Argentine man kills himself on TV

[formercia]

Source: BBC


Argentine man kills himself on TV
By Daniel Schweimler
BBC News, Buenos Aires



A former police chief in Argentina, wanted for alleged crimes against human rights, has shot himself dead in front of television cameras.

Mario Ferreyra was giving an interview on top of a water tank at his home in the northern province of Tucuman.

Police were coming to arrest him when he killed himself.

--snip--

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7743842.stm

---

The code of silence.

Never forget.

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. There's no business like show business!

[aquart]

2. Can suicide exhibitionists be nominated for Darwin Awards?

[MikeNearMcChord]

3. If not, then at least the Robert "Bud " Dwyer award for public suicide

I know bad taste. Mea Culpa.

[shadowknows69]

4. Dwyer was case study in one of my Journalism lectures in school

I got to see all the gruesome pictures.

[happyslug]

22. One of the reason Dwyer did it was it preserved his pension for his widow.

Under Pennsylvania law, Dwyer's Legislative pension was forfeit once he was sentenced. He was convicted by the Jury and order to come back another day to be Sentenced (The norm in Pennsylvania). He then committed suicide during a New Conference just before he was to be sentenced. Being dead by the time of the Sentencing, that hearing was canceled. Through the Attorney General did try to deny the pension to his Widow but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled he had NOT been sentenced, and therefore no forfeiture could take place.

Thus Dwyer's action saved his pension for his widow, smart move if he valued his wife's living standard more then his own life.

[The Backlash Cometh]

27. Ken Lay used the same retirement plan.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

5. Hey man, nice shot n/t

.

[alfredo]

6. Too bad he didn't get to face his accusers.

His fear of living was greater than his fear of death.

[formercia]

26. Omerta.

Unto death.

[alfredo]

30. At least he won't be hurting anyone else, and in his death, the worms

will exact revenge.

[formercia]

31. Maggot entree du jour.

Poor maggots.

[alfredo]

32. You ever see a maggot barf?

[formercia]

33. It reminded me of crossing the Equator

The Shellbacks made a canvas tunnel about 20 Meters long and filled it with a couple of weeks worth of refuse that had been fermenting in the tropical Sun.

I was one of the last to get initiated and I had to crawl through everyone else's vomit. The whole time, my supervisor had his foot on my back pushing me down into it.

I can empathize with the maggot.

[alfredo]

34. I rode across the equator on a country bus traveling from Nairobi to

Kampala. There were plenty people barfing as the bus headed down those narrow roads.

[Judi Lynn]

7. It's a serious matter, concerns a period in history which the U.S. supported through Henry Kissinger

who encouraged them quietly, behind the backs of our own Congress.

Really wish more people took it seriously, considering over 30,000 people disappeared, many, many of them tortured to death, and others thrown into the ocean or into rivers or lakes, even dropped onto mountaintops from airplanes. These tens of thousands of people were guilty of being suspected to be leftists. They were not even given decent trials by the right-wing junta which operated with our own country's support.

Of the young women thrown into prison, the pregnant ones were kept until they gave birth, or even were subjected to Cesarian sections in order to speed the process, then they were taken, loaded onto airplanes, and thrown out from great heights, as well, and their infants handed out to favored officers' families like Christmas gifts, or fruit baskets, or door prizes.

The grandmothers of all these redirected children formed their own mourners' activist group, and publicly protested, wearing white scarves, and they were then harrassed by the government, which sent people in to spy on them, and some of their group, which included sympathists, were also tortured and murdered.

This man, who was part of it, clearly understood the depth of evil they had all inflicted upon their country and upon humanity. It's a shame people still wallow in ignorance blissfully unaware of what it was he and his collegues did to the human race in Argentina.

[Seldona]

10. Great post.

I cannot remember his name, but I remember attending his lecture like it was yesterday. This South American man was on a speaking tour telling people what was happening, this was the mid-eighties, and he was visibly shaken and afraid while he talked.

I'll never forget him pointing out to the audience the men who were following him. It was chilling. I had never heard that big a group of people fall that silent, before or since.

I am going to do some digging. I wonder what ever happened to him? Haven't thought about it in ten years. What he described was... inhuman.

[Judi Lynn]

11. My god. Your post has the ring of absolute truth. I immediately became very cold,

and eyes instantly flooded with tears as I focused on the imagery you've evoked in that man so far from home daring to point out the very proof of what he was saying right in the crowd, even when it meant they would be more determined than ever to make him pay for it.

My own response was immediate and intense to your reference to that event.

One can only hope that somehow he was able to get to safety, even though they were pursuing him, clearly, although at the moment, you'd have to wonder how on earth he could ever get away from them. Operation Condor, which we finally know was initiated in Washington, D.C., and directed from Santiago, Chile, and joined by all the right-wing dictators in Latin America, pursued opposition members all through the Americas, even killing one with a car bomb in Washington, D.C., in broad daylight, along with his American assistant, and injuring her husband. They killed people they designated as their enemies all over this hemisphere, chasing them from country to country as they tried to find sanctuary.

Operation Condor:

ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE : L’opération « Condor »,une internationale de l’enlèvement d’opposants

By Gérard Devienne

Latin America in the 1970s : "Operation Condor", an International Organization for Kidnapping Opponents
Translated lundi 1er janvier 2007, par Liliane Bolland

Under the aegis of the CIA, and with the complicity of several Western countries, the dictatorships of Latin America in the 1970s united their "services" against activists and progressive opponents to military regimes.
In 1975, a meeting in Santiago, Chile, between Manuel Contreras, chief of the political police, the DINA, and representatives of the CIA, provided the official launching of "Operation Condor", a secret operation which all the dictatorships of a continent would join, a real common market of disappearances, as has been proven by documents discovered five years ago in a hanger behind a police station in the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion. This is being confirmed by "declassified" files that the CIA is releasing - at a snail’s pace.

In June 1976, Nixon’s senior advisor, Henry Kissinger and secretary of inter-American affairs, William Rogers, gave the green light to the dictatorship in Buenos Aires to "eliminate subversion within ten months".

The foundations of "Condor" were actually laid before the Pinochet coup d’état in 1973. Under the umbrella of the CIA, with the goal of eradicating "Marxist subversion and terrorist activities", the aim was to eliminate the principal obstacles to the ultraliberal economic policies Washington sought to impose on Latin America.

The first cooperation agreements were signed between the CIA and anti-Castro groups, fascist movements such as the Triple AAA - the Argentinean Anti-communist Alliance, set up by Lopez Rega, advisor to President Isabelle Peron.

From 1976 onwards, the Chilean DINA and its Argentinean counterpart, the SIDE, were its front-line troops. Condor’s first phase was limited to Latin America, but this was followed by a second, in Europe, principally in France, Spain and Portugal, as well as inside the USA itself.

More:
http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/article478.html

[Seldona]

12. I still have the paper I wrote for my political science class somewhere.

I believe my professor was instrumental in bringing this man to our campus to speak, and highly encouraged the class to attend. Shouldn't be that hard to track down. He didn't just speak at my campus.

I sincerely apologize for making you feel bad by posting this experience. It certainly wasn't my intention in relating the tale. I told it to back up your original post, which I think is highly relevant. Now, if I may be so bold...

:hug:

[Judi Lynn]

15. Absolutely don't apologize. People need to KNOW about this horrendous tragedy.

I found out about it, sorry to say, far later than you did.

I intend to never forget, never pass up a chance to mention what has happened now that I know! Our whole country has been deceived wickedly about how deeply our expansionist politicians have involved us in brutality which would only seem possible in nightmares had it already not occurred.

As long as they can keep most of us in the dark, chasing the materialistic dream, suspicious of, and prejudiced against other racial, ethnic, political groups, they create massive indifference here, and write a blank check on our own hard-earned income taxes to terrorize, torment, torture, and destroy obstacles in other places, and leave entire countries in mourning, and in fear, in bondage to U.S. commercial, military interests.

Don't think for a second you shouldn't have mentioned what you have witnessed. Sorry if I startled you! Strong feelings. :hug: :hi:

[Seldona]

21. It was certainly a defining moment in my development.

It was an amazing, if not shocking, time to be receiving my education. As it must be for that young student today trying to get a grasp on on the world.

That's why President Elect Obama is so exciting imo. He really seems to get it. After eight years of Bush, to say that is refreshing. Change takes time, but to be here watching it begin is something to appreciate I think.

Cheers!

[Beacool]

14. It's all true.

I was a school girl in Argentina at the time, my father was a diplomat. The CIA, just as it did in Chile 3 years earlier, supported the military that overthrew the government of Isabelita Peron (Peron's widow). On a side note, Isabelita had been her husband's VP and when he died in 1974 she became president. Isabel was the first female president in the world, there had been women prime ministers before her, but not presidents.

I remember my older brother (he's 14 years older and is now a top economist in France and Spain) taking in many people who crossed the Andes on foot to scape the Pinochet regime. He used his Apt. as a halfway house of sorts until these people could be placed in other homes. The people who escaped were the intelligentsia of Chile, college professors, students, journalists and professional people. Freedom of speech was suppressed and detractors were imprisoned, tortured and killed. Women were raped and after being tortured with cattle prods, they were also killed. The same exact thing happened in Argentina in 1976.

The irony is that we pride ourselves in the US of being the good guys, the ones that bring "freedom" around the world, but we have caused more grief and death than many of the regimes we condemn.

:(

[Judi Lynn]

17. Thank you for breaking the ice on discussing this migration due to politics.

Until reading your post, I had no idea whatsoever about the actual number of people trying to avoid being murdered. Had only heard of some specific targets being bombed, and shot across the border.

I've got to save your post as a reminder. It's absolutely astonishing, opening a whole new view I'd never known existed. It truly reminds one of what has happened in Europe when people tried to escape the halocaust there, and in Asia.

So glad to see your comments. Thank you. :hi:

[Beacool]

18. You're welcome

It saddens me to say this, but the US was complicit in the murder of thousands of people in Latin America. The US supported every single military regime and repressive right wing government in the continent with the excuse of preventing communism from taking a foothold in the continent.

The same people who later became dictators and went back home to torture, kill and suppress their people, were trained in the School of the Americas in GA. Check the link I posted below. I have yet to hear the US government apologize for the pain it helped to inflict to a good part of the continent.

http://www.soaw.org/

[Judi Lynn]

19. You bet. SOA has created a living hell for Latin American citizens.

This link reminds us that the yearly demonstration by conscientious Americans at the home of the School of the Americas at Ft. Benning is going on right now. Sunday is the last day.

Americans have wanted this place shut down for so many years, even before it was common knowledge they were teaching torture techniques there.

As the link you posted says:

Nov. 21-23, 2008: Thousands will converge on Fort Benning, Georgia for the November Vigil to Close the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC)

Join torture survivors, community organizers, and social justice activists from across the Americas and converge at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia, to start building the world that we hope for. The annual November vigil to close the School of the Americas will follow the election of President Obama by two weeks. It will be an opportunity for the progressive movement to push for the closure of the SOA/WHINSEC and to set an agenda for a new direction in U.S. foreign policy.

School of the Assassins.

Hope they get many more this year than the thousands they've already been getting, some of whom can expect to go to jail, unfortunately. In time, this protest is going to be heard. Citizens aren't backing down about SOA.

google search "SOA protesters arrested":
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rls=GGLD%2CGGLD%3A2004-37%2CGGLD%3Aen&q=SOA+protesters+arrested&btnG=Search

[Beacool]

20. School of the Assassins, is the more appropriate name.

I hope that some day someone closes this abomination of a "school". How can we demand human rights in other countries when we train the torturers? Hypocrisy, much?

x(

[Bushies gotta go]

13. Thank you Judi

Excellent background info!

so MANY prosecutions to do, so little time.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Sure glad you've been watching, and thinking about these things, too.

Hope the corporate masters don't shut down our ability to learn a lot quickly on the internetS before we can close in on what has been happening all these years, on our tax dollars, behind our backs.

They hid it all from us because they knew it was wrong. Unbearable, isn't it?

[Bushies gotta go]

37. The internetS

In our government's mind: Worst thing ever.

Makes you realize exactly why there has been such a push to reign in and control the internetS... in just the shrub non-admin alone..

[Cleita]

23. Kissinger really needs to be brought to justice. If not here in the Hague, or

taken to Chile and Argentina for trial if the above entities won't do it. If he were a Nazi involved in the Holocaust, the Israelis would know what to do.

[formercia]

24. He also knew what was in store for him should he talk.

There was only one escape.

Another right-wing reactionary with a cowboy hat.

[The Backlash Cometh]

28. Americans won't really understand what happened in South America

until Hollywood makes a movie with a character that most Americans can relate to.

[bikebloke]

29. Memorial in Salta, Argentina

I was in Argentina last month. Here's a photo taken in Salta. Each brick has the name of a Chicago school victim.

[subsuelo]

8. "crimes against human rights"?

that wording is just weird

[Judi Lynn]

9. It's corporate media's way of producing euphemisms when reality at the hands of rightwingers

might sound too brutal!

Their use of "human rights violators" instead of "torturers," and "murderers" is simply unforgiveable. It instantly tells anyone just how far they can ultimately be trusted.

[slackmaster]

25. US "reality TV" shows pale in comparison

Nobody dies, even on "Survivor".

[otherlander]

35. aaaaanotherone bites the dust!

and another one gone,
another one gone,
another one bites the dust!

[LeftishBrit]

36. That must have been shocking to everyone

As regards this man, I am not a believer in the death penalty, but cannot really mourn when such a person chooses to inflict it on himself.

[ohio2007]

38. the video wasn't all that graphic

but the people watching it unfold were horrified

sorry,
find your own video link