Wayne Madsen
Strategic Culture
18 July 2017
Strategic Culture
18 July 2017
The
small Pacific island states may pride themselves on being independent,
but they remain under the effective suzerainty of the dominant
neo-colonial powers of the region, namely the United States, Australia,
and New Zealand. These states, extending from Palau in the western
Pacific to Tonga in the south Pacific, are slaved to the domination of
their foreign policies and United Nations votes, international airline
routes, telecommunications, and finances. The small island states also
face to prospect of becoming the first victims of rising sea levels from
climate change. Some island residents are already fleeing their atolls
and archipelagos and are asking for «environmental refugee» status, an
immigration category that few nations recognize.
Normally,
the sudden heart attack death in June of Vanuatu’s 67-year old
president, the Anglican priest and Banks Islands traditional chief
Baldwin Lonsdale, would have hardly raised any suspicions of foul play.
However, when considered with other sudden deaths of Pacific leaders
over the past few decades, Lonsdale’s death raised eyebrows. For many
Pacific islanders, Lonsdale’s death was a case of déjà vu.
Although
actual political power in Vanuatu rests with the prime minister, in
2015, Lonsdale overturned pardons for 14 right-wing members of
parliament who were convicted of bribery. The speaker of parliament,
Marcellino Pipite pardoned himself, along with 13 other MPs. Lonsdale
returned home from a state visit to Samoa and quickly overturned the
pardons, claiming that no one is above the law.
Pipite
served as foreign minister of the conservative government of prime
minister Serge Vohor. In 2004, Vohor secretly established diplomatic
relations with Taiwan even though the People’s Republic of China
maintained an embassy in the Vanuatu capital of Port Vila. Vohor’s
decision to recognize Taiwan was later overturned by the council of
ministers. In forging links with Taiwan, Vohor established himself as a
hero for certain right-wing and anti-state interests around the world.
In 2015, Vohor found himself again serving as foreign minister but he
was subsequently convicted of bribery along with the other politicians
whose pardons were overturned by Lonsdale.
Lonsdale
had previously earned the enmity of the world’s biggest polluters after
he pledged to sue Coal India, Anglo-Swiss commodities trader Glencore
Xstrata, and the Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell for being the largest
contributors to greenhouse gases, and thus, rapid climate change that
was devastating the Pacific islands. In 2010, Prime Minister Edward
Natapei was toppled by a no-confidence vote while in Mexico City
attending a climate change conference. Natapei died at the age of 61
after a reported «long illness», which was apparently a surprise for
Lonsdale, who was quite shaken by the death of his friend and political
ally.
Lonsdale
was the second Anglican priest to serve as a leader of Vanuatu. The
first was Father Walter Lini, the founder of Vanuatu who served as the
nation’s first prime minister. When Lini became prime minister of
Vanuatu in 1980, he was immediately faced with a secessionist rebellion
on the predominantly French-speaking islands of Espiritu Santo and
Tanna. The rebellion was financed by a shadowy American «libertarian»
group called the Phoenix Foundation, a Carson City, Nevada-based
organization headed by a real estate investor named Michael Oliver,
which hoped to establish the «Republic of Vemerana» as a tax-free
libertarian utopia and which had been involved in an earlier attempt by
white Abaco islanders in the Bahamas to secede from the central
government in Nassau.
Lini
called in a military force of 200 troops from Papua New Guinea, which
put down the revolt in what became known as the «Coconut War». Some of
those who backed the secessionists had more than a passing relationship
with the Central Intelligence Agency and the French intelligence
service, the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de
Contre-Espionnage (SDECE).
Lini
irritated the United States, Australia, and New Zealand by establishing
diplomatic relations with Vietnam, Cuba, and Libya and signing a
fisheries agreement with the Soviet Union. He and his political party,
the Vanuaaku Pati, adhered to the concept of Melanesian socialism that
was inspired by the pan-African socialist leaders Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana
and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania. Lini refused an American embassy in
Port Vila. Vila also annoyed France by supporting the native
independence movement of New Caledonia, an act that persuaded France to
covertly support the Espiritu Santo rebellion. Lini’s political power
began to wane after he suffered a stroke in 1987 during a visit to
Washington, DC. Lini suffered the stroke while planning to attend the
National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. The annual prayer breakfast is
sponsored by the Fellowship Foundation, a group of wealthy Christian
businessmen and influential politicians. The history of the Fellowship
or «Family», as it is more popularly known, suggests that the group has
had a long history of links to the CIA. Lini never made it to the prayer
breakfast or a meeting scheduled with President Ronald Reagan, who was
irritated by Lini’s dalliances with Libya, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.
Lini’s
ensuing poor health, including paralysis on his right side, resulted in
his loss of political power in Vanuatu and he was defeated in a vote of
no confidence in 1991, a move that resulted in his resignation. Lini
died at the age of 57 in 1999. Throughout his political career, Lini was
subjected to constant «Five Eyes» signals intelligence bloc’s
eavesdropping by the U.S. National Security Agency intercept facility in
Waihopai, New Zealand, a unit codenamed IRONSAND. IRONSAND has
routinely intercepted the communications of Pacific island leaders.
Standing in opposition to the Vanuatu MPs convicted of bribery in 2015
were Lonsdale and Ham Lini, a former prime minister and the brother of
the late Walter Lini.
Lonsdale’s
recent death brought attention to the continued involvement of the
Western powers in Vanuatu’s affairs. Many of the MPs convicted of
bribery have links to the anti-state Na-Griamel Movement, led by Jimmy
Stevens, the half-Tongan, half-Scottish leader of the ill-fated
«Vemerana Republic», and the U.S. Libertarian Party, both of which were
behind the 1980 secessionist revolt on Espiritu Santo and Tanna. One of
the heads of the Phoenix Foundation was Dr. John Hospers, the 1972
Libertarian candidate for president of the United States, who also
served on the board of the «Vemerana Development Corporation», a likely
CIA front that was behind the attempt to populate a «New Hawaii» in
Vanuatu with 4000 U.S. military veterans. One of the Vemerana
conspirators was Mitchell Livingstone WerBell, a shadowy CIA weapons
smuggler based in the state of Georgia who had been involved in an
earlier illegal weapons shipment to the «Abaco Independence Movement» in
the Bahamas.
Sudden
death syndrome involving politicians is not limited to Vanuatu. Many
Pacific islanders remain suspicious about the mysterious death of
Nauru’s president, Bernard Dowiyogo. The president died at George
Washington Hospital in Washington, DC on March 10, 2003, while on an
official trip to the United States. Dowiyogo, a former President of the
republic, returned as president after President Rene Harris signed a
controversial agreement with the John Howard government in Australia to
become a processing center for Howard's «Pacific Solution», a program to
house Middle Eastern and South Asian refugees in Nauru and Manus
Island, Papua New Guinea in return for cash.
Dowiyogo,
who was 57, collapsed after signing a contentious (and secretive)
agreement with George W. Bush administration officials on the sale of
Nauruan passports, off-shore finance, and support for Bush's so-called
«war on terror.» Dowiyogo died after eleven hours of heart surgery
and while still on the operating table. The corporate media reported
that Dowiyogo died of complications from diabetes. Dowiyogo's body was
returned to the Nauruan government by the U.S. Air Force. Dowiyogo's
funeral in Nauru was postponed in Nauru because of unexplained «delays»
encountered in getting the president's body back to Nauru from
Washington.
Dowiyogo’s
suspicious death was not the first nor the last for Pacific island
leaders. Palau's first President Haruo Remeliik was murdered in 1985.
His successor, Lazarus Salii, supposedly committed suicide in 1988. Both
Palauan presidents died after they said they opposed a free association
treaty with the United States permitting U.S. nuclear warships to have
access to Palauan ports. In 1990, Ricardo Bordallo, Guam's ex-Governor
who favored Chamorro rights over the U.S. military’s domination of the
island, was found dead with a gunshot wound in the head while wrapped in
a Guamanian flag. The death was ruled a suicide.
Like
Remeliik and Salii, Dowiyogo was a strong opponent to U.S. Navy nuclear
ship patrols in the region, as well as French nuclear testing in French
Polynesia. Just a few weeks after Dowiyogo died, Dowiyogo's successor
as Nauruan president, Derog Gioura, 71, a Dowiyogo political ally,
suffered a heart attack and was rushed to an Australian hospital from
Nauru. Later reports stated that Gioura suffered a stroke. A few weeks
later, Gioura said he was surprised to learn that the Bush
administration had claimed that six suspected «terrorists», including
two members of «Al Qaeda», had been arrested in Southeast Asia carrying
Nauruan passports. On March 20, 2008, Christina Dowiyogo, President
Dowiyogo’s widow and Nauru’s longest-serving First Lady, reportedly
«died overnight» in Nauru at the age of 60, with no further details
provided. Madame Dowiyogo had been at her husband’s side when he died in
Washington.
In
1996, Amata Kabua, the five-term first president of the Marshall
Islands, died after suffering from nausea and chest pains at Queen’s
Hospital in Honolulu. Kabua, 68, was an irritant to the United States
over legal claims and law suits brought by the residents of Kwajalein
Atoll who were forcibly removed from Bikini Atoll so the U.S. could test
atomic and hydrogen bombs in their ancestral island chain. Kabua’s
obituary claimed he had died after a «long illness» even though he first
complained about his condition only a month before his death in Hawaii.
Even
the leaders of America’s surrogate «enforcers» in the Pacific are not
immune to dying suddenly after crossing swords with Washington. New
Zealand’s Labor Party prime minister Norman Kirk was a vocal critic of
the United States for everything from its nuclear armed ships in the
Pacific and its war in Vietnam to Washington’s involvement in the 1973
coup in Chile. In 1974, Kirk, 51, died suddenly after suffering a heart
attack. Later, Labor Party president Bob Harvey called for a Royal
Commission to investigate whether Kirk had been assassinated by the CIA
with a «contact poison». Based on President Lonsdale’s more recent
death, such investigative commissions should also be established in
Vanuatu, Nauru, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Guam (Guahan).
Photo: Access Now
Source:https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2017/07/18/island-leaders-penned-five-eyes-intelligence-bloc-die-suddenly.html
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