U.S. continues its century-long embrace of the dark side in Latin America
OpEdNews Op Eds 12/21/2018 at 20:18:50
By Brian Cooney
We can book-end 120 years of U.S. intervention in Latin America with two events. The first is the career of Major General Smedley Butler (USMC) as he described it in his 1935 book War Is A Racket. Butler's awards included two Medals of Honor, the Distinguished Service Medal and the Brevet Medal. Here's what he had to say about his 33 years of service:
I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. . . .I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. "I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903.
The second book-end is National Security Advisor John Bolton's visit on Nov. 29 with Jair Bolsonaro, the fascistic president-elect of Brazil. Bolsonaro is an avowed homophobe, racist, sexist, advocate of torture and admirer of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. As he said in 2008: "The only mistake of the dictatorship was torturing and not killing."
After the meeting, Bolton tweeted: "We enjoyed a broad and productive discussion with the president-elect of Brazil and his security team." Although Bolton made no press statement after this meeting, we can guess what his message was from his speech to a group of Cuban-Americans in Miami earlier in November.
More:
https://www.opednews.com/articles/U-S-continues-its-century-by-Brian-Cooney-American-Capitalism_American-Empire_American-Foreign-Policy_American-Hypocrisy-181221-53.html
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Carnival party named after dictatorship torturers called 'insult to Brazil'
Prosecutors seek to stop the event named after a police intelligence agency that tortured dissidents during the 1964-1985 military regime
Sam Cowie in São Paulo
@samcowie84
Thu 8 Feb 2018 01.30 EST
Billed as “Brazil’s largest anti-Communist block party”, the carnival event “Dops Basement” is named after the Department of Political and Social Order, a police intelligence agency that tortured dissidents during the 1964-1985 military regime.
. . .
The online flyer bears the images of the Dops chief Sérgio Paranhos Fleury and the army colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who were accused of commanding torture and death squads under the dictatorship.
During Brazil’s dictatorship, hundreds of political activists were killed or disappeared. Thousands more were tortured, including the former president Dilma Rousseff, who at the time was a Marxist urban guerrilla.
A 2014 report from Brazil’s Truth Commission found that torture was widespread under the military regime, including the use of electric shocks, beatings, crucifixion and sexual abuse.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/08/brazil-sao-paulo-carnival-party-dictatorship
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