Tim Kaine, John Negroponte, and the Priest Who Was Thrown From a Helicopter
Tim Kaine, John Negroponte, and the Priest Who Was Thrown From a Helicopter
Jeremy Scahill
Oct. 4 2016, 7:20 p.m.
A story published this week by the Daily Beast about the nine months Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine spent working as a volunteer in a Jesuit community in Honduras in 1980 and 1981 has been making the conservative rounds. The Beasts tabloid headline is a cheap exercise in red-baiting: Tim Kaines Time with a Marxist Priest.
That priest, Fr. James Carney, was indeed a revolutionary and, as a practitioner of liberation theology in Latin America during a period marked by populist movements fighting against death squads and murderous regimes backed by the U.S., an avid student of Marxist theory.
After years spent among the poor and oppressed in Latin America, Carney renounced his U.S. citizenship and joined the armed guerrilla struggle against U.S.-backed death squads and governments. He also left the Jesuits because, he explained, the order would not condone his involvement in an armed struggle. Whatever one thinks of that decision, Carney sacrificed his privilege and status to join the people he was ministering to as a priest. In the eyes of the Reagan administration, that made him a terrorist. In the eyes of the peasants and revolutionaries Carney joined in struggle, he was a hero. (For a look at the roots of Jesuits joining indigenous struggle in Latin America, check out the film The Mission.)
The scandal that the Beast claims may cause trouble for Kaine is that he once met Fr. Carney, 35 years ago. The right-wing group Catholic Vote has done its best Joe McCarthy imitation on the issue. That Kaine made the effort to seek out and spend time with Carney is troubling, according to a memo published by the group with the headline Tim Kaines Radical Roots in Honduras. It claimed that the Soviets created liberation theology to undermine the Church and advance the Soviet cause against the United States. In Honduras, the phony Marxist-tinged theology was planted to manipulate poor Catholics, instigate terrorism, and stir up a violent revolution in Honduras then the key ally of the United States opposing Communism in the region.
More:
https://theintercept.com/2016/10/04/tim-kaine-john-negroponte-and-the-priest-who-was-thrown-from-a-helicopter/
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September 26, 2003
Priest of the poor
By Tom Fox, NCR publisher
Since he was reported missing in the summer of 1983, the death of Jesuit Fr. James Carney in Honduras has been the subject of intense investigations by his family, by human rights investigators, by Catholic leaders and by the poor people he served in Honduras.
Born in Chicago, Carney had begun work as a Jesuit missionary in the country in 1961. For the next 18 years he worked, slept and ate with the poor rural parishioners with whom he lived. Among them he was known as "Padre Guadalupe." He was 58 at the time of his disappearance.
When members of Carney's family went to Honduras soon after their brother disappeared, they knew that Carney, who had re-entered Honduras that summer as the chaplain to 96 revolutionaries, had put himself in danger. They were prepared to discover that the priest had died in a military action.
Honduras government officials told them they believed that Carney died of exposure while crossing the mountains bordering Nicaragua and Honduras.
However, the family soon heard second- and third-hand accounts that Carney had been captured by the Honduran military. Some said that the priest had been interrogated, tortured and executed by Battalion 316, a CIA-trained Honduran force known to have been responsible for the deaths of dozens of Honduran activists. Still others said that U.S. government officials knew of Carney's capture and had failed to intervene to save his life.
More:
http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/todaystake/tt092603.htm
BlueMTexpat
(15,373 posts)even more highly of Kaine. US policy in Central America - especially in the 1980s - was thoroughly shameful.
As for Negroponte:
And yes, I know that Negroponte endorsed Hillary. He's not stupid. But he is anathema to me.
Judi Lynn
(160,631 posts)Was horrified and sick when George W Bush sent him to Iraq as the embassador, and to the UN as ambassador, and also to the State Department as a deputy Sec. of State.
He must feel he has a lot in common with Hillary because she worked in the same place. Horrible.
Kissinger and Negroponte. Two sadistic monsters.
BlueMTexpat
(15,373 posts)sadistic monsters. But neither is insane despite the evilness.
Nitram
(22,892 posts)Talks the talk and walks the walk. Not a phony like so many on the "Christian" right who would never venture out of their comfort zones to help people in need.
I'm really impressed with Kaine.
Nitram
(22,892 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)You mean to tell me The Intercept printed a story that wasn't a 100% shameless, sensationalist hit job on Clinton/Kaine? Does Scahill know who's signing his checks?
(For the record, it's only a 70% hit job)... Scahill is losing his touch
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)when they are oh so clearly in the tank for Trump?
Judi Lynn
(160,631 posts)Jesuit mission in Honduras set Kaines path to public service
October 6, 2016 5:11 PM
By Veronica Rocha
Los Angeles Times
EL PROGRESO, Honduras
Not long after Jesuit priest Jack Warner met a bearded, 22-year-old Midwesterner in 1980, the two Americans bonded, drawn together by the goals and questions that led them both to El Progreso, a small city not far from vast banana fields the campos bananeros.
Warner was 35 and had arrived a year earlier to form the Teatro La Fragua, a theater company for Hondurans. As the young priest looked to forge a relationship with the campesinos, his friendship blossomed with Tim Kaine, who had taken a year off from Harvard Law School to join the Jesuit mission.
He was 22 years old, Warner said, and it was the typical thing that a 22-year-old would do: What do I do with my life?
Kaine, now a 58-year-old U.S. senator from Virginia and the Democratic vice presidential nominee, has often said that his time in Honduras helped him answer that question, giving him a North Star to guide his life toward public service.
When Kaine traveled to Honduras, the nation was in the throes of turmoil, flanked by countries torn by civil war and ruled by the heavy hand of a U.S-backed military bent on stamping out what it perceived to be communism spreading in the region.
I got a firsthand look at a system a dictatorship where a few people at the top had all the power and everyone else got left out, Kaine said in July at the Democratic National Convention.
More:
http://www.heraldonline.com/living/article106500072.html#storylink=cpy