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Today's
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October
1, 2003
Sean Donahue
Wesley
Clark and the "No Fly" List
September
30, 2003
After
Dark
Arnold's
1977 Photo Shoot
Dave Lindorff
The
Poll of the Shirt: Bush Isn't Wearing Well
Tom Crumpacker
The
Cuba Fixation: Shaking Down American Travelers
Robert
Fisk
A
Lesson in Obfuscation
Charles
Sullivan
A
Message to Conservatives
Suren Pillay
Edward Said: a South African Perspective
Naeem
Mohaiemen
Said at Oberlin: Hysteria in the Face of Truth
Amy Goodman
/ Jeremy Scahill
Does
a Felon Rove the White House?
Website
of the Day
The Edward Said Page
September 29, 2003
Robert
Fisk
The
Myths of Western Intelligence Agencies
Iain A. Boal
Turn It Up: Pardon Mzwakhe Mbuli!
Lee Sustar
Paul
Krugman: the Last Liberal?
Wayne Madsen
General Envy? Think Shinseki, Not Clark
Benjamin
Dangl
Bolivia's Gas War
Uri Avnery
The
Magnificent 27
Pledge
Drive of the Day
Antiwar.com
Recent
Stories
September
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Alan
Dershowitz, Plagiarist
David Price
Teaching Suspicions
Saul Landau
Before the Era of Insecurity
Ron Jacobs
The Chicago Conspiracy Trial and
the Patriot Act
Brian
Cloughley
The Strangeloves Win Again
Norman Solomon
Wesley and Me: a Real-Life Docudrama
Robert
Fisk
Bomb Shatters Media Illusions
M. Shahid Alam
A Muslim Sage Visits the USA
John Chuckman
American Psycho: Bush at the UN
Mark Schneider
International Direct Action
The Spanish Revolution to the Palestiniana Intifada
William
S. Lind
How $87 Billion Could Buy Some Real Security
Douglas Valentine
Gold Warriors: the Plundering of Asia
Chris
Floyd
Vanishing Act
Elaine Cassel
Play Cat and Moussaoui
Richard
Manning
A Conservatism that Once Conserved
George Naggiar
The Beautiful Mind of Edward Said
Omar Barghouti
Edward Said: a Corporeal Dream Not Yet Realized
Lenni Brenner
Palestine's Loss is America's Loss
Mickey
Z.
Edward Said: a Well-Reasoned Voice
Tanweer Akram
The Legacy of Edward Said
Adam Engel
War in the Smoking Room
Poets' Basement
Katz, Ford, Albert & Guthrie
Website
of the Weekend
Who the Hell is Stew Albert?
September
25, 2003
Edward
Said
Dignity,
Solidarity and the Penal Colony
Robert
Fisk
Fanning
the Flames of Hatred
Sarah
Ferguson
Wolfowitz at the New School
David
Krieger
The
Second Nuclear Age
Bill Glahn
RIAA Doublespeak
Al Krebs
ADM and the New York Times: Covering Up Corporate Crime
Michael
S. Ladah
The Obvious Solution: Give Iraq Back to the Arabs
Fran Shor
Arnold and Wesley
Mustafa
Barghouthi
Edward Said: a Monument to Justice and Human Rights
Alexander Cockburn
Edward Said: a Mighty and Passionate
Heart
Website
of the Day
Edward Said: a Lecture on the Tragedy of Palestine
September 24, 2003
Stan Goff
Generational
Casualties: the Toxic Legacy of the Iraq War
William
Blum
Grand Illusions About Wesley Clark
David
Vest
Politics
for Bookies
Jon Brown
Stealing Home: The Real Looting is About to Begin
Robert Fisk
Occupation and Censorship
Latino
Military Families
Bring Our Children Home Now!
Neve Gordon
Sharon's
Preemptive Zeal
Website
of the Day
Bands Against Bush
September
23, 2003
Bernardo
Issel
Dancing
with the Diva: Arianna and Streisand
Gary Leupp
To
Kill a Cat: the Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo
Gregory
Wilpert
An
Interview with Hugo Chavez on the CIA in Venezuela
Steven
Higgs
Going to Jail for the Cause--Part 2: Charity Ryerson, Young and
Radical
Stan Cox
The Cheney Tapes: Can You Handle the Truth?
Robert
Fisk
Another Bloody Day in the Death of Iraq
William S. Lind
Learning from Uncle Abe: Sacking the Incompetent
Elaine
Cassel
First They Come for the Lawyers, Then the Ministers
Yigal
Bronner
The
Truth About the Wall
Website
of the Day
The
Baghdad Death Count
September
20 / 22, 2003
Uri Avnery
The
Silliest Show in Town
Alexander
Cockburn
Lighten
Up, America!
Peter Linebaugh
On the Bicentennial of the Execution of Robert Emmet
Anne Brodsky
Return
to Afghanistan
Saul Landau
Guillermo and Me
Phan Nguyen
Mother Jones Smears Rachel Corrie
Gila Svirsky
Sharon, With Eyes Wide Open
Gary Leupp
On Apache Terrorism
Kurt Nimmo
Colin
Powell: Exploiting the Dead of Halabja
Brian
Cloughley
Colin Powell's Shame
Carol Norris
The Moral Development of George W. Bush
Bill Glahn
The Real Story Behind RIAA Propaganda
Adam Engel
An Interview with Danny Scechter, the News Dissector
Dave Lindorff
Good Morning, Vietnam!
Mark Scaramella
Contracts and Politics in Iraq
John Ross
WTO
Collapses in Cancun: Autopsy of a Fiasco Foretold
Justin Podur
Uribe's Desperate Squeals
Toni Solo
The Colombia Three: an Interview with Caitriona Ruane
Steven Sherman
Workers and Globalization
David
Vest
Masked and Anonymous: Dylan's Elegy for a Lost America
Ron Jacobs
Politics of the Hip-Hop Pimps
Poets
Basement
Krieger, Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Ted Honderich:
Terrorism for Humanity?
September
19, 2003
Ilan Pappe
The
Hole in the Road Map
Bill Glahn
RIAA is Full of Bunk, So is the New York Times
Dave Lindorff
General Hysteria: the Clark Bandwagon
Robert Fisk
New Guard is Saddam's Old
Jeff Halper
Preparing
for a Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid
Brian J. Foley
Power to the Purse
Clare
Brandabur
Hitchens
Smears Edward Said
Website of the Day
Live from Palestine
September
18, 2003
Mona Baker
and Lawrence Davidson
In
Defense of the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Wayne
Madsen
Wesley
Clark for President? Another Neo-Con Con Job
Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Wesley Clark and Waco
Muqtedar Khan
The Pakistan Squeeze
Dominique
de Villepin
The
Reconstruction of Iraq: This Approach is Leading Nowhere
Angus Wright
Brazilian Land Reform Offers Hope
Elaine
Cassel
Payback is Hell
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Website
of the Day
ALA Responds to Ashcroft's Smear
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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|
October
1, 2003
Coming Soon to the
US?
Plan
Condor, the Sequel
By TONI SOLO
When Shimon Peres celebrated his 80th birthday
on September 22nd, there at the top of the guest list, ahead
of Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, South Africa's F.W. De Klerk,
and Australia's Bob Hawke was Carlos Bulgheroni. Bulgheroni is
head of the Argentinian energy company Bridas.[1] If terrorism
cropped up in their conversation, Bulgheroni and Peres had plenty
to reminisce about. Israel and Argentina served as US proxies
training terrorists in Central America through the 1970s and
1980s.
Argentinian death squad trainers based
in Guatemala were reported to have masqueraded as Bridas employees.
During that time Peres served as Israel's Defence Minister, Prime
Minister, deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister--well aware
of Israeli military commitments in the Americas. Reviewing the
background to US sponsored Argentinian and Israeli terrorism
reveals how the fictional "war on terror" is just another
pretext for the pillage of Latin America by the US government
and its favoured multinational corporations.
Argentina--30,000 reasons to cry Three
years after destroying democracy by instigating the military
coup against Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973, Henry Kissinger
was in Santiago for a meeting of the Organization of American
States. There he met the Argentinian military junta's foreign
minister. According to Robert Hill, then U.S. Ambassador in Argentina,
"Kissinger asked how long it would take ... to clean up
the (terrorist) problem....Kissinger gave the Argentines the
green light ... The Secretary wanted Argentina to finish its
terrorist plan before year end." [2] Hill should know. It
was he who served as intermediary between organizers of the Guatemalan
death squads and leading figures in the Argentinian government.[3]
Between 1976 and 1983, under the military
dictatorship, the Argentinian armed forces killed over 30,000
civilian members of the country's political opposition. Around
500 babies of women who gave birth in detention were distributed
among their parents' murderers. In over 300 camps and detention
centres, victims were tortured to death and then dumped in mass
graves or flown out to be dropped into the Atlantic from military
transport planes. Their property and goods were divided up among
their torturers and murderers--over US$70m worth.
Plan Condor--some history US determination
to destroy opposition to its domination in Latin America stemmed
from its defeat in Vietnam. The 1972 team in Paris helping Kissinger
negotiate with the Vietnamese included current US ambassador
to the UN, John Negroponte, and Vernon Walters, later a key adviser
to Ronald Reagan, then Army Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Paris.
In those days George Bush Sr. was ambassador to the UN.
By 1975 Bush Sr. was head of the CIA
and working together with Kissinger and Vernon Walters to develop
Plan Condor--a coordinated operation against opposition movements
throughout Latin America.[4] Plan Condor involved using illegal
covert means such as the assassination team coordinated between
the Chilean DIN security service and Miami Cuban terrorists like
Orlando Bosch, Guillermo Novo and Luis Posada Carriles.[5] It
also meant supporting brutal government policies of mass repression
in countries throughout South America. Plan Condor was an ambitious
and successful attempt to coordinate that repression.
Plan Condor moves to the Isthmus By 1980,
the priorities for President Reagan's Latin American team were
to defeat the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, stop the revolutionary
movements in Guatemala and El Salvador and to wipe out the popular
movment in Honduras. By the end of 1981 many now familiar people
were in place. Elliot Abrams (now Senior Director for Near East
and North African Affairs on the National Security Council) was
Assistant Secretary of State for, incredibly, human rights and
humanitarian affairs. John Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras
and John Maisto ambassador to Nicaragua. John Poindexter, Colin
Powell, Richard Armitage, Otto Reich, Roger Noriega, all worked
on Latin America under Reagan. All were brought back into the
White House by George W. Bush after the Republican packed Supreme
Court effectively validated the Florida voting fraud in the 2000
US presidential elections.(6)
Early in 1980, Argentinian army and naval
officers arrived in Guatemala to provide counterinsurgency training
for the Lucas Garcia regime. Together with advisers from Chile
and Israel they assisted the Guatemalan death squads, originally
created by the CIA in the 1960s. An estimated 200,000 people
were killed by the Guatemalan military during the long popular
resistance to that country's US supported dictatorships. In August
1981, the deputy director of the CIA, Vernon Walters, arranged
a meeting in Guatemala City with the aim of consolidating an
anti-Sandinista terrorist force with training from Argentina.[7]
Between 1981 and 1983, members of Argentina's
Battalion 601, the unit responsible for much of the terror in
Argentina itself, worked with Israeli trainers out of Guatemala.
In El Salvador they helped train murderers like Roberto D'Aubuisson
(who organised the killing of Archbishop Oscar Romero). In Honduras
they helped organise both the notorious death squad Battalion
3-16 and the mass murderers of the Nicaraguan Contra. From 1983
onwards, the Israelis trained Carlos Castaño and other
current leaders of the Colombian AUC paramilitary death squads.[8]
John Negroponte--fascist proconsul It
may seem strange now that Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte would
have facilitated Argentinian fascists (who refined their torment
of Jewish victims back in Buenos Aires by torturing them beneath
portraits of Adolf Hitler). But Abrams and Negroponte did just
that. Argentinian officers trained members of the Honduran army
in techniques of mass repression while John Negroponte was ambassador
in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa from 1981 to 1985. There
he worked closely with Honduran armed forces chief Gustavo Alvarez
Martinez to impose a "national security" state on the
Argentine model--that is, a police state based on extra-judicial
murder.
As US ambassador in Honduras, John Negroponte
displayed cynical contempt for US Congress and legitimacy, shamelessly
violating the 1983 Boland Amendment restricting aid to the Contra.
On Negroponte's recommendation, the Reagan government gave Alvarez
Martinez the Legion of Merit in 1983 for "encouraging democracy."
Alvarez Martinez was reponsible for disappearing over 140 trades
unionists, students and other leaders of the Honduran popular
movement between 1981 and 1984. In 1989, in a test case, the
Inter-American Court of Human Rights convicted Honduras of forcibly
disappearing four people between 1981 and 1983. During that period,
under Negroponte's proconsulship, Argentinian and Israeli terrorists
helped the Honduran military refine their techniques of repression.
Saudi and drugs paymasters That training
did not come free. Who paid for it? Mostly the US taxpayer via
military aid to Argentina and Israel. But when legal funds were
hard to come by, illegal sources served, including drugs proceeds
and money siphoned through the fraudulent Bank of Commerce and
Credit International, courtesy of links between George Bush Sr.,
the Saudi royal family and the Bin Laden family.[9] BCCI folded
afer revelations that it laundered money from the Colombian Medellin
drugs cartel, later to figure in the Iran Contra affair.
At this time, both Colombia and Taiwan
also gave training. But the principal countries involved were
Argentina and Israel. To help things along, Israel set up a plant
in Guatemala to manufacture Galil rifles. Under an agreement
reached in October 1981, 200 Guatemalan army officers took anti-insurgency
courses in Buenos Aires including use of "interrogation
techniques". Among their "instructors" was Ricardo
Cavallo.
The Cavallo Scandal On June 11th this
year the Mexican authorities confirmed an extradition order against
Ricardo Cavallo by the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon for crimes
against humanity during the terror in Argentina.[10] Cavallo
is accused of 337 political kidnappings, 227 forced disappearances
and the theft of children of political prisoners. Cavallo's story
stems from Plan Condor and threads back to the current Bush administration.
Cavallo and his colleagues, Jorge Radice,
Jorge Acosta and others were torturers in the Argentine armed
forces. They forced their victims to sign authorities permitting
them to dispose of their property, bank accounts and belongings.
Cavallo also worked closely with the Bolivian army under Luis
Garcia Meza in the early 1980s when Bolivia was virtually run
by drugs traffickers.
With their illict capital, Cavallo and
his friends set up the security and data control businesses Martiel
and Talsud in Argentina. They made deals with Seal Lock, an Argentine
company representing US based Advantage Security systems. Martiel
represented Casa de la Moneda of Brazil, CONSAD of Argentina,
Ciccone Calcográfica [11] and the French smart card firm
Gemplus.[12] Talsud and Martiel were virtually interchangeable,
both worked on the deal to emit the New Zaire currency for CIA
favourite President Mobutu in Zaire in 1993.
In 1995, Bridas subsidiary TTI and Seal
Lock helped Talsud secure lucrative deals in Argentina's Mendoza
province. In 1996, Talsud got the contract to issue driving licenses
in Argentina's Rioja province. Among Seal Lock's clients were
the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Argentine Central
Bank, The National Registry of Bolivia, Shell Paraguay and Israel's
ZIM maritime line. Cavallo and his brother Oscar also set up
a business in El Salvador called Sertracen, closely linked to
the Salvadoran military. Sertracen issues driver and gun licenses
in El Savador.
In August 1998, Cavallo entered Mexico
as a tourist, miraculously managing to process his residency
within a month. Within a year his Talsud company was bidding
for the Mexican driver licensing authority (RENAVE), together
with Gemplus and the Mexican company CIFRA. On September 7th
1999, they won the contract guaranteeing an estimated annual
turnover of US$400 million
The Cavallo/RENAVE scandal broke in Mexico
earlier this year amid mounting evidence of irregularities. Commerce
Vice-Minister Raul Tercero, who authorised the RENAVE deal, was
found in a wood near Mexico City with his throat cut. He left
behind several letters defending himself against accusations
of corruption.
Cavallo's business associates have an
unfortunate tendency to die violently. In October 1998, during
a bribery scandal involving IBM, Marcel Cattaneo, brother of
the owner of Cavallo client CONSAD was found hanging from a lamp
post. That apparent suicide followed similar suspicious deaths.
In June 1998 a friend of President Carlos Menem, leading businessman
Alfredo Yabran, associated with De La Rue subsidiary Ciccone
Calcografica, was found dead. In August of the same year Jorge
Estrada, Cavallo's former chief at the ESMA torture centre and
a shareholder in Martiel was found dead, another apparent suicide.
Plan Condor veteran in Mexico Like Cavallo,
someone else arrived in Mexico in 1998, but not as a tourist,
US ambassador Jeffrey Davidow. [13] Davidow was a political adviser
at the US embassy in Chile from 1971 to 1974. In Santiago, he
was an embassy insider when the CIA and the DIN Chilean security
agency were organising the assassination gang that later murdered
leading Chilean opposition figures, Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires
and Orlando Letelier in Washington. In Mexico Davidow continued
honing the skills he learned in Chile, covering up human rights
abuses in Chiapas and cultivating dubious relationships with
drug dealing businessmen--all to be expected of a Plan Condor
veteran.
The Cavallo scandal sharpened concern
in Mexico and the rest of Latin America relating to reports that
US data mining company Choicepoint has been purchasing confidential
information from companies like Talsud and Martiel on whole populations
of Central and South American countries. People fear violations
of the legitimate privacy of Latin American people travelling
to or living in the United States. Choicepoint is the company
whose DBT subsidiary spoiled the electoral roll in Florida enabling
George Bush to win that 2000 presidential election. [14]
Data abuse--the Choicepoint link It is
hard to get precise details on who is selling Choicepoint this
confidential information. [15] But some idea of the use to be
made of all that data can be inferred from the role envisaged
by John Poindexter for his Total Information Awareness program
(TIA) in the developing John Ashcroft police state. While Poindexter,
convicted of lying to Congress during the Iran Contra hearings,
may be off the public scene after the DARPA "terrorism futures"
fiasco, TIA soldiers on under different guises, like the MATRIX
program in various US states, notably Florida.
Richard Armitage, one of the Iran-Contra
plotters, was a board member of Database Technologies (DBT)/ChoicePoint
Inc before taking office under George Bush Jr. Now he is Colin
Powell's deputy Secretary of State. Choicepoint is a partner
of data mining company SAIC whose web site proclaims it has "developed
a strategic alliance with ChoicePoint Incorporated to provide
our clients with quick and effortless information retrieval from
public records data. ChoicePoint Incorporated maintains thousands
of gigabytes of public records data."[16] SAIC's clients
include The U.S. Army National Guard and Reserve, United States
Marine Corps and BP Amoco. Before becoming Secretary of State,
Donald Rumsfeld was on BP Amoco's advisory board.
BP-Amoco? Sounds like Bridas-Pan American
Energy.... Back at the conversation between Shimon Peres and
Carlos Bulgheroni, their terrorist reminiscences over, maybe
the conversation turned to oil and gas. Funny how times change
and erstwhile friends fall out.
In the early 1990s Bridas obtained oil
exploration concessions in Turkmenistan. By 1997 they were negotiating
with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to build a pipeline there.
Bridas found itself in competition vying for Taliban favor with
Unocal, a US oil company heavily criticised for its operation
in army controlled Myanmar (Burma).
Richard Armitage [17] worked for Unocal
along with another Iran-Contra figure, Robert Oakley. The Taliban
favoured a deal with Bridas. Bridas and Unocal ended up fighting
it out in the US courts. Bridas lost. At the same time, through
1997 and 1998, US policy on Afghanistan turned sour.[18] Between
November 2000 and August 2001, Argentina had its financial guts
ripped out by US banks and the international finance markets.[19]
In October 2001 the US invaded Afghanistan.
This is a fine illustration of the Bush
Doctrine: no country will be permitted to pose a threat to the
perceived interests of the United States, not even a friendly
former terrorist client state like Argentina. Bridas could see
how things were going and went with the flow. In 1997 it teamed
up with BP-Amoco. Reborn as Panamerican Energy, Bridas is working
with BP-Amoco to exploit gas and oil reserves throughout Latin
America, but mainly in Argentina and, controversially, Bolivia.
BP-Amoco gets the benefit of Bridas assets in Central Asia.
Plan Condor--alive and well The progression
from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay through Central America to
present day Venezuela and Colombia is clear. The same actors
appear time after time. Elliot Abrams, John Negroponte, Colin
Powell, Richard Armitage, John Maisto Roger Noriega and Otto
Reich all move between comfortable jobs in US government and
the corporate plutocracy that dictates US government policy.
Every one of them participated one way
or another in the Iran Contra conspiracy to mislead Congress.
Abrams was indicted and found guilty by the Congressional investigating
commission but pardoned by George Bush Sr. Richard Armitage escaped
prosecution because the investigating commission lacked resources.
They were exhausted nailing former Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger,
also pardoned by Bush Sr. Now Powell, Armitage, Maisto, Noriega
and Reich are plotting the overthrow of democratically elected
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and attempting to deepen US military
engagement in Colombia. In Guatemala, an old associate, mass
murderer Rios Montt is threatening violent overthrow of the country's
hard-won democratic governance.
None of this has anything to do with
any "war on communism" or "war on drugs"
or "war on terror". The United States and the European
Union are in Latin America for the same reasons as the Spanish,
Portuguese, British, French and Dutch colonialists before them--natural
resources and cheap labour, compounded these days by neo-colonial
extraction of forcibly contrived "debt". The methods
are privatisation, dismantling of domestic agricultural economies,
and open markets imposed by the IMF and World Bank through local
clients to favour multinational corporations like BP-Amoco, Monsanto,
Cargill and other all too familiar names.
For people in the United States the lessons
of Latin America should be very clear. French philosopher Simone
Weil once wrote that people in Europe were shocked by the Nazis
because the Nazis applied to Europe the methods European powers
practiced in their colonies. Now it's the turn of the United
States. The banal individuals currently running the White House
are steadily putting into practice at home what they have done
for three decades while facilitating terror in Latin America.
Toni Solo
is an activist based in Central America. Contact tonisolo52@yahoo.com.
NOTES
1.Bridas is an energy production and
exploration company. It operates in Latin America and Central
Asia. It has a joint exploration & production venture with
BP Amoco called Pan American Energy. The company owns 40% of
Pan American Energy (60% owned by BP Amoco). Pan American Energy
LLC is a company registered in Delaware, USA. (From BP-Amoco
and related web sites.)
2. For Hill quote see : www.icai-online.org/72616,46136.html
among many others
3. "Guatemala: Laboratorio estadounidense
del terror", February 2002. Gustavo Meoño Brenner,
Nuevo Diario, Guatemala. This article cites:--Ariel C. Armony
"La Argentina, los Estados Unidos y la Cruzada Anti-Comunista
en América Central, 1977-1984" Editorial Universidad
Nacional de Quilmes, 1999.--Stella Calloni "Operación
Cóndor, pacto criminal" Ediciones La Jornada, Ciudad
de México, 2001. -"Las intimidades del proyecto político
de los militares en Guatemala". Jennifer Schirmer, Facultad
Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Guatemala, 1999.
4.The same team helped set up in 1975
the Committee on the Present Danger, in which Paul Wolfowitz
was a leading figure.
5.Hernando Calvo Ospina, "Pinochet,
la CIA y los terroristas cubanos", 23 de agosto del 2003,
www.rebelion.org.
6. Colin Powell is Secretary of State.
Richard Armitage is Deputy Secrteary of State. John Maisto is
US representative to the Organization of American States. Roger
Noriega is Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere
Affairs. Otto Reich is US Special Envoy for Western Hemisphere
Initiatives.
7.Testimony of Edgar Chamorro, former
Contra organizer to the International Court of Justice in the
Hague, September 5th 1985.
8. Jeremy Bigwood, Narco News, "Israel
y los paramilitares colombianos" from www.rebelion.org August
15th 2003
9. The Reagan administration also used
BCCI to channel funds to the Afghan mujaheddin in the days when
Bin Laden was a US hero. Two former CIA directors, Richard Helms
and William Casey were involved in BCCI before it folded following
revelations that it laundered money for the Medellin drugs cartel.
William Casey died before the Iran Contra hearings took place.
Among various sources:--"US arms group heads for Lisbon"
The News, Portugal's English language Weekly, 4 April 2003. www.globalresearch.ca
-"À qui profite le crime? Les liens financiers occultes
des Bush et des Ben Laden" Réseau Voltaire 11 septembre
2001
10. Sources for information on Cavallo:--Article
by Olga Viglieca, Hector Pavon and Guido Braslavsky. Clarín-Zona.
Argentina September 10th 2000--"Renave: los porqué
de un fracaso" Jorge Fernández Menéndez. Semanario
Milenio. Mexico, September 14th 2000--"El largo brazo de
la mafia argentina", José Steinsleger La Jornada.
Mexico September 24th 2000--"Se expanden las empresas del
ex marino Ricardo Cavallo licencia." Mario Fiore. Los Andes.
Mendoza. Argentina August 17th 2001.--"Tiene Cavallo Información
Estrategica" Jorge Carrasco A. La Reforma. Date unclear.
11. A subsidiary of De la Rue producing
passports for the Mexican government. De La Rue now own the US
Sequoia computerised voting systems company, part owned by Carlyle
group partner, US investment firm Madison Dearborn who took over
Jefferson Smurfit's share of Sequoia 12. Fort Worth based Texas
Pacific Group recently made a huge private equity investment
between $300 and $500 million into Gemplus to expand Gemplus
presence in the international wireless communications, e-commerce
and Internet security markets.
13. "Borderline behavior",
Al Giordano. The Boston Phoenix. December 16-23, 1999
14. Greg Palast, November 2nd 2002,"The
re-election of Jim Crow: How Jeb Bush's team is trying to steal
Florida again" and his book "The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy"
15. "Imperio de control", Dieter
Drüssel. www.rebelion.org, September 1st 2003. Drussel mentions
Costa Rican owned Silnica in Nicaragua. In El Salvador and Guatemala
public concern has centred on Sertracen and InforNet.
16. SAIC web site
17. Iran-Contra Special Counsel's report,
"Independent Counsel declined to prosecute Armitage because
the OIC's limited resources were focused on the case against
Weinberger and because the evidence against Armitage, while substantial,
did not reach the threshold of proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
18. Various web sites--"Afghanistan,
Turkmenistan Oil and Gas, and the Projected Pipeline";
Timeline, www.worldpress.org/specials/
www.thedubyareport.com/oilwar.html--"Enron
played key role in events presaging war", Martin Yant. Columbus
Free Press. April 10, 2002
19. "Argentina Didn't Fall on Its
Own--Wall Street Pushed Debt Till the Last", Paul Blustein.
The Washington Post. August 3rd 2003
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 26 / 28, 2003
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