• 04 Jul 2009 02:33

  FOURTH OF JULY

   

  By Husayn Al-Kurdi and June C. Terpstra

   

  7/4/09
  
  INTRODUCTION
  
  Americans are programmed to be an ignorant and arrogant people whose culture is mainly derived from three key factors: money, media, and an ignorant, violent, racist version of Christianity. No adequate understanding of American culture and cultural celebrations such as the Fourth of July is possible without first examining these three major elements and the pervading impact they have had on the people.
  
  The USA's cultural system has proven functionally useful globally to imperialists because it provides them with citizens, soldiers, suckers, and slaves whose conditioned behavior patterns of obedience and consumption dominates their daily life. These accepted behavioral patterns have been developed over a short period of little more than two hundred years and are celebrated on holidays saturated with drunkenness, barbecued pork and all manner of self-indulgent excess.  It must be remembered that the founders of the USA are the children of imperialist Europe.   Like their European forebears they commonly accept a view of the world as basically "for the taking and raping.” They christened it as their “Manifest Destiny.” They called it “Discovery” in the past and they call it “Democratization” today.

   

  In response to these various stimuli, cultural attitudes have been produced which are characteristic of  violent, greedy, brain washed narcissists.  The language exerts tremendous influence on personal interaction and emotional tenor. The national religion, an odd mix of Calvinism and evangelical Christianity, is an ultimate expression of skepticism and greed which denies any brotherly love for the poor and down-trodden.  The dominant cultural concerns include: continuation of the ability to make money; an addiction to mind numbing media; the desensitization of the youth to violence, and McDonaldization through Christian neo-conservative fundamentalism.
  
  US CULTURAL IMPERIALISM
  
  Wealth, Prosperity and Power
  
  To the US citizen there is none really worthy of worship except the holy trinity of wealth, prosperity and power as represented by the obscenely rich four percent of families who own approximately eighty percent of the world’s resources.  The significance of their American dream is the belief that the only purpose of life is to make money and surround oneself with stuff. This  illusion is maintained and at times achieved through adherence to the teachings and practices of the corporate media and Wall Street.

  
  The mass media, including public education, are built on five core values:

   

  1. Faith in US supremacy and the finality of manifest destiny.

  2. Belief in what pretends to be the “fair and balanced” mind controlling media outlets such as FOX news, CNN and the hundreds of other channels bolstering and promoting Imperialism and inhuman capitalist prerogatives.

  3. An obsessive individualism whose main goals are the attainment of wealth and power.

  4. Self-gorging through binge eating, sexual debauchery, alcoholic consumption and drug addictions. 

  5. Pilgrimages to Disneyland and other sites of religious and secular tribute to a sociopathic society for those who can afford to do so.

   

  Rituals 
  
  Shopping is the obligatory practice that is performed, sometimes on a daily basis, and is a direct link between the consumer and their real God, The Bank. There is no higher authority in America than the banks and the main regulatory body is the IRS.  A person who knows stock market and IRS loop holes is generally revered by all Americans. Shopping mantras are advertised all day and night in media outlets.

  
  Although it is preferable for Americans to shop together in a mall, an American 
  may shop almost anywhere, such as in small towns, gas stations, and airports. Many visitors to the US are struck by the centrality of shopping and materialism in American life.
  
  The Call to Shop is a mantra that sounds something like this: 
  
  I want a Big Mac

  I need a Starbucks 
  I testify that Money is the messenger of my worth.
  I testify that Money is the messenger of my power.
  Come to the mall!
  Come to the Wal-Mart!
  Come to Bank!
  Money is Great! 
  Money is Great!
  There is none worthy of worship except Money!
  
  Taxes: The financial obligation upon citizens, soldiers, suckers, slaves.
  
  An important principle of the USA is that everything belongs to the Federal Reserve (a private banking institution) and the Federal Government. There is a miserly setting aside of a proportion of taxes for those homeless, starving or poor.   For the laboring class of the society there is much rhetoric but no regard.   Each American calculates his or her own taxes individually. This involves the annual payment of a fortieth of one's income and assets to the government. If these payments are not made individuals can be fined and/or jailed. People reduced into poverty are starved, many suffering with untreated diseases in order to hasten a decrease in the non-consuming population. 
  
  An individual may give as much as he or she pleases to charities but these donations are highly discouraged and monitored by the government unless the “giving” is corporate-approved. Some who have organized charities for Palestinian and Muslim victims of aggression have been persecuted and imprisoned for their efforts. America has perverted the ancient "golden rule" of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” into the anti-social operational maxim "He who has the gold rules.”   

  
  Celebrations 
  
  Every year during the major holidays such as the Fourth of July, citizens are exhorted to shop, over-eat and over-indulge.  Above all they must shop for Christmas, celebrating a Jesus Christ who they allege “died for their sins.”
  
  The Pilgrimage
  
  The pilgrimage to Disneyland and Disneyworld is an obligation specifically geared as a socialization process for the children and youth of the USA, even those who cannot afford to go to Florida and California each year from all over the country. The Disneyworlds provide a unique capitalist opportunity for acculturating the people to consumer living , reinforced through meeting the cartoon characters which influence their lives from their earliest years.   
  
  The Family.
  
  The primary major factor overshadowing all other societal demands of life in the USA is the complete erosion of family and kin while pretending that family is a fundamental cultural value. The lack of family and intimate relationships is really the foundation of American society. The disconnection and isolation produced by the lack of a stable family unit is greatly valued and promoted in media as “freedom”.  Behind the scenes this alienation is recognized as essential for the manipulation and control of its inhabitants. A controllable social order is created by the existence of a massive federal government and a police state.   Children, who are comodified and sexualized by the mass media, are kept in front of TV's, play stations and computers until the time they can serve in fast food restaurants, the militaries or prisons.
  
  Parents are greatly disrespected in the American tradition. Mothers are particularly abhorred and blamed for all manner of psychological problems in TV pop-psychological talk shows. 

  The cultural style of American parenting is responsible for much of the behavioral traits.  American children have difficulty establishing an acceptable pattern of ethical conduct and  differentiating between love and bribery. Crazy Horse spoke of this when he said that the "White man speaks with forked tongue." 

  
  An American marriage is both a capitalist act and a legal agreement which may be dissolved when shopping in bars and dance halls for a new partner to enhance the ego. Either partner is free to include pre-nuptial conditions in a marriage. As a result, divorce is permitted as frequently as desired. Marriage customs across race, class and orientation encourage infidelity and multiple sexual partners.

  
  CONFLICT

  The people of the US are programmed towards a propensity for violence.  The US expanded rapidly after the Holocaust of the indigenous people and the kidnapping and enslaving of Black people from the continent they named “Africa”. The US Empire continued to expand its conquests into Central America, the Caribbean and Africa and its version of Christianity gradually became the practice of the majority of the collaborators in those countries. The Crusading assault has now turned to concentrate its efforts on Arab and Muslim lands. Among the reasons for the rapid spread of Christianity was the simplicity of its indoctrination program-- an educational and psychological project accomplished via the dismantling of culture by stripping away of language, symbols and history and reinforced and supplemented by violence designed to effect speedy conquest and “conversion” of subjected peoples.
  
  Reasons for fascination with conflict may lie with the dysfunctional family where competitiveness and hostilities are instilled at an early age, and life generally exists under various forms of intense pressure. Two American sayings aptly describe the competitive, hostile spirit bred into American
  children:
  
  "It’s Us against the World" and “Looking out for Number One”.

  
  
  

   

  __________

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• 03 Jul 2009 17:09

  The Big Whorehouse On The PotomacBy Paul Craig RobertsJuly 03, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- -As Americans celebrate July 4th, they can contemplate that the union of "free and independent states," like the former British colonial power, has evolved into its final manifestation--a complete whore house. While Members of Parliament in London charge their expense accounts with every personal expenditure, including the rental of adult xxx-rated films, an American newspaper put the reporting of public policy out to bids until politico.com blew the whistle.In Washington, everything is for sale, including journalistic integrity. The Washington Post, which abandoned investigative reporting eons ago, decided to boost its sagging revenues by spreading her legs. The Post's business division put out a flyer offering lobbyists access at the Post's CEO's gracious home to "those powerful few" in the Obama administration, Congress, and among the Post's editors and reporters who decide the nation's policies, such as health care. The Washington Post's flyer offered a Wal-Mart low cost of a mere $25,000 for one "salon" to interact with decision makers and $250,000 for eleven interactions. Alas, people with an old fashioned sense of integrity impugned the Washington Post's new business model, and the Post's boss, Katharine Weymouth, had to rescind the offer that would have rescued the newspaper by turning it into a "facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters."I say damn the old fashioned moralists. America would be much better served if the Washington Post was selling access to lobbyists instead of selling the US government's PSYOPS operations in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Serbia, Venezuela, Honduras, and everywhere else, for which the paper receives a pittance: the reporter can tell his editor that he has a deep source within the government, hardly an adequate recompense for wars that cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when Americans cannot pay the mortgages on their homes. America would be better off if the Washington Post whored for lobbyists than for the US Imperial State, which has failed to adjust its imperial ambitions to its bankruptcy. As an example of its whoring for US Imperialism, on July 2, the Washington Post reported President Obama's claim that Russian Prime Minister Putin is a person who lives partly in the past, with "one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new." If Putin has "one foot in the new," he is ahead of Obama who has both feet in the past. Obama said that Putin needs to learn that "the old Cold War approaches" to relations with the US are "outdated."The Post reported this as if a failure of Putin's is endangering US/Russian relations. The Post did not point out that it is Obama, not Putin, who has wars of aggression against three independent countries--Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, with a fourth war threatened with Iran. We know for a fact these wars originated in Bush administration lies and deception, but Obama continues the occupations and expands the wars, thus endorsing the deceptions. It is the Washington whorehouse that unilaterally abrogated the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia and begin constructing anti-ballistic missile sites designed to negate Russia's nuclear deterrent. If Russia's nuclear weapons can be made useless, Russia can be knuckled under to accept America's hegemonic will, and US hegemony takes another step forward. It is Washington that is surrounding Russia with military bases: an anti-ballistic missile base in Poland, an anti-ballistic missile radar site in the Czech Republic, American-made "color revolutions," which have installed US puppet governments in Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, with failures in former constituent parts of Soviet central Asia. NATO, once a European/American alliance against Soviet invasion of Western Europe is now a mercenary US force fighting for America in Afghanistan and attempting to incircle Russia from the Baltics to Central Asia.Obama will soon be on his way to Russia to discuss whether or not Russia is willing to give in to US demands to prostrate itself before US hegemony. Obama hopes to drive a wedge between Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev, like the wedges Washington has facilitated between the ambitious ruling ayatollahs in Iran. If Obama can get Putin and Medvedev at odds, Russia will be neutralized.That would leave China alone as an obstacle to US world hegemony. The US has no media. But it does have a Ministry of Propaganda. Americans were programmed with days of propaganda that Islamic Iran, a member of the US-designated "axis of evil," stole the election from the Iranian people. According to the US Ministry of Propaganda, the Iranian people are allied with the US government against the Iranian government. Even people who are regarded as Iran experts said, without any evidence, that the elections were stolen. One of their arguments is that three hours were not enough time to count all the votes, yet it was announced that Ahmajdinejad won. The ignorance of "experts" made theft a certainty for American TV audiences. The "experts" who make this assertion are obviously ignorant of Iran's electoral procedures. For the ignorant "experts" and the Americans deluded by them, here is the way it works: There are more than 45,000 voting places, which means less than 1,000 votes per voting place, an easy number to count and report in three hours. At each voting place there are a dozen or more observers, including every candidates' representatives, representatives of the Guardian Council, and the local police. The votes are counted in the presence of all, and all sign documents attesting to the count. The vote totals are forwarded to a central office in the region that has representatives of the candidates and the Guardian Council, where they are verified by a dozen or a dozen and a half of witnesses. From here the vote count goes to the Minister of the Interior, where the vote is announced.Unless these procedures were not followed, and no evidence has been provided that the procedures were not followed, it is impossible to steal an Iranian election. It is much easier to steal an American one, which happens routinely. There are thousands, indeed tens of thousands of witnesses, perhaps hundreds of thousands of witnesses, to the Iranian vote. Yet, only Mousavi and his corrupt supporters among the high living Iranian elite, who are fighting for personal power in Iran, contest the vote. The kids in the street were the usual dupes. At this stage in history, how can anyone believe that there is a pure candidate that wants to bring freedom and justice to the people? Anywhere. In any country, the US included. Ignorant "experts" made a great noise about the fact that 50 cities or towns had votes in excess of registered voters. Again, this is a demonstration of "Iranian experts" total ignorance. In Iran, voters can vote wherever they happen to be at the day of election. Vacationers, business people on travel, commuters, and the partial absence of distinct voting districts, can produce a vote count in excess of the local registered population.The Guardian Council examined these differences, added them up, and noted that if every additional vote was fraudulent, the number was insufficient to affect the outcome.The Guardian Council has agreed to post every vote count.Did you, dear American, learn of these facts from Fox News, CNN, the New York Times, or from the CIA and Mossad bloggers? Of course not. Every time "your" media opens its mouth lies jump out that serve the US government's hegemonic propaganda. America's salvation lies with Charles Pelton and the Washington Post's business side managers. Once the American media is obviously a whorehouse, which it is, Americans might pull themselves out of their stupor and learn to recognize facts and to think for themselves.But don't hold your breath. From what I have seen, with few exceptions, Americans are as dumb and insouciant as they come. And they think they are the salt of the earth.

  http://www.uruknet.info/?p=49097

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• 29 Jun 2009 16:14

  NEIU JUST 101 Introduction to Social Justice

  CIA Crucified Captive in Abu Ghraib Prison By Sherwood Ross June 29, 2009 "Global Research" --- "The Central Intelligence Agency crucified a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to a report published in The New Yorker magazine. “A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer writes in the magazine’s June 22nd issue. “Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.” The date of the murder was not given. “No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as a result of mistreatment,” Mayer notes. An earlier report, by John Hendren in The Los Angeles Times indicted other torture killings. And Human Rights First says nearly 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hendren reported that one Manadel Jamadi died “of blunt-force injuries” complicated by “compromised respiration” at Abu Ghraib prison “while he was with Navy SEALs and other special operations troops.” Another victim, Abdul Jaleel, died while gagged and shackled to a cell door with his hands over his head.” Yet another prisoner, Maj. Gen. Abid Mowhosh, former commander of Iraq’s air defenses, “died of asphyxiation due to smothering and chest compression” in Qaim, Iraq. "There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths," says Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. "High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable. America must stop putting its head in the sand and deal with the torture scandal." At least scores of detainees in U.S. custody have died and homicide is suspected. As far back as May, 2004, the Pentagon conceded at least 37 deaths of prisoners in its custody in Iraq and Afghanistan had prompted investigations. Nathaniel Raymond, of Physicians for Human Rights, told The New Yorker, “We still don’t know how many detainees were in the black sites, or who they were. We don’t fully know the White House’s role, or the C.I.A.’s role. We need a full accounting, especially as it relates to health professionals.” Recently released Justice memos, he noted, contain numerous references to CIA medical personnel participating in coercive interrogation sessions. “They were the designers, the legitimizers, and the implementers,” Raymond said. “This is arguably the single greatest medical-ethics scandal in American history. We need answers.” The ACLU obtained its information from the Pentagon through a Freedom of Information suit. Documents received included 44 autopsies and death reports as well as a summary of autopsy reports of people seized in Iraq and Afghanistan. An ACLU statement noted, “This covers just a fraction of the total number of Iraqis and Afghanis who have died while in U.S. custody.” (Italics added). Torture by the CIA has been facilitated by the Agency’s ability to hide prisoners in “black sites” kept secret from the Red Cross, to hold prisoners off the books, and to detain them for years without bringing charges or providing them with lawyers. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, denounced the Obama administration for considering “prevention detention,” The New Yorker’s Mayer wrote. Roth said this tactic “mimics the Bush Administration’s abusive approach.” From all indications, CIA Director Panetta has no intention of bringing to justice CIA officials involved in the systematic torture of prisoners. Panetta told Mayer, “I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt…If they do the job that they’re paid to do, I can’t ask for a hell of a lot more.” Such sentiments differ markedly from those Panetta wrote in an article published last year in the January Washington Monthly: “We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don’t. There is no middle ground.” One way to discern who really runs a country is to look to see which individuals, if any, are above the law. In the Obama administration, like its predecessors, they include the employees of the CIA. Crucifixions they execute in the Middle East differ from those reported in the New Testament in at least one important respect: Jesus Christ had a trial. Sherwood Ross formerly reported for major dailies and wire services. To contact him or contribute to his Anti-War News Service: sherwoodr1@yahoo.com    ______________________________ Friendly Dictators Written in 1995 U.S. State Department Policy Planning Study #23, 1948: Our real task... is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity [U.S. military- economic supremacy]... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming... We should cease to talk about vague and...unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization... we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better. George Kennan, Director of Policy Planning. U.S. State Department. 1948 Many of the world's most repressive dictators have been friends of America.  Tyrants, torturers, killers, and sundry dictators and corrupt puppet-presidents have been aided, supported, and rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to US interests. Traditional dictators seize control through force, while constitutional dictators hold office through voting fraud or severely restricted elections, and are frequently puppets and apologists for the military juntas which control the ballot boxes. In any case, none have been democratically elected by the majority of their people in fair and open elections. They are democratic America's undemocratic allies. They may rise to power through bloody ClA-backed coups and rule by terror and torture. Their troops may receive training or advice from the CIA and other US agencies. US military aid and weapons sales often strengthen their armies and guarantee their hold on power. Unwavering "anti-communism" and a willingness to provide unhampered access for American business interests to exploit their countries' natural resources and cheap labor are the excuses for their repression, and the primary reason the US government supports them. They may be linked internationalIy to extreme right-wing groups such as the World Anti-Communist League, and some have had strong Nazi affiliations and have offered sanctuary to WWll Nazi war criminals. They usually grow rich, while their countries' economies deteriorate and the majority of their people live in poverty. US tax dollars and US-backed loans have made billionaires of some, while others are international drug dealers who also collect CIA paychecks. Rarely are they called to account for their crimes. And rarely still, is the US government held responsible for supporting and protecting some of the worst human rights violators in the world. Friendly dictators Abacha, General Sani ----------------------------Nigeria Amin, Idi ------------------------------------------Uganda Banzer, Colonel Hugo ---------------------------Bolivia Batista, Fulgencio --------------------------------Cuba Bolkiah, Sir Hassanal ----------------------------Brunei Botha, P.W. ---------------------------------------South Africa Branco, General Humberto ---------------------Brazil Cedras, Raoul -------------------------------------Haiti Cerezo, Vinicio -----------------------------------Guatemala Chiang Kai-Shek ---------------------------------Taiwan Cordova, Roberto Suazo ------------------------Honduras Christiani, Alfredo -------------------------------El Salvador Diem, Ngo Dihn ---------------------------------Vietnam Doe, General Samuel ----------------------------Liberia Duvalier, Francois --------------------------------Haiti Duvalier, Jean Claude-----------------------------Haiti Fahd bin'Abdul-'Aziz, King ---------------------Saudi Arabia Franco, General Francisco -----------------------Spain Hitler, Adolf ---------------------------------------Germany Hassan II-------------------------------------------Morocco Marcos, Ferdinand -------------------------------Philippines Martinez, General Maximiliano Hernandez ---El Salvador Mobutu Sese Seko -------------------------------Zaire Noriega, General Manuel ------------------------Panama Ozal, Turgut --------------------------------------Turkey Pahlevi, Shah Mohammed Reza ---------------Iran Papadopoulos, George --------------------------Greece Park Chung Hee ---------------------------------South Korea Pinochet, General Augusto ---------------------Chile Pol Pot---------------------------------------------Cambodia Rabuka, General Sitiveni ------------------------Fiji Montt, General Efrain Rios ---------------------Guatemala Salassie, Halie ------------------------------------Ethiopia Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira --------------------Portugal Somoza, Anastasio Jr. --------------------------Nicaragua Somoza, Anastasio, Sr. -------------------------Nicaragua Smith, Ian ----------------------------------------Rhodesia Stroessner, Alfredo -----------------------------Paraguay Suharto, General ---------------------------------Indonesia Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas -----------------------Dominican Republic Videla, General Jorge Rafael ------------------Argentina Zia Ul-Haq, Mohammed ----------------------Pakistan GENERAL SANI ABACHA President of Nigeria General Sani Abacha is a corrupt and repressive dictator in the oil-rich country of Nigeria. Supported by oil wealth, Abacha has tried to cover his repression under a mantle of democracy by allowing fraudulent elections which only serve to guarantee his continued control. During elections in 1994, Chief Moshood Abiola, considered to be the likely winner, was arrested and placed in prison before the rigged results were announced; Abacha retained control. More than 100 government executions occurred in 1994, and numerous pro-democracy demonstrators were killed by police. Shell Oil provides most of the country's wealth by extracting oil from the Ogoniland region, while in the process causing severe environmental destruction and devastating the local economy. More than 700 Ogoni environmentalists protesting the destruction of their way of life, were executed in recent years. The greatest travesty occurred in November 1995, when environmental leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 associates, were hanged despite an international outcry. Shell supported Abacha's policies by its silence. Despite an outcry that Nigerian oil be boycotted, the US government refused to do so. IDI AMIN General of Uganda Amin was one of the most notorious of Africa's post-independence dictators. A former heavyweight boxing champion in Uganda and a non-commissioned officer in the British Army there, Amin caught the attention of his superiors because of his efficient management of concentration camps in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s, where he earned the title of "The Strangler". Because of his loyalty to Britain and his strongly anti-communist stance, Amin was picked by the British to replace the elected Ugandan government in a 1971 coup. While in power, he earned a reputation as a "clown" in some circles in the West, but he was no joke at home. Amin brutalized his people with British and US military aid and with Israeli and CIA training of his troops. The body count of his friends, the clergy, soldiers, and ordinary Ugandans rose daily, but the West ignored his cruelty. As he continued to demand more aid and sophisticated weapons, he finally lost support. In 1979, his quest for more power lead him to invade Tanzania. In retaliation, he was overthrown by an invading Tanzanian / Ugandan army. Amin fled to Saudi Arabia, where he now lives a quiet life in a modest villa outside Jeddah, looking after his goats and chickens and cultivating his vegetable garden. Traditional Arab garb has replaced the bemedalled Field Marshal's uniform of his heyday. COLONEL HUGO BANZER President of Bolivia In 1970, in Bolivia, when then-President Juan Jose Torres nationalized Gulf Oil properties and tin mines owned by US interests, and tried to establish friendly relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, he was playing with fire. The coup to overthrow Torres, led by US-trained officer and Gulf Oil beneficiary Hugo Banzer, had direct support from Washington. When Banzer's forces had a breakdown in radio communications, US Air Force radio was placed at their disposal. Once in power, Banzer began a reign of terror. Schools were shut down as hotbeds of political subversive activity. Within two years, 2,000 people were arrested and tortured without trial. As in Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, the native Indians were ordered off their land and deprived of tribal identity. Tens-of-thousands of white South Africans were enticed to immigrate with promises of the land stolen from the Indians, with a goal of creating a white Bolivia. When Catholic clergy tried to aid the Indians, the regime, with CIA help, launched terrorist attacks against them, and this "Banzer Plan" became a model for similar anti-Catholic actions throughout Latin America. FULGENCIO BATISTA President of Cuba Cuban Army Sergeant Fulgencio Batista first seized power in a 1932 coup. He was President Roosevelt's handpicked dictator to counteract leftists who had overthrown strongman Cerardo Machado. Batista ruled or several years, then left for Miami, returning in 1952 just in time for another coup, against elected president Carlos Prio Socorras. His new regime was quickly recognized by President Eisenhower. Under Batista, U.S. interests flourished and little was said about democracy. With the loyal support of Batista, Mafioso boss Meyer Lansky developed Havana into an international drug port. Cabinet offices were bought and sold and military officials made huge sums on smuggling and vice rackets. Havana became a fashionable hot spot where America's rich and famous drank and gambled with mobsters. As the gap between the rich and poor grew wider, the poor grew impatient. In 1953, Fidel Castro led an armed group of rebels in a failed uprising on the Moncada army barracks. Castro temporarily fled the country and Batista struck back with a vengeance. Freedom of speech was curtailed and subversive teachers, lawyers and public officials were fired from their jobs. Death squads tortured and killed thousands of "communists". Batista was assisted in his crackdown by Lansky and other members of organized crime who believed Castro would jeopardize their gambling and drug trade. Despite this, Batista remained a friend to Eisenhower and the US until he was finally overthrown by Castro in 1959. SIR HASSANAL BOLKIAH The Sultan of Brunei To illegally fund what they referred to as the "Democratic Resistance" in Nicaragua, Oliver North and Former Assistant Secretary d State Elliot Abrams solicited funds from several authoritarian regimes, including Taiwan, South Korea and the more obscure Sultanate of Brunei Darussalam. Sir Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei, the world's richest monarch, was indeed generous to the Contras -- to the tune of $10 million. But, this generosity was not because of any commitment to democracy in Nicaragua or anywhere else, for Brunei is a monarchical dictatorship, under a State of Emergency since 1982. The Sultan also allows Brunei to be the ClA's ears on the explosive Malaysian-lndonesian border. His Royal Highness was also involved with the infamous Nugan Hand Bank of Australia, a 1960s-70s CIA front for South East Asian drug operations and money laundering. In fact, according to a secret 1978 memo, Nugan Hand submitted a proposal to provide His Highness the Sultan with a bank structure and depository system which he alone can control should any change of government take place. The Sultan lives in a new palace that may have cost as much as a billion dollars, while over 90% of his subjects live in abject poverty. Those who protest such inequalities don't fare well with the authorities. According to Amnesty International, Brunei's jails hold "at least five prisoners of conscience who have spent 25 years in detention without having been convicted of any crime." P.W. BOTHA President of South Africa During P.W. Botha's first term as President, the former Secretary of Defense altered the structure of government, giving the military and police unprecedented power. To justify this, he pointed to increasingly vocal discontent among South Africa's disenfranchised blacks, the large number of black states In Africa, and a so-called "growing Marxist" threat in the region. South Africa, he said, was engaged in a "total war' and must develop a "total strategy" to fight the battle. South Africa's apartheid regime was quietly supported by the US government, despite a UN boycott and Congressional efforts to reduce US investment there, Ronald Reagan significantly increased military expenditures in the country. But few Americans realized that Botha's total strategy against blacks had turned his nation into a ruthless aggressor. When Portugal withdrew from its colonies in Mozambique and Angola, Botha, claiming he wanted to strengthen capitalism on the continent, financed the Mozambique National Resistance (MNR) against the country's popular government. The MNR, who receive direct training from South Africa, cut off the ears, noses, and limbs of civilians. After killing their parents and raping young women in front of 10 year old boys, they recruited these boys to fight. In 1989, P.W. Botha suffered a stroke and later resigned. In early 1990 his successor, F.W. De Klerk, watching as international sanctions ruined S. Africa's economy, legalized political opposition parties and freed several important black political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela who had been imprisoned for 27 years for political activities against apartheid. Apartheid finally fell when Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa. GENERAL HUMBERTO BRANCO President of Brazil In 1961, Brazilian President Jaao Goulart sought to trade with communist nations, supported the labor movement, and had limited the profits multi-nationals could take out of the country. These policies were clearly unacceptable to the American business interests. In 1964, the US took part in the overthrow of Goulart by General Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco, although US government officials have denied involvement. As an example of US support for Branco, just prior to the coup, US officials cabled Washington a request for oil for Branco's soldiers in case Goulart's troops blew up the refineries. Brancos regime was short but brutal. Labor unions were banned, criticism of the President became unlawful, and thousands of suspected communists (including children) were arrested and tortured. As in Paraguay, Argentina, and Bolivia, land was stolen from native Indians and their culture was destroyed. Drug dealers, many of them government officials, were given protection because they maintained national security interests. Brazil formed ties with the World Anti-communist League and assisted General Videla in his takeover of Argentina. When Branco stepped down in 1967, he left behind a constitution with greatly increased military and executive powers, crippling Brazil's efforts to restore democracy. RAOUL CEDRAS General of Haiti General Cedras seized power in Haiti in 1991 after the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He ruled with the rod of iron associated with Haiti's infamous former dictators, the Duvaliers -- there were at least 4.000 political assassinations and more than 40,000 fled the country in boats for the US. He fled into exile in September 1994 when the US sent an invasion force under the banner of the UN. Cedras is now in Panama, the only rival to France as the favorite haven for former dictators -- Juan Domingo Peron of Argentina and the Shah of Iran once took refuge there, and Guatemala's Jorge Serrano is a great success as a racehorse owner. Cedras has a penthouse suite in Panama City's wealthy Punta Paitilla area. He is not short of cash -- the US State Department alone pays him $5,000 a month in rent for his properties in Haiti. Panama University Professor Miguel Antonio Bernal complains: 'Our country is being used as a wastebasket for the political toxic waste of the world.' VINICIO CEREZO President of Guatemala According to Amnesty International, arbitrary arrest, torture, disappearance, and political killings were everyday realities for Guatemalans during decades of US financed military dictatorship. In January 1986, Christian Democrat leader Vinicio Cerezo was elected President and said he had "the political will to respect the rights of man", but it didn't take long to find out that his political will was irrelevant in the face of Guatemala's well-oiled military machine. Hopes for change were dashed when Cerezo announced that Guatemala would continue to provide amnesty for all past military offenses committed from General Elrain Rios Montt's coup in 1982 through the 1986 elections. Although Ronald Reagan's State Department asserted "there has not been a single clear-cut case of political killing, within months of Cerezo's inauguration, opposition leaders attributed 56 murders to security forces and death squads, while Americas Watch claimed that "throughout 1986, violent killings were reported in the Guatemalan press at the rate of 100 per month". Altogether, Americas Watch says, tens-of-thousands were killed and 400 rural villages were destroyed by government death squads during Reagan's term in office. Colonel D'Jalma Dominguez, former army spokesman, explains "For convenience sake a civilian government is preferable, such as the one we have now. If anything goes wrong, only the Christian Democrats will get the blame. It's better to remain outside. The real power will not be lost." Today, the real power still resides with the military. CHIANG KAI-SHEK President of Taiwan The Chinese civil war pitted Mao Tse-Tung's Communists against Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalists. The US-backed Chiang, but when he couldn't do the job they also supported Japanese troops fighting the Communists, even before WWll had ended. Hated for his wanton cruelty, corruption, and decadence, Chiang did not enjoy the support of the Chinese people; entire divisions of the Nationalist army defected and fled to the island of Formosa (Taiwan). A presidential commission appointed by Harry Truman reported after Chiang's arrival there that his forces "ruthlessly, corruptly, and avariciously imposed their regime on the population. Under Nationalist rule, 85% of the population was disenfranchised, but the onset of the Korean War and the anti-communist hysteria of the McCarthy era led the US to declare that the tiny island represented the real government of China. The US was crucial in keeping mainland China out of the UN until 1971. Chiang gave the World Anti-Communist League (an international organization with links to Nazis, drug smugglers, and the CIA) its first home, permitting WACL members to use a military academy there to train troops for Latin American military coups. President Carter tried to cut US ties to WACL, but Ronald Reagan received campaign funds from the group, and WACL became involved with training and supplying contras in Argentina and Taiwan. Chiang Kai-Shek died in 1975, but many of his policies continue in Taiwan. ROBERTO SUAZO CORDOVA President of Honduras Honduras was the original "Banana Republic" -- its history inextricably intertwined with that of the US-based United Fruit Company, but in 1979, when Anastasio Somoza was overthrown in Nicaragua, Honduras got a new nickname -- "The Pentagon Republic". In 1978 Honduras received $16.2 million in US aid. By 1985, it was getting $231 million, primarily because President Suazo Cordova, working with the US Ambassador and the Honduran military, allowed Honduras to become a training center for U.S. funded Nicaraguan contras. General Alvarez assisted in training programs and founded a special "hit squad", the Cobras. Victims of the Cobras were stripped, bound, thrown into pits, and tortured. The Reagan Administration claimed ignorance of these human rights violations, but US advisors have admitted knowledge. Alvarez who made enemies among his troops because he pocketed U.S. aid and because he belonged to the "Moonies", a far-right South Korean religious cult, was overthrown by the military in 1984. Suazo's ties to Alvarez cost him his bid in the next election, but death squad activity and US aid to Honduras continued. Many high ranking government and military personnel during and after Suazo's term were drug traffickers, and although the US government denies knowledge of this, there is evidence to the contrary. In fact, the US embassy was renting space from known drug dealers. ALFREDO CRISTIANI President of El Salvador General Hernandez Martinez's 1932 anti-communist purge, was carried out on behalf of El Salvador's rich coffee oligarchy, the so-called "Fourteen Families". New president Alfredo Cristiani is a member of those same " Fourteen Families", and his ARENA party is linked to brutalities surpassing Hernandez Martinez's. Cristiani is moderate-sounding, schooled in Washington D. C., and indebted to the military for power. As puppet - president, he yielded to ARENA founder Roberto D'Aubuisson, whom a former US Ambassador called a "pathological killer". D'Aubuisson, a former Army Major with ties to Jesse Helms and the US right, studied unconventional warfare in the U S and Taiwan. According to D'Aubuisson, "the Christian Democrats (Ex-President Jose Napoleon Duarte's party) are communists, but Jesuit priests are "the worst scum of all". US State Department cables indicate D'Aubuisson "planned and ordered the assassination of the late Archbishop Oscar Amulfoo Romero". It's believed he was behind the White Warriors Union (UGB), whose slogan was "Be patriotic-kill a priest". In 1989 six priests were slain and Cristiani soon admitted his US trained soldiers had committed the murders. Yet, although assassinations of priests are notable, 70,000 other civilians were killed by the Salvadoran military and the death squads since 1980. NGO DINH DIEM President of South Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem oppressed the Vietnamese people so badly that many of them turned to the communists for protection from his ruthless rule. Even President Eisenhower admitted that "had elections been held, possibly 80% of the population would have voted for Ho Chi Minh, the communist leader". Yet Diem, who had once lived in the US, had connections, in Washington, who liked his anti-communism. He founded the Can Lao Party (CLP), a secret police force overseen by his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and Nhu's wife, Madame Nhu. The three were notorious for their ineptitude and cruelty. The CLP was not even their idea, it was originally promoted by the US State Department to rid the country of communists. Diem alienated urban professionals by suppressing all opposition to his regime. He alienated peasants by canceling their age-old local elections, forcing them off their land, and moving them into "agrovilles" surrounded by barbed wire, which even US officials conceded bore a striking resemblance to concentration camps. Ultimately, he angered his own military officers because he promoted on the basis of loyalty, not merit. In an effort to keep Diem in power, the US tried to persuade him to make political reforms. He refused, so they persuaded him to make military reforms. But when Diem was finally overthrown and assassinated in 1963, none of his generals rose to defend him. Nor did the US, which, after 8 years, had finally realized that Diem wasn't popular. GENERAL SAMUEL DOE President of Liberia Samuel Doe came to power in a bloody 1980 coup, a Master Sergeant in military gear. Today, he is a self-made General in a suit, living on US aid and corporate kickbacks. But while Doe and his cronies live in luxury, the rest of Liberia dwells in squalor. Under his regime, the gross domestic product has decreased by 13%, the country's health statistics are among the world's worst, 80% of the population is illiterate, all opposition parties but one were forbidden to participate in the 1985 national elections, and those who protest these inequities are jailed or killed. Doe, a pro-American anti-communist, received $500 million in U.S. aid between 1980 and 1985. When Congress threatened to cut off funds because of Liberia's human rights abuses, Doe requested "American financial advice" as a show of good will. The U.S. sent 17 accountants, bank examiners, and economists to help Doe balance his budget, but they realized a difficult task lay ahead when they learned that Doe had purchased over sixty $60,000 Mercedes Benz cars for his government ministers and had given the Liberian soccer team $1 million for winning a match against rival Ghana. Ultimately Doe refused to allow access to records concerning 40% of Liberia's funds, for this "second budget", revenues from gasoline and lodging taxes, goes directly into the President's bank account. The American advisors returned home in 1989, mission not accomplished, and Samuel Doe remains in office, despite early 1990 rumblings of rebel plots against him. FRANCOIS & JEAN CLAUDE DUVALIER Presidents of Haiti In 1957 Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier became Haiti's President-For-Life, establishing a strategic relationship with the US that lasted until 1971, when he was succeeded by his son Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. During the 30 years that they ruled with an iron hand, 60,000 Haitians were killed and countless more were tortured by the Duvaliers' Tonton Macoutes death squads. While Haiti became the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, the Duvaliers enriched themselves by stealing foreign aid money. In 1980, for instance, the International Monetary Fund granted Haiti a $22 million budget supplement. Within weeks, $16 million was "unaccounted for". Baby Doc made Haiti into a trans-shipment point for Colombian cocaine. Nevertheless, as long as Papa and Baby Doc were anti-communists, they could do no wrong in the US government's eyes. Their regime finally ended in 1986, when Baby Doc fled angry mobs of Haitians for asylum in France, with a fortune estimated at $400 million. It has been estimated that under Baby Doc's rule 40,000 Haitians were murdered. KING FAHD BIN 'ABDUL - 'AZIZ King of Saudi Arabia King Fahd bin 'Abdul -'Aziz is the absolute monarch of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Fahd and 2000 related royals rule with an iron grip of medieval feudalism. Control over the lives of their citizens is total and arbitrary. Torture is common, and amputation is frequently ordered by the courts. Women have few rights, and adultery by women is punished by death by stoning. Executions by hanging are public -- there were at least 60 such executions in 1994. The main opposition is from Sunni Islamists, and hundreds are in prison. Saudi Arabia is supported by the United States and other western democracies because of the enormous oil wealth that lies below the country's desert sands, its pro-West stance, and the royal family's staunch anti-fundamentalist position. The irony of American policy in Saudi Arabia is that the US, the world's most vocal advocate for democracy, supports one of the most undemocratic regimes in the world. GENERAL FRANCISCO FRANCO President of Spain General Francisco Bahamonde Franco was not the most popular leader in Spain during the early 1930s. A man of humble origins, he had worked his way up the military ladder fighting colonial wars in Africa. Franco, a staunch conservative, was infuriated when a Republican alliance of socialists, Marxists, and liberals won Spain's first free elections in 1936. So the General decided to restore order by force. Franco's Nationalists were losing the civil war, but military support from Hitler, Mussolini, and the US corporations that backed Hitler, turned the tide in his favor. Italy and Germany sent 6,060 trucks to Franco's fascists, but 12,000 were supplied by Ford, General Motors and Studebaker. The US claimed neutrality but didn't stop these companies from aiding Franco. The failure of the US and other democratic nations to assist Spain's democratic government was ultimately responsible for Franco's victory in 1939, and sadly, American volunteers who fought for the Republic were relentlessly persecuted during the US anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s. Under Franco, all political parties and labor unions were banned, books were burned, and dissenters were tortured and executed. Spain was ostracized by the international community, but the US considered Franco a Cold War ally and sank millions into the country. After Franco's death in 1975, Spain became a democratic republic once again. (Note: Spain is a parliamentary monarchy, with a Constitution since 1978 and democratic representative elections. Franco was not a President of Spain, but a "Generalísimo" supreme military commander). ADOLF HITLER Chancellor of Germany As German bombs fell on London and Nazi tanks rolled over US troops, Sosthenes Behn president and founder of the US based ITT corporation, met with his German representative to discuss improving German communication systems. ITT was designing and building Nazi phone and radio systems as well as supplying crucial parts for German bombs. Our government knew all about this, for under a presidential order, US companies were licensed to trade with the Nazis. The choice of who would be licensed was odd, though. While the Secretary of State gave the Ford Motor Company permission to make Nazi tanks, he simultaneously blocked aid to German-Jewish refugees because the US wasn't supposed to be trading with the enemy. Other US companies trading with the Third Reich were General Motors, DuPont, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Davis Oil Co., and the Chase National Bank. President Roosevelt did not stop them, fearing a scandal might lead to another stock market crash or lower US moral. Besides, the same companies that traded with Hitler were supplying the US with its armaments, and some corporate leaders threatened to withdraw their support if Roosevelt exposed them. Henry Ford was a good friend of Hitler's. His book -- The International Jew -- had Inspired Hltler's Mein Kampf. The Fuhrer kept Ford's picture in his office, and Ford was one of only four foreigners to receive Germany's highest civilian award. As for Sosthenes Behn, at the end of the war, he received the highest civilian award for service to his country -- the United States of America. HASSAN II King of Morocco Like his former ally, the Shah of Iran, King Hassan ll of Morocco spares himself no earthly delight. He has seven principal palaces, keeps 260 horses in just one of his many stables, boards most of his camels, ostriches, and zebras with his 945 head of cattle at his 1500 acre dairy farm, and he's got a couple of harems. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in Morocco is over 20%, and 95% of the population lives in abject poverty, sheltering in makeshift huts in the country's increasingly swollen cities. Citing dubious historical ties, in 1975, Hassan took his nation into a war in the Western Sahara that is costing the country over $l million a day. Although the International Court of Justice ruled that Morocco has no historical claims to the territory, the US continues to back Hassan diplomatically and financially in his war to annex the area. The US also takes an active role in stopping coup attempts against the King. According to one dissident, the CIA gave Hassan a video tape that enabled him to catch the plotters in the act. The favor was returned when Hassan visited Washington in 1982 -- he and President Reagan agreed that the US could use Morocco as an emergency base for its planes. Although Hassan has been less repressive in recent years, members of the opposition are still arrested and tortured. But as his people start to make connections between the rising cost of living and the war in the Sahara, criticism grows, and even the CIA has admitted that Hassan may not be able to keep the lid on dissent much longer. FERDINAND MARCOS President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos began his career with a bang. At age 21, convicted of gunning down Julio Nalundasan, his father's victorious opponent in the Philippines first national elections, he went to prison. He was later release by a Supreme Court Justice who, like Marcos and his father, was a Nazi collaborator. Despite Marcos's record as murderer, fake WWll hero and Nazi agent, he was elected Philippine President in 1965. Under Marcos, the Philippine national debt grew from $2 billion to $30 billion, but US corporations in the Philippines prospered, perhaps explaining why the US didn't protest Marcos's imposition of martial law in 1972. The Marcoses enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle, and they salted away billions of dollars in the course of their US-backed rule between 1965 and 1986. The Carter Administration engineered an $88 million World Bank loan to Marcos, increased military aid to him by 300%, and called him a "soft dictator". But a 1976 Amnesty International report identified 88 government torturers, and stated that alleged subversives had their heads slammed into walls, their genitals and pubic hair torched, and were beaten with clubs, fists, bottles, and rifle butts. By 1977, the armed forces had quadrupled and over 60,000 Filipinos had been arrested for political reasons. Yet, in 1981, Vice President George Bush praised Marcos for his "adherence to democratic principals and to the democratic processes". Marcos was overthrown in 1986 by followers of Corazon Aquino, widow of an assassinated opposition leader. Ferdinand and Imelda fled to Hawaii, only to be indicted in 1988 for fraud and tax evasion. Marcos died in 1989. Imelda returned to the Philippines in 1991 and stood unsuccessfully in the Presidential elections of 1992. In 1993 she was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for criminal graft and to other long sentences for corruption. She is still free while she appeals. She was elected to Congress in May 1995. Meanwhile, in it attempts to recover the lost Marcos billions from Swiss bank accounts and other shadier locations the Philippines Government has, after paying its US lawyers, recovered the princely sum of $2,000. MAXIMILIANO HERNANDEZ MARTlNEZ General of El Salvador Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez seized power El Salvador in a 1931 coup. His philosophy with regard to human rights was clear -- "It is a greater crime to kill an ant than a man," said the General. Hernandez Martinez initiated an anti-communist purge in 1932 in El Salvador. Subsequent massacres left 40,000 peasants dead and wiped out the country's Indian culture. An uprising, six weeks later, organized by El Salvador's Communist Party founder, Farabundo Marti, failed, and was followed by the crackdown on "communists". Roadways and drainage ditches were littered with bodies. Hotels were raided, individuals with blond hair were dragged out and killed as suspected Russians. Many were executed and then shoved into mass graves they had first been forced to dig. U.S. warships were stationed off-shore, ready to send in Marines to aid the General in case he ran into serious opposition. Hernandez Martinez was run out of the country in 1944, but his memory was celebrated as recently as 1980, when the Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez Brigade carried out a series of death-squad assassinations of prominent Salvadoran leftists. Farabundo Marti, killed during the purge, has also left a legacy -- the rebels who fought the U.S. backed government of El Salvador during the 1980s, call themselves the FMLN, the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front. MOBUTU SESE SEKO President of Zaire When Zaire's first elected President, Patrice Lumumba, appeared to be getting too close to socialism, US companies feared they might lose control of Zaire's precious cobalt, copper, and diamonds. So the CIA stepped in, assassinated Lumumba, and replaced him with Mobutu Sese Seko. Since 1965, Mobutu has been the US's main man in Central Africa. Mobutu has amassed an estimated $5 billion personal fortune at his nation's expense. He is perhaps the only world leader who could pay his national debt from his own bank account. In fact, there seems to be no division between his pocket and the national treasury. In 1974, when the US sent $1.4 million to assist troops fighting a civil war, Mobutu pocketed the entire sum. And no foreign company sets itself up in Zaire without a tribute to Mobutu. Although Zaire has more resources than most other countries in the region, it is the fifth poorest. Malnutrition takes the lives of one-third of Zaire's children, and one child out of two dies before age five. But Mobutu has vowed to keep the world safe for democracy and according to Amnesty International, in the name of anti-communism, he imprisons and tortures, often without trial, anyone who threatens his power base. While some members of Congress grumble about giving assistance to Mobutu, they continue to reward his work against communism and his warm reception of American corporations. GENERAL EFRAIN RIOS MONTT President of Guatemala "A Christian has to walk around with his Bible and his machine gun", said born-again General Efrain Rios Montt, military ruler of Guatemala from March 1982 to August 1983. Rios Montt was one in a long series of dictators who ran Guatemala after the Dulles brothers and United Fruit, backed by the CIA, decided that democratically-elected President Jacobo Arbenz was too reform-minded. And so, they overthrew the country's constitutional democracy in 1954. The succession of corrupt military dictators ruled Guatemala for over 30 years, one anti-communist tyrant after another receiving U.S. support, aid, and training. After the 1982 coup that brought Rios Montt to power, the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala said "Guatemala has come out of the darkness and into the light". President Reagan claimed Rios Montt was given "a bum rap" by human rights groups, and that he was cleaning up problems inherited from his predecessor, General Romeo Lucas Garcia. Ironically, Garcia had given $500,000 to Reagan's 1980 campaign, and his henchman, Mario Sandoval Alarcon, the 'Godfather' of Central American death squads, was a guest at Reagan's first inaugural celebration. Sandoval proudly calls his National Liberation Movement " the party of organized violence". Montt simply moved Garcia's dirty war from urban centers to the countryside where "the spirit of the lord" guided him against "communist subversives', mostly indigenous Indians. As many as 10,000 Indians were killed and over 100,000 fled to Mexico as a result of Rios Montt's "Christian" campaign. GENERAL MANUEL NORIEGA Chief of Defense Forces, Panama The US command post for covert Latin American operations is located in the Canal Zone where a series of figurehead presidents, some backed by General Manuel Noriega, had involved Panama in US intelligence operations. General Noriega became commander-in-chief of the National Guard in Panama in 1983, and for the next six years was more powerful than the President. He was the kind of ruthless leader the US favored in the rest of Central America. Noriega first met with then CIA Director George Bush in 1976, while Noriega was collecting $100 thousand a year as a CIA asset. Their friendly relationship persisted even after Noriega's drug dealing was revealed by a 1975 DEA investigation. During the Reagan era, Noriega collaborated with Oliver North on covert actions against Nicaragua, training contras and providing a transshipment point for CIA supported operations that flew weapons to the contras and cocaine into the US. But he fell foul of the US when he failed to support their plan to invade Nicaragua -- they withdrew aid and imposed sanctions. In 1987, a Miami grand jury indicted him for drug-trafficking, and the CIA tried to destabilize his regime. Noriega warned Bush that he had information which could change the course of the 1988 US elections and the CIA backed off. When Noriega annulled Panama's 1989 elections, citing CIA interference, Bush renewed attempts to unseat his one-time ally. Critics called Bush's failure to support an abortive 1989 coup "indecisive", but his response to that criticism, the December 1989 invasion of Panama, led to world condemnation. Noriega eventually surrendered to face US drug charges. The invasion of 26,000 American troops led to over 4,000 Panamanian deaths and installed a regime with similar close links to drugs, plus a willingness to alter Panama Canal treaties to serve US interests. Noriega was taken prisoner and stood trial in Miami on charges of drug trafficking and was sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment. He is still in a Florida jail contemplating the irony that he was once also the protégé of the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Meanwhile the legal office of the President the US installed in his place was discovered to have connections with 14 companies that had laundered drug money. TURGUT OZAL Prime Minister of Turkey Turgut Ozal was elected prime minister of Turkey in 1983, after several years of harsh military rule. But while free expression in Turkey has opened up somewhat in recent years, torture and long prison terms for political opponents and government critics have remained a way of life. In 1988, according to Amnesty International, "thousands of people were imprisoned for political reasons...and the use of torture continued to be widespread and systematic". Turkey's torturers are ruthless. Says one victim: " I loosened the blindfold and looked around. The scene was horrific. People were piled up in the corridor waiting their turn to be tortured. Ten people were being led, blindfolded and naked, up and down the corridor and were being beaten to force them to sing reactionary marches. Others, incapable of standing, were tied to hot radiator pipes. A man was forced to watch while his children were tortured." Regardless of the repression that a succession of governments have subjected the country to, US-Turkish relations remain cordial. In the past, US officials have even attributed the torture problem to "the violent nature of the Turkish people." Retired Turkish General Turgut Sunalp explains it a different way. "There has been, still is, and will be torture in Turkey because there is torture everywhere in the world," he said. But despite its human rights abuses, Turkey can do no wrong in US eyes, for it is one of the CIA's key listening posts on the Soviet border. Not surprisingly, in 1987, Turkey was the third largest recipient of U.S. aid. MOHAMMAD REZA PAHLEVI Shah of Iran 1953 was a busy year for Allen Dulles. Even as he readied the CIA for a coup in Guatemala, his agents were toppling the liberal left government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq and paving the way for the Shah of Iran. With Dulles' encouragement, the Shah made the Iranian people an offer they couldn't refuse -- join his party or go to jail. Thousands who refused to yield were imprisoned or murdered. During regional elections in 1954, the Shah's agents raided a religious school and hurled hundreds of students to their deaths from the roof. His regime received 100% of the vote that year, in an election which registered more votes than there were voters. The Shah's subsequent solidification of power led to an iron fisted rule enforced by fear and torture. His secret police agency, SAVAK, was created in 1957 and managed by the CIA at all levels of daily operation, including the choice and organization of personnel, selection and operation of equipment, and the running of agents. SAVAK's torture methods included electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails. Iran under the Shah became a devoted US ally and a base for spy operations on the border of the Soviet Union. But eventually, the Shah was overthrown in 1978 by an indigenous people's revolution that held sway until fundamentalist religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran from exile and reasserted his power during the 1979 US hostage crisis. GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS Prlme Minister of Greece When President Lyndon Johnson offered a solution to the Greek Ambassador for the dispute between Greece and Turkey over Cyprus, the Ambassador protested, saying the solution was unacceptable to the Greek parliament and constitution. Three years later, in 1967, a military coup overthrew the freely elected government of Andreas Papandreou. The coup was headed by CIA employee and ex-Nazi George Papadopoulolis. He had been on the CIA payroll for 15 years when he came to power, and during WW ll he was a captain in the Nazi Security Battalions, whose main purpose was to catch members of the Greek Resistance. Almost anyone who even said the word "communist" was jailed. During Papadopoulos's first month in power, 8,000 so-called "leftist" were imprisoned and tortured. Greece was expelled from the European Commission on Human Rights, but continued to receive US aid. In return, Greece kept the world safe for democracy by housing US military bases. Papadopoulos was ousted in 1973 after falling from grace with the inner clique that helped him rule. When the entire government fell in 1974, he and his comrades were tried for human rights abuses. PARK CHUNG HEE President of South Korea Free and open expression has not come easily to South Koreans. Beatings, torture, and execution of the regimes' political opponents have been a way of life since the Korean War. The tenure of former President Park Chung Hee, who came to power in a 1961 military coup, exemplifies the kind of leader South Koreans have been forced to endure. Park's virulent anti-communism won him U.S. support. The water torture, which leaves no physical marks on the victim, was a favored technique of Park's security forces. Cold water was forced up the nostrils through a tube, while a cloth was placed in the victim's mouth to prevent breathing. Many anti-communist interrogations were run by the KCIA, a US creation modeled after the American CIA. One victim told Amnesty International, " I was taken to KCIA headquarters, my hands tied together, and I was tied to a chair. I was not allowed to have any sleep. At night, they would drag me to the basement where they would beat me with a long, heavy stick, and jump on me. They were trying to make me confess that I was a spy. Despite such brutal behavior, the US has maintained a first-rate strategic relationship with South Korea, providing successive repressive regimes with extensive US aid. Park Chung Hee was assassinated by the KCIA in 1979, but South Korea is still a nation troubled by lack of human rights. GENERAL AUGUSTO PINOCHET President of Chile Augusto Pinochet deposed democratically elected President Salvador Allende in 1973, and buried Chile's 150 year old democracy. "Democracy is the breeding ground of communism", says Pinochet. The bloody coup, in which Allende was assassinated, was carefully managed by the CIA and ITT. Tens of thousands of Chileans have been tortured, killed, and exiled since then, according to Amnesty International. A U.S. congressional delegation was told by inmates at San Miguel Prison that they had been tortured by "the application of electric shock, simultaneous blows to the ears, cigarette burns, and simulated executions by firing squads." Despite Chile's bad human rights record, the U.S. government continued to support Pinochet with international loans. Even the state-sponsored car-bomb assassination of Chile's former Ambassador to the U.S., Orlando Letelier, did not convince the U.S. to break with Pinochet. In 1988 a plebiscite refused to extend Pinochet's rule, so he altered the constitution to reduce the powers of the incoming elected President, and left himself head of the armed forces. All the other South American dictators are gone but Pinochet has found the perfect solution: Chile now has the squeaky-clean sheen of democracy yet he still has his finger on the trigger. POL POT Commander of the Khmer Rouge The bombing of Cambodia by the US from 1969 to 1972, left 600,000 civilians dead, millions of refugees, tens-of-thousands dying from disease and starvation, and the Cambodian economy and culture in ruins. Cambodians blamed the US and the puppet regime of Lon Nol for the country's destruction, and gradually sided with the guerrilla army of the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot, which finally defeated Lon Nol, and took power in April, 1975. Once in power, Pol Pot emptied the cities, forcing the people into the countryside. Virtually all educated people were killed and more than 1.5 million people perished in this "holocaust". Only when the Khmer Rouge was ousted by Vietnam in 1979, did the terror stop. Washington took steps to preserve the Khmer Rouge as a counter force to the Vietnamese. International relief agencies were pressured by the US to provide food and humanitarian assistance to the Khmer Rouge, which had fled to Thailand, and the US sent military aid as well. In 1982, in an effort to isolate the Vietnamese, the US forced together the three contending anti-Vietnamese groups, insisting that the Khmer Rouge be part of the negotiations. Cambodia continues to suffer from the devastation produced by both the US bombing and the Khmer Rouge atrocities. Pol Pot is considered to still be the power behind the Khmer Rouge, which has a strong presence in Cambodia today, thanks to the US. GENERAL SITIVENI RABUKA Commander, Armed Forces of Fiji On May, 1987, General Sitiveni Rabuka stormed the Fijian Parliament and arrested the newly elected Prime Minister, Dr. Timoci Bavadra. Bavadra's fledgling Labor Party had just defeated Fiji's pro-US puppet Prime Minister, Ratu Slr Kamese Mara, and although Bavadra's support for a nuclear free South Pacific was welcomed by the regional populace, a nuclear free zone was be unacceptable to the US. Thirty-two days after his electoral victory, Dr. Bavadra was overthrown by the pro-nuclear General Rabuka, with the help of the US. Once in control, General Rabuka quickly allied himself with some of the most brutal regimes in the world. "Military dictators seem to like other military dictators", says deposed Fijian Prime Minister Bavadra. "It did not take long for our illegal rulers to establish strong ties with Indonesia, Taiwan, and South Korea". Under General Rabuka's US supported police state, Amnesty International has reported, for the first time in Fijian history, cases of illegal detention and torture -- the beginning of the Latinization of the Pacific. ANTONIO DE OLIVEIRA SALAZAR Prlme Minister of Portugal Antonio de Oliveira Salazar worshipped Hitler and Mussolini, but after they lost, he joined the Allies and became a card-carrying member of NATO. However, he always kept a piece of fascism alive in Portugal. His secret police, the PIDE, were much like the Gastapo; concentration camps were set up for "enemies of the state", news organizations were merely propaganda machines, and all schools had their lesson plans carefully monitored by "Big Brother". Salazar also kept a little piece of the Dark Ages alive in Western Europe. In 1970, 30% of the population was illiterate, and the infant mortality rate was the second worst in Europe. The Portugese economy stagnated. Most of the land was held by 5% of the population, the vast majority of Portuguese worked in agriculture, and all union activities were forbidden. Portugal was the last stronghold of European colonialism. Salazar refused to give up colonies in East Timor, Portuguese Guiana, Mozambique, and Angola. He believed the "white man" must bring higher civilization to the " black man". The U.S. openly backed Portugal's colonial claims, due to the strategic importance of military bases such as the one in the Portugese Azores. Salazar died in 1968, after 40 years in power. His regime fell in 1974, at which point Portugal left Angola, but the US continued to back South African efforts there. HALIE SELASSIE Emperor of Ethiopla Emperor Halie Selassie may have been a better king to the animals of Ethiopia than to its people. In 1973, during the height of a drought in which 200,000 Ethiopians died of starvation, Salassie fed beef to his Great Danes. Selassie was a fairer ruler than many of those around him. For example, as a young provincial governor, he only took 50% of his peasants crops while other governors were taking 90%, and in the 1950s as few as 100 political prisoners were tortured in his jails at one time. But, under his long rule, Ethiopia remained in the dark ages. Just after his overthrow in 1974, the annual per capita income was $90, the literacy rate was 7% and Ethiopia was the poorest nation in Africa. Under Selassie, Ethiopia received more US aid than any other African country and Washington purchased a $2 million yacht for the Emperor. When Selassie faced an uprising in the province of Eritrea, the US sent advisors and arms to help him smash the revolt. In return for our support, Selassie provided the United States with a naval oasis in the Red Sea and a place for a strategic communications station. Selassie's kindness to his animals was his downfall; he was overthrown when photos of him feeding his dogs during the 1973 famine were circulated among his outraged troops. IAN SMITH Prime Minister of Rhodesia lan Smith promised the whites who elected him Prime Minister of Rhodesia in 1982 that he would keep Rhodesia white, at any cost. To stop the black guerrilla fighters trying to overthrow his regime, Smith rationed food for Africans whom he believed were feeding the guerrillas. This cruel measure only served to starve the already undernourished black population. Studies found that over 90% of Rhodesia's black children were malnourished and nutritional deficiencies were the major cause of infant death. Smith rounded up blacks into concentration camps he called "protective" villages. Believing that ignorant people were less likely to revolt, he cut funding for black education, spending $5 on each black child compared to $80 on each white child. His all white Parliament passed a law protecting officials who took actions for the suppression of "terrorism", enabling the police and military to commit atrocities. An international trade boycott against Rhodesia arose, but while the US publicly condemned the government, it continued to do business there. In 1971, President Nixon lifted the chrome embargo against Rhodesia at a time when there was a surplus of chrome in the US. Blacks were eventually given the right to vote for some officials, but the opposition to Smith's government grew so strong that he was ultimately forced to give up some power to blacks. In 1979, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, a country primarily ruled by blacks. ANASTASIO SOMOZA, SR. AND JR. Presidents of Nicaragua The Marines invaded Nicaragua in 1912, and stayed until 1933, fighting but never defeating the revolutionary Augusto Sandino. They created the Nicaraguan National Guard and installed Anastasio Somoza Garcia in power. Then Sandino, who had signed a truce and put down his arms, was assassinated by Somoza. A general who led the Marines into Nicaragua, explained, " I was a high class muscle-man for big business, for Wall Street and for the banks. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. l helped purify Nicaragua for an International banking house." President Franklin Roosevelt put it another way. "Somoza may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch." Corruption, torture, and wholesale murder of dissidents continued for 45 years under two generations of Somozas, for after Somoza Garcia was gunned down in the streets in 1956, his son Anastasio Somoza Debayle took control. The Somozas plundered Nicaragua and became millionaires. The younger Somoza, made $12 million a year buying the blood of his people and selling it abroad at a 300% mark-up. In 1972 after an earthquake killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans, Somoza had his National Guard seize $30 million in international relief supplies and sold them to the highest bidder. Near the end of his reign, he aerially bombed his own capital to stay in power, but he was overthrown in 1979 by a rebel group who called themselves the Sandinistas, after the revolutionary hero his father had slain. ALFREDO STROESSNER President of Paraguay Alfredo Stroessner seized power in Paraguay in 1954. European correspondents who visited Paraguay during his rule used the term the "poor man's Nazi regime" to describe the Paraguayan government. Of German descent, Stroessner was a great admirer of Nazism, and this showed not only in the refuge he offered to many Nazi war criminals, such as Joseph Mengele, but also in his ruthless methods. From the Nazis the Paraguayan military learned the art of genocide. The native Ache Indians were in the way of progress, progress represented by American and European corporations who planned to exploit the nation's forests, mines, and grazing lands. The Indians were hunted down, parents killed, and children sold into slavery. Survivors were herded into reservations headed by American fundamentalist missionaries, some of whom had participated in the hunts. Between 1962 and 1975, Paraguay received $146 million in U.S. aid. Paraguayan officials seemingly wanted more, however, for in 1971, high ranking members of the regime were implicated in the Marseilles drug ring, with Paraguay their transfer point for shipments from France to the US. In the 1980s, America finally condemned Paraguayan civil rights abuses and drug trafficking. Stroessner still looked as if he'd be dictator for life, but in 1988 one of his closest generals, Andres Rodriguez, a known drug dealer, took over after a coup. Rodriguez promised to restore democracy, and President Bush called the 1989 elections a democratic opening, but opponents declared them a massive fraud. Rodriguez's Colorado party won 74% of the vote. Stroessner took refuge in Brasilia, Brazil. He still lives there, in comfort. GENERAL SUHARTO President of Indonesia Indonesia is a totalitarian state and its uncontested ruler for over 20 years, General Suharto, is one of the most brutal dictators in history. After a CIA organized coup brought him to power in 1965, Suharto, decided to purge every communist subversive from Indonesian soil. General Nasution, a close associate of Suharto, called for the extermination of three million Indonesian communist party members, and with the CIA supervised the murderous purge. Paratroopers would arrive in a region with a list of "subversives" and provide it to local vigilante groups. Using machetes and other crude weapons, the vigilantes would hack the alleged subversives to death. Entire populations of towns and villages were herded to central locations and massacred. Children would be asked to identify communists who would then be executed on the spot. In addition to the half million people who were killed outright after the coup, another 750,000 were arrested and tortured. Ultimately, one million people died in one of the most savage mass slaughters of modern political history. The US continues to this day to train and arm the Indonesian military with the latest high-tech equipment. (Suharto resigned in 1999 after mass public protest) RAFAEL LEONIDAS TRUJILLO President of the Dominican Republic The US occupied the Dominican Republic in 1916 and created the National Guard to put Rafael Leonidas Trujillo into power. The fact that Trujillo was court-martialed for kidnapping and rape in 1920 did not impede his rise to power or taint his relationship with the US. As dictator of the Dominican Republic for 30 years, Trujillo had a penchant for self-adulation, and put his personal stamp on everything, including the capital, village water pumps, and homes for the aged. Trujillo won the 1930 presidential election with more votes than there were registered voters, but because he was anti-communist, Washington was happy. He invoked anti-communism to justify mass deportations, torture and summary executions. Workers who asked for wage increases were labeled communists, and shot on the spot, as were farmers who tried to stop Trujillo from confiscating their land. He eventually controlled over 80% of the country's sugar plantations, using slave labor provided by neighboring Haiti to keep profits high. In 1937, he decided to blame depressed sugar prices on the Haitian workers, and massacred 20,000 them. Trujillo was finally assassinated by the CIA in 1961 after he attempted to have President Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela murdered because of his criticism of Trujillo's brutal regime. It was only then that the Marine Corps made public the fact that our ally Trujillo was a convicted rapist. GENERAL JORGE RAFAEL VIDELA President of Argentina Soon after the coup that brought him to power in 1976 General Jorge Rafael Videla began Argentina's dirty war. All political and union activities were suspended, wages were reduced by 60%, and dissidents were tortured by Nazi and US-trained military and police. Survivors say the torture rooms contained swastikas and pictures of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. One year after Videla's coup, Amnesty International estimated 15,000 people had disappeared and many were in secret detention camps, but although the U.S. press admitted human rights abuses occurred in Argentina, Videla was often described as a "moderate' who revitalized his nation's troubled economy. Videla had a good public relations firm in the U.S., Deaver and Hannaford, the same firm used by Ronald Reagan, Taiwan, and Guatemala. Videla also received aid from the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), through its affiliate, CAL (Confederation AntiCommunists Latinoamericana). CAL sent millions of dollars to Argentina from the US, including old anti-communist organizations with alliances with the Italian drug mafia. As part of its WACL affiliation, Argentina trained Nicaraguan contras for the US. Videla left office in 1981, and after the Falklands Crisis of 1982, he and his cohorts were tried for human rights abuses by the new government. MOHAMMED ZIA UL-HAQ Presldent of Pakistan In 1979, when General Mohammod Zia Ul-Haq executed his elected predecessor, Zulfigar Ali Bhutto, and declared martial law, drugs were unknown in Pakistan, but by 1984 Pakistan was furnishing 70% of the world's high grade heroin. That same year, George Bush addressed a group of Pakistani officials and praised the government of President Zia for its anti-narcotics program. However, among the guests listening to Vice-President Bush were many high ranking officials with links to one of the most lucrative heroin syndicates in the world. Although the US government had some very capable drug enforcement agents in Pakistan, they did not break even one narcotics case there. A senior Pakstani narcotics officer said he had concluded the US was unwilling to press for arrests that might embarrass a government so closely tied to Washington. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called Pakistan a "frontline state" defending "free people everywhere'. That may explain why despite its unsavory record of jailing and torturing dissidents, Pakistan under Zia was the largest recipient of US. aid, receiving over $3 billion in 1982, of which over half was for weapons. Zia eventually lifted martial law and called for general elections in 1985. However, many of his outspoken opponents were jailed during the elections and for several days afterward. Zia died in a mysterious plane crash in 1988, and the political party of his predecessor then formed a government behind the late President Bhutto's daughter Benazir Bhutto. Most of this information is from: Friendly Dictators authors - Dennis Bernstein and Laura Sydell Eclipse Enterprises, 1995 PO Box 1099, Forestville, CA 95436 ______________

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• 25 Jun 2009 23:33

  Spies In the Classroom: The Government Is Running a Secretive Intelligence Recruitment Program in Schools By David Price, CounterPunchPosted on June 24, 2009, Printed on June 25, 2009http://www.alternet.org/story/140872/ As the continuities and disjunctures between the Bush and Obama administrations come into focus it becomes increasingly clear that while Obama's domestic agenda has some identifiable breaks with Bush's, at its core, the new administration remains committed to staying the course of American militarization. Now we have an articulate, nuanced president who supports elements of progressive domestic policies, can even comfortably say the phrase LGBT in public speeches, while funding military programs at alarming levels and continuing the Bush administration's military and intelligence invasion of what used to be civilian life. The latest manifestation of this continuity came last week when Dennis C. Blair, Director of National Intelligence, announced plans to transform the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP) from a pilot project into a permanent budget item. Blair also announced plans to establish a "Reserve Officers' Training Corps" to train unidentified future intelligence officers in US college classrooms. Like students receiving PRISP funds, the identities of students participating in these programs would not be known to professors, university administrators or fellow students -- in effect, these future intelligence analysts and agents would conduct their first covert missions in our university classrooms. Four years ago I wrote a series of CounterPunch exposés on the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program (PRISP), then a pilot project funded under section 318 of the 2004 Intelligence Authorization Act. PRISP links undergraduate and graduate students with US security and intelligence agencies like the NSA or CIA, and unannounced to universities, professors or fellow-students, PRISP-students enter American university campuses, classrooms, laboratories and professor's offices without disclosing links to these agencies. PRISP was originally conceived by anthropologist Felix Moos, long a proponent of using anthropological knowledge in waging of counterinsurgency campaigns -- an area of growing interest to the Obama administration as it prepares for prolonged soft power counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan. It seems likely that many of the affected disciplines will offer little resistance and some may quickly warm to announcements of any new funding stream. Traditionally, the disciplines of political science, history or area specialists coming from the humanities have seldom resisted such developments; but for disciplines like anthropology, these undisclosed intelligence-linked programs present devastating ethical and practical problems, as the non-discloser of funding and links to intelligence agencies flies in the face of the basic ethical principles of the discipline. But even without the problems for individual disciplinary ethics codes, the presence of these undisclosed secret sharers in our classrooms betrays fundamental trusts that lie at the core of honest academic endeavors. While the National Intelligence Director's move to make PRISP a permanent budget item will damage the academic freedom and integrity of American universities, it will likely be met by the open arms of university administrators facing crashed university endowments and dwindling budgets. That some administrators would so easily accommodate themselves and their institutional integrity for the promise of funds should be of little surprise, but I fear that the combined forces of the current economic collapse conjoined with President Obama's ability to bring a new liberal credibility to the this warmed-over Bush era project will induce many faculty and students to seriously consider participating in these programs. Times are hard and as funds get scarce it will be increasingly difficult for many to say no. This development is just the latest installment in on ongoing efforts to increase the militarization of American higher education. None of this should be surprising in a nation that alone spends about 48% of the planet's military budget. In the social sciences, these shifts away from broad funding sources designed to create independent knowledgeable scholars, to those now requiring indentured servitude has been a long time coming. Back in the early 1990s when the National Security Education Program (NSEP) was first introduced it was widely condemned by professional associations like the Middle East Studies Association and the African Studies Association, Latin American Studies Association for blurring the lines between independent scholarship raised by NSEP's its requirements that program participants later seek employment in governmental agencies. But with the depressed economy, plummeting endowment funds at universities and foundations, the difficult academic job market, and scarce academic funding sources, I fear that professional associations' reactions against these developments will be muted. As pilot programs, PRISP and the Intelligence Community Scholars Programs made scarce funds available to students, as traditional non-payback funding programs were being cut. Programs like PRISP that seek to tie young scholars to agencies like CIA early in their career as a means of bringing new ideas and skills to these agencies will fail in meeting the claimed goal of getting these agencies to think in new ways because such ties to institutional culture early in student-agent careers will increase the influence of agency cultural groupthink while diminishing the impact of academic culture. If the Obama administration really wants to improve governmental agencies' knowledge of and approaches to the world, they need to increase funding to a broad range of educational funding programs that do not encumber or limit the range of knowledge in the ways that programs like PRISP do. This move to establish PRISP as a permanent budgetary item is the sort of program that likely will speed through congress -- which can then claim it is both supporting education funding, and military and intelligence sectors, with a bonus feel-good work-ethic mandate thrown-in by requiring students to payback their funds through required future governmental service. But this push will be done without an outside assessment of PRISP as pilot program. PRISP needs an independent assessment of what it has accomplished -- including an assessment of the impact of the predatory penalties facing former PRISP students who come to realize that they do not wish to fulfill their commitments to work for these agencies upon graduation. Because of the lack of transparency surrounding PRISP, we have little idea what is really going on with the program. Last year I was able to identify one social science recipient of PRISP funds who explained to me that PRISP had been such a failure in finding social scientists to fund that PRISP had sought out this person and provided them with funds for work that was already underway just to spend-down the PRISP budget. Given these recent difficulties with the program, I wonder if the current expansion of PRISP is a supply-side effort to troll the pool of increasingly underfunded and debt-carrying desperate young scholars with few other funding options. Professional associations like the American Association of University Professors, the American Psychological Association and the American Anthropological Association need to speak out in opposition of the permanent establishment of PRISP. PRISP risks further blurring already hazy borders marking proper independent academic roles, and it stands to confuse academic identities in ways that many will not even realize. Some of these processes are reminiscent of a recurrent motif in Philip K. Dick's stories where protagonists becomes unclear of their own agency and identity; becoming unsure of their own histories and memories, or true political alliances -- in effect becoming undercover agents with identities unknown even to themselves. As this new generation of programs covertly brings undeclared and unidentifiable students into our universities they disrupt university identities and transforms the roles all who teach, research, study and work there in ways that they will not necessarily understand -- as institutions of higher learning further lose their independence and become unwitting agents of state intelligence functions. © 2009 CounterPunch All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/140872/ _____________________

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• 25 Jun 2009 15:02

  Reflexive Research Methodologies Theories of Justice

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• 24 Jun 2009 10:24

  NEIU JUST 301 Theories of Justice

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• 24 Jun 2009 01:17

  Why American Policy SUCKSBy Jill Richardson June 23, 2009 "La Vida Locavore" -- Out of curiosity I decided to see who was spending the most on lobbying in America. And Oh My Goodness - NO WONDER our policy sucks. No wonder it's nearly impossible to pass health care reform that provides all Americans with affordable care, a global warming bill that doesn't suck, and the Employee Free Choice Act. No wonder we're in these two stupid wars. I know everyone's aware of the problems lobbying poses to our country, but good lord, if people saw the sheer magnitude of it (and the comparatively paltry amounts spent in the people's interest) they would be outraged. So here goes. Here's the list of the top 100 (ranked by amount spent on lobbying in Q109). Enjoy. I pulled up all of the reports for first quarter 2009 but over 20,000 items came up (and the report only shows the first 3000). OK, try again - all reports for over $1 million for first quarter 2009. This time a little over 100 came up (including AIG, who spent $1,250,000 on lobbying during that period). So here's how to read this list: These are the amounts spent by the corporations listed. However, many (if not most) of these corporations ALSO contract out to private lobbying firms, so the amounts you see here MIGHT not be the total amount they spent on lobbying in Q109. For example, Monsanto spent $2,094,000 for its in house lobbying but then contracted out to Arent Fox LLP; Lesher, Russell & Barron, Inc. ($60,000); Ogilvy Government Relations ($60,000); Parven Pomper Strategies ($40,000); Sidley Austin LLP; TCH Group, LLC ($50,000); The Nickles Group, LLC ($63,000); The Washington Tax Group, LLC ($40,000); and Troutman Sanders Public Affairs Group ($30,000) - for a total of $2,437,000 in first quarter 2009. Health Care, Health Insurance, & Pharma3. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: $6,910,000 6. Pfizer, Inc: $6,140,000 12. American Medical Association: $4,240,000 18. American Hospital Association: $3,580,000 19. Eli Lilly and Company: $3,440,000 37. America's Health Insurance Plans, Inc: $2,030,000 39. CVS Caremark Inc: $2,005,000 47. Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association: $1,800,000 49. GlaxoSmithKline: $1,780,000 63. Merck & Co: $1,500,000 65. United Health Group, Inc: $1,500,000 69. Sanofi-Aventis U.S. Inc: $1,460,000 76. Novartis: $1,347,134 87. Abbott Laboratories: $1,260,000 89. Astrazeneca Pharmaceuticals, LP: $1,250,000 92. Medtronic, Inc: $1,238,000 Oil 2. Exxon Mobil: $9,320,000 4. Chevron U.S.A. Inc: $6,800,000 7. Conoco Phillips: $5,980,935 16. BP America, Inc: $3,610,000 20. Marathon Oil Corporation: $3,380,000 45. American Petroleum Institute: $1,810,000 Defense 5. Lockheed Martin Corporation: $6,380,000 11. General Electric Company: $4,540,000 28. Northrop Grumman Corporation: $2,570,000 30. Boeing Company: $2,410,00 51. Honeywell International: $1,760,000 73. Raytheon Company: $1,360,000 Telecoms 10. AT&T Services, Inc: $5,134,873 14. Verizon (excluding Verizon Wireless): $3,760,000 21. National Cable and Telecommunications Association: $3,370,000 23. Comcast Corporation: $2,760,000 68. Motorola, Inc: $1,470,000 Automotive 22. General Motors: $2,800,000 27. United Services Automobile Association: $2,590,244 52. Ford Motor Company: $1,750,000 84. Toyota Motor North America: $1,290,000 86. Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers: $1,264,400 Financial 32. Financial Services Roundtable: $2,260,000 33. Prudential Financial, Inc: $2,180,000 41. American Bankers Association: $1,890,000 61. Visa, Inc: $1,540,000 74. Investment Company Institute: $1,359,917 75. Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association: $1,350,000 82. J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, N.A.: $1,310,000 90. Citigroup Management Corp: $1,250,000 90. Credit Union National Association: $1,250,000 Biotech 36. Monsanto: $2,094,000 40. Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO): $1,920,000 44. Bayer Corporation: $1,843,672 Railroads 24. Association of American Railroads: $2,759,545 54. Union Pacific Corporation: $1,717,108 71. BNSF Railway: $1,400,000 Life Insurance 42. American Council of Life Insurers: $1,867,075 44. New York Life Insurance Company: $1,840,000 64. State Farm Insurance: $1,500,000 93. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company: $1,237,000 Other 1. Chamber of Commerce of the U.S.A.: $9,996,000 8. National Association of Realtors: $5,727,000 9. U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform: $5,480,000 13. AARP: $4,090,000 15. Southern Company: $3,650,000 17. Altria Client Services Inc: $3,580,000 25. Amgen, Inc: $2,750,000 26. National Association of Broadcasters: $2,600,000 29. Edison Electric Institute: $2,550,000 31. Fedex Corporation: $2,370,000 34. Textron, Inc.: $2,140,000 35. General Dynamics Corp: $2,101,945 38. International Business Machines (IBM): $2,030,000 43. United Technologies Corporation: $1,860,000 46. Recording Industry Association of America: $1,810,000 48. CTIA-The Wireless Association: $1,790,000 50. Time Warner Inc. $1,780,000 53. The Dow Chemical Company: $1,735,000 55. American Electric Power Company: $1,716,913 56. Microsoft Corporation: $1,650,000 57. Qualcomm, Incorporated: $1,620,000 58. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc: $1,600,000 59. L-3 Communications: $1,580,000 60. Exelon Business Services, LLC: $1,540,000 62. Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc: $1,530,000 66. Norfolk Southern Corporation: $1,485,026 67. Koch Companies Public Sector LLC: $1,480,000 70. American Airlines: $1,450,000 72. Oracle Corporation: $1,390,000 77. Air Transport Association of America, Inc.: $1,340,000 78. Disney Worldwide Services, Inc.: $1,330,000 79. Sepracor, Inc: $1,324,157 80. National Association of Home Builders: $1,320,000 81. UPS: $1,316,426 83. Siemens Corporation: $1,300,000 85. Duke Energy Corporation: $1,282,770 94. Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., Inc: $1,230,000 95. Business Roundtable: $1,220,000 96. Wellpoint, Inc: $1,220,000 97. American Wind Energy Association: $1,212,504 98. F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd: $1,206,427 99. National Rural Electric Cooperative Association: $1,200,000 99. CBS Corporation: $1,200,000

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• 20 Jun 2009 05:24

  JUST 241 Selected Course Readings

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• 19 Jun 2009 06:45

  NEIU JUST 241

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• 18 Jun 2009 10:00

   

  

  "I might point out here that colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that is just confined to England or France or the United States. The interests in this country are in cahoots with the interests in France and the interests in Britain. It's one huge complex or combine, and it creates what's known not as the American power structure or the French power structure, but an international power structure. This [racist western] international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources."  “Unless we call one white man, by name, a ‘devil’, we are not speaking of any individual  white man. We are speaking of the collective 'white' man’s historical record. We are speaking of the collective 'white' man’s cruelties, and evils, and greeds that have seen him act like a devil toward the 'non-white' man. Any intelligent, honest, objective person cannot fail to realize that"  Malcolm X 

  "First World" Imperialism Against the "Third World"

    We want a better world. We want a world based on equality and mutuality. We envision a future in which the full potential of humanity is realized: one without unequal power relations and one of ecological harmony. Creating such a world is our common cause.” Such is the revolutionary refrain.

  However pious the statements are, they stand disconnected from the world today: one full of inequality, oppression, coercion, violence, poverty and so on. If we really seek to create such a new, ‘utopian’ world, one thing is clear- we have a lot of work to do. Before we embark on this huge project, we need a plan or some sort of road map. Before we can chart a course towards the world we’d like to see, we must understand where we are now.

  The world today is marked by extreme inequalities and stratification. The vast majority of people, around eighty percent, subsist on less than ten dollars a day. (1) Theirs is a world of poverty, toil and deprivation. Contrasted to this is a privileged minority noted for affluence, consumption and waste. Generally speaking, this social divide breaks down geographically: vast impoverishment being the norm of the ‘Third World’ and widespread affluence characteristic of the ‘First World.’

  The scope and depth of this situation is unimaginable. In India alone, seven hundred million people live on less than two dollars dollars a day. (2) This is roughly equivalent to the entire English-speaking world. Around half of the world, about 3.5 billion people, live on less that $2.50 a day. (1) The human effects are devastating. For example, every year over 2 million people die of water born disease and every five seconds a child dies of starvation or malnutrition. (3) (4) All of these deaths are preventable: on a daily basis Amerikans alone have an average intake of 3,700 calories, throw away almost a third of their edible food and use 5.8 billion gallons of potable water just for toilets. (5) (6) (7)

  The squalor of the of Third World and the squander of the First are directly related. Each world’s respective condition is the direct result of exploitation. The modern system of exploitation, whereby a global minority in a few rich countries lives at the expense of the impoverished global majority, is called imperialism. That is to say that in relation to the imperialist system and the Third World masses, those in the First World are beneficiaries of the former and a petty class of exploiters towards the latter.

  Imperialism is currently the most widespread, fundamental form of oppression. This does not mean that other forms of oppression do not exist. Rather, imperialism is currently the dominant form of oppression: it touches the most people in the most fundamental way; it is the foremost determinant of life-options and class; and other forms of oppression are almost always negated, heightened, co-opted or superseded by imperialist exploitation. Imperialism drives social life today.

  Attitudes and trends of thought, or ‘class consciousness,’ confirm this social reality. Whereas apathy and post modernism are common in the West, this is due to the lack of a functional need for a politically charged population. When First Worlders do express political views they are almost always supportive of imperialism. Mindless consumerism, a natural aspect of any society fattened on stolen wealth, is also a major phenomenon in the First World. On the other side of the social world, those in the Third World naturally resist their oppression. Radical Islam, the fastest growing social movement of the last thirty years, is in many regards an opposition movement against imperialism. This amalgamation of religion and anti-imperialism is no accident. Rather, it is evidence of two truths. First, the main social antagonism today is between the Third and First World. Second, oppression and resistance are inseparable.

  Insofar as imperialism is the most fundamental form of oppression, resistance and revolutionary struggles are regular features in the Third World and at the margin. It is the Third World’s anti-imperialist struggle which is both the most widespread and common struggle amongst the global masses and by definition one against the core of global power. Containing amazing diversity, flaws and potential, the global anti-imperialist struggle is the struggle of the world’s exploited majority.

  The anti-imperialist struggle is the modern day revolutionary struggle. The struggle of the global masses who are exploited by imperialism is of primary importance for those who seek a fundamentally better world: one that cannot freely evolve from the current one.

  Anti-imperialist initiatives and revolutions in a single country or territory weakens the imperialist system as a whole and gives a new impetus for further, more widespread change.  It is as part of the global fight against imperialism that the foundations for a new world are built and of this process itself from which further revolutionary potential emerges. In our period, the complete abolition of capitalism, patriarchy, youth oppression and other unequal structural relationships as well as arriving at a state of mutuality and ecological harmony are directly tied the destruction of the current order via anti-imperialist struggle.

  For revolutionaries around the world the current task is to advance and support the ongoing struggle against imperialism as part the advancement of our radical vision of a world free from all oppression. Those revolutionaries in the First World, who owing to class composition are few and far between and separated from the struggle of the world’s exploited masses, naturally find this task daunting. Nevertheless, for all those who desire a new world, this is the struggle we must engage in.

  No doubt, the path before us is long and arduous. However, the place to begin is here; the time to start is now.

  http://raimd.wordpress.com/

  ---

  Neo-Colonialism in the Racist US Police State

  In this period of Obama-ite neo-colonialism, our colonial experience as Africans reminds us that we have previously traveled this road. To qualify this as a colonial experience clarifies the fact that African history does not begin with slavery or any relationship with Europeans. Therefore, any statements or feelings that the presidency of Barack Obama is in any way history-making or even “the end of racism” grossly misrepresents reality. It smears our role as a people in the vast interwoven social fabric that produces history thru COLLECTIVE DEVELOPMENT AND INTERACTION.

  So some racist ideologues continue to say that “your own people sold you into slavery”, and if it weren’t for slavery we could not enjoy freedom, etc. These views, all too often backed up by negro preachers and politicians at some level or another, derive directly from colonialist self-justification rather than any message that will liberate our people from the bondage of colonialism and Imperialism.

  True, the seeds of ne(gr)o-colonialism took root when the first slatees received handfuls of beads in exchange for capturing their fellow Africans and selling them to white slavers. Hence, the guilt of neo-colonialism – beyond being an emotional game but embedded in a criminal activity – requires that the crooks engaged in this enterprise maintain their grip on the minds of a people sold out and eviscerated. In hand with slavery, neo-colonialism justifies Imperialism and obstructs our community from elevating critical issues like reparations, prisons, the war-of-drugs, health-care, and so forth.

  It must be said that Obama is a neo-colonialist who speaks very differently from any prior US president. Obama seems to support the unions; he points out how Cuba’s relates to Latin America by sending physicians, while the US has historically sent weapons. If Obama wants to place a human face upon Imperialism, that will fail in the long run. He cannot dismiss any of the deep-seated hostility of a racist system, which presses down upon our community.

  Thru out our colonial experience, those wielding power whose faces remain indistinguishable from ours have typically remained unable or unwilling to diminish the State monopoly on violence. Obama has yet to discuss critical issues relating to the State’s conduct in its operations, policies, and undue weight of forces on the black community. The apparent diluting effect of Obama-ite neo-colonialism, on the concentrated class question better known as racism, so far has failed to dilute anti-black police State repression.

  For this reason, Africans must recognize the realities of Imperialism. The State continues to display naked aggression against the black community. Arizona’s Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio recently expressed his admiration of the Ku Klux Klan in a broadcast interview. This same official imposes the worst work camp conditions on detainees, and recently fired NBA law and order slatee Shaquille O’Neal.

  Former US congressman turned Oakland mayor, Ron Dellums attempted to intervene in a demonstration protesting the recent police murder of Oscar Grant. Officers involved in the execution of Grant, a New Year’s Day reveler, in full view of scores of people on a BART platform, had remained at large. The State dragged its feet, despite more than ample footage captured by camera phone users, plus eyewitness accounts. For some reason, Dellums obviously believed that protests were uncalled for and people should never take to the street. Well, the demo turned int a rebellion when the mayor disappeared and the pigs moved in to arrest San Francisco Bay View activist/reporter JR Valrey.

  Following that day’s uprising, the State finally arrested the trigger man, tho his two accomplices – who accessorized the crime by confiscating camera phones – have not been charged. Meanwhile, Valrey continues to fight charges for participating in a demonstration.

  Mumia Abu-Jamal, another journalist, has spent 26 years on Pennsylvania’s death row for a wrongful murder conviction. He steadfastly continues to write about the plight of poor and disorganized working people. The State refuses to not only recognize his innocence, it refuses to review exculpatory testimony from witnesses, and ignores established legal precedents where Mumia’s rights have been violated.

  Indeed, across Pennsylvania more political prisoners waste away in prison than in any other state. Maroon Shoatz has been on 23-hour lockdown since 1991. The MOVE Eight cannot receive a fair and lenient parole hearing for a crime that they did not commit.

  A group of human rights activists traveled to Harrisburg on April 22 to discuss with state lawmakers the conditions that prisoners face inside the state prison system. These people complained of sons, friends and contacts who were on 23 hour lockdown, had urine and other contaminants in their food, denied medical attention, and subjected to other horrendous problems. Some of the lawmakers or their aides seemed concerned, while a few appeared nonplussed. In any event, the struggle for prisoner rights will not stop there, let alone the struggle for those wrongly convicted to serve as fodder for the Imperialist system.

  These are the conditions which real freedom fighters face, and our community must not wait for anybody else to speak for these oppressed sisters and brothers. Four percent of the world population, the US accounts for 25% of all prisoners worldwide. Of that number, fully two-thirds are colonized workers, being Latino and African. Together, these two groups make up one-fourth of the US population. FBI crime states have consistently stated that crimes are committed fairly evenly across populations, meaning that white commit the same crimes at the same rate as anybody else, which means that white prisoners should out-number blacks or Latinos by eight-to-one. But they do not because law enforcement and the prison system are based upon colonialism and racism.

  While any number of somebodies still need to justify the State by pleading for balance when conditions demand mass uprisings, that blind lady with the sword and scales comes from mythology. Our mistress for justice is Mama Assata Shakur, living in exile in revolutionary Cuba with a $1 million bounty on her head by this same injustice system.

  Cuba, the embargoed country which sends doctors to Latin America while America sends guns. Cuba, a land where people took up arms and joined the fight against apartheid South Africa ten thousand miles away, while America deepens African oppression. Negroes want to become doctors and politicians not to help their own people but to help capitalism. Yet African people need revolutionary physicians, revolutionary politicians and journalists, and revolutionary thinkers and doers who will help liberate our people. We must not believe in neo-colonialism no matter how well it works; we must pick up on revolution.

  mbantunyankompong.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/neo-colonialism-in-the-police-state/  

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  who I am in this country... In the summer of 1981, a 19-year-old black man went to buy a pack of cigarettes on a cool summer evening. He never returned. The following morning he was found hanging from a tree. This is in 1981! I was 8 years old at the time. There were parts of the country that I was not welcome because of the ebony hue of my skin. Those parts, however large or small, still exist. These photographs bring the reality to your face. I didn't think there was anything else to stop me in my tracks. Yet again, I was mistaken.In addition to the photographs, there is also a large mural on display at the exhibition. I found myself involuntarily moving closer and closer to it until I was at the foot of this massive, ominous piece. On its black surface, etched in. http://www.thedetroiter.com/WWHO   Thanks to brother Robert Smith for providing this item. GZ

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