Tuesday July 7, 2009, 2:23 am
Generals Who Led Honduras Military Coup Trained at SOA, School of the Americas, Ft. Benning, GA - Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch:
we’re not surprised, you know, that there’s a connection to the School of the Americas, now called WHINSEC. This school is well known in Latin America as a school of coups, a school of dictators, a school of torture. There is a direct connection, which we expected.

The two main players in this coup in Honduras that ousted President Zelaya are two generals, well-known graduates of the school: General Romero Vasquez, who’s the commander-in-chief, the head of the military, not only a graduate, a two-time graduate; and, of course, also General Luis Suazo, a graduate of the school in 1996, who’s the head of the air force.

This school is well known in Latin America, again, as a school of coups. Whenever there is a massacre, cases of torture, human rights abuses, we have been able to document a direct connection to this school. This school has trained over 60,000 soldiers from fifteen countries in Latin America in combat skills, all paid for, I must say, by the US taxpayers.

And we, of course, are—like so many, are outraged by this coup. This is a scandal. We’re encouraged by the response, of course, from the international community and the tens of thousands in the SOA Watch movement, who are really walking in solidarity with the people of Honduras at this time and the poor throughout Latin America."

Military Coup in Honduras
Stand in Solidarity with the People of Honduras
The Latin America Solidarity Coalition (LASC) condemns the military coup against the democratically elected Honduran President Zelaya. The Honduran social movements, who are courageously resisting the military take-over through protests, occupations and strikes, are calling on the international community to speak up in defense of real and direct democracy, for life, justice, liberty, dignity and peace.

Call the State Department and the White House and ask for actions, not merely words, including:

1. A cut off of all US aid (as required by US law) until Zelaya is safely returned to office.
2. Financial sanctions against the coup plotters
3. An investigation into what signals U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens gave to coup plotters before the coup.

State Department: 202-647-4000 or 1-800-877-8339
White House: Comments: 202-456-1111
Click here to send a message to President Barack Obama


Hidden In Plain Sight
by Leah C. Wells
(http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1118-15.htm)- "The United States Government itself sponsors terrorist training - at the U.S. Army School of the Americas -SOA, now called WHINSEC - in Ft. Benning, GA."
:

Not long after the Al Qaeda terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian/UK that the United States Government itself sponsors terrorist training - at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, GA.

A documentary by director John Smihula says that these horrific stories have been 'Hidden In Plain Sight', and culpability is strangely obscured despite a trail of evidence linking U.S. foreign policy to the bloodstained history of Latin America in the 20th Century. 'Hidden' gives interviews of both SOA supporters and critics, and shows flinchworthy footage of soldiers and victims. This film has debuted in more than 40 U.S. cities and has featured a national and international film festivals - including the Istanbul and Amnesty International film festivals. This month, 'Hidden' will screen at the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam.

Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti and Eduardo Galeano all give equally damning testimonies for ways in which U.S. imperialism and military intervention have worked against the Latin American poor, the workers and the indigenous, and benefited the large corporations who have taken advantage of cheap labor and compliance from regional leadership.

Christopher Hitchens distributes the blame and much more widely: "I think that the SOA reminds people in a very blunt way that Americans too can be collectively responsible for torture, for murder for dictatorship and not just for defending these things or for covering them up, or being complicit with them, but actually teaching people how to do them, which is more than complicity, it is direct responsibility."

Is it a stretch to say that U.S. taxpayers keep the school open? Is it feasible that through our oil dependency and consumptive behavior we give an implicit nod to U.S. foreign policy, consenting to whatever means are necessary to keep gas prices low? Silence is acceptance, and ignorance is no excuse.

Moreover, the U.S. war on terror and oil imperialism connects the dots from the Middle East through Ft. Benning to Central and South America. Petroleum-rich countries like Ecuador and Venezuela take heed: if Plan Colombia is any indication of how the U.S. intends to secure South American oil, the continent is certainly in for more trouble. Plan Colombia has funneled millions of dollars toward anti-narcotics efforts, attempting to quash the thriving coca industry, and has been denounced by human rights groups as a war against the people of Colombia. This funding is not used for social welfare but to protect oil pipelines, train soldiers, fumigate civilian areas with toxic chemicals, and supply weapons for "protection."

U.S. culpability in crimes against humanity is overt in the eyes of many Latin Americans. In 'Hidden', El Salvadoran death squad member tells an American reporter, "We learnt from you. We learnt from you the methods, like blowtorches in the armpits, shots in the balls." Their victims died unspeakable deaths, and those who lived carry the weight of remembrance, like Ana Chavez Fisher whose husband was killed in El Salvador. And like Hector Aristizabal whose brother was tortured and killed in Colombia. And like Sr. Dianna Ortiz who survived torture in Guatemala

For them, the existence of the school at Ft. Benning, GA is indefensible.

Yet 'Hidden' takes another look at the situation, soliciting views from proponents of the renamed-SOA.

One supporter, Congressman Mac Collins (R-GA) takes stabs at the largely Catholic "School for the Americas Watch" movement, saying that of all institutions, the church should be willing to see the good in people working for, as fellow supporter Colonel Glenn Weidner says, "peace in the hemisphere." Led by Father Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest and himself a victim of torture in South America, SOA Watch has maintained a vigil outside the gates of Ft. Benning every November since 1990 to commemorate the murders committed by graduates of the SOA of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, committed by graduates of the SOA.

Card-carrying Amnesty International member and Ft. Benning Base Commander Maj. Gen. John Lemoyne, who has been implicated in the "Highway of Death" massacre in the 1991 Gulf War, claims that "Amnesty has reviewed this school and said it was the best institution to help our Latin brothers." Paul Paz y Mino, an Amnesty International representative, counters: "General LeMoyne's statements are completely false. No one in Amnesty has ever or would ever make such a statement endorsing any military training, even though we don't oppose it officially."

LeMoyne's military career underscores the claim that even at the highest levels, those associated with the SOA act with impunity, sending implicit messages to the soldiers who train there that they are beyond reproach. With testimony from critics and even supporters, 'Hidden' still paints a bad picture of the school.

Latin Americans have suffered under two silences, one in the climate of fear and repression under their own governments, and another in Americans' lack of awareness or capacity to believe that the U.S. could be involved. Generations of Americans grew up believing that citizenship meant supporting one's country, right or wrong. Perhaps this is the only real explanation for the degree of convincing required to help a country see the forest for the trees, that which has truly been 'Hidden In Plain Sight.'

Tuesday July 7, 2009, 4:05 am
Isn't it amazing how, since the Abu Ghraib scandal, the creation of Guantanamo and the many revelations concerning the extraordinary renditions program, there's been public debate on the use and approval of torture at Guantanamo, at Bagram, and in secret CIA prisons -- weeks and weeks of headlines focalizing on waterboarding alone - does it or does it not constitute torture?-- yet there has never been public debate or newspaper headlines in the United States devoted to this US military school of torture & extrajudicial execution, coups and massacres, operating at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

"Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 under the terms of the Panama Canal Treaty. Former Panamanian President, Jorge Illueca, stated that the School of the Americas was the “biggest base for destabilization in Latin America.” The SOA, frequently dubbed the “School of Assassins,” has left a trail of blood and suffering in every country where its graduates have returned.

Over its 59 years, the SOA has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. These graduates have consistently used their skills to wage a war against their own people. Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and others who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, “disappeared,” massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins." (the last 2 paragraphs are from the SOA Watch site 'What is the SOA?' section, followed by a list of selected outrages, notorious graduates, and training documents

Notorious throughout Latin America, yet never an issue for the vast majority of Americans, despite the fact that Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch, has been able to draw up to 25,000 committed human rights defenders to protest at Ft Benning every year !

NO to the Military Coup! Demand the Unconditional Reinstatement of Honduran President Zelaya -http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/727/t/3823/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27531 - Edit & Send This Letter to Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and President Obama: I am writing to ask that the United States cut off of all US aid (as required by US law) until Zelaya is safely returned to Honduras and unconditionally reinstated as the legitimate president.

It is urgent that you express support for democracy, especially in light of the fact that the U.S. has in the past been supportive of most military coups in the continent.

The leader of this coup, Genaral Romero Vasquez, as well as other coup participants, are graduates of the School of the Americas. This coup is yet another example of the long list of grave abuses committed by graduates of this school. We urge President Obama to issue an executive order to shut down the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC).

Tuesday July 7, 2009, 4:23 am
Yet people at SOA Watch were in a position to connect the dots -as early as 2004- between US actions in Irak and what has been going on in Latin America for nearly 60 years!

Abu Ghraib: the Rule, Not the Exception

Miles Schuman
from The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Ontario


The International Committee of the Red Cross has revealed over the past days that the gross human-rights abuses of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison were not confined to a few soldiers. Indeed, it appears they were well-known to U.S. government and military officials while they occurred. As a physician who has worked with many survivors of torture in Canada -- and has lived in Guatemala, Haiti and Mexico, working with survivors of state-sponsored violence -- the images of the detainees in Abu Ghraib represent a hauntingly familiar pattern of abuse.

The black hood covering the faces of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib was known as la capuchi in Guatemalan and Salvadoran torture chambers. The metal bed frame to which the naked and hooded detainee was bound in a crucifix position at Abu Ghraib was la cama for a former Chilean patient who survived the U.S.-installed regime of General Augusto Pinochet. In her case, electrodes were attached to her arms, legs and genitalia, just as they were attached to the Iraqi detainee poised on a box, threatened with electrocution if he fell off. The Iraqi man bound naked on the ground with a leash attached to his neck, held by a smiling young American recruit reminds me of the son of peasant organizers who recounted his agonizing torture at the hands of the tonton macoutes, U.S.-backed Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier's right-hand thugs, in Port-au-Prince, in 1984.

The very act of photographing those tortured in Abu Ghraib to humiliate and silence parallels the experience of an American missionary, Sister Diana Ortiz, who was tortured in Guatemala in 1989. Before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus, she reported: "My hand was burned over 100 times with cigarettes. I was gang raped repeatedly. . . . My last few minutes in detention, I met Alejandro, whom the torturers referred to as their boss. He was tall and fair-skinned and spoke halting Spanish, with a thick American accent. His English was American, flawless, unaccented. When I asked him if he was American, his answer was evasive: 'Why do you want to know?' He reminded me that my torturers had made videotapes and taken photos of the parts of the torture I was most ashamed of. He said if I didn't forgive my torturers, he would have no choice but to release those photos and tapes to the press [Congressional Human Rights Caucus Briefing on Torture, June 25, 1988]."

The same sadistic choreography has taken place at the U.S. military base at Bagram in Afghanistan, where named witnesses informed The New York Times that detainees were stripped and hooded "with their arms raised and chained to the ceiling, their feet shackled."

This infernal landscape illustrates methods of torture consistent with U.S. military-intelligence teaching manuals. One example from the manuals produced by the U.S. Army's School of the Americas and declassified by the U.S. government, advises that in order to forcibly recruit spies, "The counterintelligence agent could cause the arrest of the employees' parents, imprison the employee, or give him a beating as part of the placement plan." It suggests that many other techniques could be used, limited only by the agent's imagination.

A 1986 report by the El Salvador Human Rights Commission, founded by Archbishop Oscar Romero, and smuggled out of the infamous Mariona Prison in San Salvador, refers to 40 kinds of torture inflicted on political prisoners, and the presence of Americans as supervisors. Graduates of the School of the Americas include military officers and leaders implicated in torture and mass murder in Guatemala, El Salvador, Chile, Argentina and Haiti, among other Latin American countries.

Two CIA manuals obtained by The Baltimore Sun in 1997, have specific relevance to the torture methods used on prisoners at Abu Ghraib. One manual written by the CIA in 1963, titled Kubark Counter-Intelligence Interrogation, states: "Interrogations conducted under compulsion or duress are especially likely to involve illegality. . . . Therefore, prior approval at the higher level must be obtained for the interrogation of any source against his will under any of the following circumstances: If bodily harm is inflicted; if medical, chemical or electric methods or materials are used to induce acquiescence."

Such methods could not have been far from the thoughts of those who applied electric wires to the Iraqi detainee pictured at Abu Ghraib. In his case, there was reportedly no potential current to cause shock. But as aptly noted by The Guardian in this connection, the CIA's 1983 Human Resource Exploitation Manual, used in Honduras, advises: "The threat of coercion usually weakens or destroys resistance more effectively than coercion itself. The threat to inflict pain triggers fears more damaging than the immediate sensation of pain."

The types of torture practised by individuals representing the U.S. government or their surrogates have varied slightly from place to place over time, depending on the particular social, cultural or religious norms that need to be subverted, in order to inflict the greatest pain and humiliation.

This subversion often goes hand in hand with gender-based violence. Examples include the rape of nuns such as Diana Ortiz by, and under the supervision of, male torturers, and the sexual assault of Muslim men by, and under the supervision of, enlisted women.

The ultimate purpose of torture, however, is always the same. It is not the extraction of information, which is notoriously unreliable under such conditions.

It is, rather, the destruction of one's voice and identity, the transformation of a human into an object (thus the hood over the face), like the Orwellian deconstruction of thousands of former lives into "collateral damage," or the "rendering" of individuals to another country for so-called interrogation.

From my experience as a physician, the Abu Ghraib images are not an exception to the rules. They represent the rules, I believe, by which the U.S. government and military exercise power over a non-servile population to optimize the economic and political interests of an elite few in the U.S. and abroad. What is not the norm, what is exceptional, is the graphic revelation to the world of these horrors. In his book A Miracle, A Universe, New Yorker writer Lawrence Weschler crystallizes the torturer's message to the tortured: "Scream. Scream as much as you like. It doesn't matter. No one is listening. No one will ever hear you. No one will ever know." The torturer, like the state sponsoring him, depends on the obscurity of the victim and silence of witnesses to continue his crimes.

We are all witnesses now.


http://www.soaw.org/newswire_detail.php?id=429

Miles Schuman, a family physician in the Kivalliq region of Nunavut (Canada), counselled refugees, and documented torture for the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture and the Clinique Sant? Accueil in Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, and in Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand.

Tuesday July 7, 2009, 4:45 am
The United States’ Anti-Democratic Pattern in Honduras

Excerpt:
Graduates of the School of the Americas/WHINSEC have a long history of repression and anti-democratic actions. The School has produced at least 11 Latin American dictators, including SOA grad General Juan Megler Castro who became military dictator of Honduras in 1975.

“From 1980-82, the dictatorial Honduran regime was headed by yet another SOA graduate, Policarpo Paz Garcia, who intensified repression and murder by Battalion 3-16, one of the most feared death squads in all of Latin America (founded by Honduran SOA graduates with the help of Argentine SOA graduates),” says SOA Watch.

It’s worth noting that John Negroponte, former ambassador to Iraq under Geoge W. Bush, was ambassador to Honduras 1981-1985. As filmmaker Paul Laverty wrote in the July 2005 issue of The Progressive, “a prizewinning series in the Baltimore Sun in 1995 demonstrated that Negroponte knew about the torture and murders that Honduras’s Battalion 3-16, trained by the CIA, was carrying out. He then covered them up by whitewashing reports back to Congress about Honduras’s human rights record.”

The United States used Honduras for years as a staging ground for its proxy war against the Sandinistas. The United States still stations troops at Cano Soto Air Base, near Tegucigalpa, which was used as a base of operations for the U.S.-backed Contras.

And while U.S. assistance to Honduras does not quite match the incredible sums spent during the 1980s, between 2005-2010, military and police aid to Honduras will reach more than $40 million.

FY 2010 Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations report, which was released May 2009, states that “U.S. foreign assistance to Honduras focuses on partnering with the Government of Honduras to enhance security, strengthen democracy and rule of law . . .”

Given the history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, Obama faces a skeptical audience when he talks about upholding the rule of law. His State Department’s budget request says “Honduras has the lowest level of public support for democracy of the 22 countries surveyed in the Americas.”

(from The Progressive - http://www.progressive.org/node/133028)

Wednesday July 8, 2009, 1:58 am
Protests Continue as Funeral Held for Slain Honduran Protester
Meanwhile in Honduras, a funeral was held Monday for one of two people killed when Honduran forces opened fire on a crowd of peaceful demonstrators who had come to the airport to support Zelaya’s attempted return. The protester, Isis Murrillo, was nineteen years old. His sister, Rebeca Murrillo, vowed to champion the cause her brother died for.

Rebeca Murrillo: “With the death of my brother I want to move forward and keep fighting and supporting Manuel Zelaya. The people chose him not like [Roberto] Micheletti … My brother will give me strength, for him I will continue fighting for the homeland.”

Despite the threats of more government violence, protests continued in Honduras Monday with several thousand marching on the presidential palace.

Wednesday July 8, 2009, 4:52 am
Thanks, Jill. Most people have no idea of the backround story on this coup !

Wednesday July 15, 2009, 1:26 am
JUST FOREIGN POLICY Petition/E-Mail Letter: Correct False Wall Street Journal Claim That Hondurans Support Coup