Pinochet Avoids Comment on Disappearances

[seemslikeadream]

EDUARDO GALLARDO

Associated Press


SANTIAGO, Chile - Lawyers for Gen. Augusto Pinochet moved Wednesday to prevent questioning of the former dictator by a judge about the disappearance of opponents during his 17-year reign.

Santiago Court of Appeals Judge Juan Guzman had ordered Pinochet to be questioned Thursday, after the Supreme Court last month stripped the general of the immunity he enjoyed as a former president.

But Wednesday, the Santiago Court of Appeals agreed to consider a request filed hours earlier by Pinochet's lawyers for the removal of Guzman from the case for allegedly showing "animosity" toward the 88-year-old former ruler.

While the court considers the request, the case will be taken away from Guzman, effectively preventing him from questioning Pinochet, and transferred to another judge. The court has no deadline for a ruling.
more
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/breaking_news/9612135.htm

[Archae]

1. And this is the "strong leader who saved Chile"

According to Ann Coulter. :mad:

[Judi Lynn]

2. They'd better keep an eye out for Judge Juan Guzman. We wouldn't want

him to drop out of sight, too, like the OTHER people Pinochet doesn't like.



Pinochet timeline:

Chile 1973 ­ 1998: a brief chronology. Dates are American style (month/day/year).



9/11/73 The military coup in Chile. President Allende dies in the Moneda Palace. A State of Siege and 24-hour curfew proclaimed.

9/12/73 The commanding officers of the four armed forces (including the police) establish the Governing Military Junta. Pinochet is designated President of the Junta.

9/12/73 The National Stadium in Santiago is set up as a temporary prison, holding, according to Red Cross estimates, some 7,000 prisoners. Other concentration camps established at Pisagua, Chacabuco and Dawson Island.

9/14/73 The Junta dissolves the National Congress; world famous folk singer Victor Jara is tortured and shot to death by military guards in the Chile Stadium, Santiago.

9/18/73 Spanish priest Joan Alsina is arrested at the San Juan de Dios Hospital, tortured and shot. His body is found on the bank of the Mapocho River.

9/23/73 Soldiers raid the San Borja flats in Santiago and openly burn books in the street.

9/30/73 Allende loyalist and former Army Commander-in-Chief General Carlos Prats Gonzalez is killed in Buenos Aires, Argentina by a car bomb. His wife dies with him. In April 1998 Argentine courts held the Chilean secret police, DINA, responsible.

05.10.73 General Sergio Arellano Stark is sent by Pinochet to 'firm up' action against former supporters and officials of the Allende government in the north of Chile. Stark and his crew summarily execute 72 people in La Serena, Copiapo, Antofagasta and other towns, many of them prisoners who had voluntarily surrendered to the military authorities immediately after the coup.

6/14/74 DINA, the National Intelligence Agency, is formally established under the direction of General Manuel Contreras, and continues in operation until mid-1977.

6/14/74 Decree 527 vests all executive powers in the President of the Junta, General Augusto Pinochet.

6/74 Chile's electoral registers are declared invalid and burned.

3/25/75 Milton Friedman, founder of the Chicago School of Economics, visits Chile and is favourably impressed.

7/16/76 Spanish economist Carmelo Soria found dead two days after disappearing in Santiago. DINA held responsible.

9/21/76 Orlando Letelier, Allende's former Ambassador the the United States, is murdered by a car bomb in Washington DC, along with his American assistant Ronnie Moffit. DINA held responsible.
(snip/...)

http://www.publica.com/chron.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pinochet liked to say that no blade of grass moved in Chile without his order.

U.S. Secretary of State at the time of the coup, he was widely quoted as saying: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people."

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901020701-265371,00.html


Kissinger, Pinochet

[seemslikeadream]

4. September 11

Salvador Allende's last words to his beloved people. Tuesday morning September 11 1973

"This will surely be the last time I speak to you, Magallanes Radio will be silenced, and the reassuring tone of my voice will not reach you.

It doesn't matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be with you. At the least, your memory of me will be that of a man who was loyal to the country. . .

Placed in this historical transition, I will pay with my life the loyalty of the people. I say to you that I am sure that the seed that we now plant in the dignified conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans cannot be forever blinded. They have the power, they can smash us, but social processes are detained, neither through crimes nor power. History is ours, and the people creates it…

In this moment of definition, the last thing I can say to you is that I hope you will learn this lesson: foreign capital and imperialism united with reactionary elements, created the climate for the Armed Forces to break with their tradition…

I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other people will overcome this gray and bitter moment where treason tries to impose itself. May you continue to know that much sooner than later the great avenues, through which free people will walk to build a better society, will open …

Long live Chile!
Long live the People!

Long live the Workers!

These are my last words. I am sure that my sacrifice will not be in vain; I am sure that it will at least be a moral lesson which will punish felony, cowardice and treason."


:hi:

[Judi Lynn]

7. Never heard those words before. Adds even more sorrow to the picture

knowing that he was aware precisely of what was happening and understood he and his beloved country didn't stand a chance.

Pinochet had jets bombing the Palace, tanks everywhere, he "disappeared" "his own people" like a demon, and we found this situation to be absolutely peachy keen. Couldn't be better.

It seems Republican Presidents don't care what the hell some dictators do to destroy and torture their people as long as they are our pals, and they are murdering leftists. Sounds easy to remember.


Pinochet visiting Nixon
in the Rose Garden

[Octafish]

3. Scum of the Earth

And they rise to the top, together.



From before Absolut Hitchens needed a Green Card favor...

The Fugitive

by Christopher Hitchins
The Nation magazine, June 25, 2001

It was, take it for all in all, a near-faultless headline: HENRY KISSINGER RATTRAPE AU RITZ, A PARIS, PAR LES FANTOMES DU PLAN CONDOR. I especially liked the accidental synonymy of the verb rattraper. What a rat. And such a trap. It was in this fashion that the front page of the Paris daily Le Monde informed its readers that on Memorial Day the gendarmes had gone round to the Ritz Hotel-flagship of Mohamed Al Fayed's fleet of properties-with a summons from Judge Roger Le Loire inviting the famous rodent to attend at the Palace of Justice the following day. In what must have been one of the most unpleasant moments of his career, noted Le Monde, the hotel manager had to translate the summons to his distinguished guest. Kissinger left the hotel, surrounded by bodyguards, and later announced that he had no desire to answer questions about Operation Condor. He then left town.

Operation Condor was a coordinated effort in the 1970s by the secret police forces of seven South American dictatorships. The death squads of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador and Bolivia agreed to pool resources and to hunt down, torture, murder and otherwise "disappear" one another's dissidents. They did this not just on their own soil but as far away as Rome and Washington, where assassins and car-bombs were deployed to maim Christian Democratic Senator Bernardo Leighton in 1975 and to murder the Socialist Orlando Letelier in 1976. The Pinochet regime was to the fore in this internationalization of state terror tactics, and its secret police chief, Col. Manuel Contreras, was especially inventive and energetic.

Thanks to the efforts of Representative Maurice Hinchey, who attached an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act last year, we now know that this seven-nation alliance had a senior partner. At all material times, those directing the work of US intelligence knew of Operation Condor and assisted its activities. And at all material times, the chairman of the supervising "Forty Committee," and the key member of the Interagency Committee on Chile, was Henry Kissinger. It was on his watch that the FBI helped Pinochet to identify and arrest Jorge Isaac Fuentes de Alarcon, a Chilean oppositionist who was first detained and tortured in Paraguay and then turned over to Contreras and "disappeared." Contreras himself was paid a CIA stipend. Other Condor leaders were promised US cooperation in the surveillance of inconvenient exiles living in the United States.

Judge Roger Le Loire has had documents to this effect on his desk for some time and is investigating the fate of five missing French citizens in Chile during the relevant period. He has already issued an arrest warrant for General Pinochet. But he understands that the inquiry can go no further until US government figures agree to answer questions. In refusing to do this, Kissinger received the shameful support of the US Embassy in Paris and the State Department, which coldly advised the French to go through bureaucratic channels in seeking information. Judge Le Loire replied that he had already written to Washington in 1999, during the Clinton years, but had received no response.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/Fugitive_Hitchins.html

[seemslikeadream]

9. THEY DANCE ALONE

Why are there women here dancing on their own?
Why is there this sadness in their eyes?
Why are the soldiers here
Their faces fixed like stone?
I can't see what it is that they dispise
They're dancing with the missing
They're dancing with the dead
They dance with the invisible ones
Their anguish is unsaid
They're dancing with their fathers
They're dancing with their sons
They're dancing with their husbands
They dance alone They dance alone

It's the only form of protest they're allowed
I've seen their silent faces scream so loud
If they were to speak these words they'd go missing too
Another woman on a torture table what else can they do
They're dancing with the missing
They're dancing with the dead
They dance with the invisible ones
Their anguish is unsaid
They're dancing with their fathers
They're dancing with their sons
They're dancing with their husbands
They dance alone They dance alone

One day we'll dance on their graves
One day we'll sing our freedom
One day we'll laugh in our joy
And we'll dance
One day we'll dance on their graves
One day we'll sing our freedom
One day we'll laugh in our joy
And we'll dance

Ellas danzan con los desaparecidos
Ellas danzan con los muertos
Ellas danzan con amores invisibles
Ellas danzan con silenciosa angustia
Danzan con sus pardres
Danzan con sus hijos
Danzan con sus esposos
Ellas danzan solas
Danzan solas

Hey Mr. Pinochet
You've sown a bitter crop
It's foreign money that supports you

One day the money's going to stop
No wages for your torturers
No budget for your guns

Can you think of your own mother
Dancin' with her invisible son
They're dancing with the missing
They're dancing with the dead
They dance with the invisible ones
They're anguish is unsaid
They're dancing with their fathers
They're dancing with their sons
They're dancing with their husbands
They dance alone

sting

Octafish

[Octafish]

14. Do Them Quickly

Sunday 29th August 2004 :

KISSINGER CAUGHT TELLING PINOCHET TO "DO IT QUICKLY" SAME DAY AS SUPREME COURT.......

KISSINGER TO THE ARGENTINE GENERALS IN 1976: "IF THERE ARE THINGS THAT HAVE TO BE DONE, YOU SHOULD DO THEM QUICKLY"

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 133

Edited by Carlos Osorio and Kathleen Costar

Washington, August 27, 2004 - A newly declassified document obtained by the National Security Archive shows that amidst vast human rights violations by Argentina’s security forces in June 1976, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar Augusto Guzzetti:

SNIP...

Kissinger’s comment is part of a 13-page Memorandum of Conversation reporting on a June 10 meeting between Secretary Kissinger and Argentine Admiral Guzzetti in Santiago, Chile.

After a series of pleasantries, Guzzetti went into the substance of the meeting by stating: "Our main problem in Argentina is terrorism. It is the first priority of the current government that took office on March 24. There are two aspects to the solution. The first is to ensure the internal security of the country; the second is to solve the most urgent economic problems over the coming 6 to 12 months. Argentina needs United States understanding and support...."

Replying to Guzzetti’s report on the situation, Secretary Kissinger said: "We have followed events in Argentina closely. We wish the new government well. We wish it will succeed. We will do what we can to help it succeed."

CONTINUED...

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3068

[gratuitous]

5. Guzman shows "animosity"

I guess that's what you call it when someone wants to ask a murderer about his work -- animosity. Meanwhile, I'm sure that Killer Pinochet had nothing but love for the people he whacked.

I just know this fucker is going to die before he has to face justice.

[UpInArms]

6. why are the Bushes always supporting murderers?

http://www.tni.org/archives/landau/bush.htm

What's Behind the Bush-Pinochet Friendship?
Saul Landau, and Sarah Anderson, IPS Fellow
The Miami Herald, 1 June 1999

Former President George Bush is acting strangely these days, as if he may have something to hide. On April 12 The London Times reported that Bush had written a letter supporting former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whom British authorities have detained since October while trying to decide whether to let a Spanish magistrate extradite and try him for crimes against humanity. The Times quoted Bush's letter to former British Chancellor Lord Lamont, calling the accusation against Pinochet a travesty against justice. Britain, Bush concluded, should allow Pinochet to return to Chile.

Why would a former President who spends his time schmoozing at fund raisers issue an impassioned defense of a notorious Latin American dictator? Hoping that the full text of the letter might help explain Bush's actions, we tried to get a copy. On April 26 Michael Dannenaher, Bush's chief of staff, told us that he, not Bush, had written said letter and that he would not provide a copy. We then turned to House International Relations Committee member Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., who also requested a copy. Her aide told us that Dannenaher gave him a different story: that no letter had been written. Lamont insists he received a letter from Bush but has yet to comply with McKinney's request for a copy.

Bush's behavior raises questions about his relationship to Pinochet, whose 17-year regime executed more than 3,190 people. The CIA backed Pinochet's rise to power in a bloody 1973 coup. Three years later Bush, as head of the CIA, had access to information that Pinochet headed Operation Condor, an international network of secret-police agencies established to eliminate dissidents. CIA officials knew, for example, that Chile had sent agents to Argentina and Italy to assassinate prominent exiled opponents. The CIA also knew Pinochet's method for foreign killings because it and the FBI collaborated in some phases of the Condor operations. Nevertheless, Bush and other CIA officials reacted like tortoises when a top-secret cable arrived in June 1976 from US Ambassador to Paraguay George Landau (no relation to author Saul Landau). The cable advised CIA Deputy Director General Vernon Walters that Landau had authorized US visas for two of Chile's covert agents, who were using phony Paraguayan passports, to visit Washington. Walters was absent, so according to CIA protocol, only Bush could have signed for the cable. Landau received no response to his urgent alert. Pinochet's secret-police chief aborted that mission, then quickly rescheduled it. Two months later, two other Chilean agents under the same aliases obtained US visas in Santiago. Upon their arrival, US immigration officials informed the CIA, but the CIA apparently made no response. To Pinochet, this may have been an indication that the coast was clear to hit his target: Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States.

...more...

[gratuitous]

8. It's the old adage

Birds of a feather flock together.

[UpInArms]

12. Pinochet also tied in with Riggs Bank

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=2974

excerpt:

In addition to its dealings with the Saudi royal family and Equatorial Guinea’s dictator, Riggs had a close relationship with the former dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet held numerous active accounts at Riggs between 1994 and 2002, even while he was under house arrest in Britain and his assets were supposedly frozen.

According to the subcommittee report, “The aggregate deposits in the Pinochet accounts at Riggs ranged from $4 to $8 million at a time.... Riggs account managers took actions consistent with helping Mr. Pinochet to evade legal proceedings seeking to discover and attach his bank accounts.... Riggs opened multiple accounts and accepted millions of dollars in deposits from Mr. Pinochet with no serious inquiry into questions regarding the source of his wealth; helped him set up offshore shell corporations and open accounts in the names of those corporations to disguise his control of the accounts; altered the names of his personal accounts to disguise their ownership; transferred $1.6 million from London to the United States while Mr. Pinochet was in detention and the subject of a court order to attach his bank accounts; conducted transactions through Riggs’ own accounts to hide Mr. Pinochet’s involvement in some cash transactions; and delivered over $1.9 million in cashiers checks to Mr. Pinochet in Chile to enable him to obtain substantial cash payments from banks in that country.”

<snip>

The revelations of the activities at Riggs Bank demonstrate how commonplace and extensive criminal activity has become within the American financial and political establishment. Not coincidentally, the bank’s activity has a great deal in common with certain features prominent in the Bush administration: the heavy influence of oil interests, the close ties with the Saudi ruling elite, the funding and support given to dictators and former dictators, including General Pinochet.

The relationship of Riggs to the Bush administration is more than tangential. Riggs owns a money management firm, J. Bush & Co., operated by Jonathan Bush, the brother of George H.W. Bush and the current president’s uncle.

Jonathan Bush played a very important role in helping find investors for the various failed oil businesses that George W. Bush ran before he began his career in politics. Jonathan Bush also helped raise money for George H.W. Bush and is a former chair of the New York Republican State Finance Committee. In 2000, he was briefly named president and CEO of Riggs Investment Management Company (RIMCO), a wholly owned subsidiary of Riggs Bank.

While Jonathan Bush appears not to have been directly involved in the Saudi, Pinochet or Equatorial Guinean accounts, his position at Riggs is an indication of the close ties between the bank and the Bush family.

Moreover, Riggs is owned by the Allbritton family, a Texas family with close ties to the Republican establishment. Joe Allbritton, the former head of Riggs who bought the bank in the mid-1970s, is a friend of the Bush family. His son, Robert Allbritton, is the current chairman and CEO.

...more...

[Octafish]

10. So. Who did the unelected moron want to head the 9-11 commission?

War Criminal Kissinger in Charge of 9-11 Cover Up

by JACK RIDDLER

"Political satire became obsolete when Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize." - Tom Lehrer

Our lord and emperor George W. Bush has just tied together the entire ball of 9/11 lies and related wax, stuck a wick in it, and handed us the match.

He has done so by appointing Henry Kissinger chairman of the long-awaited "independent" commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks.

SNIP...

Sequel to the Warren Commission

The resident of the White House was explicit in stating that the commission is not supposed to actually investigate anything about 9/11.

Wrote the Associated Press, "Bush did not set as a primary goal for Kissinger to uncover mistakes or lapses of the government that could have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks."

So what is Henry supposed to actually do? "Instead, said the panel should try to help the administration learn the tactics and motives of the enemy.

CONTINUED...

[Octafish]

15. Kissinger and FBI head palsy-walsy at "Grove."

I assume Henry the K meant the "Bohemian Grove." It's the only "Grove" in town. Built by the robber-barons and protected by the likes of William Webster and the rest of the BFEE scum.



http://www.fair.org/extra/best-of-extra/bohemian-grove.html

[seemslikeadream]

13. Just what is behind that friendship?

Thanks UpInArms, I hadn't seen that.

Pinochet: Murderer and Thief
Tito Tricot, samedi, 31/07/2004 - 13:44
Analyses | Droits humains
PINOCHET: MURDERER AND THIEF

It was a cold and misty day when the clouds unleashed their massive tears of disbelief as three diplomats were killed in the Chilean embassy in Costa Rica. Only a day earlier, a priest was slain by an irate youth in the country’s cathedral. Now, in the middle of the northern desert, an army tank crushed into a school bus. Unusual events indeed, but even more unusual is the fact that General Augusto Pinochet is being investigated, both in the United States and Chile, for holding millionaire secret bank accounts.

Only two months ago the country’s Court of Appeal stripped Pinochet of his immunity from prosecution opening the way for a new trial on human rights violations during his regime. He is being investigated in relation to the infamous “Operation Condor”, an intelligence network organized in the 70s to persecute, arrest, torture and murder political opponents in Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil.

Thus, the earth seems to be moving under the ageing dictator’s feet, but do not be deceived, for in spite of being responsible for horrendous crimes in Chile and other Latin American countries, Pinochet has never spent a single day in prison and it is highly unlikely that he ever will. His lawyers have pleaded insanity to avoid prosecution, the courts have accepted this argument and the Government is pleased that the General is not going to prison, because his freedom and impunity from prosecution were part of the negotiations between the Armed Forces and the civilian opposition over a decade ago.

Here in Chile, everyone knows that Pinochet is neither insane nor senile, not only because he frequently goes shopping to luxurious Malls or travels to the coast on holidays, but because the majority of Chileans are aware that his release from house detention in England on so called “humanitarian grounds”, was nothing but a political negotiation. It was precisely while he was in London that the New York based Riggs Bank transferred millions of dollars from his bank accounts to avoid detection by investigating judges. The question arises then: How did a person mentally unfit to stand trial manage six bank accounts and set up two offshore corporations in the Bahamas? Were the Ashburton Company and Althorp Investment Firm used for money laundering? Where did all this money come from? How could a General with a salary of less than 15 thousand dollars a year manage to save eight million dollars?

more
http://www.cmaq.net/fr/node.php?id=17712

[Judi Lynn]

11. Just found this last photo of the still living Salvador Allende

which was taken during the attack on the government palace on September 11, 1973.



http://www.ua.es/up/pinochet/imagenes/galerias2.htm

How sad.

[struggle4progress]

16. kick

:kick:

[Judi Lynn]

17. Tuesday is the anniversary of the day Pinochet's regime tortured and

killed Victor Jara, world-famous singer in Chile, at the National Stadium, where they took people for torture and interrogation, murdering many of them. Here is a list of his songs, the sixth one, "Te Recuerdo Amanda" being truly beautiful.

It's astonishing he was known everywhere but the United States. It's also worth pondering that his politics, being a "leftist," a "protest singer," got him murdered. Nothing more or less. He was not a conspirator against the coup which had just taken over on 9-11, 1973.

Please take a moment to hear this silenced voice, if you're interestesd:

http://www.nuevacancion.net/victor/mp3.html





The lyrics, translated to English of the song, "Te Recuerdo, Amanda:"

I remember you Amanda
when the streets were wet,
running to the factory
where Manuel worked.
With your wide smile,
the rain in your hair
nothing else mattered,
you were going to meet him.
Five minutes only,
all of your life
in five minutes
The siren is sounding
time to go back to work.
And as you walk
you light up everything
those five minutes
have made you flower.
I remember you Amanda
when the streets were wet,
running to the factory
where Manuel worked.
With your wide smile,
the rain in your hair
nothing else mattered,
you were going to meet him.

And he took to the mountains to fight
He had never hurt a fly
And he took to the mountains to fight
And in five minutes
it was all wiped out
The siren is sounding
time to go back to work
Many will not go back
one of them Manuel
I remember you Amanda
when the streets were wet,
running to the factory
where Manuel worked.