Fortunes of war await Bush’s circle after attacks on Iraq

By Andrew Gumbel

Los Angeles, California, Sept. 15— The last time the United States went to war against Iraq, Dick Cheney did very nicely from it.

Having served as Defense Secretary, and basked in the reflected glory of the US military’s surprisingly rapid advance across the desert sands to end the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, Cheney then managed to reap benefits of a very different kind once the war was over, and he left government to become chief executive of Halliburton, the Texas-based oil services company.


Vice President Dick Cheney

When the United Nations (UN) relaxed its sanctions regime in 1998 and permitted Iraq to buy spare parts for its oil fields, it was Halliburton, under Cheney’s leadership, that won the contract to repair war damage and get Saddam Hussein’s oil pipes flowing at full capacity again. Two Halliburton subsidiaries did business worth almost $24 million with the man whom these days Cheney calls a “murderous dictator” and “the world’s worst leader.”

Since taking over as George W. Bush’s vice-president, Cheney has severed all formal ties with his former employer, notably when he cashed in $36 million in stock options and other benefits at the height of the market in August 2000. But Halliburton -- currently struggling with a corporate accounting scandal that may or may not implicate Cheney -- could profit all over again if the much-threatened new war against Iraq comes to pass.

We can certainly expect more air strikes against the oil fields, possibly combined with a ground invasion. Then, when it is all over, someone is going to have to mop up the damage once again. Halliburton, with its previous experience and unparalleled political connections (not limited to Cheney), would be in pole position for the job.

Nobody could justifiably accuse the Bush administration of wanting to wage war on Iraq solely as a favor to its friends in the oil business and the military-industrial complex. But many of the companies that stand to gain most from a war enjoy remarkably close ties to senior figures in the administration. And some of the President’s closest confidants have shown extraordinary elasticity down the years in their attitudes to President Saddam, America’s on-again, off-again public enemy number one.

Cheney, who has gone from warmonger to dealmaker and back to warmonger, is just one example. Donald Rumsfeld, the current Defense Secretary, has repeatedly raised the specter of Iraq’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. But in 1983, when Rumsfeld was President Reagan’s special envoy to Iraq, he turned a blind eye to Iraqi use of nerve and mustard gas in its war with Iran, concentrating instead on forging a personal relationship with the Iraqi leader, then considered a valuable US ally.

Rumsfeld was actually in Baghdad on the day the UN first reported Iraqi use of chemical weapons, but chose to remain silent, as did the rest of the US establishment. Five years later, he cited his ability to make friends with Saddam Hussein as one of his qualifications for a possible run at the presidency.

This Bush administration has been much more upfront about the role of oil in its deliberations on Iraq than the last Bush administration. That is partly a matter of circumstance: Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the stability of Middle Eastern oil states has been a big policy consideration. But it also reflects the fact that much of the Bush inner circle, including the president himself, is made up of former oilmen. The oil and gas industry has pumped about $50million to political candidates since the 2000 election.

There are also uncomfortably cozy ties between the government and the defense industry. Rumsfeld’s oldest friend, Frank Carlucci, a former defense secretary himself, now heads the Carlyle Group, an investment consortium which has a big interest in the contracting firm United Defense.

Carlyle’s board includes former president George Bush Sr. and James Baker, the former secretary of state. One program alone – the Crusader artillery system – has earned Carlyle more than $2 billion in advance government contracts. Carlyle’s European chairman is former British prime minister John Major, who may have played a role in the Ministry of Defense’s controversial recent decision to declare Carlyle the “preferred bidder” for a stake in its scientific research division.

None of these links is illegal, but that does not mean there is no conflict of interest. Bush, Cheney and friends have either sold their stock holdings or put them in a blind trust, meaning personal gain is off the agenda. But gain for their friends and family may well be a by-product of the looming war against Iraq. Source: Independent (UK)

Secret unit allegedly regroups to shield rights violators in Chile

By Gustavo González

Santiago, Chile, Sept. 10 (IPS)— Human rights organizations and the Chilean government filed lawsuits Tuesday demanding an investigation into the supposed regrouping of a secret unit used by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet to destroy underground leftist parties.

According to human rights activists, the Comando Conjunto has been revived to help block legal action in the courts against security forces agents accused of human rights abuses committed during Pinochet’s 1973-90 de facto regime.

The center-left government of Ricardo Lagos initially reacted with skepticism to denunciations that the Comando Conjunto had regrouped as a network to protect members of the military from action by the courts.

But on Tuesday, Deputy Minister of the Interior Jorge Correa filed legal proceedings, and conceded that there might be a link between the supposed network and the difficulties that activists and lawyers have run across in their search for the remains of the dictatorship’s roughly 1,190 victims of forced disappearance.

The Corporation for the Defense of the Rights of the People (CODEPU) and the Group of Relations of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD) based their legal action on allegations by a purported former member of the Comando Conjunto.

Interviewed for a report that appeared in Sunday’s edition of the daily La Nación, the anonymous source only identified himself as “Colmillo Blanco’’ (White Fang).

The controversy unleashed by the newspaper report came on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 1973 coup d’etat that overthrew the democratically elected government of socialist President Salvador Allende.

An amnesty law decreed by Pinochet in 1978 protects the perpetrators of abuses committed prior to that time, which includes the lion’s share of the 2,000 politically motivated murders and 1,190 forced disappearances committed by the security forces under the Pinochet regime.

The Comando Conjunto was an illegal unit made up of military and civilian agents that operated in the early years of the dictatorship, with the aim of destroying the structures of leftist parties forced to go underground by the coup.

The Comando Conjunto, a contemporary of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), the regime’s notorious intelligence service, mainly consisted of air force officers and non- commissioned officers; and one of its main tasks was to pursue, kill or “disappear’’ Communist Party leaders.

The report in La Nación quoted “Colmillo Blanco,” who said former members of the illegal unit began to regroup last January, on orders from above issued early this year, with the aim of obstructing legal proceedings against alleged perpetrators of human rights abuses.

According to the newspaper report, files have been leaked and records have disappeared in human rights cases in the courts, to the benefit of former members of the unit.

Although the crimes purportedly committed by the Comando Conjunto are covered by the amnesty law, its ex-members can be summoned to testify by special judges who are investigating the whereabouts of the remains of victims of forced disappearance.

“It is certainly true that there have been leaks in the courts that must be investigated. We are clearly in the presence of a grave alteration of the work of the courts,’’ said CODEPU lawyer Irma Villagra, referring to the alleged existence of a secret network.

Upon filing her group’s lawsuit in a Santiago court, Villagra clarified that her organization did not blindly believe everything that “Colmillo Blanco’’ said. But she added that “we know there is some truth in what he is saying, and that there is a network that is leaking information.’’

She called on the appeals court to designate a special judge to investigate the case -- a demand also set forth in a suit brought by the AFDD.

“An illicit association going by the name of the Comando Conjunto simply cannot be allowed to exist, when we have been working hard [since the restoration of democracy in 1990] to make sure that this kind of organization can no longer operate in Chile, and to ensure that the branches of the state can work in an independent manner,’’ said AFDD vice-president Mireya García.

The air force and army issued statements denying the existence of any plan or attempt to block justice in the human rights cases.

The anonymous informant said the group was protected by the air force, and was equipped with funds to trail, intimidate and threaten witnesses and activists, wiretap telephone communications, steal files from the courts, and make bribes.

The air force “categorically’’ rejected allegations that it was colluding with former agents of the dictatorship, and protested that “this kind of denunciation has been made through the press, rather than the courts.’’

Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza said Tuesday that “there is no evidence that enables us to report the obstruction of justice....which must be determined by the judges’’ handling the cases, he added.

But shortly after he made those remarks, Deputy Minister of the Interior Correa presented a brief before Judge Mario Carroza, who is handling cases of forced disappearance blamed on the Comando Conjunto.

Correa said the government had decided to take part in the legal action, noting that if a network dedicated to obstructing justice was found to exist, that would help explain the “enormous difficulties’’ in locating the remains of the “disappeared.’’

The deputy minister asked the judge to summon “Colmillo Blanco,” as well as the La Nación journalists who wrote the report, to give testimony.

Citizens police the police in Vancouver

By Alejandro Bustos

Sept. 13— Trevor Wires* is sprawled on the ground, begging four Vancouver police officers to stop kicking him.

“You got us, please stop!” he yells to the officers who are in the midst of arresting Wires and a friend for auto theft. But instead of stopping, the officers continue to rain “punches and kicks” on the two.

“I begged them to stop,” says Wires. “I was lying face down; I didn’t dare raise my head. The blows were coming from all directions.” Wires’s story is just one of numerous tales of police abuse that Pivot Legal Society, a non-profit group working in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, has been collecting as part of their Affidavit Campaign.

The campaign is based on a simple idea: Collect the stories of people whose rights have been violated and transcribe them into a legal format. Once the transcription is finished, the person swears before Pivot’s lawyer, John Richardson, that the events described are true. The stories become affidavits that can be used as evidence in a court of law.

As a University of British Columbia law student who volunteers for Pivot, I’ve seen that the affidavit campaign can serve several important functions at once. By documenting stories of police misconduct, the rest of the city can be informed about the horrible abuses happening in our own backyard.

(For those who have never been to Vancouver, the city’s Downtown Eastside is among Canada’s poorest neighborhoods and is awash in drugs. And the people who live there are among the most marginalized in the city.)

A second function of the campaign, then, is to allow the least heard — those with the least power — tell their side of the story. As a result, the affidavits take on a therapeutic and empowering role.

Finally, by gathering this large body of evidence, it becomes possible to put forward — and back up — the argument that Vancouver’s police department needs to overhaul many of its policing practices.

To be fair, none of Pivot’s affidavits have been used in court to date and, consequently, do not amount to “proof” of any crime. That is for a court to decide. A team of lawyers, however, is currently considering how to use the affidavits in future legal action. Once a legal action is launched, the names of those who have sworn affidavits will be publicly released.

In the meantime, the affidavits I have read contain stories of illegal search-and-seizures, unconstitutional arrests and abuse of power by the police.

Consider Delphi Nguyen, a bystander who was observing police make an arrest. While watching, he swears in his affidavit, an officer told him to, “Get off the street or I’ll throw you in fucking jail.”

After telling the officer to “go fuck himself” and that in Canada citizens have a right to move around as they please, the officer walked across the street and arrested him. When Nguyen asked why he was being detained the officer replied, “for being drunk in a public place, or a nuisance. I’ll think of something.”

Nguyen has epilepsy. While in jail he suffered an attack and passed out. When he awoke, he found himself on the floor, bloodied and shackled outside the cell door. Eventually he was released. He was never given a reason for his arrest.

Then there is the story of the couple shooting heroin in an alley. Two cops walked up, pepper-sprayed them in their eyes and said, “No fixing in the alleys.” No charges were ever laid.

Cam Walker was also not charged when police busted him with $15 worth of heroin. What he did lose, however, was the $740 for his rent. The money was deposited in the police property office even though the arresting officer never bothered to contact Crown Counsel to approve charges.

For people like Walker, whether or not an official charge is laid is the least of their worries. After losing the $740, he told me, he lost his apartment. He was forced to live out of his car as he scrambled for housing.

Many of the people who Pivot has talked to have committed petty crimes, but the current police solution just doesn’t add up to a more just society.

Pivot is working on changing the equation. They also run a Legal Outreach Program that includes the Rights Card Initiative and Copwatch.

The rights card is a business-size card that spells out a person’s constitutional rights when detained by police. Part of the card, which easily fits in a pocket or wallet, can be ripped off and given to the arresting officer. This way, even people who are unable to read the card themselves can assert their constitutional rights.

To date, several thousand cards have been given out to residents in the Downtown Eastside. Feedback has been great. One woman, when detained by police, recited the card by memory. Information contained in the card informs people that they do not have to speak to police when detained and that they have a constitutional right to speak to a lawyer.

Copwatch is a recently launched initiative that is organizing citizens to observe and document police behavior. The idea is not to interfere with police work but rather to make sure that a person who is being arrested does not have to suffer the same fate as the people who have been swearing affidavits for Pivot.

*All names of those in the affidavit program are pseudonyms. Names will be released once Pivot has released its study on the affidavit program.

US Navy bombs Vieques as resistance, arrests continue

By Clare Hanrahan

Asheville, North Carolina, Sept. 17(AGR) -- The tiny Caribbean island of Vieques has been bombarded for sixty years with every weapon in the US arsenal of death –from Agent Orange and Napalm to depleted uranium. On Sept. 3, Navy destroyers returned to begin three weeks of bombing and war games at the Atlantic Fleet Weapons Training Facility, despite promises from President Bush that the Navy would leave Vieques by May, 2003.

By the first ten days of maneuvers, twenty-eight persons had been arrested. Resisters entered into military-controlled lands to act as human shields to halt the assault on the Viequense people and the delicate ecosystem of their homeland. A study commissioned by the US Navy and reported in July 2001 in the Fayetteville Observer said Fort Bragg and other military facilities in North Carolina, including Camp Lejeune, Cherry Point, and ranges in Dare County could be part of a “promising alternative” to Navy training on Vieques.

La Isla Nena, or “the little sister,” as Vieques is affectionately known, is a sparsely developed island of about 33,000 acres situated eight miles off the southeastern coast of the big island of Puerto Rico. It is twenty-one miles long and four miles wide. There are more horses than residents on Vieques, people say, adding to the wild beauty of this Caribbean island. Vieques is home to 9,311 people, rare birds, turtles, bioluminescent bays, coral reefs, and miles of undeveloped beaches—all endangered natural treasures. Flamboyant trees grace the eye with vivid yellow, orange, and purple blooms, while fruit trees yield a contaminated abundance. The island’s water is unsafe to drink. With an island of such rare magnificence, it is criminal madness that the US Navy occupies, controls, and bombards Vieques with arrogance and impunity and continues to poison and terrorize the residents.

Opponents to the bombing arrive daily at the Peace and Justice Camp, across a two-lane road from the US Navy’s Camp Garcia, to stand in solidarity with the people of Vieques in the nonviolent people’s movement known as the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques.

I traveled to Vieques with Darcel Eddins and Sharon Martin, both envrionmental and social justice activists, and Elizabeth Eames Roebling, a member of the Asheville Friends Meeting. Roebling was arrested for civil disobedience at the bombing range in 2001. Her deep concern for the people of Vieques and their struggle has been the focus of her work for several years.

In the 1940s the Navy seized 26,000 acres of Vieques from its 12,000 inhabitants in the name of national defense. Residents were offered no option. They received as little as 24 hours notice to vacate and only $50 in compensation for their homes. Whole villages were abandoned and destroyed.

Until 1999 the residents were subjected to as many as 270 days a year of bombardment—the constant noise and earth-shaking assaults cause continual anxiety, particularly among the children. That was the same year that two live bombs missed their target killing civilian security guard David Sanes. This catalyzed a resurgence of resistance and a renewed call for an end to the military occupation and bombing. As many as fourteen protest camps were set up inside the Navy base. For over a year, these peaceful warriors held their ground and halted the bombing until hundreds of US federal marshals, FBI agents and military police moved in to remove them.

The US Navy retains ownership of one-third of the 52 square mile island and has conducted live fire training there since 1941. As a result of massive and sustained civil disobedience, US Navy lands on the west have been turned over in various pieces to the Department of Interior, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the Island of Vieques. Seventeen contaminated areas in these reclaimed lands remain fenced off as superfund sites. Hundreds of concrete bunkers built to store and conceal an obscene quantity of ammunition and weapons now sit empty, like massive burial vaults.

Over the years plant life on the island has absorbed heavy metals, such as lead, cobalt, nickel and manganese, which are concentrating and moving up the island’s food chain, according to biologists Arturo Massol and Elba Diaz, who analyzed plants in the Vieques impact area in February and March last year. Vieques has at least a 27% higher rate of cancer in adults and a rate 50% higher in children than the rest of Puerto Rico, and 45% of the Viequenses examined by the College of Physicians and Surgeons showed toxic levels of mercury. A large percentage of residents are also contaminated with lead, cadmium, and aluminum, and cancer has invaded nearly every island family.

“The activities of the Navy in Vieques have had a damaging and unrelenting effect on the environment, ecology, unique archaeological sites, natural resources, and surrounding waters,” a Governor’s Special Commission on Vieques concluded in 1999. Each time bombing occurs, even with the “inert” bombs now being used, dust from that bombing, and previous bombs is stirred up, raising toxins with it, including depleted uranium. Trade winds blowing from the east to the west carry the contaminants over the populated area. The Navy admitted recently to an “accidental” bombing with depleted uranium shells, a radioactive contaminant with a half life of 4,500 million years.

A disciplined and creative grassroots movement of nonviolent civil disobedience has brought the plight of this little island to the attention of the world. Over 1500 peaceful demonstrators have been arrested. Hundreds have been imprisoned for misdemeanor trespass and have served sentences up to one year, including “Mayors, legislators, lawyers, doctors, religious leaders, artists, workers, and students,” according to the Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques.

In July, 2001, close to 70 percent of the Vieques electorate voted in a government referendum for the “immediate and permanent termination of military practices in Vieques.” This mandate led to the promise by President Bush that the bombing will cease and the Navy will leave by May, 2003. The people of Vieques are skeptical. They have been lied to again and again.

Puerto Rico’s governor Sila Calderon is a vocal opponent of the bombardments, and Vieques’ Mayor Damaso Serrano Lopez, a Viet Nam veteran, spent four months in prison for occupying the bombing range. At a recent International Peace Conference the Mayor declared, “I tell you now that if by the first of May, 2003, the Navy hasn’t packed its bags, its machine guns, and the rest of its trash, as promised by President Bush, I’m prepared to go back to jail again, to clamor from inside prison walls, for the right of my people of Vieques—to live in peace.”

Along the two-lane paved road, known locally as Calle Militar, the Puerto Rican police began gathering on Labor Day to reinforce the guard on the perimeter fence at Camp Garcia. Resisters regularly cut through the fence to gain access to the target areas. The police guard, clustered under the mango and quenepa trees and in makeshift shelters all along the fence line, lean on wooden saw-horse barricades chatting and laughing. As many as one hundred and twenty young men and women in the Puerto Rico Police force, dressed in long-sleeved black shirts and pants, keep a round-the-clock watch on activities in the resistance camps, where training in civil disobedience is offered and direct action strategies are discussed. “In this camp we have no secrets. Everybody knows what we do,” one activist said.

“We call them ‘black cats,’ another says as we pass the line of police along the road to Camp Dona Luisa Guadalupe, the headquarters for various forays into the bombing range where resisters risk arrest and the hazards of unexploded ordinance. “We play hide and seek inside the camp,” our guide explained. The resistance camp has suffered repeated tear gas attacks and rubber bullets have been fired at the protesters who assemble there. Numerous spent gas canisters were lying about the campgrounds. “We just leave them where they fall,” he said.

Just over the fence US military personnel sit at tables inside a large canvas tent monitoring activities with electronic devices, nearby a camera is mounted on a telephone pole. Camp Dona Luisa Guadalupe is under continual surveillance. Resisters attempt to deter military and police intruders with home-grown defenses. The pods of a plant, called pica pica, are hung strategically in the branches of trees around the camp. When brushed against it releases seeds that cause intense itching. Other plants with sharp edges are used in the underbrush to discourage unwelcome intrusions.

Back at the Peace and Justice Camp, school teacher and activist Nilda Medina, takes a rare break at the large table beneath the tin-roofed, open-sided shelter in the compound. Nilda has a focused and determined presence as she directs the activities in the camp. Throughout our five-day visit she worked steadily in the office and on the phones preparing for the press conference and for the arrival of the many delegations of supporters. She welcomed us warmly; as she has welcomed delegation after delegation, including the Dalai Lama, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Oscar Arias Sanchez, and other notable and ordinary citizens from throughout the world. Nilda’s husband and colleague, Robert Rabin, has been held in solitary confinement in Guaynabo Prison in Puerto Rico on a six month sentence for trespass onto the bombing range last April. “He is in the hole,” she told us. “They won’t allow telephone calls or visits.”

As we sat together around the common table in the outside shelter, island residents arrived one after the other to share their stories and concerns. The balmy breeze carried the roosters’ crows from every direction, and bronze-skinned young men galloped past on fleet-footed Taino horses, the rhythmic clomping of hooves marking their swift passage. As we talked, other horses meandered throughout camp with the abandon and freedom of neighborhood cats, their grace and stature adding a primal feeling to the scene.

Ninety-two year old Nazario Cruz Viera, wearing a wide-brimmed black hat and a full and flowing white beard, drove into the camp bringing a cardboard box filled with island fruits. Despite the likely contamination we shared the sweet gift with gratitude. Nazario talked about Vieques in the years before the military occupation, before vast stretches of land were fenced off and out of bounds to island residents, before the island and her people were poisoned. Tourists from the big island stopped to photograph the roadside murals, and to have a look at the scores of white crosses commemorating the many who have died as a result of the Navy presence.

Maria Guadalupe’s cross is just one of more than fifty planted outside the gates of Camp Garcia. Her great nephew, Tato Guadalupe told her story: “I was born and raised on Vieques,” he said. “My family was thrown out from their lands, as a lot of families were thrown out. But my mother taught us the truth about how we lived before the Navy came. Maria Guadalupe was my father’s maiden aunt,” he continued. “In 1940 she lived alone on about five acres in the Western lands. When the Navy came to give her the papers, they told her she had just 48 hours to leave. She told my father, ‘You can go if you want, but I am staying here. It is my land.’”

Maria Guadalupe refused to move. The next morning she was found dead. “She practiced the highest form of civil disobedience,” Tato said, a sadness and pride in his voice. “Thirteen members of my family have been arrested and accused by the Navy,” he added. Such is the cost of this people’s struggle in Vieques.

Nilda approached the tourists who had stopped to sightsee along the road to the reopened Western beaches. “If they stop, they are going to have to hear the truth,” she says, “I tell them about the contamination and the bombing,” she added. “Sometimes they listen. Sometimes they shake their head and walk away.”

Paul O’Leary, a tall, thin man wearing paint-splotched jeans, walked in from his home in the reclaimed area known as Monte Carmello. O’Leary is the artist of many of the murals that hang on the perimeter fence enclosing Camp Garcia. He spent 17 days in prison for trespass onto the Navy bombing range during the last exercises.

“I feel like it is my duty as an American to be here defending democracy and the dignity of the people,” he said. “I’m an American. I see this as an American problem. American democracy is in danger here.”

“Focus on the struggle of the people,” Ismael Gaudalupe advised as I sat with pad in hand to listen to the stories of these brave and gentle warriors. Ismael is a retired drama teacher in the local schools, and a former union organizer with the Federation of Teachers. He showed great patience with my very limited understanding of the Spanish language. “Speaking in English comes with the struggle,” he said as he made the effort to answer the many questions we “United Staters” asked. Ismael is one of the many heroes’ of the movement to free Vieques. He has been a vital part of the struggle for decades. “When I was a university student in 1964 I organized a march from the plaza,” he recalled. The Navy wanted to take more land but the whole southern coast of Vieques, including the vicinities of Esperanza and Puerto Real were saved when the people organized a militant campaign to halt the process.

Ismael has been imprisoned in Atlanta, Georgia, and Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, as well as the prison at Guaynamo for his civil disobedience on behalf of Vieques. He realizes that force will not work to defend Vieques against such a formidable opponent as the US Navy. Civil disobedience in the tradition of Gandhi, King, and Chavez is the method of this people’s movement.

Benito Reinosa, over seventy years old, brings an almost maternal spirit of nurturing love to his volunteer work at the Peace and Justice Camp. He comes by ferry from his home on the big island to attend to the many needs of visiting delegations — cooking, cleaning, and even carefully removing a splinter from a visitor’s foot.

“I do what I can to help,” he says. “I love America. The United States is a great country. They believe in peace. But what kind of peace do they show here? The whole world is hungry for peace. If they are going to leave, why do they keep destroying and contaminating? For sixty years people have been dying. They keep bombing. They keep killing people. If the Navy does not leave in May, this man will go in there,” he promised. “Everyone will go in, whole families and our animals.”

“I am already contaminated,” Andres Nieves said, putting down his video camera to talk. He pulled back the collar of his shirt to reveal a long scar. “I have a thyroid tumor,” he said. Nieves is a retired filmmaker from New York. He has been documenting the struggle in Vieques since his return to his homeland to bury an old friend. “I am here because of the struggle, because my friend died. I want to stop the bombing.” He calls his video project Cry of Vieques. “It is done with the heart,” he said. “My budget is zero.” Nieves is looking for assistance obtaining the equipment he needs to edit and duplicate his video productions for a wider distribution so he can tell the story of Vieques to the world.

Nestor Torres, a nineteen-year-old student of Political Science at the University of Puerto Rico, joined our Asheville delegation for a swim in the magical waters of the bioluminescent bay the night before the scheduled bombings. He is a quiet, polite young man with a strong conviction. “You can speak in English,” he said, as I attempted to communicate in my limited Spanish during an interview at the camp.

“I saw the movie Gandhi and read about what Martin Luther King did in the US for black people,” he told me. “I wanted Puerto Rico to be free. That feeling in me got bigger and stronger. I came to Vieques the summer of 1999. I felt I wanted to help, but I was too young. It wasn’t my moment to be involved in civil disobedience then, but I went to all the conferences. When the September bombings were announced this year, I knew it was my time.”

I asked him how he felt about the risk of going into the bombing range and the likelihood of being gassed and imprisoned. “It is a hard decision for me. I left my studies to come here. A lot of lawyers involved in this struggle warned me about the sentences. Six months is a long time,” he paused. “I am prepared to take the risk. My family and friends support me. My teachers support me.”

Jaime Peralta, a single father and artist, worked as a security guard inside Camp Garcia with Ready Responsibility Security, Inc. “I worked as a substitute,” he said. “I worked all over the base, anywhere they sent me.” Jaime knew David Sanes, the security guard that was killed by the off-target bomb. “The Navy keeps quiet about how many have died,” he said. “Everything is secret.” He refused to sign a form indicating he had read a document he never received about the danger in working around the ROTHR radar installation on the island. When he expressed his concerns regarding the contamination he was dismissed from his $9.90 an hour position.

“The bombing is just one part of the struggle,” Manuel Silva said as he took a place at the table at the Peace and Justice Camp. “After the Navy leaves it will be one big planet of cancer.” Silva is a Vieques poet, historian, and musician. He played his steel drums for us on the top of Monte Carmello as he told the stories of the people’s struggle to reclaim that land. “When I was a boy,” he recalled, “there was no property selfishness, no fences—my father gave away half of his land.” Silva is especially concerned about development after the Navy leaves. “The only plan I know is a bunch of greedy butchers trying to make as much money as they can.”

In the early 1970s Silva became involved in the struggle to free the small neighboring island of Culebra. He went there to play his steel drums in a band and to work as a writer for the island press. Culebra was also used as a Navy bombing range until the people rose to evict the military. “That was a war. They fought wildly because they had been so abused,” Silva recalled. “People were throwing bottles and rocks and screaming, ‘Navy Out, Navy out!’ I was shocked. So I asked people about the struggle. Ismael Guadalupe gave me books. He changed my life. He is part of my process of becoming conscious of Vieques and our entire society.”

Andres Nieve began to film as Manuel Silva continued his story of how he and as few as 14 others walked up a high hillside inside the US Navy boundaries and reclaimed a piece of land, known now as Monte Carmello. “It was the only time in Puerto Rican history that people have taken back the land. It was only 600 acres, but it is like a planet.

“I was afraid many times. We had old women, pregnant women and children…but within two weeks more than one hundred had come.”

Mount Carmello looks out over the gentle hills of Vieques and the blue Caribbean waters that surround the island. It is a high vantage point for the long view of the poets, and dreamers, warriors and musicians of this people’s struggle who hope to someday see a free Vieques.

“When the Navy leaves and they clean the land,” Silva says, “I want to come to the party and laugh and dance and sing and maybe go onto the ground like a snake with the joy.”

For information: Committee for the Rescue and Development of Vieques, Apartado 1424, Vieques, Puerto Rico 00765; bieke@prorescatevieques.org

Websites: www.prorescatevieques.org/ and www.viequeslibre.org

To contact Andres Nieves regarding help with the “Cry of Vieques” project and to assist with needed equipment (Mac SG4 double processor and Final cut III): P.O. Box 849, Vieques, P.R. 00765-0849; viequense@webtv.net

You may contact the author at chanrahan@ncpress.net

Mexican farmers declare town autonomous

Radical farmers declared the town of San Salvador Atenco, outside of Mexico city, to be autonomous on Sept. 11. If the declaration holds, it will be one of the first “autonomous municipalities” outside of the southern state of Chiapas, where Zapatista rebels run some towns.

A 14-member People’s Council said that the declaration meant that police and government officials would no longer be allowed to enter the town. The decision was approved by voice-vote in neighborhood assemblies.

Federal and state authorities have been kept out of San Salvador Atenco since machete-weilding farmers erected barricades to protest the low price the government offered for their land to build a new international airport. Ousted mayor Margarito Yanez has accused the government of illegality regarding the land sale. In July, farmers clashed with police, seized 15 hostages and launched a five-day standoff that forced the government to cancel plans for the airport. Since then, radicals have seized almost any government vehicle that comes near town and have kept order with “security patrols” armed with machetes and steel pipes. (AP)

Chretien criticizes ‘arrogant’ West

The Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, has warned the US and other wealthy nations against “humiliating” poorer countries and said perceived Western arrogance had played a part in the Sept. 11 attacks. He said Sept. 13 that the west was “getting too rich in relation to the poor world.”

Although a staunch ally in the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington, Chretien is reported to have bluntly told President Bush last week that Canada would not support an attack on Iraq without a full UN mandate. In the past year, Canada and the US have agreed to harmonize many aspects of border and airport security, refugee and immigration laws, and to share intelligence information. However, Chretien said recently in a documentary filmed by Canadian broadcaster CBC that the west was looked upon as greedy, arrogant, self-satisfied and without limits.

Chretien is the longest serving leader in the G8 group of countries and is due to retire in 2004. For this reason, there is speculation that he is thus ready to speak his mind more frankly. Canada broadly welcomed Bush’s keynote speech to the UN General Assembly Sept. 12 in which he said the US would work with the Security Council to pressure Iraq to accept UN resolutions.

Canada is opposed to the US taking action alone against Iraq, fearing it could seriously damage the United Nations. (BBC)

Yom Kippur marks anniversary of Palestinian massacre

On Sept. 16, Israel fell silent for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. For Palestinians, Sept. 16 marked a different day – the 20th anniversary of the massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra and Shatila in southern Lebanon. At least 800 Palestinians were murdered by Christian Lebanese forces allied to and nominally under the control of the Israeli army.

Palestinians hold Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ultimately responsible for the massacre. Sharon was the defense minister at the time, and responsible for masterminding the invasion into Lebanon in an effort to stop cross-border attacks on Israel by Palestinian militants.

The Israeli forces were backed by Phalange, a group of Lebanese Christian militia fighters, and the countdown to the massacre began on Sept 14, 1982, when the then president of Lebanon, Bashir Jemayel, visited the Phalangist headquarters in Beirut. A Syrian intelligence agent had planted a bomb in the building and blew it up by remote control. Jemayel was killed in the blast.

Two days later, Sharon gave the green light for Phalangists to enter the refugee camps in West Beirut, officially to look for Palestinian terrorists who had gone into hiding. The Lebanese fighters were allowed to operate freely and to “avenge” the death of their leader. They massacred at least 800 Palestinians, including children, women, and elderly people, while the Israeli army stood by. Palestinians claim the true number of victims is much higher. Many of the victims were mutilated; some were scalped, young men were castrated and some bodies were carved with the sign of the cross.

When the enormity of the crime was known, Israel was held responsible for the atrocity, although promises by the government to punish those responsible never came to fruition. Four hundred thousand people demonstrated in Tel Aviv and called for the resignation of the then prime minister Menachem Begin, and Ariel Sharon. Sharon did eventually step down as defense minister; however, he has yet to suffer any serious setbacks related to the massacre in the subsequent 20 years of his career. (The Scotsman)

S. Africa anti-gay adoption law ruled unconstitutional

South Africa’s highest court ruled Sept. 10 that laws preventing gay and lesbian couples from adopting are unconstitutional. In a landmark decision, the Constitutional Court found that people in permanent same-sex partnerships could provide children with the same stability, support and affection as in heterosexual homes.

The justices were ruling in a case involving two lesbians who have been life partners since 1989. The women, who are themselves judges, went to the high court when one of them was prevented from adopting the other’s two children.

South Africa’s constitution outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. (365Gay.com)