Dear Renaissance Network, Nov. 6
Thanks to 4 people in particular, (one who lives here in Nova Scotia too,
but reads South American & Spanish newspapers (James Crombie), one in Brazil
(César Roberto), a US citizen living in Bolivia (Thomas Kruse) and Micheal
P. from the MAI-not list) I have received a flood of good information on the
implications of the Pinochet case.
What points are important to retain from this "flood"?:
- something we already kknew: that the US government (mainly through the
CIA) knew of and helped engineer the dictatorships which killed thousands in
Latin America.
- that the US government also is implicated in Operacion Condor, a plan to
track down and kill dissidents who fled their homes in Latin America to
other nations, even the US, France and Spain. (Operacion Condor is also
referred to as "El Condor" Note from César Roberto: The condor is the
largest bird in the world.
The name of the bloody operation was probably derived from it because it
flies at the high Andean altitudes and can so ideally "oversees" the whole
South America. But it is also a rapacious vulture!)
- that there are NOW grounds to suspect that an operation similar to
Operacion Condor is active.
- that there is some humour in the midst of all this terror: The forces
behind the terror are delightfully stupid at times.
As an introduction, here is a posting from Micheal P., including excerpts
from two _Guardian_ articles:
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 22:12:47 -0800 (PST)
From: MichaelP <•••@••.•••>
Most folk won't know who Fred West is - neither do I. But this Guardian
piece provides some acid comment about the process in having the Brit
House of Lords examine the "sovereign immunity" doctrine as is is being
applied to Pinochet case. When all is said and done, Mary Queen of Scots
was the last sovereign to have invoked the doctrine on English soil.
Napoleon was also a head of state when he did the things he was exiled for
to St. Helena, so I don't think the doctrine did him much good.
And whether the Law Lords decide Pinochet can't be arrested and tried for
his actions, there is a Euro Court to which the question can be taken.
As to the second piece, each person receiving this post is involved in
politics as much as the writer was a quarter cenntury ago in Chile.
Of course none of us expects to be imprisoned and tortured for our
politics -- after all what happened was under a different administration.
But the persons who devized the tortures are still unpunished, their
progeny still runs the training centers for their successors, and those
training centers are in the countries where we expect to express our
political ideas freely. For how much longer ?
Cheers
MichaelP
===============================
Single transferable coup
By Mark Steel
Guardian (london) Wednesday November 4, 1998
Fred West's lawyers must be kicking themselves. If only they had
thought of the head of state loophole whereby you're immune from
prosecution if you're an ex-head of state, even if you only attained
that position by murdering the previous head of state.
They could have advised West to take time off from burying his
neighbours, bump off the Queen and Prime Minister, and announce he was
taking over for a while. Furthermore, he'd have been assured of a good
pay-out to cover expenses, which would have gone a long way towards
building costs.
The Lords, many of whom have spent years screaming about hooligans
being let off with light sentences, seem destined to let a mass
murderer free with no sentence at all. Not even 40 hours' community
service, or a weekend with social workers saying to him: "I see - and
when you set up this military dictatorship - how did it make you
feel?"
The arguments for allowing Pinochet to go are almost poetic in their
lack of logic. One is that he's a "frail old man". This could lead to
a change in the law, with fitness replacing the crime as the criteria
for the sentence. After a guilty verdict, the convict will do 10
minutes on an exercise bike, and the more you wheeze, the shorter your
sentence. Another argument is that Allende's government was as guilty
as the generals who overthrew it. Andrew Neil wrote that it was
Allende's supporters who had "Chilean blood on their hands". So the
murderer and murdered are equally to blame. Presumably if Andrew Neil
arrived at the house of a psycho, he could look at the lunatic with a
chain saw, then at the head in the fridge and say: "Honestly, you're
both as mad as each other".
One of Allende's faults, which Neil, amongst others points out, is
that he was elected on only 36 per cent of the vote. So I wonder if
they told Roy Jenkins about their own ideas on how to top-up the seats
of the minority parties. It's much simpler than Jenkins' proposal: you
take the first choice of the greatest number of electors and kill him.
It's called "The single transferable coup".
A common line has been that Pinochet is simply a "hate figure" for the
left. Typical was the Daily telegraph editorial which complained about
Peter Mandelson's "undergraduate ravings". Much better to conduct
affairs in a mature manner, by pouring a chap a port and politely
whispering: "Must say, that business with the electrodes was a rum old
do."
And there's the line that Pinochet helped Britain during the Falklands
War, although at the time, part of the justification for the war was
that Argentina was a military dictatorship. Besides, your average
defendant in a murder trial wouldn't be advised to plead for clemency
on the grounds that, apart from the offences he was charged with, he
also helped his mate drown 300 people in an afternoon.
The daftest argument of all is that to convict him would upset
Chileans. Thousands of marchers defied water canon in Santiago last
week, chanting: "It's a carnival - the dictator's in jail". And the
families of the victims are unanimous in stating that they could cope
better with their loss if the general were brought to justice. Their
case is so much more powerful than the one to release him, so how is
he on the edge of going home? The answer lies with Pinochet's reasons
for his actions in the first place.
Allende's Popular Unity coalition came to power on a wave of strikes
and peasant uprisings, his most popular policy being to nationalise
the copper mines. The country was brought to chaos, when lorry owners
went on strike to undermine the regime, and they were joined by a
campaign in which industrialists closed factories, and lawyers and
doctors stopped work. To appease them, Allende made the fatal mistake
of inviting generals into his cabinet and they seized their chance. A
military regime was installed, Allende and thousands of trade
unionists were murdered and profits were safe again. The High Court
judges, Thatcher, the Lords, the Daily Telegraph, Andrew Neil and the
others who defend Pinochet will drink tea with anyone who defends
profits. Either that, or the Chileans have just developed an
unfortunate coup gene.
Pinochet succeeded when the Popular Unity government played by the
rules of legal niceties while he was preparing a whole new game. Now
it looks as if another set of legal niceties will allow him to escape
again. So Jack Straw should announce that he's being locked up for
being an evil bastard and if there's no legal basis for it, so much
the better. In fact he's being done for not paying his TV licence as
well.
The worst scenario of all would be if he were convicted and sentenced
by a British judge. Because they'd say: "There's only one thing that
can do you any good my boy - a spell in the army."
** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. **
==========================
Blood cries out
Pinochet's men did terrible things to me and my friends. How can we
let him go free today?
By Sheila Cassidy
Guardian (london) Wednesday November 4, 1998
It was 24 years ago today that I was lying on on my bunk in the Villa
Grimaldi, Chile's best-known interrogation centre. With me, in that
small room, were 3 companions: Lelia, Francisca and Anna Maria. I was
37, and they were in their late teens and early 20s; university
students who had become "involved in politics".
Stiff and sore from the electric shocks, I was bleeding heavily, my
own blood mingling with the dried blood on my jeans: the blood of
Ennquetta, the Columbian Fathers' housekeeper who was killed when I
was arrested.
<snip>
I feel sick as I write, and the comforting shape of my room recedes. I
feel dizzy, spaced out. But I don't worry, for the physical
manifestations of anxiety are all too familiar and I know they will
pass. The flashbacks too, have virtually stopped.
I remember some of them vividly: once I was driving to the hospice
where I now work, and just before I passed a woman with a pram, the
elastic in her slip went and it fell to her ankles. My mind made an
immediate connection and I heard again in Spanish: "Sacarse su ropa" -
take off your clothes - which is what my interrogators said when I
arrived at the Grimaldi.
I remember too, the Lenten suppers in the convent where I was later
misguidedly trying to become a nun. The dry bread stuck in my throat
just as it had when I was in solitary confinement. The sensation
triggered the memory and I sat there in tears, as alone as I had been
in prison.
And now, 24 years later, I am about to board the train to London to
meet the barrister who will speak at the House of Lords hearing on
behalf of those of us who wish to bring a prosecution against
Pinochet.
He will also speak on behalf of the family of William Beausire, an
Anglo-Chilean businessman arrested in Buenos Aires and returned
secretly to Chile. William was seen in the Grimaldi in January 1975 by
one of my fellow-prisoners. His sister is to be in London tonight, and
the wife of the young American whose story was told in the film
Missing.
We the living, the articulate, must be the voice of the thousands who
have no voice: the family of the 2,000 "disappeared". I have lived to
tell my story of torture at the Villa Grimaldi, of my sadistic
transfer to Cuatro Alamos, of the 3 weeks in solitary and then a
further 5 weeks in detention.
But many who were seen at the Grimaldi were never seen again. They
were "disappeared". Perhaps some were run over as I feared I would be.
Some were likely shot. Others died under torture. But their loved ones
live on. That kind of grief does not resolve, but remains as a chronic
heartache.
The British courts have it in their power to make an important stand
for justice. How in God's name, in the names of the dead and the
grieving, can they quibble over an outdated law? How can America feel
it right to bomb Saddam Hussein, and England set free a similar
tyrant? I believe that British justice stands in the dock today.
Dr Cassidy was arrested in Chile in 1975 (for treating an injured
fugitive)
** NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest
in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. **
=========================
This message from James Crombie describes some of the important revelations
coming out as a result of the Pinochet case:
To: •••@••.••• (R.Magellan)
From: •••@••.••• (James Crombie)
Subject: Some angles on the Pinochet Case and Operation Condor
Cc: Jan Slakov <•••@••.•••>
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 20:25:20 -0400
Hello Cesar Roberto!
Jan sent me a copy of the message you sent her re: Pinochet.
Here, in turn, is a copy of the message I sent to the Cyberjournal.
Like you -- and about 75% of about 29000 readers of El Pais
(Madrid) polled on the Internet, I am extremely pleased
about the prospect of Pinochet being judged in an open
court of law -- in Spain or anywhere else.
As you can see, you answer some of my questions -- like the
one about WHERE the four tons of documents are. It seems as
if they are now in the hands of Jair Kirsche, the head of a Human Rights
Committee sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church in Porto Alegre, Brazil. I
will definitely add Brazil to the participants in El Condor.
A subsequent article in La Jornada also links George Bush to the
Prats assassination. He was then head of the CIA.
!Hasta luego!
James Crombie
********** copy of message follows ****************
I have just returned from a conference in Spain, where the
papers are publishing about three pages every day on the
Pinochet Case. Here are some of the angles you may not
have heard or read about:
The US State Department is keeping basically mum, perhaps
fearing the details which may come out concerning the
assassination, in Washington, of Orlando Letelier, who was
about to testify before Congress.
The argument of the UK judges who decided that Pinochet enjoys
immunity because he was head of state when he committed the
"alleged" murders, etc., is flawed -- since Pinochet was not actually
declared to be Chilean head of state until after most of
the alleged 4000 offences had already occurred. One can also argue
that torture and murder are not part of the functions of a "head of
state" (as such).
Margaret Thatcher, in a public statement, says that the UK should
let Pinochet go, basically as a token of gratitude for the assistance
he provided to the UK during the Falklands War against Argentina.
(I will not comment on this argument. It is clear how Thatcher will
vote in the House of Lords.)
El Pais, a daily newspaper published in Madrid, in its Nov. 2
edition, reveals that Pinochet was in the UK not merely for cancer
treatment, but also as part of a Chilean team on an arms purchase
mission. Guarantees had been sought -- and obtained -- by the
Chileans that Pinochet would not be arrested. Apparently there
was a foul-up... The question is, what will the House of Lords
do now? Protect the reputation of the British arms industry? or support
international legality and the movement to bring the perpetrators of
mass murder, terrorism and violence to trial?
La Jornada of Mexico City, in its Oct. 31 edition, published a report
by its Buenos Aires correspondent, Stella Calloni, concerning
involvement of the Chilean secret police, the Dina, in crimes
committed outside of Chile, referring to an article (which I have
not seen) published by Jack Anderson almost twenty years ago
in the Washington Post (Aug. 2, 1979): "El Condor ...".
Further support for these allegations stem from the discovery, on
Dec. 22, 1992 in a suburb of Asuncion, Paraguay, of four tons of
documents concerning Operation Condor.
Does anyone know any more about these documents? Four TONS?
Where are they now?
Operation Condor was a program by which the dictatorships in
power in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay [and Brazil] exchanged
information and prisoners -- for example when the dissidents from
one of these countries took refuge in another.
The international aspect of Operation Condor extended beyond
these four countries, however. Calloni quotes statements by FBI
agent Robert Sherrer to the effect that one of the phases of Operation
Condor included reprisals against (and assassination of) supposed
"terrorists" -- even when the latter travelled to countries which did not
participate in Operation Condor.
One of the victims of these operations, apparently, was the Uruguayan
Colonel Ramon Trajal, assassinated in Paris on Dec. 19, 1974.
<snip>
It would be interesting to hear from other [RN] subscribers concerning how
the local media in various countries are treating this whole affair (if at all)!
James Crombie
*************************************************************
James wrote another message with information on an CURRENT operation which
seems to ressemble Operacion Condor:
To: •••@••.•••, •••@••.•••
From: •••@••.••• (James Crombie)
Subject: Pinochet, Condor, Berrios, Years of the Wolf: 3rd of Calloni's Articles
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 06:46:43 -0400
The current publicity concerning the Pinochet years may help prevent
the "Years of the Wolf" from returning!
Those of you who read Spanish may be interested in the third of a series
of three articles by Stella Calloni, the Buenos Aires correspondent of
La Jornada concerning the operations of El Condor and the CIA. (In the
Nov. 3, 1998 issue.)
Go to
http://serpiente.dgsca.unam.mx/jornada/index.html
Click on
Ejemplares Anteriores
Then get to the Nov. 3 backissue and go to the Contraportada
Stella Calloni's article,
"EU podría aclarar la Operación Cóndor si desclasifica documentos"
is the third title under the larger headline
"Orden internacional de arresto contra
Pinochet"
********************************
The article gives the titles of books written by survivors
of Operation Condor, along with brief summaries of the
experiences described.
<snip>
Calloni closes her article with the speculation that a new
organization -- Coordinación de Seguridad Hemisférica -- is
being set up under US control to combat "conflictos sociales,
rebeliones campesinas e indígenas por la tierra'', and states
that this in turn has given rise to a "fuerte movilización en
Argentina y otros países para evitar que regresen los
años del lobo" -- a mobilization to prevent the "Years of the
Wolf" from returning. I have no idea what form this
"mobilization" is taking...
<snip>
Happy reading,
James Crombie
**************************************************************************
This _Village Voice_ article reminds us of the "Financial Warfare" (cf. the
article by that title by Michel Chossudovsky) concept, obviously still a
threat to many if not most of the world's people:
Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 15:33:58 -0400
From: Thomas Kruse <•••@••.•••>
Subject: Pinocho file: Village Voice article
Detention of former Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet could signal a Latin
American Nuremberg
Village Voice, October 28 - November 3, 1998
Washington -- The arrest of 82-year-old Chilean despot Augusto Pinochet in
London October 16 at the request of Spanish authorities has the human rights
community here inspired by the possibility that it could be the precursor to
a Latin American/Cold War Nuremberg.
Needless to say, the U.S. right and elements within the intelligence
community are not happy about such a scenario. Despite mainstream reports to
the contrary, the U.S. government has been less than helpful to Spanish
investigators who have been on the trail of Pinochet and other Latin
American war criminals. "The U.S. government does in fact have information"
pertinent to the Spanish investigation "but has withheld it so far,"
Representative George Miller said last week.
Marc Raskin, cofounder of the Institute for Policy Studies, is fervently
hoping that the information in question will be released. Raskin has deeply
personal reasons for his feelings.
It was raining, Raskin remembers, when he got the call. It was September
1976, and the news wasn't entirely unexpected:
In 1968, u.s. general Robert W. Porter publicly outlined a strategy for
combatting Communism in South America: "In order to facilitate the
coordinated employment of internal security forces within and among Latin
American countries, we are . . . endeavoring to foster inter- service and
regional cooperation by assisting in the organization of integrated command
and control centers; the establishment of common operating procedures; and
the conduct of joint and combined training exercises."
The working result of this seemingly inane jargon coalesced in Operation
Condor, a state terror network that rivaled anything today's Mideast "rogue
states" could serve up. A function of six South American dictatorships,
Condor was orchestrated by DINA and, as Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson
found in a mid-'80s journalistic investigation, was based on the warped
notion that all dissidents were Communists bent on world domination and had
to be neutralized. Anyone fleeing from secret police in one country was
subject to assassination by a reciprocal security service. And Condor
operations weren't restricted to the six member countries; if someone fled
to, say, Europe or the U.S., they, too, would be pursued and killed.
According to John Dinges and Saul Landau's Assassination on Embassy Row, an
investigation of the Letelier murder (which, they noted, bore the hallmarks
of a Condor operation), the CIA knew that assassins were en route to
Washington, but didn't share the information with the FBI. The CIA, they
also found, inundated the FBI with names of left-wing suspects after the
bombing, postulating that "the left killed Letelier to create a martyr."
Despite previous investigations, the possibility remains that
still-classified documents might show more CIA involvement in Condor-related
operations. Murray Karpen, Ronni Moffitt's father, remains convinced of CIA
complicity in his daughter's death. "Obviously, the CIA had to have known
about it," he says. "I don't know if there's anyone left in government who
had something to do with it, but if there are, they should be tried too,
absolutely."
Since stepping down as President in 1990, Pinochet has spent the last eight
years being received around the world as a right-wing icon. In the U.S., he
is a revered figure among libertarian conservatives, who adore the
dictator's embrace of Milton Friedman's economic theories, which, many
believe, led to an economic renaissance in Chile. Or, as The Washington Post
put it in an October 20 editorial, while Pinochet "did remove a
democratically elected government and see to the killing of thousands and
the detention of tens of thousands," he also "rescued [Chile] from a chaos
to which he was only one contributor, and to its controlled evolution into a
prosperous Latin democracy."
Such statements drive Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs, into a rage. "That is, simply, a journalistic obscenity," says
Birns, who was once a UN official posted to Chile. Indeed, he adds, had it
not been for the U.S., Chile's economy might never have tanked in the first
place.
"It came out very clearly in the Church hearings that it was the aim of U.S.
policy to economically asphyxiate Chile under Allende--not only was there a
successful concerted effort to make certain that no bank would lend Chile
money, but the CIA also was paying off truckers to strike," Birns says.
"Under Pinochet's labor laws--which are still in force--the trade unions
suffered incredibly, losing their rights to strike, to collectively bargain,
to have a reliable financial base. Whatever Chilean 'economic miracle' there
is was built on the backs of the poor."
Interestingly, one of the architects of the "Chilean miracle," José Piñera,
is today ensconced at Washington's libertarian Cato Institute as co-chair of
its Social Security privatization effort. The fruits of Pinochet's economic
policy also have found favor with the Clinton administration, which has been
very bullish on Chile, even though a recent report by the Inter-American
Development Bank found that Chile has one of the most skewed concentrations
of wealth in the hemisphere.
"The administration approves of collective amnesia--their stance is, 'Get on
with it, forgive and forget, don't sink into being maudlin about the past
when there are market reforms at stake,'" says Birns. "Yet when it comes to
someone bombing our embassies, it's, 'We'll hunt those terrorists down where
they are.'"
Research: Lauren Reynolds
Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia
Tel/Fax: (591-4) 248242
Email: •••@••.•••
*******************************************************************
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998 22:07:57 -0200
To: •••@••.•••
From: •••@••.••• (R.Magellan)
Subject: Keep Pinochet well locked !
<snip>
The Bolsonaro syndrome
******************************
Thomas Kruse also has already said something about the "collateral damage"
caused by the Pinochet affair in Bolivia. Outside Chile it is spreading
swiftly what I call "the Bolsonaro syndrome".
In Brazil, for instance, the main representative of the military right wing
in the national parliament, retired captain Jair Bolsonaro, has become
hysterical about the detention of Pinochert and even asked for the trial of
the king of Spain ---who was just now visiting Brazil, by the way!---
to answer for the massacre of Amerindians in the continent during the
colonial times... Nevertheless, this guy has been criticizing the
demarcation of Amerindian reservoirs (though there are very few surviving
Amerindians in Brazil) and promised a massacre of leftists if someday the
Workers Party arrives to the Presidency (an interview given in May, 1997, to
one of the most important national weekly magazines).
They are AFRAID rather than indignant, that is why they are growing pretty
mad...
The civilian version of the Bolsonaro syndrome was shown in the incredible
eagerness of the junior Frei, the president of Chile, in asking several
South American presidents, who met in Brasília together with king Juan
Carlos from Spain, to join in a common declaration urging the immediate and
unconditional release of the tyrant in the name of the Chilean sovereignty.
He was so in a hurry that he dared the diplomatic blunder of proposing it in
front of the king himself. Later the Chilean government denied such an
awkward move.
Frei's shameful initiative received a rotund "NO" from the host, the
Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who lived as an exile in
Chile before becoming a neoliberal. A few hours after the gaffe, the Health
Minister José Serra, a close ally of Cardoso and his disguised speaker, who
also was an exile in Chile during the Allende's term, conceded a blatant
interview in which he warmly supported the prison and judgement of Pinochet.
**********************************************************************
Jan: As the above makes clear, suspicions that the US (and other members of
NATO) were involved in the human rights violations are not unfounded.
These suspicions continue. For more information on what is happening NOW, I
recommend these:
- cj#807> Rwanda: it all started with the IMF... a perspective
- cj#835 1/2 & 2/2> Chossudovsky: FINANCIAL WARFARE
- the Washington Post series on "special operations"
- rn:Lest we forget: we ARE at war (July 27, 1998)
I can forward any of these messages to those who are interested.
all the best, Jan
