The
Globalization of Terror:
Organized
Crime and the Peddlers of the Old, New Democracy
by keith
harmon snow
New
Delhi, December 2001:
On
November 26th, a surveillance helicopter dispatched from the destroyer U.S.S.
John Gray -- docked for R & R in Chennai harbor -- invaded Indian airspace
without clearance. Days later, the Indian government newly subordinated its
land and people to the whims of the U.S. Navy and Air Force. The new military
agreement, U.S. Admiral Dennis Blair has assured, will buy AmericaÕs newest
ally in war a plethora of hope and promise. This is the fiction sold by the
United States government. In reality, the pact signals a new darkness for
India, and another portentous knell in the wake-up call for the world.
The
House of India in is turmoil. India, for example, has a reputation for free
market prostitution. Hundreds of thousands and possibly over a million females
are employed in Indian brothels. Thousands of Nepalese, Tibetan, Bhutanese and
Burmese children Ð girls as young as nine Ð have been lured or abducted into
sexual slavery in India. The trade is booming. Nepalese and Indian officials
sanction trafficking in females: Police are amongst the brothelsÕ leading
patrons.
Respected
for its Ònon-alignedÓ status throughout the Gulf War, the government of India
has again underscored its propensity to barter people, water and land -- its
very soul -- for money. There are the deals for nuclear weapons and nuclear
wastes. The trysts with the multinational corporations Ð the Coca-Colas and
NestlŽÕs and Shell Oil Companies. The dubious bargains with the peddlers of
Òfree-tradeÓ -- the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and World Trade
Organization.
But
money cannot be eaten.[1]
Through
the social and environmental debts and debits of mega-dams, mega-loans and militarization Ð progress as
prescribed by western predatory capitalism -- India has further mortgaged its way into deplorable
poverty, class and race discrimination, sexual slavery, natural resource exhaustion,
agricultural decline and domestic war.
Now
India prostitutes itself to the globalization of terror and the peddlers of the
old, new Òdemocracy.Ó India sides with terrorists -- legitimizes state terrorism peddled by
the West -- and prepares to manufacture its own: Yet another commodity for
export. Dotting the streets of Delhi however, the black and red adverts for ABB
Ð the secretive Swiss-based multinational Asea Brown Baveri Ð are obvious signs
that India has for some time been sleeping with the enemy. Indeed, some of us
know this.
We
know that U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, has a sordid history as
an ABB director, that he is peddling our rights and freedoms for personal
profits. We know that Condoleeza Rice is as tight with Chevron as Ronald is
with McDonaldÕs. We know that Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham Ð U.S.
secretaries of Commerce and Energy Ð are greasing the skids for oil and gas and
nuclear fallout. We understand the implications of the Bechtels and the
Carlysles and the GEs having revolving doors into the U.S. ÒgovernmentÓ and
back. Are we seriously expected to believe that these people and companies are
serving American interests?
For
her pact with the new U.S. Coalition of Terror, India is promised combined
Òhumanitarian airlifts,Ó combined Òspecial operations training,Ó Òsmall unit
ground and sea exercises,Ó and Ð the most laughable reward of all Ð the promise
of Òincreased security in the region.Ó
Well,
some of us, at least, know what that means.
Afghanistan
has been unconventionally nuked: It is just a matter of time before we learn,
as happened in Iraq, that uranium-cased ammunitions, or other ÒsmartÓ
radioactive toys, were used; that civilian water systems were intentionally
contaminated. (Some expert analysts in the U.S. believe that the Pentagon has
used small-scale nuclear warheads in Afghanistan.) PakistanÕs economy is reeling. PakistanÕs people
are divided. Pakistan and India have squared off for war.
The
U.S. is goading Israel to finish the job once and for all and the terrorists
running the Israeli government are respectfully excited. American patriots are dispensing Anthrax at
home, feeding the frenzy of American vengeance. Argentina is awash in the blood
of discontent and corruption. More than half the world is at war and the
tentacles of the newly prosecuted western terror stretch from the Philippines
to Nepal, from Columbia to the Congo, from Maine to San Francisco.
The
PentagonÕs program for India was recently revealed in its master plan for the
region. Updates in missiles and planes; heavy artillery; commands,
communications, and controls. A plethora of war toys imagined at the University
of Massachusetts, M.I.T., Dartmouth and Stanford. Technogadgets and retrofits
and miss-fits and spare parts and replacement parts and everything needed to
separate innocent people from their body parts.
And
with the indiscriminate precision of an American cluster bomb, the PentagonÕs
new deal in India triggered an immediate attack on the Indian parliament:
eleven people dead and new cause for India to prosecute war on its own soil: so
much for Òincreased securityÓ in India.
To
understand the menace of Òincreased security in the regionÓ, one needs only
examine WashingtonÕs ÒPlan Columbia.Ó Millions of U.S. taxpayerÕs dollars used
to defoliate and sterilize the land and the animals and the people of Columbia.
U.S. sponsored paramilitary death squads. Assassinations, tortures and
massacres -- and U.S. government agents, addicted to violence, dealing cocaine,
shooting up the Gulf of Mexico.
One
needs only examine the clandestine gunrunning and state-organized crime on the
killing fields of Africa. War-as-cover for private profit is U.S. foreign policy:
Meanwhile private mercenary firms -- staffed by former U.S. Generals [2] -- are dealing diamonds and
gold out of Africa. What besides total, brutal war and egregious loss of innocent life do Angola, Congo,
Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Sudan have in common? Diamonds from each accrue to the
dons of
the Bush-Clinton-Bush gangs.[3]
ÒIncreased
security in the regionÓ brought us the war in the Balkans, Bosnia, Sarajevo,
where most everyone killed died under a barrage of American propaganda which
has left even the left in the United States fighting amongst themselves about
what really happened and who the propagandists and terrorists really are.
What
happened? Divide and conquer: Yugoslavia
was selectively dismembered under the pressure of outside powers, mainly
the U.S. and Germany, which led to terrible wars of secession and the
perpetuation of widespread death and despair. The widespread misery gave new
purpose and license to Nato, the new international police force.
The
new brokers of the U.S. Coalition of Terror are selling the ÒsecurityÓ
of a red-light district, an internment camp or a minefield. The threat is real,
but unseen, and it is deadly: one is never safe. From these criminal
enterprises we can get some inkling of the hope and promise in store for the
world and its discontents. The Emperor is as naked as a snake, and thrice as
lethal. Some of us know this.
Elements
in the United States government, and the corporate shadow warriors behind it, are the
leading purveyors of global terror. Not that this is anything new. The hydra
has certainly molted however, shed its old skin and boldly emerged from its
hole. September 11 has ushered in a new era. Indeed, the Emperor need no longer
so carefully mask his gruesome intent, for a majority of the people Ð the
angry, horrified, wounded American people and their sympathetic brethren Ð now openly
clamor for the annihilation of the enemy Ð an elusive, scurrilous foe defined
by classified documents and the credos of globalization.
But
not all Americans support our ÒgovernmentÓ and its corporate allies and their
new Coalition of Terror. Language is a tool we are stuck with, and we know not what else
but ÒgovernmentÓ to call it. But it was stolen from us. George Bush was never
freely elected (as suppressed election evidence reveals). These people have
hijacked the state, wrecked the environment, and even the village idiot can see
-- if he is not already blind from the toxic discharge of multinational
corporate sludge and lethal gases regulated by the EPA. These people now
openly practice policies previously pursued only in the corridors of darkness,
in their corporate boardrooms, in their elite menÕs clubs, in the tombs of
their mindless thoughts.
Citizens
have been detained. FBI and Secret Service agents are harassing and threatening
US citizens for posters and art exhibits deemed Òun-AmericanÓ by random fellow
citizens. Web sites have been dismantled. The Cheneys and Liebermans and their
American Council of Trustees and Alumi have blacklisted academics. An Executive
Order illegally promulgated in the U.S. on November 13th created military
courts to try ÒterroristsÓ with ÒclassifiedÓ evidence. [4]
Some
of us know what this means.
Recall
that writer and Nobel Prize nominee Ken Saro-Wiwa was extrajudicially executed
(he was hung five times, so inept were the executioners) after petroleum
warlords in Nigeria Ð in the pay of Shell Oil -- framed him and tried him by
special military tribunal. His crime? Truth. Liberty. Freedom. And the pursuit
of happiness.
Military
decrees and tribunals prevail in all the western-sponsored dictatorships in
Africa Ð U.S. client states all Ð enabling the constant supply of raw materials
to feed the earth-crunching machines of waste and war. Now we can all sleep
better under the watchful gaze of the Office of Homeland Security (U.S.) and
the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (India). In Nigeria they have the State
Law and Order Restoration Decree and in Burma the State Law And Order
Restoration Council. (Oh, pardon me, thatÕs Myanmar Ð criminal enterprises, like multinational corporations, learned
long ago that changing their name is yet another Orwellian method of
deception.) Nigeria barters massacres for oil; Burma barters massacres for
diamonds and gold for Bill ClintonÕs old friends. But repression is the new,
old currency. And the peopleÕs choice is hung or jailed.[5]
Torture,
says the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.), is merely another
ÒtoolÓ in our ÒtoolboxÓ for the globalization of terror. We will use it at
home, and abroad. Thousands of innocent people were detained after September
11. Hundreds remain in detention. Have these people already been tortured?
Someone
please tell the freedom fighters and the agents of torture that the Bush gang
blocked F.B.I. investigations into the Bin Laden network prior to September 11.
Please tell them that George Bush Sr. works for the Bin Laden family business
in Saudi Arabia through the Carlysle Group, a secretive international
consulting firm that buys and sells defense contractors. Tell them that the
Bush Bin Laden gang has made a heap of money on the World Trade Center attacks
and the Afghannihilation.
(Yes,
yes. Of course. Osama Bin Laden is an outcast. The black sheep of the family. Has
nothing to do with those Bin Ladens. And neither does Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni
have anything to do with the criminal enterprises of his half-brother General
Salim Saleh. And neither does University of Massachusetts President William
ÒBillyÓ Bulger have any relationship to BostonÕs black sheep and F.B.I.
ÒMost-WantedÓ James ÒWhiteyÓ Bulger. Funny how Whitey Bulger canÕt be found by
the F.B.I..? Why shouldnÕt we believe that Osama Bin LadenÕs escape is part of
the plan? More grist for the terror millÉ No matterÉ)
Torture
is not a new tool in the war chest of the United States. For those asleep to
the clandestine war at home, the U.S. National Security apparatus has always persecuted its detractors.
American citizens defined as ÒterroristsÓ for asserting their supposed rights to freedom of speech,
basic civil rights, clean water and air, basic human needs. Recall, after all,
that Washington D.C. was founded on the invasion of the Chesapeake and the
genocide of the Algonquian nations. ÒDemocracyÓ was born on the hope and promise of tobacco and the inhuman
brutalities of plantation slavery on people of color.
The
National Security Agency and the F.B.I. neutralized the civil rights movement
in the United States: Thousands of native and African-Americans were
persecuted, hunted or destroyed under secret operations targeting non-violent citizen
groups like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panthers
and the American Indian Movement. [6]
Their crimes? Feeding, clothing and housing the people. Legislative and
judicial discrimination against women, gays, immigrants and African-Americans
persists. Meanwhile, right wing, fascist, paramilitary organizations like the
Ku Klux Klan and the School of the Americas Ð both terrorist organizations by any reasonable standard Ð
persist and prosper. And then there is the National Rifle Association.
Malcolm
X, the KennedyÕs, Martin Luther King, Patrice Lumumba, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Salvadore
Allende, Thomas Sankara, Kwameh Nkrumah Ð people who stood up for something,
put their beliefs into action. Like emerging solar technology Ð intentionally
destroyed under Jimmy Carter and Ronny ÒradioactiveÓ Reagan Ð or a normal,
uncorrupted file in some virus-infected operating system, these people were deleted. That is a short list.
On
December 2, 2001, in Brattleboro, Vermont, lifetime peace activist and social
worker Robert Woodword died in a ÒbizarreÓ and ÒunfortunateÓ incident after
frantically begging a Unitarian Universalist church congregation for sanctuary
from the CIA, FBI and police. Having at one point allegedly waved a four-inch
penknife at his eye Ð threatening to take his own life -- Woodward was shot
seven times by police. Police asked no questions. Police did not use their
nightsticks. Well, some of us have learned that Òprotection of the public,Ó
sorry to say, means protection from the police. WoodwardÕs death, scary to say, rings all the bells
of political assassination.
Some
of us know these things, and we are as sure as goats are goats. But in the free
market of global terror, where pigs are horses, girls are boys, and war is peace,
[7] who will convince the people
that they have been so undemocratically duped by decades of corporate propaganda? Who
will show them that the perception managers [8] have mismanaged their rights and freedoms? Who will tell them
that Edward Neys, a director of Burson-Marsteller, WashingtonÕs most powerful
and secretive public relations firm, is also a director of the Bush-connected
Barrick Gold Corporation? Would the people even listen? Would they care?
Burson-Marsteller
is a billion-dollar company that covers for organized crime. They covered for
the Nigerian oil barons and Shell Oil during the Biafran War. They covered for
Babcock & Wilcox and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the Three
Mile Island nuclear reactor melted down and irradiated the American landscape.
They massaged the public and managed their perceptions as the Exxon Valdez
supertanker greased the Alaskan wilderness with black crude.
Burson-Marsteller
has run public relations campaigns to shield extensive, state-orchestrated
terror by the ÒgovernmentsÓ of Argentina, Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka,
and Singapore. (Remember that Lee Kuan Yew, long-time dictator of Singapore, is
a director on the board of J.P. Morgan.) That is a short list.
Burson-Marsteller hyped the show for the Earth Summit in Rio. The people of
India, not to be forgotten, might appreciate the news that Burson-Marsteller
covered for Union Carbide after the gas massacre in Bhopal (1984).
When
the World Trade destruction site was blocked to firefighters determined to
rescue and evacuate victims, the principals of power and profit insured that
some $200 million in gold and silver buried beneath the rubble was immediately
recovered. Who will tell the people that this was the gold from CanadaÕs Bank
of Nova Scotia? That Barrick Gold Corporation is a Canadian company? That
BarrickÕs directors include former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney,
former U.S. Senator Howard Baker, and former U.S. President and C.I.A. director
George Bush Sr.?
Now,
would that be the gold that Barrick pillaged from the people of Chile -- after
the C.I.A. coup that overthrew the Allende Government? Or from the people of
Indonesia -- where East Timor was invaded and hundreds of thousands of peopleÕs
lives destroyed under the pro-U.S. Suharto Regime? (This to deny their
autonomous aspirations and to insure deep-sea access for U.S. submarines primed
for nuclear war and pooping nuclear waste.) Is that the gold from Tanzania
where the company buried people alive? Is that the gold from the Kilo Moto gold
mines Barrick controls in eastern Congo?
These
are the questions we would like the American journalists in the Washington
briefing rooms to ask the charismatic Donald Rumsfeld. Instead they grovel and
drool, for the most banal, condescending abuse, censoring themselves beyond the
absurd. They run with the pack, fight over scraps, and prostitute themselves
for their paychecks and perks and the great American ream. And as Donald RumsfeldÕs
ratings soar, the Pentagon proclaims the peopleÕs love for a new brand of
leader Ð the Secretary of War -- who is Òdead honest.Ó This is what the American people hunger
for. A leader who is Òdead honest.Ó
Honestly,
when we hear that the ÒMaoistÓ resistance in Nepal blows up a Coca-Cola plant,
or people in south India burn a Coke plant down, some of us rejoice. We recall
that one of the American directors of Coke is also a director of Elf Aquitaine,
that Elf is about oil, secret weapons deals, the ruthless and unaccountable
French-trained ÒCobraÓ militias in Central African Republic -- about raw
materials and ruthless dictators and Uzebecki warlords. Sounds pretty
un-American.
We
know that U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney was president of Halliburton
Corporation as late as 2000. Halliburton and subsidiary Brown & Root count
among their trophies some of the most prized contracts in the globalization of
terror. Brown & Root operated in Rwanda to consolidate the power of the
U.S.-supported Rwandan Patriotic Front and its leader and now President of
Rwanda Paul Kagame Ð who was trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. With U.S.
covert forces and their psych-ops and intelligence and counter-insurgency
training -- acronyms all for lethal, unaccountable force and unmitigated loss
of life -- Halliburton underwrote the two subsequent U.S.-supported invasions
of Zaire/Congo (1996/1998). And, since 1998, over 3 million people have died in
Congo. Dead honest.
Now
there are 2000 U.S. Special Forces, and additional U.S. troops of the 10th
Mountain Division, stationed at a former Soviet military base in Karshi,
Uzebekistan. One neednÕt turn over too many stones to expose the Halliburton
snakes behind the bulldozers and cement paving the runways of AsiaÕs mountain
fiefdoms.
The
Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) is in the business of manufacturing terrorism.
In drugs-for-guns rackets the C.I.A. dumped ÒcrackÓ cocaine on U.S. inner city
neighborhoods to fund terror in Central America. Torture was institutionalized
in Zaire under C.I.A.-operative Mobutu Sese Seko and for the next 34 years
special torture centers -- like the OAU-6 in Kinshasa Ð proliferated. Never has
the New York Times revealed this. They certainly know. Countless Ð countless -- innocent human beings
were eliminated under Mobutu. Countless millions currently suffer.
Hundreds
of students Ð possibly over 1000 -- were massacred (circa 1992) when MobutuÕs
elite shock troops Ð the Special Presidential Division -- invaded the University of
Lumumbashi in Zaire. Maybe twenty students Ð maybe twenty -- were killed in the
well-known Tianamen Square incident. The C.I.A., the Israeli Mossad, the French Service de
Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionage (S.D.E.C.E.), the British
MI-6, the South African Bureau of State Security (BOSS) Ð they all export torture,
and they have trained shock troops the world over in raw terror as a medium of
social control.
Q:
Why have ruthless and inhuman dictators in Gabon, Togo, Cameroon, Kenya and
Zimbabwe prospered for decades? Why -- when they massacre and torture and
enslave their citizens -- do they continue to secure loans from the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank?
A:
Return-on-Investment: R.O.I.: simple neoliberal economics. The
Return-on-Investments are the decapitations, dismemberments, disappearances practiced
on innocent men, women and children. All the while the raw materials accrue to
the ABBs, the Bechtels, the Mitsubishis, the Union Carbides, the Royal/Dutch
Shells and the GE/Enron juggernauts. And the media corporations respond with
information whiteouts. Whole countries dismissed and ignored.
Amero-European
multinational corporations are pulling the strings to ensure their cheap and
unfettered access to oil, natural gas, gold, diamonds, rubber and timber. In
Lake Albert and in the heart of CongoÕs forests multinationals are sinking
wells for petroleum and natural gas. Shell, Exxon, Chevron, Mobil, Agip,
Total-Fina control the oil fields off AfricaÕs western oil coasts.
Texaco
is entrenched in the Angola and Congo conflicts. Texaco director Charles H.
Price is a director of the New York Times Company. Ditto for CitizenÕs Energy
International, a firm controlled by the family of Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and by
N.Y.-based Lehman Brothers Holdings. Lehman BrotherÕs director John F. Akers is
a director of the New York Times Company. Phelps Dodge Corporation has mined
Zimbabwe for years and through Zimbabwe is entrenched in the profitable
bloodletting in Congo. Long-time Phelps Dodge executive George B. Munroe is a
New York Times Company director. The First Boston (bank) interests of George L.
Shinn Ð a New York Times Company director Ð certainly influenced and slanted
New York Times coverage of Zaire/Congo (1996, 1998) relief operations in which
First Boston had a financial interest.
On
the ground in Congo Ð when U.S. Special Operations paramilitary forces (read:
terrorists) perpetrated massacres of innocent Congolese civilians -- in 1965
and 1966 was soldier Cyrus Vance, later Secretary of State under Jimmy Carter.
Perhaps itÕs no surprise to learn Ð since U.S. covert forces have continued to
perpetuate violence in Central Africa Ð that Cyrus Vance is one of the
directors of the New York Times Company.
If
Samantha Powers (ÒBystanders To Genocide,Ó Atlantic Monthly, September 2001)
interviewed 50 ÒexpertsÓ to uphold the now conventional wisdom that Òthe U.S.
did not intervene in Rwanda because we did not know what was going on at the
time,Ó then she interviewed the wrong people. The Atlantic Monthly, in any case, has
an extended business relationship -- beyond advertising -- with Shell Oil
Company. And then there is Philip Gourevitch and his pal Paul Kagame and the
narrow realities of the New Yorker.
Torture
and assassinations and massacres of civilians and POWs are not new. This is the
status quo. This is business as usual. What is new is the brazen admission that
these practices are going to be used. New is the American peopleÕs brazen
acceptance of these. There is even applause in many quarters. Terror is the new
currency, openly traded, like the stocks of ABB, the Morgan Banks and the
Carlysle Group. New are the open promises and the promised methods Ð newly
advertised -- and the overt manifestations of fascism. God Bless America? God
help us.
Human
Rights Watch is the latest recruit for the new Coalition of Terror. In a press release
documenting massacres of Afghan civilians by U.S. bombers and aircraft fire,
Human Rights Watch -- uncritical of terror, Incorporated -- merely Òreiterated
its call to the U.S.-led alliance to ensure that it is taking adequate
precautions to avoid civilian casualties.Ó [9] War, in other words, and no matter the private interests behind
it, is fine. Please limit the casualties. Funded by multinational corporations
(disguised as foundations and humanitarian organizations) and compromised by
American patriotism and perhaps stifled by the specter of being castigated as un-American, Human Rights Watch has,
thankfully, clarified its limited agenda and mission. Human rights wronged
again.
The
Geneva Convention has become equally, openly irrelevant. Best tell Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf that his recent remark, Òcountries refusing to
implement UN resolutions should be called perpetrators of state terrorism,Ó
directed at India, is an indictment of the United States. Indeed, PakistanÕs
partner in crime -- the U.S. -- perpetually stalls, ignores, neutralizes and
dismantles United NationsÕ structures and treaties ostensibly designed to
defend human dignity, liberty, truth and the environment. For their unfailing
service to terrorists -- see Kofi Annan on Rwanda for a single example -- the
United Nations team is graced with a Nobel Prize for Peace.
War,
indeed, is
peace.
The
United Nations, said spokesman Fred Eckhard, is not in a position to accept
Taliban prisoners. IsnÕt that the truth! It is an outrageous scandal. But it is
also business as usual. And so hundreds of POWs were slaughtered at Kunduz and
Mazar-i-Sharif. British journalists have reported that C.I.A. operative Johnny
Michael ÒMikeÓ Spann, the first American ÒofficiallyÓ killed in Afghanistan
(even death is officiated in this global terror war, but only the death of
Americans) was no innocent victim of a prison uprising: Seems he was torturing
prisoners. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
ÒHe
was a brave American hero,Ó said C.I.A. Director George Tenet, Òbringing
freedom to a distant people, while defending freedom for all of us here at
home.Ó Disguised as an American speaking Afghan in Afghani clothing, one can
only imagine what horrible methods of torture Johnny Spann was using in the
interests of my American freedoms. Ditto for the mysterious C.I.A. operative ÒDaveÓ who
shot his way out of the history books and into obscurity.
Lying
through his teeth, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld called the reports of some
600 prisoners killed unsubstantiated and sensational. ÒThey are lying through
their teeth,Ó he said. Turns out that Northern Alliance soldiers ripped out
gold teeth from dead prisoners with steel bars. Anyway, Rumsfeld admitted, when
pressed again, Òthis is war. People end up shooting. Things happen.Ó
A
brilliant thesis. Things happen. People murdered in skyscrapers. People
murdered in hijacked planes. People murdered with their hands tied behind their
backs. People murdered unarmed. People shot in the head at close range. Red
Cross camps and rural villages with no military significance bombed: terrified women and
children running for their lives strafed by high-tech warplanes with nothing
better to do. Children lacerated by explosive yellow bombs mistaken for tinned
and plasticated food. Women raped by U.S. coalition forces. People maimed and
exploded by landmines: more tools in the toolbox of terror. Millions of people
exposed to disease and despair and starvation. People tortured. And our
American soldier boys in Afghanistan, victims all, killed by ÒfriendlyÓ fire.
Asea
Brown Baveri Corporation is in the business of infrastructure: Energy,
transportation, communications, construction. So Donald Rumsfeld orders the
bombing of Afghanistan. His old friends, the democracy loving boys at ABB meet
in secret to plot AfghanistanÕs post-destruction reconstruction. USAID, UNICEF,
CARE and the rest of the billion dollar misery industry prepare to mobilize Ð
with their upwardly-mobile salaries and their shiny, new Sport Utility Vehicles
and their humanitarian inhumanity.
The
evidence is clear. Love begets love. Violence begets violence. Singers sing.
Teachers teach. Lovers make love. Soldiers fight, and warriors make war.
Military men know only fighting. The gun is their answer to every problem.
While warriors rule our world, our world will know only war.
Things
happen, says Citizen Rumsfeld. And the Washington press pool laughs. And the
American people go shopping. And the peddlers of democracy smile in their
knowing way, ever plotting to increase their exports and liquidate the
discontents in the global marketplace of terror, which, like prostitution, is
the worldÕs oldest, newest commodity. [
keith harmon snow is a
journalist and photographer. In 2000 he spent seven months researching the
conflicts in Angola, Congo, Rwanda and Sudan. In 2001 he presented on a special
congressional panel convened by U.S. Congressional Representative Cynthia
McKinney to explore the role of US covert forces and private interests in
Africa. Keith has lectured at colleges and universities on neocolonialism,
private profit, and genocide in Africa, and on the political economy of the
western mass media. In December of 2000 he gave a lecture at Delhi University
in India.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1] Chief SeattleÕs address to
the United States government (circa 1890?).
[2] Military Professional
Resources Incorporated.
[3] See Genocide & Covert
Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, by Wayne Madsen (Mellen Press, 1999).
[4] As of December 17, some 77
legal scholars at Yale University have challenged the Bush Administration on
this.
[5] Ken Saro-Wiwa in Nigeria;
Aung Sun Su Kyi remains under house arrest in Burma.
[6] E.g., see Agents of
Repression, Ward Churchill and Jim Van der Wall.
[7] From the essay by Arundhati
Roy in War Is Peace (Arundhati Roy, Noam Chomsky, et al. 2001).
[8] Contemporary think-tanks,
public relations and intelligence experts today call propaganda Òperception
management.Ó
[9] Human Rights Watch:
Afghanistan: New Civilian Deaths Due to U.S. Bombers, October 29, 2001.