of US friendship and materials support. (1) (15)
July 1984. CIA begins giving Iraq intelligence necessary to calibrate its mustard gas attacks on Iranian troops. (19) … March 1986. The United States with Great Britain block all Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons, and on March 21 the U.S. becomes the only country refusing to sign a Security Council statement condemning Iraq's use of these weapons. (10)
May 1986. The U.S. Department of Commerce licenses 70 biological exports to Iraq between May of 1985 and 1989, including at least 21 batches of lethal strains of anthrax. (3)
May 1986. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade botulin poison to Iraq. (7) February 1988. Saddam Hussein begins the "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq. The Iraq regime used chemical weapons against the Kurds killing over 100,000 civilians and destroying over 1,200 Kurdish villages. (8)
April 1988. US Department of Commerce approves shipment of chemicals used in manufacture of mustard gas. (7)
August 1988. Four major battles were fought from April to August 1988, in which the Iraqis massively and effectively used chemical weapons to defeat the Iranians. Nerve gas and blister agents such as mustard gas are used. By this time the U.S.Defense Intelligence Agency is heavily involved with Saddam Hussein in battle plan assistance, intelligence gathering and post battle debriefing. In the last major battle with of the war, 65,000 Iranians are killed, many with poison gas. Use of chemical weapons in war is in violation of the Geneva accords of 1925. (6) (13)
August 1988. Five days after the cease fire Saddam Hussein sends his planes and helicopters to northern Iraq to begin massive chemical attacks against the Kurds. (8)
September 1988. U.S. Department of Commerce approves shipment of weapons grade anthrax and botulinum to Iraq. (7)
September 1988. Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State: "The US-Iraqi relationship is... important to our long-termpolitical and economic objectives." (15)…July 25, 1990. U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad meets with Hussein to assure him that President Bush "wanted better and deeper relations." Many believe this visit was a trap set for Hussein. A month later Hussein invaded Kuwait thinking the U.S. would not respond. (12)… July 1991. The Financial Times of London reveals that a Florida chemical company had produced and shipped cyanide to Iraq during the 80's using a special CIA courier. Cyanide was used extensively against the Iranians. (11)…June 1992. Ted Koppel of ABC Nightline reports: "It is becoming increasingly clear that George Bush, Sr., operating largelybehind the scenes throughout the 1980s, initiated and supported much of the financing, intelligence, and military help that built Saddam's Iraq into [an aggressive power]." (5) July 1992. "The Bush administration deliberately, not inadvertently, helped to arm Iraq by allowing U.S. technology to be shipped to Iraqi military and to Iraqi defense factories... Throughout the course of the Bush administration, U.S. and foreign firms were granted export licenses to ship U.S. technology directly to Iraqi weapons facilities despite ample evidence showing that these factories were producing weapons." Representative Henry Gonzalez, Texas, testimony before the House. (18)…August 2002. "The use of gas [during the Iran-Iraq war] on the battle field by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern... We were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose." Colonel Walter Lang, former senior U.S. Defense Intelligence officer tells the New York Times. (4)
This chronology of the United States' sordid involvement in the arming of Iraq can be summarized in this way: the United States used methods both legal and illegal to help build Saddam's army into the most powerful army in the Mideast outside of Israel. The U.S. supplied chemical and biological agents and technology to Iraq when it knew Iraq was using chemical weapons against the Iranians. The U.S. supplied the materials and technology for these weapons of mass destruction to Iraq at a time when it was known that Saddam was using this technology to kill his Kurdish citizens. The United States supplied intelligence and battle planning information to Iraq when those battle plans included the use of cyanide, mustard gas and nerve agents. The United States blocked U.N. censure of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. The United States did not act alone in this effort. The Soviet Union was the largest weapons supplier, but England, France and Germany were also involved in the shipment of arms and technology.
"Arming Iraq and the Path to War", by John King, UN Observer, April 2003.
Re the war on Iraq: The …"context is a blunt attempt by the superpower to reshape the world to suit itself."
…the website of the Project for the New American Century…
Last year, the Sunday Herald obtained a copy of a confidential report produced by the Project in September 2000, which suggested that blatting Saddam was the beginning, not the end of its strategy. "While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." The wider strategic aim, it insisted, was "maintaining global US pre-eminence".
George Monbiot, Tuesday March 11, 2003. The Guardian.
…contrary to the Geneva Convention, the U.S. government intentionally used sanctions against Iraq to degrade the country's water supply after the Gulf War. The United States knew the cost that civilian Iraqis, mostly children, would pay, and it went ahead anyway. ..
… This document, which was partially declassified but unpublicized in 1995, can be found on the Pentagon's web site at www.gulflink.osd.mi
… As these documents illustrate, the United States knew sanctions had the capacity to devastate the water treatment system of Iraq. It knew what the consequences would be: increased outbreaks of disease and high rates of child mortality.
… For more than ten years, the United States has deliberately pursued a policy of destroying the water treatment system of Iraq, knowing full well the cost in Iraqi lives.
Extracts from, T. J. Nagy, "How the US deliberately destroyed Iraq’s water", posted at www.globalresearch.ca on29 August 2001. For detailed documentation see www.gulflink.osd.mil
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ITALY
Italy, 1947-1970s In 1947, the US forced the Italian government to dismiss its Communist and Socialist cabinet members in order to receive American economic aid. The following year and for decades thereafter, each time a combined front of the Communists and Socialists, or the Communists alone, threatened to defeat the US-supported Christian Democrats in national elections, the CIA used every (dirty) trick in the book and trained its big economic, political and psychological~warfare guns on the Italian people, while covertly funding the CD candidates. And it worked. Again and again. This I perversion of democracy was done in the name of "saving democracy" in Italy. American corporations also contributed many millions of dollars to help keep the left from a share of power.127
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
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INDONESIA
In Indonesia, in 1965/6, a million people were killed with the complicity of the US and British governments: the Americans supplying General Suharto with assassination lists, then ticking off names as people were killed.
John Pilger, "Inevitable ring to the unimaginable", Sept, 2001, Full article at:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/archive/13-9-19101-0-24-43.html
Indonesia soon achieved complete control over East Timor, with the help of American arms and diplomatic support. Daniel Moynihan, who was US ambassador to the UN at the time, later wrote that the "United States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this about. The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success." Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The United States stood virtually alone in the world in its consistent support of Indonesia's claim to East Tlmor, and downplayed the slaughter to a remarkable degree, at the same time supplying Indonesia with all the military hardware and training it needed to carry out the job. Despite denials to the contrary, Washington continued this military aid up to and including the period of extensive massacres of pro-independence Timorese in 1999 by Indonesian soldiers and their militia allies. In 1995, a senior official of the Clinton administration, speaking of Suharto, said: "He's our kind of guy." 147
W. Blum, Rogue State; A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, Monroe, Me., Common Courage Press, 2000.
The military regime which came to power in Indonesia in 1965 has perpetrated numerous acts of terrorism against its own people and against the people of West Papua and East Timor. In the six months from October 1965 to March 1966, as General Suharto consolidated his control over the Indonesian state, hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in massacres initiated and organized by the Indonesian army, in a drive to eliminate the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). After West Papua was handed over to the Indonesian state in 1963, massacres of villagers and organized bands of resistors to Indonesian rule led to heavy loss of life; estimates of casualties vary from tens of thousands to 150,000, more than 10 percent of the population. In the first four years of Indonesia's war to annex East Timor, from December 1975 till 1979, it is estimated that up to 200,000 people, nearly a third of the population, were killed in aerial bombardments or from war-related starvation and disease. Other, smaller-scale massacres have occurred. First there was the slaughter in Purwodadi, Central Java, of more than eight hundred captured communist suspects, who were clubbed to death by their captors in November and December 1968. Then came the murder, by army death squads, of about 4,000 people during 1983, in a so-called clampdown on crime. In September 1984, many dozens, perhaps more than a hundred people, attending a rally in Tanjung Priok, Jakarta, pressing for the release of four local mosque officials, were shot dead, and in February1989, many dozens of villagers were slain when troops attacked a village that had become the centre of a rebellion prompted by the expropriation of their land. P 180. Not one of these well-documented acts of state terrorism has been condemned by any state power, West or East. There have been no UN resolutions calling Indonesia's rulers to account, no international commissions of inquiry to examine the facts and help establish more accurately the number of victims. The world's media has shown a singular lack of interest in the terrorist activities of the Indonesian state, reflecting the attitude of governments and multinational corporations which regard Indonesia under its present day rulers s the best possible safeguard for "business as usual"… p 182. During the period of parliamentary democracy from 1950 to 1957, the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) made a remarkable political recovery, winning 18 percept of the votes and taking fourth place in Indonesia's first and only free and democratic parliamentary elections in 1955. In the following decade, the PKI grew to become the largest left-wing party outside the Eastern bloc. By 1965, it claimed a membership of three million, supported by trade unions, a peasants' organization, and other mass organizations, with a combined membership of around fifteen million. As the communist-led movement gained in mass support, (… a plot to kidnap generals led to the death of six of them…)…giving Suharto the pretext to order the physical destruction of the party and the left-wing movement. (Much publicity was given to the claim that the bodies had been mutilated. This was later found to be untrue. This deception was crucial in Suharto's capacity to organise the elimination of the PKI.) According to Ralph McCehee, a former CIA agent, the campaign of deception which paved the way for the massacres was largely the work of the CIA. Referring to the fabricated horror stories about events at Halim, he wrote: This cynically manufactured campaign was designed to foment public anger against the communists and set the stage for the massacre . . . To conceal its role in the massacres of those innocent people, the CIA concocted a false account of what happened (later published by the Agency as a book,…p189 As Kolko states, the extermination of the PKI in 1965-66 "surely ranks as a war crime of the same type as those the Nazis perpetrated.... No single American action in the period after l945 was as bloodthirsty as its role in Indonesia, for it tried to initiate the massacre, and it did everything in its power to encourage Suharto, including equipping his killers, to see that the physical liquidation of the PKI was carried through to its culmination ." p 196.
C. Budiardjo, "Indonesia; Mass Extermination and the Consolidation of Authoritarian Power", Ch. 8 in A. George,Western State Terrorism, Polity, 1991.
…another recent major terrorist campaign: Indonesia's violent bid to gain control of the Portuguese territory of East Timor. This is a clear case of the "systematic use of murder and destruction… Begun in December 1975 and continuing to this day, the Indonesian aggression has resulted in the deaths of 100,000 to 200,000 of a Timorese population estimated in the mid-1970s at around 600,000. According to the head of the Catholic Church in East Timor, Indonesia's campaign has led to "the ethnic, cultural and religious extinction of the identity of the People of East Timor." Thirteen years have passed since Indonesia's invasion, Bishop Belo wrote in a recent letter to the Secretary General of the UN, "And we continue to die as a people and a nation."20 Amnesty International reported in the mid '80s the arbitrary killing of hundreds of non-combatants, the extrajudicial execution of those surrendering to Indonesian forces, "disappearances," arbitrary arrests and detention without trial "on a massive scale," and forced resettlement in campos de concentracao, as they are generally called by the Timorese. Torture of detainees was widespread and officially condoned: Amnesty confirmed the existence of secret military manuals issued to troops which permitted torture and suggested how force may best be used during interrogations.2' Deaths through massive aerial and naval bombardment, together with the consequent starvation, have taken thousands of lives. Throughout this period, …(Britain)… offered the Indonesian regime continuous and increasing military, financial, and diplomatic support. Sir John Ford, London's ambassador to Jakarta at the time of the invasion, reported in a telegram to the Foreign Office in July 1975: "…it is in Britain's interest that Indonesia should absorb the territory as soon and as unobtrusively as possible, and that if it should come to the crunch and there is a row in the United Nations, we should keep our heads down and avoid taking sides against the Indonesian Government." Fn p. 22.
A George, The Discipline of Terrorology, In In A. George, Western State Terrorism, 1991, p. 81.
Re the "referendum" in West Irian:
"…Indonesia is being especially haunted by a referendum 32 years ago that former United Nations officials now admit was a sham."… "The Indonesians, sensing overwhelming opposition to the takeover, decided to canvass only 1. 025 handpicked supporters. The result was a unanimous vote for integration. The UN Security Council after being lobbied intensely by Washington, endorsed the vote."
Historic vote was sham, ex-UN chiefs admit", Sydney Morning Herald, 23 Nov., 2001. P. 13.
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IRAN
In Iran"…the US installed the Shah as an amenable dictator in 1953, trained his secret services in "methods of interrogation" and lauded him as he ran his regime of torture."
"Folks out there have a "distaste of Western civilization and cultural values", Edward Herman, 2001. http://www.globalresearch
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IRAQ
The United States supported Saddam Hussein all through the 1980s as he carried out his war (with Iran) …and turned a blind eye to his use of chemical weapons…"
"Folks out there have a "distaste of Western civilization and cultural values", Edward Herman, 2001. http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/HER109A.html
During the 1980s, America and Britain supplied Saddam Hussein with every weapon he wanted, often secretly and illegally. The relationship was known cynically in Washington as "the love affair".
When Blair and Bush incessantly refer to Saddam "using chemical weapons
against his own people", specifically the Kurdish village of Halabja in
1988, they never explain that Britain and America were accomplices.
Not only did both governments secretly and illegally approve the sale of
chemical weapons' agents, officials in Washington and Whitehall tried to
cover up the Halabja atrocity, with the Americans even faking a story that
Iran was responsible.
…
When Bush and Blair call Saddam "a threat to his neighbours", they never mention that George Bush Senior, as head of the CIA and later President, pushed Iraq to attack Iran and supplied crucial intelligence to the Iraqi military that ensured the war went on for eight years. The result was millions of dollars in profits for American and British arms firms, and a million young men dead on both sides. A congressional investigation, long forgotten, described this as a "great crime".
THE REAL REASON FOR ATTACKING IRAQ
AMERICA burns a quarter of all the oil consumed by humanity. A study
sponsored by the US Council on Foreign Relations says that "the American
people continue to demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice or
inconvenience". Transport in the United States alone burns 66 per cent of
America's petroleum.
One estimate is that the world's oil reserves will begin to decline within
five to 10 years at the rate of about two million barrels a day. In the
Middle East, the only country capable of significantly increasing its
production is Iraq, once described by Vice President Cheney as "the great
prize".
Lies, damned lies and terror warnins, by John Pilger on the evil art of black propoganda By John Pilger http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12422214&method=full&siteid=50143
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ISRAEL
There is enormous resentment at ongoing U.S. diplomatic, financial and military support for Israeli occupation forces and their policies.
The U.S. relationship with Israel is singular. Israel represents only one one-thousandth of the world's population and has the 16th highest per capita income in the world, yet it receives nearly 40 percent of all U.S. foreign aid. Direct aid to Israel in recent years has exceeded $3.5 billion annually,
As long as U.S. military, diplomatic and economic support of the Israeli
government remains unconditional despite Israel's ongoing violation of human rights, international law and previous agreements with the Palestinians, There is no incentive for the Israeli government to change its policies.
For over two decades, the international consensus for peace in the Middle East has involved the withdrawal of Israeli forces to within internationally recognized boundaries in return for security guarantees from Israel's neighbours, the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza and some special status for a shared Jerusalem.
However, the U.S. has traditionally rejected the international consensus and currently takes a position more closely resembling that of Israel's right-wing government: supporting a Jerusalem under largely Israeli sovereignty, encouraging only partial withdrawal from the occupied territories, allowing for the confiscation of Palestinian land and the construction of Jewish-only settlements and rejecting an independent state Palestine outside of Israeli strictures.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other reputable human rights group have noted that the bulk of the violence has come from Israeli occupation forces and settlers.
The United States has played a major role in the militarization of the region.
The U.S. justifies the nearly $3 billion in annual military aid to Israel on the grounds of protecting that country from its Arab neighbours, even though the United States supplies 80 percent of the arms to these Arab states.
Furthermore, only the United Nations Security Council has the prerogative to authorize military responses to violations of its resolutions; no single member state can do so unilaterally without explicit permission. Many Arabs object to the U.S. policy of opposing efforts by Arabs states to produce weapons of mass destruction, while tolerating Israel's sizable nuclear arsenal and bringing U.S. nuclear weapons into Middle Eastern waters as well as rejecting calls for the creation of a nuclear-free zone in the region.
There has been an enormous humanitarian toll resulting from U.S. policy toward Iraq.
in recent years the United States has successfully pushed the UN Security Council to impose economic sanctions against Libya, Afghanistan and Sudan over extradition disputes, an unprecedented use of the UN's authority. However, the U.S. has blocked sanctions against such Middle East allies as Turkey, Israel and Morocco for their ongoing occupation of neighboring countries, far more egregious violations of international law that directly counter the UN Charter. In recent years, for example, the U.S. has helped block the Security Council from moving forward with a UN-sponsored resolution on the fate of the Moroccan-occupied country of Western Sahara because of the likelihood that the people would vote for independence from Morocco, which invaded the former Spanish colony with U.S. backing in 1975.
Over the past 30 years, the U.S. has used its veto power to protect its ally Israel from censure more than all other members of the Security Council have used their veto power on all other issues combined.
Most observers recognize that one of the major obstacles to Israeli-Palestinian peace is the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. However, the U.S. has blocked enforcement of UN Security Council resolutions calling for Israel to withdraw its settlements from Palestinian land. These settlements were established in violation of international law, which forbids the colonization of territories seized by military force. In addition, the U.S. has not opposed the expansion of existing settlements and has shown ambivalence regarding the large-scale construction of exclusively Jewish housing developments in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. Furthermore, the U.S. has secured additional aid for Israel to construct highways connecting these settlements and to provide additional security, thereby reinforcing their permanence. This places the United States in direct violation of UN Security Council resolution 465, which "calls upon all states not to provide Israel with any assistance to be used specifically in connection with settlements in the occupied territories."
The United States has supported autocratic regimes in the Middle East.
The growing movement favoring democracy and human rights in the Middle East has not shared the remarkable successes of its counterparts in Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia. Most Middle Eastern governments remain autocratic. Despite occasional rhetorical support for greater individual freedoms, the United States has generally not supported tentative Middle Eastern steps toward democratization.
In reality, these arms transfers and diplomatic and economic support systems play an important role in keeping autocratic Arab regimes in power by strengthening the hand of the state and supporting internal repression.
The U.S. promotion of a neo-liberal economic model in the Middle East has not benefitted most people of the region.
Extracts from, "Ten things you should Know about U.S. Policy in the Middle East", by Professor Stephen Zunes. University of San Francisco September 26, 2001
the Palestinians, forced to live in squalid refugee camps for decades subject to periodic harassment and slaughter, while the US gives 40% of its foreign aid to Israel. Much of this has been military equipment used to kill Palestinian and other Muslim people. Some 20,000 were killed when Israel invaded Southern Lebanon. Israel has been frequently condemned by the UN for holding territory taken from the Palestinians and building settlements on it. When Iraq invaded Kuwait the US retaliated with military force, killing hundreds of thousands, but the US does not condemn Israel’s invasions and acquisitions. Pilgler says "In Palelstine the illegal occupation by Israel would have collapsed long ago were it not for US backing…"
Pilger, http://www.theherald.co.ukl/news/archive/;13-9-19101-0-24-43.html
Of course Israel’s behaviour must be seen as a response to a problem of extreme insecurity and the death of many of its own citizens; the point of these illustrations is not to condemn Israel and exonerate the Arabs, it is to insist that the Palestinians like many other groups have abundant reason to be extremely discontented about the way they have been treated by the West.
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