Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
July
16, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Back to the Future in Guatemala:
The Return of Gen. Ríos Montt
July
15, 2003
Kathleen
and Bill Christison
Why We Resigned from VIPS
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft's War on Legal Whistleblowers:
the Ordeal of Jesselyn Radack
Chris
Floyd
Barge Poles: Oil Wars and New Europe's Mercenaries
Jason
Leopold
CIA Warned White House Last October that Niger Docs were Forgeries
Gaius Publius
Considering the Obvious: Fool Us Once, Fool Us Twise...Please
John
Troyer
The Niger Syndrome
Becky Gillette
No Conspiracy at Coffeen Nature Preserve: a Response to David
Orrr
Uri
Avnery
The Bi-National State: The Wolf Shall
Dwell with the Lamb
Website
of the Day
Cost of Iraq War
July
14, 2003
Lisa
Taraki
Hot Days in Ramallah
Walter
Brasch
Bush: the Pretend Captain
SOA
Watch
Training Colombia's Killers in the US
Dan Bacher
Yurok Tribe Denounces Klamath River Salmon Killers
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Intelligence Unglued
Website
of the Day
Coalition for Democratic Rights and Civil Liberties
July 12 / 13, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future
Standard
Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an
Interview with Michael Hudson
John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang
Ron
Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights
Tom
Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11
David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"
Jason
Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11
Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?
Mickey
Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa
Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group
Ramzy
Baroud
Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller
Adam
Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist
Robert
Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie
July
11, 2003
Conn
Hallinan
The Coin of Empire
Tim
Wise
God Responds to Bush
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
The Two Faces of Bush in Africa
Edward
S. Herman
Whitewashing Sandra Day O'Connor
David Orr
Coffeen-gate: What's Going on at the Sierra Club Foundation?
David
Lindorff
An Iraq War & Occupation Glossary
Website
of the Day
Dead Malls
July
10, 2003
Ron
Jacobs
Dealing with the Devil: the Bloody
Profits of General Dynamics
Sean
Donahue
Bush and the Paramillitaries: Coddling Terrorists in Colombia
Yemi
Toure
Who Outted Bush in Afrika?
Robert
Jensen
Politics and Sustainability: an Interview
with Wes Jackson
Ali
Abunimah
US Leaves Injured Iraqis Untreated
Joanne
Mariner
Federal Courts, Not Military Commissions
Website
of the Day
Electronic Iraq
July
9, 2003
David
Lindorff
Is the Media Finally Turning on
Bush?
David
Krieger and Angela McCracken
10 Myths About Nuclear Weapons
Mickey
Z.
Why Speak Out?
Lee Sustar
The Great Medicare Fraud
John
Chuckman
The Worst Kind of Lie
Gary Leupp
"Pacifist" Japan and the Occupation of Iraq
Website
of the Day
Hail to the Thief:
Songs for the Bush Years
July
8, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Bully on the Bench: the Pathological
Dissents of Scalia
Alan
Maass
Nights of Fire and Rage in Benton Harbor
Chris
Floyd
Troubled Sleep: Getting Used to the American Gulag
Linda
S. Heard
America's Kangaroo Justice
Brian
Cloughley
They Tell Lies to Nodders
Charles
Sullivan
Bush the Christian?
Saul
Landau
The Intelligence Culture in the National Security Age
Website
of the Day
Occupation Watch
July
7, 2003
William
Blum
The Anti-Empire Report
Harvey
Wasserman
The Nuke with a Hole in Its Head
Ramzy
Baroud
Peace for All the Wrong Reasons
Simon
Jones
What Progressives Should Think About
Iran
Lesley
McCulloch
Fear, Pain and Shame in Aceh
Uri
Avnery
The Draw
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July
4 / 6, 2003
Patrick
Cockburn
Dead on the Fourth of July
Frederick
Douglass
What is Freedom to a Slave?
Martha
Honey
Bush and Africa: Racism, Exploitation
and Neglect
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Rat in the Grain: Amstutz and
the Looting of Iraqi Agriculture
Standard
Schaefer
Rule by Fed: Anyone But Greenspan in 2004
Lenni Brenner
Jefferson is for Today
Elaine
Cassel
Fucking Furious on the Fourth
Ben Tripp
How Free Are We?
Wayne
Madsen
A Sad Independence Day
John Stanton
Happy Birthday, America! 227 Years of War
Jim
Lobe
Bush's Surreal AIDS Appointment
John Blair
Return to Marble Hill: Indiana's Rusting Nuke
Lisa
Walsh Thomas
Heavy Reckoning at Qaim
David Vest
Wake Up and Smell the Dynamite
Adam
Engel
Queer as Grass
Poets'
Basement
Christian, Witherup, Albert & St. Clair
Website
of the Weekend
The Lipstick Librarian
July
3, 2003
Patrick
W. Gavin
The Meaning of Gettysburg
Thomas
W. Croft
There Was a Reason They Called It the Casino Economy
David
Lindorff
Outlawing Subversives: Hong Kong
and the US
John
Chuckman
Lessons from the American Revolution
Jackson
Thoreau
New Far-Right Scheme: Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Stan
Goff
"Bring 'Em On?": a Former
Special Forces Soldier Responds to Bush's Invitation for Iraqis
to Attack US Troops
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/3
July 2, 2003
Diane
Christian
Good Killing and Bad Killing
Richard
Falk
After Iraq, Does UN War Prevention Have a Future?
Mokhiber
/ Weissman
Bush Administration: Causing Repetitive Stress
Justin
Podur
Uribe's Onslaught Across Colombia
Reuven
Kaviner
Prosecuting Ben-Artzi, the Refusenik
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/2
July
1, 2003
Sasan
Fayamanesh
Weapon of Choice: Nukes, Israel and
Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Sex and the Supreme Moralizer: Scalia
and the Sodomy Cops
Susan
Block
A Love Supreme: Our Assholes Belong
to Ourselves
Bill
Glahn
RIAA Watch: No, No Bono
David Lindorff
Weapons in Search of a Name
Gary
Leupp
Occupation, Resistance and the Plight of the GIs
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 7/1
June
30, 2003
Karyn
Strickler
The Do-Nothings: an Exposé
of Progressive Politics in America
Col. Dan
Smith
The Occupation of Iraq: Descending into the Quagmire
Tim
Wise
Race and Destruction in Black and White
Neve Gordon
The Roadmap and the Wall
Chris
Floyd
The Revelation of St. George: "God Told Me to Strike Saddam"
Elaine
Cassel
Kentucky Woman
Uri
Avnery
Hope in Dark Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/30
Website
of the Day
Bush El Hombre
June
28 / 29, 2003
M.
Shahid Alam
Bernard Lewis: Scholarship or Sophistry?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Meet Steven Griles: Big Oil's Inside
Man
Laura
Carlsen
Democracy's Future: From the Polls or the Populace?
Alan Maass
You Call These Democrats an Alternative?
C.Y.
Gopinath
Bush and Kindergarten
Noah Leavitt
Bush, the Death Penalty and International Law
Joanne
Mariner
Rehnquist Family Values
Ignacio
Chapela
Tenure, Censorship and Biotech at Berkeley
Bob
Scowcroft
Bush's Squeeze on Organic Farmers
Jon Brown
Tom Delay: "I am the Government"
Kam
Zarrabi
Keep Your Hands Off Iran, Please!
Ron Jacobs
Big Bill Broonzy's Conversation with the Blues
Julie
Hilden
Fear Factor: Art, Terror and the First Amendment
Adrien
Rain Burke
The Anarchists' Wedding Guide
Adam
Engel
US Troops Outta Times Square
Poets'
Basement
Witherup, Guthrie, Albert, Hamod
June
27, 2003
Jason
Leopold
CIA: Seven Months Prior to 9/11 Iraq
Posed No Threat to US
David
Vest
Supreme Silence: Bush's Bunker-Hunker
David
Lindorff
The Catch and Release of "Comical
Ali"
Ray McGovern
Cheney, Forgery and the CIA
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/26
Website
of the Day
John Kerry, Teresa Heinz & Ken Lay: The Politics of Hypocrisy
June
26, 2003
Sen.
Robert Byrd
The Road of Cover-Up is a Road to Ruin
Jason
Leopold
Wolfowitz Instructed the CIA to Investigate
Hans Blix
Paul
de Rooij
Ambient Death in Palestine
Chris Floyd
Mass Graves and Burned Meat in Bush's New Iraq
Elaine
Cassel
Wolfowitz as Lord High Executioner
CounterPunch
Wire
Musicians Unite Against Sweatshops
Sheldon
Hull
Squatting in Mansions
Ben Tripp
A Guide to Hating Almost Anyone
Uri
Avnery
The Best Show in Town
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
Ordinary Vistas:
The Photographs of Kurt Nimmo
June
25, 2003
Bruce
Jackson
Buffalo Cops Wage War on Pedal Pushers
Mickey
Z.
The New Dark Ages
David Lindorff
Indonesia's War on Journalists
Dan
Bacher
Butterflies and Farmworkers Confront USDA and Riot Cops
Adam Federman
"Success is Not the Issue Here"
Elaine
Cassel
"Ain't No Justice": Fed Judge Quits, Assails Sentencing
Guidelines
Bill Kauffman
My America vs. the Empire
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/25
Website
of the Day
You Are Being Watched:
Elevator Moods
June
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Supreme Indemnity
Holocaust Denial at the High Court
Roya
Monajem
A Message from Tehran: Is It Worth
It to Risk One's Life?
John
Chuckman
The Real Clash of Civilizations
David Lindorff
WMD Damage Control at the Times
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/24
June
23, 2003
Marc
Pritzke
Washington Lied: an Interview with
Ray McGovern
Conn
Hallinan
The Consistency of Sharon
Wayne Madsen
Commercials, Disney & Amistad
Edward
Said
The Meaning of Rachel Corrie
Steve Perry
Bush's Wars Web Log 6/23
June
21 / 22, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
My Life as a Rabbi
William
A. Cook
The Scourge of Hopelessness
Standard
Schaefer
The Wages of Terror: an Interview with R.T. Naylor
Ron Jacobs
US Prisons as Strategic Hamlets
Harry
Browne
The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
Magnuson
WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
Pasternak
The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
Summer Reading:
Our Favorite Novels
Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
Tomchick
Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
Adam Engel
The Fat Man in Little Boy
Poets'
Basement
Guthrie, Albert & Hamod
June 20, 2003
Walter
Brasch
Down on Our Knees
Robert
Meeropol
The Son of the Rosenbergs on His Parents Death and Bush's America
Russell
Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Grannies and Baby Bells
Norman
Madarasz
Pierre Bourgault: the Life of a
Quebec Radical
Gary
Leupp
Bush on "Revisionist Historians"
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies
Marathon: the Finale
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
July
16, 2003
Back to the Future
in Guatemala
The
Return of General Ríos Montt
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
Efrain Ríos Montt, the genocidal general
known as the Pinochet of Guatemala, is suddenly back in business.
On July 14, the supreme court of Guatemalan overturned a 1985
constitutional ban and permitted the former military dictator
to run for president of the Latin American nation in elections
slated for November.
"Twenty years ago General Ríos
Montt ran a military regime that killed thousands of people,"
says Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas
Division of Human Rights Watch. "Today he should be on trial,
not running for president."
Ríos Montt, who now serves as
president of the Guatemalan National Congress, has run for president
three other times. In 1974, the general narrowly won the presidential
vote, but his election was never recognized. He tried again twice
in the 1990s, but both times was prohibited by a provision of
the Guatemalan constitutional banning people who had participated
in military coups from becoming president.
In March 1982, Ríos Montt seized
power in a bloody coup d'etat that was quietly backed by the
CIA and the Reagan White House. He and his fellow generals, Maldonando
Schadd and Luis Gordillo, deposed Gen. Romeo Lucas Garcia and
set up a military tribunal with Montt at its head. The junta
immediately suspended the constitution, set up secret tribunals
and began a brutal crackdown on political dissidents that featured
kidnapping, torture, and extra-judicial assassinations.
The generals also unleashed a scorched
earth attack on the nation's Mayan population that, according
to a UN commission, resulted in the annihilation of at nearly
600 villages. Within 18 months, more than 19,000 people had perished
at the hands of Ríos Montt 's death squads. The killings
continued even after Ríos Montt was eased from office
in 1983. By 1990, more than 200,000 people had died in Guatemalan's
bloody civil war, with more than 90 percent of the dead killed
by government forces. Of those, more than 83 percent were indigenous
Mayans.
Perhaps as many as one million more Guatemalans,
many of them Mayan peasants, were uprooted from their homes,
many of them forced to live in "re-education" camps
enclosed with barbed wire and armed guards. Many were later forced
to work in the fields of Guatemalan land barons.
"Not even the lives of the elderly,
pregnant women or innocent children were spared," declared
the Guatemalan Council of Catholic Bishops in 1982 about the
massacres under Ríos Montt. "We have never in our
history seen such serious extremes."
Ríos Montt shrugged off such talk
as leftwing propaganda. "We don't have a policy of scorched
earth," he sneered. "We have a policy of scorched Communists."
The Reagan administration saw the slaughter
the same self-sanitizing light. Even though the US ambassador
to Guatemala cabled Washington that Ríos Montt was behind
the wave of killings, Reagan continued to embrace the general
and his regime. Reagan paid a visit to Guatemala City in 1982
where he hailed Ríos Montt "a man of great personal
integrity and commitment" and assured the troubled nation
that the man who came to power in a military coup was "totally
dedicated to democracy."
The general's ties with the United States
military go all the way back to 1950 when he received training
by the Pentagon at the School of the Americas in Panama. In 1954,
the young officer aided the CIA in engineering the overthrow
of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, whose nationalistic policies had irritated
United Fruit.
From then on, Ríos Montt's rise
was steady and almost unimpeded. In 1970, he became a general
and chief of staff for the Guatemalan army, which ruthlessly
suppressed peasant uprisings and served as armed guards for the
big land barons. His career suffered a minor setback in 1974,
when his apparent victory in the presidential elections was invalidated.
Ríos Montt apparently blamed his
defeat on the meddling of the country's Catholic priests, who
he saw as agents of the left. In 1978, he left the Catholic Church
in a huff and became a minister in the California-based evangelical
Church of the Word. He now counts among his closest prayer friends
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the reverend who recently beseeched
the Almighty to smite three supreme court justices so that more
conservatives could ascend to the high bench.
When the born-again general took power
in 1982, his messianic fervor poured forth in bizarre torrents.
"God gives power to whomever he wants," Ríos
Montt raved. "And he gave it to me." Of course, Ríos
Montt had plenty of secular help in the form of the CIA and the
Pentagon, which sent advisors into his inner circle. Moreover,
six of Ríos Montt 's top nine generals were also educated
at the School of Americas in the arts of coup-making, political
repression, torture, assassination and fealty to Washington.
The level of violence these generals
perpetrated during their brief tenure was appalling and bloodthirsty.
Indeed, it amounted to a form of state-sanctioned sadism whose
purpose was not just to kill but to invoke terror and submission,
a strategy with clear echoes of the CIA's Phoenix Program in
Vietnam. A report on the slaughter by Amnesty International succinctly
describes the kinds of atrocities that became commonplace in
Ríos Montt 's Guatemala: "People of all ages were
not only shot, they were burned alive, hacked to death, disemboweled,
drowned, beheaded. Small children were smashed against rocks
or bayoneted to death."
Ríos Montt and his gang were eased
from power in 1983. But they never went away and the machinery
of death they installed kept on killing throughout the decade
and beyond.
Meanwhile, Ríos Montt formed his
own political party, the ultra-right National Republican Front,
appointed himself chairman for life and rules with an authoritarian
rigidity. He has regularly toured the country giving speeches
that blend neo-fascist politics with his feverish brand of evangelical
Christianity. His children have advanced along with him. His
son, Enrique Rios Sosa, is the head of finances for the Guatemalan
army, while his daughter Zury Rios serves as vice-president of
the National Congress.
Attempts to bring Ríos Montt to
justice have failed. Nobel laureate and Mayan human rights advocate
Rigobertu Menchu sought to have Spanish courts indict Ríos
Montt on charges of genocide in 1999, but in 2000 the Spanish
high court bowed to US pressure and ruled that it lacked jurisdiction
to prosecute him for crimes committed outside of Spain. Early
this year, however, the court reversed itself slightly, allowing
charges against Ríos Montt to proceed for crimes committed
against Spanish citizens.
In June 2001 Center for Legal Action
on Human Rights based in Guatemala City filed a complaint against
Ríos Montt on behalf of the residents of 12 Mayan villages
which were destroyed by Ríos Montt 's troops between March
and December of 1982. More than 1,200 people were murdered in
those raids on the remote mountain villages. Although Ríos
Montt maintains he has legislative immunity from prosecution,
the case continues to percolate through the courts, backed by
dozens of graphic and heart-wrenching depositions from Mayan
villagers.
Later that year, the general got in trouble
once again for his role in a more run-of-the-mill legislative
scandal. His party secretly re-wrote tax laws governing the sale
of alcohol and beer at the behest of the liquor industry. The
secret meetings were caught on tape. Charges of political corruption
were brought against Ríos Montt and 24 of his fellow FRG
party legislators. Then the legislature, under the control of
Ríos Montt, passed a measure giving the lawmakers immunity.
The immunity grant was initially struck down by the Guatemalan
Supreme Court. Two days later a fusillade of gunfire ripped through
the home of the chief justice of the court. The charges against
the general were dropped once again.
This is the same court that has now given
Ríos Montt the green light to run for the presidency.
But now the chief justice is Guillermo Ruiz Wong, a childhood
friend of the general, and Ríos Montt publicly bragged
about having four judges in his pocket. He was right and that's
all he needed.
So far the Bush administration has maintained
a coy distance about the prospects of Ríos Montt becoming
president of Guatemala. In June, the State Department publicly
announced that it would prefer to deal with a less tarnished
figure.
"We would hope to be able to work
with, and have a normal, friendly relationship with whoever is
the next president of Guatemala," said state department
spokesman Richard Boucher last month. "Realistically, in
light of Mr. Ríos Montt's background, it would be difficult
to have the kind of relationship that we would prefer."
This was hardly a stern condemnation
of the war criminal and Ríos Montt doesn't seem the least
worried about such low-grade sniping from Colin Powell's office.
The general understands how Washington works. After all, he has
old friends in the Bush inner circle, including UN ambassador
John Negroponte, John Poindexter, Eliot Abrams and the repellant
Otto Reich.
So could Ríos Montt, even with
his grim resume of torture and assassination, be elected president
of Guatemalan? The country is mired in poverty, its democratic
institutions are frail and the government is plagued by official
corruption. The current government, headed by Ríos Montt
protégé Alfonso Portillo, recently instituted an
unsavory program of "compensating" former members of
civil self-defense patrols the paramilitary forces responsible
for massive abuses during the Ríos Montt's infamous "Beans
and Bullets" counterinsurgency campaign. In Guatemala, many
observers see this as a smart way to buy votes in advance of
the election from the general's natural constituency.
And it's still not safe to publicly criticize
Ríos Montt and his allies for crimes committed 20 years
ago. In 1998, Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera, the head of the Catholic
Church's human rights office, had his skull crushed with a concrete
block two days after he had submitted his report on the abuses
of the Guatemalan Army. He was succeeded by Bishop Mario Ríos
Montt-the general's brother. Big country, small world.
Still some people don't forget and can't
forgive. On a recent campaign swing through the Mayan highlands,
where so many perished at the hands of Ríos Montt's death
brigades, villagers pelted the general with stones.
Even so, it would be dangerously ill
advised to count the general out now that he has just gotten
back into the game.
"The last word on the general who's
maintained his presence in the country's political life for 20
years since the coup has yet to be said," warns Hector Rosada,
a political analyst from Guatemala City. "He has an incredible
ability to be born again, and he's very good at operating from
the trenches. He retreats, digs in, waits as long as it takes,
and then emerges once again."
Jeffrey St. Clair is author of Been
Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature
(Common Courage Press) and coeditor, with Alexander Cockburn,
of The
Politics of Anti-Semitism (AK Press). Both books will be
published in October.
Weekend Edition Features for July 12/13, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
The Double Wall Before the Future
Standard
Schaefer
The Coming Financial Reality: an
Interview with Michael Hudson
John Feffer
A Fearful Symmetry: Washington and Pyongyang
Ron
Jacobs
Shades of Gray in Iran
Elaine
Cassel
Judicial Terrorism Against the Bill of Rights
Tom
Stephens
Civil Liberties After 9/11
David Lindorff
New White House Slogan: "Case Closed. Just Move On"
Jason
Leopold
The Mini-War Against Iraq Prior to 9/11
Lee Sustar
What's Behind the Crisis in Liberia?
Mickey
Z.
AIDS Dissent and Africa
Sam Hamod
Semitic is a Language Group, Not a Race or Ethnic Group
Ramzy
Baroud
Awaiting Justice on an Old Blanket
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Savage Incongruities: the Photographic Life of Lee Miller
Adam
Engel
Parable of the Lobbyist
Robert
Sanders
A Review of Ralph Lopez's American Dream
Poets'
Basement
Albert, Witherup, Guthrie
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|