News and Comment, by Allan Nairn

A Normal, Minimal-Choice Election

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:26:00 +0000

The International Herald Tribune headlined it "A Proudly Normal Election" in Indonesia, and it was -- a minimal-choice election, as normally happens in most countries (Jacob Ramsay, "A Proudly Normal Election, " International Herald Tribune, July 8, 2009).

This election was a de facto choice among three mass-killing Suharto generals -- each of them old US proteges -- one of whom actually embodied the specter of something like fascist dictatorship, and people voted for the smoothest, least frightening general, the incumbent, Gen. Susilo.

But it was impossible on the ballot to vote for the poor or to vote against killing civilians, because none of the candidates, pre-screened by the establishment, stood for anything like that: these were candidates of the rich, and of murder.

Gen. Susilo had most of the army and most of the rich people behind him, so he had most of the media propaganda and also most of the campaign money.

In Indonesia a lot of poor people like the election season because they get direct cash bribes. Party messengers come to their homes and give each family several dollars, and this time everyone I met said Gen. Susilo's footmen gave the most money.

Beyond that, his two rivals were repulsive to many people. They selected as their running mates the two most hated generals in the country. One, Gen. Prabowo, has a neo-fascist style and made his name as a hands-on torturer and as Suharto's son-in-law, and the other, Gen. Wiranto, saved the army in 1998 when he threatened a Tienanmen-style massacre of demonstrators if they challenged the army after toppling Suharto.

So compared to those two, Gen. Susilo seemed less bloodthirsty, even though he's been high in the chain of command for some of the country's most famous massacres, including Jakarta '96, occupied East Timor '99, Aceh in the early 2000s, and as President he's backed nationwide police torture and army torture and murder in sealed-off Papua, and has a practice of arresting people who insult him or who hoist local independence flags. Economically, Gen. Susilo broke the law and canceled severance pay for workers, and hunger and diarrhea have been increasing nationwide, especially in Nusatenggara in eastern Indonesia.

But he's done all that smoothly. He's seen as smart, and he gets lots of foreign money. The US and investors like him because he does the necessary killing and holds down wages discreetly -- without bragging about it -- and he lets them take minerals and forests and labor while demanding smaller bribes than Suharto.

And at the same time he's made life better for city elites, lots of condos and spectacular malls. If you have money, life in Jakarta can be Valhalla. That gets him good press coverage.

But if you're poor, police thugs will come and bulldoze your home to put up those fancy condos, and your chances of working, eating, or putting your kid through primary school are the same or worse than before Susilo.

So the Herald Tribune is right, this was a normal election. There was voting but there wasn't much choice.

Link to view this posting in Arabic translation.

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Common Sense. Empty Talk. What Does It Take to Get a Meal Here, an Earthquake?

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 03:27:00 +0000

In Indonesia, the government-funded Muslim Ulema's Council (MUI) has recently issued two remarkable fatwas that, first, prohibit smoking by pregnant women, children, or people in public spaces, and that second, forbid potential voters from abstaining -- or from voting for candidates who aren't "credible" --, since these voting choices could be seen as being "dangerous for the state" (Ali Mustafa Yaqud, Deputy Chief of the Fatwa Commission, Metro TV, February 3, 2009, Western Indonesia Time).

The edicts are refreshing for those who want to breathe well, and for those who seek political insight into the fact that "the state" -- even when it's a strongarm state -- usually wants and needs some legitimacy, and often seeks it through voting, but voting on its terms, sans thoughts, options or people that are not "credible."

In the late 1960s, surveys of US business leaders showed -- amazingly, to today's mentalities -- that they actually feared revolution in the United States. Today hardly anyone even imagines it.

Today you have Marxists for Obama, and former Marxists who worked for Bush (the neo-cons) . In today's America, as in most of the world, revolution is no longer credible.

But, then again, looser talkers are now saying the same about what's called capitalism, or at least about Wall Street investment banking, which was about as solid and credible as you could get, until those weeks last September, when, as they say, it suddenly vanished into air, taking potentially lifesaving billions of imagined dollars with it (potentially lifesaving, that is, if those dollars had been used for things like food, instead of finance fun)(On the concepts of rich people's imagined and/or cybered money vs. poor people's earthbound earnings, see News and Comment postings of June 3, 2008 ["Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry. Burma, Food Crisis, Wall Street, and the World Economy"] and Nov. 21, 2007 ["Bangladesh and Wall Street After the Flood: Two Different Kinds of Property."]).

It's said that sensitivity to ground shifts tends to depend on an organism's constitution. Some claim that horses feel earthquakes before we do. And even among people, it does seem to be true that some are slower on the uptake than others.

I once sat in a Sumatra eating hall wondering why screaming people all around me were stampeding, until I looked up and noticed that the hanging light bulb was swaying back-and-forth as the earth quaked.

The MUI -- originally created by the dictator, Suharto, is showing some deep political insight. You want people on board. You want people signed-on. As their spokesman put it: "We must have a credible president."

But if people get off, refuse to affix their X's or signatures, run politically amok (an Indonesian word) -- what then?

What do presidents do, even if their boys have guns? That depends, in part, on how many guns.

But the point is this: sometimes rulers win, and -- also -- sometimes they don't win.

With conditions right, the mountains really do tremble.

And politics is not geology.

In politics, the rocks can think. They can meet and say 'Let's have an earthquake.'

People tried it in Central America and got smashed. Red huipiles ran moist with grief tears.

But people are now trying it in South America -- and from places like Bolivia, there are tremors.

When a person gets tremors, which -- for a person -- is bad, they may find, bizarrely, that nicotine helps.

But when a state gets the shakes, suppression can get messy, so preemption is clearly preferable. Thus, the minimal-choice election. Thus, the demagogue who stirs hope, but not food pots.

In the Indonesian language, to say something is 'empty talk' ('omong kosong') is to say something harshly insulting. It's worse than, in English or Spanish, crying 'bullshit!' or 'mierda!,' which makes sense, since bad as feces can be, empty talk can be even more damaging socially, especially, say, if it's on the ballot, and if the sum total of your political choice in life is voting either for package of empty talk A or package of empty talk B.

In such situations, common sense works, and it translates into any language:

It doesn't matter what they say. It matters what they do. And if they don't do it, get up and make them do it.

You could call that 'Do it yourself.' You could call it 'Revolution.'

But as the old US borscht-belt joke says, "You can call me anything you want. Just don't call me late for dinner."

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'Enemy of the Prevailing Order.' Democracy, and Saying 'Enough!'

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 04:15:00 +0000

In urban areas with street crime the idealized figure of the honest cop has long been deeply popular, especially among children.

Asked what he wants to be, a young boy in a poor household cries out, eagerly, "Polisi!," and, on getting his ear twisted by an angry mother, amends, "Allright, I'll be a doctor!"

Actually, his chances of rising to doctorhood are slim -- no spare money, no free education -- but they may be greater than those of his becoming an honest cop, since that's a species that, in this community, only seems to exist on cartoon TV.

The police almost never enter the alley (which happens to be in Indonesia) except via proxy cop-protected drug hoodlums, but poor adults with real, off-screen, experience know that to see a police officer is to tense up and then brace for a shakedown (or beating), even if you're feeling idealistic and furious enough to walk into a station to report a crime. (The practice of demanding a bribe from someone trying to report a crime sets up an infinity paradox, since the demand is itself a crime, and to report that one you'd have to pay again...)

At one of the main traffic roundabouts there's an enormous full-color poster of three top uniformed commanders, in medals, posing sternly under the slogan "Honesty"! It commemorates World Anti-Corruption Day and is directly across the street from a huge new bright-blue brothel that's advertised, in part, as a hotel, but if you walk in and ask about a hotel room, they laugh, and can't stop laughing.

This facility is on the former turf of the legendary crime lord, Olo, who went down in a power struggle with the old district police chief, Sutanto, who later became the national police commander under the president, Gen. Susilo, who ran for and won office on a platform of anti-corruption.

The other big posters are for April elections, the largest of them being for two mass-murdering, US-protege generals (Prabowo and Wiranto, Adm. Dennis Blair's old associate [See News and Comment postings of Jan. 6, 9, and 22, 2009, as well as Dec. 7, 2007]), and -- perhaps with the male electorate in mind -- for several parliamentary candidates who also happen to be beautiful women.

Elections would be one thing if you could vote consequentially against official murder, against withholding food from the starving, and against things like police-as-criminals. But elections become something else if you can't cast such big choice votes. In such typical cases, elections become diversions of popular hope and energy that end up legitimating and reinforcing unjust orders rather than reforming them.

But even if you get a rare chance to vote on basics, or on sensitive power issues, watch out if you're invadable, since if you vote wrong, there could be trouble.

Condoleeza Rice pushed for the '06 Gaza / West Bank election that Hamas surprised her by winning, and which was acknowledged by President Bush as valid, before he OK'd punishment (see footnote).

On Bloomberg TV this week, from Davos, George Soros, when asked about plunging oil prices, said that the drop was unfortunate in that it's, for example, hurting Dubai property, but on the other hand "however it's not all bad news because the main oil producing countries have been the enemies of the prevailing world order" and the price drop is now hurting them, specifically Russia, Iran, and Venezuela, where, Soros said "It's not so easy to finance a Bolivarian revolution with $40 oil."

Soros, anticipating further good news regarding Hugo Chavez, said "probably his days are numbered" -- and estimated that Chavez would last less than a year, which means that according to the world's top "democracy-promotion" funder, Venezuela's freely elected president (whose legal term is due to last 4 more years) should perhaps start looking out his window, looking not for voters, but tanks ("For the Record," Bloomberg TV, aired Jan. 30, 2009).

More fundamentallly, one might wish to hope that a major US left-liberal like Soros might also want to consider himself to be an " enem[y] of the prevailing world order," a world order in which, as a text scroll from Davos noted: "More than 24,000 people die of hunger every day" (CNN International, January 30, '09, during an interview with the Oxfam executive director). But that would be a poorly informed hope, at least regarding billionaires (who could each personally feed those 24,000 people, instead of choosing not to), and also regarding most anyone in the current top US leadership and funding strata.

But, given free will, it is indeed possible for them, and especially, less-rich people, to say 'Enough!'

If something kills innocent people en masse, it deserves to have enemies.

If a rich-world figure says they're pro-democracy, start off by asking them this: How would they feel about running the UN Security Council based on direct world popular vote, instead of nuclear weapons (vetoes are now held by the Permanent Five, the immediate-post-WWII nuclear powers), and the same with the world distribution of wealth and key questions of murder law enforcement?

That's not to suggest democracy as cure-all. Rule by the people is largely myth. Except possibly in small (non-family) groups, strong people will tend to dominate -- the questions are under what constraints; don't pretend everyone's in charge.

But the point here is merely that when today's rich leaders talk democracy, or just talk elections, they usually don't mean it if that raises the specter of a world with less-insanely-skewed wealth or power, or of a world where honest cops run around in life -- and not just on cartoon TV, arresting any evildoer who has wrongly caused, or permitted, people's deaths.

---
Footnote:

Bush said, for what it's worth as testament to pre-punishment homage to democracy:

"[T]he Palestinians had an election yesterday, the results of which remind me about the power of democracy. You see, when you give people the vote, you give people a chance to express themselves at the polls, they -- and if they're unhappy with the status quo, they'll let you know. That's the great thing about democracy: It provides a look into society. And yesterday, the turnout was significant, as I understand it. And there was a peaceful process as people went to the polls. And that's positive. What was also positive is that it's a wakeup call to the leadership. Obviously, [Palestinian] people were not happy with the status quo. The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find health care. And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories. I like the competition of ideas. I like people that have to go out and say, 'Vote for me and here's what I'm going to do.' There's something healthy about a system that does that. And so the elections yesterday were very interesting" ("President Bush Holds a White House Press Conference," transcript, The Washington Post, January 26, 2006).

Link to view this posting in Russian translation.

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A Shift Toward Worker Power? The Time is Ripe to Tip the System, Now

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 04:23:00 +0000

In bad situations, people lower their standards for what it is that constitutes good news.

There's a very sick man with a withered arm, but it hasn't been amputated, contrary to what a garbled, and panic-inducing, report had indicated.

Similarly, a boy has been coughing for three months, but a TB test says it isn't TB.

Saying this, the parent, on a cell phone from the Burma border can be heard shivering in the rare cold, even though the family has just invested in a blanket -- their second, which is now handy, since for three nights they've been sleeping in the forest to dodge police who (in a case of bad good news) aren't seeking bribes, but are instead seeking to catch people and -- word has it -- ship them to Naypyidaw (the capital) for one year's bondage labor.

The question always is, bad compared to what? One person's dump is another's home hearth.

And that can be said literally, since, not far from that coughing family, there is a garbage dump where others live in slime, but they live there not as bottom-dwellers but as, relatively speaking, rich aunts and uncles -- economic migrants -- who periodically transfer money back home, since by picking (and living) trash they make more cash than do their relatives on, or off, the farm in Burma.

There are dump cities around the world.

In Guatemala, they feature vultures (the bird kind). In the Philippines there are frequent dump-slides, killing people.

And in Cambodia, the New York Times just visited a dump city, and used the existence of this particular hell to argue against labor standards on the grounds that if people would only work more cheaply that would create more jobs for, say, dump dwellers, on the neoliberal assumption that capitalists don't currently have enough desperate, oppressed, potential workers to choose from (See Nicholas D. Kristof, "Where Sweatshops Are a Dream," The New York Times, January 14, 2009).

Very poor people can indeed be delighted when what we call a sweatshop comes to town (see News and Comment posting of Nov. 8, 2007, "Duduk - Duduk, Ngobrol - Ngobrol. Sitting Around Talking, in Indonesia."), but what the Times misses is that they would be even more delighted if it paid them better wages, didn't rape and fondle the female workers, didn't spray them with toxics, etc.

Whether or not that happens and whether or not enough jobs get created depends crucially on the balance of power.

When workers are weak, it is indeed true that cutting labor standards can get more factories built, but by that Times/Davos/Burma-junta logic of job creation you should also abolish the minimum wage, permit prostitution, even permit human bondage/ slavery, since each of those steps would indeed -- under weak-worker conditions -- induce the creation of new jobs (Inconsistently, the Times editorially does support the minimum wage, and that Times writer, has, as it happens, crusaded against poor-country prostitution).

A better job-creation solution is to change the power balance and make workers strong, in which case capital is the one that has to take bad news as good, adjust their expectations downward, and realize that if they want to put their capital to work they'll have to pay people enough to, say, eat well.

Its true that, depending on what kind of historical moment one is in, such a job solution may not always be pragmatic.

If say, for example, interest rates were high, capital could say: 'Screw these workers, who needs a factory? For now, we'll just put our money in Citibank!'

Or if capital were riding higher than usual in political leverage it could just say to a government bent on imposing laws to strengthen workers: 'Screw you, government. What do we businesses need from you? What are you going to do, bribe us?'

But of course, those are not the conditions that exist today.

Today, in what's called the financial crisis (though for those hungry, life has always been "crisis," even when rich people were calling it "prosperity"), interest rates are very low and business needs a lot from government.

Workers (or unemployed) are, of course, today still more vulnerable than bosses, but the key changeable variable now is government: it has leverage, perhaps unprecedented leverage, as businesses pant for government's bailout trillions.

And vis-a-vis worker-staffed production, businesses need to get that revivified, since stashing cash in banks is not now hugely rewarding.

Which is to say, this could be a moment for a power shift -- from workers being weak to being strong -- but only if people force government to kick in on the workers' side, to, for one thing, use its leverage and condition bailouts on deep, thoroughgoing reforms that hugely elevate labor standards, not cut them, and that alter how capital is owned and controlled so that the crisis-induced power shift stays permanent and maybe even opens the door to a more rational, less-killing, system that, at the least, does not starve people.

That's not current rich-world government policy and angry workers aren't currently mobilized.

But they could be, if some see without illusion that this strange moment could be their opening.

It could be, if they make it so, without waiting for team Obama.

Sad but true, but US economic policy is now shaped by the man, Prof. Lawrence Summers, who wrote the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics entry on "Unemployment" and observed -- to the great pleasure of Bush Jr.'s advisers -- that "If unemployment insurance were eliminated, the unemployment rate would drop ... Another cause of long-term unemployment is unionization ..." (Lawrence H. Summers, "Unemployment," The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2008).

These Summers quotations were highlighted on the blog of Bush's old economics chief, Gregory Mankiw, of Harvard, who told neoliberals not to worry too much about the orientation of Obama Democrats.

Mankiw wrote: "What would you call a group of economists who are skeptical of regulating mortgage markets, who think unemployment insurance and unions increase unemployment, who say that tax hikes retard economic growth, and who believe that the recovery from the Great Depression was a monetary phenomenon rather than the result of New Deal fiscal policy? No, it is not a right-wing cabal. It's Team Obama ..." ("The Next Team," Greg Mankiw's Blog, www.gregmankiw.blogspot.com , Nov. 30, 2008. Mankiw followed with extensive quotations from Summers and other Obama economists).

Again, such neoliberal thinking only works in a political weak-worker environment.

But that doesn't have to be the environment now -- and for the future, unless workers decide, by inaction, to politically amputate their own arms.

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Breaking News: SE Asia Groups Claim to Plan Retaliation for Gaza Killings. Said to Target Israeli Government, Intel in Bangkok, Manila, Singapore.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:39:00 +0000

By Allan Nairn

In response to Israeli terror attacks on Gaza that killed hundreds of civilians, Southeast Asia Islamist terror groups are now said to be planning retaliation against Israeli government offices, including Mossad intelligence, in Bangkok, Manila, and Singapore.

This account comes from Southeast Asia civilian sources who speak directly to some group leaders and who have in the past provided accurate information on their activities.

Such groups have frequently murdered civilians en masse, as in the Bali nightclub bombings, but are now claiming that they want to answer the Israeli mass murders of civilians in Gaza by targeting the closest thing to Israeli combatants in the Southeast Asia region, the offices housing Israeli intelligence and military sales and training operations.

They further claim, according to these sources, that they are not currently targeting Americans due to a supposed belief that new President Obama may change US policy.

The sources for this report, themselves religious Muslims, say they condemn the groups' tactics but share their anger at Israeli forces' repeated killings of civilians.

It is not clear if the planning talk is just bravado, or if it's true they'll just target combatants, since -- like their Israeli and US counterparts -- these groups have repeatedly shown their willingness to kill many civilians to make a point. (Islamist terror leaders like Bin Laden and Abu Bakar Baasyir frequently state this openly; for a rare, frank statement of near-identical Western pro-terror thinking see Thomas L. Friedman, who writes approvingly that in Gaza, Israel was "trying to 'educate' Hamas" by attacking not just Hamas combatants but also by "inflicting" "heavy pain on the Gaza population," just as in Israel's attack on Lebanon '06 "the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians..." Thomas L. Friedman, "Israel's Goals in Gaza?," New York Times, January 13, 2009. Also see News and Comment posting of Nov. 28, 2007, "Thomas L. Friedman and the Bali Bombers. Cold-Blooded Celebrity").

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A "Swiss cheese," "Bantustan" Palestine. A Recidivist America.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:55:00 +0000

President Obama has just given an interview to Al - Arabiya Saudi/UAE TV which is being celebrated as "a sign that [he] is extending th[e] hand of friendship to the Arab world" (CNN International anchor, Jan. 26, 2009, US eastern time).

He said "I can't respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians, and we will hunt them down" -- hunt them down and give them money, weapons, and training, if his actions so far are any guide, since Obama appears to be continuing the US practice of backing organizations that kill innocent civilians (ie., commit terrorism), eg., the Saudi, Egyptian, Jordanian, Iraqi, and Israeli armed and security forces, and the compliant elements of the Palestinian Authority's various armed wings .

But perhaps more remarkable than this repetition of an old sound-good work-bad US formula was his implication that he was prepared to flaunt the law more defiantly than Bush did.

Though the World Court has ruled that all Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories are illegal, Bush, like Clinton, had maintained the fiction that most of the settlements are OK but that there is a small fraction of them -- some newer outposts -- that are "illegal" and have to go.

But when asked about settlements, Obama did not even stand by this Bush nano-concession to legality, instead stating merely that a Palestinian state would have to be "contiguous," ie., that the pieces would have to be attached, a formula consistent with what Bush once called a "Swiss cheese" Palestine (which Bush said would be bad), or, in more precise terms, what Ariel Sharon once called a Palestine of Apartheid-style "Bantustans" (which Sharon said would be good). (See Khaled Abu Toameh, "'Palestine can't be Swiss cheese'," Jerusalem Post [Israel], Jan. 10, 2008 for a report of Bush's press conference; Akiva Eldar, "People and Politics/ Sharon's Bantustans Are Far From Copenhagen's Hope," Haaretz [Israel], May 13, 2003 for a report of prime minister Sharon's Bantustan discussion with former Italian prime minister Massimo D'Alema).

It's unclear whether the US bureaucracy will stand by this apparent small escalation of Bush's law-defiance (Washington's dictatorial Arab clients already have enough trouble from their oppressed publics), but it is what Obama said, and he's a lawyer who often speaks carefully.

It just indicates that, as on other big matters, the US government tends to be recidivist, feeling that it can pick and choose whether to respect or break the law.

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Hero Journalist J. A. Belo Being Persecuted, Needs Support.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 04:25:00 +0000

Many cultures have equivalents of the English-language saying "No good deed goes unpunished," maybe because there's sometimes something about decent people that can make them look like easy targets.

When East Timor was in its heroic phase, enduring tribulations that made the Bible look placid, one of the heroes was a young aspiring journalist named Jose Antonio Belo.

When, amidst liberation, Belo took me on a tour of the place where he had been tortured, he pointed to a spot where a message had been scrawled in blood by a co-detainee who hadn't made it.

(Belo and colleagues were hung from the rafters by SGI, a special Indonesian Intel unit incorporating BIA and Kopassus Group 4, both with special US intel liaison. The Indonesian armed forces illegally occupying East Timor were, as a whole, US-backed, but these commando /intel outfits that electroshocked Belo and others got special US funding, training and encouragement, all this in the Clinton years; see my "Indonesia's 'Disappeared'," The Nation [US] June 8, 1998 at http://www.etan.org/news/news2/disapprd.htm, "Indonesia's Killers," The Nation [US], March 30, 1998 at http://www.etan.org/news/news2/killers.htm, and my September 30, 1999 testimony to the US House International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations "Hearing on the Humanitarian Crisis in East Timor" at http://www.etan.org/legislation/999bhear.htm ).

Today East Timor is independent, thanks to people like J.A. Belo, and, as a result, East Timorese now live more normal-scale injustice, instead of epic daily massacre.

One of the remarkable things about Jose Belo was that, even as his homeland was burning, he still stayed devoted to the ideal of accurate handling of facts.

But now that devotion has gotten him in trouble once again since he's reported facts about a high official that that official -- Timor Leste's Justice Minister, Lucia Lobato, doesn't like, and so she's trying to jail and/or heavily fine him based on Timor's criminal defamation law which, incredibly, has been lifted wholesale from the laws of their old oppressor/occupier, Indonesia, and under which, as one official told Belo, it doesn't matter if the facts are accurate.

The newspaper which Belo now edits, Tempo Semanal, includes material in Tetum, Portuguese, and English and can be seen online and contacted at:

www.temposemanaltimor.blogspot.com
Email: tempo.semanal@gmail.com and/e/ka Taraleu@hotmail.com
Mobile/Telemovél: +670 723 4852

The International Federation of Journalists (www.ifj.org) and the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (www.etan.org) have expressed support for Belo, but he needs resources and allies to defend himself and continue speaking as a free man.

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The Torture Ban that Doesn't Ban Torture: Obama's Rules Keep It Intact, and Could Even Accord With an Increase in US-Sponsored Torture Worldwide.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:41:00 +0000

If you're lying on the slab still breathing, with your torturer hanging over you, you don't much care if he is an American or a mere United States - sponsored trainee.

When President Obama declared flatly this week that "the United States will not torture" many people wrongly believed that he'd shut the practice down, when in fact he'd merely repositioned it.

Obama's Executive Order bans some -- not all -- US officials from torturing but it does not ban any of them, himself included, from sponsoring torture overseas.

Indeed, his policy change affects only a slight percentage of US-culpable tortures and could be completely consistent with an increase in US-backed torture worldwide.

The catch lies in the fact that since Vietnam, when US forces often tortured directly, the US has mainly seen its torture done for it by proxy -- paying, arming, training and guiding foreigners doing it, but usually being careful to keep Americans at least one discreet step removed.

That is, the US tended to do it that way until Bush and Cheney changed protocol, and had many Americans laying on hands, and sometimes taking digital photos.

The result was a public relations fiasco that enraged the US establishment since by exposing US techniques to the world it diminished US power.

But despite the outrage, the fact of the matter was that the Bush/Cheney tortures being done by Americans were a negligible percentage of all of the tortures being done by US clients.

For every torment inflicted directly by Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and the secret prisons, there were many times more being meted out by US-sponsored foreign forces.

Those forces were and are operating with US military, intelligence, financial or other backing in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Jordan, Indonesia, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Colombia, Nigeria, and the Philippines, to name some places, not to mention the tortures sans-American-hands by the US-backed Iraqis and Afghans.

What the Obama dictum ostensibly knocks off is that small percentage of torture now done by Americans while retaining the overwhelming bulk of the system's torture, which is done by foreigners under US patronage.

Obama could stop backing foreign forces that torture, but he has chosen not to do so.

His Executive Order instead merely pertains to treatment of "...an individual in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government, or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States, in any armed conflict..." which means that it doesn't even prohibit direct torture by Americans outside environments of "armed conflict," which is where much torture happens anyway since many repressive regimes aren't in armed conflict.

And even if, as Obama says, "the United States will not torture," it can still pay, train, equip and guide foreign torturers, and see to it that they, and their US patrons, don't face local or international justice.

This is a return to the status quo ante, the torture regime of Ford through Clinton, which, year by year, often produced more US-backed strapped-down agony than was produced during the Bush/Cheney years.

Under the old -- now new again -- proxy regime Americans would, say, teach interrogation/torture, then stand in the next room as the victims screamed, feeding questions to their foreign pupils. That's the way the US did it in El Salvador under JFK through Bush Sr. (For details see my "Behind the Death Squads: An exclusive report on the U.S. role in El Salvador’s official terror," The Progressive, May, 1984 ; the US Senate Intelligence Committee report that piece sparked is still classified, but the feeding of questions was confirmed to me by Intelligence Committee Senators. See also my "Confessions of a Death Squad Officer," The Progressive, March, 1986, and my "Comment," The New Yorker, Oct. 15, 1990,[regarding law, the US, and El Salvador]).

In Guatemala under Bush Sr. and Clinton (Obama's foreign policy mentors) the US backed the army's G-2 death squad which kept comprehensive files on dissidents and then electroshocked them or cut off their hands. (The file/ surveillance system was launched for them in the '60s and '70s by CIA/ State/ AID/ special forces; for the history see "Behind the Death Squads," cited above, and the books of Prof. Michael McClintock).

The Americans on the ground in the Guatemala operation, some of whom I encountered and named, effectively helped to run the G-2 but, themselves, tiptoed around its torture chambers. (See my "C.I.A. Death Squad," The Nation [US], April 17, 1995, "The Country Team," The Nation [US], June 5, 1995, letter exchange with US Ambassador Stroock, The Nation [US], May 29, 1995, and Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon, "Bureaucracy of Death," The New Republic, June 30, 1986).

It was a similar story in Bush Sr. and Clinton's Haiti -- an operation run by today's Obama people -- where the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) helped launch the terrorist group FRAPH, the CIA paid its leader, and FRAPH itsef laid the machetes on Haitian civilians, torturing and killing as US proxies. (See my "Behind Haiti's paramilitaries: our man in FRAPH," The Nation [US], Oct 24, 1994, and "He's our S.O.B.," The Nation [US], Oct. 31, 1994; the story was later confirmed on ABC TV's "This Week" by US Secretary of State Warren Christopher).

In today's Thailand -- a country that hardly comes to mind when most people think of torture -- special police and militaries get US gear and training for things like "target selection" and then go out and torture Thai Malay Muslms in the rebel deep south, and also sometimes (mainly Buddhist) Burmese refugees and exploited northern and west coast workers.

Not long ago I visited a key Thai interrogator who spoke frankly about army/ police/ intel torture and then closed our discussion by saying "Look at this," and invited me into his back room.

It was an up to date museum of plaques, photos and awards from US and Western intelligence, including commendations from the CIA counter-terrorism center (then run by people now staffing Obama), one-on-one photos with high US figures, including George W. Bush, a medal from Bush, various US intel/ FBI/ military training certificates, a photo of him with an Israeli colleague beside a tank in the Occupied Territories, and Mossad, Shin Bet, Singaporean, and other interrogation implements and mementos.

On my way out, the Thai intel man remarked that he was due to re-visit Langley soon.

His role is typical. There are thousands like him worldwide. US proxy torture dwarfs that at Guantanamo.

Many Americans, to their credit, hate torture. The Bush/Cheney escapade exposed that.

But to stop it they must get the facts and see that Obama's ban does not stop it, and indeed could even accord with an increase in US-sponsored torture crime.

In lieu of action, the system will grind on tonight. More shocks, suffocations, deep burns. And the convergence of thousands of complex minds on one simple thought: 'Please, let me die.'

Link to view this posting in German translation.

Link to view this posting in Russian translation.

Link to view this posting in Spanish translation.

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Breaking News: US Intel Nominee Lied About '99 Massacre. US, Church Documents Show Adm. Dennis Blair Knew of Church Killings Before Crucial Meeting.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 10:24:00 +0000

By Allan Nairn

On the eve of his Senate confirmation hearing (due for 10am, Thurs. Jan. 22), new information has emerged showing that Adm. Dennis Blair -- President Obama's nominee for US Director of National Intelligence -- lied about his knowledge of a terrorist massacre that occured before a pivotal meeting in which Blair offered support and US aid to the commander of the massacre forces.

The massacre took place at the Liquica Catholic church in Indonesian-occupied East Timor two days before Blair met face-to-face with the Indonesian armed forces commander, Gen. Wiranto (the massacre occurred on April 6, 1999; Blair and Wiranto met April 8).

A classified US cable shows that rather than telling Wiranto to stop the killing, Blair invited Wiranto to be his guest in Hawaii, offered him new US military aid, and told the Indonesian general that he was "working hard" on his behalf, lobbying the US government to restore US military training aid for Indonesia. (That training had been cut off by Congress after the 1991 Dili, Timor massacre; for an account of the US cable and the April 8, '99 Blair-Wiranto meeting see News and Comment posting of Jan. 6, 2009 at http://www.allannairn.com/2009/01/admiral-dennis-blair-prospective-obama.html).

Blair's support at that crucial April 8 meeting buoyed Wiranto, and his forces increased the Timor killings, which came to include new attacks on churches and clergy, mass arsons, and political rapes. (For a detailed chronology based on a UN report, see News and Comment posting of Jan. 9, 2009 at http://www.allannairn.com/2009/01/blair-church-massacre-continued.html).

Since I disclosed the contents of that Blair-Wiranto meeting in a report filed in 1999 (see Allan Nairn, "US Complicity in Timor," The Nation [US], Sept. 27, 1999, reprinted in the Jan. 6 '09 News and Comment posting referenced above), Blair has defended himself by claiming that he went into the meeting with Wiranto not yet knowing of the Liquica massacre.

The Associated Press reported this month, in a January 9 dispatch: "Blair has said he only learned of the massacre a few days after the meeting." (Pamela Hess, "Obama to finalize national security team Friday," Associated Press, Friday Jan. 9, 2009, 4:22 am ET; Blair made the same claim to the Washington Post: Dana Priest, "Standing Up to State and Congress," September 30, 2000).

But now, contemporaneous records have emerged -- from the US Embassy in Jakarta, and from the Catholic Church -- showing that the massacre was publicly described by Timor's Bishop one day before the Blair-Wiranto meeting, and that while Blair was in Jakarta preparing for the meeting, US officials who were there with him were discussing the massacre in graphic detail.

One written message from a US official even noted: "In the face of the scores of horrible slash wounds at Liquica, there are no surgeons to treat them."

The US official was referring to the fact that, as had been disclosed at the Timor Bishop's April 7 press conference, dozens of refugees sheltering in the church had been hacked to death with machetes, but as Blair and Wiranto prepared to meet, some of those slashed were still alive.

Another Jakarta dispatch by senior US personnel written prior to the Blair-Wiranto sitdown refers explicitly to Blair's presence, to his impending meeting with Wiranto, and, crucially, to the detail and rough death toll of the already-known Liquica massacre.

"[W]e have the CINCPAC here today (Command[e]r in Chief of the Pacific]," the message said, referring to Blair by title; and it stated, in regard to what Wiranto's men had done: "Now we may have 40 people -- who were cowering in a church -- dead."

Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, had made the key facts of the massacre clear in his April 7, 1999 press conference, which took place the day before the Blair-Wiranto meeting.

Belo was accompanied by Father Rafael Dos Santos, the Liquica pastor who survived the massacre. Their authoritative accounts received same-day coverage in the Western and local press and were also recounted in church bulletins and in US intelligence and diplomatic traffic.

For Blair to claim that he did not know of these materials or his US colleagues' discussions taking place all around him is to strain credulity to the breaking point, especially since he's being nominated as intelligence chief, and since his meeting with Wiranto was cleared by Washington precisely to address the Timor crisis.

Bishop Belo and Father Dos Santos said the following in their publicly broadcast remarks. This account is excerpted from "Timorese Bishop says more than 25 killed in church massacre," DILI, East Timor, April 7 [1999], (AFP):

"Nobel peace laureate Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo accused Indonesian-backed militia on Wednesday [April 7] of massacring more than 25 people in East Timor outside a church. Belo was speaking at a press conference with Father Rafael Dos Santos who described how refugees sheltering in his church and home at Liquisa [an alternate spelling of Liquica], 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of the Timorese capital Dili, were hacked down with machetes. Dos Santos said Indonesian mobile brigade police stood behind the militia during the attack, and fired into the air. When the attack began 'people ran for cover wherever they could,' he said. Some ran into his house and some into the church before being forced out when troops fired teargas into the buildings. 'When they came out of the church, their eyes streaming, they were mown down, hacked to death with machetes, by the Besi Merah Putih (Red and White Iron militia),' he said ... Belo travelled to Liquisa earlier Wednesday to visit the site of the attack with Indonesia's East Timor military commander Colonel Tono Suratman. 'I have a paper from the military commander that there were 25 bodies inside the priest's house,' he said, 'but according to other witnesses outside around the church there were other bodies. I don't know exactly how many.' Belo had been quoted by the Portugese news agency Lusa on Tuesday [April 6] as saying he had first been informed by the Indonesian military of the deaths of 40 people in the church and five in the priest's house... 'Firstly I am sad, for what happened in Liquisa ... secondly I am ashamed to be a citizen of the (Indonesian) republic. It has taken us back to the middle ages,' Belo said."

We shall now see where the Senate takes us.

(For another contemporaneous -- April 7, pre - Blair/Wiranto meeting -- public report of the massacre see the report of Yayasan HAK, the leading independent East Timorese human rights group, summarized at http://etan.org/et99/april/3-10/6yayasan.htm).

Readers can reach the US Senate Intelligence Committee, which is holding today's confirmation hearing on Blair, through the US Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121.

Via the switchboard they can also reach the offices of Senators on the committee. Key members include the committee chair, Sen. Diane Feinstein, the ranking Republican, Sen. Kit Bond, Sen. Ron Wyden, who has said he will question Blair about Timor, Sen. Russ Feingold, a longtime critic of US aid to the Indonesian military, and Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who has also criticized the US policy.

A Jan. 22 '09 Democracy Now! broadcast version of this report can be found at
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/1/22/report_intel_nominee_adm_dennis_blair .

A YouTube excerpt of that broadcast is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eRMV0CV4ms

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Killer in Chief. Obama's Choice: Will this President Murder Civilians?

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:49:00 +0000

Barack Obama said during this campaign -- speaking of a notional US president -- that he should be able to do more than one thing at a time, which is sound advice for any person.

As Americans today justly celebrate their sweet win over the country's own racism they should at the same time see that they are now installing the world's new killer in chief.

Obama , on taking office, will inherit a state pre-programmed in ways that kill civilians, a vast, globe-spanning machine on autopilot, unconstrained by murder law.

As president, Obama will instantly become the world's number one arms dealer, number one trainer of secret police, number one detonator of bombs, and number one sponsor of forces, US and foreign, that by objective definition do terrorism.

Obama can stop that. He can cry halt, order: 'Stop civilian killings. Now.'

If he truly does, he'll be a hero worthy of Dr. King, of the freedom giants he rode.

If not, he'll become responsible for mass murders, and the first victims will likely fall sometime between today's swearing-in and the last inaugural ball.

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The Blair Church Massacre, Continued. A Chronology of the Timor Killings.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:46:00 +0000

It is now reported that Admiral Dennis Blair is due to be nominated later today as President-elect Obama's new US Director of National Intelligence.

Blair was implicated in the 1999 East Timor church massacres (See posting of January 6, 2009, "Admiral Dennis Blair. Prospective Obama Appointee Aided Perpetrators of 1999 Church Killings").

Below is a detailed chronology of the killings and related events, based on a UN report.

Though Blair was instructed to tell the killers -- the armed forces of Indonesia -- to stop, he chose not to do so. He did the opposite. He offered them support and US aid, instead, and the killings intensified. They culminated with the torching of the Bishop's house (plus executions), a church massacre of perhaps 200, in Suai, a slaughter at the Catholic diocesan office, the rapes and assassinations of clergy, the burning of perhaps 80% of Timor's housing, and the murders of more than 1,000 civilians.

US cables reported Blair's repeated proffers of support to the Indonesian commander, Gen. Wiranto. UN, CIA, human rights, and international press reports recorded the consequences.

The chronology is based on "ANNEX B - Select Chronology May 1998 - October 1999" of "Crimes Against Humanity in East Timor: Their Nature and Causes" by UN human rights consultant James Dunn, a retired Australian diplomat formerly posted to Timor, who wrote it for UNTAET, the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor. The text below is excerpted from the Dunn report except for the material in square brackets.

1998

May 21: President Suharto [a general, the longtime dictator] of Indonesia is forced from power, and replaced by his vice-president, Dr B J Habibie.

June 9: President Habibie states (to Reuters) that he will consider offering
special status to [Indonesian occupied] East Timor.

June 15: An estimated 15,000 students demonstrate in Dili [Timor's capital], calling for referendum [a UN-supervised vote on independence for Timor], and release of Xanana Gusmao [the imprisoned East Timorese resistance leader]...

August 12: Maj Gen Damiri and Col Tono Suratnam [of TNI, the Indonesian armed forces, run by Gen. Wiranto]meet with [militia leaders] Joao Tavares, Eurico Guterres and Cancio de Carvalho, and tell them they must organise "to protect integration [ie. continuation of the Indonesian occupation]."...

October 6:[Occupation] Governor Abilio Soares demands that all government employees, who oppose integration [the occupation of Timor], resign immediately.

October 11: Rally of 30,000 in Dili calls for Governor's resignation.

October 12: Thousands protest in Baucau [Timor's second city] against TNI
[Wiranto's occupying Indonesian armed forces].

November 1: TNI [Indonesian armed forces] troops carry out a series of raids on villages in Manufahi district.

November 4: Several hundred Kopassus [US-trained Indonesian TNI special forces]
troops reportedly arrive in Kupang for deployment in East Timor.

November 20: UN Secretary General expresses concern over violence in E Timor...

December 27: TNI troops, with Gada Paksi [militia], arrest and allegedly torture four
civilians, and destroy several homes in Maubara district.

1999

January 3: Mahidi Militia kill and injure independence supporters in Ainaro [a town in Timor].

January 24-25: Mahidi [militia], with TNI [Indonesian armed forces] involvement, kill 4 in Zumalai [a town in Timor].

January 27: It is announced in Jakarta that [Indonesian President] Habibie will ask the MPR [the upper house of the Indonesian legislature] to approve independence [for occupied East Timor] if a special vote for autonomy [permanent, modified occupation]
is rejected.

February 8: Bishop Belo and Jose Ramos Horta [a Timorese leader,and, with Bishop Belo, a Nobel Peace Prize winner] declare that East Timor should become independent, after a period of Autonomy.

February 15: BMP [militia] group and local TNI attack Guiso village in Maubara district and arrest several persons.

February 16: According to South China Morning Post report Lt. Col. Yayat
Sudradjat, head of [TNI's US-trained] Kopassus Intelligence unit (SGI) convenes a meeting of militia leaders and calls for killing of pro-independence leaders and their families.

February 17: [Militia leader] Joao Tavares reportedly tells meeting of sub-district and village heads in Bobonaro [,Timor] that they will be sacked if they fail to mobilise their citizens to attend pro-[Indonesian] government rally in Balibo [,Timor].

February 19: [Militia leader] Tavares tells Balibo rally that there will be war if people reject the [TNI-backed] autonomy [modified occupation] proposal.

February 22: General Wiranto states in Jakarta that TNI will continue to
deploy the militia to help Polri [the Indonesian national police, also under
Wiranto's supervision] maintain security.

February 24: Two Timorese shot dead in Dili, apparently not by militia, but
by TNI troops in civilian clothes.

February 25: Portuguese Prime Minister [Portugal is the former colonial power
in Timor] calls for UN presence in East Timor....

[March 3: Admiral Blair, chief of US armed forces in the Pacific, tells the US Congress House Armed Services Committee that TNI, the Indonesian armed forces, are
" the main instrument for order" in Indonesia and that their leaders have
"a strong sense of commitment to the constitution." Blair is testifying
in support of new US aid to the TNI.]

March 4: A classified Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation report
concludes that TNI "are clearly protecting, and some instances operating
with, militants'. It notes that TNI 'could apprehend or easily control
pro-Indonesian militants, but has chosen not to."

March 8: More than 1,000 Timorese from Guiso village are reported to have
fled into mountains after militia attacks.

March 11: In New York it is announced that Jakarta and Lisbon have agreed to
give Timorese a vote on their future.

[Timorese leader Xanana] Gusmao and [militia leader] Tavares agree to cooperate for a cease-fire.

March 16: BMP militia surround the Carmelite convent in Maubara, accuse the
nuns of supporting independence movement, and threaten to kill them.

March 26: According to one of those present, at a meeting with militia
leaders, [Indonesian occupation] Governor Abilio Soares orders that priests and nuns
should be killed.

April 6: At Liquica as many as 50 Timorese located in the church compound are
murdered by BMP militia, with TNI involvement. Gusmao calls on Falintil [the Timorese]forces to defend themselves. General Wiranto tells media that the massacre
was the result of conflict between 'rival groups'.

[A subsequent CIA cable says of the massacre at Liquica: "“Indonesian military
had colluded with pro-Jakarta militia forces in events preceding the attack and
were present in some numbers at the time of the killings.”]

[April 8: Admiral Blair meets General Wiranto in Jakarta, offers him reassurance
and new US military aid, invites him to Hawaii as his guest, offers specific aid
for BRIMOB -- a unit that helped stage the Liquica massacre, and offers
to lobby the US Congress to restore the TNI's US IMET military
training which was cut off by Congress after a 1991 army massacre
at a Catholic cemetery in Dili. Contrary to his instructions from the White House and State Department, Blair does not tell Wiranto to shut the militias down.]

April 12: At Cailaco in Bobonaro area, six villagers are kidnapped and then
murdered by Halilintar [militia] and TNI troops in house of Manuel Soares Gama. A
Falintil [Timorese resistance] group retaliates, killing Gama and 2 TNI troops.

April 13: In revenge attack a force of TNI and militia, led by Lt Col.
Burhanuddin Siagian and Joao Tavares reportedly kidnap, torture and then kill
six Cailaco villagers.

April 16: Belarmino da Cruz, a brother of Lopez, is reportedly killed at
Laclubar.

April 17: Massacre at home of Manuel Carrascalao [a Timorese leader].
Manuelito, Manuel's son, and at least 11 others are killed by Aitarak [militia]
and BMP [militia] members, following a militia rally, addressed by
[Indonesian army] Colonel Tono Suratman.

Team Alpha militia murder Virgilio de Sousa, an independence supporter, at
his home in Bauro, Lospalos [Timor].

[April 18: Admiral Blair calls General Wiranto and once again offers
him new US aid and assurances of support. Blair once again declines
to tell Wiranto to stop the massacres and militias, even though the
call had been arranged at State Department behest to get Blair
to correct his earlier April 8 failure to tell Wiranto to stop the killings.
Indonesian officers say Wiranto is delighted with Blair's continued
support, and takes it as a US green light to escalate the militia terror.]

April 20: [Timorese leader] Jose Ramos Horta calls for international sanctions
against Indonesia. General Wiranto visits Dili, and claims security situation is
under control.

[A Top Secret US Senior Executive Intelligence Brief states “to restore stability,
the Indonesian security forces must stop supporting the militias and adopt a
neutral posture.” But that is not what Admiral Blair tells Gen. Wiranto,
and support for the militias continues. ]

April 21: Evaristo Lopes believed dead after being arrested by Kopassus [Indonesian
Army special forces] and Team Alpha militia in Los Palos.

Falintil and militia leaders sign peace agreement at Bishop's residence in
Dili, which envisages setting up of a Joint Commission on Peace and Stability.

April 23: Catholic Church reports that between 42 and 100 persons killed by
militia units in Suai.

According to Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation report General
Wiranto had chosen to ignore the violent behaviour of TNI and militia forces
in Timor.

April 24: After two days of talks Portuguese and Indonesian officials reach
broad agreement on autonomy package and referendum [vote on independence]
, but security arrangements are yet to be resolved.

April 26: Commission on Peace and Stability for East Timor created with
representatives from pro-integration [occupation], pro-independence,
local government, military, police, Church and KOMNASHAM [Indonesian government
human rights commission]..

April 27: At meeting with Australian Prime Minister Howard, [Indonesian President]
Dr Habibie promises to hold a [Timor] self-determination ballot under UN supervision
on 8 August.

April 28: [TNI Col.] Suratman promises that pro-integration [occupation]militias
would be disarmed in coming weeks.

April 30: Report that bodies of 11 pro-integrationists found in Bauhati.

May 1: Sakunar militia, led by Simao Lopes, established in Oecussi....

May 3: [TNI] Kopassus troops and militia members reportedly kill Domingos Soares
Aparicio near Viqueque.

May 4: Mateus Soares Monis, of Sagadate, Baucau, is arrested and killed by
[TNI] Kopassus troops.

May 5: Agreement between Indonesia, Portugal, and the UN on a referendum for
East Timor is signed in New York. It provides for international experts to
help set up and supervise the ballot, and for unarmed police to observe the
process. Responsibility for security, however, rests with ABRI forces [another,
previous, name for TNI]..

May 7: The UN Security Council passes Resolution 136, in support of 5 May
Agreement, and moves quickly to commence its implementation.

May 9: [TNI] Maj. Gen. Damiri tells media that disarmament of militia and
pro-independence forces was 'proceeding smoothly' and that security situation
was now under control.

[May 10: A Top Secret CIA Intelligence Report notes that “local commanders
would have required at least tacit approval from headquarters in Jakarta to
allow the militias the blatant free hand they have enjoyed.”]

May 18: More than 30 Timorese reported killed by militia in Atara.

May 23: [Indonesian] President Habibie promises to release [Timorese leader]
Xanana [Gusmao] after ballot.

May 24: The SYSG [a UN body] urges the Security Council to send a team of
military advisers to East Timor, as Indonesian authorities was not maintaining
security there. After 3 day visit, Special Envoy Soragjee tells Habibie that
all East Timorese must be disarmed.

[Col.] Timbul Silaen, Kapolri [head of the Indonesian national police], tells
media that his police were neutral and 'had done as best as possible to
prevent violence.'

May 27: The Security Council expresses its deep concern at the continuing
violence in East Timor.

May 28: The [official government-backed] Peace and Justice Commission
reports that militia were compiling lists of pro-independence leaders, with the
assistance of intelligence agencies, so that they could be targeted if the
consultation result were to go against the autonomy [modified occupation] proposal...

June 5: Lamberto da Costa and another person reported killed after arrest by
joint TNI/BMP [militia] members. 11 others reported killed.

June 6: BMP militia force 23 women into domestic and sexual slavery in Maubara,
Liquica (KPP HAM [Indonesian human rights] Report)...

Eduardo Pereira, 50, is killed at Liquica, reportedly by 4 BMP [militia] members who
accused him of supporting Falintil.

June 11: The Security Council passes Resolution 1246, formally establishing
UNAMET [the United Nations Mission in East Timor].

The Australian Foreign Ministry announces that it has information that the
TNI [Indonesian armed forces] has actively encouraged and supported the
pro-integration [pro-occupation] militia.

June 15: UNAMET staff unexpectedly witness BMP militia destroying Leotela
village, and beating locals, with TNI watching.

June 23: The UN, citing unsatisfactory security conditions, postpones
referendum to 22 August. General Wiranto records his disagreement with the
postponement.

June 26: Bishop attends peace talks in Jakarta. Jose Ramos Horta and Xanana
[Timorese leaders] allowed to attend.

June 29: Seven UN officials injured in Maliana [a Timor town] in attack by
pro-autonomy mob [pro-occupation]. The UN Security Council President
subsequently expresses his grave concern at attack. SYSG [a UN body]
report states that security situation in East Timor not yet
conducive to holding of ballot.

July 4: A UN driver is shot during militia attack on UNAMET staff and aid
workers in Liquica and Maliana.

July 7: Indonesia sends extra 1,200 police to East Timor, in response to
international concern at security problems.

July 8: UNAMET staff in Maliana witness 60-80 militia being given military
training, reportedly organised by local TNI nco [non-commissioned officer].

July 10: Falintil [the Timorese resistance] proclaims cease-fire...

[July 14: Admiral Blair's Pacific Command naval chief, Admiral Archie
Clemins, goes to Jakarta to tell Indonesian officers that the US wants
to more fully "re-engage" with the Indonesian armed forces and proposes
that a joint US-TNI military facility be established in Surabaya, Indonesia. For detail see my testimony to the US House International Operations And Human Rights Subcommittee of the House Committee on International Relations, September 30, 1999, available at http://www.etan.org/legislation/999bhear.htm ]

July 14: Wiranto declares that there was no cause to deploy UN troops in East
Timor, which would in any case violate the May 5 Agreement.

July 16: Voter registration begins, with one militiaman killed during a clash.

August 4: Voter registration ends, with 438,000 registered...

August 8: Pro-independence and pro-integration [pro-occupation] leaders
sign code of conduct agreement, as a commitment to referendum. General Wiranto declares that surrendering of weapons is prerequisite to peaceful implementation of the ballot.

August 11: Two Timorese killed in Viqueque, and two others wounded in attack
by 59/75 Junior Militia on a poll information centre. SYSG calls for more
Indonesian police to be deployed in Timor, and for more international police
monitors.

August 12: Wiranto issues assurance that military will ensure security during
post-ballot period, and will accept outcome of the ballot.

August 13: [TNI] Colonel Suratnam is replaced by [TNI] Colonel Noer Muis.

August 16: Three Timorese are reportedly killed in Maliana by militia.

August 22: [TNI Col.] Noer Muis warns of bloodshed before and after
the announcement of the results of the ballot. Admitted to mounting
tensions in Suai.

August 25: [TNI Col.] Noer Muis says that security forces would face a big problem if
pro-independence won, and it would incite reaction of their opponents. But
'possibility of war and violence would be very small if pro-integration
[pro-occupation] faction won'.

August 26: [Militia leader] Eurico Guterres tells rally of 15,000 in Dili that
East Timor will become a sea of fire if independence is declared. After the rally two
Timorese are killed by Aitarak militia in a brawl, witnessed by Indonesian
police who failed to intervene....

August 28: In Los Palos village chief Verissimo Quintas is killed by militia,
who accused him of supporting CNRT [Timorese pro-independence
group]..

Militia force journalists and UN staff out of Maliana where two locals are
then killed.

Kapolri [Indonesian national police chief] Silaen declares that his forces
are adequate for security.

[Indonesian Foreign Minister] Alatas rejects need for peacekeeping force
in East Timor.

August 29: CNRT [pro-independence] offices in Dili, Ambeno and Los Palos
are destroyed by militia.

A senior UN field officer reports that TNI troops have stockpiled 400 M-16
rifles in Maliana, and that local commander (Lt Col Siagian) is planning to
carry attacks with militia on those who vote for independence.

August 30: The consultation ballot is held in East Timor, with more than 97%
of registered voters participating

Polling station at Gleno attacked by more than 50 militia.

August 31: Militia attacks in Dili, Gleno, Ermera, Aileu, Ambeno and
Maliana leave 11 killed, including 3 UN local staff.

United Front for East Timor Autonomy [militia group] accuses UNAMET of bias
and describes consultation as "garbage."

[Indonesian Foreign Minister] Alatas praises the referendum.

September 1: Thousands of Indonesians and pro-integrationist [pro-occupation]
Timorese start fleeing to West Timor.

September 2: UN Special Envoy Jamsheed Marker endorses Indonesian management
of security in East Timor. Portuguese, however, ask Security Council to
prepare contingency plans for peacekeeping force.

September 3: UNAMET staff in Maliana evacuate to Dili after militia attacks.

General Wiranto announces that in order "to face unexpected circumstances"
two battalions of troops had been dispatched to East Timor. He said that "he
had just heard that the situation in Timor had returned to normal."

September 4: The results of the plebiscite are officially announced at the
Mahkota Hotel, with 78.5% voting against autonomy option [ie. in favor
of Timor independence, an end to the 24-year occupation].

Within an hour of the announcement militia, many in TNI uniforms but with
Aitarak [militia] cloaks, pour into Dili, and destruction of the city begins. An early target is the Mahkota Hotel.

In Maliana Halilintar and Dadurus Merah Putih militias, in tandem with TNI
troops, begin a campaign of destruction, and kill several locals including
two UNAMET staff.

September 5: A violent operation is launched throughout East Timor,
apparently launched by the TNI with code-names Wiradharma and Guntur. 25
refugees in the Camara Ecclesiastica [Catholic diocesan office]killed by
Aitarak militia.

US Civpol offer wounded in militia attack near Liquica.

September 6: Killings and destruction at Bishop Belo's house. Refugees
forcibly evicted, several believed murdered.

Refugees also forcibly removed from ICR [Red Cross] compound.

Suai massacre at Ave Maria Church. More than 200 persons seeking refuge are
brutally killed by Mahidin and Laksaur militia, with TNI and BRIMOB support.
Colonel Sediono and Lieutenant Sugito played leading roles in the attack and
the disposal of bodies. Several woman who survived the attack were later
taken to local military (Kodim) headquarters and raped.

President Habibie imposes martial law in East Timor, and places Major
General. Kiki Syahnakri in charge.

September 7: Many East Timorese university students, returning to Dili from
Java, are reported to have been killed, and some of the women raped.

Bishop Belo is evacuated from Dili to Darwin [Australia]. Xanana [Gusmao] is
released from house arrest and taken to British Embassy in Jakarta.

September 8: Maliana Police Station massacre. More than 50 persons are killed
by Dadurus Merah Putih militia at Maliana Police Station, with TNI backing.

Timorese killed at Tumin and Kiobiselo in Oecussi in militia attack, with TNI
involvement.

Killings reported in other parts of East Timor.

Military and militia activities in Dili reflect close cooperation, under
TNI command.

[Official] Indonesian Commission on Human Rights condemns the violence, noting
complicity of [Indonesian] security forces.

Massive operation to force East Timorese to go to West Timor on commandeered
or military vehicles gets under way, accompanied by massive systematic
destruction.

September 9: As many as 14 persons killed near Batugade by militia and TNI
ncos.

UN decides to evacuate all its staff to Darwin [,Australia].

US suspends military ties to Indonesia.

Indonesian MPR [legislative upper house] accepts results of [Timor] ballot.

September 10: Massacre at Passabe, Oecussi, by Sakunar militia, assisted by
troops from [TNI's] 745 Battalion.

Reverend Ximenes is killed on road from Dili to Baucau.

UN Secretary General calls on Indonesia immediately to accept peacekeeping
force.

US President Clinton say that "it is now clear that the Indonesian military
is aiding and abetting the militia violence. This is unacceptable." [Though,
as the CIA and public reports reflected, it had been clear from the start.]

September 11: A German priest, Albert Garim, and a Timorese are killed at
Dare, allegedly by [TNI] Kopassus troops.

UN Security Council delegation, with General Wiranto, visits Dili.

September 12: Killings reported at Ainaro, Los Palos and Baucau by militia
and TNI.

Indonesian Government formally agrees to peacekeeping force intervention.

September 13: Indonesia allows international food and airdrops in East Timor.

September 14: Two Timorese killed at Raifun village.

UNAMET staff and 1,400 Timorese evacuated from Dili to Darwin.

The EU bans arms sales to Indonesia.

September 15: UN Security Council Resolution 1264 approves Interfet
[International Force for East Timor] deployment.

September 16: [TNI] Maj Gen Syahnakri denies TNI support for militias.

September 17: TNI withdraw from East Timor begins, and UN aerial food drop
commences.

September 19: Interfet commander, Maj.Gen. Peter Cosgrove, meets with Maj Gen
Syahnakri in Dili.

September 20: Seven Timorese killed by Sakunar militia in Ambeno, Oecussi.

Interfet commences deployment in Dili, without incident.

September 21: As [TNI] Battalion 745 withdraws to West Timor, its soldiers
reportedly kill Timorese and destroy houses. Financial Times journalist,
Sander Thoenes is murdered by [Batallion] 745 troops in the Becora area...

September 23: Militia groups start flooding into West Timor, and TNI troops
begin burning their barracks and other buildings.

September 24: UNHCR reaches an agreement to aid refugees in West Timor.

September 25: Massacre in Lautem area when Team Alpha militia ambush vehicle
carrying nuns, brothers and an Indonesian journalist. Nine person are killed
and their bodies mutilated.

September 27: The UN CHR calls for an international commission to investigate
violations in East Timor.

September 29: Militia reportedly kill two persons in Maliana.

October 3: Interfet troops push towards the western part of East Timor.

October 6: Bishop Belo returns to East Timor.

October 8: East Timorese refugees start returning from West Timor.

October 9: One militiaman is killed and two wounded when engaged by Interfet
troops near border.

October 13: UN officials report that about 400,000 East Timorese are missing.

October 20: Indonesia's MPR passes a decree, annulling the formal
incorporation [Indonesian military takeover] of East Timor, which took
place in July 1976.

October 25: The UN Security Council, in Resolution 1272, creates UNTAET.

October 26: East Timor is taken over by the UN and Sergio Vieira de Mello is
appointed as transitional administrator.

[End of chronology based on the UN Dunn report.]

--------------
The think tank of Obama's transition chief, John Podesta, writes that the choice of Admiral Blair, among others, is "indicative of Obama's intent to work within the rule of law in fighting terrorism" ("Putting the Law Back Into Intelligence," The Progress Report, Center for American Progress, January 6, 2009).

Did Blair "work within the rule of law" in 1999 Indonesia/Timor?

If Obama thinks he didn't, Blair should be prosecuted, not appointed. And if Obama thinks he did, then sponsoring mass killing of civilians is legal, and is indeed the kind of conduct to be rewarded in Obama's Washington.

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Admiral Dennis Blair. Prospective Obama Appointee Aided Perpetrators of 1999 Church Killings.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 12:15:00 +0000

Reports say that President-elect Obama wants to nominate retired Admiral Dennis Blair as the new United States Director of National Intelligence.

In 1999, in the midst of massacres of East Timor civilians and churches, Admiral Blair gave support to the perpetrators, the armed forces of Indonesia.

Two days after a massacre at Liquica that left flesh hanging from the church walls, Blair contacted the Indonesian commander, offered him US aid, and according to classified US cables, failed to tell him to stop the attacks.

Reassured by the evident support from Blair, then the US Pacific Command chief, the Indonesian commander, General Wiranto, escalated the attacks.

The Indonesian forces subsequently struck the Red Cross and the Bishop's residence, killing more than a thousand as they went, burning churches and raping nuns.

They were trying to derail a free election, taking place under UN auspices, that eventually ended Jakarta's illegal occupation of East Timor.

I disclosed the cables documenting Blair's proffers of support to Gen. Wiranto in a dispatch from Timor published in the September 27, 1999 Nation magazine.

Blair did not deny the report, and when I later asked President Clinton about it, he also did not deny it. Instead, Clinton pleaded ignorance and said I'd have to ask Blair.

The Nation report is reprinted below.

(Note: Though the Indonesian military denied responsibility for the murders, UN and CIA reports say otherwise. One CIA cable later declassified at the request of Prof. Brad Simpson of the National Security Archives says of the Liquica massacre that "“Indonesian military had colluded with pro-Jakarta militia forces in events preceding the attack and were present in some numbers at the time of the killings.” It was immediately after those killings that Blair offered new aid to that military.)

---

THE NATION [US]
September 27, 1999

US Complicity in Timor

While the Indonesian military's thugs continue their rampage in East Timor, most foreign reporters have fled the country. As of September 7, frequent Nation contributor and award-winning journalist Allan Nairn was believed to be the only US reporter still there. Nairn left the besieged UN compound and walked the streets of Dili, where he hid in abandoned houses as he observed troops and militia burning and looting. Nairn has been writing about the troubles there for years. In 1991, after being badly beaten by Indonesian troops while witnessing the massacre of several hundred East Timorese, he was declared a "threat to national security" and banned from the country. He has entered several times illegally since then. In his most recent Nation dispatch from East Timor, on March 30, 1998, Nairn disclosed the continuing US military training of Indonesian troops implicated in the torture and killing of civilians. He filed this report by satellite telephone to The Nation through Amy Goodman, host of Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now!

--The Editors

Dili, East Timor

It is by now clear to most East Timorese and a few Westerners still left here that the militias are a wing of the TNI/ABRI, the Indonesian armed forces. Recently, for example, I was picked up by militiamen who turned out to be working for a uniformed colonel of the National Police. [Editors' note: The Indonesian government has denied any connection between the militias and either the police or the military.] But there is another important political fact that is not known here or in the international community. Although the US government has publicly reprimanded the Indonesian Army for the militias, the US military has, behind the scenes and contrary to Congressional intent, been backing the TNI.

US officials say that this past April, as militia terror escalated, a top US officer was dispatched to give a message to Jakarta. Adm. Dennis Blair, the US Commander in Chief of the Pacific, leader of all US military forces in the Pacific region, was sent to meet with General Wiranto, the Indonesian armed forces commander, on April 8. Blair's mission, as one senior US official told me, was to tell Wiranto that the time had come to shut the militia operation down. The gravity of the meeting was heightened by the fact that two days before, the militias had committed a horrific machete massacre at the Catholic church in Liquiça, Timor. YAYASAN HAK, a Timorese human rights group, estimated that many dozens of civilians were murdered. Some of the victims' flesh was reportedly stuck to the walls of the church and a pastor's house. But Admiral Blair, fully briefed on Liquiça, quickly made clear at the meeting with Wiranto that he was there to reassure the TNI chief. According to a classified cable on the meeting, circulating at Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii, Blair, rather than telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, instead offered him a series of promises of new US assistance.

According to the cable, which was drafted by Col. Joseph Daves, US military attaché in Jakarta, Admiral Blair "told the armed forces chief that he looks forward to the time when [the army will] resume its proper role as a leader in the region. He invited General Wiranto to come to Hawaii as his guest in conjunction with the next round of bilateral defense discussions in the July-August '99 time frame. He said Pacific command is prepared to support a subject matter expert exchange for doctrinal development. He expects that approval will be granted to send a small team to provide technical assistance to police and...selected TNI personnel on crowd control measures."

Admiral Blair at no point told Wiranto to stop the militia operation, going the other way by inviting him to be his personal guest in Hawaii. Blair told Wiranto that the United States would initiate this new riot-control training for the Indonesian armed forces. This was quite significant, because it would be the first new US training program for the Indonesian military since 1992. Although State Department officials had been assured in writing that only police and no soldiers would be part of this training, Blair told Wiranto that, yes, soldiers could be included. So although Blair was sent in with the mission of telling Wiranto to shut the militias down, he did the opposite.

Indonesian officers I spoke to said Wiranto was delighted by the meeting. They took this as a green light to proceed with the militia operation. The only reference in the classified cable to the militias was the following: "Wiranto was emphatic: as long as East Timor is an integral part of the territory of Indonesia, Armed Forces have responsibility to maintain peace and stability in the region. Wiranto said the military will take steps to disarm FALINTIL pro-independence group concurrently with the WANRA militia force. Admiral Blair reminded Wiranto that fairly or unfairly the international community looks at East Timor as a barometer of progress for Indonesian reform. Most importantly, the process of change in East Timor could proceed peacefully, he said."

So that was it. No admonition. When Wiranto referred to disarming the WANRA force, he was talking about another militia force, different from the one that was staging attacks on Timorese civilians. When word got back to the State Department that Blair had said these things in a meeting, an "eyes only" cable was dispatched from the State Department to Ambassador Stapleton Roy at the embassy in Jakarta. The thrust of this cable was that what Blair had done was unacceptable and that it must be reversed. As a result of that cable from Washington to Roy, a corrective phone call was arranged between General Wiranto and Admiral Blair. That call took place on April 18.

I have the official report on that phone call, which was written by Blair's aide, Lieut. Col. Tom Sidwell. According to the account of the call and according to US military officials I spoke to, once again Blair failed to tell Wiranto to shut the militias down. In fact, Blair instead permitted Wiranto to make, in essence, a political speech saying the same thing he had said before. Here is one passage from the account: "General Wiranto denies that TNI and the police supported any one group during the incidents"--meaning during the military attacks. "General Wiranto will go to East Timor tomorrow to emphasize three things:...Timorese, especially the two disputing groups, to solve the problem peacefully with dialogue; 2) encourage the militia to disarm; 3) make the situation peaceful and solve the problem." At no point did Blair demand that the militias be shut down, and in fact this call was followed by escalating militia violence and increases in concrete, new US military assistance to Indonesia, including the sending in of a US Air Force trainer just weeks ago to train the Indonesian Air Force.

Allan Nairn

Link to ETAN East Timor & Indonesia Action Network site for official reports on the 1999 killings and for a petition regarding the prospective Blair nomination

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Drawing Your Last Breath Hungry. Burma, Food Crisis, Wall Street, and the World Economy.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 08:30:00 +0000

In parts of Burma before the cyclone hit the heat was so severe that you could walk around on a hazy day and run the risk of sunstroke.

On Thingyan the Buddhist holiday in which people dunk each other with water you could get a full-face full-pail drenching and be crisply sundried in minutes.

But when the storm water rose on the Irrawaddy Delta drying out became secondary because the sun's rays were largely gone and so was much of the land, housing, and plantings.

No one really knows how many people died but the world press has made the point that it would have been far fewer if Burma had a better government.

The point could also be made, though, that far fewer still would have died if the world had a better system of producing and allocating its wealth.

It's hard to come up with solid figures but it seems safe to estimate that the entire disposable wealth of the Irrawaddy Delta before the storm, that of its' 3.5 million residents, could have been less than that of one table-full of diners at New York's Four Seasons Grill Room.

Actually, it's more dramatic than that.

Working with figures from Forbes magazine, the IMF, and the UNDP, it's possible to estimate that there are between three hundred and a thousand individuals whose accumulated wealth is so vast that any one of them alone could pay each person in the Irrawaddy Delta for a year, and in the case of the richest, like Warren Buffett, could do it for six decades running and still have billions left.

One could get a visualization of this notion and its implications when flying over the Netherlands. Looking down from the Royal Dutch Airline a few weeks after Irrawaddy sank, you could see another delta, a country with much land below sea level, but where long infusions of wealth -- much of it extracted from Southeast Asia by whip (see the histories of the Dutch East and West Indies Companies) -- have made possible the building, behind strong dikes, by the sea, of nice, glassy homes and offices.

A cyclone Nargis would have killed anywhere -- viz. the recent storms in the US midwest -- but whether you survive a storm depends in important part on whether you and your ancestors were rich or poor and were able to build good infrastructure (even in the US, see New Orleans).

So the rich world is right to flagellate the Burmese generals for holding back resources as people die (a BBC World TV interviewer yesterday called it "criminal neglect") but wrong to fail to note that they do the same thing daily, on a global, far more deadly, scale.

The rich do pass out some of their spare wealth during a cyclone or other covered crisis, but on a daily basis withhold enough of it such that 850 million people routinely go hungry.

The recent food price hike has upped that statistic by perhaps a hundred million, and so it is said that we are in a "food crisis" and that "the era of cheap food is over."

The world would indeed be in a food crisis if there were not enough food to feed the people. But that is not the case.

The problem is that many millions of people can't afford food. That, clearly, is not a food crisis, but rather a wealth crisis, more precisely a wealth distribution crisis that can be solved by shifts from rich to poor, and a crisis that can be kept from recurring if laws and economies are then modified to institutionalize a new, more realistic, system that doesn't happen to starve people -- an objective which, one would think, is a fairly modest, and perhaps popular, goal.

Today in Rome there is a world summit on food and there has been a political stir over an attempt to exclude Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's liberator and despot.

The point is made correctly that Mugabe runs a failed economic system that kills many people who could have been saved if he had made different choices.

But the same could also be said of a number of others at the summit -- those who run the world economy --, which is certainly failed from the point of view of those who draw their last breath hungry.

UN people from FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) and other agencies have also caused a flutter by talking about $50 billion, over many years, for various food projects, which is a tenfold increase but still less than the personal holdings of Buffett, Bill Gates, and Carlos Slim, who got quite rich essentially overnight when Mexico gave him its cell phone system. It's also what the US goes though in about five months of occupying Iraq, where child malnutrition has risen in rough correlation with precision bomb drops and Iraqui democracy.

If someone's dying and you have a dollar that could save them and you withhold it, you have killed them. It's so extreme it sounds ridiculous, but it happens to be true, and will continue to be true so long as surplus coexists with bodies living on the cliff of death, or, for the luckier young ones, the cliff of mere body stunting and underdevelopment of their brains.

The big story before the food crisis was the US Wall Street financial crisis. For some weeks sober economists were fearing 1929-style panic. But Ben Bernanke, the US Federal Reserve chairman, stepped in to save the day by essentially imagining into existence several hundreds of billions of dollars worth of money that was effectively made available to some of the world's richest institutions and people.

The coverage focused on the fact that Bernanke did this cleverly, and succeeded, but it could also have noted that this is a remarkable aspect of today´s economy: while most people have to work for their money incrementally, bending in mud to plant their rice, a few can imagine it into existence in large blocks, and give it to their friends and colleagues.

By printing money, issuing bonds, making loans, creating new financial instruments, and by other means, these few create notions that have the power to buy goats, or anything else one wants, and can continue doing so indefinitely so long as rich society buys the pretense.

Which is to say that though, say, getting food to people, requires rearranging some physical things, most of the task involves rearranging the notions that govern actions from people's heads.

It´s simply a choice as to whether the power to conjure funds will be used for hungry people, and not just the juridical, imaginary persons that are investment corporations (US judicial precedent gives corporations the legal rights of persons, but like persons become ghosts it´s impossible to jail them if they transgress).

And it is likewise simply a choice whether or not to save expiring people by allowing resources to be shifted from an aid ship off Burma´s shore, or from the guys having drinks and lunch at the Four Seasons, table four.

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And Satan Said: 'Recite the Names of the People You Killed.'

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:44:00 +0000

The other day a Chilean journalist asked whether the Spanish Guatemala genocide prosecution was mainly "symbolic," but I said that it was more than that since international arrest warrants had been issued. (Re. the prosecution see postings of February 5, 7, and 9, 2008).

What neither of us knew was that as we were speaking one of the defendants had just died, and that the International Herald Tribune/ AP headline would read: "Former Guatemalan police director wanted in Spain for crimes against humanity dies" (International Herald Tribune website, February 18, 2008).

Though that only begins to ping the surface of the lake of blood that is his legacy, it is not a bad summing-up of the life of Col. German Chupina, torturer, rapist, murderer, and steward of the American Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala (AMCHAM).

(See postings of December 2, 2007, "'Go ahead, kill them. Just be sure to fill out your expense account.,'"and February 9, 2008, "It's Not the Man, It's the Mission. The Whisperers of Death.").

That's one small benefit of trying to enforce the murder laws, even in a world that doesn't yet want to. Sometimes the proceeding makes chroniclers feel free to call things by their proper names.

That didn't much happen with Suharto, who was a bigger fish and better connected, and who was, in any event, never brought up before a murder tribunal.

(The New York Times managed to start its story on the man who surpassed Saddam and rivaled Pol Pot: "Indonesia embraced Suharto as a great leader Sunday, greeting his death with official solemnity and with surging, shouting crowds..." [Seth Mydans, "In death, ex-dictator elicits grief and tributes," in International Herald Tribune, January 28, 2008]; for poor victims', rather than rich perpetrators', perspectives see posting of January 13, 2008, "General Suharto of Indonesia. One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses." ).

But imagine if proceedings, even after the fact, were brought against those who deserved it. In the US there's a popular TV cop show, "Cold Case," devoted to that notion.

But the show only deals with common criminals, like people who kill kids -- that is, people who kill kids while not on state business, or with no state political motive.

US Presidential libraries would have to start devoting exhibits in their biographical dioramas. 'The Early Years,' 'The Race for the White House,' 'The State Terrorism Tribunal.'

Though these cases are small breakthroughs, they're big, because they happen on a big, important front.

Yesterday's Haaretz tells the story of Israeli Gen. Doron Almog who, in 2005, cowered in a plane for two hours on the tarmac at London's Heathrow airport and thereby "escaped arrest for alleged war crimes ... because U.K. police feared an arrest would spark a shootout with Israeli security officials..." ( Haaretz Service, "Report: IDF general dodged U.K. arrest as police feared shootout," Haaretz, February 20, 2008.)

He wasn't such a shrinking violet when he allegedly lobbed flesh-shredding flechette shells at Gaza civilians or was smashing 50 homes there, but its different when you're not playing on your home court, and there's real law enforcement, with guns.

As it happened, this outbreak of law enforcement was unexpected, and quickly contained. Citizens had complained, a local British court had issued a warrant, the cops went to do their job, and after the general had returned to Israel -- where the cops had no job to do -- the British Foreign Office apologized profusely.

The general deplaned.

Tony Blair recently went to the trouble of commenting that a similar contemplated British case against Avi Dichter, Israel's Public Security Minister, was "utter nonsense" (The case concerns a "targeted killing" that killed the target's wife and three children, among others. Dichter last year threatened Palestinians with a "Nakba" -- cataclysm -- if they kept remembering their 1948 Nakba), an interesting remark by Blair, a man now tasked by the Quartet as an honest broker on Israel-Palestine, and who backed an Iraq invasion that his own Foreign Office's deputy legal adviser called "a crime of aggression" (which is prosecutable).

(For Blair quote: Barak Ravid, "Sources: Blair 'shocked' by Dichter fears of arrest in U.K.," Haaretz, February 8, 2008. For Dichter quote: Meron Benvenisti, "Time to Stop Mourning," Haaretz, December 12, 2007. For legal adviser quote see posting of January 17, 2008, "US Precision Bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Killing Civilians, Carefully.").

So what would Chupina and Suharto talk about, if they met, at the boiling pool, in Hell?

'CIA Station Chiefs I have known?'

In Chupina's case, it would include V. Harwood Blocker 3d, 1977-1980; Barry Royden, 1980; and Robert Hultslander, 1981-83 (see my "The Country Team," The Nation [US], June 5, 1995).

Or maybe Satan would step in: 'OK Chupina, OK Suharto, before you get to eat (if they eat down there), recite for me, from memory, the names of all the people you killed.'

You know how long it takes to recite a million names, or even some mere thousands?

And what if, as is likely, they didn't know or have forgotten most of the names?

Maybe even Satan wouldn't be that cruel.

For true viciousness, you must look aboveground.

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"Dying for a Second Round." Israel Said to Plan Attack on Lebanon.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:43:00 +0000

On Friday I asked a top-level Israeli, a former IDF (Israel Defense Forces) elite unit man and prime-ministerial confidante, whether the assassination of Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyeh could have been done by a Lebanese group.

He snorted at the preposterous notion. This was "way too sophisticated," he said. "This [the car bombing] was a precisely orchestrated international operation," and this was the "third or fourth or fifth time in a year that Israel has carried out a military operation in Syria."

When I asked him to repeat that last part he added the word "allegedly."

But the message, or at least the boast, was clear. So why is Israel doing this?

The man said of his colleagues: "There are a lot of [Israeli] military and cabinet people just dying for a second round with Lebanon. If given the opportunity they'll take it," i.e. attack Lebanon again, not in spite of "but because of" the perception that their '06 attack failed.

Though the IDF leveled blocks and villages, dropped 4 million cluster bomblets (some of which are still exploding), and killed some 200 Hezbollah combatants and 1,000 Lebanese civilians (roughly 40 Israeli civilians were killed by Hezbollah), they apparently departed Lebanon feeling politically inadequate.

The official feeling was that they either did not destroy enough, or destroy enough of the right people and items, to avoid the embarrassing perception that they lost to Hezbollah.

So to have the option of solving this problem they've apparently staged a provocative assassination in hopes of goading Hezbollah into retaliating and providing a pretext for new -- better -- destruction that this time around will "succeed," i.e. soothe hurt Israeli feelings.

There've been attempts to put this in strategic terms, as educated killers (and those who study them) prefer. 'Israel must prove its strategic value to the United States' (What? Washington is going to dump Israel? Hezbollah's "victory" strengthened the Palestinians, or Lebanon, or put Israel's existence in danger?). Or, alternatively: 'Hezbollah must be eradicated' (which everyone knows is impossible).

In fact, the closer you look the more it looks like leaders' blood psychotherapy.

And the same thing goes for the publics that follow them. Olmert is in political trouble. If he doesn't kill some Arabs soon (who or where is secondary), his governing coalition may well dissolve. The public has to feel good, too.

The problem -- for the to-be-killed, and for the notion of murder law, not to mention (and few do) decency -- is that the Israeli body politic is now set this way: demanding -- with a few, brave, exceptions -- not just daily, routine, killings of Palestinians, but periodic dramatic strikes that thrill and let them strut like hero/ victims.

It's as if the inhabitants of a US Fox News studio had multiplied and become a nation.

It, of course, doesn't have to be that way, but it is obviously that way now. All you have to do to see it is pick up the papers or talk to a few Israelis. (For representative quotations see Gideon Levy, "Little Ahmadinejads, Haaretz," 10/06/2007).

Its one thing for a state to be murdering and/or oppressing others when their local public doesn't know about it (as was largely the case when Washington was decimating Central America in the 1980s), but it's another when the public knows about it and supports the injustices and crimes (as was the case with US whites and slavery, and in the first stages of US/Iraq, where public support seemed to turn -- as it may still -- on the question of whether the US was "winning").

In the first situation, the killing policy is vulnerable. If word gets out, the public might be angry. But in the second it is more stable, and deadly, since the public knows, and asks for more.

But people and states don't get to entirely write their own histories.

They usually interact with others.

In the case of Israel, the key interaction is with the US, their military guarantor/ mass subsidizer, and with American Jews, where, among the young, opinion appears to be slowly turning (see postings of December 7, 2007, "Imposed Hunger in Gaza. The Army in Indonesia. Questions of Logic and Activism," and February 13, 2008, "Big Killer Takes Out Smaller One. 'Wipe Out a Neighborhood.' Life by Mafia Rules in the Israeli - US Domain," particularly the plaint of Malcom Hoenlein.).

Alternatively, Palestinians and groups like Hezbollah and Hamas could join the US as important determinants, but only if they too reset their outlooks (and their willingness to kill or murder) -- as some Palestinians and other Arabs at the grassroots level are now urging, cautiously -- and switched to active, but non-violent, or minimally violent resistance (like the first intifada, or the Gaza wall-breaking) and stopped letting themselves be used as a "provocation-response" button that Israel can press when it wants a thrill.

(See posting of January 26, 2007. "The Breaking of the Gaza Wall. Wise, Justified Political Violence.").

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Big Killer Takes Out Smaller One. "Wipe Out a Neighborhood." Life By Mafia Rules in the Israeli - US Domain.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:30:00 +0000

I happened to learn about the car-bomb assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah commander, while talking to a Palestinian Fatah man who is a confidante of Mohammed Dahlan, who is famously reputed in the press to have been both a torturer and the CIA's man in Gaza, until the Hamas ousted him.

The Fatah/ Dahlan man who imparted the assassination news hates Hamas with a passion -- he said that in last year's rival security forces showdown they grabbed and tortured him with knives for four hours (he was earlier tortured by the Israelis far longer, and worse, but views that as par for the course)-- and is no fan of Hezbollah, but he viewed the killing with irony. He said he was hearing that the Israelis were saying "we cleared the account with him (Mughniyeh)" (Palestinian Authority security forces, like those Dahlan ran, now have regular coordination meetings with their ostensible enemies, Israeli intelligence), yet he claimed that Mughniyeh's major killings had been more against other Arabs (eg. Saudi, Kuwait) than against Israelis.

The Israeli killing men are trying to contain their grins. The government issued a non-denial denial "Israel rejects the attempt by terror groups to attribute to it any involvement in this incident. We have nothing further to add" -- i.e. they reject terror groups saying they were involved, but do not say that they were not involved.

The US, which had a $25 million bounty on Mughniyeh's head (he's implicated, in, among other things, the Lebanon Marine barracks bombing, the kidnap/ holding of AP reporter Terry Anderson, a TWA hijacking) felt no need to show restraint, saying, through the State Department: "The world is a better place without this man in it. He was a cold-blooded killer, a mass murderer and a terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost."

In a world of proportionality and full enforcement of the murder laws -- or even, rough justice-style "what goes around comes around" -- George Bush's men would not want to make that statement, since they (and Israel) are responsible for vastly more, and vastly more civilian, killings, don't have Mughniyeh's sometime excuse of responding to invasion, and don't want to start up their cars tomorrow morning and wind up blown to bits.

But that is not this world. This is mafia world. If you're big enough, you can whack guys.

It so happened that, hours before, another Palestinian man had used that mafia term as we wove through scrolls of barbed wire, checkpoints, walls, and Galil/M-16 toting Occupation men as Jewish settlers/occupiers zipped through the West Bank on ethnically/religiously segregated superhighways.

Two days before, a fairly typical day in Israeli politics, the lead front page headline in the Haaretz newspaper was "IDF (Israel Defense Forces) to step up Gaza assassinations," in response to homemade rockets from besieged, hungry, bombed Gaza that had recently wounded Israelis (for background on the siege and the disproportionate death tolls, see postings of December 7, 2007, "Imposed Hunger in Gaza, The Army in Indonesia. Questions of Logic and Activism," and January 6, 2008 "The Breaking of the Gaza Wall. Wise, Justified Political Violence.").

"The IDF needs to wipe out a neighborhood in Gaza," said the Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, "We need to target all those responsible for terrorism without asking who they are" -- suggesting a broad definition of "responsible" that encompasses those whose actions are unknown, but who do, at least, fit the criterion of being Palestinians living in Gaza. (Haaretz English Edition, February 11, 2008).

Dani Yatom, the former Mossad chief, now a parliamentarian for what constitutes Israel's establishment left, the Labor Party, said on TV of blowing up the smaller killer Mughniyeh that "the free and democratic world today achieved a very important goal" -- suggesting that freedom and democracy do not have law and order (as opposed to whacking) as a prerequisite, which seems to undercut the whole US worldwide project of building up heavily-armed security forces (along with non-troublesome courts) -- in places including occupied Palestine -- on the claimed premise that you can't have freedom and democracy until you've first established the rule of law.

The politics are pretty clear. The US Republicans want terrorism -- other people's -- on the US electoral front burner (see posting re. the just-announced 9/11 tribunals, February 11, 2008, "The Guantanamo Gambit. A Smart But Vulnerable Establishment. Tactical Options in US Politics."), and Israel's Olmert administration is still smarting from a new official report (the Winograd Commission) saying they lost the '06 Lebanon war with Hezbollah (and with the precision-carpet-bombed civilian populations of southern Leabanon, and southern Beirut), and are simultaneously facing a fierce Israeli public clamor to go in and kill more Gazans.

There's always a certain -- weak -- case to be made for just taking out a killer if nice, legal courts can't do it (its the kind of thing that leftist guerrilla/liberation movements, or the French Resistance, did all the time). That was basically the case -- apart from the weapons/ Al Qeada lies -- that the US made for taking out Saddam Hussein. But the weak case becomes dangerously unserious when the one proposing to do the ajusticiamiento (delivery of justice, as they used to say in rebel Central America), has, like, say, the US or Israeli leadership, killed and murdered far more prolifically than has the proposed target. Then, though you remove a smaller killer from the face of the earth, you make the bigger killer still stronger, thus making life even more dangerous for regular people who are still walking around.

Surprisingly enough, for a man based in the New York area -- an old mob stronghold and recently the fictional home of HBO's Tony Soprano -- Malcom Hoenlein, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations seemed to express surprise, at a Tuesday Jerusalem press conference, at his group's poll findings that American popular support for Israel is "broad" but "also thin, and most Americans see Israel as a dark and militaristic place."

Evidently they shouldn't. When an assassination car bomb explodes, it gives off a lot of light.

(For the Hoenlein press conference see Anshel Pfeffer, "Hoenlein: Obama's spirit of change could harm Israel," Haaretz, February 13, 2008; despite the headline, he wasn't criticizing Obama, who like all the big 3 candidates, is already pledged to the official US/Israeli government line, including on Gaza. He was merely fretting that "[t]here is a legitimate concern over the zeitgeist around the campaign... All the talk about change, but without defining what that change should be, is an opening for all kind of mischief.").

Link to view this posting in Arabic translation.

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The Guantanamo Gambit. A Smart But Vulnerable Establishment. Tactical Options in US Politics.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:58:00 +0000

Though they never said it, it now appears that Bush, or at least his Pentagon, did not, for whatever reason, want Rudy Giuliani to be US president.

Though purportedly weaker than the Democrats, these Republicans have made an ingenious move by announcing a surprise 9/11 death-penalty tribunal just months before the US election.

Giuliani must be pounding the earth at the news that -- just after he dropped out of the race -- the US pre-election discussion will now be shaped, in important part, by the theme that was his only issue.

The Republicans were already in position to maybe overcome some bad fundamentals (Iraq, the US economy, too much incumbency) with the political brilliance of Senator John McCain, a man who is at once a rich military aristocrat (his father and grandfather were admirals), a regular guy in personality, a bomber, a torture survivor (by the people he was bombing), and a conservative Republican lauded for candor who manages to convince some liberal Democrats that he's actually lying -- excusably -- when he repeatedly says he's conservative.

To non-US readers asking what these US political terms mean (in Australia, for example, "liberal" is the name of the "conservative," "right wing" party), the short answer is: don't puzzle over it too much; it doesn't really affect you.

"Liberal" or "conservative," US foreign policy is quite consistent, historically -- as each new US Secretary of State accurately tells the world when there's a White House change of party.

Now, whatever small distance might have existed between the US establishment left and right (see posting of January 2, 2008, "The US Election is Already Over. Murder and Preventable Death Have Won") will be subjected to a powerful converging pull with this big Al Qaeda Guantanamo proceeding.

Senator Barack Obama, who, at this instant, may be slightly ahead for the Democrats' nomination, will now have one more reason to make sure that his eloquent, vague, talk of "change" will, if in office, actually amount to small change (See my January 3, 2008 Democracy Now! discussion of atrocities by advisers to Obama, as well as to Clinton, McCain, and others).

But one aspect of vast US killing/sparing power is that even tiny relative changes, can -- in absolute terms -- produce many more or many fewer corpses.

If, say, in theory, a series of US policy decisions can kill or save 1,000,000 people, a variation of just one percent can kill or save 10,000 people.

So even if the bitter, minimal, electoral choice must be made among 99% - identical candidates, that 1% difference does make a difference, though you may not know in which direction.

(It was the Democrats -- John F. Kennedy, for example, who created the Central American death squads [see my "Behind the Death Squads: An exclusive report on the U.S. role in El Salvador’s official terror," The Progressive, May, 1984, and a resulting Senate Intelligence Committee report, which you can't see, because it's classified] and did the most damage on Vietnam, and who, in the Kerry-Bush campaign had the harsher rhetoric on South American matters like Venezuela [key Democrats like James Carville and Mark Penn have been paid consultants to Chavez's anti-democratic, pro-coup opponents]).

Though Bush II varied from post-Vietnam establishment tactics with an Iraq invasion that made Washington look bad (not, in their terms, because of the mass civilian death, but because of the US failure to win fast) Bush himself has now been partly pulled back into line, and McCain was already in line (McCain helped to oust Rumsfeld, who, with Cheney, hurt US power by overplaying it, i.e. by invading a non-defenseless country, and, to boot, getting lots of US troops killed and maimed, conspicuously, on television).

What this means is that though the public rhetoric appears to stake out big differences, Washington insiders agree that on Iraq, as on many matters, the Republicans and Democrats are on the same page.

The Democrats' talk, for example, of starting to withdraw troops immediately does not mean anything. There are always troop rotations, so when some come home that can be called a withdrawal. Or you can withdraw -- drawing down numbers -- today and build them up tomorrow. The only pull-out statement that would be meaningful would be an expressed willingness to let Iraq's regime fall, something inconceivable for a Democratic nominee -- more so now with the Al Qaeda tribunal.

Its not just that the US has a habit of killing civilians, it's also that it has such huge power to do so (see posting of December 5, 2007,"It Takes [Out] a Village: Illegitimate American Power"). Neither is acceptable. Both should be broken, and the killers tried. But electing a Democrat -- or Republican -- as president won't do that. Other tactics must be attempted.

The US system is, in some respects, unusually open and even vulnerable. The electoral process, for one thing, is, as in most places, heavily influenced by rich people's money (it's a combination of one - person - one - vote, and one - dollar - one - vote), but it is also susceptible to not-fully-controlled television spectacle.

At one point, in 1992, the wild card candidate Ross Perot, actually led Bush I and Clinton, almost entirely based on some cable TV appearances that seemed to strike a chord (though a rich man, he hadn't even yet spent much campaign money).

Then, however, Perot self-destructed, starting with a speech implying racist sentiments and dropped out (though he later re-entered, weaker) suggesting that North Vietnamese snipers were on his lawn, and hinting that there was also some sinister plot to disrupt his daughter's wedding.

If a somewhat crazy man could come that close, it says something about US politics.

The whole thing may not be quite as tightly nailed-down as we think.

People and movements (beyond electoral matters) can, in the US, figuratively catch fire, today through TV -- which is big-corporate owned, but finds it hard to resist a circus -- and can, when given space by still-existing civil liberties, win change, as in the '60s and '70s.

That's yet to happen much in recent years, but the US social underpinnings are shaking slightly. Obama's smart enough to see that and imply promises he has no plans to keep.

If many other, more serious, less indebted-to-power people saw it, the shaking could grow stronger still.

But so far, tactically, the US establishment is still smarter than its' real opponents.

We'll now be talking 'Fry these Al Qaeda bastards or not?' instead of 'Why let a child die when you can save it?' and 'When are we going to get tough on crime and really start enforcing the murder laws?'

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The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 16:52:00 +0000

Some news reports are now claiming that Jose Ramos Horta, Timor-Leste's president, is or was in a coma. If he goes, his soul will get a good laugh from the fact that he outlasted Suharto -- who killed a third of his people --, and an ironic laugh from the fact that the first bullets to ever hit him were fired by an East Timorese.

The man behind those bullets, the rebel soldier Alfredo Reinado, is reportedly dead, and if that's true the ridiculous crisis that has gripped East Timor may actually slowly dissipate.

In some countries, a two-year upheaval that kills several dozen and features a double-assassination try (Xanana Gusmao, the prime minister, was also attacked, but not hit) might rank as the biggest thing in recent memory, but in Timor it's not even close.

The Indonesian military occupiers -- armed and green-lighted by the United States government -- killed that many on many hundreds of mornings. Their winnowing of the population was so vast that it put them in Nazi-land (see posting of December 3, 2007, " Knowing Where the Bodies Are Buried. The Indonesian Generals -- and Putin -- Laugh," and also those of August 16 '05, November 13 '07, December 5 and 7 '07, and January 13 and 27 '08).

Occupied Timor was the most terrifying place I've ever seen. There was perpetual threat of execution.

But, as sometimes happens, the oppressed people actually won.

And with gradual independence, starting in 1999, the Timorese won the right to behave as pettily as everyone else, and their leaders have been exercising it.

The rebel Reinado stood for nothing that anyone could discern, and the older generation of leaders has been bickering even as there is still hunger in the countryside, side-by-side with newly-won oil money.

Compared to the Indonesian Occupation holocaust, all of this is -- amazingly enough -- small for Timor, but that proportional comparison is, in many senses, beside the point: Just one death ends the world for someone, and when it's preventable, it's inexcusable.

Poor people are now hungering unnecessarily in Timor-Leste, under a regime that is not bad or oppressive.

The country can do much better. It can be an example for the world, as its' political victory over terror was.

When Ramos Horta, hopefully, comes back, the independence leaders should sit down and reflect. Then bury their rivalries and feed the hungry, or step aside, and let younger survivors take over.

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Murder Watch. Note to Readers Re. Even-Handed Enforcement of the Murder Laws.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 23:57:00 +0000

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Link to view this posting in Spanish translation.

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It's Not the Man, It's the Mission. The Whisperers of Death.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 23:50:00 +0000

The other night a Mayan survivor remarked that there are Kaibiles in the Congo. They're a special unit of US-trained Guatemalan troops officially called "The Messengers of Death," but he noted that recently eight of them were ambushed and died themselves in that faraway land.

The poor Kaibil killers must not have known what hit them, since, on the road, away from home, they were in the Congo under actual legal constraint, as peacekeeping troops of the United Nations.

It's a similar story with Indonesian troops, now deployed as UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.

Back home, unbound by law, they kill civilians, but, away -- where that would cause problems -- such behavior is banned, and, generally, despite their past record, they don't go around murdering people (rape is another matter; its a problem of men in armies most everywhere, and UN troop assignments vary: In Haiti, it has included repression).

It's not the man, its the mission. Political killers are not killing machines.

They are human components of killing machines, and if the machine setting is switched from "kill" to "don't kill," as trained people, they do tend to comply.

While its true that some people are what these days are called psychopathic killers, such compulsive blood-spillers are rare in any society.

There aren't enough of them to stock a brigade, let alone a government or a Harvard institute.

In the Guatemala torture/ state terrorism/ genocide case now being tried in Spain (see postings of February 5 and 7, 2008), there is one such lunatic figure -- Col. German Chupina, the former national police chief and close ally of the American Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala, who, some of his old employees say, liked to cruise the city in a black-windowed van and point out women from the street for raping, and then cutting up and finishing off with his own literally bloody hands.

Gen. Rios Montt, one of the massacre dictators, is also often described as, in his way, crazy, but that is because he combined religious fanaticism with impolitic speaking bluntness (In his case, the fanaticism was Evangelical Christian. When he wasn't killing families he was lecturing them, on TV, on their sexual mores).

As he was helping him burn the Mayan highlands President Reagan said that Rios Montt was "totally dedicated to democracy" and getting a "bum rap" on human rights (New York Times, December 5, 1982). But Rios Montt spoiled the effect a bit when he explained to the press: "It is not true that I have a policy of scorched earth! I have a policy of scorched communists!"

But the crazies are exceptions.

Most top killers avoid the smell of burning flesh. They are calm bureaucrats, ideologues, politicians, academics. They kill with whispers, papers, and keyboard strokes.

And on the earthly -- implementation -- level, where sharp knives enter chests, the human adjustment is sometimes difficult for those who must do the actual killings.

Some of the people in Spain for the Mayan trial have occasionally cried, but the other day one man did it for a different reason than the others. He cried because he'd been made a killer.

As a teen he had been snatched into the Guatemalan army and that US counterinsurgency favorite, the "Civil Patrols," (The US has used them in dozens of countries, including, recently, Nepal, the Philippines, and Iraq. Gen. Rios Montt, a Fort Bragg trainee, was director of studies at the Pentagon's Washington, D.C. Inter-American Defense College), and when this man was brought for training he found that his imposed mission included becoming "one of the destroyers of everything, of our own people in Guatemala."

The old adage among murder trainers is that once you've killed you can't go back, especially if the person you've killed is a bound and screaming, unarmed captive.

It's fair that people should pay for their crimes. But the judgers should consider circumstances. Sentences should vary according to whether the killer was under coercion, or a coercer who whispered death from an office.

Link to view this posting in Spanish translation.

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Give Me Back My Land. My Memories? That's Another Question.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:53:00 +0000

Before the Spanish court the other day, one of the surviving Mayans ended his testimony by standing up at the judge's desk and asking for his land back.

(Re. this torture/ state terrorism/ genocide case against US-backed Guatemalan officials, see posting of Tuesday, February 5, 2008, "As US Votes on Who Will Hold the Trigger, Mayans Propagate Civilization.").

How much land was it?, I asked him last night. Less than five acres, corn land.

But after all these years, he still wants it back, and wants to leave it to a surviving son.

When the army of his homeland entered his village they burned the 3-room schoolhouse ("They stole the roof!") and cut and crushed the drinkable-water pipes. And as they raped, throat-sliced, and trigger-pulled their way through , they forced people onto the mountain -- dodging US-arranged Israeli Galil bullets as they clambered upward, toward life.

They left behind land -- which, in theory, is recoverable; the man was raising a fundamental point -- but also much that cannot be gotten back, like a life without tormenting memories.

There was the time, for example, a woman recounted just now, that she snuck down from the mountain and found that "All that was left were the dogs, barking in the houses."

Outside, elsewhere, there were fires, bad smells, smoke, some crying, still-living children, as well as her own mother, dead -- dead as a result of policy.

"There arrived a great sadness, a great pain," she said, "a pain that remains until this moment."

She said that she had carried that two-decade torment to Spain and that on this formal, legal, occasion, "This is the moment that we take out our pain," and seek justice from society.

Link to view this posting in Spanish translation.

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A Short Update on Civilization, and on Guatemalan and US Criminals

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:30:00 +0000

This morning, speaking publicly in Spain (see previous posting of today, February 5, 2008, "As US Votes on Who Will Hold the Trigger, Mayans Propagate Civilization"), a very brave man from the Mayan highlands remarked that when he returned to his mother's house once the US-backed Guatemalan army had gotten through with it, he found that his entire family had been "carbonized," i.e. burnt carbon-black and crispy.

Soon after, the US sent more money (and other things) to that very army, perhaps pioneering -- under Reagan -- the first known application of the "carbon credits" concept.

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As US Votes on Who Will Hold the Trigger, Mayans Propagate Civilization.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:34:00 +0000

Today, as Americans decide who will get the power to kill or spare millions (see posting of Wednesday, December 05, 2007, "It Takes [Out] a Village: Illegitimate American Power"), a group of Guatemalan Mayan campesinos are in Madrid, on a civilizing mission.

They are here to testify about the US-sponsored Guatemalan officers who, in the '70s and '80s, murdered their families, and came out on top as rich men, drug dealers, US embassy consultants, and Harvard fellows.

It's not as if you can bring back the dead wives, missing kids, or shot-in-the cerebrum husbands, or even sufficiently punish the guilty, who now grin in elegant Zona Cinco pools and in MacLean, Virginia homes with lawns. They still twirl power and walk around, uncuffed, in polite society.

But you can, as one of the mountain corn farmers observed yesterday, "Capture them, imprison them. That's sufficient," which is generous of him, since they butchered his dear ones, friends, and animals, and burnt his gut till his intestines spilled out -- and it is to the great credit of Spain's judiciary that they are willing to let him try.

This is a case of torture, state terrorism, and genocide -- and international arrest warrants have been issued -- but the big, tough Generals who once could answer the question (posed by the conservative Guatemalan daily, El Grafico, [May 17, 1982]) "How is it possible to behead an 8- or 9-year-old child? How is it possible for a human adult to murder in cold blood a baby of less than a year and a half?" are now afraid to fly to Madrid and face the parents of the kids they consumed while pocketing cash from Langley. (Grafico referred to the massacre of Semeja II, Chichicastenango, but, in all, according to army records, 662 villages were destroyed, and perhaps 120,000 civilians were murdered in a place the population of New York City).

They're afraid because there's been something like a tear in the fabric of the political universe and, somehow, as in one of those anomalies of quantum physics, there has emerged -- in this world -- a stray particle of civilization: a legal forum perhaps willing to enforce the murder laws, even against high officials.

Not yet too high, mind you. There are not yet American names on the defendants list. But as we say in the sports which American guys love, its not over till its over.

The case is in Spain's Audiencia Nacional (National Court), which, operating on the principle 'We're all people here,' is exercising its right under international law to try atrocity cases involving non-Spaniards.

(Mayan survivors of things like crucifixion by hanging -- from the big log cross at Rio Negro -- will be testifying. I'll be testifying as well, on the army, the massacre policy, and the US. Lawyers and professionals advancing the case come from CJA [US], APDHE [Spain], RMTF [Guatemala], CALDH [Guatemala], Hastings Law School [US], Impunity Watch [The Netherlands], and the National Security Archive [US].)

Imagine if that precedent caught on. Today's US primary might be awkward, as candidates and advisers dodged the cops, were pressed to sign pledges to stop murdering, and were asked by the press to explain their own pasts -- vis a vis killing civilians, not trivia -- and to explain their bipartisan ideological softness on official crime.

In this particular US-killing matter, one of dozens from around the world, the Republicans' patron saint is Ronald Reagan, so beloved by the Guatemalan leaders who slaughtered the Mayans (and others) that they hung ten-foot portraits of him in their homes as he sent them CIA men, surveillance equipment, covert money and -- most importantly -- open political blessings. The US Democrats' dove is Barack Obama, whose chief foreign adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, greenlighted Israel to deliver the actual killing rifles (Galils) to Guatemala, since his President -- Carter -- was a little embarrassed.

Is that the difference between the two big US parties on mass murder -- embarrassment versus pride? Maybe.

We shouldn't have to wrestle with such fine -- though, sometimes, bitterly consequential -- distinctions.

We should be able to vote effectively against, and prosecute, murder.

Maybe US politics needs a civilizing Mayan invasion.

(For background, and re. the US role see Jesus Tecu Osorio, "Memoria de las Masacres de Rio Negro," Guatemala, 2006, and my "The Guns of Guatemala: The Merciless Mission of Rios Montt's Army," The New Republic, April 11, 1983, "Guatemala Can't Take 2 Roads," The New York Times, op ed, July 20, 1982, "Choices on Guatemala," The New York Times, op ed, April 4, 1983, "Despite Ban, U.S. Captain Trains Guatemalan Military," The Washington Post, October 21, 1982, "The Guatemala Connection," The Progressive, May, 1986," "C.I.A. Death Squad," The Nation [US], April 17, 1995, "The Country Team," The Nation [US], June 5, 1995, letter exchange with US Ambassador Stroock, The Nation [US], May 29, 1995, and Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon, "Bureaucracy of Death," The New Republic, June 30, 1986, and Jean-Marie Simon, "Guatemala," W.W. Norton, New York, 1987).

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Eating Dirt for Lunch in Haiti. "Overwhelming Strength" in Florida.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 03:20:00 +0000

At about 8:25 Wednesday morning, US Eastern time, AOL's internet welcome screen juxtaposed two AP news stories: "He (McCain) Jumps Ahead in Republican Race: What Will Rudy Giuliani Do Now?" and "Desperate Haitians Eat Dirt: 'One Day I'll Have Enough Food.'"

("Hungry people in the slums of Haiti are giving new meaning to the phrase 'dirt poor.' As food prices soar, many desperate people are eating mud cookies to stave off their hunger pangs...;" Jonathan M. Katz, AP, January 29, 2008, quote from AP photo gallery by Ariana Cubillos).

One thing Rudy Giuliani did after losing the Florida primary was give a speech with the line "The best way to achieve peace is through overwhelming strength."

That could have been said by the rulers of colonial France as they tore the gold from Haiti's mountains, or by Thomas Jefferson as he warned against tolerating Haiti's slave uprising. Or by the US rulers of the '50s through '80s as they backed the Duvaliers as Haiti's dictators, or of the '90s as they backed the FRAPH death squad and imposed a World Bank/IMF plan on Haiti that -- a decade before Wednesay's dirt- consumption update -- began making Haitians hungrier.

(Re. FRAPH and the World Bank/ IMF, respectively, see my "Our Man in FRAPH: Behind Haiti's Paramilitaries," October 24, 1994, "He's Our S.O.B.," October 31, 1994, and "Haiti Under the Gun," January 8 / 15, 1996, all in The Nation [US], and "Aristide Banks on Austerity," Multinational Monitor, July/August, 1994).

It might be true, in theory, that overwhelming strength could achieve peace, but only if wielded by a figure like, say, God, and the Bible, Torah, and Koran all agree that even that scenario makes massacres.

The US founders may not have followed their own stated principles -- few do -- but they were cynically insightful about people in general, so as rich men, some of them slave holders (like Jefferson), they sought to contain the popular "mob" but also to structurally, constitutionally constrain future rulers like themselves.

In stated principle, at least, the US founders feared overwhelming strength in the hands of humans.

But today, the stated principle has reversed.

Giuliani's statement was not peculiar. McCain says things like that all the time, and it was the Clinton administration, where Hillary worked, that produced the 20-year Pentagon plan for "Full-spectrum Dominance," i.e. the ability "to defeat any adversary and control any situation," anywhere, anytime (Jim Garamore, American Forces Press Service [US Department of Defense], "Joint Vision 2020 Emphasizes Full-spectrum Dominance," June 2, 2000).

But if you fully dominate the world, who's going to stop you if you murder, or if you cause people to hunger because of the way you move and concentrate scarce wealth?

Those are the murder and preventable death problems that Americans are free to raise in politics -- but usually don't, but there's also another, straight-power problem that may eventually have to get discussed.

The problem is that though militarily, in some senses, the US still overwhelms, economically the US is becoming one power-center among several.

In his State of the Union President Bush said he'd "make sure America remains the most dynamic nation on earth."

That was possible to do after World War II with the rest of the rich world ravaged, but with nodes of capitalism now having dispersed worldwide it is no longer possible.

The fastest growth will inevitably happen elsewhere and, before long, a number of others will equal the US as centers of capital, exchange, and even innovation (and, on the latter, sooner than later if the US sustains its anti-immigrant hysteria).

What then? Elected US rulers always talk in supremacist, nationalist terms (though they personally and professionally invest globally). If they truly want the US to have/keep overwhelming dominance, their comparative advantage will have to be in gunpowder.

The sensible answer by non-rulers should be: who cares about attaining/keeping dominance? As a means of achieving peace it is discredited. As a means of feeding people, it hasn't produced.

It's more reasonable to search for other means, means toward good ends like ceasing death squad sponsorship, and shifting enough wealth so that people can sustain their strength by eating real food instead of dirt.

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State of the Union. Entitlement, Justice, and the War of All Against All.

noreply@blogger.com (allan.nairn@yahoo.com (Allan Nairn)) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 04:03:00 +0000

President Bush just said "We will deliver justice to our enemies" (US State of the Union Address, January 28, 2008).

So does that mean that it's dependent on our enemies to deliver justice to us?

That's the way people like Bin Laden think, and Bush apparently shares his mindset.

A leader chooses his definition of justice and goes out and kills -- or does whatever -- to the culprit.

Thats the way things theoretically work by default in the absence of a strong society, in the condition of something like what Thomas Hobbes called "the war of all against all."

But if we didn't have a strong society, Bush wouldn't have a $2.8 trillion budget (FY 2007). He wouldn't have Secret Service bodyguards, so he'd have to wear a holster to the podium, as Arafat -- who had a smaller budget -- once did.

Without a strong society there wouldn't be any effective inheritance laws, so Bush would be out there scrambling for work and food like everybody else.

In other words, you can't have it both ways.

You can't luxuriate in huge social entitlements while ignoring society's most basic laws and taboos: the ones regarding killing other people, the ones that say that society defines justice on these matters -- not individual leaders, or even establishments -- and it defines it by consensus and law (i.e. murder laws), made laboriously over time.

So if Bush wants to go out and kill somebody with a sword, as he might in a Hobbesian world, that's up to him.

But he shouldn't be surprised -- or complain -- when he's arrested by society's law-enforcers.

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