Hillary Clinton reviewed Henry Kissinger’s latest book — and loved it.

[forest444]

A former secretary of state had a star turn in the PBS Newshour Democratic debate on Thursday night. No, I don’t mean Hillary Clinton – rather, it was Henry Kissinger, who served as America’s top diplomat under Presidents Nixon and Ford.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT) took Clinton to task for being close to her predecessor. “In her book and in this last debate, she talked about getting the approval or the support or the mentoring of Henry Kissinger,” the senator said. “Now I find it rather amazing, because I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country. I am proud to say Henry Kissinger is not my friend.”

Clinton defended her ties to Kissinger. “I listen to a wide variety of voices who have expertise in various areas,” Clinton responded, and went on to praise Kissinger’s efforts in Asia.

In the fall of 2014, Clinton also reviewed Henry Kissinger’s latest book, “World Order,” for The Washington Post, offering a largely sympathetic view. She hailed the book as “vintage Kissinger.” She also seems comfortable with his overall vision of the challenges facing the United States.

At: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2016/02/12/hillary-clinton-reviewed-henry-kissingers-latest-book-and-loved-it/
________________________________________________

Of course she did. Hillary always liked good stories.

[Octafish]

1. The Last Man of the Junta: Open Letter to Henry Kissinger from One of Pinochet's Political Prisoners

An Open Letter to Henry Kissinger from One of Pinochet's Political Prisoners

The Last Man of the Junta

by FERNANDO A. TORRES
CounterPunch, DECEMBER 12, 2006

All of the original members of the military junta that overthrew Allende and his government with the knowledge and the direct support of the US government, are now gone.

Nixon is gone and Kissinger is left alone on this earth.

Now we will never know the number of secrets or the details that they took to their graves with them. Nor will we ever know the whereabouts of the missing ones— every single one of them. I also wonder if justice will prevail and will catch up with Kissinger, the last man of the Junta? F.T.

"I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." – Henry Kissinger

An open letter to Henry Kissinger

I was not an "irresponsible" Chilean sir, but I did pay the heavy price of your words.

Mr. Henry Kissinger
Kissinger Associates.
New York

I do remember your reprimand to Chileans when they elected socialist Salvador Allende in 1970: "We cannot allow a country to go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible"

Although we were used to this kind of rhetoric coming out from the White House those years, we couldn’t imagine that those opprobrious words of yours would eventually seal the future of Chile in one of the most horrendous episodes in Latin America’s history. Yes, I can say we underestimated you sir.

Bombs falling from the skies, towers and buildings destroyed, hundreds of people butchered. Thousands missing and soccer stadiums converted into concentrations camps. Do you remember this, your own 9/11?

Since day one; since before Allende was ratified by Chilean parliament as its legitimate President, you, Secretary of Sate and National Security Advisor, Mr. Kissinger, were plotting the overthrow of Allende. You conjured up the assassination of General Rene Schneider — who supported the Chilean Constitution — to provoke an early military coup.

You plotted a "two track" policy toward this small country aimed, on the one hand, to isolate Allende internationally and, on the other (more dirty) hand, to provoked a military coup through assassinations, political subversion and economic sabotage.

Your goal, Mr. Kissinger, in uniting military leaders in neighboring countries to pressure Chile, later became "Operation Condor", which was the coordination of the secret political police forces to carry out exchange of information and prisoners, kidnappings, torture, and political assassination such as the one against Orlando Letelier and his aide Ronni Moffit carried out in Washington DC by Chilean and Cuban terrorists lead by CIA agents Michael Townley and Novo Sampol [who later was convicted in Panama for various terrorists attack and an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, but was eventually freed at the behest of the United States, which pulled the strings on the outgoing puppet president, Mireya Moscoso].

You, Mr. Kissinger, and Nixon lied to Congress, given misleading information and assuring the US played no role in Chile’s democracy deceased. You may know that at the time there was no danger of the elusive "weapons of mass destruction" but the "danger" of the spread of communism in the southern cone. You believed Chile’s "irresponsible" people were prescribing a wrong example; Chile was a dangerous "dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica," as you put it. A dagger that needs to be removed at any cost. Allende must be stopped even at the expense of democracy itself.

Because 9/11/1973 is of your absolute responsibility Mr. Kissinger, we the "irresponsible" people of Chile are naming you the Chilean version of Osama Bin laden, to say the least.

Mr. Kissinger, I was not an "irresponsible" Chilean because I was a 14 year old kid that couldn’t vote, but I did have to fully pay the heavy and bloody price of your words, sir. However thinking about your role not only in Chile but in Indochina, East Timor, Cyprus, your betrayal of the Kurds in Iraq, your unconditional support of South Africa’s Apartheid, etc. etc., I can say something you cannot: my hands are clean.

Sincerely

FERNANDO A. TORRES

FERNANDO A. TORRES was a political prisoner in Chile when he was sent to exile in 1977. He is now a freelance journalist.

SOURCE: http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/12/12/the-last-man-of-the-junta/

DU: This is not old news. Kissinger and his brethren are bringing this type of government -- where might and money make right -- to the United States today.

Doubt me? Consider Bush wins SCROTUS 5-4 and the Banksters rip off millions of homes and get off with fines for a fraction of what they stole. Disaster capitalism, Chile-Style is another name for the Austerity that We the People are going to have to get used to, even during a time of the greatest wealth in human history and its greatest concentration on record.



The only way to stop is to be aware of what is going on and to make our voices heard in opposition. While Kissinger and his bosses won't call their support for right-wing death squad tyranny for what it is for public consumption and modern marketing purposes, know it by its real name: fascism.

[Kensan]

3. Thank you...

As someone who's been mostly a silent lurker since the summer of 2001, I don't post very often. However, I've always enjoyed your posts. Octafish, I must say you have done a yeoman's job for many years when it comes to making sure the lessons of history are not forgotten, or worse, re-framed to fit an alternative narrative that whitewashes the perpetrators. Seriously, this asshole (Kissinger) even won the Nobel Peace Prize!!

Thank you for fighting the good fight.

[Octafish]

5. President Clinton and the Chilean Model: Midnight at the House of Good and Evil

The author was a Chicago Boy helping implement the scam for Pinochet:

President Clinton and the Chilean Model.

By José Piñera

Midnight at the House of Good and Evil

"It is 12:30 at night, and Bill Clinton asks me and Dottie: 'What do you know about the Chilean social-security system?'” recounted Richard Lamm, the three-term former governor of Colorado. It was March 1995, and Lamm and his wife were staying that weekend in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House.

I read about this surprising midnight conversation in an article by Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, May 13, 1996), as I was waiting at Dulles International Airport for a flight to Europe. The article also said that early the next morning, before he left to go jogging, President Bill Clinton arranged for a special report about the Chilean reform produced by his staff to be slipped under Lamm's door.

That news piqued my interest, so as soon as I came back to the United States, I went to visit Richard Lamm. I wanted to know the exact circumstances in which the president of the world’s superpower engages a fellow former governor in a Saturday night exchange about the system I had implemented 15 years earlier.

Lamn and I shared a coffee on the terrace of his house in Denver. He not only was the most genial host to this curious Chilean, but he also proved to be deeply motivated by the issues surrounding aging and the future of America. So we had an engaging conversation. At the conclusion, I ventured to ask him for a copy of the report that Clinton had given him. He agreed to give it to me on the condition that I do not make it public while Clinton was president. He also gave me a copy of the handwritten note on White House stationery, dated 3-21-95, which accompanied the report slipped under his door. It read:

Dick,
Sorry I missed you this morning.
It was great to have you and Dottie here.
Here's the stuff on Chile I mentioned.
Best,
Bill.

Three months before that Clinton-Lamm conversation about the Chilean system, I had a long lunch in Santiago with journalist Joe Klein of Newsweek magazine. A few weeks afterwards, he wrote a compelling article entitled,[font color="green"] "If Chile can do it...couldn´t North America privatize its social-security system?" [/font color]He concluded by stating that "the Chilean system is perhaps the first significant social-policy idea to emanate from the Southern Hemisphere." (Newsweek, December 12, 1994).

I have reasons to think that probably this piece got Clinton’s attention and, given his passion for policy issues, he became a quasi expert on Chile’s Social Security reform. Clinton was familiar with Klein, as the journalist covered the 1992 presidential race and went on anonymously to write the bestseller Primary Colors, a thinly-veiled account of Clinton’s campaign.

“The mother of all reforms”

While studying for a Masters and a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University, I became enamored with America’s unique experiment in liberty and limited government. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the first volume of Democracy in America hoping that many of the salutary aspects of American society might be exported to his native France. I dreamed with exporting them to my native Chile.

So, upon finishing my Ph.D. in 1974 and while fully enjoying my position as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University and a professor at Boston University, I took on the most difficult decision in my life: to go back to help my country rebuild its destroyed economy and democracy along the lines of the principles and institutions created in America by the Founding Fathers. Soon after I became Secretary of Labor and Social Security, and in 1980 I was able to create a fully funded system of personal retirement accounts. Historian Niall Ferguson has stated that this reform was “the most profound challenge to the welfare state in a generation. Thatcher and Reagan came later. The backlash against welfare started in Chile.”

But while de Tocqueville’s 1835 treatment contained largely effusive praise of American government, the second volume of Democracy in America, published five years later, strikes a more cautionary tone. He warned that “the American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” In fact at some point during the 20th century, the culture of self reliance and individual responsibility that had made America a great and free nation was diluted by the creation of [font color="green"] “an Entitlement State,”[/font color] reminiscent of the increasingly failed European welfare state. What America needed was a return to basics, to the founding tenets of limited government and personal responsibility.

[font color="green"]In a way, the principles America helped export so successfully to Chile through a group of free market economists needed to be reaffirmed through an emblematic reform. I felt that the Chilean solution to the impending Social Security crisis could be applied in the USA.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.josepinera.org/articles/articles_clinton_chilean_model.htm

It's like Grand Tragedy meets Grand Theft America, reading this stuff. Then I cry until I remember where they all are going.

PS: You are most welcome, Kensan! Really appreciate the kind words. Like the Drifter said, "Our time here isn't long..."

[forest444]

7. What great context. An embarrassment of riches.

What never gets mentioned by Social Security enemies or Pinochet apologists (and Kissinger is certainly both) is that the Chilean pension model is described by Chileans themselves as el gran fracaso - "the great failure." That's why no one else will adopt it - and the few countries that did, have since abandoned it.

Others call it el gran fraude - "the great fraud." This is mainly because each retirement account pays 30% commissions from the top. Consequently, 70-80% of Chilean retirees end up with nothing or close to it in their pension accounts and depend on a state subsidy to cover the minimum $200 pension Chilean law guarantees - and Chile's expensive.

Pinochet, btw, left out the police and military from the scheme; they get state-run, $1,500 pensions. Sweet.

So that's a "private" pension system for you: the profits are private, but the state, in Chile's case, spends 6% of GDP - one third of its federal budget - on bailing out retirees with hollowed-out pensions.

Chile can afford to do this thanks to its copper - which nets it $40 billion in exports and mostly remains state-owned. Nevertheless, calls for a switch to a national social security system, or least a choice between the two, have been growing.

Neighboring Argentina had a similar experience. After 14 years of having to bail out private pensions (while the pension funds wired billions overseas), the country nationalized its pensions in 2008. Argentina did keep the private option - but almost nobody takes it. Minimum pensions in Argentina thus rose from $50 a month to $440 by the time Cristina Kirchner left office in 2015.

The Buenos Aires Stock Exchange (which used to treat pension funds as its dumping ground for unwanted shares) doesn't like it, and they're hoping the newly elected right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, re-privatizes them (as he proposed doing years ago). He hasn't tried to yet; but seniors' advocates will definitely need to keep an eye on him.

Thanks again, Octafish, for providing the essential backstory - which so few people know about, but should.

[nichomachus]

2. She has no center

No enduring principles. Wave a hundred-thousand-dollar check at her, and she's yours.

[hifiguy]

4. She certainly seems to enjoy palling around with the vilest people on the planet.

Kissinger:



Blankfein:

?v=1429201091

Murdoch:



Clearly we ordinary peasants, serfs and commoners ain't in her club.

[raouldukelives]

6. Birds of a feather. nt