#dirty war

[agentfascinateur]

A reminder about Palestine:

Firstly, the existence of the country of Palestine was never in question. And secondly, as per the UK's own words in the oft-referred to "foundational" "Balfour Declaration":

"NOTHING SHALL BE DONE WHICH MAY PREJUDICE THE CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS RIGHTS OF EXISTING NON-JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN PALESTINE."

Plain as day.

[victusinveritas]

Terrible shame out of Texas today. We all know the shame to which I refer.

Citizens of this Great Nation wanted to celebrate the founding of the country with their public servants and protectors. They even brought fireworks and decorations. That is a welcome crowd if ever I heard one.

That ten brave Texans stood against tyranny (finally an anti-Alamo, or an Alamo in which this time the folks involved were pro-immigrant and antislavery/antifascist etc, your call there) and had the courage to say 'No more!' to shadowy forces operating outside the bounds of any legality under no distinct control should be praised. An attempted murder charge cannot exist without the names of those on which murder was attempted being entered into court records.

(This quote could really go either way.)

It's not like self-reported ICE agents have anything to hide, right? If they serve this country, let them do it proudly and unmasked with badge numbers for all to see.

But what's that? They...oh, I see, they're interested in state terror and being a private army outside the remit of the usual channels of government. Oh, well, that would be a reason to keep their identities secret. The less we know, the less we can charge them with later. And there will be a later.

So they wanted guns, in Texas. Was the problem that they were carrying them on the Fourth of July, when schools are closed?

God forbid someone have artistic hobbies.

Genuinely not sure if this is about ICE or our Terrific Ten.

PBS out here saying 'Weeeeeelll there might be a reason people are out there hunting down vigilantes in order to protect their communities."

[leftistfeminista]

Voices from the darkness: 20 dictatorship survivors and their tales

Half a century after the coup, a look at 20 key survivors who not only lived through the terror, but helped the country understand what happ

Mercedes Carazo: Survivor who faced enforced Stockholm syndrome 

Mercedes Carazo was abducted and taken to ESMA detention centre in 1976. Her case became emblematic for the perverse system of "recovery" applied by the Navy – she was obliged to work for her captors while maintaining a forced relationship with one of the officers in a bid to demonstrate that they could "convert" the militants into collaborators via extreme psychological pressure.

Carazo explained in court: "Survival at ESMA was not a free choice, it was a daily negotiation with horror where they even took away the notion of who you were." Her narrative permitted an understanding of the deeper psychological layers of torture seeking the total disintegration of the personality of the captive before their physical elimination or release. 

Silvia Labayru: Giving birth among sailors

Silvia Labayru was abducted in 1976 while pregnant. She gave birth at the ESMA Navy Mechanics School in a room guarded by officers who later grabbed her daughter to hand her over to her own family – a rare "privilege" in that context since it was not snatched for forced adoption. 

Labayru was later obliged by the naval officer Alfredo Astiz to accompany him posing as his sister to deceive and infiltrate the Madres de Plaza de Mayo.

At her trial, Labayru detailed how cold and calculating the “repressors” were: "Astiz used me as a shield and familiar face to gain confidence among the Mothers while he marked out those to be snatched." Her testimony was vital in convicting Astiz for the disappearance of the Santa Cruz group, exposing the Navy’s methodology of infiltration and deceit.

Pilar Calveiro: Intellectual who analysed camps from inside 

Political scientist Pilar Calveiro was seized in 1977 and sent to ESMA, the Quinta de Funes and a detention centre in Rosario. Her survival was not only physical but also intellectual – she used her experience to write one of the deepest analyses of the logic of the clandestine centres. Her outlook permitted an understanding of these camps as not an excess but as a central piece in the social reorganisation of Argentina.

In her book Poder y desaparición, Calveiro points out: "The missing person is a silent place produced by the state to terrorise the rest of society." Her testimony in the trials contributed a structural dimension for understanding how the network of clandestine centres operated as an integrated system of social and political control.

Graciela Daleo: Woman who was taken out to dinner by her torturers

ESMA survivor Graciela Daleo had one of the strangest experiences under the repressive machinery: being obliged by her abductors to go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant while legally figuring as missing. This strategy of "recovery" sought to break down the detained morally, showing them a fictitious normality while their comrades were dying in the basement of the Officers’ Canteen.

At the Trial of the Juntas, Daleo described that feeling of absolute alienation: "Seated in that restaurant, I was not a person but a war trophy which they flaunted to demonstrate their total power over our lives." After her release, she became an active human rights militant, rejecting any attempt at reconciliation not including the trial and condign punishment of all those responsible for genocide.

[anti-establishment-huldra]

Your Periodical Reminder to Dog On Henry Kissinger

here's your reminder that Henry Kissinger was lowkey an amoral Sack of Shit, a humanitarian crisis-and-a-half, and thought of people like pawns! so here is a non-exhaustive list of why you should join the Kissinger Freaking-Sucks Club (KFC)

Some people say he helped get us out of Vietnam but he helped expand the war to Cambodia and Laos before that

Operation Menu: Carpet bombing campaign in Cambodia which helped the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot come to power and kill about 2 million people. Nixon didn't inform Congress or ask their permission to bomb Cambodia, they were officially neutral at the time so it was unlikely Congress would have assented, so this whole thing was actually illegal (and a secret from the American people). The Khmer Rouge also tortured and experimented on people and forced kids to be in the military but that's a tweakout for another day

Operation Freedom Deal: Directly after Operation Menu, a MASSIVE bombing campaign (250,000 tons of bombs). >40% of the bombing runs hit outside the authorized zone, so Kissinger and Co. lied on the reports of those mission to cover it up. To elaborate on the Khmer Rouge bit, it caused more people to want to side with them because they could point to the bombings as a clear threat to civilians and something they needed to oppose

Operation Linebacker II and the Christmas Bombings: Lê Đức Thọ, a North Vietnamese diplomat, didn't want to accept some major last-minute changes to the October 1972 version of the Paris Peace Accords, so he stated the Americans had negotiated in bad faith, and returned to Vietnam. Nixon said Thọ had to come back to Paris in 72 hours or he would bomb North Vietnam without limit. Kissinger had reservations about this ultimatum, but gave in and approved of the decision because he knew Nixon was thinking about firing him. From December 18-29: 11 days of bombing (the heaviest of the entire war, and it was after North Vietnam already agreed to the October peace terms!!!), 40,000 tons of bombs, about 1500 casualties in Hanoi and Haiphong, all because Kissinger didn't want to lose his job. Thọ very deservedly berated Kissinger for over an hour after Kissinger tried to evade any responsibility.

Interventions in South American countries: Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, etc (more info below)

Bolivia (1971): The government became left wing and anti-imperialist, so then Kissinger and Co. helped Hugo Banzer with a coup (and then Banzer made it a dictatorship that banned civil rights and unions and made hundreds of Bolivians "disappear")

Chile (1973): A democratic-socialist was elected president, so Nixon's admin and Kissinger invested like $11 million to destabilize the Chilean government

Argentina (1976): He supported and congratulated the military junta on the Dirty War, saying they "had done an outstanding job in wiping out terrorist forces" even though US citizens had vanished/been killed in it, and openly said that he wanted them to succeed and do it quickly before Congress could stop military aid

The Chennault Affair: (still debated, I had a hard time finding reliable sources, take w/ large grain of salt)

Kissinger was a consultant to LBJ towards the end of his presidency, and was allegedly advising Nixon under the table, allegedly sabotaged peace negotiations between LBJ and North Vietnam (around 1968?), intended to make it look like the Democrats were incompetent at negotiating/ending the war so that Nixon could win the election

National Security Study Memorandum 200 (The Kissinger Report): used to justify promoting sterilization, abortion, and contraception in countries seen as threats to the US

Now look, you can have whatever beliefs you'd like about those things in general, but this isn't about people who choose to do those things, it's about having government-run programs (and pressuring countries to have them!!!) to intervene in what citizens may want for their families— we're talking potentially one-child-policy style. Pretty unethical, ESPECIALLY when you think about which countries got targeted by this: mainly countries with lots of resources and/or potential influence, and "LESSER DEVELOPED COUNTRIES"! You may think that population control is necessary to protect the environment but that bleeds a bit into ecofascism which is a whole other issue I'll tackle another day.

At any rate, the Kissinger Report said that the rapid increase of population would be a threat to the US because of increased competition for resources (based on Malthusian Theory which is generally considered inaccurate today) and because of potential political instability. After NSSM 200 got enshrined into US policy, the National Security Council encouraged refusing food aid to countries without population control programs and giving money to people who accepted sterilization: pressures that would be especially effective given the countries being targeted. The second one may not seem quite as bad, but think of the fact that the largest group of people this was aimed at was the poor of rural areas: meaning a struggling family could feel intense pressure to participate, whether they wanted the procedure or not, in order to make ends meet.

The Kissinger Report was also cited for (to some degree) influencing Peru's forced sterilization campaign from 1996-2000. Women weren't always informed about what was about to happen, were frequently coerced or forced (sometimes getting withheld food and healthcare until they agreed), and it mainly impacted vulnerable communities like Indigenous and impoverished women. There were quotas and monetary incentives for medical workers, and the whole operation was fueled by eugenics: Indigenous populations were called an obstacle to progress and "unfit for reproduction". Massive humanitarian issue!!! Anyway, little tangent over, I'll get back on track.

One of my biggest issues with the Kissinger Report is its focus on population control to combat poverty, instability, and food shortages for developing countries, instead of on aiding the countries so they wouldn't face those issues. It was written not out of care for people, but out of the classic interventionist policies of Mr. Realpolitik himself, Henry Kissinger.

At any rate, Henry Kissinger openly prioritized national interests over morality, ignored his conscience to keep his job, and was a gleeful proponent of intervention in other countries and their governments. Reading part of the Kissinger Report was what made me make this post to begin with, which is why it's the longest section and at the end. If you actually read the post, thank you so much! I hate on him because he spent many years being a respected though controversial figure in politics, long after the death of many of his Coeval Corrupt Cronies, so I hate on him in death to make up for the undue respect he was given in life.

I color emphasized it because Long-Ass-Posts are hard to read

This took me at minimum 5 hours because I tried really really hard to be accurate, if i made any mistakes, it was NOT intentional and I welcome any comments and constructive criticism. I care a lot about knowing the truth so please lmk!

Also, if you think of something big I missed, please comment, I'd love to know more!

[sugarmarbles21]

If you believe that Putin suggested the idea of annexing half of Ukraine to Trump if he helped Russia conquer it first then reblog and tag this post.

I mean, the orange dictator has not been secret about his intentions to conquer the entire continent of North America so why would he say no to annex parts of Europe and the Middle East too. (Technically he has only mentioned some countries in North America that he wants to conquer, but let’s be real. He wouldn’t stop there if he could.)

I think also that Trump is mad that Zelenskyy is most likely going to be written down in the world history books as one of the greatest leaders of our time and he’s going to go down as the worst American president ever. And his ego can’t handle that and that gives me such great joy🤣 The title Trump wants the most and someone more deserving is getting it instead.

[primulcalator]

Is it a bad time to point out that Pope Francis was complicit in the "dirty war" murders and abductions carried out by the junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983?

[davealmost]

Dirty War

[shakespearenews]

My father was a nihilist. Death was as meaningless as life, he’d always insisted, almost evangelically, and he was not afraid of it. When I was 8, he recited Macbeth’s “Out, out, brief candle!” soliloquy to me, uttering the last two words with an exuberant flourish—“Signifying nothing”—and most of the time his philosophy retained that over-the-top relish.

Daniel Loedel, “My Sister Was Disappeared 43 Years Ago” in the Atlantic