The Globalization of Terror — Peddlers of the Old, New Democracy — Part 3

On December 2, 2001 in Brattleboro, Vermont, lifetime peace activist and social worker Robert Woodward died in a "bizarre" and "unfortunate" incident after frantically begging a Unitarian Universalist church congregation for sanctuary from the CIA, FBI and police. Having at one point allegedly waved a four-inch penknife at his eye—threatening to take only his own life—Woodward was shot seven times by police. Well, some of us have learned that "protection of the public," sorry to say, means protection from the police. Woodward’s death, scary to say, rings all the bells of political assassination.

Some of us know these things, and we are as sure as goats are goats. But in the free market of global terror, where pigs are horses, girls are boys, and war is peace, who will convince the people that they have been so undemocratically duped by decades of corporate propaganda? Who will show them that the perception managers have mismanaged their rights and freedoms? Who will tell them that Edward Neys, a director of Burson-Marsteller, Washington’s most powerful and secretive public relations firm, is also a director of the Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation? Would the people even listen? Would they care?

Burson-Marsteller is a billion-dollar company that covered for the Nigerian oil barons and Shell Oil during the Biafran War. They covered for Babcock & Wilcox and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor melted down and irradiated the American landscape. They massaged the public and managed their perceptions as the Exxon Valdez supertanker greased the Alaskan wilderness with black crude. Burson-Marsteller has run public relations campaigns to shield extensive, state-orchestrated terror by the "governments" of Argentina, Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Singapore. That is a short list. The people of India, not to be forgotten, might appreciate the news that Burson-Marsteller covered for Union Carbide after the gas massacre in Bhopal (1984).

When the World Trade destruction site was blocked to firefighters determined to rescue and evacuate victims, the principals of power and profit insured that some $200 million in gold and silver buried beneath the rubble was immediately recovered. Who will tell the people that this was the gold from Canada’s Bank of Nova Scotia? That Barrick Gold Corporation is a Canadian company? That Barrick’s directors include former Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney, former U.S. Senator Howard Baker, and former U.S. President and CIA director George Bush, Sr.?

Now, would that be the gold that Barrick pillaged from the people of Chile—after the CIA coup that overthrew the Allende government? Or from the people of Indonesia—where East Timor was invaded and hundreds of thousands of people’s lives were destroyed under the pro-U.S. Suharto regime? (This to deny their autonomous aspirations and to insure deep-sea access for U.S. submarines primed for nuclear war and pooping nuclear waste.) Or is that the gold from the Kilo Moto gold fields that Barrick controls in Congo?

These are the questions we would like the American journalists in the Washington briefing rooms to ask the charismatic Donald Rumsfeld. Instead they grovel and drool, for the most banal, condescending abuse, censoring themselves beyond the absurd. They run with the pack, fight over scraps, and prostitute themselves for their paychecks and perks and the great American dream. And as Donald Rumsfeld’s ratings soar, the Pentagon proclaims the people’s love for a new brand of leader—the Secretary of War—who is "dead honest." This is what the American people hunger for. A leader who is "dead honest."

When the "Maoist" resistance in Nepal blows up a Coca Cola plant, some people rejoice. It may be remembered that one of the directors of Coke is also a director of Elf Aquitaine, that Elf is about oil, secret weapons deals, the ruthless and unaccountable French-trained "Cobra" militias in Central African Republic—about raw materials and ruthless dictators and Uzebecki warlords.

We know that U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was president of Halliburton Corporation as late as 2000. Halliburton and subsidiary Brown & Root count among their trophies some of the most prized contracts in the globalization of terror. Brown & Root operated in Rwanda to consolidate the power of the U.S.-supported Rwandan Patriotic Front and its leader and now President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame—who was trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. With U.S. covert forces and their psych-ops and intelligence and counter-insurgency training—synonyms all for lethal, unaccountable force and unmitigated loss of life—Halliburton underwrote the two subsequent U.S.-supported invasions of Zaire/ Congo (1996/ 1998). And, since 1998, over 3 million people have died in Congo. Dead honest.

Now there are 2,000 U.S. Special Forces and additional U.S. troops of the 10th Mountain Division stationed at a former Soviet military base in Karshi, Uzebekistan. One needn’t turn over too many stones to expose the Halliburton snakes behind the bulldozers and cement paving the runways of Asia’s mountain fiefdoms.