Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalAllende and Chile: 'Bring Him Down'
Published: Nov 3, 2020
Briefing Book #732
Edited by Peter Kornbluh and Savannah Bock
Salvador Allende’s Historic Inauguration 50 Years Later
Declassified White House Records Show How Nixon-Kissinger Set Strategy of Destabilization—And Why
Washington D.C., November 3, 2020 - Several days after Salvador Allende’s history-changing November 3, 1970, inauguration, Richard Nixon convened his National Security Council for a formal meeting on what policy the U.S. should adopt toward Chile’s new Popular Unity government. Only a few officials who gathered in the White House Cabinet Room knew that, under Nixon’s orders, the CIA had covertly tried, and failed, to foment a preemptive military coup to prevent Allende from ever being inaugurated. The SECRET/SENSITIVE NSC memorandum of conversation revealed a consensus that Allende’s democratic election and his socialist agenda for substantive change in Chile threatened U.S. interests, but divergent views on what the U.S. could, and should do about it. “We can bring his downfall, perhaps, without being counterproductive,” suggested Secretary of State William Rogers, who opposed overt hostility and aggression toward Chile. “We have to do everything we can to hurt [Allende] and bring him down,” agreed the secretary of defense, Melvin Laird.
“Our main concern in Chile is the prospect that [Allende] can consolidate himself and the picture projected to the world will be his success,” President Nixon explained as he instructed his national security team to adopt a hostile, if low-profile, program of aggression to destabilize Allende’s ability to govern. “We’ll be very cool and very correct, but doing those things which will be a real message to Allende and others.”
Marking the 50th anniversary of Salvador Allende’s inauguration, the National Security Archive today posted a collection of documents that provide a detailed record of how and why President Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, established and pursued a policy of destabilization in Chile—operations that “created the conditions as best as possible,” as Kissinger later put it, for the September 11, 1973, military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. The detailed deliberations and decisions they contain clarify the misrepresentations by former policy actors over the years, Kissinger among them, of the true intent of the Nixon administration posture toward the Allende government. A half century after the inauguration, according to the Archive’s senior analyst on Chile, Peter Kornbluh, “these documents record the deliberate purpose of U.S. officials to undermine Salvador Allende’s ability to govern, and ‘bring him down’ so that he could not establish a successful, and attractive, model for structural change that other countries might emulate.”
. . .
When the CIA’s covert operations to undermine Allende were revealed on the front page of the New York Times in September 1974 by veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh they generated a major national and international scandal. The uproar over the clandestine U.S. role in Chile led to the first substantive congressional inquiry into U.S. covert operations, the first public hearings on CIA operations, and the first publication of a major case study, Covert Action in Chile, 1963-1973, written by the special Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church. “The nature and extent of the American role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Chilean government are matters for deep and continuing public concern,” Senator Church stated at the time. “This record must be set straight.”
More:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2020-11-06/allende-inauguration-50th-anniversary?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=2290b9c9-3892-4cc2-bcc3-5ccd08e791f8
Brazil President's senator son charged with crimes
By MARCELO SILVA DE SOUSA, Associated Press 1 hr ago
Associated Press
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Prosecutors in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro state have charged a son of President Jair Bolsonaro with commanding a criminal organization and laundering money when he was a state lawmaker between 2007 and 2018.
© Provided by Associated Press FILE - This Nov. 21, 2019 file photo shows Sen. Flavio Bolsonaro, left, with his father Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro at the launch of his father's new political party Alliance for Brazil in Brasilia, Brazil. Public prosecutors in Rio de Janeiro state have indicted Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro for allegedly commanding a criminal organization and laundering money when he was a state lawmaker between 2007 and 2018, according to a statement the public prosecutors’ office posted to its website on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)
The charges were leveled against Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro and 16 others on Oct. 19, according to a statement the public prosecutors’ office posted to its website on Wednesday. Prosecutors allege the senator had people on his government-funded payroll who weren't required to work and who had to return part of their salaries to him.
The senator denied having committed any crime and said he was confident that courts wouldn’t accept the charge, according to a message he posted to his verified Instagram account. The accusation is “inviable because it is devoid of any hint of proof. It's nothing more than a macabre and badly engineered tale,” one of his four lawyers, Rodrigo Roca, said in a statement.
Jair Bolsonaro was elected in 2018 on a wave of anti-corruption sentiment and with promises to root out crime. His crimefighting bona fides have faced skepticism in light of the investigation into his sons, as well as the resignation of his former Justice Minister Sergio Moro, who quit and alleged that the president had sought to intervene inappropriately in the federal police.
More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/brazil-presidents-senator-son-charged-with-crimes/ar-BB1aGZ5w?li=BBnb7Kz
Guatemalans fly giant kites to honour the Day of the Dead
Duration: 01:11 10 hrs ago
- video at link -
https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/news/guatemalans-fly-giant-kites-to-honour-the-day-of-the-dead/vi-BB1aDd0E
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Older article:
Giant Kites Sumpango & Santiago Sacatepequez Guatemala
Posted on Oct 15, 2018 by guatemala culture, guatemala arts
Spanish School Antigua Guatemala Blog
On November 1st of each year, on All Saints' Day in Guatemala, the well-known tradition of the Giant Kite Festival is celebrated. This colorful tradition admired by locals and tourists alike, takes place in Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepequez, Guatemala.
Thousands of visitors arrive at the General Cemetery of the Municipality of Santiago Sacatepequez in November 1, where artistic and very creative works of artisans are exhibited. The Giant Kites (Barriletes Gigantes) are a sight to be seen. This cultural tradition of Guatemala is not only an artistic exhibition through the manufacture of kites, but it is also an ancient way to maintain the connection with the ancestors.
Historically, based on the philosophy of the Kaqchikel indigenous race, kites represent a union between the underworld and the world of the living. It is the link between those who have departed, the saints and the living.
Legend tells that each November 1st, the Giant Kites must be well prepared to receive the spirits of the ancestors, because if they do not find a good reception, they will bother and punish the living damaging the harvests. It is tradition that in each house of the village, a flower known as 'Flor del Muerto' is placed on the frames of the doors and windows, this serves to guide the ancestral spirits.
More:
https://www.spanishacademyantiguena.com/blog/2018
More photos:
https://tinyurl.com/y6dglx2e
GIANT KITE FESTIVAL in GUATEMALA: Festival de Barriletes Gigantes de Sumpango
Sacatepequez Guatemala
Giant Kites Festival, Day of the Dead | Sumpango, Guatemala 2018
3,025 views•Aug 9, 2020
All Saint's Day Giant Kite Festival in Sumpango
Connecting With Spirits Through Giant Handmade Kites
EXTRAORDINARY CARVING DISCOVERED INSIDE ANCIENT MAYA PYRAMID
NOVEMBER 1, 2020
An enormous stone design by the ancient Mayan civilization that has persisted for centuries locked within a pyramid in Guatemala shows a battle of superpowers in 6th Century Central America, archaeologists have said.
The massive frieze with inscriptions and the vividly coloured painting was found at the Holmul archaeological excavation at a dig in the northeast Peten region of the country. Archaeologists claim that the evidence indicates that the region’s rulers were embroiled in a political clash of the titans between the kings of Kaanul – the Snake Kingdom – and the kings of Tikal.
The frieze, which is eight metres wide and two metres tall and stands along the exterior of a multi-roomed rectangular building, was found in a 20-metre high pyramid built in the 8th Century, in a style typical of the Maya. Much of the building still remains encased under the rubble of the later 20m-high structure. The carving is painted in red, with details in blue, green and yellow.
Francisco Estrada-Belli, director of the Holmul Archaeological Project that made the discovery, said: ‘This is a unique find. It is a beautiful work of art and it tells us so much about the function and meaning of the building, which was what we were looking for.’
More:
https://archaeology-world.com/category/guatemala/
Secrets of the ice: unlocking a melting time capsule
Mike Power
@mrmichaelpower
Sun 1 Nov 2020 04.30 EST
Back in August 2018, archaeologists William Taylor and Nick Jarman were scrambling around a snowy, scree-strewn slope in the Altai mountains in northwest Mongolia at the end of an exhausting day. A few hundred metres above Jarman, Taylor and his colleagues were surveying the site, a disappearing ice field that local reindeer herders said had not melted in living memory. Now, each summer, it disappears almost completely.
Taylor looked down the mountain and saw his methodical colleague dancing and hollering, hopping from rock to rock. Thinking he was injured, Taylor headed down the mountain.
“Every time people hear you’re an archaeologist, they want to know the best thing you’ve ever found,” says Jarman, who like his colleague is an assistant professor and curator of archaeology at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. “I knew what I had found rewrote all those anecdotes.”
There, in crumbling snow, was a perfectly preserved arrow shaft. It was delicately decorated with ochre markings, its carving and features completely protected by the ice even though it was 3,000 years old. Normally, organic items such as this are destroyed by exposure. Jarman instantly found a piece of another arrow shaft. “You can feel when you’re in a hotspot – where everything has come together to allow stuff to be preserved,” he says.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/nov/01/secrets-of-the-ice-unlocking-a-melting-time-capsule-archaeology-glaciers
Venezuela coup plotters met at Trump Doral. Central figure says U.S. officials knew of plan.
BY ANTONIO MARIA DELGADO, KEVIN G. HALL, SHIRSHO DASGUPTA, AND BEN WIEDER
OCTOBER 30, 2020 03:16 PM, UPDATED 11 HOURS 13 MINUTES AGO
In a challenge to denials of government involvement, the ex-U.S. special operations sergeant whose security firm took part in a botched Venezuelan coup last May said two Trump administration officials met with and expressed support to planners of Operation Gideon, a Bay of Pigs-type operation that tried to oust Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.
It’s a story of bungling, bravado and cloak-and-dagger plotting, with plans shared in clandestine meetings in the back of limousines while rolling through Miami, in restaurants and even at dusk on the 12th fairway of the Red Course of Trump Doral, the Miami Herald/McClatchy has learned.
Details have been elusive, even as Gideon’s planning and execution happened in the nation’s capital, South Florida and across the Caribbean Sea in coastal Venezuela. The allegations reported exclusively in this story are also contained in a $1.4 million breach-of-contract lawsuit filed Friday, Oct. 30, by Miami attorney Gustavo J. Garcia-Montes in Miami-Dade Circuit Court.
The suit is against Juan Jose Rendon, a political consultant closely aligned with Venezuelan legislator Juan Guaidó, who the Trump administration in January 2019 began calling the legitimate president of the oil-rich South American nation.
It was brought on behalf of retired Sgt. 1st Class Jordan Goudreau, who in roughly seven hours of detailed interviews insisted he had encouragement from the administration and even held meetings to plan the operation at the Trump Hotel in the nation’s capital and at the Trump Doral west of Miami. Reporters worked on fact-checking Goudreau’s data and allegations over a six-week period.
More:
https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/investigations/article246819562.html
US Border Agents Went Rogue and Illegally Detained Hundreds of Migrants in Guatemala
Officials also tried to cover up the misuse of funds, according to a new Senate report.
MA
By Maya Averbuch
October 14, 2020, 2:57pm
Customs and Border Protection agents stationed in Central America detained and removed hundreds of Honduran migrants, acting as law enforcement on foreign soil, according to a new Senate report.
The officers were in Guatemala – funded by the State Department – to train their local counterparts and provide “mentoring, advising, and capacity-building.” Instead, they took charge on the ground and returned migrants themselves.
In January, they helped Guatemalan police round up Hondurans traveling on foot in a caravan, shuttled them into unmarked vehicles (also funded by the U.S.) and sent them back to the Honduran border, according to a new report from Democratic members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee called “DHS Run Amok?”
The report exposes the reach of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and includes the accusation that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials tried to cover up their misuse of government funds.
. . .
"These are sovereign countries, and you’re not supposed to be carrying out arrests and kicking in doors in another country," said Adam Isacson, the director of defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, a think tank also known as WOLA.
More:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxqwmx/us-border-agents-went-rogue-and-illegally-detained-hundreds-of-migrants-in-guatemala
El Salvador's Supreme Court halts investigation into murder of priests
OCTOBER 30, 202012:42 AMUPDATED A DAY AGO
By Reuters Staff
3 MIN READ
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - El Salvador’s Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that senior figures suspected of links to the 1989 killing of six Jesuit priests, including a former president, should not be investigated, lawyers for both sides said.
The killing of the priests during the Central American country’s civil war was among the most notorious episodes during the conflict in which 75,000 people were killed and 8,000 went missing.
In April 2018, a court reopened an investigation into the killings and named in court documents six military officers and a former president, Alfredo Cristiani, as subjects of the investigation.
. . .
Spain has also indicted 20 former Salvadoran army officers in connection with the killings, which took place when a group of soldiers from the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion entered the campus of El Salvador’s Central American University.
One of the slain priests was Father Ignacio Ellacuria, who was a prominent critic of the U.S.-backed right-wing government of El Salvador and the rector at the university.
. . .
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-el-salvador-priests/el-salvadors-supreme-court-halts-investigation-into-murder-of-priests-idUKKBN27F0KV
The Other Americans: United States Attacks Cuban Medics During Pandemic
The Trump Administration is refusing Cuba’s COVID-19 medical aid, claiming the doctors are being ‘trafficked.’
by Jeff Abbott
October 30, 2020
There are parts of Guatemala that have no access to medical services from the Guatemalan government. This void is being filled by the doctors from the Cuban medical mission, who are working in the most remote parts of the country.
But recently, these Cuban medics have come under attack.
n August 2020, Felipe Alejos, a rightwing congressional representative with the Todos Party, demanded that the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry annul the agreements with more than 400 Cuban medics that have served rural communities across the country since 1998. Alejos, who has been repeatedly accused of corruption for abuse of power and trafficking of influences, argued that the agreements shouldn't be in place because they are with a communist country.
“We as Guatemalans cannot accept to be financing a state that is authoritarian in nature,” Alejos said in the press statement calling for the end of the Cuban medical mission in Guatemala.
Alejos has a history of pushing U.S.-based positions in Guatemala, but on October 28, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo revoked his visa to the United States due to the accusations of corruption.
Guatemala has one of the lowest percentages of doctors per capita in Latin America, with less than one physician for every 1,000 citizens. Cuban medics serve in more than two-thirds of health areas in Guatemala, including the country’s most remote regions like la Zona Reina, where the Health Ministry has almost no presence.
More:
https://progressive.org/dispatches/us-attacks-cuban-medics-during-pandemic-abbott-201030/
Argentina Dirty War: Torture and baby theft trial under way
Published 1 day ago
Miguel Etchecolatz, who is 91, has been on trial a number of times before
Eighteen people have gone on trial in Argentina on charges ranging from abduction to crimes against humanity.
The prosecution says they were responsible for torture, baby thefts and killings carried out in three detention centres under military rule between 1976 and 1983.
Among those charged is Miguel Etchecolatz, 91, who headed police investigations in Buenos Aires.
He is already in jail serving four life sentences.
Who's in the dock?
The court in the city of La Plata will examine alleged crimes committed against hundreds of people held in the detention centres of Pozo de Banfield, Pozo de Quilmes and Brigada Lanús, which was widely known as El Infierno (Hell).
More:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-54718440
More than 400 witnesses are expected to give evidence during the trial, which is expected to take at least two years.
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