(The following letter from Australian anti-war and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge—who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--originally appeared in an Australian-Cuban solidarity group’s newsletter)
“November 28, 2015
“Dear Comrades,
“Hello everyone. Christmas is coming at us from all
directions, with the commercials ramping up their hard sell campaign earlier
than usual persuading mug shoppers to spend more than they can afford for
‘things’ they don’t need, who are then faced with a credit card debt long after
their christmas trees have been dumped in the rubbish bin. Normal for this time
of the year, except these aren’t normal times.
“Peace on earth and goodwill to all men has always sounded
sexist and phoney, but today the slogan has never felt more inappropriate. I’m
thinking of the desperate people trying to survive in Beirut, Baghdad,
Palestine, Damascus and all the other places caught up in terror. And the
cold-blooded butchery in Paris that shocked, horrified and outraged us at the
waste of young lives. ISIS, ISIL, Daesh - whatever their name - have no heart
or head, just tentacles that act in fury and barbarity. A time of killing in
hotels, cafes, concert halls, on aeroplanes, anywhere and everywhere.
“Terrorism terrifies and people are terrified, knowing that
more violence is on the way. But this current form of terrorism didn’t come out
of the blue. It’s roots go back a long way, centuries ago, to waves of western
imperialism. It’s called Blowback.
“Where did these ISIS attackers come from? There’s a
temptation to blame religion or race to avoid more solid areas of
investigation.
“ In the 1960s and 70s we had the US/Saudi backed World
Muslim League whose job was to wipe out secular nationalism and communism in
the Arab world in order to protect corrupt Gulf Arab emirates and the Saudi
kingdom and the west’s interests in oil and power. The League’s assault on
Afghanistan destroyed its communist republic long before Soviet intervention,
and paved the way for the creation of the ‘mujahideen’ whose core contained a
violent element that became al-Qaeda.
“ Crucially, the US-run wars in Iraq and Libya and Syria
turned them into playgrounds for the ‘jihardis’, a scheme spelled out in a 1997
document called the Project for the New American Century, dreamed up by the
repugnant team of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard
Perle to establish a US empire to rule the world. September 11, 2001 gave them
the green light.
“ Iraq was their jumping-off point to destroy the Middle East.
All of it bankrolled by the World Trade Organisation and the IMF.
“So it’s hard to feel Christmassy when I think of my friends
in Iraq and Libya, both of which I visited in happier times. It makes my blood
boil when I hear Libya described as a Gaddafi-run military dictatorship when it
used to be one of the world’s most democratic states.
“Four years have gone by since Gaddafi was butchered,
heralding the beginning of Libya’s decline into chaos.
“ In 1967, Gaddafi took over one of the poorest nations in
Africa but by the time he was killed he had transformed Libya into Africa’s
richest with the highest Human Development Index, the lowest infant mortality
rate and the highest life expectancy. Under Gaddafi, Islamic terrorism was
non-existent.
“ In 2009, the US State Department called Libya ‘an
important ally in the war on terrorism’. Bloody hypocrites.
“Today Libya is a failed state, with the South a haven for
ISIS and the North for migrant trafficking, all of it happening amidst a
backdrop of widespread rape, assassinations and torture.
“ Iraq’s collapse began in 1990-91 with Gulf War 1 and has
continued unabated, with 4 million Iraqis displaced and half-a-million
registered as refugees.
“ Syria’s crisis is also gargantuan with half the population
displaced and refugees numbering at least five million, Its finances in
tatters.
“Rich powers turn up with smug faces and pledge a lot of
money to UN agencies but when it comes to fulfilling these pledges their ink
runs dry. But not when it comes to arms sales. Despite the complex array of
conflicts in the region, Obama has agreed to an unprecedented splurge in US
armaments, with Saudi Arabia getting the lion’s share of $49 billion and $800
million ‘aid’ fort ‘moderate rebels’ in Syria and Kiev, while millions of
children go hungry.
“ ‘We live in pitiless times’, said Vijay Prashad, who
suggests we should read Leila Sebbar’s La Seine Etait Rouge, a searing novel
about the French government’s murder of hundreds of pro-Algerian protesters in
Paris in October 1961. One more history buried under a mountain of cliches and
lies, and forgotten.
“ Out of the blue, a blast from the past. A recent news item
appeared in a weekday edition of The Australian about the reappearance of
Michael Hand in the US State of Idaho. Hand had been a partner with Frank Nugan
in the notorious Sydney-based Nugan Hand Bank, an ‘unbank’ that never did any
banking nor hired any bankers. In 1980, a rifle blast blew off the head of what
was purported to be that of Frank Nugan - although the NSW Attorney-General’s
Department believed it was the body of a missing Italian drug dealer - and
exposed the massive fraud at the heart of his empire. At the same time, Michael
Hand took off like a rocket from his Sydney hideout, leaving behind his
clothes, passport, wallet and credit cards and vanished into thin air - until
now.
“Getting out before details emerged that Nugan Hand was a
CIA centre for a huge clandestine network involving US Generals, admirals, and
CIA men, including former CIA chief William Colby, who were involved in
drug-running, tax evasion, money-laundering, gun-running and secret arms deals.
It had the explicit and implied authority at the highest levels and in
intelligence jargon was a ‘conduit’ to buy off Australian politicians, trade
union officials and journalists, some of whom were probably unaware of the
source of favours and disinformation.
“At the time I was puzzled that the CIA with its vast
resources used the same handful of people over and over again. The answer was
detailed in a civil court action in Florida by two American journalists injured
in a bombing in Nicaragua. The 300-page indictment showed that Nugan Hand’s
crimes were only a small part of a long trail of international racketeering,
assassinations, torture and even wars carried out by a team that was formally
assembled by Vice-President Richard Nixon in 1959 after the fall of Cuban
dictator Batista.
“The anti-Castro terrorist group was supplemented by an
assassination unit as part of a broader scheme to bump off foreign leaders, the
same team being controlled by Theodore Shackley. In 1972, Shackley became the
CIA’s head of Western Hemisphere Activities and was part of the criminal
conspiracy that orchestrated the violent coup against Allende in Chile and
installation of General Pinochet (Australian ASIS personnel took part) and two
years later was up to his neck in the demise of the Whitlam Government.“And so
the tangled web goes on and on.
“This is just a taste of their crimes. But Cuba survived.
“Joan Coxsedge, “
No comments:
Post a Comment