The archaeological complex of Licurnique, located four hours from Olmos district in Peru’s northern region of Lambayeque, reveals evidence of an astronomical laboratory from the formative stage.
According to excavators, astronomical functions were engraved on rocks that have successfully stood the test of time.
The said archaeological site dates back to 3,500 or 4,000 years ago, and it is worth exploring without a doubt.
In it, archaeologists found a petroglyph that consists of a stone altar, an expression of religious superposition. It details and provides an understanding of Licurnique’s inhabitants.
Furthermore, astronomical observatories were engraved on a flat-surface rock, which were used to track stars and therefore to forecast rain fall for crops and human consumption.
In addition, explorers Juan Martinez and Manuel Curo agree that this complex combines ancient, Hispanic and Andean influences, event though it is unusual to find a blending of these three cultures’ customs, art and believes.
The astronomical laboratory was located near a river, whose vestiges are still visible but need to be preserved.
It should be noted that Licurnique is one of the 24 archaeological sites to be preserved under an inter-institutional agreement between Olmos district and the Naylamp-Lambayeque Executive Unit.
Ewan Robertson (VenezualaAnalysis via NSNBC),- Diplomats from Russia, Ecuador, Venezuela and Cuba will meet in Moscow on Monday to discuss the situation of U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden. The ex-NSA contractor has requested asylum in Ecuador to avoid what he fears would result in judicial persecution if he is extradited to the United States.
Snowden released information to the Washington Post and UK Guardian from June 6th revealing the existence of a U.S. government intelligence program Prism, which uses data from internet companies to collect information on people’s communication across the globe. He is now wanted by U.S. federal prosecutors on three charges related to espionage: theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information, and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorised person.
On Saturday Snowden spent his fifth day in Moscow, presumably in Shemeretievo airport, where he fled from Hong Kong in order to escape an extradition request.
On Monday diplomats from Russia and the three leftist Latin American countries are scheduled to meet with human rights activists in the Russian Public Chambers, a consultative body linked to the Kremlin, ”to give a social evaluation of the situation,” a Public Chambers spokesperson said. Observers consider the possibility of Ecuador offering Snowden asylum to have increased after the Ecuadorian government renounced trade preferences with the U.S. as a sign that it “doesn’t accept pressure or threats from anyone”.
Last Friday night, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro also appeared to further open the door to Snowden, stating that if an asylum request was made, Venezuela would be willing to offer the whistleblower protection.
“No one has requested us asylum for him [Snowden], but if he wants, Venezuela is willing to protect this brave young man in a humanitarian way, so that humanity knows the truth,” Maduro said at an event in the presidential palace.
The Venezuelan president will also be in Moscow next Monday to attend a meeting of the Forum of Gas Exporting Countries.
U.S. pursues Normalisation of Venezuela Relations
Meanwhile, the United States has reported it has a “strong interest” in normalising relations with Venezuela, making the exchange of ambassadors for the first time since 2010 a priority. According to a State Department spokesperson, a meeting was held between State Department secretary for Latin America, Roberta Jacoson, and the diplomat charged with Venezuelan affairs in Washington, Calixto Ortega, on Tuesday.
The spokesperson said that the meeting was held “to continue our high level dialogue with the aim of exploring options of how to improve ties between the U.S. and Venezuela”.
“We have a strong interest in continuing to work together on affairs of mutual interest, to protect and secure our national interest,” the spokesperson added.
The move comes after Venezuelan foreign minister Elias Jaua and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met at the side on an OAS summit earlier this month, where they agreed to finds ways to build “a more constructive and positive relationship”. Jacobson and Ortega also agreed to meet “regularly” to continue dialogue between the two governments.
There are currently about 50,000 Greeks living throughout Latin America, most of whom emigrated after the Second World War (Agapitidis, 1964; Katsomalos 1972). Earlier, emigration from Greece to Latin America, during the first half of the twentieth century, was so small it hardly seems worth the trouble examining. Only a few thousand people left Greece, or the Greek-inhabited regions of the Ottoman empire, and settled in Latin America. By comparison, over the same period almost half a million Greeks emigrated to the United States. Between 1900 and 1945, even Canada witnessed the arrival of many more Greeks than any single Latin American country. Nonetheless, Greek emigration to Latin America, despite its small proportions, offers researchers a chance to test theories about emigration, during the first half of the twentieth century, that have been developed on the basis of the North American experience. For if one is going to come up with an overall understanding of this phenomenon, in this particular era, one does have to take into account the entire spectrum of Greek emigration. Thus, despite its small proportions, Greek movement toward Latin America, before the Second World War, cannot be ignored.
The generally accepted conclusions drawn from studying emigration to the United States in the early twentieth century, can be summed up as follows: the persons emigrating were not the poorest, most were seeking to make money as quickly as possible, and, connected to this, most of them were initially planning on a short tay. The wave of Greek emigration to the United States, which involved roughly 400,000 persons between the 1890s and the early 1920s, was prompted by the collapse of the price of currants, which had become a major export. A blight on French vines was a boon to Greek production, centered mainly in Peloponessos, but when French vines recovered, the price of Greek currants dropped precipitously. Research has shown that the emigrants, primarily from Peloponessos, left Greece in an attempt to find ways to preserve the new, higher standard of living they had achieved during the currant boom of the 1870s-1880s. Several studies have suggested that family-based interests, including keeping up with the high price of dowries, that was a result of the economic boom, propelled many Greeks to emigrate. At any rate, there is a great deal of evidence that shows it was the relatively wealthier inhabitants of rural Greece who were the first to emigrate (Kitroeff, 1999).
Their motivation made the emigrants choose mostly urban occupations that would guarantee high wages, either in manufacturing or in the service sector. Virtually none of them chose to settle in rural areas and pursue farming, which entailed a more long-term commitment in the New World and a much longer wait for financial gains. By the same token, they did not plan to stay longer than a few years in the United States.
Although easy and quick profit was not something all could achieve, the high incidence of return migration, more than 25 percent of the total arrivals in the early twentieth century, confirms that many did not plan to settle permanently across the Atlantic.
"Διασπορά, άξιζε η σπορά ... ναι η ψυχή μου προχωράει ... γελάει"
How does the data on the Greeks emigrating to Latin America confirm the findings that are based on Greek emigration to the United States? First of all, the low numbers of Greeks moving to Latin America were related to the news that quick profits were made in the urban economy of the United States, and, secondly, the view that emigration to Latin America involved working in the agricultural sector, which entailed considerable hardships.
The Numbers Emigrating to Latin America
The Greek state was not able to monitor emigration carefully, and most Latin American countries counted Greeks with Ottoman documents as being indistinguishable from the rest of the "Ottoman" emigrants, known as "Turcos," so the task of measuring Greek emigration to Latin America accurately is very difficult. The numbers of Greeks involved in transatlantic emigration show very clearly that the United States was by far the most favored destination in the era of mass emigration. According to the Greek statistical service, between 1891 and 1920, out of a total of 386,611 "transatlantic" emigrants from the country, most (368,699) went to the United States and only 17,912 went to Canada and Latin America—the tables do not distinguish between the non-US destinations (ESYE, 1979: 52). The proportions changed after 1920 because the United States restricted emigration, but there was not a large increase of Greek transatlantic emigration to non-US destinations.
Between 1921 and 1940 the total numbers of transatlantic emigrants were 71,338, and of them, 22,083 went to either Australia, Canada or Latin America.
Prior to the wave of mass transatlantic emigration, there was a trickle of Greeks emigrating to Latin America, especially Brazil.
In 1840, there was a small Greek community in Rio de Janeiro made up of persons associated with the major Greek merchant houses, such as the Rallis, Rodocanachis and Petrocokkinos. Among that community was a Calogeras, a nephew of Greece's first governor Capodistrias, whose son, Pandias Kalogeras, became minister of finance of Brazil in 1915.
In the 1880s, small groups of peasants from Peloponessos, in southern Greece, traveled to Brazil and worked on the coffee plantations. The hardships they endured, described in letters published in the Greek press, apparently discouraged greater numbers of emigrants, whose reason for leaving Greece was precisely the wish to avoid the hardships associated with peasant life. The relatively small numbers of Greeks emigrating to South America meant that the "Greeks" rarely appeared in the relevant national statistics. The few instances where one does find the number of Greeks recorded, demonstrate how low the Greek figures were. For example, in the Argentinean province of Santa Fe, in 1875, there were only 13 Greek males compared to the 1,691 Italian males; even so, the Greeks were the tenth largest ethnic group in the province (Kleiner, 1938: 71).
"Ο ένας λάντσα χρόνια στην Αστάρια - ο άλλος καπετάνιος στα βαπόρια - Ελληνάκια σκληραρογυμένα - δούλευαν για σένα και για μένα"
During the period of mass emigration, more Peloponneseans traveled to Brazil around the turn of the century. Letters they sent were published in the local press in Peloponnesos. On the whole, heir experiences were negative; the Greek Consul in Brazil was reported as having had to cater for 500 Greeks who were "hungry, naked and homeless." This was an item which contrasted with the ebullient tone of one, Petros P. Polyzopoulos, whose letter glowed with enthusiasm about the opportunities available through the cultivation of coffee. Indeed, the newspaper that published both reports commented that Polyzopoulos's account was at odds with most incoming mail from Brazil, which was on the whole negative (Neon Aion, Oct. 7, 15, 16, 1905).
By examining contemporary local press reports one can surmise that there were probably two factors preventing more emigration from Greece to Brazil, which seemed to be the main destination among those choosing to go to South America. One factor was the conditions obtaining in Brazil. Emigrants' accounts stressed that those going to Brazil should be prepared to work in agriculture as well as put up with climatic conditions considered fairly difficult or at least unusual for the Greeks.
Judging by what occupations they pursued in the United States, where they remained within urban areas, the Greek peasants did not see their new future in terms of repeating the work environment they were used to in Greece.
Discouragement by the Greek government was the second factor mitigating against a greater flow of emigrants from Greece to South America. The government's uneasiness about the consequences of emigration, coupled with the negative reports about the experiences of the early emigrants to Brazil, led to official discouragement of Greek emigration to Brazil. Reports of an outbreak of yellow fever in Brazil, in 1905, led to a temporary ban on emigration to Brazil. Protests by prospective emigrants made the Greek government point to a similar ban it claimed the Italian government had placed on emigration to Brazil, according to reports in Greek newspapers (Neon Aion,
July 22 & 23, 1905).
"Ο ένας έφυγε για Αυστραλία - ο άλλος μπάρκαρε μικρός στα πλοία - Τούρκοι κι Έλληνες στη Γερμανία - μέρα νύχτα στη βιομηχανία"
Prospective emigrants were prepared to ignore reports of "yellow fever" in Brazil because they felt conditions in Greece were very bad (Neon Aion, July 28, 1905).
Thus, the numbers of Greeks settling in the Latin American countries were small. The smaller the country, the fewer the Greeks. For example, there were only six Greeks who arrived in Paraguay between 1889 and 1906. There were more who arrived in Uruguay: from 1909 to 1912 there were 54; from 1913 to 1916 there were 8; and from 1921 to 1924, 79 Greeks arrived in Montevideo. The most significant emigration was to Argentina, Brazil and Cuba; unfortunately, because of their relatively small size, compared to other immigrant groups, the Greeks do not appear in the Argentinean statistics. One source mentions that there were 5,716 Greeks in Argentina (Ritacco, 1992, cited in Hasiotis, 1993). These are the numbers for Brazil and Cuba.
The numbers of Greeks arriving in the Latin American countries rose in the 1920s, precisely the time when restrictions began to be imposed on emigration to the United States. However, overall emigration began decreasing from Greece. Not surprisingly, therefore, the numbers of Greeks in Latin America did not grow significantly in the next period, especially after Brazil also introduced restrictions in 1934. The following table shows a drop in the numbers leaving Greece for, what the Greek statistical service described as, "transoceanic" destinations.
Argentinean statistics on immigration in the 1930s, do not include Greeks among the twenty-five nationalities that are recorded as entering the country in the 1930s. Greeks are mentioned only in a table depicting arrivals and departures in 1939, which shows that 330 entered Argentina that year and 344 departed the country. A similar table for 1941 shows 356 Greeks entering the country and 324 departing Argentina, while in 1942 the figures were, respectively, 368 and 315. There were 346 Greeks entering Argentina in 1944, 490 in 1945, 616 in 1946, 715 in 1947, 1,206 in 1948, 1,200 in 1949, and 1,131 in 1950, which was the peak year in this period (Informe Demografico de la Republica Argentina, 1956: 37, 88-89).
The scattered and fragmented information about the geographical dispersion and occupational patterns of the Greeks in Latin America, confirms that for many, immigration was a short-erm plan designed to accumulate as much capital as possible in a brief time. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Greek settlement in the Latin American countries remained centered around the region's urban centers because so relatively few Greeks chose to work in the agrarian provinces. There are few references to the geographical distribution of Greek immigrants in the Latin American countries; this is due to the relatively small size of the Greek presence in the southern part of the American continent.
In Argentina, according to the 2o Censo de la Republica Argentina, in 1895 there were 313 Greeks (283 males and 30 females) in the country, and almost half their number, 170 (150 males and 20 females) were settled in the city of Buenos Aires.
"Ο ένας λάντσα χρόνια στην Αστάρια - ο άλλος καπετάνιος στα βαπόρια"
Another 69 Greeks (65 males and 4 females) were located around the city in the province of Buenos Aires. The numbers of Greeks in the other Argentinean provinces, according to the same census, were as follows: in Santa Fe, 34; in Entre Rios, 15; in Corrientes, 4; in COrdoba, 1; in Mendoza, 2; in la Rioja, 3; in Tucuman, 7; and in Salta, 1. In 1911, the numbers of Greeks in Argentina had risen to about five thousand, according to the New York-based Atlantis newspaper. That same year the Greek community of Buenos Aires established itself, along with a church, a school, and a hospital. In the 1920s, many Greek immigrants were involved in bilateral trade between Greece and Argentina.
No account of the Greeks in Argentina would be complete without reference to the legendary figure of Aristotle Onassis (1900-1975), considered one of the wealthiest persons in the world during the prime of his career, and certainly the wealthiest Greek.
Onassis's life has attracted a great deal of attention, so much that it is difficult to separate fact from fantasy. Onassis escaped from the destruction of Smyrna in 1922 and traveled to Buenos Aires, where he had some distant relatives. After taking on a number of jobs, including that of telephone operator, he began what was a successful cigarette manufacturing business; his father, who was a tobacco merchant in Smyrna, had also escaped the city's destruction and had resettled in Greece, where he continued his work. The success of his business permitted him to become involved in moves to promote trade between Argentina and Greece, and he traveled to Athens for that purpose. In 1931, the Venizelos government appointed him deputy consul of Greece in Buenos Aires.
But within a few years Onassis came into contact with Greek shipowners in London, and he decided to go into the shipping business, something that took him away from Argentina. Onassis began by purchasing ten old frigates in Canada after the Second World War; he was well on his way to fame by then (Evans, 1986:48-60).
Onassis was unique, of course, but also typical in the sense that he chose to work as a small owner/businessman in order to amass capital as quickly as possible. This was the case with most Greeks in Latin America. For example, in his 1919 study of Greek communities throughout the world, Mihail Dendias, estimates that there were about 500 Greeks in Chile. About 250 of them had settled in the northern port-city of Antofagasta, the country's export center. Dendias reports that most Greeks there, were small store owners or businessmen. With regard to the Greeks in Santiago, Chile's capital, Dendias mentions, approvingly, that they had already managed to accumulate considerable wealth.
"Ελληνάκια σκληραρογυμένα - ξανακτίσανε τα γκρεμισμένα - δούλευαν για σένα και για μένα"
The rates of return migration are the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle that would complete this sketchy picture of Greek emigration to Latin America. Accurate figures are not available. Greek sources suggest that, overall, return migration from all diaspora destinations was very high in the first half of the twentieth century, ranging from over 25 percent to as much as 55 percent in some instances. In his study of the Greek diaspora, Hasiotis, suggests that Greek settlement in Australia and Latin America before the Second World War conformed to the general pattern of high rates of return migration (Hasiotis, 1993: 108).
Greek emigration to Latin America in the first half of the twentieth century, hides no surprises for students of Greek emigration. The overall numbers of emigration were small, but the settlement and occupational patterns, as well as the rates of return migration, all conform to the overall norm of Greek emigration before the Second World War. This goes to show that this period was a transitional phase in the long history of Greek diaspora settlements abroad. The old mercantile diasporas were steadily dissappearing. The new diasporas, formed out of mass emigration in industrialized countries, were taking their place, through a slow and gradual process. Emigrants saw transatlantic travel and settlement as a relatively short-term process and intended to return to Greece wealthier, even though, obviously, not all grew rich and not all were able or wished to return.
The article is a republication from an article that was featured in the JOURNAL OF THE HELLENIC DIASPORA. It was written by Alexander Kitroeff who is a Professor of European History at Haverford College.
Wojtyla beatified Nazis and did the CIA’s anti-communist bidding. Ratzinger was a member of the Hitler Youth. And now, the Vatican selects a Pope once connected with Argentina’s military dictatorship which disappeared thousands of leftists. The Catholic Church staunchly supported murderous coup governments in Latin America and the selection of Bergoglio from South America signals their dedication to overturning the continent’s progressive revolutions.
Mainstream media is already lionizing Argentine Cardinal Bergoglio, who today became Pope Francis I. Bergoglio has been discussed as a “moderate” and even a “liberation theologist.” Yet his interactions with Argentina’s President, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, paint a picture of a man hostile to the progressive Bolivarian governments in Latin America.
As a bill legalizing marriage equality for gay couples made its way through the Senate, Bergoglio described it as having “destructive aims on God’s plan” and launched a failed to attempt to lobby senators to vote against it. He vocally opposed other social reforms such as gay adoption, upheld by Argentina’s Supreme Court, and the government’s free distribution of contraceptives. Cristina described Bergoglio’s reactionary worldview as reminiscent of “medieval times and the Inquisition.”
Though he once attacked former President Nestor Kirchner’s government as “immoral, illegitimate, and unjust” for not taking strong enough measures to support the nation’s poor, Bergoglio never uttered a word in opposition to the draconian military dictatorship that ruled Argentina with an iron fist.
A 2011 piece in The Guardian highlights Bergoglio’s collusion with the regime:
What one did not hear from any senior member of the Argentine hierarchy was any expression of regret for the church’s collaboration and in these crimes. The extent of the church’s complicity in the dark deeds was excellently set out by Horacio Verbitsky, one of Argentina’s most notable journalists, in his book El Silencio (Silence). He recounts how the Argentine navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now the Jesuit archbishop of Buenos Aires, hid from a visiting delegation of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission the dictatorship’s political prisoners. Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in an island called El Silencio in the River Plate. What scandal would have ensued if the first pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder and false imprisonment…
On Wednesday, Cristina announced via Twitter that the government had sent a congratulatory to Bergoglio. She also wished the new Pope a “fruitful” tenure based in promoting “justice, equality, fraternity and peace.” But a just, equal, and peaceful world is not one where the Vatican has a presence.
A Mexican judge has ruled that an exiled
Argentinian torturer must be extradited to stand trial in Spain; a
Buenos Aires court has waived military immunity against criminal
charges. And evidence mounts of decades of war by Latin American
dictatorships, with the connivance of the United States, against
leftwing dissidents.
For the Common Defense ! was a quasi-documentary short in MGM’s Crime Does Not Pay series. It was made in 1942 and featured a mysterious “Senor Castillo of the Chilean intelligence service”, who assured filmgoers that Chile was playing its part alongside the western democracies in the fight against the dictatorships and foreign agents that threatened the country. In the ruthless struggle, the main weapon, he said, was cooperation between police forces throughout North and South America.
The film was inspired by the FBI and designed as an attack on Nazi spies in Latin America and a demonstration of cooperation between police and intelligence services on a continental scale. There, in the middle of the second world war, are the seeds of Operation Condor, a continental campaign of repression waged by Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s against the new enemy – “international communism”.
The ramifications of Operation Condor were first revealed in December 1992 by several tonnes of documents from the Stroessner dictatorship, soon dubbed the “archives of terror”, discovered in a police station in Lambare, 15 miles from the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion. The tale they told was confirmed in detail by CIA documents declassified last November.
The United States had begun warning South American military commanders about the dangers of communism at the Inter-American Conference on the Problems of War and Peace, held at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City in February 1945. Bilateral agreements on mutual military assistance followed in 1951. They covered the supply of US arms and funding to Latin American countries, the secondment of US military advisers, and the training of Latin American officers in the US and at the US army’s School of the Americas in the Panama Canal Zone.
The move towards “continental defence against communism” was speeded by the victory of Castro’s revolution in 1959. The following year General Theodore F Bogart, US Southern Command supremo, invited his Latin American colleagues to a “friendly meeting” at his base in the Canal Zone to discuss problems of common interest. The outcome was an annual Conference of American Armies (CAA), first held at Fort Amador in Panama. In 1964 it was transferred to West Point, and from 1965 it met every two years. The West Point venue, a secretive meeting place symptomatic of cold war paranoia, was the heart of the future Operation Condor.
Sharing intelligence
Apart from “international communism”, a convenient catchphrase for all political opponents, Latin American military commanders were obsessed with links between their intelligence services. At its second meeting, the CAA called for the creation of a standing committee in the Panama Canal Zone to exchange information and intelligence (1). In response, a continent-wide communication network was established and top-secret bilateral intelligence meetings were held between Argentina and Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia, and others.
Files made available by those countries were circulated through a network of military attachés known as Agremil. Most were supplied by military intelligence services (G-2), but others came from security police or shadier bodies like the Organismo Coordinador de Operaciones Antisubversivas (Ocoa), a Uruguayan death squad that carried out interrogations, torture and executions, mainly in Argentina (2).
At the CAA’s 10th meeting, held in Caracas on 3 September 1973, General Breno Borges Fortes, commander-in-chief of the Brazilian army, agreed that the struggle against communism was exclusively a matter for the armed forces of the individual countries. As far as collective action was concerned, “the only effective methods are the exchange of experience and information, plus technical assistance when requested” (3). On this basis, the CAA decided to “strengthen information exchange in order to counter terrorism and control subversive elements in each country” (4).
From the time of Juan Domingo Peron’s return to power in 1973 to the 1976 putsch, when most of South America was gradually coming under the thumb of military regimes on the Brazilian model, Argentina lived through a curious transition period. Its police and armed forces stepped up repression and authorised the establishment of death squads like the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance (AAA). But, at the same time, it was the only country in the Southern Cone in which thousands of mainly Chilean and Uruguayan victims of political and social repression were able to take refuge.
In March 1974 Chilean, Uruguayan and Bolivian police leaders met with the deputy chief of the Argentinian federal police, Alberto Villar (joint founder of the AAA), to investigate ways of working together to destroy what they saw as the hotbed of subversion constituted by the presence of thousands of foreign political refugees in Argentina. The Chilean representative, a general of the carabinieri (military police), proposed that a police officer or member of the armed forces be accredited to every embassy as a security agent in order to coordinate operations with the police and security authorities of each country. He also called for the creation of “an intelligence centre where we can obtain information on individual Marxists and … exchange programmes and information about politicians. In addition,” he argued, “we must be able to move freely across the frontiers between Bolivia, Chile and Argentina and operate in all three countries without an official warrant” (5).
Villar promised that the Argentinian Federal Police’s Foreign Affairs Department (DAE) would deal with foreigners that neighbouring juntas wanted out of the way. In August 1974 the corpses of foreign, especially Bolivian, refugees started to appear on Buenos Aires refuse tips. On 30 September a bomb placed in Buenos Aires by a Chilean commando group led by CIA agent (or former agent) Michael Townley killed General Carlos Prats, commander-in-chief of the Chilean army under the Popular Unity government, who was the spearhead of opposition to Pinochet.
Police and military commando groups now crossed borders at will. In March and April 1975 more than two dozen Uruguayans were arrested in Buenos Aires by Argentinian and Uruguayan police officers, who interrogated them jointly in Argentinian police stations. Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcon, an Argentinian militant, was arrested on the Paraguayan border by Paraguayan police. As Chile’s National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (the Retting commission) subsequently established in its report of 8 February 1991 to President Patricio Aylwin (6), he was interrogated not only by Paraguayan police and Argentinian intelligence officers but also by officials of the US embassy in Buenos Aires, who passed information on to Chile’s National Intelligence Directorate (Dina).
State within a state
Meanwhile, Chile had put the finishing touches to its own system of repression. Following the putsch of 11 September 1973, for which US president Richard Nixon and his secretary of state Henry Kissinger bore direct responsibility, Pinochet gave Colonel Manuel Contreras full powers to “extirpate the cancer of communism” from the country. Dina soon became a state within the state.
The Chilean dictatorship was particularly exercised by the presence of large numbers of implacable opponents abroad. It had managed to kill General Prats, but in February 1975 the anti-Castro Cubans recruited for the purpose bungled the assassination of Carlos Altamirano and Volodia Teitelboim, the leaders of the exiled Chilean Socialist and Communist parties. In early April Contreras visited the Latin American capitals in order to persuade the security services of the whole continent to set up a special anti-exile force. On 25 August he was at CIA headquarters in Washington, where he met Vernon Walters, deputy director responsible for Latin America.
Two days later he had a meeting with Rafael Rivas Vasquez, assistant director of the Venezuelan intelligence agency (Disip), in Caracas: “He explained … that he wanted to place agents in all Chilean embassies abroad and that he was already training embassy officials who were prepared to act as intelligence agents if required. He said he had already made several successful trips to obtain the support of Latin American intelligence services. Everything was based on unwritten agreements” (7). According to Rivas, the Venezuelan government ordered the Disip to reject Contreras’ overtures. It was the only refusal. All the other countries (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia) agreed.
At the same time the order was given to set up an anti-subversion network in Europe based on Italian rightwing terrorist groups. Unable to get at Carlos Altamirano, who was living under armed guard in the Federal Republic of Germany, the assassins turned their attention to Bernardo Leighton, Chile’s former vice president and a founder member of the Christian Democratic Party. On 6 October 1975 Leighton and his wife were attacked by a fascist hit squad in Rome. They survived the shooting, but Mrs Leighton was left permanently paralysed. Despite this failure, Pinochet had a meeting with Stefano Delle Chiaie, leader of the Italian commando groups, who agreed to remain at Chile’s disposal.
At its meeting of 19-26 October 1975 in Montevideo, the CAA gave the go-ahead for a first “working meeting on national intelligence services”, prepared by Contreras. It took place from 25 November to 1 December in Santiago de Chile and was classified top secret. Contreras’ main proposal was the creation of a continental database “similar to the Interpol database in Paris, but specialising in subversion”. This was the beginning of the Chilean contribution to Operation Condor.
According to the CIA, which claims not to have heard of Condor until 1976 (8), three of the countries involved, namely Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, “extended cooperation on anti-subversion activities to the assassination of high-ranking terrorists living in exile in Europe”. Although it had been accepted for years that information was to be exchanged bilaterally, “a third, top-secret phase of Operation Condor apparently involved training special teams from member countries for joint operations that included the assassination of terrorists and terrorist sympathisers. When a terrorist or sympathiser from a member country was identified, a team would be sent to locate the target and keep him under surveillance. Then a hit squad would be despatched. The special teams were made up of people from one or several Condor states who were supplied with false identity papers issued by member countries.”
The CIA claims that the operation centre for phase three was in Buenos Aires, where a special team had been set up. Meanwhile, bilateral meetings between the countries of the Southern Cone continued as usual under the aegis of the CAA, and their effects were just as devastating (9).
Many Condor meetings took place in 1976. They were often attended by the same people who took part in CAA bilateral meetings. According to the CIA, “although cooperation between the various intelligence and security services had existed for some time, it was not formalised until late May 1976 at a Condor meeting in Santiago de Chile, where the main topic was long-term cooperation between the services of the participating countries going well beyond the exchange of information. The Condor member countries identified themselves by code numbers: Condor One, Condor Two, etc.
It was a bad year for their political opponents, who had taken refuge wherever they could. Under the pretext of attacking terrorists committed to armed resistance, the murderers struck out at anyone, crossing frontiers at will. Increasing numbers of political opponents were assassinated or “disappeared”. On 8 June, in the course of a friendly chat in Santiago, Kissinger assured Pinochet that “the people of the United States are wholeheartedly behind you … and wish you every success” (10).
Flying like a condor
But the scale of repression made the existence of Condor increasingly difficult to hide. The CIA itself became a source of embarrassing rumours as staff exchanged quips about colleagues sent abroad because they could “fly like a condor”. Finally, Contreras’ own policy of targeted assassinations put paid to the operation. On 21 September 1976 he had Chile’s former foreign minister, Orlando Letelier, assassinated in Washington. It was a major blunder. The US investigators were determined to identify those responsible. The FBI’s chief officer in Buenos Aires filed a special report on phase three of Operation Condor, and extracts found their way into the American press. A Congressional committee of inquiry was quickly set up. The Chileans responded by disbanding Dina and replacing it by another organisation. Contreras was ditched.
The newly elected US president Jimmy Carter had made human rights part of his platform. He was not prepared to countenance Condor-type operations. At the very least, he did not want the US involved in them. The prevailing view is that the Carter administration pressured the Latin American countries to close Condor down.
Representatives of all the Condor member states met in Buenos Aires on 13-15 December 1976 to discuss future plans in the light of the new situation. The Argentinians, who had outstripped all the other dictatorships in the ferocity of their methods since the putsch of 23 March, took matters in hand. With help from Paraguay, they sought a more secure and discreet channel for anti-subversion operations in the form of the Latin American Anti-Communist Federation (CAL), an offshoot of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL).
The CAL held its third meeting in Asuncion in March 1977. It was attended by the top brass of the dictatorships, including General Gustavo Leigh, a member of the Chilean junta, and General Jorge Videla, the Argentinian president, together with an assortment of Latin America’s torturers and death squad members. Their main problems were the US’ new strategy of re-establishing democracy in Latin America, the spread of guerrilla movements in Central America, and the position of whole sections of the Catholic Church that appeared to be an integral part of the international communist movement.
A plan proposed by the Bolivians, named after the Bolivian dictator, was adopted. Its purpose was to “eradicate” proponents of liberation theology. Under the Banzer plan, which culminated in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in San Salvador, hundreds of priests, monks, nuns, lay members of religious communities and bishops were executed,
An end to formal restraints
Taking charge of repression throughout Latin America, the Argentinians discarded all formal restraints. The coordination of repression was entrusted to death squads. Even though some were composed of soldiers and policemen, this was tantamount to privatising anti-subversion operations. At the same time bilateral intelligence meetings of national security agencies, as well as meetings of the CAA, continued under the aegis of the US. In 1977 the CAA met in Managua, Nicaragua, and in 1979 in Bogota, Colombia. The Argentinians also sent several missions to Central America to assist local armed forces and political police. In the spring of 1979 they started anti-subversion training courses in Buenos Aires to reduce dependence on the US war schools. The fall of the Somoza regime in July 1979 encouraged the Latin American dictatorships to standardise their anti-subversion methods.
The CAL’s fourth meeting, chaired by Argentinian general Suarez Mason in Buenos Aires in September 1980, favoured the adoption of an “Argentinian solution” throughout Latin America. From April 1980 the US Department of Defence was aware that Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil were once again pursuing the idea of an “international anti-terrorist organisation” – Condor in a new guise. Meanwhile, the CAL was coordinating massacres carried out by death squads and security forces in Central America. The Agremil files continued to circulate in the general staffs, yielding a rich harvest of cross-border arrests, exchanges of prisoners and international torture squads.
In 1981 the CAA meeting was held in Washington, following the election of a Republican president, Ronald Reagan. Developments took a new turn as the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua gave fresh impetus to anti-subversion cooperation (11). The participants decided to renew their bilateral agreements on the exchange of information about so-called terrorists and to set up a permanent CAA secretariat. This came into being on 24 May 1984 in Santiago de Chile.
When Argentina returned to democracy in 1985, the Chilean military regime was left as the last rampart against communism in South America except for Paraguay. The Reagan administration entrusted its programme of secret war in Central America to the CIA , the CAL and the private sector. The CAA remained committed to an ideology of war against international communism, except that the term now included human rights activists as well as leftwing and clerical opponents. Judges and journalists calling for torturers to be brought to trial were gradually included, as were critics of corruption, in which the military were deeply implicated..
Operation Condor as such vanished in the jungles of Central America when the US took over the struggle against the Nicaraguan Sandanistas. But it was the end of the cold war and the accumulation of its own excesses that dealt it a fatal blow. Strictly speaking, it was directed against only a few dozen or few hundred targeted victims. But the overall toll of repression in the Southern Cone alone during the period of its existence totalled over 50,000 murdered, 35,000 disappeared and 400,000 imprisoned.
Although torture and executions are no longer institutionalised on a continental scale, there is no reason to believe these practices have ceased. The crimes of the Colombian paramilitaries linked to sections of the country’s armed forces are clear evidence to the contrary. On 8 May 2000 a report by the Committee on Hemispheric Security of the Organisation of American States (OAS) reviewed 10 years of anti-subversion cooperation among the various South and Central American states. While the designated enemy is now drugs-traffickers rather than communists and there are references to human rights, the message is still the same.
Numerous Latin American states have concluded agreements among themselves and with the US aimed at greater bilateral or multilateral cooperation against terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking. These agreements confirm the role of the armed forces in social control.
Similarly, since the mid-1990s and under the aegis of the US, the Latin American countries have increased their bilateral exchange arrangements. In the intelligence field alone, dozens of arrangements are in force, in addition to the annual conference of the intelligence services of the armies of the OAS member states. The CAA still meets (in Argentina in 1995 and in Ecuador in 1997). A multilateral military conference on intelligence services, the first since the meeting set up by Contreras in 1975, was organised by the Bolivian army on 8-10 March 1999. It was attended by representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, the US (Southern Command), Uruguay and Venezuela.
“Security in the Americas”, so dear to the US, does not necessarily give first place to democracy. It would not take much for Operation Condor to rise from the ashes.
Notes:
Permanent Executive Secretariat of the Conference of American Armies (PESCAA), Information Bulletin no. 1, Santiago, Chile, 1985
See Nunca Más (never again): a report by Argentina’s National Commission on Disappeared People, Faber in association with Index on Censorship, London, 1986.
See Diffusion de l’information sur l’Amérique Latine (DIAL), no. 125, Paris, 25 October 1973
PESCAA, Information Bulletin No.1, op. cit.
Stenographer’s record published by El Autentico, Buenos Aires, 10 December 1975.
The full text of the report is available in English translation at www.nd.edu/
Testimony given on 29 June 1979 to a Washington court during the trial of Orlando Letelier’s assassins.
Whether this claim is true or false, the fact remains that Contreras was a CIA informer from 1974 to 1977 and was on the agency’s payroll until 1975 (“by mistake”, the CIA claims), as revealed by a declassified document submitted to the US Congress at its request on 19 September 2000. See El Nuevo Herald, Miami, 20 September 2000.
The Argentinians alone did not rely entirely on the United States in their “dirty war”. In 1976 a French military mission was sent to Buenos Aires to train the Argentinian armed forces in anti-subversion operations.
Declassified document quoted in El Pais, 28 February 1999
On 1 December 1981 the US administration released $19m to fund the training of an initial contingent of 500 Contras (Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries) by Argentinian officers.
Le Monde Diplomatique (English edition), translated by Barry Smerin, August 2001 link to the original version in French: Retour sur un terrorisme d’état béni par les Etats-Unis «Opération Condor », cauchemar de l’Amérique latine par Pierre Abramovici, Le Monde Diplomatique, Mai 2001
1. Never in the history of Latin America, has a political leader had such incontestable democratic legitimacy. Since coming to power in 1999, there were 16 elections in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez won 15, the last on October 7, 2012. He defeated his rivals with a margin of 10-20 percentage points.
2. All international bodies, from the European Union to the Organization of American States, to the Union of South American Nations and the Carter Center, were unanimous in recognizing the transparency of the vote counts.
3. James Carter, former U.S. President, declared that Venezuela’s electoral system was “the best in the world.”
4. Universal access to education introduced in 1998 had exceptional results. About 1.5 million Venezuelans learned to read and write thanks to the literacy campaign called Mission Robinson I.
5. In December 2005, UNESCO said that Venezuela had eradicated illiteracy.
6. The number of children attending school increased from 6 million in 1998 to 13 million in 2011 and the enrollment rate is now 93.2%.
7. Mission Robinson II was launched to bring the entire population up to secondary level. Thus, the rate of secondary school enrollment rose from 53.6% in 2000 to 73.3% in 2011.
8. Missions Ribas and Sucre allowed tens of thousands of young adults to undertake university studies. Thus, the number of tertiary students increased from 895,000 in 2000 to 2.3 million in 2011, assisted by the creation of new universities.
9. With regard to health, they created the National Public System to ensure free access to health care for all Venezuelans. Between 2005 and 2012, 7873 new medical centers were created in Venezuela.
10. The number of doctors increased from 20 per 100,000 population in 1999 to 80 per 100,000 in 2010, or an increase of 400%.
11. Mission Barrio Adentro I provided 534 million medical consultations. About 17 million people were attended, while in 1998 less than 3 million people had regular access to health. 1.7 million lives were saved, between 2003 and 2011.
12. The infant mortality rate fell from 19.1 per thousand in 1999 to 10 per thousand in 2012, a reduction of 49%.
13. Average life expectancy increased from 72.2 years in 1999 to 74.3 years in 2011.
14. Thanks to Operation Miracle, launched in 2004, 1.5 million Venezuelans who were victims of cataracts or other eye diseases, regained their sight.
15. From 1999 to 2011, the poverty rate decreased from 42.8% to 26.5% and the rate of extreme poverty fell from 16.6% in 1999 to 7% in 2011.
16. In the rankings of the Human Development Index (HDI) of the United Nations Program for Development (UNDP), Venezuela jumped from 83 in 2000 (0.656) at position 73 in 2011 (0.735), and entered into the category Nations with ‘High HDI’.
17. The GINI coefficient, which allows calculation of inequality in a country, fell from 0.46 in 1999 to 0.39 in 2011.
18. According to the UNDP, Venezuela holds the lowest recorded Gini coefficient in Latin America, that is, Venezuela is the country in the region with the least inequality.
19. Child malnutrition was reduced by 40% since 1999.
20. In 1999, 82% of the population had access to safe drinking water. Now it is 95%.
21. Under President Chavez social expenditures increased by 60.6%.
22. Before 1999, only 387,000 elderly people received a pension. Now the figure is 2.1 million.
23. Since 1999, 700,000 homes have been built in Venezuela.
24. Since 1999, the government provided / returned more than one million hectares of land to Aboriginal people.
25. Land reform enabled tens of thousands of farmers to own their land. In total, Venezuela distributed more than 3 million hectares.
26. In 1999, Venezuela was producing 51% of food consumed. In 2012, production was 71%, while food consumption increased by 81% since 1999. If consumption of 2012 was similar to that of 1999, Venezuela produced 140% of the food it consumed.
27. Since 1999, the average calories consumed by Venezuelans increased by 50% thanks to the Food Mission that created a chain of 22,000 food stores (MERCAL, Houses Food, Red PDVAL), where products are subsidized up to 30%. Meat consumption increased by 75% since 1999.
28. Five million children now receive free meals through the School Feeding Programme. The figure was 250,000 in 1999.
29. The malnutrition rate fell from 21% in 1998 to less than 3% in 2012.
30. According to the FAO, Venezuela is the most advanced country in Latin America and the Caribbean in the erradication of hunger.
31. The nationalization of the oil company PDVSA in 2003 allowed Venezuela to regain its energy sovereignty.
32. The nationalization of the electrical and telecommunications sectors (CANTV and Electricidad de Caracas) allowed the end of private monopolies and guaranteed universal access to these services.
33. Since 1999, more than 50,000 cooperatives have been created in all sectors of the economy.
34. The unemployment rate fell from 15.2% in 1998 to 6.4% in 2012, with the creation of more than 4 million jobs.
35. The minimum wage increased from 100 bolivars ($ 16) in 1998 to 247.52 bolivars ($ 330) in 2012, ie an increase of over 2,000%. This is the highest minimum wage in Latin America.
36. In 1999, 65% of the workforce earned the minimum wage. In 2012 only 21.1% of workers have only this level of pay.
37. Adults at a certain age who have never worked still get an income equivalent to 60% of the minimum wage.
38. Women without income and disabled people receive a pension equivalent to 80% of the minimum wage.
39. Working hours were reduced to 6 hours a day and 36 hours per week, without loss of pay.
40. Public debt fell from 45% of GDP in 1998 to 20% in 2011. Venezuela withdrew from the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, after early repayment of all its debts.
41. In 2012, the growth rate was 5.5% in Venezuela, one of the highest in the world.
42. GDP per capita rose from $ 4,100 in 1999 to $ 10,810 in 2011.
43. According to the annual World Happiness 2012, Venezuela is the second happiest country in Latin America, behind Costa Rica, and the nineteenth worldwide, ahead of Germany and Spain.
44. Venezuela offers more direct support to the American continent than the United States. In 2007, Chávez spent more than 8,800 million dollars in grants, loans and energy aid as against 3,000 million from the Bush administration.
45. For the first time in its history, Venezuela has its own satellites (Bolivar and Miranda) and is now sovereign in the field of space technology. The entire country has internet and telecommunications coverage.
46. The creation of Petrocaribe in 2005 allows 18 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, or 90 million people, secure energy supply, by oil subsidies of between 40% to 60%.
47. Venezuela also provides assistance to disadvantaged communities in the United States by providing fuel at subsidized rates.
48. The creation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) in 2004 between Cuba and Venezuela laid the foundations of an inclusive alliance based on cooperation and reciprocity. It now comprises eight member countries which places the human being in the center of the social project, with the aim of combating poverty and social exclusion.
49. Hugo Chavez was at the heart of the creation in 2011 of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) which brings together for the first time the 33 nations of the region, emancipated from the tutelage of the United States and Canada.
50. Hugo Chavez played a key role in the peace process in Colombia. According to President Juan Manuel Santos, “if we go into a solid peace project, with clear and concrete progress, progress achieved ever before with the FARC, is also due to the dedication and commitment of Chavez and the government of Venezuela.”
The controversial Oliver Stone documentary about Hugo Chavez
Although the controlled media contrived to mislead Americans into
perceiving Chavez as “anti-American,” the truth is that the bombastic
South American icon was actually a forthright nationalist critic of the
internationalist and imperialist forces often referred to as the New
World Order.Like many who oppose the privately-owned Federal
Reserve money monopoly which operates un-Constitutionally on American
soil, Chavez was a critic of rampant global super-capitalism, which
Chavez called “the demon.”
By Michael Collins Piper
American Free Press Newspaper via theuglytruth
There is no question Chavez knew the source of his high-powered opposition. In 2000, announcing a trip to Iraq, Chavez taunted his critics, remarking: “Imagine what the Pharisees will say when they see me with Saddam Hussein.” On another occasion he asserted: “The world has wealth for all, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ, have taken over all the wealth of the world.”
All of this is something of which even otherwise well-informed American patriots are unaware.
Should there be any doubt Chavez was perceived as a roadblock in the way of the New World Order, consider the warnings issued by David Rothkopf, front man at Kissinger Associates, the secretive pressure group of Henry Kissinger, one of the foremost advocates of the New World Order.
In Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making—which acknowledges the influence of such New World Order institutions as Bilderberg, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations—Rothkopf spoke approvingly of what he called the new global “superclass” (that is, the New World Order elite) and said that, in his words, the “political fault line” for the 21st century is the battle of “Globalists vs. Nationalists,” that an emerging “global network of antiglobalists” stood opposed to the “superclass.” He wrote:
At the core of the “anti-network” is a small group of leaders, linked by many shared characteristics and attitudes though they come from widely different regions of the world. They might be characterized as “nationalists,” or opponents of the United States, or critics of Western-led globalization. . . .
In their view, globalization is old Western imperialism dressed up in new clothes, and they are reacting to it much as they were trained to react to such incursions. . . . Whether you characterize it as nationalist vs. internationalist, populist vs. globalist, or anti-neo- imperialist vs. pro-American globalization, the fact is that the battle lines are drawn.
Specifically naming three figures among that “small group of leaders” challenging the New World Order as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Chavez, Rothkopf candidly confirmed the primary underlying conflict in our world today is—as it has always been—the fight by nationalists worldwide to preserve their nations’ sovereignty in the face of the concerted drive by cosmopolitan internationalists to erect a global imperium. Rothkopf’s admissions were a clear sign the New World Order schemers recognized serious forces were aligning against them.
Unfortunately, groups such as the John Birch Society parroted the New World Order crowd and the war-mongering pro-Israel neo-conservatives by attacking nationalists such as Ahmadinejad, Putin, and Chavez.
Considering all of this—quite naturally—from the time Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in 1999, the tightly-knit interlocking network of Rothschild dynasty-linked plutocratic families and Federal Reserve-connected financial interests who dominate the American military-industrial-media complex never spared any fervor in denouncing Chavez at any opportunity.
That international Zionism and the interwoven forces of the New World Order were disturbed about Chavez was (at first) largely kept under wraps. Zionist hatred of Chavez was confined to small-circulation—but nonetheless influential—journals read almost exclusively by supporters of Israel and in elitist circles.
For propaganda purposes designed to manipulate more broad-ranging concerns of freedom-loving Americans, the media regularly stoked up the theme Chavez was a “socialist” or a “communist” under the thumb of Fidel Castro.
That Chavez was friendly toward Castro as virtually all Latin American leaders—even “conservatives”—have been (not to mention leaders worldwide)—was hardly “proof” Chavez was a communist.
Even The New York Review of Books admitted on Oct. 6, 2005 that “a great many businessmen have prospered under [Chavez’s] rule, and he has made it clear he sees a significant role for the private sector and, most particularly, for foreign investment.” So Chavez was no “communist”—media lies notwithstanding.
In truth, Chavez modeled himself after Simon Bolivar—liberator of the Andean colonies from the Spanish crown—who, in even traditional American history texts, was called “the George Washington of South America.”
The simmering secret war against Chavez took a new turn when, on the August 22, 2005 broadcast of his 700 Club, pro-Israel television evangelist Pat Robertson—suggesting Chavez was a new communist threat—openly called for the United States to assassinate Chavez, then emerging as a forceful critic of the global warmongering of the George W. Bush administration.
Most Americans would have never heard of Robertson’s provocation had it not been for the big media loudly publicizing the evangelist’s remarks and, as such, Chavez and his supporters correctly saw Robertson’s outburst as part of a carefully-crafted high-level scheme to direct American popular ire against Chavez and set the stage for military action against him.
In fact, the call for killing Chavez came just days after the Bush administration’s foremost voice of support in the media—the neo-conservative Weekly Standard—slammed Chavez claiming he was “a threat to more than just his own people,” a danger to the tiny but wealthy Jewish population in Venezuela, bemoaning the fact Venezuelan state television speculated Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, may have been linked to the assassination of a local official in Venezuela.
Asserting “hostility to Jews” was “one of the hallmarks of the Venezuelan government,” the Standard cited a State Department “Report on Global Anti-Semitism” that purported to document, in the Standard’s words, “how openly anti-Semitic the Venezeulan government now is.”
Of particular concern was that one of Chavez’s closest advisors, the late Norberto Ceresole, was “infamous” for “conspiracy theories about Jewish plans to control the planet” and that Ceresole was a “holocaust denier”—that is, he questioned official accounts of World War II history, a “crime” punishable by imprisonment in many Western nations calling themselves “democracies,” and which, at the same time, hypocritically accused Chavez of suppressing freedom of expression in Venezeula.
Within a short time, though, Jewish opposition to Chavez went public in a big way. On Feb. 5, 2008—in a commentary in The Washington Post (a newspaper that most definitely directs opinion among movers and shakers in the nation’s capital)—Abe Foxman, chief of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith, launched a full-force attack on Chavez. Headlined “Chavez’s Anti-Semitism,” Foxman’s inflammatory broadside alleged a “rising wave of anti-Semitism” in Venezuela traceable to Chavez.
Foxman charged Venezuelan officials and media were “rehashing the ancient canard about Jewish control, vilifying Jews and Israel as agents of imperialism, and adopting anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jewish financial influence,” and expressed concern Chavez was friendly to Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Syrian President al-Assad, among others the ADL called “a verifiable threat to Israel and world Jewry.”
Although Chavez is gone, other leaders in South America and worldwide—with the support of many good Americans—still carry on his fight against the New World Order.
Image: When is blood-red socialism ok (Thailand) and when is it “ruthless autocracy” (Venezuela)? The answer depends on whether or not you serve Wall Street and London’s international order. Contrary to popular belief, socialism is not a unified global ideology and is instead like any tool – only as good or bad as the hands it finds itself in. The use of socialism by two governments no more indicates an affiliation than would guns in the hands of two opposing armies on a battlefield.
Confounding was the Australian’s (newspaper) recent op-ed titled, “Death
of a ruthless autocrat,” in regards to the late Hugo Chavez.
Confounding not for the op-ed’s condemnation of socialist policies or
its criticism of Hugo Chavez, an obstruction to Western
corporate-financier interests in South America for over a decade, but
because of the obscene hypocrisy displayed throughout, from a newspaper
and a corporate-financier-academic establishment in Australia that
coddles a figure in nearby Thailand that is every bit as guilty of
everything it accuses Chavez of.
He was lionised as a hero by the Western Left, of course, but it would be hard to find a leader in recent history who more comprehensively betrayed the wellbeing of his country than Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. He was driven by an irrational, demagogic and self-defeating antagonism towards Washington that blinded him to his nation’s best interests.
The rambling narrative of the Australian equates to condemning Venezuela for not opening itself up to Western exploitation, domination by corporate-financier monopolies, and the folly of its challenging of the West’s campaign of global aggression from Mali, Libya, and Syria, to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
In fact, the Australian itself makes a point of condemning Chavez for his support of Saddam Hussein, who’s nation was occupied by the West during a brutal 10 year war, following a decade of sanctions that in total cost the lives of over 2 million Iraqis (including half a million children) and still counting. The Australian implies that Chavez was wrong to support Iraq, despite documented evidence that the Western assault on Iraq was waged upon a patently false pretense.
The Australian condemns Chavez’ “populist economics” and ends its piece by stating:
Thumbing your nose at Washington and aligning your country with the world’s worst dictatorships is a recipe for disaster. Those who come after Mr Chavez should see that and change course.
Thumbing your nose at Washington and its interests is indeed a recipe for disaster, as has been thumbing your nose at brutal empires throughout human history. Your nation will become the target of covert military operations, terrorism, political subversion, and economic sabotage, the very root of Venezuela’s current malaise. Thumb your nose long and hard enough at the West, and you may even become subject to an outright invasion, as was the case in Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Or, you may suffer a long-term proxy war, as Syria now faces.
In reality, the Australian reveals what Hugo Chavez was really guilty of. Not of being a “ruthless autocrat,” or of being a socialist, but of being independent and for having the nerve to challenge the extraterritorial interests of an increasingly violent and unhinged West.
Thaksin Shinawatra – Populist, Socialist, Ruthless Autocrat, and Darling of the West.
Of course, the most preposterous statement of the Australian’s op-ed would easily be, “but it would be hard to find a leader in recent history who more comprehensively betrayed the wellbeing of his country than Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.” The Australian might start with Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand, propped up and coddled by the West since the 1990′s, and to this day given free passage throughout the West despite being a convicted criminal and a fugitive from the law in his native country.
The Australian’s editorial board itself has lent support to his despotic, nepotist regime, currently led by his own sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, defending him as a progressive, pro-democratic force in Thailand. In a 2011 Australian news article preceding Thailand’s national elections, no where is found the same venomous language directed at Chavez in describing Thaksin’s own populist/socialist schemes. No mention at all is made of Thaksin’s grotesque human rights record – the worst in Thai history, his intimidation of the press, and his habitual assault on any and all who challenge him.
Indeed, while the Australian calls Hugo Chavez a “ruthless autocrat,” it was Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand who mass murdered 3,000 innocent people over the course of 90 days during a so-called “war on drugs” where police were sent into the streets to conduct extrajudicial executions. It would later be determined that most of the those murdered were not even involved in the drug trade. Human Rights Watch (HRW) would confirm this in their 2008 report titled, “Thailand’s ‘war on drugs’,” a follow up to the much more extensive 2004 report, “Not Enough Graves.”
To this day Thaksin counts his “war on drugs” as one of the many highlights of his 2001-2006 stint in office. And while the Australian fails to remind readers of this inconvenient fact, other Western propagandists, such as the Economist, boldly defend the mass murder that took place under his ruthless regime. In its op-ed titled, “Thailand’s drug wars: Back on the offensive,” the Economist states:
Faced with soaring methamphetamine abuse, Mr Thaksin ordered the police to draw up blacklists of suspected traffickers and “to act decisively and without mercy”.
The Economist would also go on to say:
On the streets of Khlong Toey, the largest slum in Bangkok, there is nostalgia for Mr Thaksin’s iron-fisted drugs policy. The 2003 crackdown drove up prices, smashed trafficking networks and forced addicts into rehabilitation programmes. In drug-ravaged communities, where the ends tend to justify the means, that was enough to turn Mr Thaksin into a hero.
The Economist finishes its op-ed by lamenting that the then military-led government which ousted Thaksin in 2006, had not kept up Thaksin’s abhorrent, extrajudicial campaign of mass murder:
You might expect a military junta with sweeping powers to have kept up the fight against such illicit activity. Anti-narcotics officials say that drug seizures have risen since the military coup in September 2006.
And more recently, the Huffington Post hosted Stanley Weiss of the Business Executives for National Security (BENS) and his op-ed titled, “The Oracle of Thailand,” where he praises Thaksin Shinawatra’s populist-socialist policies and suggests the US would be better off if it applied his “Thaksinomics” across America. Weiss openly admits that Thaksin Shinwatra, despite being a convicted criminal and living in exile, is running the country by nepotist proxy. Yet, he defends what he considers a brilliant exploitation of Thailand’s desperately poor, notoriously under-educated rural population, spinning it as:
The great innovation of Thaksin and Pansak (along with U.S.-trained academic Somkid Jatusripitak) was “the increased role of government in the allocation of credit,” as Chulalongkorn University Professor Pasuk Phongpaichit writes. But not just anywhere: “Thaksinomics” focused the government’s attention on the poor and rural areas of Thailand. Arguing that “a country is a company and a company is a country,” the self-described “CEO Prime Minister” approached the national economy like a business, looking for ways, as Pasuk explains, to “mobilize any dormant or unexploited assets including unused natural resources and neglected human resources.”
Tapping unused reserves of credit in the state banking system, the team created one rural credit fund after another. To lower household expenses, they offered low-cost housing and health insurance; provided subsidized credit for buying taxis and provided loans for children to get to school.
One might wonder how that is any different than what Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela, who also won over the population in part by using state money to subsidize his support base. The difference is simple: Hugo Chavez used socialism to co-opt the population in opposition to the Wall Street-London international order, while Thaksin Shinwatra co-opted Thailand’s rural poor on behalf of Wall Street and London’s interests.Weiss’ BENS front is lined with representatives of America’s Fortune 500 who have played a pivotal role in both Thaksin’ rise to power, and his continued relevance in Thai politics.
Thaksin had been prime minister from 2001-2006. Long before Thaksin Shinwatra would become prime minister in Thailand, he was already working his way up the Wall Street-London ladder of opportunity, while simultaneously working his way up in Thai politics. He was appointed by the Carlyle Group as an adviser while holding public office, and attempted to use his connections to boost his political image. Thanong Khanthong of Thailand’s English newspaper “the Nation,” wrote in 2001:
“In April 1998, while Thailand was still mired in a deep economic morass, Thaksin tried to use his American connections to boost his political image just as he was forming his Thai Rak Thai Party. He invited Bush senior to visit Bangkok and his home, saying his own mission was to act as a “national matchmaker” between the US equity fund and Thai businesses. In March, he also played host to James Baker III, the US secretary of state in the senior Bush administration, on his sojourn in Thailand.”
Upon becoming prime minister in 2001, Thaksin would begin paying back the support he received from his Western sponsors. In 2003, he would commit Thai troops to the US invasion of Iraq, despite widespread protests from both the Thai military and the public. Thaksin would also allow the CIA to use Thailand for its abhorrent rendition program.
In 2004, Thaksin attempted to ramrod through a US-Thailand Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) without parliamentary approval, backed by the US-ASEAN Business Council who just before 2011′s elections that saw Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra brought into power, hosted the leaders of Thaksin’s “red shirt” “United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship” (UDD).
Image: The US-ASEAN Business Council, a who’s-who of corporate fascism in the US, had been approached by leaders of Thaksin Shinwatra’s “red shirt” street mobs. (click image to enlarge)….
The council in 2004 included 3M, war profiteering Bechtel, Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup, General Electric, IBM, the notorious Monsanto, and currently also includes banking houses Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Chevron, Exxon, BP, Glaxo Smith Kline, Merck, Northrop Grumman, Monsanto’s GMO doppelganger Syngenta, as well as Phillip Morris.
Photo: Deposed autocrat, Thaksin Shinawatra before the CFR on the even of the 2006 military coup that would oust him from power. Since 2006 he has had the full, unflinching support of Washington, Wall Street and their immense propaganda machine in his bid to seize back power.
Thaksin would remain in office until September of 2006. On the eve of the military coup that ousted him from power, Thaksin was literally standing before the Fortune 500-funded Council on Foreign Relations giving a progress report in New York City.
Since the 2006 coup that toppled his regime, Thaksin has been represented by US corporate-financier elites via their lobbying firms including, Kenneth Adelman of the Edelman PR firm (Freedom House, International Crisis Group, PNAC), James Baker of Baker Botts (CFR), Robert Blackwill of Barbour Griffith & Rogers (CFR), Kobre & Kim, and currently Robert Amsterdam of Amsterdam & Peroff (Chatham House).
Robert Amsterdam of Amsterdam & Peroff, would also simultaneously represent Thaksin’s “red shirt” UDD movement, and was present for the inaugural meeting of the so-called “academic” Nitirat group, attended mostly by pro-Thaksin red shirts (who literally wore their red shirts to the meeting). Additional support for Thaksin and his UDD street-front is provided by the US State Department via National Endowment for Democracy-funded “NGO” Prachatai.”
Time to Grow Up
It is time for the general population to refine their understanding of socioeconomic-political processes. Socialism is not an internationally unified political ideology. It is a set of tools that is only as good or as bad as the hands that wield them. And just because these tools can be found in two different hands, does not mean that both hands serve the same agenda – no more so than would guns in two opposing armies’ hands indicate a mutual agenda or alliance.
Hugo Chavez used socialism to build a support base, because if he didn’t, Wall Street and London would do it themselves with their proxy opposition front in Venezuela – just as they have done in Thailand with Thaksin Shinwatra.
The proof is in the West’s own narrative, where they hypocritically celebrate Thaksin Shinawatra’s “Thaksinomics” while condemning Chavez’ “Chavismo.” It would appear that socialism is only “ok” if it is used to co-opt the population for the interests of Wall Street and London. “Thumb your nose” at the West, and it doesn’t matter what socioeconomic strategy you employ, you are a “ruthless autocrat” whose days are numbered and whose memory will be immediately defiled upon your passing.
Governments do not adhere to political ideologies, they simply use them when and where profitable. In the US where a corporate-financier oligarchy literally writes the policy for politicians on both sides of the aisle, the use of socialism and “free market” economics is done in tandem to achieve a multitude of goals that would be impossible using only one or the other. While the West itself placates its population with socialism, such policies are condemned when employed contra to their interests, especially when used to galvanize a population against Western advances – as was the case in Chavez’ Venezuela.
In reality, socialism is but a single tool. An entire nation cannot be sustained upon it, no more than an entire house can be built using only a hammer. The true test of a government is not whether it uses socialism or not, but with what other tools it employs it. A nation must seek to build upon socialism’s stop-gaps with sustainable, pragmatic solutions. Outside of Wall Street and London’s international order, many nations are doing just that, but progress is difficult to gauge when the West arrays the summation of its influence and power against such progress.
The general population’s habit of perceiving socialism, capitalism, or any other socioeconomic system as a unifying ideology is folly. The ruling elite, whichever side they stand on, do not see such systems as unifying ideologies, but merely tools. It is time for the general population to look at how these tools are used, and whose hands they are actually in, instead of fixating on the tool itself as being inherently “good” or “bad.”
The story of Chavez and Thaksin illustrates the double standards and hypocrisy hidden in plain sight and casts doubts on narratives proposing anyone using “socialism” is part of a unified global cabal. Such a notion falls flat unless financial and political ties can be documented. In the case of Hugo Chavez and Venezuela, the chasm between his movement and the West’s use of socialism couldn’t be any deeper or wider.
The article which is written by Kurt Nimmo was originally published by Global Research in 2005, which points to previous attempts to assassinate President Hugo Chavez, nonetheless it is very today -especially after his death on Tuesday- and a MUST READ by all.
This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation. “How do we know that the CIA was behind the coup that overthrew Hugo Chávez?” asked historian William Blum in 2002.
“Same way we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. That’s what it’s always done and there’s no reason to think that tomorrow morning will be any different.”
Now we have a bit more evidence the CIA and the FBI connived with reactionary elements to not only briefly overthrow Chávez, abolish the constitution and the National Assembly, but later assassinate the Venezuelan State Prosecutor, Danilo Anderson. He was killed by a car bomb in Caracas on November 18, 2004, while investigating those who were behind the coup. Giovani Jose Vasquez De Armas, a member of Colombia’s right wing paramilitary group called the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, claims he was in charge of logistics for the plot to kill Danilo Anderson. Vasquez De Armas told the Attorney General’s office that those planning the killing, “all discussed the plan with the help of the FBI and CIA.”
And the sun will rise tomorrow.
“According to the Attorney General, Vasquez De Armas said that during a meeting in Darien, Panama, on September 4 and 6, 2003, an FBI Officer called ‘Pesquera’ and a CIA agent called ‘Morrinson,’ attended a meeting along with two of the plot’s alleged organizers, Patricia Poleo and Salvador Romani, as well as two of those who actually did the killing, Rolando and Otoniel Guevera,” writes Alessandro Parma. “An official from the Attorney General’s office, speaking on behalf of Vasquez De Armas, said that in Panama the FBI and the plotting Venezuelans agreed, ‘to take out Chavez and the Government.’ He said, ‘the meeting’s final objective was to kill President Chavez and the Attorney General.’”
None of this is new or particularly revelatory. Steve Kangas writes:
“CIA operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business interests abroad are threatened by a popular or democratically elected leader. The people support their leader because he intends to conduct land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers, consumers and the environment. So, on behalf of American business, and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition. First it identifies right-wing groups within the country (usually the military), and offers them a deal: “We’ll put you in power if you maintain a favorable business climate for us.” The Agency then hires, trains and works with them to overthrow the existing government (usually a democracy). It uses every trick in the book: propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even assassination. These efforts culminate in a military coup, which installs a right-wing dictator. The CIA trains the dictator’s security apparatus to crack down on the traditional enemies of big business, using interrogation, torture and murder. The victims are said to be “communists,” but almost always they are just peasants, liberals, moderates, labor union leaders, political opponents and advocates of free speech and democracy. Widespread human rights abuses follow.”
Examples include the coup to overthrow the democratically elected leader Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, the ouster of democratically elected Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala, one coup per year (between 1957-1973) in Laos, the installation of the murderous “Papa Doc” Duvalier in Haiti, the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the overthrow of Jose Velasco in Ecuador, the assassination of the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba in the Congo (later Zaire), the overthrow of the democratically elected Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart in Brazil, the overthrow of the democratically elected Sukarno government in Indonesia, a military coup in Greece designed to install the “reign of the colonels” (when the Greek ambassador complained about CIA plans for Cypress, Johnson told him: “F— your parliament and your constitution”), the overthrow of the popular Prince Sahounek in Cambodia, the overthrow of Juan Torres in Bolivia, the overthrow and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile, the assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, and dozens of other incidents rarely if ever taught in American school history lessons.
As John Perkins (author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man), as a former respected member of the international banking community and National Security Agency economist, told Amy Goodman: “Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring—to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government…. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men.” Perkins’ job was “deal-making”:
It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan—let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador—and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure—a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you’re not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we’re going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It’s an empire. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It’s been extremely successful.
Most of the money for these loans, according to Perkins, is provided by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the two premier neolib loan sharking operations (it is important to note that the Straussian neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, is now president of the World Bank, thus demonstrating how closely related the neocons and traditional neolibs are).
If the loan sharks are unable to steal natural resources (oil, minerals, rainforests, water) as a condition of repaying this immense debt, “the next step is what we call the jackals.”
Jackals are CIA-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn’t work, they perform assassinations—or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren’t able to get through to Saddam Hussein… His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq.
Hugo Chávez is now between the assassination point of this neolib plan and invasion, when “our young men and women” will be “sent in to die and kill” Venezuelan peasants the same way they are now killing poor Iraqis. Of course, it remains to be seen if Bush can actually invade Venezuela—the neocon roster is teeming with targets, from Syria to Iran—and so we can expect the Bushcons and their jackals to continue efforts to assassinate Chávez, as Giovani Jose Vasquez De Armas reveals the CIA and the FBI are attempting to do, with little success. One notable failure by the jackals is Fidel Castro in Cuba, who experienced numerous assassination attempts and CIA counterinsurgency specialist Edward Lansdale’s Operation Mongoose (consisting of sabotage and political warfare), also known as the ‘’Cuba Project.’‘
As Blum notes, we know all of this is happening, same as we know the sun will come up tomorrow.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer, multimedia artist and writer. You can visit his blog “Another Day in the Empire” at www.kurtnimmo.com/blog.
The articles posted on HellasFrappe are for entertainment and education purposes only. The views expressed here are solely those of the contributing author and do not necessarily reflect the views of HellasFrappe. Our blog believes in free speech and does not warrant the content on this site. You use the information at your own risk.
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