Pope 'plans to chew coca leaves during Bolivia visit'

Pope Francis has requested to chew coca leaves during his forthcoming visit to Bolivia, according to Bolivian Culture Minister Marko Machicao.

Coca, the raw ingredient for cocaine, has been used in the Andes for thousands of years to combat altitude sickness and as a mild stimulant. Mr Machicao said the government offered the Pope coca tea and the pontiff had "specifically requested" to chew coca. Coca leaves were declared an illegal substance under the 1961 UN convention on narcotic drugs. But the growing of coca leaves for religious and medicinal purposes is legal and licensed in Bolivia.

The Vatican has not yet commented. The Pope travels to Bolivia on 8 July.

More at BBC News

Israel’s Hand in Guatemala’s Genocide

The Guatemalan genocide of the 1980s does not just implicate President Ronald Reagan and his senior aides but the Israeli government which secretly supplied helicopters, guns and computers that were used to hunt down and exterminate Ixil Indians and other perceived enemies of the state, reports Robert Parry.

At the height of Guatemala’s mass slaughters in the 1980s, including genocide against the Ixil Indians, the Reagan administration worked with Israeli officials to provide helicopters that the Guatemalan army used to hunt down fleeing villagers, according to documentary and eyewitness evidence. During testimony at the recent genocide trial of former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt, one surprise was how often massacre survivors cited the Army’s use of helicopters in the scorched-earth offensives. Journalist Allan Nairn, who covered the war in Guatemala and attended the Rios Montt trial, said in an interview, “one interesting thing that came out in the trial, as witness after witness testified, was a very substantial number of them talked about fleeing into the mountains and being bombed, attacked and machine gunned from U.S. planes and helicopters.

On Aug. 1, 1983, NSC aides Oliver North and Alfonso Sapia-Bosch reported to National Security Advisor William P. Clark that his deputy Robert “Bud” McFarlane was planning to exploit his Israeli channels to secure the helicopters for Guatemala, according to a document that I discovered at Reagan’s presidential library. McFarlane’s approach to Israel for the helicopters was successful, according to former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe, who described some of the history behind Israel’s activities in Guatemala in his 1992 memoir, Profits of War.

Ben-Menashe traced the Israeli arms sales to Guatemala back to a private network established in the 1970s by Gen. Ariel Sharon during a gap when he was out of the government. Sharon’s key representative in Guatemala was a businessman named Pesach Ben-Or, and through that channel, Israel supplied military gear to Guatemala’s security services in the 1980s, Ben-Menashe wrote.

By Robert Parry on Consortiumnews

State of siege

Scenes from a very hard-to-find movie made in 1972: "State of Siege". It's a fictionalized account of a true story.
Using an "aid" program as a cover, the CIA trained police officers throughout South America to fight "subversives" using of torture, assassination, and police-staged explosives to blame on terrorists.

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Nazi was post-war spy for Germany in South America

A high-ranking Nazi officer, who helped develop a mobile gas chamber, became a spy for West Germany after World War Two and went on a training course for the BND intelligence agency despite German warrants for his arrest, BND archives showed.

"In hindsight, the recruitment of Walther Rauff is politically and morally incomprehensible," said BND historian Bodo Hechelhammer on Monday.

Rauff, who was a top SS security officer in Nazi Germany, was a BND agent in South America between 1958 and 1962, earning more than 70,000 Deutsche marks (about $US18,000), Hechelhammer said. Rauff died in Chile in 1984 having evaded attempts to bring him to justice.

The BND, formed after World War Two with the help of the United States, even sent money to pay for Rauff's legal fees when he fought extradition from Chile to face war crimes.

After the defeat of the Nazis in 1945 Rauff fled to South America, where he was recruited by the BND. He operated under the name of Enrico Gomez and was assigned to report on Fidel Castro, a mission that turned out to be futile because he was denied entry into Cuba.

Between 1960 and 1962, Rauff took part in two BND training courses in Germany - the second in February 1962 when there was a German arrest warrant for him.

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Hitler aide Bormann ‘escaped to Latin America’

Top Nazi Martin Bormann, who German authorities say died in 1945, escaped Berlin and lived in Latin America disguised as a priest, a former Belgian collaborator said in an interview published Saturday.

Paul van Aerschodt, 88, who was sentenced to death in Belgium in 1946 but broke out of prison before his execution and now lives in Spain, told the Derniere Heure newspaper he had met Bormann four times in La Paz, Bolivia, around 1960.

"Bormann had come from Paraguay and was plotting with some 20 officers a coup to overthrow (dictator Juan) Peron in Argentina," van Aerschodt said. He claimed Bormann, who called himself Augustin von Lembach, passed himself off as a priest and celebrated masses, weddings and funerals and administered the last rites to the dying. "But he remained a fanatic," van Aerschodt said, adding that he had made the choice not to give Bormann away but did not know what became of him.

More on Raw Story

Also see Operation Paperclip, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II (1939–45).