Letter Never Sent

Chavez on the coup from the Washington Post:

But Chavez said members of the military unit responsible for guarding the president arrested four foreigners who were firing on the crowd from the Hotel Ausonia, less than a block from the presidential palace. Chavez said the men, who were found with high-powered rifles, were released the next day by the provisional government. Police have said that at least five of those killed were shot in the head from above.

“I have no doubt that I would have been killed had I gone out into the streets that day — Chavez killed by a bullet from the people,” he said. “That was the idea behind this. This march was looking for deaths.” …

Since his return, Chavez has spoken to a number of world leaders, including Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Mexico’s Vicente Fox, Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. All offered their congratulations, he said. But Chavez has yet to hear from any State Department official more senior than Ambassador Charles Shapiro.

Good bits from here and there:

1. Backing for Palestine state increases in US
2. The American Empire’s plan to invade Iraq with 250,000 soldiers.
3. Sharon’s plan is to drive Palestinians across the Jordan Moving or killing 2 million arabs.
4. Israel to refuse cooperation with UN Trying to block Jenin massacre investigation.
5. Bush Seeking to Squeeze School Loan Program We can’t all be Yaley blue-blood, draft-dodgers.

The US has already changed rules so that they do not even need evidence of a crime to hold detainees at Camp X-Ray. I think flouting the Geneva conventions is idiotic and wrong. There should be protections for people captured during military operations.

Earlier this month, Amnesty International criticised that as a “pick-and-choose approach” amounting to “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”

Two prisoners who protested at their uncertain fate by refusing to eat for 30 days were force-fed 2,000 calories a day through nasal feeding tubes for 10 days.

They were returned to the prison cells but still are not eating and probably will be taken back to the hospital in a few days for more forced feeding.

Some links from Antiwar.com:

1. 9/11 Was a Boon for the CIA
2. Al-Qaeda Inmates ‘Outwitting Interrogators’ I found this story funny. I like how despite the ad campaign and patriotic exhortation ‘military intelligence’ is still an oxymoron.
3. Gore Vidal: CIVIL LIBERTIES The New War on Freedom Give me liberty, or give me … what? Security?
   The Federation of American Scientists has catalogued nearly 200 such military incursions since 1945 initiated by the United States.

Here’s a good Chomsky interview on 4/8/02 regarding the situation in the mideast and Israel. You can list to it in Real Audio here.

Something fishy is going on at Harvard. Half of all grades are A and A-minus, and nearly all Harvard seniors are graduating with honors.

Last year, a record 91 percent of Harvard seniors graduated with honors, a Globe study found, compared with 51 percent at Yale and 44 percent at Princeton.

A Harvard education, while expensive and a badge of the elite, doesn’t seem to mean much in reality.

From the folks at cleancampaigns.org: Remember to vote ‘yes’ on Proposition 1: Austin Fair Elections Act (for austinites only) Election Date: Saturday May 4th, 2002 Early Voting starts April 17th. The measure will provide campaign financing for local candidates for less than a nickel a week per voter..which is around $2.60 or so a year. Not a bad idea. I first heard about this when I went to a show benefitting the Austin Green Party.

George sent me a good link today regarding reports of members of Al-Qaida and Hezbollah operating inside Ecuador. Wow, what a surprise the US would suggest something like that. Of course, it’s complete bullshit. If I knew Hezbollah worked for the US I might believe it. In this case, consider the source, Richard “the killer” Armitage. Richard Armitage, one of the many vermin currently infesting the highest levels of government, is most famously known for illegally selling missiles to Iranian terrorists during the Iran-Contra scandal. Maybe he does have a nose for where terrorists are hiding. He has, after all, done business with them in the past. Illegal arms sales are not his only sin. He was investigated by President Reagan’s Commission on Organized Crime (1984) for alleged links to gambling and prostitution.

The real reason islamic terrorists have suddenly been discovered in Ecuador has to do with the Ecuadorans lack of enthusiasm for Bush’s ‘war on terror’. They have balked at the US using airfields in Ecuador to prosecute ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’. If this keeps up you can expect a change in government in Ecuador.

1. More on the resurrected Iran-Contra gang:

   
   “Bringing all these people who are so associated with a polarised ideological crusade that committed human rights abuses threatens to rekindle that partisanship,” said Reed Brody, legal director of Human Rights Watch in New York. “What is very unfortunate is that history has revealed American complicity in serious atrocities in the 1980s and, in effect, all these nominations may serve to rewrite history and rehabilitate a very unfortunate period of our history.”
   

2. Pakistan’s ISI and 9-11: ISI is Pakistani Intelligence. Remember how Pakistan contributed significant aid to the Taliban? Turns out the head of ISI, Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, came to the US on September 4, 2001 (week before WTC attack) and met with high-level US officials.

   
   Mahmoud’s meetings on two separate missions with the Taliban were reported as a “failure.” Yet this “failure” to extradite Osama was part of Washington’s design, providing a pretext for a military intervention which was already in the pipeline. If Osama had been extradited, the main justification for waging a war “against international terrorism” would no longer hold. And the evidence suggests that this war had been planned well in advance of September 11, in response to broad strategic and economic objectives.
   

3. The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire
4. The Bush Family 1920 – 2001 Ongoing Connections To Terrorism And Killing
5. From The Guardian: Friends of terrorism Bush’s decision to bring back Otto Reich exposes the hypocrisy of the war against terror