The Catholic Church’s Lost Hope

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/03/the-catholic-churchs-lost-hope/

March 6, 2013

A half century ago, the Catholic Church had a chance for reform in the Second Vatican Council, with a young advocate in Joseph Ratzinger. But reactionary popes shunted reform aside, with Ratzinger later joining them as Pope Benedict XVI. That lost hope has put the Church in today’s crisis, says the Rev. Paul Surlis.

By the Rev. Paul Surlis

A Church with a “disfigured” face. That is Pope Benedict XVI’s description of how the Catholic Church sometimes is seen because “of sins against the unity of the church.” He said this in his last public Mass, but he offered no reflections on the role he himself played in this disfigurement, especially by his consistent refusal since around 1968 to embrace the structural changes and progressive teachings endorsed for the Church by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

Benedict, as Joseph Ratzinger, an expert at the council, explained and enthusiastically endorsed the reforming trends of the council. After each of the council’s four sessions, Dr. Ratzinger wrote a pamphlet-length account of what had transpired during the preceding session and these reflections were subsequently collected in a book,Theological Highlights of Vatican II.

Pope Benedict XVI, the former Joseph Ratzinger. (Photo credit: Kancelaria Prezydenta RP)

Long out of print the book was republished fairly recently by Paulist Press and it provides us with  an excellent guide to the council’s teachings from which unfortunately Dr. Ratzinger has retreated. He conveniently ignored the fact that an ecumenical council canonically exercises “supreme power over the entire church,” as he himself expressed it.

One of the great structural changes envisaged by the council was a transition from a centralized, monarchical papacy where one person, the pope, assisted by the curial cardinals, has absolute power over the universal church to a church that would be governed by the bishops of the entire church in union with the pope. As the twelve apostles were with and under Peter, so the bishops should be with and under the pope. And, according to the council’s vision, the wisdom of the People of God, i.e. rank-and-file members of the Church, should always be consulted.
As part of collegiality it was intended that a synod representing the bishops of the universal church would be permanently in session and involved in church governance and would control the Curia, which would be forced to serve the pope and bishops as a civil service. However, the Curia reasserted itself after the council and now plays a dominant role in the universal Church.
A Failure at Reform
Vatican II’s deep structural changes have yet to be implemented, witness recent reports of corruption in the Curia. Fortunately, what these changes should entail is laid down in the section on collegiality in the Constitution on the Church (#22), in the formulation of which Dr. Ratzinger played a notable role.
A truly collegial church might well have avoided scandals and episcopal malfeasance in transferring priests guilty of sexual abuse, especially of minors, to conceal the wrongdoing, but unfortunately implementing collegiality and an independent synod of bishops is still a dead letter.
Pope John Paul II (1978-2005) made it clear at the outset of his papacy that the role of the bishops was to assist him in his ministry, not to exercise any sort of independent governance with and under him as the council envisaged. Coincidentally, the emphasis on reasserting absolute obedience to Paul VI’s condemnation of the use of contraceptives was as much about vindicating papal power as it was about the actual use of contraceptives.
Some national conferences of bishops reacted to dissension from Pope Paul’s teaching by stressing that decision-making about contraceptives was a matter of conscience for married couples, not simply one of unquestioning obedience. Even a controlling pope like John Paul II could not cause lay people to veer from a course on which more and more of them had begun to embark in the early 1960s. Still it appears that he deeply resented those episcopal conferences which endorsed the right in conscience to disagree with papal teaching.
And so, he too ignored in practice the council’s teaching on collegiality. He also curtailed the teaching role of national conferences of bishops because he disagreed with their consulting lay people as they formulated teaching on peace, nuclear weapons and economic justice, which were critical of some U.S. policies in these areas.
Backing Away
While Cardinal Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) from 1982-2005, there is little evidence that he urged John Paul to endorse the complete progressive agenda of the council.
Instead Cardinal Ratzinger targeted theologians for repressive surveillance, and he engendered a mood of fear and anxiety in theologians who were seeking to explore issues like the ordination of women and of married men in order to overcome a priest shortage that was depriving the People of God in many areas of ministry and especially of Eucharist to which they have a divine right.
Indeed, at one point Pope John Paul declared the issue of the ordination of women as definitively settled, something that was beyond his capacity to do. No one, not even a pope, can declare settled definitively or otherwise an issue that has just begun to be explored by theologians and historians and which the People of God were discerning prayerfully.
John Paul smuggled the aura of infallibility into a discussion where it did not belong. In reality, he was imposing his will on the Church, an exercise in a voluntarism (the will of the superior has the force of law) that has traditionally been rejected  in Catholic moral tradition. And in this John Paul was supported by Cardinal Ratzinger, who in his own papacy acted punitively towards proponents of the ordination of women.
There are no valid reasons in scripture or in the Church’s tradition that rule out the ordination of women. Women who were leaders in the Jesus movement routinely presided at liturgies and celebrated Eucharist, but today every effort is made to maintain the Church as a patriarchal community.
The anger displayed at the mention of the ordination of women reminds one of the hostility prejudiced whites in the South exhibited towards the struggle for rights for African-Americans and in both cases it was maintenance of the power structure – in one case white supremacist and in the other patriarchal – that was at stake.
Ratzinger’s Reversal
A burning question is why did Dr. Ratzinger turn his back on council teaching and its progressive agenda? And the answer has much to do with the student revolt of 1968 which scared Dr. Ratzinger. The great deference shown to German professors gave way to jeering and cat-calls. He himself speaks of noticing “all kinds of terror, from subtle psycho-terror up to violence” in university assemblies in which he participated.
But was a student rebellion enough to make him set aside his deepest convictions about the council and become himself someone who morally browbeat others with whom he disagreed? A case in point is Leonardo Boff, one of the most insightful theologians of liberation who was hounded out of the Brazilian community of theologians by Cardinal Ratzinger, who appears not to have grasped what the theology of liberation meant to the poor and oppressed and the promise it held for the universal church.
As pope, Benedict surprised many with his valuable social teaching. He was called the “green pope” because of his advocacy of responsible stewardship of the environment. Benedict denounced predatory capitalism and – in the wake of the global financial collapse – he suggested valuable structural reforms for global capitalism, a system he saw as especially failing the needs of the poor. However, his drumbeat of criticism of homosexuality as intrinsically evil and his constant references to abortion tended to drown out his social message.
The Way Forward
Now that Benedict is retired and the search for a new pope is underway, it is time to ask what the principal concerns of a pope should be. It is clear now from stories of scandals both financial and sexual within the Curia and the Vatican that structural reform is imperative.
Collegiality needs to be implemented so that the bishops of the world have a role in running the universal church with and under the pope. If Benedict had more input from a synod really representing the global episcopate, he would have made fewer gaffes as pope and things would not have deteriorated to the point they are now
Aside from structural reform there is need to thoroughly rethink the teaching function of the pope and of the Church itself. Moral teaching framed in “Thou shalt nots” is tiresome and mostly ignored. It makes large numbers of divorced and remarried Catholics – as well as those unmarried but living with partners both straight and gay and those practicing contraception – feel excluded from the Church, which regards them as second-class citizens.
The Church as teacher should model and reflect often on Christianity as a pilgrimage toward God and happiness. The primary emphasis should be on virtues, not sin. There is a well-developed virtue ethics that deals with courage, prudence, temperance and justice as well as emphasizing the virtues of faith, hope and charity, which give a foretaste of  happiness and life with God, the goals of life’s journey.
People – young people especially – are hungry for spiritual experience they seek to live lives liberated by the freedom guaranteed by Christ. We all seek the truth, the good, the true, the beautiful; we seek uplift and authentic religious experiences. But we are experiencing a “crisis of faith in the Gospel itself,” as Timothy Shriver argues in his excellent piece, “The Vatican needs a mystic” (Washington Post, March 1).
Some people may be put off by the word “mystic” but they should not be. Shriver writes: “A mystic is … a person who has had an experience of God’s love so unmistakable that it changes him or her forever, imparting a confidence that cannot be shaken, a humility that cannot be doubted, a freedom that exudes love and gentleness and authenticity. A mystic knows from experience, not books, that we are each beautiful beyond our understanding, loved beyond our capacity to love, united beyond our perception of difference and division.”

Becoming better lovers of God and Christ, as Shriver says, “we can become better lovers of other human beings.” Surely this is exactly the right description of what the next pope should be about, making us better lovers of the Divine Mystery and of others. One hopes that the Cardinal electors will put Shriver’s agenda at the forefront of the criteria driving their search for a new pope.

Paul Surlis taught moral theology and Catholic Social teaching at St. John’s University, New York from 1975-2000. He is now retired and living in Crofton, Maryland.

Haiti’s Nightmare: The Cocaine Coup and the CIA Connection

By Global Research News

Global Research, March 01, 2013

by Paul DeRienzo

Originally published by The Shadow no. 32, April/June 1994, published on Global Research 4 days before the February 29, 2004 Coup d’Etat

It was a day before the scheduled return of Haiti’s exiled president Jean Betrand Aristide, and it was clear that the October 30, 1993 deadline for a return to democratic rule in the western hemisphere’s poorest nation could not occur. Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest who had been elected nearly three years before with 70 percent of the vote in Haiti’s first free election, was speaking to a packed session of the United Nations General Assembly.

In a dramatic move, Aristide told the diplomats that the military government of Haiti had to yield the power that was to end Haiti’s role in the drug trade, a trade financed by Colombia’s Cali cartel, that had exploded in the months following the coup. Aristide told the UN that each year Haiti is the transit point for nearly 50 tons of cocaine worth more than a billion dollars, providing Haiti’s military rulers with $200 million in profits.

Aristide’s electrifying accusations opened the floodgate of even more sinister revelations. Massachusetts senator John Kerry heads a subcommittee concerned with international terrorism and drug trafficking that turned up collusion between the CIA and drug traffickers during the late 1980s’ Iran Contra hearings.

Kerry had developed detailed information on drug trafficking by Haiti’s military rulers that led to the indictment in Miami in 1988, of Lt. Col. Jean Paul. The indictment was a major embarrassment to the Haitian military, especially since Paul defiantly refused to surrender to U.S. authorities. It was just a month before thousands of U.S. troops invaded Panama and arrested Manuel Noriega who, like Col. Paul, was also under indictment for drug trafficking in Florida.

In November 1989, Col. Paul was found dead after he consumed a traditional Haitian good will gift—a bowel of pumpkin soup. Haitian officials accused Paul’s wife of the murder, apparently because she had been cheated out of her share of a cocaine deal by associates of her husband, who were involved in smuggling through Miami.

The U.S. senate also heard testimony in 1988 that then interior minister, Gen. Williams Regala, and his DEA liaison officer, protected and supervised cocaine shipments. The testimony also charged the then Haitian military commander Gen. Henry Namphy with accepting bribes from Colombian traffickers in return for landing rights in the mid 1980’s.

It was in 1989 that yet another military coup brought Lt. Gen. Prosper Avril to power. Under U.S. pressure Avril, the former finance chief under the 30-year Duvalier family dictatorship, fired 140 officers suspected of drug trafficking. Avril, who is currently living in Miami, is being sued by six Haitians, including Port-au-Prince mayor Evans Paul, who claim they were abducted and tortured by the Haitian military under Avril’s orders in November 1989. According to a witness before Senator John Kerry’s subcommittee, Avril is in fact a major player in Haiti’s role as a transit point in the cocaine trade.

Four years later, on the eve of Aristide’s negotiated return as Haiti’s elected president, a summary of a confidential report prepared for Congress and leaked to the media says thatcorruption levels within the (Haitian military-run) narcotics service are substantial enough to hamper any significant investigation attempting to dismantle a Colombian organization in Haiti. The report says that more than 1,000 Colombians live in Haiti using forged passports of the neighboring Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic leader Joaquin Balaguer opposes the UN blockade of Haiti, and maintains close ties with the Haitian military. The road connecting Port-au-Prince with the border town of Jimini in the Dominican Republic is the only well paved route in Haiti, and serves as the lifeline for the regime. Despite the embargo and U.S. naval blockade of Haiti, the road to the Dominican Republic has become not only the route for oil tanker trucks breaking the embargo, but the major route for cocaine shipments as well.

Fernando Burgos Martinez, a Colombian national with major business interests in Haiti, has been named in congressional records as a major cocaine trafficker, brazen enough to do business with other Colombian drug dealers on his home telephone. One DEA source says both the U.S. embassy and Haitian government have been pressed unsuccessfully to authorize wiretaps, despite DEA allegations that Martinez has been involved in every major drug shipment to Haiti since 1987.

The Kerry report claims Martinez is the bag man for Colombia’s cocaine cartels, and supervises bribes paid to the Haitian military. According to Miami attorney John Mattes, who is defending a Cuban-American drug trafficker cooperating with U.S. prosecutors, Martinez was paid $30,000 to bribe Haitian authorities into releasing two drug pilots jailed in Haiti after the engine in their plane conked out, forcing them to land in Port-au-Prince.

Martinez claims innocence from his lavish home in Petionville, an ornate suburb where Haiti’s ruling class live, overlooking the slums of the capital. He runs the casino at the plush El Rancho Hotel, that prior to the embargo realized nearly $50 million in business each week, a cash flow adequate to conceal a major money laundering operation.

But the most disturbing allegations have been of the role played by the CIA in keeping many of the coup leaders on the agency’s payroll, as part of an anti-drug intelligence unit set up by the U.S. in Haiti in 1986. Many of these same military men have had their U.S. assets frozen, and are prevented from entering this country because of their role in overthrowing Aristide, and subsequent human rights violations, including torture and murders of political opponents, raising the question—was the U.S. involved in a cocaine coup that overthrew Aristide?

War on Drugs and Human Rights Violations

When thousands of U.S. soldiers went crashing into Panama to arrest Manuel Noriega on December 20 1989, the administration of President George Bush justified the action as a major victory in the war on drugs. The cost of that victory was played down in the rush of propaganda hailing a rare victory, in a war where the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t often seen. The White House claimed casualties were low, 200 Panamanians killed along with about 20 U.S. soldiers. Bush declared the price worth the achievement of ending Panama’s role as banker and transit point for cocaine smuggled from the cartels of Colombia.

But the human cost turned out to be a great deal larger then the official pronouncements. A lawsuit brought by New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of 300 victims of the Panama invasion, charges that the casualties were actually more than 2,000 killed, that the assault left 20,000 homeless and damages exceeding $2 billion. Mass graves were unearthed after the invasion, and hundreds of victims buried in U.S.-made body bags were discovered, and eyewitnesses testified that they saw U.S. troops throwing the bodies of civilians into trenches. These revelations moved the OAS to open an investigation into possible human rights violations by the United States during its invasion of Panama, the first such investigation of a U.S. intervention ever mounted by an international body.

The gunfire had barely subsided in Panama, and General Noriega was hardly settled into his new digs in a federal prison, when another battle in the war on drugs seemed won. In Haiti, decades of brutal dictatorship seemed to be passing, with the election of President Jean Bertrand Aristide to lead the Caribbean nation of six million. It was a time when dreams of a better future by Haiti’s impoverished people seemed within reach.

But it wasn’t long before the dream was transformed into a nightmare. Less than a year after the election, on September 30 1991, Haiti’s army launched a ruthless coup d’etat that forced Aristide into exile. The coup ushered in yet another period of military repression in Haiti’s tortured history—a history marked by twenty years of U.S. military occupation, beginning with the 1915 crushing of a popular revolt by U.S. Marines.

Human rights groups report that Haitians killed in the repression following the coup may be more than 3,000. More than 2,000 others were seriously injured, including victims of gunshots and torture. The OAS imposed an embargo that failed to topple the coup leaders, but forced negotiations, brokered by the UN at Governors Island in New York last July. There coup leader General Raoul Cedras agreed to allow Aristide to return in exchange for an end to the embargo.

Yet as the date for Aristide’s return grew near, the military began a campaign of terror against their opponents. The killings peaked in the days before the scheduled return of Aristide, with the brazen murder of Antoine Izmery, a businessman and key Aristide backer, who was abducted from a cathedral and gunned down on a busy city street. Later, Guy Malary, Aristide’s justice minister, was also killed, and his body left by a roadside.

President Bill Clinton publicly expressed his support for Aristide’s return to Haiti, and sent the transport USS Harlan County, with hundreds of troops, to insure the transition to democracy. But at the port where the ship was to dock, pro-military government thugs staged a demonstration, prompting the Harlan County to turn back. It was shortly after the images of dead U.S. troops dragged through the streets of Somalia had shocked Americans, and provided an excuse for the Clinton administration to back off from what promised to be another open-ended intervention.

The Boys From the Company

Meanwhile, the CIA was openly running a full-scale disinformation campaign against Aristide. Ultra-conservative North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, a leading opponent of Aristide, brought CIA analyst Brian Latell to Capitol Hill in October, to brief selected senators and representatives on allegations that Aristide had been treated for mental illness. It turned out that the time during which the CIA report alleges Aristide was treated at a Canadian hospital falls within the same period that Aristide was studying and teaching in Israel. Latell also said he saw no evidence of oppressive rule in Haiti.

While Helms was a long-time backer of the brutal dictatorship of Jean Claude Duvalier, the Democrats have their own ties to the human rights violators and drug dealers who rule Haiti.

Former Democratic party head and current secretary of commerce Ron Brown headed a law firm that represented the Duvalier family for decades. Part of that representation was a public relations campaign that stressed Duvalier’s opposition to communism in the cold war. United States support for Duvalier was worth more than $400 million in aid to the country, before the man who called himself Haiti’s President-for-Life was forced from the country.

Even Duvalier’s exit from Haiti, in February 1986, is shrouded in covert intrigue and remains an unexplored facet of the career of Lt. Col. Oliver North. Shortly after Duvalier’s ouster, North was quoted as saying he had brought an end to Haiti’s nightmare, a cryptic statement that was never publicly perused by the Iran-Contra hearings.

The CIA and the Cocaine Connection

As Jesse Helms was using the CIA to slag Aristide in the media, an intelligence service in Haiti set up by the agency to battle the cocaine trade, had evolved into a gang of political terrorists and drug traffickers. Three former chiefs of the Haitian National Intelligence Service (NIS) are now on the list of 41 Haitian officials whose assets in the United States were frozen for supporting the military coup.

The CIA poured millions into the NIS from its founding in 1986 to the 1991 coup. A 1992 DEA document describes the NIS as a covert counter-narcotics intelligence unit which often works in unison with the CIA. Although most of the CIA’s activities in Haiti remain secret, U.S. officials accuse some NIS members of becoming enmeshed in the drug trade. A U.S. embassy official in Haiti told the New York Times that the NIS was a military organization that distributed drugs in Haiti.

Aristide’s exiled interior minister Patrick Elie says the relationship between the CIA and NIS involves more than drugs. Elie told investigative reporter Dennis Bernstein that the NIS was created by the CIA. Created, Elie says, to infiltrate the drug network. But Elie adds, the NIS, which is staffed entirely by the Haitian military, spends most of its resources inpolitical repression and spying on Haitians.

After the 1991 coup, Elie maintains that the drug trade took a quantum leap, taking control over the national Port Authority through the offices of Port-au-Prince Police Chief Lt. Col. Michel Francois. It was Francois’s thugs, called attaches, who were primarily responsible for the waves of political killings since the coup.

United States government sources say the NIS never provided much narcotics intelligence, and its commanding officers were responsible for the torture and murder of Aristide supporters, and were involved in death threats that forced the local DEA chief to flee the country. Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and received extensive CIA briefings, said that the drug intelligence the U.S. was getting came from the very same people who in front of the world are brutally murdering people.

Legacy of Corruption

In the early 1980’s, when Haiti was still under Duvalier’s rule, the drug trade in Haiti was the province of individually corrupt military men associated with Duvalier’s powerful father-in-law. By 1985 the cocaine cartels began to seek transit points for the booming cocaine industry. A natural candidate was Haiti lying just south of the Bahamas—another favorite transit route.

Haiti is particularly attractive to the drug smugglers because the most direct route from the Colombian coast to Florida lies through the Windward passage between northern Haiti and eastern Cuba. Port-au-Prince is approximately 500 nautical miles north of Colombia and 700 miles southeast of Miami. A former agent in charge of the Miami DEA, Thomas Cash, told Senator Kerry’s committee that Haiti’s attraction to smugglers is aided by dozens of small airstrips, the lack of patrols over Haitian airspace and the total lack of any radar monitoring approaches to the country. Combined with the legendary corruption of public officials, these conditions make Haiti a very fertile ground for drug traffickers.

In fact, infamous drug trafficker George Morales told Kerry that during the mid 1980’s I used the isle of Haiti mainly as a parking lot, as a place that I would place my aircraft so they could be repaired. When asked if he shipped drugs through Haiti, Morales replied, Yes, I did, adding, its something which is done fairly commonly.

Since then the role of Haiti in the drug trade has grown, and the profits to the Haitian officials involved have skyrocketed. This may explain the difficulty Aristide experienced during his short rule, in trying to interdict drug shipments. A confidential DEA report provided to Michigan Representative John Conyers told of the case of Tony Greco, a former DEA agent in Haiti, who fled for his life in September 1992, following the arrest of a Haitian military officer charged with drug running.

Patrick Elie says he got no assistance from the Haitian military in attempts to interdict drug shipments. And when Greco received information in May 1991 that 400 kilos of cocaine were arriving in Haiti, the DEA man watched helplessly as the drugs were delivered to waiting boats. Greco told Elie that the military was conspicuously absent at a moment they knew drugs were coming in.

Greco said he finally gave up and fled the country after he received a telephone death threat against his family from a man who identified himself as the boss of the arrested officer. Greco says only army commander Raoul Cedras and Port-au-Prince police chief Michel Francois, leaders of the 1991 coup, had his private number.

Despite Tony Greco’s experiences, the DEA defends their continuing presence in Haiti. There are currently two DEA agents still stationed in the country, and the DEA has continued its contacts with the military following Aristide’s ouster, despite the DEA’s admission that over 26,400 pounds of cocaine entered the United States in 1993, transhipped through Haiti with the cooperation of the military.

The DEA remains defensive of its contacts with the Haitian military. Agency spokesperson William Ruzzamenti says, Quite frankly and honestly, we have gotten reliable and good support in the things we’re trying to do there. He acknowledged that the DEA has received reports of Haitian army officers’ involvement in the drug trade, but said that the reportshave not been verified.

The International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, released in April by the U.S. Department of State—Bureau of International Narcotics matters, says the current level of detected air and maritime drug-related activity in Haiti is low. On the subject of official corruption, the report says the United States does not have evidence directly linking senior government of Haiti officials to drug trafficking, though rumors and (unsubstantiated) allegations abound. Responding to the State Department report, Representative Major Owens, who heads the Haiti committee of the Congressional Black Caucus, told the SHADOW that the State Department’s failure to act on evidence of corruption by Haiti’s military commanders was agood question the government has failed to answer. Owens says Secretary of State Warren Christopher is guilty of a double standard motivated by racism against Black Haitian refugees.

The Shadowy World of Col. Francois

Most Haitians believe that Port-au-Prince police chief Col. Michel Francois and his elder brother Evans currently run the drug trade. Col. Francois has gained that control and become one of Haiti’s most powerful men , by recruiting hundreds of police auxiliaries or attaches, to control and eliminate his rivals. Francois commands his own independent intelligence service that spies on opponents and allies alike, while running a protection racket for local drug traffickers. Michael Ratner, an attorney with the CCR, says Francois and former dictator Prosper Avril are the rule behind the facade of General Cedras.

Francois and his men have a history of involvement in the torture of opponents and death-squad-style murders of Aristide supporters. In one recent incident, attaches mobbed Port-au-Prince City Hall to prevent the capital’s mayor, Evans Paul, an Aristide supporter, from entering his offices.

One person was killed and 11 wounded during the September 8th incident, when the mob opened fire on Aristide supporters. Witnesses say the attack began when attaches dragged two of Paul’s aides from a car, viciously beating an Aristide official. Francois is also considered responsible for the murder of Justice Minister Guy Malary.

Journalist Dennis Bernstein writes that Francois was trained at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas , known in Latin America as La Escuela de Golpes, the school of coups. Originally based in Panama, the SOA was moved to Ft. Benning, Georgia in 1984. In its 40-year history, the SOA has trained 55,000 military personnel from Latin America, including the late Salvadoran death squad leader Roberto d’Aubuisson.

On April 21st 1994, a convicted Colombian drug trafficker, Gabriel Taboada, who is in the fifth year of a 12-year sentence in a Miami federal prison, fingered Francois at a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee hearing chaired by Senator John Kerry. Taboada testified that Lt. Col. Francois collaborated in shipping tons of cocaine to the United States during then 1980’s.

Taboada said he met Francois while he was in the Medellin, Colombia office of drug king Pablo Escobar, in 1984. During a thirty minute conversation, Taboada told Francois he was a car importer. Francois, he said, asked why wasn’t I in the drug business since the drug business made good money.

Speaking through an interpreter, Taboada said: I asked him what his business was and he said that at the time he was in Medellin arranging a cocaine deal. Taboada said he later learned that Francois was Chief of Police in Haiti.

Taboada told the committee that the cartel took planes out of Colombia and landed in Haiti, protected by the Haitian military. Michel Francois protected the drugs in Haiti, and then allowed the drugs to continue to the United States. Taboada also told the subcommittee that Haitian military figures often met Medellin cartel members in Colombia, including strongman Prosper Avril, who along with Francois, has long been linked to the drug trade in Haiti.

Copyright © 2013 Global Research

Supreme Court Authorizes Lawless Wiretapping

By Stephen Lendman

Global Research, March 01, 2013

America’s Supremes are notoriously hard right. Equal justice under law is just a figure of speech. Rule of law principles and egalitarian fairness don’t matter. Power politics corrupts the High Court. It lacks legitimacy.

Five Supreme Court justices are Federalist Society (FS) members. They include Chief Justice John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas. They’re ideological extremists.

FS began 30 years ago at Harvard, Yale and University of Chicago law schools. Initially it was a student organization. It challenges orthodox liberalism. It corrupts itself in the process.

It advocates rolling back civil liberties. It wants New Deal social policies ended. It supports imperial wars, corporatism, and police state harshness.

It wants reproductive choice, government regulations, labor rights, and environmental protections ended. It spurns justice in defense of privilege. It defiles constitutional protections doing so.

Justice Elena Kagan is ideologically sympathetic. She brags about loving the Federalist Society. As Harvard Law School dean, she hired Bush’s outgoing Office of Legal Counsel director, Jack Goldsmith. Francis Boyle called him a war criminal.

Last September, Congress overwhelmingly passed the 2012 FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act. Obama signed it into law. He called doing so a national security priority. He lied. It reflects police state harshness.

It’s lawless without legitimacy. It extends the 2008 FISA Amendments Act (FAA). It’s for another five years.

It authorizes warrantless spying. It does so without naming names or probable cause. It violates Fourth Amendment protections. It states:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Overseas phone calls, emails, and other communications of US citizens and permanent residents may be monitored without court authorization. Perhaps domestic ones are covertly. Anything goes is policy.

Probable cause isn’t needed. Warrantless electronic eavesdropping is instrusive and lawless. Everyone is vulnerable for any reason or none at all. Vague language allows virtually anything.

Constitutional protections don’t matter. They’re null and void. What Bush began, Obama embraces. Things are worse than ever. Full-blown tyranny remains a hair’s breath away. Obama governs by diktat authority.

The ACLU filed suit. It passed through lower courts to the Supremes. Last October, High Court justices heard oral arguments. Clapper v. Amnesty International challenged the constitutionality of warrantless spying.

On February 26, the Supreme Court ruled. It dismissed ACLU’s case. It violated constitutional protections doing so. It wasn’t the first time inviolable law was spurned.

On February 27, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) commented. The Court didn’t address FFA’s constitutionality, it said. It ruled against lawyers, journalists, human rights groups, and others challenging protections too important to deny.

It said they couldn’t prove surveillance was “certainly impending.” They didn’t have required standing to sue.

Saying so is deeply troubling. It’s an absurdity on its face. It’s a standard never before used. Imposing it denies the legitimate right to sue. Doing so reflects police state justice.

“In other words,” said EFF, “since (plaintiffs) did not have definitive proof” of what Washington keeps secret, “they cannot challenge” the law’s constitutionality.

Saying so defies reason and rule of law fairness. America’s High Court struck another blow against freedom. Good news remains, said EFF.

Its Jewel v. NSA suit isn’t affected. The spy agency targets millions of ordinary Americans lawlessly. Doing so is policy. Government officials remain unaccountable. Evidence is indisputable.

NSA whistleblowers and former AT&T employee Mark Klein provided it. It proves the telecom giant routes Internet traffic to a secret San Francisco facility. NSA controls it.

EFF challenged responsible government officials. They include George Bush, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, and others. They ordered and participated in warrantless domestic surveillance. Obama and other administration officials do it now.

In 2009, his administration moved for dismissal. It claimed permitting it would require revealing “state secrets.”

Lower and appeals courts disagreed. The case remains active. Perhaps it’ll reach the High Court. Losing Clapper makes Jewel more important.

It’s “one of the last remaining hopes for a court ruling on the legality of” lawlessly surveilling Americans, said EFF. It’s been ongoing for over a decade.

Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals judges granted Jewel standing. They said:

“Jewel has much stronger allegations of concrete and particularized injury than did the plaintiffs in Amnesty International. Whereas they anticipated or projected future government conduct, Jewel’s complaint alleges past incidents of actual government interception of her electronic communications.”

Major hurdles remain to be overcome. The Supreme Court ruled future harm must be “certainly impending.” It’s required to sue, they said. It obstructs future lawsuits.

It’s “very troubling,” said EFF. It’s especially so “in the context of cases involving secret surveillance.”

Future conduct can’t be predicted. Ruling so denies all challenges. None can be settled equitably. Anything can be claimed for any reason to deny them.

Justice Breyer dissented on Clapper. He explained certainly impending’s absurdity, saying:

“One can, of course, always imagine some special circumstance that negates a virtual likelihood, no matter how strong.”

“But the same is true about most, if not all, ordinary inferences about future events.”

“Perhaps, despite pouring rain, the streets will remain dry (due to the presence of a special chemical).”

ACLU deputy legal director, Jameel Jaffer, said the High Court ruling denies “meaningful judicial review and leaves Americans’ privacy rights to the mercy of the political branches.”

“More than a decade after 9/11, we still have no judicial ruling on the lawfulness of torture, of extraordinary rendition, of targeted killings or of the warrantless wiretapping program.”

“These programs were all contested in the public sphere, but they have not been contested in the courts.”

Police state justice remains policy.

Secret lawless surveillance alone is troubling. It differs from physical searches. It’s hidden. Targets don’t know they’re spied on or why. Innocent people suffer. Constitutional protections are denied.

Reasons for doing so don’t wash. According to Supreme CourtThink, Washington can deny victims standing.

Constitutionality doesn’t matter. Actions can be kept secret. Challengers can’t sue unless government agrees. Unfettered power is institutionalized. Rule of law principles don’t apply.

FAA permits sweeping surveillance. Categories of people can be targeted. Millions are affected at the same time. No one know’s what’s going on or why.

Police state harshness is policy. Innocence is no justifiable defense. Due process and judicial fairness don’t matter. What Obama officials say goes. They operate extrajudicially. High Court justices approve. Doing so makes them complicit. There’s no place to hide.

Electronic communications can be monitored. Probable cause isn’t needed. Obama officials convinced Ninth Circuit justices to dismiss warrantless wiretapping challenges earlier.

In Al Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama (August 2012), they dismissed plaintiff’s challenge. They did so on what’s called “sovereign immunity.”

It prevents government, its agencies and departments from being sued without consent. It stems from earlier practice. It comes from notions that monarchs can do no wrong. It violates fundamental freedoms doing so.

EFF hopes Al Haramain won’t affect Jewel. It raises “many causes of action.” They embrace more than what 50 USC, Section 1810 covers. It’s US law explaining actual and punitive monetary damages.

Jewel wants warrantless surveillance stopped. It wants millions of innocent Americans protected. It wants proper warrants and judicial oversight. It wants rule of law principles upheld.

EFF moved for a lower court Jewel ruling. It wants its case to go forward. It wants Washington held accountable. It wants lawless NSA spying stopped.

It said “FISA preempts the state secret privilege.” District court hearings will begin this fall. Whether High Court ones follow won’t be known for some time. How they rule most often remains deeply troubling.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

Amérique Latine – Afrique :« Formons un seul peuple, un seul continent »

De President Hugo Chavez

Global Research, février 24, 2013

Au moment où une part croissante de la gauche européenne se convertit au « droit d’ingérence » qu’elle critiquait il y a quelques années et où, complices de l’impunité, les médias occidentaux minimisent les milliers de victimes civiles de bombardements « humanitaires » ou « laïcs » (Afghanistan, Libye, Mali, etc…), les latino-américains ne sont pas dupes des habits neufs du colonialisme. Ils savent qu’au-delà du contrôle des matières premières, c’est l’unité politique du Sud qui est visée. La volonté des gouvernements progressistes latino-américains de développer des relations Sud-Sud (suivant la ligne tracée du Congrès de Panama organisé par Bolivar en 1828 au sommet de Bandoeng en 1956…) n’a rien à voir, contrairement à ce que martèlent les médias occidentaux, avec un quelconque « appui aux dictateurs ».

Lorsque le président brésilien Lula da Silva signa avec la Turquie un Pacte appuyant le droit de l’Iran à développer l’énergie nucléaire civile et qu’il critiqua « l’ ingérence des occidentaux dans les élections et dans la vie politique de l’Iran », quand les présidents Evo Morales, Cristina Fernandez ou Rafael Correa notamment, signent d’importants traités et contrats avec les iraniens, ils ne font qu’appliquer ce qu’il y a plus de trente ans un certain Régis Debray conseillait au prince à propos des pays du « socialisme réel ». Plutôt que d’entrer dans le Disneyland de la Guerre Froide en les ostracisant, développer une stratégie plus subtile et plus ambitieuse, garder des relations politiques et diplomatiques avec eux, pour les influencer dans le bon sens et garder son mot à dire.

En Amérique Latine, la concrétisation par des gouvernements de gauche de la démocratie participative, des droits de la femme, de l’éco-socialisme, etc… ne peuvent qu’influencer dans le bon sens la construction d’un monde multipolaire des trois-quarts de l’humanité. On ne peut qu’être frappé en comparaison par le néant idéologique qui caractérise le discours de gouvernants européens devenus simples « commis de commerce » vis-à-vis des nations du Sud (voir le récent sommet UE-CELAC à Santiago du Chili).

Lorsque les occidentaux (y compris de gauche) raillèrent et rejetèrent la proposition de nombreux gouvernements latino-américains, soutenue par l’Organisation de l’Unité Africaine (OUA), d’entamer des pourparlers diplomatiques en Libye afin d’éviter une guerre meurtrière, la présidente argentine sut exprimer le sentiment d’un continent : « Quand je vois les gens dits civilisés régler leurs affaires à coups de bombes, je suis fière d’être latino-américaine ».

Lettre du Président Hugo Chavez aux participants du IIIème Sommet Afrique-Amérique latine et Caraïbes (Guinée Équatoriale, février 2013)

Caracas, 22 février 2013.

Frères et sœurs,

Recevez mon plus fervent salut bolivarien, unitaire et solidaire, avec toute ma joie et de toute mon espérance dans le déroulement de ce III° Sommet si attendu des Chefs d’État et de Gouvernement d’Amérique du Sud et d’Afrique.

Je regrette vraiment, du plus profond de mon être de ne pouvoir être présent physiquement parmi vous pour vous réitérer, par une sincère accolade, mon irrévocable engagement en faveur de l’unité de nos Peuples. Je suis présent, cependant, dans la personne du Chancelier de la République Bolivarienne du Venezuela, le camarade Elias Jaua Milano, à qui j’ai demandé de vous transmettre la plus vive expression de mon amour pour ces continents qui sont plus que frères, unis par de solides liens historiques et destinés à avancer ensemble vers leur rédemption pleine et absolue.

Je le dis du plus profond de ma conscience : l’Amérique du Sud et l’Afrique sont un même peuple. On réussit seulement à comprendre la profondeur de la réalité sociale et politique de notre continent dans les entrailles de l’immense territoire africain où, j’en suis sûr, l’humanité a pris naissance. De lui proviennent les codes et les éléments qui composent le syncrétisme culturel, musical et religieux de notre Amérique, créant une unité non seulement raciale entre nos peuples mais aussi spirituelle.

De la même manière, les empires du passé, coupables de l’enfermement et de l’assassinat de millions de filles et de fils de l’Afrique mère dans le but d’alimenter un système d’exploitation esclavagiste dans leurs colonies semèrent dans Notre Amérique le sang africain guerrier et combatif qui brûlait du feu que produit le désir de liberté. Cette semence a germé et notre terre a enfanté des hommes aussi grands que Toussaint Louverture, Alexandre Pétion, José Léonardo Chirino, Pedro Camejo parmi beaucoup d’autres, avec pour résultat, il y a plus de 200 ans, le début d’un processus indépendantiste, unioniste, anti-impérialiste et reconstructeur en Amérique Latine et caribéenne.

Ensuite, au XX° siècle, vinrent les luttes de l’Afrique pour la liberté, ses indépendances, contre ses nouvelles menaces néo-coloniales, Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral pour n’en citer que quelques-uns. Ceux qui, dans le passé nous ont conquis, aveuglés par leur soif de pouvoir, ne comprirent pas que le colonialisme barbare qu’ils nous imposaient deviendraient l’élément fondateur de nos premières indépendances. Ainsi, l’Amérique Latine et les Caraïbes partagent avec l’ Afrique un passé d’oppression et d’esclavage. Aujourd’hui plus que jamais, nous sommes fils de nos libérateurs et de leurs hauts faits , nous pouvons dire, nous devons dire avec force et conviction, que nous unit aussi un présent de lutte indispensables pour la liberté et l’indépendance définitive de nos nations.

Je ne me lasserai pas de le redire, nous sommes un même peuple, nous avons l’obligation de nous rencontrer au-delà des discours formels dans une même volonté d’unité et ainsi unis, donner vie à l’équation qui devra s’appliquer dans la construction des conditions qui nous permettront de faire sortir nos peuples du labyrinthe dans lequel le colonialisme les a jetés et, par la suite, le capitalisme néo-libéral du XX° siècle.

Pour cela, je veux évoquer la mémoire de deux grands combattants pour la coopération sud-sud comme l’ont été les deux ex présidents du Brésil et de la Tanzanie, Luis Ignacio « Lula » da Silva et Julius Nyerere dont les apports et les efforts ont permis, en leur temps, la mise en place de magnifique forum pour une coopération solidaire et complémentaire comme l’est l’ASA (1).

Cependant, les temps que nous vivons nous obligent à consacrer nos plus profondes et urgentes réflexions à l’effort nécessaire pour transformer l’ASA en un véritable instrument générateur de souveraineté et de développement social, économique, politique et environnemental.

C’est sur nos continents que l’on trouve les ressources naturelles, politiques et historiques suffisantes, nécessaires, pour sauver la planète du chaos où elle a été conduite. Faisons que le sacrifice indépendantiste de nos ancêtres qui nous offre le jour d’aujourd’hui serve à unifier nos capacités pour transformer nos nations en un authentique pôle de pouvoir qui, pour le dire avec le père Libérateur Simon Bolivar, soit plus grand par sa liberté et sa gloire que par son extension et ses richesses.

Les paroles de cet immense général uruguayen José Gervasio Artigas résonnent toujours dans mon âme et dans ma conscience : « Nous ne pouvons rien attendre si ce n’est de nous-même ». Cette pensée si profonde renferme une grande vérité que nous devons assumer, j’en suis absolument convaincu.

Notre coopération sud-sud doit être un lien de travail authentique et permanent qui doit tourner toutes ses stratégies et ses plans de développement soutenable vers le sud, vers nos peuples.

Quoiqu’en aucune manière nous ne nions nos relations souveraines avec les puissances occidentales, nous devons nous rappeler que ce ne sont pas elles qui sont la source de la solution totale et définitive pour l’ensemble des problèmes de nos pays. Loin de l’être, quelques-unes d’entre elles appliquent une politique néo-coloniale qui menace la stabilité que nous avons commencé à renforcer sur nos continents.

Frères et sœurs, je voudrais rappeler pour ce III° Sommet des Chefs d’Etat et de Gouvernement de l’ASA, l’esprit de fraternité, d’unionisme et de volonté qui a dirigé le déroulement de ce II° merveilleux Sommet dans l’île de Margarita, au Venezuela, qui nous permit d’adopter unanimement les engagements de la Déclaration de Nueva Esparta. Je souhaite avec beaucoup de foi et d’espérance que nous puissions récupérer à Malabo l’impulsion et l’effort de ce moment extraordinaire pour notre processus d’unité, le Sommet de 2009, qui a montré autant par sa fréquentation massive que par la quantité et le contenu des accords atteints.

Depuis le Venezuela, renouvelons aujourd’hui notre plus ferme engagement dans le renforcement du Secrétariat Permanent de la Table Présidentielle Stratégique de l’ASA avec ses principales tâches et fonctions pour accélérer le rythme dans la consolidation de nos institutions et obtenir ainsi une plus grande efficacité dans notre travail conjoint.

Je regrette avec beaucoup de douleur et de peine que tout notre travail commencé formellement depuis 2006 ait été interrompu par les forces impérialistes qui prétendent encore dominer le monde. Ce n’est pas un hasard, je le dis et je l’assume pleinement, que depuis le Sommet de Margarita, le continent africain ait été victime des multiples interventions et des multiples attaques de la part des puissances occidentales.

Les nombreux bombardements et invasions impériaux empêchant toute possibilité de solution politique et pacifique aux conflits internes qui ont commencé dans diverses nations d’Afrique, ils ont eu comme objectif principaux de freiner le processus de consolidation de l’unité des peuples africains et, en conséquence, de miner les progrès de l’union de ces états avec les peuples latino-américains et caribéens.

La stratégie néo-coloniale a été, depuis le début du XIX°, de diviser les nations les plus vulnérables du monde pour les soumettre à des rapports de dépendance esclavagiste. C’est pour cela que le Venezuela s’est opposé, radicalement et depuis le début, à l’intervention militaire étrangère en Libye et c’est pour le même motif que le Venezuela réitère aujourd’hui son rejet le plus absolu de toute activité d’ingérence de l’OTAN.

Face à la menace extra-régionale pour empêcher l’avance et l’approfondissement de notre coopération sud-sud, je le dis avec Bolivar dans sa Lettre de Jamaïque de 1815 : « Union, union, union, cela doit être notre plus importante consigne. » Notre Gouvernement renouvelle, en ce III° Sommet de l’ ASA dans cette république sœur de Guinée Equatoriale, son absolue disposition à avancer dans le travail nécessaire pour consolider notre coopération dans les secteurs que j’ai personnellement proposées à notre dernier sommet, dans la belle île de Margarita. Energie, Education, Agriculture, Finances et Communication continuent d’être nos priorités et pour celles-ci, nous réitérons notre engagement pour avancer dans des initiatives concrètes comme Petrosur, l’Université des Peuples du Sud ou la Banque du Sud, pour ne citer que quelques exemples. Dans le secteur de la communication, nous proposons, depuis le Venezuela, que cet effort que nous avons réussi à mettre en place ensemble dans différents pays de l’Amérique du Sud, TeleSur, s’articule avec l’Afrique afin qu’il puisse accomplir depuis ces latitudes sa principale fonction : relier les peuples du monde entre eux et leur apporter la vérité et la réalité de nos pays.

Enfin, je veux renouveler à tous mon désir que les résultats projetés lors de ce III° Sommet ASA nous permette de transformer ce forum en un outil utile pour conquérir notre définitive indépendance en nous plaçant à la hauteur de l’exigence de l’époque et comme le dirait le Libérateur, le plus de bonheur possible pour nos peuples. Je suis un convaincu, simple et obstiné, nous réussirons à mener à bien cette cause que nos libérateurs et martyres nous ont transmise depuis des siècles. Nos millions de femmes et d’hommes présentés en sacrifice pour leur pleine et absolue liberté. Avec le père infini, notre Libérateur Simon Bolivar, je dis une fois de plus : « Nous devons attendre beaucoup du temps, son ventre immense contient plus d’espérance que de faits passés et les prodiges futurs doivent être supérieurs aux anciens ».

Marchons donc vers notre union et notre indépendance définitive. En paraphrasant Bolivar, je dis maintenant : « Formons une patrie,un continent, un seul peuple, à tout prix et tout le reste sera supportable. »

Vive l’union sud-américaine et africaine !

Vive l ’ASA !

Jusqu’à la victoire toujours !

Nous vivrons et nous vaincrons !

Hugo Chavez Frias