Robert Parry

General & Dictator Jorge Rafaél Videla

Consortium News Exclusive: Many Americans adore President Reagan for lifting their spirits after the discouraging 1970s. Yet, in secret, he collaborated with some of the Western Hemisphere’s most brutal neo-Nazis, including Argentine generals just convicted in a grotesque baby harvesting scheme, reports Robert Parry.

An Argentine court has convicted two of the nation’s former right-wing dictators, Jorge Rafael Videla and Reynaldo Bignone, in a scheme to murder leftist mothers and give their infants to military personnel often complicit in the killings, a shocking process known to the Reagan administration even as it worked closely with the bloody regime.

Testimony at the trial included a videoconference from Washington with Elliott Abrams, then-Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, who said he urged Bignone to reveal the babies’ identities as Argentina began a transition to democracy in 1983.

Abrams said the Reagan administration “knew that it wasn’t just one or two children,” indicating that U.S. officials believed there was a high-level “plan because there were many people who were being murdered or jailed.” Estimates of the Argentines murdered in the so-called Dirty War range from 13,000 to about 30,000, with many victims “disappeared,” buried in mass graves or dumped from planes over the Atlantic.

A human rights group, Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, says as many as 500 babies were stolen by the military during the repression from 1976 to 1983. Some of the pregnant mothers were kept alive long enough to give birth and then were chained together with other prisoners and pushed out of the planes into the ocean to drown.

Despite U.S. government awareness of the grisly actions of the Argentine junta, which had drawn public condemnation from the Carter administration in the 1970s, these Argentine neo-Nazis were warmly supported by Ronald Reagan, both as a political commentator in the late 1970s and as President once he took office in 1981.

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Mike Head

The truth is that the US and its allies, and all those who have collaborated with them, are guilty of war crimes.

The United States and its allies convened a so-called aid conference for Afghanistan in Tokyo last Sunday, where donor countries pledged to provide about $4 billion a year in civil programs beyond 2014, when most foreign combat troops are scheduled to leave the country.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, head of the country’s puppet regime, absurdly declared: “Today’s Tokyo conference will go down in the developing history of Afghanistan as a milestone on the country’s long journey to self-reliance, prosperity, stability and peace.”

The truth is that more than ten years after the October 2001 US-led invasion, which has devastated Afghanistan and its people, the conference was another preparation for an indefinite de facto foreign occupation. The one-day Tokyo gathering, attended by about 70 countries and organisations, was the third recent step taken by the Obama administration to cement Washington’s grip over Afghanistan far beyond the troop “draw down.”

Just a day before the Tokyo meeting, the US nominated the Afghan regime as its 16th “major non-NATO ally” (MNNA), making it formally eligible for military training, loans of equipment, and financing to lease weaponry.

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Stephen Lendman

Washington planned regime change [in Syria] over a decade ago. It bears full responsibility for months of violence and thousands of deaths.

At a Tokyo Afghan donor's conference, Hillary Clinton barely stopped short of declaring war. Time is running out to save Syria, she told reporters. Kofi Annan's admission about peace failing is a "wake-up call for everyone." "The sand is running out of the hourglass." "It should be abundantly clear to those who support the Assad regime their days are numbered." "The sooner there can be an end to the violence and a begetting of a political transition process, not only will fewer people die, but there's a chance to save the Syrian state from a catastrophic assault that would be dangerous not only to the country, but the region."

Ban Ki-moon marches in lockstep. Like Kofi Annan, he's a reliable imperial tool. In a separate Sunday news briefing, he said:

"It is crucial for the Security Council... to pressure the parties to prevent any further escalation of the conflict." "President Assad must understand that things cannot continue as they are. Fundamental change is needed." "Syrian people have suffered too long and too much. I sincerely hope that the member states of the UN Security Council will look into this issue more seriously... sharing the common responsibility by taking collective action as soon as possible."

The Human Rights Council also runs cover for Washington. On July 6, it concluded its 20th regular session. It adopted a resolution on Syria pointing fingers the wrong way. It blamed Assad for Western-generated violence, saying:

"(T)he Council strongly condemns the widespread, systematic and gross violations of human rights and the continued extrajudicial killings and prosecution of protestors, human rights defenders and journalists." "The Council reiterates the importance of bringing to justice those responsible for the use of violence and encourages the international community to ensure against impunity."

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Paul Craig Roberts

“What’s the good of nuclear weapons if you can’t use them?” - Bill Kristol

In a recent column, “Can The World Survive Washington’s Hubris,” I promised to examine whether the US economy will collapse before Washington in its pursuit of world hegemony brings us into military confrontation with Russia and China. This is likely to be an ongoing subject on this site, so this column will not be the final word.

Washington has been at war since October, 2001, when President George W. Bush concocted an excuse to order the US invasion of Afghanistan. This war took a back seat when Bush concocted another excuse to order the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a war that went on without significant success for 8 years and has left Iraq in chaos with dozens more killed and wounded every day, a new strong man in place of the illegally executed former strongman, and the likelihood of the ongoing violence becoming civil war.

Upon his election, President Obama foolishly sent more troops to Afghanistan and renewed the intensity of that war, now in its eleventh year, to no successful effect.

These two wars have been expensive. According to estimates by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, when all costs are counted the Iraq invasion cost US taxpayers $3 trillion dollars. Ditto for the Afghan war. In other words, the two gratuitous wars doubled the US public debt. This is the reason there is no money for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the environment, and the social safety net.

Americans got nothing out of the wars, but as the war debt will never be paid off, US citizens and their descendants will have to pay interest on $6,000 billion of war debt in perpetuity.

Not content with these wars, the Bush/Obama regime is conducting military operations in violation of international law in Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa, organized the overthrow by armed conflict of the government in Libya, is currently working to overthrow the Syrian government, and continues to marshall military forces against Iran.

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Richard Phillips

While Obama administration spokesmen and the Australian government continue to insist that Washington is “not interested” in prosecuting WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence head, Dianne Feinstein, has issued another call for the Australian citizen to be put on trial.

“Mr Assange should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act [of 1917],” Feinstein told the Melbourne-based Age last week. “I believe Mr Assange has knowingly obtained and disseminated classified information which could cause injury to the United States. He has caused serious harm to US national security, and he should be prosecuted accordingly.”

US Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd told the newspaper that “there continues to be an investigation into the WikiLeaks matter.”

Assange is currently inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, pending a response to his June 19 application for political asylum in that country. Ecuadorian embassies in the US and Britain reported last week that they had received over 10,000 email messages in support of his application.

Assange’s decision to seek asylum followed the recent UK Supreme Court rejection of his legal appeals against extradition to Sweden. The WikiLeaks editor fears that if removed to Sweden, Washington will intervene and extradite him to the US. There he would face trial, on trumped-up charges, for the “crime” of publishing hundreds of thousands documents exposing war crimes by Washington, and the intrigues of the major powers.

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Stephen Lendman

In 2011, Washington-led NATO forces destroyed Libya. It was ravaged, not liberated. Humanitarian intervention was cover to wage war. "Responsibility to protect (R2P)" was subterfuge to colonize and plunder another country. Tens of thousands were killed. Vital social services were lost. Imperial control replaced Jamahiriya governance. Pre-2011 Libya no longer exists. Libyans call what NATO wrought "dimacracy." Dima in Arabic is blood. NATO gains control by shedding it. An illegitimate National Transitional Council (NTC) was appointed. Puppet leader Mustafa Abdul Jalil was made chairman. Mahmoud Jibril became prime minister. Abdurraheem el-Keib replaced him. He's a businessman and prominent Tripoli family scion. He taught at the UAE's Petroleum Institute. Oil giants fund it. Last August, Washington parachuted him in as its man. Protracted conflict continues. Libyans want to live free. Their struggle won't end until NATO's removed.

On July 7, sham elections were held. Originally scheduled for June 19, violence and instability postponed them. Current conditions are just as chaotic. Tribes and insurgent gangs control much of the country. Turf battles continue.

Anyone holding a position in any capacity in Gaddafi's government was excluded from participating. So were ordinary Libyans. Only those judged professionally qualified could run. NTC stooges decided. Washington had final say. Democracy wasn't on the ballot. It never is with America in charge. Obama officials claimed otherwise.

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Robert Stevens

The New Democracy-led Greek coalition government is meeting officials from the troika—the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)—today.

Christine Lagarde, IMF’s managing director, marked the occasion with a stern warning to Athens that the austerity programme must continue. In an interview with CNBC Tuesday, Lagarde said, “I am not in a negotiation or renegotiation mood at all.”

Referring to reports that the Greek government is to present figures recording the social misery caused by years of austerity to press the case for a renegotiation of the country’s debt, she added, “I’m very interested in seeing what has been done in the last few months in terms of complying with the programme.”

Despite the majority voting in the June 17 general election against parties supporting the Memorandum with the troika on harsh debt repayment terms, the coalition of ND, the social democratic PASOK and the Democratic Left is intent on meeting the demands for further savage cuts. Its talk of renegotiating a two-year extension for paying back Greece’s 350 billion euro debt is hot air. No such compromise is on offer, as Lagarde makes clear.

A popular repudiation of the austerity agenda of ND and a collapse in the vote for PASOK, with SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) finishing second by campaigning on an anti-cuts ticket, forced the coalition to pledge not to impose certain planned cuts, such as a 22 percent reduction in the minimum wage.

Within days they were forced to retract such promises due to the hostile response of the troika. Prime Minister and ND leader Antonis Samaras responded with a letter to EU leaders affirming that government accepted “ownership of the adjustment programme and is fully committed to its targets, its objectives and all its key policies.”

Lagarde’s remarks neatly bookend comments she made just weeks prior to the election, in which she insisted that there was no alternative to the mass social immiseration being imposed in Greece. Asked by the Guardian if she was “essentially saying to the Greeks and others in Europe, you’ve had a nice time and now it’s payback time,” she responded, “That’s right.”

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Ray McGovern

Consortium News Exclusive: Hard-headed realism and outside-the-box thinking might be needed to avert another catastrophe in the Middle East, this time an Israeli attack on Iran and the unpredictable consequences. In that light, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern imagines a bleak report that an Iranian intelligence officer might send back to Tehran.

In CIA jargon, “Aardwolf” is a label for a special genre of intelligence report from field stations abroad to headquarters in Washington. An Aardwolf conveys the Chief of Station’s formal assessment regarding the direction events are taking in his or her country of assignment – and frequently the news is bad.

An Aardwolf is relatively rare and is avidly read; it is candid — and often unwelcome. (In the 2006 book, State of War, author James Risen describes two Aardwolfs sent to CIA headquarters in the latter half of 2003 by the station chief in Baghdad describing the deteriorating situation in Iraq — and angering many of his bosses.)

So, let’s assume there is an Iranian Chief of Station embedded in, say, Iran’s UN representation in New York. It is quite likely that he or she would be tasked with crafting periodic Aardwolf-type assessments for senior officials of the Islamic Republic.

And in this time of heightened tensions with the United States and the West, Tehran presumably would be interested in a think piece assessing, based on the events of recent months, what the second half of 2012 might have in store on front-burner questions like the nuclear issue and the triangular Iran-U.S.-Israel relationship.

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Jean Shaoul

Photo: A Palestinian holds up a poster depicting late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during a ceremony marking the seventh anniversary of his death, in the West Bank city of Hebron, November 13, 2011. Arafat was followed by Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). Abbas' mandate expired in July 2009. He has ruled the West Bank illegitimately ever since, on behalf of Israel. The demo in this photo may be seen as a repudiation of Mahmoud Abbas.

The Palestinian Authority has announced that it will exhume the body of Yasser Arafat, the president of the PA who died in a French hospital in November 2004. It will investigate the cause of his death, amid claims that he was assassinated with the radioactive isotope, polonium.

Arafat fell ill in October 2004, but was denied medical diagnosis and treatment by Israel. The frail and elderly 75-year-old, lapsing in and out of consciousness, was flown out of the Mukata, his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He had been under an Israeli army siege for more than two years.

Arafat was transferred to a French military hospital to receive diagnostic treatment. He died three weeks later from what the French doctors described as a massive brain haemorrhage. He had suffered intestinal inflammation, jaundice and a blood condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), but its cause remained a mystery. French officials refused to say anything more than that he had a “mystery blood disorder”, citing privacy laws, fuelling speculation that he had been murdered.

When Arafat was in hospital, his wife Suha is reported to have told visiting Palestinian officials, “They are trying to bury Abu Ammar [Arafat] alive.” But after his death, she refused to consent to an autopsy. The 558-page medical report on his condition was given to a male relative.

Arafat’s remains lie in a mausoleum in the Mukata, which is guarded by troops.

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Philip Giraldi

I recently read a fascinating article by Scott McConnell, “The Special Relationship With Israel: Is It Worth the Cost?,” which appeared in the spring 2012 Middle East Policy Council Journal. Even for those of us who have closely followed the issue of Israel’s asymmetrical relationship with the United States, Scott provides some unique insights. He observes, for example, that the result of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel has been the wholesale adoption of Israeli policies and viewpoints by Washington’s policymakers and pundits. As Scott puts it, there exists “a transmission belt, conveying Israeli ideas on how the United States should conduct itself in a contested and volatile part of the world. To a great extent, a receptive American political class now views the Middle East and their country’s role in it through Israel’s eyes.”

I would add that Israel has not only shaped America’s perceptions, it has also supported policies both overseas and domestically that have fundamentally shifted how the United States sees itself and how the rest of the world sees the United States. This is most evident in failed national security policies, damaging interactions with the Muslim world, and the loss of basic liberties at home because of legislation like the PATRIOT Act. Israel and its powerful lobby have been instrumental in entangling Washington in a constant state of war overseas while at the same time planting the seeds for a national security state at home. In short, the end product of the relationship is that the United States has abandoned many liberties, constitutional restraints, and its rule of law to become more like Israel.

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Stephen Lendman

ACTA 2.0
TPP: A Trade Deal from Hell

s address the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). They discuss what the companion article to this one calls a trade deal from hell.

Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch says it's a "Corporate Power Tool of the 1%." Secret negotiations plan:

• offshoring millions more US jobs to low wage countries;
• freeing giant banking crooks entirely from oversight;
• banning "Buy America" policies in deference to global marketplace mandates;
• decreasing access to medicines and making prescription drugs less affordable;
• infesting America with toxic foods and other harmful products; and
• destroying fast eroding environmental and health safeguards.

In many respects, TPP represents a death sentence for fundamental human rights, environmental protections, employment prospects, and constitutional freedoms. Nonetheless, it's being secretly discussed in multiple negotiating rounds.

Obama officials push it. They're pressuring negotiating nations to accept Washington diktats. They urge others to join those currently involved.

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Stephen Lendman

ACTA 2.0
Stealth Trade Agreement Secret Negotiations

Obama and political Washington support an alphabet soup of repressive police state laws, other freedom destroying measures, and hellish trade deals.

SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA threaten online freedom. Free speech and civil protections are endangered species. So are other inviolable rule of law provisions. With bipartisan support, they're heading for the trash bin of history.

Obama officials secretly negotiated and adopted ACTA (the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement). It established unrestricted supranational global trade rules. Its provisions trample on national sovereignty, privacy and personal freedoms.

In October 2011, Obama lawlessly circumvented Congress. He signed ACTA. He falsely claimed it's not a treaty. He usurped diktat authority. He claimed he acted by "executive agreement." He strong-armed other nations to go along.

TPP (the Trans-Pacific Partnership) is ACTA 2.0. The oundation (EFF) calls it "a secretive, multi-nation agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property laws across the globe."

Ten nations negotiated it secretly plus Japan without formal status. They include America, Australia, Malaysia, Peru, Vietnam, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Brunei, Canada, and Mexico.

They want it adopted quietly out of public view. Since March 2010, multiple negotiating rounds were held. They continue. Other nations may come aboard. Mexico is the latest.

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William Blum

I'm sure most Americans are mighty proud of the fact that Julian Assange is so frightened of falling into the custody of the United States that he had to seek sanctuary in the embassy of Ecuador, a tiny and poor Third World country, without any way of knowing how it would turn out. He might be forced to be there for years. "That'll teach him to mess with the most powerful country in the world! All you other terrorists and anti-Americans out there — Take Note! When you fuck around with God's country you pay a price!"

How true. You do pay a price. Ask the people of Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Iran, Haiti, etc., etc., etc. And ask the people of Guantánamo, Diego Garcia, Bagram, and a dozen other torture centers to which God's country offers free transportation.

You think with the whole world watching, the United States would not be so obvious as to torture Assange if they got hold of him? Ask Bradley Manning. At a bare minimum, prolonged solitary confinement is torture. Before too long the world may ban it. Not that that would keep God's country and other police states from using it.

You think with the whole world watching, the United States would not be so obvious as to target Assange with a drone? They've done it with American citizens. Assange is a mere Aussie.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: Enrique Peña Nieto, presidential candidate for the Revolutionary Institutional Party (PRI), flashes his election ink-stained thumbs after he cast his vote in the general election, accompanied by his wife Angelica Rivera and four of their six children: Paulina, left, Alejandro, second left, Regina, center, and Sofia, right, in Atlacomulco, Mexico, Sunday, July 1, 2012. Mexico's more than 79 million voters went to the polls Sunday to elect a president, who serves one six-year term, as well as 500 congressional deputies and 128 senators.

Like its northern neighbor, wealth and power dominate Mexican politics. Elections are notoriously tainted. Populist candidates are excluded. The late John Ross said Mexico perfected the art of electoral theft.

Longstanding problems fester. For millions, they're unbearable. They include extreme poverty, unemployment, underemployment, deep-seated private and public corruption, drug-related crime and violence, and political repression.

Beyond lip service, none of the candidates addressed them. Conditions are worse now than years earlier. Sunday's election changed nothing. Privately, Nieto assured Washington that business as usual will continue.

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Bill Van Auken

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (R), and the guided-
missile cruiser USS Cape St. George in the Strait of Hormuz.

The real message is that Washington is treating the Persian Gulf like an American lake under conditions in which the US and its European allies are ratcheting up economic sanctions that more and more resemble a blockade, an act of war.

The Obama administration has ordered a major buildup of American military forces in the Persian Gulf, as punishing economic sanctions imposed by both the US and the European Union within the last week have sharply escalated tensions with Iran. The Pentagon has deployed both a large number of warships in the Gulf itself, as well as advanced warplanes in neighboring countries.

The purpose of this buildup, according to a report published Tuesday in the New York Times, is to send various “signals”—to warn Iran against any attempt to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, to convince Israel not to carry out its own strike on Iranian nuclear facilities and to deflect Republican criticisms of Obama as “weak” on Iran.

Whether or not these are the real intentions of the US military buildup, the effect is to put a hair trigger on the threat of an armed confrontation that could provoke a devastating and potentially nuclear war with untold consequences in terms of human life, physical destruction and economic disruption throughout the region and internationally.

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