Native Americans groups fight to recover lost skull of Geronimo.
BY NOAM RUDNICK
The Yale Herald October 24, 2003
An axe pried open the iron door of the tomb, and Pat[riarch] Bush entered and started to dig...Pat[riarch] James dug deep and pried out the trophy itself...I showered and hit the hay...a happy man...''
So recounts a document thought to be an internal record from the Skull and Bones Society. "Pat[riarch] Bush" is Prescott Bush, father of an American political dynasty. His "trophy" is the skull of Geronimo, the Native American spiritual and military leader laid to rest in 1909 at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where Bush and fellow Bonesmen were stationed nine years later.
Alexandra Robbins, ES '98, has researched Bush's secret society extensively. Her recent book, Secrets of the Tomb, has heightened interest in the activities of Skull and Bones. She attests to the legitimacy of the story, "The text looks to be an authentic Bones document describing Prescott Bush and other Bonesmen robbing Geronimo's grave and cleaning the skull with carbolic acid." In interviews with Robbins, Bonesmen have admitted that there is a skull in the tomb that they call Geronimo.
Current Members of Skull and Bones chose not to comment on the legitimacy of the allegations.
Apache tribal leader Ned Anderson was informed of the alleged theft in 1986. As an ancestor of Geronimo, Anderson petitioned the Federal Bureau of Investigations to force the return of the skull. Noting that Apaches have a "great fear and respect for death," Anderson said that he hoped to honor Geronimo's express wish to be laid to rest in "Arizona acorn country."
Unwilling to remove himself from the case entirely and yield all his evidence to the FBI, Anderson withdrew his request for action. Instead, he arranged to meet with George H. W. Bush's, DC '48,(Skull and Bones) brother Jonathan in New York City. Anderson recounts that Bush sounded "very encouraging" during their initial meeting. Eleven days later, Bush presented the display case. Anderson refused to accept the skull because it appeared to belong to a small child. Bush acknowledged this fact but claimed that it was the only relevant artifact in the society's possession.
He urged Anderson to accept the display and sign a document verifying that the society was not in possession of Geronimo's skull. Anderson refused.
Since the meeting in Manhattan, no further efforts to recover the skull have been made. Anderson puts great faith in the Bonesmen. "I believe that those who are involved need to come clean on this," he said. "I think they'll come around and do what is appropriate."
GETTY IMAGES
The skull of Geronimo, an Apache chief, is rumored to be in the possession of Skull and Bones.
Jim Adams, managing editor of Indian Country Today, provides an explanation for the notable absence of recovery efforts. "Apache tribal governments seem reluctant to raise the issue because it does violate taboos about speaking about the dead. This doesn't mean they're not concerned; rather they have their own laws of secrecy."
Native Americans are far from unconcerned. Adams' publication, the leading Native American news source, has run several articles on the secret society's alleged possession of the skull. On Oct. 6, 60 Minutes televised a segment on Skull and Bones that briefly addressed the society's posession of Geronimo's skull.
James Craven, an economics professor at Clark College, suggests that such media exposure is leading to action. "In the near future, there will finally be large groups of Natives showing up in front of 'the tomb' to protest this ugly racism and grave robbing by the Bones, and they will not be leaving until that skull and any other Native artifacts have been returned."
Adams expressed similar sentiments. "My sense is that American Indians in general are appalledæ¢ utraged by the accusation, but not surprised," he said. "Remains of ancestors have been exploited and desecrated for centuries in the name of anthropology or simply for idle curiosity. But even by these standards, it's bizarre and embarrassing that a supposedly elite group would use the remains of any human being for its own entertainment."
Supposing the grave-robbing allegations are true, why would the Skull and Bones be interested in the head of Geronimo? Robbins suggests that the answer lies in their name. "Bones as a society is preoccupied with death; skulls, skeletons, and artwork depicting death are prevalent in the tomb. When Bonesmen steal things they use the euphemism that they are taking 'gifts to the goddess' whom they honor within the tomb." The focus on death is not arbitrary. The society emphasizes mortality in order to illustrate the necessity of success.
Robbins, herself a member of Scroll and Key, attests to the centrality of ritualized stealing in many of the societies at Yale. Each class attempts to outdo its predecessor in the acquisition of valuables. In addition to Geronimo's skull, the Bonesmen's tomb is rumored to contain the skull of Pancho Villa and Adolf Hitler's silverware.
Robbins expresses outrage at Skull and Bones' behavior. "I think it's ridiculous that Bonesmen's sense of entitlement is broad enough to include items that allegedly don't belong to them. The items they supposedly steal as a prank or competition may be valuable and meaningful to the actual owners. It's appalling that proper authorities have not forced their way into the tomb to retrieve the items that don't belong in there."
The legality of Skull and Bones' behavior is dubious. According to Adams, members of Skull and Bones have violated laws preventing the desecration of graves and should be held responsible as felons. "If it is true that Skull and Bones and its corporate parent RTA Inc., continue to hold these skulls, my belief would be that they are participating in a continuing conspiracy to be in possession of stolen property." Many are quick to cite the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act as grounds for prosecuting Skull and Bones. Ironically, it was George H. W. Bush, DC '48, a member of Skull and Bones, who signed this bill into law in 1990. However, NAGPRA only applies to organizations that receive federal funding. The University, in fact, was forced to return certain artifacts previously held by its Peabody Museum in accordance with the bill. However, secret societies are not directly affiliated with the University, exempting them from NAGPRA jurisdiction.
While the society's exemption from NAGPRA relies on financial independence from Yale, the two organizations are in fact closely intertwined. As Robbins emphasizes, the administration hasn't taken steps against the societies because administrators have historically been members. To this day, prominent figures on the Yale faculty and administration are members of Yale secret societies. There has always been a kinship between society men at the faculty, administration, and undergraduate levels. This close connection may explain Yale's failure to investigate the activity of certain students.
In addition to being high-ranking members of the Yale administration, members of Skull and Bones work in important governmental positions. The upcoming presidential election could potentially pit Bonesman against Bonesman.
George Bush, DC '68, and John Kerry, JE '66, both members of the society, could be hurt by their involvement in an organization that allegedly takes part illegal behavior. "I think these politicians are caught in a real conflict between their loyalty to Bones and their oaths as public servants if they don't take positive steps to return any human remains. The reports about Geronimo certainly poison relations between the Presidency and the tribes," Adams said.
Whatever the repercussions, many see the society's behavior as wholly reprehensible, particularly among those who would run for high public office. "[The theft] is a metaphor for something much bigger and even uglier. It is the ugly racism and hubris of the in-bred power elites who seek to infiltrate positions of power," Craven said.
?2002 The Yale Herald
The Herald is an undergraduate publication at Yale University.
Book Excerpt: The Legend of Skull and Bones, An Expos?of President George W. Bush's Secret Society:
"Skull and Bones has curled its tentacles into every reach of American society. This tiny club has set up networks that have thrust three members to the most powerful political position in the world. And its power is only increasing - the 2004 Presidential election might showcase the first time each ticket has been led by a Bonesman. The secret society now, as one historian admonishes, is "'an international mafia' . . . unregulated and all but unknown." In its quest to create a New World Order that restricts individual freedoms and places ultimate power solely in the hands of a small cult of wealthy, prominent families, Skull and Bones has already succeeded in infiltrating nearly every major research, policy, financial, media, and government institution in the country. Skull and Bones, in fact, has been running the United States for years.
They are taught that once they get out into the world, they are expected to reach positions of prominence so that they can further elevate the society.s status and help promote the standing of their fellow Bonesmen.
This purpose has driven Bonesmen to ascend to the top levels of so many fields that, as one historian observes, "at any one time The Order can call on members in any area of American society to do what has to be done." Several Bonesmen have been senators, congressmen, Supreme Court justices, and cabinet officials. There is a Bones cell in the CIA, which uses Skull and Bones as a recruiting ground because the members are so obviously adept at keeping secrets. Society members dominate financial institutions such as J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, and Brown Brothers Harriman, where at one time more than a third of the partners were Bonesmen. Through these companies, Skull and Bones provided financial backing to Adolf Hitler because the society then followed a Nazi - and now follows a neo-Nazi - doctrine. At least one dozen Bonesmen have been linked to the Federal Reserve, including the first Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve. Skull and Bones members control the wealth of the Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford families. - Read more about Skull and Bones
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The following text is from the introduction of
a sermon given by Robert Cushman to the Plymouth church on December 12, 1621.
And though when we came first into the Country, we were few, and many of us were sick, and many died by reason of the cold and wet, it being the depth of Winter, and we having no houses, nor shelter, yet when there was not six able persons among us, and that they came daily to us by hundreds, with their Sachems or Kings, and might in one hour have made a dispatch of us, yet such a fear was upon them, as that they never offered us the least injury in word or deed. And by reason of one Tisquanto, that lives amongst us, that can speak English, we have daily Commerce with their Kings, and can know what is done or intended towards us among the Savages; Also we can acquaint them with our courses and purposes, both human and religious. And the greatest Commander of the Country, call'd Massasoit, cometh often to visit us, tho' he lives 50 miles from us, often sends us Presents, he having with many other of their Governors, promised, yea, subscribed Obedience to our Sovereign Lord King James, and for his cause to spend both strength and life.
When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in late 1620, they were ill-equipped for survival in their new homeland. Grain brought on the Mayflower wasn't suited for planting in the rocky American soil. Planting techniques used in England didn't adapt well on this side of the Atlantic either. But, perhaps most devastating, the harsh winter reduced the number of settlers by half.
Invaluable help came from Squanto, also known as Tisquantum, a Wampanoag, who taught the Pilgrims techniques for planting and fertilizing that were appropriate for the rugged surroundings. With some seeds provided by Squanto, the Pilgrims planted corn, wheat, and barley in the spring of 1621.
By fall, realizing that their first harvest of corn and barley would be plentiful, Governor William Bradford declared a day of thanksgiving. At the three-day feast, the 50 settlers hosted 90 Wampanoag, including their chief, Massasoit. As was the Wampanoag's custom, they brought venison as a contribution to the meal. Not only was this festival a way to thank the Wampanoag, but it also served to boost the morale of the remaining settlers.
Most of the details of that thanksgiving come from a letter written by Edward Winslow, a 25-year-old Pilgrim who was the colony's ambassador to the Indians. From that letter, we know that Governor Bradford "sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together." Chief Massassoit came "with some 90 men." For three days, the Pilgrims and Indians "entertained and feasted."
"We have found the Indians very faithful in their covenant of peace with us, very loving, and ready to pleasure us. We often go to them, and they come to us.... We can walk as peaceably and safely in the woods as in the highways of England. We entertain them in our houses, and they give us venison... They are a people without any religion or knowledge of any God, yet very trusty, quick of apprehension, ripe-witted, just." - Pilgrim Edward Winslow, letter to a friend in England (1621)
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THE PILGRIMS
Children of the Devil
PURITAN DOOMSDAY CULT PLUNDERS PARADISE
Every year around Thanksgiving time in churches across America, preachers are heard to say: "The Pilgrims brought God to these shores". Judging by the atrocious behavior of these Pilgrims, I'd have to say that God must have hitched a ride back to England shortly after He arrived here.
John Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony said in a sermon preached aboard the Arabella, en route to the New World in 1630:
"to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God" - then God "shall make us a praise and a glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: "The Lord make it like that of New England!"
Shortly after this moving sermon, the Puritans dealt treacherously with their benefactors, the Native Americans, who welcomed them and helped them to survive their first years here.
The Puritans massacred a neighboring town of friendly Pequots in 1637, setting fire to the village and slaughtering the villagers as they tried to escape the flames. Some 900 men, women and children were murdered by the same Puritans who claimed that their settlement was to be "the model of Christian charity".
One of the Pilgrim officers of that expedition gave insight into the Pequots they encountered:
"The Indians spying of us came running in multitudes along the water side, crying 'What cheer, Englishmen, what cheer, what do you come for?'. They not thinking we intended war went on cheerfully."
Historian Francis Jennings wrote of Captain John Mason's attack:
"Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors, which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy's will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective."
In Howard Zinns' book, A People's History of the United States, one of the Pilgrims on the expedition is quoted as saying:
"The Captain also said, We must Burn Them; and immediately stepping into the wigwam....brought out a Fire Brand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire."
William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation, described the carnage:
"Those that scaped the fire were slaine with the sword; some hewed to peeces, others rune throw with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatche, and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fyer, and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stincke and sente there of, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to inclose their enemise in their hands, and gave them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enimie."
Cotton Mather, one of the more odious and obdurate Pilgrim leaders, wrote:
"It was supposed that no less than 600 souls were brought down to Hell that day".
Mather, in his Annals of Christ in America, wrote:
"I do, with all conscience of truth,...report the wonderful displays of His infinite power, wisdom, goodness, and faithfulness, wherewith His divine providence hath irradiated an Indian wilderness".
Indeed!
Having laid down their weapons and accepted Christianity, the Pequots were rewarded with a vicious and cowardly slaughter by their new "brothers in Christ".
Francis Jennings said:
"The terror was very real among the Indians. They drew lessons from the Peqout War:(1) that the Englishmen's most solemn pledge would be broken whenever obligation conflicted with advantage; (2) that the English way of war had no limit of scruple and mercy".
The Pilgrims justified their conquest by appealing to the Bible, Psalms 2:8:
"Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."
The use of force to take this "inheritance" was justified by citing Romans 13:2:
"Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."
William Bradford, called a man of "more than ordinary piety, wisdom and courage" by no less an authority on Godliness than Cotton Mather, wrote in 1642:
"Wickedness Breaks Forth - Marvelous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickedness did grow and break forth here, in a land where the same was so much witnessed against and so narrowly looked unto, and severely punished when it was known, as in no place more, or so much, that I have known or heard of; insomuch that they have been somewhat censured even by moderate and good men for their severity in punishments. And yet all this could not suppress the breaking out of sundry notorious sins.. Especially drunkenness and uncleanness. Not only incontinency between persons unmarried, for which many both men and women have been punished sharply enough, but some married persons also. But that which is worse, even sodomy and buggery (things fearful to name) have broke forth in this land oftener than once. I say it may justly be marveled at and cause us to fear and tremble at the considration of our corrupt natures, which are so hardly bridled, subdued and mortified.....But one reason may be that the Devil may carry a greater spite against the churches of Christ and the gospel here,....I would rather think thus, than that Satan hath more power in these heathen lands, as some have thought, than in Christian nations, especially over God's servants in them."
The twisted theology of these so-called men of God is indicative of a pervasive sickness of their minds and wretchedness in their souls. Their confused and tortured thought processes made it possible for them , in their warped minds neccesary for them, to inflict the "will of God" on the unsuspecting Indians and whoever else opposed their harsh doctrine and unforgiving authority. Considering that the Pequots were slaughtered in 1637, and that the "Wickedness" wasn't considered to "break forth" until 1642 , shows just how confused and contorted in their thinking, and in their interpretation of godliness, these vicious scoundrels really were.
Roger Williams, who was one of the more enlightened souls among the Pilgrims, was banished from Massachuetts for his "radical" notions about Christianity. Williams recalled his banishment:
"When I was unkindly and unchristianly, as I believe, driven from my house and land and wife and children (in the midst of a New England winter....)"
Williams went on to found Providence, Rhode Island, which became the chief refuge for freethinkers in New England. Williams was better inclined toward the Indians than most. Writing about the Indians he said:
"All men of conscience or prudence ply to windward, to maintain their (the Indians) wars to be defensive."
The English drive for wars of conquest was said by Williams to be driven by:
"a depraved appetite after the great vanities, dreams and shadows of this vanishing life, great portions of land, land in this wilderness, as if men were in as great necessity and danger for want of great portions of land, as poor, hungry, thirsty seamen have, after a sick and stormy, a long and starving passage. This is one of the gods of New England, which the living and most high Eternal will destroy and famish."
The Puritans, who according to the revisionist propaganda found in American school textbooks were fleeing religious intolerance, showed no tolerance for those who dared go against their severe doctrine. The peace-loving Quakers were imprisoned, banished, whipped, had their tongues cut out or were hanged for offending the sensibilities of these so-called seekers of religious freedom. Cotton Mather wrote to the captain of a ship, proposing that a ship full of Quakers be scuttled at sea.
The Puritans practiced human sacrifice in order to appease their angry God. When crop failures, disease, famine and other natural disasters occured, the ignorant and extremely superstitious Pilgrims took these events as a sign of God's displeasure . Unfortunate and innocent souls were accused of witchcraft, blamed for the various calamities, and were then cruelly tortured to death by their bloodthirsty inquisitionists. One of the alleged witches was 5 years old, a special set of handcuffs had to be made to fit her little wrists.
The Pilgrims felt justified in all their evil deeds because they were fighting supposed "red devils" and "emissaries of Satan". Their fanaticism was based on Fundamentalist dogma, and was fueled by the same siege mentality, mass hysteria and paranoia found in all dangerous cults. The Bible is used by such groups to enable the dysfunctional need of their leaders to always have the last word in an argument, the Bible supposedly providing the final authority. The "Word of God" grants the ultimate means of control to the group leaders over their flock of followers, who are referred to as "sheep". The so-called "Good Book" is brandished as an instrument of destruction whenever justification for murder is required, an instrument of control whenever fear is needed to keep the subjects properly disciplined.
In the long history of fanaticism and violence perpetrated by religious zealots, the hypocrisy and utter treachery of the Puritans stands as a testament to intolerance , avarice and ethnic cleansing. Their fearful self-loathing, their revulsion and contempt for Nature, their abject terror of the wrath of an angry God and their hatred of their fellow man combined to create a murderous frenzy of genocide and mayhem.
Not even Charles Manson and Jim Jones combined could compare with that murderous Doomsday cult - the Pilgrims.
Within an hour, 400-700 men, women, and children are put to the sword or burned to death as the English torch the village. Unfamiliar with war targeted at civilians, for the first time Native Tribes experience the total devastating effects of warfare practiced by Europeans.
The battle cuts the heart from the Pequot people and scatters them across what is now southern New England, Long Island, and Upstate New York. Over the next few months, remaining resistors are either tracked down and killed or enslaved. The name "Pequot" is outlawed by the English. The Puritan justification for the action is simply stated by Captain Underhill, one of the English commanders, in his journal, Newes from America:
It may be demanded, Why should you be so furious? Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents. Sometimes the case alters, but we will not dispute it now. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings.
Read more about The Pequot War
Read more about the Pequot War at this excellent site: PEQUOT HISTORY
National Day of Mourning, "Thanksgiving Day"
UAINE and the history of National Day of Mourning: In 1970, United American Indians of New England declared US Thanksgiving Day a National Day of Mourning. This came about as a result of the suppression of the truth. Wamsutta, an Aquinnah Wampanoag man, had been asked to speak at a fancy Commonwealth of Massachusetts banquet celebrating the 350th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims. He agreed. The organizers of the dinner, using as a pretext the need to prepare a press release, asked for a copy of the speech he planned to deliver. He agreed. Within days Wamsutta was told by a representative of the Department of Commerce and Development that he would not be allowed to give the speech. The reason given was due to the fact that, "...the theme of the anniversary celebration is brotherhood and anything inflammatory would have been out of place." What they were really saying was that in this society, the truth is out of place.
What was it about the speech that got those officials so upset? Wamsutta used as a basis for his remarks one of their own history books - a Pilgrim's account of their first year on Indian land. The book tells of the opening of my ancestor's graves, taking our wheat and bean supplies, and of the selling of my ancestors as slaves for 220 shillings each. Wamsutta was going to tell the truth, but the truth was out of place.
The first official "Day of Thanksgiving" was proclaimed in 1637 by Governor Winthrop. He did so to celebrate the safe return of men from Massachusetts who had gone to Mystic, Connecticut to participate in the massacre of over 700 Pequot women, children, and men.
About the only true thing in the whole mythology is that these pitiful European strangers would not have survived their first several years in "New England" were it not for the aid of Wampanoag people. What Native people got in return for this help was genocide, theft of our lands, and never-ending repression.
United American Indians of New England
We Are Not Vanishing.
We Are Not Conquered.
We Are As Strong As Ever.
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Chistopher Columbus, Sea Pirate
Columbus Day -- first observed as a U.S. national holiday in 1892 and declared an annual day of national celebration in 1934 -- commemorates the re-discovery of North America, by Christopher Columbus and his band of 90 adventurers, who set out from Palos, Spain just before dawn on August 3, 1492 intending to find Asia by crossing the Atlantic Ocean in three small ships.
Columbus made four voyages to the New World.[1] The initial voyage reveals several important things about the man. First, he had genuine courage because few ship's captains had ever pointed their prow toward the open ocean, the complete unknown. Secondly, from numerous of his letters and reports we learn that his overarching goal was to seize wealth that belonged to others, even his own men, by whatever means necessary.
Columbus nailed a gold coin to the mast and promised it to the first man who sighted land, as a morale booster, trying to defuse tensions and fear among the crew. A few hours after midnight on October 12, 1492, Juan Rodriguez Bermeo, a lookout on the Pinta, cried out -- in the bright moonlight, he had spied land ahead. Most likely Bermeo was seeing the white beaches of Watling Island in the Bahamas.
As they waited impatiently for dawn, Columbus let it be known that he had spotted land several hours before Bermeo. According to Columbus's journal of that voyage, his ships were, at the time, traveling 10 miles per hour. To have spotted land several hours before Bermeo, Columbus would have had to see more than 30 miles over the horizon, a physical impossibility. Nevertheless Columbus took the gold coin for himself.[1,2]
In 1498, after his second voyage, Columbus installed himself as Governor of the Caribbean islands, with headquarters on Hispaniola (the large island now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic). He described the people, the Arawaks this way:
"The people of this island and of all the other islands which I have found and seen, or have not seen, all go naked, men and women, as their mothers bore them, except that some women cover one place only with the leaf of a plant or with a net of cotton which they make for that purpose. They have no iron or steel or weapons, nor are they capable of using them, although they are well-built people of handsome stature, because they are wondrous timid.... [T]hey are so artless and free with all they possess, that no one would believe it without having seen it. Of anything they have, if you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving their hearts; and whether the thing be of value or of small price, at once they are content with whatever little thing of whatever kind may be given to them."[3,pg.63;1,pg.118]
After Columbus had surveyed the Caribbean region, he returned to Spain to prepare his invasion of the Americas. From accounts of his second voyage, we can begin to understand what the New World represented to Columbus and his men -- it offered them life without limits, unbridled freedom. Columbus took the title Admiral of the Ocean Sea and proceeded to unleash a reign of terror unlike anything seen before or since. When he was finished, eight million Arawaks -- virtually the entire native population of Hispaniola -- had been exterminated by torture, murder, forced labor, starvation, disease and despair.[3,pg.x]
A Spanish missionary, Bartolome de las Casas, described first-hand how the Spaniards terrorized the natives.[4] Las Casas gives numerous eye-witness accounts of repeated mass murder and routine sadistic torture. As Barry Lopez has accurately summarized it, "One day, in front of Las Casas, the Spanish dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 people. 'Such inhumanities and barbarisms were committed in my sight,' he says, 'as no age can parallel....' The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who, with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. They loosed dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a moment.' They used nursing infants for dog food."[2,pg.4] This was not occasional violence -- it was a systematic, prolonged campaign of brutality and sadism, a policy of torture, mass murder, slavery and forced labor that continued for CENTURIES.
"The destruction of the Indians of the Americas was, far and away, the most massive act of genocide in the history of the world," writes historian David E. Stannard.[3,pg.x] Eventually more than 100 million natives fell under European rule. Their extermination would follow. As the natives died out, they were replaced by slaves brought from Africa.
To make a long story short, Columbus established a pattern that held for five centuries -- a "ruthless, angry search for wealth," as Barry Lopez describes it. "It set a tone in the Americas. The quest for personal possessions was to be, from the outset, a series of raids, irresponsible and criminal, a spree, in which an end to it -- the slaves, the timber, the pearls, the fur, the precious ores, and, later, arable land, coal, oil, and iron ore-- was never visible, in which an end to it had no meaning." Indeed, there WAS no end to it, no limit.
As Hans Koning has observed, "There was no real ending to the conquest of Latin America. It continued in remote forests and on far mountainsides. It is still going on in our day when miners and ranchers invade land belonging to the Amazon Indians and armed thugs occupy Indian villages in the backwoods of Central America."[6,pg.46] As recently as the 1980s under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush the U.S. government knowingly gave direct aid to genocidal campaigns that killed tens of thousands Mayan Indian people in Guatemala and elsewhere.[7] The pattern holds.
Unfortunately, Columbus and the Spaniards were not unique. They conquered Mexico and what is now the Southwestern U.S., with forays into Florida, the Carolinas, even into Virginia. From Virginia northward, the land had been taken by the English who, if anything, had even less tolerance for the indigenous people. As Hans Koning says, "From the beginning, the Spaniards saw the native Americans as natural slaves, beasts of burden, part of the loot. When working them to death was more economical than treating them somewhat humanely, they worked them to death. The English, on the other hand, had no use for the native peoples. They saw them as devil worshippers, savages who were beyond salvation by the church, and exterminating them increasingly became accepted policy."[6,pg.14]
The British arrived in Jamestown in 1607. By 1610 the intentional extermination of the native population was well along. As David E. Stannard has written, "Hundreds of Indians were killed in skirmish after skirmish. Other hundreds were killed in successful plots of mass poisoning. They were hunted down by dogs, 'blood-Hounds to draw after them, and Mastives [mastiffs] to seaze them.' Their canoes and fishing weirs were stolen or smashed, their villages and agricultural fields burned to the ground. Indian peace offers were accepted by the English only until their prisoners were returned; then, having lulled the natives into false security, the colonists returned to the attack. It was the colonists' expressed desire that the Indians be exterminated, rooted 'out from being longer a people uppon the face of the earth.' In a single raid the settlers destroyed corn sufficient to feed four thousand people for a year. Starvation and the massacre of non-combatants was becoming the preferred British approach to dealing with the natives."[3,pg.106]
In Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey extermination was officially promoted by a "scalp bounty" on dead Indians. "Indeed, in many areas it [murdering Indians] became an outright business," writes historian Ward Churchill.[5,pg.182]
Indians were defined as subhumans, lower than animals. George Washington compared them to wolves, "beasts of prey" and called for their total destruction.[3,pgs.119-120] Andrew Jackson -- whose portrait appears on the U.S. $20 bill today -- in 1814 "supervised the mutilation of 800 or more Creek Indian corpses -- the bodies of men, women and children that [his troops] had massacred -- cutting off their noses to count and preserve a record of the dead, slicing long strips of flesh from their bodies to tan and turn into bridle reins."[5,pg.186]
The English policy of extermination -- another name for genocide -- grew more insistent as settlers pushed westward. In 1851 the Governor of California officially called for the extermination of the Indians in his state.[3,pg.144] On March 24, 1863, the ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS in Denver ran an editorial titled, "Exterminate Them." On April 2, 1863, the SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN advocated "extermination of the Indians."[5,pg.228] In 1867, General William Tecumseh Sherman said, "We must act with vindictive earnestness against the [Lakotas, known to whites as the Sioux] even to their extermination, men, women and children."[5,pg.240]
In 1891, Frank L. Baum (gentle author of the WIZARD OF OZ) wrote in the ABERDEEN (KANSAS) SATURDAY PIONEER that the army should "finish the job" by the "total annihilation" of the few remaining Indians. The U.S. did not follow through on Baum's macabre demand for there really was no need. By then the native population had been reduced to 2.5% of its original numbers and 97.5% of the aboriginal land base had been expropriated and renamed the land of the free and the home of the brave. Hundreds upon hundreds of native tribes with unique languages, learning, customs, and cultures had simply been erased from the face of the earth, most often without even the pretense of justice or law.
Today we can see the remnant cultural arrogance of Christopher Columbus and Captain John Smith shadowed in the cult of the "global free market" which aims to eradicate indigenous cultures and traditions world-wide, to force all peoples to adopt the ways of the U.S. Global free trade is manifest destiny writ large.
But as Barry Lopez says, "This violent corruption needn't define us.... We can say, yes, this happened, and we are ashamed. We repudiate the greed. We recognize and condemn the evil. And we see how the harm has been perpetuated. But, five hundred years later, we intend to mean something else in the world." If we chose, we could set limits on ourselves for once. We could declare enough is enough. So it is always good to celebrate Columbus on his day.
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[1] J.M. Cohen, editor, THE FOUR VOYAGES OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS (London: Penguin Books, 1969). ISBN 0-14-044217-0.
[2] Barry Lopez, THE REDISCOVERY OF NORTH AMERICA (Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1990. ISBN 0-8131-1742-9.
[3] David E. Stannard, AMERICAN HOLOCAUST; COLUMBUS AND THE CONQUEST OF THE NEW WORLD (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). ISBN 0-19-507581-1.
[4] Bartolome de las Casas, THE DEVASTATION OF THE INDIES: A BRIEF ACCOUNT (translated by Herma Briffault) (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). ISBN 0-8018-4430-4.
[5] Ward Churchill, A LITTLE MATTER OF GENOCIDE; HOLOCAUST AND DENIAL IN THE AMERICAS, 1492 TO THE PRESENT (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997). ISBN 0-87286-323-9.
[6] Hans Koning, THE CONQUEST OF AMERICA; HOW THE INDIAN NATIONS LOST THEIR CONTINENT (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993), pg. 46. ISBN 0-85345-876-6.
[7] For example, see Mireya Navarro, "Guatemalan Army Waged 'Genocide,' New Report Finds," NEW YORK TIMES February 26, 1999, pg. unknown. The TIMES described "torture, kidnapping and execution of thousands of civilians" -- most of them Mayan Indians -- a campaign to which the U.S. government contributed "money and training."
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Bartoleme de las Casas, a Spanish colonist, a priest, founder of a Utopian community and first Bishop of Chiapas, was a scholar, historian and 16th century human rights advocate. Las Casas has been called the Father of anti-imperialism and anti-racism. What there is little or no dispute about is that Las Casas was an early and energetic advocate and activist for the rights of native peoples.
Las Casas came to the Indies early, he knew Christopher Columbus and was the editor of the Admiral's journal. He knew conditions in the Americas first hand. As the following excerpt indicates, he was present during Spanish genocidal attacks on the native population of Cuba.
After coming to the realization that the Spanish treatment of the native population was unconscionable, Las Casas became a Dominican priest, devoting himself to alleviating the sufferings of the Indians. He carried on his missionary work throughout the Spanish Indies. In 1542 he was made bishop of Chiapas, and in 1549 he returned to Spain.
He wrote Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies. (1542)
Excerpts:
And never have the Indians in all the Indies committed any act against the Spanish Christians, until those Christians have first and many times committed countless cruel aggressions against them or against neighboring nations. For in the beginning the Indians regarded the Spaniards as angels from Heaven. Only after the Spaniards had used violence against them, killing, robbing, torturing, did the Indians ever rise up against them....
On the Island Hispaniola was where the Spaniards first landed, as I have said. Here those Christians perpetrated their first ravages and oppressions against the native peoples. This was the first land in the New World to be destroyed and depopulated by the Christians, and here they began their subjection of the women and children, taking them away from the Indians to use them and ill use them, eating the food they provided with their sweat and toil. The Spaniards did not content themselves with what the Indians gave them of their own free will, according to their ability, which was always too little to satisfy enormous appetites, for a Christian eats and consumes in one day an amount of food that would suffice to feed three houses inhabited by ten Indians for one month. And they committed other acts of force and violence and oppression which made the Indians realize that these men had not come from Heaven. And some of the Indians concealed their foods while others concealed their wives and children and still others fled to the mountains to avoid the terrible transactions of the Christians.
And the Christians attacked them with buffets and beatings, until finally they laid hands on the nobles of the villages. Then they behaved with such temerity and shamelessness that the most powerful ruler of the islands had to see his own wife raped by a Christian officer.
From that time onward the Indians began to seek ways to throw the Christians out of their lands. They took up arms, but their weapons were very weak and of little service in offense and still less in defense. (Because of this, the wars of the Indians against each other are little more than games played by children.) And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, "Boil there, you offspring of the devil!" Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim's neck, saying, "Go now, carry the message," meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them....
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The "Christian" Genocide Against Indians Continues
Guatemalan Nobelist Threatened
The Washington Post
Saturday, October 11, 2003; Page A21
GUATEMALA CITY, Oct 10 Reuters -- Rigoberta Menchu, a Guatemalan human rights activist and winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize, was threatened and manhandled Thursday by supporters of Efrain Rios Montt, a presidential hopeful and former dictator, witnesses said.
They said Rios Montt supporters, who objected to Menchu's presence at a judicial hearing on the retired general's candidacy for president, violently shoved Menchu, a leader of indigenous Guatemalans.
Rios Montt's 1982-83 dictatorship is considered one of the bloodiest periods in Guatemalan history.
He was barred from running for president in 1990 and 1995 by an article in Guatemala's 1985 constitution banning ex-dictators from the country's top job. In a decision that shocked rights groups, Guatemala's highest court ruled on July 14 that Rios Montt may run, agreeing with his argument that the law was created after his term ended.
Human Rights Groups Criticize Guatemala
Wed Apr 9, 2003 Associated Press
GUATEMALA CITY - Activists have accused the Guatemalan government of being behind a string of burglaries and attacks aimed at intimidating human rights organizations in the country.
In a written statement Tuesday, an alliance of social groups said the alleged campaign has left many activists terrified they will be the target of violence. One activist leader said he believed the crimes were related to creation of a state commission to investigate civil rights abuses.
On Monday, thieves raided the Guatemala City home of Mario Polanco, one of the directors of the Mutual Support Group, an organization for relatives of victims who died or disappeared during the country's 1960-1996 civil war.
That attack came hours after an assailants broke into the offices of the country's human rights ombudsman in Puerto Barrios, 150 miles northeast of the capital.
On Friday, kidnappers abducted Diego Xon, a Mayan priest who was an active member of the Mutual Support Group in the central, largely Indian province of Quiche.
Xon was well known nationally for his strong-worded condemnations of a plan to compensate Guatemalan peasants who joined paramilitary forces and helped the government carry out ruthless anti-insurgency campaigns at the height of the war. Some 200,000 people, mostly Mayan Indians, were killed before peace accords ended the fighting.
Amnesty International Campaign Against Guatemalan Intelligence Agency
June 11, 2003
Jim Lobe,OneWorld U.S.
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 11 (OneWorld) - Amnesty International has launched a new campaign to press the Guatemalan government to dissolve a notorious military intelligence unit that has acted as a death squad in the past and is suspected of masterminding recent attacks against human rights lawyers, judges, and church groups investigating abuses committed during the country's civil war.
The campaign features Amnesty's first Internet "flash" animation movie that depicts the history of the Estado Mayor Presidencial (Presidential High Command), or EMP, as the intelligence unit is called. Under the 1996 peace accords, the EMP was supposed to have been dismantled, but, despite promises by President Alfonso Portillo to do so, the EMP's budget has actually increased during his term.
"Amnesty International is prepared to wield all tools at our disposal to get rid of the travesty known as the EMP," said William Schulz, executive director of the U.S. section of Amnesty International (AIUSA).
"As their budget increases, so the human rights community must respond with increased scrutiny and resources--including using the power of the Internet--in order to prevent the EMP from further terrorizing Guatemalan citizens. We also must make sure that the Portillo administration really cleans the intelligence-gathering house and doesn't just sweep this one unit under the rug."
The campaign's launch comes at a sensitive moment in Guatemala due to the race to succeed Portillo in general elections scheduled for November. The ruling party, the Guatemalan Republican Front (FRG), last month nominated former President Gen. Efrain Rios Montt as its candidate, despite the fact that as president in the early 1980s he directed a "scorched earth" counter-insurgency campaign in which 200,000 thousand indigenous Mayan people were killed and hundreds of their villages razed.
Rios Montt was hailed by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan as an ally against "communist subversion" in Central America at the time.
". . .after meeting Rios Montt in Honduras later that month, President Reagan insisted that the regime was æ…»etting a bad deal?from the accusations of massacres and deserved renewed military aid from the United States (which he granted the following month). Had not the White House received a flood of letters calling for renewed arms sales to Guatemala after Pat Robertson appealed to his 700 Culb television show for prayers and money for the regime?
- Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, HarperCollins Publisher, 1995, p. 818-19
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Pat Robertson's organization funded Gospel Outreach to help Rios Montt build model villages for the Guatemalan peasants. Gospel Outreach fundraising arm in the U.S., International Love Lift, was able to raise $1.5 million for Rios Montt's program. The authors of Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, describe the fruit of Gospel Outreach - which turned out not to be model villages, but a genocidal campaign that was perpetuated largely because of Evangelical funding and petitions to President Reagan:
"The irony of [Gospel Outreach] name was outranked only by the name of its fund-raising arm in the United States, which was endorsed by TV evangelist Pat Robertson: International Love Lift. . . .
"Within three months of Rios Montt's self-declaration as a first choice, in June 1982, Amnesty International would issue a special report, Massive Extrajudicial Executions in Rural Areas Under the Government of General Efrain Rios Montt. Its 憄artial listing of massacres,?totaling more than sixty, included one village where survivors witnessed soldiers beheading men, battering children's heads against rocks, and raping women. More than 500 Indian people were killed in three villages in the departments of Quiche and Huehuetenango on March 23. In addition, 100 people were slaughtered in three villages in Alta Verapaz between March 24 and March 27; 250 people, in three villages in Chimaltenango the first two weeks of April; 100, in the village of Nangal alone in Quiche on April 5; 193, in Rio Negro on April 15; 54, in Macalbaj on April 18; and 100, in Josefinos on April 20.
Machine guns, grenades, and machetes were used with sadistic abandon. Most of the victims were women and children. In Alta Alta Verapaz, home of the Kekchi Indians, more than 1,000 of the 2,500 communities in the province were abandoned or destroyed. Those communities that remained were decimated by losses. In one municipality, Santa Cristobal Verapaz, up to 10,000 of the 28,000 residents were believed by local authorities to have died. . .
". . .after meeting Rios Montt in Honduras later that month, President Reagan insisted that the regime was getting a bad deal from the accusations of massacres and deserved renewed military aid from the United States (which he granted the following month). Had not the White House received a flood of letters calling for renewed arms sales to Guatemala after Pat Robertson appealed to his 700 Culb television show for prayers and money for the regime?
- Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, HarperCollins Publisher, 1995, p. 818-19
It's about the oil:
Guatemala A-2-92 Oil License Project
Ceiba Petroleo S.A. (majority owned by Trinity Plumas Capital Corp.) is one of only nine companies engaged in oil and gas exploration and development in Guatemala.
The geologic patterns in Guatemala are similar to those in southern Mexico, where recent oil discoveries immediately west and northwest of Ceiba's concessions reinforce the optimism about Ceiba's holdings.
Guatemala is in the middle of the American portion of the Tethyan Belt, an ancient geologic feature that underlies 75% of the world's proven oil reserves. Although oil has been found in three sedimentary basins in Guatemala, none has been fully developed in the past because of regulatory, political and other constraints.
The license area covers 554,000 acres along the boundary of the Mexico-Guatemala thrustbelt and the southern Peten Basin. Recent discoveries in the general region have generated an increase in international interest.
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The Lord Genghis Christ, American God of War
Gospel Outreach gained notoriety when one of its elders, Gen. Rios Montt, became president of Guatemala during the 1982 military coup.
In Latin America, cultural transformation has been effected through the introduction of charismatic sects and, when necessary, terrorist operations. Please note in La Mafia Sects( Burn Fouchereau, La Mafia Sects (The Sect Mafia), "The Sects, Powerful Tool of the Secret Services" ) that æ‰umerous agents of U.S.A.I.D.?who learned the techniques of psychological warfare in Vietnam, were responsible for the success of Latin American operations:
They [the sects] are all made in the U.S.A. and are financed from the outside; they are the vehicles for inculcating an Anglo-Saxon cultural ideology, leading to adopting an American middle class model . . .
"[T]he experience acquired in Vietnam, thanks to the work done in population control, was exported to Latin America, and particularly to Guatemala, by numerous agents of A.I.D., and of other U.S. services. Certain sects were created by psychological warfare specialists and entrusted with control of the political forum and control of conscience." ---George Orwell could never have imagined anything more effective than this! . .
It is a fact that the foremost evangelical and charismatic sects have played a structural role in the dictatorships of Latin America. Sects such as The Church of the Word in Guatemala, or the Divine Universal Church, in Argentina, are directly linked to North American structures, such as the 700 Club (the real "seminary" for the formation of gurus, directed by the CIA), P.T.L. Television, founded by Pat Robertson in Virginia, Billy Graham Evangelist Association, World Vision International (all part of the sects?money stream).?26.
Which brings us to our next link between the Jesus Revolution and Latin America -- Gospel Outreach, a California-based sect that originated in the Jesus Movement. Gospel Outreach planted so many æˆl Verbo? churches [Church of the Word] in Latin America that a website devoted to Remembering the Jesus Movement classifies Gospel Outreach as a denomination, along with Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard. æ¥ith 100 affiliated churches worldwide the Gospel Outreach network is one of three denominational legacies of the Jesus People Movement.? 27.
Gospel Outreach gained notoriety when one of its elders, Gen. Rios Montt, became president of Guatemala during the 1982 military coup.
By 1982, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was well-entrenched in Guatemala. In 1954, the CIA had joined with the United Fruit Company, wealthy plantation owners and the military to overthrow the freely-elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz. A protracted civil war ensued in this country through the 1970s, which took a turn for the worse in the early 1980's, at which time the Guatemalan army, backed by the CIA, began a campaign of genocide against the Maya peoples. Several hundred Indian villages were obliterated and their inhabitants were either killed or forced into exile in Mexico. 28. Altogether, the Guatemalan war claimed over 200,000 lives, mostly Mayan civilians. According to a recent U.N report, at least 626 massacres took place during the country's 36-year war and, in recent years, 125 massacre sites have been exhumed. Most of the victims were Maya Indians. Only two court trials have been conducted in which state prosecutors filed criminal charges and only one of these cases led to convictions. In 1998, three former members of an army-trained civilian patrol were sentenced to death for their role in a 1982 massacre of 130 civilians outside the town of Rio Negro. 29.
The rise of El Verbo Church elder, Rios Montt, to President of Guatemala in 1982, the terrorist operations of his regime and his support among leading U.S. evangelical ministers are documented in the Public Information Research Database file on Gospel Outreach:
"Gospel Outreach is an evangelical Pentecostal church with headquarters in Eureka, California and Guatemala. It grew out of the 'Jesus People' movement of the 1960s in the United States. . After the 1976 earthquake, 28 Gospel Outreach evangelicals from California arrived in Guatemala to help rebuild the country and establish El Verbo church.
"An early convert was General Efrain Rios Montt, who became president after a military coup in March 1982.
"According to the Latin American Institute of Transnational Studies, 'Within the first nine months of Rios Montt's administration, 12 evangelical pastors were assassinated; 69 were kidnapped; 45 disappeared; 15 were jailed; 11 foreign missionaries were expelled; 88 evangelical temples were destroyed; and 50 more were occupied by the Army.' By 1986, Verbo Ministries reported 250 congregations. Verbo Ministries also runs a Leadership Training School with over 1000 members directed by Rios Montt himself. . .
"Rios Montt has been supported by Pat Robertson (Christian Broadcasting Network), Jerry Falwell (Moral Majority, Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty Federation), and Loren Cunningham (Youth with a Mission). They have worked with the Florida Cuban community. . . Jimmy Swaggart Ministries has provided financial support for the schools of El Verbo in Guatemala. This is done under the æ…žrograma Ayuda Infantile,?a branch of the Swaggart ministry.?30.
Pat Robertson's organization funded Gospel Outreach to help Rios Montt build æ†odel villages?for the Guatemalan peasants. These model villages were, like the Jesus Movement, was based on communitarianism,a system of church-centered community ownership of property that vaguely would include private ownership of homes and land.31. Gospel Outreach fundraising arm in the U.S., International Love Lift, was able to raise $1.5 million for Rios Montt's program. The authors of Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, describe the fruit of Gospel Outreach which turned out not to be model villages, but a genocidal campaign that was perpetuated largely because of Evangelical funding and petitions to President Reagan:
The irony of [Gospel Outreach] name was outranked only by the name of its fund-raising arm in the United States, which was endorsed by TV evangelist Pat Robertson: International Love Lift. . .
Love was beginning to take on a strange look . . .
Within three months of Rios Montt's self-declaratoin as model choice, in June 1982, Amnesty International would issue a special report, Massive Extrajudicial Executions in Rural Areas Under the Government of General Efrain Rios Montt. Its partial listing of massacres, totaling more than sixty, included one village where survivors witnessed soldiers beheading men, battering children's heads against rocks, and raping women. More than 500 Indian people were killed in three villages in the departments of Quiche and Huehuetenango on March 23. In addition, 100 people were slaughtered in three villages in Alta Verapaz between March 24 and March 27; 250 people, in three villages in Chimaltenango the first two weeks of April; 100, in the village of Nangal alone in Quiche on April 5; 193, in Rio Negro on April 15; 54, in Macalbaj on April 18; and 100, in Josefinos on April 20.
machine guns, grenades, and machetes were used with sadistic abandon. Most of the victims were women and children. In Alta Alta Verapaz, home of the Kekchi Indians, more than 1,000 of the 2,500 communities in the province were abandoned or destroyed. Those communities that remained were decimated by losses. In one municipality, Santa Cristobal Verapaz, up to 10,000 of the 28,000 residents were believed by local authorities to have died. . .
. . .after meeting Rios Montt in Honduras later that month, President Reagan insisted that the regime was æ…»etting a bad deal? from the accusations of massacres and deserved renewed military aid from the United States (which he granted the following month). Had not the White House received a flood of letters calling for renewed arms sales to Guatemala after Pat Robertson appealed to his 700 Club television show for prayers and money for the regime 32.
The Covert Action Information Bulletin reported in 1987 that the State of Israel, Guatemala's principle backer between 1977 and 1986, not only sponsored espionage and torture of Guatemalans, but employed members of Gospel Outreach's Verbo Church to assist their agents.
"Israel also installed computer surveillance equipment in Guatemala and, under the pretext of providing agricultural assistance, helped devise Rios Montt's 'beans and bullets strategic hamlets, modeled after the CIA's Operation Phoenix. . . [ed. note: "beans and bullets" refers to Rios Montt's policy, if you are with us, we will feed you; if not we will kill you."…
[Richard Paradise of Gospel Outreach] says he works under the auspices of the World Zionist Organization as a liaison with U.S. evangelicals, with the assigned role of working against anti-Semitism within the U.S. . . According to a special report entitled 'Sectas y Religiosidad en American Latina' published in October 1984 by the Chile-based Instituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Transnacionales, during Rios Montt's rule, members of Gospel Outreach's Verbo church took jobs in espionage and torture and accompanied Israeli and Argentinean experts during interrogation sessions." 33.
Israel's role was confirmed by a member of Israel's Knesset according to CIABASE files on Death Squads: "Guatemala, 1981-89. Israeli Knesset member General Peled said in Central America Israel is 'dirty work' contractor for U.S. Helped Guatemala regime when Congress blocked Reagan administration. Israeli firm Tadiran (then partly U.S.-owned) supplied Guatemalan military with computerized intelligence system to track potential subversives. Those on computer list had an excellent chance of being disappeared."
The following CIABASE records describe the CIA operation in Guatemala, courtesy of Reuters and The Nation:
Guatemala, 1954-95. U.S. Undercover agents have worked for decades inside a Guatemalan army unit that has tortured and killed thousands of Guatemalan citizens, per the Nation weekly magazine. "working out of the U.S. Embassy and living in safe houses and hotels, agents work through an elite group of Guatemalan officers who are secretly paid by CIA and implicated personally in numerous political crimes and assassinations ''unit known as G-2 and its secret collaboration with CIA were described by U.S. and Guatemalan operatives and confirmed by three former Guatemalan heads of state. Colonel Julio Roberto Alpirez, Guatemalan officer implicated in murders of guerrilla leader Efrain Bamaca Velasquez -- husband of an American lawyer -- and rancher Michael Devine discussed in an interview how intelligence agency advises and helps run G-2. He said agents came to Central American country often to train G-2 men and he described attending CIA sessions at G-2 bases on "contra-subversion'' tactics and "how to manage factors of power'' to "fortify democracy'' the Nation quoted U.S. and Guatemalan intelligence sources as saying at least three recent G-2 chiefs have been on CIA payroll -- General Edgar Godoy Gatan, Colonel Otto Perez Molina and General Francisco Ortega Menaldo. `It would be embarrassing if you ever had a roll call of everybody in Guatemalan army who ever collected a CIA paycheck,'' report quoted Colonel George Hooker, U.S. DIA chief in Guatemala from 1985 to 1989, as saying. Human rights group Amnesty International has said Guatemalan army killed more than 110,000 civilians since 1978 with G-2 and another unit called Archivo known as main death squads. Reuters, 3/30/1995
Guatemala, 1960-90. Human rights groups say at least 40,000 Guatemalans "disappeared" in last 3 decades. Most were poor Indians. Anthropologists, led by Clyde Snow, dug away at a village site. Maria Lopez had a husband and a son in one grave. She said on morning of Valentine's Day 1982, members of anti-guerrilla militia took her husband and others. They had refused to join militias known as civil self-defense patrols and were killed. Six unknown clandestine graves in San Jose Pacho. Human rights groups blame most disappearances on army-run civil self-defense patrols set up under presidencies of General Lucas Garcia and Brig. Gen. Rios Montt. There are hundreds of clandestine graves filled with victims of the militias, right-wing death squads and brutal counterinsurgency campaigns. Washington Times, 8/5/1992, p. A9
Another case of New Right leaders using their influence to support Latin American dictators was the promotion by Pat Robertson [CNP Pres. 1985-6] and Jerry Falwell of General Efrain Rios Montt, who became president of Guatemala after a bloody coup in 1982. Rios Montt, a convert of Gospel Outreach Verbo Ministries [which originated in the Jesus Movement, a CIA operation] expected to turn the Verbo Churches into a new political movement which would "moralize national life from the top down."
"Gospel Outreach is an evangelical Pentecostal church with headquarters in Eureka, California and Guatemala. It grew out of the 'Jesus People' movement of the 1960s in the United States. . .After the 1976 earthquake, 28 Gospel Outreach evangelicals from California arrived in Guatemala to help rebuild the country and establish El Verbo church. . .An early convert was General Efrain Rios Montt, who became president after a military coup in March 1982.
"According to the Latin American Institute of Transnational Studies, 'Within the first nine months of Rios Montt's administration, 12 evangelical pastors were assassinated; 69 were kidnapped; 45 disappeared; 5 were jailed; 11 foreign missionaries were expelled; 88 evangelical temples were destroyed; and 50 more were occupied by the Army." By 1986, Verbo Ministries reported 250 congregations. Verbo Ministries also runs a Leadership Training School with over 1000 members directed by Rios Montt himself.
"Rios Montt has been supported by Pat Robertson (Christian Broadcasting Network), Jerry Falwell (Moral Majority, Thomas Road Baptist Church, Liberty Federation), and Loren Cunningham (Youth with a Mission). . .Jimmy Swaggart Ministries has provided financial support for the schools of El Verbo in Guatemala. This is done under the "Programa Ayuda Infantile," a branch of the Swaggart ministry." 18.
- References
Waiting for the Full Truth About Guatemala
CIA reluctantly begins to lift the curtain on the full extent of its involvement in Guatemala, including the murder of U.S. citizens
Bitter Legacy
Throughout the Cold War, U.S. authorities sponsored a series of undercover operations whose central purpose was to contain the spread of communism in the Western Hemisphere. One such example of this was in Cuba, when during the Kennedy presidency the CIA offered the Mafia $150,000 to arrange for Castro's assassination. Covert operations, including kidnappings, tortures and political murders were an integral part of a interventionist policy which profoundly undermined Guatemala's possibilities of creating authentic democratic institutions during this period. Penetration and control of key figures in the Guatemalan army during this period was crucial to Washington's successful implementation of its game plan. During this epoch, not only did the CIA pay and train scores of major human rights abusers, but actually conspired in the creation of lists of civilian political targets to be later gunned down.
Council On Hemispheric Affairs
Founded in 1975, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), a nonprofit, tax-exempt independent research and information organization, was established to promote the common interests of the hemisphere, raise the visibility of regional affairs and increase the importance of the inter-American relationship, as well as encourage the formulation of rational and constructive U.S. policies towards Latin America.
COHA subscribes to no specific political credo nor does it maintain partisan allegiances. It supports open and democratic political processes just as it consistently has condemned authoritarian regimes of any stripe that fail to provide their populations with even minimal standards of political freedoms, economic and social justice, personal security and civic guarantees.
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John M. Chivington, Methodist minister and "Butcher of Sand Creek"
John M. Chivington was ordained by the Methodist Church in 1844 and soon began his long career as a minister. He accepted whatever assignment the church gave him, moving his family to Illinois in 1848 and then to Missouri the next year. Chivington was something of a frontier minister, usually establishing congregations, supervising the erection of churches, and often serving as a de facto law enforcement officer. For a time in 1853 he assisted in a Methodist missionary expedition to the Wyandot Indians in Kansas.
The Methodist Church sent Chivington to Omaha, Nebraska, where they remained until 1860, when he was made the presiding elder of the Rocky Mountain District of the Methodist Church and moved to Denver to build a church and found a congregation.
Chivington was a leading advocate of quick statehood for Colorado, and the likely Republican candidate for the state's first Congressional seat. In the midst of his blossoming political prospects, tensions between Colorado's burgeoning white population and the Cheyenne Indians reached a feverish pitch. The Denver newspaper printed a front-page editorial advocating the "extermination of the red devils" and urging its readers to "take a few months off and dedicate that time to wiping out the Indians."
Chivington took advantage of this dangerous public mood by blasting the territorial governor and others who counseled peace and treaty making with the Cheyenne. In August of 1864, he declared, "the Cheyennes will have to be roundly whipped -- or completely wiped out -- before they will be quiet. I say that if any of them are caught in your vicinity, the only thing to do is kill them."
From NORTHERN CHEYENNE NET
"Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians!" "I Have come to kill Indians and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians!" "Kill and scalp everyone, including infants, nits make lice!" These comments expressed the sentiment of Col. Chivington which led to the ultimate act of genocide at Sand Creek.
At dawn on November 29th, 1864, Colonel Chivington, a former Methodist minister, found the village and immediately setup and began raining down artillery into the village. Cheyenne Chief Black Kettle quickly raised the 6'x12' U.S. flag with a white truce flag underneath it to signify that they were a known peaceful band. The gift of the U.S. flag and instructions came from the U.S. representatives, including Peace-and-Friendship medals given to the Cheyenne Chiefs personally from the President of of the United States, Abraham Lincoln himself, none of this was deterrent in the appalling surprise attack. Most of the Cheyenne men were out hunting.
Despite the absolutely clear indication of friendship, the killing and butchery of elderly, woman and infants went, the carnage and brutality was unprecedented. The horse herds cut-off from the village, the survivors, many wounded and scantily clad fled on foot. The entire village burned to the ground, including the bodies of those slaughtered." The private parts of the elderly, woman children were paraded through Denver as trophies.
The following is from "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee" written by Dee Brown:
"On the morning of November 29, 1864, 600 Cheyenne and Arapahos camped on a bend of Sand Creek were awakened by the sound of charging hooves. Two thirds of these 600 were women and children as the government granted able bodied men to go east and hunt buffalo to feed their hungry families. Only 35 braves were in the camp. This made the ensuing charge all the more frightening for the women, children, elders, and remaining braves.
So great was the fear of the coming charge that men, women, and children ran from their lodges into the biting cold taking no time to fully dress. The partially dressed Indians began to gather under a huge American flag above Black Kettles lodge (Black Kettle was given the huge American flag and peace medals by Abraham Lincoln and Colonel A. B. Greenwood in Washington only a year earlier and was told that as long as the American flag was above them, no one would be harmed). The braves present surrounded the women and children gathered under the flag. At 8:00 am more than 700 cavalry men under the command of Colonel John M. Chivington and Major Scott J. Anthony, rode in and fired on the huddled Indians from two directions. After the initial charge the US soldiers dismounted and continued the indiscriminate killing of men, women, and children. During the killing unspeakable atrocities and mutilations were committed by the soldiers. Accounts from two white men, John S. Smith and Lieutenant James Connor, described the acts of dehumanization."
According to John S. Smith, Colonel Chivington knew these Indians to be peaceful before the massacre. Smith witnessed, as did helpless Indian mothers and fathers, young children having their sex organs cut away. U.S. soldiers mutilated Native American women, cutting away their breasts and removing all other sex organs. After the Massacre, soldiers displayed the women's severed body parts on their hats and stretched them over their saddle-bows while riding in the ranks. The sex organs of every male were removed in the most grotesque manner. One soldier boasted that he would make a tobacco pouch with the removed privates of White Antelope, a respected elder. Conner witnessed a soldier displaying the body parts of a woman on a stick. The fingers of Indians were cut off to get at the rings on them. Connor remembered a baby only a few months old who had been hidden in the feed box of a wagon for protection. When the soldiers discovered the baby some time later, the baby was thrown onto the frozen ground to die. In going over the site the next day, it was noted that every corpse was mutilated in some way, and scalped.
Two other men, Robert Bent and James Beckwourth were forced to ride with Chivington that morning. They recorded similar images. Beckwourth noted that before the massacre, White Antelope (age 75) ran out to meet the soldiers. He came running out to meet the command, holding up his hands and saying Stop! Stop! He spoke in as plain English as I can. He stopped and folded his arms until shot down. Bent remembered seeing the shooting of a little girl carrying a white flag. He also remembered seeing an Indian woman on the ground whose leg had been shattered by a shell. As she lay helpless, a soldier drew his saber, breaking the arm she had risen in defense. She then rolled over on her other side. The soldier did not leave until breaking her other arm with his saber, whereupon he left without killing her. Bent saw a pregnant woman who had been cut open and disemboweled. Her unborn child lay mutilated almost beyond human recognition beside her. Quite a number of mothers were slain; still clinging to their babies. Such was the scene that cold gray morning at Sand Creek, November 29, 1864.
Although Chivington was eventually brought up on court-martial charges for his involvement in the massacre, he was no longer in the U.S. Army and could therefore not be punished. No criminal charges were ever filed against him. An Army judge, however, publicly stated that Sand Creek was "a cowardly and cold-blooded slaughter, sufficient to cover its perpetrators with indelible infamy, and the face of every American with shame and indignation."
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BIOLOGICAL WARFARE
Historian Francis Parkman, in "The Conspiracy of Pontiac" (Vol 2, pgs 39-40, in the new Bison edition) discussed the proposal to use smallpox as a weapon against the Indians. The idea, apparently, came from Lord Amherst, in a letter of orders to Col Bouquet, saying "Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occassion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them". Bocquet replied that he would try and use infected blankets as a means of introducing the disease among the Indians, but was wary of the effects that it would have on his own men. Bouquet then proposes using- in "the Spanish method"- a combination of hunting dogs, rangers and light horsemen, in an effort to "effectually extirpate or remove that vermin" at little risk to his own men. Amherst readily agreed, hoping that the use of smallpox infested blankets, as well as any other method be used that "can serve to extirpate this execrable race", although he did not think that the hunting dog idea was practical. A smallpox epidemic raged among the Ohio Indians "a few months after" the July 1763 correspondence.
Lord Jeffrey Amherst was commanding general of British forces in North America during the final battles of the so-called French & Indian war (1754-1763). He won victories against the French to acquire Canada for England and helped make England the world's chief colonizer at the conclusion of the Seven Years War among the colonial powers (1756-1763).
The town of Amherst, Massachusetts, was named for Lord Jeff even before he became a Lord. Amherst College was later named after the town. It is said the local inhabitants who formed the town preferred another name, Norwottuck, after the Indians whose land it had been; the colonial governor substituted his choice for theirs. Frank Prentice Rand, in his book, The Village of Amherst: A Landmark of Light [Amherst, MA: Amherst Historical Society, 1958], says that at the time of the naming, Amherst was "the most glamorous military hero in the New World. ... ...the name was so obvious in 1759 as to be almost inevitable." [p. 15]
The British Manuscript Project
The documents provided here are among Amherst's letters and other papers microfilmed as part of the British Manuscript Project, 1941-1945, undertaken by the United States Library of Congress during World War II. The project was designed to preserve British historical documents from possible war damage. There are almost three hundred reels of microfilm on Amherst alone.
The microfilm is difficult to read, and paper copies even harder. Nonetheless, the images obtained by scanning the copies are sufficiently clear for online viewing. The images are of key excerpts from the letters. An index is provided to show by document number the location of these images in the microfilm set. Ascii text of the excerpts is also provided.
These are the key letters:
Colonel Henry Bouquet to General Amherst, , dated 13 July 1763, suggests in a postscript the distribution of blankets to "inocculate the Indians"; Amherst to Bouquet, dated 16 July 1763, approves this plan in a postscript and suggests as well as "to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race." (This postcript spans two pages.) These letters also discuss the use of dogs to hunt the Indians, the so-called "Spaniard's Method," which Amherst approves in principle, but says he cannot implement because there are not enough dogs. In a letter dated 26 July 1763, Bouquet acknowledges Amherst's approval and writes, "all your Directions will be observed."
Historian Francis Parkman, in his book The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada [Boston: Little, Brown, 1886] refers to a postscript in an earlier letter from Amherst to Bouquet wondering whether smallpox could not be spread among the Indians: Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them. [Vol. II, p. 39 (6th edition)] I have not found this letter, but there is a letter from Bouquet to Amherst, dated 23 June 1763, three weeks before the discussion of blankets to the Indians, stating that Captain Ecuyer at Fort Pitt (to which Bouquet would be heading with reinforcements) has reported smallpox in the Fort. This indicates at least that the writers knew the plan could be carried out. Several other letters from the summer of 1763 show the smallpox idea was not an anomaly. The letters are filled with comments that indicate a genocidal intent, with phrases such as: "...that Vermine ... have forfeited all claim to the rights of humanity" (Bouquet to Amherst, 25 June)
"I would rather chuse the liberty to kill any Savage...." (Bouquet to Amherst, 25 June)
"...Measures to be taken as would Bring about the Total Extirpation of those Indian Nations" (Amherst to Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of the Northern Indian Department, 9 July)
"...their Total Extirpation is scarce sufficient Attonement...." (Amherst to George Croghan Deputy Agent for Indian Affairs, 7 August)
"...put a most Effectual Stop to their very Being" (Amherst to Johnson, 27 August; emphasis in original).
Amherst's correspondence during this time includes many letters on routine matters, such as officers who are sick or want to be relieved of duty; accounts of provisions on hand, costs for supplies, number of people garrisoned; negotiations with provincial governors (the army is upset with the Pennsylvania assembly, for example, for refusing to draft men for service); and so on. None of these other letters show a deranged mind or an obsession with cruelty. Amherst's venom was strictly reserved for Indians.
An additional source of information on the matter is the Journal of William Trent, commander of the local militia of the townspeople of Pittsburgh during Pontiac's seige of the fort. This Journal has been described as "... the most detailed contemporary account of the anxious days and nights in the beleaguered stronghold." [Pen Pictures of Early Western Pennsylvania, John W. Harpster, ed. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1938).]
Trent's entry for May 24, 1763, includes the following statement: "... we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect.
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Think About It
By Charles Buffalo
Do I know what biochemical warfare is, yes, it was smallpox in a blanket. Do I know of massacres, yes, Sand Creek and Wounded Knee come quickly to mind. And of terrorist attacks, how about the many villages burned in the night and the wanton slaughter of the men, women and children who attempted to escape the flames. Before anyone attempts to remind me that I am speaking of the past, let me continue, as admittedly these things all took place over a hundred years ago on this continent at the hands of the U.S. Military.
Perhaps I should speak of more recent times, and point to the men, women and children bombed out of their apartment and hospital beds throughout Yugoslavia in 1999. That merits terrorism in my mind. And maybe the depleted uranium that contaminates the soil throughout the Balkans as a result of the bombings will suffice for my knowledge of biochemical warfare. I am not exactly sure how to classify the more than 300,000 children, not to mention innocent adults, who have perished from lack of food or medicine in Iraq thanks to U.S. demanded sanctions.
I realize that many of these issues are not made available though U.S. media, and would be dismissed as just propaganda if I were to relate my sources as that of foreign media. However, this has not been the case. My information comes from having personally met with some of the people who lived through this, and are suffering its results yet today. The pain is in their eyes as they tell of these atrocities, so I know them to be true. Just as I have also spoken with some who actually witnessed the retaliatory strike at the WTC, and that same look was in their eyes as well. Thanks to the blanket coverage of that and the strike against the Pentagon, I was able to see a bit of what the WTC witnesses had experienced. Still, it was the look in their eyes that told more than could any media footage.
Retaliatory strikes, yes, precisely. And without the massive loss of children抯 lives I might add. A message to the American people, not only to wake them up to what is happening throughout the world thanks to the greed and desire to control of Corporate America, and also to let the people feel what it is like to have the loss of innocent lives resulting from it. Of course those lives were sufficiently downgraded to collateral loss with the Administration抯 declaration of war. That is how the innocents are labeled in other lands, collateral damages of war. I am sure most of us have been made well aware of that through the slanted media coverage we have received throughout the years.
That does not mean that I do not have sympathy for some of the victims at the WTC. After all, there were establishments such as bookstores and other non-corporate ventures there. I would be the first to say that those poor souls were indeed innocent victims. However, my feelings are not as strong when regarding those who were part of the American Corporate structure, regardless of how naive they may have been to the destructive entity that was their employer. In their case, it was almost like some of what has been done throughout the world by the Corporate structure having come back around. As for victims at the Pentagon, civilian or not, they were a part of the U.S. military machine, and military targets are legitimate targets. Keeping in mind that this has been declared war, I recall the same being said about the four-hundred plus civilians huddled in that Iraqi bunker. A justified strike because it was a military target.
Today I look around me and see all sorts of flag waving. Flags hang where I have never seen them before, on cars, porch fronts, from buildings and even on different matters of clothing. I recognize the right of each individual to express their feelings or belief, though find it a bit amusing that when such actions are carried out by those in foreign lands, especially when against the U.S., they are looked upon with disdain. In those countries I take note that it all ends in a day or two, and is not prolonged for better than a month as has been the case here. But then with the media blitz that Americans receive daily I suppose it is little wonder that it continues. When these actions are carried out in foreign lands, it generally has to do with intrusions by the U.S. Sometimes, as in the case here, it has to do with lost or threatened lives. Regardless of where it is taking place, it is the same response as that demonstrated by Americans today. Actions carried out by individuals, expressing their feelings. Individuals, no more or less human than Americans.
I know of no other people who can hate as well as Americans can. They have a long history of it, their hatred against the American Indian people, the Japanese-Americans in WWII, most ethnic minorities, and right up to any turban wearing individuals today. It is probably in their best interest that those assaulting the U.S. possibly don抰 feel this way, otherwise everyone displaying an American Flag would become a target. And without doubt, those who would carry out such assaults are already here. This continent has had some of the worst immigration policies dating all the way back to 1492. The increased so called security measures being instituted throughout the country are only further restrictions on person freedom, but the scared masses do not seem to be aware of it.
Many Americans today just can抰 understand why anyone would wish to bring harm upon this land or its people. I think this mainly because we have all been told since childhood that this Nation is a benefactor to the world. It is not human nature to hate that which benefits you, so the actions of so many in protest of the U.S. and its policies should say something in itself. If so many people in so many nations have hatred towards the U.S. there must be a reason.
The U.S. is the biggest supplier of armament in the world, and presently the major dictator of global policy everywhere. A self appointed champion of human rights, yet foremost in the condemnation of individual choice in lifestyles, suppressor of religions, not to mention the greatest at denying the needs of its poor and homeless within its own bounds. That is not to say that the American government does not provide certain needs abroad, without question the U.S. provides more to other countries than does any other Nation in the world. However, the Corporate strings are always attached. And when Corporate demands are not satisfied, the U.S. military is called in to assure them.
"I know your race. It is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it. The vast majority of the race, whether savage or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggressive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert themselves. Think of it! " Those are the words of Mark Twain from his work, The Mysterious Stranger, published in 1916, and how fitting those words are today. I have often referred to the American people as "sheepeople." and coming across this statement explained my reasoning for it better than I ever could myself. And now there is a concern about Anthrax? Is there an underlying message here?
It is most unfortunate that Americans are brought up to accept what they are told, and even more unfortunate that most do not attempt to look into issues more deeply. Sadly too many are just content to graze on the abundance that is placed before them, no other country with exception to maybe France has such an abundant supply of consumer goods available to its citizens. I think that one of the things that trouble me is that here, in the greatest country in the world, rather than its resources being directed towards the good of mankind, they continue to feed the greed machine, at a cost to those who would have no part of it. Now, more than ever, it is time for Americans to start looking into matters. Because for the first time in the history of the Nation retribution has found its way to U.S. soil.
In the early days of the present situation, the Administration made a statement that did not set well with me. It went something like, you are either with us, or against us. In other words, I, like everyone else, had the option of either approving of the military assaults or finding themselves aligned against. I don抰 have a problem with selectively removing those who are labeled terrorists, but know very well that when bombs and rockets are unleashed, innocents are killed. One instance of this has already been admitted, how many have not? I am most uncomfortable as well with the secrecy in which this so called war is being carried out, and feel that it is everyone抯 right to know what is being done considering that this time future reprisals are certain to be carried out here.
I can抰 go along with it. So I suppose that leaves me with no option but to be against. I would much rather be labeled expatriate than to be considered favorable to such barbarous endeavors.
America is the strongest Nation in the world today, why not make it one that can go down in history as the one that brought about that goodness instead of being the one that in many ways continues to be the cause. I have no use for extremists, be they Muslim or Christian, but I do feel that individuals, especially children, have the right to live peacefully in the world Creator made for them. I am sickened at the thought of any of them being extinguished by joy stick jockeys thousands of feet above, just as I am at the thought that they might be come victims to biological or other assault. I am disheartened that as Malcolm X once said, it appeared that the chicken has come home to roost, but sense that it has. I have met with people who have endured terrorism and aggression for over a decade, and have since become to see it as a way of life and have become hardened to it. I don抰 want to see the day that Americans become the same way, as they have with the senseless killings that already fill the news. My idea of living is not having the opportunity to see part of the neighborhood and the people in it turned to cinders before my own eyes. Call me a Dreamer, or just an old fool, but I believe that global harmony can be a reality if we are willing to bring about the change. If we stop for a minute, forget about ourselves and the abundance that surrounds us and think of those less fortunate throughout the world, demand that our leadership listen to us instead of the Corporate machine that dictates them, then it can happen. Destroying the lives of others is not the answer, and can only bring about further reprisals against the people of this Land.
Think About It.
Charles Buffalo
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FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
Former FBI Agent and Member of Congress Rebukes FBI
Former FBI agent and member of Congress, Don Edwards, made a statement condemning the FBI's opposition to clemency. "The FBI used Mr. Peltier as a scapegoat and they continue to do so today. At every step of the way, FBI agents and leadership have opposed any admission of wrongdoing by the government, and they have sought to misrepresent and politicize the meaning of clemency for Leonard Peltier. The killing of FBI agents at Pine Ridge was reprehensible, but the government now admits that it cannot prove that Mr. Peltier killed the agents."
Former BIA Employee Comes Forward with Testimony
about Pine Ridge Reign of Terror
On December 20, Paul Berg, a former BIA empoyee who worked on Pine Ridge and witnessed the Pine Ridge reign of terror came forward with lengthy testimony about what he experienced in a letter supporting clemency for Leonard Peltier.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Advocates Clemency in Letter to President
The Human Rights Commission is the second largest body of the United Nations and Mary Robinson is the most important figure in international human rights. She wrote her letter after the United Nations Workshop on Indigenous Media unanimously supported Peltier and asked her to intervene.
Peltier Case Raised During Clinton's Visit to Ireland
During Bill Clinton's visit to Ireland, Nobel Laureate and European Parliament Member, John Hume as well as Sinn Fein's Jerry Adams, raised Peltier's case in face-to-face meetings with the President. The Irish Government confirmed that their Ambassador in Washington has raised the Peltier case with the White House and that President Clinton has confirmed that he will review the clemency request before he leaves office.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune Editorial Board
Supports Peltier Bid for Clemency
On December 2, 2000 the Editorial Board of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune favored a bid for clemency for Leonard Peltier. The paper stated, " If Clinton concludes that Peltier did exactly what the prosecutors said he did on June 26, 1975, there is still a credible case to be made for clemency. And if he concludes, as so many others have done, that the government exaggerated Peltier箂 culpability, that case becomes compelling."
Former Quebec Justice Questions Legality of Peltier Extradition
After an inquiry into Leonard Peltier‚ 1976 extradition from Canada, Fred Kaufman, a former Quebec justice, concluded that testimony used against Peltier was falsified. A key witness, Myrtle Poor Bear, admits she was threatened into stating that she witnessed the shooting and never actually saw Peltier shoot an agent. Justice Kaufman recently wrote President Clinton urging the release of Peltier based on the "grounds that Peltier's‚ extradition and subsequent conviction in the murders are now highly questionable." The letter was turned over to the U.S. Embassy, along with additional informational materials on Monday. (source: Toronto Star,12/12/00)
Here is the address by which you can write to Leonard Peltier and send him words of encouragement:
USPL
Leonard Peltier #89637-132
PO Box 1000
Leavenworth, KS 66048
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The 1849 agreement between California territorial and federal governments provided $1,000,000 for the arming and supply of persons who would seek out and destroy Native American families. The campaign promised all "plunder" and horses taken from the Indians which will be the vigilante's bonus.
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Image from Nazi Germany
Image from America
"Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America"
The exhibit, features 40 photographs showing corpses of young black men and women hanging from pine trees, telephone poles and, in one case, a theater stage. One shows a young man being burned at the stake. Most of the images - primarily captured by amateur photographers - show white people posing next to the victims, smiling.
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Eugenics: North Carolina Gave Great Power to Eugenics Panel
North Carolina Gov. Michael Easley Apologizes for State's Past
"WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. From 1929 to 1974, North Carolina ran one of the nation's largest and most aggressive human sterilization programs, approving more than 7,600 sterilizations.
More than 30 states had similar programs, but unlike most, North Carolina dramatically expanded the program after 1945, targeted blacks in the general population and gave social workers the power to recommend sterilization, according to sealed records obtained by the Winston-Salem Journal.
The state approved 90 percent of the sterilization petitions it received.
"That's quite astounding," said Steve Selden, a professor at the University of Maryland and author of "Inheriting Shame: the Story of Eugenics & Racism in America."
Paul A. Lombardo, director of the Program in Law and Medicine at the University of Virginia's Center for Biomedical Ethics, said North Carolina was "a unique example."
Lombardo is an expert on the 1927 Buck v. Bell case in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Virginia's sterilization statute, clearing the way for tens of thousands of sterilizations nationwide. Under the banner of eugenics, Virginia forcibly sterilized about 8,000 people.
The Journal examined records from about 7,000 North Carolina cases. Among the findings:
*North Carolina law allowed three reasons for sterilization: epilepsy, sickness and feeble-mindedness. But those who ran the sterilization program often approved sterilization based on a number of other things, from alleged promiscuity to homosexuality.
*From the program's start in 1929 to 1940, 79 percent of those sterilized were white, but by the late 1960s, more than 60 percent were black.
*More than 2,000 people 18 and younger were sterilized in many questionable cases, including a 10-year-old who was castrated. Many children were sterilized over the objections of their parents, and the process for gaining the parents' consent was often a sham.
*Doctors sometimes performed sterilizations without state authorization, and the state backdated its approval in violation of its policy.
*Individual counties engaged in illegal sterilization campaigns beyond the state program.
*The program was run by the Eugenics Board of North Carolina, a panel of five bureaucrats who usually decided cases in a few minutes. It was inspired by the eugenics movement, which claimed that mental illness, genetic defects and social ills eventually could be eliminated by sterilization.
The system granted excessive power to social workers, browbeat women into being sterilized and had ineffective safeguards, the board's records show.
Many of the program's more than 7,600 victims are still alive, and they bear witness to a bureaucracy that trampled on the rights of the poor and the powerless.
"I think I'm sort of still hiding," said Elaine Riddick Jessie, of Atlanta, who was sterilized in Edenton in 1968, "but there's nothing I can do. It made me dislike myself. And I don't ever think I can like myself."
But the picture presented by the Eugenics Board files is not a simple one, said Johanna Schoen, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa who gave the Journal access to most of the records that she was allowed to copy more than 10 years ago. Since that time, the N.C. State Archives has declined other requests, including the Journal's, and the records are officially closed to the public.
"This view that we often have of sterilization - and particularly eugenic sterilization - of just being this evil thing that the state does got extremely complicated once I was confronted with these individual stories," Schoen said.
"There are stories of the state doing incredible evil, and then there are stories of women who really want the sterilization, and then there are stories of women and men who are so mentally ill that they really are totally unable to take care of children."
California led the nation with more than 21,000 sterilizations; Virginia was second and North Carolina third.
The eugenicists' views of human heredity were embraced by Virginia leaders in adopting racist statutes for policing the color line and preserving white racial purity. Earlier this year, Virginia became the first state to apologize for its sterilization program.
On May 2, the 75th anniversary of the Buck v. Bell decision, Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner delivered a written apology, saying the eugenics movement "was a shameful effort in which state government never should have been involved."
The apology followed examination of Virginia's eugenics history by scholars and the news media, including a series by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In addition, the legislature adopted a resolution expressing "profound regret" in 2001.
North Carolina Gov. Michael F. Easley apologized last week for his state's eugenics program, Oregon Gov. John A. Kitzhaber apologized earlier this month for that state's program. Many states that had sterilization programs have lost the records or, in Oregon's case, destroyed them.
Schoen said that in her close examination of more than 7,000 of North Carolina's records, she found just 446 cases in which the patient clearly desired the operation.
While almost all of the sterilization petitions showed the "consent" of a relative, patient or guardian, Schoen said, "you can't talk about this consent being freely given." Patients in state institutions were told that they had to agree to sterilization as a condition of release, and in many cases people on welfare were threatened with loss of benefits, she said.
Whether people were sterilized often revolved around the attitude of an individual social worker. As a result, some counties did large numbers of sterilizations, while others did almost none.
Medical and legal experts say a debate over the eugenics movement is not just one for the history books.
"The ethical issues that were raised by eugenics are likely to be the very same ethical issues that are being raised with genetic research, now and in the future," said Selden, the University of Maryland professor.
"They didn't have the technology [then] to achieve their goals. We do." " (Kevin Begos and Peter Hardin, Richmond Times-Dispatch, December 15, 2002)
Kevin Begos is a staff writer for the Winston-Salem Journal.
Times-Dispatch Washington correspondent Peter Hardin contributed to this report.
Posted on Tue, Dec. 10, 2002
N.C.'s eugenics record revealed
Report: State program ranked 3rd in number of sterilizations
Associated Press
WINSTON-SALEM - North Carolina had one of the nation's most aggressive and longest-running eugenics programs, sterilizing 7,600 people -- including 2,000 children -- between 1929 and 1974.
Copies of secret state documents, examined and reported by the Winston-Salem Journal, revealed the extent of the influence exerted by the Eugenics Board of North Carolina.
North Carolina ranks third in the nation in numbers of sterilizations done through the program, the newspaper report said.
Until recently, few details were known about how the Eugenics Board operated or the nature of cases it handled. The Winston-Salem Journal obtained thousands of documents copied 10 years ago by Johanna Schoen, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa.
Among the documents, the newspaper reported it found:
?nbsp;More than 2,000 people 18 and younger were sterilized in many questionable cases, including a 10-year-old who was castrated.
?nbsp;The program was racially balanced in the early years, but by the late 1960s more than 60 percent of those sterilized were black; 99 percent were women.
?nbsp;Doctors performed sterilizations without authorization, and the Eugenics Board backdated approval.
?nbsp;Major eugenics research at Wake Forest University was paid for by a patron who had a racial agenda that included a visit to a 1935 Nazi eugenics conference and extensive efforts to overturn key civil-rights legislation.
The Wake Forest University School of Medicine has begun investigating its role in the eugenics movement.
More than 30 states had sterilization programs, but North Carolina's expansion after 1945, when most other states had rejected the science, and its targeting of blacks made it different than most, experts say.
"That's quite astounding," said Steve Selden, professor at the University of Maryland and author of "Inheriting Shame: the Story of Eugenics & Racism in America."
The program was run by the state Eugenics Board, a panel of five people who usually decided cases within a few minutes.
Supporters of the eugenics movement claimed sterilization could eliminate mental illness, genetic defects and social ills.
"They don't want to hear how I feel, or what's going on in my mind. You're pregnant -- you need to get sterilization," said Nial Cox Ramirez, recalling her sterilization in 1965 after having a child out of wedlock. "And they had the nerve to tell me, `That's what's best for you.' "
Since Schoen obtained her copies of the records 10 years ago, the N.C. Office of History and Archives has denied other requests, and the records are officially closed to the public.
"I think the problem is that there are cases where sterilization was the solution -- but sterilization authorized by the Eugenics Board is never the solution," Schoen said.
California led the nation with more than 20,000 sterilizations; Virginia was second with about 8,000, and North Carolina third.
North Carolina's eugenics law, allowed three reasons for sterilization: epilepsy, sickness and feeble-mindedness.
But the board almost routinely approved sterilizations for reasons from promiscuity to homosexuality.
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