Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Rock solid humanitarian concern

Did you see those extraordinary reports from the US about how the 
Pentagon is so concerned to minimise "collateral damage" when it bombs 
civilian targets in Iraq that, where there is a risk of injuring 
civilians the US Air Force is going to drop bombs in which the explosive 
has been replaced by concrete?

Well, it's just the sort of thing any up-to-date high-powered military 
force might come up with, isn't it? Give up the advantage of possessing the 
latest and most powerful high explosive in order to throw large rocks 
instead. I'm sure I believe them.

After all, the US Government and military is well known for its humane 
concern over the civilian casualties caused by its bombing of towns, 
villages, schools, hospitals, government offices, foreign embassies, 
trains, buses, bridges, churches, etc, etc.

It was no less a person than the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, 
General Henry Shelton himself, who revealed to a gobsmacked media the news 
that the US Air Force was dropping — with extreme precision, of course — 
concrete blocks cleverly disguised as bombs.

According to The New York Times, the concrete bombs destroy the 
target but lack "the explosive arc" of regular munitions, thereby keeping 
civilian casualties at a "minimum". Actually, not bombing at all would keep 
them at a minimum.

General Shelton says the US has been dropping bombs full of concrete "for a 
long time", specifically against targets where there is the risk of 
civilian casualties.

Actually, in that strangled form of English peculiar to the Pentagon he 
said: "If we have a specific target that we are very concerned about 
collateral damage, but it's important that we hit that, that is a technique 
that we have of going after it in some cases." Which cleared that up.

Iraqi authorities were not impressed by this evidence of US humanity. US 
and British air raids since December have killed 187 people and injured 
494, many of whom were civilians.

* * *

Tea with Maggie


The British Government has also been demonstrating its humanity, with 
regard to the former fascist dictator of Chile, General Pinochet.

They have "imprisoned" this vile creature, responsible for the systematic 
torture and murder of thousands of people, in a mansion with his own staff, 
where distinguished guests like Baroness Thatcher can come to tea with her 
old friend Pinochet.

The Labour Government cares less about justice for Pinochet's victims than 
about British trade and investments in Chile, which were built up 
substantially during the respective leaderships of Pinochet and Thatcher.

Maggie Thatcher regards Pinochet as the "strongman" saviour of Chile from 
socialist barbarity and chaos.

Significantly, she not only publicly defends him now, she has never 
expressed one word of sorrow or pity for the victims of his goon squads or 
condemned his regime's routine use of barbaric torture, murder of political 
opponents and kidnapping of their children.

A correspondent on the Internet notes, in relation to Pinochet's lawyers' 
claim that the general's health was too poor for him to be extradited to 
Spain, that "of course, Pinochet's victims also had health problems, if not 
before the Pinochet goons got to them, certainly soon after.

"Not one of them was offered cups of tea by Margaret Thatcher, however."

* * *

Not the whole truth


Still on the subject of Pinochet and Chile, the US Government has been 
forced to release thousands of pages of documents relating to its 
involvement in the 1973 fascist coup in Chile that overthrew the popularly 
elected government of Salvador Allende and made Chile a testing ground for 
economic policies now being implemented by the New World Order all over the 
world.

Last June the US Government released some 25,000 pages from 5,800 documents 
related to events in Chile from 1973 to 1978. Now it has released a further 
1,200 documents from the US State Department, the Pentagon and the Central 
Intelligence Agency (CIA) covering the period from 1968 to 1973, running up 
to the coup.

However, historians and researchers have been quick to point out that the 
really valuable material, the documents relating to the CIA's involvement 
in actually orchestrating the coup are missing.

Peter Kornbluh, a member of the non-profit National Archives, observes that 
the documents contain information on the crippling truck strike against the 
Allende Government, for example, "but nothing on the role of the CIA in its 
organisation".

It's not as though the CIA's involvement is not known. It emerged very 
clearly during a US congressional probe in the late 1970s that the CIA had 
in fact funnelled millions of dollars to organise and then to subsidise the 
striking truckers.

They also paid for the fascist goon squads whose task was to "win back the 
streets from the Reds". They subsidised newspapers opposed to Allende's 
Popular Unity and of course they financially supported (i.e. bribed) anti-
Allende politicians, and every conservative group in the country.

Documents released earlier clearly indicate that paragon of honesty and 
virtue President Richard Nixon ordered then CIA head Richard Helms to 
topple Allende while the Nixon administration surreptitiously imposed an 
economic blockade on the country.

The US Government says it won't release any documents that might jeopardise 
"US national security" and US agents. In other words, it would be too 
embarrassing to let the world see just how depraved and two-faced the 
world's self-appointed champion of human rights really is.

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