Imperial terror in South America

URL: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Imperial_terror_in_South_America

"The ”war on terror”, identified in Amnesty International's annual report as a new source of human rights abuses, is threatening to expand to Latin America, targeting indigenous movements that are demanding autonomy and protesting free-market policies and ”neo-liberal” globalisation.

"Pedro Cayuqueo, director of the Mapuche newspaper Azkintuwe, also from the city of Temuco, wrote that the growing indigenous activism in Latin America and Islamic radicalism are both depicted as threats to the security and hegemony of the United States in the ”Global Trends 2020 - Mapping the Global Future” study by the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC)." [1]

"The temptation to recycle these counterinsurgency strategies from Central America to Iraq is explained by the number of Reagan-era officials now back in prominent roles in George W. Bush's administration." [2]

"The militarized approach of U.S. drug policy exacerbates negative regional trends and further threatens democratization and human rights in the Andes." [3]

Background
"Since the overthrow of the Iranian government in 1953, the CIA has engaged in similar disguised assaults on the governments of Guatemala (1954); the Congo (1960); Cuba (1961); Brazil (1964); Indonesia (1965); Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (1961-73); Greece (1967); Chile (1973); Afghanistan (1979 to the present); El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua (1980s); and Iraq (1991 to the present) -- to name only the most obvious cases. These operations have generated numerous terrorist attacks and other forms of retaliation -- what the CIA calls "blowback" -- against the United States by peoples on the receiving end. Because covert operations are secret from the people of the United States (if not their targets), when retaliation hits, as it did so spectacularly on September 11, 2001, Americans do not have the information to put it into context or understand it." --Chalmers Johnson for the San Francisco Chronicle, 22 Feb. 2004
Ref. why do they hate us?

Paraguay
In 1992, Martin Almada brought to light massive archives that document Paraguay's role in the U.S.-sponsored Operation Condor, a regional network of repression against opposition to the military dictatorships in the Southern Cone. The documents were also used to build the international case against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. These reams of papers are not for the weak-stomached. Paraguayans call them "The Archives of Terror." [4]

Argentina
The "Dirty War" in Argentina:

In October 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and high ranking U.S. officials gave their full support to the Argentine military junta and urged them to hurry up and finish the "dirty war" before the U.S. Congress cut military aid. A post-junta truth commission found that the Argentine military had "disappeared" at least 10,000 Argentines in the so-called "dirty war" against "subversion" and "terrorists" between 1976 and 1983; human rights groups in Argentina put the number at closer to 30,000.

Note: documents at National Security Archive.

Guatemala
In Guatemala, the string of genocidal dictators began with the U.S.-abetted, cold war coup to overthrow democratically elected Jacobo Arbenz in 1954. [5] It's not over yet. [6][7]

Chile
U.S. congressional hearings have documented the U.S. government's role in the Chilean coup d'etat that brought Pinochet to power.
Refer to SourceWatch article on September 11, 1973

Ecuador
In Ecuador, ChevronTexaco stands accused of severely contaminating the surrounding region during 20 years of oil drilling and production in what once was untouched rainforest with pristine rivers and lakes. [8] The pillage threat continues today. [9], [10]

Colombia
"Helicopters circling the city, combat planes roaring overhead; the streets, airports and public buildings patrolled by 13,000 police, soldiers, secret servicemen and spies, U.S. as well as Colombian.

The arrival of Donald Rumsfeld in Bogotá on August 19 [2003] did not portend anything but the further ratcheting up of imperial terror in South America." [11]

"For the past several years, South America's non-violent social movements--the Argentine piqueteros, the Brazilian landless, the Ecuadorian indigenous people, the Bolivian coca growers, Colombian and Peruvian trade unionists and community organizations--have offered a beacon of hope to the world, since they have blocked a series of neoliberal privatization efforts in the cities and held counterinsurgency in check in the countryside. As recently as nine months ago, there were reasons for relative optimism, since the movements had translated mass mobilization into electoral power: Lula and the PT had won in Brazil, Evo Morales and MAS had lost the Bolivian presidency by less than 1.5% but promised to form a formidable opposition, Lucio Gutierrez was going to have indigenous leaders in his government in Ecuador, Chávez was close to defeating the opposition in Venezuela.

Beginning with Plan Colombia, in the name of the war on drugs--which, after September 11, 2001, became the war on drugs and terror--the U.S. government responded to the growing challenge to the Washington Consensus: a military base in Manta, Ecuador, 'Plan Dignity' to eradicate coca in the Bolivian Chapare, a coup in Venezuela, offhand comments from U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that rocked Brazilian financial markets as elections neared. But the cornerstone of the U.S. approach to the hemisphere was to be found in Colombia, the world's third most-important client-state after Israel and Egypt ($3 billion paid out since 2000). In late July 2003, the U.S. House of Representatives approved $731 million in FY 2004 for the Andean Regional Initiative (explicitly acknowledged as the continuation of Plan Colombia, under new auspices), two thirds of which will go to the Colombian government; more specifically, to its military and police.

International military assistance for Colombia through private security transnational enterprises is not exclusive of the United States or limited to Plan Colombia. This “cooperation” also involves enterprises from other countries, such as Israel, with the full knowledge of said governments and Washington. These significant multiple-million-dollar contracts are signed directly by the Colombian Ministry of Defense. Nonetheless, mercenary activity carried out as a part of Plan Colombia is the most publicized. In 2006, the US Congress published an official report on US enterprises that had signed contracts with the State Department or the Defense Department so as to carry out anti-narcotics activities as a part of Plan Colombia. Most the private contract enterprises are under the responsibility of the Defense Department, but the largest contract (DynCorp) is in the hands of the State Department. [12]

Bolivia
Bolivian President "Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada was the fourth South American president to have been forced out of office by popular protests since 2000, joining Ecuador, Argentina and Peru amid growing discontent on the continent with governments that are seen as corrupt an [sic] inept." ... Bolivia's new leader, former vice-president Carlos Mesa, "has made no mention of what he would do with Mr Sanchez de Lozada's US-backed drive to wipe out coca crops - the raw material for cocaine. Peasant farmers blamed the policy for deepening their poverty." [13]

"Goni now makes Bolivia the third country in the region (Ecuador and Argentina are the others) in which sitting presidents have been pushed out in as many years by a populace angry over neoliberal policies imposed on their countries by Washington." [14]

Related Developments
Al Giordano reported October 19, 2003:
Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, a country where the coca leaf does not grow, today spoke for the first time publicly in defense of the right of the indigenous of Bolivia to cultivate their millenarian sacred coca plant.[15]
Antauro Humala, the retired Peruvian military officer who led a courageous uprising in 2000 against the dictator Alberto Fujimori, told reporters today that Peru's President Alejandro Toledo - another bat-boy of Washington - could fall the same way that Bolivia's Goni fell.[16]
Democracy Now! May 17, 2005, interview with John Perkins (audio and transcript):
"There is no question in my mind and in the mind of much of the world that this was the jackals, the C.I.A.-sanctioned assassins. I've seen them work in many places." The interview cites Panama and Ecuador during the Reagan/Bechtel regime.
[edit]Related SourceWatch resources
Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Peoples' Organisations of the Amazon Basin
FTAA
global insurgency for change
globalization
Hustling for the Junta: PR Fights Democracy in Haiti
International Republican Institute
Morales - In Defense of Humanity, speech of 25 October 2003
National Endowment for Democracy
Plan Colombia
Plan Condor
Plan Dignity
Plan Puebla-Panama
School of the Americas
Trade Agreements
United States as a rogue nation
U.S. military presence in Paraguay
war on drugs
Operation Blast Furnace
Operation Snowcap
Operation Ghost Zone

External Links
The Phoenix Project: Created by the CIA in Saigon in 1967, Phoenix was a program aimed at "neutralizing"--through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture--the civilian infrastructure that supported the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam.

Alex Contreras Baspineiro, "Coca, the FTAA, terrorism and sovereignty," ALAI, América Latina en Movimiento, June 26, 2003.
Laura Carlsen, "Latin America's Archives of Terror," AmericasPolicy.org, October 20, 2003.

Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, "Bolivia: A Crossroads for the Future of Latin America," AmericasPolicy.org, November 5, 2003.

Robert Parry, "Iraq: Quicksand & Blood," consortiumnews.com, November 13, 2003.

Jeffrey Sachs, "The Fire This Time in Haiti was US-Fueled," Taipei Times (Common Dreams), March 1, 2004. Haiti: "The Bush Administration Appears to have Succeeded in its Long-Time Goal of Toppling Aristide Through Years of Blocking International Aid to his Impoverished Nation."

Private Security Transnational Enterprises in Colombia José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers' Collective, February 2008.

ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?

ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?

Sources:
Upside Down World, June 14, 2007
Title: “Exporting US ‘Criminal Justice’ to Latin America”
Author: Community in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 2008
Title: “Another SOA?: A Police Academy in El Salvador Worries Critics”
Author: Wes Enzinna

CISPES, March 15, 2007
Title: “ILEA Funding Approved by Salvadoran Right Wing Legislators”
Author: Community in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

AlterNet, August 31, 2007
Title: “Is George Bush Restarting Latin America’s ‘Dirty Wars’?”
Author: Benjamin Dangl

Student Researchers: Courtney Snow, Erica Elkinton, and April Pearce
Faculty Evaluator: Jessica Taft, PhD, and Jeffrey Reeder, PhD

A resurgence of US-backed militarism threatens peace and democracy in Latin America. By 2005, US military aid to Latin America had increased by thirty-four times the amount spent in 2000. In a marked shift in US military strategy, secretive training of Latin American military and police personnel that used to just take place at the notorious School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia—including torture and execution techniques—is now decentralized. The 2008 US federal budget includes $16.5 million to fund an International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador, with satellite operations in Peru. With provision of immunity from charges of crimes against humanity, each academy will train an average of 1,500 police officers, judges, prosecutors, and other law enforcement officials throughout Latin America per year in “counterterrorism techniques.”

The academy in El Salvador is part of a network of ILEAs created in 1995 under President Bill Clinton, who touted the training facilities as a series of US schools “throughout the world to combat international drug trafficking, criminality, and terrorism through strengthened international cooperation.” There are ILEAs in Budapest, Hungary; Bangkok, Thailand; Gaborone, Botswana; and Roswell, New Mexico.

According to ILEA directors, the facility in El Salvador is designed to make Latin America “safe for foreign investment” by “providing regional security and economic stability and combating crime.” Most instructors come from US agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the FBI, the latter of which has had a remarkably large presence in El Salvador since opening its own office there in 2005. Most of the school’s expenses are paid with US tax payers’ dollars.

Salvadorans refer to the ILEA as a new School of the Americas (SOA) for police. Suspicions are exacerbated by comparable policies of secrecy. As with SOA, the ILEA list of attendees and graduates is classified, as is course content. Many observers are troubled by this secrecy, considering how SOA atrocities came to light with Washington Post reporter Dana Priest’s discovery, in September 1996, of SOA torture training manuals, and later with the acquisition by the founder of SOA Watch, Father Roy Bourgeois, of a previously classified list of SOA graduates, many of whom were recognized as leaders of death squads and notorious counterinsurgency groups.

After Condoleezza Rice announced plans for the ILEA in San Salvador at a June 2005 Organization of American States meeting in Miami, Father Roy wrote, “The legacy of US training of security forces at the SOA and throughout Latin America is one of bloodshed, of torture, of the targeting of civilian populations, of desaparecidos . . . Rice’s recent announcement about plans for the creation of an international law enforcement academy in El Salvador should raise serious concerns for anyone who cares about human rights.”

Suspicions are further aggravated by the US-mandated immunity clause that exempts ILEA personnel from crimes against humanity.

Though lack of transparency makes it impossible to know the content of courses, the conduct of the Salvadoran police—who compose 25 percent of the academy’s graduates—has shown an alarming turn for the worse since the ILEA was inaugurated. In early May 2007, the Archbishop’s Legal Aid and Human Rights Defense Office (Tutela Legal) released a report implicating the Salvadoran National Police (PNC) in eight death squad–style assassinations in 2006 alone. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran Human Rights Defense Office has also published reports connecting the PNC to death squads and repeated cases of corruption and misconduct.

While US interest in ILEAs is to ensure an environment that protects free trade and US economic interests, the PNC has played an active role in a crackdown against civil liberties, aimed at curbing both crime and social protest. Free trade agreements like CAFTA have been highly contentious, and President Saca’s administration has gone to significant lengths to ensure that they succeed—including passing an anti-terror law in September 2006, modeled on the USA PATRIOT Act, that has been used to arrest everyone from anti-water-privatization activists to street venders who violate CAFTA’s intellectual property rules (see Story #11).

As ILEA graduates are employed throughout Latin America, the US military is establishing similar mechanisms of cooperation throughout the region as well. The ILEA joins a host of other police and military training facilities that are run by US agencies such as the FBI, ICE, and the DEA, as well as programs run by private US security companies like DynCorp International and Blackwater.

Ben Dangl notes that in carrying on the legacy of Latin America’s “Dirty Wars” of the 1970s and 1980s, in which kidnapping, torture, and murder were used to squash dissent and political opponents, Colombia and Paraguay also illustrate four characteristics of right-wing militarism in South America: joint exercises with the US military in counterinsurgency training; monitoring potential dissidents and social organizations; the use of private mercenaries for security; and the criminalization of social protest through “anti-terrorism” tactics and legislation.

UPDATE BY WES ENZINNA

On May 22, the US Congress approved the “Merida Initiative,” which, as part of a $450 million package for anti-gang and anti-crime programs in Mexico and Central America, provides $2 million for the ILEA San Salvador’s 2009 budget. With these new funds the academy will step up its efforts, training police from throughout the hemisphere, without public oversight or transparency as to the academy’s operations or curriculum. What exactly is taught at the school remains a secret, and the involvement of the National Civilian Police (PNC) at the academy continues unabated, as does alleged PNC abuse.

While Instituto de Derechos Humanos de la Universidad Centroamericana (IDHUCA) director Benjamin Cuellar’s presence at the school has been the source of scorn and criticism in El Salvador—a topic I focused on in my article—a US human rights organization, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), has publicly come to Cuellar’s defense. At the same time, WOLA is currently negotiating with the State Department to work jointly with Cuellar and IDHUCA to monitor the ILEA. While WOLA’s logic is that they hope “to press for greater transparency and accountability within the institution,” they have not articulated a plan for how exactly they are going to accomplish what Cuellar has been unable to achieve (making the school more transparent, making the curriculum public), nor have they addressed the way in which their presence at the school, like Cuellar’s, might offer legitimacy to the ILEA’s activities without actually producing any changes in the way the academy operates. As Lesley Gill pointed out in my original piece, the use of human rights discourse and the co-optation of human rights advocates by US military and police institutions in Latin America is a tried-and-true public relations strategy pioneered at the infamous School of the Americas, and it is not, Gill reminds us, “indicative of any effort by the US to reform the military or police forces they are involved with.”

Only time will tell whether or not WOLA’s planned partnership with the State Department to monitor the ILEA will help make the school more transparent, or whether it will lend legitimacy to an academy that continues to be linked to copious human rights abuses.

The signs, however, are not promising. In March, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made by this writer for ILEA course materials was rejected because, as the rejection letter states, “disclosure of these training materials could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law. Additionally, the techniques and procedures at issue are not well known to the public.”

Since publication of my article, PNC abuse and political assassinations in El Salvador have continued, and ILEA secrecy appears only to have become more entrenched, despite Cuellar and IDHUCA’s involvement and despite increased international protest. It is still unclear whether or not the ILEA will turn out to be “another School of Assassins,” as critics call the academy. If the present situation is any indication, however, these critics may prove to be correct.

UPDATE BY BENJAMIN DANGL

A number of recent developments have dramatically changed the military and political landscape of Latin America. While some electoral victories in Latin America signal a regional shift to the left, Washington continues to expand its military and navy presence throughout the hemisphere.

On April 20, 2008, left-leaning Fernando Lugo was elected president of Paraguay. His victory broke the right-wing Colorado Party’s sixty-one-year rule. Lugo, a former bishop who endorses Liberation Theology, joins a growing list of left-of-center leaders throughout the region and has pledged to crack down on Paraguay’s human rights violations linked to US–Paraguayan military relations. Shortly after his victory, Lugo told reporters that Washington must acknowledge the new regional environment in which Latin American governments “won’t accept any type of intervention from any country, no matter how big it is.”

In neighboring Bolivia, leftist indigenous president Evo Morales has faced increased resistance from the right-wing opposition. US government documents and interviews on the ground in Bolivia prove that Washington has been spending millions of dollars to empower the Bolivian right through the US Agency for International Development and the National Endowment for Democracy. (For more on this topic, see “Undermining Bolivia,” The Progressive, February 2008, http://www.progressive.org/mag_dangl0208.)

On March 1, 2008, the Colombian military bombed an encampment of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) on Ecuadorian soil, sparking a regional crisis. This attack was part of a decades-long conflict fueled by US military training and funding of the Colombian military.

The following month, on April 24, the Pentagon announced that the US Navy’s Fourth Fleet would be repositioned to monitor activity in the Caribbean and Central and South America. The Fourth Fleet hadn’t been operating in the area since 1950. Analysts in the region suggest that the Fourth Fleet’s reactivation is a warning to Latin American leaders, such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, that are working to build a progressive regional bloc outside of Washington’s influence.

Though Washington continues to expand its reach throughout an increasingly leftist Latin America, regional alliances such as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas are growing between progressive Latin American leaders. Such political, economic, and military cooperation is effectively countering US hegemony. At the same time, the future of US–Latin American relations will depend largely on how the next US president interacts with this radically transformed region.

While most corporate media ignores Latin America, their reporting on the region is usually biased against the region’s leftist leaders and social movements. Two online publications that provide ongoing reporting and analysis on the region are UpsideDownWorld.org, a website covering activism and politics in Latin America, and TowardFreedom.com, a progressive perspective on world events. Activists interested in confronting US military aggression in Latin America could visit the School of the Americas Watch website: soaw.org. For information on US military operations in the region and the hopeful response among progressive governments and social movements, see my book, The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press).

InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business

Democracy now - Matt Rothschild - InfraGard





InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business

Source: The Progressive, February 7, 2008 Title: “Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business” Author: Matthew Rothschild
Student Researchers: Chris Armanino and Sarah Maddox
Faculty Evaluator: Josh Meisel, PhD

More than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect and provide information on fellow Americans. In return, members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public, and at times before elected officials. “There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate Total Information Awareness program (TIPS), turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” according to an ACLU report titled “The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.”

InfraGard, with members from 350 companies of the Fortune 500, started in Cleveland back in 1996, when the private sector there cooperated with the FBI to investigate cyber threats. “Then the FBI cloned it,” says Phyllis Schneck, chairman of the board of directors of the InfraGard National Members Alliance, and the prime mover behind the growth of InfraGard over the last several years.

FBI Director Robert Mueller addressed an InfraGard convention on August 9, 2005. “To date, there are more than 11,000 members of InfraGard . . . from our perspective, that amounts to 11,000 contacts . . . and 11,000 partners in our mission to protect America.” He added a little later, “Those of you in the private sector are the first line of defense.”

On May 9, 2007, George Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 51 entitled “National Continuity Policy.” In it, he instructed the Secretary of Homeland Security to coordinate with “private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency.”

“They’re very much looped into our readiness capability,” says Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the DHS. “We provide speakers, as well as joint presentations [with the FBI]. We also train alongside them, and they have participated, sometimes hundreds at a time, in national preparation drills.” According to more than one interviewed member, an additional benefit to InfraGard membership is permission to shoot to kill in the event of martial law, without fear of prosecution.
“We get very easy access to secure information that only goes to InfraGard members,” Schneck says. “If you had to call 1-800-FBI, you probably wouldn’t bother,” she says. “But if you knew Joe from the local meeting you had with him over a donut, you might call. Either to give or to get [information]. We want everyone to have a little black book.”

Jay Stanley, public education director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program, warns that, “The FBI should not be creating a privileged class of Americans who get special treatment. There’s no ‘business class’ in law enforcement. If there’s information the FBI can share with 22,000 corporate bigwigs, why don’t they just share it with the public? That’s who their real ‘special relationship’ is supposed to be with. Secrecy is not a party favor to be given out to friends. . . . This bears a disturbing resemblance to the FBI’s handing out ‘goodies’ to corporations in return for folding them into its domestic surveillance machinery.”
InfraGard is not readily accessible to the general public. Its communications with the FBI and DHS are beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act under the “trade secrets” exemption, its website says. And any conversation with the public or the media is to be carefully rehearsed.

UPDATE BY MATT ROTHSCHILD

The Progressive sent out a press release on the InfraGard story, and I was interviewed on Air America, Democracy Now! and lots of other alternative radio shows. But the mainstream media have ignored this story, with the exception of one small wire service report. The FBI hasn’t ignored it, though.

On February 15, the FBI issued a press release denouncing our article.
“The article’s claims are patently false,” said the FBI’s Cyber Division Assistant Director Shawn Henry. “InfraGard members have no extraordinary powers and have no greater right to ‘shoot to kill’ than other civilians.”

“No greater right”? That’s odd language, isn’t it? It reminded me of a quote in my article from Curt Haugen, CEO of S’Curo Group, and a proud InfraGard member. When I asked him about whether the FBI or Homeland Security agents had told InfraGard members they could use lethal force in an emergency, he said: “That much I cannot comment on. But as a private citizen, you have the right to use force if you feel threatened.”

Note that the FBI did not deny that it ever told InfraGard members that they could “shoot to kill.” All that Henry said was that InfraGard members “have no greater right.” That doesn’t exactly blow a hole in my story.

The FBI seemed put out that I did not give enough information about the meeting the whistleblower attended. “Unfortunately, the author of the Progressive article refused even to identify when or where the claimed ‘small meeting’ occurred in which issues of martial law were discussed,” Henry said in the press release. “If we get that information, the FBI certainly will follow up and clarify any possible misunderstandings.”

The reason I didn’t identify where or when the meeting took place is obvious: I didn’t want to reveal anything that would expose my whistleblower.
Incidentally, the press release fails to mention that I received confirmation about discussions of “lethal force” from another member of InfraGard, whom I did name.
I stick by every single word of my story. And I call on Congress to investigate InfraGard and to inspect the plans that the FBI may have in store, not only for InfraGard, but for all of us in times of an emergency.

One final note: since the story appeared, I’ve received several new leads, including one confirming that a private company has been given “lethal powers.”

Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA

NORTH AMERICAN UNION



Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA

Sources: Center for International Policy, May 30, 2007 Title: “‘Deep Integration’—the Anti-Democratic Expansion of NAFTA” Author: Laura Carlsen
Global Research, July 19, 2007 Title: “The Militarization and Annexation of North America” Author: Stephen Lendman

Global Research, August 2, 2007 Title: “North American Union: The SPP is a ‘hostile takeover’ of democratic government and an end to the Rule of Law” Author: Constance Fogal
Student Researchers: Rebecca Newsome and Andrea Lochtefeld

Faculty Evaluator: Ron Lopez, PhD
Leaders of Canada, the US, and Mexico have been meeting to secretly expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with “deep integration” of a more militarized tri-national Homeland Security force. Taking shape under the radar of the respective governments and without public knowledge or consideration, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)—headquartered in Washington—aims to integrate the three nations into a single political, economic, and security bloc.

The SPP was launched at a meeting of Presidents George W. Bush and Vicente Fox, and Prime Minister Paul Martin, in Waco, Texas, on March 31, 2005. The official US web page describes the SPP as “. . . a White House-led initiative among the United States and Canada and Mexico to increase security and to enhance prosperity . . .” The SPP is not a law, or a treaty, or even a signed agreement. All these would require public debate and participation of Congress.
The SPP was born in the “war on terror” era and reflects an inordinate emphasis on US security as interpreted by the Department of Homeland Security. Its accords mandate border actions, military and police training, modernization of equipment, and adoption of new technologies, all under the logic of the US counter-terrorism campaign. Head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, along with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Finance Carlos Gutierrez, are the three officials charged with attending SPP ministerial conferences.
Measures to coordinate security have pressured Mexico to militarize its southern border. US military elements already operate inside Mexico and the DEA and the FBI have initiated training programs for the Mexican Army (now involved in the drug war), federal and state police, and intelligence units. Stephen Lendman states that a Pentagon briefing paper hinted at a US invasion if the country became destabilized or the government faced the threat of being overthrown because of “widespread economic and social chaos” that would jeopardize US investments, access to oil, overall trade, and would create great numbers of immigrants heading north.

Canada’s influential Department of National Defence; its new Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier; and Defense Minister Gordon O’Connor are on board as well. They’re committed to ramping up the nation’s military spending and linking with America’s “war on terror.”
The SPP created the North American Competitiveness Council (NACC) that serves as an official tri-national SPP working group. The group is composed of representatives of thirty giant North American companies, including General Electric, Ford Motors, General Motors, Wal-Mart, Lockheed-Martin, Merck, and Chevron.

NACC’s recommendations centered on “private sector involvement” being “a key step to enhancing North America’s competitive position in global markets and is the driving force behind innovation and growth.” The NACC stressed the importance of establishing policies for maximum profits.

The US-guided agenda prioritizes corporate-friendly access to resources, especially Canadian and Mexican oil and water. The NACC’s policy states that “the prosperity of the United States relies heavily on a secure supply of imported energy.” US energy security is seen as a top priority encouraging Canada and Mexico to allow privatization of state-run enterprises like Mexico’s nationalized oil company, PEMEX. In January 2008, Halliburton signed a $683 million contract with PEMEX to drill fifty-eight new test holes in Chiapas and Tabasco and take over maintenance of pipelines. This is the latest of $2 billion in contracts Halliburton has received from PEMEX during Fox’s and current Mexican president Felipe Calderone’s administrations, which the opposition warns has become the public front for US monopoly capital privatization.1 US policy seeks to insure America gets unlimited access to Canada water as well.
Connie Fogal of Canadian Action Party says, “The SPP is the hostile takeover of the apparatus of democratic government . . . a coup d’etat over the government operations of Canada, US and Mexico.”

Citation
1. “Mexican Farmers Protest NAFTA Hardships,” People’s Weekly World, February 7, 2008.
UPDATE BY STEPHEN LENDMAN
A fourth SPP summit was held in New Orleans from April 22 to 24, 2008. George Bush, Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon attended. Protesters held what they called a “people’s summit.” They were in the streets and held workshops to inform people how destructive SPP is, strengthen networking and organizational ties against it, maintain online information about their activities, promote efforts and build added support, and affirm their determination to continue resisting a hugely repressive corporate-sponsored agenda.

Opponents call the “Partnership” NAFTA on steroids. Business-friendly opposition also exists. The prominent Coalition to Block the North American Union (NAU) is backed by the Conservative Caucus, which has a “NAU War Room,” a “headquarters of the national campaign to expose and halt America’s absorption into a North American Union with Canada and Mexico.” It opposes building “a massive, continental ‘NAFTA Superhighway.’”

This coalition has congressional allies, and on January 2007, Rep. Virgil Goode and six co-sponsors introduced House Concurrent Resolution 40, which expresses “the sense of Congress that the United States should not engage in (building a NAFTA) Superhighway System or enter into a NAU with Mexico and Canada.”

The April summit reaffirmed SPP’s intentions—to create a borderless North America, dissolve national sovereignty, put corporate giants in control, and assure big US companies most of it. It’s also to create fortress-North America by militarizing the continent under US command.
SPP maintains a website. Its “key accomplishments” since August 2007 are updated as of April 22, 2008. The information is too detailed for this update, but can be accessed from the following link: http://www.spp.gov/pdf/key_accomplishments_since_august_2007.pdf.

The website lists principles agreed to; bilateral deals struck; negotiations concluded; study assessments released; agreements on the “Free Flow of Information”; law enforcement activities; efforts related to intellectual property, border and long-haul trucking enforcement; import licensing procedures; food and product safety issues; energy issues (with special focus on oil); infrastructure development; emergency management; and much more. It’s all laid out in deceptively understated tones to hide its continental aim—to enable enhanced corporate exploitation with as little public knowledge as possible.

Militarization includes the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), established in October 2002, which has air, land, and sea responsibility for the continent regardless of Posse Comitatus limitations that no longer apply or sovereign borders that are easily erased. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) also have large roles. So does the FBI, CIA, all US spy agencies, militarized state and local police, National Guard forces, and paramilitary mercenaries like Blackwater USA.
They’re headed anywhere on the continent with license to operate as freely as in Iraq and New Orleans post-Katrina. They’ll be able to turn hemispheric streets into versions of Baghdad and make them unfit to live on if things come to that.

Consider other militarizing developments as well. On February 14, 2008, the US and Canada agreed to allow American troops inside Canada. Canadians were told nothing of this agreement, which was drafted in 2002. Neither was it discussed in Congress or in the Canadian House of Commons. The agreement establishes “bilateral integration” of military command structures in areas of immigration, law enforcement, intelligence, or whatever else the Pentagon or Washington wishes. Overall, it’s part of the “war on terror” and militarizing the continent to make it “safer” for business and being prepared for any civilian opposition.
Mexico is also being targeted, with a “Plan Mexico” that was announced in October 2007. It’s a Mexican and Central American security plan called the Merida Initiative, supported by $1.4 billion in allocated aid. Congress will soon vote on this initiative, likely well before this is published. It’s a “regional security cooperation initiative” similar to Plan Colombia and presented as an effort to fight drug trafficking.

In fact, the Merida Initiative is part of SPP’s militarization of Mexico and gives Washington more control of the country. Most of the aid goes to Mexico’s military and police forces, with a major portion earmarked for US defense contractors for equipment, training, and maintenance. The touchy issue of deploying US troops will be avoided by instead employing private US security forces, i.e., Blackwater and DynCorp.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog at http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/ and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org, Mondays from 11 am to 1 pm CT.

Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation

One million killed in Iraq?



Sources: After Downing Street, July 6, 2007 Title: “Is the United States Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month? Or Is It More?” Author: Michael Schwartz
AlterNet, September 17, 2007 Title: “Iraq death toll rivals Rwanda genocide, Cambodian killing fields” Author: Joshua Holland
Reuters (via AlterNet), January 7, 2008 Title: “Iraq conflict has killed a million, says survey” Author: Luke Baker
Inter Press Service, March 3, 2008 Title: “Iraq: Not our country to Return to” Authors: Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail
Student Researchers: Danielle Stanton, Tim LeDonne, and Kat Pat Crespán Faculty Evaluator: Heidi LaMoreaux, PhD
Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.
ORB’s research covered fifteen of Iraq’s eighteen provinces. Those not covered include two of Iraq’s more volatile regions—Kerbala and Anbar—and the northern province of Arbil, where local authorities refused them a permit to work. In face-to-face interviews with 2,414 adults, the poll found that more than one in five respondents had had at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, as opposed to natural cause.
Authors Joshua Holland and Michael Schwartz point out that the dominant narrative on Iraq—that most of the violence against Iraqis is being perpetrated by Iraqis themselves and is not our responsibility—is ill conceived. Interviewers from the Lancet report of October 2006 (Censored 2006, #2) asked Iraqi respondents how their loved ones died. Of deaths for which families were certain of the perpetrator, 56 percent were attributable to US forces or their allies. Schwartz suggests that if a low pro rata share of half the unattributed deaths were caused by US forces, a total of approximately 80 percent of Iraqi deaths are directly US perpetrated.
Even with the lower confirmed figures, by the end of 2006, an average of 5,000 Iraqis had been killed every month by US forces since the beginning of the occupation. However, the rate of fatalities in 2006 was twice as high as the overall average, meaning that the American average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or over 300 Iraqis every day. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even higher.
Schwartz points out that the logic to this carnage lies in a statistic released by the US military and reported by the Brookings Institute: for the first four years of the occupation the American military sent over 1,000 patrols each day into hostile neighborhoods, looking to capture or kill “insurgents” and “terrorists.” (Since February 2007, the number has increased to nearly 5,000 patrols a day, if we include the Iraqi troops participating in the American surge.) Each patrol invades an average of thirty Iraqi homes a day, with the mission to interrogate, arrest, or kill suspects. In this context, any fighting age man is not just a suspect, but a potentially lethal adversary. Our soldiers are told not to take any chances (see Story #9).
According to US military statistics, again reported by the Brookings Institute, these patrols currently result in just under 3,000 firefights every month, or just under an average of one hundred per day (not counting the additional twenty-five or so involving our Iraqi allies). Thousands of patrols result in thousands of innocent Iraqi deaths and unconscionably brutal detentions.
Iraqis’ attempts to escape the violence have resulted in a refugee crisis of mammoth proportion. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration, in 2007 almost 5 million Iraqis had been displaced by violence in their country, the vast majority of which had fled since 2003. Over 2.4 million vacated their homes for safer areas within Iraq, up to 1.5 million were living in Syria, and over 1 million refugees were inhabiting Jordan, Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and Gulf States. Iraq’s refugees, increasing by an average of almost 100,000 every month, have no legal work options in most host states and provinces and are increasingly desperate.1
Yet more Iraqis continue to flee their homes than the numbers returning, despite official claims to the contrary. Thousands fleeing say security is as bad as ever, and that to return would be to accept death. Most of those who return are subsequently displaced again.
Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail quote an Iraqi engineer now working at a restaurant in Damascus, “Return to Iraq? There is no Iraq to return to, my friend. Iraq only exists in our dreams and memories.”
Another interviewee told the authors, “The US military say Fallujah is safe now while over 800 men are detained there under the worst conditions. . . . At least 750 out of the 800 detainees are not resistance fighters, but people who refused to collaborate with occupation forces and their tails.” (Iraqis who collaborate with occupation forces are commonly referred to as “tails of the Americans.”)
Another refugee from Baghdad said, “I took my family back home in January. The first night we arrived, Americans raided our house and kept us all in one room while their snipers used our rooftop to shoot at people. I decided to come back here [Damascus] the next morning after a horrifying night that we will never forget.”
Citation
1. “The Iraqi Displacement Crisis,” Refugees International, March 3, 2008.
UPDATE BY MICHAEL SCHWARTZ
The mortality statistics cited in “Is the United States Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month?” were based on another article suitable for Project Censored recognition, a scientific investigation of deaths caused by the war in Iraq. The original article, published in Lancet in 2006, received some dismissive coverage when it was released, and then disappeared from view as the mainstream media returned to reporting biased estimates that placed Iraqi casualties at about one-tenth the Lancet estimates. The corporate media blackout of the original study extended to my article as well, and has continued unabated, though the Lancet article has withstood several waves of criticism, while being confirmed and updated by other studies (Censored 2006, #2).
By early 2008, the best estimate, based on extrapolations and replications of the Lancet study, was that 1.2 million Iraqis had died as a consequence of the war. This figure has not, to my knowledge, been reported in any mass media outlet in the United States.
The blackout of the casualty figures was matched by a similar blackout of other main evidence in my article: that the Bush administration military strategy in Iraq assures vast property destruction and lethality on a daily basis. Rules of engagement that require the approximately one thousand US patrols each day to respond to any hostile act with overwhelming firepower—small arms, artillery, and air power—guarantee that large numbers of civilians will suffer and die. But the mainstream media refuses to cover this mayhem, even after the Winter Soldier meetings in March 2008 featured over one hundred Iraq veterans who testified to their own participation in what they call “atrocity producing situations.” (see Story #9)
The effectiveness of the media blackout is vividly illustrated by an Associated Press poll conducted in February 2007, which asked a representative sample of US residents how many Iraqis had died as a result of the war. The average respondent thought the number was under 10,000, about 2 percent of the actual total at that time. This remarkable mass ignorance, like so many other elements of the Iraq War story, received no coverage in the mass media, not even by the Associated Press, which commissioned the study.
The Iraq Veterans Against the War has made the brutality of the occupation their special activist province. The slaughter of the Iraqi people is the foundation of their demand for immediate and full withdrawal of US troops, and the subject of their historic Winter Soldier meetings in Baltimore. Though there was no mainstream US media coverage of this event, the live streaming on Pacifica Radio and on the IVAW website reached a huge audience—including a vast number of active duty soldiers—with vivid descriptions of atrocities committed by the US war machine. A growing number of independent news sites now feature regular coverage of this aspect of the war, including Democracy Now!, Tom Dispatch, Dahr Jamail’s MidEast Dispatches, Informed Comment, Antiwar.com, and ZNet.
UPDATE BY MAKI AL-NAZZAL AND DAHR JAMAIL
The promotion of US general David Petraeus to head CENTCOM, and General Raymond Odierno to replace Petraeus as commanding general of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, provoked a lot of anger amongst Iraqis in both Syria and Jordan. The two generals who convinced US and international society of improvement in Iraq do not seem to have succeeded in convincing Iraqi refugees of their success.
“Just like the Bush Administration decorated Paul Bremer (former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority), they are rewarding others who participated in the destruction to Iraq,” stated Muhammad Shamil, an Iraqi journalist who fled Iraq to Syria in 2006. “What they call violence was concentrated in some parts of Iraq, but now spread to be all over the country, thanks to US war heroes. People are getting killed, evicted or detained by the thousands, from Basra (South) to Mosul (North).”
Other Iraqi refugees seem to have changed attitudes regarding their hopes to return. Compared to when this story was published in March 2008, the refugee crisis continues to deepen. This is exacerbated by the fact that most Iraqis have no intention of returning home. Instead, they are looking for permanent residence in other countries.
“I decided to stop dreaming of going back home and find myself a new home anywhere in the world if I could,” said thirty-two-year-old Maha Numan in Syria, “I have been a refugee for three years now living on the dream of return, but I decided to stop dreaming. I have lost faith in all leaders of the world after the surges of Basra, Sadr City and now Mosul. This seems to be endless and one has to work harder on finding a safe haven for one’s family.”
Iraqis in Syria know a lot more of the news about their country than most journalists. At an Internet café in Damascus, each of them calls his hometown and reports the happenings of the day to other Iraqi refugees. News of ongoing violence across much of Iraq convinces them to remain abroad.
“There were four various explosions in Fallujah today,” said Salam Adel, who worked as a translator for US forces in Fallujah in 2005. “And they say it is safe to go back! Damn them, go back for what? For roadside bombs or car bombs?”
It has been important, politically, for the Bush administration to claim that the situation in Iraq is improving. This claim has been assisted by a complicit corporate media. However, the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria, and over 750,000 in Jordan, will tell you differently. Otherwise, they would not remain outside of Iraq.
To obtain updated information on the refugee crisis, see http://www.irinnews.org/IRIN-ME.aspx, http://www.iraqredcrescent.org/, http://www.refugeesinternational.org/section/waystohelp, http://www.unhcr.org/iraq.html, and http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/.

A new Great Depression?

The U.S. Economy is Unsustainable

Summary
Dysfunctional capital markets, frantic central banks, stressed-out consumers, fear and uncertainty -- all are alarming echoes of the global economic cataclysm of the 1930s.

Which raises the inevitable question: Could another Great Depression be lurking over the horizon?

"I've been asked many times whether we will have another Great Depression," said David M. Kennedy, a Stanford University history professor and the author of "Freedom From Fear," a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Depression and World War II. "My standard answer is that we won't have that one again -- I'd be surprised to have one of that seriousness and duration. But that doesn't mean we wouldn't have a catastrophe we haven't seen before."

Economists and historians say the most important difference between today's economic environment and the old days is the government's role. Read More . . .

No Habeas Corpus for “Any Person”

Summary
With the approval of Congress and no outcry from corporate media, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, ushered in military commission law for US citizens and non-citizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in the New York Times October 19, have given false comfort that we, as American citizens, will not be the victims of the draconian measures legalized by this Act—such as military roundups and life-long detention with no rights or constitutional protections—Robert Parry points to text in the MCA that allows for the institution of a military alternative to the constitutional justice system for “any person” regardless of American citizenship. Read More. . .

What is Habeas Corpus anyway?
The oldest human right defined in the history of English-speaking civilization is the right to challenge governmental power of arrest and detention through the use of Habeas Corpus laws, considered to be the most critical parts of the Magna Carta which was signed by King John in 1215.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist #84 in August of 1788:
The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. The practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. The observations of the judicious [British eighteenth-century legal scholar] Blackstone, in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital:

“To bereave a man of life” says he, “or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.”