axis4peace
January 23, 2010

Haiti earthquake aid, or USA army occupation – Al Jazeera TV reports Sunday 17 January 2010.

Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
January 21, 2010

A Haiti disaster relief scenario had been envisaged at the headquarters of US Southern Command SOUTHCOM in Miami one day prior to the earthquake.

The holding of pre-disaster simulations pertained to the impacts of a hurricane in Haiti. They were held on January 10. (Bob Brewin,Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts (1/15/10) — GovExec.com, complete text of article is contained in Annex)

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense (DoD), was involved in organizing these scenarios on behalf of US Southern Command.(SOUTHCOM).

Defined as a “Combat Support Agency”, DISA has a mandate to provide IT and telecommunications, systems, logistics services in support of the US military. (See DISA website: Defense Information Systems Agency).

On the day prior to the earthquake, “on Monday [January 11, 2010], Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane.” (Bob Brewin, op cit, emphasis added)

The Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is a communications-information tool which  “links non-government organizations with the United States [government and military] and other nations for tracking, coordinating and organizing relief efforts”.(Government IT Scrambles To Help Haiti, TECHWEB January 15, 2010).

The TISC is an essential component of the militarization of emergency relief. The US military through DISA oversees the information – communications system used by participating aid agencies. Essentially, it is a communications sharing system controlled by the US military, which is made available to approved non-governmental partner organizations. The Defense Information Systems Agency also “provides bandwidth to aid organizations involved in Haiti relief efforts.”

There are no details on the nature of the tests conducted on January 11 at SOUTHCOM headquarters.

DISA’s Jean Demay was in charge of coordinating the tests. There are no reports on the participants involved in the disaster relief scenarios.

One would expect, given DISA’s mandate, that the tests pertained to simulating communications. logistics and information systems in the case of a major emergency relief program in Haiti.

The fundamental concept underlying DISA’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project (TISC) is  to “Achieve Interoperability With Warfighters, Coalition Partners And NGOs” (Defense Daily, December 19, 2008)

Upon completing the tests and disaster scenarios on January 11, TISC was considered to be, in relation to Haiti, in “an advanced stage of readiness”. On January 13, the day following the earthquake, SOUTHCOM took the decision to implement the TISC system, which had been rehearsed in Miami two days earlier:

“After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On [the following day] Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.

The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department’s European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies.

Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday [the day following the earthquake], almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups. (Bob Brewin, Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts (1/15/10) — GovExec.com emphasis added)

DISA has a Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) Field Office in Miami. Under the Haiti Disaster Emergency Program initiated on January 12, DISA’s mandate is described as part of a carefully planned military operation:

“DISA is providing US Southern Command with information capabilities which will support our nation in quickly responding to the critical situation in Haiti,” said Larry K. Huffman, DISA’s Principal Director of Global Information Grid Operations. “Our experience in providing support to contingency operations around the world postures us to be responsive in meeting USSOUTHCOM’s requirements.”
DISA, a Combat Support Agency, engineers and [sic] provides command and control capabilities and enterprise infrastructure to continuously operate and assure a global net-centric enterprise in direct support to joint warfighters, National level leaders, and other mission and coalition partners across the full spectrum of operations. As DoD’s satellite communications leader, DISA is using the Defense Satellite Communications System to provide frequency and bandwidth support to all organizations in the Haitian relief effort. This includes Super High Frequency missions that are providing bandwidth for US Navy ships and one Marine Expeditionary Unit that will arrive shortly on station to provide medical help, security, and helicopters among other support. This also includes all satellite communications for the US Air Force handling round-the-clock air traffic control and air freight operations at the extremely busy Port-Au-Prince Airport. DISA is also providing military Ultra High Frequency channels and contracting for additional commercial SATCOM missions that greatly increase this capability for relief efforts. (DISA -Press Release, January 2010, undated, emphasis added)

In the immediate wake of the earthquake, DISA played a key supportive role to SOUTHCOM, which was designated by the Obama administration as the de facto “lead agency” in the US Haitian relief program. The underlying system consists in integrating civilian aid agencies into the orbit of an advanced communications information system controlled by the US military.

“DISA is also leveraging a new technology in Haiti that is already linking NGOs, other nations and US forces together to track, coordinate and better organize relief efforts” (Ibid)

ANNEX

Defense launches online system to coordinate Haiti relief efforts

By Bob Brewin, Govexec.com01/15/2010

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=44407&dcn=e_gvetwww

As personnel representing hundreds of government and nongovernmental agencies from around the world rush to the aid of earthquake-devastated Haiti, the Defense Information Systems Agency has launched a Web portal with multiple social networking tools to aid in coordinating their efforts.

On Monday [January 11, 2010, a day before the earthquake], Jean Demay, DISA’s technical manager for the agency’s Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, happened to be at the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami preparing for a test of the system in a scenario that involved providing relief to Haiti in the wake of a hurricane. After the earthquake hit on Tuesday [January 12, 2010], Demay said SOUTHCOM decided to go live with the system. On Wednesday [January 13, 2010], DISA opened up its All Partners Access Network, supported by the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation project, to any organization supporting Haiti relief efforts.

The information sharing project, developed with backing from both SOUTHCOM and the Defense Department’s European Command, has been in development for three years. It is designed to facilitate multilateral collaboration between federal and nongovernmental agencies.

Demay said that since DISA set up a Haiti Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Community of Interest on APAN on Wednesday, almost 500 organizations and individuals have joined, including a range of Defense units and various nongovernmental organizations and relief groups.

APAN provides a series of collaboration tools, including geographical information systems, wikis, YouTube and MySpace-like pages and multilingual chat rooms.

Meanwhile, other organizations are tackling different technological challenges. Gianluca Bruni, the Dubai-based information technology chief for emergency preparedness and response for the World Food Programme, is setting up networks and systems to support United Nations and nongovernmental organizations in Haiti. WFP already has dispatched two communications kits to Haiti, with satellite systems that operate at 1 megabit per second and can support up to 100 users. It also has sent laptop computers, Wi-Fi access points and long-range point-to-point wireless systems to connect remote users to the satellite terminals. Bruni said eventually WFP plans to set up cyber cafes in Haiti for use all relief workers in the country.

Jon Anderson, a DISA spokesman, said the agency is supplying 10 megabits of satellite capacity to Navy, Marine and Air Force units engaged in the Haiti relief operation.

Many of the relief organizations and agencies in Haiti are bringing their own radio systems to the country. DISA has deployed a three-person team from its Joint Spectrum Management Element to help manage radio frequency spectrum.

The Joint Forces Command’s Joint Communications Support Element deployed two teams equipped with satellite systems and VoIP phones to support SOUTCOM in Port-au-Prince late Wednesday. Those systems were operational “in a matter of hours,” said JCSE Chief of Staff Chris Wilson. The organization will send another team to Haiti in the next few days.

Wilson said JCSE was able to get its gear into Haiti quickly because the systems already were loaded on pallets in Miami in preparation for an exercise that has been canceled.

So many governments and agencies from around the world have responded to the crisis in Haiti that they have overwhelmed the ability of the Port-au-Prince airport to handle incoming relief flights. The Federal Aviation Administration has had a ground-stop on aircraft headed for Haiti for much of the past two days.

FAA warned in an advisory Friday that “due to limited ramp space at Port-au-Prince airport,” with the exception of international cargo flights, “the Haitians are not accepting any aircraft into their airspace.”

The advisory added that domestic U.S. military and civilian flights to Haiti must be first be cleared by its command center. Exemptions will be based solely on the basis of ramp space. The agency also starkly warned “there is no available fuel” at the Port-au-Prince airport.

RussiaToday
January 20, 2010

Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has once again accused the United States of playing God. But this time it’s Haiti’s disastrous earthquake that he thinks the U.S. was behind. Spanish newspaper ABC quotes Chavez as saying that the U.S. navy launched a weapon capable of inducing a powerful earthquake off the shore of Haiti. He adds that this time it was only a drill and the final target is destroying and taking over Iran.

theGlobalReport
19 August 2009

Twenty suspects in a massacre that claimed the lives of 45 members of a Tzotzil indigenous community in December 1997 in Chiapas, Mexico have been freed from prison. The move has provoked outrage in the community of Acteal that was targeted in the massacre.
More than 50 paramilitaries are believed to have attacked 45 indigenous people – including pregnant women and children – belonging to the religious community Las Abejas while they were praying.

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Monday, July 20, 2009

President Obama will attend the controversial Security and Prosperity Partnership meeting with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper next month, it has been revealed.

The White House had not responded to requests to verify Obama’s schedule during the second week of August, however, a statement from Press Secretary Robert Gibbs titled “Upcoming Travel by the President,” confirms that Obama will attend the recently re-branded “North American Leader’s Summit” in Mexico.

“The president will travel to Guadalajara, Mexico, August 9-10 to attend the North American Leaders Summit with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper,” the announcement, reported by World Net Daily, states.

“The summit meeting will provide an opportunity for the United States, Mexico, and Canada to engage on a broad range of issues, including economic recovery and competitiveness in North America, our shared interest in energy and the environment, and cooperation among our governments to promote the safety and welfare of our citizens, including continued close cooperation to counter the A/H1N1 influenza pandemic.” the statement continues.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership has become much maligned owing to it’s quasi secretive advancement of a North American integration agenda.

Last year, one month prior to the meeting in April, documents were uncovered relating the fact that heads of state of the U.S., Mexico and Canada were beseeching business leaders to launch public relations campaigns in order to counter critics of the SPP.

The documents detailed how corporate representatives were urged to “humanize” North American integration, promote NAFTA success stories to employees and unions and evolve the harmonization agenda “without fueling protectionism”.

The move was seemingly a response to the continued exposition of the integration agenda, which led to representatives within Congress petitioning the government on the secretiveness of the SPP and multiple states introducing resolutions calling on their federal representatives to halt work on the so called “North American Union”.

During his nomination campaign, Obama pledged to end the secrecy surrounding the SPP meetings and to conduct them with full transparency.

His decision to remain silent on whether or not he will even attend the meeting until just a few weeks beforehand has guaranteed advance criticism.

Critics will also cast a keen eye over Obama’s attendance given his strong worded campaign pledge to “amend” NAFTA in favor of American workers by stemming the loss of manufacturing jobs.

Since he has entered office Obama has simply reiterated the SPP’s call to advance without stoking “protectionism”. In a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, during his first official foreign visit, Obama responded to a question regarding the renegotiation of NAFTA by saying “Now is a time where we have to be very careful about any signs of protectionism.”

Eyebrows were also raised when Obama temporarily removed economist Austan Goolsbee from his staff when it was revealed that Goolsbee had told Canadian officials that Obama’s campaign promises to renegotiate NAFTA were purely campaign rhetoric.

Global Research, June 30, 2009

While publicly opposing the military coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday, the Obama administration on Monday indicated that it will not cut off aid to the Central American country or demand Zelaya’s reinstatement.

Following a White House meeting with Washington’s closest Latin American ally, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, President Obama reiterated the position that the ouster of Zelaya was illegal. However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters at a State Department briefing that the US government was refraining from formally declaring the removal of Zelaya a “coup.”

Under the Foreign Assistance Act, no US aid can be given to a country whose elected head of government is removed by a military coup. The US is providing Honduras with $43 million in aid this year and maintains a major military presence in the country, including a base staffed by 600 US troops located 50 miles from the capital, Tegucigalpa. The US has also refrained from recalling its ambassador to Honduras.

Earlier on Monday, Clinton was asked whether the stated US goal of “restoring democratic order in Honduras” included returning Zelaya to the presidency. “We haven’t laid out any demands that we’re insisting on,” Clinton replied.

The official US line is that it attempted unsuccessfully to convince the Honduran military not to proceed with the coup. However, this amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that Washington was well aware of the coup plans.

Given the intimate and long-standing ties between the US and the Honduran military, the record over many decades of US-backed coups and military dictatorships in the country and the region, and the ongoing efforts to destabilize the regime of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, it is not credible that the US played no role in the removal of one of Chavez’s allies in Latin America.

Sunday’s coup was the culmination of an escalating political crisis in the impoverished country. Zelaya, a wealthy rancher, was elected in 2005 as the candidate of the bourgeois establishment Liberal Party. He ran on a right-wing program, but shifted in the intervening years, adopting a populist and nationalist persona in order to appease growing popular discontent, and allying himself with Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, all of which are headed by regimes considered by Washington to be hostile to US interests in Latin America.

At the beginning of June, Zelaya hosted the meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) which provisionally removed the long-standing US-backed ban on Cuba. He was among the most strident advocates of allowing Cuba to join the organization, frustrating US efforts to maintain the political quarantine on the Castro regime.

Zelaya increasingly earned the enmity of dominant sections of the Honduran business elite, the military brass and the Church—the forces most closely allied to US imperialism. On June 12, a motorcade transporting Zelaya came under fire in Tegucigalpa. At least one bullet hit the President’s limousine, shattering the windshield.

Zelaya’s effort to hold a referendum on changing the constitution became the pretext for the coup. His opponents declared the referendum an attempt to override a constitutional limit on presidential tenure to one four-year term. The referendum proposed that a vote be held on November 29, the same day as national elections, to establish a constitutional convention.

Earlier this month the Honduran Supreme Court declared the referendum unconstitutional, and army chief General Romeo Vasquez refused to allow it to proceed. When Zelaya fired Vasquez, the Supreme Court overturned the action and reinstated the general. Last Thursday, Zelaya led a demonstration to seize referendum ballots that were being held by the military.

When Zelaya attempted on Sunday to hold the referendum, recast as a nonbinding opinion poll, the military broke into his home, arrested him and deported him to Costa Rica. The Honduran Congress, with the imprimatur of the Supreme Court, elected the parliamentary speaker, Roberto Micheletti, a member of Zelaya’s Liberal Party, as “interim president.”

The military imposed a de facto state of siege in Tegucigalpa, cutting off electricity, closing down pro-Zelaya media and reportedly arresting the foreign minister and other government officials. Cuba has charged that its ambassador to Honduras and the ambassadors from Nicaragua and Venezuela were beaten by troops carrying out the coup.

Since Sunday, a tense standoff has continued between the army and pro-Zelaya demonstrators outside the presidential palace. On Monday there were reports of tear gas attacks on demonstrators.

Zelaya has vowed to return to power, and the coup has been condemned by the US, the European Union, the OAS, the United Nations and the leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Colombia and other countries allied with the Zelaya regime, who met Sunday night in Managua.

Chavez has, justifiably, cast the coup as an overt threat to his regime. He has charged the US with complicity, alleging involvement by Otto Reich, a long-time anti-Castro operative and favorite of anti-Castro exiles in Miami. Reich played a key role as a Reagan administration State Department official in the Iran-Contra conspiracy, in which Reagan authorized secret funding for the anti-Sandinista Contras, in violation of the Boland amendment which had been passed by Congress banning US aid to the Contra death squads.

Reich was one of a number of Iran-Contra veterans who were appointed to government posts in the administration of George W. Bush, serving as assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs.

The US used southern Honduras as the base of operations for its proxy war in the 1980s against the left nationalist, Cuban-allied regime in neighboring Nicaragua.

There are parallels in the Honduran events to the abortive 2002 US-backed coup against Venezuela’s Chavez. The current US ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, undoubtedly played a significant role in that failed attempt to oust an elected Latin American president.

In 2002 and 2003, Llorens served as the director of Andean affairs on the Bush administration’s National Security Council (NSC). In that post, he was the principal adviser to the president and the NSC on issues relating to Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.

Otto Reich was also implicated in the 2002 coup attempt. He met with Venezuelan opposition figures in the run-up to the attempted ouster of Chavez.

Reich is currently a board member of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, better known as the School of the Americas, located in Fort Benning, Georgia. Among the tens of thousands of Latin American military officers—and death squad leaders—who have been trained at the School of the Americas are two of the leaders of Sunday’s coup in Honduras, Army General Romeo Vasquez and Air Force General Luis Javier Prince Suazo.

Another graduate of the School of the Americas was Policarpo Paz Garcia, who ruled Honduras in 1980-82. Paz Garcia launched Battalion 3-16, one of the most feared death squads in Latin America.

Commenting on the calculations of the Obama administration, behind the official disapproval of the Honduran coup and the pro-democracy rhetoric, the intelligence web site Statfor on Monday noted that the US could exert irresistible pressure on Honduras to restore Zelaya to power, since the US provides the market for 70 percent of the country’s exports. “However,’” Stratfor wrote, “the aim of economic pressure would be for [interim President] Micheletti to make moves to support democracy, and open elections—such as those already scheduled for November 29—would easily appease the United States.”

The Washington Post reported that John Negroponte, the long-time US State Department official, said that Clinton’s remarks “appeared to reflect US reluctance to see Zelaya returned unconditionally to power.” The newspaper quoted Negroponte as saying, “I think she wants to preserve some leverage to get Zelaya to back down from his insistence on a referendum.”

Negroponte knows whereof he speaks. He was US ambassador to Honduras during the 1980s and virtually ran the US proxy war against Nicaragua that was based in Honduras.

It appears that the Obama administration is involved in an operation aimed at either permanently removing Zelaya or negotiating a return to power under conditions where his government would be weakened and its policies shifted in favor of US interests. This, in turn, would further US efforts to destabilize Chavez in Venezuela and shift the balance of power throughout Latin America.

The Obama administration has, however, learned something from the disastrous failure of the Bush administration’s botched coup against Chavez seven years ago. It is seeking to conceal its real aims behind formal opposition to the coup in Honduras and a public posture of fidelity to democratic elections.

Moreover, the US is in no position to openly support a coup in Honduras or maintain a public stance of neutrality under conditions in which it is waging a propaganda war and destabilization campaign in Iran based on allegations that the regime headed by President Ahmadinejad stole the June 12 election.

An unmistakable indicator of the real attitude of the Obama administration to the events in Honduras is the response of the US media. The media, led by the New York Times, immediately embraced the claims of the Iranian opposition that the election had been rigged and a coup had been carried out, without presenting any concrete evidence to support the allegations. It provided nonstop coverage of antigovernment demonstrations, and proclaimed the dissident faction of the clerical regime to be heading a “green revolution” for democracy.

In contrast, the US media has provided only minimal coverage of a real coup in Honduras. It has barely reported the police-state measures, arrests and beatings carried out by the Honduran military, and treated the anti-coup protests with utter indifference. On Monday evening, the events in Honduras were relegated to a mere mention on all three network news broadcasts, well behind the death of Michael Jackson.

What accounts for this stark contrast? The simple fact that the US government opposes the victor in the Iranian election and supports those who ousted Zelaya in Honduras.

The media, in particular the New York Times, which supported the 2002 coup attempt against Chavez, provides a further indication of US involvement in the Honduran coup. One month ago, as the political crisis in Honduras was heating up, the Times published a provocative article entitled “Chavez Seeks Tighter Grip on the Military.” The article retailed, without substantiation, claims of a massive crackdown by Chavez against dissidents within the Venezuelan military. This article, undoubtedly written on assignment from the CIA, was a certain indicator that the US was preparing subversion in the region.

Global Research, June 29, 2009

President Zelaya of Honduras has just been kidnapped

[Note: As of 11:15am, Caracas time, President Zelaya is speaking live on Telesur from San Jose, Costa Rica. He has verified the soldiers entered his residence in the early morning hours, firing guns and threatening to kill him and his family if he resisted the coup. He was forced to go with the soldiers who took him to the air base and flew him to Costa Rica. He has requested the U.S. Government make a public statement condemning the coup, otherwise, it will indicate their compliance.]

Caracas, Venezuela – The text message that beeped on my cell phone this morning read “Alert, Zelaya has been kidnapped, coup d’etat underway in Honduras, spread the word.” It’s a rude awakening for a Sunday morning, especially for the millions of Hondurans that were preparing to exercise their sacred right to vote today for the first time on a consultative referendum concerning the future convening of a constitutional assembly to reform the constitution. Supposedly at the center of the controversary is today’s scheduled referendum, which is not a binding vote but merely an opinion poll to determine whether or not a majority of Hondurans desire to eventually enter into a process to modify their constitution.

Such an initiative has never taken place in the Central American nation, which has a very limited constitution that allows minimal participation by the people of Honduras in their political processes. The current constitution, written in 1982 during the height of the Reagan Administration’s dirty war in Central America, was designed to ensure those in power, both economic and political, would retain it with little interference from the people. Zelaya, elected in November 2005 on the platform of Honduras’ Liberal Party, had proposed the opinion poll be conducted to determine if a majority of citizens agreed that constitutional reform was necessary. He was backed by a majority of labor unions and social movements in the country. If the poll had occured, depending on the results, a referendum would have been conducted during the upcoming elections in November to vote on convening a constitutional assembly. Nevertheless, today’s scheduled poll was not binding by law.

In fact, several days before the poll was to occur, Honduras’ Supreme Court ruled it illegal, upon request by the Congress, both of which are led by anti-Zelaya majorities and members of the ultra-conservative party, National Party of Honduras (PNH). This move led to massive protests in the streets in favor of President Zelaya. On June 24, the president fired the head of the high military command, General Romeo Vásquez, after he refused to allow the military to distribute the electoral material for Sunday’s elections. General Romeo Vásquez held the material under tight military control, refusing to release it even to the president’s followers, stating that the scheduled referendum had been determined illegal by the Supreme Court and therefore he could not comply with the president’s order. As in the Unted States, the president of Honduras is Commander in Chief and has the final say on the military’s actions, and so he ordered the General’s removal. The Minister of Defense, Angel Edmundo Orellana, also resigned in response to this increasingly tense situation.

But the following day, Honduras’ Supreme Court reinstated General Romeo Vásquez to the high military command, ruling his firing as “unconstitutional’. Thousands poured into the streets of Honduras’ capital, Tegucigalpa, showing support for President Zelaya and evidencing their determination to ensure Sunday’s non-binding referendum would take place. On Friday, the president and a group of hundreds of supporters, marched to the nearby air base to collect the electoral material that had been previously held by the military. That evening, Zelaya gave a national press conference along with a group of politicians from different political parties and social movements, calling for unity and peace in the country.

As of Saturday, the situation in Honduras was reported as calm. But early Sunday morning, a group of approximately 60 armed soldiers entered the presidential residence and took Zelaya hostage. After several hours of confusion, reports surfaced claiming the president had been taken to a nearby air force base and flown to neighboring Costa Rica. No images have been seen of the president so far and it is unknown whether or not his life is still endangered.

President Zelaya’s wife, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, speaking live on Telesur at approximately 10:00am Caracas time, denounced that in early hours of Sunday morning, the soldiers stormed their residence, firing shots throughout the house, beating and then taking the president. “It was an act of cowardness”, said the first lady, referring to the illegal kidnapping occuring during a time when no one would know or react until it was all over. Casto de Zelaya also called for the “preservation” of her husband’s life, indicating that she herself is unaware of his whereabouts. She claimed their lives are all still in “serious danger” and made a call for the international community to denounce this illegal coup d’etat and to act rapidly to reinstate constitutional order in the country, which includes the rescue and return of the democratically elected Zelaya.

Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela have both made public statements on Sunday morning condeming the coup d’etat in Honduras and calling on the international community to react to ensure democracy is restored and the constitutional president is reinstated. Last Wednesday, June 24, an extraordinary meeting of the member nations of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), of which Honduras is a member, was convened in Venezuela to welcome Ecuador, Antigua & Barbados and St. Vincent to its ranks. During the meeting, which was attended by Honduras’ Foreign Minister, Patricia Rodas, a statement was read supporting President Zelaya and condenming any attempts to undermine his mandate and Honduras’ democratic processes.

Reports coming out of Honduras have informed that the public television channel, Canal 8, has been shut down by the coup forces. Just minutes ago, Telesur announced that the military in Honduras is shutting down all electricity throughout the country. Those television and radio stations still transmitting are not reporting the coup d’etat or the kidnapping of President Zelaya, according to Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas. “Telephones and electricity are being cut off”, confirmed Rodas just minutes ago via Telesur. “The media are showing cartoons and soap operas and are not informing the people of Honduras about what is happening”. The situation is eerily reminiscent of the April 2002 coup d’etat against President Chávez in Venezuela, when the media played a key role by first manipulating information to support the coup and then later blacking out all information when the people began protesting and eventually overcame and defeated the coup forces, rescuing Chávez (who had also been kidnapped by the military) and restoring constitutional order.

Honduras is a nation that has been the victim of dictatorships and massive U.S. intervention during the past century, including several military invasions. The last major U.S. government intervention in Honduras occured during the 1980s, when the Reagain Administration funded death squads and paramilitaries to eliminate any potential “communist threats” in Central America. At the time, John Negroponte, was the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras and was responsible for directly funding and training Honduran death squads that were responsable for thousands of disappeared and assassinated throughout the region.

On Friday, the Organization of American States (OAS), convened a special meeting to discuss the crisis in Honduras, later issuing a statement condeming the threats to democracy and authorizing a convoy of representatives to travel to OAS to investigate further. Nevertheless, on Friday, Assistant Secretary of State of the United States, Phillip J. Crowley, refused to clarify the U.S. government’s position in reference to the potential coup against President Zelaya, and instead issued a more ambiguous statement that implied Washington’s support for the opposition to the Honduran president. While most other Latin American governments had clearly indicated their adamant condemnation of the coup plans underway in Honduras and their solid support for Honduras’ constitutionally elected president, Manual Zelaya, the U.S. spokesman stated the following, “We are concerned about the breakdown in the political dialogue among Honduran politicians over the proposed June 28 poll on constitutional reform. We urge all sides to seek a consensual democratic resolution in the current political impasse that adheres to the Honduran constitution and to Honduran laws consistent with the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.”

As of 10:30am, Sunday morning, no further statements have been issued by the Washington concerning the military coup in Honduras. The Central American nation is highly dependent on the U.S. economy, which ensures one of its top sources of income, the monies sent from Hondurans working in the U.S. under the “temporary protected status” program that was implemented during Washington’s dirty war in the 1980s as a result of massive immigration to U.S. territory to escape the war zone. Another major source of funding in Honduras is USAID, providing over US$ 50 millon annually for “democracy promotion” programs, which generally supports NGOs and political parties favorable to U.S. interests, as has been the case in Venezuela, Bolivia and other nations in the region. The Pentagon also maintains a military base in Honduras in Soto Cano, equipped with approximately 500 troops and numerous air force combat planes and helicopters.

Foreign Minister Rodas has stated that she has repeatedly tried to make contact with the U.S. Ambassador in Honduras, Hugo Llorens, who has not responded to any of her calls thus far. The modus operandi of the coup makes clear that Washington is involved. Neither the Honduran military, which is majority trained by U.S. forces, nor the political and economic elite, would act to oust a democratically elected president without the backing and support of the U.S. government. President Zelaya has increasingly come under attack by the conservative forces in Honduras for his growing relationship with the ALBA countries, and particularly Venezuela and President Chávez. Many believe the coup has been executed as a method of ensuring Honduras does not continue to unify with the more leftist and socialist countries in Latin America.

evagolinger@hotmail.com or evagolinger@gmail.com)

Reason-on-line

The Mexican legislature has quietly approved a bill, supported by President Felipe Calderon, that will decriminalize possession of illegal drugs in small amounts. Calderon’s predecessor, Vicente Fox, planned to sign a similar bill until pressure from the Bush administration led him to reconsider. The Obama administration apparently has not raised a fuss about the current bill, which Calderon is expected to sign any day now. The Los Angeles Times reports that the bill’s opponents worry that Mexican cities will “become Latin Amsterdams, flooded by drug users seeking penalty-free tokes and toots.” Since the Mexican government does not plan to copy the Dutch policy of tolerating the open distribution of “soft drugs,” that scenario seems implausible (although you might think Mexico would welcome more tourists, especially given the negative publicity generated by recent prohibition-related violence). At the same time, more lenient treatment of drug users, while certainly an improvement, does nothing to address the violence, corruption, and disorder associated with the illegal drug trade.

The Times says Calderon’s strategy is to ”distinguish between small-time users and big-time dealers, while re-targeting major crime-fighting resources away from the former and toward the latter and their drug-lord bosses.” The secretary general of Mexico’s National Institute of Penal Sciences tells the Times:

The important thing is…that consumers are not treated as criminals. It is a public-health problem, not a penal problem.

If consumers should not be treated as criminals, presumably because drug use is not a crime, why should the people who merely aid and abet this noncrime be treated as criminals? The traditional response is that drug users are victims of drug dealers, who get them hooked on products that override their ability to choose. As I argue in my book Saying Yes, this is a misleading description of addiction, which in any event is not the typical outcome of illegal drug use. If drug users are victims of drug dealers, rather than consumers whose demand creates the market that the drug dealers serve, then it is equally true that drinkers are victims of distillers, brewers, vintners, and bartenders. And if Mexican-style decriminalization had been the American government’s response to the problems associated with alcohol prohibition, it would have amounted to doing nothing, since simple possession and consumption of alcohol, as opposed to production and distribution, was not banned by the 18th Amendment or the Volstead Act.

In a recent column, I pointed out that the “drug-related” violence in Mexico is due not to drugs (or guns) but to prohibition. In February I discussed the drug policy prescriptions of three former Latin American presidents who perceive the problems created by the war on drugs but, like Calderon, are not quite ready to call it off. In March I noted that the medical/public health model they advocate is not necessarily inconsistent with prohibition.

Law Enforcement Examiner

June 18, 2009

Air Force Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said that when he took over the reins more than two years ago, he modified the Northcom mission statement to reflect this notion.

“When I took command, I added one word to the mission statement, and it was ‘anticipate,’” Renuart told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. “And it forces you to think differently about planning, preparation and prevention. It forces you to think about resiliency.”

Northcom, which was established about a year after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is responsible for an area of operations that includes the United States, Canada and Mexico. It serves as a “one-stop-shopping” point for military support in case of an attack on American soil. 
                                        
NORAD is a joint US-Canadian command established 51 years ago to defend against nuclear-armed Soviet aircraft entering North American airspace. Decades later, the command’s mission has expanded to include early detection of threats via air, space, land and sea.

Reflecting NORAD’s level of anticipation is the number of flights the command identified as suspicious and responded to last year. It cited 278 aircraft as “targets of interest,” so-called because a pilot fails to communicate or use proper transponder codes, follows a flight plan incorrectly, or behaves in some way to cause concern.

“On September 10, 2001, we didn’t necessarily have that same focus and we certainly didn’t have the capacity to respond across the nation in the way we have today,” Renuart said.

During 78 of those instances, NORAD scrambled fighter jets to respond to or intercept the suspicious aircraft. About 50 of these flights were diverted to alternate air fields, where the pilots were greeted by law enforcement agents.

“Certainly, we have that capability (to shoot down aircraft), and each of our fighters is armed every day when they fly,” Renuart said. “But we also have a process of command and control and communication and coordination that allows us to learn a lot about that person as this event is occurring.”

The sheer number of participants speaks to NORAD’s level of preparation and coordination. Teaming up to deal with the stolen Canadian flight were American and Canadian NORAD agents, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Transportation Security Administration, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, NAV Canada, the White House, U.S. Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and oddly enough, the pilot’s ex-girlfriend.

“We were able to have this dialogue while this event was occurring, while we had fighters — and by the way while we had customs and border patrol — shadowing this guy as he continued south,” Renuart said, noting that the pilot landed safely on a small road in southern Missouri.

“Interestingly, when he landed, I was talking on this conference to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police hostage negotiators, who were with this guy’s ex-girlfriend, who was texting him on his cell phone to say, ‘Land safely. Don’t go anywhere. Someone will be there,’” Renuart said, adding that the command then handed off control to local authorities.

The general emphasized that his commands fastidiously adhere to the rules outlined in the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that restricts the government from using the military for law enforcement.

“There are some who believe that somehow we have created this command to exercise military authority in the homeland, and that is not the case,” he said. “Trust me, I’ve got about 16 lawyers that follow me around everyday just to make sure I don’t trip over that line.

“The art form in this is to ensure that you can be leaning on the edge of that precipice to provide the right support,” he continued, “but not trip off and invade the rights and safeties that are guaranteed by our Constitution to our civilians.”

“Creating Anti-Semitism Since 1965″
By Ezra Levant 

henrymakow.com

(Levant, 37, is a Jewish Canadian lawyer, journalist and politician who gave up his safe seat in Parliament so Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, could run there. This article provides another example of  historic Nazi-Zionist cooperation designed to coerce Jews into backing Zionist policies. Ultimately, these policies advance world government by the Masonic bankers who sponsor Zionism,which is also a Masonic order.)

(From a letter to the Ottawa Citizen from Levant, April 27, 2009)

In 1965 and 1966, the Canadian Jewish Congress helped organize the fledgling Canadian Nazi Party. That sounds crazy, but it’s true, and I wrote about it in Shakedown, my new book about Canada’s human rights commissions.

In a letter to the editor in the Citizen last week, the CJC’s current co-president, Rabbi Reuven Bulka, called my book’s description of the CJC’s role “fiction.” He said all the CJC did for the Nazis was buy them a bottle of rum.

It’s true that the CJC did buy drinks for Nazis in the 1960s. That’s pretty strange in itself, and I’d like to hear more of Rabbi Bulka’s thoughts on spending Jewish charitable donations that way. But the CJC did a lot more than that: they hired an ex-cop named John Garrity to go to work for the Canadian Nazi Party.

Garrity helped organize that rag-tag band of losers, though they never amounted to anything except for fodder for the press.

There were only a dozen active Nazis when Garrity joined them and they weren’t really a political party. He called them “harmless misfits,” and they were — their leader, John Beattie, was a nervous, gaunt, unemployed 24-year-old clerk who spent much of his time dodging angry Jews who tried to beat him up. (One of Garrity’s jobs was to help Beattie escape street fights.)

Garrity brought more than just rum to the Nazis. He brought with him pretty much the only organizational talent the group had. They put him in charge of membership. Garrity called himself the “Heinrich Himmler” of the party, and a “Nazi leader for the Jewish Congress.”

I’d like Rabbi Bulka’s thoughts on that, too.

Of course, Garrity helped his paymasters at the CJC, too, giving them information about the names of party members and donors. And when Garrity finally quit the Nazis, he wrote a tell-all about his adventure in Maclean’s magazine.

Garrity larded that report with personal insults toward Beattie and the Nazis. But he did acknowledge that they had never done, or even contemplated doing, anything illegal. All of the violence he witnessed was directed at Beattie, usually by Jewish vigilantes. “Sadly, it is the … anti-Nazi extremists who, in their attempts to destroy Beattie, provide him with most of the publicity he craves. If it weren’t for the riots and the assaults and the public protest meetings they hold, there’d be no real news in Beattie,” Garrity wrote.

And that is the importance of this story and why I put it in my book about human rights commissions. Beattie hadn’t done anything illegal. He was just a loser who believed in a discredited ideology. But the CJC wanted to bring in political censorship laws and I believe they needed to build up the threat to persuade Parliament to abridge Canada’s freedom of speech.

Garrity puffed up a group of Nazi nobodies into a national menace, first through organizational support and then through spectacular media publicity. And, sure enough, Parliament enacted section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which censors offensive speech.

 That’s become a pattern. Twenty years after the Canadian Nazi Party vanished, CSIS, Canada’s spy agency, inserted an operative named Grant Bristow into another rag-tag racist group called the Heritage Front.

Unlike Garrity, Bristow didn’t play second-fiddle.

He became the boss, turning the Heritage Front into Canada’s leading white supremacist group. This time it wasn’t just Jewish money that was spent propping up neo-Nazis — all taxpayers paid for it.

Which brings us to the present day — and back to Rabbi Bulka and the section 13 censorship law. Canada’s largest customer of section 13 is Richard Warman, who has been the complainant in all but two cases heard by the tribunal this decade. The CJC was so impressed that they gave Warman an award.

But, in a stunning human rights tribunal ruling last month, Warman himself was rebuked for posting anti-Semitic comments on Stormfront, a neo-Nazi website, including a message calling Jews “scum.” Warman has stated that he was attempting to gather information on real Nazis, but the tribunal called his actions “disappointing and disturbing,” and ruled that he risked encouraging more hateful messages himself.

Warman’s actions appalled the tribunal, but apparently not the CJC. Just as the CJC did with Garrity, Nazi opponents continue to stir up neo-Nazi incidents — as if there aren’t enough real threats to Jews as it is.

Perhaps Rabbi Bulka can explain that one, too.  (End of letter)

I’m pleased that the Citizen gave me so much room to reply. In doing my research I found out a lot more about the CJC’s role in building up the Nazi Party — one of the craziest stories I’ve ever come across. I think it’s fascinating from so many angles: politically; religiously; legally; historically. It really is stranger than fiction. I think there’s enough material there to form an entire book in itself — especially when added to the CJC’s discreditable conduct in the Grant Bristow affair, and their ongoing, unseemly relationship with Stormfront member Richard Warman. Incredibly, the CJC still stands by Warman even after the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal condemned him for his anti-Semitic propaganda. You’d think that would be something the Jewish Congress might care about.

My only quibble with the Citizen is with the headline they put over the op-ed: “Neo-Nazis are best simply ignored”. I don’t believe that and that’s not the message of my op-ed. It’s a false dichotomy to set up the only two alternatives as “ignoring” Nazis, or doing what the CJC does (building them up, then getting the government to prosecute them). I think there are plenty of other options, such as rebutting and debating neo-Nazis, campaigning against them, teaching against them, politicking against them, etc. That takes more work than the lazy CJC would do — they’re too busy campaigning against global warming.

Part of me hopes that Burny [CJC CEO Bernie Farber] will write another historically revisionist reply for Rabbi Bulka to sign, so I can take another whack at them. But the more collegial part of me hopes that Rabbi Bulka will cut his losses and stop covering for his organization’s bad behaviour 40 years ago — and their bad behavior today.  

——

http://ezralevant.com/2009/04/why-did-the-jewish-congress-bu.html        April 27, 2009

More here

Related, Henry Makow “The Zionist Protection Racket”

Levant Chews Out Human Rights Officer Over His Mohamed Cartoons (You Tube)

Levant on the CJC-  “Hijacking Canadian Jews”