Honor memory of loss by upholding “principles of freedom and equality democracy represents” ─ Garzón

Two Nine Elevens in the Americas: Remembrance, Echoes

Excerpt, minor edit, end comment by 

Carolyn Bennett

Baltasar Garzón is a Spanish jurist formerly on Spain’s central criminal court and well-known for securing  in 1998 (London) the arrest of U.S. Government-allied Augusto Pinochet, Chilean torturer and commander of a military junta that on September 11, 1973, overthrew Chile's head of state, Salvador Allende.

Jurist Baltasar Garzón

Baltasar Garzón’s involvement in international cases

Pinochet: Baltasar Garzón came to international attention on October 10, 1998, when he issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet for the alleged deaths and torture of Spanish citizens. The Chilean Truth Commission (1990–91) report was the basis for the warrant, marking an unprecedented use of universal jurisdiction to attempt to try a former dictator for an international crime. Eventually it was turned down by British Home Secretary Jack Straw, who (on health grounds) rejected Garzón's request to have Pinochet extradited to Spain.

Kissinger: Garzón asked for permission for cross-examination of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in connection with a plot in the 1970s known as Operation Condor.

Argentine Genocide: Garzón filed charges of genocide against Argentine military officers on the disappearance of Spanish citizens during Argentina’s 1976–1983 dictatorship. Eventually Adolfo Scilingo and Miguel Angel Cavallo were prosecuted in separate cases. Scilingo was convicted and sentenced to over 1,000 years incarceration for his crimes.

Donald Henry Rumsfeld, Defense
George Walker Bush, U.S. President 43rd
Richard Bruce Cheney, Vice President

Guantanamo: Garzón issued indictments for five Guantanamo detainees, including Spaniard Abderrahman Ahmad and United Kingdom resident Jamil El Banna. Ahmad was extradited to Spain on February 14, 2004. El Banna was repatriated to the United Kingdom and in 2007 Garzón dropped the charges against him on humanitarian grounds.

George W. Bush Six: In March 2009, Garzón considered whether Spain should allow charges to be filed against former officials from the United States government under George W. Bush for offering justifications for torture. The six former Bush officials are:

Alberto Gonzales, former Attorney General;

Gang of Eight
International Outlaws

John Yoo, of the Office of Legal Counsel;

Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy;

William Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense;

Jay Bybee, also at Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and

David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff.

T

oday in The Guardian, Baltasar Garzón writes this.

Before September 11, 2001, in the United States became universally identified as the date of an attack on democracy, that date in 1973, four decades ago, was when Augusto Pinochet [supported by the United States Government] led a bloody military coup in Chile that ended hope of a progressive, socialist and pacifist democracy in Latin America.

The brutal attack on the citizenry of the small nation entailed a sustained period of violence during which Pinochet’s regime employed

…torture, disappearances, and

…the systematic and selective death of thousands of people –

…all the while touting messages of reform and progress

By contrast, the attacks of 9/11 2001, “were an indiscriminate massacre by foreign terrorists and [the U.S.] response was as swift and powerful as one might expect from the world’s most potent military superpower. The message was clear: actions against the United States have dire consequences.

“But the reactive ‘war on terror’ has had many consequences of its own,

U.S.
Abduction
Unlawful detention
Torture

…ushering in an era of great restriction on rights and civil liberties, and

…making commonplace the use of torture, renditions, and other perverse tactics.

Far from contributing to safety, these actions have jeopardized the manifold achievements in international human rights laws and norms from the last century that serve to protect the global public.

 

“This same two-dimensional mentality was evident 40 years ago in the U.S. government’s support of the Chilean coup d’état.

“…And, as the security state tightens its grip, the war purportedly waged in defense of democracy now finds itself as the foremost contributor to the erosion of democratic ideals.

“Rather than learn from the example of the Chilean struggle, and accept its responsibility for the suffering it brought, America’s warmongering and its many violations of international law fly in the face of the hard-fought victories of Chile’s victims and their supporters.

U.S.
Global
Wars of Terror

“As we approach 40 years since the devastating events in Chile ─ and a dozen years since the horrific attacks of 2001 ─ we must remember that to truly honor the memory of all those who lost their lives in the fight for democracy, we must uphold the principles of freedom and equality that democracy represents.”

I

n remembering two Nine Elevens and considering the work of Baltasar Garzón, an important thought arises. High level officials will not forever escape justice. They can and must be brought to account before an impartial court of law.

American Presidents’ agents, proxies, partners, military and other co-conspirators' decades-long reign of violence, their unconscionable cruelty must end; and in order for it to end, these men (mostly men) who still live, in or out of office, must be arrested, prosecuted, made to stand and be judged before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Richard Nixon
U.S. President 37th
J. Edgar Hoover
FBI Chief for life

Barack Obama
U.S. President 44th
Commander in
Illegal Drone attacks

Inside the United States, Americans must put aside ideology, partisan and other tribal politics and make a decisive effort to end the carnage and correct the character of impunity.

If this does not happen, the global reign of violence and violation of

International Criminal Court

human rights, the deterioration of law, domestic and international, the disunion of the state and destruction of all trust between government and governed, and the abolition of democracy will surely continue.

Sources and notes

“Remembering Chile's 9/11: democracy’s final triumph over General Pinochet ─ Forty years after the bloody U.S.-backed coup, it is Salvador Allende’s vision of peace, justice and solidarity that has prevailed” by Baltasar Garzón, theguardian.com, Monday September 9, 2013 10.30 EDT,

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/09/chile-911-pinochet-baltasar-garzon

Baltasar Garzón brief profile at The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/profile/baltasar-garz-n

Baltasar Garzón bio brief Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltasar_Garz%C3%B3n

Cont’:

Baltasar Garzón Real (b. October 26, 1955, in Torres, Jaén) is a Spanish jurist who formerly served on Spain’s central criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional; and was the examining magistrate of the Juzgado Central de Instrucción No. 5, which investigates the most important criminal cases in Spain, including terrorism, organized crime, and money laundering. He is currently head of Julian Assange’s legal team.

Garzón is a 1979 graduate of the University of Seville and in 1988 was appointed to the Audiencia Nacional.

  

Augusto Pinochet

As commander of the armed forces until 1998, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte frequently thwarted human-rights prosecutions against members of the security forces.

After stepping down, he became a senator-for-life, a post granted to former presidents under the 1981 constitution.

• Later in 1998, while visiting London, he was detained by British authorities after Spain requested his extradition in connection with the torture of Spanish citizens in Chile during his rule. 

• The unprecedented case stirred worldwide controversy and galvanized human-rights organizations in Chile. 

• The United States and other countries were prompted to release formerly classified documents concerning Chileans who had ‘disappeared’ — were kidnapped and presumably killed by the Pinochet regime. 

• The disclosures brought to light details of Operation Colombo, in which more than 100 Chilean leftists had disappeared in 1975; and Operation Condor, in which several South American military governments coordinated their efforts to systematically eliminate opponents in the 1970s and 1980s. 

• In January 2000, Pinochet was allowed to return home after a British court ruled that he was physically unfit to stand trial. Nevertheless, he continued to face investigations by Chilean authorities. 

• Later in 2000, Pinochet was stripped of his immunity from prosecution—which he had enjoyed as a former president—and ordered to stand trial on charges of human-rights abuses (in Chile immunity is lifted on a case-by-case basis). 

• In 2002, the charges were dropped, after Chile’s Supreme Court upheld a ruling that he was ‘mentally incapable’ of defending himself in court. 

• Soon afterward Pinochet resigned his post as a senator-for-life. 

• In 2005 he was again stripped of immunity and ordered to stand trial on charges stemming from Operation Colombo and on separate charges relating to tax evasion.

Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (b. November 25, 1915, Valparaiso, Chile; d.  December 10, 2006, Santiago): leader of the military junta that overthrew the socialist government of President Salvador Allende of Chile on September 11, 1973; head of Chile’s military government (1974–90).

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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Military solution to foreign gov’t/media-instigated Syrian crisis “war crime”—Saman Mohammadi

West's ongoing
wars on peoples of
Middle East

Propaganda provoking threats to peace, all acts of aggression constitute grave violations of post-World War II UN Convention and Human Rights Declaration
Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett

This operation of disinformation, directly managed from Washington by Ben Rhodes, the U.S. deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, aims at demoralizing the Syrians in order to pave the way for a coup d’etat.  NATO, discontent about the double veto of Russia and China, will thus succeed in conquering Syria without attacking the country illegally. Whichever judgment you might have formed on the actual events in Syria, a coup d’etat will end all hopes of democratization.—Saman Mohammadi—

“Hillary Clinton Threatens Syria with ‘Catastrophic Assault’ that would smash the Syrian State”

International Criminal Court

It is a Coup d’état, assisted by electronic means: We have these continuing reports that Ben Rhodes in the Obama White House, in the National Security Council has arranged that at a certain point for the CIA and NATO to take over Nile Sat, Arab Sat; kick off the Syrian state television, al-Dunya television and other pro-Syrian television organizations and replace that with completely fake programming, showing the flight of Assad out of the country, the entry of rebel death squad forces into the downtown squares of Damascus and Aleppo and Homs, attacks on the presidential palace and so forth, all fake.  

At various sound stages, either in Saudi Arabia or in Qatar, methods used last year in Libya, ‘Operation Mermaid Dawn’ could now be attempted so that NATO could argue that there is an internal Coup d’etat going on and whatever NATO would do at that point would be invited in, by a group claiming to be the government of Syria. 

It is a very dangerous game… essentially brinkmanship. We are at the area of brinksmanship in terms of a regional war. — Dr. Webster G. Tarpley—

War made by gov't-media propaganda (and MIC)

War on Syria
War III or IV or...

Media today not only support war, they produce war, says researcher and analyst Saman Mohammadi in an article published last month.

Without delving more deeply into the background of propaganda -made wars, recent history shows that the broadcast of false news is not new: during the past decade, significant steps have been taken in the art of propaganda.

A pop music station named ‘Free Radio of the Thousand Hills’ (RTML) in 1994 gave the signal for genocide in Rwanda with the cry, ‘Kill the cockroaches!’ Saman Mohammadi writes.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2001 “used the media to impose an interpretation of the 9/11 attacks and to justify its own aggression against Afghanistan and Iraq. At that time already, it was Ben Rhodes (now President Obama's deputy national security adviser) who had been commissioned by the Bush administration to concoct the Kean/Hamilton Commission report on the attacks.” [The 9/11 Commission or National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States chaired by Thomas Kean and co chaired by Lee H. Hamilton was established by an act of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by former president George W. Bush on November 27, 2002, ‘to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks’ and to address preparedness for and response to the attacks.]

 

The CIA in 2002 “used five TV channels (Televen, Globovision, ValeTV and CMT),” Mohammadi continued, “to make the public in Venezuela believe that phantom demonstrators had captured the elected president, Hugo Chávez, forcing him to resign. In reality the Venezuelan president had been the victim of a military coup d’etat.”

France24 in 2011”served as information ministry for the Libyan CNT, according to a signed contract.

“During the battle of Tripoli, NATO produced fake studio films then transmitted them via Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, showing phantom images of Libyan rebels on the central square of the capital city, while in reality they were still far away. As a consequence, the inhabitants of Tripoli were persuaded that the war was lost and gave up all resistance.”

International Criminal Court

All of this, he says, is in direct violation of   principles of International Law (Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights relating to the receiving and imparting of information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers); and the United Nations General Assembly resolution adopted at the end of the Second World War to prevent further wars (Resolutions 110, 381 and 819 forbid to set obstacles to free exchange of information and ideas [as the current cutting off Syrian TV channels] and ‘all propaganda provoking or encouraging threats to peace, breaking peace, and all acts of aggression.’

“By law, war propaganda is a crime against peace, the worst of crimes because it facilitates war crimes and genocide.”

Civilian dead

Mohammadi continues to outline a malicious U.S.-perpetrated catastrophe and its far-reaching consequences.

“By waging an illegal war against Syria, the Obama administration, following the Neo-con plan down to every last detail, is throwing the Palestinians under the bus and destroying any chance of a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Displaced
Homeless

“No one,” Saman Mohammadi says, “can honestly justify a military solution to a foreign-instigated security crisis in Syria. The U.S. government is going against history, world public opinion, and international law in Syria. Bringing down Assad is not moral or legal. Sponsoring terrorists in Syria and unleashing NATO death squads to terrorize the Syrian people and destabilize the Syrian government is a war crime. Syrians are fighting for their survival.

Displaced
Homeless
everywhere
crossing borders

“The international community must get real and hold the leaders of the United States, Israel, Britain, and Saudi Arabia accountable for their crimes against humanity and crimes against the peace. These are rogue terrorist states run by plutocrats and banksters; not responsible, democratic, and legitimate international actors.

   

“They want to destroy Syria, not save it from its current regime.

“The only moral response by ordinary citizens around the world to the crisis in Syria is to stand with the Syrian people against the war criminals who lead the United States, NATO, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and their Jihadist terrorists.”

Sources and notes

“Hillary Clinton Threatens Syria with ‘Catastrophic Assault’ that would smash the Syrian State; Ben Rhodes/NATO Coup Attempt in Damascus may be Imminent; Will July 2012 Become July 1914?” (Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.), Press TV,
July 9, 2012, http://tarpley.net/2012/07/11/hillary-clinton-threatens-syria-with-catastrophic-assault-that-would-smash-the-syrian-state/

Webster Griffin Tarpley

Dr. Webster Griffin Tarpley is an American author, historian, journalist, lecturer, and critic of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Tarpley maintains that the September 11 attacks were engineered by a rogue network of the military-industrial complex and intelligence agencies as a false flag operation. His writings and speeches describe a model of terror operations by a rogue network in the military/intelligence sector working with moles in the private sector and in corporate media, and locates such contemporary false flag operations in a historical context stretching back in the English speaking world at least to the Gunpowder Plot in England in 1605. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webster_G._Tarpley

“CIA Preparing Propaganda Coup in Syria – Remember Operation AJAX--aganda / War on terror” (By infolution), June 15, 2012,

http://www.worldordernews.com/cia-preparing-propaganda-coup-in-syria-remember-operation-ajax/

“This operation of disinformation, directly managed from Washington by Ben Rhodes, the U.S. deputy national security adviser for strategic communication, aims at demoralizing the Syrians in order to pave the way for a coup d’etat.  NATO, discontent about the double veto of Russia and China, will thus succeed in conquering Syria without attacking the country illegally. Whichever judgment you might have formed on the actual events in Syria, a coup d’etat will end all hopes of democratization.”

“‘World Order News’ is a 24 hour news blog dedicated to bringing the hard-hitting news to the dazed and confused public that has no time to search the overflown alternative media outlets. ‘World Order News’ is meticulous in its research and scans alternative media outlets for only the important news. ‘World Order News’ doesn’t buy into the 2-Party Left Right Paradigm: the Neo-cons and the Neo-libs are both controlled by the ‘internationalist’ elite and both parties work together in this country to achieve a ‘New World Order.’” Posted by infolution, Tuesday, June 5, 2012, http://www.worldordernews.com/about-us/

Saman Mohammadi

Toronto, Canada-based Saman Mohammadi is the writer-researcher and editor at Land Destroyer and blogs at The Excavator - http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com.

Ben Rhodes

Graduate of Rice and New York universities, Ben Rhodes is President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communication. He has been a foreign policy speechwriter since 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Rhodes_(speechwriter)

“Obama White House official Ben Rhodes has been at work for some time on an operation to take control of the Arabsat and Nilesat television satellites, throw pro-Assad media off the air, and replace them with fake reports of a successful coup against Assad that could be used as the pretext to bring in NATO forces outside of the UN purview. Assange’s dubious revelations clearly help prepare the ground for such an attempt” http://presstv.com/detail/2012/07/13/250756/wikileaks-join-nato-attack-on-syria/

“Assange and Wikileaks join the NATO attack on Syria,” July 13, 2012, 

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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy

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