Winter Soldier
Testimonies
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In the Other Press...
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To alleviate the problem of articles from other press sources being reposted on this IMC site, this section allows users to link to articles published elsewhere, and to contribute and read comments on those pieces. [Posting a new item has been removed in this static archive of the site.] |
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News: Human Rights |
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Rufina Amaya, Only Survivor of El Mozote Massacre Dies at 64 |
Submitted by: yo / 14 Mar 2007
Publisher: Washington Post
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Shedding Light on Humanity's Dark Side
The Outspoken Survivor of Slaughter
By Alma Guillermoprieto
Special to The Washington Post
Rufina Amaya, the woman who was often identified as the last, or only, survivor of the massacre at the village of El Mozote, died last week. She was not, strictly speaking, the only survivor of that monstrous event, but she appears to have been the only one who emerged with her wits about her, a clear memory of what took place, and the will to describe how hundreds of people, including her husband and four of her children, were systematically butchered on Dec. 11, 1981, in an impoverished corner of El Salvador.
The massacre took place in the early days of the United States' involvement in El Salvador. In that conflict, radical leftist guerrillas tried to overthrow a ruling establishment utterly loathed by the population at large for its corruption and human rights atrocities. The Reagan administration intervened to train and equip the Salvadoran army, and to shore up the government against what it feared would become a red tide of communism lapping at the very borders of the Rio Grande.
The news articles describing a rampage of murder by the army in a place called El Mozote were written by me and by my friend and colleague Ray Bonner. In early January of 1982, Bonner, who was working for the New York Times, told me that he and the photographer Susan Meiselas had been invited by the guerrilla leadership to tour the rugged province of Morazán, an area of El Salvador bordering on Honduras where the guerrillas held sway, and which reporters had long been eager to visit. After frantic and pleading calls to my own guerrilla media contacts in Mexico City, a trip was arranged for me as well. The Washington Post, for which I was a stringer at the time, approved the trip. We did not suspect that I was being allowed into guerrilla territory to report on a massacre.
Traveling only by night and on foot through government-controlled territory, I reached the guerrilla-held region of El Mozote as Bonner and Meiselas were on their way out. My camera had been damaged during a river crossing and so the next day I saw, but could not photograph, a ruined chapel and three adjoining adobe houses where the charred remains of dozens of victims--it was impossible to tell how many--lay half-hidden among the rubble. Along the paths connecting El Mozote to smaller hamlets, parched corpses lay in the baking sun. There were bodies in the abandoned cornfields, in one-room houses where a pedal-operated sewing machine was a sign of great wealth, in the citrus groves where birds still chirped. There were, in fact, bodies everywhere--children, men, women, draft animals -- and the air reeked.
I was taken to see Rufina Amaya, a small-boned woman in her thirties, dressed like any campesina in a skirt and short-sleeved blouse, a frilly apron and plastic sandals, and with a face that seemed to have turned to stone. In precise detail she told me the same story she would repeat throughout the years, and that forensic evidence would confirm a decade later.
An army officer who was a friend of her husband's, she said, had told the villagers early in December not to worry about a coming offensive against the guerrillas, because El Mozote, which had a large evangelical population, was not known to be subversivo, or subversive.
The troops arrived the following day and, after an initial brutal search, told the villagers that they could return to their homes. "We were happy then," Señora Amaya recalled. " 'The repression is over,' we said."
But the troops returned. Acting on orders, they separated the villagers into groups of men, young girls, and women and children. Rufina Amaya managed to slip behind some trees as her group was being herded to the killing ground, and from there she witnessed the murders, which went on until late at night. An army officer, told by an underling that a soldier was refusing to kill children, said, "Where is the sonofabitch who said that? I am going to kill him," and bayoneted a child on the spot. She heard her own children crying out for her as they met their deaths. The troops herded people into the church and houses facing a patch of grass that served as the village plaza. They shot the villagers or dismembered them with machetes, then set the structures on fire. At last, believing they had killed all the citizens of El Mozote and the surrounding hamlets, the troops withdrew.
My article appeared in the first edition of The Washington Post, and Ray Bonner's ran in the second edition of the Times, on Jan. 27, 1982.
Now that the bones of the victims have been unearthed, and cleaned, and counted, and provided with proper burial, it is astonishing to think that for years Rufina Amaya was called a liar. What she was describing, after all, was the brutal murder of her flesh and blood, of her neighbors and fellow worshipers at the chapel. Why would she have lied about such things?
The problem was that the subsistence farmers who died at El Mozote and in the surrounding villages were simply fodder in one of the last battles of the Cold War. What was at stake in believing Rufina Amaya's testimony, along with Susan Meiselas's photographs and our firsthand reports, was the Reagan administration's continued support for the Salvadoran government. Because this support was so controversial back home, it depended on twice-yearly congressional certification that the Salvadorans were making progress on human rights.
In congressional hearings and to the press, high-level officials roundly denied that any atrocity had taken place. Bonner was called a liar in a Wall Street Journal editorial. I was not. Rereading our stories from that day, I reflected that I was spared thanks to the well-meaning, and tortured, editing of my original story in The Post, which, as published, was full of phrases like Rufina Amaya "broke down only when speaking of what she said were the deaths of her children." What she said were her children, or what she said were their deaths? Even the syntax was bad.
I bring this up simply to point out how even powerful and courageous news institutions can be intimidated by the White House. The Reagan administration continued to certify that the army was indeed improving its human rights performance.
The massacre at El Mozote remained a disputed fact until a peace treaty was signed between the government and the guerrillas of El Salvador in 1992. In the face of strong government opposition, members of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team were appointed by a U.N. truth commission to excavate the zone, and exhumation work continued until 2004. At that time, the remains of more than 300 men, women, children and infants had been recovered in the main killing grounds, but the list of victims from the village and nearby hamlets includes more than 800 names. As far as is known, this was the single largest massacre to take place in this hemisphere in modern times.
The events at El Mozote are no longer in dispute, but after a quarter of a century they are also no longer even a memory for the majority of Salvadorans, most of whom had not been born on the day when young girls were dragged screaming to the hills to be raped, and children cried out to their mothers as they were murdered. In this country, people who once argued passionately over El Salvador would be hard pressed to remember when they last talked--or cared--about the fate of that tiny country. Having pumped tens of millions of dollars into the Salvadoran military, the U.S. government paid a fraction of the amount for the reconstruction effort once the war ended. And Rufina Amaya, a small, dark-skinned peasant woman, who had no other weapon but her fierce will to live and to keep alive the memory of what she saw one vile day, is dead of a stroke at the age of 64. She will be remembered in El Salvador because she is now part of its history. She is part of the history of this country, too. |
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News: Labor |
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Harvest of Shame: Report Accuses Child Labor Abuses in Guatemala |
Submitted by: brad / 13 Mar 2007
Publisher: Democracy Now!
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President Bush traveled to Guatemala on Monday and said free trade can spread opportunity, provide jobs, and help lift people out of poverty. But according to a new report, there is a food processing plant less than 10 miles from where Bush spoke where children as young as 13 years old are working under deplorable conditions. We speak with veteran anti-sweatshop activist Charles Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee about the report. |
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News: International |
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Israel recalls 'naked ambassador' |
Submitted by: @ / 12 Mar 2007
Publisher: BBC
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Israel is replacing its ambassador in El Salvador after the envoy was found outside the embassy, drunk, wearing only bondage gear, officials said...
He was inebriated, his hands were tied and he was gagged with a rubber ball in his mouth.
In spite of his drunken state, the naked figure was reportedly able to identify himself by his full name and job title... |
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News: Human Rights |
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Wonderful photos of Colombians repudiating Dictator Bush |
Submitted by: Karen Prendergast / 11 Mar 2007
Publisher: Colombia IMC
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Click on the link to check out this great photos from Colombia where our dictator-and-son-of-a-bitch faced stiff opposition... |
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Bush, 'political cadaver' -- It's all but (over) |
Submitted by: nano / 11 Mar 2007
Publisher: Cleaves Publishing
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There is something politically odd about Bush's tour of various Latin American countries. South American nations were 'lost' to the U.S. some time ago -- the price paid for America’s fixation in the Middle East. Bush is loathed internationally but is particularly despised in Latin America. The Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez accurately called Bush a "political cadaver" and led 20,000 Argentinian supporters in the chant, "gringo go home", during his counter-tour of the region. |
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Timor-Leste: Bungle in the Jungle |
Submitted by: barra / 05 Mar 2007
Publisher: Cleaves Publishing
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Prior to the leadership of John Howard and his defence minister, Brendan (studs) Nelson, the Australian Defence Forces always did Australia proud. The reputation of the ADF preceded them in any theatre of war. Aussie fighters were once considered highly specialised and skilled, so it is with a sad heart and severe disappointment that I report the raid on Alfredo Reinado's hide-out resulted in the needless deaths of four Timorese and a 'rebel leader' who easily escaped to the mountains. No one is actually sure Reinado was present at the time of the attack! |
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News: Technology |
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Scientists Can Now Predict Intentions: Dystopia Now |
Submitted by: Wadoo / 05 Mar 2007
Publisher: Yahoo! News/ AP
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Beyond Orwellian:
"Scientists try to predict intentions
By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer
BERLIN - At a laboratory in Germany, volunteers slide into a donut-shaped MRI machine and perform simple tasks, such as deciding whether to add or subtract two numbers, or choosing which of two buttons to press.
They have no inkling that scientists in the next room are trying to read their minds — using a brain scan to figure out their intention before it is turned into action.
In the past, scientists had been able to detect decisions about making physical movements before those movements appeared. But researchers at Berlin's Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience claim they have now, for the first time, identified people's decisions about how they would later do a high-level mental activity — in this case, adding versus subtracting.
While still in its initial stages, the techniques may eventually have wide-ranging implications for everything from criminal interrogations to airline security checks. And that alarms some ethicists who fear the technology could one day be abused by authorities, marketers, or employers.
Tanja Steinbach, a 21-year-old student in Leipzig who participated in the experiment, found it a bit spooky but wasn't overly concerned about the civil liberties implications.
"It's really weird," she said. "But since I know they're only able to do this if they have certain machines, I'm not worried that everybody else on the street can read my mind."
Researchers have long used MRI machines to identify different types of brain activity, and scientists in the United States have recently developed brain scans designed for lie detection.
But outside experts say the work led by Dr. John-Dylan Haynes at the Bernstein Center is groundbreaking.
"The fact that we can determine what intention a person is holding in their mind pushes the level of our understanding of subjective thought to a whole new level," said Dr. Paul Wolpe, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not connected to the study.
The research, which began in July 2005, has been of limited scope: only 21 people have been tested so far. And the 71 percent accuracy rate is only about 20 percent more successful than random selection.
Still, the research conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) southwest of Berlin, has been generating strong interest in the scientific community.
"Haynes' experiment strikes at the heart of how good we will get at predicting behaviors," said Dr. Todd Braver, an associate professor in the department of psychology at Washington University, who was not connected with the research.
"The barriers that we assumed existed in reading our minds keep getting breached."
In one study, participants were told to decide whether to add or subtract two numbers a few seconds before the numbers were flashed on a screen. In the interim, a computer captured images of their brain waves to predict the subject's decision — with one pattern suggesting addition, and another subtraction.
Haynes' team began its research by trying to identify which part of the mind was storing intentions. They discovered it was found in the prefrontal cortex region by scanning the brain to look for bursts of activity when subjects were given choices.
Then they went about studying which type of patterns were associated with different intentions.
"If you knew which thought signatures to look for, you could theoretically predict in more detail what people were going to do in the future," said Haynes.
For the moment, reading minds is a cumbersome process and there is no chance scientists could spy on decision-making surreptitiously. Haynes' studies focus on people who choose between just two alternatives, not the infinite number present in everyday life.
But scientists are making enough progress to make ethicists nervous, since the research has already progressed from identifying the regions of the brain where certain thoughts occur to identifying the very content of those thoughts.
"These technologies, for the first time, give us a real possibility of going straight to the source to see what somebody is thinking or feeling, without them having any ability to stop us," said Dr. Hank Greely, director of Stanford University's Center for Law and the Biosciences.
"The concept of keeping your thoughts private could be profoundly altered in the future," he said.
Civil libertarians are concerned that mind-reading technology may fit into a trend of pre-emptive security measures in which authorities could take action against individuals before they commit a crime — a scenario explored in the 2002 science fiction film "Minority Report."
Already, Britain is creating a national DNA database that would allow authorities to track people with violent predispositions. In addition, the government has also floated the idea of locking up people with personality disorders that could lead to criminal behavior.
"We need to start thinking about how far we are going to allow these technologies to be used," said Wolpe.
Despite the fears, Haynes believes his research has more benign practical applications.
For example, he says it will contribute to the development of machines already in existence that respond to brain signals and allow the paralyzed to change TV channels, surf the Internet, and operate small robotic devices.
For now, the practical applications of Haynes' research are years if not decades away.
"We are making the first steps in reading out what the specific contents of people's thoughts are by trying to understand the language of the brain," Haynes said. "But it's not like we are going to have a machine tomorrow."' |
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News: Human Rights |
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Hicks Update: Determined to Fight |
Submitted by: Cleaves Eds via fleet / 03 Mar 2007
Publisher: Cleaves Publishing
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An Australian son abandoned by the nation and his government has decided to fight the fabricated charges brought against him by the criminal Bush regime. You bloody little bewdy! Against all odds and after years of psychological and physical torture Hicks proves his mettle. The murdering yanks and the slimy Howard government COULDN'T BREAK OUR LITTLE AUSSIE FIGHTER! One can only imagine the forlorn faces of the Howard servile government who no doubt desperately hoped that Hicks would break and accept a plea bargain in time for the elections. The Hicks case as previously stated has all the ingredients to bring down the servile government of John 'deputy-sheriff' Howard. |
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