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Per chi avesse dubbi sul fatto che il cosiddetto nuovo ordine mondiale non
sia altro che l'aspirazione del governo/imprese USA di dominazione globale,
ecco un estratto dal libro di William Blum "Killing Hope" [a proposito
qualcuno sa se esiste l'edizione italiana?] riguardo l'invasione di
Grenada. Ossia le politiche di dominio assoluto che prima erano dedicate
solo al cosiddetto "giardino di casa" [caraibi e latinoamerica] oggi sono
estese a tutto il pianeta.                                                                          

Grenada 1979-1984

             Lying -- one of the few growth industries in Washington

                         excerpted from the book  Killing Hope

                                        by William Blum


What can be said about an invasion launched by a nation of 240 million
people against one of 110 thousand? And
when the invader is, militarily and economically, the most powerful in the
world, and the target of its attack is an
underdeveloped island of small villages 1,500 miles away, 133 square miles
in size, whose main exports are cocoa,
nutmeg and bananas...

The United States government had a lot to say about it. The relation which
its pronouncements bore to the truth can
be accurately gauged by the fact that three days after the invasion the
deputy White House press secretary for
foreign affairs resigned, citing "damage to his personal credibility''.

One of the fundamental falsehoods concerning the invasion of  Tuesday, 25
October 1983 was that the United
States had been requested to intervene by an urgent plea on the 21st from
the Organization of Eastern Caribbean
States (OECS), comprising six countries and joined in this instance b
Barbados and Jamaica. These countries
purportedly feared some form of aggressive act from the new ultra-leftist
regime in Grenada which had deposed
socialist leader Maurice Bishop. Bishop had been expelled from the ruling
party on 12 October, placed under house
arrest the next day, and murdered on the 19th.

Even if the fears were valid, it would constitute a principle heretofore
unknown under international law, namely that
state A could ask state B to invade state C in the absence of any
aggressive act toward state A by state C. In
Washington, State Department lawyers worked overtime, finally settling on
sections of an OECS mutual assistance
pact, the Charter of the OAS, and the United Nations Charter as legal
justifications for the American action. These
documents, however, even with the most generous interpretation, provide for
nothing of the sort.. Moreover,
Article Six of the OECS pact requires all members to approve decisions of
the organization's Authority (the heads
of government). Grenada, a member, certainly did not approve. It was not
even at the meeting, although US
officials were present to steer the direction of the discussions.

As matters later transpired, Tom Adams, the Prime Minister of Barbados,
stated that the United States had
approached him on 15 October concerning a military intervention. (The State
Department declined to comment
when asked about Adams' statement.) Then "sources close to Jamaican Prime
Minister Edward Seaga" asserted
that the plea by the Caribbean nations "was triggered by an offer from the
United States"-"Issue an appeal and
we'll respond" was the message conveyed by Washington. Furthermore, on 26
October, the US ambassador to
France, Evan Galbraith, stated over French television that the Reagan
administration had been planning the
invasion for the previous two weeks, that is, not only well before the
putative request from the Caribbean countries,
but, if Galbraith is to be taken literally, even before Bishop was
overthrown or before this outcome could have been
known with any certainty, unless the CIA had been mixed up in the
intra-party feud .

Eventually it was disclosed that at some point before the invasion the
government of Eugenia Charles, the Prime
Minister of Dominica, who headed the OECS, had been the recipient of covert
CIA money "for a secret support
operation".

At the same time, the United States, as if to cover its bets, endorsed (if
not in fact devised) the claim by the OECS
that the governor-general of Grenada, Paul Scoon, had also sent an urgent
appeal for military intervention to the
organization. Apart from the highly debatable question of whether
Scoon-appointed by the British Queen to his
largely ceremonial, figurehead position, a vestige of the days of the
Empire-had the constitutional right to make
such a momentous decision on behalf of an independent Grenada, there was
the mystery of how and when he had
sent his request or indeed whether he had sent it at all.

On 31 October, the London press reported that British Foreign Secretary Sir
Geoffrey Howe "was emphatic that
there had been no request for intervention from Sir Paul Scoon". Prime
Minister Thatcher unequivocally confirmed
this. Scoon, said Sir Geoffrey, "had been seen by a British diplomat last
Monday-the day before the invasion-and
had not mentioned any such desire." The same day (another report places it
on Sunday) Scoon spoke by phone to
the Commonwealth Secretariat in London and to Buckingham Palace, but,
again, made no mention of intervention.

Interviewed later by the BBC, Scoon himself said that an invasion was the
"last thing" he wanted In the end, after
the invasion was underway, Scoon signed a piece of paper aboard the USS
Guam that made the whole operation
nice and legal.

Another justification advanced by the United States for its action, what
President Reagan termed "of overriding
importance", was the need to evacuate many hundreds of civilians from the
island, mainly students at St. George's
Medical College who were supposedly in a dangerous position because of the
new regime and the chaos
surrounding its accession to power.

To refute this contention one does not have to dig for evidence; there is a
surfeit Iying on the surface, viz....

Two members of the US Embassy in Barbados, Ken Kurze and Linda Flohr,
reported over the weekend before the
invasion that "US students in Grenada were, for the most part, unwilling to
leave or be evacuated. They were too
intent on their studies." Another r port, in the London press, that three
US diplomats visited Grenada at the same
time and appeared to have agreed on orderly departures for any Americans
wishing to leave, may or may not refer
to the same thing.

The White House acknowledged that two days before the invasion, Grenada had
offered the United States "an
opportunity to evacuate American citizens. But officials said the Reagan
administration came to distrust the offer."
This was, they said, because the Grenadian government had promised that the
airport would be open on Monday
for evacuation flights, but it was instead closed. Only later did the White
House admit that four charter flights had
indeed left the airport on Monday.

Some of those who left on Monday were American medical students. The
Chancellor of the medical school, Dr.
Charles Modica, who was visiting New York, declared on the day of the
invasion that he was in touch with amateur
radio operators at the college. "I think the President's information is
very wrong," he said, "because some of the
Americans started to go out yesterday.''

The Grenadian government issued instructions that the American students
should be treated with utmost
consideration by the army; vehicles and escorts were provided for them to
shuttle between their two campuses.

The Cuban government released documents which showed that it had notified
the United States on 22 October that
no American or other foreign citizen was in danger and said it was ready
"to cooperate in the solution of problems
without violence or intervention. It received no reply until after the
invasion had begun. On the 23rd the Cubans
sent a message to the Grenadian leaders suggesting that the area around the
medical school be demilitarized to
avoid providing the United States with an excuse for invasion: "the pretext
of evacuating its citizens''.

Asked by journalists if there was any concrete information about threats to
Americans in Grenada, the White
House spokesman responded: "Nothing that I know of."

*****

The New Jewel Movement (NJM) under Maurice Bishop had taken power in March
1979 by ousting, to popular
acclaim, Eric Gairy, an erratic personality given increasingly to thuggery
to maintain his rule. That accomplished,
Bishop, a London-educated lawyer, had to deal with the exceedingly more
formidable task which faces a socialist
revolutionary in power: spurring an underdeveloped country to lift itself
up by its own bootstraps when it doesn't
have any boots. They had to start with the basics: jobs, new schools,
teacher training, adult literacy, social services,
clean water ... the NJM left private business undisturbed, but instituted
free health care, free milk for young
children, agricultural co-operatives, and the like.

Nicholas Brathwaite, the Chairman of the US-approved Interim Government
following the invasion, and his
colleagues, reported The Guardian, "readily praise the [NJM] for giving
Grenadians new awareness,
self-confidence and national pride and admit it is a hard act to follow."

The World Bank gave the Grenadian government good grades also. In 1980 the
Bank praised the NJM's sound
fiscal management and two years later wrote that "Government objectives are
centered on the critical development
issues and touch on the country's most promising development areas."

The New Jewel Movement did not hold elections. Bishop explained this
decision on one occasion in the following
way:

'There are those (some of them our friends) who believe that you cannot
have a democracy unless there is a
situation where every five years, and for five seconds in those five years,
a people are allowed to put an 'X" next to
some candidate's name, and for those five seconds in those five years they
become democrats, and for the
remainder of the Time, four years and 364 days, they return to being
non-people without the right to say anything
to their government, without any right to be involved in running the country.'

*****

As to the invasion itself ... code-named "Urgent Fury" ... 2,000 American
marines and paratroopers the first day,
by week's end 7,000 on the island, even more waiting offshore ... planes
fitted with murderous multi-barreled
Gatling guns spraying positions of the People;s Revolutionary Army ... "The
People's Revolutionary Army-are
they on our side or theirs?" asks the young Marines... the home of the
Cuban ambassador damaged and looted by
American soldiers; on one wall is written "AA", symbol of the 82nd Airborne
Division; beside it the message: "Eat
shit, commie faggot" ... captured Cubans used as hostages, ordered to march
in front of American jeeps as they
advanced on Cuban positions, a violation of the Geneva Convention ...
promises of all kinds were made to Cuban
prisoners, said Castro, to get them to go to the United States; none
accepted. "I want to fuck communism out of
this little island," says a marine, "and fuck it right back to Moscow." ...
"Britain announced that it was sending a
destroyer to assist in the rescue," said the American radio station to the
Grenadian people the first morning; not a
half-truth, but a complete lie ... Grenadians who heard the broadcasts said
they were a powerful encouragement to
accept the occupation ... the fighting was over in a week, 135 Americans
killed or wounded, 84 Cubans, 400
Grenadians, more or less ...
The land conquered, there remained the people's hearts and minds. At the
outset, the invasion radio station
engaged in fiery attacks against Bishop-he had brought Grenada into
captivity said the announcer. But then the
Americans evidently learned that this was a tactical error, that Bishop was
still enormously popular, because for
some time afterward, criticism of his regime was usually made more
indirectly and without naming him.

Before long the Psychological Operations Battalion of the US Army was
cruising over the island in a helicopter
offering the Grenadians, via a loudspeaker, a large serving of anti-Cuban
fare: the Cubans had supported those
who had killed Bishop, Grenada had been a pawn of Cuba, Castro/communism
were still a threat, and so forth.
Posters were put up showing alleged captured Cuban weapons with the slogan,
"Are these the tools that build
airports?" Other posters linked the MRC leaders to Moscow.

In March 1984, a visiting London journalist could report:

'The island remains visibly under American occupation. Jeeps patrol
constantly. Helicopters fly over the beaches.
Armed military police watch the villagers and frequent the cafes. CIA men
supervise the security at the courthouse.
The island's only newspaper pours out weekly vitriol about the years of the
revolutionary government, this
gruesome period in our history". The pressures, in a small community, are
heavy.'

And in June we learned that schools called after "heroes of the revolution"
had been given back their old names,
though not without pupil protests. And the US Information Service was
showing school children a film entitled
"Grenada: Return to Freedom".

The invasion was almost universally condemned in Latin America, only the
military dictatorships of Chile,
Guatemala and Uruguay expressing support. The United Nations voted Its
disapproval overwhelmingly. To this
President Reagan responded: "One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed
with us on just about everything
that's come before them where we're involved, and it didn't upset my
breakfast at all."

One of the evils of Communist states, we were always told, is that they
were oblivious to world opinion.

There was, however, the supreme irony that most of the people of Grenada
welcomed the invasion. In addition to
the conservative minority who knew that the "socialist" experiment would
now be decisively put to rest, there were
the greater number who were overjoyed to see the murderers of their beloved
Maurice Bishop receive the
punishment due them. Despite all the hostility and lies directed at Bishop
by Washington for over four years, it did
not seem to occur to the islanders that the invasion had nothing to do with
avenging his death and that the United
States had merely used the event as a convenient pretext for all action it
had desired to carry out for a long time.

If the average Grenadian seems thus rather ingenuous, with a short
political memory, we must consider also that
the average American lustily cheered the invasion, believed, believed
everything which crossed the lips of Ronald
Reagan (as if this were the first US intervention in history), and to this
day would be hard pressed to recite a single
falsehood associated with the entire affair. The president himself later
appeared to have completely repressed the
incident. In March 1986, when asked about the possibility of an American
invasion of Nicaragua, he replied:

'You're looking at an individual that is the last one in the world that
would ever want to put American troops into
Latin America, because the memory of the great Colossus in the north is so
widespread in Latin America. We'd
lose all our friends if we did anything of that kind.'

On the fourth day of the invasion Reagan made a speech which succeeded in
giving jingoism a bad name. The
president managed to link the invasion of Grenada with the shooting down of
a Korean airliner by the Soviet Union,
the killing of US soldiers in Lebanon, and the taking of American hostages
in Iran. Clearly, the invasion symbolized
an end to this string of humiliations for the United States. Even Vietnam
was being avenged. To commemorate the
American Renaissance, some 7,000 US servicemen were designated heroes of
the republic and decorated with
medals. Many had done no more than sit on ships near the island. America
had regained its manhood, by stepping
on a flea.



Postscript:

At the end of 1984, former Premier Herbert Blaize was elected prime
minister, his party capturing 14 of the 15
parliamentary seats. Blaize, who in the wake of the invasion proclaimed to
the United States: "We say thank you
from the bottom of our hearts," had been favored by the Reagan
administration. The candidate who won the sole
opposition seat announced that he would not occupy it because of what he
called "vote rigging and interference in
the election by outside forces."

One year later, the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs
reported on Grenada as part of its annual
survey of human rights abuses:

'Reliable accounts are circulating of prisoners being beaten, denied
medical attention and confined for long periods
without being able to see lawyers. The country's new US-trained police
force has acquired a reputation for brutality,
arbitrary arrest and abuse of authority.'

The report added that an offending all-music radio station had been closed
and that US-trained counter-insurgency
forces were eroding civil rights.

By the late 1980s, the government began confiscating many books arriving
from abroad, including Graham
Greene's Our Man in Havana and Nelson Mandela Speaks. In April 1989, it
issued a list of more than 80 books
which were prohibited from being imported.

Four months later, Prime Minister Blaize suspended Parliament to forestall
a threatened no-confidence vote
resulting from what his critics called "an increasingly authoritarian style.



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