Thursday, February 21, 2008

And Satan Said: 'Recite the Names of the People You Killed.'

The other day a Chilean journalist asked whether the Spanish Guatemala genocide prosecution was mainly "symbolic," but I said that it was more than that since international arrest warrants had been issued. (Re. the prosecution see postings of February 5, 7, and 9, 2008).

What neither of us knew was that as we were speaking one of the defendants had just died, and that the International Herald Tribune/ AP headline would read: "Former Guatemalan police director wanted in Spain for crimes against humanity dies" (International Herald Tribune website, February 18, 2008).

Though that only begins to ping the surface of the lake of blood that is his legacy, it is not a bad summing-up of the life of Col. German Chupina, torturer, rapist, murderer, and steward of the American Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala (AMCHAM).

(See postings of December 2, 2007, "'Go ahead, kill them. Just be sure to fill out your expense account.,'"and February 9, 2008, "It's Not the Man, It's the Mission. The Whisperers of Death.").

That's one small benefit of trying to enforce the murder laws, even in a world that doesn't yet want to. Sometimes the proceeding makes chroniclers feel free to call things by their proper names.

That didn't much happen with Suharto, who was a bigger fish and better connected, and who was, in any event, never brought up before a murder tribunal.

(The New York Times managed to start its story on the man who surpassed Saddam and rivaled Pol Pot: "Indonesia embraced Suharto as a great leader Sunday, greeting his death with official solemnity and with surging, shouting crowds..." [Seth Mydans, "In death, ex-dictator elicits grief and tributes," in International Herald Tribune, January 28, 2008]; for poor victims', rather than rich perpetrators', perspectives see posting of January 13, 2008, "General Suharto of Indonesia. One Small Man Leaves a Million Corpses." ).

But imagine if proceedings, even after the fact, were brought against those who deserved it. In the US there's a popular TV cop show, "Cold Case," devoted to that notion.

But the show only deals with common criminals, like people who kill kids -- that is, people who kill kids while not on state business, or with no state political motive.

US Presidential libraries would have to start devoting exhibits in their biographical dioramas. 'The Early Years,' 'The Race for the White House,' 'The State Terrorism Tribunal.'

Though these cases are small breakthroughs, they're big, because they happen on a big, important front.

Yesterday's Haaretz tells the story of Israeli Gen. Doron Almog who, in 2005, cowered in a plane for two hours on the tarmac at London's Heathrow airport and thereby "escaped arrest for alleged war crimes ... because U.K. police feared an arrest would spark a shootout with Israeli security officials..." ( Haaretz Service, "Report: IDF general dodged U.K. arrest as police feared shootout," Haaretz, February 20, 2008.)

He wasn't such a shrinking violet when he allegedly lobbed flesh-shredding flechette shells at Gaza civilians or was smashing 50 homes there, but its different when you're not playing on your home court, and there's real law enforcement, with guns.

As it happened, this outbreak of law enforcement was unexpected, and quickly contained. Citizens had complained, a local British court had issued a warrant, the cops went to do their job, and after the general had returned to Israel -- where the cops had no job to do -- the British Foreign Office apologized profusely.

The general deplaned.

Tony Blair recently went to the trouble of commenting that a similar contemplated British case against Avi Dichter, Israel's Public Security Minister, was "utter nonsense" (The case concerns a "targeted killing" that killed the target's wife and three children, among others. Dichter last year threatened Palestinians with a "Nakba" -- cataclysm -- if they kept remembering their 1948 Nakba), an interesting remark by Blair, a man now tasked by the Quartet as an honest broker on Israel-Palestine, and who backed an Iraq invasion that his own Foreign Office's deputy legal adviser called "a crime of aggression" (which is prosecutable).

(For Blair quote: Barak Ravid, "Sources: Blair 'shocked' by Dichter fears of arrest in U.K.," Haaretz, February 8, 2008. For Dichter quote: Meron Benvenisti, "Time to Stop Mourning," Haaretz, December 12, 2007. For legal adviser quote see posting of January 17, 2008, "US Precision Bombing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Killing Civilians, Carefully.").

So what would Chupina and Suharto talk about, if they met, at the boiling pool, in Hell?

'CIA Station Chiefs I have known?'

In Chupina's case, it would include V. Harwood Blocker 3d, 1977-1980; Barry Royden, 1980; and Robert Hultslander, 1981-83 (see my "The Country Team," The Nation [US], June 5, 1995).

Or maybe Satan would step in: 'OK Chupina, OK Suharto, before you get to eat (if they eat down there), recite for me, from memory, the names of all the people you killed.'

You know how long it takes to recite a million names, or even some mere thousands?

And what if, as is likely, they didn't know or have forgotten most of the names?

Maybe even Satan wouldn't be that cruel.

For true viciousness, you must look aboveground.


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Sunday, February 17, 2008

"Dying for a Second Round." Israel Said to Plan Attack on Lebanon.

On Friday I asked a top-level Israeli, a former IDF (Israel Defense Forces) elite unit man and prime-ministerial confidante, whether the assassination of Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyeh could have been done by a Lebanese group.

He snorted at the preposterous notion. This was "way too sophisticated," he said. "This [the car bombing] was a precisely orchestrated international operation," and this was the "third or fourth or fifth time in a year that Israel has carried out a military operation in Syria."

When I asked him to repeat that last part he added the word "allegedly."

But the message, or at least the boast, was clear. So why is Israel doing this?

The man said of his colleagues: "There are a lot of [Israeli] military and cabinet people just dying for a second round with Lebanon. If given the opportunity they'll take it," i.e. attack Lebanon again, not in spite of "but because of" the perception that their '06 attack failed.

Though the IDF leveled blocks and villages, dropped 4 million cluster bomblets (some of which are still exploding), and killed some 200 Hezbollah combatants and 1,000 Lebanese civilians (roughly 40 Israeli civilians were killed by Hezbollah), they apparently departed Lebanon feeling politically inadequate.

The official feeling was that they either did not destroy enough, or destroy enough of the right people and items, to avoid the embarrassing perception that they lost to Hezbollah.

So to have the option of solving this problem they've apparently staged a provocative assassination in hopes of goading Hezbollah into retaliating and providing a pretext for new -- better -- destruction that this time around will "succeed," i.e. soothe hurt Israeli feelings.

There've been attempts to put this in strategic terms, as educated killers (and those who study them) prefer. 'Israel must prove its strategic value to the United States' (What? Washington is going to dump Israel? Hezbollah's "victory" strengthened the Palestinians, or Lebanon, or put Israel's existence in danger?). Or, alternatively: 'Hezbollah must be eradicated' (which everyone knows is impossible).

In fact, the closer you look the more it looks like leaders' blood psychotherapy.

And the same thing goes for the publics that follow them. Olmert is in political trouble. If he doesn't kill some Arabs soon (who or where is secondary), his governing coalition may well dissolve. The public has to feel good, too.

The problem -- for the to-be-killed, and for the notion of murder law, not to mention (and few do) decency -- is that the Israeli body politic is now set this way: demanding -- with a few, brave, exceptions -- not just daily, routine, killings of Palestinians, but periodic dramatic strikes that thrill and let them strut like hero/ victims.

It's as if the inhabitants of a US Fox News studio had multiplied and become a nation.

It, of course, doesn't have to be that way, but it is obviously that way now. All you have to do to see it is pick up the papers or talk to a few Israelis. (For representative quotations see Gideon Levy, "Little Ahmadinejads, Haaretz," 10/06/2007).

Its one thing for a state to be murdering and/or oppressing others when their local public doesn't know about it (as was largely the case when Washington was decimating Central America in the 1980s), but it's another when the public knows about it and supports the injustices and crimes (as was the case with US whites and slavery, and in the first stages of US/Iraq, where public support seemed to turn -- as it may still -- on the question of whether the US was "winning").

In the first situation, the killing policy is vulnerable. If word gets out, the public might be angry. But in the second it is more stable, and deadly, since the public knows, and asks for more.

But people and states don't get to entirely write their own histories.

They usually interact with others.

In the case of Israel, the key interaction is with the US, their military guarantor/ mass subsidizer, and with American Jews, where, among the young, opinion appears to be slowly turning (see postings of December 7, 2007, "Imposed Hunger in Gaza. The Army in Indonesia. Questions of Logic and Activism," and February 13, 2008, "Big Killer Takes Out Smaller One. 'Wipe Out a Neighborhood.' Life by Mafia Rules in the Israeli - US Domain," particularly the plaint of Malcom Hoenlein.).

Alternatively, Palestinians and groups like Hezbollah and Hamas could join the US as important determinants, but only if they too reset their outlooks (and their willingness to kill or murder) -- as some Palestinians and other Arabs at the grassroots level are now urging, cautiously -- and switched to active, but non-violent, or minimally violent resistance (like the first intifada, or the Gaza wall-breaking) and stopped letting themselves be used as a "provocation-response" button that Israel can press when it wants a thrill.

(See posting of January 26, 2007. "The Breaking of the Gaza Wall. Wise, Justified Political Violence.").

Link to view this posting in Arabic translation.

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Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Big Killer Takes Out Smaller One. "Wipe Out a Neighborhood." Life By Mafia Rules in the Israeli - US Domain.

I happened to learn about the car-bomb assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the Hezbollah commander, while talking to a Palestinian Fatah man who is a confidante of Mohammed Dahlan, who is famously reputed in the press to have been both a torturer and the CIA's man in Gaza, until the Hamas ousted him.

The Fatah/ Dahlan man who imparted the assassination news hates Hamas with a passion -- he said that in last year's rival security forces showdown they grabbed and tortured him with knives for four hours (he was earlier tortured by the Israelis far longer, and worse, but views that as par for the course)-- and is no fan of Hezbollah, but he viewed the killing with irony. He said he was hearing that the Israelis were saying "we cleared the account with him (Mughniyeh)" (Palestinian Authority security forces, like those Dahlan ran, now have regular coordination meetings with their ostensible enemies, Israeli intelligence), yet he claimed that Mughniyeh's major killings had been more against other Arabs (eg. Saudi, Kuwait) than against Israelis.

The Israeli killing men are trying to contain their grins. The government issued a non-denial denial "Israel rejects the attempt by terror groups to attribute to it any involvement in this incident. We have nothing further to add" -- i.e. they reject terror groups saying they were involved, but do not say that they were not involved.

The US, which had a $25 million bounty on Mughniyeh's head (he's implicated, in, among other things, the Lebanon Marine barracks bombing, the kidnap/ holding of AP reporter Terry Anderson, a TWA hijacking) felt no need to show restraint, saying, through the State Department: "The world is a better place without this man in it. He was a cold-blooded killer, a mass murderer and a terrorist responsible for countless innocent lives lost."

In a world of proportionality and full enforcement of the murder laws -- or even, rough justice-style "what goes around comes around" -- George Bush's men would not want to make that statement, since they (and Israel) are responsible for vastly more, and vastly more civilian, killings, don't have Mughniyeh's sometime excuse of responding to invasion, and don't want to start up their cars tomorrow morning and wind up blown to bits.

But that is not this world. This is mafia world. If you're big enough, you can whack guys.

It so happened that, hours before, another Palestinian man had used that mafia term as we wove through scrolls of barbed wire, checkpoints, walls, and Galil/M-16 toting Occupation men as Jewish settlers/occupiers zipped through the West Bank on ethnically/religiously segregated superhighways.

Two days before, a fairly typical day in Israeli politics, the lead front page headline in the Haaretz newspaper was "IDF (Israel Defense Forces) to step up Gaza assassinations," in response to homemade rockets from besieged, hungry, bombed Gaza that had recently wounded Israelis (for background on the siege and the disproportionate death tolls, see postings of December 7, 2007, "Imposed Hunger in Gaza, The Army in Indonesia. Questions of Logic and Activism," and January 6, 2008 "The Breaking of the Gaza Wall. Wise, Justified Political Violence.").

"The IDF needs to wipe out a neighborhood in Gaza," said the Israeli Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit, "We need to target all those responsible for terrorism without asking who they are" -- suggesting a broad definition of "responsible" that encompasses those whose actions are unknown, but who do, at least, fit the criterion of being Palestinians living in Gaza. (Haaretz English Edition, February 11, 2008).

Dani Yatom, the former Mossad chief, now a parliamentarian for what constitutes Israel's establishment left, the Labor Party, said on TV of blowing up the smaller killer Mughniyeh that "the free and democratic world today achieved a very important goal" -- suggesting that freedom and democracy do not have law and order (as opposed to whacking) as a prerequisite, which seems to undercut the whole US worldwide project of building up heavily-armed security forces (along with non-troublesome courts) -- in places including occupied Palestine -- on the claimed premise that you can't have freedom and democracy until you've first established the rule of law.

The politics are pretty clear. The US Republicans want terrorism -- other people's -- on the US electoral front burner (see posting re. the just-announced 9/11 tribunals, February 11, 2008, "The Guantanamo Gambit. A Smart But Vulnerable Establishment. Tactical Options in US Politics."), and Israel's Olmert administration is still smarting from a new official report (the Winograd Commission) saying they lost the '06 Lebanon war with Hezbollah (and with the precision-carpet-bombed civilian populations of southern Leabanon, and southern Beirut), and are simultaneously facing a fierce Israeli public clamor to go in and kill more Gazans.

There's always a certain -- weak -- case to be made for just taking out a killer if nice, legal courts can't do it (its the kind of thing that leftist guerrilla/liberation movements, or the French Resistance, did all the time). That was basically the case -- apart from the weapons/ Al Qeada lies -- that the US made for taking out Saddam Hussein. But the weak case becomes dangerously unserious when the one proposing to do the ajusticiamiento (delivery of justice, as they used to say in rebel Central America), has, like, say, the US or Israeli leadership, killed and murdered far more prolifically than has the proposed target. Then, though you remove a smaller killer from the face of the earth, you make the bigger killer still stronger, thus making life even more dangerous for regular people who are still walking around.

Surprisingly enough, for a man based in the New York area -- an old mob stronghold and recently the fictional home of HBO's Tony Soprano -- Malcom Hoenlein, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations seemed to express surprise, at a Tuesday Jerusalem press conference, at his group's poll findings that American popular support for Israel is "broad" but "also thin, and most Americans see Israel as a dark and militaristic place."

Evidently they shouldn't. When an assassination car bomb explodes, it gives off a lot of light.

(For the Hoenlein press conference see Anshel Pfeffer, "Hoenlein: Obama's spirit of change could harm Israel," Haaretz, February 13, 2008; despite the headline, he wasn't criticizing Obama, who like all the big 3 candidates, is already pledged to the official US/Israeli government line, including on Gaza. He was merely fretting that "[t]here is a legitimate concern over the zeitgeist around the campaign... All the talk about change, but without defining what that change should be, is an opening for all kind of mischief.").

Link to view this posting in Arabic translation.


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Monday, February 11, 2008

The Guantanamo Gambit. A Smart But Vulnerable Establishment. Tactical Options in US Politics.

Though they never said it, it now appears that Bush, or at least his Pentagon, did not, for whatever reason, want Rudy Giuliani to be US president.

Though purportedly weaker than the Democrats, these Republicans have made an ingenious move by announcing a surprise 9/11 death-penalty tribunal just months before the US election.

Giuliani must be pounding the earth at the news that -- just after he dropped out of the race -- the US pre-election discussion will now be shaped, in important part, by the theme that was his only issue.

The Republicans were already in position to maybe overcome some bad fundamentals (Iraq, the US economy, too much incumbency) with the political brilliance of Senator John McCain, a man who is at once a rich military aristocrat (his father and grandfather were admirals), a regular guy in personality, a bomber, a torture survivor (by the people he was bombing), and a conservative Republican lauded for candor who manages to convince some liberal Democrats that he's actually lying -- excusably -- when he repeatedly says he's conservative.

To non-US readers asking what these US political terms mean (in Australia, for example, "liberal" is the name of the "conservative," "right wing" party), the short answer is: don't puzzle over it too much; it doesn't really affect you.

"Liberal" or "conservative," US foreign policy is quite consistent, historically -- as each new US Secretary of State accurately tells the world when there's a White House change of party.

Now, whatever small distance might have existed between the US establishment left and right (see posting of January 2, 2008, "The US Election is Already Over. Murder and Preventable Death Have Won") will be subjected to a powerful converging pull with this big Al Qaeda Guantanamo proceeding.

Senator Barack Obama, who, at this instant, may be slightly ahead for the Democrats' nomination, will now have one more reason to make sure that his eloquent, vague, talk of "change" will, if in office, actually amount to small change (See my January 3, 2008 Democracy Now! discussion of atrocities by advisers to Obama, as well as to Clinton, McCain, and others).

But one aspect of vast US killing/sparing power is that even tiny relative changes, can -- in absolute terms -- produce many more or many fewer corpses.

If, say, in theory, a series of US policy decisions can kill or save 1,000,000 people, a variation of just one percent can kill or save 10,000 people.

So even if the bitter, minimal, electoral choice must be made among 99% - identical candidates, that 1% difference does make a difference, though you may not know in which direction.

(It was the Democrats -- John F. Kennedy, for example, who created the Central American death squads [see my "Behind the Death Squads: An exclusive report on the U.S. role in El Salvador’s official terror," The Progressive, May, 1984, and a resulting Senate Intelligence Committee report, which you can't see, because it's classified] and did the most damage on Vietnam, and who, in the Kerry-Bush campaign had the harsher rhetoric on South American matters like Venezuela [key Democrats like James Carville and Mark Penn have been paid consultants to Chavez's anti-democratic, pro-coup opponents]).

Though Bush II varied from post-Vietnam establishment tactics with an Iraq invasion that made Washington look bad (not, in their terms, because of the mass civilian death, but because of the US failure to win fast) Bush himself has now been partly pulled back into line, and McCain was already in line (McCain helped to oust Rumsfeld, who, with Cheney, hurt US power by overplaying it, i.e. by invading a non-defenseless country, and, to boot, getting lots of US troops killed and maimed, conspicuously, on television).

What this means is that though the public rhetoric appears to stake out big differences, Washington insiders agree that on Iraq, as on many matters, the Republicans and Democrats are on the same page.

The Democrats' talk, for example, of starting to withdraw troops immediately does not mean anything. There are always troop rotations, so when some come home that can be called a withdrawal. Or you can withdraw -- drawing down numbers -- today and build them up tomorrow. The only pull-out statement that would be meaningful would be an expressed willingness to let Iraq's regime fall, something inconceivable for a Democratic nominee -- more so now with the Al Qaeda tribunal.

Its not just that the US has a habit of killing civilians, it's also that it has such huge power to do so (see posting of December 5, 2007,"It Takes [Out] a Village: Illegitimate American Power"). Neither is acceptable. Both should be broken, and the killers tried. But electing a Democrat -- or Republican -- as president won't do that. Other tactics must be attempted.

The US system is, in some respects, unusually open and even vulnerable. The electoral process, for one thing, is, as in most places, heavily influenced by rich people's money (it's a combination of one - person - one - vote, and one - dollar - one - vote), but it is also susceptible to not-fully-controlled television spectacle.

At one point, in 1992, the wild card candidate Ross Perot, actually led Bush I and Clinton, almost entirely based on some cable TV appearances that seemed to strike a chord (though a rich man, he hadn't even yet spent much campaign money).

Then, however, Perot self-destructed, starting with a speech implying racist sentiments and dropped out (though he later re-entered, weaker) suggesting that North Vietnamese snipers were on his lawn, and hinting that there was also some sinister plot to disrupt his daughter's wedding.

If a somewhat crazy man could come that close, it says something about US politics.

The whole thing may not be quite as tightly nailed-down as we think.

People and movements (beyond electoral matters) can, in the US, figuratively catch fire, today through TV -- which is big-corporate owned, but finds it hard to resist a circus -- and can, when given space by still-existing civil liberties, win change, as in the '60s and '70s.

That's yet to happen much in recent years, but the US social underpinnings are shaking slightly. Obama's smart enough to see that and imply promises he has no plans to keep.

If many other, more serious, less indebted-to-power people saw it, the shaking could grow stronger still.

But so far, tactically, the US establishment is still smarter than its' real opponents.

We'll now be talking 'Fry these Al Qaeda bastards or not?' instead of 'Why let a child die when you can save it?' and 'When are we going to get tough on crime and really start enforcing the murder laws?'

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The Shooting of Jose Ramos Horta.

Some news reports are now claiming that Jose Ramos Horta, Timor-Leste's president, is or was in a coma. If he goes, his soul will get a good laugh from the fact that he outlasted Suharto -- who killed a third of his people --, and an ironic laugh from the fact that the first bullets to ever hit him were fired by an East Timorese.

The man behind those bullets, the rebel soldier Alfredo Reinado, is reportedly dead, and if that's true the ridiculous crisis that has gripped East Timor may actually slowly dissipate.

In some countries, a two-year upheaval that kills several dozen and features a double-assassination try (Xanana Gusmao, the prime minister, was also attacked, but not hit) might rank as the biggest thing in recent memory, but in Timor it's not even close.

The Indonesian military occupiers -- armed and green-lighted by the United States government -- killed that many on many hundreds of mornings. Their winnowing of the population was so vast that it put them in Nazi-land (see posting of December 3, 2007, " Knowing Where the Bodies Are Buried. The Indonesian Generals -- and Putin -- Laugh," and also those of August 16 '05, November 13 '07, December 5 and 7 '07, and January 13 and 27 '08).

Occupied Timor was the most terrifying place I've ever seen. There was perpetual threat of execution.

But, as sometimes happens, the oppressed people actually won.

And with gradual independence, starting in 1999, the Timorese won the right to behave as pettily as everyone else, and their leaders have been exercising it.

The rebel Reinado stood for nothing that anyone could discern, and the older generation of leaders has been bickering even as there is still hunger in the countryside, side-by-side with newly-won oil money.

Compared to the Indonesian Occupation holocaust, all of this is -- amazingly enough -- small for Timor, but that proportional comparison is, in many senses, beside the point: Just one death ends the world for someone, and when it's preventable, it's inexcusable.

Poor people are now hungering unnecessarily in Timor-Leste, under a regime that is not bad or oppressive.

The country can do much better. It can be an example for the world, as its' political victory over terror was.

When Ramos Horta, hopefully, comes back, the independence leaders should sit down and reflect. Then bury their rivalries and feed the hungry, or step aside, and let younger survivors take over.

Link to view this posting in Spanish translation.

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Saturday, February 9, 2008

Murder Watch. Note to Readers Re. Even-Handed Enforcement of the Murder Laws.

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Link to view this posting in German translation.


Link to view this posting in Spanish translation.

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It's Not the Man, It's the Mission. The Whisperers of Death.

The other night a Mayan survivor remarked that there are Kaibiles in the Congo. They're a special unit of US-trained Guatemalan troops officially called "The Messengers of Death," but he noted that recently eight of them were ambushed and died themselves in that faraway land.

The poor Kaibil killers must not have known what hit them, since, on the road, away from home, they were in the Congo under actual legal constraint, as peacekeeping troops of the United Nations.

It's a similar story with Indonesian troops, now deployed as UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.

Back home, unbound by law, they kill civilians, but, away -- where that would cause problems -- such behavior is banned, and, generally, despite their past record, they don't go around murdering people (rape is another matter; its a problem of men in armies most everywhere, and UN troop assignments vary: In Haiti, it has included repression).

It's not the man, its the mission. Political killers are not killing machines.

They are human components of killing machines, and if the machine setting is switched from "kill" to "don't kill," as trained people, they do tend to comply.

While its true that some people are what these days are called psychopathic killers, such compulsive blood-spillers are rare in any society.

There aren't enough of them to stock a brigade, let alone a government or a Harvard institute.

In the Guatemala torture/ state terrorism/ genocide case now being tried in Spain (see postings of February 5 and 7, 2008), there is one such lunatic figure -- Col. German Chupina, the former national police chief and close ally of the American Chamber of Commerce in Guatemala, who, some of his old employees say, liked to cruise the city in a black-windowed van and point out women from the street for raping, and then cutting up and finishing off with his own literally bloody hands.

Gen. Rios Montt, one of the massacre dictators, is also often described as, in his way, crazy, but that is because he combined religious fanaticism with impolitic speaking bluntness (In his case, the fanaticism was Evangelical Christian. When he wasn't killing families he was lecturing them, on TV, on their sexual mores).

As he was helping him burn the Mayan highlands President Reagan said that Rios Montt was "totally dedicated to democracy" and getting a "bum rap" on human rights (New York Times, December 5, 1982). But Rios Montt spoiled the effect a bit when he explained to the press: "It is not true that I have a policy of scorched earth! I have a policy of scorched communists!"

But the crazies are exceptions.

Most top killers avoid the smell of burning flesh. They are calm bureaucrats, ideologues, politicians, academics. They kill with whispers, papers, and keyboard strokes.

And on the earthly -- implementation -- level, where sharp knives enter chests, the human adjustment is sometimes difficult for those who must do the actual killings.

Some of the people in Spain for the Mayan trial have occasionally cried, but the other day one man did it for a different reason than the others. He cried because he'd been made a killer.

As a teen he had been snatched into the Guatemalan army and that US counterinsurgency favorite, the "Civil Patrols," (The US has used them in dozens of countries, including, recently, Nepal, the Philippines, and Iraq. Gen. Rios Montt, a Fort Bragg trainee, was director of studies at the Pentagon's Washington, D.C. Inter-American Defense College), and when this man was brought for training he found that his imposed mission included becoming "one of the destroyers of everything, of our own people in Guatemala."

The old adage among murder trainers is that once you've killed you can't go back, especially if the person you've killed is a bound and screaming, unarmed captive.

It's fair that people should pay for their crimes. But the judgers should consider circumstances. Sentences should vary according to whether the killer was under coercion, or a coercer who whispered death from an office.

Link to view this posting in Spanish translation.

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Thursday, February 7, 2008

Give Me Back My Land. My Memories? That's Another Question.

Before the Spanish court the other day, one of the surviving Mayans ended his testimony by standing up at the judge's desk and asking for his land back.

(Re. this torture/ state terrorism/ genocide case against US-backed Guatemalan officials, see posting of Tuesday, February 5, 2008, "As US Votes on Who Will Hold the Trigger, Mayans Propagate Civilization.").

How much land was it?, I asked him last night. Less than five acres, corn land.

But after all these years, he still wants it back, and wants to leave it to a surviving son.

When the army of his homeland entered his village they burned the 3-room schoolhouse ("They stole the roof!") and cut and crushed the drinkable-water pipes. And as they raped, throat-sliced, and trigger-pulled their way through , they forced people onto the mountain -- dodging US-arranged Israeli Galil bullets as they clambered upward, toward life.

They left behind land -- which, in theory, is recoverable; the man was raising a fundamental point -- but also much that cannot be gotten back, like a life without tormenting memories.

There was the time, for example, a woman recounted just now, that she snuck down from the mountain and found that "All that was left were the dogs, barking in the houses."

Outside, elsewhere, there were fires, bad smells, smoke, some crying, still-living children, as well as her own mother, dead -- dead as a result of policy.

"There arrived a great sadness, a great pain," she said, "a pain that remains until this moment."

She said that she had carried that two-decade torment to Spain and that on this formal, legal, occasion, "This is the moment that we take out our pain," and seek justice from society.

Link to view this posting in Spanish translation.


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Tuesday, February 5, 2008

A Short Update on Civilization, and on Guatemalan and US Criminals

This morning, speaking publicly in Spain (see previous posting of today, February 5, 2008, "As US Votes on Who Will Hold the Trigger, Mayans Propagate Civilization"), a very brave man from the Mayan highlands remarked that when he returned to his mother's house once the US-backed Guatemalan army had gotten through with it, he found that his entire family had been "carbonized," i.e. burnt carbon-black and crispy.

Soon after, the US sent more money (and other things) to that very army, perhaps pioneering -- under Reagan -- the first known application of the "carbon credits" concept.

Link to view this posting in Spanish translation.


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As US Votes on Who Will Hold the Trigger, Mayans Propagate Civilization.

Today, as Americans decide who will get the power to kill or spare millions (see posting of Wednesday, December 05, 2007, "It Takes [Out] a Village: Illegitimate American Power"), a group of Guatemalan Mayan campesinos are in Madrid, on a civilizing mission.

They are here to testify about the US-sponsored Guatemalan officers who, in the '70s and '80s, murdered their families, and came out on top as rich men, drug dealers, US embassy consultants, and Harvard fellows.

It's not as if you can bring back the dead wives, missing kids, or shot-in-the cerebrum husbands, or even sufficiently punish the guilty, who now grin in elegant Zona Cinco pools and in MacLean, Virginia homes with lawns. They still twirl power and walk around, uncuffed, in polite society.

But you can, as one of the mountain corn farmers observed yesterday, "Capture them, imprison them. That's sufficient," which is generous of him, since they butchered his dear ones, friends, and animals, and burnt his gut till his intestines spilled out -- and it is to the great credit of Spain's judiciary that they are willing to let him try.

This is a case of torture, state terrorism, and genocide -- and international arrest warrants have been issued -- but the big, tough Generals who once could answer the question (posed by the conservative Guatemalan daily, El Grafico, [May 17, 1982]) "How is it possible to behead an 8- or 9-year-old child? How is it possible for a human adult to murder in cold blood a baby of less than a year and a half?" are now afraid to fly to Madrid and face the parents of the kids they consumed while pocketing cash from Langley. (Grafico referred to the massacre of Semeja II, Chichicastenango, but, in all, according to army records, 662 villages were destroyed, and perhaps 120,000 civilians were murdered in a place the population of New York City).

They're afraid because there's been something like a tear in the fabric of the political universe and, somehow, as in one of those anomalies of quantum physics, there has emerged -- in this world -- a stray particle of civilization: a legal forum perhaps willing to enforce the murder laws, even against high officials.

Not yet too high, mind you. There are not yet American names on the defendants list. But as we say in the sports which American guys love, its not over till its over.

The case is in Spain's Audiencia Nacional (National Court), which, operating on the principle 'We're all people here,' is exercising its right under international law to try atrocity cases involving non-Spaniards.

(Mayan survivors of things like crucifixion by hanging -- from the big log cross at Rio Negro -- will be testifying. I'll be testifying as well, on the army, the massacre policy, and the US. Lawyers and professionals advancing the case come from CJA [US], APDHE [Spain], RMTF [Guatemala], CALDH [Guatemala], Hastings Law School [US], Impunity Watch [The Netherlands], and the National Security Archive [US].)

Imagine if that precedent caught on. Today's US primary might be awkward, as candidates and advisers dodged the cops, were pressed to sign pledges to stop murdering, and were asked by the press to explain their own pasts -- vis a vis killing civilians, not trivia -- and to explain their bipartisan ideological softness on official crime.

In this particular US-killing matter, one of dozens from around the world, the Republicans' patron saint is Ronald Reagan, so beloved by the Guatemalan leaders who slaughtered the Mayans (and others) that they hung ten-foot portraits of him in their homes as he sent them CIA men, surveillance equipment, covert money and -- most importantly -- open political blessings. The US Democrats' dove is Barack Obama, whose chief foreign adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, greenlighted Israel to deliver the actual killing rifles (Galils) to Guatemala, since his President -- Carter -- was a little embarrassed.

Is that the difference between the two big US parties on mass murder -- embarrassment versus pride? Maybe.

We shouldn't have to wrestle with such fine -- though, sometimes, bitterly consequential -- distinctions.

We should be able to vote effectively against, and prosecute, murder.

Maybe US politics needs a civilizing Mayan invasion.

(For background, and re. the US role see Jesus Tecu Osorio, "Memoria de las Masacres de Rio Negro," Guatemala, 2006, and my "The Guns of Guatemala: The Merciless Mission of Rios Montt's Army," The New Republic, April 11, 1983, "Guatemala Can't Take 2 Roads," The New York Times, op ed, July 20, 1982, "Choices on Guatemala," The New York Times, op ed, April 4, 1983, "Despite Ban, U.S. Captain Trains Guatemalan Military," The Washington Post, October 21, 1982, "The Guatemala Connection," The Progressive, May, 1986," "C.I.A. Death Squad," The Nation [US], April 17, 1995, "The Country Team," The Nation [US], June 5, 1995, letter exchange with US Ambassador Stroock, The Nation [US], May 29, 1995, and Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon, "Bureaucracy of Death," The New Republic, June 30, 1986, and Jean-Marie Simon, "Guatemala," W.W. Norton, New York, 1987).

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Link to view this posting in Spanish translation.

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