[Peace-discuss] Bill Blum writes…

[Brussel Morton K.]

  The Anti-Empire Report

Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life
                                           May 1, 2008
                                            by William Blum
                                       www.killinghope.org

Since I gave up hope, I feel better.

"More than any time in history, mankind now faces a crossroads. One  
path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total  
extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly."  
-- Woody Allen

Food riots, in dozens of countries, in the 21st century. Is this what  
we envisioned during the post-World War Two, moon-landing 20th  
century as humankind's glorious future? It's not the end of the  
world, but you can almost see it from here.

American writer Henry Miller (1891-1980) once asserted that the role  
of the artist was to "inoculate the world with disillusionment". So  
just in case you -- for whatever weird reason -- cling to the belief/ 
hope that the United States can be a positive force in ending or  
slowing down the new jump in world hunger, here are some  
disillusioning facts of life.

On December 14, 1981 a resolution was proposed in the United Nations  
General Assembly which declared that "education, work, health care,  
proper nourishment, national development are human rights". Notice  
the "proper nourishment". The resolution was approved by a vote of  
135-1. The United States cast the only "No" vote.

A year later, December 18, 1982, an identical resolution was proposed  
in the General Assembly. It was approved by a vote of 131-1. The  
United States cast the only "No" vote.

The following year, December 16, 1983, the resolution was again put  
forth, a common practice at the United Nations. This time it was  
approved by a vote of 132-1. There's no need to tell you who cast the  
sole "No" vote.

These votes took place under the Reagan administration.

Under the Clinton administration, in 1996, a United Nations-sponsored  
World Food Summit affirmed the "right of everyone to have access to  
safe and nutritious food". The United States took issue with this,  
insisting that it does not recognize a "right to food". Washington  
instead championed free trade as the key to ending the poverty at the  
root of hunger, and expressed fears that recognition of a "right to  
food" could lead to lawsuits from poor nations seeking aid and  
special trade provisions.[1]

The situation of course did not improve under the administration of  
George W. Bush. In 2002, in Rome, world leaders at another U.N.- 
sponsored World Food Summit again approved a declaration that  
everyone had the right to "safe and nutritious food". The United  
States continued to oppose the clause, again fearing it would leave  
them open to future legal claims by famine-stricken countries.[2]

Along with petitioning American leaders to become decent human beings  
we should be trying to revive the population control movement. Birth  
rates must be radically curbed. All else being equal, a markedly  
reduced population count would have a markedly beneficial effect upon  
global warming and food and water availability (not to mention  
finding a parking spot and lots of other advantages). People, after  
all, are not eating more. There are simply more/too many people. Some  
favor limiting families to two children. Others argue in favor of one  
child per family. Still others, who spend a major part of each day  
digesting the awful news of the world, are calling for a limit of  
zero. (The Chinese government recently announced that the country  
would have about 400 million more people if it wasn't for its limit  
of one or two children per couple.[3])

And as long as we're fighting for hopeless causes, let's throw in the  
demand that corporations involved in driving the cost of oil through  
the roof -- and dragging food costs with it -- must either  
immediately exhibit a conspicuous social conscience or risk being  
nationalized, their executives taken away in orange jumpsuits,  
handcuffs, and leg shackles. The same for other corporations and  
politicians involved in championing the replacement of food crops  
with biofuel crops or exploiting any of the other steps along the  
food-chain system which puts bloated income ahead of putting food in  
people's mouths. We're not speaking here of weather phenomena beyond  
the control of man, we're speaking of men making decisions, based not  
on people's needs but on pseudo-scientific, amoral mechanisms like  
supply and demand, commodity exchanges, grain futures, selling short,  
selling long, and other forms of speculation, all fed and multiplied  
by the proverbial herd mentality -- a system governed by only two  
things: fear and greed; not a rational way to feed a world of human  
beings.

The Wall Street Journal reports that grain-processing giant Archer- 
Daniels-Midland Co. said its quarterly profits "jumped 42%, including  
a sevenfold increase in net income in its unit that stores,  
transports and trades grains such as wheat, corn and soybeans. ...  
Some observers think financial speculation has helped push up prices  
as wealthy investors in the past year have flooded the agriculture  
commodity markets in search of better returns."[4]  At the same time,  
the French Agriculture Minister warned European Union officials  
against "too much trust in the free market. We must not leave the  
vital issue of feeding people to the mercy of market laws and  
international speculation."[5]

It should be noted that the price of gasoline in the United States  
increases on a regular basis, but there's no shortage of supply.  
There are no lines of cars waiting at gas stations. And demand has  
been falling as financially-strapped drivers cut back on car use.


Intelligence agents without borders
When Andreas Papandreou assumed his ministerial duties in 1964 in the  
Greek government led by his father George Papandreou, he was shocked  
to discover an intelligence service out of control, a shadow  
government with powers beyond the authority of the nation's nominal  
leaders, a service more loyal to the CIA than to the Papandreou  
government. This was a fact of life for many countries in the world  
during the Cold War, when the CIA could dazzle a foreign secret  
service with devices of technical wizardry, classes in spycraft,  
vital intelligence, unlimited money, and American mystique and  
propaganda. Many of the world's intelligence agencies have long  
provided the CIA with information about their own government and  
citizens. The nature of much of this information has been such that  
if a private citizen were to pass it to a foreign power he could be  
charged with treason.[6]

Leftist Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa declared in April that  
Ecuador's intelligence systems were "totally infiltrated and  
subjugated to the CIA," and accused senior Ecuadoran military  
officials of sharing intelligence with Colombia, the Bush  
administration's top (if not only) ally in Latin America. The  
previous month missiles had been fired into a camp of the Colombian  
FARC rebels situated in Ecuador near the Colombian border, killing  
about 25. One of those killed was Franklin Aisalla, an Ecuadorean  
operative for the group. It turned out that Ecuadorean intelligence  
officials had been tracking Aisalla, a fact that was not shared with  
the president, but apparently with Colombian forces and their  
American military advisers. "I, the president of the republic, found  
out about these operations by reading the newspaper," a visibly  
indignant Correa said. "This is not something we can tolerate." He  
added that he planned to restructure the intelligence agencies so he  
would have greater direct control over them.[7]

The FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) is routinely  
referred to in the world media as "Marxist", but that designation has  
not been appropriate for many years. The FARC has long been basically  
a criminal organization -- kidnapings for ransom, kidnapings for no  
apparent reason, selling protection services to businesses,  
trafficking in drugs, fighting the Colombian Army to be free to  
continue their criminal ways or to revenge their comrades' deaths.  
But Washington, proceeding from its declared ideology of "If you  
ain't with us, you're against us; in fact, if you ain't with us  
you're a terrorist", has designated FARC as a terrorist group. Every  
stated definition of "terrorist", from the FBI to the United Nations  
to the US criminal code makes it plain that terrorism is essentially  
a political act. This should, logically, exclude FARC from that  
category but, in actuality, has no effect on Washington's thinking.  
And now the Bush administration is threatening to add Venezuela to  
its list of "nations that support terrorism", following a claim by  
Colombia that it had captured a computer belonging to FARC after the  
attack on the group's campsite in Ecuador. A file allegedly found on  
the alleged computer, we are told, suggests that the Venezuelan  
government had channeled $300 million to FARC, and that FARC had  
appeared interested in acquiring 110 pounds of uranium.[8] What next?  
Chavez had met with Osama bin Laden at the campsite?

Amongst the FARC members killed in the Colombian attack on Ecuador  
were several involved in negotiations to free Ingrid Betancourt, a  
former Colombian presidential candidate who also holds French  
citizenship and is gravely ill. The French government and Venezuelan  
president Hugo Chavez have been very active in trying to win  
Betancourt's freedom. Individuals collaborating with Chavez have  
twice this year escorted a total of six hostages freed by the FARC  
into freedom, including four former Colombian legislators. The  
prestige thus acquired by Chavez has of course not made Washington  
ideologues happy. If Chavez should have a role in the freeing of  
Betancourt -- the FARC's most prominent prisoner -- his prestige  
would jump yet higher. The raid on the FARC camp has put an end to  
the Betancourt negotiations, at least for the near future.

The raid bore the fingerprints of the US military/CIA -- a Predator  
drone aircraft dropped "smart bombs" after pinpointing the spot by  
monitoring a satellite phone call between a FARC leader and Chavez. A  
Colombian Defense Ministry official admitted that the United States  
had provided his government with intelligence used in the attack, but  
denied that Washington had provided the weapons.[9] The New York  
Times observed that "The predawn operation bears remarkable  
similarities to one carried out in late January by the United States  
in Pakistan."[10]

So what do we have here? Washington has removed a couple of dozen  
terrorists (or "terrorists") from the ranks of the living without any  
kind of judicial process. Ingrid Betancourt continues her  
imprisonment, now in its sixth year, but another of Hugo Chavez's  
evil-commie plans has been thwarted. And the CIA -- as with its  
torture renditions -- has once again demonstrated its awesome power:  
anyone, anywhere, anytime, anything, all laws domestic and  
international be damned, no lie too big.


"After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" T.S. Eliot
Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, held a press conference at  
the National Press Club in Washington on April 28, during which he  
was asked about his earlier statement that the US government had  
invented the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, "as a means of genocide  
against people of color".

Wright did not offer any kind of evidence to support his claim. Even  
more important, the claim makes little sense. Why would the US  
government want to wipe out people of color? Undoubtedly, many  
government officials, past and present, have been racists, but the  
capitalist system at home and its imperialist brother abroad have no  
overarching ideological or realpolitik need for such a genocide.  
During the seven decades of the Cold War, the American power elite  
was much more interested in a genocide of "communists", of whatever  
color, wherever they might be found. Many weapons which might further  
this purpose were researched, including, apparently, an HIV-like  
virus. Consider this: On June 9, 1969, Dr. Donald M. MacArthur,  
Deputy Director, Research and Engineering, Department of Defense,  
testified before Congress:

     Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to  
make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain  
important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most  
important of these is that it might be refractory [resistant] to the  
immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to  
maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease.[11]

Whether the United States actually developed such a microorganism and  
what it did with it has not been reported. AIDS was first identified  
by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1981. It's  
certainly possible that the disease arose as a result of Defense  
Department experiments, and then spread as an unintended consequence.

If you think that our leaders, as wicked as they are, would not stoop  
to any kind of biological or chemical warfare against people,  
consider that in 1984 an anti-Castro Cuban exile, on trial in a New  
York court, testified that in the latter part of 1980 a ship traveled  
from Florida to Cuba with "a mission to carry some germs to introduce  
them in Cuba to be used against the Soviets and against the Cuban  
economy, to begin what was called chemical war, which later on  
produced results that were not what we had expected, because we  
thought that it was going to be used against the Soviet forces, and  
it was used against our own people, and with that we did not agree."[12]

It's not clear from the testimony whether the Cuban man thought that  
the germs would somehow be able to confine their actions to only  
Russians. This was but one of many instances where the CIA or Defense  
Department used biological or chemical weapons against Cuba and other  
countries, including in the United States against Americans, at times  
with fatal consequences.[13]


Breaking the media barrier
"You take that framework of people feeling locked out, shut out,  
marginalized, disrespected, and you go from Iraq to Palestine to  
Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bungling of  
the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not  
stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts ... If the  
Democrats can't landslide the Republicans this year, they ought to  
just wrap up, close down, emerge in a different form. You think the  
American people are going to vote for a pro-war John McCain who  
almost gives an indication he's the candidate of perpetual war,  
perpetual intervention overseas?"

Thus spaketh Ralph Nader as he announced his presidential candidacy  
to a national audience on NBC's Meet the Press in February. The next  
day his words appeared in the Washington Post, Kansas City Star,  
Associated Press, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, International Herald  
Tribune, and numerous other publications, news agencies, and websites  
around the world. And other parts of his interview were also  
repeated, like this in the Washington Post: "Let's get over it and  
try to have a diverse, multiple-choice, multiple-party democracy, the  
way they have in Western Europe and Canada."

This is why Ralph Nader runs for office. To get our views a hearing  
in the mainstream media (which we often, justifiably, look down upon  
but are forced to make use of), and offer Americans an alternative to  
the tweedledumb and tweedledumber political parties and their cookie- 
cutter candidates with their status-quo-long-live-the-empire souls.  
Is Nader's campaign not eminently worthwhile? But as always, he faces  
formidable obstacles, amongst which is what H. L. Mencken once  
observed: "The men the American people admire most extravagantly are  
the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those  
who try to tell them the truth."

Here are a couple of campaigns to contribute time and money to:

Ralph Nader -- http://www.votenader.org/
Cindy Sheehan, running for Congress in San Francisco against Nancy  
"Impeachment is off the table" Pelosi -- http:// 
www.cindyforcongress.org/


"Building a new world" conference
May 22-25, Radford University, Radford, Virginia, 5-hour drive from  
Washington, DC. Cindy Sheehan, Kathy Kelly, Michael Parenti, David  
Swanson, Gareth Porter, William Blum, Medea Benjamin, Gary Corseri,  
Mike Whitney, Kevin Zeese, Robert Jensen, and others. Room and board  
available at reasonable rates. Full details at: http:// 
www.wpaconference.org/


NOTES
[1] Washington Post, November 18, 1996

[2] Reuters news agency, June 10, 2002

[3] Washington Post, March 3, 2008

[4] "Grain Companies' Profits Soar As Global Food Crisis Mounts",  
Wall Street Journal, April 30, 2008, p.1

[5] Washington Post, April 27, 2008, p.13

[6] William Blum, Killing Hope, pages 217-8

[7] New York Times, April 21, 2008

[8] New York Times, March 4, 2008

[9] Agence France Presse, March 24, 2008

[10] New York Times, April 21, 2008

[11] Hearings before the House Subcommittee of the Committee on  
Appropriations, "Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970"

[12] Testimony of Eduardo Victor Arocena Perez, on trial in Federal  
District Court for the Southern District of New York, transcript of  
September 10, 1984, pp. 2187-89.

[13] William Blum, Rogue State, chapters 14 and 15


William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

        Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies  
purchased, at <www.killinghope.org >
Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website at "essays".
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