The same actors appear time after timePresident George W Bush has nominated
John Negroponte as
the first US director of national intelligence. Mr Negroponte has been ambassador to Honduras, the UN and recently to Iraq.
he is a controversial figure because of his involvement in covert funding of the Contras in Nicaragua and his alleged covering up of human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Honduras in the 1980s.US determination to destroy opposition to its domination in Latin America stemmed from its defeat in Vietnam. The 1972 team in Paris helping Kissinger negotiate with the Vietnamese included John Negroponte
From 1981 to 1985 Negroponte was US ambassador to Honduras. During his tenure,
he oversaw the growth of military aid to Honduras from $4 million to $77.4 million a year. Critics say that during his ambassadorship, human rights violations in Honduras became systematic.Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the US, and which some critics say was used as
a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. Allegedly, in August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site.
Later, the Honduras Commission on Human Rights accused Negroponte himself of human rights violations.
Speaking of Negroponte and other senior US officials, an ex-Honduran congressman, Efrain Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun, which in 1995 published an extensive investigation of US activities in Honduras:
Their attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.
Argentinian officers trained members of the Honduran army in techniques of mass repression while
John Negroponte was ambassador in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa from 1981 to 1985. There he worked closely with Honduran armed forces chief Gustavo Alvarez Martinez to impose a "national security" state on the Argentine model – that is, a police state based on extra-judicial murder.
As US ambassador in Honduras, John Negroponte displayed cynical contempt for US Congress and legitimacy, shamelessly violating the 1983 Boland Amendment restricting aid to the Contra.
On Negroponte's recommendation, the Reagan government gave Alvarez Martinez the Legion of Merit in 1983 for "encouraging democracy." Alvarez Martinez was reponsible for disappearing over 140 trades unionists, students and other leaders of the Honduran popular movement between 1981 and 1984. In 1989, in a test case, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights convicted Honduras of forcibly disappearing four people between 1981 and 1983. During that period, under Negroponte's proconsulship, Argentinian and Israeli terrorists helped the Honduran military refine their techniques of repression.
see
a wave of torture and murder Originally published June 11, 1995
meanwhile...
US torture evidence in Afghanistan and IraqNew evidence has emerged that US forces in Afghanistan engaged in widespread Abu Ghraib-style abuse, taking "trophy photographs" of detainees and carrying out rape and sexual humiliation.
The documents also indicate that US soldiers covered up abuse in Afghanistan and in Iraq - even after the Abu Ghraib scandal last year.
"It is further proof that the army is not seriously investigating credible allegations of abuse," said Jameel Jaffar, a lawyer for the ACLU.
plus...
There Is No Tomorrowonce upon a time, James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back."according to a recent
Gallup poll Forty-five percent of Americans believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.the Rapture Index. Google it and you will understand why the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the Left Behind series which have earned multi-millions of dollars for their co-authors who earlier this year completed a triumphant tour of the Bible Belt whose buckle holds in place George W. Bush's armour of the Lord.
These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the l9th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative millions of people believe to be literally true.
According to this narrative, Jesus will return to earth only when certain conditions are met: when Israel has been established as a state; when Israel then occupies the rest of its "biblical lands;" when the third temple has been rebuilt on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques; and, then, when legions of the Antichrist attack Israel. This will trigger a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon during which all the Jews who have not converted will be burned. Then the Messiah returns to earth. The Rapture occurs once the big battle begins. "True believers" will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation which follow.
Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? on wednesday the Kyoto Protocol came into force, requiring countries to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
the world's top polluter - the US - has not signed up to the treaty. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total and more since the election - are backed by the religious right...
