Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalWho is behind the paramilitary terror in Colombia?
by Adriaan Alsema
September 7, 2020
The possible return of paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso to Colombia revives the question who is behind the far-right terror that continued after the demobilization of paramilitary organization AUC.
Colombia’s Supreme Court has sentenced more than 65 former Congressmen and at least seven governors, but the prosecution almost exclusively prosecuted members of the military arm of The Paramilitary Project.
The former presidents
Andres Pastrana and Alvaro Uribe
Colombia’s Supreme Court is currently investigating former President Alvaro Uribe for his key role in the formation and expansion of the AUC while he was governor in Antioquia and president.
There is evidence Uribe has been tied to organized crime since he entered politics under the wing of the Medellin Cartel in 1980, but his formation of almost 80 legal paramilitary groups when he was governor in the late 1990’s and his controversial demobilization of the AUC after they helped him become president has triggered most suspicion.
Uribe was not the only president who received electoral support from the paramilitaries, extradited paramilitary chief “Jorge 40” said in 2008. His subordinates of the so-called “Bloque Norte” were instructed to secure the election of Conservative Party candidate Andres Pastrana in 1998.
Both presidents are fierce opponents of the peace process, and particularly Uribe has increasingly been inciting hatred, which in some cases was followed up by death threats of far-right group “Aguilas Negras.”
. . .
The military, however, has hardly been cooperative, making it unclear how many top commanders were engaging the AUC’s terrorism practices.
Like with the businessmen, multiple military units have been accused of still using paramilitary forces.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/who-is-behind-the-paramilitaries-terror-in-colombia/
Colombia's ruling party joins hate campaign against Uribe victim and critics
by Adriaan Alsema
September 7, 2020
Colombia’s ruling party has joined a campaign to intimidate the victim of former President Alvaro Uribe‘s alleged fraud and bribery practices, opposition Senator Ivan Cepeda.
The lawmaker showed news program Noticias Uno evidence that 16 lawmakers of the far-right Democratic Center party of Uribe and President Ivan Duque have been bombarding him with requests for information, including private information he under no circumstance is obliged to disclose.
Duque’s far-right buddy weighs in
The same news program showed a letter by one of President Ivan Duque’s best friends, Luis Guillermo Echeverri, in which the far-right ideologue asked Spanish newspaper El Pais not to interview Uribe’s victims.
The offensive of Uribe’s far-right supporters followed death threats against Cepeda, his family and his defense attorney and an ongoing disinformation campaign by Colombia’s leading weekly, Semana.
Cepeda became the victim of Uribe’s alleged criminal practices that cost the former president his political career in 2014 when the far-right politician failed false charges against the lawmaker.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/colombias-ruling-party-joins-hate-campaign-against-uribe-victim-and-critics/
If Senator Ivan Cepeda were one to scare easily, it would have happened when the same people assassinated his own father, also Senator Cepeda, whom they also hated.
Agustin Edwards: A Declassified Obituary
Declassified CIA, White House Documents Reveal Collaboration between Chilean Media Mogul and Highest Level of Nixon Administration
Kissinger Set up Secret Meetings for Edwards with Nixon and CIA Director Richard Helms
Documents Record Edwards Covert Coup Plotting to Overthrow Allende in Chile
Washington, D.C., April 25, 2017 – Media mogul Agustin Edwards Eastman, who was widely regarded as the Rupert Murdoch of Chile, died on April 24, at age 89, leaving a legacy of close collaboration with Henry Kissinger and the CIA in instigating and supporting the September 11, 1973, military coup. Edwards was the only Chilean—civilian or military—known to meet face-to-face with CIA Director Richard Helms in September 1970 in connection with plans to instigate regime change against Socialist leader Salvador Allende, who had just been elected president.
Declassified CIA and White House documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University show conclusively what Edwards repeatedly denied – that he and his newspaper, El Mercurio, became a critical part of U.S. plans to foment a military coup against President Allende.
* * * * *
AGUSTÍN EDWARDS EASTMAN: A DECLASSIFIED OBITUARY
September 15, 1970, was a dramatic day in the life of Chilean media mogul, Agustin Edwards Eastman. His day began at 8am, with breakfast in the office of Henry Kissinger, then national security advisor to President Richard Nixon. At 9:15am, Kissinger had arranged for Edwards to secretly see Nixon in the Oval Office. Although there is no documentary record that the meeting with the president took place, later that day at the Madison Hotel in downtown Washington D.C., Edwards became the only Chilean—civilian or military—known to meet face-to-face with CIA Director Richard Helms. At 3:25pm that afternoon, President Nixon called Kissinger and Helms into the Oval Office and instructed them to covertly try to “save Chile” by orchestrating a military takeover. “I have this impression that the president called this meeting,” Helms later testified before the U.S. Senate, “because of Edwards’ presence in Washington and what … Edwards was saying about conditions in Chile.”
Edwards’ extraordinary influence on U.S. policy and CIA intervention in Chile did not stop there. When CIA covert action—which included the assassination of Gen. Rene Schneider—failed to block Salvador Allende’s inauguration, the Edwards media empire became the leading clandestine collaborator in fomenting a military coup d’etat. President Nixon personally authorized covert CIA funding to sustain El Mercurio so that it could become a media megaphone of opposition, agitation and misinformation against the Allende government. In the aftermath of Allende’s overthrow, the CIA explicitly credited its media propaganda project in Chile for playing “a significant role in setting the stage for the military coup of 11 September 1973,” and continued to secretly funnel money to the Edwards group so that El Mercurio could “present the Junta in the most positive light for the Chilean public.”
Throughout his long life, Sr. Edwards denied any of these things ever happened. He claimed that he and El Mercurio never received any secret funding from the CIA; on the meeting with Helms, according to his sworn testimony before Chilean Judge Mario Carroza, he declared: “esta reunión se efectuó días después de la elección de Salvador Allende oportunidad donde se comentó las circunstancias de haber salido un presidente comunista en un país democrático, pero en ningún caso se pensaba en un Golpe de Estado o algo parecido.” (Translation: “this meeting took place a few days after the election of Salvador Allende which gave me the opportunity to comment on the circumstances that had permitted a communist president to win in a democratic country. At no time did we discuss a coup or anything like that.”)
But formerly classified White House and CIA records on U.S. intervention in Chile posted by the National Security Archive today provide the historical truth that, during his life, Edwards could never admit. Among the key revelations in the documents:
More:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2017-04-25/agustin-edwards-declassified-obituary
Two women hope testimony leads to conviction in El Salvador's 1989 Jesuit priest massacre
Two women hope testimony leads to conviction in El Salvador's 1989 Jesuit priest massacre
"It really takes a lot in a Catholic country to kill a priest," Terry Lynn Karl said. "You have to turn your enemies into subhumans—this is what the top commanders did."
Catholic faithful participate in a procession to commemorate the 26th anniversary of the murder of the Rev. Ignacio Ellacuría, five other Jesuit priests and two employees at Central American University in San Salvador on Nov. 14, 2015.Marvin Recinos / AFP - Getty Images file
Sept. 7, 2020, 5:38 AM CDT
By Arturo Conde
The killings of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter in El Salvador in 1989 put a focus on the country's 12-year civil war and outraged human rights activists all over the world. Now, two American women — a Stanford University professor and a national security analyst — hope the declassified documents they helped present as evidence in a Spanish court will bring justice 31 years later.
"It really takes a lot in a Catholic country to kill a priest. You have to lay the groundwork," said Terry Lynn Karl, a Stanford University political scientist and Latin American studies professor emeritus. "You have to turn your enemies into subhumans, guerrillas, the heads of a guerilla group, and plant the idea that if you kill them, the war will be over. This is what the top commanders did."
Karl, who researched the notorious massacre over the last three decades, testified July 13 via video as an expert witness for a National Court trial in Madrid that has brought murder and terrorism charges against Inocente Orlando Montano, a former Salvadoran colonel and ex-deputy defense minister who was extradited from the U.S. to Spain in 2017.
Karl told a panel of Spanish judges that the Jesuits had been targeted by El Salvador's high military command.
More:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/two-women-hope-testimony-leads-conviction-el-salvador-s-1989-n1239348
The Mysterious Sky Caves of Nepal
The Sky Caves of Nepal, also known as the Mustang Caves, refers to 10,000 artificial caves constructed in the Mustang District of Nepal.
The region was formerly the Kingdom of Lo, with the capital located at Lo Manthang, until the kingdom was annexed by Nepal during the 18th century AD.
The caves were carved into a steep cliff face 155 feet above the valley basin, overlooking the present-day village of Samdzong near the Kali Gandaki River in Upper Mustang.
Who built the Sky Caves and when the caves were first constructed has eluded archaeologists and academics, with one theory suggesting the caves date as far back as 8-10,000 BC, but the caves have been divided into three distinct periods of occupation.
More:
https://www.heritagedaily.com/2020/09/the-mysterious-sky-caves-of-nepal/134980
Trump Can Use MS-13 as a Prop Because the US Won't Acknowledge a Role in Creating It
9/6/2020
by Roberto Lovato
ROBERTO LOVATO is an educator, journalist and writer based at The Writers Grotto in San Francisco, California. He is the author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas (Harper Collins). Lovato is also a Co-Founder of #DignidadLiteraria, the movement advocating for equity and literary justice for the more than 60 million Latinx persons left off of bookshelves in the United States and out of the national dialogue. A recipient of a reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center, Lovato has reported on numerous issues—violence, terrorism, the drug war and the refugee crisis—from Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Haiti, France and the United States, among other countries.
As I listen to President Trump speechify about how he is launching “an all-out-campaign to destroy MS-13,” the Salvadoran gang whose members (maras) I’ve known for over 30 years, the first thing I think is “it must be election season.” The second thing I think about is history, specifically, a historical figure whose contributions to creating the “gang threat” have had and are still having catastrophic consequences: Attorney General William Barr. More than anyone in U.S. history, Barr perfected the Salvadoran gang formula—mixing elections, gangs, immigration and policy—he’s been developing for decades, since the L.A. riots of 1992.
Trump ‘s Oval Office speeches and other recent MS-13 rants come on the heels of many previous pronouncements, like his 2019 midterm statement referring to the Speaker of the House as “the MS-13 lover Nancy Pelosi."
While Trump’s deploying MS-13 as an election year prop is predictable and laughable in how it (again) tries to paint the gangs as “terrorists,” these electioneering ploys hide a history of policing and intervention that created in Los Angeles, and exported to Central America, both the gangs and the policing models many are now calling on the country to abolish. Few people have worsened the devastation in Central America and the humanitarian crisis of refugees fleeing the region as much as William Barr. In attacking the maras, Trump is continuing a pattern of lies backed materially by policy and police and military boots on the ground.
I first noticed Barr’s outsized role while watching him commenting on Face the Nation right after the L.A. riots of 1992. As Barr started talking about “the significant involvement of gang members at the inception of the violence (of the riots),” it was obvious that he was laying responsibility for a billion dollars of destruction on the maras and other gangs, even though those of us who were actually on the streets knew it was the country’s first multiracial uprising. In order to understand the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other cases that moved Black Lives Matter back into action in cities across the U.S., we must understand what William Barr did in those cities to Salvadoran and other gangs following the L.A. riots.
More:
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/177178
Also posted in Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016268325
Chile Marks 50th Anniversary of Salvador Allende's Election
Declassified Records Capture U.S. Reaction to First Free Election of a Socialist Leader
September 4, 1970, Historic Vote Prompted Nixon/Kissinger Regime Change Effort
Washington D.C., September 4, 2020 – “Chile voted calmly to have a Marxist-Leninist state, the first nation in the world to make this choice freely and knowingly,” U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry dramatically reported to Washington in a cable titled “Allende Wins” on September 4, 1970. “[W]e have suffered a grievous defeat; the consequences will be domestic and international; the repercussions will have immediate impact in some lands and delayed effect in others.”
On the 50th anniversary of the history-changing election of Salvador Allende in Chile, the National Security Archive today posted a selection of previously declassified documents recording the reaction of U.S. officials to the first democratic election of a Socialist leader in Latin America, or elsewhere. Since the early 1960s, U.S. policy makers had dedicated tens of millions of dollars in overt aid and covert actions to preventing the popular head of the Chilean Socialist party from being elected. Allende’s victory set in motion a furious effort, ordered by President Nixon, supervised by his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, and implemented by the CIA, to destabilize Chile and undermine Allende’s ability to govern—an effort that set the stage for the September 11, 1973 military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. “I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people,” Kissinger famously told his top aides.
Before the election, U.S. officials believed that the CIA “spoiling operations”—covert propaganda efforts to undermine Allende’s popularity before the election—would succeed. In a confidential conversation with Chile’s Christian Democrat President Eduardo Frei on the evening of September 3, 1970, Ambassador Korry predicted that the conservative National Party candidate, Jorge Alessandri, would defeat Allende in a three-way race. When Frei asked who would win, according to Korry’s report on their meeting, “I replied that I believed Alessandri would gain no less than 38 pct, that Allende could not realistically hope for more than 35 pct and that [the Christian Democrat candidate, Radomiro] Tomic might surprise the Marxists by squeezing in second, thus making it a tighter all round race.” In fact, Allende narrowly defeated Alessandri with 36.3 percent of the balloting; Tomic came in a distant third.
Ambassador Korry filed no fewer than eighteen election-day reports on the September 4 balloting. Report number 1 suggested a “very large” turnout “without incident,” with Chileans so committed to voting that hospital patients were being “brought to polls on litters, some appearing to be indulging in their last rite….” As Allende’s narrow victory became apparent, however, the tone of Korry’s reporting changed from humorous observation to angry denunciation of Chile’s political culture for creating the conditions for, and then civilly accepting, Allende’s democratic election.
More:
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2020-09-04/allende-wins?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=4428305b-f207-4f9a-96c0-0c7690e9bb7e
How a US military doctrine became Colombia's 'origin of evil' Part 1: "Popeye"
by Adriaan Alsema August 2, 2020
The Medellin Cartel’s 1988 murder of a top anti-mafia official was one of the first indications that the US-promoted “National Security Doctrine” had become “the origin of evil” in Colombia.
The military doctrine came to life in the 1960’s during the “Red Scare,” when paranoia over possible Soviet Union interference in the Americas was common, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In a 2016 ruling, a Medellin Court called the US military doctrine “the origin of evil” after finding out that Colombian authorities, illegal armed groups and the mafia had been using the doctrine to justify any kind of violence.
What is known in Latin America as the National Security Doctrine [is] not defense against an external enemy, but a way to make the military establishment the masters of the game [with] the right to combat the internal enemy…: it is the right to fight and to exterminate social workers, trade unionists, men and women who are not supportive of the establishment, and who are assumed to be communist extremists. And this could mean anyone, including human rights activists such as myself.
Colombia’s former Foreign Minister Alfredo Vasquez
More:
https://colombiareports.com/how-a-us-military-doctrine-became-colombias-origin-of-evil-part-1-popeye/#:~:text=News-,How%20a%20US%20military%20doctrine%20became%20Colombia's%20'origin%20of%20evil,%7C%20Part%201%3A%20%E2%80%9CPopeye%E2%80%9D&text=In%20a%202016%20ruling%2C%20a,justify%20any%20kind%20of%20violence.
How a US military doctrine became Colombia's 'origin of evil' Part 2: Special warfare
by Adriaan Alsema August 3, 2020
“The origin of evil” in Colombia was the “National Security Doctrine” the US military kicked off in the early 1960’s and degenerated over decades, according to a Medellin Court.
This National Security Doctrine was a military doctrine that began developing after 1947 and initially was no more than a low-priority effort to secure “international security” in the hemisphere where US hegemony and corporate interests were pretty much unchallenged with the exception of Guatemala.
What is known in Latin America as the National Security Doctrine [is] not defense against an external enemy, but a way to make the military establishment the masters of the game [with] the right to combat the internal enemy…: it is the right to fight and to exterminate social workers, trade unionists, men and women who are not supportive of the establishment, and who are assumed to be communist extremists. And this could mean anyone, including human rights activists such as myself.
Colombia’s former Foreign Minister Alfredo Vasquez
More:
https://colombiareports.com/how-a-us-military-doctrine-became-colombias-origin-of-evil-part-2-special-warfare/
The resurrected Medellin Cartel has the US government by the balls
Medellin's "Golden Mile" (Image: Wikipedia)
by Adriaan Alsema September 4, 2020
“We won!” camouflaged men shouted after killing Pablo Escobar in 1993. They didn’t. The Medellin Cartel resurrected and now has the US government by the balls.
The so-called “Oficina de Envigado” controls much of Colombia’s drug trade through a network of local partners that sell the cocaine to their Mexican clients, keeping La Oficina out of reach of the DEA’.
Much of the revenue of these groups is laundered in Medellin and Bogota while the US Government can either look the other way or be publicly humiliated in an election year.
. . .
La Oficina focuses on the business side, laundering the traffickers’ money in Medellin and Bogota, just in case Washington DC stops chasing ghosts in Venezuela.
. . .
The mafioso with a Medal of Freedom
Uribe, however, received billions of dollars to combat drug trafficking, received a Medal of Freedom from former US President George W. Bush and is the boss of President Ivan Duque.
. . .
The new Medellin Cartel has the administration of US President Donald Trump by the balls to the point that Vice-President Mike Pence last months called Uribe, an admitted former associate of Escobar, a “hero.”
More:
https://colombiareports.com/the-resurrected-medellin-cartel-has-the-state-department-by-the-balls/
Also posted in Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016268132
Take a bow, dipstick.
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