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April 29,
Gavin
Keeney
So
Long, Frank O. Gehry?
April 28, 2002
Michael Neumann
The Jewish Left and Palestine
April 27, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
Adelphia
Going Down:
Cover Ups, Censorship
and Naughty Accounting
Jordy Cummings
Stuck Inside the Journalism School
Pyramid
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Set
This Flag on Fire!
April 26, 2002
Tom Turnipseed
Act
Now to Stop the Killing
of an Innocent Man
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Anti-Bribery
Law Takes a Hit
Tariq Ali
Letter to a Young Muslim
April 25, 2002
Francis
A. Boyle
Home
Brew? Biowarfare,
Terror Weapons and the US
Adam Federman
"And the Earth Wept"
Bush at Saranac Lake
Stanton
and Madsen
US
Media Interests:
Champions of Profit, Propaganda and Puffery
Aaron Hawley
Cop a Buzz Day in Vermont:
Education v. Incarceration
David
Vest
Code
Red: Politics and Wordplay at the Vatican
Bernard Weiner
Time Out! A Pause for Longer-Range
Thinking
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Standing
with the Peace Movement
April 24, 2002
David Vest
State of Politics in France:
Code Bleu
Jean Fallow
A20
in Seattle:
Cops Get Rough, Again
Kevin Alexander Gray
Help Save the Life of an Innocent Man:
Ask for Clemency for Ricky Johnson
Tanya
Reinhart
Jenin,
the Propaganda Battle
Todd May
Drowning Children, Palestinians and American
Responsibility
Alexander
Cockburn
The
Loneliest Road
Nir Rosen
The Broken Home:
Revisiting Israel
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
A
Big Blow to Big Tobacco
April 23, 2002
Brian Wood
Where Is the Aid for the Victims in
Jenin?
John Chuckman
I,
George:
Gomer as Claudius
Norman Madarasz
French Presidential Elections
Absenteeism and Le Pen
Dr. Susan
Block
Bernard
Parks, Goodbye:
A Farewell to My Chief
Joan Smith
Who Will Rid Us of
These Pedophile Priests?
April 22, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
EPA
Ombudsman Resigns
in Protest
Dave Marsh
DeskScan: What's Playing
at My House This Week
Ron Jacobs
A20
in DC: Taking the
Message to the Beast's Belly
Kathy Kelly
An Open Letter to
Israeli Soldiers
Irit Katriel
Word
Games and Body Bags
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
We Come for Peace
Daniel
Bar-Tal
Is
There a Way Out?
Occupation, Terror
and Understanding
David Wilson
A Week of Coups, But Now
The Freedom Train Hits Town
Shaik
Ubaid
Today
I Was a Palestinian
April 21, 2002
Michelle Campos
Suckered Again in Israel
Mike Leon
200,000
in DC Protest Say:
"We Are All Palestinians Today"
C.G. Estabrook
Sex and Power in Catholicism
Kathy
Kelly
Gimme
Some Truth Now
A Walk Through Jenin
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
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Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
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by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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April 29, 2002
Henry Kissinger: the Wanted Man
by Christopher Reilly
Henry Kissinger's dark past seems to be enclosing
around him as various countries in South America and Europe have
sought to question him about actions taken by the Nixon and Ford
administrations in which Kissinger was National Security Adviser
and Secretary of State respectively.
The latest move to question Kissinger
was by Peter Tatchell, a British human rights activist. While
Kissinger was speaking in Britain at the UK's Institute of Directors
annual conference on April 24, Tatchell attempted to have him
arrested for committing war crimes under the Geneva Conventions
Act.
Judge Nicholas Evans at the Bow Street
magistrates' court rejected Tatchell's request because Tatchell
did not present enough evidence implicating Kissinger to war
crimes. However, according to Tatchell, the judge left the door
open for future attempts to arrest the former U.S. official if
suitable evidence is presented.
According to Tatchell's recent contribution
to London's The Guardian, if he is able to "produce stronger
evidence of Kissinger's culpability in the killing, maiming,
torture and forced relocation of civilian populations in Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia in the late 60s and early 70s," then there
is a possibility an arrest warrant for Kissinger may be issued
in the future.
Tatchell believes that Kissinger is responsible
for tens of thousands of deaths in Indochina. Tatchell mentions
how the Nixon Administration dropped "nearly 4.5 million
tons of high explosives on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia";
an amount double that dropped during the entire Second World
War.
Tatchell explains that much of the evidence
against Kissinger and his role in Indochina is highlighted in
the book, The
Trial of Henry Kissinger, by Christopher Hitchens. According
to Hitchens, Kissinger approved bombing runs that resulted in
widespread civilian casualties.
Kissinger was also responsible for the
"premeditated, wholesale destruction of the environment
using chemical defoliants such as Agent Orange," as Tatchell
wrote in The Guardian. "These are war crimes under the 1957
Geneva Conventions Act."
Tatchell also mentions the comments made
by United States General Telford Taylor, the former chief prosecuting
officer at the Nuremberg trials, who stated that the Kissinger-Nixon
air strikes against hamlets allegedly hiding Vietnamese guerrillas
were "flagrant violations of the Geneva convention on civilian
protection."
Tatchell also points to freelance investigator
Fred Branfman, who "secretly taped U.S. pilots on bombing
missions over Cambodia in the early 70s. At no point did any
pilots check before or during the raids that they were not bombing
civilians. His expose that no precautions were taken to protect
civilians was later written up in the New York Times by Sydney
Schanberg; offering compelling evidence of the indiscriminate
nature of U.S. aerial attacks."
Kissinger, who was aware of all these
actions, has defended them by saying, "No one can say that
he served in an administration that did not make mistakes."
Kissinger seems to have forgotten that
most administrations are not responsible for tens of thousands
of dead innocents. According to Tatchell, 350,000 civilians in
Laos and 600,000 in Cambodia were killed during the U.S. bombardments.
This does not even count the number of civilians maimed or wounded
due to the bombings and the threat of unexploded cluster bombs
(yes, this administration used them in conflict too).
Kissinger also failed to mention the
Nixon Administration's use of chemical defoliants and pesticides,
including Agent Orange, that have, according to Tatchell, "caused
birth defects and rendered significant areas of Vietnam, Laos
and Cambodia too toxic for people to live in or farm - creating
an environmental disaster that will continue to affect many generations
to come."
However, Indochina is not the only area
that Kissinger may have been involved in the killings of thousands
of innocents.
Earlier in the month of April, Judge
Baltasar Garzon, of Spain, wanted to question Kissinger's involvement
in supporting Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet; a man
responsible for human rights abuses resulting in many deaths.
Garzon's request was rejected.
And in 2001, Juan Guzman, a Chilean judge,
submitted 30 questions to Kissinger about his relationship with
General Pinochet, to which Judge Guzman received no response.
Pinochet came into power after the CIA,
with the knowledge of Kissinger, conspired to overthrow democratically
elected leader Salvador Allende. A few months before Allende
became president, Kissinger made the famous statement on democracy,
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country
go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people."
His remarks were later reported in Newsweek and many other publications.
The attempt to keep Allende from power,
due to his socialist beliefs, resulted in the assassination of
Rene Schneider, Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army. According
to the U.S. Senate, the CIA "decided to support and engineer
the assassination of General Schneider in order to clear the
way for a coup."
The news report continues: "The
CIA passed 'sterilized' machine guns, those without markings,
along with ammunition to conspirators on October 22 [1970]. Later
that day, General Schneider, Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean
Army, was assassinated with the same weapons the CIA supplied,
according to the CIA's own admission to the United States Senate,
published in April of 1975."
General Schneider's family members are
now pressing to question Kissinger about his involvement in this
assassination. They filed a $3 million civil suit in Washington
last year against Kissinger; Richard Helms, former director of
the CIA, and other Nixon officials also were implicated in the
suit.
Another well-publicized killing that
Kissinger may have oversaw was the death of Charles Horman, an
American journalist living in Santiago during the coup against
Allende.
As stated in the preceding news report:
"According to Thomas Hauser's 'The
Execution of Charles Horman,' Horman was with several
Americans on the day of the coup. Some of the Americans were
in the U.S. military and apparently they spilled too much information
in a conversation about the coup. According to Hauser, a retired
naval engineer told Horman: 'We came down to do a job and it's
done.' "
The report continues: "A few days
later the new military junta arrested Horman in his Santiago
home. He was never to be seen again."
Horman's family members have tried repeatedly
to bring Kissinger and other Nixon officials to court in order
to find out what happened to the missing journalist.
Human rights lawyers in Chile have also
filed complaints against Kissinger for his involvement in the
covert program of political repression known as Operation Condor.
This operation, according to the International
Herald Tribune, included actions whereby "rightist military
dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay
and Uruguay coordinated efforts throughout the 1970s to kidnap
and kill hundreds of exiled political opponents"; apparently
with the support of the Nixon and Ford administrations.
Supporters of Kissinger have tried to
excuse his actions by explaining that they must be looked at
in the light of the Cold War. This is an important point; however,
even placing Kissinger's actions in the context of the Cold War
cannot excuse the death and destruction that he may have been
directly involved in.
Christopher Reilly writes for YellowTimes.
He encourages your comments: creilly@YellowTimes.org
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