This video is called The Massacre at Nueva Linda- Southwest Guatemala.
From British daily The Morning Star:
A high price for US imperialism
(Sunday 22 June 2008)
Empire’s Workshop by Greg Grandin
(Owl Books, £12.99)ONE of the many great quotes in Greg Grandin’s book is, paradoxically enough, from a general.
Former head of the armed forces in Ecuador Rene exploded in fury at the 2004 Quito summit after the then defence secretary in the Bush White House Donald Rumsfeld suggested that the armies of south America ought to subordinate their forces to the Pentagon’s command in order to combat “terrorism.”
First, the defence minister of Chile objected, commenting that the UN was the only body that could act globally on security issues, then the Argentinians weighed in with barbed remarks about being able to look after their own borders and then the general summed it all up.
“In Latin America, there are no terrorists, only hunger and unemployment and delinquents who turn to crime. What are we going to do, hit you with a banana?”
Some readers might find the title of this book slightly grandiloquent, but trust me, it does what it says on the tin. The central thesis is that Ronald Reagan allowed what we now know as the neoconservatives to road-test their theories on free-market democracy in central America simply and solely because it was so totally unimportant strategically.
The cost was borne by Guatemala, where 200,000 people have been killed, El Salvador, where 50,000 have been killed, and Nicaragua, where a terrorist movement was created and sustained on the basis that it was fighting a “war of independence” analogous to that of the US colonists. Iraq and Afghanistan are now, of course, at the centre of the storm.
Art and massacres in Central America: here.
Lawyers representing potentially thousands of Guatemalan citizens who were infected by US syphilis experiments decades ago announced on Tuesday that they will sue top US officials unless a system is created out of court to settle victims’ claims: here.
A US Nun Tortured in Central America Recalls the Nightmare. Sister Dianna Ortiz, “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse” from New York University Press: “It was in this setting that on November 2, 1989, I was abducted by members of the Guatemalan security forces, put into a police car, blindfolded and taken to a clandestine prison, where I encountered a world I never could have imagined. In that place, I came face to face with evil. There, my life changed forever”: here.
Dear Kitty. Some blog 
Posted by: “Compañero” companyero@bellsouth.net
Sat Jul 5, 2008 10:26 pm (PDT)
Friends,
On the day of Ronnie RayGun’s state funeral, a colleague and I were
talking. He mentioned that when Warren Harding died, he was sorely
missed, i.e., some thought he was a substantial guy, not responsible
for fiascoes such as Teapot Dome. Inside a year, the truth was
coming out. We wondered how long it would be before the truth of the
Reagan regime’s crimes would be revealed.
Not too long ago, I was talking with a nearby bookstore owner. I
asked him if he was aware of any books yet about Ronnie’s crimes. He
said that his is a “No Reagan Zone,” and that we Americans seem to
be in a worship-our-leaders mode. (As I work in the tourism
industry, I agree. My God, our “founding fathers” walked on water!)
Consequently, there are not yet books out–except those written
while Ronnie was still alive–which expose Ronnie for what he was: a
bumbling idiot who could respond only to a script or a teleprompter,
and who was probably incapable of tying his own shoes. But nearly
all the books now available praise Reagan. They claim he
single-handedly ended the Cold War (!), that he was an apostle for
world peace, that trickle down worked (!!), you name it. The guy can
do no wrong, right?
Incidentally, I just had a tour last week in which the teacher said
she took her kids to the Reagan Library in CA. One of the kids told
me she “role played” there, they had her sit in a chair and go over
information on Grenada–remember that one?–and she had to decide
what to do. Speaking of disinformation! But, back to the subejct:
Well, I’m putting together a bunch of articles I’ve found on the
real Reagan—I’m now up to about 65 pages. I ran across just today
an interesting article that should interest anyone interested in
TRUTH. It relates to the one event which did scare Reagan’s
manipulators, Iran Contra. Note that the article relates to
propaganda, how it was ILLEGALLY used, covered up because of it’s
illegality, and how it’s used today to manipulate us into support
for the Iraq quagmire.
Enjoy it, and ponder how those who insist on getting government off
our backs–one of Ronnie’s leading platitudes–are maniuplating us
into doing what they want, despite the truth, despite the lives
they’re throwing away.
Tim
Iran-Contra’s ‘Lost Chapter’
By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
June 30, 2008
[from consortiumnews.com]
As historians ponder George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency, they
may wonder how Republicans perfected a propaganda system that could
fool tens of millions of Americans, intimidate Democrats, and
transform the vaunted Washington press corps from watchdogs to
lapdogs.
To understand this extraordinary development, historians might want
to look back at the 1980s and examine the Iran-Contra scandal’s
“lost chapter,” a narrative describing how Ronald Reagan’s
administration brought CIA tactics to bear domestically to reshape
the way Americans perceived the world.
That chapter – which we are publishing here for the first time – was
“lost” because Republicans on the congressional Iran-Contra
investigation waged a rear-guard fight that traded elimination of
the chapter’s key findings for the votes of three moderate GOP
senators, giving the final report a patina of bipartisanship.
Under that compromise, a few segments of the draft chapter were
inserted in the final report’s Executive Summary and in another
section on White House private fundraising, but the chapter’s
conclusions and its detailed account of how the “perception
management” operation worked ended up on the editing room floor.
The American people thus were spared the chapter’s troubling
finding: that the Reagan administration had built a domestic covert
propaganda apparatus managed by a CIA propaganda and disinformation
specialist working out of the National Security Council.
“One of the CIA’s most senior covert action operators was sent to
the NSC in 1983 by CIA Director [William] Casey where he
participated in the creation of an inter-agency public diplomacy
mechanism that included the use of seasoned intelligence
specialists,” the chapter’s conclusion stated.
“This public/private network set out to accomplish what a covert CIA
operation in a foreign country might attempt – to sway the media,
the Congress, and American public opinion in the direction of the
Reagan administration’s policies.”
However, with the chapter’s key findings deleted, the right-wing
domestic propaganda operation not only survived the Iran-Contra
fallout but thrived.
So did some of the administration’s collaborators, such as South
Korean theocrat Sun Myung Moon and Australian press mogul Rupert
Murdoch, two far-right media barons who poured billions of dollars
into pro-Republican news outlets that continue to influence
Washington’s political debates to this day.
Before every presidential election, Moon’s Washington Times plants
derogatory – and often false – stories about Democratic contenders,
discrediting them and damaging their chances of winning the White
House.
For instance, in 1988, the Times published a bogus account
suggesting that the Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis had undergone
psychiatric treatment. In 2000, Moon’s newspaper pushed the theme
that Al Gore suffered from clinical delusions. [For details, see
Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
As for Murdoch, his giant News Corp. expanded into American cable TV
with the founding of Fox News in 1996. Since then, the right-wing
network has proved highly effective in promoting attack lines
against Democrats or anyone else who challenges the Republican power
structure.
As President George W. Bush herded the nation toward war with Iraq
in 2002-03, Fox News acted like his sheep dogs making sure public
opinion didn’t stray too far off. The “Fox effect” was so powerful
that it convinced other networks to load up with pro-war military
analysts and to silence voices that questioned the invasion. [See
Neck Deep.]
Seeds of Propaganda
The seeds of this private/public collaboration can be found in the
84-page draft Iran-Contra chapter, entitled “Launching the Private
Network.” [There appear to have been several versions of this “lost
chapter.” This one I found in congressional files.]
The chapter traces the origins of the propaganda network to
President Reagan’s “National Security Decision Directive 77” in
January 1983 as his administration sought to promote its foreign
policy, especially its desire to oust Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista
government.
In a Jan. 13, 1983, memo, then-National Security Advisor William
Clark foresaw the need for non-governmental money to advance this
cause. “We will develop a scenario for obtaining private funding,”
Clark wrote.
As administration officials began reaching out to wealthy
supporters, lines against domestic propaganda soon were crossed as
the operation took aim at not only at foreign audiences but at U.S.
public opinion, the press and congressional Democrats who opposed
funding Nicaraguan rebels, known as contras.
At the time, the contras were earning a gruesome reputation as human
rights violators and terrorists. To change this negative perception
of the contras, the Reagan administration created a full-blown,
clandestine propaganda operation.
“An elaborate system of inter-agency committees was eventually
formed and charged with the task of working closely with private
groups and individuals involved in fundraising, lobbying campaigns
and propagandistic activities aimed at influencing public opinion
and governmental action,” the draft chapter said.
Heading this operation was a veteran CIA officer named Walter
Raymond Jr., who was recruited by another CIA officer, Donald Gregg,
before Gregg shifted from his job as chief of the NSC’s Intelligence
Directorate to become national security adviser to then-Vice
President George H.W. Bush.
[The draft chapter doesn’t use Raymond’s name in its opening pages,
apparently because some of the information came from classified
depositions. However, Raymond’s name is used later in the chapter
and the earlier citations match Raymond’s role.]
According to the draft report, the CIA officer recruited for the NSC
job had served as Director of the Covert Action Staff at the CIA
from 1978 to 1982 and was a “specialist in propaganda and
disinformation.”
“The CIA official [Raymond] discussed the transfer with [CIA
Director William] Casey and NSC Advisor William Clark that he be
assigned to the NSC as Gregg’s successor [in June 1982] and received
approval for his involvement in setting up the public diplomacy
program along with his intelligence responsibilities,” the chapter
said.
“In the early part of 1983, documents obtained by the Select
[Iran-Contra] Committees indicate that the Director of the
Intelligence Staff of the NSC [Raymond] successfully recommended the
establishment of an inter-governmental network to promote and manage
a public diplomacy plan designed to create support for Reagan
Administration policies at home and abroad.”
Raymond “helped to set up an elaborate system of inter-agency
committees,” the draft chapter said, adding:
“In the Spring of 1983, the network began to turn its attention
toward beefing up the Administration’s capacity to promote American
support for the Democratic Resistance in Nicaragua [the contras] and
the fledgling democracy in El Salvador.
“This effort resulted in the creation of the Office of Public
Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean in the Department of
State (S/LPD), headed by Otto Reich,” a right-wing Cuban exile from
Miami.
Though Secretary of State George Shultz wanted the office under his
control, President Reagan insisted that Reich “report directly to
the NSC,” where Raymond oversaw the operations as a special
assistant to the President and the NSC’s director of international
communications, the chapter said.
“At least for several months after he assumed this position, Raymond
also worked on intelligence matters at the NSC, including drafting a
Presidential Finding for Covert Action in Nicaragua in
mid-September” 1983, the chapter said.
In other words, although Raymond was shifted to the NSC staff in
part to evade prohibitions on the CIA influencing U.S. public
opinion, his intelligence and propaganda duties overlapped for a
time as he was retiring from the spy agency.
Key Player
Despite Raymond’s formal separation from the CIA, he acted toward
the U.S. public much like a CIA officer would in directing a
propaganda operation in a hostile foreign country. He was the go-to
guy to keep the operation on track.
“Reich relied heavily on Raymond to secure personnel transfers from
other government agencies to beef up the limited resources made
available to S/LPD by the Department of State,” the chapter said.
“Personnel made available to the new office included intelligence
specialists from the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army. On one
occasion, five intelligence experts from the Army’s 4th
Psychological Operations Group at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, were
assigned to work with Reich’s fast-growing operation. .
“White House documents also indicate that CIA Director Casey had
more than a passing interest in the Central American public
diplomacy campaign.”
The chapter cited an Aug. 9, 1983, memo written by Raymond
describing Casey’s participation in a meeting with public relations
specialists to brainstorm how “to sell a ‘new product’ – Central
America – by generating interest across-the-spectrum.”
In an Aug. 29, 1983, memo, Raymond recounted a call from Casey
pushing his P.R. ideas. Alarmed at a CIA director participating so
brazenly in domestic propaganda, Raymond wrote that “I philosophized
a bit with Bill Casey (in an effort to get him out of the loop)” but
with little success.
The chapter added: “Casey’s involvement in the public diplomacy
effort apparently continued throughout the period under
investigation by the Committees,” including a 1985 role in
pressuring Congress to renew contra aid and a 1986 hand in further
shielding S/LPD from the oversight of Secretary Shultz.
A Raymond-authored memo to Casey in August 1986 described the shift
of S/LPD – then run by neoconservative theorist Bob Kagan who had
replaced Reich – to the control of the Bureau of Inter-American
Affairs, which was headed by Assistant Secretary of State Elliott
Abrams, another prominent neoconservative.
Another important figure in the pro-contra propaganda was NSC
staffer Oliver North, who spent a great deal of his time on the
Nicaraguan public diplomacy operation even though he is better known
for arranging secret arms shipments to the contras and to Iran’s
radical Islamic government, leading to the Iran-Contra scandal.
The draft chapter cited a March 10, 1985, memo from North describing
his assistance to CIA Director Casey in timing disclosures of
pro-contra news “aimed at securing Congressional approval for
renewed support to the Nicaraguan Resistance Forces.”
North’s Operatives
The Iran-Contra “lost” chapter depicts a sometimes Byzantine network
of contract and private operatives who handled details of the
domestic propaganda while concealing the hand of the White House and
the CIA.
“Richard R. Miller, former head of public affairs at AID, and
Francis D. Gomez, former public affairs specialist at the State
Department and USIA, were hired by S/LPD through sole-source, no-bid
contracts to carry out a variety of activities on behalf of the
Reagan administration policies in Central America,” the chapter
said.
“Supported by the State Department and White House, Miller and Gomez
became the outside managers of [North operative] Spitz Channel’s
fundraising and lobbying activities.
“They also served as the managers of Central American political
figures, defectors, Nicaraguan opposition leaders and Sandinista
atrocity victims who were made available to the press, the Congress
and private groups, to tell the story of the Contra cause.”
Miller and Gomez facilitated transfers of money to Swiss and
offshore banks at North’s direction, as they “became the key link
between the State Department and the Reagan White House with the
private groups and individuals engaged in a myriad of endeavors
aimed at influencing the Congress, the media and public opinion,”
the chapter said.
In its conclusion, the draft chapter read:
“The State Department was used to run a prohibited, domestic, covert
propaganda operation. Established despite resistance from the
Secretary of State, and reporting directly to the NSC, the [S/LPD]
attempted to mask many of its activities from the Congress and the
American people.”
However, the American people never got to read a detailed
explanation of this finding nor see the evidence. In October 1987,
as the congressional Iran-Contra committees wrote their final
report, Republicans protested the inclusion of this explosive
information.
Though the Democrats held the majority, the GOP had leverage because
Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, the House chairman, wanted some
bipartisanship in the final report, especially since senior
Republicans, including Rep. Dick Cheney, R-Wyoming, were preparing a
strongly worded minority report.
Hamilton and the Democrats hoped that three moderate Republicans –
William Cohen of Maine, Warren Rudman of New Hampshire and Paul
Trible of Virginia – would break ranks and sign the majority report.
However, the Republicans objected to the draft chapter about Ronald
Reagan’s covert propaganda campaign.
As part of a compromise, some elements of the draft chapter were
included in the Executive Summary but without much detail and shorn
of the tough conclusions. Nevertheless, Cohen protested even that.
“I question the inordinate attention devoted in the Executive
Summary to the Office of Public Diplomacy and its activities in
support of the Administration’s polices,” Cohen wrote in his
additional views. “The prominence given to it in the Executive
Summary is far more generous than just.”
Long-Term Consequences
However, the failure of the Iran-Contra report to fully explain the
danger of CIA-style propaganda intruding into the U.S. political
process would have profound future consequences. Indeed, the
evidence suggests that today’s powerful right-wing media gained
momentum as part of the Casey-Raymond operations of the early 1980s.
According to one Raymond-authored memo dated Aug. 9, 1983, then-U.S.
Information Agency director Charles Wick “via Murdock [sic] may be
able to draw down added funds” to support pro-Reagan initiatives.
Raymond’s reference to Rupert Murdoch possibly drawing down “added
funds” suggests that the right-wing media mogul was already part of
the covert propaganda operation.
In line with its clandestine nature, Raymond also suggested routing
the “funding via Freedom House or some other structure that has
credibility in the political center.”
Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, publisher of the
Washington Times, also showed up in the Iran-Contra operations,
using his newspaper to raise contra funds and assigning his CAUSA
political group to organize support for the contras.
In the two decades since the Iran-Contra scandal, both Murdoch and
Moon have continued to pour billions of dollars into media outlets
that have influenced the course of U.S. history, often through the
planting of propaganda and disinformation much like a CIA covert
action might do in a hostile foreign country.
Further, to soften up the Washington press corps, Reich’s S/LPD
targeted U.S. journalists who reported information that undermined
the pro-contra propaganda. Reich sent his teams out to lobby news
executives to remove or punish out-of-step reporters – with a
disturbing degree of success. [For more, see Parry’s Lost History.]
Some U.S. officials implicated in the Iran-Contra propaganda
operations are still around, bringing the lessons of the 1980s into
the new century.
For instance, Elliott Abrams. Though convicted of misleading
Congress in the Iran-Contra Affair and later pardoned by President
George H.W. Bush – Abrams is now deputy adviser to George W. Bush’s
NSC, where he directs U.S.-Middle East policy.
Bob Kagan remains another prominent neocon theorist in Washington,
writing op-eds for the Washington Post. Oliver North was given a
news show on Fox.
Otto Reich now is advising Republican presidential candidate John
McCain on Latin American affairs. Lee Hamilton is a senior national
security adviser to Democratic candidate Barack Obama.
Enduring Skills
Beyond these individuals, the manipulative techniques that were
refined in the 1980s – especially the skill of exaggerating foreign
threats – have proved durable, bringing large segments of the
American population into line behind the Iraq War in 2002-03. Only
now – with more than 4,100 U.S. soldiers and hundreds of thousands
of Iraqis dead – are many of these Americans realizing that were
manipulated by clever propaganda, that their perceptions had been
managed.
For instance, the New York Times recently pried loose some 8,000
pages of Pentagon documents revealing how the Bush administration
had manipulated the public debate on the Iraq War by planting
friendly retired military officers on TV news shows.
Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former analyst on
Murdoch’s Fox News, said the Pentagon treated the retired military
officers as puppets: “It was them saying, ‘we need to stick our
hands up your back and move your mouth for you.'” [NYT, April 20,
2008, or see Consortiumnews.com’s “US News Media’s Latest
Disgrace.”]
Bush’s former White House press secretary Scott McClellan described
similar use of propaganda tactics to justify the Iraq War in his
book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s
Culture of Deception.
>From his insider vantage point, McClellan cited the White House’s
“carefully orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of
public approval” – and he called the Washington press corps
“complicit enablers.”
None of this would have been so surprising – indeed Americans might
have been forewarned and forearmed – if Lee Hamilton and other
Democrats on the Iran-Contra committees had held firm and published
the scandal’s “lost chapter” two decades ago.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for
the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The
Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his
sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two
previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty
from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press
& ‘Project Truth’ are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com.
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Against Empire
by Michael Parenti
A brilliant exposé of the brutal realities of U.S. global domination.
Richly informed and written in an engaging style, Against Empire, exposes the ruthless agenda and hidden costs of the U.S. empire today.
As much of the world suffers unspeakable misery and lowered standards of living accelerate in the U.S., civil society is impoverished by policies that benefit rich and powerful transnational corporations and the national security state. Hard-won gains made by ordinary people are swept away.
The history of imperialism is also, however, a history of resistance, struggle, and achievement. Against Empire offers compelling alternatives for progressive change.
Softcover, 210 pp, Index
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