Why Are Things As They Are?

We Say Fight Back!

I can have no other notion of all the Governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who on pretence of managing the public only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all thast they have so ill acquired, and then that they may engage the poor to toil…for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please.
From Thomas More’s Utopia, 1516. saveourcola.wordpress.com/

iuonstrike.tumblr.com/

Failure of Capitalist Production: Underlying Causes of the Great Recession
by Andrew Kliman Synopsis

Chapter 1: Introduction.
Chapter 2: Sets out the theoretical framework that underlies the empirical analyses that follow. It discusses key components of Marx’s theory of crisis––the tendential fall in the rate of profit, the operation of credit markets, and the destruction of capital value through crises––and how they can help account for the latest crisis and Great Recession.
Chapter 3: Discusses the formation and bursting of the home-price bubble in the U.S., and the Panic of 2008 that resulted. It then discusses how Federal Reserve policy contributed to the formation of the bubble, arguing that the Fed wanted to prevent the United States from going the way of Japan. After Japan’s real-estate and stock-market bubbles burst at the start of the 1990s, it suffered a “lost decade,” and the Fed wanted to make sure that the bursting of the U.S. stock-market bubble of the 1990s did not have similar consequences. The latest crisis was therefore not caused only by problems in the financial and housing sectors. As far back as 2001, underlying weaknesses had brought the U.S. economy to the point where a stock-market crash could have led to long-term stagnation.
Chapter 4: Examines a variety of global and U.S. economic data and argues that they indicate that the economy never fully recovered from the recession of the 1970s. Because the slowdown in economic growth, sluggishness in the labor market, increase in borrowing relative to income, and other problems began in the 1970s or earlier, prior to the rise of neoliberalism, they are not attributable to neoliberal policies.
Chapter 5: Shows that U.S. corporations’ rate of profit did not rebound after the early 1980s. It also shows that the persistent fall in the rate of profit––rather than a shift from productive investment to portfolio investment––accounts for the persistent fall in the rate of accumulation. (more www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/economic-crisis/new-book-the-failure-of-capitalist-production.html)

Gitmo Hunger Strike A mass hunger strike has been unfolding in the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison for nearly six weeks. RT has been badgering the UN, prison officials, detainees’ attorneys and activists to get a full account of the situation.
March 22
The number of Guantanamo Bay detainees on hunger strike has increased to 26, up one from the previous day, Guantanamo Bay spokesman Capt. Robert Durand told RT via email on Friday following a written request.
“As of Friday, 22 March 2013, we have 26 hunger strikers, with 8 receiving enteral feeds. This an increase from Thursday, which was 25/8. Tuesday and Wednesday, it was the 24/8, Monday, 21/8, and Friday, 14/8.
We have two detainees in the detainee hospital for rehydration and observation, on enteral feed. We have two other detainee in the detainee hospital for non-hunger strike, non-life threatening treatment,” Durand said.   rt.com/news/guantanamo-bay-hunger-strike-399/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWoOMP6C7Vc

Demonstrators Attack Muslim Bros Offices In Egypt Egyptian protesters have ransacked an office of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party in the northern coastal city of Alexandria.
It was the second such attack on an office of the Islamist group on Friday. The first was in the Cairo neighborhood of Manial.
Both attacks happened as opponents and supporters of the Brotherhood clashed near the group’s headquarters in Cairo.
An Associated Press cameraman saw protesters attack the office in Alexandria, leaving with computers, files and other objects. The attack took place near the site where unknown assailants fought protesters demanding the resignation of President Mohammed Morsi, who is a member of the party.
Brotherhood offices came under attack across Egypt last December.
The group has characterized the assailants as “thugs” and “counter-revolutionaries” seeking to oust the democratically elected leader. english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/67484/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt-protesters-storm-Muslim-Brotherhoods-Alexand.aspx

Chicago Fights School Closings–but to save capitalist schooling? Better a class conscious movement to Rescue Education from the Ruling Classes: I don’t see any Caucasians being moved, bussed, or murdered in the streets as they travel along gang lines, or stand on the steps of a CPS school,” said activist Wendy Matil Pearson as opponents of the school closing plans protested outside Horatio May Elementary Community Academy in the Austin neighborhood.  http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/03/22/school-closing-opponents-call-mayor-a-racist-liar/

The Little Red Schoolhouse

There is a link between the state and the interests of capitalists. …The state, especially in organizing and directing the educational system, trains bureaucrats, technicians, executives and workers for the economy…the state’s educational system does not merely train personnel in the skills required for production. The ideological structure necesssary to maintain the hierarchy and absolutism of factories, businesses, and banks, is part of the state’s educational curriculum. ..the state socializes the population into an ideology that makes the existing class structure, the distribution of wealth and political power, wholly legitimate. (Gil Gonzalex, Progressive Education. p13)

Council On Foreign Relations’ (and War-Whore Rice) Issue Task Force Report: The Education Agenda is a War Agenda (class war and imperialist war) The United States’ failure to educate its students leaves them unprepared to compete and threatens the country’s ability to thrive in a global economy and maintain its leadership role, finds a new Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)–sponsored Independent Task Force report on U.S. Education Reform and National Security.
“Educational failure puts the United States’ future economic prosperity, global position, and physical safety at risk,” warns the Task Force, chaired by Joel I. Klein, former head of New York City public schools, and Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. secretary of state. The country “will not be able to keep pace—much less lead—globally unless it moves to fix the problems it has allowed to fester for too long,” argues the Task Force.  The lack of preparedness poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness, and U.S. unity and cohesion, says the report. Too many young people are not employable in an increasingly high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are physically unfit, have criminal records, or have an inadequate level of education.

“Human capital will determine power in the current century, and the failure to produce that capital will undermine America’s security,” the report states. “Large, undereducated swaths of the population damage the ability of the United States to physically defend itself, protect its secure information, conduct diplomacy, and grow its economy.”

The Task Force proposes three overarching policy recommendations:
Implement educational expectations and assessments in subjects vital to protecting national security. “With the support of the federal government and industry partners, states should expand the Common Core State Standards, ensuring that students are mastering the skills and knowledge necessary to safeguard the country’s national security.”
Make structural changes to provide students with good choices.
“Enhanced choice and competition, in an environment of equitable resource allocation, will fuel the innovation necessary to transform results.”
Launch a “national security readiness audit” to hold schools and policymakers accountable for results and to raise public awareness. “There should be a coordinated, national effort to assess whether students are learning the skills and knowledge necessary to safeguard America’s future security and prosperity. The results should be publicized to engage the American people in addressing problems and building on successes.”

“We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” warned Condoleezza Rice, President Bush’s national security advisor. In the long war that followed, more than 4,000 U.S. troops were killed, but not a single “nuke” was ever uncovered. (above, with pal Ghaddaffi)

NEA’s New Poster Boy and A Vacillating Reactionary Front for NEA’s Counterfeit Education Resistance The Network for Public Education, a new volunteer organization formed by Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, and other education experts, plans to use grassroots advocacy to defend public education from a wide range of well-financed threats.  Ravitch told the New York Times that the Network is calling for “broad-minded public school curriculums that included arts, sciences, foreign languages and physical education; better financing for schools; more respect for teachers; and the ‘appropriate use of testing to help students and teachers, not to punish or reward students, teachers, principals, or to close schools’.”  According to the Network’s Web site, the group will also support candidates who “oppose high-stakes testing, mass school closures, the privatization of our public schools and the outsourcing of its core functions to for-profit corporations.” Issue #158 – March 22, 2013 NEA ESEA UPDATE

Killing Ethnic Studies in Tx when Patrick’s bill — along with companion House Bill 1938 from Republican state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione — is heard and amended, it’s likely to morph into what its authors truly intended: an attack against ethnic studies, including Mexican American Studies, African American Studies and other programs developed in the last half-century to fill in the blank spaces left by Eurocentric scholarship.
Read more: www.mysanantonio.com/news/local_news/article/Ayala-Legislation-takes-aim-at-future-of-ethnic-4362237.php#ixzz2OF1z6hyP

After the San Diego EA Made big Concessions—and an Untested Superintendent is hired with an 8% raise ($255 thou) over the last boss—a School Worker Writes I think these raises that these Central Office administrators are receiving are disgusting and shameful. On Sunday, 3/10/13 the Union-Tribune reported that Deputy General Counsel received a $60,000 raise. Stan Dobbs (Mr. “teachers make $92,000″) makes a base salary lf $173,000 – 12% higher than the person who had that position. Today I received word from my principal
that I am in excess from my school because the District is raising class size to 24-27 students per class (K-3). We are constantly beat over the head with how much the District spends on “teacher” salaries…what about administrator salaries????
Before the election and passing of Prop 30, all we heard was that the District needed this extra money to help solve its budget problems, yet what do they do with the money, but give exorbitant raises.  http://thebreakfastclubsandiego.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/new-sdusd-board-approves-7-8-raise/#comments

Michigan and More–So Long foreign language instruction Even as foreign language immersion grows in Metro Detroit, districts around the country are dropping foreign language classes, mostly in rural and poor areas, according to a nationwide survey by the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C.
Districts scaling back foreign language offerings include Warren Consolidated Schools, which traditionally taught French, German and Spanish. Now it offers only Spanish.
“The number of students who selected French or German in ninth grade to begin their two-year world language requirement dropped significantly,” said chief academic officer Brian J. Walmsley. “Although we do not offer French and German, we do offer students the opportunity to take these courses through dual enrollment options.”
Foreign language studies could be de-emphasized statewide by a bill that would drop it as a high school graduation requirement.  From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130318/SCHOOLS/303180344#ixzz2OKsJFC43

The International Hot War of the Rich on the Poor

The Lone British Soldier, of 16,500, who made it from Kabul to Jalalabad in the Afghan war of  1842. Empires cannot learn.

“Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him.
We draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.” Marx

“Americans know so little history they cannot connect cause and effect.” Chalmers Johnson. And hence, Americans cannot link German V1 Rockets and Hellbound Drones.

Living Under Drones:  Executive Summary and Recommendations ; In the United States, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling “targeted killing” of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts.This narrative is false. www.livingunderdrones.org/

Brit Ministry of Defense Admits Afghan War is Lost (again) British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan are part of a campaign that attempted to “impose an ideology foreign to the Afghan people” and was “unwinnable in military terms”, according to a damning report by the Ministry of Defence.
The internal study says that Nato forces have been unable to “establish control over the insurgents’ safe havens” or “protect the rural population”, and warns the “conditions do not exist” to guarantee the survival of the Afghan government after combat troops withdraw next year.
The report, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, says that when troops leave, Afghanistan “will be left with a severely damaged and very weak economic base”, which means that the West will have to continue to fund “large-scale support programmes” for many years to come.
Even if the internal situation were stable, the Afghan government may not survive the destabilising activities of its neighbours. “Regional players do not have a vested interest in the success of the Kabul government”, states the document in a clear reference to Pakistan. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mod-admits-campaign-in-afghanistan-is-an-unwinnable-war-8535291.html

Reminder. The US is not At War With Pakistan, but the US bombs Pakistan The officials said missiles fired late Thursday night from a drone operated by the Central Intelligence Agency hit a moving vehicle in Datta Khel Bazar in the North Waziristan tribal region, which is a redoubt of local and foreign militants. “Four men inside the vehicle were killed,” a tribal official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The nationality of those killed was not immediately clear. The vehicle exploded after it was hit by two missiles, leaving the bodies charred and beyond recognition.  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/world/asia/pakistan-says-us-drone-strike-kills-4.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y&_r=0

Costs of War–$4 Trillion and Untold hundreds of thousands dead and wounded—for?

McClatchey and most of the Pro Profit Press: Iraq??!! O yeah, we made a mistake: A decade ago, the media screwed up, and screwed up royally.
We got the Iraq war wrong.
Big time.
There were a few exceptions, including detailed work that questioned claims about weapons of mass destruction by the then-Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau (now McClatchy, which owns The Sun News) while most others simply parroted what was coming out of the Bush administration.
Coastal Carolina University also did an important thing when it invited Scott Ritter, the former chief weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq, to Conway and allowed him to say why he knew Saddam Hussein no longer had the much-discussed weapons – even though some residents of the Grand Strand disapproved of the invitation.
Ritter had personal problems then and since but was right about Iraqi weapons capabilities….The Washington Post has since admitted that it didn’t publish a story by one of its top reporters that had quotes from top retired military officials who were questioning claims being made by the Bush administration.
The New York Times published stories that were primarily sourced by people within the administration that turned out to be completely bogus – in the run-up to the war and shortly after it began.
That doesn’t even include how the so-called non-mainstream and non- liberal media handled it, or the tens of millions voters who helped re-elect George W. Bush in 2004 even after they found out about the massive errors that led to a decade-long war in which 4,500 U.S. soldiers were killed, tens of thousands others sustained major injuries, 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives and the suicide rate among U.S. soldiers hit a record high.
Read more here: www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/19/186180/commentary-the-media-blew-it-on.html#emlnl=Daily_News_Update#storylink=cpy

Cheney’s Haliburton Did Well in Iraq–how about you? he accounting of the financial cost of the nearly decade-long Iraq War will go on for years, but a recent analysis has shed light on the companies that made money off the war by providing support services as the privatization of what were former U.S. military operations rose to unprecedented levels.
Private or publicly listed firms received at least $138 billion of U.S. taxpayer money for government contracts for services that included providing private security, building infrastructure and feeding the troops.
Ten contractors received 52 percent of the funds, according to an analysis by the Financial Times that was published Tuesday.
The No. 1 recipient?
Houston-based energy-focused engineering and construction firm KBR, Inc. (NYSE:KBR), which was spun off from its parent, oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL), in 2007.
The company was given $39.5 billion in Iraq-related contracts over the past decade, with many of the deals given without any bidding from competing firms, such as a $568-million contract renewal in 2010 to provide housing, meals, water and bathroom services to soldiers, a deal that led to a Justice Department lawsuit over alleged kickbacks, as reported by Bloomberg.
Who were Nos. 2 and 3?
Agility Logistics (KSE:AGLTY) of Kuwait and the state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corp. Together, these firms garnered $13.5 billion of U.S. contracts.
As private enterprise entered the war zone at unprecedented levels, the amount of corruption ballooned, even if most contractors performed their duties as expected.   readersupportednews.org/FOCUS%20_%20Cheneys-Halliburton-Made-39-5-Billion-on-Iraq-War.htm

Iraq: Depleted Uranium and Cancer Fallujah, Iraq – Contamination from Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions and other military-related pollution is suspected of causing a sharp rises in congenital birth defects, cancer cases, and other illnesses throughout much of Iraq.
Many prominent doctors and scientists contend that DU contamination is also connected to the recent emergence of diseases that were not previously seen in Iraq, such as new illnesses in the kidney, lungs, and liver, as well as total immune system collapse. DU contamination may also be connected to the steep rise in leukaemia, renal, and anaemia cases, especially among children, being reported throughout many Iraqi governorates.
There has also been a dramatic jump in miscarriages and premature births among Iraqi women, particularly in areas where heavy US military operations occurred, such as Fallujah.
Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.
As shocking as these statistics are, due to a lack of adequate documentation, research, and reporting of cases, the actual rate of cancer and other diseases is likely to be much higher than even these figures suggest.   www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/03/2013315171951838638.html

Syria: Broken—42 Dead in Mosque Bombing A suicide bomber has attacked the Iman Mosque in the Syrian capital city of Damascus today, killing 42 people, including senior pro-government Sunni cleric Mohammad al-Buti, the Imam of the Ummayyad Mosque, one of the most significant mosques in all of Islam. 84 other people were also reported wounded.   news.antiwar.com/2013/03/21/damascus-mosque-hit-by-suicide-bombing-42-killed/

The International Economic War of the Rich on the Poor

Binelli Audio, The Last Days of Detroit www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r70z6

Forbes: The Wall Street Pension Feeding Frenzy and Capitalist Corruption Yesterday a federal grand jury indicted two former top officials of CalPERS, the nation’s largest public pension fund on fraud, conspiracy and obstruction charges. Three years after the “pay-to-play” influence peddling scandal surfaced at the $225 billion fund, the Department of Justice may be poised to investigate and prosecute public pension corruption nationally. Take my word for it, there’s enough public pension corruption across the country to keep DOJ busy for decades.
As a seasoned public pension forensic investigator, it has long been my opinion that potential criminal charges are needed to deter politically-savvy scammers who are confident they will not be held accountable by pension officials they have cozied-up to—officials who are, at a minimum, conflicted and often outright culpable.  The Wall Street public pension trough feeding frenzy has, unbeknownst to taxpayers and government workers participating in these funds, cost the nation trillions and is only getting worse with the proliferation of hedge funds and private equity alternative investments.   www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsiedle/2013/03/19/calpers-criminal-prosecutions-needed-to-end-public-pension-fraud/

LA Times Discovers the Rich Aren’t Like US! If the concerns of the wealthy carry special weight in government — as an increasing body of social scientific evidence suggests — such extreme differences between their views and those of other Americans could significantly skew policy away from what a majority of the country would prefer. …  While the wealthy favored more government spending on infrastructure, scientific research and aid to education, they leaned toward cutting nearly everything else. Even with education, they opposed things that most Americans favor, including spending to ensure that all children have access to good-quality public schools, expanding government programs to ensure that everyone who wants to go to college can do so, and investing more in worker retraining and education.  http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-page-wealth-and-politics-20130322,0,3575694.story

The Emergence of Fascism as a Popular Mass Movement

Notably, Alexa Obrien is the only journalist/blogger covering Bradley Manning Regularly

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZx_UYoYmyQ

Obrien’s Bradley Manning Archives www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wikileaks/bradley_manning/

Stratfor Hacker Jeremy Hammond Marks one Year in Jail It’s the first anniversary of the day Jeremy Hammond was arrested for the last time. Since his March 5, 2012 arrest, he’s been in Federal custody, and currently resides in “The Hole”—solitary confinement at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
Hammond has yet to stand trial. If convicted, he could face anywhere from 35 years to life in prison, and it’s still unclear whether the year he’s spent in custody without trial will be subtracted from his total sentence.  …Hammond’s alleged crimes center around the infamous Stratfor hack of December, 2011, in which the operations of a private global intelligence contractor were exposed for all to see.
Hacker crew LulzSec took responsibility. Over five million emails were obtained in the hack, and—after an apparent attempt by LulzSec leader (turned FBI informant) Hector “Sabu” Monsegur to ransom them to WikiLeaks—someone in LulzSec leaked them to the whistleblower site for free, much to the FBI’s dismay.
Hammond is being charged with that leak.

A lifelong activist and anarchist, Hammond organized his first protest at 12, and basically never stopped since, despite frequent arrests and convictions. After the Stratfor arrest, he waited eight months, until November 20th, to find out if he’d be granted bail. To no one’s surprise, he was not successful, but to everyone’s surprise, the judge cited his use of everyday internet technology such as TOR, an IP-anonymizing software developed for the US military, as a factor in judging him a flight risk.
Within two weeks Anonymous struck back, claiming that Judge Loretta Preska, who is presiding over Hammond’s case, is biased because her husband was a client of Stratfor’s. Judge Preska has declined to recuse herself, and her husband denied any relationship with Stratfor. Anons have taken umbrage at the dismissive tone of her remarks to the defense, and have begun two parody accounts which tweet “So what?” to anyone who asks a question.  http://www.dailydot.com/news/jeremy-hammond-lulzsec-wikileaks-1-year-prison/

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQyUK0KGMYU

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4EADG6iZkM

Rios Mott–The CIA’s Mass Murderer Roughly 200,000 civilians, most of them of Mayan descent, were killed during the 1960-1996 conflict as a string of right-wing governments attempted to rid Guatemala of leftist guerilla fighters suspected of being in league with communists.
An additional 45,000 people went missing.
Victims and human rights advocates applauded the start of the trial over Rios Montt’s 17-month rule.
“Finally we’re going to know the truth. It’s justice for the survivors and for the world,” said Sandra Moran, 53, who was laying flowers outside the court before the trial started. Her uncle was tortured during Rios Montt’s government, she said.
A United Nations-backed truth commission report released after the 1996 peace accords found that the army and paramilitary groups were responsible for more than 90 percent of the hundreds of massacres carried out during the war.   www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/20/us-guatemala-riosmontt-idUSBRE92I11720130320

Postmodernism: “Religion with an Angry Cloak” (Breisach) History had not ended, nor could postmodern theory grapple with the conditions of its continuance. The financial collapse of 2008 demonstrated that language itself, or the “symbolic register” in postmodern parlance, could not by itself contain the entirety of social reality. In fact, the manipulation of the “symbolic realm” in the stock market, in particular in the real estate sector, had resulted in real material consequences that had spun out of the reaches and control of language itself. Moreover, mere symbolic manipulation could not, by itself, remediate such consequences. Further, for those who regarded class analysis as outmoded, or class itself as a mere construct of language, the class character of the social order, underlying layers of mediation and theoretical obscurantism, became starkly visible. Meanwhile, with the election of Barack Obama and his continuation and extension of Bush’s policies, the hollowness of identity politics (the political fallout shelter of postmodernism’s retreat from historical materialism) was on full display.  http://insurgentnotes.com/2013/03/postmodernism-the-academic-left-and-the-crisis-of-capitalism/#comment-1184

Solidarity for Never

Detroit Federation of Teachers: After EVERY Detroit Teacher was fired in the Fall, Wages/Benefits cut (and 80 % of the members tried to quit), DFT Boss Keith Johnson Seeks Ratification of A Contract He himself Says is “Terrible,” in order to keep the forced dues feeding him dft231.mi.aft.org/files/2013_cba_faq.pdf

Wayne State Faculty Union Locks In 8 Years of Forced Dues in Long Term Contract dodging right to work law Despite a legislative proposal to cut funding to educational institutions that sign off on labor contracts before the state’s right-to-work law takes effect next week, the Wayne State University Board of Governors on Wednesday approved an eight-year labor pact with its faculty union.
Approval of the contract ended eight months of negotiating at WSU that was initially highlighted by a struggle between the administration and union over a proposal the rank and file regarded as an effort to ban faculty tenure.
When an agreement was reached recently, a new battle erupted, with the university and union officials standing in solidarity as Republican lawmakers balked over the lengthy contract. The GOP legislators demanded an explanation and proposed slashing university appropriations by millions for schools skirting right to work.
From The Detroit News: www.detroitnews.com/article/20130320/POLITICS02/303200459#ixzz2OKgAEbzD

Spy versus Spy

Operation Condor, the Church, and the New Fake Pope A coordinated campaign to kill political dissidents across Latin America in the 1970s, all with the knowledge of the US, resulted in one of Latin America’s darkest periods.  Tens of thousands of people were kidnapped, tortured and killed by military regimes across the continent and those who fled repression in one country were often targeted in another – there was no escape.
‘Operation Condor’ involved six different nations – led by Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet in response to the populist and socialist movements emerging throughout Latin America in the 1960s and 70s.
On Tuesday, a human rights trial began in Argentina to investigate the crimes committed during that operation.
It is the latest example of Latin American Countries coming to terms with their past through criminal proceedings and truth commissions.
However there has been no truth and reconciliation committee to determine the precise extent of the US’s role in the killing or disappearance of some 80,000 people – nor has there been any accountability.
Declassified cables show that the CIA and the US state department were aware of ‘Plan Condor’ early on.

An excerpt of a weekly summary from July 1976 reads:
“When we say there is no evidence we should say there are no documents that show operational participation by the CIA [to prove it]. The [US] legal attaches were very well connected in Southern America and they were aware of the operations.”- Carlos Osorio, Southern Cone Documentation project
“Intelligence representatives from Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Chile and Argentina decided at a meeting in Santiago early in June to set up a computerised intelligence data bank – known as ‘Operation Condor’…”
Other cables show that Henry Kissinger, the then secretary of state, told his ambassadors not to confront the military governments over assassinations and torture.
And a 1978 briefing document for a US ambassador to the region says:
“By July 1976, the Agency was receiving reports that Condor planned to engage in ‘executive action’ outside the territory of member countries against leaders of indigenous terrorist groups residing abroad.”   www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2013/03/2013367461442124.html

The CIA Rendition and Drone Crimes On Tuesday, Open Society Justice Initiative released a report documenting the CIA’s secret rendition, detention and interrogation program following Sept. 11, 2001. The report, which largely details previously known assistance provided to the agency, found that 54 countries played a role in the operations, although in some cases the role was limited. The report is being released at a time of renewed attention on the CIA’s counterterrorism operations. (Read related article) www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/brennan-nomination-opens-obama-to-criticism-on-secret-targeted-killings/2013/02/05/8f3c94f0-6fb0-11e2-8b8d-e0b59a1b8e2a_story.html

The Obamagogue’s Private Army, CIA, Expands Role in Backing Syria’s Jihadists in the name of Stopping Jihadists The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its role in the campaign against the Syrian regime by feeding intelligence to select rebel fighters to use against government forces, current and former U.S. officials said.
The move is part of a U.S. effort to stem the rise of Islamist extremists in Syria by aiding secular forces, U.S. officials said, amid fears that the fall of President Bashar al-Assad would enable al Qaeda to flourish in Syria.  The expanded CIA role bolsters an effort by Western intelligence agencies to support the Syrian opposition with training in areas including weapons use, urban combat and countering spying by the regime.
The move comes as the al Nusra Front, the main al Qaeda-linked group operating in Syria, is deepening its ties to the terrorist organization’s central leadership in Pakistan, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324373204578376591874909434.html

The Magical Mystery Tour

The Pretender Pope, the Fake Church, and the Dirty Wars The Vatican under Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II played a central in supporting the Argentinian military Junta.
Pio Laghi, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to Argentina admitted “turning a blind eye” to the torture and massacres.
Laghi had personal ties to members of the ruling military junta including General Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera. Admiral Emilio Massera in close liaison with his US handlers, was the mastermind of “La Guerra Sucia” (The Dirty War). Under the auspices of the military regime, he established:
“an interrogation and torture centre in the Naval School of Mechanics, ESMA [close to Buenos Aires], … It was a sophisticated, multi-purpose establishment, vital in the military plan to assassinate an estimated 30,000 “enemies of the state”. … Many thousands of ESMA’s inmates, including, for instance, two French nuns, were routinely tortured mercilessly before being killed or dropped from aircraft into the River Plata
Massera, the most forceful member of the triumvirate, did his best to maintain his links with Washington. He assisted in the development of Plan Cóndor, a collaborative scheme to co-ordinate the terrorism being practised by South American military régimes. (Hugh O’Shaughnessy, Admiral Emilio Massera: Naval officer who took part in the 1976 coup in Argentina and was later jailed for his part in the junta’s crimes, The Independent, November 10, 2010, http://www.globalresearch.ca/washingtons-pope-who-is-francis-i-cardinal-jorge-mario-bergoglio-and-argentinas-dirty-war/5326675

The Best and Worst Things in the History of the World

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8V551A5yZE

So Long