A Video Interlude: Victor Jara

I hate letting a day go by without at least a simple entry about current events, but so much is happening it's hard to focus on just one item of interest -- I'm working on longer pieces on teabaggers, the war presidency, reclamation of leftist symbols, and other areas of personal interest.



But, in the interest of not letting too much time go between posts, here's another video interlude, this time focusing on one of my personal heroes, Chilean guitarist, singer/songwriter, labor activist, and communist Victor Jara, who was assassinated on 15 September 1973 by the fascist junta -- led by Augusto Pinochet -- that overthrew -- with CIA involvement -- the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende during the "original" 9/11.

Before Jara was killed, they broke his hands, and mockingly threw his guitar at him and told him to "play now" -- such was the power of his words and his songs and the threat they meant to the fascist regime.

Victor Jara knew then -- as did his killers -- what Woody Guthrie knew years earlier -- "this machine kills fascists."

While many of Jara's songs were about the obvious things like love, he also sang songs of revolution. This song honors Che Guevara, the Argentinean doctor who helped overthrow the fascist and corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, and who then went on to foment revolutions in Africa and other parts of Latin America:



And, taking the internationalist angle a little bit further, Christy Moore, legendary Irish musician, sings a song about Victor Jara:

The Ongoing Trials of Henry Kissinger

Close friends and comrades know my deep interest in Latin American revolutions, as well as the CIA's involvement in the various coups and assassinations that have toppled democratically-elected governments throughout the region, resulting in hundreds of thousands of lives lost and destroyed asserting US dominance in the region.

One of the more odious and unapologetic figures who features prominently in the supression of these Latin American liberation movements was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. His fingerprints have long been on coups and assinations, to the point where Christopher Hitchens, before he went all neocon and batshit, wrote a pretty good book entitled The Trial of Henry Kissinger, which was made into a subsequent documentary which you can watch and/or download from google video. If you have an hour and twenty minutes, there's no better use of your time than watching the video.

If you don't have time, you can read two excerpts from Hitchens' book here and here

All that is a long way around to the point of this posting tonight. Word comes that Kissinger rescinded warnings against Condor assassinations, seen as essentially giving a greenlight to Chile's fascist regime to assassinate former Chilean Defense Minister Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976.

Why does this matter now? For decades, Kissinger's defenders have said that Harry Shlaudeman, his assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, sent the cables to US ambassadors in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay on his own, countermanding an explicit State Department ban on assassinations by Southern Cone's military regimes as part of Operation Condor.

However, evidence has emerged that Shlaudeman was acting on behalf of Kissinger, at his behest, or, more clearly, under his orders. Washington knew of plans by Operation Condor to assassinate dissidents in their own countries and abroad, the State Department imposed a ban on such assassinations, and Kissinger rescinded that ban, paving the way for the assassination of Letelier by Pinochet's fascist assassins in Washington less than a week later.

Is this the smoking gun that will finally make Kissinger pay for his crimes against humanity? Probably not. Democrats have a weak stomach when it comes to punishing criminals of Kissinger's calibre, and "law and order" "strong on terrorism" Republicans would push back, saying Kissinger should be carved on Mt. Rushmore for his tireless fight against democracy in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, never mind he gave foreign terrorists permission to assassinate a political figure right in the heart of our nation's capitol.