Clinton campaign undermined on the streets of Tegucigalpa

HONDURANS denounce corruption.  

WITH all eyes on Greece, and how far its people can defy the bankers, the IMF, the European Union's commissioners, and those Germans who insensitively forget how their occupation robbed Greece blind during World War II, and how the Federal Republic was rewarded with massive aid when it began re-armament in 1953....I wonder if I might be forgiven for trying to catch up on some events on the other side of the world?

The Greeks, of course, have experienced the limits of Western democratic tolerance before. In 1944, before the Nazis had finally been defeated, the Allies turned their guns on the main Greek Resistance movement, ELAS, because it was Communist-led, and Greece had to endure four years of civil war. Then in 1967 the colonels staged their coup, in accordance with a NATO contingency plan -though they might not have been the intended military group - rounded up opponents, and ruled for the next seven years.

If that was a shock for Europe, people in Latin America have been used to such interventions over the years, from US marines landing on their shores in the earlier half of the 20th century to recoup the bankers' losses, to the coup which overthrew Salvador Allende's government in Chile in 1973, and the US-armed Contra terror against Nicaragua through the 1980s and early 1990s.

So it is all the more remarkable today that not only are a number of countries refusing to be bullied by the great power to the north, and attempting policies of independence and social reform, but even people in some of the little 'banana republics' are gaining confidence, and getting results. Here's a report from a week ago: 


TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – After weeks of thousands of people marching against the corruption in Honduras arrest warrant has been issued for vice-president of Congress, Lena Gutierrez, by the supreme court of Honduras. Gutierrez, along with 16 others, including her father and two brothers, have been charged with fraud, crimes against public health, and falsification of documents.
According to UPI: “Gutierrez and her family are linked to the AstroPharma Company that allegedly embezzled and defrauded the government out of about $120 million by selling poor-quality medicine at inflated prices.”

Gutierrez, who is a member of the governing National Party, has of course claimed innocence. She had previously made the statement that she will prove her and her family are not guilty of the accusations, however now that proceedings are underway, she has been advised to remain silent. Hernandez has also been accused in a corruption scandal dealing with social security. During his 2013 election campaign, he allegedly received about $90 million out $300 million that was skimmed from Honduras’s public health system. It is not yet known if President Hernandez will resign despite the protests.

http://anonhq.com/corruption-in-honduras/

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/07/02/Honduras-court-orders-corruption-arrest-of-Congress-vice-president/9321435848094/

An earlier report from Associated Press carried in the Guardian had said that "The protesters are upset over a scandal involving a purported multimillion-dollar embezzlement of social security funds, with some of the money allegedly going to finance the governing political party. Among other things, they are calling for President Juan Orlando Hernandez to resign.
.........
"Organized via Twitter with hashtags including one that translates as “resign JOH” – a reference to the president’s initials – the movement began recently as just a couple of dozen people at a torchlight vigil in the capital.

"It gradually picked up steam, and thousands marched through Tegucigalpa on Friday with similarly large protests in San Pedro Sula, Siguatepeque, Choluteca and Comayagua during the weekend.
The Honduran Public Ministry has said a network led by the then director of the Social Security Institute, Mario Zelaya, fraudulently misspent at least $120m during the 2010-14 presidency of Porfirio Lobo.

"The scheme allegedly relied on mark-ups topping 100% on goods and services such as medicines and pensions, with kickbacks then being paid by businesses that benefited. At least part of the money purportedly ended up in the hands of the National Party, which counts both Lobo and Hernandez as members."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/honduras-protests-social-security-embezzlement

The Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign and others this week circulated a message saying "
 Honduras' people are currently marching in the largest protests their country has ever seen, demanding an end to corruption in their country. These demands are growing week on week, but they need international support to pressure their government to acquiesce".

https://www.change.org/p/uk-government-and-un-support-honduras-people-s-demands-for-an-end-to-corruption

James Watson, a member of the very small UK-based NGO the Environmental Network for Central America, who is in Honduras at the moment, writes:
"Our press is increasingly reporting on this issue, but it is still receiving little attention. Honduras has been suffering repression since 2009 when a military coup brought its current National Party to power. The country is known as the murder, repression and corruption capital of the Americas. This year, Honduran press revealed evidence of millions of dollars stolen from their social security institute, and used partially to fund the last National Party election campaign. They have demonstrated that at least 3,000 people have died as a result, from lack of health care. This has ignited the "Indignados" movement, which represents a call from the people of Honduras for change. They are demanding a UN-backed International Commission against Corruption, but the corrupt president Juan Orlando Hernández is refusing calls. The UN has responded with a fact finding mission, but international pressure is required to press the National Party to listen to the protests, and to end the scandalous financial and military support that the UK, Europe, the US and Canada provide Juan Orlando.


www.enca.org.uk

In the background to what is happening in Honduras now are the circumstances in which the government came to power.

In the 5 a.m. darkness of June 28, 2009, more than two hundred armed, masked soldiers stormed the house of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya.  (no relation to the fraud accused Mario Zelaya - CP) Within minutes Zelaya, still in his pajamas, was thrown into a van and taken to a military base used by the U.S., where he was flown out of the country.
It was a military coup, said the UN General Assembly and the Organization of American States (OAS). The entire EU recalled its countries’ ambassadors, as did Latin American nations. The United States did not, making it virtually the only nation of note to maintain diplomatic relations with the coup government. Though the White House and the Clinton State Department denounced only the second such coup in the Western Hemisphere since the Cold War, Washington hedged in a way that other governments did not.
“If you want to understand who the real power behind the [Honduran] coup is, you need to find out who’s paying Lanny Davis,” said Robert White, former ambassador to El Salvador, just a month after the coup. Speaking to Roberto Lovato for the American Prospect, Davis revealed who that was: “My clients represent the CEAL, the [Honduras Chapter of] Business Council of Latin America.”
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/exclusive_hillary_clinton_sold_out_honduras_lanny_davis_corporate_cash_and_the_real_story_about_the_death_of_a_latin_america_democracy

President Zelaya had been promising measures to assist the poor in Honduras. He had also been moving too close to states like Bolivia and Venezuela for the US liking. Nevertheless the official US position was against the coup.

Press Statement
Ian Kelly
Department Spokesman
Washington, DC
November 27, 2009
The United States remains committed to help restore the democratic and constitutional order in Honduras in the wake of the June 28 coup d’état that removed President Zelaya and led to the suspension of Honduras from the Organization of American States. As part of that effort, we expect the parties in Honduras to implement the measures they agreed to in the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord, including steps toward national reconciliation and the December 2 Congressional consideration of President Zelaya's restitution. We look forward to the Congressional deliberations getting underway as announced.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/nov/132501.htm 

But e-mails obtained between top Washington officials reveal a different picture. In the run-up to Honduras elections in 2009, with Zelaya exiled, anti-coup opponents were murdered, rallies and newspapers suppressed, and there was suspicion of widespread rigging. But here was then Assistant US Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, who had been in Honduras before the coup, in an email to Hilary Clinton just after the November 29 election results were announced, which brought Porfirio Loba Sosa's National Party into office.

    The turnout (probably a record) and the clear rejection of the Liberal Party shows our approach was the right one, and puts Brazil and others who would not recognize the election in an impossible position. As we think about what to say, I would strongly recommend that we not be shy. We should congratulate the Honduran people, we should connect today's vote to the deep democratic vocation of the Honduran people, and we should call on the community of democratic nations (and especially those of the Americas) to recognize, respect, and respond to this accomplishment of the Honduran people.
   Finally, this Administration, which worked so hard to manage and resolve this crisis, should be the one who defines the results and perceptions of today's vote, and not our critics on the Hill (who had no clear pathway to elections) or our adversaries in the region (who never wanted this day to happen).

http://www.cepr.net/blogs/the-americas-blog/newly-released-clinton-emails-reveal-state-department-s-celebration-over-honduras-flawed-elections-following-military-coup

In her book “Hard Choices,” Clinton admits that she used the power of her office to make sure that Zelaya would not return to office. “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico,” Clinton writes. “We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.” http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/hillary-clinton-honduraslatinamericaforeignpolicy.html

Clinton reports that Zelaya was arrested amid “fears that he was preparing to circumvent the constitution and extend his term in office.”  But others say this was simply not true. As Clinton must know, when Zelaya was kidnapped by the military and flown out of the country in his pajamas on June 28, 2009, he was trying to put a consultative, nonbinding poll on the ballot to ask voters whether they wanted to have a real referendum on reforming the constitution during the scheduled election in November. It is important to note that Zelaya was not eligible to run in that election. Even if he had gotten everything he wanted, it was impossible for Zelaya to extend his term in office. But this did not stop the extreme right in Honduras and the United States from using false charges of tampering with the constitution to justify the coup.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/hillary-clinton-honduraslatinamericaforeignpolicy.html

More details of Hilary Clinton's role in Honduras have come out.

 A new round of emails from Hillary Clinton’s time as U.S. Secretary of State released last week, reveals her connection with backers of the 2009 military coup that toppled Honduran president Manuel Zelaya. According to an email exchange in the aftermath of the coup, Clinton requested the assistance of a prominent PR advisor Lanny Davis as a back-channel to Roberto Micheletti, the interim president after the coup. Davis was also an adviser to a group of Honduran businessmen who had supported Zelaya's ouster . The request came a week before Clinton brokered a deal to reinstall Zelaya through a national unity government. According to the Intercept, this was an attempt at undermining the democratically elected left-wing president while not explicitly endorsing the coup. The plan failed however as the legal vacuum left by the coup made the return of Manuel Zelaya impossible. The U.S. State Department continued to support and recognize what many considered fraudulent elections by the post-coup government, saying they were “free, fair and transparent.” http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Hillary-Clinton-Implicated-in-Honduras-Coup-Emails-Reveal-20150707-0022.html.

The renewed wave of popular demonstrations in Honduras have caused the first crack in the regime just as Thomas Shannon, now a Counsellor to Secretary of State John Kerry, was starting a visit to Central America, including Honduras.

And though too late to affect former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in a post she no longer holds, the latest revelations of her duplicity, as well as the signs that what she helped put together is starting to crumble, should surely damage her campaign to run as the Democrats nomination for President?.  Of course she would not be the first liar in the White House. But the others were elected before they were found out.


*****************************************

By way of  a personal confession

BACK in the mid-Seventies, when I was briefly employed as a journalist on the "Foreign"(sic) Desk at News Line, I was instructed to always put datelines at the head of any story, just as they came in from Reuters or Interpress. Having seen my by-line "Charles Parkins" apparently reporting from ADDIS ABABA, TOKYO or PARIS, a comrade visiting from Up North complimented me on the amount of travel I was getting in, so soon after joining the paper. I expected to see a bigger than normal twinkle in her eye, thinking she must have noticed how the day before I seemed to be filing reports from two distant locations on the opposite sides of the world, on the same day. Not even Phineas Fogg could have managed it.
In reality, unlike my senior comrade Jack Gale who was dodging bullets in the hills of Lebanon at the time, I rarely got out of the Clapham office, and the nearest I got to exotic parts was when I was despatched to rural Ayrshire to find a bunch of Glasgow lads on a jobs march, and join them on the road to London.
I did on one occasion decide to use a story about Honduras, and confidently datelined it TEGUCIGALPA.  Alas our editor, a no-nonsense Aussie called Alex Mitchell (well, except when he was fed nonsense by Gerry Healy, which he pretended to almost believe), spotted it, and shook his head. I suppose the Vimto book, from which we educated Manchester and Salford lads had learned world capitals as boys, never penetrated his remote corner of Queensland. So out it came, and I was supposedly filing my story from MEXICO CITY.  Which was probably safer in those days.
Having reached a ripe old age without ever visiting Tegucigalpa, and not having an editor to tell me what I can and cannot put in my blog, I can at least fulfil an ambition, by quoting an item datelined TEGUCIGALPA, and putting it in my headline. Ah, freedom!  

Mott and the missing accomplices

MOTT convicted after public campaigning


FORMER Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt has been sentenced to 80 years in prison after being found guilty of crimes against humanity, and specifically for his part in the slaughter of 1,771 Mayan Ixils in the 1980s. 

It is the first time a former head of state has been found guilty of genocide in their own country, and the first time a former head of government has been held to account in Guatemala for the abuses carried out during a 36-year conflict that killed an estimated 200,000 people and led to 45,000 other "disappearances".

The verdict was greeted with satisfaction by Guatemalan and international human rights organisations. Pascal Paradis, director of Lawyers Without Borders Canada, which advised lawyers acting for victims' families said the fact the trial happened at all was a big achievement.
"It was quite a feat to get past the amnesty law that was passed when Guatemala signed a peace deal in 1996 to end its 36-year war. Impunity is no longer the rule," he said.

Some of the victims's families and other Guatemalans expressed less satisfaction.
"What I want is for Ríos to feel the pain we felt," said Elena de Paz Santiago, who was 12 when she and her mother fled a massacre in their village in 1982.
They hid in the mountains and survived by eating roots and wild plants for months, before being caught and taken to an army outpost to cook and clean for the soldiers. Her mother died while they were both being gang-raped and was later buried in a mass grave.
"He [Rios Montt] will go to jail but he will have food. We nearly starved hiding out in the mountains," she said in an interview outside the courtroom.
Guardian, May 11 -Former dictator Rios Mott jailed for Genocide

Guatemala may be a faraway country of which we normally hear little, but one of my earliest memories of international affairs was the news of US bombers and the CIA removing a "pro-communist" government headed by Colonel Arbenz, in 1954, supposedly because it had imported Czech weapons with which to defend itself. Assuming that Washington did not seriously fear Guatemala was planning to invade the United States there seemed no reason to object to Guateemala having weapons, unless you were planning to attack it anyway.

I subsequantly learned that Colonel Arbenz had wanted to take some uncultivated land from the American-owned United Fruit Company in order to give it to Guatemalan peasants, a truly dreadful crime. Nowadays there are more than bananas at stake for companies involved in Guatemala, and more international interest than the media might reflect.

Even before he gained infamy as a mass murderer Rios Mott had distinguishing features from the long list of Latin American dictators. He was known as “Brother Efraín,” having converted to a fundamentalist brand of Christianity offered by the California-based “Church of the Word” (Verbo), But as well as thanking God in heaven for anointing him as Guatemala’s president, he had the State of Israel on earth to thank for his successful March 1982 military coup.

Israeli press reported that 300 Israeli advisors were on hand to assist and train his soldiers. Israel became a major supplier of weapons and aircraft, as well as technical expertise, to the Guatemalan regime. While the United States taxpayer could go on subsidising the regime, letting Israel supply the weaponry, even US planes built under licence, had the advantage that it was not restricted by Congress, Indeed US officials have learned over the years that mentioning Israel is one way to quieten congresspersons from asking awkward questions.


Rios Mott justified his war on native peoples by claiming he was fighting against subversion.
 “Look, the problem of the war is not just a question of who is shooting. For each one who is shooting there are ten working behind him.” Rios Montt’s press secretary added: “The guerrillas won over many Indian collaborators. Therefore, the Indians were subversives, right? And how do you fight subversion? Clearly, you had to kill Indians because they were collaborating with subversion. And then they say, ‘You’re massacring innocent people’. But they weren’t innocent. They had sold out to subversion” (Witness to Genocide, Survival International, 1983, p. 12).

The Israelis helped the Guatemalan forces build an airbase, and set up an intelligence network similar to that in Israel's occupied territories, as well as outposts resembling those of the Israeli army. A report for Time magazine:: “Colonel Gustavo Menendez Herrera pointed out that his troops are using Israeli communications equipment, mortars, submachine guns, battle gear and helmets.” Army Chief of Staff Benedicto Lucas García had stated previously: “The Israeli soldier is a model and an example to us.”

Israel had always boasted good relations with Guatemala, promoting agricultural projects and cultural links. But as Yossi Sarid protested in the Knesset, it had “abandoned the green route of agriculture for the red and bloody route of arms,” .  Likud member Yigal Hurwitz replied, “Your speeches, Yossi, are not saleable on the foreign market; weaponry we can sell."

If  acting as America's proxy and even competitor in this way was profitable, it brought some other results. Guatemalan refugees and exiles, from those driven from heir land into refugee camps in southern Mexico to those fortunate enough to be in US universities, have found it not too difficult to identify with faraway Palestinians, dreaming of the right of return, and to their land.  

María García Hernández, co-founder of a refugee women’s organization called Mama Maquín, described the standpoint of her group: “The Guatemalan refugee and returnee women are clear about the fact that land is the most important family possession that we have. Land is…a space where we can live and work, defend our rights and pass on our culture, customs and languages to our daughters and sons.”
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/israels-proxy-war-in-guatemala/

Some of Israel's supporters seemed to think that because Guatemala supported Palestine partition and was first to recognise the State of Israel back in 1948, it would oppose Palestinian recognition at the UN. In fact, last month Guatemala's governmen became the first to recgnise a sovereign state of Palestine. There's a sort of continuity there, as well as poetic justice.

See also:

Matt Carr on Mott and his crimes
 
http://www.4thmedia.org/2013/02/03/genocide-in-guatemala-sided-and-supported-by-us-arms-and-training-supplied-by-israel/


http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/91666/linked-arms

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efra%C3%ADn_R%C3%ADos_Montt

Home truths from Buenos Aires

Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman has told the Israeli government to stay out of his country's affairs and not insult its sovereignty, after the Israelis objected to an agreement with Iran, under which a "truth commission" will investigate the bombing in 1994 of Buenos Aires Jewish community premises.

Timerman, who is Jewish himself, told the Israeli ambassador that Israel did not speak for the Jewish people and did not represent it.  By claiming to act for Argentine Jews it was giving "ammunition to antisemites who accuse Jews of dual loyalty" .

Before the Zionist state or its hacks in the West start writing off Hector Timerman as some kind of traitor or "self hater", they had better remember who he is. His father Jacobo Timerman was a famous victim of the right-wing military junta that ruled Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s. Arrested on April 14, 1977 because of alleged links between a partner in his newspaper and funding for Montonero guerrillas, Jacobo Timerman was tortured and interrogated, not about the guerrillas, so much as about fantastic Jewish conspiracies including plots to establish a second Jewish state in Patagonia.

He wrote about his experiences in his book 'Prisoner Without A Name, cell Without A Number'.

The Israelis are claiming now some responsibility for obtaining Jacobo Timerman's release a year later, after which he was deported to Israel. But his son Hector may well be aware of the context in which this happened, of Israeli arms supplies to Argentina, and collaboration between intelligence and security apparatuses. During this period there was a disproportionate number of Jews among the junta's victims, many of them not even arrested but simply "disappeared".

The 1982 Lebanon war, the bombing of Beirut and later massacres of Palestinians led to Timerman's disillusionment with Israel. He wrote a book about this, 'The Longest War', and eventually returned to Argentina.    

Some 85 people were killed and hundreds injured in the bombing of the Alliance Mutual Israelita-Argentina (AMIA) building on July 18, 1994. The victims included unemployed people queuing for benefits, as well as welfare workers and other staff, not all of them Jewish. A massive demonstration was held in Buenos Aires to show solidarity with the victims and denounce the attack. The AMIA bombing came two years after that of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.

It also occurred after the Menem government had authorised an investigation into what happened to Nazi gold shipped to Argentina with the fall of the Third Reich, which assessed the influence former Nazis gained in the country's business and state authorities. There were suggestions, probably erroneous, that some evidence was being kept in the AMIA building.

Various allegations and investigations were held, some pointing to the involvment of Hezbollah acting as agents for Iran, and a court case involving police officers implicated in the bombing. But there has been no satisfactory explanation or successful prosecution. Israeli and US Jewish organisations have insisted it was the work of the Iranian regime but with little explanation as to motive. A former Iranian diplomat was arrested in London in 2003 on an Argentine warrant, but released after the Home Office said there was insufficient evidence to justify extradition.

Last year the Argentinian government told the UN General Assembly that it was having talks with Iran, and on January 27, 2013 it announced that the two governments had agreed to set up a "truth commission".   On hearing of this,  the Israeli Foreign Ministry summoned the Argentine ambassador for a reprimand, during which the ministry's deputy director general for Latin America, Itzhak Shoham, objected to the deal and demanded explanations.

The Argentines were furious, and in response, Timerman summoned Israeli ambassador Dorit Shavit for a reprimand on January 31. According to Israeli Foreign Ministry sources who saw Shavit's account of the meeting, Timerman was "upset and really angry" that Israel had demanded explanations of the Argentine ambassador.

"Israel has no right to demand explanations; we're a sovereign state," Timerman reportedly told her. "Israel doesn't speak in the name of the Jewish people and doesn't represent it. Jews who wanted or want to live in Israel moved there, and they are its citizens; those who live in Argentina are Argentine citizens. The attack was against Argentina, and Israel's desire to be involved in the issue only gives ammunition to antisemites who accuse Jews of dual loyalty."

Summoning the Argentine ambassador and then leaking the fact to the media was unacceptable behavior, he continued. "Argentina doesn't summon the Israeli ambassador for explanations. If we wanted to, we could summon you here twice a month to demand explanations about a military operation in Gaza or construction in the settlements. But we don't do that, because we don't want to intervene in your sovereign decisions."

Why Was Becerra Betrayed?

PEREZ BECERRA - handed over.

VENEZUELA and Colombia are neighbouring countries at the northern end of South America. Colombia is not just the home of the Medellin drugs cartel but a place where big US and

British companies are protected by the military and by mercenaries, and said to be one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a trade unionist.

Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez has befriended Cuba and offended the United States, trying to make its oil wealth serve the people, and taking over private companies, promoting education and worker co-operatives. Expressing a mix of ideas from Christianity, Marxism, and the liberal ideals and patriotic aims with which Simon Bolivar led the 19th century struggle against Spanish rule - hence 'Bolivarianism'. (Apparently supporters refer to 'Chavism' - which could suggest a different tendency in Britain).

Winning support from socialists in Europe, as well as Latin America, Chavez has pleasantly surprised even the enthusiasts, by telling a colleague that he was a "Trotskyist", and even talking for a time about forming a 'Fifth International'

So the shock has come all the harder to those looking to Venezuela for inspiration, when President Chavez's government arrested a left-wing Colombian political refugee, Joaquín Pérez Becerra, and handed him over to the Colombian authorities.

Demonstration in defence of Jaquin Pérez Becerra. Photo: Luigino BracciPérez Becerra was arrested by Venezuelan security on April 23 as he arrived at Maiquetia airport. Colombian president Santos reported that he had personally contacted Venezuelan president Chávez to let him know that Pérez Becerra was on a commercial flight to Venezuela, having left from Sweden and changing planes in Frankfurt: “I gave him the name and asked if he would collaborate in capturing him. He didn’t hesitate”.

The Colombian regime accuses Pérez Becerra of being a leading representative in Europe of Colombia's FARC guerrillas. Perez Becerra was a local councillor of the Patriotic Union (UP) in the Valle del Cauca region in the 1990s. The UP was subject to a campaign of systematic killings by paramilitaries linked to the Colombian state. Two UP presidential candidates, eight UP congressmen, 11 UP mayors, 13 UP deputies, 70 UP councilmen, and up to 5,000 UP activists were killed.

Perez Becerra then fled to Sweden where he was given political asylum. He is the editor of the online New Colombia News Agency (ANNCOL) and had visited Venezuela in the past. An official statement from the Venezuelan Justice and Home Affairs Ministry described him as a Colombian national.

But according to Jorge Martin, on the International Marxist Tendency (IMT)'s website 'In Defence of Marxism', "he is in fact a Swedish national after having renounced his Colombian citizenship in 2000, and was travelling on his Swedish passport. After being detained by the Venezuelan authorities, he was held incommunicado. The Swedish consulate was not informed about his arrest and within 48 hours he had been handed over to the Colombian authorities and taken across the border. The Swedish authorities have sent a protest note to Venezuelan foreign affairs minister Nicolás Maduro and provided Pérez Becerra with legal representation in Colombia".

Martin notes that "This case has created uproar amongst revolutionary activists and Bolivarian organizations (including the UNETE trade union, the Venezuelan Communist Party, the Coordinadora Simón Bolivar, the Bolivar and Zamora Current, etc) in Venezuela and internationally. The details of the case are particularly scandalous. Protests were first directed at foreign affairs minister Nicolás Maduro and communication and information minister Andrés Izarra, but a week after the arrest of Perez Becerra, president Chávez himself assumed full responsibility".

The Venezuelan government says there was an Interpol “red notice” on Perez Becerra and that they could do nothing else but to arrest him and hand him over “in full compliance with international law”. But Jorge Martin points out that Interpol red notices “are not arrest warrants”, but just a request “that the wanted person be arrested with a view to extradition,” according to the Interpol website.

"For Perez Becerra to be extradited he would have had to go through a legal process which could become lengthy. Instead he was just handed over to the Colombian authorities. Even if one accepts the argument that the Venezuelan authorities had to respect Interpol’s red notice and arrest him, Perez Becerra is a Swedish national, travelling on a Swedish passport. Surely the thing to do would be to hand him over to the Swedish authorities. And why should the Venezuelan government respect an Interpol red notice when the Interpol has removed red notices for Venezuelan bankers in the US who are sought for corruption by the Venezuelan justice system? And why should the Venezuelan revolution collaborate with the Colombian judiciary when the 2002 coup leader Pedro Carmona is protected from Venezuelan justice in Bogotá?"

Chávez has also claimed the affair was a trap set for him. He has queried why Perez Becerra was allowed to leave Sweden and board a plane in Frankfurt if there was an Interpol red alert on him. He says he was put in an impossible position of “damned if I arrest him and damned if I don’t”. It is clear that the whole situation is very dubious. Why did the Colombian authorities only reported the presence of Perez Becerra on the plane two hours before it was due to land? When was the Interpol red notice issued? Was it when Perez Becerra was already on the plane? If not, how was he allowed to board a plane in Frankfurt, one of the most secure airports in the world? Was there really a red notice on him, since none can be found on the Interpol site?

US diplomatic cables recently released by Wikileaks show that former Colombian president Uribe had considered an armed conflict against Venezuela which he saw as a threat: “The best counter to Chavez, in Uribe's view, remains action – including use of the military.” It has also been revealed that a military force of about 100 Colombian soldiers was sent into the Venezuelan border state of Zulia in 2005. Another cable, dated 2006, explains how Uribe was attempting “to maintain a positive bilateral atmosphere, using joint energy projects and trade to create incentives to moderate Chávez’s behavior,” while at the same time this would allow him “to create the political space to permit clandestine cross border operations” into Venezuela (16 de noviembre de 2006, Wikileaks en elespectador.com)

Santos held ministerial office during the Uribe presidency. As a minister of defence he was responsible for the Colombian army's illegal incursion into Ecuador to kill FARC leader Raúl Reyes. He also organized the Operación Jaque to rescue FARC hostages, which was also designed to sabotage Venezuelan efforts at mediation with the guerrillas which were embarrassing the Uribe government. Under his watch the “false positives” scandal erupted, which proved that the military had been carrying out extrajudicial executions of innocent civilians and then presenting them as guerrillas in order to “show results”. It is estimated that more than 3000 people were killed in this way.

Santos appears to have twin track strategy for Venezuela, using diplomatic and trade relations to try to put pressure on Chavez to moderate his policies, to get him to collaborate in the “struggle against terrorism” by handing over FARC and ELN members based in or passing through Venezuela, while at the same time not abandoning plans to undermine Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution, to be used as and when required.

http://www.marxist.com/perez-becerra-and-strategy-of-venezuelan-revolution.htm

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6168

The response of the International Marxist Tendency to this episode is significant, because this Tendency (represented in Britain by the faction of former 'Militant Tendency' members who decided to cling on inside the Labour Party when others reformed outside as the Socialist Party) has attached special importance to Venezuela.

The tradition to which they adhere is what more "orthodox" Trotskyists used to call Pabloism. Viewing the state of the world after World War II, Michael Raptis (better known by his pen name Pablo) argued that objective conditions were tending towards a Third World War, and this would propel the Stalinist leaders towards revolutionary policies. (Some say there was a 'Left' turn in the Communist Parties from about 1947, expressed in strikes in France and guerrilla movements in the Far East). Trotskyists would have to get into the Communist Parties or at least the unions they led, in order to be part of this.

The wars in Vietnam and Algeria brought a further development. Raptis and the Dutch Trotskyist Sal Santen were both arrested for clandestine assistance to the Algerian FLN. Later Raptis/Pablo would enter the service of Ben Bella's Algerian government. Supporters here published a pamphlet -"Ben Bella on Workers Control". As various 'Third World' leaders rose up, attempting to develop their societies by measures of public ownership and planning, while resting on Soviet or Chinese support to resist Western imperialist pressure, the Pabloites and Ernest Mandel produced a new interpretation of Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. Rather than the working class and Marxists moving on from the 'democratic' revolution to take the power, it was 'objective circumstances' again that would make what began as bourgeois revolutions 'go over' into the socialist revolution. The role of Marxists would be to assist and advise.

Fidel Castro's triumph in Cuba, the establishment of the first "socialist state" in the Western Hemisphere, persuaded the US Socialist Workers Party among others to try and sink their differences with the Pabloite "Fourth International". In some countries left-wingers tried to emulate Castro's guerrillaism, sometimes with tragic results. Fortunately perhaps, in Britain, while some tried to reproduce France's May-June 1968 by focussing on students, the other group continued Pablo's idea of "deep entry" - though since this is Britain, most eschewed the minority Communist Party and stuck with Labour instead.

If Castro and the martyred Che Guevera are still admired, the arrival of Chavez, who turned from the military to pursue his aims through election and the institutions, while turning to the labour movement as allies, is bound to have an appeal, much wider than this or that sect. In a period when we had been told socialism was finished, the Venezuelan leader has been in the forefront of Latin America's turn to the Left.

But a few things have blotted Hugo Chavez's escutcheon recently. Even if we accept his alignment with Castro in defence of Libya's Gaddafi as being necessitated by opposition to imperialism, it is a bit harder to justify apparent support for Iran's Ahmadinejad. Oil producers' solidarity may explain such alliances, but defending such states against US or other Western imperialism does not mean defending oppressor regimes against working people.

Another issue that has aroused concern is Chavez' seeming readiness to accept the military coup regime in Honduras, supporting its admission to the OAS.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/15493-venezuela-agrees-to-honduras-return-to-oas.html

In Venezuela itself, there is the question of working class independence. Workers' pressure has forced the release of Ruben Gonzales, a union leader who had been sentenced to seven and a half years imprisonment for supporting an iron miners' strike.

http://www.ft-ci.org/article.php3?id_article=3897

Another twist to the Becerra saga is that Colombia is dangling the possibility of extraditing Walid Makled, a wanted drug trafficker, to Venezuela. Was this the quid pro quo?

Whatever the faults and wrong moves committed by the Chavez government they do not detract from Venezuela's right to pursue its own development, independent of US dominance. Equally the duty of socialists to support the Venezuelan people in this does not require us to pretend that everything is perfect. Indeed, the weakness of forever seeking some such 'model' to extoll the virtues of can both weaken us when clear-sighted, critical solidarity is needed, and cause longer term disorientation.

US justice leaves terrorist laughing - but then he was one of theirs.

'War on Terror'? You must be having a laugh. Luis Posadas Carriles.

THE man who is believed to have organised the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner off Barbados, killing all on board, walked free from a Texas court last week, after a four-year attempt to prosecute him for lying to the immigration authorities ended with his acquittal.

Luis Posada Carriles, now 83, was a veteran right-wing terrorist and former CIA agent. His part in the bombing of the Cubana Airlines DC8, killing 73 people, had been known for years. Indeed declassified US documents show the American authorities had advance intelligence that an airline bombing was being planned by Cuban emigres with whom Posada Carriles was working.

Cuba and Venezuela, which held the accused in its jail at one time, have condemned the US court's decision to acquit him. A Cuban official called the outcome a "shameful farce"; Venezuela said the US was protecting a known terrorist.

Besides his alleged involvement in plotting bomb attacks in Cuba, Posada Carriles was engaged by the CIA for gun running to right-wing Contra rebels operating against Nicaragua. At least one American citizen, working on a rural aid project, was killed by them.

His trial in Texas was on charges of lying to immigration officials about how he entered the US and about his alleged involvement in bomb attacks in Havana in 1997 in which an Italian tourist was killed.But it ended with his acquittal on Friday.

The head of Cuba's parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, told the Associated Press the federal judge in Texas had prevented jurors from seeing evidence that would have convinced them of his guilt.

"The US government is as much a liar as he is because it converted a killer who has been sought for decades into a simple old liar," he said.

The Venezuelan government expressed "indignation" at "an act of theatre" designed to "protect the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles".It said it would renew its request to have Posada Carriles extradited for his alleged role in the bombing of the Cuban airliner, which was organised from Venezuelan soil.

Posada Cariles was imprisoned in Venezuela in 1976 for his part in the airline bombing. He escaped in 1985. Then in 2000 he was jailed in Panama for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro. But he was pardoned and released four years later.

The US has previously refused to send Posada Carriles to Cuba or Venezuela, saying he might face torture.This from the land that remains famous for its 'humane' treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo! They're all heart sometimes!

Declassified US documents show that the accused airline bomber worked for the CIA between 1965 and 1976, thus he was in its employ when he allegedly arranged the airline bombing. He is also said to have worked for other intelligence agencies, including those of Pinochet's Chile and the military junta in Argentina.

Together with his co-conspirator Orlando Bosch, Posada Carilles allegedly helped Chile's DINA secret police plan the car bomb murder in Washington of Cuban dissident Orlando Letelier and his American secretary.

See also, on knowledge of airline plot:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/index.htm

on Letelier case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letelier_case

Buddies in Arms (and bomb conspiracies)

IT'S a happy picture, the two old friends and comrades in arms meeting in Miami. The man on the left is Orlando Bosch Avila, his buddy is Luis Posada Carriles, and if those names don't ring a bell straight away, because they have not been in the news much here, they will mean something to a lot of people in Cuba and other countries.

On October 6, 1976 Cubana airlines Flight 455 was destroyed, plunging into the sea soon after takeoff from Barbados. Two time bombs had exploded in the aircraft. All 73 people on board the plane were killed, , including young members of the Cuban national fencing team, and five North Koreans.

Earlier that year Orlando Letelier, former Chilean Foreign Minister driven into exile by Pinochet, was murdered by a car bombing in Washington. In 1978 a former CIA agent, Michael Townley, was convicted of carrying out the bombing on behalf of the Chilean secret police, DINA, but he eventually walked free, under the US Federal Witness Protection Programme, having testified against his Chilean associates.

Luis Posada Cariles , and perhaps Orlando Bosch Avila, had attended a meeting with Townley where the Letelier killing was planned. Bosch entered Venezuela in mid-September 1976 under the protection of the then Venezuelan president Carlos Andres Perez. A CIA document described a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser in Caracas, to support Bosch's activities. The informant quoted Bosch as making an offer to Venezuelan officials to avoid acts of violence in the United States when President Carlos Andres Perez visited the United Nations in November, in return for "a substantial cash contribution to [Bosch's] organization."

Bosch was also overheard stating: "Now that our organization has come out of the Letelier job looking good, we are going to try something else." Several days later, Posada was reported to have stated that "we are going to hit a Cuban airplane" and "Orlando has the details."

Bosch was arrested in Caracas on 8 October 1976, and held for nearly four years while awaiting trial for his role concerning the Cubana Flight 455 bombing. He was acquitted along with three-codefendants (one of them Luis Posada Carriles) of these charges in September 1980, with the court finding that the flight had been brought down by a bomb but that there was insufficient evidence to prove the defendants were responsible.] Bosch was convicted of possessing false identification papers, and sentenced to 4.5 months, set against time already served. Defending himself, he would later say, infamously, "All of Castro's planes are warplanes."

“ Guys such as Bosch make it easy for the Cuban government to claim that the United States harbors, or at least tolerates, anti-Castro terrorists. ”

— Miami New Times

Miami area law enforcement officials linked Bosch to several dynamite bombings, including a blast in the offices of Mackey Airlines in 1977, after the airline announced plans to resume flights to Cuba.

In 1987, Bosch was freed from Venezuelan charges and went to the United States, assisted by US Ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich; there, he was ultimately arrested for a parole violation. Bosch was detained in the United States for six months until all charges were dropped and he was able to live in the United States freely. It has been alleged that Bosch was pardoned by President Bush, and protected by the Bush family. Bush senior had been head of the CIA when Bosch's crimes had been committed and Cuban emigres in Miami lobbied Florida governor Jeb Bush to have his father intervene.

Luis Posada Cariles was involved in the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban emigres. After its failure the CIA took him to Fort Benning for training in sabotage and explosives, then set him to work with the Cubans in Miami. But after some problems with the US backers which led to him being questioned about his "unreported association with gangster elements", Posada relocated to Venezuela, in 1968, taking with him CIA supplied weapons including grenades and fuses.

Becoming a naturalised Venezuelan citizen, Posada became chief of operations of the Venezuelan DISIP, tasked with suppressing leftwing guerrillas. He was joined in Venezuela by fellow Cuban Bosch. The CIA became concerned that their former protege was combining his security work with cocaine trafficking, and in 1974 Posada was dismissed from his Venezuelan post. There were suspicions that he was involved in a plot to assassinate Kissinger, then seen as too soft on Cuba. The CIA was already under pressure at home to clean up its act, and needed to distance itself from rogue operators.

Posada formed a private detective agency in Caracas. Two of its men, Freddy Lugo and Herman Ricardo Lozano, were implicated in the Cuban airliner bombing, and confessed. A declassified FBI report says: "Our confidential source ascertained (...) that the bombing of the Cubana Airlines DC-8 was planned, in part, in Caracas, Venezuela, at two meetings attended by Morales Navarrete, Luis Posada Carriles and Frank Castro". Posada and Bosch were arrested. Bosch was to be held four years before his trial and acquittal, but Posada had already escaped, to start a second career with his old bosses, under the Reagan administration.

Based in in El Salvador, Posada worked with Felix Rodriguez, a CIA operative who had overseen the capture of Che Guevera. They coordinated arms supplies to the Contras, right-wing gangs financed by the Reagan administration to carry out raids and murder in Nicaragua. Posada was paid $3,000 per month plus expenses from U.S. Major General Richard Secord, who was directing operations for Oliver North. The subsequent Iran-Contra investigations shed light into this major US operation. Several of Posada's connections, including Félix Rodríguez were asked to testify. But Posada remained in El Salvador, and signed up as a security adviser to the notoriously brutal Guatemalan regime.

In February 1990 Posada was shot while sitting in his car in Guatemala City by unknown assailants, but unfortunately he survived, and his medical bills were looked after by the Cuban emigres and the Americans.
In 1997, Posada was implicated in a further series of terrorist bombings in Cuba aimed at tourist hotels and restaurants. An Italian-Canadian, Fabio di Celmo, was killed and 11 people wounded as a result. In a taped interview with The New York Times, Posada said: "It is sad that someone is dead, but we can't stop." Aiming to frighten tourists from going to Cuba, Posada was reportedly disappointed with the reluctance of American news organisations to report the bombing attacks, saying "If there is no publicity, the job is useless".

Loose tongue and keenness on publicity may prove Posada's undoing, as poor attention to tax returns did for Al Capone. In 2000 he was caught with explosives in Panama, accused of plotting to kill Castro during the Cuban leader's visit. A pro-US president let him get off in 2004, and once again the Bush connection is said to have helped. But arriving in Texas to claim asylum, Posada was detained by US immigration authorities, and then the Department of Homeland Security, though the US authorities refused an extradition request for him from Venezuela, on the grounds that he might be tortured there. No 'extraordinary rendition' there then!

The Venezuelan government has understandably accused the US of having a "double standard in its so-called war on terrorism" , harbouring terrorists and attributing methods to others which it has itself practised at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The US government sought to deport Posada elsewhere, but at least seven friendly nations refused to accept him. Under the 1971 Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation the US is obligated to prosecute Posada for the alleged acts of terror.

Luis Posada Carriles was released from jail after paying bond on April 19, 2007. The US Fifth District Court of Appeals in New Orleans rejected a Justice Department request Posada be refused bail for entering the U.S. illegally and he was escorted by Federal agents to Miami where Cuban emigres welcomed him as a hero. patriot. Posada was required to remain under 24-hour house arrest at his wife's apartment in Miami until trial, with permission to leave only to meet with attorneys or for doctor's appointments. On May 8, 2007 U.S. district judge Kathleen Cardone dismissed seven counts of immigration fraud and ordered Posada's electronic bracelet removed.

The photo of Bosch and Posada was taken by reporter and researcher Tracey Eaton from the Along the Malecon website during the launch of a book by Bosch on December 9. The launch took place in the University of Miami's Institute of Cuban American Studies, which is subsidised by USAID (US official agency which uses foreign aid to promote US aims) and run by a former CIA analyst.

In 2009, a federal grand jury issued an indictment, the first US reference to the 1997 bombings in Cuba. On April 9, 2009 The Miami Herald reported:

"The superseding indictment from the grand jury in El Paso does not charge Posada, 81, with planting the bombs or plotting the bombings but with lying in an immigration court about his role in the attacks at hotels, bars and restaurants in the Havana area. The perjury counts were added to the previous indictment that accused Posada of lying in his citizenship application about how he got into the United States. Another new charge is obstruction of a U.S. investigation into "international terrorism.""

Posada is being accused of lying to U.S. authorities and is due to go on trial next month in El Paso, Texas. It will be the first time evidence from the Cuban authorities and the FBI will be presented linking the former CIA operative with the Havana bombings. A judge has also ruled that taped evidence can be heard, including Posada's interview with a New York Times freelance journalist boasting about the Havana hotel bombings.

But there are still powerful interests and lobby groups in America who support Luis Posada Cariles, and enough old co-workers in the intelligence establishment, who would sooner this case was closed.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/04/1957771/posada-trial-marked-by-firsts.html#ixzz18OB0kiTp

The miners are rescued, and their memories unearthed

LUIS URZUA led the shift underground, and was last to be freed. Luis was used to hardship and responsibility young, looking after the younger kids. His father and his stepfather were both murdered by Pinochet's regime

NOW that we have all been delighted to see the Chilean miners rescued, witness and share in the joy of their families, it is not a bad time to look at some of the circumstances.

We'll note in passing another piece of good news, that Baroness Thatcher was too ill to attend her 85th birthday party. Maybe we'll get the news we've been waiting for in time for those street parties by the end of the year after all.

To those brought up in Thatcher's (and Blair's) Britain and used to its right-wing press, it must have come as a shock to see men come crawling from underground, and be told that down there, children, is where wealth is created, and not in the City finance houses or by 'celebrities' on catwalks.

We know now that the miners had warned about dangers in this mine, and in the methods being used to speed up the extraction of ore. We know that the mine owners in their generosity did not pay the men's wages while they were trapped underground. And now the companies are excited that in the course of the rescue operation richer gold and copper deposits were found.

But here's John Pilger, of whom it has been said, "For more than a generation, he has been an ever stronger voice for those without a voice and a thorn in the side of authority, the Establishment.

'The accident that trapped the miners is not unusual in Chile and the
inevitable consequence of a ruthless economic system that has barely
changed since the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Copper is
Chile’s gold, and the frequency of mining disasters keeps pace with prices and profits.
There are, on average, 39 fatal accidents every year in Chile’s privatised
mines. The San Jose mine, where the men work, became so unsafe in
2007 it had to be closed – but not for long. On 30 July last, a labour
department report warned again of “serious safety deficiencies”,
but the minister took no action.
Six days later, the men were entombed.

'For all the media circus at the rescue site, contemporary Chile is a
country of the unspoken. At the Villa Grimaldi, in the suburbs of the
capital Santiago, a sign says: “The forgotten past is full of memory.” This was the torture centre where hundreds of people were murdered and disappeared for opposing the fascism that General Augusto Pinochet and his business allies brought to Chile. Its ghostly presence is overseen by the beauty of the Andes, and the man who unlocks the gate used to live nearby and remembers the screams".

It was on September 11, 1973, "Chile's own 9/11", as Pilger reminds us, that reforming Chilean president Salvador Allende's elected Socialist government was overthrown by Thatcher's friend General Pinochet.
Allende's government had been held up as proof that you could advance to socialism by a "peaceful road", but the CIA and the military put a stop to that after he expropriated American-owned copper mining companies.

Thousands of Chilean workers and students were rounded up by the junta, or fled as refugees. The labour movement and Left here were horrified by mass executions and torture in Chile, but with Pinochet came Chicago school monetarist economics,and the Right took it as inspiration.

A group of print trade unionists picketing over an in-house dispute on Fleet Street one-night were approached by two lubricated 'gentlemen of the press', who asked what it was about. They explained their issue politely (they were members of the now long-merged Society of Lithographic Artists, Designers and Engravers, SLADE, real gentlemen and ladies). "Well, I should not worry about", one of the editors said, "in six months time your union will be destroyed, and you will be lying dead in the gutter".

Peregrine Worsthorne visited the Chilean prison camp on Dawson Island, and saw no sign of brutality or torture. The left-wing prisoners were lucky to still be alive, he thought. Besides, if a British socialist government tried to "turn this country into a Communist State, I hope and pray our armed forces would intervene to prevent such a calamity as efficiently as the armed forces did in Chile."

When Pinochet came to Britain it was only right that Tories like Worsthorne and Thatcher stood by their man. In Chile, according to Pilger, you see little sign of Allende's name being remembered, though plainly what people remember may not be reflected in official public memory.

"Today, Chile is a democracy, though many would dispute that,
notably those in the barrios forced to scavenge for food and steal
electricity. In 1990, Pinochet bequeathed a constitutionally
compromised system as a condition of his retirement and the
military’s withdrawal to the political shadows. This ensures that
the broadly reformist parties, known as Concertacion, are
permanently divided or drawn into legitimising the economic
designs of the heirs of the dictator.

At the last election, the right-wing Coalition for Change, the
creation of Pinochet’s ideologue Jaime Guzman, took power
under president Sebastian Piñera. The bloody extinction of
true democracy that began with the death of Allende was, by
stealth, complete. Piñera is a billionaire who controls a slice
of the mining, energy and retail industries. He made his
fortune in the aftermath of Pinochet’s coup and during the
free-market “experiments” of the zealots from the University
of Chicago, known as the Chicago Boys. His brother and
former business partner, Jose Piñera, a labour minister
under Pinochet, privatised mining and state pensions
and all but destroyed the trade unions.

This was applauded in Washington as an “economic miracle”,
a model of the new cult of neo-liberalism that would sweep
the continent and ensure control from the north. Today Chile
is critical to President Barack Obama’s rollback of the
independent democracies in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela.
Piñera’s closest ally is Washington’s main man, Juan Manuel
Santos, the new president of Colombia, home to seven US
bases and an infamous human rights record familiar to
Chileans who suffered under Pinochet’s terror.
Post-Pinochet Chile has kept its own enduring abuses in shadow.
The families still attempting to recover from the torture or
disappearance of a loved one bear the prejudice of the state and
employers.

Those not silent are the Mapuche people, the only indigenous nation
the Spanish conquistadors could not defeat. In the late 19th century,
the European settlers of an independent Chile waged their racist War
of Extermination against the Mapuche who were left as impoverished
outsiders. During Allende’s thousand days in power this began to change.
Some Mapuche lands were returned and a debt of justice was recognised.
Since then, a vicious, largely unreported war has been waged against the
Mapuche. Forestry corporations have been allowed to take their land,
and their resistance has been met with murders, disappearances and
arbitrary prosecutions under “anti terrorism” laws enacted by the
dictatorship. In their campaigns of civil disobedience, none of the
Mapuche has harmed anyone.

The mere accusation of a landowner or businessman that the
Mapuche “might” trespass on their own ancestral lands is often
enough for the police to charge them with offences that lead to
Kafkaesque trials with faceless witnesses and prison sentences
of up to 20 years. They are, in effect, political prisoners.

While the world rejoices at the spectacle of the miners’ rescue,
38 Mapuche hunger strikers have not been news. They are
demanding an end to the Pinochet laws used against them,
such as “terrorist arson”, and the justice of a real democracy.
On 9 October, all but one of the hunger strikers ended their
protest after 90 days without food. A young Mapuche,
Luis Marileo, says he will go on.
On 18 October, President Piñera is due to give a lecture
on “current events” at the London School of Economics.
He should be reminded of their ordeal and why.
http://dprogram.net/2010/10/14/chiles-ghosts-are-not-being-rescued-john-pilger/

And now, about a working class hero against whom Chile's rulers had committed their crimes well-before he was old enough to go down the mine.

The difficult life of Luis Urzua, the last miner to come to the surface

Translation of extracts from an article in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo

... Urzua was the first to speak to the outside world and the last to
leave the mine .. The Chilean government and NASA describe him as a natural leader
.. He has become the man who has spent longest underground ever
.. His father and stepfather were killed during the Pinochet
dictatorship

Little is known of Luis Urzua (54) and his family, he is the one who
has spoken least out of the 33 rescued. But this shift leader, from
Vallenar, was as important as the mining minister, Laurence Golborne or the
Codelco engineer, Andre Sougarret, who led the rescue operation. Without him,
there would have been no rescue.

The shift leader in San Jose, a topographer by trade, was the first to
speak to the outside world. “Hallo, who am I talking to?” said
Golborne. “can you hear me?” asked a voice from 650 metres down. “we can hear you
loud and clear, who am I talking to?” “you are talking to the shift
leader. Luis Urzua. We are OK. Waiting to be rescued”.

…….After 67 days of suffering and happiness, the man deserves his world
record. But few know how hard the life of this born fighter has been.
A calm person, the oldest of six children, he helped bring up the younger
ones. He had to. While Luis was still a child, his father, also Luis
Urzua, was killed by the dictator, Augusto Pinochet. He was a member of
the Communist Party. His stepfather, Benito Tapia, was also killed, by
the “caravan of death” (a squad led by generals that went from prison to
prison carrying out assassinations).

He was a member of the Socialist Party.
NASA says that Luis Urzua is a “natural leader”…..The mother of the
“hero of Copiapo”, Nelly Iribarren, says “My son has always been very
disciplined, he was the one in charge among the children. As my husband
died when they were small, Luis was the man of the house,, he helped me
bring them up and he always made the rules”.


“Luis has been a miner for 31 years, he knows about underground rescue
and first aid, and so we knew that he would look for some way to get out.
And I can imagine “mi negro” going round and sorting everyone out, rationing
food and handing out tasks because he is like that, bossy but organised”
said his mother, who did not go to Camp Hope set up round the mine
because of her health.


What this good woman does not talk about is the suffering caused her and
her children, which includes the time Luis has spent underground. Of
Luis’ first father we know little. Just that he was also called Luis Urzua
and he disappeared under the Pinochet dictatorship. We know more about
Nelly Iribarren’s second husband.

Benito Tapia Tapia, 32, worked for Cobresal and was Luis Urzua’s
stepfather, all the father Luis had. He was a national leader of the
Confederation of Copper miners and member of the Central Committee of
the Socialist Youth. On 17th September 1973, he was arrested and taken to
Copiapo prison. From there to the barracks and then he lived no more.
Benito was assassinated by the Caravan of Death along with the managing
director of Cobresal, Ricardo Garcia Posada and Maguindo Castillo
Andrade, another trade union leader like him.

At nine in the morning on Wednesday 17th October, major Carlos Brito of
the Atacama Regiment based in Copiapo took Ricardo out of the public
prison, and at 19.20 the same day sergeant Oscar Pasten did the same
with Benito Tapia and Maguindo Castillo. All three were taken to the
barracks. From there they went to the cemetery. “The shooting of Garcia, Castillo
and Tapia was led by lieutenant Ramon Zuniga Ormeno along with sub
lieutenant Fernando Castillo Cruz” was the statement given to judge Juan
Guzman by Diaz Araneda a few years ago. Arturo Araya, who was Juan
Mendoza (the legal doctor)’s assistant, arrived at the Copiapo morgue early on
the morning of 18th October. He saw three bodies lying covered by white
sheets on slabs. He went to uncover one to undress it and start the autopsy
but the cemetery administrator stopped him “these bodies are untouchable”
he said.


The three bodies were buried with no coffins in an open trench in Patio
16. In the register, Garcia was given number 13, Tapia 14 and Castillo
15. some days later, Bernardo Pinto, a worker in Cobresal, paid a
gravedigger to open the grave and never forgot what he saw. When they came to the
surface, “they had no coffins and the three bodies were destroyed, with
deep cuts to the face, trunk, legs, in some you could see the bones in
the wounds” said Bernardo. Soon afterwards, the three bodies, including
Benito’s, disappeared forever from the cemetery.

Maglio Cicardini, mayor of Copiapo and Sergio Iribarren, Luis’ cousin,
corroborate the story. “It is true, his father and stepfather were
assassinated”. Jaime Tapia, brother of the murdered Benito, was in Camp
Hope and represents Luis. Asked if his brother was assassinated by the
dictatorship, he replied “I can tell you nothing, it will all come out
when it should, after they are rescued”.

(thanks to Sue Lukes for making this available).

Jonathan Moyle

JONATHAN MOYLE. Did he stumble into powerful interests?

THIRTY years ago, on March 31, 1990, Silvia Cabrera made a horrific discovery in room 1406 of the Carrera hotel where she worked in Santiago, Chile. The room was in chaos, with papers scattered around. There was a syringe on the table. And the room occupant's body hanging in the wardrobe.

The dead guest was a young British journalist, Jonathan Moyle, a former RAF pilot, working for the journal Helicopter World, in Santiago covering the air show as guest of the Chilean air force.

At first the Chilean police listed the death as a suicide. British Foreign Office officials put out the story that the dead man had died accidentally while engaged in some bizarre and elaborate act of auto-eroticism.

Jonathan Moyle's parents refused to accept that he had killed himself either deliberately or by misadventure. Their son had been in good spirits, following up a story that fitted his special interests, and was looking forward to getting married when he returned.

The evidence uncovered when the case was pursued showed they were right. A Chilean judge pronounced the cause of death as murder. Moyle had been drugged, suffocated with a pillow, injected in the heel with a lethal substance, then strung up in the closet. An improvised nappy had been put on him to contain bodily fluids and smell so as to delay the body being found.

Further investigation by journalists and by Jonathan's father Anthony Moyle indicated that the helicopter journalist had been interviewing Chilean air force officers and officials of a company owned by Carlos Cardoen. He had also received warnings to back off. He appears to have been interested in the company's purchase and modification of some helicopters for military use. It is thought the helicopters may have been sold on to Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi regime was known as a good customer for Cardoen. In 1987 the New York Times reported that the Chilean arms dealer made a fortune selling cluster bombs to Iraq during the war with Iran. With the war winding down in the late 1980s, Saddam Hussein may still have wanted helicopters both for external and internal use against Kurdish and other rebels. US Congressional papers record that Cardoen tried to manufacture a cheap attack helicopter from a customized Bell Jet Ranger, one of the world's most readily available commercial helicopters. The Iraqi government's officers may have seen this on display at the Santiago show, and put in an order.

Maybe Jonathan Moyle had seen it too. A keen, politically-naieve if patriotic man, said to have informed on fellow-students during his college days. he might well have been using his job as journalistic cover for intelligence work, and would certainly have seen it as his duty to investigate anything he considered of concern to Her Majesty's government, and pass on what he found.

It may not have occurred to him that some people, at least, in HM government, might already know something about supplying weapons and military technology to Iraq, and would thank him to keep his nose out of such things. It was not until November 1992, when three executives of Coventry machine-tool manufacturer Matrix Churchill were charged with supplying equipment of strategic use to Iraq, and during their case that we heard about former defence procurement minister Alan Clarke's advice to be "economic with the actualite".

But already before this another connection had been raised in the House of Commons. Early Day Motion 589, moved by Ken Livingstone,was headed "Mark Thatcher and arms Sales to Iraq:

"That this House welcomes the decision of the United States Congress to investigate arms sales to Iraq; notes the charges by former Israeli Military Intelligence agent Mr Ari Ben-Menashe that a Texan-based company owned by Mr Mark Thatcher was used to move equipment directly from Britain to Iraq, that Mark Thatcher introduced 'Supergun' designer Gerald Bull to South African Military Intelligence General Pieter Van der Westhuizen, who subsequently introduced Mr Bull to the Iraqi Deputy Chief of procurement who arranged payment for Mr Bull's services via Cardoen Industries financial network and that Mark Thatcher introduced Mr Bull to Mark Thatcher's Chilean associate Carlos Cardoen; notes that Mr Ben Menashe also charges that Mark Thatcher sold 48 Chieftain tanks to Chile and proclaimed his admiration for General Pinochet; and, in the light of these charges, hopes the Government will conduct its own investigation to determine the truth of these charges and, if proved true, bring criminal charges against any United Kingdom Government individuals who were aware of these activities".

We may note an interesting coincidence. The Matrix-Churchill trial was linked with Iraq's efforts to build a "super-gun" for accurate firing of missiles. The designer, Canadian engineer Gerald Bull, had previously supplied heavy weaponry to Israel and South Africa, and been recommended for US citizenry by Senator Barry Goldwater, before finding a customer in Iraq. Bull was assassinated outside his Brussels flat on March 22, 1990 less than ten days before the killing of Jonathan Moyle in Chile. It was reportedly carried out by a three-man Mossad hit team, and it is generally assumed that the Israeli secret service was gunning for Bull because he was helping the Iraqis.

But on April 16, 1998, the Flemish daily de Morgen discovered another coincidence. The arrival in Brussels of a four-man team, described in documents as "UK MoD Special Forces Staff", in the weeks before Gerald Bull was killed. They were supposedly looking into supply of special explosive devices by the PRB company. Among them was Stephan Kock, described as both MI6 and SAS, whose company Astra Holdings was in competition with Gerald Bull for ownership of PRB.

There are bound to be tangles of intrigue and disinformation surrounding these cases, with intelligence services, even those which which otherwise co-operate, competing to point the finger at each other.
The fact remains that two men were killed, one in Santiago and one in Brussels, and in neither case has anyone been brought to justice.

Jonathan Moyle appears to have met his death because in his keenness to pursue the truth he stumbled into powerful, ruthless interests. But whose? Carlos Cardoens might have had the motive and the resources to remove this nuisance, but could he alone have arranged a cover-up, and made sure he never faced justice?
The British intelligence services never kill people - we know this because they have more than once said so, and we are supposed to believe them. But it remains striking that, far from pressing the Chileans for an investigation into the death of a British subject, it was British officials who hastened to discourage interest with their story about strange sexual practices.

And after the Matrix-Churchill scape-goating trial collapsed, we had the Scott Inquiry, much of which remained secret, and no further moves to prosecute anyone involved in the Iraqi arms business.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/60769.stm
http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/moyle.smeared_graun_2jun1990.html
http://www.blythe.org/Intelligence/readme/81sum

While eyes were on Tripoli, what happened in Tehran?

WHILE the TV news, front-page headlines and hypocritical outrage were focussed on Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's return to Tripoli this weekend, there was not so much media attention for an event in Tehran.
Triumphant for now after his police and thugs broke up opposition, and installed against a backdrop of torture and show trials, President Mohammed Ahmadinejad has appointed former Revolutionary Guard commander Ahmad Vahidi as Defence Minister.

Megrahi was released on compassionate grounds, but only after dropping his appeal against conviction for the Lockerbie bombing. Newspapers have kept calling him the Lockerbie "bomber", and politicians pretend to be shocked that he has had a "hero's welcome'; but if they are really convinced of his guilt they can surely not be pretending he acted alone, and without orders or a motive? If, on the other hand, Megrahi had succeeded in proving his innocence - and the Scottish review commission had found faults with the conviction - then the case of who did arrange the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 would again be open.

The longstanding alternative scenario put forward was that the Syrian-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Commnd was involved in the airline bombing, under a contract to the secret service of Iran. The motive was retaliation for the downing of an Iranian ailiner with the loss of 300 lives, carried out by the US missile carrier Vincennes. The captain and crew of the US ship were decorated. So much for the hypocrisy of US protests about a "hero's welcome".

At least the Iranian explanation has some logic to it, even if the evidence has yet to be gathered and tested. It became impolitic to pursue an accusation against the Iranian or Syrian governments when their collaboration was needed for war on Iraq. Now, when we are hearing all about the feelings of relatives of the Lockerbie bomb victims it is probably impolite to remind ourselves that the Iranian airbus victims also left grieving relatives.

The significance of the Vahidi appointment relates to a different bombing. On July 18, 1994, a van loaded with with explosives was detonated outside the premises of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), Argentina's central Jewish welfare and cultural association, in a heavily built-up district of Buenos Aires. The bombing destroyed load-bearing walls, and brought down floors. Eighty-five people died,both service users and staff, and more than 300 were injured. The attack came two years after the 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in which 29 people were killed.

The AMIA bombing was Argentina's worst ever terror attack, and there was a huge demonstration in Buenos Aires in sympathy with the victims and protest at the outrage. But Argentine authorities have been unable to establish with any certainty who was behind either bombing, and nobody has been convicted.

The Argentine police and military have a record of antisemitism, as well as corruption. A disproportionately large number of those arrested or 'disappeared' under the military junta's 'dirty war' in the 1970s were Jewish, although this did not prevent the junta shopping with Israel for arms and intelligence co-operation.

In 1997 four police officers were arrested. Police commander Juan Jose Ribelli was chargd with providing the van used in the AMIA attack. His father had received $2.5 million prior to the explosion. But it was difficult to prove what this was for, or where it came from, and though suspicions have continued of a local connection to the bombings, investigations have not got far.
http://212.150.54.123/spotlight/det.cfm?id=261

In 2004 all suspects in the case of a "local connection" were found not guilty and released. Meanwhile US and Israeli authorities and intelligence services have been keen to claim Iranian responsibility, allegations about which have been made by an Iranian defector. They even named a Lebanese "suicide bomber", though the man's brother said he had been killed in Lebanon months after the bombing.

On October 25, 2006, Argentine prosecutors Alberto Nisman and Marcelo Martínez Burgos formally accused the Iranian government of directing the bombing, and said it had used Hezbollah militants to carry it out.

But what was the motive? Buenos Aires is a long way to go to find an Israeli target, let alone to bomb a Jewish community centre which is nothing to do with the Zionist state. The Lebanese and Syrian immigrants in Argentina, who found themselves being put in the frame (including immigrants' son President Carlos Menem) had generally good relations with the Argentine Jewish community. As for the Iranian regime, with perhaps the biggest Jewish community outside Israel in the Middle East, it would hardly need to go to the other side of the world if it was merely bent on attacking Jews, out of its supposed fanaticism.

According to the Argentine prosecutors, Argentina had been targeted by Iran after Buenos Aires' decision to suspend a nuclear technology transfer to Iran. This has been disputed, because this contract was never terminated, and Iran and Argentina were negotiating on restoration of full cooperation on all agreements from early 1992 till 1994, when the bombing occurred. That makes one think. Did whoever arranged this bombing in Buenos Aires intent to protest the nuclear deal's suspension, or to prevent the deal's resumption?

Judge Galeano issued warrants for the arrests of 12 Iranians, including Hade Soleimanpour, Iran's ambassador to Argentina in 1994. In 2003, at the request of the Argentine authorities, British police arrested Soleimanpour in Durham, where he had enrolled for a course at the university. He was later released because, according to the Home Office there was not enough prima face evidence to proceed with an extradition.

Judge Galeano also interviewed Abolghasem Mesbahi, an alleged former Iranian intelligence officer who reportedly said a former Argentine president accepted a $10 million payment from Tehran to block the investigation. Former President Carlos Menem denied the claims, but admitted he had a secret Swiss bank account. Menem said the attack had been related to his support to the US during the First Gulf War and to his visit to Israel. Abolghasem Mesbahi claimed to the Argentine court that Iran had planned the bombing, thinking the centre was a base for the Israeli secret service, Mossad.

Mesbahi had also warned accurately that London would be next for bombings. On July 26, 1994 a car bomb exploded outside the Israeli embassy in London, injuring 14 people, and later that day another explosion hit Balfour House, Zionist fundraising offices in Finchley. Apparently MI5 had ignored warnings about the embassy bombing, and Scotland Yard made no effort to interview Mesbahi. Two Palestinian, British university graduates with no connection to Iran, are serving time for "conspiracy" to bomb the embassy, though both denied it.

Interpol has had Ahmad Vahidi on its "red notice" list since November 2007, in connection with the AMIA bombing and an Argentine warrant. At the time of the bombing in Buenos Aires Vahidi headed the al Quds unit of the Revolutionary Guard which co-ordinated operations abroad, including those using Hizbollah members.

The Interpol notices are not in themselves warrants, but member countries can treat them as a request to apprehend the person. Evidently in Ahmadinejad's Iran they are a good thing to put on your CV.

Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman says Vahidi is accused of being "a key participant in the planning" of the attack. "It has been demonstrated that Vahidi participated in and approved of the decision to attack AMIA during a meeting in Iran on August 14, 1993. Iran has always protected terrorists, giving them government posts, but I think never one as high as this one," he told the Associated Press.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has said appointment of Vahidi will confirm the "terrorist" nature of the regime in Iraq. Barak is a fine one to talk, considering that Israel made Ariel Sharon prime minister after the Kahane commission had held him culpable for the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Israeli peace campaigners hare supporting calls for Barak himself to be declared a war criminal after the onslaught on Gaza.

But since Israeli war guilt in no way establishes Iranian innocence, we must continue raising questions and demanding answers about the Buenos Aires bombings. Besides Jews and Arabs, Argentina received another group of immigrants after World War II, welcomed by Peron for their import of know-how and capital. Some were just ahead of arrest warrants, but assisted to the New World by Franco Spain, the CIA, or friends in the Vatican. Israel found it easier to infringe Argentine sovereignty then go through extradition procedures when it took Adolf Eichmann. Croat Poglavnik(fuhrer) Ante Pavelic got away when the Yugoslavs sought to extradite him. The deputy whom Eichmann regarded as his "best man", Alois Brunner, was among the Nazis for whom the CIA found work in the Middle East, winding up in Damascus as a businessman and adviser to the security police.

President Carlos Menem must have upset quite a few important people in Argentina and elsewhere when, in 1992, he announced an investigation into the Peron regime and the haven it had provided for Nazis and their loot. all. An American document from April 1945 estimated that Nazis secretly sent more than $1 billion to be invested in Argentina. In December 1996, the Argentine Central Bank handed vital information on bank accounts to Jewish researchers, detailing funds transferred from banks in Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal between 1939 and 1949. In March 1997, President Menem ordered the Central Bank archives to be opened for investigation of Nazi funds.

Did some other agency sell the Iranians a pup, by getting them to believe Mossad was using the AMIA building? Or did someone believe, perhaps with more reason, that some of the files on Nazi wealth being gathered for investigation were housed in the building? Could the Iranian regime's agents have knowingly or unwittingly have provided a convenient 'false flag' for someone else's dirty work?

If the Iranian secret service and Hizbollah were involved in this atrocity they committed a crime not only agaisst Argentina and its Jewish community but against the many Arab Argentinians whose name has been besmirched by association, and who found themselves regarded as "suspects". If not, then Iran as much as anyone has an interest in full investigation and bringing to justice the real culprits. But as with his willingness previously to host a Holocaust deniers' conference (some of whose participants are incidentally as bitter enemies of Muslims as of Jews), Ahmadinejad's peformance is a liability to Iran.

.