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Prompted by recent court rulings and by Hugo Chavez and GW "Waterboard" Bush rekindling their war of rhetoric,
I reviewed some Big Picture reading and reflections on the context of the current strife ...
My questions are at the end following with the linked reading excerpts.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised = Venezuela Overthrow film.
On April 12th 2002 the world awoke to the news that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had been removed
from office and had been replaced by a new interim government. What had in fact taken place was the
first Latin American coup of the 21st century, and the world's first media coup.. .....
***** I give this 5 stars! THE FILM: the revolution will not be televised *****
Watch video - 75 min - Remember to RATE this. Rated 4.7 out of 5.0
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5832390545689805144
The Website:
http://www.chavezthefilm.com/index_ex.htmDeep Context: From Pinochet to Bush II - Fascists and Nazis in Latin AmericaThe context and rational of current Bush/NeoCon actions is important, and not isolated from history.
The following previous compilation offers greater detail of the matters highlighted in this post:
George Bush Sr. May Face Charges: Conspiring to Kidnap and Murder Political Activists
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2459135Various legal cases seeking justice for State Terror atrocities in the past failed.
However, the subthreads above show how much information has been recently declassified,
and the story below shows what happens when information is de-classified, legal actions follow:
Family to sue Henry Kissinger for death. Sep 9, 2001 -
http://www.frankolsonproject.org/News/Kissinger-Frame.h...A story on CBS “60 Minutes” tonight reported that the family of a murdered Chilean general plans to file a lawsuit ... against Henry Kissinger for his alleged role in the death of Gen. Rene Schneider, the commander of the Chilean Army who was killed by kidnappers in 1970. Citing recently declassified government documents, the civil suit is expected to claim that the CIA supported a kidnapping plot ...
Human Rights and the Court - July 3, 2004 -
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00EED71E38F930A35754C0A9629C8B63 ...
The Supreme Court has upheld an important law that offers victims of torture, genocide, slavery and war crimes worldwide a day in court, and a shot at justice. The law, the arcane Alien Tort Claims Act, was originally written to fight piracy in 1789, but it has been used by foreigners to sue in American courts for overseas human rights violations. Holocaust survivors used the act to pry damages from the Swiss banks that held the assets of Nazi victims ....
These articles illustrates unfinished the business in the U.S. Congress, including seeking justice for assassinated American citizens (and for my attempted assassination?).
The Assassination of Ben Linder -
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles9/Solo_Martyrs-Negroponte.htmWhen Ben Linder was murdered by US government trained and funded Contra terrorists in 1987 in northern Nicaragua, he was installing electricity for impoverished rural communities. At his funeral in Matagalpa, that northern Nicaraguan city overflowed with mourners for the young man from Portland, Oregon who came to work for them and finished by dying for them. Writing about what was needed in order to resist the US terrorist war against Nicaragua, Linder wrote once "everything you can do should be done". So, apart from fixing up electrical generating plant, he also helped with vaccination programs, dressing up as a clown to amuse parents and children waiting in line, riding his unicycle, juggling.
How exceptional was Ben Linder? Perhaps it was his murder that made him an icon for those people determined to show solidarity with Central American victims of US government aggression. Tens of thousands of US citizens worked for longer or shorter periods in Central American countries before and after Ben Linder. The great majority stayed for brief lengths of time with poor rural and urban communities in Nicaragua during the Sandinista revolution. But many others worked long term on human rights and grass roots community development throughout the region. ....
"The criminal investigation of Bush was regrettably incomplete." = independent counsel
Document 19: George H. W. Bush Diary, November 4-5, 1986 -
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB210/19-Bush%20Diary%2011-4-86.pdf.pdfThen-Vice President George H.W. Bush became entangled in controversy over his knowledge of Iran-Contra. Although he asserted publicly that he was "out of the loop -- no operational role," he was well informed of events, particularly the Iran deals, as evidenced in part by this diary excerpt just after the Iran operation was exposed: "I'm one of the few people that know fully the details ..." The problem for Bush was greatly magnified because he was preparing to run for president just as the scandal burst. He managed to escape significant blame -- ultimately winning the 1988 election -- but he came under fire later for repeatedly failing to disclose the existence of his diary to investigators and then for pardoning several Iran-Contra figures, including former Defense Secretary Weinberger just days before his trial was set to begin. As a result of the pardons, the independent counsel's final report pointedly noted: "The criminal investigation of Bush was regrettably incomplete." ....
Violations in Guatemala "extrajudicial killing of certain categories of persons is almost routine"
Document 6: CIA Cable, From: Chief, Latin America Branch, To: Immediate Director,
"Station Investigation of Human Rights Violations in Guatemala," October 15, 1991.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB27 /
On October 15, 1991, the CIA station in Guatemala sent an “eyes only” cable to Mr. Ward (identified as “Chief/LA”) titled “Station investigation of human rights violations in Guatemala.” Summarizing the murder of U.S. citizen Michael Devine, the cable states that “the entire command structure of the military zone where the killing took place was controlled by men known to be capable of murder under the most casual pretext.” At least one of those commanders was a paid CIA asset. After discussing several other cases, the cable concludes by reporting that “the extrajudicial killing of certain categories of persons is almost routine.” ...
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB27/03-01.htm Current legal actions following new declassifications are bringing the human rights violations
to the fore now in Latin America and Europe, as those involved are charged with capital offenses.
This article introduced a current case in Argentina:
Plan Condor: Crimes Without Borders in Latin America
Marie Trigona - 12 Dec 2007 -
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1042/1 /
Former military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla and 16 other military leaders in Argentina will be prosecuted on charges of conspiring to kidnap and kill political activists in a scheme known as Plan Condor, developed by Henry Kissinger and George Bush Sr., head of the CIA at the time. Dictators in Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina killed opponents in the 1970s and 80s under the plan, also known as Operation Condor. The United States and Latin American military governments developed Operation Condor as a a transnational, state-sponsored terrorist coalition among the militaries of South America. In Argentina alone some 30,000 people were disappeared as result, leaving loved ones to seek justice decades later.
Coordinating Terror with U.S. support. Plan Condor began with the U.S. supported military coup against Chile's democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. Allende's government was targeted as a threat to U.S. strategic policy in Latin America early on. White House tapes reveal that on Sept. 14, 1970, then-President Richard Nixon ordered measures to force the Chilean economy into bankruptcy. .......
Amnesty International Lists 20 Chilean Officers to be Brought to Justice
DEC 15, 2006 - LONDON -
http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/1215-05.htmAmnesty International (AI) today published the names of 20 high-ranking Chilean officers whose trials have languished in the court system for several years. The organization called on Chilean authorities to ensure that the recent death of Augusto Pinochet is not used as an excuse to de-emphasize the importance of legal proceedings against others suspected of thousands of cases of torture, "disappearances" and killings committed under his rule.
"Pinochet may have been the mastermind, but there is always a chain of command that is involved when so many thousands of horrifying abuses occur," said Larry Cox, executive director for Amnesty International USA ...
Italy judge issues 140 arrest warrants in "Plan Condor" case = 2007.12.24
Dec 24, ROME (Reuters) -
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071224/ts_nm/argentina_italy_condor_dcAn Italian judge on Monday issued arrest warrants for 140 Latin Americans suspected of involvement in a coordinated persecution of leftists and dissidents by Latin America's military rulers in the 1970s, Italian news agencies said.
Almost all of those on the list are living in Latin America and a number are already in custody there as part of investigations into the conspiracy known as "Plan Condor."
One man, Nestor Jorge Fernandez Troccoli, a former member of the Uruguayan secret services, was arrested in southern Italy, the Ansa and Agi news agencies reported. The warrants involve Argentines, Bolivians, Brazilians, Chileans, Paraguayans and Peruvians. They are suspected of complicity in the deaths of 25 Italian citizens killed in Latin American by military regimes in the 1970s, the news agencies reported.
Under Italian law, Italian magistrates can investigate the killings of Italian citizens overseas. ...
Meanwhile, BUSH JR is trying to make sure public documents do not
become declassified EVER for all time forward, particularly those of BUSH SR.
Their inquisition extends to released documents in order to re-classify them. ?? "Declassification in Reverse" ??
Presidential Records Act and Executive Order No. 13,233 (the "Bush Order"),
FINDINGS REGARDING ADMINISTRATION OPENNESS/SECRECY AGENDA
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB84/findingsopen.htmPresidential Records Act - When, on January 20, 2001, the Presidential Records Act ("PRA"), 44 U.S.C. § 2201 et seq., 12-year restriction period for records containing confidential communications among President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, and their advisers expired, the Bush White House first directed the National Archivist to withhold the records while it "studied" the matter, and then, on November 1, 2001, President George W. Bush promulgated Executive Order No. 13,233 (the "Bush Order"), which purports to give binding directions to the Archivist about how to administer presidential and vice presidential records under the PRA. The Bush Order turned the PRA's public access requirement on its head by granting former Presidents, Vice Presidents, and their "representatives" veto power over any release of materials by the Archivist simply by claiming executive privilege, regardless of the merits of the claim. Only with the "authorization" of a former President or Vice President does the Bush Order permit the Archivist to disclose any presidential or vice presidential records.
Reagan, V.P. Bush secrets protected ad infinitum?? by the Bush Order. "Upon the death" of designee ...
Executive Order 13233 of November 1, 2001 - Further Implementation of the Presidential Records Act
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish policies and procedures implementing section 2204 of title 44 of the United States Code with respect to constitutionally based privileges, including those that apply to Presidential records reflecting military, diplomatic, or national security secrets, Presidential communications, legal advice, legal work, or the deliberative processes of the President and the President's advisors, and to do so in a manner consistent with the Supreme Court's decisions in Nixon .....
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-13233.htm The U.S. Intelligence Community's Secret Historical Document Reclassification Program
Declassification in Reverse
The U.S. Intelligence Community's Secret Historical Document Reclassification Program
Edited by Matthew M. Aid -
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB179/index.htmWashington, D.C., February 21, 2006 - The CIA and other federal agencies have secretly reclassified over 55,000 pages of records taken from the open shelves at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), according to a report published today on the World Wide Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. Matthew Aid, author of the report and a visiting fellow at the Archive, discovered this secret program through his wide-ranging research in intelligence, military, and diplomatic records at NARA and found that the CIA and military agencies have reviewed millions of pages at an unknown cost to taxpayers in order to sequester documents from collections that had been open for years.
The briefing book that the Archive published today includes 50 year old documents that CIA had impounded at NARA but which have already been published in the State Department's historical series, Foreign Relations of the United States, or have been declassified elsewhere. These documents concern such innocuous matters as the State Department's map and foreign periodicals procurement programs on behalf of the U.S. intelligence community or the State Department's open source intelligence research efforts during 1948.
Other documents have apparently been sequestered because they were embarrassing, such as a complaint from the Director of Central Intelligence about the bad publicity the CIA was receiving ........
officials at CIA and military agencies have argued that during the implementation of Executive Order 12958, President Clinton's program for bulk declassification of historical federal records, many sensitive intelligence-related documents that remained classified were inadvertently released at NARA, especially in State Department files. Even though researchers had been combing through and copying documents from those collections for years, CIA and other agencies compelled NARA to grant them access to the open files so they could reclassify documents. While this reclassification activity began late in the 1990s, its scope widened during the Bush administration, and it is scheduled to continue until 2007. The CIA has ignored arguments from NARA officials that some of the impounded documents have already been published.
...........
Raiding the Presidential Libraries
It is now evident that the multi-agency historical document reclassification program was expanded in or about 2003 to include the NARA-run Presidential Libraries, especially a review of previously declassified documents housed at the Kennedy and Johnson Libraries. .............
The Damage Done
The results of the multi-agency reclassification effort since it began have dramatic and disturbing ...since 2001 security personnel from the agencies involved have "surveyed" 43.4 million pages of documents held by NARA ... since 2001 9,500 documents totaling 55,500 pages have been reclassified and withdrawn from public circulation ..........
BUSH SR and BUSH JR are not alone in their roles in this history or in the efforts to keep the facts from public scrutiny.
The Iran-Contra Affair 20 Years On = Documents Spotlight Role of Reagan, Top Aides
Pentagon Nominee Robert Gates Among Many Prominent Figures Involved in the Scandal
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 210 - Nov 24, 2006 -
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB210/index.htmWashington D.C., November 24, 2006 - On November 25, 1986, the biggest political and constitutional scandal since Watergate exploded in Washington when President Ronald Reagan told a packed White House news conference that funds derived from covert arms deals with the Islamic Republic of Iran had been diverted to buy weapons for the U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua. ....
.... a partial list of some of the more prominent individuals who were either directly a part of the Iran-Contra events or figured in some other way during the affair or its aftermath:
* Elliott Abrams
* David Addington
* John Bolton
* Richard Cheney - now the vice president, he played a prominent part as a member of the joint congressional Iran-Contra inquiry
* Robert M. Gates
* Manuchehr Ghorbanifar - the quintessential middleman, who helped broker the arms deals involving the United States, Israel and Iran
* Michael Ledeen - a neo-conservative who is vocal on the subject of regime change in Iran
* Edwin Meese - currently a member of the blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group
* John Negroponte - ... ambassador to Iraq in 2004 and director of national intelligence in 2005. (See previous Electronic Briefing Book)
* Oliver L. North - found guilty on three counts at a criminal trial but had those verdicts overturned
* John Poindexter - post-9/11 .. head of the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program
* Otto Reich
Documents ...........
VP Cheney's experience with PRISONER ABUSE: PATTERNS FROM THE PAST
Secretary of Defense Richard B. Cheney Informed of "Objectionable" Interrogation Guides in 1992
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 122 -
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB122/index.htmU.S. Interrogation Manuals Counseled "Coercive Techniques" "Inconsistent with U.S. Government Policy"
National Security Archive Posts CIA Training Manuals from 60s, 80s, and investigative memos on earlier controversy on human rights abuses
Washington D.C. May 12, 2004: CIA interrogation manuals written in the 1960s and 1980s described "coercive techniques" such as those used to mistreat detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to the declassified documents posted today by the National Security Archive. The Archive also posted a secret 1992 report written for then Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney warning that U.S. Army intelligence manuals that incorporated the earlier work of the CIA for training Latin American military officers in interrogation and counterintelligence techniques contained "offensive and objectionable material" that "undermines U.S. credibility, and could result in significant embarrassment."
The two CIA manuals, "Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual-1983" and "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation-July 1963," were originally obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Baltimore Sun in 1997.
So, I ask (in the context of all linked above, and before going offline for some fishing):
Did the BUSH JUNTA Bungle the Overthrow of Hugo Chavez? (Unlike Allende, is Hugo lucky he is still alive?)
Who will be held to account for past State Terrorism?
Does the so-called "War on Terror" serve as propaganda covering up past State Terrorism?
Will those who kill for political purposes be held to account?
Who? Where? When? What is the extent of the current cover-up?
Will U.S. Courts treat killing non-US persons for political purposes as criminal?
What has to be accomplished to restore Justice in the United States?
How far back will we have to clean up? Who has to be cleaned out?
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