Excerpt: "Chilean socialist economist Orlando Letelier was killed on a
Washington, DC street corner on September 21, 1976 - questions still
remain."
US-supported Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, is seen here shaking hands
with then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1976. (photo: Ministerio
de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile)
Letelier Murder Highlights US Impunity, Imperialism 40 Years On
By teleSUR
21 September 16
Chilean socialist economist Orlando Letelier was killed on a Washington, DC
street corner on September 21, 1976 - questions still remain.
Forty years ago Wednesday, a remote-controlled car bomb exploded on a
Washington, D.C. street, blocks away from the White House. The attack,
ordered by Chile's Augusto Pinochet, killed Orlando Letelier, a Chilean
leftist economist, politician and diplomat living in exile following the
1973 coup against socialist President Salvador Allende.
The bombing, dubbed an act of international terrorism, also killed
Letelier's coworker, U.S. citizen Ronni Karpen Moffitt, and wounded her
husband, Michael Moffitt, and remains, to this day, a symbol of the
profligate violence that characterized General Augusto Pinochet's bloody
dictatorship.
Declassified documents later revealed that Pinochet - propped up by
then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the CIA, headed by George
H.W. Bush in the year of Letelier's murder - had ordered Letelier's
assassination. In a precedent-setting move for universal jurisdiction,
London police arrested the despot in 1998 on a Spanish court order, eight
years after his dictatorship collapsed. But Pinochet died in 2006 without
ever being prosecuted for the Letelier-Moffitt killing or the thousands of
other cases of forced disappearance, torture, rape, and murder under his
command.
That's one main reason why Sarah Anderson, global economy director at the
Institute for Policy Studies where Letelier worked when he was murdered,
says that there have been only "measures of justice" in the Letelier-Moffitt
case, but that no full or satisfying accounting has yet occuurred. Notably,
Chilean General Pedro Espinoza and notorious former head of the secret
police Manuel Contreras, now deceased, were both jailed in 1995 for their
role in the killing. But many human rights advocates have long argued that
the chief masterminds behind the crimes and the U.S. officials - chiefly
Kissinger among them - supported them in their heinous crimes and should be
held accountable and put on trial.
In May, Chile requested the extradition of Michael Townley, the U.S. hitman
and Chilean secret police operative who orchestrated the entire Letelier
attack. Townley, who served 62 months in jail after confessing to his
crimes, remains in the U.S. witness protection program, and Washington has
failed to respond to the extradition order.
"This man was an international terrorist, and his actions resulted in the
death of many people," Anderson told teleSUR, stressing that other
individuals involved in the crime also enjoy U.S. witness protection and
that it remains incumbent on the U.S. to answer to Chile's extradition
request.
The U.S. State Department is scheduled to hand over newly declassified
documents to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet later this week. Human
rights defenders and legal advocates hope the archives will help unearth
details of the CIA-backed dictatorship's atrocities and the roles of
specific operatives and U.S. officials, while also aiding Chilean society in
reconstructing historical truth and collective memory.
Anderson added that the new documents may also be important for victims'
family members, including Letelier's widow Isabel Margarita Morel. It is
estimated that anywhere between 3,000 and 10,000 victims were tortured,
killed, or forcibly disappeared under Pinochet as part of the regional
U.S.-backed Operation Condor aimed at wiping out "insurgents" and
stabilizing dictatorships in South America.
Letelier's legacy lives on four decades later not only as an emblematic case
among many dictatorship-era abuses, but also in the lasting relevance of his
work theorizing how violence under Latin America's dictatorships bulldozed a
path for de facto authorities to impose the new economic doctrine of
free-market neoliberalism.
"These policies have been largely discredited, in part because of what
Orlando (Letelier) pointed out, which was that these policies would cause
widespread suffering," John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy
Studies, told teleSUR, adding the neoliberalism have also proved to decimate
the environment. "There's now a widespread rejection of these policies and a
real contestation for power in the world of ideas over what kind of economic
models should come next."
Just weeks before his assassination, Letelier wrote a scathing article in
The Nation laying bare how Chile's much-heralded "economic freedom" went
hand-in-hand with "massive repression, hunger, unemployment and the
permanence of a brutal police state." He also singled out U.S. economist
Milton Friedman and his so-called "Chicago Boys," arguing that they, too,
should be held culpable for wreaking havoc on Chilean workers and society.
Letelier's economic analysis reflected his socialist politics, and he argued
that growing inequality and gross wealth concentration were not accidental
exceptions of the neoliberal economy, but the rule.
And according to Cavanagh, U.S. imperialism played a key role in imposing
neoliberal policies - founded on the cornerstones of liberalization,
privatization, and deregulation - that free-market economists tested in
Chile and exported around the globe. He explained that the U.S. economists
"happily dispensed advice" beginning in the 1970s to a number of Latin
American dictatorships rushing to embrace the neoliberal model in a
phenomenon that author and activist Naomi Klein later famously dubbed the
"Shock Doctrine."
A decade after Chile's bloody coup, neoliberalism got a boost from free
market champions like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, while the model
was institutionalized in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as a
condition for financing, paving the way for the consolidation of the
Washington Consensus while the apostles of neoliberalism chanted "there is
no alternative."
But with discontent as the impetus, notable global power shifts and
political struggles to escape the clutches of the U.S. in many countries in
Latin America - long dubbed the U.S. "backyard" - has thrown the economic
consensus off kilter. And trade proposals such as the controversial
Trans-Pacific Partnership involving both Chile and the United States, are
the new battlegrounds against the status quo.
"For people who are concerned with the link Orlando made 40 years ago, these
new trade agreements are the realm where this fight is continuing," singling
out the TPP as a pinnacle "embodiment" of the neoliberal model. "(Neoliberal
policies) have less power and there is more space for countries to fight
back."
"It (the TPP) wins and passes, it does give new life to that model," he
continued. "If the peoples of those 12 countries... defeat this agreement,
it will be one more blow in the neoliberal armor."
In Chile, the full-throttle privatization and the gutting of public services
in the 1970s and 1980s, implemented through brute and brutal force, took a
lasting toll. The ongoing crisis is palpable in the thousands-strong marches
that have flooded the streets in recent months to demand free quality public
education for all and an end to crippling student debt, as well as a
reversal of Pinochet's privatized pension system that deprives many seniors
of dignified retirement. Letelier's own son, Juan Pablo, like ousted
President Allende's daughter, Isabel - both current Senators and former
members of Congress with Chile's Socialist Party - continue to confront
these political challenges, the legacy of the regime that led to their
fathers' deaths.
"Many people over this half century have been killed fighting against
injustice and fighting against repressive economic policies, and (Letelier
and Moffit) are simply two of them," said Cavanagh. "But they are symbols in
this larger fight."
In memory of Letelier and Moffitt, the Institute for Policy Studies honors
two recipients every year, one from Latin America and one from the United
States, with an award celebrating the "new champions of human rights." The
2016 Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award recognizes all past honorees as the
40-year struggle for justices wages on.
"We have tried to keep the memory of Letelier and Moffitt alive in a way
that is not just about the past but about supporting the causes of today,"
said Anderson. "And many of these have been people who are fighting some
form or another of imperialism."
"It's lifting up people who are fighting with very limited means against
powerful forces," she added. "We think that that's a proud part in the
legacy of Letelier and Moffitt."
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
US-supported Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, is seen here shaking hands
with then US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1976. (photo: Ministerio
de Relaciones Exteriores de Chile)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Letelier-Murder-Highlights-US-Impunity
-Imperialism-40-Years-On-20160921-0004.htmlhttp://www.telesurtv.net/english/
news/Letelier-Murder-Highlights-US-Impunity-Imperialism-40-Years-On-20160921
-0004.html
Letelier Murder Highlights US Impunity, Imperialism 40 Years On
By teleSUR
21 September 16
Chilean socialist economist Orlando Letelier was killed on a Washington, DC
street corner on September 21, 1976 - questions still remain.
orty years ago Wednesday, a remote-controlled car bomb exploded on a
Washington, D.C. street, blocks away from the White House. The attack,
ordered by Chile's Augusto Pinochet, killed Orlando Letelier, a Chilean
leftist economist, politician and diplomat living in exile following the
1973 coup against socialist President Salvador Allende.
The bombing, dubbed an act of international terrorism, also killed
Letelier's coworker, U.S. citizen Ronni Karpen Moffitt, and wounded her
husband, Michael Moffitt, and remains, to this day, a symbol of the
profligate violence that characterized General Augusto Pinochet's bloody
dictatorship.
Declassified documents later revealed that Pinochet - propped up by
then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the CIA, headed by George
H.W. Bush in the year of Letelier's murder - had ordered Letelier's
assassination. In a precedent-setting move for universal jurisdiction,
London police arrested the despot in 1998 on a Spanish court order, eight
years after his dictatorship collapsed. But Pinochet died in 2006 without
ever being prosecuted for the Letelier-Moffitt killing or the thousands of
other cases of forced disappearance, torture, rape, and murder under his
command.
That's one main reason why Sarah Anderson, global economy director at the
Institute for Policy Studies where Letelier worked when he was murdered,
says that there have been only "measures of justice" in the Letelier-Moffitt
case, but that no full or satisfying accounting has yet occuurred. Notably,
Chilean General Pedro Espinoza and notorious former head of the secret
police Manuel Contreras, now deceased, were both jailed in 1995 for their
role in the killing. But many human rights advocates have long argued that
the chief masterminds behind the crimes and the U.S. officials - chiefly
Kissinger among them - supported them in their heinous crimes and should be
held accountable and put on trial.
In May, Chile requested the extradition of Michael Townley, the U.S. hitman
and Chilean secret police operative who orchestrated the entire Letelier
attack. Townley, who served 62 months in jail after confessing to his
crimes, remains in the U.S. witness protection program, and Washington has
failed to respond to the extradition order.
"This man was an international terrorist, and his actions resulted in the
death of many people," Anderson told teleSUR, stressing that other
individuals involved in the crime also enjoy U.S. witness protection and
that it remains incumbent on the U.S. to answer to Chile's extradition
request.
The U.S. State Department is scheduled to hand over newly declassified
documents to Chilean President Michelle Bachelet later this week. Human
rights defenders and legal advocates hope the archives will help unearth
details of the CIA-backed dictatorship's atrocities and the roles of
specific operatives and U.S. officials, while also aiding Chilean society in
reconstructing historical truth and collective memory.
Anderson added that the new documents may also be important for victims'
family members, including Letelier's widow Isabel Margarita Morel. It is
estimated that anywhere between 3,000 and 10,000 victims were tortured,
killed, or forcibly disappeared under Pinochet as part of the regional
U.S.-backed Operation Condor aimed at wiping out "insurgents" and
stabilizing dictatorships in South America.
Letelier's legacy lives on four decades later not only as an emblematic case
among many dictatorship-era abuses, but also in the lasting relevance of his
work theorizing how violence under Latin America's dictatorships bulldozed a
path for de facto authorities to impose the new economic doctrine of
free-market neoliberalism.
"These policies have been largely discredited, in part because of what
Orlando (Letelier) pointed out, which was that these policies would cause
widespread suffering," John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy
Studies, told teleSUR, adding the neoliberalism have also proved to decimate
the environment. "There's now a widespread rejection of these policies and a
real contestation for power in the world of ideas over what kind of economic
models should come next."
Just weeks before his assassination, Letelier wrote a scathing article in
The Nation laying bare how Chile's much-heralded "economic freedom" went
hand-in-hand with "massive repression, hunger, unemployment and the
permanence of a brutal police state." He also singled out U.S. economist
Milton Friedman and his so-called "Chicago Boys," arguing that they, too,
should be held culpable for wreaking havoc on Chilean workers and society.
Letelier's economic analysis reflected his socialist politics, and he argued
that growing inequality and gross wealth concentration were not accidental
exceptions of the neoliberal economy, but the rule.
And according to Cavanagh, U.S. imperialism played a key role in imposing
neoliberal policies - founded on the cornerstones of liberalization,
privatization, and deregulation - that free-market economists tested in
Chile and exported around the globe. He explained that the U.S. economists
"happily dispensed advice" beginning in the 1970s to a number of Latin
American dictatorships rushing to embrace the neoliberal model in a
phenomenon that author and activist Naomi Klein later famously dubbed the
"Shock Doctrine."
A decade after Chile's bloody coup, neoliberalism got a boost from free
market champions like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, while the model
was institutionalized in the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as a
condition for financing, paving the way for the consolidation of the
Washington Consensus while the apostles of neoliberalism chanted "there is
no alternative."
But with discontent as the impetus, notable global power shifts and
political struggles to escape the clutches of the U.S. in many countries in
Latin America - long dubbed the U.S. "backyard" - has thrown the economic
consensus off kilter. And trade proposals such as the controversial
Trans-Pacific Partnership involving both Chile and the United States, are
the new battlegrounds against the status quo.
"For people who are concerned with the link Orlando made 40 years ago, these
new trade agreements are the realm where this fight is continuing," singling
out the TPP as a pinnacle "embodiment" of the neoliberal model. "(Neoliberal
policies) have less power and there is more space for countries to fight
back."
"It (the TPP) wins and passes, it does give new life to that model," he
continued. "If the peoples of those 12 countries... defeat this agreement,
it will be one more blow in the neoliberal armor."
In Chile, the full-throttle privatization and the gutting of public services
in the 1970s and 1980s, implemented through brute and brutal force, took a
lasting toll. The ongoing crisis is palpable in the thousands-strong marches
that have flooded the streets in recent months to demand free quality public
education for all and an end to crippling student debt, as well as a
reversal of Pinochet's privatized pension system that deprives many seniors
of dignified retirement. Letelier's own son, Juan Pablo, like ousted
President Allende's daughter, Isabel - both current Senators and former
members of Congress with Chile's Socialist Party - continue to confront
these political challenges, the legacy of the regime that led to their
fathers' deaths.
"Many people over this half century have been killed fighting against
injustice and fighting against repressive economic policies, and (Letelier
and Moffit) are simply two of them," said Cavanagh. "But they are symbols in
this larger fight."
In memory of Letelier and Moffitt, the Institute for Policy Studies honors
two recipients every year, one from Latin America and one from the United
States, with an award celebrating the "new champions of human rights." The
2016 Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award recognizes all past honorees as the
40-year struggle for justices wages on.
"We have tried to keep the memory of Letelier and Moffitt alive in a way
that is not just about the past but about supporting the causes of today,"
said Anderson. "And many of these have been people who are fighting some
form or another of imperialism."
"It's lifting up people who are fighting with very limited means against
powerful forces," she added. "We think that that's a proud part in the
legacy of Letelier and Moffitt."
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
