Argentina Protests Charges, Restricts U.S. Ambassador (Update3)

[struggle4progress]

Source: Bloomberg

Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) -- ... U.S. Ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne must limit his meetings to Foreign Ministry officials, a person familiar with the situation said. Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana called Wayne to his office last night to express his country's displeasure and demand the U.S. extradite Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, the man at the center of the scandal ...

Argentina's lower house voted 128 to 62 to approve a resolution repudiating the U.S. probe, which Argentine Cabinet Chief Alberto Fernandez called ``offensive'' in an interview with Radio Diez today. Former President Nestor Kirchner said the country is being ``manhandled by a bunch of mobsters,'' and yesterday Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called reports linking him to Antonini an ``outrage.'' ...

Argentine prosecutor Maria Luz Rivas Diez said in an interview that Antonini, who isn't charged with any crime, should face questioning in Argentina over possible money laundering and smuggling. Argentine federal Judge Marta Novatti sent Interpol an arrest warrant for Antonini on Aug. 16 ...

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=anPqjcENNtWo&refer=latin_america

---

Argentina harshly attacks the US over "the suitcase scandal"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3105287

Argentine Leader Rebukes US Over Cash
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3101040

Venezuela accused in Argentina campaign probe
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3100668

[DBoon]

1. Argentines are very familiar with US dirty tricks

Operation Condor (Spanish: Operación Cóndor, Portuguese: Operação Condor) was a campaign of political repressions involving assassination and intelligence operations officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America. The program aimed to deter left-wing influence and ideas and to control active or potential opposition movements against the usually conservative governments. Due to its clandestine nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor will likely never be known, but it is reported to have caused thousands of victims, possibly even more.<1><2><3>

Condor's key members were the right-wing military governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil, with Ecuador and Peru joining later in more peripheral roles.<4> These nations were ruled by dictators such as Jorge Rafael Videla, Augusto Pinochet, Ernesto Geisel, Hugo Banzer, and Alfredo Stroessner. The operation was jointly conducted by the intelligence and security services of these nations during the mid-1970s with the knowledge of and some support provided by the United States of America<5>

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

[Judi Lynn]

2. So pleased to see the link you posted. Funny someone questions the neutrality!

FACTS are not neutral, are they? Everything in that article can be verified by so many other different sources. None of this is a deep dark secret anymore, since the facts got out, despite all efforts to conceal them. It just took a couple or more decades, apparently, and the Freedom of Information Act.

Who the hell would attempt to defend the honor of a filthy program like Operation Condor, and the participants! Wildly contemptible.

It's really time more people snapped out of it, awakened long enough to learn what certain elements in their own government have done over the long, ugly years when right-wing Presidents ran roughshod over the world, and bullied, plundered, slaughtered Latin Americans past any chance of forgiveness, or even the right to hope for it.

[DBoon]

8. You do know that military stationed in Guantanemo Bay...

have been caught altering Wikipedia articles to white-wash what goes on there? As in the last few weeks:

http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/16/1842258&from=rss

[Peace Patriot]

3. This is VERY important, that South American countries with truly representative

governments are FIGHTING BACK, and are exposing Bushite lies, covert ops and rotten intentions. I'm SO-O-O liking Christina Fernandez, the new prez of Argentina, and her husband Nester Kirchner (former prez). They are on fire about this. They are taking no shit. They are calling it what it is. And they have made very strong statements about Bush Junta "divide and conquer" tactics, that it WON'T WORK.

This is a big change in South America--and it's very widespread in the new leftist governments elected over the last half decade (in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and also Nicaragua, and to some extent Chile). They have each other's backs. They are moving forward on goals of regional independence and self-determination very fast, and on multiple fronts--economic, infrastructure development, finance, regional trade groups, and, no doubt military and intelligence cooperation. They are also all committed to social justice.

Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay seem to have especially strong ties with each other, in terms of dealing with the Bushites and associated global corporate predators. It is so good to see. We poor peons up here in the north, with our fascist junta--quickly turning us into the biggest "Banana Republic" on earth--need to study this Bolivarian revolution and learn how it's done. Some general lessons I've picked about this revolution in South American politics: 1) Transparent elections (U.S. voters, take note!); 2) grass roots organization, and 3) think big!

What they are showing us is that it CAN be done. You can throw the fascists and the corporate rulers off your backs. A couple of other lessons: patience--be in it for the long term (no quick fixes; do your homework, your work as citizens); and, COOPERATION, based on strong ties of brotherhood and sisterhood--ties of the heart, ties of good people among each other.

It's interesting what Nestor Kirchner said, when confronted with Washington's demand that South American leaders "isolate" Hugo Chavez. Kirchner's reply was, "But he's my brother."

Politics doesn't have to be based on "dog eat dog," and on cruelty, pure ambition and greed, and power for its own sake. It can be based on ties of love--and, when it is, it is a most beautiful thing to behold: Democratic people taking action out of CARE FOR EACH OTHER and for other human beings.

That is what we are seeing in South America, and that is why our war profiteering corporate news monopolies--with their degraded notions of politics--hate it and slander it so much. They really do not understand brotherhood. It is not in their language, or in their hearts. They do not understand how many friends Hugo Chavez has, and why he has them. To them, the greatest thing in the world is to become a millionaire, and then a multi-millionaire, and then a billionaire who can own everybody else, and they of both politics and business as the brutal game of seeking advantage on the ladder up to total power. We have so long been fed this version of politics that we hardly remember what it is like to have a real democracy, with leaders who really care about the rest of us.

What a joy it is to behold it in South America! THIS. IS. WHAT. DEMOCRACY. LOOKS. LIKE!

[Selatius]

4. It's more difficult for us to overthrow corporatism but not impossible. Let me elaborate a little

The biggest reason being that corporatism has its base of operations within the US, in any likely case. Nowhere else on earth can you find the number of billionaires/industrialists in greater concentration than in the continental United States. We are the "wolf's lair" as far as global corporatism goes.

It's far easier to eject an outside force of interference in your country than to remove one that comes from within the country itself. Unlike the people of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and others--we are not as fortunate as far as being able to see the threat. It's more difficult to look in the mirror at yourself--as they say--than to look at others.

Americans have built up a very hefty level of distrust in government institutions, so naturally left wing reforms that make the government the center-piece in enacting reforms becomes problematic, especially with a population made somnambulant with entertainment in substitute of real, critical thinking news. Many Americans recoil at the notion of socialism where many Latin Americans openly debate it and accept it. This is a natural development of Cold War propaganda. The people of the South are not afraid. The same can probably not be said for a large swath of America, unfortunately.

But that is to say that left wing reforms cannot occur. I think the evidence is proven ample that when a population is made to feel pain, that it's old mindset can change. Ideally, change occurs before the onset of massive pain, but with health care, I think it's safe to say the US population is suffering through a measure of pain that they want the pain to stop, hence them becoming more receptive to other ideas that may not involve a laissez-faire approach. A great example of this is the noise rising over health care costs.

The New Deal likely would not have been possible without the Great Depression to demonstrate to Americans the importance of left wing ideas. The Great Society programs were also instituted largely with the same population that came to know bitterly the hardship of wealth inequality during the long, dark years of the Great Depression.

Unfortunately, I am starting to come to the internal consensus that the only real change will occur after much pain and misery has been inflicted by people who push profits ahead of people, the corporatists. Maybe if the Americans are as deprived and as starving as French citizens were in 1789, then maybe they would join the ranks of peoples that did go through a class revolution.

[Peace Patriot]

5. I agree with you, Selatius, that us folks here in the U.S. have a unique

set of problems, and we have also been targeted for disempowerment in unique ways, designed just for us. It's a kind of left-handed compliment. We are the most potentially powerful progressive force on earth. We have the sovereign right not just to regulate, but to dismantle, the global corporate predators that are robbing and oppressing others. We are at the vortex of corporate evil. And the ruination of our democracy and our country is not following any historical precedent very closely, although it has resemblances to some. The fall of the Roman Empire, and Hitler's Germany, come to mind--two scary precedents, with much to teach us--but the parallels break down on important points, as they do with the South American examples.

The folks in South America have been pushed to the wall. They have vast poor populations that have been egregiously robbed and oppressed, by U.S.-backed local fascist elites and U.S./western financial and economic predators. They also have things like political leftists being thrown out of airplanes, and other brutalities of these regimes, in living memory. And they have had it. They are declaring their independence, and seeking it in many new and interesting ways.

We are heading that way fast--into egregious oppression--but we're not there yet. And it may not happen in ways that are all that obvious (for instance, some peoples' fears of the nazi boot coming down). Also, I think a lot of people still hold onto the illusion that somehow our democracy is going to right itself. The truth about the rigged voting machines has just not spread far enough yet, for most people to realize that the mechanism for "righting" the foundering ship of state--transparent vote counting--has been removed. The rigged machines are not the only thing wrong with our election system, but they are the 'coup de grace'--they are entirely blockading change. It's tragic to see these folks--here at DU, for instance--passionately debating the merits of the different Democratic candidates, and failing to realize that the choice will not be theirs. No real populist or leftist--and no one who will stop the war, or do what's needed to restore this democracy--CAN be elected. Who gets nominated, and who wins, is determined by machines run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, and our own party leaders voted for, and supported, this fascist coup, and have actively tried to keep the voters ignorant of it.

So, we have the problem of PERCEPTION. People who believe that they are living in a democracy, when they are really not, are as oppressed, in their way, as people being rounded up into detention camps. Bringing the nazi boot down is a lot of trouble for rich cabals that are just into massive theft, and aren't really building anything (--a mighty industrial war machine, for instance). The fascists are oppressing people here with subtler techniques than they use in South America--at least thus far. You gotta be worried about all the nazi laws and precedents they're putting in place--but some of them might just be laws that immunize Bushites from prosecution (such as new spying and torture laws).

In South America, they know when they are experiencing a fascist coup. Here, the fascist coup went right by people. October 2002, passage of the "Help America Vote Act"--$3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle, to fast-track election theft machines all over the country, by 2004; same month as the Iraq War Resolution, and closely related to it. The IWR guaranteed unjust war; HAVA provided the means to shove the unjust war down the throats of the American people, and to keep in going in spite of what is now an epochal antiwar majority of 70%.

I do think this, though--as to parallels with South America. Transparent vote counting would start to turn things around dramatically, and very quickly. That's why I think it needs to be the number one priority of the Left. Count all the votes, in a population with 70% opposition to a war, and the war will end.

It may take a while--and economic catastrophe--to bring back socialism, or, with public counting of our votes, it may just happen because it is in the interest of most people. But NOTHING is going to change until we HAVE transparent vote counting again. We are locked into failure--as a democracy, as a society, and as an economic entity and a country--and we may be locked into disaster, of one kind or another, if we don't fix this fundamental mechanism of our sovereignty.

[bonito]

7. But NOTHING is going to change until we HAVE transparent vote counting again.

Word.

[Peace Patriot]

9. In my list above of the So. American countries with the closest ties, I meant to

include Argentina.

"ARGENTINA, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Uruguay seem to have especially strong ties with each other, in terms of dealing with the Bushites and associated global corporate predators. It is so good to see."

Nestor Kirchner (and now Cristina Fernandez), Lula da Silva (Brazil), Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales (Bolivia) and Rafael Correa (Ecuador) are PARTNERS, with regional independence and social justice goals, and have demonstrated their close ties, and their having each other's backs, in numerous ways, including the one I mentioned above, when Kirchner resisted Bushite pressure to "isolate" Chavez (Kirchner said, "But he's my brother!"). I can't call it a "brotherhood" any more, since Cristina Fernandez joined. Partners will do. They see each other as friends and cooperators in creating an entirely different and better future for South America than the murdering, torturing, thieving Bushites, and their Democratic Party collaborators, intend.

I don't know as much about Tabare Vazquez in Uruguay, but I do know that Uruguay has taken no shite from Bush, and has sided with Venezuela and other leftist countries in regard to Bush's various efforts to "divide and conquer" South American trade groups, and to get these countries to distance themselves from Venezuela, for its strong socialist policy and pugnacious attitude toward the Bush Junta. Vazquez, too, is a socialist.

And here is that word "brother" again. In recently concluding various economic agreements with Venezuela, Vazquez said...

"'There is no room for doubt. Uruguay's people have to, as I the nation's president will now, express their deepest gratitude to this government (Venezuela), which has been a brother and friend to Uruguay,' Vazquez said."
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90778/6235598.html

There is also the matter of torture and murder by rightwing thugs trained by the U.S., that profoundly traumatized Uruguay and other South American countries. The horror is chronicled by Marie Trigona in an article about Bush's visit to Uruguay last March:

"'The precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired effect.' These are the words of a US instructor in the art of torture teaching techniques in Uruguay during the nation's 1973-1985 military dictatorship. The US played a major role in supporting Uruguay's brutal dictatorship, agents from the CIA and Office of Public Safety operated abroad to teach intelligence techniques to fight communist and socialist dissidents." (MORE)
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-03/24trigona.cfm

It's rather an anti-Vazquez article, but that was then--March 07, when Bush was on his kneecapping trip to South America. The upshot of the visit was that Vazquez DIDN'T cave--as subsequent events have proven, no doubt due in part to the huge anti-Bush protests in Uruguay during Bush's visit, and pressure from many progressive groups.

Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina were all victims of "Operation Condor," and share this history of horror inflicted by U.S.-supported dictators, which colors everything that is happening today in South America.

It's interesting that Chile's Michelle Batchelet--another South American socialist, who was herself tortured by Pinochet, and lost family members to rightwing torture and murder--got into some political trouble by waffling, under Bushite pressure, when the UN vote on Venezuela's membership on the Security Council was pending. Chile abstained on that vote, and Venezuela lost. But Chile's own ambassador to Venezuela publicly criticized Batchelet for not staying strong in solidarity against Bushite bullying, and Venezuela was subsequently voted in as a member of the OAS human rights council, and has been--or will soon be--given full membership in Mercosur (South American trade group), because Venezuela, really, has the most advanced thinking of all, as to what it takes to throw off U.S. domination, and its leadership has empowered them all, and vastly strengthened their hands in dealing with Bush and associated global corporate predators. At the time of Chile's abstention, I was thinking just that--that Batchelet may not have Chavez's back, but Chavez's uncompromising attitude toward the Bush Junta has empowered Batchelet, and I was hoping she used that power well--to get something for her people. You can't expect perfect behavior from countries that have been so exploited and brutalized, and are still under Washington's boot in many ways.

It was a tide-turning moment, though, in regional solidarity. The Bush "divide and conquer" tactic has utterly failed in South America. And the government that has become isolated, and despised, is Colombia, Bush's and Rumsfeld's favorite Latin American country--where torture against leftists is still practiced.

[cascadiance]

6. Bush wants to get Mennen back in charge of Argentina so that he/we can break them again!

And make them into more World Bank fodder like they used to be before the Kirchners came to office later.

Hats off to Ms. Kirchner for standing up to our criminal regime!