Chile president Michelle Bachelet says pacts of silence on dirty war must end

[Judi Lynn]

Chile president Michelle Bachelet says pacts of silence on dirty war must end

President praises example of former soldier who gave evidence about attack

Seven ex-soldiers charged with burning dissidents alive in 1986

Associated Press in Santiago
Monday 27 July 2015 15.45 EDT

Chile’s president, Michelle Bachelet, has called for citizens to break the pacts of silence that have covered up human rights violations during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship, praising a former soldier who helped the investigation intoan incident in which two activists were burned alive.

A Chilean judge last week charged seven former members of the military over the 1986 attack in which one pro-democracy activist died and another was left with disfiguring burns. Four other ex-soldiers are still being questioned over the case.

The charges come after another soldier testified about the case last year, breaking a nearly three-decade pact of silence.

“Let’s put an end to the silence,” said Bachelet, who herself was held and tortured during the dictatorship.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/27/chile-president-michelle-bachelet-end-silence-dirty-war

[Judi Lynn]

1. Guardian's article doesn't mention her mother was also tortured & her father, loyal Air Force Gen.,

loyal to his elected President Allende, was tortured to death.

Right-wing, US-supported Augusto Pinochet, who was later returned to Chile to stand trial, years too late, bought the farm in order to avoid his trial for his filthy, evil, inhuman, behavior from the bowels of hell in his efforts to destroy leftist Chileans altogether.

[center]

HAPPY DAYS The future president backed up by her brother, mother and father in Santiago in 1961.

Michelle Bachelet, her brother, Alberto, her mother, Ángela Jeria, her father, Air Force General Alberto Bachelet.



General Albert Bachelet



Young Michelle Bachelet[/center]

[MisterP]

2. Pinochetism chewed through a LOT of generals

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Prats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Jose_Torres
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Schneider

Argentina played it a little different, but even leading a death squad didn't protect you from the self-consuming logic (especially if you started talking)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustavo_%C3%81lvarez_Mart%C3%ADnez

[Judi Lynn]

3. Kicking for important info. links. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

4. So glad to learn about J.J. Torres, and Gustavo Alvarez, etc.

Was severely underinformed, and will be looking forward to learning more about both of them, for different reasons.

There's a much better view of what happened in Bolivia and Honduras, Argentina, Chile for anyone who reads these links. The door has been opened much wider for those of us who see the new information (to us) and want to learn more.

[MisterP]

5. there seems to be a succession of butchers at work: 1973-6 it was Pinochet's Operation Condor,

then Argentina took it over and invited all the P2 nuts back in and replaced the older-style dictatorship with a cocaine-smuggling technocrat whose death lists were computerized by Mossad and who was Raquel Welch's cousin IIRC; history happens and by 1985 the CIA's scrambling for funds as the reason for Red Ribbon Week starts heading for the slammer: Ollie North (who'd helped butcher Amazonian peasants) suggests making up the shortfall with embezzlement and this only became headline news because Hasenfus packed his parachute over the taunts of the other mercs

this isn't a conspiracy at work in Washington, this is like THREE conspiracies going at once

[Judi Lynn]

7. So little about these things ever made it to the US American public. Has to be deliberately sought

now by those who are lucky enough to even catch hints about any of these machinations.

Had heard Klaus Barbie moved throughout South America years ago. A wire correspondent who contributed to DU Latin America forum until he died mentioned he had been stunned to discover Barbie sitting in the same coffee shop with him in Montevideo once.

I read Barbie was connected to Hugo Banzer closely, didn't know his Bolivian presence continued during Luis García Meza's cocaine coup dictatorship.

Paraguay, under Stroessner, along with Brazil gave haven to Josef Mengele. A person can't get more evil than either one of these Nazi monsters, and they were more than welcome with US-supported South American governments.

It's incredibly hard to grasp the rationale for Israeli involvement with these same governments. Simply doesn't make a bit of sense in conventional terms.

Hope it will become impossible for the much more detailed account of these events to be contained during our lifetimes. It's filthy having a population remaining so wildly misled over what the hey has been happening for so very long.

I hope to also learn far more about the Bolivian dictators, Bolivian right-wing history, and the "contributions" made to the demoralization and subjugation of Native American people in the Americas via "missionaries," and "religious"/government allied groups, of which I've only scratched the surface of the surface.

Thanks for these important information-bearing links.

[MisterP]

9. after Carter cut off Guatemala it turned to Buenos Aires, Pretoria, and Jerusalem

this network actually ran the Contras independent of the US, with Sharon even coming to Tegucigalpa to meet with the drunkard president-general to set up arms channels and

Buenos Aires was heavily advised by Israelis even as it tortured what appears to be every Jew in the country in swastika-draped cells thinking they were going to buy out Patagonia (not that new--the ratlines were first set up by Perón as he became more conservative and his party covered the entire spectrum of Argentinean politics and the tacuaras blamed Jews for everything); as it shot bankers and NCOs as "Reds" its only trade partner ended up being the USSR; as it blamed Masons for trying to take over everything it used a rogue lodge to organize everything, and so on

I guess hypocrisy is just a good way to show off one's power over reality?

[Judi Lynn]

10. So much upheaval in Argentina which we never saw covered here at all.

Didn't have a clue regarding Jewish presence in Argentina, and how the bizarre belief was created regarding Jewish possession of Patagonia. So much chaos over so many years.

The material on the taciaras is deeply interesting. Clearly there should be time to look far more deeply into their history as the group precedidng the montoneros.

Ran across references to this death squad in Argentina, can see it is necessary to find far more about it, too. Amazing. From its Wikipedia:

The Batallón de Inteligencia 601 (Spanish for "601 Intelligence Battalion&quot was a special military intelligence service of the Argentine Army whose structure was set up in the late 1970s, active in the Dirty War and Operation Condor, and disbanded in 2000.[2] Its personnel collected information on and infiltrated guerrilla groups and human rights organisations, and coordinated killings, kidnappings and other abuses.

The Batallón was under the orders of Guillermo Suárez Mason and ultimately reported to junta leader Leopoldo Galtieri.[3] The unit took part in Luis García Meza Tejada's Cocaine Coup in Bolivia in 1980 and trained Contra units in Lepaterique base in Honduras in the 1980s. It also trained members of the Honduran Battalion 316.

The Peruvian government is known to have collaborated with members of the group in the kidnapping, torture and disappearance of a group of Montoneros living in exile in Lima in June 1980.[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batall%C3%B3n_de_Inteligencia_601

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Discovered a true oddity regarding Dirty War official Videla:

. . .

Videla maintains the female guerrilla detainees allowed themselves to fall pregnant in the belief they wouldn't be tortured or executed.[3] On 5 July 2010, Videla took full responsibility for his army's actions during his rule. "I accept the responsibility as the highest military authority during the internal war. My subordinates followed my orders," he told an Argentine court.[4] Videla also sheltered many Nazi fugitives along with Juan Perón before him, Alfredo Stroessner of Paraguay and Hugo Banzer of Bolivia. He was under house arrest until 10 October 2008, when he was sent to a military prison.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Rafael_Videla

(How can a human being be this profoundly twisted? Wow.)

[MisterP]

11. the attitude was

“First we will kill all the subversives; then we will kill all their collaborators; then their sympathisers; then those who remained indifferent; and finally, we’ll kill the undecided.” --Iberico St-Jean

it was a paranoiac doctrine from the French actually (BA wasn't gonna accept torture manuals from some soft DEMOCRACY like America) through the OAS whose "successful" technique at the Battle of Algiers was to grab someone off the streets knowing they were innocent, torture them, dispose of what once used to be a baker or a fishwife, and then disappear whoever they named between screams--and the more people they grabbed off the streets the deeper the "conspiracy" against civilization seemed; you'd work your way inward to the NLF's highest ranks then: it's rooted in French fascism, which is quite distinct from Hitler or Mussolini: it's quite closer to Franco

early 70s the left-Peronists started a guerrilla movement against the military regime thinly overlain with right-Peronist demagoguery: double agents everywhere made the process even more complicated; Peron then returned firmly to the right, starting with a massacre minutes after he landed and ending with Isabel Peron doing every damn thing Massera and Videla and their hangmen would commit in the following years; even Borges initially hailed Videla as saving the country from civil war under literal occult fascism, as just another corrective coup to turn back the clock like in 1943, 1955, 1962, and 1966: of course nobody counted on Videla being a Francophile and Massera a P2 member who thought he was saving all Western civilization under the Southern Cross

Reagan of course thought this was all peachy and endorsed the Dirty War: "Inevitably in the process of rounding up hundreds of suspected terrorists, the Argentine authorities have no doubt locked up a few innocent people, too. This problem they should correct without delay. The incarceration of a few innocents, however, is no reason to open the jails and let the terrorists run free so they can begin a new reign of terror. Yet, the Carter administration, so long on self-righteousness and frequently so short on common sense, appears determined to force the Argentine government to do just that"

this one's dry: http://www.amazon.com/Ideological-Origins-Dirty-War-Dictatorship/dp/0199930244/
the main book on the CIA and drugs is http://www.amazon.com/Cocaine-Politics-Central-America-Updated/dp/0520214498/ it doesn't just go deeper than the Kerry Report but how drug money encouraged agents and officers to calve off on their own because they could set up self-funding private empires like the Argentineans did with cocaine

[Judi Lynn]

12. In his soulless, amoral whitewash of the Dirty War Reagan still had time to take a kick at Carter.

The guy's speech writers really knew how to stuff those words in his feeble mouth, didn't they?

Fascists all sound alike, decade after decade, etc. They have absolutely NOTHING of value to bring to the world other than constant attempts to destroy what progress has been achieved even as they battle like wildmen to keep all progress from happening at all times.

That Reagan quote is a real model of right-wing pomposity, self-"righteousness", in all its depravity. No wonder George HW had no choice other than to press him to accept the Medal of Freedom.

[center][/center]
Thanks for your reference to the two books. People really need to find out more. The information is there for those who will take the initiative instead of waiting for the right-wing propagandists to tell them all about what has happened in the real world.

[MisterP]

13. if Murka couldn't "avenge Vietnam" then at least someone else could

it's much the same worldview as Pol Pot (who we backed as a brave resistance hero against the wicked Reds, like the Angolan Maoist who said he was God!)

ironically Reagan's Third-World policies all seem to have been written by *Beijing* as much as by the Birchers

[bemildred]

6. Yep. Democratic government must be honest government.

No lies. There is no other way to do it. Once you start lying, it never stops.

[Judi Lynn]

8. A link discovered regarding useful book: "State Terrorism and the United States" (Dirty War)

[center]Argentina's Dirty War


excerpted from the book


State Terrorism and the United States


From Counterinsurgency to the War on Terrorism


by Frederick H. Gareau[/center]
. . .

NUNCA MAS: REPORT OF THE ARGENTINE COMMISSION ON THE DISAPPEARED

The Commission (CONADEP) was charged with the duty of investigating and submitting a report to the president on the fate and the whereabouts of the disappeared, the desaparecidos, a word left in Spanish by the world press in its reports on Argentina. It worked initially from a list of six thousand desaparecidos provided by the Permanent Assembly on Human Rights. With no power to subpoena witnesses as human rights advocates wanted, its evidence came overwhelmingly from the victims. Forty-four of the torturers and their commanding officers were invited to testify. None of them accepted. The Commission spent nine months on the project, and then submitted its report to the president in September 1984. Its findings were summarized in a book entitled Nunca Mas (Never Again) which immediately became a best seller in Argentina.

p96
The report found a contradiction between the military's constant disrespect for human beings and its advocacy of what it called a Western, Christian life style. A month after the military coup, Colonel Juan Bautista Sasiain, who later became Chief of the Federal Police, affirmed that "the army values a man as such, because the army is Christian." The Commission charged that the army practiced state terrorism, made possible by the power and the impunity of a military dictatorship "which they misused to abduct, torture, and kill thousands of human beings."

p96
The Commission found that the vast majority of the 8,960 victims were not only innocent of acts of terrorism, but even of belonging to guerrilla organizations. They were trade union leaders struggling for higher wages for workers; youngsters who belonged to student organizations; journalists who did not support the military regime; professionals who belonged to suspicious organizations; young pacifists, nuns, and priests who were inspired by the teachings of Christ and who took this message to the poor; friends of these people; or others whose names were given to the security forces out of vengeance or by the kidnapped under torture.

As impressive as the combined size of the groups targeted for direct attack may seem, the reader is reminded that state terrorism in Argentina sought to intimidate and coerce a much larger audience, namely those sectors of society that longed for social change. Furthermore, a quantitative breakdown of the victims points to the class nature of this case of state terrorism and to the prominence of students as victims. The largest percentage (30.2 percent) were blue collar workers; the third largest (17.9 percent) white collar workers; and the seventh largest (3.8 percent) maids. Students were second, accounting for 21 percent of the victims and one-third of these were also employed.

More:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Argentina_STATUS.html

[Agony]

14. kick