Colombia: the Israel of Latin America

Colombia has become the Israel of Latin America to destabilize the region

María José Estero Poves

Jorge Eliecer Molano is a Colombian lawyer who is 23 years in the defense of human rights. He took care of cases like the disappearance of 11 prisoners after the siege of the Palace of Justice in 1985, the massacre in the community of San José de Apartado, where two children were beheaded by the military and paramilitaries, the bond of four Colombian generals in creating a group paramilitary murder of a student during the military invasion of the University.

Now, Molano denounces the actions of the Colombian intelligence service and the Department of Administrative Security (DAS), after the revelations of the Colombian Attorney who brought to light that during the tenure of President Alvaro Uribe, the DAS investigated politicians, trade unionists, journalists and human rights defenders (Colombian and Spanish) to defame them. During these years, Molano was threatened.

By which sectors have you been threatened for defending human rights?

Jorge Molano – The threats came from the Ministry of Defense and were forwarded by the vice-presidency of Colombia in 2008. They told me that I run an extraordinary risk. I asked where this risk comes from, but the question was not answered. This year the government told me that after meeting with the Board of Generals and Defense Minister, the military did not regard my job well because I was “attacking military honor” and was even asked to leave the country.

One of the cases you reported is the disappearance of prisoners after the siege of the Palace of Justice in Bogota in 1985.

These events occurred 25 years ago. Now Colombian Justice issued a sentence. Eleven people from the M19 guerrilla group were taken away by the Colombian Army from the Palace in the heart of the capital, with television cameras recording this event. Nothing more was heard of them. They were taken to military prisons and died from torture. This was denounced and there was a judicial process in which intimidation was a recurring practice.

After 13 years, the attorney overseeing the case managed to open the ditch from where the bodies were exhumed, but they were murdered on April 18, 1998. The judge who sentenced General Plazas Vega in July had to leave the country because of threats 15 days after delivering the sentence. The magistrate who directed the case was removed from office by pressures from the army and political sectors.

We are hoping that they consider several generals, that is positive, but the government has no intention of fulfilling it. General Plazas Vegas has been sentenced to 30 years for all these events. But he is imprisoned in his residence, a house of 600 per 400 m². In addition, last year, while he was undergoing trial, Plazas Vegas was hired by the Military University to teach discipline of Juridica War, in which lawyers for Human Rights are considered – after the guerrillas – as the second front of subversion of the country.

What involvement does the ex-president Alvaro Uribe have in the investigations ordered from the DAS secret service against human rights defenders?

During eight years of the Uribe government we were facing an incompetent president, who did not know what was going on, and a president who headed a criminal enterprise. The action of DAS, besides, also crossed the border, and was an action done with Operation Freedom in different countries against European citizens, parliamentarians and members of the Spanish Parliament. These actions of espionage are related to subsequent murders, displacements of populations and attacks.

All these facts can be considered as a crime against humanity, as recognized by the UN. Therefore, Uribe has to answer. He will be judged by the Commission on Accusations of the Congress, which some prefer to call the commission of acquittals, because in the last 50 years, it did not resolve any case after all the denunciations, under the argument that all allegations are unfounded.

We have doubts that the prosecutor acts against the four directors of the secret service linked to criminal activities. The new government has also been giving posts to those involved. When the facts are known, the prosecutor’s office orders the confiscating of computers and documents from DAS. The decision comes from the director of DAS. But the detectives kept a lot of information which they themselves protected. What’s troubling is that the current director of the DAS is the person who received notice of the action and who ordered the destruction of evidence.

What implicates the CIA and what economic interests lie behind these facts?

Most of the wiretapping equipment that they used was provided by the United States. Even the keys of the offices of DAS in the capital were held by members of the U.S. embassy. Colombia has become the Israel of Latin America and has held a destabilizing role in the region. In one of the reports of the Prosecutor, it is clear that the Colombian secret service was funded by the CIA in order to infiltrate the embassy of Venezuela, Ecuador and Cuba. International pressure has increased, but the European Union, which is aware of the murders that were committed and the connections between military and paramilitary forces, prefers to look the other way. They advanced, including winning space with the European Union, and the signing of an agreement for free trade. It is incredible that economic interests prevail over human rights.

What is the number of political disappearances in recent years?

Official statistics say 42,000 missing since 1980. According to the Forensic Medicine Department, an agency of the General Prosecutor’s office, over the past three years 7,060 Colombians forcibly disappeared. Before that, it was affirmed that Colombia was the most ancient democracy in Latin America. Anyone can see that we have been surviving a dictatorship. The numbers far outweigh those that disappeared during the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile, Argentine military juntas and the dictatorships in Uruguay and Paraguay.

What progress has been made in investigating the killing of San Jose de Apartado?

This process is quite painful. As a defender of human rights, what moves me most is thinking about the image of Santiago, an 18-month baby who was beheaded. The argument of those who beheaded it was that it was killed so that, when he was an adult, there was no subversive and he would not recognize the killers.

First the government attributed it to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). What happened was that a colonel of the Colombian army received money from the paramilitaries to buy witnesses who accused FARC. After three or four years, we have the investigation reopened. A person of the 17 Brigade was linked to those who had worked with the paramilitaries.

It was proven that the paramilitaries were summoned to come from different places. Two days later, the army was summoned to meet with paramilitaries in the same place. For five days, military and paramilitary forces marched together, slept in the same place and during the massacre, were together.

The court decided to sue the ten Colombian military, a trial which was attended by observers from Spain, Sweden, the United States and other countries. The judge ruled on August 4 this year to absolve the military because he felt that there was no proof that they had a pact with the paramilitaries and that is not considered a crime to dismember a girl of four and a baby of 18 months.

Another Colombia is possible …!!

Pakistan elites turn blind eye to war

Pakistan elites turn blind eye to war....
By Fatima Bhutto

With governments like Pakistan's current regime, who needs the strong arm of the US Central Intelligence Agency? According to Bob Woodward's latest bestseller, Obama's Wars, when Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari, an obsequiously dangerous man, was notified that the CIA would be launching missile strikes from drones over his country's sovereign territory, he replied, "Kill the seniors. Collateral damage worries you Americans. It doesn't worry me."

Why would he worry? When his wife, Benazir Bhutto, returned to Pakistan in 2007 to run for prime minister after years of self-imposed exile, she was already pledged to a campaign of pro-American engagement. She promised to hand over nuclear scientist and international bogeyman Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, the "father" of the Pakistani atomic bomb, to the International Atomic Energy Agency. She also made clear that, once back in power, she would allow the Americans to bomb Pakistan proper, so that George W Bush's global "war on terror" might triumph. The Americans had been involved in covert strikes and other activities in Pakistan since at least 2001, but we didn't know that then.

This has been the promise that has kept Zardari, too, in power.

According to the recent cache of US State Department cables released by WikiLeaks, his position and those of his colleagues in government haven't wavered. In 2008, for example, Prime Minister Yousef Raza Gilani enthusiastically told American ambassador Anne Paterson that he "didn't care" if drone strikes were launched against his country as long as the "right people" were targeted. (They weren't.) "We'll protest in the National Assembly," Gilani added cynically, "and then ignore it."

In fact, protests by the National Assembly have been few and far between and yet, by the end of November, Pakistani territory had been targeted by American unmanned Predator and Reaper missile strikes more than 100 times this year alone. CIA drone strikes have, in fact, been a feature of the American war in Pakistan since 2004. In 2008, after Barack Obama won the presidency in the US and Zardari ascended to Pakistan's highest office, the strikes escalated and soon began occurring almost weekly, later nearly daily, and so became a permanent feature of life for those living in the tribal borderlands of northern Pakistan.

Obama ordered his first drone strike against Pakistan just 72 hours after being sworn in as president. It seems a suitably macabre fact that, according to a United Nations report on "targeted killings" (that is, assassinations) published in 2010, Bush employed drone strikes 45 times in his eight years as president. In Obama's first year in office, the drones were sent in 53 times. In the six years that drone strikes have been used in the fight against Pakistan, researchers at the New America Foundation estimate that between 1,283 and 1,971 people have been killed.

While the dead are regularly identified as "militants" or "suspected militants" in newspaper stories and on the TV news, they almost never have names, nor are their identities confirmed or faces shown. Their histories are always vague. The Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) took a careful look at nine drone strikes from the last two years and concluded that they had resulted in the deaths of 30 civilians, including 14 women and children. (Perhaps superior American military intelligence classified them as "militants in training".) Based on this study, an average rate of error can be calculated: 3.33 civilians mistakenly killed in each drone attack. The dead, Pakistanis will assure you, are largely unnamed, faceless, unindicted and unconvicted civilians.

Pakistanis are considered irrelevant, however, and collateral damage, as it turns out, doesn't seem to worry anyone in the governing elite.

Think of it this way: this summer, monsoon rains and floods submerged one-fifth of Pakistan, affecting 20 million people. It was the country's worst natural disaster in its history. Although the body count, under the circumstances, was considered comparatively low - 2,000 killed - the United Nations concluded that the destruction caused by the floods surpassed the devastating Asian tsunami of 2004, the Pakistan earthquake of 2005, and the recent earthquake in Haiti combined.

Two million homes were destroyed and the crucial food belt in the key agricultural provinces of Punjab and Sindh was ravaged. Millions of children were left homeless or at risk of contracting cholera, dysentery and other water-borne diseases. According to the World Heath Organization, 1.5 million potentially fatal cases of diarrhea and another two million cases of malaria are still expected.

During what UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon termed the worst disaster he'd ever seen, with the country desperate and prostrate, the CIA launched its most extensive drone campaign yet. Over the 30 days of September, as Islamabad rushed to assure Washington that it would not divert too many troops from the war effort to help with flood relief, 20-odd drone strikes were called in. They would produce the highest number of drone fatalities for a single month in the past six years.

In 2009, in one of the many State Department cables WikiLeaks loosed on the world, US ambassador Paterson confirmed that key player and Chief of Army Staff General Parvez Ashfaq Kiani directed his forces to aid those American drone strikes. Various US operations in the country's northern and tribal regions were, the ambassador wrote, "almost certainly [conducted] with the personal consent of ... General Kiani".

The Pakistani media have welcomed the release of the State Department documents because much that reporters and pundits have long claimed (and which Washington has long denied) has now been confirmed: that, for instance, the mercenary private contractor Blackwater (now known as Xe Services) has been operating in Pakistan at the behest of the Americans, that the country's military high command has given the green light for drone strikes on its own people, and that the government of President Zardari has turned the country over to the Americans for money.

Pakistan already receives approximately US$2 billion in military aid a year, and that's just for the army. Under the Kerry Lugar Bill passed by the US Congress, if Pakistan plays nice, opens up its nuclear secrets, and the army's internal documentation on how it selects the chief of army staff and other matters, the country will get $7.5 billion of "civilian aid" over five years - and this is just the tip of the financial iceberg, which, of course, offers the present leadership the chance to extend their incompetent rule just a little longer.

One newspaper baron and government chamcha - apple polisher in Urdu - became the laughing stock of the country's new media when he went on television to suggest that revelations about how Pakistan's government had lied to its people, subverted its national sovereignty, and coordinated foreign attacks didn't faintly measure up to those about leaders in other countries. Look at Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi!

The Pakistani political establishment has always believed that the West is best. It has, after all, been the ultimate source of their power; and so, on December 3, Gilani called a meeting of the Joint Chiefs, the defense minister, and various cabinet ministers, including the finance minister, to discuss the WikiLeaks scandal and strategies for dealing with any potential embarrassments in yet-to-be-released cables. (Lie, undoubtedly. It worked so well before.)

Tariq Ali, a Pakistani writer and historian, reacted to the WikiLeaks revelations swiftly and with a frustration and anger felt by many Pakistanis:

The WikiLeaks confirm what we already know: Pakistan is a US satrapy. Its military and political leaders constitute a venal elite happy to kill and maim its own people at the behest of a foreign power. The US proconsul in Islamabad, Anne Patterson, emerges as a shrewd diplomat warning her country of the consequences if they carry on as before. Amusing, but hardly a surprise, is that Zardari reassures the US that if he were assassinated, his sister would replace him and all would continue as before. Always nice to know that the country is regarded by its ruler as a personal fiefdom.

Still, that elite carries on with little sense of the grim absurdity of recent events. As the WikiLeaks documents pour out, various members of parliament are queuing up to have their names put forward as possible replacements for the prime minister. Since the only person capable of replacing the president is his sister, there's no need for debate there.

Like many military chiefs in the past, Kiani is putting forward his own set of favored names, overstepping the official limits of his office with impunity, while the unelected dark overlord of the government, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, has been offering himself for another unelected posting.

Malik came to public notoriety as Benazir Bhutto's security adviser - until her assassination in December 2007. The job of policing the nation was always a peculiar reward to offer a man who couldn't keep his one charge safe. Malik, for whom Zardari issued a presidential pardon and who had all corruption charges against him dropped under the National Reconciliation Ordinance (an odious law pardoning 20 years worth of graft carried out by politicians, bankers and bureaucrats) was also given a senate seat by his friend the president.

Zardari, it is worth noting, did not stand for elections either, has no constituency, and was made president in the very same manner as Pakistan's previous ruler, General Pervez Musharraf: he was selected by his own parliament.

What will Pakistan's elite learn from WikiLeaks? Undoubtedly nothing. And if we're going by the White House's response so far, nor will Washington feel more constrained than it ever has been when it comes to choosing its allies and running the South Asian arm of its informal global empire.

The Zardari government makes no secret of its gratitude for American support. They have, after all, watched as a foreign power bombs its land, illegally detains or renders its citizens, and turns a blind eye to Pakistan's flagrant censorship and abuse of human rights.

This obeisance to power is the key to Zardari's American engagement. And so it will remain. While we wait for WikiLeaks to reveal the rest of the cables, which are unlikely to have any bearing on Washington's future dealings with the governments of Zardari in Pakistan or President Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan (or anywhere else for that matter), we watch as American officials argue for expanding their drone attacks southwards into the natural-gas-rich province of Balochistan. That it shares a border with Iran hardly seems a coincidence.

The Zardari regime's essential acquiescence has recently been acknowledged via a multi-year "no strings attached" offer of a military aid package by Washington. At the height of the devastation wreaked by the summer floods, the health secretary of Balochistan and the deputy chairman of the Pakistani senate both alleged that aid could not be airlifted out of an air base in the city of Jacobabad on the border between Sindh and Balochistan, two flood-ravaged provinces, because it was being used by the Americans for their drone strikes in Pakistan. The American Embassy issued a swift and suitably hurt-sounding denial, but the damage was done - and the message was clear: the war against Pakistan continues unabated, with its own government at the helm....

US CHOOSES INFLATION, FAST DECLINE , NWO?

Zimbabwe. (Website for this image)

At the UK's Financial Times, James Mackintosh has explained that the USA's wealthy elite got good news on 7 December 2010. (The Short View - Good news comes in threes)

On that day it was announced that the tax cuts for the super-rich would continue.

The US has "abandoned any pretense" that it is trying to balance the books.

Inflation is likely to rise.

"The total cost of the tax cuts will be $1,000bn over two years."

"A coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral forces like NATO, and an international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no longer meaningful to speak of national empires at all." - Professor Alfred McCoy (Four ways the doomed American empire could collapse) - see below

According to Li Daokui, an academic member of China's central bank monetary policy committee:

"The fiscal (government spending) situation in the United States is much worse than in Europe.

"In one or two years... US Treasury bonds and the dollar will experience considerable declines." (US fiscal health is worse than Europe's: according to a Chinese central bank adviser)

Detroit - Website for this image

America's decline could be seen to have started when the military-industrial-narco complex embarked on the Vietnam War or the Iraq War.

Alfred W. McCoy is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

On 5 December, at alternet.org, Professor McCoy wrote about Four ways the doomed American empire could collapse

Among the points made:

1. The US Empire could collapse within 15 years.

The following empires, after things started to go badly wrong, ended as follows:

Portugal within one year.

Soviet Russia within two years.

The UK within 17 years.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 may be the start of America's downfall.

2. China may be top nation some time after 2020.

By 2020, "China's global network of communications satellites, backed by the world's most powerful supercomputers, will also be fully operational, providing Beijing with an independent platform for the weaponization of space and a powerful communications system for missile- or cyber-strikes into every quadrant of the globe."

3. Historian Paul Kennedy prophecied that the USA was going to fail as a result of losing control of its economy and becoming overextended.

4. American jobs have been heading overseas.

5. Australia and Turkey are using their American weapons for joint air and naval maneuvers with China.


6. By 2008, the US had already fallen to number three in global merchandise exports, behind the European Union and China.

7. American leadership in technological innovation is on the decline.

The World Economic Forum ranked the United States 52nd in the quality of its university math and science instruction in 2010.

8. The dollar may cease to be the world’s reserve currency.

Big US deficits have been caused partly by continual wars.

9. The US may be forced to pull U.S. forces back from hundreds of overseas bases.

10. Russia and Iran control much of the world's gas and oil.

The US has done too little to develop alternative sources.

11. A New World Order?

"A coalition of transnational corporations, multilateral forces like NATO, and an international financial elite could conceivably forge a single, possibly unstable, supra-national nexus that would make it no longer meaningful to speak of national empires at all.

"While denationalized corporations and multinational elites would assumedly rule such a world from secure urban enclaves, the multitudes would be relegated to urban and rural wastelands."

12. Reform?

"The American system is flooded with corporate money meant to jam up the works; and there is little suggestion that any issues of significance, including our wars, our bloated national security state, our starved education system, and our antiquated energy supplies, will be addressed with sufficient seriousness to assure the sort of soft landing that might maximize our country's role and prosperity in a changing world."


Early in 2010, "Assange met with Israeli officials in Geneva" and struck a "secret deal."

Documents about the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza "were removed and possibly destroyed by Assange....."

The sources of the report are said to be former WikiLeaks volunteers. (WIKILEAKS STRUCK A DEAL WITH ISRAEL OVER CABLE LEAKS)

US ambasassor to Honduras knew coup against Zelaya was illegal but supported it anyway

December , 2010 -- US ambasassor to Honduras knew coup against Zelaya was illegal but supported it anyway

On July 6, 2009, WMR reported on the involvement of the Obama administration and its ambassdor to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, a Bush holdover, in the coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. In the following cable, dated July 24, 2009, Llorens admitted that the coup that he supported was illegal and that the present president, Porfirio Lobo, should have been ineligible to serve as president for ten years:

VZCZCXYZ0000 OO RUEHWEB DE RUEHTG #0645/01 2050023 ZNY CCCCC ZZH O 240023Z JUL 09 FM AMEMBASSY TEGUCIGALPA TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 0237 INFO RUEHZA/WHA CENTRAL AMERICAN COLLECTIVE IMMEDIATE RUEHCV/AMEMBASSY CARACAS IMMEDIATE 0735 RHEHAAA/THE WHITE HOUSE WASHDC IMMEDIATE RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC IMMEDIATE RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE RUEIDN/DNI WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE RHEHAAA/NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL WASHINGTON DC IMMEDIATE RUMIAAA/USSOUTHCOM MIAMI FL IMMEDIATE C O N F I D E N T I A L TEGUCIGALPA 000645 SIPDIS WHA FOR A/S TOM SHANNON L FOR HAROLD KOH AND JOAN DONOGHUE NSC FOR DAN RESTREPO E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/23/2019 TAGS: PGOV KDEM KJUS HO SUBJECT: TFHO1: OPEN AND SHUT: THE CASE OF THE HONDURAN COUP REF: TEGUCIGALPA 578 Classified By: Ambassador Hugo Llorens, reasons 1.4 (b and d) 1. (C) Summary: Post has attempted to clarify some of the legal and constitutional issues surrounding the June 28 forced removal of President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya. The Embassy perspective is that there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch, while accepting that there may be a prima facie case that Zelaya may have committed illegalities and may have even violated the constitution. There is equally no doubt from our perspective that Roberto Micheletti's assumption of power was illegitimate. Nevertheless, it is also evident that the constitution itself may be deficient in terms of providing clear procedures for dealing with alleged illegal acts by the President and resolving conflicts between the branches of government. End summary. 2. (U) Since the June 28 removal and expulsion of President Zelaya by the Honduran armed forces, the Embassy has consulted Honduran legal experts (one cannot find a fully unbiased professional legal opinion in Honduras in the current politically charged atmosphere) and reviewed the text of the Honduran Constitution and its laws to develop a better understanding of the arguments being parlayed by the coup's supporters and opponents. ------------------------------- Arguments of the Coup Defenders ------------------------------- 3. (SBU) Defenders of the June 28 coup have offered some combination of the following, often ambiguous, arguments to assert it's legality: -- Zelaya had broken the law (alleged but not proven); -- Zelaya resigned (a clear fabrication); -- Zelaya intended to extend his term in office (supposition); -- Had he been allowed to proceed with his June 28 constitutional reform opinion poll, Zelaya would have dissolved Congress the following day and convened a constituent assembly (supposition); -- Zelaya had to be removed from the country to prevent a bloodbath; -- Congress "unanimously" (or in some versions by a 123-5 vote) deposed Zelaya; (after the fact and under the cloak of secrecy); and -- Zelaya "automatically" ceased to be president the moment he suggested modifying the constitutional prohibition on presidential reelection. 4. (C) In our view, none of the above arguments has any substantive validity under the Honduran constitution. Some are outright false. Others are mere supposition or ex-post rationalizations of a patently illegal act. Essentially: -- the military had no authority to remove Zelaya from the country; -- Congress has no constitutional authority to remove a Honduran president; -- Congress and the judiciary removed Zelaya on the basis of a hasty, ad-hoc, extralegal, secret, 48-hour process; -- the purported "resignation" letter was a fabrication and was not even the basis for Congress's action of June 28; and -- Zelaya's arrest and forced removal from the country violated multiple constitutional guarantees, including the prohibition on expatriation, presumption of innocence and right to due process. ------------------------------------------- Impeachment under the Honduran Constitution ------------------------------------------- 5. (U) Under the Honduran Constitution as currently written, the President may be removed only on the basis of death, resignation or incapacitation. Only the Supreme Court may determine that a President has been "incapacitated" on the basis of committing a crime. 6. (U) There is no explicit impeachment procedure in the 1982 Honduran Constitution. Originally, Article 205-15 stated that Congress had the competence to determine whether "cause" existed against the President, but it did not stipulate on what grounds or under what procedure. Article 319-2 stated that the Supreme Court would "hear" cases of official or common crimes committed by high-level officials, upon a finding of cause by the Congress. This implied a vague two-step executive impeachment process involving the other two branches of government, although without specific criteria or procedures. However, Article 205 was abrogated in 2003, and the corresponding provision of Article 319 (renumbered 313) was revised to state only that the Supreme Court would hear "processes initiated" against high officials. Thus, it appears that under the Constitution as currently written, removal of a president or a government official is an entirely judicial matter. 7. (U) Respected legal opinion confirms that the removal of a president is a judicial matter. According to a 2006 book by respected legal scholar Enrique Flores Valeriano -- late father of Zelaya's Minister of the Presidency, Enrique Flores Lanza -- Article 112 of the Law of Constitutional Justice indicates that if any government official is found to be in violation of the Constitution, that person should be removed from office immediately with the ultimate authority on matters of Constitutionality being the Supreme Court. 8. (U) Many legal experts have also confirmed to us that the Honduran process for impeaching a President or other senior-level officials is a judicial procedure. They assert that under Honduran law the process consists of formal criminal charges being filed by the Attorney General against the accused with the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court could accept or reject the charges. If the Court moved to indict, it would assign a Supreme Court magistrate, or a panel of magistrates to investigate the matter, and oversee the trial. The trial process is open and transparent and the defendant would be given a full right of self-defense. If convicted in the impeachment trial, the magistrates have authority to remove the President or senior official. Once the President is removed, then the constitutional succession would follow. In this case, if a President is legally charged, convicted, and removed, his successor is the Vice President or what is termed the Presidential Designate. In the current situation in Honduras, since the Vice President, Elvin Santos, resigned last December in order to be able to run as the Liberal Party Presidential candidate, President Zelaya's successor would be Congress President Roberto Micheletti. Unfortunately, the President was never tried, or convicted, or was legally removed from office to allow a legal succession. ----------------------------- The Legal Case Against Zelaya ----------------------------- 9. (C) Zelaya's opponents allege that he violated the Constitution on numerous grounds, some of which appear on their face to be valid, others not: -- Refusing to submit a budget to the Congress: The Constitution is unambiguous that the Executive shall submit a proposed budget to Congress by September 15 each year (Art. 367), that Congress shall approve the budget (Art. 366) and that no obligations or payments may be effectuated except on the basis of an approved budget (Art. 364); -- Refusing to fund the Congress: Article 212 states that the Treasury shall apportion quarterly the funds needed for the operation of the Congress; -- Proposing an illegal constitutional referendum: The Constitution may be amended only through two-thirds vote of the Congress in two consecutive sessions (Art. 373 and 375); a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution, as Zelaya promoted, is therefore unconstitutional; however, it is not clear that proposing a constituent assembly in itself violates the constitution, only that any changes ensuing from that assembly would be invalid; -- Defying the judgment of a competent court: Zelaya insisted on pushing ahead with his constitutional reform opinion poll after both a first-instance court and an appeals court ordered him to suspend those efforts; however, while he clearly intended to follow through with the poll, he never actually did it; -- Proposing to reform unreformable articles: Since Zelaya's proposed constituent assembly would have unlimited powers to rewrite the constitution, it violated Article 374, which makes certain articles unamendable; once again, though, Zelaya never actually attempted to change the so-called "carved in stone" articles; it was only assumed he intended to; -- Dismissing the armed forces chief: The Supreme Court's Constitutional Hall ruled June 25 that Zelaya was in violation of the Constitution for dismissing Defense Chief Vasquez Velasquez; the Constitution (Art. 280) states that the President may freely name or remove the chief of the armed forces; but the court ruled that since Zelaya fired him for refusing to carry out a poll the court had ruled illegal, the firing was illegal. 10. (C) Although a case could well have been made against Zelaya for a number of the above alleged constitutional violations, there was never any formal, public weighing of the evidence nor any semblance of due process. ----------------------- The Article 239 Cannard ----------------------- 11. (U) Article 239, which coup supporters began citing after the fact to justify Zelaya's removal (it is nowhere mentioned in the voluminous judicial dossier against Zelaya), states that any official proposing to reform the constitutional prohibition against reelection of the president shall immediately cease to carry out their functions and be ineligible to hold public office for 10 years. Coup defenders have asserted that Zelaya therefore automatically ceased to be President when he proposed a constituent assembly to rewrite the Constitution. 12. (C) Post's analysis indicates the Article 239 argument is flawed on multiple grounds: -- Although it was widely assumed that Zelaya's reason for seeking to convoke a constituent assembly was to amend the constitution to allow for reelection, we are not aware that he ever actually stated so publicly; -- Article 239 does not stipulate who determines whether it has been violated or how, but it is reasonable to assume that it does not abrogate other guarantees of due process and the presumption of innocence; -- Article 94 states that no penalty shall be imposed without the accused having been heard and found guilty in a competent court; -- Many other Honduran officials, including presidents, going back to the first elected government under the 1982 Constitution, have proposed allowing presidential reelection, and they were never deemed to have been automatically removed from their positions as a result. 13. (C) It further warrants mention that Micheletti himself should be forced to resign following the logic of the 239 argument, since as President of Congress he considered legislation to have a fourth ballot box ("cuarta urna") at the November elections to seek voter approval for a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. Any member of Congress who discussed the proposal should also be required to resign, and National Party presidential candidate Pepe Lobo, who endorsed the idea, should be ineligible to hold public office for 10 years. --------------------------------------------- - Forced Removal by Military was Clearly Illegal --------------------------------------------- - 14. (C) Regardless of the merits of Zelaya's alleged constitutional violations, it is clear from even a cursory reading that his removal by military means was illegal, and even the most zealous of coup defenders have been unable to make convincing arguments to bridge the intellectual gulf between "Zelaya broke the law" to "therefore, he was packed off to Costa Rica by the military without a trial." -- Although coup supporters allege the court issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya for disobeying its order to desist from the opinion poll, the warrant, made public days later, was for him to be arrested and brought before the competent authority, not removed from the county; -- Even if the court had ordered Zelaya to be removed from the country, that order would have been unconstitutional; Article 81 states that all Hondurans have the right to remain in the national territory, subject to certain narrow exceptions spelled out in Article 187, which may be invoked only by the President of the Republic with the agreement of the Council of Ministers; Article 102 states that no Honduran may be expatriated; -- The armed forces have no/no competency to execute judicial orders; originally, Article 272 said the armed forces had the responsibility to "maintain peace, public order and the 'dominion' of the constitution," but that language was excised in 1998; under the current text, only the police are authorized to uphold the law and execute court orders (Art. 293); -- Accounts of Zelaya's abduction by the military indicate he was never legally "served" with a warrant; the soldiers forced their way in by shooting out the locks and essentially kidnapped the President. 15. (U) The Armed Forces' ranking legal advisor, Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza, acknowledged in an interview published in the Honduran press July 5 that the Honduran Armed Forces had broken the law in removing Zelaya from the country. That same day it was reported that the Public Ministry was investigating the actions of the Armed Forces in arresting and deporting Zelaya June 28 and that the Supreme Court had asked the Armed Forces to explain the circumstances that motivated his forcible exile. 16. (C) As reported reftel, the legal adviser to the Supreme Court told Poloff that at least some justices on the Court consider Zelaya's arrest and deportation by the military to have been illegal. ------------------------------------------ Congress Had no Authority to Remove Zelaya ------------------------------------------ 17. (C) As explained above, the Constitution as amended in 2003 apparently gives sole authority for removing a president to the judiciary. The Congressional action of June 28 has been reported in some media as acceptance of Zelaya's resignation, based on a bogus resignation letter dated June 25 that surfaced after the coup. However, the June 28 Congressional resolution makes no mention of the letter, nor does it state that Congress was accepting Zelaya's resignation. It says Congress "disapproves" of Zelaya's conduct and therefore "separates" him from the office of President -- a constitutional authority Congress does not have. Furthermore, a source in the Congressional leadership told us that a quorum was not present when the resolution was adopted, rendering it invalid. There was no recorded vote, nor a request for the "yeas" and "nays." 18. (C) In sum, for a constitutional succession from Zelaya to Micheletti to occur would require one of several conditions: Zelaya's resignation, his death, or permanent medical incapacitation (as determined by judicial and medical authorities), or as discussed previously, his formal criminal conviction and removal from office. In the absence of any of these conditions and since Congress lacked the legal authority to remove Zelaya, the actions of June 28 can only be considered a coup d'etat by the legislative branch, with the support of the judicial branch and the military, against the executive branch. It bears mentioning that, whereas the resolution adopted June 28 refers only to Zelaya, its effect was to remove the entire executive branch. Both of these actions clearly exceeded Congress's authority. ------- Comment ------- 19. (C) The analysis of the Constitution sheds some interesting light on the events of June 28. The Honduran establishment confronted a dilemma: near unanimity among the institutions of the state and the political class that Zelaya had abused his powers in violation of the Constitution, but with some ambiguity what to do about it. Faced with that lack of clarity, the military and/or whoever ordered the coup fell back on what they knew -- the way Honduran presidents were removed in the past: a bogus resignation letter and a one-way ticket to a neighboring country. No matter what the merits of the case against Zelaya, his forced removal by the military was clearly illegal, and Micheletti's ascendance as "interim president" was totally illegitimate. 20. (C) Nonetheless, the very Constitutional uncertainty that presented the political class with this dilemma may provide the seeds for a solution. The coup's most ardent legal defenders have been unable to make the intellectual leap from their arguments regarding Zelaya's alleged crimes to how those allegations justified dragging him out of his bed in the night and flying him to Costa Rica. That the Attorney General's office and the Supreme Court now reportedly question the legality of that final step is encouraging and may provide a face-saving "out" for the two opposing sides in the current standoff. End Comment. LLORENS

Lebanon's Al Akhbar newspaper has released State Department cables not previously released by Wikileaks. The Wikileaks saga has grown more mysterious. Two examples of the Lebanese paper's cable haul follows:

ClassificationSECRET//NOFORN Header VZCZCXYZ0002 PP RUEHWEB DE RUEHRB #0679/01 2181914 ZNY SSSSS ZZH P 061914Z AUG 09 FM AMEMBASSY RABAT TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0538 INFO RUCNMGH/MAGHREB COLLECTIVE RUEHBS/AMEMBASSY BRUSSELS 3210 RUEHLE/AMEMBASSY LUXEMBOURG 0115 Content S E C R E T RABAT 000679 SIPDIS NOFORN STATE FOR S/CT, NEA/MAG AND DRL/NESCA E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/06/2019 TAGS: PHUM, PGOV, PTER, KISL, MO SUBJECT: LANDMARK TERRORISM CASE RAISES HUMAN RIGHTS QUESTIONS REF: A. 08 RABAT 0311 (NOTAL) B. 08 RABAT 0178 (NOTAL) C. 08 RABAT 0222 (NOTAL) D. RABAT 0543 (NOTAL) Classified By: CDA Robert P. Jackson for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). 1. (C) Summary: On July 28, a Sale court sentenced Moroccan-Belgian Abdelkader Belleraj to life in prison (instead of the death penalty requested by prosecutors) for running an international terrorist network. The 34 other defendants on trial with Belleraj received sentences ranging from one to 30 years. While Belleraj and some of his associates undoubtedly had links to terrorism, the link is much less clear for six Islamist politicians, who received sentences ranging from two to 25 years. These six politicians have come to be known in the public and the press as "political detainees" because of allegations that they were arrested for their political affiliation rather than any real connection to terrorist acts. Human rights activists monitoring this case have condemned the trial and the verdict. A family member of one of the politicians sentenced to 20 years called the trial a "farce" and wondered, in the context of celebrations of King Mohammed VI's ten years of rule, "How can this be possible in the new Morocco?" End Summary. ---------- Background ---------- 2. (C) In February 2008, Minister of the Interior Chakib Benmoussa publicly announced the dismantling of a dangerous terrorist network, masterminded by Moroccan-Belgian Abdelkader Belleraj. Belleraj was arrested for possessing an arsenal of firearms, allegedly to be used to assassinate Moroccan ministers, members of the military, and Jewish citizens. He is suspected of having committed at least six assassinations in Europe, as well as conducting arms trafficking, money laundering, robberies and other crimes (Ref A). The 34 other men arrested in connection with the network were charged with crimes such as "disturbing the national security of the State" and "conspiracy to plot and carry out terrorist acts," the highest crimes under Moroccan terrorism laws. ------------------- The Six Politicians ------------------- 3. (C) While there is little doubt that Belleraj and some of his associates have committed grave crimes, the public and media have labeled six of the defendants "political detainees" because of allegations that they were arrested for their political affiliation rather than for having any real connection to terrorist actions or intentions. While the Embassy and other diplomatic missions do not dispute the prima facie threat from Belleraj, who has a long history of relations with Islamic radicals from Ayatollah Khomeini to Osama bin Laden, there appears to be little evidence that the six politicians had any involvement in planning terrorist acts. Nevertheless, the GOM persisted in trying all of the accused together under the anti-terrorism laws enacted after the May 2003 suicide attacks in Casablanca, dismissing repeated attempts by lawyers to separate the trials of the six from the larger group. As a result, the politicians were charged, like the other members of the group, with involvement in terrorist activity, including plotting against the regime, being a member of an armed group with the objective of destabilizing the nation, and threatening public safety -- among the most severe crimes under Morocco's terrorism laws. 4. (U) Five of the politicians affiliated with Islamist-inspired political parties at the time of their arrest were sentenced to 20 and 25 years in prison. Maelainin Laabadla, a Sahrawi member of the national council of the Islamist-inspired Party of Justice and Development (PJD), headed the PJD's commission on the Western Sahara; Mustafa Moatassim served as Secretary General of the Civilized Alternative (Al Badil Al Hadari), a small, Islamist-inspired political party which was disbanded two days after his arrest; Mohamed Marouani and Amine Regala had been, respectively, the Secretary General and party spokesperson of the unauthorized party of the Nation (Al Oumma), an Islamist organization that had been seeking party status; and Abdelhafid Sriti worked as a television correspondent for Hezbollah's Al Manar. 5. (SBU) The sixth politician, Hamid Najibi, a member of the national council of the Unified Socialist Party (PSU), and the only politician not affiliated with an Islamist party, received a suspended sentence of two years. International reaction to the heavy sentences of the politicians has been mostly shock, especially given the skepticism increasingly voiced by the press and public regarding the case. --------------------------- Political Links to Belleraj --------------------------- 6. (C) In the early 1990's, under the reign of King Hassan II, at least four of the six politicians belonged to an organization called Islamic Choice, an Islamic cultural and political organization. For ideological reasons, Islamic Choice eventually dissolved and then split into two smaller Islamist political parties, the Civilized Alternative and the Nation. According to Moroccan government officials, Belleraj and his co-conspirators hoped to use these parties as the foundation of a new political wing of their network, and then, under the guise of political activity, use them to destabilize Morocco (Ref B). 7. (C) At the time of the arrests, the Civilized Alternative had been formally recognized by the GOM, and, according to Sidi Ali Maelainin, the brother of Mr. Laabadla, had been encouraged as an alternative to the Islamist-inspired PJD, until the terrorist network was uncovered. The Nation had applied for and was awaiting approval as a political organization at the time of the arrests in February 2008. Because it had not yet received an official refusal, it was on the verge of becoming a party by default, Maelainin said. He speculated that the GOM opposed the recognition of the Nation because it could open the way for Sheik Yassine's Islamist Justice and Good Works Organization (al-Adl wa al-Ihsan or AWI) to enter politics -- a move strongly opposed by the Palace. -------------------- A Message to the PJD -------------------- 8. (C) Relatives of the politicians, and increasingly the press, suggest that the arrest of the six political defendants was designed to deter the proliferation of Islamist politicians and political parties, rather than terrorist acts. As reported, shortly after the arrests of the six politicians, even the PJD acknowledged that the arrests may have been intended as a message to stay in line (Ref C). The PJD has denounced the verdicts against the politicians, suggesting that such punishments evoke the authoritarian reign of Hassan II and the &Years of Lead.8 9. (C) According to Abdelaziz Nouyidi, a prominent human rights attorney and member of the defense team, the arrest and trial of Islamist political figures was timed to send a clear message to the political parties in the lead up to the June 2009 local elections. "The Palace wanted to remind the Islamists to stay within the bounds established by the King," he said, continuing that an alliance between the PJD and the left would not be welcome. Nouyidi speculated that the inclusion among the defendants of Hamid Najibi of the Unified Socialist Party signaled the Palace's displeasure at the prospect of such an alliance. --------------------------- Evidence and Irregularities --------------------------- 10. (C) According to human rights NGOs, defense attorneys and European diplomats familiar with the case, the state's evidence against all 35 of the accused consisted of the defendants' statements to the police in which they implicate themselves and others, and two seizures of weapons which were allegedly intended to be used to conduct assassinations and other terrorist acts. The defendants initially affirmed their statements before a preliminary judge, but then retracted them before the trial judge, saying they had been obtained under duress or had been altered. 11. (S/NF) The judge's written decision on the case has not yet been made available, and it is, therefore, not clear what, if any, other evidence the GOM may have against the accused. The Moroccan Government provided to the Regional Affairs Office photographs of the seized weapons which included guns, ammunition, silencers, and balaclavas. Despite repeated requests, the GOM did not provide satisfactory evidence to the Mission of a connection between the politicians and the terrorist network. Daniel Bernard, Belgian Legal Advisor to the Government of Morocco, who has closely followed this case, speculated, "Maybe there is something behind the accusations" of the six politicians, but if so, the Moroccan Government has not divulged it to anyone. 12. (C) Calling the trial and prosecution of his brother "a farce," Sidi Ali Maelainin outlined for PolOff other irregularities in the case. The judge had repeatedly refused to allow the defense access to files, to call witnesses or to introduce evidence, he said, accusations confirmed by Bernard. In addition, nearly all the defendants alleged that their statements had been altered by the police. The Charge raised these concerns in his June 24 meeting with Human Rights Council Chairman Ahmed Herzenni, who acknowledged the irregularities and promised to review the trial following delivery of the verdict (Ref D). ------------- No Fair Trial ------------- 13. (C) Calling the trial "pre-cooked," Johan Jacobs, Counselor at the Belgian Embassy, said there is "no doubt" the trial was unfair. Not a single person had been acquitted, he observed, an unlikely outcome given the large number of defendants. He also questioned how an impartial judge could reach a verdict and determine sentences for 35 different individuals less than 12 hours after the closing arguments. He told PolOff that some of the evidence used in the trial had been provided by Belgium and was written in French and Dutch. Even though the evidence provided by Brussels was accurate and, in some cases damning, Jacobs wondered how the trial could be fair if neither the defense nor the prosecution could understand it. When the defense requested to have the files translated into Arabic, the court ruled that only parts of the files could be translated, orally, during court proceedings. This is a peculiar way of honoring a defendant's right to know the evidence against him, he said, adding, "Some of these guys have real proof against them, but that does not change the fact that the trial was unfair." Sidi Ali Maelainin called the lack of a fair trial "frightening." In the context of national celebration of the reforms initiated by King Mohammed VI over the last ten years, he wondered, "How can this be possible in the new Morocco?" ------- Comment ------- 14. (C) The GOM's heavy-handed approach taken by the GOM in this case illustrates Morocco's willingness to use its counterterrorism laws to marginalize Islamist-inspired political activities. The nearly universal belief that the verdict of this trial was predetermined by the Ministry of the Interior -- a not unlikely scenario -- highlights the lack of trust many Moroccans have in the justice system. Equally troubling for Morocco's governance reform outlook is the plausible prospect that at least six defendants were tried and convicted for political reasons unrelated to zealous counter-terrorism objectives. If true, this would represent a manipulation of the courts not only for security goals but also to affect legitimate political activity -- a step backward in the political and democratic progress the Kingdom has realized in the past decade. Although the GOM has made great progress in respecting human rights under King Mohammed VI, there is still room for improvement, particularly in respecting non-establishment viewpoints. End Comment. ***************************************** Visit Embassy Rabat's Classified Website; http://www.intelink.sgov.gov/wiki/Portal:Moro cco

O 171334Z FEB 09 FM AMEMBASSY NOUAKCHOTT TO SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 8138 INFO AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV PRIORITY Content C O N F I D E N T I A L NOUAKCHOTT 000138 NOFORN SECSTATE AF - A/DAS BOULWARE E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/17/2021 TAGS: PREL, USAU, PGOV, MR, IS SUBJECT: MAURITANIAN RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL REF: A. STATE 14163 B. NOUAKCHOTT 6 C. NOUAKCHOTT 47 D. NOUAKCHOTT 101 E. NOUAKCHOTT 118 Classified By: CDA Cornelius Walsh, reasons 1.4(b) and (d). 1. (C/NF) Summary: Having watched the evolution of the Israeli relations issue in the context of the Mauritanian political crisis, we believe that the junta, particularly Foreign Minister Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, is deeply concerned about the repercussions of a formal break in the Mauritanian-Israeli relationship. Their steps to date, while detrimental to Israeli interests, have been incremental and hesitant. However, given the volatile nature of the issue, American engagement at this very sensitive time may be used by more radical members of the junta and its constituents, who have a planning horizon much more limited than that of the Foreign Minister, as a pretext to sever the relationship and free Mauritania from what they consider its onerous restraints. End Summary. 2. (U) Since the advent of the coup d'etat in early August, Embassy Nouakchott has observed and reported on the junta's approach towards relations with Israel as well as the attitudes and statements of other participants in the current political crisis affecting Mauritania. Inasmuch as Israeli Ambassador Arbel had not presented his credentials prior to the coup and that Israel hewed to the western policy of non-recognition, this kept the issue off the table for some months. Always a delicate subject, it appeared that both the junta and its opponents preferred that the issue not enter their political world. 3. (U) The late December Israeli incursion into Gaza, however, changed the nature of the discussion. The junta found itself pressured by its domestic constituency, its opponents, and fellow Muslim states to cut relations with Israel as a show of solidarity with Gaza and the Muslim mainstream. Indeed, it appears that some states offered recognition and financial support for just such a gesture. Large and sometimes violent anti-Israeli demonstrations focused on the Israeli Embassy in Nouakchott further forced the junta to address the issue. On the domestic front the junta appeared to be in a competition with its opponents as to which could be more anti-Israel than the other. 4. (C/NF) Despite these pressures, the junta has proceeded slowly and very carefully in its measures against the Israeli presence. It has recalled its Ambassador (Ref B), declared a freeze in relations (Ref C), almost surreptitiously closed its Embassy in Tel Aviv and removed its personnel (Ref D), and finally two weeks ago informally called the Israeli Ambassador and asked that he take "appropriate measures" regarding the freeze (Ref E). As of February 16, the Israeli Ambassador has not been contacted again by the junta's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 5. (C/NF) We have sometimes considered the junta's steps to be an attempt to have its cake and eat it as well, i.e., give the appearance of distancing itself from Israel while maintaining a straightened relationship. However, its hesitancy, its apparent rejection of blandishments from Iran, Libya and other players, and its rhetorical back and forth with the opposition lead us to believe that the junta is well aware of the serious consequences of an actual break in diplomatic relations. The formal break is indeed a card that the junta may wish to play at some point. However, indications until now have been that it will not do so without a pretext or an action that will allow it to gain an advantage either from international partners (it already has anti-sanction support from the Arab League) or against its domestic opponents. 6. (C/NF) Intervention at this point may be the pretext the junta desires/needs to make its final break. Using a USG reminder as the focus of its rupture would burnish the junta's "eastern" credentials with a number of Muslim states. Having identified the United States as the most adamant of its international critics, the junta would also be tempted to use such an intervention to undermine our democratic credentials with the Abdallahi administration, the FNDD, and other parties with whom we have worked throughout the past six months. There are those, evidenced, in a recent article in a minor local newspaper "Points Chauds" who choose to see the sanctions question and the internationalization of the Mauritanian crisis as (in the words of the paper's headline) "the Jewish lobby against the Arab pressure group, who will have the last word?" We would therefore recommend that the request outlined in Ref A be reconsidered. 7. (C/NF) Comment: In our conversations with the Israeli Ambassador we sense that the GOI does not realize that the full spectrum of political opinion in Mauritania, junta, anti-junta, and opportunistic, is opposed to continuing relations with Israel. The sole factor that has kept the junta from a full breach is its understanding that such a move would make its relations with the United States and the west that much more difficult. This is understood as well by the opposition parties which, while goading the junta to take action, do not make such a break a sine qua non in their own position papers. In our view, the Israelis could garner possible good will in the future were they to follow the Mauritanian lead and depart quietly and unofficially to return just as quietly when conditions here and in the Middle East improve. There is, of course, the danger that this would be another pretext for a formal break but there is also the possibility that the junta and/or any follow-on administration would consider such discretion as a positive factor in the future. End Comment. HANKINS

WASHINGTON RULES; AMERICAN HOLOCAUST

American bombs.

Three new books about US influence in the world have been published:

1. Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War, by Andrew Bacevich.

2. How Wars End: Why We Always Fight the Last Battle, by Gideon Rose.

3. The Frugal Superpower: America’s Global Leadership in a Cash-strapped Era, by Michael Mandelbaum.

None of these books is going to enlighten you about 9 11, but they are of interest.

1. Andrew Bacevich is a professor at Boston University and a former colonel in the US army.

He opposes the USA's militaristic, interventionist foreign policy.

His son was killed in the Iraq War.

Bacevich believes that the threat from the Soviet union was exaggerated; the Russian Empire was a place of poverty.

He believes that the Military-Industrial Complex has taken over US policy for its own financial gain.

He writes of the Vietnam War, "McNamara’s considerable analytical ability ... facilitated the killing of several hundred thousand non-combatants."

Victim of American Depleted Uranium (liberty.hypermart.net/.../death_made_in_america)

2. Gideon Rose is editor of Foreign Affairs magazine.

He believes that American foreign policy "has been generally good for the United States and the world at large."

Think of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rose believes America has used its armies "to carve out an ever larger 'zone of peace' and create a mostly benign structural context in which local, economic, social and political development could proceed".

Rose writes of Woodrow Wilson: "He wanted to spare Germany the ravages that had befallen his beloved south after its total defeat a half-century earlier."

3. Michael Mandelbaum is a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

He believes that the USA cannot afford more wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.

He believes that, unfortunately, this will help Russia and China.

He writes that "mounting domestic economic obligations will narrow the scope of American foreign policy".

According to Mandelbaum "One thing worse than an America that is too strong, the world will learn, is an America that is too weak."


At the UK Financial Times, on 4 December 2010, the influential Gideon Rachman gives his comments:

FT.com / Books / Essays - What if US influence goes into retreat?

"There is no sense in Bacevich's book that, ultimately, American power in the cold war served a moral purpose and delivered a moral end: the peaceful defeat of a dreadful Soviet dictatorship that had murdered millions of its own people and subjugated many of its neighbours.

"Because Bacevich is so alive to the follies and flaws of American policy, he does not pause to imagine the world without American power, either during the cold war or today.

"The US military presence in the Middle East and the Pacific is huge and brings many problems in its wake.

"But would either area of the world really be in a better state if the Americans simply packed up and left? I doubt it...

"If Bacevich is right, the world will be a better place if the US is forced to abandon its quasi-imperial role.

"According to Rose and Mandelbaum, much of the rest of world may come to regret the diminution of American power."

Gideon Rachman is an FT columnist and author of ‘Zero Sum World: Power and Politics after the Crash’ (Atlantic)


What Rachman fails to mention is the American Holocaust.

The USA has been responsible for the deaths of many people in many countries.

If you add up the totals, the USA is probably responsible for the biggest holocaust of all time.

USA

"As a Native American, every time I see the American flag I feel the same way I imagine Jewish people must feel when looking at the Nazi flag."- Rod Coronado, Native American.

IRAQ

The CIA put Saddam into power and manipulated Iraq and Iran into a war. 1.5 million Iranians may have died in the Iran-Iraq war. Then came the Desert Storm campaign, depleted uranium, UN sanctions and the latest Iraq war. Over 1 million Iraqis have died as a result of American interference in Iraq.

9 11

On 9 11, 1973, Salvador Allende, the President of Chile, was killed in an American-sponsored coup, led by General Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet's rise to power, organised by the CIA and Henry Kissinger, began nearly twenty years of military dictatorship that led to thousands of deaths. 30,000 people were massacred in the weeks following this September 11th, as Pinochet tried to wipe out those who opposed fascism.

The Congo was given a military dictatorship thanks to the CIA assassination of Patrice Lumumba. The Congo conflict has led to at least 3 million deaths.

In Cambodia, America (and Britain) backed Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot who killed nearly 2 million Cambodians.

In 1936, the American National Guard helped Anastasio Somoza to set up a dictatorship which ruled Nicaragua for 43 years.
Brazil, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ecuador, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti, Greece, Iran... All of these and more suffered from torture and death as a result of American 'intervention.'

"I will never apologise for the United States of America - I don't care what the facts are," said President George Bush Sr. in 1988, when the U.S. Navy warship Vincennes shot down an Iranian commercial airliner. The plane was on a routine flight in a commercial corridor in Iranian airspace. All 290 civilians on board the aircraft were killed.

Many thousands of Afghan civilians have died as a result of U.S. led air strikes in Afghanistan.

Many Germans died after the end of World War II due to the harsh policies of the USA. A survey conducted by the German government stated that some 1.4 million German prisoners died in captivity; many of them died in American captivity.

Since the Second World War, the US government has bombed 21 countries:

China in 1945-46 and again in 1950-53,

Korea in 1950-53

In Korea, nearly 3 million civilians were murdered by the USA and its allies. Civilians were murdered at No Gun Ri and many other places. The USA supported the fascist puppet regime in South Korea. The South Korean government carried out genocide against both North and South Korean people.

Guatemala in 1954, 1960, and 1967-69

Indonesia in 1958

Up to one million innocent civilians died in Indonesia after the CIA put Suharto into power in Indonesia. At least one third of the population of East Timor died after the USA gave Suharto permission to invade that country.

The CIA's MK ULTRA - Nazi style torture of American children

Vietnam in 1961-73

North Vietnam did not want a war. The US military-industrial complex made sure that there was a war. Through the Phoenix Program, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were tortured to death in “interrogation centers”.

These torture centers were built by the United States. Women were always raped as part of the torture before being murdered. This terrorism, rape and mass-murder was the policy of the USA. The My Lai massacre itself was an operation of the Phoenix Program.

Up to 5 million Vietnamese were killed in the Vietnam war.

Congo in 1964,

Laos in 1964-73,The United States Air Force dropped the equivalent of a planeload of bombs every eight minutes for nine years on the people of Laos — from 1965 to 1973. Over 2,000,000 tons.This was some of the heaviest aerial bombardment in world history.

Estimated civilian deaths: 800,000 men, women and children.

Peru in 1965,

Cambodia in 1969-70,

El Salvador throughout the 1980s,

Nicaragua throughout the 1980s,

Lebanon in 1968-89...., 93,96, and 2006....

Grenada in 1983,

Bosnia in 1985,

Libya in 1986,

Panama in 1989,

Iraq in 1991 and later,....

Sudan in 1998, ongoing...

Former Yugoslavia in 1999,

and Afghanistan in 1998 and 2002....

If you add up the totals, the United States of America is probably responsible for the biggest holocaust of all time.

MK ULTRA

"Since before the end of WWII the United States Corporate Mafia Government has been hell bent for total world domination, by any and all means necessary, no matter how brutal — including the slaughter of as many millions of innocent civilian men, women and children as it takes to accomplish that goal."

Source of quote: http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/bibliographies/Main.html

Ex-State Department employee William Blum stated:

"An American holocaust has taken place - So great and deep is the denial of the American holocaust that the deniers are not even aware that the claimers or their claims exist.

"Yet, a few million people have died in the American holocaust and many more millions have been condemned to lives of misery and torture as a result of US interventions extending from China and Greece in the 1940s to Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1990s."

Cracks in the wilderness of mirrors

Cracks in the wilderness of mirrors
By Pepe Escobar

The temptation to see WikiLeaks as a neo-Baudelairean artificial paradise - the marriage of libertarian anarchism and cyber-knowledge - could not be more seductive. Now no more than 40 people are helping founder Julian Assange, plus 800 from the outside.

All this with a 200,000 euro (US$264,000) annual budget - and a nomad home base. WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson maintains that this is still a "gateway for whistleblowers", where sources are unidentified and even unknown. You can get a whistleblower to show the emperor has no clothes with just 200,000 euros - just as someone, be him Osama bin Laden or not, could usher the real "new world order" in on 9/11 with $500,000.

Daniel Ellsberg, who broke the Pentagon Papers in 1971, sees Assange as a hero. For vast swathes of the United States establishment, he is now public enemy number one - an unlikely echo of bin Laden. He may be now in southeast England, contactable by Scotland Yard, and about to be arrested at any minute courtesy of an Interpol mandate based on his being wanted in Sweden. Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan may be doing the twist in his media tomb; if the media are the message, when you can't eliminate the message why not eliminate the media?

The book of sand
Let's examine Assange's crime. Here he is, in his own words, in "State and Terrorist Conspiracies":

To radically shift regime behavior we must think clearly and boldly for if we have learned anything, it is that regimes do not want to be changed. We must think beyond those who have gone before us, and discover technological changes that embolden us with ways to act in which our forebears could not. Firstly we must understand what aspect of government or neo-corporatist behavior we wish to change or remove. Secondly we must develop a way of thinking about this behavior that is strong enough to carry us through the mire of politically distorted language, and into a position of clarity. Finally we must use these insights to inspire within us and others a course of ennobling, and effective action.

So Assange understands WikiLeaks as an anti-virus that should guide our navigation across the distortion of political language. If language is a virus from outer space, as William Naked Lunch Burroughs put it, WikiLeaks should be the antidote. Assange basically believes that the (cumulative) revelation of secrets will lead to the production of no future secrets. It's an anarchic/romantic/utopian vision.

It's vital to remember that Assange configures the US essentially as a huge authoritarian conspiracy. American political activist Noam Chomsky would say the same thing (and they wouldn't want to arrest him for it). The difference is that Assange deploys a combat strategy: he aims to corrode the ability of the system to conspire. That's where the metaphor of the computer network fits in. Assange wants to fight the power of the system, treating it as a computer choking in the desert sands. Were he alive, it would be smashing to see the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges penning a short story about this.

On top of writing his own "Book of Sand", Assange is also counter-attacking the Pentagon's counter-insurgency doctrine. He's not in "tracking-the-Taliban-and taking-them-out" mode. This is just a detail. If the conspiracy is an electronic network - let's say, the (foreign policy) Matrix - what he wants is to strike at its cognitive ability by debasing the quality of the information.

Here intervenes another crucial element. The ability of the conspiracy to deceive everyone through massive propaganda is equivalent to the conspiracy's penchant for deceiving itself through its own propaganda.

That's how we get to the Assange strategy of deploying a tsunami of leaks as a key actor/vector in the informational landscape. And that takes us to another crucial point: it doesn't matter whether these leaks are new, gossip or wishful thinking (as long as they are authentic). The - very ambitious - mother idea is to undermine the system of information and thus "force the computer to crash", making the conspiracy turn against itself in self-defense. WikiLeaks believes we can only destroy a conspiracy by rendering it hallucinatory and paranoid in relation to itself.

All this also takes us farther into crucial territory. The bulk of the cablegate-inspired global-talk-show tsunami has totally missed the point. Once again, it doesn't matter that most cables are gossip - trashy tabloid stuff. See it as Assange's way of illustrating how the conspiracy works. He is not interested in journalistic scoops (as much as his media partners, from the Guardian to Der Spiegel may be); what he wants is to strangle the nodes that make the conspiracy possible - to render the system "dumb and dumber".

No doubt cablegate shows how the US State Department seems to be in dumb-and-dumber territory - not even creative enough to do their own versions of "pimp my cable". This is already an extraordinary victory for an organization different from anything we have seen so far, which is doing things that journalists do or should be doing, and then some. And there will be more, on a major bank's secrets (probably Bank of America), on China's secrets, on Russia's secrets.

Mirror, mirror on the net
The US government and most of corporate media predictably rolled out their defense mechanism, as in "there's nothing new in these cables". Some might have suspected that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ordered American diplomats to spy on their colleagues at the United Nations. Another thing entirely is to have an official cable confirmation. If UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was not such a wimp, he would be throwing a monumental diplomatic fit by now.

And then, at the same time, the US government and virtually the whole establishment - from neo-conservatives to Obama-light practitioners - want to pull out all stops to delete WikiLeaks or, even take out Assange, as George W Bush wanted to do with bin Laden. Grizzly nutjob Sarah Palin says Assange is worse than al-Qaeda. Such hysteria lead an Atlanta radio station to ask listeners whether Assange should be executed or imprisoned (no third option; execution won). Redneck Baptist priest Mike Huckabee, who might have been the Republican contender for president in 2008 and is now a talk-show fixture, goes for execution as well.

Who to believe? These freaks, or two frustrated US federal investigators who told the Los Angeles Times that if WikiLeaks had been active in 2001, it would have prevented 9/11?

French philosophers avid to escape their own irrelevancy foment conspiracy theories, lamenting that WikiLeaks gives the media unprecedented powers; other blame the Internet ogre for gobbling up journalists. That's the beauty of the leaks - this is the stuff conspiracies are made of.

Under this framework it is very enlightening to listen to what eminent Cold Warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski has to say. He told the US Public Broadcasting Service that cablegate is "seeded" with "surprisingly pointed" information, and that "seeding" is too easy to accomplish.

Example: those cables saying that the Chinese are inclined to cooperate with the US in view of a possible Korean unification under the aegis of South Korea (I debunk this in my previous article, See TheNaked Emperor, Asia Times Online, December 1, 2010).

Dr Zbig says that WikiLeaks may have been manipulated by intelligence services with "very specific objectives". They could be, as he hints, internal US elements who want to embarass the Barack Obama administration. But he also suspects "foreign elements". In this case, the first on the list would be none other than the state of Israel.

As conspiracy theories go, this one is a cracker; could WikiLeaks be the head of a real invisible "snake" - a massive Israeli disinformation campaign? Evidence would include cables seriously compromising the US-Turkey relationship; the cumulative cables painting a picture of a Sunni Arab-wide consensus for attacking Iran; and the fact that the cables reveal nothing that demonstrates how Israel has jeopardized US interests in the Middle East over and over again.

In an interview with American talk show host Larry King, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin went Dr Zbig and said this was in fact a manipulation - the cables as a deliberate plot to discredit Russia (this was before Russia clinched the 2018 World Cup; now everyone is drowning in torrents of Stoli and no one gives a damn about cables anymore). Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said virtually the same thing regarding Iran.

And then there's the conspiracy that didn't happen: how come the Pentagon, for all its ultra-high-tech savvy ways, has not been willing, or able, to completely shut down WikiLeaks?

There's thunderous chatter everywhere on WikiLeaks' "motives" for releasing these cables. We just need to go back to Assange's thinking to realize there's no "motive". The intellectual void and political autism of America's diplomats is self-evident; they can only "understand" the Other: the world in terms of good guys and bad guys. The great French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc Godard is 80 this Friday. How fresh if he would shoot a remake of Made in USA, now featuring the perplexity of the system as it contemplates its reflection in a giant, digital mirror.