Killing Hope- Part Three

In October 1, 1965 six Indonesian generals were murdered by a group of junior officers who claimed that those generals were supporters of CIA who had planned to oust the first president of the country, Sukarno, and their action was to prevent it. General Suharto: “a man who had served both the Dutch colonialists and the Japanese invaders- and his colleagues charged that the large and influential PKI [Communist Party] was behind the junior officers’ ‘coup attempt’, and that behind the party stood Communist China, (P.193).” This so-called coup was an excuse for Suharto to encourage people, in particular Moslems, to initiate a Communist killing macabre: “The Indonesian people were stirred up in part by the display of photographs on television and in the press of the badly decomposed bodies of the slain generals. The men, the public was told, had been castrated and their eyes gouged out by Communist women. (The army later made the mistake of allowing official medical autopsies to be included as evidence in some of the trials; and the extremely detailed reports of the injuries suffered mentioned only bullet wounds and some bruises, no eye gougings or castration.),(P. 193,194).” Murdered Indonesians during those years are reported to be between half to one million. There are accounts of Muslim men banding known Communists together and mass killing them: “Twenty-five years later, American diplomats disclosed that they had systematically compiled comprehensive lists of ‘Communist’ operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, and turned over as many as 5,000 names to the Indonesian army, which hunted those persons down and killed them…Robert Martens, a former member of the US Embassy’s political section in Jakarta, stated in 1990: ‘It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands, but that’s not all bad. There’s a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment.’, (P. 194).”

In Uruguay, we are introduced to the head of the Office of Public Safety (OPS) in Montevideo by the name of Dan Mitrione. OPS is basically an offshoot of CIA centered in Washington headed by “Bryon Engle, an old CIA hand”. Mitrione was an expert torturer who explained his technique to a Cuban American: “Mitrione considered it to be an art. First there should be a softening-up period, with the usual beatings and insults. The object is to humiliate the prisoner, to make him realize his helplessness, to cut him off from reality. No questions, only blows and insults. Then, only blows in silence… Here no pain should be produced other than that caused by the instrument which is being used. ‘The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect,’ was his motto. During the session you have to keep the subject from losing all hope of life, because this can lead to stubborn resistance. ‘You always leave him hope… a distant light.’ The American pointed out that upon receiving a subject the first thing is to determine his physical state, his degree of resistance, by means of a medical examination. ‘A premature death means a failure by the technician…’ About half a year later, 31 July 1970 to be exact, Dan Mitrione was kidnapped by the Tupamaros. They did not torture him. They demanded the release of some 150 prisoners in exchange for him. With the determined backing of the Nixon administration, the Uruguayan government refused. On 10 August, Mitrione’s dead body was found on the back seat of a stolen car… Secretary of State… President Nixon’s son-in-law…attended the funeral for Mitrione, the City’s former police chief… Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis came to town to stage a benefit… White House spokesman, Ron Ziegler, solemnly stated that ‘Mr. Mitrione’s devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere. ‘A perfect man,’ his widow said. ‘A great humanitarian,’ said his daughter Linda… For the next 11 years, Uruguay competed strongly for the honor of being South America’s most repressive dictatorship. It had, at one point, the largest number of political prisoner per capita in the world… The dissident Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, summed up his country’s era of dictatorship thusly: ‘People were in prison so that prices could be free.’, (P. 202, 203).”

Greece in mid-1960s goes through a massive political change, thanks to George Papandreou who was elected with such a majority that Greece had not seen before or since. CIA station in Greece was working hard to topple him, and finally succeeded. In the mist of the political turmoil in Greece, a dispute with Turkey over Cypress erupts: “which was now spilling over onto NATO, President Johnson summoned the Greek ambassador to tell him of Washington’s ‘solution’. The ambassador protested that it would be unacceptable to the Greek parliament and contrary to the Greek constitution. ‘Then listen to me, Mr. Ambassador,’ said the President of the United States, ‘fuck your Parliament and your Constitution. America is an elephant. Cypress is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good… We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about Democracy, Parliament and Constitution, he, his Parliament and his Constitution may not last very long.’ (P.216)”

Guatemala of 1960 is run by a dictator receiving directions from CIA, like any other American country south of the US borders. The story of Guatemala cannot be separated from its neighbors. Every once in a while, there is a nationalist government that struggles to survive for a few years, in spite of US sanctions and/ or oppositions financed by the US, but then it is also toppled and another US puppet government rises into power. An Indian woman who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992, testified as follows: “My name is Rigberta Menchu Tum. I am a representative of the ‘Vincente Menchu’ [her father] Revolutionary Christians… On 9 December 1979, my 16-year-old brother Patrocino was captured and tortured for several days and then taken with twenty other young men to the square in Chajul… An officer of [President] Lucas Garcia’s army of murderers ordered the prisoners to be paraded in a line. Then he started to insult and threaten the inhabitants of the village, who were forced to come out of their houses to witness the event. I was with my mother, and we saw Patrocino; he had had his tongue cut out and his toes cut off. The officer jackal made a speech. Every time he paused the soldiers beat the Indian prisoners. When he finished his ranting, the bodies of my brother and the other prisoners were swollen, bloody, unrecognizable. It was monstrous, but they were still alive. They were thrown on the ground and drenched with gasoline. The soldiers set fire to the wretched bodies with torches and the captain laughed like a hyena and forced the inhabitants of Chajul to watch. This was his objective- that they should be terrified and witness the punishment given to the guerrillas, (P. 236).”

Some think that CIA is active only in Middle Eastern, African, Asian, and Third World countries. In fact, CIA conducts operations in all Western Countries. Its actions can be conducted in many different ways and through many front organizations. We learn about CIA operation in Australia, and a bank that was established in 1973 by an Australian person by the name of Frank Nugan, and an American Vietnam veteran by the name of Michael Hand. The bank was founded in order to facilitate many of CIA’s clandestine activities. Some of such activities are listed in the book, and they are interesting to note: “The Nugan Hand Bank succeeded in expanding the scope of normal banking services. Among the activities it was reportedly involved in were: drug trafficking, international arms dealing, links to organized crime, laundering money for President Sukarno of Indonesia, unspecified services for President and Mrs. Marcus of the Philippines, assisting the Shah of Iran’s family to shift money out of Iran, channeling CIA money into pro-American political parties and operations in Europe, transferring $2.4 million to the Australian Liberal Party through one of the bank’s many associated companies, attempting to blackmail an Australian state minister who was investigating organized crime … In addition, several mysterious deaths have been connected to the bank, including that of a ranking CIA officer in Maryland. And on 27 January 1980, Frank Nugan was himself found shot dead in his car. In June, Michael hand disappeared without a trace. The Nugan Hand Merchant Bank collapsed, $50 million or so in debt, (P. 249).”

What Ronald Reagan started in 1980s to do to Libyan leader, Obama did for him a few decades later. Although Obama was a shrewd and crafty politician, Reagan’s simple mindedness matched Qaddafi’s words. Reagan, like all his predecessors and all his successors had to keep the military budget constantly expanding, and the best way to do it was through creation of wars. Qaddafi fit all the characters of an enemy: “Ronald Reagan and his ultra-ideological comrades took office in January 1981 committed to a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich… i.e. welfare for the rich, for defense industry friends and business associates, past, present, and future…Qaddafi was a designer-monster: a quirky, unpredictable, super-uppity Third World leader, sitting on the world’s ninth largest oil reserve; a man with deep-seated pan-Islamic, pan-Arabic, anti-Zionist, and anti-imperialist convictions, who had closed a strategic US air base in Libya in 1970; an artless braggart mouthing revolutionary rhetoric so juvenile he could serve equally well as bogeyman or buffoon; a man carrying out or supporting enough real terrorist acts so that any exaggeration would be believed… Ronald Reagan- a man who played with air strikes as if he were directing movie scenes- had chosen to take on a man who, like himself, was a prisoner of ideology… The Libyan leader, however, did have a social conscience, not a quality known to be part of Ronald Reagan’s DNA. (‘You don’t see poverty or hunger here. Basic needs are met to a greater degree than in any other Arab country,’ reported Newsweek in 1981 about Libya.), (P. 283).”

One of the chapters of the book “Killing Hope” is allocated to Nicaraguan revolution of 1978. It is interesting to know that another revolution happened the same year in the other side of the globe. Sandinistas who took power after the collapse of US supported Somoza regime, honored the debt carried over from the previous regime to Israel and Western countries, and by sending political envoys to other countries, attempted to establish good relations with all states of the world. On the other hand, Iranian revolutionary government attached US embassy twice, and kept many of the embassy personnel hostage. When Ronald Reagan was in power, he created an army to topple the government of Nicaragua. This action, and at the same an inaction towards Khomeini’s regime, clearly shows that Khomeini was favored by Reagan, as he, like US administrations, rooted out any socialist and nationalist groups by imprisonment and execution. Of course Western supported propaganda of the Shah and Somoza regime in invalidating nationalism and socialism had its imprint in mostly religious minds of the people of both countries. The book quotes from a Nicaraguan government militant: “Tell a Nicaraguan factory worker… that we are building a system in which workers will control the means of production, in which income will be redistributed to benefit the proletariat, and je will say ‘yes- that’s what we want.’ Call it Socialism and he will tell you he doesn’t want any part of it. Tell a peasant- in whom the problem of political education is even more acute- that the revolution is all about destroying the power of the big latifundistas, that the agrarian reform and the literacy campaign will incorporate the peasantry into political decisions – and he will be enthusiastic, he will recognize that this is right and just, Mention the word Communism and he will run a milt, (P. 302).” The same thing could be told about any Iranian peasantry or laborer.

The first attack on the sovereign country of Iraq happened by George Bush, the father. In a chapter about this aggression, and the reason for it (expanding, instead of cutting the military budget after the collapse of the Soviet Union), the author makes an interesting general statement: “While many nations have a terrible record in modern times of dealing out great suffering, face-to-face with their victim, Americans have made it a point to keep at a distance while inflicting some of the greatest horrors of the age: atomic bombs on the people of Japan; carpet-bombing Korea back to stone age; engulfing the Vietnamese in napalm and pesticides; providing three decades of Latin Americans with the tools  and methods of torture, then turning their eyes away, closing their ears to the screams, and denying everything… and now, dropping 177 million pounds of bombs on the people of Iraq in the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world, (P. 320).”

Review of this book, Killing Hope, will be completed in the last part, which will be published in a couple of weeks in this weblog.